Spotted Eagle Rays

Reinventing my Tumblr because I'm bored

[spottedeaglerays]

Gen 1: Lorelei Michaels

Little Lorelei Michaels was left orphaned at just 3 days old, when Lorelei’s mother suffered a hemorrage and father suffered a broken heart. To take care of her, Mr. Michael’s projects; Father and Mother Bot. Created to help around the house. Mother and Father Bot became sentient and immeaditely took on the role of taking care of baby Lorelei. 

[artfoli]

Paintings from the Water Lilies (also known as Nymphéas) series, by Claude Monet (1840-1926).

[anordinaryseal]

[vint-agge-xx]

SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS LIKE THE VICTORIANS:

1. Christmas Cards: We first started sending Christmas cards in the 1840s when the Penny Post allowed people to send a card to anyone for one penny. The world’s first commercial Christmas card was designed in 1843.

2. Sing Christmas Carols: Victorians revived the centuries-old custom of singing carols to celebrate the season, which included adding new life to the 400-year-old song “The First Noel.” They not only went door to door singing for friends and neighbors, they enjoyed carols in parlors at home and during beautiful candlelit worship services in local sanctuaries. Where there was song, there was sheet music; nicely illustrated pieces with Christmas themes from the early 1900′s are not only beautiful, they are quite collectible today.

3. Decorate a Tree: The German custom of tabletop Christmas trees was taken to new heights by Victorians who placed them on the floor in their homes. They adorned their beloved evergreens with flickering candles, fancy paper Santa’s, glistening angels, chocolate wreaths, gilded apples, silver cornucopias holding treats decorated with tinsel tassels, and dozens of other beautiful ornaments.

4. Hang a Kissing Bough: Before the middle of the 19th century, the kissing bough was the primary piece of decorative greenery in the Victorian home for the holidays. A kissing bough, sometimes called a kissing ball, is a double hoop of evergreen boughs, holly, ivy, apples, pears, ribbons, lighted candles, and other ornaments with streamers going up to a central point and a sprig of mistletoe hung from its center. Victorian Christmas traditions dictate that any woman who wanders under the kissing bough has to allow herself to be kissed.

5. Serve Christmas Pudding: Christmas pudding is a porridge made by boiling beef and mutton combined with raisins, currants, prunes, spices, eggs, breadcrumbs, ale, and spirits. This dish is made in large copper kettles and prepared several weeks before Christmas. Each member of the family takes turns stirring the thick stew and making a wish. It is the traditional end of a Victorian Christmas dinner.

Christmas pudding usually contains a silver coin, a ring, button, and thimble. Tradition says the finders of these respective objects will be given the gift of wealth, be married within the year, or be destined for bachelor or spinsterhood.

6. Give Children Christmas Crackers: Tom Smith, a London confectioner, designed a tube-shaped object filled with sweets and toys as a special Christmas favor for children. To open this Victorian “Christmas cracker”, you pull on both ends to break the cylinder and create a popping sound. 

[vint-agge-xx]

Victorian Slang'

-AFTERNOONIFIED A society word meaning “smart.” Forrester demonstrates the usage: “The goods are not ‘afternoonified’ enough for me.”

-ARFARFAN’ARF A figure of speech used to describe drunken men. “He’s very arf’arf’an’arf,” Forrester writes, “meaning he has had many ‘arfs,’” or half-pints of booze.

- BACK SLANG IT Thieves used this term to indicate that they wanted “to go out the back way.”

-BAGS O’ MYSTERY An 1850 term for sausages, “because no man but the maker knows what is in them. … The ‘bag’ refers to the gut which contained the chopped meat.”

- BANG UP TO THE ELEPHANT This phrase originated in London in 1882, and means “perfect, complete, unapproachable.”

- BATTY-FANG Low London phrase meaning “to thrash thoroughly,” possibly from the French battre a fin.

-BENJO Nineteenth century sailor slang for “A riotous holiday, a noisy day in the streets.”

- BOW WOW MUTTON A naval term referring to meat so bad “it might be dog flesh.”

- BRICKY Brave or fearless. “Adroit after the manner of a brick,” Forrester writes, “said even of the other sex, ‘What a bricky girl she is.’”

- BUBBLE AROUND A verbal attack, generally made via the press. Forrester cites The Golden Butterfly: “I will back a first-class British subject for bubbling around against all humanity.”

-BUTTER UPON BACON Extravagance. Too much extravagance. “Are you going to put lace over the feather, isn’t that rather butter upon bacon?”

