#historical satire

[screamingeyepress]

In “Dead Airwaves Episode 4: Plague Studies,” history’s deadliest disease can’t convince two aristocrats to face reality. They’d rather believe absurd plots and nonsense than acknowledge the black plague’s presence. It’s bleak, it’s funny, and it skewers the lengths people go to avoid discomfort. Don’t miss this twisted comedic gem! https://www.screamingeyepress.com/podcasts/dead-airwaves-ep-4-plague-studies/

[oh-westly]

I gotta brand new shiny helmet and a pair of kinky boots 🎶 I gotta lovely new flack jacket and a lovely khaki suit 🎶…

[madame-helen]

[shkatzchen]

I feel bad if my Sims have to reread the same books all the time, especially when I'm using the romance books to hold off the "single and loving it" lifestyle (honestly, can't my sims be both romantic and waiting for the right person rather than having romantic interactions with everyone without the game thinking they don't want a relationship?). So I made some clones of the romance books (which provide a flirty buff) and added some 16th-19th century love poetry with a nice cover and voila! A collection of nine new books sims can buy to indulge their romantic side.

Just what poetry will you and your sims be reading?

Queen Elizabeth I "On Monsieur's Departure"

Shakespeare's Sonnets (featuring 116)

Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"

Sir Walter Raleigh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"

Anne Bradstreet, "To my Dear and Loving Husband"

Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose"

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester "A Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover."

George Gordon, Lord Byron "She Walks in Beauty"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"

Base Game Compatible.

Download from SimFileShare here.

Made with S4S.

[piningpercussionist]

HELLLPP I WAS SHOWING MY SISTER STUPID FUCKING SCOTT PILGRIM MEMES AND I MENTIONED GIDEONSUGGESTIONS' "GIDEON X READER HEADCANONS" POST AND WE JUST:

"Gideon?"

Graves.

"Like. Gideon?" (Said with the inflection of Gideon from Gravity Falls)

Graves. Gideon GRAVES.

(She gives me side eye.)

GIDEON GRAVES. HE VAPORIZES YOU. I AM LITERALLY SHOWING YOU A SCOTT PILGRIM BLOG RIGHT NOW.

"OHhhhh! I'm sorry, I'm stupid today."

I can't with this fucking girl 😭

[deadpanwalking]

What did you think of the first episode of The Regime? I'm not sure what to make of it yet.

Neither am I—I really hope that it comes into its own and doesn't rely as much on the Veep and Succession house blend. Kinda digging Elena and Herbert's Kronk and Yzma thing, though.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[postcard-from-the-past]

French catholic satire on a vintage postcard

[georgeivsexpiredbrandy]

I stand corrected this is so much fucking fun

I will admit that I have drawn genderbent george (however you want to call her) many times before but this is the first time I've drawn her with genderbent wellington I LOVE george iv x wellington okay LEAVE ME ALONE I DREAM ABOUT THEM at least 20 minutes of my dream each night are dedicated to those old men I cannot take it anymore grrrrr

[nevesmose]

A world not yet calling itself Terra. The Western Front, 916.M2.

An experiment for me in a lot of ways - writing a different style, using canon NL characters, fitting them into a historical AU, using a twist ending. Done in part as a test run for an original vampire-related project that I'm considering setting in a similar time period. Enjoy! 🦇

[burningvelvet]

Satirical prints of Lord Byron drawn by artists Robert and George Cruikshank. They depict Byron philandering with women around the time of his and Lady Byron’s scandalous separation in 1816.

That summer (around the time these would have been drawn), Byron rented the Swiss villa where Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein. She, her partner Percy, and her step-sister Claire, had all followed Byron from England so that Claire could continue her recent affair with Byron. The third drawing shows Byron in the famous Drury Lane Theatre where he was a committee member, which is where Claire first went to meet him and initiate their relationship.

[kay-oh-al-tea-sea]

Fintan is a slut who dated Tolkien Shakespeare and Forkle no one forget it

[ruffianbandwidth]

Greetings y'all! I know it's been a while, and I apologize for the lack of posts about music (check out Cameron Winter's new solo album "Heavy Metal" if you haven't already. He sounds like beautifully discordant and spastically sonorous Gen-z Bill Callahan). Life has a way of forcing you into adulthood, despite your best efforts to avoid it, and pretty soon you're left having to prioritize certain things over others (and sadly blogging about music for free was one of those things that had to fall to the wayside). However, if you enjoyed my posts, and dare I say my writings, then you might be happy to know that I wasn't just growing old and selling out. I was actually pursuing other creative pursuits all these years of absence - including writing. In fact, that's the reason I'm here posting, because I finally self-published one of the books I wrote a few years back (because unfortunately it is once again relevant). It is available as both an eBook and a paperback here and I would really appreciate your support!

