The Wheel of the Year: Samhain

So here we  are, Samhain, the beginning of the Dark half of the Celtic year. A blessed three-day long Samhain to all those who celebrate it and may no evil spirits find you tonight - or humans getting drunk and throwing eggs at strangers' houses because "yay, FUN!"...which might be way worse, now I think of it *facepalms while weeping at humanity's twisted view of what it is to "have fun"*

Samhain might be my least favourite festivity in the Celtic/neopagan/neodruidic Wheel of the Year, although I do admit the neodruidic and Celtic-inspired feast can have a strong charm of its own. As an agnostic neodruidess, my activities during these three days (31 October - 2 November, seeing as Samhain festivities traditionally lasted for three days) usually consist on a walk in the garden or a trip to the mountains, plus a seasonal plant adornment in my kitchen 'agnostic altar', plus a cake, usually including pumpkin and/or nuts.                                  

 The current Halloween festivities, however, generally annoy me. I've got no problem with people dressing up, I'm a cosplayer myself. And it isn't because 'it isn't a traditional feast in the area', an argument I'm frankly tired of reading and hearing. You can enjoy any festivity disregardless of your area as long as you like it, feel drawn to it and are respectful about it,  My reasons are:

1.  All the death and horror themes, which are generally not to my liking. 

2.  I associate it with the days becoming shorter and the illogical decision of shortening the already short days courtesy of the infamous Winter time change. Not a fan of short days, or cold, for that matter.

3. But what I really, really dislike about Halloween is the way people 'have fun'. Once again, dressing up, having a party, that's all good. Not so good if your main aim is getting drunk at a park and potentially bothering people, though. And how the hell is going from house to house throwing eggs and putting toothpaste in door knobs even remotely OK??  Would these people (kids, teenagers, adults, there's a bit of everything) enjoy it if I suddenly came and threw eggs all over their house, and then defended my right to have fun, calling them 'intolerant weirdos'?? Do you know how bad day-old eggs smell? Do you know how disgusting it is to clean  that up? Why is it even remotely OK that I have to clean rotten eggs up in my goddam house so that some egotistical drunk teenager idiots and some spoiled kids, sometimes with their morally-dubious, irresponsible parents actually accompanying them while they throw rubbish at people's houses (A+ parenting!!), have FUN?!  Having fun does not mean having a go at people in this way, since last I looked. Seriously, if you like throwing eggs and stuff so much, why don't you go throw them at your own windows and walls? Don't want to clean that up afterwards, right?  And let's not talk about the assholes that throw eggs and stuff at buses and cars. Not only have the poor bus drivers to clean all that up after their whole day's work - they could cause a damn accident!

  *Ugh*

So anyway, to celebrate Samhain today :) I've decided to post a series of Power Point slides that I made about the festivity and the seasonal gods and goddesses according to Celtic mythology.  The Irish+English+Spanish texts are part of a show about the Celtic festivities that I and my fellow Irish students and teachers prepared and took part in during 2011-2012. 

-DISCLAIMER about the images:  I always try to credit every image I use in my blogs, same as I'd like people to do with my own artwork and photographs. I really like to illustrate my posts and projects, and I deeply appreciate the work of all the artists and photographers that make that possible. However, it's not always easy to credit a picture, seeing as most of them come from Google searchs and many lack watermarks. All of this makes the job of tracing back each picture to its owner/artist/original page very difficult. I do try to take my time in order to do this, but I don't always succeed. So I'll gladly credit any picture that remains here uncredited, if you know who's the original artist. And if you find you own some of the pictures shown here and you don't want me posting your (credited) work in this blog, please do let me know as well!

 -Morrígan's name is spelled in a variety of ways, from 'Mórrigan', to 'Morrígan', to 'Morrigán', to 'Mórrigán', to even 'Mórrígán'. Personally, I enjoy the last version quite a lot, although I alternate from time to time.

Geeky London trip 2014: Doctor Who haul

Continuing the fandom-centric parts from my geeky trip to London, here is what I got in the Who Shop (for my visit to the shop, see previous post here):

Both my mum and I got Ten's sonic screwdriver (I want to cosplay Ten and she wants to cosplay Nine, but the screwdrivers are pretty much the same except for the colour of the case - Ninth's is bluish). I also got a model of the TARDIS.

