Prof. Suspended for Game of Thrones T-Shirt

In academia, allowing your daughter to wear Game of Thrones apparel is a sign of dangerous mental illness.

Anyone who finds this situation improbable has never worked in higher education.

In an effort to get myself similarly suspended, here is a picture of my own children cosplaying a few years ago. Note the belligerent nature of their costumes — the Unabomber-like Ludditism of my son’s steampunk attire, and the appearance of my daughter as a masked vigilante (no doubt a sign of Klan sympathies). Also, the sign “WESTin” is prominent in the background — clearly a pro-Western (and therefore a colonialist, anti-other-cardinal-directions) message.

Cosplay

 

Beowulf’s Sword in Young Justice

Young Justice, the animated series about D.C. comic book sidekicks getting their own covert Junior Justice League, had a throw-away Beowulf reference in episode 19, “Secrets.”

In that episode, a villain named “Harm” (who obnoxiously always referred to himself in the 3rd person) steals Beowulf’s sword, which can only be wielded by the pure of heart — and as his heart is pure evil, it counts. Once he has learned the incantation to make the sword work (which is vaguely-Old-English sounding gibberish), he uses it to wreak a bit of havoc.

Beyond that, it isn’t really clear what sword this is supposed to be, since in the Old English poem Beowulf fights Grendel unarmed (heh heh), and in the battle with Grendel’s mother Unferth’s sword Hrunting fails, and the Beowulf has to kill her with a giant sword she happens to have lying around her lair.

One cool potential reference to Grendel, though — the sword is actually sheathed in what looks like a mummified arm. Not exactly canonical to the medieval poem, but cool nonetheless.