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Mairead Ni hIarlatha

@irishtothebackbone / irishtothebackbone.tumblr.com

Why yes, I am an American who's very proud of my Irish heritage. What gave it away? My url comes from a family story that I'd be happy to share if you're interested. There's really no rhyme or reason to this blog. I post what I like and I like what I post. And that tends to include all things Irish, some things Scottish, mythology, history, awesome historical women, various TV shows, beauteous scenery, and cute animals, especially dogs. Oh, and writing. Lots and lots of posts about writing. She/her and somewhere on the asexual spectrum (still figuring out that part out). LGBTQIA friendly. Homophobes, TERFs, and racists need not apply.
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Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

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s-laptop

I mean honestly everything that Arab traveler said lines up with the Arctic areas, except the white hair part, I don't know where that originates from, or if it's accurate

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xenotiic

If I had to guess, maybe they had albinism? Or maybe it's one of those cases where kids sometimes start out with one hair color and develop a different one when they get older. This is all conjecture, but something to consider.

Still really cool tho

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emma-d-klutz

guys, the traveler just wasnt used to blondes

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6qubed

my favorite calvin and hobbes comic is the one where his dad just rolls up and casually destroys his entire night by pointing out some neat trivia about record players

are you sure. are you sure calvin’s dad is not a seasoned elder trickster. are you sure this isn’t the exact outcome he was hoping for

ok but that’s actually canon

You forgot this one

*looks pointedly at ETD*

Calvin’s dad is basically a Calvin who has learned that he can’t get away with running outside naked or throwing snowballs at neighborhood girls, but he is still precisely the same little shit under the thin veneer of civilization.

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davidmann95

@lyricwritesprose Calvin and Hobbes has been one of my favorite things since I could read and Calvin’s dad one of my favorite characters, but that last comment blew my mind wide open. Of course that’s what he is. Of course.

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roach-works

one of the most subtly delightful things about calvin and hobbes is that you can SEE that calvin is his parents’ kid: his dad is so playful and imaginative, and his mom has a heck of a temper and a good sense of what’s right and wrong. calvin is a smart, passionate, imaginative kid who gets really upset when he thinks things are stupid or unfair. he drives his parents crazy sometimes because he’s a kid. but they were probably a lot like calvin themselves, when they were little. 

My favorite goddamn comic

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goodqueenaly

I posted about it a few days ago, but if you haven’t seen, Steven Attewell, perhaps better known on here as @racefortheironthrone, just passed away.

Steven Attewell wasn’t just a great writer and analyst (though he obviously was), nor just a great podcaster (though he was that too), nor just a great academic mind (though he was that as well). Attewell was a supremely kind, thoughtful, funny, and upstanding human being, someone I was very fortunate to call my dear friend. Hardly a day or two went by without one of us bouncing ideas for an essay or post off the other, or swapping some historical trivia, or sharing thoughts about the latest MCU project. When I got engaged, he was one of the first people I told, and whenever I, say, read a book about New York’s gilded age, or listened to a podcast episode about Reginald Pole, or learned that some Americans were still using hand crank phones into the 80s (no, really), I often thought “Attewell would appreciate that”. 

Even now, it seems utterly surreal to think of him as passed. Just a week before he died, I had been telling him how much my fiancé adored his X-Men ‘97 podcast. A few days before, he and I had been joking about the recent east coast earthquake. I knew how excited he was about his “Tyrion IX” ASOS CBC essay, since he and I had been discussing it in the weeks before he died, and his Tumblr posts right to the end displayed that same high quality you could always expect from him. I keep waiting for my messenger app to pop up with his name again, or his familiar avatar to appear at the top of my Tumblr feed with another ask from him. 

We have lost a giant of the ASOIAF community, but far more importantly, we have lost a very good person. Read some of Attewell’s works - “Who Stole Westeros” is a seminal piece IMO, as is his CBC analysis of “Eddard XI”, but you can’t go wrong with anything he wrote, and if I tried to list every piece I could recommend from him it would be a novel in itself. Listen to some of his podcasts or vlogs - his excitement over X-Men ‘97 is infectious. Keep reading and writing, just as he was doing. Miss him and grieve, by all means, but know that for the many people, myself included, he inspired and touched and interacted with, his memory and impact won’t be forgotten. 

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so-many-ocs

writing is cool because the whole time you do it, you're thinking "is this shit? is this a steaming pile of hot garbage? is this the worst thing ever written by anyone?" and then you literally never find out

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Gee, I thought these people were the ones who were like “If you don’t like it, you can just move to a blue state.”

And now they’re mad the guy is doing just that?

You can’t oppress and discriminate against someone then be mad when they take their highly useful skill elsewhere.

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invisiblelad

His point is basically that he’s going to go where he’s wanted. Guys like Brett realize, as he’s leaving that he’s actually beneficial to the society he’s leaving. If he wasn’t, Bret would be celebrating. This brain drain they’re fretting about is entirely of their own bigoted doing. If they’d thought about retaining great contributors to society instead of culture wars, there’d be no issue. 

And the guy still is doing his job, by the way. Saving sick kids.

He just wants to do it in a state that doesn’t hate him and his family.

“You cannot demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who provide it for you.”

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one thing that's great about the song of ice and fire books is the way nobody ever knows what the fuck is going on. like somebody in a bar will be like "long live good king renly!" and somebody else will be like "oh he died. like a month ago. yeah lady catelyn stark stabbed him" and somebody else will be like "actually I heard he was stabbed by a shadow his brother fathered on a priestess" and a fourth person will be like "wait didn't renly literally just win the battle of king's landing last week" and then they're all like "well, whatever. long live good king whoever it is now. next round's on me"

the funniest one to me was when catelyn was having a sit down with stannis and renly and stannis was like "renly I don't care how cute you are, you are not the rightful heir 😤" and catelyn was like "um... neither are you? joffrey is next in the line of succession? we're all rebels here?" and stannis is like 👀 and renly is like "lol bro guess she didn't get your raven memo about all of cersei's kids being incest bastards" and catelyn is like "cersei's kids being what now"

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I've had this idea since Episode 1 of Hazbin Hotel and I had to get it out of my head at last! XD When Lute said to Charlie about Hellborn being pardoned the first thing I thought of was all the Hellborn (Imps, Succubus's, Hellhounds, ect) all gleefully taking the utter mick out of the Exorcists knowing they can't do anything back.

I imagine very few things unite the residents of Hell but annoying the Angels has to be one of them! X)

I also managed to slip my own little Impsona into the 7th panel :P I should draw him more often its fun! (Little hint of things to come ;))

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I don't know what drugs they put in the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack but I'm OBSESSED.

My brain hasn't stopped playing Loser Baby, Poison and Hell is forever, over and over again.

Let's just say, my Spotify wrapped is going to be screwed this year lmao

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