#and is almost certainly apocryphal.

[unopenablebox]

you can learn so much about the little traditions and daily experiences in a location and time period from reading contemporary fiction that you would never learn in a history book. for example, in early 20th century england, if you received a box of violet cream chocolates in the mail they were virtually guaranteed to be poisoned

[jonnywaistcoat]

i just want you to know that i have to do some analysis of "for sale: baby shoes, never worn" for an english assignment and that joke you made one time on a stream about the shoes never being worn because it was an unexpectedly massive baby has been in the back of my mind the entire time. thank you

I remember! "For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Massive baby."

Always astounds me Hemingway is held up as such a great writer when the man didn't even realise adding these two simple words would make his story cool and happy and kinda funny (cause of the inclusion of a huge baby) instead of it being, like, super sad. Absolute rookie move imo.

[chuthulhu-plays]

I generally watch LPs of horror games bc I'm too anxious to actually play them but a lot of them have FANTASTIC stories, so sometimes I just binge-watch KrinxTV for background noise. Been watching a lot of playthroughs of Still Wakes The Deep because it's such a delight to hear Scottish voice actors get work and I thought I'd address some questions I keep seeing Let's Players ask:

--Adair is a member of the National Front as you can find out from posters in his cabin, a Neo-Fascist British political party that’s been going since the sixties. While it often preaches British ethnic unity, in practice that often means “everybody in the UK should be exactly like East End Londerners” and features plentiful disdain for Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk, alongside those perceived as “not British”. No wonder the wanker eats alone in the canteen.

--Neeps and Tatties=turnips and potatoes, mashed, drenched in butter or sauce. Fills your belly, keeps you warm, probably makes you sink like a stone because it’s so heavy.

--Cranachan=a dessert made of raspberries, honey, cream and oats, absolutely delicious

--Rennick calls Caz a “wee ned prick”. Ned is apocryphally said to stand for “non-educated delinquent” and is basically just a way of calling someone an uneducated, lower-class criminal

--A lot of things said by and about Roy indicate that he’s a teetotaller who went through AA and specifically became Catholic and is making an effort at converting Caz.

--I think it’s entertaining how Scottish nicknames often follow a pattern of shortening/rejiggering that I also see a lot with Australian nicknames—Cameron becomes Caz, Rafferty becomes Raffs, etc. Trots is an unusual one but is almost certainly a reference to him being a communist, presumably a Trotskyist. Gibbo is also an unusual one in that it’s just very silly. There’s a kind of indignity implied in being killed by a guy called Gibbo.

--A few times on the radio you hear the Shipping Forecast, a type of weather report aimed at specifically reporting weather conditions out on the ocean, and is also famous for the report being read in such a calm, soothing tone that some folk use it as a sleep aid.

--All the yellow paint for interactable things is very video gamey, yes, but is also in line with old British health and safety standards, and yellow paint on things like emergency ladders or on the edges of stairs that are trip hazards is a thing ou can still see in some older buildings.

--Caz keeps saying he’s “good with the leccy”; leccy=electricity. Caz is implied to be quite a wee guy who can get through a lot of tight spaces, and my uncle swears blind that electricians used to refuse to take on apprentices over a certain size because they only wanted to train wee guys who could get up into the tight spaces that a lot of older buildings are full of. On that note, “wee man” is a term of endearment, generally, and isn’t exclusively applied to short guys.

--Finlay saying of Gibbo that “he’s no right” is INCREDIBLY OMINOUS. It sounds mild but “he’s no right, that boy” is what older folk say about a child who’s been found disembowelling cats for fun or someone they strongly suspect is a pedophile. It’s not something you’d say about a friend who’s just acting a bit unusually.

– “Great minds united over a Buckie”--Buckfast, or Buckie, is a caffienated tonic wine that’s cheap, widely accessible, and is a bit like rocket fuel for bad decisions.

– “Ya roaster” tbh I don’t really know where it comes from, calling someone a roaster, but I’ve always felt like it has a vibe of telling them they’re huffing their own farts.

--Scunnert/scunnered--buggered, screwed, utterly fucked, etc

– “You’re the jammiest bastart on this rig” Someone who is jammy is someone who has incredible luck that is implied to be related to their sheer confidence or willingness to engage in risky behaviour. Walking along the street and finding a pound coin isn’t jammy; crossing the road confident that the cars won’t hit you and stopping in the middle to pick up a pound coin before making it unscathed to the other side is jammy as all hell.

--Barlinnie is the biggest prison in Scotland, and largely hosts violent offenders—it’s where Caz would definitely go for hospitalizing a man.

--Weans are children (contraction of wee yins/wee ones). I thought this one was contextually obvious but apparently not.

SPOILERS BELOW

--”One spark and the whole thing’ll go up”—this is referring to the wee spark of flame in the lighter used to blow up the rig, but is also kind of a pun because electricians are often called sparks or sparkies, and in the end it’s Caz who blows up the rig.

[a-book-of-creatures]

And on the subject of foxes and etymology. Fuchsia? The color? It’s named for fuchsia, the plant...

... which was itself named for Leonhart Fuchs, whose family name means fox. Which also means that we’re almost certainly not pronouncing it the way it was intended to be pronounced.

Of course the resemblance of Fuchs to a certain other word in English has long been noted in a bunch of almost certainly apocryphal headlines.

Don’t confuse fuchsia with magenta, originally a fuchsine dye which was renamed after the Italian town of Magenta following the French victory there in 1859.

[deadpresidents]

Two questions about Lincoln.

1. I heard he used to lift half tons over his shoulder when he worked as rail splitter but I'm not sure if that's real or not. Do you know if it is real?

2. I heard that Lincoln was visiting a fort that had an attack while he was visiting but I can't recall where nor when it happened can you help with that please?

