#but those edits should be sufficient enough

[turtlesandfrogs]

I made this Pre-pandemic for a "Starting plants from the grocery store" class I was teaching, here it is edited down for anyone interested.

For saving seeds, the fruit should be fully mature for the seeds to be fully mature. Therefore, you can use seeds from a winter squash but not a baby zucchini, and the likelihood that the seeds of a tomato (or red bell pepper) will grow are much higher than for a green bell pepper. Unfortunately, many are either going to be poorly suited for your conditions, or hybrid, which we'll touch on later.

Stem cuttings are a great way to start many common culinary herbs! Especially basil!

Some tubers to consider starting from are sweet potatoes and actual potatoes.

And then of course, the bulbs! Green onions and garlic are your best bets!

These are outdoor plants and thus are Somewhat Fussy if you're going to grow indoors. Do not overwater them (eg, letting them sit in a tray of water for days) nor let them dry out completely. Try to keep them evenly moist, with thorough waterings that then pour out the bottom of the pot unimpeded. 

Given that they are outdoor plants, a south-facing window (assuming you’re in the northern hemisphere) or grow lights are your best bet. If they don’t get enough light, they will turn pale and stretch towards their light source. They won’t grow as quickly or as healthfully as they would with sufficient light.  

Examples:

Tomatoes & peppers! Tomatoes are the one that actually inspired me to make this because I saw this clip on starting plants from kitchen scraps, and they buried the whole dang half of a tomato! Don’t do that! What a waste of a tomato half! EAT your tomato! Take the seeds out! 

If you’re intending to grow these outdoors, start them about 6 weeks before your last frost. If you have not grown plants from seed before, here’s some information from another class I taught: https://tinyurl.com/seedstarting2020

If you’re intending to grow them indoors the whole time, you will likely need grow lights for both tomatoes and peppers, and they like it if you keep your house on the warm side. I would suggest growing them outdoors and buying seeds for a dwarf tomato if you really want to grow indoors.

The down side is that most are hybrid, so when you grow out the seed, it's not necessarily going to grow well, be productive, or taste good. Even if it is open pollinated, it's probably been bred to thrive in conditions unlike those you can provide. If you need a successful crop, I highly suggest buying seed, or swapping with a reputable source. Although if you like and can find yellow pear tomatoes, those are an exception to this entire paragraph.

Basil! Basil is a great one to do stem cuttings of, get it started indoors, and then plant out once night time temperatures stay above 50f (10c). I prefer to start them straight into soil, and seem to have a higher success rate this way. To do this, remove all leaves except the top bud, and bury the stem in soil up to just beneath that bud and firm gently. Keep the soil moist and the pot above 60f, and you should have a good success rate. This method works for mint, lemon balm, rosemary, sage, etc, as well.

Green onions- really easy, put the bottom inch or so in soil and they’ll grow very well for you. I prefer soil over water because a) the water gets stinky, and b) they grow better and stronger in soil.

AND MORE:

Sage, rosemary, and thyme (also any stemmed herb): just like basil

Lettuce, carrots, beets: you get the tops, but usually they’ll try to bolt. Easier just to buy seeds. If you want, I usually start in shallow water and then plant as soon as I see roots growing. Again, keep the soil moist, and for these ones, keep them in a cooler part of your house. But really, they almost always bolt in my experience.

Sweet potatoes: Get them in the fall, it takes months for them to start growing (unless you're somewhere warm apparently? ). They will sprout, grow roots, take slips to plant outdoors once night time temperatures study above 50f (10c)

Garlic, just grab a clove and plant in the fall. Boom. GARLIC.

Squash- you don’t know what you’ll get, because they might be cross pollinated with another variety or hybrids. If you do grow it out and it’s bitter, don’t eat it, it’s poisonous. If you want to know more, search “toxic squash syndrome”

Ginger: Plant the rhizome in summer, harvest before frost, or overwinter indoors with a lot of light.

Pineapple: Doable, but it takes three years to get a harvest. Plant in well draining soil, and give it as much heat and light as you can.

Just for fun: (Unless you’re in the tropics or have a lot of patience.)

Mango, avocado, citrus. Take years, and a different climate than I have to fruit. If you’re in the tropics, go for it, but know that avocado pollination can apparently be tricky. I am not in the tropics, so I do not have direct experience with this. Citrus I think I've read also don't come true from seed.

Apples, pears: take years, and don’t come true to type. You do not know what you’ll get, and you’ll probably get something that is not worth eating (but would work for cider). These do need a cold dormancy period in the winter to do well. Of course, you could plant them and then top graft if it does turn out they don’t taste good.

Plums, peaches, apricots: take years, often do come true from seed, but peaches and nectarines are very susceptible to peach leaf curl, so may just die depending on where you are.

#gardening #vegetable gardening #yes that post made me remember but i did already have it written up #regrowing vegetables #pirating vegetables

[glitchdollmemoria]

do people who disregard photosensitivity realize that seizures can fucking kill or do they just not care. do people not realize that their "aesthetic" "cool" flashing lights that happen without SUFFICIENT warning... are fucking capable of killing people. i dont even care if i sound pissy right now because i am pissy, im sick of feeling like myself and others with epilepsy arent even afforded the right to be an afterthought to most people. im not even photosensitive but ffs this shit makes me so angry.

seizures themselves can be deadly if they go on too long, theyre essentially electrical overloads in the brain, you know, that organ that controls the entire rest of the body? and seizures can result in injuries or death from falls. from choking on our own vomit. from drowning in our own bathtubs, if we think we might be safe to bathe and then get proven wrong. maybe someone just wanted to watch a video or movie while they took a spa day.

did you know that epileptics are more likely to die younger than those without epilepsy, with all those risks and more? and have you heard of SUDEP? sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, death without a known cause, a rare but very real possibility for us. it kills approximately 1 in 1000 epileptics a year, if not more since it may not be accurately tracked. thats thousands of us dead a year. we do not need you to add to our death rates.

"all these things are known risks, epileptics just have to be more careful-" epileptic people should not have to be on constant fucking high alert. how about instead, people just learn to give a shit about life threatening disabilities? it takes so little effort to just offer a CLEAR and VERY OBVIOUS warning AHEAD OF TIME, for a SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME, before your stupid flashing lights. or just dont add them at all. are they necessary? are they really necessary? would you really fucking rather photosensitive epileptics have to be constantly on guard, IMPOSSIBLY on guard, rather than you just considering their safety? nobody can anticipate every instance of unexpected flashing lights they might come across. but you, creators, are able to provide warnings, and if for any reason you arent, then hire someone else to edit the warnings in or just get rid of the fucking lights altogether.

again, my epilepsy is not photosensitive, but i will never stop being protective of my photosensitive siblings. my own life is scary enough with the form of epilepsy i have, i cannot imagine how terrifying it must be to have to maneuver through the world with photosensitivity, and i dont want careless assholes to go killing my fucking community because you dont give enough of a shit to worry epileptic people. i am pissed off and emotionally exhausted and the shit with elon musk having a flashing gif on his twitter account was the straw that broke my back today so youre getting a pissed off PSA. everyone better start doing a whole damn lot better.

link to the CDC page about SUDEP

link to the epilepsy foundation site page about seizure risks

people without epilepsy are encouraged to reblog but know that i am already angry and will not tolerate bullshit on this post. give a fuck about other peoples lives and safety or im blocking you.

#sudep cw #sudep tw #actually epileptic #epilepsy awareness #photosensitivity #photosensitive epilepsy #''im just gonna make a quick bitchy vent post'' proceeds to write paragraphs on paragraphs with citations so im taken seriously lol #anyway. photosensitive epileptics i am kissing you all on the foreheads #everyone please take your meds and stay safe out there #happy last day of disability pride month since thats still happening too. ofc elon pulls this shit now. #disabled #disability #disability pride month #disability awareness #disability pride

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Plan

So the poll is still running, but I think I'm safe in saying there's sufficient interest, so I'm going ahead and typing up a "how we're going to do this" thing, which I will schedule to post after the poll ends properly. As of the time I'm writing this, over 500 people have voted for the "yes I want to draw things" option, and I had been expecting to get maybe a dozen, so we definitely have enough participants. Let's get started then:

Our Source

I had originally planned to translate an Old or Middle English bestiary, but haven't been able to find a good one -- the best option I was able to dig up only has thirteen critters, which I feel like isn't enough to really have fun with. I was debating the idea of translating a Latin one -- this would have been far more time-consuming since my Latin is terrible, but also I do need to practice it, so I figured it evens out -- when I found a solution that doesn't involve me spending hours and hours on translating.

It seems that when Aberdeen University created their digitized version of the famous Aberdeen Bestiary, they released it under a Creative Commons license. (Assuming I'm reading their copyright policy correctly; I'm not a lawyer.) It does not seem to specify whether the transcriptions and translations they attach to the scanned images are also covered by Creative Commons, but since all of those are already freely available online through their website, I can't imagine they would have a problem with me posting them here as long as I provide attribution (which I am hereby doing right here on this post) and am not using it for commercial purposes (which I am not).

The Aberdeen Bestiary is missing a few pages, but there exists a very similar manuscript, the Ashmole Bestiary (they're sometimes called "sister" manuscripts), which is not missing those pages. And I happen to have a translation of the Ashmole Bestiary in hardcopy on my bookshelf, so I can just use it to fill in the gaps. Edit: whoops, the one I have is the Bodley Bestiary. They are in the same bestiary "family", though, so it still works well enough. (I think that should qualify as "fair use", since I'm only taking excerpts and not using them commercially.)

The upside of using the Aberdeen Bestiary is that it means when I round up all the art of each critter, I can include their very nice illustrations alongside the reveal of what animal was being described.

The downside of using the Aberdeen Bestiary is that since it already is free online, people might be tempted to "cheat" by looking up the entries and finding out what animal they describe. For that, please see the next section...

Guessing the Animal

Guessing what animal is being described is not the point of the exercise. (Feel free to have theories and whatnot, but please keep them to yourself so as not to influence the artists.) If you see an entry and think, e.g., "oh that's describing a raccoon"*, and then you create a picture of a raccoon... well, you could have done a perfectly good raccoon at any point and didn't need this framework to do it. So just don't worry about what animal is meant, and do your best to draw (or paint or stitch or whatever else) based on the description! You're not getting ranked on accuracy and there are no prizes forthcoming, so... just have fun with it.

*Example chosen as something that will, for obvious reasons, definitely not be in a 13th-century European bestiary.

Edit after starting to type these things up: some of these are going to be super easy to guess, though, to the point where I don't know how possible it'll be to block out prior knowledge. Sorry about that.

General Procedure

I'm going to schedule a post every Monday (I'm thinking of queuing them for 6pm Eastern Time) with a new entry. It will be the translation of an entry from the Aberdeen Bestiary with all references to the animal's name replaced by a randomly-generated nonsense word. (Henceforth to be referred to as "nonsense-names". I'm Googling* each one before using them so I don't accidentally generate one that actually means something.) These posts will all be tagged maniculum bestiaryposting, so you can follow that tag if you want to make sure you see them.'

