#instructor napoleon

[nade2308]

Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, USN, Naval Aviator, "Top Gun", 1986

Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel Kaffee, USN, JAG Corps, "A Few Good Men", 1992

Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Geman Army, "Valkyrie", 2008

Roy Miller/Matthew Knight, CIA operative, "Knight and Day", 2010

Ethan Hunt, IMF agent in disguise as General Anatoly Fedorov, Russian Army, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol", 2011

Jack Reacher, ex-Major and investigator for the 110th Military Police Special Investigation Unit, US Army, "Jack Reacher", 2012

William Cage, public affairs officer and Major, US Army, "Edge of Tomorrow", 2014

Jack Reacher, ex-Major and investigator for the 110th Military Police Special Investigation Unit, US Army, "Jack Reacher: Never go back", 2016

Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, USN, Naval Aviator, test pilot and flight instructor for the Navy, "Top Gun: Maverick", 2022

Barry Seal, airline commercial pilot for TWA, "American Made", 2017

"A man becomes the creature of his uniform."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

@thethistlegirl @malewifebillcage

[blueiscoool]

Ancient Herculaneum Scrolls Blackened by Vesuvius are now Readable  

X-ray scans can just tease out letters on the warped documents from a library at Herculaneum.

The lavish villa sat overlooking the Bay of Naples, offering bright ocean views to the well-heeled Romans who came from across the empire to study. The estate's library was stocked with texts by prominent thinkers of the day, in particular a wealth of volumes by the philosopher Philodemus, an instructor of the poet Virgil.

But the seaside library also sat in the shadow of a volcano that was about to make terrible history.

The 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius is most famous for burying Pompeii, spectacularly preserving many artifacts—and residents—in that once bustling town south of Naples. The tumbling clouds of ash also entombed the nearby resort of Herculaneum, which is filled with its own wonders. During excavations there in 1752, diggers found a villa containing bundles of rolled scrolls, carbonized by the intense heat of the pyroclastic flows and preserved under layers of cement-like rock. Further digs showed that the scrolls were part of an extensive library, earning the structure the name Villa of the Papyri.

Blackened and warped by the volcanic event, the roughly 1,800 scrolls found so far have been a challenge to read. Some could be mechanically unrolled, but hundreds remain too fragile to make the attempt, looking like nothing more than clubs of charcoal. Now, more than 200 years later, archaeologists examining two of the scrolls have found a way to peer inside them with x-rays and read text that has been lost since antiquity.

"Anybody who focuses on the ancient world is always going to be excited to get even one paragraph, one chapter, more," says Roger Macfarlane, a classicist at Brigham Young University in Utah. "The prospect of getting hundreds of books more is staggering."

Most of the scrolls that have been unwrapped so far are Epicurean philosophical texts written by Philodemus—prose and poetry that had been lost to modern scholars until the library was found. Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who developed a school of thought in the third century B.C. that promoted pleasure as the main goal of life, but in the form of living modestly, foregoing fear of the afterlife and learning about the natural world. Born in the first century B.C. in what is now Jordan, Philodemus studied at the Epicurean school in Athens and became a prominent teacher and interpreter of the philosopher's ideas.

Modern scholars debate whether the scrolls were part of Philodemus' personal collection dating to his time period, or whether they were mostly copies made in the first century A.D. Figuring out their exact origins will be no small feat—in addition to the volcano, mechanical or chemical techniques for opening the scrolls did their share of damage, sometimes breaking the delicate objects into fragments or destroying them outright. And once a page was unveiled, readability suffered.

"Ironically, when someone opened up a scroll, they would write on a separate sheet what they could read, like a facsimile, and the original ink, once exposed to air, would start to fade," says Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who specializes in digital imaging. What's more, the brute-force techniques usually left some pages stuck together, trapping hidden layers and their precious contents.

From 2007 to 2012, Seales collaborated with Daniel Delattre at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris on a project to scan scrolls in the collections of the Institut de France—former treasures of Napoleon Bonaparte, who received them as a gift from the King of Naples in 1802. Micro-CT scans of two rolled scrolls revealed their interior structure—a mass of delicate whorls akin to a fingerprint. From that data the team estimated that the scrolls would be between 36 and 49 feet long if they could be fully unwound. But those scans weren't sensitive enough to detect any lettering.

The trouble is that papyri at the time were written using a carbon-based ink, making it especially hard to digitally tease out the words on the carbonized scrolls. Traditional methods like CT scans blast a target with x-rays and look for patterns created as different materials absorb the radiation—this works very well when scanning for dense bone inside soft tissue (or for peering inside a famous violin), but the method fails at discerning carbon ink on blackened scrolls.

Now a team led by Vito Mocella of the Italian National Research Council has shown for the first time that it is possible to see letters in rolled scrolls using a twist on CT scanning called x-ray phase-contrast tomography, or XPCT. Mocella, Delattre and their colleagues obtained permission to take a fragment from an opened scroll and a whole rolled scroll from the Paris institute to the European Synchrotron in Grenoble. The particle collider was able to produce the high-energy beam of x-rays needed for the scans.

Rather than looking for absorption patterns, XPCT captures changes in the phase of the x-rays. The waves of x-rays move at different speeds as they pass through materials of various density. In medical imaging, rays moving through an air-filled organ like a lung travel faster then those penetrating thick muscle, creating contrast in the resulting images. Crucially, the carbon-based ink on the scrolls didn't soak into the papyrus—it sits on top of the fibers. The microscopic relief of a letter on the page proved to be just enough to create a noticeable phase contrast.

