#even as recently as in the early 20th century! like sure maybe a lot of drag queens at stonewall would call themselves trans women Now

[officiallanxichen]

[ID: a screenshot of a reply by yuri-alexseygaybitch that reads, "Can you explain?" End ID.]

the historical source we have for understanding much of the early roman empire are so fucking bad. like whenever you hear any insane story about tiberius/caligula/nero/commodus/elagabalus imagine trying to put together an account of any modern figure if your only avaiable sources were tucker carlson archives and the daily mail

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 5: Indiscreet (In The Future)

Unfortunately it would be a bit of a lie to say that I vibed with Indiscreet right away. Not to say that I didn't like it, but maybe my unprepared ears weren't ready for whatever this album is. It's a lot. And it's all amazing stuff!! Still, I guess it needed some getting used to before I could really GET IT too. Had to stick to the couple tracks that I gravitated towards first (and I REALLY liked those btw. A lot) before gathering up the courage to take another plunge into the whole thing. Probably a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that this was one of my very first Sparks albums: the 6th I listened to according to my notes... I know Indiscreet is a pretty big fan favourite and thankfully, for me it might just be the finest case of gradually enjoying an album more and more with each listen. And I must say I REALLY love it now. EVERY song here is amazing, no doubt about that now.

But returning to the start for a bit, I was ready to get into some more of that (glam) rock side of Sparks I already knew by then from the previous two albums, and I got a bit of that here... Not quite as much as I hoped perhaps, but that was just another fact of life to learn here: Sparks never stick to one thing for too long. And this is when I need to get into the beautiful mix of... everything that this album offers. Early 20th century big band and vaudeville next to rock and pop and even some slightly-punk-before-punk-was-even-a-thing-really, as I've seen In The Future be described as once (more or less)... And then within the tracks themselves, we'll have strings next to brass and horns next to electric guitars next to beepy synthesisers. And let's not forget the most important of them all: the whistle.

The best thing about it all though is that it does not feel jarring to have a mix of all these different things and jump from one to the other constantly. Or, at least, not TERRIBLY jarring. Jarring within reason? Jarring, but in a masterful and knowledgeable way that works in favor of the whole piece rather than against it? You name it.

I say this... quite often about Sparks and individual songs or albums of theirs but this time I mean it perhaps even moreso than ever, that this album is extremely unique and truly like nothing else I've ever heard or likely will ever hear. I'd say it poses a bit more of a challenge than some other Sparks releases but once you get through that initial bewilderment (if you DO encounter it. I'm sure many don't but many others also probably do just like I did), the reward is a really great and one of a kind musical experience.

Favourite songs (and other highlights):

Happy Hunting Ground: early fav that I don't really think about all that much anymore... (it's still a total banger though. And, not going to lie, seeing the live performance of this song from Dee Vee Dee renewed my love for it recently). I was REALLY into it in the beginning though. It aligning very well with my hopes for more energetic rock tracks must have been a big part of that

Get In The Swing: idk what to say about it but it's just SO GOOD! Type of song I hear before the album proper that convinces me that yes, this band here is truly something special, I need more of this

Pineapple: it fullfills every need! Most importantly the need for a very singable and delightful tune from the renowned songwriter Russell Mael. It's sure to lift my mood considerably every time I hear it

It Ain't 1918: I think if I had to cut down all of Indiscreet to one song that represents it best as a whole, I would go with this one (Get In The Swing would probably be my second choice)

The Lady Is Lingering

In The Future: DEFINITELY my favourite here, another candidate for one of the best Sparks songs overall, special shoutout to those short instrumental segments between parts of the verses, you know, with the synth line that slows down and then speeds up again?

Miss The Start, Miss The End

Profile: song so good and in line with the rest of Indiscreet that I find it hard to believe it's just a bonus track. Impressive falsetto moments, fun as heck piano lines, all of the songs here are very unique but this one is fun and catchy in an especially unique way, to me

[awakenedsalamander]

would you be willing to speak moron the Technocracy? you have very interesting takes on it and I would like to know more

Happily!

So to me the Technocracy (in its 20th and 21 century incarnations, anyway, the early Technocracy/Order of Reason is different in some significant respects) represents a view of the world that is divorced from anything other than data and hard facts. This viewpoint is not exclusive to scientism, the paradigm I discussed in my recent post on the Technocracy, and is in fact an arguable core of pragmatism itself— there are times when it is essential to put aside ideals, emotions, and speculation and work only with what you can tangibly interact with. Sometimes, you have to put aside how the world should or could be, and work only with what it provably, unquestionably is.

But if you’ve ever discussed politics with someone who keeps insisting “well, that’s just how the world is,” rather than engaging with new ways of thinking or unconventional ideals, you’ll probably have realized that this way of looking at things can be profoundly limiting.

(Incidentally, this is why I think there’s the tendency to align most Technocrats with Stasis/The Weaver— the paradigm of technology itself can be Dynamic, Entropic, and Questing in a lot of cases, but the way the Technocracy uses it is broadly static, I think.)

Let’s use an example here, and talk about climate change. There’s a tendency to view the people most effectively driving climate change— the executives who profit off it, the lobbyists and politicians who sustain it, the demagogues and conspiracists who argue against its reality— as malevolent. They know what they’re doing, they know how it hurts the world and the people who inhabit, and they’re fine with it. Maybe some of them even enjoy it. This is basically the tack Werewolf: The Apocalypse takes with Pentex, for instance.

And that view is, to a larger extent than I think is remotely comfortable, true. Reckoning with the truth in that is part of what makes Werewolf fun, and it’s also one of the drivers on Mage’s own Nephandi.

But, I think it’s also true that most of the people responsible for ecological collapse don’t see themselves as doing anything wrong, and are instead able to just elide the details of the morality and ramifications of their industry/system/ambition and focus purely on the benefit. As said earlier, that is sometimes necessary— in an immediate crisis it can even be a godsend— but in the long-term and on a wider scale it can be quite damaging.

See, if you focus only on quantifiable data, there’s a way to look at climate change as kind of a trade-off you make for important numbers to go up. Industrialization is, economically speaking, incredibly beneficial, the advancement of technology improves not only wealth, but also security, communication, and even quality of life, and from the point of view of certain fields (at least as they currently exist) like agriculture, commercial shipping, energy production, and so on, the policies that really combat the bad effects of climate change would be disastrous! Can’t we afford a few more degrees Celsius for all that?

And if you want to get really dark, there’s the fact that wealthy countries and their oligarchs are going to be the least affected by natural disasters, resource conflicts, and pandemics. It won’t be easy, sure, but nothing ever is, and from a realpolitik standpoint, if other nations (which are potential threats after all) suffer those bad effects more than you do, then maybe weathering the storm is tactically viable…

So all in all, don’t pump the brakes, and certainly don’t reinvent the wheel here! We’ve got a good thing going, and it could be chaos to stop it! Hell, with all the benefits we’re getting, we might even invent some gadget or technique to solve the worst of it.

But of course, this misses so much. In the same way that topics I wanted to touch on, like algorithmic culture and automation, may have valuable benefits from certain points of view, you have to look at the whole picture. With climate change, you already see mass extinctions, and no amount of restorative cloning is going to reverse the ecological damage there. We’re going to see an increase in displacement and homelessness by disasters and the need for people to relocate from dangerous areas, which will ruin lives, if not end them. To say nothing of the inhumanity of allowing suffering on this scale when something can be done about it, right now!

But how do you prove that “ecological damage,” “ruined lives,” and “inhumanity” are worse than the loss of trillions+ of dollars which we’d have to spend to avoid them? It’s apples to oranges— no, it’s the abstract to the concrete. If someone only wants to think about the numbers, then there’s at least a debate. There’s cost benefit analysis and logistic comparison— but not action.

Now, I am simplifying significantly here. There are many reasons that climate change and other societal crises aren’t addressed beyond scientism, or political inertia, or even just greed and selfishness. To name a few, we also struggle against ignorance, against fear, against exhaustion, against bigotry, against the unknown. It’s not so simple. One of the problems with the worldview I’m attacking is its tendency to simplify things by smoothing over the issues, so I don’t want to do that.

But I do think that the biggest issues in our society can’t be tackled with cold math and a focus on what nets the best cost-to-benefit ratio. I think in a lot of cases, that kind of thinking— which, to bring it back to the point, is the kind of thinking the Technocracy embodies— is what got us these issues in the first place.

God, was this too serious for a World of Darkness discussion?

Anyway, thanks for the question! I appreciate the chance to analyze the topic.

[goblinfaggot]

If sexuality is a social construct, doesn't that imply it's a choice? Doesn't that erase our history? Doesn't that erase people like me who knew from a very young age they were gay despite living in homophobic countries? Doesn't that imply that right wingers are right when they say they can correct homosexuality?

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: a lot of people seem to mistake 'socially constructed' for being somehow unreal or not meaningful, but pretty much any abstract concept is a social construct. Think the other misunderstanding is to see the construct as the same thing as what it represents, rather than a sort of metaphor for how we interact with it in society. There have always been people with penises who are attracted to other people with penises, and people with vulvae who are attracted to other people with vulvae (and all sorts of other people attracted to all sorts of other people with various genitals etc), but it's relatively recently that that has been understood in terms of "homosexuality".

I've been thinking about this a bit recently in terms of trans history, and the claim "we've always been here". Think it's murky to say that, as the social constructs of transexuality and transgenderism are even more recent than homo/heterosexuality. There are heaps of people and roles in history that would probably be considered trans in a modern context, but the way those people described themselves and related to sex and gender was also necessarily something different to being trans because the concept (the generalised metaphor for a particular range of experiences) didn't exist yet.

So when we're talking about sexuality as a social construct it's the framework of homosexuality, heterosexuality, etc that we're talking about and not the existence of people being attracted to people like themselves or whatever sex acts they do.

In terms of whether it's a choice, I don't think it being socially constructed makes it more or less a choice than it being some unmediated fated truth. I think the question of choice is a sidetrack that plays into right wing rhetoric that wants to remove homosexuality and ultimately sexuality at all. As you suggest, if it's a choice then you can surely make a different choice! But if it is innate then all they can do is pity you for your affliction (strong hint of original sin there). The 'born this way' narrative kind of concedes the moral point, when we could be arguing instead that it doesn't matter whether it's a choice or not (or what precedent there is), there's nothing wrong with being gay (or trans etc).

Can you change your sexuality? Maybe. You can definitely change how you express it, which is effectively the same thing for conservatives. And it can definitely move around a lot naturally.

Should you have to change your sexuality? No. It is not a problem to be fixed.

On a side note, the popular constructions of sexuality have never been adequate to describe human sexuality (and have never meant to; the point is to define what is normative so that control can be exerted over the abnormal), and it's fascinating to look at how sexuality and gender and language have worked in the past. Early 20th century queer writing is wild for this, with oftentimes homosexuality being attributed only to the person being penetrated, and sometimes feminine pronouns will be assigned to them. To some extent we've recreated that with top/bottom concepts, and a lot of how we discuss sexuality and gender is very restrictive and focused on being morally correct rather than actually describing our experience. There's lots of trans people from the 80s for example who will identify with a bunch of different apparently contradictory things that a lot of modern queers might baulk at, but that's just how language works/fails to work.

