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kiefbowl · 1 month

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I was reading an opinion piece on Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis on CNN by Jamal Baig about the increasing rates of cancer in patients under 50. As far as 5 minutes of googling and JSTORing can lend me to believe, there's nothing illegitimate about Dr. Baig. However, I found this bit in his opinion interesting:

Now, I'm always dubious when reading anything that attributes a very broad generalized idea that changes in diets have caused an increased in cancer, because more often than not it's not pointing to an exploration of, say, increased pesticide use, but the author's personal bias against the quote unquote "unhealthy", especially those who are deemed "fat" by the medical industry.

That being said, I was curious what source he linked, half expecting it to lead to just another op-ed from some other doctor from who knows when, but I was pleasantly surprised! Written by a man named Michael Donaldson, it was an evidentiary review published in a scientific journal called "Nutrition and cancer: A review of the evidence for an anti-cancer diet."

Now I wasn't going to give the whole thing a read, but I stopped in each section, gave a quick skim to get a general vibe, moved on to the next section, etc. I was immediately suspicious that the very first line in the abstract was "It has been estimated that 30–40 percent of all cancers can be prevented by lifestyle and dietary measures alone" as that seems to be a bananas statistic to just posit, but it still had the air of scientific integrity, so I did my skim.

The first handful of sections had things that gave me some moments of pause, that this article was in fact another doctor simply cherry picking data to confirm his own biases, but nothing so egregious as to do a spit take. That comes in a few minutes. The first section that made really go hold the phone was when we got to his Flax Seed section.

Compare how he writes about Red Meat...:

(that's all he wrote, btw)

...with how he starts writing about Flax Seed:

Did I just enter a Flax Seed commercial? Does this guy work for BIG FLAX SEED? on and on he writes about Flax Seed, and I start getting a sense that perhaps this man has a Flax Seed Agenda. In any case, he eventually moves on and I quickly skim to get to the end (because it's boring among other things).

So, who exactly is Michael Donaldson?

Girl are you kidding me

The Hallelujah Acres Foundation is a FOR PROFIT company that sells a """biblical""" based diet program called the hallelujah diet and also sells supplements on said site.

Now, in case you forgot where I started with this, this was the link provided as a "source" to a legitimate doctor's claim in an op-ed about cancer that "at least part of the answer" of why cancer is increasing in under 50 patients are the "changes to nutrition and lifestyle that took hold in middle of the last century." Dr. Baig did not read this article, or if he did was not concerned that it was written by the employee of a company that profits from unscientific research it uses to sell supplements and diets. Which is worse, I don't know.

The point I'm making is that you absolutely need to be vigilant all the time. You need to understand that doctors can not only have biases, but agendas. Researchers can have biases and agendas. Scientists can have biases and agendas. And that magical thinking about real health issues that can affect your future can permeate the scientific community because weirdos write convincing enough evidence that support their already determined world view.

This kind of shit is the reason why women go into doctor offices complaining about pain in their abdomen and get told to go lose weight and come back in 6 months. This is why ideas like moralizing eating have huge effects on women's health and influence medical misogyny, and why it's a feminist issue.

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didoldacc · 1 year

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can I request a fic where beom and reader are enemies (secretly in love with each other)but had to do a project work together in beom's house which led to reader accidentally seeing a picture of her beside beom's computer which happened to be playing p0rn......and sub beom begging for reader to help him! also if possible....maybe reader ordering beom to j3rk off infront of her to humiliate him?? if these are too uncomfortable please don't force yourself to write!! I love your works btw🩷

mdni!

warnings: sub!beomgyu, perv!beomgyu, mentions of p0rn, masturbation(m), humiliation(m receiving), cowgirl position, oral(f receiving) if there is any i have missed please let me know!

you would kill your professor, you could. she matched you with beomgyu out of all the people she could choose. what are the odds of you pairing up with beomgyu instead of other 98 people who also take this class. the professor must have a grudge, you think.

"seriously, -------- how would she know you and beomgyu don't get along? stop being paranoid." you huff at your friend's rationale that you don't wanna admit it's true.

"anyways, we agreed to meet up at 6 so i gotta leave." you say before you leave. "you will stonker" she yells with her voice filled with irony.

it doesn't take you long to arrive his house. once your app shows that you are in the location he has sent you, you ring the bell. you hear a stir coming from the apartment. you get impatient and when you lift your hand to ring the bell again, the door opens.

"you are early. you weren't supposed to come here for an another hour." he seems on his toes but you don't mull over much about it. "i thought it would take me longer to get here and i also gave us an extra half an hour to get prepared so that we could start at exactly 6." you say before entering his house without his invitation. you question his manners since he didn't even bother to invite you to enter. he apologizes for that as if he can read your mind and asks for you to give him a minute. you agree and head to his couch while he was heading to bathroom.

once you sit, you start to observe his house unintentionally. yet you tell yourself to stop it since you don't want your mind filled with details of him. you deceive yourself everything about him is redundant information.

you take the laptop close to you so as to prepare essential sources and articles that your professor recommend. it seems like he is going to take long and it will only benefit you two if these things are ready. but you come across with an unexpected scene. you eyes go wide minute you witness one of your cutest photos that you often use in your social media profiles and an adult video playing on his screen starring a woman oddly similar to you. you are supposed to feel disgusted with what you just overeyed but you felt a burning sensation down there.

you think beomgyu is actually a chaldean when you hear his voice calling your name behind you. "you weren't supposed to see that. i am sorry, can you- can you just forget what you just saw?" you don't exactly know what to do. but he cannot seriously expect you to just forget about it.

"no! no, i can't just forget what i just saw. you are such a disgusting pervert, you know that?" you practically shriek. you turn around to see his expression and feel sorry for him once you realize he is panicking.

"please, i beg you. if you can't forget it, can you at least try to forgive me? i can do everything, i swear. please, please, please, plea-" you cut him of by shushing him. "what do you mean by everything? like what can i gain with your abilities? i am already doing good socially and every other aspect in my life. what could you possibly bring to table? you are just afraid that i can use this to ruin your reputation, aren't you? but i will not give you the satisfaction. especially not after your elementary school bully act towards me!"

"i swear it is not it. i don't even care about my reputation. boys will not even see the problematic aspect of this and girls will forgive me no matter what i do because i am pretty. you know that!" you shake with laughter "you seriously cannot be saying these in your position. you are really thinking you are something." you mock him.

"no! please just listen. what i have to say! i wouldn't even care if they hold me accountable and isolate me, even if i have no social life left. i just want your forgiveness. i swear. i was just teasing you with my childish act to get your attention. i never intended to hurt you. i cannot live with the fact you thinking so little about me. i am really sincere. please just forgive me. please i beg-" you cut him of again this time with your acrimonious laughter. he seems more scared than ever your pity towards him grows.

"you sound like a broken record repeating the same part over and over again. but i guess i can find a way for you to make it up to me." his eyes sparkled with hope. "yes, -------. whatever you want." he keeps begging and waiting for your dispensation. you give him a smirk before you lean toward his eyes and whisper "how about we just restart the video and watch the video together? can you do that, hm?" he looks in your eyes with a shocked but pleased expression and nods his head.

he sits down to couch and takes his laptop on his lap. he gives a little pat right next to him implying that he wants you to sit there. you do and he starts to video.

beomgyu kept gulping throughout tho whole very vanilla video. you sighted that he was mostly focusing on your picture than the video itself. and you see a growing dome on his pants. he turns to you and asks for your help nicely but instead you smirk with delight and lean towards his ears once more. "why don't you put on a show for me instead? it is not your place to ask for help, you know?" you rown.

"but it is so humiliating. i-" he tries to protest before you shut him off. "i know it is exactly why i want you to do it. and also didn't you say that you would do anything?" you argue. he nods and takes his laptop to put it on axle stand. he slowly pulls his pants and underwear down and turn his head to face you. he gives a soft smile before starting to jerk off. his hands going up and down as fast as he can while he keeps whimpering.

he slows down to tease himself to give you the best show he can. it doesn't take him long to moan your name. the sensation starts to cloud his thinking. he just stares at you with empty eyes only filled with desire. when you flash a smile at him, he gives the loudest moan yet.

