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specialagentartemis · 7 months

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We talk a lot about reading comprehension and misinformation on this website, but learning how to slow down, assess sources, and fact-check is a skill. A skill a lot of us have not been called on to demonstrate since high school, but a skill that's vitally important in the modern world.

I'm in graduate school for the social sciences (anthropology) - critically assessing sources is part of the skillset we are taught. I've had people ask on my post about historical misinformation, "How can I only reblog things that are true? How can I tell?" And it's a good and important question!

A couple core questions to ask, about history, science, or current events, are:

Who is saying this?

Where are you seeing this information? Is it a legal scholar, a historian with a PhD, a museum curator, an on-the-ground activist, a rando twitter poster, a Mormon conspiracy theorist? For scholarly questions, look for people with PhDs and published articles; for questions of current events, look for what people who are actually there are saying and showing.

Who agrees with them?

Can you find articles from other sources corroborating this, or is it just one guy who is saying this? Conversely, do you see anyone disagreeing and correcting this information? Who?

Does this person have an ideological bias that might cause them to discount conflicting information?

Everyone has biases, of course, but some are obvious. A lot of revisionist American history is put out by Mormon groups to try to prove the literal truth of the Book of Mormon; ditto for history that seeks to prove various things in the Bible. It may be easy for us to laugh at that, but a lot of tumblr revisionist history involves inventing gay historical figures out of flimsy sources because we want it to be true. Is there a reason that the person making this claim might want this to be true? This doesn't necessarily make it false, but it does mean you have to require more robust claims.

What sources do they cite?

Do they cite well-documented research or well-provenienced archaeology? Do they have photographs of what they're claiming happened? Or do their claims rely on nameless, dateless, "I can't show you my sources yet" or "I swear I heard about a guy..." Do they cite any sources or is it "just trust me bro"? Are those sources that they do cite reliable, or are they circular? Do the sources they cite actually say what this person is claiming they say? Are they cutting out half of a quote, or ignoring conflicting evidence presented in the same source?

Is this conspiracy theory thinking?

Is this making claims that an individual or a group is secretly hiding information from the general public? Is it blaming one individual or group for widespread societal problems? Is it claiming that the only reason this isn't common knowledge is because Somebody is suppressing it? Is it claiming that the solution to a complicated political problem is actually simple and everybody knows it but people just don't want to do it for nefarious reasons? That's conspiracy thinking, and it's almost never as clean or easy as the claimant wants you to believe.

Just because someone is saying something confidently doesn't necessarily make it true, but also, just because you don't like something doesn't necessarily make it false. Ask these questions when you see a claim that makes you feel angry - or makes you feel righteous. Look for journalists, scientists, historians, legal scholars, who present their credentials and their sources. Look for multiple independently verified news reports or scientific articles. Determining The One Truth about things is not always easy and sometimes not possible, but asking these questions helps you assess what you're reading critically and evaluate claims.

#history #science #misinformation #current events #saw a post about how people should stop criticizing lack of reading comprehension or falling for misinformation #and should present advice or help instead #which is fair. so here I am #falling for someone saying something wrong confidently is not a moral failing #but it is in all our best interests to try to cut through the bs

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canary3d-obsessed · 10 months

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 38 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard) (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Shopping and Night Hunting

Xue Yang convinces Xiao Xingchen to take him along as his night hunting assistant, and the Empathy session jumps forward. The next thing we see is a whole street full of dead people with Xiao Xingchen standing over them with his sword, while Xue Yang looks on approvingly.

Xiao Xingchen explains that the whole village was Puppets, with no living people. Dude. DUDE. Even by the standards of a world that contains Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen, you are way too trusting of shit that people tell you.

A-Qing checks the corpses and they have white eyes, which makes her think they might really be puppets. Xue Yang makes some insane faces just so we know he's not actually turned over a new leaf.

Next we see Xiao Xingchen trying to buy potatoes (this is fantasy China, not pre-Qing historical China; they can have all the potatoes they want) and a vendor telling him to scram. Is Xiao Xingchen just asking for free potatoes? Is this the first time he’s realized that doesn’t generally work?. Xue Yang menaces the vendor by loudly stabbing a potato, and then calls Xiao Xingchen back over.

The vendor gasps and fills up their basket with food, and Xiao Xingchen smiles because he thinks that his buddy silently convinced the guy to give them food by...being nice? Unclear.

I Ain’t Gonna Play Yi City

Next we see ultrahot Song Lan arriving at the gate of Yi City, where A-Qing is happily picking up a money purse. ...whose? Do enough living people come through here that they just casually drop money on the ground? Song Lan twigs to her not being blind pretty quickly, although for politeness sake he lets her continue to pretend.

Song Lan asks if she's seen a white-clad sword-bearing daoist priest, and she quizzes him to make sure he's a good guy before helping him. Her entire set of security questions:

1. are you friends? 2. How tall is he? 3. is he hot? 4. What does his sword look like?

If this is not a mistranslation, these are not very good questions to ask if you want someone to believe you’re blind, incidentally.

Song Lan's answers:

1. ............... .... ...yes 2. me and him match like a set of salt and pepper shakers 3. like, SO hot 4. It’s named Shuanghua (”splendid frost,” per Viki), as all True Sword Fans know

(more after the cut!)

These answers are correct, pretty much, so he passes the security check and she leads him into the city. He comes carrying his sword Fuxue (”blowing away snow,” roughly), his horsetail flail, and his messy, messy feelings, which are going to be his undoing.

They walk through the super-abandoned town, which has paper decorations hanging up. These paper decorations are really well made, considering that they are still there when WangXian roll up several years later.

Song Lan has a little crisis trying to psych himself up to see Xiao Xingchen. Bro, you have been walking around looking for him for literally YEARS, and you haven't figured out what to say yet? Contrast with Lan Wangji, who went for the wrist-grab mere moments after discovering that Wei Wuxian was back, and followed it up by carrying him off to his bed.

Enemy Mine

While he's dithering, Xue Yang comes back, and A-Qing hides while Song Lan stands there being shocked.

We're treated to the Xue Yang version of sweet banter, where he tricks Xiao Xingchen into picking a short straw for chores, and then tells him he was tricking him because he was blind.

They have a laugh together and Xue Yang is handsy with XXC, causing Song Lan to clench his fist so strongly that we can hear his knuckles cracking.

You knew your ex was going to be at the party; if you can’t handle seeing him with a new guy you shouldn’t have come.

Then he sees Xue Yang go out to get groceries, and he grips his flail so hard that his palm starts bleeding. That sentence is about a weapon, not about his dick, incidentally.

More Empathy

But then empathy skips ahead, showing Xiao Xingchen stabbing Song Lan, while Wei Wuxian's hands shake and he says "Song Lan, don't!" like he’s in the audience of a horror movie. A-Qing, in the present, drools up some blood, which is pretty normal for her, TBH.

The Lan kids are alarmed and want to wake them up, but Jin Ling says to hang in there for a bit more. For a kid, Jin Ling isn’t bad at wielding authority.

A distraught Jingyi insists, however, so Jin Ling starts ringing the bell, and Wei Wuxian opens his eyes but doesn't come out of Empathy. He does stop skipping ahead, though, so we go back to Song Lan & Xue Yang's confrontation, which is possibly the best fight in the whole dang show.

We’re Gonna Get It On ‘Cause We Don’t Get Along

Xue Yang comes back from the grocery store to find Song Lan perched on his roof like a sexy vengeful raven. Xue Yang greets him sexily politely and with no anxiety at all, and Song Lan attacks.

Song Lan has had literally years to settle his mind and get his emotions under control and...he has not done that. Like, at all.

He could have cleared this whole situation up with about four words to Xiao Xingchen, and they could have fought Xue Yang together. But he was so unready to hug it out with his ex that he opted to face Xue Yang all on his own. Dumb. Ass.

Contrast this with Lan Wangji, who always talked to Wei Wuxian, no matter how estranged they had become. Trying to stab him counts as talking. And also contrast this with Jiang Cheng, who hashed everything out with Wei Wuxian in an excruciating public confrontation, after which they teamed up to save their nephew. Neither of those guys let their ooky feelings stand in the way of a reconnection, and their outcomes were way, way, way better than Song Lan’s.

Xue Yang and Song Lan get busy fighting, and Song Lan starts asking what the fuck Xue Yang is playing at, how long has he been deceiving Xiao Xingchen, etc.

Xue Yang is a perceptive guy, and he points out that Song Lan is holding back because he wants to ask these questions. He’s absolutely right; Song Lan wants to feel indignant and righteous, partly because he knows he himself has mistreated Xiao Xingchen. He’s putting himself in the role of Xiao Xingchen’s protector, when he doesn’t actually have that relationship with him any more.

I love this fight sequence for two reasons. First, because it showcases the actors doing a lot of moves themselves, and they both look amazing and move beautifully. (OP has slowed most of these gifs down quite a bit to avoid giving everybody a migraine, incidentally--the camera operator was moving around as much as the actors in these shots)

Second, because a lot of story happens in this fight; the dynamic between them, as two people with a very complex mutual hatred, is played out in their moves. Song Lan's moves are all strong attacks, expressing his anger and frustration, while Xue Yang’s are mainly defensive, avoidant, and slippery, because he is more interested in hurting Song Lan with words than with his blade at this point. He knows he has an unbeatable advantage up his sleeve, so he’s not particularly worried, even when Song Lan lands a couple of hits.

Xue Yang lays it all out for Song Lan, explaining that Xiao Xingchen, being blind, relies on his sword to point toward resentful energy. Hey, isn't that what Wei Wuxian's Compass of Evil does? So WWX only needs that thing because he can't carry a sword? That...actually makes sense. Anyway, Xue Yang figured out if he cuts people's tongues out, Shuanghua can't tell living people from monsters, which is so awesome and fun for Xue Yang.

Song Lan starts to lose his composure and calls Xue Yang a “villain,” which leads Xue Yang to mock him for his weaksauce cussing ability.

Xue Yang: You educated people have a disadvantage when cursing someone out. Song Lan: Eat a bag of dicks, fuckstick.

Then he criticizes Xue Yang for taking advantage of Xiao Xingchen's blindness.