[studioahead]

Artist Spotlight: Leslie Williamson

Leslie Williamson is a photographer of interiors. We mean this literally – in books like Still Lives and Modern Originals she photographed the studios and homes of iconic artists, including some of our Northern California favorites – but also figuratively, because what is remarkable about Williamson is her ability to touch upon the life of a space, or as she calls it, the soul – the part that offers a glimpse of a person's inner world, even when that person is no longer part of this one. In speaking with her, and looking at the mysterious, quiet, strangely emotional places she has photographed, I kept thinking of Gaston Bachelard's maxim in The Poetics of Space: "all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home." Flip through any one of her books, and you will see how such notions take shape.

Studio AHEAD: Let's start with your essay "Doc's Lab," published a few weeks ago in a recent WildSam guide, Big Sur & HW 1. Tell us about it and what draws you to this particular landmark in Monterey.

Leslie Williamson: It’s funny how that came about. I became a little enthralled with Ed Ricketts and his Pacific Biological Laboratories when I moved to Monterey in April 2020 (yes, a pandemic move…). I am sure it won’t surprise you to learn that when I am in a new place, I research “house museum” to find what is around me, and when I did this in Monterey, Pacific Biological Laboratories came up. I have never read any Steinbeck so I wasn’t familiar with Ricketts and his story, but with the quiet of the pandemic I soon became a fan. Ricketts is such an inspiring character! It’s no wonder he was Steinbeck’s best friend and muse.

Anyhow, I tried and tried to visit Pacific Biological Laboratories throughout the pandemic but it was always closed. Finally one day, as I was on a walk, the door was open and the nice docent let me in even though I didn’t have a reservation. Oh my goodness that space, it gave me goosebumps!!! It is just so special – steeped in history on a few different levels: early 20th-century Cannery Row and the PBL/Doc Ricketts era and through to the birthplace of the Monterey Jazz Festival and the men’s club that left it to the city of Monterey. Of course I photographed the space and my plan was to write an essay to accompany it that would go on the Still Lives Portal on my website. I have begun sharing my stories in real time there. Happily the WildSam project seamlessly dovetailed in unexpectedly. I am thrilled they wanted to publish my essay in their 50th WildSam guide. I hope people will read the essay while looking at the images. It will really bring it to life.

SA: While we're talking about places, I want to mention a photograph you took that I find so compelling: of JB Blunk's Moongate sculpture that leads to JB Blunk's house. We've been to the estate, and to get there you have to go deep into the woods of Inverness, along a windy road up a steep mountain far from everything, and there is a sense of the space caught unawares, as if no one is supposed to see it. I'm not really sure this is a question! But maybe you can speak about this feeling; it's very powerful.

LW: Thank you! It is a special place for sure. I experienced that same feeling on my first visit. Somehow my emotions come through in my images a lot of the time. I’m not sure I can say more than that. It has always been that way. 

SA: I love the home libraries of various Californian luminaries that you shot in Interior Portraits – partly because whenever I'm in someone's house for the first time I head straight to their bookshelf, and partly because they're incredible spaces. Ray Kappe's library, with its bright blue cushions and the bamboo forest outside, shows his relation to reading. What sort of objects "speak" to you as the kind that tell a story, and how do you photograph that object in way that helps it best tell its story?

LW: First off, can I just say I love libraries too…so much. There was a time when our bookshelves were a window to our mind, heart and soul. I just added a Bibliophilia section on my SL Portal that shares people's bookshelves. I always photograph them and they never make them into my books so I decided they needed a venue of their own.

As for other objects that speak to me, I never know what they are going to be. It is different for every person/space I am in. I generally just trust my gut. From Una Jeffer’s narwhal tusk, to Georgia O’Keeffe’s record collection, I seem to be able to sense where there are meaningful stories.

SA: What role does writing play in your photography, and vice versa?

LW: My writing is still a surprise to me. I see it as in service to my photography; but having said that, the "Doc’s Lab" story ran in WildSam with none of my photographs, so maybe that is evolving? When I wrote Handcrafted Modern, it was a bit of an unexpected turn of events that led me to writing the book, as well. But in hindsight, it was the magic combination of expression I didn’t know I was looking for. The photography always comes first and I let my curiosity run rampant as I shoot. Then, after I have edited the images, I hone in on the stories I want to share in the writing. That is the general scenario my process takes.

SA: Speaking of which, you've now published four books. Tell us a little bit about this process – whether you've a vague idea for each project... or how you build a narrative between each space photographed ... maybe a hint as to the next project you're working on…..

LW: The process of creating my books has evolved quite a bit since Handcrafted Modern. I began just because I wanted to see the spaces of my favorite architects and designers and this evolved into a plan to create a library of how creative people live in the 20th/21st centuries. And that is still happening, but I realized pretty quickly that the discernment of my choice of spaces to photograph is very specific. I am looking for what I call “soul spaces”: spaces that are still imbued with their inhabitant’s soul if they are no longer with us and an innate expression of the owner if they are still living there. There is always a certain je ne sais quoi that I am looking for. I know it when I see/feel it. But I am not sure there are words to describe it.

As for what’s next, I am looking to more shows in art galleries and museums. There is a particular project I am just diving into that will be in a major museum in a few years. I can’t say more. And of course there will be an accompanying book. Creating books is in my DNA.

SA: Finally, pretend you are not Leslie Williamson and that Leslie Williamson comes to one of the homes you've lived in – any of them from your whole life – to photograph it for Still Lives: The Sequel. What room would you want her to capture? What is in it?

LW: Oh wow…what a question! I am not sure any of my former or current homes would warrant being included in one of my books. But I do wish I could time travel back and photograph all of my former living spaces starting with my childhood home, where my father still lives, before we remodeled it in 1976. I can’t really remember it before that and am curious what it was like in its original state and how my parents had it set up, what objects they had, etc. I also wonder if there is an evolutionary through line of my own that would be evident in my own bedroom/homes throughout my life starting from my first bedroom. Like artists who make a portrait of themselves once a year, I wish I had a portrait of my living spaces for every year. I would be fascinated to see that, just for my own curiosity and self learning.

Photos by Leslie Williamson

Leslie Williamson’s home in Monterrey, CA.

“The Party Room” at Doc’s Lab on Cannery Row in Monterey. Originally the home of noted marine biologist and Steinbeck muse Ed Ricketts.

Detail in Ed Rickett's former home and business, Pacific Biological Laboratories, on Cannery Row. Monterey, CA.

JB Blunk’s ‘Moongate’ sculpture and his home in Inverness, CA. 

Detail of the living and loft area in JB Blunk’s home.

Artist and AIDS activist Derek Jarman’s library at Prospect Cottage, his home in Dungeness, UK.

The kitchen/greenhouse and a longe area in the home of artists Evan Shively and Madeleine Fitzpatrick. Marshall, CA.

Artist David Ireland’s sitting room in his home and masterwork, 500 Capp Street. San Francisco, CA.

Stair detail in artist Jesse Schlesinger’s home. Sausalito, CA.

[galacticlamps]

ooooh I'm VERY interested in hearing about second nature (I'm assuming this is the human nature au? if so I LOVE the title that's so clever)!! also 6th time's the charm and the 29th fic in your big document if you like o:

wip tag game!

(descriptions posts above the cut, excerpts below it)

second nature is indeed my human nature au - as in, literally a spin on those episodes (I haven’t read the book) & not just a chameleon arch humandoctor story, so the basic description of Two, Jamie, & Zoe being on the run from the Family of Blood and winding up hiding out at an early 20th century English boarding school with Professor John Smith is as you'd expect it to be. That’s probably about the extent of the plot similarities though, since it’s also a get-together fic primarily about the relationships between the 3 main characters.

I just realized "6th time's the charm" probably sounds like a satisfying conclusion to some adorable 5 + 1, but no, instead it's a reference to the fact that 5 other documents in that list are attempts at writing the same story, and that particular doc's version of it hasn't been touched in over a year now (whoops), but I’ll post a little piece of it anyway. It varies between being multi-chapter or a one-shot and between perspectives, but it’s basically a fic in which Two & Jamie have managed to go quite a long time without actually talking about their feelings, Jamie’s certain they should, the Doctor’s convinced they shouldn’t, and the eventual result is a kind of forced confession.

In the list, 29 is set in season 5, with the description “the doctor saves jamie with time lord regeneration energy. they aren't sure if they can leave because of it” - I actually really like this one, I just know I have some big parts of the plot to finalize before I could really work on it seriously

Second Nature:

Picking one piece of this was really hard but let’s go with this bit from what should be the second chapter, since that doesn’t really require context:

Zoe studied the Doctor's unconscious face thoughtfully. "Do you think I could pass for his daughter?"

"Hm? Oh, I don't know - I'm no good at that sort of thing. Your hair's similar?" he ventured.

"Thanks, Jamie,” she rolled her eyes.

"Yours is neater,” he added quickly.

"I should hope so, seeing as I have actually been known to brush it on occasion."

"But wouldn't a lie that big be kind of difficult? I mean, if you're his daughter that would mean he should remember your whole life growin’ up, and your mother and you bein’ born. The Doctor said he'd just go along with most things, makin’ up memories that make things make sense but . . . I don’t know, that's an awful lot to not really remember about a person, isn't it?"

"I suppose. And then, I'd be expected to know anything he can't recall, and to refer to all the right places and things he invents for himself in his past. . . You’re right, it’s probably not the best explanation for my being here."

"Probably not." Jamie wasn’t sure what would be, but he didn't think he could pull off pretending the Doctor was his father for three minutes let alone months, so he was especially invested in having Zoe come up with a different cover story for them both. She seemed stuck on it though.

"Perhaps I could be adopted, and recently? I can say I'm a little younger than I am, and if he's been a teacher, maybe I was one of his students, and I lost my family, and we got on really well so he took me in? How's that sound?"

"Och, I don't know,” Jamie shook his head, defeated. “It might work."

"I think I ought to say I'm an orphan either way,” Zoe continued, unfazed. “It’s close enough to the truth, I suppose, since I never really knew my family before going away to the institute, and it saves me having to invent existing relations." She sighed and kicked up her feet so they dangled over the edge of the front seat of the cart. Jamie put an arm out and pushed her back protectively even though he knew she was fine. "Oh, I would so like to say I'm here to teach at the school with him or something like that, but I don't think they'd let women teach boys here, at least not one my age."

from 6th time’s the charm:

“. . . and, anyway, Jamie’s anxious to get a look at some of their nicer resorts, aren’t you, Jamie?” They both turned to him then, and while Jamie could tell Zoe had read the room well enough to know that was more than half a lie, she still looked intrigued. It was the Doctor, however, that put the nail in the coffin on Jamie’s protests, staring at him so hopefully, like a child on Christmas morning. No matter how many trips they made – and no matter how disappointing any of them proved, he was always so determined to be excited about the next one. And Jamie could hardly blame him for that, what with it being one of those things that made his heart thrill and his cheeks blush and Zoe remind him wasn’t there something you said you’d discuss with the Doctor?

“Oh, aye, sure,” he agreed, rolling his eyes, but even the Doctor’s persistence had come to be endearing. It was one of the many things Jamie loved him for, he knew, and just because he hadn’t quite gotten up the nerve to ever tell the Doctor as much didn’t make it any less true.