"it feels so good. it feels better than every time i have jerked off or been with someone. thank you." he keeps saying like it is his entreaty. "you can't cum though. so keep edging yourself for me yeah?" he obeys and slows down once more. his movements keep teasing his cock. he flings his head back from pleasure breaking his eye contact. you sense he is about to cum so you take his hand to stop him. he raises his hand to give you a waiful look. you melt in lust with his pretty face looking so voluptuous.

he presumes and suddenly kisses your lips very passionately. you admire his boldness and return to kiss. you hold his waist to pull him closer and he leaves a broken moan.

both of your breathing quickens when the kiss get more passionate. you feel his teeth giving a small bite to your lower lip making you open your mouth. he uses the opportunity and his tongue enters your mouth. his hand reaches to your neck and he gives soft fondles. once you both get out of breath you stop.

as soon as he leaves your lips he takes off the rest off his clothes. and giving you a look implying you to do the same. you give him a smirk and undress yourself. he just stares when he sees your naked body with an obvious admiration.

he sits down again and you get on his lap. giving him a softer kiss before sitting down on his member. he nods implying you to move and you do. he places his hand on your clit to play with it. "wanna make you feel good." he says. it doesn't take him too long to reach his high. once he feels it's coming he places his hands to both of your hips and raises you to cut out your walls from hid dick. you sit next to him while he pumps his manhood a few times and coming undone.

he doesn't even bother to clean his stomach before making you lay down and getting between your legs and helps you to reach your high too. once he is done he gets up kisses you again before taking you to his bathroom to give both of you a nice shower.

he gives you one of his t-shirts for you to cover yourself up. he starts talking to break the awkward atmosphere. "i have always liked you by the way. i acted obnoxious because you kept giving me the cold treatment. i know it was not the right thing to do but i couldn't get your attention otherwise." he confesses.

you feel shocked at his confession yet it gives you courage to confess back. "i did give you the cold treatment i won't deny but it was only to protect myself. i felt this pain in my chest every single time i saw you. i figured that i had feelings for you. i mean you wouldn't wanna hang out a girl like me so i distanced myself to not get hurt. i mean it sound cheesy when i tell this but-" this time you are the one getting cut off middle of your speech. "why would you think that i wouldn't wanna be with a girl like you? do you know how ridiculous you sound?" he questions but you just incline your head. "he pets yor head before asking "so what do you want to do at our first date girlfriend?"

you giggle and say "study, i guess we have an unfinished assignment."

author note: i think you have sent this to several people. please don't do that. if my work has any similarities with anyone else please let me know. i will gladly give credit if someone wrote something similar to this ask. and please do not do this agin and put the writer in an awkward situation. 🕴

i hope you like it~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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centrally-unplanned · 2 months

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I was listening to this cast by The Weeb Crew, with SteveM as a guest, going through some other Evangelion video and dissecting the mythical memetic tropes it buys into. Which was a lot of fun, I recommend the cast, and the video they are critiquing is a bit of a grad-bag of zombie memes about Evangelion from the 2000's, which yeah have aged poorly.

One of the ones they get into is the idea that Evangelion's TV ending was "intensely unpopular", and Anno & crew were getting like bombarded with death threats and stuff. Which happened at some level sure, but certainly wasn't the median response. The video actually sites the "emails" shown on screen in End of Evangelion as evidence:

And like, bro those emails are fake! The staff wrote them for the movie, they didn't use real death threats or fan mail, that would be a huge legal liability. Not saying they are analytically useless or anything but, you know, you need to know that.

Anyway, SteveM mentions that of course there was pushback against Eva's ending, but actually the big wave wasn't interior to the fandom - instead it was sparked by Eva "going mainstream" discourse-wise. In particular a review essay by social critic Eiji Otuska (who is also a former lolicon creator ding ding ding) that was published after the finale aired sparked a widespread discussion in the media by other critics. He links to the essay in their discussion....except he doesn't. He thinks he did, and then when they look, its just someone else mentioning it in an article in 2003:

Bitter disputes broke out on online bulletin boards, with some critical of the producers for failing to provide a clear-cut end to the story, and others who praised the finish for being "typically Evangelion-like." But when commentator Eiji Otsuka sent a letter to the Yomiuri Shimbun, complaining about the end of the Evangelion series, the debate went nationwide. "The debate that erupted over the ending went way beyond our calculations," Gainax's Sato chuckles. "Anno probably knew what was going on. He realized that media other than anime had taken notice of Evangelion."

Which triggered in me the thought - why doesn't he have it? He references it in his own work after all. As you can guess, after some searching I am pretty sure I know why; no one has it. Its never been scanned or reprinted in an accessible format! It definitely is important in the history of Evangelion - I have seen this claim in other contexts, the essay that sparked a discourse, and you can find many works about Evangelion citing Otsuki (generally later works, like an article published in September of 1996 which you can buy) But what the article article said is only discernable via the clues dropped from second-hand accounts.

So can we find it?

First of all I need to figure out what is even being referenced. Searching through contemporary Japanese sources, I dug up an extremely handy find:

A somehow-still-existing 1997 fan page by a Japanese otaku (I'm giving you this stuff auto-translated btw, what would you do with a wall of kanji?) who extensively catalogued every media mention of Evangelion. I am sure they missed some, but they didn't miss a big one like the Otsuki letter - which we know from the above interview appeared in gigantic newspaper Yoimiuri Shimbun:

This gives us three candidates; given that we know it was written after the finale aired, and that was March 27th, 1996, our most likely candidate is the April 1st essay; I was able to find a secondary source mentioning the review was "immediately" after the finale, so I think that nails it.

Which alas does not bring up anything! Try as I might I cannot find any extant blog post, or scanned image, or long quoted form. But after trying the usual methods I did realize something - unlike my average document hunt, this is Yoimiuri Shimbum, a newspaper, a big newspaper. Which means they probably have their own archive, which I might be able to access. and low and behold, they do! And my university research services actually have an account!!

Incredibly blessed by this stroke of luck, I went digging for everything containing "Evangelion" and "Eiji Otsuka" in 1996, and found it:

And it's fucking blank. If the article is scanned or anything it will have that "Japanese Text" you see on the first result, or "Scanned Image" tag or something. I swear its like the only ones not scanned, all the random ads and list of best sellers are all there, but the entire cultural essays section is just an archival void. Shot in the skull right at the finish line.

Alas I am out of ideas of this one - its a newspaper, no one is selling this on Yahoo Auctions. Though hey, at least now we know the title:

"オウム」を超えるはずが... / It should surpass Aum...", 876 characters long.

"Aum" by the way is Aum Shinrikyo, the cult terrorist group that conducted the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Which you can imagine really took the chattering classes by storm; it was the culmination of a series of "extremist" actions that began in the 1980's that built up a narrative of societal decay and alarm. It really isn't surprising that Otsuka linked Evangelion to Aum Shinrikyo; the apocalyptic connections were obvious, there was even an episode of the show that had to be changed due to the attacks as the production team thought the events were too similar. And additionally, if this essay was gonna spark a "societal backlash", it has to say something controversial right? I have definitely seen other critics like Hiroki Azuma discussing Eva in relation to Aum as a "social phenomenon" - I am betting Otsuka is the source of that comparison being so ubiquitous.

From other sources like people on twitter and other articles, I can pick up a few other details on what it contained; apparently he referred to Evangelion's finale as a "self-help seminar" for otaku and lambasted the idea of airing one of those on TV. And from his other writings I think you can certainly piece it together - essentially seeing Evangelion's self-involvement and hyper-introspection as a product of the same societal malaise that birthed Aum Shinrikyo, while failing to deliver a solution that could "go beyond" that. Which, the shit you said about media in the 90's, I want a hit of what he's having! But while today its quite obvious that groups like Aum were, sure, saying something about society but turned out overwhelmingly to be fringe weirdos as opposed to canaries in the mental institute coal mine, at the time this was very much the zeitgeist.

