#I don't remember the contemporary details of it tbh

[catman-draws]

really taking hs as a serious work (i know i know) the dancestors would be a really horribly written concept, since like you said they were mostly intended more as a one-off joke than any kind of meaningful plot point. (weren't they also supposed to be a subtle/blatant insult towards the fandom? because we all know hussie loves flat out insulting his fans)

Oh the dancestors were HORRIBLY written, I don't think there's any contention about that.

[ottomanladies]

reallifesultanas Thank you very much for your answer! Yes I meant Dumas not Alderson sorry for that! Is there a reason for the illogical amount of salaries? I mean the earlier salary lists of registers clearly help us to indentify the sultanas. The 1555-1556 registers are 100% logical; the 1603-1604 registers are still logical: Safiye, Handan, aunts of Ahmed, great-aunt of Ahmed, great-great aunt's daughter (Ayse Hümasah), cousin of Mehmed III, far relatives. But then there is this one.. highest salary for the full sisters of the sultan is logical, but then what does the daughters of Murad III doing there? Fahri/Kamer and Hümaşah/Rukiye* are surely Murads and so Ümmügülsüm could be also Murad's... For the lesser salaries Beyhan, Safiye, Hatice I could imagine they were Mehmed III's, maybe Beyhan's Mustafa was Mirahur Mustafa? But these stipends are just not logical... (*Murad III's daughte Rukiye was said to be married to Nakkas Hasan not Huma). And for Ümmügülsüm there is that one report from 1688 (Katherine Trumbull) when it is said she developed a relationship with Sultana Ümmühan, the aunt of the deposed Sultan Mehmed IV, through visits to the harem. This Ümmühan could be Halil Pasha's wife and so Murad III's/Mehmed III's daugher, or is it more likely not an aunt but sister/cousin? Or she truly can be Ahmed I's daughter? There is this 85 numaralı Mühimme defteri that provide some informations suggesting suggesting Ümmügülsüm was sister of Murad IV. Sadly I dont have the book so I cannot check how true is this claim...

I hope you don't mind if we continue here on ottomanladies.

I know the harem register doesn’t seem to make sense from the point of view of hierarchy but we must remember that the hierarchy could be broken on the basis of favouritism. Maybe those aunts were more favoured than the others.

In this table we can see Gevherhan Sultan, a great-aunt of Ahmed I’s, the reigning sultan. Dumas mistakenly identifies her as a daughter of Murad III’s and a concubine of non-haseki rank, but the reality is she’s first because she’s the most senior princess alive. If you look closely at the second category — “Frais de bouche” — she receives the same amount as Ayse and Fatma, Safiye’s daughters. Gevherhan was quite favoured by Ahmed I because she had trained Handan in her household. Also, her late husband Cerrah Mehmed Pasha had performed Ahmed I’s circumcision. Borekçi says that she was the only recipient — apart from Handan and Safiye — of sable fur:

“A register preserved in the Topkapı Palace Archives gives further details of the gifts Gevherhan Sultan received from her great grand-cousin. At the beginning of this register, there are records of the furs and robes of honor sent by the new sultan to his larger family right after his enthronement on December 27, 1603. Here, Gevherhan Sultan is listed as a recipient of a sable robe (semmûr kaplu nimtâne) and recorded as the third female member of the dynasty after the retiring queen mother, Safiye Sultan, and the new queen mother, Handan Sultan, and before all other living sisters and daughters of Murad III and Mehmed III -- a clear indication of her privileged position. Later, on February 6, 1604, she again appears in the register, this time as the only female family member apart from Handan Sultan to receive a fur-trimmed silk robe.”

