Nerdiosity

Smug face of a free man

Shout out to all your internet friends who are gone.

Those messenger screen names that haven’t logged on in ages, some before detailed profiles were a thing on those services.

Those emails that are long since abandoned, some with domains that no longer exist.

Those online friends you knew years ago and who then helped shaped you in some way, who you just can’t FIND anymore.

Those people who once were, and hopefully still exist IRL, that seem to have no known internet life anymore.

And those who have actually passed on, and their online lives are now a memorial to them.

I miss you all. I hope life is/was kind to you, and maybe one day, we’ll somehow connect again.

man the britney spears testimony is chilling. she can't drive, cant choose her therapist or any person around her, is forced to perform and train or she'll be put on meds and restrained at home, cant see her kids or even have a new child, was forced to get an IUD which she can't have taken out, can't even choose her own food and bedtime. it's very much institutionalisation except she still has to perform to make money for her family (the same that claim she shouldn't have autonomy over her own life) and can't even change a single dance move in her choreography. it's just. christ.

see what i mean by parents feeling ownership over their children. her parents were allowed to suspend her autonomy as an adult too.

and like. she's a rich cis white woman (though tbh she can barely touch the money she makes for her abusers)! and her disability and status is still enough to completely suspend her autonomy in the most abusive way, to even deny her the ability to have kids or refuse food. this is an absolute nightmare. imagine what it's like for institutionalised working class folks too. poor folk, people of color, trans people who also had their autonomy suspended that way and are institutionalised or under conservationship. im really glad she got this opportunity to speak, no matter how short it was. but christ is it heartbreaking.

he’s doing a great job

Lucy Lawless was not a particularly burly woman, but somehow she made Xena seem like a fucking tank and I don’t understand how.

Don’t get me wrong—she was strong, and certainly not a waif, but more than almost any other female superhero actress I’ve ever seen, Lucy Lawless exuded physical power and weight that I actually believed (when she wasn’t somersaulting in front of a ridiculous greenscreen).

that’s a damn good point

INTENSE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

COSTUME EMPHASIZING BREADTH OF SHOULDERS

THEM THIGHS

WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS ABOUT HOLY SHIT

JAWLINE

EVERYTHING. ALL OF IT. I DON’T KNOW I’M JUST FEELING EXCEPTIONALLY WARM RIGHT NOW.

I LOVE HER

This is because the tank is not concerned with muscle or endurance. Tank is purely a matter of 60% attitude, 30% mindset, and 110% fuckaroundandfindout.

I've also seen another version of the commentary on this post speculating that she was also SHOT like male action star at the time - which has nothing to do with size, but with posture and staging and yes, attitude. 😊

Lucy Lawless was not a particularly burly woman, but somehow she made Xena seem like a fucking tank and I don’t understand how.

Don’t get me wrong—she was strong, and certainly not a waif, but more than almost any other female superhero actress I’ve ever seen, Lucy Lawless exuded physical power and weight that I actually believed (when she wasn’t somersaulting in front of a ridiculous greenscreen).

When I close my eyes and imagine Xena, I imagine her fucking shredded. Just absolutely ripped. Muscles McGillicutty out here. She could burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man and kick my ass.  

But then when I actually look at Lucy Lawless out of costume, even when she was playing Xena, she looks... average. A gorgeous woman, absolutely, and rather tall, but not the Amazon she comes across as when she’s inhabiting the role. 

With few exceptions (like Linda Hamilton), I don’t get that from other actresses portraying physically strong characters. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman costume has a very similar design, but I never believed in the physicality of her character even when the CGI physics are more realistic.

Steven L. Sears at The USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Oct 25, 2006

On how he approaches female characters

”The interesting question about writing the female character...the female character was an object, it was a plot twist, it was something to motivate the male to do something heroic. It was never accepted as a character. To me that was the biggest difference, first. Secondly, was the portrayal, and I mean the physical actress portrayal...When we hired Lucy Lawless, what really impressed me was her physicalization. She did not apologize through her body. And that had been the biggest critique about women characters. Even wonder woman. They apologize through their body. ‘I’ve got to be masculine, but I’m gonna off-set it by doing it in a feminine way’. Whereas Lucy was like ‘Okay, I’m gonna do it.’ And she did it. And I remember sitting there, watching that with the original supervising producer and saying ‘That is sexy.’ Because there’s no apologies. That’s a real character. And that is attractive to me and I’ll bet it’s gonna be attractive to other people.”

