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shy-sapphic-ace · 6 months

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List of queer books I read, loved & recommend!

(There isn't any particular order, I wrote these as I remembered them)

Master Of One - Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett (mlm, fantasy, very cool worldbuilding and magic system, funny, cool characters)

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree (wlw, fantasy, very soft & chill vibes)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (wlw, high fantasy, cool worldbuilding, kinda reminds me of LOTR but with more dragons and feminism and lesbians)

Even Though I Knew The End - C.L. Polk (wlw, supernatural noir, cool 1930s detective story with angels & demons, I loved this one!)

The Love Interest - Cale Dietrich (mlm, science fiction, very cool concept)

The Darkest Part Of The Forest - Holly Black (side mlm, fantasy, cool fae lore)

The Weight Of The Stars - K. Ancrum (wlw, not quite science fiction but space stuff is involved, lovely and complex characters)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz (mlm, fiction, very nice in general, there is also a sequel)

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee (mlm, historical and vaguely fantasy, nice story but I preferred the sequel honestly)

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy - Mackenzi Lee (wlw, the sequel to the one before, more fantasy elements than the first, asexual main character!!)

Gallant - V.E. Schwab (no romance, but in the background one of the characters(?) uses they/them pronouns, very cool dark fantasy vibe)

Stranger Than Fanfiction - Chris Colfer (gay main character, trans main character, coming-of-age, nice book)

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (yes it's the Love, Simon book, mlm, fiction, pretty nice)

They Both Die At The End - Adam Silvera (mlm, sci-fi ish but mostly fiction, cool ideas, but the ending is sad! Very amazing book though, I haven't read the prequel yet)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid (wlw, bi main character, historical fiction, cool story, just a neat book in general)

This Is How You Lose The Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (wlw, sci-fi, very cool time travel stuff!! and very beautiful, it felt like reading poetry most of the time)

One Last Stop - Casey McQuinston (wlw, background trans & pan & queer characters, sci-fi or fantasy idk, but time travel, I loooved this book, great)

The House In The Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, THIS BOOK oh my gosh you should read it!!, just cute and lovely and good)

Under The Whispering Door - TJ Klune (mlm, fantasy, this book is also sooo amazing, great character development and awesome relationships and stuff, it's been a while since I read it but it was so good)

And They Lived... - Steven Salvatore (nblm, fiction, about gender identity and learning to love yourself, read it a while ago but it was very nice)

I Wish You All The Best - Mason Deaver (nblm, fiction, about finding your identity and people who care about you, very cute and sweet)

The Song Of Achilles - Madeleine Miller (mlm, historical, very good in general)

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (mlm, background wlw in the third book, fantasy, it's a trilogy, basically Harry Potter if it was gay and also better)

Silver In The Wood - Emily Tesh (mlm, fantasy, very pretty, lots of fae stuff and lovely descriptions, it has a really good sequel too)

Pretty much anything by Alice Oseman (all cute and lovely and great, though I've only read Radio Silence so far I hear only good things, Solitaire is on my to-read list)

I Kissed Shara Wheeler - Casey McQuinston (wlw, fiction, it's been a while but I liked this book)

The Falling In Love Montage - Ciara Smyth (wlw, fiction, this book was so cute and funny and deeply emotional it made me Feel way too many things, I'd definitely recommend it)

What Big Teeth - Rose Szabo (a bit of queerness all around, fantasy, werewolves and monsters, this one was pretty cool!, lots of original ideas for the world/character building)

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liamlawsonlesbian · 28 days

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what book I would give each current formula one driver to introduce them to the joy of reading

an intellectual exercise no one* asked for

Max Verstappen: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond - if you are nd and have read this book, you may understand me. otherwise just trust me. the impetus for this post

Checo Perez: The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White - this is an excellent read-aloud book for Sergio Jr.'s age, and there is nothing as wonderful as reading a compelling book to a kid you love, imho

Charles Leclerc: The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman - he is on the record as a Potter enjoyer. also, I think he would enjoy having a little animal friend

Carlos Sainz: Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood - okay yes this is partially a joke about the title, but this is a hilarious and wonderful memoir, about weird families and Catholicism, and I think Carlos would enjoy it.

Lando Norris: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett - in my mind Lando is a little bit like @bright-and-burning but less cool, so this fits. also, the combination of high number of jokes/page + action/mystery seems like a good fit

Oscar Piastri: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - this book has the kind of mystery that really draws you in, plus I think Oscar would dig the questions about AI it digs into. I choose to believe with zero evidence that he would be interested in the funky gender stuff

Fernando Alonso: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - look me in the eye and tell me this book wasn't written for Fernando Alonso

Lance Stroll: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - yeah

Lewis Hamilton: Die Trying by Lee Child - Lewis deserves to read mildly trashy thrillers <3 plus there's a Tom Cruise movie

George Russell: Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith - as a proud Brit, George should be reading one of the premiere English authors of the 21st century. her first book of essays is a fun and readable place to start

Yuki Tsunoda: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - I don't have a Yuki-lore explanation, I just want to give him one of my favorite books

Daniel Ricciardo: The Gunslinger by Steven King - The Dark Tower series is Lord of the Rings-esque in scope but Western-inflected in aesthetic and written by The Horror Guy, I think DR would enjoy

Alex Albon: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee - I say this with so much love in my heart, but Alex wants to be seen as smart. this book is brilliantly written pop science

Logan Sargeant: Bloomability by Sharon Creech - yes this is a book for tween girls, but it's about boarding school in Switzerland, and Sharon Creech is a genius. if I could convince him to read it, I think he would love it

Valtteri Bottas: The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien - what are hobbits if not humanoid moomins?

Zhou Guanyu: Piranesi by Susannah Clarke - a fun, exciting, stylishly written book for a stylish guy

Kevin Magnussen: Watership Down by Richard Adams - rabbit warfare <3

Nico Hulkenberg: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - Hulk SEEMS like a Dad Who Reads Historical Fiction, even if he isn't yet

Pierre Gasly: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - I almost said A Game of Thrones but I don't think that would be good for him. so, Six of Crows. he likes heists!

Esteban Ocon: City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty - a superhero origin story of sorts for Mr. Spiderman

Bonus: Liam Lawson: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - lesbian from New Zealand. let me have this

*ro asked for it, take it up with them @oscarpiastriwdc

#put the body of this under the cut bc it's embarrassingly long #these books are all originally in english which i know would not be ideal for many of the drivers! but those are the books i know best #do not lose

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melodiousmonsters · 8 months

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I'm just going to start talking about my celestials each month to give you all some low effort and fun(for me) content. Also doing full illustrations of them as well, with some design notes at the end.

My interpretation of loodvigg, named Fhobia Denta Latrostratous (they're one of the three celstials with a full name at the moment) is a fair bit different from other's interpretations of it for extremely personal reasons. They're a tad bit strange, and creepy looking, but overall they are a compassionate (in their own strange way, like almost everything about them) and creative individual that's held as a role model for all shadowkind. They also have a lavender colored ring around their pupils so their eyes aren't fully pink, which is the main difference from the cannon loodvigg, along with the subtly different feathers, lower body, markings on the abdomen, and scales on the arms.

