I'd like to introduce you to LJS 57, a compendium of Astronomical text in Hebrew, written in Spain around 1391. It's an interesting combination of astronomy and astrology, and illustrates how the division between "science" and "not science" was not nearly so clear in the past as it is today. It has some fantastic illustrations of constellations!

🔗:

「 Multiple illuminations 」

「 Multiplexed illuminations 」

women reading and doing construction work

in a french manuscript containing Christine de Pizan's exceptional proto-feminist "Book of the City of Ladies" ("Le Livre de la Cité des Dames") from 1405, a literary work in which she envisions a society consisting only of admirable women in history

source: Paris, BnF, Français 1179, fol. 3 recto.

plumbings our game

Guda: a medieval self-portrait

Self-portrait of Guda, homilary, Frankfurt, second half of 12th century.

"The first category of figures we have considered shows the artist present in the work or in the process of creating it. To that category, we add a second type of portrait or self-portrait, in which the artist beseeches a favorable judgment for him-/herself after the work is completed.

Such is the case with the famous signed self-portrait of Guda, who represents herself within a collection of homilies in an initial D[ominus] for the octave of the Pentecost. The inscription reads: “guda peccatrix mulier scripsit q[ue] pinxit h[un]c librum (Guda, a sinful woman, wrote and painted this book).” Of the seven initials in the manuscript, this D is one of only two that contain figures. The other historiated initial comes at folio 196, the opening of the Assumptio Mariae, and contains a portrait of the virgin identified as Maria Virgo. The other five initials display dragons, interlaces, ribbons, or spirals.

Guda represented herself firmly grasping the initial with her left hand and raising her right in a gesture of salutation and expectation. I would argue that Guda carefully and consciously chose to be here. The initial opens the ninth homily of St. John chrysostom, the Sermo beati iohannes episcopi de david ubi goliad immanem hostem devicit (Sermon of the blessed Bishop John, on when David overcame the monstrous enemy Goliath), which explains the election of David. The homily also offers an occasion to meditate on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and its role in comforting the soul. In short, Guda has chosen the perfect spot in which to await the Second Coming of Christ, and this is why she represents herself as a sinner, whose activity as an artist should count in her favor at the end of time.

Guda’s self-representation in this way is analogous to the scene the scribe Swicher has staged (for the reader?) in the frontispiece of his copy of isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. Swicher’s author portrait is most original. In the upper register, Isidore of Seville is depicted in conversation with Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza, the patron of the Etymologies. In the lower register, Christ in propria persona presides at the scribe’s last judgment. Two angels busy themselves at a balance in which is weighed the very manuscript Swicher copied. The work of the scribe counts as a work of virtue: a third angel takes Swicher’s soul away through a thick cloud, whereas the devil turns around empty-handed. The Titulus attests to this: "O god, deign to have mercy on this wretched scribe. Do not consider the weight of my faults. Small though the good things may be, let them be exalted over the bad. Let night give way to light; let death itself give ground to life.”

Guda and Swicher make use of the same patterns of visibility and those patterns are not gender-specific. In both cases, the artists stage their humility and represent their belief that they might reach the heavenly kingdom through the artistic work they have done."

Mariaux Pierre Alain, "Women in the making: early medieval Signatures and artists’ portraits (9th–12th c.)", in: Reassessing the Roles of Women as 'makers' of Medieval Art and Architecture

Croisière sur la Seine…

Fuck it, can you expand on your thoughts regarding What Can We Know About Thunderman?

One of the funniest and most horrible things I've ever read partially because like 60% of it is just pages and pages of Alan Moore stating industry facts and names with the serial numbers filed off, and if you have enough comic book brainworms to be reading Thunderman in the first place there will probably be at least one or a dozen references here and there that will spring out of nowhere and hit you like a punch in the gut (the one I remember was the Jack Cole one). A lot of the stuff in Thunderman that reads as absurd funny parody or metaphors too stupid to be real are actual industry facts that Moore has knowledge of, and even the stuff that isn't you can trace a direct line of what exactly it's referring to or who exactly this is referencing.

This is a story in part about how horrible it is to be a sicko with comic book brain worms that is mainly understandable if you're exactly that kind of person. Besides all the references to real-life people and events, most of the modern stuff he's making up are still just as incisive and accurate because literally nothing changed, not even in regards to the movie paradigm ("At last he has attained a semblance to a religious figure. Can we stop now?"). Much of this is Moore dunking on Certain Industry Guys he probably knew and interacted with and indirectly bullseyeing on more recent guys, because a lot of these guys are the same. There are your extremes like the one con-goer here who is pretty much just Max Landis verbatim, but there's also so much that's brutally on-point for industry practices and writers ("What if we had Thunderman do something, and then something happened?") that you can fill in your own names.

