#<- dont quote me on that its all google translate

[dreamiara]

good to know that the preparations for meeting dream are going well!!!

[kerubimcrepin]

Reviewing various Dofus-related merch without buying the merch in question [PART 1]

This post will not go into details on the Dofus novels, which were already discussed, and most of which are not buyable on the Ankama website, or available digitally anywhere on the internet (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SCAN OR PHOTOGRAPH THEM AND SEND THEM TO ME I PROMISE TO BE NORMAL AND——)

But it will go into another type of book (that I would like to solicit the scans/HD photos of, from you, dear followers) today: The Dofus Activity books for kids (which are, weirdly, easier to get, considering all of them are on the Ankama store? Weird.)

Just like in the case with the Dofus novels, all info here will be both useless and redundant, as well as mostly taken from Otakia.

Ton Aventure à Dessiner

It's a book you draw in. Otakia has only 2 scanned images, used for review purposes, and I decided to try my hand at this one, because I have trouble drawing Kerubim:

Here is my result:

I actually find the way this book explains his head pretty helpful!

Ton Livre de Stickers

It's a sticker book. It sure is stickery, however, the interesting part is that googling it revealed several more sticker books, which don't seem to be available on Ankama's site:

We live in a society.

Le Donjon Maudit - L'album dont tu es le héros

According to Otakia, and I quote, "Within the story of this book Kerubim, Simone and Joris are trapped in a magical dungeon by going to the Festival of Trools and Legends. If they fail to disarm the traps and find the treasure, they will spend the rest of their lives in this sinister place. Despite the danger, Joris is enthusiastic and sees the opportunity to prove to his Papycha that he is also a true catventurer."

Images of what the book is like, also taken from Otakia + machine translations of what is said in these pages:

The reader solves puzzles in a choose-your-own-adventure style, and the whole book is structured kinda like an episode. Can you feel the pain I feel knowing I'll never read any of these goddamn books?? 😭 i guess you win some you lose some. this is my cosmic punishment for owning five gravity falls books.

Ton Livre d'activités

This is kind of like the last book, but without the plot or the cool choose your own adventure thing.

Also there's this activity book, but ngl, I can't find any screenshots/scans of its pages in reviews, so rip bozo.

[serendipitously-enchanted]

Resources for academics on a budget

Coursera- this is one of my favorite websites right now. Its a website that has tons of online classes, made by colleges, you can take free of charge. Although some of them you have to pay for to have access to; most of the classes are free. You can also pay for a certificate (around 80$ for a class) if you want/need to (although its not a requirement). The classes are mostly stem and social science based. There are also language learning classes if you need to learn english (they have other ones too but the ones i looked at required pay). But not all of them are stem and social sciences. Look for classes you want to take and Coursera probably has at least one. I am taking a bunch of classes on paleontology and other science subjects i will probably need for that, and im taking courses of other things that interest me such as greek mythology or writing. All you have to do is sign up with an email and password. This comes in an app as well. https://www.coursera.org/

Modern States- this is a website that also gives online classes, but this one is focused on getting you ready for the CLEP exams. “The College Level Examination Program is a group of standardized tests created and administered by the College Board. These tests assess college-level knowledge in thirty-six subject areas and provide a mechanism for earning college credits without taking college courses.” Although you dont have to be taking a CLEP to take these classes. The types of classes they have are business and management, composition and literature, history and social sciences, science and mathematics, and world languages. This is a good resource if you want general knowledge on a topic. I am taking a natural science course and a french course. All you have to do is sign up with an email and password. https://modernstates.org/

Khan Academy- you have probably already heard of this one, but if you havent, or just havent signed up yet, sign up for it. Its a website that has a collection of youtube videos and written articles about topics. There can also be short tests at the end of a topic/unit. They have classes from pre-k to college level. These are topics you typically see in a high school. They have classes on math, science, arts and humanities, computing, economics, life skill, and test prep. I am taking math classes, science classes, and an art history class. This one is especially good if you have kids or are still in grade school. All you have to do is sign up with an email and password. This comes in an app as well. https://www.khanacademy.org/

Sparknotes - you probably already know about this one as well, but if you havent, sparknotes is a website that has a collection of works of literature most of which are old enough to not be affected by copyright anymore. They also have translations of the works to modern day english. They provide the full text, a summary, summaries of the characters, literary devices, questions and answers, quotes, quizzes, and essays. They also provide information on other topics such as math, biology, philosophy, chemistry, and much more. You do not have to sign up for this one if you dont want to, but you can. There is also sparknotes plus which you have to pay for. It gives you an ad-free experience, study notes, flashcards and quizzes, ap english test prep, and more. https://www.sparknotes.com/

Quizlet- you have probably heard of this one too. quizlet is a website made for you to study with. It has a ton of subjects you can look at to study with, you can also make your own study set. Within a study set you can use flashcards, learn (which quizzes you on your knowledge until you have everything correct), write, spell, test, and you can play while you learn with matching and a game called gravity. Its a good resource to use if you need help remembering something, such as vocabulary of a language you are learning. You do not have to sign up but you can. This comes in an app as well. https://quizlet.com

Youtube- you probably know this one too, but youtube can also be used to learn topics instead of just being for entertainment. This one has probably the widest range of things to learn on it. There are people posting about almost any topic you can think of. I personally use it for paleontology. There are also “less academic” topics you can learn about such as fashion. This is a good website because a lot of the people here show their faces and tend to have more of a camera presence than people from some of the other websites, it also tends more to lean on entertainment than just giving you fact after fact. You dont have to sign up but you can (although you probably already have an account). This comes in an app as well. https://m.youtube.com/

Sci-hub- this website is a bit different from the ones ive already talked about. Its a pirating website for looking at academic articles put behind a pay wall. This is good for people who want to have access to papers on a topic but dont have the money to sign up for 10 different websites for research.

Your local library- libraries are incredibly important, but they cant stay open unless people are actively using them. So if you have a library close to you, sign up for it! Signing up for a library card is completely free, the only time you would have to pay is if you have an overdue book (but even then its probably only a couple of $). Sign up for libraries and you’ll get access to tons of free books, but you can also get access to laptops as well if thats something you would need. Its also just a quiet place to chill out while you study/read.

Museums- museums can cost money to get into, but depending on the museum you go to it doesnt have to be a lot of money. There are also museums for science or art it doesnt just have to be science museums all the time if thats not something you are interested in. If you have time and a bit of money museums are great resources to learn about new things. Recently i had a week long break at my school and my family and i went to 3 different museums to look at their prehistoric life exhibits. Its really cool to go and see fossils in person. We went to my states Children’s Museum (which has a good exhibit on dinosaurs), the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Museum of Natural History in Ohio.

Used bookstores- used bookstores are good for getting a cheaper price on books that you want. Although sometimes they may not have a very good selection. However, there are websites online that function as used bookstores would just with a wider range of books.

