ain't that just the way

Tori, 22: Catholic, writer, introvert, classical Anglophile. Slytherin. INTJ. Various fandom stuff and lots of politics. Bizarre humor. No pandering. No porn.

[thecollectibles]

Fallen Ancient by Josh Norman

the thing about “well-behaved women rarely make history" is that the author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, didn’t write it about women who would be considered “badly-behaved;“ she wrote it in a book about a midwife, about women who had been largely ignored and erased from history because as a result of their “good behaviour.” So it’s not a “BAD GIRLS DO IT WELL" kind of quote; it’s a reminder to respect and pay attention to the women who go about quietly living their lives.

[auntjrh]

it’s a reminder to respect and pay attention to the women who go about quietly living their lives.

[juiceandjoggers]

I was just thinking about this! I watched ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ for the first time and really loved its message. As a 22-year-old planning to spend most of my life as a stay-at-home mom, it is lovely to think that even though my life might be considered “small” by some, and I won’t be in any history books, I can leave a legacy all the same. Nowadays, there’s too much of an emphasis on “making history” if you ask me.

[podsn]

I saw this on Instagram and honestly I can’t stop laughing

[justlookatthosesausages]

I’m on the floor omg the sound edit 

[kittyvisuals]

The cats live in another world very distant from this 😹

[pikaole]

Moth & Beetle

[ Patreon / twitter / instagram / shop / print / teepublic / LINE store  ]

[pippinstook]

Aragorn training the hobbits how to fight but he’s like Detective JJ Bittenbinder.

[pippinstook]

Aragorn, tossing small swords to the hobbits: Time for Street Smarts with Strider. Shut up! You’re all gonna die. Street Smarts!

[overthinkinglotr]

Aragorn: *draws Sauron’s attention to the Black Gate so Frodo and Sam can make it into Mordor unseen*

Aragorn: NOW WE’VE THROWN HIM OFF HIS RHYTHM

[ex0skeletal]

Borzoi Puppy

[lostangelssong]

Hey @zero-alice

[bears-official]

#for some reason it has never occurred to me that this type of dog exists in a puppy state??#i guess i just assumed they emerged fully formed from mist and moonlight

[realtaa]

@mwuffie

[overthinkinglotr]

I wanna talk about the kinda genius (?) way Aragorn is introduced in FOTR and why it’s even more iconic than most people think it is

When we first see Aragorn it’s the famous shot of him in a dark cloak, his face hidden in shadow

But what other characters wear dark cloaks and have their faces hidden in shadow?

It’s not just that Aragorn is Shifty-Looking™,  the film is drawing a clear visual parallel between Aragorn and the Ringwraiths. They’re shadowy figures in hooded cloaks that conceal their faces, who seem to be looking for Frodo. After the innkeeper tells Frodo about “Strider,” Frodo even begins fidgeting with the Ring like he did when hiding from the Ringwaiths.  At this point in the movie neither Frodo or the audience have any idea what the The Black Riders are,  (I mean you do if you’ve watched the films a million times but teCHNICALLY–) and Aragorn is framed as if he might as well be one of them.

Frodo denies knowing anything about the Ring until Aragorn pulls off his hood and shows his face, something the Black Riders never did:

At which point both the characters and the audience start to realize he might be trustworthy.

But the thing is:

When Frodo asks Aragorn what the Black Riders are, Aragorn responds:

“They were once men, great kings of men. Then Sauron the Deceiver gave to them nine rings of power….”

“Woah Strider, are you telling me that Great Kings of Men are secretly hiding out in Bree under new names/identities while disguised in dramatic dark cloaks???? Well I’ll be on the lookout for these secret kings, Mr Strider, tell you if I see any.” 

But seriously tho– the Black Riders are introduced as mysterious hooded figures,  then revealed to be Great Kings of Men who fell to the dark side. Aragorn is introduced as a mysterious hooded figure who might be a Black Rider, then revealed to be a Great King of Men who might fall to the dark side. 

This is also why that last moment between Frodo and Aragorn in Amon Hen is so great: Frodo (and the audience’s) first impression of Aragorn in Bree was: could this person be a Black Rider? And at the climax of the film, after we’ve learned all about who “Strider” really is, and how the Black Riders were men just like him who were corrupted by Rings of Power, ……in a way, we’re still asking the exact same question. 