Love your blog been following for years

First of all, thanks for following and I appreciate the message! 1. In his early years, Lincoln definitely performed quite a bit of physical labor that required heavy-lifting, but a half ton is 1,000 pounds. Even though he was, by nearly all accounts, incredibly strong and, at 6'4" tall he was powerfully built (remarkably so for that time period), that's still a ridiculous amount of weight for any human to lift. The story of Lincoln lifting that much weight actually came from Lincoln's friend and law partner, William Herndon, who is a major source of information about Lincoln's life before the Presidency and in Springfield. Herndon wrote that he had personally witnessed the feat of strength (in fact, Herndon puts the weight at between 1,000 and 1,300 pounds). I just don't see how it was possible. I looked up the record for the deadlift and it was set at a little over 1,100 pounds at one of those World Strongest Man competitions. Lincoln undoubtedly had impressive physical strength and probably had that "country strength" that is hard to measure, but I feel like Herndon had to have been exaggerating about that particular feat, even if it wasn't completely apocryphal.

2. The story about the fort is from Lincoln's visit to Fort Stevens, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., where the President actually witnessed a battle on July 12, 1864. The story told over the years is that as Lincoln was watching the battle from the heights of a parapet in the fort, Confederate snipers took some shots at him. It's been said that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a young officer in the Union Army who would later become one of the longest-serving Supreme Court Justices in history (1902-1932), yelled, "Get down, you damn fool!" to the President. While Lincoln did witness the battle and was urged to get out of the dangerous firing range of the Confederate troops, it almost certainly wasn't Holmes who yelled at the President.

[samhaft]

Hi, I just have a silly question on if any of the tlt cast characters are neurodivergent? (I mainly ask cause projection + a lot of the fandom is neurodivergent lol/pos)

I mean Yoav and I certainly both are neurodivergent lol. Like do you mean the characters in canon? My POV around the tombsonas specifically is that they’re intentionally semi-blank slates that we as a community kinda imprint on. For example if you’re AuDHD and you feel a kinship with Tesla, then Tesla can be AuDHD! The fact that the tombsonas pair with an indefinite amount of people across all of time and space means that EVERYONE is in the mix. I don’t want anyone to feel excluded or unrepresented because canon has not specifically shouted them out. Or feel like “well I have dyspraxia and so does Armstrong, so that forces me to look at them as representing me, when otherwise I’d more relate to Doc.”

There’s a (maybe apocryphal) story attributed to Stan Lee where he emphasized the importance Spider-Man being fully covered head to toe, because it means almost anyone can feel like they could be inside the suit - I feel much the same way about the Tombsonas. They’re not people - YOU are the people, so whatever is in you is in them.

Outside the tombsonas, I definitely think (emphasis on think, as these are my headcanon not literal canon) Snoozie is ADHD or AuDHD, Haru has BPD, and Drunk Guy atop his canonical addiction also has PTSD.

[cantsayidont]

July 1988. An art book for a show that never quite came to be, ROBOTECH ART 3 is also the official account of how the planned sequel to ROBOTECH fell apart. if you've heard of ROBOTECH, you're almost certainly aware that it was an amalgamation of three similar but unrelated Tatsunoko anime series, tied together with a new storyline by American producer Carl Macek as a multigenerational saga with enough episodes for American TV syndication. The dilemma this presented (other than for aggrieved weebs insisting that the new storyline was a bastardization of the presumptively superior original series) was that characters from the different generations couldn't really interact, and some important plot elements could only be presented through exposition. ROBOTECH II: THE SENTINELS was to be a 65-episode original series that would chronicle how the survivors of the first generation (adapted from the popular SUPER DIMENSION FORTRESS MACROSS) set out to make peace with the Robotech Masters of Tirol (the villains of the second generation, adapted from SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS) and ended up embroiled in a war with the Invid, the villains of the third generation (adapted from GENESIS CLIMBER MOSPEADA), who eventually conquered the Earth. This was to lead up to the finale of the original series, which would be the starting point for a subsequent series.

For various reasons chronicled at length in the book, the project collapsed after only a handful of episodes were completed. (The surviving footage was later released on home video.) Macek's story outlines were then adapted in several similar but distinct ways in a series of prose novels by "Jack McKinney" (a pseudonym for the writing team of Brian Daley and James Luceno), in the Palladium roleplaying game, and later in American comic books by John and Jason Waltrip. There was also a fanon take that mostly rejected all of the other versions as incompatible with the actual scripts and footage of the original show, which eventually led Harmony Gold, the American production company, to retroactively declare the entire project apocryphal. Harmony Gold then hired the Waltrip brothers to create a five-issue comic book prelude to its truly dire 2007 direct-to-video animated sequel, ROBOTECH: THE SHADOW CHRONICLES, which is heavily reliant on the events of the SENTINELS storyline without being entirely compatible with any previous version of it, and is frustratingly unsatisfying to anyone who actually liked any of them. (Nobody won, in other words.)

THE SENTINELS is often derided for no particularly good reason. The basic storyline has its clunky aspects (in addition to the continuity issues the RRG contingent identified), but so do the original Japanese shows, and the Japanese MACROSS franchise has subsequently gone a lot of weird places that tend to undercut the claim that ROBOTECH is categorically inferior. Both have their flaws, but ROBOTECH and THE SENTINELS are hardly without merit. (The dismal SHADOW CHRONICLES is another matter …)

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: The First Omen

As anyone who's been hanging around philosophers for a long enough amount of time, it's hard to say anything categorical and true. Try to find a way to define chair that contains all chairs and exclude all non-chairs, to quote the most famous example. So, when I say that I don't really like horror sequels or prequels, it seems like I put out a call for the universe to humble me. If all my humble pie gets served in the form of movies like The First Omen, though, I will certainly not complain. Also beware that some spoiler talk is inevitable in describing why this movie kicks so much ass, so if you want the short version: Absolutely SPECTACULAR visuals and genuine creeping dread makes this movie so damn good it's almost stupid. Watch it first chance you get!

