To live forever

[jugn00-deactivated20220212]

I had a bestfriend in 6th grade but something happened and I didn't talk to her anymore. I was okay yet she was very upset by it and haunted me from the sidelines for 3 years which after I realized how bad of a friend I was and I wanted to make it up to her. Went to school to hang out with her. Her best friend hated me because I kept snatching her away. Both of us started writing and showed eachother our work and sent pieces of paper across the classroom as if we were in 1950s. Us having very dramatic fights. Me being very upset after. Continues for three more years during which I started doubting my sexuality but was in denial that I was madly , insanely in love.

Memorised all of her details , knew almost all of her facial expressions and her handwriting and the lines on her palm. Her brown eyes , short hair over her eyes , barely reaching up to my shoulder. We were very close but we never dared to atleast hold hands. Damn we should have!. I should have grabbed her and kissed her when I could have.

She left for Australia when I just turned 16 and OL exams were over. Left a bullet hole in my heart and let the blood drip. Didn't call me for 2 months. I started writing songs. Couldn't open my mouth and tell anyone that they were about her. How could I? They told me I was brilliant for writing love songs without being in love. I smiled and told them that I watch alot of TV. One time I was explaining the meaning of '11.11' to a friend and she said 'I know who this is about' and my stomach sank. 'It's not that simple' I lie.

I lie. I lie. I lie. I talk to her excessively in the first year , she comes home to talk to me, I count the time zones in my head. We were close to lovers than we were to friends. But it was okay. I can be happy with this. She memorised the songs that I wrote. I tell her the one song that sounds the most like friendship is about her. All of them are about you , you dimwit.

I don't say that.

A year rolls on and another . I find new friends. I find peace. I still can't resist her notifications and it saddens me when she's upset with me. But I don't think about her alot. I have a crush on a guy in my class who I haven't even talked to, she's happy for me, says it was unpredictable. I have a crush on a French guy with three sisters , she's fangirling with me. I'm okay. It's all good. Life is good.

She says that she loves me. I ask her finally. 'More than friends , you mean?' . She says 'Eww no' . Eww . Eww. Eww. The word bounces in my head. I translate it as homophobia. Hypocrisy. You say that the gays are cool but ewww? . Anger rises in me. I'm bisexual. I say without thinking. You hate the gays? It's Eww? Well, the girl that you love is bisexual! What do you think about that? Huh?

Tons of support pours in from her. Hold on? Does that mean you liked me? Mockery. Maybe probably. Oh if you liked me , I would totally date you , if it is to save our friendship. Pity. I hate you. I hate you. Angst weighs in my heart. The floor is of eggshells. We fight. We fight. And then we don't. It's awkward. She doesn't know why. I write 'Wastelands'. She asks me who hurt me like that. You did. You did. I'm sorry. We shouldn't fight anymore.

We phone call. Why didn't we phone call all this time?.We only texted. It grows. It starts with 2hours, 4 hours to 6. I finally start to talk about girls to her. I go on about Casey from atypical. For ages on. She asks me who would I save if Casey and she was drowning. I hesitate. She does not like it. You. Casey's Izzie's problem.

What do you want from Australia? You and maybe like a kangaroo. We plan to get married if there was noone else. Go to Paris platonically. I've never anyone else quite like you , you know. You seem like you came out of a book. That's cliche. But love is.

It didn't take 3 months more for us to start dating. My beautiful girlfriend I've been dating for 4 months now. The average phone call time is 13h. My sleep schedule is messed up and my weekends are hers. She woke up to her love poems. She's not on my lockscreen because my parents hate her and her parents hate me. Her family is homophobic and so is mine. Not my end game but right now , I want to take all my time and give it to her.

I love her soo much you know.

i am crying. i hope you are with each other until the end of time. how can i not believe in love???

[fungal-symbiote-on-the-internet]

I sent this to my girlfriend and she said

[weaver-z]

How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:

Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:

[georgieharrisons]

also according to michael collins when the three of them were discussing what neil armstrong should say when he first stepped on the moon, collins suggested armstrong say “Oh, my God, what is that thing?”  and then scream and cut out his mic.

