#mapmaker reveal

[os-mapmaker]

Hey mappy!!! Guess what? I wish you would start showing your face in these posts!!!

Damn that was my last wish... Well hope this one is worth it!!!

// A camera has appeared on The Mapmaker’s desk.

How did you…?

…Oh, right. Magic anon.

…I suppose I should finally show myself.

⠀

. . .

⠀

⠀

Greetings. You may call me The Mapmaker.

[marztheincredible]

Atlas of The-Oh?

Disregard, that shouldn’t be in here.

High Corpus is thriving underneath Emperor Belos’ benevolent reign. Unfounded rumors of past coups of the local government is propaganda from the rebels. Please report to your nearest Precinct if suspicious activity arises.

[redgoldsparks]

August Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

Heavyweight: A Family Story of Holocaust, Empire and Memory by Solomon J Brager After listening to this excellent interview with the author on the Gender Reveal podcast, I was very excited to pick up Solomon Brager's hefty nonfiction comic about family history, Jewish identity, the Holocaust, and empire. This is an incredibly well researched and thoughtful book. The author grew up with outsized family stories of a Jewish boxing champion great-grandfather from Essen who punched Nazis, and a great-grandmother who carried her children across countries and mountains to escape to the US. But these stories became much more complicated when the author started digging for receipts. One factor is the immense financial privilege of the family which already had bank accounts and significant savings in New York. Another factor is the layers of violence and empire that build up the power of the countries fighting on both sides of WWII. The author's quest to research the family story is a major thread in the story itself and I am absolutely awed by the amount of work that went into uncovering and shaping this story.

My Dearest Patrolman vol 1 by Niyama As a delinquent teen, Shin was mentored and protected by a friendly patrolman, Seiji. Having one supportive adult in his life completely turned Shin's life around and he also decided to become a patrolman. Years later, Shin and Seiji meet again, and Shin decides to confess the feelings he's been nursing for a decade. Lighthearted dating hijinks ensue! Strikes a nice balance between silly, sweet, and spicy.

Go For It, Nakamura! by Syundei An extremely silly and cute high school rom-com. Shy Nakamura has a massive crush on his classmate Hirose. Despite the fact that they see each other every day, Nakamura has never introduced himself. What will it take to get him to finally speak up and try to befriend his crush??

Something Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt In 2020, Sarah Leavitt's partner of more than 20 years, Domino, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. Leavitt, a cartoonist and writer, tried to make sense of this decision through comics and abstract watercolor paintings. The result is a gorgeous, heart wrenching, deeply human meditation on love and loss. There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core. I sobbed through the majority of reading it, but couldn't put it down. Leavitt's mapmaking of the landscape of grief is a gift to us all.

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb read by Elliot Hill What can I even say about this, the final novel of a 16 book fantasy series, which I have been reading and re-reading now for twenty years, other than holy shit??? I can't believe I've reached the end of Fitz's journey at last. This book is SO long (nearly 1000 pages) and much of it is brutal to read; characters we love are beaten, abused, tortured, and left in pretty hopeless situations for much of the novel. I think Hobb's insistence on revisiting almost every single character from the Rain Wilds and Live Ship sub-series expanded the first third of the book more than needed; had I been editing it, it would have been shorter. And yet! And yet! I was riveted by this too-long book, devouring it in big gulps, scream-texting about it to several friends who were reading the series along with me. The ending hit SO HARD. Its PERFECT, TERRIBLE, WRETCHED, one of the cruelest endings for several beloved characters and while also giving them a kind of grace and eternity I did not see coming, but should have. This book fulfills the themes of the entire series so well, completing repeated patterns, showing cycles that ripple through three generations, while also leaving a door open for the future that I'm already daydreaming about. Literally how did Robin Hobb come up with all of this. Its flawed but its perfect. I am in awe.

BL Metamorphosis vol 1 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen An older woman picks up a BL manga by chance at a bookstore and discovers a new fandom late in life. She ends up befriending a shy high school girl who works at the bookstore and also loves BL, but has no one to talk to about it. This is such a freaking cute premise and I love the loose sketchy art style!

