Birdy @dandy--bird - Tumblr Blog

dukeofduckstblr-deactivated2023

I usually do not give a fuck about the Eurovision but this year is a bit special for me as it is my language and culture who will represent France, so I have some thoughts about it and need to get them out.

First if you don’t know anything about this, the “French” song that will be at Eurovision is called Fulenn and was made by Alvan & Ahez. Alvan is a Breton electro musician. Ahez is a band of three Breton women who met in Diwan, which are immersion schools teaching the Breton language, and learnt kan ha diskan, Brittany’s traditional way of singing, from Louise Ebrel, an absolute icon of traditional Breton music.

The song is entirely in Breton and inspired by a Breton legend, the legend of Katell Gollet.

By the way Breton is a Celtic language of the Brythonic branch (with Welsh and Cornish, the other branch being the Goidelic one, with Irish, Scottish and Manx). Stats say it’s spoken by about 200K people nowadays, it is considered endangered. It’s spoken in Brittany, a western region of France.

Now I kind of want to point out the irony of it all… Diwan schools, where the members of this band met, are technically illegal in France. They exist, but they are in a very precarious position following the Constitutional Council’s decision of two years ago that officially ruled immersion schools as “against the French constitution”. The 2nd article of the French constition states that The Language of the Republic is French. France has quite the history of being absolutely terrible to the non-French languages spoken on its territory, hell it’s pretty terrible even to any Romance/French language that isn’t the standard (as regularly shown by the rampant glottophobia in our medias).

So France is going to be represented by a song born of something France is constitutionally against. I’m kind of amazed by the audacity.

To be fair, it’s not the first time France sent a Breton song to the eurovision, the other time was in 1996 with trad artist Dan ar Braz (check him out!).

So that’s for the fun political bits.

If you’re curious about the legend of Katell Gollet, here it is: Katell Gollet was a beautiful young woman whose only love was dancing. Her uncle wanted her to marry so she said ok, I will marry any man who can keep up with me and dance with me for 12 hours straight.

Many men tried, they all died of exhaustion.

Katell’s uncle was horrified and locked her up in a tower but she escaped and went to another party to dance again. Her dance partner died of exhaustion too, then the musicians died of exhaustion too, but she still didn’t want to stop, so she invoked musicians from the depths of hell to keep playing for her, and the Devil himself came to dance with her. The Devil and her then went through the gates of hell still dancing.

Of course originally it’s supposed to mean “Be a good girl, settle down for a man and marry, if you like dancing and having fun too much you’ll go to hell” because Brittany was catholic as fuck for a long time (hello Irish cousins). Personally I see a woman who didn’t want to settle down for anyone who couldn’t keep up with her and I dig that energy.

I highly encourage you to go check the song out, there are many videos of it with English translations on youtube. I think it’s a bop, personally, it’s a fun mix of electro and traditional singing. The lyrics are beautiful too!

Fun little language fact: Fulenn is a very versatile word, in the song it means “spark”, as in a spark of fire (which sometimes is written “Fulenn tan”), but in other contexts like “Fulenn erc’h” it means snowflake, and “Fulenn aour” is a gold chunk.

Fulenn is also a collective noun, which means that its default form “Ful” is plural, and you have to add a suffix to it (-enn) to make it singular. Ful= sparks. Fulenn= spark. This is of course because you rarely talk about a single spark, a single snowflake, those usually come in groups. Other collective nouns are usually cattle related, but my favourite one has to be “Krampouezh/enn”. It means crepe, and it’s a collective noun because whomst the fuck would only eat one crepe, am I right?

Anyway, I’m super happy about this song, about the visibility, about the lovely singing of those Breton-speaking women. Nothing would make me happier than this song winning the eurovision, forcing France to organise the eurovision (and as we all know, no country actually wants that) next year.

gallusrostromegalus

Here’s the song! It’s a banger and I’ve had t on loop for a few days.

thebaconsandwichofregret

Never thought I’d be voting for France in Eurovision but defence of the Brythonic languages comes before wider national grudges!

Also this snaps!

crow--teeth

[sits down at the head of a massive oval table and folds my hands professionally] hello everyone. blood is bone tea

incel-rights-advocate-deactivat

kellkyy

Its from that meme

brightwanderer

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

heronbrew

I think it's hilarious that hands down the worst way to learn magic is the actual rulebook. Please do not read that. It's just there for reference when something weird happens

lesbianralzarek

posts that i know are about magic the gathering but i have to check to make sure op isn't just living in a way doper world than me

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

gender is a construct and mine specifically is a condemned building scheduled for demolition (due to the violation of a truly alarming number of building codes)

peaceful-meme-goblin

Mine is the gutted former Best Buy that becomes a Spirit Halloween every October.

dandy--bird

Mine’s a mailbox that teens keep hitting with a bat but inexplicably ends up fixed and standing no less than a day later.

starpeace

i love when tragedies are like “the love was there. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the love was there”

angelicandsanegirl-deactivated2

pls

angelicandsanegirl-deactivated2

jphcrk-deactivated20251128

The fact that they’re still tight about this after all these years is so funny to me like they must think about it every single day

vann-haal

Man it wasn't even the copypasta. I saw folks eviscerating the guy for daring to write YA stuff. Teen love for teens. And how that made him a pedophile. Like that's what's being talked about here. Not the cock monologue. It was the endless hate and vitriol like I remember distinctly my dash being flooded with "he's a grown man who writes stuff for kids. That's super sus of him" and him literally being called a pedophile and other such smears. Like the cock nonsense was the absolute least of what happened. Don't be a derisive dick. If you're referencing that then obviously you were around to see all the toxic bullshit too and you should know all of this

But oh noooo! It was obviously the goofy taste of balls post that did it! Because tumblr is good and always correct /s

dragonsspire

It is particularly cruel to me that John Green was harassed essentially off of the internet in the way that he was because the poor man has OCD and is very open about it.

The way he was treated is horrible and disgusting for anyone at all, but John Green has for years and years (along with his brother Hank) tried to make the world a measurably better place while living with a horrific mental illness. A mental illness that makes something like being called a pedophile over and over again horrific in ways that unless you have OCD, or are very very close to someone who does, you will never understand because OCD targets whatever you value and makes your world a living hell over it.

And you know what? He still writes his novels, and he is still out here doing absolutely everything he can to make the world a measurably better place. The cock monologue was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Also if anyone did this to my brother I would never ever forgive anyone involved. Never. The fact that they are still engaging with the internet in the way they do, with vulnerability and kindness is remarkable.

vigilantsycamore

The notes on this post are shit so just to be clear: if you’re following me and you think it’s funny to harass someone, or that it doesn’t count if the victim is above a certain age or if the harassment happens online, or that it’s worse to speak out against harassment than to harass someone, unfollow me because I don’t fucking want you to interact with me

On the positive side, here’s two replies that are actually decent:

headspace-hotel

"Harassing someone non-stop for months, including graphic sexual harassment and disturbing baseless accusations of child abuse, is funny as long as I think the victim is annoying!" -a lot of people, apparently