#and despite the colonisation

[la-pheacienne]

"jewish protagonists in world war 2 movies will likely be more relatable to an american viewer than roma people, straight up, because most mainstream holocaust films with jewish main characters are about middle class ashkenazi jews who lives are much like middle class americans. even though most of the jewish victims of nazism were poor religious eastern european jews. its the fear that it could happen to you, and thats less apparent if the story is about victims you cant relate to. also, theres a lot of jewish directors in america and not a lot of roma directors".

Hollywood has made a lot of movies about the Holocaust, but not a single one has shown a romani perspective, even though half of Europe's roma population was exterminated by the nazis. I can't really think of anything coherent to say about this, do you?

because it is not of interest to western audiences and doesnt fit the pre-established popular narrative structures of mass culture relating to ww2. whats going to be a popular movie has nothing to do with the real magnitude or importance of something. the big space that ww2 and nazi movies occupy in mass culture also has little to do with the real history of the holocaust for any of its victims. in fact the holocaust was pretty absent from american consciousness post war, it wasnt seen as part of why the us was fighting ww2, survivors didnt talk about it, and it first started to enter popular american consciousness in a big way because of a nbc tv series in 1978 called holocaust about a fictional jewish family. and although this series was the first time many americans had even seen or heard of many aspects of the holocaust, it was still criticized for sanitizing the true extent of nazi war crimes and how horrific conditions were. all this is to say that very few of these popular culture representations really have to do with showing the full reality of something, there are calculations in terms of everything relating to the mass market for film and tv. theres on one hand a western fascination with the third reich (just go to any book store and see how many books there are about hitler) that i think motivates a lot of these representations and on the other hand the transformation of memory of the shoah into a political tool for us interests and the rise of the israel lobby in the us, thus american films are more likely to feature jewish narratives. jewish protagonists in world war 2 movies will likely be more relatable to an american viewer than roma people, straight up, because most mainstream holocaust films with jewish main characters are about middle class ashkenazi jews who lives are much like middle class americans. even though most of the jewish victims of nazism were poor religious eastern european jews. its the fear that it could happen to you, and thats less apparent if the story is about victims you cant relate to. also, theres a lot of jewish directors in america and not a lot of roma directors 🤷🏻

further reading:

The Culture Industry

[thedreadvampy]

so me and Sam FINALLY watched the last season of Capaldi's Who

and tell me how, after literally over a decade and for perhaps the first time in his fucking career, Steven Moffat wrote a not just tolerable but really actually good two-parter and fully stuck the landing. like the editing and pacing were still a bit off but the storyline was original, fun, interesting and emotionally invested, and most importantly, rather than ending on a damp fart or the most furious autofellatio in history, the final part didn't fumble it and ended in a way that felt emotionally satisfying and like it made sense for the characters. like the last time he successfully wrapped up a multiparter in a way that didn't feel cheap and hollowly disappointing to me was literally The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and a) that was in 2005 and b) tbh The Doctor Dances is about a tenth as compelling and memorable as The Empty Child.

so after 12 years of either hackery or great ideas that fall apart in the second act, Steven Moffat writes what I would genuinely consider to be a memorable Good Doctor Who serial. it ends with bittersweet pathos, a solid closer for all the main characters, and sends Moffat's showrunning career out on a genuine high despite failing ratings and budget cuts (and the fact Doctor Who hasn't been consistently good since about 2009). good job Steve. with grudging respect I admit you pulled it out of the bag on this one.

wait what's this there's one more episode left? and it stars Mark Gatiss? and you literally spend the whole episode inexplicably just shitting all over the legacy of Doctor Who by inventing a version of the First Doctor that bears literally no resemblance to the character that William Hartnell actually played, just so you can spend the whole episode saying misogynistic things to run yourself off to how much more Totally Feminist your version was than the version you made up in your head of what Doctor Who was like in the 60s? and it added literally nothing to the season except to take all the wind out of the sails of the actually good finale you already wrote?

even when he writes a good episode this fucker still finds ways to disappoint me.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

me: hey kai, while youre too tired to actually write, you could do minor planning for that silly minecraft au fic your brain is stuck on. you could just come up with usernames and simple stuff.

also me: *creates controversy and backstories for background characters who might not even show up even if i wrote the fic*

also also me: *using my knowledge of spanish to read a wikipedia page in french about tigritude which is a concept created in 1962 by nigerian writer wole soyinka in response to a movement that i think was like affirming négritude, which is a framework of critique and literary theory developed in the 1930s and mostly used by francophones and african diaspora politicians, as an emancipatory concept for black people*

[4whomittolz]

Was drunk and bored and getting annoyed at the ridiculous coverage of the US election so I decided to fix the place.

I'm from Australia where we only have 7 states, as such I have the (objectively correct) opinion that 50 is too many states, so I decided to cut it down to 10.

A few notes on my improved US map:

•Despite Illinois making the cut, Chicago is now in Michigan, due to the state getting the entire bank of its namesake.

•Boston is also in Michigan due to special exception.

•New York is now the capital of Pensylvania

•Yes that's how you spell Pensylvania

•The border of California is just roughly the Rockies, no need to overthink it.

•Making Florida bigger actually dilutes it's power, but Texas must be abolished

•Colorado should still be a rectangle, that's my mistake, I just couldn't be bothered fixing it.

•Alaska has been returned to Canada with a hand written apology

•All the random ass islands that the US forgot to pretend they didn't colonise have gained independence

Please let me know if there are any more improvements you can think of.

Edit: As a number of you have mentioned, Alaska never belonged to Canada, and giving it to them would be incredibly wrong when the native people have been trying to gain independence all this time.

