#anyway if you like this stuff i have a lot more i can recommend lmao

[genericpuff]

Do you have any entry level recommendations for someone looking to learn a bit more about Greek mythology? I’d love to read up on it but I’m not sure how to find reputable sources and avoid Americanisation.

I mean, at the risk of sounding crass, you're likely going to run into Americanization no matter what you do because America itself was built on many cultures, especially that of Greek philosophy and storytelling.

Buuut if you mean you wanna read some actual Greek myth content that AREN'T modern American spins on classic tales, Emily Wilson is a popular choice for many people dipping their toes into translated mythology as her translations are both simplistic and concise in their language choices as well as fun in their structure to read both internally and orally (iirc her translations are done in iambic pentameter which is very familiar to anyone who's ever read Shakespeare). I've been working through her translation of The Odyssey, it's been pretty enjoyable :)

I've also heard great things about both Lattimore and Fitzgerald, the latter of whom I will be reading next after I finish Wilson's translation. That said, I haven't read either of their works yet, so take my recommendation of them with grains of salt! (I hope you enjoy them though if you check 'em out! If you beat me to it, let me know how they went!)

OH also, I know it's sorta the opposite of what you're likely looking for as it's VERY influenced by modern contexts, but thanks to another anon I recently got into Destripando la Historia which is a super fun animated Youtube series that retells the stories of various different gods from different mythologies. If you're into stuff of the goofy anime variety, you might enjoy them, it's a Spanish series but you can turn on captions to read the translations! It's super beginner-friendly, it covers a lot of different stories and myths without getting into so much detail that it's overwhelming (but gives you a good kickoff point to start with!) and the songs and animations slap, Afrodita is one of my favorites haha

Overall the biggest advice I can give you if you're trying to avoid fanfiction-y / "Americanized" retellings is just to cross-reference. If you find a retelling you really like but aren't completely sure of its legitimacy as a functional retelling, keep reading, watching, and learning more. It's a skill like any other, and the more you read, the more you'll be able to pick out what's a legitimate retelling from studied scholars vs. what's fanfiction that you don't need to take too accurately or seriously LMAO

And honestly, nothing wrong with the fanfiction stuff! Mythology, in its very nature, changes over time, it's an inevitability and many of the myths we still draw from today are often derivative in and of themselves from even older versions that pre-existed them (see: Ovid).

it's okay if your introduction to Greek myth is through derivative fanfic, stuff like Disney's Hercules and even Lore Olympus ARE fun to consume for a lot of people and make for a good entry point into learning more about the myths!

What's frustrating - and what I tend to criticize the most here - is when the fanfiction gets advertised / sold as legitimate retellings; when the fanfiction grossly misrepresents the actual mythology and yet tries to claim it as legitimate anyways which results in fanbases that are running around with completely false information claiming it as fact. If you can give the team behind Hercules credit for one thing, their rendition may not be completely accurate, BUT the folks who made it never bragged about how much smarter they were than other people about Greek myth or call themselves "folklorists" when they didn't even have any formal education/training/etc. in it cough like another creator we know cough 💀 If we want to make a comparison between LO and a Disney film in terms of how it grossly misrepresents the themes and cultural contexts of the original stories it was drawing from... Disney's Pocahontas does exactly that 💅

So if you want to avoid any "grossly" Americanized versions of Greek myth that are borderline disrespectful to the stories they're drawing from... yeah, that's usually a pretty indicative red flag LMAO

But outside of those very specific scenarios, just have fun with it, there really is no "right or wrong" way to engage with the mythology if you're simply just wanting to learn more, the beauty of it being mythology is that it's very diverse in its mediums and thus you don't have to be restricted to learning about it exclusively through academic translations or lectures. Of course, there are cultural intersections with these myths that shouldn't be ignored, we always have to treat it with care when engaging with it so that we aren't overwriting another culture's traditions or beliefs - but if you're simply wanting to learn about and entertain yourself with some amazing stories that have quite literally stood the test of time, do so however you see fit :)

[pizzaisgo]

I'm a fan of Strada, Ensemble Anonymous, Hespèrion XXI and Ensemble Micrologus. Gryphon is one of my favorite bands, and they've recorded some old folk songs, mostly in their first album, although I don't know how old they're all (they mostly make original music anyway).

I love the Longest Johns, I love the High Kings, but we gotta find some other contemporary musicians who record songs from before 1700. Reblog with recommendations if you've got any

[xitsensunmoon]

Biting the Hand That Feeds au FAQ (Vampires + donor au)

Any general content warnings for bhtf au?

Yes. A normal amount of fnaf warnings, a normal amount of vampire warnings. For someone who doesn't know I elaborate... For vampire stuff, the most obvious ones are blood, hypnosis, bites, and animalistic behaviour. Less obvious - slightly suggestive themes. For fnaf - fnaf's usual violence, dark themes, a drop of gore and murders. The lore is uh. Very dark. I will try to decrease the amount of all of the cruelty but man. People who know, know how hard it will be. But I will tag everything properly so don't worry.

Is there a fic for your au?

No. And currently, I'm not even planning on writing one.

How do I find the story?

For now, we have two comics that are directly connected and one that doesn't have a specific place in the story but is about canonical lore.

[ 1 ] - [ 2 ] - [ x ]

In future, we will have more and I probably absolutely will forget to update this post so I recommend checking the tags. Here's the tag list

Tip: don't click the tag. Tumblr hides half of the results. Type it in the blog's search instead :)

Are the comics the only canonical thing about au?

No! I answer asks and draw a lot of doodles with bhtf au all the time and 90% of them are canon. You can, yet again, find everything in the tag list linked in the previous question.

Can I draw/write fan stuff for your au?

Yes, please!! I'm always happy to see fanart and fan writings and literally everything that you do! Just tag me when you post and use a fanart or fanwriting tag for au specifically so I don't miss it!

Can you include my characters in your story?

No, unfortunately, I cannot. The story is already written and I don't have any "space" for background characters either. Maybe it will change but currently, things are like this.

I asked a question with an interaction with my characters and I never got an answer, why?

I don't accept such requests. I'm not ready to spend my time drawing other people's characters for free(if I personally don't want to, of course)

Is there any limit to how many questions I can ask?

No, not at all! You can ask all you want just please make sure your question wasn't answered before. There is a big possibility I will just simply delete it if it was answered beforehand many times. Check the ask tag for it.

