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esther-dot · 5 months

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Pride & Prejudice AUs

You Look Like A Movie, You Sound Like A Song 2k @jonsastan

She had met Jon Targaryen there. It was a complete accident and at first, Sansa thought, a complete misfortune. He was drenched from an impromptu swim in his pond, and she was flustered, not wanting him to think she was vying for his attention. But as she had attempted to make her hurried escape, he had found her and invited her parents to stroll with him around the gardens. He had offered her kindness, and thoughtfulness, he had talked with her parents, discussed the present state of politics with her father and chatted knowledgeably about gardens with her mother.

A Certain Step Toward Falling in Love 2k by @comma-splice

Jon Snow returns North after departing abruptly one year ago.

The Bennet Sisters - a P&P AU comic by @melinaillustrations

P&P Gifset by @sardoniyx, P&P Gifset by @dcbicki, P&P Gifset by deactivated

Persuasion AUs

Who Loves Longest, Who loves Best 1k by @ladysaruka

After refusing him years ago, Sansa sees her cousin once again.

Persuasion edits one, two , three by @glueck

Mansfield Park AUs

Half Agony, Half Hope 10k, incomplete by @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth

After the death of his disgraced mother, Jon Snow is taken in by his uncle's family, the Starks of Winterfell. He grows up alongside his cousins, including the beautiful and kind-hearted Sansa, but knowing he can never truly be their equal, he fears he has little choice but to leave the place he's come to call home. corresponding moodboard

Catch Me If You Can 34k (P&P and Emma inspired too) by @ben-barnes-is-my-husband

Set in the countryside of Regency England, Jon Snow has been in love with Sansa Stark for as long as he can remember. He wants her as his wife, but Sansa is not sure she wants to be a wife at all, and she knows she doesn’t want to marry the pragmatic and boring Jon. She’d rather help Theon Greyjoy come out of his shell and play matchmaker. But then Jaime Lannister comes to town and Jon finds he has some serious competition for Sansa…

Moments Like This (So Few and Far Between) 3k by @lydiamartenism

Mama and Papa left the house to go pick up Jon, the son of her father’s oldest friend. Three weeks ago, the phone rang and their parent’s announced that Jon would be coming to live with them since his mother passed away and had no one else to take care of him.

Northanger Abbey AUs

The Lady in White 7k by @kissed-by-circe

Dragonstone Manor had looked like it had woken only a few days earlier, after a slumber of several years, if not decades, and Sansa had felt like the heroine of a gothic novel, a mysterious, naive girl with a dark past or a dark secret, arriving at the opening scene of the most dramatic story of all times. Or Sansa as Katherine Morland in a Jane Eyre Setting.

Sense & Sensibility AUs

In Such Jocund Company 2k @maybetwice

It would be no matter at all for Captain Snow to return to the north after seven months’ absence, had Sansa’s heart not changed entirely in that time. A remix of Colonel Brandon and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility.

Emma & Clueless AUs

if i loved you less 2k by @ladystarks

Her father has, often and fondly, told Sansa that she and Mr. Snow bite at each other like wolves, but he hardly understood that their verbal sparring was as exhilarating as a sport well done, or a match coming together under Sansa’s skilled hands. corresponding artwork

Sansa: A NOVEL in Five Parts 15k by @imagineagreatadventure

Sansa Stark, handsome, clever, rich, hopes to establish herself as her town's foremost matchmaker. After seeing her governess Miss Shae married to the rich and clever Mr. Tyrion Lannister, she feels as though she deserves that title. Her dear friend and cousin, Jon Targaryen, heartily disagrees and is quite proven right when Sansa sets her sights on marrying off her newest and dearest friend Jeyne Poole to the vicar Mr. Baelish.

A Baldwin and a Betty 2k

Jon drives to the Valley to give Sansa a ride home.

Emma AU art by @dcvahkiin and Clueless art by wolvesofspring

Emma Gifset by @dcbicki

General Regency AUs

No Notion of Loving by Halves 2k @darkmagyk

The Stark cousin, Jon, goes home to discuss matters concerning the entail on Winterfell. In which Jon is a really good guy, and I flagrantly disregard how entails actually work.

Manners and Misunderstandings 114k, WIP by @x-winging-it

The Stark sisters have travelled all the way to London to begin their first season, leaving behind the familiar world of Winterfell Hall and a disappointed Jon Stark- with whom the eldest Miss Stark has been convinced to break off a connection. In London they join family friends the Baratheons and the fashionable young Tyrells in a world of romance and balls. Meanwhile Gendry Waters has been plucked out of the life he knew to become his ailing father's heir, Robb, Theon and later Rickon embark on military careers in the Napoleonic wars, and their aunt Lysa makes a foolish marriage. When tragedy hits the family, they must come together, learning how manners may hide monsters and the best people are often those misunderstood by society.

