#citations quotes etc etc

[idiotsonlyevent]

i've seen a lot of people mention how dorohedoro explores class through its magic system, but i really think dorohedoro could be interpreted as a very thorough exploration of capitalism and how it affects basically every single aspect of society. (spoilers through the end of the manga under the cut.)

in dorohedoro, capitalism is artificially created through chidaruma's meddling. in creating the sorcerers and allowing them to mistreat humans, chidaruma creates 'capitalism' (aka class inequality, leading to class struggle) in dorohedoro's world. this eventually leads to the creation of hole as an entity, representing the personification of class struggle.

smoke, defined by personality and determining someone's abilities, is a form of capital, both a type of currency and a status symbol. not only is a sorcerer's position determined by how much smoke they can create, but the actual function and 'usefulness' (aka 'power') of the smoke is important as well. those without smoke - both humans and weak sorcerers - are opressed.

there are also powerful sorcerers w certain 'unique' abilities like risu and natsuki who cannot conform to these normative expectations due to the nature of their magic, showing that regardless of how 'powerful' an individual actually is, their performance and adherence to norms is what's considered most important; since they cannot conform, then they are considered failures.

en represents success in capitalism; he is a powerful sorcerer, with a useful ability at a high level of mastery, and he can produce a ton of smoke. not only that, but he literally runs a mega corporation! there are jokes throughout the manga of en's unethical and exploitative practices.

but just because he himself is successful and runs a successful business, doesn't mean that any of 'his family' - and by extension en himself - are 'safe' from the dangers of capitalism; he is simply in less immediate danger than everyone else!

en is revived - allowing the rest of the family to survive - because of fujita, ebisu, and sho: the three family members most frequently deemed 'weak' or 'useless.' sho's magic enables fujita to retrieve en's devil tumor for revival, and sho saves the rest of the family from being dissolved by hole. fujita's 'meek loser' demeanor is what allows him to effectively spy on the cross-eyes, retrieve the devil tumor, and negotiate with tetsujo. ebisu's relationship w kikurage and quick thinking allows her to to enlist dokuga's help to transport en's corpse, completing the revival plotline. and this is not to diminish everyone else's contributions, but to note that especially fujita and ebisu are able to help save the family because of the skills they have developed outisde of magic to survive in a world that does not value them. en's, the family's, and capitalism's survival is reliant on those they deem 'useless'; capitalism's survival is reliant on the labor of marginalized and exploited workers.

dorohedoro's cast is filled with characters who are outcasts and don't 'fit in' with societal expectations, and as the story continues, relationships between humans, sorcerers, and those 'in-between' become even more prominent. despite everything - the hardships, the resentment, the difficult histories everyone has - dorohedoro goes out of its way to consistently affirm friendship and solidarity between sorcerers and humans, regardless of the expectations that society has for them and the roles they're 'expected' to play.

dorohedoro does not have an ending that 'solves inequality' - massive social change can't happen overnight. dorehedoro DOES have a hopeful ending, though. it reaffirms that progress is possible. that in a chaotic, unpredictable, unfair world, there is still peace, friendship, and gyoza - we just need to find it and work for it together.

[wildkitte]

Let’s talk about Creusa!

Hooray @aeneiddaily has finally reached my favouritest blorbo of the Aeneid, Aeneas’ wife Creusa. I just finished my bachelor’s thesis about her (specifically what Maurus Servius Honoratus says about her character, also comparing to R. G. Austin’s commentary) and she’s been a special little brainrot of mine for the last couple years even before last schoolyear’s deeper dive into madness.

For now I want to just talk about some basics when it comes to Creusa, and then some more text based analysis later (probably tomorrow and the day after, I suppose?). Please note that my information on the topic is still limited - I only got as far as a BA thesis can go (around 33 pages overall), and I mostly used articles written in English and whatever was accessible through my university’s library.

Let’s start with a little introduction, and once Aeneid Daily gets to the Juicy Bits (aka lines 2.768–795) I’ll get to some deeper discussions of her character and what commentators, both modern and ancient, have said about her.

(And, uh… spoilers for the ending of Book 2? If that is a concern?)

SO, Creusa! Who is Creusa? Well, she is Aeneas’ wife and the mother of their son Ascanius, and she dies at the end of the Book 2, these are the basic facts. But are they? There’s actually some interesting stuff relating to her tradition.

Aeneas’ wife appears in earlier tradition, in both art and literature. In the famous depiction of Aeneas carrying his father and the penates out of Troy, he’s occasionally accompanied by a woman (or sometimes two) depicted with him, assumedly his wife. Sometimes she tags along with Aeneas to Italy, and in some traditions, she is saved and swept away by Venus or Cybele. To my knowledge she is never captured by the Greeks (like poor Andromache and Cassandra). For some reason Vergil decided to create a version where she dies (and I will get to the possible motives of this in another post), and that became the popular tradition after Aeneid was published.

One fascinating thing about Creusa (that drives me ABSOLUTELY INSANE) is actually her name – and specifically that it might not be her name at all.

She has been called Εὐρυδίκη (Latin spelling often Eurydica), and the name later changes to Κρέουσα (lat. Creusa). It is not certain when or why this change happens exactly. Pausanias talks about this in Hellados periegesis and explain that Creusa (Κρέουσα) is “naturally Aeneas’ wife” (εἶναι γὰρ δὴ καὶ Αἰνείου τὴν Κρέουσαν γυναῖκα) but that i.e., the author Leskheos has also used the name Εὐρυδίκη (Paus. 10. 26.1-2). But suddenly in the 1st century BC, Livy, Vergil and Dionysius of Halicarnassus start using the name Creusa – I have not been able to find an explanation as to why this happened. Austin speculates that it might have been some new finding of the antiquarians of the time, or perhaps one of the authors came up with the name first and it caught on (Pausanias certainly sheds no more light on this).

But hey why is the name important at all? Well, you might have picked up on the familiar name Eurydica there and maybe even made the connection to Vergil’s Georgics – and you would be absolutely correct to do so! While Vergil is partially creating his own tradition with Creusa, he references his own passage on Orpheus and Eurydice in the 4th book of the Georgics (4.453-527), down to direct quotes pulled from this previous work. There are some pretty obvious similarities between Aeneas and Creusa and Orpheus and Eurydice, which I found to be an interesting add-on to the character of Creusa (I’ll also come back to this later – let’s talk about PARALLELS BABY). In a way Vergil’s Creusa carries with her the earlier tradition of Aeneas’ wife, and Vergil is able to connect all these versions of her into one while also reinventing her for the purposes of the epic. (I am very normal about this) (trust me)

Her being Ascanius’ mother is actually something that has been contended as well. Servius mentions that it has been called into question – there are some who think Ascanius is Lavinia’s son (he mentions Livy as one; see Serv. Aen. 1.7) rather than Creusa’s. In Vergil’s version Creusa is very explicitly Ascanius’ mother, and this actually has a deeper reasoning than just a matter of taste. I probably don’t have to explain to anyone the importance of connecting Aeneas and through him Iulus to emperor Augustus, but it is indeed connected to that. Not only is Iulus of divine origin (being the grandson of Venus) but he is also descendent from the royal family  of Troy – Creusa is Priam’s daughter, Hector’s sister, and Vergil brings this up a lot (as does Servius, he’s really into proving the point). The Trojan royal family line brings even more legitimacy to gens Julia‘s right to power. Here Vergil creates a political myth (like Tarrant (1997) puts it) to emphasize Augustus' legitimacy and Creusa being Ascanius’ mother is an integral part of that.

But hey so, Creusa’s death, what’s up with that?

Once we get to her disappearance, I’ll talk about this a bit more because there is actually a lot of interesting discourse there, both in modern research as well as Servius’ commentary (Commentarius in Vergilii Opera, from c. 4th and 5th century (I include both Servius and Servius Auctus and use them interchangeably)). It all starts from today’s entry, lines 2.675-678, but I’ll talk about it more once we have full context.