What about limitations? Any boundaries?

Please no questions about tickling🧍‍♀️ I got so many of those it already makes me uncomfortable. And for some reason, a lot of people send asks that include violence towards my characters and while I don't really feel uncomfortable with this I just idk what to answer and why are you even doing this lmao

What questions I should avoid?

Well, not really avoid but I will mention it anyway.

The things I have planned to draw right now:

- Sun and Moon and y/n's first meeting

- The creation of Sun&Moon

- Why S&M are sensitive to light and darkness

- How they hunt

So no need to ask me about these. I will show it, I promise.

What about sexual themes?

I understand that I post a lot of suggestive stuff and it may appear I allow such a thing but no.

You can create content with it tho, I don't mind for the most part. Just be ready that I may not reblog it, as my Tumblr is a SFW place. It's always 50/50.

Romantic themes?

I do draw some kisses and cuddles when I feel like it and you of course can send ideas for cute interactions but in the story we're very far away from it lol.

My question gets ignored even though I followed everything that you mentioned here. Why?

Answered in main FAQ.

Can I share the ideas for your au with you?

YES!!! Yes, yes and yes! I'm very open to that, like yes! The only thing that I definitely want to mention - you should expect that I actually can take your ideas and use them. Some people are protective of their ideas so if you're like this you probably should not share them with me :)

The information that you're using for your au is wrong.

Happens sometimes yeah. I know nothing about any medical stuff for y/n so I usually improvise. After all it's an au about robotic vampires man, this information is absolutely wrong. But! You're free to drop feedback/constructive criticism in my inbox!

Will be updated later

[canmom]

Hello! I absolutely love your blog, everything from your festival recounts to animation analysis and programming (one of tumblr's recommended posts was the one where you made your own rasteriser, and I liked your attitude in what I've read so much that I'm gonna attempt to conquer my 3-year-long grudge against using opengl during college and do something similar now that I'm a bit older and have no deadlines :D).

But anyway, I have 2 questions (sorry if there's easily accessible answers, tumblr search is not helping): 1. During your animation nights, does the screen stay black while everyone watches their own video while you provide commentary? I haven't caught any yet but maybe someday! And 2. do you have any youtube channels or just one-off video essays that you like that also cover animation/directors? Or, even programming lol.

Sorry for the long ask have a nice day!

hiii! i'm very touched that you like my dorky eclectic blog <3

For the Animation Nights, I just stream the video over Twitch from local sources on my computer, typically by playing the video in mpv and recording it in OBS. This is obviously not ideal from a video quality perspective, but it's the easiest way to watch video in sync without making everyone download files in advance. Then we all chat in the Twitch chat box (in large part to crack stupid jokes, it's not that highbrow lmao). I've gotten away with it so far!

As for youtube channels, I can recommend...

anime production/history (i.e. sakuga fandom)

SteveM is likely the most sakuga-fan affiliated anituber. He makes long, well-researched and in-depth videos on anime history, usually themed around a particular director or studio.

Pyramid Inu might be my fave anituber - very thoughtful analysis of Gundam, obscure mecha anime and oldschool BL and similar topics. tremendously soothing voice too.

The Canipa Effect does excellent deep dives into the production of specific shows, both western and anime. I appreciate the respect he gives to the Korean animators of shows like AtlA in particular!

Sean Bires's 2013 presentation on sakuga is pretty foundational to this whole subcultural niche, and a great place to get an introduction to the major animator names to know and significant points in the history of anime. unfortunately a couple of the segments got slapped down by copyright but the rest holds up!

animation theory (for animators and aspirants)

I'm going to focus here on resources that are relevant to animation in general, and 2D animation. if I was going to list every Blender channel we'd be here all week :p

New Frame Plus is one of the best channels out there for game animation, describing in tightly edited videos how animation principles work in a game context and analysing the animation of various games. highly recommend

Videogame Animation Study is similar, examining the animation of specific games in detail

the 'twelve principles of animation' (defined by Disney's Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas) remain the standard approach to animation pedagogy; there are various videos on them, but Alan Becker (of Animator vs Animation) has quite a popular series. I haven't actually watched these but many people swear by them! Dermot O'Connor expands the list to 21. Note that some of the terminology can be a little inconsistent between different animators - c.f. 'secondary motion'...

Dong Chang is an animator at Studio NUT, who produces a lot of fantastic, succinct videos on standard techniques in the anime industry, timesheet notations, etc. etc. Studio Bulldog, a small anime studio, are a good complement; they focus more on douga than genga and are generally a bit more traditional.

programming

big topic here, I'm going to focus on game dev and tech art since that's my field. but also some general compsci stuff that's neat

SimonDev - graphics programmer with a bunch of AAA experience, fantastic explanations of advanced optimisations and some of the more counterintuitive aspects of rendering

Acerola - graphics programmer who makes very detailed guides to a variety of effects with a very rapid and funny 'guy that has seen monogatari' editing style. When he's good, he's really good. His video on water is probably the best one I've seen (though I can recommend a couple of others).

TodePond - the most charming, musical videos about recursion and cellular automata you've ever seen. less programming tutorial and more art in themselves.

Ben Eater - known for his breadboard computer series, a fantastic demonstration of how to go from logic gates up to the 6502 with actual hardware. worth watching just for how clean he puts the wires on his breadboards like goddamn man

Sebastian Lague, Useless Game Dev - both do 'coding adventure' style videos where they spend a few weeks on some project and then document it on Youtube, resulting in a huge library of videos about all sorts of fascinating techniques. great to dive into

Freya Holmér - creator of the 'shapes' library, makes videos on mathematical programming, with gorgeously animated vector graphics. Her video on splines is a particular treat.

There are definitely many more channels I can recommend on these subjects, but I'll need to dig into my history a bit - unfortunately I need to rush out right now, but hopefully that should be good to be getting going with!

[cuppajoel]

Hey!

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering where this random Joel Miller blog came from- and I don't blame you.

My name is Rae, I'm 26, and I consume a lot of media. Over the past 9 months, I have been lurking in the shadows (on AO3), kindle in hand, reading and adoring the series' that many of you have created.

Over the past month or so, I have found myself dipping into Tumblr more and more and what I've found is some of the most intricate, thought-out, warm, and passionate pieces I've ever read. As someone who consumes a lot of words for a living, I have been truly astounded.