You Could Draw Me to the Gallows 2k by @azulaahai

After having eloped from home with and subsequently been abandoned by wealthy heir Joffrey Baratheon, Sansa Stark refuses to come home. Having caused a scandal that is sure to prevent her from ever marrying, she is adamant not to bring further shame to the family name by returning to Winterfell. Until, that is, a visitor comes to her - Jon Snow, an old family friend, determined to bring Sansa with him back north. He has a solution to offer her - a proposal with the potential to change both of their lives.

A Perilous Dance Indeed & fiercely, tenderly and eternally 27k by @amymel86

He should either look away or interrupt this improper little meeting, he knows. For some unfathomable reason, he does neither. The two look far too intimate for Jon’s liking, although he feels he should have come to expect it to be so. A romantic like Sansa – however proper she is – would simply adore overt flirtations and a secret tête-à-tête. Even from where he stands, Jon can see the way in which she has stars set in her eyes like precious cut stones. He only hopes the man for whom they shine is deserving of it. *** Cousin Jon is to inherit Winterfell Manor and its estate after the untimely death of his uncle leaves a widow and two daughters. Sansa is expectant of an imminent proposal from her dear beau, Harrold Hardyng and everything will be absolutely, stunningly, utterly fine.

Waiting for Your Slippered Feet 49k by @wintry-ritu

Lady Sansa Stark has always looked forward to her come-out season in London, the balls, the rides in Hyde Park, evenings at Vauxhall, the romance and wonder of it all. Never had she imagined that it would happen like this, with her parents gone and her younger siblings underfoot. Now, all Sansa wants is for it all to be over quickly so she can get back to Winterfell. She needs a kind, amiable man who will be brave enough to take on his wife's siblings. That should not be so hard to find in London, should it? And while she is most grateful for Jon Targaryen's help, why must her cousin be so distracting?

To Make You Love Me 16k incomplete and orphaned

When Ned Stark dies, he leaves behind his wife, two daughters, and his family’s estate at Winterfell. What follows is a series of unwanted marriage proposals, houseguests who far outstay their welcome, and Arya parading around in a comically large hat and an oil-paint mustache as she declares herself the new ‘Lord of Winterfell,’ in an attempt to dissuade her sister’s suitors. However, when Mr. Jon Snow — their distant cousin and Ned’s appointed heir to the estate — comes to call, an oil-paint mustache is hardly enough to deter him from courting Miss Sansa Stark. And she thinks, perhaps, that a man could marry her for love more than her claim, after all.

Mine for a Season 101k by @vivilove-jonsa

Colonel Jon Targaryen is a single man in possession of a good fortune who claims no interest in finding himself a wife. With his war wounds, he thinks no young lady would want him anyway for anything beyond the allure of his pocketbook. Fortunately and unbeknownst to him, Fate has chosen to find a wife for him and will even deliver her right to his doorstep. Taking on the responsibility of shepherding a young lady about for a Season in London is not at all what Jon had wished to do but he had accepted out of a sense of familial duty. However, once he meets Sansa again after only having met her years ago as a child, he may not consider it a duty so much as a torment.

a lady of winterfell 185k, WIP by @wandering-scavenger

She bit her lip and exhaled shakily, “If you are so sickened by the prospect of marrying me, we should be able to obtain an annulment easily enough with your father’s connections.” “I will do no such thing.” he snapped, refusing to look at her. Sansa had never felt more rejected than she did at that moment. Her past experiences of being humiliated at the hand of Joffrey did not feel as painful as this. Even so, she could not allow him to see the weakness in her, not now. “I will not be left out, Jon.” she said, tilting her chin up to look down at him. He grimaced. They were silent for longer than she cared to count, but each second that he did not speak chipped away at her resolve and her ability to withhold her tears. Jon did not want her, and she could not blame him. Who could ever want her? It should not have distressed her as much as it did. She was never his favourite sister, she who treated him as a stranger since she was old enough to understand what a bastard was. A tear slipped down to her face until she tasted the salt of it on her lips. “If we marry, we will remain so.” corresponding gifset

moth's wings 47k by @cellsshapedlikestars

Sansa was determined to convince her aunt to let Arya debut, which is how she finds herself in her current predicament. “Who is this secret gentleman who has asked for your hand?” Aunt Lysa asks, and Sansa knows from her tone that she does not believe. (She has every right not to believe, for it is not true.) And then Sansa does something very, very foolish. She says a name. “The Duke of Dragonstone!” Or, Sansa fakes an engagement so that Arya can debut and marry the man she loves. The only problem? Her fake fiance just so happens to be in the city when he was not supposed to be.

An Understanding 2k, WIP by @thewolvescalledmehome

At the start of Sansa Stark's third London Season, she decides it will be her last. She will secure a husband by the end of the final ball. Jon Snow is new to the London Season and high society. He never expected to inherit money or property from an unknown uncle. When they meet at a ball, Sansa gets an idea.

you're in my blood like holy wine 72k

Sansa finds it difficult to look at Jon’s face, with its weathered lines and cragginess. It is the face of the North and a face that northerners trust; the face of Sansa’s brothers and her father, who had been loved and respected by their tenants as their forefathers had been when they were kings. How can Sansa feel anything but resentment, looking into that face and knowing that all of her years of hard work will never earn her the respect that that profile engenders within seconds? But she does. It is a small, burning coal of something that must be smothered.