Here's some more info on the book (in case the title is too off-putting lol):

Make Armstrong Great Again was originally written during 2017-2019, and was inspired by the fact that I was teaching high school at the time. Being part of a high school campus as an adult feels like you're an anthropologist doing field work. It is as joyous and beautiful, as it is terrifying and confusing. You can't help but marvel at the rawness of that age. The passion, emotion, apathy, and authenticity constantly churning throughout. It is a land of contradictions. All of it hanging together by a thread, or rather the thin facade of order, tradition, and consequence.

Post-2016, I saw and felt a lot of parallels between a high school campus and our political reality. Here was the US, the global hegemon, and purported democratic beacon and moral compass of the world, coming to terms with the fact that our political institutions were nothing but a facade based upon crumbling notions of propriety, fairness, and consequence. All of which was meant to cover, obscure, and mystify our underlying economic/social reality.

Now I'm not one to subscribe to the "Great Man" theory of history. I think everyone, regardless of the power they wield, is more or less a prisoner to our underlying social/economic systems, and therefore confined to a limited range of actions and possibilities. However, I do think that every now and then, certain historical figures happen to resonate with a moment, and therefore have a little more latitude in their ability to actually respond to systems and shape reality.

Sadly, I believe Trump is one of these figures. The combination of his wealth, social capital, and personality allowed him to embody the moment, which in turn led to him (consciously or unconsciously) recognizing and breaking through the thin facade of our political order. In doing so, he forced everyone else to recognize the facade and stare into the abyss, and ever since that realization we have all been collectively going insane, trying to channel or numb all of our anger, fear, and desperation.

Whether its class de-alignement, Qanon, cottage-core fantasies, Russia-gate, clinging to empty institutions, compensatory nationalism, opiate epidemics, pointless impeachments, our ever-expanding forms of spectacle and entertainment, the circular firing squads of the left, more and more blatant racism and anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment, or just a general sense of nihilistic doom, we have all been trying to come to terms with the fact that reality no longer has any safe guards or guarantees.

This is terrifying (but also potentially liberating), and since the levers of politics are completely controlled by moneyed interests (and therefore out of our reach), all of us are incredibly alienated and have no meaningful form of social organization, and we are up against the ticking clock of ecological destruction, we end up turning on each other and using the most vulnerable as scapegoats. We do this because it's easy, and because attacking and blaming symptoms seems like the only option available. We are all so busy, tired, atomized, and disempowered that we can barely imagine, let alone muster up the will, sacrifice, and wherewithal to do what is hard and organize so that we can actually struggle against the root material causes of our misery. And so instead, out of sheer desperation, we direct all of our energy, focus, and emotion into chasing the phantoms and ghosts of a culture war. Suffocating more and more in the process, and growing more insane all the while.

Anyway, all of this is to say, imagining our politics in the context of a high school was strangely illuminating. On the one hand, it is incredibly fitting. And yet, at the same time, it feels completely out of place and exaggerated even amongst oft lambasted and demonized hormone-addled teenagers. Situating our politics in the context of a high school somehow managed to highlight its absurdity all the more. The plot of this book seems fully fictional, and yet it's the context of our very real, and very adult, reality. In fact, much of the tweets and debate/speech dialogue used throughout are direct quotes from the 2016 campaign (with some necessary contextual changes). And of course, perhaps most absurd of all, the ultimate result of it all is the same.

That's the book. In all its entertaining, infuriating, and devastating glory. No one escapes unscathed. It's different from my usual style, but it was nice to take a break from my more "conceptual" work and practice writing in a different way (though for better or worse my verbose and overwrought philosophizing still finds its way into the novel). Anyway, if you want a copy, it is now available both as an ebook and a physical paperback via the link in my bio. Hopefully it provides some sort of catharsis as we buckle up for these next four years.

[moonchildsfae]

the “shakespeare was meant to be performed/watched, not read” sentiment is actually theater kid propaganda.

read the plays! soak in every word! READ THE FOOTNOTES, I BEG OF YOU!

signed, a literature and cultural studies student and former shakespeare hater

[steelthroat]

I casually found a meme about the 4th of July and there was the first comment that asked:

"Guys I'm not America what's the 4th of July about I forgot 😭"

And okay some people memed, some answered for real and then this guy's answer:

FREED FROM THE ENGLAND COMMINIST??????

COMMUNIST??????

COMMUNIST??

[postcard-from-the-past]

French political satire on a vintage postcard