#Ed Lyon

[paul-archibald]

Superstitions

Composers and performing artists can often be superstitious about dealing with the trials and tribulations of performing and composing. From ‘touch wood’ or avoiding walking under a ladder or crossing fingers or feeling concerned about getting out of bed on Friday the 13th. Many of these superstitions can feel very real to those affected by them. In this edition of In Conversation we look at how…

[ulrichgebert]

Zu Edison Denisovs absurder, melancholischer Jazzundnochvielmehr-Oper nach Boris Vians L'écume des jours gibt es hier (damals noch "in echt") schon weise Worte. Grade besonders passend zur allgemeinen Stimmung.

[bowtiesarecool11]

Mock the Week 16.02: Unlikely things to hear on a nature show (1/2)

[rainbowgod666]

The minecraft movie should have herobrine in it and it should be animated and if herobrine inst italianly dubbed by the youtuber Lyon i *WILL DROP NUKES*

[thefutureiswhat]

Fargo 5x01 // 2x08

[alfvaen]

Summer's ended, not for the first time. I guess I can see that it was not as ridiculously hot and smoky as some of the other recent summers around here, but still not great. Also ended is another month, which means it's time for me to ramble about books and stuff.

Possible spoilers for Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science In The Capital" series, Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books, C.L. Polk's Kingston Cycle, and, for the last time for a while, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen, completed September 4

Here I come at last to the end of my latest Vorkosigan Saga reread. And my first reread of this book at all. It came out after I reached the end of the series in my reread blog in 2015, which was probably the last time I did a full reread of the series up to that point. I did read a number of books in the series to my sons when they got old enough, but I was unable to persuade them to go much past A Civil Campaign with my lukewarm assessments of the later books.

My primary impression of my first read of the series is that nothing happens. Which I'm sure is not a fair assessment, but, basically, it does not reach the level of excitement of any of the previous books in the series whatsoever. I kept catching what I thought where clues about where the plot was really going to go when it picked up, and then every single time it turned out to be a false alarm and the plot continued to not pick up. It's a fairly gentle book, and I found that excruciatingly annoying.

Sure, we return to Cordelia, we return to Sergyar, we revisit some of the landmarks (literally) from Shards of Honour. See, the surprise ending of Cryoburn (which I am now spoiling for you all) is the death of Aral Vorkosigan, and all that we get to deal with it is five drabbles (100-word snippets from the point of view of Miles, Cordelia, Ivan, Gregor and Mark). For this book, it's three years later, and Cordelia, now sole Vicereine of Sergyar, is contemplating changing her life in two ways: by resigning as Vicereine…and starting some embryos of new children of hers and Aral's from his frozen seed.

We also get to really meet Admiral Oliver Jole, who's in charge of the fleet around Sergyar. Previously I only remember him as one of Aral's staff officers back in The Vor Game. And it is gradually revealed (perhaps a spoiler, but I don't really care) that that whole time, he was Aral's lover. In fact, Aral, Cordelia and Jole were a secret throuple. It makes a kind of sense, since, by Cordelia's assessment, Aral is bisexual but more attracted to men, particularly military men. He probably wants to be monogamous, to be a good Barrayaran, but Cordelia's from Beta Colony and they have far fewer sexual hangups, so she wouldn't care, and so he gets to have his same-sex relationship as well.

Cordelia tells Jole that out of her frozen eggs, some of them weren't viable, but they can do a thing where they can remove the nucleus and replace it with genetic material from another cell. Including a sperm cell. So she offers him the chance to create his own embryos with his and Aral's DNA. Which he accepts. And so now they're both gestating some children in uterine replicators…and then they end up starting their own affair. It sounded like they had had their own sexual encounters before, but only with Aral also participating; now they're trying a relationship with just the two of them, sub rosa at first.

About halfway through the book, we get Miles and his family coming to visit, which is nice to see (though it still doesn't lead to anything exciting happening), including all six of their kids. Miles is in the loop on his mother's plans for new children, but not about Jole.

There's also a few subplots--Jole's assistant who ends up dating a ghem-lord from the Cetagandan embassy, plans to build a new facility so they can relocate the capital away from its current too-close-to-a-volcano location that keep going awry, and bored teenagers getting into trouble (which provides one of the few moments of tension). One explosion near the end which provides one of the others.