*Later Note: Did you know that if you search dozens of nonsense words within a short span of time, Google makes you prove you're not a robot? Repeatedly?

Anyone who wants to draw the critter being described should do so. (You are encouraged to describe your thought process re: why you've depicted it the way you have.) You can put it in its own post, or reblog the description with an image, or however you want to do it. Then tag your art with the nonsense-name I've given to the animal.This will let me and others find it. (You should probably employ copy/paste there to make sure the spelling is the same, since nonsense words are hard to spellcheck.)

A week after posting the bestiary entry, I'll go through that tag and round up all of the art contributed. Then I'll put the images in a big post (or series thereof, considering how many people might participate), along with an @ and a link to your original post.

If you want...

to not have your work included in the round-up post

to have only a link to your post included and not an image

to have me include a link to your website / other social media / etsy shop in addition to or instead of your tumblr

to have other information included alongside your work

anything else along those lines

... then just say so in your post and I will follow your instructions to the best of my ability.

I will also include, at the end of the round-up post, an image of the creature as depicted in the Aberdeen Bestiary and what it is actually called.

All posts I make on this will be collected at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting so that people can look at previous ones without scrolling through the tag.

Various Notes

I'm going to trim out any religious digressions in the original entries -- bestiary authors had a habit of adding stuff like "and the raccoon is symbolic of god in such-and-such fashion, which teaches us...", and I just don't think that's relevant here.

The entries will also be presented in a random order. This is because they're sorted into categories in the original text, so if I don't change the order we're going to get stuck with, e.g., a few months of All Birds All The Time.

You should all be aware that the animals described are not guaranteed to be, you know, real. There are several entries describing animals that straight up do not exist -- some of which are mythical creatures familiar to most people, others of which are extremely obscure.

Explanations of the animal's name within the entries will be redacted.

If other animals are mentioned within the entries, they will not get replaced with nonsense-names. Originally, I was going to make the switch globally, so that if, e.g., the entry for "raccoon" read "a raccoon is about the size of a possum", and the random generator had decided that a raccoon was a balzikhear and a possum was a flunggrish, the "raccoon" entry would now read "a balzikhear is about the size of a flunggrish". However, I decided that it will cause more problems than it solves to obscure any comparisons to other animals -- so the name-switch is now localized only to the specific entry. A possum is a flunggrish only in its own entry, and remains a possum everywhere else.

I was originally going to do one post for every single entry, but there are a lot of them and they vary wildly in length & quality. So I've cut it down to exactly 52 posts, meaning that if I queue them up for once a week, this will run for roughly a full year.

Most of that cutting-down mentioned above was done by combining a bunch of the really short entries into categories -- the last half-dozen posts in this series will be group entries. You can choose to make art of any of them that strike your fancy, or do a group portrait, or just ignore them --I dunno, I'm not a cop, do what you want.

I did also directly cut some, mostly domesticated animals because there's a somewhat different approach to them based on author and audience familiarity.

So yeah, that should cover everything.

#maniculum bestiaryposting

[putschki1969]

Hello Puts!

I don't think I have seen you share your thoughts about Keiko's latest single. I personally really enjoy this release and I am curious how you feel about it?

Ugh, yeah, you got me there🫣I've been uncharacteristically quiet about Keiko's 「夕闇のうた」. Quite frankly, I've just not had enough positive things to say to warrant a proper review😭. As most of you probably know, I do not get any pleasure from lingering on stuff I don't particularly like, I simply move on and prefer to focus on things I actually enjoy. But hey, since you asked, I might as well write up a few things that have been going through my mind.

Disclaimer: Needless to say, this is all just my personal opinion. I am by no means an expert on music or singing, I am just a fan who is very invested in my girls but due to having a very specific taste, not everything works for me but of course that doesn't mean that it won't work for anyone else.

Let's start with the single's A-Side 「夕闇のうた/Yūyami no Uta」. It's not like I hate the song or anything, objectively it's a decent track, I just can't really get into it. There are some songs and melodies that immediately resonate with me, others grow on me over time and then there are some I need to hear performed live to properly appreciate them. In this case, none of these options apply unfortunately. We got our very first snippet way back at the end of November and to be honest, that didn't do much for me which already kinda tempered my excitement. Ever since then the song has had time to marinate but I haven't been able to warm up to it. Even the live performance at last year's Kaji Fes didn't have a noteworthy effect on me. My last hope was hearing the full studio version but my reaction was once again rather lukewarm. The visuals of the PV helped a bit to get me into a good mood for the song but ultimately, I was pretty much underwhelmed. And the worst thing is, I struggle to pinpoint what exactly is bothering me about the song. One thing I am definitely not a fan of is the overly rushed and repetitive drum-beat in the verses, for some reason I feel like it clashes a bit with Keiko's singing and cheapens the overall vibe of the song but that could just be my personal impression. I prefer a good build-up to a chorus and I don't think we are getting it here. Speaking of the chorus, the structure of the chorus doesn't work for me or maybe it's the melody (lack thereof?) that doesn't appeal to me? Not sure exactly but it's not giving me what I would have liked. The first part starting with "inori" is pretty generic and then we get a sort of crescendo for "utau/fureru" which feels oddly out of place, especially when it transitions right into the scat singing. Maybe there is too much different stuff going on or it's all happening too fast but it doesn't have the impact on me which it probably should have. I am usually a big fan of Keiko's scat singing, I mean, her yay- yay-yay part in YK's "vanity" or Kalafina's "Door" regularly gives me an eargasm so why the hell does it leave me so unimpressed in "Yūyami no Uta"???!!! I guess it's more of a combination of the melodic arrangement and the accompanying scatting which makes songs like "vanity" or "Door" so much more epic for me....? As for the bridge, it's okay I suppose. In her interviews, Keiko has mentioned multiple times how her progress as a vocalist has made it possible to tackle all these high parts and that just a few years ago, Yuki Kajiura would have assigned Yuriko Kaida or one of her other chorus singers to sing those sections. Keiko's higher registers are a hit and miss for me, sometimes they work, other times not so much. Here she sounds perfectly fine and I fully understand why YK would feel confident to let Keiko handle this on her own. But again, the whole part is just meh and by now I am convinced that it is because the song doesn't have a sufficiently nice melody to provide a good base for Keiko's singing.

I want to continue with 「夕闇のうた Special Edit ver.」 because I honestly feel like we have been robbed of something really good here. Whoever decided to bypass this in favour of the normal version should really start questioning their life choices. I am not saying that this version is perfect (we don't even get all that much to form an opinion on it) but from what I hear, it is superior in many ways and would have worked better as an ending (edit: apparently, it has actually been used as ED on the 3rd ep). That gorgeous strings intro alone takes the song to a whole new level, making it so much more melodic. And the somewhat obtrusive drums feel way more toned down here since they are introduced at a later point of the song to create more of a proper build-up towards the chorus. The chorus itself is pretty much the same from what I can tell but I wonder what the bridge and the remainder of the verses would have sounded like in this style. The ending verse of the song also works a lot better for this special edit, wish they had included all of it starting from "itoshii" and then concluded it with another strings section.

Now all that's left to talk about is the single's B-Side, 「燈命/Tōmei」. This song is a big no-go for me so I'll keep it short. The composition, arrangement and lyrics were all done by Saku who has previously worked with Keiko on "Ray" (Lantana), "Sakura wo Goran" (dew) and "YOUR" (CUTLERY). He was only in charge of the arrangement for"Sakura wo Goran" but out of those three songs, "Tōmei" feels closest to this one in terms of vibe and overall blandness. I've come to enjoy "YOUR" quite a bit (even if I am not so happy with some of Keiko's higher notes) and "Ray" is decent too but my entire body outright rejects songs like "Sakura wo Goran" and "Tōmei". Sorry🙈I don't even know what else to say. I listened to it and immediately was like, nope, next one please.

Phew, this turned out longer than expected. I feel shabby for going on and on about all the stuff I didn't like but oh well, what's done is done. Moving on...

#kalafina #keiko #reply #review #夕闇のうた #yūyami no uta #燈命 #Tōmei

[blondedmuse]

JUST FOR TONIGHT

bradley “rooster” bradshaw x reader

synopsis. ꩜ you learn how bradley truly feels about you.

author's note. ∿ wow look whose writing again! this also has no editing because i’m so tired and wrote this in 30 minutes

word count. ⨾ idk a lot

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

It’s the middle of a the night and you found yourself wide awake and held tightly in strong arms. You should be tired and you should be asleep but the heartbeat of the man behind you has kept you wide awake.

He’d ended up in your bed more often than not in the past few months and you in his. It’s a game you didn’t know you were playing, tip-toeing around each other to see who would fold first.

It was usually you, and you’d take him home with no regrets that night but then once he was gone by morning there was always a sour taste left in your mouth.

It lingered because you were yearning for something more—something you weren’t sure Bradley wanted. While he took you out from time to time, you continued to tell yourself you were just friends; with benefits of course.

There were lines that you established neither of you were meant to cross, yet it’s as if those boundaries were made to be broken.

So now you lay wide awake contemplating where you stand and what this means for the both of you. You tilt you head so you can see Bradley and you don’t think the thoughts of your present have ever once occurred to him. Maybe they have but it’s not worth the headache, especially at four in the morning.

So carefully, you slip from the hold of his arms and off the bed and head to the living room, taking your acoustic guitar with you. You settle on your couch with the hopes that music will serve as a sufficient distraction and your fingers drift to the chords of I Love You So by The Walters.

The song is quiet enough to keep him from his wake and you sing the words just above a whisper. Halfway through the song you almost forgot Bradley was in your bedroom—almost.

The truth is the moment you’d left the room and your side of the bed was cold, he woke up. He’d slowly been growing accustomed to your body in his arms as he fell asleep, which he damned himself for because it was never meant to happen. It was never meant to happen because why would you feel that same? You were just friends, right?

Still he woke up looking around the room for your figure and as soon as he heard a voice he realized maybe he didn’t have to search far. It wasn’t long before he noticed you were singing, to which he then realized he’d never heard before. He’d always wanted to ask you to play something for him, to hear your voice to the tune of one of your favorite songs and now he had the chance.

He walked downstairs as quietly as he could which proved itself to be not quiet enough as you turned around to see him standing at the bottom of your stairs.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” You asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t mind.” he sighed before thinking of the right words to say.

“I’d like it if you kept going.”

You hesitated before nodding to the spot next to you on the couch. “Don’t you have training tomorrow? I just- I think you should get some sleep. Proper sleep.”

“I’ll be fine. I’d rather you sing me to sleep anyways,” He told you, shifting his position so that he was lying down.

“Please?” He asked and how could you say no?

“Alright,” You agreed and your fingers started once again. Going for something slower, you started playing John Wayne by Cigarettes After Sex, singing along like you had done earlier.

