Eino-e - Eino - Tumblr Blog

“what are you reading?”

“its a…online book.”

Wish I could do that

“This is what me and the other Dora’s worked on during the first lockdown.”[x]  

Fine vs. perfect

Inspired by that awesome This Is Fine Dog - Plant Edition.

You know which one I’m talking about..

i cannot believe i wasted an hour of my day off doing this again

The Original

pls look at my Cool Power Point that i spent way too long making

The Sequel

My favorite place to read

I need this for my own sake, because I'm not always sure I said No.

Consent Education.

“…even after a millennium” 💙☀️⚔️🌙💙

pictures without animation under keep reading 💙

Weiterlesen

Ships as horror movies

Because I love horror. Naturally, read further at your own risk, all warnings apply:

Winnix - Body horror

A tale about helplessly witnessing a loved one to succumb to a transformation, if from Dick’s PoV

A tale about being infested with something foreign that slowly takes you over and destroys your humanity, if from Nix’s PoV

Horror comes from within. Your own body is your enemy.

Nix has fought it for so long, keeping it at bay and keeping himself together.

But now he’s reached his breaking point. He’s too tired.

Something lives inside him; something alien, something inhuman, and it’s growing, it’s taking over and slowly growing from inside out, and no matter how much he fights it, he can’t stop it.

Dick tries to help, but he can’t.

No matter how much he cares and wants to help, he doesn’t know what he’s up against. He can’t see it, he can’t reach it, and he’s powerless to stop it.

He is also afraid. The man he knows and loves is slipping away from him, he’s losing him piece by piece as the person he was is twisted and turned into something else.

It is painful. It is dirty. It is disgusting. It is hard to watch.

It’s also private and intimate. This tragedy is for the two of them. It’s the slow destruction of not only one person, but his relationship.

The thing Nix is turning to may be a monster of some sort (pick your location: woods for a werewolf, beach for a merman), or perhaps it’s a disease that rots him until he’s just a walking corpse. In any case, his humanity will be gone.

How long will love keep you from screaming in disgust and terror?

How deep can loss cut you?

Speirton - Slasher

Someone here is a killer. But who???

A secluded location, a group of friends and aquitances, no way out…

…and then the murders start. Gruesome, horrible, bloody murders, when the people get picked off one by one.

Ron is a killer who’s looking for the one who will complete him: his final girl.

Or boy. Because Carwood is the perfect mix of pure and strong, someone whose animal instinct Ron just craves to see awakened.

It’s a story about twisted love and obsession, and how everyone else around lovers becomes expendable meat in the elaborate game of survival.

Our hero has been seduced, played, and finally betrayed when his lover turns out to be the killer who just wants to take the game of survival to the extreme with him.

There’s going to be obscene violence and murders, and moments of tender comfort and encouragement that will really punch you in the gut when you realize what Ron is really up to

But it’s just love. Running through the woods makes your heart race. Struggling with a killer makes your blood pump. Torture is just physical act of emotion taken to an extreme. Pain and pleasure are so close to each other, aren’t  they?

Every killer needs the one victim who’s heroic, pure and willing to fight. Otherwise, what’s even the point?

Who doesn’t want to feel completed, after all?

BabeRoe - Cult/Possession

 Strange things happen in the deep dark depth of the swamp

People who haven’t much left their home have their own ways of doing things, their own traditions, their own… rituals.

It’s all really normal, if you just take a glance at it. If you’re an outsider, you’ll just pass through and that’s it, or maybe you won’t venture far enough from the town in the first place.

For Gene though, it’s home. Home he can never leave.

There are local businesses, bars and a school, but they are not quite right.

There are friendly neighbors, but they are not quite right.

There’s a church, but it’s not quite right.

Poor Babe had no idea what it meant to meet Gene’s family.

But it’s time.

Sooner or later, It needs to be fed.

This is a tale about a cult that has formed because a local spiritual leader was corrupted. An unholy creature has cursed an entire community and now feeds on their worship - and souls.

Gene has been demanded a sacrifice, and he planned to delived. Only, Babe earned his affections for real, and together they are willing to fight the unholy and defy the community.

Well… “Fight”. Or maybe just run. Perhaps only survive. Or maybe just die with their souls still theirs.

You can’t set the bar too high. After all, the swamps are dark and deep, and it’s so very easy to get lost.

