I Pulled Up The Sketchy Online Old English Version Of Beowulf And Yeah It Has 3,182 Lines. If You Took

I pulled up the sketchy online Old English version of Beowulf and yeah it has 3,182 lines. If you took 5 seconds per line you’d need four and a half hours to recite it (or specifically to recite the one version that got both written down and preserved for a thousand years) (only a little charred). But I mean 5 seconds per line is for chumps who don’t want to unlock the Beowulf speedrun.

Also ok for SCIENCE I timed myself and quickly reciting the first 5 lines took 16 seconds, let’s call that fifteen because I mispronounced meodosetla. At that pace (if you could keep it up consistently and I mean never cough never take a drink) you’d be looking at 2.65 hours, or 2 hours and 39 minutes (or 159 minutes). This is actually 20 minutes shorter than the theatrical run-time of Peter Jackson’s Two Towers (179 minutes).

Now, the original post was about reciting Beowulf in an hour, so 2 hours and 39 minutes is not gonna cut it, and is so far over time that even doubling your pace can’t save you. You’re gonna lose this speedrun and Æthelflæd’s new scop poet is going to laugh at you. However, there’s a cheat to exploit here. In the period when Old English (language of Beowulf) was spoken, people often just said there were 12 hours in a day and 12 hours in a night, no longer how long or short daylight actually was. This made the concept of a daylight hour stretch in summer, when daylight lasts way longer than 12 hours. There’s a good article on this I’ll find it if anyone wants it. I don’t actually expect anyone to have read this far.

ANYWAY, the longest day in Jarrow (furthest north Old English speaking town I could think of) in 2024 (sorry this data is not calibrated for the 10th century) was of course midsummer: June 20th, at 17 modern hours 22 modern minutes and 1 modern second. This means each early medieval hour that day actually lasted 1 hour and 26 minutes. Still not nearly enough lads, but this is when it becomes a skill game. Because I wasn’t going ALL that fast. We need to squeeze 159 minutes of Beowulf (aka basically Two Towers) into 86 minutes. If you could half my pace-per-five-lines from 15 seconds to 7.5 seconds, you’d be able to do it, one day of the year, in Jarrow. Iceland is cheating. Good luck.

“I’m not going to do the thing because I don’t view it as important.” ← Conscious decision made of your own free will.

“I want to do the thing because I view it as important, but trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would.” ← Executive dysfunction, a physical health problem that doesn’t answer to your own free will.

“Trying to get myself to do the thing creates the same reaction as trying to put my hand on a hot stove would. This must mean I don’t actually want to do the thing and I’m just tricking myself into thinking I do.” ← No, that’s still executive dysfunction, but you’re having brainworms about it.

ARE YOU TODAY’S DATE?

BECAUSE YOURE 10/10

Summary:

It's hard to juggle responsibilities sometimes. Being Clark Kent can be just as stressful as being Superman, and it doesn't get any easier when he takes it upon himself to mentor a kid named Danny with strange new powers and unknown triggers. If he can figure out how to be a Kryptonian, surely he can help Danny figure out how to be a halfa… Right?

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At long last, posting week has arrived for @dpxdcbigbang! Big thanks to the mods and my artist @wandixx. I'm very excited to present my entry! Enjoy!

Art to the amazing fic by @numinous-scribe "I wonder what could lie beyond infinity", read it, it'll punch you in a gut but, like, gently.

We're both part of the Ghouls and Gangs Bang ( @dpxdcbigbang ), check out other works because both writers and artists did amazing jobs, and their works are really varied when it comes to vibes, length and characters used from both universes

Spoilers to the ending of Scribe's fic under the cut, read before proceeding

I'm not crying, you're crying