#irish american cultural institute

[gracie-bird]

Princess Grace of Monaco at a dinner in her honour in recognition of her contribution to Irish cultural development at St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 28, 1978 . 

At right is Dr. Eoin McKiernan, president of the Irish American Cultural Institute. In the foreground is the Waterford Crystal Globe that Princess Grace was to present to one of the guest. 

#grace kelly #princess grace #eoin #mckiernan #irish american #heritage #roots #irish american cultural institute #1978 #dior #cartier

[kevin-ar-tuathal]

"Béarlachas"

I've been meaning to write this post for some time now. As a person from the Galltacht (English-speaking Ireland) living and working in the Gaeltacht (Irish-language Ireland), and operating most of my life through the medium of Irish, I can honestly say that English-language Ireland, Second Language speakers of Irish and Learners of Irish tend to have a really skewered understanding of a) what Béarlachas is, b) the different forms it takes and c) what effects/damage/meaning each of its forms holds.

Contents of this post:

•Perceptions of Béarlachas

•Loanwords Vs Béarlachas

•Different Languages, Different Sounds

•Language Purity Vs Language Planning

•Conclusion

Perceptions of "Béarlachas"

Outside of the Gaeltacht, most people's understanding of "Béarlachas", or "Anglicisation" in Irish (which I am deliberately putting between inverted commas!), is the use of so-called "English-language words" in Irish. The usual list people like to list off include:

• Fón

• Teilifís

• Giotár

• Raideo

• Zú* (see Language Purity Vs Language Planning below)

• Carr*

*The ironic thing about the last item being that 'carr' (the word for a personal vehicle) is older than the English-language word 'Car' 🚗.

Second language learners with a bit more exposure to the language deride native speakers, particularly speakers from Conamara, for "using English words and adding '~áil' at the end to make a verb". Several examples being:

• Gúgláil (Google-áil)

• Sioftáil (Shift-áil)

• Sortáil (Sort-áil)

• Péinteáil (Paint-áil)

• Vótáil (Vote-áil)

• Focáilte (F*ck-áilte)

• Supósáilte (Suppose-áilte)

(⚠️NB: it is HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT that I spelt these words in these specific ways in Irish - to be explained below!⚠️)

Other so-called "English language words" in Irish include:

• Veain • Seit • Onóir • Ospidéal • Aláram • Cóta • Plaisteach • Leictreach, 7rl, 7rl...

And what about: "Halla" or "Hata" ??

Loanwords Vs Béarlachas

Before I explain where I'm going with this, I am going to introduce some words that have their origins in other languages, like:

"Seomra" from the Middle French "chambre".

"Séipéal" from the Middle French "chappelle".

"Eaglais" from the Greek "ekklesiastes".

"Pluid" from the Scots "plaide".

"Píopa" from Vulgar Latin "pipa".

"Corcra" from Latin "Purpura" (from before Irish had the sound /p/!)

"Cnaipe" from the Old Norse "knappr".

"Bád" from Anglo-Saxon "bāt".

ALL of these words, like the ones above, came into Irish via the most natural means a language acquires new words: language contact.

The reason WHY the word gets adopted is usually -and this is very important - the word is for something that the culture of the language Borrowed From already has, which is introduced to the language Borrowed Into.

For clarification, what I am trying to say is that languages NATURALLY oppose cultural appropriation by crediting the culture they got a word from by using their word for it...

I.E. "Constructing" a new "pure" word for an item that has come from another culture, is, in effect, a form of cultural appropriation - which is why institutions such as Alliance Française and Íslensk málstöð are at best puritanical, and at worst xenophobic*.

*There is nuance here - there is a difference between institutional efforts to keep a language "pure" (re: those such right-wing English/British and American opinionists who claim that the English language itself is endangered 🙄), and language planning (which also falls under the remit of Íslensk málstöð).

Furthermore, there is also such thing as "dynamic borrowing". This is where technically a language has adopted a word from another language, but has changed its meaning/adapted it to its own need. Let us take two Irish language words for example: "Iarnród" and "Smúdáil"

Iarnród is made up by two words taken from the English language: Iarann, from English language "iron" and Ród, from English-language "road".

Together, these two words mean the English-language term "Railway" - but English has never had the term "Iron Road" to refer to this object.

Similarly, Smúdáil comes from the English-language word "smooth". Only adapted to Irish, and adding the Irish-language verb suffix creates a word which means "to iron (clothing)". 😱

Different Languages, Different Sounds

Every single language on this planet has its own sound system, or "phonology". It is VERY rare for a new sound to be introduced into a different language, and some languages are MUCH more sensitive to what speakers of another language would consider a "subtle" difference, or not a difference at all.

Now...

IRISH HAS DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF SOUNDS AS THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!!!!!

(^roughly ~ish) I am making this simplistic statement to DRIVE home the fact that what English-language speakers and Learners of Irish hear as "the same as the English", Irish speakers hear a SIGNIFICANT phonetic difference.

All consonants in Irish [B, bh, c, ch, d, dh, f, fh, g, gh, h, l, ll, m, mh, n, nn, p, ph, r, rr, s, sh, t, th] - and YES, séimhiú-ed consonants and double consonants count as separate consonants - EACH have at least TWO distinct sounds. Ever heard of that old rhyme "Caol le caol, leathan le leathan"? Well, the reason why it exists ISN'T to be a spelling tip - it's to show how to pronounce each consonant in a word - which of the two distinct sounds to say.

What I mean to say by this is that, when we adopt a word into Irish, we aren't just "grabbing the word from English and hopping a few fadas on it"; we are SPECIFICALLY adapting the word to the Irish language phonetic system.

I.E. when an Irish language speaker is saying the word "frid" THEY ARE NOT USING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WORD "fridge" !!!

The sounds used in the English-language word belong to the English language, and the sounds used in the Irish-language word belong to the Irish language.

As a linguist I get very passionate about this distinction - the AMOUNT of times I have come across a self-important Irish language "learner" from the East of the country come to a Gaeltacht and tell native speakers that they are not using the "official" or "correct" version of a word in Irish just GRATES me to no end. PARTICULARILY as these so-called "learners" cannot hear, or typically have made NO effort to understand phonetic differences between the two languages. (Though honestly, on that point, I cannot wholely blame them - it is a fault on Irish language education as a whole that the differences in sound are hardly, if ever, mentioned, let alone taught!)

Language Purity Vs Language Planning

Moving on, as I mentioned earlier, it is very rare for a sound to be adapted into a new language. As many Irish language speakers and learners know, there is no /z/ sound in (most of the dialects of) Irish.

And yet, somehow, the official, modern translation given for the Irish language for "Zoo" is ...

Zú

Whenever I think on this given translation, I am always reminded of a good friend of mine, a lady from Carna, who used to always talk about "Súm" meetings she used to go on to talk with friends and family during COVID.

This woman only speaks English as a second language, having only ever learnt it at school and only ever used it in professional environments. She does not have the sound /z/, and as such, pronounces words that HAVE a "z" in them as /s/ sounds, when speaking in Irish OR in English.

As such, I often wonder how An Coiste Téarmaíochta can be so diligent in creating and promoting "Gaelic" words for new things, such as "cuisneoir" instead of "frid"; "guthán" instead of "fón" (which is actually pronounced "pón" in Conamara, as that suits the sound system of that dialect better); or "treochtú" instead of "treindeáil" ... And then turn around and introduce sound and sound combinations such as /z/ in "Zú" and /tv/ and /sv/ in "Tvuít" and "Svaedhpáil" 🤢

It's such this weird combo of being at the same time puritanical with regard to certain words, dismissive in regards to vernacular communities, and ignorant with regards to basic linguistic features of the language.

(Especially when, i mbéal an phobail, there are already such perfectly acceptable terms for these kinda words, like Gairdín na nAinmhithe for "Zú; Tuitéar and Tuít for "twitter" and "tweet"; and Faidhpeáil for "Svaedhpáil".)

Conclusion

This really prescriptivist approach by Irish language institutions needs to end. Not only is it not addressing or engaging with the Irish language as it is spoken by vernacular communities, it is creating this really twisted dynamic between second-language Irish speakers who apparently "know better" than first-language and native speakers of Irish.

This is what "Béarlachas" is. Not the natural adaption of words from a language with which Irish in the present day has most contact with. Not the dynamic inventions of native speakers, and even Second-language-as-vernacular speakers, utilising all the linguistic features available to them, whether that be their own dialects of Irish, English, or whatever OTHER languages/dialects are available to them.

