#[ i hope this works for modern day ]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

[blooodymoon]

A "RETURN of the Number of PERSONS FLOGGED in the BRITISH NAVY, in each of the Years 1845 and 1846; specifying the Name of the Ship, the Offence, the Sentence and the Number of Lashes Infficted." Parlamentary Paper, Number 661 of Session 1847

So after reading the Post about Jopsons Flogging by @handfuloftime I went down a research rabbit hole because I wanted to see if their exist sufficient & specific enough Data to accuratly compare his punishment and put it in the historical context.

I found this Website, which features the two tables from the Parlamentary Papers and their Source.

(Note: The tables on the website are incomplete and inaccurate in certain places. I compared it from top to bottom to the original source and corrected/added the informations in my table.)

I used that as a basis for my own table, where I also added Averages and Sliders so people can search the Informations!

(Apparently Sliders don't work on Mobil, and I don't know enough about Google Sheets how to fix it :/

If anyone knows or if you find a some kind mistake please let me know.)

This week I visited the University Libary, which has access to the Parlamentary Papers Online, to see if such tables also exist for earlier years but sadly 1845 was the first year where they went into such Specifics.

(I hope to add some of the Years after 1846 to the table, when I can.)

Earlier years only had these Informations per Year:

Total Number of Punishments

Total Number of Lashes

Highest Number of Lashes Inflicted at One Time

Lowest Number of Lashes Inflicted at One Time

This Information for 1839 - 1846 under the Cut.

Also under the Read More are some Graphs, Medians & Averages about Flogging for Drunkenness Alone, seperated by Seamen, Marines, Boys and Everyone!

Hope that someone find this useful/interesting !

Corporal Punishment for Drunkenness Alone

Everyone:

Lashes Sentenced Median: 32,75 (1845: 36 | 1846: 31,4)

Lashes Sentenced Average: 31,07 (1845: 31,13 | 1846: 31,02)

Lashes Inflicted Average: 30,8 (1845: 31,02 | 1846: 30,58)

Seamen:

Lashes Sentenced Median: 36 (1845: 36 | 1846: 36)

Lashes Sentenced Average: 34,37 (1845: 34,62 | 1846: 33,86)

Lashes Inflicted Average: 34,33 (1845: 34,41 | 1846: 33,86)

Marines:

Lashes Sentenced Median: 31,4 (1845: 32 | 1846: 31,4)

Lashes Sentenced Average: 30,8 (1845: 31,09 | 1846: 31,09)

Lashes Inflicted Average: 30,8 (1845: 31,09 | 1846: 30,69)

Boys:

Lashes Sentenced Median: 24 (1845: 24 | 1846: 33)

Lashes Sentenced Average: 26,22 (1845: 24,4 | 1846: 28,5)

Lashes Inflicted Average: 25,33 (1845: 24,4 | 1846: 26,5)

Years

1839:

Number of Punishments: 2,007

Number of Lashes: 59,341

Highest: 60 | Lowest: 3

1840:

Number of Punishments: 2,026

Number of Lashes: 60,302

Highest: 48 | Lowest: 1

1841:

Number of Punishments: 2,066

Number of Lashes: 61,669

Highest: 50 | Lowest: 2

1842:

Number of Punishments: 2,472

Number of Lashes: 71,024

Highest: 100* | Lowest: 1

1843:

Number of Punishments: 2,170

Number of Lashes: 63,985

Highest: 60 | Lowest: 3

1844:

Number of Punishments: 1,411

Number of Lashes: 42,352

Highest: 72+ | Lowest: 6

1845:

Number of Punishments: 1,070

Number of Lashes: 33,511

Highest: 48 | Lowest: 3

1846:

Number of Punishments: 1,077

Number of Lashes: 32,360

Highest: 50* | Lowest: 3

*By sentence of a Court Martial.

+By order of the Commander-in-Chief for theft, in a shop at Chusan, and violence to the natives.

