#there was a period of time in my life where I ONLY had dinosaur related dreams/nightmares because i didnt watch anything BUT tlbt

[st4rrmii]

Been thinking about Lucien and Darius bonding over their love for The Land Before Time and crying over the first movie together

[iambic-stan]

River View

I think I'm ready to share my second Tori and Elena story! This one was also like therapy to write...and there might be a little more info-dumping. But I hope it speaks to someone.

"That was really an alligator!" I exclaimed.  Not that I'd never seen one.  But I couldn't tell you the last time I did.  It was just lying on a log, sunbathing, I guess, and the scales made it look like a dinosaur from a children's book.  I'd lived here all my life but it still looked out of place somehow.  I rolled down the window for a better view and craned my neck to keep staring as the car whizzed past.  "Do you see stuff like that out here all the time?" I asked incredulously.

"Not every time I come," Elena replied.  "I still get excited every single time I spot one.  We're almost to the parking lot."  She turned down a narrow dirt road with dense foliage.  Deer flies whacked against the car, and I made little shrieking noises at the sight and sound of them.  

"Don't worry--I've got spray that'll deter them," she assured me, pulling into a parking spot.  There were several other cars, so we weren't the only hikers for the afternoon.

"I'm so glad you didn't want to get up early," I sighed.  "I had THE WORST cramps ever," I looked over at her and then it dawned on me that this might be TMI.  "Sorry--I forgot for a moment," I said, smiling awkwardly.

"Nothing to be sorry about," she said, pulling up the parking brake and the key out of the ignition.  She stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact as she often did.  "I get periods, too, basically.  No blood, but for me the cramps are horrible, my breasts get sore, food starts to look gross, and the littlest things seem like disasters suddenly."  

"Wow, I relate to most of that, actually," I told her.  I didn't realize Elena was trans for months; finding out did make some pieces fall into place in my head.  Her insecurities seemed magnified in the hostile culture of the South where anything different is perceived as an immoral deviance--even drag queen storytime was some kind of battleground.  As a lesbian, I didn't always feel safe, and I knew she didn't, either.  I could understand why she sometimes seemed closed off, though she was starting to come around.

"I brought Alex because I really wanted to listen.  To be listened to," she said in a stilted voice, like she was reading cue cards. "And I thought that you wouldn't want to after we got all sweaty, so maybe like, now?  In the car?"

'Alex' was Elena's stethoscope, which I'd only found out about because we were both drunk enough.  If she hadn't been, I'm not sure how long it would've taken her to tell me about this interest of hers.  Most times we got together, we listened to each other's hearts, and though it was really only a novelty for me, I readily agreed to participate again and again.  The way she sometimes lit up when I listened was unmatched by most every other sort of way I've made someone happy.  It felt good to be so needed.  I loved having a go-to person for cuddles and hugs, especially when I was single, which was most of the time lately.  She was beautiful, with long black hair, blue eyes, and a petite body, but the boundaries didn't feel blurred because I knew she was asexual.  I admit that I didn't really know what all that meant, and I found myself thinking of her often when we weren't together, wondering (worrying?) if my feelings were truly platonic.

She pulled Alex out of her hiking backpack, and I took hold of the ear tubes.   We'd done this many times, but it still seemed a little strange to wear the stethoscope and place it on her chest.  "Girl, it's beating fast.  It usually is when I listen," I told her.  And that was an unparalleled sort of experience, even for someone like me who never would've thought to do something like this unprompted.  Placing a stethoscope on her chest and discovering that her heart was beating fast all because she was excited that I was listening to it gave me a little thrill.  She always smiled and looked gravely serious when I told her it was so fast.  Her chest moved under my hand with every breath--an unexpectedly intimate part of this activity, and I watched it quietly for a few seconds.  

"Thank you, Tori," she breathed.  

"You don't have to thank me; I'm happy to do it," I insisted, pulling down the collar of my nylon top so she could have better access to my chest.

The sight of her wearing the ear pieces and the feeling of her putting the stethoscope on my chest were becoming familiar. I used to associate that feeling only with having to see a doctor, and never a pleasurable or even positive experience.  "Yours is slower," she told me.  "And steady. No skips."  She reached for my hand with hers that wasn't holding the chest piece, and I squeezed it.  This was becoming my new normal, I supposed, and in some moments it felt like home.  When she put Alex away again, she seemed so intense--her eyes wide and her face fixed into a frown that implied great concentration and...some level of shame, almost?  She looked away and I wondered if she was embarrassed to be so vulnerable.  I leaned over in the seat and put my head on her shoulder, hoping I conveyed that it was more than ok to feel so much and so openly with me.

When we stepped out of the car, she promptly doused me in bug spray, then did the same to herself.  It seemed to work because the flies hovered around us but didn't try to bite.  They still made me uncomfortable, but I was trying to be a good sport about this.  She had suggested so many times over the past year that we should go on a hike together--nothing crazy, mind you--it would be all swampy flat land, less than two hours from home and would take no longer than half a day, she assured me. And we could get some local seafood afterward.  The weather was just right for me to agree to it.

"How many miles are we talking?  Go easy on me, babe," I said teasingly.  

"We can take the Cypress Trail, which is a 2-mile loop.  It connects to the River View Trail, which has an overlook that's not super impressive but it's only like another half mile to it.  Half of it is boardwalks.  And then if we want to go deeper into the woods-" 

"I'm gonna stop you there," I said, with a smile so it didn't seem too rude.  "Those two trails sound like enough for me."

"Fair enough," she said.  And then, after a pause to look at my face, "I'm so excited you're with me!" She jumped up and down a few times.  It felt infectious, and a warm, cozy feeling welled up in my chest.  

"I'm glad we could make it work," I told her, side-eyeing what looked like a horse fly hovering a little too close by.

The first mile or so was uneventful, in a good way.  We passed a couple that pointed out a barred owl looking down at us from a tall bald cypress, seeming almost to pose for photos.  I screeched when I noticed a snake curled up on the side of the boardwalk, and Elena protectively took my hand to indicate that I shouldn't get too close.  When we were both at a safe distance, she told me it was a copperhead and pointed out the Hershey-kiss pattern on its body.  I had to admit that it was beautiful even though I try my best not to wind up in the vicinity of venomous snakes.  The cypress knees, spider lilies, and even the algae film on the water were vibes. I liked that we were far enough from the highway that I could hear bird calls instead of passing cars.  It was so peaceful.

I was a few paces behind Elena when I heard her squeal with glee.  "What is it?" I asked, jogging to her.

She turned to me, her hands closed over something, then opened them up to reveal a large black and white beetle.  Instinctively, I jumped backward and almost tripped over a stick.  She seemed oblivious.  "It's an Eastern Eyed Click Beetle," she said with wonder.  "I love their big eyes."  I stood a few feet away and watched in horror as she allowed the beetle to crawl all over her hand and arm.  She snapped a few pictures with her phone.  "I'm so excited that I found one today!"  After a few more seconds of admiring it, she placed it on a tree trunk.  I couldn't remember when I last thought something was so endearing and yet so revolting at the same time.

She looked up at me, grinning like she'd won the lottery.  Over a bug.  "So um, you're not a fan of bugs, I know," she allowed.  "I got kind of carried away and I guess you've never seen me like that.  Hope it wasn't too disturbing.  Tell me more about what animals you really like."

I let out a chuckle.  "It wasn't disturbing," I said.  "But uh, you can have the bugs. Well, I love Mollie, for one."  Mollie was Elena's chonky daschund.  "We had a couple of great danes when I was growing up.  Don't laugh, but we had one named Scooby.  I loved him so much.  We got him when I was 6 and he passed when I was in high school.  I love turtles--especially the soft shelled ones.  So cute.  One time my girlfriend and I went to D.C. on vacation and there were these giant pandas at the zoo--Mei Ziang and Tian Tian.  I was obsessed with them.  I couldn't but wanted so much to hug them. I could sit and watch them for hours.  I actually went back by myself a couple of years ago--not long before I met you, to see them again.  They live in China now, though.  But I'd love to go somewhere else with giant pandas."

We talked for a while about what animals we'd seen in person, in the wild or zoos, aquariums, or refuges, and I wondered why we hadn't made any of those trips together.  We made tentative plans to take a day trip to an aquarium in Texas with capybara and porcupine encounters and before I knew it, we'd made it to the second trail, the one that was supposed to feature the underwhelming view.

I let Elena go ahead of me and watched her gait.  There was this confidence in her step that I rarely got to see.  The boardwalk had ended three quarters of a mile before, and the trail narrowed.  The flies were closer, but we'd re-sprayed twice to be cautious and I was mostly, happily, bite-free.  I liked allowing her to walk ahead of me, because she caught all the spiderwebs I couldn't see.  She accidentally ran into one of them and one of those banana spiders fell down onto her shoulder.  I screamed in panic, but she brushed it off like it was nothing and kept walking.  

"The river's just up ahead, but you have to crouch down into this space here, then follow the path a few more feet," she told me. I followed those instructions even though she didn't realize that crouching down was one thing for her, being less than five and a half feet tall, and another thing for my almost 6-foot tall stocky body.  But I managed it with only a twig or two in my hair, and was rewarded with a solid, if not fancy, place to sit--a wooden fishing pier.

Elena pulled two chocolate chip granola bars out of her bag, said, "Here, Tor," and handed me one.  

"Where did 'Tor,'" come from," I asked in an unintentionally loud voice.  "I feel illegal now."  I laughed at what might have been the worst joke I'd ever made.

She turned beet red and busted out a laugh.  "I have no idea," she said, "It just came out.  We can never speak of it again if you want."

I shook my head and sighed, taking a few gulps of water from my flask.  I was glad to be sitting, but I didn't think I could metaphorically sit on things the way Elena did.

"It's actually not underwhelming at all," I said, scanning the horizon.

"Glad you wound up liking it.  I kinda hoped that if I undersold it, reverse psychology just might work."

Undersell it she did.  The water was a murky brown, but the mostly-undisturbed natural area was otherwise clean, with purple and yellow wildflowers growing in abundance on the banks.  I smiled at the log below us with six turtles lined up, end-to-end, enjoying the sunshine as we were.  I tried to let my racing thoughts blend into the rushing of the river and just breathe in the fresh air.  My heart was pounding.  It was something I used to either ignore or get anxious about, but with her, I thought of it a little differently.  "Hey, do you want to feel my heartbeat?" I asked her.  

"Of course," she said, wasting no time turning to place her hand flat on my chest.  "Oh, wow! Why is it so fast?"

"Did you know that in 'Wildest Dreams' on 1989, there's an interpolation of Taylor's actual heartbeat, like throughout the song?" I said, not knowing why I took so long to share this detail.

"No!  I did not!  Is that my Taylor Swift Tidbit of the day?  Thanks," she grinned.

"Yes I thought you'd be into that one."

"Oh yeah that'll do it."

"So, um, you told me you're asexual a long time ago, but I admit I don't know much about that.  You never dated, like, not even in high school or college?" I asked.

"No, I never did.  I was still pretty good at scaring people away with the intensity of my feelings, 'cause that's just me.  I was misunderstood quite a lot.  I never wanted to have sex, so I always thought dating would be a waste of time.  As soon as the person found out I didn't care about sex, I was sure that would be the end of it.  Pretty sure I'm aro too."

"What's 'aro'?" I asked.

"Aromantic.  I don't really get romantic feelings for people.  I can love them fiercely, but I don't want to like, kiss them or have them all to myself or think about buying a house with them.  I guess you could say I get 'butterflies' when it comes to thinking about sharing my heart thing with someone, but it's just...not like they describe romantic feelings in novels.  Or the movies.  Or by, like, the standards of anyone who's ever told me about their crushes or boyfriends or whatever.  In ace culture, sometimes we say we have a 'mesh' or a 'squish,'" she explained. 

I let out a laugh, but not in a derisive way, I hoped.  "What does that mean?"

"Squishes are romantic crushes with no sexual attraction.  Sometimes I get those on celebrities, I think, but not so much in real life.  Meshes are like crushes with no sexual or romantic attraction. Like you have a strong desire to be close to someone.  Sometimes it's just that you want to be emotionally open to them in a way you would be with a partner, except the two of you aren't dating.  Maybe you're affectionate in a way that blurs the lines between friendship and romance from an outside perspective, even though you don't have romantic feelings for each other.  'Alterous' is kind of an umbrella term for platonic feelings that are tough to define.  Sometimes your feelings sit somewhere between the traditional boundaries of friendship and romance.  It's also kind of dependent on societal norms because we have a narrow view of friendship in our culture, you know?  A lot of times I feel like my feelings for people I want to share my heart thing with are kinda alterous.  At this point in my life, being over 30, I think if I was gonna have real romantic feelings, I would've experienced them by now.  I've certainly met people who were wonderful enough, attractive enough, and all that."

I tried to take all of this in, sure I would forget one or more of these words by the end of the conversation.  "So the...alterous feelings...that's just something that asexual people experience?" I asked.

"Oh, not at all.  I think it's a very common human experience, but most people think of relationships in simpler terms.  And they don't use words for all these things.  They fall in love and get married, spend less time with their friends as a result, etc.  Not being concerned with sex, and in some cases romance, too, ace people spend a lot more time analyzing platonic type relationships, sometimes to a fault," she laughed.  "For some ace people, a friendship will be the most intimate relationship they'll ever have.  There are just so many different ways to love," She smiled at me and we actually held eye contact for a few seconds.  "Thanks for letting me ramble."

"It's ok. I've pretty much never really thought about it," I admitted.  I didn't know how to put it into words yet, but I felt more at peace.  Maybe there never was anything to worry about.  If Elena's hand had still rested on my chest, she would've noticed that my heart was more relaxed.

I watched and listened to the water, then reached over and put my arm around her.  "I love you," I said softly.

"Aw, I love you, too, Tori."

[luxudus]

Barosaurus and the Morrison Formation.

    I just finished all my final projects and graduated from my high school, meaning i finally have the time to start posting again! This was a project I made for my high school art class where i had to illustrate something into 4 quadrants, each quadrant being done with differing materials. I was originally considering doing my sophont species: the Xy'ktals. But decided to do something more paleoart related since it was outside of my comfort zone at the time. This project took me almost 2 months to make, I started working on it in late march and submitted it in late may. And almost half of it was spent researching the life of this formation and trying to accurately reconstruct it. I hope you all enjoy this art piece

My Statement

   As an artist who loves the natural world, I became fascinated with the field of paleontology long before I discovered my love for the possibility of alien life. I was introduced to the field by the Jurassic Park film franchise and was thrilled by all the big monsters made to scare. I bought their toys, watched most of the movies, and enjoyed most of it.     Eventually I phased out of Jurassic park. Many years later, when I was into designing aliens, I found a youtuber who made me rethink how I designed alien life. Teaching me that the human body plan is far from universal and we would likely make first contact with something that looked more like a jellyfish or a worm than a human.     While browsing through their other videos I found out they did paleontology, and once again my eyes were open. To see what the natural world looked like before mankind came to be was amazing. Getting to see plants and animals beyond my wildest dreams, so different they might as well be considered aliens. Yet they felt familiar, they felt relatable. That is what made me fall in love with the field.

    Nowadays I casually look into paleoart, looking into the depths of time and into the earliest ages of life as inspiration for my own alien worlds. While working on this assignment, I realized that not many people are up to date with the modern idea of the prehistoric. Most still think of them as scaly screaming scrawny slaughter machines. Some might even still think of them as the lumbering dim-witted kangaroo-like lizards of the 1800s to 1900s. With this work i intend to change that     My goal with this assignment wasn’t just to draw dinosaurs, but to show everyone just how amazing the prehistoric world was. But most importantly, these were animals at the end of the day, not movie monsters made to scare. They lived simple lives of joys and sorrows, felt love, played with each other, and found happiness in the small things. They were no different than the animals of the modern world.

Introduction

    To showcase this, I drew the many species that lived in the Morrison formation of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. A basin of sedimentary rock dating to the Jurassic period 150 million years ago. Back then this place was a semi-arid environment, home to swamps, floodplains, and savannahs. But this place didn’t look like modern savannahs now.     For one, angiosperms such as flowers, leafed trees, and grass only evolved some 10 million years after all the dinosaurs went extinct. Meaning almost none of the familiar plants were present in the jurassic. Instead of our familiar faces, Conifers, Cycads, and Ginkgos took the role of trees, horsetails were a common sight, and Ferns took the niche of grass. In fact Ferns were so prevalent they became their own biome known as the Fern Prairies

    The animals are also far different too. Unlike the depictions spurred on by Jurassic park, of big, gaunt, and mindlessly ravenous reptiles designed to kill. Through finely preserved fossils we now know most of them were covered in varying degrees of feathers. Some may have had simple hair-like feathers while others were almost birdlike in appearance, since birds actually evolved from dinosaurs.     Pretty much every dinosaur that didn’t have a beak had lips covering their teeth. Their hands would have faced each other rather than pointing downwards. Lastly we know that pretty much all of them were covered in enough fat and muscle to not have every detail of their bones poking out like a starved animal     The winged bird like-creatures named Pterosaurs too have changed a lot. We now know they were also covered in fur, and were possibly brightly colored too. their hands faced each other in the same way the dinosaurs did. Surprisingly they walked on the balls of their feet like us, and some were even postured like us too.

Barosaurus: the main star     The dinosaur that’s the focus of this piece is a young male Barosaurus as he stands near a conifer tree. Relaxing in the cool moist air brought on by the passing rain of a Cumulonimbus cloud     Barosaurus was an enormous species of herbivorous dinosaur that helped define the Morrison formation along with many other species. They were a part of the clade Sauropoda, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs renowned for their extremely long necks and equally long tails.     Barosaurus wasn't the longest or the strongest sauropod. but it was still impressive at a staggering 82-89 feet long. This behemoth was so huge their front arm alone was as big as a human. Most sauropods had a uniquely weird set of feet. The hind feet were round and had 3 toe claws that pointed outward. While the front feet were horseshoe shaped, with the fingers all fused together and an empty space at the center. Only the “thumb” has a claw while the rest of their fingers were bare, save for possibly a collection of jagged scales that aided in traction.     Like mentioned earlier, Barosaurus was an herbivore that specialized in high level browsing. They were also surprisingly flexible, the structure of their neck vertebrae gave them a wide range of motion, allowing them to eat tons of plant matter in wide sweeping motions without having to move an inch.

    Despite their sheer size, the juggernauts of the Jurassic were still preyed on from time to time by Allosaurus and maybe Ceratosaurus. To counter this, the Barosaurus has a few weapons at its disposal, It could possibly rear up on its hind legs to make itself look even larger or even to stomp on incoming attackers. But its greatest weapon was its tail. It was thin and flexible, allowing the Barosaurus and its relatives to whip at their attackers with a thunderous crack, stunning the predators and possibly leaving long stinging cuts in them.     Speculated here, the Barosaurus was given a vibrant set of brown and black patterning as a way to distinguish themselves from other sauropods. They possess a large black dewlap to displace heat all in one area while the main body remains light in pigment and the head mostly white. Several Eye-like patterns run down the neck as a form of sexual display as they could potentially swing their neck around as a display of their flexibility to mates. The tail by contrast is a bright green as both a warning sign to predators and a way to communicate with other barosaurs. And long spines run from the head to the tip of the tail, making their whips even deadlier to any predator even considering going after them.

And now It's time to talk about all the other species that make this formation famous. Organized from left to right

Tile 1: Graphite pencil and Fine art pen     An Ophisthiamimus basks under the sun on a rock in the foreground. They were a 3 inch long reptile that specializes in insect feeding.     Despite its lizard-like appearance it was actually a Rhyncocephalian. A near extinct order of pseudo-beaked reptiles that dominated the early mesozoic, but were beaten back by tue lizards. The only surviving species of this clade is the Tuatara of New zealand

    An old bull Brachiosaurus wanders across the drylands. They were a tall species of sauropod dinosaur that had a length of 57-72 feet long and weighed 28-47 metric tons. They were so big their forearms were as tall as an adult male. They Were herbivorous and browsed on high up plantlife such as the leaves of conifer, ginkgo, cycad, and tree fern leaves.     Speculated here, they could have had a large and flappy dewlap to displace heat. They may have also had several sets of inflatable neck sacs for sexual display since it was found internal air sacs ran down their neck and invaded their bones to reduce weight.

    A small herd of very young Dryosaurs head towards the brachiosaurus for protection, in the same way a school of small fish orbit around a whale.     Dryosaurus was a species of small and nimble ornithiscian dinosaur that may have grown to be 7-9 feet long. They were Herbivores that fed on low lying plantlife, picking them out with their pointy beaks before chewing them with a set of cheek teeth.     So far no fossils of fully grown Dryosaurus have been found yet, so illustrated here instead are very young members of this species. Heavily Speculated here, they might've had a set of feathers turned quills on their tails and arms to stop larger predators from grappling on them. This feature was purely speculative and might've never existed on them.

