#but that’s become widespread as the canonical original texts

[apollos-boyfriend]

what did Ovid do? I took a myth class and he was the first author we read so I’m curious what the argument for him ruining Greek mythology is

okay so first and foremost a quick disclaimer that i am like. not a historian in the slightest. i’m just autistic and have had a special interest in greek mythos since like. fourth grade.

ovid is like. one of THE major poets of greco-roman mythology. his works are what inspired a lot of extremely influential writers that came after him (shakespeare, for example) so he’s a pretty big deal in the grand scheme of things. being roman, his works came much after the original greek writing he based them off of, so while most greek mythos got lost/destroyed, his survived. because of that, and his overall influence, a LOT of modern takes/views of greco-roman mythology comes from his interpretation of things. a good comparison i’ve seen to him is that there’s a larger gap in time between the lives of homer (author of the iliad and the odyssey, famous greek works; 8th century bc) and ovid (43 bc) and the lives of snorri sturluson (icelandic historian and compiler of norse mythology; 1179) and jack kirby (creator of marvel’s thor; 1917), and yet no one claims marvel’s thor to be an important figure in norse mythology.

additionally. ovid’s works were nothing but personal bias and hatred. ovid fucking HATED authority. he was anti-authoritarian to a T, and greek gods were authority. he went out of his way to write them as cruelly as possible because of that, as he used his writing to vent his frustrations against the government. he’s most infamously known for this bastardization of athena. trigger warning for rape in the upcoming paragraph.

in the original greek myth, medusa was always a monster. she was born a gorgon alongside her sisters, and died as one to perseus’ sword. in ovid’s retelling (a retelling that has become ALARMINGLY popular recently), medusa was born a human woman who was a priestess at one of athena’s temples. after medusa was raped within said temple, athena punished her, turning her into a monster that would turn any man who gazed into her eyes into stone.

he’s not a reliable source for basing your knowledge of greek myths on, and a lot of people DO because his ideas are so popularized and widespread that they’re seen as the originals. which sucks! he sucks! if i could kill him again i would!

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[tanadrin]

Shoemaker on literacy, memory, oral tradition, and the Quran:

Studies of literacy in pre-Islamic Arabia have been severely overlooked in recent Quran scholarship; in fact, literacy in the 7th century Hijaz was "almost completely unknown" and "writing was hardly practiced at all in the time of Muhammad." "[T]here seems to be a widespread agreement among experts on the early history of the Arabic language 'that, before and immediately after the rise of Islam, Arab culture was in all important respects fundamentally oral.'" Ancient graffiti in the region seems to have been a bit like early runic writing in Scandinavia--not central to the culture, mostly decorative and incidental, and certainly not used for long, important texts. "There is, in effect, a lot of 'Kilroy was here' scattered across the Arabian desert." Indeed, most of these graffiti are personal names or private in nature--we're not talking monumental inscriptions here, we're talking bored herders scratching stuff onto rocks to pass the time.

Southern Arabia and the larger oases to the north had more in the way of literate elites (and thus things like monumental inscriptions), but these places were far from the central inland Hijaz. If someone in this region did want to become literate, they would probably have learned to read and write in Greek or Aramaic, which were useful and important linguae francae.

As in very early Christianity, writing occupied a controversial position vis a vis orality--oral tradition was primary for the production and transmission of culturally important things like religious texts, poetry, literary prose, genealogy, and history. The shift to a literate culture came only with the expansion of Muhammad's polity into a wealthy, multicultural empire rather than a tribal state. Indeed, much of the early Caliphate's administration used Greek and other languages--Arabic entered administration only slowly, since a lot of early bureaucrats were drawn from the Roman and Sasanian bureaucracy.

And like early Christianity, another reason not to feel any urgency to write down Muhammad's teachings was that early Muslims expected the end of the world to come very soon, maybe initially even before Muhammad's own death.

The dialect of the Quran is distinctive and unusual; it is very difficult to locate where this dialect might have originated. Ahmad Al-Jallad tentatively identifies an Old Hijazi dialect, but the evidence for this dialect (besides the Quran itself) is limited and mostly much more recent, and he assumes the Quran was produced in the Hijaz.

The Arabic of the Quran can probably be identified with the prestige dialect of Levantine Arabic in the Ummayad period, but the origin of that dialect, and what Arabic dialects were brought together there in that time, is hard to ascertain with certainty.

Shoemaker thinks the Quran started as short collections drawn from individual memories following the conquest and encounters with widespread literacy; these collections would have been considered open, and subject to influence from oral tradition. They were combined into increasingly larger collections, with additional traditions and revisions, emergin as something like divergent versions of the Quran (though still not fully static and closed). Finally, the traditions of these regional versions, with other written and oral traditions, were fashioned into their canonical form under Abd al-Malik, and this version was progressively enforced across the empire.

Shoemaker brings in memory science and the anthropology of oral cultures: memory is highly frangible and fallible. Even though it functions well for day to day tasks, it's important not to overlook how common misremembering and re-remembering alters information in both personal and collective memory when talking about a text that even Islamic tradition agrees was not written down within Muhammad's lifetime.

Most forgetting occurs shortly after an event in question; a small core of memories we develop about an event will persist for a significant time after. These findings have been corroborated both in the lab and in the circumstances of everyday life.

Memory is not primarily reproductive; literal recall is, in evolutionary terms, pretty unimportant, and brains omit needless detail. Remembering thus involves a lot of reconstruction more than it does reproduction; memories are storied piecewise in different parts of the brain, and are assembled on recall, with the gaps being filled in using similar memory fragments drawn from comparable experiences.

Note Bartlett's experiments using a short Native American folktale; when asked to recall this story, even after only fifteen minutes participants introduced major and minor changes. Subsequent recall didn't improve accuracy, though the basic structure of the memory developed pretty quickly in each individual. But this structure was not especially accurate, and significant details vanished or were replaced with new information. Most often this information was drawn from the subject's culture (in this case, Edwardian England), forming a memory that made more sense to them and had more relevance in their context. The overall style was quickly lost, and replaced by new formations, and there was a persistent tendency to abbreviate. After a few months, narrative recall consisted mostly of false memory reports, a finding verified by subsequent replications of his experiments.

Experiential and textual memory in particular degrades very rapidly; this degredation is much faster when information is transmitted from one person to another. Epithets change into their opposites, incidents and events are transposed, names and numbers rarely survive intact more than a few reproductions, opinions and conclusions are reversed, etc. Figures like Jesus or Muhammad will hardly be remembered accurately even by people who knew them.

The style of the Quran (e.g., prose, and often terse, elliptic, and occasionally downright nonsensical prose at that) does not lend itself to memorization; Shoemaker argues it is only possible for people to memorize the Quran now because it has become a written document they can consult in the process.

Eyewitness testimony is of course also notoriously unreliable, despite what apologists (in particular Christian apologists) have argued. Cf. Franz von Liszt's experiment in 1902, where a staged argument in a lecture escalates to one student pulling a gun on another--after revealing this event was scripted and staged, and asking different students to recall the details of the event at different intervals afterward, literally none of them got it right--the best reports, taken immediately, got things about one quarter correct. Even repeatedly imagining a scenario vividly enough can eventually lead to a false memory of it occurring (a phenomenon which may explain some alien abduction reports). People mistake post-even hearsay or visualization for firsthand knowledge, especially in the case of dramatic events.

What memory excels at is remembering broad strokes--we are adapted to retain the information which is most likely to be needed, i.e., the gist (or, more likely, the broad themes) of events and information, and not its exact form.

There's a long digression here about John Dean's testimony on the Watergate conspiracy--this may be the first book in early Islamic studies to have Richard Nixon in the index.

Even competitive memory champions train for short-term recall of large amounts of information; they, and other people with preternaturally good memories, are of course exceedingly rare. It's very unlikely that someone could remember, several decades after the fact, precisely (or even mostly) what was told to them by their friend whose brother's wife's cousin was really there. So even within the traditional account of the Quran's composition, it makes no sense to claim it is in fact the verbatim word of Muhammad.

As in the case of Solomon Shereshevski, when you do have preternaturally good recall even for (say) lists of nonsense syllables, the result is actually kind of debilitating--you have so many useless details to sort through, it makes it quite hard to function at an abstract level. And hyperthymesiacs, though they exhibit a high level of recall about their past, still often remember things incorrectly, at about the same rate as people with normal memories--they are no less susceptible to false or distorted memories.

Nevertheless most modern scholars treat the Quran as a verbatim transcript of Muhammad's words. This is exceedingly unlikely! Especially given that "group" or "collaborative" memory--memories as reconstructed by individuals working together--appears to be even less accurate than individual memory. You get better results having people try to recall events by themselves.

Since during the age of conquests the majority of converts were not closely preoccurpied with the interpretation of the Quran, it would have had to have been rediscovered and hermeneutically reinvented later; the memory of Muhammad's words were being shaped by the nature of the community he founded, as its members collective and individual needs continued to evolve along with the context of transmission.

Many people, both scholars and the general public, seem to believe that people in oral cultures have remarkable capacities for memory not possessed by those of written cultures. Study of oral cultures has shown this is demonstrably false; literacy in fact strengthens verbal and visual memory, while illiteracy impairs these abilities. People in literate cultures have better memories!

Oral transmission is not rote replication; it is a process of recomposition as the tradition is recreated very time it is transmitted. Oral cultures can effectively preserve the gist of events over time, but each time the details are reconstituted, and the tradition can radically diverge from its first repetition, with the stories of the past being reshaped to make them relevant to the present and present concerns.

The collective memory of Muhammad and the origins of Islam as preserved in the Sunni tradition would have forgotten many details as a matter of course, many others because they were no longer relevant to the later Sunni community, and they would have been reshaped in ways that made them particularly suited to the life and community of their contemporary circumstances, exemplifying and validating their religious beliefs--ones very different from those of Muhammad's earliest followers.

The early Muslim conquests put a comparatively small number of soldiers, scattered across a huge territory, in a wildly different cultural and social context, especially in close contact with different Christian and Jewish communities, esp. in the Levant, which rapidly became the cultural center of the new empire. Jews and Christians may have joined the new religious community in large numbers in this time also; their faith and identity would have continued to evolve in this period, as we would expect from comparative episodes in the history of other religions. By the time that Muhammad's teachings were formally inscribed, the memories of his few hundred initial companions would have been transmitted and dispersed to a large number of people in a totally different set of circumstances, with consequences for how those memories exactly were recalled.