It's through you guys that I have read not only about my one true love, Joel Miller (in all incarnations), but also branched out to other characters in the P.P. fandom.

Notable mentions go to: Mando, Javier Peña, Agent Whiskey, General Acacius (jfc), Frankie bby, Dieter Bravo to name but a few...

Anyway, the point of this post is to say, thank you for the amazing work that the creators in this sphere are doing. I was in a reading slump for a good couple of years you have helped me find my love of reading again. <3

The sole purpose of my blog is to keep a record of what I'm reading (y'all I've been trying to keep tabs just by liking masterlists and it's getting outta hand lmao) and, if you're interested, give some recommendations of fics that I've been reading and loving.

I also wanted to give a quick shoutout to some of the accounts of the fics that I have been pining after for the past while. I do not claim to be the first one to come across these series'. I am well aware that it's not just me jumping on the bandwagon, but truly jumping on the Boeing 747 with the thousands of others that love your work.

Regardless, some special mentions go to:

@punkshort -Every joel miller fic you've written? I've read twice through. I'm so excited for the next chapter of Swept Away. @hellishjoel (brat tamer joel is beautiful) @fuckyeahdindjarin -You started my love affair with Dieter and Jack. I actually cannot explain the way that Joel in Seams made me blush @almostfoxglove - I think about See you at Three daily. I'm really excited to read your other series! @juletheghoul -Joel the menace is on my mind always. @covetyou - your ideas are so imaginative and such a breath of fresh air @tightjeansjavi - I started reading The Rite of Movement yesterday and its all i can think about @whocaresstillthelouvre Joel Miller fics with Taylor Swift titles? i can die happy tbh @chloeangelic (All fics on A03) @5oh5 From EDEN??? Thats all. (jk i love your other stuff too but from Eden is something else) @hier--soir every joel fic you've written is *Chefs kiss*

There are many, many more recommendations I could give and I am working my way through my over-saturated 'likes' so I can create a well organised 'recommendations' post.

I could honestly spend hours, picking your brains and gushing over the work that you guys have created but for now, I am going to reel myself in, say hi and thank you.

[ohcorny]

hey corny. so i always see people recommending to outline their story before starting it, but could you talk a little bit more about what that means? what is an outline and how do you structure one? how long are the ones you write, depending on the project? do you focus on plot beats or feelings? how specific do you get? can u recommend any readings for learning more?

up front i don't have any resources for this, only experience. and outlines feel like one of those things where it's like... there are a million ways to do it and the way that works for me might not work for you. i have a friend who writes out all his ideas on index cards and that, for me, is insane. but he's also a better writer than me so who can say what is right or wrong.

anyway an outline is essentially a sketch but for a story. you go through the whole thing, start to finish, and figure out what goes where and what happens when. the idea is that this is the stage where you work out all the big picture stuff and make sure it all fits together, now, and not after you've drawn twenty pages and suddenly go "wait shit that doesn't work" and have to do it over. it is much easier to delete and rewrite a paragraph than to redraw several pages.

doing anything more, ie including dialogue or feelings, depends entirely on how useful that information is to you at that point in the process and whether the purpose of the outline is for your own guidance, or so somebody else can tell what you're trying to achieve.

this got really long with multiple examples

here is an excerpt from the original outline i used to pitch Hunger's Bite to publishers. this one had to be polished to a professional standard, because somebody else was going to read it and decide whether they wanted to give me thousands of dollars to tell this story. (also several of the details are no longer accurate. for instance it now takes place 9 years earlier lmao)

this paragraph represents the first eight pages of the book. the final book is 264 pages long, and the outline was 12 pages of paragraphs as dense as this one.

it establishes where we are, who's there, and what they're doing. i describe their conversation, but i don't commit to the dialogue. i will occasionally include snippets of literal dialogue, but usually only if it's Important Dialogue, or i just don't want to forget a good idea i had while outlining. it's not expected at this step.

an outline written as part of a pitch to a publisher should tell the whole story, with all the important details, and leave nothing ambiguous. they need to know the tone, shape, and the arcs. no secrets! all the spoilers. outlines for yourself should do this too, but outlines for others need to be as clear about your vision as possible. again, an outline like this exists for the purpose of getting you paid thousands of dollars. you should write it like that.

in comparison, here's an excerpt from the outline i wrote for revisions to my WIP prose novel, so i could show it to my agent (who already read the draft) to be like "do these changes sound good?" i'm not selling it to anyone yet, just making a guide so i can have a conversation about it. so it doesn't need to be neat, it just needs to be functional and clear. the first chapter was entirely new stuff. the second bit was just writing down what was already in the chapter that existed.

i have historically been very bad at outlining things when i don't think i "need" to, and only wrote this one after having written like 60k words of the book without any overall plan. i gave what i had to my agent for feedback and then sat down and figured out how i could apply it. it's made the whole revisions process significantly less daunting. now i have a checklist for things i need to do! this one was a paragraph or two for each chapter, with the ones that needed a lot of rewriting given a bit more detail.

lastly, here's a bit of the outline for the first roger crenshaw book. i was the only person who had to see this, and since the story was planned to be very short i didn't have to worry about a whole lot. as long as i knew what was supposed to go where, it would work. honestly it's not a whole lot different from the previous example.

this one was like five paragraphs and it did the job, and this story was like 15k words. you only need as much or as little as will actually help you on the page.

basically if you take nothing else from this, it's that there are multiple ways to write an outline, that it does not need to be perfect if you're doing it for yourself, and that it only needs what you think is important (unless it is for other people. then it should have everything). and also it's a good idea to do it earlier in the project than after you've written 60k words or drawn--jesus christ i got up to 12 chapters in never satisfied? it's amazing i didn't quit sooner