He gets a couple of licks in but then Xue Yang stops and points out that Xiao Xingchen is only blind because of giving his eyes to Song Lan.

This stops Song Lan in his tracks; I am not sure if he already knew that’s where his eyeballs came from, or if he thought it was a coincidence that Xiao Xingchen became blind after he, Song Lan, got new eyeballs. Then Xue Yang challenges Song Lan's standing to be fighting on Xiao Xingchen's behalf, reminding him that he's not actually Xiao Xingchen's friend. These are the same tactics that Jin Guangyao will later use on righteous, insecure Jiang Cheng.

Back when Xue Yang killed Song Lan's sect/temple buddies, Song Lan blamed Xiao Xingchen, and Xue Yang says now that that was his plan; he killed them to turn Song Lan against Xiao Xingchen.

It totally worked. Song Lan said that they should never see each other again, and Xiao Xingchen took it to heart and fucked off forever - after giving Song Lan his eyes. Contrast this with Wei Wuxian, who stuck by Jiang Cheng despite being blamed & choked by him after the Lotus Pier massacre.

Despite all this emotional turmoil, Song Lan is holding his own...until Xue Yang pulls out his secret weapon; half of a yin tiger seal.

He starts hitting Song Lan with corpse poison and resentment blasts and very quickly has him on the ropes.

He finishes up by cutting his tongue out. Yikes.

At this point it’s clear that Xue Yang was never in any serious danger; this was his plan for Song Lan all along. Song Lan goes to attack Xue Yang but now that he’s been modded, Splendid Frost thinks he’s a zombie, so Xiao Xingchen comes sailing in and stabs him.

Song Lan tries to raise his sword to XXC's fingers so he can identify himself, but at the last moment his eyes turn solid black and he drops the sword. Does that mean Xue Yang stuck a nail in his head already? *shrug*

Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen head back into the coffin house -- seriously, why do they live there instead of one of the many actual houses in this town? -- and leave Song Lan lying in the street, with A-Qing, who saw the whole thing, hiding behind a hay stack.

Xue Yang Must Die...eventually

After some more bell ringing, Wei Wuxian emerges from Empathy, pretty overwhelmed.

He gets up and goes over to Xiao Xingchen's coffin and looks closely at the wound on his neck, understanding that XXC killed himself, and why.

His face, in this moment. Suicide isn’t something he expected to have in common with his uncle.

He tells the kids and A-Qing to stay in the coffin house; he won't explain what he saw, except to say that Xue Yang must die. Then he goes off to kill Xue Yang, by which I mean to assemble his Xue-Yang killing team, rather than try to take him mano a mano like Song Lan did.

The first order of business is to finish rebooting Song Lan, which he does by pulling the second nail out of his head like he should have done four hours ago.

Note that Wen Ning and Song Lan were fighting for the ENTIRE time Wei Wuxian was doing Empathy. Corpses don’t get tired, I guess.

As soon as the nail comes out of his head, Song Lan quiets down, looking bereft, and crouches on the ground to try to reassemble his shattered consciousness. Unlike Wen Ning, he doesn’t have to bake in a cave for a month to achieve this.

We get a nice shot of Wei Wuxian, Song Lan, and Wen Ning looking like the cultivation world’s handsomest goth band.

Next, Lan Wangji cuts open Xue Yang's shirt so he can yoink his spirit-trapping bag, which he then tosses to Wei Wuxian.

Now Xue Yang is the one who's overly emotional.

Wei Wuxian, despite being very upset by what he saw in Empathy, is completely cool and in control of himself now, because that's just how he is in a fight. (Unless you kill his sister. That gets him very emotional, but the emotion is rage, at least initially, so it’s not a safe tactic.)

Lan Wangji gets in another poke with Bichen while Xue Yang is distracted.

Camera operator: Spare me!

Xue Yang decides to take his ball amulet and go home, disappearing into the fog while Wei Wuxian keeps talking smack at him.

Holy Abrupt Episode Ending, Batman!

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #restless rewatch the untamed #ep38 #canary3d-original #yi city

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therainscene · 2 years

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The first time I saw this shot from the van scene, I thought, “oh no, Jonathan knows. And he looks troubled. Is Will’s sexuality going to be an issue for him? Is he going to be a dick about it? I’m sure he’d never hate crime his brother, but...”

Then we got the pizzeria heart-to-heart, in which Jonathan wins the Best Ally of All Time Award and gives Will the most cathartic hug I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. It’s probably my favourite moment in the whole show.

Because of course this is how Jonathan would react. Of course the guy who always encouraged Will to be himself, who even subtly queer-coded his reassurances on the off-chance that was something Will needed to hear, would be accepting and supportive. Of course that troubled look was because he was angry at himself for being too much of a stoner to notice his bestie suffering in silence.

It was a sobering moment. I knew all this about Jonathan going into the van scene, yet I still walked away from it assuming the worst. I was acting like one of those reddit bros who insist that nothing nice is allowed to happen to the long-suffering gay character because it “wouldn’t be realistic” for a show set in the 80s.

It got me thinking: is Will being similarly paranoid?

Look at his reaction when Jonathan assures him that he will always love and accept him no matter what... you can see fear, hope, and relief all flooding through him.

It’s like he can’t believe this is really happening, that Jonathan knows what he is and continues to love him anyway.

S4 is the first season in which Will doesn’t have to contend with any supernatural bullshit. Gone are the horror metaphors: his struggles are mundane and depicted entirely literally. But the pizzeria scene still strongly reflects the endings to the supernatural arcs from S1 and S2: with loved ones seeing him in torment and reaching out, reminding him of how deeply and unconditionally loved he is by them.

(They were extremely unsubtle about this.)

By S4, this boy who’s been targeted by homophobic bullies for as long as he’s been at school is willing to stand up in front of his class and openly identify with a gay historical figure. He even tries to confess his feelings to a boy who (in his estimation) is likely to reject him. Via a portrait with a heart on it! That’s damning physical evidence!

If he can do these dizzyingly ballsy things in a homophobic 80s environment, then surely he’s ready to come out to those trusted loved ones who have demonstrated their love for him time and time again. He could have laid the groundwork for confessing to Mike by coming out to him first, but he didn’t. He could have officially come out to Jonathan during the pizzeria scene, but he didn’t. Why not?

Why is acting gay in a hostile environment somehow easier than coming out to his loved ones?

I think this is why the GA tend to believe that Will’s arc is about being accepted, rather than about scoring a romance with Mike -- because he really does have issues with acceptance!

What the GA tends to miss, though, is how the platonic love he’s received for four seasons now is not enough. It’s important, to be sure, and it helps for a while... but the demons just keep coming back. He still feels like a mistake.

If Mike rejects him romantically but continues loving him platonically... well, that’s nice, but would it really be any different from all the other times he’s been showered with platonic love? Why would such a bittersweet scenario be the one time platonic love finally defeats his demons once and for all?

Jonathan told Will that it’s okay to be gay... but Mike’s the only person who can show him that it’s true.

#stranger things #byler #jonwill #will byers #jonathan byers #my analysis

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vergess · 2 years

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even more appropriate that mina's name (wilhelmina) means vehement/resolute protector

I fucking ADORE the names in this book, tbh. Bramthaniel really said 'Hold on let me Maximize The Symbollism' for every one of his beloved OCs.

Just off the top we've got:

Lucy: White, light, bright. References the fall of Lucifer and positions her as a star on the cusp of both day and night, prior to her turning. Shares meaning but not etymology with Gwenhwyfar/Guinevere.

Arthur: A bear of a man, noble and powerful, but condemned to mourn the betrayal of the woman he loves through no fault of hers or his, but rather, the intervention of a foreign man. So, that's literally just King Arthur.

John/Jack: There are a lot of Bible guys named John but I've decided to use John The Baptist the because he was also a weird cutting edge philosopher hermit who primarily existed to prop up other figures in Christian mythos, but unlike a lot of them, we know this particular wonk existed because there are a lot of legal document about his execution. Unlike the proverbial Jack Of All, a mythological figure who had every imaginable skill and constantly escaped traps of his own making by the skin of his teeth (see also: Jack Seward's Weirdly Erotic Relationship With Candles)

Jonathan: Bro is fully named after The One Biblically Acceptable Gay Man, and spends his arc clinging to the divine spark of his love for Mina, certain of its purity in spite of everyone and everything around hem screaming that his love is profane. This shit writes itself.

Mina: Not just a protector, but a warrior-protector. And not just a warrior protector, but the literal contemporary QUEEN OF VAN HELSING'S HOMELAND AT THE TIME. I know we all keep calling her a Queen, but I want us to really remember that Bramothy and VH were calling her a Queen unironically.

Abraham (VH): Okay this one is by far the funniest because unlike the rest, the symbolism here is about as subtle as a 14 year old trying to name their Naruto OC using Google translate. Setting aside Bram's own name and his father's name and VH being physically described as looking like Stoker. Abraham is, of course, The Old Dude From Which The Major Global Religions Descended. Hence him being older and more informed than everyone else, but also talking with a degree of nonsensical allegory that anyone who had to translate ancient texts into modern language growing up knows is the fucking worst even when you DO finally understand it. Also this is probably a factor in the weird obsession with 'his descendants' in pop culture.

Van Helsing: A foreigner of a foreigner, his name is Dutch for 'dude from Sweden' but specifically means 'dude whose family came from a particularly barren part of Sweden like 8 generations ago.' He's a real Immigant Success Story, is old Abe.

But we can do better still.

See, at the time that was more or less everything Abe's surname had going in (as far as I'm aware while not doing any additional research).

But today, the Anglosphere does know one more thing about Hälsingland, Sweden.

See, the capital* is REALLY popular this time of year for their.

Ritual bonfires.

You might say he's a stubborn old goat. Maybe even a criminal one!

*Hälsingland is a historical district folded into the modern county of Gävleborg, of Gälvebocken fame.

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terabyteturtle · 8 months

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Fighter #09 - Luigi

- Luigi’s kinda scared of portrait paintings. He hates going past the 'Everyone Is Here' mural in the first floor hallway because he feels like Sora’s eyes are following him.

- He usually gets put on laundry duty. The laundry machines in the mansion are super high-tech with tons of random settings, so when Luigi first saw them, he got really confused. He nearly blew up the dryer twice trying to figure out which button started the wash.