Luckily, the apology note got lost in the mail in all the turmoil, so Canada never realised they're meant to have Alaska now. The Alaskans just start quietly self-governing and hoping the US and Canada don't notice, then after a few years they declare independence.

[mariacallous]

Last year, the lead singer of The 1975, Matt Healy, managed to offend a whole lot of Gaelgoirí (Irish speakers) when he appeared to mock a fan’s name – Dervla – at a meet-and-greet.

Healy isn’t alone, though, when it comes to anglophone bafflement at Irish names. A recent study based on an analysis of Google searches revealed the words that British people have the most difficulty pronouncing. The names Aoife, Saoirse, Niamh and Siobhán occupy places in the top 10.

And it’s not exclusively a British problem: I always cringe watching US talkshows where the host quizzes their Irish guest (usually Saoirse Ronan) on the pronunciation of their and other Irish names.

I’ve heard every possible variation of my own name from non-Irish people. It’s not uncommon in Ireland; in secondary school, there were four Niamhs in my class. But I rarely come across an English person who is familiar with it, despite the proximity of our two countries.

In case you don’t know, it’s pronounced “Neev” or “Nee-av”, either is perfectly acceptable. The prefix Ní means “daughter of”. My surname is trickier, and has even tripped up a few Irish people; it can be translated as Herbert, and is pronounced “her-a-vard”.

When I was living in London, I quickly learned that saying Niamh at the counter in a coffee shop or over the phone to make a booking simply wouldn’t fly. This led to the invention of what I call my “Starbucks name”. Anything easily pronounceable with a simple spelling would do. Mia, Sophie and Rose were among my common aliases.

Speaking to others reveals a litany of similar experiences. Aoibhe Ní Shúilleabháin, a designer and teacher, spent two years at college in England having her name mispronounced and disrespected. (Her first name is pronounced “Ay-vah”.) More than one lecturer resorted to calling her “blondie”.

She tells me: “I was asked to say, ‘Three hundred and thirty three trees’” – a tongue-twister that does the rounds on TikTok – “more often than I was asked to repeat my name.” She recalls the lack of interest when she attempted to explain that Irish and English are different languages with different pronunciation rules.

Clearly, the sensitivities at play here are rooted in history: Ireland was colonised by the English and our national language was all but wiped out. A language revival began in earnest in the 19th century, but it’s never quite recovered. Ireland’s most recent census shows that about 40% of Ireland’s population can speak Irish. The English destroyed our language once before, so every little throwaway comment and scoff at our names hurts a little bit more – and ultimately becomes just tiresome. A handful of people even remark, “Oh! I didn’t know Ireland had its own language,” when I tell them about my name.

Writer Darach Ó Séaghdha is all too familiar with these difficulties. (The “rach” in Darach is pronounced like “Bach”, he says.)He hosted a podcast called Motherfoclóir, a podcast about the Irish language and culture, and whenever there were guests on with Irish names, “inevitably the episode would turn into group therapy”. There was one bad experience, he recalls, when he was told that his surname “looked like a wifi password”. But he decided to give his children Irish names, too. It’s a common trend, he says, “because parents with Irish names have been battle-hardened”.

Like the others I spoke to for this piece, writer and director Rioghnach (think “Ree-nock”)Ní Ghrioghair believes that a sense of superiority among English speakers is to blame for the constant mistreatment of Irish names. But she’s defiant. “We are going to scrutinise the British for any transgression regarding the pronunciation of our names,” and other things, she tells me, like British media claiming Irish actors as their own during awards seasons.

There is no easy crash-course I can give to you on the pronunciation of Irish names, but you can always try out “how to pronounce”-style websites (which themselves can be contested). But the simplest and most reliable solution is perhaps just to politely ask an Irish person – and listen attentively to what they say. I may have accepted that English people are very rarely going to get my name right on the first go, but I appreciate a well-intentioned effort. Just don’t laugh at it, please.

[jewishvitya]

I remembered this essay from years ago when I was unlearning what I knew of Israel and zionism and I couldn't find it again, and now I see it in a Shaun video, with the source.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall." I downloaded it from the Jabotinsky Institute.

These are the titles he gave this essay:

I said that Zionist leaders explicitly talked about Zionism as a colonialist movement. This is an example of what I was talking about.

Some quotes:

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

He's saying openly: no land was colonized with the consent of its indigenous population. So we have to do it without that consent.

Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."

He said that any zionist who depends on the Arab population accepting a Jewish state on their lands, might as well withdraw from zionism because that's impossible.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

And then he says that this Iron Wall is the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration - they're the power that stops Palestinians from resisting us.

He says that despite this, zionism is moral and just, so justice must be done, zionism must move forward. He just wants to be honest about what it takes. He wants to discourage talks of an agreement to avoid signaling to the British that they must try to reach one between us and Palestinians. Just stop them from fighting us, we'll colonize the place.

Zionism was openly colonialist until this language was no longer politically useful.

Editing because I was kinda shocked by the response this got, in several moments. When the slavery of US founders was brought up to dismiss this whole thing. When First Nations reservations were brought up on the same list as the United States as equivalent to Israel, because I said I oppose the existence of a country that prioritizes one ethnic group at the expense of others, and I support democracy that protects everyone equally.

But another thing that's still nagging at me is the idea that this whole essay can be dismissed based on semantic arguments, like sure this uses the word colonialism, but is it actually the colonialism that we talk about and oppose? And what if this word is only used to appeal to the British for support?

