#ask database

[hellsitegenetics]

I work in the biochemical industry, the NIH website has been slow / crashing for everybody. Not just you champ 👍 keep up your good works though

if the US government doesn't let me find out what creature the sonic adventure 2 theme lyrics closest align to right now i'm gonna start killing hostages

[fisheito]

this vision descended upon me while riding the bus

[elumish]

For my book database project, because of how I've been doing it so far, the vast majority of what I have robust plot/trope tagging on is romance.

For fantasy or sci fi what sort of plot attributes or tropes would you likely look for, to find books either to read or to query?

[not-poignant]

Potentially an odd question, but is there a specific site or method you use for research for your writings? Researching medical/legal/similar procedures is the bane of my existence because I can never seem to find an explanation I understand well enough to then write about.

I recently caught up to Stain, and while reading it struck me how you put a lot of detail into a wide variety of topics (the medical part of Alex’s injury at the start, therapy, Alex’s eye examination, Sebastian talking about his boss trying to underpay him, among other topics) (HUGE kudos about that by the way, it adds another layer of realism) and it feels like there’s no way one person can have firsthand experience/knowledge in ALL these things unless you’ve lived an extremely varied life.

I was just hoping you might have some pointers about how to go about researching basically anything because I feel like I’ve GOT to be missing something.

No worries if you can’t/don’t want to/don’t have an answer, I just thought shooting an ask your way is worth a shot haha.

Hi anon,

Researching is its own skillset, like writing or editing, there's no one specific site to go to, to make it easier, it's more like...taking the time to learn the constellation of ever-changing sites, books, and more in order to best learn how to learn. Because that's really what it is about: Learning how to learn.

On learning how to learn (I should say, I'm not very good at teaching, so some of this stuff might not be helpful to you, please ignore it if it isn't!):

But I do have some things that I do which might help. And some that might not.

The first thing that won't really help is I have led a varied life in a way that is convenient for the content I write, lol. The medical part of Alex's injury - I've been badly injured. The eye examination - I have astigmatism and was diagnosed late and blamed for my own eyesight issues which I didn't realise were eyesight issues. I've seen over 19 therapists in over 25 years. I've talked to bosses about pay and I've had lots of friends that have too.

Tbh the things I've had to research the most in Stardew Valley have been:

The intersection of astigmatism/myopia/dyslexia treatment and the best order in which these things should happen.

Stardew Valley - literally the calendar, the schedule, liked gifts, disliked gifts, favourite meals etc. Some I know off by heart, others I don't really remember at all.

The best way to clean a house (though my mother was a professional cleaner for most of my childhood, I just wanted to revise and see if anything had changed since then)

Cleaning standards for home laboratories

The colours that sweetpea flowers come in etc.

It's always random stuff. And to be honest, a lot of this doesn't happen in much detail in the story. The colour of sweetpea flowers was for the bouquet, and I think it was one line. The best way to clean a house has accounted for very little actual writing.

Now for actual helpful stuff:

Wikipedia is your friend. My browser search bar goes straight to Wikipedia, not google. It's amazing how much Wikipedia will explain a ton of different things these days. It's true some concepts might be hard to understand, you might need to spend more time Wiki-ing / googling / using a dictionary to start understanding those concepts.

When it comes to writing trauma, for example, I've read upwards of 20+ academic books (i.e. the kind psychologists study at university or after university in postgrad) about trauma. I wouldn't expect other people to go that deep, but other folks aren't writing trauma like I am in every single story, and it's a special interest of mine. But it kind oh illustrates that I'm not going to a single site about something.

But you could get a deeper understanding by just looking at the PTSD and C-PTSD and trauma articles on Wikipedia, and slowly reading them.

The second is that medical sites can also be your friend.

The third is that Reddit is amazing for lived experiences, with a grain of salt that some people are lying for clout. But 'what treatments helped best with your dyslexia reddit' as a search phrase is going to be way more helpful than whatever AI bullshit the google search line will give you otherwise. Deep diving into reddit threads can be super helpful for stuff that I used to find out previously on personal blogs (it's amazing how much 'what's life on an oil rig like blog' used to turn up a ton of lived experiences from firsthand encounters for example). I don't use my Reddit account for anything other than research, lmao. It's a hidden gem for lived experience and human interpretation of complex issues. It can be especially helpful for legal / economic matters, but honestly, I mostly just handwave legal stuff with caveats/disclaimers. You can do an undergraduate degree in law, and a lawyer is still going to painstakingly point out all the ways you're wrong about something. It's just better to tell the lawyers in advance that you know you can't compete with their knowledge base lmao.

