#so this doesn’t become an industrialisation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

trainsinanime · 10 months

Text

Turnverbot

So James Somerton, a Youtube video essayist, has been the Tumblr and Youtube main character of the week. Between a video by HBomberguy about his (and other people’s) plagiarism…

youtube

…and a video by Todd in the Shadows about how everything James made up is mostly bullshit as well…

youtube

…and a Twitter thread by Dan Olson about deceptive business practices, this guy has been thoroughly demolished.

I don’t really want to add to that; this has gone as far as needed to give you an accurate impression of his character and content, and then some. Anything more isn’t actually helping, it’s just piling on for fun, and this has definitely gone too far when I see people arguing that it has always been immoral to be a fan of his or something like that. That’s just plain wrong.

…but I do have something I want to add here, specifically with regards to one of the earliest things in the Todd in the Shadows video: The famous idea that sports and fitness ideals came into the US because GIs were jealous of the toned masculine bodies of the Nazis. That is bullshit, obviously, everyone in Germany was malnourished by the end of the war and the whole fitness thing has many different sources (see e.g. Pierre de Coubertin, who created the modern Olympic Games in the late 19th century).

But this reminds me of one story that I want to share: The time when sports was illegal in Germany. And don’t worry, this doesn’t actually have anything to do with James Somerton whatsoever.

Yes, sports was illegal in Germany from 1820 to 1842, the so-called “Turnsperre” or “Turnverbot” (roughly “athletics ban”), although it was not uniformly enforced in all parts of Germany and faded away before the official repeal. In our modern worlds where sports seem like a natural part of life whether we want it to be or not, this sounds completely crazy. The reason given was that the athletes were dangerous revolutionaries who wanted to destroy the social order. And the really fun thing is: This was basically true.

Let’s set the scene. We are near the start of the epoch sometimes called the “long 19th century”, which started in 1789 with the French Revolution (though I’d argue that 1775, with the American Revolution and Watt’s steam engine, works just as well), and ends with the start of World War I. During this time we see a rapid change of the way the world works, with industrialisation going into full force, cities growing and new ideas becoming widespread. We start the era with most people believing in the divine right of kings, and end with democratic and Marxist ideals ruling the world. And throughout it all we see different groups constantly argue, often violently, about what a country is and how it should work.

This is most notable in Germany. In 1789, there is no real Germany. Sure, there is a German king, who can also get himself crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, though not all do. But the power of these rulers is mostly limited to their own countries, which, in the case of the Habsburg’s, were considerable. The rest of Germany, though, was a smattering of more or less large princedoms, free cities, knight alliances, small and large countries, all basically independent with their own laws, their own customs borders, and with very different amounts of e.g. freedom of the press. They were united by a common imperial council (Reichstag) and court, but those were some very loose connections. There was never a unified army, and attempts to raise unified taxes mostly failed.

This status quo was never rigid, stuff kept changing constantly, but the start of the “long 19th century” really put it to the test. The ideals of the French Revolution appealed to many, and constantly improving printing presses and road networks meant they could spread further more easily. Then we got Napoleon, who conquered much of Europe, including much of Germany. He was an evil dictator, sure, but he modernised and liberalised the political systems of the areas he conquered.

(A particularly famous example: When the french conquered the german city of Cologne, one of the things they did was assign house numbers to all houses for the first time, without street names at the time. A well-known Cologne perfume maker still uses the number, 4711, their house received at the time in their marketing.)

Napoleon was eventually defeated by ABBA, and at the Vienna Congress Europe was re-arranged: The old German empire, which had collapsed basically the moment Napoleon asked nicely, was replaced by a loose confederation of independent states, which grew by taking over many of the smaller ones. The states there agreed to largely repress demands for more liberal constitutions, freedom of the press, and they insisted that all states should have a legitimate ruler, meaning someone appointed by God (i.e. born to the right family).

During that period we see the start of people calling for a unified, modern German country. The princes are initially opposed; not a surprise given that this would destroy their power bases. There is also the question what a modern Germany should be.

Around this time, starting around the turn of the century, we meet Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. Jahn was well educated, son of a protestant priest, and mostly worked as a teacher. Around 1800, he published his first political pamphlets, at that time still loyal to Prussia, one of the biggest parts of Germany at the time. But during the napoleonic wars, his opinion shifted: In 1810, he published pamphlets arguing for a united, modern Germany and invented a definition of a “German people”. He also argued against old feudal systems and demanded a Germany that is egalitarian, where all members of the German people have the same rights and freedoms.

Around this time he also came into contact with Franz Christian Boll, a preacher who argued that some movement and exercise is probably good for you. Boll convinces Jahn, and Jahn forms this idea into the gymnastics (or athletics? Not sure how to translate this) movement. This movement is based on a certain type of idealism: The modern Germany is full of free Germans with sound bodies and sound minds. This became very popular very quickly.

Jahn quickly established lots of outdoor exercise places, and invented a lot of forms of exercise and devices that we still use today. He and his friends took the idea of “some exercise is good for you” and turned it into a systematic approach.

And yes, this movement is racist in nature. Historians go back and forth about how racist exactly, but it’s clear that there was at least some here. Jahn has low opinions of Jews, Roma and Black people, and defines his German people in part in opposition to them. He also voices similar disdain for the French and for catholic priests, but, you know, different power dynamics there.

The gymnastics movement is part of the first all-german meeting on the Wartburg (known centuries earlier for housing Martin Luther) in 1817, where lots of people with similar ideas meet up to start their campaigning for a unified, modern and democratic Germany. At this meeting the black-red-gold flag of the free Germany is introduced, and here the first “Burschenschaften” (university fraternities) are founded, which also fight vehemently for a unified Germany. But it is also here where we see the first big political book burnings. They burn French laws, but also books by jewish authors. Wikipedia says that this was probably because Jahn just hated that author because he liked France too much, not because he was a Jew. Wikipedia has a citation for that, personally I haven’t read the book so I can’t say how plausible that is.

These meetings on the Wartburg are still being held today, but they’re now mostly a meeting place of the rich and old racists and far-right extremists, including fraternities, some (not all, not even most, but some) of which are just incredibly racist.

The fraternities and the gymnastics movements, who have basically the same ideals, just different means, are of course immediately at odds with the much more conservative opinions by the governments after the explicitly conservative Vienna Congress. But it’s also important to note that these movements did not have universal support in Germany. There were plenty of educated people who thought these were all unpatriotic idiots. In the case of the gymnastics movement, that came to a head when Russian consul August von Kotzebue (a name that is incredibly funny in German, just trust me) was murdered by a member of the fraternities and gymnastics movement.

The reaction by the authorities was swift. The very loose German confederation issued laws that forbade gymnastics and closed all the spaces and clubs where gymnastics were being done. Jahn himself was briefly arrested.

Of course that didn’t actually settle things, especially since the revolutionary part of the movements were the politics, not the sit-ups (note: I don’t actually know whether they were doing sit-ups at the time already).

In the next decades, the calls for a unified Germany became louder rather than quieter. We also see that many of the princes come around to this idea. The king of Bavaria, for example, commissioned huge memorials dedicated to the idea of Germany, like the Walhalla, a greek temple near Regensburg that houses busts of famous Germans.

(Note that at this time, it’s still unclear what Germany even is and where it ends, so the Walhalla includes some danish and English kings among others. This is a problem that will take not only the rest of the long 19th century to resolve, but also a good chunk of the 20th. The language borders and fuzzy and don’t match political ones and mostly never did, and there are lots of weird details: For example, the kings of Denmark, the Netherlands and England all were rulers of some territories that were part of the Holy Roman Empire. And the question what to do about the ethnically heterogenous states of Prussia and in particular Austria was also open. A good example for this are the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, which change hands between Germany and France every few decades until the end of the Second World War.)

The states become more liberal, and in 1842, the gymnastics ban is repealed and Jahn got restitution payments. Ever since then, sports have (sadly) been legal in Germany.

The rest of the story is also interesting but not really sports-related anymore: In 1848, triggered by yet another revolution in France, revolutionary fervour sweeps all of Europe, and under the pressure of public opinion, the princes of Germany agree to a united, constitutional, sort of democratic Germany. The constitutional congress meets in the Paul’s church in Frankfurt am Main (the Main is a river, but it is also the main Frankfurt) and works out a constitution. But the Prussian king refuses the emperor’s crown, because it smelled too republican for him, and in 1849 the princes stage what is legally speaking a coup, dissolve the congress in Frankfurt, and take power back for themselves. In 1871, a new modern Germany is formed, under Prussian leadership, without Austria and explicitly as a union of princes, rather than a democratic thing, though it does include a parliament. That Germany is instrumental in starting the First World War, and from there we leave the area.

You don’t need to know any of this, I just think it’s fascinating.

#history #sports #germany #Youtube

10 notes · View notes

eaglesnick · 3 months

Text

“While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business." Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

During the BBC Election Debate, hosted by Mishal Hussain, the candidates were asked how our country would be kept “safe from another major conflict?” We had the expected answers regarding increased spending on the armed forces, a commitment to maintaining our nuclear deterrent and increasing the number of military personnel. Carla Denya, the co-leader of the Green Party, however, took a different tack, pointing out a less obvious, but perhaps the most dangerous threat of all.

“The biggest threat facing the UK and the world is climate change"

Ok, this is exactly the answer the leader of the Greens would give. No points for working that out. But the fears she voiced were not that we would all die of heat stroke, or burn to death in forest fires, nor was she unduly concerned about increased rainfall or flooding per se. She didn’t even mention rising sea levels due to melting icecaps.

Having put forward climate change as the biggest existential threat Britain is facing she went on to tell us:

” And militaries, interestingly, are taking this threat extremely seriously.”

The reasons hardheaded military authorities all over the world are taking climate change so seriously is because it will create food and water shortages leading to famine. This in turn will cause conflict as millions of people literally fight to the death trying to access these diminishing resources, which in turn will lead to massive migration and refugee problems.

Africa will be one of the worse affected continents.