Webgott - Creature Feature

The most unlikely team is out on a hunt for a Creature.

Web the scientist is naive, passionate and wants to study it.

Joe who’s accompanying him as a technician/driver/muscle/common sense doesn’t believe in monsters, but if he did, he’d hunt it.

Their small expedition ventures deep into the ocean, so deep there’s no light, but they do find grand underwater structures of a sunken city, just like their mysterious sources said they would.

(That, or a graveyard of ships. Either way, a maze of a location more interesting than just empty water, and that is hauntingly beautiful to look at.)

The Creature is real! Oh no!

The Creature is also not at all what they thought. It’s not an animal. It is smart, it is powerful, it is ancient, and it is terrifying beyond comprehension, and it hungers.

It is dangerous, it is mysterious, and it is Evil. And it wants something horrible.

It wants them for food, it wants to kill for fun, and it wants them for hosts of its offspring.

Selection of monster grossness: Slime, eggs, parasites. Maybe mindcontrol for extra terror and to really push that “the evil will corrupt and violate you in every way” angle.

Web wanted to study and understand It, so he’s the one who succumbs to its lure. He has to be rescued.

It’s not only the creature that’s terrifying, though. It’s the deep waters, the silent ocean, the oxygen tank that might run out or leak, everything else that lurks in the deep dark depths, and the crushing pressure of cold, unforgiving water.

How many will reach the surface, see the sun and breath fresh air again?

(part 2 is coming soon)

Some kind of a free interpretation of “the little mermaid” where there’re no princes, no evil octopus-mermaids, no understanding fathers. But we have helpful octopus-mermaid godfather Snape (who have probably had his own drama with a human woman), king Lucius (Draco don’t approve of his cruelty towards people and his wish to make them all shark food), sailor/pirate Harry (choose what you like more) and, of course, headstrong and curious Draco-little-mermaid in love. Try to make a story out of this yourself, I’m here only to draw pics.

At first I was like 'nahh, that doesn't apply to me' because instinctive answer was 'polish the box? Nope. It should be open. Hiding God somewhere in my room would be criminal. He should be up and about, accessible to all people, helping them and bringing joy to the world'.

And then it hit me. I hide myself in my room. I need to go out. I want to bring joy in the life of others.

One time my rabbi told us, “imagine you had a box with a little bit of god in it. What would you do with the box?”

So we were like ?? “We’d protect it and keep it nice and clean and polished” and he was like “your body’s that box. Stop eating markers”

Moved to a new city and now I keep finding these beautiful places all around me

Can't believe how lucky I am.

Good to know I'm not alone. Also: hearing these embarrassing moments makes it clear that it's only a big thing for myself, not the person I spoke to.

been howling at these for half an hour

They're so cute together. Friendship is a vital part of life and I hope Joe can forgive Booker.

The Old Guard Relationships

Booker & Joe

Genius!

the old guard + cards against humanity (1/?)

OH MY GOOOOOD!!! FUCK YES! Feeling a million times more motivated by this. And they all look so happy!

Finally a motivation video without fitness models, but with ordinary girls!

♥️

So this is what happens when you (and not for the first time) watch some behind the scenes-stuff from The Old Guard. You end up doing an endless amount of screenshots. Just because. What can I say…? 

The quality content I love ♥️ yay historians!

The Old Guard: A Joe/Nicky Historical Primer

If you’re like me, you’ve just recently fallen ass-over-teakettle for The Old Guard, a newly released Netflix movie which takes some of my best-beloved fictional tropes (badass ladies! found family!), mashes them together, and queers the traditional action movie in great ways. You’ve got the implied past relationship between Andromache and Quynh, and the textually explicit relationship between Joe and Nicky, the immortal warrior husbands of my heart.

And if you’re like me, you want lots and lots of fic that explores the many centuries that they’ve all spent together! And if you’re a deeply nerdy historian like me, you want that fic to be as authentic as possible. (Unless you want to deliberately just play with past-as-aesthetic, à la A Knight’s Tale, which I’m not going to judge!) I’m not a specialist in the history of the Scythians or of Hồng Bàng-period Vietnam, so I’m not the person to write a primer on Andromache or Quynh’s likely backstories. But I am a historian of the Middle Ages (12th/13th century, mostly), so here are some resources that might prove helpful for you when writing Joe/Nicky fic.