Sources: A "RETURN of the CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS inflicted in the ROYAL NAVY, in each of the Years 1839 to 1843, both inclusive, stating the highest and lowest Number of Lashes at each Time, and the aggregate Number of Lashes in each Year [ ]" Parlamentary Paper, Number 308, of Session 1845 + ABSTRACT of Total Numbers of CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS inflicted in the NAVY, and the Total Number of LASHES Inflicted, in each Year up to the 31st December 1846 [ ]. Parlamentary Paper, Number 661, of Session 1847

[michsmeesh]

have u ever drawn modern au jovier? love all ur work btww^__^

i have drawn them already but i'll gladly draw them again and again and again and again and

[froschli96]

you know, i always find it really funny when dudebros complain about syndicate and odyssey being too "jokey" or not "taking its characters seriously" or whatever…

like, did y'all collectively sleep through "it's-a me, mario!", "i meant besides vaginas", ezio inventing the latte, bartolomeo's... just... *gestures vaguely* entire character, etc?

like, it's fine to have preferences of course, i myself prefer a more serious and grounded tone, but these are usually the same people who tout the ezio trilogy as "peak assassin's creed", call ac1 a glorified tech demo and hate on connor for being "too serious and boring", like? make it make sense!

[hudson-fabulous-hornet]

> Old men who can't go three seconds without being snarky to anyone four feet from them...

> I have no idea if cars have some grey base coat that's temporary like the human equivalent to casting but if so thats so epicsauce. Comics are not for the weak (Me I am the weak).

[brandwhorestarscream]

Sooo mini-rant in the tags lmfao. Dont look if you dont wanna read about current events lol

[theunconcernedembalmer]

I may not be as active on the idv scene anymore but I miss seeing you and your Aesop on my dash oop. Glad to see you back fren :3

I missed being here XD thank u so much for the message beth!!

[toxooz]

new König bio addition dropped and im concluding there is indeed officially Somthn Fucked Up Under There™💗💖😳😳💗💓🥵🥵

[thewhizzyhead]

one day I wish I could actually like understand songwriting especially for theatre so that I can I dunno actually put to use the random tunes I have in my head that just spontaneously appear while I'm doing the most mundane of shit. anyways patron has the concept of an opening number now

[waateeystein]

Analyzing Nick Dear's Frankenstein (and why we should move on to better play adaptations)

Alrighty y'all, its the long-awaited Nick Dear Frankenstein analysis post! This post is focusing specifically on Dear's characterization of the Creature, and why it negatively affects the play overall (plus some adaption theory added in for funsies). For additional context, I am an MFA candidate studying theatre, and I did this research and the accompanying slides for a project in my graduate-level theatrical criticism class. Basically this post is the text version of that presentation, with some of the slides included, and the fluff trimmed. There is a fair bit of academic jargon in here, but I tried to make it as accessible as possible!

And with all of that out of the way, the Nick Dear Frankenstein deep dive is under the cut! (And citations at the end.)

CW: Discussions of violence and SA.

Before I get into the script itself (which if you are interested in reading it, a PDF version is easily found on google), I want to introduce a fun adaptation theory which is specific to studying Frankenstein, called "Frankenstein Complex Theory." This theory comes from Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry in the introduction section to "Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster's Eternal Lives in Popular Culture." (A fantastic read that I recommend to anyone if your school or local library has it in circulation.) This introduction introduces the "complex" theory, as well as some really awesome ideas that get used and referenced by all of the authors included in the book.

Basically Cutchins and Perry assert that traditional adaptation theory is simple not enough to properly study Frankenstein and it's innumerable adaptations. One might also assert that Frankenstein itself is an adaptation, Mary Shelley published multiple editions of her story, and one could argue that the original story is an adaptation of other stories like "Paradise Lost." Linda Hutcheon, another academic in the field of adaptation studies who also wrote a fantastic book (cited at the end), talks about this idea of "palimpsestuous Intertextuality." I want to first argue here that the original text of Frankenstein and its adaptations (the "myth" of Frankenstein) are palimpsestuous.

And when I say the "myth" of Frankenstein is "palimpsestuous," its basically just saying that the "myth" (tall green guy with bolts in his neck who is mostly non-verbal, going around killing people mostly without rhyme or reason) is the predominate cultural narrative of Frankenstein's monster, rather than how he actually is in the book. All of the cultural ideas of what Frankenstein's monster is are this giant network which interweaves with itself, references and builds off itself, and constantly creates new things from these connections. The book and it's adaptations are not in hierarchy, one is not implicitly better or more important than another, they all work together to create our cultural narrative of Frankenstein's monster. Thus, palimpsestuous Intertextuality.

But what is this "Complex" theory I mentioned earlier, and what does it have to do with Nick Dear? Well, here is a helpful diagram!

