#and a history nerd

[lovelydisc]

Ok. As a Greek mythology nerd I need to tell you what the Greek gods are because I have a fondness for them and a compulsive need to correct people. 

Zeus: big guy, “father” and king of the Greek pantheon. He married his sister(Hera) and cheats on her with his other sister and a whole host of women. His domain was the sky and he wields lightning and storms

Hera: “mother” of the Greek pantheon. Married Zeus, and becomes jealous bitch in a lot of myths because of his cheating. Mostly it’s misogyny, but sometimes she is kind of a shitty person. Goddess of marriage, and being a wife and mother. Not really a goddess of childbirth or pregnancy(that was her daughter).

Poseidon: god of the ocean, earthquakes, storms, and generally water. I have a fondness for him cause I read Percy Jackson, but he is a jackass. He’s not as bad as Zeus, but he is the Middle Kid stereotype of all Middle Kid stereotypes. He has temper tantrums and holds WAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY too many grudges. Just so many grudges. He’s not a super big main character in myths. But he has a rivalry with Athena

Demeter: goddess of grain/plants/farming. She’s mostly a crop farming goddess and general agriculture. She is kind of a BAMF, not gonna lie, and she has a couple really good myths where she has fucked shit up for people who were being shit heads. She had a daughter with Zeus(her brother) who is also kinda famous, but for reasons other than being related to Zeus and Demeter. Is not married, does not have sex, is one of several virginal goddesses(virginal means abstains from all sex in this context)

Hades: god of the dead (NOT GOD OF DEATH!!! THAT IS A DIFFERENT PERSON). He’s kinda the “accountant” of Greek afterlife. He doesn’t reap any souls, but he makes sure that all the dead people go to all the right places and he rules over his kingdom pretty peacefully. Keeps to himself, usually the black sheep. Often framed as the villain, but he’s actually pretty chill. Keeps to himself, likes the dark, doesn’t really interact with anyone but his wife, his kids, and his dog. Cause drama like once and then he goes back to being chill and slightly threatening. We love him

Hestia: no one ever talks about her, but she is goddess of the hearth, and the home. She is pretty chill too, fave up her seat on the counsel of the twelve gods for Dionysius and now tends the god’s hearth in the middle of Olympus and has first say on all collective sacrifices. She’s the chillest of any god anywhere and I will hear no shit about her. One of several virginal goddesses(virginal means abstains from all sex in this context)

^^main 6 gods and goddesses

Rest of Greek pantheon:

Apollo: sun god, but also god of archery, music, disease and medicine, and (bad) poetry. He’s one of a few twin gods and he’s the son of Zeus. He’s a bit of a little shit and a playboy, and many of his romances don’t pan out in the myths. Gay as all hell. Pretty funny. Makes QUESTIONABLE decisions

Artemis: moon goddess, and goddess of the hunt(both literally hunting but also a group of lesbians and aroace women who hunt in the woods for their entire lives after joining. They give up all men, and all contact to the outside world. Sounds like a shit ton of fun ngl). She is twins with Apollo and often hunts with him. She’s pretty chill. Will kick your ass if you sexually harass/assault/rape anyone. Another BAMF.

Athena: goddess of wisdom, war strategy, and crafts. Pretty much goddess of being smart/intelligent. She is hot headed tho, and she can be kinda a bitch. We love her tho. She’s great. She is besties with Odysseus and hates HATES Poseidon. She is famous for a couple myths that have been twisted to frame her as an unreasonable bitch (Arachne, Medusa and Perseus, etc), but in most of the originals she is actually a pretty decent person. She is too a BAMF. one of several virginal goddesses(virginal means abstains from all sex in this context)

Dionysius: god of wine and madness. Occasionally turns jackasses into dolphins, churns women into a frenzy and has multiple orgies. He’s like your one uncle who is literally always drunk or high and had serious game when he was younger (tbh he always and forever will have serious game). Pretty chill. Also seriously fucking gay. Like all Greek gods and goddesses are gay, but there are some that are gayer than others (literally hand carved a dildo so that he could fulfil a promise to a dead guy, when he really didn’t have to)