Once you finished the song you were sure he was out like a light with his eyes closed and breathing slowed, and you were stuck in this awkward position once again. Before you could get up however, the sound of his voice left you frozen.

“I hope you know I love your voice. Love it almost just as much as I love you,” He rasped.

Your brows cinched together and you heart stopped momentarily. Did Bradley just say he loves you? You looked to him again to see his eyes flutter open, searching your face for any kind of reaction.

“You don’t have to say anything Y/N, I just wanted to tell you. But if anything, I do want you to stay with me. Just for tonight?”

You obliged, setting your guitar down on the coffee table in front of you and lying down next to Bradley, allowing him to hold your once again and you allowed his warmth to consume you like a love.

You knew you would talk about this tomorrow morning, but for now you could only hope it wasn’t just for tonight.

#do you want a part 2 #not proofread #i hate this <3 #but i love bradshaw soo #bradley bradsaw x reader #bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x y/n #bradley bradshaw x you #bradly bradshaw fluff #bradley bradshaw angst #bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster x reader #rooster fluff #rooster angst #rooster x y/n #rooster x you #top gun maverick

[lermisv4]

Some thoughts about Dabihawks and the “Enemies to Lovers” trope (someway through this turned into a character study).

OK, so this is a very weird thing for me to post, especially since I normally don’t post at all (and for the few people that actually follow me and may see this, I just reblog art and photographs for the most part so this may be even weirder). But anyway, I want to dump this here. I don’t know if this makes much sense or has much of a basis. And I’m far from a shipping expert. Warning in advance.

Normally, I do not ship. At all. I support canon pairings if there and I can tolerate ships for the most part. I am one of those people who get annoyed if everyone is gay in a work because my mind goes to “what would be the odds in real life” - I don’t mean many offense, but my environment made me only encounter homosexuality in fiction so I doubt my experience with LGBTQA people is universal, but to me it’s a rarity.

And a type of ship that particularly annoys me is “enemies to lovers”. I just couldn’t see it. At all. I hated the very concept of those ships and they were among the first things I would filter out when searching through the Archive. “Don’t like, don’t read” as they say and I sure as hell didn’t read.

This probably has a lot to do with me being a bit of a stickler for canon or canon details in many case, but to each their own.

Enter Dabihawks.

Funny thing, I don’t have a 100% clear memory of how I ran into this pairing because make no mistake, I’m VERY new in My Hero Academia. As in, barely a few months new. So I’m pretty sure I ran into Dabihawks when I was looking for porn and was mostly unfamiliar with the characters.

Yeah, that’s another thing I should mention. I don’t normally read porn fics featuring characters I’m familiar with. Mostly for the stated above reasons.

But Dabihawks? That’s different.

MHA is the first fandom in which I can actually say that I ship non-canon pairings. That “yeah I can absolutely see that”.  And Dabihawks is the chief of them for reasons I don’t really get.

It should be everything I hate in a ship. My issue with the enemies to lovers thing is that very often those people don’t have a reason to become lovers, at least not the way I see it. I’m excluding AUs and stuff like that because your story, your playground, but Dabi and Hawks do not have an actual reason to get emotionally close to each other. It’s lies and zero trust and openly murderous intentions from both sides, and Dabi is a goddamn maniac (no I’m not using the medical definition of the term).

But this at the same time is what this makes this pairing work.

Dabi and Hawks feel fundamentally like very similar - or rather, parallel - people.

Normally, when taking an enemies to lovers dynamic, there are two main approaches that I see.

1) one of them is the victim of circumstance and the other person comes as some sort of saviour

This is a ship dynamic that I can see working, it has some tragic elements that work well for drama, puts both characters on a good and decent moral ground, and if written correctly can promote growth for them. When this becomes problematic is when this dynamic is shifted to “I can fix them”. When I’m not given sufficient reason to believe that “villain” person can become better.

Enter the second approach

2) Stockholm Syndrome - EDIT: I was told I was using the term wrong. They were right so I'm rephrasing it to "unhealthy attachment"

Excuse me if I wrote “Stockholm” wrong. Regarding the subject of “I can fix them”, I know just enough about relationships to know that this is a toxic mindset in real life. Many times the characters in these series get obsessed with the “villain” of the pairing, and likewise the villain becomes obsessed with the hero. However, in this case, instead of having a dynamic of “I want to offer a chance to help because I care about this person” and “I want to become better and I’m grateful to this person for giving me the chance to do so”, we instead have both characters adopting a far more toxic mindset. The hero feels less like “someone in love” and more like “someone with a guilt and/or superiority complex”. Likewise, the villain still acts with villainous intent. They want to lure the hero in. So in these pairings, the hero and the villain - the two sides of the enemies - do not share a common ground other than the battlefield.

And then there is OOC.

The thing about enemies to lovers pairings, particularly the seond type, is that one character needs to be the victim of the other character, or act wildly out-of-character for this to even happen. That’s why I oftenly associate enemies to lovers with manipulation to a certain degree.

Now, I admit my pool is... limited. My main encounters with such ships are all those “Harry Potter x Voldy/Draco/death eater here”, as well as some miscellaneous stuff like “Hibari Kyoya x Mukuro” or “Dark Marik x literally anyone” or “Aizen x Ichigo (wtf)”. Either the Draco in Leather Pants syndrom is in full strength, or this is going on.

So why do I find Dabihawks different?

Well, they’re both  in the same shoes, and they’re both the victim, and they’re both the manipulator.

Dabi and Hawks have an extremely personal, pre-established connection long before they even meet, said connection being Endeavor. And it’s not really in terms “I want to overcome this guy” but rather “this guy irrevocably changed my life and is connected to my family”.

There are far better analysis essays here on this, but Dabi and Hawks are defined by two very different versions of the same person. Dabi knows Endeavor as the monster who pretends to be a hero and never loved him as a parent, while to Hawks Endeavor is the proof that there is good in this world and saved him from his parent. Endeavor is the physical manifestation of how they perceive the world they live in. Dabi sees the worst of the hero society because he grew up in it, while Hawks has completely fallen for the glamorous image. For Dabi, the existence of pro-heroes among people is not a spectacle but an inescapable part of life; literally, he lived in the same house as one. Meanwhile, for Hawks it was such a spectacle that he did not believe it to be real. So they both start from the same point - Endeavor - and reach completely different conclusions. One of them thinks the world is fake, while the other thinks that miracles happen.

Another thing they both are parallels/mirrors/foils to each other is how exactly the abuse was for each of them. I’m trying to put this in terms of invisibility and expectation.

A core question in both their childhoods is “why was I born”. We see both of them being faced with this question as early as their toddler years. Both of them are undeniably too young to get existential like that. Here is the difference though; Dabi was clearly told exactly why he was born by his father, while Hawks’ own mother posed this question to him. So here again we have two different paths from the same starting point. Dabi already knew the answer but it was ripped away from him, while Hawks was asked to find the answer until it was shoved into his hands.

I’ll talk more about that later.

So, invisiblitity? Dabi and Hawks were invisible in their own house in different ways. At first, Dabi had ALL the attention on him but then it was ripped away along with the answer to the question “why I was born”. This caused instability in his life, like somone tore off his foundations. Dabi desires this stability back; he technically already knows the answer to the “why I was born” thing, so he believes that with thee attention he will get it back. He always, ALWAYS screams at people to look at him.

Hawks on the other hand thinks that being invisible is a good thing. Hawks knew he was unwanted from the very beginning, and since he could not leave, the best thing he could do was pretend he’s not there. Hawks doesn’t want to be seen. So he’s quite, inexpressive, and diverts attention away from him. Hawks wants the answer to the question “why I was born”, but he knows all too well that his parents won’t provide it, so he doesn’t seek them out.

And that is when they both are thrown into the exact opposite situation of their comfort zone.

Dabi is shoved - metaphorically - intoa world where everything is defined by secrecy. Limelight villainy - aka the villains who attack people in broad daylight - are in danger because they attract attention, and now Dabi is a villain who works in secret, even though his nature is to want ALL the spotlights on him.

Meanwhile, Hawks is thrown in the world where all the limelight will be on him, while he’s most confortable just disappearing.

Here we come back to Endeavor. With the Hero Comision, Hawks is shoven the answer of “why were you born” into his hands. Now, I’m not saying Endeavor has ties with the Hero Commision. Unlike what fanfiction claims, I really don’t think Endeavor wants much to do with them. But the important bit here is how Hawks preceives it. Hawks already thinks that heroes are fantastical guardian angels, and tols that he WILL be a hero.

So Dabi starts out with all the expectations and attention piled on him, only for them to be taken away and for him to be thrown in the shadows. While Hawks starts with nobody having any expectations or paying attention to him, and then he gets shoved to the spotlight.

And how do they react to the situation? Well, with the exact same way; putting on completely opposite but based on the truth masks. Dabi pretends not to be the massive attention seeker that he is and instead feigns apathy; except this apathy is only partially feigned because he only cares about one thing - it’s just not villainy itself, it’s a person. Hawks on the other hand pretends to be far more happy-go-lucky and friendly than he actually is, but that’s also partially based on a truth; he is optimistic to a fault (his words).

And this is a very simplified version of what makes this pairing work. When they collide, they collide HARD in every single area. Because every single area is a common area. Their lives match each other’s step for step long before they actually meet, so they have a lot of common ground, and the line in the sand between heroes and villains is not straight. It’s jagged as hell because they both got dragged through it.

So when they do finally meet, their oposite beats more or less forces the other to remove the mask. We see Hawks getting angry and laser focused and emotionless, killing someone in a location where no one could see. We see Dabi danceing around like a drama queen and laughing at the camera in front of the whole world. In a sense, tey are finally back in their comfort zones. And they had to collide to do it.

Dabi doesn’t want to be saved by the hero, and Hawks doesn’t want to save the villain. They do NOT trust each other, but know each other better than anyone else, because their lives are so close.

And I think their fight in canon perfectly reflects that. In a darkned, enclosed location like the ones they grew up in, with Hawks trying to keep something a secret while Dabi demanding that all eyes are on him.

And this is why I believe it works as a pairing. Yeah, there is a lot of symbolism and popular ship dynamics you could throw here (icarus and the sun, blonde and brunette except that’s a lie, sunny boy vs emo dude) but no. It’s how they force each other to be REAL and to look at the other side of their path that makes this ship work.

I read a fair bit of Dabihawks fanfiction, and it rarely starts with love at first sight or “I love this person”. Of course it fucking doesn’t. It starts with them actually considering murder, and then getting uncomfortable because the other person is getting under their skin. By taking a look at each other, they are forced to take a look at themselves. Because they have the exact same kind of baggage.

