Girl With An Odd Name

[rustchild]

I am mere centimeters away from writing a full on essay about how the “goblins are inherently antisemitic” myth spawned by this website propagates misinformation, displays a huge misunderstanding of what folklore is and does, and contributes to an environment that distracts people from how antisemitism actually operates and the ways in which it’s dangerously on the rise in our current climate–something which, surprise surprise, has almost nothing to do with little green fairy men

[rustchild]

There are antisemitic iterations of the goblin! There are also antisemitic iterations of basically everything in European folklore, because if there was one thing people in Europe loved it was hating Jews! But those aren’t definitive and the problem there didn’t originate with the invention of the goblin–which was an evolution of other existing fairy myths, overlaps with them, and isn’t nearly as distinct, differentiated, or universally codified as people seem to think. It originated with people hating Jews, and using pre-existing stories and myths to express that hatred. Most of the time, though, they just wrote about Jews, because they didn’t need a secret magical creature code to be terrible to us. They could just do that! The way that people on this website are obsessed with a single, “original” version of a story, which can then be deemed morally acceptable or unacceptable, goes fundamentally against the way folklore is created, propagated, modified, and used to fit different locations at different times. There isn’t a single “problematic” goblin canon you can point to! They aren’t defined that simply! And no, A Certain Popular Fantasy Series doesn’t count! By focusing on the goblin as the problematic thing, and not the stories about Jews that the antisemitic goblin myths–which are rarer than people seem to think–draw off of, the Discourse™ focuses on a single pass/fail signifier of wokeness instead of actually educating people on the complex narratives that have built different iterations of antisemitism over the centuries. It is also, and I cannot stress this enough, not how folklore works. Learn about blood libel, learn about the myth of the Protocols, learn about how antisemitism uses Jews as the powerful other to justify other forms of prejudice and oppression, and don’t write stories about money-obsessed people with hooked noses. Goblins themselves don’t factor into that as anything other than a footnote.   

[nthecaptin]

this is probably above my pay grade but regarding neil gaiman it's so starkly clear how much class-based absue is entwined in this horrid situation. his victims were financially dependent on him, unable to even admit to themselves that what was happening was abuse because they had, in some cases, literally nowhere else to go. amanda palmer, self-proclaimed feminist, was complicit in a truly fucked mistreatment of a woman because she wanted to keep the babysitter that she didn't have to pay. gaiman was quoted literally saying that he's very wealthy to one of his victims. even the little mention of gaiman making decisions in his and palmer's marriage bc he's the one with the money is just. so telling when you know what to look for. they both took advantage of their social and financial priviledge over their victims and used it to abuse, manipulate, put down, and in the end try to silence them.

[sam-keeper]

Nosferatu is a movie about how you gotta let women post about their problematic fantasies cause otherwise your whole city will get covid

[ashgunnywolf]

Honestly, with all the tradwife cooking trash circulating, it only makes me love B Dylan Hollis more for baking vintage recipes while being openly gay, making sexual jokes, and screaming at the ingredients. He's the antithesis of every soft-spoken cishet woman cooking for her husband and children. You don't have to be an idyllic cottagecore housewife to cook.

[onbearfeet]

The swearing is essential. That's what "made with love" or "the secret ingredient is love" means. It means, "I love you so much that you're worth this fucking bullshit."

[sistertaxon]

its so funny that they were like "oh the guy who plays dr who is too old and sick how are we gonna explain that there's someone else playing him now" and they were like. well we could just get another old white guy who looks similar. we could have him hand off the keys to someone else. we could have a bad guy turn him invisible and he comes back wrong. and they eventually went with the stupidest possible answer which was "he just does that sometimes"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Okay yeah but it does seem to be working out for them

[teethburied]

dramatic lighting changes + spotlight lighting

The Age of Innocence 1993, dir. Martin Scorsese

[not-bartlet]

you are doing some 'secretary' (2002) shit to me

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Trump would be such a good drag queen like just such an unbelievably incredible and talented drag queen it's such a bummer that he's decided to be a fascist and a threat to democracy because that cunt would devour at the House of Yes

such a loss

[wizzard890]

his cadence, his tiny bitchy hand gestures, his cunty little nicknames for people that are insane but also somehow stick to your brain? 

“the problem with ron desanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are...... noT yet available.”

if he’d laid the garbage fire of his entire soul aside for a wig and heels back in the 80s, we’d live in a better world. 

[sparrow-va]

(via @dragonprincessmew )

[andhumanslovedstories]

Watched the 2004 Phantom of the Opera film for the first time ever, ask me anything

[andhumanslovedstories]

Look yes okay there was an edible involved BUT I don’t think that’s the only reason I spent every fucking minute of that movie enraptured, quaking with joy. It’s so wonderful that this teen girl wet dream of a cinematic masterpiece exists. This movie hit cunt full throttle

[andhumanslovedstories]

What if you were so beautiful and so talented and so tragic, and your eyes were so big and so wet, and then two men whose lives revolve around you fistfight in a pool? What if your good sweet boyfriend who is willing to die to protect you got tied up by a dangerous romantic monster who will kill to have you?? What if everywhere you went was opulent and everything you wore was stunning??? Please god listen, I am grabbing you all by the lapels and shaking, this movie is at every moment one hundred percent committed to being the shameless distillation of the best daydream you’ve ever had in math class.