Reporting today in the journal Nature Communications, Mocella and his team show that they were able to make out two previously unreadable sequences of capital letters from a hidden layer of the unrolled scroll fragment. The team interprets them as Greek words: ΠΙΠΤΟΙΕ, meaning "would fall", and ΕΙΠΟΙ, meaning "would say". Even more exciting for scholars, the team was able to pick out writing on the still-rolled scroll, eventually finding all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet at various points on the tightly bundled document.

Even though the current scans are mostly a proof of concept, the work suggests that there will soon be a way to read the full works on the rolled scrolls, the team says. "We plan to improve the technique," says Mocella. "Next spring we have an allowance to spend more time at the Grenoble synchrotron, where we can test a number of approaches and try to discern the exact chemical composition of the ink. That will help us improve the energy setting of the beam for our scan."

"With the text now accessible by virtue of specialized images, we have the prospect of going inside the rolled scrolls, and that's really exciting," says Macfarlane. Seales agrees: "Their work is absolutely crucial, and I am delighted to see a way forward using phase contrast."

Seales is currently working on ways to help make sense of future scans. With support from the National Science Foundation and Google, Seales is developing software that can sort through the jumbled letters and figure out where they belong on the scroll. The program should be able to lump letters into words and fit words into passages. "It turns out there are grains of sand sprinkled all the way through the scrolls," says Seales. "You can see them twinkling in the scans, and that constellation is fixed." Using the sand grains like guide stars, the finished software should be able to orient the letters on the whorled pages and line up multiple scans to verify the imagery.

The projects offer hope for further excavations of the Herculaneum library. "They stopped excavating at some point for various reasons, and one was, Why should we keep pulling things out if they are so hard to read?" says Seales. But many believe there is a lower "wing" of the villa's collection still buried, and it may contain more 1st-century Latin texts, perhaps even early Christian writings that would offer new clues to Biblical times.

"Statistically speaking, if you open up a new scroll of papyrus from Herculaneum, it's most likely going to be a text from Philodemus," says MacFarlane. "But I'm more interested in the Latin ones, so I would not be unhappy at all to get more Latin texts that are not all banged up."

For Mocella, being able to read even one more scroll is crucial for understanding the library and the workings of a classical school of philosophy. "Regardless of the individual text, the library is a unique cultural treasure, as it is the only ancient library to survive almost entire together with its books," he says. "It is the library as whole that confers the status of exceptionality." The scanning method could also be useful for texts beyond the Roman world, says Seales. Medieval books often cannibalized older texts to use as binding, and scans could help uncover interesting tidbits without ruining the preserved works. Also, letters and documents from the ill-fated Franklin expedition to the Northwest Passage in the 19th century have been recovered but are proving difficult to open without doing damage. "All that material could benefit from non-invasive treatment," says Seales.

By Victoria Jaggard.

[opera-ghosts]

Today I will remember the extraordinary soprano Adelina Patti (1843-1919). Here we see this antique Postcard from 1898.

Spanish-born soprano who was one of the greatest of her century.

The Spanish-born soprano Adelina Patti was the most renowned singer in Europe and the United States for over 30 years. She was born in 1843, the youngest of three children, into a family of opera singers and musicians. Her parents were opera performers well known in Europe by the time of Patti's birth in Madrid, where they were on tour. Her Italian father was Salvatore Patti; her Spanish mother was Caterina Chiesa Barili-Patti , known before her marriage as Signora Barili. Caterina also had four children from an earlier marriage, and all seven of her children would enjoy successful careers as singers.

When Adelina Patti was four the family moved to New York, where her father became an opera house manager. Her half-brother Ettore Barili gave Patti voice lessons starting at age five; by the age of seven Adelina was recognized as a child prodigy and the next year she gave her debut concert at New York City's Tripler Hall. Audiences and critics at subsequent concerts were stunned by the maturity, range, and purity of her voice. Her success in New York led to a three-year tour of American cities, unprecedented for such a young child, from 1851 to 1854. A second concert tour followed in 1857. Patti's sister Amelia Patti was married to the renowned pianist Maurice Strakosch; he took care of Adelina while on tour and served as her manager, instructor, and accompanist. She received only a minimal education, although her family background and musical training made her fluent in Spanish, French, Italian, and English. Her parents and Strakosch continued training Patti in the demands of operatic singing until they felt she was prepared to sing opera professionally. They arranged for her critically praised debut in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor at the New York Academy of Music in 1859; she was 16, and would perform in opera continually for the next half-century, enjoying a career that was decades longer than that of most opera singers. Soon after her debut Patti faced serious family crises, as her father's struggling opera house failed and her mother left the family in 1860 to return to Rome. Patti then began to provide much of the family's income through her performances.

She toured the eastern United States and the West Indies from 1859 to 1861. In 1861, she went abroad, under the care of her father and Strakosch, to perform in La sonnambula at the Covent Garden opera house in London. She was enthusiastically received in London, where she was to perform every autumn for 25 years.

Patti remained on tour in Europe virtually continuously for 20 years, not returning to New York until 1881. She played to crowded houses in Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris, and across Italy. The operatic roles she chose ranged from light comedy, which she preferred, to tragedy, but whatever role she appeared in, critics were universal in their praise of her acting ability and the emotive power of her voice.