    A female Harpactognathus catches an unnamed early mammal from a hole in the ground. They were an extinct species of generalist pterosaurs that hunted small inland vertebrates and had a wingspan of 8.2 feet long. They were a part of the family Rhamphorynchidae, an early group of pterosaurs known for possessing toothy beaks and a long, thin tail.

Tile 2: Colored pencil and fine art pen     A young male Allosaurus tries to get with a female of the same species with his elaborate courtship dance. Flailing his arms, rhythmically stomping the ground and bowing his head to reveal the bright red crest, the female however is unimpressed.     Allosaurus was a species of 28-32 froot long theropod dinosaur that was one of 3 apex predators of the Morrison formation. They were discernible by the 2 pointy crests above their eyes. They specialized in hunting large prey such as stegosaurus and will sometimes come together in packs to even hunt sauropods such as Brachiosaurus and Barosaurus. They would've used their short but sharp teeth to slash into prey like a machete and used their short but muscular arms to hold onto their prey.     Speculated here, they could have sported black stripes and white splotches in an attempt at disrupting its outline and masking its eyes and ears. As well as having intricate mating dances that would've shown their flexibility and persistence.

    A young female dryosaurus hides behind the Barosaurus' leg, waiting for the perfect opportunity to avoid the allosaurus and reunite with the herd.

    A male harpactognathus takes off on the back of the Barosaurus. Speculated here, they could've had some sexual dimorphism like their azhdarchid cousins

    2 Mesodactylus play around on top of the back of the Barosaurus/     They were a small species of pterosaurs that belonged to the family Anurognathidae, a group of small round and furry pterosaurs. They were estimated to be between 4-5 centimeters in length.     Sadly not much speculation went into them, other than a faint stripe on the underside of their wings, and the potential presence of play behavior. Something seen in all young mammals, some reptiles, fish, and even bees.

Tile 3: watercolor paint, a bit of acrylic paint, and a bit of Graphite pencil     A herd of Camptosaurs run towards a lake after a long odyssey across the muddy drylands     They were a species of medium sized Ornithopod dinosaurs that were 20 feet long and 6 feet tall. They were somewhat related to the previously mentioned Dryosaurus but are closely related to Iguanodon. One of the first dinosaurs ever discovered and named. They have 5 fingers on their front arm but only the front 3 end in claws     They were somewhat slow herbivores that may have lived in small herds, browsing on medium sized plants and competing with the many similar sized herbivores in the region.

    A pair of male Gargoylesaurs rest under a conifer tree     Gargoylesaurus was a small species of armored herbivorous dinosaur ranging from 10-11 feet long but less than 3 feet tall. They are an early member of the family Nodosauridae in the Suborder Ankylosauria, meaning this dinosaur is related to the somewhat famous Ankylosaurus.     Not much was speculated here other than the presence of a blue stripe running down their face as a form of sexual display

A lone Cycad tree amongst the fern prairie

Tile 4: Digital art

    A stegosaurus gets inspected by a young and curious Ceratosaurus

Stegosaurus was a medium sized herbivorous dinosaur that was 23 feet long and 10 feet tall at the back. They can be easily recognized by the large asymmetrical dorsal plates running down the neck, body, to the tail. As well as the presence of 4 tail spikes named the Thagomizer.     They were herbivores that fed on ferns, horsetails, and cycads with their uniquely crown shaped teeth. They could’ve possibly been carriers for Cycad seeds the same way elephants help disperse the seeds of savannah trees.     Speculated here, the dorsal plates and thagomizer are brightly colored orange as a threat display towards their predators such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus.

Ceratosaurus was the second of 3 apex predators of the morrison formation. They were a medium sized carnivorous theropod that ranged from 21-22 feet long and 5.2-6.5 feet tall. They are discernable by the 3 hump shaped crests on top of their head, their long and slender teeth, and the presence of osteoderms running down their body.     They shared the same habitat as Allosaurus, and could’ve possibly fed on similar prey such as stegosaurus, ornithopods, and possibly sauropods. Uniquely it has been suggested that Ceratosaurus could’ve fed on fish too as a way to avoid competition with Allosaurus     Not much has been speculated on their design other than a bright yellow face as a form of sexual display and horizontal stripes possibly as a form of motion dazzle camoflauge.

    A Kepodactylus soars across the fern prairie with an unnamed reptile in its mouth.     Kepodactylus was a species of medium-sized pterosaur from the family Ctenochasmatidae, their distinct from other pterosaurs by possessing a crest akin to the later on azhdarchid pterosaurs while also having teeth akin to the Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaurs. This species had a wingspan of 8.2 feet long     The illustration of them eating a reptile, along with the patterning is entirely speculative as there was very little information to go off of.

    Another male Barosaurus observes the one in the middleground, wary on whether or not it could become a friend or foe.     Despite our conception of large herbivores being gentle giants, that idea couldn’t be further from the truth. Many cases in our modern world show large animals such as Goats, rams, boars, water buffalo, rhinoceroses, and even elephants will retaliate against their predators to devastating effects. Hippos of all animals are the absolute epitome of this truth, they are extremely territorial and frequently kill everything that comes too close. At least 500 people die from them every year. In some cases they will even kill baby hippos that they didn’t have a hand in creating, just to ensure their own bloodline succeeds above all others.     It was very possible that prehistoric life could’ve matched this aggression, if not exceeded it. With the barosaurus’ ability to rear up on its hind legs, It could’ve used this to clash with other barosaurs. Whether it be over territorial disputes, fighting for potential mates, or simple distrust.

    A male stokesosaurus basks on a pile of rocks in the foreground, getting ready to fan out its neck plumage to cool off     Stokesosaurus was a 10-13 feet long theropod dinosaur that was apart of the clade Proceratosauridae and the superfamily Tyrannosauridea. Meaning this dinosaur was a somewhat distant relative to the world famous cretaceous era superpredator Tyrannosaurus rex     Speculated here, Their coat of feathers is a stark black to combat UV radiation, they possess a patch of neck plumage that could fan out to displace heat. With the streaks of white stripes helping break up its outline and cool down what could’ve been the heat sensitive parts of its body. They could’ve also had a white underbelly to form countershading     Fun fact: one of my friends has the same last name as the first part of this dinosaur's name, so as a tribute to our friendship I modeled the patterning and coloration of him. The neck plumage a tribute to his hair, and the coloration based off his clothing

[nohiketoosmall]

By complete coincidence I was flipping through a book I thrifted called "Birds: Their Life, Their Ways, Their World" from 1979 (originally published 1976) right before I saw this post, so though this isn't adding much new information I thought it'd be interesting to add some excerpts from this book in this post, to give specific context for the knowledge in that time period.

In the Introduction:

[ID: Drawing of a lizard skeleton with parts labeled 1-6 as well as a smaller detailed drawing labeled B and 7-8] p8

"Birds evolved from a group of reptiles closely related to the dinosaurs about 150 million years ago. The skeleton of a reptile such as a lizard (A) is still similar to that of a bird...." The passage goes on to detail these similarities based on the labeled numbers. (p8)

"Our knowledge of the history of evolution of birds begins in Germany, where an animal the size of a crow called Archaeopteryx lived in a fauna dominated by reptiles.... [it] resembled a reptile in having a long , bony tail. But in one respect Archaeopteryx was unique, for it possessed feathers." (p9)

[ID: Drawing of a fossilized skeleton of an Archaeopteryx. Reptilian features and feathers are clearly visible. The drawing is labeled 1.] p163

[ID: Two drawings labeled 2 and 3. 2 is of a skeleton with the outline of a bird-like body. 3 is a feathered, brown and red animal similar to both a bird and a dinosaur. The caption reads "The Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica (1). A fairly complete restoration of its skeleton is possible (2) but its colours (3) must always remain a subject for speculation.] p163

"Archaeopteryx lithographica, the earliest recognized bird, is the only representative of its family and displays a mixture of features that are typical of both reptiles and birds... Two things are certain however; it is a bird, but it closely resembles extinct reptiles called coelurosaurs which were carnivorous, bipedal dinosaurs. ...Many of the scientists who have studied this bird agree that it is very fortunate that its feathers were preserved, for without them it would have been difficult to identify the remains as belonging to a bird at all. (p163)

[ID: Two lifelike drawings of an Archaeopterx fully in color, labeled 1 and 2, performing behaviors potentially similar to birds. The caption reads "Restoration of Archaeopterx (1) Feeding on insects, which are known to have evolved 150 million years ago, and (2) in an aggressive posture. The posture is hypothetical; there is no fossil evidence for such displays.] p164

"The pelvic girdle is distinctly dinosaurian in appearance, however there is at present some controversy concerning the wawy in which two bones of the girdle... are joined to one another" More research needs to be undertaken before it is known for certain how flight originated and whether Archaeopteryx was an efficient flier. My personal view is that Archaeopteryx was capable of powered flight over short distances." p164

I think things like this are a really interesting look into previous scientific consensus, or lack thereof in some instances. Since within my generation birds have been rather consistently labeled dinosaurs (at least within my life) I'd not heard that anyone had considered Archaeopteryx a bird but not a dinosaur.

My interpretation of the book is that the author is trying very hard not to lean one way or another, and although they put their personal opinion in sometimes, the full page/passages are full of qualifiers that more information has to be found. But it is very evident that the strong link between dinosaurs and birds was known in 1976.

A Timeline

1850s: Some scientists notice the connection between dinosaurs & birds and think birds might have evolved from dinosaurs, given similarity between Archaeopteryx and many dinosaurs, as well as between dinosaurs and living birds  

1960s: Deinonychus is discovered. Scientists starting to realize birds did evolve from dinosaurs; other ideas become fringe hypotheses 

1970s: More dinosaurs are discovered that point to dinosaur behavior being more like birds than reptiles 

1980s: Scientists begin using evolutionary relationships (ie, cladistics) to classify life, rather than Linnean Taxonomy (Kingdom-Phylum-Class etc.), especially for extinct creatures, because it really doesn’t apply to extinct life like, at all. Coelophysis, an early dinosaur, is speculatively depicted with feathers. Some very bird-like dinosaurs are debated on whether they are birds or dinosaurs. 

1993: Birds are straight-up called dinosaurs in the famous film “Jurassic Park,” which is one of the first pieces of media to depict dinosaurs as extremely birdlike; changes public perception of dinosaurs dramatically  

1996: Sinosauropteryx, the first feathered non-avian dinosaur, is revealed to the public. Birds determined to have evolved from dinosaurs, full stop; BANDits (birds-are-not-dinosaurs scientists) now a backwards, on-par-with creationists group. Since we classify dinosaurs based on their evolutionary relationships, we start calling birds dinosaurs, because they evolved from dinosaurs. 

1999: Sinornithosaurus, the first raptor (ie, cousin of Velociraptor) dinosaur found with feathers, is described. Many other feathered dinosaurs are described as well, from all over the group closely related to birds. The Walking With Dinosaurs landmark documentary series calls birds dinosaurs. 

2000: Microraptor, a raptor dinosaur with full wings on its arms and legs, is described 

2001: Velociraptor is given… “feathers” in Jurassic Park III. Velociraptor also portrayed as more bird-like than ever. When Dinosaurs Roamed America, another groundbreaking dinosaur documentary, shows all members of the group closely related to birds (except T. rex) with feathers, including Deinonychus, all over their bodies. Also calls birds dinosaurs. 

2002: A specimen of Psittacosaurus, a dinosaur about as far away from birds as you can get, is described with quills on its tail very similar to feathers 

2004: Dilong, a small relative of T. rex, is found with feathers and display structures like modern birds 

2007: Many feathered dinosaurs are now known from the group most closely related to birds. A specimen of Velociraptor with feather attachment sites on the arms for wing feathers is now known. Velociraptor now known to be definitely, no question, feathered 

2009: Tianyulong, another dinosaur from a group very far from birds, is found with fluffy quills covering all over its back 

2012: Feathered dinosaurs now coming out many times a year. Yutyrannus, a large and closer relative to T. rex, found with shaggy feathers all over its body 

2014: Kulindadromeus, another dinosaur from the group very far from birds, is named. It has fluffy covering like that of Sinosauropteryx all over its body, rather than quills. Feathers determined to be mostly likely ancestral to all dinosaurs and lost secondarily in larger species (especially if fluff known on closest relatives, pterosaurs, is also feathers - see below). 

2015: Zhenyuanlong, a close relative of Velociraptor the same size as Velociraptor, is found with extremely large wings. Raptor dinosaurs inferred to have large wing feathers unless anatomy indicates otherwise (such as having short wings). Jurassic World comes out, making dinosaurs less bird-like than in the original Jurassic Park - with lizard-like tails and behavior, and no feathers at all. Essentially, a huge step backwards. 

2018: Branched fluffy covering very similar to feathers described now on multiple pterosaurs, the group most closely related to dinosaurs (think Pterodactyls). Fluffy covering considered ancestral to all members of the Pterosaur-Dinosaur group, if not all animals more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. 

We have known birds are dinosaurs since before many people reading this were born - since before I was born. We have known dinosaurs had feathers since the mid-1990s. We have known Velociraptor was fluffy and had wings since the mid-2000s. This isn’t news. This isn’t up for debate. Please grow up. Thank you! 

[museums-are-cool123]

Introduction

My name is Millie and I am an intern at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's Conservation Department.

What does that mean?

A museum conservator's job is to preserve, fix, and protect museum collections, including displays, specimens, archives and the building itself.

For me, I spent this semester on my hands and knees cleaning the dinosaur exhibits.

"So you get to clean the dinosaurs?"

No, that's not what I said. Me and another intern clean everything except the bones. We clean the floors, the glass, the leaves, the trees, and the walls. Yes, it's a long process. Yes, it's tedious. Yes, I love it.

Maybe it's only because I work twice a week and I'm best friends with the other intern, but my time at the museum has been nothing less than exciting. I feel incredibly lucky to spend time working within an elegant building with a rich and fascinating history, surrounded by interesting objects and passionate experts.

How did I end up in Conservation?

Honestly? Luck.

Growing up, I've always been curious and weird. I've always had special interests and could always be found outside. I had trouble containing myself in the classroom, and was labeled the chatty kid in my classes. But, because I did well enough, my impending ADHD diagnosis flew under the radar.

High school was where I saw some of my troubles start. I had trouble sitting in the hour-and-a-half long block periods, I would work at home because I was too distracted to do it in class, I fell behind in group projects, and I had my seat switched... a lot.

I applied and enrolled to the University of Pittsburgh with high hopes of going to medical school to become a medical examiner (the ones who look at dead people). I faced my weed-out courses head on as a first-year microbiology major, but soon COVID hit, and we went home.

During my all-virtual sophomore year, I realized I did not want to go into STEM. I liked learning about science, but not to the level of detail taught in many STEM courses. I think organic chemistry and biochemistry are interesting, but I don't want to learn where a bromide ion would attach onto a polycarbon in an SN2 reaction. It just wasn't for me.

At the same time, I had joined my school newspaper and quickly climbed the ladder. I realized I was not only good at writing, but that I actually loved it, and I entered my junior year as an English Writing major.

Through my transition, I met Jeff, an English professor an advisor at Pitt who also held the same niche interests as me: honey bees, death, medical anatomy, botany, museum studies, and taxidermy. I took some classes with him and he mentioned the opportunity of working at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I had no idea of what kind of work I'd be doing, but I immediately agreed. He set me up with my boss, Gretchen, and I joined the museum's Conservation Department a few weeks later.

Conservation is like writing: It's an avenue to explore my interests and curiosities.

Writing gives me the flexibility to write and learn about my wide vast of interests. I can write a research paper on COVID-19 related health disparities in urban/rural areas while also writing a news report on Joe Biden's speech in Pittsburgh, while also writing a personal piece about the complexity within a father/daughter relationship. Writing is the most centralized thing in my life.

Conservation gives me the flexibility to write and learn about my wide vast of interests. I can spend time dusting a geode from the hall of gems and minerals while also spending time looking at the ornithology's department's moldy files, and spending my afternoon cleaning leaves next to the Stegosaurus.

.

I hope this blog acts like a museum: a place where I can share and display my interests and experiences as I enter into the museum field.

[doorbloggr]

Wednesday 13/10/21 - Dinosaurs of the World Part 4; Madagascar and India

Majungasaurus grabs the tail of a Madagascan crocodilian, Mahajungasuchus; Sergey Krasovskiy

When you think of our current geography, it makes sense to think of Madagascar as part of Africa's greater biosphere; a lot of biota found there now have relatives on the African mainland. The same for India, even more so because the Indian continental plate has made landfall on the Asian Mainland. But in the Mesozoic Period, these two landmasses were more associated with the southern continents of Australia, Antarctica, and South America. India wasn't even a part of Asia until after the dinosaurs went extinct.

Late Cretaceous Madagascar and India, Walter Myers

During the age of reptiles, India and Madagascar were best buddies, and biogeographically, palaeontologists unite these two as their own distinct region. In terms of dinosaur diversity, the two regions share a lot in common with South America. Titanosaur Sauropods and Abelisaur Theropods are king in these regions. So when I started to construct a list of dinosaur highlights, I found it difficult to make a list of dinosaurs that weren't all Sauropods and Abelisaurs. So compared to my Africa, and Asia episodes, this list will be a bit shorter, but rest assured, there is a lot to discover about dinosaurs from Madagascar and India.

Isisaurus colberti

Isisaurus, Dmitry Bogdanov

Isisaurus was a large sauropod from Late Cretaceous India. It was a member of the Titanosaur clade, the largest and longest, and heaviest of all dinosaurs. Isisaurus colberti was originally called Titanosaurus colberti, united with the Indian dinosaur that this clade is named after, but closer inspection of its fossils led palaeontologists to classify Isisaurus in its own genus. Titanosaurus itself is currently a nomen dubium: a species that may not be real because remains are too fragmentary to be sure.

The most distinguishing feature of Isisaurus is its tall neck spines, giving it a very unique appearance for a Titanosaur, but it's not really known why they had them. Isisaurus coprolites (fossil poo) have had parts of pathogenic (diseasing) fungus found in them, giving paleobotanists a unique insight into the plant life of its habitat. Isisaurus is also unique in its name. It does not in fact call reference to the Egyptian God Isis, but it is fact named for the ISI (Indian Statistical Institution), making the only dinosaur I personally know to be named after an acronym.

Barapasaurus tagorei

Barapasaurus, SpinoInWonderland (deviantart)

Barapasaurus was an Early Jurassic Sauropod from central India. It was very early for a Sauropod, evolutionarily, but quite large for its time, 5.5 m tall and 14 m long. It's skeleton reveals a lot of traits basal to the true sauropod group, but was primitive in others, particularly its feet. Barapasaurus was the first dinosaur skeleton to be mounted in an Indian Museum, in 1977. It's name is also part Indian (Bengali), Bara meaning "Large", and Pa meaning "Leg" and of course the Greek Saurus to end it out. The large leg bone in question being the first bone of the animal found.

Dravidosaurus blandfordi

Dravidosaurus, Pavel Riha

Dravidosaurus was (potentially) a late surviving Stegosaur found in Late Cretaceous India. So far in these lists, I've tried to avoid highlighting Nomen Dubium, but I wanted a bit of variety in my Indian Dinosaurs, so this is an exception. Dravidosaurus is named for the Dravidanadu region of South India where it was found. Studies of the specimen in the 1990s hypothesised it was a plesiosaur, a type of marine reptiles related to turtles. But studies in the 2010s decided that among the remains found are a Stegosaur back plate and tail spike, but there's still too little material to be sure of anything. If it was indeed a Stegosaur, it was one of the smallest, 3 metres long and maybe half a metre tall.

Rahonavis ostromi

Rahonavis, Julio Lacerda (@paleoart on tumblr)

Rahonavis was a small theropod dinosaur from Late Cretaceous Madagascar. It's exact classification has been subject to much debate since it was first described, as it lies right on the boundary between non-avian dinosaurs and the earliest true birds. Depending on who you ask, Rahonavis is either a basal Avialan like Archaeopteryx, or an extremely derived dromeosaur like Dakotaraptor or Microraptor. Given the shape of its arms, and the evidence of flight feathers, Rahonavis was likely capable of flight, but wasn't as good in the air as modern birds. It was the size of a typical modern bird too, about 70 cm long. It's name consists of the Malagasy Rahona, meaning "Cloud/Menacing" and the Latin Avis, meaning "Bird".

