oh no, you don’t! you haven’t filled out the appropriate forms! you need better credentials. first fill out the following*:
do you admit–publicly, loudly, and continually–that you do not:
✔ condone
✔ accept ✔ understand
any of the villain’s immoral behavior, and that you do not:
✔ enjoy
✔ tolerate
✔ see any value whatsoever in
reading about actions that deviate from Current Puritan Norms, regardless of their merits as devices of narrative tension, character believability, and explorations of morality and empathy in a literary work?
X __________________
*you may waive signing this form if you can answer yes to the following question:
do you like the villain because you’re coping with a traumatic experience? if so, please describe your experience in as much detail as possible and publish the form for public viewing.
now you can say you like a villain on your blog!
…so, basically, the words “I like this villain” are meaningless.
I’ve sat on my leg too long and now I’ve got pins and needles and oh gods I hate pins and needles, I’m sitting here wiggling my leg like a maniac trying to get the blood flowing properly again.
But it’s made me think….though I should probably point out anatomy and just in general how the body works is not my strong suit.
Preternatural or supernatural beings, do they get pins and needles? I mean they all have working nerve endings and blood…technically.
Vampires, for instance, are so often described as flushed and warm after drinking blood, but if their cells are absorbing it then wouldn’t they technically get pins and needles? Because they were originally hindering the flow of blood by not having any, and they’ve still got working nerves so the rush of blood should cause pins and needles, right?
Can you imagine a vampire drinking after a long abstinence, their sigh of relief when they feel the hot blood warm their body….then it begins. First in their fingertips, toes, and the tips of their nose and ears, and gradually it creeps through their entire body as their dormant cells come to life to absorb the blood. Nerve endings sparking randomly.
Imagine this dark creature of the night, sharp fangs bared, hissing out with copper tinged breath, “Fuck! Fucking pins and needles! I hate them so much!”
Imagine them flailing about, frantically rubbing at arms and legs to get the blood flowing properly. Once it finally stops, and they’re left panting, with that heavy warm feeling spreading through, they realise a human is standing there, staring at them wide eyed, mouth dropped open in an aborted attempt at a scream.
“Not a fucking word,” the vampire would grumble before running off into the night, their murderous image completely ruined by fuckingpins and needles.
I’ve seen a few threads recently arguing that adults don’t belong in digital fan spaces because tumblr and the like are for young people, and I’ve finally put my finger on why this perspective unsettles me so much: because it perfectly mirrors the argument that queer adults – or queer things in general, really – are a creepy, corrupting influence on kids. Given how queer so much fandom content is, especially online, this might seem counter-intuitive, but one of the biggest culturally conditioned fears we have is that there’s something inherently predatory about older queer folx interacting with younger queer folx, because obviously queerness is inherently sexual and therefore something something power dynamics, right?
But the thing is, we’re missing a huge chunk of what should be the visible adult queer community because of the AIDS epidemic, ostracism, suicide and other shit like DADT that keeps or kept people closeted. Which is a big part of why so many younger queer folx don’t know queer history, or have only a passing acquaintance with it: because so many of the people who ought to have handed that knowledge down are missing or dead, or were otherwise kept from speaking. Which is why, in turn, we keep seeing resurgent waves of queer discourse – again, on places like tumblr – where younger people are, without knowing what came before them, both reinventing the wheel and making sweeping, inaccurate statements about their (very truncated view of) community history.
Because that’s the thing: for any culture or a community to survive, you need someone to transmit the history. Adults, elders, historians, senior figures, whatever – you need to keep records, you need people who are invested for the long haul, and above all you need a sense that what you’re building is important or worthwhile enough that it deserves to perpetuate itself. The community itself might change over the years, along with its dominant philosophies and expressions, but these are shifts that happen, not because knowledge has been lost, but because it has increased.
And look. I could go on a whole separate rant about how Western society is increasingly age-segregated in a bunch of unhealthy ways, and why that’s warping our collective memories. The idea that Teen Stuff and Adult Stuff shouldn’t overlap hasn’t sprung up in a vacuum. But fandom is not, should not be and never has been equivalent to the ephemeral, viral shifts of kid culture, the hopscotch games and nursery rhymes and songs and slang that children transmit to each other and then immediately outgrow, so that all subsequent reminiscence of them is detached from participation or up-to-date knowledge, unless obtained secondhand.
Not all adults in fandom are queer, nor is all of fandom queer. But online, in contexts where we’re talking largely about fanfic/fanart rather than convention spaces, and where there’s demonstrable overlap with other areas of queer and feminist discourse, fandom is one of the few arenas in which queer adults routinely interact with queer teens. And particularly knowing there are people in fandom who express a love of queer ships but discomfort with IRL queerness otherwise, it does not sit well with me to see a “But Think Of The Children!” argument being used to suggest that the people who create and maintain fandom are acting inappropriately by doing so.
Annotated for your pleasure, these Weird Folk Song Premises are very educational. Some plots are wonderfully bizarre, sung in lost languages – others have familiar echoes that you’ll pick up later in your favorite stories. Eight female trad/folk singers explain how to address life’s great challenges, such as getting your fairy boyfriend to commit, the best ways to make harps out of body parts, and under what contexts it’s cool to eat a dead dude. I couldn’t find a great Soundcloud recording for Sovay, so I suggest this one.
“An Elfin Knight Kidnapped My Wife, So I Staged This Elaborate Revenge Musical To Get Her Back” – (King Orfeo) – this Celtic retelling of the Orpheus myth has wild imagery and a happy ending, and inspired Tolkien’s legendarium of tall, fair, strange “elves” that meddle inscrutably with human affairs.
