#annotated compendium

[rlinwriteslu]

Those familiar with the Annotated Compendium are probably aware of how interpreting who is saying literally any of the dialogue is entirely dependent on the text color. Now, if the next thing you think of is "wait, doesn't that make it unreadable for colorblind people and for people with screen readers," you're asking the right questions.

That's why I'm happy to announce that I have gone through it and added dialogue tags that go before each line that should be readable by screen readers, and they should also show if the work skin is disabled (manually or by downloading it).

Happy reading!

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙎𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙪𝙗𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨!⁠ Hit the link in my story today for this new 19-page setting and new Fighter subclass! Exclusively for $5+ supporters as part of their pledge, included with the art, cards, compendiums, and other bonuses that they receive!⁠ ⁠ Excerpt from Pindlith Vel Dran’s Guidebook for New Volunteers⁠ ⁠ Compiled, annotated, and clarified by Pindlith Vel Dran, Senior Archivist, Acting High Adjunct Curator of the Story Stacks, Certified Rhetorician (provisional), etc.⁠ ⁠ Section I: Orientation, for Those Who Are Always Disoriented⁠ ⁠ Welcome to the Library. You are reading this because you have—through misfortune or misjudgment—become a volunteer. Most are not chosen. Most are not asked. You are simply here, and someone has decided you might be useful. Possibly even you.⁠ ⁠ Let us begin with this: you will not make sense of the tower. The Library is a recursive structure that responds poorly to attempts at neat cartography. Wings shift. Rooms invert. Staircases go nowhere. Attempting to impose order on it is like—I don’t know what it’s like. Stupid, I guess.⁠ ⁠ Your responsibilities, if you insist on having them, include:⁠ ⁠ Replacing books that are willing to be replaced⁠ ⁠ Locating and subduing Dantly’s scattered pages before they gain sentience⁠ ⁠ Assisting visitors without encouraging feedback (I don’t want to read it)⁠ ⁠ Not dying in the Black Index⁠ ⁠ Not touching the catalog system (I will know; I will find you)⁠ ⁠ You are not expected to succeed; you are merely expected to avoid introducing further complications. ⁠ ⁠ Stay out of my way, and we will not have a problem. Consider yourself oriented.⁠ ⁠ – P.V.D.⁠ ⁠ A folded recipe card has been tucked between the pages. It smells faintly of cloves. In messy scrawl:⁠ ⁠ Don’t let Pindlith scare you. The tower’s strange, sure, but it’s not trying to hurt us…probably? Come to the refectory whenever you want a hot meal.⁠ ⁠ You’re going to do fine. Promise.⁠ ⁠ —Joriah⁠ ⁠ —⁠ ⁠ This setting includes a new Fighter subclass: the Stance Master! Pair passive effects with active reactions, change them on the fly, and make the most of your opportunity attacks: you get several! ___ ✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon's Saddlebag on Patreon for as little as $3 a month!

[the---hermit]

April 2025 reading wrap up

The two main themes of this last month of reading were audiobooks (again), and the hunger games. Believe it or not I had never read the original trilogy. I was a teen in the hight of success of the books, I remember everyone around me reading them, but I was not a big reader back in the day. I actually didn't love reading at all. I was only reading graphic novel, and that's it. I think it's more or less in that period of time I started to very very slowly get into reading in my free time, but they journey was long and slow. In the past couple of years I had the idea of actually reading the hunger games trilogy, since I have fallen in love with the dystopic genre, and many have started to consider these books modern classics. The main thing that held me back is the fact that they are ya, and from experience I always struggle with books classified as ya. Then some beloved friends finally conviced me to give them a try and during the past month I listened to the audiobooks, fell in love with them, bought physical copies and then also read the two prequels, and loved them even more. So much so that I am already looking forward to rereading all five books to heavily annotate them like all of my beloved dystopic novels. I am still thinking about them, and I think I will be for a while.

Books I finished:

Emily Wilde's Map Of Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (I had a great time with the second book in the series, I feel like this was a great sequel to the first book, but I am sadly not having a good time with the thrid and final book of the series)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Re:Carmilla (I have read the original novella a few times and always loved it, but this audio adaptation was so good. I listened to it as it was coming out, but I plan on relistening to it in the future with no pauses between the various chapters. The performances of the VAs was incredible, they gave so much life to a story I already loved, and I know it's kind of unrelated but this hyped me so much for my yearly reread of Dracula following the Re:Dracula adaptation)

The Handmaid's Tale - graphic novel adaptation

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Books I am currently reading:

Emily Wilde's Compendium Of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett (ngl this book is holding me back a little bit I am super stuck with it, I kinda want to dnf it, but at the same time I'd like to finish the trilogy, so I have no idea what to do. I read a little of 100 pages and nothing has happened, and I just do not reach for it?)

