And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.
not what i expected from a post that began with “speaking of pronouns,” but an a++ show of the versatility and surprise daily available on tumblr dot com
Here’s my favorite thing about this video – according to Cage, 4’33" consists not of silence, but of the ambient sounds of the environment that the audience hears. It’s meant to call your attention to the lack of silence in any given space, to the noises around you (inspired by Cage’s attempt to use a totally silent, soundproof room, only to discover that in such rooms you can hear your own circulation). In his words, “There’s no such thing as silence.” Sound is everywhere! And the consequently amazing thing is, when you silence a recording of 4’33" and listen to it, it becomes a real performance of 4’33", because you’re listening to the ambient sounds of your own space.
so last night i was rereading house proud by astolat, aka the best harry potter fic there ever ever was, & then i started having Thoughts about hp wizards being the descendants of the fae cuz it just makes!! so much sense!!!
i am perpetually disappointed by so much of jkr’s world-building but this in particular bothers me so much cause like
she placed so much emphasis on blood lines & ~purity but the only ever used it as a shite allegory for racism
u know who gives a thousand shits about blood lines? the fae. u know who goes to great lengths to exist separately from humans? the fae. u know whose society is split into groups based on personality? the fae!!
the evolution of wizarding society makes so much more sense!! if u interpret them as being fae adapting to the changing world!!!
no wait actually im not done
like just consider, for a second, hogwarts houses being based on fae courts
they align so perfectly??
hufflepuff is the spring court (cheerful, optimistic, peaceful); gryffindor is the summer court (fierce, bold, energetic); ravenclaw is the autumn court (serene, reflective, wise); slytherin is the winter court (aloof, harsh, unforgiving)
and that makes hufflepuff & gryffindor seelie, and ravenclaw & slytherin unseelie
so wizarding society is slowly shifting from the formality of courts to something more casual as bloodlines are diluted & muggleborns become more common
& then hogwarts is founded and cements the shift by making it formal but not directly connected to the old ways
which explains why wizarding society places so much importance on the house system, and why personality/character factors into it, and why slytherin has such a pureblood bias because of COURSE the winter court is going to be pickiest about it’s members
i am never going back from this headcanon this is my life now
OH SHIT Y’ALL QUIDDITCH IS TOTALLY THE WILD HUNT???
like what if it was literally originally the hunt. it gets more sport-like as bloodlines dilute & picks up more muggle elements as muggleborns increase but
originally, the snitch was a person & it was a hunt
cuz why else would catching the snitch end the game!!!
& over time the area hunts can pass through get smaller & smaller so they adapt,
and the snitch becomes an enchanted object when wizards start becoming few enough killing each other for sport is a bit ridiculous, & muggleborns come along & suggest beaters and goals and a point system
but they never get rid of the snitch or catching it or that being The Goal because it feels right
I feel very strongly that @seananmcguire needs to see this.
Specific dates provided in movies–especially those that pass within our lifetimes–are always interesting to me. Today is one such date. While watching Blade Runner on Saturday, I overheard the replicant Leon mention his inception (activation) date, April 10, 2017. That’s today. (Notably, the more advanced replicants such as Roy have earlier activation dates, in 2016.) It makes Blade Runner another one of those movies that hilariously overestimated the advancement of technology. Like with many others of the time, it’s hard to fault the conclusion; in 1982 we were exploring space, had personal computers in peoples’ homes, and the (somewhat affluent) common man was capable of recording their own video broadcasts. Looking 35 years ahead, it was ambitious, but not completely unreasonable to assume that we would have the kind of quantum advancement we had seen since 35 years earlier, in 1947.
Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies, mostly for the visual artistry. In an era long before CGI as we know it today, Los Angeles is somehow depicted with breathtaking beauty. The lighting and shot compositions blends film noir of the old with a futuristic view of humanity. It’s easy to see how much my favorite anime, Bubblegum Crisis, borrows from the setting. I’m not as completely sold on the film’s story, which bears its fair share of oddities (and I’m really not fond of the interactions between Deckard and Rachael in his apartment.) But overall it’s something I think everyone should try.
