to all my demotivated girls

​no lie I had to get up to shake my ass this is potent

How can I hire him to perform in my bedroom at 6:30 every morning?

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/

I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful

if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.

but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.

christ, he's good.

the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.

Get this man a starring role as Marc Antony in a southern adaptation of this show PLEASE.

This man is fantastic. 💕

The thing that just destroys me about this, though -- we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which...let's be fair, most are, but not the way it's said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I'm not really sure how to explain it except... like... "Thrice" is not a word you hear in common speech...unless you're in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.

Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.

One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.

In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.

One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.

I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.

This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:

First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.

Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.

TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.

definitely one of the challenges I have with reading Shakespeare is that it sounds so weird to me. “The good is oft interr’d with their bones”?? Who talks like that?

Well,,, rednecks. Despite being Elizabethan English, none of this is really out of character for a man with that accent; southern american English has retained not only (I am told) the accent of Shakespeare, and the “Oh!” speech patterns, but also so many of the little linguistic patterns: parenthetic repetition (“so are they all - all honorable men”), speaking formally when deeply emotional, getting more and more sarcastic and passive-aggressive as time goes on, etc.

Someone sent this to me a while ago and I dropped it in my drafts because I wanted to comment on how RIGHT this sounded but I couldn't express why it sounded right, so I'm glad other people have picked it up

There's a theory that Appalachian English in particular retains a lot of the qualities present in Shakespearean english that are now gone elsewhere. Thinking of my Mamaw, who says "twice't" instead of twice and other things like that...

This is right up there with Gary's Cook's Hamlet soliloquy

First of all, this is brilliant acting. Second of all, the language analysis above is great for anyone interested in it. And lastly, this video, to me, does a great job of pointing out the effect of type of media on the story you're trying to tell. Shakespeare's plays work best as plays. Not as scripts, not as movies. Plays.

@intheholler

anything i can say has already been said, so id just like to comment from a sentimental standpoint on how emotional i am seeing the recognition and thoughtful dissection of our accents and dialect, along with their many nuances, discussed in the context of SHAKESPEARE.

because so many people use him and understanding his works as a shitty benchmark of intelligence, and so much hell we catch over our accents and dialect is because we sound "dumb." in reality, it just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of our use of language and how perfectly valid it is.

at least in the appalachian dialect, we have our own subconscious rules about tenses and plurals, for example, that often get chalked up to us being uneducated and not understanding grammar. when, to us who speak it, such dialectal grammar makes perfect sense and feels incredibly natural. or even just how much meaning there is in certain word choices and pronunciations like one of the commenters pointed out. it's a beautiful dialect full of poetry and melody and drama and it deserves respect

Trust

English added by me :)

odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”

Oðinn spake:

Bright the sun shone | at the time of Þor’s birth, And bathed his count'nance fair. Loki, wolf-father, | the trickster, the liar, I found on the cold pavement While returning in glory | from a grand hunt For a 3 AM quesadilla.

@damn-fuck-i-burnt-myself-again

I need this framed on my wall it’s so beautiful. 

@theshitpostcalligrapher

ay @systlin hmu

@systlin

My husband complained that this was more Shakespeare than Eddas, and I challenged him to do better.

Solen sken, skönt gyllene

Dagen Tor föddes

På trottoaren, vid Taco Bell

Där låg Loke

—KJN

My translation:

The sun shone, sweet golden

The day of Tor’s birth

On the tarmac, by Taco Bell

There lay Loki

(For poetry reasons, Thor needs the Swedish spelling.)

@bold-sartorial-statement

ay yo show ur husband 

@bold-sartorial-statement no but hang on this should be in runes: 

(oops spot the typos)

i wanna translate this into icelandic so imma do it 

Sólin skein, björt og gullin við fæðingu Þórs á stígnum við Taco Bell Þar lá Loki

The amount of quality going into these shitposts is amazing

This is not shitposting, this is transformative work!

And in Danish because why not:

Solen skinnede, skøn og gylden

På dagen for Tors fødsel

På asfalten ved Taco Bell

Dér lå Loke

“LEV MERE (LIVE MAS)”

*Snorts*

When Thor born

He hair shine brite

A very very

Magical site

But then I see

A bab from hell

I pik up loki

From taco bell

the rosetta stone of shitposting

@incorrectnorse-quotes

Now THIS is the best post on this hellsite

The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

Man if I heard that shit while descending upon a strange land with my brethren I'd straight up dig a hole to die in right the and there, fuck the emperor fuck the gods that's a warning straight from the bones of an older evil and whatever is coming is worse than death

Instagram : krewkutz

This made me feel really happy...

