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Tom Emanuel

@realtomemanuel.bsky.social

2.6K followers 460 following 2.3K posts

UCC minister. Theologian. Tolkien scholar. PhD on The Lord of the Rings and Post-Christianity @ University of Glasgow. Dad. He/him. All views my own. Blog: queerandback.substack.com Contact: thomas.emanuel(at)glasgow.ac.uk

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · Nov 20

What manner of man is this whom you have followed? Allow me to introduce myself with a short 🧵:

Hi! I'm Tom, a progressive Christian theologian, Tolkien scholar, and researcher with the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow.

The main Gilbert Scott Building of the University of Glasgow on a rare sunny day in Scotland. The central Gothic Revival tower rises, like something out of a fantasy novel, above a courtyard filled with green trees. At lower left, a wrought-iron lamppost adds a Narnia-esque touch. Photo by yours truly.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 7h

Whether I'm slamming a term paper or finishing a manuscript I've been working on for years, the insane adrenaline high of pushing up hard against a deadline is one of my favorite parts of writing. Why offload a delirious experience you'll remember for the rest of your life onto a bullshit machine?

Dane 🔜 NYCC AA L-34 @monkeyminion.com · 1d

I wrote a 15 page report on heraldic symbolism in medieval armor and weapon design for my art history class the night before it was due (8am class). Made up 90% of it (only found one book for reference) and got an A. GenAI could fucking never.

wrote 20 pages on Faulkner's The Bear four hours before final papers were due on trucker pills and coffee and cigarettes and got an A, fuck you.
You people couldn't hang with real slackers.
finn
wokeupchic • 4d
It's fuck Al till your homework due in 25 minutes

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 21h

It will never cease to crack me up that T.S. Eliot was from St. Louis and just cosplayed so hard he became English. Picked one hell of a culture to appropriate.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 4d

Due to a series of travel snafus brought on by Storm Amy, a trip that should've included a hotel stopover turned into a 48-hour-long gauntlet. I could sort of deal with being awake for that long in my 20s, but now that I am old (read: 35) I never, ever, under any circumstances want to do that again.

A man holding a flip phone looking like Jim Carey at his most manic, with the caption "People who have been awake for so long they no longer have boundaries."

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 7d

A friend took me out last night to celebrate the first full draft of my thesis and I worked myself up enough sermonizing about The Lord of the Rings to her that I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight have got a bit weepy in public. This is not surprising, but it is indicative.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 8d

Mazel Tov!! I'm one step behind you (first full draft submitted to supervisors last night) - you're proof that the next step can be taken!

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 8d

Right, I've been wading through the thesis trenches for a month. Did I miss anything important?

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 8d

And by "10 hours a day" I mean "10 hours seems right, maybe more, I dunno I kind of lost track of time there for the month of September"

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 8d

I've done nothing but write for 10 hours a day for weeks on end to wrangle 3 years' worth of notes, rough drafts, polished drafts, articles, essays, and massive unwieldy bibliographies into a single coherent document.

I am going to take this opportunity not to think about *anything* for a while.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 8d

Next day and I'm still in a delirious state of elation mixed with utter physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. I know I still have revisions, then submission, then my Viva, then corrections. But I set my life on fire for this bloody thesis and it's wild to have something to show for it at last.

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 9d

There will be revisions before I submit this sucker in December, but by God, I wrote a PhD thesis.

A snapshot of the word count for a Microsoft Word document, specificllly the first full draft of my PhD thesis. Pages: 278. Words: 97,605. It is entirely unnecessary to tell you how many characters there are, with or without spaces.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 9d

There will be revisions before I submit this sucker in December, but by God, I wrote a PhD thesis.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 24d

All right, friends, it's time to peace out while I work on this thing called "writing a thesis." I'll log in once a day to check DMs, but otherwise I'll see you in October. Until then, Happy Equinox, Blessed Mabon, Happy Hobbit Day, and Shanah Tovah, plus anything I inadvertently missed. ✌🏻

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 24d

IMO it's impossible to even grasp what he was doing unless you read him as a 20th century author. Bananas to me that people would call him a Victorian.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

To be clear: I *am* going insane right now, but for different (if not entirely unrelated) reasons. #PhDLife

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

Good thing I've kept a complete bibliography of every book, book chapter, journal article, magazine article, essay, blog post, lecture, conference paper, review, film, YouTube video, or podcast I've encountered in the last 5 years. Otherwise I would be going insane right now. #PhDLife

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

I can tell you exactly when the number jumped from 2 up to 6 cups a day and it's Winter 2021 when my first was born. Funny how that works!

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

Two months into new ADHD meds and another side-effect I didn't anticipate is a radical reduction in my caffeine intake. I had been drinking 5-6 cups of coffee a day for years. Now I can only drink a single cup in the morning before getting the jitters. It makes perfect sense - just unexpected!

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

I find the Jewish theology of pikuach nefesh really helpful here: almost any mitzvah can be broken to save the life of another. Your first duty is to your fellow human beings.

To love your neighbor *is* to love God. The two things aren't ultimately in conflict.

Jesus was nothing if not a Jew.

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

Leading up to my final year at uni, I won a pretty prestigious scholarship for postgrads going into careers in public service, and I remember the baffled looks my cohort gave me when I described myself as a "religious philosopher." The nomenclature has changed since then, but the bafflement has not.

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

The question "Which rights matter and when?" is a question of underlying commitments. It's a political question. It's not as simple as yelling "But free speech!!!"

I agree: freedom of speech is really, really important - and other things are important too. Two statements can be true at once. 3/4

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

Which rights have greater weight and when? Any just society has to be capable of holding that delicate and ever-shifting balance.

That's how I always understood BLM. A country where Black lives *actually* matter is going to make some different fucking ethical calculations than the one we have. 2/4

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 25d

The paradox of free speech is that any right, pursued to its logical extreme, will come to exclude all others. A fascist's "right to free speech" is in direct conflict with an oppressed person's right to be free from mob violence and state repression.

No one right is ever totalizing. 1/4

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 26d

As JRRT was fond of telling interviewers who annoyed him, the novel was "an essay in linguistic aesthetic." This was in fact an overstatement, but we all know how crazy the dude was about his made-up languages.

Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 26d

The out-of-touch Principle Skinner meme from the Simpsons. Top panel: "Am I insufferable to be around?" Bottom panel: "No, it's my loved ones who are wrong."

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 26d

When I was choosing a PhD topic, a loved one told me that under no circumstances was I allowed to do one on politics and theology because it would make me insufferable to be around. Turns out I couldn't escape it in Tolkien studies either: the politics and theology bit, *and* the insufferable bit.

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Tom Emanuel @realtomemanuel.bsky.social · 27d

I regret to inform the quizmaster that Sindarin and Quenya were invented 20 years before Tolkien wrote the first words of LotR