#read the whole article its fascinating

[thejaymo]

In our ministry, there’s little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We’re connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter.

New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul

[piggycyberwarrior]

How the Arcane Characters would react to a smart!s/o

a/n: hey guys so yeah.. i am backkk. love you all and pls request or talk to me if you want <3 don't be shy!!

Contains: Viktor, Vi, Ekko, Silco, Jinx

Disclaimer: Okay so i know people can be smart without reading books- but reading online articles or there are different reasons BUT there is no "world wide web" in the Arcane Universe. That is why the reader's a massive bookworm-kinda-smart person (?)

warnings: itsy bitsy teenie tiny mention of mature themes (turn on; feral) but NO further description; mentions of kissing (?), goofy Jinx (like what did you expect T-T) not proof read

let me know if i missed any warnings!!

Viktor

LOVES IT

like really he would be so thrilled to have a smart partner

would constantely go to the library with you- buying old science books or books about stuff that you like to read.

^ he never lets you buy them tho <3

Asks you when there are some issues with his work.. like this is such an honour (my bby has some issues when it comes to asking for help)

Viktor would always and I mean ALWAYS compliment you

-"look at my smart darling"

He just feels understood and so comfortable with you as you are on the same wavelenght as him

Loves to hear you ramble to him about the most random things at night, during walks, breakfast, in the morning, just simply at anytime

peppers your whole face with kisses while you ramble to him in the morning- loves to make you laugh, giggle or chuckle

Also adores it to have deep conversations with you

He just loves you<3

Vi

it would turn her on so much to be honest

like its so attractive (fr guys)

she would listen to you all the time, rambling and or reading to her- even tho she doesn't understand shit sometimes

loves it when you put her in her place when she did something stupid

also loves that you are a walking wikipedia

"Cupcake, what do you mean the dot over the "i" has a name??"

- " yeah its called the tittle or superscript dot- not only the dot over the i but also the dot on top of the j"

"WhAt?"

would constantely brag about you to EVERYONE like its almost embarrassing stopp vi please

used to steal you books from Piltover (still does it to be honest)

sometimes asks you if that one random fact she heard was true

loves to kiss you after you answered her question- as a price for being this smart <3

Ekko

lmao i don't know why but Ekko is such a sucker for intelligent/smart people

like dis man would be on his KNEES for you.

he would be always crafting stuff with you, always making sure you've got a new book in your hand, always kissing the ground you walk on

he wastes no time getting you anything that you need for your studies, crafts or freetime.

Has no shame- will show you off to EVERYBODY ON THIS GOD DAMN PLANET (like Vi)- especially to his teammates tho

loves loves LOVES to spend time with you and teach him the things you know or learned

"So the Midas effect is about people becoming more generous after a simple touch?" "Exactely, but the effect isn't scientifically proven- its just an assumption." "I see.."

also loves your fascination for knowledge

I'm sorry but he would go absolutely feral when he sees you teaching stuff to the small kids in the HQ.

it would make him so happy ngl

He would kiss you after that everytime- praising you that you're so smart

Silco

he would think it's so hot

Lets you read or craft in his office so he can watch you

^ it calms him

i don't think he would brag about you but he would be so proud of you neverthless

tells you that too

isn't stupid himself so he sometimes reads the books you enjoyed reading- he does that because he wants to know what you're talking about- never admits that tho

"What are you reading, handsome?- "Oh.. History of the World- it's quite interesting" you looked at him dumbfounded but quickly smiled "It really is interesting- the text structur is just beautiful!" you happily cheered

he loves it when you ramble to him at night- him laying on your chest and softly carding your fingers through his hair i love this man

just stares at you with that unreadable hot gaze of his when you start mumbling to yourself about some equations.

doesnt look all that dazed but on the inside he is GONE!!

he is so in love

grabs your chin and turns it to his face- pressing your lips onto his. Loves how you squeal- suprised that he interrupted your train of thought

Jinx

she adores it SO MUCH

constantely wants you to talk to her like she sits there- criscrossed, head resting in her palms- listening as if she has nothing else to do.

always wants you to tell her anything that you learned

^ she deadass throws a tantrum if you don't

only really listens to you- thinks you are always right

just like her sister- you have to keep her from doing stupid stuff

^ you cannot tell me she wouldn't do anything stupid lmao

decorates your book covers and doesnt know why you're so stressed everytime she does it (like thats a no-no , darling pls)

like thats so weird and all but she loves to read Picture books while you read Aristotle- just to feel the vibe

"How is your book?" you asked her with a raised eybrow while flipping to the next page- hearing her hum as she was reading that picture book. "Oh it's great, pudding- the ducks finally found their home!!"- "Really, that's good to hear" you chuckled softly

gives you suprise kiss-attacks when you're absorbed in your work

brags to sevika how smart her s/o is but gets jealous when others tell you that you're smart like gurl?

please do reblog, sweetheart <3

[scoringeffects]

do you have/know of any kind of natejo primer post? i am starting to be very very intrigued by them…

there is this very delightful primer that covers natejo during their halifax mooseheads era (juniors, age 16-18 [2011-13]) and their team north america era (made up team for the 2016 world cup of hockey) i would so so super recommend clicking on every link there, and as for the 2023-24 season:

nate reached out to jo about playing with him in colorado during the summer because he knew his contract with montreal was coming to an end and jo signed for league mininum to play with him

jo talking about nate in his 'get to know me' interview

jo knows where nate is knows what he likes can almost feel him on the ice. normal things to say about your center.

they walk their dogs together!

bench yappers. ignore that nate probably doesnt have a great deal of concepts about personal space.

both nate and jo achieved career highs in points playing on the same line. nate by 29 freaking points. jo also had a career high in time on ice per game !

nate has the most assists on jo's goals, and jo loves to pass to nate.

one of jo's very best games as an av where he scored the OT winner and partially helped nate extend his second to gretzky home point streak. not inherently natejo but the nhl put the full game up on youtube and its a fun background watch because the announcers r so very nice about jo yayayyyyy. okay hold on it definately used to be up on youtube as a 'fan favourite' voted in game and now its either unlisted, restricted, or entirely gone. fascinating. what a wonderful league. anway.