The First Omen follows the story of Margaret, a young American women well on the way to become a nun when she moves to Italy and finds herself smack-dab in an evil conspiracy to bring about the Antichrist by ways of profane human husbandry. The conspiracy is centered around, or at least Margaret believes it to be centered around, a troubled teen girl in the care of her convent, but as the sheer scope of the conspiracy becomes clear to her, Margaret realizes the real locus of the conspiracy is much closer to home.

The twist that this is less of a The Omen as it is a Rosemary's Baby take is perhaps not the single most shocking one to people who's seen their share of twist-laden media, but honestly, I respect it. The twist isn't a shocking swerve as much as it is a confirmation of an idea that has been incepted in your brain and has been brewing for about two acts at this point. It's all in the visuals, how Margaret finds herself in these immaculate artful shots, that in addition to being cool as hell, also tells us she's living under tightly managed control. Then there's the more obvious symbolism, like her waking up after a rare night of libations in a composition that evokes a spider's web where she is caught in the middle, or her kneeling in prayer surrounded by candles that appear to float in the air. It looks gorgeous, and really helps with the oppressive atmosphere.

Another twist I really enjoyed was the movie's take on what a satanic conspiracy would look like. In most of these Satanic Panic-type stories, these cults are made up whole cloth of a category of person I don't really believe to exist. It's just a big ask to presuppose there exists large, organized groups of people who believe in Christianity, or at least the largely apocryphal mythology around modern Western Christianity, but deciding to throw their lot behind God's Comparable But Fundamentally Lesser opponent, Satan, often for ill explained reasons. That seems nonsenical to me, not only because almost all the aesthetics of this quote-unquote satanism is just Catholicism But Spooky (i.e Catholicism,) but because it seems like such a hard sell. Why, after all, accept that mainstream ideas about God and Satan when there's so many spicy heresies and strains of theological thought that one could easily adopt into it instead. Gnosticism alone could fuel a generation of fun new religious horror, but I guess that's too spicy for Hollywood.

The First Omen solves this quite elegantly by making the very spicy but ultimately true observation that a satanic conspiracy would be most likely to arise from the already religious, and perhaps even from the Catholic Church itself. As such, this conspiracy is chock-full of creepy nuns and shady priests, but in the way these things often are creepy or shady in real life, instead of the "profaning of the holy" business that's usually the draw. It's not so much that they worship Satan as they are scared as shit of the rising secularism in society and wants to bring about the ultimate wrestling heel to scare people back into the arms of the church. Would it work like that? Perhaps, or perhaps these are theological accelerationists seeking to push the matter of Judgement Day a skootch, who am I to say. Either way, their goals of bringing about the son of the devil has not been going too well, as getting a woman born of demonic cuckoldry pregnant with the devil's spawn to give birth on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year is already difficult enough, and these robe-wearing fuckos, being good, proper, God-Fearing satanist conspirators, needs the child to be male. Can't have a Girl antichrist running around after all. It's not proper.

Putting aside the dark hilarity of this incredibly elaborate conspiracy being stymied by gender roles for god knows how long, it's also quietly brilliant to me how this take on the Satanic Conspiracy also ties in so well with the topic of pregnancy and agency that the movie has set its mind to. Margaret isn't important to the conspiracy outside of her capability of giving birth, to the degree that the reason she makes it out with the antichrist's fraternal twin sister after the birth is because the conspirators don't care enough to confirm the kill when leaving her for dead in a burning building, allowing a last-minute rescue by Margaret's support network. It sets up a quite compelling case for a sequel in my mind, if nothing else because I deeply desire to know what implications there being two living beings technically qualifying for the position of Antichrist.

Ultimately, I believe The First Omen to be the best kind of prequel. It is much more concerned with telling a good story than with justifying every little story beat with the metatext of the original, and as such expands the setting universe in interesting ways. Granted, there is the nod to the gruesome opening scene of the original in an early scare, and name-dropping Margaret's son with the original's soundtrack does happen as is mandated by tradition, but those were the only nods to the original I caught personally. I do feel a slight tremble of trepidation when hoping for a sequel though, as The First Omen feels very lightning in a bottle, and it might be tricky following up on it without devolving into fanservice and/or nonsense. I suppose we will just have to see.

[petervintonjr]

"The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future."

This summer, let us browse the stacks of the remarkable life and career of archivist, collector, and curator Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (the "Father Of Black History"), without whom there almost certainly would not have been a Harlem Renaissance. Born in 1874 Puerto Rico to a black mother (from the Virgin Islands) and a Puerto Rican father of German ancestry (hence his distinctive surname), Schomburg recounted a childhood tale of a bigoted grade school teacher in San Juan, who asserted that black people had "no history, art or culture." He moved to New York City in his teens but he never forgot this racist sentiment, and he remained fiercely connected to his Puerto Rican heritage. Activism called to Arturo early; in 1892 he was deeply involved with Las Dos Antillas, an advocacy group that pushed for Puerto Rican independence from Spain --a mission which of course sputtered to a disillusioning end after Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States.

Schomburg pivoted to academic life and embarked on a study of the African Diaspora. In 1911 he co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research, a long-term reclamation project in which materials on Africa and its Diaspora were collected. Schomburg would devote the next 20 years of his life to this project --travelling throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America to rare book stores, antique dealers, and even used furniture stores (one from which he apocryphally claimed to have recovered a handwritten essay by Frederick Douglass). Over time he and his team of African, Caribbean, and African American scholars would amass a collection of over 10,000 books, manuscripts, artwork, photographs, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and even sheet music. One of his proudest finds was a long-forgotten series of poems by Phillis Wheatley.

