For the oceans are unwholesome there
writing, gender fuckery, art, feminism, and assorted fannish things
Omfg I was sitting in a room with a bunch of my aunts, uncles and cousins and my grandma had this weird smile on her face so I asked her what was up and she just looked at me and said “everyone in this house is alive thanks to my vagina”
Dear Prudence, 18 June 2013:
Q. My wife and I just learned our daughter and her husband have decided to divorce. It’s for a reason discussed here before—he wants children, she doesn’t. We’re stunned and hurt because he was up-front about this and she has come to a conclusion which we feel is more about her social lifestyle than parenting. But it is what it is and it is her choice. Problem is that we’ve been crazy about the young man from the first time we met him (he’s everything you dreamed of your daughter marrying, i.e. funny, successful, outgoing) and now we are experiencing an incredible sense of loss. It just sounds too weird to think of trying to maintain a relationship with him, after all he’s got time to go meet someone else, marry, and have a family, and our daughter would never forgive us. But we’re experiencing severe depression over this, to the point where we’re actually communicating less with our daughter who we believe is the unreasonable party in this case. What should we do to go on from here?Dear Soon-To-Be-Former In-Law,
Your daughter should have children against her will so that you can keep hanging out with your awesome son-in-law, the light of your life, a man whose reproductive desires should be accommodated by your daughter, a person you believe is too shallow to appreciate the value of child-rearing in the first place.
How heartbreaking it must be to have an adult daughter who doesn’t plan on using her body to produce the grandchildren you deserve. Would that she could see what you see, which is: her uterus, with a baby in it, just for you and the man who gives her value in your opinion!
What a loss for you—not only is your unreasonable daughter making foolish decisions about her future such that she and her soon-to-be-ex husband can fulfill their life goals as they see fit without enduring a lifetime of resentment and misery surrounding a situation in which there is no compromising, but she’s totally ignoring how her parents feel about the function and purpose of her reproductive organs.
Badger and guilt your daughter until she becomes the loving, doting grandbaby factory you know she can be. If she doesn’t (literally) deliver? Continue to dote on your ex-son-in-law; that way your daughter can really see the effort her mom and dad have put into parenting.
So, I’m rereading the Wheel of Time, right. And. Um. I really did not a) remember how much better Moraine, Nynaeve, and Lan (ideally together) are than all the rest of the characters and b) realize the extent of the influence that subconscious affinity has apparently had on my own writing.
It’s mostly lovely and fun. And a bit wtf how did I forget.
lawwwd Jeeeezus…. THIS IS A PIE
LIFE FOREVER CHANGED
omg
10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Original Star Trek (via mediahascookies)
THIS IS WHAT STAR TREK IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT
(via bookishbutcorruptible)
When JJ Abrams decided that he didn’t like the “philosophy” of Star Trek, this is some of the stuff he was knocking.
(via grouchythefish)
Ahahahahaha. And on a much sillier note: “Wrote Asimov, ‘Through the agency of Mr. Spock, Star Trek has been capitalizing upon a fact not generally known among the male half of the population. Women think being smart is sexy!’”
The omission of Jorah’s backstory Lynesse from the GoT scripts does the character a great disservice, because that relationship, and his attitude toward its demise, frames the Dany/Jorah relationship.
Man, drawing floorplans for the houses in my novels takes a lot of time that could be more productively spent doing just about anything else. Sure is fun, though.
‘Cock’ is actually a pretty damn old euphemism. It appears in some middle English poetry as ‘cok’, if that tells you anything. Officially it doesn’t enter widespread use until as late as the seventeenth century, but that doesn’t stop poets and monks as far back as the eleventh century from alluding to the way a fighting-cock’s wattles turn red and stiff during a battle.
Depending upon the character, I imagine Tolkien could have got a lot of variety in his dingdong discussions. Archaic terms for ‘penis’ are not only richly varied but highly regional— see the ‘langer’ in Ireland, or the ridiculous-sounding ‘todger’ in the UK/Australia. And I do believe Tolkien came up with not one, but several Elvish words for penis: gwî for poetic use (elves writin’ porn yeeeah) and gwib for daily use, plus puntl in case you need to contrast two elves’ differing backgrounds. (I don’t believe we have a Noldor ‘penis’, but having variety in slang is always good for characterization.) [Source]
As for the dwarves, I have shamelessly used Khuzdul-sounding English terms like pud and lome (fifteenth-century slang referring to a ‘loom’). I can also see the dwarves using terms like ‘tool’ and ‘shaft’ much more readily than most other races, since they are workin’ dudes.
Humans can go with damn near anything. I prefer to give them more modernized, recognizable terms for ‘penis’, since we’re supposed to share genetic material anyway and we might as well communicate with each other. (And by ‘modernized’ I mean ‘sixteenth century or later’.) ‘Cock’, ‘prick’, ‘tool’, and perhaps ‘dick’ all work here. (If you’re not writing erotica, ‘pizzle’ and ‘piece’ are common terms. We’re also now treading on Shakespearean grounds, where spontaneous euphemism has become much more widely bandied and recognizable.)
Hobbits are a little tricky. On the one hand, the roly-poly provincial way Tolkien portrays his hobbits makes me shrug and think, okay, ‘todger’ it is. On the other hand, I don’t particularly want to write all my hobbits as shy violets who use polite euphemisms for everything. So lately I’ve been trying out some of the simpler archaics: ‘pin’ (or ‘pyne’), ‘yard’ (as a stick, a unit of measure), ‘stud’, and (of course) ‘cock’. (Most of these are farming terms, too, which fits with the style of the hobbits.)
I just like cock, okay? *shrug*
A few more archaic curiosities: ‘erection’ often becomes ‘pride’, ‘stand’ (as in ‘cockstand’), or even ‘tend’ (from the Latin for ‘stretch’); ‘cod’ is often used in preference for the scrotum rather than the entire external male genitalia, thus ‘codsack’; and the further back you go, ‘balls’ becomes ‘bollocks’ becomes ‘ballocks’, and also ‘baubles’, ‘knappes’, ‘cullions’ from ‘sceallan’ (shells), and ‘herthan’ (with the ‘herthan-belig’ or testicle-purse). Feel free to Tolkienize the most archaic terms— the -an ending denotes a plural, so change it as you see fit.
One of the best sources I can give you is this excellent book, the sample of which should keep you writing archaic smut for ages before you even consider buying it (which I suggest, if you like these things). I have used it gratuitously here as a source.
Thanks for the interesting question, by the way— and, uh, sorry for sprawling it out into an essay. You might say my answer became… engorged.
(via nolikereally)
nerds
nerds
i love you
(via jinglesharks)
well this sure is a thing
(via czarnoksieznik)
…nonexistent. Sorry, bro. I still might have an ambition to work through EotW, but I doubt I can blast through the whole series, what with work starting on Mon.
ALAS!
…you’re not missing that much. They’re weirdly entertaining and addictive, but a) I’m only on #2 and already nothing happens and b) the more I read, the more quiet seething rage I feel toward ta’veren as a plot device.
Bless that ring.
It’s really an excellent ring. Not doing much good at reminding me to actually read WoT, though. How go your efforts on that front?
