@eldritchgriffin / eldritchgriffin.tumblr.com
so you're telling me that the Catholics have a new mascot that's a cute anime-style blue-eyed teal-haired anime (girl(???) or boy, possibly???) and her name is Luce? As in latin for light, so they're a bearer of light? like... Lucifer? Okay.
For better or worse, Luce has the power of God & Anime on their side.
why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit
This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.
There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.
There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.
Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.
Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.
Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.
So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.
Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.
The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.
HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.
Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.
yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’
The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.
Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.
I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?
The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.
When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.
Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.
Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.
Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.
I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.
official linguistics post
My mum is from South Wales. My dad is from East London. Both of them were the first in their families to go to university (in London, in the 1970s) and both of them made an effort to lose their accents—my mum because she said it made people think she was stupid and my dad because he thought his made him sound like a criminal. As a result, my brother and I both have extremely bland, generic southern English accents. I had an unusually international (and admittedly privileged) upbringing, but people have often assumed I’m posh in a way that I am not because my parents both changed their own voices and encouraged me to maintain certain characteristics in my own accent and speech. My (lack of) an accent is an asset my parents secured for me by hiding the evidence of their own regional backgrounds.
As Professor Higgins said, “The moment and Englishman speaks he makes another Englishman despise him.”
I think unless you live in the UK, and perhaps unless you live in the UK and haven’t moved much from your point of origin or already had a high prestige accent, you don’t realise precisely how much people make snap judgements based on accent.
My family are from North Lincolnshire and I spent the most formative chunk of my childhood in Country Durham, a northern, traditionally economically deprived area which had recently had its primary industry ripped out of it.
I loved to act, and my parents sent me to ‘Speech and drama’ classes, without realising what the 'speech’ part of that meant. They were illocution lessons. They were designed to take kids with the local 'mackem’ accent and teach them to speak “properly” ie with something closer to Standard Southern English, because that would serve them better professionally. My parents only found out one day when I came home crying my eyes out because I’d lost marks in an exam for incorrect “u” vowel sounds.
The accent(s?) I use most of the time now is so deeply fabricated, it doesn’t correspond to any particular place. It is always a conscious decision, and I code switch frequently. I generally keep in a pinch of northern vowels sounds just out of spite.
I have adopted Birmingham as my home and lived there longer now than anywhere else. Local people tell me this makes me a Brummie, it’s a city marked by people moving in and making their home here.
But people who don’t live here? As soon as I say I’m from Birmingham so many people outside immediately console me - “Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have the accent”
AUGH!
last night i dreamt shadow gens revealed that shadow had a biological mom this entire time and that's why he's a hedgehog. she was a woman in her early 40s who was unable to have kids and got involved in donating dna for project shadow only to experience tragedy. despite being killed during the ark incident she showed up in shadow gens because of the time eater - shadow previously had no idea she existed, but upon seeing her in white space he somehow knew who she was and thought "mom...?"
not even God can predict this ending
"Honestly, these days I'm mostly an e-reader, and if I want a book I buy it. I only get nice hardcovers of books I really like. Plus, it seems like to find anything I'd have to dig and search, which I don't care enough to do anymore. I'm mostly going to this bookstore for the vibes. My budget is safe because I doubt I'll even buy anything." - me, full of hubris, about to enter John King Used & Rare Books
one of the first sections on the first floor is art and comics and i immediately realized my error
the gasp i let out when i spotted an Out Our Way collection was audible three stacks over and truly humbling. when i saw a rufus king pulp from 1930 i was so excited i started tearing up for real.
here is a map of the store btw
they offer it when you walk in so you can figure out where you are and one of the employees assured me that if i got lost i could just yell
Ball of molten iron vs discarded pineapple skin was not a 1v1 I was ever expecting to see, nor was I expecting the pineapple skin to win.
yeah but if you're wearing pineapple armour you need to look out for werewolves
Where do you think they're sourcing the pineapple skins from?
He made another video where he covers a wooden shield in pineapple skin and his friend uses a blow torch on it and the shield is barely charred
He has another one where he makes an entire suit out of pineapple and then stands in front of a blowtorch. I think he’s onto something.
What I'm hearing here is that dragons only look scaly. In reality, they are pineapple.
i definitely think minecraft won't be the game for everyone in the end and that's just how things are no problem but i do think *some* people who don't get the hype of it just need to play with their friends and build a house with them. its also for doing things like this.
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whatever i guess nobody've read that so imma just drop the screenshots
Marian Ellis Rowan (1848-1922, Australian) ~ One hundred and fifty-eight medium- and small-sized moths, in seven columns. A wide range of families is represented, including the NOCTUIDAE, ARCTIIDAE, LASIOCAMPIDAE, LYMANTRIIDAE, GEOMETRIDAE, PYRALIDAE, SESIIDAE, etc.
Watercolour with bodycolour on green paper
[Source: Christie’s]
By weaving popsicle sticks together in a specific pattern, there is a build up potential energy (stored energy) in the bent and twisted sticks. When released from one end, this stored potential energy is converted into kinetic energy (energy of motion) as the sticks rapidly unfurl and fly through the air in a chain reaction.
national elections so fucked someone’s out to become king of the franks
I got a trial subscription to La Dépêche so that I could learn more about this and discovered several additional facts:
…WTF!
I know this isn't ninjago guys but I finished this 17 hour painting for my art class and I was proud of it so...enjoy.
I love Egypt fun fact about me. :)
A PAINTING????
obligatory
It's that time of year when Tumblr celebrates Easter by posting pictures of crucified anime characters, and inevitably somebody in the notes will pop up to helpfully explain that crucifixion imagery has no cultural significance in Japanese media because Japan is only about 1% Christian, which bugs me because it's completely wrong.
It's true that in the majority of cases, crucifixion in Japanese cartoons isn't meant to be conveying any specific theological message, but something Western audiences are likely to miss is that a large portion of those random crucifixion scenes are referencing Ultraman.
Ultraman's creator was a devout Roman Catholic who explicitly intended the titular hero to read as a Christ figure, and consequently, various Ultramen have been crucified on multiple unconnected occasions throughout the franchise's history. Crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons are often directly name-checking particular crucifixion incidents from Ultraman, right down to emulating the compositions and camera angles of specific shots. It's like an especially morbid version of the Akira slide.
The upshot is that, while it's true that the inclusion of gratuitous crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons typically has no (intentional) theological message, stating that they have no cultural significance is incorrect. A large chunk of the Japanese viewing audience are going to see them and immediately go "hey, that's an Ultraman reference".
Anyway, as an image tax, have a shot of four crucified Ultramen miraculously resurrecting a fifth Ultraman by shooting laser beams out of their hearts:
[Ultraman Ace (1972), episode 14, "The Five Stars that Scattered Throughout the Galaxy", about nineteen and a half minutes in, if you're terribly curious to see this shot in its original context.]
You know what, fuck it. Figure skating is now my favorite sport. Unless there's another one that will let a competitor dress up in a silly costume and do all these silly jumps and wiggles and fall on purpose, IN THE OLYMPICS, there's no contest
Wow, well, there's a use for an old typewriter.
his tail can hold a marble
