#fuck paywalling literature

[ezras--moon]

If you want all of the audio books Pedro Pascal narrated in mp3 format,

please DM me for the link.

[leiascully]

Re: posting your ko-fi or whatever on AO3 (don’t do it), I’m lucky that I’ve never been in a position where I needed to crowdfund my rent (I’ve been broke, even for extended periods, but never zero dollars broke), but also, if you accept money for fanfic, you’re opening yourself up to so much legal trouble.  Fan art is just different and that sucks for those of us who can’t draw, but that’s how it works. 

Anyway, you’ve never seen a leiascully ko-fi and I hope you never will.  I do this for the love of my blorbos and for kudos.  When I write an original book, you can buy that :)

[enarei]

i hate how the overwhelming majority of so called "trans feminist" literature is locked behind academic level paywalls. only accessible as a PDF, or as a hardcover book on amazon for $30 + shipping or some shit like that. if you call yourself a socialist ostensibly writing for a marginalized demographic but you don't upload your work to pirate websites you're a fucking poseur

[ranticore]

answering oc asks all in one bunch as promised

@fair-lead

don't worry about the broken emoji it's the only one of the set so i know which question it is hehe

🪽does this character believe in a higher power?

Yes! Ishmael has a strong belief in the same higher power that every other settler of his time believed in - Atom Genetech, of course, the corporation that developed him & the other GMO humans of Siren. The reverence held towards Atom was practically religious - the Company was the reason for being there, the Company was always watching, the Company had mysterious designs upon this world which most people were not privy to.

Unlike all of us, Ishmael knew for a fact that he was designed exactly to be the way he was. He had a creator. But he also had a belief in destiny, and that it was his destiny to have been born into that strange twisted form. Once he accepted that he was never going to become normal, he had to accept that he would always be like That. Therefore it was his destiny to suffer, and the creator, his creator, made him for the sole purpose of recording that suffering.

🪱 would this character move a worm off the pavement or save it?

When he was growing up, Ishmael had not much feelings for the smaller animals around him. He was never taught to view them as anything other than strange aliens to be documented by people smarter than himself. But once he was released from active study (he got too big and uncooperative) and spent more time in the seas of Siren, the natural world, he was able to observe the smaller creatures in situ, and he found a lot of peace in that. Once he began to recover from his entire childhood, he was an emotional wreck, feeling things all at once and far too strongly and unable to dissociate from those feelings anymore. And many of those feelings involved a deep, aching pity and empathy for the animals around him, to the point where he tried to be vegan for a while. So yeah he'd move a worm off the pavement lol but only at that point (and he'd beat himself up for not doing the same in his earlier years)

⚖️ how do they seek justice?

Through violence.

@sleepvines

👛 what is always with this character?

His glasses are the obvious answer but I also think he carries with him a small library of literature wherever he goes - mainly guidebooks of deciphering ancient languages and navigational charts that point the way to the ruins of the first settlements on Siren. He already can't fly so it gives him a little bit more freedom to carry around heavy stuff than other shortwings (and, anyway, Huarva does the carrying). Hidden among his scrolls cases of important archaeological guides and lexicons you will find a collection of adventure serials which he avidly collects; monthly releases of chapters written by some of the most famous novelists of the Spire.

🪷 what gives this character inner peace?

I don't think he experiences inner peace tbh. His life is extremely hectic and dangerous and his favourite activity is debating people under the table, he might find a peaceful mindstate a little boring. He might enjoy a moment of silence while crossing the sea on the raft towed by Huarva but it would be very quickly broken by him needing to say something; he can't just sit with himself. He has to DO something.

@magmacannon

🐁 how are this characters ethics?

Qedivar: actually not too corrupt all things considered (and corruption is the way of the things at the university). When he discovered the Truth at the end of his archaeological quest, he knew that it was information he should release publicly (i.e not behind a paywall and also not after the other scholars had edited out all of the juicy bits), and he was faced with an ultimatum - release it, and risk his life, or keep it hidden and accept the nice promotion the scholars dangled in front of him. He chose to release it instead.