It’s also one of the reasons I think that this ship has so much variety in it. I read plenty of Dabihawks porn. A thing I find in slash fiction is that in a popular pairing, there is almost always a designated top and a designated bottom with designated preferences. Who will be the Uke and who will be the Seme of the relationship. I can’t believe I just wrote that. There is this general concept of what they’re into. But with Dabihawks, there isn’t such a pre-established concept because both sides of the pairing can fit any role. You can have anything from service dom Dabi to pillow princess Hawks to both of them being soft, or both being sadomaschohists, to switches, and who tops or bottoms in fiction is up to a coin toss. And it always feels in character because they both have this...zigzagging yet parallel dynamic, of having same yet different starting points, and moving at the same axis, taking turns at the same points.

So yeah. Not sure how to finish this but... yeah. Here is why I think this pairing works. Thanks for reading, if you did.

#long post #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #dabi #todoroki touya #hawks #takami keigo #dabihawks #enemies to lovers #essay #shipping dynamics #fanfiction #fanfic #referenced smut #this may be very baseless on my part but feel free to criticise #actually I ASK you to criticise #original post

[gamingavickreyauction]

Why is eugenics wrong, exactly?

The argument for eugenics is pretty simple: for most of the time humans were around, there was natural selection against things like disability and stupidity, but those selective forces largely don't exist now. As such, in the absence of other forces, humanity will tend to be more stupid and have more genetic diseases over time. Thus, some artificial selection should be used to avoid this.

Eugenicists have historically gotten this wrong—humanity has gotten more, not less intelligent—as a result of assuming traits are more genetically determined than they actually are. However, presumably there must be some fundamental limit to this: if humans become stupid enough, then no amount of dietary and educational improvement will be sufficient—just like no diet and education can get a monkey to learn calculus. So, this doesn't seem like a particularly robust argument against eugenics, to me.

Eugenicists have historically committed many atrocities. There is a large-to-democidal human cost to eugenic policies. However, the eugenicist can respond that, if one extrapolates genetic deterioration far enough, it would inevitably lead to the end of human civilization (some intelligence is necessary to keep society running), so any human cost is justifiable. The principle that anything is justifiable to save humanity might be controversial, but it is one reasonable people can hold.

Another thing is that when people say 'of course the human cost is bad, but it's unavoidable,' it's very often because they don't care much about the human cost in the first place. This can be seen in the history of eugenics from the violent practices used—excessive even for what they were aiming to achieve—and how the victims of eugenic policies have tended to be groups eugenicists are not sympathetic to—the poor, the disabled, and people of color. However, this is more an argument against trusting eugenicists than an argument against eugenic ideology itself.

Something that I think eugenicists can't so easily justify is that their policies seem to be unnecessary. The apparent risk is on a very long timescale, and within that timescale, we might have gene editing, transhumanism, or various other technologies which render the argument for eugenics void. So all the suffering was for nothing. We do not know if these technologies will arise, but there is no justification for not at least waiting in case they do. This argument seems watertight but also seems unsatisfactory in its conditionality—if it turns out to be impossible for humanity to progress much beyond where we are now, technologically, would it follow that eugenic policies are justified?

It seems to me that the most sweeping, most satisfactory argument against eugenics is one from anti-authoritarianism: eugenic policies are generally carried out by the state, but the powers involved in carrying out eugenic policy could all too easily be used in other, less justifiable ways. Giving the state that much power is a slippery slope. Furthermore, people disagree about which traits should be selected for and which should be selected against. The state cannot be trusted to make this judgment and should not have the power to.

This seems to be the only argument that can unconditionally rule out all forms of eugenics. But it might also be unsatisfactory because it implies eugenic policies are theoretically good; it's just that our institutions aren't good enough to implement them, or that if everyone could agree on what traits are desirable, eugenics would be fine. Then again, those issues are pretty fundamental.

This argument also seems doubtful (though not unsalvageable) when faced with the civilization risk that genetic deterioration theoretically presents: if it's worth doing anything to save humanity, then it's worth risking a despotic government too.

So is this last argument sufficient? Are there other important arguments against eugenics that I'm missing? where, exactly, does eugenic ideology go wrong?

I'm taking eugenics as a whole here because it is generally agreed that eugenics is universally bad. So I'm not asking about e.g. racial eugenics, as that has more obvious problems—it's the low-hanging fruit. So I suppose I'm assuming that it's not the case that different forms of eugenics are wrong for separate reasons.

Also, eugenic policy can mean things like financial incentives for or against reproduction, rather than direct physical violence such as forced sterilization or murder. However, when not having enough money means you get made homeless, financial incentives are still very violent, at least to some groups.

#cw eugenics #cw ableism

[lone-rhapsodist]

A letter to Classics Tumblr

This is a blog post I wrote to talk about: 1) my university experience of academic writing; 2) my frustration with academia, especially the humanities; 3) my struggles with writing and with my mental health; 4) my experience of teaching as an environment which aims to encourage the expression of new ideas; and 5) my project to create a space for ancient studies which encourages people to share their ideas, including an outline of how it would work and how it would benefit our subject. I hope you will find this valuable. I hope you will be happy to support the project. Thank you.

When I was a university student, sometimes in essays I would write what I call ‘feel’ statements. Feel statements are statements which start with ‘I think’, ‘I feel’, ‘I believe’ etc. They are usually frowned upon in academic writing. I have checked a few writing guides before writing this blog post, and most recommend that these statements be edited like so: 1) remove ‘I feel’ etc.; 2) add evidence to back your statement up; 3) change your phrasing to make your statement sound more objective. Now, I agree that statements should as much as possible be backed up with evidence. But why remove ‘I feel’ when it is ‘I’ who feels that the statement is true? And what counts as ‘evidence’ exactly?

As I was writing essays at university, I was constantly facing one of two problems. 1) I was working too much with the original Latin or Ancient Greek text and too little with the scholarship. As a result of this, I was able to develop many original ideas but could not back them up with scholarship, since there was no scholarship discussing those ideas, and so my analysis was good, but it was not sufficiently ‘evidenced’ by scholarship. Alternatively, 2) I was working too much with scholarship, reading lots of books and articles and so on, until my ideas were basically a mash-up of all the ideas contained in the scholarship, and my engagement with the text was completely filtered through those ideas. This meant I had a very good view of the scholarly landscape, but little to no work on the text, and so my work was weak because of the lack of original thinking to support it.

I hated this so much. I hated that, if I engaged mainly with the text, my work did not have enough ‘evidence’ to back it up. But then, if I engaged mainly with the scholarship, my own analysis of the text suffered, and I could not develop the original thinking necessary to make good work. I just could not win!

It was around my third year of university that I started to lose passion for ‘originality-driven’ academic writing and started seeing it more like an exercise in style. Do some analysis of the text, include lots of scholarship, and congrats! You will impress your lectures AND get good grades! Like that is what matters. Like this isn’t all about generating new ideas, new ways of looking at the text. No, it wasn’t about trying anymore. It was about playing safe. No trial and error, God forbid you stumble upon something good and original. Nope. Just stick to the plan and you will be fine.

However, despite my best efforts, I could never get rid of feel statements in my writing. And why should I? Especially if I am making an original point. Especially if there is no evidence from previous scholarship to back it up. Of course, I am going to explain why I think this is a good point, why I believe the evidence in the text itself supports this point, why I feel like this should be regarded as a valid interpretation of the text. But if you are just going to shut me down by claiming that there is no scholarship to support my statement, I am sorry, that is not my fault.

Folks, I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on Aristophanes. I read every single book in the university library about Aristophanes. I know because I was also Library Champion for Classics at the university, and I ended up ordering a lot of books on Aristophanes and Old Comedy just because our university did not have some of the most important scholarly works on either. I read so much that I knew what our library had was not enough, and I asked for more! I even went to another university library to consult some of the works we did not have in our own library, just so I could use them for my dissertation.

And yet… it still wasn’t enough! I was making some very original points about the texts, about the plays themselves, but there was no scholarship to back them up! I ended up writing so many feel statements, just because I had no other way to support my ideas from previous scholarship. I mean, actual scholars, people who dedicated their lives to studying this stuff, did not see what I saw! How is that my fault? How is that their fault? It’s no one’s fault!

There was no fault with what I was doing. The fault was with the system which did not approve of what I was doing. Academia. The humanities. The writing guides. All of these things. Yet what I was doing was simply working on the text and developing my ideas from there. Because this is what you do in the humanities. You sit down with the text and you go from there. And if you are reading Aristophanes, yes there is a lot of factual information, yes there is a lot of context, but at the end of the day, it’s just you and the mighty beast that is Old Comedy. You can read all the scholarship in the world, but in the end, you need to face the text. And if you face the text first, you will come up with a thousand original ideas, but if you read the scholarship first, you won’t. So, which one do you think you should start first? The text. The text. It’s always the text.

But then, if you always start from the text, you will find it difficult to fit your original ideas into the scholarly landscape, and you will write ‘I feel’ a lot, and your work will not be deemed good enough, and you will struggle. And sometimes, you will struggle so much, you will have a mental breakdown. And you will tell your doctor. You will tell your family. You will tell your department. And you will get a big, long extension for all your remaining assignments and end up submitting your master’s dissertation six weeks late.

That’s me. That is what happened to me. I had a breakdown and I finished my master’s late. And now, I struggle with writing. Massively. And every time I try to write, either about my subject, academia, or my university experience, one of three things happen: 1) I feel like throwing up; 2) I have a mini-depressive episode in which I feel so debilitated I had to lie down and sleep for an hour; or 3) I actually write something, like I am doing now, as in some kind of ADHD-induced hyper-focus fever dream, and the result was is usually so messy I never dare to post it.

But now… I can’t do this anymore. I am 27. I finished my master’s four years ago. By every measure but my own, I am a successful professional entering his third year as a teacher. Yet I just… cannot let it go. I cannot accept that this happened to me. Most importantly, I cannot accept that this is only my fault. I cannot accept that I was made to feel so insecure about my work that I actually wanted to end it all, and I nearly did! Mind you, I do accept that some of it is my fault. I definitely put too much pressure on myself. I was so worried I was going to disappoint my family and my lecturers that I showed no kindness to myself. Also, a lot of bad stuff happened all at once. Financial problems in my family. My girlfriend and I broke up. My dog died. It was basically a perfect storm. But the system… I cannot absolve the system. The system has its faults. And it does in this story too.

Every time I see a writing guide which discourages students from using feel statements… every time I see academics do the same, claiming that students’ work is too rushed, or even that they are being anti-academic or anti-intellectual… I am sorry, but what the fuck. And this is happening in the humanities. A discipline which is famously based on one’s own interpretation of the sources. I can understand if a student did not do enough work on the text, or enough reading around a topic, but if they did, and they came up with an original idea about it, why in the world are you demanding from them that they rephrase their ‘I feel’ statements into something more objective-sounding? How? If there is no scholarship which supports their statement, because no one else has thought of that idea before, how can they possibly back it up with that sort of evidence? Surely, they can use the text for that. I mean, that is where their idea came from in the first place. What? That’s not enough? What is your problem?