[candychameleon]

honestly tfocs are so much fun to make and play around with and more people should make them. like even if you stick the same oc in different TF universes you can end up with WILDLY different stories anyway just purely bc of how different each continuity's universe/rules can be

like an oc pair i share w my best friend, in their "main" timeline they are divorced decepticons with a LOT of trauma and issues that constantly fight. but if they were in ANY other universe they'd just be happily married autobots bc that's just how things would shake out LOL

don't even get me started on the amount of euphoria you get from commissioning artists to draw them 🙏 THERE'S NOTHING LIKE IT HIGHLY RECOMMEND like as an example of diff universes...my main tfoc and self-insert, Short Circuit, is in 5 different universes. her "main timeline" is IDW1, and then I've also put her in TFA, CV, ES, and SG, and while there are some elements of her story that stay the same as well as her personality basically stays the same no matter what, she still varies in terms of design in that universe and how she interacts w the events of her life and the world/other mechs around her. like ITS SO FUN to have all these diff flavors of the same character!! ok i guess i now have also technically put her in the gi joe universe LMAO. in the...gi joe/transformers universe that i've concocted in my head bc i've never actually consumed any of the canon gi joe/transformers crossover stuff yet

cannot recommend enough making up your OWN transforming robot guys to become obsessed with

[crystallizsch]

Hey! i'm new to the twst fandom, and i love ur work! is there any blogs like urs, that does art or writes /reader fics that u would recommend?? i'm trying to find some more to follow! thnx 💕

AAAGHGJJ THANK YOU SO SO MUCH THAT MEANS A LOT ANON 🥺💖

and welcome to twst fandom!! i hope you have fun during your stay and find the perfect corner of the twst fandom that is right for you!

also i'm so happy that you trusted me with recommendations??? 🥺🥺🥺

im not sure if you lean more into my general twst stuff (and by general i mean 99% jamil LMAO) or my oc x canon stuff

i guess i'll get you started with blogs that i personally like!! and i hope you can go from there, especially since i don't know what type of content you're particularly into 🙏

anyways i rambled on for too long ;; let me get to it below the cut:

(i'm not going to tag anyone i'm too shy and terrified so i'll just link to their profiles instead; also they are not recommended in a particular order)

(and if you see yourself here uhhh hi ily guys (platonically) 🫶🫶🫶)

(i wish i have the words right now to individually gush about each and every one of them but the brain is not brain-ing right now and i really shouldn't hold this ask hostage for too long 🙏)

/reader fics: - natsukishinomiyaswife - viperwhispered - diodellet - rooksamoris - twstbookclub - twstowo - kalims - yaksha-lover

art/ocxcanon: - midnightmah07 - jovieinramshackle - oya-oya-okay - skriblee-ksk - cheerleaderman - boopshoops - twstgo - fell-fell - egophiliac - terristre - thecoolsquirrel - rizdoodls - cheekinpermission - flipppyflopp - daily-trey - medicine-san - pointy-spiral - mintmoth - lico-arts - offorestsongs - 0honeybones0 - ashipiko - r-aindr0p

honorable mention to these blogs too if you'd like to read info about twst in general!

- raven-at-the-writing-desk - yuurei20 - mysteryshoptls

these are my admittedly not-100%-objective recommendations bc half of them are friends/mutuals and i genuinely enjoy their content <333 and i tend to particular about stuff that i like 😭

so like i said, i encourage you to look for others beyond the blogs that i recommend! and don't forget to have fun while you're in the fandom!! 💖💖💖

[arcandoria]

Virtual Photography Process

I got an ask that I posted by accident before being ready, so I'm going to make this a post I suppose fmdlksg Anon was asking about my Reshade Preset for Cyberpunk and what my VP process is, so here it is!

Anon, I don't quite have a VP process. Not in a trademark way anyway. My VP varies wildly across the years and generally speaking I just go with the vibe I feel at the moment!

I've had phases where I would barely do any post-processing at all and only rely on heavy Reshade, I had phases where I'd do some minor color tweaking and add a lot of effects like dust and sparks, and my current one where I do pretty much all my color tweaking in post-process and only really use light Reshade to sharpen the image and make colors pop a bit.

My current Reshade is a tweaked version of a friend's preset. I have an average rig, don't have any Fancytracing, so Reshade is mostly there to sharpen the image, deepen the colors and try to compensate for my GPU's limitations. I forgot to use Otis DOF for this example, but nowadays I don't use any Reshade DOF, and rely only on Otis'. I also only use Otis lights because I can control what each light does a little better than AMM lights, but I used AMM lights a lot when I first was VPing.

It's when the game's closed that I have my fun with colors!

I do my coloring on RawTherapee, which is a free Lightroom. Mostly I make use of the Film Simulation, sometimes layering multiple, sometimes using only one.

I then move to Photoshop which is my last stop and my "correction" phase. I have a huge library of actions and gradient maps I paw around for any last coloring (specially making shadows more matte and less defined), tweak contrast/brightness, and add some blurring and noise (beloved).

I probably have actions/gradient posts reblogged on my repository blog (@halkuonn), I can't point you to a single place because I've been dragging these around for over a decade and across at least 3 computers...

Honestly, don't get too attached to a single workflow with your VP. VP is art and art is meant to be a creative outlet, if you start putting too many rules and step by steps on your personal workflow, you'll probably get frustrated fast.

My current workflow is way lengthier than how I took some of my older VP, but that's because I feel like doing it. I don't necessarily feel like it's better or worse, it's just a different way I've been doing stuff and having fun with VP.

This is from 2022 - I wasn't using Otis Freecam, relied on AMM Lights, and did some mild/low post-processing - things like making the shadows a little bit more purple with Color Balance, and adding A LOT of blur manually because I didn't know how to use any of the DOF shaders. I was using Pinky's Preset back then.

This is from 2023 - the fuck it we ball era. This has like... 0 post-processing. I wasn't using Otis DOF (I don't think it existed yet), but I was already using Otis Lights learned to use the DOF shaders. The only thing I was doing for post-processing is add Noise and slap my signature (which this one doesn't even have lmao). I already had a new Reshade preset from my friend, but didn't really tweak any of it.

From this year! I still wasn't using RawTherapee a lot, but it was the start of my "I'm going to do everything in post-processing" era, with shadows not as dark/contrasted and everything a bit hazy.

So yeah! Don't stress about having a single workflow, or the best workflow, or even the most appropriate Reshade. For me the less I try to be biblical about my VP process, the more I enjoy taking it, and in turn the more satisfied I am with the results.

If you want more of a tutorial, I can try?? doing one?? but really the only thing I have been consistently doing with my VP all these years is slapping some extra blur and adding Noise on PS.

Hope this helps or at least provides some software recommendations / process ideas though!