While in Paris in 1866, through her friendship with Empress Eugénie , Patti met the aristocrat Louis de Cahuzac, marquis de Caux, who served as a personal servant to the French emperor Napoleon III. They wished to marry but the marquis was not allowed to retain his privileged position at the French court if he married a working woman. Since Patti would not consider giving up her career, de Caux eventually resigned his post. This freed the couple to marry in 1868, when the new marchioness was 25 years old and her husband 42; however, the marriage lasted less than a decade, and they obtained a legal separation in 1877. As Patti was by then a celebrity throughout Europe and the United States, her marital problems brought scandal to the opera world and were the subject of often sensationalistic newspaper articles in many of the countries she had performed in. In the divorce suit, de Caux charged Patti with an adulterous affair with her co-star, Italian tenor Ernesto Nicolini. She admitted to the affair, but maintained in her defense that de Caux was jealous, controlling, and violent, and that he allowed her no access to her substantial income. The divorce would be finalized in 1885, when de Caux was awarded a settlement of $300,000 from Patti. Freed at last from her unhappy marriage, Patti married Nicolini a few months later.

Despite her personal problems during the separation and divorce, Patti continued to travel widely. She did a concert tour on her return to New York in 1881, followed by two operatic tours of the United States. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, she was the most highly paid and most visible singer in Europe and the United States, receiving press coverage for her appearances as well as for her shocking personal life, legendary jewel collection, enormous wealth, and for her demanding, often capricious personality. She maintained homes across Europe, where she was friends with and frequently host to Europe's royalty and aristocracy. Her fame even led to mentions in contemporary literature and drama, such as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Patti gave a farewell performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House in 1887. She and Nicolini then left for another extended tour abroad, performing in Spain and Argentina. In 1895, at age 52, Patti gave six farewell appearances at Covent Garden. She and Nicolini then went into semi-retirement on an estate in Wales called Craig-y-Nos Castle which Patti had purchased some years before, and where she lived with Nicolini prior to their marriage. Patti adopted Wales as the native land she had never truly had, and was respected by the Welsh for her generosity to charitable causes and to her poor neighbors.

Ernesto Nicolini died in 1898. Patti, age 56, remarried a year later. Her third husband, a Swedish aristocrat named Baron Rolf Cederström, was a former military officer who, at the time Patti met him in 1897, was director of the Health Gymnastic Institute in London. At the time of their marriage, Cederström was only 28; their age difference and his occupation made the renowned opera star once again the subject of a flood of news articles and gossip columns.

The urgings of Patti's American fans called her back to the stage in 1903, when she began her last operatic tour at New York's Carnegie Hall. Although Patti was by then considerably older than most opera singers were at retirement, audiences were still moved by her powerful performances. In 1906, at age 63, she made her formal farewell appearance at Albert Hall in London. She also made numerous recordings which have preserved her work and demonstrate the remarkable purity and range which captivated her admirers and which had once led the composer Giuseppe Verdi to call Patti the greatest voice he had ever heard.

Adelina Patti was called out of retirement to perform occasionally at charity events in Wales and England through 1914, when she left the stage for good at age 71. She spent the remaining five years of her life at Craig-y-Nos Castle, where she died in 1919, at age 76. At her wish, her husband buried her in the celebrity cemetery Père Lachaise in Paris. He eventually remarried, selling Craig-y-Nos Castle to the Welsh National Memorial Association which converted it into the Adelina Patti Hospital. The hospital remained in operation until 1986, when the castle and its grounds were turned into a national park and cultural center.

[empirearchives]

Giuseppe Donizetti — served Napoleon on Elba and accompanied him during the Hundred Days

Portrait of Giuseppe Donizetti later in life

Giuseppe Donizetti was born into poverty in 1788, in the Northern Italian city of Bergamo. The eldest of his siblings, he worked from a young age, training as a tailor’s apprentice. His true talent was in music, which was spotted early on in his life.

Giuseppe was conscripted in 1808 at the age of 20. He served the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in the Seventh Italian Regiment. He fought against Austria in the War of the 5th Coalition in 1809. He spent the years of 1811, 1812 and 1813 in Spain.

In 1811, he was became ill en route to Spain and was hospitalized at Castelnaudary in France. 43 years later in 1854, he wrote about it to the court of the Ottoman Empire:

“Constantinople, November 22, 1854. Mémoire to His Highness Achmed-Fethy Pasha. Finding myself in a comfortable position thanks to the beneficences of Our August and Glorious Sovereign, I cede to the Hospital of Castelnaudary (Aude), in which I was ill in 1811, the portion coming to me of the legacy left by the Emperor Napoleon I to the Battalion of the Island of Elba. The papers establishing my right to participate in the credit opened up by the Decree of August 5, 1854, issued at Biarritz by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon III, I have been obliged to send to France at the time when I was honored with a brevet as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Your Highness's Very humble Servant, Joseph Donizetti.”

Location and photograph of Castelnaudary

After the dissolution of the Kingdom of Italy and the First French Empire, he enlisted in the French military and was stationed on the island of Elba as a military flutist. It was on Elba, in the town of Portoferraio, where he was married in 1815.

That same year, he accompanied Napoleon during the Hundred Days, traveling with him on the same ship from Elba to Antibes, France. He likely fought at the battle of Waterloo.

Landing of Napoleon I in Antibes in 1815

After Napoleon:

The Austrians took control of Northern Italy after the fall of Napoleon. According to the historian Emre Aracı, Giuseppe was “a greal admirer of Napoleon and the French […] Giuseppe strongly opposed his country’s domination by the Austrians. Evidence shows that he secretly took part in the Carbonari resistance and even appeared at court trials.”

Giuseppe Donizetti became a composer, and had a full career as Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music. He even composed the first National Anthem of the Ottoman Empire, the Mecidiye Marşı. His main legacy is introducing Western marching music to the military of the Ottoman Empire.