[rinbowaman]

seeing ur note at aftermath part two had me giggling reiii sorry but tumblr is dogshowing you girl what the actual fuck 🤣🤣 you might need to restart or smthg we don’t want these to happen to ur future works🫡

the first part…us walking up the stairs with that *amazing gown it’s so pretty I’m ngl I can just imagine this whole scene in my head just playing and it has me screamingg like UGH QUEEN. GODDESS. HELL YEA I LOVE THAT FOR US JUST PERIODT

The amount of fluff and love in this chapter is oozingg oml rei this is your fluff era‼️‼️

also, the niki appearance in this chapter?! just what we needed frfr like us getting scared cus ngl I would be hella scared too man but heeled asking niki to set the entire river aflame not because he can’t handle them but because their screams are scaring US

FUCKING HELL YEAH EVERYBODY MAKE WAY HEELEL AND HEETHAN IS THE MFING STANDARD 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️ (I’ve said this before but anw hihi)

I absolutely absolutely just adore the scene where we play peekaboo from behind his throne and us sneaking to quickly sneak a gentle kiss on his cheek and heelel loving it?! LAWDDD THAT PART IS OOZING WITH FLUFFY GOODNESS might just be one of my fav scenes in SE7EN

and us finally tearing down our walls and living so happily in hell with him….I mean realena in this story is a lot stronger than me cus the moment heelel takes me I would’ve given everything to him right that fucking second 😌

ALSO THE PART WHERE HE SPEAKS TO HER IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES!!!!!!! I wonder how you chose the diff languages you were gonna include lmao but you’re amazing reina ilysm

And heelel’s speech at the very end…it’s got me in tears this chapter is so so beautiful 🥹🥹🥹

<3!!! my love, i'm so glad you were touched by this chapter bc its gotta be one of my all time faves out of all the series i've drafted. heethan obviously has some really good moments too, you're right, both him and heelel.....everyone make way! lol.

the peekaboo scene was just...i love that scene so much. i also really like it when you guys go over to sit by his feet, in between his legs and rest your head against his kneecap, like i just love that image in my head so much....especially as he's running his fingers through your hair? like lawd....have mercy.

so the languages....my favorite part in the entire series...ngl. i know for sure i have some german and tagalog speakers, i didn't include spanish this time bc....not to spoil...but heethan (in previous chapters) has spoken some spanish, but there's still more scenes that is coming your way where heethan speaks in spanish. so i left those out and am saving it for heethan. for this part, i wanted to show love to my Tagalog and german speakers, also arabic (i'm pretty sure i have two that i can think of if i'm assuming correctly) and i dont think i have any korean speaking readers (if i do yooooo.....you guys got the best quote in my book) but i mainly included the korean one just bc welll.....heeseung is korean lol.. so i just used google translator to translate all of hte quotes and they came out BEAUTIFULLY. i love that he said all those things to you bc he felt that one language didn't have enough words to express his love for you.

but guuuuuuuurlll...wait until MF part 3...you about to lose your shit (in a good way) lol.

[uncannndy]

Fandy watch me put my translating skills to the test i think youd be amazed *ahemeaeh*

i love you guys

Jester dogs

I love wood

Why are yall like this to a random stranger online

Why love granite, uh ginger uh er fuck uh erm uhm uh yeah m

Rich of dragon (in both snese of the word) wood

Pls kill me

Youre so axcurate yho 😭😭 pop off anna youre learning 🥳🥳🥳🎊🎂💕💖

[stylesnews]

Anons be acting like being an UA and a fully formed person with opinions that you don’t publish are mutually exclusive. Stylesnews can walk AND talk at the same time, y’all.

Exactly. It's like we're a machine and our job is to please others regardless of our personal opinions, likes, views and etc. I've said it a million times: stylesnews, while we're happy it's a source of thousands and thousands of people, it's OUR source, for us, OUR baby and OUR home, we're the ones living in it and we're the ones that gotta be happy with it at the end of the day! Theres a few UAs that popped outta pettiness after we raised this one but it's not easy keeping a blog going and updating and trying to live somewhat a regular life when these things don't have regular working hours. All of us have anxiety and it peaks sometimes because of this UA, we all have gone all nighters to make sure people in Europe and Australia wake up to pictures, quotes and etc, we have all woken up early af to make sure people in North and South America get the content on time, we've had to reach out to friends and good ol google to help translating things in languages we could only dream of understanding, to make sure everyone's being understood and information is accessible to all, as much as possible, we've dedicated so much time to this UA because its our home, we wanna be able to access our main blog's dash and reblog from a source we trust, that we KNOW we won't be seeing anything WE dont wanna see and we can have a pleasant fandom experience, and you wanna click that anon feature, all high and mighty, and come here tell me how to do things? Nah, I don't think so. 

[happy-concepts]

hot take on toxic lgbtq relationships in veggietales

larry from veggietales doesnt deserve the tomato. ive only seen one episode but in it this tomato puts together a really thoughtful welcome back alter for larry after he comes back from like hungarian camp or something idk its a language thing and on the banner the tomato writes like “wb” in another language cause thats apparently what the cucumber was learning while sucking dick in the outhouse or whatever else happens in summer camp for legal adults idfk ive never been to one

anyway what the tomato did was so thoughtful and larry just acts like hes weird and doesnt even seem to care cause he got lost and went to a british summer camp or something EVEN THOUGH THE TOMATO COULD NOT HAVE POSSIBLE KNOWN THAT and what a jackass honestly. what a fucking asshole your partner did all of that for you and you cant even be the least bit grateful for all that effort? boy doesnt have hands and also lives in like alternate vegetable universe (im not sure what the lore is so dont quote me on that) so he cant just type welcome back into google translate.  i know it sounds like im projecting here but i swear to god im not i have never been in a serious relationship or done anything that passionate for someone, i just really dont like how larry veggietales treats his boyfriend whose name i cant remember. it met be tom 

[revolutionary-demosthenes]

Louis de Manoël de Végobre (Pt. 1/2)

Essay 11

Louis de Manoël de Végobre. A friend (or more?) of John Laurens and Francis Kinloch, a lawyer, a scientist. I wanted to learn more about him after I reblogged that last quote, and found some interesting things so I figured I’d share them with you!

Keep in mind: I'm still doing research and finding new things about De Végobre... only it all has to be (google) translated because most of the writings on him are in French. So keep in mind the margin of translation errors while reading this. This first one will just talk about De Végobre’s life in general, and in the next one I’ll talk more about his sexuality and relationships. 

Louis de Manoël de Végobre was born on November 12, 1752, to Charles de Manoel de Vegobre and Louise de Vignolles-de-La-Valette. I assume he was probably named after his mother. He had several siblings, but sadly (as with John Laurens) some of them died very young.

I was unable to find much more about his childhood, so fast forward to 1774. 

De Végobre was a friend of the Chauvets, a family in Francis Kinloch and John Laurens’s social circle in Geneva in 1774. He taught Laurens math, and they became good friends. After Laurens left for England, De Végobre kept up a correspondence with him... one that was obviously not completely reciprocated, as this is what Végobre said in the beginning of a letter to John Laurens on February 18, 1775:

“Sir,

There is the second; shall a third be? I dont know, but you know. When I have wrote [&] sent an epistle, I am always imagining the history of it; I long to see it [illegible], arriving, read, and answered; I Keep in my memory its date, I calculate the time of its arrival, and I impatiently expect the time of receiving an answer. This longed for answer arrives at length; then I am contented, and beginning another letter I prepare myself for enjoying still such a pleasure. But—if no answer… What must I think? I am concerned, sometimes a little angry. How does my friend do? Is he sick, absent, or idle in answering? Suspense is a hard thing.

I have wrote to you on the 24th of December, you have not yet answered. If you are guilty of negligence, pray do not aggravate your fault by a longer delay. Fault, I say; indeed I think it to be a fault to let pass over a great time without answering the letter of one who deserved answer. There is the end of my chiding, and I hope my thanks will soon began: I mean, that my second stroke shall get me an answer. Indeed, I would be sorry if your continued silence would hinder me from setting pen to paper a third letter.”

“Suspense is a hard thing.” Pull those heartstrings, Louis!

“I would be sorry if your continued silence would hinder me from setting pen to paper for a third letter.” This is so hilarious and sarcastic. Like, “I would be so sorry, John, if I didn’t write you again because you DON’T EVER WRITE BACK... that would be really sad, John.” 

At the end of this same letter, De Végobre also mentions, “Kinloch will not write to you, as he says, being a little angry with you because you dont answer his letter…” So basically, it seems these three were very close in Geneva, but Laurens didn’t write to Kinloch and De Végobre nearly as much as they wanted. And they let him know this was the case. Some possible explanations for this:

Laurens was busy. Studying law.

Laurens being jealous and it being painful for him to remember Geneva and his friends there. This one is more speculative, but since Laurens didn’t want to leave Geneva, and seemed very happy there, it’s possible that the letters Kinloch and De Végobre sent made Laurens feel jealous that he wasn't in Geneva with them. 

Maybe Laurens was just “idle in answering.” This was not unusual for him.

Anyway. For age reference here, in 1776 De Végobre would’ve been around 24, and Kinloch 21.