- A history buff, Luigi has read every historical book he could find in the library.

- Back in the day, Luigi actually developed and sold his own energy drink. It was an instant hit, but then Waluigi convinced him to take a bad deal and he lost the rights to everything.

- His favorite chore to do around the mansion is vacuuming. He's had plenty of experience with a vacuum from both practical and impractical standpoints.

- He gets flustered when someone compliments him, especially if that someone is Daisy.

- Luigi is, without a doubt, the king of belly flops.

- He has a hidden talent for modeling.

- He’s honestly surprised by how many fans he has. He thought Mario would get all the attention (not that he minds, he usually doesn’t like being in the spotlight anyway).

- Luigi still gets scared easily, but he’s built up a stronger fear tolerance thanks to the multiple haunted locations he's been in.

- He was bullied back in high school, but now those bullies look up to him.

- Roy ruthlessly teases him all the time, but it's all in good nature.

- He prefers his birthdays to be celebrated in a low-key way, but living in Smash Mansion makes that impossible.

- He used to have severe arachnophobia. Once, Roy captured a spider and dangled it in front of Luigi's face to freak him out. It worked, but it worked a little too well. Luigi jumped so high from being scared that his head hit the ceiling. He had to stay in bed for a couple days afterward. Roy ordered him some pizza as an apology. Since then, Luigi was able to overcome his fear of spiders.

- This poor guy has a lot of nightmares, as well as some confusing dreams. One of his strangest ones was of Incineroar chasing him on a treadmill. He has no idea what that was about.

- He takes melatonin gummies every night.

- Luigi sleepwalks a lot and usually wakes up to find himself outside.

- He formed a drama club with Robin, Chrom, Lucina, Hero, Zelda, Byleth, Marth, and Rosalina. They invited a couple more fighters to join, but those are still pending. They get together every week and perform plays with each other. They're really enthusiastic about it; they have homemade costumes and everything.

- He has a bowtie collection. Each one is for a different occasion, some of which are extremely specific. One of his favorites is a green one with white polka dots, which is worn only for eating pizza on a Thursday.

- Luigi is better at pinball than Waluigi. The scrawny villain refuses to admit it, but it's true.

- For their first date, Luigi and Daisy went strawberry picking.

- Luigi is a menace with a water gun during the summertime. Seriously, this dude has a sniper shot.

- He gets sunburns easily and could probably burn in fluorescent lighting if he tried hard enough. One time, Ridley wanted to be mean and see how long it took for him to get a sunburn. When Luigi wasn't looking, he snatched his sunscreen. It only took about ten minutes for Luigi to become as red as a lobster. Ridley was quite literally rolling on the floor, howling with laughter. For the rest of that week, he couldn't pass Luigi in the hallway without snickering.

- Luigi has sensitive skin, so he uses special soaps, creams, and lotions that are nice and delicate. All of them are scented with tea tree oil.

- Waluigi keeps trying to steal his girl. Bro thinks that if he just gives her a rose and a flashy smile, she'll fall head over heels with him. He believes that he has what the kids call "W Rizz". Luigi's secretly jealous because he thinks Waluigi has more charm than he does. Because of this, he’s kinda scared that Daisy will leave him, but in reality, he has nothing to worry about—Daisy loves this adorable dork. Besides, Waluigi's the type of guy to actually like the scent of Axe Body Spray. Him and Wario both.

- Inuit kisses (nose nuzzles) and boops on the nose are Luigi and Daisy's primary forms of affection.

- Mario constantly has to remind him that Diddy Kong is DK's nephew, not his son.

- He and Mario used to be paper boys when they were younger. Whenever Luigi sees a newspaper, he gets nostalgic.

- He cries every time he watches a sad movie.

- Luigi ate a bad shroom outside once and had the weirdest trip ever. He honestly doesn't remember much about it other than that it was weird. Diddy Kong found him lying outside muttering something about a big, black tumbleweed coming to take his soul.

- He can pop his shoulder out of his socket at will.

- He can also make fart noises with his armpit. Mario's been jealous of this since the third grade.

- Whenever he greets somebody, he uses finger guns.

- Whenever he takes a shower, he blasts music and quietly sings along.

- Bewear is his buddy. Luigi wants to hug him so badly, but doesn't want to get his spine crushed.

- He dropkicked Wario once for insulting Daisy. After that, he kept Daisy's name out of his mouth for good.

- His favorite song from the Smash soundtrack is the Luigi’s Mansion main theme from Ultimate. This went from a tune he sang when he was scared to a song he plays when he's about to get crafty on the battlefield.

#ssbu #smash ultimate #headcanons #luigi #sora #daisy #mario #roy #incineroar #robin #chrom #lucina #hero #zelda #byleth #marth #rosalina #waluigi #ridley #wario #diddy kong #donkey kong

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msclaritea · 3 months

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"Biopics of massively famous musicians are rarely very good, often because they stumble at the question of whom exactly they’re being made for. Are you making a movie for the already initiated die-hard fans yearning to see the life and times of their hero reflected back at them in exacting detail? Or is your movie a welcome mat for novices, a breezy jukebox of greatest hits aimed at cultivating new generations of fans, goosing streaming tallies and catalog sales in the process? Most musician biopics never manage to resolve this tension, in part because they’re usually also serving a third master, namely the musician’s estate, which tends to hold its own, very specific ideas about on-screen depiction.

Bob Marley: One Love, the new movie about the late reggae superstar that’s produced by Marley’s widow, Rita, along with some of his children, is a biopic that does seem to know whom it’s for, which isn’t a point in its favor. The film is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) and stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as Marley, who does his best with the role despite not really looking or sounding much like the real Marley. (Within the past four years Ben-Adir has played Malcolm X, Barack Obama, and Bob Marley, quite the triptych of historical figures.) Lashana Lynch plays Rita and steals the film in every scene she’s in, even if the movie’s script fails to elevate her character past the archetypical suffering-yet-supportive wife of a genius.

Rather than taking a cradle-to-grave approach to Marley’s life, One Love instead focuses on a single period of Marley’s career, his self-imposed exile to England in the aftermath of the 1976 attempt on his life at his home in Kingston, during which time he recorded Exodus, the 1977 LP that marked his full breakthrough into global superstardom. The film opens with the assassination attempt, after which we’re quickly whisked to London, where the film depicts Marley writing most of Exodus’ songs in a cloying series of “eureka!” moments that tend to populate movies of this kind. Snippets of Marley’s classic “Redemption Song” surface as a recurring musical motif in the film, and in one of the last scenes, we see Marley performing the song for his awestruck family in a sappy flourish that’s also anachronistic. (By most accounts, Marley didn’t write “Redemption Song” until 1979.) Periodically we’re treated to a series of flashbacks of the singer’s earlier life, a clichéd device that this movie could have used more of: Brief forays into Marley’s conversion to Rastafarianism are surprisingly well done, and a scene of a teenage Marley and the Wailing Wailers performing “Simmer Down” at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One is the best moment in the film.

One Love is an inspirational tale about a Great Man who used music to unite the world, one that reduces one of the most consequential and complicated artists of the 20th century to a walking fount of genial aphorisms, the guy who suggested we all get together and feel all right. As such, the film indulges a decadeslong public appetite for a particular imagining of Marley that his estate now seems depressingly eager to feed. It’s been 42 years since Marley died of a rare form of melanoma at age 36, and I’m not sure there’s a musician who’s more literally iconic: Go to any commercial district in any part of the world and within minutes you’ll find an opportunity to buy something bearing Marley’s likeness. In the United States, Marley has been a staple of dorm-room walls for generations: The casual and underinformed co-optation of Marley by American bro culture has even inspired a recurring meme in which Marley’s name is erroneously affixed to an image of Jimi Hendrix.

To a certain brand of musical cynic, Marley has become the embodiment of a musician whom people own posters and T-shirts of but don’t actually listen to, which isn’t totally fair to most of the owners of those posters and T-shirts. Some of Marley’s music is still enormously popular: His 1984 greatest hits compilation Legend is currently enjoying its 820th week on the Billboard 200, a position it will likely maintain for the foreseeable future given One Love’s early, strikingly robust box-office projections. The only album that’s spent longer on the chart is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

But in the pop-cultural imagination, Legend has completely eclipsed everything else Marley ever released. The album has sold more than 15 million copies in the United States alone, while no other Marley LP has sold even 1 million stateside. From a purely mathematical standpoint, this would indicate that for many fans, Legend is the first and only Marley album they’ll ever listen to. I’m not sure there’s another greatest hits compilation that has played such an outsize role in the public definition of an artist.

Legend is a fine little collection, but the idea that it’s some sort of one-stop synopsis of Marley’s career is absurd. For starters, 10 of its 14 tracks date from the period of 1977–80, a four-year time frame that represents the height of Marley’s global popularity but is a relatively minuscule cross section of a staggeringly prolific, nearly two-decade-long recording career. (Five of Exodus’ 10 tracks are included on Legend, which I suspect is one reason that One Love is so invested in the album’s significance.)

This period also coincides with a time when Marley’s music seemed to take a step back from revolutionary politics, a tack that may have been driven at least in part by the aforementioned assassination attempt. The Marley canonized on Legend is not the Marley who sang “I feel like bombin’ a church/ Now that you know that the preacher is lyin’ ” or who called for “burnin’ and a-lootin’ tonight … burnin’ all illusion tonight” or declared that “Rasta don’t work for no CIA.” The dominance of Legend in the U.S. is particularly striking when one considers that Marley’s highest-selling album in this country during his lifetime was 1976’s Rastaman Vibration, which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and includes such overtly political tracks as “Crazy Baldhead,” “Rat Race,” and “War.” Legend doesn’t include a single track from Rastaman Vibration, instead opting for romantic fare like “Is This Love” and “Waiting in Vain” and feel-good anthems like “One Love/People Get Ready” and “Jamming.” (For an excellent deep dive into the history and legacy of Legend, I recommend this article from the Ringer earlier this week.)