[wickedwitch-of-the-left]

all you’ve done is convince me that michael collins was one of the funniest men alive tbh

[ziggy-scardust]

Michael Collins is a HILARIOUS SPACE ANGEL and I will shout this from the rooftops every time this post comes up on my dash. He showed up at my school in Boston for an event and the first thing he said was “I just learned what the state bird of Massachusetts is. It’s the upraised middle finger.” He followed up with “Buzz and Neil were bickering like an old married couple the whole time. It was nice to get some peace and quiet while they were on the surface. Forget being the farthest from all humanity, I just wanted to be the farthest from those two.”

Oh and let’s not forget his long and distinguished post-astronaut career in the State Department and as the director of the Smithsonian.

[thebiscuiteternal]

Reblogging again in memory of Collins’ passing today. Godspeed spaceman.

[xue-tian]

Can someone write a villain who is a mad psycopath and kill anyone they don't like without blinking an eye but is afraid of bugs ???. I think that would be hillarious.

[xue-tian]

Like imagine them seeing a bug in their room and is terrified and tries to shoot the bug and failing and end up destroying a large potion of their home and calling an exterminator in the middle of the night and telling the confused poor dude to kill the bug in the most painful way possible?

[xue-tian]

Can someone write a villain who is a mad psycopath and kill anyone they don't like without blinking an eye but is afraid of bugs ???. I think that would be hillarious.

[laughicate]

Journals, articles, books & texts, on folklore, mythology, occult, and related -to- general anthropology, history, archaeology. 

Some good and/or interesting (or hokey) ‘examples’ included for most resources. tryin to organize & share stuff that was floating around onenote.

Journals (open access) – Folklore, Occult, etc

Culutural Analysis - folklore, popular culture, anthropology – The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture

Folklore - folklore, anthropology, archaeology – The Making of a Bewitchment Narrative, Grecian Riddle Jokes

Incantatio - journal on charms, charmers, and charming – Verbal Charms from a 17th Century Manuscript

Oral Tradition – Jewish Folk Literature, Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics – Nani Fairtyales about the Cruel Bride, Energy as the Mediator between Natural and Supernatural Realms

International Journal of Intangible Heritage 

Studia Mythologica Slavica (many articles not English) – Dragon and Hero, Fertility Rites in the Raining Cave, The Grateful Wolf and Venetic Horses in Strabo’s Geography

Folklorica - Slavic & Eastern European folklore association – Ritual: The Role of Plant Characteristics in Slavic Folk Medicine, Animal Magic

Esoterica - The Journal of Esoteric Studies – The Curious Case of Hermetic Graffiti in Valladolid Cathedral 

The Esoteric Quarterly

Mythological Studies Journal

Luvah - Journal of the Creative Imagination – A More Poetical Character Than Satan

Transpersonal Studies – Shamanic Cosmology as an Evolutionary Neurocognitive Epistemology, Dreamscapes

Beyond Borderlands  – tumblr

Paranthropology

GOLEM - Journal of Religion and Monsters – The Religious Functions of Pokemon, Anti-Semitism and Vampires in British Popular Culture 1875-1914

Correspondences - Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism – Kriegsmann’s Philological Quest for Ancient Wisdom 

– History, Archaeology

Adoranten - pre-historic rock art

Chitrolekha - India art & design history – Gomira Dance Mask

Silk Road – Centaurs on the Silk Road: Hellenistic Textiles in Western China

Sino-Platonic - East Asian languages and civilizations – Discursive Weaving Women in Chinese and Greek Traditions

MELA Notes - Middle East Librarians Association

Didaskalia - Journal for Ancient Performance

Ancient Narrative - Greek, Roman, Jewish novelistic traditions – The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel

Akroterion - Greek, Roman – The Deer Hunter: A Portrait of Aeneas

Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies  – Erotic and Separation Spells, The Ancients’ One-Horned Ass

Roman Legal Tradition - medieval civil law – Between Slavery and Freedom 

Phronimon - South African society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities – Special Issue vol. 13 #2, Greek philosophy in dialogue with African+ philosophy

The Heroic Age - Early medieval Northwestern Europe – Icelandic Sword in the Stone

Peregrinations - Medieval Art and Architecture – Special Issue vol. 4 #1, Mappings 

Tiresas - Medieval and Classical – Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages

Essays in Medieval Studies  – The Female Spell-caster in Middle English Romances, The Sweet Song of Satan

Hortulus - Medieval studies – Courtliness & the Deployment of Sodomy in 12th-Century Histories of Britain, Monsters & Monstrosities issue, Magic & Witchcraft issue

Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU

Medieval Archaeology – Divided and Galleried Hall-Houses, The Hall of the Knights Templar at Temple Balsall