Majungasaurus crenatissimus

Majungasaurus, Moonmelo (deviantart)

Majungasaurus was a medium sized Abelisaur theropod from Madagascar. It was from the very end of the Cretaceous period, one of the last dinosaurs. Majungasaurus was about 3 m tall and 8 m long. It had one of the most complete skull fossils of its family, with a blunt snout, sturdy, but wrinkled face structure, and its signature cone shaped horn right between its eyes. The horn was not built for combat and would've likely been a display structure. Its short but robust jaw allowed Majungasaurus and other Abelisaurs to bite down and twist more effectively than other theropods, and may have been specialised for hunting the many Sauropod species that inhabited Madagascar in its time. Majungasaurus is named for the Mahajunga province of North Madagascar.

The unique horn shape may be the most visual diagnostic feature of Majungasaurus, but many actually know the dinosaur for being the only non-avian dinosaur to have evidence of cannibalism. Signature bite marks found in Majungasaurus prey has also been found in other adult and juvenile Majungasaurus specimens. Palaeontologists are unsure if this is evidence of Majungasaurus actively hunting other members of its species, or if they simply scavenged on the dead.

Thanks for Reading

I apologise for making this article a bit shorter than the last couple has been. I've been trying to include some variety in dinosaur clades in these regional highlights, so rather than discuss mostly Abelisaurs and Titanosaurs, I picked one of each and then a few more notable species I could find. There really are a lot of interesting species from both India and Madagascar, so I recommend looking up info on the other interesting dinosaurs from the regions.

Next blogpost I'm thinking Europe, and there's quite a few interesting species I can think of already without consulting the entire list of species. My intention is to do North America last, since most of the species people know are from there and I want my readers to savour what the rest of the world has to offer first. As usual, links to previous and future articles below, and will be edited once I have written more.

<< Part 3: Africa || Part 5: Europe >>

[mk-wizard]

How “Zombie Garfield” Happened

Hello, friends.

Today, I want to talk about a comic series that is extremely special to me because it is one of the many comics that made me realize what I wanted to do as a calling and it helped shame my childhood as well as my sense of humour: Garfield. Sadly... this essay will be a negative one, but it needs to be written. It is how the “Zombie Garfield” came to be. No, it’s not a Halloween special, it is a case of how the downfall of Garfield happened and how it became nothing more than a shadow of what it once was. Note that this essay is also subjective and I am well aware that some fans like the new Garfield. I have nothing, but respect for those fans, but as someone who read Garfield from the beginning and owned a large majority of its books for the last 25 years, I can tell you that the iconic orange fat can is not what he once was and while he has yet to lose weight, he has lost a lot of his original charm. And it goes well beyond seasonal rot. To understand how Zombie Garfield came to be, I will list all the things that made classic Garfield great and how those qualities are now gone. And for the record, this is coming from someone who supports reboots and getting with the times.

1- Garfield is still and always will be a cat. - No matter out outlandish, wacky, ambidextrous his forepaws are or quirky Garfield will act, he will always fall back on being a cat. He cannot talk meaning no one can understand or hear his thoughts, he walks on four legs most of the time and he is a creature of his species habit. With the exception of eating mice that is.

In short, Garfield was smarter and more self-aware than the average cat, but he is a cat and would act like one. That was part of what made him funny, but over time, Garfield would walk only on his hind legs which now had human like feet, everyone could hear his thoughts or he could talk, and he was able to do everything a human being could do. In other words, Garfield became more like an anthropomorphic cat playing the part of a cat.

It just isn’t the same and while I love the Looney Toons for being this way, Garfield isn’t a Looney Toon. He was his own unique thing and now, that uniqueness is gone and I’m not the only who misses it. After all, Garfield paved the way for other pet themed comics thanks to being a cat. It also feels all the more wrong to stop being what he is supposed to be for that reason.

2- Garfield has a heart. - While Garfield has the personality of a problem child and slightly bullying big brother, deep down, he loves John, Odie and at one time, the comic was on the path with Garfield even growing to love Nermal. And no, this isn’t a joke. At one time, Nermal growing on Garfield was a thing.

That was also a huge part of the joke. Garfield was cynical, sarcastic and savage, but deep down, had a lot of love to give. And that is why we loved the comic strip. After all, how can you have a family slice of life comic if there’s no love? Now, Garfield’s antics have become outright sadistic to the point of being grimly homicidal which I get is funny to some, but to a long time fan like me, that is shocking and not the Garfield I know. At all. And not just Garfield. Everyone in the comic has become so mean spirited. While the Garfield family was never a perfect one, it was never dysfunctional like it is now. While even Nermal used to say clever quips, he was never actually mean because he actually admired Garfield. Now, the heart has been replaced with stone and it shows.

3- Garfield was relatable. - And not just for people with cats or for socially awkward people like Jon. Garfield was relatable to people in general because it dealt with issues that the average person could relate to. It wasn’t all about Garfield being a glutton or just putting down Jon. While exaggerated at times, at the core, we could all put ourselves in the characters’ shoes at one time or another. Kind of like, this situation right here;

Nowadays, we have Garfield taking these mission impossible type trips all the way in the Amazon jungle, he finds a dinosaur bone in his backyard and there was even a special about him becoming a superhero.

Now, I don’t mind specials that switch it up, but even the specials should be grounded in reality because that was Garfield’s major audience: real people. And I also understand that the new Garfield Show cartoon is aimed for children, but the type of episodes it features feel like they belong in another setting. Not for Garfield.

4- Everyone would win and lose some sometimes. Including Garfield. - In other words, Garfield was not a Mary Sue who would get away with everything no matter how awful he acted. Sooner or later, he would get his karma moments just like everyone else would. And on the flipside, the others would win every now and then for their efforts including Jon and Odie. This kept the characters interesting and funny.

Now, there seems to be an unwritten rule that no matter how bad Garfield acts, the worst he gets is a slap on the paw. And also, Jon just isn’t allowed to win anymore (with the exception of the point I will bring up next and I’m surprised he still has that with how he is written now). This has changed Garfield into a mischievous yet loveable cat to a borderline abuser. This is absolute not the Garfield I know at all. Sure, he was savage at times, but never cruel. And Jon was socially awkward and had a rocky love life, but he was never THIS inept.

5- Jon’s struggle with winning Liz’s heart. - If there was one true plot to Garfield, it was Jon finding true love though specifically, him trying to woo Garfield’s vet Liz. It was always kind of hinted that sooner or later, Jon would finally capture her heart and it was something we were all rooting for yet at the same time, it would be bittersweet because it would mark the end of the series just as Steve Urkell finally winning Laura Winslow from Family Matters marked the end of that series. As long as Liz only at best tolerated Jon, it meant that the story was still going on and in its defense, the comic was still funny throughout that period even if by the end, its age was starting to show.

And on a side note, I mean even years after this phase of the comic, but this is the best of the Jon wooing Liz strip’s in my opinion. Anyway, when the fateful day happened where the pair finally went steady, we all expected to end. Of course, not abruptly as there would be a few new jokes to tell, but the story ran its natural course and the only big left to do was end it on a high note with Jon and Liz most likely either getting married or at least living together... but that didn’t happen. The comic is still ongoing which is a disservice to it because all of the important jokes have run out. Now, it looks like the story will continue until Liz leaves Jon which is not a good way to end the show because instead of ending on a happy high note, it will end on a sad low note. If it even ends when that happens.

Now, as I stated before, this is all my opinion, but I have to say that in my mind, once Liz finally became Jon’s woman and the family accepted her, Garfield ended. I also want to clear the air that new Garfield in no way, shape or form changes the way I feel about my Garfield. Nothing can change that for me. I am just saying that I have lost interest in the comic and I just take it as another example of what happens when you don’t let a story end once it has run its natural course. It loses itself.

But what do all of you think? What has Garfield lost? And what is your opinion on new Garfield? I would love to hear it. If you love my essays and my work, do give me a follow and even drop me a Ko-Fi or become a patron of mine. I also make art, webcomics and I do commissions. All links are in my profile page.

Thanks for reading and as always, have a great day and stay safe.

[atsumumiyasimpgirltm]

Never Too Old For Science (The Only Exception) [Kei Tsukishima x Reader)

Pairings: Kei Tsukishima x Reader

Warnings: Karasuno Crackheads

Genre: Fluff

Type: Oneshot

Word Count: 2048

A/N: I wrote this a while ago before I formed this blog, but I thought it was super cute so I had to post it. 

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

“Um, are you people in high school?” The attendant asked, skeptically looking the Karasuno volleyball team up and down. Groups of children and their parents turned towards the group, unable to keep their shock in at how tall they were.

It was definitely not fun being scrutinized by small children.

“Yeah, we’re all under eighteen, and our guardians are here,” Tanaka responded, gesturing to Asahi, Daichi, and Sugawara. 

“They’re wearing the same jacket as the rest of you,” the attendant argued back. “If you’re all under eighteen we need a supervisor for this group!”

“I’m eighteen, and so are they,” Daichi cut in. “Please let us in.”

“You’re holding the line up! I want to see the penguins!” Noya jumped in the air and attempted to sprint past the attendant until Daichi grabbed him by the collar to stop him.

“Calm down, Nishinoya,” Asahi chided. 

The attendant obviously didn’t want to have to deal with the Karasuno team anymore, so reluctantly, he opened the gate for them to walk through.

The California Academy of Science was an architectural wonder, with glass pane windows completely making up the entrance and a ceiling that seemed to never end. 

Kei hooked his fingers with yours so he wouldn’t lose you among the children that were your height. As he pulled you towards him, you spotted a short boy in dinosaur pajamas staring at the both of you with wide, brown eyes. 

You locked eye contact with him and smiled. He turned away, embarrassed that he was caught staring (I guess children can feel shame after staring).

“Come on, we have to go put our bags down,” he said, adjusting the shoulder strap on his own bag, trying to pull you with him.

You had other ideas. 

“Kei, look,” you pulled at your boyfriend’s hand. “Alligator.”

“Haven’t you been here before?” He asked, placing his hand at the small of your back to lead you along with the rest of the team. 

“Of course I have,” you responded. “It’s just that every time I come here I feel like I’m six again.”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You’re so childish.”

“Says the one that’s holding a twelve-inch Brachiosauraus stuffed animal,” you shot back. 

He looked towards the roof and flushed pink. “Be quiet.”

~

The volleyball team walked through the Academy of Science, with the exception of Tanaka and Nishinoya who ran.

“I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO EXCITED ABOUT LEARNING THINGS IN MY LIFE!” Nishinoya screamed, running out of site with the hollering Tanaka.

“Imagine if he was as invested in his school work as he is in running through here,” Kei snarkily commented. 

You smiled, trying to hold in a laugh. “That’s a little mean,” you told him. 

“You’re smiling,” he observed, smirking back at you. 

You stopped smiling immediately, and with a straight face, said: “No, I’m not.”

Kei touched your cheek. “You should smile more, it’s not the most annoying thing you do.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” you grinned at him, doing as he requested a second ago. 

From the edge of your vision, you saw the same kid in the dinosaur pajamas, watching you and Kei again. Learning from your first experience with him, you didn’t look back, instead nudging your boyfriend. 

You whispered to him, “Don’t look, but do you see to the left?” You paused, waiting for him to side-eye to the left. “There’s a kid who keeps looking at us.”

“We should tell him to stop staring, it’s rude,” he opened his mouth to warn the child, but you slapped your hand over his mouth. 

“You’re rude, don’t tell him off, he’s probably in elementary school,” you scolded. 

“This is how being with Hinata, Nishinoya, and Tanaka feels,” Kei made a face, “Children are no exception, especially when they’re annoying.”

“He’s not hurting us, just staring,” this time you were the one to drag Kei, “Let’s go before you scare the kids.”

Reluctantly, Kei followed you, leaving the creepy child behind. 

~

You and the team had gotten yourselves situated in the aquarium exhibit, and most of the boys had already run off to the gift shop to buy things, or to the cafeteria to take advantage of the free food. 

“I didn’t know Hinata could jump even higher,” you remembered what had happened five minutes earlier. “Free food really gets people going. We should go get some.”

“I’m fine,” Kei unrolled his sleeping bag and took a t-shirt out of his bag. He began to lift the shirt he was wearing over his head-

“Don't change here! There are people,” you hissed, lightly backhanding him on the arm. “Besides, I brought pajamas for both of us.” You grinned and fished around your bag for the two onesies at the bottom. Taking them out, you threw the significantly bigger one at Kei. 

“We’re going to look so cute,” you gushed. 

“What the hell is this?” Kei asked. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”

“Get us matching dinosaur onesies?” You paused for a dramatic effect. “Yes, I did.”

“You don’t actually expect me to wear this, do you?” He skeptically said.

“For me, please,” you pleaded, looking up at him.

“This is stupid,” Kei said but went to the bathroom to change anyways.

~

You pushed the door out and saw Kei waiting for you. 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he complained. “How did you get me to do this?”

“You’re a pushover for me,” you hugged him. “Don’t worry, we look cute.”

“Matching onesies,” a third voice said, “What a coupley thing.”

You and Kei both looked in the direction of the voice and saw Nishinoya with his phone out. “We should make a team scrapbook, I bet the photographers at the games will gladly give us pictures.”

“Now you will forever be immortalized in this dinosaur onesie,” you told Kei. 

He raised his eyebrows in an annoyed manner and looked at Nishinoya. “Give me the phone.”

“Sorry, Tsukishima. The answer is no,” he smiled. 

“Give me the phone,” Tsukishima started to step towards Nishinoya. 

Nishinoya dashed down the hallway in the direction back towards the aquarium. You and Kei followed him back. 

There, Nishinoya was showing Sugawara the picture he took of you and Kei.

“That’s cute,” Sugawara commented on the onesies. “I like it.”

“Can you stop commenting?” Kei asked, “It’s annoying.” He was gone as soon as he came, the hood of his onesie lightly hitting his back as he walked around the corner. 

This time, you didn’t follow. 

~

Around 3 AM, you rolled over and were met with a flat sleeping bag where your salty boyfriend was supposed to be.

Groggily, you panicked. “Oh my god, did I crush Kei?” you whispered. “It’s not Flat Stanley anymore, it’s Flat Kei.” 

You moved your hand over the sleeping bag, and thankfully, he was not there. 

Everyone around you was asleep, so you carefully stepped over the sleeping bodies to go look for Kei. 

“Where could he be?” You thought out loud. 

Butterflies? That exhibit was closed.  

Aquarium? You were in the aquarium, and he didn’t even like fish that much. 

Penguins? It was too cold there, he bundled up in sixty-degree weather. There was no way he would willingly spend the night in a temperature-controlled room that was consistently cold. 

That left you with two exhibits that were still open, The Space exhibit and the Dinosaur exhibit. 

Out of those two, you knew exactly where he would be. 

You looked at the signs and blindly followed them to the exhibit. 

There, in the Jurassic period, sat Kei with another person, the boy in the dinosaur pajamas.

“The dinosaur you stole from me? That’s a brachiosaurus, and it lived in the late Jurassic period,” Kei explained. “They were about 75 feet long.”

“How do you know so much about dinosaurs?” A small voice asked. “That’s so cool!” 

“You’d be the first and only person to ever think that.” 

You considered interrupting, but you wanted to see how this played out. 

“Who was the person with you earlier?” The boy asked, tugging on Kei’s arm.

“That was (Y/n),” Kei said. “They gave me this dinosaur onesie.”

“I want a dinosaur onesie,” the boy said.

“Ask (Y/n), then.”

Kei and the boy sat next to each other in silence for a couple of minutes, the boy hugging the brachiosaurus stuffed animal, and Kei reading the information board presented in front of one of the exhibits. 

“Come over here, (Y/n),” Kei said without turning towards you. “I just saw your reflection in the glass.”

You had been caught. Without making a sound, you sat on Kei’s other side. He put his hand on top of yours and looked towards you with a soft smile. The smile reserved only for you. This was probably one of the more tender moments the two of you shared. After about a minute of staring at each other, you and Kei were interrupted by the other person on the bench. 

“Why are you so short?” The boy blurted. “I thought high school people were supposed to be tall.”

“Excuse me?” You asked. 

“He said, ‘why are you so short?’” Kei repeated back with a smirk. “I can’t answer that question, nor can I relate to being short.”

“Forget dinosaurs, we need to go to the genetics display,” you rolled your eyes, but didn’t scold the boy. It wasn’t a question asked in a malicious or teasing manner, just a kid with no filter. The boy stood in front of you to get a better look at you. 

“Woah, how are you and this guy friends?” The kid asked. “You’re so. . . good looking!” 

This time, it was Kei’s turn to be shocked. 

“What are you insinuating?” Kei questioned. “Are you saying I’m not good enough?” 

“Come on Kei, this kid is like what? Five?” You laughed as quietly as you could. “Does his opinion matter that much to you?” 

“No, but-”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

You smiled at Kei, and he couldn’t help but break out into his own smile. 

“That’s how my parents look at each other,” the boy said. 

You couldn’t help it, you let out a howl of laughter. “Oh my god,” you spat out between laughs.

Kei was not so amused. 

“It’s late, shouldn’t you be in your sleeping bag?” He asked, shooing the boy away. 

The boy stared him down for a moment, then hopped off the bench, and began walking towards the Cretaceous section.

“I’d like my brachiosaurus back,” Kei said. 

The boy ran back, and reluctantly handed Kei the dinosaur. 

It was just you and him now.

“Do you really like me?” He asked, catching your attention. 

You were taken aback by his question. “Of course! Otherwise I wouldn’t put up with you and your bad attitude!” 

He snorted, and lightly shoved you. “You eat all of my food and take all of my clothes.”

“Well to be fair, it’s my food after I eat it, and you give me your sweatshirts after forgetting them at my house.”

“I did not give you my Karasuno jacket,” he playfully argued. 

“That’s an exception.”

“You’re an exception,” Kei said, then sighed. “You’re the only exception I’ll ever make.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” You closed your eyes and breathed in the air. It was fresh, the room being temperature controlled. 

“You can decide,” he leaned closer to you. 

You opened your eyes quickly. “You’re so sappy sometimes.”

“Way to ruin the moment,” he pulled back and rolled his eyes. 

“We have a long time to have moments, okay?” You told him. “Unless you’re planning on finding another exception.”

Kei was silent, staring at the rich green foliage in the display, and the small, glass box with the dinosaur footprint. You looked to him, and he must have seen, because the side of his mouth pulled up slightly. Content with what you had, you leaned into his side, and he put his left arm around you, pulling you closer. 

It was just you, Kei, and the dinosaurs. 

Your breathing slowed, and you relaxed, your mind going foggy before you felt tired.

After a lengthy, but comfortable silence, Kei had assumed you were asleep.

People were always more honest when they thought no one was listening, you learned.

“I’ll never find another exception,” he had whispered. “You’re the only exception I’ll ever have.”

With your eyes closed, you exhaled lightly and smiled slightly. 

The only exception.

 To you, it was a beautiful thought. 

[whistlesanbells]

Community Headcanons

Just a random list of headcanons I have, organized by character (feat. A lot of Britta x Annie)

Jeff

I saw someone mention that Jeff might have an ED, and given what we see with his relationship with food, and how he is willing to go as far as to hurt himself to be the best at something (in this case be the best looking) it makes a lot of sense.

A lot of people headcanon Jeff as bi but honestly I just take him as cishet. He has many many issues but I don’t think sexuality is one of them, because half his personality is his attraction to every woman that breathes lmao

Exudes top energy but really the minute someone else tops him, he gets insecure for a bit but ends up really liking it.

Britta

Raging bisexual. I feel like she’s known for a long time, but never told the group because it would just be another thing for them to poke fun of about her.

In the same vein, I believe Britta’s parents were very homophobic, and that’s why she cut ties. I think she came out to them at a younger age and it was messy. It would make sense that she would refuse to tell the group why she didn’t get along with her parents: because she wasn’t ready to come out to the group yet. Instead it gets framed as her just rebelling for no reason.

We hear almost nothing about Britta’s past, except for a few offhand comments about a dinosaur-related trauma. Britta is incredibly quick to deny talking about her past, which led me to believe that she has some kind of trauma. Personally, I believe she was r*ped in her childhood, which would explain her extra effort to comfort troy when he lied about it. It would also explain why she is so fervently for women’s rights, especially when it has to do with bodily autonomy.

Dyslexic!Britta makes so much sense to me, because her parents were likely unsupportive, so she didn’t get much help or accommodations in school at a young age. This probably led to her habit of going out of her way to do poorly in a class so it looks like she’s just not trying, so she doesn’t have to face the reality that she never developed good study habits and she would have a lot of trouble in school even if she tried. Even though she doesn’t do well in school, she’s really smart, she’s just not great at articulating her points :))

She was a tomboy in elementary school before it was considered socially acceptable, and she was bullied ruthlessly for it. In her true, “stick it to the man” fashion, she never grew out of it.

Britta is terrified of Annie finding out that she won’t do well in school even if she DOES try, because she’s afraid Annie will lose respect for her.