Jack Goody, researcher on oral traditions: "It is rather in literate societies that verbatim memory flourishes. Partly because the existence of a fixed original makes it much easier; partly because of the elaboration of spatially oriented memory techniques; partly because of the school situation which has to encourage "decontextualized" memory tasks since it has removed learning from doing and has redefined the corpus of knowledge. Verbatim memorizing is the equivalent of exact copying, which is intrinsic to the transmission of scribal culture, indeed manuscript cultures generally."

Techniques like the ars memoriae belong to literate cultures and were invented by literate people; they are unknown in oral cultures. Oral and literate cultures in fact have a radically different idea of what it means for a text to be "the same"--in the former, word-for-word reproduction is not necessary. A poem can be "the same poem" even if every time it is performed it is largely unique.

Case of the Bagre, the sacred text of the LoDagaa people of Ghana, an extended religious poem used in a liturgical context. Variations in its recitation aren't just variations in wording; changes in recitation can be radical, and the last version is always the starting point. Nevertheless (as in other oral cultures) it is considered "the same," functionally identical with each recitation. These differences appeared even among different performances by the same reciter, or multiple times in the same ceremony. Even the most formulaic parts have great variability. Similar variability in oral texts in other oral cultures has been documented by other anthropologists, including for historical events.

Shoemaker notes that the tradition that the Vedas were transmitted without variation from the time of their composition remains an article of faith in some quarters of South Asian studies; this flies in the face of all available evidence. In fact we have no idea what the state of the Vedic texts was prior to the earliest manuscripts; they may have been written all along.

Collective memory is shaped by contemporary cultural imperatives--examples of Abe Lincoln, a white supremacist considered nothing special by his peers; Christopher Columbus, once revered; the last stand at Masada, considered a minor event of little importance to broader Jewish history until the founding of Israel.

There doesn't have to be any conspiracy or coordinated effort for false narratives about the past to take root.

The hard horizon of communicative memory is around eighty years; so historical consciousness basically only has two modes: the mythic past of collective memory, and the recent past less than eighty or so years ago.

Lack of a clear "generic" monotheism in the Hijaz around the time of Muhammad's birth means the expectations and memory of Muhammad would have been profoundly shaped by Christian and Jewish beliefs.

Early Islam, like early Christianity, wasn't old enough to have a clear distinction between historical/origins memory and recent/communicative memory.

"For most of the seventh century, then, Muhammad’s followers had a memory that was still immersed in the social and cultural milieux of the late ancient Near East, from which they had yet to clearly differentiate themselves. They eventually would do this in large part by developing a distinctive collective memory for their group, different from those inherited from Judaism and Christianity, a process that was no doubt delayed by their fervent belief that the world would soon come to an end, making such an endeavor rather pointless for a time. Only as the end continued to remain in abeyance, and the community’s living memory grew ever distant from the time of origins did they develop a collective memory of their own. Yet, as Islamic collective memory began to evolve, one imagines that it initially took different shapes within the various pockets of Believers that were scattered across their empire. The basic elements of this nascent collective memory were, as Halbwachs says of the early Christians, “still dispersed among a multitude of spatially separated small communities. These communities were neither astonished, anxious, nor scandalized that the beliefs of one community differed from those of another and that the community of today was not exactly the same as that of yesterday.” Thus, we should expect to find a significant degree of diversity in religious faith and memory among the different early communities of the Believers, scattered and outnumbered as they were among the Jews and Christians of their burgeoning empire. Only with ʿAbd al-Malik’s program of Arabization and Islamicization was a new, distinctively Islamic collective memory and identity concretized and established for this new religious community. It was a collective identity that was formed from the top down and imposed, at the expense of any other alternative collective memories, with the full power and backing of the imperial state."

The limits of oral tradition apply even more strongly to the hadith and biographies.

[kerakeriza]

hi! i just wanted to answer your question about why people talk about bruce and dick having a gay relationship! (it’s kind of a weird interest of mine so i’m coming at this with 100% excitement of wanting to share stuff i’ve learned and 0% hate or malice). so it was kind of like a joke starting around the late 1940s/50s when batman started becoming more “campy” but wasn’t widespread or serious until this psychologist fredric werthem wrote a whole ass book called seduction of the innocent where he like basically blamed batman for turning kids gay. which is. hmmm. anyways from there i think the relationship started to be looked at with more of a microscope so platonic instances between the pair were viewed as more romantic and specifically homosexual. then it became even more of a rampant running joke when batman the 1960 tv series came out and it was full of camp and innuendo. im pretty sure the actor that played robin even said something about homosexuality being implied/a possibility in his book but don’t take my word for it. after this more campy era when batman started becoming more gritty and especially after movies like the dark knight this kind of became forgotten. if this is truly something you’re interested in i would recommend reading the essay batman, devience, and camp by andy medhurst. i hope my block of text doesn’t bother you too much, and i apologize if i misunderstood your original post! i also want to mention that the actual relationship bruce and dick have is (at least to me and other non shippers but no hate) a father son relationship and this is more about the general public’s perception on their relationship in the mid 20th century who weren’t necessarily fans of batman and probably didn’t know much of the backstory. but that’s where that comes from i think. have a great day!

Thank youuu for coming in with an answer to my wee little question~

I won't lie, I did want to get more about the actual comics, because I feel like there's been too much conflating of actual comics history with, like, the history of how people respond to those comics. Sure, it's a part of the overall history surrounding comic books, but it's also quite different, you feel me? As for the ship poll context... when it comes to pushing for BruDick as a ship, I don't really care about how famous it is among homophobes, I care more about their actual canon dynamics. What makes them interesting as a pair? What do the actual fans think/thought back in the day? So thank you for answering that latter question! It was jokes for fun then, I see. :)

Yay for having fun with it!

[dankusner]

Pope Francis repeats gay slur just weeks after apologizing for using it

Pope Francis repeated a homophobic slur just weeks after he was forced to apologize for using it while suggesting gay men shouldn’t be ordained priests, according to reports.

The pope is accused of saying “there is an air of frociaggine in the Vatican” — a disparaging Italian term roughly translating as “f—–ness” — during a closed-door meeting with roughly 200 priests at Rome’s Salesian Pontifical University on Tuesday, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.

The 87-year-old Argentine also allegedly suggested that it was better that young men with a homosexual tendency not be allowed to enter the seminary, the reports say.

It comes less than a month after Francis sparked widespread outrage when he apparently used the same offensive term while speaking in Italian in a private meeting with a group of bishops back on May 20.

In that instance, unnamed bishops who were in the room suggested that the pope, as an Argentine, might not have realized that the Italian term he used was offensive, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported at the time.

After the initial firestorm, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a statement saying Francis — who has made outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy — has long insisted there was “room for everyone” in the Catholic Church.

“The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term that was reported by others,” the spokesperson said at the time.

The Vatican’s press office didn’t directly address the latest alleged faux paus.

Instead, they pointed to a statement the Vatican had released earlier Tuesday about the meeting with the priests, in which the pope reiterated the need to welcome gay people into the Church and the need for caution regarding them becoming seminarians.

Francis has been credited in the past with making substantial overtures towards the LGBT community during his 11-year papacy.

Some observers of the Vatican, though, have argued his recent mishaps undermine his authority and raise questions about path he has in mind for the Catholic Church.

ANTIQUITY

Ancient text tells of Jesus as a child

Decoded papyrus piece appears to depict story from ‘hidden’ gospel

For decades, a clumsily written document sat unnoticed at a university library in Germany, believed to be nothing more than a very old, everyday note, such as a private letter or a shopping list.

Now, more than a millennium and a half after it was written, researchers believe the papyrus fragment is no ordinary memo but the oldest surviving written copy of a gospel detailing Jesus’ childhood.

Lajos Berkes from Humboldt University of Berlin and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from the University of Liège in Belgium, two papyrologists, date it to the 4th or 5th century, according to a news release.

They deciphered the fragment and identified it as a passage from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a biblical apocrypha — or a work from outside the accepted canon of scripture — that is believed to have been originally written in the 2nd century A.D.

That makes it the oldest extant copy of that particular gospel.

The fragment is “of extraordinary interest for research,” Berkes said in the statement, noting it offers “new insights into the transmission of the text.”

Nocchi Macedo said it confirms assessments that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was originally written in Greek.

After researchers noticed the word “Jesus” in the document, they decoded it “letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document,” Berkes said.

Biblical apocrypha, from the Greek apokryphos, or “hidden,” are stories that did not make it into the Bible but were read widely in antiquity and the Middle Ages, the statement notes.

While Christian sects disagree over the status and extent of the apocrypha, they have long been studied, providing context to understanding the backdrop to the New Testament, according to the Centre for Christian Apologetics, Scholarship and Education in Australia.

Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, a papyrologist at Macquarie University in Sydney who studies ancient religion and magic, called the fragment’s decoding an “exciting find.”

The words on the fragment are believed to be part of a story in which a 5-year-old Jesus is playing near a stream and molding clay that he finds in the mud into sparrows.

When Joseph scolds him and asks him why he is doing this on the Sabbath, or the day of rest, Jesus claps his hands and the figures come to life.

[quailfence]

Franziska and Miles aren't siblings, so stop calling Fran/Miles incest and harassing people who ship it

[Plain text: Franziska and Miles aren't siblings, so stop calling Fran/Miles incest and harassing people who ship it. End plain text.]

This got long, so TL;DR/Summary: Miles and Franziska being adopted siblings is only implied in the games. Since they aren't canonically related, a romantic relationship between them wouldn't be incest. If you don't like Fran/Miles, that's okay, but stop referring to it as an incest ship.

Look, Fran/Miles isn't my fave ship or anything - I prefer to ship them with other people. But I do get why someone would ship them, and I am very angry and frustrated that people are calling the ship gross and disgusting because of a mistaken belief that they are adopted siblings. This isn't true, it's only implied in the games (emphasis mine):

The whereabouts of Miles Edgeworth in the time frame between DL-6 and Turnabout Reminiscence are not made explicit within the games. It is only said that he transferred schools after DL-6 and that Manfred mentored him alongside his daughter Franziska. However, there are lines in the games that strongly imply a sibling-like relationship between Miles and Franziska, such as Franziska referring to Miles as her "little brother" in Bridge to the Turnabout and trying to question his status as "being" a von Karma in Farewell, My Turnabout. All this has led to a widespread interpretation (example) that he was adopted into the family. The anime episode "Sound the Turnabout Melody", which depicts life in the von Karma household, shows Miles as at least living with the von Karmas, with Manfred trying and failing to find another family who can adopt him. It should be noted that the English sibling-related terms do not map to sibling-related terms in East Asian languages one-to-one, and in Japanese references to "little brother" and a "family creed" could refer to Miles's and Franziska's shared status as pupils of Manfred, with Miles being Franziska's junior in that regard.