And it’s only there, when Aragorn refuses the Ring, that we finally find out the answer is no.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

[roachpatrol]

Holy fuck. I was raised Jewish— with female Rabbis, even!— and I did not hear about any of this. Gender studies are important. 

[kogiopsis]

Why Gender History is Important (Asshole)

[treewizarded]

“so you just threw gender in there for fun” ffs i hope you poured his drink down his pants

[notyourdamsel-in-distress]

I actually studied this in one of my classes last semester. It was beyond fascinating. 

There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.

Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf  when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage. 

The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have. 

Another interesting tidbit is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Kristallnacht is a term that historians came up with after the fact, and was not what the event was actually called at the time. It’s likely that the event was actually called was (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the German word for it but it translates to) night of the feathers, because that, instead of broken glass, is the image that stuck in people’s minds because the soldiers also went into people’s homes and destroyed their bedding, throwing the feathers from pillows and blankets into the air. What does it say that in our history we have taken away the focus of the event from the more domestic, traditionally feminine, realms, and placed it in the business, traditionally masculine, realms?

[historicity-reblogs]

Badass women and interesting commentary. Though I would argue that “Night of Broken Glass" includes both the personal and the private spheres. It was called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, which led to Jewish survivors referring to it as the November Pogrom until the term “Kristallnacht" was reclaimed, as such.

None of this runs directly counter to your fascinating commentary, though.

[wtfhistory]

READ THIS.

[the-waters-and-the-wild]

If anyone has books or articles related to these accounts or ones like them, please let me know. These stories need to be told. 

[historicity-was-already-taken]

@the-waters-and-the-wild hi! I’m (OP) actually writing a book on these themes. If you’re interested in learning more or helping me out with access, please check out this page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/women-in-the-warsaw-jewish-underground-project#/

Women in the Warsaw Jewish Underground Project

Help me pay for the translators, books, reproductions of archival materials, and editors I need. | Check out 'Women in the Warsaw Jewish Und

[idunnobutwhocares]

Does anyone know of any books that focus on the lost roles of women throughout history? don’t get me wrong this is important and interesting but I wanna know as much as possible you know?

[historicity-was-already-taken]

@idunnobutwhocares idk maybe the OP.

Now to be clear, these roles were never lost—the sources exist and historians know how to analyze them and have written libraries of books on the subject. The problem is that those histories and their meanings haven’t penetrated much into public conceptions of the past.

So, for now check out the reading lists I link to on my home page. If you’d rather wait for a curated list, send a DM to my ask box.

[neil-gaiman]

I’d add something else. A lot of Holocaust survivors didn’t talk about what they did to survive.

My cousin Helen will be 102 in February and she is still one of the smartest people I know . A couple of years ago she told me that after she escaped the Warsaw ghetto (she wouldn’t tell me how, although I suspect that it may have been under the dead bodies on a cart dragging out the dead, as she got in to the Warsaw Ghetto in an empty body cart) she went to the apartment of a woman she had been friends with who only knew her as the person on her forged papers, but who would not ask questions about Helen showing up without luggage or explanation.

On the third day that she was there the woman called to her excitedly, shouting “Come and see!” Helen went out onto the balcony. Smoke was rising from the ghetto a few blocks away. The Warsaw Ghetto had fallen. “Isn’t it wonderful?” asked the woman. “The Jews are burning!”

Helen said the smile on her face was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.

And Helen’s daughter mentioned that she had never heard Helen talk about that incident before. Her mother kept so much of what had happened back then to herself.

Helen’s older sister, Wanda, had false papers, worked with the Resistance and, without any training, worked as a nurse for Nazi Doctors who didn’t suspect her. (As a spy? Because her false ID was that of a nurse? I don’t know.) All the information I have about the living and the dead is fragmentary, like peering at a huge room through a tiny keyhole.

They survived, and they moved on…

[juiceandjoggers]

This so interesting! Also, @idunnobutwhocares, The Lilac Girls is a fascinating read on this sort of thing. I think most of the characters are more or less fictionalized but it does focus on the historical perspective of everyday women during this period. So cool!

[patron-saint-of-smart-asses-dea]

I think the virtue that inspires such mothers [to have children/large families] is not obedience or even generosity, but hope. They see a future for themselves and their children, filled with the happiness that God has promised. If that’s your view of what life has in store, why not share it?