Ishmael: all fucked up, bouncing between extremes (as I said above). He was never raised to be someone who acted ethically or unethically, he was raised to be studied. He was never given lessons or even a good example to follow, especially since all he knew for a LONG time were the lab techs who were not ethical towards him. So an important part of his character is that he turned around and enacted the same bad treatment on the only people of the settlement he considered 'below' him, the beta phocids. He got better later, after developing a friendship with Cherta, but it was always a bit of an uphill battle to get him to behave normally, he was always hard to be around, always offputting, and had no benchmark for 'normal'.

Mia: not quite so high stakes as the other two but he is a terrible gossip and is not above opening other people's mail just to spectate on the private lives of others. Other than that he does his job well and makes sure the letters are delivered on time, which i guess is ethical?

♟️describe how they would play chess, if they would.

Qedivar: he'd be good at it for sure but overly defensive, maybe not taking advantage of as many openings as he should.

Ishmael: overturns the board the first time someone captures one of his pieces

Mia: gets 75% of the way through the game, loses interest

🦇 biggest material fear (ie heights, bugs etc)

Qedivar: heights is probably accurate. He can't fly. He also hates sipho nymphs (which resemble winged silverfish and are about a foot long) because of how they wriggle.

Ishmael: needles

Mia: drowning; a practical fear, as he spends so much of his time on the wing over the sea. He is buoyant and can rest on the water, unlike many longwings, but bad weather can be so dangerous over open water. So probably a fear of storms as well.

🛡️how does this character protect themself and others?

Qedivar: he's very bad at this. He'll try to argue, use his words, but he's a scholar and quite insulated from the real world. He can fight shortwings as part of a spirited thesis defence, but if someone really wants him or his friends dead there's not much he can do about it. He is a songbird.

Ishmael: with violence

Mia: just fly away man what's all the fuss about lol

⚖️ how do they seek justice?

Somewhat naively, Qedivar believes that justice is inevitable, and that if enough knowledge is spread, if enough people see Facts and Truths, they will naturally come to the most just conclusion on things.

Mia hasn't had to seek justice really since all he does is deliver letters and stuff but he has a 'live and let live' attitude and up to a certain degree of severity, he's probably not going to seek justice at all.

i know that guy

🪷 what gives this character inner peace?

Inner peace? what the hell is that

♟️describe how they would play chess, if they would.

If you could play a glass cannon in chess i think it would be like that. It's all attack all the time, but the defence is lacking. He IS good at 4 player chess because his opponents' attentions are divided and his bad defence isn't such an issue (unless they team up on him).

🐌 do they carry their home with them or is it a place?

He has no special attachment to any place of residence; his actual home, where he's supposed to be living, is mainly a place to store stuff (the bed is dusty at this point). He does get homesick about Ferru but more for the practical, everyday stuff than any intangible concept of Hometown(tm). He misses the climate, the food, but not the people.

🪓 would they make it to the end in a horror movie?

Not in a million years would John be a final girl. He wouldn't be the first dead, but he would be the intellectual/sciency character who tries explaining the horror away as EMF waves or whatever, and when he inevitably dies, it changes the tone dramatically because now we know it's Serious.

[ygodmyy20]

Hello, I hear you have many thoughts on open access publishing? 👀

Okdoki Texas I have had enough time to gather my thoughts!

BIG caveat. I haven't worked in academic publishing sphere in over a year. Things change often and there likely are things I just (not being in the industry any more) don't know because I am not in the thick of it. I also am not an academic, I have never published in a journal. I just worked in the industry.

another also (so many I just, want to make sure I am super clear) anything with academia is complex, and there is no one perfect answer. There are a myriad of things that academic publishing is grappling with that isn't just OA publishing. But I'll just touch on OA publishing here!

Useful links that can probably give better definitions on things than I ever could:

^ DORA is related to publishing but i won't talk much about it here. Another issue with academic publishing is how journals are ranked. Which.....i am not gonna go into but if you search Journal Impact Factor you can find more info. (legit its like, academic publishing is a big iceberg hahahah)

First off, a brief def of what Open Access Publishing is:

OA Publishing is "A publication is defined 'open access' when there are no financial, legal or technical barriers to accessing it (source)." That is the best definition that exists. But OA journals are also characterized by funding models which do not require the reader to pay to read the journal's contents, relying instead on author fees or on public funding, subsidies and sponsorships. 

