frolic - Tumblr blog

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Someone has made fake London Underground signs, and whoever did it is a ruddy genius.

http://imgur.com/a/lUWTG

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That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at dawn, and felt like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.

Gustave Flaubert (via briefquotes)

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WHEN MY FAMILY JOKES ABOUT THE LENGTH OF TIME THAT I'VE BEEN IN SCHOOL

credit: Katelyn

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FIGURING OUT POST-GRAD PLANS

credit: justaregularanon

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So… this is a thing I was talking about the other day, because these are both valid points that kind of make me sad when taken together. Because…

1. Quidditch is such the most real sport. And it’s some of the most strategic, athletic, quality entertainment I have ever seen.

2. That being said, as someone with little to no hand eye coordination and a pathological inability to engage in competitive team sports, I have found it very difficult to participate in the quidditch community.

It’s a new sport, and it’s growing, but it’s still so small that there doesn’t seem to be much room for spectators. What I think happened, and I could be wrong, is that a lot of the hardcore Harry Potter fans that the original poster alluded to showed up in the beginning, did not in fact like sports much, and ended up wandering off never to return. So no one followed up on trying to draw crowds, because if you couldn’t hook the fans, who were you going to hook? Well, people who are sports fans actually.

Because there are other fans, like me and the original poster apparently, who like Harry Potter and sports. In my experience though, because we are not large in numbers, there’s no infrastructure in place to facilitate fans. The IQA has made leaps and bounds in the last year when it comes to keeping the website updated and letting people know when events are happening. But if you’re not on a team or friends with people who are on a team, there is not yet a large enough fan network to really facilitate spectatorship. I watch a lot of quidditch online, I’ve been to a couple regional tournaments, and I made the trip out to Orlando last year for the cup, and while yes, I enjoyed the matches, I still always felt a bit… unwelcome?

It feels awkward to phrase it that way, because I have never met a quidditch player I did not like. Neither would I disparage the warmth and camaraderie that is apparent within the community. But the community is so tight that not being associated with a team turns the spectators into outsiders. I don’t think this is any fault of the teams or the players, but quidditch at its current size and popularity is not yet a spectator sport. And it should be. Because have you seen it?

Maybe the players don’t want or need to be watched. They clearly love what they do, and the IQA seems to be managing fine without tons of fans or ad revenue. Personally, however, I would love to see the sport turn into something I can go watch in the bleachers surrounded by fellow lovers of the game instead of a hoard of the players’ closest family, friends and teammates. Not that they can’t love the game too. It just always feels like I’m crashing a particularly skilled game of post Thanksgiving pick up football.

So in the name of not complaining without offering a solution: I think that if quidditch wants to attract spectators that aren’t going to sit on their phones and complain about being bored, it also needs to start marketing beyond the quidditch clubs that already exist. I recognize the challenges associated with this endeavor. Yes, Harry Potter fan sites advertise the World Cup, but I think most fans know about quidditch by now, and save for the ostracizing effect of the clique mentality would be into quidditch if they wanted to be. I’d like to see it expand beyond that.

Has anyone tried recruiting regular sports fans as spectators? I know I’ve seen players scooped from other sports, but what about scooping fans? You don’t have to love Harry Potter to love quidditch. Thanks to fandom stigma, the marketing is sure to be met with skeptical looks and raised eyebrows, hence the difficulty, but if some people were persistent enough to get non-fans to play quidditch, surely we could be persistent enough to get non-fans to watch it too.

This may have gotten a little long and rambly and become only vaguely related to whatever I was commenting on originally, but it’s just a humble suggestion in the hopes that maybe one day loving quidditch won’t feel as if it has to be from afar.

I said this on Facebook about a year ago, but seeing the recent “lol, sports are stupid” attitude on tumblr, I gotta say it again.

As both a Harry Potter enthusiast (and that’s putting it EXTREMELY mildly) and a sports fan, I get very annoyed when people say they’d watch Quidditch if it were real.

You’re lying.

Stop it.

No, you wouldn’t.

You’d sit up in the stands with broomsticks and balls flying around your head texting your other friends who don’t like sports

"idk. i think we r winning. im so booored. if 1 of these idiots ever catches the snitch, u wanna hang?"

