flippyspoon:

botanicapoetica:

trashmouse:

dingo-inna-domino-mask:

saxifraga-x-urbium:

moranion:

irisbleufic:

infinity-and-fantastic:

whothebuckisfucky:

majorgenerally:

hansbekhart:

sadrobotinabowlerhat:

spuzz:

ihavealotoffeelings:

attractivegkry:

bookelfe:

dearthoughthenightisgone:

wintersoldierfell:

singlecrow:

saperele:

nossavyara:

alterac:

le-prince-des-fees:

devoutjunk:

katherinebarlow:

sofriel:

magica-tenore-regina:

ravingliberal:

If you were on Drunk History, what would you drink & what topic would you discuss?

6 bottles of wine and zora neale hurston 

Mojitos and the 1763 lacrosse game-turned-Indian-takeover of Fort Michilimackinac

Absinthe and Verlaine shooting Rimbaud.

gin & tonic and the lost generation or historical women writers OR the fucking Romantics and their shenanigans 

half a fifth of rye and the battle of hastings

margaritas and hurrem sultan

Gin/Earl Grey tea and the history of mining/oil booms in the US.

Rye and Ginger and 1970s sitcoms OR marriage equality campaigns in Canada, the US, France and Argentina

Pink wine and the WW2 defences of the City of London.

Tequila and the collapse of the medieval Italian banking system.

Gin and tonic and the history of mathematical logic 1879-1931.

Manischewitz and the turn-of-the-century Yiddish theater

Scorpion Bowl and the Great Molasses Flood of 1919

Malibu and Coke and the Plantagenets.

Vodka cranberries and Alexander Hamilton during the Revolutionary War

Straight whiskey and Samuel Beckett

Gimlets and technological advancements during World War II.

Jameson and Henry II or maybe Alice Paul. Oh no, the trials of Oscar Wilde

Lemonade appletini and the rise of Stalin

Angry orchards and the Picts

Undiluted absinthe and Herculine Barbin

Wine and the misappropriation of Nietzsche’s philosophy

Three jugs of irredeemably bad cheap nightclub cocktails and why T E Lawrence was definitely no take no backsies a masochist, with textual evidence from primary and secondary sources and a certain amount of crying

Yuengling lager, eunuchs

Tequila, and historical women in physics.

Moscow Mules and Rasputin

Margaritas and the California Gold Rush

Bordeaux and the ruin of French New Orleans

gascon-en-exil:

Before what will undoubtedly be a brutal late shift at work tonight I’m going to see Love, Simon at a nearby theatre (because when one can’t drive and is short of lovers or chauffeurs one must take extra care to coordinate things). As an anon recently pointed out my experiences in being gay are not exactly typical or relatable, so I don’t see myself having much of a personal connection. I’m open to being surprised however.

Update: was not very surprised, though it wasn’t bad by any means – just not the kind of story in which I see myself.

Before what will undoubtedly be a brutal late shift at work tonight I’m going to see Love, Simon at a nearby theatre (because when one can’t drive and is short of lovers or chauffeurs one must take extra care to coordinate things). As an anon recently pointed out my experiences in being gay are not exactly typical or relatable, so I don’t see myself having much of a personal connection. I’m open to being surprised however.

Since you ended up watching Merlin all the way through, I’m curious, how did you find it yourself?

Might as well write this out in full.

The campiness

Never really improves, though I found I was noticing it less as the series went on. There is a general movement away from frequent depictions of CGI monsters in later seasons, though most of the magic continues to look a little silly (especially that throwing people backwards telepathically bit) and the music is still trying too hard in most scenes and gets recycled a noticeable amount. Again, I may not be the best judge here since my only other exposure to fantasy in visual media comes from video games and big-budget movies.

The setting

Ahistorical in a way that annoys me. I hate when adaptations of stories with explicit real world settings go out of their way to divorce themselves from that context; it’s a major reason why one of my favorite adaptations of “Cendrillon” is Ever After and why I don’t care for most of the Disney live-action remakes. It’s bad enough that Lancelot isn’t French, but then the show goes on and on about “the old religion” – presumably a pop culture version of the pagan religions of the British Isles plus actual magic – and never once references the religion that supplanted it even in situations where it’s downright idiotic to exclude it…like, you know, weddings, or maybe Arthur’s coronation? I imagine that it must be difficult for Anglos and other Protestants to engage with their pre-Reformation history when Catholicism has such an unavoidable aesthetic presence. It’s all very disingenuous too; we all know what Albion is, and there’s various references sprinkled throughout to real places and peoples, to say nothing of Arthur’s anachronistic battle cry in the finale for “the United Kingdoms” or the show’s last scene.

