#edited for historical accuracy

[pokemonheadcanons]

Headcanon #753

The Treasures of Ruin cause so much destruction because they’re enraged about being stolen from their home region by the Paldean Empire in the 17th century.

[astralsi]

chrono | latest

[viscount-nelson]

Nelson, 22.

Disgusting little freak, serial man lover, definitely has lead poisoning. Vocabulary of an old man, characteristics of a young ruffian.

I just sort of post stuff i like.

Current Things™️

- The Terror

- Korol I Shut / Король И Шут

Minors please do not interact

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

in light of a second migration to this site i just need to speak my truth which is that harrow is a redditor gideon is a twitter user and ianthe is a tumblrina hope this helps

[koraktor]

Behind the scenes mischief :) || part 2/? || m: Krabat (2008)

[fideidefenswhore]

"She was a ruthless woman who injured many, myself and my sainted mother included. She was quite capable of playing the King false, I promise you. My advice to you, Sister, is to forget you ever had a mother like that." Elizabeth caught the note of obsessive grievance in Mary's voice. She knew instinctively that it would be unwise to provoke her further by arguing with her. "Forgive me, Sister, but I had heard otherwise," she said simply. "Then you heard wrongly. She had me sent to wait upon you when you were a baby, and she told those that had charge of me to beat me for the little bastard I had become. How could you think such a one innocent?" "I am very sorry for your afflictions, Sister," Elizabeth whispered, aware more of the need to be diplomatic than of the desire to defend her mother. "They were not of my making, nor my desire." "How could you think her innocent?" "I heard things," she answered, then grew a touch defiant. "The whole world does not think my mother guilty."

The Lady Elizabeth [Chapter 8: 1544], Alison Weir

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"Ed Iskandar talked with God. Then it was Lucifer’s turn. Now he was addressing Adam and Eve.

[...]

Right now, Iskandar was rehearsing the plays from Act I, including Madeleine George’s 10-minute piece about the Fall of Man, which she gives the elaborate title,  “A Worm Walks Into A Garden or The Fall of Man, an experiment in motive and comedy.”  In it, Lucifer tells dumb jokes to Adam and Eve, as a way of seducing them. Adam finds them funny. Eve doesn’t.

“You’re missing a crucial part of your anatomy,” Lucifer says to Eve. “The funnybone.”

Lucifer is being played by Asia Kate Dillon.

[...]

Dillon was writhing and entwining themself around Eve.  Suddenly Chase Brock, the show’s choreographer, got down on the floor and started to writhe on the floor along with Lucifer. Brock had researched the earthworm, and showed some pictures of earthworms to Dillon on his laptop to suggest other moves they could make."

"50 different plays by almost as many different playwrights is a massive undertaking in which each vignette varies in tone from the one before it.  The actors playing the characters do not change from play to play; this forces the performers to be as comfortable and convincing with farce as they are playing tragedy.  It is also fascinating to contemplate the mental and emotional gymnastics that each performer of The Bats (the resident acting company of The Flea) must have undergone to ensure that each character maintains the same internal psychological throughline when they appear in different plays by very different authors.

The first act deals with the Old Testament books and the Nativity.  In playwright Dale Orlandersmith’s Song of the Trimorph, the angels in Heaven mindlessly worship God (a deliciously petty, yet shrewdly authoritative Matthew Jeffers), who takes it as His due until Lucifer (Asia Kate Dillon) starts to question whether love without choice means anything.

Dillon’s beautifully delicate, white-haired devil is one of the show’s most complex figures. Watching them evolve from nuanced philosopher to diabolical heavy to world-weary cynic, depending on the vignette, is fascinating.  The narrative speeds its way through the Bible. Highlights include Madeleine George’s surprisingly feminist take on the Adam and Eve story; Hwang’s marvelously urgent Cain and Abel tale, which posits the first murder as a story of vengeance against a capricious God; and Mallery Avidon’s whimsically horrifying tale of Noah’s Flood, which also entails the deaths of everyone who didn’t make it aboard the Ark.

[...]

The show’s second section deals with the Life of Jesus, with Colin Waitt’s astonishingly variegated boy-next-door Jesus shifting from an idealistic dreamer as he travels with Mary and Joseph to a forceful, almost angry philosopher when he argues with Lucifer about the nature of love to a bratty dolt when he confronts Gabriel about his inevitable fate.  The fact that the playwrights clearly have a different idea of Jesus’s personality sets Wiatt a complex task:  He has to make his Christ the same in all situations; whether he’s being comic or tragic, Wiatt is convincing and moving in a performance of stunning versatility.

Indeed, his likable turns in Gabriel Jason Dean’s beautiful Christ Enters Jerusalem makes his ferocious agonies in Qui Nguyen’s Christ Before Herod and his subsequent crucifixion all the more heartrending. The third act deals with Christ’s resurrection and humanity’s fate at the Day of Judgment, and includes a series of plays set in modern times, as well as God’s final words to Lucifer, Jesus, and to us.  The show’s final Day of Judgment coda by Jose Rivera is an essay of forgiveness and unexpected love."