(I believe the 6 şehzâdegân are unmarried princesses that Ahmed still had to matchmake but this is another story)

I know it’s Rukiye that Öztuna says has married Nakkaş Hasan Pasha but he could be wrong tbh, it wouldn’t be the first time. Also, neither Sakaoğlu or Uluçay confirm this; they give no information about Rukiye except for the identity of her mother. Unfortunately Öztuna never gives his sources so we don’t know where he found that Rukiye was married to Nakkaş Hasan Pasha. I would trust the harem register and contemporary sources (the ragusian diplomat, in this case) more tbh… both say that Nakkaş Hasan Pasha was married to a princess called Hümaşah…

About Beyhan… the problem is the wife of Mirahur Mustafa Pasha went on to marry Cigalazade Sinan Pasha’s son Mahmud Bey in 1612, and died before 1620, the date of Mahmud Bey’s second wedding, which means she shouldn’t have been alive in 1638-39. The Ragusian letter date 1648, though, lists a Beyhan Sultan widow of “Nideli Mustafa Pasha”— unfortunately, I can’t say who this man is or what “nideli” means.

I do agree with you, though. I think that Beyhan, Safiye, and Hatice are daughters of Mehmed III. We know that seven princesses were married in the summer of 1613, after all. A letter dated July 1613 by a Ragusian diplomat, furthermore, says that “at the present there are fifteen sultanas”.

About Katherine Trumbull, I guess you mean this:

“While in Istanbul, Katherine had developed a relationship with Sultana Ümmühan, Mehmed IV’s aunt and sister to Ibrahim II. On 14 July 1688, Katherine met with Ümmühan for the first time, and the two women continued to meet in the imperial harem throughout Trumbull’s residence in Istanbul. During these visits, Katherine must have been accompanied by someone with knowledge of spoken Turkish, or else it is unclear how she would have been able to communicate with the women she met in the harem. At any rate, when she returned to the embassy, she brought to Trumbull news of things taking place in the Ottoman court.” — Ghobrial, John-Paul A, 'Overcoming Distance in Everyday Communication', The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London, and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull (Oxford, 2013; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Jan. 2014)

Unfortunately, William Trumbull’s diaries were not published, they’re in the British Library. I always like to cross-check my sources and the fact that I can’t read the original kind of annoys me. Ümmühan is quite an unusual name for an Ottoman princess: Ümmi means mother and Han sovereign, it kind of sounds like “valide sultan”, which is why I thought it was a title for a moment but I couldn’t find anything to confirm this. It is kind of interesting, though, that Öztuna says that Ibrahim’s eldest daughter was called Ümmügülsüm, who could have been named after another Ümmügülsüm (the one that in 1622 was unmarried? Who knows)

The Mühimme defteri is not a book but a collection of copies of all the imperial decrees or decisions taken in the imperial council. They’re numbered and the number 85 refers to the years 1630-31. You can find the PDF for free on the website of the Turkish National Archives but, well, it’s in Ottoman Turkish.

(This is one of them)

So I can’t really read it even though I have it.

[decepti-thots]

Something I've pondered - has anyone tried to develop or expand on the Pretenders? Because the impression I get is that they're entirely forgotten sans Bludgeon.

While I have read very little Marvel G1, my understanding is that it's their biggest and most in-depth appearance in-fiction. Which makes sense, as it was running when the toys were coming out and needed a promo! There's a whole thing with Scorponok and what have you, I do not know the details but I'm pretty sure they were a fleshed out presence in that book for a bit.

The Japanese equivalent- again, this is a piece of fiction I've seen like two episodes of and otherwise heard about third hand, haha- is probably that they're in Super-God Masterforce. They're very tied into the whole concept of that show, with the whole "look! cybertronians turning into humans! humans turning into cybertronians!" element. Again, this is contemporary I believe to the toyline being on shelves in Japan, so makes sense.

After that, there's mostly just been easter eggs and brief tangents that don't really go anywhere. Furman (worked on Marvel G1) starts to bring some stuff in at the verrry start of IDW in his post -ations stuff, but it's not a hugely important plot point that goes anywhere tbh, it's more just an extended reference that crops up every now and again through his latter phase one comics. Roche (noted Marvel G1 fan) brings it in for the stuff where Kup post-Spotlight gets a new body and it's a Pretender body, but again, it's mostly just a reference.

However, his stuff with the Chimeracons and later Overlord-as-Megan in SotW and RotW is also, if by a different actual name, clearly a riff on Pretenders. (Carnivac's a Pretender toy, for example.) Tarantulas finding a way to disguise his goons as organics (and himself) via their fancy new technoorganic bodies is some sort of weird cross between Beast Wars and Pretenders, which is neat, and then the Wrequiem thing with Overlord posing as a human is clearly inspired by Pretenders.