[mindshelter]

wordle and bts may seem like they have nothing in common but both have been cited by redditors as the reason why their elderly relative quit watching fox news and started acting normal again

[mindshelter]

love wins i think

[wizardshark]

you can hate wordle or bts as much as you like, but in the time honored words of a long gone tumblr user: "shit dude whatever works I guess"

[cabalittle]

It's almost like our elderly suffer from extreme loneliness and mental degradation and introducing them to a community based around something positive (music, a fun little game) rather than an endless pit of paranoia and giving them something to stimulate their brain and regrow neurons(you can repair your brain at any age as long as you give it stimulation, like music, or puzzles) will help them recover from what can only be described as a soul sucking addiction

[elsandifer]

Neil Gaiman being accused of sexual assault?

Absolutely horrible. At a bare minimum, he initiated a sexual relationship with his kid’s nanny. That’s fucked up. At best it’s a catastrophic failure of judgment. And frankly, when was the last time this shit turned out “at best,” y’know?

Worse, it is exceedingly clear that this story has been broken in as a politically motivated attack on Gaiman for his trans advocacy. That is, to state something as flagrantly obvious as “don’t bang your nanny,” an entirely separate matter from the substance of the accusations. But it certainly makes all of this even more miserable. In terms of my own work, I am intending to take full advantage of the fact that I do not have to make any decisions on what I want to do when writing about him for several months.

[chutzpah-haver-deactivated20201]

this is not about any 1 post in particular but i feel like it should be more commonly addressed im the fandom that tolkiens dwarves are jewish and you cannot have a meaningful analysis of them without acknowledging that

i see a lot of posts talking about how dwarves are often derided by tolkiens narrative. questions like “why does tolkien insist on the dwarves being greedy” and “why did the line of durin get wiped out” and my favorite “is thorin a good or a bad person? lets discuss that”

those are all great questions to ask but they cannot be examined without acknowledging that tolkien based the dwarves on jewish people, and his portrayal of them is influenced both by antisemitism AND an evolving level of respect for jewish people that coexisted in tolkien. that is why we get the “dwarves are not heroes” passage in the hobbit. hell, the entire premise of the hobbit is plainly based on jewish history and lore: 12 dwarves (the 12 tribes of israel), with 1 leader, on a quest to reclaim a homeland that was stolen from them. except tolkien also has that reclaimation revolve around riches, because jews are greedy and violent in his mind (esp pre-wwii tolkien). antisemitism is the reason for thorin being portrayed as acting rash, hauty, and possessive in the hobbit. that is why it is impossible to analyze his character without acknowledging that he is jewish.

as for the radical switch in the portrayal of dwarves in the lord of the rings, this is post-wwii tolkien, when he felt a lot more guilty about being antisemitic. gimli is an apology for his antisemitism in the hobbit. at the same time, the dwarves as a people do not have much of a meaningful part to play in the narrative, and in fact so many of them have been wiped out in cold blood (sound familiar?) and i think that that also reflects tolkiens biases

he was a complex man writing a very complex piece of fantasy that has many aspects that reflect his own beliefs and beliefs prevalent in his society at the time. those beliefs coming through in his work is an important aspect of middle-earth to examine. i dont think anybody will disagree with me on that.

TL;DR for the love of G-d when youre asking questions about the dwarves’ morality and narrative in tolkien please remember that they are based on jewish people and it is IMPOSSIBLE to ask these questions fully if you dont remember that

heres an essay on this topic if you want to learn more

[animate-mush]

Hell the entire premise of the hobbit is plainly based on jewish history and lore: 12 dwarves (the 12 tribes of israel), with 1 leader

This is false though.

I guess that's why I have difficulty with this post. Like, I am pretty sure the conclusions and overall sentiments are true (Gimli being written as an apology rings very true and is something I have heard elsewhere, for instance). But so many of the cornerstones of the argument are just wrong.

This is the big one. Not only is 12+1 Dwarves = 12 tribes of Israel a pretty out of character move for Mr. I Hate Allegory, but everything to do with the Dragon could not more obviously be a reference to Beowulf. "Twelve warriors and their angry king" is Beowulf (and those numbers there are pretty transparently a Christian allegory). And you can tell it's Beowulf because the other details of the encounter are also Beowulf - the dragon is incensed by thr theft of a large two handled cup; the cup thief is the guide who leads the 12+1 up to the dragon's lair. And I'm not just substituting one allegory for another - it's not a 1:1 mapping, it's an in-joke. Which is extremely in character for Tolkien. Like, you don't need to understand that he's cribbing from Beowulf to "get" the Hobbit. But I think you do need to understand that he's cribbing from Beowulf before you start building too much analysis on the presumption that he's doing something other than that.