One Day’s Director Has No Regrets About the Movie’s Controversial Ending

Legend’s preeminence has helped turn Marley into the musical equivalent of a tourist destination, at which One Love is just one more cozy attraction. This is worse than a shame, because the real Bob Marley was one of the most remarkable musical talents of the 20th century. As a songwriter, he was so prolific that music seemed to pour out of him, a quality that has sometimes led to a naturalization of his gifts that veers into exoticizing primitivism. (One Love certainly partakes in this.) But rather than being some carefree savant, Marley was a fiercely disciplined and ambitious artist from the very beginning. He wrote and recorded his first single, “Judge Not,” in 1962 at the age of 16, and it remains an astonishing debut, an effortlessly catchy melody sung by a voice that sounds both nervous and supremely confident in a way that only a teenager can manage.

By the time he signed to Island Records in 1972 and began his ascent to international superstardom, Marley had already written a lifetime’s worth of great songs. He had a preternatural ear for hooks and crafted songs that were ready-made hit records, three-minute gems of perfectly crystalized musical ideas. As a singer, his indelible tenor rasp and thrillingly improvisational style were the byproducts of an extraordinarily well-honed sense of intonation and time. And during the 1970s, he fronted what might have been the best band on the face of the earth, grounded in the peerless rhythm section of drummer Carlton Barrett and bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, the latter of whom died earlier this month at age 77. (Aston’s son and namesake, an accomplished musician in his own right, plays his father in the film.)

One Love doesn’t know how to begin exploring this artist and his art in any way that even begins to be interesting. Instead it just feeds back the same sanitized and saccharine idea of Bob Marley to the same audience who has been eating that up for generations. It’s a movie about a poster. Over the end credits of One Love, archival performance clips of Marley flash onto the screen, and for a few moments we’re treated to sounds and images that are infinitely more magnetic and thrillingly alive than anything we’ve seen over the preceding 100-ish minutes. That Bob Marley, and the extraordinary body of music he left behind, is still out there for those who go listening for it, but this movie isn’t where you’ll find him."

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lunarsilkscreen · 6 months

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Kooper the blue turtle (From Paper Mario)

Has a name incredibly close to Kamek--the magikoopa. Why is this?

Oh, Kooper's Japanese name is Kameki and the Kamek's name is closer to Kammekku (Likely a shortened Kami-Koopa, which is a different character [maybe] in a later Paper Mario) (Kame-Ki, or Tortoise-Energy){kamehameha-tortoise destruction wave}

Why do I bring this up?

Well, if Paper Mario, Like Mario Bros 3, and Super Mario World 2, is instead a bed-time story (or a play) told to children (In game lore of course) then this makes a lot of sense:

There is a long-standing trope of the Fanfiction self-insert writer that pre-dates the internet. There's also a long standing trope of the traveling poet (Matsuo Basho.) And there's also the trope of the scribe: A second to an important historical figure who wrote down what that figure said because the important figure couldn't write. (Like Plato to Aristotle)

What this potentially means is that the "Epic of Paper Mario" was written by the same author who wrote "Mario Babies on Dinosaur Island" both works which have a self-insert of said Author: "Kameki".

This has historical precedent, as traveling performers putting on shows would do similar things, and sell "Tonics" or alcohol, or sugar water to go along with the show.

Why the shift to Kammekku and Kammy in later works? Either the performer was putting on a one man show, or like older plays, takes a less intensive role to oversee directing and production. Shakespeare is said to have done much the same thing.

And Mario, the Everyman could be played by literally anybody. Like Dr. Whomst, or 007, the character is always the same, the actor isn't always.

But Maybe Paper Mario was, until Charles Martinet's retirement anyway.

Perhaps. Kameki was a traveling Poet after the fall of Bowser's keep, and wrote the Epic of Mario based on stories he heard about Mario. And after meeting Bowser one last time, was told that Bowser has a reputation to keep, and can't be known to be fraternizing with the Likes of the "Good Guys".

And keeping true to his old mentor's wishes, the play-write unleashed his first work: [The Epic of Paper Mario] (Written, produced, directed, and starring Kameki)

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shithead-123 · 1 year

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Kotlc collecting head cannons Pt. 3

And finally, last but not least,

Fitz: You thought I forgot abt him. You thought I was a Fitz hater and didn't include him. WRONG. I saved him for last bc he is the ULTIMATE collector. buckle up bc this is gonna be long. He has everything. Gnome collections, rock collections, medicine/herbal collections, knife collections, plants collections, stick collections(him and Biana fight over sticks it's so funny), sticker collections, book collections, jewelry collections (this includes traditional Indian jewelry bc The Vacker's brown idc), clothing collections, shell collections, collections of things that remind him of ppl, ribbons, beads, wires, Doorknobs, carpets, chairs???, star charts, bottle caps, socks, vinyl records, lightbulbs, glitter, stationary, random human junk, Dirt even. Rocks again, literally thousands of rocks. Fitz = rock. He's such a hoarder. Bro even collects cats. You cannot convince me he has an army of pigeons that he has from his time in the human world. Speaking of human cities. he has a trinket from every area he visited, canonically. He has those ugly tourist baseball caps. The "I love New York" t-shirts. used coffee cups from like Starbucks. flattened soda cans. He looks at those soda cans in wonder. It'll forever be a mystery of what these things are. He'll never put two and two together that unflattened soda cans, and flattened soda cans are the same thing. He's mystified. But because he collects so much random shit, he has a lot of cool things too. Like dinosaur fossils(he's a dinosaur boy) that are really rare. Ancient pots and scrolls and other historical things. And he knows the history behind everything bc he's a nerd. Dude could become a billionaire just from the things he owns. He has three Toyotas(that he hot wired???? somehow???). A private jet. A yacht. And iPhone 13. a laptop that he doesn't know how to use. A lottttt of human movies/TV shows which he doesn't know he has. But he does. POKEMON CARDS. He plays the Pokemon games on Nintendo. He and Dex do pokemon battles. Fitz always loses. YU-GI-OH CARDS. Omg bro would be the only one who knows how to Play Yu-Gi-Oh. he's a master at it Dex loses to him in Yu-Gi-Oh sadly. Board games, card games. Comic books. He likes DC more than marvel bc I like DC more than marvel. Idk who his favorite superhero would be. I could do a post on everyone's favorite. baseball cards. Press on nails. CDs. Action figures. fake lashes. candy. Harry Potter wizard wands (he thought they were sticks). Antique Chess boards. Sooooo many cooking supplies. None of the Vackers can cook because they're clowns, so when Della see's her son doing some stress baking, she encourages him to expand into cooking and now he cooks dinner for the entire gang sometimes. He has all the versions of the air-fryers. he uses none of them. Knives that are sharper than Ro's daggers somehow. He owns human property too. Illegally. bc he's a minor and also a citizen of zero human countries. so he has forged documents too. He has 6 pounds of crystal meth. He has no idea what it is, but he has it, he thinks it's plant fertilizer. Don't ask how. For all his Vacker properness, Fitz goes feral in the forbidden cities. He collects pride flags too, for Biana and someday himself, when he stops being in denial. of course all this stuff and he still doesn't have a single human penny to his name. Sophie's feeling homesick so Fitz shows her his hoard. She goes crazy. Everyone makes a day of looking through Fitz's stuff. What crazy is that all of this is under his bed. it's all in there. It's magic. You're wrong if you think Fitz is a normal guy. he's not.

#kotlc #kotlc fitz #fitz vacker #girl he's not even my fav character but ik he's the hoardiest so I had to go all out #Fitz is like top three fav characters tho #so ig it checks out #still this is crazy #wait should I do TWs in the tags?#if someone wants them pls let me know otherwise I'm leaving it like it is

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slowjamastan · 2 years

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readmoreing about my hetalia fanfics

ok so i was having a conniption last week about how canonically there's like at least 3 hetalia countries that are twitch streamers (like BRO ,,,sexie funy manboob -core for real) and now im working on an au / fanfic / ?? where a bunch of the young and/or social media capable characters make the worlds shittiest hype house

so far the setup is that hongkong made a joke tweet aimed at provoking iceland and liechtenstein (canonically a trio of friends and painfully underutilized imo), bcz the latter two are um. liech is like 12~14 she uses the internet exclusively for playing barbie dressup games. and ice is a young teen but is canonically struggling with modern tech which i think is so great

anyway all this is to say that larger influencers like the philippines were like Our Species needs better marketing let me hook you up and make this happen and then idk there's a hashtag trending and it gets the attention of the USA who is like waow just like the netflix show ill set u up in LA like a real hype house. who are u guys again (<- doesn't know his world geography )

and hong is like ok um fuck it we ball. ill double down im not a pussy. should we stream minecraft or something. and his bestie liech is like ok! whats minecraft

im still trying to figure out how to fit in femboy streamer poland (<- literally a thing he does in canon) since he's probably almost 30 and not a fun character to write for anyway but his presence feels necessary

so ya im still working through how this comes together but im excited to plan the fan response (if any) and then the swift downfall. the bit is that everyone they get involved has little to no technology know-how or otherwise their sense of pop culture is outdated. ideally they will end up giving their kind a worse image than before and get targetted for being cringe

most of my time so far has been spent researching like...... liechtenstein political history or cantonese slang or southeast asian historical relations. such is the danger of hetalia related wiki rabbit holes. thres a lot of ground im trying to cover and i want everything to be believable enough. ive read a lot of shitty heta fics in my time and i refuse to commit common mistakes

im also obsessed w using mostly minor characters while avoiding too many major ones. hetalia has so so so so so so many canonized characters and all of them are incredibly interesting. there's a lot of dynamics that can be mined for gold. and ppl like to focus on like ... 12? 12 of them. not in my house tho i wanna talk about some real obscure guys. america gets to be there tho bcz he's my number one best boy forever

next chapter im trying to introduce molossia to the main cast because Again . Incredibly underutilized guy. my son, even

this is all im thinking about these days btw

#post

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ratsoh-writes · 3 years

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Crush works at a museum and at night everything come back to life. They tell this secret to skelyboy because they trust them and also because they like the skeleton

Undertale, Fellswap, Outertale, GTale and Swapfell

Sans: lol he doesn’t believe you. You’d have to do something drastic like making him sleepover at the museum with you to make sans take it seriously. He’s one of those guys who would deny the existence of ghosts if he didn’t know one personally

Papyrus: NO WAY!! So like.. when they come to life, do they talk too? Are the fossils and figurines intelligent? Do they actually remember the time period they’re from? It would be super interesting to interview one!!