De Végobre finished learning law around this time, and became a lawyer. 

After Laurens left for London, a young man (aged 18) came to Geneva, and his name was Gabriel Manigault. He and Végobre became friends, and according to Evolution of a Federalist, William Loughton Smith of Charlestown (1758-1812) by George C. Rogers, jr:

“De Vegobre in a letter of June 7, 1776, after thanking Laurens for ‘the pretty Swift,’ told of being charmed with Manigault, whom he taught geometry and who taught him French and English belles-lettres. They often walked together and on Saturday evenings would visit Kinloch, who lived one league in the country and there they might stay until Sunday or even Monday."

In some ways it seems here that Gabriel replaced Laurens. He was a new student of De Végobre’s, who also was teaching De Végobre English, something Laurens did as well. De Végobre wrote Laurens on Dec. 24 1774, “For (putting aside all friendship) you have been my first teacher in English tongue, at every progress I made in this language, at every delight (and many are) I always remember that I am obliged to you for that...”

Gabriel was also a friend of Kinloch’s, it appears, since he and De Végobre were apparently staying multiple days with him regularly. 

However, the trail on De Végobre runs pretty cold after 1776. He eventually came back to Geneva in 1784. According to the book La France protestante: ou, Vies des protestants français qui se sont fait un nom dans l'histoire depuis les premiers temps de la réformation jusqu'à la reconnaissance du principe de la liberté des cultes par l'Assemblée nationale; ouvrage précéde d'une notice historique sur le protestantisme en France, suivi de pièces justificatives, et rédigé sur des documents en grand partie inédits, Volumes 7-8 by Eugene and Émile Haag*, “[De Végobre] was appointed secretary of the first appellations then lord of the commands of Peney and Champagne; but political events stripped him both of his place and his fortune.”

There’s also a possible letter from him to Laurens from 1781, but I think it’s in a private archive.

De Végobre left Geneva for unclear reasons. (La France Protestante Vol. 7-8 by Eugene and Emile Haag simply says “Domestic affairs, then political circumstances kept him away from Geneva for several years, where he did not return until 1784.”) The political circumstances, however, may have been the Genevan Revolution.

“In 1814 Geneva having recovered its independence, de Végobre became a member of the Representative Council, where he sat until 1833 and where he displayed great activity. In 1815 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court, and he held the office until in 1826, when, believing that his strength was declining, he resigned.” (from La France Protestante, Vol. 7-8 by Eugene and Émile Haag.)

De Végobre was interested in science, particularly physics. He was knowledgable enough that he even filled in for a sick science professor Marc-Auguste Pictet once!

De Végobre did not have many published works. There’s one called Discours pour servir d'introduction à un ouvrage posthume de François-André Naville, ci-devant conseiller d'Etat de la République de Genève, and another titled Sur le jury dans les procès criminels.

As for De Végobre’s personality, he seems to have been a pretty affectionate friend and generous as well. A man who knew De Végobre said that it was “by his amiable and serene character that he shone; neither sad trials, nor the age which often makes selfish and morose, did not alter in him this benevolence, this warmth of heart which made him so precious to his friends.”**

De Végobre never married. Again quoting La France Protestante, Vol 7-8 by Eugene and Émile Haag, “He [De Végobre] lived with his sister Anne Charlotte, who died Sept. 28, 1840 [...] This young lady also left fond memories. Although her fortune was small, her charity was inexhaustible. She was one of the founders of the Asile des orphelines de Genève, an establishment which until its last day was the object of her constant care.”

The “founding an orphanage” draws some Eliza Hamilton parallels. 

Louis de Manoël de Végobre died in 1840, at around 88 years old.

*all the quotes from this book were google translated from French, and because of the long title, in the rest of this post I just refer to this book as “La France Protestante, Vol. 7-8.”

**google translated from French 

[illfoandillfie]

ok sorry but how many people do yall think rog has ever slept with cos i’m guessing four figures no lie

okay, i don’t normally respond to messages like this because, frankly, i dont really feel like its my place to speculate on roger’s sex life. Theres a difference between writing a fiction story with a character named after and inspired by him and discussing his actual personal life which i have no real knowledge about. What he gets up to in his free time is between him and the women he does it with. but i didn’t really feel able to ignore this one. please don’t take this as me telling you off or shutting you down or anything like that. If you want to speculate about roger’s body count thats up to you, go nuts with it. and i love when you guys message me and I don’t want to discourage you from feeling like you can talk to me or just send me your random thoughts or whatever about any subject. But I feel like I need to address why I disagree with this sentiment. Also so I can ask ya’ll to please stop asking me questions like this. 

So firstly, just to get this out of the way. 1000 is a lot. even 100 is a lot. I think if rog had slept with 1000+ people he’d have a least a few illegitimate kids and probably would have been checked into rehab for sex addiction (not to mention STIs and such because lbr people in the 70s specifically probs werent the most careful especially if drugs were involved). I mean even if we were going to say Rog got lucky with a different woman after every show we wouldn’t reach 1000. According to google, Queen played around 700 shows in their entire career. If we add shows played by The Cross thats only another 67 odd shows (according to wikipedia). 

now, i think there are 3 things that contribute to this idea of roger as especially promiscuous. 1. His attitude/demeanour/general way he sells himself. 2. the generally held conceptions about rock stars and rock star behaviour. and 3. what i’m going to call fandom dumbassery (but i mean that with a lot of love) 

So lets start with the man himself. Roger Taylor is loud and opinionated and not particularly humble. He knows he’s talented and attractive though for at least some time he was a little self-conscious about how feminine he looked. He’s always up for a laugh, likes to party and has admitted to enjoying his drink and his women. He’s had kids with two different women, who’s relationships “overlapped”, and is currently married to a third. At least that’s the perception we can gleam from his interviews, behind the scenes videos, and other public appearances. 

It’s easy to see how that image leads to accusations of being a womaniser and a cheater and basically a bit of a slut lmao. But here’s the thing. I think Roger, in part, markets himself that way. The thing is, if you look at his solo songs and the relationships he currently has with his kids and their mothers, and things other people have said about him/his relationships over the years, I think it’s fair to say he also has a bit of a romantic streak maybe? idk if thats the best way of describing it...he’s self confessed to not being a fan of marriage and the like but he’s not opposed to writing and singing love songs and seems to believe in ~love~ as a concept/power. He certainly cares deeply for those closest to him. Whether or not that translates to an agreement with monogamy I can’t say for certain. It’s hard to draw conclusions here because a lot of what we know of his personal life was fed to us through magazines and news paper gossip column articles and they were never looking for the truth, they were looking for scandal and sensationalism. 

For instance the whole thing with the overlapping relationships. I think most people who have read anything about roger and dom and debbie realise that it’s not as cut and dry as “he was cheating with debbie and left dom for her” even though that was the story being sold by the press at the time. The reality (or at least the version closer to reality since obviously no one outside of them and whoever they were closest with knows all the nitty gritty details) is that rog and dom had already split when they got married. it was a marriage of convenience to make sure her and the kids would be looked after financially etc even after he’d moved out. So while it looked to the public like he married one chick and 30 odd days later was spotted with another, there really wasn’t anything untoward happening.  I’m not saying he never had casual hookups or one night stands and i’m not saying he never cheated, but I do think some of it’s been exaggerated, whether by him to encourage the rock star perception or by newspaper/magazine articles.

Now, obviously, we have stories of rog, particularly in the late 60s and into the 70s, being with multiple women. There’s that bit in the Interview with a Queen “Groupie” (which is a fantastic read and i defs recommend checking it out if you havent already) where she talks about roger being a chick magnet and says that, at the time, it was pretty common to sleep about. But, she also says she didnt notice him doing it more or less than anyone else and seemed to mostly be with Jo (his girlfriend at the time). This is the same Jo that got a mention in the Queen in 3D book (”i think we all had the feeling that these two were together for life, but it was not to be”). Conversely, we have that quote (which i cannot find rn but i’ll link it when i do) about roger sometimes having one girl upstairs while another waited in the garage for them to be finished. I think it was about Rog in the mid-late 60s in Truro but whatever. Obviously he wasn’t anywhere near celibate and it’s likely was sleeping with people outside of his relationship(s). But one has to assume that as he got older those kinds of antics stopped happening, at least as frequently.

