this is a sideblog where I collect historical and scientific references or other relevant reference- admittedly with the aim of later writing fanfic, so relevant fandoms will be present. I said this wasn't a fandom blog but alas.
Primary focus:
+ Treasure Planet (2002) dir. Musker and Clements-
-- Age of Sail, Outer Space, Seafaring, Deep Sea, Sci-Fi, Animation
+ The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
-- 1600s, animals, caves, combat
+ Dracula by Bram Stoker
-- 1890s, London, bats/wolves, history
+ Left 4 Dead
-- zombie apocalypse, American South
+ The Gilded Age, 1870s-1890s, Wild West, Horses
At some point I'll go through and standarize tags so they're easier to use as a reference.
Most of this blog runs on a queue, I'm sporadically active so I might be delayed in answering asks or what have you but I will get to it eventually.
On this blog we do NOT support L*ve Acti*on Treasure Planet. John Ripa, Glen Keane, Musker, Clements, James Newton Howard and the entire damn creative team did not pour their heart and soul into this movie (which Disney screwed over!!) for it to get cannibalized for parts and turned into more low effort l*ve acti*n cash grabs!!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer
connectedpapers
the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!
for example: here i search "human B12"
i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"
here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)
you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.
researchrabbit works similarly. you do need to create an account to use it, but it is completely free (as far as I know), meaning no limits to your collections/graphs.
obvs people can like or dislike whatever characters they want but the specific take of “tim drake is a bad character bc his fans are annoying and his fanon characterization is woobified and boring” is so silly to me. first of all why are you letting internet randos influence your enjoyment of a character. second of all while his fanon characterization is woobified and boring that is also true of dick and jason and like 90% of all male characters in fandom so
and it’s PARTICULARLY silly to me when i see a post that discusses the popular fanon takes on all three of them but while dick’s & jason’s mischaracterizations are framed (accurately!) as things the fandom does to them, tim is talked about as if he’s like. a sentient being responsible for his own mischaracterization and sometimes also jason’s and dick’s.
Iron Lung Details: The Map Lines and Simon's Navigation
I think this is one of my favorite bits of characterization in the movie, and such a good way to track Simon's progress throughout.
image-heavy below
His first interactions with the map are very careful and wary. He squints at the markings, trying to make out the nuances and details on it. When he first jots down his initial placement, he's got a soft touch with the charcoal stick. Probably worried about breaking it. His lines are steady and precise.
Our first glimpse of his journey track shows he's taken things very slowly. He's gotten maybe three strides on the map by the time his first O2 light goes off. He's not in a rush, he's taking his time and being thorough, but the O2 light sinks in that he doesn't have the luxury of time.
Next time we see the map, Simon has considerably sped up with the whole expedition. But also from the short lines, we can see he's still hesitant with navigating in the ocean.
Lots of feeling out for walls and obstacles, and even a bit of going back and forth. If I had to guess, he probably got the turn and angles wrong and messed up his directions. Still, lots of progress way faster!
We go quite a bit before the map becomes relevant again, massive time skip to post-stranding in the caves and out of range from the map. As he succintly puts it, he's fucked. How does he keep track of his path without the map? Make more map!
The first addition to the map is carefully trimmed and measured, he even double checks the grid. He goes a bit past the landing coordinates but it's still a small addition. He either doesn't think he'll need to use that much paper to get back into the mapped range, or he won't waste paper just yet.
He's more comfortable with the process as well. Mark progress, take picture, double check the angles, visualize it, jot it down, repeat. We then get a time skip while he fumes over the tape Xs, and there's already an update to the map.
He's added considerably more to the extension, but it's in squares. He's done the extensions in increments as they became needed instead of all at once. He even tapes over a piece of pipe?? Yeah whatever works dude, at least you didn't end up headed that direction.
Also in comparison to the original map and the new expedition line, you can see he's moving in longer lines. No longer tippytoeing through the geography, though in his defense, the tunnels are slightly wider than the ones he was dropped into originally.