PRE CANON - WESTERN - FAIRYTALES - LITTLE WOMEN - HOLIDAY - SEASON 6 ANNE OF GREEN GABLES - THE GIRL IN GREY - FREE CITIES - FAIRYTALE PART II - POLITICAL MARRIAGE - SALTY TEENS - POST CANON

#jonsa #jonsa fic #regency au #pride and prejudice au #emma au #northanger abbey au #mansfield park au #persuasion au #dot fic list #marriage of convenience au #arranged marriage au

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oldfangirl81 · 6 months

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Omfg, I just remembered a rare ship I had in small fandom. Season 3 of Primeval introduced Captain Hillary Becker played by Ben Mansfield. I shipped him with everyone but mostly Connor Temple. And I swear there was an episode where Connor has to sit on his lap in a suv. There was this great LJ fic group that wrote about the special forces team that helped protect the geeks.

Captain Hillary Becker

That was him scaring the crap out of some jackass who had Connor's pet dino.

Connor Temple

#primeval #i am going to have to rewatch it #so expect everything to get crossed with it because I remember vague bunnies #captain becker #connor temple

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friedap · 1 year

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Review: You should be watching Rational Creatures.

Persuasion has always been my favorite novel by Jane Austen. Sadly, there was no Persuasion in the wave of YouTube modern adaptations that started a decade ago with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Not only did adaptions of Emma (Approved) follow, there were two adaptations of Northanger Abbey (Northbound and The Cate Moreland Chronicles) and an attempt at the unfinished Sanditon, well before it became a PBS series. Mansfield Park became From Mansfield With Love, the very best adaption of Austen’s least popular novel. I kept thinking Persuasion would be next. But after a few years, the YouTube literary adaptation had lost its bloom.

Rational Creatures debuted in 2019. Its slightly minimalist aesthetic beautifully captures the tight plotting and the melancholy tone of the original novel. The short episodes sometimes feature more meaningful glances underscored with music than actual dialogue. The series is shot as a film rather than a vlog. This makes it possible to more subtly suggest the inner lives of Ana Elías (a Latina Anne Elliott) and Fred Wentworth, who fell in love as teenagers but parted badly. She went to college, he became a famous travel blogger. Ana’s high school YouTube videos provide flashbacks of their relationship and feel appropriately old-fashioned.

The changes to adapt Persuasion to modern times are deftly handled, and the acting across the cast is uniformly compelling. The circle of friends that Fred returns to after many years of travel is queer and bisexual, and thus genders of characters have been changed. Louisa Musgrove is Louis, and Ana’s sister is married, but to a wife not a husband. Missing characters and other details from the novel show up in stray references, inside jokes for those familiar with the original source material. The writing for the remaining characters is perhaps kinder to them than Austen’s often biting satire, though without them losing their core features. Louis, in particular, has a notable new depth as does Ben (Captain Benwick). Fred is not simply a modern version of Austen’s conquering naval hero. He is someone who has traveled the world but finds himself strangely stuck and unhappy. It’s heartening that Ana is not the only one with lingering feelings from their ended relationship and a sense that her life is not going anywhere.

The first season of Rational Creatures had thousands of viewers. Although crowd funding subsidized season two, the pandemic hit, making production impossible. Three long years later, the series has resumed, like Anne and Captain Wentworth’s relationship, finally fulfilling its original promise. Yet sadly, while Netflix’s ridiculously terrible Persuasion generated international attention, a smaller number of viewers are enjoying seeing the YouTube rendition play out. I imagine that they, like the makers of Rational Creatures, are the best company: clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation. You should join them.

Creators of Rational Creatures: Ayelen Barrios Ruiz Pagano, Hazel Jeffs, Jessamyn Leigh, and Anya Steiner.

Above: Ben (Benjamin Mills) and Louis (Derek Quesada); Ana (Kristina Pupo) and Fred (Peter Giessl).

#Jane Austen #Persuasion #Rational Creatures #literary adaptation #lizzie bennet diaries #Emma #Sanditon #northanger abbey #mansfield park

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kiki-de-la-petite-flaque · 3 months

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L’età non ti protegge dall’amore.

Ma l’amore, in qualche misura, ti protegge dall'età.

Anaïs Nin

14 gennaio 1977 moriva di cancro a Los Angeles,

assistita da Rupert Pole.

Molto conosciuta come scrittrice di letteratura erotica, è stata anche una grande esploratrice dell’animo umano e per qualche tempo ha praticato anche la professione di psicoanalista, dopo aver fatto la modella, la danzatrice, la scrittrice, la conferenziera.

