#THESIS

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[forgingtheblade]

TECHNOBLADE IN THE GALLERY!!

The reception for my BFA thesis is TONIGHT! I’ve definitely fallen off of posting regularly here, but I will share process updates as soon as I have some more free time.

but HE’S FINALLY DONE!!!

[mayajadeart]

Fucking, thank god for grad students. Grad students are truly the GOAT of science. A lot of scientific research is limited by what kinds of research can produce results that might be profitable for businesses, including the journals that publish that research in the first place. But grad students? They're not trying to make money for anyone, they're trying to prove themselves as scientists before entering the professional world. The only thing a master's or doctorate thesis is supposed to do is prove to your university that you have mastered your craft and are capable of producing research that meets the standards of the scientific community. The only job that a graduate student has when producing that thesis is to do good research that has never been done before. They're just about the only scientists whose sole prerogative is to look where no one else has looked to answer questions that no one else has, possibly because no one else has even asked them yet, and to compile their results, whatever they are, for the pure sake of knowledge itself.

I'm not a scientist, I'm just someone who does scientific research in my free time because I'm deranged enough to think it's genuinely fun, and because a lot of the art I do is scientifically informed. But because I'm doing this research for art rather than a more "practical" application, a lot of the times the reasons why I want to know something are completely different from the reasons why these topics are actually studied. I don't want to know how to create synthetic equivalents of Feline Facial Pheromone F3, whose function we already know, in order to reduce stress and prevent undesirable behavior in pet cats in new homes and vet clinics, I want an analysis of the components that make up Feline Facial Pheromones F1 and F5, whose functions we don't know, in order to start building hypotheses about what those functions might be, so that I can figure out how catgirls would perceive these pheromones and theorize how they might talk about them in their native languages. But nobody's gonna pay me to do that, are they?

And let me tell you, sometimes the only people who seem interested in the kinds of bizarre and esoteric questions that an artist like me will have are grad students publishing theses. I still haven't found anyone trying to figure out what FFP F1 or F5 are used for, but I have found:

A full, comprehensive description of the complete phonology and grammar of the Lushootseed language and its dialects, spoken by several Coast Salish tribes of the Puget Sound region, published by Ted Kye in 2023 for his doctoral thesis at the University of Washington. Lushootseed is the source of many words from the region, including hugely important place names like Snoqualmie, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Snohomish, Sammamish, Duwamish, Mukilteo, Shilshole, and of course, Seattle, but the language itself is extinct, with its last native speaker, Vi Hilbert, dying in 2008. There are, however, efforts to revive the language, and that would be significantly more difficult without Ted Kye's work. I think we can all see why this kind of thing is valuable.

And, this second one is a bit more esoteric but hear me out:

The discovery that a popular ornamental aquarium fish might actually have been sequentially hermaphroditic this whole time, which was practically a footnote in a 2016 thesis by Lia Gomes and Silva Henriques from the University of Porto, in Portugal. The fish in question is the red-tailed shark, Epalzeorhynchos bicolor, which is not an actual shark, but a member of the carp family that just happens to look like a shark, and two very important things to note about it are that it is critically endangered in the wild, and in fact was thought to be totally extinct in the wild until one was found in 2014, and that they are also practically impossible to breed in captivity. The primary threat to the species is considered to be habitat destruction. The quite substantial supply of this species in the pet trade today all come from fish farms in Southeast Asia, which use hormones to induce reproduction in the species, through processes that are kept as trade secrets and are essentially unknown to the scientific community. So, we have literally no idea how this fish breeds, which means that hobbyists can't breed it themselves, and scientists don't know what conditions they even need in order to breed in the wild. This one paper, written by students in Portugal who attempted to induce gonadal maturation in the species using hormone injections, is perhaps one of the only clues we have on the path to saving this species, and it hints at a conclusion that could have HUGE implications for the husbandry, captive breeding, and survival in the wild of the red-tailed shark: all of the individuals that were dissected without having undergone hormone injections were immature females, and immature males only started appearing in groups that had been injected, suggesting that all individuals of the species might start out as females, and then at some point in their development, certain individuals, for unknown reasons, may develop into males instead, making them sequential hermaphrodites. This isn't unknown in fish (clownfish do something similar, except they all start out as males and become female when they achieve dominance in their social group), but it was completely unexpected in this species, and could go a long way in starting to explain the difficulties with breeding them and potentially be a step on the path to learning how to breed them in captivity, as well as saving them in the wild.