There's also a neat little bit during the driving scene, where the proximity radar beeps and he gets the turn wrong before adjusting. Really sells the startle!
Also during the driving scene, we see him improvise ways to do more than one thing at once. His caution and calm from before is out the window, he can't just ditch parts of the driving system he has down, but he can add to it to make it more malleable. Like trying to stick the camera button down so he doesn't need to go back and forth, or putting the folio on the throttle to keep pushing forward while away from the console.
His lines are way messier as well. In part from having to draw vertically instead of horizontally, but also he doesn't have time to care about the map looking pretty and clear. This is just for him to see and work with, after all. He also doesn't check everything with the camera anymore, if the proximity says there's something he just assumes a wall and puts it on the map.
Also notable is his methods. He still sticks close to walls to map out an area, but at the center of that larger pocket, you can see that once he noticed he might be boxed in, he moved closer to the center of the open area and then turned to the unmapped portion. He's triangulating.
This barely-second-long scene is so important to me. Sloppy as he is with the map now, his lines are still straight. Wonky, but straight. But as time passes and his mind starts to go from exhaustion, pain and isolation, we get this curved line. His navigation is going as tilted as his mind.
Then we reach the SM-8 and my god, the aftermath. You can see how heavier his hand has gotten (and how blunt the charcoal tip has worn down to) by the change in line thickness. You can also see his triangulation got severely wonky at the end there. Loops and turns and spins, and back to the short spurts of movements once he neared the beginning of the circle.
I've also mentioned before, but this is the time where the camera pictures stop being snapshots to him, and he begins to visualize them as full, tridimensional perception. The camera have become his eyes.
Once he agrees to meet up with Ellie, he's completely ditched the map grid. He's eyeballing the coordinates, and by now he can do it fairly confidently.
He also draws a very straight line with a confidence that he shouldn't have about the terrain. He's triangulating between where he is, the Light POI marker, and what he's guessing is open range for him to navigate thanks to the charted map. I must assume he intends to eyeball and feel his way around that line at the very least.
Not only that, during the trip to the Light, he drives without checking the map once. He memorized the middle point coordinates, drives to it, and then adjusts to the intended destination, all while talking shit at Ellie. That is fucking impressive!
Or, is it?
We're back from Eyeball land and bargainign with Ava for freedom now. The section of the map with the neat straight line is, not? We see now instead shorter, measured though slightly curved lines. It's a similar path overall, but very much different strokes, angles and lines.
This could be a continuation error, or this could be Simon misremembering his trip to the Light. Your pick!
Then we get the trip back to the SM-8 and what a ride it is. Simon isn't really all there for it, but he still keeps track of his movements. Messy, longer lines, heavy pressure on the stick.
On the way back, we see he jotted down the sub location, aaaand the Light path lines are wonky again. Simon, please can we get a definitive look on those please?
Now we have the Ellie face-off so all maps and coordinates are out the window. What is worth noting is that however long the trip back out of the tunnels took, he didn't bother with the maps at all. Ava agreed to meet him at the exit of the tunnels based on his guesstimate coordinates, so it wasn't that far to go, but this is not new territory for him, he definitely navigated on proximity radar only.
This is good to know for me, because I am heavily leaning towards the "Simon becoming a shuttle operator" fic idea lately.
Something something Simon would also navigate this way in space. He seems incredibly methodical. Possibly spurred on by being nervous, which is an interesting character trait to have. So, I'll put that in my notes:
Simon treats a stressful situation like something to be surgically precise over, and Simon knows the basics of navigation immediately. There's no "learning how to drive/nav" sequence, he just does it.
More little evidence cues about my theory that Simon used to be a pilot...
Ok so hi, I'm not sure if you have seen that one instagram post people have been mocking. Basically it was SMTH like, "facts about Gwen Stacy that show why she was Peter's ideal girlfriend" and half of them were made up and I could tell they were made up. Now I found a post called "10 things Johnny Storm has done but they get progressively more wholesome" or SMTH like that. Now, this one i can't tell if they are true or false(I'd ofc be happy if they were true lol) so I'm leaving the link here for you, if you wanna see and confirm maybe! https://www.instagram.com/p/DZNPmXnFJ4k/ Thank you! I hope the link works because sometimes they don't.
