soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2024-06-27 12:57 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2024-06-27 12:57 pm
5 things: bedtime, taizong emperors, fic tags, feelings about birds, feelings about bugs
one
me every night: THIS is going to be the night I get it right and am asleep at a good and reasonable time
me every night, hours past bedtime, not yet in bed: it's a total mystery how this has happened yet again!
two
last week's podcast learnings: hang on, my personal nemesis Li Shimin wasn't the only emperor called Taizong, there was a Taizong emperor of the Song as well?!
*goes to wikipedia*
aha, same characters for Taizong for both Tang Taizong and Song Taizong, and it means "Great Ancestor", I'm picking up what's being put down here
three
me looking at fic tags saying "eroticised blood drinking" like okay I'm listening..... and then I notice the "alternate universe: vampires" tag and yeah nah I'm outtie
four
sometimes you see unknown birds flying over a distant treeline going about their business, and you get so emotional (positive) about how many birds there are beyond your ability to perceive, living their lives and doing their things, that tears come to your eyes!
five
whenever I spend extensive time outside in a healthy ecosystem, I'm amazed at the sheer variety of different insects I see. like, other than all the mosquitoes and deer flies, I hardly see two of the same species, and yet I'm constantly seeing bugs! it makes me want to know about all of them, which is an impossibility because there's SO many!
me every night: THIS is going to be the night I get it right and am asleep at a good and reasonable time
me every night, hours past bedtime, not yet in bed: it's a total mystery how this has happened yet again!
two
last week's podcast learnings: hang on, my personal nemesis Li Shimin wasn't the only emperor called Taizong, there was a Taizong emperor of the Song as well?!
*goes to wikipedia*
aha, same characters for Taizong for both Tang Taizong and Song Taizong, and it means "Great Ancestor", I'm picking up what's being put down here
three
me looking at fic tags saying "eroticised blood drinking" like okay I'm listening..... and then I notice the "alternate universe: vampires" tag and yeah nah I'm outtie
four
sometimes you see unknown birds flying over a distant treeline going about their business, and you get so emotional (positive) about how many birds there are beyond your ability to perceive, living their lives and doing their things, that tears come to your eyes!
five
whenever I spend extensive time outside in a healthy ecosystem, I'm amazed at the sheer variety of different insects I see. like, other than all the mosquitoes and deer flies, I hardly see two of the same species, and yet I'm constantly seeing bugs! it makes me want to know about all of them, which is an impossibility because there's SO many!
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I love imperceptible birds! I was thinking about rails the other day and how they're probably keeping me company any time I'm near a pond, but they're just shy and living their own lives!
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ok so there's two aspects to this!
first: I find vampires SO boring. idk why! they just are, to me, and always have been! goes along with werewolves and zombies as being a major yawn despite so many people loving the tropes. whereas! if characters are eroticizing blood related stuff when they AREN'T supernatural beings who must drink blood to live, then they're being freaks for their own sake, and that's fun :)
second: when my main fandoms are all set in handwavey ancient china, it's.....weird. to me. to read fanfic making the characters be very specifically a european supernatural being. it feels a bit colonialism flavoured, you know?
EDIT: also! the birds! yes you're SO right about the rails and things and it's delightful to remember, every time!
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I feel like the second one will be more satisfying for me as a way to start, do you have suggestions on where I could find info to go about learning that part of things?
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However, a quick internet search gave me this and this, maybe one of them could be helpful? I was going to say that surely there is an entomological society in the US that would have resources, and indeed there is, but it seems more geared towards professional entomologists, rather than amateur ones, as is the case in Sweden.
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it definitely does seem like amateur entomology enthusiasts in north america are not nearly as well organized as amateur ornithology enthusiasts. when I got into birds it was immediately obvious where I needed to go for information and how to approach the hobby, but it's not the same with bugs at all :(
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Insects!
https://bugguide.net/ is a really good resource for all things crawly in Canada and the US. The works cited section can be really useful and they also have good comparisons of commonly mistaken species and groups a lot of the time.
In Books:
- Steve Marshall's Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity - all of the colour photos, keys at the back, overviews of insect orders - not the cheapest book but you are absolutely getting your money's worth - I know a guy who took the intro to insects course at U of G when Marshall was still teaching it and he said it was the one textbook he still uses (my friend is not an entomologist). It's a more recent work (in comparison to some other insect keys/books that are out there) and since Marshall is Guelph-based it is very much the bugs in your area.
- Borror and Delong's Introduction to the Study of Insects is a smaller, older, more technical book. (Marshall's is basically the best coffee table book/textbook that I own, Borror's is a thing that I got out of the library once and it is wee in comparison.)
- Chu's How to Know the Immature Insects is in the public domain and available for viewing here - I have just found this and am kind of in love with it. There are technical illustrations and they are technical illustrations but there are also non-technical illustrations just for book aesthetic reasons and they are adorable.
The Toronto Entomologist's Association is a thing and I absolutely second their endorsement of Brent Turcotte's website for recommendations of books for Ontario Field Naturalists - I found Chu from Turcotte just now, and find that Turcotte's recommendations are spot-on in general, with enough info to make informed purchasing decisions.Once you start getting into things (i.e. wanting to indentify insects to lower taxonomic levels) the Canadian Journal of Anthropod Identification has some good keys on its website.
National Moth Week is coming up and there is an event in High Park in Toronto July 23rd. Moth Nights can be a good way to meet people and you will also get other insects coming to the sheet, like beetles and caddisflies.
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