Still, I don't really care all that much what it says - its an important artifact! It started the "Eva discourse boom" that broke out of otaku circles and launched Evangelion into a cross-societal phenomenon! We should have a record of it, it should be preserved. I will ruminate on it, and see if any other ideas pop up. And meanwhile if anyone out there happens to see what I missed definitely let me know.

#evangelion history #Ash anime deep dive bullshit #mini-essay

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felassan · 1 month

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just some thoughts on these (source: this article) original sketches of the Dragon Age world through time / concept sketches of the Thedas map at different points in its history:

(the linked article is worth a read for extra info and context on the maps). like the article says, whenever a name of a place or people is typed as opposed to handwritten, it means that the place or people originally had a different name which was changed by EA's "sensitivity team" due to it clashing with something from the real world. Names of things change when worldbuilding anything all the time ofc, but it’s just interesting to me to look at what's been typed over and list places / peoples which at one point in the creation of the world were called something else before being renamed for that reason:

Arlathan, Frostback Mountains, Alamarri tribes, Anderfels, Par Vollen, Antiva (used to be called "Calabria"), Orlais / Orlesian Empire, Seheron, Orzammar

I wonder what the ones (besides Antiva) used to be called? ^^ there are other names on the map that appear to have been renamed at some point in the process (see below), but they weren't typed over like this.

On the time periods given in some of the bottom-right hand corners: “F.A.” refers to the Founding of Arlathan (elven calendar), where 1 FA is the year in which Arlathan was founded. “T.E.” refers to the founding of the Tevinter Empire (Imperial Calendar), where 0 TE is the year in which the Imperium was founded. Does “F.C.” refer to the Founding of the Chantry, making this an alternative way of notating the Chantry calendar? (the Chantry was founded in 1:1 Divine and World of Thedas tells us that the founding initial event honored in this calendar is that in its first year the original head of the Chantry, Divine Justinia I, was appointed). Was this the original name/way of writing of the chantry calendar before they decided (either in-world or devs doing the worldbuilding) that instead of notating it like FC they would have ages like “-150 Ancient”, the Divine Age/1:10 Divine etc? Is “600 F.C.” the Steel Age? In that map it shows the Qunari Empire borders really quite far south into what became Antiva and Rivain, and we know that in the Steel Age the Qunari pushed deeply into Antiva and Rivain, so it could track. Ferelden would also have been founded as a kingdom at that time, explaining why Ferelden now appears.

These maps are also interesting as instead of purely geographical they are also political in places. (I think DG said at one point on the old forum that the lack of exact borders on the Thedas map we see is intentional, with the rough area controlled by each nation being pretty clear, and “when it comes to areas where they border on each other the exact ownership is probably in question”.) ((there are some cool fan-made maps out there where different people had a go at headcanoning or approximating borders to make political versions of the main map btw)). On some of them we can see dotted lines presumably representing borders or approximate borders of nations/states and the territories claimed or controlled by at that time of different groups of people, past and present, including in many cases the naval territory/their waters. It’s really interesting to see where some of these borders approximately are and to see how they changed through time in the world timeline. There are no border lines on the final sketch/most recent [in-world time-wise] version of the map, I guess as it’s the present time in which DA:O is set, or close to that time.

For example, it’s really interesting to me to see in 1100 TE the borders of the Dales, the borders of the Kingdom of the Ciriane and the borders of the Kingdom of the Planasene. (the Ciriane were the loosely-defined tribe from ancient times that lived in what’s now central Orlais, and the ancestors of modern Orlesians. The Planasene meanwhile were a farming tribe that became the ancestors of most humans in Nevarra and the Free Marches.)

And to see in -100 TE/6300 FA those of the kingdoms of Neromenian and Qarinus before the formation of the Imperium and before they became absorbed by the Imperium.

And it’s interesting to see Tevinter’s borders expand and contract over time, and stuff like how when the Kingdom of Rivain was founded, it was originally a much smaller nation in the northern part of that peninsula only, whereas in the modern day the peninsula looks to all be part of the kingdom of Rivain.

(in general it’s really interesting to compare these sketches with the map of Thedas as we know it hh).

The first map set in -100 TE/6300 FA clearly places the city of Arlathan, capital of Elvhenan, in the forest now known as Arlathan Forest. Codex Entry Enasalin says:

"An example of such a place is Sundermount in the Vimmark Mountains near Kirkwall. According to Dalish legend, this was a burial site for elders and the location of a great battle between Imperial and elven forces—nowhere near Arlathan (if one believes the city was near the forest of the same name in northeastern Thedas).)"

^ The dot there is the settlement of Arlathan.

Some other things I noticed/was wondering about:

It seems like the Venefication Sea during development used to be called the "Venefician Sea".

The ancient elves are noted as “the Elvhenan race”, rather than the elvhen race

A name is given for the tribes that presumably were the ancestors of modern Rivaini humans/the human tribes that inhabited the area around what became modern Rivain: the "Riverian Tribes". This is notable to me as I don’t remember hearing this before, and they aren’t listed in the list of known human tribes.

We can see the “Yothand tribes” noted in the area that became the Anderfels. Before seeing these sketches, the Prima strategy guide for DA:O mentioned that the main population of the Anderfels in ancient times in 500 TE, were called the Yothandi (note the "i" at the end isn't on the sketch map). parts of the info in that guide seem to be of debatable canonicity so that’s interesting too (maybe those segments of the guide were written earlier on during DA:O’s development before some changes were made in the worldbuilding?). In the Anderfels there are also the Orth people who live in the Wandering Hills today, but originally this was an old name for people[s] of the Anderfels (Orthland) in general. “Orth” doesn’t appear on these sketches. So what do we think? ^^ Were the Orth people called the Yothand[i] people earlier on in the worldbuilding process then the devs changed it? Did the Yothand people come first in the in-world timeline, and that was the name of those peoples in ancient-ancient times, before they grew into, came to be known as, or were otherwise absorbed by the Orth, in still-ancient but not super-ancient times? The map with Yothand is set in -100 TE, so in this scenario they were still called Yothand for another ~600 years going by the Prima guide. Are Yothand and Orth synonyms, like the Ciriane/the Cirean? Maybe one of the two terms is/was an umbrella term that includes the other, like Alamarri includes/included multiple tribes (Clayne, Chasind, Avvar)? Maybe there were simply multiple tribes like in Ferelden (Clayne, Chasind, Avvar) in the Anderfels (Yothand and Orth both). Maybe it’s just a case of loosely-defined groupings, like the Ciriane, with different parts or groupings within that having their own names? I'll note that interestingly "Yothand" seems like a combination of Anderfels and Orth.

Maybe "Yothandi" is a variant form of "Yothand" or plural or something?

Whatever the situation with the Yothand[i] and the Orth, given that e.g. the Ciriane for example are a loosely-defined group, given that the Alamarri are/were made up of multiple tribes (Avvar, Chasind, Clayne), given that the sketch gives these groups as “tribe[s]” plural (Ciriane, Planasene, Inghirsh, Yothand) just like it says “Alamarri tribes”, and given human history irl, since there are multiple named groupings underneath the Alamarri umbrella (Avvar, Chasind, Clayne), I’m choosing to headcanon that Ciriane, Planasene, Inghirsh etc are similarly umbrella terms with multiple other named groupings within them, just that they're names that we don’t know, unlike with the Alamarri tribes. makes sense, Ferelden is the most fleshed-out human nation in the setting.