Within that are many types of OA publishing. Gold, Green, Diamond and more. You can find those definitions in the source link above on OA publishing.

Now, non-open access journals cover publishing costs through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licenses or pay-per-view charges. These are paywalled journals.

Open Access Publishing was created because research and knowledge was and is getting locked behind paywalls. For example, if I want to look up research on say....ADHD medication.

I do a search. I find this:

Paywall. Luckily I can gleam a good bit from the abstract they provide and they share some key highlights. But I cannot read the full text.

So now where do I go? I can try and dig around and find reddit or other articles on other sites, but what if I really wanted to read the research? What if i don't want to read an opinion piece on it? I can't. I have to pay for it (cuz I am not affiliated with a university) or find it somewhere else.

Open access reduces those paywalls so I can read that research if I want to.

However, worth noting, it isn't always a perfect model, as certain side effects have come up like an increase in predatory journals, incredibly high author costs, "double dipping" by large publishers (i.e., a journal charging an author fee and still charging libraries and institutions a subscription cost to the journal) and others.

At the same time, I fully back OA publishing over the old model because the locking of knowledge behind paywalls is too big an issue to ignore. Everyone deserves to be able to access research. And publishers are making so much fucking money off of research they didn't DO. (IN some cases an author is PAYING a journal to publish their journal and then the journal charges others to access and its like I AM SORRY????)

Reminder: You can always email an author and ask for their paper. They likely will send the PDF to you. They WANT their research to be read (bc my god the time it takes to publish a paper is insane.)

I am not the right person to give recommendations on how to publish. It is so dependent on your field of study, the journals in your discipline, etc. Most often, a professor or advisor will help with those decisions, but I think more younger academics should ask questions. Understand what OA is, and see if there are any OA journals in their field that would be a good fit for their research.

Anyway I hope that was helpful or interesting, Texas!! Again I am not sure I have any hot takes, I still just feel strongly about the dissemination of research to the public.

[incesthemes]

Your jopzier scorbutic nostalgia post goes sooo fucking crazy and just blew a hole in my brain. You’re so real and correct for that one + I’ve never seen that connection before!!

Do you have any other resources on scorbutic nostalgia you could link? It’s very interesting to me. Thank you and have a lovely day :)

hi, thank you! i have not been able to stop thinking about jopzier since i learned about the hallucinations. dear god

(sorry this is late, i posted the horrible thing and then disappeared for half a week to a convention lol)

i had to go down one hell of a rabbit hole to find any information about scurvy beyond the initial symptoms and treatment options because apparently that's the only free information about scurvy on the internet, oh my god. but i found this article about scurvy on national geographic (which i had to relinquish my email address to read so i would argue it's not actually free) which interviews a professor of humanities named jonathan lamb about his book, scurvy: the disease of discovery. his work looks at how scurvy (and other 18th century diseases) shape and influence literature, so rather than being about the science of scurvy, he researches how it's used in literature and the i guess emotional effects of it on culture? he's basically the only modern-day person talking about scurvy, though i was able to find a few research papers (also locked behind paywalls) that seemed to support his research. i wouldn't know though. can't access them </3

i was able to find another paper by lamb on scorbutic nostalgia which talks about thomas trotter's studies on scurvy back in the late 18th century. of course the paper cost $50 to rent (or, as of today, it's not even accessible even with payment, lmfao) so i could only look at the abstract for it.

anyway his book has a whopping 2.6 stars on amazon and scathing reviews about how dense and meandering it is, so i nabbed myself a Convenient Digital Copy instead to scan through. my primary goal was to see if mr. lamb had hard evidence of hallucinations as a symptom of scurvy, since i couldn't find anything (for free, online) that wasn't penned by jonathan lamb about these hallucinations. turns out his meandering, dense writing worked in my favor, because this guy LOVES quotes and about half of the book is just that. so i found the section about scorbutic nostalgia and discovered a veritable trove of contemporary journals and letters from sailors describing their vivid dreams. i marked up a bunch of stuff, so i'll share some of what i read under the cut through so you can avoid having to witness the book proper if you so choose. highlighting is my own, obviously.

hopefully this helps! finding resources about scurvy is actually so frustratingly difficult.

