The ramblings and insights of a traveler of the Multiverse: That is, the collective that is "real life" and the many realities witnessed through books, movies, TV shows, anime, music, etc.
(Practically nothing belongs to me, unless I'm the OP.... even then, pictures are probably still not mine.)
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a “woman.”
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like “BTW guess what happened, we’re all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concerned”
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all “what a miserable and greedy race”
but really they’re just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth - and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven
Just as an additional thought, we hear that women dwarves generally stay within the mountain and are a protected, guarded subset of the dwarves. There’s not many of them, so there’s an implication that women dwarves are too precious to be allowed out.
But what if this too is a mistranslation? What if the dwarves were talking to the Men and when asked “where are all your women?” they hit a wall. They whisper amongst themselves, and eventually come back with a question, “What’s a woman?” The Men are incredulous.
“Why, the members of your race that bear children, of course!“
More dwarven whispering.
They reach the conclusion that Men mean dwarves who are currently pregnant. Well! Of course those dwarves are currently safe within the mountain, well cared for and generally loathe to travel until the child is born. The Men take this to mean that all dwarven women are discouraged from traveling, and that their primary purpose is childbearing. Dwarves find this a satisfactory outcome, especially with the way Men treat their women, and so even when the misunderstanding becomes clear to them they never correct it.
I like these. I like these a lot.
@silentlycrazy ’s tags because they’re a great addition to this.
i absolutely love this whole post.
This kinda implies that making a child and raising a child are considered two different crafts if he’s going back to adventuring after just one year. Same as how some might specialize in refining raw material, while others make things out of the stuff that has already been refined to some extent.
I’m picturing a Childcrafter’s Guild whose craft consists of raising children to such an age that they might start an apprenticeship, and finding suitable mentors to introduce the children to. They also advise and assist any of their people who are attempting such a project on their own and provide classes as needed. Nothing good comes of anyone attempting a complex craft without proper instruction after all.
Since children are seen as something of a communal project the concept of ‘parents’ is another one that doesn’t have a clear translation into dwarven culture. Eventually they figure out that while the literal translation is “the one who brought you into the world”, functionally it’s used to refer to a relationship similar to that of Master and Apprentice, except for some strange reason that relationship is assigned at birth with no attempt made at checking for compatibility.
“The entire British museum is an active crime scene” - John Oliver
[image description: two pictures, one above the other. The first image shows a statue originally from the Acropolis in Athens, now in the British Museum. The statue is a column shaped like a woman. It is labelled London. The bottom image is from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, showing the other five matching column/statues, with a space for the missing statue pointedly left open. This picture is shot from above and is labelled Athens.
image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it
/end id]
For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.
Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“
Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.
Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.
There’s no chance that the British Museum will return any of this in the next generation. It’s not up to the curators at the British Museum; they don’t get any say in this. The board of governors of the British Museum is made up of old posh English people who genuinely believe that the Empire was awesome and England has a perfect right to everything in the British Museum. They have set policies about what can and can’t be removed from the collection, and according to those policies nothing of any historical or monetary value can be given away or sold. And they actively promote the idea that their predecessors had a perfect right to loot the cultural heritage of the world, and that the museum has a perfect right to keep it forever. The only way to get anything out of the British Museum and back to its rightful place would be to completely replace the entire board of the museum with new people who think completely differently. And that’s not happening any time soon, alas.
By the way, the British argument that Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for the antiquities……. Greece has 206 archaeological museums. It’s not only incredibly demeaning as an argument, it’s also straight out false and misleading.
One thing (and with the massive caveat of I don’t disagree with the above in the slightest): the Board of Trustees isn’t like that. They’re not all white, they’re not all rich, and they’re not all English. By and large they’re academics. I was speaking to them the other week with regards to repatriation when I visited and they’re actually very much all for it (bar one or two exceptions…looking at you George) and are working on things. A group of 5 of them I can confirm actively loathe Elgin and the marbles room. The problem lies with the British Museum Act of 1968 (hereafter referred to as BMA68) which was a law created by the government to prevent anything within the BM, which the government owns but wants very little do to with unless you’re trying to repatriate fyi, being removed in the “national interest”. Repatriation is, annoyingly, illegal in the case of the contents of the BM. So the Board have been trying to change this by putting pressure in various areas to get the laws changed, and the government screws them by enforcing term limits for serving on the board and then trying to stack the board in their favour to prevent further action. It’s a game of politics and the government do not want to give up BMA68 at all.
