#exploring the world of english

[illustratus]

Isolation: The Mayflower becalmed on a moonlit night by Montague Dawson

[15-lizards]

I know you’re mostly vibing with Dune right now, and I’m here for that, BUT I’ve been really into traditional Circassian fashion lately, and it made me think of you because I instantly wanted to know where you would place it in ASOIAF. I was thinking it should be nearer to Dorne than the North and nearer to Essos than the West because of the cultural ties to the Turkish style of Northern Donishfolx and the Mongolian horse lords of the Dothraki but I’m not sure where that really belongs then. I love the women’s dresses and the sort of militarized style, it’s very unlike GoT show-style but feels very in keeping with the idea that these tiny houses make war on each other like a spring activity rather than the way we think of total war in the modern era and fashion has slid in to be like “okay but let’s make it pretty”. Does any of that track at all?

Eurasian/west Asian fashion is criminally underutilized in fantasy settings but ☝️I have always been a firm believer in it

I’ve always seen it as belong in the north of Dorne. Where it’s not as hot as the southern reaches, so heavier fabrics and more layers are commonly seen, but still hotter than the stormlands and the reach, meaning that clothing is looser and offers more freedom of movement and airflow. Headwraps and veils being more frequently used for sun/wind protection than just fashion or modesty. Also finely wrought and intricate golden jewelry I tend to associate with Dorne. The style itself also feels like a organic blend of the traditional clothing of both Western European and the Near East, which contributes to my headcanon of this type of fashion being common on the border and in the marches. So in short this is what I think the Daynes wear 🔮💫

[maihonhassan]

I really felt it when Rumi wrote:

"Come on sweetheart let’s adore one another before there is no more of you and me."

“Rumi, Fountain of Fire” Burning Gate Press, 1994.

[noirshitsuji]

every once in a while I will see this take in the bb fandom that like 'nothing has felt like Black Butler since X arc' (usually Noah's Arc Circus) which I find. very interesting. I think the implication is usually that nothing has felt as like serious or gritty or psychological thriller-y or devastating, or that somehow the vibe has gone weird. and like, this is not to diss anyone's interpretation. but also.

this is a story where one moment the main boy character is wearing a dress and being accosted by a pedophile nobleman and the next he's nearly been human trafficked. and then it turns out his aunt is jack the ripper and she dies at the hand of her grim reaper ally who decides to turn on her for being unable to kill her nephew. cue flashback to the extremely tragic life she's had and the complicated feelings she has about said nephew as a result, although ultimately her love for her sister, that she seems in him, means that she cannot slaughter him as she has so many others.

and then next arc, the culmination of an indian prince's coming of age where he's processing his loneliness and neglected upbringing comes during a contest where people are trying to obtain the royal warrant for curry. and the main character wins it by inventing the curry bun, a japanese dish, in Victorian England, after the elderly queen rides in on a horse wearing sunglasses and declares him a winner.

like. idk what to tell you, like yes the Circus Arc was very dark and all but are we really going to pretend that the boy band thing during the blue cult arc was out of left field??? for the person that did pride and prejudice and zombies on the titanic?? like this has always been the type of story this is wdym-

[vingilotes]

Remember this post? Yea, so... I actually did not play a lot in that save cause I was way to busy with work and all (still kinda am but lol who cares).

But!!!!!! In the last few weeks I got the URGE to play some stardew, so I started my save again.

And because I really hate myself, I just went and did the seasonal portraits for Ophelia. lol

I also fixed the color scheme of the OG portrait to fit in better with Nyapu's palette lol

I even did a flower dance portrait too! (Inspired by Hamlet's Ophelia)

A bit more about Ophelia and the process of drawing under the cut.

Since they are quite small (64p), I did this all surprisingly fast. I am thankful for it because I am way too impatient and lazy. I have a sketch for the marriage portrait but when the time comes I'll finish it.

About Ophelia, welll... she is a kind girl who always wanted to be a musical theatre actress, she managed to get into an acting school but did not have luck with her career. She also had a toxic relationship that made her stop chasing her dreams. Because she needed a job, she went to work for joja but soon got tired of it. The farm is an opportunity for her to take control of her life and find new dreams!

