#useful lists

[hauntedheroines]

Dark Ships from 2023

It's not the greatest year for villain/heroine or problematic ships I must say. It was really hard to find new juicy stuff but here is what I came up with by order of preference:

Homelander x Starlight (The Boys)

Homelander x Maeve (The Boys) - in a smaller scale

Agatha x Dracula (BBC Dracula)

Eren x Mikasa (Attack on Titan)

Debbie x Nolan (Invincible)

Ikaris x Sersi (Eternals)

Motoko x Puppet Master (Ghost in the Shell (1995))

Charlie x Charles (Shadow of Doubt)

Alice x Luther (Luther)

Gabriel x Michael (Star Trek Discovery)

Guts x Griffith (Berserk)

Happy holidays, everyone!

#useful lists #villain x heroine #the boys #starlander #homelight #homelander x maeve #agatha x dracula #bbc dracula #eren x mikasa #attack on titan #debbie x nolan #invincible #ikaris x sersi #eternals #villainess x hero #alice x luther #luther #gabriel x michael #star trek discovery #guts x griffith #berserk #villain x hero #ho yay #shadow of doubt #charles x charlie

[littlepawz]

oh, you hate spiders? You’ll enjoy this :)

#arachnophobia #spiders #poisonous creatures #ouch #spider bites #arachnoids #poisonous spiders #crawlers #household pests #useful lists #nature #beware

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order #at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers #90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies” #serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent #like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries #but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate #and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited... #i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something #cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare #and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest. #it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!' #'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members... #..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)' #anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language? #maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity #and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media #and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons #and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators #instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period #anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value” #and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives #so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs) #happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world #(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills) #and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on... #...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin #oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works? #beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value #and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the #important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)

[fluentisonus]

He added, after a pause: “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”

Les Misérables, Volume I / Book V / Chapter III, trans. Hapgood

#is this anything? idk I've been looking at it too long to tell. anyways I just really liked this passage #^ the text here is a little abridged tbc bc i couldn't draw all the uses of nettles he lists etc #I think I might also color that last panel separately bc I'm really pleased with it tbh #thoughts #my art #les mis #jean valjean

[cemeterything]

i think my favourite horror trope is what i like to call "it gets better before it gets worse". the evil is seemingly defeated. the worst is apparently over. it was tough, and maybe you didn't all make it out in one piece, but you made it. except that you didn't. you're still infected, still marked. you bring the horror with you wherever you go. and there's no timeframe after which you can say you're safe with any certainty. it might lie dormant for years, just waiting for you to turn your back to it long enough to let it find you again. it knows your scent, now. it can hunt you down wherever you go.

#🐉 #i cant really list examples because so many horror narratives make use of this #tma utilised it really well in a narratively aware sense with the whole catch and release tactic the entities had going on

[nothorses]

after having an entire hour long conversation with my coworkers about what "degendering" is, and the importance of using trans people's pronouns when you know them- rather than always defaulting to "they/them" no matter what- and still getting "they/them"ed by people I trusted not to fucking do that to me, I have decided that the name and pronouns circle of introductions for new additions to the group will now include the very clearly stated boundary that they do not use "they/them" pronouns for me.

your move, cowards!

#the positive end of this is that i happened to be the first non-cis person to introduce myself in the circle #and two nonbinary(?) people after me both followed suit & elaborated on like #which pronouns were okay AND which pronouns they actually preferred people use for them/how they use them #which was really cool!! #usually they've just given the list of which ones were okay #so it was nice to have the detailed insight and also nice to see them asset boundaries

[the-final-sif]

I feel like there's two parts to the no fly list leak that are getting overlooked right now

1) the person in question has the handle "maia arson crimew" meaning media outlets have to cite "crimew" as the person they're quoting, which is amazing.

2) From everything I've read, crimew didn't actually commit a crime (in this case at least). According to crimew, the no-fly list was discovered on a publicly accessible server, totally unsecured. crimew was using Shodan which is a totally legal tool regularly used by a lot of the security community for research. Schools use and provide access to Shodan, it's a normal tool. Nothing crimew was doing was out of the ordinary. Her access and use of the file was most likely legal (or at least next to impossible to prosecute), given that it was publicly accessible.

crimew even notified CommuteAir of the data vulnerability. Which prevented more sensitive data from leaking, and was absolutely a sign of acting in good faith. Her obligation to even do that is a pretty gray area, but she did it anyways.

