#history repeats itself chronicles

[that-one-paintbrush]

What does bristles think of lightbulb?

Bald!

[fire-gift]

oh god, i just read that there's gonna be a twilight reboot as a tv show now... What's the point of this reboot if the movies already adapted all of it?????????

[mr-s-crane]

[DO NOT REPOST]

Your local LGBTQ+ historian here with a TIMELY FACT: In May of 1933, the first books burned by the N@z! Party were looted from the library of The Institute for Sexual Science (ISS) in Berlin. This research facility was the world’s first sexology clinic. Founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, it promoted sex education, offered STI treatment, chronicled queer history and provided early forms of gender affirming medical care. The queer and trans community was among the first scapegoats of Germany’s fac!st regime.

History does, indeed, repeat itself.

Therein lies horror. And therein lies hope.

Because time and time again, the same old forces have tried to erase us and they always fail. Time and time again, their acts of hate inspire our acts of rebellion that push progress forward in response to their one, brutal step back. It shouldn’t have to be this way. But with every turn of the wheel, we thrive. If the study of history has taught me anything, it is that queer joy is as inevitable as spring.

FIGHT FOR US.

The 19th century painting featured is “Joan of Arc” by John Gilbert

[yingdu-lover]

Ik the cosplay event is the only funny light-hearted moment we got from this trio in the otherwise traumatizing first episode but (I woke up in the morning and suddenly this came to my mind) - Lu Guang cosplaying may be a metaphor for something else too, it may have another significance.

Even if I don't talk about the meta-narrative of RanXi chronicles, Lu Guang cosplaying itself is a kind of 'meta-performance' of life. He impersonates someone who he may want to be (being together with a safe and sound Cheng Xiaoshi) not who he actually is. He is the coser of his own existence which got lost in the repeated loop of history, he performs, he conforms to the pre-written script BUT he is trying to re-write the history too. Let's take a look at the lyrics of Flash by Gorilla Attack :

Hmm, I can't believe that you were here I know I can't do it There's no chance to rewrite Our story ended long ago Trrr The time is coming now Blank I wake up blushing my- Just a loop A bored 'n loop Should I do this now 'til the end? Into the story As just an extra You are the reason I live But you don't remember me? Oh, can I be with you? It feels like comedy Contemporary dance Please lock me up with too many tasks to do Let me lose them off completely Always looking away Flash me, flash me Gotta get the power to rewrite I just wanna deny, I just wanna rewrite, yeah Clash it, clash it What a wondrous nightmare I just wanna deny, I just wanna rewrite The only thing that I got, just like a little lamp I gotta go in one-way smoke Resist the lifeless scenario Become the person The person I wished for that day The room like a coffin, too bright A groove that I lost faraway Blanket, I need a blanket Not a synthetic one Notice the regret engraved so hard Crying, don't let me go anywhere It is not 目に見え, fly out Babe, you don't see me Your shadow that only I got That only I got Flame out, flame out I don't care about it anymore Now I can fly Only I can fly Rush it, rush it You're just making sure I'm alone But I have the power It was undercover Flash me, flash me Gotta get the power to rewrite I just wanna deny, I just wanna rewrite, aye Clash it, clash it What a wondrous nightmare I just wanna deny, I just wanna rewrite The only thing that I got, just like a little lamp I gotta go in one-way smoke Resist the lifeless scenario Become the person The person I wished for that day Ah-ah That only I got That only I got

This is very tough for Ne to choose a single most favourite song from Link Click but Flash is a song that has an extremely special part in my heart. This song too is about someone who is desperate to re-write a history as someone who is constantly taking part in the history.

See how the first few verses actually start with the admission that "there is no chance to rewrite, our story ended long ago."

Then the denial strikes in with the raging desperation.

The only thing that I got, just like a little lamp / I gotta go in one-way smoke/ Resist the lifeless scenario/ Become the person/ The person I wished for that day

I know that the little lamp can be a general metaphor for hope but since it's our guang-guang I'm not gonna ignore the significance of his name here.

Also there is something about being and becoming. Even though it's a performance that's self-indulgent (!), there is an attempt to strike a delicate balance between hope, stubbornness and disaster. Now how successful that attempt is...

Idk man, it may be a side effect of reading too much Shakespeare and thinking too much about meta-theatricality and existentialism but anyway, I wanted to share this morning's enlightenment so yeah.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, November 18, 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and 14 other women were arrested for voting illegally in the United States presidential election of 1872. Though all were arrested, only Anthony was indicted and brought to trial in circuit court. Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and advocate for women's rights, significantly contributing to the women's suffrage movement and challenging laws that restricted voting rights to men.

Susan B. Anthony's act of civil disobedience, arrest, and trial galvanized the American women’s suffrage movement. During that period, like all criminal defendants, Anthony was not allowed to testify in her own defense and had to rely on her attorneys to present her case.