(Though it can be worth looking up regional differences, because if I see another Australian writing Australian legal procedures into US law (or vice versa) I will scream - like no, Aussies, we do not have BOLOs here, we have KL04, LOTBKF and BOLF depending on your state).

A good way to start learning how to learn is to actually start outside of your stories and start with things you already love. Plug your favourite movie into Wikipedia and learn about how it was made, or what the production was like. And when you find something mildly interesting, say, about film lighting, open up those Wiki articles or plug 'film lighting process for (insert movie here)' on google, and have a look at some of the results. Learn how to learn, how to go deeper, what seems to be helpful, and what isn't. Consider making a list of articles you really enjoy - I love a website that aggregates all the different odours and flavours in the world and their chemical compounds which has been incredibly helpful for Palmarosa. The website is a bit hard to navigate, but if you plug something like 'spearmint' into the search, it'll help.

If you don't already have it, put Wikipedia on your phone. It's free / ad-free. I have my own personal server on Discord that I use to house a lot of resources (for everything, from my business, to health records, to writing resources). If you use Discord already, I highly recommend the 'private server' as a great way to aggregate everything together.

If the article formatting of online articles doesn't feel good, you can do text-to-speech, or use the little 'reader' symbol to make it more reader-friendly.

Books are also not to be underestimated for how helpful they can be (I find too many people are website focused these days, but actually, not everything can be found on websites, a lot of the best niche knowledge is still in books when it's not in lived experience tellings). Find out about your local and online libraries. A lot of people (especially younger folks) don't realise just how much information they can get access to, for free. Librarians themselves are gifts from god, who will literally help you find the books you need for whatever subject you want to learn more about, and if they don't know, they will often personally take it upon themselves to look further for you. 'I want to learn more about German composers' is - for many librarians - a very exciting question that they will want to help you with.

Outside of that, niche websites (like the odours one I mentioned), sometimes just finding sites where asking research questions gets answered. For example the free blogging site (with no ads), Dreamwidth, has a community called little_details where you can ask your niche question and people will answer and say what their expertise is in that subject. It's incredible and active enough to be super helpful. In some cases it's completely changed the course of a story.

Over time you'll also learn what's less helpful. Some articles are clearly ChatGPT written or written for ads and not accurate - so if you can get the same information corroborated at multiple sources, that will help.

And don't forget the value of just listening to people online and irl regarding their experiences. As a writer, I feel like an 'experience collector.' I like asking friends, strangers, family, etc. all kinds of questions because I think a part of my brain is always aware that something they're sharing could be a vitally grounding element in a story and it's also just interesting and people like sharing about their lives. Whether I'm asking my roommate about the process of getting a government evaluation approved, my architect friend about drug use in Australian architecture, or a friend from Bali what sort of foods he grew up with and what his comfort meal was when he felt sick, etc. Writers collect experiences, not just their own, but those of others. The greatest tools a writer can have in their toolbelt are knowing how to listen, learning how to learn (and how to love learning), and knowing what the right questions are.

None of those things can be gained with one or two websites. But they can be gained with time and curiosity, and well, that helps with your whole entire life, and not just writing. :D

[baklavagyna]

“i asked chatgpt and it said…” just stop right there. nothing you say next matters. because it will be drivel.

[bucephaly]

wait, can i ask why DNA doesnt matter when it comes to knowing if youre cherokee? doesnt having the dna confirm you having the ancestry? i dont understand why it is different, i would love to understand

So first off, DNA tests are strictly for entertainment. They are not super accurate, they're basically just for the novelty of it. Being able to enroll in a federal tribe is a legal matter, it's a matter of actual citizenship in a sovereign nation. A government entity like a native tribe will not accept a commercial DNA test as legal proof of ancestry.

A DNA test will not tell you you are cherokee. It'll say 'Indigenous Americas- North,' so it doesn't connect you to any tribe in particular. That isn't useful, you can't assume that a trace native result means your cherokee granny story is true. Even if you take a dna test and you have a like 20% native result, you'll still have to do genealogy to find the actual legal records connecting you to a certain tribe.

DNA tests are not accurate. For example, my mom took a 23andme DNA test a few years back and it gave her a 0.1% native trace ancestry result. She will bring it up and say 'oh I'm native!!' when she feels like it'll make her sound cool, but she's also done her genealogy back generations on all lines and there is zero native ancestry there. This happens a lot. Vs me, I took an ancestry.com DNA test [it was a gift, I wouldn't have done one otherwise I don't really care], and it says I am 100% European. Yet, my cherokee ancestry is easily found in my genealogy, and the DNA tests matched me with cousins who descend from the same Cherokee ancestors and who do have a native result. So you can't trust a positive Or negative result. It just isn't useful in this case lol

I will say, they can be useful when it comes to connecting with family as an adoptee or if you don't have contact with that side of your family. My friend has been able to find lots of cousins through their DNA test, which has helped them a lot since they were adopted.