G: it takes a while to convince him it’s real, but once he’s a believer, it becomes Gs personal life mission to figure out how these plastic models are moving and talking. Is there some force literally changing their atoms? Is it magic infused in the materials??

Green: he agrees once to meet one of the old physician wax figurines. After the dusty old man insisted that blood letting is a perfectly good treatment despite greens proof otherwise, green vows to never return lol

Mal: when he visits one night, partly to keep you company, partly to see if you were telling the truth. Mal comes in to you arguing with the Egyptian pharaoh about his jeweled nemes (headdress) which had unfortunately cracked along the metal lining. After sassing the ruler in submission, mal makes your night just a tiny bit easier by promising to meld the cracks.

Cash: that’s creepy as hell. Of course he wants to see it! Don’t you dare leave cash unsupervised or else he’ll teach the caveman figurines how to play video games. Your job will be 50x harder when the caveman start demanding super smash bros every night

Lord: he does believe you, but he doesn’t like it. Lord might tattle to wine about the situation, casing his best friend to investigate and identify the curse animating all the exhibits.

Mutt: he doesn’t believe you and decides to break in for funnies on your day off. The next time you see mutt he has a shining black eye. He doesn’t tell you how he got it. When you go back to work, you notice the taxidermy bear has two matching, fist sized black eyes as well.

Pluto: he’s practically salivating at the thought of talking to all of those historical figures in the museum. Pluto may be a rock nerd mainly, but he also adores history. He’s begging you to sneak him into work one night

Jupiter:……. Can he ride the t-Rex skeleton? He only wants that one thing. Then Jupiter’s life will be complete

#undertale imagines #undertale headcanons #undertale #gastertale #swapfell #fellswap red #outertale

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lumberjackloverboy-moved · 2 years

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Bro if you watch the show youd know that the poc in the crew are treated with the same respect as everyone else.

Theres even an episode where two guys con a lot of rich people out of some money and at the end of the episode they give it all to the servants on the rich people's ship and we see them escaping while the rich people are too busy to notice.

The writers' goal is not historical accuracy their goal is fun. Like, every historical figure in hamilton owned slaves but theater kids love to look past that. They're not unproblematic theyre pirates and they kill people and that's literally what makes the show worth watching

you just really, really love ignoring black people pointing out antiblackness in media don’tcha buddy

#antiblack racism #racism #ofmd

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danny-chase · 3 years

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The Batfam as Tech Majors

AU where Alfred got tired of watching Bruce slap duct tape on the Batmobile and call it good, so he forced the children into college. He makes each of them complete an internship with Lucius in R and D so they have better knowledge of how the devices that their lives depend on work. Majors/minors/tropes under cut.

Dick:

Mechanical Engineering Major

He was in undeclared engineering for as long as possible

He settled on mechanical because it seemed the most broad

Plus he joined a car club, loved it, and there were a ton of MechE’s there

He ends up taking credit overloads most semesters because he always finds 1-3 random classes that he wants to take

Despite taking everything from advanced computer science classes (he somehow convinces even the most intense professors to let him into their classes) to hyper specific phycology classes, he doesn’t have any minors to show for it

He just gets bored with the subject after a couple classes

This gives him a bunch of random knowledge

When he talks to his younger siblings about classes, somehow he’s always managed to take at least one that they’re in, and offers advice.

He has the best RA stories. He most certainly did not need to be an RA. But the school was hurting for them and he thought it would be fun.

His residents loved him, but that didn’t stop them from playing beer pong in the common spaces at 3am.

He founds a circus arts club after his residents pull up information about his past and get overly excited about it

Specifically, he finds out they know about his past, because one of them decided it was a good idea to try and juggle knives, and because he’d prefer there not to be any additional bloodstains on the carpet he decides to start the club

He nearly graduated late because he forgot he needed to take specific classes for his major

Barbara:

Computer Science/Math duel Major

She’s a TA for Comp Sci 1, all the students fight to get her help because she’s amazing at spotting bugs and is super patient

Somehow she’s the president of 3 clubs and is on student senate

She’s the curve breaker

She gets homework assignments meant to take a week done the day they’re assigned

She and Dick went to a single party together, stayed for five minutes, decided it was too loud, and went to get ice cream

Along with her club, she’s in professional organizations, and is part of a women in STEM mentoring program

She started a petition to get more wheel chair ramps installed. Half the buildings are protected under some “historical grounds” bs that’s an excuse for not being accommodating

The petition didn’t go anywhere at first, but it was widely shared on social media and made the school look horrible, so they implemented some of her proposals

Jason:

Philosophy/Cognitive Science duel Major

He gets asked “There’s a philosophy major?” every time he has to do one of those stupid what’s your name and major icebreakers

Jason lives in the library

He’s fallen asleep in there at 3am after it gets locked up

He quotes philosophers at his siblings when they’re being annoying, and it effectively shuts them up, because he only quotes the most nonsensical arguments

He gets involved with the college’s community outreach program

He volunteers for a local robotics team

When people find out his majors, they’re genuinely confused, because he understands robotics really well

He lies his ass off about being really interested in it as a child

Dick convinced him to be an RA for a semester, and he almost had a heart attack

Someone choked in front of him on the first day

Despite seeming like a tough RA, he genuinely cared about his residents and had to quit because he was so stressed out that one of them would do something stupid and die

Cass:

Innovation/Design Major

She’s really observant, so she’s great at spotting flaws in infrastructure and coming up with ways to fix them

Spending time with Barbara made her realize the lack of systems designed with wheelchair users in mind

Her experience being illiterate and not knowing English has imprinted on her the need for signage that can be understood by anyone

She focuses on taking project based classes, where she can draw out her designs and build them, rather than figuring out the math behind them

She has patents for the inventions she created at WE

She was exempted from the “Alfred’s mandatory college degree program” but decided to go as a part time student for herself

It took her twice as long to graduate, and a lot of tutoring from her siblings, but she made it!

The family threw her an extra special party when she graduated - everyone else had minor celebratory dinners, but they went all out for Cass

There was not a dry eye at her graduation ceremony

Cass works part time with WE on and off as a designer after her first internship

She comes up with ideas during patrols, draws them and sends them to Lucius

Tim:

Computer Science Major with a minor in game design

He makes it to approximately 20% of his lectures

He nearly didn’t graduate on time because he put off his humanity courses for so long

He missed the actual ceremony, even though the family showed up

He starts all his assignments the day before they’re due

If at all possible he avoids groupwork and offers to do assignments by himself because he gives his teammates heart attacks when he starts his part the project at 3pm the day before it’s due

This leads to extremely frequent all-nighters

He always finds himself rewriting everyone else’s code to make it work more efficiently

This can, of course, cause some people to feel a little upset

Other students specifically seek him out as a teammate so they can half ass their parts

He participates in game jams when he has time, and got super into the hacking club

Against all odds, he joined a fraternity

Dick literally fell off a building when he found out

He makes up stories about partying for the heck of it, when in reality he and the guys just play Smash Bros together until 3am

He hasn’t seen anyone drink more than two beers, and he hasn’t tried alcohol there either

He joined on accident, he had just pulled an all-nighter and stumbled into a recruiting fair, he heard someone shouting about Mario Kart Double Dash, and bada bing bada boom, he agreed to rush because it involved being stuck in a room playing video games all weekend

Steph:

Civil Engineering Major with minors in Sustainability and STSS (Science, Technology, and Social Science)

She gets constantly shit on for being a civie

Every time she introduces herself someone mumbles “fake mechie” in the background

She and Jason complain about the disrespect together

She was genuinely shocked when Bruce offered to pay for her college tuition

She’d been planning on going and cutting costs any way possible

But Bruce took her aside when she was applying and offered to pay it all

She refused at first, but then money just appeared in her bank account, and what was she supposed to do, give it back?

She also participates in professional groups and is a member of SWE (Society of Women Engineers), and she mentors younger students

She ends up as class president by running a very successful social media meme campaign

She got and email saying she’d won and panicked because she had no idea what she was doing and was just having fun making memes

She ended up staying class president the entire time, and ended up getting really into it, and ended up with a pretty solid approval rating

She joined a sorority and had a blast

They worked with the local animal shelter, and she started bringing Damian along as well

Her sisters think he’s adorable and he secretly enjoys the attention

She gets her revenge on all the civil engineering haters by landing her dream job redesigning the poorer areas of Gotham to include more green spaces, increase affordable housing, and upgrading access to utilities

Duke:

Biochemisty Major with a minor in Neuroscience

Harper, Tim, Steph, and him are all in the same year

Tim convinces him to join the fraternity with him

He joins a variety of professional groups as well

He mentors other BIPOC, and joins NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) and runs helps run professional development programs

But he’s also in like million other clubs that he does not put on his resume

He’s runs the college’s meme page club, is part of the Pokémon Go club, is on the competitive Overwatch team, consistently attends the anime club’s Dragon Ball Z watch parties, joins the Dance Dance Revolution club, and the list goes on and on

When Tim is awake, and Harper isn’t busy, they go with him, but both of them have too much inconsistencies in their schedule to join

He ends up meeting like half the campus

He unintentionally has become a god of networking

Unlike his siblings, he goes all the way for a doctorate

He researches Joker venom, determined to figure out a cure for his parents (in my HC, he eventually does)

He wins like every award imaginable for his groundbreaking research into venoms as he comes up with vaccines that save countless lives

He still works on the meme page, even after he graduates

Harper:

She somehow defies all odds and triple majors in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering

She takes credit overload every semester, and gets credit for her internships at WE

She and Steph were roommates freshman year, and Steph swears that Harper never sleeps

She is the most wanted partner for every engineering project

She thrives in college, and lives off of coffee

She’s in the front row in every lecture

She doesn’t leave the lecture halls, she’s gotten locked in more than once after falling asleep

She had a heart attack the first time she saw students using the machine shop

Half the students weren’t wearing safety glasses, she counted three people wearing slides, the machines were rusted over, the soldering irons were all broken, and she nearly watched someone break their wrist using a power drill

