#contemporan

[deadlydoseofart]

Kama camera video 8mm by Radu din Dacia Via Flickr: 2022

[funishment-time]

[afieldinengland]

for some reason, the bitchery of new labour seems to have even been capable of infecting some of its biographers. in the author description on the inside cover of gordon brown: the biography by paul routledge (published in 1998), it says that routledge was also working on an unauthorised biography of peter mandelson at the time of publication. and so you think, ‘oh, interesting that it’s unauthorised, given that this biography had gordon brown’s full cooperation, and paints a pretty favourable picture of him.’ and then, well, you remember it’s new labour, aka the political family with an internal rupture a mile wide, and then you recall which sides of said abyss mandelson and brown respectively sat on in the late nineties. so of course if paul routledge was a fan of brown, he likely wasn’t going to rate mandelson, and wouldn’t have felt the need to seek authorisation. and so when you look up the mandelson book, it’s called Mandy— the nickname mandelson detested— and multiple online reviews go along the lines of ‘man, routledge wanted this guy’s guts for garters’

[auquaticmoonlight]

Eepy guy

[dionysus-complex]

help! my dissertation is being haunted by Lucan

[english-history-trip]

Drawing of Henry VI of England by Jörg von Ehingen.

From 1457-1459, Swabian knight Jörg von Ehingen traveled Europe participating in various campaigns; throughout, he kept a journal and sketchbook of his impressions of the many royal courts he passed through. His compilation includes portraits, in the order of his visits, of Duke Ladislaus V of Austria, Charles VII of France, Henry IV of Castile, Henry VI of England, Alfonso V of Portugal, Janus III of Cyprus, Duke René of Anjou, John II of Aragon, and James II of Scotland.

[isawken]

i need a certificate of provenance proving that i’ve been going by the name ken for a decade now. i simply cannot bear the thought that people, when hearing my name, think "oh they must have really liked that barbie movie". i am not a recent ken adaptor i am not a ken trender (kender) i am a legacy ken and i need to be respected as such

[mariocki]

The Nesting (Massacre Mansion, 1981)

"It may come as a surprise to you that a physicist could even contemplate the existence of paranormal phenomena."

"But you admit to the possibility."

"I admit the possibility of the unknown. I admit that science is only beginning to understand its own discoveries. But I do not believe in evil spirits or painted phantoms in windows."

[galwednesday]

This week's deep dive rec is Slate's Slow Burn: The L.A. Riots podcast, hosted by Joel Anderson, which is a great example of how long-form reporting can give context to complex social and historical events:

In 1992, a jury failed to convict the four Los Angeles police officers who’d been captured on videotape beating Rodney King. The city erupted into fire and chaos—the culmination of decades of unchecked police abuse and racial injustice. For the sixth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, Joel Anderson returns to explore the people and events behind the biggest civil disturbance in American history—a story that’s still playing out today.

[leggerezza-dell-essere]

____ Francesco Sambati

[fedoranon]

Rewatching Gundam Wing because it's my comfort War Is Bad™ and you know I've never paid enough attention to what a little fuckin psycho (affectionate) Relena is.

It's like episode 10 and this guy has threatened (tried? I've been watching over a few days, and also I'm not sure what he's doing counts lmao) to kill her over seeing his face but she's gone totally ride or die for his ass based PURELY on her own curiosity in episode 1, goaded him multiple times about how he still needs to kill her in order to snap him out of a suicidal funk, then FOLLOWED HIM to a different school presumably in a different country or different part of the country just to make small(?) talk(?)

She justifies this to her father's ghost (good sign) by saying that Heero's the comfort she needs by her side in order to get over daddy's death like??? Being sad because you're dad's dead and his last words to you were to tell you that you're adopted is apparently justification to stalk people often enough that their classmates (in, again, completely different area from where you hang) tell you when those people move, because they recognize you, the person who's always coming to their school just to talk to their random transfer student classmate.

LADY!!! At this point in the story, the least awful he's been to you was A) cover to get close to you to try to kill you (which you knew because he told you as much), B) ignoring you, and C) not letting you die (against his stated goals = mixed signals), which could as much be about him being uncomfortable killing an innocent civilian kid as about any affection toward you. (At this point in the narrative, I think that's a more likely read on Heero than attraction/affection. He'll get there, I remember the broad strokes of the plot, but at episode 10? I really don't think so.)

Yandere ass behavior honest to fuck. What a queen 👑

[deadlydoseofart]

Roșu cadmiu by Radu din Dacia Via Flickr: 2023

[firstelevens]

sambucky (bake off AU mayhaps?? 👀) + “bloom” 🪷

“Okay, but why did bodyslamming the dough seem like a good idea?”

Sam scowls at the phone. “I didn’t bodyslam the dough, Bucky. I just applied extra pressure so it would roll out.”

“You threw your entire body weight behind that rolling pin and fucked up your neck and shoulder, Sam; I think that’s a little more than extra pressure.”