This isn't the the first time that prominent zionist thinkers talk about zionism as a colonialist movement. I saw it in old publications, things like magazines, I'd be posting them too if I found them again. I did my own deconstructing years ago, I don't remember where I found all my sources.

I do remember that they talked about the two concepts together - the idea that we're here to colonize, and that we're here to come home. So nowadays there's the arguement that people can't colonize their own homeland, but to them there was no contradiction. I saw it again looking at Herzl's diary last night.

I say I define colonialism through actions and tactics, through the harm that's done to the victims of colonization. Because if we knowingly repeated the actions of colonizers and used the help of an imperial force to conquer a land, having a historic connection to it shouldn't absolve us.

Jabotinsky didn't write to the British in this essay. He wrote to other zionists who wanted to aim for something more collaborative with Palestinian Arabs. And it's true that word choice can mean different things in the context of the time, but there's a reason I chose those quotes. What is he actually saying in this essay?

Consider colonization throughout history - the native population never agreed, so we must do the as colonizers did in the past.

Palestinians will never agree to a Jewish state - so we must do it by force. We should use an imperial force as an "iron wall" to prevent them from resisting. Stop talking about an agreement because then the British will try to reach one instead of holding them back and letting us do our thing.

He's comparing the zionist movement to other efforts of colonization, to talk about emulating them.

This isn't a game of semantics. I'm not just bringing this up just because he used the words.

What he's describing - conquest by force, preventing a Palestinian state, forcibly creating a Jewish majority - is what happened. And it's still what's happening.

This is the branch of zionism that went into practice and founded Israel.

[wszczebrzyszynie]

despite humanity spreading all over the universe in post-space colonisation era, the only other life form ever found was a fungi-like microorganism living in giant colonies, which by their appearance resemble earth minerals. it can be found deep below the surface of different, seemingly unrelated moons and planets, desperately hiding from all forms of light. commonly known as sculk, it is the newest and most important discovery in recent human history, although very little is actually known about it

Tango is a former hasa engineer, one of the people who completly revolutionized space mining, renowned for his work on the nature of sculk, and currently a wanted terrorist on the run, after he blew up a significant chunk of callisto, one of jupiters moons, durning an illegal sculk mining operation. Completly unfit for the criminal lifestyle, its a miracle he hasnt been caught yet, especially with many bounty hunters and criminals alike on his tail

(aka an old, gwitch/trigun/cowboy bebop inspired story idea revamped to fit minecraft themes, so i could draw some cool retrofuturistic designs. the price is in pln because me and aku thought it would be funny... poland can into space)

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

our flag means death but i've never watched it

Hey OFMD fandom, the Ineffable fandom sends their Mascot. I was supposed to do this many days ago, but the OFMD tag on tumblr was filled with... things. This time, I gained my knowledge from Pinterest instead, and I, Asmi, of the Good Omens Fandom, am rooting for you all!

THAT BEING SAID. WHAT THE DEVIL IS THIS SHOW MEANT TO BE? AS USUAL, I UNDERSTAND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DESPITE MY BEST EFFORTS, BUT TAKE A SUMMARY ANYWAY:

It is gay. Of this at least, I am very sure.

There are pirates. The pirates are the above gays.

There is a guy named Ed who is Blackbeard, and he is very soft and shares trauma and has grey hair.

He is in love with Stede, who writes him bottle letters and throws them away.

Ed is not happy about the throwing away part. I think he wanted to read the letters.

They read the letters together.

There is a guy named Lucius and someone kisses him and they do a victory punch. They break up because of fish.

Someone named Izzy has a redemption arc.

There are colonisers. They are British. This makes sense, at least.

The colonisers are not homophobic, they merely find love pathetic.

In the 1600s male pirates married each other and that's where the term 'matey' originated. I do not know. This is what Pinterest yelled at me.

Uh Ed pulled a Crowley on Stede and instead of Alpha Centauri asked him to run away to China with him.

Stede ran away from him instead.

Izzy was not a father figure to Ed. Discuss. It is something involving horniness and unrequited love.

Izzy died.

Ed was upset under a blanket. Stede respected this.

Ed built a blanket fort. Is this a running theme?

I understood nothing more because I can't make out whether 'ship' refers to relationship or the actual fucking ship. What does 'Steve does fixing in the ship' MEAN IS THIS MARRIAGE COUNSELLING OR NAVAL ENGINEERING?

EVEN THOUGH I UNDERSTOOD NOTHING, THIS SEEMS LIKE A GAY FUCKING DISASTER. RENEW IT. GO SLAY OFMD THE GOOD OMENS FANDOM IS BEHIND YOU.

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Hamas is a heinous, murderous, vile terrorist group that’s intent on killing Jews.

But you can’t say they haven’t been honest about their intentions. Their manifesto, the interviews they’ve given, and the way they try to brainwash children through schools and media content have all been quite blatant in showing their modus operandi.

However, despite their very brutal honesty, why do Hamas-sympathisers try so hard to make Hamas look like good guys by defending literal crimes in the most insane ways?

It’s worrying and also shocking as these hypocrisies are such common sentiments coming from college campuses, which were once institutions that honed critical thinking.

Do they think that “kill all Jews” is a code phrase for “we want our territory back”? How do you possibly interpret open calls for the annihilation of Jews in any other way than what it is?

Do they not think that kidnapping women, raping and torturing them, and parading their naked, mutilated bodies around town to sexually humiliate them while men cheer is sexual violence against women? Isn’t this a feminist issue, part of the MeToo movement?

“Think about the children!” Yes, but when babies are beheaded and burned, when 4 year olds are kidnapped and orphaned, is claiming that these are AI-generated images and ripping down the posters of the hostages thinking of the children?