They are generally unexpressive (tonealy, the main way monsters express their emotions) yet VERY emotional. Over the years they gradually became more in control of their emotions due to sheer life experience, but they are still a little more irrational and driven by emotion than most of the other celestials.

They hate being touched, loud sudden/repetitive noises, math, people or things that get too into the meaning of art and other stuff like that, and the texture of a few things like fish meat or coarse fabrics. There are very few things they have a neutral opinion on, one of which is the taste of blood by itself.

They love keeping up their appearance in most situations, for example, their hair isn't naturally like that, they use their saliva like hair jell and specifically style it to look like that, also they would be absolutely rancid smelling and filthy with their diet of fresh meat and preferred locals of wet warm caves. They spend a lot of time cleaning themselves, which is extremely rare for monsters. They also like eating more than your average monster, they eat like a toddler because of how preoccupied with eating they get, collecting/making taxidermy and other oddities, and all critters, especially invertebrates though.

They are majorly interested in biological sciences, specifically preservation and taxonomy. They gave the celestials and dof era monsters/critters their scientific names(no I don't have scientific names for the celestials yet, I've kinda ran out of ideas for scientific names tbh). They happen to spend a lot of their time in a very large cave network with a lot of different types of caves that make good enclosures for keeping critters to study.

They care a lot about the other celestials as they are siblings and gets very angry if something bad happens to them, only if they feel it's undeserved, their empathy is a bit wacky and inconsistent.

Also most shadow monsters tend to share in its odd mannerisms, sometimes the behaviors show up in completely non shadow affiliated monsters and no one knows why.

Disclaimer (I think that's the right word), yes you guessed right, Fhobia and the large majority of the shadow monsters are autistic, the term isn't used in universe as the monsters don't have a word for autism as they aren't that into psychology and "the way that monster is" has worked in place of a proper word historically, monsters aren't into categorizing others.

as for design notes and process here it is! all the stuff in red boxes are final.

#my singing monsters #beezleart #art #melodious monster chronicles #loodvigg #fhobia denta latrostratous

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peachesofteal · 3 months

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i would love a book recommendation list from you whenever you have the time to write one up :-)

Hi! I put together a list of everything I've personally read and enjoyed. Please remember these are my personal recs. To each their own. These are fantasy/high fantasy recs only, and one science fiction because I cannot resist talking about Dune.

Mistborn (7 books split into two eras) and The Stormlight Archive (4 books) - Brandon Sanderson - Just read them. I can't even begin to cover the way I have consumed the Cosmere (his multiverse). Complex magical systems that make sense. These are my number one recommendation.

The Poppy War (and it's two subsequent books)- R. F. Kuang - technically it's military-ish fantasy. The magic blends really well and I didn't put these down. I loved how Rin was more morally grey. It teaches, too.

Wheel of Time (sixteen ish books) - Robert Jordan with an assist from Brandon Sanderson at the end - one of my favs. Typical hero stuff but I love the world and the magic system. I watch the show too, and would recommend if you want to get a little excited about reading them. This series ruined me for a while, it was really hard to get into anything else.

Malazan - ten books - Steven Erickson. I read these a while ago but they’re very engrossing.

The Priory of the Orange Tree (and A Day of Fallen Night) - Samantha Shannon - I devoured these! Really liked them. Sometimes the pacing is a little weird but… would recommend.

All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness - okay it’s historical fantasy but definitely check these out. Witches, vampires, demons… dark haired love interest and Deborah Harkness really weaves the history so well, I loved them. She has an additional book in this universe that I didn’t like so much BUT she has a new one coming out soon and I’m excited.

And finally... Dune - Frank Herbert (only, NOT the books his kids wrote. So six titles, ending with Chapterhouse: Dune) - Science Fiction. If you’ve seen the first movie you more or less than know the premise but I promise you there is so much more. I am aware that some interpretations of this story reduce it to a white savior narrative but that’s simply NOT the case and you would have no idea unless you actually read the full six books.

Last thing: I don’t recommend jumping from series to series. Take a break or read a romcom. These stories are deeply detailed and very engulfing. Learning new worlds, magical systems, religions, races, etc when you change books can be confusing and do a disservice to the book and yourself. “The first book” in a lot these can be hard to chew or digest because you’re learning so much, so keep that in mind! 🩵

#peaches asks #book recommendations #book recs

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fatehbaz · 3 months

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hi! SUPER interesting excerpt on ants and empire; adding it to my reading list. have you ever read "mosquito empires," by john mcneill?

Yea, I've read it. (Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, basically about influence of environment and specifically insect-borne disease on colonial/imperial projects. Kinda brings to mind Centering Animals in Latin American History [Few and Tortorici, 2013] and the exploration of the centrality of ecology/plants to colonialism in Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World [Schiebinger, 2007].)

If you're interested: So, in the article we're discussing, Rohan Deb Roy shows how Victorian/Edwardian British scientists, naturalists, academics, administrators, etc., used language/rhetoric to reinforce colonialism while characterizing insects, especially termites in India and elsewhere in the tropics, as "Goths"; "arch scourge of humanity"; "blight of learning"; "destroying hordes"; and "the foe of civilization". [Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” The Historical Journal. October 2019.] He explores how academic and pop-sci literature in the US and Britain participated in racist dehumanization of non-European people by characterizing them as "uncivilized", as insects/animals. (This sort of stuff is summarized by Neel Ahuja, describing interplay of race, gender, class, imperialism, disease/health, anthropomorphism. See Ahuja's “Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World.”)

In a different 2018 article on "decolonizing science," Deb Roy also moves closer to the issue of mosquitoes, disease, hygiene, etc. explored in Mosquito Empires. Deb Roy writes: 'Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a lecture to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce [...]. [H]e argued that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope."''

Deb Roy also writes elsewhere about "nonhuman empire" and how Empire/colonialism brutalizes, conscripts, employs, narrates other-than-human creatures. See his book Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 (published 2017).

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Like Rohan Deb Roy, Jonathan Saha is another scholar with a similar focus (relationship of other-than-human creatures with British Empire's projects in Asia). Among his articles: "Accumulations and Cascades: Burmese Elephants and the Ecological Impact of British Imperialism." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 2022. /// “Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma.” BJHS Themes. British Society for the History of Science. 2017. /// "Among the Beasts of Burma: Animals and the Politics of Colonial Sensibilities, c. 1840-1940." Journal of Social History. 2015. /// And his book Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (published 2021).

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Related spirit/focus. If you liked the termite/India excerpt, you might enjoy checking out this similar exploration of political/imperial imagery of bugs a bit later in the twentieth century: Fahim Amir. “Cloudy Swords” e-flux Journal Issue #115. February 2021.

