#(this was situated in 19th century london)
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not to be about opera again but to be about opera again. as an art form it has the reputation of being super stuffy and something for snobs who don't know how to have fun only but honestly this was one of, perhaps even THE main theatrical entertainment for centuries. i wish people knew how hard these things can go and how engaging they can be. like characters kill and die and fight wars and (almost) commit human sacrifice left and right. characters fall in love they mourn they're ecstatic they cry they're furious it's an extremely dramatic and emotional art form! and i understand that opera does not appear approachable bc of the general conventions of the art form but i promise old works can be fun and engaging if you go watch them with some preparation beforehand (reading the libretto helps) - not to mention not all operas are old bc there are so many modern operas which engage with topical events! also the music slaps.
#le triomphe de trajan (1807) out here calling for a man's execution with this banger:#point de grace pour ce perfide; que tout sons sang coule sur un autel#(no grace for this treacherous man; let all his blood flow on an altar)#this is also annoying to me when people write historical fic and the characters treat the opera as this elitist thing#that they don't know anything about.#you know when they go to the opera reluctantly and then they have no idea what's going on on stage or who the composer is.#which is. very unlikely for anyone with the money to attend an opera in certain opera houses in the 19th c. tbqh#like im more of an expert on paris and vienna idk what it was like in london#but if you were decently (upper) middle class or nobility (esp in paris) you went regularly. this was like a whole social space too#i recently read a fanfic and one of the characters was like 'oh it's in italian. i don't know that' and the other character went like#'it's by a man called donizetti what did you expect'#(this was situated in 19th century london)#like first of all. donizetti was NOT a librettist he was a composer he did not write the text#and second of all. he worked on french operas ?? so did rossini. and spontini.#opera was an incredibly international art form. also bc productions would be performed in different countries all the time#(sometimes changed and/or translated but not necessarily)#and again like i said. this was one of THE main forms of entertainment. people were familiar with its conventions! it was well-liked!#ofc bc of the seating prices it was not very accessible to lower classes most of the time#but lbr most characters that get written into an opera scene in fiction are at the very least decently bourgeois lol#i wish people knew how to properly historicise forms of entertainment whose reputation has changed in the modern era#from what it was a century or more ago#very adjacent to people 'cancelling' old lit bc of 'bad takes' like idk how to tell you this but people thought different back then#completely different world view from what we have today. that does not make lit from that era irredeemable it is just from a diff. time#acknowledging that and reading the text critically but also still enjoying it are things that go tgt here#ok rant over (it is never over)#curry rambles
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An Israeli author was supposed to appear and give a talk about her books at the Pushkin House, part of the University of London. It was due to occur on . With the date approaching the people at Pushkin House sent the following to Ms. Rubina.
Good afternoon, Dina
The Pushkin House advertised our upcoming discussion on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They would like to understand your position on this issue before reacting in any way.
Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?”
Natalia! “
Ms. Rubina responded with the following open letter.
An OPEN LETTER
from Dina Rubina
“Dear Natalia!
You have written beautifully about my novels; I am very sorry for the time you have wasted. But it seems we’ll have to cancel our meeting. The University of Warsaw and the University of Torun have just cancelled lectures by the remarkable Israeli Russian-speaking writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Jews in Galicia in the 17th and 19th centuries – “to avoid aggravating the situation”. I suspected that this would also happen to me, because now the academic environment is the main nursery of the most disgusting and rabid anti-Semitism, hiding behind the so-called “criticism of Israel”. I was expecting something like this, and even sat down three times to write you a letter on the subject… but I decided to wait, and so I have waited.
That’s what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious account of my position on my beloved country, which now (and always) lives in a circle of ardent enemies who seek its destruction; on my country, which is now waging a just patriotic war against a violent, ruthless, deceitful and sophisticated enemy:
The last time in my life I apologised in the headmaster’s office, in the ninth grade. Since then, I have done what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing only my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.
And so on.
I’m really sorry, Natalia, for your efforts and the hope that you could “cook something with me” – something that everyone will like.
Therefore, I ask you personally to send my reply to all those who are interested:
On Saturday 7 October, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, carefully prepared and perfectly equipped with Iranian weapons Hamas terrorist regime ruling the Gaza enclave (which Israel left some 20 years ago) attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim and simultaneously pelted the territory of my country with tens of thousands of rockets. Atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities and horrors that make the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah pale in comparison (captured, by the way, by the frontal and chest cameras of the murderers themselves and boastfully sent by them in real time to the Internet), can shock any normal person. For several hours, thousands of gleeful, blood-drunk animals raped women, children and men, shot their victims in the crotch and in the head, cut off women’s breasts and played football with them, cut babies out of the bellies of pregnant women and immediately beheaded them, tied up small children and burned them. There were so many charred and completely burnt bodies that for many weeks the pathologists could not cope with the enormous burden of identifying individuals.
My friend, who worked in a New York hospital waiting room for 20 years and then spent another 15 years in Israel identifying remains, was one of the first to arrive in the burned and blood-soaked kibbutzim with a group of rescuers and medics… She still can’t sleep. A medic used to cutting up bodies – she fainted from what she saw and then vomited all the way back to the car. What these people have seen is beyond words.
Together with the Hamas fighters, the “civilian population” rushed into the holes in the fence, joined the pogroms on an unprecedented scale, robbed, killed and dragged whatever they could get their hands on into Gaza. Among these “peaceful Palestinians” were 450 members of the UN’s UNRWA scum. Everyone was there, and judging by the stormy total joy of the population (also captured in these inconvenient times by hundreds of mobile cameras) – there were a lot of people – Hamas supports and approves, at least before the real fighting starts, of almost the entire population of Gaza… The main problem: our residents were dragged into the beast’s lair, more than two hundred of them, including women, children, the elderly and non-essential foreign workers. About a hundred of them are now rotting and dying in the Hamas dungeons. Needless to say, these harassed victims are of little concern to the “academic community”.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I am not writing this to make anyone sympathise with the tragedy of my people.
For all these years, when the world community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) – and the annual budget of the UNRWA organisation alone is a BILLION dollars! – All these years, Hamas has used this money to build an empire of the most complex underground tunnel system, to stockpile weapons, to teach primary school children how to dismantle and reassemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle, to print textbooks in which the hatred of Israel defies description, in which even the maths problems go like this: “There were ten Jews, Shahid killed four, how many are left?” – with every word calling for the murder of Jews.