Anaïs Nin, nasce nel 1903 in Francia, figlia di una cantante e un pianista, entrambi di origine cubana.

A undici anni viene abbandonata dal padre e da quel momento comincia la sua passione per la scrittura, concretizzata dalla realizzazione di un diario basato su una lettera al genitore che l’ha lasciata.

Anaïs si trasferisce, quindi, a New York con la madre e i fratelli: nella Grande Mela entra in contatto con un ambiente completamente nuovo. A vent’anni si sposa con un bancario ma il matrimonio ben presto si rivela infelice: una prigione dalla quale la ragazza tenta di scappare attraverso diverse relazioni extra-coniugali, spinta dal bisogno di conquistare molti uomini, dopo aver perso l’uomo più importante della sua vita, suo padre.

Tornata a Parigi, attirata dal vivace clima intellettuale della capitale francese, che in quell'epoca accoglie i musicisti, gli scrittori e gli artisti più importanti del momento, inizia a scrivere la prima parte del suo diario (il futuro Diario di Anaïs Nin). Nel corso del suo periodo parisien, ha la possibilità di conoscere Henry Miller, l'autore di Tropico del Cancro e Tropico del Capricorno, innamorandosene; ben presto, intraprende una relazione anche con la moglie di Miller, June Mansfield.

Nel 1931 la Anaïs Nin scrive il suo primo libro, D.H. Lawrence. Uno studio non accademico: un saggio su D.H. Lawrence, cioè l'autore del romanzo L'amante di Lady Chatterley.

Cinque anni più tardi dà alle stampe La casa dell'incesto.

Intanto, la Nin si avvicina sempre di più alla psicanalisi, con lo scopo di ritrovare sé stessa: va in analisi da un allievo di Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, con cui intraprende una relazione d'amore che la fa ritornare a New York per collaborare professionalmente con lui. In breve tempo, tuttavia, la carriera da psicoanalista le va stretta, e cosi Anaïs torna alla scrittura.

Nel frattempo, nel 1955 l'autrice, pur continuando a rimanere sposata con il suo primo marito, si era sposata in segreto una seconda volta con Rupert Pole: ben presto, però, le nozze erano state annullate per evitare guai. Non solo: negli anni Cinquanta, Anaïs Nin era entrata in contatto con l'Lsd, esperienza che aveva riportato fedelmente nel suo diario, nel quale venivano descritti gli effetti che la sostanza aveva sulla sua creatività e sulla sua percezione di sé.

Il mondo attraverso gli scritti di Anaïs è un mondo ricco di fascino e di meraviglia: anche le piccole cose, le persone più insignificanti vengono descritte con amore e profondità, ma soprattutto con curiosità. Una vita intensa e profondamente vissuta, quella della Nin, che a questo proposito diceva: “La vita ordinaria non mi interessa. Cerco solo i grandi momenti… Voglio essere una scrittrice che ricorda agli altri che questi momenti esistono.

Anaïs Nin

#Anaïs Nin

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20genderchild · 1 year

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#literary inspired web series #headlessseries #nothing much to do #lovely little losers #project green gables #the emma agenda #project dashwood #from mansfield with love #call me katie #rational creatures

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triviareads · 13 days

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i just finished a novel you recommended (bed me duke! excellent!) and moved on to my usual annual re-read of northanger abbey and do you have any recommendations for romance novels for each austen couple? i think that would be pretty cool!

I love that! the Bed Me series has never failed me so far, and I'm very excited for book 4, Bed Me, Baronet (the hero's a blond and possibly a virgin based on ALL his friends speculating about him in each of their books lol). As for romance novels based on Austen couples, I'm gonna be a little selective here because I haven't actually read Sense and Sensibility (but I vaguely remember watching the movie) or Mansfield Park:

Pride and Prejudice

There are lots of romance novel adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, and there are even more claiming to be inspired by the "enemies to lovers" aspect of P&P EVEN IF IT'S NOT AN ENEMIES TO LOVERS ROMANCE. So my best recommendation would be Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne; it's a modern adaptation set in Washington D.C.; Liza is a local radio DJ and activist who meets Dorsey (a Filipino adoptee) and realizes they're on opposite sides of the gentrification situation occurring in DC. I loved how the book dealt with the class difference along with the added layer of race. It also modernized the "proposal" aspect really well imo because randomly asking a gal to marry you without even dating wouldn't necessarily work in the modern era BUT the proposal Dorsey put out there still felt inherently degrading to Liza even if she'd hooked up with him already (another change from the original, and an appreciated one).

Persuasion

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas: I'll forever recommend this; McKenna and Aline were childhood sweethearts before they were separated by her father the earl, because McKenna was a stableboy. Now he's uber-wealthy and resentful about what happened all those years ago BACK for REVENGE and by revenge I mean he's going to seduce Aline and... that's about it lol. Never has a man come back with more loathing/self-loathing with a plan that's so half-baked even his drunk friend is like "but are you sure buddy".