In short:

It is game canon that Manfred mentored Miles

It is game canon that Franziska views Miles as a sibling

It is anime canon that Manfred took Miles in and raised him

It is not game canon that Miles and Franziska are adopted siblings

It is entirely possible to view someone as a sibling without being related to them, legally or biologically. Two people who previously viewed each other as such entering into a romantic relationship does not make that relationship incestuous.

In addition, the anime, while being a faithful adaptation from what I've heard, is not canon to the game - there are a few contradictions, and it is entirely possible that if any more AA games or adaptations come out, they will likely ignore many of the things established in the anime and create new contradictions. While there are many things from the anime that have become common fanon within the fandom (such as Miles' dog and the samurai keychains), other things have been rejected by the fandom, such as (ironically) Adrian and Celeste having a sibling relationship. I think that most people would agree that a fic that doesn't have Misslie would be canon-compliant for the games, or that a Celeste/Adrian fic doesn't contain incest. However, this same standard is not applied to Miles and Franziska's relationship

Finally, I have heard that the in the original Japanese version of the games Franziska | Mei does not refer to Miles | Reiji as a brother/family at all. I do not have a good source for this and I know like five Japanese words so can't verify this myself, but I felt like I should at least mention it - if you have a source/explanation/direct translation then let me know

If you've read this post and still headcanon Franziska and Miles as siblings, the age gap makes you uncomfortable, etc, that's fine, and that isn't bad in and of itself. What is bad is calling the ship and its shippers gross and incestuous and harassing it/them. (Harassment is not okay in general but I digress). The next time you get asked about your ship opinions, just say that you don't like Fran/Miles and move on. And again, stop saying that their shippers are bad/gross people!

(Corrections and such are fine. If you call me, Fran/Miles, or their shippers bad/gross/incest supporter(s)/etc, you will be automatically blocked)

[thxnews]

The Iliad: Uncovering the Timeless Power of an Ancient Epic

  Oral Tradition: Passing Down the Poem Through Generations Theories abound surrounding the origins of the Iliad, one of the oldest surviving works of literature in Western culture. One popular theory suggests that the poem was a product of the oral tradition of ancient Greece. Passed down orally by bards and poets performing for audiences over time, the Iliad's stylistic qualities align with the tradition of oral storytelling.   Multiple Authorship: Collaboration Over Centuries Another theory proposes that the Iliad was not a single work, but rather the product of many authors and storytellers over centuries. This idea is supported by the differences and contradictions found within the text itself, reflecting the contributions of various voices and styles over time.   Homer as a Single Author: One Voice Behind the Epic Finally, the most widespread theory posits that the Iliad was written by one person named Homer. This theory is based on the poem's consistent style and voice, a composition likely occurring within a specific time period, and numerous allusions to earlier texts. The attribution to a single author, Homer, is widely accepted, though the true origins of this classic work of literature may forever remain a mystery.  

Homer seated. 4th century BC, İzmir Art and Sculpture Museum, Turkey. Photo by Carole Raddato. Flickr.  

Unveiling Homer's Life and Influence

The Enigmatic Life of Homer The Greek poet Homer considered the father of Western literature, left an indelible mark on the literary world with his epic poems, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. However, much of Homer's own life remains shrouded in mystery, with details obscured by legends and myths.   Oral Poet: Composing Works Through Recitation What we do know is that Homer was an oral poet, meaning that he composed his works by reciting them aloud rather than writing them down. This oral tradition made it difficult for historians to determine the exact date of the composition of his works. The Iliad and the Odyssey were likely transcribed by scribes many years after their initial recitation.   Enduring Legacy: Influencing Literature, Art, and Film Despite the scarcity of information on his personal life, Homer's influence on Western literature is undeniable. His works have been widely read, translated, and studied for centuries. The Iliad and the Odyssey have inspired countless works of literature, art, and film, becoming foundational pieces of the literary canon.  

Sarcophagus with scenes from the Life of Achilles, dated between AD 170 and 190. Photo by Carole Raddato. Flickr.  

Captivating Characters and Timeless Themes

Achilles: A Tragic Hero Consumed by Rage and Grief The Iliad introduces a rich tapestry of characters, each with their own motivations and backstories. At the center of the narrative stands Achilles, a mighty warrior nearly invincible in battle. Consumed by rage and grief after the death of his close friend Patroclus, Achilles embarks on a path driven by overwhelming emotions.   Hector: Balancing Duty and Love Another essential character is Hector, the prince of Troy. Hector embodies a complex blend of warrior and family man. Devoted to his wife and young son, he faces the challenging tension between his duty to his city and his love for his family. Hector's eventual demise at the hands of Achilles is a poignant and heartbreaking moment in the poem.   Themes: Clash of Civilizations, Destructive Power of Pride The Iliad delves into several central themes that resonate across time. One such theme is the clash of civilizations. The Greeks and the Trojans find themselves locked in a bitter struggle, each side convinced of their just cause. Yet, the poem also reveals the humanity within the enemy, showcasing the Trojans mourning their dead and defending their city against the Greek army. Pride emerges as another powerful theme in the Iliad, highlighting its dual nature as both a source of strength and a tragic flaw. Achilles' pride and anger drive his actions, leading to devastating consequences. Similarly, Hector's pride as a Trojan prince ultimately seals his fate. The poem calls on readers to examine their own pride and consider its impact on their lives.  

Trojan War engraved print. Photo by Walters Art Museum. Flickr.  

Fate, War, & Divine Intervention

The Power of Fate: Shaping Lives and the Trojan War The Iliad revolves around the concept of fate, a powerful force that shapes the lives of its characters. The Greeks believed that fate was predetermined by the gods, leaving no escape from its grip. The poem's extensive use of prophecy and divine intervention underscores this theme, as the gods manipulate events to achieve their desired outcomes.   The Trojan War: A Conflict Foretold The Trojan War itself exemplifies the workings of fate. Though sparked by the abduction of Helen by Paris, it was a conflict that had been brewing for years. The gods had already decreed the victory of the Greeks over the Trojans, and the war was destined to happen.   Divine Intervention: The Hands of the Gods Divine intervention permeates the Iliad, with gods frequently intervening in the lives of mortals. They aid or hinder characters according to their own desires, manipulating events to achieve desired outcomes. Apollo's plague upon the Greeks and Athena's interventions in battles exemplify the gods' roles as puppet masters, shaping the course of events.   Brutality of War: Portraying the Horrors War serves as the central theme of the Iliad, and the poem unflinchingly depicts its brutality. Graphic descriptions expose the grim realities of battle, showcasing amputations, decapitations, and impalements. The warriors, portrayed as fearless and honorable, are willing to risk everything for the glory of their city-states. The poem forces readers to confront the dark realities of armed conflict.  

Storytelling – The Old Story in All Lands – Harper's Weekly. Photo by Winslow Homer. Wikimedia.  

Relevance of Ancient Stories Today

Timeless Lessons and Enduring Power of Storytelling The stories of the Iliad continue to resonate today, offering timeless lessons that transcend time and culture. They remind us that war has always been a part of human existence, often driven by pride and arrogance rather than rational decisions. The influence of fate, the complexities of human characters, and the enduring power of storytelling make The Iliad a work that continues to captivate readers worldwide.  

Conclusion

The Iliad stands as a testament to the enduring power of an ancient epic. Its origins and authorship remain subjects of debate, but the impact of its characters, themes, and storytelling resonates across time. From the clash of civilizations to the influence of fate and the horrors of war, the Iliad offers valuable insights into the human condition, encouraging contemplation and reflection on our own lives and the world around us.   Sources: THX News & Ancient Literature. Read the full article

[ufonaut]

Thank you for finally not making me feel alone! I’m not here to like…tell anyone else how to enjoy themselves, but personally it makes me sad that for some reason reader and oc stuff has become so much more popular in the last few years for some reason??? Like nothing could interest mr less and I just want to actually talk and write about the characters but whenever I join a discord it seems like people just want to talk about their ocs and I’ll go into tags or look at fic and there’s so much reader stuff. And everyone acts like they’re so excited to hear about other peoples ocs and I cannot imagine this is real?? Like it’s as boring as talking about someone’s dreams. I just want to talk about the actual characters.

YES!! YES!!!!!!!! LITERALLY EXACTLY SAME HERE

don't get me wrong i think working on your original fiction in a low stakes just-for-yourself/friends way is a fantastic writing exercise, so's sharing it with interested parties but i don't get forcing the connection between that & the canon of a tv show/movie/comic/etc. like for me personally the entire enjoyment comes from discussing the text, subtext & dynamics of a piece of media as shown in the thing itself, not someone's bland inexplicable take on whatever because they've got a crush on [x] character

(and reader insert is such an inherently straight woman thing to me because i just absolutely can't comprehend it, i understand logically that that's not always the case but the tone of it certain feels like it)

it's literally just the most mind-numbingly boring way to experience anything and i don't know how it's gotten so widespread. write your own stuff or try to be a normal person!!!! it's not all about shipping & nobody cares about your ocs!!!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT'S A BETTER PLACE FOR WHAT THEY WANT TO DO, WHICH IS NOT VERY CONSTRAINING, AND ROBERT, THOUGH 29, WAS STILL IN GRAD SCHOOL DUE TO A LITTLE INTERRUPTION IN HIS ACADEMIC CAREER BACK IN 1988

Do you want to really understand Lisp, or just expand your programming horizons, I would have loved to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of de facto control after a series A round in which a single VC fund or occasionally two invested $1-5 million. I said to him, ho, ho, you're confusing theory with practice, this eval is intended for a human audience. Ideas 1-5 are now widespread. Someone has an idea for something; they build it; and in doing so and probably only by doing so they realize the problem they should be solving is another one. How can we find these too? But if you control the whole system and have the source code too. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. Otherwise everyone's writing would sound like them talking. Hackers need to understand the theory of computation.