The judge in the case ordered the jury to find her guilty without deliberation. She was fined $100, to which she said, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”  She delivered a now-famous speech despite the judge commanding her to cease.

Even though she was found guilty, her courageous stand and ensuing trial brought greater attention to the insufficient rights of women under the U.S. Constitution. Anthony remained dedicated to advocating for women’s suffrage, delivering speeches nationwide, and working diligently until her passing. Fifty years later, the ratification of the 19th Amendment would pass, giving women the right to vote. 

Hooray for Women’s Suffrage! Also, let’s hope we don’t see this history repeat itself!!

The photos featured come from the following books in our collection:

History of Woman Suffrage edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage and published in Rochester, N.Y. by Susan B. Anthony in 1887.

An Account of the Proceedings on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting at the Presidential Election in Nov. 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote Was Received published in Rochester, N.Y. by the Daily Democrat and Chronicle Book Print in 1874.

View more Milestone Monday posts.

-Melissa, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[saintarthur01]

✩Writeblr Intro✩

✩About the Author✩

Hello there ! I am Arthur and I am a writer who decided to make a separate blog just for my works and such. My main blog is @saintv0id if you are interested for whatever reason. I go by either Arthur or Void on here whichever is fine. I go by she/her and am also demiromantic

I like anything fantasy and fiction, and other such things like renaissance festivals, the medieval and renaissance periods, I like collecting bugs and bones, and I love musicians like Hozier, Tamino, Florence, and Noah Kahan

✩About this blog✩

• This blogs purpose is for my writings/stories and whatever relates to them, like OC intros, lore revealing, or really whatever takes place in my world

• I am open to any asks, questions, or msgs, or even recommendations if ya wanna know anything or submit something, please do so

• All stories and writings on here are all within the same world/universe that i have built, they are all connected one way or another

✩About how my stories work✩

• Again all of my stories take place in the same world, which I have called Allra, so all of my stories together will be called The Chronicles of Allra

• If you are interested in the basic lore and history behind Allra, I will soon have a post up with all the info, I will add the link here once updated and completed

• Allra is heavily influenced and based around Norse mythology, although all characters and lands are original, they are inspired by the norse mythos and the norse mythos are even implemented into the world’s history somewhat

• Some stories will be multiple parts and others will be just short stories involving random characters within the world and some will have a bigger impact then others

✩About my WIPS✩

Prince Killer:

• Genre: Fantasy & Adventure

• Warnings: Murder, hints of emotionally abusive family (will update if the list expands)

• Tropes: Magic, found family, retelling with a twist, major angst, royalty, fighting against prophecy & destiny, morally grey MC, family rivalry, major symbolism

• Main & Side Characters: Locke Ambrose, Caradoc Ambrose, Kailen Skaesun, Elwin Ambrose, Toke Ambrose (There’s more but those 5 are really the ones that need to be noted)

• Summary: In a world that was reborn after the events of Ragnorak, history seems to repeats itself as the King of Konunheim hears word from one of his trusted prophesiers that his son, Caradoc, will die by another’s hand by a simple arrow made from a harmless plant and if this were to occur the world may break out into another war and destroy itself. Assuming his last born, Locke, may be the killer due to his certain ways and dislike of his brother, he demands for his punishment and a way to keep Caradoc safe. While the other nine courts are splitting apart over the idea of a apocalyptic war, the two brothers now have to find a way for one of them to be pardoned and the other to not die while also preventing a war, and maybe even find out if Locke actually has intentions to kill his brother and follow through with prophecy or keep Caradoc safe…

(other works are in progress, I will update this list as I work on them more)

[eretzyisrael]

by Kasra AArabi

After the Holocaust, the Western world vowed never again to tolerate a regime committed to the extermination of the Jewish people. Eighty years on, despite all the rhetoric, either consciously or unconsciously, this promise has been broken.

Let me be clear (and I write this as a British-Iranian): the West has been, and remains, in complete denial about the Iranian regime’s war on Jews. I am not scaremongering, exaggerating or omitting nuances, although this is what the champagne socialists across much of Whitehall and the legacy media would like you to believe. Quite the opposite.

In fact, they are the ones who are illiterate to the religious-ideological nuances driving supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his paramilitary the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) aggression towards Israel, not least since October 7.

Khamenei and the IRGC view conflict with Israel not through the lens of state deterrence or in defence of Palestinians – as is often heard in the mainstream Western narrative – but as a religious-ideological struggle against Jews.

Every aspect of how they communicate, interpret and act against Israel is plagued with the goal of exterminating the Jewish people in a way that bares uncanny resemblance to the Nazi regime in Germany more than eight decades ago.