It's also an incredibly personal and tragic piece because the core story of it, in between vivid descriptions of Greg Land's office space porn oceans and self-destructive daydreams and rolling catastrophes, is about a guy who deeply loves his art form, deeply loves the creators and artists who gave him so much for so little in his life, and deals with so much horrible toxic bullshit that the only way he finds to live, the only way he finds to not be complicit in the pigsty, is to leave it all behind and work the poison out of his system forever. Like he very openly talks about the protagonist leaving it all behind to go write the next big novel and writing that note, and the non-superhero ideas that will come after, as something that nobody is going to care about, but that he has to do. I don't think I could fully appreciate the sequence where he quits his job at comics and walks out of the office feeling better than ever, until I myself got fired from an incredibly stressful job that made a thing I love (video editing) into the bane of my existence, and no amount of money worries in the world could make me not feel at that moment like I was walking home to the sunniest day of the year.

It wasn't only how much better life was without comics that had startled him, but also how the comics business looked, viewed from outside. How small it was; how cruel and how ridiculous. All the warped personalities the industry either attracted, or else bent and fashioned for itself out of naïve enthusiasts who'd been expecting something else. He couldn't understand why he'd not bailed out of the business years ago, though in a way he could. Part of the answer was just plain human inertia, and part was the fact that, from the inside, comics people and their weird behaviour could seem almost normal.

Dan was grateful he'd escaped in time, though he'd admit that even that escape was qualified. Removing himself from the comics field was one thing, stopping thinking about comics was another. Constantly, he'd find his mind alighting on some decomposing gobbet from the mental garbage-tip of trivia that his career had left him with, when that was the last thing he wanted to be thinking of. He probably should have anticipated some sort of reaction - thirty-something years in any field would leave you with a lot of baggage, and especially an enterprise almost designed to be obsessional, like comics -

His fantasy that he could be a proper literary author, living miles from anywhere and shunning interviews like Salinger or Pynchon, had congealed over this last few months from idle dream to psychological necessity. He'd put his farewell dossier together, and it was published without eliciting much in the way of a reaction or response, but the important thing for Dan was that he'd written it. His lip was better and he could speak normally again, since, for some reason, having quit the comics world, he was no longer trying to eat himself alive. Dan was committed, now, to his new life, and there could be no vacillating. Change or die, those were his options.

And putting aside the fact that "Dan" is killed by the Vince Coletta stand-in and the story itself ends in a much bleaker and more horrible note, to me that feels like Moore being very honest, as depressing as it may be, that nothing else he ever does is gonna get the kind of buzz and following and money and praise that he did for his corporate superhero droppings, and he still doesn't regret one bit what he left behind, and he's going to make the weird magic lizard stories he actually wants to do until he dies and try to not think about superheroes ever again even though he will obviously never fully succeed. Not just because it won't leave him alone, but because it's a part of his life. He loves stories, he loves art, he loves comics, and if not now, he very clearly deeply loved superheroes once, and maybe he still does if he can put aside the sheer nightmare bullshit toxicity attached to them that he's dealt with. I'd even point to a recent occasion he did try just that, with the character of Captain Universe, who accomplishes maybe the only real heroic act in LOEG: Tempest when he stops an atomic bomb from leveling England and ends the story with his big heartfelt wedding.

LOEG is the dead last place you'd expect Moore to place a heartfelt send-off to his superhero work, and much of it gets obscured by that asylum sequence where he savages existing IP capes and the farcical elements of the team and other criticisms at the genre, but it's there, and it's maybe the only story that has a happy ending in the book even. With Captain Universe, a character who has no real history, Moore is able to put all feelings for superhero IP and the big two aside and do this platonic ideal of a superhero and the creative possibilities and hopeful fantasy of a superhero. He's willing to poke holes in the guy and ruthlessly make fun of his shitty allies and villains, but LOEG affords Captain Universe an almost shocking degree of dignity (plus the existence of the canceled Superverse, which was going to be a LOEG-esque project with superheroes done with Rick Veitch tying in to The Show, showing Moore had plans to try writing superheroes again on his own terms even after everything). I think Thunderman in large part is about conciliating these feelings with a large degree of autobiography.