So here’s my little introduction to Creusa, I have a lot more to say (I had 33 pages to say, actually, and would’ve had more if I didn’t have to narrow my research topic down, boo).

Oh Creusa, Creusa, you mysterious creature, most loyal of wives and yet another tragic female character who must die for Aeneas’ fate to be fulfilled. She’s a wife, she’s a mother, she’s chosen by gods and even… immortal? More to come tomorrow!

(Edit: the rest of my posts on her can be found in my creusa-tag)

[camelspit]

Roisin's Reading Rumble: Round 1

(Note: before I say what the challenge is this round, I want to clarify eliminations, now that there are a set number of people.

round 1: 3 people will be eliminated

round 2: 2 people will be eliminated

round 3-5: 1 person will be eliminated

fail to submit on time and you will be eliminated)

Round 1 Assignment:

Pick a dynamic between two characters (romantic, platonic, antagonistic, familial, etc.) and describe the relationship between them in as much detail as possible. This could be dissecting their interactions, discussing their history and why they're drawn to eachother, etc. Please try to keep it purely canon-based.

This will be due June 29th, 2023 and results will be posted on the 30th.

Please tag as roisin's reading rumble and @camelspit and @arson-anarchy-death

If you have any questions, let me know! :)

@when-wax-wings-melt

@florida-preposterously

@squishmallow36

@axels-corner

@thefoxysnake

@faggot-friday

@cogaytes

@aphelea

@gay-otlc

[nerice]

thesis progress report -introduction (passable) -theory queer definitions (rough draft) -theory queer narrative (rough draft) -theory cartoons/anime (rough draft) -analysis binaries (fix the framing) -analysis magigirls (add quotes) -analysis hero sacrifice (add quotes) -analysis [evangelion joke] (rough draft) -conclusion (sure) -bibliography (doing this last dw abt it)

[coryosmin]

Extra Credit - Professor Coriolanus Snow x Fem!Reader

summary: Coriolanus Snow is your communications professor at uni and it so happens to be the only class that your grade is dropping in. So you decide to ask your handsome professor what you can do to get extra credit. He gives it to you.

warnings: modern au, age gap (reader is 19, coryo is 25), college setting, nsfw content, mdni, p in v, oral (m receiving), flirting, soft dom coryo, praise kink, degradation kink, etc.

word count: 2,300

enjoy!

Being a university student, it takes a lot to maintain good grades. You’ve always been a good student, taking your time to learn the material, studying frequently, and wanting to maintain high grades. And you’ve achieved that in all of your classes except for one, communications.

It’s not that it’s a hard class. Communications is quite easy when you really get to the fundamentals of it. However, your professor, Professor Snow, was a harsh grader and will nitpick the tiniest of errors. Some may call him passionate about what he does, others may call him ridiculous. You personally think the latter.

Professor Snow was the professor that many of the students fawned over. He was young, some students being the same age as him or similar. He was blond, muscular, and always looked good in a suit. He was stoic and never really smiled for any particular reason. But his personality most certainly put a damper on his beauty.

You sat in your communications class, frowning at the paper you had just gotten back. It was an essay on conflict resolution, something you thought you did really well on as you had studied and researched the topic. However, the grade you received on that paper made you realize otherwise. In red ink was a big old “C-“ with no other information given. No feedback, nothing. And you were quite worried about your grade.

So after Professor Snow had dismissed the class, you stayed behind, nervously biting your lip as you waited for the other students to clear out. There were of course stragglers which made it a bit harder to have the confidence to talk with your professor. Once they had left though, you gathered your things and walked up to Professor Snow, who was erasing the whiteboard. “Sir,” you said hesitantly, getting his attention.

Professor Snow turned his head around to see you before going back to erasing the whiteboard. “Yes, Ms. L/N?” he said in that beautiful voice of his.

You cleared your throat before speaking. “I just wanted to possibly chat about my essay,” you said.

Professor Snow finished erasing the whiteboard placing the eraser down before turning around to face you. He rubbed his hands together. “What about it?” He asked, looking at you with his blue orbs.

“I don’t quite understand how I got a C minus when I met all the requirements that you assigned in the rubric,” You exclaimed, holding your paper in your hand.

Professor Snow motioned for you to hand him the paper so you did. He stood next to you, pressing his shoulder against yours as he showed you what you did wrong. “There are a few grammatical errors,” he said, pointing at a few of the lines. “This line right here isn’t a direct quote so I’m unsure as to why it’s in quotations,” he said.

“Because it’s paraphrased,” You replied.

“Paraphrasing doesn’t need quotes, it needs the citation,” Professor Snow exclaimed, glancing at you before looking back at the paper. “Overall, it’s a bunch of small errors that are silly mistakes which is why you were given the grade you were given.”

You frowned in frustration. Shouldn’t the content of the essay matter more? You sighed. “Is there anything I can do for extra credit?” You asked, looking up at your professor. He was already looking back at you when you had asked, the two of you only a few inches away from one another.

Professor Snow tilted his head slightly, tapping his chin as he thought to himself. After a few moments, he smirked, leaning in to whisper in your ear. “There’s certainly something you can do…” he whispered.

You gulped at the proximity, your heart racing in your chest. “What?” You whispered back.

Professor Snow smirked, pulling away as he moved to close the door of the lecture hall, locking it behind him before walking over to his desk chair and sitting down. “Get on your knees for me,” He said simply as he spread his legs.

Your eyes widened as you realized what Professor Snow meant. You hadn’t taken him to be that kind of professor. “T-that’s breaking many different university rules, Professor Snow. I hardly think-”

“If you want the extra credit so badly, you’d do it,” He shrugged, raising his shoulders as he did so. His expression was amused, as though not expecting you to take up his offer whatsoever. Which made you realize what exactly he was doing. He was challenging you. And you never back down from a challenge.

So you did what he hadn’t expected which is drop your things and walk over to him, kneeling in front of your professor. “I’ll do it,” You replied, looking up at him.

Professor Snow’s eyes widened before he quickly recovered. He cleared his throat, licking his lips. “Get to it then,” he said, his voice thick.

And so you did. You unzipped his red slacks, your eyes fixated on the bulge forming in his pants. “If you want me to stop at any point, sir, please let me know,” You said, pulling his pants down gently.

Professor Snow simply watched, anticipating your touch. He helped you pull his pants down just enough to reveal his black briefs. “Keep going,” he replied.

You brought a hand to his bulge, palming him through his underwear. Professor Snow let out a small groan at the feeling, his cock hardening from a semi to a full erection underneath your touch. You couldn’t help the smirk on your face at the reaction of your professor. It was most certainly hot and sent a wave of arousal down to your core. You licked your lips, moving your hands to the waistband of his underwear and pulling them down enough to reveal is pretty pink cock. Your eyes widened at the length, unable to help the gasp that escaped your lips. “You’re so big,” You said in amazement.

Professor Snow smirked at your reaction. It was true. He was at least eight inches, maybe a little bit more. “Yeah?” He asked, looking down at you.

You blushed, nodding your head. You looked up into Professor Snow’s eyes before looking back at his cock. You leaned in, licking a stripe from the base of his cock to the tip, swirling your tongue at the top. Professor Snow shuttered at the feeling, a hand moving to your head. You slowly eased him into your mouth, making it about halfway before his cock was hitting the back of your throat. You moved your head back up, swirling your tongue, before moving it back down. Then you got into a rhythm.

Professor Snow moaned, letting his eyes flutter shut for a moment as he relished in the warm feeling of your mouth on his cock. He knew this was definitely forbidden, students cannot sleep with teachers. But he just couldn’t help himself. You had always been his favorite student though he tried not to show that by nitpicking every little thing you turn in. You actually do wonderful work. But he didn’t want to accidentally reveal his favoritism towards you simply because he’s attracted to you. It’s a weakness and Coriolanus Snow was not a weak man. “Such a dirty whore, sucking your professor’s cock for a grade,” He groaned, opening his eyes to take in your beauty.