The straight woman is unsatisfied with straight studio porn. She wants to get off to something in which the actors actually emote and show passion beyond canned moans from the women and, at best, vacant grunts from the men. She turns to gay porn. She knows it's not "for her," but neither was the straight porn, and at least the actors look like they're enjoying themselves. And for a short while she is satiated by Sean Cody et al, but she runs into the same problems she had to begin with. She was not looking at sex but a simulacrum of sex, trapped in Plato's cave. Unsatisfied, she turned to vintage gay porn, harkening to a time when most gay bars still had darkrooms and reliably smelled of piss and Amyl Nitrite. Here was the real thing, in all its animalistic passion. But she still couldn't immerse herself in the fantasy. She wanted the media to engage with her own imagination and meet her half-way, rather than having it spoonfed to her onscreen. She turned to yaoi, with its elongated figures reminiscent of mannerist portraiture, then bara, including hardcore BDSM scenes. But the tactile sensations depicted in the pages didn't do justice to their real life counterparts. She turned deeper into her own imagination, this time reading erotica. No, not the poolside paperbacks sold at Barnes and Noble. The good shit. Why then, was she still not satisfied? She dug deeper, searching for the true meaning of eroticism. She studied the psychoanalysis of Freud, the cultural criticism of Susan Sontag, the feminist poetry of Audre Lorde. She took vacation time and flew to Europe, starting at the caves of Lascaux to explore the human urge to create, then traversed the Camino de Santiago on foot, along the way meeting a 56 year old carpenter from Burgos named Andrés, with whom she had an explosive affair. They both knew it couldn't last, which made them cherish each other's touch all the more. Upon flying home, she gave up. If her search for true eroticism never bore fruit this whole time, why would it now? It would take years before she stumbled upon the answer by pure happenstance: dubstep.

English added by me :)

this video has been going around for a while but the English subtitles didn't match the energy of the spoken French at all. i had to fix it.

reblog to spread this version

The finished piece!

A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge

I.

This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.

II.

Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?

(The difference is less and more than you might think.)

Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.

III.

Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.

It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.

IV.

Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.

You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.

I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.

V.

Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.

Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.

In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.

VI.

You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.

If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.

Say yes.

Keep reading

under the readmore:

VII.

Some of the friends you shouldn’t have made will already be pieces in the game. They’ll teach you how to wrap glamor around your body into the perfect uniform, bone white or black as night. They’ll teach you the weapons: knives and scythes for Black, poisoned flowers and shredding thorns for White. They’ll teach you the rules: move as your chess-mistress demands. Fight only to first blood.

They’ll show you how to cheat. How to slide the knife and angle the flower for the kill.

It’s only victory that’s rewarded on the chessboard.

VIII.

Some of your friends will fight on the other side.

You will think this makes a difference.

It won’t.

IX.

Of course you may die there. Most girls do.

If you live, it will mostly be luck. But it will also be that you decided to win.

Your scythe and your thorns are slick with the blood of those you once called friends.

X.

Do not believe you are broken yet. You still have that wish, wrapped around your heart. You remember it at night, as you lie weeping in your bed. As you shed blood on the chess board.

No one else has ever loved this way before. You still believe it. You still believe that you can win your heart’s desire.

XI.

These are the ways you may finally break. You may hear that your chess-mistress has a casket with an apple sweet enough to cure any sickness. That the Fairy Queen has a scroll, on which the names of those tithed to Hell are written. That your elf-knight is imprisoned in a pit of snakes, because he tried to help you.

Or you may shed one more drop of blood than you can bear, and you may try to stir your sisters to rebellion.

There are many ways, and only one breaking.

You will stumble, if you try to steal. You will be seen, if you try to escape. If you trust anyone, you will be betrayed.

You will be handed back to your chess-mistress, and she will drag you by the hair down a twisting, sightless stairway, down to a vast cavern vaulted with tree-roots, lit by winking fireflies.

There, among soft green moss and dry dead leaves, sleep a thousand heroes. Your chess-mistress will lead you among them, will show you their pallid faces and explain: they all believed they could defeat the fairies.

Some were named in prophecies. Some were born under lucky stars. Some could speak with beasts and birds. Some only had hearts that were brave and true.

They all thought that they loved as no one else had loved before.

She will whisper the truth to you, as you tremble in her grip: your love is like the falling leaves. If no leaf has twisted this way as it fell before, what does it matter?

They are old as the stars, the heartless creatures you have made your masters, and they have seen every love. They know that every heart has a crack they can use to destroy it.

And this is the law, written in the stars and seeds: in the end, all things must fail.

XII.

She may kill you then. Goodbye.

XIII.

She may choke your mouth with poppies, and lay you down to sleep forever among the failed heroes. Goodbye.

XIV.

Or she may ask if you’d like to be cured of your weakness.

Her star-bright eyes and your broken heart will only allow one answer.

