racheldratch:

walk up into the club like yo i heard u were talkin shit about lysa arryn

basically how i start any convo with GoT/ASoIaF peeps

incandescentquill:

tatterdemalionamberite:

binghsien:

aporeticelenchus:

heidi8:

sonneillonv:

dressthesavage:

narwhalsareunderwaterunicorns:

anglofile:

spicyshimmy:

how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?

like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’ 

was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’ 

sometimes i wonder

oh my GOD

the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print. 

here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.

however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around. 

but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh). 

conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr. 

(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.) 

I needed to know this.

See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.

Ancient Iliad fandom is intense

Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).

And then there’s this gem from Plato:

“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium

That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.

Note that the printing press in China is invented much earlier and it has basically the same effect. Social conservatives in the censor bureau censored huge amounts of literature and poetry because of the devastating effect it had on the literati class (who formed most of the government bureaucracy, let’s not forget: So your state governor can’t work this week because he’s having Baoyu / Daiyu feels.) This did not stop it from leaking out anyway, in secret editions and hand-copied versions. And OMG the feels that these people have. There’s basically a constant struggle between the censors and this underground fandom, most novels are copied chapter-by-chapter, with people inserting fanfic chapters when they don’t have all the material (so if you have chapters 2, 3, 4, 10, 12 of your favorite book you might write your own 5-9 and circulate them) or just writing straight-up fanfic (famously in Water Margin and Red Chamber it _becomes canon_ after the author’s death.)

This post is the best thing, every part of it. Nothing to add except wow. 

I’ve reblogged this before, but it had less information on it then.   Shakespeare is almost entirely stuff we’d call fanfiction nowadays and his histories are RPF. We have evidence medieval nobility did things a lot like weekend-long LARP as entertainment, with paid performers as game organizers and NPCs.  For centuries, there have been rumors that Queen Victoria knighted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in order to pressure him into retconning Reichenbach and continuing to write Sherlock Holmes stories.  

I was an enormous Tolkien geek in middle school, and went as far as reading a lot of his letters/a lot of Simarillion meta.  The short version is, he deliberately left gaps in the Silmarillion because Tolkien, as a professor of language and mythology, believed that for nearly all of human history storytelling had been participatory and involved many tellers of the same tales.  He thought early-to-mid 20th century pop-culture and mass media were destructive because people did far less telling of stories, claiming of stories, and reworking of stories.  I am pretty sure that, despite being a stuffy old professorial Christian white dude who would probably not read any porny fic or watch shippy vids, Tolkien is beaming in his grave over such things’ existence - over participatory storytelling having finally made its glorious comeback, over the 20th century’s approach to narrative being firmly established as an abberant nightmare that is thankfully mostly over. Did we get mythos we all reference and participate in to come back in style?  Oh, by Harry Potter’s scar and every Jedi’s lightsaber, have we ever pulled that one off. 

(via queenofpyke)

talesofthebandit:

#repost #help

(via slay-z)

legallyunderage:

#signalbost

(via slay-z)

iambickilometer:

slapface:

womenwhokickass:

(76# Ghana) King Peggielene Bartels: Why she kicks ass

“To be a king in an African village or some places like this, it’s not like European queens where everything is on a silver platter for them … I have to really work hard to help my people. I have to give myself to people to better their lives..”

• She is currently the King of Otuam, Ghana and one of only three female kings in Ghana. She has maintained her work in Ghana’s embassy in Washington, D.C. while making education affordable in Otuam, installing borehead wells to produce clean drinking water, enforcing incarceration laws to deal with domestic violence, providing the village with its first ambulance, replenishing the royal coffers by taxing Otuam’s fishing industry to improve life in the village, and appointing three women to her council.
• When she encountered corruption and the threat of embezzlement to the royal funds, she declared “I’m going to squeeze their balls so hard their eyes pop!”
• For 11 months out of the year she’s regular Peggy, secretary for the Ghanian Ambassador.  She works, keeps in touch with her advisors via phone every night, saves her money and accumulates her vacation time into one month-long period- where she then takes off to Ghana to fulfill her duties in-person.
• When she discovered that male chauvinists wanted her to only be a figurehead, she said: “They were treating me like I am a second-class citizen because I am a woman. I said, ‘Hell no, you’re not going to do this to a woman!’”
• King Penny’s tale has been documented in a book written by her and author Eleanor Herman and is to be made into a film after Hollywood star Will Smith bought the rights to the book.

SO SHE’S A LEGIT WOMAN KING OMFGGG

King Penny’s tale has been documented in a book written by her and author Eleanor Herman and is to be made into a film after Hollywood star Will Smith bought the rights to the book.

oh my god i am so ready and also so glad that will smith bought the rights

(via mia-the-wonder-slut)

dallyingminstrel:

here-lies-andalusia:

this-is-not-jewish:

thearcanetheory:

mildrose:

simpliss:

i-said-adventure:

as-adorable-derps-do:

j-wolf-harding:

demons:

The immediate reaction of German POWs upon watching uncensored footage of the concentration camps shot by the US Signal Corps.

People often forget that most of the German troops had no idea about what was going on, they weren’t all fanatic Nazis bent on genocide, they were just regular soldiers who answered the call when their country went to war.