“17 out of the 20 countries most threatened by climate change are in Africa." (uneca.org: 02/11/23)

Africa has a population of nearly 1.5billion souls, 60% being younger than 25 years of age. According to Statistica, 45% of Africans are Muslim while Christians make up the majority of the population. In sub-Saharan Africa 36 of the 42 countries were at war with each other between 2018-2022.

These wars involve Muslim and Christians alike, and according to the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, “religious violence in Africa has become frequent and is increasing”. Most of the theological conflicts involve Sunni Islamists, but Christian fundamentalists are also responsible for a number of deadly conflicts.

As climate change impacts more and more on the environment, expect further conflicts as all sides battle for control and access to the vital resources of food and water.

The developed western democracies are historically blamed for global warming due to industrialisation. More recently, China and India must share some of the responsibility for rising CO2 levels. However, when millions of Africans are on the move trying to escape the inevitable increase in conflict in their geographical region, it is not America, China or India they will be heading toward – it will be Europe. This will cause massive social tensions. Even if these refugees were of the same ethnic and religious persuasion as we native white Europeans this would still cause resentment and resistance. Indeed, this is already happening.

The far-right in this weeks European elections, have played the “immigration card” to great effect, stoking peoples fears to their own political advantage. The sad fact is, there is some truth in what they say. Mass migration has led to lower wages – it was meant to! That is simply the law of supply and demand. An influx of tens of thousands of migrants in a short period of time, does lead to housing shortages and strains on health and education services. Only a fool would deny these potential problems.

How much migration contributes to these problems - rather than under-investment and budget cuts - doesn’t really matter if people THINK migrants are the sole problem. Across Europe the far-right are successfully laying ALL of the blame for failing public services on excessive migrant numbers. At the moment numbers are relatively low compared to what is to come. Imagine how much more traction they will gain when the existing conflicts in Africa worsen due to climate change and millions more young Africans head for Europe’s shores.

ALL of the far-right political parties in Europe are hostile towards migrants but they also are highly critical of the green agenda and policies aimed at mitigating climate change. Nigel Farage stated a few days ago that decarbonising the grid by 2035 is “unaffordable”. What's more, he claims green policies are "sacrificing economic growth". According to Farage, "net zero is a bad policy and is bad for people.”

If the Greens are right, then continued global warming will result in a massive increase in African migration as their continent is hit by chronic food and water shortages, and resulting regional conflict. For Forage and the rest of the far-right in Europe, growing the economy (and making the already wealthy even richer) by the same old polluting industrial practices is far more important than mitigating the inevitable increase in African refugees seeking safety in Europe.

If they were genuinely concerned about migration numbers they would be supporting the green agenda, not opposing it.

The really cynical might be forgiven for believing that without the emotive issue of migration then the political parties on the far-right might have nothing with which to appeal to their electorates. After all, none of them offer alternative economic policies to the ones we already have, and for the vast majority of Europeans, and certainly here in Britain, these policies have been failing ordinary working people for years.

#uk politics #Reform #nigel farage #green deal #migration #fascists #far-right #africa #islamists fundamental christians #war #conflict famine #water shortage

3 notes · View notes

rlyehtaxidermist · 2 years

Text

fuck it, midgley discourse in my notes, we ball.

Time to talk about one of my favourite regulatory archdevils, Dr. Robert Arthur Kehoe.

I love that this is his Wikipedia photo. The slightly raised eyebrow. The faint but noticable cheekbones. The level, slightly superior expression. Even just the angle of the shot. This is a man who’s about to give a gloating monologue to James Bond.

Kehoe was a medical doctor with a specialty in toxicology and one of the early lions of what we now call “occupational health” - that is, what does and doesn’t make a workplace a safe place to work in. At the time, this was basically an open question - the first worker’s compensation laws only went on the books in the 1880s, and were often scrambling to respond to health risks. OSHA isn’t even a twinkle in the eye of the ten-year-old and politically uncomplicated Richard Nixon, whose family lemon plantation just failed.

The Background

This lack of occupational health standards is rapidly becoming a big problem for a “little” company called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (actually a corporate chimera of General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey - who you now know as Exxon, and DuPont - who you now might still know as DuPont but is also a few other companies, it’s complicated). Workers at Ethyl’s plants were suffering from neurological disorders, which culminated in the deaths of five workers, injury to many more, and at least one worker, Joseph G. Leslie, being secretly committed to a psychiatric institution by the company, who publicly declared him dead.

See, Ethyl (through GM) owned the patent to a little chemical called tetraethyllead, which was being promoted as the solution to engine knocking - a performance issue in older automobiles. Ethyl’s CEO, Charles Kettering, had previously been GM’s head of research, where he had tasked a talented but retroactively very unfortunate chemist by the name of Charles Midgley, Jr. with developing a compound to combat knocking.

Midgley first figured out that a blend of ethanol with the gasoline would help solve the problem. GM did not like this, because ethanol was so easy to make that they’d never turn a profit on producing ethanol-blended gasoline. So Kettering told Midgley to try again, and he did - he found a tellurium compound that would work great for solving knocking. It stank to high heaven, so GM said no, try again, and finally Midgley settled on tetraethyllead, and GM immediately patented it for use in fuels.

Tetraethyllead had some downsides. It is mostly known today for its environmental effects, particularly the massive scale of lead poisoning from lead and lead oxide emissions caused by TEL combustion. These weren’t really in the picture in the 1920s, where concerns about large-scale environmental impacts of industrialisation were considered a fringe view or even outright pseudoscientific. Instead, the issue was the toxicity of TEL itself - it was already known to be far more poisonous than lead or lead oxides, as the organic structure of the compound allowed it to pass the blood-brain barrier, where it would then break down and cause lead poisoning to set in extremely quickly.

It’s this exposure to TEL that caused the initial controversy, and lead to things like the infamous publicity stunt where Midgley dunked his hands in leaded gasoline and took a big ol’ sniff to prove how safe it was, never mind that he had just been recovering from lead poisoning weeks earlier. Even if TEL is dangerous, claimed Midgley, finished Ethyl gasoline was perfectly safe for consumers - officially, the problem was that workers weren’t following adequate safety standards. He would also repeatedly deny the existence of any appropriate alternatives to TEL, including the two that he had previously suggested to GM and the several other alternatives used by rival fuel companies domestic and international.

Kettering and Midgley’s public statements are contradicted by private correspondence, which detailed several alternatives including ethanol. That said, these concerns were all about the toxicity of tetraethyllead, not the combustion byproducts which would later give it its infamy. There is some also dispute as to the extent that Kettering and Midgley viewed TEL as the ultimate solution to knocking, or an intermediate fuel to allow the economic development of high-compression motors that could be converted to run on ethanol - though this was motivated not by environmental concerns, but the growing belief that gasoline supplies would soon be depleted. (Of course, that wasn’t the case.)

My general view of Midgley as a scientist is that he came up with genuinely brilliant solutions to the problems he was posed, that happened to have large-scale ecological effects he couldn’t have anticipated. But he certainly wasn’t some hapless victim in this either, and was at the very least the direct architect of TEL’s version of the “no alternatives” narrative, which helped shut down early investigations into the dangers of TEL.

But this isn’t about Midgley. Let’s introduce our main man.

The Safety Doctor

“During the entire history of man on this earth, he has had lead in his body. He has had lead in his food, he has had lead in his drinking water... the question is not whether lead per se is dangerous, but whether a certain concentration of lead in his body is dangerous.“

- Robert A. Kehoe, Antiknock compounds and public health.

If the official line at Ethyl was that the workers were to blame for everything, the private line was clearly that they needed better safety standards. To this end, Kettering hired a toxicologist named Robert Arthur Kehoe as the company’s chief medical consultant. Kehoe’s job was to research the impact of TEL on workers and improve safety procedures - which he did. This made him a leading figure in the emerging field of occupational health - working for a major chemical company was less a conflict of interest and more proof of expertise.

Kehoe would found the Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology, touted as the “first university-based laboratory devoted to toxicological problems peculiar to industry”. Named for Kettering, it would be financed primarily by Ethyl, DuPont, and GM, and it would come to define the early approach to science and occupational health.

After Kehoe’s changes were implemented, experts studied garage workers who were expected to be exposed to TEL. The review found some concerns with blood health, but no major signs of lead poisoning; while the question of environmental exposure was raised, the study was grounded in Ethyl’s own laboratory results, which claimed that only 15% of the lead in gasoline could be found in emissions (with another 15% being found in engine oil, and the remaining 70%... assumed to stay in the engine). This was accepted at face value without any independent sampling of street-level lead.

The committee concluded there was no reason to ban leaded gasoline - however, they called for continued investigation, as well as research into alternatives to tetraethyllead - particularly ethyl alcohol. These requests were ignored.

Kehoe soon became the go-to expert for the lead industry, and developed the early doctrine for testing dangers of exposure in the workplace. Kehoe worked from the baseline assumption that, if a compound existed, people would naturally be exposed to it in some capacity - the burden then lay on determining the dose where this became a problem.

The origin of this doctrine is sometimes attributed to Midgley, but its application in a legal and regulatory sense would become known as the Kehoe Rule: regulation is appropriate “if it can be shown that an actual danger is had as a result on the basis of fact”, but that technology should not “be thrown into the discard on the basis of opinions”. Kehoe’s “facts” were rooted in a simple chain of deductions:

As lead exists in nature, people are exposed to it naturally.

As people do not all have lead poisoning, the body must then have means to counteract lead poisoning.

Thus, there is some baseline level of lead exposure which the body is capable of handling without lasting harm.

Thus, leaded gasoline is only a risk if it can be shown that emissions exceed that baseline level.

Environmental samples seemed to support Kehoe’s argument. There was a baseline level of lead in the environment, even using ice and soil samples deep enough to predate industrialisation, and people had greater exposure to lead from food or drink than from the atmosphere. Kehoe and his colleagues conducted studies on human subjects to determine the “safe” threshold - defined as the blood lead level when a physical examination could detect symptoms of lead poisoning.

Kehoe’s group dominated the discussion of lead in the medical field to an almost unprecedented extent. His laboratory - named for Kettering and funded by Ethyl, GM, and DuPont - essentially monopolised peer review of lead-related health research, allowing them to reinforce their results and dominate the medical field, including redefining the medical definition of lead poisoning to match the blood lead thresholds set by Kehoe’s lab.