Orfeo rescues Lisa Bell by playing some supernaturally sweet riffs.
Look up “Sir Orfeo” and educate yourselves because you’re worth it.
The refrains are “Scowan ürla grün” (Early green is the wood) and “Whar giorten han grün oarlac” (Where the hart goes yearly). The language is not Celtic, but Scandinavian – said to be some of the last preserved remnants of the Norn language. The “gabber reel” may be related to the Scottish “gramerie,” or magic – it was clearly a rockin’ tune that “makes a sick heart heal.”
“I Dated A Serial Killer and Then Killed Him” – (The Seventh Girl) – Another parable warning us all of the dangers of dating those pesky Weird Knights. In this variation, an Outlandish Knight. (Outlanders, as you know, are Scottish, making them just as distressing as marriage prospects as any fairy knight.) It’s a tale as old as time – you run off with an outlandish cutie, he turns out to be a serial killer, and then you’ve got to kill him, don’t you?
“Six pretty girls have you drownéd right here, but the seventh girl has drownéd you!” sings the heroine triumphantly. (People who read Ursula Vernon’s “The Seventh Bride” without realizing that it’s retold folklore are going “Ah!” right now… )
“I Dressed As A Man And Robbed My Boyfriend at Gunpoint for Reasons” – (Sovay) -Hey, watch out you folksong resellers and fairy-tale-retellers, this obscure little piece of lore is my absolute favorite and you haven’t gotten your grubby little paws on it yet! (Just kidding, I’ve already been promised a retelling of Sovay, you can write more if you send them to me.) Sovay is one of my favorite folk songs. To challenge her lover’s faith, a woman dresses herself as a man, arms up, and robs him at gunpoint. Will he value the token she gave him over his own life? Well played, Sovay. Well played.
“My Sister Drowned Me and My Corpse Turned Into A Swan: On the Plus Side They Upcycled Said Corpse Into A Haunted Harp” – (The Bonny Swans) – this modern variation of the “Twa Sisters” has an admittedly strange plot. She’s a miller’s daughter but the harp accuses the son of a king? HOW CAN YOU MAKE A HARP OUT OF A SHOULDER BONE? I HAVE BEEN ANGRY ABOUT THIS SONG SINCE I WAS A VERY SMALL CHILD. Anyway, the “Twa Sisters” songs are generally about women murdering each other, and weird stuff happening to the corpse.
“If I Hug My Shapeshifting Fairy Boyfriend Hard Enough He Might Make A Good Husband” – (Tam Lin) – You’ve probably heard of this one, so let’s toss it in to break up the hipsterish obscurity. I love Janet. Janet makes such terrible decisions. But they have an underlying logic! Janet goes out into the woods and destroys foliage until a wild territorial garden elf yells at her, and then she naturally sasses and then bones him. This results in a rather awkward pregnancy, so she destroys a bit of foliage to induce miscarriage while getting the fairy’s attention. The fairy explains that if she wants to hug him while he turns into some carnivorous wild animals, he will marry her. Not surprisingly, Janet is into it. Toss a coat on that naked boy and bring him home, Janet! You freaky thing.
“Start a Hashtag, These Elfin Knights are Absolutely Out of Control” – (Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight) – You can skip this one. Isabel hears some sexy horn-playing from an elf-knight (presumably plangent honking on a trumpet) and absolutely loses her head. But then she regrets it when the Elf-Knight turns out to be the Outlandish Knight from “The Seventh Girl” and recites a tedious speech about how she will be the latest in his string of murder victims. Isabel offers to stroke his hair – a trick I use on my husband – and he falls asleep with his head in her lap, allowing her to cut his head off (not something I do with my husband). This is a more boring tune and not a very Weird Variation, but it’s got very deep roots and has quietly spawned a lot of folklore.
“Does the Three Second Rule Apply If His Pets are Watching?” – (Three Ravens) – some ravens discuss whether it’s cool to eat a dead knight while his dog, hawk, and lady/deer girlfriend (?) are watching. Oh no, now the deer “friend” is taking the corpse away. You’d think people would consider the ravens.
“Aha, Bet You Didn’t Think of That One” –(I Gave My Love a Cherry) – a riddle song, sometimes simply called The Riddle Song. The tradition of giving/asking for impossible objects/tasks is very common in British folk, and this particular song is one of the very oldest. From “Scarborough Fair” to the riddle-games in the Hobbit, the context of this song ripples outwards. Sometimes maidens in English trad songs save their lives by challenging elfin knights to games of riddles. Sometimes lovers fight by assigning each other impossible tasks. But the tradition of weird or riddle challenges can have a happy purpose. Here, someone offers their loved one a series of mysterious and impossible gifts: a cherry with no stone, a chicken with no bones, a baby that doesn’t cry, and something with no end. But how can such gifts exist? The singer reveals that the gifts are a cherry in flower, a fertilized egg, a sleeping child… and the singer’s love for the beloved one, a story with no end.
We were talking about Tam Lin so I am bringing back this playlist for more “what the FUCK”
Is it just me, or does the whole “cherry with no stone,” and “chicken with no bone” thing … possibly have some answers that are less innocent than the song ends up at?
Does anyone else just get like really stubbornly indifferent towards a popular character? Like you don’t feel hateful but you feel yourself giving less fucks and falling deeper into fuck deficit every time people gush about how great they are and its kinda like being at a party where everyone else is having a good time and you’re awkwardly standing in the corner with the underappreciated dog.
Loki is the Philosopher King 