[spacelazarwolf]

I’m an Italian ger who’s being converted in an Ashkenazi community. I want to connect to my culture so badly!!! Is there any books you’d recommend, Italki food you love, or special rituals you do on Shabbat / during the week that are influenced by being Italian? I’d love to introduce more into my own practice!!

yeah! also this ended up being probably more in depth than you were asking for so apologies lmao.

so for some context (in case you or anyone reading this is not already aware), italki jews are a specific group of jews within italy. italki isn't like a nationality, so it's not a synonym for "italian jew", it's more like a regional identity. people from rome, naples, and venice are all italian, but they're also roman, neapolitan, and venetian. even if they move somewhere else, they'll likely still retain that regional identity. italy didn't become a unified republic until 1871, so culture and language and food varied a lot by region (which it still does), and that's true of jewish communities too, especially those that came from other places.

italki jews are jews who were brought to italy by the romans or traveled to rome to be merchants, and have been there since roman times. ashkenazi jews came during the middle ages, primarily settling in the north in places like venice. it's very worth noting that ashkenazim in italy, with the exception of one or two communities, have significantly different musical tradition, pronunciation, language, and food than other ashkenazi communities. sephardi jews came mostly after the expulsion from spain and portugal, though there were some living in sicily and southern italy.

with all that in mind, i'd definitely recommend doing some research into the demographics of the jewish community in the place you or your family is from. if you already live there, it should be much easier!

resources:

the jews in italy- their contribution to the development and diffusion of jewish heritage

cookbooks by edda servi machlin (she has several, but some are hard to find)

cucina ebraica

i highly recommend checking out torah.it. it's a fantastic archive of recordings and pdfs all about italian jewry. you will spend hours there and still have only scratched the surface.

rabbi barbara aiello also has a lot of different resources.

i highly recommend checking out the work of leo levi for research on italian jewish music. he spent years interviewing and recording chazzanut, scholars, and other community leaders and saved so many italian jewish melodies from complete extinction. (i believe all these recordings are uploaded to torah.it as well)

primo levi is another italian jew to research. he wrote many books that are available for purchase, including a memoir about his survival in auschwitz. there is also an institute in his name dedicated to the preservation, study, and celebration of italian judaism.

ensemble bet hagat put out an album of reimagined italian jewish music a few years ago and i believe they are also working on a second one. it is beautiful.

anyway that's probably enough nerding out, i can get to the more personal stuff and answering the actual questions you asked me now lmao.

right now, it's just me in my apartment so there's a lot of traditions i can't do, but if you have family or friends you can invite over, there are a lot of lovely traditions you can incorporate. i use a three branched candelabra for my shabbat candles. the middle candle is lit first and used to light the other two, as you would with hanukkah candles. if you have multiple people at your table, you can give them their own individual candles, in which case you will light the shamash (middle candle), pass it around the table for each person to light their individual candle, then the host will light the two other candles.

for food, i love making riso del sabato. it's a risotto dish with saffron and it is delicious. there's also a pumpkin ravioli in brown butter and sage sauce in cucina ebraica that is to die for.

[zarkishere]

height chart time!

over at twitter i didn't really get to write ANYTHING soo...let's talk about this AU for a bit here! nothing important, just some thoughts and maybe some spoilers hehe (there is 100% spoilers LMAO)

this is a passion project of mine born from my WAY TOO STRONG hyperfixation on spooky month and my LOVE for slime rancher! it's been in my head since around November 2023, but only did i start REALLY thinking about it in around the middle of January 2024. i was on a family trip, it was super late at night and i was daydreaming about spooky month as i looked out the window... at some point i started to think about...what if Lila was on the far far range? then i started to plan; a new island on the far far range, a sort of market instead of the thingy (no idea what it's called) that Beatrix uses to interact with NPC's in practice it'd be very similar. you walk up to a stand (that looks according to the person and what they want) and they'd pop up all hologram-like! then bow, you talk, you sell them stuff, amazing! of course in this AU some people actually go to Lila's house, like Frank! you know that little spot behind Beatrix's place back in the game? well, there! every once in a while Frank would show up in his flying van, offering items you can buy :D some would be...less than needed (like heart beets and such) OR they could be something wonderful! like Gilded Ginger! or other illegal items shh...no one can know... anyway! then i started using milanote (which i recommend) and started figuring out the story and characters here's a screenshot! a lot of things were changed soo...take it with a grain of salt ;)

i did a lot of sketches on random bits of paper and my phone (which i won't be adding here cuz they're not needed :P) figuring out character designs, and eventually moved on to start doing the character sheets on my pc! you might've noticed, but i really thought of this first as if it was a videogame it will never be, don't get me wrong, but it started from there and THEN i started to think of it simply as a story i want to tell there's still a long way to go, but i have so many cool ideas i JUST WANNA START WORKING! i got sick recently (and still am tbh) so i'm taking a bit of a break tho.. i have a lot of ideas for the story, and am already planning out a small animatic...but again, no promises! i don't even know if i'll do everything drawn or i'll write stuff out too! i mean, i might even get bored and never touch this again LMAO i'm writing this on the 29th, so i haven't watched the new EP yet...but i imagine a lot of things will be changed once it comes out so, one last time, everything i say and do is up to change! i'm in no way a professional and this is just a side thing i'm doing while actively working and studying. i'm just a guy after all. i hope you guys like this as much as i do, and i can't WAIT to give you more information! that's it for now, i gotta do my music homework LMAO--take care everyone :)

[genericpuff]

I'm curious - how many unanswered asks do you have in your inbox? Or do you just delete the ones you don't plan on answering?

do you feel good anon

do you feel good about yourself with this question

targeting me like that

geeeeez

ok but more seriously LMAO i have an embarrassingly large amount of unanswered asks but i do read all of them <3 a lot of them honestly are just from folks like, sharing their anonymous opinions about either LO and LR, with the odd one about comic advice, sharing webtoon recommendations, and other things of that nature!

In the case of the LO asks, it's stuff that often has already been spoken about at length before so I don't really have anything to add (but trust me, I'm usually in total agreement, if I heavily disagree with a take I'll usually try to respond to it but it's rare that that's the case because most of the takes are just things like "wow the art in this panel sucks" like yep it sure do LOL) and often it just feels like my inbox is just like, a comment box for people to get their feelings out anonymously and honestly that's fine, I just also can't really respond to every single one unfortunately, but I do read them and I love y'all's takes!

