#why can’t people like her music & leave it at that…..she is not a feminist deity lmao

[rollercoasterwords]

ok top 5 least favorite parts of that article lol:

1. taylor sings on her tour even when she’s stressed!! (she did have to reschedule one night after a girl died bc of unsafe conditions. taylor was so sad 💔)

2. girls have been told that our natural feminine interests, like love and glitter, are silly. but if we monetize those things, then more “female art” gets made! #feminism

3. horcruxes, infinity stones, gandalf

4. i thought about bringing up the fact that taylor’s career never actually died or even suffered that greatly, but then i decided not to, because what matters is that she felt canceled

5. “female rage”

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. I just find it gross how Persephone never got the choice to tell anyone (besides "Chiron") about her assault? Eros prodded it out of her, Hera "touched" her and figured it out (then forced Hephaestus to SEE the actual act), Psyche found out and was about to tell everyone else until happenstance stopped it, and Hades, the man who is praised for "respecting her boundaries", went against those boundaries to spy on her then forced her to tell him. Even that choice was ripped away from her.

2. Rachel could have ripped off Mamma Mia down to the plot and ABBA musical numbers and it'd still be more accurate to mythology than whatever she's doing instead. Hell, it'd force her to actually set it in Greece instead of /ITALY/. The supposed GREEK myth expert over here!

3. What's gross about the Eris thing is what is it saying exactly? It's a "curse" to have less than pleasant emotions? All that's telling RS' audience of young girls is that they what, can't have normal emotions and have to be "perfect" all the time? IDK, it sees awfully easy for Persephone to be "kind" when she never faces any actual consequences for her actions and has everything provided for her that the 99% of us will never get. It's such a privilege worldview to sell as "feminist"/"empowering"

4. Something I feel like RS fell flat one was when hades said Aphrodite had half Olympus around her finger. Hera doesn’t like her, hades hasn’t helped her, Ares is ready to leave her for Persephone, I haven’t seen anyone other than Eros help her. She slept with Zeus to get her son out of trouble, but I haven’t seen anyone actually treat the goddess as she is. 

5. is that supposed to be a meta comment by rachel about how people critique persephone being "boring" because of her lack of dark traits? bc people love a good, sweet character, the LO issue with persephone is rachel kept insisting she's this ~complex~ goddess only to blame eris for persephone's one negative trait because she didnt actually want a complex character, she wants persephone to be her bland self inert who gets horny induced rages for the ~aesthetic~ but is perfect the rest of the time.

6. the fact persephone's entire personality and goals is just the doing of others is like .. such a weird self own. rachel somehow took a goddess with admittedly lacking characterization in mythology and made her so devoid of anything to her she had to write in a gaggle of goddesses trying to scrap together a a flimsy excuse of a personality for her to even try and make sense of the lack of development she's given her. how is that even possible to unwrite a character like this and publish it??

7. where's that gif from twilight where the blonde lady threw a baby into the fire because that's what I want to do to baby persephone 💀 apologize to the roses that were wasted to make that thing 💀

8. Why does baby Persephone look like a mandrake from Harry Potter lmao. does Rachel know those thinks are ugly and can kill you.

9. It's kinda funny Hades' expressions when he saw Persephone in the party because when he asked who was she he looked like he's about to sneeze and then he looks like he's getting a heart attack instead of falling in love at first sight or whatevs

10. I stopped reading LO a while ago because of the characterization of Thanatos, who's always been my favorite Greek deity to learn about (ignoring the fact that webtoon got boring for me in general).  Throughout the (minimal) myths he's in, he's shown as fair and kind, but also not very emotional (seeing as he's, well, death & being emotional would interfere with being neutral).  Idk if this makes any sense I just always get really attached to death deities so lo thanatos makes me sad :(

[amandajoyce118]

Friday Five: Women In History

Think of this Friday Five as a list of five women I wish Timeless had the chance to do episodes about. Why? Because it’s the last Friday of Women’s History Month. In honor of all the women who made history, I’m spotlighting five who often get overlooked this week. These are women who don’t get taught about in schools because, instead, we learn about their male counterparts. Or, these are women who had a big influence on a particular market, but few people know their story.

Five: Zelda Fitzgerald

I thought I’d start off with a woman that people are probably slightly familiar with, but maybe don’t know her full story. If her name sounds familiar, but you can’t place where you know her, that’s because she’s the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you went to high school in the U.S., or studied American Lit at all, you probably read at least one of his books, like The Great Gatsby. What you might not know is that Zelda was as good as, if not a better writer than, her husband.

Her husband regularly wrote down things she said when recounting stories to friends, stole her journal, and all around copied her work. She “inspired” all of his heroines. So, if you actually like his writing, chances are, you really like Zelda’s. She was trapped in a loveless marriage. He cheated on her, but wouldn’t allow her to have relationships with other men. He also attempted to drive her to a nervous breakdown so he could have her institutionalized. All around, not a great guy there.

Zelda actually got an offer to have her journals published at one point, but because of her husband, she couldn’t. She retaliated by publicly reviewing his writing, penning, “plagiarism begins at home.”

Four: Andree Borrel

A lot of posts have gone around tumblr about the women who acted as spies and assassins during World War II lately. Andree Borrel didn’t go that route, but in her twenties, she was recruited to train members of the French resistance.

