stealing weekend entertainment again?

[gavin62truck]

It's 3pm EST and there's no entertainment? Alrighty then!

I'm pretty sure that this question has been posed in the past, but of course since then so many more new pups have been added and more new players have joined, so:

Because of your pup(s), what subject(s) do you now know more about than you ever did before? What have you willingly researched to the minutest detail? What random factoid can you blurt out that might cause someone to look at you weird and say, "...Why do you even know that?"

(Totally using Tommy's I AM SO SMRT icon for this.)

Comments

[ladysingsthe]

Sex magic.

That's the one that rrrrreally comes to mind. Aleister Crowley and Germanic traditions and limited amounts of tantra, and let me tell you it is awkward when a college coed spots Secrets of the German Sex Magicians on the part of your bookshelf that is mostly hidden behind a chair.


I also want to share with the class that in honor of my cousin's middle school graduation ceremony and subsequent hangouts with the stressful half of my family, I have spiked my cafe au lait with hazelnut kahlua.

Bring it onnnnnn.

[swankyfunk]

That. Is. Awesome.

Both the sex magic and the spiked coffee.

German Sex Magicians sounds like an incredible Weimar-era cabaret act.

[smallgayjew]

Oxford and the English education system circa 1983.

Greek Mythology.

Nikola Tesla.

[swankyfunk]

What's the most randomly awesome thing you learned about Tesla?

[innerbrat]

Niccolo Machiavelli.

Judo and other martial arts.

Um.


I don't actually do much research >_>. I'm skilled at flying by the seat of my pants!

[sardonicynic]

Well, um.

→ CIA interrogation techniques from the Cold War to post-9/11 (thank you, Alfred McCoy!);
→ international money markets;
→ designated responsibilities of the U.S. Marshals Service; and
→ the implementation and expansion of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

[afullmargin]

CIA techniques are *fascinating*... and also very hard to get information on. Go figure.

[themightyspazz]

For Voodoo:

Lots and lots and lots and lots of fireteam tactics. Also a lot of SOPs for night missions, radio procedures, and brevity codes, among...a lot of other stuff.

For John:

Er...I know how to operate a lot of the weapons he uses?

And I'm preeeetty familiar with how someone like John would live and survive off the wild?

But I am still woefully ignorant in regards to horses and the riding of them.

[afullmargin]

Do you have a good resource for mission tactics/formation type stuff? I've been trying to lessen my handwaving when it comes to actual tactics for small strike teams, but haven't found much I can actually use. Most of the tactical stuff I've found is for at least 10 - not smaller special ops groups.

[gavin62truck]

I thought I was content to know all there is about firefighting from watching "Rescue Me." But no. When the time came to actually, y'know, write about this stuff and have Tommy know what the fuck he's talking about... Ahh, crap, time for some learnings.

Things like: slang terms for firefighting equipment; firehouse traditions and pranks; specific jobs each firefighter performs during a search and rescue; FDNY radio call signs and what they mean. And lots more serious business type stuff. And hell, now I even know what kind of siren is used on FDNY rigs. Wtf.

Also, I skim firefighting blogs and message boards for inspiration for OOMs and anecdotes. Seriously.

[afullmargin]

That is beyond awesome in every single way, shape, and form.

In writing my fic (particularly with Henry & Carlton) I had to learn a lot of the same stuff about the police force - which is all kinds of fun.

(Oh God, and all the hours of research I've put in for Hot Fuzz fic that doesn't really translate over. *weep*)

[hey35andholding]

I know waaaay too much about Medieval cookery, medicine and weaponry thanks to playing Sheila.

I studied phantom limb pain for Ash.

For Clementine, I've researched a bit about showgirls: how they live and love, as she'd say. (And next to nothing about police work because she is canonically clueless and knowing more than she does wouldn't mesh!). But I have researched a bit for Juliet, so I don't sound like a hopeless fool while playing her.

I need to study more for Dix, honestly, especially about how saloon singers were viewed in the west.

Pinkie being a baker and me having studied cullinary arts thankfully dovetail together beautifully.

...My search engine history is, as always, interesting.

(Also I'm thinking of posting a test drive meme because ATP is tonight <3 <3 <3.)

