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abybweisse · 10 months ago

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Blood Work (p1), Elitism, transmutation, and religious fear

⚠️ long post ⚠️

So, I now have a copy of Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, by Holly Tucker. It's a reference for Yana-san, as she mentioned it in her old tuna.be blog around the start of the blue arc.

I see in the list of important people a mention of the real Dr. Moreau, and there's a later chapter about chimeras... so I know I'll be talking about that some, over this series of posts.

It's important here, too, because when researchers were first attempting blood transfusions in the 17th century, people were terrified about receiving blood from animals, like sheep and cattle. They thought that animal blood would transmute humans into human-animal hybrids. Even in the 20th century, some white people were terrified of receiving blood from black people, because they thought the blood could effect the race of their future children or grandchildren. Nonsense, of course, but they didn't understand.

17th century blood transfusions were generally performed by taking blood from a lamb or a calf. The barbers/physicians/researchers had no clue about blood types. Jean-Baptiste Denis successfully transfused blood from a lamb into a teenage patient. Then he made several successful attempts at transfusing from a calf to a "madman". The guy later died, and Denis was blamed. Turns out some doctors who didn't want him to succeed had actually poisoned that second subject with arsenic.

It wasn't even a matter of those physicians wanting his experiments to fail while theirs worked; no, they simply didn't want blood transfusions to become a practice. They were afraid of transmutation from animal blood, and they were afraid of what animal-to-human blood transfusions would reveal about humanity -- that we are truly just animals, too. The trial against Denis ended research into blood transfusions for about 150 years.

Blood types were still unknown in the late 18th century, when a physician wanted to attempt to revive George Washington's largely exsanguinated corpse with a transfusion of lamb's blood. FYI, he died on a December 14th, just like Prince Albert. His family refused the offer only because they feared sullying his body with animal blood, and they insisted his body must be left untainted and wholly together for him to be properly received into heaven. Such was the continued lack of understanding. Yana-san might have given Undertaker the idea to use blood transfusions in conjunction with other techniques for the reanimating and revival process from the account of what that physician wanted to do to Washington.

When blood transfusion research was in full swing, in the 19th century, they were starting to piece together the idea of blood groups, but they still didn't quite know about things like universal whole blood donor and universal whole blood recipient. There was a strong elitist element to this, so they generally thought like could only be compatible with like. They also still saw non-human blood as inferior, even if it might be compatible. The best compatibility was expected between twins and then between close relatives.

I have a feeling that Yana-san has played around with this bias, which would explain why real Ciel is only receiving AB (Sirius) blood, Canopus B, Vega O, and Polaris A. All those people at Sphere Music Hall are led to believe they are being treated as equals, when they are in fact being split up into a caste system where some "stars" are of a higher magnitude than others. And, at times, Blavat Sky and others have made it clear they see some blood types as being less worthy than others. By extension, some people are treated as less worthy. Blavat seems to realize that Sirius can receive blood from other blood types, because he gives "leftovers" of Vega and Polaris blood to the Sirius renal patients. It's possible that real Ciel doesn't know he can have any type of whole blood, but I suspect he knows and simply doesn't think anything else is good enough for him.

I'd also like to mention Snake and Finny here, since we know Finny was injected with something to increase his strength and other traits. Then we see Snake with various attributes that are associated with snakes. In either case (or both) we could be dealing with transmutation. It's not realistic in our world, but it might very well be possible in theirs. Each of them might have been injected with chemical cocktails derived from other animals: Snake from snakes and Finny from perhaps a few completely different species.

We now know Snake wasn't born a snake and turned into a human, but there's nothing to say he wasn't born human and "adulterated" with snake traits. There's also the weird story the freak show attendant claims: human mother and snake father. Maybe not an actual snake as his father but more like his mother being injected with snake blood or something... and that producing a hybrid child. Again, not what we'd consider possible, but the Kuroverse plays by different rules.

One other aspect I want to touch on in this post: Othello's and Grelle's fears regarding the very nature of human souls and existence. This is a form of religious fear, not too different from what George Washington's family feared. His family feared he wouldn't be accepted into heaven, while these two reapers fear humans might no longer even need souls, and that heaven may no longer matter to them. What would that mean for the existence of reapers, when their supposed salvation requires them to keep collecting souls?

Well, I'll probably talk about bias and fear again, as well as these other issues, but I'll stop here... for now.

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merlyn-bane · 6 months ago

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212th Breakout

I offered....several months ago to post my personal breakout for the 212th that I use in my own works, and then promptly got distracted and forgot to clean it up like I was planning to. Well that post started getting notes again and reminded me, so here it is!! More info under the line break.

