#to the original cultures

[heyclickadee]

Someone drop Phee in the middle of the Smithsonian or the British Museum and let her go to town.

[spiderbae2319]

We don’t talk about Leia killing Jabba enough. Her grandmother and father were born into slavery. Her blood was that of the desert sand and the shackles of bondage. Leia was never more a Skywalker than the day she strangled her slave master with the very chains he used to bind her. The daughter of Anakin Skywalker was the one who killed Tatooine’s most notorious slaver, and I find that really beautiful.

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[yuribeam]

(common superstitions from the perspective of a USAmerican- would love to hear superstitions from other regions and cultures!)

(follow the most often when the situation arises, or believe in the strongest)

[eldritchdyke]

Every remake of a game should come with a copy of the game it is remaking that is compatible with modern hardware but otherwise untouched and I'm not even exaggerating this should be mandated by law. If you're going to attempt to recreate a piece of art you have to give people access to its original context otherwise it becomes the only context and makes the previous version simply a superceded product

[violetwolfraven]

The funniest thing in the world to me is when people write mermaids that are bothered by humans eating fish. Like do you think fish don’t eat each other? The ocean is full of little freaks that will eat whatever or whoever the fuck will fit in their mouths. If the mermaids haven’t been eating fish this whole time what do you think they’ve been eating? If the answer is humans, that doesn’t make it any less funny. They’ll eat the species that looks like the top half of them but won’t eat a species that looks like the bottom half? Peak comedy.

[thecoramaria]

Fanfic readers trying to find another fic exactly like the last one they read:

[cleocartwrightphotography]

Free Falling

[unpretty]

society is spiraling and culture is a wasteland. i know this because i looked and most people prefer things that are fun and easy, making fun and easy things extremely popular. this is the first time that's ever happened, historically.

[buried-in-stardust]

打鐵花 (da2tie3hua1; struck iron fireworks) is a traditional folk firework that began in Henan and Shanxi, first arising in Queshan county, Henan and later circulating through the whole country. It had first appeared during the Northern Song dynasty, and was most popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

For Queshan struck iron fireworks, a two-layer pergola is built and covered with willow branches for performances, under which the molten iron is struck up with two willow sticks to create a rain of fire.

[eng by me + edited an ad out]

(On top of the information in the video, I have some more about its recent history under the cut.)

*Also, a note about one of the subtitles: I realized later that "going into battle without a shield" actually just meant going shirtless. I was only confused about this phrasing while translating because she didn't go shirtless, although that is for obvious reasons

Queshan struck iron fireworks had almost been lost before Yang Jianjun unearthed it again in 1988. It had almost died out in the early years of the Republic of China being established, after which there had only been three performances until 1988: 1952, 1956, 1962. Yang Jianjun had seen the 1956 performance as a 7-8 year old and later on as the director of a cultural centre, began digging up the skill and its history. In the process, he became an apprentice to Li Wanfa, who had been the last head of the Queshan Struck Iron Fireworks Society. He practised with sand and water, learning of its historical origin, its ancestral inheritors, craftsmanship and performance arts, but didn't touch the real thing until 1988. Through Yang Jianjun's efforts and investment, the first struck iron fireworks performance in more than 25 years took place in Nanshan Square (then a deserted area) in Queshan county.

Queshan struck iron fireworks are different from other struck iron fireworks in that it requires a wide area to perform, whereas others only needed a wall or could be hit straight up into the air, and it costs much more money to set up.

The names of inheritors are difficult to trace, and can only be traced back to the Qing dynasty during the Qianlong period, making Yang Jianjun a sixth-generation inheritor, and Jiang Xunqian (OP) the first woman and a seventh-generation inheritor.

[muffinlance]

I'm barely to the massacre and I can already tell I'm going to be screaming at every this-makes-no-sense decision made by the writers (your temple is under violent attack, and you evacuate the kids... to a barely enclosed corner in a prominent temple room? Instead of to the hundreds of sky bison that were highlighted as flying in earlier? Why?) (And Aang left to clear his head and think instead of to run from his duties? That's such a less compelling plot arc?) (And the show had him briefly monologue about being a goofy kid who loves pies and his friends instead of using the extended temple scene to show any of that? Didn't want to pay more child actors, did you, Netflix?)

Yeah I'm just. Going to be screaming at the screen instead of enjoying this. Different decisions aren't necessarily bad, but when those decisions seem to be in the direction of "show a man burning alive before we even get to the on-screen massacre" this is just... not the show for me.

[fluentisonus]

there are many retellings & adaptional choices i really don't like when it comes to writing new stories about old myths, and that i feel are boring or ignoring interesting points & implications or unfamiliar with the topic or ancient cultural context in a way that rubs me the wrong way. BUT the way some people on here talk about myth retellings as if retelling them is in and of itself a bad thing, or that retellings are somehow 'staining' the 'meaning' of the 'original myth', and Particularly posts that just seem to be hating on the people writing these books not for any real constructive point but just because they think Change Is Bad is going to make me feel bonkers insane fr. come on guys

[cybergus]

June Nocturnal Walks (Mexico City 2023), by Abelardo Ojeda.

My Street Photoblog

[transmultiphobia]

"I've been thinking recently about the first ever trans space I was ever actually a part of, Bigender.net. My experience was primarily with these forums in ~2009, but I came back to peek in later years, and am trying to regain access now. There's a lot of bigender cultural things there that would probably never be known about or archived somewhere easily accessible unless someone talked about what they saw there, and I wanted to share some things.

+ A Lot of people used two or more names that they switch up, use in different contexts, and that often align with specific genders. Names are essentially changed like pronouns are for many people.

+ Most bigender people seemed to experience some kind of fluidity or flux of gender, and it was rarer for people to feel like 100% both at all times. This seems to be more often where people label themselves androgynes.

+ The language of "en femme" and "en homme" was used to describe both how one was presenting (similar to the modern boymoding/girlmoding) and to how one felt their gender on a specific day, which is what makes it different from girlmode/boymode. It wasn't just about presentation regardless of gender, but presentation as related to gender.

+ Plurality became so common over the years as a framework of bigender expression that a whole subforum for plurality emerged on these forums. Lots of plural bigender folks would experience having a "girl side" and a "boy side" in a dual system.

+ There were just as many bigender folks who experienced a neutral/other/middle gender experience besides just being male/female. It really wasn't limited to 2 genders, even if at the time it was very male/female bigender focused."

Aster, Bigender Culture

[obobro]

[originalhaffigaza]