a post about the subtitles on my harry potter vcd
so i found my old vcd-copy of harry potter and the chamber of secrets and… i don’t know what’s more entertaining, the movie or the subtitles.
Do not educate your child to be rich. Educate him to be happy so when he grows up, he’ll know the value of things, not the price.
—(via amber-danique)
(Source: disimba, via pink-with-lemonade)
brimming with danger: incandescentquill: tatterdemalionamberite: binghsien:…
narwhalsareunderwaterunicorns:
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.
I am really really glad someone brought up Iliad fandom, because fandoms in ancient Greece = actually the best thing ever. *cuddles PhD topic* Participatory storytelling is a thing of beauty.
Also, ha and a hell no to ‘highly emotional novels’ being a 16th century innovation. Greek and Roman literature had novels! Awesome novels! In so many different flavours of awesome! Not just tropetastic romance/adventure, but also gay romance/adventure! Science fiction! Crack! Historical RPF! And parodies of other novels! And parodies of science fiction!
Seriously. Trust me. Awesomeness all over the place.
(via theragnarokd)
(Source: savemebarrys, via lunsfuhd)
One time I saw a post accusing asexuals of forcing their sexuality into other people’s faces
and I feel like there should be a blog of aces doing that
Asexually doing laundry in public
Casually leaning against a wall in a non-sexual manner
So much asexuality right out there for everyone to see holy shit
Aces in yo’ faces
(via detectivebuttcop)
Here are some awesome and empowering quotes from several very strong female celebrities.
And Kristen Stewart.
No, you know what? Fuck you.
Let me tell you about Kristen Stewart.
Let’s talk about how she’s the centerpiece of one of the most inexplicably popular misogynistic pieces of film shit and somehow gets blamed for it sucking, despite the fact that, hey, the books were actually worse. For those who were lucky enough to escape reading the actual books, her apparent lack of emotion is 100% accurate to Bella’s character, because Bella is in fact not a character but a blank white wall for fourteen-year-old girls to project themselves onto. Robert Pattinson is not the only one in the cast who hates Twilight, thank you.
Let’s talk about how she got crucified in the media for having an affair with a married man, when that man was her director. And let’s remember that she was called all manner of things for “ruining her relationship with RPattz” when she wasn’t even engaged to the dude, let alone married with kids. But oh no, she gets called a slut because she’s Kristen Stewart, she gets her career fucked because she’s Kristen Stewart, and the dude gets off scott free.
Let’s talk about how she is incredibly shy and anxious (rather, incidentally, like Chris Evans) but does film anyway, because she’s just that awesome.
Fuck your noise. She’s not the best actor in the world but she sure as hell doesn’t deserve that kind of shit.
(via eat-the-alphas)
m4ge:
The Walmart game.
Hmm..
I dont know if I can top that.
hold on I got this
i would totally get this.
omfg
this is my favourite post on tumblr
(via janeth-the-maniac)
The milkshake: This is not limited to fast food nor to milkshakes. That ‘concoction’ is the industry standard artificial strawberry flavoring found in everything strawberry flavored that isn’t naturally flavored.
Chicken nuggets: Total lies. My sister works at the Tyson plant that provides KFC and McDonalds their nuggets. There’s no ‘pink paste’ stage. ’Reflavoring’ is an injection of mostly salt into the meat in order to give it some taste because modern day chicken is nearly flavorless. If you want to disgust people, show them the conditions of the processing plants that dismantle the chickens.
The pubic hair one: You eat more of your family’s pubic hairs cooking in your own home. You think you don’t shed once you walk in your own door?
Peanut butter: This is a cold hard truth of food mass production. There will be insects. You can never get rid of them or take them out of the process. The FDA places limits on how much can be allowed into specific foods so that food manufactories don’t get lazy and just say ‘Well we can’t keep it out.’ The FDA limit helps immensely because it makes these places try to keep the insect population down through keeping things clean.
Shellac: Oh my god this is so stupid. ’Shellac’ is an INGREDIENT. It’s a NATURAL PRODUCT produced by INSECTS. It is then PROCESSED into food-grade glaze or colorants, OR into wood and furniture polish. They don’t just take wood polish and dump it on your jawbreakers. Grow up.
Bacteriophages: The ‘phages of which you speak are used to kill the listeria virus. Listeria is a bacteria that attacks the immune system and has a one in five mortality rate. Bacteriophages? They’ve been used as an alternative to antibiotic medications in Russia and France for 90 years. That’s really disgusting and dangerous!
Coke: This is total and complete bunk. It would have been far more effective to point out that colas and carbonated drinks have been linked to weakened bones in those who overconsume them, but this is complete lies here. Again.
Salads: I think you mean propylene glycol. And again, this is bullshit. PG only causes reactions in those allergic to it. It has a very low toxicity and can only negatively affect human health if very large amounts are ingested very quickly and over a very short period of time. By which I mean ‘Find a vat of it and start drinking it and nothing else.’ Again you go for the lie instead of pointing out that fast food salads are processed and contain as much fat and cholesterol as most of the other foods offered by a fast food place.
Beef additives: This has nothing to do with fast food. This is common in MOST meats in the US. This is because the US has become so obsessed with the fat content of meat and making it ‘healthy’ that we have literally bred almost all the flavor out of every food animal breed we currently use. Flavorants are almost ALWAYS injected during processing or most of our meat would be bland and tasteless. ‘Flavorants’ typically being concentrated broth and/or salt and seasoning.
Cheese: Lies again. Only those cheeses labelled as ‘Pasteurized process cheese food’ and ‘Pasteurized process cheese spread’ match these stats. Pasteurized process cheese is simply a blended cheese made to have a sharp taste and be easily melted. Your lie here is that the 47% is referring to the cheese’s fat content, not cheese content.
This image is full of lies and misrepresented half-truths and anyone spreading this as truthful should rethink their approach.
THE COMMENT. EVERYONE READ THIS COMMENT. ^^^^
(via detectivebuttcop)
This is a simulation of a rotating 4 dimensional Cube, otherwise known as a Tesseract.
What you are seeing is it Rotating. It is not being distorted, reshaped, or anything like that. it is simply Rotating - It appears to be distorted because you are only seeing the ‘projection’ of it. similarly if you rotated a 3D cube infront of lamp the shadow you would see would appear to distort.
(via theragnarokd)