here's nate saying that jo is his favourite teammate ever. since 2010 nate has played with at least 280 people. he said this during his hart (league mvp as voted by the writers' association) and ted lindsay (league mvp as voted by the players' association) award interview. also couldnt find it for the life of me but im certain there's an interview where jo says he wants to play with nate for ten more years. EDIT: here is the article, found by the lovely @mi-kko-ran-tanen it is also a bit of a natejo primer very very good would encourage a read

24-25 season:

jo resigned for another year ! turned down money again for 'loyalty and happiness'

they actually might have seperation anxiety

jo is going to be point per game this season i believe it with my whole heart.

r-ing into the rpf:

nate's start in the league was . well. the avs were very very bad for quite sometime, bottomed out nearly historically after the 2016-17 season (season directly after team north america and the world cup of hockey) and i think this is around the time nate locked in so to speak. this spittin chiclets interview from 2019 is pretty good (dont let the spittin chiclets part put u off 🙏), he talks about worrying about being a bust, about his expectations and also just the way he talks back then and what he's achieved in the five years since oh nate u have no idea whats in store for u ☹️

jo's time in the nhl has been tumultuous to say the least.

mid way into the 2022-23 season he held the record for most points without a goal by a forward in a single season. (he ended the season 2-27-29, scoring a goal in his 46th game) teammate and close friend josh anderson was quite sweet about it all

there's a lot of talk about jo being a draft bust, there's also a lot of talk about his development being screwed from the get go (sent back down to juniors for the 2013-14 season despite having won the calder cup the uear prior because if a player is juniors eligable they cant play in the minors or smth like that), he was also injured a lot, the habs under bergevin not being great at player development, and in tampa and montreal there was an expectation on him to be an offensive powerhouse that he just wasnt unfortunately due to injuries and mental health issues. they also tried to develop him at center.

it is absolutely not the best metric to measure 'draft bustness', but sorting the 2013 draft by games played and total points, jo is top 20 for games played and top 15 for total points

an espn redraft from march of 2023 has him still in the first round but much lower

absolutely crushing thank u greg

jo was actually injured so much holy shit bro has never played a full season. the closest he got was 81 games in 18-19

apparently there was some buzz about a drouin-iginla trade in 2015 between tampa and colorado??? what couldve been damn

ALL THIS TO SAY nate believed in him and jo believed in nate and it paid off so freaking hard last season and jo has his love for hockey back and nate had his career best personal season next to him and they are it if u think about it

f-ing into the rpf:

i know you didnt ask but i would be remiss if i didnt share these, they're currently what i would say is quintessential natejo reading

I don't believe in soulmates (but nobody saw me like you) by shade_of_blue (@shade-of-drou) (M, 6k) soulmates au where jo realises dewey has soulbond sickness

those who favor fire by bruinss (@droumack) (M, 14k) absoloutely crushing magical realism fic where jo's heart freezes the more he falls in love. it is actually unfathomable how much nate loves him, and how much nate loves jo

got my finger on her trigger by creamsicle_melt (@creamsiclemelt) (E, 6k) lesbian natejo nate fucks jo within an inch of her life absolutely fantastic peice of literature.

you'd have to stop the world by bladeless_knife (@mi-kko-ran-tanen) (M, 12k) nate is stuck in a timeloop watching jo get hurt no matter what he does. genuinely incredible theyre so so very much natejo here and also very nate and very jo

Gather by plethoriall (@plethoriall) (E, 4k) once again, another fic where theyre so very natejo. like that interview linked in the very first bullet point? those guys ("yeah we're dumb and dumber") def did this. a delightful study in what if our codependant homoerotic teenage friendship turned into a regular healthy adult friendship except every time you touch me i remember how we used to jerk eachother off which (thankfully for everyone inolved) turned into Yay sex and also i love you. instead of turning toxic.

all very very very good writers i would highly highly suggest checking out their other works as well + commenting and kudoing

[atimburtonfan]

I went down a whole Sweeney Todd rabbit hole by reading up on articles and watching videos to find out a bit more about the origins of the tale of Sweeney Todd beyond the original penny dreadful. Apparently the story is inspired by a supposed true story, though it can't be verified.

According to this story, a murderous barber and a next door baker did exist but it took place in medieval Paris around the year 1400. Allegedly they are supposed to have killed around 200-400 people. The more you read about it, the more it appears to be an urban legend from France, both the Penny Dreadful and the original urban legend contain the dog that eventually gives away the killer as it refuses to leave the front of the barbershop after its owner disappeared, though the dog has been removed from the musical and Tim Burton's adaptation.

The oldest written mention of this myth comes from 1612 in which a Swedish traveller by the name of Pehr Lindestrom in France is warned about a murderous barber working in Calais, Pehr found this tale fascinating enough to write it down in his journal which survived until today. Interestingly, his version of this story got translated into English and was published in England just a few decades before 'A string of pearls' was written, the original Sweeney Todd tale. It is clear that the writer of Sweeney Todd was inspired by this French legend. Even Charles Dickens wrote about cannibalistic bakers before the publication of Sweeney Todd so the urban legend must have been relatively well known.

Another interesting bit, yet it is impossible to tell if it is true, is that during Napoleonic France, the chief of the Parisian police, Joseph Fouché was apparently investigating a case of a barber working in Paris who was suspected of having killed people with a neighbour baker disposing the bodies into pies. Sadly we do not have any evidence in form of investigative papers.

My honest opinion about Sweeney Todd's origins? I believe it is an urban legend created around the 14th century in France as a cautionary tale to warn others of strangers and of strange food that you have not prepared, you can never truly know where the meat comes from that you buy. Though it is always fun to fantasize about it all being real. Imagine travelling to Fleet Street and to discover an old closed off sewage system beneath the street just filled with human remains, hundreds of them. As in the original tale it is told that Sweeney and Lovett dump the skeletons in a chamber in the sewage directly below the bakery.

I'm sorry for this late midnight rant but I love investigating urban legends such as these.