Since October 7, the IRGC has conducted two unprecedented direct attacks on Israel, what it officially refers to as “Operation True Promise.” While this name may mean very little to Western leaders and societies – exemplified by their indifference towards repeating it – the name in fact has the same connotation as the “Final Solution”. It is a direct historic reference to the sixth divinely ordained Shia Imam, Ja’far Ibn Muhammad As-Sadiq, who is said to have promised the complete annihilation of Jews at the hands of the “powerful people” in the city of Qom, home to Iran’s Shia clergy.

Likewise, Khamenei and the IRGC have continued to compare their conflict with Israel since October 7 with the Islamic battle of Khaybar, when the Prophet Mohammad’s army attacked the fortress of Khaybar – a Jewish stronghold in Arabia. After Khaybar fell to the Islamic army, Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Imam of Shia Islam, effectively eradicated the entire Jewish community in Khaybar, killing all men over the age of puberty whilst enslaving the female population.

Today, not only has IRGC propaganda vowed that “Ali’s sword will conquer Khaybar again”, but the very ballistic missiles it has fired against Israel are officially known as “Khaybar destroyers” or Jew destroyers.

Today, we often question the morality of the European leaders who chose to appease Hitler despite all they knew about his violent antisemitic ideology. And while history may not repeat itself, it does often rhyme. As you read this, the red carpet has been rolled in Davos, Switzerland for the Iranian regime’s vice president for strategic affairs and propagandist-in-chief, Javad Zarif, a figure often compared to a modern-day Joseph Goebbels. European leaders and media will sit side-by-side in a luxurious setting with Zarif and entertain his whitewashing in spite of the fact that just 72 hours earlier, senior IRGC commanders once again vowed to “erase” the Jewish state from the face of the Earth.

But this ignorance at best, indifference at worst, towards the Iranian regime’s ideological war on Jews is not simply restricted to the West’s political class. It has now become an unfortunate regular feature of Western society. In London, week in, week out, ordinary people have attended rallies organised by entities linked to the Iranian regime, stood side-by-side with placards promoting Khamenei’s antisemitism, and even cheered as pockets of protesters chant “Khabar, Khaybar”. Of course, Tehran’s useful idiots in the West will insist that Khamenei’s regime is against Zionism, not Judaism. But senior IRGC commanders, who are personally involved in spearheading attacks against Israel, have themselves debunked this very line. In a live interview with Iranian state TV, senior IRGC commander Mohammad Jafar Asadi openly cursed the “evil Jews”, stating there was no difference between Zionists and Jews as “the root of Zionists are Jews”.

Visiting Auschwitz last week, Sir Keir Starmer vowed to fight the “poison” of antisemitism. But if he and other leaders genuinely committed to this promise, they would mean taking a robust stance against Khamenei’s regime, the only recognised state today that is ideologically committed to the extermination of the Jewish people.

This means not shying away from proscribing the most violent armed antisemitic organisation in the world, namely the IRGC. It means shutting down all centres in the UK that are linked to the regime, as my organisation has been calling for in a new campaign to “make Britain a Khamenei-free zone”. And, perhaps most importantly, it means supporting the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations to free themselves from Khamenei’s totalitarian Islamist dictatorship.

Kasra Aarabi is Director of IRGC Research at United Against Nuclear Iran

[dalesramblingsblog]

A Brief Look at Judge Dredd Novels, Part XVI: Swine Fever by Andrew Cartmel

This is, for our purposes, a book which is immediately fascinating just on the basis of author alone. There's been plenty of cross-pollination between Doctor Who and Judge Dredd in the past, with the likes of Dave Stone, David Bishop and Stephen Marley each allowing us to contemplate points of overlap between the respective franchises' novelistic offerings through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still, this is a big one. Andrew Cartmel, script editor of the original iteration of Doctor Who in its final three seasons, and writer of the sprawling War trilogy across four years of the Virgin New Adventures, gets the chance to pen a full-length novel in the world of Judge Dredd.

As if to further hammer home the neat parallels at play here, Swine Fever is even the first such novel we've looked at to post-date the smash success of the 2005 revival; as far as I can tell from the publication date on the 2000 AD website, the book saw print roughly in the week between the airing of Father's Day and The Empty Child. The Eighth Doctor Adventures would wrap up with The Gallifrey Chronicles a mere two weeks later, while Cartmel himself would usher in the end of the Past Doctor Adventures with Atom Bomb Blues in December 2005, just in time for the arrival of David Tennant.

It would be nice to say, in light of all this, that the world of 2000 AD acquits itself just as well opposite two of the most acclaimed episodes of Doctor Who's first revival season, but... well, unfortunately Swine Fever is just a little too muddled and aimless for its own good.

That's not to say that there aren't good ideas here, because there are. They can, admittedly, kind of be boiled down to a slightly more farcical updating of themes of environmentalism and animal rights that Cartmel was playing with in books like Warhead and Warlock well over a decade ago at this point, with a mild update to focus on the issue of factory farming rather than animal experimentation.