The items out of the packaging:

The TARDIS I got is the 'Spin and Fly TARDIS' (This one). It's sturdy and very nicely made. The level of detailing is also very good, from the wood texture, to the windows, the lantern top and the 'Pull to Open' sign. The colour shows darker on the pics, but it's very close to the trademark 'TARDIS blue' in real life. The doors open to show a curvy 'bigger on the inside' view of the console room:

This model simulates the TARDIS' take off and landing sequences (also the vortex buzzing) with sound effects and the top lantern blinking on and off. The sounds are cool, but way louder than I expected! This TARDIS also has a detachable transparent 'flight cradle' attached, so you can spin it (by hand). It's definitely not the best feature of this model, as it's cumbersome and tiring to spin smoothly. 

                                        

  

Ten's screwdriver plastic replica (this one) is a pretty cool prop, well-made, with button-activated light and sound effects (four options). Very happy with it :). Of course, one always wishes it was the real deal so that I could open doors, repair stuff, do sciency scans and fight aliens xD. But even considering its limitations, I find it really very cool :D

After visiting the Who Shop, we went back to the hotel and proceeded to play with our sonics while eating chocolate, so here's a video featuring the four sound effects:

Next Geeky London Trip post will feature Harry Potter :)

Geeky London trip 2014: The Who Shop

UPDATED: So regarding fandoms and this blog, I leave most of the fandoms stuff for my Tumblr blog here, but from time to time I'll be posting geeky stuff here as well, especially if reviews or feminist writing are involved (especially given that I'm the writes-a-lot type and I don't want to flood my Tumblr with lots of writing as yet xD). 

*END OF UPDATE*

So, first geeky-site review! I've recently come back from a geeky holiday in London (with my equally geeky mum) and I have so many geeky pics to share ^^. During our stay in London, we focused on three fandoms: Sherlock BBC (my favourite fandom!), Harry Potter and Doctor Who. 

I'm relatively new to Doctor Who, although I'm steadily beginning to identify with the word 'Whovian' and am currently the proud owner of  my very own sonic screwdriver ^^. General info about me and DW includes Ten and Nine being my fave doctors and loving the TARDIS :). And I'm still interested in writing reviews of DW episodes from a feminist point of view, btw (just, I haven't got a lot of spare time at the moment, that's why there's only one review here. But I've already drafted a couple more). 

   So, during our stay in London we decided to pay the Who Shop a visit. Emboldened by our desire to get a model of the TARDIS and sonic screwdrivers xD (just because they're cool :), and for our future cosplays as well), we undertook the relatively lengthy journey to this whovian destination in Upton Park. 

   I had read that this area was a bit dodgy, but, to tell the truth, I didn't find it all that different from other parts of London. It's not central London, granted, but (at least during the morning) I didn't find it that dodgy-desolate as I had been expecting, which was a good thing. The only unsavoury people we met was a brute of a woman shouting and hitting her children for asking her water on the tube back to central London (poor kids :( ).

   After getting off the tube, we decided to go the opposite way and ended up taking one bus to nearly Canary Wharf (the fates wanted me to experience feels again, it seems), and then another back to where we should have been going. Turned out that London A-Z was right and it was a short walking distance from the Upton Park tube, only the numbers on the streets were a bit jumbled up and we decided that turning right instead of left was the right thing to do xD. Well, at least we got some fish and chips for lunch.

    So after our little adventure, here we were (click on pics for larger image):

The shop is biggish and TARDIS blue (obviously). The shop windows were pretty cool as well, with lots of random Whovian merchandising, daleks and a cardboard cutout of Ten included:

The interior of the shop was satisfyingly geeky, even for one who doesn't still fully identify as Whovian. They had quite a lot of stuff, such as TARDISes, Daleks (both full size decorative models and merchandising), books, magazines, toys, prop replicas, some costumes, plastic screwdrivers with light and sound effects (we got two of those, Ten's - my mum will cosplay Nine because he's her favourite, but the screwdriver is basically the same), DVDs and CDs, and T-shirts, among other stuff.

 Regarding the T-shirts, they had some female sizes as well as male, yay for a bit more equality. Although there wasn't a lot of variety, imo, and the sizing, even if female-intended, was still too large for me. I don't see why thin-structured people like me can't have geeky T-shirts that fit us snugly (it is a bother to be a female geek and like snug clothing rather than loose clothing!). And the same for larger people. Such limited sizing is not cool (anywhere in the clothes industry, but specifically in the geek culture industry) :/.

There were also some Star Trek and Sherlock items (just some T-shirts and books in the last case). My mum got a cool Sherlock T-shirt with 221B on it, and we also got a cute (and shared) TARDIS model with sound and light effects.

