if you dont have me on facebook you are probably not missing out on any posts but the comment section is important too lmao
I went to the Renaissance faire dressed as a warrior. I had a real sword with me, too. I was standing (in character) next to a sword-fighting ring, where kids of all ages got the chance to pick up a sword and challenge the champion. Some woman walks by, with her little girl. The girl starts walking towards the ring, saying she wants to fight. But the mom pulled her away hella sharply, and was like, “That’s for boys.” You don’t want to be a BOY, do you?” And the girl looked around and saw me. I think she thought I was a boy; I had my hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a hood. So she comes up to me and asks me, “Do you think girls can be fighters, too?” And her mom looks like she’s silently gloating. Like she thinks I’m going to say no. So I take off my hood, untie my hair so that it flows freely, and kneel before her. And I’m like, “Milady, anyone can be a fighter.” I swear, the look on that mother’s face made my day.
This post was good but then it got better
Okay, this is a slight topic diversion, but in response to the above comment. I’ve volunteered at the CT Ren Faire for years now. For the last 5 or so I’ve worked in the game section, and we have a game similar to the above comment called “Smite the Knight”. I’ve been in the ring before, it’s a ton of fun getting to run around with the kids. The main goal is entertainment. Have a good shtick, keep the crowd engaged, and let the kids have a good time.
In both work and observing, I have learned something about kids. A lot of parents try to get their boys to go fight. Of the young ones that do, they tend to be shy. You get the ones who just swing the boffer swords around with no regard for life, but, mostly, they’re reserved. It’s adorable. I mean, they’re kids.
But the girls. THE GIRLS. Holy crap. I swear, the pinker the dress, the more taffeta and glitter…the more intensity. I remember, the first year I worked there, one girl came in, grabbed the biggest sword she could, and WENT TO TOWN on our knight. Lifted it over head, let out this primal scream and mowed him down. Homeboy is 6′2″, she was FIVE. And once he was in the fetal position (He was fine. It was for show.) on the ground, she stopped, put her foot on his chest, and yelled “I AM A FIERCE PRINCESS!!”. Later in the day when she walked by a couple of us yelled “Ah! It’s the fierce princess!” and she stopped and flexed. It was the best, and I will never forget that girl.
OH MY GOD IT’S BACK YES
This has improved since last I reblogged.
I taught karate for like 5 years, and the girls were always, pound for pound, better than the boys. Even the girls who didn’t really want to do it and were only there because their parents made them were better than like 95% of the boys.
I was playing fiddle at a ren faire, and two little girls were really enjoying our set. After quite some time one of them walked up to me and shyly offered me her star tinsel tiara, because she “didn’t have any money. And this protects you from trolls!” I said “Thanks, that’s really sweet – but what about you? Don’t you need protection from trolls?”
At which point this six-ish-year-old girl whips out her certificate from the axe throwing booth and says “Nah, I’m fine.”
I still have that tinsel tiara. It’s draped over my modem. I figure it’ll protect me from the most trolls that way.
I am not in the habit of reblogging a post and slapping an “it got better” on there BUT I SAY GOTDAMN
Þrymskviða. Compressed down, it goes like this: A Jotun steal Thor’s hammer Mjolnir and says he’ll only give it back if he’s given Freyja to marry, as she is the most beautiful goddess in all of existence. The gods argue over what to do for a while before Heimdall suggests they stick a bridal veil on Thor, says he’s Freyja, and pretend they’re giving Freyja (Thor) to the Jotun to marry so Thor can get close enough to the Jotun to steal Mjolnir back.
Now typically when people talk about this story, it’s with an element of disbelieving comedy. “Oh my god, who would believe Thor was a woman, let alone Freyja, the most beautiful goddess in the world?”
But I propose a different way to look at the story.
See, different cultures have different beauty standards. Modern western beauty standards may be a delicate hourglass supermodel, but that’s not always been the case. Greece, for instance, depicted Aphrodite like this:
Yeah. A Greek sculptor was told “sculpt the goddess of beauty” and they thought “alright, fat rolls, that’s where beauty is at, let’s do this”. And everybody else apparently agreed with them, because up went the statue. Beauty is a malleable concept is what I’m getting at.
Now this is where it becomes relevant that Freyja is not just the goddess of love, sex, and beauty. She’s also the goddess of war. And the righteous dead. Goddess of war in the same Viking warrior culture that gave us shield maidens, women who wielded seven fucking kilogram (15 lbs) shields in combat.
Sooooo … when the Norse storytellers said, “This is Freyja, goddess of war and the righteous dead, who rode giant murder cats into battle, she is the most beautiful goddess in the world”, I’m guessing they weren’t thinking of her as some willowy waif. No, I’m guessing they probably thought more along the lines of:
190 cm (6′3″), broad shoulders, built like a brick shithouse, with a jawline like whoa, and fully capable of murdering everything in her path.
Put in that context, the story of Thor dressing up as Freyja sounds less like a punchline about “how could anyone ever mistake Thor in a veil for Freyja?” and becomes more a case of “ohhhhhhhhhhh, no wonder all the gods thought this plan would work”.
Artisan Scribbles 