Who are/were the “Shaelan” [sp?] race and the “Olvenene” [sp?] race?? (if you can make out those words better please let me know!!) I don’t think these words crop up elsewhere in known lore. On the sketch that they appear on, human tribes are called “[Something] tribes” and the elves (a people that is not human) are notated as the “Elvhenan race”. Were there a few other races that weren't human on Thedas this far back in the world’s time? Or at this point in the creation of the world in the dev process, were there a few more races who are not humans in the lore and they were then removed? I wonder what these groups were like/what these people were concepted to be like at that point. The “Shaelan race” are given as living in the now-Free Marches area south of the Minanter River. If the way Arlathan is drawn is anything to go by, the “Olvenene race” are given as living in what looks like a forest, north of the Tirashan and near the Hunterhorn Mountains, near where Kal-Sharok is. They have a capital city/settlement in that forest called “FaeFran” [sp?], which to me sounds kinda fantasy-elfy or fey. Maybe the patch of the forest north of the Tirashan on the map sketch became the green bit around the Blasted Hills on the map we know? I wonder if they were a different type of elf or a significant elven subculture within the greater culture Elvhenan, given the way the name sounds and the forest location. (also, like the Elvhenan and their capital in Arlathan Forest, in the next time period, they have also vanished...).

I'm also excited to see the Orkney Mountains appear (below the Tirashan, west of the Frostbacks)! Context on this from the DA wiki:

"The Orkney Mountains are not marked on any of the official maps. Traveler's Guide section of the Dragon Age: Origins: Prima Official Game Guide, Ultimate Edition provides the following description: "The Orkney Mountains, a rugged chain of mountains that stretches from the icy wastelands of the southeast deep into the continent's center, dominate the southern lands of Thedas." They are distinguished from the southern range of the Frostback Mountains, which are described in the following way "A smaller mountain chain called the Frostback Mountains juts between Ferelden and Orlais and holds the dwarven city of Orzammar (thought to be the last until the rediscovery of Kal-Sharok)." The status of the Orkney Mountains (including their supposed existence and location) remains unclear, as they were not mentioned in any other Dragon Age media."

Things I noticed on the later time-period maps:

From the map at 300 FC, it looks like there is a settlement called “Orlay” in Orlais. (again if you can make this out better than me, let me know!) On this map the only other settlement marked is Minrathous, the capital of Tevinter, and they’re marked with the same symbol (dot inside a circle), so I wonder if at one point in the worldbuilding process, the capital of Orlais was called Orlay? In later sketches, I can’t see Val Royeaux and Orlay is the only settlement in Orlais marked with the ‘capital’ symbol. Maybe Val Royeaux used to be called "Orlay" and then the devs renamed it?

On the map at 600 FC, it notes the Qunari as the “Qunari Empire”. I don’t remember hearing this phrase in published lore, unlike e.g. “Orlesian Empire” or “Tevinter Imperium”. Similarly, while Tevinter is called an empire in the lore, you don’t really hear “Tevinter Empire” like the map notes so much as "Tevinter", the "Imperium" and "the Tevinter Imperium".

On the last, most modern-day map sketch, specific locations for Qundalon and Sundarin are given in the form of dots marking them, as opposed to the map we’re familiar with which doesn’t mark them specifically and just has the text nearby in the general area. Sundarin might at one point have been “Sundurin” but it’s hard for me to make it out.

It’s on this last sketch that more settlement detail and more specific settlements that we’re familiar with start to appear, like Vyrantium, Marnas Pell, Neromenian, Redcliffe etc.

Interestingly, the capital of Seheron on the last sketch is given as Alam (marked by the capital symbol of a dot in a circle), with the settlement of Seheron marked with just a dot. It seems that at some point in the worldbuilding it was decided that the capital of Seheron the nation would be Seheron the settlement as opposed to Alam, as the lore we’re given states the capital is Seheron.

Treviso could have been “Trevis”, but the “o” could also just be obscured by the line of coastline. also it's odd to me that Calabria had to be renamed because it was the name of a region irl but Treviso, which is a city irl, just stayed Treviso?

Ansburg used to be on the coast of the Free Marches in the east, south of Rialto. As we know it, it’s to the west inland, north of Markham.

Lothering’s location also changed, quite a bit. In this map it’s on the northern coast of Ferelden, east of where we know Highever is and west of where we know Amaranthine is. (It is there, the first bit of the word is just obscured somewhat by the line of the coastline). In the map that shipped of course, it’s in Ferelden, south of the Bannorn and north of Ostagar.

I’m reading this settlement in the east of Ferelden on the map sketch as Highever. Anyone else also think so? Maybe this is where it used to be in the worldbuilding process until at some point like Lothering it changed? (or the changes also could have been a result of when the artists drew the map-proper, based on what the article says).

I’m reading the red box settlement here as Val Chevin. I wonder what the letters (looks like the end of a word that was partially cut off after “Orlesian Empire” in typeface was added by the sensitivity department) marked in blue said? maybe “-way”, as in the Imperial Highway? And I can’t make out the name of the settlement in brown is or match it with anywhere on the map we know. “Fourehatie”? [sp?] Maybe this place became “Val Foret”?

Lastly, in the Anderfels, I’m guessing that these settlements (“Laro-velanie”? [sp?], “Melo-orthanic”? [sp?]) are Nordbotten (left) and Hossberg (right) respectively. I guess they got renamed at some point in the world-building process. (Note the presence of “orth” in the name of what we know as Hossburg, like the Orth people/Orthland).

Is there anything else you noticed? any other places that changed name or locations, or people/group names that we can only guess at what they were? or maybe I missed something or you can make out any of the words better than me, or you compared the sketch maps to a different Thedas map like the DA:I war table map and noticed something? If you have any thoughts or corrections, let me know. ^^

Image credits: David Gaider [source link]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #long post #longpost #mj meta

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ovaruling · 11 months

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@non-suspiciousname @junipercastor i’m not a dietician or doctor disclaimer disclaimer if you have preexisting conditions this may not be for you disclaimer disclaimer i cannot account for every human experience disclaimer disclaimer BUT the easiest way to do this is to first learn what “high fiber foods” means.

and before i begin, here’s how much fiber we more or less need via a helpful Harvard health article.

so, to recap: for women—the ones who matter to me—that’s 25g for adult women who are 50 and under. women 50 and over, that’s 21g.

and i included the extra paragraph about Metamucil etc bc that is important to note. a lot of people do think they’re getting quality daily fiber in these powders.

here’s a helpful article abt the differences between soluble and insoluble fiber. both are important in their own ways!

and just so we’re clear on the benefits of upping your fiber intake:

so!

i recommend a quick google to see the fiber content per serving of a variety of foods that i don’t have time condense here. but, like, beans are a really inexpensive way to do this (add some rice to it and you have a complete muscle-lovin’ protein btw! all the essential amino acids are covered when you combine rice and beans 🫶). beans and legumes are incredibly rich in fiber, and they’re budget-friendly, shelf-stable, and easy to make and easy to incorporate into infinite delicious possible dishes.

but your fiber can be gotten from so many different sources! (my data here is approximate from individual checking. pls allow 1-2g of fiber for margin of error in case i mistype!)

for fruits: 1 cup of blackberries OR raspberries has 8g of fiber!!!!! 1 medium apple has around 4-5g of fiber. an average banana or a serving of strawberries have 3g of fiber. an average avocado has 10g of fiber. and so forth

for grains: steel-cut oats have 5g of fiber per 1/4 cup uncooked (oats are generally rich in fiber anyway, but steel cut in particular). a slice of whole grain bread should have around 3g fiber. brown rice contains 3.5g fiber for every cooked cup. one cup of cooked quinoa (which is also a complete protein!) contains 5g of fiber. bran is almost 15g per one cup serving.

if you’ve got access to chia seeds, a 1oz serving provides 10g fiber. here’s a yummy super easy recipe for peanut butter chia pudding!!!

nuts and seeds provide a lot of fiber too. 1oz of walnuts contains nearly 2g fiber! 1oz of almonds contains 3.5g fiber. peanuts contain 2.5g fiber for 1oz. sunflower seeds are 12g per 1 cup serving (though that’s a lot of them to eat—1/4 a cup would be closer to 3g)

and my fave prunes are 12g per one cup serving. again, that’s a lot of them to eat. 1/4 of that would be 3g.

beans/legumes are king for fiber. 1 cup of cooked black beans contains 15g of fiber. 1 cup of navy beans contains around 19g of fiber. 1 cup of kidney beans contains 11g of fiber.

