Tolkien Society Seminar - this Saturday

Don't forget to sign up for our 2025 Seminar on "Arda's Entangled Bodies and Environments", taking place this Saturday! The event is free to attend and open to all. The full schedule is on our website. #BookSky

www.tolkiensociety.org/events/semin...

We're currently at 46%, which is incredible! Thank you all so much, every little bit helps, and I'm tremendously grateful. Keep sharing it around if you can!

I also currently have a GoFundMe for top surgery! Please consider donating, the more I get, the less likely that I need to go the Medical Tourism route (which has dangers and complications).
gofund.me/a5e31e43a

you can deposit checks at any post office! It's all very easy, resist the biometrics whenever you can :)

Handy suggestion to anyone getting tax refund letters in the mail: they are making you confirm your biometrics if you don't have a UK passport. We should all just request cheques, annoy the hell out of the bureaucracy and show we don't like the biometrics!

Funeral Invitation, 1688.

Funeral invitations first appeared in the 17th century, and acted as an admission ticket to both the church and the funeral feast. Pallbearers were often assigned a number on the ticket to signify their position in carrying the coffin.

Gay Studies, Queer History, Queer Theory (They/She)

My Femme Fatale Sauron paper is in this!! Get 'em while they're hot!

A thing I would love to do professionally, but won't because I hate doing things like this for the asshole public: Trip Planning.

So to my friends, if you're ever super stressed about a trip and don't have time to plan for yourself, I will happily do it for you for a small fee. I'm very good at it~

PS: the need to understand is an enacting of a need for power and control on a very small scale. Okay, I'll stop now.

And the IRONY of the paradox of language is that we as humans seem drawn to understanding, but we can never truly understand, and it drives us absolutely fucking crazy while also motivating generations of scientists and scholars.

But that's a whole other thread, perhaps a whole blog post, on the paradox of queer theory. But the paradox of queer theory is intrinsically linked to the paradox of language.

And I think about this a lot in regards to queer theory because so much of the history of queer theory is people trying to define a term in order to communicate and utilize a concept effectively, but queer is intrinsically undefinable, because it is an unstable responsive ad/verb, not a noun.

But we also NEED to understand that our definitions are always going to be imperfect, are always going to be subjective, and never complete. Wilde was right when he wrote "to define is to limit" but we NEED to define to communicate. Hence, the paradox.

We simplify because we need a general consensus to communicate what we're thinking and feeling, because we have unfortunately yet to develop telepathy (though I would argue that the arts are the closest we can ever get to reading another person's mind, but thats a tangent).

Okay, so what do I mean by this? What is a word? A word is a signifier that a community has agreed on to represent a concept. We have agreed what an apple is. Except there are so many kinds of apples, so everyone imagines a different kind of apple when you say the word apple. It's a simplification.

I'm thinking a lot about paradoxes lately, but I think the greatest paradox that everyone really should understand is that language is essential for communication, but will always be limited by the need to define and thus unable to truly communicate perfectly.

Oh noooo I'm going to be away!! Oh damn, I've been really wanting to see this.

UK universities are doing it tooooo

www.npr.org/2025/09/17/n...

EXACTLY

I'm convinced that people who prefer endnotes to footnotes don't actually read endnotes. Endnotes suck so much and only exist to prevent aesthetic clutter.

Love that, peak Halloween energy

I truly love getting Dracula Daily emails, even though I am not doing the read along this year. I enjoy knowing that it's currently Dracula Season, and Jonathan, Mina and the Gang are getting into shenanigans.