One of the two full-sized TARDISes in the shop, and the full-sized Dalek (with 'Don't touch or you will be exterminated' on it):

And here's me having fun with the (very fearsome xD) Dalek. I've always thought they're kinda cute, but it actually sort of freaks one out a bit when you have a full-sized one standing right next to you in real life...Laughing at it in the pics might not have been a great idea, now I think about it...:D

                                       

The shop also includes a small museum with some costumes and props, some of them replicas, some original, and mainly classic Who-themed. I personally didn't find it all that thrilling (I wasn't expecting Cardiff Who experience level (which I still haven't visited), but perhaps a little bit more). Also, I'm hardly familiar with classic Who yet, so that's probably  another factor why I wasn't thrilled about it.

The visit to the museum included unlocking and stepping into one of the model TARDISes, and that was pretty awesome on its own and totally worth it, though! (Please notice the fact that we both decided to wear something blue :) ):

 

And more fun pics with the TARDIS! 

     

                                                

I like this pic a lot :). TARDIS aside, hey, my hair's looking long! From my perspective, it usually doesn't feel that long to me, so cool :)

And because we need a rant of sorts in an activist blog (feel free to skip. If not, read more):

 The staff of the shop was friendly and helpful, but there was one thing I didn't quite like about the Who Shop, and that is their photograph policy. Apparently, you can only take pics in the TARDIS if you've paid to see the 'museum', and you can take pics of the items in the 'museum', but you cannot post them online (I'm sorry, but what's exactly the point of that, from a fan's point of view? I didn't feel like taking any pics because I'm not familiar with Classic!Who yet, but still, didn't quite understand. Do they think that people won't come to visit their museum if there are pics online? Personally, seeing pics of places where I want to go further motivates me to go and gives me an idea of what to expect). You apparently can't make videos either (once again, I find video tours pretty helpful before visiting the actual place). Also, donating the museum fees to charity is pretty nice, but I still think that donations should be about free choice, rather than a part of compulsory fees to get into a museum.

Quenya translation - Diálogo de Astérix en Quenya: Eleniono Tecië mi i Lambë Eldaiva / Translating Astérix into Quenya

I've been studying Tolkien's Quenya for a while, and one day I decided to translate something. So I ended up translating some frames from one of my fave Astérix comic books: The meeting of Anticlimax and Astérix in Astérix in Britain (Astérix chez les Bretons in the French original). It's nice to be a geeky erudite :) 

 The tricky part about translating Astérix comic books, in my opinion, revolves around all the set phrases, idioms and double-meaning jokes. So I wanted to base my tolkienized translation on at least two different translations. As well as the original French version of the comic book, I used the English and the Spanish translations in order to create the Quenya translation - I like the Spanish translations of Astérix books because they're reasonably literal and quite close to the original; on the other hand, I find that the English translations deviate quite a bit from the original more than once, so that was the version I ended up using the less for my translation. 

 The final study includes the comic panels with the Quenya dialogue superimposed (bigger pic of the panels below as well), the English and Spanish translations, a brief analysis of my own Quenya translation, and a list of the dictionaries/glossaries and the rest of bibliography I used.   I initially published this translation here as a pdf file back in 2014 (the English version is below), but I recently updated it and got it published in the Summer 2019 Estel, the official seasonal magazine of the Spanish Tolkien Society (Sociedad Tolkien Española), so here's the updated version from the magazine :D :

In English (earlier version, not updated):

Closer look at the panels with  my Quenya translation (Open in a new tab for a larger image):

And bonus pics of the newly received magazine with the article :D ^^

  

 

 

-On the use of my essays and studies: DO NOT use this work without my permission. If you're interested in it and want to share it or expand on this idea, you're allowed to reference it AS LONG AS you credit me and link to this post. It would also be nice if you contacted me beforehand. DO NOT publish as if it were your own work, always quote and link.

My response to '20 Things Women Do That Men Probably Don't Know About'

I found this list about "20 things women do that men probably don't know about"  the other day (thanks, Facebook, for giving me such profound things to read). You can find it here. Not the best read (I will copy the points of the list below when I comment it, too).

Although I usually just scroll down these kind of lists (after scoffing inwardly for a bit about sexist stereotypes),  I'm feeling activist and snarky, so let's critisize stereotypes for a bit.