Please bear in mind that 1. these are my own head-canons and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that they're canon compliant and 2. this is a living document and can and probably will be updated at any time.

There is a second tab at the bottom that will take you to a page full of OC character sheets for the OCs listed in the breakout on sheet one. They are all in different levels of development and I will probably be adding to them over time, especially more pictures. If you want to use any of them feel free, just let me know because I would love to see. Frankly it's a dream of mine for Bent to end up a fanon character one day like Bones or Helix.

#212th attack battalion #212th meta #star wars #star wars meta #star wars: the clone wars #resources #writing resources #references #reference material #also going to tag this #codywan #just bc my fellow codywan fans might find it useful

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southwest-pottery-bracket · 10 months ago

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A crash course in some vocabulary

Archaeology, like all sciences, has a lot of specialized jargon we use to talk about pottery. To make sure everyone’s on the same page, here’s a list of some common terms I’ll be using, what they mean, and how to pronounce them.

~ 🏺🏺🏺 ~

Ware: A broader term for a technological/cultural tradition in pottery. Typically, construction method, color, clay type, temper type, and paint type are what defines a “ware.” So Chuska Gray Ware is unslipped, usually unpainted gray clay with crushed black basalt temper. Roosevelt Red Ware is red-slipped clay with sand temper and carbon-based paint. Hohokam Buff Ware is unslipped or cream-slipped buff-colored clay with coarse sand temper, created using a paddle-and-anvil forming method and painted with red paint.

Type: Within a ware, a type is a more narrowly specific decorative style. Roosevelt Red Ware has multiple types within it, such as Salado Red (unpainted red-slipped), Pinto Black-on-red (black paint on the red in a specific radially symmetric interlocked hatched-and-bold pattern), Pinto Polychrome (same decorative style but on a white-slipped interior field), Gila Polychrome (red exterior, white-slipped interior, a usually-broken black band around the rim, black painted designs in a two- or -four-fold symmetry), Tonto Polychrome (bolder and less symmetric black-and-white designs on a red field), Cliff Polychrome, Dinwiddie Polychrome, Nine Mile Polychrome… different stylistic variations on the Roosevelt Red Ware technological/visual core. You can read more about categorizations here.

A note on naming conventions: Pottery in this archaeological tradition tends to have a two-part name: a location where it was first defined and described, and a colorway. Wares tend to be “[Broad location or broad cultural group] [Color] Ware”; types tend to be “[Specific site] [paint color]-on-[clay color].” So within Tusayan White Ware is Flagstaff Black-on-white.

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Gila: A river in southern Arizona and a bit of New Mexico, and a lizard and a polychrome type named after it. Pronounced hee-la.

Hohokam: An archaeological term for a Native American cultural group that lived in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, defined by traits like red-on-buff pottery, massive canal systems for field irrigation, and platform mounds. It comes from the O'odham-language word huhugham, “ancestors.” They are the ancestors of the modern Tohono O’odham and Akimel O’odham people (it’s a little bit more complicated than that but that’s basically the case.)

Mogollon: An archaeological term for a Native American cultural group from central New Mexico, eastern Arizona, and northern Chihuahua. Most iconic trait is the elaborate range of corrugated and smudged pottery. Named after the Mogollon Rim, the geological formation that marks the edge of the Colorado Plateau and a drastic change in geology and climate in the northern Southwest and the southern Southwest. Along with the Ancestral Pueblo, the Mogollon culture are ancestors of modern southern Rio Grande and Zuni pueblos. Pronounced moh-guh-yon.

Olla: A water jar with a wide body and narrow neck. Pronounced oy-ya.

Polychrome: Pottery that is three or more colors (poly+chrome), most often meaning red, white, and black.

A Tonto Polychrome olla. Southeastern Arizona, 1350-1450.

Pueblo: A collective term for Native people of the Southwest US (particularly in the Rio Grande river watershed, but also Hopi and Zuni) who share cultural traits and history—most immediately notably, a tradition of living in square adobe houses in large villages, which are also each called pueblos. Ancestral Pueblo is the term for the archaeologically-defined cultural group that share these similar traits and are, generally, from the northern half of New Mexico and Arizona, and a southern strip of Colorado and Utah. The Ancestral Puebloans were formerly called “Anasazi” but that has fallen out of favor due to pushback from modern Pueblos. Also, each modern Pueblo prefers to be called a Pueblo rather than a tribe in most cases—so you say the Pueblo of Acoma, the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris Pueblo, Taos Pueblo, the Pueblo of Zuni, etc.