They cry out about war crimes but ignore that raping women and taking hostages are literally war crimes.

They scream to boycott companies for their ties to Israel using devices with technology designed in Israel. Will they give up their life’s pleasures because of their ties to Israel? My money is on no, because it’ll affect them personally and heaven forbid they take up activism that actually would inconvenience them in the slightest.

They claim to be experts in geopolitics after watching one TikTok video and claim that this is about territory and not antisemitism while also saying that Israelis can just “go back to whichever other country they also have citizenship in”. While turning a blind eye to the multiple antisemitic attacks around the world, and calling Israelis “white colonisers”.

They also claim to be champions of mental health awareness, experts in the psychological mechanisms of mental illnesses and take cautions to avoid triggers and micro-aggressions so as to not offend those who have psychological conditions. “We should let those who actually have these conditions speak up about their experiences!!”

But then when it comes to actual psychologically stressing situations like being kidnapped and taken hostage, they suddenly can speak for the hostages and know exactly what went on based on the most vacuous, flimsy evidence? “Oh she’s in love with her captor, she’s smiling at him! They’re smiling and waving, they must have been treated nicely by Hamas!”

How do they sleep at night with these competing ideologies in their heads? What do they achieve by making all these seem like the actions of good people?

They’re like Hamas’ PR team and defence attorneys rolled into one.

No matter what crime Hamas commits, they’ll come up with justifications and make it look like some kind of beneficent act of humanitarianism.

It’s so exhausting trying to reason with people who don’t see reason.

[manestan]

i won't be watching eurovision this year, i was leaning pretty heavily to not watching but BDS have officially called for a boycott.

for russia to be barred from performing since their invasion of ukraine (in the words of the contest as it would bring themselves into "disrepute"), but for a blind eye to be turned to the genocide being committed in front of our eyes is flagrantly eurocentric and upholds the dehumanisation and colonisation of the middle east that is at the heart of the tragedy currently unfolding in palestine. as with all other boycotts this is one of the easiest ways to show support for palestine. like it takes 0 effort or money or time to just not watch

free palestine 🇵🇸

[cakeofdoom]

If you've ever seen a list of 'History fun facts' you might have run into the fact that "Oxford University was founded before the Aztec Empire." This is true, but it's interesting that this is considered a fun fact. There is this general thought or idea that indigenous empires and societies were 'ancient'. Here on Tumblr I've seen the ruins of Machu Picchu tagged as ancient history (it was founded in the 1400s). In games like Civilization aztec jaguar warriors and incan sling-units are ancient units.

I think this idea is caused by a general view on many non-European societies as unchanging and static before European contact. I know this isn't a very novel take, but I think it's interesting because this belief has had a great impact on how colonisers governed their colonial subjects - and I think it still has an important impact today.

You're probably wondering how I'll make this about Greenland and you'll have to wonder no more. For a long time in the 1700s and 1800s the policies of the danish colonisers in Greenland often held that they were in place to preserve the traditional Greenlandic way of life. This was pretty absurd coming from the same people trying to eradicate the current religious and spiritual practices of the Greenlanders/Kalaallit. While its debateable how influential this goal actually was on policies, I do think that it created a very rigid view of what the Kalaallit should be. In the early 19th century southern Greenland was hit by famine as the amount of seals plummeted. Despite this the danish administration still pushed for seal hunting, only selling equipment for seal hunting and increasing the rewards for capturing seals. The famine could probably have been avoided had they started to provide better fishing equipment, but this was frowned upon. Green landers were supposed to catch seals, the Danish colonial administration thought.

Even today some people view indigenous people as wrong for not acting 'traditional' enough. I've seen people say Greenlandic seal hunting isn't actually traditional because they used motorized snow scooters and rifles instead of dog sleds and spears. Similarly with the Faroese whale slaughter because they use motor boats instead of row boats.

This post was written entirely because I've always really hated that fun fact because I hate fun and I hate facts.

[whencyclopedia]

The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe

"The Bright Ages" dispels the common myth that the Middle Ages were dark, backward and brutal. The book weaves a new history of the Middle Ages, examining over a 1000 years from the 5th to the 16th centuries, arguing that the "Dark Ages" are a modern ideological myth and that the Middle Ages were far more luminous, tolerant and diverse than they are commonly believed to be.

Each chapter of the book examines key developments in time and space across Medieval Europe, starting and ending in Ravenna, Italy. It covers:

the late Western Roman Empire

the Byzantine Empire,

the Goths,

Anglo-Saxon Britain,

the Franks,

the Vikings,

France,

the Black Death,

the Crusades,

Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations in Spain,

the Caliphate,

Hildegard von Bingen,

monastic orders,

the Golden Horde,

the Black Death

and much more.

The book centers on several compelling arguments that are not commonly considered when thinking of the Middle Ages.

First, the authors argue that the Roman Empire did not fall in the Middle Ages. The so-called "fall" of the Western Roman Empire was not understood by medieval people to be an end to the Roman Empire. It was merely a shifting of the centre of power from Rome to Constantinople. In the medieval mind, the Roman Empire was alive, powerful and respected (until it finally fell at the very end of the Middle Ages in 1453). Equally, various rulers in the Middle Ages claimed a connection to the Roman Empire to justify their rule.

