i may be a romantic but i’m not hopeless

love is in everything and that’s just the truth

[realmikedirnt]

pinned about

jamie § late 20s § xae/xem (conj) § ze/zir (conj) § he/him (conj)

trying my best to be the person i want to be. content warnings are tagged as #(warning) cw but may be inconsistently tagged. liveblogging is marked #jamie liveblogs and my daily reflection posts are tagged #yramtd. further tags can be found under the cut, and the most common tags are attached to this post for ease of navigation and blacklisting. relationship tags are not necessarily romantic.

sideblogs:

@rhianleighis (ffxiv) § @aboywhofogshisworld (purple aes) § @whentheviruscuresitself (pink aes) § @eighthavenueserenade​ (blue & gold aes) § @earthandafar​ (green & bronze aes)

general tags

#climbing to the light (hope/positivity) § #bad day tag (funny posts) #cat tag § #humans are for better or for worse inherently ridiculous (what it says on the tin) § #Catholic tag § #nerd shit (general interesting things) § #lgbt history § #linguistics § #meta (fandom meta discussion/essays)

bands & musical theatre

#jams (audio posts) § #fbr tag (acts signed to fbr before ~2015) § #not fbr tag (acts not signed to fbr before ~2015) § #blink tag (blink-182) § #deen gray (green day) § #les mis § #aitm (american idiot the musical) § #beetlejuice tag

other fandoms

#lotr (all tolkien) § #sansûkh (the lotr fic) § #the final frontier (star trek) § #leverage § #fma tag (primarily fma:b) § #tma tag (the magnus archives) § #jjba § #taz tag (the adventure zone) § #rgg tag (all yakuza/like a dragon games & spinoffs)

[fishfingersandscarves]

“Balin and Oin are going to have apoplexy, and Father is going to spontaneously combust,” Frerin whispered, staring at Gimli in horror. Thorin did not answer. He had his head in his hands.” @determamfidd

[everchanging-encyclopedia]

hey dont cry ok. billie joe armstrong in a skirt, mike dirnt in a dress, and tre cool in, uh...

1992, i think

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[drtanner]

Didn't like it

[spiritualistapologist]

[lizardsfromspace]

One of my favorite hoaxes was in early 1962. There was a musical that debuted in 1961 called Subways are for Sleeping that was doing very poorly. For bizarre reasons (ads were banned in the New York subway system lest people take it as permission to sleep there) and normal (the reviews were poor).

But in 1962 an ad came out full of effusive praise from every prominent theater critic in New York. Every single one. From the Times to the Post, all of the famous theater critics in New York LOVED Subways Are For Sleeping

Except...

One of the papers paid to run this ad noticed something...off. Namely, that the editor knew Richard Watts the theater critic and he wasn't African-American.

It turns out that the producer of the musical had found seven New Yorkers with the same names as the seven biggest theater critics in New York, since while he couldn't lie and say they liked it, he could pay for *a* John Chapman or *a* Robert Coleman to see the musical and quote them next to their photo truthfully, bc how many people even knew what the leading theater critics in NYC looked like?

Turns out the producer had wanted to do this for ages, but had to wait for the NYT's critic to retire bc he couldn't find anyone with the same name. Anyway it worked: it went from being about to close, to running another hundred shows and winning a Tony

Here's the main source for this, btw

[lizardsfromspace]

Grateful to everyone who's pointed out the delightful vagueness of "7 OUT OF 7" loved it. 7 out of seven what? Well, seven out of the seven people in the ad of course

[boundtogetloud]

the travie

[queerasfact]

Women’s History Month - Sofya Parnok

Sofya Parnok was born in Taganrog, Russia, on July 3rd 1885, to a highly educated Jewish family. Her first surviving poem, written around age 15 about her weekly dance class, already shows her attraction to other girls in the class.

Sofya had her first lesbian relationship the following year, but in her twenties, pressure from her family and a desire for increased independence from her father led her to marry friend and fellow poet Vladimir Volkenshtein, who was aware of her sexuality. While they shared a love of poetry, music, and writing, the marriage didn’t last, and after just a year, Sofya sought a divorce.