“I had to get five dozen danishes shaped, what was I supposed to do?”

“You could have waited literally any amount of time for the dough to warm up.”

There’s no video on the call, but Sam can perfectly picture the look on Bucky’s face anyway, frustration mingled with fondness, and he would call the feeling that blooms in his chest homesickness if he wasn’t already smack in the middle of Delacroix.

“Put Alpine on,” he says, instead of I miss you or thank you for worrying about me. “She’s much more sympathetic than you are.”

“Can’t,” says Bucky. “She’s at my parents’ place.”

“And where are you, exactly? You left her all alone?”

Bucky snorts. “I dropped her off a while ago. She’s busy hanging out with my parents while they set up for the party; I just needed to make a quick stop.”

That, at least, explains why Sam thought he heard a GPS earlier in the call. The neighborhood that Bucky’s parents live in might as well be a labyrinth, and for all George and Winnie’s well-intentioned directions, one visit was enough to put Sam firmly on Bucky’s side of the ‘this is why no one should live in New Jersey’ debate. 

(Not that Bucky ever needs to know that. During his last visit to the city, Sam had shamelessly baited Bucky by praising a bagel spot in New Brunswick, and the resulting angry makeout session had absolutely been worth listening to Bucky’s rant about the superiority of New York tap water.)

Sam doesn’t realize that he’s gone silent until Bucky’s voice breaks through his thoughts. “I didn’t interrupt you setting up at the truck, did I? Tell me you’re not there right now.”

“You’re worse than my Mama, you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” says Bucky, and it’s actually stupid, the way a corny line like that makes Sam’s heart stutter.

“I’m not at the truck,” says Sam. “Freddie said he could cover the lunch rush, and Naya has practice after school today, so we’ll just close things up early.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. I know you were looking forward to seeing everyone before tonight.”

He sighs. “It’s fine; I’m just glad we didn’t have to shut down completely. I should’ve been more careful.”

“You think I could have that last thing in writing? Get it notarized, maybe?”

It’s very obviously a ploy to make Sam laugh, but it works anyway. “Shut up, Barnes. I’m always careful.”

“Oh, did you get rid of Redwing and just forget to tell me? That tiny little plane that you flew during a storm the other day, because you live to stress me out?”

“I live for other things; raising your heart rate is just a bonus.”

Bucky snorts. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” says Sam. He starts to ask something else, but cuts himself off as the doorbell rings.

“Sam Wilson,” Bucky says, faux-scandalized, “did you just call me to kill time while you were waiting for company to arrive?”

“Not this time,” says Sam, as he pushes away from his desk. “I’m not even expecting anyone; Sarah and Freddie already took the truck.”

“Maybe they forgot something.”

“I think I’d have noticed eight batches of croissants lying around.”

“Maybe they just really wanted to see you again.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s that one,” laughs Sam. “Hang on a second, let me just see who it is.”

He’s still got the phone pressed to his ear as he pulls the door open, which is maybe why he’s so confused to find his boyfriend standing on his porch and not a thousand miles away in New Jersey.

“Like I said,” Bucky says, grinning crookedly at Sam, “I just wanted to see you again.”

[weedle-testaburger]

pointless bit of doctor who trivia of the day: when they made the seventh doctor's title sequence, one of the designers suggested it'd look cool if his face was silver. he meant that he could just recolour it silver, but no one got the memo and they literally painted sylvester mccoy's face silver for the photoshoot. and made him wink

[auquaticmoonlight]

It isn’t your fault

[honestlyvan]

wym ovan is a cheater?

I mean it's not explicitly in the text but listen. Come the fuck on now. Do you really think Mr Interpol-affiliated grey hat, climbs-firewalls-for-fun-and-sport, intended-play-area-is-merely-a-suggestion has ever played a single game in anything approaching a "normal" way? CC Corp were having psychological breakdowns about Ovan's presence on the service even before he became a walking system integrity error and spent, what, several years giving CC Corp the runaround on their own platform.

Ovan is just so damn wilful and composed and perpetually invested in outwitting his circumstances that he'd get bored with a game that just tells him what to do, and doesn't really offer him options to figure out what he wants to do for himself. He is patient with things exactly to the point where his influence over them begins -- and if he can give things a shove to get them cascading, he absolutely will. The game he'd be playing in The World is the meta-game speedrunners play, where it's not a matter of what you can do in-game, it's a matter of what the game technically can't stop you from doing.

I think if Ovan did start playing The World for fun rather than simply using it as an entry point into investigating CC Corp's systems, he spent his early levels trying to sequence break every single quest and then very quickly jumped to glitchhunting and rumorchasing and escalating amounts of fucking around in the black box parts of the system. He already had access to the Creator Room by the time Aina started playing, and once she got deep into the lore of the game, it would have been pretty trivial to put his PC at the level cap with maxed out equipment so that she never had to stop to grind and could keep getting deeper into the game at her own pace.