Second, the book argues that the Middle Ages were far more diverse and interconnected than most people believe. People moved freely and frequently between countries and cultures, both within Europe and between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. With them came ideas, knowledge and goods. The idea that, during the Middle Ages, Europe contained "purer" nations is an ideological fantasy conjured by nationalists:

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, imperialist European powers and their intellectuals (often the forerunners of, or scholars in medieval studies themselves!) sought a history for their new world order to justify and explain why whiteness –a modern idea, albeit with medieval roots– justified their domination of the world. They found the proto-nations of the Middle Ages useful as a past to point to for their modern origins, pointing to both medieval connections to Greece and Rome and the independence and distinct traditions of medieval politics. These modern thinkers used the fiction of Europe and the invented concept of "Western Civilization" as a thread to tie the modern world together.

Third, the book highlights at several points that power was less concentrated in male authority than commonly believed. Throughout the Middle Ages, women held positions of power and their power is attested in medieval primary sources. Abesses could be superiors of monks, kings wrote to Hildegard von Bingen for advice, Leif Erikson's sister led an expedition in Newfoundland, and some Queens were responsible for the Christianisation of kingdoms, to cite a few examples.

Finally, the book argues against the connotation of the term "medieval" signifying "backward". In fact, the authors show that even though religion played a more central role in society than in the modern era, the Middle Ages was a humane society concerned with what is moral and good, despite the cruelty that occurred in this era like in any other. The epilogue suggests that European colonisation represented the real "dark ages" by recounting a debate about whether the natives of the New World could be considered human and what rights the Spanish crown and landowners had over them.

Overall, The Bright Ages paints a new picture of the Middle Ages filled with nuance and diversity. Unlike popular Medieval tropes, the Middle Ages were far more complex and less dark than we commonly believe. The myth of the "Dark Ages" is a modern one, and to truly understand, we must dissociate from it.

Matthew Gabriele is a professor of history at Virginia Tech, and David Perry was a professor of Medieval History at Dominican University. The book is written with the general public in mind and is easy to read. Each chapter is engaging and many of them refer to key events in Medieval history that most readers would be familiar with. However, a reader with no knowledge of Medieval history might find the book hard to follow.

Continue reading...

[newrochellechallenger2019]

i need a fic where patrick gets a crush on one of art’s smart stanford friends 😭😭 like an english major girl or something 😭

*forehead kiss* (as promised)

omg yes did you crawl into my brain and see the english student inside me???

you first meet patrick zweig when you knock on art's dorm door and the door swings open to reveal the tall, curly haired brunette staring back at you instead.

he leans against the doorframe, his eyes looking you up down, unsubtly checking you out. 'hey' he says, voice dripping with flirtation.

your brow furrows, jostling the paperback under your arm. 'is art in?', turned off by his cockiness.

there's a rustling of bedcovers from inside the dorm and art appears by the door. 'yes- hi- uh- this is patrick, we went to school together and uh-.' he says, tone apologetic.

'i'm a professional tennis player.' says patrick suavely, extending his hand out for you to shake.

you nod, shaking his hand politely. 'nice to meet you patrick.' you say formally and he smirks, seemingly victorious. 'anyway, i just wanted to drop off my book, i've put all the notes in so you can look over it before the next lecture.' you smile at art, handing the copy over.

his face lights up 'seriously? oh you're a lifesaver!' the blonde says warmly and your smile grows. 'it's no problem really.' and he shakes his head 'nah i owe you one, thanks.'

you wave goodbye and the door closes, art turns on patrick 'no.' the blonde says quickly. 'what? i wasn't even-' protests the brunette, feigning innocence. 'no way, she's way out of your league dude.' art says firmly 'that hurts man.' patrick mock pouts.

despite art's protests, patrick was unperturbed and started to take more trips down to stanford to 'visit art'.

the second time you meet patrick is in the library, you'd been pouring over your essay for half the day when patrick stopped at your table.

'thought that was you' he grins, and even though it hardly been a month since you last saw him, his charm felt familiar somehow.

you look up from your laptop 'what brings you here? this is for students.' you say coolly.

he barks out a laugh 'yeah i know that, art dragged me here to look for some textbook for his presentation.' he waves in a direction dismissively and slides into the seat next to you.

'what are you working on?' he says, peering over your shoulder and as your shoulders brush, you feel a jolt of electricity.

'essay. you wouldn't get it.' you say shortly, trying to ignore the way his body feels against yours.

he clutched his chest dramatically, feigning hurt and you roll your eyes. he nudges ever close, practically pushing you out of your chair as he reads. '...prevelance of...american colonisation...' 'yeah okay.' you interrupt, turning to him. 'thank you.' you say with finality, staring at him as a signal to leave you alone.

he leans back in his chair and eyes you with a wry grin, 'you're right, it's too smart, i don't get it.' and you shake you head, turning back to your laptop.

'patrick!' interrupts art, and you both look over at him. 'there you are, you left me talking to myself by the shelf like an idiot' and patrick hardly stifles a snigger at art's put-out face. 'sorry.' he manages, not a trace of apology in his tone.

'come on.' art says to patrick, before turning to you. 'sorry, good luck with your essay!' you nod in acknowledgement and patrick stands up with a groan, 'spoilsport.' he hisses to art, 'never going to happen.' retorts art and they leave the library.

it'd been a couple months since you last saw patrick, art had said that the tour was too far out for him to travel easily so you'd forgotten all about the sparks that had flown between you that day in the library.

it was the early hours of the morning and you were browsing the aisles of the college supermarket, looking for a final caffeine fix to cram before your exam that day.

you hear a rustling behind you and a hiccup, 'i like the...caramel ones...' slurs a voice and you turn around. patrick is stood behind you, staring at you, eyes slightly glassy, his arms filled with an array of snacks. you blink at him, 'are you-' and he waves his arm to cut you off, 'art got some drinks.' and you nod 'right.'

you turn back and grab a coffee from the fridge, a caramel one and his face brightens, 'good onesss....yes?' he grins wide, 'sure', you reply with a tight lipped smile.

you walk down the aisle toward the cashier and patrick follows, wobbling slightly, 'hey- come back with- hic- me.' he says and you shake your head, 'i'm okay, i've gotta study.' art should be too but you don't say that part and the footsteps behind you pause and you turn around, patrick's staring at you like you just said the most outrageous thing in the world, 'study?!... study study study, is that all you do?'.