He was employed by the Ottoman government on 17 September 1828 for an annual salary of 8,000 francs. This was considered a very high salary by his family. Giuseppe’s trouble with the Austrian authorities after the fall of Napoleon may have been a motivator for him to leave Italy. He moved to Constantinople at the age of 39 and spent the rest of his life there.

Giuseppe’s patron was Sultan Mahmud II, who ruled from 1808 to 1839, and Sultan Abdulmejid I, who ruled from 1839 to 1861.

According to the historian Emre Aracı:

“The Donizettis were so well-liked in the Ottoman capital that when fire broke out near their house Ahmet Fethi Pasha, the sultan's brother-in-law, ordered all the houses surrounding the maestro's home to be razed to the ground in order to prevent the flames reaching the building.”

Sultan Mahmud II

His brother, Gaetano, called him his fratello turco— Turkish brother, writing to his friend that “He loves Constantinople, to which he owes everything.”

Giuseppe even encouraged his brother to move to Constantinople, but Gaetano declined. “I do not want to play the fool like my brother, the Bey, who, after having earned more than I perhaps, stays there in ancient Byzantium to scratch his belly between the plague and the stake,” wrote Gaetano.

Giuseppe moved to Constantinople two years after the creation of the Imperial Musical School (Muzıka-i Hümâyûn), which was an Ottoman institution which trained its students in Western style of music. He was specifically recruited as an expert to help lead this effort.

Giuseppe’s younger brother, Gaetano. By Francesco Coghetti, 1837

Gaetano Donizetti, though younger than Giuseppe, became the much more successful and internationally well-known brother, producing nearly 70 operas in his life. Gaetano is considered one of the most successful opera composers in history. Because of this, Giuseppe is widely known as Gaetano Donizetti’s brother. The historian Emre Aracı pointed out that this has actually been good for Giuseppe’s reputation because it has enabled him to be remembered when many other composers have been forgotten.

Both brothers were awarded the Ottoman Order of Nișan-i Iftihar. When Gaetano received the award at the Ottoman Embassy in Paris, he proudly said: “Napoleon belongs to two centuries, I to two religions.”

Burial:

Giuseppe died in 1856, and is buried in the vaults of St. Esprit Cathedral, on the European side of Constantinople, in the district called Pera (now called Beyoğlu). According to Emre Aracı, the district “was once the home of a thriving Christian community”. The Church was built in 1846, 10 years before Giuseppe died.

Interior of St. Esprit Cathedral

Giuseppe and his brother Gaetano are two great success stories and examples of people from impoverished backgrounds who go on to live prosperous and interesting lives.

Sources:

Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, 1963

Emre Aracı, Giuseppe Donizetti at the Ottoman Court: A Levantine Life, The Musical Times, Vol. 143, No. 1880 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 49-56

Emre Aracı, Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha and the Polyphonic Court Music of the Ottoman Empire, The Court Historian, Volume 7, 2 December 2002

Özgecan Karadağli, Western Performing Arts in the Late Ottoman Empire: Accommodation and Formation, 2020

[bighandsforabigheart]

Thinking about scuba diving au now where Solo and Gaby are the local instructors and Illya dives with them

Solo’s flirting so hard but Illya’s only interested in the fishes. And sharks. And rays. And all the other cool marine animals. He’s trying to get Illya to talk about his personal life on the boat ride to the dive location but it always comes back to talking about the ocean. Which Solo doesn’t mind but he really really wants to get to know Illya before he has to leave back home. Gaby thinks it’s funny because it’s usually the divers hitting on Solo and she’s never seen him be that desperate.

(This entire thing is because one of the instructors today went “…or you can enjoy a show of shirtless sweaty men carry heavy equipment!” with a wink when we were getting off and I immediately thought of Napoleon saying that instead of processing what he said like a regular person)

[illustratus]

On Outpost Duty by Georg Friedrich Kersting

Theodor Körner, Friedrich Friesen und Heinrich Hartmann auf Vorposten

Kersting painted this picture as a memorial to three friends who had fallen in the Napoleonic wars: Theodor Körner, Karl Friedrich Friesen, and Heinrich Hartmann. Kersting had also followed Körner’s lead and joined the Lützower Freikorps (volunteers) in 1813. As an unmounted marksman, “Jäger zu Fuß”, Kersting had been given weapons and money by Kügelgen and Caspar David Friedrich. Goethe had pronounced the blessing of the arms. The painting represents both Kersting’s patriotism and his grief. The three friends have taken up their position at the edge of an oak wood. They are wearing the Iron Cross medal, which was designed by Schinkel in 1813. Oak trees, their hair styles, and their red, black, and gold uniforms point towards a newly-awakened sense of being German. Silence reigns. Each member of the group seems lost in his own thoughts as though he were no longer of this world. Friesen leans against an oak tree with his rifle at the ready. As a drill instructor he fought alongside Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and became Lützow’s personal adjutant. On the left of the picture sits Hartmann, a nineteen-year-old law student from Heidelberg who had fought with Friesen and Kersting in the battle at Göhrde. Kersting was to see him die. The poet and dramatist Körner, sitting behind Hartmann, recruited volunteers for the Freikorps in Dresden. In his works, he advocated that the freedom of the fatherland should take precedence over the life of the individual.

[indynerdgirl]

Topgun AU Ideas

As I was scrolling through the Topgun tag on AO3 the other night, I realized that I was starting to see the same tropes and AUs over & over again. And while not a bad thing at all, personally, I'm just starting to get a little bored of reading the same story over & over.