Annie was the only one in the group she came out to, because she trusted her to keep a secret and not to judge. Annie asks her a LOT of questions, but Britta puts up with it.

Acts like a top, is really a bottom.

She has a crush on Annie from 21st century romanticism on, but never expresses it because she doesn’t want to make Annie uncomfortable.

Troy

Gay lmao

I definitely feel like he had a crush on abed around end of season 3/ beginning of season 4, but it was unreciprocated.

Troy has an inherent sensitivity that makes him the heart of the show, but it took a while for him to feel comfortable with that. I feel like he had a lot of parental pressure to be perfectly straight and masculine, since he was raised under a strict religion.

Troy never wanted to be an athlete. I believe he wasn’t allowed to explore his interests because he demonstrated talent for sports at a young age, and that’s what he was pressured to do for the rest of his life.

Troy doesn’t always understand how Abed functions, but he is always accepting, supportive and understanding. Instead of trying to understand how his brain works, he memorized the patterns of what bothers him and what doesn’t, and uses that to help his friend in the best way he can. It’s super sweet :))

Abed

Aro/ace Abed rights!! I haven’t seen this one as much, but I really like it. I genuinely don’t think abed has much interest in relationships, which has absolutely nothing to do with being neurodivergent. I think he feels pressure from the group to date, because that’s what they think is “normal.”

I LOVE Annie and Abed’s friendship but I definitely don’t ship them. Sure, they kissed once, but she was attracted to Han Solo, not abed. Annie was attracted to dean when he was actually like Jeff too, but she DEFINITELY wasn’t attracted to dean lmao. Instead, I think they’re both really close because they’re both neurodivergent, and Annie understands him more than anyone else in the group, albeit not entirely. They also have a special handshake you can see at the end of season one :)

This isn’t a headcanon but it’s *technically* never stated in the show but Abed definitely has autism. l DO headcanon that Annie has his safe foods written down in a list because she’s the only one who knows how to cook in the apartment, and she knows it’s important to him.

Abed has all of his friends’ likes and dislikes memorized and written down, as well as their birthdays, as a result of psychoanalyzing them. He gives the best birthday gifts and never forgets.

Definitely was the ACB (creds to film theory on that one)

Shirley

I don’t have a lot of theories for Shirley, because we see a lot of her personal story in canon. However, I do believe that she wasn’t always such a devout Christian. I think she was raised with Christian ideals, but it wasn’t central to her personality until Andre cheated on her. After she went though a dark period of (likely) alcoholism, I like to think that’s when she turned to Christianity, and it gave her hope. She loves it so much because it genuinely did save her from a bad time in her life.

I think she is a big part of the reason why Troy, Abed, Britta, and Annie are afraid to come out to the group. They assume she would never see them in the same light, when truth be told, she would love them all the same. I think she would be uncomfortable at first, but either she would come to the realization or britta would convince her that it is inherently Christian to love everyone, no matter what. Her motherly instincts take precedence over her Christian ideals.

Shirley views Annie as the daughter she never had, but is very careful not to tell her for fear of hurting her feelings. She very much enjoys helping her navigate college and seeing her mature. She also loves all their girl talk since this is the aspect of parenting that she doesn’t get with three boys. In the same vein, she loved teaching Britta how to have friends who are girls, and she likes to think she played a part in raising her.

Pierce

I don’t like pierce enough to psychoanalyze him lmao

Annie (saddle up, this is gonna be long)

Lesbiannie, obviously. Annie’s romantic tendancies SCREAM compulsive heterosexuality. Annie’s relationships with men are always schoolgirl crushes, and she even admits to abed that she never really liked Jeff, she just liked the idea that he was available and willing to love her. It also makes sense that she can’t stand the idea of not being perfect in every way, including heterosexual (because she confirms that her parents are bigoted and that’s likely what she was taught). I think she would have a lot of internalized homophobia, and she would be very insecure about her sexuality, seeing how she acted during the STD fair.

I would love to think Annie also had her first ever real, I like this person for themselves and not just because they’re attainable crush on Britta. She always looked up to her because she was so cool and far less uptight than she was, but as they grew closer, she saw her in a different light. I ship them hardcore lmao.

Annie has ADHD!! I could talk for hours about this, mostly because I have very similar struggles to Annie’s canon character arc (minus the drugs lmao) and it’s mostly due to my adhd. Long story short, she was likely raised undiagnosed until she discovered it herself, which led to trying adderall and overdoing it because she was unsupervised. She was likely very insecure about her ADHD, which led her to overcompensating academically. Because she masked so much in academic settings, it’s likely she didn’t have much of a social life because that’s where her symptoms presented themselves more.

In addition being friends with abed has made her far more comfortable unmasking. If you watch her in studies in modern movement you can see her stimming (flapping her hands, rocking back and forth and swinging her arms) way more than usual. She normally fidgets by fiddling with her fingers by her waist and pulling her elbows tight to her sides in a position suspiciously similar to raptor arms. Not only is this a common and discreet way to fidget, it is easily passed off as good posture. This makes sense, as it is Annie’s trademark resting position.

Annie reads YA books and a LOT of fanfiction for fun. The group expects her to be more well versed in classic literature, but the girl just loves her some vampires. It’s where she learned a LOT of her....dnd tricks ;).

Top energy that Jeff never let her use DEFINITELY comes out with Britta.

She helps Britta study and teaches her all the study habits she had to learn, and Britta’s grades improve a little bit!!

Switched to pantsuits because of britta, I like to think she had some influence on that.

Lost interest in Jeff after Basic Sandwich

Knew that Abed was the ACB the whole time, she definitely had it figured out in that binder lmao

Anyways enjoy, just figured I’d write this down somewhere haha

[365days365movies]

May 7, 2021: TRON (1982)

Starting to leave lo-fi sci-fi with this one.

Can I just say, I am VERY excited for this one. Mostly because it’s hard to get more ‘80s than this movie, specifically in terms of computers. I’ll explain. Y’know Jurassic Park? Yeah, the same movie I’ve brought up far, FAR too many times this month. Is...is that my favorite sci-fi movie? Shit, it might be? I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the movie COUNTLESS times...I’m pretty sure it is! Huh. Go figure. Anyway, where was I?

Oh, right! Remember the most irritating character in the movie? This is, in my opinion, older sister Lex Murphy. In the book, for the record, she’s a VERY different character. She’s the youngest sibling amongst the two, and she’s a sports nerd who hates dinosaurs. And she’s also the most annoying character in the book, so at least they kept that consistent. However, you may be saying to yourself: “Jesus, this dude really loves Jurassic Park. Even in the intro for Tron, he’s talking about it. Why the hell does he keep bringing it up?”

Well, allow me to explain. When I was 9 years old, I was super into two things: dinosaurs and reading. You may think that I wasn’t very popular in school as a result. And the truth won’t surprise you. Anyway, on January 3rd, 2001, it was a cold morning in the supermarket when

...OK, lemme get to the point. IT’S A UNIX SYSTEM!

See, this moment when Lex hacks into the computer to reactivate the locks (a task given to Tim in the book, but whatever) does two things. One, it makes Lex relevant in a film and story where she’s almost entirely unneeded. And two, it established something in the minds of movie-watchers everywhere: a completely misguided idea of what computer programming is.

And this is just one of MANY examples of Hollywood weirdly representing computers to the public. This was kind of a trend throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, as computers were beginning to become available to the public. Examples are:

WarGames (1983), dir. John Badham

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), dir. James Cameron

Revenge of the Nerds (1984), dir. Jeff Kanew

Weird Science (1985), dir, John Hughes

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), dir. Russo Bros

That last one isn’t a great example, and it’s not even within the right time period. I just love Arnim Zola, and he NEEDS TO RETURN to the MCU. Goddamn it, I want this guy back, complete with his full robot body! COME ON FIEGE, LOOK AT THIS GUY! That last one may or may not be my fanart for the character with my own design NEVERTHEGODDAMNLESS!

Look, all you gotta do is connect the various machinations of Arnim Zola to the foundations of AIM, which is easy given their link in the comics. Zola and his fellow Paperclip scientists helped fund Aldrich Killian’s AIM, and the project to give Zola his sick-ass robot body eventually wound up being a part of the project that would create the hovering robotic chair used by this guy.

THIS IS ALL I’VE EVER WANTED PLEASE

...Ahem.

Anyway, the weird-ass ways that Hollywood’s represented computers, hacking, and all other associated things can be traced back to 1982, when the first film to use mostly computer generated imagery for its setting was created. This was, of course, Disney’s TRON. And while I haven’t seen it before...I’ve see its sequel in theaters?

On a related note, Tron Legacy might be a mediocre film with a mediocre soundtrack, but GODDAMN DO IT LOVE THE FUCKING VISUALS. It’s genuinely my favorite aesthetic. That whole “outlined in light” thing? Goooooooh, BABY, how I love it.

Style over substance, but OH THE FUCKING STYLE

Anyway, despite that, I’m looking forward to seeing where the whole thing came from. I dig that style, too. Is there a name for those aesthetics? Let me know, so I can devote my life to it forever. Anyway, shall we get started?

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

So, we start this movie off with a BANG, jumping into an arcade where two kids are playing none other than Lightcycle, and jumping into said Lightcycles to meet one of the drivers, Sark (David Warner). A sadistic program, he takes great pleasure in executing programs in Lightcycle races.

One of these programs, in fact, is being brought into imprisonment now, to be set against Sark in a race. The program, Crom (Peter Jurasik), speaks with fellow prisoner Ram (Dan Shor), where we get some idea of the lore of this place. Many programs believe in “the Users”, god-like figures who they believe created them and tell them what to do. However, the mysterious Master Control Program is rounding up the programs that believe in Users, taking over their functions or executing them. Diggin’ the lore so far.

In the real world, we meet Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a computer programmer commanding his own program, Clu (also Bridges), and...look, I’m not sure what they’re doing, but OHHH. IT’S A UNIX SYSTEM, BABY. The beautiful bullshit that this movie uses to denote computer activity and programming, it’s...MMMMMMMMMCHEF’SKISS, it’s so FUCKING GOOD!

Anyway, Clu’s apparently being sent to find some information, but he’s caught by Master Control. Jeff Bridges shows off some pretty over-the-top acting, but it’s charming as hell. Clu’s interrogated by Master Control Program (also Warner), and killed, or “derezzed”. This frustrates Flynn, but why?

Well, we get a clue from MCPs concentration with Ed Dillinger (David Warner), who arrives at his office in the COOLEST FUCKING HELICOPTER I HAVE EVER SEEN. I will never make enough money to have this helicopter, but maybe one day I can do it to a car, holy shit. Anyway, Dillinger lands and enters the ENCOM building, where he speaks with his computer table, which contains MCP.

Is this a thing with computer programmers? Do they, like, physically talk to their programs, and the programs talk back? Is this a thing that happens? Are the conversations interesting? Are IT people literally computer-whisperers? I gotta talk to my friends in computer sciences and IT about this.

Apparently, Flynn’s been snooping around their servers for a specific file, and they’re trying to stop him from getting that file. Meanwhile, in an office in the building, a man named Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) is blocked out of the system in an attempt to flush out Flynn’s location. Bradley’s summoned to the office for what seems like a routine interview, but is actually more of an investigation. Doesn’t go anywhere.

On a side note, by the way, it would appear that MCP is somewhat in control of Dillinger. Although, how and why is unknown. In any case, he’s attempting to amass power. Additionally, the fact that he’s directly speaking to one of the Users is...interesting. And on a second side note, Bradley is preparing something, a security program called “Tron”. That might come up later.

MEANWHILE, elsewhere in the building, a group of scientists are conducting an experiment to digitize solid matter and transport it into computers. It succeeds with an orange, much to their delight and celebration. One of these scientists is Lora Baines (Cindy Morgan), Flynn’s ex-girlfriend and Alan’s current girlfriend. They go to the arcade to reconvene with Flynn, much to Alan’s irritation.

Flynn not only owns the place, he’s also a game whiz, brilliant computer programmer, and recently fired ex-employee of ENCOM. He’s also been sneaking into the ENCOM system, and he details exactly why he’s moving against them. While working for ENCOM, he had started writing programs for some very complex video games, which could’ve have made him quite a bit of money. But Dillinger stole his files, and uses it to climb up the ranks to Senior Executive of ENCOM, while Flynn lounges in relative poverty. He’s planning on getting into the system to get evidence of Dillinger’s wrongdoing.

The trio plots to take down Dillinger and get the evidence together, breaking into ENCOM that night. Meanwhile, Dillinger’s meeting with Walter Gibbs (Barnard Hughes), a co-founder of the company, and one of the other scientists who made the digitizing machine. Dillinger says YOUR TIME IS OVER OLD MAN, and brushes off his concerns about he’s handing the company.

He’s not the only one with issues, as MCP decides to take over FOR Dillinger. Apparently, Dillinger’s talents are stealing data and creating Cybernet/HAL 9000. Good job, buddy. But that may end, when Alan goes to finish and install his program, Tron, which will hopefully take MCP down. Meanwhile, Lora and Flynn go to the basement with the digitizing machine. At the computer terminal, MCP decides to stop Flynn by...well, you know where this is headed.

Yup! Flynn’s brought into the computer by Lora’s machine, and is digitized and put into the game grid. And since we’ll be spending a lot of time there, I think I need to acknowledge something: I really love how this movie looks. The CGI is rudimentary, but it’s used surprisingly well. Consider that this is also made in an era where this is the kind of imagery that computers could literally generate at the time, and you’ve got a pretty great movie in-context.

Flynn, now in those spiffy program duds, is sent by the MCP to compete in the Game Grid, under Sark’s supervision and tutelage. He’s thrown into the brig with the other imprisoned programs, where he learns more about this world. Once brought into the throes of the Game Grid, he’s told that those who believe in the Users are to be trained poorly, ensuring their inevitable death. Meanwhile, those who renounce their belief will be spared. And of all the programs who still believe in the Users, there is none quite as powerful...as Tron (Bruce Boxleitner again).

We see Tron’s badass skills in Ultimate Frisbee. And OK, it’s not Ultimate Frisbee, but you throw discs that contain all of your essence and all of the things you’ve learned in your time there. You basically pour your entire essence and being into the disc as you throw it. So, really, it is Ultimate Frisbee, according to that one dude who’s REALLY into Ultimate Frisbee.

Flynn is commanded to play one of these games, and he winds fairly easily. However, when he defeats his opponent, he’s almost about to die. However, Flynn refuses to finish him off, leading Sark to do so instead. And Sark is tempted to kill Flynn as well, but he holds off at the last moment.

Flynn finally gets to meet Tron, where he feigns being a program that knows of his User, Alan. Of course, Tron looks exactly like Alan, which is why Flynn blurts out his name. But as they’re discussing this, Flynn, Tron, and fellow prisoner Ram are sent to compete in the Lightcycles. And, yes, I’m now looking for a game like this on my phone, because GODDAMN to I love Lightcycles. Can’t WAIT for the Disney World ride, oh my GOOOOD. 

So, our guys get in the Lightcycles, and they outmaneuver Sark’s guys. They’re actually able to escape the arena and the Game Grid, making it outside the citadel. They encounter a, uh, bitstream, and soak up some energy before moving on. On the way, though, they’re nearly killed by Sark’s guys in tanks, and Tron is separated from Flynn an the unconscious Ram.

Flynn and Ram finds a place to rest and hide, and Flynn discovers that, as a User, he actually has the ability to somewhat manipulate the reality within the computer, and he makes a version of MCPs ships, the Recognizers, which resemble the villains in Flynn’s game that Dillinger stole. Now realizing that Flynn is a user, Ram asks him to help Tron, before dying and disappearing into pure code. Whoof.

Tron, meanwhile, ends up finding an input/output program named Yori (Cindy Morgan), who helps him in his escape. She takes him through the city, where we see some interesting designs for control programs, almost like a Hunger Games Panem sort of deal.

Flynn has trouble driving his ship, as he meets a “bit”, a small bit of data that only answers in yes or no. He, too, ends up in the city, and you start to notice that this film has a really heavy influence in our cyberpunk concepts and fashions today. Honestly, I really dig this whole thing. Kevin uses his programming powers to disguise himself as one of Sark’s guards, while Yori and Tron find their way through the main citadel of the guards.

They make their way through to the access tower, where they ask the program Dumont (Barnard Hughes again) to let them access the interface that will allow them to speak with the Users, specifically Alan. Reluctantly, Dumont agrees to let Tron through, where he goes to the access port. Which, for the record, looks awesome. He goes to speak with Alan, and he does that one pose. Y’know, the famous Tron pose that’s on the poster?

Yeah, that’s the good stuff. Anyway, he gets information written onto his disc that’ll allow him to kill MCP. Neat. And unfortunately, that’s exactly when Sark and his guys show up, taking Dumont away as Tron and Yori escape. Yori gets them onto a Solar Sailer, a device that will transport them to the central computer. Tron fends off some of Sark’s guys with video game noise kicks, and the Solar Sailer arrives to take them away.

Sark chases after them, but the pair manage to outrun his very cool-looking ship. MCP threatens to destroy Sark for his failure, but he promises that he’ll be able to get them. On the ship, Tron looks down at the side to see Flynn hanging on. Turns out that he was one of the guards that attacked the two. Tron pulls him up onto the ship, and Flynn reveals that he is, in fact, a user. He also reveals that Users aren’t exactly the gods that programs believe them to be.

Anyway, how’s Dumont doing?

Ah.

Well, the Recognizers find Tron, Yori, and Flynn, and chase after them on the light beam the Solar Sailer is on. However, with his User powers, Flynn manages to get the Sailer onto a different beam, while pulses on the original beam destroy the Recognizers.

Doesn’t end up mattering much, though, as Sark finally catches up and intercepts the group. The Solar Sailer is destroyed, and Yori and Flynn are thrown in the brig with Dumont, who’s still alive! Can’t say quite as much for Tron, apparently. But, again, I can only assume that Ton is still alive. We’ll see, though. Sark denies Flynn’s identity as a User for some reason (I mean, MCP told you who he was, but OK), and he sentences them all to death. Outside the ship, of course, is Tron, who’s hiding and waiting for the right time to strike. And that is when we finally see him.

Glorious. Absolutely goddamn glorious. MCP is taking the remaining programs that believe in Users, Dumont included, and incorporating them into his mass. Meanwhile, Sark has found Tron, and the two are fighting with a classic game of Ultimate Frisbee. Tron nearly defeats Sark entirely, but MCP revives him, and gives him the power to take out Tron. He grows gigantic, and it looks genuinely really convincing.

Flynn prepares to take out MCP once and for all, and kisses Yori just beforehand, which is weird as shit. He jumps into the program, and controls it just long enough for Tron to throw his disc at it and land the finishing blow. And with that, MCP is ended, and the threat of take over is gone! The I/O towers light up, and the Video Warriors have won! Don’t ask me what that means, I study birds.

And with ALL OF THAT DONE, Flynn gets the proof he needs from a print-out that, to be honest, I feel like he could’ve just typed up himself. It doesn’t look like that much. But, still, MCP is gone, Dillinger’s screwed, and Flynn now gets a cool-looking helicopter of his own, as the new CEO of ENCOM. And from there, he will become a deadbeat dad that abandons his kid to live in computers forever. Or something like that, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Tron Legacy.

And that’s Tron, a goofy movie of its time, but one that’s a lot of fun all the same. And with some effects that, to be honest...I actually really liked! But more on that...IN THE REVIEW! See you there!

[scoobydoominuscoobydoo]

Alright, I guess we should talk about Scoob!

So Scoob! was digitally release nearly a month ago and Mod Silas and I finally got around to watching it. 

For anyone who liked it and don’t wanna read me heavily criticize it then I’ll just spoil you right now:

I did not like Scoob! at all.

And it was really disappointing because this is the first wide release film Scooby has gotten in 16 years. That’s a long time to think of bringing Scooby to the general public who don’t go out of their way to watch every single direct-to-video movie. The announcement of a new feature length film was two or three years ago and I was really excited to hear it because I was expecting some high-quality content.

My opinion of it quickly dropped a lot when it was revealed that the original voice cast wouldn’t be in it. That’s fine all on it’s own but they did it without even letting the original cast know they wouldn’t be a part of this (Besides Frank but he wasn’t even cast as who he originally played). Seeing both Matthew and Grey’s responses to this made me sad and I was significantly less excited for this movie. 

Suddenly the concept of this movie not being that good became very real to me. How much passion can you have for Scooby-Doo when you ignore the original cast and hire people who have never done anything for the franchise before that.

Despite all of that, I was giving Scoob! the benefit of the doubt because I really wanted this movie to be good. I wanted this movie to open up the potential for more major Scooby projects. And while this movie did well financially I find myself so disappointed that after 16 years this is what we got.