You moaned around his cock, arousal pooling between your legs. You clenched your thighs at Professor Snow’s words, trying to relieve some tension. You continued moving your head up and down rhythmically, using your hand to jerk off the amount of his cock that you couldn’t fit in your mouth.

“Getting all worked up from sucking my cock?” He asked, caressing your hair. “Dirty whore.” He moaned. “I’m so close. Are you going to be a good girl and swallow?”

In response, you continued your movements, sucking his cock so well. His cock twitched in your mouth, signaling his release. “Oh fuck,” he moaned, throwing his head back in pleasure before cumming in your mouth. You swallowed his cum, sucking him through his orgasm. And when Professor Snow finished, you pulled off of his cock, looking up at him with pretty eyes, swollen glistening lips, and messy hair.

“Did I do good, sir?” You asked, giving a small smile.

Professor Snow breathed heavily, giving you a breathless chuckle. You looked so attractive to him. “Yes, you were a good girl,” He replied, causing you to clench your thighs. Professor Snow’s cock twitched in interest again, ready for more. He smirked at you. “Come here, baby.” You obliged, getting up off of your knees and crawling onto Professor Snow’s lap. Your skirt pooling around the both of you. Professor Snow gripped your hips, leaning in to kiss you on the lips.

You kissed him back, eyes fluttering shut as you moved your lips in sync. He kissed you deeply and hungrily, as though you were the air he needed to breathe. And you absolutely adored it. Professor Snow’s hands moved underneath your skirt to grab your ass, massaging the flesh through your panties. You moaned softly against his lips, allowing his tongue to enter your mouth and explore you.

After a few minutes, he pulled away from the kiss, looking into your beautiful eyes. He moved a hand to your clothed pussy, feeling it through the fabric. “You’re soaked, baby,” He murmured.

You let out a shaky breath, nodding your head. “So wet, Professor Snow,��� you murmured back.

Professor Snow smirked. “Call me Coriolanus or Coryo when we’re alone, baby,” He said as he slowly rubbed your clit through your panties.

You let out a soft moan, nodding your head at Coriolanus. “Yes, Coryo.”

“Good girl,” He replied, kissing your lips. “Gonna fuck you, okay?”

You nodded your head in agreement. “Please, sir,” you asked, biting your lip.

Coriolanus gave you a soft smile, still rubbing your clit. “Such good manners,” he said. And then he moved your panties to the side, grabbing his cock and rubbing it between your folds. “Are you on birth control?” A very important question and a good one to ask too. You are a college student after all.

“Yes,” You replied, sighing as you felt the tip of Coryo’s cock rub against your pussy. And without any more hesitation, Coriolanus inserted his cock into you slowly, causing you both to moan. It was a bit painful at first, Coryo being the biggest you’ve ever really had. But it felt oh-so-good. “Wanna ride you,” You whispered, wrapping your arms around Coryo’s neck.

“Go ahead, baby,” Coriolanus replied, grabbing your ass. “You deserve it.”

And so you did. You began to move your hips slowly up and down Coryo’s length, causing the both of you to moan. Coriolanus kissed your lips while you moved your hips. You were so wet and tight around him. You whined at the feeling, grateful to finally being able to relieve the ache you’ve had between your legs for some time now. You pulled away from the kiss, throwing your head back in pleasure as you moved your hips a bit faster. “Oh fuck,” you moaned out.

Coriolanus watched you ride his cock. You were so gorgeous and pretty. Your cheeks were red, your cunt was so tight and warm. Coriolanus couldn’t believe he was finally fucking you. He wrapped an arm around your waist, stopping your movements. You looked at him confused until you felt him bucking his hips, fucking up into you at a harsh pace. You let out a squeal before bringing a hand to cover your mouth, muffling your moans.

“You like that, baby?” Coryo breathed harshly. “Like my cock fucking you so hard?”

You nodded your head, mewling. “So good, Coryo,” You moaned out. “So deep.”

Coriolanus continued fucking up into you, feeling his release approaching rapidly. He reached a hand between the two of you, rubbing circles on your clit, causing you to let out a muffled loud moan against your hand. “Such a good girl, taking my cock so good.” He moaned out. “Gonna cum inside your beautiful pussy. Would you like that, huh? Would you like to be filled with my cum?”

You whined pathetically, nodding your head. “Yes!” You moaned out. “Please cum inside me, Coryo, please.” Your orgasm was approaching quickly, the familiar heat building inside your abdomen. “Am so close. Can I cum? Please let me cum.”

Your words and begging spurred Coryo on. God you were so fucking perfect. “Yes, baby, cum for me. Such a good girl,” He moaned, resting his head against your shoulder as he continued his movements. And soon you both were cumming at the same time, you gushing around his cock as he came inside of you.

And when you both came down from your highs, you breathed heavily, looking down at Coryo. You both were silent for a few minutes until you broke the silence. “So…” You breathed out. “Did I earn my extra credit?”

Coriolanus let out a small laugh, nodding his head against your shoulder. “Yes, baby, you did.”

You grinned at your professor. “And do you do this with all of your students who need extra credit?” You asked.

Coriolanus lifted his head to properly look at you, an amused smile on his face. “Only the special ones. And I only have one of those,” He replied charmingly.

Later in the week, when you went into your Communications class and Professor Snow passed out your previous assignments, your essay from earlier was handed to you. The C Minus was crossed out and replaced with an A+ and a note that read “See me after class.”

It’s safe to say that after that, Professor Snow was your absolute favorite professor.

[mixelation]

i was confused by some of the current conversation about "avoiding" plagiarism, but having found a post with a bunch of anecdotes from being being confused..... yeah, okay, i think some people on here actually have no idea how to write an analysis at all??? for academic papers (a casual blog post would have a lower burden):

if you quote someone directly, you obviously have to cite them, and also put quotation marks around what you're quoting.

if you're reporting someone else's thoughts, ideas, findings, etc, you have to cite it. yes, even if you're paraphrasing/rewording it

it's bad form to not contextualize what you're quoting or paraphrasing (when necessary), to prevent twisting your source's arguments into something they probably weren't trying to say

if your entire paper is summarizing and quoting other people, you probably haven't done any original analysis and you probably haven't made any arguments of your own. this is okay for some papers (like a literature review), but if you're in a class, it's almost definitely not what you're meant to be doing

it's totally normal to paraphrase other people. you just say, "So-and-so argued ABC [citation]. However, Such-and-such would later make the counterargument that XYZ [citation]. Here I propose a compromise between So-and-so and Such-and-such: [your own ideas here]." or even "Here I argue So-and-so's original argument has more merit. [Explain why you think this, perhaps using other people's work as evidence.]"

[dduane]

I had an odd impulse in the age of Internet to look up the articles in WOUNDED SKY's bibliography. I dug for a while for the Isenson one. Then blinked a few times, realized that in 1983, 1996 was in the future ... and figured our timeline just went down an alternate route. Bit delighted to find that the first two do exist, though. Purely curious: were they research you found while writing? Or were they found after the plot? Etc.

I found them while researching.

In preparation for The Wounded Sky, I spent all my non-working hours for the guts of six weeks in the science library at Cal State Northridge, hip deep in journals on hyperdimensional physics. My favorite paper name from that research period remains "Taub-NUT Space As A Counter-Example To Practically Everything."

A couple of the papers that were particularly useful to me were cited in the [air-quotes]bibliography[/air-quotes] at the novel's end. The (then) young Princeton professor cited told me later that he'd been using TWS as part of his physics syllabus. :) So that circle closed nicely.

Meanwhile, for those who haven't seen it, here's what that citations page looked like.

[journeytothewestresearch]

Can you please tell me what abilities sun wukong have because am always confused about it i even hear some people says that sun wukong is omniscient and omnipresent and can control time or that he is is a boundless character

At no point in JTTW is Monkey ever depicted as a boundless character with omniscience, omnipresence, and control over time. Anyone claiming that has never read the novel. Never ever trust any online claims about Sun Wukong unless a cited quote is provided.