Aphrodite: goddess of love and beauty, often fetishised and not really treated as a person. Sometimes a bitch, but I think it’s mostly because she’s only really seen as a beautiful entity and not a real person. Had a fling/situationship with Ares and eventually marries Hephaestus. I believe that she and Hephaestus fell in love, but many myths take the approach that she cheated on Hephaestus a bunch and their marriage was shitty. I like the love one better, but that’s just me. She is actually really cool cause she’s a really curvy woman and is like insanely beautiful and I’m like really gay about it.

Ares: god of war, kind of a shit. He’s just got anger issues and misogyny as sort of inherent to his character. He’s fine, but is fuelled by his anger like 100% of the time.

Hephaestus: god of metallurgy and crafting weapons. He’s like the god of engineers and computer science. He’s pretty cool. He’s like the only disability rep in the whole pantheon(I could be persuaded on this point tho. I could see Hades also being physically disabled). He was tossed off a mountain by his mother Hera when he was a kid and so has a lot of issues both mommy and medical. He makes the weaponry for the gods alongside his cyclops assistants. He IS NOT the god of fire, though he does use it. We love him. He’s nifty.

Hermes: messenger god. He’s like a mailman. He’s also the god of thieves, travellers, spies, vagabonds, etc. he’s pretty cool. He has magic shoes that let him fly and his wand thing is used as the symbol for medicine. He’s chill we like him. He’s pretty cheeky tho. He’s also unofficially the god of pranks.

Not all of the gods, just the big 13. I can tell yall about the rest of them but that would require a whole other post.

TLDR: I’m a Greek mythology nerd, and I geeked out

this website’s easy watch. *dangles a bunch of greek gods like keys*

[blumineck]

Huge thanks to Richard of the Order of the Blade for throwing me around!

(If you’re in the UK, consider checking them out! The order are a combat school with a really fun and welcoming ethos)

And as always, more bows, swords, and nonesense on Patreon

[labelleizzy]

[weirdsociology]

hey writers we have to talk.

if you've read any romance or fanfic in the past twenty years (i know you have), you know that there are a certain number of scents associated with hot dudes. you can probably recite the list of Things Men in Fic smell like in your sleep: leather, black pepper, pine, sandalwood, "something uniquely him", clean sweat, and if the character has ever fucking been within 50 yards of a firearm, something called "cordite".

here's the thing.

NO ONE SMELLS LIKE CORDITE.

cordite was a highly specific type of smokeless gunpowder developed in the 1890s by england specifically and used mostly in wwi.

if your good-smelling guy is not (a) english (b) using a very specific type of british rifle (c) dying in a trench in flanders, he does not smell like cordite. technically even if he does meet all those conditions he still doesn't smell like cordite because he smells like trenchfoot.

the point is, cordite is so far from universal that no one but the most hardcore gun nerds give a single shit about it. making your Sexy Hero smell like cordite is like naming a cassette-only bootleg live recording from the 1970s as your favorite grateful dead album. everyone at the party hates you immediately and knows you're doing it for clout. also, it's just factually... wrong. please stop. i know everyone else is doing it, but you can do the right thing here, i believe in you.

so what do people who are using guns smell like?

well if your story is set before the late 1880s, the smell of a fired gun is black powder, which, unfortunately, smells like seventeen flatulent cows have been shoved in a tire factory. trust me, you do not want your Hot Dude to smell like black powder. it's b a d.

if your story is set after the late 1880s, guns are using some variety of modern 'smokeless' powder - which speaking broadly doesn't really have a ton of scent when used. it does have some, but it's sort of non-descript: the best way i can describe it is the sweet, ozone, hot-plate smell of popping your car hood with a warm engine.