There is one potential story that I remember reading somewhere along the way about Roger cheating on Debbie while she was pregnant. But, take that with a grain of salt because I can’t find the article again and also I think it was from like The Sun or something equally as rubbish. The press was notoriously always printing mean shit about the boys and that might have been another thing they published to create scandal. Even so, if we assume it’s legit that is still only 1 story. Not to throw him under the bus but Brian is the one with multiple confirmed affairs, who literally wrote songs about it all. So why is Roger the one with sleazy reputation? 

This is where my second and third points come in. There is a pervasive idea about what it means to be a rock star. The whole trashing hotel rooms, sleeping with groupies, passing out drunk every night thing. And I’m sure that Queen was like that to an extent. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that all of them got up to shit on the road. Between innuendo laden interviews and songs, videos and accounts of their parties, stories CT has put online, and other stories like the one of Roger bringing out lines of coke as dessert when he was having dinner with motley crue. They definitely embraced the rock and roll lifestyle. And I think with Roger’s personality being what it is, it’s easy to link him to those traditional rock star tropes and say it was all true all the time. I also think Roger has done nothing to counter those beliefs. He’s been open about how he wanted to be a rock star since the minute he picked up a guitar, he’s labelled himself as a great lay in magazines, he’s joked about girls pulling their tits out over dinner in interviews (though he said he didnt take her home), he’s written songs like One Night Stand and Dirty Mind and Airheads which explicitly mention his preference for women and alcohol. I think it’s fair to say he’s kind of encouraged that view of himself. Whether it was just a side effect of being part of such a well known band and having such a boisterous demeanour/personality, or whether it was intentional as a version of promotion i don’t know. maybe a mix of them? I mean I’m sure it didn’t hurt sales and stuff. it’s the whole guys want to be him, girls want to be with him thing, right? Maybe that’s just me being cynical though lmao. 

Anyway, the fandom brain has taken all of that and compressed it into memes and jokes about rog being the band slut. Which i’m not complaining about, lord knows i’ve made the same jokes and reblogged the same posts and used those tropes in my fics. They’re funny and lend themselves to interesting fic concepts. Plus, i think roger is the sort of person who would probably laugh about most of it. But it’s an idea that keeps feeding into itself through fandom, perpetuating what is probably a misguided view of his personal life.

Again, I am sure he’s had his fair share of fun and I’m not trying to make out that he was always perfect or whatever, but I don’t think he’s been with as many women as the popular discourse would imply and I certainly don’t think he’s in the 4 digit numbers. 

[winnerloser]

idk who needed to hear this today but 

if you use fanart for anything, you give credit for it.

usually i would just implore you guys to at your own discretion but. 

i think sometimes people forget that if you use fanart without explicitly asking for the author’s permission, that's stealing. but obviously no one has ill intent behind it with this hobby, which is why crediting is important. it’s the least you can do.

it doesnt matter how much you use the fanart. even if it only appears on your blog once. even if it’s just a throwaway icon for a gag. even if you replace the icon with new icons from somewhere else. if it was on your blog at some point, and you don’t intend on deleting it, and it’s still on there, you give credit for it.

there’s maybe some leeway if you commissioned the art and/or the artist already cosigned you to using it without giving permission. but that’s the only special instance i can think of.

in that same vein, please just look on artist’s profiles to see if they allow reposting in the first place. if their account says no reproduction/no reposting/DONT USE MY ART.... don’t use it. if the bio is in japanese, chinese, korean, whatever- google translate it. i know google translate can suck but it’ll easily convey what you need to be looking for. 

if you’re one to think that you don’t want to use source media like screenshots or mangacaps because fanart is prettier, don’t ignore the fact that the people providing you the luxury to do so are just that- people, who spent hours to draw what could amount to just one or two icons. who could’ve drawn what you were using as a commission for someone else. who more than likely posted the image without any idea what you’re using it for-- more importantly;

without any idea what you’re using the image to represent, what messages you’re trying to convey- with their image. the fact that the subject is a copyrighted character/isn’t theirs doesn’t change the fact that the drawing in and of itself is still their creation.

it would behoove you to start keeping tabs of the sources you intend to pull from. if you see a piece from pixiv you think you’ll consider pulling from- pluck it, save it, so later when you open photoshop you’re not sitting with the pulled image thats titled computer jibberish with no artist’s signature.

YOU KNOW WHAT? i’ll go you one even better than that.

When you save an image from pixiv - this one for example, by default it’ll save it as 78827921_p0_master1200.jpg.  78827921 is the image ID. https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/78827921 will take you back to that image. Plug in any other ID, and it’ll go back to its source. There you go. Easy if you accidentally forgot to keep tabs.

nobody is entitled to the usage of another person’s art, and if you use the excuse that [just by virtue of OP posting it on the internet, it’s free gain], that’s bullshit.

if you post anything- even a text post or roleplay thread- going by that same logic, anyone should be allowed to reblog it, remix it, go to town on it; it’s on the open internet, after all... right? No. you’re entitled to security in the things you post. you don’t really need to say “don’t/ask to reblog” in the tags for people to get the hint to not or ask first if they feel inclined to. if you believe you’re entitled to that comfort and respect, i don’t see why that mindset can’t be translated to fit the situation of artists. even if you don’t give a shit how your stuff gets circulated, at least try to look at it in the way that not everyone is you.

and not everyone is me, so some may be wondering still why they can’t just go ahead and do what they want so long as they’re not hurting people/keeping it lowkey. i mean, at the end of the day, there’s nothing i can do about it either. you can totally do whatever you want, im not denying that. but just know that you’re not 100% in the clear from getting discovered by somebody. you’re not impervious to being found. and reposting/art being used or transformed without credit or consent is a very real reason that artists get upset or even sometimes lock their profiles, delete, or stop drawing/posting, or stop making their art publically available. this is NOT just a western philosophy. asian artists do this just as well- hell, you could even say that some are even more stringent about etiquette when it comes to treating their works with respect. that includes reposting policies.

if you’re too tired/busy/lazy/forgetful/cursed to credit, that’s 100% not an excuse lol. or if you’re thinking, crap, i have all these nicely done assets that i’ve created but it’ll be too difficult to go back and retroactively find the sources!

idk what to tell u but tough titties bro thats a you problem*

uh, so to end this:

再版ポリシーが破られている場合は、お知らせください。すぐに画像を削除します。このブログから利益を得ることも、失礼することも意図していません。再版は許可されているが、クレジットがない場合は、お知らせください。修正いたします。ありがとうございます、失礼します。

如果违反了您的转载政策，请告知我们。我会立即删除图像。它无意从此博客中受益或无礼。如果允许转载，但信用不正确，请告知我们。我会马上改正的。谢谢，不好意思。祝好

this is in my credit’s page at the bottom. i can’t vouch for the japanese, but i can say with more certainty that the chinese is legible. if someone is better at japanese and has any adjustments they’d recommend, please do so! it’s just saying that i don’t intend to cause harm or disrespect by borrowing the artwork, and that at any of the artists’ discretion, whether i’m violating their repost policy or not, they are urged to reach out to me and tell me to remove their art if they don’t want it on my blog. feel free to snatch it and use it for your credits page, or write something similar in lieu of that. i’m 100% in support of that.

please be conscious and considerate of the people who work hard and do a good deal of the heavy lifting for you to be able to make your blog pretty and aesthetic in the first place. i think the bounty of beautiful and high-quality art for the pokemon fandom- or for any popular fandom for that matter- sometimes makes us forget that it isn’t a commodity. it’s something that when taken for granted, can genuinely affect others who work hard to provide content for people to enjoy. at the end of the day, they do this to make themselves and others happy. seeing others take that work without any acknowledgement to them is demoralizing, don’t think that they’ll get enough recognition from others to compensate for you. that’s frankly not how posting art on social media works at all.

i mean, even if this doesn’t convince you, i can only hope it’ll spur you to be more conscious in the future. 