Unfortunately, in the latter case, I wasn't able to find any other published work by either of the listed authors, and no one else seems to have repeated the experiment. This is a real shame, because the results of the experiments, while very intriguing, weren't conclusive; they had a fairly low sample size, and would need to be confirmed by further research. But there's no indication of that research being done, and I might be the only one other than the university's board of reviewers who's even read the thing.

All this is to say, fish testicles are interesting and I'm begging someone to do more research on them, please.

[shitacademicswrite]

[outsidewolves]

[lottiestudying]

12.11.2023—had a few slow study days to deal with my mental health. had some time to think through my analysis, so have some more clarity there. hopefully this week i can finish a second full first draft

[xylographica]

Becoming Animal

This was the main part of my thesis from last year, an exploration of my experience growing up being encouraged to leave behind the connection to nature I had as a kid, and now my journey into reforming that connection.

[james-farrow-did-nothing-wrong]

Tomorrow I have to defend my thesis about the criminal world in Six of Crows because the joke I made two years ago has gone too far

[veralernt]

Im in the thesis phase where i just need to push through but keep my mind at bay - anxiety is through the roof these days 🥲

[lilliangst]

here’s a series of illustrations i did for my junior thesis last semester, based on the book “This Is How You Lose the Time War” that I had made into a physical book 👉👈

i also made a character sheet — i understand that the book is kinda meant to be pretty abstract, so red and blue arent really supposed to have fixed forms. but i had to come up with something to draw for my style of illustration 🫠 i hope i did them justice somewhat

i didnt have time to finish the last illustration which was a shame bc i felt like it would have wrapped up the series perfectly, but heres the sketch of what i planned for it to look like

[aingeal98]

We all know why people have designated Damian the bitey and stabby Robin and Jason the violent one. (To my knowledge Damian has never bitten anyone it's literally just the racism) but what amuses me is that Steph, despite her short tenure as Robin, actually threw her hat in the ring for most ferocious. Like miss sunshine and waffles in fanon is the only Robin I can think of that quite literally just started biting her enemies as a last resort.

And unlike Jason who's Robin run was mostly him being pretty similar temper wise to his predecessor with the one exception of the rapist he may or may not have let fall to his death, Steph started day one of working with the bats literally attempting to murder her father.

And as Robin? Yeah fuck that "if we kill we're no better than them bullshit." If she's up against a serial killer she's going to use EVERY advantage to not die, including potentially lethal moves.

And honestly I think it rules. I know they were trying to show her as a less good Robin than perfect Tim but honestly they just made her more interesting because she's not actually wrong for fighting to save herself even if it means her attacker could die lmao. Let Steph have her anger and violence, she deserves it.

[virtuosicstudyblr]

I am proud to announce that I am indeed making progress on my thesis. 😌

[sociologi]

30.10.2024 | I spent a few days in Paris in the beginning of October and writing my thesis there just seemed so much more appealing than it does now I'm back at home

[prokopetz]

Thesis: the reason we're having a nostalgic revival of the 1990s in 2024 even though nostalgic revivals usually trail twenty years behind the genuine article rather than thirty is because what everybody is picturing when they think of "the 1990s" is actually the early 2000s.

[nocturnal-phantoms-fandoms]

I just had a talk with my thesis supervisor and I want to check something real quick.

I want to write my bachelor's thesis about fanficion and AI - specifically about fanfiction writers' attitude towards the use of generative AI in fandom spaces

The survey (and the rest of the thesis) is still v much in the making, I just want to check how many potential responders I could reach from this account

Pls reblog after voting

What I can say about the survey for now:

1. The survey will be anonymous!

2. The survey will be in English (but the rest of my thesis will not. I am however required to write an abstract in English)

3. My supervisor said it's fine if I want to focus on one fandom - In this case it will be the HP fandom. However I would like to include as many reposnes as I can, so it will probably not be a requirement to be in the HP fandom.

4. You don't need to write fanfiction to take part in the survey (but there will be a question if you read and/or write fanfics). You need to be in the fandom though

5. You need to be over 18 (most likely)

I want to keep myself anonymous as well so there is a possibility I will have to make a separate sideblog/account for it.

If anyone will be interested in the results, for some reason - I am required to write the abstract in English, so I might share the abstract. Maybe. More info after I write anything for my thesis.

[lottiestudying]

17.05.2025—anyone else’s sleep schedule goes completely out of the window during essay/exam season?