"Béarlachas" is the brute enforcement of English language mentalities and an obsession with "purity" onto Irish, a language that has FOREVER adopted and integrated words, features and people into itself.

Gaeilge, like Éire of old, like the Ireland I want to be part of today, is open, inclusive, non-judgemental - knowing where it is coming from, and knowing that its community is its strength and key to how it has and will survive!

#Gaeilge #Béarlachas #postáil fhada #irish language #minority languages #gaeltacht #irish vocab #tráchtas #English #Langblr #Essay

[pigeonflavouredcake]

My Grimoire Research Library

this is a list of my major resource I've referenced/am currently referencing in my big grimoire project. For books I'll be linking the Goodreads page, for pdfs, websites and videos i'll link them directly.

There are plenty of generalised practitioner resources that can work for everyone but as I have Irish ancestry and worship Hellenic deities quite a few of my resources are centred around Celtic Ireland, ancient Greece and the Olympic mythos. If you follow other sects of paganism you are more than welcome to reblog with your own list of resources.

Parts of my grimoire discuss topics of new age spiritualism, dangerous conspiracy theories, and bigotry in witchcraft so some resources in this list focus on that.

Books

Apollodorus - The Library of Greek Mythology

Astrea Taylor - Intuitive Witchcraft

Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham - Treasury of Folklore: Woodlands and Forests

John Ferguson - Among The Gods: An Archaeological Exploration of Ancient Greek Religion

Katharine Briggs - The Fairies in Tradition and Literature

Kevin Danaher - The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs

Laura O'Brien - Fairy Faith in Ireland

Lindsey C. Watson - Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome

Nicholas Culpeper - Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Plutarch - The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives

R.B. Parkinson - A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Around the World

Rachel Patterson - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

Raleigh Briggs - Make Your Place: Affordable & Sustainable Nesting Skills

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Ronald Hutton - The Witch: A History of Fear in Ancient Times

Rosemary Ellen Guiley - The Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft

Thomas N. Mitchell - Athens: A History of the World's First Democracy

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers: Witchcraft S3x and the Crisis of Belief

Yvonne P. Chireau - Black Magic: Religion and The African American Conjuring Tradition

PDFs

Anti Defamation League - Hate on Display: Hate Symbols Database

Brandy Williams - White Light, Black Magic: Racism in Esoteric Thought

Cambridge SU Women’s Campaign - How to Spot TERF Ideology 2.0.

Blogs and Websites

Anti Defamation League

B. Ricardo Brown - Until Darwin: Science and the Origins of Race

Dr. S. Deacon Ritterbush - Dr Beachcomb

Folklore Thursday

Freedom of Mind Resource Centre - Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Royal Horticultural Society

The Duchas Project -National Folklore Collection

Vivienne Mackie - Vivscelticconnections

YouTube Videos

ContraPoints - Gender Critical

Emma Thorne Videos - Christian Fundie Says Halloween is SATANIC!

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - The Source Of All Conspiracies: A 1902 Document Called "The Protocols"

The Belief it or Not Podcast - Ep. 40 Satanic Panic, Ep 92. Wicca

Wendigoon - The Conspiracy Theory Iceberg

Other videos I haven't referenced but you may still want to check out

Atun-Shei Films - Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology

Belief It Or Not - Ep. 90 - Logical Fallacies

Dragon Talisman - Tarot Documentary (A re-upload of the 1997 documentary Strictly Supernatural: Tarot and Astrology)

Lindsay Ellis - Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia

Overly Sarcastic Productions - Miscellaneous Myths Playlist

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - SATANIC PANIC! 90s Video Slanders Satanists | Pagan Invasion Saga | Part 1

ReignBot - How Ouija Boards Became "Evil" | Obscura Archive Ep. 2

Ryan Beard - Demi Lovato Promoted a R4cist Lizard Cult

Super Eyepatch Wolf - The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers and Mediums

Weird Reads with Emily Louise -The Infamous Hoaxes Iceberg Playlist

Wendigoon - The True Stories of the Warren Hauntings: The Conjuring, Annabelle, Amityville, and Other Encounters

#I'm writing this while watching the new SovietWomble video #good way to spend 3 hours #witchblr #witch #witchcraft #pagan #pagan witch #kitchen witch #paganism #hellenic pagan #hellenic witch #grimoire #digital grimoire #book of magic #grimoire resources #witchcraft resources #resource list #witch masterpost #eclectic pagan #witchy #grimoire tips #grimoire inspo #grimoire inspiration

[determinate-negation]

i know new york being the ancestral homeland of jews is a joke but as a jew from europe it literally feels that way. like i cannot imagine like a whole street written in hebrew. like i want to go there just to see that. i dont think jews inthe united states are aware of how good they have it

i do want to note that america is also a settler colonial state and its only because of specific american aims of the settler project and material realities of the economy and the physical land they were trying to settler that theyve had this “melting pot” ideology where jews were incorporated similarly to italian and irish immigrants, instead of continuing to have deeply ingrained religious and cultural antisemitism like europe. there were in some periods of us history more restrictions on jewish immigration and some institutional barriers for jews, especially before and during ww2, but never to the same degree as europe. although american jews were rarely (if ever, i dont know any examples but there could be some) violent genocidal settlers like the anglos and generally migrated later, we were still settlers searching for economic interests provided by american expansion on native land. that being said were here now and have the status of any other american settler (meaning people who arent indigenous or descended from enslaved people brought here against their will) most indigenous theorists and activists maintain that they want sovereignty, reparations, companies to stop destroying native land, etc, not every american settler to leave. i really believe that the united states also must fall, but i dont think this makes us like not belonging, at least any more than the other settlers.

i just want to say this to explain that my love for new york and the east coast us is complex. objectively the multicultural and cosmopolitan aspects of nyc that make it unique are products of american imperialism– for example nyc is the most linguistically diverse city in the world! over 600 languages are spoken here, including languages that arent spoken anywhere else anymore, but think about why that is. and the flourishing of jewish communities and culture in parts of the us was a product of specific historic processes and policies, and we like any other descendants of settler-immigrants have to grapple with that. i think its possible to oppose and fight against american imperialism and settler colonialism and still deeply appreciate the contradictory aspects of culture in america. (which lbr all the dynamic and interesting and worth preserving things about american culture were not created by anglos, but by outsiders and oppressed people) anyways this is all just to say im really not coming at it from a nationalist perspective but a diaspora perspective but yeah, new york is such a jewish city its genuinely incredible. this is why i especially despise tri state area zionists... youre ignoring that you live in the greatest place in the world for jews. literally the most jewish city in the world. like theres a moving company called schleppers here, yiddish words are part of everyones dialect, you can get the best jewish food everywhere from delis that are like 100 years old, we literally have a truck called the mitzvah tank that chabad drives around and asks people on the street if theyre jewish. the only romaniote synagogue in the western hemisphere is here and they have a greek jewish festival every year (which unfortunately is always covered in israeli flags -_-) the whole foods by one of my work sites had a sign up for yom kippur catering because the neighborhood is so jewish.

jewish culture and history and jews in general are just part of the fabric of life in new york. also whatever street youre talking about was probably written in yiddish since thats what most of the hassidic jews speak here! nyc has the largest concentration of yiddish speakers, which isnt surprising, and its the 8th most spoken language in nyc. theres also a big and still growing bukharian community here too. if you ever can, i really recommend visiting new york. theres so much jewish culture and history here. a lot of american jews live much more isolated, so i cant speak for them, but for many parts of the north east i feel that were lucky. antisemitism exists here but idk ive grown up in pretty jewish areas and never really experienced it. europe sounds legitimately shitty. also... fun fact, netanyahu went to high school in the suburbs outside of philly

^my photos in the lower east side, and heres some photography of hassidic williamsburg too

also williamsburg

[saintsenara]

Any favourite Irish headcanons for Seamus? 😊

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

and i'm sorry to say that i'm going to be really dull and - before we get into the more insincere headcanons i have for seamus - say that figuring out his role in the series depends on the answer to a really important question which neither the books nor [to my knowledge] jkr's post-series writing addresses:

is wizarding ireland a colony?

as someone who is fond of seeing the series through the lens of anglo-irish history, this preoccupies me a lot - and i think it's something very interesting to unravel...

the statute of secrecy - the law which brings about the separation of the magical and muggle worlds - was first instituted in 1689 and put fully into effect in 1692.

it's reasonably clear from the tone of the extra canonical material that these dates come from [and also from the fact that - i am told - the statute of secrecy is a fairly significant sub-theme of the fantastic beasts films] that jkr landed on these dates for the statute primarily by thinking about the history of witchcraft in early-modern america [the salem witch trials, for example, take place in 1692-1693].