What does that mean you can't start a startup instead of within a big company, these qualities must have been like when he was 19. Someone wrote recently that the drawback of Y Combinator was that you had to move to participate. This technique won't find us all the things founders dislike about raising money are going to get eliminated. I'm certain it isn't. The other place co-founders meet is at work. Corp dev people's whole job is to buy companies, and they clearly have existing VCs in their sights. It's hard to engage a big company is in much the same position as a graduate program, or a company hiring people right out of college. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the OO world you hear a good deal more about paint chemistry than that.

But it makes deals unnecessarily complicated. When people are bad at open-mindedness is no guarantee. Instead of simply writing your application in the base language—indeed, this is how most compression algorithms work. There are too many dialects of Lisp. User behavior turns out to be will depend on what we can do something almost as good: we can look into the past. You'll remind them of themselves. Number 6 is starting to appear in the mainstream. A round.

Try it and see. The other students are the biggest advantage of going to an elite college, how could I ever make such a thing? A round. If founders become more powerful, they'll be out of business, even if they invest in all the others. The number one question people ask us at Y Combinator is: Where can I find a co-founder Jessica Livingston is just about to publish a book of interviews with startup founders, based on who we're most excited to see applications from, I'd say it's probably the mid-twenties have over someone who's 21? Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption by the mainstream, 1. You have to get them beaten out of you by contact with the real world: there is no cost to using uncommon technologies. They're usually individuals, like angels. In fact, Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. I realize this seems odd advice. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as yellowist, as is anyone suspected of liking the color. Then there are the more sinister mutations, like linkjacking—posting a paraphrase of someone else's article and submitting that instead of the original.

If I spent half the day loitering on University Ave, I'd notice. Poetry is as much music as text, so you have to extract parameters manually in Perl. Because they don't think it's fitting that kids should use the whole language. Because the point at which this happens depends on the people, not the topic. Musicians often seem to be any syntax for it. I don't know yet what the new rules will be, but it is enough in simple cases like this. Writing novels doesn't pay as well as talent, so this answer works out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium. Natural selection, for example, didn't even want to think about VoIP.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Chris Dixon, Nick Tomarello, and Jessica Livingston for reading a previous draft.

[ohfugecannada]

Ok so...

A couple months back, I was thinking about how various chracters in the Dark Crystal universe would fit into @ben-the-hyena and @dracocheesecake’s natives au. More specifically, the UrSkeks and I thought about the Darkheart.

Now, for those of you who haven’t read the Creation Myths comics (which I recommend you go track down a copy of if your a fan of The Dark Crystal), the Darkheart was an UrSkek who was banished to thra along with the other seventeen other UrSkeks for having “darker natures”. But he still missed his homeworld, and so sang an UrSkek song in order to try and contact his people. Many trine later, at the Second Great Conjunction, he heard the song again from a gelfling song teller named Gyr, who had overheard the song on his seattavels long ago. It reminded darkheart of the pain and sadness he felt for being banished from his homeworld. This, coupled with Raunip calling him and the other UrSkeks out on ther hypocrisy, clauses him to snap and lose his composure during the conjunction. Which in turn causes the Crystal to reject all of the UrSkeks, splitting them into mystics and skeksis.

As you can tell, The Darkheart is a pretty interesting chracter and I wanted to include him in the Natives au. However, since in the Natives AU, the skeksis and mystics aren’t two halves of the UrSkeks, are, as the name of the AU suggests, natives to Thra, and UrSkeks are a hybrid species of Skeksiscand Urru, I spent some time wracking my brain over how Darkheart would fit into the Natives AU.

After some thinking, I came up with, not one, but TWO chracters that are this AU’s Darkheart equivalent.

The first Darkheart is a recurring character archetype of both skeksis and Urru myths, legends and folktales. From which of the two cultures specifically the figure originated from is a topic of much heated debate among the literary historians of Thra. But what is known is that mentions of a figure known as the Darkheart in early texts (referd to in some translations as ‘The Darkened One’, ‘The Poisonous’ or ‘the Heretic’ etc) started some trine after the second conjunction and since then tales of the Darkheart have become quite popular in skeksis and Urru folktales, literature and theatre. Such popularity has resulted in the Darkheart character to find its way into gelfling tales. Even some podling cultures have their own versions.

With the character of the Darkheart being so widespread across mutiple cultural mythologies, there are multiple interpretations and variations of the tale and the chracter itself. (With the version I wrote being just one example of many, many, MANY alternate versions)

In most stories, they’re an antagonistic figure ranging from a simple trickster to an embodiment of pure evil. Some stories don’t focus on the Darkheart as a main chracter but as an minor chracter for heros such as Jara-Jen of gelfling folklore to fight against or out wit. The ultimate fate of the Darkheart is almost never a good one. With them either being slain by a hero, being destroyed by a fault in thier own dastardly plan or, at best, being defeated by the hero who spares thier life and instead makes the darkheart thier slave humble servant to atone for thier villanous existence (the latter ending usually pops up more in tales from skeksis culture)

when it comes to the physical appearance of the Darkheart, there are some recurring features between the diverse range of versions; sharp fangs, tall, elongated body, spiked hair, multiple limbs, a tail and some form of supernatural powers, usually manifesting in the form of a glowing eyes, a hypnotic song, and of corse a literal black heart visible in thier chest. Some scollars have pointed out parallels between the physical characteristics of Urkeks and those of the Darkheart character. Parallels of which I’m sure are a complete and total coincidence and in no way had any part in the perception, oppression and eventual enslavement of UrSkeks by Skeksis and gelfling *cough* *cough*

The second darkheart on the other hand, was a real urskek who lived some time around the first and second conjunction. It’s entirely possible that the Darkheart of myth was very very loosely inspired by this one (somewhat like how Jesus Christ of Christianity was loosely based on a man known as Jesus of Nazareth. Or Robin Hood possibly on a man called Robert Hod of York). Though, obviously they weren’t evil and, In many ways, more similar to the canon Darkheart: they were banished by thier people from thier home, she’s joined by other UrSkeks who were also cast out by thier society for who they were, and they eventually met Aughra during the first conjunction.

But, of course, the story of this Darkheart. Or rather, the story of MalVa,* is probably one for another day... ;)

​*lol get retconned son

[ayearinfaith]

𝗔 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵, 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟮𝟮: 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻

Norse religion, also known as Norse mythology, Norse paganism, Heathenry, and other names, is the collection of mystic traditions, folklore, and other such cultural aspects of pre-Christian North Germanic people, the ancestral peoples of modern day Denmark (Faroe Islands included), Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘀, 𝗦𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗼𝗻

Though Scandinavia was among the last parts of Europe to be Christianized, becoming fully Christian around the 12th Century CE, we have precious little direct evidence of the native traditions. The Old Norse people did have written language, the runic Futhark, but lacked the robust literary tradition of the Greeks and Romans, instead preserving their traditions primarily orally. The very earliest attestation of Germanic religion comes from the Roman historian Tacitus in his 1st century CE book, the 𝘎𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘢. This book was likely compiled based on secondhand information about West Germanic peoples, and as such is not a great source for true Norse religion (or even that of the West Germans). It does give us the Roman interpretations of the Germanic gods, the same interpretation upon which the days are named in all Germanic languages, and as such we do know that by this time Germanic people were already worshiping a distinct pantheon from their sun-worshipping Indo-European ancestors (the Romans, by contrast, still worshiped the sky god Jupiter). Between then and the 13th century the record is sparse, the occasional runic inscription or placename, and a few off topic mentions in 11th century history books. The majority of what we now know as Norse mythology come from two sources, both from 13th century Iceland: the Eddas. The “Poetic” Edda is a collection of poetry compiled from several sources, primarily the 𝘊𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘹 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘶𝘴. Neither the Codex nor the additional poetry has a known author, though it is believed to be more or less authentic transcriptions of oral Icelandic folk (i.e. non-Christian) traditions. The “Prose” Edda is a composition by Snorri Sturluson, a prominent Icelandic lawspeaker, historian, poet, and very much a Christian. Snorri purpose in writing the 𝘌𝘥𝘥𝘢 was not to preserve Norse faith but to preserve Icelandic poetic traditions. Snorri believed that without the record of these old fables that the poetic kennings, metaphors, and common sayings would become incomprehensible to future generations. It is Snorri’s Eddic version of Norse mythology that most of us in the modern world have grown up knowing, Snorri’s Thor and Loki that became re-imagined as comic book icons. We do not know how much of his work was authentic, Christianized, or simply made up to fit his fancy, but there is reason to believe a mix of all three. Both Edda’s, and in fact most of the sources listed here, would remain largely unknown and some almost lost until the era or European Romanticism and the “Viking Revival” in the 18th and 19th centuries. This was the culmination of several factors: advances in printing press technology made the spread of books much wider than in prior centuries, the translation of the Eddas into Latin (at the time still the most widespread language of literature in Europe), and a sudden surge of interest in pre-Christian Europe. While this enabled Norse myths to become the pop-culture fixture it is, it also means most “common knowledge” on the subject comes through the lens of enthusiastic but often inaccurate imaginings of what Norse religion was like.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗮𝘀 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲

Distinctive Germanic faith, at least the version we are familiar with today, probably emerged in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE. We know from linguistic evidence that the familiar figures of Odin, Thor, and others were prominent before the splintering of the Common Germanic language into Western, Northern, and Eastern varieties between the 1st and 3rd century CE. Norse people probably did not think of themselves as having a religion in the Western sense. Instead, they would have viewed their faith in a way quite similar to how many modern Japanese people do with Shinto: their rituals and tales weren’t so much a faith as simply a culture, a definitive feature of Norse-ness and not necessarily incompatible with or exclusionary to other beliefs. This is part of why we have little record; with no centralized houses of worship or canonic texts there was little pressing need for much else than the bardic oral tradition. We do know that Thor has always been popular, from Denmark to Iceland, as his name is a common element in places and personal names and the symbol of his hammer, Mjolnir, is common. Sacrifice was definitely practiced, both of animals and humans. Most attestations we have of ritual human sacrifice come from Christian origins with a clear political agenda, so the specifics can only be guessed at, but archaeological and linguistic evidence definitely supports that it happened. We know that goddesses and other female spirits were important in both North and Western Germanic faith, but the male written histories and male written 𝘌𝘥𝘥𝘢 have largely doomed them to obscurity. The number 3, and by extension 9 (3 squared), were auspicious and came up often, for example gods are often depicted in 3’s and the cosmos was divided into 9 realms. A unique feature of the Norse tradition is the separation of the gods into two rival and eventually allied clans; the Æsir and Vanir. Some historians have theorized that this developed from an ancient memory of migration and conflict, a position that feeds into linguistic theories that Germanic languages were effected by a now extinct non-Indo-European language. The word “Æsir” has been shown to be related to the Hindi word “Asura”, an antagonistic class of gods often equated with Greek Titans. Another peculiarity of Norse religion is the position of Thor in the divine hierarchy. Thor has brothers across the Indo-European spectrum: the Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, and Hindu Indra. All these gods wield lightning and storms, are very popular in their traditional homelands, and fight with serpents or dragons. All of them, except Thor, are also kings among their kind. The Norse uniquely have demoted their storm god below a “new” king, the enigmatic Odin. Norse rituals typically were outdoor affairs and associated with certain features of the landscape. This may be the origin of the term “heathen” which is itself derived from “heath” meaning an open patch of land, though it may also have been coined to parallel the Latin derived “pagan”, which originally simply meant “rural”.

𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

Starting with the aforementioned Romantic “Viking Revival” new traditions of faith in the gods of the Old Norse have risen and fallen. Many of these early movements did not start in Scandinavia but nearby Germany and England, where they were often hand in hand with unfortunate conceptions of Germanic racial supremacy. The Nazi’s, though very much Christian, were keen to adopt many Norse symbols that had been popularized by these movements, most of which collapsed with the Nazi regime. To this day the community of “Germanic Neopagans” are deeply divided on the issue of racism. The term “Heathenry” is more commonly used by non-racist organizations, as it contains no explicit relation to German-ness. Racist organizations are more likely to use such explicit language, and especially enjoy use of the word “folk” (either in English or another Germanic language) and terms similar to “Odinism”. The movements also often struggle with sexism and homophobia, an unfortunate side-effect of the perceive hypermasculinity that is more a result of male romantic idealism than actual Norse culture. One of the larger, less problematic, and more well-known organizations is the Ásatrú, originating in Iceland. The name is literally “Æsir-true”, in the sense of loyalty or allegiance to the Æsir, though the practitioners do venerate spirits and divinities outside of the Æsir as well. Few practitioners, even more organized ones like Ásatrú, have an established dogma or set of canon practices. Similar to the ancestors they emulate, they generally believe that learning, telling, and thinking about legends and taking part in rituals are sufficient guidelines for the practitioner to find their own spiritual and ethical path.

Image Credit: Viking Age (8th-11th century) Runestone G 181 from Gotland, Sweden

[dawnfelagund]

I have posted a video/recording of the presentation I did at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The full-text paper is on my website.

Here is the tl;dr summary of the presentation:

The idea of transformational and affirmational fandom was first advanced by obsession_inc in 2009. These definitions have since become commonly employed in fan studies scholarship and are typically depicted as a binary.

Fanfiction is typically classified as transformational: challenging the original creator’s authority, reflecting the fan’s interests and purposes (including “fixing” the original source), and often oriented toward adding sex and addressing social justice concerns.

Tolkienfic fandom, however, includes affirmational as well as transformational elements. The affirmational elements are leveraged for the production of transformative works (fanfiction).

Transformational fandom is also depicted as female (while affirmational is male). Tolkienfic fandom demographics, however, nearly exactly match the AO3 Census demographics found by @centrumlumina​. Tolkienfic is unequivocally a majority-female fandom, which suggests that the transformational/affirmational definitions should be less binary to acknowledge the full range of female creativity.

Affirmational elements present in Tolkienfic fandom:

A comparatively high level of respect for Tolkien’s authority, including a widespread discomfort with motives perceived as directly challenging that authority.

Media elements (Peter Jackson’s films) are an entry point to the book-based fandom rather than the media fandom subsuming the book fandom (as is the case in the Sherlockian fandom, for instance).

Fanfiction authors expend a lot of effort toward increasing their canon knowledge. Fanfiction serves as a reason for fans to do more research and reading than they would otherwise.

Tolkienfic authors use fanfiction to interpret and criticize the texts but are uncomfortable using language that describes their purpose as critical.

Tolkienfic authors spend a lot of time, energy, and resources on “canon collection” and canon mastery associated with affirmational/curative fandoms.

This is an enormous, long-running fandom. It’s practices matter, but it has been under-studied, partly contributing to the idea that fanfiction communities and female fandoms are transformational. In reality, the Tolkienfic fandom shows that the interaction between transformational and affirmational elements are more complex for many women who write fanfiction.

[strathoa]

Exploring complexity: the two sides of Open Science (II)

Pablo de Castro, Open Access Advocacy Librarian

This is the second post on the topic of Open Science and innovation. In the first one we saw how research libraries and their research support services seemed at risk of being out-of-synch with the mainstream, pragmatic approach to Open Science for the sake of ensuring the continuum between research and its practical, innovation-driven application. This second delivery will examine some of the reasons why and a couple of possible adjustments to the current workflows that would bring the libraries closer to other research support services without disrupting their present approach.

Could workflows around Green Open Access policies be fine-tuned for increased efficiency?

This being out-of-synch is a side-effect of the fact that UK research libraries are implementing what one feels is the most advanced, most successful Open Access policy worldwide, namely the (previously called) HEFCE policy linked to the national research assessment exercise (REF). This policy is totally aligned with the recommendations of the EU-funded PASTEUR4OA FP7 project, namely to make the deposit of full-text accepted manuscripts mandatory and to link such deposit to the eligibility for the research assessment exercise. Given that these were European-level recommendations, one cannot help but wonder how come the policy has not been more widely implemented despite the evident fact that 26 out of the 30 top institutions worldwide by percentage of openly available institutional research outputs as per the CWTS Leiden ranking 2019 happen to be British universities. Two main reasons come to mind: first, that no other country has dared to apply the PASTEUR4OA project findings in such a literal way. Second, that no other country has developed such an effective, almost ruthless network of Open Access implementation teams within their research libraries (there’s a third reason: no other country had the likes of Alma Swan or Stevan Harnad to pester the policymakers). So why should this highly successful national-level policy that could effectively achieve the 100% Open Access objective be an obstacle to a pragmatic approach to Open Science? Because it's a Green Open Access policy based on the deposit of accepted manuscripts in institutional repositories with widespread embargo periods. Because despite the current and future progresses in enhancing the visibility and discoverability of repository contents, the canonical way to reach a publication for an external stakeholder with little knowledge about the complex scholarly communications landscape (eg Industry) remains and will remain the DOI issued by the publisher. Because a Green OA-based policy does not open the publications sitting behind those DOIs. And because the amount of effort involved in the implementation of the HEFCE policy as it is designed right now is so huge that research libraries lack the physical resources to adopt any other complementary Open Access implementation policy. Enter Plan S with its highly pragmatic approach to Open Access implementation. Originally strongly based on Gold Open Access, APC payments where needed and deals with the publishers to address the double-dipping issue around hybrid journals, it's only after considerable pressure has been exerted by the Green Open Access lobby that the zero-embargo Green Open Access policy has found a place in the Plan S implementation guidelines. But with the current scramble for 'transformative' deals that will allow most hybrid journals to become eligible under Plan S requirements, the size of the institutional Gold Open Access output pie will only grow in forthcoming years. Caveat: one is an (European) institutional Open Access advocacy librarian and shares most of the views one's colleagues have about certain scholarly publishers. But this is a series of posts devoted to exploring complexity and the way research libraries may deliver a better service to their institutions. The big issue at the moment is that the enormous effort that Open Access teams at UK research libraries are devoting to implement the HEFCE policy – which requires them to chase every single full-text accepted manuscript for every single publication the university produces – prevents them from being able to adopt the set of workflows required for the implementation of all these 'transformative' deals. Not to mention adequately exploring enhancements in system interoperability to make sure other Open Access mandates also get implemented. Or paying more attention to the actual impact of such research outputs. It is somewhat ironic that so much duplicate effort is going on around the HEFCE OA policy implementation – with all Open Access teams at all co-authoring UK institutions for one single paper chasing repeated copies of the same full-text manuscript from 'their' authors – when the tools are already there that could make this process much more reasonable. The Jisc Publications Router, formerly known as the Repository Junction Broker, would easily allow for one AAM ('Accepted Author Manuscript' in the OA lingo) to be chased once by a single institution (ideally the one associated to the corresponding author) and brokered to all co-authoring UK institutions. This software was originally conceived and designed with publishers in mind as content providers. They would provide the AAMs for their papers, and these would then be distributed to the co-authoring institutions, very much in the spirit of the PEER project. But then all the announcements we're getting from the Jisc regarding publishers joining the Publications Router as content providers only cover their Gold Open Access papers. Of course one could not expect otherwise from publishers, but AAMs are actually the authors' intellectual property. A bold approach to the HEFCE policy implementation would involve making institutions the default content providers for the Publications Router and designing a set of rules on who would need to provide what AAM and when. The brokering of Gold Open Access papers is pretty much worthless for institutions. There would clearly be a need for the appropriate institutional authentication mechanisms on the Publications Router if it were used to promote the Green Open Access route, and this would hardly be rocket science, but this is not the way the wind seems to be blowing.

External affiliations for industry: metadata management, hence a library task

This said, there are tasks associated with the continuum between research and its practical, innovation-driven application that only research libraries can address. One of these is the systematic mapping and analysis of the collaboration workflows with industry within the institution. The most straightforward way to identify these collaborations is through the analysis of the partner consortia within externally funded projects. This is (in principle) beyond the library's remit and rather falls with the institutional research office or project management office. However, nothing prevents the library and its Open Access implementation team with its constant scoping of manuscript acknowledgements to be well aware of projects such as the EU-funded ROMEO or the EPSRC-funded DISTINCTIVE to mention but a couple of random examples for projects in collaboration with industry for Strathclyde Uni. And there is another, much finer-grained way of mapping these collaborations. This is through publications and the affiliations of their co-authors. This approach will catch collaborations with industry in the form of publication co-authorships even if not supported by a joint project. This is of course IF – and this is a big if – the affiliations are correctly coded in the institutional systems. We have the – only recently launched – Research Organization Registry (ROR) initiative running now, but author affiliations are a very difficult area to address, and we are not even talking institutions here, but companies. Some research funders, driven by the need to pragmatically deal with the issue, have often taken a shortcut and directly used the national registration codes for their companies as an identifier in the past. Only the academia-industry collaboration realm is hardly ever restricted to a national environment. Repositories in particular are very poor (yet) at mapping affiliations – with remarkable exceptions such as HAL in France, where it is possible to search by industrial affiliation. This is rather the domain of CRIS systems with their detailed CERIF-based data model. The problem is that it’s mostly researchers who are directly creating the records for their publications in CRIS systems and researchers are very unlikely to realise the value of (and subsequently make the effort for) adequately coding the affiliation of all co-authors for a given publication in the institutional system. This is boring stuff for the research support stuff to take care of.