29. Here’s a chunk of the first scene of actual dialogue I wrote for it, after making notes on the premise & context (sorry it’s so long & so light on both punctuation  & narration, that’s how most of my wips start out, & bc of that I figured it'd make even less sense if I gave you a shorter piece):

Jamie! Good to see you up and about but maybe it'd be better if-- I feel fine And I'm very glad to hear that but still, a little precaution never-- I feel great Really? I know I feel much better than I've any right to Ah. Well you see, the ah, the medical assessment, initially, last night, may not-- You did something to me, didn't you? Saved my life? Jamie, I-- You did, I know you did. I didn't understand it when it was happening - still don't, really - but now I know you can do something-- Jamie, keep your voice down! Only I never saw you do anything like that before. So why is that? It's dangerous, isn't it, what ye did? That's why ye don't do it all the time? It's . . . complicated, Jamie-- Complicated? I've seen I don't know how many people die in front of us and never seen you even try to do a thing like that to save any of them before, and now you tell me you couldn't because it was complicated?? Complicated to explain precisely why it's dangerous, Jamie, please. Sit - if, if you can comfortably, that is. Oh. Aye, of course I can. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt better in my life. the Doctor only nodded evasively at the ground as Jamie sat on the edge of the sofa opposite him & leaned forward conspiratorially, his elbows on his knees Alright, it's complicated to explain - but start with this - is it dangerous to me or dangerous to you? To both of us. And to Victoria. Victoria? And to Ben, and Polly, and for that matter to Kirsty and Colin McLaren and to a hundred other people you haven't-- How in the world can it be a danger to all those-- It's very hard to explain, Jamie. In fact, part of the explanation could add to the danger too. Jame sat back. He’d been with the Doctor long enough to know there were plenty of things he didn’t tell him, but some were things he knew he wished he could, information he didn’t feel safe sharing however much he'd like to. There were a very few topics it all tended to connect back to, and given the situation, it didn’t take long for him to guess which one it was this time. It's to do with your own people, then. the Doctor shrugged helplessly, as if convincing himself he wasn't saying anything that wasn't already obvious. Well, it would have to be, wouldn't it? he suggested in a thin voice, almost wincing away from his own words. Jamie's heart ached at seeing how pained such a small admission made him, but his pulse quickened too, and there were some facts he needed to know before he could leave it be. And for whatever reason I'm guessin you're not supposed to do what you did to me last night? the Doctor nodded jerkily, not meeting Jamie's eyes. You might put it that way, yes. And it - he couldn't help but glance incredulously down at his own hand laying unassuming, palm-up in his lap; even he wouldn't know, just to look at it, that the Doctor had squeezed it so tightly in both of his own last night until all three had glowed a blinding gold - except, of course, for the fact that it didn't belong to a dead man this morning. but there were people more perceptive than he in the wide universe  - it leaves traces? Yes, it does And if those traces are used to find us... he knew when and when not to bother with details. We should leave he stood up abruptly. The Doctor rose too catching him by the elbow They have time travel too, Jamie. That wouldn't make it better How not? If they've noticed the trace - and they might not, but if they have - then watching it move through time and space irregularly would be the final confirmation on what had happened That you used your... abilities to save me? Or a - one of my people - to save a human, yes Aye, and? And that would not be taken lightly by anyone Alright, and the alternative? Well, if we stay put for a while, the Doctor explained slowly, releasing the hold on his arm at last, behave in a spatially and temporally standard way, then, possibly it'll be given up on as a blip on the radar. A mistake. Somehow Jamie was quiet a long time How long will it take the trace to wear off? I've no idea Doctor? Well, I've never done that before! So why do it now? Because the risk was too-- How? How was this risk worth it when you've just said all the things it endangers? God, Doctor am I even gonna be able to-- he blanched, suddenly, and the doctor knew his thoughts before he spoke them Am I gonna be able to come with you when you leave here?

[maxwell-grant]

You have done an (excelent) post on how to reinvent Batman as a Pulp Hero. Do you think you could do one to Superman as well? Or do you think it is impossible to do this with the progenitor of the Super Hero genre without transforming him in a totaly diferent character?

Well, you saying it as impossible only makes it seem ever more tempting of a challenge, but yes, it is a bit harder. I'm gonna link my Batman post here as a reference point.

Partially because Batman's a franchise I've thought extensively about for a long time in regards to what I like about it or how I'd like to approach if given the opportunity, which is not something I can really say for Superman until more recently the Big Blue to start orbiting my brain. I don't have years worth of redesigns or fan concepts saved on my galleries and files to comb through to pick and choose here, and my experience with Superman as a character is considerably different, in some aspects more deeply personal, and not really something I'd like to go into in this blog, at least not now.

Part of the reason why it's harder is also because Batman and Superman have very different relationships with their pulp inspirations. Batman was, ostensibly, a pulp character adapted to comics, a dime-a-dozen Shadow knock-off who picked up and played up diverging traits from other characters and gradually ran with them to gradually forge a unique identity. Superman right from the start was rooted in a much stronger conceptual underpinning: the Sci-Fi Superman and Alien Menace who, instead of being a tragic monster or a tyrannical villain, becomes a costumed adventurer and social crusader. Even the name Super-Man was taken from an early story of Siegel and Shuster about a telepathic villain who ends the story lamenting that he should have used his powers for the good of mankind instead of selfishness. I hesitate to call what Siegel and Shuster were doing “subversive” because that term's picked up a real negative connotation, and it's not like Siegel and Shuster were out to upend their influences (they were pulp aficionados themselves), but rather putting a more positive, new spin on them.

Which is why it also becomes a bit harder to do what I did with Batman and align Superman with some of his pulp-esque inspirations, like John Carter, Flash Gordon or Hugo Danner, without just making it "Superman but he's John Carter", "Superman but it's Flash Gordon", and "Iron Munro / Superman but everything sucks" respectively. It's harder to create a character that wouldn't feel reduntant and derivative at best, and actively contradictory to Superman at worst.

I guess if I had to come up with a "Pulp Hero Superman" take I liked, well first of all I'd have to take steps to distance it from the likes of Tom Strong or Al Ewing's Doc Thunder, those two are as good as it gets in regards to Pulp Supermen. I stipulated for Batman a "No Guns, No Murder, No Service" policy partially to distance my takes on Batman from all the "Pulp Batmen" that just add guns and murder and take Batman back to the barest of basics. Likewise, I'm adding a "No Depowered Science Hero" rule here, which means it's a take that's likely going to veer off a lot more into fantasy and probably enough tampering with Clark's character that it does risk becoming a different character.

Frankly I don't think I'm gonna succeed at doing these without just making it a new character entirely, because with Batman you can get away with just upending the character's aesthetic and setting and even origin and still keep it recognizably Bruce Wayne (in fact Batman does that all the time), which isn't really the case with Superman, who needs those to remain recognizably Superman as he goes through internal changes and character shifts. I guess what I'm gonna do here is more taking the building blocks of Superman/Clark Kent and see a couple new ways I can rearrange them to create a Pulp Superman

Perhaps something we can do is to scale back or recontextualize the "superhero" parts without diminishing Superman's role as a superpowered fantasy character.

One way we can start is by picking on that connection between Superman and the sci-fi supermen/alien monsters of pulps I mentioned earlier and play it up further, to create a Superman who's deeply, deeply alien in a way that no mild-mannered disguise or colorful outfit can really disguise, something so dramatically powerful and alien, that instead you could get tales about the kinds of ensuing changes and ripple effects this has on the world upon the The Super-Man's arrival. And for that I'm gonna have to quote @davidmann95's concept for Joshua Viers' absolutely stunning Superman redesign on the left side of the image above

The red, the goldish-orange and white, the alienness, the angelic, sculpted feeling, the halo, that innocently curious expression: it’s genuinely beautiful. Superman as a redeeming science-angel from beyond our understanding, as much past the uncanny valley of limited human comprehension as a Lovecraftian monster but tuned to the opposite key - you could spend an endless procession of human lifetimes trying and failing to understand this being, but all you’ll ever know for sure is that it is beyond you, and it knows you, and it loves you.

Superdoomsday from Earth 45, healed and transformed into the savior it was originally envisioned as? Some descendant of his, or a future of the man himself? An alien who picked up on a broadcast of Superman from Earth, and so inspired reshaped itself in his image to spread his ‘gospel’ to the stars?

Alternatively, to come back to Earth a little, many, many pulp characters and series were built off the antics and personalities of real people, celebrities getting their own magazines or serials or fictionalized takes on them, so perhaps one way to make a "pulp" take on Superman would be to emphasize a bit more of Superman's real-world roots, trends that inspired his creation directly or indirectly at the time. The Jewish strongman Sigmund Breibart and Shuster's interest in fitness culture, Harold Lloyd's comic persona, the rising "strongman" film genre in the early 20th century, actors Clark Gable and Kent Taylor that supposedly named his secret identity, Clark Kent being a socially-awkward journalist based of Siegel's own school experiences.

Maybe one start to an authentic Pulp Superman, who would still be Superman, would be to just ask the question "What if Superman was a real person and/or a celebrity, and they started making pulp magazines and serials dedicated to him? What would those look like?". You wouldn't even have to restrict it to just a story set in the 1930s, in fact you could even play around with the rise of new mediums over the decades.

This third one is a little closer to some plans I have for my own take on a Superman character, not necessarily what I would do with Superman proper but one of my ideas for a Superman analogue. Superman's a character I'll always associate strongly with childhood and childhood fantasy, and to tap into that I would emphasize the other end of the fiction that influenced Siegel and Shuster: comic strips, in their case specifically Little Nemo and Popeye.

In my case I would bring additional influences from some of the comic strips I personally grew up reading like Monica's Gang and Calvin and Hobbes, and I already talked a bit about Captain Fray in terms of how he’s a Superman character despite being a villain. I guess you could call this one "What if Superman was a public domain comic strip character, stripped of the importance of being the founding figure of a super popular genre or extended universe, and also was kind of ugly?".

He's not "Sloth from the Goonies" ugly, I swear I didn't actually have Sloth in mind when typing out this idea, I've never watched that film nor did I know until now that he actually spends the film in a Superman shirt. That's not really what I'm going for. Visually I was thinking of modeling my take on Superman heavily after Hugo from Street Fighter and his inspiration Andre the Giant, to really emphasize the “circus strongman / freak wrestler” aspect of Superman’s inspiration, particularly in regards to how Hugo’s SFIII version strikes a really great balance in making Hugo ugly and both comedic and fearsome in battle, as well as lovable and even a little dopey (without being outright stupid, like his IV self) in his victory animations and endings.

He's still Superman, he still goes on fantastical adventures to help people, he's still a deeply loving and compassionate soul whose face beams with joy and affection and who's got wonderful eyes and a great smile. It's just that this smile has a couple of mismatched stick-out teeth or some missing ones, and he's got a crooked smile some people take as smug or malicious, he’s got a strongman’s gut instead of a bodybuilder’s abs, his nose is a little busted (maybe he’s had too many crash landings), and his hair is a little wild or greasy, and he doesn't exactly have very good people skills because of how others usually react to him and, y'know, he doesn't get the kind of publicity Superman would get despite doing ostensibly the same things. He’s not deformed, he’s incredibly intelligent and capable, but in comparison to how superheroes are usually allowed to look, he might as well be Bizarro in the public eye.