The Secret Life of Trees - graphic novel adaptation (I am now realizing that one of the themes of my year of reading so far has been graphic novel adaptation of books, and I am having a great time with them)

Magellano: Il Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo by David Salomoni (this is the book I am studying for one of my exams and so far it's really interesting and well written, I have high hopes for this one)

[soupdrinkinglincoln]

Sure it’s been pointed out here but can we talk about the bookshelf in the background of Caine’s office?

Can’t make them all out but

-Four compendiums on Gloinks, including a ‘comprehensive history volume 1’. One of the Gloinks books is annotated, instead of with typical Gloink shapes, with what I think are hamburgers, going back to what Caine referred to the team of humans as on their return in the second episode (?) (or alternatively the theme of this episode as a whole)

-Egg

-Mindfreak

-Matpat Theory. Can’t quire tell what the volume is but it looks to me almost like volume 37?

-XC, which happens to be 90 in Roman Numerals if that means anything

-Frank

-Recurrence of the number 57 on the blocks

-‘Massacre Droids’

-XDCC, which is similar to the name almost given to Pomni, XDDCC, but which is also apparently a method of file sharing that can be used for piracy?

-The teapot is also once again there

[ryin-silverfish]

So about JTTW and FSYY, is there any confirmation of which one was published first? I read that JTTW published first, the other says FSYY first. Which one is it?

I mostly want to know about this because I'm curious if Yuan Hong is the one copy Wukong or the otherwise

It's actually a matter of some scholarly debate.

See, we know that the earliest 100-chapter edition of JTTW is published in 1592 by the Shide Tang publishing house, but we don't get a publishing date for FSYY's earliest edition (aka, the Shu edition), only an author/compiler/editor's name, Xu Zhonglin, on the second volume of the novel.

Li Yunxiang's preface to FSYY claimed that the bookhouse owner Shu Chongpu (aka Shu Zaiyang) purchased Zhong Xing's unfinished annotation of the FSYY books, and he merely edited the novel and finished the annotations on his friend's request.

However, the likelihood of Zhong Xing actually annotating the manuscript is pretty low, due to the classic Ming dynasty marketing scheme of "saying a really famous literati wrote the commentary".

Though one can't really dismiss the possibility of an earlier FSYY manuscript/printed edition circulating on the market before Shu Chongpu, Xu Zhonglin & Li Yunxiang got their hands on it, giving the nature of most vernacular novels...

See, neither JTTW nor FSYY nor other Ming classic novels are written by a single author in the way most modern novels are. Rather, they are part of a story cycle that accumulated over the ages, before these individual stories were compiled, rewritten and expanded upon by the literati author of the 100-chapter novel.

Before the 1592 JTTW novel, there's JTTW Pinghua and JTTW Zaju, and before the Shu edition FSYY, there's Lieguozhi Zhuan and Wuwang Fazhou Pinghua, and though the earlier works are broadly similar to the 100-chapter novel, they are also pretty different.

(Like...think of the greater story cycle like a school of fish, and the 100 chapter novel as the seafood chowder on the table, made out of the fishes that got caught in the fisherman's nets.)

(The same fish, aka, a character or a plot beat, might have been there thoroughout the progression of events, but the live fish in the water and the cooked fish in your mouth obviously taste pretty different.)

And another thing about Ming vernacular novels is their tendency to liberally copy poetry, characters, and entire paragraphs from other people's work.

JTTW does it, FSYY does it too but less well, and the tons of incredibly similar poetry between JTTW and FSYY suggests that one of them likely copied the other.

Liu Cunren, one of the few notable early scholars of FSYY, is of the opinion that JTTW copied FSYY. Zhang Peiheng, Li Yihui, and most contemporary scholars think FSYY copied JTTW. And some scholars suggest that both JTTW and FSYY copied their poetry from one of those Ming encyclopedias/compendiums so the similarity doesn't really mean much.

The general scholarly consensus, based on the Chinese papers I've read, is that the 100-chapter FSYY novel is published some time in the early 17th century.

Also, if you remember my post on the Ming annotations of Nezha's story: the Chapter 13 End Commentary certainly proves that the annotator has already read JTTW by comparing Nezha to the Handsome Monkey King, and saying that Nezha's story should be passed on like JTTW and Water Margin.