Before I begin, I suppose that some people will not be interested in a more or less lengthy, and 100% snarky, commentary about a theoretically "harmless" list ridden with gender stereotypes. I really don't force anyone to read anything. So please, let us not have any comments about how I overreact to a harmless 'fun' list on the Internet, and how I must have a lot of free time, or how I'm a 'crazed, bitter feminist'. I do enjoy myself by writing snarky responses to stereotyped texts, because yes, I am against stereotypes and don't think they're fun or healthy. And no, I'm not exactly bitter because of it, although my life would be so much better without unnecessary gender roles. To each their own :)! Only, I don't feed trolls.

 Before commenting on each point, I'd just like to mention that I'm not a fan of generalisations. Generalisations are often wrong, misleading and/or prejudiced or ridden with stereotypes. Generalisations do people very little good and they're certainly not the best argument to use if you want to validate a point.  I'm saying this because this list - as well as so many others - is brimming with generalisations about how women supposedly act and think, thus promoting a lot of stereotypes that are not true in many cases (some of these, or all, may be true for a faction of women, but certainly not for all), and not exactly harmless, either.  And the same goes for lists about how men supposedly think and act.

 I think these lists bug me quite a lot because they appear shallow and harmless, but they keep promoting these unhealthy stereotypes that just enforce sexism. Just notice how this list about 'things women do that men don't know about' MAINLY focuses on physical aspects having to do with clothes, make-up, evaluation of the body and so on. There is practically nothing about character or mind or thought, or anything else (after all..."what else is there?!"). According to this list, women are beings who overly focus on their bodies and are usually self-conscious about them, feeling pressured to conform to a certain 'ideal body'. It is inferred that all use make-up and shave their body hair. It is inferred that all have deep interest about clothes. The only non-physical point of this list is that theoretically women get emotional in an irrational way from time to time. And for them, apparently, breasts are apparently so important when it comes to defining their "womanhood".

While many women may identify with some or even all of these points, what bugs me is that the writer chose these frankly shallow points as points that theoretically describe what a woman is versus a man. Men are also pressured to conform to certain body types and ideals in our society, but to a lesser extent than women, of course, and if one takes a look at these kind of lists, for men, there are comparatively very few points about physicality and 'beauty themes', and way more points about character, thought and action. And specifically quite a few points about how women make myths about men, and how they aren't really true. And yet women's lists, not all of them but way too many, still focus on these beauty points and apparently they're not myths or generalisations or anything. See, just at the right of this '20 things women do that men probably don't know about' is another list called '20 myths about men that need to be erradicated immediately'.  Double standards much?

Some of these points I have done or experienced. But I would never say that such things as poking myself in the eye with a mascara wand or wearing the same bra for a few days defines me as a woman (I'm also non-binary and gender critical, so the concept of 'defining myself as a woman' doesn't even apply to me). Given that 99% of these points are about someone's  beauty routine and thoughts on their body, generalized to extend to all women, I would hardly say they're a good way to describe a whole sex, or a whole gender (even if the gender construct does come with a lot of these subjective stereotypes). 
And about the title, 'that men probably don't know about'...No wonder men don't know about aspects having to do with someone's private routine!  Some of these stereotyped thoughts are so stereotyped, though, I do think men already must know about them. After all, we don't stop reading about how all women should be self-conscious about their bodies because they don't conform to the idealised body of society, or how women are so irrational and governed by PMS, right?

If someone wanted to 'define herself/themselves as a woman', first of all (and I repeat that for some people who are trans, agender, non-binary, genderfluid, and/or queer in some other way, that concept nay either not 't even apply, or apply in a very different way), I guess they'd prefer to define herself/themself without using too many gender-biased stereotypes, which basically make no sense. And second, while they could talk about their body at a certain point (this post is focused on women with female bodies only, though), they would probably choose aspects that had to so with character and way of thinking before and/or at least in addition to their body and, indeed, before their personal beauty routine.  Also, you cannot expect to summarize a complex individual, disregardless of their sex (and/or gender), by 20 points about someone's personal ideas, like I said. According to this list, I'm just someone who's seemingly rather obsessed with her breasts, self-conscious about her body, jealous of the bodies of other women, equaling her beauty routine to everyone's beauty routine and the very "essence of womanhood", and crying irrationally to add a bit of variety. Yeah, I think I'll write another list for myself, if you don't mind.

Pretty much

So, a bit of a more detailed commentary on each point.  Read on if you're interested!