Since I hated almost everything about this movie I’m gonna break it up into a numbered list (otherwise I’ll be ranting endlessly).

#1: This movie fails at telling a story.

When the trailer was dropped I remember being like, “Great. Lets recycle the whole Scoob and Shag friendship as a central narrative. Not like they’ve done that a million times before.” And then next thing you know, they’re on the Falcon Fury and I was so not excited. That was two plot-lines they’ve played with before and I can’t remember the last time anyone cared about the Blue Falcon. It’s one of the weaker movies and nobody talks about that one episode of MI that he’s in.

But again, I was going to let it slide because it’s still possible to create a good story out of something recycled.

The movie opens up with them when they were kids and I was already bummed because this movie is taking place in present times and not the 70′s or the 80′s. They allude to the fact that Shaggy enjoys stuff from that time period (while he’s scrolling through a smartphone) but that’s not the same. This concept bugged me for the rest of the movie because the majority of scenes where the gang is solving something they just Google it and the the scene is over. As opposed to it taking place before the internet and writers would have to get creative. And while I love the gang as kids because when it’s done in the show they have so much charm and life the beginning scenes are kinda pointless and don’t establish anything major. I think they were trying to show that the gang have been really close since they were little but it doesn’t come off that way. Not to mention the whole scene with the gang together feels really stiff and I was salty that Shaggy wasn’t wearing a Commander Cool costume instead of his Blue Falcon outfit.

At this point I was waiting for the character conflict to be introduced because that’s a key convention in every Scooby movie. There’s always a man in a mask to chase but that’s not where the story comes together. The story comes from some sort internal conflict within the characters.

The phantom dinosaurs in Legend of the Phantosaur are awesome but that’s not what the movie is about. It’s about Shaggy overcoming his own internal hurdles.

That’s been a consistent pattern in the best of the Scooby films (even all four of the live action ones do this) and I was waiting for it to be identified. And then next thing I know we’re twenty minutes into the movie and I’m not sure what it’s even about. The scene where the gang talk about wanting to become a legitimate business happens so fast and it took me like five minutes to be like, “Wait is this our conflict?” A fight between the gang about Shaggy and Scooby’s usefulness to the cause? (Which is also a recycled plot but whatever.) Their fight happens so fast and isn’t taken all that seriously so Shag and Scoob’s anger seems more played for a laugh than anything else.

But then they cut to the bowling alley and the two of them seem genuinely upset. And I can’t help but think if you had let the earlier scene escalate into an actual argument that I would have bought the hurt feelings. But then none of it matters because Shag and Scoob are immediately attacked and rescued by the Blue Falcon and someone’s OC. And when the rest of the gang find out they instantly feel bad and so I guess the tension between the gang wasn’t supposed to be the central conflict.

Now it’s back to being about Shaggy and Scooby and their millionth time being the chosen one.

Shaggy becomes pretty upset because Scooby is getting into the whole superhero thing and isn’t giving Shag a second thought. But the thing is, none of this was built up. The villain and Simon Cowell tell Shag he isn’t special and both of those times aren’t even remotely emotional. They briefly mention that Shag has some self confidence issues and that turns into him getting mad at Scooby for taking off his collar and playing hero. Ignoring the fact that this is not in character at all it’s clear that the story is now forcing conflict because we’re 45 minutes into the movie and all we’ve done is slapstick.

Shaggy and Scooby’s falling out is ridiculous because they’ve only been mad at each other for like ten minutes of the whole movie so there aren’t any stakes at all. You know they’re gonna make up because this fight came out of nowhere and wasn’t built up at all. Shag and the gang reuniting isn’t emotional at all and Shaggy breaking up the fight could have been so much better if it was just done better.

And that’s how this whole movie is, this plot had the potential to be great scenes could have gotten something from me but nothing is built up and it can’t stay consistent.

By the final battle of the film we’ve only had two things resembling character arcs in Shag and the Blue Falcon and neither of them have any weight. The movie tells us what we already know, that Shaggy is indeed useful to the gang and I just want this movie to be over.

And I guess because they wanna tug on your heartstrings the writers threw in a little self-sacrifice. And I’m not against that at all I think that’s a good resolution to the arc they were trying to give Shaggy but the thing is there’s no stakes or tension in the scene. It just happens and we’re meant to be sad about it but I can’t because nobody else in the scene seems to think it’s all that depressing besides Scooby. And like two minutes later the conflict is resolved and we get our obligatory dance party at the end. 

That whole thing is not a story, nothing is really accomplished by the end and nobody has really gone anywhere. 

There was no Point A which takes us to Point B which brings us to Point C. This was an insane labyrinth of lines running through as many points as they could and then calling it a day. There was no natural progression and none of the conflicts presented even mattered because they were immediately resolved anyway. That makes sense for a TV show but this is a feature length film. I honestly could not believe they were going to release that in theaters because there is no way it’s worth the money. 

It was so devoid of the Scooby-Doo charm and this movie felt more lifeless than anything I’ve watched in a long time.

#2: The movie does a bad job of portraying the gang’s friendship.

One of the fandom’s favorite parts of the Scooby-Doo franchise is the friendship between the gang and the way their characters interact.

But in this movie they behave more like coworkers than anything else. They try to play up the gang feeling guilty and missing the guys but it’s really not convincing. And it’s clear that the fight was more or less to contribute to Velma, Daphne and Fred’s story rather than the whole gang. They spend most of their scenes talking about the mystery or what Shaggy and Scooby would be doing if they were there. The one time in the movie where I can buy them being best friends is when we watch that accidentally took a video instead of a selfie. I thought that was really cute and showed the gang’s dynamic effectively.

The end of the movie where Shaggy is supposedly sealed in the Underworld forever is so underwhelming because Scooby is the only one reacting. Like that’s supposed to be their best friend of ten years who they don’t think they’ll ever see again and they barely bat an eyelash until they go to comfort Scooby.

My first thought was, “There is no way the gang would just let Shaggy sacrifice himself.” And I kept wondering why no one else was trying to stop him or hold him back. 

It’s annoying because I like when the whole gang’s relationship a key part of the plot rather than just Shaggy and Scooby + the other three who are also here.

#3: The villain and the Blue Falcon are pointless.

You could have taken Brian and Dick Dastardly out of the movie and replaced them with anyone and the movie would not have changed at all.

The Blue Falcon squad add nothing to the story and are mainly just there for ......nostalgia I guess??? But nobody even remembers the Blue Falcon??? 

The scenes with Dastardly are easily the worst parts because he’s just a copy-paste villain who sometimes says semi relatable things and it’s meant to be hilarious. His whole plan to open the Underworld just to get his dog back could have been interesting but obviously it wasn’t because nothing is properly built up in this movie.

Their first mistake was immediately revealing who their villain was right off the bat. I won’t be salty that they used actual supernatural forces because Scooby has done that plenty of times. I am salty that they just up and tell you who the puppetmaster is without any goal at anonymity which just goes against everything Scooby is about.

And they’ve done this multiple times. Whenever real supernatural forces are brought into the mix that does change anything because the forces are almost always being controlled by a man in a mask. This sticks to the Scooby belief that the real evil in our world comes from man and not fictional monsters.

#4: This movie’s presentation is not good.

I will quickly say that I actually liked Shaggy’s design in the movie even though Mod Silas already drew Shag with a long sleeve under his shirt and I think that’s a lot better looking. Whatever, I thought he was cute.

I was talking about how stiff the opening scenes felt, well the whole movie looks pretty stiff as well. 

The character designs are distracting (every girl in this movie with their hair down looks like they’re just wearing a wig it looks so bad I don’t understand hair hasn’t looked back in animation for like a decade) and the animation is pretty sloppy. The directing and camera movements also don’t make any half the time and only make everything more jarring. I have nothing against CG animation but I feel like this movie was trying to be 2D in a 3D space and and was just not working out.

Also the voice acting in the movie is really not good. Like idk how this movie managed to get a bad performance out of these pretty renowned actors but none of them sound like they wanna be there or even really care. Which is funny because if they had kept the original cast you know they would have given it 110% since they actually have passion playing these roles. If the performances were actually good I feel like I would have enjoyed the movie a little more.

They also play some standard pop songs and that confused me because they literally played the original theme song at the beginning. Like you guys have the What’s New theme which everyone loves, a plethora of other theme songs, and two Hex Girls songs you could have played. 

When the dance party at the end happens Mod Silas pointed out that it was a wasted opportunity because instead of having the Blue Falcon be a DJ they could have just brought in the Hex Girls or Simple Plan.

But they didn’t do that and I honestly wonder if the people who made this movie care about Scooby-Doo at all.

#5: The things that I actually liked.

Again, I liked that scene where they do that cute selfie thing, I thought was adorable and accurately showed their dynamic.

I also liked that Daphne was the one to point out what Shag and Scoob contribute to the team because I’m biased.

When they address that Shag and Scoob are they ones that make sure the gang is eating I like that, I thought it was very in character and made a lot of sense.

I like when Captain Caveman showed up for literally no reason and was voiced by Tracy Morgan. Simply because it was so dumb I had to laugh.

I like the gang’s group hugs because those always showcase how tall Shag is compared to everyone and they all deserve a hug.

Any of the lines Fred said because they were the majority of the actually funny jokes in the movie.

The scene where Shag, Scoob and Daph are split off and she keeps getting her spare Scooby Snacks stolen by Scooby. I just love that trio for obvious reasons and it was the only part of the movie where I felt happy.

At the end when Shaggy yells at the gang and tells them what to do because I just always like it when he does that, it always throws the rest of the gang off and it’s funny.

The scene where they unmask Dastardly and it’s Simon Cowell and then they unmask Cowell and it’s Dastardly again. Like the smartest joke the movie had.

The Hex Girls poster at the carnival because it tricked me into thinking we’d see them at some point.

I liked DynoMutt, I though his design was cool and he got the other half of the actually funny jokes.

When Blue Falcon does that phone gag and is all like, “Adventure is calling!!” And the scene is supposed to be exciting but then Shag immediately is like, “No thanks.” I thought that was in character and pretty funny before being taken back because conflicts are resolved instantly in this movie.

Conclusion:

When you’re passionate with something as underground as Scooby-Doo you find yourself getting very protective of the legacy it leaves behind.

Granted this franchise has always had some black marks on it’s record but that’s to be expected since it’s a 50 year-old series.

Scoob was going to bring Scooby-Doo back into the limelight after such a long time remaining on CN or Boomerang respectively. And was just so devoid of the passion that even MI had, it felt like more of a cash grab than anything else. And it bums me out because there are so many good things that we could have gotten from an animated theatrical release.

But instead we got an hour and forty-five minutes of nothing and that isn’t what Scooby deserves at all. I can only hope that someone will want to try again and this time, they’ll actually care.

(Feel free to share your own thoughts on the movie and maybe discuss point I made that you agree/disagree with.)

[wherethemusetakesme]

1-4, 11, 15 for the meme

Multi-Muse questions

1. Which of your muses to do relate to the most?

That’s... actually a really good question. While I’m very attached to almost all of them for various reasons, I’m not sure that many of them are characters who I specifically relate to, at least not fully.

I guess, in a sense, possibly Lilo? At least, in the sense of having been that one weird kid with odd interests, and not having had a lot of friends who understood me... but even then, there are still several areas where we’re nothing alike - she, like most of my muses, is still more outgoing than I ever have been! - so it’s still not a complete thing; but I think she’s possibly the closest.

At least if you don’t count my mun face claim, Huey, who I find Extremely Relatable™ but isn’t actually a muse xD

2. Which of your muses was an unexpected muse?

Taffyta, Zoey and Padparadscha were all kinda spur-of-the-moment muses when I picked them up! Most of my muses, even if their initial appeal to me was unexpected, I’ve thought through, maybe tried out a little in other places, before I picked them up; but those three were far more spontaneous and went through no such process. Vixey was too, even more so, when I started playing her - but that was on another site, and by the time I added her to my tumblr I was very comfortable with her already.

Taffyta was picked up when my girlfriend’s Vanellope blog was lamenting the lack of anyone writing for the other Sugar Rush kids; I spontaneously sent her a series of anonymous asks as if from Taffyta, then that spiralled off into making a blog for her.

Zoey, I grabbed equally spontaneously because we watched the 2D-animated Rudolph movie together, and I thought the amount of under-utilised potential in the character was absolutely criminal; I wanted to try and explore her as her own person, beyond just the love interest. (And the fact that my gf also played Rudolph on her multimuse played a part in convincing me, too!)

Then Paddie... I don’t even remember, other that it was only, like, the day after the SU Wanted Special Event dropped; and I scrambled around like mad to set up her blog because I hadn’t been planning to take on any other SU characters after Connie xD

3. Have any of your muses taught you anything in writing them? What?

I... can’t remember. I’m sure it has happened; I try to do due research when something necessary comes up, and I’m sure I’ve learned unexpected things from both that and from working around in my muses’ very different mindsets. But I genuinely can’t, offhand, think of any particular instances where I’ve learned something specific from them.

4. Which muse required the most research for?

Most of my research, I admit, comes down more to checking around various fandom wikis, or the source material itself, for obscure details that I missed the first time, or that I don’t quite remember! Other than that, I’ve definitely done some dinosaur research for Cera - including information on size and, most recently, diet -; research on the relevant area of Africa for Kiara; and, perhaps most unusually, for Angry I had to look into such an obscure topic as how ice was stored in a European setting before the invention of the freezer (and whether it even would have been during the time period of Tangled or not)!

Not counting the research done on fandom-specific topics... possibly Kiara? I definitely remember chasing around after facts to do with African seasons and specific details of various animals’ ways of life for her threads ^^

11. Do your muses share trends in AUs?

Um... to an extent. There’s no one AU that all my muses have, I tend to pick and choose which AU verses I give to which muses; but I will usually give any given AU verse that I want to play around in to at least two of my muses. Zootopia verses, for example, went to Kiara, Cera and, as of last week, Vixey; Star Wars verses for Angel and Mabel; Toon verses for Webby and Cera; and at least Cera and Kiara have dark-ending AU verses that spin off from their mains. So there are trends, but not ones that cover more than a handful of muses at a time.

15. Which muse is the most chill to write?

I always find Angel a pretty chill experience to write for, these days; probably because of how familiar a muse she is to me. She was the first character I ever RPed as, way back before I’d even heard of tumblr (over ten years ago now!), and as such she - or at least, my take on her - just flows easily without me having to think about it a whole lot. The fact that I haven’t watched her movie in SEVERAL YEARS and she still comes easy to me is testament to just how engrained she is on my writing xD

Otherwise? Vixey, probably. Writing all the little hesitations in her speech - the “oh, hm, gee”s that she sprinkles liberally about every time she talks - is just relaxing to me in an odd way, and the fact that she has somewhat less complexity as a character, compared to a lot of my other muses, mean that writing her just... flows sometimes, making it a pretty chill experience too ^^

[tyrannoninja]

“The Sultan of Finback Isle” Excerpt

The below is an excerpted chapter from my self-published novelette The Sultan of Finback Isle, which you can purchase in Kindle format on Amazon.com.

After slamming his palm on the start button, Abdullah Kalua lowered himself to his PWC’s dashboard, popping his bronze-brown knuckles over the handles. He hooted a lyric from his favorite Hawaiian victory song as the untethered watercraft flew off from the flank of the FBI boat, the latter disappearing as a gray-and-blue speck on the azure surface of the equatorial Pacific.

He grinned with pleasure and rocked his head about, cheering for the breeze that flowed through his wavy black mane. His destination may have lain twenty degrees south and twenty-five degrees east of his father’s home archipelago—as indicated on the dashboard’s coordinate panel—but it felt fantastic to return to the tropics after almost three decades. Balmy as Los Angeles had been, its Mediterranean climate was too dry and the California current too frigid for Abdullah’s tastes.

Monique lagged ten yards behind him. He could hear only the faintest hint of her PWC’s jetting out water.

“Got to speed up, babe!” Abdullah shouted. “You’re being too cautious again!”

She sped up a mere three yards closer to her husband. “We’re taking enough risk with this already!”

“C’mon, girl, that’s what makes it fun! Admit it, who wants to enter this dude’s house the ‘proper’ way now?”

“Well, you sure don’t!”

From the horizon ahead rose a sliver of green beneath a halo of clouds. It swelled into a mass of overgrown hills and ravines grooving down from a flat plateau, with a blinding white band of beach at the bottom. To the left, the beach gave way to rocks beneath a low black cliff.

Holding his hands over his eyes in imitation of a surveying explorer, Abdullah hummed out loud an iconic tune from a certain movie score that John Williams had composed in the early 1990’s. “There it is! Magellan’s Finback Isle! Da-dun, da-da-dun, da-da-dun bong, bong, bong—”

Monique roared out an annoyed groan. “You sure chose the corniest theme for the moment!”

“What else would you have chosen for this particular island? How about the one from Jurassic World? Bong, da-dun, da-dun, la-la, la-la…”

He continued to “sing” out tracks from both films’ soundtracks until the splashing of his wife’s accelerating watercraft drowned out his voice. With a vengeful snicker from Monique, the starboard of her PWC’s bow thrust into the portside of Abdullah’s stern with a banging bump. One of his hands slipped off a handle over the jolt.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! These are government property, remember? Our taxes pay for their repairs!”

Monique pointed ahead with widened, horrified eyes. “Then you really should—watch out!”

The hull of Abdullah’s PWC grazed over the slanted face of a black rocky outcropping. The craft soared high into the air until its bow smashed into the cliff’s upper lip. Flung off his mount’s seat, Abdullah collided face-first onto the coarse trunk of a stout and palm-like giant cycad. The fronds of tree-ferns, club mosses, and pandanus trees clawed him as he bounced all the way down to the mossy floor.

A flock of scarlet honeycreeper birds fluttered in panic beneath the treetops. One screeched before disappearing in a burst of red feathers when a yellow-and-black blur intercepted it in one leap. Abdullah blinked thrice and squinted up from where he lay without spotting the creature again. He wouldn’t know for sure, but there weren’t supposed to be any wild cats on Finback Isle. Right?

Abdullah gave his arms and legs a shake to wake them back up. He winced from the strain of a hundred sores as he raised his torso up to his knees. All those scratches and cuts had ruined the tattoos on his shoulders and pectorals, erasing slices of the Arabic calligraphy that flowed parallel to the swirling Hawaiian lines. The kapa designs on his swim briefs had taken on almost as much damage.

He pounded a fist on the spongy earth. “Allah damn you all. These’ll cost over half a grand for my old uncle to fix. You hear that, local plant life? Half a goddamned grand!”

His voice bounced between the trees until it subsided under the rhythmic buzzing and whining of insects interspersed with the squawks of Polynesian bird life. One thing he did not hear was even the faintest note of his wife’s PWC. Had he fallen so deep into the island’s jungle, far away from shore? Or had the watercraft turned off? Abdullah prayed that Monique had switched it off herself rather than getting into an accident like his own.

Not that she’d dare get herself into an accident like this. The woman had always been too cautious.

Ferns rustled over the crackling patter of paw-like feet over the dead leaves of the forest floor. From the shadows within the undergrowth scintillated a pair of bright green, cat-like eyes. Below them glistened a maw of elongated canines drenched wet with saliva.

Abdullah dug his fingers into the moss beneath him and froze still, the sweat chilling to ice on his brow. There weren’t supposed to be any cats on this island. Much less big cats, like leopards or jaguars. Monique had promised him so, and she wouldn’t misinform her man like that. Would she?

It did not stride to him on the underslung legs of a cat, or any other mammalian creature. Instead, it crawled forth on legs bent outward like those of a crocodile. Its hide, golden orange with black mottling, sparkled with a hairless and pebble-wrinkled texture from the dapple of sunlight overhead. As the animal encircled him, swaying its tapered tail, it brushed his skin with the sniffing nostrils on its long square-chinned muzzle.

This was no cat. This was a lizard with the fangs of a cat, and possibly a dog’s sense of smell. Abdullah had seen something like this in a natural history museum when and he Monique first dated. He forgot its complicated name, but the sign had identified it as living in the Permian period tens of millions of years before the earliest dinosaurs roamed the earth. And it was almost certainly a carnivore that ate—

With a cry partway between a reptilian hiss and a cougar’s shrill roar, the creature launched itself onto Abdullah’s breast. He seized its neck with his left hand, his arm muscles buckling in their struggle to keep the fanged jaws away from his own jugular. Extending his right arm down to his tactical knife, he wriggled his fingers to pull it out by the hilt until the beast punctured his biceps with its front talons.

He pounded against the monster’s flanks with his knees. It did not even flinch once. Its jaws snapped an inch closer to Abdullah’s face with each heartbeat as the strength drained from his limbs. If he had no way of getting this savage prehistoric holdover off him, then he might as well have his mission doomed before it even began. Chief Fawal and his whole force would get off scot free, and everyone they ever wronged­—not least of whom was his Monique’s own younger brother, as well as the boy’s husband—would rest in heaven unavenged.

