fialleril:

systlin:

anastasiaoftheironwood:

godsinthemountains:

inn-dagstjarna:

What did Old Norse sound like?

Okay so this dude with a doctorate?? Who specializes is Old Norse??? Just makes his instructional videos in the middle of the wilderness in the Midwest??????

Exactly! He used to teach at UCalifornia Berkeley, and now he’s at UColorado Boulder. 

His translations of the Eddas are my favorite!

@starfoozle

(Source: http://fialleril.tumblr.com/)

thestraggletag:

ofgeography:

so here’s a fun story about this movie. guess who loves this movie? me! i do! i love this movie. i love this movie so much that when i was in the 7th grade and i saw “first wives club 2” on pay per view i was like: HELL YEAH!! FIRST WIVES CLUB TWO!! NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS A SEQUEL!!!

here’s the synopsis for first wives club 2:

disgruntled first wives take their ex-husbands’ new lovers under their wing.

sounds great, right? awesome viewing material for a precocious 11-year-old.

so i buy this movie, and like, three minutes into it i’m starting to feel suspicious?? like it’s really low quality and my girls are nowhere in sight?? how come none of the first wives are the same?? how come they’re alone in a bedroom with mood lighting?? why is she taking off her shirt?? why are they both taking off their shirts?? WHY ARE THEY–

here’s what i did not know about first wives club 2:

  • it is a lesbian porno of no relation to the beloved 1996 classic.

so of course i, horrified that i’ve accidentally bought porn on my family’s account (and in that state of panic that kids work themselves into whenever anything regarding sex is mentioned), quickly shut off the TV and go upstairs and watch an episode of veggie tales to like, cleanse my soul and apologize to jesus, and that’s that.

EXCEPT, OF COURSE:

  • you have to pay for pay per view.

so the end of the month comes and i have completely put this incident out of my mind, haha, i accidentally bought porn, how funny, TELL NO ONE. right? and i’m sitting at a nice dinner with my mother, my stepfather, and my very religious aunt deb, and we’re just talking about farm things, whatever, when suddenly my mother puts her fork down and says, “okay, there’s something we need to discuss. as a family.”

  • AS A FAMILY.

and i’m like, running through a list of people i know who could conceivably be dead, and fantasizing about my mother announcing that she’s going to buy me My Own Computer Just Because U Earned It Kiddo, and she pulls out a piece of paper that says DIRECTV across the top. and i’m like: OH NO.

“i received the tv bill today,” my mother said, and i was like, shoveling potatoes into my mouth as fast as i could because i knew that when i went to PORN PRISON they weren’t going to feed me this kind of quality starch. “does anybody want to tell me who purchased the pornography?”

as a reminder, a quick table survey:

  • my mother, surprised and disappointed by the porn bill (innocent)
  • my stepfather, a grumbly old cowboy who just wants to sing along to kenny chesney and watch the hunt for red october (innocent)
  • my aunt deb, a super religious catholic whose best friend is a nun named Sister Placid (innocent)
  • me, the 11-year-old with a mouthful of potatoes who definitely purchased the lesbian pornography

silence.

my mother said, “i’m not going to ask again.”

silence.

my aunt looked at my stepdad. my stepdad looked at my aunt. NOBODY LOOKED AT ME, THE 11-YEAR-OLD WITH A MOUTHFUL OF POTATOES WHO DEFINITELY PURCHASED THE LESBIAN PORNOGRAPHY.

my mother shook her head and put the bill down. “this was incredibly inappropriate,” she said. “skip, deb, whoever. buy that shit on your own time. i’m not paying for it. what if molly had seen it?”

  • WHAT IF MOLLY HAD SEEN IT?

“don’t expose my kid to that crap.”

  • DON’T
  • EXPOSE
  • MY KID
  • TO THAT CRAP

“if you want to watch porn, fine, but do it in private and don’t expect me to pay for it. i can’t believe one of you did that in the living room.”

  • I CAN’T BELIEVE ONE OF YOU DID THAT
  • IN THE LIVING ROOM

but molly, why didn’t you own up to it and explain that it was an accident?