[witch trials were not an exclusively american phenomenon, of course, but they had begun to fade out in early-modern europe by c.1650, which is roughly when they begin to become more widely-documented in the american colonies. it's also fair to say that the pop-culture image of witch trials, even in europe, is heavily influenced by their american manifestation - we've all seen the crucible!]

but selecting this american context to situate the statute within means that - apparently by accident - it's also a document which appears into the lives of british and irish wizards during an extremely bloody time in anglo-irish history...

a detour which has nothing to do with harry potter...

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the main period of british colonial expansion in ireland - the early seventeenth century is, for example, the period of the plantation [that is, the settler colonisation] of ulster [what is now roughly northern ireland].

like many periods of anglo-irish relations, there was a major sectarian aspect to the british treatment of the irish. the plantation was driven by protestant settlers from scotland [which is not and has never been a colony!] and england into northern ireland. the protestant population expanded rapidly in the seventeenth century, political authority in the subordinate irish parliament was largely in the hands of protestant elites [especially clerics connected to the church of ireland] who enacted the policies of the british parliament and the crown, the catholic population was subject to land confiscations, restriction of worship, and an expectation of anglicisation.

and in march of 1689 - the year the statute of secrecy was first signed - this all... rather kicked off.

in november 1688 - in an event known as the glorious revolution - the king of britain [and ireland!], james ii, was forced from the throne. among the reasons for this [many of which were to do with james' absolutist views of monarchy] was the fact that james was a roman catholic, and that the birth of his son james [iii, the old pretender] in june 1688 displaced james ii's protestant daughters mary and anne in the line of succession and would result in a catholic dynasty on the throne. which was unpopular.

so james was chased off and the throne was offered to william of orange - soon to be william iii - the husband of mary [ii].

in an attempt to regain his throne, james primarily recruited support from among the catholic population of ireland [as well as scotland and france], having promised to reverse many of the more unpopular sixteenth- and seventeenth-century policies imposed upon ireland by the crown. this was intolerable both to british and irish protestants, and william iii had no choice but to land in ireland with an army.

the start of the conflict was bloody but nebulous. the tide turned in william iii - and his protestant supporters' - favour in july 1690, with the battle of the boyne, a williamite victory. the jacobite cause was in shambles, james fled the country, and his supporters were eventually made to formally surrender with the signing of the treaty of limerick in october 1691.

from 1691 to 1800, ireland was a british colonial client state [nominally an autonomous kingdom with its own parliament, in reality controlled by the crown and responsible to the king's cabinet in london] politically dominated by anglo-irish protestant families. in 1800, this "independent" legislature was abolished and ireland was absorbed into the united kingdom of britain and ireland and governed from westminster via a colonial administration in dublin, which remained dominated by anglo-irish protestants. this remained the case until the establishment of the republic of ireland in 1922. northern ireland remains a constituent nation of the united kingdom.

and now back to the wizards...

according to the harry potter lexicon [my beloved], jkr has connected the establishment of the statute of secrecy in britain to a delegation of wizards who sought protections for the magical from [a post-battle-of-the-boyne?] william iii and mary ii in 1690. when they failed to get these, the british delegation - along with the representatives from other nations who made up the international confederation of wizards - agreed to the full imposition of the statute, with the main local result of this being the creation of the ministry of magic to govern the magical citizens of britain...

and of ireland?

because something which has always stood out to me - in a way i imagine it has for literally nobody else - is that you can suggest on the basis of canon that magical ireland was never partitioned...

“[England] Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten,” said Charlie gloomily. “Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg.” 

charlie is talking about the performance of the uk's constituent nations in the quidditch world cup here. we know - obviously - that ireland are the finalists and eventual champions of the competition.

northern ireland, however, is nowhere to be seen...

it could be that the northern irish quidditch team is as abysmal at international sport as its muggle equivalents and that charlie regarded it as futile to mention it. it could be that wizarding ireland is a united ireland [slay!]. but it could also be that the minister for magic is ultimately responsible - as the monarch would have been at the time the statute was signed - for the governance of the entirety of ireland, with his rule maintained within ireland itself by a client government which he appoints.

because while i don't buy the idea of a hereditary wizengamot or think that the sacred twenty-eight has any actual power other than the opportunity to influence the minister... it's striking that the name of an anglo-irish noble family appears on it [burke - although carrow is sufficiently close to the anglo-irish "carew" for us to consider it a variant, and one also finds the odd lestrange knocking about irish history...], and that jkr has written about another of the most prominent pureblood families as having been resident in ireland during the seventeenth century... the gaunts [it's why lord voldemort like relics so much...]. we also know that the london edition of the daily prophet - which functions as something close to state propaganda - circulates in ireland, because seamus' mother takes it, and that the ministry is unhappy with the tricolour flag being flown ostentatiously by ireland supporters during the world cup...

it is, then, entirely possible - should an author wish - to imagine that the imposition of the statute at such a key point in anglo-irish history means that the magical ireland of the 1990s remains subject to the british minister, and that it therefore has a very different political and cultural relationship to britain than its muggle cousin.

and i also think that this but one way of thinking more broadly about the wider imperialist vibe which is found in the books: the defence of "civilisation" and the status quo; the fact that so much "wizarding" culture is just posh british stuff; the fact that so many of the historical analogies jkr uses to mirror wizarding history relate to the troubles; the ways in which the size and insularity of the wizarding population means that the conditions which enable revolution might not be present in magical communities, etc.

and for us to think about the ways this might make wizarding history diverge from muggle in the early-modern and modern era: is there a revolution in wizarding russia, or are there still estates staffed by squib serfs? do wizards think they're travelling to istanbul or constantinople? do wizards participate in the "new imperialism" of the late nineteenth century, imposing the same colonial borders upon magical africa and asia as muggles do? what would it be like, if you were muggleborn, entering a world which is not only so culturally and politically different, but geographically different?

which brings us to...

seamus finnegan headcanons

on the basis of name alone - which, of course, doesn't mean everything - seamus appears to be one of the only students of irish extraction [that is, not just the only student who's an irish national, but the only student who's of irish heritage] at hogwarts [orla quirke - sorted in goblet of fire - is the only other one i can think of].

[although it is worth noting that many names which appear to be scottish are also common in ireland - especially in the north. professor mcgonagall has - on the information of the seven-book canon - just as much chance of being an ulster protestant as she does a scot...]

[i have decided on the basis of this that i now think cormac mclaggen is northern irish.]

irish people from all walks of life live, study, and work in britain - and vice versa. but the fact that seamus attends a boarding school with the specific cultural vibe hogwarts has - that is, an institution which is a pastiche of elite, fee-paying british schools; which directly maintains the class-based status quo which props up the wizarding state; whose graduates dominate high-level political and institutional positions; and whose student body is strikingly well-heeled - suggests that there are less famous wizarding schools in ireland, and that him being sent to hogwarts is the result of a certain anglophilia [and the desire for him to benefit in any future ministry career, in britain or ireland, from an elite british education] on behalf of his parents...

this is not to say that i think seamus is a protestant - although i genuinely think that the muggle dad witch mam thing is meant to be a joke suggesting he comes from a mixed marriage [still reasonably scandalous here even in 2024!] - but that he comes from a reasonably posh, anglophile, unionist catholic background, as did many real anglo-irish civil servants educated at the sort of institutions - especially oxford and cambridge - hogwarts shares a cultural vibe with.

but who gives a shit about class and religion! the more important things to know about seamus:

his go-to chip shop order is - as it should be - a spice bag.

he has - in his life - drunk the odd bottle of football special.

his over-the-top loathing of "pretty-boy diggory" in goblet of fire is an absolutely iconic deflection tactic from the fact he's gay - and deamus is canon.

indeed, he loves dean so much that he has willingly cheered for the england national football team [although he threatened to obliviate anybody dean told about this]. dean, for his part, has got really into hurling.

