veganthranduil

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What's it all for if it goes unremembered? It's the art that leaves the mark. But to leave it, it must transcend. It must speak for itself. It must be true.

#black sails

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The Ministry of Time is very good!!!!!!!!!

#johis talks #the agony of having finished a book that no one else in your physical vicinity has read #I NEED TO YELL

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fitzjames/crozier/ross call that a. polarcule

#the terror

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Catch me on Ao3 promoting unsafe sex, huge age gaps, adultery, and blasphemy.

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really crazy how much i’ve imagined this fic. like it’s soooooo imagined you wouldn’t even believe. not writing it though

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the weakerthans, "sun in an empty room" // m*a*s*h, s11e16 "goodbye, farewell, and amen"

#mash

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as far as i'm concerned all gore is necessary

#The Ministry of Time (2024)

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writing is cool because the whole time you do it, you're thinking "is this shit? is this a steaming pile of hot garbage? is this the worst thing ever written by anyone?" and then you literally never find out

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Instructions for how to download a Youtube video using VLC on Reddit

Instructions for how to navigate the underworld on an Orphic gold tablet

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it rules to be a transgender writer because writing trans themes is easy as fuck. it's easy as fuck dude. trans themes basically write themselves. change is the fundamental motor of storytelling. guess what else is all about change bitch

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best of the onion

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the gay stewards society. is this anything

#the terror

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Grad school is lying to you. You can indulge fixations on obscure topics on your own time. You can sit in a library color-coding notes on articles printed from JSTOR for free. You can argue with dead philosophers in essay format whenever you like. Academia is a state of mind.

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youre an olympic level hater. i respect it.

they asked me to represent my country in the sport of hating i said no. i hate my country

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why are french people rude?

Ah well, the safest explanation when an entire country’s people are stereotyped as rude is that they have their own culture with different criteria for politeness than the ones you are used to. It’s probably easier for Americans to forget this than for the rest of the world, because they consume less foreign media than the rest of us (from literature in translation to foreign films) and are less exposed to aspects of foreign cultures that could inform them about different norms of politeness (online interactions happen in their own language and follow their own (anglo) social codes.) With this insular worldview it’s easy to take it for granted that American good manners are universal. They are not!

A very common gripe against American tourists in Paris is that they talk so loudly in public spaces, which is definitely rude here but I assume that in the US, people just have a different threshold for what constitutes ‘loud’ (I wonder if it is due to being used to having more space than Europeans). I also remember a discussion I had with one of my translation professors about the American concept of ‘active listening’ and how negatively it is perceived in France. It may be that in the US it is polite to make ‘listening noises’ at regular intervals while someone is speaking to you, ‘uh huh’, ‘right’, ‘yeah’, ‘really?’, and that you would perceive someone who just stands there silently as disinterested or thinking about something else. In France it is more polite to shut up and listen (with the occasional nod or ‘mmh’) and it’s rather seen as annoying and rude to make a bunch of useless noise while someone is speaking.

There are of course countless examples like that. The infamous rude waiters in Parisian cafés probably seem a lot more rude and cold to people who have a different food culture… People from other cultures might consider a waiter terrible at his job if he doesn’t frequently check on them to make sure they don’t wait for anything, but the idea that a meal is a pleasant experience rather than just a way to feed yourself (esp when eating out) means we like having time to chat and just enjoy our table for a while, so we don’t mind as much waiting to order or for the next course. French people would typically hate if an overzealous waiter took the initiative to bring the note once we’re done with our meal so we don’t have to wait for it, as it would be interpreted as “you’re done, now get out of my restaurant.”