This gets at the biggest issue with Swine Fever, though, which is that Cartmel's commentary never seems especially clear on what it's taking aim at, outside of the broadest possible statements like "factory farming is an inhumane, horrible way to treat animals." Which is definitely true, but as a central thematic statement it's not quite enough to hang a whole novel on.

Even here we should perhaps qualify things a tad. It's debatable, after all, whether Warlock really had a significantly more in-depth take on matters of animal experimentation, just as it's debatable whether a science fiction novel always needs to be some groundbreaking political treatise. But what Warlock did have was a sense of scarily focused, powerful anger that never left you in doubt as to what Cartmel was trying to say, even if it could simplistically be reduced to "Don't treat animals badly"; where Warlock gave Chick multiple point-of-view sequences that culminated in a bleak, harrowing euthanasia scene, Swine Fever treats audiences to an uncomfortably long depiction of pig sex built around a bad pun about "porking." And I mean, you know I love me some bad puns, and history repeats first as tragedy and then as comedy and all that, but all the same... pig sex?

The social consequences of Mega-City One's burgeoning obsession with pork are perhaps the prime example of this confusion in action. At times, it seems as if Cartmel is angling to portray the rivalry between fans of competing pork restaurant chains as akin to football hooliganism, while the Judges' overzealous and poorly-handled attempts at crowd control seems to evoke the Hillsborough disaster, hardly the most contemporary of references for a novel published in 2005 (though, of course, it fits perfectly with Cartmel's general status as a writer whose sensibilities were honed in the late Thatcher years).

Equally, however, Swine Fever seems to want to gesture at a "War on Pork" analogous not just to the War on Drugs - so, again, Warlock's shadow is hard to escape here - but to the War on Terror. The climax sees a group of mutant, intelligent pigs hijacking a shuttlecraft and seeking to collide it with a large, prominent structure in the midst of a bustling metropolitan area, as straightforward an evocation of 9/11 as is possible.

There is perhaps something barbed in this, especially in the closing revelation that the Council of Five's response to the crisis is to legalise the indiscriminate slaughter of the pigs, a clearly disproportionate reaction that will probably achieve very little besides widespread, pointless carnage. Porkditz's ultimate fate is probably the closest the book comes to recapturing that sense of anguish at Chick's death, but as it's quite literally in the last scene, it's very much a case of "too little, too late."

Even in the portrayal of the fast food craze spurred on by the legalisation of pork, Cartmel really doesn't have much to say beyond depicting the consumers of Mega-City as dumb, stupid fat oafs willing to ingest sub-par food without a care for its negative consequences for their health. There's little thought to the ways in which fast food companies fill the vacuums left by food deserts and poverty, even though it's a fundamental pillar of Judge Dredd continuity that Mega-City One is rife with unemployment.

Instead, witness the interminable "comedy" scenes of the flatulent, bumbling Judge Carver - and frankly by the end of the novel one can't help but wonder how he and Darrid haven't been kicked out of the Justice Department altogether for their stellar levels of incompetence, let alone why Dredd keeps bringing them along on crucial missions; frankly I also just found myself wishing the pigs would succeed in blowing up the Aquatomics complex, if only to get rid of the buffoons - and try your best not to think about how this is probably about the level of commentary on fast food we could expect from a book published just one year after the release of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me.

Swine Fever ultimately feels like a missed opportunity all around. Instead of providing a compelling point of overlap between the worlds of Doctor Who and Judge Dredd at the precise point at which the former was beginning to claw its way back into the public's good graces, it instead only serves to make one long for Cartmel's past glories.

When you get right to the heart of the matter, there just isn't that much meat on the bones.

The Ranking So Far:

Dreddlocked

Deathmasques

Black Atlantic

Wetworks

The Final Cut

Kingdom of the Blind

Bad Moon Rising

Silencer

Eclipse

The Medusa Seed

Dread Dominion

Dredd vs Death

Cursed Earth Asylum

The Hundredfold Problem

Swine Fever

The Savage Amusement

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

"The legacy of the Democrat Party is now anchored in civilization’s chronicles. If you are a member of the Democrat Party, this is who you are for future generations to read!

The Democrat Party now sits in the company of Atilla and his inhumanities, with King Leopold II and his horrors in the Congo, with other miscreants of history (Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, etc.).

Let the electorate accept this fact about the “Ds” and remember their egregious behavior in the 2026 elections!

History is repeating itself with the pardons/commutations of Biden’s last 30 minutes in office."

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

Good means books that I personally think are good in themselves or good to read for whatever other reason.

truth be told I want to start my own private library which only houses such Good Books ™ that the old money in my area decides to finance it so borrowing can be free, and then I’ll also have it be an art gallery where I only admit Good Art ™ and support the library with those profits also

[crsssie]

builder becomes the built - lovebrush chronicles

To build a world means to play god.