The lead industry owned lead health, and it wasn’t even a secret.

Clair Patterson With A Meteoric Iron Chair

“It is not just a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate and collaborate with industries investigating and deciding whether public health is endangered - it is a direct abrogation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health organizations.”

- Clair Patterson, addressing the U.S. Senate

Modern academia prides itself on the self-correcting nature of science. There’s a lot of things that could be said about this principle in practice - I keep telling my mother (a research quality expert in her field) to write a book on it, now that she’s retired and the university couldn’t do anything about it. But Kehoe’s research wasn’t challenged from within medicine. Or biology, or chemistry. The challenge to Kehoe’s medical Mordor came from the humble discipline of geophysics.

Clair Patterson, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, set out to answer a relatively simple question, and one nominally unrelated to issues of occupational health and fuel use: how old is the earth? What about the Solar System?

Patterson’s approach was simple: using samples of uranium taken from meteorites, use the ratio of lead to uranium isotopes in the sample to determine the age of the rock (and from this, the cosmic time frame between it being released by supernovae and landing on Earth). The problem was that Patterson’s data kept coming back wrong: there was too much lead in his samples. He had to develop a whole new clean room paradigm to avoid lead contamination - and in this clean room, he found something he wasn’t looking for.

The same contamination - in the air, in the water, even in Patterson’s own hair - that thwarted his study also influenced the studies of pre-industrial environmental lead concentrations. The assertion that “lead exists in nature” which was the foundation of Kehoe’s entire medical and regulatory paradigm was rooted in flawed data. The industrialised world didn’t have a natural baseline level of lead - it exceeded that concentration by over one thousand times.

In 1965, Patterson published his findings. Of course, Kehoe - a leading expert on lead exposure - was called upon for peer review. Kehoe didn’t squash the findings - actually, he supported Patterson’s paper, though not out of respect for his findings, but because he believed they would be of scientific value as an example of just how wrong a researcher could be. He told the journal to publish the paper so that he and his team could “face and demolish” it. (Seriously. I’m not joking about the Bond villain thing.)

Patterson’s work would see most of his research funding withdrawn, and the oil industry would attempt to influence CalTech’s board to get him fired. But the same meticulous procedures that he needed to build his cleanroom were reflected in his research notes and data, and reviewers outside Kehoe’s group of lead experts validated Patterson’s conclusions. New samples were taken from Arctic glaciers and the depths of the ocean, and when protected from contamination like Patterson’s meteorites, they supported him, not Kehoe: lead concentrations increased dramatically with industrialisation.

Patterson and Kehoe would face off before the U.S. Senate in a 1966 hearing. Kehoe was called as the medical expert on lead poisoning, while Patterson spoke for the new conclusions - and denounced Kehoe’s monopoly on lead research and the government’s sometimes-tacit, sometimes-explicit support for his findings.

Afterwards

If this were a morality play, this is where Kehoe’s career would end, but it didn’t. Kehoe retired from academia in 1965, a year and was granted the title of Professor Emeritus of Occupational Medicine by his long-time employer, the University of Cincinnati. He would withdraw from public life in 1979, but not before championing the unproven-but-not-disproven safety of another Midgley-made environmental disaster, Freon.

Patterson’s work shook faith in tetraethyllead, but it took another, ten years for the government to finally regulate it. Pediatrician Herbert Needleman found a link between neurodevelopmental damage in children and elevated lead levels, which was soon linked to air pollution. Despite a lawsuit from the Ethyl Corporation, the U.S. government officially began phasing out the use of leaded gasoline in automobiles in 1976. Ethyl Corporation shifted to international markets, and lobbied many governments in the developing world against banning leaded gasoline.

While the United Nations declared that leaded gasoline was eliminated worldwide in 2011, it remained available for purchase until 2021, when it was officially removed from sale in Algeria, the last country to produce it. The United Nations once again declared that this marked the worldwide elimination of leaded gasoline. Tetraethyllead is still produced in the United States and China for use in aviation fuel.

The Kehoe Rule’s stranglehold on public health discourse was shaken by the erosion of its namesake’s work, but it lingers, especially in the United States. The example set by Kehoe became the scientific shield for much of the scientific malpractice of the mid-20th century, from the proliferation of asbestos to the U.S.’s use of defoliants as chemical weapons in Vietnam. In many ways, it remains active today, as Monsanto (now Bayer) relied on a variation of the Kehoe Rule as their primary defense against lawsuits regarding their Roundup pesticide’s possible status as a carcinogen.

Endings

Perhaps the ironic symbol of Thomas Midgley’s career is his death in 1955. Suffering from polio, Midgley developed a sophisticated system of mechanical mobility aids, only to be killed when the device malfunctioned, making him one of the unlucky few to have invented their own cause of death. He was 55.

Clair Patterson died on December 5, 1995 at age 73. The cause of death for the champion of air pollution regulation was a severe asthma attack.

Robert A. Kehoe died in 1992, shortly after his 99th birthday. The University of Cincinnati’s archives house a collection of his papers, though none I could find had been digitised (at least for public view). In the archive’s introduction, they describe him as a “renowned occupational health expert”.

There is a private university in Flint, Michigan named for Charles F. Kettering. Yes, that Flint.

#science history #midgleyposting

15 notes · View notes

whitegoldtower · 1 year

Text

Watched Hellboy 2 and as with the majority of this sort of media, once again, the elf was right.

Humans do, in fact, suck ass. They are greedy and they do ruin literally everything.

This film made me think about the absolute horror of the Industrial Revolution, watching your verdant world become smog-filled and black. If I had been alive long enough to see it all happen (I.e, if I had the lifespan of an elf), I would also want to cull the humans who had destroyed my habitat to make theirs bigger. I’m also just really sore about the fact that the city I live in just cut down a load of trees to make the pavements bigger in the central town. The pavements were big enough. The trees weren’t in the way or harming anyone. I am watching, in real time, industrialisation.

So pissed off I could eat my teeth.

And I felt so sad and angry and just really disappointed when he actually killed the forest god. Gonna sound bad when I say this, but I would have let it destroy the city. I’d literally have just put the weapon down, walked away and let it do its thing.

A lot of the time when people write stories about evil elves it’s just to make them feel better about how humans have ransacked and ravaged the natural world. To justify it. And even better, making the non-humans ‘forgive’ the humans for what they’ve done? LMAO. In another universe, ‘humans’ and ‘forgiveness’ would not Co-exist in my vocabulary.

I’d have a fucking colossal vendetta, and for each tree cut down, each plant destroyed, I’d cut down a human and use them as fertiliser. Call me population control.

Buuuuut, I wouldn’t go out of my way to hunt them. For the humans to stay alive would be as simple as heeding my one request; don’t destroy the forest. It’s simple, really. Not an impossible task. If a tree falls naturally, then by all means use its wood. I don’t bite. Promise. Even though I hate you all. 👹

I just want a film, or any piece of media, really, where the elves pop off and actually do win a war against the humans. I want to see humans getting knocked off that high horse and actually receiving the consequences of their actions. I want it to be the humans who suffer, for once. I WANT A GAME WHERE I CAN PLAY AS A SCORNED ELF AND HUNT HUMANS FOR SPORT. LIKE A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER.

Yknow like how in Doom the doom guy has to stave off hordes of demons so that his homeland doesn’t become hell

Yeah that, but you play as an elf finding really creative and gory ways to dispose of humans so that your forest homeland doesn’t become an industrialised hell

And you just cull them like rats

Anyway, rant over, I’m just a nihilist and would rather humans just didn’t exist tbh

4 notes · View notes

nayelichang · 2 years

Text

Why you shouldn't wrap your food in aluminium foil before cooking it

If you’re baking fish, roasting vegetables or preparing a piece of meat for dinner tonight, chances are that you’ll wrap your food in aluminium foil. What you may not realise is that some of the foil will leach into your meal – and this could be bad for your health.

Research that I conducted with a group of colleagues has explored the use of aluminium for cooking and preparing food. Aluminium doesn’t just appear in foil: it is the most popular cookware material used by people in developing countries. Pots and pans are lined with it and it is found in some kitchen utensils like large serving spoons. Copper used to fulfil this role, but over time it’s been replaced by aluminium because it is cheaper to mass produce and easier to clean.

But while cooking your food in aluminium pots or pans isn’t a bad thing, placing it in foil and putting it in the oven is problematic. This is especially true with acidic or spicy food that’s prepared at high temperatures.

Aluminium and health Human bodies can excrete small amounts of aluminium very efficiently. This means that minimal exposure to aluminium is not a problem: the World Health Organisation has established a safe daily intake of 40mg per kilogram of body weight per day. So for a person who weighs 60kg the allowable intake would be 2400 mg.

But most people are exposed to and ingest far more than this suggested safe daily intake. Aluminium is present in corn, yellow cheese, salt, herbs, spices and tea. It’s used in cooking utensils, as described above, as well as in pharmacological agents like antacids and antiperspirants. Aluminium sulfate, which is derived from aluminium, is used as a coagulant during the purification process of drinking water.

Scientists are exploring whether over-exposure to aluminium may be posing threats to human health. For instance, high concentrations of aluminium have been detected in the brain tissue of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have examined the community of old people with Alzheimer’s and concluded that it is a modern disease that’s developed from altered living conditions associated with society’s industrialisation. These conditions may include high levels of aluminium in daily life.

Aluminium poses other health risks, too. Studies have suggested that high aluminium intake may be harmful to some patients with bone diseases or renal impairment. It also reduces the growth rate of human brain cells.

Visit Bible printing homepage for more details.

Avoid foil when cooking Given all of these proven risks, it’s important to determine the aluminium concentration when cooking. Pots and other cookware tend to be oxidised, providing an inert layer that prevents the aluminium from leaching into food. The problem is that when you scrub your pots after cooking, that layer is worn away and the aluminium can seep into your food. This is easily avoided: when you get new aluminium pots, boil water in them several times until the base becomes matt. This creates a natural oxidation that prevents leaching. They may look nicer when they’re scrubbed and shiny, but a matt base is better for your food and your health.