Amir explores not only insect imagery, specifically caricatures of termites in discourse about civilization (like the Deb Roy article about termites in India), but Amir also explores the mosquito/disease aspect invoked by your message (Mosquito Empires) by discussing racially segregated city planning and anti-mosquito architecture in British West Africa and Belgian Congo, as well as anti-mosquito campaigns of fascist Italy and the ascendant US empire. German cities began experiencing a non-native termite infestation problem shortly after German forces participated in violent suppression of resistance in colonial Africa. Meanwhile, during anti-mosquito campaigns in the Panama Canal zone, US authorities imposed forced medical testing of women suspected of carrying disease. Article features interesting statements like: 'The history of the struggle against the [...] mosquito reads like the history of capitalism in the twentieth century: after imperial, colonial, and nationalistic periods of combatting mosquitoes, we are now in the NGO phase, characterized by shrinking [...] health care budgets, privatization [...].' I've shared/posted excerpts before, which I introduce with my added summary of some of the insect-related imagery: “Thousands of tiny Bakunins”. Insects "colonize the colonizers". The German Empire fights bugs. Fascist ants, communist termites, and the “collectivism of shit-eating”. Insects speak, scream, and “go on rampage”.

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In that Deb Roy article, there is a section where we see that some Victorian writers pontificated on how "ants have colonies and they're quite hard workers, just like us!" or "bugs have their own imperium/domain, like us!" So that bugs can be both reviled and also admired. On a similar note, in the popular imagination, about anthropomorphism of Victorian bugs, and the "celebrated" "industriousness" and "cleverness" of spiders, there is: Claire Charlotte McKechnie. “Spiders, Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction.” Journal of Victorian Culture. December 2012. She also addresses how Victorian literature uses natural science and science fiction to process anxiety about imperialism. This British/Victorian excitement at encountering "exotic" creatures of Empire, and popular discourse which engaged in anthropormorphism, is explored by Eileen Crist's Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and O'Connor's The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856.

Related anthologies include a look at other-than-humans in literature and popular discourse: Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out (Heholt and Edmunson, 2020). There are a few studies/scholars which look specifically at "monstrous plants" in the Victorian imagination. Anxiety about gender and imperialism produced caricatures of woman as exotic anthropomorphic plants, as in: “Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory" (Chase et al., Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009). Special mention for the work of Anna Boswell, which explores the British anxiety about imperialism reflected in their relationships with and perceptions of "strange" creatures and "alien" ecosystems, especially in Aotearoa. (Check out her “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” Transformations. 2018.)

And then bridging the Victorian anthropomorphism of bugs with twentieth-century hygiene campaigns, exploring "domestic sanitation" there is: David Hollingshead. “Women, insects, modernity: American domestic ecologies in the late nineteenth century.” Feminist Modernist Studies. August 2020. (About the cultural/social pressure to protect "the home" from bugs, disease, and "invasion".)

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In fields like geography, history of science, etc., much has been said/written about how botany was the key imperial science/field, and there is the classic quintessential tale of the British pursuit of cinchona from Latin America, to treat mosquito-borne disease among its colonial administrators in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. In other words: Colonialism, insects, plants in the West Indies shaped and influenced Empire and ecosystems in the East Indies, and vice versa. One overview of this issue from Early Modern era through the Edwardian era, focused on Britain and cinchona: Zaheer Baber. "The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge." May 2016. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and other scholars of the Caribbean, "the postcolonial," revolutionary Black Atlantic, etc. have written about how plantation slavery in the Caribbean provided a sort of bounded laboratory space. (See Britt Rusert's "Plantation Ecologies: The Experiential Plantation [...].") The argument is that plantations were already of course a sort of botanical laboratory for naturalizing and cultivating valuable commodity plants, but they were also laboratories to observe disease spread and to practice containment/surveillance of slaves and laborers. See also Chakrabarti's Bacteriology in British India: laboratory medicine and the tropics (2012). Sharae Deckard looks at natural history in imperial/colonial imagination and discourse (especially involving the Caribbean, plantations, the sea, and the tropics) looking at "the ecogothic/eco-Gothic", Edenic "nature", monstrous creatures, exoticism, etc. Kinda like Grove's discussion of "tropical Edens" in the colonial imagination of Green Imperialism.

Dante Furioso's article "Sanitary Imperialism" (from e-flux's Sick Architecture series) provides a summary of US entomology and anti-mosquito campaigns in the Caribbean, and how "US imperial concepts about the tropics" and racist pathologization helped influence anti-mosquito campaigns that imposed racial segregation in the midst of hard labor, gendered violence, and surveillance in the Panama Canal zone. A similar look at manipulation of mosquito-borne disease in building empire: Gregg Mitman. “Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia’s Plantation Economy.” Environmental History. 2017. (Basically, some prominent medical schools/departments evolved directly out of US military occupation and industrial plantations of fruit/rubber/sugar corporations; faculty were employed sometimes simultaneously by fruit companies, the military, and academic institutions.) This issue is also addressed by Pratik Chakrabarti in Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (2014).

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Meanwhile, there are some other studies that use non-human creatures (like a mosquito) to frame imperialism. Some other stuff that comes to mind about multispecies relationships to empire:

Lawrence H. Kessler. “Entomology and Empire: Settler Colonial Science and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation.” Arcadia (Spring 2017)

No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Keith Pluymers)

Archie Davies. "The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 46, Issue 2, pp. 270-283. November 2020.

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Urmi Engineer Willoughby, 2017)

Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Aro Velmet, 2022)

Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson. “Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. August 2007.

Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (Alan Mikhail)

The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca J.H. Woods, 2017)

Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (Kristen Hussey, 2021)

Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (Kirsten Greer, 2020)

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Saheed Aderinto, 2022)

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (Timothy P. Barnard, 2019)

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka)

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tinfairies · 1 year

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The Fairy Garden

My Ko-Fi

Commission Directory

My Art Tag: tin art

My ask box and DMs are always open for people to come chat or be horny little freaks!

Don't like it? Block me!

Don't be a cunt.

Dark content including rape, self harm, suicide, murder, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, necrophilia, cannibalism, incest and bodily fluids will be present here.

My only major boundary is scat. It just doesn't interest me.

Bestiality and pedophilia are entirely off the table. Yuck.

I do not consent to my writing or art being translated and/or posted to any other website or being fed to AI.

I go by Tin or Lu, I'm 23 years old.

Filthy American 🦅*eagle noises*

I am bi, enby and more fem presenting. I use any pronouns but use she/her by default since it's just easiest. (what I'm used to)

About Lu

I represent myself with bears, tigers and orange cats.

Lu's tumblr

Lu is similar to an alter ego or imaginary friend if you will. I blame shit on him and project my problems onto him. I use him so I don't have to feel negative emotions. He is my punching bag.

Lu is me and I am Lu and I am in full control of my actions and words.

Lu is represented by black dogs/wolves

I "talk" to him and he "talks" to me

Fun Facts

I have 2 kitties named Mercury and Jasmine and 2 leopard geckos named Mister Man and Dracarys

I do lots of art, I used to write a lot but I haven't had the muse for it lately

Mentally ill but who isn't these days (we live in a society fr)

Kink Stuff

Bisexual, switch. Lots of nasty, icky kinks.