So yes, personally, I also think that FSYY novel comes after JTTW novel and borrows quite a lot from it, in typical vernacular novel fashion.

[reductionisms]

gintama mathematics compendium

recent developments in the world of gtama mathematics have convinced me to put together a rough handbook, if you will, of its various disciplines and applications.

the culmination of my gtama-math thinking is a (subjective) understanding that any gtama math is necessarily derivative. gtama mathematicians take gintama's initial unintelligible representation and extract meanings from it into relations we can better understand; in other words, we are looking at the representation of something undescribable and attempting to describe it further. if you like Euclid, this is going from R^n to R^n-1.

the scope of this list is narrow simply because my memory sucks and my knowledge of gtama-math bloggers is small. please send me addendums and updates so i can incorporate them.

My qualifications for this project are that I'm bad at math.

Philosophical Basis

on gintama as a mathematical system (yamameta, 2024)

Set Theory (groups and their relations)

gintoki equivalence class (ibid, 2023)

yorozuya&shinsengumi equivalence class (kraniumet, 2022)

joui 3 set theory (ibid, 2022)

ft. ygh set theory (ibid, 2022)

shoukason equivalence classes (joelletwo, 2023)

Analysis (limits, continuity, sequences, etc)

limit theory (kraniumet, 2023)

zura is schrodinger's wall (ibid, 2022) *geometric analysis

Algebra (concepts and their operations)

shouyou transitive property (yamameta, 2023)

shogun assassination equivalence poem (kraniumet, 2022)

takasugi&gin (me, 2024)

eye equivalence (kraniumet, 2024)

fs castle (ibid, with tags from transjjester, 2023)

cliff (agroupofcrows, 2022)

poles (ibid, 2023)

Euclidean Geometry (parallel lines exist)

types of symmetry (yamameta, 2024)

angle relations (ibid, 2023)

foils/parallels (ibid, 2022)

utsuro samsara geometry (agroupofcrows, 2023)

spiderweb cycles (ibid, 2022)

illustration of the final (ibid, 2023)

cinematic angles (kraniumet, 2022)

shoukason geometry (suchira with regnigt, 2024)

comedy orientations (regnigt, 2023)

Topology (beyond the parallel)

ouroboros framework (yamameta, 2023) *including sequel (application), original poem and its annotation

spheres (ibid, 2023)

spiderweb cycles #2 (agroupofcrows, 2023) *c.f. path connectedness in toplogy

joui 3 homeomorphism (kraniumet, 2022)

joui 4 topology one (ibid, 2024), two (ibid, with my tags, 2024)

Logic (applications)

time math (ibid, 2023)

takasugi math (ibid, 2022)

final triangle math (joelletwo, 2024)

shogun assassination equivalence (triangles) (joelletwo as joelleity, with kraniumet tags, 2023) *tags belong to analysis

shogun assassination equivalence (relational) (agroupofcrows, my tags, 2023)

shouyoutsuro reproductive strategies (joelletwo, 2023)

sakagin existence theory proof (yamameta, 2024)

sacchan/mutsu existence theory proof (ibid, 2024)

Conclusions:

I think gtma math works best when it refuses to describe with generative structures. that is, rather than generating an unrelated, outside structure and forcing gintama into it, we look at gintama and derive structures from it in cooperation with other knowledge. obviously the entire concept of gtama math already seems generative (who in gintama is actually doing math, anyways?), but i think this actually comes down to axioms and proofs, basis and spaces. gintama is already some unknown space; we first acquaint ourselves with the space, consider its pre-existent properties, and then we incorporate outside knowledge-as-description to reduce it into something knowable. this takes a lot of creativity, and is quite literally the procedure of math.

every single person who engages with any text ever is actually doing this in their own heads. we can never know anything, and yet, when we are related to by something from outside ourselves, we are called to incorporate its shadow into who we are. mistakes come when we generate ideas of what outside things should be and force whatever approaches us to fit those ideals (e.g., never-ending complaints about fanon). in a certain sense, though, it's impossible not to do this, which is why the modern mathematical system exists. logic is about appropriate direction; rather than idea in my head->put thing outside me into my idea->this is what the Thing is, math wants to go in the reverse: I can't know the thing outside me->it enters into me nonetheless->from studying it and relating it to other things, i generate ideas. hence axioms, which put the Thing inside your mind while also telling you, what we're talking about, you can never know, it is and isn't real, but you still have to deal with it.

everyone derives, or, in its proper sense, generates, their own frameworks about everything they come into contact with, whether or not they're aware of it. and yet, it takes a shit ton of thought and creativity to shape the framework taking form in your head into something actually expressible in words. the gtama mathematicians cited here are therefore brave warriors of mathematics, literary analysis, philosophy, and general living. pythagoreas has nothing on any of you.