"Overall, the point of view of The Mysteries leans toward deism, the Enlightenment philosophy that presents God as a kind of clockmaker who created the universe, then left it alone to run according to its own laws. We see God squabbling with, then abandoning, Lucifer, setting in motion the events of the Bible, but even in Eden he is surprisingly enigmatic.

[...]

And, as one of the thieves killed with Jesus prophesies, it may all be for naught; he conjures up a future in which "the religion founded -- haha --upon your existence will be held up to justify the slaughter of millions over hundreds and thousands of years, for the brutal sins of domination and exploitation, the lynchings, the massacres and genocide, the relentless militarism. Everything you stood for will be erased."

[...]

In any case, the company is an almost constant joy. Among the more striking performances, [...] Asia Kate Dillon is a compelling presence as Lucifer."

"Four dozen playwrights take four dozen spiritual positions, which allows bubbles of radical reimagining to emerge only to sink again beneath the waves. For instance, our very first playwright, Dael Orlandersmith, paints Lucifer (Asia Kate Dillon) as a sweetheart Cordelia type refusing to curry favor with an insecure God (Matthew Jeffers). The fallen Light bringer keeps popping up throughout, and yet while Lucifer makes a number of solid points—many vigorously antichurch—they're still costumed as a blood-smeared reptile. Does evil exist? Or does it only exist when it can dress super cool?"

"It begins with a scene in heaven where we meet the lavish Angel Chorus that will be with us for the duration of the play, and witness Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven, something like in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

[...]

We also meet the rebellious Lucifer in that first scene in heaven, played with dazzling cynicism by Asia Kate Dillon, and at the same time the angel Gabriel, played by Alice Allemano, who, obedient to God, in contrast to Lucifer, struggles valiantly trying to make sense out of God’s commands and following through on them.  These two, Lucifer and Gabriel, played by tall, striking people, fine actors who resemble one another, hold the vast array together like bookends.

The scenes in the Garden of Eden are delightful, played, appropriately in the nude, by Jaspal Binning as Adam and Alesandra Nahodil as Eve.  Throughout the play, Biblical episodes are interpreted by the many playwrights in non-canonical ways and the first of these is brilliant:  the knowledge the first couple gain through their disobedient eating of the apple is — how to tell a good joke and how to enjoy one!"

"Act I – The Fall begins with Creation and Lucifer’s fall from grace with God. Lucifer is played by a steady, radiant Asia Kate Dillon who reappears frequently to mix things up with earthlings and the rival angel, Gabriel, played by Alice Allemano makes goodness alluring. God is played by an extremely patient and multi-dimensional Matthew Jeffers whose sense of humor humanizes the Lord."

"As starting points, Dael Orlandersmith’s “Song of the Trimorph (Lucifer’s Lament)” and Liz Duffy Adams’s “Falling for You” are somewhat too abstract, particularly “Falling for You,” which has Lucifer wonder, “How can there be love in the absence of being?”"

"Starting with the Fall, we are introduced to the Angel Gabriel and the fallen angel Lucifer, played by two equally lissome and brilliant young actors, Alice Allemano and Asia Kate Dillon. They compete for God’s affections by using a chorus of singing punk angels."

"Asia Dillon as Lucifer brought the precise mixture of demonic delight and fragility necessary for such an adaptation: watching their performance was like looking at a raw cut in the bowels of the earth, brimming with fire and unimaginable sadness."

(no relevant quotes, but throwing in a brief pdf of a grantee project report that focuses on Engagement)

[basingstokemercury]

writing time again!

unfortunately been out all day and exhausted but i'll do my best

[the-punforgiven]

Man we really just listened to the most painful repetitive shit 17 years ago huh

[missswritesalot]

Can i request some possessive, maybe even a little mean, Robb Stark nsfw? i need that man in a way that borders on obsession 😭

A/N hope you like it anon. Gets soft at the end. Will edit later for historical accuracy. Requests open.

"Your grace," you began nervously as your husband threw open your bedchamber door. Opening it was hard enough so thinking of the force it took to rattle the hinges made you wince. Perhaps you could finally see the King Robb that maidens swooned for and bards sang of.

"Like a dog? A beast? Numbskulled brute? Is that what you said?" He spat out. His anger, so hard to provoke but equally hard to quell. Now it was righteous too.

“I didn’t mean any of it,” you nervously said. “I only wished to entertain.”

Robb walked towards you and you took a step back. You were vulnerable, only wearing your shift.

“And what did you call yourself? Little more than a whore I paid two coppers for? A greedy little queen, at the mercy of the king?” Robb said. “I can’t even repeat what I heard. Yet you said it when I have done nothing but treat you gently with kindness.”