BDSM, pet play, age play, knife play, cnc, dumbification, and piss are some of my top kinks.

A mommy dom, or a ma'am but I like being called daddy and sir too. I love puppy and kitty subs and littles.

I am a kitty sub and a little sometimes.

I like being a brat.

I can be a mean dom or soft dom depending on what my sub wants

Fandom List

(this list updates frequently and you're always welcome to pop into my ask box or DMs to talk about these fandoms!)

Anime/Cartoons: Hunter x Hunter, Death Note, Fruits Basket, One Piece, Black Butler, Hazbin Hotel, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Ouran High School Host Club, Princess Jellyfish, Bungo Stray Dogs

TV Shows: Supernatural, The Boys, Gen V, Alice in Borderland, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Criminal Minds, Percy Jackson

Movies: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, MCU, DCU, X-Men, Slasher/Horror Fandom, Star Wars, The Last Unicorn, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Twilight Saga, Phantom of the Opera

Video Games: Left 4 Dead, Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Dead By Daylight, The Sims, Stardew Valley, Red Dead Redemption, Animal Crossing, Boyfriend to Death, The Price of Flesh, Sally Face, Fran Bow, Night in the Woods, Fear and Hunger

Misc: Creepypasta, Marble Hornets, Homestuck, The Vampire Chronicles, Lychee Light Club

Other Interests

Art, writing, history, archeology, anthropology, architecture, vintage era, edwardian era, medieval era, dinosaurs, cryptozoology, speculative evolution, science, mass tragedies, chernobyl meltdown, cults, fashion, historical fashion, horror, true crime, music, musicals

My Hunger Games/TBOSAS Masterlist

My One Piece Masterlist

My Hunter x Hunter Masterlist

My Old Masterlist

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thewritetofreespeech · 2 months

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Could I request Mammon, Satan, Solomon, and Simeon with a lover who's a writer?

Imagine them writing favorable articles about Mammon to make him look more credible.

Mammon

At first, he’s very happy & excited to see that he’s getting some good press.

Mammon is used to it a little, from his modeling and people telling him he looks good, but being that he’s doing a good job by a stranger makes him feel like he’s actually doing something positive.

When he finds out it’s MC though, Mammon is crushed. He thought that someone else thought he was good, and now he just finds out it’s a fluff piece written by his partner. He feels kind of betrayed.

Satan

Being such a bibliophile, it makes sense he would have a partner who is a writer.

He’s very supportive of their career. Offering advice, proof reading, and extending readings of their manuscripts to make sure that they are good. And he gets to read their book before anyone else.

At events like book signings, he acts as their bodyguard. They don’t really need one, but Satan insists that he be there.

Solomon

Not the biggest ‘reader’ outside of spell books, but he appreciates that they are good at it.

He does read their new works when they finish and enjoys them. He usually has nothing but positive feedback.

Is helpful on the research end of things. Since he’s lived so long, he knows a lot of stuff. From science and philosophy to real historical events.

Simeon

They met at a public event where their books were being hosted, and hit it off immediately.

Simeon and MC have different writing styles and types of stories they write, but Simeon loves that. The different perspective is very interesting to him and he finds it fascinating how their mind works.

They have a cute little rivalry when their new books come out. Trying to see who can sell the most copies or get the best reviews. It’s all in good fun though.

#;ask and ye shall receive (request answers)#obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me hc #mammon #obey me mammon #obey me satan #satan #obey me solomon #solomon #simeon #obey me simeon #headcanons

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max1461 · 2 months

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It's like, I enjoy history, and there are lots of other history enthusiasts here! Why don't I chat with them about history more? Well sometimes I do, but like... every post about history on here has to including some musings somewhere about like, what we can learn from it. Was this historical event good or bad? Can we implement this historical type of institution in our own society? Does the collapse of the blah-blah empire portend the collapse of America?

And it all just feels so vapid and pointless. These "lessons" are 99% of the time deepities or insight-porn, and they are likewise 99% of the unpleasant. I want to read history to hear about interesting things from the past. The details, the specific events, that's the interesting bit. I think attempts to create natural-science style generalizations or laws about history is probably futile, outside some very basic observations about like, population size and production capacity and stuff. But everyone is always trying to extract these "take aways", these fucking lessons, and figure out how to apply them to the present and to the fucking discourse du jour and whatever.

And I just feel like it makes history discussion unpleasant to engage with, it makes these things all fraught instead of just cool and interesting. And fraught for no epistemically justified reason.

You know those WW2 enthusiasts who just want to talk about all the different models of tank? I wish everyone was more like that, for every different period of history.

I'm like that, but instead of models of tank, it's languages. I like knowing about all the different languages and where and when they were spoken and what's related to what and so on. You can model me quite accurately as a WW2 tank guy but for languages.

But everyone is always trying to look at history and conclude shit, and I'm just like

you probably can't

trying makes the whole thing more unpleasant

I don't know, I think I wouldn't mind the "meta-historical navel gazing" if it was occasional, I might even like it. But it's way more frequent than could possibly be justified on the grounds of its intellectual merits or of its enjoyableness!

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capn-twitchery · 2 months

Note

I'm sorry did I see you say you did your masters' thesis on character design? could you tell us more? 👀

YES ABSOLUTELY thank you So much for giving me an excuse to go off about this oh my god--SO!! 👀

my masters was on animation, specifically concept art & pitch bibles for animation (i'm not sure how well known those are but basically it's a document/book you bring into a pitch, contains all the basics of the show!) so it focused around making an animated show concept, a pitch bible & a visual development portfolio (just a fancier way to display more concept art) & the thesis (was supposed to) document the thought process behind making it

it was classed as a science masters, which meant the project had to be based around a hypothesis, so things got Muddled (hypothesis was on the rarity of adult horror in western animation) but the core of it was: i wanted to make a pitch for a fake tv show and write about character design & analyse art styles. so i did! there was stuff on stereotypical design traits & what they imply, environmental storytelling, how to show story through character design, how genres affect art styles & why, stylising animals for animation, sticking to historic research vs visual shorthands/readability, off the top of my head.

i will spare you hours of ramblings BUT i will not spare you the chance to show off some of the stuff i made >:3c the show concept was an 1800s (vaguely) southern gothic horror vibe, i went for anthros bc i had never tried them before and wanted something more challnging than humans. story concept was based around ergotism, mass hysteria, unreality, weird creatures in the fields that may or may not be real, power struggles, etc. etc.

the pitch bible i am still so Unbelievably proud of--i made everything basically from scratch myself, drew so many things i'd never even Attempted before, and although i'd change a few things now (mainly the writing/formatting) i'm still proud of it! i think the visitants pag is the coolest thing i've ever made still >:3c here's a handful of pages, and i'll put a few of the visual development portfolio ones under the cut & the links to the full things if anybody is interested!!

i never did get to finish the visdev portfolio bc of a bunch of health issues + a surgery, which is a shame. i do still really like this project tho and i'm immensely proud of getting the degree even through the Fuckery 😌

i'd love to come back to it someday, there's a lot of things i'd like to change now i'm not under a time limit (better historical reference, for one) but it's the first uni project i've still felt passionate about after submitting it, so thank you for giving me the chance to talk about it :D

if you did wanna see the full pieces, the pitch bible is here and the portfolio is here (albeit unfinished)

#inquiries #abstractkind #thank you 1000x hehehehe i always love talking about this #i know it's unrelated to the blog entirely but it's ok it gets an exception #fredspeaks #sorry this is long i hope it's interesting at least >:3

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starswallowingsea · 6 months

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Suguru Geto is a fucking eugenicist and I'm tired of people just brushing that aside to make silly gay fanart of him: an essay.

Hi hello JJK tag I have come to drop one singular essay to you and I do hope you'll at least listen, since it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this essay, lets first define eugenics and why it's bad. Strictly speaking, eugenics is the movement for "racial purity" that requires the planned reproduction of people only within narrowly defined racial categories, as well as the elimination of undesirables within a population (oftentimes people of color, disabled people, and queer people) via sterilization or death. The movement began in the late 19th century and continues to some extent to this day. You can read more about it here if you're interested.

Eugenics goes hand in hand with other forms of bigotry and manifests in how people refer to each other, including some of the ways that Geto refers to non sorcerers within the manga, even before his death and subsequent possession of his body by a spirit. Geto refers to regular humans as "monkeys" and cleans himself in response to coming into contact with him. This sounds familiar, doesn't it?

This wording is very intentional on the part of Akutami and the translator. Geto is a villain and meant to be someone we see in disgust and while there are sympathetic villains in other series and I'm not going to say that you can never like villain characters (some of my own favorite characters are villains who have done fucked up things before), there is a difference between the two. Geto is specifically a representation of eugenicist, racist, xenophobic beliefs that exist in the real world. He is not someone who is fed up with the system, he is not someone who just wants to fuck around and find out.

This comment here further emphasizes my point. One of the core ideas behind scientific racism and eugenics is the idea of biological races or that people with different skin tones have different, distinct biological functions in their body. An example of this in our world involves GFR production and "race corrections" in kidney tests (source) that are only just starting to be phased out in the medical field. The idea of needing a race correction for something like kidney function is a product of scientific racism and indirectly plays into eugenics. Denying that people are the same race or even species as you because of uncontrollable factors (sorcerer abilities, skin color, country of origin, sexuality, gender, etc) is uh. Not a good thing!

"Monkeys" is a word that comes up frequently with Geto's talks on non sorcerers as well. It's a loaded term and again a deliberate choice on behalf of both Akutami and the translator to use it. Historically, due to scientific racism in the field of evolutionary science specifically, black people and people of color were assumed to be more closely related to monkeys and therefore "less evolved" than white people. It's a loaded word used with intention by Geto and by Akutami in the writing of Geto's character.

IN CONCLUSION can we please stop woobifying Geto as a character. His ideals and goals are an important part of him and watering him down to do gay shit with Gojo is really not what we should be doing with him in fan works. Yes Gojo's reaction to losing his friend to essentially the far right pipeline of eugenics and fascism is realistic and it's okay for Gojo to feel hurt and betrayed by this, but the reality is that Geto broke away because he believed so strongly that the world needed to be cleansed of non sorcerers and Gojo eventually accepted that he lost his friend, no matter how much it hurt to let go. This is an important part of Gojo's character arc and development but to ignore the everything about Geto's beliefs and never acknowledge them, or god forbid make JOKES about this stuff is a surefire way to make sure disabled people and people of color don't feel safe talking with you.

Notes:

I cannot stop you from shipping Satosugu or any other Geto ship. This essay was meant to inform people of the deeper meaning behind Geto's beliefs and maybe help some people see that real life issues are reflected in the media they consume. JJK is not a work that shies away from handling harder topics and this is no exception.

I will not be responding to any bad faith arguments on this post or in my inbox. If you have a genuine question feel free to come talk to me and I am willing to have a civil discussion with you about it, but calling me names or insulting me will be met with a block button so just save yourself the trouble and block me first.

#shay speaks #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk analysis #suguru geto #geto suguru #satosugu #sugusato #stsg #sgst #anti satosugu #<- these tags are intentional bc i need as many people as possible to see this #i dont engage with the fandom in general bc of this specific issue with people just #glossing over geto's fucking eugenics policies and viewpoints and making them into jokes #so uh. this might be a wake up call to some of you.#otherwise feel free to block me my feelings wont be hurt lmao i already block so many stsg shippers as they come up in my notes

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ladykailitha · 1 year

Text

The Promise

Just a little sweetness to break up the absolute angst fest I’ve been working on. I’ve have cried so many times writing the next few parts, my little romantic heart needed a break.

So I jumped on the “they met as children” bandwagon.

Or you can read it here on AO3

Eddie wandered around Steve’s bedroom as Steve went to answer the phone. He wasn’t surprised to see that the room held little personality. Not because Steve was a blank slate by any means. No, it was more that judging from what Eddie knew about Steve’s parents and the way they forced conformity on him.

So the book shelf was a bit of a surprise. Four neat little shelves crammed with books.

Steve opened the door and asked, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Eddie looked up from the bookshelf feeling caught out. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop. It’s just everyone says you don’t read, so the bookshelf was a bit of a surprise.”

Steve scoffed. “They only say that because I don’t read fantasy or science fiction. I read other stuff.”

“What’s wrong with either of those two genres?” Eddie asked, moving away from the shelf to sit on Steve’s bed.

Steve shrugged. “I guess I never found the right kind of fantasy, especially since you told me that there are so many sub-genres. I guess I got overwhelmed.”

Eddie nodded. Not every fantasy book was for every person. He would have to go through his books and find a nice variety for Steve and figure out what he liked.

“And what about science fiction?” he asked.

Steve wrinkled his nose. “I hate it. And I’ve read all of the supposed greats, too. Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury. They all spend so much time on the science that they don’t get to the fiction. And it hurts my head.”

Eddie sighed and cocked his head. He couldn’t fault that. “So what do you like?” Steve cocked an eyebrow at him and he laughed. “I didn’t get to read any of the titles before you came back.”

Steve still eyed him skeptically but came over to sit on the bed next to him. “I like biographies. Mainly sports but a couple historical figures too. Winston Churchill was interesting. Diary of Anne Frank. But mostly I like mysteries.”

“Mysteries? Really?” Eddie said lightly. “Will wonders never cease. So who’s your favorites?”

“I like Agatha Christie, of course, Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes...” he trailed off. “The classics, I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with the classics,” Eddie said. “What’s your favorite Holmes story?”

Steve hummed. “I would say ‘The Adventure of the Silver Blaze’.”

Eddie frowned. “I don’t think I’ve heard of the that one.”

“It’s where a horse goes missing right before an important race and the trainer is found dead,” Steve explained, starting to talk excitedly for the first time since he caught Eddie going through his bookshelf.