And now that Israel, shocked at last by the monstrous crime of these bastards, is waging a war to destroy the Hamas terrorists, who have prepared this war so carefully, planting thousands of shells in all the hospitals, schools, kindergartens… – here the academic world of the whole world has risen up, worried about the “genocide of the Palestinian people”, based, of course, on data provided by… who? That’s right, by the same Hamas, by the same UNRWA… The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, the massacre in Somalia, the mockery of the Uighurs or the millions of Kurds persecuted for decades by the Turkish regime – this very concerned public, wearing “Arafat” around their necks, the trademark of the murderers, rallies under the banners “Free Palestine from the river to the sea! – which means the total destruction of Israel (yes, many of these “academics”, as surveys show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where some borders are…). – Now this very public asks me to “take a clear position on this issue”.
Are you serious?! Are you serious?!!
You see, I’m a writer by profession. All my life, for more than fifty years, I have been folding words. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto… and many others.
Now, with great pleasure, without using too many expressions, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send all the brainless “intellectuals” interested in my position to the ASS. In fact, very soon you will all be there without me”.
Dina Rubina
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The perfect Tiny Tim:
It is so easy for "Christmas Carol" adaptations to reduce Tiny Tim to little more than a prop. "God bless us, Everyone!" He squeaks, and suddenly Scrooge, the original Grinch, falls to pieces over this kid he's known about for all of three minutes. This is the character that finally starts to cut through Scrooge's icy heart. Why? Because he's cute? Benjamin Bunny is cute...
"Catch!"
Because he's disabled? This is 19th century London. I'm sure Scrooge has seen a kid with rickets before. So why Tiny Tim? Well thanks to the masterful direction in "Muppet Christmas Carol", we can see the impact Tiny Tim has on Scrooge, his family, and the entire story.
Scrooge first sees Tim perched atop Bob's shoulder as they make their way home from church Christmas Eve. It's clear that they're as close as father and son can be. However, while the Ghost of Christmas Present is charmed, Tim doesn't make much of an impression on Scrooge. Not until Bob says a line straight from the original text:
"He told me that he hoped the people saw him in church because it might be pleasant for them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see."
Scrooge is astonished. Despite his young age, Tim is spiritually mature and wise. And despite his disability, he keeps an upbeat, cheerful demeanor, giddy for Christmas and everything it brings. When his parents start to squabble, he defuses the situation with a positive attitude.
Scrooge is moved to tears as Tim leads his family in prayer. Because yes, "Bless Us All" isn't just a song, it's a prayer that God will bless this family and that they will always follow in His ways. Their goose is small, their house is a shack, but they consider themselves blessed. Scrooge has everything, but he's alone and miserable. The Crachits have little, but they have love. And Tim, through his joy and optimism, is a constant reminder of that.
When Scrooge inquires of Tiny Tim's future, the Ghost of Christmas Present answers, "I see a vacant seat by the chimney corner and a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered, I believe the child will die."
"If these shadows remain unaltered..." For the first time, Scrooge is forced to confront how his own actions, his miserliness toward his fellow man, affect those around him.
HE is Bob's employer. HE has been keeping this family in poverty.
Scrooge could have paid Bob enough to buy a warmer house, more coal, better food. He could have paid him enough to buy medicine or a better doctor for Tim. Their fates rest in his pocket book. And yet Bob and Tim still toast him at the dinner table. Scrooge might not have done much, but for the little he has done, they're still grateful.
The Crachit house is a home of love. And Tiny Tim is its heart. If Scrooge doesn't change, they may lose him.
That's why "Muppet Christmas Carol's" Tiny Tim is the perfect version of the character. It allows us to see Tim not just as a guilt trip for Scrooge, but as a person who's important to his family. There are stakes to him dying. There are stakes to Scrooge not changing, aside from an eternity dragging chains.
At least he won't be lonely.
What else is there to say, except...
#muppet christmas carol#the muppets#jim henson productions#a christmas carol#tiny tim#ebenezer scrooge#Bob Crachit#kermit the frog#robin the frog#Christmas
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I don't know anything about England but I'm interested in how the characters' locations inform their characters like Seward's. I'd like to know more about the implications of being from Purfleet/Essex for example (Though iirc Stoker immigrated from Dublin well into adulthood so I don't know how well he knew all the cities.)
there's so much to be said! i really don't think that stoker meant much intentionally, but the placement of the asylum in purfleet specifically is interesting.
long post so i'm cutting this!
the asylum at purfleet, essex, is an example of the common 19th-early 20th century phenomenon of establishing psychiactric hospitals in the rural counties surrounding london - simultaneously serving as a 'tranquil' location away from the city, while also serving the dubious, cruel purpose of squirelling away would-be patients into residences away from the city - out of society, out of sight, out of mind.
in terms of jack seward himself, purfleet is a kind of an in-between, nothing place - things and people pass through, not much stays. (there's a reason why whitby is remembered as 'the dracula place', and not purfleet.) it's quite literally on the edge of london - of society - and in that scene where jack's looking despondently towards the sun setting west over london, his own isolation becomes palpable - from society and from the world as a whole. the endless, transient, liminal feel of the essex saltmarshes just....gives the vibe. this was a scene that felt particularly gothic to me - jack is the custodian of his very own haunted house, here, in all its bleak, isolated glory.
It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.
this is an fascinating parallel with the count's situation in transylvania, which is NOT the topic du jour here so i'll stop before i ramble but compelling nonetheless! like the count, though, he's a liminal figure - in london, but not quite in london. in the group, but not in the group. alive, but not really living. wide awake in the witching hour, unsure how to re-integrate with society.
it's also worth noting that the opening of dickens' great expectations has pip in his childhood home on the kent marshes - which would pretty much be the opposite bank of the thames from purfleet. in great expectations, pip's village serves a similar role - the quiet, bleak, nowhere-place directly placed against the bustling cosmopolis of london.
in terms of other characters and locations, i've written a bit before about jonathan (and mina possibly) hailing from exeter, devon, in the south west of england - which is much further from london.