Merthur

I feel like the internet lied to me, or at least greatly exaggerated how big a deal this pairing is. It may be the emotional core of the show, but I spent almost the entire watch waiting for the other slashy shoe to drop. It sort of did in the second half of the finale when Merlin comes out as a sorcerer as part of a Lord of the Rings-esque sequence with the two of them struggling to reach an impossible destination together, but like Tolkien the show in general feels curiously sexless no matter how many gratuitous shirtless scenes they slip in. Like Frodo/Sam I can absolutely understand why people would ship it, but I’m not feeling it, nor am I really interested in reading magic as a metaphor for queerness in this one situation since so much else is done with it through numerous other characters.

Morgana (and other women)

Had interesting development and motivations up until the third season when she starts smirking evilly in every scene and wants the throne apparently just for giggles. By the time she’s dressing like Bellatrix Lestrange (and the last HP movies were being released about the time this show was, so I can’t be the first person to draw that comparison) she’s virtually identical to Nimueh – anyone remember her? – or Morgause following her first episode where she was actually interesting. Having read Le Morte d’Arthur and some other medieval texts at university I’m aware that looking at women in angelic/demonic binaries could be considered part of the source material, but it gets downright repetitive after a point. Gwen gets to be the overall exception, but her big arc in the last season lets her dip into the treacherous evil woman characterization anyway. Morgana’s death was also anticlimactic to an absurd degree, just a bump in the road on Arthur and Merlin’s last road trip together.

Everyone else

I still have no idea how we’re meant to feel about Uther by the end. His last episode features him as a vengeful ghost who hates everything Arthur is and he’s very much a dick in life, but at the same time he has moments of genuine conflict and sympathy and he does die protecting Arthur…and there’s also that two-parter where he marries and has sex with a troll, haha? Gaius stopped being more than the resident physician and dispenser of exposition sometime around the halfway point. The dragon is also nothing but a dispenser of exposition and occasionally a handy deus ex machina Merlin can call on at will, notwithstanding when Merlin releases him and he goes on a rampage. Mordred is difficult to parse as a whole, though what finally motivates him to betray Arthur and side with Morgana feels cheap in the “here’s this person who’s important to a main character who’s never been seen before and will never be seen again but now they matter dammit” way that TV sometimes does. The other knights are odd in that their level of development is dependent on how much screen time they got before becoming knights of the Round Table. Can anything be said of Percival except that he’s the big one who’s deathly allergic to sleeves? 

Overall

Can’t say I’d recommend it, except perhaps alongside Sherlock as a study in (allegedly) subtext-laden British TV shows with large fanbases despite their lack of payoff. It’s just not my style really, though I felt obligated to see it through to the end. 

@dornishsphinx tagged me for this, and it looked like it would take a fair amount of time until I actually read the rules and noted that explanations aren’t actually necessary. Really, thinking of ten followers who might be interested in doing this was harder (though of course if you’re not tagged and want to do it by all means do so): @markoftheasphodel, @capriciouscorvid, @demoiselledefortune, @agoddamn, @quintessentialgaymutant, @paragonred, @deetvar, @allonym, @thehylianbatman, @mwritesink

Rules: Write your ten favourite female characters from ten different fandoms and tag ten different people.

1. Fire Emblem – Micaiah (This one was easy)

2. The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword Impa

3. Avatar/The Legend of Korra: Azula

4. Les Misérables – Fantine

5. Harry Potter – Fleur Delacour

6. Warcraft universe – Yrel

7. Faulkner’s collected works – Rosa Coldfield

8. Sense8 – Kala Dandekar

9. Disney animated canon – Cendrillon/Cinderella

10. Merlin (because I decided to sit through the whole show after all) – Morgana

@capriciouscorvid – That explains why Southern hospitality feels so out of place in New Orleans. This is the oldest city in the South, the only one with an urban culture that predates the Civil War since all other major Southern cities either didn’t exist at all before the war or were of little consequence pre-industrialization. That level of attentiveness is simply unnecessary in such a high population area. There’s also the cross-cultural observation that urbanites are more rushed and less friendly than people in rural areas, and even if New Orleans is lauded as a laid-back and European (read: Latin, relaxed) city compared to the likes of NYC and Chicago it’s still nothing like the country.

