#not a recommendation

[belle-primrose]

Some old book covers I've found on Pinterest!

DISCLAIMER: I haven't read or checked the topics of any of these books. I do NOT advertise or recommend anything. This is simply for aesthetic purposes. My apologies if any of the books contains offensive language or topics.

#books #book cover #old books #old book covers #new post #gothic #vintage #pinterest #pinterest find #aesthetic #i have no idea #garden #gothic novel #not a recommendation #disclaimer #historical fashion #gothic books #old house #haunted house #haunted mansion #mystery #mystery books #book covers

[lu-fic-recommendation-of-the-day]

Masterpost!

The title should explain things but here's this anyway!

I will try to recommend a fic (specifically a linked universe fic) trhough a link each day! I'll add trigger warnings if need be, and I won't give links to smut fics.

You can send me an ask with a recommendation if there's one you'd like to add on here! (I don't know how submissions work)

#not a recommendation #masterpost #starts tmrw btw

[spamano-fanfiction-recs]

Themes to look forward to

Here's an overview of themes I plan to make, but haven't compiled everything for yet.

The Darkest of the Dark: horror, gore, and general negative portrayals of Spain or Romano, where they are insane or evil. Some of these fics I don't think fits within the others categories, even if they seem like they do.

On-Going: Fanfics that seem like they hopefully might be finished someday, and have had new chapters published in the last year or two.

I Wish This Wasn't Dropped: Fanfics that hasn't been updated in at least five years, or have officially been discontinued or dropped by the author. I wish they weren't.

Transformations, Time Travel, and Magic: Through magic, something strange has happened.

Historical: Historical Hetalia or historical times – except for the Golden Age of Piracy themed fanfics, they're in The Sea.

Fairy Tales and Royalty: Fanfics based on fairy tales or other forms of classic literature – or just with a focus on princes, kings, and nobility.

Omegaverse: Exactly what it sounds like. alpha/beta/omega fanfics go here.

That's (Un)Professional: Workplace AUs of any kind – such as offices, teachers, boutiques, and so on.

Poly: For when it's not just spamano. Sometimes, it's quadruple the spamano, at other times, they're joined by someone else.

Fanfiction collections: there's a lot of fanfic drabbles and oneshots that are collected into one big thing. This is for them.

The Ladies: for genderbent spamano – het and sapphic love.

#not a recommendation

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

How can a 1970 song have such a strong pervert energy

#flashback #this one was frequently on loop last year #so innocent #That french woman annoys. #Spotify #The Troggs #Reg Presley #not a recommendation #don't listen to this

[farminglesbian]

Valley of a thousand hills (2022) Bonie Sithebe

#valley of a thousand hills #mandisa vilakazi #sibongokuhle nkosi #sunday lesbian flick #bonie sithebe #not a recommendation #but i took all these caps as i was watching it and i appreciate the lead performances #depressingly enough it ends up being another one of those lesbian/gay movies with a truly TERRIBLE ending #like. bleak horrific and brutal. can't even fictional lesbians be free from male violence #...and to at first give the reunited lovers a happy end to then take it all away literal minutes before the credits? even more cruel #and so unnecessary since the story could have easily ended with them apart but alive #why why why #sigh #rant over

[songrecommendation]

Sorry about the late recommendation, I got distracted with the finale of the Owl House and was obsessing about that all day. I'll post the recommendation in a minute (it's about The Owl House).

#apologies #not a recommendation #the owl house #I'm going to miss it

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

#EDIT: Added a great resource for ESL and African languages that weren't found elsewhere #I do NOT recommend memrise and will talk about it another day but #langblr #duolingo #duo #language learning #language learning apps #mandarinblr #resource #reference

[animentality]

kicking a hornets nest.

#booktok #writing #writers on tumblr #bookblr #book recommendations #book rec list

[spooksier]

passages that make you whisper "oh my god"

#text! #working on a paper abt the degradation of the line between real/unreal in modern society and this one paragraph blew my MIND #like it literally tied all of my other sources together #also this whole paper is about how sex has disappeared from american media so if ur interested in that i highly recommend it

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

imagination (1963) - harold ordway rugg

"chekhovs cat / schrödingers razor / occams gun"

#chekhov #schrodinger #occam #the three genders #hope everyone has a good halloweekend #and a good hallowtuesday #watched the 1979 nosferatu #it was silly #feel free to recommend more german films #anyway #blackout poetry #blackout poem #author #book #poetry

[fleshadept]

looking at (vetted) gofundmes for people trying to escape palestine and i don't know how many of you actually click on the gofundme links you reblog but i would like to point out, for what it's worth, just how amazing it is that so many have raised so much money. it may overall feel like a drop in the ocean but the fact that several gofundmes have raised tens of thousands of dollars is amazing. it is so expensive to leave gaza right now, and people still need money after they escape. but regardless of what propaganda the US, UK, canada, and other western nations are trying to pump out, people across the world are doing what they can to help these people survive. many of them are still very far from their goals (like this one and this one and this one) and some of them are very close to high goals (like this one), and some of them have reached almost double their original goal.

and that's not even addressing direct aid or organizations that take continuous donations for distribution of food, menstrual products, etc. the PCRF has raised $16,000,000 of their target goal of $20,000,000 to fund current aid and long-term relief efforts in gaza. ANERA's febuary 13th update discusses the material ways they helped palestinians today:

(ANERA donate link)

my point is, it often feels like the world is turning a blind eye to palestine. but i would like to point out that there is an important difference between "the world" and "western political leaders and media narratives". a breathtaking amount of real people, the people who make up the world, are trying to help. in the face of israel attempting to commit genocide, the world is saying No. These people deserve to live. and literally sending millions of dollars internationally, through the internet connection that israel has desperately been trying to destroy.

it may not feel like it matters in the grand scheme of things. but to the people who get fresh clothes, or a hot meal, or blankets, or the kids who get new toys, or to the people who are able to bring their families to safety, it matters to them. go make someone's day better. i've linked so many options with ways to do that.