You scribble down on your pages, manuscript pulled up on your big screen, hands on your tablet as you draw and create worlds. But it is not a tablet, and there is no screen. There is an empty void, and there are no pens to draw with. Everything manifests at the command of your word, your soul commanding something, and then something appearing. You are a god, and you build worlds at the strike of your hand. Your worlds are for you to play with, and the creation of man is nothing more than fickle in the universe. 

But civilizations rise and fall, and history repeats itself until the clock of life eventually shatters, and you have to fix it.

It is boring.

So, you create multiple and watch, eyes keen as they are doomed to live the same lives over and over again. They are boring, you find. There is no difference. Even when you place them in a world of perfection and tell them to do whatever, they repeat their actions from a past of a different civilization, creating wars as they covet things that are meant to be shared. You do not understand them, but perhaps they reflect a deeper and more complex version of you. Man are made in your image, after all. 

So, after much of your creation dooming itself, you wonder if an outside world dooming it would create any change. A civilization that harvests the very things that make your creation what it is. What is emotion? Why is the lack of it revered in this new world? They call themselves the empire, their thoughts synced with yours, yet desiring the destruction of your other creations to keep their civilization afloat. All they wish for is the very thing you can not have. This civilization is a direct reflection of yourself, you think. 

You watch as they destroy worlds.

Ah, how fun would it be to play the hero that so many worlds so desperately adored?

So, you blink owlishly, eyes wide as you stare up at your caretaker, his hair a waterfall of silver, mind finally remembering.

"你还好吗，小画家?"*

You smile up at him. "我下一个漫画注意有了."**

*"Are you alright, little painter?" **"I got the idea for my next manhua"

[that-one-paintbrush]

Good Bristles! She is bald :3

(I guess if Bristles isn't bothering her, I can just let her stay on Lightbulb's head. ..Her bald head.)

[cienie-isengardu]

Cienie's take on Mandalorian Culture: Arasuum - stagnation as symbol of death, not sloth

The Funeral Rites of Taungs and later Mandalorian Warriors. <> Kad Ha’rangir and mandalorian traditional weapons (part 1 — part 2 — part 3 – part 4 – part 5)

Mandalorians: People and Culture [Star Wars Insider #86, 2006] introduced Arasuum as the god of Stagnation and Sloth:

“Mandalorians were once intensely religious but disillusionment with the old fanaticism and worship of war itself gave way to a far less supernatural belief system among modern Mandalorians. They now regard creation tales, such as Akaanati’kar’oya (The War of Life and Death) as parables to illustrate a deeper philosophical meaning rather than literal supernaturalism. The stars were mythologized as fallen kings of Mandalore, and there are tales of the mythosaurs, but the pragmatic and skeptical Mandalorians look for allegory in these stories. The manda - best described as a combination of the collective state of being, the essence of being Mandalorian, and an oversoul - is not viewed as a literal heaven. Traditionally, the Mando afterlife is seen as a plane of spiritual energy in constant conflict between stagnation, and the opportunity for change brought about by destruction - a parallel with modern theories of cosmology. In Mandalorian myth, this conflict is symbolized by the eternal war between the sloth-god Arasuum - the personification of idle consumption and stagnation - and the vigorous destroyer god Kad Ha’rangir, who forces change and growth on the universe. Every Mando warrior who dies is said to add to the army of the afterlife, defending wives and children living in its permanent, peaceful homestead - the only place Mandalorians believe they can ever reach a non-transitory state of existence.”

This description of Arasuum was repeated in following tie-in sources:

Excerpted from “Industry. Honor. Savagery: Shaping the Mandalorian Soul” keynote address by Vilnau Teupt, 412th Proceedings of Galactic Anthropology and History, Brentaat Academy, 24 ABY [2012, published in The Essential Guide to Warfare]:

“After being driven from ancient Coruscant, the Taungs relocated to Roon and then wandered the Outer Rim, leaving hints of their passage in various species’ chronicles and histories. But they attracted little notice until they conquered Mandalore around 7000 BBY. At that time Mandalore lay beyond the galactic frontier - but close to the Republic’s outlying trade routes. Soon, rumors reached the Republic of worlds ruled by ferocious warriors. They served the god Kad Ha’rangir, whose tests and trials forced change and growth upon clans he chose to be his people. In opposition to Kad Ha’rangir stood the sloth-god Arasuum, who sought to tempt the clans and drag them down into stagnation and idle consumption. By waging war in Kad Ha’rangir’s name and according to strict religious laws, the Mandalorian Crusaders defied Arasuum and showed themselves worthy of favor.”

and 

Death Watch Manifesto [2013, published as part of The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett]

Our history begins with the Taung, the Shadow Warriors we honor as our Progenitors. They originally dwelled on Coruscant, but their enemies drove them into the Outer Rim. Their clans traveled from planet to planet on orders from their war chief, who interpreted the will of their now-extinct gods: Kad Ha’rangir, the all-seeing creator of test and trials; Hod Ha’ran, the trickster agent of fickle fortune; and Arasuum the god of sloth, an enemy whispering and seducing with promises of peace [...].