“It was only my ladies, and I didn’t wish to disappoint, husband.” You said. You placed your hand gently on his chest. “They dream of you, and I couldn’t appear jealous. I needed to show you didn’t lack passion in bed.”

“Wasn’t just the ladies. My men heard you recount your pleasure and now they’re the ones salivating.” He shouted.

“Cease this! It’s childish and I will speak as I wish.” You said, feigning annoyance.

Robb looked madder with each word out of your mouth. He gripped your wrists to the point of pain and spun you around. With a hand on your back, he pushed you face down onto the furs.

"You talk like a whore you get taken like one."

He pushed your chemise up and you felt his fingers find the most sensitive parts of you. He shoved two in roughly, making you scream. Thank the old gods, your plan worked better than expected.

“And what of my men guarding you? Did they have to hear your of escapades? Know how you enjoy in my chamber?” Robb demanded.

The twist of his fingers in your unprepared cunt made tears spring to your eyes.

“Who do you belong to?” He asked. You refused to reply. You shook your head.

“You’re mine, you hear me?” Robb yelled. He slapped your arse to make his point. No need to trigger him even more, you decided. “Who owns ye?” He asked again.

“You do,” you mumbled.

“And I am your King, and your husband. And you had better remember that.”

“Yes, husband.” You whispered. You heard the sounds of him undressing. You didn’t dare move.

Robb held your hips on either side of you and pushed you into the bed.

“Who’ll take you now?” He demanded.

“You, my lord and husband.” You replied submissive. His breathing behind you told you he was still furious.

His hands tightened around your hips and you felt the impossible thickness of his member at your entrance. He'd taken you before, he was your goddamn husband, but never in anger and never like this.

He began to push in, deaf to your cries.

"Robb," you pleaded, your will breaking. He was deep in you but not to the hilt yet. This new position was physically uncomfortable adding to your humiliation. "Please, please." You begged. You didn't know what you were asking for, for him to let you go or for a moment to adjust. But you were so hot you could barely see. You had never felt desire like this. You anticipated your release like Robb returning home.

"No," he said quietly. "You will accept this, wife." He sheathed himself to the hilt within your body. You were glad he'd let go of your arms, so you could twist your fingers into the furs on your bed.

He was deeper than before in this new position, you felt like you were being split open. You reminded yourself you were trying for this reaction. Some part of your heart hurt most of all, knowing that your husband didn't care about the pain he inflicted upon your body. He was mean.

He pulled out again and pushed back in slowly. The deep pleasure knocked the breath out of your lungs. It added to everything you felt from the stretch of his girth.

Your cries grew louder due to pleasure, and you were screaming in abandon at how good he made you feel.

“More, husband, Robb, please.” You begged incoherently. The snap of his hips against yours set a harsh pace.

He tried to stop, to tease you, but he couldn’t. He was too excited looking at your body beneath him.

It didn’t take long before you were clenched around his cock in your pleasure, and he spent in response to you.

Robb collapsed atop you. He rolled over to the side, breathing heavily. You took a moment to calm yourself down and turned to face him. You took his hand in yours carefully, you wanted to know if his anger had been quelled yet. You were pleased when he brought your hand to his lips to kiss it.

“I love you,” he said. “And I have no desire to share you. Not this. Not our time together when we get so little.” Robb confessed. Your heart broke for him. Perhaps you’d gone too far in seeking his passion.

His face grew tense as you didn’t reply. “Have I hurt you, love?” He asked, caressing your cheek. You leaned into his touch with a sigh.

“No, dear husband. I love you too,” you said softly, content.

[marzipanandminutiae]

in view of Netflix and a few other networks apparently announcing that they are no longer requiring actors to wear corsets/stays, but framing it as the ultimate in feminist allyship against an Oppressive Historical Torture-Garment (and presumably typing their press releases one-handed, if you catch my drift), I have a few things to say:

1. I presume they will also be condemning Spanx, dieting, weight loss surgery, obsessive exercise, breast or pectoral or ab implants, Flat Tummy Tea, editing actors’ bodies in post, etc. since this is all about promoting healthy body image. ...right?

2. Okay, this one is not tongue-in-cheek: if a costume designer forces you to wear massively uncomfortable stays or corsets and tells you your discomfort is an inherent feature of that garment type, they are lying. All the articles on this cited reports from actresses saying they threw up because of Regency stays or couldn’t eat in Edwardian corsets. And while  I’m sure some of that is giving interview audiences the sensationalism they want to hear, I believe them in general. 

Someone needs to tell them that that’s not normal.