Other than that... can't think of anything! IDW1 did a bit with the Marvel concept, and otherwise, it's largely been relegated to the odd in-joke here or there. (I wonder if it's because the toys have not been as fondly remembered over the years as a lot of G1 stuff. I feel like mostly I just see people dunking on how goofy the human character modes look and not much else. Who knows.)

[anghraine]

I re-read the whole academic drama around Irish-Americans and NINA policies, because it was relevant for something I'm working on and I'd forgotten some of the details.

A relatively conservative professor wrote an article in the early 2000s arguing that the Irish-American cultural memory of NINA policies ("No Irish Need Apply" restrictions on both Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans, mainly in the 19th century but persisting in some places into the 20th) is hugely overblown, with the implication that anti-Irish prejudice in the US at the time was not really that big a deal in general.

It struck me as a bit odd for a conservative professor to pull this argument when the usual approach is to use the history of anti-Irish policies to deny very contemporary racism experienced by people of color or blame its victims. I'd expect "Irish-Americans are over-exaggerating their historical oppression because they want to frame themselves as oppressed people despite being the beneficiaries of modern whiteness" from progressives more, tbh (since that is indeed an issue!).

On top of that, some elements of the author's conduct can only be described as extremely unprofessional, as when he speculates that Irish-Americans collectively remember a history that either never happened or was extremely limited in its effects because of ... uhhh drunkenly imagining it, basically (no obnoxious stereotypes there, no sirree!). Another scholar described trying to talk to him about the issue, since he (Scholar 2) had seen considerable evidence to the contrary, and the author shrugged him off as a defensive Irish-American (Scholar 2 noted that he is neither Irish nor US American).

Despite the issues, this interpretation gained fairly broad academic acceptance, though with some reservations (and in other cases, quiet disbelief). But back around 2015, Rebecca Fried (who I believe was a middle school student at the time) ran over the whole thing and found it deeply puzzling, since she'd seen very considerable evidence of NINA policies in digital archives.

She ended up putting together a very polite rebuttal in which she pointed out that these kinds of documents often don't survive, as Scholar 1 undoubtedly knew, so the dozens of them that she did find likely represented a real and widespread phenomenon in the United States rather than drunken exaggeration that allowed Irish-Americans to manufacture solidarity without much cause and therefore justify the evils of ... unionizing.

(Yeah, the original article is a lot.)

The original author responded in the comments on coverage of her article, which was published by the same journal as his own (an Oxford one, I think). His response was predictably condescending and sneering, and also very nitpicky—basically he argued that he'd been talking about a very specific iteration of the NINA issue, but since his explanation of why the Irish-American community would make this grand mistake was so sweeping and obnoxious, and also even his approach to the specific situation he claimed to be addressing was clearly flawed and imprecise (in my opinion, obviously not claiming to be unbiased here).

But apart from the weird mix of the blatant anti-labor rights stuff and the stereotypes about Irish and Irish-American people and the lack of rigor and consistency in the focus, it was also interesting to see how something so clearly flawed and partial could not only pass muster but gain widespread acceptance despite considerable evidence to the contrary along with the records of even so large and assimilated a group as Irish-Americans. This isn't ancient history, it al went down less than 10 years ago.

[supercantaloupe]

alright operablr might hate me for this one but i...was not wild about don carlo, tbh. i think it's kind of a mess. before i elaborate i want to stress that a lot of my opinions are taste based and i am not saying that the opera or anyone who likes it are Bad or Wrong, i just don't think it's quite For Me. adding a cut so you can ignore all this if you want

anyway after having seen both nabucco and don carlo within a week of each other (thereby doubling my previous experience with verdi of traviata and otello), i'm starting to feel like, stylistically, early/mid verdi is much more my speed than late verdi. i remember coming away from otello thinking "that was alright" whereas with nabucco and traviata i was thinking "wow that was great!"...after finishing don carlo last night i was just...confused. i feel like i'm missing something.

