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Irish archaeologist, also into some fandom stuff
Current fandom: Tolkien Legendarium/Silmarillion
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@ordon-shield (Legend of Zelda)
@sun-and-moon-mushroom (SVSSS)
@suddenly-danganronpa (Danganronpa, largely inactive)
@dyinginlava (MCYT, largely inactive)
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This! And AO3 allows original works as well as fanfiction, meta, essays, fanart, podfic and other fanworks, but not recommendation lists. It's an archive not a social network.
Three things:
[ID: Screenshots of a Facebook post from user Advocatus Peregrini, which reads:
I was conversing with a fully-grown adult a few days ago, born and educated in the USA, who let this little gem drop:
“Well, it’s like Shakespeare said, “Love conquers all!”“
I pointed out that Shakespeare never said that, Virgil did, (Eclogues X) and Chaucer after him (Canterbury Tales.)
She said, “Oh I’m sure Shakespeare said that. In Romeo and Juliet!”
I sighed. I’ve been in that play several times, in different roles, and even directed it. That text does not occur in it.
But the real grind-my-teeth moment here was that if Romeo and Juliet can be said to have a message, it is most certainly not “Love conquers all,” seeing as the lovers die by their own hands with a trail of their friends and relations’ corpses in their wake.
Neither this fact, nor the fact that I knew the play, nor my explanation that Virgil and Chaucer used the phrase long before Shakespeare’s birth dented her determination that “Love conquers all” came from Shakespeare.
“You don’t know ALL the versions!” she protested.
All the versions?
Alternative Bard?
With every instinct screaming at me to let the matter drop, warning me that some horror that will not soon be absent from my nightmares waited around the next corner of this conversation. I pressed on.
It was a decision I was soon to regret.
I asked when she had first read “Romeo and Juliet.” She said she had only read it once, when she was in Junior High. In the version she was taught, Romeo and Juliet survive, are reconciled with their parents, and are married in the church with their friends Mercutio and Tybalt arm in arm in the wedding party.
“Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint.”
It turned out that her school had their own “version” of Romeo and Juliet, with an “uplifting” ending. This was printed and distributed by a religious education publisher. And it was the only version of the story that she had ever read. Of course she had HEARD other people say that the story was a tragedy, but she just assumed they were wrong.
And she did not see why MY version of Shakespeare should be considered better than HER Shakespeare, which, after all, had a much more wholesome ending.
I explained, in vain, that “my” version is definitive because Shakespeare actually wrote it (quiet, you Oxfordians. Don’t make me stop this car) and the message of the play - that when adult stubbornness meets youthful impulsiveness tragedy ensues - is lost in the ersatz, happy-clappy ending.
She said the ending that had been Frankensteined onto Shakespeare’s play by the “Christian Education” publisher was better than the original ending, “if the ending is as sad as you say it is.”
At this point, I concluded that this was a person who deserved to go through the rest of her life “…safest in shame! being fool’d, by foolery thrive!” I bid her adieu.
After the conversation, I wondered, darkly, if that was to be the fate of Shakespeare, and all other literature if the happy-clappy people get their way - as harmless and “uplifiting” as a cheerleader’s chant.
I wondered what these bowdlerizers would do with “Hamlet?” or worse, “Titus Andronicus” or “MacB-” Nothing wholesome, I’m sure. Oh, that’s right, what they can’t appropriate, they ban. Or burn.
In trying to protect children, we leave them undefended from “…the slings and arrows” that life will no doubt throw their way. Shakespeare raises the issues of tragedy - the fatal flaw, the last turning, the role of fate, as well or better than any author before or since. He is a gentle tutor, much to be preferred over that stern and dangerous teacher, Experientia Inopinatum.
But, as ever, it really isn’t about the children. It’s about the adults, and their desire to avoid answering difficult questions from agile young minds, who know no fear and swarm like eager flies around questions that have been boggling our best minds for millenia. To answer the questions that literature raises, you have to have thought deeply about them yourself. And that is something that few dare to do.] end id
Pickaxe, hoe, and fishing rod are now complete too!
researchers: this condition is underdiagnosed advocacy groups: we'll spread knowledge that it's underdiagnosed healthcare workers: some of us will use expanded diagnostic criteria now patients: wow we finally know what's up
tabloids: the condition is mysteriously spreading. this is DANGEROUS.
straight white people making a romance movie: haha what if it was illegal to have sex? wait what's lawrence v texas. wait what's mclaughlin v florida. wait what's loving v virginia
As preposterous and stupid as this fucking movie's premise sounded (for a light-hearted rom-com, and not The Handmaid's Tale) I didn't want to think about it too much until the movie actually came out, and then I could see if it was somehow more intelligent and subversive than the trailer let on, but guess what, it's even worse!