[teslacoils-and-hubris]

Here's a list of games I think the mercs would like, if they had access to computers in 2023

Soldier- flash games like you'd find on cool math games. On the one hand I do think he'd be into cod and the likes, but on the other I think he'd be an absolute legend at the papa's pizzeria games

Scout- unironically I think he'd play tf2. Definatly a fps kinda guy, but the general comedic potential and inclusion of blood boosts tf2 over the likes of overwatch for him

Pyro- ponytown. They like finding the weird niche drama and discourse that goes down on those servers and making it worse. Also incredibly fucked up indie horror games that stick with you for years, I'm a horror fan pyro truther

Demo- story heavy games. He cried when he played undertale, then cried again when he tried a genocide run. I could see him getting weirdly invested in those choice games? The ones where all the good options are paywalled behind premium currency

Engineer- logic and puzzle games, I think he'd get a kick out of portal both for the general story and solving levels. Probably also that one bridge building game but he makes absolutely insane bridges that no one but him understands. Also factory builders like satasfactory

Heavy- I think he'd be into story heavy games, but darker ones than demo, like he would be into pathologic you know? The dude has a PhD in Russian literature he would fucking love pathologic!

Spy- the hitman series. He plays it as seriously and realistically as possible, always silent assassin never uses gimmicky kill methods the works. It makes him feel better about how fucking hijinks filled his real spy work is

Medic- soulsborn fan. He's just somehow really good at them naturally and really enjoys the fucked up lore and watching scout get freaked out when he recounts the fucked up lore. Calls it a skill issue when people say they're hard games

Sniper- I cannot picture this man playing anything more modern than an old clunky arcade shooter. Maybe old-school mario games if you really begged. I imagine he has some kind of computer malfunction aura that causes anything more modern than the 90s to just explode. He's living off the grid with an old Nokia and that's the only cellphone he's ever had and ever will have

[gamerkats]

Hey, besties. *heavy hearted sigh* Look....

If, in your reading travels, you happen to stumble upon some cis/het/idiotic toxic trope/shameless depthless book and you go, "Huh, that style kinda looks like gamerkats. Wait. Is... Is that gamerkats trickin' on the other side of Literature Street!?", just go on about your day, 'kay?

Don't tell your friends and try to drive traffic to our curb. Don't live your sleuth truth messaging us saying, "Found you!" Don't rally all the mutuals and stage a "don't write this garbage, you're better than that" intervention in the DMs. 👏 Move. 👏 Along. There's nothing to see at this crime scene.

Girls gotta eat, and that "toxic guy/mean girl I can't believe it's not butter plot twist" money spends.

Even though it's not what we enjoy writing, it's what a massive audience enjoys reading. No shame in their kink game. It makes them happy, and us a little cheddar.

We don't kink shame in this house!

Why are we saying this? Because a couple of you are scary good, and have seen through our street name, and wanna reveal that we're not "cis/het Heather" but actually two Queer cats in a trench coat. Don't. We're not even being polite and saying please. We're straight up telling you to mind your business.

If we wanted you to read what we were doing as a side hustle, we would have been advertising our stuff here. Obviously, we're trying to protect our safe spaces. You don't know the types of readers this stuff brings.... To the point that, we don't even have a socmed account for this shit. It's just a pen name and a quick write/publish into the digital void; where grammar dies on the literary battlefield, clutching originality's fallen corpse.

Trust us. You're not missing out on our stories. It's cheap, greasy fast food, when y'all are getting the home-cooked meals, ok?

We're sharing our Queerest of passions for free with y'all on AO3/Wattpad. Other than obvious fanfic stuff, everything is our IP. We could sell if we wanted. But we just don't like the feeling of paywalling our Queer rep when it's so desperately needed.