Of course as any curator will tell you, acquiring unique pieces is nothing without a means to share the knowledge and the history that comes with them --by 1930 (the year of his eventual retirement), Schomberg would have lent numerous items to schools, libraries, and conferences and organized exhibitions. In the midst of all this he wrote articles for a wide range of publications, to include Marcus Garvey's Negro World; the NAACP's The Crisis (edited by W. E. B. Du Bois), and A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen's The Messenger; as well as essays for the National Urban League and The Amsterdam News (Harlem's newspaper).

Significantly in 1926 the Carnegie Corporation bought Schomburg's collection for $10,000 (about $125,000 in today's currency), on behalf of The New York Public Library. The collection was added to the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints of the Harlem Branch on 135th Street, of which Schomburg would later be appointed curator (following a stint as curator of the Negro Collection at Fisk University). The Division became the "go-to" centerpiece of many a Black artist, writer, and scholar; to include Arna Wendell Bontemps and Zora Neale Huston. After his death in 1938, the Division was renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, History and Prints. Schomberg's protégé, an up-and-coming author and poet named Langston Hughes, assumed responsibility for the collection.

Today the collection is known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (still under the auspices of The New York Public Library) --now topping out at more than 11 million indexed items, and considered to be one of the world's foremost research centers on Africa and the African Diaspora.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/14/23

oops! all friend recs edition. this post brought to you by viewers like you. thank you!

listening

green day's last ride in, courtesy of @dying-suffering-french-stalkers. this DOES belong on a daisuke jigen lupinthethird playlist ur correct. not quote four minutes of a laid back, surf rock instrumental. above all this is the american genre of music that Wants you to think it sounds effortlessly cool, and jigen is one of very few fictional characters who puts that much work into looking effortlessly cool.

ran across some apocryphal reddit posts that are like "yeah they came up with this riff during a sound check and liked it so much they decided it didn't need lyrics". sure i'll buy that!

-

reading

The Skylark of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith, courtesy of @believerindaydreams. restarting this audiobook available through my library, which is apparently the 1946 hardcover edition that differs wildly from editions before and after. what are those differences? who can say! i cannot easily find a breakdown!

critical reception of this book was mixed. i think the criticisms about scientific plausibility (even by 1919 standards) and dialogue are warranted. doc smith was a chemical engineer, who are certainly. types of guys. most of the fun of this book (for me) comes in recognizing the building blocks of the space opera. i like peeling up the seams and following this novel's construction decisions. i don't fully agree that this is where space operas started, but arguments about how it's the most imitated space opera are convincing.

it's quite rare i listen to an audiobook bc my ears are not friends with my brain, and it's easier to listen to chattier podcasts where if i tune out for a moment i don't miss much. the reader? performer? reed mccolm has a voice i do better with (neutral american accent in the baritenor range). i don't really know if i'd find the paper version easier or harder to follow, bc mr mccolm is doing his absolute fucking best with the voicework but doc smith does not seem overly fond of dialogue tags. it is occasionally difficult to figure out who's speaking.

a line that made me stop folding laundry and yell HELLO??? out loud: "Each girl looked at the other, and liked what she saw." unfortunately no gay shit seems to be going on, but we spend a fuck of a lot of time in this chapter going over how the spaceship works, so it's very possible they're engaging in quiet bisexualism in the background and doc smith has simply not noticed. gay shit going on in the background is not critical to our understanding of how the spaceship works.

-

watching

What's Up Doc? (1972, dir. Bogdanovich) courtesy of @nikkifromtabs. i had a fucking marvelous time with this screwball comedy. i could not give you any of the finer details of the plot or who has what bag when but i enjoyed every goddamn minute. as i write this on monday night it is singlehandedly responsible for improving a miserable day. MANY short sharp barks of laughter

i love screwballs but they tend to stress me the fuck out-- bringing up baby is verging on a horror movie for me. even though streisand's character would be the very best of friends with hepburn's character in bringing up baby, this movies stresses me the fuck out WAY less. perhaps its bc it feels more like a stage play, or more deliberately humorous, or just that the stakes feel way lower. the mile a minute dialogue is best appreciated with subtitles

can we go back to the halycon days when dudes were not waxed bare and dangerously dehydrated in order to have a shirtless scene? ryan o'neal is a handsome if slightly bland man and he looks like Just Some Guy with his shirt off. great! love it! give me more!

i was going to write a whole little thing about "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny" but we can boil it down to "seventies beauty standards are wildly different from today's" and "everyone in this movie is almost always too busy sliding in and out of various scrapes to be horny"

kung fu hustle, arsenic & old lace, and this movie are now in a three-way tie for my favorite comedy.