Yusuf and Nicolò Timeline

This timeline is based on movie dialogue, what can be gleaned from Copley’s wall, from the props seen in the end credits, and from additional promo material where that doesn’t contradict the movie canon. (There are conflicting bits of para-canon out there that just can’t be made to coincide re: how many centuries the Immortals have spent together.)

1066: Joe is born Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, the son of a merchant trader family from the Maghrib (not sure if the specific region of North Africa is ever specified). First language Arabic?

1069: Nicky is born Nicolò di Genova, a former priest who takes the cross (listen, as a historian of religion I have Notes on this backstory for him but sure, whatever). From his toponymic, he’s almost certainly from Genoa in what is now Italy. This means that his first language was almost certainly a dialect of Ligurian, a sister language of modern standard Italian.

1099: Jerusalem, Nicky and Joe die for the first time

17th century?: England when Andy and Quynh are captured.

1834: Saõ Paolo

1850s: Crimea

1914-18: Western Front

1936: Spain

1940s: Pacific Theatre

1956-59: Cuba

1960s: USA

1967: Oslo

1968: Cuba

1975-79: Cambodia

1992: Nicky attends an English-speaking college

1992-1996?: Sarajevo

Early 2000s?: Democratic Republic of Congo

2019: Turkey, Morocco, South Sudan, France, England

Or, to sum up: two guys from opposing sides meet up during a war in the Middle Ages, kill one another a bunch but realise none of the deaths are sticking, fall in love, and live together happily ever after, and I think that’s beautiful.

This schematic map of Jerusalem is partly visible in the end credits. As you can probably tell, this wasn’t intended for use as map to navigate by, but instead points out some of the most important places in and around Jerusalem from a Christian perspective. National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague, KB, 76 F 5, fol. 1r.

First Encounters

Ask most people to list things they associate with the Middle Ages, and the Crusades will probably make that list. We tend to think that we know what the Crusades were about just because they show up as backdrops a lot in pop culture, generally with armoured knights going up against turbaned foes in dusty settings.

But movies tend to get it wrong a lot of the time. (Know a medieval history professor, particularly one who specialises in the Crusades? Ask them what they think of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. Oof.) So too do a lot of popular references to the Crusades, which often frames these wars as “a clash of civilisations” between white Christian Europeans and brown Muslim non-Europeans. This kind of framing is pretty inaccurate and very reductive. It’s not really the product of a direct engagement with the medieval primary sources, but is a product of later centuries of reinterpreting, reimagining, and repurposing the meaning of the Crusades. (Particularly in the 19th century, when white European colonisers wanted to find past precedents to justify their expanding empires.) It’s also something that uses hindsight to make a single thing out of a confusing, sprawling series of conflicts loosely connected by geography and purpose.

In other words, in 1099, Nicolò wouldn’t have thought of himself as “a Crusader on the First Crusade”. He’d have most likely thought of himself as a “pilgrim” or “soldier of Christ” who’d gone on a “journey” or “[sea] crossing” to Jerusalem. He may have thought of Jerusalem or the Holy Land as specific goals to capture (but not all Crusaders did). But that did not necessarily mean he specifically set out to fight against Islam.

In 1099, Yusuf would have thought of what was happening not as the first in a series of conflicts, but rather a continuation of many decades of Frankish aggression against the Dār al-Islam, the Muslim world. (In the eleventh century, western Europe was comparatively speaking a marginal, underdeveloped, rural backwater, and so there was a tendency on the part of Muslims to clump all western Europeans together as pale, hairy “Franks” (the people of Francia, modern France) who were smelly and had an uncouth tendency to shit and fart in public.

The first time they met, Yusuf probably thought of Nicolò as a Frank. Not sure what he thought about his toilet habits, though.)

Various waves of travel associated with the First Crusade, 1096-1099

Why Getting the Backstory Right Matters

The Crusades happened a long time ago, but like so many aspects of the Middle Ages, they still aren’t over. This is because they continue to have political, social, and cultural resonances for people around the world. The Crusades (or certain framings of the history of the Crusades, at least) are used to support a whole spectrum of extremist politics and are actively used to promote violence in the 21st century: whether that’s Anders Behring Breivik writing a whole manifesto calling himself a latter-day Knight Templar before murdering 77 people, or Osama bin Laden condemning contemporary Western policies as a new Crusade, or the Bush administration framing its own actions approvingly as a Crusade. (There’s a depressingly long list of examples I could add here.)