Medieval Feminist Forum  – multiculturalism issue; Gender, Skin Color and the Power of Place … Romance of Moriaen, Writing Novels About Medieval Women for Modern Readers, Amazons & Guerilleres

Quidditas - medieval and renaissance 

Medieval Warfare

The Viking Society - ridiculous amount of articles from 1895-2011

Journals (limited free/sub/institution access)

Al-Masaq - Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean – Piracy as Statecraft: The Policies of Taifa of Denia, free issue

Mythical Creatures of Europe - article + map

Folklore - limited free access – Volume 122 #3, On the Ambiguity of Elves

Digital Philology -  a journal of medieval cultures – Saracens & Race in Roman de la Rose Iconography

Pomegranate - International Journal for Pagan Studies

Transcultural Psychiatry

European Journal of English Studies  – Myths East of Venice issue, Esotericism issue

Books, Texts, Images etc. – Folklore, Occult etc.

Magical Gem Database - Greek/Egyptian gems & talismans [x] [x]

Biblioteca Aracana - (mostly) Greek pagan history, rituals, poetry etc. – Greater Tool Consecration, The Yew-Demon

Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - [x]

The Gnostic Society Library – The Corpus Hermeticum, Hymn of the Robe of Glory

Grimoar - vast occult text library – Grimoires, Greek & Roman Necromancy, Queer Theology, Ancient Christian Magic

Internet Sacred Text Archive - religion, occult, folklore, etc. ancient texts

Verse and Transmutation - A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry

– History

The Internet Classics Archive - mainly Greco-Roman, some Persian & Chinese translated texts

Bodleian Oriental Manuscript Collection - [x] [x] [x]

Virtual Magic Bowl Archive - Jewish-Aramaic incantation bowl text and images [x] [x] 

Vindolanda Tablets - images and translations of tablets from 1st & 2nd c. [x]

Corsair - online catalog of the Piedmont Morgan library (manuscripts) [x] [x]

Beinecke rare book & manuscripts  – Wagstaff miscellany, al-Qur'ān–1813

LUNA - tonnes from Byzantine manuscripts to Arabic cartography

Maps on the web - Oxford Library [x] [x] [x]

Bodleian Library manuscripts - photographs of 11th-17th c. manuscripts – Treatises on Heraldry, The Worcester Fragments (polyphonic music), 12 c. misc medical and herbal texts

Early Manuscripts at Oxford U - very high quality photographs – (view through bottom left) Military texts by Athenaeus Mechanicus 16th c. [x] [x], MS Douce 195 Roman de la Rose [x] [x]

Trinity College digital manuscript library  – Mathematica Medica, 15th c.

eTOME - primary sources about Celtic peoples

Websites, Blogs – Folklore, Occult etc.

Demonthings - Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project 

Invocatio - (mostly) western esotericism

Heterodoxology - history, esotericism, science – Religion in the Age of Cyborgs

The Recipes Project - food, magic, science, medicine – The Medieval Invisible Man (invisibility recipes)

Morbid Anatomy - museum/library in Brooklyn

– History 

Islamic Philosophy Online - tonnes of texts, articles, links, utilities, this belongs in every section; mostly English

Medicina Antiqua - Graeco-Roman medicine

History of the Ancient World - news and resources – The So-called Galatae, Gauls, Celts in Early Hellenistic Balkans; Maidens, Matrons Magicians: Women & Personal Ritual Power in Late Antique Egypt

Διοτίμα - Women & Gender in Antiquity

Bodleian Library Exhibitions Online – Khusraw & Shirin, Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-Place of Cultures

Medievalists – folk studies, witchcraft, mythology, science tags

Atlas Obscura – Bats and Vampiric Lore of Pére Lachaise Cemetery 

[niambi]

I’m????

[alarajrogers]

Oh my God this actually explains so much.

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.

[dollbeshop]

The next time a guy says, “What? You don't want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.

[sounddesignerjeans-deactivated2]

y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves

[astronomically-androngynous]

Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack

[meitanteiconductorsan]

This is absolutely un-not-reblogable.

[paleanchorlove]

Fame

Like Nicotine , 

Let my lungs go black . 

And slowly I lose my breath. 

But it was too cold and I asked ; 

“Can I just have a little bit of it?’

