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if you've ever used the London Underground you might have noticed that it often gets uncomfortably hot. the reason for this is actually that its builders dug too greedily & too deep and as a result the trains are very close to the fires of hell. hope that helps.

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the most unexpected way to experience my save's first pink soup

as expected though the game crashed 3 min later

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Bad habits

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can you teach us how to say trans rights in old english

I.... have a lot to say about this actually. Get ready for an essay about translation and historical queerness.

So. I've been thinking about the best way to translate 'trans' for a while now. I used one word in a post from last summer but I don't really like it anymore. I've come up with a few options since then, but I'm not fully satisfied with any of them.

When I choose things to translate for this account, I generally try to choose things that I can translate without too much anachronism; that is, things that actually have OE translations. I don't mind bending the rules a bit (ie using the word for well/spring for sink, or grain cakes for mochi), but I generally keep those pretty simple. Following that ethos, ideally I could find a good word encapsulating queer gender identities in Anglo Saxon England. Unfortunately, our options are not exactly ideal.

Putting modern labels on people in the past is a tricky business. I have taken two classes that largely focused on this question and I still don't feel particularly well equipped to give any sort of definitive answer. My priorities are two somewhat contradictory ideas.

First, keep in mind that modern queer labels are social tools and conventions. Using them willy-nilly to describe the past can and will give you an inaccurate view of the past. Saying Eleanor Rykener (look her up!) is definitively a trans woman glosses over complexities of her life and experience, while extending a false sense of the age of the term 'trans' to a word and social category that is extremely modern. To me, saying she was a trans woman is far less interesting then actually considering how she and the people around her thought of her!

At the same time, I think examining the modern queer community's connection to the past is incredibly important to understand where we are now and where we are going. We always have been and will always be here. At the same time as I feel uncomfortable describing Eleanor Rykener as a trans woman, I see myself and my experiences as a trans person reflected in hers. I consider her an ancestor of mine, even if I don't want to think of her as explicitly trans. In Getting Medieval, Caroline Dinshaw sees her goal as queer historian as "making relationships with the past, relationships that form parts of our subjectivities and communities, [...] making affective connections, that it, across time" (pp 11-12), which really resonates with me. We just need to remember that connections are not the same as anachronistic labels. (Go read the intro to that book it's very good and much more readable than most queer theory)

All that being said, let's look at some Old English

One source of information about a third gender category is from Ælfric's glossary (a basic Latin-OE dictionary) for the translation of hermaphroditus, the Latin word for an intersex person (a super complicated word in its own right). These people certainly had a queer (in the sense of non-normative) gender, but I don't want to conflate them with our modern sense of transness. Plus, the words are weird and shitty. One is wæpenwifstre, in ME penis-woman; wæpen is literally weapon, but is often used to mean penis. There's also scritta/scrætta, which can also mean prostitute, and also maybe monster? Not a fan of those.

And then there's bæddel/bædling, which is... complicated. I know there are some transfemmes who do/did use it as a label, but I don't know the nuances of how and why, and it seems controversial enough that I don't want to throw it around. It shows up in OE texts only five times as a term for intersex people, effeminate (ie bottoming) men, and/or a third gender category. There's a lot of interesting inferences one could draw from its use, but we really don't have enough evidence to say anything conclusive. If you want to know more, see Religion and Trans Literature by David Wade and Between Medieval Men by David Clark. (there's also the whole other discussion of people thinking it's the origin of the word bad. I don't find the argument super convincing but whatever)

So, I'm not a fan of really any of those options. The other direction I could go in is making up a word. Disclaimer, I never do this sort of thing, so there is a good possibility that my construction doesn't make any sense.

I don't think a straight up calque would work that well, but perhaps a combination of cynd and wendan would work. The word gender is originally just referring to the grammatical concept (there are gender systems besides masculine/feminine! lots of them!), but the OE word for grammatical gender and sex are the same, (ge)cynd. Wendan does quite a few things, but it often means to move/change from one condition to another, which works well for my purposes. Cyndwendan would mean to gender-change, or transition, which could be conjugated as one needs; cyndwendednys (after a-wendednys) would be the noun form, a transition. The past participle cyndwended means transitioned, which could be used as a substantive adjective (ie a transgender person). Another option is wendancynd, meaning a changing sort of person or a person who changed.

Again, I don't ever make up words like this. @arachneedle (or anyone else!) I think you're better at this sort of grammatical nitty gritty than I am, do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

oh and rights is gerihta

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they love derpy :3

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I love Queer Housing listings where you can immediately tell it's about a week from descending into complete hellish chaos

the more therapy-speak is involved in defining the house's Values and Mission As A Community, the more I can already tell why the departing housemate is leaving

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how do you feel about Jinu's death?

That's a complicated question to answer, because it depends on how you mean.

Jinu's death is a narrative tool, and it's one I think was used well.

