This is just how magic works, honestly.

inspired by a rant i was going on elsewhere bc someone tweeted something very stupid and uninformed about hamlet and it got my back up as someone who took two single-text-focus english literature courses in college and they were on wuthering heights and hamlet, i now put it to all of you on here:

the most unrealistic part of the iliad & odyssey is actually every single time they talk about a hecatomb of cattle like its nothing. 100 cows? in this collapsing late bronze age economy? Where Are You Getting These. Who’s Your Cow Dealer. Can I Have Their Address

Via @finelythreadedsky

"dni if you engage with irredeemable media! dni to kill a mockingbird stans" ok well CLEARLY you have never read to kill a mockingbird if you think it's irredeemable media and also having a book that was published in 1960 on your dni stan list is kinda ridiculous actually

i literally do not think any of you have ever read a book published before the 2000s before in your entire life

#'Dni if you've read to kill a mockingbird' what's is this the Florida banned books list #Who r u Ron DeSantis

#can somwone pleasw provide context to whatever the fuck op is referring to

You really buried the lede by only mentioning To Kill a Mockingbird

The Catcher in the Rye did lead to Lennon's murder, but mostly this list is 'DNI if you love fun'

Getting #BlackRock to change/exit the real estate market in NYC is a massive win for New Yorkers and #ZohranMamdani.

ok i’ve been curious about something. can you name a character who is, all three at once,

1. canonically female (no variation)

2. canonically the protagonist of her story (if it’s an ensemble cast you have to say you can legitimately see her as The main character)

3. your personal #1 favorite character in that story (ties are acceptable)

I have Eowyn in my list and I feel I should justify this. Eowyn is not the main character of the Lord of the Rings. But she is the main character of her own narrative thread within the story in which she makes decisions that shape her own destiny. She's also basically the first shieldmaiden in fiction who doesn't exist to make someone else look good. Eowyn jobs for no one.

hello male writer. before you is a typewriter. you have one day to write a novella with a woman as the protagonist without describing her breasts. the timer begins now

Her ass was like a peach, and brother I’m in her pit.

well. that one’s on me

Tolkien already won this contest.

Froggy enjoys the spring day

scientists want you to know ✅

I’m 33 and American. This myth is so widespread here I didn’t know the truth until I was TWENTY-NINE. I was literally taught something similar IN COLLEGE—that the Puritans were so reactionary in America as a result of what happened to them in England. And this was in a class about the history of witchcraft accusations and the Salem witch trials. Like, we were taught that they were horrible HERE, but the narrative was still that they faced injustice in England.

This wasn’t a stupid teacher, either. She had her first doctorate and was pursuing a second. Basically everything else I learned in that class checks out. The myth just runs THAT DEEP.

Yep. :/

This thread got me watching this BBC documentary on Oliver Cromwell and I highly recommend it anyone else who also had no idea.

The "injustice" the Puritans faced was not being in power any more and thus not being able to oppress people who didn't worship in the same intolerant way they did.

So they went to America and did it there.

They seem to have done it on and off ever since.

I was a whole-ass adult the first time I heard it framed as "the Puritans were so extreme and oppresive in their religious practices that every country in Europe kicked them out."

I *had* kind of known that, but I had not, well, heard it *framed* that way, and the framing is really critical. It's really difficult to get past childhood indoctrination (that continues into adulthood, like, this is not a piece of information that most American have access to: "persecuted because of religious intolerance" is as far as it goes) even if, technically speaking, you have access to all the facts.

Fun fact: you can live in Central Europe and still be adult when you'll learn that puritans were not exactly persecuted religious minority.

The myth doesn't just run deep, it also runs wide.

The Puritans did face injustice in England; during the reign of Charles I, they were persecuted and this motivated some of them to fly to America so they could have the whip hand.

They did not, in fact, mostly come after the Restoration. They mostly came during the reigns of James I and Charles I; once Puritans took over England, the tide stopped.

They were part of a larger movement, Calvinism, which either took over or got kicked out for trying to take over and which played a big role in the Wars of Religion.

But it's very important to understand - you can be horrible humans AND be persecuted horribly at the same time.

Basically, from 1500 to 1650, every Christian group in Europe was simultaneously persecuted in some places and murdering in God's name elsewhere.

Why do so few people care about Helen after she set foot outside Troy? Why aren’t people interested in the fact that Helen got lost with Menelaus on their way home and ended up in Cyprus, went to Phoenicia and Egypt, and also encountered the Sidonians, the Erembians, and the Libyans? Why is a woman (who may have spent more time in other places than in her own home, and who, being so intelligent, surely has a very different worldview from others, with unique knowledge of entire peoples and undoubtedly more than adequate understanding of their philosophies, medicine, and many other cultural aspects) discarded simply because she’s over 40? Because she is Menelaus’s wife? Because she isn’t in Troy? Because she isn’t in Sparta?

For what reason is a woman who has lived in three distinct cultures for a long time reduced solely to a debate about her willingness to go to Troy?

forever pissed that Helen is usually stripped of any semblance of agency now a days

Because the Illiad and the Odyssey are the only parts of the overall saga that most people know.

Marvel's tribute to Gerry Conway

i take it back this is an incredible paragraph that should live forever in the paper of record

prev DELIGHTFUL tag

I think the bulk of fanfic proves that most authors have never seen their own bodies. Let alone other people.

only 62 more frogs until we hit 8,000 species described. the moment we've all been waiting for

there are an average of about 150 new amphibian species described per year so I remain hopeful that 2026 will be the year of 8,000 frogs

I do love that somebody tagged tumblr's own frog scientist on this post. chop chop dr scherz, we've got 62 more frogs to discover and you're the only frog scientist any of us knows

GUYS amphibian species of the world is still at 7,994 species of frog BUT amphibiaweb is at 8,008 species of frog, and do you know who is a co-author on the 8,000th species of frog there???? TUMBLR'S OWN FROG SCIENTIST DR SCHERZ

yall we did it

we made it to boob frogs

you have to dress in this style for the rest of your life!

(you do not have to follow the beliefs associated with the style if that style has associated beliefs. The wheel curse does not affect anything like that.)