also fun news: we have a radioactive cat at work right now. Her poop and pee has to be stored separately for 6 weeks to let the radiation decay. We’re not allowed to touch her— i mean, we technically CAN but we can’t be face-to-face with her and no lap time allowed. We can’t even be within 3 feet of her for more than 30 minutes.
and she’s SO FRIENDLY. she walks up with that little purruprpppruprrupp!! walk cats do. She wants to be held.
Either that or she’s hoping her radiation will kill me.
Wait how DID she get radioactive?
Thyroid treatment! She has hyperthyroidism, meaning her thyroids are making too many hormones. Radioactive iodine (I-131) was used to destroy some of her thyroid, which will hopefully reduce the hormones released into her system.
Does she have superpowers now or are they still developing?
My grandpa lives in clarksdale, Mississippi and HATES white people with a passion. I grew up listening to stories like this. His cousins had to flee to Chicago in the 60s for trying to fight a group of white landowners who wanted to hang them for trying to leave the land they worked on.
Slavery turned into “share cropping” if you kept your slaves ignorant and isolated then they didn’t know they had been freed. This went on well into the 60’s the fucking 60’s these people are still alive dealing with this type of shit in the deep south.
My friend said to “fact check” this and I’m like…black ppl are literally saying they were kept as slaves what is there to fact check. Anyway, sharecropping was still slavery as far as I’m concerned.
At surface level, this is concerning because they are awesome stories, and everyone’s life is made a little better when they find an awesome story.
On more serious levels, fandom is a wacky place, full of people doing wacky, occasionally damaging things to each other. Some of that has evolved, but some of it is the same as it ever was. History rocks because you can learn from the mistakes of others, and maybe hurt people a little less in the future. Fandom being a giant, convoluted web of passion, some history that could use sharing goes missed.
The two stories linked are from early 2000s Harry Potter fandom. The Ms. Scribe Story is a tale of one person’s aggressive use of sockpuppets to work their way up fandom hierarchy. The Cassandra Claire Debacle is about how the top name in that fandom hierarchy is a plagiarist.
They’re prime examples of fandom being fandom in intensely negative
ways. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a brand of fandom toxicity that isn’t on display in some way within these write-ups, and while that is admittedly sort of depressing, having things to point at that make you stop and think, “Wait, I’ve seen this before, this is not a thing I want to be part of,” can keep you out of some of the deeper fandom pitfalls.
They are also deeply fascinating reads. If you haven’t explored them before, or only know the summary versions, give them a shot.
People who prefer hot weather: Snow and ice are a pain, and the cold is just kind of uncomfortable even when you wrap up, you know?
People who prefer cold weather: MY SKIN LITERALLY MELTS OFF EVERY SUMMER I AM A FUCKING HUMAN SOUP AS WE SPEAK
you wouldn’t believe how many people reblogged this to whine about hot weather in the tags.
too cold? put on another layer!
too hot? change into thinner clothes!
still too cold? put on another layer!
still too hot? uh, get naked I guess?
still too cold? put on another layer!
still too hot? Ţ̡̜̮̗̟̯͘ͅA̛͈͎̤͙̳̦̱̜̺̪K̢̻̥̥̥̪̙̜̩̗̼̤̻̻͖͍̜͈͉͠ͅE̟͕̩͔̪͓͔̥̦͇̣͇̳͕͉͜ͅ ̠̝̥̖̭̦̼́͝O̩̦͓̠͉̲̲̱̪̹̻̼̭̯͎͈̕͢F̷̸̢̛̙͇͔̜̙̮̗̲̤͇̯͡F̧̨̱̤̲̫͕͔̼̭͙̠̙͙̹̻ͅ ҉̫̠͓̙̠͔̕͜͠Y͡҉̴̘̭̬̳́O̶̶̧͚̞̣̯̩̫̜̩͉̤͎͖̖͟ͅU̶̵̺̠̪̘̱̮̮̙̻͈̣̦̭͠͝͞R̨҉̦̺͓̩̺͖̘̪̥̺͚̱͚͔̪͓̖̰ ̷̸̺͇̳͇̖̥̻̳͚̗̥͙̪̣́S̡̞̳͖̭̯͉̻̠͔̥̹̫̣̼̹͇͜K͏̧͍̪̗̖̜̫̙̱̫͈̟̝̮͈̻̺̯̟̠̀Į̧̙͙͔̠͖̟̕͝Ǹ͖͎̳͍̪̱̞͇̺̘̩͘͜͠
The cold is easily shut out, the heat is inescapable hell
Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.
His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.
So Tolkien started another novel.
And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)
He gave up multiple times.
That book? Fellowship of the Ring.
You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.
First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.
Second lesson: Writers have to support each other. Seriously. It might be the difference between a book that becomes beloved by hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) even existing or not.