But cooking your food in foil is a different story. Aluminium foil is disposable and you will not be able to create that inert layer prior to using it. My research found that the migration of aluminium into food during the cooking process of food wrapped in aluminium foil is above the permissible limit set by the World Health Organisation.

youtube

Aluminium is significantly more likely to leach into food, and at higher levels, in acidic and liquid food solutions like lemon and tomato juice than in those containing alcohol or salt. Leaching levels climb even more when spice is added to food that’s cooked in aluminium foil. Anything acidic sparks a particularly aggressive process that dissolves layers of aluminium into food.

This research suggests that aluminium foil should not be used for cooking. Instead, we’d recommend using glassware or porcelain when preparing baked dishes. It’s safe to wrap cold food in foil, though not for long stretches of time because food has a shelf life and because aluminium in the foil will begin to leach into the food depending on ingredients like spices.

#Youtube

0 notes

verdantmoontruther · 3 years

Text

d’you know the more i think about it, the less i think you can compare draco calling hermione a mudblood to snape calling lily a mudblood. the situations are completely different and no, i don’t actually think snape’s came from a place of blood supremacist hatred.

a friend of mine told me a story of when she was maybe 13, a kid she knew started hanging with the wrong crowd. he was 50% jewish, 50% something or other, and 100% lonely, and he started hanging with the something or others.

and you know how it goes - kid feels like he doesn’t belong here nor there, grew up in a predominantly jewish community but gets poisoned or manipulated into thinking those people - you know, the ones he grew up with, his neighbours, his teachers, his mother - they’re worse, they’re below them (and he’s now a part of the them, he has a definitive identity, and isn’t that alluring to a lonely kid like that). and the kid desperately wants the approval of these something or others, wants it like he’s never wanted anything before.

i don’t really remember the details because they was recounted to me later piece by piece, but long story short - he calls this other guy a yid. a sheeny. a kike.

that’s what i’m getting from snape - this is a poor, lonely, scared kid that was just humiliated (and essentially sexually assaulted) in front of half his school. he retreats to doing what he thinks will bring him the most comfort, get the most people to fight FOR him in HIS corner.

he weaponises his own self-hatred by projecting it onto someone else in order to win the approval of the few people that he truly believes may stick by him.

see, it’s really important that we remember that snape was half muggle himself, and loathed it. when he self-identified as the ‘half-blood prince’, the ‘half-blood’ was a reminder of his belonging to wizarding society. that’s why he took his mother’s name, too. when he expresses his hatred towards muggles by calling lily a mudblood, i think it’s moreso a reaction towards how unsafe and alone he felt in that situation, and it’s a callback to his father (a muggle), who was canonically abusive and neglectful. it’s a callback to muggle society, where he lived in abject urban poverty in the industrialised midlands in the 60s and 70s during increasing inflation and taxation, unemployment at the same height it was at during the fucking great depression, the ira bombings in birmingham, and miners’ (and other blue collar workers’) strikes, of which his father would have been a part, and which would all have become part of a cycle he couldn’t escape from had he not been a wizard. it’s a callback to, ironically, his own future, and how he would have probably continued his father’s line of work, however loathsome it was, because poverty is often cyclical, but the wizarding world gave him something to excel at (potions) and put his brilliant mind to work (he was 15 inventing his own spells).

there was a whole blow up over my friend’s situation, because it was a major dick move, but it also came from isaac who lives with his mama and bubbe across the street from the beit tfila, and you see every so often at the deli, and whose bar mitzvah you ate cake at. and it hurt because it came from isaac down the block, but it also hurt less coming from isaac down the block than if it had been tanner and makeighleigh and their billion dollar mansion.

this shit is so fucking common in minority communities, not just with mixed kids but with self-loathing full kids, as well. the amount of times i’ve had to check my own self-directed antisemitism, growing up in a predominantly non-jewish area (coincidentally, the same industrial midlands that snape and lily grew up in), is unreal.

draco calling hermione a mudblood, though? doesn’t compare. he’s a snooty pureblooded rich kid talking down to a 100% muggleborn girl for no reason but his own (or, at least, his parents’) convictions. vile loathesome evil little cockroach

so, tl;dr - was snape calling lily a mudblood a dick move? yeah, nothing can cover for that. but do we have to consider context, including the fact that that slur applies to him himself, too? yes. don’t be silly. furthermore, do i even think that snape ever held to any blood purist ideology? ... no. i don’t.

#severus snape #snape #pro severus snape #pro snape #lily evans #lily potter #harry potter #harry potter meta #harry potter analysis #i can't believe i'm writing harry potter meta in 2021 #i am a grown woman #whatever i'm just tired of the snape hate train #also i'm jewish don't get on my ass about saying slurs that apply to me #this isn't anti marauders #i just beg you guys to give an abused brainwashed 17 year old some leniency

138 notes · View notes

thedreadvampy · 4 years

Text

Ok like I'm sorry for all the Elias discourse but stepping off from OGlias for a moment I legit saw someone saying it was a mischaracterisation to assume Jonah Magnus was himself a rich white dude which

Let's leave aside for the moment that Jonah Magnus not being wealthy and privileged utterly sucks the meaning of of a lot of what the podcast has to say about class and exploration because hey, that's a matter of interpretation

What do we know about Jonah Magnus (from all statements mentioning his original incarnation)?

1816: Interacts as at least an equal with Albrecht von Closen, who has at least one family estate and an aristocratic pedigree and thus could be expected to be at least middle class if not wealthy. This is relevant because Georgian class was very stratified and cross-class mixing heavily discouraged, 1816 is probably fairly early in Magnus' career, and Albrecht doesn't address him as one would a social inferior.

1818: Established the Magnus Institute, apparently without external funding partners because he's the only one ever mentioned in connection with its organisation and his friends talk about it as his own project; it certainly isn't associated with an existing university or academy as far as we can tell.

1824: not a lot of additional information, except that again Magnus' friends are all moving in wealthy, upper class circles

1831: In a position to hire professionals for Millbank under good terms. We learn more about Albrecht, he's definitely painted as wealthy old money, which continues to speak to this association

1841: reasonably close friends with Sampson Kempthorne, workhouse designer, who expresses the expectation of Magnus agreeing with him about workhouses and the treatment of the poor through work. At this time, Magnus is living in an Edinburgh townhouse, by which I'm guessing we're talking about one of the New Town Georgian 4-floors-plus-servant's-quarters which that name implies. Those aren't mansions, but they weren't where a clerk or shopkeeper would live - they were built for ship owners, lawyers, doctors, the upper-middle and upper classes, and as the name townhouse implies they were generally occupied as one of several estates, with the usual occupants being likely to also have a country place.

Beyond specific statement letters, Magnus largely crops up via his association with his wee gang, all of whom are wealthy upper-middle or aristocracy (Smirke, Rayner, Lukas)

He has the resources and social clout to devote his time to pursuing what is, effectively, a hobby; his interest in the supernatural doesn't bring in much income and, conversely, often costs him to chase up. He doesn't appear to have a full-time job at any point; he works on Millbank with Smirke but he doesn't appear on the records, meaning this is unlikely to be a paid management role. His friends refer to his supernatural work as a hobby or interest, not a job, and make it clear that at least by the 1830s-40s this is his whole life (he's "rattling around with his books and letters") - ergo he does not have a need to support himself beyond that.

He had the resources and funds to, by himself and for his own purposes, not only shape the building of Millbank but also to set up an independent academic institution which is still running 200 years later

Like, is it explicit that he's a rich white man? Not per se. Would all of this information make sense if he wasn't? I suppose it's possible but it's a reach, and one that I'm not sure why you as a writer would make without making pretty clear. To be able to move comfortably in moneyed Georgian circles without being born to money, and to be able to do the things Magnus does without having substantial disposable income - that would be exceptional, and would surely merit some sort of comment.

(I've talked about the race politics of Georgian Britain as relates to Jonah Magnus before, but just to sum up: in a time before the abolition of the slave trade and during massive colonial expansion into Asia, being a British man of wealth and not being white was pretty unusual. We can see this in the description of Rayner; he's very specifically described as Black, but also his Blackness is notable to a contemporary narrator. so again, not impossible for Jonah to be a person of colour, but definitely unexpected and it would be an interesting choice to write that unremarked)

just by way of historical context, as I say, class was very structured and immobile in Georgian Britain for the most part. It was also, as I understand it, much more discrete. Whereas now, the lines between working class, middle class and upper class are pretty fuzzy, in the 1800s they were a lot more clear-cut - the working class worked for little money, had little to no education past basic literacy and numeracy, and the entire household would work; the newly developing middle class made a living through highly-skilled jobs (artists, doctors, lawyers, clerks, shopkeepers, factory owners, shop owners and pub landlords, for example) and would have enough disposable income to buy property; and the upper class/gentry may work (but only appropriate to their station; academia, law or the church, largely, and of course a lot of them in the 1810s made bank from Caribbean plantations and their imports) but substantially they lived off the profits of investments, ownership and estate management, built off heritable wealth.

There’s a big range of middle class though, although it was a small segment of society. At the bottom end, you have your grocers, pub landlords, shopkeepers, clerks and so on - they probably own their homes and business and have money to buy things outright rather than renting. At the top end, we have some really pretty substantial wealth - we’re talking multiple houses and estates, large-scale business concerns, tens of permanent staff, and only one person in the family needing to work. The difference between upper middle and aristocracy isn’t necessarily in quality of life, aside from blood it’s really just a question of whether the majority of your income comes from work or from investment and property management. So for example, Smirke is upper middle, but very wealthy - he has a career in a high-profile trade, he’s notable and welcome in high society, but ultimately his wealth is dependent on him continuing to get work. Von Closen may have more or less material wealth than Smirke, but his money is old money and he does not work; he’s very much a gentleman of the upper crust. Particularly with Industrial Revolution and the profit that the slave trade and the expansion of the Empire were bringing in for traders, the middle class was abruptly getting a lot richer in at the start of the 19th century and if anything class was getting a lot more discrete - urbanisation and industrialisation meant the poor were getting poorer (and less able to exist outside a monetary economy) and the working rich were getting a lot richer (until of course after a couple of hundred years the upper middle class almost eclipsed the idle class as the Rich and Powerful)

So the gentry/nobles/old money/upper class were the only class whose wealth wasn’t to a high degree reliant on them working, and so honestly being a Georgian gentleman was stultifyingly boring. That’s why so many comedies of manners crop up from the lower end of the upper class - you have to find something to keep you busy and social politicking is something. But it also meant a lot of gentlemen scholars - men with time on their hands and nothing they desperately needed to be doing, who got really into eccentric hobbies and niche interests (like social engineering, or art theory, or the occult, or unpicking weirdly specific theological concepts, or a bit earlier experimenting with light and lenses, or a bit later investigating the origins of species, or getting super into a specific aspect of the classics). The idle rich weren’t the only ones doing academia or research, but they had the time, money and resources to devote to really deep dives into things without much financial use.