[isfjmel-phleg]

Books that I own that I should get to this year if possible:

Alternative Alcott and Work by Louisa May Alcott

Various books by Margery Allingham

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte (have owned this for over a decade but been too daunted by its length to tackle it)

More Annotated Alice

Various books by Agatha Christie

Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (another scary brick)

Various Dostoevsky books

The Last Courts of Europe: Royal Family Album 1860-1914 by Jeffery Finestone

Cousin Phillis and Other Tales and Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

Between Walls and Between Cases by W. R. Gingell

The Child from the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge

Various works by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I got interested in trying to read his works while I visited MA. I had to read The Scarlet Letter in high school, which was unpleasant thanks to our curriculum's pharisaic approach to literature, but I want to revisit it and encounter others as an adult and draw my own conclusions)

Various books by nineteenth-century author Mary J. Holmes (picked up at an antique store including Millbank, which is referred to in the Little House books)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Tales by Washington Irving

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (gift from a friend)

Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones

The Last Empress by Greg King

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi (a secret pal gift from someone who read my remark on the form that I found it hard to describe my taste in books succinctly, got hung up on the puzzling word "succinct," and scoured the internet for Succinct Books, bless her heart)

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer

Voices in the Night by Stephen Millhauser

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett (picked up in a shop because I thought the title was funny; I am not planning to dive into the associated series)

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Robin: Tim Drake Compendium One (or, as I call it, The Tim Tome)

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (picked this up at a booksale because my sister had had to read it for multiple college classes and I was curious)

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su (picked up at a booksale forever ago)

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Various Jules Verne books

The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West

Doomsday Book and Blackout (and All Clear and Cross Talk if I can acquire them) by Connie Willis

The Sinclair's Mysteries series by Katherine Woodfine

Zero Hour: Part One (and Part Two if I can snag it when it's released later this year)

[windsofcourage]

TAP . TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP . TAP TAP .

LINK RAISED HIS HAND to his lips , skimming the pad of his thumb along the ridges of his teeth . for all of his research , link's efforts to get to the bottom of the temple's mystery hadn't proved especially fruitful yet . the earthquake had dumb a number on the already unstable ruins grounds . STILL — LINK COULD REMEMBER what he had been here for , before , even if the memories of his cursed life were embers flickering at the back of his mind .

HE WAS TRYING NOT TO DWELL ON IT TOO MUCH .

. . . it was uncanny .

HE LIFTED THE SHEIKAH SLATE . the shutter clicked and snapped , freezing an image of the temple's front gate . then another , zoomed into the weathered aether symbols on its face . a third , of the grate at his feet — miraculously intact since a week ago . squinting at the last photo , link chewed on the ridge of his thumb again in thought . he wasn't a scholar the way zelda was . far from it . but every ounce of information counted for something . or , that was what the princess would say , certainly .

TAP . TAP TAP . he typed out a small annotation next to the image . a reminder for later . 「 damage has been repaired to the aether temple . some kind of magic maybe ? 」and clicked .

「 SAVE TO COMPENDIUM? > Y N 」

@mischiefmodig / starter call !

[finleyforevermore]

Curious because i was unaware of the existance of a CCCC fandom, any entry level info and suggestions :::?

Hi Cass! I could give you some entry level info sure! :)

CCCC is an acronym for Chonny's Charming Chaos Compendium, which is an album by Chonny Jash (yes you're reading that right).

The album is made up of rewritten and recontextualized versions of songs by a currently "on hiatus" band called Tally Hall, along with the band members' own side projects/personal projects, such as Joe Hawley's group Miracle Musical.

I'll try not to give away too much, but the story is about a person referred to as The Whole, who metaphorically splits into 3 different individuals, the purple and blind Heart, the blue and logical Mind, and the red and powerful Soul. Soul, Heart, and Mind (ESPECIALLY Heart and Mind) have got to figure out how to make things work between each other so that Whole can remain...well, Whole!