I have worn corsets and stays a lot in my life. I know people who wear them as everyday support garments. And neither I nor anyone I know has been seriously hindered in normal activities by them. There are even photos and videos of women from corset-intensive eras climbing glaciers, playing sports, having snowball fights, doing manual labor...living their lives

 Sure, there have always been and will always be people who find corsets or stays inherently uncomfortable- that’s why it’s good to have many support garment options available for people who need them. And there have always been and will always be ill-made, ill-fitting, or extreme examples of the type- I’m not  saying corsets are always The Most Comfortable Thing Ever For Everyone, because that’s not universally true of any garment.

But these production companies have been hurting actresses under the guise of “historical accuracy,” and this latest pronouncement is just another attempt to shift the blame. 

Don’t let them get away with it.

EDIT: Apparently the Official nature of the source for this announcement is in question, but the gist of the post still stands, so I’m leaving it up. Will edit further if new developments arise.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When prophecy fails, election polling edition

In Canto 20 of Inferno, Dante confronts a pit where the sinners have had their heads twisted around backwards; they trudge, naked and weeping, through puddles of cooling tears. Virgil informs him that these are the fortunetellers, who tried to look forwards in life and now must look backwards forever.

In a completely unrelated subject, how about those election pollsters, huh?

Writing for The American Prospect, historian Rick Perlstein takes a hard look at characteristic failure modes of election polling and ponders their meaning:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-25-polling-imperilment/

Apart from the pre-election polling chaos we're living through today, Perlstein's main inspiration is W Joseph Campbell 2024 University of California Press book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in US Presidential Elections:

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/lost-in-a-gallup/paper

In Campbell's telling, US election polling follows a century-old pattern: pollsters discover a new technique that works spookily well..for a while. While the new polling technique works, the pollster is hailed a supernaturally insightful fortune-teller.

In 1932, the Raleigh News and Observer was so impressed with polling by The Literary Digest that they proposed replacing elections with Digest's poll. The Digest's innovation was sending out 20,000,000 postcards advertising subscriptions and asking about presidential preferences. This worked perfectly for three elections – 1924, 1928, and 1932. But in 1936, the Digest blew it, calling the election for Alf Landon over FDR.

The Digest was dethroned, and new soothsayers were appointed: George Gallup, Elmo Roper and Archibald Crossler, who replaced the Digest's high-volume polling with a new kind of poll, one that sought out a representative slice of the population (as Perlstein says, this seems "so obvious in retrospect, you wonder how nobody thought of it before").

Representative polling worked so well that, three elections later, the pollsters declared that they could predict the election so well from early on that there was no reason to keep polling voters. They'd just declare the winner after the early polls were in and take the rest of the election off.

That was in 1948 – you know, 1948, the "Dewey Defeats Truman" election?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

If this sounds familiar, perhaps you – like Perlstein – are reminded of the 2016 election, where Fivethirtyeight and Nate Silver called the election for Hillary Clinton, and we took them at their word because they'd developed a new, incredibly accurate polling technique that had aced the previous two elections.

Silver's innovation? Aggregating state polls, weighting them by accuracy, and then producing a kind of meta-poll that combined their conclusions.

When Silver's prophecy failed in 2016, he offered the same excuse that Gallup gave in 1948: when voters are truly undecided, you can't predict how they'll vote, because they don't know how they'll vote.

Which, you know, okay, sure, that's right. But if you know that the election can't be called, if you know that undecided voters are feeding noise into the system whenever you poll them, then why report the polls at all? If all the polling fluctuation is undecided voters flopping around, not making up their mind, then the fact that candidate X is up 5 points with undecided means nothing.

As the finance industry disclaimer has it, "past performance is no guarantee of future results." But, as Perlstein says, "past performance is all a pollster has to go on." When Nate Silver weights his model in favor of a given poll, it's based on that poll's historical accuracy, not its future accuracy, because its future accuracy can't be determined until it's in the past. Like Dante's fortune-tellers, pollsters have to look backwards even as they march forwards.

Of course, it doesn't help that in some cases, Silver was just bad at assessing polls for accuracy, like when he put polls from the far-right "shock pollster" Trafalgar Group into the highly reliable bucket. Since 2016, Trafalgar has specialized in releasing garbage polls that announce that MAGA weirdos are way ahead, and because they always say that, they were far more accurate than the Clinton-predicting competition in 2016 when they proclaimed that Trump had it in the bag. For Silver, this warranted an "A-" on reliability, and that is partially to blame for how bad Silver's 2020 predictions were, when Republicans got pasted, but Trafalgar continued to predict a Democratic wipeout. Silver's methodology has a huge flaw: because Trafalgar's prediction history began in 2016, that single data-point made them look pretty darned reliable, even though their method was to just keep saying the same thing, over and over:

https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-art-of-losing-a-fivethirtyeight

Pollsters who get lucky with a temporarily reliable methodology inevitably get cocky and start cutting corners. After all, polling is expensive, so discontinuing the polls once you think you have an answer is a way to increase the enterprise's profitability. But, of course, pollsters can only make money so long as they're somewhat reliable, which leads to a whole subindustry of excuse-making when this cost-cutting bites them in the ass. In 1948, George Gallup blamed his failures on the audience, who failed to grasp the "difference between forecasting an election and picking the winner of a horse race." In 2016, Silver declared that he'd been right because he'd given Trump at 28.6% chance of winning.