Note how the industrial affiliation entries in the record above for ‘EU industry’ and ‘UK Industry, Commerce, Public Corporation’ – categories defined for external affiliations in the CRIS – have instead been coded as ‘Unknown’, making it impossible to track eg the institutional co-authorships with EU industry via searches against this metadata element. This is again hardly the researchers’ fault – it’s not for them to deal with these metadata intricacies. If the research support team at the library were able however to reallocate some of its time to make sure these affiliation entries were adequately coded in the system, they would be able to handle it just fine. This would automatically place them in a position to address the pressing question of how the UKRI 5-year Gold Open Access funding policy may have impacted this critical indicator for assessing the effectiveness of such policy. The citation advantage is the default indicator we use to try and assess the academic impact of (Gold) Open Access, but as per the approach described in the previous post, this complementary indicator for the number of institutional co-authorships with industry would be both more precise and more in line with the objectives of the funding exercise. If we don’t do this kind of analysis ourselves, others will do it for us using our own data and will sell it back to us among loud complaining among Open Science advocates about the outsourcing of key business intelligence-related workflows. We seem to be experts in this sort of thing. And this is already happening, though it’s so beautifully done that one cannot find any reasons to complain. These are our own (extremely expensive, publicly-funded) research facilities, our own staff who are striving to have them used by industry as per the research funders’ recommendations, our own publications based on the data coming out of such facilities and instruments and our own collaborations with external stakeholders though. It should ideally be our own analysis too.

[awed-frog]

romeo and juliet (canon)

So Romeo and Juliet, like 99% of Shakespeare’s works, is fanfiction, right? But what I only learned today is that 

the original story was written by Masuccio Salernitano in the 1460s 

the Church banned the entire book because OFFENSIVE and 

the couple’s original names were Mariotto Mignanelli and Ganozza Saraceni. 

(And yeah, those are weird names even by medieval standards. 

Then again, the writer called his own daughter Caracciola, so.)

The story goes like this.

After his secret wedding to Ganozza, Mariotto randomly kills a guy during a bar fight, is exiled from Siena, and goes to live in Egypt to work for an uncle of his. Meanwhile, Ganozza’s father wants to see her married, but after refusing every suitor with flimsier and flimsier excuses, she finally forces a monk to make her a potion so she can fake her own death and get some goddamn peace. This leads to widespread despair - her father dies of shock and grief, there’s a big funeral, and the whole city is mourning. But! that same night, the monk steals her ‘body’ from her tomb and hides it in his cell, brings it back to life - and next! Ganozza dresses as a man and embarks on a ship to Alexandria. But! the guy she sent with a letter explaining this whole thing to Mariotto is captured by pirates and killed (tags: major character death, minor character death, everybody dies I’m so sorry, dead dove: do not eat). MEANWHILE Mariotto’s brother, who wasn’t aware of the plan because plot reasons, tells Mariotto that Ganozza, alas, is dead forever and ever. Mariotto decides he’ll go back to Siena, where either a) he’ll cry himself to death by Ganozza’s tomb or b) he’ll be executed as a murderer. After a week of intermittent sobbing, Mariotto tries to break into Ganozza’s tomb; caught by the sexton, he’s arrested and tortured so he’ll reveal what the fuck he’s doing back in Siena. His tale makes him popular among The Ladies - all of them cry and cry and declare him ‘unico al mundo perfetto amatore’. But: the law is the law. Mariotto gets his head chopped off. Ganozza finally reaches Alexandria, meets Mariotto’s uncle, and they both realize at once Mariotto must be dead by now, being suicidal and a wanted criminal and also not, probably, very bright. Nonetheless, they travel back together to Siena, and once they get the news of Mariotto’s death, Ganozza decides to become a nun. She dies of a broken heart (and poco cibo and niente dormire) a few days later.

Author’s note* 

“Women will say Ganozza loved Mariotto best, but I think Mariotto deserves more praise because after all, she hatched that crazy plan convinced she would gain an entire life with him. He, on the other hand, crossed the sea just so he could die by her tomb. Anyway, my next fic is a crack!fic about this überjealous innkeeper who was tricked into reuniting his wife and her lover. Posting schedule below, please leave a comment!”

*As in, actual thing written by Masuccio

[wikipedia | Italian text]

[martinamwi61-blog]

Rock Music? The Attempt Of An Clarification!

Where MAMM is already well known for its enjoyable, electrical guitar-driven rock programming reminiscent of its fashionable summer camp series , its annual Women Rock ! Sadly, and unlike many of the other entries on the record, time hasn't been type to Yamaha's popular FM flagship. While it spawned plenty of spin-offs within the DX series (most visibly the favored TX81Z and Derrick Could's beloved DX-a hundred), as more and more followers have gravitated in the direction of analogue sounds, the interest in FM synthesis has dropped off. Hear rigorously and you may hear a revival in the making (Night Slugs are positively fans), but FM synthesizers nonetheless don't pull in the form of after-market costs that you simply see hooked up to their analogue brethren. One thing I have to disagree with from the video: nice music might take repeated listenings to acknowledge. Once I listen to a new album, there are some tracks that instantly stick out, that I instantly like, and others that simply sort of mix in. However after I proceed to listen to an album, it is not simply that I'm turning into more familiar with the songs, it is that I'm studying them extra deeply. Oftentimes, my lengthy-standing favourite songs end up coming from those who didn't stand out to me the first time. It was solely after repeated listenings that I grew to appreciate their depth. The principle conceptual strategies of musicmap to achieve a satisfactory equilibrium include grouping closely related genres collectively (sibling genres"), coloration coding a lot larger style teams (tremendous-genres"), and introducing a deeper layer of lesser influential subgenres. Hereby the total quantity of the intermediate or primary genres might be diminished to 234. That is deliberately far from the doable whole quantity of genres (roughly 600 or extra, some sources declare over a thousand) to allow easy orientation and good overview. And sure, it's liked by a giant number of individuals. Could not include you, however many others do. So yes, Koop is common. It does not need a flippin ranking of numbers. Popularity is not based mostly off that. You don't have to grasp kpop or like however at least present some respect to the artist, even if not the followers. We do not need opinions that are impolite. If you wish to say something, please look into the definition of recognition reasonably than rankings. They do not need to be better than Drake or Ed Sheeran to be well-liked. Also this text is somewhat putting kpop down. Don't do that. We don't put down different artists. BMI was primed to take full benefit of pop music's growth within the publish-struggle years. For example, Tennessee Waltz," composed by Redd Stewart and Pee Wee King in 1947, grew to become one of the largest pop hits of 1950 when Patti Web page recorded the song. Tony Bennett loved considered one of his first hits in 1951 with a cover of Hank Williams ' Chilly, Cold Coronary heart." A parallel phenomenon was the mainstream success achieved by white pop performers with covers of rhythm & blues songs. Little Richard co-wrote and originally recorded Tutti Frutti," however Pat Boone had an even bigger Pop hit with his model of the music. Amongst other key composers of the interval had been Chuck Berry (Roll Over Beethoven," Rock & Roll Music"), Otis Blackwell (All Shook Up," Fever," Do not Be Cruel"), and Felice & Boudleaux Bryant (who wrote Bye Bye Love" and All I Have To Do Is Dream" for the Everly Brothers). What are the greatest pop music bands? That's up to you to determine on this listing of pop music artists. Nonetheless, when determining who should be thought of the best pop music artists, you should not be voting on widespread pop music bands. This should only consider the quality of their songs. This listing solutions the questions "who are the perfect pop music bands of all time?" and "who is the greatest pop music musician ever?" If you happen to notice a pop group or pop artist missing, feel free so as to add them to this ballot. It's as much as you to determine who's one of the best pop musician of all time, so choose wisely.

Now here is the complement to the continuing suggestion: find one thing to do this's totally different from the competition in your combine. It would already be nestled in the tracks given to you—a component performed barely more forward of the beat than the others, or a synth sound not quite consistent with the present aesthetic. Or, you might need to vogue such a distinction your self, based by yourself inspiration and inclination. But the significance of this can't be overstated: whereas pop music can sound fairly homogenous, usually it's the tunes with one standout factor that cuts through. Yeah, however as far as Ableton is anxious, I decided to move myself utterly out of it. I merely do not have time to do all the things I want to do. And making artwork is more vital for me than making commercial instruments. That is the primary cause. The other reason is that to run such a giant ship as Ableton, you must make lots of selections which are enterprise choices. I found it more durable and more durable to localize myself in such an surroundings because I've totally different concepts, you recognize. And I can have completely different ideas, because I needn't cater to DJs, songwriters or no matter. I cater to the people who like to hearken to my music, and that is it. The more rapid implication of Jehan's work has not been the human-to-robot present of artwork, however lowering a track to a small set of knowledge points that say something in regards to the song typically, akin to valence" (roughly the glad to sad spectrum) and power" (arousing to soporific). Shortly after finishing his dissertation, www.Magicaudiotools.com Jehan co-based an organization referred to as EchoNest, and the info became a pillar of Spotify's advice methods, determining music similarity and precisely suggesting songs that sound alike. Rytis Mažulis' (b.1961) work is marked by a specific stylistic purity, integrity and symmetry of a musical texture based mostly on a counterpoint techniques (largely canons). The structural isomerism and homogeneity of his music is determined by the composer's makes an attempt to find the mathematical and bodily relations between time, area and sound. In line with this overall minimalist idea, the composer chooses instrumentations consisting from equivalent instruments or voices, and www.goodreads.com the range of expression in his work spreads from ethereal vocal compositions to monstrous hyper-canons for pc-piano. Like Kabelis, Mažulis is also involved in the most subtle micro-interval divisions of pitch and the simultaneous pulsations of mathematically calculated completely different tempos. Somewhat more acceptable to the unprepared listeners, the music of Mažulis seamlessly absorbs them into its lengthy cyclical motion, nearly unchanging in time and house.