I do suggest giving the album a listen (if you wanna watch the music videos that go with songs, use this playlist!), and if you want/need to, use excellent artist @/cinnamonsly's annotations of the album! It's an excellent and easy to understand analysis of the album!! :)

There's also W3tBl@nk3t's awesome in-depth song-by-song analysis of the album! You can't really go wrong since they're both really great analyses!!

Oh, and speaking of artists like @/cinnamonsly, if you take a look at the "#cccc" tag on Tumblr, you'll find some awesome art of the characters! The characters technically don't have set in stone appearances so you can imagine em however you want!

There's a discord server for fans of Chonny's music and it's full of lovely people! Would highly recommend joining it! (if you descend far enough down the rabbit hole-)

I think that's all the entry-level stuff you need to know! Hope you have fun dipping your toes into the world of Chonny's Charming Chaos Compendium! 💜💙❤️

[invinciblerodent]

Modern AU- what’s the best Christmas/Holiday gift for your Veilguard blorbos?

Ooh, fun!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️ Let's see....

I think Ver, despite her deep aversion to dealing with- and talking about her emotions, would most likely want something sentimental... but wouldn't ask for it, and would probably lightly make fun of the person gifting it, before displaying it as one of her most prized possessions.

As she lost her family and her home when she was very young, Ver doesn't have many physical reminders of her childhood: not many toys or trinkets (I think the Mercars thought her a bit too old to get her any), and no family heirlooms, so I think there is a part of her that always seeks that sort of meaning.

Which is why her apartment in Minrathous is quite messy and cluttered with all sorts of things that she didn't have the heart to toss littering most surfaces.

So, I think what she'd value very much would be things that are symbolic of the relationship she and the gifter share.... and is preferably either handmade, or refers back to an inside joke or something. (Oh, she'd go WILD for a homemade gag gift. ....And maybe crack a joke about the person being just obsessed with her in a voice that sounds like her throat is closing up with emotion.)

In her playthrough, I kept a large nug statuette displayed in her room, and headcanoned that she jokingly commented on it as Davrin was working on it (something like "Wow, what a wild, vicious beast- I'm sure that one was a hell of a challenging hunt!"), so once it was done, he just sort of left it on the console in her room without a word, and it became her favorite thing in the world very, very quickly.

I think that's rather in-character for them, and very sweet, too. ❤️ (She named it Piglet. It also ended up in a prized spot in the home they eventually started sharing. Soon there was a huge cabinet full of his creations, but Piglet will always be the most special to her.)

I wanna say that Marcus is not much for murkier symbols, and prefers words over other items.

As someone on the Mourn Watch, who's been studying and working with death and grief most of his life, he's seen a fair number of people crumble under the weight of words unsaid or misunderstood, so he doesn't really want to leave room for that in his own life. (Consequently, if he had his way, he'd probably like to live in a box of bookshelves with just a hole cut in one wall for a door.)

I think a perfect gift for him would be a copy of a book the gifter likes (doesn't matter what genre or topic) with bonus points for annotations, or a piece of poetry written in the person's own hand- though not necessarily by them.

I think this meshes really nicely with both his relationship with Varric, AND Bellara- like I quite like to headcanon that once, rather early on, she left a book (something like, idk, Compendium of the Marauding Magus - Studies on Artifacts of the Ancient Elvhen across the Fair'st Lands of Thedas and Their Contemp'rary Applications, by Sister Gaelya of Cumberland) with an excited note about something interesting on page 257 on the cover, and his first thought was "weird way to propose, but I accept".

As for Tristan, I don't think many people in his life have thought to give him more than like, buying him a pint in the nearest dive, so I'm not sure if even he knows what he'd like.

My thought right now is that as someone who is used to traveling around (and lived with very little prior to that), he doesn't really like a lot of clutter. When left to his own devices, he's pretty austere, doesn't care a lot about things lacking purpose, and is not super into the idea of being given things he'll then have to lug around or find a place to keep- but he has a quite deep, if hidden appreciation for beauty, and ephemerality (though he wouldn't use that word probably).

I think he'd like.... consumables, for the most part. Things that are special in their way, but finite. A box of sweets tied up with a little bow. A nicer loose-leaf tea in a satchel. Something that just smells nice, like a piece of soap or a candle. A moment of indulgence.

Hell, wine and dine him, or buy that man flowers. He'll probably scoff and tell you he's not some dithering maiden who needs wooed, but his ears would flush a little, and I'm sure he'd be thinking about it for years to come. (Which is partly why he and Emmrich are going to work so well, imo.)