the closest they come to divorce is when dean won't stop singing galway girl by ed sheeran at him.

one @whinlatter has convinced me of: this is their son.

his confirmation name is florian - the patron saint of protection against fire.

him getting beaten to a pulp by the carrows - and then explaining in great detail how the room of requirement works to harry - is iconic, and is a really under-appreciated aspect of character growth from his doubt over harry in order of the phoenix.

the derry girl he identifies most strongly with is james - although he tells everyone it's michelle.

he met edele lynch from b*witched once and lost his mind.

he owns a flat cap.

him publicly beefing with his mam in the immediate run-up to dumbledore's funeral is one of the most specifically irish things he ever does and i can't explain why.

him giving harry an "appreciative smirk" after he drops the iconic "there's no need to call me sir, professor" line is the second most irish thing he does. i, once again, cannot explain why. [him winking at harry after he answers snape back in their very first potions lesson also sends me.]

he is the voice behind this iconic video... and, let's be real, his slight capacity for self-aggrandisement and sulking does make him a plausible cork man.

he visits his granny every sunday for endless cups of tea and re-runs of ballykissangel.

he has never read a single piece of writing by sally rooney - but he lies and says he has.

he did this to harry on his first day in the ministry:

his wand is made of dogwood - which suits the flamboyant and loud.

he's shown in canon to quite like a bit of gossip - him being gassed up by quirrell's claim that he fought a zombie and then gutted when quirrell refuses to actually tell the story always sends me - and i like the idea of him being amazing value in a pub.

he's an only child - but he has at least thirty cousins. and his cousin fergus genuinely never did have another peaceful moment after seamus learned to apparate.

he and lavender went to the yule ball together because both dean and parvati are stupid and didn't see what was right in front of their faces. they split a bottle of archers behind a rose bush and complained about men and it was the best night of their lives.

he goes as red as a lobster the second the sun's out.

he runs the shit london guinness twitter account.

his boggart is a banshee because his dad - who is literally only mentioned once in philosopher's stone - dies over the summer before his second year [banshees - in irish folklore - herald the deaths of family members with their weeping]. however - unlike harry - you don't hear him fucking banging on about this all the time...

and he can't speak a word of irish, but none of the posh english lads he knows are going to risk calling him out on that...

#asks answered #asenora meta #seamus finnigan #northern ireland posting #republic of ireland posting #the fact that she didn't think *once* about the fact the ministry of magic is technically established by king billy... #joanne come on noyyyyy #dumbledore was in the apprentice boys i fear #that's why fawkes is orange #literally just checked the lexicon to see if anything significant happened on the twelfth...

[ilikethisacompletelynormalamount]

It feels like Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are lifelong friends, even though they insist their bond formed while working together on All of Us Strangers, the new drama from Looking and Weekend filmmaker Andrew Haigh.

On a Friday afternoon in Los Angeles in November, the pair remain in their own world. A cacophony of publicists and camera operators swirl around them, in the thick of a string of media interviews, but Scott, 47, and Mescal, 27, sit calmly shoulder-to-shoulder in a press room having their own private, whispered conversation. It's difficult to make out, which only makes you want to know what they're saying that much more. And when you pry, they shrug it off.

Perhaps this was what Haigh was talking about when he said, during an awards-season Q&A for the American Film Institute, that the three of them went to a concert in London together and his actors "completely ignored" him most of the day. "We didn't!" Scott insists. "That's not true," Mescal adds, laughing. "That's a little bit of hyperbolic directorial license," Scott says. "We need to have a word with him." *

*(emphasis entirely mine, because, seriously Andrew Haigh, wtf was that interview)

It's no wonder the internet has fallen for the bond between these Irish gents, fawning over photos of Mescal attending Scott's birthday party at a club.* The pals say they only knew of each other "a little bit" prior to All of Us Strangers, but "not as well as we know each other now," Scott quips — alluding to the sex scenes they shot together for the movie. "We know everything. The whole kit and caboodle!" However, once people see the film — part romance, part ghost story — it's their emotional bond they forge on screen that stands out... and often leads to overt sobs from the audience.

*(a club that was definitely NOT in Spain, no matter what you may have read on Twitter, just so we're clear. It was also the wrap party for Vanya, which had just ended that evening in London, so unless he has super powers, Spain's not possible. Also, Andrew was surrounded by other friends and practically everyone involved in the play, not there with just Paul FFS. Sorry, sorry, carry on. )

...

Scott and Mescal joke how it was their Irish heritage that helped them understand what Haigh was going for. "The means to express is something that we as a culture are still processing," Mescal says. "I think that's why Irish actors, generally speaking, are good at playing the stuff beneath the surface. A good healthy dose of repression helps the ol' acting." The connection these actors forge through performance is palpable. It was a surprise even to them how affected the audience became when they attended their first public screening of All of Us Strangers in Los Angeles earlier in the week. "I was balling," Scott recalls. "We had to do a Q&A afterwards. I was really emotional."

...

"To play being in love or falling in love with someone, it's the best, completely wonderful thing to be able to do," Scott says. "We were starting to get to know each other [as people], as well. Beyond our preliminary friendship, it was like both of those experiences were coexisting."

This was a very good article, you should absolutely click through and read it all so that EW knows that we are interested in this film and these actors!

(Thank you for indulging my asides, I just had some things I needed to get off my chest 😆)

#andrew scott #paul mescal #all of us strangers #andrew haigh #entertainment weekly #jamie bell #claire foy #his beautiful smile #fucking spain *incoherent grumbling*

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

"I’m pleased to announce that today PayPal committed to me that it no longer services this entity," he said. "For American companies, national security should be more important than the bottom line. Doing business with fiscal sponsors of Palestinian terrorists is not acceptable."

The revelation is the latest blow to Alliance for Global Justice's ability to rake in cash for itself and the 140 organizations it fiscally sponsors, including Samidoun, which has shared staffers with the Popular Front, according to Zachor Legal Institute, a think tank that contacted the Treasury Department and IRS about companies working with the Arizona group. Alliance for Global Justice also sponsors the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a coalition accused of having terror ties that the Democratic fundraising giant ActBlue recently booted off its platform.

AFGJ had to move its fundraising operation to PayPal after Stripe, the Irish-American payment processor that handled $817 billion transactions in 2022, parted ways with it in early September. Salsa Labs stopped working with AFGJ in February, prompting the Arizona charity to put out a 1,000-word statement urging donors to send paper checks. Watchdogs, including Israel's NGO Monitor, have also zoned in on how AFGJ has sponsored Collectif Palestine Vaincra, which it says has coordinated with the Popular Front for a child "indoctrination" camp in the Gaza Strip.

AFGJ's online fundraising portal now produces an error that reads, "Your payment has been declined," when the donation button is pressed. The organization, which did not return a Washington Examiner request for comment, published a press release on its website noting that its projects have "found themselves to be targets of right-wing media attacks.

"The accusations caused financial institutions to cancel AFGJ’s contracts for accepting credit card donations for itself and its projects, distributing funds to projects, and carrying on other vital forms of business, without any investigation or due process by the banks," Alliance for Global Justice said this week. "AFGJ and its 140 fiscally-sponsored projects were suddenly de-platformed, blocked, from using these services. Projects that depend upon these tools have seen their payrolls, rent payments, and other critical financial transactions blocked."

#paypal #palestinian terrorism #alliance for global justice

[thechanelmuse]

Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court ruled against race-based affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. We saw this ruling coming a mile away, while there were Asians picketing outside as if Black Americans were the big bad wolves of race 🐺 for all of this. No one has benefited from affirmative action more than white women simply because of the word "minority." Other groups followed thereafter under that action. 

Affirmative action was for everyone except for white men, many who were/are already legacy students, children of university donors, or the descendants of the Old Stock aka the Mayflower people. Many of your eltie. (No one was white in this country but those colonizers and their descendants. Anyone from European countries immigrating during US slavery (like the Irish - Potato Famine era) or after US slavery had to work their way to becoming the fake racial status called white. (Ya know, contractural indentured servitude, assimilation and shit.)

When affirmative action was first enacted, it was originally and only intended for the descendants of US Freedmen, the formerly US chattel enslaved people who just happened to be "Black" because the US government declared them us such by race. But as usual, the trick bag language to bar the descendants of this land from an even playing field was instituted. The makeup of this country then was not what it is today since Black Americans fought for our civil rights, as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the right for others who were barred by white Americans if you did not descend from their choices of European countries that did not include the likes of Italy. So your ass would not be here if it wasn't for Black Americans.

