Studying Linguistics Is Actually So Wonderful Because When You Explain Youth Slang To Older Professors,

Why you should read Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey frequently scores second on polls of least liked Austen novel, but I honestly don’t know why because it’s awesome. So let me try to convince you to read it…

Northanger Abbey: Everything you could wish for in a novel!

The Most Attractive Leading Man in Austen: I know you think you want Darcy, but do you really want a man who can’t take a joke? How about instead of insulting you at the assembly, he dances with you and makes you laugh! Surveys reveal that “makes me laugh” is a consistently attractive trait in a future spouse. Besides being extraordinarily funny, he also will willingly take you dress shopping, loves his sister, and reads novels. Shall we agree that he is the perfect man?

Most Relatable Leading Lady: Despite having a good education, are you sometimes a little lost in a conversation? Are you reasonably good looking, passably intelligent, and only somewhat accomplished? Catherine Morland is just a normal, everyday girl who stands up against peer pressure and falls head-over-heels in love with a cute guy. If she could be born to be a heroine, than all of us can be!

Villains So Well Drawn You Will Swear you Met Them Yesterday: Have you met a guy who constantly brags about his vehicle, talks without actually saying anything, and who assumes that girls will go for him even though he has nothing to recommend him? I have, and so has Jane Austen, its John Thorpe! Isabella is a classic drama queen who is dating a really sweet nerd but angling for the football star. You knew her in high school, I guarantee it.

Highly quotable one liners:

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

“His departure gave Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain.”

Great life lessons: 

“No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.”

“Beware how you give your heart.”

“Our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for.”

and best of all, a passionate defence of reading novels from the Narrator, who continues to be sarcastic and hilarious throughout the novel.

Northanger Abbey, honestly, what’s not to love?

One of the funny things about LotR is that almost every people in it professes to disbelieve in the supernatural, but because they live in a fantasy world their baseline for "natural" is so jacked up. The Rohirrim are like, yeah, there's a wizard in this tower and ancient tradition that we have no reason to doubt says this mountain is full of ghosts, but walking trees? Short people? I don't think so. Galadriel is like, "Listen I heard you describe what I do as magic and look I just gotta clear some things up, okay." Gondorians are like, yeah, of course the Enemy has spectres of men who lived long ago and never died and can now fly above us and incapacitate us with just their voices. This is just a fact of life, okay? But shut up about this magic weed that makes comatose people better. That's an old wives' tale. Royalty? Press X to doubt.

The people group in Tolkien's work who seem most receptive to magic and least restricted by their own notions of what it can do actually seem to be the hobbits. And they use it to avoid meeting people they don't want to talk to

Good save

“You fool!” cackled the Dark One, “No man can kill me!” “But I am no man!” bellowed the hero, as he unhinged his jaw. A grotesque sound filled the hall as they hacked up impossibly large balls of cloth. Unfurling, they stand and announce “For we are actually three trench coats in a halfling!”

This is the first discussion of The Great library of Alexandria that hasn't made me feel anger and regret I am just confused but I like it

The Great Library of Alexandria was burned for a very good reason. It was hopelessly contaminated with the works of time travelers and the paradoxes were soon to be catastrophic. Only a full purge would save the world.

you’re not the dumbest person I know.

But you better hope he doesn’t die.

Describe a dog going to fetch a stick, but in the style of a noir crime thriller.

a collection of my favorite tweets regarding the Ever Given in the Suez Canal

Two people meet at a bar. One thinks they’re being hit on. The other is a spy and thinks they’re meeting with a contact. Misunderstandings ensue.

I want to try this with time travel

You, an immortal, have spent your entire life being a professor. Today, a new student signed up to your class, who happened to be a familiar face. Turns out, they already took one of your classes; 200 years ago.

“Sir, World of Warcraft subscriptions just jumped by 2.3 billion” “Billion with a ‘B’? Where did they come from?” “Well, all the new traffic is routed through the Deep Space Array. It appears we’ve made first contact. Or, at least Thrall has…”