[afullmargin]

*test drive woo*

I can help out a little bit with old west when it comes to saloon culture and prostitution! I did a lot of research on the subject back when I thought I could actually write a novel and made it about halfway through.

And firearms/police stuff, of course.

[ceitfianna]

A lot of what I write about for pups I already had an interest in which helps like the medieval world, Greek Mythology, the world of the West.

Thanks to Sameth, I read books about engineering for fun, Henry Petroski's stuff is brilliant. I got to ask my dad questions about psychiatry and psychology in the 1960s for Charles who also has me reading stuff about genetics.

I keep reading articles about con men for Moist, they're interesting reads but its his fault.

Though I've learned a lot more about the Civil War thanks to William and I will actually read The Republic of Suffering at some point. I know I'll learn a lot but his time can be so depressing. Oh and dime novels, I've learned a lot about them. William and Charles and Jane have me constantly going, wait, is this book out yet? Which authors would they know?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

May I suggest a classic work on the subject of messing with people's heads?

Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Foster Mackay. Published in 1841 and yet when I read about some of the speculations and bubbles he described it was like reading about the insane tech startup bubbles of the 1990s. (The link is to the book on Project Gutenberg. Yay for the public domain.)

[afullmargin]

Oh man, so much research. When I write fic I'm one of those people that can handwave something major (like say - surgery specifics) but will *obsess* over details like how much a pair of a certain designer shoe costs. So I've researched a lot of weird shit that I never needed to know about. BUT, for these characters specifically?

Henry - State of California penal code. Woodworking. Gardening (seriously, I had no idea you can plant irises in September in southern California). California geography.

Gus - Gus has an encyclopedic knowledge of medications and basic medical know-how that I've had to do research for (such as, names of a generic medication, the ingredients and what it *smells* like). Safecracking (which he's also very good at), obscure 80s & 90s pop culture trivia (I know some of this, but nowhere near what he knows) and the films of John Hughes (another one I knew, but not to *his* level.)

Michael - omfg. Okay? Michael is like if Macgyver had a love child with the CIA. I've done research on things that could probably get homeland security to look at me real funny when they view my google history (not that some other more "interesting" hits wouldn't raise eyebrows) like bomb building, weapons specs, maps of the greater Miami area. I've researched stunt driving, firearms and ammunition (I had a base knowledge, but it's been expanded in a big way), field medicine, Army regulations and training, the contents of MREs in the late 80s/early 90, drug culture, foreign languages, Russian politics... his list is pretty extensive.

[swankyfunk]

like bomb building, weapons specs, maps of the greater Miami area

Your last words will be "But I swear, that was for RP purposes!" as the men in black suits come to take you away.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

For Ianto, it's mainly been coffee, Cardiff and Welsh. (At one point I was even confident enough to compose short sentences, and I am so not a language person.)

For Merlin, despite the mess of anachronisms that is the world of Merlin, I've looked up things like food and culture. I was also very happy to have found a transcript site that includes the Old English they use for spells.

For Stuart, it's mostly been music (and even then, I haven't worried too much about historical accuracy.) I was alive in his time period but I can't always remember specific years for songs and movies and whatnot.

I foresee a lot of research into WWII and the 1940s for Steve. I just today looked up what you can use as a substitute for rennet!

Someday I've really got to play a character from a historical period I've actually studied.

[swankyfunk]

I foresee a lot of research into WWII and the 1940s for Steve.

The history of New York City and Brooklyn (my home) from the '20s through the '40s is a tiny wee bit of a hobby of mine. There's nothing you can't learn from Wikipedia, but if you need any extra sources for whatever, hit me up, I could probably help.

[missmarybennet]

Thanks to this one, I'm up to my eyeballs in research on topics related to late Georgian/Regency history including (but, God help me, not limited to) social dynamics, food, manners and customs, coaches, courtship and weddings, holidays, the English class system, the war with France, relations with America, post-Colonial Massachusetts, and the age of sail.

My latest random factoid is that it took anywhere from six to eight weeks to travel by ship between London and Boston, and it was not a fun trip. Especially since at this time (1798) America and France had well and truly fallen out and the French were taking American merchant ships left and right. Which was one of the contributing factors to the formation of the U.S. Navy.

