the sad thing is, everyone thinks they’re so forgettable, or they don’t mean anything to anyone. but you don’t see your high school friend, smiling to themselves, when they think about your quirks or how dramatic you used to be whenever you got a crush. you don’t see the person who saw you around a lot but was always too shy to talk to you. you don’t remember the person you helped, and maybe you didn’t do much for them, but you didn’t know that they were having a shitty month and you sparked their first real smile in weeks. you don’t see the person that secretly loved you too, who never forgot the soft words that you said, or the way you smiled whenever you saw them, or how you reminded them of sunshine and flowers; and how the thought of you pops into their mind more than you will ever know and in the randomest of places. you will never know that a soft song or strawberries or a sunset will remind someone of you. they will go to the beach and think of you for some reason, until they remember that the last time they saw a color as beautiful and as profound as the ocean was when they looked in your eyes. no one knows their impact on people, or their worth. no one thinks they will be missed when they leave, but they don’t know that once you go into someone’s life, even for a fleeting moment, you stay forever, and you take up a soft place that no one else could ever replace.
Okay, so my friend Chloe just pointed this out, and it’s amazingly accurate:
“Because of the scarcity of Dwarf-women, their secrecy and similarity in
appearance to males, and their lack of mention, many Men failed to
recognize their existence.”
Okay, so?
Well, Tolkien was a philologist, and a Norsist, and that means he knew Völuspá well enough to pull the names of every dwarf from Dvergatal and he had a pretty firm grasp Old Norse grammar.
In fact, he grasped it well enough that he knew if you dropped an n from a name ending in –inn, it changes from the masculine
definite enclitic
to the feminine.
Well, what the hell does any of this mean?
Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:
Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.**
That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.
Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke (lol we’re so learnèd about Norse grammar that my comment on Dwarf women being indistinguishable from men is hilarious because of this grammatical funniness)
But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and
hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.
**He also dropped the double-r suffix, but -r as the root is still, in general, a masculine grammatical feature
I’ve said it before, we know two things about the genders of the Company: that dwarf men and women are indistinguishable to outsiders, and that Bilbo is an unreliable narrator.
Self defence sprays that are legal to carry and use in the United Kingdom
Image 1: Farbgel Image 2: StoppaRed
I’ve seen a lot of people (mostly women, for reasons which may be obvious) speaking about being worried when going out, be it alone or even with friends, both in the day and at night. I know that a lot of female friends of mine carry around a can of antiperspirant or a pot of pepper to use if they’re ever attacked. What I know a lot of people don’t realise is that there are products out there which work in a violent situation and help in catching the assailant for the best part of a week afterwards.
Known as ‘criminal identifiers’, these sprays are brightly coloured dyes which can be sprayed in the face of an attacker. Unlike things such as CS or Pepper sprays, criminal identifier sprays are legal in the UK.
There’s a few available on the market, with farbgel and Mace’s Stoppared being the mostly highly recommended.
What these sprays do is release a sticky, brightly coloured dye. It’s difficult to wipe away and stains the skin a bright red colour. No matter how hard an attacker might try to remove it from their skin and clothing, the staining typically lasts for around a week and doesn’t even start to fade until after a few days have passed.
Unlike CS and Pepper sprays (which, again, aren’t legal in the UK) criminal identifier sprays don’t cause irritation or pain to an attacker. Instead, they expand and clog up the area sprayed with a kind of sticky foam that’s difficult to wipe away. It should give you enough time to escape and report someone whose face resembles a baboon’s arse to the police.
Each can of the sprays costs around £10 each, though it may be cheaper when buying multiple canisters and if you shop around.
This is an original post, but I’ve released it into the public domain. It can be shared, altered, reposted in whole or in part with no need for attribution (though obviously I would appreciate it!)
cc @misandry-mermaid
It should give you enough time to escape and report someone whose face resembles a baboon’s arse to the police.
That’s brilliant
Oh yeah, this is good stuff.
Also…this is awesome for here in the US too. “Hey, it’s a Nazi rally!” **2 days later** “Hey, did you hear Todd at work was ID’ed as a Nazi? Apparently, he got dyed at a rally, and on Monday when he showed up to work with a red face, the boss called the cops immediately.”
me at school: omg when i get home i’ve got to do loads of shit like finish that project and read that book omg i need to review for that test too omg so much to do
i have discovered a new way to charge spell jars!! if you have a big enough opening on the jar, you could put a crystal point in to direct energies & such! 🌞🌟✨
I’m sorry to hear that – but please know that even though it may feel like you can’t, there are ways that you can fight those negative thoughts and stop them in their tracks. To do that, we have to learn a little bit about how negative thoughts work. In this series, the gentle reminder self help network is going to address the different kinds of negative thoughts and how to fight them.
Most negative thoughts are the ones that come without warning, and often are unwanted thoughts that can ruin your mindset for the day or longer. Those are called Automatic Negative Thoughts, or ANTs for short. Learning about how those thoughts work, so you can be aware of when they are happening, is one of the first steps towards being able to have a little more control over them.
According to Dr. Timothy Sharp of the Happiness Institute, there are ten common types of ANTs.
ANTs can be fought by something that I call PRTs, or Positive Response Thoughts. These can also be called ‘parts’ because they are important parts that are needed for recovery. There are three types of PRTs.
Let’s go through those common types of ANTs, and see how we can fight them, okay? You can do this. I will warn you that reading negative thoughts is not easy and can set off your own. So please remember you can take a break if you’re feeling overwhelmed, and that you are so strong.
Automatic Negative Thoughts
Overgeneralisation
Filtering
All or Nothing Thinking
Personalising
Catastrophising
Emotional Reasoning
Mind Reading
Fortune Telling Error
Should Statements
Magnification and Minimisation
Positive Response Thoughts
Validation
Reassurance
Perspective
[ Permission was granted by Dr. Timothy J Sharp to reference his copyrighted work.
And if you think you’d benefit from a more detailed explanation of unhelpful thinking and how to manage it, consider Dr. Sharp’s “The Happiness Handbook” as well as The Happiness Institute’s series of happiness workbooks.]
teakepp 