^ This

THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG

wow

im speechless

NO NO NO NO

FUCK THIS SHIT

THE GERMAN CITIZENS KNEW

THEY KNEW

The ghettos happened in cities, the apartheid laws happened under their noses, Jews were rounded up under their noses THEY FUCKING KNEW

Death camps and concentration camps were built WITHIN CITY LIMITS. Auschwitz, for example, is well within the city, and people take fucking strolls under its walls. I was fucking THERE, don’t even. The Polish knew, the Germans knew, it was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE not to know. It’s even in the historical record, it’s even in fucking civilian diaries, THEY KNEW.

I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF THIS REVISIONIST BULLSHIT.

^This.

Sorry not sorry, German apologists, but what you’re seeing in this photo isn’t shock, it’s guilt. Richly deserved, completely merited GUILT. So take your, “Aw, those innocent little German soldiers, poor babies,” revisionist shit and shove it back up your collective ass.

This reminds me of a story my boyfriend told me. His grandmother was from Bavaria and moved to the United States as a teenager, before the war got really bad. Into adulthood she was always aware of social justice issues and was a vocal supporter of the American Civil Rights movement. Years later in her nursing home she was visiting with another German woman. They were talking about the war and the other woman claimed she never knew about what was happening to the Jews. My boyfriend’s oma sharply looked at her friend and said, “You can say that to Americans, Hette, but you can’t tell me that. I was there. Everyone knew.” 

The entire “poor Hitler he was a human” and likewise bullshit about the German forces that keeps going around needs to fucking stop.

(via vilecrocodile)

imawanchor:

hazelandglasz:

durnesque-esque:

thehippiejew:

extrafeisty:

jaycubs:

A Glasgow nightclub has installed a two-way mirror which allows male revellers in private booths to spy on unsuspecting women as they visit the toilet! With no notification or signage anywhere in the venue many female club goers have been left feeling embarrassed and used. Although they do briefly show the mirrors in a promo video, the club has been quickly deleting comments and posts on their social media from club goers trying to alert others to the situation. This is pretty much illegal and hugley violates privacy. Thank you The Shimmy Club for giving us a shiny, new, creative and cool take on objectification.
article here

i’m never leaving my house again, this world is just too fucked up.

WHAT!?

gross gross gross gross gross

Good morning disgusting.

Remember ladies:

• “No space, leave the place” (fingernail test)
• A two way mirror must be set INTO the wall, not placed on top of it.
• If you rap/knock against the mirror, one installed onto a wall (a normal mirror) will make a dull sound, because there’s something behind it. A two-way will have more reverberation.
• Use the flashlight on your phone to shine on the mirror, if it’s a two-way, you’ll be able to see into the other room.
• You can also shield your eyes and see in if you lean up against the glass.
• The room being viewed will have to be brightly lit (10x brighter than the room looking in), so if you’re in a typical dimly lit club bathroom, you’re ok.

boosting the fuck out of this

also this is their not even apology. idk what to call it. 

how fucking gross

(via superficialmycosis)

- “The heart is a relatively simple thing.”

- “I’ve not found it to be so.”

(via sangfroidwoolf)

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

A Florida family says their 18-year-old daughter was charged with a felony and expelled from high school as a result of a consensual, same-sex relationship with another student.

Kaitlyn Hunt started dating a female classmate at the beginning of the school year when she was 17 and the girl she was dating was 15. According to an account posted to Facebook by Kaitlyn’s mother, in February, just after Kaitlyn turned 18, she was arrested on felony charges at the behest of her girlfriend’s parents. The specific crime was “sexual battery on a person 12-16 years old.”

Kaitlyn’s mother believes the charges were motivated by anti-gay animus:

They were out to destroy my daughter, they feel like my daughter “made” their daughter gay. They are bigoted, religious zeolites [sic] that see being gay as a sin and wrong, and they blame my daughter.

But Kaitlyn’s problems did not end there. Her girlfriends’s parents appealed to the school board and had her expelled from Sebastian River High School. Kaitlyn’s mom reports that the State Attorney, Brian Workman, has offered Kaitlyn a plea deal of “of two years house arrest and one year probation.” Kaitlyn has until next Friday to accept the plea deal or face a trial.

The family has started a petition calling on the state attorney to drop the charges against Kaitlyn.

(via skeptikhaleesi)

nopolarbearsinnorway:

kaluvinar:

Hey guys, so here’s an update on Monty! 

Our little trooper came home from the vet today. As you can see, they actually found an eye underneath the swollen, pus-filled infection. His leg is looking better so it seems less likely that it will have to be amputated, although the x-ray showed that all of the toes in that paw had been completely crushed. We will still have to take him into the vet every two days for the next 6-8 weeks to have the bandages changed (seen on his back leg). After cleaning his nose we can now see what’s going on with it. None of this is pretty, and the veterinary bills are growing each day between the cost of his pain killers, antibiotics, and general medical attention. 

We’re still collecting donations at our indiegogo page here: 
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-save-our-monty

If you could help us out by reblogging and helping to spread the word, or even by donating anything you have to spare, it would mean the world to us and our Monty.

Baby ; A ;

(via watchermostcharmed)