#—imperial library

[opencommunion]

"Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead. ... Israel’s 'strategic goal' at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack. ... The purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late. Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee. ... The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or 'only' ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties. 

A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide. 

That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it. ... The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too."

[honouredsnakeprincess]

so, why do magical girls (when they are depicted with weapons) usually depicted as using weapons of a previous era? there are a hundred fencers, a dozen musketeers, but practically no magical girls with anything used after the first world war.

[elderscrollsconceptart]

"Foul Murder" - The Murder of Nerevar

Art created by Michael Kirkbride for the 10th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

Piece commissioned by The Imperial Library

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Last Chancers Omnibus Cover Art by Andrea Uderzo

[ebookporn]

Rare Editions of Pushkin Are Vanishing From Libraries Around Europe - Who is Taking Them?

Dozens of books have disappeared from Warsaw to Paris. Police are looking into who is taking them, and why — a tale of money, geopolitics, crafty forgers and lackluster library security.

By Rachel Donadio

In April 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, two men arrived at the library of the University of Tartu, Estonia’s second-largest city. They told the librarians they were Ukrainians fleeing war and asked to consult 19th-century first editions of works by Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s national poet, and Nikolai Gogol. Speaking Russian, they said they were an uncle and nephew researching censorship in czarist Russia so the nephew could apply for a scholarship to the United States. Eager to help, the librarians obliged. The men spent 10 days studying the books.

Four months later, during a routine annual inventory, the library discovered that eight books the men had consulted had disappeared, replaced with facsimiles of such high quality that only expert eyes could detect them. “It was terrible,” Krista Aru, the director of the library, said. “They had a very good story.”

At first, it seemed like a one-off — bad luck at a provincial library. It wasn’t. Police are now investigating what they believe is a vast, coordinated series of thefts of rare 19th-century Russian books — primarily first and early editions of Pushkin — from libraries across Europe.

READ MORE

[crynwr-drwg]

The Imperial Library website has been revamped!

Check out THIS Reddit thread for info!

[escapismsworld]

📍Imperial Road Palace, Tver, Russia 🇷🇺

[tianshiisdead]

the school uniforms of boys schools in manchukuo resembled the army uniform, with dark green fabric and caps and the number of the class/year on the collar. unlike in taiwan where the schools were a symbol of japanese modernity, the schools in manchukuo were unstructured, messy, and generally ineffective. In later years as the war began, the schools became increasingly militarized and abandoned teaching curriculum in favour of forcing the students into labour to fund the war effort. racial inequality was rampant, with the japanese students dining separately and eating separate (and fuller) meals. violence and abuse was common, not only from the teacher to the chinese students but also among the students, as fighting and bullying was encouraged as a show of martial strength. In later years as military training became mandatory, officers who’d fought in the chinese mainland were brought in to train the students - which largely backfired as the teacher’s rampant abuse and tendency to conflate their students with the chinese they had fought in battle only further pushed the students to turn away from state ideology. it seems that school was the place where the pro state ideology was disseminated most successfully, however the abuse and militarization in later years undid a lot of the work from early years. despite many of the major cities having a japanese colonial presence for longer than the 14 official years manchukuo existed, the schools were only established after the takeover resulted in a new direction for japanese imperialism in the region. even in dalian, the only city formally colonized in the 1910s and 20s (and not simply a concession/part of the railway zone), before 1932 the number of schools established for chinese students were quite limited, and the form of colonialism was primarily economic.

girls schools also existed but it seems the english language research on the topic is limited

[everybodyknows-everybodydies]

“A what now?” Her voice sounds loud and panicky even to her own ears. She’d stood up so fast when the armored woman had said the words that her chair has fallen over behind her, punctuating the exclamation with a thud.

Urag, slightly more composed than Kharish, says with barely-restrained urgency, “You brought an Elder Scroll here?”

“An Elder Scroll? No, no, I’ve brought you… yes, three,” says the Dragonborn mildly, her voice muffled by her helmet. She sets the large bundle under her arm onto the counter and unwraps the cloak.