The US racial classification after the 1960s was determined by how one self identifies, not by what the US government told you you were. You can choose whatever race you want to be now, which is why race is and always was dumb. It's not permanent nor real like ethnicity. Black Americans aren't Black because of a racial construct. We're Black ethnically due to ethnogenisis, our culture and our history on this land that is our homeland. 

Striking down affirmative action doesn't harm us. It does us a big ass favor that became a free for all and used us as a scapegoat for baseless arguments.

Who are people gonna blame now when they still don't get in? What will the likes of Vivek Ramaswamy whine about now? The big bad wolf of what they call “woke culture?” Us again, huh. Rinse and repeat. Anyway...

#affirmative action #lineage is key #supreme court #us supreme court #vivek ramaswamy

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Character Profile — Ireland

Character Name: Éire. The Republic of Ireland, the Island of Ireland. Brighid Kelly, Brid Ó Ceallaigh, Bridgie, Aunt Bridgie, Auntie, Mum, Mam. Imbolc or St. Brighid's Day is the spring festival in ancient times and under the Catholic Church and she kept it for that reason. The night will end.

Age: Late 30s, modern day.

Height: 5''8/173cm

Physical Description: Brighid spent the most time with their mother and shared her looks the most. Her circumstances have changed in innumerable ways, but Brighid carries herself like the druid and warrior queen her mother raised her to be. Not hunger, hardship or her reduced place in the world ever bent her back, and now she stands free and tall in her own right. Very fair, she's got a smattering of freckles across her body, a sharp face with what can bee an otherworldly beauty to her. Her people populated much of her brother's children, and her looks have added a slightly ethereal look to them in the right light or surreal circumstances, resulting in both Alfred and Jack being mistaken for changelings.

Eye colour: Green. But not only the green of her isle but the churning blues and greys of the sea. Her eyes can't quite decide what colour they want to be and will vary on her clothes and the lighting.

Hair colour/style: Red. Hibernian gold was a red gold metal, likely mixed with copper, from Ireland in ancient times, and her hair is that exact shade. She has always worn it long, often bound up with ribbons, a snood, or just braided. It's curly, especially when she can care for it in modern times.

Personal Appearance/Style: In the modern day, she likes fine things. Irish-made linens and wools, and like most nations of her age, she doesn't like artificial products. Deprived of much of her dignity for much of history, she takes much pride in her appearance now and wears nice jewelry and clothes for most occasions. She wears many wool sweaters, high-waisted trousers and boots out in the country and still tends to wear a nightgown to sleep out of habit.

Verbal Style: Speaks English with her Irish accent and refuses to do otherwise. Speaks Irish in all the surviving dialects and some that are no longer alive.

Level of Education: A thousand years ago, she was the most educated person in Europe, with Irish monasteries and nunneries preserving much of European knowledge. But in the intervening centuries, stripped of much of her cultural knowledge and education increasingly only available in English, she felt somewhat behind in technology because she was trying to fucking survive, but always made a point to seek out new information when she could and probably taught a hedge school herself in the 18th century. From Alfred's independence, she kept a close correspondence with him. When she became independent in her own right, it was with a lot of American capital and encouragement, as well as infusions of cash from American institutions; she became one of the most educated countries in Western Europe and the world again by the end of the 20th century.

Occupation: These days, she works as an Irish teacher, sometimes even in the preschools when she's in a maternal mood, but she is also a diplomat, political activist, businesswoman and

Past Occupations: Weaver, farmer, nun, abbess, governess, union organizer, activist, labourer, teacher, social worker, factory worker, tailor, charwoman, cobbler, laundress, dressmaker, milliner, brewster, distiller, embroiderer, dyer. You name it; she's probably done it to survive.

Skills, Abilities or Talents: She's incredibly talented at all things textile. Embroidery, weaving, springing, making flax and fleece in to linen and wool. She's skilled at navigation and boats, but on a smaller scale than her brother or nephews, and prefers to stay closer to the shore. She's also incredibly musically and artistically gifted with her Celtic influence found across the world. Fiddle, harp and her voice are her favourites but she can just about play or sing anything put in front of her.

Admirable Personality Traits: Friendly, passionate, blunt, welcoming, warm, affectionate and witty.

Negative Personality Traits: Angry, moody, depressive, stubborn, and impatient but she has literally no reason not to be those things considering her history, christ.

Sense of Humor: Playful, subversive, a bit twisted, and loves a good use of word play or a pun.

Physical/Mental illness or affliction: She's been through so much, and it shows in her body. She's had problems with her digestive tract for decades, anemia, and a lot of trauma. She's remarkably well-adjusted, considering her history. However, her friends and her brother's children still get phone calls in what should be the dead of night for Brighid, and it is usually the morning for him because she's having a bad day. She'll call Alasdair more often than the other two of her brothers and Alfred, but her relationship with Alfred is a lot more of her giving him advice than him comforting her. A lot of the time, she calls Jack at the asscrack of dawn for him to wake him up and maybe accidentally hears a confused, sleepy "Mum?" like he's still small enough to cradle in her arms. But they talk a lot. She was probably the first of her siblings to go to therapy, second in the family only after Matt.

Hobbies/Interests: Reading, embroidery, knitting, hiking, shinty, hurling. She's getting more fit these days and more able to do exerting activities. Baseball was largely taken from a game called rounders, and she'll throw a ball around, but also dearly loves hurling and Gaelic football.

Favourite Foods: Brighid doesn't have a single favourite food. Bread, cheese, smoked salmon, boxty, barmbrack, soda bread, stew, colcannon and champ, spagbol, meat and veg, steak and chips, toasties, tikka masala, fish and chips. She was thrilled when Jack learned how to cook Greek and Italian and wanted to show it off, and she's always down to have some beers and go absolute ham on some pub food with Alfred.

Most important personal item: I don't think, with her insane history, she got to keep anything personal her entire life. But I think she has a set of very nice emeralds that Alfred gave her when she first came to America that she's incredibly fond of. A lot of her best jewelry is from Alfred.

Person/friend close to character: She's fairly close to her brothers all things considered, but things are certainly easier with Rhys and Alasdair than with Arthur. Two thousand years of fuckery isn't exactly water under the bridge, but it's not exactly brought up in every conversation, either if only because Brighid is tired. She's very close to Alfred, which I'm only recently exploring, but the sheer amount of Gaelic songs about America and Australia gives me fucking emotions. Her situation got so much less desperate after Alfred intervened at certain points, and I think he probably even gave her an allowance anonymously because she deserved so, so much more than his people or the United Kingdom was giving her, and he's very fond of her. Jack's her baby boy in every way, except he calls her his aunt most of the time because Arthur sorted it that way.

Brief family history: She was born to Brigantia/Brittania in the pre-roman period, she's not exactly sure how old she is, but she's older by at least 300 years than Alasdair and more like 500 for Rhys and Arthur. Her relationship with her siblings is difficult, to say the least, but she especially shares close linguistic ties with Alasdair. Her brother's children are also very important in her life, with Alfred forming an incredibly important part of her life, politics, history and economy. Things are occasionally difficult between her and Alfred, but generally, it's a good relationship. She's emotionally closest with Jack, feeling stronger maternal feelings with him than his brothers because of her role in both his earliest years and him being the most Irish nation outside of Ireland.

Most painful experiences in the character’s past: Where in god's name do I even start? When they buried their mother in the late ancient period, maybe the 4th century for her as a person? The famine would probably be the worst, how it hollowed her out for generations, the hell on earth of being rolled onto a coffin ship and burning with fever in a shed in Toronto before Matt and Alfred can finally get her to America. She's seen famine, plagues, invasions, and everything in between.

Their Song: The Voice by Celtic Woman

#Character Sheets || bodies and flesh of borders and fences #Brighid || An Bearna Bhaoil #hws ireland

[gracie-bird]

Princess Grace of Monaco at The Irish American Cultural Institute dinner in New York on Jan. 18, 1975.

#grace kelly #princess grace #irish american cultural #irish american cultural institute #new york #1976 #vera maxwell

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: May 4, 2023

What happened to the art of disagreement? In 2017, I addressed this very question in my stand-up show, Thought Crimes, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. My main topic was the aftermath of the Brexit vote and how so many of my friends had developed a strange new determination to reduce all political disputes to a matter of good vs evil, with those who voted to leave the EU falling firmly in the latter camp. I felt there was something inherently amusing about this sudden surge of mass infantilism.