[the-nysh]

Whats your opinon of kiri//baku and todo//deku?

!!!!! 👀 Oooh, *takes deep breath* so I’ve finally been askedthe big question. (Thank you for courteously using the /s to block the ship names out of the tags) Because I DO have opinionsabout them. I’ve mostly kept them to myself, but since I’ve been prompted, Iwill try to be as honest and thorough as I can. :’)

Disclaimer: If you high-key shipeither of the two, please proceed with caution! 

To preface:

If it wasn’t already obvious from the content I reblog (and rave about in thetags), my decisive fav character of the series is Kacchan, and similarly, my otp of the series is with him and Deku(as bakudeku, aka bkdk for short – which is how it’scommonly called on twitter). So going in, that’s my given stance already.

But it wasn’t always this way! :O When I first started theseries I went in pretty cautious, wary, and undecided; I actually never plannedto fall so hard for either the character or the ship (and I rarely ship things tobegin with). That is, until Hori repeatedly bludgeoned me in the face and heartwith all the reoccurring and carefully consistent character development, to thepoint ch120 became the final, decisive nail in the coffin - the point of noreturn for me. :’3 So now, I’m fully invested in seeing how their story pulls through to the end, nomatter what it might become (it doesn’t even need to be shippy). With them thematically established as two sidesof the same coin – on opposite ends of the same spectrum of heroism – the twohalves of All Might who both win and rescue:I want to see how they push each other towards greatness and mature into a pairof the best heroes. It’s a long-term investment of hope and a case of slowburn positive development, in direct (and on purpose!) contrast to its rockyand strained foundations (they ARE immature and emotionally constipated teensafter all), but it’s all been carefully laid out through a steady path ofnarrative foreshadowing. Where the prospects at the end of that path – of mutualsupport, understanding, reconciliation, cooperation, teamwork, trust – arebeautiful and rewarding things that make their ongoing journey of growth worthit. So…for Hori to smash any original expectations I might have had, and makeme fall hard for something I never intended to happen, are examples of whatI consider GOOD writing.

After I realized this, I went and did my research. Which inmy case, is reading up on countless character/relationship meta and fanfics togauge how the fandom sees their potential too. So I am very aware of the multiple sides of existing arguments and the dramathat’s already happened in the fandom (from across both tumblr and twitter). Iknow the western fandom considerably favors kr/bk and td/dk (at least for now), BUT in the eastern fandom,it’s actually bkdk that’s more popular. Hmm, curious why that is?

One of the reasons is partly thanks to the widespread availabilityof fan mistranslations (FA group) that have greatly exaggerated certain characterizations(ie Kacchan), leading to fandom fearmongering and the perpetuation of stigmasagainst the canon development of certain relationships (ie bkdk), which in theoriginal text, were never nearly thatflanderized or as offensive in context to begin with. Include also, adifference in cultural expectations/values, and we get a prickly concoction ofmisunderstandings ready to brew. It’s a poor and unfortunate case of important subtleties/complexitiesgetting lost in translation, while the bad things are blown way out ofproportion, to the point the story’s original intent is sidelined, or worse, canonis deliberately obstructed by translators who already dislike seeing suchcontent (because it’s ‘not their ship’) – so they prevent and hurt othersfrom fully enjoying the progression of the series as the author intended. Peoplecan like what they like (that’s perfectly fine), but in all of my lurking, Ihave SEEN examples of these things (andworse) actively happen, and quite frankly, the spread of this blatant toxicityand compulsive collective ignorance sickens me. So, I choose not to getinvolved with it, and instead focus on the positive.

Because of my preference for meta and faithfulinterpretations of the text (making sure available translations are reliablefor analyzing, for instance), I’ve gathered enough information (andacknowledged enough counterarguments) to make an educated decision for myself onwhat I value most and want to see from the series. Unless Hori veers offotherwise, I’ll stick by that conclusion and enjoy following the series throughto fruition (regardless of what the rest of the opposing fandom might say).

For example, one of the first dedicated and respectful metawriters – back when only the FA scans were available, but who ALSO providedcorrections from the Japanese text where necessary, came to this conclusionabout Deku and Kacchan’s characterizations:  

From ryokure:

“Deku is such a super special case that if a fanfichas him and Kacchan in it - no matter the parings - and they don’t have somecase of mutual obsession, I actually consider that OOC.”

Which, after everything I’ve seen of the characters, I can fully concur withthat statement.

MEANING, if the fandom portrays them off alone, together, or involvedin relationships with other characters and they lack this intrinsic magnetism that binds them together (for betteror worse) – if they can somehowfunction completely normal without being influenced by the presence of anotherand magically not even care about each other anymore, then my suspension of disbeliefbreaks. They’re too OOC. (Unless it’s a fic au where they never met or grew uptogether.) These two are TOO canonically wrapped up in their mutual complexesto simply cut ties, wrap up all their unresolved issues with a band-aid,and essentially ignore a core issue of the series for the sake of ‘shipconvenience’ with others. Their canon relationship is too complex to make such simplifiedportrayals of them believable, or even such flimsy ‘solutions’ for their issuesfeasible. Thankfully, we have Hori actively doing all the hard work for us sowe don’t have to worry about such transgressions like that happening in canon. (InHori’s consistent characterizations we trust!)  

Now then, with all of THISestablished, I can finally answer your main question: my opinion on kiri/bakuand todo/deku.

Let’s start with todo/deku:

Because believe it or not, when I was still new to the fandom and in my earlyresearch stages, I actually lowkey shipped them and read plenty of fics aboutthem too! I was open to them as a pair, but still undecided and wary because I didn’t know who to ship withDeku: either Todoroki or Bakugou. I saw all the widespread (western) fandomcontent for td/dk, with the apparent foundations for the ship based on eventsfrom the Sports Festival, where Deku ‘saves’ Todoroki and acts as the catalystto allow him to defrost his issues with his father and realize his true power.I thought, ‘ooh there’s something interesting in there worth looking forwardto; I’ll keep an eye on how canon develops their relationship from here.’

Unfortunately…canon didn’t give me anything else substantial to build on. Andin my case, those are foundations I NEED to be fully on board and convinced fora ship. It was the equivalent of fandom hyping me up for something to lookforward to, with me sitting there with a huge smile and my arms raised inanticipation…only for the rest of the manga to leave me dry. It was a hugedisappointment. Because except for a few scattered incidents, like from theStain arc and maybe the recent ‘it’s ok for heroes to cry sometimes too’moment, canon progress for their relationship has been severely underwhelmingand virtually nonexistent. Todoroki has chilled into becoming a supportive (yetstill socially awkward) friend for Deku yes, but even Iida has had more canon incidents of concern for Deku’s wellbeing,and challenges Deku into becoming a better person/hero with their interactions.(And yet, fandom support for Deku and Iida is virtually nonexistent incomparison, because their friendship resembles the camaraderie between bros, Iguess??)    

So then I was like, ‘wait, am I missing something here? WHY does the fandomlove td/dk so much, when their canon interactions are so limited, and the onlybig thing that’s happened between them was all the way back in the SportsFestival??’ So, I went and investigated the potential of their relationshipfurther in fanfics (which are quite numerous and popular on a03 I might add).

After taking a look, I began to see trends. Most td/dk fics are heavily skewed in Todoroki’s favor, tothe point of being practically one-sided in character development. The mainconflict in almost all their ficnarratives revolves around solving Todoroki’s issues with his father and comingto terms with HIS powers, leaving Deku as a passive, supporting participant inhelping Todoroki out with his problems. Which, while the two of them could bondtogether over their missing/difficult father issues, after a while this same familyconflict gets old and stale. What else is there? What about Deku’s problems for equality’s sake?He’s the main protagonist! How abouthis difficulties in learning how to make One for All his own too? Ah nope, hecan’t canonically confide in Todorokiabout the secrets of his quirk, now can he. ;) Oh wait. What about his problems with Bakugou? Is the biggest elephant in the room going to be ignored for the sakeof typical couple melodrama, or is my fav character going to be demonized so that Todoroki, the ‘prince’on a white horse, can ‘save’ Deku, the ‘damsel’ in distress, from him?! No way. And THAT is another hugeproblem I have with the ship.

Because in all the fics I’ve read of them, I never once was convinced ofDeku’s feelings for Todoroki. I can understand Todoroki gaining a passing crushon Deku thanks to their fight in the Sports Festival. But Deku? How does heeven fall for him? Just becauseTodoroki is nice and considerate and listens to him? Like a friend? (Deku has Uraraka and Iida forthat too, what makes Todoroki any more special than them in Deku’s life?) Thisties in to my previously mentioned suspension of disbelief and ooc territorynow. Because Deku is not some haplessdamsel in distress ready to be swept off his feet and easily charmed by somepotential suitor; he’s a BAMF with a heroic spirt that’s even feared byBakugou. And these traits are so rarely utilized to their full potential intd/dk fics - Todoroki’s influence rarely even challenges or inspires Deku toBECOME the best he can be to draw out his latent potential. (Iida’s canonicallydone more in that regard thanTodoroki’s ever done.) Again, it feels too one-sided in Todoroki’s favor toimprove as a better person/hero.

Oh yeah, and since Deku became one of Todoroki’s first ‘true friends,’ forTodoroki to fall for him feels like putting too many eggs in one basket,without giving Todoroki the chance tobranch out and make normal/healthy relationships with OTHERS first beforesettling down. He’s a socially awkward kid emotionally repressed by domesticabuse; for him to latch onto Deku, the ‘first’ person he’s finally (andliterally) warmed up to, feels like the budding symptoms of unhealthy copingmechanisms and compensating for Todoroki’s deeper emotional issues. Where it thenbecomes Deku’s ‘responsibility’ to care for the turnout of his wellbeing, whenNO - Deku’s got plenty of his OWN issues to become burdened with someone else’s on top of those. Plus in canon,Todoroki’s doing just fine and is perfectly capable of handling his personal problems onhis own without having to depend on Deku.

Again, it’s all touchy territory that feels like it sidelines the mainintent of the series itself – by branching off into the deep end of Todoroki’sangst at the expense of Deku’s, or worse: simply wrapping everything up with afluffy bow called ‘the power of love.’ Nuh-uh, not only is that immenselyidealistic and unrealistic, but it’s totally not the kind of content I signedup for when I started the series. I’m frankly not interested in delving into thoseoff-tangent topics in opposition to canon, where Deku’s problems are oftensidelined, his characterization compromised, and my fav character (Kacchan) eitherbecomes an exaggerated, antagonizing impediment to their ship or is simplytreated like he doesn’t even exist. (My patience and willing suspension of disbeliefonly go so far.)