On Big Families And Educated Women (via patron-saint-of-smart-asses)

[wafflesandsyrup]

Man America is fucked up and has issues but I’m glad that Canada and China are being more exposed for how messed up they are too. I’m all for calling out shit when it’s noticed but it just seems like the US is the “””safe””” option and then so much wrongdoing in other nations goes unnoticed because they aren’t the US.

[wafflesandsyrup]

Like oh I know Canada is letting dangerous, mentally unstable people with pedophillic tendencies go free without any consequences or charges but have u heard that the Cheeto Man said a Mean Thing on Twitter????

[wafflesandsyrup]

Oh I know that Chinese citizens have been treated as subhuman chattel for about a hundred years now, and the police are mutilating Honk Kongers, and people are having their organs harvested, and you cannot express anything but satisfaction with your government without possibly being jailed or killed, but in the US freedom of speech hurts my feelings sometimes?????????

[theinturnetexplorer]

[glumshoe]

Is there anything more nauseating than ‘expensive heterosexual wedding’ culture?

[r4cs0]

You

[memefix]

children stripping in adult gay bars for money

[patron-saint-of-smart-asses-dea]

“The Murry and OKeefe families enlist the help of the unicorn, Gaudior, to save the world from imminent nuclear war.“

?

“Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior undertake a perilous journey through time in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction of the world by the  mad dictator Madog Branzillo”

???

“Charles Wallace’s sister, Meg – grown and expecting her first child, but still able to enter her brother’s thoughts and emotions by “kything"”

??????????

[thephilosophersapprentice]

that book is good. fight me

[herring-red-deactivated20201020]

Agreed. Just because it sounds kinda wild when you summarize it under a paragraph doesn’t mean it’s bad, smh. (Swiftly tilting planet was actually my favorite)

Anyways, don’t diss the time quartet (except for maybe Many Waters, but that’s personal bias talking there)

[patron-saint-of-smart-asses-dea]

I didn’t think it sounded bad just very out there like unicorns and weirdly named telepathy powers? Madog the dictator? Nuclear warheads and time travel? With a unicorn??? I am confusion

[juiceandjoggers]

I loved Many Waters as a kid! It was just so weird! I haven’t read it in a zillion years so that may have changed...

[woppy42]

[woppy42]

[woppy42]

[woppy42]

#have u considered: moogle gaps

i have now thank you

[woppy42]

and thank you to @somnambule-plus​ for my new favorite word… schoogle

[woppy42]

thank you @firstfandomfangirl​

[bipirate]

i think one of the most interesting things is how, ever since the 19th century, the gothic has become almost synonymous with dark and eerie things, vampires and the like. artists and writers in the 19th century looked at those old and grimy buildings and were like, hell yeah, spooky shit. but it becomes even more interesting when you realise that those dark and grimy buildings weren’t dark or grimy at all when they were built; that darkness comes from years and years of smoke from candles and other grime building up. look at this picture from the restoration of the cathedral of chartres:

how fucking cool is this? so not only are those dark and creepy gothic stories from the 19th century just a fiction of the imagination of 19th century edge lords, but the actual medieval cathedrals were light and colourful. it makes you think about what age in history really deserves the term ‘the dark ages’, huh

[dashaibo]

The one with the black plague, poor hygiene, insane infant mortality rate, legalized slavery and endless petty feudal wars.

[catie-does-things]

i don’t know who needs to hear this but when you go to confession CLOSE THE DOOR OF THE CONFESSIONAL ALL THE WAY otherwise EVERYONE WAITING IN THE CONFESSION LINE CAN HEAR ALL YOUR SINS

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

one time a priest told me to talk quieter in confession and i was so Embarrassed but he was just like “no we don’t have good soundproofing i don’t want anyone else to hear you!!”

[catholicliving]

Fun fact, in those cases where you accidentally overhear someone else’s confession, you are also under the Seal of Confession. So you can’t go blabbing about it to anyone.

But, still, it’s no fun to overhear other people’s confession, whether it’s poor soundproofing or someone leaving the door open on accident.

[concealdontfeeldude]

See, why isn’t the Seal of Confession used more cinimatically? That’s some tension

[juiceandjoggers]

@thatcatholicgentleman right?? I love the way it was used in Hitchcock’s ‘I Confess’.