Sheath of Asclepius

ophiucha:

> “excommunication”
> “werewolves in Catholic countries”
> “excommunication legends myths”
> “excommunication werewolves”
> “mass excommunication”
> “list of people excommunicated by catholic church”
> “free company”
> “white company” “john hawkwood”
> “pope blessed urban v”
> search:wolframalpha “full moon in september 1366”

> “wedding of lionel of antwerp”
> “geoffrey chaucer” “the book of the duchess”
> “historical events in 1968”
> search:wolframalpha “full moon in october 1968”
> “war of the eight saints”
> “donnina visconti”
> “bernabò visconti” “excommunicated”
> “jean froissart”
> “petrarch” “the term ‘dark ages’”
> “arthur conan doyle” “the white company”
> “arthur conan doyle” “werewolves”
> “arthur conan doyle” “a pastoral horror”
> “werewolves in medieval literature”
> “sir marrok” “king arthur”
> “sir marrok” “bisclavret” “melion”
> “guillaume de paleme”
> “history of florence” “medieval florentine architecture”

URL: ophiucha

Top 5 fandoms you’ll see:

• BBC’s Sherlock
• BBC’s Merlin
• Team Fortress 2
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• The 10th Kingdom

Top 3 celebrities you’ll see:

• Jensen Ackles
• Stephen Fry
• Mark Sheppard

Top 3 other topics you’ll see:

• racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in fantasy writing
• body positivity, plus-sized fashion
• bitching about people who bitch at everything

Do I make graphics? Nope. I make photosets and fuck around with saturation and vibrancy, though.

Do I liveblog? Not often.

My ask box is: open and anon-friendly

tecanoshinju:

The great thing about going to Japan is that there are some moments that are just like the clouds part and everything becomes clear. The first time was when I really understood the “I vs We” concept of Japanese society; another was when I was walking to school and it was just snowing sakura petals because they are EVERY WHERE and are so delicate just the barest wind sends them flying. When I went back this past time, I wasn’t planning on doing anything new, so I wasn’t expecting any great revelations. But boy did I get one and it changed the very basis of how I look at cosplay.

I think I mentioned before, but my friend who I went with, Lisa, speaks fluent Japanese and has quite a few Japanese friends who both draw doujinshi for or cosplay from Hetalia. Several of them were in town for Comiket, so we went out to an izakaya for dinner the night before we were going to the con.

The great thing about drinking is it really is a GREAT ice breaker. Your language skill vastly improves, their inhibitions about being polite vastly decreases, and things usually go swimmingly from there. In this instance, it only took about a drink before we were pulling out phones to show each other our cosplays. It took another before I finally asked a question that had been grinding on me for YEARS. Note: the following conversation is how I remember it going but it was a combination of English, Japanese & Lisa translating when I just didn’t have the vocab.

“Okay, please explain to me why Japanese cosplayers use velvet for the Revolutionary outfits!” I asked, gesticulating with my third screw driver. “It’s supposed to be wool! And the designs! They don’t even try to make them look historical!”

“Well of course they don’t,” Cotton-san said, looking at me as if I were asking why the sky was blue.

“… Wait what?”

“If they make them historically accurate that might offend someone,” she said, again, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

So here’s how it goes down, guys. When a manga/anime/whatever is based off of a historical person (or in Hetalia’s case, full armies), it is widely considered polite to make it obvious that this is an interpretation of the person by changing their appearance and dress from what it was so that no one mistakes it for being an actual historical representation. The cosplayers also don’t want to offend anyone by wearing actual uniforms from another country/time period, so they don’t even bother trying to make them historically accurate.

To say that my mind was blown was a complete understatement, but it was definitely one of those things where everything just kinda clicked. Why Rose of Versailles is hilariously inaccurate. Why Takarazuka doesn’t even really attempt to make their actors look like an individual if it’s a historically based play (I’ll have to show you there take on McArthur, LoL). Why there is lace on military uniforms where there should NEVER BE LACE.

So, just remember, when you’re looking at that reference and tearing your hair out and screaming, “What IS that?! Why is that there?! No one would ever wear that at this time!”, they know and it’s completely on purpose. Because they don’t want to offend you.

> “excommunication”
> “werewolves in Catholic countries”
> “excommunication legends myths”
> “excommunication werewolves”
> “mass excommunication”
> “list of people excommunicated by catholic church”
> “free company”
> “white company” “john hawkwood”
> “pope blessed urban v”
> search:wolframalpha “full moon in september 1366”

pianowizzy:

1. Expect debate. INTJs enjoy tearing things apart to understand them and to prove (or disprove) their worthiness.
2. They will gladly argue a point they don’t actually support, just for the sake of argument or to probe things. This bears repeating: an INTJ can easily and persuasively assume a point of view which is wholly contrary to his actual conviction. If in doubt, ask.
3. INTJs do have a strong sense of humour, often dry and quick, but also a bit warped. It can easily take a morbid streak.
4. Expect blunt, honest, sometimes even hurtful answers: if you don’t want to hear the truth, you wouldn’t ask, would you? They’re notorious for their integrity to the truth no matter the emotional cost if the matter can be improved.
5. INTJs like to do lists, enumerations, pattern sorting and putting things into an ordered state (ordered for them, not necessarily for the rest of the world).
6. Statements you can’t back up with either solid facts or solid reasoning will at best be ignored and at worst poked fun at in ways not many people would describe as nice.
7. Try to be both concise and precise. Using 81 woolly words where 18 sharp ones would suffice will not endear you to them.
8. They do love wordplay though: if you can re-package your 81 woolly words in a witty, unexpected, esoteric fashion, they’ll appreciate that.
9. Don’t expect an INTJ to respect anything you (or some other authorities) say just because you (or some other authorities) say it. INTJs bow to one authority only: rationality.
10. For an INTJ truth is more important than simply being right, so they will readily admit errors or mistakes (once they have been convinced something they said or did was indeed wrong — to convince them may not be easy though). INTJs unfortunately expect others to work likewise (and react bewildered if they don’t).
11. Stick to a statement after being proven wrong by facts or reasoning and an INTJ will treat you as an irrational idiot and everything you say as probable nonsense.
12. Try not to be repetitive. It bores them to death.
13. Clumsy attempts at political correctness and similar aberrations will greatly amuse them.
14. Don’t be surprised at sarcasm, hyperbole and flippancy. In fact, a non-sarcastic INTJ must be severely ill.
15. Expect punctuality and exactness. They try hard to be on time and they hate unpunctual-ness, especially of the casual sort: the words obsessive-compulsive come to mind.
16. They tend to be quite forgetful in everyday life, especially for trivial things like car keys, dropped tools or anniversaries.
17. You can’t trust that an INTJ takes something, anything for granted. They do take some things for granted, but you’ll never know what and what not. The more extreme ones are actually willing to put everything to the test (and I mean everything).
18. Remember that INTJs believe in workable solutions. They are open-minded to all and every possibility, but they will quickly discard any concept they deem unfeasible.
19. Their way of showing that something you say (an idea, a suggestion) has potential or merit is by trying to pull it apart (which shocks those poor souls who instead expected awe or admiration). The ultimate INTJ insult to an idea or suggestion is to ignore it altogether, because that means it’s not even interesting enough to deconstruct.
20. INTJs can and will make themselves and everything else (and again, I mean everything) the butt of their jokes, witticisms and deeply nonsensical remarks.
21. Do not expect INTJs to care very much about how you view them. They already know that many people see them as arrogant bastards with a weird sense of humour and they long since got used to it.

missveryvery:

oh hey i think i have a photo i took of one