... I also had this silly little idea that he and Harding would be fast friends- she'll be the first to see the kindness beneath his terseness, and he'll soon grow to think of her as, like, a niece or something. Which makes them sharing embroidery as a hobby really cute, since Tristan doesn't keep his pieces afterwards (because they amount to basically just hand-exercises to him).

When she finds out that after working however many hours on a piece, he just sort of gets rid of them, she'll be utterly scandalized, and forbid him from ever throwing them away again, and I think he'll secretly really enjoy seeing her cherish something so silly so much. (I also like to think that he'll keep a handkerchief with a wonky griffon crest on it in his breast pocket for many, many years.)

+Ray; honestly? A day off and a blowjob.

I don't yet have a shot of him in Veilguard that I like, but god he's so fucking tired, what he deserves is rest and many an orgasm and nothing less

[xenopoem]

"What the fuck is this? What is this? I don't know. Maybe that is okay, not knowing, and maybe it isn't. These words, these phrases, these assaulting passages that strike like a tsunami are shattering the windowpanes of pure consciousness and disturbing the foundations of what has been whispered into our ear, by a robotic earworm, lodged in there. This creature has been there, as early as our conception on this wet planet, a metaphysical and physical thing that destroys all forms of continuity, rational thought, and reality, spreading the seeds of this elusive thing that has been drilled and planted into us, under the guise of fiction/literature, this thing called... art. This isn't a book. This isn't literature. This isn't normal. This will test you. And, the further you go, the more you realise, there is no goalpost, there are no markers to pinpoint and to use to map your way through it. It is this fusion of confusion and submerged identities and manifestos that screams for attention. It provokes you into skipping, forcing your way through the molasse of information and detail, and creating your own narrative from a cargo hold's worth of words, letters, and protein grain ruining your vision. You end up flipping through it and hitting pause on your meat machine, exacting a robotic process, selecting a phrase, a passage, a page, scrolling through the digital device, the paperback, breaking conformity and poisoning the expectation-devil sitting on your shoulder, the little bastard. This book can be read. This piece of art can be used as a physical weapon. This isn't the future. This isn't the present. This is definitely not the past. It is the in-between stages of corruption and renewal. In the blink of an eye, what was once a familiar word or letter transforms into something altogether ultra. Vasicek and Siratori have created a massive nuclear bomb of a "book." Augenblick is something altogether neu and alt. It is fucking impressive." Zak Ferguson (Author of My Body Meat & The System Compendium)

[rlinwriteslu]

Shoutout to the time maybe about two or three months ago that I decided that, hey, I'd been playing a lot of TotK recently, I forgot how fun Wild's games are, I feel ready to make another Annotated Compendium entry, and then I started planning it out and figuring out what I wanted.

And then I realized that the next entry that need to be made was actually the Scimitar of the Seven, not the Lightscale Trident, and I had to throw out my plans. Whoops.

[dontlookforme00]

You’ve converted me… 😞

gimme a guide on what order to listen to the cj songs pls 💫

....holy shit. Another one bites the dust. I'm so good at recruiting people

OKAY so, if you're looking for the cccc (Heart, mind, and soul) storyline, ya gotta go to cccc. Shockingly, i know. Its full name is Chonnys Charming Chaos Compendium. It's a 'cover' of Tally Halls, Martins Marvel Mechanical Museum.

You can actually listen to the songs in order, they're pretty chronological!!! I'd recommend listening to them all, if you've got time ofc. If you don't, start off with The Heart Acoustic, then The Mind Electric, then The Soul Eclectic.

But it's pretty important you listen to the whole album eventually

You might not understand it. I sure as hell didn't. Side note, heart=moon, mind= sun. Buuut, after you've listened, and if you like the songs, then I can show you a video analysis on the album. It explains the story and some of the symbolism, and definitely helped clear things up for me!! It's right here, if ya need it.

Those are all the hms songs (for now.) !! But he has other albums, too.

Most notably, Gothic Whore, or the Novel Lyric Hunt. It's a whole bunch of songs about various gothic stories, including but not limited to, Carmilla, Dracula, Adam (frankensteins monster) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I don't actually have that much for this album, other than, it's very nice! Very cool.

The lyrics are pretty easy to interpret, especially if you know the stories. If not, there's always the genius lyrics annotations lmao. No joke that's how I did it.

Ofc, you don't have to read into the lyrics or anything, but if you wanna have all the subtext for the fandom, it sure fucking helps. I also find it pretty fun.