She refuses to work there

Her secret to success is prioritizing - she absorbs the material like a sponge so if homework is only worth 5%, it isn’t getting done, and she’ll just cram before the exam

She almost joined Tim and Duke’s frat (it’s co-ed), but she didn’t have the time

They let her in without rushing senior year because Tim ended up as the boss, and he said so

Cullen:

I don’t know a ton about Cullen, but I feel like he would be a comp sci major

He comes in when Harper, Tim, Duke, and Steph are upperclassmen, and he joins all of Duke’s clubs

They have a million inside jokes

To the other siblings, it seems like the two have their own language

He also joins a club that mentors LGTBQ+ students at the local high school, and encourages them to pursue STEM careers if they’re interested

Jason recruits him as a mentor for the robotics team (he’s the lead mentor at this point) after some of the kids in his mentoring program mention him at a meeting and Jason is like O.O

He avoids parties at all costs, and ends up joining the frat as well

It’s all Duke’s fault he’s in a frat

He does however, meet some lovely boys in the frat

Damian:

Aerospace Engineering/Environmental Engineering dual Major with minors in sustainability and biology

He nearly riots when he’s presented with the college’s idea of a vegetarian/vegan meal

He manages to get out of the meal plan after that, and begins rallying students to push for better options that contain actual protein

He joins a community service club that works with the local animal shelter, and secretly joins the circus arts club (that’s thriving even without Dick there)

He learns how to sew blankets out of old clothes for the animals

He and Barbara are the only siblings to graduate with a 4.0, simply because they were the only one that took the time to actually do all the homework, and remembered to turn things in on time

He refuses to live in the dorms, and instead lives in one of their apartments nearby (once again somehow managing to complain to the college enough to get his housing waived)

He literally walked in once when visiting Duke, and immediately walked out, and resolved never to step near one again

He makes a total of three friends while at the school, both are in the animal shelter club

They exchange vegetarian/vegan recipes, and get together to cook

He decides to move off campus with them his junior year when they needed another roommate, and he won’t admit it to his siblings, but he had a ton of fun

He and his friend group may have joined an animal rights hacktivist group and may have helped orchestrate some major hacks

Poisson Ivy finds out and feeds him targets and information when they’re supposed to be fighting (she just walks back to Arkham if the others aren’t watching, and slips him a list at the end)

Bonus Bruce:

He cries at every graduation

He’s asked to make a speech at every graduation

He never does - it’s about his kids, not him

He single handedly is keeping the school from bankruptcy - not that any of his kids (other than probably Barbara) know

He sobbed for days after Cass graduated

He genuinely didn’t expect Dick or Tim to graduate

After Dick graduated, he wouldn’t let Bruce touch any of the equipment, and the rest of his kids followed suit

He isn’t actually bad at engineering, his education was just super informal, and hey duct tape works 95% of the time in his experience

The real reason Alfred was annoyed was because he refused to take the time to properly fix something if someone was in danger, and then he’d forget that he’d just used duct tape to patch something

But now since no one lets him touch anything, he’s genuinely lost a lot of the knowledge

But in a pinch, he can fix stuff

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burningthemidnightcityoil · 3 years

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ON CLASSES

Classpects run on Irony, Puns, Wordplay, and each class has a secondary verb, in addition to the one they share with their pair.

Witch - Which. “Choose / Choice”. A Witch chooses power. Witches are the Powerhouse of the Session(cell). They are akin to Thieves, for a Witch takes power. But the difference here is that a Witch doesn’t need to take it from other people, a Witch takes back their own power from whatever Guardian (or “familiar”) has it. Its not like an Heir, where the Heir can just wait for it to come; a Witch has to grab it or be forced into its service.

Heir - Air/Err. “Inherit”. An Heir inherits power. While Heirs are akin to the Page, where they both inspire others to help them; the difference here is that Heirs will inspire others to Guide them (Literally inspire others to act as Seers), while Pages inspire others to Serve them (Inspire others to act as Knights). Heirs don’t like being Served (In fact, Heirs Homestuck-Historically have conflicts with Guardians because of their Service), and Pages don’t like being Guided. (Most Pages tend to talk smack about those trying to Guide them)

Mage - Magician. “Perform”. Mage’s are showy, in addition to being knowitalls. How you are Seen is Important. There are three Mages, two known and one HC’d, that give this. Sollux, inspite of his problems, is a Show Off and tries to play it off Smoothly. His performance is more important than his powers (Or Spells, if we’re dedicated). Meulin also tends to be Showy. Both by showing off her favorite couples, and by her Disciple self showing off her rommance on literal cave walls. HC’d Mage, Diamonds Droog / Draconian Dignitary, is all about the Show and the Class, and not about Flash Powers or Transformations.

Seer - To See. “Envision”. Seers See Seas. What you see is important. Unlike their counterpart, the Mage, A Seer’s visions are more important than their Spells. (This is inspite of the fact that both Mages and Seers are equally capable of both Visions and Spells, as well as Performance. It seems what what indicates if you’re a Mage or a Seer is if what’s important is How you are Seen, or What you See; A Mage wants to be Seen, a Seer wants to See).

Thief - To Steal / To Steel / Steel yourselves. “Enforce”. If Knights are the Law, Thieves are the Enforcers; because they literally reinforce themselves by taking what they want. Let’s take this a step further, and include all definitions of Enforce Thieves Strengthen, Intensify, Force, Drive and Urge whatever they set their sights on, to be what they want it. (After all, they Steal, or Take By Force / Violence)

Rogue - To Go Rogue / Haywire. “To Cross”. Rogues are pretty good about making connections, and making connections work; be it between people, or their Aspect. (Roxy between her Friends and her Windows; Nepeta with her Romances)

Knight - Night. “To Bare / Bear”. Bear hands? This may seem outlandish, but the origin of the word Night is “Bare” or “To be Bare of Sunlight”. And Knights tend to put on a kind of Mask, or Shield, or rather, Helm / Helmet as they feel their weaknesses (or what they think are their weaknesses) feel bare to the world (Dave and his Sunglasses; Karkat and his Temper; Latula and her Gamer Attitude).

Page - Chapter. “To Assemble” YOU BOY, EQUIP ARMS. This one took a bit, but what’s a Page without a Chapter? Be it a Chapter in a Book of Pages, or a Council to of all those they have called on to serve them. A Page is a Knightly figure that has a Round Table, akin to a Rogue’s Merrymen. A Page inspires others to play Knight to them, or to serve them. To call to Arms, or call to Action. So basically, if Robin Hood is a Rogue’s Mythic figure, King Arthur is a Page’s mythic figure. So literally, all those a Page calls on personally, makes them apart of their Round Table of Knights. (Wait, does this mean that HS^2 Jane is Morgan Le F--)

Maid - Made. “To Make” Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice. Maids are the Makers. They don’t so much as Maintain, though they do that too, as they create. Consider. Aradia is a prime example. She dies, so she makes Time for herself as a very powerful Poltergeist. She becomes a Robot, and makes Time for Herself by her many many Robot Time Copies, or as Time is Numeral, making Numbers. She becomes a Godtier, and suddenly, Time in the Dream Bubbles align perfectly with the Present. Notice how when we are first introduced to the Dream Bubbles, Time was a real nonlinear pain. But when Aradia took the Reins on this Time Management Stuff, and suddenly the Dream Bubbles were Linear and aligned with our Story. She did want to see the end, after all (And the more living Time Gods entered the Bubbles, the more Linear things became) For Porrim, its about Making Space for others in both her various views and her uh... Various Views. For the Dolorosa, this included making Space for herself, and for her son. She possibly even helped direct him closer to the idea of Freedom (And he did see visions of another space in time...)

Sylph - Sylvan / Wood Threshold. “To Matter” Okay, this one is like the Knight’s, if not more complicated (and likely gonna require more development in the future, cos this took waaay too much digging for my liking). Thing is, Sylph is a difficult thing to name from name alone unless you look into the word itself. Because its derived from Sylvan “Of the woods”. But we break that down into two things. Silva, the Woods, and Hyle, Matter. Hyle / Hule is already the Greek word for Matter or Wood in any case. And our word for Matter is already derived from Mater, the Latin word for Mother. (The original English word was displaced by Latin; Andwork was once our word for Matter). Unfortunately, I can’t quite make the connections here yet, so I’m not sure if “To Matter” is the proper verb. I can, however, describe some loose connections that at least tell me I’m on the right track: ... Sylphs are defined by their Environment; Such as Kanaya’s relations regarding Trolls (A motherly figure), Aranea defined herself by Information and giving Information (which ain’t healthy), Mindfang defined herself a Thief because the Troll Empire was lead by a Thief And HC’d Sylph of Mind, Snowman was, quite literally, the Universe (And its Multiverse, which is a Mind thing). So a Sylph defines herself by her “Woods”, or like a Nymph / Dryad, by her “Tree / Wood / Matter”. And when you kill the Tree / Wood, you kill the Sylph, and vice versa (Destroy the Matriorb, and Kanaya dies; Kill Snowman and you kill the Unvierse; Mindfang was murdered, and her Enlightenment about the Doc died with her).

Prince - Principle / Foremost. “To Postulate” Its the Principle of the matter. For Princes, Principle and Code are key, and they will follow these as a fundamental truth (and be damned to anything else). This is likely what it was meant when they were called a Destroyer Class, because they do tend to destroy all avenues when it doesn’t fit their Principle. A Group of Princes could be called an Argument. For Eridan, both the system he resided in, and his own internal narrative (his Hopes), were his fundamental truths. And in the end, it fucked everything up. For Kurloz, his Belief System and his chosen Lord were his Fundamental Truth (And Rage is about Truths; so this guy didn’t just have a fortified castle, he had an entire armored country) For Dirk, the Character someone presented was the Truth of the matter, and the Character he presented. He believed that all versions of him were Him, and that was his biggest flaw, because they weren’t. AR was no more Dirk Strider than Bro was. ... And unfortunately, one version of him took this very literally (HS^2).