Having said that, I am slowly compiling a comprehensive list of all of Monkey's magical abilities and skills, complete with corresponding Chinese terms and citations. However, I am nowhere close to being done (and won't be for years), so I can only give you a general list at this time. But I will link to my past articles where applicable.

The following is based on a list I wrote a few months ago for someone looking to make their D&D campaign more authentic.

Immortality - He has six layers of immortality. But these are more like layers of invulnerability. As a "bogus immortal" (yaoxian, 妖仙) he is still susceptible to injury and death because he hasn’t yet achieved Buddha-nature and broken free of the wheel of rebirth (see note #1 here for an explanation).

Invulnerability - He has an adamantine hide that can't be pierced or hurt by earthly or heavenly weapons and elements (this doesn't count the times that he allows himself to be cut). This is thanks to all of the immortal foodstuff he had eaten in heaven being refined within his body by his samadhi fire, giving him a "diamond body" (jingang zhi qu, 金鋼之軀). Sometimes he uses this invulnerability to freak out demons by blocking a sword strike with his bald head. However, he can still be hurt. For example, he is twice wounded by special elements born from spiritual cultivation, samadhi fire and wind (the book treats cultivated and heavenly elements as two different things). Also, one villain, a scorpion demoness energized with Buddhist dharma power, is able to successfully penetrate his skin by stinging him in the face with her tail.

72 changes - He can transform into anything. The only flaw is his tail, which doesn't always change the way he wants it to. Or, a character recognizes him because of his red butt.

Cloud somersault - This allows him to fly 108,000 li (33,554 mi / 54,000 km) in a single leap. The skill is actually a metaphor for instantaneous enlightenment, for those who achieve it will immediately arrive in the Buddha's paradise.

Magic hairs - He can change any one of his 84,000 hairs into anything he wants (tools, random objects, living creatures, etc.) These include hair clones, which are autonomous copies of himself that can range into the tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions. However, he only deploys these on a small scale in the novel. He never uses the power to its full stated extent.

Super strength - His greatest feat is carrying two mountains while running "with the speed of a meteor." But there are characters physically stronger than him. For instance, Monkey cannot escape the grip of the Great Peng bird once he is caught in his powerful talons.

Martial arts - He is proficient in armed and unarmed combat, being able to go toe-to-toe with deities with centuries more combat experience than him. "Short Fist," a historical style, is listed as his preferred boxing method. But he mainly relies on his magic iron staff for fighting.

General magic - Monkey is shown capable of calling forth gods and spirits, growing or shrinking to any size, parting fire and water, creating impassable barriers, conjuring wind storms, casting illusions, freezing people in place, putting anyone to sleep, unlocking any lock, bestowing superhuman strength, bringing the dead back to life, turning invisible, changing someone's appearance, traveling to and from heaven and hell, etc.

Magic Eyes - He can see through illusions. But this isn't always portrayed consistently, for I know of several times where Guanyin fools him, and even a god of the soil, a lesser deity, is once able to do the same thing.

Medicine - He can diagnose maladies and concoct medicines to solve the issue.

You can see that omniscience, omnipresence, and control over time are not listed. I think the problem is that people are confusing Sun Wukong at two different points in his character arc. The powers listed above come from the journey itself (ch. 13 to 100). The omni-level powers would come after he achieves Buddhahood at the end of the novel (ch. 100). However, it's very, very important to know that the story ends before Sun Wukong, now the "Victorious Fighting Buddha," performs any feats (i.e. he has no feats as a Buddha). I'm sure people could assign him powers ascribed to other Buddhas in religious literature, but what happens after the story ends is beyond canon.

I hope this helps.

[hermitw]

I've been thinking about this reblog of yours for months and I finally figured out how to respond to it.

I went and read No Longer Human by Junji Ito and it was a very upsetting thing to go through. I don't think I can read it again. However, I came out of it thinking that Gege was probably inspired by it.

When Yozo is first introduced, I noticed that Takaba's backstory was very similar. Feeling isolated from others, he decided to become a clown to gain acceptance from others. (Citations in Image Captions)

And later when Yozo was caught "cheating" (it's in quotes because those women are child rapists), I noticed that her face was really similar to the one Higuruma's client made when he felt betrayed by the trial outcome.

There's probably a lot more to say about how themes surrounding CSA and suicide in this work are echoed in JJK, but I'm not able to make the post myself. No Longer Human is too far out of my comfort zone in terms of graphic depiction to delve into it deeper.

But you seem strong enough to handle it, so... Idk maybe run with this some more.

Ohhh this is so interesting! I could definitely read No Longer Human again - tbh I read Junji Ito's version years ago. This year I listened to the audio book and bought a copy - but it's like, a draft in the author's handwriting (bc I thought it would help me study Japanese and if I had an English translation that I'd read it on repeat lmao). But you're real for that - I forget how disturbed people tend to be trying to read through it, I'm sorry that was rough.

I did go back to read the reblog and idk how relevant all that was - I've reread the manga since and felt like, oh I might have been misremembering some things like Uraume - idk if they actually had a freeze response in ch. 219, since they did tell Yorozu to back off though it took a minute - but it's also interesting how their CT deals with ice. Like to have a fight response, they freeze others? It's so interesting but I can't be sure whether it's there at all. (ik that yap II inspired some more coherent posts, like how it influenced Choso's self-image, etc., I linked but didn't tag you back then bc I felt Annoying especially w heavy topics but I can definitely go back and find them if you'd like.)

On a twin peaks note (without spoiling it), I feel like it inspired jjk to some extent - I've been feeling like the last chapter will end the way s2 did. Or at least - with the weird dreamy themes, "we are the dreamer who dreams and who lives inside the dream", etc...

But you're right - Yozo and the others' reactions resemble more jjk characters than I would think to connect. Takaba's jokes are truly a shield... And now I have an excuse to read Junji Ito's version again? Thank u so much (also isn't it funny how September 28 Uzumaki airs and September 30 jjk ends?).

I think gege gets inspired by the most tragic stories, I wonder how much of that is accurate but I can't always be convinced otherwise.... Especially when anime / manga series that he's confirmed as influences often deal with autonomy in ways that I couldn't handle (Evangelion, the night beyond the tricornered window).

By the way - ik we've mentioned elfen lied before, but in the first episode, you know that coffee mug? How it looks like jjk foreshadowing? Even has snail head Mahito - cut off-, the baseball, Panda, the worm (also cut off).... and later the newborn babies that look just like Yuuji...

I swear that elfen lied, Kagewani, and banana fish influenced jjk. It seems so obvious w those, maybe Vampire Princess Miyu as well.

Sorry for getting off topic - I've been looking into why Momotaro keeps coming up in jujutsu kaisen, and in the end it came back full circle to that damn coffee cup. Invest in a baseball team? A zoo? I'm going insane.

All this to say - rereading Junji Ito's version and seeing if I notice similarities between manga panels is so exciting. Gege even made a note that he asked for permission before drawing - I think it was the Uzumaki CT - So we know he's a big fan of Junji Ito. And it seems like there is a rly good chance No Longer Human inspired him as well (though I feel like characters with similar traumas having similar reactions is inevitable to some extent, if they're written in a believable way, it should be clearer when I'm reading both stories in the same format) based on the stories he has officially referenced.

[thepringlesofblood]

Murderbot Citations

I'm writing a giant research paper on the murderbot diaries and how Wells contrasts utopia & dystopia in her worldbuilding to deepen both sets of lore. So, I have made a LOT of citations.

Like, a LOT of citations. I can't even begin to describe. and it has been a royal pain getting them all on the computer, formatted correctly, with page # and book attached.

So. I decided to publish my giant list of citations online in case anyone else wants to do posts/papers/projects on the murderbot diaries and needs formatted, direct quotes with page numbers attached. (Also to feel like all this work has been for more than just my own academic needs.)

TLDR: A compilation of quotes from The Murderbot Diaries with page numbers attached, ready to be adjusted to the citation style of your choice & used as in-text citations where you see fit to put them. Enjoy!