Full Moon Over Freedom by Angelina M. Lopez: Another second-chance romance; Gillian asked Nicky to take her virginity when they were teenagers and teach her about sex stuff before leaving for college. Now she's back and divorced, and they're skirting around each other and having multiple clandestine encounters even though they think it's all temporary. While there's not much of a class difference, you get the sense Nicky thought of himself as her bit o'rough and she was an unattainable princess-type to him.

The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long: Second chance romance with love at first sight; There were a couple aspects that really reminded me of Persuasion; there's very similar language to Anne where Olivia is described as having "withered away" since Lyon left, and she refuses all other suitors. And! Lyon is a sailor like Wentworth except, well, not on the legal side of things lol. It's also just super romantic when they do reunite years later.

Emma

Bed Me, Baron by Felicity Niven: George and Phoebe are long-time friends who've known each other since she was a baby. She asks him for sex lessons so she can help her please her future husband who she's engaged to (not George lol). While there's not much of an age gap in this one (4 years), George Danforth is daddy so that should square you away there.

Olivia and the Masked Duke by Grace Callaway: Here's an Emma/Knightley-ish age gap, plus, Ben and Livy were family friends/friends since she was a kid. Later on, she sees him having sex with another woman in the stables and it's basically her sexual and romantic awakening, so she spends a lot of the book chasing after him while he's running for his life.... until he isn't. Sex-wise the vibes are daddy dom/mildly bratty.

Sense and Sensibility

The closest I could think of in terms of Marianne/Col. Brandon was Rosalind and Torrington from A Recipe for a Rogue by Kathleen Ayers. Like Marianne, Rosalind is initially horrified that an *older man* like Torrington might want to marry her (the number of old man-girdle and secretly balding hair jokes.... hilarious) and Rosalind avoids every attempt her mother makes to match them. Torrington is attracted to her from the get-go and slowly woos her by way of exchanging recipes, baked goods, and licking food off her thighs.

tbh I have no idea who'd fit Elinor/Edward's vibe.

Northanger Abbey

It's actually very hard to find heroes who have Henry Tilney's playful irreverence paired with Catherine's sweet naivete so I'm holding off on this one for now!

#book recs #kathleen ayers #angelina m lopez #grace callaway #felicity niven #julie anne long #lisa kleypas #nikki payne #historical romance #romance novels #contemporary romance #ask #jane austen #pride and prejudice

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fatehbaz · 11 months

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Adam Sills’s well-written and beautifully produced Against the Map is in some ways a strange book to review [...] [from the disciplinary perspective of environmental studies]. Sills shows little interest in environmental history or ecocriticism, even in the “ecology without nature” mode [...]. His basic argument is that cartography, because of print capitalism, seeped into all sorts of facets of life on the British Isles during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It became something that playwrights, novelists, and creative nonfiction types, like Samuel Johnson, developed spaces of resistance to in their publications. Sills highlights the political nature and problematic historical genealogies of maps, an argument that has broader implications for [contemporary] environmental historians who use maps to convey [relatively more “objective” and/or “scientific” information] [...].

Sills begins by accepting the idea, derived from Ben Anderson’s comparative work, that “the history of the map and the history of the modern nation state are inextricably bound up with each other” (p. 1). He then cites two of the key analysts of this in relation to Britain: Richard Helgerson on the literary nationalism of the English Renaissance and John Brewer on the fiscal-military state of the eighteenth century, with its army of surveyors and excise tax collectors. In this historiography, the “surveyor emerges as an authorial figure,” key to the making of the modern state as distinct from traditional dynastic and ecclesiastical authority (p. 3). Combined with cheap printing, the result was what Mary Pedley has called a “democratization of the map” (p. 4). [...]

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For John Bunyan, the “neighborhood” became a site of resistance (as it is for Denis Wood in his 2010 Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas). [...]

For Aphra Behn, [...] the theater and “built environment” of the “fragmented, chameleonlike ... scenic stage” had the ability to challenge coherent representations of the Atlantic empire produced by maps like those of world atlas publisher and road mapper John Ogilby (p. 65).

From Dublin, Jonathan Swift directly satirized the cartographic and statistical impulses of the likes of William Petty, Henry Pratt, and Herman Moll, who all helped visualize London’s colonial relationship with Ireland [...].

From London, Daniel Defoe questioned efforts to define what precisely makes a market or market town through maps and travel itineraries, pointing toward the entropic aspects of the market (“its inherent instabilities and elusive nature”) that challenged and escaped efforts to stabilize such spaces through representations in print (p. 163).