I performed the show every evening during the fringe at The Stand comedy club, and I very much enjoyed working with such a pleasant and professional team. I remember, on one occasion, chatting to a member of staff who completely disagreed with my political views. The conversation was stimulating and, above all, amiable. Had I suggested at the time that, just a few years later, a show at this same venue would be cancelled because members of staff found the opinions of those involved offensive, she would have laughed. I’m confident that nobody at The Stand, either performers or staff, would have considered this a remote possibility. Surely it would be absurd for a comedy club, of all places, to reject the principle of free speech?

Yet this is precisely what happened this week when The Stand cancelled the booking of SNP politician Joanna Cherry, who had been scheduled to appear as part of the club’s ‘In Conversation With’ series. Cherry is a lesbian who campaigned against Section 28, and has recently been vocal about the threat to women’s rights and single-sex spaces posed by the rise of gender-identity ideology. This is her thoughtcrime.

If I were keeping a tally of Things I Never Thought Would Happen, it would by now have grown too long to maintain. When I performed that show in 2017, I had assumed that I was observing a momentary glitch, and that within the year everyone would be shaking their heads and laughing about their brief bout of hysteria. I was wrong. The insane tribalism of the Brexit vote was merely a symptom of a much more worrying trend, and we have since allowed ourselves to descend into a Manichean world of angels and devils.

My book, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World, is my attempt to grapple with this disturbing new reality. A new paperback edition has been published this week, and I had hoped that by this point, it would already have started to seem out of date. In truth, the problems I describe in the book are accelerating. Novels by Roald Dahl, PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie have since been rewritten by ‘sensitivity readers’ (newspeak for ‘censors’). The Irish government is currently passing new hate-speech laws that are similarly draconian to those passed by the Scottish government in 2021. Prestigious scientific journals are publishing pseudoscience in order to uphold this new ideology, too. Only this week the Scientific American ran a piece entitled ‘Here’s why human sex is not binary’, illustrated with an image of the male and female gametes that prove that it is.

It’s difficult to keep up with these baffling developments. Most of us have noticed the rise of this new ideology that is now dominant in all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate institutions. We can see that its impact is divisive, regressive and illiberal, and yet it describes itself using progressive-sounding terminology, such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘equity’. When language becomes unmoored from meaning, we are all at risk of mistaking change for progress.

We have seen that the disciples of this new religion are pushing for more and more censorship, whether that be through the cancellation of comedians, the deletion of potentially offensive scenes in old television shows, or stronger ‘hate speech’ laws. We have seen women physically assaulted for standing up for their sex-based rights. We have seen how anyone who questions the new orthodoxies jeopardises their career prospects and risks being publicly shamed. The existence of what we now call ‘cancel culture’ is often denied by those who indulge in it the most, but its list of casualties expands by the day.

Those of us who are taking a stand against these cultural revolutionaries are often told that we should just ignore them. Who cares if a few zealots are demanding that we attend ‘unconscious bias’ training sessions? Who cares if civil servants and teachers and staff at the BBC are being encouraged to announce their pronouns in emails and at the beginning of meetings? Who cares if the Ministry of Defence is holding LGBTQIA+ coffee mornings to discuss pansexuality? If we let them get on with it, the logic goes, all of this will just go away.

But this is very wrong. If we ignore these developments, the culture warriors won’t fade away – they’ll win. These activists are promoting an authoritarian creed, and are doing untold damage to our world, while believing they are making it better. If your toddler starts smashing up the crockery, you don’t just politely wait for it to finish. Sometimes you have to intervene in order to prevent further damage.

I wrote The New Puritans in the hope that the book would become obsolete. Judging from recent events, this won’t be happening any time soon.

#Andrew Doyle #authoritarianism #woke authoritarianism #The New Puritans #gender ideology #queer theory #cancel culture #sensitivity reader #censorship #woke #wokeism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #wokeness #religion is a mental illness

[handoverthekawaii]

We Go Together | Homelander x You | Chapter 25

Taglist: @hom3landr @theaudacitytowrite

After months of waiting, you and John are just one night’s sleep away from the big day — tomorrow, John will finally face Vought in court for the first day of the civil bench trial.

The legal proceedings have dragged along, with victories scored on each side. In one clash, Vought managed to convince the judge to institute a gag order on the involved parties until after the verdict. BUT, Em’s firm tracked down one of Madelyn Stillwell’s former secretaries, who is more than willing to share how much time her boss was spending keeping America’s favorite hero satisfied when he first debuted in The Seven.

Alvarez and his colleagues spent weeks reading box after box of discovery materials, practicing oral arguments, and prepping John to testify about his illegal contract with Vought. When you and John leave the law office for the day, you feel confident that there’s nothing more to be done to prepare. From here, you have no choice but to let the legal process play out, and to hope that the court can see through Vought’s conniving ways.

But John is still nervous — he won’t admit it, but you can tell by the way he keeps clenching and releasing your hand as you walk up the street toward a nearby park. It is nearly the end of summer now, so much warmer and sunnier than when you first started working at Vought back during spring. Now, it’s the perfect time of year to stay out a little late on the town, cut loose, and maybe take a step outside both your comfort zones.

Which is how a couple hours later, John ends up sitting on a barstool beside you, getting ready to participate in a trivia competition at a local Irish pub. He’s never been comfortable drinking — too many opportunities to make a truly catastrophic drunken mistake. Instead, you and he split an appetizer of pretzels and dip while you wait for the first question.

It took him months to be confident visiting public places, even disguised with street clothes and sunglasses. All summer long, he worried that someone would stop to squint at him and say, “You look familiar…” but it never happened. John is realizing that most people don’t gawk at each other the way they used to gawk at Homelander.

As it turns out, having a secret identity has its perks..

With a deep knowledge of American history, current events over the last twenty years, and Vought International’s many pop-culture offerings, John proves himself a standout trivia contestant. You can barely keep up, dropping a semi-confident answer here and there, but your efforts combined land you in third place when the scores are tallied. A perfectly respectable score, you and John reassure one another — and, next time, you’ll probably win the whole thing!

Now, sure, John makes a show of rolling his eyes and insisting to the bartender that he’s only here because of YOU. But in truth, he knows that you insisted on coming to take his mind off the proceedings tomorrow.

And it’s working, John thinks to himself. He won’t allow himself to fully relax until the trial is over but, at least for now, he can feel the weight on his chest lightening and his mood lifting.

All thanks to you — YOU made that happen for him.

He loves you so much that it hurts. And when you get home for the night, he’s going to tell you — no, he’s going to SHOW you — just how fucking much you mean to him.

“All rise!” the bailiff shouts, announcing that the judge is entering the courtroom to begin hearing the case of John Gillman v. Vought International Co.

Glancing around as you sit back down, you can’t help but be astounded by the array of people assembled in the courtroom today. Alvarez and John are seated at the plaintiff’s table, the captain of The Seven wearing his Homelander uniform for the first time in months. You, Em, and other staff from the law firm are lined up in a row of chairs behind the plaintiff’s table.

More of John’s supporters sit in the public gallery benches. Many of them are strangers — like the college kids wearing #freehomelander shirts — but there are also a couple familiar faces. Black Noir is standing in the back of the courtroom, and Translucent’s disembodied voice whispered a greeting as you and John exited the elevator.

No cameras are permitted in the courtroom, but the rest of the seats are filled with journalists, from NNC and the New York Times and USA Today, phones at the ready to start live tweeting once the proceedings begin.

Then there’s the opposing counsel, a small army of grey suits from Vought’s Legal Division flanking Madelyn Stillwell herself. She tried to approach John when she first saw him, but Alvarez heroically jumped in and herded the executive back to her seat.

No Stan Edgar today, though — the bastard must not think it’s worth his time to be here, John thinks to himself angrily as the judge takes a seat at the bench.

We’ll see about that, won’t we, Stan? [continued on AO3]

#ao3 writer #fanfic #homelander #homelander x reader #homelander x you #the homelander #homelander x y/n #homelander the boys #the boys amazon #the boys tv #the boys homelander #the boys fanfic #freehomelander

[eagna-eilis]

Listening to Sinéad O'Connor on this fine Sunday morning and just thinking about what she means to me.