Sex workers are thrown under the bus, shown only as thieves who fleece men in the woods at night, while queer sexuality is relegated to a few scenes with Allie’s roommate (a woefully underused Quintessa Swindell) and a handful of pans past blurry same-sex extras making out in the background. “This night is for the straights,” Swindell’s character says to Allie, before saying that queer people have worked around straight laws for centuries. This is supposed to be a nod to queer resilience, but largely comes off as straightwashing the history of anti-LGBTQ legislation in this country that led towards raids of queer clubs and incarceration of queer people in the not-too-distant past (let alone the current barrage of anti-Trans and LGBTQ legislation currently in the works and on the books). It’s also ignorant of the long and fraught fight for the normalization of age-of-consent laws, which, by the way, did not happen in all states in this very country until 2003. Yes, that’s not even thirty years ago. By the end, our intrepid protagonists have not had sex with anyone, because this is a film about Romance with a Capital R (and I guess sex is not part of romance!) and for that very same reason they ultimately embrace the fascist state of things. They aren’t the only ones who refuse to fight back. No one in this cursed film is protesting this mandate beyond “repeal” signs in various windows and some creative graffiti (...) (...) If we are supposed to believe that the film is making some subversive statement about the state of sex and bodily autonomy in this country, it cannot end with its leads embracing their chains. That’s just warmed-over conservatism running around in sheep’s clothing.
yeah i wrote this post having only seen the trailer, but jesus christ. was this movie a psyop LMAO??
also, for the unaware: mclaughlin v. florida was a 1964 supreme court case that struck down a florida anti-miscegenation law that criminalized cohabitation (and thus, as implied, sex) between white people and people of color of opposite genders. anti-miscegenation laws made marriage and sexual relationships between white people and people of color, most often specifically black people, a FELONY in several states in the united states up until the 1950s and 1960s. though it was already struck down by the supreme court, the state of alabama didn't repeal their law until 2000! there were THREE ATTEMPTS at codifying anti-miscegenation into the us constitution!
like yes, the issue here is partially straight white people's ignorance on the united states's history of homophobic policy, but it's also really important to recognize that arguably the majority of the issue here is straight white people's ignorance of the united states's history of codifying eugenics and antiblack racism.
the premise could have been interesting as a serious dystopian story, especially taking that history into account, but it wasn't written that way at all. this movie should never have been a fucking romcom making light of the violence the united states (and many other countries) has enacted on any kinds of sexual relationships it deems undesirable.
i still don't fully understand why people act like believing in gendered socialization means you think socialization is immutable. no, by believing in "male socialization" i am not saying "every single person socialized as male is hard-wired to behave one way and cannot learn a new way to behave." infact, believing in the latter is actually closer to bioessentialism than any actual socialization argument. all i'm saying is that when you are raised as male, you are socialized as male, and that comes with different learned behaviors than someone raised & socialized as female. you can, however, very easily replace those learned behaviors with new ones. i implore you to do so, in fact.
Saying that male socialization can change still implies that all people AMAB were affected equally by it in the first place. It's still a TERF belief to insist that trans women have to unlearn having been raised categorized as men. One can talk about how expectations can be placed on different people given a number of factors without saying that trans women's experiences are all inherently rooted in privilege and entitlement, and that they have to work to accept the mindset of the oppressed.
I'm sorry but being AMAB DOES give you certain privileges over AFAB folks including literally not being a victim of female infanticide.
It IS different. Caitlyn Jenner had male privilege before she transitioned. That does NOT invalidate her current present day womanhood.
This is TERFery, and saying trans women having incidental and uneven access to being treated better on the basis of default gender assumptions is no different than saying trans men have male privilege when the same thing anomalously happens to them.
You will never understand the mental torture of being 12 years old and having a debilitating crush on Hugo Weaving Elrond & having to lie to ur friends and say you like Legolas Orlando bloom like all the other girls so you don’t get fucking bullied
Now I’m 35 and I have a live sized cardboard Elrond who lives on my stairwell & I kiss him every time I go upstairs so anyway the moral of the story is never kill yourself
No hate on you because you’re braver than any US marine for that but I think we might have been having wildly different experiences
Hey idk who needs this but helpful reminder that "virgin blood" in any witchcraft shit that requires that means "virgin" in the same sense as "virgin hair" means hair that hasn't been dyed or processed in any way, natural in the default sense. So no, "virgin blood" doesn't mean blood from a virgin, just blood that hasn't been used for any other kind of witchy shit earlier.
Whether nor not someone has fucked before is completely irrelevant. Any act of fucking doesn't instantly make someone contaminated or un-magic any of their shit. You're just not supposed to re-use blood for blood magic. That's just not. Just do not. Like that's just weird who does that.
Concept: one of those standard plots where a magic user and a tech expert are arguing over whose purview the weird thing of the week falls under, but it's the magic user who's insisting this has to be a science thing and the tech expert who's insisting it has to be a magic thing, because they're not arguing over worldview, they're arguing over jurisdiction and neither of them wants to be the one who has to deal with it
"Look, it's a circuitboard. That makes this tech - your territory"
"That 'circuitboard' sure looks like a runic circle to me. Your territory"
"Look, it's an evil lab! That's your circus!"
"Yeah, and there's a demon inside! That's your monkey!"