A little bit more 

And more 

And more, 

So I’d cut a piece of my soul 

and put it on the street 

And wear a pretty dress, 

Let people come nudge it with sticks, 

They say it’s beautiful and I smile

They say it’s not and my heart bleeds in 

Wonder what it would feel like , 

To have myself not be mine. 

To belong in everyone else  except mine, 

With blackened lungs

But a pretty face.

[nour-ishment]

“All of a sudden two decades have passed and you still have not kissed anyone with tongue, or kissed anyone at all for that matter, or had a 3 AM conversation with someone who would rather look into your eyes for ten minutes straight than talk. You have never worn a lover’s sweater or “forgotten” it at home in your bedroom just so you would have an excuse to see them again. You have never even stood face-to-face with someone who makes your hands shake so hard it feels like they’re both having a separate anxiety attack. This causes you much guilt and self-blame and sadness but above all, an overwhelming curiosity. Are you really that ugly, that unwanted, that uninteresting, that boring, that no one, absolutely no one, has ever looked at you like the only thing on earth? The answer is no. The better answer is that someone out there, somewhere in the world, is “wondering what it’s like to meet someone like you,” and they have two decades worth of love stored in their veins like a shoot-‘em-up drug, and they’re just about ready to inject it into someone else’s bloodstream. All you have to do is roll up your sleeves and wait for it to happen. At times you felt so lonely you could stand at the edge of a cliff with nothing beneath you but air and grass and a long, long way down, and you’d still feel emptier than that canyon itself. Maybe you even danced with yourself alone in your room a few times, arms outstretched around a ghost, pretending someone else’s hands were on your waist, someone else’s eyes boring into yours. Or maybe you fell temporarily in love with strangers on public transportation, fell in love with anybody who so much as accidentally brushed your hand on the way past. For you, falling in love with dozens of people a day was a coping mechanism for not having anyone to love you in return. But people are not eggs and falling in love with a dozen of them does not mean your shell will remain uncracked. One day you’re going to hit the point where you’re so desperate for human contact that you’re going to snap in half and all your love will bleed out like egg yolk. But someone out there is eating a bowl of Ramen noodles right now, or putting on slippers, or settling into bed. They are doing all the normal things that you’ve done in your own life. They are just like you. They have cellulite and extra fat in all the wrong places and goals and fears and doubts and bad handwriting. The truth is that they are just like you, and being just like you, they’re looking for a lover too. They’re what you might call a soulmate. They think they’re all alone in feeling the way they do, but you’re really both two halves of a whole. And one day you’ll meet them, bump into them on the street, and your two halves will be put together, and you’ll make one.”

— Writings For Winter - For Twenty Year-Olds who have never been loved  (via beepboopboopbeep)

[crimeronan]

honestly i think my complete lack of impostor syndrome comes less from confidence in myself and more from confidence that everyone else is Just Some Guy

[crimeronan]

musing on this today

i don’t really consider “success” (getting into great schools, having a great job, working with big name professionals, owning your own business, etc) to be a measure of anyone’s skill or value

ie: i do not operate with any nonsense hierarchies of “this person is more successful than me so they must be better at what they do.”

it’s the same principle i talked abt in the post i made about kudos on ao3 - success isn’t a measure of quality, it’s just a measure of opportunity. the only difference between a ‘successful’ person and me is that a successful person has had more opportunity to build their career

there is an enormous amount of privilege in both professional and academic success. hard work is part of it, but luck is an even bigger part

your favorite mainstream author, actor, musician - they may be talented, and they may have studied their craft, and they may create valuable art. but they aren’t any more talented than a passionate kid who grew up in the backwoods of some southern state and has to work 12 hours a day in manufacturing to cover their parents’ mortgage instead of following their dreams

later this week i have a job interview that could change my entire career. i got that opportunity through luck - the mother of one of my partners let me know about it. i’ll be talking to established television and fiction writers about how i craft stories and theme. if they like me, i’ll be working with them. (not on television, but on various other projects.)

which should, theoretically, be intimidating. they’ve written for fucking TV while i’m a high school dropout from rural new hampshire. how am i supposed to compare?

