best of the onion

This was too real

the gay stewards society. is this anything

Grad school is lying to you. You can indulge fixations on obscure topics on your own time. You can sit in a library color-coding notes on articles printed from JSTOR for free. You can argue with dead philosophers in essay format whenever you like. Academia is a state of mind.

Such cool information buried in the tags. I love leaning this kinda shit y’all it’s so cool

One a friend told me a while back:

Whilst travelling in South Africa she popped into a dry cleaners. The two ladies behind the counter were talking. Being a polite English woman, my friend waited for them to finish their conversation and acknowledge her.

However, as time went on she began to get more and more annoyed. The girls were aware of her presence, they kept glancing at her, but continued their conversation.

Eventually, just as she was getting ready to storm out one of the girls slammed her hands on the counter and yelled “woman, are you EVER going to say hello?”

Turns out, in South Africa it is considered polite to wait for customers to come to you, rather than “pressure” them into talking to you when they “clearly” aren’t interested.

Adding to the whole “manners are different in different places” for countries I’ve lived in: In China it is considered very bad manners, when giving or receiving business cards or money or other similar flat rectangular objects, to use one hand. In the West if we’re giving or receiving business cards or bank notes we don’t even THINK about how we give or receive it - people use one hand all the time - but in China if you DON’T use two hands it’s considered really impolite and disrespectful, and people can actually get offended (especially if they gave you the thing with two hands and you took it with only one). 

In Western countries we’re always taught that “it’s rude to stare at strangers”, yet in China people will openly stare at you and not even consider that it might be rude or uncomfortable. It’s just not considered rude in China, it’s considered perfectly normal and unremarkable - if you’re unfamiliar in some way, they will stare at you, that’s it. It takes some getting used to, because for those of us from the West it IS VERY uncomfortable and rude, but you have to keep remembering that it’s not done to be rude or offensive - if you did the same back to them nobody would bat an eyelid.

In the Philippines, when somebody visits you while you’re eating, you have to offer them food. And on the other end of the spectrum, when you are being offered food, you need to refuse once. Only once. Then when they insist, you have to. You can’t refuse.

Yesterday, an American came to the office and when he refused to eat with us three times I swear the tension in the room sky rocketed.

ok francis rawdon moira crozier post: everyone’s always (rightly) repeating the “irish and middle born” line but i really don’t see talk about it beyond that — except maybe having him spit some irish gaelic while he fucks fitzjames in a fic, and i guarantee you that man would not have been a fluent irish speaker (see: efforts from both the english and from irish communities to prevent people from speaking irish). and as part of that i’d like to see more discussion of is francis’ betrayal of who he is and where he comes from.

he is irish. the famine has just begun. he spends his life attempting to rise through the ranks of, to be a successful arm of, the empire that has ensured his status as a second class citizen, his inability to speak his ancestral language, the genocide of his countrymen. francis has his assertive personality and his vocal objections and his challenges, but ultimately he’s betrayed the very essence of who he is and only does it further upon destroying himself with alcohol — because to the empire, what else would an irishman do?

and he has so little genuine self awareness about it. deep inside himself, in his subconscious, i’m sure he knows. but he could never begin to Truly know it within the conscious or to actually vocalize it. bc how do you even begin to acknowledge or make sense of this about your ENTIRE LIFE?

and ofc this parallels with james and with hickey. pretending to be something you’re not, betraying the very essence of what you are. hiding. he doesn’t know it but THAT is the basis of his initial resentment of those two: they’re betraying themselves.

because to him, at first, hickey is an irishman who has so fully committed to the betrayal he won’t even speak in a way that implies his origin. hickey thinks this double deception makes them comrades, but in reality, would francis really have had hickey punished As A Boy if not for their first exchange? would hickey have mocked francis’ irishness from the gallows if not for the failure of that disguise, this betrayal of a perceived countryman?

the full extent of james’ betrayal is hidden to francis until the cairn but he still sees it, and he sees himself in it. the obedience, the obsequience, the ambition, the admiration, (the queerness,)

so when james confesses his bastardry, his non englishness, his deception, even if francis did not now love him, how could he ever hold it against him? he’s done worse.

and, perhaps most significantly, paralleling that with silna. francis helping the empire to colonize and imperialize other places as ireland was. silna avoiding and almost rejecting her duty for nearly the entirety of the show, seeking shelter with and in some cases allying with the interlopers she despises and who have ruined her life. Tuunbaq Is Dead.