The level of formality required to be seen as polite is quite high in France, which might contribute to French people being seen as rude by people with a more casual culture. To continue with waiters, even in casual cafés they will address clients with the formal you and conversely, and won’t pretend to be your friend (the fact that we don’t have the American tip culture also means they don’t feel the need to ingratiate themselves to you.) I remember being alarmed when a waitress in New York introduced herself and asked how I was doing. “She’s giving me her first name? What… am I supposed to with it? Use it?” It gave me some insight on why Americans might consider French waiters rude or sullen! It might also be more accepted outside of France to customise your dish—my brother worked as a waiter and often had to say “That won’t be possible” about alterations to a dish that he knew wouldn’t fly with the chef, to foreign tourists who were stunned and angry to hear that, and probably brought home a negative opinion of French waiters. In France where the sentiment in most restaurants is more “respect the chef’s skill” than “the customer is king”, people are more likely to be apologetic if they ask for alterations (beyond basic stuff) as you can quickly be seen as rude, even by the people you are eating with. 

And I remember reading on a website for learning English that the polite answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, thank you!” because it’s rude to burden someone you aren’t close to with your problems. In my corner of the French countryside the polite thing to do is to complain about some minor trouble, because saying everything is going great is perceived negatively, as boasting, and also as a standoffish reply that kind of shuts down the conversation, while grumbling about some problem everyone can relate to will keep it going. (French people love grumbling as a positive bonding activity!)

Basically, before you settle on the conclusion that people from a different place are collectively rude, consider that if you travel there and scrupulously follow your own culture’s social code of good manners, you might be completely unaware that you are being perceived as obnoxious, rude or unfriendly yourself simply because your behaviour clashes with what is expected by locals.

#last year in Barcelona i was very tired and at a queer neighbourhood party #and my friend introduced me to a bunch of his friends #at some point i accidentally defaulted to 'german greeting' (held out my hand to shake his) #and everybody looked at me like i was crazy #because it felt so rude (as though i was trying to distance myself from him) #we ended up all laughing about my german slip-up #but i had never thought of formality as something that could be perceived as rude until that moment

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ok francis rawdon moira crozier post: everyone’s always (rightly) repeating the “irish and middle born” line but i really don’t see talk about it beyond that — except maybe having him spit some irish gaelic while he fucks fitzjames in a fic, and i guarantee you that man would not have been a fluent irish speaker (see: efforts from both the english and from irish communities to prevent people from speaking irish). and as part of that i’d like to see more discussion of is francis’ betrayal of who he is and where he comes from.

he is irish. the famine has just begun. he spends his life attempting to rise through the ranks of, to be a successful arm of, the empire that has ensured his status as a second class citizen, his inability to speak his ancestral language, the genocide of his countrymen. francis has his assertive personality and his vocal objections and his challenges, but ultimately he’s betrayed the very essence of who he is and only does it further upon destroying himself with alcohol — because to the empire, what else would an irishman do?

and he has so little genuine self awareness about it. deep inside himself, in his subconscious, i’m sure he knows. but he could never begin to Truly know it within the conscious or to actually vocalize it. bc how do you even begin to acknowledge or make sense of this about your ENTIRE LIFE?

and ofc this parallels with james and with hickey. pretending to be something you’re not, betraying the very essence of what you are. hiding. he doesn’t know it but THAT is the basis of his initial resentment of those two: they’re betraying themselves.

because to him, at first, hickey is an irishman who has so fully committed to the betrayal he won’t even speak in a way that implies his origin. hickey thinks this double deception makes them comrades, but in reality, would francis really have had hickey punished As A Boy if not for their first exchange? would hickey have mocked francis’ irishness from the gallows if not for the failure of that disguise, this betrayal of a perceived countryman?

the full extent of james’ betrayal is hidden to francis until the cairn but he still sees it, and he sees himself in it. the obedience, the obsequience, the ambition, the admiration, (the queerness,)

so when james confesses his bastardry, his non englishness, his deception, even if francis did not now love him, how could he ever hold it against him? he’s done worse.

and, perhaps most significantly, paralleling that with silna. francis helping the empire to colonize and imperialize other places as ireland was. silna avoiding and almost rejecting her duty for nearly the entirety of the show, seeking shelter with and in some cases allying with the interlopers she despises and who have ruined her life. Tuunbaq Is Dead.

#GOOD SHIT #francis crozier #the terror