With a cracking bang, followed by a spurt of blood and brains, the leopardine lizard rolled off Abdullah to lay limp on the earth. There stood over it the ebon silhouette of a tall svelte woman with a thick crown of Afro hair, steam still slithering out from her Glock’s barrel like a serpent.

Abdullah giggled, half nervous and half thankful. “That’s my girl! I must say, though, that was a risky shot. If you missed, you could’ve killed me.”

Monique lent her hand out to her husband with a smirk. “And you said I was too cautious.”

“I never said you always would be.”

He straightened his back and brushed specks of dirt and blood off his body. “So, what happened to you in the meantime? You found a safe landing place?”

After slipping her pistol back in its holster on the thong of her leopard-print bikini, Monique unsheathed a machete from her opposite hip. “A little to the north, near some old ruins on the beach. Stay close and keep your eyes on the foliage at all times.”

She crouched beside the dead creature’s tail and hacked it off in a double chop.

“What is that thing, anyway?” Abdullah asked. “Some kind of extinct lizard?”

“Don’t you remember seeing these at the museum on our first date? It’s a gorgonopsid. They’re more related to us than to lizards.”

“Right, they’re mammal-like reptiles, from before the dinosaurs.”

Monique hauled the gorgonopsid’s tail onto her shoulder. “They’re not reptiles, either. They’re synapsids, as are all mammals.”

Abdullah shrugged. “Whatever. They should have died out alongside their mainland cousins two hundred and fifty million years ago. Wait, I did get that number right, didn’t I?”

“Almost. Give or take an extra million years or so. Let’s get going, we don’t want another hungry Paleozoic relic overhearing us in this jungle.”

[randomoranges]

these blurbs are recycled. back in 2015, i had written these for another teacher au verse for another fandom. i never got around to posting them for the other fandom [i don’t think so. if anything they’re on my old LJ somewhere, but anyways.] i decided to re-read them and update them a little. these are based on true events and some wishful thinking. 

the wishful thinking part is that i really would like to have an Edward lamao. 

Teaching AU

Planning

Étienne had no idea what it was that had possessed him, when he agreed to this contract. Sure, he had a degree that said he could teach, yes, he actually did want to work, but he had no idea how to organise his lessons and the curriculum only helped him so much. He could do anything he wanted and the idea was overwhelming to say the least. That was the way art was – basically, he could have the kids do whatever project he so desired, so long as they ended up learning whatever it was the Progressions of Learning said. It didn’t matter how it was the students learned about primary colours, so long as they did. Étienne would have preferred some guidance – some left over projects from the year before to at least get him started and guided.

 He was still a little shell-shocked. This was his first contract, the staff was nice, but the school was enormous and he felt as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. It didn’t help that he was the only art teacher in the building and therefore had no other art colleagues on hand, (why had he agreed, why?) He would have liked to been able to exchange ideas with someone else – someone who knew the program and had done this for a few years – who knew the school.

 Étienne sighed and tried to calm down his racing heart. He hated feeling like an incompetent. He could come up with projects easily, but – would the students enjoy them? Would they be able to do them? Would they breeze through the project in thirty minutes instead of the four periods he had planned? And then there was the grading – the groups – so many groups, so many projects and thus, so much grading. How did one manage it all? How did teachers not sign their souls over when they started?

 There were high hopes riding on him and he didn’t want to disappoint.

 If he was honest with himself, Étienne would admit that he had spent the past two weeks fretting during sleepless nights over this job and that so far, it was more stress than fun. He hated this. He missed his free time. He missed going home and doing something for himself. Something fun. He was always bone tired when he got home and there was always something work related to do; e-mails, grading, planning, preparing, thinking – thinking – thinking. Even when he tried to sleep, his brain would kick into gear and play over the days lessons and over think the upcoming ones. There was no break. Ever.

 But he wasn’t one who gave up.

 He would show them, damn it. He would show the man who hired him that he had made the right choice.

 Even if it meant more sleepless nights and more after hours at school trying to keep his head above water.

 Étienne sighed and opened up another tab on his computer, looking for some inspiration. At least the school was quiet now.

 Printer

Edward didn’t know why, but somehow or other, he had decided that this year, he would make the new science exam, since apparently, the one the school had used last year was garbage and he had So Many Great Ideas.

 Even though he had three other colleagues who equally taught fifth grade science, he had volunteered to do it, to show that he was willing to be part of the team, help out, and get involved. Or something equally wonderful and daft.

 That was fine, except now he found himself alone, in the teacher’s room, on a Friday night, two hours after classes had let out, trying to coax life into the printer.

 He wanted to go home.

 These exams needed to be printed now, so that they could be looked over on Monday and then distributed by Tuesday. Therefore, now was not the time for the printer to stop working, thank you very much.

 Edward would have gone to a different printer, but this was the only decent photocopier that could staple and hole punch the documents as well. He would have asked another teacher, but it was past six and no one was left in the school. Well, no one he knew of. No one in their right mind, really.

 He was tired, hungry, on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of this stupid printer, stressed, anxious and overworked. He had piles of marking to do this weekend and he had lessons to plan. To top it all off, today had been a day six and he hated those. (It was the one day in his schedule where he didn’t have a specialist and of course it fell on a Friday, when the kids were more excitable. He’d tried to make his afternoon easier by putting on a movie, but that had been met with only partial success.)

 It was a lot. It was too much. Why had he ever agreed to any of this? Why did anyone ever agree to this? And most importantly, how could anyone ever even think that teachers’ had it easy? This was anything but. Sure, he loved his students, would do anything for them, but.

 He let out a frustrated cry and slammed his hand on the printer. There was no way the paper was still jammed or that the ink cartridge was low. He tried rebooting the machine, but he got the same error message as before.

 He was going to give up.

 He had let everyone down.

 He knew he shouldn’t have gotten so involved; he should have kept his mouth shut.

 He should have minded his own business.

 He should have – he let out a mangled sob and then heard a soft cough from the door.

 Edward spun around quickly and wiped his eyes. He wasn’t alone anymore.

 He squinted at the door and saw the new art teacher – Étienne. What was he doing here? At this time? Why wasn’t he home?  

 “Late night?” He asked, all smiles and casualness, but Edward had a feeling that Étienne was just hiding his own exhaustion behind his friendly smile.

 “No – I mean – yes, I mean...” He looked at the printer and wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

 “Printer problems?”

 “Yes... and I was almost done. Well, for the day. Not like we’re ever done.”

 Étienne laughed and stepped inside the dimly lit office. There had been daylight before, but he hadn’t bothered turning the lights earlier, too absorbed in his work.

 “Mind if I take a look?”

 “Go ahead. It can’t get any worse than this. Although, if you fix it, I might just want to kiss you.” He joked and then realised how that sounded. He was about to apologise for the comment, but Étienne offered him a smile and a soft laugh instead. Edward stepped aside and let Étienne have a look. Étienne turned on the lights and Edward squinted at the sudden bright lights.

 Étienne looked at the printer and hummed in concentration. He opened the tray, checked for a paper jam, and Edward wanted to tell him that he had done all of that already, but, well, Étienne could have the pleasure of finding that out for himself.

 It took Étienne a little over an hour, during which they exchanged polite conversation. Edward tried to print his document, when it seemed that it would work, but every time, without fault, the printer stuttered or printed out blanks, much to both of their discouragement.  

 Finally, after four threats of setting the damned thing on fire, three litanies of curses and one break to cool off, the photocopier finally spat out Edward’s document.

 Edward first kissed the stack of freshly printed-paper and then launched himself into Étienne’s arms.

 Art Room

Edward looked at the small mountain of exams he still had to grade and groaned. He hated the end of term for many different reasons and this was definitively one of them.

 He had more grading than he cared to do and the report cards needed to be filled in afterwards as if he didn’t have enough to do already.

 It was a good thing he was on top of his grading.

 He could only imagine what it would be like if he wasn’t.

 Actually, he didn’t want to imagine.

 At least he only had twenty-eight students to deal with. He had no idea how Étienne managed. He’d drown. He’d never be ahead. There was no way. Sometimes, he looked at Étienne correct projects and he wondered how he did it – how he decided what was full marks and what deserved less. Étienne had explained it to him once; had shown him his very detailed rubric, but even then.

 Edward threw his red pen down and fished out his cell phone. He needed a break. He wanted to go home and forget about all of this. He wanted to pretend he was a regular man with a regular 8 to 4 job that didn’t follow him home. He wanted to go on a date with his boyfriend and not pass out on the sofa by nine-thirty like some ancient dinosaur man.

 He opened up his conversation with Étienne, typing out a new message quickly.

 “Are you almost done?” He typed out. Maybe, if Étienne was nearly done, he could use it as an excuse to head home.

 The reply came a few seconds later, “Not even close. You?”

 Edward sighed; so much for an earlier night. “Likewise. I need a break. Mind if I pop by yours for a bit?”

 “God, please. I need a distraction something fierce.”

 Edward put down his phone and stretched luxuriously, letting out a groan. His neck was stiff and his shoulders were sore, but standing up felt good.

 Étienne’s art room was two floors below his own classroom and they had made the art room their own little meeting point when they wanted to sit together away from everyone and everything else. The art room’s doors had no windows, there was a comfortable plush couch in the back of it, and there weren’t any other classrooms beyond it. Therefore, it was the perfect place for some quiet time together.

 Edward made his way towards the other room and took a moment to listen to the quiet of the building. There was something soothing and a little eerie about a quiet school in the dead of the night. He thought it was calming. It was different from the regular hustle and bustle of the day, with the students running down the stairs after class, before class, during class being their rowdy selves. Now, he could hear himself think and breathe.

 “Fancy meeting you here.” Étienne greeted him at the door with a pleased little smile.

 Edward couldn’t stop himself from grinning. He liked the fact that he could meet up with his boyfriend like this. He had friends who wondered how it was they ever had anything to talk about when they worked at the same place. It worked for them. They made it work. If anything, it meant that Étienne understood his work reality and vice versa. They both knew how demanding it was to teach and so, they never fought over the other “being lazy and not having done a chore” or something. Edward liked that they had the morning and evening commute together, even if they didn’t say anything. Just being together and sharing the same space was enough.

 They exchanged tired, fond smiles and Edward closed the door behind him, before pulling Étienne close for a hug, leaning back against the door.

 “God, you look how I feel.” He told Étienne.

 Étienne laughed and gave him a one over. “I can say the same about you, Murphy, and yet you’re still a sight for sore eyes.”

 “Kind as always, Maisonneuve.”

 “Only for you.” Étienne said, soft, and closed the distance between them, cupping Edward’s cheeks with his hands to press a kiss to the corner of Edward’s mouth.

 “No. Kiss me proper, damn it. I need something to survive this hell night.” Edward pouted.

 Étienne’s laugh was more of a rasp, but he was never one to refuse Edward a kiss. He pulled him closer and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, looking into those eyes he loved so much, before he kissed him properly this time. Edward sighed against him, held him closer and chased another kiss when Étienne made to pull back.

 This was by far the greatest perk of working with his boyfriend. It wasn’t as if they used every chance they got to make-out, but it was nice to know that they could. That when Étienne needed a hug they could sneak one in behind closed doors and that when they were both doing their usual unpaid overtime, they could indulge in a little moment or two to make the night a little easier.

 After Hours

Parent-teacher interviews were finally over and the desks and chairs had been put away. Tomorrow was a PED day, but at least it meant a reprieve from the kids, even if they still needed to be in at the same time and then have to sit through meetings that could always be summed up in an e-mail but never were.

 Even though Étienne was exhausted and he wanted nothing more but curl up in bed and sleep until spring, there was a get together in the staff room and he could go for a little socialising. It wasn’t as if he had time to see his friends anymore anyways.

 Being the new teacher, he hadn’t really gotten the chance to make new friends, but Edward was there and so he figured he could hang out with him. If anything, there was free booze from the looks of it and that in itself would make this a little more interesting.

 Luckily, being the art teacher meant that even if he didn’t really know the other teachers, they knew of him and that he existed in the school. They all exchanged polite hellos and congratulated themselves on surviving the night, before toasting to that.

 Étienne found Edward by the back of the room, sitting on one of the couches. He seemed to be engrossed in a conversation with the other fifth grade teachers and Étienne figured he might as well join them, even if just to sit somewhere.

 “Excellent, I thought you had left.” Edward said with a bright grin and Étienne thought that maybe this wasn’t Edward’s first drink, judging by the pink of his cheeks.

 “Nah, you’re my ride home, or did you forget?” He joked. Honestly, the rides home and to school were a life saver. He needed to get Edward a proper Christmas thank you gift just for that. And also because Edward had offered him friendship when it seemed as though he would be alone in this new school and drown in his own feelings.

 They exchanged a few anecdotes from the night, until one of the gym teachers showed up with a special bottle of whiskey and a stack of mismatched teacups.

 “Looks like things are going to get interesting!” Edward grinned at him. Étienne could only nod as he was handed a cup.

 The janitor came by to kick them out around eleven, when he had to arm the school. They didn’t mind, really, since they did want to head home and they did have to show up to school the following day, even if the idea of calling in sick and sleeping in seemed oh so alluring.

 Étienne’s head was spinning a little and he wasn’t sure if it had to do with the extra cup of whiskey or the fact that Edward had been pressed close to his side, all evening long, with their legs touching and shoulders bumping into each other. However, for once in his life, he was happy to have the cold November air blast him in the face when they stepped out.

 If anything, it had been an excellent way to end the evening and he had connected with a few other teachers. Especially Edward. Edward was fast turning into a potentially Real Friend. Friend he could meet up with outside of school type.

 “You ready to head home?” Edward asked, bundling up in his scarf and coat. Étienne liked the rosy tinge to his cheeks and wondered if it was the cold, the booze, or a blush. For half a second Étienne had a vision of going to home to someone – of going back home with Edward and he mourned the fact that he wasn’t – that there was no one home waiting for him and to kiss him goodnight.

 “Yeah; I’m beat. You?”

 “I’m okay. I guess I’ll pick you up tomorrow? Around 7h30?” At least he could sleep in an extra thirty minutes.

 “Sure looks like it. Wanna grab lunch during break?” He threw out, feeling bold. They’d never done lunch before. They kept it at the lifts, which were already nice, even if sometimes they were quiet. Edward seemed surprised, but recovered quickly. His cheeks taking on an interesting shade of pink that Étienne wasn’t sure if it had to do with the cold, the booze, or something else.

 “Sounds like a plan.” He finally said and nodded to himself.

 Étienne grinned feeling light-headed and giddy.

 FIN

[ladyhistorypod]

Episode 18: Three’s Company, Four’s Divine

Sources

Ishtar

Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus: Mesopotamia Timeline

Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus: Inanna/Ishtar

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: Inanna and Enki

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: Inana's Descent to the Netherworld

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative: Composite Text of Akkadian Descent of Ištar

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

CON­STRUCT­ING THE IM­AGE OF ASSINNU BY MARTTI NISSINEN SAANA SVÄRD

Further Learning: Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: Epic of Gilgamesh, Epic of Gilgamesh: Standard Babylonian Version

Nüwa

Oxford Reference

Mythopedia

Google Arts & Culture

Further Learning: Remarks by Ambassador Cheng Jingye

Danu & Tuatha Dé Danann

The Goddess Danu (YouTube)

Danu - Irish Goddess (YouTube)

Ancient History of Ireland, Tuatha De Danaan, Scythians, and Phoenicians (YouTube)

Celtic Mythology - An Introduction to the Tuatha De Danann (YouTube)

Further learning: House Shadow Drake - Don and Dana, Celtic Myth and Legend, Poetry and Romance, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland, Life Understood from a Scientific and Religious Point of View, The History of Ireland

Persephone

Hesiod’s Theogony

Homer’s Hymn to Demeter

Madeline Miller

Further Learning: Lore Olympus (webcomic), Punderworld (webcomic)

Attributions: A Ghrà by Damiano Baldon

Click below for a transcript of this episode!