Writing backstory fic for Joe and Nicky that leans into the “clash of civilisations" interpretation of the Crusades obviously isn’t anywhere near comparable to any of the examples I just gave. But I think it makes them less interesting as people, and strips nuance out of their backstory—while also wrongly assuming conflict between different groups as inevitable (particularly when it comes to the Middle East and interactions between peoples in the Middle Ages as less complex, pragmatic, and layered than they are today.

Plus, y'know: it’s wrong. 

The Crusades weren’t a Hollywood movie or a video game. They were a complex, messy, multidimensional set of conflicts that involved real people. The First Crusade wasn’t the inevitable clash of two eternally opposed groups. It was a complex event that was the result of a whole bunch of factors including the popes not getting on with the German emperors, the Normans wanting to conquer even more places, the Byzantines engaged in ongoing conflict with the Seljuk Turks, economic motivations, an entire concept of penitential warfare, and, yes, religious fervour. But it wasn’t “just” about religion in the same way that no war today is about “just” one thing.

Or, to put it another way: you don’t want Joe to describe your understanding of his past as infantile, do you?

(Also, think very, very carefully before you use existing Crusader imagery/memes about Nicky. Even if you’re doing it to be funny or sarcastic, the vast majority of those memes have some pretty nasty contemporary connotations. Nicky would be very unimpressed with you for associating him with the alt-right.)

Overviews by Modern Scholars

Susanna Throop’s The Crusades: An Epitome is a very accessible, short recent introduction to the Crusades and how people have thought of them over the centuries. I strongly recommend it. You can pick up up a paperback copy for cheap, or download the e-book version for free from the publisher’s website.

If you want to read more in-depth about the First Crusade specifically, Jay Rubenstein’s Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse is a good, narrative-driven overview, while Paul Cobb’s The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades looks at things from a medieval Muslim point of view.

Christopher Tyerman’s God’s War: A New History of the Crusades or Thomas Asbridge’s The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land are also decent introduction, but you’ll have to invest a lot of time in reading them. (They’re bricks.)

(If you want to write something where Andy and Quynh appear, I’m sorry to say that for a variety of reasons including a dearth of sources, there’s just not a lot of scholarship out there about women and the Crusades. If you’ve got access to an academic library, there are a handful of journal articles but that’s about it, though someone is working on a biography of Mélisende of Jerusalem right now so keep an eye out for that! If you are also a nerd like me.)

Try to avoid: Steven Runciman (groundbreaking in his day, but now dated and superseded by a lot of later research), Amin Maalouf (a novelist, not a historian, and it shows), anything ever shown on the History Channel, or Bernard Lewis (Joe… Joe would not have liked Bernard Lewis.)

Voices from the Middle Ages

It’s tough to find sources from the Middle Ages that are available freely online in an accessible modern translation. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook will crop up high in any search result, but it’s ancient in internet terms (started in the mid-90s) so there’s a lot of link rot, and it is also largely made up of older, out-of-copyright 19th century translations that often show their age. (Generally speaking, if a translation is old enough to use “Mohammedan” or “Moslem” instead of “Muslim”? Hit the back button.) Some more recent, reliable translations of sources about the Crusades and the Crusader states can be found here, here, and here. The Database of Crusaders to the Holy Land will give you info about the kinds of men and women who went on Crusade 1095-1149.

If you’re willing to hunt out books in print, this bibliography is a fab list of translated texts from medieval and early modern Iberia and North Africa. In particular, Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291 and The First Crusade: “The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres" and Other Source Materials are good collections of materials from a largely western European perspective.

Usama ibn Munqidh’s writings offer an eyewitness account of the Crusades from a Muslim perspective. In his travel narrative, ibn Jubayr recounts the pilgrimage he undertook from Spain to Mecca and Medina, and his other journeys in the twelfth century. It’s not specifically about the Crusades, but it will give you a wonderful insight into the diverse, dynamic Mediterranean world that Joe and Nicky were born into.

Now I like Ron even more. And Lip sure would look hella good playing volleyball shirtless on the beach.