split peas are i think around 8g per cup when cooked? cooked broccoli is around 5g. corn is around 4g.

i could go on but i’m literally hooked up to an IV for medication rn so i’m one-handed lol i apologize for how cramped this is

but here’s a great list from the Mayo Clinic of high fiber foods and another list of 40 foods from a women’s health mag and also another from healthline, which also has a handy chart for fiber requirements for more specific age groups based on sex

and yes, there are also high-fiber cereals, but beware of the much-touted and rightly-feared ingredient of psyllium husk. it’s more or less used as a laxative and can be outright dangerous for your digestive system and is very painful if not consumed in militant moderation. ask me how i know lol. please please be careful of psyllium husk. like, for real. just stay away from it altogether imo.

sorry this is a lot of discombobulated info, but again i’m one handed at the moment. but hopefully that helps a bit! fiber is linked to longevity and good colon health and that’s what i want for women forever

EDIT: go slow with this! if you’re not used to the recommended daily intake, you will need to gradually work up to this so as not to upset your gastrointestinal system. you may otherwise find yourself in discomfort. GO SLOW. add fiber-rich foods in small portions over time to allow your body to adjust. it is well worth the patience—but don’t overload your system by eating a ton of prunes and thinking you’re doing yourself any good that way. introduce gently and in moderation until you feel comfortable with how it makes your digestion feel!

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maggiec70 · 23 hours

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Maréchaux d'Empire: La gloire pour destin

Quelle horreur!

On the other hand, this book will keep me alternating between guffaws and serious eye-rolls for days.

The "replacement" for David Chandler's anthology, Napoleon's Marshals, published in 1987 with each of the 26 mini-bios written by for-real scholars [and not just Americans, either] is this November 2023 anthology edited by Francois Houdecek, who holds forth at the Sorbonne, claims to be a "disciple" of Jean Tulard [I believe M. Tulard has thousands of those!], and is involved in all sorts of activities and scribblings involving Naps. He is also responsible for gathering and organizing vast quantities of Napoleon's correspondence, so kudos for that.

However--and oh, my! what a huge "however" this is!--the 26 contributors range from the marginally average Pierre Branda to the apparent dregs of French scholarship whose names have never resonated outside the borders of Gallica. Each of these articles is depressingly cardboard, flimsy with details, utterly bereft of any attempt at analysis or understanding of the individual's character, talents--or lack thereof--and other useful and expected details, even in an anthology. These contributors apparently competed to see who could write the most drivel using the fewest sources. Naturally, I went straight to the entry about Lannes, and by the time I reached the end, I had permanently dislocated my eyebrows. The "author" of this travesty is Jacques-Olivier Boudon, whose credentials, on paper, are impressive but whose knowledge of Jean-Boy is worse than passing; it is non-existent. The reason for that is based on M. Boudon's sources:

He cites Lannes’ “official dossier” in the SHD, which I copied before I left, so I know every page and every sentence in it, and I know you won’t find squat that is useful unless, of course, you care how much putting on Mozart’s Requiem cost, and who sang the tenor solo.

High on the hit parade list is Regis de Crepy’s smarmy bio of the Lovely Louise, another book I can quote endlessly. Boudon used one letter from that.

Boudon also took bits and pieces from the three more recent French biographies by Dammame, Zins, and Willette—although the latest was published in 1994—and explained what I thought about them in a previous blog.

The absolutely most hysterical “source” is the 2002 historical fiction by a lovely 93-year-old woman, Penelope Le Fers-Dupac, who lives in Lectoure and who I know [I also know the biographer Jean-Claude Dammame, but that’s another story]. This novel is called “Le Mousquetaire de Napoleon: L’autre vie du marechal Lannes.” Make of this what you will, but it is the wonderfully entertaining, hilarious, and fictional tale of Jean-Boy’s first marriage.

I am appalled that this person didn’t do justice to Jean-Boy in an anthology where he would have shone at the top in capable hands. I know who's the real expert here, and I certainly don’t mind if someone also chooses to write about My Guy. But he or she had damn well better get it right, and this French morceau de merde massacred his subject.

BTW, joachimnapoleon, have you encountered Vincent Haegele? He did Murat no favors here, either. Thanks for reading the rant. I feel better.

#jean lannes #don't bother #napoleon's marshals #truly terrible french writng #non-history #who are these idiots?

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sabaramonds · 6 months

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if anyone is wondering if im going to do an analysis of double & mikoto i uhhh need to find more stuff to read in english about psychiatric care and dissociative disorder patients in japan but given what ive found so far im like. well this is what i expected from milgram ill be honest having read the voice drama tl and watched the mv 8573485 times (omg hanae natsukis vocals) i do have a few thoughts. mentions of CSA and childhood abuse below as well as medical abuse - mikoto2 ("john" LMFAOOOO) claims he was born from mikotos workplace stress and implies that mikoto did not have DID prior to that; DID is only developed in childhood, but its common to live your life without knowing about it until adulthood (the average age at diagnosis is 29-35 years as of a 2007 paper on sciencedirect i just double checked; according to a 2009 piece from the national library of medicine, the average patient for a diagnosis is a woman of about 30 years old and a retroactive view of the patients medical history and symptoms tend to reveal a lifetime of DID symptoms) so basically im saying that its equally possible deco and yamanaka are unaware of this or mikoto2 is lying his ass off because why would he want to tell some amnesiac teenage prison warden btw the reason i exist is because mikoto was abused as a child. why do you think our mom divorced our dad. even if es likely researched it themself and is probably aware of the statistical likelihood that mikoto experienced long term childhood abuse, why would mikoto2 say it...especially if that abuse was sexual in nature - according to this video recorded by a japanese man (a recovering hikkikomori who experienced forced hospitalization in the past), the 2017 statistics for mental hospital inpatients was that there were 280,000 patients at the time, and 170,000 of those were hospitalized for over a year. 90,000 had been in hospital care for more than 5 years and 26,000 had been in care for 20 years. he also references that most psychiatric care facilities are private in nature, not government-run, so they prioritize the amount of patients they receive in a short period of time because it earns them more profits (another video i watched compared this practice to a mcdonalds burger vs a proper restaurant; make more at a cheaper cost). likewise, long term care facilities dont want to let their patients go easily, because even if families or the patient cant afford to cover the cost, insurance or the government social security system will cover it. a combination of the psychiatric business as its run and the broader cultural attitude towards mental health (in some cases, families do not want their shame to be public, and actively do not want their mentally ill relative to be released from the hospital; if this is the case, its more likely for a patient to be forcibly hospitalized long term without anyone outside to advocate for their release) so im kind of like. hm. (see saw motion with my hand) as far as rep goes i think its kinda middling, especially because mikoto2 is the Alter Who Kills People For Some Reason trope, which always sucks and basically every journal, article, or vlog ive looked into from people with DID has said "god please stop with the murder alter trope please please", but considering the source material i think its...well, its honestly better than what i was expecting. but milgram is designed to be abstract to a certain extent and were still missing information, so who knows. maybe yamanaka and deco have something else up their sleeve regarding mikoto. but yeah i couldnt find anything specifically regarding patients with DID (or related disorders) but i did only poke around for like 2 hours in the middle of the night soooo ill come back to it and that concludes my findings on this topic for today. stay tuned for my next mikoto fic installment or whatever

#milgram #kayano mikoto #the 574875384 tabs i have open whenever im looking into anything ever. the rabbit holes.#i started watching some guy from kyoto cook omelettes in a minimized window while reading about kenmi shrine exorcising inugami from people #on the regular #and then i fell asleep. typical.#my ramblings #edited to adjust some wording because i made a miss steak

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ratuszarsenal · 5 months

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btw, the tournament I'm running requires me to do research before every round, so here are some random curiosa that crossed my path this time:

CEEOL! aka the Central and Eastern European Online Library - a treasure trove of articles and publications as well as a very convenient jumping-off point for further research. go check it out!