actually, i definitely am; i've seen people posting about recurring motifs and beautiful arias etc in the music and i definitely missed those. again, late verdi (along with a lot of late romantic music tbh) just Is Not My Thing, i think. and considering how late don carlo is in verdi's output i'm not surprised (very much a post-wagner composition, don carlo is. same with otello). i'm planning on writing a separate post about this so i won't go into much detail here but the music really lacked a lasting memorable-ness for me; what was there was nice, yes, but it didn't feel like anything stood out much. i mean, numbers like the brindisi and amami alfredo in traviata, va pensiero in nabucco, and la donna e mobile in rigoletto -- these all Stand Out, even after only a single listen, but i am not even 12 hours off watching don carlo and i don't think i could hum for you one of its melodies. again, this has a lot to do with personal taste; in general i tend to prefer 18th and early 19th century music styles, and i plan on going into more detail about memorable music in theater in a different post.

and man, the plot is a mess. also, not to apply too modern a lens of story criticism here, but the pacing is all over the place: act ii is, like, twice the length of act i, and act iv is no quick jaunt either, then v is pretty short again. (and really who am i to complain about a 3.5 hour runtime, as a giulio cesare fan, an opera which bumps up against 4? well, at least giulio cesare has a consistent if slow pace...)

it is all over the place. one moment it's a typical operatic romance, then a political intrigue, another it's a gay psychodrama, and then it's about the catholic church. i think this is a feature rather than a bug for some people but it really did not work for me. like it's all well and good watching rodrigo and carlo swearing their loyalty for one another in the most totally heterosexual way possible or making plans to save flanders or deal with carlo's embarrassing crush on his stepmom or whatever, but when the very next scene (with no real warning) is a public parade of heretics for shaming and burning...bit of a tonal whiplash there, i think!

again, taste is a factor here. known sexy oklahoma enjoyer sasha supercantaloupe is no stranger or opponent of tonal whiplash in theater, but when it comes to "no one expects the spanish inquisition!" i think there's a difference between guys with silly outfits and silly accents popping out from behind a corner and a crowd of people dressed in friar habits carrying crosses and torches around onstage...especially to a jewish viewer like me. the plot very much feels like something someone who doesn't like opera would make up to belittle the art form imo: it's like four different things at once all thrown together in a very long, kind of jumbled mess. (i mean, what does eboli even do other than show up, make things Even More Complicated, and then disappear within two acts?)

and...i get the sense that verdi/contemporary audiences might've thought this, too. obviously the fact that it got so many productions that it HAS so many different versions at all shows that people liked it enough to keep performing it -- but there being so many different versions of the opera (disregarding translations), four acts versus five, cut or revised arias, etc, i think also indicates that something about the opera was not working quite right that they kept trying to fix. now i've only seen one version (granted it came highly recommended to me by mutuals, but only one nonetheless) and can't comment on other versions of the opera; maybe another version works better for me, idk. on its own i actually think it's really interesting that there are so many different revisions out there to study -- a real lucky glimpse into the dramaturgical process that you don't normally get to see from shows of the era or earlier. (ask me about hadestown if you want to know more of my thoughts on changes made over the course of a show's development being for better or worse.) but the finished version of the opera (at least the version i saw) is a bit of a mess imo. i definitely think it has its high moments, but i don't think they completely overshadow its lows. comparing it again to otello, which was a much more consistent product in tone and pacing etc. to me, although a bit less interesting overall too.

i feel like i might be disappointing some people by saying all this lol but i have to be honest. don carlo was just not my thing. suffice to say that i think late verdi has absorbed too much wagnerism for my taste, musically and dramatically. maybe i'll rewatch it at some point -- i'd be curious to check it out in french this time -- but i don't expect to be doing that anytime soon, unless a friend or something is watching and really wants me to join (and i can spare four hours...). i can see why y'all like it (well, some of why y'all like it) and i do admit there's some good stuff in there to like. namely the carlo & rodrigo shit. i understand now lol. the opera definitely feels like it's ripe for shitpost/meme content and i am here for that. but i can't say this one is going at the top of my fave shows list. sorry everybody!

[dollveis]

15 questions 15 mutuals !

thanks for the tags, loves ♡ @elliessknife @m-3-ijiworld @millersaurora

⠀⠀⠀

❀ were you named after anyone?

yes, im named after one of my dad's friends named valerio, i hate it here

❀ when was the last time you cried?

last night, yesterday i spent the whole afternoon and night crying JABNDKWKFJ

❀ do you have any kids?

nope, i love kids tho

❀ do you use sarcasm a lot?

i think i use it more when i speak spanish but speaking english i don't

❀ what's the first thing you notice about people?

physically talking, smile and stare. about personality, probably how they interact with other people and how they express and form sentences

❀ what's your eye color?

greenish-blue? it really depends on the light

❀ scary movies or happy endings?

both but im not watching scary movies alone

❀ any special talents?

i have quite a vocal range so i can make different voices(?), im pretty flexible, i have a really good memory for some things (like i can remember a lot of things that happened years ago with A LOT of details) and im lowkey good at acting

❀ where were you born?

spain

❀ what are you hobbies?

writing, drawing, listening to music, playing guitar, making crafts, do my makeup or do other's people makeup, poems, cooking

❀ have any pets?

8 cats and a dog that's lowkey mine but also my sister's

❀ what sports do you play/have played?

back in high school i played volleyball competitively and im also a contemporary dancer. i also did badminton, archery, baseball and tennis (never seriously and from time to time) and horse riding and swimming when i was a child (idk how to swim anymore tho)

❀ how tall are you?

recently i discovered i'm 4'10 and not 4'11, that was my last straw

❀ favorite subject in school?

english, arts and history

❀ dream job?

i have no idea tbh, i always wanted to be an artist idc in which way (music, visual arts, writing...)

tags! (i have no idea who has been tagged or not plus i sure im pretty late to this, also feel free to just not answer ♡) @anchoeritic @elliesflower @zahraaziza @astro-ellie @astroels @psychorphic

[oodlyenough]

I liked 42 pretty well and I'm curious why you don't, haha. I'm also working my way through the 12th doctor now so I haven't encountered Chibnslls writing for DW. What are your thoughts on it? I loved Broadchurch. Well... season 1 and 3 lol

Okay so in fairness at this point I haven't seen 42 in like... ten years... so it would be hard to write a detailed list of the stuff I don't like. I just found the plot unbelievably contrived -- not even the living sun (although: kind of the living sun), but the idea that there was this failsafe security system and the only way to get through it was to answer *random trivia questions* just... I can't handle that. It's too stupid LOL. It makes NO SENSE:

-Trivia can be answered by anyone, not a specific set of people, which is the point of a security system. It's like if your bank security question was "What is the capital of Australia". Why in the goddamn -Not only that but the trivia they use, for no reason, includes trivia from the 20th century Earth (so Martha can answer) even though the contemporary cast literally don't even know how to pronounce "Beatles"... who chose this?? -And iirc one of the doors IS a personal security question, for no reason, for variety. But it never got changed when crew changed lol. Anyway I just remember finding the rest of the episode not really good enough to justify my extreme irritation by like, everything else happening, lol.

Re: the Chibnall era, I can't tell you too much except that I watched about 4 episodes of it, was bored and never have watched more. Full disclosure, I had already stopped watching the show regularly by the time he took over. I had given up midway into Twelve's last season when I just wasn't enjoying any of it. When Thirteen started, I love Jodie Whittaker and was interested in a change of showrunner, so I tuned in, but... yeah. Just fell flat for me, I wasn't interested.

I did watch a 5 hour youtube video (lmao) about the issues in that era which... kind of just leads me to believe I was correct to dip. The new characters just did not connect with me enough to keep watching.

I liked Broadchurch s1 and s2 as well (s3 do not interact), but I never liked Chibnall's DW work -- his episodes under RTD and Moffat are consistently some of my very least favourites -- and I didn't like much of his work on Torchwood either/assume a lot of what was salvageable from Torchwood came from oversight from the DW-RTD-Julie Gardner mothership tbh.

So the odds were against him, for me, when he took over DW. Broadchurch s1 and Doctor Who are very different shows trying to accomplish very different things, and ...yeah.