-CAT-LAP A London society term for tea and coffee “used scornfully by drinkers of beer and strong waters … in club-life is one of the more ignominious names given to champagne by men who prefer stronger liquors.”

-CHURCH-BELL A talkative woman.

- CHUCKABOO A nickname given to a close friend.

- COLLIE SHANGLES Quarrels. A term from Queen Victoria’s journal, More Leaves, published in 1884: “At five minutes to eleven rode off with Beatrice, good Sharp going with us, and having occasional collie shangles (a Scottish word for quarrels or rows, but taken from fights between dogs) with collies when we came near cottages.”

-COP A MOUSE To get a black eye. “Cop in this sense is to catch or suffer,” Forrester writers, “while the colour of the obligation at its worst suggests the colour and size of the innocent animal named.”

- DADDLES A delightful way to refer to your rather boring hands.

-DAMFINO This creative cuss is a contraction of “damned if I know.”

[tiredstars]

I think the worst part is when you’re sitting there in your tears, with the weight of exhaust on your soul and you know you don’t want your loved ones to experience your death but man…can anybody just make this all stop though? And knowing that no one will come save you from this existing on this earth unless you do it yourself.

And then you’re back at “I CANT FUCKING KILL MYSELF!!!! I’M GONNA LIVE A FULL LIFE OF FUCKING PAIN BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO CAUSE ANY PAIN!!”

And then that’s it… you’re crumbling.

[birdinthewinterwinds]

»✨.The dark Queen.✨«

🏛».and her Lord husband.«🏛

——————————

I asked him for it.

For the blood,

for the rust,

for the sin.

I didn’t want the pearls

other girls talked about

I wanted pomegranates.

I wanted darkness,

I wanted him.

So I grabbed my king and ran away

to a land of death,

where I reigned and people whispered

that I’d been dragged…

- D.M.

[i-cordelia]

I read an interesting interpretation of this that said Athena cursed Medusa as a way to help protect her from Poseidon which lead me to this thread . I am blown away because I always saw Medusa as a victim rather than a villain. I am so glad I am not the only one.

Here’s a more expanded take.

[chotomy]

–

based on these passages from the odyssey and the aeneid (and i think it might have happened in the iliad too, though i can’t remember where):

athena and aphrodite know EXACTLY what matters and that is HEROIC BIMBOFICATION!

[wnq-writers]

@wnq-writers

[louckscreens]

Do I Wanna Know, 505 - Arctic Monkeys

like/reblog if saving

[wordsnquotes]

“There is a moment—Oh, just before the first kiss, a whispered word—something that makes it worth while.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[spottedeaglerays]

[dedalvs]

Can I just say thank you to you and your book? We were discussing AAVE in my anthro class and the topic shifted to why languages in general are looked down upon, someone brought up Arabic as a language that sounds harsh because of cultural constructs, and there was a lot of incoherent yelling back and forth until I broke out my handy dandy copy of The Art of Language Invention and read the passage where you talk about how you designed Dothraki to sound harsh. The room quieted down after that.

Ha, ha! YEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!! You did good work!

For those who haven’t read it, this is the section (since it’s my own book and can just copy and paste it from my file. Ha. Remember when it was just typewriters—and then before that just quill and parchment?):

When I was hired to create Dothraki for Game of Thrones, I didn’t get many notes from the producers. Really there were only two things they wanted from the Dothraki language: (1) They wanted it to incorporate all the words George R. R. Martin had created in his books, and (2) they wanted it to sound harsh.

Harsh.

What does that mean when it comes to a language? Jason Momoa has described Dothraki as sounding like German. Many have described it as sounding like Arabic; a few like Russian. Most English speakers I’ve run into agree, though, that it sounds harsh. Why?

One tack might be to compare the languages that Dothraki is compared to. What sounds do they have in common? Quite a few, actually. Arabic, Russian and German have all of these sounds in common: b, s, z, sh, k, l, m, n, a, i… Even more than that. Does having an m in a language make it sound harsh? Probably not. Almost every language on the planet has an m sound. In fact, a lot of languages feature those sounds listed above—including English—so perhaps we need to try something different. What sounds do Arabic, Russian and German have in common that English lacks? Turns out it’s only one sound, and its phonetic transcription is [x]. You’ll often see it spelled kh and referred to as a “throaty” sound like the ch in German Bach. And, indeed, that does seem like a pretty “harsh” sound to an English speaker. It’s so…clearing-your-throat-sound-y. That must be it! The presence of that sound makes a language harsh.