So my personal take is that, given that by 1818 Jonah Magnus had the capital, the social heft and the time to found and run an independent academic institution focused on his relatively niche interests, and to do so with enough resourcing that it still runs 200 years later, the safest bet is that he was born a gentleman. At the very least, all the people he socialises with are securely upper-middle or gentry; he has a visible disdain for the poor; he owned substantial personal property by at least middle age (the Edinburgh townhouse); he had the social clout to get involved behind the scenes in a major social architecture project - it seems like the lowest this could possibly place him is mid-to-upper middle class at birth (he could have made that much money from working and lucky investments, but to get into a position where by middle age you can afford to become the Idle Rich, spending all your money and time on an obsessive personal interest, you would need to have started off with at least the capital and clout to get a high-level education and/or make significant business investments (say, buy a series of factories or build a shipping empire). You could make a case that he could work his way up from being born to a middling-middle-class family - maybe a country vicar or a shopkeeper - but friends can I show you some numbers I googled?

In the 1810s, being mid- or upper middle class (fourth or above) meant you were richer than 94.5% of the civilian population. Upper middle and above (like literally every person we know of who had social ties to Magnus except maybe the architects)? Literally top 1%. (well. 1.25%).

The middle class in Georgian Britain was the elite. They weren’t the elite of the elite, but they had money, land, property, staff, clout and privilege. You can’t project the class politics of 2021 onto 1818 (that is, in fact, why pure Marxism still requires an updated reading, bc in even the last 150 years the specific distribution and attributes of class and wealth has changed substantially (although the same people do stay at the top and bottom)).

I think our perceptions are altered by the worries and perspectives of popular contemporary authors. For example, Austen characters often bemoan their lack of wealth, and are firmly Middle Class, and compared to the upper middle and the gentry they are living frugally and on a budget, but with “cottages” that are often six- or seven bedroom houses with several parlours and one or two servants, plus a town house, and with only one breadwinner per family and enough invested wealth to live entirely off the interest (that’s what the incomes of these characters are), they are living in a degree of wealth that would be unthinkable to 95% of their contemporaries, and it would be fair to assess them as rich by modern standards.

You can argue that Jonah Magnus wasn’t aristocracy. You cannot argue realistically that he wasn’t rich. Not only does that make no thematic or character sense (again, that’s a matter of interpretation, but it seems to me to be Pretty Key to his character that he’s an examination of inborn privilege) but it also makes no contextual historical sense.

#pls pay attention to me i spent way too long on this #p r o c r a s t i n a t i n g #also. there is an argument that class mobility was increasing #but uhhhh that doesn't mean it was a plausible thing to jump from penury to princedom #example: in the 1810s my ancestor walked from Edinburgh to London to seek his fortune and escape starvation at home #his was a remarkable rags to riches story #but his 'riches' was a job as a low-level law clerk and an undergraduate degree from Cambridge #he owned a flat I think #but he wasn't out here with the personal wealth to set up an independent research foundation #(I don't remember which ancestor but I think great grandfather?)#anyway the point is this is a wild take #I could talk at length about how it ALSO makes no thematic sense but I feel like I've tapped that one enough lately #tma meta

183 notes · View notes

x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years

Text

How Venom Prison became death metal's most vital young band

Venom Prison talk abuse in the music industry, pushing the boundaries of metal and how they aren't about to back down

Larissa Stupar is doing all right. She’s about to release another shit-hot record with Venom Prison, has just got married to the love of her life, and is expecting a baby boy in March. It’s all a bit wholesome.

“When I announced my pregnancy on Instagram, someone commented, ‘Uterine Industrialisation’, which is one of our song titles,” the vocalist says. Ah.

“I just replied, ‘Thanks for comparing me to a birthing machine. Very kind of you.’ The person deleted it and commented again, just saying, ‘Congratulations.’”

People get pregnant all the time. Half the human population is female, and as the Bloodhound Gang so profoundly spake, we ain’t nothin’ but mammals. But matey boy from Cannibal Corpse isn’t carrying a foetus around for nine months. Danzig doesn’t breastfeed, as far as we know. When male bandmembers become parents, they’ll probably miss a show or two. Then they’re back on the road.

“I don’t think this should be treated any differently because I’m a woman,” Larissa adds. “We just don’t see this very often within metal bands because there aren’t that many women. We’re going to have to take some time off, but we still want to make Download festival possible. It means something to us as a band, me as part of the band, and me as a mother. Venom Prison is part of who I am, and I’m not ready to give it up.”

She speaks with that nervous positivity you only really get from parents-to-be, which is refreshingly at odds with her band’s brutal outlook. Formed in 2015, Venom Prison blossomed from Larissa’s involvement in the anti-fascist hardcore scene.

A Welsh band, with a Russian-born vocalist who had spent her teenage years protesting against actual Nazis in Germany? Yeah, they ruffled some feathers and were nails as fuck.

Debut album Animus kicked up a stink in 2016. Its fetid blend of death metal and hardcore was a welcome waft, as was its explicit artwork, which upset conservative death metallers by depicting women castrating a man and feeding him the gloop.

Samsara arrived three years later, packing chonkier riffs, upscaled production and better songs. Across just a few years, they opened for Trivium on a massive European tour, brought all the pyro to Bloodstock’s main stage and signed to one of metal’s most prominent labels, Century Media.

Excluding Primeval – a collection of re-recorded demos and two new songs, released in late 2020 – album number three, Eerebos, is their first ‘proper’ record on Century Media. It doesn’t skimp on the grimness.

“In Greek mythology, Erebos was the very first primordial God that created darkness from nothing,” says Larissa. “From chaos. It fit the themes and how we experienced the last two years – this darkness born from chaos.”

But Venom Prison is as Venom Prison does, and highfalutin concepts about gods and epic shit are ten a penny; that’s what normal metal bands do. When Erebos was announced, the group cited a real-life ‘repetition of the cycle of violence’ that spreads beyond that mythical mayhem.

“There’s so much going on in the world in regards to politics,” Larissa elaborates. “Black Lives Matter, refugees in the UK – they died crossing in that freezer [in 2019, when 39 people died travelling in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Essex]. In America, people are being incarcerated just because they aren’t wanted there. They’re separated from their children. Families are broken up. There was a whistleblower who revealed that women were experiencing medical procedures they never agreed to – their wombs were being taken out.”

This topic of discrimination is something they touch on directly in the record’s lead single, Judges Of The Underworld: ‘Guilty as charged, a childhood of abandonment and desolation/Adolescence filled with guns, institutionalisation/Who is to blame?’

“In America, for example, people are born into poverty, violence, and neglect, and they’re stuck there,” Larissa says. “They’re cheated by the system. They experience it as the victim, the offender and the witness at the same time. Then as soon as they go into the prison system, they’re completely fucked. Because even after you leave, you’re placed back into the same environment you came from, and you have no chance to get out of the cycle.”

This is all worthy discussion material. Thankfully, Erebos rams the message down your throat by being the most diverse, grand and catchy thing Venom Prison have slapped their name on. Sure, it’s still death metal. But it’s immediately melodic, nodding to seminal albums such as At The Gates’ Slaughter Of The Soul and Carcass’s Heartwork.

Orchestral flourishes flit through tracks, composed by the band’s guitarist, Ben Thomas. Solos reign supreme. There are proper singalong choruses.

“With Animus and Samsara, we just wanted to establish our sound because we were a new band,” Larissa explains. “This time around, it wasn’t about doing ‘just another death metal record’. I’m personally not interested in listening to someone who writes the same 10 songs every two years.”

She goes on, quickly citing Bring Me The Horizon. “They’ve evolved from a tiny deathcore band to playing some of the biggest venues in the UK. They keep changing their sound, and they just don’t give a fuck.”

It’s apt that she brings them up, as Venom Prison’s latest work shares one clear trait with Oli Sykes’ Steel City ruffians: the introduction of clean vocals. Larissa had experimented with some strangled, semi-clean lines on 2020’s Slayer Of Holofernes, but they were more in keeping with someone like Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan. They were ‘sung’ vocals in the same way stubbing your toe ‘kinda hurts’.

Clean passages can be found in pockets of Erebos, but most prominently on the eerie, quasi-ballad Pain Of Oizys. Aside from singing in choirs as a kid, this was the first time Larissa had approached vocals from this angle.

“You can’t go in and just sing, even if you’re meeting the notes,” she explains. “You need to have the soul and emotion that connects you to the lyrics. I really struggled with that to start with – I was stuck recording for three hours, and just ended up crying and stopping for the day."

“I’d love to use more clean vocals in the future,” she admits. “I don’t think we’ll make clean-only songs, but I’m planning on learning how to sing properly. I want to connect with my own voice more; I’m confident with screaming, and I want the same feeling when it comes to clean vocals.”

In terms of what’s next, Venom Prison are primed to cleave metal fans’ ears. Erebos is still uncompromising and heavy, but offers so much more. Trivium took a punt on the band in 2018, and Venom Prison were set to open for Parkway Drive at Wembley Arena in 2020 – they’ve since had to drop out of the rescheduled dates.

Popular bands cottoned onto Venom Prison’s potential, and now it’s time for everyone else to play catch-up. “It shows that there is a place for an extreme band in the more mainstream part of metal,” Larissa confirms.