15 Kisses - Part 15

Surprise kiss

The last installment of this drabble series 🙂 You can find the whole thing on AO3 here.

~°~

Contrary to what Nix believes, Ron knows how to be affectionate. It’s a side of him few people get to see and appreciate because he doesn’t trust easily - his parents broke that natural openness in him through years of a cold, unhappy childhood. He learnt to keep his vulnerability hidden. Therefore, Carwood realised early on that their relationship would never be as publicly loving as some others are or, at least, it would take more time to get there. It’s fine, he doesn’t mind. They can still have fun together with their friends even if they sit on completely different sides of a table and don’t share inside jokes every other minute like George and Joe. 

At times, it does get a bit frustrating though. Today, they all went down to the beach as a group - their entire flat, George, Joe and Tab’s current girlfriend. Under the clear blue sky, the water provided soothing relief from the sweltering sunshine, and they spent an hour or so horsing around among the waves,  splashing each other’s faces and interrupting Tab’s attempts to romance his girl. His constant flirting made Carwood jealous. He wanted to touch Ron like that but didn’t dare do it in front of so many people. It was a welcome distraction when they finally got out to play volleyball in the warm sand.

Their teams are quite evenly matched. Dick got Peacock and Tab on his, likely because Ron wanted to challenge him plain as day and called dibs on Carwood, and they got George. It’s a good way to split their group - Peacock’s clumsiness and George’s wandering attention cost about the same number of points, and the chemistry between Dick and Tab is almost enough to balance Ron’s vicious attacks. Meanwhile, Nix, Joe and the girl fawning over Tab sit in the shade, sipping cocktails and smirking behind their sunglasses.

“Joe, you’re supposed to be my cheerleader!” George exclaims when he manages to score for the first time and Joe doesn’t even move a muscle. “Did you at least document this historic moment on film?”

“So am I a cheerleader or a cameraman?” Joe calls back in a flat tone, obediently raising his phone to record the next serve.

“Multitask.” George laughs and, to no one’s surprise, botches the next point.

Nevertheless, their team wins against Dick’s excellent skills. When the ball lands in the sand at the end of the game and kicks that last point in, George crows in joy and skips over to Carwood to give him a double high five. He rushes past Ron too, even dares ruffling Ron’s hair in his boundless excitement, then throws himself down beside Joe to look at the pictures. Nix tells Dick he’d buy him a drink if that helped him get over the sore loss, and Tab starts playing against Peacock one-on-one to impress his girl. Carwood’s cheeks ache from his sunburn and the wideness of his smile. He takes his tank top off and tucks it into the pocket of his swim trunks, craving the cool water again, but he doesn’t even make it to the shade because Ron loops an arm around his neck, pulls him in and presses their lips together.

Ron kisses him in front of everyone, outside, in the open, as if they’ve done this a thousand times before.

“Oh, wow.” George coughs when Ron strokes his hand down Carwood’s bare chest as he pulls away. 

They are all shocked, even those who knew, even Carwood himself, but Ron pays them no mind. He points at Dick and gives him a toothy, ferocious grin. 

“Winters, ready for a rematch?”

@fromcrossroadstoking @gutsandgloryhere

Makes me proud to call myself a feminist.

“We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.” ➼ Emmaline Pankhurst

A BRIEF HISTORY (AND POSSIBLE FUTURE) OF FEMINISM

Today I completed my first book nook and it turned out great! Love my little entrance to a secret world in the woods.

A mistake is way too boring, my mind is running so many ideas why these objects are in Dick's room, I'm loving it.

Can anyone help me, please? In episode 5 of Band of Brothers in Dick “teetotaller” Winters’ hotel room in Paris, there are an almost empty glass, what looks like a half empty bottle of whisky and on the chair an USAAF ARMY OFFICER’S CRUSH CAP. This is obviously not a mistake. The room is very dark outside the bathroom, but if you lighten up the shot, you can see them very clearly, hidden in plain sight. The director of ep. 5 “Crossroads” is Tom Hanks, so why did he put these items in Winters’ room? Why did he hide them? Is there a logical explanation I can’t find? Help? Anyone?

The Fallen of World War II

I don’t know how many of you know about this informative and thought-provoking infographic, but I recommend watching the video if you haven’t seen it before.

Link to the website to interact with the charts: http://www.fallen.io/