then we have this publication, which I am dying to find in its entirety somewhere online. (the title translates to something like 'Forest Churches. Places of Secret Evangelical Liturgies in Beskid Śląski'). I found it in this document, which is apparently a lesson plan about Lutheranism in Poland and it has many other sources like this one in its bibliography. very cool!!

speaking of religion-adjacent stuff, did you know what Matejko's largest painting is? because it's not the Battle of Grunwald! it's this:

that's Dziewica Orleańska, aka Matejko's take on the Joan of Arc! the painting was intended by the old sod to be his magnum opus (it measures up to 47 square meters ffs) but it premiered to a very cold reception from both Poles and Frenchmen. oh well!

the wikipedia article for that painting mentions that one 'hrabia [count] Wielkopolski' was one of Matejko's models - believable, given that the nobility and intelligentsia sometimes lent their faces to the great artist's works. but the guy in the hyperlink was count Aleksander Wielopolski, a statesman who died 7 years before the model-recruitment process started, and someone who would have had his hands rather full to be posing for paintings - since he was the target of Two assassination attempts in the January Fucking Uprising

why? well, he was a conservative politician who sanctioned violence against the rebellious populace, hunted the anti-Russian underground and tried to bring Poland even closer to the Russian empire than it was. makes sense why they would want to stab him! twice! however, he is also to be thanked for making Jewish people equal before the law and he worked staff public offices with as many native Polish people as was possible, to counter-measure the abuses found in Russian-run bureaucracy. an extremely mixed bag if there ever was one. as an aside, you may know his name from Malczewski's painting, Hamlet Polski. Portret Aleksandra Wielopolskiego:

which symbolically depicts a man's conflicted views of his own homeland - but curiously, it's a portrait of the 1860s Aleksander's grandson by the same name, who didn't have a long history of double-loyalty like his ancestor, and that's the point: the titular Hamlet refers to the entire generation of the fin de siecle, who would soon be faced with the same dilemmas as their forefathers

anyway! that was a bit grim. look at this hilarious portrait of stanisław august poniatowski:

#thank you and goodnight #history #echo

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apollosgiftofprophecy · 3 months

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Hello, I'm a new reader of your fics and found you through AO3, after reading your fic where Apollo n Poseidon are punished with mortality and King idk how to spell his name was talking about getting his daughter married made me wonder about how Greek Marriages and Courtships work/how they were performed and the actual marital rites ofc

Love your work, looking forward to your response •u•

Okay okay, so this requires a lot of know-how and I most definitely don't know everything so this is what I know:

Courtships differed from city-state to city-state. But overall I think they all shared one common factor - a courting gift. Courting gifts were used to basically show off a guy's status in the world, and the better the gift the better chance he had at winning the marriage.

This is actually exemplified in the myth of Cassandra and Apollo! Apollo's courting gift was the gift of prophecy, which Cassandra accepted, ergo confirming their courtship (their relationship was also considered to be a type of marriage btw! Cassandra would have been one of Apollo's 'wives', like the Pythia (essentially married to her job aka Apollo), Cyrene (was literally married to him; eloped with him), or the Muses (his immortal companions) even though they weren't like. married married. they weren't married like Zeus & Hera are, or Hades & Persephone. it was a symbolic one, or even an emotionally-bonded one.

So big gift = better chance at winning her hand. cool.

NOW I WOULD LIKE TO INTERRUPT OUR BROADCAST ON ANCIENT GREECE AND TURN OUR ATTENTION TO COURTSHIPS IN THE MYTHS :D

I've already discussed Apollo&Cassandra, but there are plenty more courtships going on.

Admetus & Alcestis, for one! Odysseus & Penelope! Admetus and Odysseus both had to complete a set task to be seen as "worthy" of marrying their respective wives.

For Admetus, it was yoking a bull and lion to a chariot and riding it into Alcestis's dad's kingdom (which he did with Apollo wingmanning him bless their souls) and for Odysseus, he completed various physical exercises (like a race) and won!

So I guess the overarching message about Greek courting/marriage rituals is the guy has to prove how much of a rich badass he is, and if he can't show off his wealth (like Odysseus), he's gotta make up for it with EXTRA badassness.

As for the marriage itself, it also depended on the region. And it's A Lot so I would recommend skimming this wikipedia article on it and then looking deeper into various other websites - just looked it up, and there are quite a few. I would nail down the main similarities between them as the Facts and the extra info as Potential Facts (my usual method of research - and if the info in corroborated in an informative source, then it is also Fact)

I also see you mentioned Proclia and Laomedon, and what he would have had to do for her marriage. I did find this website on Anatolian marriage customs (since they are in Anatolia and not Greece), but I don't know how reliable it is. If there's anybody out there who knows more, shoot it at me! :D

And thank you anon! :D I promise I have more in store, just working on getting the next couple Hunger Games AU chapters done before moving on to the Delphic fic! :D

#the oracle speaks #ancient greece #anatolia #marriage #courting #anon ask #ask and replies #asked and answered

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bunnyhugs22 · 4 months

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Actually Biden *did* do that for everything on that list.

Maybe try a news source that isn't Twitter.

(X) Really? Did he codify abortion rights? Did he finally fired the unelected parliamentarian that blocked his Build Back Better agenda? (btw the republicans fired two of parliamentarians in the past in order to get what they wanted passed, so there’s precedent) He also didn’t lift a finger to fight back again Manchin and Sinema when he had all kinds of leverage against them.

Only a small handful of people are getting their loans forgiven, when he could have fought harder for universal loan forgiveness (because the law is arguably on his side.) This way he can have his cake and eat it too by means testing it.

The big climate spending he made was historic, I’ll give him that. But the new drilling he allowed undid all of those gains.

No executive orders outlawing assault weapons. Only ghost guns that take money/sales away from weapons manufacturers.

The whole point of that post was to show that Biden isn’t some small bean that can’t fight back. He’s bypassed congress more than once to fund Israel’s genocide. This is who he fights for, and it isn’t the working class.

I don’t want Trump to win, so that’s why the dems have to run literally anyone else. Trump's win in '24 will be because of the Democratic Party’s arrogance. The DNC hasn’t learned a thing since Hillary. You simply can’t shame people into voting for you. It’s a losing strategy.

(Paywall Article. Sorry)

#genocide joe #joe biden #free palestine #free gaza

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gemsofgreece · 9 months

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As a certified linguist I want to kinda smack that person a bit. Not only were they rude and entitled, they also did not do their homework. So this is @ them: Yeah seas and oceans are used interchangeably in poetry sometimes to. You know. Refer to bodies of water to point out their vastness. It’s not factual. A sea is not an ocean (check etymology btw you’ll find yourself nicely surprised.) But a literary term is literally never more applicabile than a factual one unless you’re writing poetry. And I’m pretty sure a Tumblr post caption for a photo is not somewhere you should refer to poetic language with an assumption that everyone knows you did. Entitlement and stupidity.

I hope you’re okay after this mess. ☀️

Just in, Anon, from this lovely person:

At this point I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that @lilbbyhaiku is very very young, otherwise I do not know what to say.

Again let's remember they lost their marbles for this tag:

I have never seen a more dramatic response for such a thing in my life. Like, I was literally acknowledging I was nitpicking from the beginning, even though I knew I was factually correct because like you said, I did consider it could have been said in a liberal, poetic fashion. Or perhaps they didn't know and it is human to not know.

However, we should also note that in American English the meaning has deviated in literal speech as well because I have seen it many times used and misused in an entirely factual context. For example, I was once conversing with an American and I told them I was from Greece and their first question was "Wow have you ever been to the ocean then?" which on one hand shows they know Greece has - generally - access to water, on the other hand either they don't know where Greece is located, which is their right of course, or the word has been standardized in American English as the primary word for any body of saltwater. If you also see here on Tumblr, people tag all photos picturing the sea, regardless of place, as "ocean". Happens to A LOT of my Greece posts as well. It has been standardised, fine, the issue is it can be really inaccurate and misleading for countries that do not have access to oceans, especially because the word ocean exists in so many languages and I believe in the vast majority its meaning has not deviated like in American English. Besides, the website they linked as the "ultimate source" does misuse the term in an entirely factual, supposedly informative context. A travel guide page, of all things.