“The ancient Mandalorian deities were led by all-seeing Kad Ha’rangir (left), shown here beside the trickster god Hod Ha’ran (central) and the slothful Arasuum (right).

The mentioned above works associate Arasuum with laziness and stagnation, even though those two terms aren’t synonymous, nor even closely tied to each other. Stagnation is, basically speaking, a lack of change that may be conditioned by various factors. Laziness though is a choice a person makes - a choice to not work or use as little effort as possible[1]. 

Arasuum is constantly accused of being sloth. In contrast, Kad Ha’rangir, as Destructor and as god sending trials to test his people plays an active role in mandalorian mythology. However, the same as with Kad Ha’rangir, I think the sources - and with it, in-universe knowledge - may not be accurate. Or more precisely, the modern academics’ conclusions are based on incomplete sources whose true meaning perhaps was lost over the centuries.

For example, Kad Ha’rangir is treated as one of the most important, if not outright the main deity, but as I was proving in previous analysis, sword - in mando’a: kad - did not have any special place in the culture of the original Mandalorians (Taung), as they hold mythosaur axes in high regard. Which puts into doubt the prominent position of god named after a weapon clearly favored by human Mandalorians who replaced the now-extinct Taungs. It does not mean there was never a god-Destructor in original mythology but rather allow us to assume the mandalorian culture has undergone many changes with passing time. If the Kad Ha’rangir himself may be a god reshaped to fit the needs of early human Mandalorians and their descendants, then the same could happen with Arasuum. 

Which is why I decided to analyze Arasuum and his role through the lens of three aspects:

Mandalorian language (Mando’a)

Official tie-in material 

widely understood Mandalorian culture

Let's start with the MANDALORIAN LANGUAGE

For those unfamiliar with Star Wars lore, mando’a is an official mandalorian language. Initially developed by composer Jesse Harlin as part of the soundtrack for the 2005 video game Republic Commando, it was expanded into functional language by Karen Traviss, the author or tie-in Republic Commando book series. The glossary included in her books evolved into a full dictionary and grammatical guide published on Traviss’ official page (archived version can be found here).

In short, Mandalorian language evolved from a few songs into a functional dialect that fans adapted and to this day are still developing for their own use. Understandable, the original mando’a published by Karen Traviss is an artificially created language but because it was made by the same person that at time shaped Mandalorian culture, we have a reason to assume the meaning of deities’ names wasn’t assigned at random.

And so we have a role of Destructor assigned to Kad Ha’rangir - in which kad is a word for sword/saber

while ha’rangir is derived from ha’ran or rangir, two words related to ash/destruction & hell. 

With publication of Bounty Hunter Code and The Essential Guide to Warfare comes Hod Ha’ran, another deity whose name and role correlate with similar meaning in mando’a:

The name of Arasuum brings an important detail - mandalorian language distinguishes between stagnation

and laziness.

As can be seen, there is no common element between those two words, as in: one word is not derived from the other, the way logically some meanings are connected.

If two names have direct correlation to gods’ mythological roles, why Arasuum wouldn’t be perceived by original Mandalorians the same as Kad Ha’rangir and Hod Ha’ran? And this is our first clue to understand Arasuum’s original role in mythology.

Arasuum, as his name suggests, remains the same. Is stagnant. In contrast Kad Ha’rangir is associated with vigor, the growth that happens to Mandalorian people. All three presented above source material associate Kad Ha’rangir with life (active energy), what from biological and symbolic perspectives is a constant change. Since both deities are part of the same myth titles as The War between Life and Death, logically thinking Arasuum, the unchanging god, should represent death as opposition to growth.

If we go with that logic, then facing and overcoming Kad Ha’rangir’s trials may mean surviving the hardship like fight (war). Each victory over death (stagnation) gives a warrior an unique experience that change them, though if the change is for better or worse may be secondary concern. Alive Mandalorian can’t stay the same, because those unable to grow will fail to survive another god’s trial and then will be lost to Arasuum. 

And this is the base ground for my theory that stagnation from mythological point is symbolic metaphor for death and with that, Arasuum is the god of death, not laziness.

The next part will explore the tie-in source material, with special focus on Death Watch Manifesto and political symbolism of Arasuum.

SIDE NOTES:

[1] Just to be clear here: no, needing to rest after hard work is not laziness, the same as lack of will to take action due to depression or other psychological or physical illness. 

