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THIS IS KILLING ME. HELP

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Trees, like animals, can also experience albinism, though it is extremely rare.

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idk if it's been talked about before but suzanne collins never misses a BEAT when it came to names, specifically coriolanus snow and dr volumnia gaul. just from their first names alone you can already guess what type of role might play between them (well... if you've read shakespeare's coriolanus that is. i do recommend it btw).

a lot of bits were taken from shakespeare's play for tbosas like the motif with scars / wounds / the body as being a microcosm of the nation, the common people fighting up against the government, coriolanus' hatred of the common people wanting to be "equal" to him, the rebel arc etc etc but i'm soooo so so interested in the fact that dr gaul was named volumnia and coriolanus is coriolanus because in the play, coriolanus' mother's name is volumnia!

volumnia is arguably the only female character in the play that has any depth (i am so sorry virgilia). his mother shapes her son into the warrior he is. she reminds him at every turn that he is nothing more than a weapon to be wielded. in fact, she's the one who gets her son to come back from his "revolt" against rome which ultimately lead to his demise. this parallels tbosas in the same way because dr gaul took coriolanus and molded him into the villain you would see in thg trilogy. she brought him back from d12 and then brought about the end of his humanity (a death, so to speak—at the end of the book he said something similar to this to try to save himself from lucy gray's suspicions but he was right because he did kill a part of himself to be where he is)! coriolanus snow's mother is present but off-page. her ghost haunts him, comforts him, but the 'mother' figure is the ever-present, all-knowing dr gaul.

UGH! like with just their names you could map out where they end up at the end of the story and that's literally insane. like the caliber of writing is literally next to none fr

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lucky

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So obviously in The Warrior's Apprentice, the throwaway bit about Beta Colony's historical war drama The Thin Blue Line serves to quickly cue the reader into the differing narratives around the Escobar war, show how sheltered Elena is, foreshadow the Bothari revelation, etc etc

But it's very interesting to me that the only concrete detail we got about what is actually in TTBL is that it features Cordelia killing Vorrutyer.

It says such fascinating things about Beta Colony that they didn't reassign that to another character, fictional or otherwise. From the Betan viewpoint* this woman killed a major enemy commander while in captivity, sowing maximum chaos right before the major assault where they revealed their new capabilities, possibly sealing the deal for Escobar thereby... and then came home, had a public meltdown, was accused of being a spy, tortured someone (!) to escape**, WENT TO THE ENEMY'S PLANET AND MARRIED IT'S NEW RULER.

Do they value accuracy in media so much that it was unthinkable to write Cordelia out? How do they end her storyline in the drama? Do they have to explain her disappearance? How do they spin that? I'm picturing all the starry-eyed Beta teens looking her up on idk Betapedia after seeing TTBL and going "she did WHAT?" Did they have to worry about her protesting her portrayal/ publicly setting the record straight? Hell, what did Elizabeth Naismith think of it? (My eternal question honestly).

Heck, maybe the whole point of the piece is that War Is Bad But Sometimes Necessary and they write Cordelia as having Succumbed To The Romance Of Violence which is why she runs away to Barrayar in the end, bc she could No Longer Live Among Us, in contrast to the true heroes who get to come home and live peacefully. We don't know.

But we get such few glimpses of life on Beta and this one tantalizes me.

*keeping in mind they have no idea what Ezar did

**granted that those last two bits may not be public knowledge

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Posted by Steven Payne to Facebook group British Medieval History:

People in the Middle Ages valued sweet smelling breath and bodies, seeing them as desirable, so there is a great deal of evidence from the period of tooth pastes, powders and deodorants. Contrary to the typical Hollywood depiction of medieval peasants with blackened and rotting teeth, the average person had teeth which were in fairly good condition, mainly due to the rarity of sugar in the diet. Most medieval people could not afford sugar and those who could used it sparingly. Archaeological data shows that only 20% of teeth had signs of decay, as opposed to 90% in the early twentieth century. The main dental problem for medieval people was not decay but wear, due to a high content of grit in the main staple, bread. For deodorants, soap was available for the wealthy, but a variety of herbs and other preparations were also used. Soapwort is a plant native to Europe and Asia which, when soaked in water, produces an effective liquid soap. Mint, cloves and thyme were also extensively used by simply rubbing into the skin, and alum (hydrated potassium aluminium sulphate) was an effective deodorant. I am trying to keep to 14th century technology on my pilgrimage to Canterbury, which gives me various options when looking at hygiene. In the middle ages people generally cleaned their teeth by rubbing them and their gums with a rough linen cloth, or the chewed end of a stick. There are various recipes for pastes and powders that could be put on the cloth to help clean the teeth, but I have chosen simple salt to whiten them and to aid fresh breath. I will also be using the stick method, and will be taking along a supply of liquorice root sticks for that purpose. I also have a few blocks of alum, which when rubbed into wet skin has a deodorising effect. Alum, like beeswax, was used extensively in the middle ages for a variety of purposes, also being useful: * in the purification of drinking water as a flocculant * as a styptic to stop bleeding from minor cuts * as a pickling agent to help keep pickles crisp * as a flame retardant * as an ingredient in modelling clay * as an ingredient in cosmetics and skin whiteners * as an ingredient in some brands of toothpaste The photograph shows my wash kit including home made olive oil soap, salt for the teeth, a block of deodorising alum, cloves, a boxwood comb made for me by Peter Crossman of Crossman Crafts and some liquorice root sticks, all on a woollen ‘towel’. Note that the cloves are kept in a ventilated box….this is because insects hate the smell of cloves and so a perforated box will keep them out of my kit and food bag when I am sleeping rough. TIP: If you steep some cloves to obtain the oil and put the liquid around the doors and windows of your house, it keeps spiders and insects out.

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FINALLY FINISHED THIS please ignore that it's scrunkly as fuck i need to iron it but i got too excited that it was done lol

pattern: heart sampler by badvibesonlyshop on etsy

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Religious art leaves out the best part and it’s such a goddamn shame. Livestock, Agriculture and Food is an integral part of any culture and we all need to be pushing for more realistic sheep in religious art. #FATTAILSFORJESUS

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This blog is my adult version of cutting pictures out of magazines and glueing them on to paper

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Komodo Dragon

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I support the "fiction isn't real so nothing matters" mindset but tbf at a certain point it can tip over into "the curtains are just blue" territory

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Bil Keane's Channel Chuckles

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I just heard my mom tell my brother, “when you die, you will go outside and garden until your father says you’re done” and it took me a second to realize that my brother was playing a videogame and this was not a theological discussion.

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best traits to give your characters

passively suicidal

premature ejaculation

erectile dysfunction

vaginismus

cries during sex

cries after sex

hates sex

actively suicidal

full bush AND hairy pits

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wow

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