And of course it can be more than one thing. But it can't not be that.

And I know I trimmed this quote but like also, the diasporic element is wildly played up in the movies but actually not that present in the book? There are other Dwarven kingdoms that are doing just fine. The loss of the mountain happened this generation. And the foundation of the mountain only two generations back. It's really not a quest for a "homeland" - Thorin wants to kick out the bully who took his stuff. (And that aspect is crucial to the conflicts over the treasure. This isn't "A Treasure Hoard" up for grabs. This is stuff in a large part created and still owned by actual living people. It's not "the Arkenstone" it's "the Arkenstone of Thrain." Thorin isn't obsessed with it because he's greedy, he's obsessed because it's his. That belonged to my dad. I watched him dig it up and craft it with his own hands. I just learned he got tortured to death. Why tf do you have it???)

Is is simply not the case that "the whole premise of the Hobbit is based on Jewish lore." The whole premise of the Hobbit is based, unsurprisingly, on Tolkien's own academic interests, specifically Beowulf, a text that he is famously really super into.

And like, again, I hear what you're saying, but like:

and in fact so many of them have been wiped out in cold blood (sound familiar?)

That doesn't happen? There's a single Lost Expedition and it's written as a bog-standard Lost Expedition. An exploratory party tries to retake a place from people they have a long standing conflict with and get killed. The last people who tried to retake this particular place also got killed. Multiple wars have been fought about it. Literally nobody is going around killing Dwarves in cold blood. By contrast, while it is true that Dwarves as a people are not prominent in the narrative, (a) they're only marginally less prominent than the Elves, and (b) Tolkien goes out of his way to let us know that the Dwarves are happy and prosperous and get on well with all their neighbors. Because the good guys won in the Hobbit, and he makes a point of nothing in the Lord of the Rings victory. And it's not just "well Dwarves are fine if they stay in their place" because he also makes a point of saying there's a second colonization attempt, of Aglarond not Moria, and it's wholly successful and produces good results for everyone involved and they all live happily ever after and nothing bad happens. On the same level the line of Durin doesn't get wiped out?? Thorin dies heirless but so does Beowulf. And of the two it's a much bigger problem for Beowulf.

I'm not saying Dwarves aren't Jews. I'm not saying that that isn't a potentially important lens for analysis. I'm not saying they don't display antisemitic tropes at times followed by a deliberate desire to correct them.

But enough of your premises are wrong or cherry-picked or overreaching that I'm not willing to share this post uncritically.

[stil-lindigo]

an ex-zionist jewish man recently went a bit viral on tiktok for sharing exactly how he sees zionism tie israel to the jewish identity and his personal experience with breaking away from it - I think it’s a really great watch.

He also made a follow up talking specifically about how he learned to humanise Palestinians, and a really integral part of it was his school, which would often bring in Palestinian speakers who’d share their perspective (here’s a link to it).

[bibliophelia94]

Huh, so I see this guy's also autistic which is interesting because for me what led me to become skeptical of Zionism was growing up an undiagnosed autistic girl in a Zionist Jewish community that seemed to have no space for someone like me. I was too uncoordinated to be a good athletic Zionist girl, not social enough for the Zionist youth groups and summer camps, and I asked way too many questions. I also never really managed to connect with the emotional messaging in the same way everyone else seemed to- not that it didn't have an effect on me, just that I was more uncomfortable with the blatant emotional manipulation and propaganda. I actually only ever went to Israel twice: first with my family when I was 15 and then on a Birthright trip for autistic Jews when I was 20. I had a good time on both trips but by my teen years I had already grown skeptical of the narrative being pushed on me and nothing about the trips really changed that.

[stil-lindigo]

an ex-zionist jewish man recently went a bit viral on tiktok for sharing exactly how he sees zionism tie israel to the jewish identity and his personal experience with breaking away from it - I think it’s a really great watch.

He also made a follow up talking specifically about how he learned to humanise Palestinians, and a really integral part of it was his school, which would often bring in Palestinian speakers who’d share their perspective (here’s a link to it).

[abracadaze]

i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

[satusepiida]

His ghost is setting those cars on fire actually

[coyotegestalt]

I hadn’t really considered “the agnostic demigod of electromagnetism is the reason Musk’s companies fail” before, but I like the concept. 

[spectroscopes]

It's so funny to say something like "I have matured past Christopher Nolan and prefer more intellectually challenging and difficult-to-understand films like those of Andrei Tarkovsky" because he would — and did — completely disagree with that framing of his work, saying that children understand his films better than serious critics.

[spectroscopes]

The fact that she said this in 2004 and Jezebel repeated that lie last year is making me feel so depressed, lol. Nobody wants to listen to a single thing Kate Winslet says.

[spectroscopes]

It’s so obvious too that rumour was made up as a way of bullying Kate and people just keep repeating it. I’d go crazy.