*i get that things happen and this isn’t meant to shame you if you happen to be one to do any of the things other than credit. but know that you don’t... really have an excuse when there’s so many different options, shortcuts and alternatives available to you. you don’t really cite from a shitton of different sources for your paper and then go back to pick through every individual quote to find where it came from to avoid plagiarizing. you just.. make a note or works cited. it takes like, 15 extra minutes. if you’re going to spend hours on photoshop or writing fancy infoposts, you can spend an extra 15 making a works cited.

[girl-bateman]

Moodboard FAQ

Below are some frequently asked questions, as well as examples of what sort of moodboards you can/are often requested.

Where is the moodboard I requested?

A lot of times people don’t realize I've already posted their moodboards without them getting a notification for it. So please, before you ask me about yours specifically, check my tags!! If you remember what you requested, for example "intj slytherin" you could just search "intj" and see if its there. If you still, having put in a request over three months ago, cant find it, then just ask me about it! :)

When are requests open?

I always put in my bio when requests are open and you'll notice my ask box is probably closed if requests are closed as well. If requests are closed please respect that and don't message me a request anyway. If requests are closed it means im working on the requests I already have and I won't open up requests again until i've posted all of them.

How many requests do you have at the moment?

I dont have the energy to count every single one but around 100 most of the time, depending on how long ago I opened my requests. When my requests are open I get 5-10 requests per day and I usually keep it open for AT LEAST a week.

How many times can I request?

I would advice you not to request more than three times per open request period. If my request have been closed for a while and then re-open you can put in new requests, despite the number of requests you have put in before.

Should I request by giving you a message or an ask?

I prefer you send me an ask but won’t mind if you send it via the messages either.

What information should I give when requesting?

Be as specific or non-specific as you like but if an element in an aesthetic is important to you such as the colors or overall vibe, let me know because otherwise I will just do my own interpretation. If you don’t mind getting surprised you don’t really have to provide that much details. But if you want the moodboard to be specific, for example be in vibrant colors or have a pastel theme, TELL ME. 

What can I request?

Basically anything:

OC, RPG, D&D Characters ? - yes

(Moodboard for a Game of Thrones OC)

Tv shows (with either all characters or just a simple one) ? - yes but please specify if you want a moodboard of the show or specific ones for each character.

(A snippet from a B99 Moodboard with all the main characters)

(A overall Moodboard for the show “The Society”)

Ships ?- yes, unless it makes me feel really uncomfortable (I’ll let you know if it does)

(A Moodboard for Shuri x MJ)

Playlist moodboard ?- yes, but keep in mind that if I know nothing about the character/ship I might not do it bc it takes a lot of time and i want to be able to do it justice.

(A Stormpilot Playlist+Aesthetic)

Name Aesthetic ?- yes

(A name Aesthetic for the name “Elsa”)

A  moodboard just based on your blog/ how I perceive you ?- yes.

(A Moodboard based on myself)

A specific moodboard for yourself ?- yes but please put in something about your personality (hogwarts house, mbti, zodiac) as well as your appearance and gender to make it a bit easier for me to get it right.

(A “Enfj / Cancer sun / Taurus moon / Leo rising” Aesthetic)

Couple Aesthetic ? - yes, but please be very specific with the genders or I will just make it gay on default.

(A couple Aesthetic for a Gemini (m) x Virgo (f))

Fanfiction Aesthetic ?- yes, just link the fanfiction you want me to make a moodboard out of and specify if there is a special quote you want in it :)

( A snippet of a Fanfiction Aesthetic for the fic  “Written on your heart”) 

Song Aesthetic ?- yes, but if its a song that is not in english, make sure there is a translation of it somewhere online (I dont think i can trust google with the translation haha)

(Aesthetic for the song “Sweet Dreams TN” by The Last Shadow Puppets)

If you have any more questions, let me know and I will add it to this post :)!

[tillman]

im sorry if you already answered this before but im interested in reading the arthurian legends. what books do i start off with?? google isnt being too helpful ;;

i love answeing this like once a week its so funny to me . let me find my most comprehensive answer ive done so far i have to write an essay or id go crazy again. heres a direct quote from one like 2 months ago sorry its long i have a problem and its called special interest disease. (rewrote the section on individual knights so they have actual tales to google) :

u can always start with something like le mort d’arthur! theres modern retellings of it that are WAYYY easier to read than the actual 14th century text LMAO. it has a lot of info about most of the major players youll see in any arthurian legend like arthurs rise to fame, kay being shoved in the court, a bit of lancelots tale (at least the copy i have cut like . most of it ??? *SHAKES* YOU CANT REFERENCE THE JOYOUS GARD WITHOUT EXPLAINIGN HOW LANCELOT FREED IT FROM THE EVIL WIZARD, MALORY!!!!!!), like all you would ever need to know about tristan, gawain and his 4 weirdo brothers, mordred, guenevere, ect. its really interesting from just a fun chivalrous romp to also see like.. the culture of the time.

from there i would just see what you like. i can recommend a lot of the romances (tristan and isuelt by gottfried, while not finished, is a BLAST i really love it - lancelot and the lord of the distant isles is amazing and i think my favorite modern rendition of a legend ive read so far cus i cant . find any copies of the vulgate cycle atm…. sad, the book of gareth is a part of le mort d’arthur but i think my favorite bit ? its very fun i really love gareth hes cute) and im still working through the more combat whatever tales rn (gawain and the green knight is kinda slapping? oh gawain sir i adore you but please stop beheading random women and knights you have young impressionable brothers and gaheris is already a freak)

uhmmmmmmm yeah . in short i think the best way to get through All Of This lore is to pick a knight of the round table and branch out from there. starting with something like malory’s le mort d’arthur or even something like pyles more modern king arthur and his knights is pretty good for getting an introduction of some of the main characters/stories. if u ever wanna know more about a knight i . know too much .

i think if ur going the one knight and branching route u wanna go with a Major knight, no palomides or torres even if theyre funny as fuck. Tristan has any version of tristan and isolde. i recommend gottfried’s version cus hes a wonderful author with interesting opinions on loveLancelot has an entire cycle for him but its hard to find full texts of unless your library is good. the vulgate cycle/lancelot-graal cycle is really good from the bits ive read, and if u want a more modern way to ease urself into it theres an adaptation of the book of galehaut which is killer (lancelot and the lord of the distant isles) and theres also the knight of the cart from Troyes (*SHAKES MY FIST AT THE SKY* FUCK YOU TROYES)Gawain has a few. u could look to the welsh sources (which ive been meaning to.. srry i dont have much info on them :-() or something like gawain and the green knight.Mordreds pretty prominent in a lot of different sources which is fun . u can find him everywhereOH TROYES PERCEVAL. ive heard that ones good. gotta get an english translation i only jave the 12th century french version so i cant really speak for the tale itself. troyes . oh troyes. i certainly wnat to beat his head in with a large mallet . 

ok i hope any of this made sense sorry i just started infodumping and didnt stop but lemme know if u need help finding a pdf or wanna know more about a certain knight/tale whatever i am always willing to talk about arthurian legends :-)

[nomorevanillabeanicecream]

no more vanilla bean ice cream

they were out of vanilla bean ice cream, they had vanilla, french vanilla, sweet cream vanilla and cheesecake vanilla, but not vanilla bean, when did everyone all of a sudden get into vanilla bean, everyone was a pig they could not care less about the bean in the vanilla or not, but now apparently everyone was into vanilla bean ice cream because last week there was a full row of umpqua vanilla bean ice cream and now there was none

so I’m waiting in line at safeway with my subpar vanilla ice cream after I had gone on a much needed quarantine run right after spending two hours texting my friend and she was telling me about how google owns all the data in the world and not only has enough data to know me better than myself, but since they know everyone else’s data too, they know my friends data so they know me in context, the whole thing was very depressing so depressing i didnt even want to use a period in my writing anymore because what the fuck was the point of punctuation anyway in this world, i would still be nice and use commas, just to give my fingers a break and be able to get a thought in or so. 