Now, crimew has gotten charged by the US in the past for other things, however, Swiss citizens cannot be extradited against their will. So the proceedings were suspended. She could only be charged under Swiss law, and given that the data is/was publicly accessible and the exposure was for public good, that's very unlikely to happen.

The people actually getting investigated by congress/the FBI/the TSA are the idiots at CommuteAir that were hosting the no fly list on an unsecured publicly accessible server. They're the ones who actually get in trouble for failing to have followed basic security protocols. They're the ones who had a legal obligation to safe guard that data, and they're the ones who fucked up.

#sif speaks #maia arson crimew #no-fly list #politics #to be clear to people in my inbox #I already edited this post to fix the accidentally switch to them/they #The remaining uses of them/they aren't referring to crimew #they're referring to other people #I can't do anything to update reblog chains though

[dozydawn]

Compact Mirrors with Original Art Nouveau Tile Designs by TheArtNouveauShop.

#compact mirror #art nouveau #tiles #1k #they aren’t ‘original’ they’re actual designs but i just used the listing’s words

[iphigeniacomplex]

it’s very easy to tell the good satires and pastiches from the bad ones because the bad ones are too afraid to live within the form. like if you are doing work with fairy tales and you are refusing to look closer at the underlying logic and unspoken rules of what can seem at first to be a senseless form, you are not going to create meaningful work. to borrow a turn of phrase originally used by maria tatar, if you refuse to enter “the house of fairy tale” as anything more than a gawking tourist, you will miss the particular order to the way the table is set, the rooms that are locked vs the rooms that are simply difficult to enter, the set of the floorboards and the position of the furniture. whatever you build will then be a gilded imitation of how you believe the house of fairy tale ought to look, the table set according to your educated specifications and every door open. there can be no interrogation of themes from a writer who views the form as beneath them!

#it speaks! #sondheim understood this with into the woods; the deconstruction of narrative itself is able to happen because we are able to believe in -> #<- the fairy tale logic he employs prior to this. #its a kids book but adam gidwitz understood this with a tale dark and grimm!! #cant speak for the rest of the series but that first book uses the absurdity of fairy tale logic to speak about the absurdity of -> #<- adulthood and the pedagogy present in many fairy tales to discuss the ways parents hurt their children. #rule of threes is important but theres so much on my list ive yet to read; always welcome recommendations. #fairy tales #into the woods #<- this comes from musings on how successfully i feel that musical functions so it gets the tag

[hauntedheroines]

Dark Ships from 2022

A good year. Not so much in quantity, but quality.

Midnight Mass (Mildred x John/Father Paul)

Significant Other (Ruth x Scout)

Stranger Things (Eleven x One/Vecna)

No Time To Die (Madeleine x Safin)

Mr. Robot (Angela x Phillip) - I pretend season 3 and forward does not exist

Mr. Robot (Elliot x Tyrell)

A Long Fatal Love Chase (Rosamund x Tempest)

Fresh (Noa x Steve)

The Invitation (Evie x Walter)

Matrix Ressurections (Neo x Agent Smith)

The Cheat 1915 (Edit x Hishuru)

Avengers (Gamora x Thanos) Not canon

#Villain x Heroine #Villain x Hero #Useful lists #Neo x Smith #Ho Yay #Matrix Resurrections #The Invitation #Evie x Walter #Fresh #Noa x Steve #Mr Robot #Elliot x Tyrell #No Time To Die #Madeleine x Safin #Eleven x Vecna #Stranger Things #Angela x Phillip #Midnight Mass #John x Mildred #Significant Other #Scout x Ruth

[littler3d]

You know what, I like the fact that the FNAF movie confuses the lore even more. Scott Cawthon is committed to his sins, and managed to mess up the timeline even more. A true nostalgia piece, confusion and all

#fnaf movie #fnaf #fnaf movie spoilers #I guess?? #seriously though why us are the relatives switched up #the dates are hard enough to keep track of #now I gotta add Vanessa and Mike and to list #five nights at freddy's

[oflights]

helpful sites for writers

i have a little collection of websites i tend to use for coming up with ideas, naming people or places, keeping clear visuals or logistics, writing basics about places i've never been to, and so on. i tend to do a lot of research, but sometimes you just need quick references, right? so i thought i'd share some of them!

Behind the Name; good for name meanings but also just random name ideas, regardless of meanings.