Haley: Which goddess is three point three seven feet tall? Kelsie: Three point three seven? Haley: Yes. Alana: Do– do you want us to say? Do you want to say? Lexi: These jokes are just a quiz for Kelsie. Haley: I have to have multiple jokes? I'm not ready. Alana: I have one it’s fine. Haley: Okay well it's Demeter. Alana: And you know you should also you know in in in COVID times, in COVID times you should be standing Demeters apart. Lexi: Oh. My. Lord Jesus. Oh my god. I should say oh my lord Ashera [Ash-er-a]. Kelsie: There you go. Alana: Oh, that's very funny. Haley: I love when Alana’s– Alana: Ashera [Ash-ay-ra], actually please. Lexi: Yeah, right. I knew as soon as I said it I said it wrong. Haley: Every couple of episodes Alana will… like Lexi and I will say something, and Alana will be like “oh that's like really funny” in this tone and like… I’m always funny. Don’t be surprised. I don't need this from you. Kelsie: Actually Haley, you're quite hilarious. Haley: Thank you. Lexi: Wait, but how does that tie into social media? Haley: I didn't get to the question yet. The question is because for… well my dad doesn't listen to my podcast, but for my dad is the worst person to get Christmas or birthday presents and his birthday is January 2, so like hop skip and a jump right after Christmas. But he loves board games, and his favorite board game is Codenames, so I have printed out over two hundred photos– like family photos– of the like stupidest photos in the world. And I'm laminating everything so it could be his own Codenames pictures, replacing all of it. Kelsie: That’s good. Haley: And my question is, is there a photo from your childhood where you're like what am I doing but you have that second jolt of like no this actually makes complete sense when you're realizing like what you're doing in the photo? For me it was crouching down in like the seventh grade next to a kangaroo, waking up a kangaroo, and then immediately after getting punched. I also had bangs but it was Australia and humidity or whatever climate that just didn't work with my curly hair. Lexi: So that was a set up so I could say that the picture of me digging up a dinosaur… Which, famously on this podcast I get mad when people think archaeologists dig up dinosaurs. Kelsie: As you should. Lexi: But yes, there is a picture of me, five years old, digging up a dinosaur. Not a real one. I don't think they’d let four year olds do that. Haley: But the best part is the goggles! Lexi: I have goggles on to protect me from the dirt. Kelsie: That’s important. You don’t want to get schmutz in your eyes. Lexi: But I’ve never been on a dig where I wore goggles. Kelsie: Maybe you should. Maybe you should wear goggles next season. Lexi: You know how much acne I’d get around my face if I wore goggles in the heat of Israel? Alana: Yeah, right? Kelsie: Who cares? Alana: No, go to Ireland! [INTRO MUSIC] Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly lady you missed in history class. We're back recording new episodes, so here is Lexi. Lexi, what would you be the goddess of? Lexi: Cross stitching and tricycles. Alana: Do you want to elaborate or just leave it at that? Lexi: Well right now I am cross stitching and it's what I do with my hands when I'm talking because I have mental problems and the only way I can focus on something is to do something else mindless. And the tricycle is because I have an adult tricycle and an anecdote my dad took that tries to go into the bike repair shop to get the brake fixed and he was too embarrassed to say it was his daughter’s so he said his wife bought it for his mother in law. Alana: And I really like that question so I'm also gonna ask Haley. Haley, what would you be the goddess of? Haley: I think I would be the goddess of eggs, just because I would control them and like not take it in because like I don't wanna be the goddess of something like I destroy, so like… Alana: For the irony. Haley: The irony. Eggs. Alana: And it's our third ever guest, Kelsie! Kelsie, tell the listeners a skosh about yourself. Kelsie: Hi everybody I'm Kelsie Ehalt. I am a Master’s student at Brandeis right now and I'm going to go and list the department I'm in. It's just a lot of words, so get ready. But I'm in the joint program in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, those are two different departments, but they both have ‘ands’ which makes things confusing. But basically I study ancient history via texts right now. I do archaeology as well but right now since digging’s not really a thing because we shouldn’t travel because of the pandemic, I'm really focusing on languages for my Masters. And then I also incorporate the gender studies side of things into the equation, so I'm just looking at how gender functions in the ancient world and thinking about it from a not straight white man perspective, basically, because that's basically all that’s been published. And there’s some better scholarship coming out now, but there's still some work to be done so I'm doing what I can there. Alana: We do love all of that. And I'm Alana and I tried to start an all goddess religion when I was like eight. (Haley laughing) Alana: Me and my friend Kay who is one of my like oldest friends in the whole world, they're gonna get a shout out a little bit later as well because they sort of helped me in my research. We like tried to start up polytheistic all goddess religion when we were like eight. We like had a list of goddesses that we wanted to name and we like created little rituals. A great time to be had. Kelsie: Everyone should have just a religion creation phase I think. Alana: Absolutely. We called it Selenism because the main goddess was Selene. Haley is shaking her head at me and it's making me feel… ways. Haley: I love it but also like… Lexi: I feel like I was like writing fan fiction before I knew it was fan fiction, while you simultaneously were making a religion. Haley: Like I'm not surprised that either of this happened. Not surprised at all. Alana: It's a true story, it's a fun story. We kept a lot of ash in bottles… related to this religion that we were making up. Kelsie: Where did you get ash from when you were like… Haley: Yeah, that’s the… Alana: I don't think we still have it, but like we had it for a while. Lexi: No no no, where did you acquire it? Kelsie: What were you burning? Alana: Oh. From like. I don't remember. Haley: No that's a body. Alana: I think we just like burned paper or something and collected the ash. Kelsie: Oh, that’s not exciting. Alana: We played with a lot of fire when I was… Kay and I… we played with a lot of fire. Haley: Yeah! Yes! Yes. Lexi: I don’t know what to say. Haley: No, playing with fire… Wait, were you a Girl Scout too? Alana: No, I was a Daisy for half an hour and then they wanted me to do all this like stupid weird shit like say my own name in a group of people so that was a no no for baby Alana. Alana said no no to being a Daisy. Kelsie: Alright so I'm going to talk about my girl Ishtar today. So Ishtar is the Akkadian name for the goddess of love and war but the Sumerian version of her name is Inanna so I might switch back and forth between Ishtar and Inanna but know that by the later period they're the same person. There's some debate about whether Ishtar was a separate goddess who became then sort of like coagulated in with this earlier Inanna, or if Ishtar is just like a direct connection to Inanna, there's a debate about this, it’s not quite clear. So I’ll probably refer to her as Ishtar. If I mess up and instead of Inanna it’s because I work with the later period stuff so I don't really see Inanna too much. But anyway so Ishtar, Inanna is the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. And she's depicted in all kinds of different texts, but obviously we have the most interesting sort of goddess information about her from the mythological texts, but she also shows up in legal texts because they're just invoking her to you know validate decisions, things like that. And people in this period, well in Mesopotamia across all periods of history, have personal gods so she’s invoked in sort of just letters too if they're just like “hey bud I'm sending you this thing, you know, good luck, thanks Ishtar or Inanna.” like whatever, she's brought up a lot. But for today I'm gonna focus on a few of the mythological texts because I think that's where we get the most interesting information about who she is as a character in the Mesopotamian religion. So the biggest story, or the story where she has the biggest role, is– the title’s translated, there's not really a title, they don't always title these tablets. But it's translated as the Descent of Inanna or Ishtar into the Netherworld. So I'm gonna give you a little summary of what goes on in that story which is… it's a fun one. I actually– this is one of the first things I– the actual– first actual texts I worked on translating in Akkadian, not just working out of the exercise the book but actually working with text. So I'm gonna tell you the Sumerian version a slightly longer, and there are more details, so I'm gonna tell you that version, and then I can tell you how the later Akkadian versions differ later. So here, Inanna–because this is Sumerian– she's deciding to go down to the netherworld. It's kind of conceived as like a cavern type thing underground so I guess I should go over Mesopotamian cosmogony first so we have Earth here which is where you know humans and mortals lived, and above that is the heavens, which is pretty standard for what modern Abrahamic traditions follow as well. But then beneath the Earth, we have the netherworld or underworld. In Sumerian it’s kur, in Akkadian it's kurnigi… I'll just call it the netherworld. And then between the netherworld and the Earth we have the Apsu, which is sort of this underground water where things happened too, and that's where Enki lives. And that's also– that plays a role in the creation story of Enuma Elish where Tiamat, one of the primordial goddesses who's the goddess of fresh water...? Either freshwater or saltwater I’m forgetting. She mixes with Apsu which is either freshwater or saltwater, whichever one she's not, and they create the other gods from there. So the Apsu is really important because it's sort of the origin point of all of the gods within Mesopotamian… the Mesopotamian pantheon. It's also where Enki lives, and he's one of the head gods too and we'll talk about him some more in the story because he plays a role. Okay so in the Descent of Inanna… so she's going down to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, who is the goddess of the underworld. I'm forgetting what her name is in Sumerian, it might be still Ereshkigal. But she’s going down to visit Ereshkigal because her husband– Ereshkigal’s husband has died, so Inanna wants to go to his funeral. And before she goes down, she tells her assistant– it's translated as minister in the versions that I looked at– her minister whose name is Ninshubur– I'm not sure about the length of the vowels there, but Ninshubur is Inanna’s like assistant, I'm imagining like a PA. And so Inanna is like “okay Ninshubur, like I'm going down, it's kind of dangerous to go, people don't really go down to the netherworld, so if I'm not back in three days go ask these gods for help.” and she gives a list of gods. First is Enlil, and then Urim, Nanna, and Enki. That's important later because she gives a list of four and it's important that she gives a list of four because the first three don't help her, but we'll get to that in a minute. So Ninshubur is like “okay, great, have a good visit to the netherworld,” and off Inanna goes. So Inanna goes down, she’s stopped by the gatekeeper… and the gatekeeper says “hold up, what are you doing here and why are you here?” And so Inanna says “I'm visiting my sister because her husband died and I want to go to the funeral” and he's like “okay let me go ask her.” So he goes and asks Ereshkigal if it’s okay and Ereshkigal is concerned because before Inanna went down, she got these powers. And the powers are manifest in physical objects. So she gets a ring that has some sort of special power, and this lapis lazuli necklace that has a power, and there are seven other– seven total things, so five other things that have powers. And so Ereshkigal knows that Inanna brought these and she's concerned about them because there's a sort of not trusting dynamic between them even though they are sisters. So Inanna’s like okay you can let her in but close all seven gates and only open one at a time to let her in, and each gate take one of her things. So she goes through it's the same sort of structure throughout, in the Sumerian. And she goes to one gate, they take her ring. She goes to the second gate, they take her hat or whatever. And it goes on for seven gates. And then she gets to the last gate, they let her in, and basically it was a trap. Speaker 0: They… it's kind of confusing. The Sumerian is not really clear on what exactly happens. But I've sent Alana the link to the translation that I looked at, and so you can read it too if you want to see– Alana: That will be in our show notes at ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. Kelsie: Yeah. So I used the version that the… the Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature version which is trans– it's sort of a… It's a compilation of some different translations but it's a pretty standard not too fluffy interpretive translation, so I thought it was pretty good. But basically… so she gets the last gate and then they start yelling at Inanna and then she turns into a corpse and they put her on a hook. I'm not exactly sure what the process of these things are, but I’m imagining they're yelling at her and she just sort of like desicates and like dries up and they like put her on a hook. The motivation isn't super clear, I think, and some of the tablet is broken, so there… we might be missing some of the context, of course. And you know, of course, something important happens in a break, that's always the case, it’s never something boring. So maybe there’s some sort of other story, and maybe it's orally transmitted, detailing the drama between Ereshkigal and Inanna. Maybe there's a more specific reason why Ereshkigal does not trust Inanna and therefore wants to take her powers and then trick her to stay in the netherworld. Anyway, so Inanna's dried up, on a hook, and then three days passed and so Ninshubur, you know, being the loyal personal assistant, realizes three days have passed and Inanna’s not back, so she's like “oh shit, I better go get help.” So she goes to the first person that Inanna told her to ask for help from, Enlil. Enlil says “no, I’m not helping.” And then Ninshubur goes to Urim, Urim says “no I'm not helping.” And then Ninshubur goes to Nanna, and Nanna says “no, I’m not helping.” And finally she goes to Enki, who in some versions of myths is Inanna’s father. And in this version he… the wording is that he is her father, but we have to be careful with the wording about like familial relations in Near Eastern text because sometimes they’re just using them to describe power dynamics, not actual biological relations. So even though Enki here is you know referring to Inanna as his daughter, it might just be a power dynamic thing rather than a biological relation. That's not super clear, but in other versions of the story he’s also depicted as her father so I think that's fair enough to go for the narrative. But anyway, he’s like “okay fine I'll help, what is Inanna doing?” And so Ninshubur explains that she went down to the netherworld and is stuck. So Enki's like “okay I have a plan.” So he makes these two figures and these are gonna come up later because these figures are what I'm doing my thesis on. He takes dirt from his fingernail and he makes a kurgarru and in the Sumerian it’s galutera. In later Akkadian is just galu. But these two figures– and I’ll explain a little bit more later when I talk about what I'm doing for my thesis– there are some interesting gender performance things going on with these figures. But right now I’ll just leave them as helpers that Enki makes from dirt from under his fingernail. And he gives one of them a plant and he gives one of them water, and he’s like “okay, go down to the netherworld, and give… you're gonna see a corpse, and it's gonna be confusing, but that corpse is your queen.” So I love that saying, because he's like “you’re gonna see this dead body” so he knows what happened already, which I don't understand how that happened. But he's like “you're gonna see this corpse, give her the water, give her the food, and you'll be okay.” They go down, they give Inanna the water and the plant, and she– I assume like somehow revives. And I’m imagining like a sponge, like they put the water on her and like I said before, like I’m imagining like the yelling like desiccated her, so there was sort of like… like soaking up the water. And so okay… she's like “okay I'm fine now.” So they start to leave, and these two demons stop them, the group of three who are leaving, so there’s five of them now. And they say “well, no one ever leaves the netherworld, so you need to send someone to replace you.” And she's like “okay, who do you want” and they're like “we want your assistant” and she's like “no she's too loyal” and then they're like “we want your manicurist” and she's like “no she's too good” and then they're like “what about your husband” and Inanna’s like “okay sure, I guess.” There's some other stories about her husband Demuzi, that it was an arranged marriage too so Inanna is like not too keen on her husband. But so anyway, so the demons go to take Demuzi, and he's like “oh no, I don't want to go to the netherworld.” So he talks to his brother Utu, who lives in the heavens, and he's like “Utu, turn my limbs into snakes so I can escape the demons” and Utu is like “okay, that sounds like a good idea.” And so he turns his limbs into snakes, and he escapes the demons. And then the last part of the story is really fragmented, so I have no idea what's going on, but apparently Demuzi escapes, and then some other things happen, and then Inanna talks to a fly…  like a bug, a fly, who says “I know where your husband is, we can go find him.” And then apparently the fly helps her– it's broken so it's hard to know and then the story ends somewhere there. But that's the short, sort of humorous version of the Sumerian version of the descent of Ishtar, or Inanna, rather. And then the Akkadian version is a lot shorter, it leaves out a lot of the details of… it doesn't have the story afterward, after they leave the netherworld and the demons are trying to take someone back to replace Inanna, the Akkadian version doesn't have that. One of the notable things but the Akkadian version, I think, and this sort of links into my master's thesis, which I’ll get to in a second, is that when Ishtar, in this case since we're talking about the Akkadian, is stuck in the netherworld, there's a whole series of lines repeated twice or three times where it's like all of the animals and humans aren't having sex anymore. And things are bad. And so that's how they know that something's wrong with Ishtar, instead of the assistant sending people down to help, other people realize that something's wrong, which I think is interesting. And then, you know, then she gets back and it's okay. But yeah. So, to talk about my thesis a little bit. So I'm focusing on a couple different figures in the cult of Ishtar, the main ones I'm focusing on is the assinnu. The assinnu is the syllabic spelling of it in Akkadianin but there's also a logogram which in Sumerian is sagg or sag. That one you see sometimes the other one is urmunis which is literally man-woman. Haley: Fun fact, sag in Farsi is dog. Kelsie: Oh, really? Haley: Yeah. Kelsie: In Sumerian it’s head or like top. Haley: Oh that's fun. I was ready for you to be like wolf. Kelsie: No, it's the same as the Arabic it's kelb, kelbum in Akkadian. Anyway, so I think there's definitely something going on interesting gender-wise with these figures, and so actually I first came up with this topic because I was reading the descent of Ishtar in Akkadian, not the Sumerian version. But my first semester of Akkadian, and my professor was a PhD student and we got to a part where– the part where in the Akkadian version, Ea instead of Enki makes an assinnu. And it's the word assinnu in the Akkadian version, but it’s kurgarru and galla in the Sumerian version, but these are all kind of related. I'm throwing words out, I’ll explain the difference– and also the difference isn't super clear, so if you’re confused between them, everyone is. There's not a clear distinction between these roles that we found in the textual evidence so far. But I was like “okay what's an assinnu” because I never heard that word before, that's not a common word in Akkadian and he’s like “oh, it's like a third gender person” and like that raised red flags in my gender studies brain, I'm like okay like whenever you categorize something as third gender without any other discussion there's something interesting going on there. So I started reading some more about what people had written about the assinnu and it turned out to be pretty gross because as we all know being archaeology students and students of the ancient world, it's all white straight man… cis straight men writing about basically everything and so that's the case with gender as well, unfortunately. And so in all these different translations of texts, the assinnu are translated from everything as like cultic prostitute, to eunuch, to impersonator– all these gross words that I think… one, just really limit the conversation that you could have about gender in these figures because you're placing so many modern assumptions on them just with the single word that you're using, and two, especially words like eunuch and cultic prostitute like there's no textual evidence to support these interpretations anyway. So it's all this secondary scholarly interpretation being placed on these figures where you know there's not many textual instances of them, so it's hard to say what exactly is going on but there's not specific evidence for castration or prostitution. For my thesis I’m basically going through and writing about how the word assinnu and kurgarru and galu and kalu have been translated by scholars, and then going back and seeing like what can we figure out in terms of their gender performance from the actual textual evidence that we have, as opposed to just going to these simplistic, interpretive labels. And my proposition, too, at the end is to not translate words like that because any translation that we have is going to simplify the role of these figures and I think just leaving it in the Akkadian leaves more room open for describing the things that they did and leaving it open because we don't know a lot about them, and just leaving that sort of gray area there instead of just labeling them one thing or another. But yeah so that's what I'm working on for my thesis, and all of these figures are associated with Ishtar specifically. And I think there is something interesting there because of Ishtar’s liminality herself because she's the goddess of love and war and those are two kind of opposite things. And her own gender performance is kind of somewhere in between this binary because sometimes she's portrayed in cylinder seals and things with a beard, and her animal is a male lion, or a lion with a mane, at least. I mean there are female lions with manes too. So I think Ishtar herself has some interesting gender things going on, so it makes total sense that her cultic functionaries, her cultic personnel, also had some interesting gender things going on too. So I'm just trying to figure out what exactly we can say about what's going on within her temple. There’s not a lot of evidence, but just trying to figure out what's going on. Lexi: I love it. I love your thesis. Haley: My mind is blown. Lexi: I really struggled to settle on a lady for this episode because I wanted to do something interesting but I didn’t want my lady to be from the same region as like another lady that was already being covered by one of you in this episode and that's– the regions you are familiar with are the regions I am familiar with because we had the same professors. So I had to branch out of my comfort zone and explore a person I had never explored– well, a god I never explored because this is goddesses. So I did what any sensible person would do and I reached out to my sister– sorority sister, for everyone who's been following along. And I would like to thank my sister Amber for suggesting this lady. It was a very good suggestion. So I'm talking today about Nüwa. Clarification, as always, I do not speak Chinese, so that's the best that it’s going to get but it's probably not totally correct but do with that what you will. I speak Korean, not Chinese. Alana: Have I been Jewish yet? Have we said Sprinklebear McPuss-n-Boots yet? We got to get all three. Lexi: You got them in. We got them in. Nüwa is the mother goddess of traditional Chinese mythology, so you know we know of a lot of other mythologies from other parts of the world and there often is a mother figure… you know, a matriarch among the deities if you know what I mean. So she's that but in China. And her name is made up of two characters, nu which means woman and wa which is a unique character that is only a part of her name, so that's how it distinguishes her from women in general, it's Nu-Wa. And she is the sister and wife of emperor god Fuxi. And Fuxi is the god who created hunting and cooking, which is a fun combo like hunt then cook? Not vegan, but very relevant to each other. She is often depicted as a serpent, and it's her body is the figure of a serpent and she has a woman's head. And she is capable of shape shifting into anything she wants so she can change how she appears. And let me just say she looks really dope, like what a vibe, check out our Instagram, I’ll put up a picture there, or Google her, but I'm obsessed with the different looks that she has. In some depictions she's just drawn as a woman in traditional Chinese dress, which is hanfu and that's slightly less cool but like chill. And in the traditional Chinese creation story Nüwa created humankind from the earth. And we see this in a lot of creation myths. If you know of creation myths from around the world, a lot of times like the physical earth or clay or dirt is related to the creation of humankind. So the story goes that one day she was walking through the woods and she found the woods to be so beautiful that she was sad that she couldn't share the beauty with others. She wanted someone else to enjoy the beauty of the earth. So she decided to create humans from the clay around the river. So she stopped at the riverbank, she picked up the clay, and she's like “I can make humans out of this.” And it is said that she made the aristocracy, like the aristocratic class from yellow clay from the riverbank, and the lower classes were made from mud. And so Nüwa made the upper classes with her hands, she molded them, but her hands got tired and so she picked up a rope and she dipped in the mud, swung it around over her head, and the mud that dropped off became the lower classes. So there is a class distinction in this story, I assume it was at one point in history perpetuated by the upper classes to justify like the class divide in their society but that's how the story goes. And there are several versions that story with varying details so if you are curious to go explore it there are texts about her written in Chinese and Vietnamese and a couple other Asian languages, so if you speak any of those and want to go read it, feel free. But that's the general basic… things that seem to be true in every version of the story. She is credited with defeating the evil water god who is depicted as a black dragon and is named Gonggong, which… I love that name too, like I love the double syllable situation. It's like you could call a pet that, but I guess not since he's an evil water god, maybe it's not good luck to name your pet after him. And Gonggong he’d ripped a hole in the sky when he was battling another god– it was the fire god, so the water and fire god were like [fighting noises] you know? That was not good podcast audio, but they were going at it, him and the fire god. Alana: How am I supposed to transcribe that? Lexi: Ahhh noise! Kelsie: Throw in some vowels and some Hs. Lexi: They were going at it. And they were fighting. And Gonggong ripped down one of the pillars, which is a mountain. He ripped it down, and the sky got a big hole in it. This is a big problem because the sky protected the people from like crazy weather phenomena, so like rain, tsunami, crazy kind of like… crazy crap was happening in the sky. And so she repaired the hole and saved the humans because she loved them because they were her creation, and versions of the story also differ, with one suggesting that she died of exhaustion because she was so tired because she had like held up the sky and put it back together. But she saved humankind, so it was like her last great feat. And another version suggests that she could not repair the sky with just the material she had, so she herself became stone and put the sky back together. So there’s either the version of her dying of exhaustion or her actually becoming the material to repair the sky. Either way, this is her final story so she sacrifices herself to save humankind from Gonggong's mistake. Kelsie: Wait, so with the second version where she is repairing the sky herself is there like an astrological sort of connection to her then? Is there like a constellation representing her? Lexi: That's a good question. No source I read specifically dictated that. Particularly I think because she tends to be associated with the day, but I am unsure. There might be a constellation related to her. She's technically the goddess of marriage and fertility. Chinese religion has really changed over time, but despite that, Nüwa has remained an important figure to many people in China. There are many temples and shrines that are dedicated to her and preserved in her honor, including one that is seen as the ancestral shrine of all humanity, so she's very central in like the identity structure of China. And some women in China today pray to Nüwa for assistance in issues of fertility or marriage, so like if you want a husband you're supposed to go and be like “Nüwa! Give me a man!” and if you want to have a baby, you're supposed to go to Nüwa and be like “Nüwa! Birth me a son!” and so on and so forth. In addition to her role in religion, she also features prominently in pop culture in China and other parts of Asia. She has been a character in three video games, so you can go play Nüwa. I don't know exactly how these video games work, I have not played them. But if that's your jam, Google it. And in numerous television shows and films, there's films that depict all the different stories surrounding her and other deities so she factors into those stories too, and there have been film adaptations specifically of the sky fixing story. And on Earth Day in 2012, a statue of Nüwa created by a Chinese professor was revealed in Time Square as a representation of the importance of protecting the ozone layer because the theme of that year's Earth Day was the ozone layer. And so the ozone layer protects humans and is similar to the sky and Nüwa in her stories… so the statue is of her holding up a piece of the sky… Nüwa holding a piece of the sky…  and she's holding that up and that represents the ozone layer and the fact that we need to keep the ozone layer safe, so as you would give to Nüwa and worship Nüwa you should worship and protect the ozone layer… so on and so forth. Very very cool. And the statue was later moved to Vienna and I've included in the further reading the transcript of the speech that was given when the statue was installed in Vienna which is now where it lives forever, so it's really interesting if you're into that kind of thing. And also I will include a link to the Google Arts and Culture page that describes the statue and you can learn more about the statue and what it's made of if you like that kind of thing and what it looks like. Haley: I was having like a mental identity crisis with who I was gonna pick, and I was on TikTok, of course, scrolling through like just for inspiration. And I came on for my like For You Page. I think that's what it's called, the youths call it, a fun story about Danu and Tuatha Dé Danann. I really… Okay, so this is Irish mythology that we're doing a deep dive into, and I asked Robert how to pronounce these, and of course I forgot. So in Irish mythology, Danu, meaning the flowing one or the divine one who brings all things into being, is associated with both masculine and feminine things which is like right on. However, every time I pick– like, I couldn't decipher like, discern whether she was representation– like if you looked at her while she had her pronouns, or assuming from scholars now she/her pronouns, if she would represent both masculine and feminine or if she is just associated with because she's the divine one who brings all things into being. Because when you look at her it's– I put a lot in the further reading but I used a lot of YouTube videos of the people who are like kinda amateur experts in this… certainly not myself. And a lot of the representation that they put up were very feminine goddess like. Like very nature-esque, flowing long hair, flowing skirts and dresses, or sometimes like a warrior but really like honing in on that feminine side. And that's just my tangent. So she is also like the earth goddess of fertility and growth, abundance, agriculture, as well as intellect, change, and wisdom– and a whole host of others. She just does it all, apparently. She's also like the hypothetical mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann which is what I'm also going to talk about. But before that, because this group of people, the Tuatha Dé Danann, which is Old Irish for the people of the goddess of Danu and the anai– the A. N. A. I. within the name means wealth and that's kind of strange because this… when I'm reading Danu is D. A. N. U. and that’s not found in any like medieval Irish text which was kind of like a point in time where people were like okay it's not in this period and afterwards type of situation. That goes for a lot of her myths and legends. And if you let me nerd out for a sec, let's go into some etymology of the name Danu. Scholars believe that the name Danu is the nominative form and the genitive form is Danann, spelled as like D. A. N. A. N. N. or D. O. N. A. N. D. or D. A. N. A. N. D., which is seen in the primary sources, that’s also how the name Tuatha Dé Danann is spelled. It's the D. A. N. A. N. N., the genitive form of Danu. Again, with these people, they are the people of the goddess of Danu. And this is the story that I'm actually gonna focus on because spoiler it's great and it's also one of the most well known sources, just if you like do a Google search this is the one that keeps popping up with her. And it's about how… basically Ireland was kind of populated. So opening our book to a short story, while there are a bunch of little stories like within this one story, I'm kind of like lumping it all up. And in Irish mythology  Tuatha Dé Danann were the first people or tribe in Ireland. Since they're supernatural and they're not necessarily human but they are human, the way they arrived to Ireland was like via dark clouds and mist which also gets strange because they landed on Connacht. Am I saying that right, Alana? Alana: Connacht. Haley: Connacht. Alana: C. O. N. N. A. C. H. T.? Haley: Yes! Yes ma’am. Alana: Connacht. Yeah Haley: Which is on the west side of Ireland. And this is where– Alana: It's– throwback to episode two, that is around where Gráinne Ní Máille was born and lived and did her pirate-y thing. Haley: Exactly. So this is like why it gets weird, why I say it's like they arrived via dark clouds and mist because they also had boats. So when I was first reading this, I was expecting like people coming out of like dark mist and clouds because clouds are in the sky! But I think now like boats come along with it, so there might be spaceship boats or like water boats. But– Alana: Like in Treasure Planet. Haley: Exactly! That’s what I was thinking. Lexi: Ancient Aliens? The aliens brought boats down and created the Irish people? Haley: NO. Alana: No no no no. Treasure Planet. Treasure Planet is the analogy that we are going with, Treasure Planet. Haley: Yes. And when they arrived, they supposedly burned the boats, hence forcing them to settle in the land they like docked. Which made little to no sense-tentacles, because you literally like, again, rode in like a cloud of mist. And also I want to know when they settled, and they were like “okay, we have food, water, shelter. Let's burn them boats.” And that's fine, that's a great tradition, I'm not like saying for the tradition. But what if, like, if it was immediate, how did you know that was like a suitable habitat? Because like wouldn't you say “oh, we don't have like one of the three basic needs, four, five basic needs that we need, let's get back on our boats and travel around.” These are also supernatural beings and I'm just overanalyzing mythology. That's what I do. Also once they were settled, so like post-burning boats, I guess… It was said that they stayed there for centuries. And for the archaeologists and all of us here part of the myth that is the ring forts, are also called like the fairy forts… Alana is making a face. And that's because that– Alana: I dug a ring fort! Haley: Connection to you and Susan. Probably Susan, why I know this story. So– Alana: This is the Susan Johnston appreciation episode part two. Haley: I actually have a book that she gave me right next to me on my desk, I have with my library background. Anywho, the fairy forts are like often called fairy forts because the Tuatha Dé Danann used them as portals to another like world. And side note, if a human were to happen across the portal they would be forced to dance until they went mad. Honestly, that’s just like… I read that and it was also kind of like– Lexi: What a way to go. Haley: Exactly. Kelsie: It wouldn't take very long for me, like you know twenty minutes I'm gone. Haley: I know! I was like I can dance through like one album of ABBA but like if we get into an album of the Beatles I might like cease to exist. Alana: (Gagging noise) I hate the Beatles. Famously I hate the Beatles. Haley: Rude. And then she is on a podcast with like one of the best Beatles lovers ever. Lexi, right there and then I’m like a– Alana: I hate the Beatles. I think they're overrated. I think it's just like mediocre white men getting more credit than they deserve. Lexi: Well, Sergeant Pepper takes your note and kindly throws it out.The bird. Haley: He took a nice poop on it. Alana: That's fine. Whatever. Haley: Okay so back to my story, because it’s about me right now. We all went mad. And then lastly, this is my last note, so when the Celts invaded, the legend goes that they all turned themselves into fairies, hence, fairy forts! And then they keep watch over the land. That's them. That's Danu. Kelsie: What's the– I don't know if you know this, and maybe I… maybe there’s not an answer, but what's the significance of… between fairies and circles around things? Like when I think of like– like I know about ring forts, I didn't realize there was a connection to fairy forts. But then like winding up like fairies and circles like… Haley: Yeah. Kelsie: Mushrooms, like that’s also a circle-y thing on the ground. Is that a bigger thing? Haley: So, the circle is like the portal, and the reason why it's called fairies is that the legend says they turned into fairies. So it's like fairy forts, that’s their fort. Kelsie: That makes sense. Haley: That's the most I can tell you. I'm sure there's more. There are a lot of YouTubers out there. Lexi: Also, circles is magic. Alana: I'm talking about Persephone the Greek theological figure, ancient Greek. I identify with her very strongly because I also contain multitudes. There is a poem by Nichole McElhaney who is the author of A Sisterhood of Thorns and Vengeance, a book that apparently just like does not exist, because I cannot find it in print anywhere. But the poem goes “Do not worry about your contradictions - Persephone is both floral maiden and queen of death. You, too, can be both.” And I love that. But apparently like the book doesn't exist Nichole McElhaney has a couple of other poetry books with really interesting cool names similar to A Sisterhood of Thorns and Vengeance. She is also known as Proserpina in Rome, and also known as Kora or Kore, which means maiden. And she becomes Persephone when she is like queen of the underworld which we will get to… the stuff that you might know… because of the Percy Jackson series. So in Homer's Hymn to Demeter… Homer's Hymn to Demeter is kind of the primary source we have for the story of Persephone being taken to the underworld. Homer describes her as slim-ankled, which my friend Kay, shout out Kay, who I brought up earlier, we tried to make a religion together, they are an expert in classical literature and they said that that probably meant like a graceful or delicate or something along those lines. So the story is Hades saw her in a field, abducted her, and took her to the underworld and like made her his queen and something about pomegranate seeds, that he forced her only one in Homer’s hymn. It’s only like one seed. You hear it like three or six other places, but in Homer it's just one. Here's what you might not know about that myth, according to Homer. Hades had Zeus’s permission to do this, but not Demeter’s, who is Persephone’s mother. And Demeter goes searching all over like the whole world for Persephone, and everyone saw what happened– like the sun god saw what happened and was like yeah we're not gonna help you because like basically they said she could do a lot worse as far as a husband goes. She's like queen of the underworld right now. I think like that's a pretty good deal… you know Hades isn't going cheating on his wife like someone we know. Zeus. But according to Homer, one pomegranate seed meant three months in the underworld. Anyway Persephone– this is a really short story I'm sorry– Persephone. She is part of the agrarian triad which is a group of three agricultural slash harvest deities with Demeter and a god called Triptolemus. Kelsie: Lexi would call this an agricultural throuple. Alana: That's an excellent point. I don't think there is any evidence for that but I do like the idea of it being a throuple. So Persephone as queen of the underworld kind of gives a more pleasant face to the concept of death and the afterlife, so it kind of like helps Hades’s reputation and there's not as much stigma about it because yeah you're dying but look the goddess of spring is also queen of the underworld, so that's pretty cool. Now I'm going to cede the rest of my time to modern reinterpretations that are all written by women or some other marginalized group. The only one whose like gender I don't know is married to a man and cis straight men don't marry other men by definition, so this person is marginalized in some other way. I don't know if they know that, but it's really cool story. So first of all, Hadestown. Wow. Anais Mitchell. It's beautiful. It's jazzy. It's so much fun. It's Hades and Persephone but they've like fallen out of love after so long and also the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is in there. I want a live recording of it– it's a Broadway show– I want a live recording of it the way that Hamilton has been. I think that is what we deserve. There is also a couple of webcomics, the first one is Punderworld, which has a very– why are you shaking your head Kelsie? Kelsie: It’s such a bad pun and it has pun in the word! Alana: It’s a bad pun and it has pun in the word. It's a very realistic art style, there are not a ton of episodes, one of them made the rounds on tumblr while ago if you were still there. And it takes place in a more realistic like ancient Greek Olympian kind of setting. Links to the webcomics by the way will be in further learning which is what I've been calling it lately because it's not always reading. The other one is called Lore Olympus. There are a lot of episodes of this one. It is more whimsical but also somehow grittier? Like all the characters are kind of color-coded. Athena has a very androgynous, ace, butch lesbian vibe like someone else in the Zoom right now. So it’s like Olympus is a modern city, but the mortal realm is still in ancient Greece. It's really cool, I was up until five AM last night reading it because I just like gave up and was like I just have to read this. Shout out to my friend Em who told me about those webcomics. Also Madeline Miller, who wrote Circe which was an incredible book and Song of Achilles which I haven't read yet, wrote a really cool piece about Persephone several years ago that basically ends with if Madeline Miller were Persephone we would always have winter because she loves pomegranates so much and that is a mood. Lexi: I love that you brought up Percy Jackson because it always bothers me but there are so many cool modern literary takes on a lot of these things but that's the one that had to get famous? Haley: I'm rereading and I finished the Percy Jackson series, forgot how much like I invested myself into it. I think I only read like the first book and like half of the second because I don't remember the third, fourth, fifth but I have the next series which is like… Alana: The Heroes of Olympus or something? And it’s the Roman? Haley: Maybe. I think that's the next one. Alana: I read the first four Percy Jackson books in a weekend, and I would have read the fifth one in a weekend but it was not out yet. Lexi: I was a fan of them as a child. Alana: I was in like fourth grade. Lexi: Yeah probably fourth grade. But my mom decided I was still a fan of them and for my twenty third birthday I asked for a single ticket to go see Hamilton by myself, but for the same price my mother bought four tickets to see Percy Jackson the Musical. Picture this– Haley: Wait, where was it first? Lexi: It was on Broadway. I mean a real Broadway– Haley: They had Broadway? Lexi: Yes. Picture a thirty two year old gay twink dancing around the stage pretending to be a twelve year old boy. Alana: That just sounds like the Percy Jackson Lightning Thief movie. Lexi: Yes. Alana: But with singing. Haley: To be fair Logan Lehrman because I– Alana: Oh, Logan Lehrman is incredible. Lexi: Also, I won't spoil the musical, the musical's gone now it doesn't run anymore, but in case they ever do another iteration and people want to see I won’t completely spoil it. But it is written where there's only a cast of eight people but all the characters are covered by those eight people, and so there are some weird interesting things where that really take you out of the story because like they have to do double duty as characters and all they do to change is like throw on a jacket. Haley: Is it just the first book? Lexi: Yes and no like how the movie was the first book, but like not. You know I mean? Haley: Yeah. Lexi: It's not a truthful direct adaptation. The songs were like “when your dad’s a god, your dad's a god. The one other thing I want to say about it is my brother and I had both for the books as kids and were like okay we'll go see this as like a family thing, whatever. During the intermission, a girl behind us who was probably maybe fourteen or fifteen would not shut up about Percy Jackson to her family and my brother leaned in and was like if we’d come here seven years ago that would have been you. And I mean probably. But to that team who put that on. Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review, or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself. Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Amelia Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History. Haley: Next week on Lady History, she’s going to blind us with some science. We're doing a deep dive into the women of twentieth century science. Haley: We good. Alana: Amazing.