“Whoa!” Eddie teased but Steve laughed. “Why do you like it so much?”

Steve blushed. “It’s one of the few times that Dr Watson finds an important clue.”

Eddie lit up with interest. “Yeah? What was the clue?”

“That the horse tracks start coming back about half way through.”

“And Holmes was so focused on seeing the clues in front of him that he forgot to look to the side?” Eddie guessed.

Steve nodded. “It’s really cool.”

“Now here’s the really important question...” Eddie said, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. “Poirot or Marple?”

Steve who had leaned forward before Eddie asked the question, threw his head back and laughed.

“Poirot hands down!”

Eddie put his hands over his heart. “No! Say it isn’t so!”

“Afraid so,” Steve said with a grin. He leaned over the bed to pull out his favorite book. “Elephants Can Remember.”

“It’s about a girl who’s future mother-in-law wants to find out if insanity runs in the girl’s family because when she was a little girl her father was with her mother both found dead on the top of the cliff near their home. Was it a double murder? Murder/suicide? And if so, who was the one that killed them both, the mother or the father?”

“So this old bat comes to Poirot to find out?”

Steve nodded. “It’s really good.”

“Huh,” Eddie said. “That does sound interesting.” He began leafing through the pages when a piece of paper fell out. “What’s this?

Steve shrugged. “Just a piece of paper I use as a bookmark sometimes.”

Eddie eyed suspiciously. Steve was far too causal about this little piece of paper.

He turned it over. There was a circle around a heart and a little note that said, “This is the best ring I can do right now, Love E”

“What’s this?” Eddie asked, his breath catching in his throat.

Steve blushed. “The first person I ever kissed.”

“Eleanor Jackson gave you this?” Eddie asked. He had heard the story of course. Everyone had. How when Steve was ten Eleanor declared him to be her husband and would kiss him every day on the playground. Everyone thought it was cute. Personally, it made Eddie gag. Mainly because no one had asked Steve what he thought.

But Steve was shaking his head. “She was the first girl I kissed.”

Eddie’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me, what?”

Steve looked down and began picking at a loose thread on his comforter. “I don’t even remember what his name was and since he only signed it as ‘E’ I guess I probably never will.”

Eddie looked down at the note again. “Tell me about this boy.”

Steve bit his lower lip. “When I was eight, my aunt took me out to one of the lakes to play on the beach. I don’t even remember which one. But there was this dark haired little boy making a sand castle too close to the water and would get frustrated every time a wave came up and destroyed his hard work.”

Eddie grinned. “Sounds cute. Even if he seems a little dim.”

“I asked why he didn’t simply move further up the beach,” Steve said, remembering with a fond smile. “He said that he had. Twice!”

“Oh the poor little bastard,” Eddie said, nearly doubling over with laughter.

“So I convinced him to make little soldiers instead for the waves to deliberately carry away.”

“Awww...” Eddie said. “Did he agree?”

“We made a game out of it,” Steve said. “Who could build the fastest army before the wave came back.”

Eddie was cackling now. “So who won?”

“He did by a landslide,” Steve said. “I could only manage to make three or four but he made ten!”

Eddie shoved his hair in his mouth to try and stifle the laughter. “Oh god, you are so competitive. How on earth did you handle that?”

Steve tipped his head back and sighed. “I pouted.”

“Of course you did,” Eddie said.

“It’s how I got my kiss though,” Steve said. “So I really couldn’t complain.”

Eddie tilted his head to side. “And how did that work?”

“When he saw me pouting, he kissed me,” Steve murmured. “Said that he had seen his mom do that with his dad when his dad pouted.”

“Cute!” Eddie said giggling.

“I kissed him back in retaliation,” Steve said. “He was just so sweet.”

“He really sounds like it,” Eddie said softly, looking down at the note. He crossed his legs and looked up at Steve. “When did he give you the note?”

Steve mirrored his position. “Just before him and his parents left. He told them he had forgotten something. He rushed back to me and gave me the note.”

“That’s real sweet, Stevie,” Eddie said. “So you just told everyone it was from Eleanor Jackson and kept it safe all this time.”

Steve nodded. “Everyone thought it was so sweet that she wanted to marry me, but I hated it.”

“Because you were already engaged to someone else,” Eddie teased. “Oh my what would Nancy think? You were cheating first!”

Steve protested, “Hey! It wasn’t like that!”

Eddie grinned. “I know, big boy. I’m only teasing you. You look so pretty when you blush.”

Steve pouted.

Eddie leaned over and pressed his lips to Steve’s.

Steve gasped. “Eds?” he asked, unsure.

“I learned that from my mom,” Eddie whispered as he worked a ring off his right hand. “Sorry it’s late, darlin’, but I finally got you a better ring.”

He slipped on Steve’s ring finger on his left hand.

Steve stared at the ring on his finger in awe and something softer, more dear.

“Did you know the whole time I was tell the story that it was you?” he asked, suddenly shy.

Eddie shook his head. “Not at first. I didn’t remember the sand castle or the little soldiers. Remember the kiss, though.”

Steve looked up at him through his eyelashes. “Yeah?”

“Of course I remember the first person I ever kissed, Steve,” Eddie cried. “Like you, I didn’t remember the boy’s name. I don’t think you ever said.”

Steve blushed. “Probably not,” he admitted still shy.

Eddie kissed him again and Steve melted into it. “So pretty boy: gay or bisexual?”

Steve frowned for a moment, thinking. “I want to lean more to toward bisexual because of Nancy, but the more I think about our relationship and how we are much better as friends, I start to wonder. And then there’s Robin. What straight or bisexual man suddenly stop having feelings for a girl just because she said she liked her own gender?”

Eddie nodded. “You’ve dated women pretty exclusively, did you feel anything for any of them? A spark, a floppy feeling in your stomach?”

Steve shook his head. “The closest I ever got to that was with Nancy. I was happy with her. Maybe no sparks or fireworks or anything like that, but she made me happy. So I thought that’s what love was.”

Eddie smiled, “And now?”

“Happiness is just a start,” Steve said, pulling Eddie back for another kiss.

Eddie grinned against Steve’s lips. “Well you make me pretty happy.”

Steve looked down at the ring on his hand. “We haven’t even dated and we’re already engaged,” he said with a laugh.

Eddie moved to sit next to Steve and picked up his hand to admire the ring. “I didn’t think I would find you again. And even when I entertained those thoughts, I would come up with scenario after scenario where we hated each other because we become such different people.”

Steve blushed. “My nightmare scenarios where were I found you again only to find out you were already with someone else. Or you tell me that it was a youthful indiscretion and that didn’t mean anything.”

Eddie kissed the ring gently. “Turns out we were both wrong.”

Steve chuckled. “I’m glad we met when we did, Eds. Again, I mean.”

Eddie cupped Steve’s cheek with his other hand. “Why’s that, sweetheart?”

“I think our nightmares would have come true,” Steve said softly, closing his eyes and leaning into Eddie’s touch. “Only it would have been me telling you it was a youthful indiscretion so Tommy would still like me. And then we would have hated each other. And I can’t stand the thought of that. Not now. Not now that I’ve gotten to know you.”