people who use guns a lot don't smell like fired guns all the time anyway, so while those scents might work in a fight scene, they're not realistic all the time. but there are some things that your Sexy Shootist will smell like basically 24/7 and that's metal and gun oil. metal you can go and sniff (i recommend non-stainless steel), but if you want a reference, most gun oils have a sharp, organic smell that's not dissimilar to canola oil but muskier and with a tang overtop. it's not unlikely leather is in the mix as well due to routine handling of leather equipment and gear. modern gear also tends to have a certain smell although it varies by production country and storage conditions - lots of opportunities there.

in conclusion: gunslingers and hired killers and military folks can be sexy and smell great on page, but i am begging you not to say "cordite" when you mean "gunpowder" ever again. we can do this. we are writers and therefore pedants. i believe in us!

[curiouslymyown]

Nerdy loser Remus Lupin who somehow became best friends with the three most popular guys at Hogwarts, only to learn that they are also losers

[infiniteglitterfall]

People talk about how the Jewish population of the world is still smaller today than it was in 1939.

The 1948-49 American Jewish Year Book says that there were an estimated 16,633,675 Jews on earth in 1939. (Yes, "estimated!")

And that a decade later -- three years after the Holocaust killed nearly 6,000,000 Jews -- there were 11,373,350.

Today, there are (an estimated) 15,736,800.

(It can be higher, depending on how you count it. But this is the number that seems consistent with how the American Jewish Year Book was counting it.)

But it occurred to me recently that that doesn't tell the whole story.

Because today, 0.02% of the world is Jewish. (Really, 0.019%.) But I bet it was different back then.

How different? And different how?

Turns out there are 8 billion people alive today. But there were a little more than 2 billion back then.

16,633,675 divided by 2,300,000,000 is freaking 0.72%.

0.72% of the world was Jewish in 1939. That's almost 300% more than 0.19%?

Even after the Holocaust, 0.49% of the world was Jewish.

Those are still tiny percentages.

But the effect of the Holocaust, the massive ethnic cleansing of Jews across the MENA region after it, and the massive pogroms killing up to 250,000 other Jews before it, has been that the actual proportion of the world that's Jewish plummeted by 75%.

We went from 0.72% of the world to 0.19% just during the last 80 years of all that.

And because it was literally over 50 years of genocides and ethnic cleansings all over the place, we also went from vibrant Jewish communities with thousands of years of history across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, to being almost entirely concentrated in the United States and Israel.

Little bit more in Canada and Australia, neither of whom seem to be handling that fact super-well. And smatterings in many other places.

It's just really fucking wild to me.

Not only that this is true. But that I had to put these pieces together myself, from everything I was learning by studying recent Jewish history.

It's very fucking weird, as an American, to live with the incredible contrast of knowledge and history, versus the overwhelming mainstream leftist message that Jews are a white European oppressor group.

[reddamselette]

with the trojan war, it was caused by paris abducting helen as aphrodite promised helen to paris when paris chose her as the fairest and gifted the golden apple to her. helen and paris eloped (courtesy of aphrodite's influence and eros' arrows) after that and menelaus (along with agamemnon) assembled a large army of achaen leaders and then went on the ten years of the war.

anyway so who's helen? i would say in the og series, it's kevin. kevin who was technically stolen away from eau and stayed with the foxes despite the fact that if he stayed, it would bring about riko's wrath on everyone. kevin, in a way, is and was the person many people were fighting over to rescue or keep or take away depending how u look at it. to rescue? easy. from riko. to be free from the ravens. to keep? the foxes, of course. with the deal he shared with andrew, the contract with wymack, everything with neil, they weren't ever letting him go. to take away? riko and tetsuji which is so self-explanatory.

in the tsc series though? jean is helen this time around. jean who was rescued by renee but also stolen away from eau and stayed with the foxes as well to recover then flew to california to join the trojans. unlike kevin, where people wanted him for his skill and his determination to exy; jean is wanted (by the ravens) for his position in the perfect court even though it doesn't even mean anything anymore. they just want the power they sort of believe jean has. this time, jean no longer at eau means the ravens are the ones who opened their gates for the trojan horse (which could be considered renee) and just like troy, the nest was forced to close—effectively falling.