Many families in Ireland actually have The Auntie We Don't Talk About. The so-called crazy one, more accurately the one who really went through it. To the younger generation of Irish women, Sinéad was the auntie of us all. Our brilliant, unorthodox auntie who people older than us wrote off as mad, shrill, zealous. We listened to our elders denigrate her or write her off. Harridan, madwoman, banshee.

But inevitably we, her hundred thousand nieces, we went onto YouTube and watched her tear up a photo of the man whose institution created the environment for and then covered up the rapes of our fathers, which interned our grandmothers without trial for the crime of being pregnant and then stole our infant mothers out of our grandmothers' arms.

And we knew that she was right. That Sinéad was a Cassandra, her truths ignored by an American culture which fundamentally could not comprehend that where she came from, where I come from, it is obvious that the Catholic Church was the great destroyer.

We eventually learn that she grew up in an abusive home, that she struggled mightily with her mental health. Some of us see ourselves in that.

We listen to her, we listen to her completely unique voice and hear our own accents. We hear in her voice, her words the wounds of our whole history. And we hear joy, too. Affirmation. Bravery.

I don't know that people unacquainted with our history can truly appreciate what it meant for a daughter of the Irish 1960s to stand with her head shaved like the Granuaile and howl 'I DON'T KNOW NO SHAME I FEEL NO PAIN I CAN'T SEE THE FLAMES'.

Shame, the thing which controlled the inner and outer lives of a deeply Catholic culture. Pain, the martyred-mother emotion that Irish women were supposed to bear with grace. The flames that all were meant to fear.

I was born into the world after she put this cry of liberation into it. It is unfathomably easier to be an Irish woman now than it was when Sinéad first made herself heard by us all.

I see her as the auntie of us all because we inherit something from her. The world is poorer without her. My culture is poorer without her.

#sinead o'connor #Irish history #irish culture #tw: abuse #tw: csa

[theterrancrowe]

I don’t really like Zootopia, not one bit…

I mean, I used to like Zootopia when it first came out, but I was very young and naïve at the time and I didn’t really understand (or more accurately, care to understand) the problems that plague the actual film.

And I’m not talking about how it essentially uses the same cookie-cutter plot of most Disney films at the time, nor am I talking about the shitty twist villain, Assistant Bellweather, or even the god-awful pop song, ‘try everything’ by Shakira. No, I am specifically referring to the political messaging of the film.

In a nutshell, the racism allegory of Zootopia doesn’t work because of both the mismanaged use of animal symbolism (specifically the LACK of symbolism of meaningful use of it), and the complete unwillingness on behalf of the writers to explore the nuances of racism in any way.

The concept of 'race' is really just a colonial construct just made to serve the interests of colonial powers in Europe and to justify the abhorrent actions they were doing to literally everyone else, and only has a weak connection to actual ethnicity. Like, the reason why Irish and Italians were not considered "white" back then, but are now, or how people group eastern asians as a 'seperate kind of people' than south and southestern asians because they're not brown is all the same, its made up.

And because the writers dont seem to really understand this about race (and also because theyre both white), they completely misrepresent race as a concept by depicting it as just a real and biological way that people are structured as, instead of the wibbly-wobbly bullshit that it really is, it's like how a lot of cis people like to treat the gender binary. But at the same time this supposed 'biological truth' is just pushed aside as just a slight difference, like how in the actual film, no one actually addresses what predators eat or how they actually are different.

This contradictory nature is also the reason as to why they have to 'go savage' in order to actually stir up the bullshit race war that Assistant Mayor Bellweather wanted (just because i guess? Her motives are never explained.) This movie talks about racism like its just people hating eachother for a justifiable reason that they just made up, and then bending backwards and saying that its completely nonsensical and we should just get along anyway.

I think the reason as to why this is, is because the actual writers just don't know shit about racism. They're both white, and they don't seem to make that many political stances anyway, so its safe to assume that all the nuances of systemic racism have just not stuck to them in any way, and that their understanding of it just boils down to "some people are just mean to others because their skin is brown."

Racism in real life is based on cultural ideas on how certain 'races' behave mostly in a cultural context. Theres a reason why black people often have negative stereotypes depicting them as robbers or violent rapists, or of them eating fried chicken and watermelon like animals. Because black people have a history of enslavement, followed by racist systemic oppression after the abolishment of legal slavery as an American institution. These stereotypes are bullshit, but they exist, not as a product of some innate human quality of tribalism, but as a product of a white supremacist culture. The same goes for all other 'races' too, with their own specific cultural contexts.

There's so much potential in using furry imagery to convey a political message, but what this movie does with it is to just tell a neoliberal story about a half baked racism allegory that doesn't even make a lick of sense under scrutiny

#Zootopia #movies

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

1868 – Norman Douglas, born (d.1952); Austrian-born British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind. Douglas was one of the liveliest, wittiest and most original writers of his generation. His novel, South Wind (1917) exerted a strong influence on almost every modern writer who came out of the 1920s.

Douglas had discovered the joys of Capri in 1888 when he journeyed there in pursuit of a rare species of blue lizard. What he discovered there was something else altogether - a gay paradise. He fell in love with the island and decided to make it his "soul's operating base."

South Wind, in part, recounts the story of how he made up his mind to leave his wife and settle in Capri to enjoy the Gay life, openly and without shame. The setting of the novel is an island, like Capri, called Nepenthe, inhabited by an extraordinary group of eccentrics who, seen through the eyes of an English bishop, represent the contrast between the cultures of Northern and Southern Europe. In this satiric novel, English hypocrisy gets it between the eyes.

Douglas died, broke on Capri, but not before he had compiled an anthology of graffiti collected in several languages from the walls of public toilets throughout Europe. Roger Williams' Lunch With Elizabeth David (1999) is a novel about Douglas's relationship with Eric Walton, the boy he took to Calabria.

1950 – Dan Hartman (d.1994) was an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer, best known for such songs as: "Free Ride", "I Can Dream About You", "Instant Replay", "Love Sensation", and "Relight My Fire", all of which had world-wide success.

Born in Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg, Hartman joined his first band at the age of 13, The Legends. His brother Dave was also a member of the band. He played keyboards and wrote much of the band's music, but despite the release of a number of recordings, none turned out to be hits. He subsequently spent a period of time backing the Johnny Winter Band and then joined the Edgar Winter Group where he played bass on three of their albums and wrote the band's second biggest pop hit "Free Ride" in 1972. Upon launching a solo career in 1976, he released a promotional album which had, as its full title, Who Is Dan Hartman and Why Is Everyone Saying Wonderful Things About Him?. It was a compilation disc including songs from Johnny Winter and the Edgar Winter Group.

In late 1978, Hartman reached #1 on the Dance Charts with the disco single, "Instant Replay." This was followed by his second chart topper, 1979's "Relight My Fire," which featured friend Loleatta Holloway on vocals. This song later became the theme for the NBC talk show Tomorrow. During the next decade he worked as a songwriter and producer, and collaborated with such artists as Tina Turner, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Tyler, Paul Young, Holly Johnson, and James Brown.

Hartman died in 1994 at his Westport, Connecticut home of an AIDS-related brain tumor. Dan never married and had no children. He kept his HIV status a secret, even after Holly Johnson announced his own HIV status in 1991. Although it is unclear if Dan was ever publicly out about his sexuality during his lifetime, his website features tributes from many friends and colleagues who were aware that he was gay. Several of them mention how Hartman never seemed completely comfortable with his homosexuality, although he was much more open about it with those who shared his orientation.

1966 – Sinéad O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U".

Since then, while maintaining her singing career, she has occasionally encountered controversy, partly due to her emotional statements and gestures such as her ordination as a priest despite being female with a Roman Catholic background, and her expressed strong views on organized religion, women's rights, war, and child abuse.

In addition to her solo albums, her work includes a number of collaborations with other artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts.

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O'Connor outed herself as a lesbian, "I'm a dyke ... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a big lesbian mule. But I actually am a dyke." However, soon after in an interview in The Independent, she stated, "I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description." In a magazine article and in a programme on RTÉ (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTÉ on 29 May 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women. In a May 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, she stated, "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes".

1972 – Janae Kroc (born: Matt Kroczaleski) is an American who previously competed as a professional powerlifter and competitive bodybuilder. In 2015, Kroc came out as transgender and genderfluid, taking the name 'Janae' and adopting female pronouns. She uses the name 'Matt' and male pronouns when referring to the time before her transition.