What do you think people did at the beginning of scholarship? Did they not come up with original ideas themselves, supported by their own analysis of the text? Didn’t they use the text to explain why they believed their ideas were valid, and perhaps add any other scholarly evidence, if they had any? But if they didn’t, what would they write? ‘I think’. ‘I feel’. ‘I believe’. Those were the words. If not those words exactly, something similar. But that is the way new ideas were formulated. And it has been more or less so up to the 1960s, until someone decided we needed to go all scientific and devoid of any human emotion. Because after all it’s the humanities we are talking about. Why be human about it?

So yes, feel statements used to be good for a while, but we don’t that anymore, God forbid we accidentally stumble upon something original that isn’t backed up by at least two scholarly citations. It’s ridiculous. And it’s even more ridiculous when you realise that academics today do still use feel statements in their work! Full professors do it, and they allow themselves to, because they know a lot about their subject, and so they reserve themselves the right to feel things from time to time. But even regular lecturers do it! There was this great article I read recently titled “Research: It Starts with a Feeling”, and subtitled “Can we talk about our feelings, hunches, or instinct about our research openly?”. Yes, we can! Of course, we can! That is the whole freaking point! So why in the world are we sitting here actively discouraging students from using feel statements in their work, and in the humanities of all disciplines!?

I guess because we are afraid. Because we know that, in the humanities in particular, true objectivity is a myth. We know that, as much as we have knowledge and we try to evidence our statements, they’re still ‘our’ statements, and in that lies our humanity. And we are worried about looking human, in the humanities of all disciplines. Because our discipline is constantly under attack in this capitalist world, where knowledge is all about power, and not pursued for its own sake. And if the people who run the world realise that there is still humanity in the humanities, they’ll pull the plug on funding. They’ll kill the humanities, and with it, humanity. And so here we are. Trying to make it all sound more objective. Feeding the narrative that there is an objective truth out there, we just have to find it.

Well, you know what’s also out there? People. People who know stuff. People who have ideas about stuff. And if we all sat down and talked with each other, perhaps we would reach some kind of collective knowledge, together. Perhaps we would realise how stupid it is to think that true, objective knowledge of this world lies outside of it, and how it makes so much more epistemological sense that knowledge is a combination of all the facts as well as all our thoughts, beliefs, interpretations, experiences and what not. Then, we could finally allow ourselves to just sit down with each other, feel vulnerable, and say what we feel. And sure, there needs to be some knowledge behind those statements. And there needs to be some evidence to back those feelings up. But why not give people a chance? Why not let people be human? In the humanities!

If someone asked me what that would look like in practice, I would think of my experience as a teacher. One time, I was introducing my students to a passage from Ovid in which he talks about an (alleged) sorceress called Dipsas. Dipsas was trying to end the relationship between Ovid and his girlfriend, but that was just the context of the poem. However, the passage we were studying was all about Dipsas’ (alleged) wondrous powers. One of her powers was the ability to “split open the ground with a solid spell”. Well, one of my students came up with the genius idea that the chasm Dipsas was (allegedly) able to create with her powers could possibly be representative of the ‘chasm’ she was also trying to create between Ovid and his girlfriend. I was AMAZED! I had never thought of that. The commentary notes from Cambridge made no mention of it either. And it just made so much damn sense! It was even right at the end of the passage, clearly foreshadowing what was going to happen in the rest of the poem. And this was from a student at her third ever Latin poem in her life! No previous knowledge, barely any context, just… pure intuition!

My experience of teaching has shown me that, when you create an environment which encourages people to share how they feel about something, they come up with amazing ideas, interpretations you would never have thought of, even ‘hot takes’ which can change your perspective on something entirely. This is the sort of stuff which I would love to see more of in academia… but I do not think it will ever happen. Sure, there will always be seminars with fun lecturers who will encourage students to look for this sort of stuff. For example, I once had a lecturer compare Juvenal’s verses with Eminem’s lyrics, and it was fantastic! But there are not that many academics who do things like that, and again, it’s more for fun than anything else.

I wish more academics were more open about their approach to their subject. I wish they would share more about how, for all their knowledge and intellect, they are still driven by feeling, by passion, by their soul as well as their mind. To be fairer to academics, I wish academia itself, especially the humanities, was more open in this respect. I wish the system could be changed, that the vulnerabilities could be shared, that a conversation could be started about how to make things better, together. But, again, I am not sure it will ever happen.

So, fuck it. I’ll say it first, if no one has said it before. I believe that feel statements should be allowed in academic writing in the humanities. I believe that, if you have good knowledge of a topic, you will have feelings about it, and insofar as your knowledge of the topic is correct, and there is no clear evidence contradicting your statements on a topic, then your feelings should be regarded as valid and should be taken seriously by others.

That’s the project, folks. That is what it’s all about. If you have some knowledge of a topic and you have certain feelings about it, you should be able to share them in a safe space, where others can read them, appreciate them, and give you feedback and advice on how to develop your ideas further. This is the space which I want to create with my project. I want it to be welcoming and encouraging. I want people in it to be kind and supportive. I want to give people the opportunity to put forward their ideas anonymously if they do not wish to reveal their identity at first. And I want others to be able to give constructive criticism in structured, time-stamped, informed discussions which can easily be archived and saved for future reference.

This space would be open to people of any ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Ideally, I would like anyone, literally anyone to be in it, from researchers to PhDs to graduates to university students to high schoolers to enthusiasts of any age or background, whatever their education level or knowledge of the ancient world, I do not care! It would be about ancient studies (which is a better name for Classics), and it would be about the ancient people, literature, history and culture of anywhere in the ancient world, defined as you prefer.

Honestly, I would put no limits to whatever we can talk about in this space. It would be a Discord server, but it would be run like a forum. There would be a general chat for casual conversation, and specifically created channels for dedicated discussions, with moderation as necessary. There would also be voice channels for live discussions and potentially live community events. Of course, like for any community, there would still be rules. Like, don’t be an asshole. Don’t be a Nazi. Don’t misappropriate the ancient past to support your extremist ideas. Also, fuck TERFs.

But also, please do not perpetuate in your interactions with others any of the awful academic practices which we are trying to move away from with this project. For example, the principle of authority. The principle of authority states that we must always accept the opinion of an authority on a given topic, without any possibility for criticism, on account of the fact that, since they are an authority on that topic, their opinion must be regarded as superior. It’s Galileo Galilei vs the Aristotelians all over again, folks. And it’s wild. So yeah. Don’t just claim that because one scholar said something, then a person’s opinion is invalid. Especially if they have evidence to back it up. Like their own analysis of the text. Or the opinion of other scholars. In general, please do not perpetuate that stifling traditionalism which we are trying to get away from.

So yeah. This is the project. To create a space, a Discord server, where people can share their ideas about anything related to the ancient world, and get support and advice from others to develop their ideas further into whatever they like, be it an academic paper or a research proposal, or even just a blog post. But it doesn’t need to be just non-fiction or writing. I would love for this space to be a place for creative writers as well. I would love to see poetry, prose, whether stories or fan fiction, blossoming from it, even other media, such as art, comics, music, videos, podcasts etc. I mean, this is a place for people who feel things about the ancient world. Surely the feelers par excellence, the artists, should be involved in a project like this.

I once asked a scholar of ancient drama whether it would be important for future researchers on this topic to seek further collaboration with artists in their work. He answered with a resounding ‘yes’. I never stopped thinking about that. I never stopped thinking about what he essentially said: that an artist, through their interpretation of an ancient work, can offer an expert on that same work a perspective which even they, for all their knowledge, could not have thought of. Just like my student did, with her brilliant comment about that poem by Ovid. Anyone who has a passion, an enthusiasm, a willingness to learn about the ancient world, has 100% the potential to make an outstanding contribution to our wonderful subject. These people are out there, and they are desperate for a place to ask their questions, share their feelings, and put forward their ideas. I really hope this project can do something to help towards that. I hope you will be happy to support it.

I hope that you will not think of this project as being anti-academic or anti-intellectual. If you do, I am sorry about that. I welcome your feedback on this matter. Also, if I have shared with you my story, it’s because I wanted to explain the reasons behind my frustration with academia, especially the humanities, and how that has fuelled as my passion for this project. It will be a long journey to turn this idea from fantasy into a reality, into a community. But I do believe that, with your support, this could be something truly amazing for our subject. Beyond academia, and back to our humanity. Thank you and stay human.

lone-rhapsodist

#lone-rhapsodist #personal #classics #tumblr #project #writing #academia #humanities #mental health #tagamemnon #tagitus #ancient studies #ancient world

[oc-aita]

AITA for trying to ensure the survival of my subjects and myself?

I (immortal, M) am a king. However, this kingdom exists in a space between dimensions, so it is already stretched thin since there are not many people who exist naturally here. In addition, it is rare for someone to naturally fall through into this space, but I need a steady food supply that is highly specialized; if I simply take it without finding a way to replenish it, all of my subjects will die, and I will be alone and starve. I attempted to talk to the neighboring kingdom (which I will call the Lunar Kingdom, or LK for short) so I could expand, but despite their similar small numbers, they refused and easily defeated our kingdom in combat. I finally came up with a solution to solve all of our problems: I would use my limited magic to catch the souls of the dead from other universes and bring them into this world, sort of like a resurrection. They would not remember their old life and be free to live a new one in my kingdom within reason. I carried out the plan in secret so as to not disturb the average subject, and after a while I managed to rapidly expand the kingdom. Most of these people who joined us became soldiers, making them perfect to help harvest my food supply and battle the LK.

My daughter, A (19, F) knew I had come up with a way of expanding the kingdom, but I did not tell her how I was collecting the souls, nor the details of my special food supply. She had always had her eye on K (19, F), the priestess of the LK, so I knew she could not lead the final blow on them. I had my general E (17 at the time, M) infiltrate the LK and launch a coup. It worked, but he refused to hand the former LK to me and began going by the title "The Demon Lord". It took a very long time to find someone sufficient enough to defeat him, but eventually he was killed by S (14-- or 17 now, I believe? M?). This still did not leave S satisfied, so I had him become my executioner and go after those who threatened my kingdom. In a battle with a rebel still loyal to the old LK, S died. His soul persisted still, but I could not bring him back on my world. I told him if he helped me send 1,000 people to our kingdom, he would be able to be reincarnated back here. He accepted the deal, though I had no idea if this was possible as he was the first person who stuck around after dying. I sent his soul back to his world, unsure if he would even have a body to exist in.

Well, S is back, bringing his work partner N (18, M) with him, someone I employed on his world to help send souls and was never meant to be able to leave his station. They also brought K with them even though she should be dead. Even though S and N broke the laws I set down, and K was an immature leader who would not listen to my ideas about joining our kingdoms together for I, the more experienced ruler, to rule in her place, they alongside A are saying that I am a murderer and horrible for trying to keep myself alive. I argued that I have saved many more people by bringing them back to life, and the people being lost in pursuit of helping me and my kingdom is a small price to pay. Surely you can understand this was the only way?