Around this time she met Iraida Albrecht, who was the daughter of a wealthy Moscow socialite. The two women began a relationship, and moved in together very quickly, with Sofya writing “I’m renting a whole apartment, have even acquired some furniture, and now, as a result of luxury far beyond my means, I’m a stay-at-home in Kolokolnikov Lane with my girlfriend and a monkey…”

After Vladimir, Sofya had many relationships with women, beginning with socialite Iraide Albrecht, wtih whom she shared an apartment, and a pet monkey. Others included with fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva; actress Lyudmila Erarskaya; opera singer Maria Maksakova; mathematician Olga Tsuberbiller; and physicist Nina Vedeneyeva. These relationships often overlapped, with Sofya’s partners being aware of one another, and sometimes even good friends.

Sofya’s poetry explores her Russian, Jewish, and lesbian identities. In 1915, she published her first collection, Poems, which included perhaps the first openly lesbian writing published in Russia, leading to her modern epithet “Russia’s Sappho”. Sofya drew inspiration from Sappho, and often used fragments of Sappho’s poems in her work. Sofya continued writing poetry up until her death. Her final poem was a farewell to Nina.

Sofya passed away on August 26th, 1933, with Nina and Olga by her side.

Check out our podcast to learn more!

[Images: Sofya in the later 1920s; Sofya and Olga; Sofya and Lyudmila]

[buried-in-stardust]

[eng by me]

[borderlinebastard]

what “feeling better” can look like after using a coping technique:

beng able to get up and walk around safely

thinking/talking more clearly and lessening of brain fog

a willingness to re-engage with a situation/emotion (even with some reluctance)

ability to do a task you did not want to/could not do before

being able to plan and problem solve (even if you still don’t know what to do)

improved concentration/focus

more understanding of a situation

calmer and slower thoughts (rather than scattered thoughts/rumination)

slower heartbeat and breathing

faster heartbeat, if doing exercise, and momentum that gives you a chance to do a task before you sit down again

being able to sleep easier

an ability to look at the big picture and not get lost in the details

feeling that you can “manage”

ability to control outbursts/destructive behaviour or pause before acting

managing to stop crying

I think people tend to assume their mood is what will improve after trying coping techniques, however, your mood is not the full extent of your mental health, and it doesn’t totally define whether or not a technique has helped you. When disorders cause symptoms like chronic emptiness and low mood, it’s worthwhile to pay attention to your body and your abilities to look for signs of improvement, which can then have an affect on your mood in the long term.

[here-to-shine]

​it’s also very important to be aware of your coping mechanisms if they’re healthy and noticed how they effect your everyday life

[peatbogpirate]

this one's from last year but I just started my rotk reread and this scene makes me giggle every time

[dragongirlsweetie]

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @bentothuglife ! Natural history used to be a bit more loosey-goosey

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

See I love this though, because this is one of the few pieces of medieval natural history where, as batshit insane as it is, the reasoning behind it does actually make sense.

See, barnacle geese live in the UK, but they don't breed here. They travel to the arctic to have their babies and don't return until they're fledged.

So, from the medieval perspective— given that most medieval brits weren't really in a position to go down to the arctic and check out the wildlife— barnacle geese a) vanished every summer and b) didn't seem to lay eggs or have babies. They just showed up at the same time every year, already basically grown.

Enter the goose barnacle.

The goose barnacle, supposedly, has a similar pattern and colouration to the barnacle goose. I can't really see it myself, except that they both have white patches, but medieval people apparently could.

Crucially, however, the goose barnacle likes to attach itself to driftwood, meaning that branches would regularly wash up on UK beaches covered in them. People at the time (not unreasonably) assumed that this meant that the barnacles grew on trees, whose branches later snapped off and fell in the water.

So, we have all these geese who vanish every summer and then emerge later in the year as full grown adults. And we have all these barnacles that apparently grow on trees (where birds like to live) and have a similar colouration to the geese.

So like, it's insane from a modern perspective, but you can see how they got there.