So I honestly thought I wouldn't receive a response to that tag of mine or that they would say "oh okay i didn't know that" or "yeah I know I just used it in a liberal way because this happens occasionally in American English" and then I would be like "cool just clarifying for people taking this literally" but I certainly did not expect that shitstorm lol where I was told to fact-check, then I was called a troll because I did not find a random "Greece vs Turkey" personal post first thing and then I was presented with the wrongest travel article out there and told to shut the fuck up.

But the more I see of that person's responses, the more I realise there is not a reason to perpetuate this, either they're too young or they are generally not handling this well so let's drop it. I will also delete my reblog of their post because honestly sod it.

#the weirdest discourse I had in my life #about a jellyfish and oceans #anon #mail #linguistics

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onlyhereforangst · 1 year

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Who fucked the fandom I'm confused? The person who wrote the article?

oh absolutely not, from what i can tell @shelbbswrites is a lovely person & writes about some of my favorite ships & i'd like her to keep writing so i can spiral about jiara in the near future.

as for who fucked the fandom, well. girl. the blog whose gif was linked, @/opponentsheir, is the one who knowingly, willfully fucked the fandom last summer.

it was circa mid-late May 2022 and here was the jiara tumblr fandom, struggling to get through the drought by the scraps of bts we'd scrounge up from filming. blurry ass photos that make you concerned for a tourist's ability to hold their water as they drink, random selfies that tell you next to nothing, and then the occasional "omg this is BIG how does this make sense how does it fit in but omg it's BIG" crumb.

times were rough, bts were tight, and the unsuspecting jiara tumblr fandom was hungry. unbeknownst to us in comes OH who decides. let's have some "fun" let's liven up the jiara fandom because it's clearly dead (false) and idk im bored besties let's play a hehe silly joke! at first, a few handpicked jiara blogs get random anonymous post submissions and each blog has like 2-3 different posts that are all supposed bts leaks. it's never-before-seen photos of what we can only presume are s3 bts. almost all of these blogs were in a jiara discord server together so the photos weren't shared because wtf who is trusting us with these clear leaks we don't want them to stop though. so we sit on these, we get excited, we spiral, all that fandom stuff that we had already. been. doing. but yeah here's a few more bts crumbs to have fun with. then a few weeks later when, to OH's surprise, the fandom hasn't reacted like she wanted, freaked out over her "leaks," hasn't posted them on every platform ever to give her the attention she feels she deserves, she decides oooh let's send more! this isn't sociopathic at all!! and then bam there's a second round of anonymous post submissions followed up by an anon ask sent to one of the blogs saying "you can post them, this is the last you'll get because i've reached my max photoshopping ability do not contact again" (also pardon but how tf are we supposed to contact you if you're anonymous).

ANYWAYS the leaks: we're talking blurry, random characters - sarah, pope, rose, jj and pope, kie, a random dude by a fire, and then jj having his beat-up face held by hands that look just like kie's hands.

and sure enough, we spiral! an actual face hold??? on our screens??? fuck yeah! cannot wait for s3!!! jokes on us we're getting so much more but yeah!!! we're theorizing we're writing whole ass fics we're speculating we've got a discord emoji we've got everything. a few hours later the leaks make it to jiara twt and THEY go wild too. i mean who tf wouldn't? you're starving for content and some mysterious source decides to drop you leaks. like yeah hindsight is 20:20 and who was going to potentially violate an NDA for this, but still.

fastforward several months and now OH is back because i guess she got desperate for attention again and feeling "important" or whatever. she goes on anon and says hey btw those leaks were fake ha ha isn't that funny, here's the photos i used linked here and here and omg isn't this just hilarious bestie such a good time man i love the jiara fandom being active again because god i was so BORED and man i just wanted more fics and edits and omg look it worked i mean i've done it before and i'd do it again (or some shit like that idk i dont have the wherewithal to go look it up and get it 100% correct but yeah, she admitted to doing it for funsies)

rightfully so, the fandom is fucking pissed. it isn't *fun* to get manipulated, it isn't *fun* to get manipulated into making new content???? that we don't get fucking paid to make???????? fuck you?????? you don't manipulate an entire group of people for SHITS AND GIGGLES that's literally sociopathic shit babe, go get help please. so yeah she fucked the entire fandom over Summer 2022 and did it because "i'm bored i want content" like fuck all the way off.

oh and side note: another anonymous poster tried to say oh i know who it is, but also i'm not going to tell you because you guys are clearly mad at her and i don't want you to take it out on her, i know her and it's ok she's ok. like i'm sorry. the fuck? don't insert yourself into this stupid sociopath's deranged manipulative plan. because guess what bitch, we've got detectives in this fandom and while OH never came off anon like the coward she is, the fandom was able to put it together & not only determine her tumblr but also her twt so when she tried a fucking round three several months later with "oh i found these on reddit but the post disappeared hehe" we all saw through that shit a mile away.

in a nutshell, @/opponentsheir fucked the fandom over with her manipulative bullshit & does not deserve a fucking drop of attention from anyone in this fandom.

#thanks for coming to my bitchtalk #like a tedtalk but i cuss a lot and rage #ask #anonymous #go off grace #obx #jiara #outer banks

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thyandrawrites · 2 years

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Hello! Hope you are having an amazing day!

I just wanted to ask since flowers have different meanings based on culture what do rei's flowers she had in the hospital represent?

Hi! I’m doing okay, thank you.

I can’t really answer about the cultural aspect because I’m not japanese and I’d never heard about this flower before bnha. I’m also no expert on plants or flower language, but I didn’t want to answer this with a simple “I don’t know” so I did a quick google search.

take all of what follows with a grain of salt because I’m basing it off a single (if thorough) article in japanese, which I inputted in a machine translator (DeepL, which is at least a much better tool than google). Sorry about that too btw but I didn’t have the spoons to approach such a huge text with my current skill level. I double-checked the relevant bits with a dictionary, at least!

So, here are some highlights:

-it’s apparently called Gentian in English. Also known as Autumn Bellflower. It blooms between September and November and as such it’s associated with the arrival of fall. It also seems to grow wild,

which aligns with what we’ve seen in the flashbacks. Rei comes across a bush of wild rindou and stops to watch them, and Enji notices

-It seems to me that Hori chose this flower in particular for fairly straightforward reasons. Quoting from the abovementioned source: “Although it is tolerant of cold, it does not fare well in hot weather.” Which is almost word by word canon text from this scene:

This feeling is further emphasized by the fact that when Enji narrates his first meeting with Rei, the flowers appear again exactly when he’s saying this about her temperament:

The thematic point here is less the flowers themselves imho, and more the dichotomy between ice and fire as metaphors of opposite dispositions. Throughout the story, fire is repeatedly associated with hotheadedness, with passion, with strong and overflowing, irrational feelings. Think of Shouto summoning his flames for the first time in years when he’s in emotional turmoil during the sports festival. Think of Touya going out in a blazing tornado when he can’t stop crying. And then compare it to Shouto’s aloof, ice-prince persona, to his emotional repression back when he only used his ice side. Fire is thematically attached to impulsiveness, to the strong pull of emotions. Ice, instead, is typically associated with self-restraint, willpower and cool-headed principles.

Enji compares Rei to ice because she’s able to go along with the arranged marriage despite knowing it was a contract to bear Enji’s children. In other words, she’s ice because she’s able to remove her emotions from her choice, and thus face it with her head held high. She’s rational, calm and collected about it.

But, and here’s where the flowers come in, ice is strong in winter but brittle in the heat. Rei’s disposition makes her strong, yes, but also all the more susceptible to her husband’s opposite nature.

I think that’s all there is to it, really. Horikoshi doesn’t strike me as the kind of author who goes above and beyond to add complex and cryptic symbolism to his writing. His style is generally pretty transparent, when he adds any symbolism at all. See the gripping hands as a metaphor for abuse, the hands reaching out as a metaphor for help, and the eating around a dinner table together as a way to hint towards an eventual family reconnection. Hori isn’t particularly subtle imho, so that’s why I never really bothered delving deep into hanakotoba.