'no!' you say defensively, bristling with hurt as you reach the cashier. patrick slides alongside you and hands over cash to pay for your coffee before you can stop him, unceremoniously dumping his own purchases on the counter.

'i'm sorry...i didn't mean that' he says with about as much sincerity as a drunk man can, 'it's okay.' you say quickly, grabbing your coffee and starting to leave.

his heart breaks, the alcohol coursing through his veins making him more dramatic than usual, 'wait! don't go!' his voice breaks, and you look at him a bewildered expression, 'what? why not?', looking at him expectantly.

'i'm in love with you' he blurts out and your eyes widen, and he catches sight of your expression 'no- hic- i have a crush on you- i mean.' and his face is so serious, you have to press your lips together to fight a smile at how endearing he's being, 'i figured.' you say quietly and his mouth falls open. 'and do you-.' and you pause, taking him in, he was handsome, that much was obvious and when he wasn't being an ass, which was seemingly all of the time, he was sweet.

you step closer towards him, your smile growing, 'i don't know yet' you say flirtatiously and his eyes light up, 'kiss...' he slurs leaning in and you lean back, 'outside.' you redirect, taking his hand and leading him outside of the shop, leaning against the wall.

you slowly cup his face with your hands and lean in, his lips meet yours gently as you kiss but it doesn't take long for the kiss to grow sloppy, his hands going to your hips and lifting you up against the wall, forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist.

he breaks the kisses, forehead against yours as he pants heavily, 'best...kiss...ever.' he mumbles, 'you're drunk' you laughingly respond and he shakes his head dramatically, before putting you down, 'gonna go back to- hic- art.' he says dazily and you stifle a laugh 'good idea.'

you watch him walk off, heart warmed by the brief makeout session you'd shared even if it was outside a college supermarket in the middle of the night.

he turns around, 'come see me on tour baby!' he calls and you grin 'will do!' and he looks overjoyed, half-running, half-stumbling in the direction of art's dorm.

hope you enjoy love <3

[neembu]

in a similar vein, i also hate how we've decided to consider ourselves superior because some inventions come from our country. after all, a human made that. what is so hard about seeing each other as equals as opposed to participating in a weird race that doesnt even matter.

i despise nationalism, not when it is a means to revolt against colonising powers but rather when it arguably becomes the reason for colonisation. i dont know how humans came to think that they were better simply because they were born on a different piece of land. we all came from the earth and we'll all go into it.

[hier--soir]

may + june + july reads

the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by r. l. stevenson [★★★★]

"Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering."

: ̗̀➛ a london lawyer, mr utterson, investigates strange occurrences between his old friend dr henry jekyll, and the evil edward hyde.

: ̗̀➛ a horror classic! coming in at a sweet 96-pages, it was easy to smash out in an evening. and despite the brevity of the text and the fact that it's over a century old, i found it insanely compelling and indeed pretty chilling at multiple points.

: ̗̀➛ there are some ridiculously funny lines in this. i believe he named the evil character hyde just so he could drop this banger: "'If he be Mr. Hyde,' he had thought, 'I shall be Mr. Seek.'"

: ̗̀➛ henry jekyll my sweet summer child, you flew way too close to the sun with this shit.

: ̗̀➛ "You must suffer me to go my own dark way." BARS.

babel: an arcane history by r. f. kuang [★★★★★]

"The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles."

: ̗̀➛ opening in the year 1828, a young boy from canton is orphaned by cholera and brought to london by a mysterious professor. he is trained in latin, ancient greek, and chinese, in preparation for the day he will attend oxford university's royal institute of translation - babel. the tower is the world's center for translation and silver-working, the magical craft that has so far brought unrivalled power to the british and supports the empire's ongoing colonisation of the world. but what happens when it is discovered that britain is pursuing an unjust war against china, and robin realises that serving babel means betraying his motherland.

: ̗̀➛ this book left me absolutely speechless. upon starting it i was immediately ashamed at how long it had taken me to pick this up considering all the hype. serious thanks to @seventeenpins for recommending this to me recently, you are the best for putting me onto this.

: ̗̀➛ beautifully crafted, incredibly intelligent, great central characters. i don't even know how to put into words what i felt about this one. and as someone who consumes a fair amount of translated literature [see: my love of ancient greek and roman classics] it tickled my interest around the biases and intricacy of translation so perfectly. you need to read it. please.

: ̗̀➛ have to include: "It should have been distressing. In truth, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away."

: ̗̀➛ have to include #2: "So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?"

: ̗̀➛ and absolutely cannot not include this iconic PBS diss: "He greatly enjoyed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, though he could not say the same of the poems by her less talented husband, whom he found overly dramatic."

paradise rot by jenny hval [★★★★]

"But my dreams are full of apples, and in the dark my body slowly transforms into fruit: tonsils shrinking to seeds and lungs to cores. I dream of white flowers blossoming under my nails, as if under ice. Then my nails break, opening up like clams and in the finger flesh there are little sticky fruit pearls."

: ̗̀➛ jo is in a strange new country for university, living in a house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems increasingly more and more alive.

: ̗̀➛ so much piss in this one folks.