jonathan and mina, in terms of the group dynamics, are outsiders: they're very much lower middle class, hyper-aware of the importance of money and societal etiquette as a means for survival and social betterment. this is a personal hc of mine, but i like to think of jonathan as having the long supressed remnants of a devon accent. south west accents are often the subject of a lot of ridicule and mockery in the UK (akin to a southern US accent) and hiding that regionalism, in both the 1890s and today's britain, would be a means of survival and progress for him - i think the fact that he's always given a standard home counties RP accent in adaptations cuts out a major aspect of his character. he's a devon boy!
in contrast to all this, lucy's hampstead residence shows her affluence. it, too, at risk of breaking my social isolation metaphor, was on the edge of london at the time - but was known more as a wealthy suburb with huge areas of greenery at hampstead heath and highgate. there's something to be said, though, about a place like highgate cemetery - a liminal place between the dead and the living, between city and country, haunted at night by a vampire - and the same could be said for purfleet.
arthur is hard to pin down - for the life of me i CANNOT work out where 'ring' is supposed to be - at first i thought it might be a shortening for ringwood, hampshire, which could work! but i just don't know. his character does scream privileged southern/home counties though, and if anyone has any followups on 'ring' and its wherabouts i would LOVE to know because this has been bugging me for ages. lmao
tl;dr, psychology and sociology as informed by place is SO fucking fascinating to me like it just. it affects so much. from the liminality of certain places lending themselves to the supernatural, to characters being mirrored by their surroundings and vice versa, to the social implications of where you call home. it's just!!! interesting!!
#cw ableism#dracula#dracula daily#this is my disorganised magnum opus i wrote so much and deleted half bc it goes off-topic but there's so much.....#i grew up near the fringes of london myself and there's a certain transience to that kind of hinterland which i think you get w/ any city#my own personal hc for jack seward is that he was brought up in an isolated seaside town (harwich‚ maybe?) and went to university in london#before continuing his education in amsterdam#also i like that harwich has a DIRECT ship route to the netherlands....thinking.....thoughts..#while writing this i was doing some research and now i have many seward hometown thoughts god.#[points to a puddle in a saltmarsh] this is jack seward. to me
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I know this has nothing to do with KuroxTWST AU, but what would happen if Kalim and Jamil swapped places with Soma and Agni, the same goes for Soma and Agni?
Thank you for your patience!!💕💕 I tried to think about it well🤔
If Soma and Agni were in the place of Kalim and Jamil
It seems to me that there would not be a big difference, because Soma is somewhat similar to Kalim and he is also 17 years old😳 I think he would be interested in studying at the college of magic and he probably got along well in the Scarabia dormitory!💖 Agni would have taken Jamil's place then! Of course, he is not a teenager, but he would probably want to study in a place like this, at least to be near Soma. He would also cook a lot of food and treat many people to curry buns! But they are really so innocent, they could probably be fooled :')
If Kalim and Jamil were in the place of Soma and Agni
FIRSTLY, THEY WOULD BE SHOCKED BECAUSE THEY FOUND THEMSELVES IN THE 19TH CENTURY!! And in their case, it all depends on the circumstances where they find themselves. But they probably would have lived at Ciel's house in London!👌It seems to me that Jamil would at least be able to negotiate with Ciel about something, for example, housing and food and the like. Kalim would have behaved like Soma but probably less spoiled🤭
Jamil would be more stressed by a similar situation, but in general they would be able to settle in a similar place, but it is desirable that Ciel and Sebastian keep an eye on them🥺
Thank you for the question!! I hope you were interested in reading this❤️❤️❤️
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HL headcanon : life in the 19th century
I was doing some historical research in order to make a family tree (for an OC for a fanfiction in the Hogwarts Legacy universe) because I'm a stickler for historical detail (It's not at all because I'm a history professor) and I thought it might be nice to share this for anyone who's interested.
Social transformations of the 19th century
HL takes place at the end of the Victorian era in UK, a historical period marked by the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to this revolution, many transformations appeared and developed in Europe:
The railway network in UK in the 1840s (at the time of HL, the Hogwarts Express was still something new and must have caused a scandal among the purebloods, who were no doubt scandalised that one of the latest Muggle technical innovations was being used to take students to the castle).
The gradual disappearance of proto-industry and the decline of workshops, particularly in the textile industry, which were replaced by the emergence of factories (spinning mills) in the towns. In addition to economic and social upheaval (emergence of a new social class: the working class), the Industrial Revolution was marked by a major rural exodus. People left the countryside to go to the cities to find work.
Cities then grow by welcoming a whole new population (whole families leave the countryside for the city). To meet this demographic challenge, we note the emergence of working-class neighborhoods that are developing in large cities. These neighborhoods are usually located next to factories.
The living conditions in his neighborhoods were not the greatest luxury (insalubrity, pollution of factories, poverty wages, etc.). It is enough to read some social surveys carried out at the time (such as that of Villermé in 1840 for France) to realize that living in the nineteenth century marked by this industrial revolution was not necessarily the best. In fact, the city of London was so polluted that a permanent fog hung over the city. In 1858, The Great Stink took place, which was the origin of the installation of sewage systems throughout the city (here again it can be assumed that in HL, the system of pipes to evacuate waste water from toilets and toilets is almost a novelty (toilets having become standard from 1840)).
In short, all the transformations linked to the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century suggest that life expectancy at that time must not have been very high.
Life expectancy
For my OC, I chose to make her a member of the French wizarding family Rosier. And then being French myself, that’s it.
The situation in France in 1891 was essentially the same as in England (the Industrial Revolution having spread throughout Europe, what happened in England was observed elsewhere).
I managed to find graphs showing the evolution of life expectancy in France. I guess it was more or less the same for the UK.
Graph showing life expectancy at birth in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria. In the 19th century, life expectancy was around 43 years.
Source : Swiss Life, La révolution de la longévité, 29 mars 2016.
Graph showing life expectancy in France from 1720 to 2020. The blue curve shows the life expectancy of men and the orange curve that of women. Here too the average is around 43 years.
Source: INED (French national institute for demographic studies)
Motherhood in the 19th century
To create the family tree, I had to look up the average age at which women gave birth. As life expectancy is low, women give birth at higher rates. In addition, the infant mortality rate was high at the time (medicine wasn't really that good, plus questionable hygiene standards).
Table showing the average age of childbirth among single women. We note that during the second half of the 19th century, women gave birth most at ages 20 and 24.