[ofmdrecaps]

01/21-23/2025 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Happy Birthday Ewen Bremner!; David Jenkins; Rhys Darby; Con O'Neill; Vico Ortiz; Gypsy Taylor; Andrew DeYoung / Andy Rydzewski; Damien Gerard; Articles; Fan Spotlight: Nes & The Tiny Co-Captains; Never Left Podcast; Love Notes;

== Happy Birthday Ewen Bremner! ==

First and foremost, Happy Belated Birthday to our one and only Mr. Buttons -- Ewen Bremner! His birthday was on Jan 23! Hope it was wonderful sir!

= David Jenkins =

David sending us some love in these trying times. Remember to keep you humor, luvs.

Source David's Bsky

= Rhys Darby =

Rhys has been VERY active the last few days with SF Sketchfest going on amongst other things! In continuing with sharing his stand ups, we got more from the wallet in the skinny jeans bit!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rhys Darby (@rhysiedarby)

Source: Rhys' Instagram

= SF Sketch Fest =

In addition, some pretty cool stuff came out of the SF Sketch Fest! Rhys did stand up, but he also participated in the 45th Anniversary Live Read of Airplane! We also got some pictures that broke the fandom for a few days.

Sources: Cobbs Comedy Club

A clip from the Airplane read! (thank you to @wastingyourgum for find it on facebook!)

Source: Matlock Zumsteg's Facebook

Rhys found D (for Darbs) while out at the show! You can check out the SF Sketchfest BTS he has on his paid substack here!

Source: Rhys' Paid Substack

While Rhys wasn't actually present, him and his early career came up on The Dom Harvey show! Thanks Moosh for sharing!

Source: The Godfather of NZ Comedy

= Con O'Neill =

Jan 22nd was the 10th anniversary of the show Cucumber - starring Con O'Neill!

Source: RusselTDavie's IG

= Vico Ortiz =

Vico shared some heartfelt messages on their current journey/transitions going on in their life on their instagram.

"Grief is such a painfully fascinating, terrifying, devastatingly beautiful and powerful experience. I am in constant awe of its transformative prowess. I must confess I am in the thick of it. Discovering the times I am paralyzed by it as well as times where I surrender to it and witness how it ebbs and flows within me. Transforming me. There are some things I was already expecting. But other things out of my control (the LA fires/Presidential transition being some big ones) one took me completely took me by surprise, the other I have been bracing myself for and I recognize that I am in swimming in the trenches. Im experiencing pain, joy, anger, celebration, sadness, frustration, gratitude…. All of it coming at me in chaotic order, showing up in the most random of places, and in ways I never imagined my heart and nervous system could experience. Im learning how to let myself be human each an everyday in a system that is determined to separate me from myself, from my/our humanity. It’s messy. It’s beautiful. It’s chaotic. It’s expansive. While the fires have devastated me and have left me undone in ways I wasn’t expecting, one thing I am abundantly certain of: no matter what anyone says, regardless of their political “power”… I will always exist. Who I am and who/how I love is a non-negotiable. And I will fight tooth and fuckin nail for my/our right to exist visibly and I will be louder each and everyday because I deserve to be here in this world and you deserve to be here in it with me, celebrating who we are every goddamn day. While I know IG is the only Meta app I’m currently using, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for ways in which we can engage in community that feels safe and affirming. Im enjoying the substack space with @todayingaypod as well Patreon and BlueSky! While TikTok was a good place, I’m currently putting it under observation after the whole shutdown/brought back debacle. I love yall… I genuinely am so grateful that we have each other even if the systems put in place are whack af. Squeezing everyone tenderly 🫂 Enjoy a glimpse of many transitions, moments of levity and honoring ancestry through these photos 🫶🏽✨"

Vico also posted More OFMD BTS on their Patreon!!

Source: Vico's Paid Patreon

= Gypsy Taylor =

Some of Gypsy's works being highlighted from The Newsreader Season 3!

Source: Gypsy's IG Stories

= Andrew DeYoung / Andy Rydzewski =

One of our Directors, Andrew, and our cinematographers, Andy are on their way to SXSW (South By South West) Film and TV Festival for their film 'Friendship'! It's an official selection! Congrats you two!

Source: Andy's IG Stories

= Damien Gerard =

Our Father Teach, Damien, is blessing us with more and more cat content, Athena is such a work of art <3

Source: Damien's Bsky

== Articles ==

Thank you so much to @adoptourcrew for keeping us up to date in all things OFMD Article related!!

GeekSpin Article

source: Adopt Our Crew Bsky

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Nes & The Tiny Co-captains =

So I will spread this out over a couple of recaps because the massive Rhys section above took most of my picture allotment! But I wanted to take a moment to highlight the adorable artwork of Nes. Their Tiny Co-Captains are such a break in my day every time I stumble upon them. Whether they're spending time together, eating cherries, going on silly adventures, Nes brings such joy and life to them that I just wanted to take a moment and appreciate the perfect chibi co-captains and their fabulous creator. I especially adore Archie and look at this super adorable snake for the Year of the Snake! If you aren't already following Nes, please check out their work below! It'll bring a smile to your face even on the roughest days!

Bsky / IG / Tumblr

Nes' Linktr.ee

Source: Nes' Bsky

= Never Left Podcast =

A new episode is back, and this time they're talking about the story in Stede's spank book! 👀 Check it out on your favorite podcast platform!

Source: Never Left Instagram

== Love Notes ==

I know you're tired lovelies. I am too. Been a hell of a year so far.

Please remember to rest, and take care of yourself. Drink your water, eat some food, and laugh if you can. The world feels dark, but you are the light within it. You make it beautiful, and keep it kind. You will shine brighter when you can recuperate and rest-- so please take care of you for a while. Sending Love your way <3

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nanea Hoffman (@sweatpantsandcoffee)

Source: SweatPantsAndCoffee Instagram

[deancasforcutie]

I love your blog and commentary! I was wondering what's your favorite theme in SPN?

Thank you for the ask! That's nice of you to say, I've enjoyed seeing your meta on the dash as well.