Some tribes, like the EBCI, do use proper paternity DNA tests for enrollment. These are actual legal tests, though, not gimmicky kits.

So basically, even if you do get a native result on a dna test, you'll still need to do genealogy to confirm it, find what tribe, and find how they connect to you. For cherokees, family and kinship is super important, you'll often be asked who your family is, who your ancestors are, etc, it's part of our culture. If you are going to be claiming cherokee ancestry, you're going to be asked who you are. If your response is 'I got a native result on my dna test' you're going to get laughed at. To claim cherokee, you need to know who your family is, how you're connected to the people, that way you can actually find where you fit with the community. I've randomly found a cousin while visiting Cherokee NC, where I was introducing myself with my line and the guy I was talking to was like 'oh I'm a [surname] too!' And we were able to right there figure out exactly where we connected, which of our ancestors were siblings even when they lived in the early 1800s.

The genealogy will allow you to see if you can enroll as a citizen, teach you about your ancestors, help you find cousins, etc. Cherokee genealogy isnt hard, we are very well documented and there are plenty of resources available, like the Cherokee Research and Genealogy Facebook group ive mentioned before. You can point to an indigenous DNA result all you want, but it won't mean anything to us and it won't get you anywhere. Remember, to claim cherokee is to claim to be a part of a living people, and to reconnect is to reconnect to this community. You can't do it alone, and if you don't have the proof that will legitimize yourself to other cherokees, you wont be accepted and no one will help you learn.

Just.. don't waste your money lol. You can confirm or deny cherokee ancestry properly with genealogy easily and cheaply, while DNA tests are expensive and won't actually do much of anything.

[wundrousarts]

Any Nevermoor fans in Adelaide??? I am desperate to know what Jess might mention about Silverborn at the Adelaide Festival 😭😭😭

[becca4leafclover]

I'm sobbing Cucuruchito on QSMP is LITERALLY what irl AI are 😭 it doesn't truly know anything, it's got a database of information it strings together as it sees fit and clearly doesn't have a memory of past responses so it's not truly learning or remembering what it's been told or is answering and can give conflicting responses to repeated questions, and it LITERALLY regularly makes up misinformation. THIS IS WHY AIS ARE A PROBLEM IRL AND NOW ITS SO OBVIOUS IN QSMP AAAAA 💀💀💀💀

[whyamiherewhosummonedme]

I have been informed that Reddit has found my story and are being super Reddit about it. Quick looksee of the comments revealed a bunch of people saying it was fake because [insert misunderstanding of how bacteriophages work]. Say its bullshit, whatever, but the being confidently absolutely wrong part is whats getting to me

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

We know our man GRRM is fond of Beauty and the Beast, but i wonder if he was influenced for Sandor as well by Phantom of the Opera (another Batb story!). There's a Phantom adaptation which has the Phantom be named "Sandor", and he's not born disfigured, his face is burnt in a fire...And his dead wife has red hair. The film's from 1983 made for tv, obscure. maybe it's a coincidence but..

I checked GRRM's writings and interviews -- using zionius's So Spake Martin Extended search engine, which has everything -- and I'm afraid I can't find any time GRRM has ever even mentioned the Phantom of the Opera. I know sansan Phans have brought up the connection before, but the fact that, yes, POTO is also a beauty and the beast story may just be the simple reason for those shared tropes, sorry. And GRRM has said that Sandor being a real name was unintentional.

Thank you for that info about the 1983 TV movie, though. GRRM did start working in Hollywood in the 80s -- although not until 1985, he had just published The Armageddon Rag in '83 -- but it is possible he saw the movie when it was nationally broadcast on CBS. However, if he did, he's never mentioned it. Perhaps someone sometime could ask him about any perceived POTO connections...

[hellsitegenetics]

Just wondering, how the hell do you do this

Do you know all this off the top of your head or???

"do you know all this off the top of your head" can you imagine. i'd be unstoppable

[mcyt-cats]

do you ever have to like. check references to remember cat names. or do you just have a mental database of every cc cat ever

Great question! For like the first two years of running this blog it was basically just a mental database. Like genuinely I just knew them. There's a few cats that I've always had trouble telling apart (like Minx's cats or Martyn's cats) but I used to be able to ID most of them off a photo without you even telling me which CC owned them.