a dramatical "schwiiierig" is literally the worst response you can get from a German

no matter the struggles there is always ao3 in bed

Malcolm Reed and Trip Tucker in Star Trek Enterprise — req. by anon

Fountain

On the one hand, I think there's deeper narrative significance to the pissing Hickey scene in "A Mercy". It's mechanically necessary to get someone out of the tent when Stanley sets the fire, allowing them to cut the tent and free the men inside. That it's Hickey shows us something about him. We know he's not drunk, cos Hickey doesn't drink, so he's sober when he shows us what he thinks of the carnival, and by extension, England. To Hickey, England isn't home and comfort and beauty. It's a toilet. When Hickey finds himself shut out of the tent- symbolically shut out of England, for Hickey, of all people, understands that you can't go home again- he doesn't say, Let me in. He says, "Let a man in." Part of it's down to Hickey's way of speaking. He likes little turns of phrase ("Help a mate up"; "[I've seen] more of your postern than your face"; "your kindness is unstoppable"; "we've eaten from these tins of mystery"). Part of it is the, I guess, vampiric, and generally supernatural feel to Hickey. He goes into and comes out of a grave, but he's not dead. He requests entry, never speaking of himself, only a hypothetical 'mate' or 'man', as though he were neither. No one knows his real name, so no one truly has power over him. Even as others are dropping dead, he looks hale and hearty. Hickey's also an opener of ways, a literal janitor, 'door man', breaking in where others are unable. He acts unselfishly to help the others, though he could have left them to die, if all he wanted was to make his own way. He stabs poor Dr. MacDonald by accident, as though even his good works were cursed, Hickey can't win for losing. On the other hand, kink is everywhere in The Terror, from the commonplace- uniforms and rank; firearms; voyeurism; flogging- to the more obscure, what we may call the erotics of filth. There's hardly a bodily function in The Terror that isn't eroticized. It's a redirection of sensuality: there are no graphic sex scenes in The Terror, but the men's bodies are shown in a sensual way, even in the least sexy contexts. There's nothing appealing about Hickey taking a shit on Gibson's bed, but the framing of the act (Hickey's in Gibson's intimate space; Hickey caresses one of Gibson's white gloves and puts it on) and the obsessive, affectionate focus of the camera-as-voyeur on Hickey makes it so, gives a romantic feeling to something un-romantic. The same can be said for James' solo exploration of his bullet wounds. He's sick, pale and thin, trembling with dread. Yet, the scene shows something else. James goes alone to his tent, panting and gasping, can't wait to get his clothes off. He touches himself hesitantly, his hand on his breast. He grabs a mirror, showing us the reflection of his face, his nipple, his wound. His expression is one of agony and horror, but Tobias Menzies tends to act pain like part of him enjoys it. And isn't Menzies, as James, just so beautiful? Hickey pissing in the carnival starts out as an ordinary, solitary moment. It's nothing special; he just has to go. We, the audience, see him, but we see almost everything in The Terror; that, alone doesn't make it a voyeuristic scene. Des Voeux appears. Our awareness transfers from disembodied omniscience to him. At first, Des Voeux's annoyed with Hickey, but then he gets to, "... unless you want that ripped off." He looks at Hickey. He smiles, nasty but nervous. Hickey looks at him. Hickey's gaze softens, and he opens his mouth. It's not going to go any further, but it doesn't have to. We don't have to be told that Des Voeux saw something he liked. We don't have to be told that Hickey would have been receptive. The implications are obvious. But the scene saves its nastiest trick for last. Because it doesn't go any further, because Des Voeux walks away and Hickey goes outside, the narrative maintains plausible deniability. You didn't really see that. Or you did, but it's not what you thought it was. And if you thought that, it's all you. It was all in your mind. Your dirty, dirty mind.

did you know? if you do your laundry you can get your clothes back

not the socks.

Thank god they brought back An Amount Of Daylight That Makes You Want To Live. It was getting a bit scary for a minute there.

"He wouldn't say that" in a 'fic author trying to use terms of endearment in a language they clearly do not understand' kind of way

I love when we all have the same problem

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA DYING WHSJDHAHSJS

HIRSCHKUH

ich mein, Reh wäre nicht viel besser, aber hätte zumindest noch niedlichere connotations

aber Hirschkuh???