No shame to those who do paywall. Support those Queer writers!!!!! Sell your Queer works!!!! This is an "us" thing, not a commentary on Queer writing thing. We have our own pains and traumas and writing Queer fiction for free is how we chose to heal some of them.

The flip is, we also kinda need monies too.

To like, you know, live.

So we made a choice. Free the Queer, paywall the 'Bad Boy Fireman Cowboy Next Door Is Answering A Five Alarm Rodeo In My Bed'.

Surprise.

We're sellouts...like every other writer who wants to eat. We try really hard to mask our style, but it's apparently still there. So, if some found us, others will eventually. Don't make us change pen names and start from scratch.

Here's the exchange:

Y'all get the free real Batman version of us, who's raw, unfiltered, gritty, quirky, Queer as fuck, soul searching, human existence commentary, romance-nightmare diary entry, trauma coping, disability struggling, weirdly poetically surviving, bimbo nerd chic.

And the randos pay for the Bruce Wayne who's a mentally healthy, sassy, fiery feminine icon, living in a cabin by a lake, drinking wine and eating chocolate with her soulmate husband and two dogs.

We don't trick where we treat, ok? So don't snitch and ruin a girl's hustle. You don't ask us why we're there, and we won't ask you the same.

We both didn't see shit.

Ok. Kiss, kiss, love, love. Sorry we're not independently wealthy. Bye. 💋❤

Edit: 😂😂😂😂 Ok, so, by the powers of sheer whining from you beloveds, that you want smutty stuff without plot too, fine. You're right, that's only fair. We're already writing a lot, BUT how about this, all the cutting room floor and unpublished practice scenes will be scooped up, and posted under a fic title called, Miss Kitty's Fabulous Empornium or something. We'll even slap some reader x character, and villain x hero names to hide what books of ours they belong to. 😉

[3style3]

rant about the whole "ai is the future" that techbros keep spewing and why i think its stupid and incorrect and that we will absolutely be fine. read below the cut if u wanna hear my techy rant.

ai does not have the five senses, it cannot taste, hear, smell, touch or if you wanna get technical, THINK. all it knows is anything spoonfed to it and anything it “generates” is an amalgamation of everything its been spoonfed. it cannot make a perfect recipe (cant taste, smell, see), generate good sounding music (cant hear), all art it generates is well.. a literal mashup / collage of preexisting works (cant be creative without being given prompts and prexisting artwork), its a parody of existing works more than it is actual art. (see: definition of parody) it cannot create new sewing patterns (cant see, cant test it in a 3d space) nor can it write good literature (cant think, memory limits, only knows what its told). ai literature is becoming increasingly easier to sniff out by anyone who has written or studied literature in any capacity given it only writer colleen hoover esque work or something akin to a 14 year old on wattpad. (if someone presents me actual writing vs ai writing, with some looking into it i could easily sniff it out given how repetitive & unsure of itself it can be, source: ive tried writing storylines with it and it began "calling back" details that never happened within the story)

chatgpt will 100% be paywalled once it gets all the info it needs from self proclaimed alphamales who think lifting weights or waking up just an hour before school (those “wake up at 5 am videos “ ring a bell?? newsflash i was waking up at 4 am during highschool & even after; you are not cool) makes them cool (lol) and techbros on twitter who Mind you are never professionals in the field. theyre always whining about the downfall of nfts (something my dad (PROFESSIONAL) and i (hobbyist) forsaw, by the way) with no company that they own or even work for listed.

nobody smart in the industry who has been in it for more than 2 years genuinely believes ai is taking over. it quite literally cannot replace people who create clothing, ORIGINAL artwork that has never been seen before, musicians, engineers, service workers (only so much a robot can do to solve a customers problem!) human connections (current chatbots are going through their downfalls as we speak). not to mention the privacy risk that people are increasingly becoming concerned about (ie. how people are reacting to “windows 12 ai”)

is ai advancing? absolutely. no doubt about it. will it become anything more than just an assistant to humans? absolutely not. remember when people were convinced that synthesizers would end musicians as we know it and it simply became a tool to assist us? remember when people thought that digital art was going to end all artists as we know it.. and it simply became another medium? remember all the times we thought computers were gonna replace humans and it never did? remember when people were CONVINCED nfts were the absolute end all be all, and it DIED as nothing more than a fad? thats the exact path ai is taking. ai has always been around but now its advancing and that intimidates people, but it shouldnt, because without humans adding variables and inputs, it is literally useless. it is a robot that quite literally cannot work alone. we are fine. techbros are fucking idiots.