I may have let slip I'm working on a full-series essay project (currently paused after Gamble era) about how Supernatural develops a gothic horror critique of heteronormativity emerging from its original critiques of the American Dream, nuclear family, and patriarchy/toxic masculinity - so I might cop out and say these are all my favorite themes for the layers of meaning they acquire over the course of the series. It's fascinating how all horror in this series (like many other stories) ultimately stems from the violation of autonomy, from the meditations on free will to the nature of demons/angels/monsters and how they possess or harm people, and how we can see the series move from Kripke era's tragic framework of the illusory "apple pie life" as an unsustainable dream against the reality of horrors/trauma, to later seasons' presentation of non-normative (found) family as a solution that can prevail even within the margins of The Life. And I could make a whole separate thing about how Dean especially struggles with everything the life has taken from him versus a genuine drive to save people hunting things, hopefully I can articulate it all better soon.

(I also have a totally separate interest in the urban legend angle, really just a focus in season one, stemming from when I was bored in school reading Snopes articles and books like Jan Brunvand's The Mexican Pet. But it's also interesting how final seasons explore and transform Jungian/Campbellian influences it had from the start, there's a gap in my college lit education I'm trying to fill here.)

[bestanimal]

Round 1 - Phylum Cycliophora

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

As the newest described phylum (described in 1995), Cycliophora so far only contains the genus Symbion. But these animals are so unique that they certainly deserved their own phylum. They have so far been only found living attached to the mouths of cold-water lobsters. They have a commensal relationship with lobsters, feeding on microscopic particles from the lobsters’ meals.

Symbions have sac-like bodies, and three distinctly different forms in different parts of their two-stage life-cycle. The asexual feeding stage is the largest, attaching itself to a host via its adhesive disk. The asexual individual will produce males or females depending on the season. Males have two reproductive organs and no digestive system. Females are the same size, but have a digestive system which eventually collapses and reconstitutes itself as a larvae. You can read more about their fascinating reproduction on the wikipedia article, because it’s just… a lot.

Propaganda under the cut:

Tfw you’re so weird scientists make a whole new phylum for you

Seriously, their reproduction is so weird

Do you ever feel… like a plastic bag… on a lobster mouth…

[thethirdromana]

a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his

Mina describes Jonathan's nature as this, but I'm not sure what "simple" means in this context. Frugal? Not cunning?

I thought I knew the answer to this question, then I did some research and it turns out that the word 'simple' here carries a surprising amount of weight. So thank you for the question, because I just learned a lot!

This article talks about changing values in Victorian society, from the Georgian politeness of gentlemen, which was later disdained as artificial, to Victorian manliness, which was characterised, among other things, by simplicity:

The touchstone of polite conversation was the anticipated impression made on the listener. The manly man was someone who paid more attention to the promptings of his inner self than to the dictates of social expectation. Manly speech was therefore direct, honest and succinct. Its purpose was not to please, or to shield listeners from the disagreeable, but to convey meaning without equivocation.

And I think we really see this demonstrated in Dracula with the directness and straightforwardness of the very manly Quincey.

Jonathan is less manly than Quincey (everyone is less manly than Quincey) but nonetheless this is an assertion of Jonathan's manly virtues by Mina. He isn't struggling and doubting himself because he's effeminate or in some other way lacking; from Mina's perspective, his struggles are actually a demonstration of how good a man he is. The article also notes that simplicity was particularly seen as a virtue for middle-class men to aspire to, and Jonathan is the one unambiguously middle-class male main character in Dracula.

I do recommend reading the whole article. It's a fascinating read, not only for readers of Dracula but also for North and South, which it discusses.

[wordy-little-witch]

From this post

Tldr: transfemme buggy and the quaking of the seas

I have an absolutely unhealthy obsession with fantasy science. I have an unhealthy obsession for one piece. Mix em together and you get this:

Devil Fruits are so freaking weird man. They are supernatural, by common story telling throughout the series, and then you find out they can be replicated through science. You can make whole ass test tube babies with those powers by mixing source DNA and Lunarian DNA. The accessibility to research on Devil Fruits is lacking, and I do whole heartedly believe that's due to the world government. But we DO know some specific things.

Zoans, Logias and Paramecias are the three categories, then they have sub categories. Zoans can awaken. But can Logias? Can Paramecias? Are some Devil Fruits mislabeled due to lack of research or misinformation? It's basically highly unusual biochemistry.

I already believe whole heartedly that Buggy has some knowledge of medicine - she's not a doctor by any means, but she knows enough to take care of some simple to moderate concerns. Nurse practitioner, basically.

I feel like Buggy, no longer drowning the drsphoria-she-didn't-realize-she-had, would be open to exploring the world and being as curious and fascinated as she damn well pleases.

It starts, as many things do in her life, with something learned from or about a certain man in a straw hat. First Roger, then Shanks, now Luffy - strawhatted monsters plague her life. But this monster has done something even Roger and Shanks deemed dangerous - he mad her curious.

The tales of what happened in Wano spread like wildfire. The Strawhats learn about Cross Guild. Cross Guild learns about them not too long after. And Buggy pauses when Crocodile laughs his distinctive way as he reads a passage from the article in the news.

Paramecias do not allow for transformation. She knows this. She researched Devil Fruits near obsessively after the Pineapple Incident to cope with the new fear and then a genuine fascination. She has read damn near every available document on Devil Fruits in the Cardinal Seas and Grandline. She knows about Devil Fruits.

Luffy's Devil Fruit turns everyone on its head. A normal person might chalk it up to him being a D, might say that that little spitfire doesn't follow logic in any capacity; Buggy knows better.

Buggy knows because she is a D herself, something she only recently announced, by blood and bond both. Buggy knows Luffy is not an idiot, that he does follow his own logic, and she knows that that has nothing to do with his personal logic.

Buggy knows this, and Buggy knows Devil Fruits, and now Buggy is Thinking.

She quickly comes to a few hypotheses.

1) Luffy's Devil Fruit is either not a paramecia at all, which would mean the information available has been altered, changed or purposefully misrepresented.

2) The study on Devil Fruits only goes so far - she knows this specially to be true, given how she herself had so many questions that have yet to be answered regarding the topic. If that is the case, Luffy may well have simply harnessed an otherwise unaddressed or undiscovered aspect of his Fruit specifically or Fruits in general.