However, if you wanted to give it a shot anyway, here’s what the same article says about it:

“The language of gentian flowers includes "victory," "sense of justice," "stand by you in your sorrow," and "lonely love. “Victory" and "a sense of justice" are derived from the fact that gentian has been used as a medicinal herb since ancient times and is associated with the image of "overcoming illness”. The words "to be close to your sorrow" and "lonely love" seem to be derived from the fact that it grows wild by itself without growing in clusters. In addition, the words "full confidence" and "chastity" are given to the purple and white gentian, respectively.” [Source]

I personally consider this part a bit more of a stretch, but if we wanted to take the hanakotoba approach, maybe Horikoshi also chose this flower to show Rei’s progress towards recovery. After all, she is holding it while she faces Enji in that hospital room:

She’s no longer dwelling on her sadness, on her sorrows, but overcoming it. At this point, she's no longer an inpatient in a mental hospital, but she's facing her fears head on. There's a determined glint in her eyes now, and she's no longer afraid of saying what she always wanted to say. "Our children are suffering, and our pain comes second to soothing theirs because we are their parents." And now she's no longer melting away (like ice) or wilting (like flowers) when facing that heat.

I hope that makes sense!

#ali replies #bnha #bnha meta #meta:rei #todoroki rei #rindou flowers #my post #you might be wondering why I hunted down a jp article if I didn't want to translate it #well it's mostly because websites that talk about flower language are often very unreliable #each site says a different thing #esp if the article is in english #so I wanted to at least try for some accuracy

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super-lad · 6 months

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So, I'm scrolling through my dashboard and I see this post:

This post has 1000+ notes.

Needless to say, the post is wrong. The woman in the video did say, "I went through hell" about her experiences as a hostage. It's not CNN propaganda. It's the truth.

Here is what the woman, Yocheved Lifschitz, additionally said in a fuller video:

youtube

"I went through hell something I didn't think human beings would do to one another. I have never gone through anything like it in my life… The young men beat me and hurt me and they took my watch and jewelry." (timestamp: 1:12 to 1:26)

This was translated by notable Palestine-friendly news network, Al Jazeera. They are funded by Qatar, who currently harbors Hamas leadership within their borders. Qatar also served as mediators between the US, Israel, and Hamas during hostage negotiations. So you could say, Al Jazeera has the least amount of motive to skew bias of their coverage towards Israel or the West.

OP's post is unequivocally wrong. Yes, war and propaganda often go hand in hand. For a genocide to happen, the aggressor will try to justify it. But in this post, specifically, OP backs these claims with evidence that is an outright lie.

Also, what exactly is OP trying to say?

If you read that CNN article, we see the entire dialogue where Lifschitz also praises her Hamas captors for being "kind" during captivity. OP is saying that CNN is spreading propaganda to justify genocide. I'm being generous here, but I guess the evidence for that is: "The headline did not mention how well Hamas treated the hostage."

Hm. I wonder why?

I think it's because she said the experience was hell.

Because. She. Was. A. Hostage.

Is that where we are now in the Tumblr discourse? Our thinking is so black-or-white to the point where someone could kidnap your grandma, beat her up, then bring her back and someone will respond with, "Well, why is no one talking about how they fed her?"

Yet, OP's post has 1000+ notes... 1000+ notes on a post that is omitting the words of a recent captive (whose husband is still with Hamas btw, whose life is very much at their whim) to support OP's agenda of saying: "israel bad, media = propaganda."

Contrary to what many Tumblr bloggers may have you believe, the news media is not inherently untrustworthy.

That is not to say they are omniscient beings. News networks can be wrong. They can be biased like everything in the world. This is why you diversify your sources. And I don't mean start reading joke publications like the New York Post or Democracy Now. You should still aim for something with a semblance of neutrality.

However, you, as the consumer, need to maintain healthy skepticism of what is being left out, glossed over, or ignored. Always get a bigger picture. To do that, get more vetted sources. Just don't fall into QAnon thinking and suspect all news organizations are targeting you with propaganda. There is an unhealthy degree of distrust towards competent news organizations on Tumblr these days.

Frankly, many of us should treat other bloggers with the same amount of distrust Tumblr users treat the Western news media with.

Otherwise, we risk a repeat of 2016's infamous Russian bots. Except this time, we're the bots spreading misinformation to fuel pointlessly divisive discourse. And whose to say we don't have paid bad actors sowing discontent on this site right now. Don't feed into it. Do your own research. Diversify your sources. Call out falsehoods.

Don't take the average Tumblr blog at their word when the topic is something as serious as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Otherwise, you run the risk of letting one person define an entire international crisis for you.

#im a fandom blog so sorry to my followers #but hey kara danvers is a journalist who values truth and justice right #israel #palestine #gaza

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rikeijo · 1 year

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heyy! I just wanted to ask, are there any rumors about the movie production in the JP fandom (or anywhere)? I’m always seeing people say “…if the rumors are true…” but what rumors? I’m so out of touch

Hello! Thank you for the ask!

As far as I know there are a few kind of rumors, you can find on Eng Twitter, mainly:

Some people, who claim to have insider knowledge what is going on, say that everything is alright, and we just have to wait. On the other hand, some people claim the movie has problems with international distribution, that is: the production committee wanted to release the movie in countries like Russia and China, where they would have problems with queer content. Some other people say that the movie is crap anyway, because they didn't include any queer content in it (and somehow, it still can't be released in Russia and China, that's why we haven't seen it yet...).

...So yeah, imo, claims like that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Sure, international release would be prestigious, but... The thing is Japanese companies usually prioritize Japan anyways, so I personally don't think it's very likely that they chose to lose so much money on this movie, just because they want to release it in China and Russia, or any other country except Japan, so much. Like, why? Just Japan, Europe and the USA would make them enough money... (I mean, if they really had problems with international distribution, even releasing the movie just in Japan would still give them profit, wouldn't that be better for the IP holders, than literally wasting a ton of money on a movie that may be never released?).

Not to mention that they stopped all promotion, they don't sell any goods anymore (the sportswear sponsor did the "come celebrate Yuuri's birthday and get Yuri!!! badges" campaign, and the PR account didn't even retweet that), so they chose to actively not make money on this IP, even though they still could (normally anime marketing is often like beating a dead horse...). The real money is always made on merch and don't they need money to make the movie?

Another problem is that if we ever see this movie, it for sure won't make as much money as it would if released in 2019. So once again, according to the rumors, they chose to lose so much money, because for some reason they just need to release the movie in China and Russia. Both countries where the government has a very negative attitude toward anime in general...

So yeah, I personally don't think China or Russia, or international distribution has anything to do with it.

On the Jp side the rumors I know of are (rumors, so it all can be just bs):

the movie was once returned to the blank sheet of paper stage (everything was thrown away) around summer of 2019, the source was allegedly somebody who worked for a Jp distribution company on Twitter;

Sayo stopped going to figure skating competitions/ice shows, the source is stalkers on Twitter;

the company that owns the rights to YoI (and it's not Mappa, guys), had financial problems in 2020, because of corona (understandable, their main source of income are music events) - that's not really a rumor, you can find articles about them selling their main building in very expensive district of Tokyo; btw, you can easily check who owns the IP, as info like that is available publicly

the movie is currently not being worked on - the source is e.g. Hiramatsu-san who tweeted that he drew Yuri!!! for the first time in a long time in the end of last year, and he's the animation director - if he didn't draw YoI, then most likely no-one did.

Also, no-one keeps Sayo and Mitsurou in a basement. Mitsurou is on Jp TV every month, does live events and so on. I think it was last month? There was a guest who liked Yuri!!! and she talked about it a bit with Mitsurou, but like, absolutely nothing about any future projects. They changed topics and didn't mention it again.

Sayo most likely works now under a different name (to not be followed around by crazies...).

#ask #ice adolescence

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