The tone of Lord of the Rings changes significantly when you learn that Sauron isn’t his name but an elvish pun on it that basically means “that mother fucker”
last night i had a dream that my college was adding a minor in Gnome Studies, and it…actually sounded really cool
okay so this is how the Gnome Studies minor worked in my dream, if i’m recalling correctly: there were five classes you had to take, and each one corresponded to a letter in the word “gnome” (though the material really doesn’t match a letter at all):
G – the class you had to take as a prerequisite. introduction to gnomes in general—what is a gnome? what are their origins?
(all the other classes you could take in whatever order you wanted)
N – a sociological look at gnomes. specifically i remember this dealing with the question of, like, why blue-collar/working-class families tend to place garden gnomes in their yards while white-collar/upper-middle class people view them as tacky (yes that actually is a real thing), and what gnomes’ presence or lack thereof can teach us about real and perceived class divides
O – gnomes from a gender and women’s studies perspective. in what ways do gnomes and gnomish figures queer the gender binary as it exists today? why are so many gender non-conforming people fascinated with gnomes? can gnomes’ radical ugliness help us to brush past society’s problem with superficial beauty?
M – gnomes in literature and mythology. not only is this class a deeper look at the History of Gnomes, but it also forces us to ask questions about timely issues facing our society today: why have gnomes endured in western media for so long? what is it about the gnome that somehow brings us back to it again year after year? what does the gnome symbolize in our collective consciousness?
E – unfortunately i woke up before finding out what this one was. if i had to guess, though, it’d be memetic uses of gnomes; why “gnome” has become such a weird internet punchline recently, why “gnomeo and juliet” and “sherlock gnomes” exist, what about the word “gnome” brings us such delight in these troubled times, etc.
“I’m not big on heroic speeches, and that’s not going to change today, but I’ve got some things I need to say about what we’re setting out to do.
Over the past few months, I’ve been stabbed, shot, drowned,
frozen,
poisoned, electrocuted, set on fire – both consecutively and concurrently! – and on one occasion transformed into a ground squirrel, which I did not care for at all. And I know a lot of you have been through a lot of the same things.
At the time, I thought of it as the hazards of the job. I’m sure you did, too. But with what we’ve learned today, we now know that a singular force – some people would call it a god – has been behind it all from the very start.
Many would find it disheartening, to know that a god has it in for them, but I look at it like this: if there’s someone behind it, then there’s someone to blame for all the ridiculous bullshit that’s been visited upon me – indeed, upon us all. And if there’s someone to blame, then there’s someone who can catch payback.
…
Is this about justice? Maybe. Is it about freedom? Certainly, if we succeed, a lot of people will be set free. But I think it’s important to have a personal reason going into this, and for me, that reason is an ass that needs kicking.
So come on. Let’s go beat up God.”
Voices that folks have informed me they heard this post in:
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