Edit: I have been told it is "relevant" to include the detail of what my food supply is. My daughter calls it "the determination and hope siphoned off of people", and it can make an individual no longer able to contribute to my kingdom. They are left in a zombielike state which could permanently destroy their soul. This contributes nothing to the matter at hand, but to satisfy her I made this edit. Regardless, if someone is unable to fight and support the people they are around, I argue it is more humane to put them out of their misery than to let them suffer.

#original character #am i the asshole #aita #unreality tw #death tw

[gascon-en-exil]

I don’t know if you’d be interested in this, but I think watching you play through games you enjoy would be really entertaining. I saw your Dream Daddy playthrough and thought your reactions were really funny. I looked to see if you had any more videos like it, but I only saw one other playthrough you made about a year ago. Would you ever be interested in making a playthrough series again?

I've also done a few Patreon-exclusive videos with live commentary on Darkest Dungeon II back when it was in early access, although since the game had its full release in May I haven't felt the urge to return to that concept. The unfortunate reality is that my channel is still small enough to where I can't depend on just anything I release getting views, and whenever I step outside the sort of content that consistently gets the most engagement - which is pretty much just FE - I'm taking a risk. Of course I should be doing it because I enjoy it and all that...but these videos frequently entail weeks of work, and even unscripted playthroughs like that DD run take hours to record and more work on top of that to edit. The seven-minute scripted video I put out a few weeks prior about a much more obscure dating sim has over three times as many views as the DD one, and even then those are substantially lower numbers than what my Three Hopes impressions pieces pulled a few months later.

I'm not opposed to doing more reaction videos, but I need to feel like there will be enough interest to justify the effort. It doesn't help that the majority of games I'd like to highlight in that way are less well known themselves, making them an even tougher sell. Maybe when I break 1000 subs and can actually monetize the ads that YouTube is already putting on some of my videos I'll feel motivated to step outside my wheelhouse more often.

Alternatively, I may just try doing if I'm stuck in a sufficiently lengthy content lull and need a video idea. The algorithm apparently doesn't like it if you aren't producing at least semi-regularly.

#YouTube rambling

[inkofamethyst]

October 2, 2023

After two and a half days of illness, I'm pretty much back to regular functioning (with occasional sneezes but at least the sinus pressure has majorly receded). This does mean that I'm about two days behind where I wanted to be, but I'm going to have to try as best as I can to catch up so Thursday doesn't ~suck~. I don't really want my sleep to suffer though [edit 2, next morning: failed, reverse bedtime procrastination strikes again], that's a habit I'd like to leave back in undergrad if possible. Man, I can't wait until I'm done with (undergrad-level) classes (though then I'll have to structure my own days which is another kind of challenge).

Anyway back to the house conversation, I'm obviously facing a major hurdle preventing ownership: the down payment. I know I listed out all of those "little" savings goals a bit ago, but preparing for a down payment is a huge goal, like tens upon tens of thousands of dollars in some places, and I don't want that to bite into my emergency fund which I am also trying to build (though the emergency fund will likely be much smaller than the down payment goal). The toughest part is that saving in grad school is terribly difficult. The first year and a half are so are going to be weird because I don't really know what my taxes will look like, but budgeting should become easier as I settle in.

And then and then not only do you have to do a down payment, but also hoa fees, monthly mortgage, insurance, figuring out how to get things fixed when (not if) they break, not to mention all the fees you have to worry about before moving in and all the people you have to pay... so many things to consider, so much cash to raise. And like yes I know that serious saving requires serious sacrifice, but bread and roses man. I wanna get a bass guitar in two years, I'm solidifying a wardrobe, I wanna keep sewing. I don't wanna be so single-track-minded that I'm totally miserable for years (like they tell phd students to not let Being In School stop them from living their lives).

I need to talk to a financial advisor, agh. So many things online are saying that renting could be the better move,,,,, but something deep in my bones tells me that it's propaganda of some sort.

God the way I could've been absolutely insufferable as a (metaphorical) finance bro had I actually taken accounting seriously in high school. Like I totally could've gotten a degree in finance and gone into consulting had I not taken money for granted in high school and really thought seriously about it. Honestly...? That probably would've been an easier way to live than the path I've chosen, but I suspect that what I'm doing will be a bit of fun and probably more intellectually stimulating. So that's okay. I guess.

Another funny thing about this whole ~house~ mini-obsession is that it was merely a month ago that I was freaking out (mildly) about the idea of moving away from home lol.

On to different topic entirely, Knowt has got to be my fav quizlet successor. Having anatomy experience is definitely making these practical cram sessions go by faster.

Today I'm thankful that I'm mostly back to normal and also that I decided to go to this social hour thing where I might've made a new friend (someone who knows my puzzle-friend actually lol)! Now comes the tough part--finding and scheduling things to do with them. It's not like high school where you are with people all the time and come to learn who they are gradually. This takes a lot more conscious effort I feel like.

Okay, enough time spent here. I have (too many) things to do.

[edit, like 20 minutes later: I think I just worked through necessity vs sufficiency in my head and im so proud]

[vees-strangeworld-omniverse]

ARGONUS INFO: the other aeronoids

(NOTE: description copy-pasted from DA where i normally post my works. any context that is missing here on tumblr can be found on my DA [linked here and on pinned post] )

[this image is best viewed when opened in a new tab.]

[re-upload due to original being re-blog from main]

edit 11/21/23: i changed the native range of most avibells; instead of originating in nylus/sonias, most avibels will come form the eastern hemisphere with some species in the western hemisphere. i figured it'd make a bit more sense given how diverse gliders actually are.

AAAAAND like with the elkinets, i go more into detail about the other members of the order aeronoida.

the aeronoids are the other species of "living aircraft" on argonus. alot about their biology is similar, if not the same as the elkinet. if you want more details on that (and the elkinets themselves), look at this post here [tumblr edit: this leads to the DA post, not the tumblr one which you should be able to find via the search bar]. but, i'll go over the basics:

1-they're entirely biological, with the exception of their semi-mechanical engines.

2-sometimes there exist pygmy versions of them, usually due to lack of resources. a-however, pygmies tend to be more common due to purposely breeding them.

3-colorations is usually based of respective aircraft's, though can be almost anything. a-and like with the elkinets, there's only colors, patterns and markings.

4-hybrids can exist, and have similar statistics of getting a hybrid as the elkinets (primarily with size differences between the parents) a-however naturally speaking, it only exist within two parents of the same genus. b-there tends to be a higher chance for a hybrid for the other aeronoid species, regardless of the size difference.

[tumblr edit: most aeronoid groups are monotypic, consisting of a single genus, if not a super genus at the largest]

5-their engines are more resilient than a normal, non-living aircraft. they don't fly faster than 210mph. a-while on the topic of flight, aeronoids aren't always flying as their top speed. they only have their engines at full power for long enough to get sufficient air. after that, they lower the speed so that it's just enough to keep them in the air. b-however, there are two main groups that don't have engines, later on those.

6-they have a similar lifecycle to each other, though with varying degrees of each stages length. a-these lengths obviously vary depending on lifespan. 7- there are some foot variations with the other aeronoids, like their is with the elkinets a-however, these variations are usually either your standard anisodactyl feed or webbed feet. this is dependent more on the environment they've adapted for than it is the aircraft type.

8-they're around the same length as their real-life aircraft counterpart a-exact sizes vary between individuals and species b-some aeronoids, however, are smaller than their real-world counterparts now, before we can truly get into the four main groups of non-elkinets, we first have to go through the evolutionary tree first, so you get a good idea on who's related to who.

EVOLUTION AND BASIC TAXONOMY          it all starts with the bird ancestor, a sort of stem-parrot, which may have looked similar to your average passerine, or maybe a bit like a mimicoot minus the crest and pseudoteeth. after all, on my post about the mimicoots [tumblr edit: also a link to a DA post], the tomium is purely convergent to the aeronoids. the superorder would then split into two groups: the mimicoot and the aeronoids.

 there haven't been any clear fossils of an intermediate aeronoid (at least at time of posting, maybe i'll make one later), thought most people agree it may have looked like a weird theropect-bird hybrid. between the bird ancestor, the intermediate form and the basal aeronoid, a couple major things have happened:     1-the loss of feather covering the body     2-wings becoming more thicker and longer in the absence of flight feathers     3-the loss of the secondary eyes (the smaller bottom eyes that most vertebrates have)     4-the appearances of prop engines both on the back and on the wingtips.

    after the intermediate form came the basal aeronoid, which looked like a theropect with an engine on it's back. it's guessed that this basal aeronoid uses all three engines to fly, though speculatively rather poorly. that didn't matter, though, since most aeronoids later down the line would develop better flight in there own unique ways.

    the earliest group to branch off from the rest were a group that started using less of the engines in more favor of flapping their first forelimbs. these intermediate gliders would become the avibels, the aeronoids that returned to their flapping winged ways of their ancestor, minus feathers.

    the next branch would lead to the theropects, which further developed their wing engines as their primary scource of flight, as well as re-evolving them as another set of "arms". however, before true theropects came along, another group close to them would split off and start using those arms more often than their original first forelimbs, causing those forelimbs to reduce in size. these aernoids would be the elkinet ancestor, as as they further developed their wings, not only did those vestigial arms completely disappear, but also the prop blades since they started using the actual wing itself to grab and manipulate object. this would eventually lead to the elkinet we all know and recognize.     despite the multiple arms of multiplanes (biplanes, triplanes, ect), they're not a separate group as the elkinets. the multiple wings are more of a mutation that stuck around than something that was ancestral.

    the final branchoff would lead to a quadrupedal aeronoid that had lost the prop engines on the wingtips in favor of the one on the back. one group would ditch the wings entirely and become the carnivoran-like stunits. the other, however, not only lost wings but also the engines entirely. what the intermediate "flightless" form looked like is also under debate, though it may have had small, vestigial wings and a heavily reduced engines. in any case, the aeronoid would instead opt for completely gliding and loosing powered flight, leading to them becoming the rodads.

alright, natural history lesson over, time to continue on.

    most aeronoid species are relatively smart, and have been kept in captivity by both elkinets and later down the line humans. while most of them are really tame, some species have been fully domesticated. their reasoning for being kept by elkinet usually is companionship, though some secondary usages like hunting, transportation, eggs and meat are also common. in addition, their pygmy variation are also common due to intentional breeding.     aeronoids tend to fill in similar niches to other existing animals. despite this, they rarely do ever go into direct competition with other animals of the same niche, probably due to argonus's size which allow the aeronoids to take over a niche of their own in certain areas.

  ok, ok, NOW we can get into each individual (extant) groups of aeronoids.   