Kroc served in the United States Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995 and was selected for presidential security duty serving under President Bill Clinton. The tour of duty included time in Washington D.C., providing security for military officers at the Pentagon and for some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1992 to 1994. Assigned to security duty for Warren Christopher (then Secretary of State) during the United Nations conferences in 1993, Kroc was later assigned to the security force at the presidential retreat at Camp David from 1994 to 1995.

In interviews, Kroc has described growing up in a trailer in a rural conservative area. Kroc started working out with cement-filled Sears weights at 6 years old, including doing 100 reps on a 10-pound dumbbell, and at 8 years old constructed a weight bench out of a 2x4 or 2x12[31] on cement blocks and made a barbell out of milk jugs filled with sand hung on a stick. Kroc weighed 118 pounds as a high school freshman, and, after graduating from high school at Standish-Sterling Central.

In 2004, Kroc was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Kroc had three children with a woman named Patty; they split up in 2006. Kroc also married a woman named Lauren.

Kroc says she was the "Manliest of the Manly Men", known as an "Ultimate Alpha Male" before transitioning. Kroc came out as transgender to friends and relatives (including three sons) around 2005. In April 2015, Kroc legally changed forenames from Matthew Raymond to Janae Marie, a name chosen by Kroc's mother. In July of that year, Kroc came out as both transgender and genderfluid. She is living as both genders, saying she often feels like two completely different people trying to share a body, fighting for control. Kroc goes by female pronouns, but uses male pronouns when referring to her life as Matt. In December 2015, Kroc's was the first featured among the top 63 most powerful comings-out of 2015.

In regard to combined (squat, bench press, and deadlift) equipped powerlifting total, on April 25, 2009, in Iowa, Kroc set the male world record in the 220 lb. weight class with 2,551 lbs (composed of 738 pound bench press, 810 pound deadlift and 1003 pound back squat), which at the time was also the fifth highest total for the 242 lb. male weight class. Matt no longer held the record as of August 21, 2010, when a 2,715 pound total was achieved by Shawn Frankl (the man who held the record prior to Matt) in Ohio.

1980 – John Lennon, English musician and peace activist murdered (b. 1940); There are stories of an early intimate relationship between Lennon and Brian Epstein that are probably true. Lennon was certainly a friend to Gay rights and LGBT people as Yoko has continued to demonstrate in her own works.

On the morning of December 8, 1980, Annie Leibovitz came over to the Ono-Lennon's apartment to do a photo shoot for the Rolling Stone magazine. She had promised Lennon it would make the cover but she initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone. Leibovitz would recall that, "nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover." When Lennon insisted that both be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to recreate the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved. With the pictures in hand, Annie Leibovitz left their apartment.

The Lennons spent several hours at the studio on West 44th Street before returning to The Dakota at about 10:50 p.m. Lennon was concerned about seeing five-year-old Sean before he went to sleep, so they returned to the Dakota instead of going out to eat. They exited their limousine on 72nd Street, even though the car could have been driven into the courtyard.

Jose Perdomo (who was the doorman at the entrance), an elevator operator, and a cab driver all saw Mark David Chapman standing in the shadows by the archway. The Lennons walked past, and Ono opened the inner door — leaving Lennon alone inside the entrance.

Chapman called out, "Mr. Lennon!" As Lennon paused to turn around, Chapman dropped into a "combat stance" and shot at Lennon five times with hollow point bullets from a Charter Arms .38 revolver. One shot missed, passing over Lennon's head and hitting a window of the Dakota building. Two shots struck Lennon in the left side of his back and two more in his left shoulder. All four wounds caused serious internal damage, and at least one of them fatally pierced Lennon's aorta.

1981 – The New York City Gay Men's Chorus performed a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall, making them the first gay musical group to play there.

 "I Want You!"

1996 – In England, South Yorkshire Police placed a full-page ad in "Gay Times" as part of a recruitment campaign.

2004 – The New Zealand Parliament approves civil unions with a vote of 65-55. Full marriage equality passes in 2013.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Alice Fraser has finally released her 2022 show, Chronos. I heard her advertise it on The Bugle for ages, she’ll come on and at the end will plug its upcoming tour dates, which were sometimes in Australia and sometimes in Britain but fucking never within easy driving distance of my house in Canada. But she said a while ago that she was filming it, and now it’s finally on Go Faster Stripe. For purchase in a bundle with her 2023 show, Twist. Which I think I’ve heard about slightly less often, entirely because she’s been on The Bugle slightly less often in 2023, I guess she’s a bit busy as she’s spent this year raising one very young child while pregnant with another. Fewer Bugle appearances, but still found time to do two new hours in two years, film them both, and now you can buy the two of them for ten pounds, which I think is a good deal. I mean I haven’t seen them yet, so I guess I don’t know for sure, maybe Alice Fraser has suddenly become shit at stand-up comedy. But from Alice Fraser as I know her, two shows for ten pounds is great.

I know Alice Fraser as The Bugle's most frequent guest. And I know that because of the spreadsheet that I obviously keep up to date every time a new episode comes out. Actually, as I write this I've realized this would be a good time for me to post the top rankings as of the end of 2023:

Those are the top 15 most frequent guests, out of 42 guests in total (obviously my spreadsheet contains a lot more information than that, these are just the cliff notes, if anyone for some reason wants a list of every Bugle episode containing any individual guest, that is a thing I can provide). Alice Fraser is first with 120 and Nish Kumar is second with 75, so she's got a pretty comfortable lead. That's a fairly nationally diverse top 15 list. Five Brits, three Americans, three Australians, two Indians, one Irish, one NZ.

Anyway. The point is that I got to know enough about Alice Fraser from The Bugle to know I like what she has to say, and want to hear more. So last year I sought out her stand-up specials, and God, they are good. Talking about "intelligence" as an abstract and general concept is sort of nebulous and maybe meaningless, but if it exists, I think Alice Fraser is maybe the most intelligent stand-up comedian out there. She's from Australia and still lives there but she works in the UK a lot (and obviously she went to Cambridge University, another on my disappointingly long list of favourite comedians who were once in Footlights, I really am a big fan of that unfairly elitist institution) and she used to be a lawyer and she's just really brilliant. She makes a lot of puns and dirty jokes on The Bugle and then she gets up in her stand-up shows and tells complex moving stories about family and heritage and culture and tragedy and personal identity (she was raised Buddhist but is also Jewish and has family from lots of different places and those influences from everywhere come up in her work), and it's also funny, and it's really good.

The completist in me loves that Alice Fraser is one of those comedians where almost all her full-length shows has been released at some point, as a video and/or audio special. Here's a screenshot from her Wikipedia page of all her stand-up hours:

And here's a screenshot of the Alice Fraser subfolder in the stand-up folder of my hard drive:

Pretty similar lists; now that her last two shows are online she's made almost everything available. As you see in the screenshot I've already purchased Chronos and Twist, but I haven't watched them yet. I think I'm going to end this year with a full Alice Fraser re-watch. Start with Savage and watch them in order until I get to the new ones. A lot of Alice Fraser's shows build on each other, showing us her perspective and her ideas and her experiences in more and more depth every time, and I think they're worth doing in order. She specifically said that anyone who buys the Chronos/Twist bundle should watch them in that order, as Twist is a sort of sequel to Chronos.

I watched/heard those first three shows - Savage, The Resistance, Empire - last year. I saw Ethos earlier this year, and I think it's my favourite of her shows I've seen, though it's close. More than that, Ethos is one of my top few shows I've seen in 2023 at all (not just shows from 2023 - as that one isn't, it's from 2018 - but shows I've watched in 2023, which is a lot).

Anyway, I haven't even seen the new shows yet so I can't comment on them, but I just wanted to remind anyone who's unaware that Alice Fraser exists, and she's really really good at what she does. If you like comedy with intellectual ambition but also personal depth, introspective but also trying to tackle abstract ideas, storytelling and emotional impact but also I promise it does remember to be funny, then check out Alice Fraser.

Her first three shows can be heard in audio form for free on ABC Podcasts:

And here's where you can buy her new shows on Go Faster Stripe:

I guess I can't technically recommend those shows as I haven't seen them yet, and I won't until I finish my re-watch up to that point. But I definitely recommend Alice Fraser, just as an entity. Highly recommended entity.