BL Metamorphosis vol 2 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Unlikely friends Urara, a shy high schooler, and Ichinoi, a widowed calligraphy teacher, bonded over their love of a BL manga series. Now they're heading to a doujinshi event to try and meet their favorite author. This brought me right back to my early days of visiting cons and meeting authors for the first time!

BL Metamorphosis vol 3 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara has been reading and loving BL manga years, but it takes a push from her older friend Ichinoi before Urara considers the idea of possibly drawing her own. Can she find the time to write and draw a story around her cram school schedule? This series PERFECTLY captures the BL reader to BL writer pipeline, I'm so charmed.

BL Metamorphosis vol 4 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara applies for a table at a comics festival, so now she has a deadline for her first original comic. Can she get it done in time? Ichinoi is there to cheer lead and support in every way she can (finding a printer, sewing a table cloth, agreeing to work the table, packing their lunches) but only Urara can get the comic done. This book contained one of my very favorite exchanges of the whole series, when Ichinoi asked "Is it fun to draw manga?" and Urara responded honestly, "No. It's hard to look at my own art for so long. But it feels like I'm doing what I should be doing."

BL Metamorphosis vol 5 by Kaori Tsurutani translated by Jocelyne Allen Urara and Ichinoi struggle through a long, slow day of trying to sell an original comic at their first ever comic event. Unbeknownst to them, their favorite author is there as an attendee. This book felt like one of the most relatable portrayals of the early days of a comics career I've ever seen. I'm obsessed with this series and definitely want to watch the live action movie adaptation!

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez This complex fantasy novel weaves together a multi-strand narrative of violence, love, and the end of empire in an original world of old gods and talking animals. In the main thread, two warriors carry the corpse of an almost-dead goddess across the country in a five day dash from the mountains to the sea. The goddess was once the Moon, torn out of the sky by her own desire for immortality. Her children became the despotic Moon Throne, a cruel dynasty which has repressed and punished the people and elements. The Moon Thrones' heirs, three brothers with extraordinary powers, chase the warriors and hunger for the last dregs of the fallen Moon's power. In another thread, an unnamed protagonist watches this drama unfold as a play being performed in a dreamy underwater sleep realm, while recalling the stories their lola told of the old country before the war. This novel is often compared with NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season in terms of scope, literary prose, and ambition and I can see why. This novel employs some very creative and unusual writing choices that make it more rewarding to read in print than to experience in audio. I had a content warning for gore and cannibalism going in, so I was prepared for the violence of the middle section. I really enjoyed this novel and I can tell I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell, Michael Obiora This book follows multiple different story lines, some of which captured me much more than others. In Kentucky in 1850, an enslaved black boy watches a new thoroughbred racing colt's birth and begins a lifelong relationship with the horse, who will go on to be one of the most well-known champions in the history of American horse racing. In New York City in the 1950s, a gallery owner known for her modern tastes falls for an equestrian portrait of the great Kentucky race horse, Lexington. And in 2019, in Washington DC, a Nigerian-American art history student and a Smithsonian scientist dig into the mystery of an unlabelled horse skeleton in the museum's collection- and its possible connection with several paintings by a Civil War era equestrian artist. I admired the amount of research that went into this novel, and the way the paintings of Lexington tied the different timelines together. However, I really struggled with how the interior emotional lives of several of the Black male characters in this book were portrayed by this author. When Jarret, the enslaved Black groom, is separated from Lexington and forced into plantation labor temporarily, Brooks writes of him gaining a depth of spirit and understanding for the human condition from this experience. This felt deeply weird to read from a white author! I'm not really the right reader to say whether Brooks did a good job or not, but it put me on edge. When the final climatic moment of the novel read like a heavy-handed lesson in how Black men are still at risk of police violence even in 2019, I wondered who exactly that point was supposed to be for, and if Brooks is the one who needed to make it. So, I felt very mixed as I finished this book. There's a lot to admire craft-wise, and I can understand why so many readers were impressed by it. But I honestly I don't recommend it, unless you want to read it in a book club setting and have a nuanced discussion about what works and what doesn't in this novel.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson A young girl named Sophie spends her summers on an island of the coast of Finland with her very present grandmother and her rather absent father. Each chapter tells of an incident experienced through the eyes of the very young and the very old- the growth of mosses and wildflowers on the island stones; boxes and bottles of flotsam and jetsam washing to shore; a great storm; an adventure in trespassing; an unexpected visitor; a night spent outside sleeping in a tent. Without much of an overarching plot this book is still a moving picture of living very close to and in tune with the seasons and elements in a very specific part of the world. It's brief and open ended but I really enjoyed it!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 14 by Ryoko Kui As the smoke clears after the explosive ending of the previous penultimate volume, our heroes gather themselves, check on the survivors, and set out on the most collaborative challenge: cooking and eating an entire chimera body. This is a satisfying and in some ways gentler ending than I expected from this series, but I really enjoyed it!

Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä translated by Thomas Teal  In the autumn of 1963, Tove Jansson, her partner Tuulikki 'Tooti' Pietilä, and their taciturn friend Brunström set about trying to finish a small cabin on a tiny Finnish island before the onset of winter (and possible legal delays of building permits). Tove and Tooti spent their summers on the island for the next 3o years. This book contains excerpts of journal and introspective writing on the nature of the island, the sea, the changeable weather, the futility of human efforts to shift the natural environment. These writings are paired with delicate prints Tooti made of water, stones, and ocean views. I read this directly after The Summer Book and after listening to a short biography of Jansson- this made a good companion to those other texts, but might have been a bit spare on its own.

[theresthesnitch]

When Fred and George found the Marauder's Map, they would have had no idea what it was or how to trigger the map. Instead, they would have gotten a parchment that talked back.

Fred and George didn't spend hours guessing a secret passcode they didn't know existed opening. Instead, they chatted with Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs until the mapmakers realized they found the right people to reveal their secrets to.

[meadowlarkx]

tagged by @welcomingdisaster to share the first lines of my last ten posted fics and see if there is a pattern! Thank you I love this meme 💖💖

I've now posted a few more stories since I last did this, so let's go...

strike another match: Maglor, like his brothers, had packed little when they left Aman’s shores forever.

amendation: Maglor had imagined he’d lost the capacity for hope.

Singer Doomed: Fëanáro, Elemmírë recalled, had a sweet voice.

cautionary tale (The Burning Kingdoms): “Why do you still come to me wearing her face?"

wild-wandering by wood and glen: Peace settled on the new realm of Doriath as though it had never left.

Less Wise: There are streams in Mirkwood that travelers cannot drink from.

bite thy wings and let thee crawl: “Remove your helm."

Mapmaking: “Yet your position is vulnerable.”

Scripts and Tongues: Stiff parchment crackled under weathered fingers as another page turned.

elvenkings: Afterwards, they went back.

I think I tend to want the first line to either sort of dump readers into the middle of the scene or not quite "reveal" entirely what's going on... with simpler/clearer language than the later writing somewhat, too? Or something.

I tag @imakemywings @i-am-a-lonely-visitor @aipilosse @undercat-overdog @thecoolblackwaves @dovewifes @searchingforserendipity25 if you'd like to do it!

[pansexualkiba]

so here's the scenario:

Izuku Midoriya, a young lad whose father passed at sea, is the apprentice to a local mapmaker. One day, while the master's away, a man who seems to tower over any other, haggard and booming, crashes in through the door, demanding a map.

When he sees that Izuku's the only one in the entire business, quite a lot of bravado leaves him, and he deflates into this raggedy older man. He explains that he wishes to leave in three days time to the Southern Seas, and he would also like to hire Izuku as his navigator.

Izuku, feeling a spark of adventure, decides to accept, completely forgetting to mention he isn't actually a mapmaker yet. However, he IS very good at reading and interpreting maps, and that's half the job right there.