Bigger songs, bigger tours, and a bigger platform mean that Venom Prison’s socially conscious, politically sharp values can reach more people. UK death metal legends such as Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Napalm Death have touched similar nerves throughout their careers, but now the world’s caught up, as issues such as racial and sexual violence are more widely scrutinised by the public.

The latter topic is something Venom Prison have attacked and dissected with a laser-sharp lyrical focus. Despite the ripples caused by #MeToo, the Marilyn Manson allegations and more, Larissa still believes there’s work to be done. “It might accelerate the process, but we still have a long way to go,” she sighs, referencing the Manson case.

At the time of writing, sexual assault charges have been raised against the shock rocker, and the police have searched his home. “I like Kanye West as an artist, so it was disappointing to see him collaborate with Marilyn Manson [on West’s new album, Donda],” Larissa continues.

“I understand where he’s coming from as a Christian. He believes that people deserve forgiveness, and they can find God and, I don’t know, transcend into being a better person or whatever. I wish that Kanye would take the same compassion he has for Marilyn Manson and apply it to the people who accused Manson of doing these awful things.

“Fans often side with artists instead of trying to see the perspective of the people who accused them,” she finishes. “They just don’t care. It’s naive and blind. There are still people out there listening to Lostprophets; they have millions of plays on Spotify. Some people are just completely fucked.”

It’s a sombre note to end on, but it’s this kind of real-world horror that Venom Prison draw from. It’s what they fight for. Fuck the patriarchy, fuck racists, fuck abusers and fuck anyone who thinks they’re above others.

This attitude brought so much acclaim and outcry when Animus arrived. Hiatus or no, baby in tow, Erebos confirms their relevance. It’s the kind of record that deserves to be heard on the main stage at Download, not the fourth. It’s what will make them the UK’s essential extreme band.

#larissa stupar #venom prison #2022 interviews

9 notes · View notes

ohfugecannada · 3 years

Text

Oddworld: Role Switch au

So a couple of weeks(?) ago, @oddest-worlds posted an idea for an au where mudokons were an evil cultist species-supremacist power because of the mudokon moon incident and the glukkons were the enslaved natives. I really wanted to pitch in ideas/headcanons, but was busy with coursework at the time.

Fortunately, I just finished my project and now have more free time so I got to writing some stuff.... a lot of stuff... mainly just some points on the main trio of eusocial races (Mudokons, Glukkons and Sligs) and their role in the AU. So strap in!

(Fyi if you have/had other ideas that contradict the headcanons bellow, feel free to ignore those. Or pitch in some of your own ideas, I’d love to hear them!)

Glukkons

Were once a spiritually oriented race who practiced black magic, occultism and alchemy and were allies of the Mudokons thousands of years ago

When the mudokons declared themselves as the supreme race because of the mudokon moon, they were, understandably, upset and concerned

Fearing their once allies were drifting further away into cultist, species-supremacist behaviour, the glukkons set out to disprove the mudokons declaration of supremacy though their alchemical arts and unify their species once more

It’s said that some glukkon alchemists were successful in finding the answers they seeked out, but what those answers were have long since been lost to time

Now becoming more industrialised and realising the glukkons were a possible threat due to their alchemical powers, the mudokons orchestrated a war against them, nearly wiping the glukkons out in the process before thier surrender

After the war, disillusioned, outnumbered and on the brink of extinction, the glukkons began working for the mudokons, who belittled, oppressed and eventually enslaved them

Now most glukkons are born into subservience to the Mudokons, oblivious to their spiritual past, true history and culture

Still native glukkon tribes out in the wild in hiding from the mudokon empire

I mentioned this before, but I personally imagined the glukkons of this timeline walking on thier legs, which are still somewhat short, and retained thier long arms. Basically, they have the same body type to gibbons and similar long armed apes

Because they walk with their legs and not on their arms, most glukkons stand at almost half their canon height, roughly around 4 or 5 feet tall or so

In industrial captivity, most glukkons tend to have a grey or pale skintone like the glukkons we see in soulstorm

Native Glukkons born outside of captivity are much more diverse in skin colour, with their base colours ranging from brown to purple, red, pink or green etc

Along with This, they have the ability to change their skin colour like octopuses (which makes sense given their closest relatives evolutionarily are the oktigi and other octopus/cephalopod-like creatures)

Notably, they flash different colours across their face and skin when feeling strong emotions like sadness, anger, excitement etc. Similar to the mudokons in Abe’s Exoddus

Glukkons from certain tribes also have bioluminescent markings and patterns on their skin that are visible in the dark. Though, this trait is not as common

Using this colour changing ability, some glukkons are able to copy the colours and even textures of their environment and become one with the scenery. Essentially making themselves invisible. Of corse, this particular aspect of colour changing usually doesn’t come as naturally or involuntary to glukkons as the emotional-based changes. In most cases it takes years of training to master the art of invisibility

Much like the Mudokons in canon, industrial-born Glukks are born into captivity from a mother queen and their eggs are shipped off to be sold into slavery

Baby or young slave glukkons are raised alongside their siblings and cousins over a mudokon master and are usually kept together as something akin to a demented orphanage where youngling glukks are sent to work as soon as they can pick up a rag and bucket

@oddest-worlds, You described the mudokons as being cult like. I personally imagined this would ya know aside from the moon worshiping mudokon supremacy stuff manifest itself most in the way they control thier glukkon slaves

Glukkons in slavery, much like people born into cults, are indoctrinated at a young age to believe their mudokon masters are perfect, all knowing and benevolent beings, that the outside world beyond the factories is a savage, unforgiving wasteland where outsiders will try to lead them astray, and that they are better off and safer dedicating their lives to loyaly serving the mudokons

Glukks who challenge these beliefs, defy their mudokon masters or try and escape to the outside are often severely punished. Either from being removed from their glukkon group, being held in a cell for hours or days where they are interrogated and for their “crimes” or getting severe beatings.

Native free glukkons have a similar tribal society structure as the native mudokons in canon, with each tribe having their own distinctive culture

As said before, they practice the occult, black magic and, most prominently among different glukkon tribes, alchemy

As well as living in tune with nature, Glukkon alchemists often practice the art of transmutation, turning one type material or substance into another, and joining certain substances and/or materials together. Which they do in order to better understand the natural world around them

Nowadays, though, native glukkon civilisation is far from what it once was millennia ago

Thanks to the mudokons and other industrial societies either enslaving or killing off their numbers as well as building over their sacred lands, most native glukkon’s main priority is to hide away from the rest of society and to protect what little of their culture and traditions still remain

From my research I learned the practice of alchemy (or at least the traditional western version of it) could be traced back to Egypt and Thoth, the god of arts and sciences, so I thought it would make sense if at least some individual native glukkon tribes culture and overall aesthetic would be loosely based on the ancient Egyptians as a callback to this, with some small echos of the architecture we see with the glukkon aesthetics of the canon timeline plus the more native looking early concept art of glukkons

Also while researching alchemy I noticed one key aspect of it involved change and transmutation, I.e. turning base metals like lead into noble metals like gold. I thought about how this could also connect to their colour changing. Maybe some native glukkons believe the colour changing to be a glukkons most primal form of transmutation. And view the ability to blend in with the environment as a way of being one with nature, both in the figurative and literal sense. Or something else along those lines

In industrial propaganda, native glukkons are painted as savage barbarians and alchemists as swindlers and charlatans that lead gullable slave glukkons astray, filling their heads with doubt, or with the promise of bestowing riches and immortality for a price

Enslaved glukkon’s clothes tend to consist of whatever textiles they can get their hands on in the factories and what little the strict dress code implemented by their mudokon masters will allow

The main item of clothing worn by most glukk scrubs is a shoddily cobbled together shirt and overalls. Sorta like an even shabbier version of the basic glukkon pud uniform in munchs oddysee

Like many things, native or liberated glukkons tend to have a lot more freedom when it comes to what they wear

The more traditional fashions often worn by glukkon alchemists include long, loose fitting robes, sometimes with these thick ribbed shoulder pads. Pretty much the same as outfit worn by glukkons in the very early concept art back when they were still called “Oldger” or “Ociti”

Mudokons

A once spiritual race that possessed psychic powers and were allies to the Glukkons thousands of years ago

When the shape of a Mudokon pawprint appeared on one of Oddworld’s moons, some mudokons took this as a sign from the gods that they were the chosen race

Blinded by their self imposed delusions of grandeur, the first believers of the mudokon moon sign set out to prove the mudokon race’s superiority over all other races of Oddworld

The moon believers did this by recruiting more mudokon members into their tribe, slowly converting the many tribes into one unified empire, increased consumption of the planets resources and began to isolate themselves from the rest of Oddworld

Building massive towers that reached the skies, they began to spend most of thier time indoors, only looking up at the night sky to see thier sacred moon, the symbolic reminder of thier divinity over Oddworld

Gradually abandoned thier spiritual ways in favour of a more industrialised way of life. Only a few powerful figures within the Mudokon empire still use their psychic abilities such as possession

Growing more paranoid that their Glukkon allies and thier powers of alchemy would prove to be a threat to their rising power, the mudokons orchestrated a war against the glukkon tribes, nearly wiping them out in the process

After the war, the mudokon empire gave the queens of the last remaining glukkon tribes an ultimatum: give away thier children to the empire where they would be “employed”, “sheltered” and “safe”, or let them be born into a “primitive” tribal wasteland at the brink of extinction

The mudokons were able to enslave their once Glukkon allies and quickly rose to become the most powerful, and power hungry, civilisation in all of Oddworld

In terms of architecture and aesthetic, I figured many of those motifs from their spiritual/tribal past would subtly carry over to their current society, I’ll be it more metallic and industrialised. Like larger, dystopian dieselpunk versions of the huts, buildings and structures we see in Monsaic Lines and other native mudokon locations

The buildings they live and work in are also incredibly tall, with some structures in their urban cities reaching above the clouds (basically the opposite of the canon glukkons subterranean cities)

The Mudokons are the main industrial society with a stronghold over the planet

Having essentially brainwashed both thier mudokon citizens and glukkon slaves, the mudokon empire is singularly concerned with proving their dominion over the planet oddworld. with no reguard for the native creatures and cultures that inhabit it

Mudokon society is extremely dedicated to the idea they are the best civilisation in all of Oddworld

As far as they’re concerned, their empire is the supreme civilisation, unparalleled in architecture, politics, philosophy, military and art

And they are dead set on proving thier superiority to the other races of Oddworld, no matter the cost

Any historical records that makes mudokons civilisation and society look bad or less then perfect are either deeply hidden away or destroyed. Through this constant revisionism as erasure, their true history has been long forgotten

Only consistent part of their history is the mudokon moon, which they hold as a sacred symbol and a reminder of their power as the “chosen race”

Now, the sight of the mudokon moon is rare for any industrial borns due to the sky being covered by air pollution from the mudokons buildings and factories

Young mudokons are born as eggs by their respective queen and sent to be raised by a foster mudokon worker and, if they’re rich or well off, their many glukkon slaves

As I said before in the glukkon bit, the way glukkons are taught how to view the world is very similar to real life cult indoctrination and brainwashing. Young mudokons get a similar treatment in terms of their education

At an early age, mudokons are taught by their elders that oddworld belongs to the strong such as them, that the other races that cannot compare to the mudokons, And that all mudokons which as them are perfect and destined for greatness. (Provided they work hard and follow the rules of the empire...)