This isn't an entirely worthless excuse. If you predict that Clinton's victory is 71.4% in the bag, you are saying that Trump might win. But pollsters want to eat their cake and have it, too: when they're right, they trumpet their predictive accuracy, without any of the caveats they are so insistent upon when they blow it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDlo7YfUxc

There's always some excuse when it comes to the polls: in 1952, George Gallup called the election a tossup, but it went for Eisenhower in a landslide. He took out a full-page NYT ad, trumpeting that he was right, actually, because he wasn't accounting for undecided voters.

Polling is ultimately a form of empiricism-washing. The pollster may be counting up poll responses, but that doesn't make the prediction any less qualitative. Sure, the pollster counts responses, but who they ask, and what they do with those responses, is purely subjective. They're making guesses (or wishes) about which people are likely to vote, and what it means when someone tells you they're undecided. This is at least as much an ideological project as it is a scientific one:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-09-23-polling-whiplash/

But for all that polling is ideological, it's a very thin ideology. When it comes to serious political deliberation, questions like "who is likely to vote" and "what does 'undecided' mean" are a lot less important than, "what are the candidates promising to do?" and "what are the candidates likely to do?"

But – as Perlstein writes – the only kind of election journalism that is consistently, adequately funded is poll coverage. As a 1949 critic put it, this isn't the "pulse of democracy," it's "its baby talk."

Today, Tor Books publishes VIGILANT, a new, free LITTLE BROTHER story about creepy surveillance in distance education. It follows SPILL, another new, free LITTLE BROTHER novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/26/dewey-beats-truman/#past-performance-is-no-guarantee-of-future-results

[simulatedstyles]

18th Century Chemise & Breeches

A set of historically-accurate garments for your Male Sims!

Hi all! After what seems to be the longest time away from The Sims 4 (all thanks to Fallout 4, Baldur's Gate, and Dragon's Dogma 2), I'm back to playing my historical save and creating some Sims content. I made these pieces of cc literally years ago as a quick little personal creation, but I've decided that I actually like them and thought I'd share with you all!

You Get 4 Package Files:

The "un-tucked" version (the original mesh I created) is what would've been worn as the only layer of underwear in the 18th century, so men would be fully commando under their shirt. With this in mind, I designed the chemise to be worn without any bottoms, leaving your Sim's lower half nude.

If you're using any unmentionable adult mods in your game (cough cough 👀), you WILL see all parts underneath...no promises that there won't be some clipping should your sim hunks be a bit more...ahem...well-endowed...

You should be able to pair this un-tucked version with any pants you'd like in-game, however there will likely be clipping if not paired with the breeches I've made for them. The "tucked" version should work with pretty much everything though!

Located in the Tops category of CAS

3 swatches in different shades of "linen" (historically speaking, these would never be colored, so I did not provide any colorful swatches)

HQ compatible textures

BGC

These are a mesh edit of @historicalsimslife 's port of "Bardly Shirt" from TS3 - you do not need their mesh for mine to work, but what are you even doing if you don't have it already in game?

In the 18th Century, breeches were the next layer worn after your chemise (without any "underwear" beneath as we would wear today). Gentlemen would simply tuck the length of their chemise directly into the breeches. I tried to add a bit of accuracy and realism to them with a buttoned flap on the front for easy bathroom access and ties at the knees and back of the waist to keep things snug!

I had originally only created these in the same 3 linen swatches to match the shirts, but ultimately decided I liked them enough to pair with other options as well. So I ended up providing you many swatches for these!

2 versions: one with a bulge and one without

Located in the Bottoms category of CAS

70 swatches in my usual favorite Federal & Georgian palette

HQ compatible textures

BGC

Here ya go!!

[intuitive-revelations]

I've got a kind-of crack theory about Ruby's mother...

Back in The Church on Ruby Road, Ruby is invited onto Long Lost Family, a genealogy TV program hosted by Davina McCall, with the hope of finding some information about her bio family. Unfortunately, they come up with nothing.

[ID: 6 gifs showing Ruby and Davina McCall talking to each other on the phone from The Church on Ruby Road. Davina apologies to Ruby, who tries to hide her upset at the news.

DAVINA: "There is no trace of your mum or dad. I'm sorry. It happens sometimes." RUBY: "No, that's fine... Thanks but, um, could you keep looking?" DAVINA: "No, there's nothing more we can do. If your parents aren't on some kind of database, we can't find them." RUBY: "Ok, um... isn't that unusual though? There's not a single trace anywhere? I mean... in the whole wide world, my mother's never left a blood sample or anythin'?"]