It won’t hurt, when she slides her fingers between your ribs and pulls out the little beating bit of flesh that humans find so important. She’ll give you something to replace it: a rose, a thorn, a bit of thistledown.

She’ll lead you back up the stairs, and she’ll teach you to be a chess-mistress.

XV.

Go ahead and forget your mortal name. You won’t need it anymore.

XVI.

You will hear weeping at night. You may imagine it’s your elf-knight in prison, or your sister in Hell, but truly it’s your heart, bereft of its body and not understanding.

Ignore it. You know now what mortal tears are worth.

XVII.

You will have all your wishes then.

You will visit your mother once to feed her honey seasoned in starlight, and you will watch her through a looking-glass as she crawls across the earth, more shriveled each year as she grows ever older and cannot die.

Your will take your sister from the cage where she waited for the tithe, and carve her face with bloody signs to protect her, and use her as a guard for mortal girls.

You will win your elf-knight in a game, and every night he will kiss you obediently as you desire.

You will wield the chess-pieces that you once called sisters, and you will make them glorious before you break them.

And every night, you will hear your own heart weeping.

XVIII.

Don’t imagine that your heart will save you. Every fairy hears that weeping, and every fairy ignores it. That’s what it means to be one of them.

But this is the single crack in the fairy law: that sometimes the one they adopt are still loved. Even by those whom they have destroyed.

So it is possible—it is not likely at all, though ten thousand years should pass—but it is possible that a woman shrunk and withered into a cricket-like thing may creep upon a golden casket. It is possible that a stumbling girl with a ruined, bleeding face may pry open the lid. It is possible that an elf-knight, dazed and broken and knowing human love only by hearsay, may lift the heart out. It is possible that a scarred and bitter chess-piece, who remembers when you ceased to have compassion, may bring the heart to your chambers.

It possible that one of them may give it back to you.

XIX.

This is what you will understand as your heart is returned to you, as you scream and as you weep:

You are nothing special and neither is your love. A thousand thousand leaves have fallen, and the fairies have outlasted every one. They do need to outwit or outmatch: they only need to wait, until each one destroys itself. If no leaf ever flutters the same as it falls, what does it matter?

But this is is the strength of leaves falling, the foolishness of mortal hearts: they never cease.

Every power in the world has a crack. And after a thousand thousand thousand years, one leaf, no better than all the rest, may twist and finally fall through.

This is the law, written in the stars and seeds: in the end, all things must fail. The fairies are old as the stars. But not older.

And you, who have your human heart again, know all their secrets still.

XX.

This is the truth you will use to break them, to rend both fairy courts apart and set their prisoners free: no one else has ever loved this way before.

These are amazing — and shockingly accurate. Did you know there’s a “Bechdel test” for female scientist biographies?

Follow @the-future-now​

Alright, nevermind, don’t write about women like men, write about men like women, this is way better

was at market today with my father (who is frankly a wild ape of a man) and i was trying to sell a single apple from my scrawny and shriveled tree. the apple itself however had a plump and rustic charm, almost flirtatious, and i thought to myself well surely someone will see the value in this apple and i can turn a tidy profit and go on my merry way. well no sooner had i attracted the attention of an interested buyer (a comely maiden to boot) than my father revealed to me that in his lackadaisical idiocy he had eaten the apple on the road. i asked him what exactly i was supposed to sell at market now, to which he responded im sure you’ll think of something, demonstrating to me that which i already knew: he was an imbecile with no modicum of grasp for the idiosyncrasies of mercantilism. but that was not the end of my troubles; nay, it was but the first chapter in a manuscript of misery, for as i turned to apologize to the maiden and endeavored to explain the predicament we now found ourselves in i could see stark displeasure writ plain across her previously affable visage. it was only then i realized her identity: marguerite, daughter of the baron, known for her fickle nature and her tendency to sic the village guard on those foolish enough to earn her ire, and though just minutes previously i had thought myself quite the intellectual giant (having nearly managed, you will recall, to sell a single apple to a lady of some means, sight unseen) i was forced to concede that i was said fool. it was then that i began to panic, and in my haste i offered the young mistress an apple even more enchanting than the first; one, i claimed, i had been saving for his majesty the king. well marguerite is nothing if not a covetous and prideful harpy, and thusly my promise quelled her bloodlust. she bade me fetch the apple at once, to which i replied that i’d need to return to my farmstead and i should be glad to present it to her at next weeks market. nonsense, said she, and insisted instead upon accompanying me and my incomprehensible dolt of a father back to our home immediately, escorted by a retinue of armed guards. now i imagine it is quite clear to those with half a head on their shoulders that i am in possession of no such apple, nor is it likely that a fruit of such splendor could even exist, and so frankly i am pretty much fucked