ASR = All Systems Red

AC = Artificial Condition

RP = Rogue Protocol

ES = Exit Strategy

NE = Network Effect

FT = Fugitive Telemetry

SC = System Collapse

I use 'mb' as shorthand for murderbot

It's mostly ASR, with some NE and FT thrown in, but I put all the abbreviations in case I wind up coming back and putting more citations here

My list is organized according to how I'm writing the paper (all ones about surveillance here, all the ones about contract slavery there, etc.), so the page numbers are not in order, and there might be a repeat or two, but they are in book order. some of them might be repeated bc I had them formatted in lists like "all quotes related to ___) and some quotes relate to multiple things.

if you're looking specifically for gender-related mb quotes, @worldsentwined made a wonderful post collecting them a while back. I also have a few other murderbot posts that have quotes in them that might not be here, including a reblog where a bunch of lovely people added extra citations onto my original post. I hope you find what you're looking for!

All Systems Red

“I had been on contracts where the clients would have told me to put the bleeding human down to go get the stuff.” (15) ASR

“There were groans and general complaining about having to pay high prices for shitty equipment. (I don’t take it personally.)” (31) ASR crossover w slavery

“My education modules were such cheap crap;” (34) ASR

“I’m not refundable.” (49) ASR

“(You had to check everything out and log any problems immediately when you took delivery or the company wasn’t liable.)” (52) ASR

“It was all company equipment though, per contract, and all subject to the same malfunctions as the crap they’d dumped on us.” (58) ASR

““The company could be bribed to conceal the existence of several hundred survey teams on this planet.” Survey teams, whole cities, lost colonies, traveling circuses, as long as they thought they could get away with it. I just didn’t see how they could get away with making a client survey team—two client survey teams—vanish. Or why they’d want to. There were too many bond companies out there, too many competitors. Dead clients were terrible for business. “I don’t think the company would collude with one set of clients to kill two other sets of clients. You purchased a bond agreement that the company would guarantee your safety or pay compensation in the event of your death or injury. Even if the company couldn’t be held liable or partially liable for your deaths, they would still have to make the payment to your heirs. DeltFall was a large operation. The death payout for them alone will be huge.” And the company hated to spend money.” (90) ASR

“The organic parts mostly sleep, but not always. You know something’s happening. They were trying to purge my memory. We’re too expensive to destroy.” (116) ASR

“The company required this as a security feature if you wanted your base to be anywhere without open terrain around it. It cost extra, and if you didn’t want it, it cost even more to guarantee your bond.” (124) ASR

“Okay, the problem is, I’ve mentioned this before, the company is cheap. When it comes to something like a beacon that just has to launch once if there’s an emergency, send a transmission through the wormhole, and then never gets retrieved, they’re very cheap.” (137) ASR

“I said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.” It’s an automatic reaction triggered by catastrophic malfunction…. “Your contract allows—” “Shut up,” Mensah snapped.” (139) ASR

“…we’re cheaply produced and we suck. Nobody would hire one of us for non-murdering purposes unless they had to.” (34) ASR

“In a smart world, I should go alone, but with the governor module I had to be within a hundred meters of at least one of the clients at all times, or it would fry me.” (37) ASR

“I walked out a little way, past a couple of the lakes, almost expecting to see something under the surface. Dead bodies, maybe. I’d seen plenty of those (and caused plenty of those) on past contracts, but this one had been dead-body-lacking, so far. It made for a nice change.” (44) ASR

“This is how we fight: throw ourselves at each other and see whose parts give out first.” (69) ASR

““Dr. Mensah,” I said, “this is a violation of security priority and I am contractually obligated to record this for report to the company—” It was in the buffer and the rest of my brain was empty.” (73) ASR

“The DeltFall SecUnits hadn’t been rogues, they had been inserted with combat override modules. The modules allow personal control over a SecUnit, turn it from a mostly autonomous construct into a gun puppet. The feed would be cut off, control would be over the comm, but functionality would depend on how complex the orders were. “Kill the humans” isn’t a complex order.” (75) ASR

““Because if the company wanted to sabotage you, they would have poisoned your supplies using the recycling systems. The company is more likely to kill you by accident.”” (81) ASR

“I said, “I did not hack my governor module to kill my clients. My governor module malfunctioned because the stupid company only buys the cheapest possible components. It malfunctioned and I lost control of my systems and I killed them. The company retrieved me and installed a new governor module. I hacked it so it wouldn’t happen again.” (81) ASR

"“Do they really expect to get away with this?” Ratthi turned to me, like he was expecting an answer.” (105)

““They may believe the company and whoever your beneficiaries are won’t look any further than the rogue SecUnits. But they can’t make two whole survey teams disappear unless their corporate or political entity doesn’t care about them. Does DeltFall’s care? Does yours?” (105) ASR

“Freehold meant it had been terraformed and colonized but wasn’t affiliated with any corporate confederations. Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn’t been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.” (26) ASR

“The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company.” (48) ASR

“I had a moment to feel betrayed, which was stupid. Volescu was my client, and I’d saved his life because that was my job, not because I liked him.” (79-80) ASR

“One saw me and Ratthi and said, “Again, this is irregular. Purging the unit’s memory before it changes hands isn’t just a policy, it’s best for the—” (143) ASR

“Maybe it would work out. This was what I was supposed to want. This was what everything had always told me I was supposed to want. Supposed to want.” (147) ASR

“Murderbots aren’t allowed to ride with the humans and I had to have verbal permission to enter. With my cracked governor there was nothing to stop me, but not letting anybody, especially the people who held my contract, know that I was a free agent was kind of important. Like, not having my organic components destroyed and the rest of me cut up for parts important.” (14) ASR

“I’m always supposed to speak respectfully to the clients, even when they’re about to accidentally commit suicide. HubSystem could log it and it could trigger punishment through the governor module.” (15) ASR

“…if it monitored the governor module and my feed like it was supposed to, it could lead to a lot of awkward questions and me being stripped for parts.” (31) ASR

“I had worked for some contracts that would have kept me standing here the entire day and night cycle, just on the off chance they wanted me to do something and didn’t want to bother using the feed to call me.” (33) ASR

“I don’t know why I was dancing around the word. Maybe because I thought she didn’t want to hear it. She’d just shot a heavily armed SecUnit with a mining drill to get me back; presumably she wanted to keep me.” (76) ASR

“Then Mensah said quietly, “SecUnit, do you have a name?” I wasn’t sure what she wanted. “No.” “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said." (82) ASR

“To them, talking to me was like talking to a hopper or a piece of mining equipment.” (127) ASR

“I know I said SecUnits aren’t sentimental about each other, but I wished it wasn’t one of the DeltFall units. It was in there somewhere, trapped in its own head, maybe aware, maybe not. Not that it matters. None of us had a choice.” (132) ASR

“Guardian was a nicer word than owner.” (148) ASR

“I’ve purchased your contract.” (145) ASR

“He said, “Good news! Dr. Mensah has permanently bought your contract! You’re coming home with us!” (141) ASR

“I’m off inventory.” They had told me that and maybe it was true.” (145) ASR

“SecSystem records everything, even inside the sleeping cabins, and I see everything.” (30) ASR

“I was supposed to check their personal logs periodically in case they were plotting to defraud the company or murder each other or something…” (57) ASR

“One of the reasons the bond company requires it, besides slapping more expensive markups on their clients, is that I was recording all their conversations all the time, though I wasn’t monitoring anything I didn’t need to do a half-assed version of my job. But the company would access all those recordings and data mine them for anything they could sell. No, they don’t tell people that. Yes, everyone does know it. No, there’s nothing you can do about it.” (27-28) ASR

“Now they knew their murderbot didn’t want to be around them any more than they wanted to be around it. I’d given a tiny piece of myself away. That can’t happen. I have too much to hide, and letting one piece go means the rest isn’t as protected.” (33-34) ASR