Fantasy Name Generator; this link goes to the town name generator, which i use most, but there are lots of silly/fun/good inspo generators on there!

Age Calculator; for remembering how old characters are in Y month in Z year. i use this constantly.

Height Comparison; i love this for the height visuals; does character A come up to character B's shoulder? are they a head taller? what does that look like, height-wise? the chart feature is great!

Child Development Guide; what can a (neurotypical, average) 5-year-old do at that age? this is a super handy quickguide for that, with the obviously huge caveat that children develop at different paces and this is not comprehensive or accurate for every child ever. i like it as a starting point, though!

Weather Spark; good for average temperatures and weather checking!

Green's Dictionary of Slang; good for looking up "would x say this?" or "what does this phrase mean in this context?" i love the timeline because it shows when the phrase was historically in use. this is english only, though; i dig a little harder for resources like this in other languages.

#writing #writing tips #writer resources #writing advice #helpful links #etc. #handy #also the magical careers generator #literally used that earlier tonight #also feel free to add to this list @ anyone

[yeoldenews]

While we’re on the subject of names, is there an explanation for how traditional nicknames came about that are seemingly unrelated to, or have little in common with, the original name?

ie- John/Jack, Richard/Dick, Henry/Harry/Hank, Charles/Chuck, Margaret/Peggy/Daisy, Sarah/Sally, Mary/Molly, Anne/Nan, etc

I am actually over a week into researching a huge follow-up post (probably more than one if I’m being honest) about the history of nickname usage, so I will be going into this in much, much more detail at a hopefully not-so-later date - if I have not lost my mind. (Two days ago I spent three hours chasing down a source lead that turned out to be a typographical error from 1727 that was then quoted in source after source for the next 150 years.)

As a preview though, here’s some info about the names you mentioned:

The origins of a good portion of common English nicknames come down to the simple fact that people really, really like rhyming things. Will 🠞Bill, Rob🠞Bob, Rick🠞Dick, Meg🠞Peg.

It may seem like a weird reason, but how many of you have known an Anna/Hannah-Banana? I exclusively refer to my Mom’s cat as Toes even though her name is Moe (Moesie-Toesies 🠞 Toesies 🠞 Toes).

Jack likely evolved from the use of the Middle English diminutive suffix “-chen” - pronounced (and often spelled) “-kyn” or “kin”. The use of -chen as a diminutive suffix still endures in modern German - as in “liebchen” = sweetheart (lieb “love” + -chen).

John (Jan) 🠞 Jankin 🠞 Jackin 🠞 Jack.

Hank was also originally a nickname for John from the same source. I and J were not distinct letters in English until the 17th Century. “Iankin” would have been nearly indistinguishable in pronunciation from “Hankin” due to H-dropping. It’s believed to have switched over to being a nickname for Henry in early Colonial America due to the English being exposed to the Dutch nickname for Henrik - “Henk”.

Harry is thought to be a remnant of how Henry was pronounced up until the early modern era. The name was introduced to England during the Norman conquest as the French Henri (On-REE). The already muted nasal n was dropped in the English pronunciation. With a lack of standardized spelling, the two names were used interchangeably in records throughout the middle ages. So all the early English King Henrys would have written their name Henry and pronounced it Harry.

Sally and Molly likely developed simply because little kids can’t say R’s or L’s. Mary 🠞 Mawy 🠞 Molly. Sary 🠞 Sawy 🠞 Sally.

Daisy became a nickname for Margaret because in French garden daisies are called marguerites.

Nan for Anne is an example of a very cool linguistic process called rebracketing, where two words that are often said/written together transfer letters/morphemes over time. The English use of “an” instead of “a” before words beginning with vowels is a common cause of rebracketing. For example: the Middle English “an eute” became “a newt”, and “a napron” became “an apron”. In the case of nicknames the use of the archaic possessive “mine” is often the culprit. “Mine Anne” over time became “My Nan” as “mine” fell out of use. Ned and Nell have the same origin.

Oddly enough the word “nickname” is itself a result of rebracketing, from the Middle English “an eke (meaning additional) name”.

I realized earlier this week that my cat (Toe’s sister) also has a rebracketing nickname. Her name is Mina, but I call her Nom Nom - formed by me being very annoying and saying her name a bunch of time in a row - miNAMiNAMiNAM.

Chuck is a very modern (20th century) nickname which I’ll have to get back to you on as I started my research in the 16th century and am only up to the 1810s so far lol.