But ALSO, because your barnacle goose was born from a barnacle, many people at the time argued that it was technically a fish in the eyes of the Catholic church. At a time when nobody was allowed to eat meat significant chunks of the year, this was a useful myth to believe in.

The church, incidentally, did not agree with it. Not because they rejected the idea that barnacle geese spontaneously generated from barnacles— they were all in favour of that— but because, in the words of one writer “if anyone were to eat of the leg of our first parent (Adam) although he was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating meat”.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

[zanahoriabaila]

When your friend has so much himbo spirit he rigs himself a gaydar to be a better wingman.

[official-lucifers-child]

my man here m a d e his own gaydar. he. he fucking. he made a gaydar. he made a gaydar, thought this through and put together a system specifically to find gays. he made

[fluentisonus]

jmw turner + (im)permanence, change, & a painting as a process that includes both the creation & the eventual falling apart:

'Turner: Imagination and Reality', Lawrence Gowing // The cleaning of two paintings by Turner, Jim Dimond // 'Turner's Oil Paintings: Changes in Appearance', Joyce H. Townsend // JMW Turner's Paintings That Defy Preservation, Julia Margaret Lu // Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finley

[fluentisonus]

"His desire to perform in front of others as he painted may have been a way for him to exhibit a new conception of painting, which he seemed to increasingly experience as a temporal and physical production, and as a process of expression, rather than as a finished product or the completion of a pre-given design."

'Painting as Event: Performance and gesture in late Turner', Hélène Ibata

[p-applebun]

[precalamity]

can someone who knows about you/thou divide in shakespeare help me out bc I just skimmed through all of horatio and hamlet’s interactions to find that hamlet consistently refers to horatio as “you” in act one, but starting with his very heartfelt speech in act 3 scene 2 praising horatio, he consistently uses “thou” until the end of the play (which does, sadly, imply that “o, I could tell you— but let it be.” is not actually directed at horatio…) more interesting to me is that horatio only ever uses “you” to refer to hamlet until after hamlet has died, when we get “goodnight sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” does this have to do hamlet with hamlet being dead? or?? what are the general connotations of you/thou at this time (bc I know it has changed over time). why did the changes happen as they did or does literally none of this matter ?

[vienna-is-waiting]

OMG this is actually such a fun literary quirk of Early Modern English, and it adds a LOT of subtext to those interactions!

So, in Early Modern English (the dialect of the time period— it is NOT “old English”, that’s an earlier form of language so different from our current way of speaking you would not be able to interpret it) “you” is a FORMAL address, “thou” is INFORMAL.

Using the “formal you” is a sign of respect and deference, but also an indication of distance. It’s a way of being polite. So when Hamlet is is using the formal “you” in act one it is a politeness, but as the plot goes on he switches to thou to illustrate the depth of that relationship, as “thou” (the “informal you”) is the form of address used between people who are CLOSE with each other— family, good friends, lovers. It is clear that they are close enough for hamelt to address him that way, and the switch can also be viewed as an appeal to their closeness as Hortaio becomes further and further involved in hamlet’s plot.

Now Horatio’s side of this is actually the more interesting one.

You are absolutely right, hortaio uses the formal “you” the entire time hamlet is alive on stage. This is appropriate, given their differing statuses, hamelt is a prince, and using “you” formally is basically like calling someone “sir”. “You” is how you address your boss, people with high social standing than you, and just people you don’t know very well. It’s slightly at odds with hamlet’s very easy way of addressing Horatio, but as hamelt is the one with higher social standing it makes more sense for him to be the one pushing the informal address while horatio continues to speak semi formally.

The part that makes it so much more interesting though is the switch after hamlet’s death, because that really adds to a heartbreaking moment. Basically what that’s meant to tell the audience is that hortaio is mourning hamlet as a friend, and a person he was close with, not as a prince. It’s kinda a break in the more distant, appropriate way of speaking we’ve seen from this cautious scholarly character so far, he’s breaking down, and he’s lost his FRIEND, he’s just watched someone very important to him die, and the switch in formality emphasizes that. It’s no longer about hamlet’s social standing, it’s about what hamlet meant to him

[tequilamockingbyrd]

And looking at the text from a practical angle, as a working piece of stagecraft--plays in the Elizabethan era didn’t have stage directions beyond your basic enter/exeunt, etc! And neither rehearsals nor full scripts were really a thing. When you’re writing out a play by hand (and when competitors or your own actors stealing a plot is a risk!) it doesn’t make sense to copy the whole thing so that the guard in A1S1 (who only shows up for that scene) knows when to say “not a mouse stirring.”