-

playing

Dead Man's Rest courtesy of @jaimehwatson who recced this nearly three years ago and @pasta-pardner who gifted it to me last week. i have played it for three hours got three different routes and none of them are "happy". are any of them happy? is this a commentary on the inherent tragedy of revenge and the inherent tragedy of the american western, never able to escape stolen dreams on stolen land? the tyranny of the small business/farm owner only able to exist on a mountain of skeletons and heavy subsidies from the government? i am rotating this game in my mind at helicopter speeds.

also chase i agree with you this sheriff is definitely supposed to be lee van cleef

storytelling: it is uneven at best. the native american love interest's route is a particular weakness. as a review on steam said, it reads very much like the only media the devs consumed researching this was disney's pocahontas. there are some very moralistic and defensive statements throughout other routes as well that read like the devs trying to get ahead of any accusations, which makes this game much weaker as now it is neither a product of its time or ours. the mystery does unfold in a way that surprised me, and you have to go through multiple different routes with multiple people in order to get more of the solution. this is very hard to pull off and i liked this murder mystery/tragedy aspect of the game very much. i am not a mlm so i can't really comment on whether or not these romances are fulfilling, although they are straight up gay and there isn't a bisexual reading that can be applied. i, noted bisexual cowboy enjoyer, was a little disappointed that the MC cannot have a bisexual reading applied to him, he does seem very firmly at one end of the kinsey scale.

construction: there are four different ways of presenting dialogue. there are SO many routes in this thing and i feel like standardizing the text boxes would have made their lives easier? i do appreciate the vibes-based subtitles for the music and sfx. this is startlingly good caption work for a tiny idie studio.

is it "good"? did i have a "good time" playing it? fuck if i know. compels me tho.

-

making

this one is For a friend but it fits the theme. baby blanket progress, about a repeat and a half in. the tentative baby date is march 5th and the tentative blanket date is uhhh probably end of may? at this pace?

[fideidefenswhore]

What did you think of the comment in BSR that Henry 'fetishized virginity'?

I think it was...interesting.

I mean, yes, probably? His response to "Prenez la, elle est pucelle, vous aurez ceste advantaige que vous luy ferez le pertuys a vostre mesure" was to "laugh" and "leave with a good countenance", men were...disgusting.

But, much more so than other men of his status, of that era? Probably not.

Citing C/oA as an example was interesting, because, like... "cared about Catherine being a virgin when he married her", I mean, sure, but this was probably because she had been married to, and lived with, his brother? If Catherine was widowed of someone not related to him-- or, more realistically, given how few royals existed, to some distant relative-- I'm not sure he would have cared so much? One assumes he figured that Katherine Parr was not one, twice-widowed, and yes, that was at a later point in his life, but he was still the same person?

And as it relates to AB, there's nothing in his letters (which, as far as they go, is almost all we have, there's not really much better insight on his side that exists) that mentions, or even implies, her virginity? The "rather lose my life than my honesty" comes from George Wyatt, the specific mention of "maidenhead" by Anne was, if memory serves, either a Strickland or Leti embellishment on even that (very possibly, apocryphal) speech.

Beyond that, one of the requested dispensations was to wed someone that he had already consummated his relationship with; so it's entirely possible (though not exactly probable) that Anne wasn't a virgin, and that marrying her was thus more about that she was the woman he wanted as his wife/partner, than about the chance to have sex with her (which is so anathema to the common Tudor narratives that it's generally not considered...Gristwood has been the latest to do so in Tudors in Love).

What else, we have him being enamoured of “there was no treasure in this world that she valued as much as her honour, and on no account would she lose it, even if she were to die a thousand deaths”, Chapuys’ assertion that he will “find witnesses” that attest to lack of said honour if Jane Seymour ever displeases him ; we have virginity relating to grounds/complaints in the annulment of his marriage with Anne of Cleves, and we have the “deceit of pretended virginity” featuring in the indictment against Katherine Howard. 

So, a preoccupation with women’s virginity is certainly a feature (he only marries a widow twice, and the first time it’s with the assurance that it was an unconsummated marriage; arguably the mistresses we know of were all unmarried, too); I just don’t entirely agree with the implication that there was anything particular unique about the definitive “excessive and irrational obsession” wrt women’s virginity? Since that was such a product of the culture and the era...unfortunately. 

[annebrontesrequiem]

hi! when u search sunne in splendor on tumblr ur post https://www.tumblr.com/annebrontesrequiem/705559484360163328/i-do-think-its-a-bit-of-a-pity-that-sharon-kay is one of the first that comes up. i’m 66% of my way thru my first read of it (also my first of any of her books). i’m at the part where edward decides to kill george to hide his (apocryphal?) first marriage...and it’s starting to drag a bit. i know sunne in splendor sacrifices quite a bit of the historical part of historical fiction to make richard Correct, but it also sacrifices the fiction part of historical fiction bc richard is prob the most boring character bc he’s almost always Correct. i think the reason it’s starting to drag for me is it’s getting to a point that a lot of the ambiguity that the earlier part so good is quickly disappearing (i read the first two thirds in two days and then nothing today bc i keep getting to the marriage bit and kinda groaning). is edward’s first marriage apocryphal- like the claims richard didn’t kill those kids? basically im hoping u can give me motivation to finish the last third

it’s really a remarkably well written book for a first novel- my library has the thirtieth anniversary edition, which i guess is re-edited by skp from the original. do u have an opinion on which version is better? a author i liked re-edited a diff series for a tenth anniversary edition and made it substantially worse. what skp chooses to include/exclude is sometimes really odd to me. what are some of ur fav moments from sunne and splendor/what odd about it to u?

i really like all the deeply odd character interactions, like isabella thinking about lancaster saying he’s against wife beating, or will hastings lying in bed w jane shore and erectile dysfunction heartsick bc he can’t ask ned to not sleep w her bc will’s afraid bed will say no. what a wild and weird and well written dynamic! honestly made hastings my fav character rn. i also really liked marg of anjou

Hey anon! Sorry for the long wait time getting this ask out, I wanted to make sure I answered everything fully and was a bit too busy to do so before now.

With Sunne, even someone like me who will defend it until I die, I definitely agree there is a lull period. To me after the whole drama with Anne is concluded there’s a bit of a letdown as the plot moves towards its finale. This could be because Anne Neville is the best character to me, but I also think it’s because there’s this sense of anticipation towards the back end. This is really where Penman begins to play fast and loose, and as such it becomes much more dramatic for the audience, trying to see how this all is going to come into play. But in the interim while Edward’s still alive, there certainly can be a sense of boredom.