Essentially, every piece of Frankenstein media every created, including Mary Shelley's original novel, are all part of the "Frankenstein Network." The complex, however, is personal, it includes anything from that network that you have personally consumed. Some people have a wider complex than others, but nonetheless, most of us have some kind of Frankenstein Complex (if you're this far in the post I'm assuming you have one lol.) I think Cutchins and Perry really popped off when they created this theory, its a fantastic way of studying/teaching adaptation.

But onto Nick Dear. Why did I just spend so much time covering adaptation theory and teaching you all a bunch of academic jargon? Well firstly, I spent a lot of time on that research for class and I wanted to share. But secondly and more importantly, my thesis for this entire post is that Nick Dear, whose goal with his play was to create an adaptation which humanized the Creature and sticks very close to the novel, created something that was unintentionally more a product of his personal complex and the palimpsestuous "myth" of Frankenstein's monster. He wrote a play that deeply mischaracterizes the Creature, and in turn uses violence and SA for shock value rather than substance.

And maybe this is a bold claim, but I think comparing the plot of the novel (from the creature's point of view) and the plot of Dear's play is a good place to start. And for your visual reference, I created a plot diagram for both so that we can compare the two side-by-side. (Thanks Freytag lol.)

The first thing we can notice about comparing the overall plot structure is that they are indeed, very similar. And this tends to be most people's reactions to seeing this play. That compared to most other Frankenstein media, it is super faithful to the book in terms of setting and characters and hitting important plot points. And I too want to praise Dear for that. I think he was extremely smart about what characters he chose to cut or combine, and the plot points he chose to include. I also personally love that despite the cutting of Walton's character, Victor and the Creature still visit the arctic at the end of the play. Dear made so many great choices with his play, but ends up squandering it his mischaracterization of the Creature.

But how is he mischaracterizing the Creature? Well first, lets look at how Shelley characterizes him in the book, specifically in terms of violence. I argue, that anytime the Creature kills someone in the book, it is a mostly equal/proportionate reaction to the violence done against him. His first murder his killing William, and the subsequent execution of Justine after he frames her for William's murder. All of this comes after Victor's initial rejection of the Creature, and rejection by multiple villages, the DeLacey's and the young drowning girl and her father. Killing William and Justine was his first retribution after all of the rejection and violence against him, which was initiated by Victor creating him and rejecting him in the first place. And this is his only planned revenge at that point, his next move was demanding that Victor create a female creature for him, with the plan to flee and live a peaceful life in South America (whether he actually meant what he said is up to interpretation.) His next murders only come after Victor destroys the unfished female creature. This is when the Creature kills Henry and then Elizabeth. Elizabeth (and arguably Henry) are Victor's partners, and the people he most personally loves. Killing them is direct retribution for Victor destroying the female Creature, who was supposed to be (at least from the Creature's perspective) the Creature's romantic partner. All of the Creature's direct murders are direct mirrors to Victor's transgressions against the Creature. William is killed for the initial rejection and subsequent exiling from society, Henry and Elizabeth are killed for the destruction of his future romantic partner.

Dear takes a different approach in adapting these murders. In his play, the Creature's first murder is not William, but is actually the DeLacey's. After being personally tutored by Father DeLacey for a significant amount of time, the eventual and fated meeting with Felix and Agatha arrives and the creature is rejected by them. Instead of going straight to Geneva, as he does in the novel, he first sets fire to the DeLacey's cabin, killing the entire family inside. To me, this feels like the first instance of spectacle and shock over actual substance. In both Shelley's novel and Dear's play, as the creature learns about humanity and war, he clearly has a distaste for violence and killing. And because of this, I don't understand why the Creature has such an extreme reaction to the DeLacey's, especially in this version where Father DeLacey shows him so much direct kindness, and it is Felix and Agatha specifically who reject him. Why would the Creature decide to kill them all? If Dear wanted to add additional deaths, why not just kill Felix and Agatha and spare Father DeLacey because of his previous kindness? This violence, to me, feels undeserved and does not mirror the violence done against him by this family. From a staging perspective, the visual of the house burning is actually a very impressive collaboration between the set and lighting designers on the giant stage of the National Theatre. But I question why this moment needs to be here, when the rest of the play and it's staging in the premier production already has so much beauty and shock and spectacle. This is also the first moment where I find the Creature unsympathetic, because this action seems overly extreme as a response.