Now obviously, I know tracking down family is hard and, especially for orphans and adopted children, there's no gurantee that you'll be able to get the information you need. But I do find it odd there's seemingly "no trace" of Ruby's parents.

The section where I go on an odd tangent about genealogy

Speaking as someone who isn't a genealogist, but does enjoy researching family history in what little spare time they have... in my experience, close DNA matches aren't that hard to find. Especially if you're of white european descent, as Ruby is (presumably).

(It's generally harder for other ethnicities, as most research resources are white english/american focused. I know this is especially tricky for people like african-americans, where many of one's ancestors may have been enslaved. I've personally also found it tricky with Jewish communities as historically many of them used patronymic names prior to the 1800s, plus you have to account for immigration name changes, pogroms etc.)

For example, as someone who is white, with a mix of various british, mainland european, and ashkenazi ancestors, I actually have thousands of DNA matches, just from an autosomal test on Ancestry alone, let alone something like an mtDNA, xDNA or yDNA test:

[ID: Edited screenshot showing maternal and paternal DNA matches on my AncestryDNA profile. There are 16279 maternal matches and 9745 paternal matches.]

Obviously, due to the way family trees work, most of these are distant matches, however it does include plenty of close ones too, which I've been able to trace to real records and identify relationships with. Personally, my matches even already include many 1st and 2nd cousins, albeit usually a one or two degrees removed, especially as the userbase tends to swing older on these websites. This includes a few people close enough for me to have already known them from family functions and shared annecdotes. Meanwhile, where I did have blank spots, from immigrations, estranged family members, early deaths etc, I've been able to fill in a lot of information.

So what does it mean that there's "no trace" of Ruby's family?

Deliberate or not?

The big question I've had since The Church on Ruby Road is: just how untraceable is Ruby's family?

On one hand, I feel like if this was real life and professional TV genealogists were helping you, you'd get a bit more information than a quick phone call saying they've got zilch. If they're sharing nothing... do they literally have nothing?

On the other hand, this also feels like a writing shortcut. We don't really need 3 hours of Davina McCall sat with Ruby at a computer breaking down every question and theory about possible family members. Ultimately, this was probably just a way to quickly get some major exposition out there, plus throw in a Christmas celebrity cameo for casual viewers. The fact they only talk about Ruby's "parents" being in a DNA database, and no-one else, doesn't give me a lot of faith in the care for accuracy RTD took with this plot point tbh.

Indeed Davina does say 'it happens sometimes', which could indicate it's not as extreme as having zero close relatives...

...but Ruby also asks if it's unusual for there to be no trace of anything, which Davina doesn't answer. If we're asking that question, it sounds like things really could have turned up that blank.

It may not be easy for orphans and adoptees to find family, but I assume it must be quite rare to have zero possible leads? Especially if you're a younger person, and thus may have a good number of people of the right generation to know/remember your family members still alive. Worst case scenario, I can imagine having some leads, only for someone to be uncontactable, or lack the information that would be useful. That being said, maybe I'm being too optimistic, as someone who had the priviledge of never having as much difficulty.

The weird sci-fi parallel (TW: incest (kinda), intersexism)

This is where we get to my theorising. Because in a science fiction context, and specifically a time-travel one, there is one quite famous short story that has a protagonist with zero family connections: '—All You Zombies—' by Robert A Heinlein.

(Fun fact: "All You Zombies" is also the name of a planned Class Ongoing story, once I get the time to resume that.)

You may also be familiar with the movie adaptation: 'Predestination'. It's also seemingly the inspiration for all sorts of similar stories, from 'The Man Who Folded Himself' to Red Dwarf and Futurama.

You might see where i'm going from that last one...

(Again disclaimer: if you seek it out, that this story may be quite triggering. It also was written in 1959. While it's actually somewhat respectable of a trans (kind-of, you'll see what I mean - I'll generally use the pronouns used in the text below) protagonist, it includes sexism, intersexism bordering on medical horror, and selfcest/incest.)

In 1963 (funnily enough), a lonely, orphaned 18 year old woman named Jane has a sexual encounter with a man in a park which ends up leaving her pregnant. When complications arise, the doctor discovers during a successful caesarian she's actually intersex, with a form of ovotesticular syndrome, with her immature, partially developed organs "a mess". He removes the now damaged womb, ovaries etc and, without consent, 'rearranged things so that [they] can develop properly as a man".

A few weeks later, the baby is stolen from the hospital by a man.

Despite all this tragedy, they do decide to complete their transition, restarting life as a man. He struggles to find work, but eventually finds himself making a living selling fake confession stories to magazines as "the Unmarried Mother".

Years later In a bar, he tells his story to a Bartender. After it all, the Bartender reveals he's actually a time agent and offers the chance to see his baby's father again. He drops him off in 1963 to find the man.