i guess i could also accommodate for paragraphs break at visually appropriate times, it didn't matter if it was contextually appropriate or not, i was going to drop a paragraph break because i know people like paragraphs, charles dickens and dostoevsky and jane austen and leo tolstoy never made paragraph breaks that's why no one ever read their books, people just say they read them to seem smart but they never really read them they just knew it was the right thing to say that they were literary geniuses because their books were so long, see people like to lie and say they know the work of a great author even though they only read a few  quotes by them, but that was enough to say good and bad things about writers without ever knowing what the hell they did, few understand the theory of relativity but everyone calls einstein a genius. 

the thing about quarantine was that at this point i had gotten used to seeing very few people in my life and i was enjoying it so whenever i had to go to the supermarket i had to see all these people and boy were they gross, maybe i would not have seen them as so gross if had gotten my vanilla bean ice cream but i had not so, they were gross, they were all getting so fat, and fat in like weird ways, not like fat on the sides like the michelin tire guy or a cute belly like the pillsbury dough boy or like that kinda funny superfat like homer simpson or peter griffin they were just gross fat, like it looked like they had just been eating garbage and watching netflix fat, like this one guy seemed like if you got a pillowcase filled it up with hot lard and then poked two pool cues on the bottom of it, this other lady looked like a minifridge emptied into a potato sack.

the asses were the worst part, it was kinda hot so everyone was wearing shorts and it was not appropriate when they wear shorts always have that like red line right under the shorts and it does not look that great, the oddest one was the skinny ass but with fat legs, i did not get that one, the person would have no ass mass at all but then the legs were super fat i did not understand what they were doing to get their bodies to look this way, a lot of people were also walking around with wedgies, a lot of people were also walking around in pajamas covered in animal hair and it was gross, its like you have nowhere to go, you are all complaining about not having the right to go out, so when you do go out why not maybe spruce things up, honour life, honour your fellow human, no, screw that we are all going to behave like the whole entire public sphere is a big ass pijama party,

the whole facemask thing, wait before, i start talking about the facemask thing, everytime i start a new paragraph, google is trying to force me into capitalizing the first letter, it doesn't even ask me if i want to capitalize it, it just goes ahead and does it, google is such an presumptuous douche sometimes, now when i write in gmail, it autocompletes all my sentences, great so we can all sound like robots, and it does it like automatically, so i ending having to erase the lame sentence it wrote, i mean i would have probably come up with something similar or exactly the same too, after all there are only  so many ways to say goodbye, but id like to think it was my idea, these engineers had no savoir faire, just so you know, so now i hope that everytime you start to read a new paragraph you imagine me hitting the backspace button to delete their fascist capital letters, and its frustrating because im really trying to write as fast as i can, i bet you can tell

see it happened again, and its not that i just have to hit the delete, i have to get my mouse and put my cursor there so it like detects its not just on mistake i am trying to delete their smartass capital letter, so yeah to the facemask thing, the whole facemask thing was pretty dumb, i mean if the facemask was the windshield to the coronavirus i didnt get how casual people were being about, they would just pull it right down under their noise, oh great now you have all your coronavirus on your nostrils, what the hell, i didnt get it, im pretty sure noone in that safeway store had coronavirus, and it was coronavirus not covid19, what is it about us having to find dandy little names for things, it was the coronavirus and thats that, so yeah we were all carrying about these facemasks that if they were really protecting us from the coronavirus lingering in the air then we were being flagrantly irresponsible in our use, but deep down we all felt it wasnt, but we just had to wear one because it was the rule, but we all knew noone in the store had coronavirus

it may sound weird, but i think you know when someone has coronavirus, its like you can just tell, you know like other things you can just tell about a person, i remember i once went up to san francisco about a month ago, and i saw this guy on the muni line headed to the bayview that for sure had coronavirus, he wasnt coughing or anything, but i saw him and i knew he definitely had coronavirus, it wasnt because he was black or chinese or  anything, this isnt like a hidden racist joke, i could just tell, i freaked out , and i havent gone up to the city since then, and then, lo and behold they announced that a muni driver got the corona and that the bayview district had the most corona cases in the cities, see sometimes you can just tell

im pretty sure that day i even had the corona on me, i mean i didnt get it, but im pretty sure it landed on my hand, but i washed it before i touched any of my mucous parts, but it was there with me, i dont think it was from the guy on the bus thought, i think it landed from this other guy, i went to a deli to buy water, bananas, coca cola and chocolate and this guy was kinda drunk and talking real loud and coming real close and i could feel the air get really moist when he passed by me and my hand was exposed and i know that at that moment some of it got on my hand, but i didnt panic, i knew i couldnt lose my cool, i had to just play it smooth, and wait till i could get to the studio and wash my hand and everything else, i was really thorough i walked the whole way back to the studio with my hand outstretched so it wouldnt touch my jacket or anything, i could feel it was there, it was for sure there, but i played it cool and washed it and nothing happen, but i was that close 

 and thats why you have to wash your hands because you could be that close too to having coronavirus, so see im not that crazy, that the reason they recommend us all to wash our hands, because at some point it could be that close to you, and if you don't wash your hand before your touch your eye, boom you got coronavirus, crazy to think that you too could have had coronavirus on you, and you could have, but now i think there isnt that much coronavirus on things anywhere, i think the coronavirus is like hiding or something, i think the coronavirus are like finding their niches and stuff, like if you ask me i think the coronavirus right now is probably somewhere where the sun dont shine, i bet it like flew to a a dirty dive bar that was totally shut down windows boarded and everything, but its there just chilling on the sticky counter, waiting to come back in the summer, i also think it might be at like some nasty to-go food place, like there is this wing place open till midnite around my house, i bet there is a little coronavirus there, but only a little bit, and its like one of the lazy ones, so i dont think it feels like jumping on anyone

at work i have to tell the staff how to wash their hands, i tell them they have to wash on top of their hand, palm of their hand, each finger, in between fingers, under the finger nails, and up to the elbow, but i mean if they have coronavirus, and their touching my food, i think its going to get on the to go box anyway, but its the rules so i play along, i even translated the rules, and told them to sign a paper, the paper also said that they had to wear a facemask, its not like they have multiple facemasks, i mean we are going to give them a few, but its up to them to wash it, one guy asked me if he could use the same one for a few days, i told him no, but i mean even if he washes his facemask before work and then lets say he puts it in his pocket, what if his jacket has corona but his facemask doesnt, itd be a real shame if his corona jacket infected his noncorona facemask, but i saw him and i dont think he had corona anyway

im repeating the same point and the rant is losing steam, so i gotta ramp it back up, or maybe no, maybe its not all just about ranting, maybe i should tell you some good things, like ill tell you about my run, the day was so nice, it was bright and sunny, and thats really all i gotta say, the point that i have more to say about right now is that i feel like im writing like that kid from catcher in the rye, that kid was a real case, i cant say i disliked the kid, but i wouldnt hang out with him, i mean in general i wouldnt be hanging out with high schoolers, but i might hang out with him after he grows up, i think we were all like that kid at some point, and the ones that arent, are soul dead and just go to work and drink craft beer and probably become those engineers without savoir faire that figure out the code to finish my email sentences

but i also feel that i am writing likes james joyce in ulysses, those are two books that i read from cover to cover ulysses and catcher in the rye, all it takes is a good fucked up guy to write something honest and you can get me to finish it, james joyce was all about stream of consciousness, crazy to think that ulysses is regularly named the best book of the century, and it wasnt even that bad of a century for books, it was a crazy book, and it was daring and new to just expose how he felt a person thought, and i mean it was pretty smart, because that is how we think, we jump around and we get nervous and self conscious and horny and we think in simple letters, and our memories associate things weirdly, i mean dante was the best writer of all the time, but i dont know anyone that thinks inside their brain in metered stanzas, if there was such a person, i dont know if id like to meet him, it would be a lot to handle good novels have taught me a lot, they've confused me too, but overall taught me things, see life is a grey thing, like there arent absolute values, 