Okay, let's myth bust this Instagram account. I did see that Gwen Stacy post when it went around, and like, if it's the one I'm thinking about, literally everything on it has no basis in canon. But I saw it reposted to tumblr where it didn't have any notes, so I just kind of rolled my eyes and ignored it. This post has 40k notes, so it's fair territory.
So right off the bat, I'm always really wary of big "comics blogs" that don't or can't provide references. If it's someone's personal blog, that's their choice, but if you're putting yourself out there as an authority, you should be able to back up your statements. None of these "facts" have references attached. Can I say for sure some of them never happened? No. I've read probably 90% of Johnny's appearances, so I have a very good grasp on his canon, but I can't say for sure one of these wasn't mentioned in a throwaway line in some random issue of Marvel Fanfare, and I can't check because there's no references. So I'm going to bust what I can. Funnily enough, a lot of these seem to have some basis in canon, but the facts got twisted.
"He willingly slept on the couch for months so a struggling Peter Parker could stay in bedroom rent-free." Sorry, Spideytorch fans, this one is fake. Peter and Johnny have lived together, in two separate continuities (616 and the original Ultimate universe), but Johnny never slept on the couch for months so Peter could stay in his bedroom. It's not clear what the sleeping situation was in FF #17, but Peter was only struggling because there was an alien horse partying in his kitchen, and in the original Ultimate universe, Johnny and Bobby shared a room while Peter took the attic in Aunt May's house. I see where they got the basis for this, but it just didn't happen.
"He spent weeks learning how to cook just so he could surprise his sister Sue with a homemade birthday dinner." I see where they got this, but it's not what happened. So first off, yes, Johnny is canonically an excellent home cook. In Fantastic Four: A Death in the Family, Johnny says he's always cooked, with some inference that it was a survival skill developed during his and Sue's rough childhood. In Fantastic Four #520, there's a flashback where he makes Sue a sandwich for Mother's Day. There's no scene where he spends weeks learning to cook specifically to make Sue a birthday dinner.
"He defends Ben Grimm whenever anyone mocks the Thing's rocky appearance, despite their playful bickering." This one is more or less true. Johnny is very protective of Ben, in his own way. You know, that's their dynamic -- they annoy each other and insult each other, but they're the only ones allowed to do it. So, true, but again, sources would have been nice.
"He is extremely serious about fire safety and uses his platform to educate children on how to stay safe." True, more or less. This is likely a reference to Fantastic Four #342, the Teen Immolation Suicide Cult issue. This is actually a Spideytorch one. At the end of the issue, Peter comforts Johnny by reminding him of the speech he gave at his school when they were kids, and suggests that Johnny speak about fire safety. Subsequent runs, like Claremont's run and Marvel Knights 4, had an additional focus on Johnny and fire safety.
"He always keeps an eye out for lonely heroes and invites them to the Baxter Building for family Thanksgiving dinners." The only Thanksgiving Fantastic Four related issues I know are the cover to the Christmas issue in Millar's run (FF #564) and an issue of Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius where Franklin accidentally transforms everyone into turkeys. Like, is there a mention of this somewhere in canon? Maybe. But I don't think so.
"He flew to a hospital window to give a young, terminally ill fan a private glowing light show." Again, I can't prove that this one didn't happen, but I don't remember it. It also feels like it has a little too much in common with Amazing Spider-Man #248, in which Peter visits a terminally ill young fan. So, can I say for sure this isn't a reference somewhere? No. Is there a whole scene about it? I'm pretty sure there is not.
"He frequently hosts charity toy drives and visits children's hospitals using his superhero status." This is incredibly general and would be true for just about any celebrity character, unless they were a celebrity character who was designed to be a jerk. It's not not true, but it also just kind of goes without saying. Johnny's a rich celebrity who gives back to charity.
