#the urbs

[diableriedoll]

Trying to convince my ST that The Urbz is just a VtM game.

[evandorkin]

New on the Patreon: THE URBZ: CENTRAL STATION (2004) Scanned original line art (w/links to finished color art by Sarah Dyer) for a 4-pg online comic done for Electronic Arts. The Urbz was a part of The Sims franchise, the EA Urbz Comics site (featuring Pete Bagge, Chynna Clugston-Flores, Jim Mahfood, Jay Stephens and James Kochalka, among others) was taken down some years ago.

https://www.patreon.com/evandorkin

As always, most posts (like this one) unlock at a buck a month.

Thanks to all the backers for their continued support!

[introspectivememories]

sorry but do you ever think about the fact that the bernard we have today is a direct amalgamation of everything that happened in his past and i know that sound like such an obvious statement to say but it actually kills me to know that you can draw a direct line from who he is today all the way back to that sixteen year old boy who watched his best friend bleed out. like it is the defining moment in his life. it fundamentally shaped who he is and the person he's become. he is the bernard we know and love not despite the grieves shooting but because of it. because the gangs all got together and shot up his school. because tim walked out of that room with nothing but a baseball bat. because his darla got shot. because he watched her gasp and cry as she died. because he watched the blood coagulate around the wound. because he sat there and held her hand as her life drained out of her. because he walked into school that day with a joke he knew would make her laugh and her nose would scrunch up and she'd snort a little and tim would roll his eyes at him and call him ridiculous and instead he walked out with a bloody white shirt, blood under his fingernails, and two friends less. because, even now, almost half a decade out from the shooting, he thinks that if he closes his eyes, he will always be that stupid, scared little sixteen year old, holding the cooling body of dead best friend.

[ukyou-kuonji]

Every Rumic boy protagonist is either a cat boy or a dog boy. In the sense that they either love that animal or are literally a cat boy/dog boy.

Godai? Dog boy. Ranma? Cat boy. Inuyasha? Dog boy. Rinne? Cat boy. Ataru is a dog boy although you have to watch the Ranma anime for the joke. I haven't read MAO yet but I'm pretty sure he's a cat boy.

[dsudis]

Who wants some sleepy domestic Emhyr/Geralt?

Got a kind of bewildering ask yesterday that I won't bother answering directly as it didn't seem particularly relevant to me, but it did remind me how much I enjoyed writing Witcher fic, and that I still have some bits of Emhyr/Geralt(/Eskel) fic I was working on that I've never shared, and I am in a sharing mood today!

This is from what would have been Urbe Aureā #5, in which Emhyr begins his courtship of Eskel by offering him any witcher's favorite thing: a job in Toussaint. Geralt, naturally, goes along with him, and then they come home to the palace in Nilfgaard, mostly unscathed...

Geralt knew just what to do this time, returning to Nilfgaard in the middle of the night. He parted from Eskel with a mumbled agreement to meet again in the morning, shed his weapons and everything else he could without scandalizing any servants he met, and went directly to Emhyr's rooms. 

He reached up to run a hand over the stubble that was all the hair left on the lower part of his head now. It was two days' growth, because that was how long it had taken him, Eskel, and occasionally Lambert, to deal with every other little problem someone had brought to their attention after the wraiths were dealt with.  

He hadn't been dawdling this time--not like the days he'd spent in Tretogor chasing down stray bandits and necrophages. He just... couldn't go off and leave the place knowing there was a problem with giant centipedes popping out of somebody's vineyard, and a nasty ghost haunting somebody else's well--and then he'd had to make a few patrols to check for signs of any vampires who'd started making nuisances of themselves since he left. Those always turned up again when there had been a lot of them in one place, like seeds germinated by a forest fire. 

But now, at last, he was done and back again. He and Eskel had availed themselves of the baths B.-B. had had waiting for them after they got back from sorting out those fleders, and then they'd agreed with barely a word to head back through the portal. They'd left Lambert asleep under his workbench, knowing well that he'd be happier to bitch about them leaving without a goodbye than to actually suffer through any parting scene. 

And, after all, he knew exactly where to find them if he wanted them. 

Geralt let himself into Emhyr's rooms and hesitated, listening out for a moment, but Emhyr didn't rush out to meet him as he had that time before. Maybe he'd slept a little easier, knowing Geralt had left on Emhyr's own errand, and with backup to boot. Maybe he just didn't expect Geralt to have returned after only a few days. 

Either way, there was no point lingering in the sitting room. Geralt let himself into the bedchamber, and his heart did something painful and fond at the sight of Emhyr sleeping. He tried to ignore it, willed it away, even as he was walking over. He was at the side of the bed when he remembered: he loved Emhyr, and he knew that, and Eskel knew that, and Emhyr probably knew that, and as yet that hadn't brought about any more than the usual amount of destruction.  

He could just... feel it. He could look at Emhyr sleeping, with his head on one pillow and another tucked under his arm like he'd lost the knack of sleeping without another body to lean against, and feel like he belonged there. In Emhyr's bed, in his arms, in his life, because that was a role he could fill, a job he could do. He could be the Emperor's Witcher and like it.  

Emhyr didn't move--didn't give himself away, if the lurker in his bedchamber had been anyone less astute--but Geralt knew the moment he woke.  