It becomes a running gag that people tend to assume some nearby fireman or cop was the one who rescued the hundred orphans out of a burning building single-handedly, meanwhile he's getting accosted off-panel by police officers who think he set the building on fire, or think they can bully this weird man dressed funny. He goes to rescue old people in peril and occasionally they yell at him that they don't have any money. He doesn't get asked to lead superhero meetings or teams even though many in the community advocate for just how much he does for the world, he gets censored out of tv broadcasts or group shots (even his face is sometimes pixelated when they do show him), people invite him on talk shows and don't really let him talk or assume they got the wrong guy. He goes to rescue a woman dangling off a building, and then he gets attacked by like three different superhero teams who assume he must have kidnapped the poor damsel. He was the first superhero, he is the strongest of them all still, but he never really gets credit for it, it nor does he even want to. None of this at all stops him or deters him, except for some occasionally funny reactions.

This never really changes for him, he doesn't really earn people's approval nor does he have to, instead the stories, outside of the gags and adventures you’d expect from a comic strip, veer more towards others learning to be less judgmental and him learning ways to better approach people. He isn't any lesser than Superman just because he doesn't look like most people would want him to look and he doesn't have to look like Superman. Really I think we could use more superheroes that don’t look all so uniformly pretty.

Again, probably not a take that would work for Clark proper, but it’s one way I would take a shot at doing Superman with my own

I have other stuff in the works for this character but I'd like to keep them to better work on them for now, but yeah, these are three of my shots at developing a Pulp Superman.

Alternatively here's a fourth idea that's more pulp than all of these: Join up Nicholas Cage with Panos Cosmatos again, or whatever weird indie director he decides to pair up with next, and let them do whatever the hell they want with Superman. Give us Mandy Superman. Superman vs The Color Out of Space. Superman vs Five Nights at Freddy's. Superman’s quest to find THE LAST PIG OF KRYPTON. Anything goes.

[bookwrm130]

I want to talk about this song because I've completely fallen in love with it. (I apologize to my family for randomly singing this song every 5 minutes.) First and foremost, I enjoy songs from this time period. They're usually so boppy and fun.

But that's not the only reason why I love this song. I love it because, in addition to it being a 'vintage' song, it's also a very queer song.

The obvious reason is, of course, that Gideon, played by a woman, sings about a woman she's in love with.

But it's so much more than that.

I looked up the writer of this song, Daniel James Chan, and according to his Instagram, he's a queer man, married to a man. He stated that this song was a celebration of his journey and the pride he has over that journey. When I found out about this, I thought, of course this song had strong queer vibes, the man behind it is queer himself!

"We've been forced to hide away our hearts until a better day. Now we are breaking down the door." While there are many couples throughout history that were "forbidden", this feels very pointedly about same-sex relationships. After all, how many stories do we know of older same-sex couples that had to hide that they were romantically involved until recently? The answer is a lot.

"Stand clear, bearcats coming through." Now, this took me a while to understand. I didn't know what "bearcats" was referring to until I found out it's an early 20th century meaning a fierce or aggressive person. However, it's mostly used to refer to women. While being a "fierce and aggressive" woman isn't exclusive to queer women, they are words that you would apply, in the 1920s, to women who refuse to follow the societal norm. And for certain, a lot of non-heterosexual women follow this pattern.

Added to this very queer song is the fact that there is absolutely no contest that this is an Avalance song. It's played as the two are dancing, it mentions blue eyes, and it speaks of time and going on adventures. But it's obviously sung from the point of view of one of the ladies. It's clear to me that this is more likely to be Ava speaking about Sara.

First of all, the song mentioned: "to my genuine surprise." Where have we heard similar words? When Ava was reassuring Sara that she's still Sara Lance, even if she is in a human-alien hybrid clone body. "...and yes, the very surprising woman I fell in love with."

Ava helps Sara thinks through her actions and that they have consequences. Sara helps Ava realize that there are times when you have to let things go and go on an adventure. "Take me down the boulevard then round this crazy world of ours."

"Please don't say it's all a game." As much as Ava loves (maybe somewhat begrudgingly) being dragged through these insane adventures, she still needs some things to be steady and stable. And for her, that stability comes in the form of her relationship with Sara. We know that she is the first to bring up settling down. It's important to her. (Of course, back then she hadn't realized the stability can come from just being with Sara, no matter what. They don't have to have the white picket fence.) Ava wants to make sure that this is all real and Sara won't just toss her away once she's bored with her.

"In the present, future, and the past." While this is obviously about the fact that they are time travelers, it also suggests that they're, in their very own words, "co-captains for life". Now and until forever, their love is going to last. "Sweetheart our love is made to last."

I'm not an expert on music or history and there's probably a lot more I've missed when listening to this song, but these are the things that immediately jump out at me. These are the reasons why I'm so enamored with this song.

[jakowskis]

i know we're all frustrated with the limited lore we have regarding the four lords but i wanted to put some questions out there in hopes someone has the answers. if not ig we can just speculate, & maybe the answers will crop up via word of the writers eventually or smth

first off, heisenberg's wiki page currently states smth about him being kidnapped as a child. i know there's a lot of talk about "forced to be her children", but is anything canonically mentioned regarding miranda kidnapping the lords, especially with them as minors? either from the village or from elsewhere, considering their diverse last names?

even if something along those lines happened with heisenberg, that just brings up a dozen more questions. like, we know alcina was 44 yrs old when miranda got a hold of her. i don't quite understand how the whole eva-reincarnation thing was intended to work, but apparently the potential "vessels" didn't need to be young girls. lady d's wiki makes it sound like she inherited her family's castle in her 40s (in the 1950s) where she met miranda, was enchanted by her, and willingly allowed herself to be altered by the cadou.

i know there's some (undated) documents you find in the game where someone discusses how miranda took donna in, & i think she's described as a young woman, so that means she was an teen or adult when she was infected, too. presumably an adult, if her aging stopped when she made contact with the cadou like alcina & miranda. i'd consider a theory that she's actually just younger than the others, but everything in her home indicates shes from the 20th century, too. all the lords have an old-fashionedness to them, but alcina's the only one who's time period is confirmed. donna kinda reminds me of the 1920s, actually.

moreau... everything about his dialogue implies childishness. it'd be a solid bet that, if the child kidnapping concept is true, he was a fellow victim. the thing that's throwing me off... he has a tattoo. a sailor tattoo. maybe, before things went crazy, even under miranda's influence and with the mutation, he was able to be semi-normal and even travel and go somewhere modern enough to give tattoos, but i'm inclined to think it's a relic of a past life. also worth mentioning he seems to be somewhat older, as he has gray hair... did he not stop aging as the women have, or was he, again, influenced by miranda as an adult?

karl's in a similar boat with his age, but there's that damn wiki sentence that's throwing me off - kidnapped as a child. was the cadou introduced to his body when he was a boy? did miranda really try her often-lethal experiments on children? has he aged normally, then? we'll guess he's late 40s - was he born in the early 70s, and he really is alcina's little brother? and was he the only one of the lords subjected to that specific hell? taken and experimented on as a child, whereas the other three were willing adults?

despite my confusion over the origin of the kidnapped child concept, this theory does make sense. it especially explains his hatred towards her.

but it also opens up another can of worms. now im thinkin... how awfully convenient that there were four notable families in the area who's most recent descendants happened to be able to semi-successfully bond with the cadou. it makes me wonder.. aside from alcina, and maybe donna as well (namely bc of the gravestone by her home), did the lords actually hail from the families they represent? is it possible miranda gifted moreau and heisenberg the last names of long-gone families who'd once been prevalent in their region, along with the reservoir and factory, respectively, both families had once presided over?

either way, whether descended from locals or outsiders brought in - where are their families? donna's parents are dead, okay... how about the rest of them? surely all four of them don't have absolutely no family at all. which, in line with what i just talked about... is it possible heisenberg was taken from his family as a kid? i doubt miranda would have the decency to exclusively seek out orphans.

then there's his line about "she took me. took us." (which also lends to the concept of him being a child when he got dragged into things, as adults are less often "taken".) i get the feeling 'us' doesn't mean the other lords, whom he disdains. maybe, karl was abducted with one or more biological family members, and the cadou experiments proved fatal with them? it could further explain why he hates miranda so damn much, and the way he's the only one who understands that she doesn't truly care for them. the others only saw what she had "gifted" them - whereas, perhaps very early on, karl lost something precious to him at the hands of miranda. maybe he was the first to see her monstrous side.

and if miranda did sort of raise him, where'd he learn the engineering? donna's an amateur botanist, alcina paints & had enough knowledge of science to successfully make her daughters, and moreau's an amateur (and unsuccessful) scientist as well... did heisenberg teach himself, like the others seemingly taught themselves about their hobbies? or maybe did miranda, brilliant in her own right, teach him in an attempt to bond? would she care enough to? doubtful, but maybe she felt compelled to, in an attempt to win him back, after killing off that hypothetical family member (or members?).

there's so many loose ends... it's both frustrating, and incredibly stimulating. i love puzzles lol

[booklindworm]

A rant against Karen Traviss' understanding of history and her FAQ answers

Did you base the Mandalorians on the Spartans?

<cite> No. I didn't. </cite> Fair enough.

<cite> I really wish history was taught properly - okay, taught at all - in schools these days, because history is the big storehouse that I plunder for fiction. It breaks my heart to hear from young readers who have no concept even of recent history - the last fifty years - and so can't see the parallels in my books. You don't have to be a historian to read my novels, but you'll get a lot more out of them if you explore history just a little more. Watch a history channel. Read a few books. Visit some museums. Because history is not "then" - it's "now." Everything we experience today is the product of what's happened before. </cite> Yeah, I do to. Please, Ms Traviss, go on, read some books. Might do you some good. And don't just trust the history channels. Their ideas about fact-checking differ wildly.

<cite> But back to Mandos. Not every military society is based on Sparta, strange as that may seem. In fact, the Mandos don't have much in common with the real Spartans at all. </cite> You mean apart from the absolute obsession with the military ["Agoge" by Stephen Hodkinson], fearsome reputation ["A Historical Commentary on Thucydides" by David Cartwright], their general-king ["Sparta" by Marcus Niebuhr Tod], the fact that they practically acted as mercenaries (like Clearch/Κλέαρχος), or the hyper-confidence ("the city is well-fortified that has a wall of men instead of brick" [Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus])...