So I started thinking about what kind of AUs I would love to see in the Topgun fandom and then I started making a list and it kind of spiraled out of control. Oops. 😆

I now present to you all my somewhat organized list of AU ideas! And feel free to use them for any fandom, I was just thinking about Topgun as I came up with them all. It's also by no means an exhaustive list so I probably missed some obvious ones.

Military AU ideas: Pentagon/Joint Chiefs/White House Advisor (think The West Wing but for the military - this is the one I've been dying to see someone tackle!) Navy JAG NCIS Blue Angels Air Force Instead of Navy Astronauts/NASA Test Pilots Naval Academy Instructors Adversary/Aggressor Squadron Office of Naval Intelligence Sailors Instead of Pilots Submariners Instead of Pilots Naval Flight School Instructors (Aviation Preflight Indoctrination, Primary Flight Training, Intermediate Flight Training, and/ or Advanced Flight Training)

Character AU ideas: Natasha is Maverick's daughter/niece  Bob is Maverick's son/nephew  Natasha is Ice's daughter/niece Bob is Ice's son/nephew Maverick is Amelia's father Penny Is Also a Pilot Penny’s Father Is An Air Force General Obligatory Goose/Carole/Ice Lives AUs Maverick’s Dad/Mom Lives Any of the younger pilots is the kid of one of the other 86 boys

And a whole lot more under the cut!

American Historical AU ideas: Colonial/Revolutionary War Post-Revolutionary War Lewis & Clark War of 1812 Mexican-American War/The Alamo Wild West (good guys or bad guys) Organ Trail The Gold Rush (California or Alaska) Pony Express Civil War/Reconstruction Transcontinental Railway Cattle Drives Industrial Revolution/The Gilded Age WWI Bootleggers/Rum Runners/1920s Jazz Age Great Depression/Dust Bowl WWII Korean War Vietnam War 1950s/Greasers Moon Race/1960s NASA 1980s/The Cold War

Other Historical AU Ideas: Ancient Greece/Rome Middle Ages Renaissance Tudor Elizabethan Georgian Regency Napoleonic Victorian Edwardian

Fandom AUs: The West Wing Firefly The Avengers Agents of Shield Star Wars Star Trek Harry Potter Percy Jackson Ocean's 11 Mission Impossible Bourne Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan Jack Reacher John Wick Friends New Girl Supernatural How I Met Your Mother Chuck Downton Abbey CSI Jurassic Park Indiana Jones The Office Parks and Rec Pacific Rim

Other Profession AU ideas: Coffee Shop Book Shop Bakery/Candy Maker Winery/Distillery Restaurant/Chef Bartender/Bar Mechanic/Car Repair Shop Doctor/Medical/Hospital Firefighter/Police Officer/Detective Wildfire Firefighter Florist Tattooist Gardener/Gardening Horse Racing Motorsports (NASCAR/F1/Motocross, ect) Professional Sports (baseball, football, hockey, soccer, basketball) Rodeo/Bull Riding Olympians Air Racing (it’s a real thing!) Actors (movie or stage)/Celebrity Ballet Dancers Teachers College Professors Lawyers/Judges National Park Ranger Cruise Ship Pet Groomer/Veterinarian Farmer/Rancher Banker/Financial Bodyguards Zoo Museum/Living Museum Musician/Band Mall (everyone works at different stores at the same mall) Marketing Archeologist Spies Reporters/Journalist News Anchors Lifeguards Assassins Criminals/Thieves/Heist Bounty Hunter

Misc AU Ideas: Royalty/Lost Royalty Time Travel Fae/Fairy Mermaids/Selkies Witch/Wizard Werewolves/Vampires Fantasy/Magic (including modern/urban settings) High Fantasy Dragons Soulmates (color blindness, first words, timestamps, matching marks, can share emotions, Red String of Fate, can share dreams, can see/talk to each other in dreams, can write on each other's skin, telepathic, Soulmate Goose of Enforcement) Omegaverse/ABO (not everyone’s cup of tea, just putting it out there!) Roommates Pirates High School College Mob/Mafia Fairytale Arranged Marriage Accidental Marriage Fake Dating/Engagement/Marriage Superhero/Villain Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse Forbidden Love Boarding School Space/Sci-Fi Road Trip Summer Camp Immortal/Reincarnation Hallmark Movie Amnesia Pen Pals Resurrection Animal Shapeshifter May this list inspire all of you amazing fanfic writers out there! 💜

[deusvervewrites]

I don't know what was going on in France in this era

It wasn't France, just Paris. The Parisians tend to try and lynch the government every time it angers them (1789 wasn't the first or last time, or even the most egregious. That would be 1418)... And after 1871 they were more furious than in 1789, only this time the government won (it was the second and last time, and the first time it had taken Napoleon himself) and had the gall of replacing their police with state cops nobody liked.

Thus the Parisians didn't help them against the gangs, and when the gangs started getting out of control the commoners hired sailors from Marseille to teach them Savate, the rich and nobles hired cavalrymen to teach them battlefield sword techniques to adapt to their walking sticks (and since they paid well the instructors resurrected a few arming sword techniques for the heavier canes), and then they cross trained. Maybe helping the police out would have been simpler, but they were angry at them too.

Wild

[etymology-of-the-emblem]

Xander / マークス and Ryoma / リョウマ

Xander is the crown prince of the kingdom of Nohr and wielder of the sword Siegfried in Fire Emblem Fates. The name Xander is a short form of Alexander, a Greek-based name. Considering he is a major character and face of the Conquest route, he is likely named after Alexander the Great, the famous Macedonian king and general; he widely expanded his kingdom to one of history's largest empires. Much like Nohr, Greece under Alexander's rule looked eastward, invading through India until halted by the Persian Empire. Considering that Xander's mother Katerina (or Yekaterina in Japanese) is named after Russian Empress Catherine the Great, there may be an intentional throughline of powerful rulers carrying the "Great" epithet. There could also take influence from Catherine's grandson Alexander I of Russia, emperor during the Napoleonic Wars. Ironic in a sense, this would make the prince of the invading nation named after an emperor who was unsuccessfully invaded.