"Not an assassin," Geralt said softly. "Just--" 

Emhyr pushed himself up to sit, a wash of delight turning his craggy features almost young, in the little light that reached Geralt's eyes. Mindful that Emhyr could see even less than he could in this dark, he stepped forward, holding his hands out, saving Emhyr the trouble of disentangling himself from the bedcovers.  

"My dear witcher," Emhyr murmured, catching his hands and tugging him closer still, then catching his mouth in a kiss. "Where is your partner?" 

Geralt laughed a little against Emhyr's mouth. "Not so quickly won over as that, dear majesty. But he did come back with me, safe and sound. He's in his own room, probably already asleep." 

"Excellent," Emhyr said, and he genuinely did sound pleased. And he'd asked about Eskel first thing, when he might have ignored the whole matter of him until morning, and that, too, made Geralt's heart squeeze.  

"And yourself?" Emhyr went on, his hands releasing Geralt's and sliding up his arms. "You smell clean enough, but you know I am not as keen as one of you. Any injuries? Any trouble?" 

"Not as such," Geralt said, climbing onto the edge of the bed so Emhyr could reach more of him, and taking Emhyr's hand to guide it up to the base of his skull. "Lost some hair." 

"A pity," Emhyr murmured, running warm fingers over the shorn part of Geralt's scalp before he settled his hand on the nape of Geralt's neck and tugged him into a deeper kiss.  

Geralt leaned into Emhyr's firm grip, his whole body easing, muscles relaxing that had been faintly tensed for days on end. That human-strong hold on him and Emhyr's mint-clean mouth coaxing his open meant that he was home safe, done with the job, and it was finally time to let his guard down. He let himself sway into Emhyr, trusting his weight to the solid warmth of Emhyr's body. 

Emhyr let out a little grunt, though his body betrayed no great evidence of straining under the pressure. He closed his other arm around Geralt and eased them both down, not bothering to sort out the covers or get Geralt naked--as though all that mattered was both of them here, at their ease. As though he needed nothing more than that. 

Geralt sighed, nuzzling at Emhyr's chest, and went out like a blown candle. 

[castelnou]

toledo (españa)

[latin-literature-tourney]

Latin Literature Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut!

Livy Propaganda

Wanna teach your kids some exempla virtutis? Look no further

Writes in really fantastic periodic style

An undergrad in a class I TA’d for once referred to him in an essay as “my homeboy Livy,” and frankly there is no review more glowing than that

Sallust Propaganda

Writes prose like it's poetry

Loves to work in fun little archaisms without warning, as a treat

Does really amazing things with speeches and rhetoric

[missin-you-already]

Li Bingbing (Ada Wong), Michelle Rodríguez (Bad Rain), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine), Colin Salmon (Clone One), and Oded Fehr (Clone Carlos)

Boris Kodjoe (Luther West), Aryana Engineer (Becky), Milla Jovovich (Alice), Michelle Rodríguez (Good Rain), and Johann Urb (Leon S. Kennedy)

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

[illustratus]

Marcus Curtius by François Gérard

[jamiedornaniseverything]

Hollywood Dirt (2017) dir. Tosca Musk └ First Time  (pt. 1) (pt.2) (pt.3) (pt:4)

[skadario]

The Last Bed

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 82: Frak, smeg, and more swearing in fiction - Ex Urbe Ad Astra interview with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

The words that a culture considers taboo or obscene can tell us things about what that culture considers important or profane. For example, many swear words in present-day English relate to sex and body functions, while historically in English we've also had more religious swears, like "God's blood" and "God's teeth". In fiction, authors can use invented swear words to get around censorship, like "frack" in Battlestar Gallactica and "frell" in Farscape, as well as to create a sense of a particular culture, such as "smeg" in Red Dwarf, which then sometimes take on new lives of their own among fans.

In this bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we've ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about fictional substitutes for the F word, expletive infixations like abso-bloody-lutely, sweary lexical gaps (why don't we swear with "toe jam!") and old fashioned swears in English. We also talk about learning real-life swear words without full awareness of their emotional valence by reading fiction (such as how Gretchen and Ada don't find "bloody" as taboo as Jo does), cultural differences in taboo gestures such as pointing with the middle finger in real life and teeth-baring smiles in Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, and an extra bonusy bit about recording emotional punctuation in the audiobook of Because Internet.

Content note: Lingthusiasm episodes about swearing contain real swears! If you typically play this podcast around kids, for example, it's up to you whether you want to have that conversation with them.

Also note that this conversation was first recorded as an interview with Gretchen for Ada and Jo's podcast, Ex Urbe Ad Astra, where it will one day appear in longer form, but they've kindly let us share some of Lauren's favourite snippets from it in advance (plus a few comments from her at the end!). Listen to this episode about swearing in fiction, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

[cassinova24]

The whole Resident Evil fandom acts like every time Leon appears, it’s a different guy, so what if we just make a spin-off called “Leon Kennedy: Into the Kennedy Verse”

[preliminary-gayeties]

[ukyou-kuonji]

At the end of the new Spiderverse movie when Miles was talking to Earth 42′s version of his mom, she TOTALLY thought he was about to come out to her. “I know you know I’ve been lying to you... It’s just I thought that if you knew, you wouldn’t love me the same” And she responds “nothing could change the fact that I love you.” You know she’s thinking like okay I have to pretend to be surprised yet supportive-

[visualpiles]

Gianni Versace Fall/Winter 1995 campaign by Bruce Weber