Izuku is then tasked to take care of a few essential roles on the voyage: food, entertainment, and, most importantly, money. The mysterious man shall take care of the rest. So, as Izuku wanders through the marketplace wondering where he could possibly find a financier, in walks Shouto Todoroki, the youngest son of a very wealthy nobleman and the current heir after a series of various incidents.

Shouto Todoroki, for quite some time now, has been crushing on the mapmaker's apprentice, you see, and upon hearing that he needs a large sum of money, he immediately offers to find staff positions for Izuku's voyage himself, and he shall personally come to oversee the voyage he's investing in. In this way, he hires Katsuki Bakugou the cook, Eijirou Kirishima the butcher, Hanta Sero the carpenter, Mina Ashido the barber-surgeon, and two tavern musicians by the names of Denki Kaminari and Kyouka Jirou. The rest of the staff is hired by the mysterious man, who assumes the role of captain.

The deadline does approach, and the ship has a crew of at least twenty strong, but by the orders of Enji Todoroki, Shouto's father, Shouto's betrothed, Momo Yaoyorozu, is to join the voyage, as a reminder to Shouto that he must return and not "run off to sea and a life of debauchery" as his eldest brother certainly had done before perishing. Still, the ship departs for the south.

Naturally, there is some bonding between Izuku and the older man. It's quite a long time, traveling the ocean by ship, and Izuku comes to see him as a father figure - his real father, Hisashi Midoriya, had been murdered by pirates at sea, and Izuku's hated pirates ever since.

However, soon, Izuku's crew is beset by two separate rival pirate factions - one helmed by Tomura Shigaraki, who aims to become the next Dread Pirate of the Southern Seas; the other helmed by Neito Monoma's crew, who mutinied against their old captain a year back and have become a sort of Robin Hood-type crew. After the second one, the captain comes clean to Izuku: he is actually the Great Pirate All Might, Scourge of the Northern Seas, who lost his entire crew following the long and bitter fight with the Dread Pirate All for One, of the Southern Seas.

Naturally, Izuku sort of blows up, and declares that this must be a betrayal - he had thought of All Might as a sort of replacement father, and his own blood father had CERTAINLY been a good man. Then comes the reveal that All Might's old captain, before he had become the Great Pirate All Might, had been none other than Dread Pirate "Fire-Breathing" Hisashi Midoriya, Terror of the Northern Seas. In fact, they're on a treasure hunt right now for Hisashi Midoriya's last greatest treasure, thought to have been lost in the territory war with All for One.

Will Izuku come around to the pirate lifestyle, especially when a grand majority of the crew are pirates themselves? Will Shouto gain the courage to call off his arranged marriage (certainly with no love lost) and pursue his romance on the high seas? Will All Might get the Lost Treasure of "Fire-Breathing" Hisashi? And what of the rival crews - and the naval vessel commanded by the mysterious Lieutenant Aizawa?

[mightofmerchants]

An old ship has been uncovered.

Ready to reveal its secrets.

Feel free to check out more details about my little mapmaking tool 'Canvas of Kings' on Steam.

[silvercompassmaps]

Happy Easter!

I have teamed up with several mapmakers to bring you free Easter-themed maps this year!

Feel free to browse the catalog below:

Angela Maps | Giant Nest | This battle map showcases a massive, mysterious creature’s nest, which has been the source of terror for the local community.

Bearworks | Swamp Altar | An ancient altar and a majestic flowering tree stand together as a sacred testament to the divine, towering above the swamp and exuding a power that seems to command respect from the spirits of the land.

BeatrixRae | The Easter Throne | With the first breath of spring in the air, the Easter Bunny has no time to waste. Hopping with haste, in this spring wonderland throne room, thousands of eggs are being colored, decorated, and hidden for children all across the realm.

Dransky | Fern Flower | A glimpse at the long-forgotten ancient world of folk legends and myths when they were still true. Here is a vision of a deep forest inspired by a Slavic fairy tale and a fern flower growing among an ancient stone circle.

Eledryll | Graveolent Glade | Puffs of morbid spores linger through the foetid air, propelled into the atmosphere at each step you take on the dampened ground: the druidic ritual went extremely wrong in those parts of the forest.

Elyrian Dreams | Of Days Gone | Many have walked these wayward paths throughout the ages. You are not the first. You will not be the last. What stories have these old stones witnessed? What secrets do they keep? Pay homage to the people of old, fair pilgrim, and perhaps they may reveal them to you.

RhasmusDnD | The 1000 Bunnies Army | 1000 armored bunnies

Sanctum of Maps | Hedge Maze Easter Festival | Begin your hunt to collect all 12 easter eggs scattered inside a vibrant Hedge Maze, return them to their nests in the center and perhaps the Shrine of the Rabbit will reward us?

Silver Compass Maps | Exit from the Underworld | A long and arduous path that starts from the depths of the underworld and finishes at the opening to this world

[n1ko-whoisdefinatelynotacat]

[ @os-mapmaker ]

I apologize for my extended absence.

l assume you have already seen the messages sent through your connected communication device.

The codes hidden within those revealed some information.

The first thing revealed is that this is another attack from Team Rainbow Rocket.

The second thing...is much more concerning...

...Two of them have already been injured.

. . .

The Writer was alerted, but communications with him have been lost.

. . .

Wait, another message is coming in…

. . .

…Ah. I should have expected this.

The Writer was captured.

. . .

// The connection from The Inversion is getting worse. The message is getting fuzzy…

There #s stil# an aud#o file #hat I have n#t had a c#ance to l#sten to, sinc# it is #ownloadi#g incredi#ly slow fo# some rea#on.

⠀

I am #ure you a#e al#ea#y awa#e of th#s, but yo# need #o hurr#.

(we’re gonna pretend this is being answered from [Redacted]’s blog-)

[I figured Rainbow Rocket was involved with this. I had just been hoping I was wrong.]

[But the fact that they not only managed to capture Somino and the others, but also The Writer?]

[…]

[I should never have left. I’m almost to that universe now, I’ll pick up the pace.]

[It seems that my connection to you has grown fuzzy. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contact you again. Thank you for the warning.]

[os-mapmaker]

Two men emerge from a portal behind you. One is well over six feet tall, a giant in every sense of the word. Before you cn object, his large hands grasp you & hold you still.

The other, a dashing man with long curly hair, points a fancy rapier at you. "Hello. I am looking for a six-fingered man. Have you seen him?" He nods at the giant. "Fezzik, remove his hood. I must see this man for myself."

Ack! Hey, what are you—

// His hood is removed, and…

. . .

I…I have not come across anyone like that in the timelines I have visited…I am sorry.

I have no idea how you got here, but…there is no one else here. So…would you mind letting me go so I can get back to my work?

…Please?

[a-typical]

Turns out, two regions of the world exist where you can indeed identify a national border from space, as if mapmakers drew it themselves.

In one area, fields of green, and on the other side of a sharp boundary, brown desert.

In another area, the nighttime landscape is ablaze with city lights, yet across a sharp boundary, the depths of darkness.

These boundaries are sharp and thin. They reveal unevenly shared resources across borders, where one side controls their landscape while the other side does not.

  What’s going on?

The irrigated/desert borders are in the Middle East, between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and between Israel and large swaths of the West Bank—regions of ceaseless political tension. The GDP per capita of Israel is twelve times larger than that of Palestine.

Such stark visual differences from above need not be national boundaries of disparate geopolitics. They can also delineate areas of subjugation. In 1992, during my first of several visits to South Africa—two years before Nelson Mandela was elected president—I flew into Johannesburg at night and noticed on the long approach to the city a large ground area with sharp boundaries and no interior lights. It was clearly a lake. That’s what lakes look like from an airplane at night. Returning home a week later, flying back out in the daytime with the ground fully illuminated, what I had seen was no lake. It was the larger part of Soweto, an all-Black shantytown of Johannesburg with no electricity. No lighting at night, or at any other time of day. No appliances. No refrigerators. I can know all this intellectually for having read about it, but when I confront it from above, with details stripped away, I don’t see the politics, the history, the skin colors, the languages, the bigotry, the racism, the protests.