Except. this is 100% my wheelhouse. i know exactly what i’m talking about, i know how to explain my technical process, i know how to tailor my approach to suit different clients. i have all of the skills necessary to do the job, backed by eight years of professional writing experience.

i’m confident that i know what i’m doing.  

and the biggest thing is: i don’t feel like i need to prove a damn thing.

i’m not going into that interview like, oh, let’s try to convince them i’m worth humoring. let’s try to trick them into giving me a chance.

we are the goddamn same! we are writers who build our careers off of storytelling and technique and theme and craft! we love to explore the impact that we can make using words! we love to push the limits of language!

they are my Peers. they are professional writers who are passionate about what they do. we have a shitload of common ground even before we’ve had a conversation. 

i don’t need to earn a place with them. my place already exists. 

instead, i just get to vibe with people who share my interests and my knowledge and my passion. and that’s neat as hell! it’s just as neat as talking to other fanfic authors & hobbyist writers who love what they do without making it their career

the moment i start ascribing value judgments to people’s accomplishments, it’s over. no one is better or worse than me. i know i’m skilled.  but more importantly, i’m not worried that other people are somehow Inherently More Skilled Than I Am

i bring Myself to the table. i offer what i have to give. i connect with people, i learn about their expertise. i collaborate by combining my areas of expertise with theirs

i don’t need to be any more than who i am. because literally all of them are just people. they aren’t more special or more worthy than i am.

they are Just Some Guys

[girldaddy-deactivated20251016]

joseba eskubi paintings that make me feel crazy!!

[pompadourpink]

The reality about spoken french

We don’t use the negation ne. We say Je sais pas (I don’t know) or On a pas à le faire (we don’t have to do it),

Speaking of which, we prefer using on rather than the pompous nous : On est arrivé-es (we’ve arrived), On y va? (shall we go)

Speaking of which, our questions are often affirmative sentences ending with a question mark (i.e. : a high-pitched tone) : Tu viens? (are you coming), T’en veux un-e? (do you want one).

Speaking of which, we chew words. When followed by words starting with a consonant, personal pronouns can lose their final letter : J’te l’dis! rather than Je te le dis (I’m telling you).

Speaking of which, we’re lazy : Je can be Che (chais pas), Il can be Y (r’garde, y’a un chat!) and grunt : many euh (uh), ah, bah (hum), ben (well), hein (tf?) and rhooo/rhaaa (ffs). We often start sentences with but : Mais tu saoules! (you’re annoying) to express displeasure.

Speaking of which, on top of dropping négations, we drop pronouns : You’re being a pain in my ass should be Tu me fais chier but can be Tu fais chier - maybe to make it universal or dramatic.

Speaking of which, we thrive on sarcasm and irony. To someone who’s babbling, we’ll answer It makes my leg look good.

Speaking of which, we repeat (personal) pronouns at the beginning or end of sentences. We’re likely to ask Qu’est-ce qu’il en dit, lui? and answer Moi, je veux bien (tonic pronouns, careful!).

Speaking of which, we like to use the conditional mode to indicate a wish or hypothesis : lots of Si j’avais su, j’aurais dit oui (had i known, i’d have said yes), J’aimerais bien pouvoir- (I wish I could-), etc.

Speaking of which, we add useless words : Bien (j’irais bien), Petit (un petit peu), Très (très vrai), Trop (je ne sais pas trop), ça (C’est quoi, ça?)…

Speaking of which, let’s stop before you all get disgusted and unfollow me. Remember this is spoken, private french and doesn’t apply to formal situations!

[meangirlnurse]

anyone else remember being a child and seeing the very neat handwriting of other little girls and somehow knowing that you were a different genre of person than they were

[lunarconception-deactivated2021]

literally no…i remember seeing bad handwriting & thinking “oh these other kids must be orphans or something”

[meangirlnurse]

fascinating to hear from the other genre, thanks for your contribution

[xue-tian]

Actually back in elementary school , since there were no grades , handwriting was a social standard.

I remember staring at the pretty handwriting of other girls and daydreaming about the day where I'll have perfect handwriting .

[tokyostudying]

LEARN CHINESE WITH DRAMAS (the king eternal monarch)

嗨！i was watching tkem with chinese subs and some quotes really caught my eye so i decided to make a vocab list with these quotes!~~ this is the first part because i’m pretty tired right now but i’ll do another part if you like. you can check my other post about learning chinese with tv series here. feel free to correct me anytime! 爱你们！ 我们一起加油！❤

不是神创造出人类而是软弱的人类创造出神的。bùshì shén chuàngzào chū rénlèi érshì ruǎn ruò de rénlèi chuàngzào chūshén de. “God never created humans. It was the weak who created God.”