Bard - Barred / Bar. “To Prevent” Bards are quite the Wild Card, because how the hell do you manage destroying stuff for other people’s benefit and it actually ensured that it is a benefit? But from our few examples, Bards do act as great barriers. They keep things on the path because if you didn’t have that barrier, you wouldn’t progress, or you’d go too far too quickly, or things could go out of hand. For Gamzee, he tends to invoke the idea of the Barrier Maiden (He does roleplay a fairy / maid). He can’t die cos he’s a Cosmic Keystone to things happening like they’re suppose to. Paradox Space, literally, cannot let him die because it needs him to complete the Alpha Loop [By extension, no Doomed Timeline ever has a Dead Gamzee, he’s just that important, the stupid fuck] / [consider the theory that he also absorbs his alternative selves to keep his keystone status; like how Rose absorbed her alternative dream self] (Though when you take him from his story / destiny / fate, he’s just another mortal shitty clown). Gamzee prevented Rage, for Homestuck to continue as its intended narrative. For Cronus, his little Hope Quest was a direct line to Lord English (being the evil wvizard in his little Harry Potter fantasy). But this blew up royally, because as it turns out, it isn’t up to the Beforus Trolls to do shit. So just as Gamzee’s crisis of Fate put things back on the Path to LE and prevented catastrophe, Cronus’s crisis caused catastrophe. He prevented Hope for the Beforus Trolls, because it wasn’t their Story. And now for my HC’d Bard of Doom, Clubs Deuce. He does exactly what it says, he Prevents Doom. Inspite of what it appears, he’s highly competent because that prevents things from going to hell. For CD, he prevented Doom, for his Crew, and the sessions he’s involved in. And any time CD tends to disappear from the picture, is when things go to hell fast (For the Crew, Cans showed up; for the Beta Session, he was a mere herald for the doom that was already coming and his death cinched it)

#homestuck #classpect

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elisabeth515 · 3 years

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(Some) Greek Gods as Historical Figures

So some days ago I secretly logged back into Mythology and Cultures amino and I stumbled across post of casting historical figures as the gods from Greek mythology. Of course, I hated it, so I made my version of this.

Note: Of course, this is going to have quite a lot of Napoleonic figures, since I am more familiar of this period, but please do reblog this post (or tag me on another post) with the hashtag “#mythical figures as historical people” and add some more of your historical figure Greek God fancasts!

Note 2: this post is for entertaining purpose, and just me introducing some guys to y’all and I am not a historian myself and hopefully you all would still like my takes😅

1. Zeus - Louis XIV of France

First and foremost, I shall introduce the king of gods featured in Greco-Roman myths. You may ask, why don’t I cast Henry VIII of England? Well, my reason is very simple: Henry is far from accurate to Zeus in actual myths.

To be honest, Zeus has a more “absolute power” energy in it, and Louis XIV totally has rocked it (like that iconic line “l’état, c’est moi (I am the state)”). Well, Henry also has that kind of energy but everyone only remembers his six wives and the uncountable number of bloodshed (not to mention Catherine of Aragon is a much better fighter than him—got this from Horrible Histories OwO)... Anyways, Louis XVI is basically a Zeus.

2. Hera - Catherine of Aragon

This brings to Catherine of Aragon herself. She’s a total Q U E E N and if you have watched “Six” the musical you already got what I mean (like, being the wife who married to Henry the longest). There’s also the early warlike aspect in Hera (featured in Homer’s works) that Catherine has it as well (at least you know that she’s getting more victories than Henry if you have watched Horrible Histories season 6, in the episode with Rowan Atkinson playing Henry VIII (which is sad because I want Ben Willbond to play him—he iconic to the HH fandom)), making her a great casting of Hera.

Hera, in my opinion, is a very strong woman who has to take Zeus’s shit and I could totally understand why she took revenge on the girls that Zeus has slept with—but anyways, hopefully you guys would like it :3

3. Aphrodite - Pauline Bonaparte

This is half-self-explanatory, really—just look at that statue she posed as Venus, the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite.

Pauline was famed for her beauty in her time, also a big chunk of scandals from her affairs (which bugs her big brother Napoleon, a lot). Nevertheless, despite her big spending habits and a great sexual appetite, she always helped Napoleon in some surprising ways (like she sold her house in Paris to the Duke of Wellington to get the funds for Napoleon).

Just like Aphrodite herself, Pauline harnessed her beauty very well. Thus, I rest my case.

4. Apollo - Joachim Murat or Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria

(Warning: long content ahead)

Firstly, let me briefly introduce them because you guys might not know them much.

Joachim Murat was a marshal of France, also one of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, grand duke of Berg and Cleves from 1806 to 1808 and the King of Naples from 1808 to 1815. After the wars, he attempted to escape yet was caught and executed in 1815 in Pizzo, Italy (if you have read of Alexandre Dumas’s “Famous Crimes” you might know him—by the way no one has cut his head off and sent it to that big nose King Ferdinand).

For those who have watched “Elisabeth” or the “Sissi” movies, you might know Franz Joseph I of Austria already but you might not know much about himself besides being the husband of the (in)famous Empress Sisi (ie. Empress Elisabeth of Austria). He was the Emperor of the Austria from 1848 to his death in 1916—one of the longest reigning European monarchs in history. During his reign, the empire had been through a lot of change, most notably, the creation of Austria-Hungary. Nevertheless, he was also the Emperor who started World War I and he died of old age in the midst of the Great War.

For Apollo, I’m not casting musicians because this is quite overdone. I rather want to shed a light to the other arts that he represented in Greco-Roman mythology. This makes me want to draw a parallel to Joachim Murat as he was also a great sucker of classical literature. Plus, he also was known to be a flamboyant dresser (his nickname was “the Dandy King” by the way), also the designer of the uniforms of the Neapolitan army (with an excessive amount of amaranth, perhaps his favourite colour). Really, everyone just sees him as a great flamboyant himbo but in reality, he’s iconically badass in the battlefield as the First Horseman of Europe. Well, also he’s known for being extremely good with women even though his wife Caroline was fierce as hell. So, in my opinion, he fits the image of Apollo that we know.

However, you guys might feel surprised why I picked Franz Joseph for Apollo. Well, he really... was a rather mediocre ruler in my opinion, and perhaps our most memorable image of him was the senile emperor who signed the declaration of war to Serbia. Nevertheless, he was a well-liked man among his subjects, at least to some old citizens of Austria-Hungary telling future generations. Besides, culture flourished in Vienna under his reign—with notable figures like Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Erwin Schrödinger. Despite the series of unfortunate events which made the empire started to crumble, Austria-Hungary arguably has its cultural importance in Europe. Sounds like what Apollo would do if he’s a ruler, somehow.

Well, enough of his political achievements, let’s talk about his private life... which was probably the actual reason why I picked him.

Enter Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, also known as Sisi.

On a side note, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier of France, Prince of Neufchâtel and of Wargram, was Empress Sisi’s grand-uncle in-law via his marriage to Duchess Maria Elisabeth in Bavaria

Absolutely love Pia as Elisabeth in the musical so please don’t mind me using a gif from this :3 ((also, “Elisabeth” spoiler alert

Franz originally was to marry her sister Helene (nicknamed Néné), nevertheless, on the first meeting in Bad Ishl, he has fallen for the young Elisabeth, head over heels—making him defying his domineering mother, Archduchess Sophie, for the very first time. Elisabeth also liked him and did not expressed her refusal either, so they got married in St. Augustine’s Church in 29th April, 1854.

However, the marriage was not well. Sisi was not accustomed to the strict Austrian court especially Archduchess Sophie (also she was not really a fan of intimacy). Poor Franz was rather helpless in situations between his mother and his wife, and eventually, Sisi chose her freedom over her duty as Empress, traveling around the world. They two briefly went back together during the Austro-Hungarian compromise, yet she was constantly not there. Eventually, Sisi was assassinated by an anarchist named Luigi Lucheni during her stay in Geneva, Switzerland, and Franz was devastated over her death (“she will never know how much I love her”).

To Franz, he loved her so, but he really didn’t understand her needs. Even though he had countless mistresses and female companions in Vienna, he still missed his wife. I say, he was really unlucky when it comes to love. Like Apollo himself, he dated countless nymphs and humans, but a lot of his notable relationships did not have a good end. (Probably Cyrene was the most lucky one, yet she also has chosen to be left alone after mothering several children with Apollo.) For this, I picked Franz Joseph as Apollo.

5. Ares - Jean Lannes or Michel Ney

As usual, for those who don’t know much history, I shall briefly introduce my babeys these two great soldiers.

Jean Lannes was one of the marshals of Napoleon, known for being one of Napoleon’s closest friends and his fiery personality, and is considered one of the best marshals of the 1st French Empire. His finest moments including the Battle of Ratisbon in which he led his men to storm the well-guarded city with ladders (hence his nickname “ladder lord” in our very humble Napoleonic marshalate fandom :3). Sadly, he died of the wound he received in the battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809.

Michel Ney was also one of the marshals of Napoleon, known for his extreme valour (yep, he is known as the “Bravest of the Brave”). As you might know, he was one of the marshals who was in Waterloo, yet, his finest hour was during the retreat from Russia in the disasterous 1812. Sadly, he was arguably the most prominent victim of the White Terror under the second Bourbon restoration, executed in 1815 (**I am not accepting any kind of conspiracy theories of my babey survived and died in America😤).

Speaking of Ares, I have a lot of things to say (that’s my dad ;-; no jkjk). He is really not that bloodthirsty idiot who casually hates humans. Well, he’s more like a fiery dork and a man who was very faithful to his lovers, and fights very well (by the way also one of the best dads). So, the bois that come into my mind are automatically two of the most courageous marshals of France.

Lannes, if I have to get him a godly parent, it would definitely Ares. He resembled the god a lot (also I sometimes imagined Ares as a smol bean with dark hair), probably looks the most like Ares himself. He got that fiery temper, that faithfulness to his wife Louise, also being a very courageous fighter in the field—well he literally was like, “NO LEMME STORM DAT CITY *grabs ladder*”.

There you have it, my big bro our ladder lord Jean Lannes who can pull off a perfect Ares.