I love when real life overtakes movie life like this.
What I find interesting is not so much the overestimation but how bad pop culture can be at guessing which AREAS of science and technology will advance. Blade Runner has ‘replicants’ and space colonies and flying cars; it doesn’t have smartphones. Countless stories and series and movies had routine interstellar travel and computers that still needed punch cards, or printed answers out on film, or generally just displayed text and primitive graphics. Isaac Asimov’s Elijah Bailey books had androids that looked perfectly human, intelligent robots, and interstellar starships, and still, in one novel, had the protagonist taking a flight in which essentially a scrolling newspaper was displayed on a piece of physical film on the seatback in front of him!
We don’t have spaceships or extrasolar colonies or flying cars, but we do have devices in that fit in the palms of our hands and have access to almost literally the entire sum of human knowledge, and more processing power than all but perhaps the most advanced supercomputers of the 80s. We may not have tricorders or long-range sensors that match what you’ll see on Star Trek, but we can display images and information in incredibly high definition. This is not the future we expected, but it would certainly have seemed just as fanciful 50, 40, even 30 years ago.
Mind you, I still want starships and extrasolar colonies, so get on that, everybody.
My favorite thing about this is that Dottie is getting fucking object concealment tips from these genius food-stealing women and she’s probably using that knowledge to hide idek small thermonuclear devices in her bra or something. Probably went back to the Red Room afterward like “omg girls let me teach you what I learned in America. It’s vital we teach our tiny assassins to knit, I met a woman who successfully concealed a whole chicken in her sweater, they’ll need this kind of ingenuity in the field.”
I also really love that this is a large group of women who unabashedly like food and eating. None of them are going “oh no my diet, what if I get fat?”, they’re like “I CAN FIT A CHICKEN IN MY SWEATER AND THEN LATER, I HAVE A WHOLE CHICKEN FOR ME.”
I’ve reblogged this before and seen it at least a dozen times, but every time I see “AND THEN LATER, I HAVE A WHOLE CHICKEN FOR ME.” I start ugly laughing and can’t stop and frighten the dog.
Remember that these women grew up during the depression. A lot of them probably learned food hoarding tactics because they never knew when their next meal was going to be. So yeah, if you have the chance to shove an entire chicken in your sweater so later, when there is suddenly *no food*? You’re gonna take it.
Idk if anyone had made this headcanon yet, but I present to you: NHL prospect Chris “Chowder” Chow.
Listen, NCAA hockey is no joke. So many of the best NHL players went NCAA first. You get to develop your game and go to school at the same time. And if Chowder is really as good as it seems, playing D1, you best bet he was on the radar for the NHL scouts.
He actually grew up a Boston Bruins fan, because both his parents are both from the Boston area originally. But right out of high school, before he came to Samwell, Chowder was drafted into the NHL. To the San Jose Sharks.
It explains his love on a whole new level. He’s more than just a hockey fan from California. He’s the chosen one of an NHL organization. Their top goalie prospect. The future of their team.
I’ve seen Moana twice now, and something that’s stuck out to me the most has been the reality of Te Kā. She was– for all intents and purposes of the story –a woman who was violated and had something important stolen from her, and in her protective grief, became a monster.
But when Moana saw Te Kā from the right perspective, she saw Te Fiti. Not “in spite” of her current existence; she understood that Te Kā and Te Fiti were the same creature.
“I know your name. They have stolen the heart from inside you,
but this does not define you.”
The hostility of Te Kā and the legendary beauty of Te Fiti coexisted within the same being, and Moana accepted and validated that without hesitation. I think that’s profound as hell, given how so many women are held to unobtainable static standards of beauty and purity and get shamed if they show any capacity for ugliness or difficulty. Seeing that realistic duality exhibited and validated within a goddess, of all characters, was so powerful.
tl;dr– Moana is goddamned feminist as fuck, everyone should see it.
Steel Phoenix Studios 