#also very appropriate for this time of the year

[jackslocket]

IL PREDESTINATO VINCE.

(inspired by @scdria's super awesome monaco poster)

[royalarchivist]

I say this in the kindest way possible, but I think this style of prose is more appropriate for a personal account rather than an update account. I have no idea who's being talked about half the time. 🥲

[ Tumblr meme via @mikaikaika ]

[hand-face-chan]

I'm only halfway though Hbomberguy's new video and I dont know if this is a universal experience but my main horrified takeaway from hbomb's plagiarism video so far is that one of my highschools TAUGHT AN ENTIRE CLASS OF 13 YEAR OLDS TO PLAGIARISE. LIKE, ON PURPOSE.

I ended up moving to a much better highschool, but my first highschool essentially taught us to "write" essays by reading what someone else had written and then write what they said again but putting it "into your own words". Which in practice was teaching us to change, for example, "the works of Shakespeare were regarded by many as the first popular art form" to "Shakespeare's plays have been said by some to be the first example of popular media". One teacher actually told us that the process of writing an essay was "saying what the people you've researched have said, in a way where it sounds like you said it".

Like. The tactics that actual plagiarists use to hide the fact that they were stealing. An actual teacher tried to teach me to do that.

[quasi-normalcy]

.

[batri-jopa]

Quite recently I realised that whenever I hear or see a word "always" it sounds in my brain more like polish "za każdym razem" (that is "every single time") instead of what I've been taught ("zawsze" is more like "now and forever"). Would you please tell me what it really means?

[marcmorrigan]

my heart's crippled by the vein that i keep on closing / you cut me open

OCs, they/them for seyva and he/him for rauel! bloodless version + original concept sketch and some notes under the cut

heavily inspired by carrie + vintage pulp novel cover art... i didnt end up emulating the style much, but i think i got the vibes okay!!! yayyy blood

[bunnihearted]

📚🎀💕

[emdotcom]

I have a wild, new, & bold suggestion for a tumblr feature:

When a tag is recommended or trending. & It previews some posts IN that tag, (showing you thumbnails of art, for instance,) then maybe.

Clicking on that post. Should show you that fucking post.

[dontwanderoff]

im considering making percy jackson the next class novel in my class but like, do i think the kids will actually enjoy it and that they're definitely the right age for it OR am i just wanting to do it because i want to read it???

[plexippusangel]

Once again I am feeling very touch starved right before I hang out with my VERY pretty friend who I can't date on account of how I would be very bad for her in particular despite how much I adore her on every level. I have to keep a grip on myself. Appropriate amount of hugs and the like. I will be sooo so normal about this.

[cave-monkey]

I think one of my favorite thinks about LMK is that Sun Wukong genuinely feels stupid old sometimes in the sense I am genuinely unsure if he knows the difference between a 2yo, a 12yo, and a 20yo. All the characters are fully grown adults, but Sun Wukong is over here treating it like a wacky preteen adventure show because he has no clue. MK probably told him his age once and Mr. Great Sage straight blue-screened for a second doing mental calculus trying to remember what that means for mortals and he still hasn't figured it out. Old enough to be away from his parents some of the time, sure, obviously, but like...only two decades? That's not very many. How many of those do humans usually get?

When he's not tossing it on the mental pile of 'probably not important' he's trying to figure it out from context like a name you don't want to admit you forgot. This has cleared up exactly nothing.

[pepprs]

misery despair suffering etc etc

[cowardstiel]

11:30pm night b4 my bday (✌️)and i’m holding back tears bc i’ll never be 22 and listening to taylor swift 22 again. now i really will be feeling like i’m 22 which is still a slay but i’m just lamenting the passage of time ig

[muu-kun]

muu, why did you turn out this way.

[deadpresidents]

"What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 millions people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn't carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn't paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."

-- "How Far Would He Go", TIME Magazine's interviews with Donald Trump, April 30, 2024.

I know we're saturated in coverage of Trump and it's easy (and probably better for our mental health) to usually ignore most of the articles when we see them, especially since he's so full of shit and infuriating. But it's also important to recognize that he is going to be the Republican nominee for President and he could absolutely be elected in November, and if you thought his first term was scary and dangerous, you need to understand that in a second term he's going to have people around him that are better prepared and VERY willing to do the crazy shit that he wants to do to this country. They aren't even hiding the fact that they are seeking vengeance against political opponents whom they feel have wronged them, and are ready to fundamentally dismantle the democratic foundations that are barely holding this country together after nearly 250 years.