After this moment, the murder of William is different but not too dissimilar in tone to the novel. At it's heart, it is still the Creature's first direct revenge against Victor. After this, our next big departure from the novel is when the female creature is fully brought to life, different to the novel where she is never fully given life. Victor killing her after she has been able to briefly live is a more extreme measure on Victor's part too, which by my own argument, may warrant a more extreme reaction from the Creature. And to be absolutely clear, Victor simply kills/dismantles her, and nothing more. As for the creature's reaction, Henry is a cut character in this adaptation, so we obviously don't see his death. Instead, the Creature kills Elizabeth, but in this version, not only does the creature kill her, he also r*pes her. This is my biggest point of contention with the play. To me, the subtext in Dear's version is that the Creature views both Elizabeth and the Female Creature as some kind of property, and when his property (the female Creature) is taken away by Victor, he takes Victor's property (Elizabeth) away too. Right before her death in the play, the Creature and Elizabeth actually have a really touching conversation, and they seem to genuinely bond. And so when the Creature eventually kills her afterwards, him r*ping her comes completely out of left field. The only explanation to me, is that despite empathizing with her, the Creature ultimately still views her as Victor's property, and needed to take her away from Victor in a way that was more than just taking her life from him. And honestly, it's a really gross interpretation of these characters. And I want to be very clear that I know depiction is not endorsement, and that I also believe there is a time and a place for depicting SA on stage, but this play was not the time nor the place. The creature simply killing Elizabeth is enough to get the point across, the SA seems to have been added for pure shock value, and again, spectacle. One could argue that this action done by the creature is part of his sexual awakening, just as he learns about other aspects of humanity. But again I believe this is not justified by the text of the play, and is written for pure shock value at the expense of another character, specifically a woman. I would call this misogynistic.

And these extreme reactions from the Creature in Dear's play seem to create this hyper-masculinized version of the character and the story. And I think that is a shame considering the original story was written by a woman, and Mary Shelley did a fantastic job of writing a story where the men can exist across a spectrum of masculinity, without needing to be this stereotyped version of hypermasculinity with a desire for sexual vengeance. I mean, Victor creating the Creature is a pretty clear metaphor for motherhood/parenthood, especially considering Shelley's experience with motherhood and the loss of her children and her own mother. And not to say that a cis man isn't capable of writing an authentic adaptation of a woman's story, but here, I think Nick Dear missed the mark, especially in regards to Elizabeth's death and his depiction of Creature/masculinity.

And I don't want to boil this down to, "Nick Dear is a man and therefore his adaption is automatically bad." Because I don't think that's the case, and I think that's an unfair assumption to make. What I do think, is that despite trying to make an adaptation that strove to humanize the Creature better than most other adaptations, Dear instead created an adaptation that fell into the overly-violent monster tropes of the greater Frankenstein Network of adaptations. In essence, Dear may have unintentionally become a product of his own "complex." And unfortunately, that subconscious influence may be partially why we get this interpretation of the Creature, and the unnecessary shock factors added into the story.

So where do we go from here? Chances are, if you see a theatre company putting on a production of Frankenstein, it's probably the Nick Dear version. This was the case for me last October when I accidentally attended a production of this script at a professional theatre company back home in Florida. My hope is that one day we can move on from this script, and find a Frankenstein play adaptation that humanizes the Creature in a way that most audiences (who probably have not read the book) are unfamiliar with, while also not resorting to shock value that dehumanizes the women in the story. My homework for myself beyond this research project, is to read more Frankenstein play adaptations, and specifically ones that are not written by cis men. I think the experiences of women, trans people and disabled people (or obviously any intersection of these communities and identities) could really lend themselves to new and exciting interpretations of the script that bring broader perspectives into context. If you have any suggestions of Frankenstein plays or playwrights who have written Frankenstein plays, I would love to check them out! I also suggest giving the National Theatre world premier pro-shot of Nick Dear's Frankenstein a watch, purely just for the design of the show. Costumes, set, sound and lighting are all really spectacular, and I would love to do an analysis of that aspect of the show one day.

Obviously there was a lot about this show I didn't cover (Cumberbatch, I know), I just wanted to cover the characterization of the Creature at a textual level, because to me that is the most glaring issue with this play. Please let me know your thoughts, and thanks for reading if you got this far!

Citations (I didn't do a great job of referencing these in-text, but all of these sources are great and I highly recommend checking them out!)

Cutchins, Dennis R, and Dennis R Perry. “Introduction- The Frankenstein Complex: When the text is more than a text.” Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular Culture, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2018, pp. 1–19.

Dear, Nick, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein: Based on the Novel by Mary Shelley. Faber and Faber, 2011.