In Japanese, Xander's name is マークス (rōmaji: mākusu), romanized as Marks. The name is most likely a corruption of マルクス (rōmaji: marukusu). While this can be used for the name Marx like early fan translations addressed the character by, it also can be used for the Latin name Marcus (also rendered as マーカス; rōmaji: mākasu). This choice is most associated with Roman political figure Marcus Antonius, better-known thanks to Shakespeare as Mark Antony (マーク・アントニー; rōmaji: māk antonī). Mark Antony was a general serving under Gaius Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars and, after the conquest and rising tensions among the First Triumvirate, during the Civil War. Before war erupted, he went to the Roman Senate in an attempt to peacefully settle the conflict, but his pleas were largely resisted. After Caesar became dictator of Rome, Antony served as his second in command and, after the formation of his cult, the high priest. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony agreed to be a member of the Second Triumvirate alongside Caesar's heir Octavian and Marcus Lepidus, and divided the Roman Republic amongst them. However, tensions between him and Octavian were high, especially as after his marriage to the young Caesar's sister he maintained an affair with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Eventually, this strain birthed the War of Actium between Rome and Egypt, with Antony declared a traitor. When the couple had their backs against the wall as Rome invaded Egypt, they took their own lives, leaving Octavian as the sole ruler of Rome, which he soon converted into the Roman Empire under his new name Caesar Augustus. Xander seems to take influence from Mark Antony more so as they both were respected military leaders with tense relations to the powers they support - Garon and Julius Caesar - but proudly follow them despite such. Additionally, Shakespeare popularized the image of Mark Antony being a tragic figure in Antony and Cleopatra. Especially in Birthright Xander can be interpreted as a tragic figure, like most following the "Camus-archetype" in the Fire Emblem series. It could also be argued based on some of Xander's lines that his death in Birthright was of his own intention, further relating to Mark Antony.

Ryoma (JP: リョウマ; rōmaji: ryouma) is the high prince of the kingdom of Hoshido and wielder of the blade Raijinto. He is named after Sakamoto Ryouma (坂本龍馬), a master swordsman and political activist following the end of Japan's isolationist policy brought about by the forceful arrival of United States Commodore Matthew Perry. Born to a low-ranking samurai family, Sakamoto dropped out of school at an early age to pursue the blade in Edo, becoming a master kenjutsu instructor come his early twenties. Soon after returning to his home domain of Tosa, he was an early member of the Tosa Loyalist Party, one of many organizations that were dissatisfied with the Tokugawa Shogunate (a military dictatorship) and desired power to lie in the hands of the Imperial Court once more. As the Tosa Loyalists, purely focused on their domain, began plotting the assassination of the local governor - a man largely focused on modernization - Sakamoto, whose interests lay more with the army of Satsuma marching on Edo, left Tosa. The act of leaving one's clan was not acceptable and brought about the death penalty and left one denounced as a rōnin. He traveled back to Edo, where he and a colleague planned to assassinate Katsu Kaishu, a member of the Shogunate and a major influence on Japan's westernization. Upon meeting Katsu, however, Sakamoto was convinced of the need for westernization and the development of Japan's naval force. He became an assistant and mentee of Katsu. When Katsu was dismissed by the shogunate and his naval training center done away with, Sakamoto and other students were taken in by the Satsuma domain. Here he established Kameyama Shachū, a trading and shipping company through which he allied the opposing domains of Satsuma and Chōshū. Together, Satsuma and Chōshū were able to best the Tokugawa Shogunate and brought about the Meiji Restoration. Shortly before the start of the Boshin War, however, Sakamoto Ryouma was assassinated by the Mimawarigumi, a police force established by the shogunate. Fire Emblem's Ryoma obviously takes inspiration from the historical figure as a skilled wielder of katanas, but also in his participation in a revolution, seen in his affiliation with the Chevois Rebellion. A comparison can also be made between Ryoma's sudden disappearance from Hoshido to support the western-based revolt and Sakamoto Ryouma's leaving of Tosa to support the movement against the Tokugawa Shogunate, while growing in understanding of the westernization movement from his superior. Additionally, Sakamoto bringing peace between the feuding Satsuma and Chōshū domains to dismantle the shogunate may have some influence upon Corrin being able to bring peace between Nohr and Hoshido to bring war to Valla.

There are notable parallels between the purported namesakes of Xander and Ryoma. Both Mark Antony and Sakamoto Ryouma were major political figures in times of unrest in their countries during the buildup of a shift from militaristic dictatorships to placing power in the hands of an emperor followed by a period of peace. Both instances feature the subject as a major player in the conflicts leading to an imperial system but dies shortly before such a change is adopted. The endings of both of their lives can be reflected in Xander and Ryoma, who in their respective route opposing Corrin die in battle shortly before peace is found between the warring kingdoms.

[abwwia]

Pauline Auzou, born Jeanne-Marie-Catherine Desmarquets (24 March 1775 – 15 May 1835) was a French painter and art instructor, who exhibited at the Paris Salon and was commissioned to make paintings of Napoleon and his wife Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma. via Wikipedia

#AryHetstory #FrenchArt #PalianShow #arthistory

[rockislandadultreads]

More Historical Fantasy Recommendations

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Young Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria—even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that old stone wall, Tristran learns, lies Faerie—where nothing not even a fallen star, is what he imagined.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country.

Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.

Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrel. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.

This is the first volume in the “Strange & Norrell” series.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterpiece, we see the tumult and adventures of Camelot's court through the eyes of the women who bolstered the king's rise and schemed for his fall. From their childhoods through the ultimate fulfillment of their destinies, we follow these women and the diverse cast of characters that surrounds them as the great Arthurian epic unfolds stunningly before us. As Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar struggle for control over the fate of Arthur's kingdom, as the Knights of the Round Table take on their infamous quest, as Merlin and Viviane wield their magics for the future of Old Britain, the Isle of Avalon slips further into the impenetrable mists of memory, until the fissure between old and new worlds' and old and new religions' claims its most famous victim.

This is the first volume in the “Avalon” series.

[kaiowut99]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episodes 91 and 92 Subbed (Finalized)

(Previously: Episodes 89 and 90 Subbed [Finalized])

(Check out my Subbed!GX Stream Masterpost!)

TURN-91: The Grim Reaper’s One-Turn Kill

Rumors have spread of a duelist taking part in GeneX who defeats his opponents in one turn.  This turns out to be Tachibana, who gained his drawing power through a pact with a Grim Reaper card.  Judai ends up dueling Tachibana, who’s sold his soul to the Grim Reaper, and with the start of their duel, Tachibana draws his “One-Hit Knockout! Slash Draw” Magic Card and comes at Judai with his One-Turn Kill. Can Judai possibly...

TURN-92: The Triangle Duel

As word goes around that rank-and-file Instructor Chronos and Vice-Principal Napoleon are being “fired,” Principal Samejima shouts “Get out of here!” at them.  They were both disheartened, but they happen to catch Chairman Pegasus of Industrial Illusions, Inc., on his way to visit Principal Samejima, and they ask for employment with I2.  Pegasus says he will approve their employment if they somehow defeat him in a duel, and so starts a Triangle Duel between Pegasus, Chronos, and Napoleon.  Can Chronos and Napoleon hope to...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Pegasus voice* I give you finalized!91 and 92! deeeesu

Slight delay in finalizing these aside, these episodes aren’t too bad; some continuity with the Duel Academia’s North Campus in Tachibana and his struggle to make the decks he cares about work, making him turn to a Grim Reaper spirit promising to improve his drawing ability--at the cost of his soul. Works well enough for a one-shot episode in GX, nice seeing another One-Turn Kill strategy after Ojin’s in 84, plus the animation looks really good throughout, along with “Impossible Victory” being used as Tachibana switches arms with his Disk to reject the Grim Reaper’s influence.  92′s fun with Pegasus making another cameo--this time, actually dueling--and the premise being that Chronos and Napoleon thought Samejima fired them when he was just frustrated was up GX’s humor alley--though it is interesting Toon Kingdom didn’t come out in the card game until long after GX (I liked the shot of it as we see Toon Red Archery Girl, Toon Summoned Daemon, and the other Toons he used in DM as a nice homage).  Pegasus’ll still have some time in S2 and S3, related to the plot Samejima thought about early in the episode, so he’ll be back.  Kind of a shame they didn’t make a GX remix for his Toon World theme from DM though, lol; points to the dub for using theirs.  (Tachibana’s voice in the dub was also really good.)

Edit-wise, both episodes had a fair amount of fixes I applied, mostly on the card error and quality-of-watching end (including some interesting split-screen issues), but there were 2-3 bigger ones I was able to make work; due to Tumblr’s dumb link limit in posts yeeting them out of the tags used for them and limiting their reach, and since I still wanted a visual element to it, I’ve made a separate post with my usual fix/edit breakdown for the interested!

Anywho, enjoy! These make for a little breather as we get into Judai vs White Asuka next time and some changes to Saiou’s SOLA plans.  Been looking forward to revisiting the next stretch of eps for a while as Season 2 closes on some of its best episodes; should be fun.

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOepZQwvAlo

In my experience, if Jacques-Fromental Halévy crops up in a music history class, it will be in connection with two points of interest.  1.  He composed the opera La Juive, which music history instructors like to trot out as a prime example of nineteenth-century French opera, and 2.  He was a Jewish composer whom Richard Wagner actually kind of liked.* Certainly if you went by the kind of music history teaching I received, you could get the impression that Halévy was just A Pretty Darn Good Composer, who just happened to be Jewish, a happenstance upon which the fact that he composed an opera called La Juive has absolutely no bearing.

But it did have some bearing!  Like a lot of Pretty Darn Good Jewish Composers, Halévy came from a cantorial family, and he knew his way around the liturgy, even the versions of it that emerged from the twin pressures of the French Revolution and Napoleon.  This is a choral setting of part of Psalm 118** that Halévy composed for his nephew’s wedding in 1858.  It was also used for a synagogue dedication in 1874, so one would imagine that it kept circulating for various events over sixteen years, and maybe built up some cachet to be used again rather than Halévy just composing something new for the occasion.

*I haven’t heard anything about what Cosima Wagner, the Natasha Fatale to Richard’s Boris Badenov, thought about Halévy.