These days it's a bit more to keep track of, I update this blog less often, and I spend less time stalking CCs on social media for cat photos. It is much more difficult for me to remember all their names. So right now, if I forget a cat name, I normally just search this blog for the CC name. My tagging over the years has benefitted me because it allows me to double check things very easily!

[cuties-in-codices]

Where do you find these manuscripts? Is it like a website or do you find it randomly??

hey, thanks for the curiosity! lenghty answer below the cut :)

1)

medieval manuscripts are typically owned by libraries and showcased on the library's websites. so one thing i do is i randomly browse those digitized manuscript collections (like the collections of the bavarian state library or the bodleian libraries, to name just two), which everybody can do for free without any special access. some digital collections provide more useful tools than others (like search functions, filters, annotations on each manuscript). if they don't, the process of wading through numerous non-illustrated manuscripts before i find an illustrated one at all can be quite tedious.

2)

there are databases which help to navigate the vast sea of manuscripts. the one i couldn't live without personally use the most is called KdIH (Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters). it's a project which aims to list all illustrated medieval manuscripts written in german dialects. the KdIH provides descriptions of the contents of each manuscript (with a focus on the illustrations), and if there's a digital reproduction of a manuscript available anywhere, the KdIH usually links to it. the KdIH is an invaluable tool for me because of its focus on illustrated manuscripts, because of the informations it provides for each manuscript, and because of its useful search function (once you've gotten over the initial confusion of how to navigate the website). the downside is that it includes only german manuscripts, which is one of the main reasons for the over-representation of german manuscripts on my blog (sorry about that).

3)

another important database for german manuscripts in general (i.e. not just illustrated ones) is the handschriftencensus, which catalogues information regarding the entirety of german language manuscripts of the middle ages, and also links to the digital reproductions of each manuscript.

4)

then there are simply considerable snowball effects. if you do even just superficial research on any medieval topic at all (say, if you open the wikipedia article on alchemy), you will inevitably stumble upon mentions of specific illustrated manuscripts. the next step is to simply search for a digital copy of the manuscript in question (this part can sometimes be easier said than done, especially when you're coming from wikipedia). one thing to keep in mind is that a manuscript illustration seldom comes alone - so every hint to any illustration at all is a greatly valuable one (if you do what i do lol). there's always gonna be something interesting in any given illustrated manuscript. (sidenote: one very effective 'cheat code' would be to simply go through all manuscripts that other online hobbyist archivers of manuscript illustrations have gone through before - like @discardingimages on tumblr - but some kind of 'professional pride' detains me from doing so. that's just a kind of stubbornness though. like, i want to find my material more or less on my own, not just the images but also the manuscripts, and i apply arbitrary rules to my search as to what exactly that means.)

5)

whatever tool or strategy i use to find specific illustrated manuscripts-- in the end, one unavoidable step is to actually manually skim through the (digitized) manuscript. i usually have at least a quick look at every single illustrated page, and i download or screenshot everything that is interesting to me. this process can take up to an hour per manuscript.

---

in conclusion, i'd say that finding cool illuminated manuscripts is much simpler than i would have thought before i started this blog. there are so many of them out there and they're basically just 'hidden in plain side', it's really astounding. finding the manuscripts doesn't require special skills, just some basic experience with/knowledge of the tools available. the reason i'm able to post interesting images almost daily is just that i spend a lot of time doing all of this, going through manuscripts, curating this blog, etc. i find a lot of comfort in it, i learn a lot along the way, and i immensely enjoy people's engagement with my posts. so that's that :)

[disteal]

how u doing dis? staying sane amongst the various historical events that are cramming themselves all in before the end of the year?

Blissfully logged off during what feels like the worst posting environment of the decade, thanks for asking 🫡

[anjanahalo]

Wayne Vs Fenton 3

start of the madness

pls note I'm putting these numbers in as "what I have written." They're not gonna necessarily be in order. I hope to make a full fic to put on AO3. In the interim, here's stuff I wrote in general as it strikes me in the moment. This bit is from Tim's perspective after Damian and Danny Are Friends become a known quantity in the Wayne household. ~*~