: ̗̀➛ jenny hval is a norwegian musician and this was her debut novel, and it was bizarre and haunting and disgusting and made me cringe and feel squeamish at many points, and yet i read it in one fell swoop. it grips you for 120-odd pages and when you're done it feels like you've been spit out disoriented.

mrs s by k. patrick [★★★]

"When she is not around, I invent her. When she is around, I invent her. It is not her fault."

: ̗̀➛ an australian butch lesbian travels to england to work in an elite boarding school, where she meets mrs s, the headmaster's wife. over a hot, restless summer, the two engage in an affair.

: ̗̀➛ i enjoyed this one decently enough. the writing style grew a bit tiresome, and the storyline seemed quite laissez-faire, but overall yes i enjoyed it. what can also grow tiresome for me is the woman-on-woman affair when one of them is married to a man - but maybe i've just read too much queer lit with no foreseeable happy ending lately, idk.

: ̗̀➛ the way the dialogue was structured [or perhaps, unstructured to a painful extent] was not my cup of tea at all.

: ̗̀➛ i was really tickled by her living in an annexe so close to the school nurse, who is very religious. the dynamic gave way to great passages like this: "I imagine her, at night, sending prayers my way, so sweet as to be malicious. In each of our interactions there is always the feeling that I would do better under her God. I don't mind her God, so tangible. The sexy Jesus in her bedroom. His body I too would die to have. Not just the chest but the legs, a footballer's legs, complex with muscle. Even those sad, raised palms. Brazen in their injuries. Such glamour." like hello??? incredible.

grey dog by elliott gish [★★★★]

"You called me a dirty little beast, and I have become as dirty and beastly a woman as there ever was."

"What is that quote from Othello, what Emilia says about men? They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, they belch us."

: ̗̀➛ a 'literary horror novel' set in 1901 about the unmarried and almost 30 'spinster' ada byrd who accepts a teaching post in a small isolated town. she wants to be rid of her past, one 'riddled with grief and shame', but upon witnessing strange and grisly sights, ada begins to believe that something ancient and beastly is behind all the peculiarities in this little town. her confusion deepens, and ada's grip on what is reality, delusion, or traumatic memory, begins to blur and fail.

: ̗̀➛ body horror, gore, the horrors of being a woman, witchy business, descent into madness, women longing for women.

: ̗̀➛ because the entire text is written in first person diary entries, i found that it sometimes failed to establish a creepy atmosphere. although this issue was more prominent for me in the first half, while in the second half the diary entries acted as a great insight as to how unhinged she was becoming. slay.

: ̗̀➛ imo this is simply what happens to a woman when she is raised by a heinous father and ends up an adult surrounded by too many sexy older women!

the sleepwalkers by scarlett thomas [★★★]

"How many eyes can one storm have?"

: ̗̀➛ still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, evelyn and richard arrive on a tiny greek island for their honeymoon. it's the end of the season and a storm is brewing on the horizon. they check into the villa rosa, which has a peculiar owner named isabella, and everyone wants to talk about the famous sleepwalkers, a couple who stayed at the hotel recently and drowned.

: ̗̀➛ saw a tagline that coined this as 'patricia highsmith meets white lotus' and i'd agree. good mystery thriller with some action.

: ̗̀➛ this one was a touch slow at first [it's told in letters, dictated audio recordings, from different perspectives, etc] but ultimately gripped me and i thoroughly enjoyed the drama and mystery. newlyweds that hate each other's guts? yeah, bestie, i need to know why.

: ̗̀➛ i really got into some of the takes showing how evelyn and richard viewed each other. this really stuck with me: "I read infrequently, partly because every book change me, right down the level of my DNA. I didn't want to be changed so often. But you were able to hoover up contemporary culture without so much as a little belch afterwards. You just carried on being you."

: ̗̀➛ also let me fucking tell you, there was a line in this book that made me drop my kindle and GUFFAW in shock. page 88, HELLO. evelyn girl you kill me.

the drift by c. j. tudor [★★★]

"These days death had been laid bare for what it really was. An ending. Often brutal, seldom fair, rarely kind."

: ̗̀➛ a thriller-esque, horror-esque book about a deadly infectious virus, and the attempted survival of three seperate groups trapped in isolated circumstances in the icy wilderness. [this one is so hard to describe sorry]

: ̗̀➛ the book is told through three different pov's. i normally despise this but i actually didn't hate it in this case, although i did have favourites.

: ̗̀➛ boyfriend asked me to read this when he finished it and then watched me from across the room the almost whole time, pretending not to be staring whenever i looked up. and he was right, it was fast-paced, had some good twists and turns, and was enjoyable, albeit very different from what i normally read.

what have i done? an honest memoir about surviving post-natal mental illness by laura dockrill [★★★★]

"Put me out of my misery. I feel like a killer on the loose. I need to turn myself in."

"Or the one of New Mum having champagne and cake with the girls. Another doing 'date night' two weeks before her six-week check, like, 'Yes, we still have sex!' Mum is fitting back into her clothes; Mum is making papier-mâché piggy banks; drinking enough water; shaving her armpits; reading a bedtime story; going to a gig; playing peekaboo. Mum is keeping up with her favourite TV shows; reading the Booker longlist; being a good friend; making a healthy yet tasty cost-effective-probably-vegan meal; recycling; giving baby massage; sterilising. Mum is getting rid of her pregnancy knickers when they are the only knickers she truly likes; doing her taxes; walking the dog; donating to charity; freezing bananas; learning Japanese because why not? ... Oh look! Mum is abseiling down the Shard and still finding the time to express and write a blog about the whole experience."