#free palestine #cricket chirps #palestine #gaza #if you feel overwhelmed and don't know where to begin #i recommend deciding on a total amount of money to donate (e.g. $20 $100 etc) #and deciding you will either donate it all in one place or split it between a few places #do what you can!!! it will always be helpful no matter how little #1k #5k #10k #20k

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

#original post #text post #500 #1k #2k #btw i know my definition of death of the author is loosey goosey here #it wasn't the main point so i went informal with it! as ppl in the tags have pointed out it isn't exact #and i do recommend reading the wikipedia article or similar (possibly even the essay itself if you're narsty) if you want to learn more! #wasn't expecting this to take off so my apologies to my barthes-heads out there #love you mwah #5k #10k #15k #20k

[lu-fic-recommendation-of-the-day]

Fics say "new session" in the link when they're locked to registered users. It'll still work just find dw about it

Ah okay! Thanks for letting me know.

#not a recommendation #asks

[cursedgamerchild]

"internet historian's alt-right anyways" "great day to have never liked james somerton" "never even heard of illuminaughtii before this lol"

that's great buddy but don't go around thinking you're immune to this. if you're not looking for plagiarism, you likely won't notice it unless its egregiously obvious. hell, you've probably consumed plagiarized content without even realizing it. even hbomb pointed out that these people disguised what they presented pretty well as long as you didn't try and dig deeper. don't come away just thinking of this as a callout piece, take this as an important lesson about vetting your sources. if googling scripts in quotes was enough to expose the original, we should all start doing that shit!!

edit: it got a little too doomer-y a little too fast so one quick addition

this is hbomb's curated playlist of queer creators, many of whom were victims of plagiarism

this is producer kat on reddit calling for any more plagiarism discoveries and for queer content creators to be uplifted

please take some time to uplift these creators and recommend any you know! if you can help uncover more of the original creators whose work was lifted that would be great too :)

UPDATE- From Hbomb's twitter: "We're in the process of cataloguing everyone James Somerton plagiarised and finding their contact information. Which is quite a task, so to help us out: If you see this and happen to be one of the people Somerton stole from, please email us at [email protected]"

edit 2:

#hbomberguy #james somerton #illuminaughtii #internet historian #vice #ign etc have had issues with plaigarism before #this isnt just some youtuber scandal remember #even books can fall victim to this #kaz rowe's history vids exemplify this pretty well #i'd recommend the triboulet ass slapping myth one if you want a good breakdown #and somerton absolutely had problems with the way he discussed foreign media and anyone that wasnt a cis gay man #but considering most of his ideas werent his own that doesnt dismiss the original authors' work keep in mind

[ambrosiagourmet]

I've seen pieces from this extra comic before, but never read the full thing until today. And holy shit does it hammer home just how much the story is about class.

Multiple times, when food comes up in this comic, it’s also in context of money:

I've seen this last panel on the right brought up before in context of like, dungeon meshi's relationship with fat and eating, but in the full context of the comic it really hits how much adventuring directly consumes bodies for money.

As much as this has been part of the story the whole time, showcased as early chapters 19 and 20...

It never fully hit me before how often adventuring comes down to having no other way to make money but to throw yourself into death repeatedly. To be used, whether it’s by individual selfish people (like the resurrection group that is happy to try and get Kabru's group to kill each other to get extra gold from them in chapter 32), or by the greater cog of the Dungeon Economy in general.

Which, to be clear, is all too often how things work in the real world, too. So many jobs burn through the health and lives of workers. Dungeon Meshi just makes it literal in a new way: by making the healing and resurrection, a core part to the adventuring loop, directly use fat, muscle, and energy from the body being healed.

Imagine Amazon, but if you got injured at work, they could literally burn up some of your body to get you back to working sooner. And that was seen as an advantage of the job.

And then you have Laios, thinking about eating monsters:

Not just because he likes monsters a lot. But because it would help. He says something similar in the actual manga too, during the chapter discussing his dream with the Winged Lion

Laios wants to be able to make a home for Falin. He wants to give her a place where she never has to eat alone. And when he gets a party, he wants to give them a way to eat well. And when he runs a country, well…

He wants to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.

Food is political. Food ties into class, and money. What is deemed "proper" to eat, what is a luxury, what is crass… so much of it comes down to money.

Being judged for eating what's available, when what is “proper” isn't affordable, is already a thing that happens. People forced into work that consumes their energy is already a thing that happens.

Dungeon Meshi has a lot of fantastical elements, but boy is its examination of food and class very real.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #laios touden #dungeon meshi spoilers #the full thing is up on mangadex and I v much recommend giving it a read #dunmeshi analysis

[augory]

I’ve been skimming John Francis Daley’s (director on D&D: Honor Among Thieves) twitter and I continue to be so completely blown away by the movie’s commitment to practical effects and/or minimized CGI where feasible. I mean holy shit look at all this

#dnd honor among thieves #dnd: honor among thieves #dnd:hat #the quicksand with the tiles?!?!? WHAT #a lot of these are videos so I recommend checking out the Twitter feed I’m just too lazy to embed everything