<cite> A slightly anarchic, non-centralized, fightin' people? Sounded pretty Celtic to me. Since I went down that path, I've learned more about the Celts (especially the Picts), and the more I learn, the more I realise what a dead ringer for Mandos they are. But more of how that happened later... </cite>

The Celtic people are more than one people, more than one culture. Celtic is a language-family! In the last millennium BC nearly every European ethnic group was in some ways Celtic, and they were not one. Later, after the Germanic tribes (also not one people, or a singular group) moved westwards, the Celtic cultures were still counted in the hundreds. Not only Scotland was Celtic! Nearly all of Western Europe was (apart from the Greek and Phoenician settlers on the Mediterranean coasts). The word “Celts” was written down for the first time by Greek authors who later also used the word “Galatians”. The Romans called these people “Gauls”, and this word was used to describe a specific area, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, the Cévennes and the Rhine: “Gaul”. So the Celts, the Galatians and the Gauls were all part of the same Celtic civilisation. "Celts, a name applied by ancient writers to a population group occupying lands mainly north of the Mediterranean region from Galicia in the west to Galatia in the east [] Their unity is recognizable by common speech and common artistic traditions" [Waldman & Mason 2006] Mirobrigenses qui Celtici cognominantur. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History; example: C(AIUS) PORCIUS SEVERUS MIROBRIGEN(SIS) CELT(ICUS) -> not just one culture "Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and northern Spain to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia and were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, and Celtiberians. Linguistically they survive in the modern Celtic speakers of Ireland, Highland Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Brittany." [Celtic Culture: a historical encyclopedia. by John Koch] "[] the individual CELTIC COUNTRIES and their languages, []" James, Simon (1999). The Atlantic Celts – Ancient People Or Modern Invention. University of Wisconsin Press. "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae live, another in which the Aquitani live, and the third are those who in their own tongue are called Celtae, in our language Galli." [Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico] <= I had to translate that in school. It's tedious political propaganda. Read also the Comentarii and maybe the paper "Caesar's perception of Gallic social structures" that can be found in "Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State," Cambridge University Press. The Celtic tribes and nations were diverse. They were pretty organized, with an academic system, roads, trade, and laws. They were not anarchic in any way. They were not warriors - they were mostly farmers. The Celts were first and foremost farmers and livestock breeders

The basic economy of the Celts was mixed farming, and, except in times of unrest, single farmsteads were usual. Owing to the wide variations in terrain and climate, cattle raising was more important than cereal cultivation in some regions.

Suetonius addressing his legionaries said "They are not soldiers—they're not even properly equipped. We've beaten them before." [not entirely sure, but I think that was in Tacitus' Annals]

Regarding the Picts, in particular, which part of their history is "anarchic"? Dál Riata? the Kingdom of Alba? Or are you referring to the warriors that inspired the Hadrian's Wall? Because no one really knows in our days who the fuck they were. The Picts’ name first appears in 297 AD. That is later. <cite> Celts are a good fit with the kind of indomitable, you-can't-kill-'em-off vibe of the Mandos. Reviled by Rome as ignorant savages with no culture or science, and only fit for slaughter or conquest, the Celts were in fact much more civilized than Rome even by modern standards. </cite> That's how the Romans looked at pretty much every culture that wasn't Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Egyptian, or from Mesopotamia (read, if you want, anything Roman or Greek about the Skyths, the Huns, Vandals, Garamantes...).

<cite> They also kicked Roman arse on the battlefield, and were very hard to keep in line, so Rome did what all lying, greedy superpowers do when challenged: they demonized and dehumanized the enemy. (They still used them in their army, of course, but that's only to be expected.) </cite> They were hard to keep in line, but they most definitely did not kick Roman arse on the battlefield. Roman arse was kicked along the borders of the Roman Empire, such as the Rhine, the Danube, the Atlas mountains, etc. And mostly by actually badly organized, slightly anarchic groups, such as the Goths or the Huns (BTW the Huns were not a Germanic people, even though early 20th century British propaganda likes to say so). Though they were also decisively stopped by the Parthians. Who were very organized. Ah well. <cite> While Rome was still leaving its unwanted babies to die on rubbish dumps - a perfectly acceptable form of family planning to this "civilisation" - and keeping women as chattels devoid of rights, the barbarian Celts had a long-standing legal system that not only gave women what we would think of as equal rights, but also protected the rights of the elderly, children, and the disabled. They had a road network across Europe and worldwide trade long before the Romans ever got their act together. And their science - well, their astronomical calculations were so sophisticated that it takes computers to do the same stuff today. </cite> See? You even say yourself that they weren't actually anarchic. Also you're not completely right: 1. women (of most Celtic cultures, with one notable exception being the Irish) were not allowed to become druids, e.g. scientists, physicians, priests, or any other kind of academics, so they did not have equal rights. Also, as in other Indo-European systems, the family was patriarchal. 2. the roads they had were more like paths, and did not span the entirety of Europe; the old roads that are still in use are nearly all of them Roman. Had the Celtic inhabitants of Gallia or Britannia built comparable roads, why would the Romans have invested in building a new system on top? 3. world-wide? Yeah, right. They traded with those who traded with others and so were able to trade with most of southern Eurasia and northern Africa, as well as few northern parts (Balticum, Rus), but that's (surprise) not the whole world. 4. most people use computers for those calculations you mention because its easier. It's not necessary. I can do those calculations - give me some time to study astronomy (I'm a math major, not physics) and some pencils and paper. 5. and - I nearly forgot - the kids didn't die. That was a polite fiction. The harsh truth is that most Roman slaves were Romans... <cite> So - not barbarians. Just a threat to the empire, a culture that wouldn't let the Pax Romana roll over it without a fight. (Except the French tribes, who did roll over, and were regarded by the Germanic Celts [...]) </cite> WTF Germanic Celts? What are you smoking, woman? Isn't it enough that you put every culture speaking a language from the Celtic family in one pot and act as if they were one people, now you have to mix in a different language-family as well? Shall we continue that trend? What about the Mongolian Celts, are they, too, proof that the Celts were badass warriors? I think at this point I just lost all leftover trust in your so-called knowledge. <cite> [...] as being as bad as the Romans. Suck on that, Asterix... </cite> Asterix was definitely a Celt, and unlike the British Celts, he was not a citizen of the Roman Empire.

<cite> Broad brush-stroke time; Celts were not a centralized society but more a network of townships and tribes, a loose alliance of clans who had their own internal spats, but when faced with some uppity outsider would come together to drive off the common threat. </cite> They might have tried, but they didn't. The first and only time a Celtic people really managed to drive off some uppity outsider would be 1922 following the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921*. The fact that France, Spain, Portugal speak Romance languages and the British (or Irish) Isles nearly uniformly speak English should be proof enough.

*Unless you count Asterix. <cite> You couldn't defeat them by cutting off the head. There was no head to cut off. </cite> You mean unlike Boudica and Vercingetorix. Oh wait. Tacitus, in his Annals, said that Boudica's last fight cost 80,000 Britons and 400 Romans their lives. He was probably exaggerating. But it definitely stopped much of the British resistance in its tracks. <cite> To the centralized, formal, rather bureaucratic Romans, for whom the city of Rome was the focus of the whole empire, this was a big does-not-compute. The Celts were everything they didn't understand. And we fear what we don't understand, and we kill what we fear. </cite> While that is totally true, it's also completely off the mark. The Romans demonized the druids, not every Celt, and they were afraid of what was basically an academic network. That had nothing to do with war. <cite> Anyway, Mandos....once I took a single concept - in this case, the idea of clans that operated on a loose alliance system, like the Celts - the rest grew organically. I didn't plan it out in detail from the start. </cite> That's really obvious. Maybe looking at some numbers and remembering that you weren't planning a small, local, rural, medieval community would have helped, too. I mean lets have a look at, say, Scotland (since you specifically mentioned the Picts): they still have less than 6 mio. people all together, and that's today. Mandalore is a sector. A sector of Outer Space with at least 2000 inhabited planets. How do you think that translates? It doesn't. <cite> I just asked myself what a culture of nomadic warriors would value, how they would need to operate to survive, and it all grew inexorably by logical steps. The fact that Mandos ended up as very much like the Celts is proof that the technique of evolving a character or species - find the niche, then work out what fits it - works every time. It creates something very realistic, because that's how real people and real societies develop. </cite> Celtic people were usually not nomadic! And, once again, non of them were predominantly warriors! It's really hard to be a nomadic farmer. I believe the biggest mistake you made, Ms Traviss, is mixing up the Iron Age (and earlier) tribes that did indeed sack Rome and parts of Greece, and that one day would become the people the Romans conquered. And apart from the Picts they really were conquered. <cite> So all I can say about Mandos and Spartans is that the average Mando would probably tell a Spartan to go and put some clothes on, and stop looking like such a big jessie. </cite>

I'd really like to see a Mando – or anyone – wearing full plate without modern or Star Wars technology in Greece. Happy heatstroke. There is a reason they didn't wear a lot (look up the Battle of Hattîn, where crusaders who didn't wear full helmets and wore chainmail* still suffered badly from heat exhaustion). [Nicolle, David (1993), Hattin 1187: Saladin's Greatest Victory] *chainmail apparently can work like a heatsink CONCLUSION You're wrong. And I felt offended by your FAQ answers. QUESTION You're English. You're from England. A group - a nation - that was historically so warlike and so successful that by now we all speak English. A nation that definitely kicked arse against any Celtic nation trying to go against them (until 1921, and they really tried anyway). A nation that had arguably the largest Empire in history. A nation that still is barbaric and warlike enough that a lost football game has people honestly fearing for their lives.

Also, a Germanic group, since you seem to have trouble keeping language-families and cultures apart. If we were to talk about the family, we could add on the current most aggressively attacking nation (USA) plus the former most aggressively attacking nations (the second and third German Reich), also the people who killed off the Roman Empire for good (the Goths and Visigoth), the original berserkers (the Vikings) and claim at the very least the start of BOTH WORLD WARS. Why did you look further?

Some other sources:

Histoire de la vie privée by Georges Duby and Philippe Ariès, the first book  (about the antiquity) I read it translated, my French is ... bad to non-existent

The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle That Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire  (about the Huns) by Alessandro Barbero

If you speak Dutch or German, you might try

Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien

Janssens, Ugo, De Oude Belgen. Geschiedenis, leefgewoontes, mythe en werkelijkheid van de Keltische stammen. Uitgeverij The House of Books

DISCLAIMER

I’m angry and I wrote this down in one session and thus probably made some mistakes. I’m sorry. Or maybe I’m not sorry. I’m still angry. She can’t know who reads her FAQ and at least two of her answers (on her professional website) were offensive to the reader.

[theanimeview]

My Nitpick Issue with Sherlock in Moriarty the Patriot

By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting​

It may surprise some of you to know that I have degrees in book reading and writing. While earning those degrees I studied one specific time period more than the others--that being British Literature from late-17th/18th century through the early 20th century. This is to say that it is a time period I know a little more about than you might think. And early 1900s is probably my favorite period out of that timeline, particularly England under Victoria’s rule. 

And, perhaps, because of this strange obsession I have with the period, I presently have a small bone to pick over Moriarty the Patriot. 

It’s not the minor inaccuracies of the clothes, nor the adaptation of character designs. It’s not even the adjustment to social tendencies depicted that are more Japanese than British-English of any period thus far either--because those kinds of things happen frequently in adaptations. And it's not Moriarty or his backstory too! Because, again, this is an adaptation, and liberties will be taken to fit the new story (besides, even in the original works by Doyle the man’s backstory was inconsistent). 

My issue is with the character of Sherlock and his supposed “deductions.” Well, maybe more accurately it's with the writing of Sherlock. 