THE STUNNITS (helicopters)

wild ranges:     the stunits are found almost worldwide, but are most common in the temperate and lush habitats. they can also be found in civilizations as strays/ferals. general diet:     most stunnits are generalist omnivores, but there are some variations to exactly what they eat. some of the smaller helicopters have a more carnivorous diet, as they'll hunt smaller animals and eat carrion as part of their diet. on the otherhand, some of the largest helicopter species are near-entirely herbivores, having plants as a main staple of their diet.     captive stunits are usually fed their own diet-specific kibble, though with the more omnivorous / carnivores species some good grain-free dogfood have been used as a cheaper alternative. behavoir:     most stunnits are social to some extent, at the very least they'll tolerate each other if food and water is plentiful. armed and attack helicopters have a more vulpine-like role, being carnivorous loners that only really get together to mate and raise young. larger helicopters have a more canid-like behavior. much like other aernoids, the stunnit's tail and prop blades can be an indicator of emotions. for example, their tails wag when happy or exited, or their props could twitch around to show frustration or annoyance.     stunnits raise their young in the late spring. they'll create a shallow "nest" that's either loosely made of nesting materials or no nesting materials at all. the mother will lay about 3-5 eggs, and then both parents will protect the eggs until they hatch. the babies are precocial, meaning they're born in an advanced state to where they're able to walk, run and to some extent drink/eat on their own. the parents still have to protect them and feed them until they're truly ready to be on their own.     stunnits, both in the wild and with feral colonies, have a set territory that that chase intruders off of. these fights rarely end in severe injuries/death. feral colonies tend to be less territorial. stunnits communicate with growls, howls and "groarks" (barking, but with a slight growling/roaring tone to it; best example i can give is the mane wolf's roar-barks).

additional stuff:   the stunnits get the title of "man's best friend" of argonus, and it's no secret why. they're the aircraft analog to carnivorans, more specifically bears, canines and felines. most species have been kept in captivity and used for a variety of tasks, such as transportations, guarding, herding, hunting, pest control, ect.     they have an actual full body. helicopters with a lattice tail (Like the bell 47 tail here) have an actual full tail, and like the cockpit/canopy the lattice rods are just extra ornaments. even with the skycrane, they're a more fuller body.     just like their real-world counterparts, they're incredible fliers that can hover in places, as well as dive and make hairpin turns. when they fight in the air, most of it is just them chasing eachother around, maybe even pushing eachother a few time before one of them leaves. these fights usually dont last too and and almost always ends with both parties leaving with little to no injuries.     most species of stunnits (excluding the mostly-herbivorous ones) have a serrated beak, which is good for cutting into their food whether that's be the flesh of an animals or the flesh of a watermelon.

THE AVIBELS (sailplanes and gliders)

wild ranges:    most species originally were found throughout the eastern hemispheres, with some species being native to the western hemisphere. however, thanks to the elkinets they can be found anywhere where there's civilization..

general diet:     while the avibel are considered generalist omnivores, they're more in line with being an opportunistic carnivores and have at least 50% of their diet consist of meat. most of the meat they eat are usually animals smaller than them, with their favorites being rodents, lizards, frogs and fish. the plants they eats, on the otherhand, are often fruits, grains and seeds of various plants. they've also been known to have an incredibly strong sweet-tooth from time to time, having been known to raid maple buckets and beehives for the sweet, sugary treat insides. this sweet tooth is most common in the spring.     avibels that are kept in captivity are typically content with eating a high-quality dogfood since most contain all the essential nutrients to keep the gliders happy. however, there do exist more specialized feed for avibels, especially for ones who want them to start producing more eggs. this feed usually contains a mixture of insects, dried meat, dried fruit and grains.

behavoir:     the avibels are best described as being "bootleg crows". they have the intelligence just slightly under that of actual crows and ravens, able to learn and adapt to various environments. the avibels are very social animals and are commonly seen in small groups of 3-7 (Though larger groups do occur). they're monogamous and mate for life; if one partner dies, the other will become depressed and will refuse to mate with any other glider for a while (sometimes never). avibel are expert hunters, and can be seen actively hunting small animals and insects.     these aeronoids have a decent vocal range. they made a wide variety of sound, usually consisting of hisses, screeches and "chirps", all reminiscent of various bird-of-prey. they'll also slam their tails on the ground to show anger and frustration (this is especially true to broody hens).     when raising young, the two parents will create a nest usually under a tree or any other covered places. unlike alot of other aeronoids, baby avibel chicks (which they have 1-2 of) are born both blind and deaf for the first week or two, much like some bird species. the parents swap places and take turns caring for the babies until after two months when they're ready to be on their own. sometimes the offspring will stay with the parents to help care for the next generation.

additional stuff:     unlike most other aeronoid species, the avibels typically don't have any form on engines whatsoever. instead, the go the old-fashion route and fly by flapping their wings to take off. once in the air, they'll uses a mixture of powered flight and rising thermals to stay in the air. despite their appearances as a more bird-like elkinets, they're only distantly related to them like we are to baboons.     also unlike alot of aeronoids, their beaks have sorta re-evolved into...beaks. more specifically, their beaks are curved and sharp, with the top one having a point not unlike an eagle's. the beak is much like a multitool, being able to tear, shred and cut not just their food but also really anything.     elkients have raised avibels for centuries as a source of eggs, meat and companionship, and the gliders often double as a form of pest control too. humans also took a liking to them, as their intelligence and easy tamability made them great mounts as well. however, avibels have been known to act aggressive towards humans and anyone who disturbs their nest while they're raising chicks.

THE RODADS (lifting bodies) wild ranges:     rodads originate from the woodlands and mountains of sonias. just like with the two other aeronoids here, the elkinets and their civilizations have made them a world-wide city animal.

general diet:     the rodads are generalist herbivores, generally speaking. the specifics of what plants they eat can vary by the region. naturally speaking, they eat leaves, flowers, fruit, nuts and seeds, but they'll also take grass, twigs and really any plants they can get their forepaws and mouths on. they'll also take on insects and small animals occasionally. during it's waking hours, a rodad will spend at least 70% of it's time foraging for food. behavoir:     rodad's aren't the most smartest animals out there. rodads are also not very social animals, and at most in the wild they'll tolerate each other if they're enough food and water around. however, in captivity they're alot more easier to get along with each other. wild rodads are territorial, and they can be seen fighting for the best food and mating rights.      when not eating or fighting, rodads are rather slow and chill animals, and can be see climbing and/or sleeping in trees (or any other high, enclosed place), or wonder around to make sure no rival steps foot into their territory. if disturbed, they'll either run or (if in a high place) jump off and glide to safety. and if they're really cornered, they'll try and bite/scratch the threat.     they're rather tolerable around other smaller animals that don't pose much threat to them. rodads are also surprisingly good swimmers, and many species have at least some semi-aquatic lifestyles. with their combined behavior and occasional affinity for the water, some humans called they "citybaras", seeing them as the capybaras of the city.     the aircraft are ok parents. males usually make a small cavity in the ground, just big enough for a female and her clutch pf 4-5, and he'll mate with first female that comes in. after that, he'll make sure no other guys take his girl while she lays her eggs and protect them. once the eggs hatch, he leaves her to do the rest of the work. thankfully, the babies are born precocial, so there's not much to be done other than making sure they learn how to eat and drink on their own.     rodads don't make much noise. at most they've been known to hiss and softly squeak. however, during fights they'll scream and squeal not unlike that of koalas.

additional info     the rodads are the only aeronoid, both presently and within fossil records, to ditch true flight entirely. instead they use their weird body shape to glide from one place to another. they can actually glide long distances, and in addition are surprisingly good jumpers and climbers. unfortunately, they often fall prey to many predator, stunnits and avibels being a common foe.      although they have no wings, rodads still have a small, thin tail. rodads also have evolved whiskers, which they uses to sense their surroundings since their vision isn't the best. 

THE THEROPECTS (tiltrotors)

wild ranges:     theropects are strictly restrained to the jungles and rainforest of sonias. unlike most others here, feral population are actually rare and only confined to equally warm habitats. all other theropects outside of sonias are usually part of zoos and sanctuaries, sometimes as exotic pets, too.

general diet:     theropects are all around generalist omnivores. they eat anything that's edible to them, but fruits and leaves make up 60% of their diet. sometimes they'll pick up some invertebrates, small animals, and eggs to round out their diet. they're rather infamous for raiding fruit farmers and stealing the food they grow, especially during peak ripe season.

behavoir:     one of the most intelligent species of animal on argonus, the theropects are only second to their civilized relatives, the elkinets. as a matter of fact, they're the closest thing argonus gets to chimps and gibbons, since when it comes to primates no hominoids themselves haven evolved on argonus (Only lemur, new world and old world monkeys). despite the likening to chimpanzees, they're more like gorillas, being plant-eating pacifists that rather would scare it's enemies than to actually attack.     theropects are not only bipedal like their relatives, but are also very good a manipulating objects. they use both their forelimbs and their wings (or more accurately their prop blades) to grab, hold and move things. their prop blades are especially good at this, since they move very much like the elkinet's wings. they even have a bit of gecko-padding to further hold things.     the tiltrotors are very social and very good parents. they make a very simple nest to lay their eggs in. the mother usually only has one baby, rarely ever two. while the babies are born with their eyes open, they still cling onto mom (or any other females' if she's not round) for at least two years. during that time both mother, father and other members of the group will help take care of them and the mother, and later down the line teach the offspring how to survive.     theropects make a wide array of barks, screeches, whistles, coos and hisses to communicate with each other. 

additional stuff:     since argonus lacks any apes, this is the closest they got to gibbon, gorillas and chimpanzees. in captivity, they're about as pleasant to own as a cockatoo or macaw (aka don't get one unless you're very experienced). they've been used in laboratories and scientific studies, and are common info the film industry as animal actors. however, they're not all sunshine and rainbows, as they're very noisy, nippy and often can be seen stealing things from their owners. however, with enough proper love, care, toys and attention, those issues are brought down to a minimum. still, there is alot of legality issues when it comes to owning theropects as pets, so usually it's better off to leave it to zoos and sanctuaries to take care of them.

aaaaand that's it for the aeronoids! any other information regarding them will probably be in other post.

#argonus #planet argonus #speculative evolution #speculative biology #speculative zoology #living airplane #living aircraft #helicopter #glider #sailplane #tiltrotor #lifting body

[hyperbolicreverie]

Read your most recent one-shot (loved every minute of it, Brook and Law had interesting interactions and I especially love when goofy Brook shows his wisdom), and I had a thought. Law makes note that the kids from Punk Hazard would have to visit a geneticist- my thought is, does the One Piece world even have a term like that?