With LR asks, y'all are way too sweet to me and send me just the kindest things about LR, and I hope y'all know that even if I wind up not getting back to your ask about it, I do read everything you send and appreciate so much the amount of support you've all shown for this project since I took it on <3 A lot of those asks are literally my version of "do it for her" where I read them and it reminds me of why it's so worth doing what I do :') <3

Whenever people recommend me other works to read, I add them to a list and I am currently trying to tackle it :) (honestly that list isn't as big as you'd think, a lot of the recommendations are for the same stuff, like other Greek myth retelling comics or otherwise just bad webtoons that people want me to suffer thru LOL) I just recently finally got a physical copy of Song of Achilles and while it's slow going, I'm gonna be sharing my extended thoughts about it, either in a big Tumblr post or maybe a video if I can motivate myself to do it 🤔

And of course, the comic advice asks... these ones admittedly I do tend to actually move into my drafts because I really, REALLY do want to respond to them, but I'm also not someone to half-ass responses to questions like that. That is a bit of a bad habit on my end because it often means I'm spending crazy amounts of time going over topics that can be researched, but I also just really love talking about comics so it doesn't feel good to get a comic advice ask and just leave it at "idk just start" like yeah, do that, but also I want to pass on all the things I WISH I had known when I was first starting out and I'm glad people see me as someone to learn those things from! So when it comes to those asks, don't worry, I'm picking away at them <3 (but also man, I should probably just like... put together some kind of hitchhiker's guide to comic making or something huh LOL)

Anyways! I do have a lot of unanswered asks and honestly, I'm not really one to delete them, even if I don't get back to some of them it is still nice to read them in their own little curated space separate from my main blog, it's kind of like a personal comment section between myself and those of you who took the time to write <3 The only asks I tend to outright delete are ones that are just like, way too bad faith to even want to give any attention to, or bot spam lmao But for the majority of y'all who have sent genuine asks to my inbox and never saw a response and worry that I might have ignored it or deleted it, I hope you can have reassurance in knowing that they are all still there and even if I can't make time every day to respond to them, receiving all your personal takes about LO and your amazing feedback and kind words about LR is something I'm always excited to see whenever that little notification pops up in my Inbox tab. I see you and appreciate you <3

[mal3vol3nt]

hello!! I randomly spent like 30 minutes stalking your blog and!! 2 thing!!

bro I just got into atla and WHAT IS WITH THE FANDOM DUUUDE.. what’s with all the discourse it’s literally not that serious damn and how could people misinterpret literally every character so bad 😭😭 why are people so mean to my boy aang. he’s literally just a little guy. sunshine personified literally HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE TO HATE HIM WHAT!! and just. everyone misinterprets everyone so bad, zuko too, also it is kind of annoying how most of the fanworks are about him, I love him too, both he and aang are my favourite characters, but it would be nice to see stuff focused on other characters too.. also people in the fandom woobify him so bad and it’s just like. why. his flaws are what make him interesting!!! also I have no strong feelings on z/k, I think it’s a pretty mid ship but it can be done well (one of my favourite fics does it really well and the reason I really liked it there is bc IT WASNT EVEN THE FOCUS THE FOCUS OF THE FIC WAS AANG AND ZUKO’S FRIENDSHIP, and the author wasn’t even planning for it in the first place it sorta just happened with the way they wrote it, so it actually made sense in that context, so it can be done well but imo it doesn’t work within the context of the show and kataang is objectively so much cuter cmon y’all have bad taste smh) anyways yeah. atla fandom is wack as hell and I will not be joining it lol a lot of people here need to go rewatch the show bc they seemingly completely forgot what it’s about and also touch some grass (but tbh aaaall the sequels will never be canon. to me. lok and most of the comics butchers the gaang so bad and it makes me so upset so I refuse to acknowledge them as canon. there are no atla sequels in ba sing se :)

ok wow sorry for the random long ass rant in your inbox I hope you don’t mind!! have been thinking about that and I guess reading a lot of your posts sorta made me want to get that out somehwre

anyways what I ACTUALLY wanted to ask is if you read fanfiction, do you know of any good aang centric fics? since. it should not be that hard to find them he’s the MAIN CHARACTER why is he so unpopular in his own show he’s literally the little guy ever <//3 more aang appreciation pls

AH sorry for taking so long to answer! i haven’t peeped my inbox in quite some time lol

BUT THANK YOUU and i agree 100%!! joining the atla fandom is like being dropped in the middle of a war zone so i’d definitely recommend staying away and just sticking to the actual show and fanfics lmao

now as for aang-centric fics i’m so glad you asked. lemme put yall on (a lot of this is aangst sorry)

1. 🧡

Aang's 18th birthday stirs up a lot of unprocessed grief and with the inauguration of the United Republic just around the corner and increasing expectations the pressure of it all is becoming too much

Republic City shenanigans, drunken truth or dares, complicated visits home and a semi-arranged marriage inbound!

Complete — 24 Chapters

Part 1 of the finding our way series

⭐️ now this is by FAR my favorite aang-centric fics of all time. it goes into aang’s repressed anger and grief in a way that is so well done i can’t believe it’s free to read. if you’re someone who loves aang, you will love this fic that is a guarantee. i seriously can’t recommend it enough

⭐️ this brilliant author also has another fic uploaded to the same series titled “beautiful boy” that is bumi ii and cloud family-centric. i’m currently reading it and it is a masterpiece so i’d highly recommend that as well

2. 🧡

A sound carried on the winds lead Aang and Katara to hope for something seeming long lost.

Complete — 3 Chapters

3. 🧡

Aang meets one of the firebenders who took part in the original Air Nomad genocide, and Suki deals with the aftermath.

One Shot

4. 🧡

Hakoda and Aang have both lost too much in the war. Together, they learn what it means to live.

One Shot

5. 🧡

In which, Aang still suffers from the guilt and shame after having abandoned his duties as the Avatar resulting in the Airnomad genocide and his friends, remind him that he isn't alone, not in this fight.

Incomplete — 4/6 Chapters

6. 🧡

A collection of ficlets written for Aang Week 2021, hosted by @ aangweek on Tumblr.

Complete — 7 Chapters

7. 🧡

Being the Avatar is a burden as heavy as the weight of the world. But as long as Katara is alive, she swears that Aang will never have to carry it alone. Written for Kataang Week 2023 Day 2: Injured.