Women in the 1830s had their first child at age 23 (compared to around 24 in 1870), their second at 26 (compared to 27 in 1870). We also note that in 1830, women had more children than women in the 1870s/1880s (10% of women had a 3rd child in 1830 compared to 6% in 1870; 6% of women in 1830 had a 4th child compared to 1% in 1870).
Source : BRUNET Guy, « Célibataires et mères de nombreux enfants. Parcours de femmes à Lyon au xixe siècle », Annales de démographie historique, 2010/1 (n° 119), p. 95-114. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2010-1-page-95.htm
Sorry if the documents are in French, but I am French and I am used to doing my research in French university databases.
I hope this could have been useful for those who write fiction in the HL universe and who want to remain consistent with the society of the time. (Well then I think that wizard families lived longer because magic had to help with health problems linked to pollution or other. Thanks to Wiggenweld potions)
I hope my English is clear, I mostly use a translator.
#hogwarts legacy#headcanon#hogwarts legacy headcanons#ominis gaunt#sebastian sallow#garreth weasley#Divider credits to @cafekitsune
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from the future to the past.
request: professional hacker!s/o whos very skilled in computers and building them, with terrifying abilities to gather intel,,,, also has a talent in making gadgets then time travels to mtp,,,, works for mi6, best buddies with von herder, close relationship with secretary holmes too,,,, how would the rest of the moriarty gang react? would they use them???
# tags: headcanon; strangers to friends & strangers to lovers; time travel; hacker!reader; soft romance; a bit of comedy; sfw
includes: gender neutral reader ft. whole mi6 {mtp}
author’s note: hey anonnie, sorry for waiting so long! thank you! hope you like it :)!
↘ Your latest invention turned out to be the biggest and by far the most shocking success of your twenty-something life.
↘ And at the same time your greatest and most dangerous curse, because the last virtual time exchange program you created, which was made by the initiative of restoring old databases, took you... several hundred years back, to be more precise, to the end of the 19th century and on top of that to London city.
↘ You looked like a recluse among beautifully dressed ladies, children in clothes with long frills and gentlemen with tall hats and gold-trimmed coats.
↘ Your bright jeans, black sweatshirt with a huge hood and hair tied up in a loose bun were a comic image among the dressed-up nobility or even less wealthy townspeople. Your appearance and the fear in your eyes caught the attention of Albert and Louis Moriarty, who extended a helping hand to you without asking for anything else.
↘ At the MI6 hideout William spoke first, not convinced of your presence among them. At first he thought you were the enemy and wanted information about their group, but then when he started asking you about various names and situations that seemed logical to him, your expression didn’t become distrustful or deceitful in the slightest. He realized that this is not your world.
↘ On that day you told everything about yourself and the future that awaits humanity, as well as about their fame in later centuries. You told about the actions of Sherlock Holmes and the Moriarty family, and also that in the 21st century many books, series and films about their lives were created. Of course, Sherlock was thrilled and asked you about everything, and then he got closer to you than anyone in MI6.
↘ For others it was strange that he liked and trusted the other person in this way, and for some it was completely normal – after all, you were a person always smiling and really cute in your actions.
↘ Sherlock quickly fell in love with you and became your partner (not only at work, but also in life).
↘ Over time: days, weeks and months, you forgot about your previous life. You gladly accepted the help of Louis and Miss Moneypenny, who helped you dress up so that you fit perfectly with the other members of MI6, while Sebastian and Fred, with a little help from James Bond, created a new name for you and your new past, so that no one has not developed unfounded suspicions of you.
↘ You also made great contact with Jack, who replaced your father in these difficult times, and with Von Herder, who became your closest friend. You two got along great, and although he did weird things sometimes and had a dangerous passion for firearms, you really had a good time and loved playing cards and reading books in your spare time, and teasing William or Albert who always shook their heads when they saw the two of you.
↘ Zack acted like your second father, although he was definitely shyer than the others, while Henry and Sherlock’s male sibling were like big brothers to you. The latter felt great respect for you, the more that you straightened his real, younger brother a bit, and at the same time made him much more serious and became a good helper of the Moriarty brothers.
↘ Your manual skills have been very useful to MI6; even if at first the middle brother just wanted to use you to help him with his own plans, over time he really liked you and realized that even though you feared for your current life, you worked hard to help them and be their real friend.
↘ You continued to create your inventions as a hobby, and your list of later achievements included the creation of the first light switch and lamp, and even the first screen with the ability to save data on it. For your entire group, you created the first makeshift telephone with the ability to receive short calls, and when you had a little more time than normal, you created more inventions that benefited not only MI6, but all of England, and then the world.
↘ You wrote it all down in a notebook, which after many years found its way to the right people, and they published it, making MI6 famous all over the world, starring you, and your romance with Sherlock Holmes became one of the best-loved romance novels of those years.
↘ Such was your new life, and your relationship with people from the officially nonexistent sixth branch of the British Military Intelligence.
#— 🍓#moriarty the patriot#moriarty the patriot headcanon#moriarty the patriot headcanons#moriarty the patriot x reader#moriarty the patriot x you#moriarty the patriot x y/n#yuukoku no moriarty#yuukoku no moriarty headcanon#yuukoku no moriarty headcanons#yuukoku no moriarty x reader#yuukoku no moriarty x you#yuukoku no moriarty x y/n#sherlock holmes#sherlock holmes headcanon#sherlock holmes headcanons#sherlock holmes x reader#von herder#von herder headcanons#von herder x reader#mi6#mi6 headcanons#mi6 x reader#william james moriarty x reader#james bond x reader#sebastian moran x reader
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VAMPYR)
OK. It's actually hard for me to talk about this because it's been a long time since I played this game, but I keep thinking about it day after day. I am very sorry that many people do not know about such a wonderful game as vampyr AND I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE IT! (English is not my native language) There is a very good plot with several endings, and only you choose what to do in a given situation.
I also feel bad that Jeffrey was only shown for four? times throughout the game. I really thought that he was one of the main characters, but no.
I think we've all seen the Judas kiss, and let me tell you, it was too gay. These tropes From hate to love describes their interactions too well. I really like their relationship in fanfiction, everyone writes it differently, but at the same time they are similar.
BUT HAVE YOU JUST SEEN THE AESTHETICS OF 19TH CENTURY LONDON?! I adore those years too much, and I’m sorry that my computer doesn’t allow me to experience the whole atmosphere of the city. Does anyone have any screenshots from the walkthrough? I need them urgently, please. I need someone with whom I can discuss all this, but I'm posting on tumblr, where there are people who are fans of this game just like me.