-UPDATE: A commenter just kindly let me know that these points were selected in a pretty biased way and taken out of context from this Reddit, where individual women are commenting about things that they do or have done. Meanwhile, the Tickl post takes the problematic turn of selecting (in a biased and subjective way) a few of these personal, individual experiences, taking them out of context and massively generalizing them so that they're the things that apparently define women vs men. Thus, we go from a series of relatively harmless, individual experiences (still influenced by gender roles, but that's another issue) to a stereotype-promoting message implying that women are these beauty-obsessed and emotionally unstable beings who owe society (and men) their appearance. Proof of the harm which something can do when taken out of context and interpretated in a subjective, biased and manipulative way. And that is NOT OKAY. I don't care if the selecter's original intention wasn't to promote an stereotyped view of women. That's what (s)he is doing.

Celtic goddesses: Brighid (part 3)

From the Take Back Halloween site (with ideas to cosplay Brigid! :) ): http://takebackhalloween.org/brighid/. The artists of this montage are unknown to me, if you know about them, please contact me!

Part 3 of my goddess Brigid tribute is going to be mainly about aesthetics: More artwork and some excerpts and links to songs and poems about this Celtic goddess.

-DISCLAIMER: Same as in the former two parts, I do not own any of the songs/poems or any of the artwork, unless I state so. Poems and songs that do not belong to me are quoted and credited, and the authors of the artwork are credited as well, and in the case of Deviants, I also link to their DeviantArt profile (if you do not want me to show your credited artwork here, please contact me). This is for enjoyment and appreciation only. And once again, please do not spam me about religion.

• Poems and invocations: I've chosen a few, there are many more on the Internet. 

                                                    'Hail, Brigantia!'  by Patti Wigington

'Brigid's Fire - The Offering' by Joanna Powell Colbert

"Hail, Brigantia! Keeper of the forge,

she who shapes the world itself with fire,

she who ignotes the spark of passion in the poets,

she who leads the clans with a warrior's cry,

she who is the bride of the irlands,

and who leads the fight of freedom.

Hail, Brigantia! Defender of kin and hearth,

she who inspires the bards to sing,

she who drives the smith to raise his hammer,

she who is a fire sweeping across the land."

Invocation of Brighid by Ellen Evert Hopman (Old Irish translation by Alexei Kondratiev)

'Brighid Mother Goddess of Ireland' by Jo Jason.

"A Brigit, a ban-dé beannachtach
Tair isna huisciu noiba,
A ben inna téora tented tréna,
Isin cherdchai,
Isin choiriu,
Ocus isin chiunn,
No-don-cossain,
Cossain inna túatha.

O Brighid, blessed Goddess
Come into the sacred waters
O woman of the three strong fires,
In the forge,
In the cauldron,
In the head.
Protect us.

Protect the people."

          

                                            Excerpt from 'Lady Day', by Susan Morgan Black:

Card  from the "Oracle of the Goddess" Divination Deck, by Gayan S. Winter (also known as Gayan Sylvie Winter), illustrated by Jo Dose (Copyright 2006, U. S. Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, Connecticut). [Thanks to thetarotman for the info!]

"(...) The sacred fires of Brigid

        Are lit.

        Goddess of the blacksmith's forge,

        Of healing wells and

        Bardic wit.

        The Sun is returning,

        Spring is on her way.

        We light the sacred fire,

        For this is Brigid's Day."

Excerpt from 'Invocation to Brigid' by Michelle Skye (http://thetarotman.wordpress.com/tag/lisa-iris/)
I really like the fragment I show, but I'm not a great fan of these kind of invocations where such things as 'let me do your will/bidding' are expressed, as I'm more of an agnostic spiritualist and certainly against serving a deity. 'Inspire us' and 'guide us' are all right, but 'teach me to do your bidding' and 'I serve you' are not so great for my mindset and lifestyle. I prefer to have inspiration and guidance while being my own mistress.

'Brigid media study' by awenbrig on DeviantArt (http://awenbrig.deviantart.com/art/Brigid-media-study-103151288).

"Most blessed Brigid,
Living light,
Bright Arrow,
Goddess of the sun and
Of the eternal fire,
Arise like a shining sun!"

'Brighid' by purplefaerey on DeviantArt (http://purplefaerey.deviantart.com/art/Brighid-197773210).

"Victorious one of shining spear

Come, dear Brigid, come, be here!"

(Excerpt from an ancient invocation, http://www.wicca-spirituality.com/brigid-invocation.html)

• Songs: