#BUT MY PROBLEM IS it's so badly written that it's like reading the wikipedia of a horror movie where it flatly tells you the grisly bits

[goatsandgangsters]

the good news is that I finished a book and it got me out of my reading slump where I would start things, not finish, switch to something else, not finish

the bad news is that "yes daddy" by jonathan parks-ramage is one of the worst written books I've read in a whiiiile. bland expositiony prose, flat characters, a bunch of weird plot detours. Written like a 200-page Wikipedia summary instead of an actual book

the worst news is that it has such intensely favorable gushing reviews on goodreads, and the people who hated it mostly hated it for a different reason, and so I'm left alone like oKAY BUT THE PROSE WAS SHIT, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS

[blubberquark]

Why Not Write Cryptography

I learned Python in high school in 2003. This was unusual at the time. We were part of a pilot project, testing new teaching materials. The official syllabus still expected us to use PASCAL. In order to satisfy the requirements, we had to learn PASCAL too, after Python. I don't know if PASCAL is still standard.

Some of the early Python programming lessons focused on cryptography. We didn't really learn anything about cryptography itself then, it was all just toy problems to demonstrate basic programming concepts like loops and recursion. Beginners can easily implement some old, outdated ciphers like Caesar, Vigenère, arbitrary 26-letter substitutions, transpositions, and so on.

The Vigenère cipher will be important. It goes like this: First, in order to work with letters, we assign numbers from 0 to 25 to the 26 letters of the alphabet, so A is 0, B is 1, C is 2 and so on. In the programs we wrote, we had to strip out all punctuation and spaces, write everything in uppercase and use the standard transliteration rules for Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß. That's just the encoding part. Now comes the encryption part. For every letter in the plain text, we add the next letter from the key, modulo 26, round robin style. The key is repeated after we get tot he end. Encrypting "HELLOWORLD" with the key "ABC" yields ["H"+"A", "E"+"B", "L"+"C", "L"+"A", "O"+"B", "W"+"C", "O"+"A", "R"+"B", "L"+"C", "D"+"A"], or "HFNLPYOLND". If this short example didn't click for you, you can look it up on Wikipedia and blame me for explaining it badly.

Then our teacher left in the middle of the school year, and a different one took over. He was unfamiliar with encryption algorithms. He took us through some of the exercises about breaking the Caesar cipher with statistics. Then he proclaimed, based on some back-of-the-envelope calculations, that a Vigenère cipher with a long enough key, with the length unknown to the attacker, is "basically uncrackable". You can't brute-force a 20-letter key, and there are no significant statistical patterns.

I told him this wasn't true. If you re-use a Vigenère key, it's like re-using a one time pad key. At the time I just had read the first chapters of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography", and some pop history books about cold war spy stuff. I knew about the problem with re-using a one-time pad. A one time pad is the same as if your Vigenère key is as long as the message, so there is no way to make any inferences from one letter of the encrypted message to another letter of the plain text. This is mathematically proven to be completely uncrackable, as long as you use the key only one time, hence the name. Re-use of one-time pads actually happened during the cold war. Spy agencies communicated through number stations and one-time pads, but at some point, the Soviets either killed some of their cryptographers in a purge, or they messed up their book-keeping, and they re-used some of their keys. The Americans could decrypt the messages.

Here is how: If you have message $A$ and message $B$, and you re-use the key $K$, then an attacker can take the encrypted messages $A+K$ and $B+K$, and subtract them. That creates $(A+K) - (B+K) = A - B + K - K = A - B$. If you re-use a one-time pad, the attacker can just filter the key out and calculate the difference between two plaintexts.

My teacher didn't know that. He had done a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation about the time it would take to brute-force a 20 letter key, and the likelihood of accidentally arriving at something that would resemble the distribution of letters in the German language. In his mind, a 20 letter key or longer was impossible to crack. At the time, I wouldn't have known how to calculate that probability.

When I challenged his assertion that it would be "uncrackable", he created two messages that were written in German, and pasted them into the program we had been using in class, with a randomly generated key of undisclosed length. He gave me the encrypted output.

Instead of brute-forcing keys, I decided to apply what I knew about re-using one time pads. I wrote a program that takes some of the most common German words, and added them to sections of $(A-B)$. If a word was equal to a section of $B$, then this would generate a section of $A$. Then I used a large spellchecking dictionary to see if the section of $A$ generated by guessing a section of $B$ contained any valid German words. If yes, it would print the guessed word in $B$, the section of $A$, and the corresponding section of the key. There was only a little bit of key material that was common to multiple results, but that was enough to establish how long they key was. From there, I modified my program so that I could interactively try to guess words and it would decrypt the rest of the text based on my guess. The messages were two articles from the local newspaper.

When I showed the decrypted messages to my teacher the next week, got annoyed, and accused me of cheating. Had I installed a keylogger on his machine? Had I rigged his encryption program to leak key material? Had I exploited the old Python random number generator that isn't really random enough for cryptography (but good enough for games and simulations)?

Then I explained my approach. My teacher insisted that this solution didn't count, because it relied on guessing words. It would never have worked on random numeric data. I was just lucky that the messages were written in a language I speak. I could have cheated by using a search engine to find the newspaper articles on the web.

Now the lesson you should take away from this is not that I am smart and teachers are sore losers.

Lesson one: Everybody can build an encryption scheme or security system that he himself can't defeat. That doesn't mean others can't defeat it. You can also create an secret alphabet to protect your teenage diary from your kid sister. It's not practical to use that as an encryption scheme for banking. Something that works for your diary will in all likelihood be inappropriate for online banking, never mind state secrets. You never know if a teenage diary won't be stolen by a determined thief who thinks it holds the secret to a Bitcoin wallet passphrase, or if someone is re-using his banking password in your online game.

Lesson two: When you build a security system, you often accidentally design around an "intended attack". If you build a lock to be especially pick-proof, a burglar can still kick in the door, or break a window. Or maybe a new variation of the old "slide a piece of paper under the door and push the key through" trick works. Non-security experts are especially susceptible to this. Experts in one domain are often blind to attacks/exploits that make use of a different domain. It's like the physicist who saw a magic show and thought it must be powerful magnets at work, when it was actually invisible ropes.

Lesson three: Sometimes a real world problem is a great toy problem, but the easy and didactic toy solution is a really bad real world solution. Encryption was a fun way to teach programming, not a good way to teach encryption. There are many problems like that, like 3D rendering, Chess AI, and neural networks, where the real-world solution is not just more sophisticated than the toy solution, but a completely different architecture with completely different data structures. My own interactive codebreaking program did not work like modern approaches works either.

Lesson four: Don't roll your own cryptography. Don't even implement a known encryption algorithm. Use a cryptography library. Chances are you are not Bruce Schneier or Dan J Bernstein. It's harder than you thought. Unless you are doing a toy programming project to teach programming, it's not a good idea. If you don't take this advice to heart, a teenager with something to prove, somebody much less knowledgeable but with more time on his hands, might cause you trouble.

[aromanticannibal]

Transfem Katsuki (edited as of Nov. 2023. Katsuki hadn't died yet when this was written so bear with me.)

In honor of "fuck I thought about transfem Katsuki and now I'm in love with her again" and also because of a shitty discourse post I saw. Enjoy.

She will NOT figure it out until at least second year of UA.

She's always been uneasy about the whole boy thing. Specifically boy. Like she's one of the guys ok sure but she's not a boy.

We know how kind Aldera is to anyone who's slightly out of the norm (ie Deku) and Katsuki is especially aware given she was part of the problem. So yeah, internalized transphobia (+homophobia) we love to see it./s

Getting into UA and quickly realizing that like more than half the class is openly and proudly queer in some way gave her whiplash, and as much of a bully as she still was at this point, she didn't say anything.

She tried to convince herself it was to not get in trouble and gamble her place at UA, but really she was just glad to not be somewhere as fucked as her middle school.

And if the trans ponytail chick makes her question who she really wants to be... well that's nobody's business.

As I am very subtly implying, Momo ends up being a big part of Katsuki accepting herself and her identity as a trans woman.

Katsuki loves her friend group (she'll never admit it but she does, so much) but she associates them with her old group from Aldera somewhat unconsciously, and is terrified they'll push her away, even if she knows she's just. Straight up wrong.

As in, so incredibly wrong. Sero and Jirou are non binary ("Whatever the hell that means") Kirishima is a proud trans man ("More of a man than any of the cretins at Aldera will ever be") Mina's dating a trans girl from another school ("Camie Utsushit or smth") and Kaminari is so many different flavors of queer its almost impressive.

Really, her friends are probably the ones that should be worried, she tries to remind herself, hammering it in her head. Katsuki was an asshole for most of her life, they should be the ones scared of her. They're not though. For some fuckin' reason.

So yeah, talking to her friend group is out of the question. Momo though.

Momo is a special kind of trustworthy. Momo is the kind of person you'd give your entire life savings, your child, your car and your wife to. Katsuki hates that, she hates trusting people, it always ends badly, so she prefers doing stuff on her own.

Except it doesn't always end badly. Especially not with Yaomomo.

Every early saturday morning, Katsuki's and Momo's workout sessions happen at the same time. Eventually, they start talking during that time. Katsuki eventually asks about Momo being trans, more or less convinced she'll tell her to go fuck herself (she obviously doesn't).

It helps, despite the fact that her experience isn't the same as Katsuki's at all. Momo always knew she was a girl, her parents always were supportive about it, and money really wasn't a problem to help her transition once she was old enough to make that decision. Hell, she can literally make estrogen.

Katsuki then comes to the realization that yeah, she's probably a girl. Not like I'll ever do shit about it, she thinks.

Things kinda stay stagnant for a time then. Katsuki has way more important stuff to worry about (like exams and also her and her friends almost dying etc etc) and the self-hatred that simmers in her head constantly doesn't make it really fun to actually think about herself.

Second year comes around.

Because this is me, and my blog, and I do what I want, I present to you my son, Shinsou. Most trans guygirl t4t lesbian of all time. In my heart.

So Shinsou is very trans in the most mysterious way you could think of, so mysterious he himself doesn't really know what is going on with his gender. He doesn't exactly care, he just vibes (any pronouns).

They're pretty knowledgeable on queer stuff because it loves to read wikipedia pages until 5AM when it can't sleep and got lost on multiple LGBTQ+ related forums when she was 13. (He also knows a lot about chickens and lizards.)

She can just breathe the queer coming out of Katsuki, but when they ask they're just met with "oh Bakugou? Yeah no, he's cishet. Our token straight man. To prove we're diverse, etc." (-Shouji, entirely serious). Shinsou's not buying it but she doesn't like assuming, so he shuts up.

Meanwhile, Katsuki has nothing to think about anymore now that things have settled and she's not getting attacked by her self-hatred constantly, so she unfortunately ends up thinking about her gender (truly tragic. Genuinely though, it's almost distressing because she pushed the thought down for so long that it's scary to think about).

Because early mornings and nights are a time outside of our world, it's again around 5AM that Katsuki talks to someone who might help her with her gender problem. Shinsou in fact, who's of course awake on a Monday morning after a sleepless night, eating cereal out of the box.

Katsuki finds herself chatting with the weirdo and eventually asks what the fuck kinda gender it is, if only to be able to call her something else than the weirdo in her head.

The realization that gender is a construct and doesn't really fucking exist so it doesn't actually matter is somewhat of an epiphany for Katsuki. Like she's silent for multiple minutes. Shinsou is getting scared

Quietly, she mutters a small "I think I'm a girl" to Shinsou. It smiles and says "Nice. There's not enough girls in this class." and goes back to its cereal.

Katsuki has no fucking idea how that fucker exists. He's an anomaly in the timeline. Katsuki adores them.

(Platonically. Girl doesn't have time for romantic love. Yes I'm also making her aromantic, because aro Katsuki is the loml and one of my fave hcs.)

After that weird but insightful conversation, Katsuki finally asks Momo for help, taking her up on an offer she had made one morning. ("If you ever need my help for anything concerning [your gender bullshit], come see me.")

Momo being the absolute QUEEN that she is, she assembles all transgirls and cisgirls of the class + whoever else would like to join (which ends up being Jirou, Shinsou and Aoyama) and they all go on a shopping trip with Katsuki to help her figure out what she likes.

Does she want to wear makeup? Does she want feminine clothes? Or long hair? Does she want boobs? Or thinner traits?

Does she just want different pronouns and to be addressed viewed as a girl?

Mina shortens that as "What kinda girl is Katsuki".

I'll do you the answer here so this doesn't take forever, because the process of figuring it out must be long.

Mainly, the verdict will eventually be that Katsuki didn't really feel comfortable in the box she, her parents and Aldera put her in, which is a sort of vague idea of a Boy, Man, Son. She's mean and a bitch and probably a tomboy and she's a girl. That's all. She doesn't want of any of that flowery pink crap and being "gracefully feminine" like Momo is, she'll still kick your teeth in. Being a girl isn't fundamentally part of her identity or her personality, but it's who she's comfortable being.

She does enjoy skirts once she feels comfortable enough to wear them. She grows her hair a bit too (because she doesn't wanna look like her mother at first, but she ends up liking the look) and puts it up in a ponytail.

Makeup is a bitch but it looks cool, so she lets Mina, Aoyama and Shinsou use her face as a canevas for their weird makeup experiments. She thinks she looks like a clown half the time though (she doesn't, she's really cute). She mostly does eyeliner, which she already knew how to do before starting her transition, and very rarely lipgloss.

She doesn't really care about having breasts or softer traits, mainly because her traits are already pretty androgynous when she looks at herself, and she's already got big pecs so like. Basically tits. It's the same, it doesn't really matter. She's happy with how her body looks, she worked to have a healthy body and she doesn't care if it's "not a woman's body" or whatever the fuck. She likes how her body is and she doesn't really care about changing it.

She thinks of using she/they (like Jirou) but doesn't exactly care about they/them? Like they're not bad to have used on her (way better than he/him) but she prefers just using she/her.

She doesn't change her first name. It means victory, so it's already perfect for her. It's her name.

Some of her friends (the ones who aren't scared of death cough cough Shinsou) call her Katsuki-chan (Kacchan is copyrighted) but most her friends call her Kats', because she let slip one time she thinks it's cute.

To end this because good lord I've been typing for some time, here's my Transfem Bakugou pinterest board. I actually have a bunch of transfem characters pinterest boards lmao

Also realizing I almost didn't talk about Izuku. Damn I've really betrayed myself as a bkdk truther. Rip.

[sapphiresonstrings]

I admit that I didn't read the book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, but here's a copy-paste from the Wikipedia article:

More than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and five types of entirely pointless jobs:

Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters;

Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, or to prevent other goons from doing so, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists;

Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code, airline desk staff who calm passengers with lost luggage; Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers;

Taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.[4][2] More than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and five types of entirely pointless jobs: Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters;

Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, or to prevent other goons from doing so, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists;

Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code, airline desk staff who calm passengers with lost luggage;

Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers; Taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.[4][2]

I am a cross between a flunky, taskmaster, and a box ticker. A large part of my working life has been spent producing empty corporate reports about nothing, and another large part has been spent managing overseas employees doing things that don't need to be done. Usually those overseas employees are really annoyed that I'm wasting their time, and it's hard to argue because I really am wasting their time.

That's it, that's all. That's my job. I feel like some kind of manager in the East India Company a hundred years ago, because most of the time I do nothing but force a bunch of people with Indian accents to do meaningless compliance tasks induced by badly-written Western laws. I assure you, bullshit jobs are real.

Today is a good day to remember that David Graeber was a complete hack, and his books were bullshit on both a conceptual and moment-to-moment level, with easily-debunked false claims on almost every page.

If you read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and/or "Bullshit Jobs", you should put them in a category with "Super Size Me" as 'works that made a big splash upon release but were later revealed to have been almost totally fraudulent'.

[audreydoeskaren]

Hello Audrey, your costume reviews are really interesting and fun! I enjoy reading them a lot, and now I can watch movies with a more informed eye.

If you want to, you could review Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster? I plan to watch it sometime this week, it seems interesting! Only if you have time! I imagine watching and rewiewing these shows must take a lot of time, and movies should be enjoyed 😊

Thank you! 😘

Hi, I’m glad you liked my reviews! Yes I would absolutely love to review The Grandmaster. Sorry for posting this so late, I happened to be away last week. I actually watched this movie when I was a wee child so I more or less know what it's about, now as an adult with a costuming obsession I can see it with new eyes.

The Grandmaster (2013) 一代宗师

The Grandmaster is a 2013 Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts drama film based on the life story of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man. The film was directed and written by Wong Kar-wai and stars Tony Leung as Ip Man. (copy and pasted from Wikipedia) The Wong Kar-wai + Zhang Shuping duo strikes again. The plot spans many decades and it's not really specified in what year some scenes take place, but it could generally be understood that the chunk of it where Ip Man is a middle aged man takes place in 1937 and the other chunk where he's older in 1950. If I had a euro every time I reviewed a drama set in 1937 I would have three euros which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that there’s three already. If you read my posts, you can pretty much pick out the questionable things by yourself. But I also like to be mean toward badly made costumes so here I am.

Source here

I'm watching it on Youtube on rent and apparently I can't screenshot anything. So seven minutes into the movie and there is a scene where women who look like this appear (this is not the same scene) and I've already stopped thinking. I'm starting to doubt if the shops selling fingerwave extensions are holding Chinese costume designers at gun point to include them in movies they're designing for. It really looks like 铜钱头 used in Chinese opera hairstyling, is that why costume designers are so attached to it? They actually waved the actress’ hair in this one but still somehow chose to use extensions. A real fingerwave wouldn’t have such exaggerated circular shapes, and the circular part would only be on one side of the part. The circular shape is also just the low part of the “wave” structure, not a deliberately created shape.

Apart from that, the cheongsam in 1937 should have a lower collar with one or two buttons. I’m not a fan of the huge bling trims used here, they existed but weren’t common at all. Even for evening occasions 30s cheongsam were a lot more toned down in the decoration. I would like to give a special shoutout to the plucked eyebrows though. I will give the costuming one free point because of that alone. I also like that they showed both Chinese and Western shoes in that scene. However, the lip shape could be more heart shaped.

Source here

Early 30s fingerwave.

There are a couple women in this scene wearing sectioned bangs and giant flowers on their shoulders, the former is a 1920s thing and the latter a late 20s/early 30s thing, so neither of them should appear in a scene set in 1937.

Source here

They are wearing something like this, which is decidedly late 20s.

Source here

I like the representation of sheer cheongsam here, but the sleeves could be shorter. I think this shot summarizes the staples of Zhang’s 1930s costuming... He’s been doing the same thing for decades and there is zero character development. The female characters here look almost exactly identical to some from The Flowers of War. The fingerwave extensions, the unnecessarily long sleeves, gaudy fabrics and trims etc.. My biggest problem with his way of styling 1930s characters is that although the individual elements used aren’t technically wrong per se, but the frequency in which they appear and the overall atmosphere they create do not match that of the 1930s at all. For example, he’s super fond of using these “luxurious” fabrics with darker colors, loud floral patterns and long sleeves for younger women, which were at the time more associated with older women. Simpler, brighter, abstract patterns were a lot more mainstream. He also loves elaborate trims, which did exist in the 30s but were not common at all; the much more popular plain binding in multiple rows is never attempted. He and most other costume designers for republican era dramas almost never dabble in Modernist, Expressionist or Art Deco aesthetics, although they dominated upper class circles in fashionable cities in the 30s like Shanghai and Hong Kong. The costumes he creates are always dark, moody and stiff yet trying to be seductive, revoking semi Orientalist impressions of a rotten, decadent “old China”, even though historically the republican era saw a lot of innovation in fashion and avant garde experimentations. The magic of the 30s is never successfully captured in his creations, in my humble opinion. I personally would like to relegate this to the limitations of the straight male imagination but feel free to interpret this in your own way.

Source here

The cheerful 1930s aesthetic we never got.

Source here

Sheer cheongsam with slip, though this look is more of a mid 30s thing (this poster is from 1934). Also see how voluminous and not flat her hair is.

In the fight between Ip Man and the other masters, the character of Sister San has a pretty interesting outfit. I love that they showed her in bound feet, which some older women still had after 1912 because they felt it was more comfortable than letting out their feet. Seeing a woman with bound feet do a fierce martial arts sequence is also weirdly the empowerment I didn’t know I needed. The socks and slippers combo would be unthinkable before the 1900s when women would commonly wear heeled lotus shoes and leggings, but in the republican era footbinding wasn’t so prestigious anymore and many women chose more relaxed footwear.

Her hair is once again blasphemous, but the plucked eyebrows are so good I’m willing to let it slip. She wears a black aoku outfit with lace trim which could be a thing in the 30s.

It reads very early 1910s with the sleeve length but I guess you could do it in the 1930s if you want? I actually have no clue what a 1930s aoku outfit looks like.

Source here

1900s photograph of a woman in aoku.

Source here

Gertrude Olmstead in a similar aoku costume, 1927.

Actually I just figured there aren’t many costumes to talk about in this movie... The male characters mostly wear 长衫 changshan, which is a very simple garment that you couldn’t possibly get wrong. Menswear also doesn’t change much over the decades so you could get away with whatever.

Source here

Men’s changshan.

I tried really hard to find photos or shots of costumes in subsequent scenes but I’m sorry the movie is just so dark and there are no full body shots showing a character’s costumes from head to toe... There is this iconic look where the female lead wears a fur trim coat and a cheongsam but it’s a fight scene and everything moves really fast and I can’t really see any details. 

At this point I feel like y’all can recognize Zhang Shuping’s costuming style and the common mistakes he makes so there really isn’t any point in picking out everything from this move in particular. Overall a 5/10, just because it’s usual Zhang Shuping does 1937, but one extra point for the plucked eyebrows like I promised. The movie itself is really good though, just the fight scenes alone make it worth a watch.

[antiloreolympus]

8 Anti LO Asks

1. I am, personally, of the opinion that you can rewrite the myths as much as you want (as long as you keep the characterization of these gods consistent, acknowledge that these are people's religious figures, and are respectful of the original myth/god's characterization). I personally am writing and entire story where 0 to none of the original backstory for the children of Kronos are used. In fact, most of all the god's backstories are changed. The problem comes about when you're a mythology expert, when your fans claim you're version is the true version, when you demonize gods and cause pagans to get harassed, when your fans change the wikipedia page for different real life religious figures to match your story, etc.

Greek Mythology is a playground for writers, since there really is no limit to what you can do with it. But you have to remember that these gods existed before you, and will exist when you leave.

2. I mean, Harry Potter is a badly written mess from a transphobic white lady and she still has fans claiming its the peak of fantasy and redefined literature over actual good series like Lord of the Rings or the Discworld books. LO fans are basically the same in their blind devotion, which is funny bc can't you guys can just like something normally? They don't need to claim it reinvented the wheel to be enjoyed. We all like trash from time to time, no shame in that, in my opinion.

3. @ the redesigning video: if LO fans cant tell who anyone is when someone tweaks even the tiniest thing from RS' designs, then she failed as a character designer. A good character design should be able to fit in multiple styles and still make sense even if they're in different outfits or not exact 1 to 1 in accuracy from the source material. That's such an unintentional burn on LO fans to admit they can't tell anyone apart in their own comic unless its heavily spelled out.

4. I can't not imagine LO Thanatos going home to his cave with Hypnos and just shit talking Hades while Hypnos just nods and cringes. "He's dating a 19 year old Hypnos!!!! A 19 year old!!!" "Fuckin, ew. What." "THANK YOU!" Sorry it's just so funny, and the only thing that gets me through reading LO.

5. On the an ask about Daphne's ears not being pointy in some panels, my theory is that a LO editor couldn't take RS' Germanic elves style and corrected it for once! RS does such a bad job at differentiating characters that she gave nymphs pointy ears - which was never a thing for nymphs in Greek folklore! - so we can tell who is who.

6. i think my big problem with lo is that i would not hate it NEARLY as much if it was just... an original story. with original characters. and maybe, at most, being INSPIRED by greek mythos. but because its meant to be seen as a ~faithful retelling~, i can't help but get super upset. these aren't the gods i worship, these are ocs with the names of the gods pasted onto them. (staying anonymous so i don't get harassed <//3)

7. God the mixed vibes of LO give me a headache! Are we supposed to see the story as one of corporate greed, indifference and death, or as a sweet romance where the characters go through bad times? Rachel please make up your mind before mine explodes.

8. it definitely was less refined and could often get a bit messy at times, but the early LO art at least had some charm and seemed to have thought out choices put in it, but now it's very flat and and even generic looking, even the colors arent aiding in making it look unique. where the early style used interesting color choices and dynamic long panels to tell the story, its now replaced by flat, static images that look like rushed first attempts over something done by 5+ people. its sad to see.

[wisteria-lodge]

a bird secondary with a *very* unhealthy badger model

i’m pretty sure i’m using both Bird and Badger secondary tools - i just cannot for the life of me figure out which one’s my actual secondary, and which is the model. it doesn’t help that both of them are at least slightly charred. when i was younger, i was surely a Bird secondary, no doubt.

One of the reasons I ask people for childhood stories is I fundamentally don’t believe that sortings ever change. (Maybe that’s the Lion in me talking.) You can build beautiful models that you adore living in, but important aspects of yourself don’t just... fall away. They change, and grow, and level up. 

i’ve always loved collecting knowledge, i store trivia better than many a fandom wiki, i’ve studied things just because they interested me, i’ve once memorised a big portion of the pokedex just for fun… you get the idea.

I’m going with Bird secondary as a hypothesis, but this doesn’t necessarily say bird secondary to me. Bird of some kind, sure. But it could still be a model. 

when academia kicked my butt (hello, undiagnosed adhd), and i realised my natural talents and good memory won’t help me, i think i burnt my Bird. it really hit me very hard.

That can happen. And it’s brutal. But when a secondary burns from over-use, it’s not gone it’s just... tired. 

i’ve started appreciating kindness and hard work, and i wanted to be a person who - wasn’t necessarily the smartest in the room (because i felt that this ship has already sailed.)

There’s a fun word for someone who thinks they’re the smartest person in the room. And that word is “asshole.” :) Seriously, ‘being the smartest person in the room’ isn’t a real thing, and definitely not something to aspire to.

didn’t help that i’ve also acquired a nemesis who was just as smart as me, but an asshole, lmaoo. 

Like I was saying...

But I thought perhaps I could be the kind one. the patient one. the steady one. of course, that didn’t work for me with my adhd at all, lol. i am physically and mentally unable to reach that ideal of stable, patient, consistent, reliable. and it hit my self esteem real hard again. 

There is some sort of POWERFUL Badger secondary influence in your life, making you believe that you need to be that way too. And you don’t. That’s the entire premise of this system. That there are many ways to solve problems, all equally effective and valid. 

after all, not everyone can be smart, and that’s alright - but everyone can be a hard worker, right? it’s not a matter of any innate abilities.

You think the chip that allows you to settle down and focus on doing a non-preferred task in increments over long periods of time is not an innate ability? This is why I hate standardized tests. They test your ability to take a test much more than they test the material. Not everyone *can* sit at a desk in a silent, windowless room and do math problems for four hours. And why on earth should that be that a desirable, rewarded ability? The end goal is not to graduate and start working in a factory like its 1905. 

my bachelor degree’s taken me a year longer than it should have, because i’ve started just… not doing my work. didn’t come to class, didn’t hand in my homework, didn’t contact my professors. did everything at the very last minute, if at all. and i didn’t know why.

It’s because you struggle with executive dysfunction. Because you’re neurodivergent.

i’ve felt terrible about it, because i wanted to be a good student, you know? i wanted to feel like i earned that degree. i passed, because i’m bright and i can extrapolate based on the knowledge i already have, and i have a lot of knowledge in this wonky brain of mine - but it doesn’t feel like i… deserved that pass. 

for instance, we had this class - literature masterpieces of XX century. we were supposed to read one book each week. obviously i didn’t manage, bc despite reading as if my life depended on it in my early years, i lost that ability sometime during my high school years (when depression hit). so the night before, i’ve sat down, read the wikipedia article on every book and every author on the list, read goodreads’ reviews, sparknotes, whatever i could find. sometimes even fragments of the original text. and i passed that (oral) exam, even with this extremely strict professor. and i felt horrible about it, because i didn’t feel i deserved to pass that. i didn’t read those books! i’ve lied to you! i’ve cheated! 

Listen. I’m a teacher, and I am telling you, you deserved that degree. You got the info, you thought about it, you understood. You didn’t trick your strict professor. Your professor did a good job, and allowed you to think and learn and demonstrate your knowledge in a way that worked for you. (Which is what they’re supposed to do.) I love students with ADHD, their brains are fast and non-linear, and yes they skim the reading, but they make connections and take things to new levels and process things in such cool way, and it just makes me feel alive you know? 

I actually have more trouble with the opposite type, the student who obviously did the reading, but didn’t play with it or connect it to anything else they know, so it just kind of sits in their head like a lump, not doing them any good. But they are really good test-takers.

then again - doing things the right way was (and still is) sometimes just simply unaccesible to me.

There is no right way to do things. The right way to do thing is whatever makes you happy and gets the job done. But that’s a hard one to internalize. I still have trouble truly internalizing that one. But I’m getting better. 

the badger secondary, therefore, is not anything that’s actually… useful to me, most of the time, lol. 

You are crushing yourself under the weight of a Badger secondary model.

unless it’s the ~vibes~ of the badger that make professors like me, most of the time - and because of that liking, they’d often turn a blind eye to just how badly i’d fuck up.

I bet your professors like you because you’re an interested, interesting student who brightens up their day. And if they’re turning a blind eye, it’s because they know that people with ADHD struggle with deadlines sometime. And that’s /fine/

i often seem trustworthy and reliable in the beginning, before my executive dysfunction trips me up, and makes me beat myself up for not actually being that.

My thoughts on secondaries and executive dysfunction. 

it’s the bird that helps me still achieve anything these days - the knowledge i still have, and the things i pick up along the way, from friends or twitter or online articles. i can bullshit my way through many things, because i know quite a bit about a wide range of topics.

It is so easy to pick up on true bullshit as a teacher. We *know* when you don’t know what you’re talking about. When you put together interesting statements and arguments on the fly - when you pull something out of your ass - it’s still coming from you. That’s just an alternate way of thinking. Also, everything you have written is SO BIRD.

but actually applying myself - which i feel is both necessary to succeed 

It’s not.

and the right way to do things

There’s no such thing.

 - is just… out of my reach. sorry for the rant, but i’m just so super confused, lmao. if you have any thoughts on this mess, i’d be very grateful. apologies for any mistakes, too - english is not my first language.

English isn’t your first language??? Your English is amazing. You’re a bird secondary, and a pretty brilliant one by the sound of it. And you are torturing yourself because you aren’t living up to an entirely arbitrary Badger secondary ideal.

[capitainerowen]

All the episodes of the cartoon Ratz – part 1

Like I said in my previous post about this cartoon that I really love, there is 52 episodes of it! In the French Wikipedia page, it says that there are also 3 seasons but since I have nothing that prove that, so it doesn’t matter in here. Because I love this cartoon so much, I’m going to explain to you all of the episodes, with a resume and why I love them!

Actually, it will probably be too long for only one post (52 episodes, 52 pictures…) so I’ll divide it in 9 parts! The 8 first will present 6 episodes each and the last one will present 4 episodes, so that way it will be easier for you to read it! All the parts except for the last one will talk about. Like I said, my personal order is the order of the French Wikipedia page, so it will be in that order that I will present them. Once again, don’t worry about it, you don’t have to follow that specific order but the one you want! I will also give you the French names, so in the other languages it won’t be the same but that’s the way I know the cartoon.

A last warning! There will be some spoilers to describe the episodes and the characters in it so if you don’t want to be spoil, you may as well want to come back later! However! If you’re not afraid of spoilers, you can read it, it’ll be fun (at least I hope so).

In this first part, I will present to you the following episodes: Stop, Salut ma poule ! , La nuit du gouda toxique, Le génie du fromage, Panne sèche and Un ami qui vous veut du bien.

Stop is an episode in which Razmo, after a race with Rapido, has a light accident and become paranoid about it and tries to protect Rapido and himself from the dangers of racing, speed, and accidents, acting like a cop, putting a very lot of signages everywhere in the ship and even remaking their ratboards, giving it an AI to force Rapido to drive as slow as possible to protect him, just bothering Rapido more and more.

I think it’s a really good episode to start the show! It introduces us to the main characters, Razmo and Rapido, and understand how they are, their relationship and everything. It’s not my favorite episode but it still is a good one, funny and great. Razmo’s will protect both Rapido and himself is adorable (but a little too much). And even if he is really angry at Razmo for being overprotective and paranoid, Rapido still is showed being happier when he can do anything with his little friend.

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the Captain, Steve the AI

Score: 6.5/10 (I love the demonstrations of affection between Razmo and Rapido and the fact that the episode is almost only about the two of them)

Salut ma poule (which could literally be translated by “Hello chick” I guess) is an episode in which Razmo is having a depressive episode with the beginning of the spring and after Rapido “tries” to comfort him, the little rat comfort himself by saving a chicken from the cook Benny and trying to help her flying despite Rapido explaining him how impossible this is, finally helping her to fly away from the boat and from Benny.

This episode is pretty good! It gives us another aspect of the relationship of Razmo and Rapido, were Rapido is trying, in his own bad way to comfort Razmo, badly but clearly used to Razmo’s blues. Also, it’s a really good demonstration of the heroism of Razmo, being so much into his own things that he doesn’t even notice things that are obvious (like chickens not being able to fly). Also, his way to overcome the problems by doing things more and more strange ending by a success is really awesome! Razmo is the kind of genius that really like to go extreme really fast, using science to protect himself from his different issues, which may have happened a lot because Rapido tries really hard to stop him.

Characters in that episode:  Razmo, Rapido, Benny, Marie the Chicken (she may have another name in English, I don’t know)

Score: 8.5/10 (really funny and soft, one of my favorites episodes with a good rhythm in it)

La nuit du gouda toxique (translated by The night of the toxic gouda) is an “horror-like” episode, but for children obviously, in the Halloween theme (one of the two). In this episode, while Razmo tries to scare Rapido with his pranks, the Captain of the ship accepts chemicals on his boat because he needs money. After making Rapido angry against him, Razmo runs away to prepare an other pranks with goudas but, by accident, some chemicals flow on the goudas who come to live, with the want to eat the two rats.

It’s a nice episode, not the best, but nice to watch sometimes. It screams a little too much for me maybe? This episode shows how weak and easily scared the two rats are but I do like how it describe to us the relationship between the three humans on the boat and how strong Svetlana is (we love strong & tall women here)!! It’s one of the first episodes were the side non-human characters are enemies and promise to come back (and they never do, it happens with one character only, I’ll present them later).

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the three goudas (Mo, Gory and the last one), the Captain, Svetlana, Benny

Score: 5/10 (it’s okay but that’s all)

Le génie du fromage (translated by The cheese genie) is a pretty nice episode in which Rapido and Razmo accidentally awake a genie in a lamp, having 3 wishes to make between the two of them (so one wish and an half each). Razmo then wishes to attract the cheese to himself and Rapido wishes to change everything he touches in cheese.

I love this episode!! It’s so funny and nice, Rapido and Razmo are just so great and well written! The Genie is an absolute jerk with them, playing with what they want and ask, just to give them a lesson (or maybe just to mess with them). Also, the fact Rapido is willing to give up a huge chance to have his dreams just for Razmo is a real strong good point for me. It’s one of the episodes that I just love to watch because it’s a really good episode and I love to re-watch it a lot. And it’s the only one episode with a moral! So yeah, it’s really great.

Characters in that episode: Rapido, Razmo, the Genie

Score: 9.5/10 (I won’t spoil why it lost 0.5 point but it’s because Razmo is my favorite character of this show)

Panne sèche (translated by Off fuel) is an episode where Razmo, in a really huge need of affection or something like that, break the ship, making it off fuel (see? Like the name of the episode, eheh). When another ship’ captain come to help, a weasel attacks him to obligates him to make her fly or she will kill him.

It’s not the best episode but it’s so funny!! Watching it now, there’s a lot of tendentious innuendos in Razmo’s attitude and I can’t help but smile like a dumbass every time because Razmo is needy as hell and Rapido is just used to it like if it happened a lot. And like, for someone who like Rapido, there is good content of him.

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the Captain, Svetlana, Benny, the weasel, Captain Salami (I believe his name is translated because it makes a joke in French but I don’t know what it is)

Score: 6.5/10 (Nice, lot of adult undertones, Rapido having a bath)

And last but not least! Un ami qui vous veut du bien (translated by A friend with good intentions)! This episode presents us one of the many forgettable nemesis of the two rats, a penguin named Fred who is a thief really good with lying, manipulating Razmo really easily, but not Rapido who understands really quickly that something is wrong with that bird.

It’s not an amazing episode, just a little better in my opinion than La nuit des goudas toxiques because I like it when Razmo plays music, but that’s very personal of me. Also, it gives us some Domestic trope of Rapido and Razmo and I love it so much. And I really love when Rapido doesn’t fall for the lies of someone else because he’s himself a huge liar (but he falls for Razmo’s lies every times) so he’s very angry at everyone trying to manipulate his Razmo (I’m a huge fan of it).

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, Fred, Benny

Score: 6.5/10 (it gains point because of the jealous!Rapido thing only, yes)

So there it is for that first list! I hope you liked it! I’ll give you the next one as soon as possible!

Please watch Ratz and have a good day!

[sodiumlamp]

Lately, I’ve been watching mathematics related videos whenever YouTube recommends them to me.  It’s a decent timewaster if you’re into that sort of thing.    This one is about the Golden Ratio, which was something I had to (re)-learn in 2013.  

I took two semesters of physical chemistry in college, and the second one covered applications of group theory in chemistry, which I found completely impenetrable.  I just couldn’t make any sense of it, or even understand what the point of it was supposed to be.     I remember trying to study the textbook and being incredibly frustrated that it wasn’t helping at all.    That was in 1998.    In 2013, I resolved to try again.    The professor had only wanted us to work from three chapters in that one textbook, but I decided to read the entire thing, in the hopes of making sense of it all.    

Long story short, the book was just really badly written, with typos in the text and the answer key, and the textbook assumes you’re familiar with more math than I was.   The purpose of the whole thing--at least as far as chemistry goes--is that some molecules have symmetrical structures, and some are more symmetrical than others, and you can use that to simplify certain calculations, like the ones that predict whether a molecular structure will be stable or not.   

You do a lot of matrix algebra with group theory, or I think that’s what it’s called, and it’s a lot easier to do that in 2013, when there’s websites that calculate them for you, and Wikipedia articles that let you look up certain notations that you’ve never encountered before.   For some reason, I used Euler’s constant a lot when I worked on that book, and while I’d known about e before, I’d never really understood its significance until 2013.  

As for φ , I kept running into terms involving the (1±√5)/2, and noticing the same sequence of decimals whenever I added or subtracted.    Eventually I googled it and found out this thing had a name.   I feel like I learned about the Golden Ratio in school, but misunderstood it to be 1:1.5, instead of 1:1.618....    I thought it was just an aesthetic proportion, something that had been recognized as pleasing to the eye, and that was why it kept showing up in art and architecture.  But it’s much more important than that, which is why mathematicians appreciate it so much.  

Same deal with Euler’s constant.   In math classes, they just dropped the thing in my lap and said to use it.    You can do base ten logarithms, or base 2, or you can use the natural log, which is base e.   Why would you want to do that?   So you can solve this workbook problem about compound interest.   Why are we working all these problems about compound interest?   So you’ll learn how to use e. 

Watching some of these videos, I now see that it was all explained ass-backwards.   In high school, I thought they were desperately trying to teach me how to get a good deal on a loan.   That was never the point.   The interest rate scenario was just a way to illustrate what e is and where it came from.    Say you put a dollar in a bank account and they give you 100% interest applied once a year.   In a year’s time you’ll have two dollars.   If they applied the interest more frequently, like twice a year, you’d end up with $2.25.   So the more shorter the interval, the more money you make, even though the interest itself is the same.   But the more frequently you compound it, the less extra money you gain, so your 1 dollar can only grow so much in a year’s time, somewhere between $2 and $3.   Euler’s constant is the solution to a scenario where the bank uses infinite intervals over a year: about $2.72.  That’s the most you can make under those rules.   

But it’s not just a solution to one problem, it’s a gateway to get you to think about using limits and approximations to solve other problems.   I watched one video where a math teacher explains how 0 to the zeroth power is equal to 1.    He had his students start with 1^1, then 0.1^0.1, then 0.001^0.001, and they kept getting results that were closer and closer to one.   So even though they couldn’t work the problem directly, they could approximate zero and extrapolate from the approximations.    Which is what calculus is all about, but I never learned that when I took pre-calculus in high school.   The teacher spent the whole class yelling at us for not already knowing this shit, and telling us we’d all go broke unless we became engineers.   My fourth semester of college calculus was liquid death, because all we did was the same three or four problems about pendulums and flow rates through pipes.   The three semesters in between were pretty cool.   I enjoyed those classes, so I never understood why the stuff before and after was such a slog.    Sometimes it really is the teacher’s fault.

I��ve been thinking about trying to brush up on my understanding of mathematics.   Statistics seems to keep creeping into my line of work, and maybe I shouldn’t let the ghost of my Calc IV professor scare me off.    I might as well post some of the videos I’ve watched on here, since it’s not like I’ve been using this space for much else lately.  

[qqueenofhades]

i am a youngin and I have LOTS of questions for you. I became aware of you through your political posts so question number one would be how did you become so articulate? sometimes when I want for respond to arguments, I get so frustrated that i look a fool and nothing gets done. question two, how do you inform yourself and stay critical of what you watch and read? question three, how does one balance their desire to learn and their need to live their life? sometimes I want to spend days (1/?)

 youngin anon (2/?) Sometimes I want to spend days absorbing all the knowledge I can get my hands on, but I also have to go to school, I wanna spend time with my friends, i want to watch my overdramatic rom coms, so and so forth so the desires are constantly battling out in me. question four, how realistic is to want to be a professional historian? when I saw you mention you’re a professional historian, I almost screamed bc so cool! If I want to be a historian, could I succeed in the field?thanks

(3/3) youngin once more w/ her final question! how do you educate yourself on the government and what it’s doing? finding and reading through government reports is confusing and I barely understand how it works because I barely understand civics. I want to learn and be a helpful citizen in the future, but I’m only 15, and I don’t even know what I don’t know. It all feels a bit overwhelming.

Okay, first of all, you must know that telling me that you think being a historian is “so cool” means that you’re now my favourite person and I will 101% die for you, right? Right.

Second of all, I’m very impressed that you’re 15 years old and thinking about all this, which also increases my desire to invite you in for a virtual hot chocolate and chat while scrambling to look like I in any part know what I’m doing and shout at you to stay in school and get enough sleep. I will do my best to go through your questions in order.

One, I’m flattered to hear that you think I’m articulate, and there is definitely an advantage to being able to write and rewrite arguments, rather than being put on the spot and having to do it orally. It comes with practice and educating yourself on what makes a good argument and reading arguments that you find convincing, taking note of what they do well, and the kind of evidence that they marshal to support their positions. It’s similar to writing a good essay or other thesis-driven piece, where you have a position in mind and have to put together reasons for your listener to believe you or at least take your stance seriously (the noble old arts of rhetoric and logic, which were central parts of the classical liberal arts education). I am not sure that there is any easy shortcut for this, alas. Your critical sensibility will get refined with use and age and the volume of things that you read and think about. This also goes into the question of how you stay informed, aware, and critical about things that you read. Basically, the rule of thumb is the delightfully named CRAAP test:

C(urrency)/R(elevance)/A(uthority)/A(ccuracy)/P(urpose). 

Is the source recent? Is it relevant? Is it published or has it gone through peer review? Is it being used in conversations in its field? Who would have an interest in presenting this information one way or another? (I.e. a big manufacturing company concluding for itself that it is not polluting the environment with its operations would be… suspect to say the least). The corporate media in America is very often not all that reliable and/or will certainly not report everything going on, because their central interest is money and upholding the status quo. If you want a left-leaning and reputable news source, you could try The Guardian. It’s a UK-based newspaper, but focuses a lot on American and international issues. Almost nothing that you read from a tabloid or from a random Facebook or Reddit source is likely to be all that legit. Don’t agree with an opinion just because you like it, without doing research. Don’t listen just to what people on the internet would like you to think, including me (I mean, by all means, go out and research and decide for yourself if whatever the hell I’m saying has any merit to it). You don’t need to do this all the time, and you do need to prioritize your mental health and your desire to live an ordinary life. There are bad things happening in the world, but humans are not built to take in a 24/7 bombard of bad news, and it doesn’t make you a bad person if you have “empathy exhaustion.” You literally cannot care about everything everywhere, though you can do your best to stay informed and sympathetically engaged. 

Next, I really recommend you read A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. It is a classic, it is a pretty clear and straightforward read and doesn’t have confusing footnotes or too much academic jargon, and it sets out and explains the way in which American history has often been framed and the many problems with that approach. (There is also A Young People’s History of the United States, also by Zinn, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen.) All of these will offer some corrective and perspective on what passes for historical education in America (answer, pretty much bupkis) and hopefully give you some sense of the ways in which this narrative has systematically discouraged critical thinking or anything besides “America’s the best!!!1″ in generations of America First flag-waving masses. If you do want to be a historian, it’s important to familiarize yourself with what the academic practice of history looks like, decide what you’re interested in and what you might like to specialize in, what area/place/time, and other such things, as well as developing an appreciation for the subject and the work that goes into putting together a historical argument. It will also help if you like reading a large variety of things about many topics, as you will become informed and engaged that way. 

As for whether you could succeed in the field: god, I hope so. I’m in the very-not-fun post-PhD job hunt phase, and I have to warn you that it’s pretty soul crushing, and comes after the exhausting, time-intensive, and nitty-gritty process of getting all the way through the MA and PhD themselves in the first place. That’s almost ten years of school on top of an undergraduate degree, and you really do have to be committed to your subject and want to remain in it if you are going to get through all that with your will to live (barely) intact. Academia is also a weird and cliquey and sometimes depressing place with its own set of bizarre rules. None of this is meant to discourage you – I think we need historians very badly and more than ever – but to warn you that if you think you could be happy being anything other than an academic historian (not to mention make more money) you should seriously consider doing it. You still have most of high school to go before you enter college, and I honestly can’t say what the humanities job market might look like in another 10-15 years, when it’s pretty nonexistent right now. There are jobs, and you can make a career out of it, but they’re all extremely competitive, because there just are not enough of them for all the newly minted humanities PhDs with hopeful dreams of making it in the academy. You have to be fairly lucky, know the right people, network a lot, and apply for pretty much everything you can think of. And as noted, nobody gets into this because they want to be rich. It just is not happening.

I am really flattered, again, that you want to hear my advice on all this, and I would love to help you in any way that I can. You’re welcome to return if you want to chat through things. I also really do recommend Wikipedia. It gets a lot of flack for not being an “academic” source, but as a starting point, you can just go in there, look up whatever you’re interested in, and read the basics (such as civics, the American political system, and so forth). Well-written articles will also be well cited and have lists of links and references at the bottom, which you can use as a jumping-off point for more research. If you’re interested in learning, there are definitely ways to do that. I think you’re already well on the way to being a helpful and productive citizen, just by virtue of WANTING to learn and be informed and critical and compassionate. Tons of people, including lots of them who are much older and in much more important positions than you, don’t do that at all. So you’re already doing better. The information, the ability to work with it, and to form your own opinions will come with time. So don’t go too crazy about feeling like you have to learn it all immediately. You will continue to learn and you already sound like you’re going in the right direction.

I have faith in you. If you want a hug from a random stranger on the internet, consider yourself hugged. Or if that’s too creepy, here’s a high five.

[shikai-the-storyteller]

WFC: Siege watch!

Part 1: Episodes 1, 2, and 3

[Part 2] (Linking because Tumblr isn’t even showing the post on my blog or on my dash 🙄)

As a side note: every single person in this fandom is horrible at tagging their spoilers, you guys really need to do a better job at that because I’ve got a bunch of blockers on and I was STILL almost spoiled multiple times. Come on you guys...it literally came out today, be better about this.

Alright going to try and keep expectations low because I feel like the target audience for this is G1 dudebros who take a series about transforming cars way too seriously, but I’m still cautiously optimistic because a friend vetted for the dudes working on this show so WE”LL SEE

Episode 1

Aw man there’s only 6 episodes??? Bummer, I wonder if they’re already working on Season 2 or if they’re going to see how this does and let it die in the water if it’s not popular enough.

Things I know going in: Skyfire / Jetfire is in this, Megatron has big lips, and Elita is in it. That’s literally it, I’ve managed to avoid spoilers thusfar (though a few of the promo images implied Skyfire’s a Decepticon, so you KNOW that’s gonna break bad eventually)

WHEELJACK Wednesday THURSDAY

OH MYG OSH IS THAT SKYWARP??? EXPECTATIONS ARE NOW SKY-HIGH

The transformation sequences look so reminiscent of those stop-motion videos people do of their Transformer toys transforming. This isn’t a dig at the animation style, I think that’s rather charming and I wonder if it’s intentional.

Wow Bumblebee sounds like a jerk. I’m instantly on-edge, please don’t make all the characters ~hyper-masculine mean guys who don’t know how to have fun or talk about their emotions~

“The Autobots aint paying you for attitude” YOU TELL HIM WHEELJACK

Yooo Velocitron exists!

Ahh so Bumblebee IS just a mercenary, not an Autobot

OHOHO HERE”S JETFIRE

Wow Jetfire you’re really going the bad dude route huh

Ayyyyyy there’s Starscream

YOOO THERE”S THUNDERCRACKER

Thundercracker I appreciate that you’re using fancy tech to identify wheeljack but his Autobot badge is literally Right There

WTF

WELL THAT DIDN”T LAST LONG HUH...that’s a bit disappointing

OH NVM THAT WASN”T A HEEL-TURN THAT WAS JUST A STRAIGHT UP “I”M THE BOSS” MOVE

huh so they’re making Skyfire the target of Starscream’s desire for power. hmm

WHY ARE YOU GUYS RUNNING JUST TRANSFORM INTO CARS unless they’re too low on energon to do it??

There he is...Mr. Big Lips

Well that’s a surprising take Megatron

Isn’t that Cybertron and Luna 1 in the sky though?? Are they on Cybertron rn or not??

Megatron’s voice is really throwing me off, if it weren’t for his helmet and color I’d really think that was Overlord

ITS TRUCK DAD

OHOHO HE SAID THE THING!!!!

Why does bumblebee have lips too

“What do you know of slavery?” Alright that line did make me go “OHHHH”

“Alpha Trion would be ashamed!” “Of us both, I think” ouch, but nice to see Alpha “Grandpa” Trion back in a series

Megatron PLEASE don’t say “I’m enjoying this, Prime” in that voice while I can hear Optimus groaning in the background

AYYY ELITAAAAAA

Why are the Seekers chasing these guys, who are running on foot, ON FOOT??? CHANGE INTO YOUR DANG ALT MODE

WHEELJACK SWORE

man I’m only like a few minutes in and I’m already bored. I’m going to watch the whole thing, but I feel like this is really lacking soul or personality so far. It very much feels like the script was written by people who aren’t familiar with these characters, so they’re writing them how they EXPECT them to sound, not writing them as they actually are. It’s more than a little disappointing, but this is only the first episode, so I’ll keep going and see if this is consistent throughout the series.

Oh man, just listening to Elita you can tell she was written by a dude. Oof.

There’s the Ark!

Dang everyone’s running low

Jeez Optimus and Elita wouldn’t just walk by all these injured Autobots!

And Optimus wouldn’t brush off his officers!! Agh!!!

YO Ultra Magnus!

Chromia!!!!!

oh my gosh is THAT Red Alert??

Hey where’s Ratchet though

Gosh the writing is so STIFF!!!! I can’t stand this, if I wasn’t a die-hard Transformers fan I would’ve bounced a few minutes ago

 It might also be the way the VAs pause between words, please speak normally, these constant pauses between words are frustrating

Ok but where the frick is Soundwave

“His arrogance I actually like” pfft

Annnnd here comes Ultra Magnus to accept the treaty on Prime’s behalf, where he’ll get held hostage and probably wind up beefing it.

Episode 2

SOUNDWAVE!!!! BABY

And Shockwave!!! 

YO SKYWARP ACTUALLY GOT A SPEAKING LINE

I want to know where Megatron got all this fabric for those stupid flags and where Ultra magnus got that cloak

Is. Is that Prowl with a weird paint job

Wow bad aim dude

Ultra Magnus you dummy....

Ok but if it was a battle then who were they fighting against???

Wow you’re really just gonna stand there and take that Magnus?

I know they’re on a time-crunch because they only have 6 episodes, but they have to do more to make me care about the characters. I’m inclined to care about them already because I’m familiar with the series and because as a stand-alone, even I’m like “Ok. So?” whenever new problems come up for them. I’m not invested!

Not to compare the two, because I feel like this entire liveblog will turn into a comparative essay, but Cyberverse got me invested in characters within the first episode! They were on an even TIGHTER time-crunch because their episodes were only 10 minutes, and yet they did a great job weaving a tight narrative and making good use of their time to tell a story and have characters charm the audience.

Optimus: Til All Are One Rodimus, coming out of nowhere: TIL ALL ARE ONE

WELL THAT”S NOT THE VOICE I WAS EXPECTING FOR SHOCKWAVE he sounds a bit reminiscent of his TFA version

What does de-rez mean

Ok but that’s assuming that this thing will automatically reprogram them?? Reformatting doesn’t automatically mean someone will turn into a Decepticon!

You know, there’s a lot of talking in the show but the dialogue doesn’t actually say a lot. It doesn’t reveal much about the characters or tell me who they are.

YOOO THERE”S SOUNDWAVE

AUDIO BOOB

It really annoys me that characters always pause after saying “I”. It’s always “I.........[long pause] rest of their sentence.”

what do you mean “Teams” Optimus there’s like 5 of you guys

I love you Soundwave!!!

Whoa wait was that Impactor in the background?

ughHHHHHH I HATE THAT MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE IS “what have you done?” SAID UTTERLY MONOTONE WHEN IT’S NOT EVEN A BIG DEAL!!! YOU CAN”T FLIP THAT LINE OUT WITHOUT ACTUALLY PUTTING IN THE FOOTWORK TO EARN IT!!! AGH!!!

Again, it feels very much like the writers read the wikipedia page for Transformers and maybe the first sentence of each character’s bio page and then wrote the entire script from there. It’s frustrating. I hate being so severe in my reviews because I hate dunking on my fellow writers because they don’t always have final say in what happens, but this is astonishingly poor writing.

Like, I can see what they’re TRYING to accomplish, but it feels like they whiff so badly.

YO IT IS IMPACTOR

oh thats Barricade that’s why I thought that was Prowl

Chromia!!!! My darling!!!! I can’t believe there’s only two girls in this show so far

Oh that’s Cog, I wasn’t sure if that was Beachcomber or what

Nice one Chromia

Oh is that Mirage?

Ugh ANOTHER WRITING PET PEEVE: Constantly having characters start to say something but then then their dialogue gets cut off. It’s fine if it’s once in a while but over and over it’s annoying

I also feel like a lot of the VAs lack...emotion. They don’t emphasize the lines. Like, “Get him into the repair bay” is one example. Depending on how you emphasize certain words in that sentence, you can infer a lot! Emotion, the state of mind of the character, etc. But when it’s delivered in such a bland way, it’s a bit like “ok whatever”, which is how I’m starting to feel about this whole show. This doesn’t go for all the VAs or all lines, but it’s consistent enough that my mind’s wandering.

RAVAGE??? RAVAGE???? RAVAGE?!?!?!??!?!

It was probably Bumblebee.

Not to be nitpicky but it should be “Neither we nor the Autobots”

The idea of reformatting is so stupid!!! It implies that Autobots and Decepticons are inherently different, which is stupid!! It’s so dumb WHY DO YOU GOTTA GO THAT ROUTE IT”S SO STUPID (ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY”RE TACKLING THE TOPIC OF OPPRESSION??? THEY”RE SAYING THEY”RE LITERALLY DIFFERENT SPECIES AND USING IT AS A PLATFORM TO SAY ONE GROUP IS INHERENTLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER. THAT SUCKS)

Episode 3

RATCHET!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lmao love your lipgloss Megatron

Ohh is Ratchet going to fix Impactor??

PROWL??? HE”S SO SHORT

Gosh please, please don’t have humans in this show

lmao Skyfire called Starscream a tool

RATCHET!!! :D

I’d like to see who was on the writing team of this show

Isn’t that Mirage?

YEAH THAT IS MIRAGE

Again with the sentences consistently being cut off....

Is that Sunstorm?

Points to Chromia and Mirage for showing the first bitof personality in this show.

Yooo Ratchet! Oof he’s not chummy with Prime huh

YOO CAMINUS EXISTS TOO

LMAO FEISTY GRANDPA

Oh Mirage come on

Actually no, don’t shut Impactor up he’s right

“I didn’t patch you up just so you could blow a valve here” *snorts*

Wouldn’t it be frickin hilarious if Magnus just popped open a panel and Minimus came out and just dipped outta there

lmao nice lightsaber Jetfire

LMAO “PULL THE TRIGGER MAGNUS”

JEEZ JUST PUNCH HIM RIGHT IN THE FACE WHY DON”T YOU 

Ratchet is the ONLY character they’ve given personality in this show so far.

Jeez Mirage cool your jets

Oh for frick’s sake Optimus be cool

Megatron please stop torturing your ex boyfriend

Ok but who did they rise against??? Were there Quintessons in this universe too?

oh come on you guys

Oh boy something tells me Skywarp isn’t going to survive the rest of this episode

Oh jk, Skyfire just let him go. Well alrighty then

I’m not sure how they found the Autobot base, they implied that it was because of Impactor but that doesn’t make sense

This post is getting long so I’m going to spit it between two posts

[blindwifethings]

Just a girl with RP, trying to make my way in the world.

I was 18 when I found out that I “might” have retinitis pigmentosa. I was at what was possibly the longest eye appointment I had ever been to. I couldn’t tell you how long I was there, all I know is that after I left, there was a lot of uncertainty.It was supposed to be a typical eye exam. The first optometrist that came in did the typical tests, but as she was checking my eyes, pointing a bright light directly into both eyes, making them water, she couldn’t stop staring. She decided to do a few other tests, then walked out of the room without saying anything. After about 10-20 minutes she came back with someone else. The next thing I knew, they were both staring into my eyes a discussing what might be wrong. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but with how much time I had been stuck in that chair, with neither of the other two people in the room talking with me, I was terrified. After several more minutes, they finally decided to end the appointment. They turned on the lights to the room, and handed me a stickie note with the note “Retinitis Pigmentosa” written on it and said “We think you have this. Google it when you get home”, then left the room without saying another word. When I got home, I did what they said and googled what was on that stickie note. 

I opened the wikipedia link and read what these words meant, and it felt like my world was going to crash down around me. At the time, I was already having trouble seeing in dim lighting, but I could see pretty well with glasses or contacts during the day. I grew up in an area where to get from point A to point B, you have to drive, and oh, how I loved the freedom of driving. Long drives, especially were my favorite. As I read through the article, it mentioned that as time went on, things would only get worse, and that it would get to the point where I would need to stop driving. 

Later that night, I handed a printed copy of what I had read, and gave it to my parents to read, then headed to my graveyard shift to work. When I got home in the morning, my parents sat me down, and I could feel and see just how devastated they were. My mom said that I needed to find a way to see the world and travel, which I, sadly never did. My dad didn’t say anything. He just sat there, sad, not knowing what to say. My younger brother walked in to the room we were in, and trying to be funny, gave me a hug and said “don’t worry, I’ll find a cure”. 

When I was 24, I was officially diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. For 5 years, I avoided getting tested, because I hated knowing that there was nothing that could be done to fix the problem. Like with most of my problems, I avoided it as long as I could. When I went to get tested, they took me to a room with what looked like a short atm/computer. The doctor sat me down in a chair and put a thing in my eyes that were supposed to mimic contacts, but with one difference, at the center of the “contact”, the was a chain like thing that was plugged into the computer. it was the most uncomfortable my eyes have ever been, but it confirmed that I had retinitis pigmentosa. When I went back to my optometrist, and after he gave me the official diagnosis, he told me that I was no longer allowed to drive. This was the news I was dreading. Luckily, I no longer lived in my town, and instead was living in a place called Orem, Utah. I was in my second semester of school, having waited so that I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life. However, after getting the diagnosis, I was devastated, and failed that semester. I made the decision to stop school because I still had no idea what I wanted to do, and I needed to figure out how to make my new lifestyle without driving work.

I am now 30 years old, I now live in Salt Lake, and I think I’ve got this public transportation down. I struggle with dim lighting even more than I did before, and my tunnel vision has slowly gotten worse. Every year that I have an eye appointment, they tell me the same thing, “there’s going to be a cure in 5 years”. It’s been 6 years since my diagnosis, and I can’t see things getting better. I love eating out at different places, but there are a lot of places that like their dim lighting, where I have to be guided to my seat by whoever I am with. Luckily, I work from home, so I don’t need to worry abiut the commute to or from work. At the office, there is usually enough light for me to get around, and if there isn’t enough, all I have to e-mail our facilities team or contact security and they fix it for me. And if I have to work into the night, well, thank god for lyft. 

I am also no re-starting my second semester, and I have finally figured out what direction I want to head. I’ve changed my major to international business, and I am hoping to one day be able to work in a foreign country, do something I enjoy. I am still absolutely terrified at the idea of going completely blind. This anxiety has led me to the decision not to have kids.

I know that there are people who have different types of disabilities who have kids, and this wasn’t an easy decision, not because I wanted kids before, because I don’t think I ever truly wanted kids, but because I knew the decision would make a lot of people sad. 

I guess my posts here are going to be my journey with retinitis pigmentosa. If i eat out in salt lake, and if struggle getting around in the restaurant, I will do my best to remember to let you know. If I travel, like I so badly want to do, I will let you know every detail about how I was able to get around, and give helpful tips for people in my same situation. If you have any tips for me, I welcome them. 

[awed-frog]

When you say romance should be 18 and over do you mean the brand of romance we know today (aka toxic) or romance as a whole? If we wrote healthy romance aimed at younger crowds or presented unhealthy behaviour as unhealthy behaviour in regular romance (for older crowds) would that be a good solution?

Well - I see three questions here, all of them incredibly complex and beyond interesting: should art be political and is censorship ever a good idea and also is the romance genre okay? The answer to all of them, in my opinion, is ‘no but’.

1) Should art be political?

The stupid thing is, art is inherently political, whether you want it to or not, but art that’s deliberately political tends to be awful, and that’s a universal truth both for left-wing stuff and for right-wing stuff. When you willingly create political stuff, what you’re crafting is propaganda, and proganda is generally sad and bad. I guess there is propaganda that’s also good art - Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs comes to mind - but the problem is, not all of us are Victor Hugo. 

That said, since whatever we create is political (because man is a social animal) and will have some kind of moral message, yes - ideally we want more art with an ethically ‘good’ moral message than we want garbage, because art (and here I include everything: books, movies and so on) is perhaps the most effective and impactful mind-shaper ever. That’s why Disney is doing its very best to be a monopoly, after all. But: I don’t have a good solution for how to ensure art is nice. I think art is nice when artists are nice, and artists are nice when they grow up in good, healthy societies. So the more a society rots from the inside out, the more likely it is you’ll find art that’s also rotten. I mean, while romance as a genre was always a bit dodgy (see below), what that article was talking about - the rise of the possessive, violent boyfriend and domestic abuse as the great love story - is sort of a recent phenomenon, and goes hand in hand with the deterioration of women’s rights in (Western) society. 

(As an aside, I’m not sure I agree (young) women are necessarily misogynistic for reading crap like Fiftfy Shades: I think (young) women are exhausted. Fifty Shades is, more than anything, an ode to undeserved capitalism - the only kind that seems open as an option today. After all, we know trickle-down capitalism doesn’t work and most of us will toil and toil for very little; Christian Grey is the antidote to that, the guy who shows up, basically kidnaps you, and smothers you in a life of riches for which the only thing you must do in return is give up. Having someone else decide on your job, your car, your possessions and clothes, where you’ll live, what you’ll eat and when, whether you’ll take birth control (lol: obviously not), when you’ll see your friends and family plus when and how you’ll orgasm - what women tried to escape for generations is suddenly the dream for many of us - not because of any new political ideology, but because we’re beyond tired. Women, like men, are now crushed in a neverending cycle of bs, underpaid jobs, and are apparently fed up enough in taking responsibility for anything that not only romance and ‘superhuman’ characters are booming, but a very specific kind of subset of that: essentially, slave fics. 

Just give up your agency, and you’ll be taken care of and cherished - forever.

I understand a kink is not the same as your actual political opinion, but still - I’m not enthusiastic about this trend, and I’m even less enthusiastic when it gobbles up young women who haven’t had time to experience real life relationships.)

No, I think that in the end, the answer is - if you reverse the rotting of society, automatically - statistically - you’ll get healthier artists and a healthier audience. So, really, the fight is always the same: better paid jobs, better (and free) schools, more opportunities for continued education of any kind, more democracy and transparency, more green spaces and better living conditions.

2) Is censorship ever a good idea?

Sadly, no. You’d think the logical conclusion of what I just said would be, ‘In the meantime, let’s ban the most dangerous stuff’ or something, and while part of me is tempted to support that, censorship has a way of ending very badly no matter how good and noble your intentions are.

(Self-censorship should be more of a thing, though: not everything that goes through our minds deserves to be seen and shared.)

What sucks at the moment is that on the one hand, capitalism is operating its own censorship; and on the other, its desperate search for new markets has led to a disastrous disintegration of actual human interactions.

So, problem one is that we only publish and market what makes a lot of money, and while that’s normal, to an extent, the result today is that everything is ‘almost the same’ as the previous thing (think sequels, prequels, remakes, obnoxious book covers for books that are basically all the same). So if ‘asshole boyfriend who beats you up’ suddenly makes money, it becomes very hard to escape the trope, because what will be offered to you everywhere is exactly that. This was less of a thing back when our main sources of entertainment were shared (movie theaters, the one family TV, school libraries and so on); now, it’s an epidemic, and as we see with Youtube algorithms, a dangerous one, because this obsession with watching and rewatching ‘almost the same’ inevitably leads to more and more extreme stuff.

Meanwhile, problem two is that the more tailor-made our entertainment is, the less we connect to real people. I know I sound about 90 here, but when all family members are glued to a different screen - mom watching the 50th remake of Eat, Pray, Love, dad down the rabbithole of lizard conspiracy theories, big brother now exploring some milk&peanut butter weirdness on Youporn and younger sister 30 fics deep into Stucky high school AUs - what do they have in common? What do they talk about? What can they even learn from each other? Until recently, and for aeons, fiction was shared, and its primary goal was to form a connection between group members. Now, that’s gone. We destroyed it, without even realizing what we were doing, in the space of twenty years. And yeah - I know you can create new communities, but a) these communities are virtual (which means, for the most part: not real) and b) they tend to connect like with like, which is comforting, perhaps, but not very useful. The whole point here is that we need to learn how to feel empathy and trust for those who’re different, and build a community with them - instead, what the internet is doing is isolating us inside our little bubbles, so much so that any minor disagreement is now seen as good reason to break off contact.

Censorship, however, doesn’t solve any of this. For starters, we need more regulation on how big corporations can get, what social media companies can and can’t do and who can access what kind of material. And it’d be great if we could all unplug a little, but uh - fat chance of that.

3) Is the romance genre okay?

Again, just my opinion, but personally, I mistrust it. There are no romance books for men? Instead, books for men feature a Main Character doing stuff and improving himself while accidentally meeting a Sexy Lamp he can go home to at the end of the story. And, well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but isn’t this a healthier way to look at life? While good relationships are very meaningful (or even the most meaningful) part of any human life, if your goal is to get them, they won’t grow right. You shouldn’t be hyperfocused on finding love; I think it’s much better to be like Main Character: you work on your drawing skills, try a new sport, read poetry, defeat evil Russians, thus developing inner happiness and self-confidence, thus leading you towards towards a partner who’ll fall in love with who you are - not a partner who was looking for some empty shell to fill with their own expectations and preferences.

And I know - romance books and movies are full of exciting non-romantic events and stuff - but still, the fact they’re classified and intended as romance does imply that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate goal. Which, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s healthy, and is a particularly inappropriate message for young women. After all, why is it okay that young men are encouraged to go on ghost hunts, study dinosaurs and save the world while young women are taught to wait around for a broken (possibly violent, but it’s not his fault) bad boy only they can fix? It’s messed up, is what it is, and I may be extreme here, but even the tamest, sweetest romance revolves around the same message: that you’re not complete on your own, and that you should focus on relationships as a way to become a better, happier human being. 

Now, as much as I love this quote -

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” — Oscar Wilde

- obviously there’s no direct cause-and-effect here - you don’t read one book and become a mindless Stepford wife - so I’m not saying, ‘no one should read romance ever’. It’s just - as I said in that other post, we should all enjoy diverse stuff. Read your romance novels, but also read the classics, read some philosophy, a random poem, a badly-written thriller - read Stephen King, read how the OED was written, or a Wikipedia article on the French resistance - anything and everything. Because of capitalism, because of this push towards personalized entertainment, we’re being forced and pigeonholing ourselves in smaller and smaller cages, and the worst thing is - we’re comfortable inside them, because this is the awful truth: cages are comfortable, and that’s why we need to get out before we forget what cages are for.

[As a final point: you say ‘if we wrote’, does it mean you’re an aspiring writer? If so, you shouldn’t worry about any of this. You write what you want, you write the stories you want to read. Just remember to get out of your cage as well - experience, discover, grow, read, dare - and then put all that into your books. I’m sure they’ll be great, whatever your favourite genre.]

[elenatria]

In a nutshell: The Terror is also about real people, who've been dead for a long time. Some predicted the Terror fandom would move to the Chernobyl fandom because Jared Harris and similarities in narratives (it ends badly for everyone, they all die, etc.). Mostly, this happened. Some Terror fandom people think that Chernobyl should not be shipped, because it's about real people, who've been dead for... less long? The fandom is pretty much split on the question, afaik.

… Tell me moar! 

Oh, the delicious hypocrisy of the purity police.

Lol, and they’re calling me a hypocrite because I think most hetero pairings on tv are badly written and lame “but I ship men in romantic situations all the same”. As if it’s impossible for them to consider the “forbidden” aspect of it as well as the kink factor, which is still freedom of thought and it’s h-a-r-m-l-e-s-s. And the fact that men were always allowed to enjoy woman-on-woman pornography, no one bats an eye when they do, and that lesbian kisses are still way more common on tv than gay kisses because patriarchy, because men kissing are still a taboo. But let’s not even go there, shall we? Let’s not even touch the subject of how misogynistic and racist “smut boys for white girls” sounds. 

The few times the antis do try to process the kink factor they say we “objectify” men. Laughable, as if I have Legasov and Shcherbina locked up in my basement, as if I profit from “objectifying men”, as if headcanons and fics and fanart in a random blog on tumblr are harming men in any way.

But the purity police were always a hypocritical, self-righteous and narrow-minded bunch, always eager to tell others what to do.

Exactly lol, Legasov and Shcherbina shouldn’t be touched because they have been dead for less long than the people in The Terror, also they’re not in period costumes but they use phones, cars etc etc so somehow Terror/Chernobyl fans think that “hey, this could be my self-sacrificing grandfather right there”. Guess what, he’s not. Guess what, we ship his fictional counterpart. Guess what, he’s dead and he doesn’t see what we do. If antis feel offended on the dead people’s behalf  it’s because THEY feel offended and project their own feelings on those people’s families. Families that have much bigger problems than a bunch of people shipping their dead relatives I’m sure. Families that do not have first world problems but REAL ones, to this day. 

But what do antis know of real problems? If they had them, if they faced them daily, they wouldn’t be here bitching and wagging their  finger to total strangers.

Look, I’ll even make it easier for them: Valoris haters are okay with The Terror because those guys didn’t sacrifice themselves to save millions. In that sense Legasov and Shcherbina are saints to them, and no one ships saints, right? Because taboo. Because saints are not supposed to have sex (Virgin Mary and all), because saints are not supposed to be used in people’s fantasies. Because mere fantasies are also a taboo. Still a taboo.

I’m guessing antis have no idea what intertextuality is so here, let’s throw them a bone of knowledge straight from Wikipedia.

“Intertextuality is the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text. It is the interconnection between similar or related works of literature that reflect and influence an audience’s interpretation of the text. Intertextuality is a literary device that creates an ‘interrelationship between texts’ and generates related understanding in separate works. These references are made to influence the reader and add layers of depth to a text, based on the readers’ prior knowledge and understanding. Intertextuality is a literary discourse strategy utilised by writers in novels, poetry, theatre and even in non-written texts (such as performances and digital media). Examples of intertextuality are an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text, and a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.”

See? Fanfiction writers have at their disposal a literary tool that has been used by writers for centuries and they didn’t even know. And the antis think they can stop them? Lolz.     

Here’s the sad truth: antis watch a show and suddenly feel like they know the characters, like they own the characters, fictional or not. So they go googling them. So they go to tumblr, go to the “Chernobyl” tag thinking that it’s “safe”, thinking that it’s Wikipedia or something, thinking that they’ll only find their classmates in there. Dude, you’re not in your classroom anymore. They like to say “this is the internet” (so accept my bs) but they forget that this applies to both sides, yes this IS the internet and the internet is full of a million voices, a million opinions. 

What are they gonna do, shut down all those they don’t agree with? Only  fascists do that and I’m not giving a single inch to people who think like fascists. No one should.

[confinesofpersonalknowledge]

the m diaries

a series of short fics i wrote for my friend, who I am lucky enough to share a birthday with! this is for you, m, even if it’s late <3

pairings: logicality, background prinxiety

word count: 3667

warnings: i don’t think there are any for this? its the most fluff i’ve ever written. please tell me if i need to tag something!

taglist (general): @romanamongthestars @heir-of-the-founders @anthoscopus @ocotopushugs

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part one - a worthwhile ‘whisk’

It’s not a secret that Patton likes to bake - he does it often, and he does it well, and the others are not hesitant to show their appreciation of Patton’s baked goods. To say that Patton is a lover of food is to underestimate greatly, in Logan’s observations of the other Side.

It’s commonplace to find the other Side in the kitchen, a delicious smell wafting from the room alongside the hum of whatever song Patton was deciding to obsess over that day. Many days, it was a tune from Disney. Roman was quick to join in, happily singing along to whichever song Patton chose, dancing majestically in the dining area - alone, or with a partner. These days, he seemed to enjoy tugging Virgil into his dances, much to the blushing chagrin of the anxious Side.

Sometimes Roman or Virgil are recruited by Patton to help bake. Usually, this is a subtle maneuver from Patton whenever he notices that either is feeling particularly high-strung that day, lashing out more, or simply a bit quicker to give a reaction. And usually, he’s successful in cheering the others up, two flour-covered cheeks stretched in a dimpled simple difficult to ignore even by someone having the worst of days.

He’s yet to invite Logan into such an activity, though Logan supposes that, too, makes sense. Logan is rarely prone to the overly-emotional outbursts of the other three - he finds them frivolous and oftentimes unnecessary to achieving the best possible task. As such, Patton is less likely to notice when Logan is feeling particularly uncharitable, or, as he likes to put it, down in the dumps.

Usually, though, when Logan is feeling in such a way, he finds himself in the Commons, curled with a book he pretends to read as he listens to the consistent, calming noises of Patton rustling about in the kitchen, with his consistent humming. Logan finds comfort in the softness of their home in such moments, the simpleness of simply existing alongside Patton without need of their interaction, and getting along without saying a word. It’s… nice.

So finding Patton curled on one end of the couch, the cardigan Logan gave him fully on, no music or light streaming from the kitchen as the Commons are unusually enveloped in darkness is… surprising to say the least. Patton doesn’t say a word when Logan settles down next to him, barely glancing up at him. Though, in the brief moment where their eyes met, Logan suspects that he spotted a glimpse of bright tears swimming in Patton’s eyes.

Frowning to himself as he stood, Logan quietly made his way to the kitchen, flicking on the lights and ignoring the twing of something deep in his chest at the way Patton sniffled quietly in the Commons. Gathering the ingredients, vessels, and utensils necessary for Patton’s favourite dessert - triple fudge brownies - he began to quietly and gently place them on the counter, hoping they would catch the other Side’s interest.

When it’s been a few minutes and Logan has found himself halfway through the recipe with no sign of gaining Patton’s attention, he decides a more nuanced approach may be appropriate. Wiping his face on his shoulder, unknowingly smearing flour on his face, Logan washes his hands and quickly exits the kitchen, making the short way over to where the huddled form of Patton Sanders continues to sit.

Sitting down gently next to him, Logan waits until Patton spares him a glance to offer him an uncertain smile. When Patton does a double-take, that smile becomes a little more genuine, and surprisingly, a laugh bubbles in Logan’s throat when Patton pulls out of the curled position he had previously assumed - which must have been terrible on the Side’s back - to stare at him in shock. Standing up, offering a hand to help Patton do the same, Logan gently asks, “Would you like to bake with me?”

The beaming, though slightly wet, smile that Patton gives him is answer enough. Hours later, when Roman and Virgil descend the stairs into the Commons, drawn by the housewarming, drool-inducing smell of the triple fudge brownies set to bake in the oven, they find the forms of Patton and Logan in the kitchen, covered in flour and other various ingredients. Both are laughing, faces aglow under the crappy kitchen lights as they steal unknowing glances each other, admiration clear in their gazes. Both are oblivious to the outside world, and the knowing glances that Roman and Virgil slant at them, lost in each other’s eyes and the happiness they find hidden deep inside.

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part two - a four-am snack

See, the problem isn’t really the time; four-am is no stranger to Logan, not with his tendency to go off on late-night binges on Wikipedia, always constantly searching for new information, new things that he hadn’t known before, something to settle the restless itch in his mind that always pushes him to learn more, know more, find out more. It usually ends in badly-hidden dark circles under his eyes, and the slightly disapproving frown Patton slants at him in the mornings, forcing Logan to hide the slight hurt he feels at the look.

That is - being awake at four-am is not something new for Logan. For Patton, however, is another story altogether. The man is the very definition of early mornings and early nights - Logan doesn’t think he’s ever seen the pure embodiment of sunshine stay awake beyond 11pm on any night. And he’s always awake, no matter what, at 6am, in the kitchen happily humming as the delicious smells of breakfast waft through the house.

So, on the rare night in which Logan is actually asleep at four-am, he’s rather surprised to find Patton gently shaking him awake, grin bright and happy under his glasses. It’s far too bright for four in the morning, but Logan finds that he cannot bring himself to truly complain. Not when the full force of the same smile is directed straight at him, even if it is at four in the morning.

Speaking of which.

“Patton… why, exactly, are the two of us awake at four in the morning?” Logan asks, voice heavy with sleep as he pushes himself onto his elbows. Patton doesn’t reply, simply raising an excited finger to his lip in a shushing motion and grabbing Logan’s wrist, warm fingers curling snuggly around it.

Logan is suddenly glad it is too dark for Patton to see the red that crawls up his neck. He lets the shorter Side bounce ahead of him, eyes watching the bounce of soft curls as they head down the stairs.

The Commons are silent, save for the quiet fall of rain in the backyard outside. For once, the TV and the radio are off, silence settling into the Commons in a way that it rarely does when all four of them are awake. Darkness has quietly befallen the Commons, shadows gently reaching sleepy fingers towards the center of the room, where Patton happens to be dragging Logan anyway.

Logan follows the Side, mostly in a sleepy haze of confusion, until Patton is dragging him to sit down on the couch, the blinds having been opened to the outside world. Rain falls heavily and steadily, the world occasionally illuminated by flashing glimpses of lighting far in the distance, thunder rumbling quietly and comfortingly. Patton doesn’t say a word, but aims another one of his blindingly beautiful smiles at Logan, and Logan… understands, suddenly, what Patton wants from him without a single word.

Gently, he relaxes into the couch, feet drawing up underneath him in a comfortable fold as Patton settles in comfortably next to him. Silence curls around them, blanketing the moment in a kind of peace difficult to find in their rushing, energy-filled home during the day. And Logan could understand why Patton awoke him - for this, for a moment such as this, Logan wouldn’t mind waking up a million times.

The peace is a fragile thing, really - easily broken by the slightest of movement or the softest of noise. The background of the falling rain is soothing, a quiet reassurance to busy minds that moments of solitude and recuperation are available. Moments like these are difficult to find and even harder to catch. Some distant part of Logan is unimaginably grateful that Patton invited him to one - and chose to share it with Logan.

Eventually, Logan’s eyes slip close, his head tilting dangerously until he finds himself leaning on Patton. It draws a wide-eyed gaze from Patton, one that is quick to soften into something highly akin to fondness and love. Shifting them slightly into a much more comfortable position, Patton places a gentle kiss at Logan’s dark brow before slipping off both their glasses. Closing his own eyes, Patton allows himself to drift off.

In front of them, rain continues to gently fall. Lightning flashes illuminate both their faces as they sleep, a soft, different kind of peace settling quietly over the sleeping pair.

All is well.

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part three - a field day of flowers

It starts with Roman and Patton, and their overly-enthusiastic love of flowers, gardens, and flower gardens. And Virgil, who apparently spent one Wikipedia-fueled night with Logan on a binge of flower meanings and is unable to say no to Patton’s puppy dog eyes. Not that he has to, with Roman aiming a hopeful smirk at him. Virgil is especially weak to those, as Logan has come to note over the last few weeks.

It ends with Logan’s hair full of flowers, and Patton bounding up to him, grin firmly in place as he shoves bouquets of multi-coloured roses into Logan’s arm. How they end up there is the true story.

Logan finds that Roman has a very unsubtle way of trying to subtly pushing him into asking Patton out. That is - the field they are currently in is absolutely chock full of flowers that symbolize romance, and different forms of love that Logan does not necessarily want to admit that he feels.

They are bright and beautiful, much like Patton, who very much has a fondness of bright and beautiful things. Which means that when Patton goes running off to the fields, hands curling around wild red carnations, Logan cannot help the red flush that travel up his neck. And at the question Patton poses him, curls bouncing as he tilts his head, Logan has to take a moment for himself before he can bring himself to answer. After all, red carnations represent deep romantic love, as well as passion, and Roman is really bad at being subtle.

Logan spots Virgil’s influences when he sees jasmines in the distance, the long-stemmed white flower catching Patton’s eye at the same time it does Logan’s. And Logan remembers a distant conversation, months prior under a starry sky and a nervous Virgil far too anxious about approaching a certain prince in regards to his feelings. Logan had remembered jasmines, then, sitting under the stars with his best friend - remembered that they had a symbol for unconditional and eternal love. Patton comes dashing up with a gentle handful of them, quietly threading them into Logan’s hair as he stands stock-still, a blush alighting both their faces even as they avoid each others’ gazes.

Purple bellflowers are next to join the wild array of flowers in Roman’s field and Logan’s hair. Patton finds them, quietly cooing over how they remind him of Virgil even as he picks them, holding them out gently to Logan. By now, the blush is something far more permanent, stuck on his face as Patton gently tucks two bellflowers behind each of Logan’s ears. He’s not entirely sure that Patton is truly understand the meaning of the flowers he is presenting to Logan like a gift - bellflowers are said to symbolize unwavering love, after all.

It is the similar story with the asters, though Logan is the one to point out the small area where the white-and-yellow flowers grow. He isn’t really sure why he did it, though some instinct drove him to do it, some art of him wondering if Patton would appreciate the flower as he quietly explained the meaning of asters. (They were symbols of love, of trust.)

And that is the story of how they end up here - with Logan and an arrangement of flowers in his hair, each one more romantic in meaning, and Patton running up with more in his hand.

Except these are roses - red and white, together, coming together to represent a union, and red alone to mean true love - and Logan is not sure Patton is fully aware of the meaning his actions hold, of the things he has communicated silently to Logan. And Logan - he cannot bear it, cannot have false hope in the light of things unsaid, not when a large part of his world teeters hopefully on the axis of the brightness in Patton’s eyes, and the pangs of sadness that overcome him when that brightness dulls, even for a moment. Of this, Logan must be sure.

And so he asks, voice quiet and gentle and hopeful despite his every attempt to keep it impassive. To be sure that he is not selling his heart away to someone who does not want, has never wanted it.

Patton only smiles and boops Logan’s nose, smiling as he calls Logan silly, saying that he’s been trying to send a message the entire time.

Logan smiles.

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part four - a midnight wait

It is 5 minutes away from midnight on the night of April 30th, and Logan is suddenly nervous. It’s like every minute has slowed down to a crawl as he awaits the inevitable striking of midnight, and the shift into May - May 1st being, of course, Patton’s day of birth.

He’s likely being irrational about this event in its entirety. It is not, in any shape or form whatsoever, unusual or irrational to stay awake until the moment when a new day is born simply to extend birthday wishes to a friend - Logan has experienced the same from his friends often. But Patton - Patton is not just any other friend. No, he cannot be, not with the giant crush Logan has on him.

4 minutes now, and all Logan can think about is Patton’s bright blue eyes and the way they light up behind his glasses whenever he sees Logan. The rush of happiness Logan gets at seeing the happiness in Patton’s eyes, the way the blue eyes see more, understand more than anyone else Logan has known. Here is the truth, raw and honest, if Logan was to ever give it: Patton is much smarter than others make him out to be, much smarter than he himself makes him out to be. After all, intelligence is not simply a measure of knowledge useful in schools - there are countless kinds of intelligence, and Patton is the most emotionally-intelligent person Logan has ever had the pleasure to know, the pleasure to be friends with. It is all written in his eyes.

3 minutes, and Logan’s thoughts shift to Patton’s smile. It has never failed to draw the attention of people - it’s the biggest compliment Patton gets, that his smile is wide and beautiful. And, seeing it from an absolutely objective viewpoint, it is a beautiful smile - the most beautiful Logan has seen adorning the frankly perfect beautiful face of the most wonderful human Logan has had the privilege of knowing. Patton’s smile is enough to light up a room, enough to bring cheer even to the most of upset of people when all else has failed. It’s one of the most wonderful things about him.

2 minutes, and Logan is suddenly struck with the image of Patton’s freckles. They’re everywhere, adorning most of Patton’s face with their grace and their beauty, and Logan wants to spend every day of his life counting them over and over again, tracing the constellations in them and finding new ones. They’re mini-stars on Patton’s cheek, an universe spreading itself across the bridge of Patton’s nose for Logan to appreciate in the moments when there is quiet and peace across the room - and sometimes in the ones where there is not. He’s often been caught staring at the freckles, mentally counting them, tallying up the counts in his mind and committing them to his memory.

1 minute - Logan is truly nervous now, a strange kind of energy humming in him as his grip tightens around his phone. This birthday feels different somehow, as if it means more than a simple wish on a simple minute. He and Patton have been dancing around each other for awhile now, neither acknowledging their emotions or doing something that would bring their awkward dance to a stop, neither willing to take the initiative if the other isn’t. But of course, each moment is important, and as Logan sits in bed, phone in hand, he knows that this birthday will bring something new into his life, and into Patton’s.

0 minutes.

Me to Patton <3: Happy Birthday, Patton. May all the wishes you may want come true.

Patton <3 to you: Aww, thank you Logan! See you later today! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

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part five - dental shenanigans

Logan has a tendency to wear a straight face like a mask - neutrality is his natural state, and oftentimes it is mistakenly misread for displeasure. It’s highly ever the case - Logan is a serious man, and he does not like to display his emotions for everyone to see. He takes them for a sign of weakness - he should be strong enough that he is the only one he needs to deal with, and understand his emotions, in his mind. It’s a mentality Patton works hard to get rid of.

Of course, that is a Logan who is not high on anesthesia following a dental procedure. A Logan who is high on anesthesia is a completely different story, as Patton is about to learn.

It’s like this - a high Logan is one that lowers the boundaries he has, the walls he has built to exclude almost every and isolate himself into a fortress of solitude, as illogical as it may be. Which means he’s no longer suppressing the emotions that rise and fall in his chest like waves.

Patton sees this when he first enters the room, Logan’s eyes immediately jump to Patton, forgetting everything and everyone else in the room as a wide grin splits his lips, Patton’s name tumbling out his mouth in a happy cry. The nurse shook her head fondly in the corner, knowing she’d lost the war for the man’s attention from the moment a nervous-looking Patton had stepped into the room.

Patton, for his part, was no less dramatic. He was quick to run over to Logan’s side, grabbing his hand as he stared in worry at the usually stoic man, not registering that Virgil had ducked into the room behind him, phone ready in his hand as he snickered quietly to himself, video already rolling. He had eyes only for Logan, and it seemed that Logan only had eyes for Patton.

This would be fun to show to Logan when he wasn’t quite as loopy in the morning, but for now, Virgil was going to take as much advantage of this as he could. Nothing like a little bit of blackmail for the man who had piles of blackmail on the others, stored safely away.

Virgil has to bite his lips to stop his laughter when Logan suddenly throws his arms around Patton’s shoulders, loudly declaring him the most perfect of angels, giggling as Patton automatically hugged him back before quietly whispering that Patton gave the best hugs, ever.

Roman was really going to hate that he’d missed this, especially because Virgil was too busy shaking with laughter to really hold the camera steady. It was an experience in-and-of itself to see Logan so… open with his emotions, especially in front of people he wasn’t familiar with in the first place. And for the man to do it so flamboyantly, as well, in a manner that didn’t fail to remind Virgil of Roman’s overly-extravagant way of speaking and acting altogether. It was as if Logan was a whole new man in such a loopy state.

Though it was becoming clearer that Patton didn’t quite know how to handle Logan in such a state, judging by the way that Patton clung to Logan, not allowing him to fall but not really holding him as if he was hugging him. Virgil supposed it was fair enough - none of them had really ever seen Logan so… extra, before.

Before Virgil can do anything, however, Logan pulls away, hands coming up to grab Patton’s face as he gasps, before loudly and suddenly asking, “Oh my god, are you an angel?”

Patton giggles lightly, reaching up and fixing the crooked glasses on Logan’s face before responding, “No, I’m Patton, silly.”

Logan gasps again, hands covering Patton’s own on his face, “But that’s the best thing to be! Patton’s are so cool, and fun, and nice, and sweet, and smart, and funny, and they make the best puns! My Patton is really, really cool! Have you met him?”

Virgil laughs at the blush covering Patton’s entire face, though Patton’s voice is steady as he responds, “Really? You should really tell your Patton you feel this way. I bet he would be really happy if you did.”

Logan smiles sleepily at Patton, eyes blinking slowly as he whispers, “Okay, Patton! If you say so, though no telling him! I want to tell him when I wake up, okay? No telling Patton, you have to pinky promise me.”

Patton pinky-promises Logan, and Logan only smiles again, before succumbing to his own exhaustion and slipping into sleep, hand still holding Patton’s lightly, their pinkies linked. Patton makes no move to unlink them, even as Virgil approaches quietly, ready to tease the hell out of his friend.

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Comments and reblogs are highly, highly appreciated and also lifeblood. Ofc, no forcing. <3 have a good night

[douxreviews]

The Merchant of Venice (2004) Review

"I am a'weary of this world."

When a merchant's ships are all lost and he forfeits a debt, his debtor Shylock demands exactly what the bond stipulates – a pound of his flesh...

The Merchant of Venice is a tricky play, because although popular and including some of Shakespeare's most famous lines, the themes of the play make it difficult to produce for modern audiences. As far as Shakespeare was concerned, the play was clearly a comedy. It ends in marriage, generally a marker of comedy in Shakespearean drama (it was written before the late 'Romance' plays). Most of the plot is clearly ridiculous; Portia's late father's method for choosing a husband for her is obviously ludicrous, there are women dressing up as men and tricking their new husbands, and even Shylock's demand for a pound of flesh has a comedic aspect (note that although in the court the bond is written to stipulate a pound of flesh from near the heart, when he first suggests it, Shylock says he'll take it from 'what part of your body pleaseth me' – and if I've learned anything about Shakespeare's sense of humour over the years, I can guess what that refers to). But we in the twenty-first century don't generally find anti-semitism, condoning slavery, implied homophobia, references to racism and forcing people on pain of death to change their religion terribly funny.

There are only really two solutions to this – play the romantic scenes for comedy and the Shylock scenes for drama, or play the whole thing for drama. Michael Radford's film goes all out for drama, and it mostly works very well. Unlike Hamlet, which I quite like modern dress versions of, The Merchant of Venice is a film set in a very specific time and place (here it's given it a date of 1596, when the play was probably written) and the film places it firmly within history by outlining the history of anti-semitism in early modern Venice in title cards at the beginning. This is pretty much essential to understanding the story, and the visualization of Antonio spitting on Shylock (referred to later in dialogue) also helps to set up the characters and the root of Shylock's anger effectively.

Shylock is a character much like Euripides' Medea – he has a wonderful speech outlining how badly he's treated and arguing passionately for better, but his actions later in the play suggest that the author did not intend him to be entirely sympathetic (rather under-cutting the suggestion that Shakespeare was making a plea for tolerance or Euripides a feminist). For modern audiences, though, he is a compellingly conflicted character, and here he is played brilliantly by Al Pacino. Pacino's performance is captivating and heart-breaking and the courtroom scene is absolutely gut-wrenching.

The decision to play the story completely straight (there are elements of humour, of course, but none of the really broad comedy or light atmosphere of, for example, the lighter scenes in Much Ado About Nothing) mostly works. Some of the romantic scenes come across as a bit overblown and melodramatic, but the conflict between working from a script written as comedy and making it a drama only really becomes an issue in the courtroom scene and especially in the final twenty minutes or so after it. It's great that Portia saves the day with her quick thinking, but the fact that she makes the least convincing man since Bob in Blackadder is a bit distracting, and there's just no way we can feel really invested in the lovers messing around with rings and easily broken promises after watching the absolute devastation of Shylock's defeat.

Still, these are pretty much unsolvable problems in this play, and it would be a terrible shame never to produce it because its attitudes are out of date (it's hardly alone there). I think this film really does the best possible job with this material. All of the cast, as well as Pacino, are fantastic, and the American actresses playing Portia and Nerissa are doing the best and most convincing fake English accents I've come across. It looks absolutely gorgeous and it has one of the most beautiful film scores I've ever heard. A combination of medieval-inspired music, Tudor-inspired music, a boy soprano and a song sun by Hayley Westernra, the score is utterly gorgeous and is matched by the incredible cinematography and beautiful costuming.

According to Wikipedia, both Jeremy Irons (playing Antonio) and director Michael Radford thought that they had portrayed Antonio and Bassanio's relationship as just platonic good friends. I'm not sure what film they were watching, because one of the first observations that came to me as I re-watched it was "this version really plays up the suggestion that Antonio is in love with Bassanio." Joseph Fiennes (as Bassanio) did deliberately play up the idea of a homoerotic attraction (possibly a history) between them. I am a person who will argue for hours that Frodo and Sam have an entirely platonic relationship, and I can see how you could play Antonio and Bassanio as just good friends, but I don't think that's what they've actually achieved here – and I think that's a good thing.

Because of the dramatic approach taken to the material, the film has a deliberately melancholy air, and rather than ending on everyone going off to finally get laid, as the script does, the film finishes on a shot of Jessica, who is revealed not to have given away her mother's ring for a monkey after all, looking sad and pensive. This melancholic atmosphere is enhanced by the shots of Antonio looking on wistfully as Bassanio and Portia embrace. The film has turned Shakespeare's bawdy comedy into a serious drama about love and pain and betrayal and acceptance, or lack thereof, so it seems entirely appropriate to interpret Antonio's love as another example of a character constrained and made to suffer for what he is, and every choice both director and actor make seems to reinforce that, from Antonio gazing out at Bassanio and denying that he's in love (methinks he doth protest too much) to his emphasis on his willingness to put his body on the line for Bassanio. You almost have to be trying not to see it to miss it. If that wasn't what Radford and Irons intended, they've gone wrong somewhere.

This is a difficult story, but this film does a fantastic job making it accessible, approachable and absolutely beautiful. I love me some Kenneth Branagh, as you know, but in terms of tackling something really difficult really well, this has got to be one of the best Shakespeare adaptations I've ever seen, and much as we might have come to expect it of him, it's worth saying again that Pacino completely blew me away. Beautiful in every way.

Notes and Quotes

The cast is absolutely full of familiar faces, some known before this film, some after; Joseph Fiennes, Kris Marshall from Love Actually/My Family, Charlie Cox from Stardust/Downton Abbey, Zuleikha Robinson from Rome, Mackenzie Crook, John Sessions, Jeremy Irons...

The quote at the top of the page is the version of Portia's opening line used in this film, but the full line is usually "my little body is a-weary of this great world." It's one of my Mum's favourite Shakespeare quotes, partly because of the 'little body' bit.

Prince of Morocco (reading from a scroll): All that glitters is not gold...

Shylock: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Portia: The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Juliette Harrisson is a freelance writer, classicist and ancient historian who blogs about Greek and Roman Things in Stuff at Pop Classics.