One Shot

8. 🧡

Aang goes to Kyoshi for advice, and learns that they might have more in common than he imagined.

One Shot

9. 🧡

Raava was ancient. The spirit of order and light, created to serve as a peacekeeper among the spirits. That was her purpose. When she had fused with Wan, she had fully anticipated the years of strife and war.

What she had not anticipated, however, was the feelings. The feelings of love, joy, fear. The feelings of humanity.

And no such feelings were stronger than the love she experienced the first time she looked into the eyes of her newest incarnation. The first time she met Aang.

One Shot

10. 🧡

“I want you to make me a promise, Avatar Aang,” Katara whispered. This time, when she placed her hand on top of his, he didn’t pull away. “When this is all over, when the war is won… Promise me that you’ll grieve.”

(alternatively: grieving is hard. aang’s friends work harder. a series of missing/expanded scenes from a:tla exploring aang’s grief through his friends’ eyes.)

One Shot

(continuation in reblogs)

[dallasgallant]

Time period post: Terminology and technology

This started as quick and easy smaller one but it’s sort of diverged into subsections, anyways… this’ll be on some of the existing technology and terminology of them time. There was actually a far bit more than you’d assume.

Let’s start terminology wise. “Refrigerated air” is still one of my favorites that I’ve discovered, it basically means that a building is air conditioned! HUGE! NEW THING! It was being added to motels, businesses - homes eventually etc. so a motel being “Refrigerated air, color Tv, swimming pool” is a really damn nice place. Now days motels seem to be looked down upon but they’ve always been a huge part of the culture, especially when cars were new and big and the height of road trips back in the 1950s-60s. (Howard Johnsons , holiday inn etc) this was also the height of roadside attractions/tourist traps think ‘worlds largest’ anything, Route 66 (before it crumped into the remains of today)

~

Another terminology heavy thing is Schooling,

Back in the day it was much more common to hear “Primary school” in America than it is now an alternative is Grammar school - both of which being daycare-Elementary. Then “junior high” was more common than Middle school

But in a smaller town it’s also common to have more than one if not all of these schools and grade levels shoved into one huge building.

Corporal punishment- hitting students, was still a thing. (Also the argument of basically student rights/are people when it came to anti war protest in high schools)

Desegregation of schools began.

Schools also started later in the morning but still got out at a decent time; this changed in the 1980s

~

As for general terminology a lot of slang is still used today that was introduced in the 60s, I’d recommend looking it up but for JD specific stuff I do have a post up!

It’s also important to recognize some of their language would be outdated… not actively out to harm but they wouldn’t have knowledge of language 50+ years in the future etc. (like how a lot of older phrases or words have become offensive etc)

~

As for technology, a lot was changing too. The computer was still new and huge— spanning rooms as this huge mechanical thing that was going to get man to the moon. Still far from being in homes. However, still a lot of neat stuff and gadgets for people to play with.

The 60s are really the height of what we’d now consider “Retrofuturism” with how maybe one day they’ll be huge video screens and transporters and video watches and world peace etc. there was a obsession with progress and innovation in a very optimistic way.

Though if you wanted to transport your music (and weren’t going to carry a huge ass record player around) you have small portable radios but also hand/shirt pocket ones as well. I can’t speak to sound quality …

Phones were still on the wall or on the table. Color tv was slowly being adopted in households across the country— but still pretty $$$ a lot of people would be sticking with B&W even if tv and movies were making the more permanent switch.

So uh fun fact about cars. It wasn’t until 1968 models came out that seatbelts were standard and required. It’s more than likely the boys cars don’t have seatbelts. (They were invented in the late 50s and it sort of depended)

Bench seats were also super common so it didn’t matter which side of a car you got into as you could just slide across. You can see where this only adds to teen car culture- make out points, drive ins with some uh backseat bingo (actual term! Lmao)

[woah-uhuh-uhuh-uhuh]

Squip Contagion Theory

A theory about what squips really “want” and how they reproduce! I’m sure people have already looked at every angle of this stuff back in The Olden Days of bmc fandom, but what the heck, I had fun putting it into words anyway. Forewarning that a decent amount of it is based in speculation rather than evidence. 

As usual, I bolded all the major stuff + tldr at the start because I talk too much lmao

tl;dr

Like most other organisms on this planet, a squip’s primary goal is to reproduce. (Which makes sense - things that reproduce more are just going to outnumber things that don’t. Especially when squip reproduction directly translates to human monetary profit).

As a potential host, you’re made to feel worthless in some area of your life (what I term the “axis of torment”) by a current host, until you’re psychologically ready to buy and obey a squip. 

The squip then compels you to make other people worthless in the same area of life, until the squip (as it has been marketed to you) seems like a natural solution to their problems. 

You might then offer the squip to your victims because your own squip encourages you to (as Rich does to Jeremy) and/or you come to believe that it just… really is the natural solution to their problems. (Jeremy to Michael: “I think you’re pissed I have one and you don’t!”)

This produces a chain of people who all (A) have squips, (B) produce more squip-hosts by ‘infecting’ (squipping) the particularly susceptible people around them (creating more squip demand → more squip production, yada yada yada), and (C) hold similar beliefs about the purpose of squips (cool pills, smart pills — and ostensibly anything else a brain pill could do, like “fixing” speech impediments as they mention in the book).

(cont)

Squips as symbiotes

The question I started with: Why does Rich’s squip decide that Jeremy needs a squip? And why now instead of earlier?

I mean, it’s odd, right? The squip’s primary goal is to improve people’s lives. Using Rich as a host/avatar, the squip makes choices that improve Rich’s life, and then essentially recommends itself to Jeremy in order to improve his life, too. That all makes sense!  …Except wait, if that was always the point, then why did it also decide to beat the crap out of Jeremy for over a year in the interim?

I’ve been rolling around the theory that squips don’t actually have a strong directive to improve people’s social standing or intelligence or anything like that — like most other organisms, all they really want to do is reproduce. 

If you think about it, they’re not that dissimilar to a virus in terms of their reproductive cycle. The only way a virus can reproduce is by taking over the cells of other organisms and forcing them to manufacture more viruses.* Squips need humans — not only to produce more squips, but also to provide their habitat (i.e. the human brain) and possibly their power source, and grant them physical presence in the world (if you’ve read Animorphs, you probably know what I’m talking about here). Squips are obligate parasites,** and humans are their host species. 