I’m instead plagued by a simpler thought that, as a species, we might not possess the maturity or wisdom the future requires to assure the survival of civilization.

— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization - Neil deGrasse Tyson (2022)

[sun-jellies]

Shadow and Bone - S2E1 thoughts

-ITS BACK BABY

- I’m actually going to be so pissed if Alina and Mal get the same ending in the books when they both said they want to travel the world together

- Inej 😍😍😍

- NIKOLAI MY BOY!!! Have I said how much I love Nikolai I feel like I haven’t posted enough about him

- (Go white boy go!!!)

- The Kaz and Jesper scenes are making me worried that if they ever do a crows spin-off they won’t have any more impactful reveals to make because they already made most of them in sab

- I’m so glad Alina’s mapmaking wasn’t brushed aside (also I’m sensing that there will be a LOT of maps this season)

- girl get out of there

- boy get out of there

- These mfs get caught their first day 💀

- No way Tante Heleen is dead, we have not seen a body I don’t believe it

- ALL SIX CROWS IN ONE EPISODE ONG

- oh boy I hope they handle this fantasy racism in a way that is actually respectful. Oh boy I hope Alina wearing the first army uniform doesn’t mean they completely brush aside how the first army treats Grisha.

- Mom pick me up I’m scared (they blew up the crow club)

- I don’t know whether or not to be excited or scared that a lot of the promotional material was in the first episode

- overall I’m hopeful for the rest of the season, but I can already tell that it is going to go way off the rails in terms of book accuracy

[titleknown]

HELLOWEEN #20: CALOPTERA

-CHYLOPTERA is a Scribe of Hell, with 5,663 maps of the locations of Hell and 23 letters of certification to his name. He may be called to send plagues of insects, bats, fire or aether upon the sender's rivals and call strange rains for both beneficient & malicious  ends, and may grant information upon the locations of Hell for use in summoning, though this is unreliable.

He appears as a great iridescent insect with the wings of a bat. Do not ask him for information upon the affairs of Hell otherwise, as he will give it to you vociferously and speak of it even unprompted, but most of it will be lies.-

...It is interesting to note this entry because, while the author of the Last Testament is unknown (though there are some hypotheses, including my own), the fact he advises against summoning Caloptera (using one of multiple alternate spellings from other sources) for his profession in Hell but rather the areas of his expertise, and advises against using his advice, which suggests a certain level of experience and pragmatism I cannot help but respect...

...At least, as far as diabolists go I mean. Diabolism is often ill-advised and definitely dangerous, and the fact that the status quo is that mortals end up attempting summoning them first before far less dangerous and deceptive options sends me... sends me... Well, I could talk about it, but I feel as if I should have more consideration for your time, and this is afar from the topic at hand.

It has been noted numerous times that the residents of Hell have been willing to give me their secrets, a fact I feel both honored and disquieted by, but you may wonder how I plan to prevent these secrets from being revealed.

Well, according to my preference for stealth in action, I have decided on a tactic of concealment by way of misinformation, in terms of having it published by today's subject.

They are renowned as a mapmaker of Hell and as an information broker par-excellence; far beyond the reputation of Ranamah despite her generally superior skills at both (though her reach is limited). They are also known as a great and terrible liar, terrible in the ways great liars are in that they include just enough truth to convince you the rest might not be false, and just enough lies to convince you that his real lies won't blindside you.