**Psalm 118 is very long, and it has multiple jarring shifts of perspective, mood, and topic.  Noah Aronson thinks that Psalm 118 may be intended to represent the diverse thoughts of a whole crowd of people coming to the Temple for a festival, which is one of the better interpretations of it that I’ve heard.  But because it is so patchwork, not many people are inspired to set the whole thing to one piece of music.***

***That being said, if anyone were tempted to do that, I’d lay money that it would be a shape-note composer.

[empirearchives]

The Artist in his Atelier

about 1805–1808, Napoleonic era

Christiaan Andriessen (Dutch, 1775 - 1846)

Sitting at a drafting table in a private drawing school, an artist concentrates on his work. Pots of ink and drawing instruments lay on the table, while plaster casts of classicizing reliefs--common teaching implements in drawing schools--hang on the wall. This vivid watercolor is notable not only for its beauty but for the way in which it reveals the cultural life of the early 1800s. During this period, the art of drawing expanded its influence, leaving the confines of the academy and entering the homes of the middle-class. Andriessen derived his primary source of income from his activity as a private drawing instructor. There is speculation that this may be a self-portrait of the artist in his studio.

Source: Getty Museum

[violettduchess]

5, 18, 27!

5 What's your favourite passage that you wrote this year?

From this Keith fic

“You….were gone. He…beat you.” The words burn, leaving your tongue blackened and ashen. “Why have you come back?” There is a tremor in your voice, harbinger of the scream you wish you could release, the fury that this side of him wasn’t banished for good.

“Come back?” He yanks you toward him, lowers his head. His breath is a viperous hiss in your ear. “My love, I never left.”

Horror is a monsoon, washing over you, filling your lungs until they feel like they might explode. Your skin is cold, ashen, corpse-like. You burn and you freeze and one more touch will shatter you like a cracked glass figurine. 

“No…..” The word struggles past a throat choked with revulsion. “We….He….he defeated you. You….he said you….were gone….” Words pour out of you, blood flowing from a gaping wound. 

18 Did you participate in any fic writing challenges this year?

Yes! I took part in a Spring CCC, Summer of Smut, Napoleon Week, the AU CCC, my own Fall CCC, and I am going to do something for Tis the Season for Fluff

27 What was your favourite fic to read this year?

No question, it was @aquagirl1978 and her Chevalier Ballet instructor fic Pas des Deux I love this fic with all my heart and would love to see more people find it!!

[deadmandairyland]

Came up with another concept for a possible Super Daryl Deluxe fic in the future if I can come up with more specific details for it:

A somewhat more mundane AU with no world-ending or teenager-murdering plots (man, this seems to crop up a little too often in media I like). It’d have some on-the-nose title, like “The Surprisingly Mundane Adventures of Daryl Whitelaw” or something, but it would still be a bit crazy, kinda like BakaTest (but without the summoned beasts) or maybe even Nichijou if I’m feeling ambitious.

Here are some basic ideas floating around my head:

Daryl has an overactive imagination but almost never speaks (which is pretty much canon already). Basically in this universe, even if it turned out that Daryl actually does believe the events of the game happened, it’s all in his head (which I think could actually be a funny concept, and it’s even touched upon somewhat in the game before eventually blindsiding you with a “Holy shit, this stuff is actually happening” epiphany).

Daryl can speak but is super awkward and doesn’t really know how to speak to people. On the rare occasions that Daryl does speak, he of course sounds like Napoleon Dynamite.

Instead of being an isolated girl living in the vents, Princess is something of a queen bee at the school (with Daryl being completely convinced that she’s literally royalty and an ice queen that’s waiting for a dashing prince to thaw her or whatever). She’d be kind of a Pacifica Northwest kind of character, and her name would literally just be Princess Bavarius because why not.

Eli Bavarius is not an eons-old doomsday supervillain, but something like... idk, a superintendent or some kind of government official? Someone that still has a lot of power over the school and is a bit of a dick. He can still have a skull for a face though, I think that would still fit the story. Maybe a result of the escalator incident? Will the escalator get a Historical Villain Upgrade in this? These are the real questions.

In the same vein of Eli still having the skull for a face, Vice Principal Robatto can still be a robot, again because why not.

Potential Love Interests (TM): So if Daryl is both our Archie and basically our hilariously clueless harem anime protagonist, Princess would obviously be our Veronica. Beyond that, I think Abby and Skill Sorceress (OOF, that’s going to be the hard part, coming up with names for the DnD characters. I don’t want to be calling Skill Sorceress, well, “Skill Sorceress” the entire time, and I don’t want to confuse everyone by calling her “the Homestuck” the whole time either) would make for good Bettys. Plenty of comedic potential there. As for the gay option I’m thinking... Saving Instructor (who I also need to come up with a name for because “Saving Instructor” doesn’t even make sense outside of a video game and I’m not calling him “the Weeb” the whole time either). We never see what’s under the Goku mask either, maybe he removes it at some point and he turns out to be a bishonen all along, complete with sparkles.

No, Paul and Alan will not be love interests for Daryl. I can’t do that to poor Daryl. I can do a lot of things to poor Daryl, but not that.

Possible Side Ships (TM): So right now all I’m thinking is that if I don’t end up pairing Abby with Daryl I’m probably going to pair her with either Monica or Claire, and if I don’t pair her with Claire then I'm probably going to pair Claire with Steve (insert haha funny Resident Evil joke here), but that’s pretty much all I can think of at the moment.

Non-Romantic Character Dynamic of Note (TM): I want Time Knight and his sister to be major characters. I just love their whole dynamic of the sister being like “My brother is the coolest, he’s the best brother ever and roleplaying with him is so much fun!” and meanwhile Time Knight is just the biggest delusional asshole on the planet. I don’t think we ever see them on screen together in the game so just imagining scenarios where they’re interacting is fun.

Anyway, that’s all I got for now. I mean it’s a lot to go off of, but actually coming up with a coherent plot out of this is the hard part. Only time will tell if we will see anything come out of either this or my “Super Abby Advance” idea.