You see, Sherlock is almost always introduced the same way in an adaptation. He makes a judgment about someone (usually about Watson or the Watson stand-in) and then proves it using his observational skills. This introduction is important because it clarifies that the world of the characters is one based on where common sense and science not only work but make sense. His deductions are logical and based on some semblance of rationality. Here is an excerpt from the original novel: 

“I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, `Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' 

How does this prove we are in a world where common sense and logic works? Well, because he didn’t pull any of these deductions from thin air. He just used his eyes and common knowledge to make a quick judgment. 

In the example above, everything that Sherlock assumes is true and based on reasonable assumptions about the time period and about what he can observe of the person before him. 

The tan of Watson’s skin is something he notes because London is usually dark and wet around this season, so you’re unlikely to get a tan. The way the man walks and stands is also a thing he can observe, and fresh military men walk very differently from the average citizen or gentleman. These two observations, coupled with noticeable injury and limp could lead one to think that maybe he has just come back from the current war (the First Anglo-Afghan War). Of course, maybe he wasn’t injured in the war at all--maybe something else happened; however, you can make a pretty good guess that an abled bodied soldier would not be home and looking for a room in the middle of war-times if something hadn’t happened to him on the battlefield.

My point is that all of Sherlock’s deductions come from observing details, paying attention to the basics of the world (such as the ongoing war or understanding rigor mortis), and using your senses. Sure, there may be a few things the average person doesn’t know that Sherlock does, but that’s because Sherlock has studied different things and to a more serious degree. The level of understanding is different, but not impossible to achieve in one’s own time or effort. And, as another note, Sherlock is not perfectly observant all of the time. There are plenty of examples of him needing to take breaks, of him closing his eyes to block out distractions so he can better focus on what someone is saying, and of him smoking to zone out for a bit so that he can come back to a problem with fresh eyes at a later time. 

It’s absolutely vital to Sherlock’s character, and the original story, that all of the deductions are based on the “possible,” which is why the introduction of Sherlock in Episode 6 of this adaptation immediately irritated me. Here is the scene:

Side note:  I’m sorry it’s shown as a poorly made gif--I literally could not find a copy of the clip with English subtitles on YouTube so I could not include it as a video. If you want to look at it in the episode itself, it starts at about the 13:00 minute mark. EPISODE LINK)

Here is what bothers me so much. Why would a mathematician be checking to see if the staircase on a ship fits the golden ratio? More importantly, why would that in any way matter to Moriarty as a character? Based on what we’ve seen so far of this character, and we’ve had 6 and 1/2 episodes to define him so far, none of Sherlock’s statement makes sense here. 

Like, at all. (And I know that this also happens in the manga--doesn’t make sense there either.)

You know what would make sense though? For the time period and the character development we’ve seen of Moriarty thus far? A pause to consider-- and maybe even compare--staircases on the ship between the main steps for passengers and the steps for commoners or staff. 

Why would that make sense? Oh, thank you so much for asking. Time to get real nerdy here for a minute: 

Class issues were a serious problem in Victorian England (as they are now, though in a different way). These issues were not necessarily the same as depicted in the show but it was still consistently present throughout the society as a whole. (A good, short read on the subject can be found here for those of you interested: Social Life in Victorian England.)

One way that this issue came out was in the very architecture of homes. In Victorian England, nobleman homes and estates were built with main staircases, where the residents and guests walked, and servent staircases, where the staff and other temporary employees walked. The difference in these stairs was huge, as the servant staircases were basically death traps. 

In the late 1800s, a mathematician (and architect) named Peter Nickolson figured out the exact measurements that would generally ensure a comfortable and easy walk upstairs: 

BTW: Here is a great video on the subject and how they were death traps: Staircases in Victorian England

However, Nickolson’s math and designs were not used regularly in the design of houses for years to come. 

By the setting of the story, and given Moriarty’s interest in maths, his understanding of class issues, and beyond--this kind of knowledge would make far more sense than searching for the golden ratio in a man-made set of stairs. 

Moreover, the golden ratio is generally interesting to mathematicians (to my understanding) because it can be seen in nature frequently. It is a pattern found everywhere, from the way that petals grow on flowers, to how seashells form, to freaking hurricane formations! So why on Earth would Moriarty be interested in an architect's choice to use such a ration when planning a staircase? 

He wouldn’t, I believe. Nor would Sherlock generally be able to make that assumption based on his time gazing at the staircase, distance from said staircase, nor angle. 

So what can he deduce, if not that? Well, he may be able to deduce that Moriarty is a nobleman based on his attire. He may also be able to deduce that the man is a student based on age, as in an earlier episode we were told he’s quite young to be teaching in university and appears close in age to his students. Maybe he’s a student of architecture? But, if he’s a nobleman--as we suspect he is based on his attire--then it's unlikely he works a labor-intensive job or one close to it. So, he must be in academia for academic reasons such as mathematics. Physics during that time, as an academic subject, focused more on lighting, heat, electricity, magnetism, and such. And, Sherlock notes that Moriarty is specifically looking at the stairs, not the lights of the ship. 

So, BAM! I’ve deduced Moriarty is a young nobleman who is likely a student of mathematics. Perhaps he’s recently had a lesson on staircases or another algebraic concept that’s caused him to pause with momentary interest. 

It makes a heck of a lot more sense than finding a “golden ratio” in a man-planned and man-made staircase... don’t you think? And, maybe, we can even deduce that rather than a student he’s a professor who has just thought up an interesting lesson--though that would be a BIG jump from the data we’ve been provided here. 

Deductions that come from major leaps in logic make it seem like Sherlock is doing magic... and he is--because it is magical that people find it impressive or believable. It’s not. And I would argue that the original character would find it insulting based on his comments to Watson regarding being compared to other fictional detectives.

Pay in mind, I have this feeling about several adaptations, so my judgment on Moriarty the Patriot isn’t technically exclusive. It just hit me so hard in my first viewing that I felt I needed to share because generally, this issue of deductions becoming magic rather than stemming from logic doesn’t happen in the first two minutes of meeting Sherlock Holmes.

So... yeah. Thanks for coming to my absurd history/lit lesson through Moriarty the Patriot. I appreciate you sticking with me to the end and hope it was enjoyable.

You can watch the series on Funimation.com right now at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/moriarty-the-patriot 

Overall, it’s a pretty good series; although there was a lot more child-murder than I expected...

[stages-of-mania]

Lord Huron Timeline Masterpost

Disclaimer: A lot of this information is speculation and consists of a lot of theories. Feel free to take things with a grain of salt.

Lonesome Dreams: 

Setting: 19th century Wild West (some theories suggested could be the Middle East in the mid-20th century) 

Characters:

Huron (main character)

Blaquefut (Huron’s best friend)

Helena (Huron’s girlfriend)

nameless Helena’s Ex (we're gonna call him Sonny for convenience)

Story: (I’m sure that most of the songs are in chronological order from the album but a few of them I believe are flashbacks so I had to move them around.)

She lit a fire/one of the best love songs ever written: The story goes earlier in the timeline technically, as it’s flashing back to how Huron met Helena. This is how the pair met. She lit his fire to travel the world or something.

Ends of the earth: early on in Huron and Helena‘s relationship. He wants to travel the world but she doesn’t so they’re kinda like “let’s split up for a bit”

Setting sun/the most mindfucking song (yes this bonus track is played at the end of the song, but hear me out ): Sonny has noticed that Helena has found someone else. They both know that Huron is better for her, but Sonny’s still pissed so he goes full yandere and chases after Huron. This story was put at the end and made “unfinished” because Sonny will always have a vendetta while Huron’s alive.

Time to run: Huron and friends are being chased by Sonny’s goons. Blaqufut gets shot in the head while helping Huron escape.

lonesome dreams: now this is a bit of a stretch, but from this theory, LD is basically purgatory and Huron travels to it to rescue Blaqufut from death.

Ghost on the shore/best song: nothing too significant to the story, it’s just Huron talking about how he misses home/the Great Lakes

I will be back one day: again, nothing much, just Huron reminiscing over Helena in pursuit to find her.

Man who lives forever: again nothing too significant, just Huron not wanting to die.

Brother: this is possibly the aftermath of an altercation between Huron and Blaqufut that they resolve. It pretty much just reaffirms their friendship.

In the wind: this one actually occurs while Huron is still on the run but from Helena’s perspective. It’s basically her reminiscing over him. I think they put this one at the end because it’s spiritually the end of the album, as it discusses how long distances and death can stop love.

Lullaby: Huron finally makes it back to Helena. He’s a complete wreck but Helena’s just happy he’s back

Sidenotes: Lonesome dreams are a collection of stories from Jorge Ranger Johnson, a writer character that Ben made up. Because of this, some of lonesome dreams might not actually be real within the universe of Lord Huron. Or they might be real events and just happened to be written about by an author. 

Alternate theories suggest that Setting sun was actually about Huron the entire time and it did take place at the end of the album, causing Helena to find someone else and Huron to becoming a murderer. 

One last important thing, because these are stories and might not actually occur within the universe of Lord Huron, it is possible that there is no afterlife, as suggested in later albums.

Strange Trails: 

Setting:

1950s, somewhere in America.

George’s: A bar that several characters tend to spend time at (probably in reference to George Ranger Johnson)

Characters:

Frankie Lou: washed up singer who presumably had a failed romance that fucked up bad. Probably an alcoholic. Sings at George’s

Cobb Avery: zombie brought back to life out of vengeance. His family was killed because his boss gave him a piece of land on a sinkhole. leader of the “World Enders” gang. Basically a bunch of terrorists. Kills everyone from the company that sold him the house. Hangs out at George’s

Jonnie: member of the world Enders. Kind of trigger-happy in a thrill seeker. Probably one of the less malicious members of the group. Probably 19.

Buck Vernon: I also think another washed-up singer. What’s important though is that he suffers from hallucinations and is desperately trying to find the girl of his dreams.

Lily: some girl that every guy in town has the hots for. Hangs out at George’s

Jim: Lily's boyfriend. Hangs out at George’s.

Danielle: Young girl. The only child character, I’d say 11-14. Best character. You’re never too young to have an existential crisis.

Justine: not really important, presumably a writer.

Louisa: some random girl (Assuming that this theory is true, she might also be a witch and might’ve started out as an asshole, might also hang out at George’s)

There’s also some other guy but he was part of one song and it wasn’t significant so disregard him.

Story:

Love like ghosts: this is Frankie reminiscing over her failed relationship

When the night ends: Jonnie talking about appreciating the finer things in life while everything’s going to shit

Dead man’s hand/also best song: buck finds Avery presumably dead while wandering the desert. He buries him only to find out that Avery is still alive. Avery says that there’s no afterlife for him and he doesn’t want to go back in the grave. The pair become friends and go their separate ways.

Hurricane: just Johnny talking about living life on the edge

La belle fleur sauvage/the beautiful wildflower: just the lead singer gushing over Lily. The guy singing this only shows up in this song, but it’s just meant to establish that everyone has the hots for Lilly. The song could also be talking about Buck in his pursuit.

Fool for love: Buck goes to George’s to win over Lily, but Jim is already with her. Being delusional, buck tries to take on Jim (in the music video he gets Avery to fight him), he trashed the place and because of this is kicked out. He’s pretty optimistic but after this, he feels kind of defeated. (*Post-Rejection Depression Time*)

World ender: focuses on Avery‘s story. Follows him as he seeks vengeance and kills the people from the company that sold him the shitty house.