"After rescuing a young girl from a bad accident, Johnny quietly used his own money to completely clear her family's crushing hospital bills without taking credit." Do not remember this one happening. A little searching tells me it's been on other "facts about the Human Torch" accounts before. It's the kind of thing that is very believable for Johnny. It would be in character. I can't pull a specific scene where it happens.
"During a record-breaking freezing winter night, Johnny stayed awake until dawn maintaining a controlled, smokeless fire to keep a vulnerable group of homeless citizens from freezing to death." Again, totally in character, believable behavior from Johnny. This one might have happened somewhere in the canon. But it's also just like, "superhero with fire powers does good thing superhero with fire powers should do."
"After a young fan severely burned himself trying to copy the Human Torch, a heartbroken Johnny rushed to the hospital and stayed by his bedside until the child passed away." Ugh. Okay. True, but this description simplifies things considerably. This is referring to Fantastic Four #285, where, yes, a young boy who is a fan/has a crush on Johnny sets himself on fire trying to emulate him. When Johnny does hear what happened, he goes to the hospital to see him, but Tommy, the young boy, dies almost immediately after telling Johnny he did to be like him, and the boy's parents blame Johnny for his death. So this is a little less heartwarming than this account implies. It's a very good issue, but I don't think I would put it on a list of heartwarming facts. Johnny almost quits being the Human Torch over it.
See, this kind of stuff is tricky for me because these aren't -- they're not out of character. (Barring the first one; it plays into a thing I don't personally enjoy with Spideytorch where Peter's comparative poverty is kind of leveraged to make him dependent on Johnny's generosity, which is not their dynamic at all. Peter is frequently broke and Johnny is generous, but that's just not their deal.) Some of them are rooted in things that actually happened. But calling them facts and not giving sources (because they don't have sources) just kind of poisons the well. It's the kind of thing that is totally harmless when you acknowledge that it's a headcanon, but not when you're representing yourself as a canon source. I want people to acknowledge that Johnny is an incredibly kind character, but preferably for things he actually did.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i know some people interpret the "you believe in god?" " it beats the alternative" lines as stratt wanting some sort of divine punishment for her part in the project, but i just dont think thats true. shes human, like the rest of us. we all want peace and acceptance. and i dont think stratt regrets doing what she had to do if it meant earth had a chance to live.
in the end, i think what she wants is certainty.
for the rest of her life on earth, humans are going to hate her and blame her for the hardships they will go through. until the beetles make it back, she wont even know if it was all worth it.
so when she believes in god, she believes that in death, god will look to her and say "you did the right thing. you made the hard decisons, but they were the right ones. it was worth it."
i also just feel like grace's entire character arc of learning to be brave/finding someone to be brave for does not mean much and is not very interesting if you're not prepared to acknowledge that he was. in fact. kind of a coward beforehand.
imagine being éowyn in the lord of the rings trilogy. your uncle the king is being mind controlled by an evil wizard until said evil wizard's cooler version shows up and frees him. he is accompanied by an elf, a dwarf, and the hottest guy you've ever met. the hot guy also happens to be 87 years old and maybe still not over his immortal elf girlfriend but he respects and listens to you so you're shooting your shot. your geriatric hotguy situationship turns you down the night before the biggest battle ever then goes ghost hunting in the mountains. you decide to go to battle because you'll either help save your people or die in a really cool and honorable way. you then kill middle earth satan's number one henchman with the power of loophole and being a woman (you are also helped in doing this by a 4 foot tall stoner). then you get to marry faramir. 10/10 no notes my girl went through it all
eowyn essentially went through what i did as at 13, "practically every guy around is a jerk so fell in love with the first one to come along who treats girls with respect"
(im autistic so pre-transition i could not get the time of day from most of my schoolmates especially the boys lol)
Do you think that, if the ship wasn't always recording at all times, when Stratt got those videos twenty years later, it slowly dawned on her that it was only Grace in recordings?