But hang on. You know what other languages have that sound (or if not that sound exactly, something very, very close to that sound)? Spanish and French. It’s true. The j in the Spanish name Javier is pronounced pretty much exactly like the ch in German Bach. And the French r comes out as an even throatier version of this sound in words like trente, “thirty” and produit, “product”. Do you know any English speaker that’s ever described either French or Spanish as “harsh” or “throaty” or “guttural”?

Anyway, then it mentions cultural stereotyping, which is definitely at play, and goes on to discuss sound systems, etc. It’s pretty good! I stand by it. Only like two infuriating typos that I have no idea how I missed. That index I had to pay for, though… Doesn’t even list Hawaiian! Go to the index and try to look up Hawaiian and see what happens! Theoretically, I was supposed to catch this in proofreading, I guess, but, I mean, geez, I had to pay extra for it! Ugh.

Back on topic, to you, anon, I say:

[captxinsteve]

When Daenerys arrived at Dragonstone and when she crouched down to touch the sand, I immediately noticed the change in tone of the music. It became more like the Dothraki Khaleesi theme at that point and then it slowly changed back to her theme. I think it was really beautiful how the tone of music changed at THAT specific point of the scene (which was also a very powerful moment as well) like as if it was a reminder of her being a Khaleesi and how her journey started and maybe it was a reminder of Drogo and she was remembering the promise he made to her and she was telling herself “I’m finally back home, I did it”.

THESE LITTLE DETAILS ARE VERY IMPORTANT.

THAT WHOLE SCENE HAD ME SHOOK ANYWAYS. 

[oadara]

What do you think about Dany's anti-slavery policy, priding herself on being a liberator, while also proudly waving the Blood of Old Valyria flag, worshipping her Valyrian roots and bonding with Dothraki? Dothraki have enslaved many in their path and Valyrians were big-time slavers themselves, having enslaved Ghiscari and then expanded their empire to Essos, stocking their mines with slaves along the way (as per TWOIAF).

Hello anon,

While your question was clearly meant as hate-snark, I’m going to answer anyway. These mischaracterization have been making the rounds of late and I would like to address these claims and clarify what the text actually says.

Like those who are descendants of the First Men and the Andals, Daenerys is descendant of a conquering genocidal culture. As the First Men massacred most of the Children of the Forrest when the invaded Westeros and the Andals tried to do the same to the First Men when they invaded Westeros, the Valyrians subjugate those that they conquered and killed as well. Now, I won’t defend the actions of any of these races, they were wrong, but our current heroes are no more responsible for what their ancestor did than you or I are responsible for what our ancestor did.

Having said that, the Valyrians were a particular nasty group of people and I want Dany to eventually learn and understand this and to refute that part of her heritage. However, while Dany is proud of her Valyrian heritage, many of her actions have been in complete opposition to what the Valyrians did and stood for.

There is a particular under-analyze element of Dany’s slave revolution and I’ve noted it here and there but I’ve never fully addressed it and it is the symbolism of the dragon. In the time when the Valyrians ruled, the dragon was a symbol of oppression, of subjugation, or cruelty. It was the mean by which the Valyrians were able to conquer whole swaths of Essos, to overpower their opponents and to bend them to their will. Now let’s fast forward to four hundred years after the Fall of Valyria, once again there is a Valyrian in Essos with dragons. But there is a twist to this story, this descendant of Valyria is using her dragons to free people, to give them their lives back, to undo what her ancestors created. Where once the dragon was a symbol of fear and terror, now it was a symbol of hope. Where the Valyrians were once the Masters, this Valyrian is a Mother, giving her children life. A life that had been taken from them. The astounding irony of this has been completely lost on most fans.

It is interesting to note that Dany isn’t the only Targaryen to fight the slave culture of the Valyrians. Her great (in both distance and importance) ancestor Aegon the Conqueror used his dragon to fight the expansion of Volantis when they invaded the Free Cities of Essos.

From the World of Ice and Fire:

Volantis, the mightiest of the Free Cities, quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle. Men and women of noble Valyrian blood, though not dragonlords, called for war upon the other cities. The tigers, as those who advocated conquest came to be known, led Volantis into a great conflict with the other Free Cities. They had great success at first, their fleets and armies controlling Lys and Myr and commanding the southern reaches of the Rhoyne. It was only when they overreached and attempted to seize Tyrosh, as well, that their burgeoning empire collapsed.