Meet me in the Woods: more of Frankie reminiscing over her failed romance

Yawning grave: (OK so this is the first big roadblock in the story, so the character that this song is about is very much left up to interpretation) I assume Avery has kind of calmed down But still intends to pursue the people that have wronged him.

Frozen Pines: (disappointingly) The only song about Danielle. Her parents were abducted by aliens in front of her. She is sort of in denial and refuses to leave where she is in the middle of the forest out of the delusion that they’ll come back. The song ends with her realizing that she has to move on as she attempts to leave the forest. (also, frozen Pines is the name of the motel so it could also just be that maybe Danielle is stuck at a motel which would honestly be kind of funny.)

Cursed/best love song ever written: Buck has found himself a new girl. However, due to previous failed romantic endeavors and hallucinations, he thinks that she’s an asshole trying to put a curse on him. (The song is presumably about Louisa. It’s entirely possible that Louisa was being manipulative but they sort things out)

Way out there: (The most difficult song to figure out) presumably about Avery. I can only best describe it as him having an existential crisis and him missing his dead family.

Louisa: after Buck was tempted to kick bricks, Louisa helped him out and gave him a newfound appreciation for life. Now they’re happy =]

Night we met: last song of Frankie reminiscing over her ex. Also, the lyric video confirms that Buck & Louisa either broke up or she was just a figment of his imagination, so uh, ya. Hopefully you weren't as emotionally invested in these characters as much as I was because that tore me a new one.

Sidenotes: this album definitely had the most interpretations. The biggest issues are the stories of yawning grave and way out there, as I am unsure that it is even about Avery. The real issue tho is the lack of songs about Danielle. Ben Come On!

There are also a couple connections between this album and the next

Vide Noir: 

Setting: 1960s. Detroit & Los Angeles. 

Background info: A drug called vide noir has recently been legalized. It’s basically just a hallucinogenic that destroys the fabric of reality, good times.

Characters:

Buck Vernon: Christ Ben just can’t seem to give this guy a break.

Lee Green: Buck’s new girl. Probably wants to be an actress or something.

Lady moonbeam: A medium/psychic. I think she’s black but it’s hard to tell because of the lighting.

Cobb Avery: Best Boy Electrician on “Products of the Universe” TV show. (only mentioned in 1 song)

Marsha Tanley & Dale Frander: “Products of the Universe” host; guy selling vide & its derivatives. (not in the songs)

Story:

Lost in time and space: Buck is upset because Lee left. He decides to chase after her nonetheless.

Never ever: Buck's spirits are lifted as he heads out to find Lee.

Ancient names: Buck goes to Lady Moonbeam For advice but she sees into the future and sees that Buck will become a drug addict. He’s in denial but she knows otherwise.

Wait by the river: just Buck talking about how you would do anything for Lee. Also reveals the potential of an altercation between the two of them, presumably the two of them having a fight before she left.

Secret of life: (OK this one’s a little hard, the singer is clearly Buck, but it’s hard to tell if he’s confronting either Lee or lady moonbeam) either way, whoever he is confronting has allegedly made a pact with Avery that will cause something bad to happen to Buck. Because of this, he downs a bottle of fukitol/vide noir.

Back from the edge: the MF dies but comes back (where have we seen that before)

Balancer's eye: Buck runs into God and is denied access to heaven. Either because he wasn’t supposed to die or maybe people who take drugs aren’t allowed in. Or God has really high standards and no one‘s allowed in (again, weird knowing that Blaqufut experienced purgatory and Avery said there’s no heaven at all)

When the night is over: realizing the effect of VN, Buck is becoming worried for Lee that she might overdose if he doesn’t find her soon enough

Moonbeam: Like with Louisa, Buck ran into a girl that saved him from a bad place. Hard to tell if it’s Lee (it likely isn’t because of later in the story)  or lady moonbeam.

Vide Noir: Buck talking about the effects of the drug.

Emerald star/The most depressing song ever written: after doing everything he can and fucking dying, Buck finally finds Lee but he is turned down as she would rather be a junkie. It’s also possible that she might die or be dying, judging by the fact that the second half of this song is just instrumental followed by a sudden halt at the end. {Yay, I get to experience “close to you” all over again}

Sidenotes: George ranger Johnson is a spiritual advisor for the show that Avery works on.

The events of the film are claimed to come at the end/after the album.

--------------------------------

All information was aggregated from the albums, interviews with Ben, music videos, articles about the film, Products of the Universe, & whatever else I could scavenge from LH’s YouTube channel.

I’d also like to give a huge thanks to the fanbase for their theories and research. It really helped out a lot piecing this all together. I had a lot of fun discussing this with fellow Wanderers and Enders and really appreciate being a part of this fanbase.

If you have any alternative theories, timelines, etc, be sure to mention them. A huge chunk of this info will probably become obsolete when the film/next album comes along so enjoy this while we can still be optimistic.

Dear Balancer help us.

[jesuisgourde]

(@officialjonlord I was going to type this earlier but my internet went kaput for a little while. Anyway, here it is!)

I don’t think it’s anything to terribly revelatory or amazing, but it’s just something I noticed while reading the Books Of Albion journals (physical and online) after reading Peter’s archived forum(s) and blog posts.

What I noticed is that Peter is more thought out in his journals, more deliberate. He seems to consider his words more and be more selective with them. Not even necessarily in terms of crossing something out and writing a different word (which he mainly seems to do while writing a descriptive/fictionalized piece or working on lyrics), but also just even when he writes about what he’s done or about how he’s feeling. Even his more random or stream-of-consciousness style entries seem to be considering how various descriptions or visuals go together or paint a scene exactly. Since the scans both physically published and online were likely edited or at least reviewed/vetted before they were posted, I’m sure there are plenty of entries that we’re not privvy to, but the emotional entries that we do get to see seem to hold back or to be slightly more self-edited.

Compare that to the entries posted on the forums and blogs, and we see much more unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness style writing from Peter. There is definitely a reason for that: typing is often much faster than handwriting and therefore it’s easier to ramble without considering what you’re putting down. But I think it’s interesting because the displays of more intense or descriptive emotion come from the online posts rather than the journal entries. Which, again, makes sense due to the ability to just type quickly, heedless of typos or run-on sentences or the connection between descriptions. Which gives us some very poetic entries.

Peter’s poetry in the journals is often more classical-sounding, and you can see him imitating or at least being influenced by 19th and early 20th century poets and authors. His poetry and rambling on the forums are a lot less imitation and a lot more just unfiltered streams of description or narration or poetry.

Part of this I think somewhat has to do with age as well. From Albion To Shangri-La is a book of journal entries heavily edited by a stranger (rather than Peter) and is mostly just selections of fragments, but those fragments are stylistically closer to the stuff from the forums than from a lot of the stuff in the original published and online journals. But the journals are from the early days, 99-06. Albion to Shangri-La is from 08-13, and I think there’s more there of Peter just writing as himself and experimenting as himself rather than trying to emulate writers he admires.

But I do think the online entries are often more poetic than a lot of the journal entries because Peter isn’t editing himself or stopping to consider his words as much. It’s sort of a “first thought, best thought” situation. I think also since Peter kind of always intended to publish his journals, he seems to write with that intent in mind, which means he’s writing for an audience without necessarily knowing who that audience is or will be. Writing on the forums and blogs, he already has an audience, but he doesn’t need to edit himself because it’s already there. Plus, despite knowing there’s an audience, there is something sort of inherently freeing about writing to the “void” of the internet that is sort of this weirdly full emptiness you put your words into. I’m sure that had something to do with it too.

I just thought it was interesting that there was a sort of notable difference between his writings in the paper journals and his writings online. His emotional writings online are a lot more intense and free-flowing, whereas in the journals he doesn’t seem to let go as much and really rant or rave or cry out. (But, again, that could be just due to editing/vetting.) In the journals he seems to write like he’s trying to be a certain kind of author, like he’s trying to emulate the styles of the writers he really loves and admires and put his own spin on it. Which is not a bad thing! I like it! But the online entries seem much more naturally written, more “brain falling out one’s fingers and onto the page” rather than something sat down and considered.

The From Albion To Shangri-La entries (and the few typewritten poems and rambles Peter has posted on twitter etc) seem to kind of sit between the two. Which makes sense, because those are much more recent and therefore are a Peter who is maybe more comfortable and settled in to his own personal style of writing.

Anyway, that was my probably less interesting than expected thought while reading through all the journals and things!

[marzipanandminutiae]

Recently you mentioned how keeping up with fashions was a 'Respectability Thing' & fashionable vintage clothing is recent. I was wondering if this extended to other items. For example, having antiques (particularly furniture) as a status symbol. When did having a hundred-year-old chair go from, "I guess we know the last time the owner's family had money" to "what a find! This must have cost you a fortune"? I want to guess late Victorian or maybe Edwardian period. Thanks.

That’s a really interesting question! I’m not entirely sure it has gone that way, at least not as a strict linear progression. Because I think our mindset towards furniture might have gone in the opposite direction of our ideas about fashion.

Old furniture, unlike old clothing, could sometimes have something of its modern appeal well before vintage fashion hit the scene. There’s a chair currently on display at one of my museums that the owner found antiquing in Salem in the 1890s, for example.

(Yeah, antiquing existed back then. Ornate old furniture could already fetch a premium even when wearing old-fashioned clothes was a taboo sign of poverty. Go figure.)

Though furniture styles changed, it seems like well-kept pieces that were behind the times could be regarded as sort of...noble, I guess? Ancestral rather than negatively old-fashioned. So there was a bit more leeway than for clothing.

That wasn’t universal- I’ve read Edwardian books that speak disparagingly of “heavy old furniture,” and even some similar sentiments from the late Victorian era. But I feel like, in a way, they could be a bit more forgiving of outdated furniture than we are of Victwardian design elements today.

People no longer abhor ornate 19th- and early 20th-century interiors the way they did in, say, the 1950s. However, you still hear a lot of talk about “opening up the space,” and praises of “sleek, modern design.” I mean, look at our appliances- the more like smooth, featureless shapes they look, the better they appear to sell. Look at the IKEA aesthetic, with all its blond wood and smooth surfaces. Look at shabby chic, one of the few ways old furniture can weasel its way into the houses of the lifestyle influencer set.

My first instinct is to be an emotional, bitter snark monster and say this all started “when stark geometric nonsense with no ornamentation first got popular, ie the 1920s.” Blame the 1920s is one of my core life philosophies. But that’s not quite true, I must admit. For one thing, a lot of furniture being made in the ‘20s still looked fancy and highly decorated. For another, the idea of “ugly old furniture” predates the Jazz Age, as I previously mentioned.

Honestly I feel lke it really started when the majority of our furniture began to look NOTHING like the majority of earlier styles.

Like, if a chair from 1865 has clawed feet, and in 1900 you buy a piano stool with clawed feet, you’re not going to consider clawed feet ugly. You might, I imagine, be inclined to look more favorably upon old furniture because a lot of it isn’t THAT different from what you’re used to. You can probably tell the difference, but it isn’t quite as jarring as like...the contrast between my house’s modern kitchen chairs and the Victorian parlor chair in my room (AKA “The Most Objectively Comfy Chair Ever Don’t @ Me You’re All Wrong And Your Squishy Unsupportive Chairs Should Feel Bad”). 