/history geek

[ceitfianna]

It's a fascinating era. I've done research for playing Jane and love learning more.

I love how you put into play what you learn with Mary, she's so herself and real.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Oh, lord. Let's start with parapsychology and cryptozoology and Forteana and occult lore, for Ray. I may have pulled stuff out of my tuchus when I was writing his dialogue, but I went to a great deal of effort to read what source material I could to match up with what a Ghostbuster was supposed to know.

For Harry Wells I had to buckle down and learn a fair chunk about the way the British Army is organized, because the American military handles things differently. I also had to pick up a hell of a lot of English military slang, because cussing alone isn't going to carry the day. Also I needed to learn about football as she is played in countries where they take the game seriously, because Harry was canonically a fan. And then there was the Yorkshire stuff because of where he eventually retreated to in his world.

For Medic, I didn't do all that much research except to find out what regular medical science was like in the early to mid 1960s as a comparison to 'point the funny gun at the other guy and he'll heal'.

For Gordon... not as much as you'd think. Gordon's physics don't come into play as much as he'd like, and I was already fairly familiar with a lot of the weirder concepts thanks to a lifelong adoration for Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman. Mostly I had to learn more about geography for him. We moved City 17 from Europe (the game designers said it was based on Sofia, Bulgaria) to the States in order to make overall OOMery easier to handle (and because the areas that aren't old world architecture resemble the nastier parts of Newark, NJ), but I still had to do geography and geology research to come up with places for things like Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt and White Forest (it's at the site of the real world White Forest Zen Buddhist Monastery in the Catskill Mountains of New York State), and even Black Mesa (at the site of the Black Mesa Golf Course outside Espanola, New Mexico). And a few other places as well.

Adrian has left me having to learn a great deal about the Marine Corps and about helicopters. I placed his point of origin in West Virginia because I had visited the area and worked there on a few volunteer trips, and it was relatively easy to research. I also wound up learning a great deal about historic figures who started off as farmboys and grew up into military badasses and war heroes, since I wanted a good pattern to base Shephard on and it's hard to beat 'no, really, actual guys did this'.

The Fallout pups have mostly resulted in me learning "Oh, Jesus, seriously? We did that historically? We actually did that other horrifying thing historically? GOD DAMMIT HISTORY STOP BEING SCARIER THAN THE GAME THAT RUNS ON B MOVIE TROPES" stuff. I still haven't finished reading Project Orion because every time I get through four or five pages I have the urge to call one of my uncles who grew up in the Fifties and thank him for his generation not destroying the world after all.

[heirtothechair]

I still haven't finished reading Project Orion because every time I get through four or five pages I have the urge to call one of my uncles who grew up in the Fifties and thank him for his generation not destroying the world after all.

The math is perfectly sound.

If you want to put a skyscraper into orbit and never go back to your home planet.*


*Actual level of irradiation may very depending on exact details of design. Not recommended for frequent launches.

[cameoflage]

Nothing in particular for Aradia, but some of my OCs have smacked me in the head and demanded I do research. My knowledge of the Victorian era (patchy and often insubstantial though it is; I'm not good at research, but I take whatever I can get) is largely the result of playing Clone Gareth, since what I knew beforehand generally dated to 10-20 years after the time period he came from. And I went looking for material about OCD and PTSD for Darcy and Ophelia, but I was interested in that for unrelated reasons too.

...not sure why all the characters who I've had to do research for are related.

[bjornwilde]

Did you know that San Francisco in the late 19th century had a sever imbalance in the ratio of men to women? Like seriously, it was something like 1 to 50 or maybe even a hundred. Also bottled beer didn't exist then.

Things I learned from playing Emperor Norton the First.

[waddledoodles]

The Triforce.

I used to think it was a boring symbol that was overused in merchandise for the series, and now I know it's an overused symbol in merchandise that, in universe, has the potential to make sky_child one of the most powerful characters in the bar! I mean the Zelda Wiki entry says about the Triforce of Power alone: "This power is absolute, making the recipient of Din's blessing a god-like entity, vastly more powerful than any mortal, affording its wielder invulnerability, vast strength and an unlimited source of mystical power." Yeah, cute sleepy teenager MY ASS.

Also, narcolepsy.