This is fair! This is so nice! I love this!
You know what else kept him going while he wrote Lord of the Rings? Well,
having an income while he wrote, that he didn’t really have to work for. In fact, he held his dream job (Professor of Literature) with a full-time income,
that came with a pleasant private office. He sat at work, for which he was being paid to do something else, and actively avoided doing his actual job while he pursued his own unrelated novel.
having a stay-at-home wife to run his entire home and family for him.
having servants…. that helps….
having a large, pretty house within a pleasant 25-minute walk of work.
never having to do:
household maintenance
laundry
cooking
cleaning
Life Admin
the not-fun gardening
the not-fun childcare
The work day
of Men of His Time ended when they came home. Women of His Time, and
Staff, existed to run the rest of his life. And that’s what they did. Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien was the center of his household universe, which existed to support him in every possible way.
Let’s be real: he was not the person who was up in the night with a teething baby. That was what the nanny was for, followed by the wife. It would have been unthinkable for a man of his time/class to do his own childcare.
Actually, it’s worth noting that he had in particular a Very Intelligent Icelandic nanny, who lived in his
house and looked after his four children all day, and was never given a holiday, and told the children lovely bedtime
stories about trolls and the Icelandic Edda, and who provided a useful
resource for the language and myth he used in LoTR, until his wife became too jealous.
I mean, what could YOU do if you had that much support? Write an epic! probably!!
Because nobody was forcing him to do anything, ever, he slept late and woke up late. sounds nice
Tolkien did not do laundry. He did not cook meals. He did not
clean the house. He did not wrestle rice pudding down the necks of
his screaming babies, while calmly and lovingly answering his schoolchild’s questions. He wasn’t
making a cake while talking to his boss on the phone and wiping up the
dog’s sick. He did not spend hours every day in the process of keeping
his home together, or sorting the affairs of his four children, or sorting out the wifi. The Care and Keeping of Tolkien was outsourced to
wife, servants, scouts, assistants, waitstaff.
He would have received free meals at work, although he usually walked home for lunch, where he was served food and alcohol that he took into his private study. but if he didn’t
want to do that, Oxford profs of His Time could just get free lunch. He could ring a bell to be brought tea and snacks at work. And then he would go home and be served dinner.
Going to the pub with his friends, who supported and admired him! Sure!
not
having to go home in the evening to his four toddlers and children, because he was a Man of His Times! and he could totally
just spend evenings holed up in a pub with his admirers, because he was not required at home to help, or parent, or do anything in the home, except be served a glass of beer and go into his study.
god, imagine spending hours in the pub on a work night with a bunch of highly qualified literature professors telling you how smart and lovely and amazing you are. heck YES you’d be encouraged.
The Hobbit was already popular so it was probably quite helpful to know that while writing the next work.
Working and writing in a place that is generally considered to be an
inspiring setting for academia and literature. Want to write Elrond’s
Council? Sit down at a beautiful old stone table and start writing about the table. Want to write about a tree? Go write under
your favorite ancient tree in the Botanical Gardens. Want a snack? Ring a
bell and a scout will bring you toast and a cup of tea.
I mean, he wasn’t exactly spending his 40 hours a week under a manager’s baleful eye while he manned the self-checkouts at the Tesco in Coventry, or pumped gas for minimum wage in Montauk, scribbling notes into his phone. He floated around The City of Dreaming Spires, dreamily making art, while several people labored very hard so that he would be untroubled by Real Life while he floated.
Let’s be real. Tolkien’s literary accomplishments are very impressive, but he L I T E R A L L Y
was doing them on his work clock with the full support of a pit crew.
To be fair, I love the man. And I love the huffy apologism in the Tolkien Gateway: “Writing [The Fellowship of the Ring] was slow due to Tolkien’s perfectionism, and was frequently
interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic
duties.”
I’m ??? sorry that writing a novel on the company dime was frequently interrupted by occasionally having to do his job???? oh my god I love and hate this so much,
Dianna Wynne Jones, of Tolkien’s students at Oxford, commenting “of Tolkien, they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…”
maybe because that’s what academics are SUPPOSED TO DO, it is their job,,,
He would also deliberately mumble incomprehensibly, ignoring his students, deliberately delivering terrible lectures, so that they would all go away; but Dianna actually wanted to receive some of the education she’d been promised:
“I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid).”
God love the man! Deliberately teaching so badly because he planned to alienate his students and collect a paycheck! He would be flayed on social media for less, today. There would be news articles about the Lazy Professor. He would be fired, and buried, and dug up, and fired again.
In conclusion: yeah, CS Lewis was very encouraging and that helped immensely! But probably so did a secure income, freedom from chores and labor, and a crew of support staff. Who knows what we might do, if we all had that kind of encouragement. We’d probably be very productive.
Death By Catchphrase 