: ̗̀➛ a memoir about a first-time mum's experience with post-partum psychosis, and her survival.

: ̗̀➛ this book was a heart-ache of a read. honest and raw and devastating and uplifting. often very very funny -- "People told Hugo, 'Don't go down the goal end, mate; it's like watching your favourite pub burn down.' Oh ha. Ha. Ha." -- i couldn't put it down.

: ̗̀➛ the end did start to feel a touch self-helpy which isn't necessarily my bag of tricks when it comes to non-fiction, but those inclusions felt warranted and fair after such an in-depth depiction of everything laura had gone through.

: ̗̀➛ serious mental health trigger warnings for this one. there is plenty of humour, but it gets very dark.

the death of jane lawrence by caitlin starling [★★]

"She dreamed of tearing out a rotted pit inside of him where his martyrdom resided."

: ̗̀➛ in an alternate version of victorian-era britain, jane shoringfield is seeking a marriage of convenience that will allow her to continue working, with all the benefits of being a married woman, and she finds this in dr augustine lawrence. however, he has one condition - she can never visit lindridge hall, his family manor outside of town, where he himself will sleep each and every night. but on their wedding night, an accident strands jane at the door in a rainstorm, and in place of her husband she finds a terrified, paranoid man who cannot tell reality from nightmare. by morning he is himself again, but jane knows something is terribly wrong at lindridge hall.

: ̗̀➛ i picked this up looking for a fun, spooky little read, but am sad to say that i absolutely did not like it. the characters were fickle, the plot twists were unsurprising and revealed poorly, and the storyline was all over the place. sadge!

: ̗̀➛ sold itself as a gothic ghost horror, but didn't live up to that at all [for me!] heavily inspired by crimson peak, and it doesn't care if you know it.

: ̗̀➛ also - when your 'independent strong female' mc marries a guy who lies constantly and makes up bullshit and every time she confronts him he boo-hoos so she forgives him immediately cause he really is a nice man?? womp womp.

: ̗̀➛ also also - way more cocaine in this than i expected.

my book rating system is as follows:

★ = i felt pure contempt the entire time

★★ = yeah it's a book

★★★ = i liked it!

★★★★ = good fucking book, damn

★★★★★ = blew my dick clean off and i'll throw a tantrum if everyone i know doesn't also read it and love it

if you want to share a book you love with me, please do! i am always looking out for new recs.

[wszczebrzyszynie]

Hello everyone. Today i bring you the Space Mining au masterpost ... this is somehting i planned on doing for a while now, as space mining started becoming more and more fleshed out and my answers to your questions started getting more convoluted. Answered one question created 5 more kind of thing. So here is a timeline i made and a lot of links to different asks explaining even different-er things. Its a lot of loredumping but i tried to make it as clear as possible. Normally its the kind of thing youd learn by reading the story but im not planning on making a comic and i will never write a fic so this is how it has to work. average bartek story treatment

Despite humanity spreading all over the universe in post-space colonisation era, the only other life form ever found was a fungi-like, small organism living in giant colonies, which by their appearance resemble earth minerals. it can be found deep below the surface of different, seemingly unrelated moons and planets, desperately hiding from all forms of light; most of it is long dead, found in its rock-like form. commonly known as sculk, it is the newest and most important discovery in recent human history, although very little is actually known about it. Tango is a former HASA engineer, one of the people who revolutionized space mining, renowned for his work on the nature of sculk, and currently a wanted terrorist on the run, after he blew up a chunk of callisto, one of Jupiters moons, durning an illegal sculk mining operation. Completly unfit for the criminal lifestyle, its a miracle he hasnt been caught yet, especially with many bounty hunters and criminals alike on his tail

I tried to include the absolute most important parts. Doesnt look very well but i hope its at least readable

* Everything starts when Tango blows up a part of callisto. He worked there on a practically illegal sculk mining site; everything was meant to be kept secret, obviously, so when it turned out that the sculk is actually alive, parasitic and infecting everyone at a rapid pace, there was little help they could get. The outbreak was catastrophic but with HASA being a govermnent organisation that set up an illegal mining site not only outside of their controled area, but also in the solar system (which was and still is considered something like a buffer state... in space. At the time of the story lots of people from different places live there because its considered peaceful enough) there is no way they would get involved. So the few remaining survivors chose to blow up the mining site to save themselves. It both did and didnt work as intented, destroying a chunk of the moon and succesfully sealing the cave system, but also killing the remaining miners, with Tango being the sole survivor. Despite being a great asset to the company (he is, despite it all, considered the father of modern space mining), everything that happened was swifly pinned on him, with HASA claiming everything happened behind their back. Tango became a wanted terrorist in one day. An important note about the worldbuilding is that everything is corrupted and not good

More information to be found here. I havent linked every post ive ever made about it, just the ones i think are the most important! every space mining related thing can be found in the space mining au tag. This part will be updated with new information whenever i post it!

Designs:

Tango and Jimmy / Scar / Hotguy Scar / Grian / Pearl (+ info) / Joel / Martyn / Skizz / Impulse / Scott (+ info) / Bdubs and Cleo / pre-retirement Cleo, Lizzie and Gem / Ren / Doc

About:

Character relationship chart (not everyone is included) Desert duo/Ranchers/Imp and Skizz relationships More about desert duo / more about the ranchers / more about Impulse and Skizz + space mining as a whole More about Scott and Jimmy + space stations Etho and Bdubs (and Cleo) / more about Etho Cub (and the burning of the ranch) More about Grian Pearl (+ design) Martyn Gem Doc

Zeds full reference/design isnt included because it isnt up to date.