#names #nicknames #onomastics #history #asks #nicknames are really hard to research you guys #there is so much info out there and it's almost all nonsense #and I'm talking academic books with listed sources not buzzfeed listicles #some guy in the 18th century forgetting to mention Bill on a list of common nicknames does not mean it wasn't in use at the time ma dude #i've had to get very creative with sources #god bless word for word murder trial testimony

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

got a worm nibbling my brain. can someone help me find a piece of obscure media?

webcomic/indie comic from the 2010s. basically a sci-fi short story about a young girl (with red hair?) who was being raised by scientists as part of an experiment. she receives a haircut/has her head shaved, in preparation for her annual brain scan/testing. it is revealed that while her body is human, her "brain" is artificial, made of computer implants throughout her skull and spine. at some point her biological mother (also a scientist on the same campus?) encounters her and is repulsed, viewing her as a machine who has murdered her daughter.

it was very poignant and it bruised my heart and i can NOT find it anywhere

#i thought it was made by the creator of 'O Human Star' for some reason but apparently not? #goddammit goddammit goddammit #'i don't have to write down the title of this piece of media i encountered in my formative years bc i'll always remember it' #*cut to ten years later frantic googling* #fun fact 'a.i.' is now a completely useless search term #google in general is useless #and stuff i read 3+ years ago regularly vanishes from the internet #bookmarks are not enough! if you like indie media--download that shit! buy digital/physical copies while you can #save it to the cloud back it up and organize that shit!!! #keep a list of the stuff you read (organized by date/media type and possibly with keywords if you want it to be useful longterm) #(or a spreadsheet even if you're like me and rabidly consume short stories/comics like a pack of amnesiac piranhas on a feeding frenzy) #(that stuff PILES UP over the years ok. if you wanna make sure you'll be able to find it again a decade later--curation is key) #because art WILL touch your soul and then vanish into the void leaving naught but a 404 Error in its wake #i am an old man shaking my fist at the kids on my lawn but the kids on my lawn are me and my longterm digital planning skills circa 2012

[uncanny-tranny]

Once you stop thinking about queer people's labels as strict indications of what's in their pants and who they do/don't bed and instead view queer people's labels as how they interact with the world, you'll find that you'll get along with queer people better and treat them better, I think.

#queer #lgbt #lgbtq #like of course some people use labels in the way i described first and i don't think that's inherently bad... #...but like. as a trans person i hate when people try to like... use my labels (or their labels they force on me) to say what's in my pants #i think there's a fone line between somebody using a label in the first way i described and somebody forcing their understanding of other... #...people onto them. like. #i think it can be a small shift in thought but it's helpful #it reminds me of the shirt that went around of the boston dyke march (<3) shirt design... #...which basically listed who was welcomed at the march and it was a super long list #if anybody is wondering what i'm talking about wrt the last two tags i have the image on hand

[bonefall]

Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.

It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.

#No patience. Wither and rot. #These motherfuckers dogpiled the legend who leaked the no fly list because it identified as the wrong type of lesbian. #They will attack the people doing DIRECT ACTION over dumbfuck label discourse. Deeply unserious people. #Embarrassing to think that there are rubes out there who keep falling for this #For ALL our sakes I hope this is literally their first rodeos and they really haven't fallen for this bullshit twice. #But unfortunately I'm too old to be that hopeful. #I didn't get to see the big ''public block list'' made for us dirty queers who support or are bi/mspec lesbians but I hope I was on it #If a man is best judged by his enemies then exclusionists who echo terf rhetoric are the ones I WANT to have. #And ''public lesbian block list'' is in quotes because if you REALLY thought that such a thing wasn't a ''GO HARASS THESE PEOPLE'' charter- #--then you have a black mold where your brain used to be and it's rapidly eating into the bathroom tile you call a skull #Unironically you should not have a platform if you are THAT stupid or malicious to think it was anything BUT a harassment charter #I hope they're ashamed. #Context for those unaware: a flesh-eating amoeba created a public blocklist for people who supported bi lesbians #Minors and extremely small creators without big platforms were on that list #People got harassed but the most namely was Lockandkeyhyena who had people raiding his server with racial slurs and death threats. #I hope everyone involved sees who their ''allies'' are when they spread that sentiment. #A bunch of people ACTUALLY 'invading someone's space' to post the n-word and suicidebait. #THAT is who you appeal to. Sit with that.