[penny-anna]

some further thoughts on this:

I do think that a factor here willl be that (for whatever reason) this guy's students have become less likely to lie about their favourite book.

there's some kind of major irony in the fact that the majority of people responding to this haven't read the entire article BUT also that a lot of them couldn't if they wanted to bcos its fucking paywalled. here it is:

the TL DR is that the article is primarily about the fact that increasingly college students are struggling w the reading material they've been given, w longer books, and with 'challenging' books that used to be normal assigned reading. the above excerpt is just a closing anecdote.

important to note here that the issue is not that Percy Jackson is fantasy or that it's 'lowbrow' literature, it's specifically that it's a book for children.

unlike with other categories like genre, there are actual mechanical differences between children's literature and adult literature. books for children use simpler prose & vocabulary because children are generally still learning to read. there's a whole technical side to it that i don't fully understand! but it's that 'easy read' aspect of them which is relevant, not anything to do w their relative quality.

Ppl on the other hellsite losing their minds over this in every imaginable direction lmao

[durn3h]

So fucked up that so much of the money that goes to researchers comes from the government and yet the vast majority of scientific literature is locked behind absurdly high paywalls

[scottslemmons]

I really wish we knew where this interviewer is now, so we could check in on him and see if he's aware that he'll only be remembered as the snob who got utterly demolished by a titan of literature and fantasy, or if he's safely ensconced behind the paywall at the New York Times sneering at any fiction that doesn't involve a middle-aged professor fucking one of his students.

Terry Pratchett about fantasy ❤

Terry Pratchett interview in The Onion, 1995 (x)

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Terry: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

Terry: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

Terry: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus.

Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

[transmutationisms]

Would you be able to give some references or places to read more about the humour stuff? I looooovvveee purgation motifs

YES. so first of all, just for getting an overview on humouralism, my go-to would probably be "passions and tempers: a history of the humours" by noga arikha. this covers a pretty broad historical sweep.

looking at purgation more specifically, "the expressiveness of the body and the divergence of greek and chinese medicine" by shigehisa kuriyama is sooo good. it's a comparative history, but the parts on chinese medicine are really mostly to illustrate points about greek med. also, the focus is on bloodletting specifically, but very similar logic about purgation and cleansing motivated a lot of other humoural medical treatments, and kuriyama does draw some of that out. this book is just so cool.

ok fuck it i'm just gonna bullet point the rest of this lmao

"a reconstruction of the hippocratic humoural theory of health" (balzer & eleftheriadis, 1991, journal for general philosophy of science. doi 10.1007/BF01801207) -- another good overview. more digestible length than a whole book

"humoring the body: emotions and the shakespearian stage" by gail kern paster -- really good look at how much we're missing when we disembody early modern drama, and given the influence of shakespeare over succ... yes

"the rise and decline of character: humoral psychology in ancient and early modern medical theory" (jacques bos, 2009, history of the human sciences. doi 10.1177/0952695109104422) -- historical argument is problematique but it gets the noggin rotating

"diseased bodies, defiled souls: corporality and religious difference in the reformation" (charles h parker, 2014, renaissance quarterly. doi 10.1086/679783) -- on catholic views of humoural 'defilement' vs calvinist views of sinful sensuality. reminder that the roys are catholic lol

"you are what you eat: historical changes in ideas about food and identity" (steven shapin, 2014, historical research. doi 10.1111/1468-2281.12059) -- intro to food and temperaments, including humoural aspects. side note, literally love steven shapin. please read him.