That's one emotional core of the story, but mainly I remember Thunderman for being really fucking funny. The EC Comics hearing. The porn ocean odyssey. Stan Lee Stan Lee-ing so hard he nearly gets killed by gangsters over it and one chapter detailing his transition from person to Character. Marvel was all along a CIA conspiracy to promote radiation poisoning. The chapter that's entirely dedicated to Moore stopping the story to riff and review the Superman movies. This books swings widly and it's an incredibly entertaining read.

And maybe the most horrible thing about Thunderman isn't in the way it's protagonist meets it's end or in the final chapter or even *gestures broadly at all of it*, it might just be the chapter before Alan Moore drops his Superman movie reviews, because with it comes the realization that yes, Alan Moore has been to Reddit, and has looked enough into reddit superhero discourse to be able to plausibly imitate it, which means he probably has sat through at least one argument about him too many. The stand-out of that chapter is the bit where he's riffing on Cavill's mustache fiasco and the DCEU, but it also includes some bits that now read as pretty perfect bullseye jabs at the MCU's current state of affairs.

Anna, no! 😭

Night Clouds III

Art Prints/ Products

The History of Ink - 1860.

Idk about yall but illuminations make the cutest fucking models ever. In fucking existence.

I’ve actually mainly only watched 2 different types of movies they made (minions and despicable me are the same series and then sing)

You guys can’t tell me the minion models (ESPECIALLY THE MAIN THREE KEVIN, STEWART AND BOB) aren’t fucking adorable. Idc how many Facebook moms use them for HORRIBLE memes but god DAMN IT.

Also gru as a child. Coke on. His model + his voice is fucking adorable. And I hate kids.

Need I say anything? Buster, Porsha, johnny, Rosita, ash, gunter and hell even crawly are cute (the best being buster porsha and Rosita)

I hate porcupines, pigs, koalas and gorillas looks. Hate them. But illuminations has the ability to make these things I HATE into something adorable af.

Now thinking of it I think illuminations made me like gorillas and koalas looks (especially baby koalas omfg). I always say koalas are like the pugs of the tree dwellers, so ugly that they’re cute.

I used to think koalas second thumb looked weird but growing up is realizing koalas and their silly hands are fucking cute‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Also Nooshy. I just love lynx.

some impressions from the "Kalīlaẗ wa Dimnaẗ" (كليلة و دمنة), an arabic manuscript from 1762 containing a collection of fables and 180 illustrations, translated from middle persian to arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa ʿAbd Allâh

source: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Arabe 3475, fol. 31 verso (birth), fol. 20 verso (cows), fol. 62 recto (woman) and fol. 90 recto (sex).

80's unicorns from the collection of @mlpmemories !

Extinct Disney Parks and Attractions tournament round 2: Group C

Reminder, you don't have had to experience any of the attractions/experiences to vote! Just read in the info and/or watch the vid,then vote for which you wish you would have experienced more/which sounds cooler!

Videos and propaganda/info dumping under cut

IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth: Epcot (1999-2019)

Propaganda:

Oh boy, here we gooooo. I could go on for hours about this show. It was one of the most unique nighttime shows Disney had, it was so unique to Epcot and didn't have any songs from disney films, which is what the park was suppose to be! Its all original and is so uniting and powerful. The soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and fully original and gives me goosebumps everytime. Nothing can compare to how powerful it is. And yes, the middle section was a bit slow, especially if you couldnt see the globe well, but I think they should have just updated that part and kept the rest instead of forcing IP into Epcot like the replacement shows. This show was all about nations uniting and every culture being beautiful. From the torches that 'blow out', to all the fire in the middle, to the iconic globe opening with one united torch, to the different countries lighting up, to the jaw dropping finale of huge canon like fireworks coming out of each country area to finish with the brightest finale you will ever see, to the iconic song afterwards (from the Millennium Celebration Tapestry of Nations Parade!). And then Spaceship earth all lite up in purple with the song from Tapestry of Nations parade playing as you exit the park, nothing will beat the magic of that, and I cry every time I remember I will never experience that again. I kid you not, half the reason I did the DCP when I did, was so that I could see the last showing of this! Ill have to find video of me afterwards later xD This was my absolute fav show as a kid and remains so to this day. IN THIS ESSAY I WILL

Red Car Trolley News Boys: California Adventure (2012-2019)