for us human beings, its easy to think of things as black and white, good and bad, yes or no, but thats not how it goes, there is a lot of grey area, and thats why i guess i liked ulysses, see the whole book is about this guy that is roaming around dublin, while he knows his wife is cheating on him, the last chapter is a stream of consciousness from his wifes mind, in which she just goes through her mind thinking about her past lovers and this guy she is cheating on her husband with, and ultimately she feels bad and when her husband climbs back into bed with her, shes like thinking oh there he is again, old leopold, but hes my leopold and she i guess kinda does admit to loving him, life hurts like that sometimes, a woman can still love you but cheat on you, a man can do it too, anyone can cheat on you, but still love you, anyone can hurt you and still love you, its a rough reality, remember i wrote an essay on this book, and the teacher said that i should save it and give it to the woman i marry it was so good, i didnt save it so i guess that wont ever happen, i cant even remember what i said, probably something about forgiveness and the abstract beauty of love, i was only twenty, i could have said anything

i wish i could remember what i wrote though, nowadays a lot of people are walking around with fear of intimacy issues, they are scared to open up to people, you know a lot of people are saying that they have intimacy issues, so i wanted to figure out more,  i looked it up on wikipedia and it said there were four types of people, normal people that love themselves and can share intimacy with others, people that think themselves unworthy of intimacy but seek it, people that are scared of being intimate with others out of fear of rejection, and people that have self worth but think others are undeserving of intimacy, i think the whole thing probably comes from parental stuff, that's always the freudian way of looking at things, its kind of a shame because i think people really do like laying in bed and talking comfortably with someone after a wild fuck, when i wrote the essay i didnt have intimacy issues, but i might now, i dont know, and even if  i did i dont know what type of of person i am,  i guess sometimes people do say some stupid things, and stupid things out of  a naked person are the worst kind of stupid things, whatever its wikipedia, anyone could have written, just like the original science study it supposedly based on,

ok this all getting too gooey and it lost its sharp vibe, i think that we were on a roll, when we were on the coronavirus landing places part, but then i get too serious and stuff, i do still want to talk about books i like, you know like thats one of the favorite things english teachers like to do, they like to analyze all the references that an authour made to other books, normally its the bible or the odyssey or some other greek or roman classic, like ulysses was modeled after the odyssey, i remember the teacher always talked about that, ive never read the odyssey or the iliad, ive heard they are great books, but i try not to say it myself, i do say that homer was a great poet though, but i never read his stuff, i mean ive read the first line, but i dont know the whole story or anything, i guess we are all hypocrites at some point or another, i do know however that ulysses was in one of dantes circles of hell, because he was advisor to deceit, the deceit of having that big horse full of soldiers go into to troy, so he ended up in hell, talking about hell that was another book they loved to reference, the bible, the bible doesnt see things grey, they see it black or white, this morning i woke up at four in the morning, and i couldnt get back to bed, so i pulled to a random spot and started reading proverbs, they make it seem so simple, this is good, that is is bad, i wish it were that simple, it used to be that simple like that when i was little kid, maybe it still is but,  i just refuse to see it that way

[eleventhousandfour]

tagged by @arcaydyin – thank you so much!

nickname: emma is such a short name anyway so i don’t really need a nickname haha but em / emm gender: female astrological sign: aquarius... no idea what my sun / moon / rising sign is, i just know i’m aquarius ! height: 6 ft… but tbh i never actually made it to 6ft, i never got that tall! :( i’m like a centimetre short i’m like 182cm i think so i’m technically 5’11 but 6ft sounds better hahaa sexuality: i like girls! and if you wanna put a label on that then i’m a lesbian / gay hogwarts house: definitely ravenclaw but there’s a bit of hufflepuff in me too! favorite animals: i find loads of animals cool but i suppose my favourites are arctic foxes and seahorses… wouldn’t it be so funny though if my patronus was a seahorse, like imagine it just sorta bobbing about in the air, that would be amazing...  number of blankets: if you mean number of duvets then 1 + sometimes a blanket / quilt if im cold in the winter where i’m from: the uk! dream trip: i wanna go to so many places but a) money b) I don’t have a travel buddie bc all my friends are ‘party all night!’ type people and im not lol and c) im too shy to travel on my own and make friends along the way haha when i made this account: i created it in december 2011 i think why i created this account: all my friends were getting tumblrs and i didn’t want to feel left out lol followers: a lady never tells……. jokes I have 383, it would help if more of my posts actually went in the frigging tags !!  following: too many... i will check – 2,609 wow that is too many, though i reckon a lot of those are dead / inactive the last thing I googled: ‘does tango orange have caffeine in it’ because i was ordering a takeaway online and i am avoiding caffeine… but the answer was inconclusive, and i couldn’t be bothered to waste time finding out the answer i just wanted my greek food so instead i ordered a 7up lol :) favorite musicians: sigrid is my absolute fave! also aurora and lorde and some others i like are passion pit, banks, daughter, london grammar, of monsters and men, bon iver, the xx and at the moment anything esc 2019 ofc! song stuck in your head: kill this love by blackpink do you get asks: i occasionally get asks… i got a few from an anon about skam spain the other day that made me ridiculously happy bc i never get asks haha amount of sleep: i used to be sooo good at sleeping but now it varies so much and i definitely don’t get enough… i reckon i get around 6/7 hours a night but i have discovered i can survive on like 5/6 hours... lucky number: 4 and 24 what are you wearing: dark grey skinny jeans and a t-shirt from uniqlo with a marimekko design on it... it has a blue background and white spots, but its now almost too big for me because ive lost so much weight (losing weight is a good thing because i was totally overweight and didn’t feel healthy) but because its too big it’s almost getting uncomfortable to wear bc theres just so much fabric that’s just not needed anymore lol!! it’s a little frustrating bc its one of my favourite t-shirts and its so pretty so i cant stop myself from wearing it! dream job: honestly? i don’t know... i’ve often said my dream job would be a film / tv location scout but then i have begun to realise that not all parts of the job appeal to me... like i know that i have an insane natural talent at finding out where places are filmed (and to do that i can happily spend hours looking on google maps and researching things) and that has translated into me thinking ‘that’s what a location scout does!’ but then actually, would i really be spending all my time looking at google maps and researching places? no, i probably would not... the job would be so much more than that. also would my enthusiasm disappear if it was my actual job? my passion for finding out where places are filmed is because im a) hella nosy and b) really interested in the movie / tv show / actor so i want to find it out because i just have to know and it’s fun but would that still be the case if i actually worked as a location scout? who knows! so basically i have no idea what my dream job is hahaa... instruments: i unfortunately can’t play any musical instruments because i am untalented and don’t have the patience, i blame my brother and my cousins for stealing all the musical genes in my family… languages: i speak english and english only... but there are some yiddish and scots words that occasionally crop up when im talking thanks to my family’s heritage, but i dont speak any other languages... i learnt french and spanish at school but i found them very hard and never really enjoyed learning them, although i did get a b in french at gcse so i was alright i guess but i reckon thanks to crisana and juliantina i have learnt more spanish in the past few months than i did during the two years i learnt spanish at school haha...  favorite songs: ugh i have too many faves, but sight of you by sigrid, the seed by aurora, radio gaga by queen. dancing with myself by billy idol, be the one by dua lipa, to the other side by passion pit, ribs by lorde, 33 god by bon iver, dog days are over by florence + the machine, video killed the radio star by the buggles to name but a few… random fact: ???!! i guess a random fact is that i find it impossible to come up with random facts about myself! aesthetic: exploring new places, quoting random lines from poetry or films, going to supermarkets in foreign countries, saying ‘i love you’ spontaneously, posing for endless photos in endless pretty locations, watching the sunset over a city while listening to music, enjoying the magical loveliness of everyday life…

im tagging @theelephantsvanish @etherealpondsx @lexa-el-amin @allyoursecrets @annatorvsgf @frenchcutcarrot @supuswnt @hillyan @celmurcia 

[makingscipub]

Threads, worms and science communication

I thought I had written my last post about epigenetics. But then came along some ‘worms’ and I had to write another one.