She likes reading, singing and drinking a bit of wine in calm nights. She is quite energetic and can be really forgetful sometimes.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

2 things ive learnt learning french:

i know a LOT of english words

i use a lot of them wrong

[quenthel]

ok to be fair... i love wrathfinder like 90% bc i played it together w my friends on discord... experienced the whole game w them and we explored it etc... nobody played this game also back then it felt like and the wikis were empty so it was just us gathering knowledge it felt like... incredibly special space in my heart for that game for that experience

[ren-or-rin]

tumblr is the act of spitting pseudo-profound words on a page that invoke both nihilism and optimism without any right to assert such things.

and i fucking love it. because one day, someone's gonna see a line in your borderline shitpost and it's going to be the most impactful thing that they've ever read and shape how they see the world just a little.

[throesti]

Earth C AU where they didn’t actually win at the end and the whole post-game environment is manifested subconsciously by Jake's Hope powers wandavision style (that's why Jane's dad didn't die even though he's a Guardian technically and in-game they're prone to dying)

[deathsmallcaps]

Replying to tags but then I ran out of room and I think i was if not cooking then at least microwaving

#dude when I was in 6th grade I read #the veldt #and at the time it disgusted and genuinely scared me because I was #just so surprised that people - children! - could be raised to be so heartless #idk if I read it for the first time as a 23 year old it would scare me so much #but goddamn

#I think we're both people who are *at least* good at literacy but we're both a little too STEMmy #to look at it the way some English teachers want us to? #like they want people to go from 'damn that's fucked up → what themes are the authors trying to explore here → what about the world #made them think of that and perhaps what are they trying to get us to consider and think about and perhaps change' #obviously not all writing is a fable with a moral at the end #but a lot of good writing has some sort of central belief that it wants the reader to consider

#(I struggle in creating that with my fiction ugh and I think a lot of booktok books do too and it bugs me that we have that connection)

#but anyway #I think you and I'd first reactions are like #’that's horrible → how can we prevent that specific problem from occurring again' #like take the lottery. my (and maybe your?) first reaction is like 'that's horrible → they should ban the lottery' #but the English teacher is going to want us to think 'oh gee okay so this is a commentary on traditions. why would this tradition be started #/necessary? does the lottery reflect the overall morals and sensibilities of the overall society (aka fond of the death penalty etc). #what sort of tradition might this mirror today? connecting to historical events and the fact that the person stoned and the author were #women. aka the gender commonly stoned for witchcraft in New England #do you think that's related?' etc etc etc wrapped in metaphors and shit. and tbh that's how I learned a lot of my religious and political #philosophy as well as history. I really like Thomas swift's 'a modest proposal' (satire) for that reason.

but that was NOT my initial #thought process for English class. I had to be heavily trained into thinking that way and often my first instinct is to not engage with the #metaphor an just go straight to the logic/sensible answer. blah blah blah. I really respect lit and history teachers as a profession but boy #do I not want to teach it because I would be so slack on writing the kinds of questions that would get the kids to engage with the meta. #once I got a piece I got it but it was a struggle every damn time. because I had to get over my feelings of well why didn't they just not #do that'

the biggest one I can think of is 'song of Solomon' by Toni Morrison. I think my senior AP English teacher wanted us to really #consider authors and characters of color (he was white but it was 2018-2019 aka Trump era) so he taught us othello and TM. othello is a #little easier to understand because iago is just being a little bitch about a Black foreigner getting a promotion and a hot wife and no longer being able to convince himself that he was better than Othello

But TM’s main character Milkman? Unlikeable, spoiled little shit who doesn’t give a damn that he’s the 1 percent of his marginalized community and he’s frittering his privileges away so hard that it literally induces suicidal and murderous tendencies into the people around him. Among other things.

It took me foreverrrrrr to engage with the text beyond GOD I HATE THIS GUY but once I was able to examine his psychology and the mean flip side of ‘if you want to fly, you have to get rid of earthly attachments’, which he does at the end of the story.

Was it a chore? Absolutely. But have I ever forgotten the story or the literary tools it gave me? No.

Maybe I’m just speaking for myself in this longass response - you and I usually talk animals and men not books 😅 - but yeah every English class is full of these annoying stories that are meant to rattle one’s brain and I REALLY avoid rattling lmao. Tbqh again I respect lot classes but I’m glad they’re over lmao

But anyways I listened to Levar Burton’s podcast ‘Levar Burton Reads’ from start to finish, and he once read (as a three parter) Toni Morrison’s Recitatif. It’s the story of two girls, one Black one white, who grew up around and with and against each other during the mid 1900s.

I didn’t know what the story was getting at, aside from the surface ideas of the American Civil Rights Movement and privilege and stuff. But LB usually asked questions or briefly mentioned the author’s main idea at the end. And when he did? HOLY FUCK.