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The history of the sheet ghost
So this was brought on by a conversation I had in my Religion and Gender class when someone wondered where the sheet ghost eve came from, and my brain of course latched onto that and badda bing badda boom here we are. The simplest answer is probably the most obvious if you think about it, back in the wayday, people used to be buried in shrouds with many poorer people being buried in the sheets from their death bed. This of course translated to people dressing up in white sheets when they wanted to imitate the dead coming back to haunt the living. Over time the idea of a sheet ghost grew from being the natural representation, to synonymous with ghost even as the world moved towards coffin burials.
But there's also been some interesting stories regarding sheet ghosts through the years. In fact, at one point in 19th century Britain it could be dangerous to dress as a ghost. many would dress up as a ghost to frighten people, but others used the disguise as a mean to commit crimes and assault women. As a result there have been people who died, whether for being the ghost prankster in question, or unfortunatly having a work uniform all too similar to a ghostly disguise.
Some of the first reports of fake ghosts actually can be traced back to the Reformation as critics of Catholicism accused the church of faking ghosts to convert doubters. According to one account, a priest once fastened candles to a bunch of crabs and released them in a dark graveyard to imitate the lost wandering souls of purgatory.
Now don't be fooled, there were still gender roles in ghostly pranks, with women often mimicking poltergeists by knocking on doors, moving furniture, throwing rocks at windows (there have been several poltergeist cases where the either actual or thought to be actual situation was a board little girl). Most of the sheet wearing pranksters on the other hand were men who often times had less than pure intentions. To keep it a little more lighthearted, that's all the more I'll say about that particular bit of history, although my sources do talk about it in more detail if you're interested.
And my favorite bit of sheet ghost history, is Victorian spirit photography, which is a trend that kept going until the 1930s. Just look at these spooky pictures!
And perhaps my favorite, from 1889:
Look at them, they're bringing 110%!
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((Information about Asmodeus!))
Name: Asmodeus
Nicknames/Aliases: A.S. Morris. Samael calls him “Mo”, which is fine, or “Momo”, which he hates, it’s so undignified-
Age/Date of Birth/Place of Birth: Older than time/Before time began/Heaven
Species: Demon/Fallen Angel
Gender/Pronouns: Technically agender, fine with corporation being seen as “male”, he/him
Sexuality: Technically asexual, sex-positive, pan…something (he’s. Experimented. With various humans of various genders.) (But, really, they were all stand-ins for a certain someone.)
Appearance: Asmodeus looks much like Aziraphale does, except with straight, white, combed-back hair rather than blond curls. His eyes are black and look human, but he always wears gloves to cover up patches of white snakeskin on the back of his hands and up his arms. Has quite heavy under-eye eyeliner tattooed on (it came with his corporation, he can’t get rid of it). Wouldn’t be caught dead in anything other than black. Blatantly refuses to wear anything more modern than 19th century attire (think Laszlo Cravensworth, but with zero rhinestones). All the emo kids in London see him as an icon.
Personality/History: A fussy demon. Rather quiet, gothic, and always looks sad and distant, though he’d tell you “I can’t help how my face looks”. Basically, Aziraphale with clinical depression instead of clinical anxiety. Eternally tired. Relieved to be anywhere but Hell. Owns an antique museum/restoration workshop, incredibly minimalist and sparse, with rather clinical glass displays for the most delicate pieces. Intimidates said antiques into staying in one piece with an incredibly cold demeanor. Secretly sends donations to keep all the second-hand bookstores running. Files reports so meticulously and perfectly that Hell is suspicious about them (most reports are scribbled on the back of a bit of cardboard). Looks like he desperately needs a cup of tea, or a hug, at all times. He didn’t mean to Fall. He just… stumbled down the wrong staircase.
His first assignment from Hell was to tempt the first humans into sin, but he didn’t want to damn them like he had been damned, so he curled up in the first tree he found and went to sleep. Eve befriended him, and asked if the apples were his. He said no, and there was no sign…well, he took credit for it in his report, but it was an unfortunate situation. Those humans didn’t deserve to be kicked out, surely. Unless that was part of the plan all along…?
Anyway, that poor angel (the starmaker he’d once admired so!) was very upset by it; and it wasn’t very demonic of Asmodeus to comfort him, but you try looking at Samael’s sad little face and ignoring it. Still, he’d best leave it at that. It wouldn't do for a demon like him to get into the habit of hanging around an angel.
Asmodeus proceeded to get into the habit of hanging around an angel. Well, it wasn’t his fault that Samael kept appearing, and Asmodeus did try to warn him that it would get him into trouble. But you try telling such a sweet, darling creature to go away; it didn’t bear thinking about. Maybe things would be alright as long as nobody found out. It’s not as if his one-time-crush was going to turn into him falling deeply in love over the millennia or anything- oh, fuck.
Excerpt from my Bad Proverbs master document, originating from April 2022! I'm very excited to finally do something with my Reverse Omens AU!
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Here are 10 (more) featured Wikipedia articles. Links and summaries are below the cut.
Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South.
Cai Lun (Chinese: 蔡伦; courtesy name: Jingzhong (敬仲); c. 50–62 – 121 CE), formerly romanized as Ts'ai Lun, was a Chinese eunuch court official of the Eastern Han dynasty. He is traditionally regarded as the inventor of paper and the modern papermaking process.
The Cock Lane ghost was a purported haunting that attracted mass public attention in 1762. The location was a lodging in Cock Lane, a short road adjacent to London's Smithfield market and a few minutes' walk from St Paul's Cathedral.
The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes 6,500 years ago brought a wetter landscape.
James William Humphreys (7 January 1930 – September 2003) was an English businessman and criminal who owned a chain of adult book shops and strip clubs in London in the 1960s and 1970s. He was able to run his business through the payment of large bribes to serving police officers, particularly those from the Obscene Publications Branch (OPB) of the Metropolitan Police.
The London Necropolis Company (LNC), formally the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, was a cemetery operator established by Act of Parliament in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London's future burials in perpetuity.
The Order of Brothelyngham was a group of men who, in the mid-14th century, formed themselves into a fake religious order in the city of Exeter, Devon. They may well have been satirising the church, which was commonly perceived as corrupt.