Hutcheon, Linda. “Beginning to Theorize Adaptation: What? Who? Why? How? Where? When?” A Theory of Adaptation, Routledge, New York, New York, 2006, pp. 1–32.

Jones, Kelly. “Adaptations of ‘liveness’ in theatrical representations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular Culture, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2018, pp. 316–334.

Pfeiffer, Lee. “Frankenstein: Film by Whale [1931].” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 24 Nov. 2023, www.britannica.com/topic/Frankenstein-film-by-Whale.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1831.

[pynkhues]

Not a baiting ask: I don’t recall any of the characters dressing more androgynously as the books went on, save Gabrielle? There are passages of Louis and Lestat wearing lace, pearls and velvet frock coats in the modern day, in reference to 18th c. fashion: Is that what the other Anon may have meant? That’s not an androgynous sartorial choice with historical costuming in mind, though, it’s Louis dressing in the fashion of his human era. (Perhaps there is a misconception from a passage in which Louis wears lace and pearls at Armand’s urging, or someone sharing such passages with intent to mislead other fans about the canonicity of Femme Louis or Femme Lestat beyond Anne’s personal identification with them, which has happened before and will happen again.) In the show, Louis dressing in lace, pearl and velvet would be Louis dressing in a colourful three piece suit in the style of the 1910’s.

(x)

Ah! Thank you for the correction, anon, I didn't remember any either, but I'm hyper-conscious of only having read through Memnoch (and having read most of the books I have quite a while ago, although I've been re-reading TVL recently) so I chose to take the ask in good faith and assume perhaps something happened in later books. That could very well be what the anon meant, but perhaps you're right too that there are scenes being taken out of context.

[dirt-goth]

I've decided my only actual "gym goal" is actually just to be able to do the splits again but also this in no way helps my initial plan of "increase upper body strength"

[milkweedman]

I bought a drop spindle at an SCA garage sale a while ago, and today found a bunch of blue/green roving at a thrift shop (8 ounces!!) and decided to try spinning it up. I found your intro post and it says batts are better for beginners than roving. Can I turn one into another? Is it worth it to try?

That's awesome !

And yes, you most certainly can turn a roving into a batt (using a blending board) and also a batt into a roving (using a hackle). Blending boards are niche tools though, and for the cost of buying one blending board, you could buy several batts.

You can make blending boards, though.

If you get carding cloth--70 or 90 TPI (teeth per inch) are good all-arounders--and staple it to a wooden board of slightly larger dimensions, then you've got yourself a blending board for usually about 1/4 - 1/2 the price of just buying a new one. (My blending board was about $100 USD, to give you an idea of the general price. They're one of the more affordable fiber processing tools)

You can also just do away with the carding cloth entirely, and make something which is similar to a blending board, with the key differences being that's its both quite a bit worse and free (or very cheap). Either drive a bunch of finishing nails through a wooden board (you want about 1/2 inch or a centimeter of the nail tip exposed on the other side, in an ideal world) as close together as you can, or else tape several pieces of robust cardboard together and drive the nails through that. That's what I did (the cardboard version specifically--actually, found some pictures !) early on in my spinning career when I wanted to blend colors. Disclaimer: I didn't ever actually attempt to pull the fiber off as batts; this was like a 2x4 inch surface and they would have been pitifully small. But I did pull them off as rolags which spun up just fine, and which are also a better beginner fiber prep than roving is.

As to whether or not its worth bothering with any of that... no, not really. To be extremely honest, I'm not positive that 'beginners first rolag made on makeshift nail board' would actually be easier to spin than roving in any capacity (fiber processing and preparation is as much of a skill as spinning is, and like I said the nail board is notably worse at what it is attempting to do than a blending board is, although it does still do it), so.... if you want my firm advice: buy a batt. if you can't buy a batt, give the roving a try as is. if the roving isn't going well, really only then is it worth attempting the stuff I just described.

[orcelito]

I have Officially. Voted for Harris 👍

[littlecrabbs]

Chapter 1: Business as Usual

While working for a laboratory under his brother Hal, John Grey learns how little they see eye to eye. Grey navigates dealing with his petty and unrelenting brother inside and outside of the office, as well as concealing information he'd rather not let him know. Working with family has put his relationship with friends, family, and lovers under inspection in a way he never anticipated.

[sunscess]

" are you certain this is what you want? "

@batcaller liked for a one-liner starter