You can ignore all this and do as you please!!! Just have fun, his music is fucking great

Other great albums include, covered in discontent, That Handsome Devil Power Hour, the before, and The Tim Minchin Power Hour. Cya!!

[xtruss]

Mappa Mundi: The Greatest Medieval Map In The World

— By Anna Bressanin | Wednesday February 14, 2024

Credit: CalimaX/Alamy

From a small island in the Venetian lagoon, a 15th-Century monk somehow designed an astonishingly accurate planisphere of the world.

On the second floor of the Library of Saint Mark in Venice, a map of the world occupies an entire room – and rightfully so, considering its historical significance and imposing size (2.4m x 2.4m, bigger than a king size bed). Completed in 1459, the Mappa Mundi is the compendium of all the geographical knowledge of the time and is arguably the greatest medieval map of the world.

Almost twice as large as the famous English Hereford Mappa Mundi (ca 1300), this exquisitely decorated planisphere showcasing Europe, Africa and Asia was the masterpiece of Fra Mauro, a monk of the Camaldolese order who lived on the small Venetian island of San Michele.

Although the monk never set foot outside Venice, his Mappa Mundi is amazingly accurate in its depiction of cities, provinces, continents, rivers and mountains. America isn't on the map, since Christopher Columbus would take his trip across the ocean 33 years later; and nor is Australia. But Japan (or in Fra Mauro's words, "Cipango") is there, making its first appearance on a Western chart. Even more surprisingly, Africa is correctly drawn as circumnavigable, long before the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.

"It's the oldest surviving medieval map," said Meredith Francesca Small, author of the book Here Begins the Dark Sea, also describing it as the most complete medieval map to survive into modernity. "It's the first map to be based on science more than religion. The Hereford map is all propaganda, religious propaganda."

While the Hereford map depicted Heaven and Hell and was designed to serve as a compendium of the world's knowledge from a spiritual perspective, Fra Mauro took a scientific approach to his cartography. He declared in his inscriptions that he would "verify the text by practical experience, investigating for many years and frequenting personas worthy of faith who have seen with their own eyes what I faithfully report here".

There's more than scientific and historical relevance to it, though. The most striking aspect of the map, which immediately catches your eye after ascending the white marble stairs of the Library of Saint Mark, where some of the world's most precious and ancient manuscripts are kept, is its sheer splendour.

"It's huge, beautiful, fantastically crafted," said historian Pieralvise Zorzi. Beyond the outlines of countries and continents, Fra Mauro's Mappa Mundi is a magnificent golden and blue painting composed of minute drawings of gorgeous palaces, bridges, sailing ships, rolling blue waves and outsized sea creatures, plus a total of 3,000 cartigli – red and blue annotations written in ancient Venetian that tell stories, anecdotes and legends.

In Norway, for instance, a cartiglio indicates the location where the Venetian merchant Pietro Querini came ashore after a shipwreck. As the tale goes, he not only survived the accident, but he brought stockfish back home, thus starting the Venetian passion for baccalà (the creamy fish spread you can find in every osteria).

The Exquisitely Decorated Mappa Mundi measures an impressive 2.4m x 2.4m. Credit: Bildagentur-online/Getty Images

Another cartiglioindicates Tharse, the "kingdom where the Magi came from", then thought to be located somewhere between China and Mongolia.

All these annotations are legible on the map, and are relatively easy to decipher for Venetian speakers since the current dialect is not dramatically different from the idiom of the 15th Century. However, the inscriptions are also translated into English on an interactive map created by the Galileo Institute and Museum in Florence. Displayed on a flat screen in the same exhibition space as the Mappa Mundi, it provides the somewhat peculiar experience of entering the mind of a savant monk and reading the world through his medieval eyes.

It was not a small world. Although Fra Mauro lived his entire life in his island monastery in the lagoon backwaters, he tapped into the knowledge of travellers and merchants who crossed paths in the flourishing trading city of Venice that was "the capital of cartography at the time", explained Saint Marks librarian Margherita Venturelli.

“Maps Were Fundamental For Trade Because If You Have A Good Map, You Can Go Everywhere”

"Maps were fundamental for trade because if you have a good map, you can go everywhere," added Zorzi. "Every innovation in terms of cartography was welcome in Venice, and well-paid."

The Library of Saint Mark is home to one of the world's most significant collections of classical texts. Credit: Mo Peerbacus/Alamy

Fra Mauro's main source for Asia was merchant and fellow Venetian Marco Polo, who had published his travel accounts more than 150 years earlier. On the map, 150 locations are directly traceable to Marco Polo's Travels; for instance, the Mount of Adam was placed in the island of Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka), where, according to legends recounted by Polo, the first man's body was believed to be buried, together with his teeth and even his bowl, which was supposed to have the magical property of multiplying food.