Phan Đình Phùng (Vietnamese: [faːn ɗîŋ̟ fûŋm]; 1847 – January 21, 1896) was a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces in Vietnam. He was the most prominent of the Confucian court scholars involved in anti-French military campaigns in the 19th century and was cited after his death by 20th-century nationalists as a national hero.
The Tottenham Outrage of 23 January 1909 was an armed robbery in Tottenham, North London, that resulted in a two-hour chase between the police and armed criminals over a distance of six miles (10 km), with an estimated 400 rounds of ammunition fired by the thieves. The robbery, of workers' wages from the Schnurmann rubber factory, was carried out by Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus, Jewish Latvian immigrants.
Volubilis (Latin pronunciation: [wɔˈɫuːbɪlɪs]; Arabic: وليلي, romanized: walīlī; Berber languages: ⵡⵍⵉⵍⵉ, romanized: wlili) is a partly-excavated Berber-Roman city in Morocco situated near the city of Meknes that may have been the capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania, at least from the time of King Juba II.
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The Reigate Squire
This has three different titles - "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire", "The Adventure of the Reigate Squires" and "The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle". The first is from The Strand, the second is the book title and the third is the American title from Harper's Weekly.
This is from the second "volume" released in book form - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and the fourth one in the LFW series from there.
Telegrams were the rather expensive text messages of the 19th century. Holmes likely asked someone at the hotel to send one to Watson and the postman would drop it at 221b Baker Street.
Watson could get to Lyons (or Lyon) in France in under 24 hours via train-ferry-train-train (Charing Cross-Dover-Calais-Paris-Lyon) for the price of £4 2s 6d second class and £5 9s 9d first class, not counting any supplements for a sleeping car berth. The South Eastern Railway sold through return tickets. Adjusted for inflation, he's looking at around £410 in the former and £550 in the latter. You might pay around the same today at short notice, but for much faster journey.
Railways also employed interpreters at major stations to aid travellers.
Hotel advertisements from this period are great fun. The RL Lyon hotels in the 1887 Bradshaw's on Timetable World include noteworthy things like a garden, a piano, a lift and the provision of foreign newspapers.
Reigate is a town about an hour by train from London Victoria in 1887. Today, you could do the entire journey from Baker Street in under an hour.
Reigate itself is an affluent commuter town in Surrey located just outside the modern M25 motorway and has been around long enough to be recorded in the Domesday Book, William the Conqueror's census/tax assessment of England in 1086. Much of it was still rural at the time.
Cunningham senior is a magistrate. He's not the first dodgy magistrate we've encountered - see "Gloria Scott" and we need a counter for that.
"Help! Help! Murder!" is the kind of thing you often see in Victorian literature - and crime reports from that period.
British police officers were not routinely armed with handguns at this point and still are not - the truncheon would prove sufficient for most situations.
A carafe is a glass container with a flared lip for serving liquids. It is not a decanter, which has a stopper.
Holmes' use of powder burn evidence for busting the Cunningham's story is a very early use of a forensic technique now taken for granted in crime stories.
Both Cunninghams will likely hang for this murder. It's pre-mediated and the fact the former is a magistrate is an aggravating factor if anything.
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Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Well, well, well, look who has risen! Dracula's dusted off the cobwebs and decided it's time for a grand re-entrance. It's been a whole decade since Dr. Van Helsing gave him a third-degree sunburn. Now, we've got a group of adventurous Londoners who, after a "charming" coach driver decided to leave them stranded near Dracula's doorstep, are about to embark on a thrilling evening tour of the notorious castle. If Yelp were around in the late 19th century, his guests might not be too happy with their stay: "Four stars for atmosphere, but the service really sucks - literally!"
Now, it seems the castle has a new tenant, and he's not your typical friendly host. Meet Klove, a grizzly looking fellow and Prince of Darkness follower who's taken up residence. He's got a unique hobby, too – mixing tourist blood with Dracula’s ashen remains in what could be the world's messiest smoothie. As you can imagine, things get a bit batty for the Londonites who suddenly find themselves caught up in Dracula's comeback tour.
We also haphazardly learn earlier through exposition that one way to dispose of vampires is by subjecting them to running water. And lucky for the surviving travelers, they are about to witness the most holy of slip 'n slides, as a priest they randomly crossed paths with earlier becomes an unintentional marksmen when he shoots a patch of ice surrounding the castle sending Dracula for a chilly dip that's more than just a little "stakey" situation.
Dracula in this film? He's the strong and silent type – so silent, you'd think he suffered from xenophobia. Legend has it, Christopher Lee got the script, took one look at his lines, and thought they were so bad, he refused to speak any of it. But the writer? Well, he had a different story, claiming that vampires have a no chit-chat policy and prefer a sip of blood over small talk. Who needs established lore when you can just make shit up to fulfill your storyline needs.
Anyway, this film basically created the template for Dracula films. Get all MacGyver when it comes out to resurrecting him, ensure he's smitten with a buxom beauty who can probably balance a tea tray on top of her chest, and then finish it off with an exit strategy that wraps up the story as the narrative creeps around the hour thirty mark.
My thoughts? A solid 8 out of 10 moonlit nights via daytime shoots.
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Overlooked No More: Claude Cahun, Whose Photographs Explored Gender and Sexuality
(June 19th, 2019)
Society generally considered women to be women and men to be men in early-20th-century France. Cahun’s work protested gender and sexual norms, and has become increasingly relevant.
“Untitled (Claude Cahun in Le Mystère d’Adam)” by Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, 1929.Credit...Estate of Claude Cahun, via San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
by Joseph B. Treaster for The New York Times
In early-20th-century France, when society generally considered women to be women and men to be men, Lucy Schwob decided she would rather be called Claude Cahun.
It was her way of protesting gender and sexual norms. She thrived on ambiguity and she chose a name, Claude, that in French could refer to either a man or a woman. She took the last name from her grandmother Mathilda Cahun.
Cahun (ca-AH) made ambiguity a theme in a lifelong exploration of gender and sexual identity as a writer and photographer. Decades after her death, she has a growing following among art historians, feminists and people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.
Working in Paris in the racy 1920s and ’30s alongside Surrealist artists and writers, long before the rise of the gender-neutral “they” as a pronoun and the advent of terms like transgender and queer theory, Cahun created stark, sometimes playful, but deliberately equivocal photos of herself.