God!!! If only this were normalized for female characters. The Terminator franchise does a pretty good job at having physical women; Dark Fate also had Grace move like a real person inhabiting space.

Grace has short hair. She looks like a typical athletic butch woman:

Being butch is not offensive. Portraying tough butch women in action movies is not some regressive anti-feminist act. I can and I will compare Grace to Xena because she is a female character portrayed as strong and tough in a very natural and unapologetic way—there are no concessions to preserving an elegant or dainty aesthetic when she fights.

Women come in all shapes and sizes. If you reject the importance or value of women’s strength because they have “””male features””” and you think that’s regressive or not good representation you can eat my entire ass, and also Xena’s.

the argument is often made that school uniforms are more conducive to a learning environment where wealth/class does not have a significant role in social dynamics among students and i just gotta say that is a garbage take lol. like some of you dont have any regular interaction with tween girls and it shows!

i grew up in a predominantly affluent suburban area and our public school system’s uniforms were basically just a solid color polo shirt (color depends on what school you attend) and khakis. something no kid would choose to wear if they were given the choice lol but whatever, it could have been worse. everyone wearing essentially the same outfit didnt make the relationship between fashion and wealth any weaker, though. why? well because certain brands of solid polo shirts are more expensive and better than others. certain styles and shades of khaki bottoms are more on-trend and more expensive than others. tiny embroidered logos become status symbols. kids wear some variation of the same frumpy outfit but they wear expensive shoes and buy expensive backpacks and wear whatever useless trendy accessories they can waste their parents’ money on.

even in schools with much stricter dress codes that require students to wear a specific shirt and a specific pair of pants and a specific pair of shoes, its the same story. the faded fabric from the hundreds of times your hand-me-down uniforms were washed and dried when your older siblings wore them years before you is a dead give-away. showing up to the first day of class with shoes that are clearly well broken-in is a dead give-away. you can tell at a glance who has money and who doesn’t!

stop forcing these kids’ parents to purchase several articles of clothing they otherwise would not spend their money on because their kids will never wear them anywhere but school! let kids go to school in their own damn clothes (so long as they’re appropriate)! and more importantly quit subliminally teaching kids that wealth is a virtue!

In my high school the full cost of all the uniform pieces was over a hundred pounds (and that’s 20 years of inflation ago) and kids who wore the wrong uniform got put in the isolation room. I don’t know if the teachers realized that they were punishing kids for not having rich parents.

Preach it. I’ve been arguing this for years.

Also like, it fails to actually identify what the fucking dynamics are that make wealth/social class/bullying in general an issue in learning spaces. Pro tip: it’s not about the fucking clothes.

It’s about whether or not that school creates an environment where bullying/treating people badly based on perceived social standing, economic standing and social conformity is permitted/endorsed. When that school has an environment (which includes the attitudes of parents and the community in general), kids will find some way to bully and harass and otherwise be “distracted by the dynamics” of social standing, economic standing and social conformity even if the school literally hands them out exactly the same outfit of the same age and wear at the beginning of each day.

If the school creates an environment where that is not acceptable, it won’t matter what anyone is wearing.

Because the problem is “these kids think it’s okay to treat other people badly based on where they perceive their social/economic/conforming-to-norms falls on their subconscious internal chart”. Based on that they will find something. Without that, they won’t.

If I was Elizabeth Bennet my entire family abandoning me at the dinner table when Mr. Collins requested a private audience would have been my villain origin story.

Meirl

I love Hasan more than I love some of my relatives

Yatak çok güzel ;)

When you’re a cat, and you can’t get up because a cat is sleeping on you. (Inception noises)

That’s it, the Professor is truly the King of Sass

The letter didn’t come from the Nazi party, but from the publishing house which had expressed an interest in the German translation of The Hobbit. Tolkien’s response really is a thing of beauty, though, so it deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

25 July 1938                                              20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully

J.R.R. Tolkien.

(Letter 30)

The Hobbit wasn’t published in German until 1957.

This might just be the politest “fuck you” ever written.

W.h.a.t.

Not just “I wish I had Jewish ancestors, but I don’t,” but also “you do realize that’s not what ‘Aryan’ actually means, right,” and “you guys are making it pretty hard to be proud of my German heritage.”

i might have just done something great

Top 5 Episodes Per Season // BTVS Season 2 #1 - Becoming Part 2 Now that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what’s left? Me.

“Jeff Wysaski, an artist based in Los Angeles, printed out some fake Halloween costumes and hung them up around a real costume store.”

sorry I’m shitblogging but holy moly