Just look at what Trump says about the people who he incited to attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and halt the peaceful transfer of power that has happened every four years since 1789:

"Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. 'I call them the J-6 patriots,' he say. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, 'Yes, absolutely.' As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor."

Oh, and please note that Trump -- a former President of the United States and possible future President of the United States -- said on the record in these interviews with TIME: "There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country and that can't be allowed either." We are at a point where political leaders are outright saying that in this country again, and it's because of Donald Trump.

So, take the time to recognize that Trump is straight-up telling us the country we're going to be living in if he wins again in November. And understand that your vote matters -- and WHO you vote for matters -- because, as I've been saying for years now, ELECTIONS HAVE FUCKING CONSEQUENCES.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The thing with the Mari Lwyd, though, is that it's being... I don't know, 'appropriated' is the wrong word, but certainly turned into something it isn't.

Thing is, this is a folk tradition in the Welsh language, and that's the most important aspect of it. I feel partly responsible for this, because I accidentally became a bit of an expert on the topic of the Mari Lwyd in a post that escaped Tumblr containment, and I clearly didn't stress it strongly enough there (in my defence, I wrote that post for ten likes and some attention); but this is a Welsh language tradition, conducted in Welsh, using Welsh language poetic forms that are older than the entire English language, and also a very specific sung melody (with a very specific first verse; that's Cân y Fari). It is not actually a 'rap battle'. It's not a recited poem. It is not any old rhyme scheme however you want.

It is not in English.

Given the extensive and frankly ongoing attempts by England to wipe out Welsh, and its attendant cultural traditions, the Mari is being revived across Wales as an act of linguistic-cultural defiance. She's a symbol of Welsh language culture, specifically; an icon to remind that we are a distinct people, with our own culture and traditions, and in spite of everyone and everything, we're still here. Separating her from that by removing the Welsh is, to put it mildly, wildly disrespectful.

...but it IS what I'm increasingly seeing, both online and in real world Mari Lwyd festivals. She's gained enormous pop-culture popularity in recent years, which is fantastic; but she's also been reduced from the tradition to just an aesthetic now.

So many people are talking/drawing about her as though she's a cryptid or a mythological figure, rather than the folk practice of shoving a skull on a stick and pretending to be a naughty horse for cheese and drunken larks. And I get it! It's an intriguing visual! Some of the artwork is great! But this is not what she is. She's not a Krampus equivalent for your Dark Christmas aesthetic.

I see people writing their own version of the pwnco (though never called the pwnco; almost always called some variant on 'Mari Lwyd rap battle'), and as fun as these are, they are never even written in the meter and poetic rules of Cân y Fari, much less in Welsh, and they never conclude with the promise to behave before letting the Mari into the house. The pwnco is the central part to the tradition; this is the Welsh language part, the bit that's important and matters.

Mari Lwyd festivals are increasingly just English wassail festivals with a Mari or two present. The Swansea one last weekend didn't even include a Mari trying to break into a building (insert Shrek meme); there was no pwnco at all. Even in the Chepstow ones, they didn't do actual Cân y Fari; just a couple of recited verses. Instead, the Maris are just an aesthetic, a way to make it look a bit more Welsh, without having to commit to the unfashionable inconvenience of actually including Welsh.

And I don't really know what the answers are to these. I can tell you what I'd like - I'd like art to include the Welsh somewhere, maybe incorporating the first line of Cân y Fari like this one did, to keep it connected to the actual Welsh tradition (or other Welsh, if other phrases are preferred). I'd like people who want to write their version of the pwnco to respect the actual tradition of it by using Cân y Fari's meter and rhyme scheme, finishing with the promise to behave, and actually calling it the pwnco rather than a rap battle (and preferably in Welsh, though I do understand that's not always possible lol). I'd like to see the festivals actually observe the tradition, and include a link on the booking website to an audio clip of Cân y Fari and the words to the first verse, so attendees who want to can learn it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible any of that is, of course! But that's what I'd like to see.

I don't know. This is rambly. But it's something I've been thinking about - and increasingly nettled by - for a while. There's was something so affirming and wonderful at first about seeing the Mari's climb into international recognition, but it's very much turned to dismay by now, because she's important to my endangered culture and yet that's the part that everyone apparently wants to drop for being too awkward and ruining the aesthetic. It's very frustrating.