kevin and jean are helen in their respective stories as the reasons why people fight over them differs drastically and can range to several things. and i like to think since the ravens are the trojans in this case, their downfall started with riko's death but i also believe that it was truly pushed into place the moment renee stepped foot onto that campus. therefore, renee is our trojan horse.

obviously this does NOT include any sort of theories because i won't lie—i actually don't theorize much on books like that. i mean i do but i like to throw it up in the air and let the wind decide.

this rant does, however, include my reasoning as to why both kevin and jean are helen of sparta.

has anyone done analysis of the trojans in ancient history & myths and used it to make theories abt tsc 2 & 3 bc i just started thinking abt it and need to peel that apart rn all i remember is trojan horse and i cannot imagine that is relevant in any way. is kevin or jean helen of troy in this instance send help

[dingledraw]

☕️🫖

[rafey-baby]

He looks like a sexy history nerd who’s trying to tutor reader because she decided it was a good idea to take some history courses in university but now, she’s failing her tests and coming to the conclusion that maybe history is actually just not for her.

However, she’s stubborn and wants to pass the class so she gets a tutor but it’s so difficult to concentrate on what he’s saying because she keeps getting distracted by the way his strawberry mouth moves around the words and—

“Do I have somethin’ on m’face?” he suddenly scolds her with a click of his tongue; brows raised and an amused smirk tugging at his mouth when she stutters out a response, face flushed.

“N— no. Sorry.”

“Need you to focus on this, yeah? It’s important. Or would you prefer a different type of a teachin’ method?”

And her eyes round out because why does the seemingly innocent question sound so filthy when he says it with that low drawl of his…

[lyss-sketchbox]

Iudex wrio from the swap au doodles

[iwtv-az-hours]

Guys, do you know that after the Reign of Terror there was an edgy fashion trend among posh young girls who didn't get guillotined of wearing red ribbons around their necks as a morbid fashion statement - that they survived / to commemorate their family members who didn't ?

...which could mean nothing

[burningvelvet]

the worst part about having an embarrassing amount of knowledge about your hyperfixation is having to repress the urge to correct people when they talk about it bc u don't want to be an asshole but at the same time u Need to Share and Protect the Knowledge for the Good of All Mankind

[blumineck]

My new favourite archery image!

This painting is located in the Church of the Nativity in Prague, and is dated to 1663. It is also the basis of at least 3 D&D character concepts that are stuck in my head now.

If you want more info, art references, and tutorials, check my Patreon!

[chaosgoblinhours]

jaster mereel had to die young because the moment he ever had to meet palpatine on his home turf he'd take one look at the politician's eclectic collection and immediately go 'oh !! Is that a ceremonial sacrificial dagger of darth rabies???" and immediately go off on a tangent about old republic lore while palpatine gets bodied by at least five jedi in the background

[peofun1]

Compiling Metaphor Refantazio humans and their Hieronymus Bosch inspirations

Enemy spoilers up through 7/17 on the in-game calendar

far from complete, since I'm nowhere near done with the game yet, but these are all the funny little guys I've managed to find the inspirations for! I've put the enemy's names and the names of the Bosch paintings in the alt text for each image.

I highly recommend checking out Bosch's paintings, for these guys and the many other fantastical and macabre creatures in his works. it's kind of like a game of I-spy, lol

enemies I was NOT able to find a 1-to-1 inspiration for under the cut. if anyone out there HAS spotted a better match for these ones, feel free to add on!

so I couldn't find a good match for the big terrible baby, unfortunately. best I can say is that Bosch tends to paint a lot of creatures that are just a human head on legs.

same goes for the giant sandworm; I couldn't find anything even remotely similar even after scouring through every Bosch painting (and some sketches!) I could find. it feels inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights, but I didn't see anything that really resembled this thing.

but again, if anyone knows of a better match for either of these, I'd love to see it!