Unnerved by the Volantene aggression, Pentos joined the Tyroshi in resistance, Myr and Lys rebelled, and the Sealord of Braavos provided a fleet of a hundred ships to aid Lys. Also, the Westerosi Storm King, Argilac the Arrogant, led a host into the Disputed Lands—in return for the promise of gold and glory—that defeated a Volantene host attempting to retake Myr.

In the wake of all the conflicts, and the struggles that continue to this day over the Disputed Lands, the plague of the Free Companies was born and took root. At first, these bands of sellswords merely fought for whoever paid them. But there are those who say that, whenever peace threatened, the captains of these Free Companies acted to instigate new wars to sustain themselves, and so grew fat on the spoils.

Near the end, even the future Conqueror, the still-young Aegon Targaryen, became involved in the struggle. His ancestors had long looked east, but his attention from an early age had been turned westward. Still, when Pentos and Tyrosh approached him, inviting him to join a grand alliance against Volantis, he listened. And for reasons unknown to this day, he chose to heed their call…to a point. Mounting the Black Dread, it is said that he flew to the east, meeting with the Prince of Pentos and the magisters of the Free City, and from there flew Balerion to Lys in time to set ablaze a Volantene fleet that was preparing to invade that Free City.

I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. And while Dany is proud of her Valyrians heritage, she certainly doesn’t warship it, not when she’s destroying what they created. What Dany is truly proud of is her Targaryen heritage. This is understandable given that her family legacy is all she has left of her family. She’s the last known member of her House, being proud of where she came from gives her a sense of belonging.

Which now leads me to how Dany came to embrace the Dothraki culture of her husband Drogo. As we know throughout her childhood Dany was powerless and oppressed by her brother. She was his pawn and subject to his whims. But when she married into the Dothraki culture she learned to find her inner strength. To assert herself and to demand that other respect her to acknowledge her personhood.

And this is incredibly important to Dany’s development. A part of her will forever be grateful to the for allowing her to gain that strength. Yet, we have seen sense AGOT that Dany is willing to defy. The Dothraki and their practices. We saw it when she began to grab the Lazareen women and take them as her own to protect them, as best she could, from being raped or worse. This of course was an inadequate way of saving these women, but at the time she was using the tools she had. But what I want to look at is the sort of conduct that Dany as a leader has allowed her Dothraki to partake in.

First, let’s look at how Dany address her newly formed khalasar.

A Game of Thrones, Daenerys X

“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.”

Here is where Dany frees slaves for the first time and realizes that people should be free to chose who they follow. From the Red Waste, to Qarth to Slaver’s Bay the Dothraki who followed her did not engage in rape and they did not grab random people to enslave. They followed Dany’s orders to the letter. When we get to Meereen we learn that there are dire consequences for those who break the orders of the Mother of Dragons.

From A Storm of Swords - Daenerys VI

Meereen had been sacked savagely, as new-fallen cities always were, but Dany was determined that should end now that the city was hers. She had decreed that murderers were to be hanged, that looters were to lose a hand, and rapists their manhood. Eight killers swung from the walls, and the Unsullied had filled a bushel basket with bloody hands and soft red worms, but Meereen was calm again. But for how long?

She clearly will punish those who break her rules and laws and will not just turn a blind eye to lawlessness. Which is more than can be said of most Westerosi lords because while the Dothraki are uncivilized savages, the Westerosi are civilized ones.

Dany has her flaws and there are still many things she needs to learn but if you want to have an honest debate about her character I suggest you do it by not mischaracterizing her character and misrepresenting the text.

TTFN

[infinitestalia]

It’s funny how certain people are suddenly awake to the racism of the show now. So years of the most grotesque imagery of white saviour Daenerys ruling over brown slaves, savages and barbarians wasn’t racist to you? The Dothraki just being a horde of uncivilized rapists ready to be brought to heel by the almighty Khaleesi? The people of the foreign lands she conquered all being moustache twirling villains or grateful, adoring slaves? Them literally chanting in worship of her as she smiles serenely while they reach out to just touch her? This wasn’t fucking racist to you?

But suddenly you care about Missandei. When she was killed purely in service of Daenerys’ story, to make her upcoming mass murder sympathetic, and when you’ve all already made her death all about- yes, you guessed it- Daenerys.

[spottedeaglerays]

Well someone is triggered