If you ever decide to listen to it (I’ve never gotten my hands to a print copy so idk if they usually have some sort of author’s note at the end to ask the reader this question)(I love LB’s voice he’s a pleasure to listen to if you listen to Recitatif) please @ me and tell me if it also blew your mind and made you consider how you viewed the POV character of the story.

Because it blew my mind and made me really consider why I assumed things about the pov character. Im not going to say anything further because I feel like I’m spoiling the point but yeah.

Anyways again this could be just me but I’ve always had trouble moving on from the straight solution mindset. When I was 12 I was in a model UN and I was told to write a report about Togo and its healthcare issues. I took this to mean that I had to research the common issues there (such as unclean water and mosquito bite diseases) and then come up with solutions.

It was incredibly embarrassing to do all that and then hear every other group explain their countries healthcare issues and WHY (historically, monetarily, etc) their countries struggled with such things. And my ass went up there and talked about affordable mosquito deterrent changes to water sources and cheap water cleaning services.

I didn’t realize it then but like. It perfectly exemplified my lack of instinct to subtextually interact with instructions and prompts.

And the thing is. May the universe bless and boost the fucking lit teachers out there because my poor students are entering math class with lit skills 6 grades under where they should be and are genuinely unable to interact with straightforward STEM instructions. My college had every ed major take a ‘teaching literacy’ class and sure I passed but the thing is. I’m not really the person that’s supposed to catch these kids on that subject. I’m supposed to be a secondary math teacher. So a lot of the advice in that class simply wasn’t applicable and I wish it was!!! I’d be happy to help in that subject but also I WAS TRAINED TO BE A MATH TEACHER. AND MOST LITERACY AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY COURSES ARE NOT DESIGNED WITH STEM IN MIND. (Which is why I want to learn enough Spanish that I can teach kids learning English math as well because that’s an area that doesn’t get a lot of crossover and a lot of kids fall through).

Well this turned into a ramble goodnight lmao. I’d say this was a decently microwaved thought track lol

[shimmeringseaa]

I hate having to make a decision 😫

[illustratus]

Mayflower II on her sailing trials in the waters off Brixham, South Devon, April 1957 by Montague Dawson

[nezumasa]

This is how it feels to explain anything

[9yardsmedia]

In this heartwarming episode of No 309, we dive deep into the emotional journey of love, commitment, and the unbreakable bond of family. This story captures the essence of a young man who, despite life's challenges, finds himself deeply in love and immensely grateful for the continuous support he receives from those closest to him. His partner stands by his side with unwavering dedication, and his family’s love provides him with the strength he needs to pursue happiness and face life’s ups and downs. 👉 Subscribe to my channel to stay tuned:     As we unravel his story, we witness the true meaning of unconditional love, where trust and loyalty transcend any hardship. Through beautiful, heartfelt moments and touching dialogues, this episode highlights the importance of having a support system that lifts you up, keeps you grounded, and empowers you to become the best version of yourself. The themes of this episode resonate with viewers who understand the profound impact that love and family support can have on a person’s life. It’s a reminder that no matter where life takes us, the presence of loved ones makes every challenge manageable and every success more meaningful. Join us on No 309 as we explore these universal themes of love, trust, and the powerful influence of family. Whether you’re a fan of romantic dramas or simply in need of a heartwarming story, this episode promises to leave you feeling uplifted and inspired by the beauty of true connection. 🍁𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗸𝗙𝗹𝗶𝘅 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹🍁 Immerse yourself in the captivating world of Turkish entertainment with TurkFlix Official, your one-stop destination for enthralling Turkish series and movies! We bring the magic of Turkish storytelling to your screen, all meticulously presented with English subtitles for your viewing pleasure. Dive into heart-wrenching dramas, laugh-out-loud comedies, and pulse-pounding thrillers, all boasting rich cultural experiences and unforgettable characters. Subscribe to TurkFlix Official and unlock a treasure trove of Turkish entertainment, waiting to be discovered!

[muses-of-the-memory]

Happy 29th Anniversary Pocahontas

As it is the 29th Anniversary of Pocahontas, one of my favorite Disney films, I took it upon myself to roleplay as the titular character, and I may roleplay as John Smith as well.

[catboybrain]

i dunno if its just me being so weird and in love with mathematics or it's the fact i worked on ai stuff before the ai boom or just that i'm jaded, but any sort of generative ai based off a prompt is just boring to me. i don't think it's ethically bad all the time but, like, it's subpar, why would i ever settle for that.

i can draw anyway and i know people who draw as well (or paint, or model etc.) and i learned all this shit myself so idk why i'd want to hand off a good concept to something that's not as good as i am at it?