2B) if Luffy's Devil Fruit can change his surroundings, can Awaken like a Zoan, then could any Fruit do that? Could Logias? Could all Paramecias? Could hers-?

And she stops.

Buggy's got a history of pyromania, bordering on terrorism ((and she'll argue those semantics another time, the WG is so annoying-)). She loves a good bomb, a good explosion, she adores making her bombs and updating weapons and studying chemistry.

She also was a Warlord, brief as it was, and absolutely snooped around the marine headquarters. The schematics and information on their infamous Buster Calls was sparse, she'd give them that, but it only took her three meetings to get a good grasp on it all. The concept was good, she'd admit that, but it was wild, untamed, unrefined. It was simply a glorified firework meets cannon ball meets biochemical warfare.

But it had given her Ideas.

Marines do their schematics so oddly, but she could appreciate a change in perspective, especially when it also inspired her.

Explosions are chemicals, are catalysts, are combustion - and combustion is fission, is fusion, is expansive.

If she could find a way to cause the fission and fusion on her specific terms, could isolate, map, and replicate the event on command, it could revolutionize everything.

She's had the thought in mind for a while prior to this, but the revelation regarding Luffy, Devil Fruits and the woeful lack of research and study there leaves her with a fire in her best.

Especially since Buggy D Clown, Emperor and Captain and Chairwoman, has the Chop Chop Fruit.

She can split and reassemble at will.

She can control the fissures and fusions of her body.

How deep, how small, can that control go? Is there a set area around her? It works on her clothes. Why does it work on her clothes? Is there a range already? Can she control it? Can she expand it?

Can she impose it on other things?

Could Buggy actually make a seas damned mega bomb with her Devil Fruit?

That doesn't even begin on her endless thoughts on others. Does Alvida have a range? Can she impose her ability elsewhere? It supposedly worked on her weight, but that's not friction - what's up with that? Is it internal? Would blunt force trauma hurt her? Could blades? If it slips OFF, could things slip THROUGH?

And Galdino, his abilities are incredible. But it's a Paramecia, isn't it? Why isn't it a Logia? Is it because of the nature of the substance? He's a 'human candle' as he so aptly put it, but what's the limit? What's the capacity? What does that mean?

On that front, what about Crocodile? Sand is a nifty power, yes, but rather limited on the open sea without an additional source. She has no doubt he's deft with it, but could there be more to it than she knows? Could there be more than he knows? Could a Logia Awaken? What would that look like?

Buggy is a Flashy Fool, the Genius Jester, but right now, she is plain old Buggy - curious, excited and itching to experiment.

She asks questions - simple ones, odd ones, gathers her data as best she can. She will not use her friends as guinea pigs, she refuses, but she's going to compile, record, and analyze everything until she has a chance to go a little science.

She's a pirate, her morals are skewed, but she will not harm innocent, good people.

Everyone else is fair game.

And with a curious clown diving into a field of research so often controlled by the Marines, it brings the expanse of misinformation, control of knowledge, and fascist tendencies to glaring light.

And Buggy the Bombastic Clown lives up to her name in unexpected ways.

The Seas learn to fear when she holds up a hand, poses her finger to snap, and smiles. Your fate is sealed, more often than not, when blood red lips stretch and damn near coo, "Boom~".

And when some information about Pluton cones to light? Well.

She's got a fascinating option to power this behemoth of a war ship. Turns out keeping the Clown in the Guild was the best decision Crocodile could have hoped for.

Buggy takes the world by storm and it turns out being a war ship's power cell isn't even the biggest thing she discovers.

[panlight]

I've been reading a lot of Lovecraft over the past few weeks. I'm currently reading "The Dunwich Horror" and it features a baby of half supernatural parentage that grows super extra fast and likes to drink some its caregivers' blood for funsies.

It's WILD to me how this is literally exactly what Renesmee is but with Lovecraft it's existential dread and cosmic horror but with Stephenie Meyer it's a cute fairy tale happy ending. Literally NOTHING is different.

Oh, yeah, the speed-growth is very similar:

From the wikipedia article: Within three months of his birth, he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age...At seven months, he began to walk unassisted," and he "commenced to talk...at the age of only eleven months." At three years of age, "he looked like a boy of ten," while at four and a half, he "looked like a lad of fifteen."

I mean, if anything, Renesmee was able to walk and talk sooner. She was doing all this before Christmas, when she was about 3 months old.

But totally, one of the really fascinating things with Twilight is that if you just shift your POV a little, you can make it horror. You can make it a psychological thriller. You can make it the story of a depressed, divorced police chief watching his daughter succumbing to something he doesn't understand. It would be so, so easy to see it as the story of the destruction of human!Bella rather than the triumph of vampire!Bella. The elements are there, you just have to change the POV.

And that might be part of what keeps this fandom going; there's so MUCH to play with. You could easily make this a vampire horror story and not change a single plot point, you just slightly change how characters react to them. Renesmee "loving to show off the size of her pray" pretty easily goes from "haha a cute competitive kid" to "YIKES does she enjoy killing things too much? If she's like this as a baby what will she be like as an adult?"

So much about Renesmee in particular is off-putting and unnatural and at the very least horror-adjacent (I know it's supposed to be funny and cute when she bites Jacob, but she's drinking his blood and he LITERALLY cannot say no because of the imprint. That is HORROR. It's Horror!) but Bella's narration doesn't treat any of it that way. The only 'horror' and dread from Bella's POV is that Nessie might age up to an old woman and die in 15 years or so; but that ends up not being the case. Nessie is presented to us as this adorable ray of light whom everyone instantly loves. But even THAT could be horror; compare how she writes about how Nessie is "special, hard to resist" or has "some magic" that she has "bewitched (affectionate)" them with, vs how SM writes about whole covens being destroyed in defense of Immortal Children who were also adorable but uncontrollable monsters.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

the idea that the Germans overwhelmingly supported the nazis is a perversely fascinating tool of propaganda tbh bc it was and is used by so many people with different goals and in different ways. The nazis obv just tried to legitimize themselves by faking the results of eg the 1934 referendum; the various German governments of the post-war period in turn use this referendum to show that referendums are bad and everything should be left up to qualified politicians bc the people would just elect another Hitler (who was, in fact, empowered primarily by so-called qualified politicians). Various far-right groups uphold it to claim that modern democracy is a sham. The allies used it to tell theri soldiers "see? They chose this! You can kill them without second thought, men, women, and children, and it's totally justified bc they unanimously stand behind their dictator", and lastly (afaik, at least) there's the cult of guilt in Germany as well as internationally condemning every German who was born after the whole thing as guilty by association. Like practically zero people of influence have any interest at all in being honest about this, and if you do, somehow, it's nazi apologia to say that the NSDAP were oppressors who did not care about what the population actually wanted.