“No one would be shooting at me because they didn’t shoot people there. Mensah didn’t need a bodyguard there; nobody did. It sounded like a great place to live, if you were a human or augmented human.” (146) ASR

“If there’s a chance we can save lives, we have to take it,” Pin-Lee agreed.” (57) ASR

“They were the first clients I’d had who hadn’t had any previous experience with SecUnits” (40) ASR

““You have to think of it as a person,” Pin-Lee said to Gurathin.” (95) ASR

“”It is a person,” Arada insisted.” “I do think of it as a person,” Gurathin said. “An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.” “Then stop being mean to it,” Ratthi told him. “That might help.”” (96) ASR

“Overse added, “It doesn’t want to interact with humans. And why should it? You know how constructs are treated, especially in corporate-political environments.”” (107) ASR

“”You know, in Preservation-controlled territory, bots are considered full citizens. A construct would fall under the same category.” He said this in the tone of giving me a hint. Whatever. Bots who are “full citizens” still have to have a human or augmented human guardian appointed, usually their employer; I’d seen it on the news feeds.” (112) ASR

“Ratthi smiled at the console. “Because Dr. Mensah is our political entity.” He made a little gesture, turning his hand palm up. “We’re from Preservation Alliance, one of the non-corporate system entities. Dr. Mensah is the current admin director on the steering committee. It’s an elected position, with a limited term. But one of the principles of our home is that our admins must also continue their regular work, whatever it is. Her regular work required this survey, so here she is, and here we are.”” (111) ASR

“Ratthi came over to see if I was all right, and I asked him to tell me about Preservation and how Mensah lived there. He said when she wasn’t doing admin work, she lived on a farm outside the capital city, with two marital partners, plus her sister and brother and their three marital partners, and a bunch of relatives and kids who Ratthi had lost count of.” (147) ASR

“Ratthi sighed. “Oh, yes, they know. You would not believe what we had to pay to guarantee the bond on the survey. These corporate arseholes are robbers.”” (112) ASR

““Because the scanners suck corporation balls,” Pin-Lee muttered.” (42) ASR

“Of course I need you. I have no experience in anything like this. None of us do. Sometimes humans can’t help but let emotion bleed through into the feed. She was furious and frightened, not at me, at the people who would do this, kill like this,” (107-108) ASR

“I said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.” It’s an automatic reaction triggered by catastrophic malfunction. Also, I really didn’t want them to try to move me because it hurt bad enough the way it was. “Your contract allows—” “Shut up,” Mensah snapped. “You shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you.”” (139) ASR

"I had flashes off and on. The inside of the little hopper, my humans talking, Arada holding my hand." (140) ASR

“We had a problem at the hatch of the big hopper where Mensah wanted to get in last and I wanted to get in last. As a compromise, I grabbed her around the waist and swung us both up into the hatch as the ramp pulled in after us. I set her on her feet and she said, “Thank you, SecUnit,” while the others stared.” (99) ASR

““I know you’re more comfortable with keeping your helmet opaque, but the situation has changed. We need to see you.”” (103) ASR

““It’s usually better if humans think of me as a robot,” I said.” (103) ASR

““Maybe, under normal circumstances.” She was looking a little off to one side, not trying to make eye contact, which I appreciated. “But this situation is different. It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.” My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I cleared the face plate and had it and the helmet fold back into my armor. She said, “Thank you,” and I followed her up into the hopper.” (104) ASR

“They were saying things like I didn’t even know it had a face.” (21) ASR

“Arada and Pin-Lee didn’t try to talk to me, and Ratthi actually looked away when I eased past him to get to the cockpit. They were all so careful not to look at me or talk to me directly that as soon as we were in the air I did a quick spot check through HubSystem’s records of their conversations.” (39) ASR

“They had talked it over and all agreed not to “push me any further than I wanted to go” and they were all so nice and it was just excruciating.” (40) ASR

“That was when I realized they weren’t ignoring the possibility of sabotage.” (43) ASR

“This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.” (60) ASR

“It was nice having a human smart enough to work with like this.” (67) ASR

“I do a half-assed job sometimes, okay, most of the time, but Pin-Lee had checked, too, and she was thorough.” (71) ASR

“It was starting to occur to me that Dr. Mensah might actually be an intrepid galactic explorer, even if she didn’t look like the ones on the entertainment feed.” (73) ASR

“I hoped they hadn’t been stupid about it, too soft-hearted to kill me.” (77) ASR

“My clients are the best clients.” (78) ASR

“But I think the fact that the Unit has been acting to preserve our lives, to take care of us, while it was a free agent, gives us even more reason to trust it.”” (80) ASR

“Overse sounded mad. “It told us about the combat module, it told us to kill it. Why the hell would it do that if it wanted to hurt us?”” (81) ASR

“Before anyone else could move, Mensah said, calm and even, “SecUnit, I’d appreciate it if you put Gurathin down, please.” She’s a really good commander. I’m going to hack her file and put that in. If she’d gotten angry, shouted, let the others panic, I don’t know what would have happened.” (84-85) ASR

“She continued, “I would like you to remain part of our group, at least until we get off this planet and back to a place of safety. At that point, we can discuss what you’d like to do. But I swear to you, I won’t tell the company, or anyone outside this room, anything about you or the broken module.”” (86) ASR

“Of course she had to say that. What else could she do. I tried to decide whether to believe it or not, or whether it mattered, when I was hit by a wave of I don’t care. And I really didn’t. I said, “Okay.”” (86) ASR

““We have to shut it down, or it’s going to kill us.” Then he winced and looked at me. “Sorry, I meant HubSystem.”” (86-87) ASR

“Then Arada came up and patted my shoulder. “I’m sorry. This must be very upsetting. After what that other Unit did to you . . . Are you all right?” That was too much attention. I turned around and walked into the corner, facing away from them.” (87) ASR

“I should keep my mouth shut, keep them thinking of me as their normal obedient SecUnit, stop reminding them what I was. But I wanted them to be careful.” (92) ASR

““If a strange survey group landed here, all friendly, saying they had just arrived, and oh, we’ve had an equipment failure or our MedSystem’s down and we need help, you would let them in. Even if I told you not to, that it was against company safety protocol, you’d do it.” Not that I’m bitter, or anything. A lot of the company’s rules are stupid or just there to increase profit, but some of them are there for a good reason.” (92-93) ASR

[I cited this whole conversation bc I wasn't sure exactly what bits I wanted to use. apologies for the giant block text.]

“Ratthi’s expression was troubled. “But surely . . . It’s clear you have feelings—”” (54)

“She looked up, frowning. “Ratthi, what are you doing?” Ratthi shifted guiltily. “I know Mensah asked us not to, but—” He waved a hand. “You saw it.” Overse pulled her interface off. “You’re upsetting it,” she said, teeth gritted. “That’s my point!” He gestured in frustration. “The practice is disgusting, it’s horrible, it’s slavery. This is no more a machine than Gurathin is—” Exasperated, Overse said, “And you don’t think it knows that?” I’m supposed to let the clients do and say whatever they want to me and with an intact governor module I wouldn’t have a choice.” (54) ASR

“I’m also not supposed to snitch on clients to anybody except the company, but it was either that or jump out the hatch. I sent the conversation into the feed tagged for Mensah. From the cockpit, she shouted, “Ratthi! We talked about this!” I slid out of the seat and went to the back of the hopper, as far away as I could get, facing the supply lockers and the head. It was a mistake; it wasn’t a normal thing for a SecUnit with an intact governor module to do, but they didn’t notice. “I’ll apologize,” Ratthi was saying. “No, just leave it alone,” Mensah told him. “That would just make it worse,” Overse added.” (55) ASR

Network Effect

“Humans in the Preservation alliance didn't have to sign up for contract labor and get shipped off to mines or whatever for 80 to 90 percent of their lifespans. There was some strange system where they all got their food and shelter and education and medical for free, no matter what job they did.” (35-36) NE

