A Cacophony of Mind

Is not Just a Cactus Anymore 31, queer, and tired

[byjove]

The funniest part of A New Hope is that Luke Skywalker is a 19 year old who has not locked in yet and plays with toys and sleeps in his childhood bedroom at his aunt and uncle’s house and Leia Organa is a 19 year old with a mission to save the galaxy from fascism. Luke has never left his hometown, Leia just watched her planet be blown up. He’s peeved his uncle is asking him to do his chores, she’s imprisoned for resisting the government. You relate to them both but they’re on complete opposite sides of the 19 year old life stage spectrum.

[kuttithevangu]

“If you fail to do as we ask you we will POISON your horses, signed, Yiddish Camorra”

[helpful doodle of a terribly drawn black hand, also labeled POISON, in case you didn’t get it]

[moveslikekeithrichards]

huge fan of when cats reach out and touch each other with disrespectful intent

[we-are-knight]

You know, I don't think I'll ever get over how that one post I made about women as knights in history, made it all the way to Reddit only for a bunch of redditors to argue that women couldn't actually be knights because:

- "the term is gendered" (it's not, and feminine equivalents were sometimes created specifically for the purpose)

- "they didn't actually do things as knights" (who didn't? The Hatchet women fought the Moors. A few other Orders had women as masters of arms. Both martial and formal examples)

...and a few other reasons that come down to "I don't like imagining my manly men in steel had women in their ranks, girls have cooties".

And the reason I say this is because recently, Wikipedia updated their page on "Knight", specifically adding a section about women with the title of knighthood, and what function they performed. And I know: "Wikipedia is not an academic source"--but every academic institution will accept the sources and articles used to back up wikipages, which confirm what has been said.

Knights were sometimes women. 🤷

[we-are-knight]

I saw this and needed to answer.

The gendered versions of 'knight' come from Romance languages, and literally just change the word to fit the gender of the subject (within a binary). So it isn't like English, where a female knight has always been a 'Dame', but, using Spain as an example, the word for Knight in Spanish is 'Cabellero'. This is the default masculine.

The feminine word for Knight? 'Cabellera'.

Similarly in French: "Chevalier" becomes "Chevaliére".

In Italian, "Cavaliere" becomes "Cavaliera".

Outside of Romance languages, "knight" is just a title for a social rank, so even the English Dame is by default a knight by rank, but may not have the title (although not impossible).

So it's not a silly infantilisation, than using a word for the knightly class and gendering it in a binary, which means we can actually tell that, yes, women as knights existed, enough that the feminine form of the word pops up now and then, so we know it existed.

[jv]

ooh, where one could read that original post??

Just a note about translations and ... well, patriarchal bullshit.

When you say "Hatchet women fought the Moors" I was like "hey, that seems to be part of my local history, how have I never heard about it?", and when I googled it ... I actually have heard about it, it's the Orden del Hacha from Catalonia (Orde de l'Atxa in the original Catalan). But ... there's something odd going on. Why the fuck in English they have translated like "Order or the hatchet"? You know, in Spanish and Catalan there's no really a difference between "Axe" and "Hatchet": There's a single word for them, "Hacha/Atxa". But in English, there's a difference. A Hatchet is a hand axe, pretty much the smallest one you can think of:

So It's pretty remarkable that whoever translated the name of the order to english first decided to use "Hatchet" and not "Axe". I'm pretty sure if this was a order of men warriors the name would have been pretty different. Specially when THIS was their coat of arms:

So dear academic-who-translated-this-first: Does that look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?

[we-are-knight]

Important inclusion I was not aware of, thank you very much friend. :)

[heroineimages]

I’m going to be chuckling over ‘Does this look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?” for the rest of the day.

[tinybed]

[comealongphil]

dawn dimmadome? wife of doug dimmadome, owner of the dimmsdale dimmadome?

[punkrorschach]

actually she took the dimmadome in the dimmadivorce

[distortionincarnate]

May we see more pictures of your elderly cat?

Absolutely! She doesn't always look terrible I just happen to adore when she does :3

[evilundead]

glad yall are enjoying Meemaw ^^

[catchymemes]

[lostinthelegs]

Mr. Business and The Heavy have claimed the role of Luigi's giant goth girlfriends.

[daftpatience]

sorry i had toooooo draw them

[pangur-and-grim]

she never looks relaxed

[pangur-and-grim]

[crimsonclad]

I saw a bumper sticker and thought “is that seductive Daffy Duck” and then when I looked closer I realized it was actually a fishing bumper sticker but also. also it is still very much seductive Daffy Duck???? somehow????????

[frontmansdefender]

[teaboot]

Ooo if it’s Submitting Voids Time, here’s my boy and his peetsies sticking out from his new cat condo 🥲

Oughhgghhgghhhhhhh the peetsies......

[orcboxer]

honestly "oracle that nobody believes" is such a solid trope. imagine trying to convince anybody in 2006 what the next two decades was gonna look like

[orcboxer]

Cassandra: I have seen the future and it is really, really stupid. They're hiding in the fucking horse.

[goldengenuflexion]

[fandomsandfeminism]

Is there anything sadder than the little chunk of Kikis Delivery Service when Kiki says “I used to really like flying before it was my job” and then gets so burned out that her magic stops working and she cant talk to Jiji anymore and she tries so hard to FORCE the magic that she breaks her mothers broom and stays up all night, alone, trying to make a new one and crying?

And I know it is all ok in the end- Kiki has friends who look out for her and she takes care of herself and finds her place.

But fuck, those 20 minutes just hurt my heart so much.

[shybi-n-ready2cry]

[valtsv]

today i learned that there are cave paintings of bats and i think you all deserve to see them

[iamgoingtobeatyouwithhammers]

@teaboot

[noelledeltarune]

okay that was not my last straw but i have maybe 3 to 4 straws left at most so watch out.