If you for some reason are in need of upping yr blood pressure you can try reading this obscene Jason stanley article in which inherent german blood guilt for Hitler is used to justify treating all future generations of Russians as analogously guilty of the invasion of ukraine by way of their national identity

Even so, my first thought when meeting another German is that their grandparents most likely would have enthusiastically supported murdering me and my family. […] [T]here is still fear and shame in their eyes whenever they attempt to steer the conversation away from their country’s dark legacy. There always will be, because genocide will not and cannot be forgotten – ever.

Imagine just saying this, in print, on purpose! I cannot, as the saying goes, fucking even

[fanhackers]

Honoring Our Foresmutters: Joanna Russ

Inspired to post today by the recent New York Times article on Joanna Russ, “Joanna Russ Showed Us the Future: Female, Queer but Far From Perfect,” which promotes an exciting new collection of her work by the Library of America.  Joanna Russ was a fan and a fanfiction writer well as, arguably, the literal founder of the field of fan studies. While Russ has been referenced or namechecked many times in the Fanhackers blog over the years (here and here, for example), I don’t think we’ve ever specifically shouted out her field-founding 1985 essay “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love.”  (Is there an important fan studies essay before this one? Perhaps Ien Ang’s 1985 work on Dallas fans? Janice Radway’s 1984 Reading the Romance? Lamb and Veith? Lichtenberg, Marshak, and Winstons’s 1975 landmark Star Trek Lives? Maybe that one. But Russ is pretty much the first to document and defend modern slash fandom as we know it (which is one of the reasons the NYT article links to the Archive of Our Own.)   

Russ says a lot of things in this essay about Star Trek slash, what it is and how it works, and how slash serves as a sexual fantasy for women. (She also says some pretty fascinating things about not just female rape fantasy, but also about male rape fantasy: there’s a lot of sympathy here for men’s sexual fantasy and empathy for the way men are thwarted under patriarchy as well.)  But I think my favorite thing in the essay is the way Russ is willing to own her feels:

I hope I haven't offended anyone by calling K/S "sexual fantasy." If it weren't, I wouldn't pay any attention to it. I love the stuff, I love the way it turns me on, and I love its attempt to establish a very radical androgyny in its characters. So many feminist creations of Amazons and Goddess-worshippers and so on simply don't work-most are very thin–but K/S works, if you know and like Star Trek, and (as I mentioned) it is the only sexual fantasy by women for women that's produced without the control or interposition of censorship by commercial booksellers or the interposition of political intent by writers or editors. It's also a labor of love for the women involved, since it is (and must be, because of the possibility of lawsuit) non-profit. I find it raw, blatantly female, and very valuable and exciting.

She ends the essay preparing to go back to the story she is writing!

And now, if you will excuse me, I must go back to my ancient Vulcan castle with the carved bedposts where I have left my two characters, Guess Who and Guess Which, in a very dramatic and painful situation. In fact, I left Spock preparing to beat Kirk, whom he has bought as a slave in an alternate universe in which violent Vulcan (Spock's planet) never reformed. Of course the point of the whole scene is that Spock can't bear to do any such thing because he is madly in love with Kirk. So he smites his forehead with his hand (or some similar gesture) and rushes out to agonize. Meanwhile Kirk (who's of course in love with Spock) agonizes too, but in the opposite direction, so to speak.  They will do this for a long as I can contrive, and then they will make great music together, also as long as I can stretch the scene out. Yum. And so on.

That “Yum,” in print, in 1985, is everything! 

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[acheronist]

🧛🏻‍♀️⚰️

disclaimer i am not a scholar or a historian or an archaeologist. i just like vampires in a freak way and read a lot of weird articles + listen to podcasts and think about this a lot.

so the vampire burials that i know the most about were done in the general region of like... hungary / slovakia / romania / poland kind of following along the line of the carpathian mountain range. but also then in like, early america as well for some reason. random ass 1700s vampire hysteria panic swept the nation (all 25 square miles of it).

anyways so this area in europe is notorious for vampire folklore anyways so it tracks that where the european vampire folklore was originating = where people are most frightened of it for real. and so the vampire graves that have been excavated and studied are HONESTLY PROBABLY just the graves of like..... normal people who were ill in some way, and therefore cast into a suspicious light, and then died. but it was a fairly common belief that if someone WAS a vampire, especially prior to dying, then they'd return from the dead and attack and kill their family first before moving onto friends and neighbors and the rest of the community. bad for the community. so after the "vampire" in question died, the living would take extra steps to ensure that the deceased would not rise from the grave again and start killing them because well No One would like that! so one one hand its really kind of upsetting that-- essentially-- the dead were being accused and vandalized without the ability to protect or defend themselves AND THEN ALSO having their burial rites get screwed around with. sure you prevented the vampires but now we've got fucking ghosts. great work everyone.