Temper: Non-clay bits that are added to natural clays to make them easier to work with. When you buy clay from a store now, it’s already mixed and processed and ready to use. When you find clay out in nature, it’s almost never so easy. Typically, you have to mine/harvest clay from riverbanks or cliffsides, and it’s hard and dried; then you have to grind the hard clay up into fine particles, and mix them with water. But natural clays are often puddly and don’t always hold together well, so you add temper, something hard and grainy to make your wet clay stick together more easily and make it good to work with! Temper can be sand, ground-up rock, ground-up shell, or even ground-up bits of other broken pottery. What different people used as temper is one defining feature of a pottery ware and pottery tradition.

Sherd: A broken bit of pottery. NOT shard. When it’s pottery, it’s “sherd.”

Slip: Very runny wet clay. It’s used to help attach clay pieces together, but more pertinently here, plain-colored pots are covered with an even layer of bolder-colored clay slip to get the desired color pot.

Smudging: A decorative style that potters made during the firing stage. They would have open pit-fires for firing their pottery, and cover the desired part of the pot with a layer of charcoal or ash. This creates a carbonized, reducing environment—that is, a lot of carbon, and little oxygen. This creates a smooth, inky black finish on the completed pot.

A Starkweather Smudged bowl. Mogollon, western New Mexico, AD 900-1200.

Vessel: Another word for pot, basically. Means a ceramic container of some sort. Bowls, jars, ladles, pitchers, mugs, etc are all vessels; effigies and statuettes are not.

#pottery #archaeology #reference material

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howardwimshurst · 2 years ago

Photo

A solution to stiff animation and awkward poses: https://www.animatorguild.com/motion-... We just launched a catalogue of dynamic reference footage for animators. This is a little preview of the HUNDREDS of reference videos we have in the male walks and runs reference pack.

#animation #animation reference #anime reference #animation references #walk cycles #run cycles #anatomy reference #references for animators #reference material #human movement #edweard muybridge #walk cycle #run cycle #animtion tools

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nixariel · 1 year ago

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Timelines and Carmen Sandiego: To Steal Or Not To Steal

...or, can I make the interactive special play nicely with canon? Meant as a companion to my previous timeline; please note that this is centred around the 'perfect' route where Carmen manages to save both her ground crew and the stolen items. For an overview of how to access all eight endings, I would highly recommend this excellent schematic.

Shanghai (stated in dialogue as approx 1 year after Carmen started stealing from V.I.L.E.; "which part of the last year")

· "Notorious V.I.L.E. stronghold" is in Lujiazui district of Shanghai; location roughly corresponds to the Jin Mao Tower based on position relative to the Shanghai Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center · Carmen can enter from the air by ziplining across from the Shanghai Tower or from the ground via the elevator shaft · Walks into conspicuously-open vault to learn her ground crew has been kidnapped; if she does not cooperate, the faculty will use Dr. Bellum's mindwiping device to turn Ivy and Zack into V.I.L.E. operatives ◦ As per bad ending 1, Coach Brunt had bet Professor Maelstrom a steak dinner that Carmen would refuse V.I.L.E.'s deal point-blank · Curiously, a 10-19 licence plate is visible on a passing car during Player's intro of the target; in the main series, this number seems to be used exclusively for A.C.M.E. vehicles

Xi'an (roughly 2h direct flight time from Shanghai to Xi'an)

· First task is the theft of a terracotta warrior for Brunt; Carmen goes to a "fresh dig site" where more statues have recently been found · Exact date unknown but apparently a Tuesday; "it's either dress-up Tuesday for the security staff or..." · Tigress has been sent as V.I.L.E.'s handler-slash-back-up for Carmen; leaving her in the pit reveals she has a fear of insects but helping her enables the later 'imperfect good' ending of saving Zack and Ivy while V.I.L.E. keeps the statue · Carmen gets her first check-in with the siblings, then is offered the choice of going to either Hell Creek, Montana, to retrieve a T. rex bone for Dr. Bellum or Monte Carlo, Monaco, to steal one hundred tins of Beluga caviar for Countess Cleo

· If trying to establish a 'canon' narrative for the special, Cleo's caper would make the most sense as the next theft; Carmen has managed one heist for V.I.L.E. but now struggles with the implications of needing to do it again, and to a charity no less. Mime Bomb is also present more to monitor Carmen than to help, much like Tigress, and Julia does not mention a stolen dinosaur bone despite bringing up the missing terracotta warrior during her brief conversation with Carmen. Going from one plainclothes agent in Monte Carlo (or presumably only one; no recognizably-A.C.M.E. faces in the crowd and Julia reaches for her pen rather than an earpiece if tricked into going to the roof) to three officially-dressed agents in Montana also seems like a more appropriate escalation of A.C.M.E.'s efforts to catch Carmen than the reverse.

Monte Carlo (roughly 11h direct flight time from Xi'an to Monte Carlo)

· Exterior of the hotel hosting the charity dinner appears somewhat similar to the Hotel Metropole Monte-Carlo · Debut of 'Scarlett Santarosa' as an alias; Player's startled "who??" upon hearing it suggests that this may not have been entirely planned · Declining the diplomat's offer to dance leads to Carmen expressing a preference for tango over the waltz; accepting it shows her losing focus/drifting into a daydream partway through, which may be a sign that having to rush through back-to-back capers is starting to wear on her · Evidently A.C.M.E. has received intel that V.I.L.E. may be targeting the caviar, Julia assigned to investigate and/or thwart; she seems much more comfortable blending in with upper-class society than pretending to be a fashion model in Milan · Julia also much more overt with her willingness to extend Carmen the benefit of the doubt; that she's carrying around a champagne glass full of some unspecified sparkling liquid is probably pure coincidence ;)

· Carmen acknowledges having "joined forces with Jules before"—a phrasing that suggests something more like their collaboration in Milan than simply leaving the recovered Magna Cartas on a train seat; trusting Julia is necessary to achieve the 'perfect' route ending · The successful grab 'n' dash route leads to Carmen landing on a bridge-like structure with some similarities to the Fontvieille Shopping Centre; the unsuccessful stash 'n' sneak option has her walking down what is almost certainly the Rue de Millo in La Condamine

Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport (roughly 2h direct flight time from Monte Carlo to Heathrow)

· Before continuing on to the third heist, Carmen demands another check-in with Ivy and Zack; comparing the amount of light coming through their cell window at different times of day allows her to deduce that they are being held somewhere with 24/7 sunlight · Player confirms that this would currently be the North rather than South Pole; midnight sun in the Arctic goes from late March to late September

· Choosing to attempt a rescue instead of continuing with the third heist reveals that Tigress has been stationed at the Arctic facility, presumably to oversee the guarding of Carmen's ground crew; unclear how/if she is involved in their transfer to Île d'Oléron for the ending of the 'perfect' route ◦ The diner from the post-Arctic bad ending is located in none other than San Diego, suggesting that this is after Team Red purchases the Carmen Brand Outerwear warehouse (and is quite possibly the Best Sneaky Detail in this entire special asdfghj XDD)

Hell Creek (roughly 9.5h direct flight time plus 3.5h drive time from Heathrow to Hell Creek State Park)

· Carmen more resigned than upset at the thought of stealing the T. rex bone for Bellum; would be in keeping with having managed to get through two heists for V.I.L.E. already · Archaeologist from Morocco can be seen entering one of the tents at the excavation site (a.k.a. the OTHER contender for Best Sneaky Detail XD)

· Even considering something as risky as trying to catch and break into a plane while it's taking off may be another sign of strain/fatigue affecting Carmen; this would also fit with Montana being her third caper in a row · Research lab is approximately 200 miles away (and is attached to an amusement park like the discount version of a Michael Crichton novel, there's even a Tyrannosaurus head over the main entrance, this is ABSOLUTELY intentional XDD) · Bellum expected her to have snagged the bone within mere hours of landing in Montana ("been in Montana for an entire afternoon"); pushing Carmen to complete the thefts as quickly as possible is likely part of keeping her too busy to out-think V.I.L.E.'s trap · Carmen is offered the choice of El Topo or Le Chevre for assistance; El Topo will show up having helpfully researched potential exit routes while Le Chevre drops a pinecone on her head and calls her "the bossy one in [their] class" · Compared to El Topo, Le Chevre also distinctly under-impressed by the quality of A.C.M.E.'s suits · El Topo's knowledge of the tunnels underneath the combo museum/amusement park leads to a quick and A.C.M.E.-baffling disappearance after nabbing the bone; picking Le Chevre, on the other hand, leads to the very serious A.C.M.E. agents very seriously commandeering a dinosaur-themed roller coaster train in order to chase Carmen along said roller coaster's track until she manages a daringly acrobatic escape that ends with her hang-gliding off into the night (yes I have a favourite operative how can you tell)

· As an alternative to a straight reconciliation with show-canon, might I suggest that riding a literal roller coaster in order to chase Carmen Sandiego through an amusement park in the middle of the night sounds suspiciously like someone trying to prank a newly-reinstated Devineaux? ;)

Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport (unknown drive time plus roughly 9.5h direct flight time from Montana to Heathrow)

· After she returns to the airport, the faculty sends Carmen an e-ticket for a ferry to the Île d'Oléron; she is to bring the dinosaur bone and caviar tins there to exchange for her ground crew · Somehow Julia has managed to track Carmen to Heathrow, unclear if A.C.M.E. aware; her attempt to tail the thief is quickly noticed and Carmen uses the opportunity to ask for her help

Île d'Oléron (roughly 75 min direct flight time from Heathrow to La Rochelle; ferry to the island takes another hour)

· Paperstar watching from the Phare de Chassiron; as per the final bad ending, V.I.L.E. plans to have Lady Dokuso and the Cleaners ambush Carmen after she disembarks

· All real-world ferries to Île d'Oléron look to be from La Rochelle; closest actual stop would be Saint-Denis-d'Oléron, approximately 4 km away, as the coastline near the lighthouse is too shallow to permit a commercial dock · Carmen has Julia take her place on the ferry and swims to the island instead, finds Zack and Ivy in the V.I.L.E. aircraft hangar there · Paperstar notices Julia's glasses and alerts the guards, interrupting their escape · Zack figures out how to fly a helicopter in a hurry and Carmen references Casablanca ("here's looking at you, crew"); terracotta warrior conveniently found to be already stowed/never unloaded in back

Julia's apartment, presumably still in Poitiers

· All stolen items deposited neatly outside Julia's door, complete with a bouquet of roses; we do not see who rings the doorbell · One possible explanation for the opening and closing scenes of Ivy and Zack during the post-ending bonus music video is that they indeed managed to break out of their cell at least once while Carmen was busy with V.I.L.E.'s capers, even if they were then recaptured before they could find a way off the Arctic base; certainly their parts of the song are referenced in-episode during both the post-Xi'an check-in and the post-Arctic bad ending

Special vs. Canon

In terms of trying to fit the special with the rest of the show, both Carmen's dialogue ("which part of the last year", see estimated date for Boston caper in previous timeline) and the Arctic midnight sun reference suggest a late spring/early summer time frame, meaning roughly April to June-ish depending on how strict we want to be with the definition of a year. Shadow-san's absence from the faculty and from the special in general, plus the fact that the remaining members appear to be in some transitional location—as per the industrial metal-panel backgrounds during most of their calls to Carmen, rather than anything resembling either the Canary Islands school or the Outer Hebrides castle—isn't as definitive, but would at least be in keeping with a post-explosion (March-ish) pre-move-to-Scotland (October) placement.

There is also Julia's readiness to trust Carmen's intentions in Monte Carlo, combined with Carmen's "joined forces with Jules before" line, which would suggest that this is before Player Trojan-horses the A.C.M.E. database but after the Milan caper. Given the notable absence of any reference to Stockholm, this might further suggest a point after both that mishap and the failed Botswana collaboration because Carmen's willingness to reach out for A.C.M.E.'s help with the diamond mine could be seen as forgiveness for chasing her off a tower in Sweden—and with that attitude of letting bygones be bygones, Julia might consider doubling down on her faith in Carmen to be a more convincing apology than dragging up bad history.

With how quickly things go from Brunt dropping the Wolfebomb to Carmen salvaging the mainframe hard drive to her demanding answers from Shadow-san, it would be very difficult for the special to take place then regardless of how conveniently it would excuse the ninja's absence. However, there is an unspecified amount of time between that confrontation and Carmen showing up at Chief's usual coffee shop in Seattle—and since Carmen wouldn't have confirmed Shadow-san's truthfulness yet, he'd most likely still be benched in San Diego (nor would the faculty expect to see him with her given their belief in having driven a wedge between the two). Chase, at this point, would also have been retrieved from the island and fired by Interpol but not yet reactivated as an A.C.M.E. agent.

Although not a perfect reconciliation—that Carmen would be willing to put a hold on finding answers about her father's death in order to raid a random V.I.L.E. vault in Shanghai is... questionable, to say the least—the most plausible canon setting for the special would therefore seem to be after the reveal of how Shadow-san became a faculty member but before Team Red comes up with a plan for how to hack A.C.M.E.'s database.

As always, this is the work of only one person. If there's something missing or incorrect, let me know and I'm happy to update. Otherwise, I have a CS 2019 trivia tag for the things that didn't quite fit in either timeline, as well as the odd headcanon that does a little more reading-between-the-lines. ;) Have fun.

END

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