Eddie smiled softly. “I know what you mean, baby. And I’m grateful, too.”

Steve kissed him again and let Eddie lower them on to the bed.

“You’re so beautiful,” Eddie whispered. “You were beautiful then and you’re even more so now.”

“I love you, Eds,” Steve murmured. “I think I always have.”

Eddie grinned. “Me, too,” he murmured against the skin of Steve’s neck. “Me, too.”

#My writing #stranger things #steddie #met as children #ladykailtiha writes

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aro-culture-is · 11 months

Note

Aroallo culture is constantly feeling like a degenerate

I have... more than a few things to say on this topic, but I will restrain myself to the two major points that have caused me to delay posting this.

For one: Internalized sex negativity ahoy!

In all honesty? I genuinely do not understand how sexual attraction without romantic attraction (or any other form of attraction, really) is supposed to be bad. I genuinely cannot tell you how wild it is to think that sexual attraction, one of the instincts that has generally been selected for among all sexual species similar to us, is somehow... morally incorrect? How much must we hate ourselves, see ourselves as the monster in a bedtime story, for the invisible Thought Crime of feeling like another person is attractive? It's okay. Literally the only "bad" is if your actions in response to a feeling are performed in malice or cause harm, and even then there's nuance that requires thought and communication, not mind-reading and assuming others will be disgusted.

Sincerely, please please please look into sex positivity. Read about it. Follow sex positive accounts, movements, and people. Let yourself feel in response, and ask yourself what does and does not speak with you. Engage in the topic. You don't have to believe it right away, but I promise you, it is well worth your time to expose yourself to resources that teach you another perspective that does not demonize the vast majority of the world in some strange and non-productive way, producing shame and little to show for it.

Secondly... degeneracy.

What a very, very loaded word. To summarize some points from Wikipedia, in terms of fact: the concept of degeneracy in this usage originates from the 19th century theory of social degeneration. The concept of heredity had yet to be fully understood in social degeneration's 18th century development, and this movement largely believed that habits of parents changed their child's biology. This, in turn, was used to explain a perceived decline in civilization. It took little time for the theory to appear in medical and zoological works, with the intent to explain why different ethnic groups exist. You may recognize this concept by a directly related one: eugenics.

The theory of degeneracy first grew fame when used to explain racial differences, and quickly spread from the medical field to psychiatry (ie, mentally ill individuals will produce more severely mentally ill children, and therefore should not continue their lineage) and criminology (particularly when combined with phrenology). It was associated with authoritarian political attitudes such as militarism, scientific racism, and support for eugenics. The development of degenerate theory both partially predates and partially follows the works of Gregor Mendel in describing the theory of evolution, and frankly, largely based its so-called scientific backing on incorrect understandings of evolution and poor science, using such understandings to prop up eugenicist beliefs.

Why do I say all this? I think it is very, very important to recognize the sociopolitical bullshit that props up the absolute pseudoscience that social degeneracy revolves around, and to state that anyone who truly believes in degeneracy does not actually have the best interest of other's in mind or heart except that of the current in-groups. if people in your life are using these theories and words, I want to empower you with knowledge that they are, scientifically and historically, very much in the wrong. I want you to be able to look at their words, and understand the context behind their beliefs, even if they themselves do not.

also, real talk: if you can, form other social networks. join a club, play social games, go to community events, anything it takes to experience people outside of those who give you this message. it'll do wonders for you to build social circles outside of that stuff.

tl;dr:

the origins of the theory behind the word "degenerate", as used today, are scientifically bullshit, politically and socially motivated, and largely were used to justify eugenics. i would recommend not trusting people who genuinely believe in degeneracy to have anyone's best interest at heart but their own, and that you are perfectly normal and fine as you are.

#aro culture is #aro #aromantic #actually aro #actually aromantic #ask #mod axel #alloarophobia #internalized alloarophobia #sex negativity cw #long post

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freezing-kaiju · 22 days

Text

ALRIGHT, IT'S TIME!

THE SECOND RYUKI-AND-BLADE-ACCOMPANYING ANIME POLL IS NOW HERE!!!

SO, MEET YOUR CHALLENGERS!

AJIN Demi-Human

youtube

We start with a dark horror and possibly scifi about ethics in science, immortality, and an outlaw fugitive alien plot as a boy finds himself part of a group of immortals declared legally inhuman. While I have some misgivings about Oh No I Was Secretly A Creature All Along plots, I do fucking love horror and there’s a lot of ways for those plots to hit hard in the trans and gay and autism organs and be really important!!!!

Dimension W

youtube

The New Tesla Energy Corporation has monopolized the fourth dimension and the coils that connect to it. A duo of bounty hunters, one human and one robot, make money via repossessing illegal coils and seek out the answer to the mysteries within the dimension. I really wanna watch this one for a few reasons, the primary one of which is 'there are multiple fat women'. It seems to have freaks and weirdos and fun times, and its comedy is emphasized more than most of the other ones on this list so it might give some needed levity!

Kyoukai no Kanata

youtube

A bumbling monster hunter with blood powers meets an immortal via trying to shank him and ends up in an arrangement where she'll keep trying to kill him to boost her confidence while hunting monsters in what I hope is a monster-of-a-week show that came highly recommended by a friend as her favorite anime, or one of her favorites, so i have high hopes! Script's by the hibike euphonium guy and the power system seems quite interesting!

Air

youtube

A puppeteer (if he’s as good as Sakon will remain to be seen) stops his Road Trip To Meet A Golden Sun Jupiter Summon to stay for a bit in a town and, as happens to anyone who stops for too long, gets attached to the place and also meets a girl who might be said jupiteresque being. My friend informs me that it's gorgeous, sounds amazing (so I'll make sure to get clips), and has "nice sad vibes"!!! And it’s…listed in a “provincial horror” listing… hoho

Heike Monogatari

youtube

A child who can see ghosts and the future walks tirelessly through the tragedy of the war between the Taira and Minamoto families before the dawn of the first shogunate. It's wildly beloved by a friend of mine, and also centers a historical event i know some but not all about and definitely need to know more about the Taira side of. Seems like a beautiful drama, one I could lose my heart over.

SSSS Gridman

youtube

Digital kaiju! Digital hero! Digital amnesia! A monster of the week show about an unknown amnesiac summoning and merging with Hyper Agent Gridman to fight digital, possibly virtual monsters while making friends(?) in the real world! It's the one thing Tsubaraya Productions has that isn't Ultraman, and I expect some tokusatsu vibes from it along with the mecha stuff, i've also heard it has gay girl megatron??