and then on the other hand morbid freaky trivia is so fascinating to MEEEEEEE so here some of the most dramatic methods that i can recall from the top of my head:

dismembering the deceased's corpse ( with an emphasize on decapitation)

and for the decapitation, sickles or hand scythes were placed over the deceased's neck, so if they lived and sat up again, they'd cut their own throat

also rearranging the dismembered body (pieces) or the body (whole) in specific patterns

padlocking the deceased's feet together

placing bricks or rocks into the deceased's mouth, either breaking their teeth or making it impossible for any postmortem vampire zombie bite damage to be inflicted upon the living

pinning the deceased's corpse into the ground via steel or iron stakes to keep them from getting up. often stakes were stabbed thru the heart which is where the motif in media today comes from

but also sometimes removing the heart from the deceased completely and burning it also happened

burying the deceased with wreathes of garlic and poppy seeds and paprika peppers to act as wards to keep them where they were. which is hilarious also when you take into account how much garlic and poppy and paprika gets used in eastern european cuisine

and i might be making this part up LMAO but i feel like in my heart. and brain. that i remember a colonial american(?) story where an autopsy was performed on a recently deceased girl(??) whose organs still looked "fresh" and functional, as it were, and not like the organs of someone dead. because she was obviously rising from the dead and drinking the blood of the living which we can tell from her remarkably fresh organs. this was another great instance of vampire organ harvesting but i for SURE need to go try and find my source for this again.

and similarly, i also am like 90% sure I've read about exhuming someone who had been accused of being a vampire, and judging how their rate of decomposition was going, and if they looked too fresh and alive then they were a vampire and we can brutally kill them again. obviously differences in burial climates and situations would have no bearing or affect upon the body's rate of decay btw.

but then as we work our way up thru history, illegal body snatching also became an incredibly common thing as anatomists and doctors and surgeons needed the bodies to learn from. and I'm SOOOO so certain that grave cages / mort safes were invented because normal people did not want their corpses to be body snatched and turned into underground med student dissection homework. BUT ☝🏻 i have also seen claims that cages over the graves were put in place to keep the vampires IN the grave, not to keep body snatchers OUT of the grave. and then I went hmm. where have I seen big elaborate grave cages before?

mother fucking henry ford has a mort safe cage on his shit, so the only reasonable conclusion to all of this is that henry ford was a vampire. amen. my edible is hitting now and i cant think of a good conclusion to this post sorry. someday i will write an essay. or finish making my gay ass zine about this.

[b-skarsgard]

He is already iconic as the clown Pennywise in the Stephen King film adaptations "It".

Now Bill Skarsgård, 34, tackles another classic horror role, as the vampire Count Orlok in "Nosferatu".

- When my six-year-old daughter came to visit the set, she cried the first twenty minutes she saw me in make-up, says Bill.

No wonder the daughter was a little scared at first, perhaps, because in the role Bill Skarsgård , 34, really looks like a 400-year-old Transylvanian vampire. It's really only his height and eyes that you recognize him under all the make-up. And the voice sounds as if from beyond the grave.

read the full article at the link or under the cut

translated through google

When the film now premieres in Sweden, it has already been a smash hit in the United States. Has taken in $40.8 million (about SEK 450 million) since Christmas Day, which was almost twice as much as the film company had dared to hope for.

Alongside Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp , 25, Nicholas Hoult , 35, Aaron Taylor-Johnson , 34, Emma Corrin , 29, and Willem Dafoe , 69, are found in front of the camera. In addition, director Robert Eggers, 41, after only a few films, has something of a cult reputation among film lovers, for his passionate projects, whether they are about vampires or Vikings, such as "The Northman" from 2022, starring Alexander Skarsgård, 48 .

I meet Bill a few weeks before Christmas at a hotel on Södermalm in Stockholm. The same neighborhood where he lives with his partner Alida Morberg , 39, and daughter Oona. A few days later, he will leave for the film premieres in New York and Los Angeles, which now, with hindsight, started the great success of the film.

You would think that it was Alexander who had introduced his little brother to the director, but it turns out that was not the case at all.

- I met Robert before Alex met him. It's been almost ten years. He had made "The witch" (2015) which I loved. He represented a vision of his own as an artist, an uncompromising integrity, says Bill, and continues:

- I first read for the role that Aaron Taylor-Johnson is doing now. Then he thought I was better suited for the role of Thomas, as Nicholas Hoult does. I got it, was overjoyed, now it's happening, I thought. But then the film was postponed. Robert's status then was not such that he was allowed to do what he wanted. He needed to make a couple of other films to do "Nosferatu" justice.

- Then Robert begged and asked me to be in "The Northman". I was there two days before the recording was to start. Had hair extensions and everything. Then covid came and stopped everything. I went home and climbed the walls, but then started developing the TV series "Clark" with Jonas Åkerlund , 59.

When "The Northman" was finally gone, Bill was busy with "Clark". Gustav Lindh, 29, took over his role.

And then it was time for "Nosferatu".

- When Robert started casting actors for all the roles and I heard nothing, I wondered if he was so easily offended. I wrote him a letter and out of nowhere he came up with this, that I was to be Count Orlok. As flattering as terrifying.

Bill was well aware of the original, "Nosferatu" from 1922 by FW Murnau (1888-1931) with Max Schreck (1879-1936) in the title role.

- Father Stellan thought we should watch a lot of movies when we were children. It was the whole silent film quagmire with Chaplin and Buster Keaton and there was also "Nosferatu". I was probably nine, ten years old. And then I have had a fascination with the Dracula films and all its interpretations, from Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman.

The recording of "Nosferatu" took place at Barrandov Studios in Prague.

- I had previously recorded "The Crow" there, so I stayed in the same hotel as then. Was there for four months and probably had 50-60 recording days, there was never a long break. And if Count Orlok is only there as a shadow image, then it is me who sits behind the camera and orchestrates the hand.

To be transformed into Count Orlok, every day took about 3.5-4 hours.

- When I saw the sketches of what he would look like, I thought that that guy doesn't even look like he's alive. But it just became even more of a war to breathe life into this, a challenge, it was spurring.

Had you asked your father how hard it is to sit in the make-up for so long? He sat for eight hours every day when he made the "Dune" films...

- He knows how hard it is and just said Welcome to the club . Although... hasn't it been the case that every time Dad talked about the make-up for "Dune" he added an hour to each interview? (laughter), Bill jokes.

There were also other preparations for the role. He had trained properly for the action film "Boy kills world" a couple of years ago.

- Robert liked that I was thin but ripped. So I had to get as thin as possible anyway. Ate only meat for a period. I probably weighed ten kilos less than I do today.