Johnson’s travels to Scotland redefined surveying, resisting the model put forward by the fiscal-military state in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

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The final chapter and conclusion, “The Neighborhood Revisited,” looks at Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), a classic novel of the artificial environment of the estate garden. By the early nineteenth century, neighborhoods were more like gated communities and symptomatic of Burkean conservatism and nostalgia. But in Austen’s hands, their structures of affect also suggest the limits of the controversial map- and data-centric literary methodologies [...] and perhaps more broadly the digital humanities. “The principle of spatial difference and differentiation, the heterotopic conceit, always remains a formal possibility, not only at the margins of the empire but at its very center as well,... a possibility that the map cannot acknowledge or register in any fashion” (p. 234). For Sills, this is true of eighteenth-century mapping as well as the fashion for “graphs, maps, and trees” in the early twenty-first century.

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Sills’s basic argument, that a certain canonical strain of English literature - from Bunyan to Austen - positioned itself “against the map,” seems quite solid. He makes this point most directly by appealing to the work of Mary Poovey on the modern “fact,” with the map as “a rhetorical mode ... that serves to legitimate private and state interests by displacing and, ultimately, effacing the political, religious, and economic impact of those interests” (p. 91).

Nevertheless, returning to a[n] [exclusively] canonical, Bunyan-centered, “small is beautiful” neighborhood approach [potentially ignoring planetary environmental systems, the global context, in cartography] seems limited and problematic from the perspective of Anthropocene [...]. The global maps and mathematics used by the likes of Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton, which were directly satirized by Swift in the Laputa section of Gulliver’s Travels (1726), did something different than Petty’s mapping of Ireland. High-flying as they may have been, such maps and diagrams were key to the development of [...] environmental thinking by Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Alexander von Humboldt, and others in the nineteenth century. More recently, global mapping [...], like the internet closely tied initially to the modern American fiscal-military state, have [also later then] been essential to identifying processes of climate change, ocean acidification, deforestation, dead zones, sea level rise, desertification, and a host of other processes that would otherwise be challenging to perceive. This is no mere “Vanity Fair.” Sills’s book would have benefited from engaging with Jason Pearl’s Utopian Geographies and the Early English Novel, published in 2014 [...]. Pearl also does close readings of Behn, Defoe, and Swift, choosing Margaret Cavendish instead of Bunyan and stopping in 1730, just before things became picturesque but just after they were financialized by the South Sea Bubble, Newton’s mint, and Robert Walpole. Pearl reproduces maps by Defoe of Robinson Crusoe’s global travels and of Crusoe’s island, Swift of Houyhnhnmland, Ambrosius Holbein of Thomas More’s Utopia [...].

What if rather than “against the map,” we are seeing struggles between radical and conservative cartography [...] engaged in a fight over the future (utopia)?

What if what [...] [some have] called “capitalist realism” [...], what might in the eighteenth century be called “nationalist realism,” is not the only thing happening with maps and the imagination?

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Text above by: Robert Batchelor. “Review of Sills, Adam, Against the Map: The Politics of Geography in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. May 2023. Published online at: h-net,org/reviews/showrev,php?id:58887. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. In this post, all italicized text within brackets added by me.]

#hmm lot going on here pretty thoughtprovoking for a review #i have lots of thoughts about radical potential of maps for conception of planetary scale and antiimperialism #though simultaneously must remain critical of panopticon aerial perspective of satellite imagery as batchelor says originating with usempire #to acknowledge radical alternatives to imperial mapping in nineteenth century #instead of namedropping humboldt and darwin and chauvinist racist figures i wouldve pointed to #exslaves and abolitionists and their use of global scale conceptions to frame revolutionary atlantic and international solidarity #anyway #abolition #ecology #colonial

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witchofthemidlands · 7 months

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Primeval || Series 3

#sarah page #abby maitland #connor temple #captain hilary james becker #danny quinn #primeval #laila rouass #hannah spearritt #andrew lee potts #ben mansfield #jason flemyng #primevaledit

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templetv · 3 months

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#captain becker brainrot has expanded to my spotfiy hehe #spotify #spotify playlist #moodboard #aesthetic #primeval #captain becker #hilary james becker #ben mansfield

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thespieswholovedme · 3 months

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TMI Tuesday: "Charlie, FMK with Kingsman, Statesmen + MI6 - Spill. that. tea."

//This is from a while ago but here we go!

"Alright, I'll bite... let's make sure I can remember everyone..."

Kingsman:

Galahad / Harry Hart - Marry, he's so gorgeous and adorable, also quite commanding though.

Galahad / Eggsy - I mean he's young but I definitely wouldn't kill him so.... shag.

Merlin / Hamish - Marry, for very different reasons than Harry... I mean if you're married you get to do it all the time right?

Arthur / Chester - Kill Kill Kill Kill

Lancelot / Roxy - I mean if I have to save a ladies life by marrying her or shagging her then of course I'll have to marry her.

Cador / James - No matter what Sora says I'd still marry or shag him, he's gorgeous and beneath all that charm there's a good heart.

Tristan / Arty - Shag, god can you imagine marrying Arty? It'd be like marrying a younger brother!

Alundyne / Indy - Again to save a ladies life I'm definitely going to... wait actually I don't think I would want to marry Indy... she's trouble so maybe just the shag.

