today in french we were doing an exercise on adjective forms and some of the sentences said things like “boys prefer pretty girls,” “girls prefer muscular boys,” etc. and my 40 yr old straight married professor makes an awkward face and says “ok, wow these just got weirdly heteronormative. how about you fill in the blank with whatever noun-adjective combination you want, as long as it follows correct grammar”
and the answers that we came up with were amazing.
girls don’t prefer boys, girls prefer (fast) cars and money
boys prefer beautiful barbecues
girls prefer annoying cats
boys prefer 75 large plastic dinosaurs
and of course: pretty girls prefer pretty girls
so remember kids, heteronormativity doesn’t belong in the classroom but 75 large plastic dinosaurs do.
We can talk about that goddamn shitty movie Maleficent till the cows come home, go on and on about how stupid it is to make such a simply evil but awesome villain the martyr for no goddamn reason.
But you know what I want?
I want a spinoff of the Beauty and the Beast about the one who cursed Adam (the beast,) the Enchantress.
Because this bitch
This fucking bitch, is possibly as evil, maybe even more evil and sadistic than Maleficent.
The Enchantress cursed the prince because he failed a test, he was unkind to her because she presented herself as an ugly old hag. She turned him into a werewolf minotaur hybrid (fucking cool I’ll give her that,) because he was rude to her and didn’t want her rose.
So she cursed him, along with every single one of his servants. What did his servants have to do with any of this? Why are they being punished?
Not only that, but this stood out to me when I watched the movie again. When the spell is broken, all of the monstrous statues and art pieces transform into graceful, beautiful ones, I’m assuming that’s what they looked like before.
So this enchantress not only cursed him and his servants (oh and his fucking DOG DID I MENTION THAT) she took away every beautiful thing he had, replacing them with things like goblins, dragons, ghouls and other monsters, just to remind him what he was and what she had done to him, and he would have to look at them every single day.
I’m going to rightfully assume she provided the magic mirror as well, all of the magic in the movie stems from her, the mirror most likely came from her. His only window to the outside world is a handheld mirror, so he can fucking look at himself.
But you know what the kicker is?
If we take these two lines into consideration
“The rose, which was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year” ~Narrator
“Ten years we’ve been rusting…” ~ Lumiere
We can reasonably deduce that the Enchantress cursed the prince when he was eleven years old.
Not only did she curse an 11 year old, she cursed an 11 year old PRINCE in the middle of a dark night who refused a stranger shelter because, get this, I’m 20 and if some weird old lady showed up at my door in the middle of he night and was like Yo Can I Sleep Here i would probably just close and lock my door because!!!!
Who is she!!!! I don’t know her!!!! What if she tried to kill me or stole everything!!
This boy is a prince living in a palace of luxury and he was probably given the “don’t talk to strangers” talk by his (dead??) royal parents!! Or at least Mrs. Potts!! He was probably like this lady’s gonna steal our silverware and candle sticks in the middle of the night and all she’s giving me is a rose that was probably picked from our own garden?? Bye lady.
Last night at Standing Rock, the police were using concussion grenades among their “nonlethal” weapon arsenal. Sophia Wilanski was hit with one of these grenades and was flown to a hospital for emergency surgery. She ended up losing her arm. A woman lost her arm in a peaceful protest. A peaceful protest for the right to have clean fucking water. A WOMAN LOST HER ARM FIGHTING FOR CLEAN WATER.
One of Washoe’s caretakers was pregnant and missed work for many weeks after she miscarried. Roger Fouts recounts the following situation:
“People who should be there for her and aren’t are often given the cold shoulder—her way of informing them that she’s miffed at them. Washoe greeted Kat [the caretaker] in just this way when she finally returned to work with the chimps. Kat made her apologies to Washoe, then decided to tell her the truth, signing “MY BABY DIED.” Washoe stared at her, then looked down. She finally peered into Kat’s eyes again and carefully signed “CRY”, touching her cheek and drawing her finger down the path a tear would make on a human (Chimpanzees don’t shed tears). Kat later remarked that one sign told her more about Washoe and her mental capabilities than all her longer, grammatically perfect sentences.“ [23]
Washoe herself lost two children; one baby died shortly after birth of a heart defect, the other baby, Sequoyah, died of a staph infection at two months of age.
after the death of her children, researchers were determined to have Washoe raise a baby and brought in a ten month chimpanzee named Loulis. one of the caretakers went to Washoe’s enclosure and signed “i have a baby for you.” Washoe became incredibly excited, yelling and swaying from side to side, signing “baby” over and over again. then she signed “my baby.”
the caretaker came back with Loulis, and Washoe’s excitement disappeared entirely. she refused to pick Loulis up, instead signing “baby” apathetically; it was clear that the baby she thought she was getting was going to be Sequoyah. eventually Washoe did approach Loulis, and by the next day the two had bonded and from then on she was utterly devoted to him.
*information shamelessly paraphrased from When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Masson.
Even more interestingly, after Washoe and Loulis bonded, she started teaching him American Sign Language the same way that human parents teach their children language. It only took Loulis eight days to learn his first sign from Washoe, and aside from the seven that his human handlers learned around him, he learned to speak in ASL just as fluently as Washoe and was able to communicate with humans in the same way she could.
I am fascinated by animals who teach other animals. Not just human things like sign language (though this is FASCINATING and I would love to see if they eventually develop their own dialect) but don’t trust that guy, and here’s how to use a tool to open a nut, etc.
Wild horses teach their foals what not to eat, but what to eat if they’re sick. It’s transmitted information, not instinctual behavior. Horses have pharmacology.
And apparently one of the main things that differentiate humans and other primates is that humans are able to DEVELOP complex ideas, means of communication, etc, but any other primate can fairly easily UNDERSTAND and UTILIZE these ideas. I’m not sure if we have yet figured out why this is, but It’s so interesting because we really can’t just automatically know how much they’re capable of. There are probably lots of complex ideas and actions that non-human primates are intelligent enough to learn and understand, and teach others in their group, but since no one has introduced it to them they aren’t yet able to do it. We’ll never truly know how similar we are unless we give them the chance to show us, and idk I just think that’s really interesting.