And then there was the voice. In the Netflix series "Clark", Bill normally speaks in the scenes where he acts in front of the camera, but as a narrator, when Clark Olofsson looks back on his life, he has a kind of old man's voice.

- I love voice work. In this case, Robert wanted a dark old man voice. He describes so beautifully in the script that it sounds like it comes from the deepest grave. I worked with an opera singer who taught me to find the technique to place the voice in the nose, in the throat, or down here in the stomach, as deep as possible, says Bill, touching his stomach - and suddenly sounds like Count Orlok.

Bill's female co-star in the film is Lily-Rose Depp, 25-year-old daughter of Johnny Depp, 61, and French singer/actress Vanessa Paradis, 52.

Did you guys talk about what it's like to be the daughter of such a super celebrity as Johnny Depp?

- She tells me: You know how it is. But no... being Johnny Depp's daughter is on a slightly different level than being Stellan's son. Depp is like the biggest movie star of the generation. Her mother is also very famous, at least in France.

- Then I can recognize myself in that thing with nepobaby here and there, that you give 110 percent to work against the stereotype that you are there because of someone else.

- When you see the film, there is no question that it is her talent that means she is in the film. It's a real shut up performance by her.

Next, Bill will go to the USA and make the hostage drama "Dead man's wire" with Gus Van Sant, 72. A director that father Stellan worked with back in 1997 in "Good Will Hunting".

And what about Bill's daughter, who was so frightened that she cried seeing her father as a vampire.

- Shortly after that, she sat with her headphones on and followed the recording. Then she just looked proud, says Bill, who was greeted in Prague by the family at regular intervals. •

[josefavomjaaga]

I have not read the article in its entirety yet. I'm just fascinated by the idea that Murat's many uniforms require wargamers to have a whole set of tiny Murats for every occasion...

[adarkrainbow]

I will complete my trilogy of Hansel and Gretel stage adaptations of fascinating visuals with this piece. I made several posts about the Royal New Zealand Ballet's adaptation and its homages to Germanic cinema (and obscure carnival traditions). I reblogged something about the Hänsel and Gretel concert of Lindemann-Tägtren and its disturbing, horrifying but also darkly clownesque visuals... And now I bring you the San Diego Opera adaptation of the famed Hansel and Gretel opera, with quite impressive puppetry!

I will copy-paste here the content of an article by Beth Accomando, which can be read in its original form here.

It’s not every day that an opera singer gets to bring a cannibalistic witch to life.

"I lure children into the forest and I cook them into gingerbread cakes and then I eat them. It's delightful," said tenor Joel Sorensen.

But what’s not so delightful is having to wear a big puppetry rig to create a larger-than-life witch onstage.

"I am a puppet," Sorensen explained. "The witch is a puppet, a very large puppet. And I have a colleague, Iain [Gunn], behind me. He bears the bulk of the weight on his back. So I'm basically working with a puppet while trying to sing and convey a character. It's a real challenge."

The challenge for director Brenna Corner in bringing Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" to the San Diego Opera stage was how do you bring a fairy tale to life?

"One of the things that I think is really tricky about 'Hansel and Gretel' is size. How do you make two grown-ups look like they're kids and two other grown-ups look like they're adults? And then someone else looks sort of even bigger and more powerful. And quite frankly, the best way I could figure out how to do that was puppets," Corner said.

So anything that was not human became a puppet. Like the witch.

"It's different in that it's not my physicality. So, because I'm manipulating her hands, her arms, and I'm working in tandem with [Gunn] so I can't move as quickly as I might normally or as sharply but facially and vocally, I'm trying to do the same things that I would do if I were performing it without a puppet," Sorensen said.

Now if you are thinking of puppets as something you put on your hand, think again. Imagine actors completely enveloped in layers of fabric with a large sculpted head or face high above their shoulders and an arm span that exceeds 10 feet.

"We had to really kind of blow up the notion of what a puppet is in order to successfully encompass the fusion of opera and puppetry," said Judd Palmer of Old Trout Puppet Workshop in Calgary. "Our inspiration was classic 19th century children's book illustrators like Arthur Rackham or N.C. Wyeth. We wanted the whole thing to feel like it comes out of a book and it becomes the illustrations coming to life like a pop up book."

Palmer designed the puppets for a production in Canada and Iain Gunn of Animal Cracker Conspiracy here in San Diego is now the puppeteer working with Sorensen to play the Witch onstage.

"I get to live inside this character that I'm helping to bring alive," Gunn said. "But she has her own voice standing right in front of me. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I am transported inside this imagination. It's like I'm in the 'Time Bandits' or something like that where … we're doing something magical and it's a magical character and the only reason it's alive is because we're in there giving it our all. So it's pretty cool."

The puppets engage the audience in a unique way.

"It's this agreement that the audience makes with the performers," Corner explains. "That we agree not to see the person who's obviously a person and instead we agree to look at what is fabric and some PVC pipe and a plaster-like face, right? But we agree to do that. So what's extraordinary to me about puppetry is that as an audience, we're continually investing our imagination in seeing the thing that the performers want us to see and then as the performers keep investing in that then all of a sudden they go away. They don't exist there anymore and it becomes something else kind of magical."

By not trying to fool the audience and instead asking them to play along in this game of make-believe, the audience becomes a co-conspirator.

Palmer pointed out, "You can see the puppeteer right there in a ridiculous outfit. They're sweating and panting from having to run across the stage and they're waving the puppet around. It lets us all in on the joke in a way but also in the kind of the dream. It makes it evident to everybody in the audience that they are going to have to invest imaginatively in this in the same way as the people on stage are."

It's recommended that you bring a child-like sense of imagination to this show.

"That joy that you had when you were a kid," Corner said. "And you could imagine what would happen if a stick was suddenly a giant scary monster. I think that's what you want to bring to this production because that's what this production creates is the sense of wonder and joy and mystery that's inherent in being a kid."

And inherent in a story that begins with the magical possibilities of once upon a time…

San Diego Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdick’s "Hansel and Gretel" opens Saturday and will have three additional performances through Feb. 16 at San Diego Civic Theatre.