Damian making friends didn’t make sense. Everyone else felt complacent in simply accepting it. Tim wasn’t. Considering his upbringing, autonomous socializing wasn’t part of Damian’s personality. Nor was how calm and patient the former assassin child became with all of his siblings, Tim included. Damian himself insisted he and this “Danny” were friends. Hell, Damian even called the kid by a nickname. Not his last name, not “Daniel.” His actual, preferred nickname. Tim was suspicious and instantly began investigating. Daniel “Danny” Fenton, age 15, moved to Gotham two months ago from Amity Park, Illinois with his godfather and temporary guardian, Vlad Masters, former mayor of Amity Park, head of Vladco Industries, and heir to Wisconsin’s Self Proclaimed Dairy King’s fortune. Child of Jack and Madeline Fenton, doctors of something called ectobiology, former college classmates of Vlad Masters, and founders of FentonWorks, a cottage research facility that developed antighost (Ghosts? Really?) weaponry and equipment. Brother of Jasmine Fenton, currently a student of Yale in their psychology undergraduate program, and already a shoe-in for the Dean’s list. Honestly, of all the people related to him, Danny ended up being the least interesting. Middling grades that dropped in high school along with attendance. That was probably what led to his coming to Gotham. A set of brilliant - if evidentially weird - parents and a rich and involved godfather doing what they could to help their faltering son to succeed by sending him to one of the top schools on the east coast. There was evidence that Amity Park itself had some apparently minor meta vigilante protecting it, but searches for “Phantom” turned up nothing in the Justice League’s database, suggesting whomever this was might be an actual ghost like Deadman and, thus, restricted to access by those with JLD clearance. Tim put aside that issue for later. He could just ask B for privileges later. Besides, the only information he found on this vigilante was on a few amateur fansites and local papers. No major news sites or government listings. It couldn’t be anything major. His focus remained on Daniel Fenton. Except, even when looking into the kid’s socials, there wasn’t anything interesting. He had a couple friends back in Amity, the most interesting of the two was Samantha Mason of the Mason family, though Tim already knew of her from various socialite dinners she looked ready to burn to the ground, pink and lacey dress or not. Her social media was full of activism, conservation movements, and calls for both veganism and something called ultra recycle vegetarianism. Tucker came from an average family of upper middle class parents, nothing odd there, though his social media showed his love of technology and ancient Egypt. Nothing strange there. Danny’s social media, besides his friends, included links to Nasa, occasional rambles about high school life, and, for some reason, a dog photoshopped to look green. From the replies of his few followers, it was an inside joke since they all cooed over the dog and didn’t comment on the green. Again, nothing strange. Even the one time he managed to hack into Damian’s phone to see his messages yielded nothing. He and Danny would meet for what Danny called “playdates.” For some reason, Damian played along with a name Tim knew he’d scoff as childish and beneath him. Even that would be innocuous. One or the other would suggest meeting at various parks, arcades, even the observatory, negotiating dates and times, and that was it.

Danny was a normal kid. Damian was a born and bred assassin. Why in the actual fuck were these two friends? Nothing made sense. Everyone else was happy to ignore it because of the peace the irrationality before them instilled. Tim wouldn’t become complacent. Whatever Danny was hiding, he’d find it.

[somestorythoughts]

Dehydration

Back with some vampire clones!

Echo's throat feels like the air on a desert planet. The nutrients the Techno Union were giving him must have been high in iron or something, because he's well aware that blood brothers don't survive this long with only rations, but he's still so thirsty.

"Rex. Thirsty."

His Captain glances around the room automatically before he turns back to Echo. The General navigating with Tech, it's only vod here. "Blood or water?" He murmurs, the arm around Echo's shoulder's squeezing gently.

"Blood. Please?"

The sergeant - crap what was his name? - glanced up. "You're, what did that medic call them? A redder brother?"

"Blood or redder brother." Rex confirmed. "If you're unfamiliar I guess you don't have any bitten with you?" Bitten, their terms for brothers who are willing to be go-to's for all the blood brothers. Fives had been one.

"I'm not sure what that means?"

Rex grimaced. "How close are we to the Resolute?"

"Tech!" The Sargent calls. "What's our ETA?"

"Twenty-five minutes!" Is the shouted response. The other two troopers are watching, clearly curious.

"And time to get to the medbay." Rex adds. "Thirty minutes Echo. Can you hold on for thirty minutes?" Echo nods, too tired to say more.

Thirty minutes later a surprised Tech watches the ARC trooper they rescued sink alarmingly sharp teeth into the wrist of the ARC who'd accompanied them earlier. "Huh."

"Don't work with the blood brothers a lot do ya?" The ARC asks from where he's carefully holding Echo, apparently very relaxed with the biting. "Echo. You've got to breathe."

There's a snarl and the ARC winces. "Okay maybe you don't."

"Might need another volunteer Jesse." The medic - Kix - muttered. "Echo I'm going to scan you. Stay calm." He waits till he gets an acknowledgement, then starts.

"I have questions." Tech decides.

"Run me through what you know of these prosthetics and we can talk once I know he's stable."