[une-sanz-pluis]

Catherine of Valois wrote a very affectionate letter to Henry V? (Of course, members of the royal family during that period wrote letters to each other with great affection...)

I'm very sad to say this but this letter doesn't seem to exist. I talked about it briefly in this post but it's worthwhile going into more detail since I don't know of anybody who has discussed this letter and its existence in depth.

Anne Crawford in Letters of the Queens of England says that none of Catherine's letters are known to survive today, which was repeated by Katherine J. Lewis in probably the most academic biography of Catherine to date. There are a few blogposts that reference this letter, as does Amy Licence in Red Roses, but these all reference Agnes Strickland (Licence's text suggests she's quoting the letter but she's actually quoting Strickland's summary of the letter - and incorrectly at that. This mislead me for several years into thinking this letter actually existed.)

This is the entirety of what Strickland says about this letter:

Early in the same spring Katherine wrote her warlike lord a most loving letter, declaring that she earnestly longed to behold him once more. This epistle was answered by an invitation to join him in France.

There is no footnote for this paragraph and, as you can see, there is nothing in the text itself to indicate its source. This doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence since it makes it virtually impossible to track the letter back to a source. The fact that Strickland deals with the letter in such brevity - a single sentence! - and paraphrases, rather than quoting, the letter, adds more doubt.

Strickland's reputation adds even more doubt. She was a Victorian historical writer best known for her Lives of the Queens of England series, which has proved tremendously influential and tremendously unreliable. Strickland's speculations, suppositions and imaginings were often presented as fact despite being unsupported by the historical evidence and these speculations have entered into the accepted narrative about various queens. For instance, Strickland reported how Isabella of France was greatly upset by the fact that Edward II callously gave the wedding presents he received from her father to Piers Gaveston - but while we know Edward sent these gifts to Gaveston, it does not seem like he gifted them to Gaveston but rather had Gaveston take temporary custody of them in his capacity as Edward's regent. We know nothing about Isabella's reaction to this either. Additionally, Strickland popularised and possibly invented the story that Catherine was effectively imprisoned in Bermondsey Abbey when her marriage to Owen Tudor was discovered - we do not know why Catherine entered Bermondsey Abbey, much less whether it was against her will, though we know now that the council knew about her marriage to Owen much earlier than her retirement to Bermondsey. John Carmi Parsons's essay "Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290): Legend and Reality through Seven Centuries" also details the problems with her treatment of Eleanor of Castile and is an interesting commentary on Strickland's own politics that influenced how she wrote about these queens.

Now, in the two examples I mentioned, Strickland seems to have let her speculations/imagination outstrip the evidence rather than completely inventing these narratives out of nothing so it might be unfair to claim she completely invented the letter. However, without a source for the letter, there's no way to know that the letter even existed. It's impossible to tell what Strickland is referencing - I've made the assumption thus far that Strickland is referencing a letter that actually existed but she may have referring to an earlier historian's claim or a reference in a chronicle or a history to Catherine's letter. But Catherine of Valois has not, as far as I'm aware (I would love to be proved wrong!), been the subject of any in-depth historiographical studies which would help us locate an earlier source. It may be possible to locate the source by scouring older histories ourselves but it would no doubt be a huge and potentially fruitless task.

As to your question about the affectionate terms of the letter... assuming the letter did exist, Strickland's discussion of it is so brief and includes so little detail that it's hard to tell anything about it. It is true that most medieval individuals referred to each other in terms that indicated great affection (e.g. John of Gaunt referred to all three of his wives as his "dearest consort" in his will) so it might not actually mean very much beyond convention. If Catherine's phrasing was unusual, it might tell us something of she really felt about Henry - but without the text of the letter, it's impossible to make any assessment.

I want to end by saying that it is possible that the letter, or one like it, existed. Catherine must have written many letters, not just to Henry V, that are not known to survive in the present day and perhaps still exist in private or obscure collections and records. It may seem unlikely but it was only in 2022 that historians and archivists rediscovered new records about one of the most discussed aspects of Geoffrey Chaucer's life in the National Archives.

It also seems that Catherine's life has been the subject of scholarly neglect (that is not to to say that she has not been of interest, only that this interest has almost entirely been limited to her ability to be cast as a romantic heroine or in speculating about her sex life and the "true" paternity of her Tudor children or the treatment of her corpse). It is possible, then, that this scholarly neglect has led to some records of her life going unnoticed. I hope that the rise and growth of queenship studies will continue to allow her life and tenure as queen to be reassessed and new evidence looked for and found.