Ney is like a slightly introverted (and mature) version of an Ares person. You can guess his temper already through his famed auburn hair, and indeed despite his shy exterior his temper sometimes was a bit explosive, and a bit impatient (which was somehow one of his fatal flaws). He was a great fighter, known as a skilled swordsman in his youth. And you all know how brave he is in his famed epithet. Michel Ney is purely badass (and C U T E) you know (and he needs a lot of hugs because he has really been though a lot in the wars, and was a possible case of PTSD which was shown in his arguably suicidal behaviour during the battle of Waterloo). That’s why I casted him as the Greek god Ares OwO

And there you have it, my interpretations on the Greek gods via people in history. I originally would like to include more but somehow I realised that I have written too much about my picks. So, if you want to add more, reblog this post or tag me on the post you made on this topic (and please use the hashtag “mythical figures as historical people” so that I could look into your choices via the search bubble on this app🥺).

Last but not the least, I hope you all lovelies like this, also have learnt something new via my brief introductions on some historical people. Have a great day!

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Having just sent you a message the other day about how much I love your historical asks, I realized I have a question myself that you might know the answer to. I’m a Christian and I have never been able to figure out why Christianity has historically viewed non-procreative sex for pleasure as bad. (And none of my family, including my clergy father, have figured it out either. I think my dad has a bone to pick with Augustine? And I feel like Aquinas also has something to do with this.) But given that Jesus had a body and gives a speech about “the Son of Man came eating and drinking” as though he enjoyed it, how did this whole “the body is sinful especially the sex part” thing happen? I have been thinking about this a lot recently for Old Guard reasons, which should surprise no one.

Oof. So, a short and simple question, then. (Sidenote: did they expand ask limits? Because I’ve definitely gotten a couple asks today, including this one, that are longer than usual, rather than forced to space out and hope that Tumblr doesn’t eat them.)

The entire history of sexuality in the West and its relationship with Christianity throughout the centuries is obviously a topic that far, far exceeds anything I could possibly cram into this ask, but let’s see if I can hit on some of the highlights. First off, one could remark that some aspects of Jesus’s teaching managed to disappear from the official doctrine of Christianity almost immediately, and for a variety of theological, cultural, and social reasons. As anyone who has a passing knowledge of the late Roman Empire is aware, they were known for being sexually liberate (at least if you were a nobleman, as the freedom certainly did NOT apply to women), and the notorious run of emperors who were having orgies and sleeping with boys and their sisters and hosting nonstop sex parties did a lot to sour early Christianity’s relationship with it. Because pre-Constantine/Theodosian Code Rome was Christianity’s enemy (since Christians refused to perform the traditional civic sacrifices to the Roman gods, which was all that Rome required alongside permitting its citizens to practice whatever other religion they wanted), and because the emperors were such a high-profile example of sexual excess, that became an easy point of critique. Obviously, the Roman polemicists, like every other historian, should not be trusted on EVERYTHING they say about the emperors, but the general pattern is there and well-established. So Christianity, trying to establish its religious and moral bona fides, can easily go, “Well, Caligula/Nero obviously sucks, come join us and live a purer and more moral life!”

Constantine converted in the early fourth century and the Theodosian Code was issued at the end of the fourth century, which made Rome officially Catholic and represented a huge reversal of fortune for fledgling Christianity, helping it expand like crazy now that it was officially sanctioned. However, the Roman Empire was splitting into two halves, west and east, and the development of Greek Christianity in the eastern empire was strongly influenced by ascetic and austere traditions (if you’ve heard of the Stylites, i.e. the guys who liked to sit atop poles out in the Syrian desert to prove how holy they were, those are them). The cultural context of denial of the flesh and the renouncing of bodily pleasures also played intensely into the third/fourth/fifth century debates over heresy and orthodoxy. Some of the most vicious arguments came over whether Jesus Christ could have actually had an embodied (and therefore possibly inherently sinful) human body, or it was just a complicated illusion, the “shell” of a body that his entirely divine nature then inhabited without actually being part of. This involved huge theological arguments over the redemptive nature of the Eucharist and even Christ’s sacrifice: was it real/effective/genuine if he didn’t REALLY die and suffer the pain of being crucified, and was just assured that he’d be fine ahead of time? So yeah, the question of whether Christ had a real body (because then that might be sinful) was the knock-down, drag-out theological disagreement of the early centuries C.E., and left a lot of hard feelings and entrenched positions in its wake.

Likewise, your dad is correct in having a bone to pick with Augustine, at least in terms of his impact on views of sexuality in the late antique and early medieval Christian church. Augustine is obviously famous for agonizing endlessly over his sexuality/sexual urges in Confessions, his time as a Manichaean, his relationship with a woman and the birth of his son out of wedlock (and if you want a lot of repressed homoeroticism: well, Augustine’s got that too) and how his conversion to Christianity was intensely tied with his renunciation of himself as a sexual being. Augustine also pioneered the nature of the inheritance of Original Sin: therefore, every human who was born was sinful by virtue of sharing in humanity’s legacy from Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. (And yes, obviously, this led to the beginnings of the embedding of clerical and social misogyny. Oh Augustine, I kind of hate you anyway because I had to read the entire goddamn 1000-page City of God during my master’s degree, but bro, you got a lot to answer for.) This involved EVEN MORE obscure speculations about whether original sin was passed down in male semen, and therefore Jesus was free of it because he was supposedly born divinely to a woman without a male father, but yeah, the idea that sexuality itself was already a suspect thing was fairly well correlated and then cemented by Augustine’s HUGE influence over the early church. Everything post-Augustine incorporated his ideas somehow, and so the idea of bodily pleasures as separating you from divine purpose got even more established.

Then we had the Carolingians in the eighth and ninth centuries, who were the first “empire” per se in Western Europe post-Rome, and who were also intensely concerned with legislating moral purity, policing the sexual behavior especially of its queens, and correlating moments of political or military defeat with insufficiently virtuous private behavior. The Carolingians likewise passed these ideas onto their successor kingdoms, especially the medieval kingdom of France (which would eventually become the pre-eminent secular power in Western Europe). Then the eleventh century arrived with the Cluniac and Gregorian Reforms (which were interrelated). One of their big goals was for a celibate and unmarried clergy on all levels of holy orders, from humble village priests to bishops and archbishops. Prior to this, clergymen had often been married, and there wasn’t a definite sense that it was bad. But because of this, and the idea that a married clergyman wasn’t pure enough to provide the Eucharist and would be distracted from his commitment to the church by a wife and family, the Cluniac and papal reformers intensely attacked sex and sexuality as evil. Priests didn’t (or rather, were not supposed to) do it, and if you weren’t in a heterosexual church-performed marriage and didn’t want children, you shouldn’t be doing it either. (Did this stop people, and priests, from doing it? Absolutely not, but that was the rhetoric.) This was about when celibacy began to be constructed as the top of the heap in terms of holy lifestyles, for men and women alike and laypeople as well as those in holy orders. NOT having sex was the most virtuous choice for anyone, even if sex was a necessary evil for having heirs and the next generation and so on. (Which is interesting considering that our hypersexualized present attaches so much value to having sex of one sort or another, and the asexual-exclusion types, but yeah, that’s a different topic for now.)

Of course, when the Cathars (a schismatic Catholic heresy in France and Italy) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began attacking ALL materiality and sexuality as irredeemably evil, the Catholic church went a bit like “whoa whoa that’s a little too far, hold on now, SOME sex is good, sex can be nice, we’re not actually like those guys” (even though they had been about a hundred years before). Because Cathar spirituality taught that any kind of attention or indulgence to the body was sinful, that included any kind of sex at all, even married heterosexual intercourse. (Of course, the Cathars themselves didn’t always live up to it either; see Beatrice de Planissoles and her Cathar priest lover.) The Catholic church obviously didn’t want to go THAT far, so they began rowing back some of their earlier blanket statements about the evilness of sexuality and taught that husband and wife both had a responsibility to offer each other sexual pleasure and fulfillment. I’ve answered many asks about sexual behavior and unions in the medieval era, the arguments over the definition of marriage, and how that changed over time in response to social needs and pressures, so yes. We know what the IDEALS were, and what people were legally supposed to do, but the fact that church writers were complaining about bad behavior, sexual and otherwise, literally the whole time means that, obviously, this did not always match up with reality.

The theories of the Roman physician Galen, which prescribed that female orgasm was necessary to conceive, were also well known and prevalent in the medieval world, which meant that ordinary married couples trying to have children would have had some awareness that female pleasure was supposedly necessary to do it. (This ties into my “it wasn’t an unrestrained extravaganza of violent painful rape for women all the time YOU GODDAMN MORONS JESUS CHRIST” rant, but we will recognize that I have Many Rants. So yes.) Obviously, we can’t know what the sex life of individual married couples behind closed doors was actually like, but there were a variety of teachings and official stances on sex and how it was supposed to be done, and as noted in other posts, just because the church thought it is zero guarantee that ordinary people thought that way too. People are people. They (usually) like having sex. They had sex, both gay and straight, married and unmarried, so on and so forth, even if the church had Opinions. Circle of life, etcetera.

Anyway, then the Renaissance arrived (and we just had the “why the Renaissance sucked for women” ask the other day), which prescribed a reversal of all the comparative sexual and political and social latitude that women had gradually acquired over the medieval era. It very much wanted to see women returned to their silent, domestic, maternal, objet d’arte roles that they had occupied in antiquity, and attacked the actions of women in their public and private lives as one of the major causes of the crises of the late medieval era. (Because you know, misogyny is always a useful scapegoat rather than blaming the powerful men who have fucked everything up, as we’re seeing again right now.) Because the Renaissance is regarded, fairly or unfairly, as the start of the early modern Western world, it’s where a lot of modern gender attitudes and views of sexuality became more explicitly codified and distributed faster than at any point in history before, to a more extensive audience, thanks to the invention of the printing press. We’ve obviously had moves toward sexual liberation and agency in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emergence of the modern feminist and gay rights movements, but now in some ways, we’re back in oddly Puritan attitudes in the twenty-first century. And since America was founded by Puritans, their social attitudes are still embedded in the culture, fanned today by hyper-conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Even though Puritans themselves ALSO, shock surprise, didn’t always live up to the stringent standards they preached.

...whoof. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but hopefully that gives you the broad-strokes development.

#history #medieval history #queer history #history of religion #history of sexuality #history of marriage #women in history #long post #good lord that's a lot of tags #emjee #ask

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