[frolic]

I am sorry the crazy Texas weather made this not a thing again. =(

I have not put on a hat, coat, gloves, scarf or boots in 2 days. I will not have to put any of those things on today either. I like having this break from the snow and windchills. Also I have seen the mission control center at NASA and it was beautiful.

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I think it's nice that Voldemort always waits until the end of the School year to try and kill Harry.

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my American History professor at uni accused me of plagiarizing because I used the word "jocular," so I went to his office hours and proceeded to conjugate Latin verbs with English cognates until he stopped making assumptions about what his students do in their free time

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Post-apocalyptic Captain America.

Reblogged because I'm pretty sure I do battle with this guy every time I get on I35.

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So... this is not a good thing. Or a thing that I have really figured out how to change yet. But I just realized that as much as I support positive self image and teaching women to feel good about themselves, reading stuff like this makes me personally feel shitty. Because somehow I escaped a lot of this cultural bullshit, and I didn't body monitor or self-objectify. I mean, maybe occasionally? But it was realllly rare, and didn't start until long after most women I've talked to started to experience it. And now, the more I read things like this, the more they make me feel unnatural. Like by actually having a positive self image I am somehow betraying womankind. And it makes me start to body monitor, and worry, and now... I do it far more often than I'm comfortable with. Not because I am trying to be a sex object for men, but because I am subconsciously trying to understand what it is like to be a "normal" woman. And that's unhealthy too.

I know we need to talk about it, for those women out there who weren't as lucky as I was, but... when I realized, I thought it was worth mentioning. It sounds like I'm the minority, but social justice so often tries to stick up for the minorities too. I just don't know how one would go about doing that without ignoring the plight of the majority in this situation - which I would never condone. There is stuff to be said here about utilitarianism and media influence and diffusive injustice, I just don't know what it is yet.

The Sexy Lie, Caroline Heldman at TEDxYouth@SanDiego

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Officially on my sightseeing list. =)

So in celebration of the reveal of the cover of City of Heavenly Fire, i decided to pay a visit to Blackfriars Bridge, especially considering today is my last day in London! So i went and walked around day dreaming about Jem, Tessa and Will. And i saw that sign! Needless to say it MADE MY DAY! Hahaha @iamfandom I have mad respect for you. When did you put that sign up? How long has it been there undisturbed? Has cassandraclare seen this? ^_^ 

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So, um.... these are really pretty, but not really accurate, and in fact a little offensive. By which I mean we're meant to assume Ancient China, Ancient Greece, and the Pre-Islamic Middle East didn't have styles that changed with the times while Europe and the Americas clearly did?

More importantly, I don't pretend to know much about the details of European style throughout history, but Jasmine's outfit is absolutely the last thing a 'princess' would have worn in Pre-Islamic Arabia. Or Post-Islamic Arabia for that matter. Because Aladdin didn't take place in Pre-Islamic Arabia. At all. If you listen closely, the Sultan is going "Allah forbid!" all over the place.

My compliments to the artist's talent, bit if someone is going to call these drawings "accurate" they should probably check their facts first before pandering to pervasive orientalism.

Disney Princesses In Accurate Period Costume.

sheltymops:

SLEEPING BEAUTY (1485).

POCAHONTAS (17TH CENTURY POWAHTAN). 

CINDERELLA (MID 1860’S)

JASMINE (PRE-ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST)

SNOW WHITE (16TH CENTURY GERMANY).

ARIEL (1890’S)

BELLE (1770’S FRENCH COURT FASHION).

CLARIE HUMMEL

Megara (Ancient Greece)

Mulan (Ancient China)

Tiana (1920’s)

Rapunzel (18th Century)

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WHAT I WISH MY THESIS WAS REALLY ABOUT

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This picture is perfection.

Merkel: *not amused*

Obama: Yeah... I figured.

Credit: Al-Jazeera

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Well have I got the place for you... http://www.dickslastresort.com/

one time i was reading about maid cafes in japan and some have spots for tsundere maids where youre paid to insult the customer and that is what id like to do

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I cannot be the first person to discover this...

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Best.Study.Drink.EVER

[frolic]

Ankara, Turkey