Here she’s a man. There she’s a woman. Sometimes she’s a little of both. Sometimes her head is shaved. In one photograph, Cahun brings together two silhouette portraits of herself, bald and austere, sizing each other up. “What do you want from me?” her caption reads.
“Que me veux-tu?” by Claude Cahun, 1928.Credit...Claude Cahun, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, via Alamy
“Masculine? Feminine?” she wrote in her book “Aveux non Avenus,” published in English as “Disavowals.” “It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”
As writer and photographer, Cahun worked at upending convention. “My role,” she wrote in an essay published after her death, “was to embody my own revolt and to accept, at the proper moment, my destiny, whatever it may be.”
Cahun’s writing is complex and often difficult to follow, scholars say. But it provides context for the photographs and the weave of her life.
The photographs are by far her most compelling work. At first, scholars thought of them as self-portraits. But the gathering consensus is that Cahun choreographed and posed for the photos, and that her romantic partner, Marcel Moore, who was born Suzanne Malherbe, often pressed the button. It was a collaboration.
Cahun died on Dec. 8, 1954, at age 60, on the tiny Channel Island of Jersey off the Normandy coast of France. Hardly anyone noticed. “Disavowals,” her most heartfelt book, had not been well received. And she had never exhibited the photographs.
In the 1990s, however, she received a rush of attention as gender issues were gathering steam around the world. “Suddenly,” said Vince Aletti, a New York photography critic and curator, “she seemed incredibly of the moment.”
A French writer, François Leperlier, published a book on Cahun and helped organize the first exhibition of her work, at a museum in Paris. An English edition was published as “Claude Cahun: Masks and Metamorphoses.”
Professors and graduate students in art history and in feminist and gender studies began writing about her. Art museums wanted her work.
Cahun’s photographs have been displayed in group shows in the last two years in nearly a dozen museums in London, Paris, Washington, Melbourne, Warsaw and elsewhere. She is featured in a group exhibition running through early July at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Another group show opened in Bonn, Germany, in late May, and one opened in Sweden in mid-June.
“Untitled,” by Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, circa 1928.Credit...Estate of Claude Cahun, via San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Tellingly, many middle and high school students have attended the San Francisco exhibition, said Lori Starr, the museum’s director.
“In Cahun you’ve got an artist who turns the camera on themselves to see who else they can become,” said David J. Getsy, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who specializes in gender and sexuality in art. “Isn’t that what we’re all doing now with cellphone photos? This is one reason young people might see themselves in Cahun.”
Paris named a street for Cahun and Moore in 2018. That same year, Christian Dior brought out an androgynous collection inspired by Cahun.
Cahun’s art spoke to David Bowie, who was known for his shifting personas. He arranged a flashy, high-tech, outdoor presentation of her photographs in New York in 2007, telling reporters her work was “really quite mad, in the nicest possible way.”
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob was born on Oct. 25, 1894, in Nantes, a provincial capital 200 miles southwest of Paris, to Maurice Schwob, the owner and publisher of the regional newspaper Le Phare de La Loire, and Victorine Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse.
When she was 4, her mother began to show signs of mental illness and her grandmother took her in.
At 12, Lucy was sent to boarding school in England after French classmates began harassing her with anti-Semitic taunts. Back in Nantes at about 14 or 15, she met Suzanne Malherbe, who was two years older. The encounter, Cahun would write, was like a lightning strike.
Eight years later, Cahun’s father remarried. His new wife was Marie Eugénie Malherbe, Suzanne Malherbe’s mother. That made Cahun and Moore stepsisters, which created the appearance of a conventional relationship.
In Paris, they lived comfortably off family money. Drawing on her studies at the Sorbonne, Cahun wrote for literary magazines and journals, published at least two books and performed in experimental theater.
Moore worked as an illustrator and theatrical designer. Their apartment became a gathering place for writers and artists. They talked about social justice and debated communism as a counterforce to fascism. André Breton, a leader of the Surrealist movement, wrote in a letter to Cahun in the early 1930s that she was “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”
Left, “Marcel Moore” and right, “Self Portrait,” by Claude Cahun, 1928. Credit...Jersey Heritage Collections/Jersey Heritage
Scholars are convinced that the choice of the name Claude Cahun was an important and symbolic expression of Cahun’s worldview. “It was not just a pen name,” said Jennifer L. Shaw, an art history professor at Sonoma State University in California and the author of a biography of Cahun. And yet Cahun and Moore usually called each other Lucy and Suzanne. Many friends and relatives also addressed them by those names.
In a similar separation between the intimate and the public, scholars say, the photographs were more part of a private conversation than something to present to the world.
“They were in the mode of investigation, who you could be, how you could be, projecting yourself into another skin, another universe,” said Tirza True Latimer, a professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, who first wrote about Cahun in her Ph.D. thesis nearly 20 years ago. “These were two lesbians living within certain constraints. The photographs, the acting out, were a way of being free. It wasn’t really about producing an art object.”
In 1937, with tension rising in prewar Paris, Cahun and Moore decamped for Jersey, where they bought a large granite house overlooking St. Brelade’s Bay.
When the Nazis rolled over France in 1940, they took Jersey and the other Channel Islands. Cahun and Moore fought back — with their typewriter and pens, writing short messages to the Germans under the guise of an unhappy soldier they called “the soldier with no name,” said Louise Downie, the director of curation at the Jersey Heritage Trust, which has the main collection of Cahun’s and Moore’s work.
The messages — written on small bits of paper, sometimes even toilet paper — said that the war was lost, that German troops should look out for themselves. They called Hitler a vampire. Whatever the soldiers’ commanders might say, one note read, “Nobody dies for us.”
They slipped the notes into uniform pockets at the laundry, under windshield wipers and into cigarette packs left on cafe tables, Val Nelson, the senior registrar at the Jersey trust, said.
“Self Portrait,” with cat, in garden, by Claude Cahun, 1950. Credit... Jersey Heritage Collections/Jersey Heritage
It was a small-scale effort, with serious consequences. Cahun and Moore had a suicide plan and carried barbiturates. After three years they were caught and sentenced to death. Twice, they tried to kill themselves but underdosed. The war ended and they went free.
Cahun died nine years later and was buried in the churchyard next to their house. Moore took her own life 18 years after that. They are now together under a single gravestone inscribed with two Stars of David and their birth names.
Why they did not put Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore on the tombstone — or use them in their handwritten wills — is a mystery. There are no clues at the Jersey trust.