“...it was a natural mistake on Arada’s part. In Preservation culture asking payment for anything considered necessary for living (food, power sources, education, the feed, etc.) was considered outrageous, but asking payment for life-saving help was right up there with cannibalism.” (201) NE

“There were "free" bots wandering around on Preservation, though they had guardians who were technically supposed to keep track of them.” (27) NE

“Plus, it was Preservation and there were no scanning drones, no armed human security, just some on-call human medics with bot assistants and “rangers” who mainly enforced environmental regulations and yelled at humans and augmented humans to get out of the way of the ground vehicles.” (24) NE

"Over the comm loudspeaker, Dr. Ratthi said, 'It is a person!'" (16) NE

“Even the individual humans’ feed signatures only contained info about sexual availability and gender presentation, which I didn’t give a damn about.” (13) NE

“If this went wrong I was going to feel really stupid. The Targets would finally show up and be all “What the hell was it trying to do to itself?”“ (305-306) NE

“That’s one of the reasons Me 1.0 misses its armor.” (293) NE

“You and Amena were right. 2.0 was a person. It wasn’t like a baby, but it was a person.” (340) NE

“The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired.” (132) NE

“- because it thought you were dead. It was so upset I thought-Oh, hey, you’re here” (227) NE

“Amena’s voice said “No, it doesn’t like to be touched!”“ (335) NE

““No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious,”” (12) NE

"It's not aliens, 2.0 said. We knew it wasn't aliens, I told it. It countered, We were seventy-two percent sure it wasn't aliens. That was an outdated assessment but I didn't need to argue with myself right now." (314) NE

Fugitive Telemetry

“Preservation had two economies, one a complicated barter system for planetary residents and one currency-based for visitors and for dealing with other polities. Most of the humans here didn’t really understand how important hard currency was in the Corporation Rim but the council did, and Mensah said the port took in enough in various fees to keep the station from being a drain on the planet’s resources.” (79) FT

“The Preservation Alliance has a weird thing about food and medical care and other thing humans need to survive being free and available anywhere.” (35) FT

“The employment contracts for Preservation citizens were pretty simple, because their planetary legal code had so many in-built protections already. (For example, humans and augmented humans can’t sign away their rights to their labor or bodily autonomy in perpetuity; that’s like, straight-up illegal.)” (12) FT

“Preservation has high safety standards so we passed through two air walls before we got to the cargo ship’s hatch.” (70) FT

“Right now Aylen and the other officers were explaining to their individual Targets what rights they had as detainees in Preservation Alliance territory. (It was a lot of rights. I was pretty sure it was more rights than a human who hadn’t been detained by Station Security had in the Corporation Rim.)” (85-86) FT

“As part of the rights thing, Aylen had told Target Five the scanner would be on, which I thought was playing way too fair,” (89-90) FT

“Station Security was only allowed to keep the Lalow for one Preservation day-cycle before they either had to charge the crew with something or let them go.” (106) FT

“You need a surveillance audit.” (145) “Some of those systems are under privacy lock, we’d need a judge-advocate to release their access records,” (146) FT [these are together bc its a line of dialogue from mb, a huge monologue about what a surveillance audit is, and then Indah's response, which is the thing I care about for my paper]

“Most of the station’s clothing supply came from the planet, where human hand-made clothing and textiles were so popular there was hardly any recycler-produced fabric. (I told you Preservation is weird.)” (22) FT

“The colony ship hadn’t just been left to rot; the humans liked it too much for that…Pieces of clear protective material had been placed over the occasional drawings on the bulkheads, and on the pieces of paper stuck to them and covered with scribbled handwriting and faded print. Feed markers had been installed by Station Historical/Environment Management with translations into Preservation Standard Nomenclature.” (123) FT

“…you’re on a giant spaceship that has been meticulously preserved as a historical artifact. If they still had intact lunch menus from however many years ago, the chances were good they still had the safety equipment.” (125) FT

“Station Security isn’t armed except with those extendable batons (they don’t even deliver shocks, they’re just for hitting/holding off aggressive intoxicated humans) and the officers are only issued energy weapons when there’s actually an energy-weapon-involved emergency.” (72) FT

“…they were here to assess the damage to the transport and try to repair it. (Apparently on Preservation this would be free? Gurathin said it fell under what they called a traveler’s aid rule. In the Corporation Rim, the transport would have had tp sit there damaged and racking up fines until its owner or an owner’s rep arrived.)” (55-56) FT

another "couldn't decide so the whole dang thing is here"

"For a name, I could use the local feed address that was hard coded into my neural interfaces. It wasn’t my real name, but it was what the systems I interfaced with called me. If I used it, the humans and augmented humans I encountered would think of me as a bot. Or I could use the name Rin. I liked it, and there were some humans outside the Corporation Rim who thought it was actually my name. I could use it, and the humans on the Station wouldn’t have to think about what I was, a construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage, a killing machine for whichever humans rented me, until I made a mistake and got my brain destroyed by my governor module." (28) “I posted a feed ID with the name SecUnit, gender = not applicable, and no other information.” (29)

[manichewitz]

me explaining why i ship sam and frodo: *hours of rambling about the intricacies of their relationship, ten in-text citations of all the times sam’s devotion to frodo saved them both from disaster, quoting “i can’t carry it for you but i can carry you” and “dont go where i cant follow,” sobbing about how they canonically love each other so deeply, bringing up academic articles about wartime homoeroticism and deconstructing toxic masculinity, etc*

me explaining why i ship aragorn and legolas: im gay and i want to see the pretty men fuck

[crow-caller]

@tired-tapir

Somehow I forget I could have ever been fl posting before my recent nosedive into it.

Fl lore is really really cool but indeed very hidden, vague, scattered, secretive... this is on purpose! I love that. For ages there was a very strong 'no spoilers' request to keep it that way on most everything.

But this policy made and makes it difficult to reference and track down, even if you know the secrets. It can be a barrier to getting into the games, which are good on many merits besides sick lore, because things are often hard to understand and well hidden.

This is why I'm being very tempted to try and arrange some lore iceberg or introduction guide on the matter... I want to share, but there's so much to cover

In fallen london the browser game, deepest lore is there and slowly revealed through playing, so by mid/late game you're pretty exposed to most of it. But this takes real life weeks, months, years, so it's not that accessible. (Als0 there's just always more you're missing)

Playing Sunless Seas/Skies: both are hard. The secrets are buried. But much more lore is directly explained and explored, by nature of how you experience it. (Also again great games I love u skies)

Mask of the rose! It's really the most accessible intro to the FL universe and touches on a bit of everything lore wise.

This is the lore wiki! Honour it. It used to be very limited, but due to relaxed spoiler policies it is now an little accurate source on pretty much everything. It will not tell you everything and does not cover everything, but it's enough for most. The wiki editor does a great job updating things and adding citations, it's all WIP. You can read this baby for hours.

Like the lore wiki, there's also a Fallen London Game Wiki. This isn't arranged for general lore use, and uses truncated quotes for stuff, but has FL archived for Some reference.

You'll never guess: there's also the Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies wikis. Both are harder to navigate but have full text of ports, actions, etc.

Finally there's just joining the FBG discord and lurking in 'lore spoilers', where you'll probably see me spend too long ponderin' as I'm want to do. You can search chat history for specific things or ask questions

Very suitably, fallen london serves as a secret role playing game for secret hunters where you need to search citations, several sources, heresay, and other people to get the full picture of some stuff. It's fun and frustrating. I am a scholar of the correspondence of in game text

[friendlycursedspaceotter]

So I've seen a couple posts on my dash that are like "after Kamala got the nomination, people are fucked, she's bad, Palestine will be destroyed, immunocompromised people will die, trans people will be completely stripped of rights, etc." Respectfully, that's kind of a weird statement to make.

Like, I admit that Kamala Harris isn't perfect. The Venn diagrams of "candidates that Tumblr leftists will support" and "candidates that will make it anywhere near the White House" are, at the moment, two circles that don't overlap. I'm not saying that there are third party people who have tried to make it into that circle. There are! It's just that, mathematically speaking, winner-takes-all races don't allow anything but the two-party system. That's pretty common knowledge.