Akudama Drive

youtube

It's a prison break and crime story set in a tech dystopia, starring a scene girl shoplifter, and featuring a bevvy of unpersoned convicts in what seems like an excellent ensemble clusterfuck!!! The Danganronpa crew made this thing! It's also beloved by a friend of mine, and I've heard it'll be a generally excellent tragedy of a time

Canaan

youtube

A reporter gets saved from assassins by a woman she might do yuri with, and the summaries I’ve found seem to imply a plot about terrorism and mystery! It’s a Type-Moon work that isn't part of the fate, tsukihime, OR melty universes! It might still have magecraft, but it's tagged sci-fi too, and a type moon take on scifi sounds interesting... it’s also based on. *checks wikipedia* a…perfect-Famitsu-score visual novel for the Nintendo Wii. So I might need to dig out some old hardware to watch this thing. For fun’s sake!

Killing Bites

youtube

A guy unintentionally becomes the underground wrestling promoter of a ?werewolf? Woman who murders his friends and wins him a shitload of money. The end goal? According to the summary, control of the economy!!! This was recommended as garbage and good lord I need garbage so much good god I need to put some trash inside of me.

#kj grabs a megaphone #kj watches anime #polls #IF YOU WANT TO VoTE MULTIPLE OPTIONS PUT IT IN YER TAGS

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cadmusfly · 3 months

Text

Analysing the Quality of Napoleon's Marshals With Silly Data Science

Let's talk numbers and laugh at funny graphs with missing data!

Other people in this fandom do really lovely detailed information posts, I do weird fanfic, dragon shitposting, body pillow design shitposting and run a stupid Lannes ask rp blog. But! I'm also a programmer with an interest in Numbers, and today we're going to Analyse These Dead Frenchmen with a bunch of screenshots of graphs.

Ethan Arsht published a really interesting article called Napoleon was the Best General Ever, and the Math Proves it., where using data scraped off Wikipedia articles, he creates a statistical model drawing from multiple variables per battle to calculate How Good A General Is At Winning.

Give the article a read, it's great stuff, but if you don't feel like it, he basically applies WAR - "Wins Above Replacement" - which is a value from baseball that measures how many wins a player is worth when compared to a replacement.

So the general's WAR would be how well they compare to a completely average general who replaced them. Yes, as Arsht says, "in other words, I would find the generals’ WAR, in war."

But as he says, this is not a stringent historical analysis and is more of a fun thought experiment. Wikipedia is probably the most comprehensive dataset on this topic that he had access to, but it is Wikipedia the crowdsourced online encyclopedia, so it is going to have holes and inaccuracies. And this was written seven years ago, and the data was collected then, so any updates to these articles since then wouldn't be reflected.

And it's not a perfect model that takes into account everything - it's an approximation, a whole bunch of number crunching. I haven't looked too deeply into how the numbers work exactly, even though I could.

I think that 0 would be "completely and utterly average"? A positive WAR is good, a negative WAR is not. Napoleon is the best general ever at 16.679 WAR, the next highest is Caesar at 7.445 WAR.

(Link, you can hover over each battle and look at each datapoint!)

But I'm interested in Napoleon's marshals. The 26 men he raised up to military nobility! The dramatic assholes who kept arguing with each other. I'll post links for all of them at the end of this, but I won't be screenshotting each of their WAR graphs, just a few.

I'm not entirely sure how the scraper collected the information about what battles a commander is considered in "charge" of - I tried looking at the provided code repository but I am reminded that data science people bless them are not really good at structuring or publishing code and why are all the html pages just straight up saved in the root folder why are the jupyter notebook outputs just uncleared aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Oh yeah this was scraped from seven years ago so current wikipedia pages won't be reflective of what's on the graphs - so we can assume that this is just grabbing stuff from the "Commanders and leaders" part from each individual battle page and collating them into numbers

Anyway let's look at the iron man himself, Davout, considered to be the best of Napoleon's marshals.

(Link)

Heh, here we see the first hole in the dataset - Jena-Auerstedt is considered to be one battle, and Napoleon would like you to think that's the case.

Anyway, pretty good! Let's look at Jean Lannes, the lively Gascon

(Link)

Oooooh, even better than Davout! Helps he didn't go to Russia. Wait, why is Aspern-Essling dated to before Ratisbon, especially when Lannes died in the former?

Let's look at André Masséna, also known as being pretty cool:

(Link)

Damn, neat, though I think there's a lot of omissions here.

Here's Murat:

(Link)

Lol Tolentino, I do like how Murat Peaked there a little bit

But we're forgetting a certain redhead, aren't we?

(Link)

Ouch. But also Waterloo not appearing there, hmmm.

Anyway let's finish off the screenshots with Napoleon's greatest strategist, Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the man that Wellington called a master of the defensive!

(Link)

honestly this is the entire reason why i wanted to write this post

in soult's defense - as a soult defender - he had a pretty shitty army full of conscripts, was isolated, was occasionally pretty bad at adapting tactically to new surprises and had to deal with the english being stubborn fuckers, but he was brilliant in setting things up strategically and forcing the english to catch up through a fighting retreat with a demoralised army, stopping them from closing in on france too

but also the way this graph bullies soult so hard makes me laugh a lot

Anyway, yeah, these graphs are definitely inaccurate and I'm also posting these to see the Napoleonic community on tumblr's reaction to them, but they are a fun way to engage with history!

Just don't take them seriously, and feel free to argue in the tags/comments/reblogs

I could theoretically use this guy's code to rerun this just for the Marshals now - I know my way around some data science code - but I do have a lot on my plate, but it would be a fun experiment!

Marshal WAR Graph Links

Note: So these are under the Wikipedia article names at the time that the web scraper was run seven years ago so some of these names turned out to be different from what they are now and I had to do a bit of digging to fix some

you can definitely tell that the information is incomplete on a lot of these, again i repeat the information was scraped off wikipedia seven years ago

Louis-Nicolas Davout

Jean Lannes

Joachim Murat

Michel Ney

André Masséna

Jean-de-Dieu Soult

Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey (one battle lol)

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Charles-Pierre Augereau

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte aka Charles XIV John of Sweden (Two battles and only Swedish ones I think)

Guillaume Brune

Édouard Mortier (two battles)

Jean-Baptiste Bessières (two battles)

François Christophe de Kellermann (one battle, Valmy)

François Joseph Lefebvre (two battles)

Charles-Victor Perrin (ouch)

Étienne Macdonald

Nicolas Oudinot (lol)

Auguste de Marmont (loll)

Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr

Józef Poniatowski (three battles but hmm. pretty bad but feel like there's too much missing info here)

Emmanuel de Grouchy (two battles, can't make a Where's Grouchy joke)

Marshals Without Graphs Not because they didn't command anything but I couldn't find their graphs on the website or in the code repo

Catherine-Dominique de Pérignon

Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier

Louis-Gabriel Suchet (wtf? maybe seven years ago the documentation on him was sad)

EDIT: wait i was looking at the notebook (the uh place where the code was being run, to see if i could run the code myself)

soult is one of the lowest ranked generals overall on this initial list pfftHAHAHhahahahahahahaha

#napoleon's marshals #napoleonic era #napoleonic wars #napoleonic shitpost #cadmus rambles #cad rambles about dead frenchmen on main #jean lannes #louis-nicolas davout #joachim murat #michel ney #andre massena #im not tagging all of them #jean-de-dieu soult

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