神 (shén) god, spirit

创造 (chuàngzào) create, produce

~ 创 (chuàng) start, achieve

~ 造 (zào) make, build, create

人类 (rénlèi) mankind, human race, humanity

~ 人 (rén) human

~ 类 (lèi) kind, type, class

而是 (érshì) rather

~ 而 ér and, as well as

软 (ruǎn) soft, gentle, weak

笑过一次之后，你就在也笑不出来了。 xiào guò yí cìzhī hòu, nǐ jiù zài yě xiào bù chūlái le. “You’ve sinned by laughing once and now you can never laugh again.”

笑 (xiào) smile

一次 (yīcì) once

之后 (zhīhòu) later, after, afterwards

~ 之 (zhī) go, leave for

~ 后 (hòu) empress, queen

你要改便你的祈祷吗？ nǐ yào gǎi biàn nǐ de qídǎo ma? “Would you like to change the prayer?”

要 (yào) demand, ask, request

改 (gǎi) change, convert, transform

便 (biàn) in that case, then

祈祷 (qídǎo) prayer

所以纯元本希望陛下可以将这一切都忘记。suǒyǐ chún yuán běn xīwàng bìxià kěyǐ jiāng zhè yīqiè dōu wàngjì. “Which is why i wished you (your majesty) had forgotten everything.”

所以 (suǒyǐ) so, therefore, as a result

希望 (xīwàng) hope, wish, expect, want

陛下 (bìxià) your majesty, his majesty

可以 (kěyǐ) can, may, pretty good

一切 (yīqiè) all, everything

忘记 (wàngjì) forget

[awed-frog]

big bones don’t lie - griffins

[If you found my blog because you’re curious about Greek people mixing up prehistoric bears and demigods, this post is for you. I studied archaeology with a focus on other things, and the research on this topic goes back decades, but imo the best book on how dinosaur bones influenced mythology is Adrienne Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters. I strongly suggest you support this amazing historian and buy her stuff - she’s a great writer and she specializes in folklore and geomythology, it doesn’t get much cooler than that - but if you can’t and you’re interested in the subject - well, I believe scientific knowledge should be shared and accessible to everyone, so here are a few highlights. Part one of six.] 

Griffins: a very mysterious mystery

“A race of four-footed birds, almost as large as wolves and with legs and claws like lions.” 

The one thing you need to know about griffins is that they don’t really fit in anywhere. They have no powers, they don’t help heroes, they’re not defeating gods or anything like that. Technically speaking, they’re not even monsters - people thought griffins were legit - real animals who lived in Central Asia and sat on golden eggs and mostly killed anyone who went near them. And okay, someone might say, ‘Frog, what’s fishy about that? People used to be dumb as rocks and there’s plenty of bizarro animals out there, anyway’ and yeah, that’s a very good point - except for one thing. See, what’s creepy about griffins is that we’ve got drawings and descriptions of them spanning ten centuries and thousands of miles, and yet they always. look. the. freaking. same. 

Like, here’s how people imagined elephants.

This is insanely funny and probably why God sent the Black Death to kill everyone, but also pretty common tbh, because a) people want to feel involved, b) people are liars who lie and c) it’s hard to imagine stuff you’ve never seen. So the more a story is passed around, the more it’s going to gain and lose details here and there, until you get from dog-footed hairy monkey of doom to plunger-nosed horror on stilts. But griffins - art or books, they’re consistently described as wolves-sized mammals with a beaked face. So that’s what made Adrienne Mayor go, Uh. 

And what she did next is she started digging around in Central Asia, because that’s the other thing everyone agreed on: that griffins definitely lived there and definitely came from there. And this is where things get really interesting, because as it turns out, on one side of the Urals you’ve got Greeks going, ‘Mate, the Scythians, you know - they’ve got these huge-ass lion birds, I’m not even shitting you rn’ while on the other side of the Urals - wow and amaze - you’ve got Siberian tribes singing songs about the ‘bird-monsters’ and how their ancestors slaughtered them all because they were Valiant and Good.

(This according to a guy studying Siberian traditions in the early 1800s, anyway, because you know who writes stuff down? Not nomads, bless them: dragging around a shitload of books on fucking horseback is not a kind of life anyone deserve to live.)

And anyway, do you know what else those Mighty Ancestors did? They mined gold sand, and they kept tripping over dinosaur bones because that entire area is full of both things and some places are lucky like that. And in fact, the more excavations were carried out in ancient Scythian settlements, the more we started to realize that those guys were even more obsessed with griffins than the Greek were. Hell, some warriors even had griffins tattooed on their bodies? 