Meanwhile, in 1964, the Bartender steals a baby from a hospital, and drops her off at an orphanage in 1945.

The Bartender returns to the Unmarried Mother a month later in 1963, just in time to see him leaving a lonely young woman he met with in a park...

"Now you know who he is", the Bartender says, "—and after you think it over you’ll know who you are... and if you think hard enough, you’ll figure out who the baby is... and who I am.” He drops the Unmarried Mother off in 1983, where he can be recruited by the Temporal Bureau.

The Bartender, Jane, the Unmarried Mother, the kidnapper, the Father, and the Baby are revealed to all be one person, a family tree onto themself. The perfect time agent, causally disconnected from the rest of humanity and thus safe from Faction Paradox - if they are truly human at all (possibly explaining their biological bi-sexuality).

Thus, literally, having no relatives.

NO, OF COURSE I don't think this is what's up with Ruby!

But...

A lot of people have suggested that the woman who drops off Ruby could be herself. Obviously this doesn't necessarily mean Ruby is her own mother - let alone her own intersex father, child, and recruiter too!

But the story did come to my mind watching the Christmas special, and I do think the less squicky side of it, the 'perfect time agent' angle is worth considering. Could Ruby really be causally/genetically disconnected from the rest of humanity? Could she literally have no close relatives?

Assuming her DNA is not taken from any other person, but some semi-random mix of genes, she really may not match with anyone. At most, she would have some distant false matches, who share very small portions of DNA with her just by statistical fluke.

"BUT", I hear you say, "Didn't she get rewritten by the literal butterfly effect in episode one? She must be connected to humanity!"

Yes she did. But you know else happened?

She was still there.

Seriously think about it. Time travel fiction often doesn't think about the full consequences of time being altered even slightly, especially for a gag, but think about it literally. If all of human history was changed and a whole new species, possibly descended from Silurians, became dominant on the planet...

... why would the Doctor still happen to be travelling with someone with a name beginning with 'Rub-' who looks like Millie Gibson? Remember her name comes from Ruby Road... so does 'Ruby Road' exist on Rubathon's Earth? The Church presumably doesn't, unless there's a lizard Jesus...

At the very least we can point to the Web of Time being particularly reinforced around Ruby for some reason, even after all the damage it's taken between Flux and now, letting Ruby persist into the new timeline. This is explicitly confirmed in the last episode, with the Doctor calling it a fixed point.

At worst, it may imply whatever 'designed' Ruby just needs her to meet the Doctor, no matter what the dominant species on Earth is.

Mind you, both of these do open questions about what happened in the timeline where Ruby was eaten by the Goblin King. Maybe targetting her after her birth left her temporally vulnerable? Or maybe it was a necessary event, to bring the Doctor to Ruby Road...

Add this to some other things we've seen this season:

In Space Babies, we're introduced to the concept of 'baby farms', allowing people to be loomed born without a parent.

We also know, at least, that Ruby registers as human to the TARDIS (though given Sutekh's influence, who knows how trustworthy that scan was now!).

In The Devil's Chord, Ruby is not erased by Maestro destroying humanity. Granted we can put this down to the Doctor/TARDIS, and how time travel effects people's biodata, but I think it could be a misdirect.

(Interestingly there was a very similar plotpoint in "City of the Daleks", the Eleventh Doctor adventure game, which saw the New Dalek Paradigm invading Earth in...1963. Unlike Ruby, Amy eventually actually does start to fade, needing a 'chronon blocker' to stabilise her. Hey remember how we just heard the word 'chronon' used a bunch in the show.)

In Boom, the Ambulance is entirely unable to find a next of kin for Ruby, despite seemingly having her in its records. This is a little hard to dissect, as you could take a lot of different interpretations away from it. At the very least, it suggests Ruby doesn't have any living descendents in the 51st century. Carla probably doesn't either (which makes sense with her not having any bio-kids, and Ruby seemingly being the only child she fully adopted rather than fostered?) But for its extensive records, it's notable it still couldn't find anyone after that, even presumably with access to Ruby's DNA like the genealogists had.

Everything in 73 Yards.

Between the snow falling in each episode, plus context in The Legend of Ruby Sunday, we know that Christmas Eve on Ruby Road, while fixed, is also uniquely vulnerable and 'raw'. With the woman's changing reactions to the Doctor, it's also flexible enough to change, somewhat.

Similarly, the possible connection between the woman who dropped Ruby off and the woman in 73 Yards, between her face not being visible and the CCTV camera being around 73 yards / 66.6 metres away. And if that woman really was Ruby, then maybe the parallels to All You Zombies may not be as insane as they sound.

[the-snake-and-dove]

you cannot convince me that thorfinn is a heterosexual character. hear me out.

1. historically speaking, vikings are famous for going at each other exactly like the greeks and romans did (pagan warriors loved that kinda thing and it was very much considered normal based on their mythology) it wouldn’t at all be unreasonable for him to be bisexual, when it comes to historical accuracy.