@demoiselledefortune – Class certainly has a role. Although very few Louisianais were ever more than haute bourgeoisie Créole slaveowners infamously liked to put on aristocratic airs. The oldest extant restaurants in New Orleans date from that antebellum period, and though all of them have relaxed their standards in recent decades to appeal to tourists you can still find that kind of high end service if you know where to look. (I also think New Orleans’s origins as a slave-based city has something to do with it. Although it doesn’t directly correlate to the behavior of commercial service staff, there’s a completely different atmosphere to a situation in which one legally owns one’s domestics.)

@dornishsphinx – I don’t really know how to comment on differences between US Anglos and British Anglos. My perception is that the difference in attitudes mostly comes down to the US winding up with the Anglos’ most psychotic strain of Protestantism and the corresponding “Puritan work ethic” that in reality translates to aggressive capitalism with an often hypocritical moral veneer. I mean, they theoretically hate the Anglo monarchy and one would assume that would be their defining trait, but contemporary US Anglos seem strangely fond of the British royals judging by how often they appear in magazines and tabloids. What any of that has to do with aggressively friendly customer service I’m not entirely sure.

demoiselledefortune said

hmm interesting. One of the difference in restaurant etiquette between French & Anglo culture that always struck me was actually the amount of obsequiousness expected of the staff in American restaurants, whereas French waiters can be expected to joke a bit with their customers in a friendly manner a little (i wonder how much of that has to do with waiters being paid from tips in the US vs having an actual salary in France besides culture)

Anglo(-American? I doubt it’s limited to the US though) customer service may be partially explained by the need for tips, but then they behave the same way in retail and other areas where tips are not expected or allowed. The obvious superficiality of that type of service has always bothered me, as if Anglos were terrified of the thought that the people serving them might not actually like or care about them aside from their money. If it’s friendly it’s never sincerely so, and if staff ever joke with customers they never come anyway near saying something that might be construed as negative.

I think there’s definitely also an element of the isolation factor at work here, the same thing that explains the noticeable differences between metropolitan French and the languages of North American Francophones. Notwithstanding how many Créoles ever lived in Paris for any period – almost all emigrated from the provinces, and many of them from the south – there’s no question that we’ve been influenced by other cultural elements in the intervening three hundred years, including the Anglo-American culture of the South that grew up around and partially infiltrated Louisiana. Superficial friendliness is one of the hallmarks of so-called Southern hospitality and one even some non-French New Orleanians like to insult for its fundamental absurdity. Just as the Cajun patois comes from 18th century French in extreme geographic isolation haphazardly blended with Spanish, Native American, English, and other words, so are Créole mannerisms most likely a mix of how 18th and 19th century emigrating provincials thought Parisian society worked and our contemptuous reaction against the people who later laid claim to Louisiana.

As a child when eating at restaurants with my family I learned French dining etiquette…or at least what we think is French dining etiquette and may possibly be an approximate imitation of Parisian manners from the decades before the Revolution and/or from the Restoration. Hands always on the table, keeping bread on its own plate but breaking it by hand, taking our meat rare and our white wine lukewarm, speaking at a low volume to foil potential eavesdroppers, engaging as little as possible with the wait staff and expecting them to be prompt and attentive but mostly silent in return, and so forth. It should probably go without saying that that is nothing like how Anglos prefer to dine, so I’ve had to endure my fair share of lovers who talk too loudly and too familiarly to the staff for my taste. I just came back from one such dinner where I quite literally facepalmed more than once at a display of that sort. 

Yes, I’m an ethnocentric snob and have been told as much by more than one man who’d been to France and assured me that the salespeople and waiters they encountered there were all smiles and friendliness (in English) as soon as they started flashing American dollars, but still this cultural divide or whatever you’d care to call it really cuts into my ability to perform the social aspects of my position. I can eat like an Anglo – hide my hands and strike up a conversation with everyone in the restaurant and order only the blandest dishes on the menu and spend ten extra minutes working out convoluted tip percentages and how to split a bill however many ways – but why would I ever want to?

paragonred said

I’m guessing between Jugdral, Tellius, Elibe and Magvel, you would prefer Jugdral? Or do you think some of the others have more interesting “centuries later” material?

Actually I’d really like to see my pet theory that Tellius and the Fates continent are part of the same landmass proven true, or at least something that ties Fates to the other settings more definitely and makes it more coherent overall. Echoes did a fair amount to help out Awakening which in my opinion had less going for it to start. Also, Jugdral and Elibe have potential remakes to look forward to for expanded worldbuilding, whereas the more recent settings aren’t going to be getting that anytime soon. 

Generally speaking I don’t think the distant future approach taken by Awakening is necessarily a good one, since it still leaves a ton of room open to go all over the place and yet still lean too heavily on shallow callbacks.