Besides Polo, Fra Mauro had numerous sources around the globe. The fact that the chart looks upside down to contemporary Western eyes, with the south on top, might indicate that he was inspired by Arab cartography, like a 12th-Century map by North African geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi. The numbers that Fra Mauro lists as "the Distance of Heavens" are from mathematician and astronomer Campanus de Novara. "From the centre of the world to the surface of the Earth there are 3,245 miles. From the centre of the world to the lower surface of the heavens of the Moon there are 107,936 miles," and so on, he writes in the top left corner of the Mappa Mundi.

Fra Mauro also displayed a healthy scepticism and wasn't shy of criticising – as well as sometimes using –the revered Ptolemy's Geography, a treaty written in Alexandria, Egypt, by Claudius Ptolemy in 150 CE and lost for centuries to the Western world until it was rediscovered and translated in Latin again in the 1400s.

Fra Mauro's main source for Asia was merchant and fellow Venetian Marco Polo. Credit: The History Collection/Alamy

This Renaissance rationalist attitude also showed in the way he placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden outside of the planisphere, making it clear that Heaven is not a place on Earth; a statement that separated religion and geography and was forward thinking for any medieval man, let alone a monk.

These novelties, and the fact that the map was completed few decades before Christopher Columbus sailed to America, contribute to Fra Mauro's Mappa Mundi being considered the geographical link between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. To contemporary visitors, his map is a reminder of the fact that maps were once not only practical tools, but also a matter of beauty – and a way to tell the most extraordinary stories.

[ryin-silverfish]

Chapter 13: Of Tigers and Ghosts

"When the mind is active, all kinds of mara come into existence; when the mind is extinguished, all kinds of mara would be extinguished."

-This quote from Tripataka was an altered version of Chan Master Huineng's last words, only that the novel replaced 法(law/phenomenon) with 魔(mara/demon)——sidenote, JTTW really likes referencing stories about Huineng's life and deeds.

-Now, mara doesn't always equal to literal demons; rather, it can be anything that obstruct a practitioner from reaching enlightenment, inside or outside. Since it is through the unquiet mind/heart that stray thoughts and wicked desires and distractions arise, the only way to eliminate such obstructions is by understanding and mastering one's own heart/mind.

-About 10-12 days outta Chang'an, we have our first demon encounter. General Yin(寅将军) the tiger, Steer Hermit(特处士) the bull, and the Bear Mountain Lord(熊山君)…

-Hmm, why do these names sound familiar? Ah, it turns out two of them are from this one's favorite pass-time classics, Taiping Guangji(太平广记)! Compiled at the beginning of the Song dynasty, it was half-encyclopedia, half folk tales compendium, and the tale these two demon NPCs came out of could be found in Vol. 434.

-Unlike their later versions, the General Yin and Steer Hermit of Taiping Guangji were pretty cultured, peaceful demons, playing chess and sharing a drink with the scholar who ran into them. Though their drunken discussion did get a little heated later and the two demons angrily walked out(leaving behind paw + hoof prints that clued the scholar to their true identity), they were not man-eaters.

-Continuing from last week's readings, what Tripataka did to pacify the ghost of Boqin's dad was pretty much what a Yogacara monk of the Ming dynasty would do while on the job.

-First, chanting of mantras to clear away bad karma, then, scriptures that offer deliverance for the dead. After that is done, a prayer was written on paper for later use, followed by more scripture-chanting——Guanyin Sutra, Amita Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Mahamayuri Sutra, etc.

-Finally, incenses and food are offered, and the earlier prayer slip + "paper horses" are burnt away. My annotated Chinese edition presented two definitions for "paper horse": 1) horse drawings used in rituals (as mounts for the gods), 2) drawings of guardian gods themselves.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

[wolfislost]

Fantasizing about having the time and resources to obsessively research my kintype.

Think about it-

A huge vintage style world map covered in writing marking the locations of various werewolf myths, tracking the spread of stories about our kind as they travel by word of mouth. Various pins and coloured string connecting places and events with common elements.

Newspaper clippings and print outs of books no longer available, lost to the passage of time. Each one furiously annotated, underlined in some places and highlighted in others.

Dozens of mythology books and compendiums of legends from across the world, with pages of interest marked in bold colours- references marked for further research.