  • are you fucking kidding
  • i did not want to go to porn prison

the fun conclusion to this story is that i never owned up to it, which means that there are 3 people in the world who have not solved the mystery of the lesbian porn. a quick survey:

  • my mother, who lives every day wondering whose porn she paid for
  • my stepfather, who probably wishes he knew less about his wife’s sister’s porn preferences
  • my aunt, who probably wishes she knew less about her sister’s husband’s porn preferences

but molly, why don’t you own up to it now, with the safety of time and distance and the knowledge that porn prison isn’t real?

  • are you fucking kidding
  • this is the best thing i’ve ever done

Always reblog.

chi-chi-chimera:

notbecauseofvictories:

also, as a coda—I love that finn’s first instinct once he throws his lot in with the resistance is glorious pointless martyrdom, to the point that rose has to physically stop him from throwing his life away 

I mean this is finn, whose bone-deep sense of self and hunger for life broke almost two decades of stormtrooper programming! and he’s ready to die! what on earth could possibly….?

mostly I like this idea because it enables me to believe that when finn thinks of heroism and The Cause, that circuit is still wired wrong in his head, tangled up with all the first order propaganda, the latent programming whispering that he’s just cannon fodder. This is what he’s good for this is how he’s meant to serve the first order the resistance; don’t you want to kill the thing you hate, don’t you hate them, the enemy who threatens you, threatens your squad, isn’t that worth your death?

(rose isn’t wrong, they are fighting to save what they love. just—so is the first order. everyone is fighting to save what they love, that’s the part that makes this so fucking awful.)

(what the first order wants to save is worse. that’s how you know.)

anyway, I love the idea that even now, finn thinks in the violent, objectifying (as in, it turns people into objects) vocabulary the first order gave him. I just….really want him to be unpicking all the wrong shit left in his head, slowly but surely.

I like this idea. But also…

Can we really say Finn’s actions were pointless?

At that point, the last stand of the Resistance with no real hope for rescue that anyone was sure of at the time, surely there is no option but to continue the attack even if it is suicidal. The scene is clearly meant to rhyme with Poe’s dreadnought attack at the start of the film, but there (since no-one was aware of the tracking yet) it at least made some sense to conserve their forces and strength for another time. 

Here? 

If Luke hadn’t turned up – and they had no reason to know he would – everyone would be dead. If you’re going to die anyway, choose how you do it – and if they had managed to destroy the cannon then they would have saved everyone else inside.

This is obviously a Watsonian critique of the fact that Rose’s actions only make sense if you assume characters have knowledge of what’s going to happen in the plot in the future – that she had a hope of rescue that doesn’t make much sense in story. Obviously I don’t think the film should have had Finn die even if it did save everyone. They just ought to have approached the whole issue in a different way rather than forcing Poe to learn a lesson that didn’t apply in these very different circumstances and which basically amounts to ‘don’t try too hard and wait for your leaders to pull something out of their ass to save you all – you don’t need to know the details’.

whispering-fragments:

So, this is the little gift made for the Secret Santa! This is for @radiantanor

At first i thought of a young Gil-Galad wearing a Santa costume, but then i imagine them celebrating this holiday as we do and i remembered when i discovered that my dad was Santa with a fake beard (i was 5 back then) and i told my mom, but she just told me that my dad was at work at the moment and the man sitting there was Santa. That’s the story inspiring this drawing, it’s kinda funny, don’t you think?

As i don’t have a tablet to draw, i did it on paper and then scaned it; it’s the first time i colour something and i think it turned out very good

My handwriting sucks, so i’ll ‘translate’ you the little dialogues that are there.

Left side: 

Lindir: (Hiding) My Lord Elrond, i think you should put the wig on or Lady Arwen will suspect.

Right Side:

[UP] Young Arwen: Mommy, i know that he’s my daddy!

[Down] Celebrian: Of course he’s not, he’s santa! don’t you recognise him?

I really hope you like it! Have a great holiday

@whispering-fragments, thank you so much for this! It’s a really cute story, and I love Elrond’s good-natured expression – and the idea of him having such fun times with his family. I hope you have a lovely holiday too!