Statesman:

Scotch / Sora - Marry, marry, marry, marry. I mean we already are practically married, she's my work wifey. Why not make it official.

Gin / Joe - ¬¬ Sora's going to kill me... but shag.

Tequila - I mean he's hot right, he looks kind of dorky but also massively muscly.... shag

Whisky / Ginger - Marry.

Whisky / Jack - Kill

Champagne / Champ - Marry

MI6:

007 / James Bond - I just don't think he's very attractive... and I don't think I've interacted enough with him to save him... kill.

007 / Nomi - To save a ladies life, thousand percent marry her.

Q / Ben - Oh gosh he's adorable, marry but only to save his life.

M / Gareth Mallory - I mean Maria loves him, and the things she's told me... I sort of get it a little bit but not a lot. He's got nothing on Merlin so I suppose shag, I don't want to kill him after all.

M / Olivia Mansfield - Marry

Moneypenny - Marry, have you seen her when she's in action?

Bill Tanner - He's pretty adorable but I don't know about marry so shag.

George Finley - I met him once at a party and he's got the look of Harry, a bit fuller in the face though, but he's far quieter and almost softer. I think I'd probably marry him.

003 / Hugo - If what Sora and Maria have told me is anything to go on.... kill him.

#;answered #;fmk game #;charlie answers #james bond rp #kingsman rp #statesman rp #spy rp #Charlie out here like I will shag or marry every girl if it means I save my ladies

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onlydreaming · 2 years

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-Ophidian

Franz Kafka // Wageningen University // David Foster Wallace // @saint-ambrosef // Ada Limón // Ben Capalan // Francisco Goya // Catherine Gildiner // Margaret Atwood // Laozi // Architecture mysticism and myth. 1892 // Adonis // Akwaeke Emezi // Anne Carson // Maya Marshall // David Cronenberg // Inio Asano // Maggie Stiefvater // Mark Z. Danielewski // Ian Matthias Bavitz // La Lampara Maravillosa // Brenna Twoh // George Abraham // Emily Dickinson // Heather Havrilesky // Gwen Benaway // Stig Dagerman // Yves Olade // Katy Wiedemann // Ajahn Chah // Katherine Mansfield // Sara Teasdale // The Judge, 1921

#web weaving #poetry #not my quotes #quote #x #🜏#☿#☽🜔☾#♄

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arkiwii · 11 months

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Rambling about Il Siracusano event - a subjective review

Il Siracusano event having been out for an entire week now, and with the survey Yostar gave us about the event, I would like to ramble a bit about the event and what I thought of it; of course, this is mainly going to be something subjective, so not many might agree with it, feel free to give out your opinions in reblogs/comments! I'm very open with it, no problems at all!

So, warning, small spoilers about the event, long post and probably bad english, I'm doing my best

What I liked about the event

Map design and layout

Of course, I think this is very original to have a direct map of Siracusa as a field of exploration, and more than all, having not only the stages, but different places; it really makes Siracusa feel real, realistic, almost like a real city, rather than "just some stage levels"

Some events have been pretty original with their map, like Maria Nearl's map looking like a tournament, or Mansfield Break looking like the prison's design, or the amazing Stulifera Navis's map, but none were as elaborate as Il Siracusano

We can see a lot of worldbuilding and originality from it, and it's very pleasing to see! The only small downside I can see is that when we first open the event's stages, there's no indication to where to start - of course, by looking around and clicking on everything, we can find our path, but it's slightly overwhelming at the first glance and we feel a bit lost

Characters and story

No surprise, Arknights characters are very attaching as always, and even side NPCs have been really amazing in it, may it be Giovanna, Sicilla, Agenir, but even less remarkable characters like Danbrown and Ben - who thought an event would have made me feel attached for a carwasher guy? The little side quests where we follow each of the main's characters in the city was really interesting, because we could experiment their point of view and life outside of the main story, making them feel human and alive

The whole story about the influence that the famiglias occupy in the city, making it an anarchy where each decide their own rules, and the only law being the one brought by the Judges, yet their power is still meaningless, was really great

It really takes us away from our sense of morales by showing us a place where crimes are casual, and a day without blood flowing sounds like more of a surprise than a day without; the characters all have a different way to react to this life, some decide to live with it without complaining, some decide to oppose to it, and some prefer to go away

I rarely pay attention to events stories, at least, not if I'm not interested in the characters; Texas and Lappland being not the characters that I'm the most attached to, I could have just ignored it, but yet I still felt taken in the story

Side note to la Critica Artistica, some reviews are truly funny and the winks to the event's main story are awesome

Rewards and event shop

Are you telling me there is a stage with guaranteed orirock clusters? For real?!