It’s been a hot second since I read the Whole Cake Island Arc (where that term would have have come up if at all because Germa clones). In that arc as well as the beginning of Dressrosa, we learn more about the term “Lineage Factor,” which seems to be the OP world name for DNA. (Law is the first person to bring it up actually, when describing how Caesar makes SMILE.) Do they have the term “genetics?” Would a geneticist be called a… lineagist? I don’t know- the fact that Lineage Factor as a term exists at all is fun for me because it’s like a little extra spice of worldbuilding. But science and advancements in the OP world are so all over the place that I don’t know what to think sometimes. 🧪 🧫 🧬

Oh gosh I love the Lineage Factor so much. I love that the way it's described we have a base idea of what it is, based on real world associations. I love the sheer potential of the concept, because it could explain so much about why it seems people in the One Piece world are so--for the lack of a better term--malleable. Why are some of them fuck-off tall? Why can these strange fruits affect people in truly astounding ways? What makes it such an editable part of existence that a sufficiently familiar scientist can just go "well my daughter eats poison for fun now"?

I don't think the One Piece world has a broad understanding of genetics or the lineage factor equivalent. Scientific knowledge is, as you mentioned, completely all over the place, and that does make a certain amount of sense, given the geography of the world. There's a giant continent running in one direction and two stretches of calm nautical death running perpendicular to it, and everyone's scattered across islands. Those barriers are going to have effects! (Incidentally, this is why I write about language so much, because those same barriers should have caused so much linguistic diversity in the world).

Incidentally, this is (unfortunately) why I think we don't get an easy fix for SMILE. None of the people who we've met who seem to have the possible skills to maybe do something about it are likely to do so. Vegapunk's an entire mystery and he's working for the World Government. Law seems to understand the concept enough to explain it, at least. And so far, the only way to get rid of the effects of eating a devil fruit seems to be...to die.

I dunno, there's a lot of potential for the concept, and I hope we get more of it, because I sure do love these details that help illustrate how the world goes 'round.

#rev speaks

[the-voltage-diaries]

What political issue would the KoP guys be particularly passionate about? (PART 1 - TAKI KOZAKI)

welcome to another edition of me using my degree in all the ways i shouldnt heh (edit: i should be working on the assignment i have to submit tomorrow but oh what the hell) (edit#2: this ended up being a long post because I have opinions, so I divided it into one post for each guy. I have tried to explain some of the terminologies that might not be familiar as well. hopefully this gets you interested in some of the issues i think about! I'll continue this series if y'all like it! so let me know <3) p.s. : I picked two for each guy because why not

Taki Kozaki

Sustainable Development vis-à-vis Economy The age-old question has always been - development, but at the cost of what? How far are we willing to go? What all are we willing to destroy to become 'developed'? That's where the concept of 'sustainable' development comes in, i.e. development in such a way that not only do they meet and fulfil current needs, but also don't compromise the ability of the FUTURE generations to fulfil their needs. Sadly, there is little doubt about how despite nearly every country in the world claiming to advocate for sustainable development, it never materializes in actions. A simple reason for this is that sustainable development is not economically feasible. After all, how do you develop in a 'sustainable' way without compromising on the economy of your country? How do you produce at a similar or increased capacity, export oil, gas, or other resources that your economy practically survives/depends on without indulging in the exploitation or use of those resources that need to be preserved? This is exactly what Taki would like to spend his time considering. Since he's into real estate and development, I'm sure he has seen his fair share of environment being harmed, trees being chopped, people being displaced and dislocated, resources being abused and over-exploited to build cities, amusement parks, and 'up-scale' areas. But since he also has a very rational and human side to him, I can see him trying to figure out ways to promote sustainable development without compromising a lot on the revenue/economic output generated. He'd spend his free time reading up articles and journals before bed, looking at the data, figuring out alternatives. I'd honestly love to sit down and have this talk with him. He'd be very well-versed in the opinion, even if he wouldn't have a concrete way forward.

Capitalism vs Subsistence Theory of Wages Let's connect the dots one by one. To begin with, 'Capitalism' is that economic and political system where a country's trade and market are controlled by private owners. It is highly profit-driven. The private entities, who are not controlled by the government, have complete power over the market. They decide the prices at which products are sold, the number of items produced, where the products get sold, and so on. To earn maximum profit, private owners would always sell their products at prices way higher than the cost of producing them. In addition to low production costs, if they got even the labour - who would work to increase their production - for cheap prices, wouldn't their profit margins be insane? Pay less to the workers, pay less cost of production, and earn 10 times what went into making that product. So much money. This is where the Subsistence Theory of Wages comes in. Since we have established why a producer would want cheap labour - to cut their costs even more - let us try and understand exactly how much would an owner be willing to pay the labour. It must be an amount that is not too much (because the owner wants little cost) and not too little (because why else would the worker agree to work?). The Subsistence Theory of Wages states that wages given to a worker should just be sufficient enough to sustain them. It should be just enough to pay for a day's meal, a day's shelter, and a day's clothing. Because only then, to pay for the next day's necessities, would the worker come BACK and work and earn that next day's wage. With Taki's history of issues with money and his otherwise humane and ethical side too, I can see him advocating for fair pay. I mean, of course, he's into real estate and otherwise too supports capitalism by all means, he loves his profits, but not at the cost of someone's life and basic living standard. He'd want his workers paid worth their work, and he'd figure out a way to maximize his profits while not compromising on the pay for his workers. He's someone who, at the end of the day, wants as many people as possible to receive joy out of his work - even if that's utopian because people are poor can't afford these things - but that makes me believe his ethics would want everyone's growth, not just his own. He'd strive to do things in his power to ensure not just the company improves, but so do the lives of people who make it successful.

That's it for the first installment! Let me know what you think~ Final note: Look, at the end of the day, this guy is fictional. And so is the hope that such ideas GENUINELY exist. It's idealistic of me, I know, but we're talking hypothetically anyway.

#Kings of Paradise #Taki Kozaki #Yosuke Sagara #Kiyohito Shirakami #Shun Randoh #Blood Moon #Amatsukasa Sakuto #Hayachika Kasatsubaki #Kaisei Kuon #Voltage Inc #Love 365 #Politics #Political Science #Economics #sustainable development #Capitalism #thoughts #KoP #Otome Romance

[sherbet-shark]

Aaaah! Hello there! I just wanted to say that I loved the nonverbal headcanons! Though I am not nonverbal, I am selectively/situationally mute. While I may not understand how being nonverbal may affect/effect(I forget the difference) some folks, I can relate in certain areas!

Looking to it, yeah there are lots of fics where the reader does eventually get used to/comfortable enough with a character or characters where they will eventually speak. Personally, I don’t like how it’s just all blown up. Sometimes a selectively/situationally mute person can speak to a person in an environment and situation they feel comfortable in, sometimes they can’t, and that’s alright!

I kinda just want supportiveness in areas of speech or lack thereof. Like, where a reader is so comfortable with someone they don’t feel the pressure that is put on to them by society to speak. They don’t have to speak in order to be understood.

Selective/situational mutism is different from being nonverbal I believe. I’m not sure how you or others feel about the term “going nonverbal” or of the term “semiverbal” but there are differences. For me, my selective/situational mutism is largely because of anxiety. But it’s also because I have difficulty getting things from my brain to my mouth. When I do speak, it often has to be slower than what is considered normal, if I try speaking at a “regular” speed, my words get caught up and I end up repeating one or two words and am unable to continue.

There are differences, and I think it’s really nice to acknowledge and learn those differences! Every person is different and I think that’s amazing. Like, you mentioned humming I believe in the headcanons? Whenever I am in a situation I am unable to speak, I can not even make sounds like humming. I do more like a “click” sound with my mouth and tongue. The differences are very interesting to me. While there are differences there are similarities, but similarities should not, ah, should not make differences not exist or any less important, does that makes sense?

Ah, anyways, I just wanted to say that I really liked the headcanons! I do hope this didn’t come off as offensive or ignorant or anything of that like? If so, please do tell me so I know of where I may need to, ah, adjust my phrasing.

HI ANON!! I didn’t expect such a fast helpful response,, but thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts on this topic. Thank you for correcting me! 🙇‍♀️Now that I do think about it, I believe that there are differences between being completely non-verbal and being selectively mute. I think one of the videos I link previously on the post we’re talking about does say they have a severe case of anxiety thus explaining their AAC device.

I totally agree dear! I’d love to see more research done onto these topics like being selectively mute and the highlight the differences between being nonverbal. There’s nothing wrong with wanting representation and I’d love to see more fics where having the s/o isn’t as blown up as it is. Because someone people literally cannot speak so it’s difficult to wholly relate.

I’ll definitely do more research on these topics and really I graciously thank you for coming to me and correcting me, once I get sufficient information on the differences I’ll edit the post accordingly. AND AND IM SO SORRY IF THAT OFFENDED YOU IN ANYWAY, I deeply apologize if I came across ignorant but I’ll be right on the research once I’m done with chores. Again thank you for being comfortable enough with me, reading my posts enough to be able to gently correct me. I deeply appreciate this learning experience.

#twisted wonderland #sherbet talks

[vistascs22]

The Bold Type!

Who doesn’t know Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and MD of Biocon or P.V. Sindhu who got numerous badminton accolades home? Women in India are continuously setting their mark in various fields and increasingly establishing their presence and power in various political and economic domains. 

But the question is, is this enough? Even after 75 years of independence, is this growth sufficient and worthy of being complacent with? 16th December 2012 (“Nirbhaya” Rape Case) still repeats itself every day and we just skip those articles in news apps and papers as a routine while sipping our tea. India still tops the chart when it comes to female feticide and domestic violence. 

Women need motivation, support and the required resources to climb the ladder of success. We can’t be content with mere examples of limited accomplished females anymore. Women from both urban and rural areas and from all the income groups need to be independent in all the three aspects: financially, emotionally and physically. And sure, we need education, proper healthcare and equality in opportunities for that, but we also need something more which is often unspoken about.

It’s simple! We need a community of women empowering other women. We definitely require a platform where women see other female warriors coming out of similar restrictions to pursue their dreams or people openly talking and discussing issues they were always asked to be shut about. We need a place of comfort for them, where they feel heard, respected and empowered and where stories aren’t censored for being too bold, where articles are published without the ‘required’ edits and where women know that toleration and being silent is not an option anymore. 

TASK AT HAND

You are hired as the Chief Strategist Officer (CSO) by Vineeta Singh, CEO and co-founder of Sugar Cosmetics Corporation for a new women’s magazine to be launched by the company. The purpose of this magazine goes beyond marketing of their products and brings into light the contemporary issues faced by women today. You as the CSO are required to come up with the following deliverables: 

Name of the magazine along with the mission and vision statement

2. USP of the magazine 

3. List out the top 5 issues which the magazine should aim to address 

4. Competitor analysis and target audience 

5. Marketing strategies with special emphasis on ways to target the male audience as the reader of your magazine 

6. Strategies to generate sources of revenue from the magazine

7. Design a cover page for your magazine

You are free to add any other extra deliverable as per your discretion. 

Hint: Put creativity at your best!

You are required to come up with a PPT of not more than 7 slides and a REPORT (no page limit). Kindly follow the format.

Deadline: 7 a.m.

Incase of any doubts, please feel free to reach out to:

Shelja Agarwal: 7002508044