So honestly I might pin this one on the 1950s. It was more like a slow creep throughout the first half of the 20th century, but I’m still composing my Ouija board constructive criticism of The Haunting of Hill House where I make Shirley Jackson confess that she just hated Victorian architecture, so....let’s oversimplify!

Hope this was at all coherent and helpful. I would edit it more, but I have to finish getting ready for work.

[thefudge]

Do you have any Romanian (language or just content-wise) media recs? Particularly novels and poetry but really any must-sees/must-reads are welcome!

uuuu! 

my brain is too fried right now to do any kind of exhaustive list so i’m gonna rec a few things that i know you could get your hands on/available in translation:

for two thousand years, by mihail sebastian - really heartbreaking yet also lucid, adventurous and darkly humorous memoir of a Jewish writer in his youth at the height of nazism in romania (there’s even a Penguin classic of it)

diary of a short-sighted adolescent by mircea eliade - a funny and bittersweet bildungsroman about a bookish teenager who wants to read everything now and be the cleverest person alive while also struggling with being super lazy and unmotivated because he’s young and restless, it’s very #relatable. but it’s also fascinating to read this in opposition with “for two thousand years” because eliade entertained legionnaire nazi sympathies at one point. (also, you should check out his novellas too, especially the fantastic ones)

anything you can find in translation by gabriela adamesteanu - just lovely, delicate prose about growing up, being an adult, inhabiting your body and your feelings in an oppressive world 

the hatchet by mihail sadoveanu (apparently, there is a translation) - a lot of people give this novel flak, mostly because we had to read it in high school, but it’s a great and deceptively simple little novel that says a lot more about people than it cares to admit. the action takes you through several villages in the East-Carpathians, where a peasant woman goes in search of her missing husband. it’s a fascinating mixture of crime and folklore and mythology. 

any novella by costache negruzzi, but especially “alexandru lapusneanu”, another classic we had to read in school and which gets a lot of flak. it’s so bonkers and #quality-trash. let’s just say there’s a scene where the power-hungry voievod/prince lapusneanu enacts a red-wedding situation and builds a pyramid of freshly severed heads to impress his lady wife *swoon* 

the forest of the hanged by liviu rebreanu - i know people argue this isn’t his best novel, but it’s got the most heart. it’s the story of a soldier/philosopher in WW1 who falls in love with people again. that’s it. he falls in love with people, and the war and everything in between doesn’t matter anymore. or it matters only as it pertains to people, and people alone. 

gallants of the old court by mateiu caragiale - a bizarre gem of early 20th century Romanian nightlife, a wonderful, orgiastic fugue, feverish and infuriating. it’s mostly about rich men and social-climbers getting into existential trouble, but also into real trouble. normally, because the action takes place right before WW1, this would signify the end of an era. but we don’t really have a beginning or end. we are part-balkan, part-french imitators, part-whatever-sticks. nothing moves us, and everything does. and that’s why it’s a sort of love/hate letter to romanians 

in terms of poetry, some personal faves:  nichita stanescu, ana blandiana, monica pillat, marin sorescu,  a.e. baconsky, lucian blaga, emil brumaru, nora iuga, marta petreu, nina cassian. and yes, mihai eminescu, our national poet, though i’m often in two minds about him.  

poetry in translation is really hit and miss because of the “untranslatable”, so here’s two lines from a poem by nina cassian, because i want to show you what i mean:

            De când m-ai părăsit mă fac tot mai frumoasă             ca hoitul luminând în întuneric. 

this roughly and poetically translates to:

          Since you left me I’ve grown more beautiful

           like the corpse lighting the dark 

and this is sort of lovely on its own, but you’d need to know and hear and taste the word “hoit” in romanian to really feel the abjectness, because “hoit” is a smelly, ugly yet also alluring, already decomposing version of “cadavru” aka cadaver/corpse. also “ mă fac tot mai frumoasă” cannot be accurately summed up in “i’ve grown more beautiful”. a literal translation would be “I make myself more beautiful”. in romanian, this is obviously idiomatic and not literal. and yet, these strange self-reflexive valences make these lines strong and eerie, as if the speaker were authoring her beauty, shaping it out of clay and darkness and “hoit”,  like a butterfly cracking the corpse’s shell to get out, but also retaining some of its mesmerizing stench. why did i pause to do a close-reading of romanian poetry??? anyway, you catch my drift

in terms of movies, a recent one i really loved was sierranevada by cristi puiu, which is a neurotic family drama that drains you but also lifts you up 

and yeah, the hype is real, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days by cristi mungiu really is that good (about two young women trying to get an illegal abortion in communist romania. it won the palme d’or for very legit reasons. it breaks you in small ways. the very last shot of the film you’ll carry with you forever). i also liked graduation by cristi mungiu, where a young overachieving girl is about to graduate high school and go on to study abroad, until a terrible event unmoors both her and her family. the movie turns almost hallucinatory at one point, filled with ambiguity and a kind of sleep-walking quality 

tales from the golden age by cristi mungiu (him again!) is also fantastic for anyone who wants to get a taste of communist romania and the sad-funny absurdities of everyday life. this movie is split in 2 parts and the format is that of an anthology, almost like watching several short films at once. and there is one film in the anthology that always turns me inside out, and it’s really silly, it’s this bonnie and clyde type story about this girl and boy who meet at a party and devise an ingenious get-rich scam and just run around a few neighborhoods trying to put it into practice and it’s...the sweetest, most incomplete thing. there is such a strange, lovely connection there that never gets realized, and there is a MOMENT between them where he helps her step down from this ledge and he holds her briefly to him and i remember being in the cinema and thinking THIS, this is THE MOMENT where i felt these people were real. it was such an honest, lovely moment. like the equivalent of this song. ANYWAY, why am i rambling so much??? this ask was supposed to be SHORT. 

aferim! by radu jude is also a really neat movie and provides a look into the historical romanian/rroma relationship and why it’s so messed up, yet also so organic

the death of mr. lazarescu by cristi puiu is also a great little film about a man who gets sick and goes to the hospital. and...dies, as you can tell from the title. on the surface, he dies because of institutional ineptness and a broken healthcare system. at a deeper level, he dies because we no longer know how to help people. various hospital staff in the film do try to help him and fail for various stupid or quietly heartbreaking reasons. it’s a movie about being physically unable to care. there’s indifference, sure, but also this great exhaustion of the human spirit. but the movie is also darkly funny. might not be a great pandemic watch, but then again it might be exactly what you need 

there are soooo many other classics in terms of books (morometii by marin preda, for instance, about a patriarch in a small village in the South who slowly realizes the world he used to live in doesn’t have room for him anymore, and maybe it never had) but i’m gonna end on a quote from ion creanga, one of the most cryptic classics of romanian lit:

“Şi eu eram vesel ca vremea cea mai bună şi şturlubatic şi copilăros ca vântul în tulburea sa”

my translation: “and I was cheerful like the best weather and frolicsome and childish like the wind in its cloudiness” 

and again, the words in romanian and their particular sound and bite (”şturlubatic”, “tulburea”) immediately take me elsewhere. creanga writes about childhood, but it’s never really childhood. he writes as an adult who, in my opinion, was never really a child, but a weird, small god of the land. i mean the word “tulburea” can mean both “turmoil” and “muddiness”. the wind can be anguished, but also just a little cloudy, just a little hazy, shrinking its agony, howling it in the child. it’s eerie and gorgeous. so, that’s what he does: creanga writes about children as if they were wind-like spirits. he writes stories about devils and the peasants who trick them and school books filled with spit and flies, and warm eggs stolen from nests and fairy-tales of a world that is buried somewhere inside us, but not too deep, things hidden under our clothes or nails or even in our hair. and it’s all so physical and convoluted, just like his prose. and i don’t think anyone will ever make sense of him and that’s what makes him so discombobulatingly great.

anyway, this was supposed to be...like, really short! and not gassy! i’m sorry. i love waxing about all this gay stuff. i’m so gay about it. 

realistically tho, the nearest thing you’ll find in your local bookshop is probably books by famous ‘theater of the absurd’ playwright, eugen ionesco, or novels in translation by contemporary author mircea cartarescu. both are pretty good, so go for it! (if you want to start small, i’d recommend REM by mircea cartarescu, because it’s so trippy and meta and captures that summer holiday eeriness so well. it goes well with this romanian song sung in english)

okay byeeeee 

[yossariandawn]

the texas chainsaw massacre, the ring, silence of the lambs, saw, & night of the living dead!!

the texas chainsaw massacre: what’s ur favorite food? Hmm.. a tough one right out the gate! lol I have a deep, unwavering love of tacos. I'm pretty sure I could eat tacos every day without getting sick of them. For a runner up: fajitas, but they do come with more downsides in the expense and prep categories. But if we're talking about food as less of a meal and more of a base ingredient, potatoes are where it's at for me.

the ring: if u could visit/live anywhere in the world, where would u? I do like where I live, so I'll go with visit: Ireland (I have some fairly recent ancestors that came over from there in the early 20th century) Australia (for the wildlife) and maybe for a more plausible roadtrip either the east coast of the United States for the ocean or west for the mountains? South for friendship purposes lol. But I've got no interest in any major city touring.

silence of the lambs: what’s something ur looking forward to? My aunt moving into her new apartment. She's been staying with me since a double whammy of post shoulder surgery + the end of a lease, and it has been an experience that I think we are all looking forward to ending haha. Just waiting on the final bit of paperwork to come in the mail, fingers crossed/pray to whatever god y'all believe in that it shows up on Monday.

saw: give a controversial opinion >:3 OH, YOU. Such a troublemaker 🤣 You probably already know most of my opinions, controversial or not, but here's my attempt at a new one: I think people on here vastly underestimate just how bad Tumblr is as a primary source of information. WHICH, isn't what it's designed for, to be fair! But as bad as other social media sites are at encouraging false, misleading, or clickbait-ey headlines with no real news to circulate, I think a lot of people don't realize those flaws very much exist here too, and they are more included to trust things they see since it feels like it's coming from our community.

Just like everyone should always be wary of corporations and people in power trying to present the news and events in the world in a way that benefits them, we should also be wary of the often emotionally driven circulation of facts from our peers too. And posts on here discourage some really important safeguards like easily accessible updates or corrections- the way each post creates a separate spreadable copy post means that even attempted updates/corrections will often never be seen. Heck, half the time the comments on a post include some potentially vital missing piece that are just... invisible to most people!

I think independent and diverse journalism and perspectives and experiences are absolutely vital to discovering what is true and what is false and what is still unknown. But personally, I find Tumblr most effective as an alert to what people are talking about, be it an often scarily fast alert lol. But I always try and go offsite and look into things more afterwards, even for something as small and potentially low stakes as a helpful tip about where to find a more ethical product or company. This includes life hack stuff too, cause some of those can seem harmless but be actively dangerous. And that's my rant about how important and powerful and easily muddled information is for the day lol.

night of the living dead: what’s ur fav hobby? Probably editing, if we're talking a hobby where I produce something that can be observed lol. I really like puzzles though, and thinking through things, and just finding out new stuff and how things fit with each other.

Thank you for asking me! You continue to rock, as always 💖💖💖 horror movie asks found here!