I have written about worms once before on the Making Science Public blog, in the context of science communication. And this blog post too will reflect on worms in the context of science communication, but in a slightly different context.

In 2014, when I wrote my first worm post, twitter was eight years old but still evolving. Now we live in a twitterverse where science communicators can use ‘threads’, launched at the end of 2017, to knit together tweets into a science story. Some of the best science communication now happens in ‘threads’. And this is what happened on this occasion.

So what am I talking about? On 6 June a research group working in Tel Aviv around Oded Rechavi published an article in Cell entitled “Neuronal Small RNAs Control Behavior Transgenerationally”. The gist of the article was this, as summarised in the abstract: “In Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes, parental responses can transmit heritable small RNAs that regulate gene expression transgenerationally. In this study, we show that a neuronal process can impact the next generations.”

So the hero of the study is C. elegans, the worm of wonder I had talked about in my previous blog, but not in the context of epigenetics. What has this to do with epigenetics?

Worms and epigenetics

Epigenetics is a new field in genetics and genomics, which came to prominence around the year 2000 and about which I have written since 2013. It is still finding its feet and it is still struggling with definitions and concepts. One of the most contested notions is that of ‘transgenerational epigenetic inheritance’. This phenomenon has been observed in plants, worms and some rodents, but there is, as yet, no clear evidence that it exists in mammals/humans.

In an important article summarising some myths surrounding epigenetics, Edith Heard, a renowned epigenetics researcher, pointed out: “Since the human genome was sequenced, the term ‘epigenetics’ is increasingly being associated with the hope that we are more than just the sum of our genes. Might what we eat, the air we breathe, or even the emotions we feel influence not only our genes but those of descendants?” This is at the core of speculations surrounding epigenetics and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

The worm study that caught my eye has to be seen in this context. It was announced under headlines such as “Worm parents pass on behaviours epigenetically to offspring”.

Even one of the most sceptical observers of research into transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, Kevin Mitchell, tweeted: “Some real transgenerational epigenetics… (in worms)”.

He also retweeted a ‘thread’ by the group leader, Oded Rechavi, which was a masterpiece of science communication, both verbal and visual – indeed, threading them both creatively together. We’ll come to that in a minute.

Epigenetic worms in the media

How was the study reported in the ‘mainstream media’? I had a quick look and found only four articles, all published in Israeli news outlets. I tracked down a few more on Google News. Here are some of the headlines in the print media: “Israeli study: Nervous system can transmit messages to future generations”; “Israel study says neurons, not just DNA, can affect progeny’s fate”; “Researchers say nervous system passes info to kids”; “Worms help Israeli scientists rewrite basics of genetics”.

Two things struck me: first the use of anthropomorphic terms like ‘kids’, a type of language that can create the wrong expectations, and the claim that this study overthrows basic genetics. This claim came also up in an online article on Breaking Israel News entitled “Small worms help Israeli researchers disprove basic dogma of modern biology”. This article was, I believe, the press release for the Cell study and contains a great artistic illustration of worms. It was picked up by eurekalert, where Rechavi is quoted as saying “It’s important to stress that we don’t know yet whether any of this translates to humans”.

In the past, some epigeneticists and philosophers of science have made claims about epigenetics overthrowing basic biology, claims that were greeted mainly with scepticism by other scientists.

Three other online articles reported on the study, one published in The Scientist and dryly entitled: “Worm parents pass on behaviors epigenetically to offspring”; one in Psychology Today seeing it as ‘disruptive’ to biology and neuroscience, and one in the Big Think linking it to ‘reincarnation’ (tongue in cheek)! There may be more. But let’s get to the thread.

Twitter threads

According to Twitter, “[a] thread on Twitter is a series of connected Tweets from one person. With a thread you can provide additional context, an update, or an extended point by connecting multiple Tweets together.”

Here is a random example of a ‘thread’ – there are longer and more extravagant ones out there. This one is about Mayan hieroglyphics, which I loved (it’s linked to a fantastic podcast). You can click on it and see how it goes…

Knitting a science story using words and images

So, what about this worm thread then, which got 423 retweets and 1,156 likes? Rechavi posted it in the afternoon of 6 June, just after his lab’s article came out in Cell. It starts with a bit of a firework of emojis, hashtags, and hyperlinks.

The hashtag uses a well-established epigenetic metaphor. The accompanying image (called ‘a summary model’ in the thread) provides an overview of the ‘flow’ of signals/memory, I suppose, between neurons, germline and behaviour.

The second tweet congratulates all the team members and especially the artist who created the illustration for the press release Beata Edyta Mierzwa and reproduces the sci-art image. See here. I think the image represents a tree of life/arteries of life populated by worms with little epigenetic ‘tags’ or post-it notes attached to them… but I might be wrong.

The third tweet writes about long-standing speculations about inheritance and is illustrated by a photo of a Greek statue representing a thinker. It ends by stressing: “But transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is still extremely controversial, especially in mammals”.

The fourth tweet goes into this controversy in a bit more detail, saying: “The reason it’s controversial is that there’s no good mechanism that can explain it. It was hypothesized a long time ago (19th century) that the germline is isolated from the soma, and that somatic responses (including neuronal responses) cannot become heritable”. The work presented in the thread puts forward a candidate mechanism.

This tweet is illustrated with a photo of the front cover of August Weismann’s seminal book The Germplasm – a theory of heredity (published in 1893). This tweet relates to what some news articles reported, such as one in the Big Think that stated: “Rechavi believes this research pushes back against biological dogma (the ‘Weissmann Barrier’) claiming that heritable information is segregated from somatic influences.” This seems to be much less cautious than the tweet, probably because it’s based on the ‘press release’.

As there are 17 tweets in this thread, I won’t summarise each one of them. Let’s just say each tweet is a combination of text and image. It uses images of many types and genres, such a diagrams, various plots and scatter grams, cartoons, microscopy images, photos, and so on..

However, I want to point out one more tweet, not for its image but for its text, as it engages in anthropomorphic language (also used in some headlines) which might confuse people and make them think that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance has also been demonstrated in humans:

“MORE interestingly, if rde-4 great-grandchildren are derived from heterozygous great-grandparents that expressed rde-4 only in neurons, their chemotaxis behavior is much improved. The ancestors’ neurons control the behavior of the great-grandchildren”

Reception

The response to the thread was overwhelmingly positive with lots of tweets expressing congratulations. One tweet posted a compiled thread on something called ‘threader’, which you can read here. And there is an ‘unroll’ here on a thread reader.

You can also read the compiled text of the tweets on Reddit. There are only a few comments related to that text, but three of them are interesting. One continues the anthropomorphising of the worms and creates a great metaphor: “Grandpa worm sent a zip file of worm behavior instructions to grandbaby worm”.

Two others jump into a controversy surrounding transgenerational epigenetic inheritance that been reverberating through popular science for a while: “Lamarckism wasn’t as wrong as we thought.” While somebody else says (in a longer comment): “I definitely don’t want to dismiss this but I dont know if I’d call this ‘heritable’ in the same way DNA is heritable.” Discuss!

A new type of science communication

The worm study has provided me with a great opportunity to learn about threads and to alert readers of the Making Science Public blog to the fact that there are now new ways of making science public, using the old art of intertwining words and images (see also GIFs), texts and illustrations, art and science.

There is no yet a lot of research out there examining the use of twitter threads for science communication. I found one SciCommthreads hashtag on threads, but that’s about it. There must be more!

On a different but related note: I am looking forward to a new little project with Aleksandra Stelmach and Alan-Miguel Valdez examining the power of images in the construction of popular notions of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

Image: Wikimedia Commons: C. elegans, stained

The post Threads, worms and science communication appeared first on Making Science Public.

via Making Science Public http://bit.ly/2KOJ5Q7