Do you think she felt a pitching, gut-wrenching horror when she realized that he was alone?
Do you think she thought back to that day that she forced him to go, soothing herself with the reminder that he at least wouldn't be alone, and realized that, no, she not only sent him to his death but she sent him utterly alone with two corpses?
Do you think that she remembered the fact that Grace had always been forcibly alone: ostracized from his communities, humiliated into silence, and realized she was only compounding on that?
Do you think that, upon hearing about Rocky for the first time, she felt a wash of relief rather than wonder or awe or surprise?
Do you think that, upon seeing Rocky in the ship for the first time, she felt pure joy not at the fact that she was looking at an alien but knowing that Grace wasn't alone anymore?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
according to An Immense World, apparently giant squid eyes are, like, UNREASONABLY large, even for something their size living at those depths. the next largest eyes on earth, blue whale eyes, are less than half the size, and swordfish, who live at similar depths as giant squid and have the largest eyes of any fish, have eyes that could fit inside a giant squid's pupil.
eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??
turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.
sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale is lurking around
and also I gotta say, the imagery... the huge lurking threat betrayed only by the ambiguous glowing shape of its movements through the water, is really evocative, if spooky deep-sea games aren't already using that to make things extremely ominous then they should really start
LOL. Well, everyone would be miserable. Listen, I am less allergic to exploring this terrible relationship dynamic in writing than a lot of people (on the way to something better, of course), but like let’s talk about WHY. A really compelling part of Everlark to me is that they both have some really warped core beliefs about their own worth and value to other people in relationships, and they ultimately heal this by choosing each other.
But where do these core beliefs come from? We talk a lot about their mothers, but Katniss’ fear of Asterid’s depression doesn’t really explain a lot of things about her senses of guilt and obligation and relationships being tit-for-tat and suspicion. You know what does? The older kid she desperately glommed onto for survival at 12 years old and looked up to because she was a literal baby and he seemed so much more mature and wise, who thinks all that shit himself and feels entitled to her simply because he’s put in the time. She’s always so anxious about his reactions because deep down she knows his reactions are not nice. He is the one who taught her that relationships are transactional.
Anyway I’m old enough to know that, for better or worse, sometimes the only way out of a bad core belief like that is through it, so sometimes I’m up for therapeutically writing about that as a stop on a journey to a happy ending where she unlearns the bad things he taught her about other people and her own worth. But Gale and Katniss will fall apart in any universe, because they don’t have similar values at all and he is absolutely responsible for many of her self-esteem issues.
I love this analysis that Gale is the person who made Katniss view relationships transactionally. It’s not much of a stretch, he’s a great option for the source of that world view.
I think often about this moment in the first arena when Katniss needs to ditch Peeta to hunt successfully. She works hard to phrase it in a way that won’t bruise his ego and she’s surprised when he’s not angry with her. WHO do we think taught her that a boys pride needs to be protected or else he’ll get upset? This is after she took off her shoes along with him so he wouldn’t think he’s the only problem when definitely he is. She never coddles him like this again, once she knows him better. She did this because she always had to do it with Gale.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Since I had to leave the stream early, did you end up enjoying Project Hail Mary?
I did! I actually rewatched it last night while I was doing God's most annoying manicure because as you might imagine I missed some of it ahahah. I do not recall parts of it, I'm sure I was embarrassing. SORRY ALL.
But yeah it was cute! I don't necessarily think it was God's deepest film, but it was a really fun cute movie with a friendship theme that I really enjoyed and Ryan Reynolds was cute in it. Jill watched a lot of it with me and really liked Rocky, which, of course, you're supposed to. But it works! It works!
Eva is the most Eastern German woman to Eastern German and I think she's great, I was cheering when she was like. "Well. You're going anyway." Queen energy and also, yes. Individual choice and all is nice, but sometimes you have to do the right thing for a lot of people versus one person. Sorry about it (I am not).