*[I’m not a virologist. This is probably an egregious generalization.] **[i.e. parasites that can’t survive outside of a host. Also, parasite is a loaded word here but I can’t get into that.]

Obviously, the easiest way to ensure the future of squipkind would be to “poison the water supply” (a la The Play), or at least squip a lot of people who are able to manufacture squips. Why they don’t just do that is definitely relevant (my personal theory is actually just the same explanation they use in — you guessed it — Animorphs, which posits that voluntary hosts are easier to control).

But I don’t really have time to dive into that here, so I just want to talk about the more subtle, deliberate tactic they use instead. Under squip contagion theory, squips prefer to select specific people and individually prepare them to become hosts.

Chain of torment: Rich → Jeremy

Rich’s squip torments Jeremy until he’s completely lost all sense of self worth, and then when he finally hits rock bottom — look at that, I’ve got just the thing! Just the thing to fix exactly the problem that I personally gave you! Crazy how that works out. 

…And it’s weird that it’s marketed like that to Jeremy, right? As a coolness pill? At least according to Michael, other people have been using it for intelligence/academics — and that’s just on top of his other amazing argument that didn’t get enough credit in the script honestly: (“You really think its primary function is to get you LAID? … of all possible applications for such a mind-blowingly advanced technology, you ever wonder what it’s doing inside of YOU?”) Certainly, it could be a catch-all “pill that fixes your life.” But for what it’s worth, scary stock boy seems to believe it’s specifically a coolness pill, too. (J: “How did you know why I’m here?” / SSB: “Just look at you, kid.”) 

I actually think the squips are just creating chains of customers, each tormenting the next on some axis of jealousy (like coolness or success) and then offering the squip as a solution to that jealousy. So by necessity, the next customer has to want the squip for the same reason you did, because that’s the only axis you can torment them on — the same one the squip has improved for you. This creates different “strains” of marketing. 

WOW friend’s brother has specifically been told that he’s an idiot (ostensibly by society, since they invoke grades, but obviously I like to imagine a squip was involved lol), and he thinks he’s buying a “pill that makes you smarter.” 

Rich(‘s squip) makes him popular, which makes Jeremy feel unpopular, so he must market the squip as a “popularity pill.” 

Axis of torment: Jeremy → Michael & Brooke

But not just a popularity pill. Rich SPECIFICALLY markets the squip as a pill that makes you feel seen — not just a blip, or a guy nobody even remembers going to their school. And then, well, what does Jeremy(‘s squip) proceed to do to Michael and Brooke…?

I’ll admit, it’s not the strongest theory, but I do think it’s an interesting framework in light of how Jeremy’s squip went “fuck this guy in particular” and decided to bring Michael to his absolute breaking point, to make him “wish [he] was never born.”* For just this brief moment, he’s finally reached Jeremy levels of disregard for his own identity. Because like Jeremy and pre-squip Rich, Michael has quite LITERALLY become invisible.

*[And yeah, I know this was partially unsquipped Jeremy’s doing, but I can’t even pretend to believe that this isn’t exactly what the squip would want him to do anyway.]

(Also, I know this is debatably to separate Jeremy from the Red? I won’t pretend I have a brilliant argument against that, because it’s a really fair point. But just as a thought, I also don’t think that was the most surefire way to eliminate Red from the equation.)

But hey, you know what’d actually be great for that? What could really turn things around for you, Michael? Hey, you know what could help you not be a loner and a stoner and a loser who drives a PT Cruiser? It’s like, this crazy thing you’ve probably never even heard of. Really obscure stuff. Yeah, it’s from Japan actually?

On Brooke: there was actually… no coolness-related reason to specifically target this girl who got cheated on, and then try to make Jeremy “cheat” on her. Is that really supposed to make him look cool? Even if it had gone as planned, it would’ve still just gotten half the cool kids in school to absolutely fucking hate him!

(Oh yeah, and also make Brooke feel completely worthless. But I’m sure that’s just collateral damage. I mean, it’s not like we have anything to gain from making some kid feel unseen and undesirable. Especially not when she lives in such close emotional proximity to two different squip hosts who are actively doing better in that department. Just a shame, really.)

And a final bit of anecdotal evidence, this time for Jenna: (JH: “That’s sad, what should I do?” SQ: “You should ignore her.”) Much like Michael and Brooke, here’s another kid on the margins of the social sphere. Why not make her feel just a little more invisible?

end note

// If you want a conclusion paragraph go read the TLDR again :P

Tysm for reading!!!! I know at heart the squip is just a total plot device, but it’s fun to get into the scifi lol. If you have your own theories feel free to share!! I know this is not the most solid interpretation out there :P

(Now excuse me while I try very hard to not write an Animorphs AU. Can’t believe K.A. Applegate single-handedly invented the idea of organisms that enlist down-on-their-luck people to take them into their brains and control what they do. Good for her.)

[baby-xemnas]

I havent read OP and I don't think I can possibly can anytime soon. But holy fuck, your LawBepo art made me ship them too. Bepo is so cute and adorable, such a sweetheart as a contrast to Law who is reserved and etc.

At first i was intrigued by the fact that Bepo is a huge polar bear...

And also the bottom (usually anthropomorphic beings, when paired with humans, are usually the tops or the like dominant one in the relationship, at least from what i have seen in media.) So i think i got fascinated and begin to love the ship from that standpoint.

Now im gonna read lawbepo fics to satiate my newest ship obssession, lol.

OP is a lot and sadly they are only a small part of it (law is big/popular but i dont care for those parts because they dont have bepo in them and law is at his best with bepo) beginning of OP is good for many other reasons that have nothing to do with lawbepo lmao

true lawbepo fics only exist on pixiv, i read them through google translate which is not that hard to do on desktop, and they are worth it 1 2 (not everything in the tag on pixiv is perfect either but i can recommend those 2 definitely :)

ao3 only has bepo/law or platonic fics tagged with & instead of slash

anyway thank you for UNDERSTANDING

it is true that furry/monster in an interspecies ship fanwork dom tops 90% of the time so it is rare (not to mention that i myself got asked several times if ill make stuff with reverse order - it's what ppl expect/want) but i love bigger bottoms always have always will and canonically bepo is the spoiled baby of the relationship!

makes law all the more impressive. this 2,4m huge guy is your cute weepy bf? word...

thank you for your message ♥ im very glad