"Kamala Harris doesn't like trans people." That is a major [citation needed]. I haven't looked into her policy much, but I honestly think that almost anything is better than Donald "This man is a bioessentialist and has explicitly said in interviews that cisgender people are the only real genders, trans and nonbinary people are delusional and also that intersex people don't exist" Trump. I mean, the bar is in the ninth circle of hell. Even if she says "human beings are allowed to exist and express themselves however they want and we shouldn't restrict that" it would be better than Trump.

As for Palestine, immunocompromised people, housing, and any other issue you can use to justify not voting for her, I don't need to emphasize how bad Trump is. We know that. If any of those issues would be your breaking point, I have some advice for you: grit your teeth, vote blue, and use the next four years lobbying national, state, and local governments for election reform, specifically ranked choice voting. I know the energy as of late is "have fun and we're going to party," but it doesn't change the fact that our choices are a party that is at least willing to reform and listen, and fascists led by an old white man with narcissistic personality disorder who has no desire to change. You're not in heaven. You're on Earth, and you have to work for what you want. If you want candidates who better represent you, work for that change. If you want to stop a genocide, work so that people can escape it and for an end to the violence. If you want queer people to live and keep living, band together and make sure that happens.

And because I'm a Whovian, I need to quote the Twelfth Doctor right here: "And what will happen after your glorious revolution?" If you decide to burn it down and kill millions, how will you make sure that this won't happen again? Because last I checked, we forgot about the Holocaust (policy-wise) pretty quickly. We have backtracked with feminism in the past thirty years. If you want a revolution, have it be a quiet one. Have it be a revolution of words and laws, not one of weapons and blood. If you want your gold stars and moral superiority to stay intact, you're not going to get it by assassinating billionaires or overthrowing the government. Those are not tactics of progress. Why? Because progress has a way of lasting. That's why we call it progress. We are moving forward.

So get on the bus, losers. We're going voting.

[factcheckingmclennon]

hey! making a pinned that will for now hold some basic info/disclaimers & may in the future have a read more with a guide to deep dives

navigation

james/lorraine, they/he/she, 24. BA in religious studies/history, going back for a MA in history in january (that's relevant okay that's my CREDENTIALS for this silly blog)

my main is @menlove

I am indeed a shipper! no hate is meant at all by this blog existing, I'm just a historian that is going crazy trying to sort out fact & fiction in this fandom. there's a lot of both and I think a blog like this could be useful

and in that vein, I will never, ever directly come after or @ anyone who shared that misinformation. if you send me a request and start it with "I saw so and so post x, is this real?" I'll make a post without your ask in it. I don't want to send hate anyone's way. if it's an older post, i'll probably link the source of the misinformation for the sake of clarity, but if it's a blog that's still active i won't & i'll just screenshot. (maccaswife1978 is not a real person btw dgshdhshs. as far as I know! sorry if anyone's ever had that username)

I'm always open to correction. I have 0 way of knowing or finding everything, so if you have a credible, reliable source that I didn't find in my deep dive of something I rated fake/neutral, please let me know! I'd love for some of these to be real

I also take requests! feel free to ask me about anything that you want fact checked. just know sometimes I might not be able to find an answer or I might be bogged down & not be able to answer just then. I'll do my best to get to everyone, but inevitably my mental health and life Will come first so......

rating system

fake- this is a source that, from everything I can find, only loops back to other mclennon blogs/forums. again, I'll take correction on these.

neutral- this is a source that is fake in some way but real in others. maybe it's a quote taken wildly out of context, or the quote passed around is fake but the content really did happen & has a more grounded source. or maybe it was written in a biography that didn't use citations and I have no idea where that author got that information, so you should take it with a grain of salt. or maybe it's something that isn't necessarily fake, but there's not enough evidence to definitively prove it one way or another (i.e. did anything happen in india?) whatever the case, this source has ended up neutral in the grand scheme of mclennon.

real- happy day for us all, these are for ones that turn out to be real! these are ones that are backed up by one or more reliable source & have hard evidence

source reliability

what do I mean by "reliable source"?

for me to count a source as "reliable" and count it towards a fact/quote being real, it has to be one of these things: first-hand (interviews, auto biographies, etc), recorded (video/photographic evidence, basically), or a well-sourced/respected biographer.

sources that fall into the in between category and might still earn a "real" rating but should be taken with a grain of salt are things like: second-hand sources (& who they are is important in determining how big that grain of salt should be), biographers who are allergic to sourcing, and things like lyrics/poetry/short stories which rely heavily on interpretation unless explained by either john or paul themselves. none of these automatically mean a "neutral" or "fake" rating, but they're taken into account.

and sources that will earn a fake rating once they're found to be the original source: tumblr blogs, deviantART pages, fan forums, gossip columns, etc. basically, if all I can find is someone writing out "slash beatles quotes" on a page in 2011, it's getting chucked in the bullshit pile unless someone else can find a source that predates it.

[gffa]

Realizing that I think I've read probably 80% of the High Republic stories is wild because honestly I thought I was barely halfway, but the stories go faster than I expect them to. There's a lot of good I have to say about the High Republic stories, they're surprisingly fantastic at all the moving parts of the story, that through books and comics and audio dramas and multiple authors writing all of it, it does feel like multiple points of view on a singular created universe, they really got their continuity shit together. They're also very easy to read, I can pick them up at any time, and while I have my issues with the whole thing, I will say that more than half of the books have left me feeling like I want more once I've finished them, that I'm definitely ready to pick up the next one. The issue I have though is that I cannot get over that the whole project feels like a palette swap of the prequels story--the Jedi philosophy is the same, the Jedi abilities are the same, the Jedi's interaction and treatment from the galaxy are the same (put on a pedestal by some, reviled by others, they usually make friends wherever they go, the political entanglements are almost exactly the same), the reasons they're drawn into a large-scale battle are exactly the same, the conversations they have about why they've joined this fight are the same, the technology of the era is almost exactly the same, etc. This works great for me in a lot of ways, because you couldn't have handed me a better example of why the Jedi were doing their best in the prequels and how they were good people, I couldn't have asked for anything more to demonstrate my case except for maybe a silver platter to deliver it all on. But it also keeps me from connecting with the story as uniquely its own, because how am I supposed to care about a character when they're so clearly patterned off Obi-Wan or when half the cool things about them are a nod to Mace? How am I supposed to get invested in a character when the majority of their personality is made up of quirks or that they're the bestest ever ever ever, rather than giving them any kind of bite as a person? I have had zero desire to read fic about any of these characters, which tells me a lot about how much I care about them as characters, instead of plot points. Would I recommend these books and comics? I think so, they're fun, I'm genuinely having a good time, but also at least half the reason I'm reading them is so I can quote them for my Jedi Citations project. They often lack any real bite, but that's an overall Star Wars books problem that's not unique to these ones and, eh, lots of people are super in love with these books and I can see why, it's entirely possible I just am too deep into Prequels Brain so I can't get past that basically half of what's going on in these books is a retread of the prequels' plot points and worldbuilding.

[olderthannetfic]

I know meta is allowed and welcome on AO3, but what about meta that is only partially supposed to be serious and partially meant to be a bit crackish or written with the author being very aware that they're really just grasping at straws and absolutely overinterpreting this specific thing just for the fun of it? Also, does one usually put quotes, gifs and other kinds of citations into it and link stuff like for example a script draft that was slightly altered in the episode itself but looking at it still may give room for specific interpretation etc.?

And another question from that: if a fanfic is specifically inspired by such a final draft, does one link to the draft (on a freely accessibly site that is non-commercial afaik) or is it better to just mention that you were inspired by a specific scene in the draft that didn't make it onto the screen?

--

Yes, some meta cites sources. No, your meta doesn't have to be serious. What it should be is non-ephemeral.

Put whatever you want in your author's notes. If you find it relevant, mention it.