2. pete’s quote in halloween 2. he tells isaac there’s plenty of other fish in the sea, then follows up with “well not really, but there’s that one guy (jenkins) and idk what thor means when he mentions boat rules-“ which just refers right back to my first argument.

3. he backed up sasappis’ “i did it 43 times” claim, saying he “watched him many times as ghost.” both of their mannerisms after the fact imply that thorfinn was very much telling the truth in some capacity.

4. his two reactions to the dinosaur stripper. you cannot tell me those came from a 100% heterosexual man. (even if one was technically in isaac’s dream, but isaac has known him for awhile so)

5. jenkins telling nigel that isaac and thorfinn were together and nigel totally believing it and not at all thinking it was impossible or even close to a lie.

6. when he and flower were trying to find a third. he seemed more irritated about the situation overall, and didn’t seem phased about considering the other male ghosts as options. he didn’t seem all that opposed to pete “winning” either.

7. his reaction to the lumberjack tik tok. i’m not at all convinced he was that intrigued just from seeing wood being chopped.

8. when isaac and nigel have a brief fallout from nigel “liasioning” with jenkins that one christmas, thorfinn suggests isaac would get along with george the puritan (from the farnsbys) because they’re both gay. sasappis tells him his assumption that two guys would “get along” just because they’re both gay is wrong. when it pans back to thorfinn, he looks genuinely confused. to him, a viking, that’s a totally normal assumption to make, because that was closer to what his customs would’ve been.

9. not really a reason, i just think it’s funny. he once told pete he had “very shapely calves.”

(edit) 10. the official ghosts account reposting the clip mentioned in 2. captioning it: “the b in lgbt stands for boat.” as well as “to isaac, nigel, and anyone who observes ‘boat rules’ we hope you had a happy #pridemonth.”

[pochiperpe90]

[Eng] Elle Italia - Daily Venezia: THE HISTORY IS US

Luca Marinelli is almost unrecognizable in the role of Mussolini in the series M. Son of the Century, directed by Joe Wright. Two greats together to tell one of the darkest and most criminal periods in History

Personal opinion: M. Son of the Century is one of the masterpieces of the 2024 Mostra. It's a shame it can't win, because it's a TV series, even if its director continues to call it a film. A seven-hour long film, which will be released in eight episodes on Sky and Now in the early months of 2025. It’s produced by Sky Studios and Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment, a Fremantle group company, based on the novel by Antonio Scurati, written by Stefano Bises and Davide Serino. The director is Joe Wright, the protagonist is Luca Marinelli. It tells with historical accuracy the rise of Mussolini and our country's surrender to dictatorship.

Sensitive material, it reminds us that we invented fascism, and perhaps a foreign director, let's say, could have approached it with greater detachment, without our sense of guilt.  Wright looks at me almost with pity, in a good way: “But I share that sense of guilt, I reject national borders, there are no nations: the similarities between us human beings are more than the differences, I feel as responsible as you Italians…I was very careful to tell the truth without being didactic, I tried to understand without sympathizing, maintaining a critical distance... Mussolini was fascinating, he seduced a nation and many others. If I hadn't shown that charm then people might have thought that Italians were all idiots. That balance was my main concern... On a more personal level it's a series about toxic masculinity, which is like nothing else in us, we have it inside us. We have to understand our responsibilities and turn our backs on them, so as not to end up morally bankrupt".

Every day it took Marinelli two hours of makeup and hair to get into Mussolini's shoes. "It was something I brought home with me," the actor confesses, "in the same shape as on the set: the 22 kilos I had gained, my hair cut as you see it in the scenes.  The black lenses. were the things I could leave in the makeup van. Working with all the different departments was fascinating”.

It must not have been easy for him to shoot so convincingly in the fascist salute: “These are filthy and brutal things that the role required of me, but of course there is a big difference between what is considered right and what the role requires. I certainly did not take pleasure in carrying out certain actions or even in expressing myself in that way, but rather the opposite. What I had to face during the production of the project, as a convinced anti-fascist that I am, really cost me a lot. I did not come out of it intact”. But he was in the hands of an excellent director, a master in the cinematic transpositions of great books (Anna Karenina, Atonement, Pride and Prejudice).  How does he approach them? "The film," Wright continues, "is what happens in my head while I read the book. I'm dyslexic and so when I read I think I see beyond the words, I create the scenes and I edit, zooming in on small details that interest me. M. is a mash up between Scarface, Man with a Movie Camera and 90s rave culture." Tom Rowlands' techno music creates the right atmosphere: "I didn't want anything classic, kids have to see it too, they have to understand the roots of fascism." Luca Marinelli is monumental in the role of the "duce." "He's one of the greatest actors in the world, along with Gary Oldman. But, like Gary Oldman, he doesn't know it."