For a mudokon, lacking this sense of superiority over other races and drive to prove themselves as exceptional is frowned upon in thier society, and such mudokons are often either outcasted or placed in the lower ranking job roles

Like the glukkon workers in canon, adult mudokon workers are often employed as powerful bosses and rulers in the mudokon industries of food production, science, politics and/or religion to name a few

While some individual mudokon masters value mollah and material gain over other things, mudokon society as a whole isn’t quite as obsessed with mollah the same way glukkon society in canon is. They do hold monetary wealth and riches in high regard, of corse, but mostly as one of many status symbols to prove their superiority over others

Due to their belief of being the superior race, some mudokons are known to be extremely arrogant and self centred, to the point they’re often compeating with one another over who is the better mud

In terms of physical appearance, I imagine mudokons having a lot more angular features, like more talon like claws on their hands/feet to evoke a bird of prey

While mudokons are still omnivores, teeth such as their canids are more pronounced due to consuming more meat products such as scrab, Meech, slig and elum meats

I also feel like the slight uncanny-valley elements the mudokons already have should be subtly accentuated in the switch designs for creep factor and everything

unlike muds of canon, muds of the switch au tend to be on the lean, average and/or slightly cubby side rather then underweight and slightly bony in terms of their weight. Mostly down to having relatively better diet and quality of life, at least compared to their canon counterparts.

Mudokons also have way more feathers on their heads! Though, due to the airborne pollution of their industrial lifestyle, feather growth is mainly restricted to their head and face

don’t tend to grow as many feathers on other parts of their bodies like arms, legs etc

On top of this, as mudokons tend to live in colossal tower-like structures, they’ve evolved adaptations to life in higher attitudes such as naturally taking shorter breaths.

One popular form of dress for most moderate or high ranking mudokons consists of a shirt garment with a v-shaped neck (kinda like a Dashiki) a medium length skirt and long ornate robes or feathered cloak. Think more fancy versions of the native clothes worn by the mud shamins in canon.

How intricate, layered, extravagant and/or customised etc these clothes are depends on how high the individual mud wearing them is on the power/wealth hierarchy. Kinda like the wealth hierarchy with canon glukkons. Most lower class muds tend to look closer to the muds we see in canon with a short loincloth-like skirt and simple vest.

While the majority of mudokon society tends to be more industrialised, there are certain elite and powerful groups within the mudokon empire that still practice their spiritual psychic powers

One example of such a group is an elite task force of mudokon agents specifically trained to hone their psychokinetic abilities.

Fed on an exclusive diet of mind altering spooce shrubs, they are granted powerful and dangerous abilities (provided they don’t die from spooce overdose first). Such as the power to possess the minds and bodies of other beings

They are employed as black ops-like operatives by the mudokon empire to manipulate the affairs of other Oddworld nations and races behind the scenes with their powers of possession, as assassins to take out highly dangerous targets from afar with death via red ring explosion or possession induced head explosion, or as bodyguards to protect highly powerful and elite clients, usually mudokon queens. Essentially taking on a similar role to the Glocktigi in canon

Sligs

Race of amphibious/semi-aquatic swamp dwellers

Society not as complex or “advanced” as others like the glukkons or mudokons, technology wise

Somewhat nomadic as they tend to move around from place to place in colonies, though their preferd environments are wetlands, marshes, swamps, lakes and bogs

Were never enslaved by Glukkons, Mudokons or any other societies of mudos for that matter. probably since Sligs are seen as useless and impractical for such tasks anyway. I mean, what kind of peanut-headed chumps would have a legless species who can’t use their hands do their dirty work for them?! lol!

While functional on land, they’re a bit more adapted for life in water, with webbed hands and seal-like tails for swimming as well as gills in their mouths for breathing underwater

Walk with their hands when on land (similar to pantsless sligs in canon but slightly less awkward)

Use the highly dexterous tentacles on their faces to pick up objects and use tools while they walk or swim

Covering themselves up with dirt, moss, mud etc is a big part of their culture. Not because they think they’re ugly like the Sligs in canon, but because it provides good camouflage from larger creatures and predators wanting to eat them

If a Slig is spotted or about to be caught by anything that would want them as food, they can use their arms to leap away from their attacker

In terms of actual clothing, they don’t wear much aside from a covering that wraps around the middle section between their abdomen and their tail mostly so their butts don’t get cold when they go up on land. These coverings are usually either made of soft reeds weaved together, a leaf held together by a stick going through both ends or whatever they can get their tentacles on in thier surrounding environment

Even without fancy covering or camo, Sligs are pretty diverse when it comes to their appearance

Depending on the environment, their skin tone can range from light green to yellow, dark green, blueish-green, teal, brown or black to name a few

Some Sligs also have tiger like stripes similar to the ones on big bro Sligs in canon

And, of corse, there’s albino Sligs. How they’re treated tends to vary form colony to colony

Some outcast or even kill albinos, fearing their bright colour could attract predators

Other colonies are a lot more accepting of albinos, though they tend to be more protective of them due to, again, being more easy targets for predators

Most albino Sligs either take extra care to cover themselves with as camouflage as possible to hide their bright skin, or stay under the water for most of their lives, rarely ever venturing up to the surface world

Queens are also never seen on dry land, as their birthing process is significantly less painful underwater

While none of the queens in this timeline are as cripplingly obese as queens like Skillya in the canon timeline, most healthy queens are still rather large. Sorta like the size/weight of an average male elephant seal, or a salt water crocodile

Also, while some queens can still be jerkasses, they don’t usually eat their own young, as they don’t hold as much resentment towards them due to the less painful birthing process. Plus, their many drones usually bring them smaller fish and swamp dwelling creatures to keep them well fed

Baby sligs (or sliglets, as I like to call them) are born underwater and later take their first peek up to the surface after a couple of weeks

Raised by either one of their drone fathers or their many older siblings

baby Sligs are also born able to swim and walk on instinct, sort of like lizards. They only need to stick with their guardians for protection and to learn valuable life lessons from them like camouflage, avoiding predators, looking both ways before they cross the rivers etc

According to ex-Just Add Water employee Will on the Oddworld forums, Lorne Lanning originally envisioned Sligs having pig like fur, but this was cut from Oddysee due to technical limitations at the time. I headcanon that native Sligs had fur in the canon timeline but lost this trait due to their industrial lifestyle, similar to mudokon’s feathers. Hence in this timeline, some native Slig colonies do have fur.

usually more common, much thicker and more prominent on Sligs from colder climates as it helps them stay warm

The fur is also good for collecting dirt and growing moss and algae on, adding to the Sligs camouflage

I also have this headcanon that the noises sligs make for the BS and S’Mo BS commands in Oddysee and Exoddus gamespeak are remnants of their old language before they were enslaved by glukkons in canon. This is how Sligs communicate to each-other in this timeline: through a series of frog-like ribbit and croak vocalisations.

They do have the ability to speak language in the same way Mudokons and Glukkons do, I’ll be it in a limited capacity since they’re somewhat cut off from these language speaking societies and not used to talking in words. Think of it how, in canon, Gabbits like Munch can speak language with characters like Abe but can also call to other Gabbits through a dolphin-like “song”

Though they were never slaves, that doesn’t mean industrial societies like the Mudokon empire haven’t caused trouble for them

On top of occasionally hunting them to make high protein meat products and for sport, the Mudokon empire has also put their glukkon workers to use digging up Sligs swamplands for iron ore, as water that carried flakes of iron accumulated and settled in those swamps. As well as gathering peat from mires for fuel

These practices have been encroaching on the Sligs natural habitats. driving them out and disrupting their usual migration patterns

In a lot of cases, Mudokons purposefully try to drive off or exterminate Slig colonies. Viewing them as useless, dirty pests getting in the way of the precious resources that, much like everything else on Oddworld, the mudokons feel a sense of entitlement to

Alright, that all the points I got down for the big three. I do have some ideas for the other races like vykkers, steef, oktigi, meeches etc but for now, I’ll just leave it here. Again, please let me know what you think of all this and feel free to make contributions.

@southern-forests

#oddworld #au #aus #mudokons #glukkons #sligs #oddswitch #oddswitch au #role switch au #I had the most fun writing about swamp sligs

23 notes · View notes

ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

Note

sorry for the short paragraph, what i mean't was ever since AO3 indicent with the untamed, the fans have became more rapid. i understand they are fans of the actors and the live action drama and all. I find it hard to want to read and watch Heaven Officials Blessing cause the fans insert their fantasy of wang yibo and xiao zhan into the works of MXTX's works alot lately like they did with MDZS. everytime i look at MXTX's works all i see is shippers and yibo and xiao being shipped.