Sources:

Anne Crawford, ed. Letters of the Queens of England, 1100-1547 (Sutton Publishing 1997)

Katherine J. Lewis, “Katherine of Valois: The Vicissitudes of Reputation”, Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty (eds. J. L. Laynesmith and Elena Woodacre, Palgrave 2023)    

Amy Licence, Red Roses: Blanche of Gaunt to Margaret Beaufort (The History Press, 2017)

John Carmi Parsons, "Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290): Legend and Reality through Seven Centuries", Eleanor of Castile 1290-1990: essays to commemorate the 700th anniversary of her death: 28 November 1290 (Stamford Paul Watkins 1991)

Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, vol. 3 (Lea & Blanchard, 1841)

[autumnbrambleagain]

So IF, say, a Marlfox ended up in Qud, this is why I think it would naturally form an army of snapjaws.

Consider. Marlfox the book literally has a part that goes:

This narrative has been edited by Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop, Actor Manager Impresario. Who insists that the entire tale is a drama, which he will be later performing as a play, hence the three parts being named as acts rather than books. We crave your indulgence for this deviation.)

Like all Redwall books, they're post-edited propaganda made to make the landlord goodbeasts look good, and the oppressed "vermin hordes" look bad.

No, the marlfoxes weren't there to steal trinkets, they were there for medicine. Their mother was old and sick and dying, and they were sent out to get stuff to keep death away? It's a metaphor. Redwall chroniclers have twisted the truth.

No, the marlfoxes weren't constantly murdering one another. That's propaganda to make the Redwallers clean of conscience. If the books were up-rated in age I'm sure the marlfoxes would be like, committing incest with one another constantly just to hammer in how ~evil~ they are and how they don't have ~morals~ like ~us.~

The water rats celebrating the marlfoxes' deaths and becoming peaceful farmers? Really? In a series where rats are biologically impelled to be evil, selfish, nasty, mean, brutish? Aha. Tell me more about how the native populations celebrated the civilizing light of the British reaching them, Mr. Jacques.

So obviously the Marlfoxes were cool ninjas, yeah, sure, probably did some bad things, yeah! They, like all other "vermin" races, have spent their lives having the arable land owned by selfish, snobbish upper-crust goodbeasts. Of course everyone wants to conquer Redwall--they control all the good land, and refuse to allow the filthy, lower, base vermin races access to them.

Okay! Established. Marlfoxes are awesome, Redwallers are all entrenched oppressors. Let's say one gets sucked into a space-time vortex and ends up in Qud.

So, after some culture shock, there's some things they'll notice. Snapjaws will be nice to them, because the law of mimicry means they'll recognize the snout and the fur and be inclined towards it. The marlfox will see another people desperately scrabbling together a hard-fought life, and, ok, have you seen snapjaws.

They get killed by equimaxes.

They get killed by horned chameleons.

They get killed by salthoppers, dragonflies, and dromads!

Do snapjaws raid peaceful settlements? Sure. They have their forts and their castles, but they're rattle-skattle things shored up poorly against the salt around them. How else can they survive but in raiding? This isn't like the goats, who dominate the land. Snapjaws are forced to the edges, and everything is their match or more.

So I'm thinking a marlfox, being clever and having been in that situation most of their life, will experience a feeling between sympathy and opportunity.

While there are peaceful snapjaw settlements, how much land is there in Qud that can support a village? This is something that's finally going to come up in Proselytize soon enough--one of the big theses of the story! There isn't enough resources for everyone to live in peace. It's just a hardboned fact. The Brambled Fae is gonna have a lot to say about it!

So obviously the marlfox would accumulate snapjaws, build a castle, and history would repeat itself. But there are no Redwallers who own everything. Each village is a small center of power at best. Yd Freehold, Ezra, the Six Day Stilt, even these centers of power don't project force externally much.

And that's why it's ENTIRELY 100% CANON that my Redwall marlfox CoQ crossover OC donut steel is going to build a snapjaw empire, and bring prosperity to snapjaws everywhere. Probably at the expense of, oh, let's say, I don't know. I'll roll dice to determine who to destroy the homes from.

[sassyandclassy94]

I used the “Stone in my shoe” line on a guy at church last night (“What?? Why am I a stone in your shoe?!” “Dude, relax! It’s a line from Masters of the Air, I’m being funny!”) and before that I tried to recommend Masters of the Air to ANOTHER guy at church (Isaiah actually… for those of you who used to follow the… chronicles) and he said HE CAN’T TAKE A LOT OF WWII🙄 I should’ve said “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it” BUUUT, instead I told him he should get over it and watch it cause it’s good. IF you watch it with VidAngel’s filter, like I do. Then he said:

“Filter? You girls are getting a little more liberal in what you watch now aren’t you? With all the swearing and rude remarks.”

Michaiah piped in with: “SAYS THE GUY WHO LAUGHED AT BOBBY’S RUDE REMARK ABOUT THE OARS NKT BEING IN SYNC. Mr. SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.”

And he could not deny it. He agreed and said that’s fair. And then he talked about how it was the delivery of the line, not the actual line itself. Uh huh. Sure it is.