But whatever their reasoning, Cahun and Moore remain symbols of how people can break free of society’s preconceptions.
“Their lives were a performance around the questioning of identity,” Jonathan Carter, the chief executive of the Jersey trust, said.
#gender#claude cahun#history#lgbtq history#lgbtq#france#the new york times#joseph b treaster#the 20th century#lgbtq archives#archives#archival#archive#dior#david bowie
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Christopher Skaife: The Ravenmaster
To catch and capture a[n escaped] raven in full view of the public is a tricky business and to be avoided if at all possible, since it requires not only a cool head and steady nerves but quite a bit of luck. My first piece of advice to anyone finding themselves in such a predicament would be to stay cool and to pretend you have total control of the situation, which you most certainly do not. Like it or not, you're about to become a star on YouTube.
(picture: ravens Munin and Jubilee II, taken during my 2017 trip to the Tower of London)
Tradition holds that there must be no fewer than six ravens kept at the Tower of London, or else the British throne will fall. Of course, for all of their intelligence and capability, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect a population of ravens to survive in the Tower all on their own. Enter the man with one of the most unique jobs in the entire world: yeoman warder Christopher Skaife— the ravenmaster.
As the person most responsible for the most famous collection of corvids in the entire world, Skaife is in the singular position to share the stories of these remarkable animals. His respect and love for both ravens as a species and also these specific birds as highly intelligent individuals drips from every page. As the yeoman warders live within the Tower, Skaife is also able to give us a look into the inner workings of one of the most recognizable (yet still secretive) tourist destinations on the planet.
The Ravenmaster is very loosely structured as a day in the life of Christopher Skaife, beginning with the dawn checks on the ravens and ending with shepherding them back into their enclosure. The narrative meanders throughout, however, exploring Skaife's stories about caring for the ravens, their mischiefs, their astonishing primate-level cognition, Skaife's own history, his mistakes, his successes, his dreams, and the curiosities one of the world's most famous castles has accumulated over its long history.
Like a lot of the best nonfiction work, Skaife is the teller of stories you simply cannot find anywhere else. His willingness to approach his vaunted job— quite literally his place in a mythology— with candor is vital to what makes The Ravenmaster succeed. For instance, he quite readily acknowledges the key story of the ravens— that they are an ancient augur of the health of the monarchy— cannot be attested to before the late 19th century.
And, listen: I grew up outside of Philadelphia. I took multiple field trips to the Betsy Ross House. I fully understand how the story around a thing can become more important than whether or not the story is literally true. But I really appreciate how Skaife is willing to approach these stories with objectivity, even if that might undermine his very title.
We are fortunate that, for as much as Skaife is a professional animal caretaker, he is just as much a professional storyteller. The warders are responsible for leading tours of the Tower, something they take quite seriously. If I were to level one criticism, it's that the written structure of the jokes, stories, and even the larger flow of the book feel a little off. Once I realized, however, that this is an adaptation of Skaife's tour story, it made much more sense. If you imagine that you're hearing this story as he leads you through the both literally and metaphorically layered history of the Tower of London, that's the best form of The Ravenmaster. You don't, in fact, actually need to imagine it: there exists an audiobook version, narrated by Skaife himself. I would encourage you to check it out.
I read this book because I love corvids. Every spring and summer, there is a colony of blue jays who take up nesting in my neighborhood, and they've come to know me by sight. It is a wonderful feeling when a corvid likes you— or, at least, has you pegged for a sucker. For that reason, I thought I might close with Skaife's advice for how he came to fall in love with ravens:
If you are in any way interested in birds, and yet like me just a few years ago you don't know where to start, I suggest studying a particular bird: don't try to learn about every species all at once. Pick a bird you love, or which fascinates you in some way. It doesn't matter which one: a goose, a swan, a sparrow, a hawk. Learning about birds, like learning anything else, is all about patience and persistence and just doing the little things right, again and again. Get to know your bird. Attend to their peculiar traits and the shape of them, their flight, their song, the way they walk. Study their talons, their feathers, their tails. Look into their eyes.
If you'll excuse me, I've got some homework to do about blue jays.
#completion list#books#completed#todo#review#christopher skaife#the ravenmaster#nonfiction#birds#ravens#the tower of london#corvids#tower of london#history
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seidou and/or Johanna Barker for the character ask :D
Sillies <3
Already did Seidou here :>
Johanna
favorite thing about them
I love how cynical she is, like given her character archetype you’d expect her to be like naive and “pure” but no my girl is paranoid as shit as anyone would be in her situation
least favorite thing about them
The movie turned her into a sexy lamp and I will never forgive them for that :(
favorite line
So many good ones to choose one but god her duet with Anthony during Searching gets me every time. “And then home… someday” god why did you have to do this to me my heart can’t take this <3
brOTP
There’s not many characters in the musical but I think she and Toby would be friends. I mean they’ve both seen shit and also need therapy but unfortunately they were born in 19th century London
OTP
Her x Anthony oh god this ship has taken hold of me. Every single one of their songs together is great and when I listen to their duet in searching I start to cry. God these two. I don’t normally like love at first sight tropes but I’m making an exception cause for these two it actually kinda makes sense and also I love everything else about them. Also if you say the “I’ll steal you” line is Anthony being a creep I will hit you with the media literacy stick please think about the situation they’re in for five seconds I am going to stop rambling now.
nOTP
I don’t think anyone actually ships this but her and Turpin. For obvious reasons
random headcanon
Taken from this fic but hc that she and Turpin had an actually pretty good father-daughter relationship before she got older and the events of the musical happened :(
unpopular opinion
Ok I saw a video once that said “why does everyone hate Johanna” and I don’t really know if everyone actually does but if they do then I guess me liking her would count. She’s really cool you guys please I’m sorry the movie cut out every interesting part of her character
song i associate with them
Green Finch and Linnet Bird for obvious reasons but for songs not specifically written her uh… Fish in a Birdcage maybe?? Idk ;-; Also some parts of Um, it’s Kind of a Lot fit her I think :>
favorite picture of them
I can’t really find any good pictures online but Maria Bilbao’s performance during Green Finch and Linnet Bird <3 I love how she actually looks like a teenage girl and I love the detail of the red under her nails and I love how frantic she seems
Tysm for the ask and also for giving me a chance to rant abt her ;w;
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