I know we like to categorise everyone we’re up against in the fight for repatriation as “old, white, rich guys” but it’s not helpful when it is decidedly not the case. We need to be mad at the right people and focusing on efforts to change this ridiculous law. At this time, supporting projects like the International Training Partnership, which is the BM’s way of building a network of curators and training them so organisations like the British Government can’t say “hurr durr they can’t look after their artefacts” because actually they can, we trained them ourselves. The network of curators also allows them to build mounting international pressure. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pressure is building now, I promise you.
“We need to be mad at the right people” is the crux of SO MANY THINGS
Thank you Lottie, as always.
So the problem isn’t even the people who run the museum, who are after all museum people and want museum things to be done well and respectfully, but the government, who want the museum to remind everyone of the time before they made their entire country a laughingstock.
I’m well aware that I’m reading way too much into a kids’ movie, but I think it’s very funny that the genie just implicitly upset the entire geopolitical landscape to grant Aladdin’s wish. He didn’t ask to convincingly fake being a prince he asked to be a prince so Ababwa is just. a thing now I guess. And despite how the characters act in the ending Jafar never actually had the authority to divest Aladdin of that position, so there’s probably still a brand spankin’ new country still just waiting out in the dessert, technically ruled by Aladdin(’s newly conjured royal parents?) unless it got folded into Agrabah after the marriage or something.
On that note, despite not having the power to un-prince Aladdin, Jaffar actually did wish to become the Sultan, and then never actually, like, died. So I guess that by the end of the movie Jasmine is technically, politically speaking no longer royalty but Aladdin/Ali Ababwa still very much is.
Agrabah is an occupied state.
Buddy I am very happy to inform you that there is a Chatroom Thread devoted to these very implications on SpaceBattles and I’d be happy to share it with you if interested
Oh good there’s other people whose brainrot resonates with mine
Stage-Toph: “I see everything that you see, except I don’t ‘see’ like you do. I release a sonic wave from my mouth.” *elongated scream* “There! I got a pretty good look at you.”
but the LOOK on Toph’s FACE it is the best thing E V E R R R
#there is no way in hell I could ever forget about this who do you take me for
Okay but I also love this scene because the way this play was written and cast tells us two really important (and hilarious) things about the way people (specifically people in the Fire Nation) perceive Toph-
1. Although they know she’s blind, no one actually has any idea how her seismic sense works
2. No one who’s fought her is willing to admit they got their ass beat by a 12-year-old girl who doesn’t clear five feet and weighs 95 pounds soaking wet.
hazbin hotel pisses me off because the concept itself really isn’t that bad but it falls short in reality due to the incurable curse of Being Made By Vivziepop
“satan’s daughter believes sinners have a chance of being redeemed despite how strict and unforgiving heaven is to those who have fallen” interesting. has potential. “there’s a dick joke every seven seconds and almost every plot point is wrapped up within one episode” STOOOOOOPPPPPPP ✋✋✋✋ ENOUGH
you’d think a muppet Sherlock Holmes would cast Kermit as Holmes and Miss Piggy as Watson based on body type, but no. You’d be wrong. Holmes is Miss Piggy and Watson is Kermit and you know, you KNOW I am right
can someone who can draw muppets help me out here…I can see it so clearly
Instead of a swear jar, my friend group has an I’m fine jar. If you say you’re fine, you pay a dollar. We do not have a swear jar as we would lose all our money. So now I imagine the bats adventures with the Im fine jar.
—————
Jason: So, Tim, how are you?
Tim: I’m… okay.
Jason: Fuck you, Timmy! I’m one dollar away from being able to buy a limited edition novel!
—————
Tim: I will destroy that stupid fucking jar if it’s the last thing I do.
Bruce: I’ll help.
Tim, the hypocrite: No. You need to share your emotions if you want to enjoy your old age.
Bruce: I’m 45!
—————
Alfred: We have created an I’m okay jar as well.
Tim: THIS IS A DICTATORSHIP!
Bruce: I thought I was the dictator.
Dick: You’re the figure head. Alfred has always been in charge.
The ramblings and insights of a traveler of the Multiverse: That is, the collective that is "real life" and the many realities witnessed through books, movies, TV shows, anime, music, etc.