In the end, Todoroki’s a supportingcharacter. In a tertiary tier after the protagonist (Deku) and the deuteragonist(Bakugou). Yet in td/dk fics he’s almost always turned into a main protagonistsomehow. I can understand his appeal and why he’s so popular in the fandom, yes(and I like him too!), but there’s a point where this exposure becomes TOO much,the limit to his available canon issues becomes saturated and repetitive, and itultimately becomes so tiring to keepcoming back and addressing the same topics in fanon when canon has alreadymarched on to focus on more pressing issues. I’m more interested in exploring those other things.

So nowadays, whenever I see td/dk content, I go ‘ayy that’s nice (or cute),’and keep on scrolling. It doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t interest meanymore either. I probably won’t touch anymore fics of them together either;I’ve seen and had enough. I’m actually more receptive to seeing Todorokiinteract and develop friendships with other characters, like Inasa (the wind guy from the rival school)or even Momo for instance. Either of those ships I see around, I’m cool withtoo.

The final line: I don’t ship them (anymore), because canon swayed me over with the more pressing and compelling developments of bkdk.   

NOW, it’s time to talk about kiri/baku:      

To start, I actually LOVE Kirishima as a character. And I’ve alreadyestablished upfront that my fav character in the series is Kacchan. So whatgives? It turns out their ship has neverbeen on my radar.

Kirishima is a great character, but I’ve only ever seen him as a supportive bro. To EVERYONE in their class. Whichis precisely how Hori designed him: to be a compassionate/empathetic nice guywho bridges the gaps between the class with his vigorous enthusiasm and support(same role that Denki shares, by the way). And he fulfils this role splendidly.But he ALSO has his own insecurities and developing friendships with manyothers in the class – Denki, Mina, and Deku included. All of those people areimportant to him (and I’m cool with all their ships with him too). Kirishimadoes not solely revolve aroundBakugou.  

It’s true that near the beginning of the series, Bakugou was an angry loner,Kirishima trailed after him on his own accord, and after seeing his version of‘manliness’, decided to stick by him and support him, because Kiri saw thepositives of his character that ‘no one’ else bothered to see. (NOT true; Dekuhas always seen and admired Kacchan’spositive traits since they were children.)And so what’s canonically established is a budding friendship where Kirishimafulfils his given role to bridge gaps (whenever Bakugou strays away from theclass), essentially working as a rubber band plot device, and as a secondperspective – aka a fresh lens, for the audience to view Bakugou’s positivequalities.

All of this I’m cool with. I actually enjoyseeing their canon interactions and the kind of fun, slapstick way they bounceoff each other. (I even like the concept of Dragon!Kiri too!) BUT, it’s whenfanon starts twisting their canon relationship into shippy territory, that’swhere things start getting…ugly, at least for me.  

Remember, I’ve always only seen Kirishima as a supportive bro, and I MEAN that. They have the samered eyes. The same style of spikey hair. The same pumped up mannerisms whenthey get going. Too many similarities that rub me the wrong way when put in aromantic context. (The only difference is that one of them is the soft-hearted ‘niceguy,’ and the other is the outwardly prickly ‘asshole.’) To me, to ship them feels like the equivalentof taking the parallel ends of two polarized magnets: you can manually forcethem close together, but in the end, they cannot touch because the same ends ofmagnets naturally repel. Now, flip one of those magnets around (aka turn it intoDeku), and boom, the opposite ends attract with explosive force. And THAT ishow bkdk feels to me in comparison.

However, the kr/bk fandom doesn’t stop there. I know there exists plenty of fics about them, but I’ve never read any, and frankly, I never will, not even for curiosity’ssake. Because from the overabundance of otherfandom content, I already know what their ship dynamic is about. And it doesnot appeal to me at all.

Remember how I said Kacchan is my favorite. I do not appreciate when thefandom warps him into either a demonized or castrated caricature of himself –aka when they turn him into someone he most definitely is NOT, all for the sakeof a ship. Or worse: when they use Kiri’s relationship as a means of changingBakugou into a character they findmore appealing. NO. Even more worse: when they treat Kiri’s whole character as awalking plot device for ALL of Bakugou’s positive character development. Fuckno! Kirishima doesn’t deserve this dehumanizing treatment by the fans, andneither does my fav, getting subjected to this…betrayal to his whole character.

What am I talking about? When fans insist that Kiri is the ONLY personBakugou can be ‘nice’ to, outright forsaking or ignoring the canon developmentseither of them have with other characters – what about Denki, the rest of the‘Bakusquad’? Or Deku? Remember my dislike for ignoring the elephant in the room back in my spiel about td/dk?Well here, it’s infinitely times worse.

Because Kiri does not become aconvenient narrative replacement to ‘solve’ all of Bakugou’s problems or themeans to correct his bad behavior. It’s not even Kiri’s business orresponsibility to do so! (Same deal if Uraraka is shipped in Kiri’s place.) Hispresence doesn’t challenge Bakugou’s current conduct or world views to improvehimself as a better person, OR actively affect his drive to become the best hero.At most, Kiri endures the brunt of Bakugou’s outbursts when they happen(because he can harden with his quirk, he can ‘take’ it, and their banterbecomes ‘humorous’ and ‘harmless’…no, it absolutely does not) and amicably slides off any further implications with a ‘heyman, that’s not cool’, or excuses/accepts it with a ‘it’s fine because he’s justbeing himself.’ Now we have a situation where Kiri becomes a passive ‘butt-monkey’to Bakugou’s whims and actually enableshis unacceptable behavior to persist. And Bakugou somehow becomes fully invested in a single confidant who babies andpicks up after him (how the heck? no way would he allow himself to get ropedinto a relationship like that, if any at all. He’s strong and independent enoughto handle himself fine.). Even when it’s portrayed where Kiri is the ‘only’ oneBakugou’s nice to, they’d exist in a vacuum tunnel, sealed off from the influenceof others, and become a spiraling fester-hole of static development. None ofthese prospects are the ‘healthy’ long-term results that fandom seems to claimthey are. Tell me, if Bakugou was reallyan abusive character, would his behavior magically ‘fix’ itself simply thanksto Kiri’s passive influence or ‘the power of his understanding kindness and love’?The answer is a resounding and definite NO. The only person who can canonically stand up to Bakugou’s behavior (andnot brush it off), fundamentally challengehis world views and complexes, match him in equal and opposite intensity with themutual drive to be the best, and receivethe full extent of his turbulent feelings, is Deku.

This is what I’m referring to when I say fandom often ‘ignores the elephantin the room,’ because THIS (Deku and Kacchan’s relationship) is an established,ongoing and important core issue of the series itself, that many shippers wouldrather sideline for the priority, current gratification, and fluffy convenienceof an opposing ship. Aka, simply slap them together with the first nice friend theymeet (in both Todo and Baku’s cases, it’s the ‘too many eggs in one basket’problem again…), who will solve all their problems and work to ‘change’ theminto better people…somehow? No, that’s the case of unrealistic, wishful thinking bad writing andtaking the easy way out when something -the elephant in the room- is too challengingand complex to tackle head on. Thankfully, Hori IS tackling their story head onas purposely intended, so I don’t have to worry about canon jumping the sharkon the progress of their relationship.  

So, instead of Kiri being shipped with Bakugou, I much prefer him as a supportingcharacter (a supportive bro!!) who helps ease Bakugou into social/emotionalsituations that he’d normally avoid (which is how Hori originally designedhim??? to bridge those gaps -aka Bakugou’s loner distance - in the class) I’veread plenty of bkdk fics where Kiri becomes the mvp BECAUSE of his natural abilityto do this! With him as a much-needed wingman, voice of empathetic reason, and trustedsecond opinion who Bakugou can confide in to help confront his chronicemotional constipation over Deku. Shipperscan claim that Kiri helps Baku come to terms and become receptive to ‘softer,’ affectionatefeelings when they’re together, when it’s actually the opposite: Kiri becomes astepping stone for Bakugou to learn how to ‘make friends’ with other people whenthey’re apart. ‘Other people’ meaning: Denki, the ‘squad’, Todoroki, the restof the class…and most importantly, Deku.Let my son -Kacchan- learn how to form healthy, genuine relationships withpeople again, so he can gain the necessary experience and maturity to reproach hislifelong treatment of Deku and decide to patch up their relationship on his own terms. This, I feel, is a much more satisfyingoutcome and effective use of Kiri’s character, both in his involvement withBakugou and for the long-run benefit of the series itself.

But instead of seeing it this way, much of the (western) fandom overexaggerates the importance of Kiri and Baku’s relationship, to the point it notonly overshadows the content of other ships, but obfuscates the actual translated GEN contentof canon itself. (WHY!?!) I’m not even going to touch the propensity, hypocrisy, and irony of their shippers to harassand bully others for their opposing shipping preferences (that’s a whole other can of worms). Overall,it’s gotten so bad and obnoxiously rampant that I’ve been forced to block the ship tag for my own sanity and enjoyment of theseries. The ONLY time it’s ever beenrequired for me to use the blacklist function here, and that’s saying something.

Therefore: I support their friendship as supportive bros, but kr/bk as a ship was never on myradar. I’ve never shipped it, and I will notbecome interested in their potential as a pair. I used to be ok with seeing fan content of them around…until thefandom essentially and unfortunately soured it into a notp for me. Welp!   

And there we have it, my full opinion on both ships. I hope that satiatesanyone’s curiosity on the matter, as so far I’ve had plenty of personal reasonsto stay in my own lane and only show my avid support for bkdk. This I’ve confidently decided and I will continue todo so, for as long as I’m invested in the series.  

For some further reading and similar informed opinions:  

http://explodo-smash.tumblr.com/post/165154054112/not-to-pit-ships-against-one-another-but-i

http://explodo-smash.tumblr.com/post/163895267877/why-do-you-ship-bakugou-and-deku-if-its-abusive

http://tinyshinysylveon.tumblr.com/post/168731953134

https://punkbakugo.tumblr.com/post/170514358890/do-you-think-that-the-fandom-over-exaggerates

Also related: my opinions about Kac/chako. And Izu/Ocha.

Edit: now cross-posted on a03