Instead, you get “cue-scripts” which contain ONLY the lines for a particular character, plus 6 or so syllables of the preceding line to ‘cue’ them that it was time to speak. (This means, btw, that there are some interesting moments where Shakespeare clearly intends for multiple characters to speak at the same time/interruptions to occur but modern productions instead have a weird, stilted call & response situation...)

But we were discussing thee & thou! According to RSC these function, in a very simple way, as stage directions for the actor. It tells them, as the previous poster notes, how their character feels about the relationship/what degree of intimacy they should be modelling. But it also literally told them HOW CLOSE they should get to the other actor! 

Because each actor only knew their own lines, you generally didn’t move/do much ‘stage business’ unless you were talking or it was a pre-discussed fight scene, since you had a limited sense of what was coming next. (This is also why Shakespeare characters will refer to/talk about any really plot-critical props they need to use, such as daggers, vials of poison, severed heads of ex-boyfriends that they’re waving in their husband’s face, etc. etc., because the actor needs to know about that in advance and plan for it! Fight scenes were rehearsed, though they’d often just work with a handful of pre-choreographed fights that could be re-used from play to play.)

So when an actor uses “thee/thou” to refer to another character, that means they should get literally, as well as figuratively, closer to them. When they swap to “you” they can move away/maintain a distance. If they’re swapping back and forth--or their terms don’t match up--that means that they’d be moving closer and farther apart throughout the scene (a lot of Oliva’s conversations with the Fool in Twelfth Night come to mind). When there’s a sudden swap, as, for example, the end of Hamlet & Ophelia’s scene where he suddenly says “get THEE to a nunnery” it conjures the image of him approaching her, maybe grabbing her, where previously they’d maintained a kind of wary distance.

In Horatio’s case, I absolutely concur that it’s an emotional pivot for him, a breakdown of the established social order (and of the story, with characters dying like flies and Fortinbras in the wings ready to bust onstage) but also, in almost every production I’ve seen...

Horatio says that line while cradling Hamlet’s dead body.

[witchofthewild]

I would rather spend a lifetime with you, than face all the Ages of this world alone.

*t4t indigiqueers your fantasy otp* (inspired by @neechees gif sets!!)

[ponyboyfaceshopping]

by Gerard Donelan

[hormelfoods]

For historical context, this is about making a panel for the AIDS quilt, a memorial project which began in San Francisco in 1985. Due to the stigma surrounding both homosexuality and AIDS during this time, victims of the epidemic were often cremated and disposed of or buried without ceremony, their bodies unclaimed by their families or origin or held by hospitals rather than released to same-sex partners.

Each panel in the AIDS quilt memorializes a life lost to the disease. Each panel is 3′ x 6′ (approximately 1 meter wide and 2 meters long), the approximate dimensions of a cemetery plot. The quilt, which then consisted of 1,920 panels representing 1,920 individuals lost to AIDS, was first displayed in Washington DC in 1987. The public response was immediate, positive, and overwhelming, and the quilt began taken around the country to be displayed in more cities. At each stop, the names of the dead were read out loud. At each stop, more panels were added.

By the time the quit returned to the US capital in 1988, it had more than 8,000 panels.

The quilt continues to grow. Today, it has over 50,000 panels memorializing over 100,000 of our dead. It’s too large now to physically display in its entirety, but you can view the entire thing online. There are also curated virtual displays of just panels which honor the Black and native people killed by the virus because in the US (and likely abroad, although I don’t know enough about public health elsewhere to say so with confidence), communities of color are disproportionately impacted by epidemics, as we have seen time and time again.

You can learn more about the quilt and its history here, and you can learn how to add a panel to the quilt here.