As to the first marriage, it’s a little complicated. Unfortunately I don’t have any of my proper history books on me right now, so you’ll have to have some sketchier sources from me. And disclaimer that this period of history is absolutely not my area of expertise, and I want to work on reading more about it since I find Richard III so fascinating. Basically, there was this idea – according to Charles Nicoll in The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street yes I am straight up yanking this quote from Wikipedia I’m sorry – that:

“Handfasting was legally binding: as soon as the couple made their vows to each other they were validly married. It was not a temporary arrangement. Just as with church weddings of the period, the union which handfasting created could only be dissolved by death. English legal authorities held that, even if not followed by intercourse, handfasting was as binding as any vow taken in church before a priest”

Thus there is the idea that Edward plighted his troth to Lady Eleanor Butler, thus making his marriage illegitimate, and all his children too. I haven’t read Sunne in a while, but I’m pretty sure Penman essentially presents this idea of what happened.

Mortimer Levine explores the idea of a precontracted marriage in his “Richard III – Usurper or Lawful King?” which is in part a review of Paul Murray Kendall’s Richard III, which I haven’t yet read but I own and I know is very partial to Richard. According to Levine, the existence of a precontract remains shaky at best – even in the act in which it is brought up, the contract does not take center stage but is rather part of a list of many. Not a great sign that Richard III himself truly believed in the contract. The idea that Clarence was killed over the contract is also pretty ridiculous. I feel like I've made my stance pretty clear on old posts, but I should say I think the idea that Edward had a marriage which made his children illegitimate is obviously just politicking and has absolutely nothing to do with any historical fact. In real life it was a tool for Richard's (successful) bid to the throne. Much like the idea Richard didn't kill his nephews, this is not - to me - part of any viable historical reality. And the impact of the claim is, of course, more important than whether or not it was real. The whole article does a much better hash of it than I can, and if you have Jstor I would high recommend the read since it’s not that long.

As to Richard being boring, I find the personal things in his life – his marriage, his guilt, etc. – more interesting than the court politics. Once Edward – and Edward his son and Anne – are dead this definitely picks back up. So if that was what interested you, I would hold on for a bit – if you haven’t finished the book in the past few days of course

The version that I have read is I believe not the 30th anniversary edition. The ISBN is 978-0-312-37593-5; if you want to compare with your version. As such I can’t say which is best, but I must say that you’ve intrigued me and I would love to track the 30th anniversary copy down now. What I wouldn’t give to read the manuscript now being held by the Richard III Society I cannot say. I know a great deal was cut by her editors – if that can be believed – and though edited books are surely better, I cannot help but want to read the original labor of love. Maybe someday.

My favorite moments are, as alluded to, the scenes involving Anne. This is partially a thing that has always been the case with me and historical figures. I think Josephine Bonaparte, for example, is much more interesting than Napoleon. And Anne is truly a fascinating woman in her own right, having been married to both the heir to the Lancastrian throne and the last York king. I want to read two of the most recent biographies out about her someday, I’m sure they would be fascinating.

In the book of course theirs is a love match for the ages, and let me tell you when I first read this book at the age of about 13 I was absolutely obsessed with them. I was also very into the Secret Garden (musical) at the time, and Anne and Richard and Lily and Archibald definitely blended in my mind a bit. I also think that Anne helps make Richard as a character more interesting. As you say, Richard can be boring for how purely good he is, and though Anne is also a very good character, I think she brings out an interesting part of Richard.

Another scene that I love is when Edward is talking to Elizabeth (Woodville) and says that Richard is alas an idealist and a romantic, as contrasted between him and George. That scene has stuck in my mind since I first read it, and I just cannot stop thinking about it.

I also love the scene right before Richard dies when the atmosphere is truly perfected. I just remember so well the stagnant, hot, languid August air that seemed to pervade the scene, so well that I remember myself in that moment reading it as being in late summer, though I first read the book in May. I also think it really captures Richard’s feelings in that moment well; tired, missing his family which has all died essentially (besides perhaps his nieces and nephews and sister-in-law who surely despise him). Richard comes off to me as almost suicidal in that scene, and bleakness is riveting in a way that I find difficult to reread. Thus his death becomes in a strange way cathartic, though bleakly so. Penman had the makings of a tragedian, makings which were honed in her later books. We see the seeds of it here. But the scene is very out of place when you consider the scenes of Richard’s childhood. It is strange for how full of despair it is. I think that’s why it’s so haunting. Of course, nostalgia could be blinding, but that is how I remember that scene.

I also like when Richard is mulling over the parallels between him and Anne and Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. I honestly think that like set off something in little me’s brain. Sometimes I imagine how interesting it would be to write a paper or a dual biography comparing them. When Richard speaks of Henry Duke of Gloucester and Eleanor, his wife, being forced to do penance that also stuck with me. I agree anon, it’s these strange little moments that are so fascinating. A true sense of historical scale. I like that Penman was not afraid to make her cast huge. And that though the book is so extremely partial to Richard, she does ultimately, I think, give a great deal of characters grace.

I also like her portrayal of Marguerite d’Anjou. If you enjoy that and you enjoy this book overall, I’d highly recommend When Christ and His Saints Slept about Stephen and Empress Maude. I think Maude is similar to Marguerite in some ways, expect much more complicated.

As I said in that post, I really think Penman hit her stride with the Plantagenets. Though she certainly has her heroes and heroines, her characters become even more conflicting and grey – Robert, Maude’s brother, stands out to me in this regard. I adore Penman as one of my favorite authors, but Sunne really is imperfect for all that I adore it. Not that I won't stop defending it until the day I die of course. I hope you get to the end, and I’m glad you enjoyed so far!