She actually started off trying to help in the war efforts on her own. She traveled from France to Spain to fight against Nazi work, but thought her efforts were meaningless, and made her way back to France. There, she took a nursing course offered by the Red Cross and became field certified to help in the hospitals. Since she was under 21 when she did it, the hospitals wouldn’t allow her to stay and volunteer. That is when she started working for the underground.

She started safehouses that helped British soldiers who were shot down, escaping Jews, and spies. Eventually, she and her friends had to leave France when their safehouses were compromised. They made their way to England where they gave full reports to MI5 and began working for the Special Operations Executive to help the French resistance.

Not only was she recruited for the French resistance, but when they sent her back to France to start her work, she was parachuted into the area. She (and her partner for the mission, of course) was the world’s first female paratrooper. She was excellent at her job, but she was eventually captured. Andree was executed in a French concentration camp in 1944.

Three: Willie Mae Thornton

Everybody remembers the names of the singers. The songwriters don’t get as much credit. Today, they get a little more because so many singers like to write (or assist in writing) their own music. In the day of Willie Mae Thornton though, she was the Big Mama (yes, that was her actual nickname) behind the curtain.

She first started singing in church, like so many people from the south. When her mom died, she had to drop out of school and get a job to help support her five siblings. Eventually, she left home to pursue a career in music. While she could supposedly “sing pretty,” if she wanted to, she preferred to make her voice “big” instead. In other words, she didn’t conform to what men in the music industry thought of as a feminine sound. She belted.

Willie Mae wrote and recorded music that other people made into hits. “Hound Dog,” made famous by Elvis Presley? She sang it first and it spent a few weeks at the top of the charts, but she didn’t see any real profit from it. Her record sold about 500,000 copies, which was big for its time. Elvis’ version became the hit, selling 10 million copies just a few years later. Likewise, she wrote “Ball n Chain,” which Janis Joplin made famous. She also didn’t get the profits from that because the record company owned the song, not her. Joplin, however, hired her to open for her as a way to give back what the record company took from her. (I feel like she should have split profits with her, but that’s just me.)

(Side note: I almost wrote about Rose Marie McCoy here instead. Like Willie Mae, she was a black woman who wrote hits for other artists. She also wrote songs for Elvis. By the end of her songwriting career, she wrote more than 800 songs, including commercial jingles. I think she’s a little bit more well known since NPR has featured specials on her in the past, but probably not by much.)

Two: Hypatia

Since the other three lived and worked in relatively recent history, it seems prudent to go back a little farther - like way back. I’m talking fourth century. Hypatia was from Alexandria, you know, where the ancient library was that we all wish had survived disaster?

Hypatia was a scholar in the time that women weren’t really allowed to be scholars. All of the stories and historical accounts of the era paint men as the heroes in Greece and Rome, with women as the people on the sidelines being fought over or worshiping deities in temples. Hypatia’s father, Theon (not a Greyjoy, Game of Thrones fans) wanted her to have the same opportunities as men in their community, so he made sure she was educated in science, math, and astronomy. Eventually, Hypatia became a teacher.

Unfortunately for her, Hypatia lived at a time when Christianity was spreading throughout the ancient empires. Though she didn’t seem to subscribe to one religion over another, historians seem to consider her a pagan. She was tolerant of other religions, and was one of the people outraged when Jewish residents were ousted from Alexandria and Christians began targeting pagans. She was murdered by a group of angry Christians during Lent. She wasn’t just murdered either. She was stripped, had her eyes removed, and then pieces of her body were taken throughout the town and burned. For no reason other than she was seen as an enemy of the political leaders at the time.

I’ll admit that the first time I ever learned about her was a result of doing my own research after “Hypatia’s chariot” was an artifact in Warehouse 13. Despite the few things I’ve read recently calling her a famous ancient scholar, or a feminist icon, I doubt most people know her name.

One: Sayyida al-Hurra

For a time when I was a teenager, I was fascinated by the life of pirates. Not in the romance novel way, but more in the what-drove-a-person-to-piracy kind of way. I think most people, primarily as a result of Hollywood, become passingly familiar with pirates like Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Glossed over is the Pirate Queen Sayyida al-Hurra, who actually held a long standing alliance with Blackbeard.

She was actually born into a wealthy Moroccan family and married a much older business man. She continued to run his business after his death. Her family, however, was forced to flee from Morocco when the Spanish declared themselves rules and Christianity started spreading through the region. (She was Muslim.) Eventually, she became the political leader of Tetouan and married a king. She didn’t even travel to marry, but instead, made him come to her, which was unheard of.

Holding onto her grudge against the Spanish empire for what they did to her people, she used her political standing to slowly build her pirate army and take on their ships. She made her little country rich with stolen merchandise and selling the Christians she captured into slavery in place of her people. She was also the foremost negotiator when it came to releasing Christian captives. She was the person European nations contacted to offer up ransoms, so she only sold people into slavery if the European nobles weren’t willing to pay. Sayyida ruled the western Mediterranean while Blackbeard ruled the east.

Sadly, history doesn’t know what happened to her. Though she remained queen after the death of her husband, her son in law overthrew her, and then… nothing. I’d love to see a movie speculating about her fate.

Obviously, there are thousands of women who were important to history. I picked five that I have found interesting, and ones who aren’t usually present in more mainstream pop culture (like the ladies of Hidden Figures, for example) for this list.

That’s it for this week! Tell me about a woman in history you think everyone should know about!