Hi anon,

You perhaps won’t appreciate this answer, but I think that what you are expressing in this ask is not very healthy. To be so affected by the actions of other people online to the point where everything that becomes tangentially related to them becomes effectively ‘contaminated’ is not a very healthy thought pattern or a proportional reaction. Especially so considering that, in the grand scheme of things, the actions of those fans/shippers have materially little negative impact compared to a lot of other things going in the world: what are the tangible negative impacts of some people on the internet using using the settings of MXTX’s novels for... fics, I’m presuming? Even the AO3 incident in China, about which there has been much misinformation and which for that reason I do not even feel like I’ve got a good grasp of what actually happened--ultimately, it’s important to take a step back and realise that the real crux of the issue is still, at the end of the day, state control and censorship and, to a degree, mob mentaliy/online harassment that unfortunately unfolds in fandom spaces but definitely not only there.

The pandemic has meant, for a lot of us, that we spend a lot more time online and have a less rich and fulfilling life offline. It’s easy to want to channel negative emotions we might feel and even our feelings of hopelessness with the state of the world towards more manageable and sensationalised drama/forms of perceived misconduct in our very niche corner of the internet--and to lose sight of a sense of perspective regarding these matters. But that doesn’t meant it’s healthy, or that it’s good for us. I’ve recently taken a step back from tumblr because I realised how much being exposed to discourse that has so much vitriol, that exists only in the extremes, was just not doing anything positive for me and that instead I could use that time to connect with my irl queer friends who are thankfully not terminally online. I’d definitely recommend in your case that you take a step back from being in the fandom or fandoms in general, if only for a while. Even if you have very little you can do because of the pandemic, try using your screen time to do other things: read ebooks, watch documentaries, learn a new skill, develop a new obsession for *spins wheel* the industrialisation of lace-making-making--hell, you can even just go on novelupdates and find other danmei novels to read and just never engage with fandom spaces. I’m sure that after a while you’d notice a change for the better in your thought patterns and a reduction of your emotional responses to seeing people online do things you don’t personally agree with.

#anon ask #fandom discussions

11 notes · View notes

semper-legens · 3 years

Text

77. The Unforgetting, by Rose Black

Owned: No, library Page count: 355 My summary: Lily Bell wants to be an actress. So when the Ghost Professor comes to her door offering her a role, she accepts with delight. But there is more behind Erasmus Salt’s production than a simple play. Lily is assured that the obituary in the newspaper and headstone in the graveyard are just props. But more and more the trap keeps closing in... My rating: 2.5/5 My commentary:

If you know me, you know that I love the Victorians. I just think they were so interesting - the contradictions of Victorian culture, the rapid expansion and industrialisation, the huge gap between rich and poor. If you know me well, you will also know that I have a huge affection for the magic trick known as Pepper’s Ghost. This book’s about a girl who plays a ghost onstage in the Victorian era. Reader, I thought this’d be a no-brainer. In fact...meh?

Let’s start with our protagonist, Lily. My biggest problem with Lily was how passive and naive a character she was. It’s pretty clear from day one that Salt is bad news, but she spends so much page time wondering what’s going on when the reader has figured it out chapters ago. It’s only in the last third that she really gains any kind of active involvement in the plot, and even then, it isn’t much. It’s disappointing, because a young Victorian woman who aspires to being an actress is actually a pretty interesting character concept, but here it just falls flat on its face.

Erasmus Salt, to me, represents the narrative’s biggest misstep. See, you figure out that he’s got this weird Oedipal thing going on with his dead mum, who he saw die and whose death led him to becoming the ghost professor and wanting to bring back real ghosts. He targets girls with his mother’s long pale hair to be his ghost, and is sexually involved with girls that remind him of his mother. (Ew.) But when do we learn this? First third of the story. For my money, this is a massive mistake, because it shifts the narrative focus from ‘what is Salt doing and why?’ to ‘can Lily escape it?’, which is a less interesting story because she doesn’t do anything. Also, he’s not any more developed, really, than that summary I just gave you, which renders him something of a flat character.

Faye is Salt’s sister, and has the more interesting developing story, in that we learn her history gradually as the plot progresses. Her whole deal isn’t hard to work out, admittedly, but points for preserving some mystery, I guess. She had a kid in the past that she had to give up, and covets Lily’s kid as her own as a way of dealing with that grief. But overall, she’s not very interesting either. Sorry, I keep wanting to come up with more stuff to talk about, but this book was just completely uninteresting.

Next up, we’re back to Animorphs, and Jake’s in trouble...

#The Unforgetting #Rose Black #bookblr #book blogger #book blogging #2.5

8 notes · View notes

imissthembutitwasntadisaster · 3 years

Note

For the WIP ask! The Girl and the Sword! Lizzie Highgates Forgoveness!! *bangs fist on table* Victorian! Fantasy! Podcast! About! Flying! And! Friendship!

Sorry, this got a bit long but I love them! so much!

The Girl and the Sword: So fundamentally this is based on the idea that in this fairy tale country, if a prince or nobleman wants to marry someone but cannot be at the actual wedding, he can send his greatsword to stand in his place. A young noblewoman is marrying a prince, and she does not particularly want to, and so when the sword turns up that’s the last straw. She grabs it and runs, and there were so few guards because the prince wasn’t there, she gets away and hides in the woods until she can escape. It’s about her travels from thereon. However, the problem is, the prince in his rage throws her family into the dungeons, and it’s made clear from the start that this would happen, so it’s a little bit about duty vs happiness? In the case that duty would absolutely not bring happiness, unlike the case in which it would. So that’s actually left quite open-ended. So anyway she vows revenge on the prince and starts training, and this is actually going to be posted on here as soon as I finish it, so I won’t tell you the ending but I really like it.

The thing is, what I say in it is that it isn’t a coming-of-age story. Because the modern interpretation of coming-of-age so often involves lost innocence, a discovery that people are cruel, and this noblewoman (who doesn’t have a name btw until she chooses one, and she actually takes three while on the run from the prince and they all mean Dawn) found out about that a long time ago. I am Once Again writing a story about how people are kind. There are people! In the villages! Who lie to the prince saying she was never there, who give her shoes, who give her a place to rest! Kindness is possible!!!

Lizzie Highgate: This is an older wip, but also actually a very similar narrative. I also think of it as a fantasy sister to Vivien. I didn’t actually realise but I do now. But there we go. Elizabeth’s noble parents were killed by a despotic king, so she put together a merry band of warriors to take him down, and they fail. She is thrown in prison, until another band of adverturers actually succeed. But here’s the thing, they don’t kill the king, they cause him to change his ways! Lizzie is set free, but the king knows she and other prisoners like her might still want to kill him so she is banished from ever being seen by him again. He is good though, he truly becomes good, and that’s the kicker. Elizabeth is furious that there is no justice. She finds herself eventually in this one village and she slowly lives through the revenge, and she adopts a changeling child and falls in love with a man and her anger lessens. It’s all about her learning how to forgive. And also about the kindness of strangers.

The Scientist and the Storyteller: MY BELOVED.

So there’s a lot of context to know about this. This is a world like ours, but it is all permanatly covered in cloud. No one has seen the stars, except for a few going too high in balloons. This also means that sailing is very rare due to the inability to navigate by sea, except for in Iceland, Norway, and Britain. You see, the Norse had this sunstone which polarised light, meaning that you could see where the sun was on a cloudy day and navigate by this (we know what stone it is, there are different reports on if it works). It’s rare. The Norse did invade England, meaning the English got some of the stone, so again in this narrative, because of the ability of the British nations to have merchants that sail, at this point in the mid to late 1800s Britain is still deeply powerful (although minus an empire due to the lack of ships with which to imperialise) and as industrialised as it can be. It’s the Industrial Revolution but steampunk. (The steam and the clockwork comes from the fact that mechanical clocks had to be invented far faster because sundials didn’t work. Steam was a very useful tool to use, so it became more widespread).

Some time around this time, we discovered how to artifically polarise light, and this discovery in my world means that sailing has boomed! Anyone can do it! And so the decision has been made to Map The World. This is a highly tentative exploit given that it would involve all countries working together, but it is in full swing.

Back in London, Helen Luella Layland is working under Professor Gupta (not a real professor but she says it lets her get away with things). She’s from a posh family, and she’s an inventor (there is so much fake science in this. I am not a scientist and even with the research I have to do, to fudge it I’m going to have to make so much up). She and the professor are working on a powered flying machine. Visiting sometimes is her friend, William Stansfield, who wants to be a folklorist in that very Victorian way of going around and writing down all the stories.

The professor is kidnapped, and they all assume it’s for the flying machine. So Helen and William have to grab the plans and Run Away. They then go on a series of Escapades, meeting a series of friendly and eccentric people, all up and down the island. It’s all about storytelling, how they pass from people to people, how they comfort us. They are besties, and constantly supporting and loving each other. At a crucial moment, they go up in a balloon and they go above the clouds and see the stars. Helen starts talking about what they might be, and so does William, but he does it as a story, inventing constellations as he goes. Because it’s about science and stories, how they work together, how we are creatures of BOTH how there is so much beauty in BOTH how seeing the beauty in one allows you to see the beauty in the other MORE CLEARLY.

I won’t tell you the real evil plot, but I will spoil the ending because if this is ever written it won’t be for years. The podcast is told as William, years later, rereading the journals they wrote at the time to adapt them into a novel. Various characters from the main plot keep turning up in this future to talk to him, who survived through it all, and they often say that what was written down wasn’t accurate, and it’s played for laughs, but it also is all about the unreliable narrator. Furthermore, all throughout within the adventure William focuses a lot on loss, on how the hero always loses something or dies, how important loss is to a great ending. Helen never turns up in these forward flashbacks. At the end, Wiliam says she dies. BUT THEN he finishes the story and she walks through the door, back from a trip to India. She says that wasn’t how it really went, and tells a version where she lived, he says maybe he’s just making her up now, that her timing seemed very convenient, that maybe this version of her is false too. It’s left uncertain which is the truth (although I think she for sure lived), because it’s not about the FACTS, it’s about the truth you want to give to people! real facts are not always a deeper truth, and if the deeper truth is that sometimes everyone survives, then it doesn’t MATTER if that really happened!

I just love it so much!!! Thank you for asking!

#ask games #wip ask #magpie-trove

8 notes · View notes