[automatismoateo]

How seeking God led me to (almost) true atheism. via /r/atheism

How seeking God led me to (almost) true atheism.

Earlier today I posted this in a smaller sub because this one was still private; I'm reposting it here and I hope it's OK. This is my first post and I'm still getting the hang of reddit, so apologies if I mess up!

Hello fellow atheists, I'd like to share my personal experience with religion and atheism. If you wish to skip this bulk of text (totally understandable!) there's a brief and concise TLDR at the bottom of this post. I was born in an agnostic family and my parents always allowed me to choose for myself whether to believe in the supernatural or not at all. I chose to go to catechism when I was a child, mostly because I wanted to be around my friends; I wasn't certainly making a conscious choice. That was a mistake that, in my opinion, it cost me dearly. The Catholic Church is no joke, the way they inculcated that religious nonsense into my head still has its repercussions to this day, 20 years later. I was effectively indoctrinated, brainwashed into believing in a lot of unhealthy things - the worst of all? an unrelenting gnawing feeling of guilt whenever I would do something that the Catholic Church would deem 'sinful'. In spite of what I said above, I somehow managed to snap out of it (partly, at least) after Communion. I stopped going to Church at 11 yo and my parents didn't object - in fact, they looked relieved. However, the damage was done. My psyche had been effectively moulded by the Church's teachings and the fear of the supernatural was there, like a beast lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce at me whenever I was at my weakest. Fast-forwarding 15 years into the future, I've managed to live my life mostly without the so called fear of God, but never completely. The worst came during the Pandemic, when loneliness and sadness took the better of me and I started to read the Bible again - as if trying to find some solace in that collection of nonsensical books. Alas, I seemed to have found it, solace, albeit at the time I didn't know it was false, as every word found within those pages. I began to 'see' signs of God everywhere - living in the homeland of the Catholic Church didn't help either, as there's a bloody church every 20 meters round here, and people always ready to brainwash you with their faith. I won't go into detail in regard of what went on into my head, as you can well imagine what did, but I'll tell you that I swayed my own self into believing I was being called to serve God - I nearly joined a convent, that's how serious this all was getting; and day by day, I felt the growing weight of the shackles of religion weighing me down.

But then, and I thank my parents for this, who taught me to always take things with a grain of salt and use that fantastic thing called critical thinking, I started reading the Bible again - TRULY reading it this time, cover to cover. By this time, I was already in contact with a local deacon, with whom I would meet weekly to discuss my discernment, which was going rather well, till I began to bring up the ugly, uncomfortable questions that not even the enlightened deacon could answer. I had began doing serious research, borrowing old and new texts alike on the history of Christianity and Judaism from various libraries here in Rome, as well as scouring the net of course. I even read several suras from the Quran and compared the two holy books, and the so called apocryphal gospels, parts of which can be found in the Quran. After weeks of intense reading, I realised that the whole holy scripture, upon which Christians base their doctrine and dogmas, made absolutely no sense to me. There was so much incoherence, from historical and theological point of views alike! Not even the most skilled apologetic could've changed my mind about this at that point. After that, I left the Church behind, hoping that this time around it would be for good. Alas, it was not. The 'spiritual' need returned a couple of times, but it was never as strong as that crisis I had during the pandemic, thankfully. Gradually, I've drifted towards atheism and nowadays I feel like I'm mostly healed of the religious sickness. However, despite dismissing most supernatural nonsense as just fiction, I feel there's a small part of me which wants those stories to be true. I would really want to get rid of this subtle, inner desire but I don't know if I will ever be able to. TLDR: I struggled my whole life with religious teachings I was brainwashed with as a child. During the pandemic, overcome with loneliness and sadness, I grew extremely close to the Church again and have even thought to join a convent. I never did, because through reading and research I came to the conclusion that these holy scriptures and the religions based upon them, are just complete nonsense. I'm now an atheist, who, however, is still struggling with supernatural beliefs, at times. I've got a couple of questions for you: 1) did any of you go through anything similar? 2) if so, did you manage to become fully atheists after that? How did you do it? Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I needed to share this experience with someone, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

Submitted June 14, 2023 at 02:51PM by nihilisticbliss4u (From Reddit https://ift.tt/XckdZSy)

[common-misconceptions-daily]

The familiar story that Isaac Newton was inspired to research the nature of gravity by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea came to him as he sat "in a contemplative mood" and "was occasioned by the fall of an apple".[292]

[no-reply95]

I thought the "j*p tart" story was almost certainly apocryphal though? Francie's the only first-person source, she's one of the least reliable sources in all of Beatledom, and neither John nor Yoko ever made mention of it when they were really pushing the "the Beatles/Paul were horrible to Yoko" narrative, which all seem to suggest that Francie made it up.

Hi anon, thanks for the ask! :)

I agree that there are many reasons to doubt the reliability of Francie's account.

Based on Francie's testimony, not only was she a witness to the J*p tart incident but so was John, Yoko and Paul. Of course, it makes sense that Paul would never publicly out himself as a racist, but why did John and Yoko (to this day) never even vaguely mention this incident? Especially in the dumpster fire that was 1970 & 1971, you would have expected John and Yoko to jump at any opportunity to outline all the ways that Paul, especially, had treated them badly, it was definitely their M.O. at the time to frame themselves as the victims of the Beatles/Paul's misogynistic racism, take the following quotes from Lennon Remembers for instance:

How would you characterize George’s, Paul’s and Ringo’s reaction to Yoko? It’s the same. You can quote Paul, it’s probably in the papers, he said it many times at first he hated Yoko and then he got to like her. But, it’s too late for me. I’m for Yoko. Why should she take that kind of shit from those people? They were writing about her looking miserable in the Let It Be film, but you sit through 60 sessions with the most bigheaded, up-tight people on earth and see what its fuckin’ like and be insulted – just because you love someone – and George, shit, insulted her right to her face in the Apple office at the beginning, just being ‘straight-forward,’ you know that game of ‘I’m going to be up front,’ because this is what we’ve heard and Dylan and a few people said she’d got a lousy name in New York, and you give off bad vibes. That’s what George said to her! And we both sat through it. I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why.