The entire's event rewards are truly great, may it be the rewards given by the side quests or the event's shop, we really have nothing to complain about - we literally can get 600k LMD from the shop alone, not given all the LMD given by the side quests as well; this event allowed me to promote three six-stars in a single day

And of course, not to mention the free six-stars operator given out, Vigil, even if a Tactician Vanguard is not the most ideal in the gameplay, and apparently the character is not the best gameplay wise, it's still a good gift for new players

What I did not liked in the event

Complicated dialogues and foreign language

Of course, a common criticism about Arknights in general is how complicated it is to understand what is going on; the whole plot often revolves around politics and other complicated subjects, it's difficult to grab a hand on what is being told if we don't have a basic knowledge on the subject

While the event was slightly easier to understand, some details went above my head easily, - but it could be fault to the fact that I am not a native English speaker and also cursed with ADHD - the dialogues were still very long and if it's not about the characters we care about, we quickly lose interest or barely read it; you know the rules, thirty or fourty minutes of cutscenes, and in the end, not even five minutes of gameplay

Not mentioning the characters using Italian terms; it's not the first time that characters use their native language in a media, Pokémon and Disney movies being good examples, but there is a fine line between "using local expressions time by time" and "using key terms in this language" - I have to thank myself for being French, since the languages are quite similar, I could guess what some words meant, but sometimes I really had no clues. Having important terms like Il Signore dei Lupi can be confusing, and we miss some important points or small details, and not many enjoy playing with a translator open near them

Complicated politic talk is already confusing, complicated politic talk in another language is even more confusing; I think it's an important role of a translator to know how much they should remove, and how much they should keep, to have dialogues that we can understand while showing the cultural references used behind

Way too easy

I'm not a new player, nor an old player, I already have a bunch of six-stars, and very good ones, and Elite 2 characters; but for having done almost all Side Stories/Intermezzo in the course of the last weeks, I can definitely tell that even at my level and with the units I used, some were seriously challenging, and I'm not talking about the ex stages, but the main ones

Yet, I have never seen an event as easy as Il Siracusano; the new enemies were nothing challenging, sure, the debt progress was an original adding, but the challenge was not that complicated - not only there is no downsides in letting civils die (while in other events, you would lose a life point), but the enemy that appears when the debt is full is not that bothersome. It could be for the first stages, but later, with a good defender and good healing, it can be really easy to counter it

And here comes the final stage and boss; annihilated. I never cleared a boss stage this fast ever, and I had no help or anything, it was all improvised and a surprise - I don't even know what the final boss's ability was, as I killed him before he could even use it, and no support unit were used

Of course, there is a true debate about if the main stages of an event should be easy or complicated; on one hand, if they're too complicated, new players will struggle to finish the event, or even not finish it at all in due time, and even old players might have to use a guide or playthrough to know what to do; but on the other hand, if it's too easy, old players will find no pleasure in playing the stages, and with the dialogues being way too long, it really is "95% of cutscene, 5% of gameplay"

I think it's something that the game still has to work on it; of course, I would like to have stages I can clear without having to use Deus ex Ch'alter and our Savior Kyo, but I would like them to be challenging enough to not clear them in a blink of an eye; it's a true balance that still needs to be found, something not as complicated as SN-10, but not as simple as IS-10, and finding balance in a gacha - so a game with a lot of units, each with their own abilities and strength, and allow every player to be able to use who they like - is the most challenging

What I would love to see in the future

"Showcase" stages of new operators

A very good idea that I loved in An Obscure Wanderer was the stages with given operators, and more than all, Mlynar himself; it was a very good introduction for the players to directly test out the new operator's ability, and if it was not for these stages, I would not have been convinced to roll for him

May it be Texalter, Penance, Vigil and Lunacub, we did not had any stages where we could use the operator or see them in battle directly; not a lot of players might feel comfortable enough to test out the character as a support unit, since it's a bit "testing new waters", and three new six-stars can feel imposing

But I feel like if there's some special stages - those "tutorial stages" that costs no sanity, and with no rewards, or at most just one Originite Prime, would help to test the true potential of the character in a given stage where the operator would have a perfect niche, to help the player how to use them, but also to convince them to roll the character

Lore guide and event sum-up

For people who have a hard time focusing on the dialogues and just what is going on in general, I think that a lore guide and sum-up for each event would be truly useful; quite like the small lore hints given in Chapter 10 and 11, but more elaborate, probably without rewards, but a new page at each stage and cutscene cleared

The lore guide could introduce each characters with their name, role, affiliation, and small profile, an introduction to the place where the event take place, and a sum-up of the important events and key points of the event, in an easy language; and why not use this guide to translate/explain cultural references used in the event? It could be interesting, not only to educate us, but also it would allow to have characters speak in their native language without making it hard to understand since there'll be an explanation given

Alright, so that's it with all I can come up with! I have no idea how pertinent it is to put my review and opinions on Tumblr, cause the chances that a personal of Yostar comes by are very low, but we never know!

#arknights #il siracusano spoilers #rambling #long post #I have no idea if I got characters/mechanics/foreign terms right I don't have my game open near me and I'm waiting at my therapist's

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