There are, in fact, three. Three Elder Scrolls.

Kharish imagines, very suddenly, what it would be like to wake up to everyone in the world swarming over the decaying bridge (excess overflowing off the sides, into the sea) like an army of ants descending on the remains of a picnic. She needs to sit down. She almost does before remembering she knocked over her chair.

“How—” Urag’s voice cracks. He clears his throat. “How much are you asking?” She hears what he really means:

You can’t expect us to have access to the kind of money these would be worth.

You can’t leave without letting us try anyway.

The Dragonborn makes an indifferent gesture. “I am not asking.” She sounds faintly puzzled, bemusement tinging the dreamy distant quality of her voice. “I brought them to you.”

“Why?” Kharish immediately thinks better of asking as Urag grabs her shoulder with a strangling grip and a low hiss of her name, here translated to mean shut up.

She doesn’t seem to know how to answer that. “They are…” The Dragonborn pauses. “…finished, with me. This is where they go now.”

Being a hero of legend must involve being hit in the head, very hard and very often. Kharish had assumed from the accomplishments attributed to the Dragonborn that she must be a woman as cunning as she is powerful, not one who talks as though her head is full of cotton and hands out pieces of the fabric of reality for no particular reason.

She can see Urag furiously planning out a display that is absolutely hostile to any presence deemed too close, which is inarguably the best course of action; they don’t let certain books out from behind the protective glass at all, and those don’t even run the risk of unpredictable reality-altering and blindness and—whatever else these artifacts are capable of.

Not even the Imperial Library has an Elder Scroll anymore, much less three.

As ill-advised as it is, the thought of how fumingly, uselessly envious they’ll be has her mentally composing her next interlibrary letter. Esteemed colleagues in Cyrodiil, I initially thought to seek your advice regarding a certain set of recent acquisitions, but I seem to recall your experience is primarily in losing track of priceless relics—

The Dragonborn’s head swivels without warning, her entire demeanor shifting, somehow more rigid, more alert. More present. The clouds in her head must have cleared in one swift wind. “I am needed,” she says. “May I use your roof?”

They gesture simultaneously to the dark spiral stairs leading to the roof. The Dragonborn ascends out of sight with singular focus; before the door has even creaked shut again a thunderous WULD! sends tremors through the stone walls.

Kharish smooths the end of the cloak still underneath the Scrolls, half afraid to touch them directly. They’re hard to look at for very long, even unopened as they are, reflecting both too much and not enough light. One rolls towards her with the trembling of the building; reflexively, she jerks the cloak up to stop its movement, illogically terrified for a brief moment it might lunge at her. “I didn’t realize,” she says as the walls fade to quiet again, “that the Dragonborn was such an emptyheaded ninny.”

“I don’t much care what he is,” says Urag, eyes shining. “Where’s Mirabelle? She needs to see these.”

“Should we start drafting a request to Solitude?” She looks up at him. Her fingertips hover over the fabric.

He laughs suddenly. “Oh. Oh. …I hadn’t even begun to think of—no. No, but Mirabelle will have the final say. It’d come with idiots claiming to be oversight committees, red tape, too many nosy—well, maybe even more of Ancano’s ilk, and that alone’s enough to deserve a strong no.”

He’s right, of course. No amount of gold is worth even the faintest possibility of that. She files it away with the letter the Imperial Library won’t be receiving. “Still,” she says, a little wistful, “under better circumstances, maybe. There’s so much we could do with government funding!”

[farsight-the-char]

While the Imperial Armour books focused on the big picture, this novel zooms right into the plight of the common soldier and follows an officer named Tyborc as he navigates both the battlefields of Vraks and the irrepressibly sacrificial tendencies of his own regiment. 

Memes Are Real.

Krieg getting new wave later this year unofficially confirmed.

I can see the reposted shovel memes now.