I was always hoping that they would come around. I couldn’t believe it, and they all sat there with their wives, like a fucking jury and judged us and the only thing I did was write that piece (Rolling Stone, April 16th, 1970) about “some of our beast friends” in my usual way – because I was never honest enough, I always had to write in that gobbly-gook – and that’s what they did to us.

Ringo was all right, so was Maureen, but the other two really gave it to us. I’ll never forgive them, I don’t care what fuckin’ shit about Hare Krishna and God and Paul with his “Well, I’ve changed me mind.” I can’t forgive ’em for that, really. Although I can’t help still loving them either.

What were their reactions when you first brought Yoko by? They despised her.

From the very beginning? Yes, they insulted her and they still do. They don’t even know I can see it, and even when its written down, it will look like I’m just paranoiac or she’s paranoiac. I know, just by the way the publicity on us was handled in Apple, all of the two years we were together, and the attitude of people to us and the bits we hear from office girls. We know, so they can go stuff themselves.

John Lennon, Lennon Remembers Rolling Stone Interview, 1970

So the above quotes were about a year and a half after the J*p tart incident and at the height (or near height) of John's anger at Paul, when he's highlighting all the terrible slights that both he and Yoko faced at the hands of the other Beatles, all he can say for Paul was that "You can quote Paul, it’s probably in the papers, he said it many times at first he hated Yoko and then he got to like her. But, it’s too late for me." and rather than calling out specific actions that Paul did against them as a couple or Yoko specifically, as he does for George, John describes the fact that a lot of the actions against them "even when its written down, it will look like I’m just paranoiac or she’s paranoiac". If Paul had really left a racist note to Yoko and admitted it in front of John and Yoko, when John is at his rawest emotionally and has an agenda to paint Paul in the worst light possible, why doesn't he throw him under the bus and expose him, like he exposed George? Why would their actions against John and Yoko make them seem paranoid? Paul writing, and admitting sending a hate note to Yoko would be a clear case of him treating John and Yoko terribly so that, for me, is one of the biggest reasons why Francie's account is suspect.

There are also other minor points to her story that don't add up to me. Why, after going to all of the trouble of typing up the hate note and leaving it somewhere where John and Yoko would find it, would Paul then just admit to writing it, under no duress? Also, as a Brit myself, the use of "hot shit" in the message is also a bit of a red flag. Referring to something as "hot shit" or something as "the shit" are Americanisms, so it's a bit weird that Paul would have used language like that in the note. There's also the relevancy of the fact that Paul and Francie had a short lived relationship and thereafter Francie has consistently tried to denigrate Paul and exalt the ballad version of John and Yoko, it would definitely be in her agenda to make Paul look as bad as possible and support the view that John and Yoko were only the victims of Paul's tyranny.

However, all that being said, I wasn't living in Cavendish in the summer of 1968 with John, Yoko and Paul, Francie Schwartz was. It's possible that the incident happened as Francie described but for whatever reason John and Yoko agreed to never publicly mention it, maybe they kept quiet on it because Paul kept quiet about John supposedly trying to hit Linda when she was pregnant or maybe John was scared that if he outed Paul as a racist that he would burn bridges irrevocably (although HDYS kinda blows that theory to pieces). Francie was undoubtedly a witness to a lot of things that happened around the Beatles around that time and that's why her quotes on Paul have been used extensively in numerous books. The fact of the matter is that aside from Love Me Do, The Authorised Biography and a few small interviews up to 1968, Jane hasn't spoken about her relationship with Paul and probably never will, definitely not in the detail that Francie did and Linda also never went in to the level of detail that Francie did in her book, albeit for a much shorter time period than Linda's 30 year relationship with Paul. I can see why authors who have been starved of material on the man behind Paul's public façade have lapped up Francie's insights for decades, she's one of the few people alive who not only had the ability to lift the lid but did so, with apparently little fear of recrimination. I've heard Lewisohn mention Francie's story in a podcast interview in the past (Think it was the Beatles Naked Podcast) and he gave her views a lot of credence so when volume 3 of his books comes out in 2050, definitely expect Francie to be heavily featured in the character profile drawn up for Paul.

To be clear, I think it's fine to use Francie as a source but authors should be presenting Francie's account for what it is, unverified eye witness testimony, not as fact. We'll see how authors tackle the J*p tart episode in future books, hopefully with the work done by Erin Torkelson Weber they'll be more of an emphasis on the responsible use and presentation of sources so we'll see how this is handled going forward...

[dumb-hat]

Did you have a greek mythology phase or an egyptian mythology phase? Or something else entirely?

I went through a ton of phases as a kid. Greek mythology. Norse mythology. Arthurian legend. The way I fell into Marvel comics as a little kid was a nigh religious experience at the time, and I certainly approached it as a mythology. Despite coming from an almost militantly secular family background, I had a fascination with the gnarlier bits of Christian mythology, like weird angels, apocryphal texts, eschatology. Honestly, that shit terrified me as much as it fascinated me, which was probably the draw.

The bummer is that as I've gotten older, I've forgotten tons of this stuff. I guess the good thing about that it's super fun to read about any of that stuff now and go "Oh man, that's awesome. I remember that!" but it'd be super cool to be, I dunno, conversant in it all now, still.

You can ask me stuff too, if you want, whoever you are.