Indeed, as they bloviated on their past, I was mainly putting pins into things to cross-reference with his records. if there's one thing the ascendant and obnoxious of Hell share with mortals, it is their love of self-aggrandizing, a fact I leveraged with simple flattery to convince him to publish my book, buoyed by his reputation of lies to obfuscate its truth within Hell (though you and I know better)

Cross-referencing the records and my other interviews, indeed his reputation preceeded him. His secrets of most of the demons I asked about were blatantly untrue unless you knew them merely from "vibes" rather than actual experience, usually flattering himself and the powerful while slandering them, the slander published about Giobella being particularly... spicy (Though she apparently found it amusing). 

Beyond his statements about certain... proclivities in Acabus, I found that one of the few things he had told the truth about was his apprenticeship with Titivillus. Titivillus the legendary Great Scribe of Hell. Titivilius... 

...OH GOD HOW I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM SO MUCH, YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW MUCH BULLSHIT THAT MOTHERFUCKER HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE STUDY OF MONSTEROLOGY ALONE, EVERYTHING I DO TO PROPERLY CHRONICLE THE MULTIVERSE'S BESTIARY AND HE ROLLS IT BACK BY FUCKING DECADES! OOOOOH I-

...I apologize, I got slightly heated there. Needless to say, I do not like the man. But it is curious how Caloptera spoke of Titivillus as a close and dear friend who "rescued me from iniquity" despite the fact that, by all accounts, Titivillus hated him. The lies were not even necessary, as his reputation from his work with them and his genuinely honest mapmaking already seemed to be the main pillars of his reputation.

Perhaps it was simply an attempt at promoting his name, perhaps it was his way of re-writing history to pretend to be loved. I perhaps suggest the latter, given another indication of his record was that before his apprenticeship, he was quite an accomplished soldier. Working in the field mainly, but powerful and deeply feared.

I had heard about this before, but when I asked him about it, he merely said nothing and gave a thousand-yard stare before very quickly attempting to change the subject. Perhaps his lies and flattery are overcompensating for this past he seems so quick to dismiss, given his most common epithet was "Caloptis The Loveless"

An amusing antecdote before I leave, I will note that when I entered the records hall to find information, I noted a list of individuals prohibited from entering the archives. One of them was Caloptera. Multiple others appeared to be Caloptera in various states of disguise...

-Xavier X. Xolomon , Monsterologist and Understudy to The Librarian Of Babel

--------------------------------

The concept for this one came from me wanting a flying demon, and then with the parts on hand me thinking of a very specific Calvin and Hobbes storyline (BATS AREN'T BUGS) and following through with him as an overly-confident liar kinda came from there.

Also, note his insect head isn't from a "true bug," which was a concidence, but one which I am happy to take credit for!

The outburst over Titivillus (a real demon from folklore, noted for spreading misinformation) was admittedly partially inspired by Dan Backslide, partially inspired by my very real grudge against RJ Palmer for making the issue of trying to un-fuck the Creative Commons a million times worse! Because I am nothing if not petty!

As per usual the whole descriptions, designs, ectcetera from this project are free to use as you see fit under a CC-BY 4.0 license so long as I; Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!

[girl-mercury]

my parents have the tv on all day with the history channel shows about how ~aliens built the pyramids~ and other alien conspiracy nuts and my brain is like a computer experiencing catastrophic numbers of pop-up ads trying to address every three wrong claims per sentence. "how could this sixteenth century map of antarctica showing no ice have been made without aliens revealing radar to humans so they could see a pre-climate change temperate forest??" the 1500s were not known for their mapmaking expertise - maybe antarctica hadn't been "discovered" by europeans but y'all don't believe anyone else is more intelligent than a rock - it's not fucking aliens jfc - if the government can handle a conspiracy around this with total secrecy and within funding that congress will allow then i clearly have the wrong staff in my office - i'm not fucking kidding these people read more government documents than actual government employees who won't read their fucking email i stg - lkajdfljf

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotean Humor and Critique of Imperialism

"Another response to their historical situation and likewise an aspect of the competitiveness of both comedy and historiography is to showcase aggressive humour. One sure target of Aristophanes’ biting humour is those with intellectual pretentions, whether the sophists or others— whose familiarity to his audience made the humour all the more powerful. Herodotus likewise expects his audience to relish the humorous mockery of people who claim knowledge they don’t possess, whether Hecataeus in asserting divine ancestry at only sixteen generations’ remove (2.143), or the contemporary mapmakers who are deluded about the shape of the world (4.36). A picture emerges, then, of authors of both camps, historiographic and comedic, jousting and engaging with members of their intellectual community, a community either already familiar to their audiences, or soon made so by witty and stinging characterisations.