[opencommunion]

"US" locations of weapons and surveillance companies that supply "Israel" "US" locations of the "big six" military corporations producing most of the weapons "US" locations of corporations with active military contracts with "Israel"

"Canadian" locations of weapons and surveillance companies that supply "Israel" German weapons manufacturers supplying "Israel" (list on pages 54-57)

"UK" locations of manufacturers of "Israeli" combat aircraft components

More corporations invested in the genocidal Zionist colonial project

Nonprofits that fund the genocidal Zionist colonial project

[belle-keys]

i’m not anti-intellectualist by any means and i do believe that seeking out knowledge and new ideas in the form of books and art is a key to gaining wisdom and insight and even happiness, but i’m also not for people forcing themselves to read things they really don’t want to read or are not interested in simply because they fear they’ll be considered ignorant and not-smart by society or academic establishments or peers if they don’t

rather, i believe anti-intellectualism would diminish greatly if we stressed why these books and art and media are interesting and worth our curiosity and engaging with today instead of the culture of distributing checklists of “smart” books and media and “dark academia” subjects that just seem ever-shrouded in white elistism and obscurity when there’s much more to them than that

learning and seeking knowledge are not inherently pretentious pursuits, but educators over time haven’t actually stressed why leisure learning and reading are valuable or how they are enjoyable, which leads to a lot of people outside of rigorous academic institutions to think “well this old book is just pretentious imperialist garbage since it’s clearly boring and so i’m gonna be against traditional means of learning because i don’t want white academia to dictate my worth” and then others respond to this with “haha you’re just ignorant and i’m better than you because i love this old book” and the cycle perpetuates because we’re all lacking moderation in our thinking

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Not a question but I just wanted to say that you are doing the lord's work with this blog! I really admire your time and dedication spent sourcing the art and finding everything you can. This blog is so important to the fandom and I appreciate you for running it!!

Thank you! Honestly when I started this blog I was worried I'd only have a few months worth of posts at most. Instead I'm sitting at 2,500 saved works of official TES art and concept art with a lot left to add to my archive.

ATM the hardest thing isn't even finding the art itself, its finding the credit for who did it. A lot of the art gets uploaded to the Imperial Library or UESP wiki with no artist citation or source link so I have to spend time either tracking down the artist or confirming as best I can that no public credit exists for the art.

Thank you for your appreciation!

[ilovedthestars]

the absolute BEST part of finally reading imperial radch (i finished the ancillary trilogy!!! and turns out there's MORE?!) is getting to go back and look again at all the funny posts and stunning fanart that have been slowly convincing me to read it. this was how i got into murderbot first too (saw so much fanart and meta about it on tumblr that i had to read it, instead of the other way around) and even though it had its downsides (i spoiled myself on all the good twists in murderbot lol) i genuinely think this might be the best kind of media experience for me in terms of excitement and fun. because i know in advance that people love it and there's a community already built around it that i can dive into right away, and often i've already had some emotions about the characters just from seeing some gorgeous fanart, so when I get to those characters or scenes they hit even harder because i already care about them. and then i get to go back and look at all those things with fresh eyes, and understand all the layers of meaning now that i didn't get before, and that is so satisfying and rewarding to me.

anyway, hello imperial radch fandom!!!! i'm here now and i'm going to spend the next couple days shouting in the tags of all the cool fanart that made me read the books (thank you thank you thank you to @grammarpedant who started putting an excellent stream of imperial radch posts on my dash the second i finished the trilogy, you are the sweetest ever <3). i may already have a fanart idea of my own sketched out and it might be very ambitious and i may be considering actually teaching myself how to use clip studio paint for it. if there's fanart or fanfic you think i HAVE to see then send it to me please (even if we are strangers, it's not weird, i will think you are so cool!) (person i don't really know who already DM'd me an imperial radch post when i mentioned it the other day: i think you are so cool) i am going to see if i can ride this enthusiasm far enough that it becomes a long term obsession.

[sonofdorn-vii]

Really happy with my little Imperial Fists top brass collection, hope they release a Camba Diaz at some point but I suspect they won't (they've not even done an Aeonid Thiel at this point which is crazy)

[meggannn]

just finished ancillary justice