[sebastianshaw]

Rando Munday ramblings! For new followers, on Munday sometimes I just post a bunch of personal stuff I normally wouldn’t. Not usually anything intimately personal, more like random thoughts and news that just isn’t relevant to the blog in any way, not related to X-Men or RP or writing in general, etc. ....there’s a lot of Hannibal today, sorry, I’m rewatching it.

- I definitely wanna have a pair of critters named Hannibal and Hasdrubal at some point, maybe if there's a third I'd name him Hamilcar. I know everyone will think I named them after Hannibal Lector but actually these are really common names from Ancient Carthage. Like if you look at Carthagian history and records, everyone is Hannibal, Hasdrubal, or Hamilcar, it's like John, James, and Jim. I'd prefer the pair, though, since Hannibal and Hasdrubal were a pair of brothers and famous historical figures, so it would feel much more like a "set" that way (whereas they did not have a brother called Hamilcar) - Speaking of Hannibal Lector, I knew he was based on a real person, but I did not realize that person was a gay Mexican man. That’s...an interesting example of gay history, for sure. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Thomas Harris (the writer of the books that the films and later the TV series were based on) based Hannibal on a surgeon he met while interviewing an inmate at prison for another novel. This surgeon was so intelligent and charismatic that Harris implicitly assumed that he was a doctor in the employ of the prison. Nope---the doctor was an inmate himself. Harris was so shaken by the encounter that it inspired him to create Hannibal Lector, who, in contrast to the typical media portrayals of serial killers as uncontrolled lunatic slashers like Michael Myers or Leatherface, is a charming, culture, charismatic intellectual. To protect the man’s identity, Harris called him “Dr. Salazar” in interviews, so that was always how I knew him. I just now learned not only was his real name Alfredo Balli Trevino, but his victim was Jesus Castillo Rangel, his male lover. Harris describes him as a small, lithe man with dark red hair and, unsurprisingly, “a certain elegance about him”. Though Trevino was given the death penalty for his crimes, his sentence was commuted to 20 years and he was released in either 1980 or 1981. He died in in 2009 when he was 81 years old. He reportedly spent the last years of his life helping the poor and elderly, and he expressed deep regret for his “dark past”---which I suppose makes sense, since his crime was that he killed a lover in a fit of rage during an argument, whereas Hannibal simply killed people in cold blood whom he had no attachment to because he liked eating them (something Trevino never did) and to punish them for rudeness. - I’ve decided to stop buying silk, unless it's from a thrift store and thus my money won't go to supporting sericulture. Ahimsa silk isn't an option either, the bugs aren't technically killed but they're not treated well either. I know it might seem weird to eat meat and wear leather and yet not want to purchase something that hurt moths and larva, but...I have to eat meat for medical reasons, and my leather purchases is limited to boots that I then keep for YEARS AND YEARS so it's very sparing. There's really no such thing as a cruelty-free diet or lifestyle, whether that cruelty is suffered by animals or by other humans, but I can still make choices that at least lesson some small aspect of harm. I need to eat meat, I don't need real silk. ...Haven only wears bamboo silk for this reason and when this came up with Shaw, he absolutely thought she was fucking with him, like even SHE can’t be THIS insane, NO ONE ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT BUGS WTF - The books nearest to me right now are “Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype ” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, “X-Men: The Legacy Quest Trilogy” by Steve Lyons, two  horror anthologies, the script for “M. Butterfly” by David Henry Hwang, “The Spanish Riding School of Vienna: Tour of America 2005″ book I got from when I went to see the Lippizanner horses perform, and a big beautiful leatherbound English translation of “The Flowers of Evil” by Charles Baudelaire. This is...this is a summary of my whole personality, sans rodents. Also god I need to clean my room. - Something I've noticed is that many sci-fi horror films that do the whole "science went too far against nature!!!" thing....don't actually have the problem result from the lack of ethics involved or because the scientists did something "unnatural", it happens because they didn't follow basic safety precautions, lab protocol, common sense, etc. "Splice" for instance, is a really good example---the problem isn't that they made a part-human hybrid, that's not why shit goes wrong, shit goes wrong because the two scientists act like idiots, adopt the creation as a child, hide it in their barn instead of a sterile controlled environment, and then one of them HAS SEX WITH IT. Or in "The Fly" the problem isn't that Brundle invented a teleporter, it's that he tested it ON HIMSELF while he was ALL ALONE. Even in "Jurassic Park" the issue is less that dinosaurs are breeding and more the result of a disgruntled worker who was given way too much power over being able to run things, and thus shut them down when he wants to. So many "science gone wrong!" movies end up not really being condemnations of science itself, so much as depicting scientists as utter dumbasses. Which, on the one hand, I do like, because I dislike the notion of condemning scientific progress just because it seems icky or creepy or "goes against nature" (so do vaccines, I still like those!) But on the other hand, the movies don't FRAME it as "this is the result of failure to practice science safely and sensibly" they frame it as "they should never have attempted such an unnatural thing and this disaster is punishment for a moral sin" even though the issue doesn't happen because what the scientists did was "wrong" it happens because they do something DUMB. - Bringing it back to Hannibal, I reached the episode where Margot Verger first appears, and if I have one big disappointment about the Hannibal series, it's Margot. In the books, she's a huge butch lesbian, literally and figuratively. In the TV series, she's a pretty femme fashionista like all the other women, and she fucks Will in order to get pregnant. At the time this came out in 2013, I tried to be all resigned and fair-minded about this. I was like "ok, well, they didn't want to be offensive with a stereotype, and I guess that's fair, I guess not hurting people matters more to me than getting the horseback-riding bulldyke hearthrob of my high school years on-screen at last" but you know what? No. Firstly, butch lesbians deserve representation too. How many have you ever seen onscreen, let alone in a mainstream media production? Sure, it's a stereotype, but it's not an inherently negative one, they just get treated that way in media because society sees it that way. But the way to handle butch lesbians and femme gay men and so on isn't to erase them from the screen, it's to start writing them as human beings and not caricatures or jokes or monsters. Margot is a fleshed-out human being, she's nuanced and twisted and hurt like everyone else in this series, she would be PERFECT for that. She wouldn't be just a butch lesbian, she'd be a CHARACTER who just also happens to be a butch lesbian. I don't really think she was changed to avoid "hurting" lesbians, I think she was changed because the director, gay man or not, clearly has a way he wants the women in his series to look (they're all fashion plates, all have long hair, all very sophisticated, etc) and book Margot didn't fit his aesthetic, his design if you will. Because god forbid we just make her a DAPPER dyke, right? Back to having sex with Will, which most certainly did NOT happen in the books...that's not bad itself in a VACUUM, fucking men to get a baby is something real-life lesbians do, I had a friend in college who was actually conceived that way, but like...no media exists in a vacuum, and there is very little depiction of lesbians in media that doesn't feature them fucking men for SOME reason or another. They want a baby, or they start the story with a boyfriend, or they're actually bisexual, or they're even raped, but there's always SOME reason we have to watch a guy fucking them and it's frankly distressing. Like, remember Irene Adler in BBC's Sherlock? It's a pattern. And I'm not saying lesbians who have had a sexual past with men, or who were the victims of sexual violence by men, don't deserve representation, I would never say that, those are very common experiences, I'm not saying "gold stars only", I'm saying that there is a strong pattern in media where it seems almost obligatory that a lesbian has to have sex with or be attracted to men at some point, while comparatively the opposite case, where a lesbian is depicted as exclusively and only attracted to and "with" other women, is seldom there. And it's just kind of a kick in the nads for me, as I think it was for a lot of other lesbians, butch or not, that a gay director took an opportunity like Margot Verger and turned her into just another attractive lipstick lesbian that is okay with having sex with the male protagonist as a treat tee hee (Spoiler: She does end up with Alana though, which I appreciate)