And it’s probably all they ever talked about, because that’s when griffins suddenly appear in the Mediterreanean landscape: when Greek people start trading (and talking) with the Scythians.

(Another important note here, not that I’m not bitter or anything: something else those excavations are showing is that Herodotus was fucking right about fucking everything, SO THERE. Father of lies my ass, he was the only sensible guy in that whole bean-avoiding, monster-fucking, psychopathic and self-important Greek ‘intelligentsia’ and they can all fuck off and die and we don’t care about temples Pausy you dumb bitch we want to hear about the tree people and the Amazons and the fucking griffins goddammit. Uuugh. /rant)

So anyway, Scythian nomads had been hunting for gold in places with exciting names like ‘the field of the white bones’ and basically dying of exposure because mountains, so Herodotus (and others) got this right as well: that successful campaigns could take a long-ass time, and very often people just disappeared, never to be heard from again. What everybody got less right: the nomads and adventurers and gold miners weren’t killed by griffins, because by the time they started traveling into those mountains, ‘griffins’ had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. What they did see, and what was sure to spook the fuck out of them, were fossils - and, more precisely, protoceratops skulls, which can be found on all the major caravan routes from China all the way to Uzbekistan and are so ubiquitous paleontologists call them ‘a damn nuisance’.

And guess what they look like.

Just fucking guess.

[Left: a golden griffin, Saka-Scyhtian culture; right: psittacosaurus skull, commonly found in Uzbekistan and the western Gobi.]

Also, fun detail if you’re into gory and painful ways of dying: many of the dino skeletons are found standing up, because the animals would be caught in sand storms and drop dead. So basically you’d be riding your horse and minding your own gold-related business when all of a sudden you see the empty sockets of a beaked something staring at you and yeah - as a reminder, the idea of evolution was not a thing until Darwin, so any Scythian or Siberian tribesman seeing something like that would assume there was a fairly good fucking chance of a live whatever-the-hell-this-is waiting for him behind the next hill. And that’s what he’d say to Greek traders over a bowl of fermented mare’s milk: to stay the fuck away from those mountains, because griffins, man, they’re fucking real and there’s hundreds of them and anyway, maybe write that down if writing’s something you’re into, never saw the point myself but eh, to each his own, right, and cheers, good health, peace and joy to the ancestors. 

Man, don’t you just love mythology?

(How fossils influenced mythology: part two, Cyclops, will be up soon.) 

[theapplepielifestyle]

“Some people like thick hair like a lion’s mane, and other people like thin hair that pours down like an inky waterfall, and some people love someone so much they forget what they look like. Some people think the night sky full of stars at midnight is the most beautiful thing imaginable, some people think it’s a forest in snow, and some people… Well, there are a lot of people with a lot of ideas about beauty. And love. When you love someone a lot, they just look like love.”

— Rebecca Solnit, Cinderella Liberator (via exhaled-spirals)

[bamsara]

the overwhelming grief of losing an entire year to sickness, violence and pandemic fatigue is settling in so id like to remind everyone that: you are not a failure, yes there is still a happy future for you, and wearing a mask is very sexy

[werelivingarts-deactivated20230]

study & chill playlist 🎵 🎶

Hi, it’s werelivingarts! I often have hard time to search for music to study so here are some suggestions and compiled lists of playlists that you can try out if you want! 

[playlist] I couldn’t sleep, so I played a song.

[playlist] a deepening night with songs.

[playlist] with the fresh breeze of autumn night.

[playlist] a song that signals the approach of autumn:)

[playlist] how was your day today?

[playlist] a lazy afternoon, with that warm sunshine:)

[playlist] Why don’t you listen to this song when it rains?

[playlist] one cup of coffee with jazz hip hop.

[playlist] for your night drive aesthetic.

[playlist] It’s just… a song that I really want you to listen to today.

[playlist] I need to relax in my busy daily life!

[playlist] I wish I could comfort you.

[playlist] chill bts lofi hiphop mix

[playlist] 새해 다짐이 틀어지면 뭐 어때

[playlist] you’re studying in a haunted library with ghosts

[playlist] english songs chill study

[playlist] the day I want to be achromatic alone in a colorful world

[playlist] emotional song when your mind is a mess

[playlist] let it hurt until it can’t hurt anymore