I think that his death was appropriate for the story that was being told! I felt terrible for Rumi - I still feel terrible for Rumi when I rewatch - because she had so clearly wanted to have a much more human idea of saving him come to fruition, but he's not human anymore (and I say this to mean: he doesn't think like a human anymore, "saving" has a completely different meaning for him). He died 400 years ago, and he's since been put through 400 years of being tortured by guilt and shame he has had no peace from, and no hope to ever escape from in the future. That he was able to grow to the point of doing something unselfish (the opposite of the very thing that landed him in this situation, the thing he has been stewing in for literal centuries thinking he could never be anything else) because of her, that he was able to let go and heal enough to HAVE a whole soul he could give to her... the fact that he was at peace in his last moment... the narrative did not surprise me, and I don't feel betrayed by the way it came to be.

Do I wish he had lived instead? I don't think that would have served the story any better, and I think it might even have hurt it a little. The ending wrapped up the way it should have- with a focus on Rumi, and her friendships with Mira and Zoey, and her relationship to her community (the young fans at the end). I think if Jinu had lived, it would have thrown off that focus. It would have pulled it sideways to individual romance, rather than community, in a movie whose whole message is about community.

Do I wish that she had not lost him? That's a different question. I don't want Rumi to lose anything, she deserves the world.

In universe, I think what happened to Jinu, from Jinu's POV, is better than he could ever have hoped at any point in the last 400 years. I think he was happy to have the chance to save her for saving him, and to be at peace. What happened to Jinu from Rumi's POV was rough, but she also hadn't really known him that long, or that well, especially compared to the other people in her life. Ultimately I think she'd find a way to come to terms with the idea that sometimes you have to be happy for people on their terms, not yours, even if it isn't what you wanted. This is common in animal care (caring for the animal AS THAT ANIMAL, not the animal you want it to be/mistake it to be), but I think it applies to caring about humans too. Caring for someone as the person they are, not who you want them to be. Like I said above, she may have wanted a human 'good ending' for him, but if he was happy with how it went... but I think it will still hurt her. We're human, stuff like that hurts us whether we understand or not.

Out of universe, I agree completely with the decision, it was the right one for the story they were telling.

in my heart of hearts, in fanfiction perhaps, I will see them again. I mean, what is a person if not their soul, and she's got his right at her fingertips in that sword. in a world like theirs, I'm sure something can be done with that. To the pen of an old school fandom writer, canon means nothing. Canon is simply the paint you get to choose how to apply to a million canvases if you want. I'm sure people will.

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Buff Rumi and da girlzzz lol

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there is no greater mystery than What Was That Deleted Video In My Youtube Playlist

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Listening to a podcast

"Let's take a word from our sponsor."

*Skip ahead a minute* "You can-"

*Skip ahead a minute* "Use code-"

*Skip ahead a minute* "300,000-"

*Skip ahead a minute* "300,000-"

*Skip ahead a minute* "T-shirts-"

*Skip ahead a minute* "Motherfuck-"

*Go back 15 seconds*

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KRV literally looks like a painting right now

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Just updated my Ao3 profile and realised it’s old enough to legally drive in the US. 😂

Got it in March 2010 and the user ID is four digits long.

Reblog with when you got your Ao3 account and how long your user ID is.

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DELAINEY HAYLES as CLAUDIA in Interview with the Vampire ↳ 2.02, Do You Know What It Means to Be Loved by Death

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compliments from girls go hard

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no one:  me a full 24 hours later: wait, does it look better like this???

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So I've just realized that I passed the 5000 gifs mark for this blog!!!! WOOHOOO!

I've done well over 700 gifsets and around 5000 individual gifs of Arcane alone. They're all done on Photoshop. Screencapped, edited, colored, sharpened. Hours and hours of time just spent on making gifs for everyone to enjoy, for free, and will always be for free.

Gifmaking can get pretty tedious... not only in making them, but also dealing with all the negativity and harassment that people tend to throw at us + looking down on us gifmakers (which is another topic itself ngl lol).

But I still find it fun. I do it because I love the show. And I will continue to do it purely out of that love.

It can take hours and even days to make gifsets. If you think it's easy, I highly encourage you to try it. Fandom seriously needs gifmakers back.

Not much to this post honestly. I just wanna celebrate being this dedicated to a sideblog, which has never really happened before in all my years of gifmaking haha. I am very lazy I swear lol

Finally, if you want to keep supporting the work I do, please do share and link this blog back. That's all I really ask for.

I just want more people to know that there's a blog that makes HQ Arcane gifs, so that they can enjoy the show that I love very dearly. While I did make this blog primarily for myself, I'd love to see more people enjoy them too!

There's really not much to this post other than me wanting to celebrate a milestone haha. Even if the show ended last year, I hope my love for Arcane (and CaitVi ofc!!!) will last ♡

Edit: OMG I FORGOT but thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has continued to follow, liked, scrolled through, used, reblogged, lurked, or commented positively on my gifs!!! You guys (especially the regulars who I see reblogging and adding funny and sweet tags all the time) seriously make the gifmaking process so much more fun and enjoyable! Thank you so much guys 🥰