Aggressive, victimising humour involves outwitting and insulting one’s opponent. It shares targets across both genres, such as the tyrannical individual or group who abuses its power; and its serious monitory lessons are part of the educative tendency of both genres.40 Donald Lateiner focuses on premeditated insults, situating them in the context of the agonistic character of relations between Greek males in this period. Both genres reflect this aspect of Greek social relations, Aristophanes more intensively, the historians more rarely, and with the purpose of endowing certain characters and events with instructive vividness. Mark Mash in this volume analyses in detail a Herodotean staging of victimising humour and one-upmanship in the Ethiopian king’s response to the messengers from Cambyses. As Mash shows, the historian’s representation of this character’s use of competitive, victimising humour contributes to the Histories’ serious critique of imperialism.41 Humour serves to deflate intellectual presumptions or arrogant ethnocentrism or—even more arrogant—the drive to conquer others. For while Herodotus is in general terms a cultural relativist, there is a problem for him with the nomos of Persian imperialism (as with the drive for conquest that Herodotus reveals to be a key motivation of most human communities): in depriving others of political freedom, it negates their nomoi. The display of the Ethiopian king’s dexterous use of victimising humour is, then, a mise-en-abyme of the historian’s own use of a favourite tool of the Old Comedian.

A humorous trick can also be the means of provoking someone to reveal his character; and another historiographical narrative which exposes imperialism and greed, where the apparently weaker party triumphs, and a foreigner criticises the Persian king, is the humorous trick (ἀπάτην, 1.187.1) played by Herodotus’ Babylonian Queen Nitocris. To display—and memorialise (see next section)— the greed of some future conqueror of Babylon, and to take comeuppance on him, she sets her tomb high atop the main city gate, with an inscription inviting a future king to open it, should he need the money; but warning him otherwise to leave it alone. Undisturbed until Darius’ time, the tomb is opened, but Darius finds only a corpse and an inscription with the rebuke: ‘If you were not greedy of money and sordidly greedy of gain, you would not have opened the coffins of the dead’ (1.187.5). Triumph of the underdog—in this case, of a representative of victims of future imperialism—is a favourite scenario of comedy. Biting personal humour thus again becomes a serious means of resisting empire."

From the Introduction of Emily Baragwanath and Edith Foster (editors) to the collective volume Clio and Thalia. Attic Comedy and Historiography (2017), Histos Supplement 6, available on https://histos.org/documents/SV6.ComedyandHistoriography.pdf

[isaacapatow]

@calamityshepherd * on the path heading to the solar panels

"We haven't had any mapmakers here so far," Ike said, looking around as they walked as if he was mentally attempting to create a map of Redwood. "It hasn't been too much of an issue since in general, proper maps have worked fine with a few tweaks -- but the further in we get to zombieland times, the more the roads and landmarks are changing. Hell, even the towns and cities. New settlements cropping up, or coming revealed."

He glanced at Calamity to see if the guy was getting all this, or reacting to it, or stonefaced. The possibility was high on each one, if what Ike was feeling in his gut had any hold in the truth.

"Now, I'm not about to ask you to go back out there, not when you already made it through your pilgrim's progress to land through grace here in the celestial city--" Ike's deep intonation imbued the words with a certain reverence, "--but anything you can tell me about your travels would be helpful. And I know you and your wife want to be helpful. To contribute to the betterment of this community."

They were walking in the opposite direction of the people of that community, away from the bonfire and the centre at the middle, but Ike knew his point wouldn't be lost. Not on newcomers, who were now given the chance to sleep sound and safe through the night.