"'you have no good blood in your body': oral communication in sixteenth-century physicians' medical practice" (michael stolberg, 2014, medical history. doi 10.1017/mdh.2014.71) -- patients' views of the body as unclean and in need of purification/evacuation/etc

"blood matters: studies in european literature and thought, 1400–1700" ed. bonnie lander johnson & eleanor decamp -- as the title suggests, mostly focussed on blood. but includes analysis of blood as a humour, and also shows how this kind of analysis can help us make sense of literature/media

"humoural wombs on the shakespearian stage" by amy kenny -- more shakespeare, lots of Gender. looks at performance history in conjunction with humoural theory

most of these books you should be able to find free on z lib etc, and with the articles access varies but if you hit a paywall, lmk and i might be able to float you a pdf. also if you read german or french there's a lot of lit on humouralism out there.

oh and also you can snowball the reference lists in any of these things and be pretty sure you're finding good stuff!

[jakey-beefed-it]

Yet. More. Star Trek: Online shenanigans.

I started playing my OG STO character again for the first time in like 10 years. I had forgotten how much I liked him. In the intervening time we got the ST: Discovery uniforms, so I made those the norm (with a color shift to update them to early 25th century command/operations/science color shoulders) on his crew and decided they’re all specifically associated with Starfleet Intelligence. He was always my more martial Starfleet captain, modeled on Ben Sisko with a dash of William Adama, but he still has a strong moral code so Section 31 is still on his shit list forever. So, Starfleet Intelligence- fly an under-sized and over-gunned escort with a cloaking device, beam in, covert ops as needed.

The USS Chin’toka is the aforementioned over-gunned escort, using elements from the Defiant as well as the Vanguard class of escorts. The ship is named after the system just inside Cardassian space where two major battles were fought in the Dominion War. It’s like naming a ship the Waterloo, or the Yorktown for that matter.

Captain Hector ‘Two-Gun’ Ramirez is a human from Cuba, on Earth. Sternly professional and coolly tactical in command, those who know him well (including most of his senior staff) are more familiar with his wry humor and passions for xenoanthropology and comparative literature. He is startlingly good at 3d chess, though he seems to take his few losses in as good a humor as his wins. On the ground, he evinces an array of startling physical abilities uncommon among humans- ambidexterity, situational and bodily awareness, and strength rivaling an untrained vulcan. Ramirez himself is unaware, but the reason for all of this is that he is in fact an augment, genetically designed for greater mental and physical abilities. Starfleet Intelligence knows, however. The prominent scar on his face comes from a bat’leth, during a close quarters fight in the Federation-Klingon war of 2409.

Commander Sedys sh’Thasari is his first officer, herself a skilled tactician with more of a mind for long-term strategy than Captain Ramirez. Andorian, she’s blue with white hair and antennae. She’s the one with the bun. She gets her own picture since she’s the Number One. In space her abilities are primarily focused around getting the most out of the ships’ many phaser cannons as well as managing shield distribution to cover whatever flank is drawing the most fire. On the ground, she focuses on laying down covering fire either with her phaser rifle or with grenades.

Lt. Commander Nyrah Ohlob is second officer and Chief of Operations aboard the Chin’toka. She’s the andorian with the half-shaved curly hair. She knows her way around a starship like few others, using her talents to keep the ship from being blasted apart by much larger vessels.

Lt. Commander Hern Siila is the Science Officer. He’s a bolian! He’s therefore also blue, though with no hair or antennae. On the bridge, he focuses on stealth- both the Chin’toka’s own, and detecting other cloaked ships.

Lt. Commander Irri Lanek is Chief Tactical officer. She’s a cardassian, dammit. As in she’s an ‘alien’ who I tweaked in the character redesign/tailoring thing to look like a cardassian. Since actual cardassian bridge officers are behind a paywall, and fuck that. Her focus is on the quantum torpedo launcher.

You get a whole lot more bridge officers and jobs for them (Chief Medical Officer is a human named Lucy MacAllister, Chief of Security is a jem’hadar named Lurat’iklan) but these four are my go-to away team so they get the focus of this absurdly self-indulgent post.

[cancerbiophd]

dark academia*: science version

*an aesthetic that revolves around romanticizing university and academia, classic literature, the pursuit of self-discovery, and a general passion for knowledge and learning

opening a lab notebook from decades ago and hearing the soft crackle of the pages, trying to decipher an old lab tech’s cursive handwriting

an entire shelf of old glass specimen jars with peeling and faded labels

someone’s brainstorming flowchart that was left on the whiteboard for so long the ink’s turned permanent

going to science museums on rainy weekends and quiet evenings

spending hours at the microscope staring at your samples because it’s like visiting a whole hidden world

reading papers so old they have hand-written labels on their figures

lab benches that stay forever occupied and forever messy

scattered paper towels with hurried last-minute math equations

equipment from years and years ago that are slowly losing their color saturation, but still work just fine

trying to make your lab notebook legible, but sometimes you just write too fast

walking a little ways off from the group during fieldwork, just to see what’s deeper in the forest

feeling a sense of beauty at dead and broken things--be they preserved samples of a once living thing, or an unusable piece of equipment no one can bear to throw away

walking around with the lab coat unbuttoned so it flows behind you like a cape

journal articles scattered throughout your desk, some in precarious piles, others folded open to a page you had meant to read months ago

1-hour lab meetings turning into 3 hour brainstorming sessions

always an entire wall of flasks, beakers, and graduated cylinders drying in the rack above the sink

sharing articles with colleagues who can’t access them bc fuck paywalls

a hallway filled with light-bleached posters from past-conferences

running multiple experiments at once, and turning to each one right before the timer goes off like a skilled dancer

blowing the dust off of old specimen display cases

bubbling flasks in one corner, a high-tech bench robot in the other corner

bookshelves overflowing with science textbooks and nonfiction, and binders containing data for all your different manuscript ideas (and you have quite a few of those)

walking everywhere with a timer clipped to a piece of clothing, forgetting about it, and having it go off in the middle of a conversation with a professor

[breelandwalker]

Excuse me, I'm "DOING IT WRONG?" So I should just be teaching and writing books for the fun of it and not to make a living? I should just hope that the mortgage company accepts payment in the gratitude of the pagan community at large? I should pay for groceries and the cable bill with my social media follower counts?

This is literally my JOB. I bust my ass six days a week on top of my 9-5 doing research and writing and recording and marketing and trade shows and panels. I pay taxes on this income. And it's the same for every other pagan/witchcraft author out there. Books don't just appear out of thin air. Writing is WORK. We are WORKING. We deserve to be PAID for that WORK.

There is a difference between knowledge that should be free to be shared, like current events and basic reference, and published works in a specialized field. Wikipedia exists. Online encyclopedias exist. Digital shared library collections exist. Archives of public domain works exist. And most of them offer free access. But you should be able to access recently-published books in a highly niche market without paying for them because...they might not be available in your area? The ENTITLEMENT.

(Also comparing the library advice to reproductive rights arguments? DISGUSTING.)

Books are a luxury in the same way that cell phones are a luxury. Having them means you can move through life with easier access to information and entertainment, but they are an expense and you don't need them to survive.

A $20 book you can find on Amazon is not the same as a paywall on a news site. And the real hubris here is suggesting such, considering how many authors, including myself, DISTRIBUTE INFORMATION FOR FREE EVERY DAY.

Seriously. I have a blog and a podcast, neither of which are behind a paywall, and all I ask is that if people enjoy my content, they consider purchasing a book? How fucking dare I.

It's a fine thing to say you support pagan literature piracy when you're not the one trying to pay bills with book sales. When you write a book, YOU can distribute it for free. In the meantime, some of us need to eat.

This SHOULD haunt your waking hours and I hope you think about it every day until you learn better and lose that entitled attitude.

Weekly reminder that it's not okay to illegally download and distribute free copies of recently-published books from a niche market where the authors depend directly on monthly royalties to pay their bills.

Books are a luxury and if you can't afford a title, save your pennies or check out a copy from your local library. There are plenty of free resources and public domain texts available in the meantime.

It's worth mentioning that plenty of authors in the witchcraft and pagan markets make a point of providing free resources and advice to the community on a regular basis, myself included. To take that information and then turn around and steal from us on top of it is not only petty, it's cruel, especially considering the financial hardship we're all facing in the current economy.

Download overpriced textbooks and public domain titles, not witch books.