When I think of similarly low-excitement stories from elsewhere in the saga, I mostly end up with novellas--"Winterfair Gifts", perhaps, which is maybe principally a romance; "The Mountains of Mourning", which was a mystery, and still had attempted horse-murder and firebombing, and infanticide, so it packs way more of a punch; and "The Flowers of Vashnoi", which still has a little drama in it. This one is attempting to be an entire novel and it feels like it doesn't have enough steam. It also kind of reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu, which I recall being equally dull for large chunks of it, and even that had some excitement at the end. This one just feels like waving a languid goodbye.

Goodbye, Vorkosigan Saga. We'll always have Memory. We'll probably never get to see stories with Miles's children (or Cordelia and Jole's children, or Ivan's or Gregor's) growing up, outside of fanfic. Lois isn't being mean to the characters any more, they can have their happily ever after.

Jenn Lyons: The Ruin of Kings, completed September 11

It was time to try a new author again, a female author. But considering the last two books were SF and urban fantasy, probably not one of those, which was a bit of a quandary because many of the one I was interested in were one of those. But I browsed the epic fantasy books on my shelf and decided to go with Jenn Lyons. I've heard good things about it, and my wife recommended it (and has read the whole series), so I guess. It seems thick, but it's actually not even 600 pages in the copy I've got, and I'm not worried about long books putting me behind on my Goodreads challenge any more anyway. (Since I changed my goal from 100 to 90, then added those two short humorous library books, I've been consistently ahead. I might be able to fit in a Neal Stephenson before the end of the year.)

The book is oddly structured. In the first part, our main character, Kihrin, is in jail and being watched over a being named Talon who seems to have absorbed the memories of a lot of other people. They pass back and forth a "recording stone" and tell Kihrin's story at different points (Kihrin started later than Talon thought he should so she takes it upon herself to fill in the backstory). This happens over alternating chapters (labelled with who's doing the telling), fairly short, Kihrin's in first person and Talon's in third, and often from different POVs. Oh, and this is also being annotated by a different character that we don't even meet until half to two-thirds of the way through the book, who puts in footnotes that I'm not sure even add much value.

I'm not entirely sure it all works. There's the disorientation of the rapid timeline shifts, the confusion of when the further-forward timeline mentions something that hasn't happened in the backstory timeline, the fact that due to body-swapping magic I started to lose track of who was who and who was whose child/parent and who was dead and who was alive… Sometimes information was dropped that seemed irrelevant, and so I didn't retain it, until it turned out that hey, that god was going to be an actual character and things that happened centuries ago are actually relevant. It feels like a book I'm going to have to reread, and not because "it was just that good" but because there's so much that I missed the first time through. (For instance, it's got icons at the beginnings of chapters, which I missed about 95% of on my way through, even after I first noticed them.) I also belatedly noticed the family tree at the back, which might have been helpful earlier (or perhaps spoilery), and it's confusingly annotated because of the body-swap thing mentioned above. And yeah, a lot of godlike characters with weird relationships to each other and Kihrin. (I do actually kind of like Talon, who is an interesting and dangerously amoral character mostly being used a tool by others.) Plus a significant item which seemed to just randomly appear to the main character during the climax? That could have been done better with a little bit of foreshadowing and/or lampshading to explain why it was more than just a horrendous coincidence.

It reminded me in bits of other series. The backstory structure reminded me a little bit of the Kingkiller Chronicles, some of the characters and worldbuilding reminded me of the Eli Monpress series, and the mostly nasty noble characters made me think of Pierce Brown's Red Rising. I will doubtless continue reading the series, but it hasn't fully won me over.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, completed September 15

I definitely wanted a palate-cleanser after the Jenn Lyons, something that wasn't fantasy. And maybe not even speculative fiction at all. And, because of my schedule, with a male author. And Huckleberry Finn has been sitting there for a while…and sometimes even gets some discussion on Tumblr, mostly to do with people claiming it's a bad book because Huck uses the n-word, and other people rebutting that that's part of the whole point, having it examine Huck's learned racism, or something. So it's still being talked about, is the thing, more often than, say, Madame Bovary.

As you may have gathered, the vast majority of my reading is science fiction or fantasy, and very little of it is what anyone might call "literature". (My wife and I had a disagreement recently about whether or not Sherlock Holmes stories count as "literature". I think that they're detective stories and thus still kind of genre, like the Dick Francis books are thrillers. But it's a fine distinction.) I read very little mainstream until I was in university, when I decided to branch out a bit. I actually liked Thomas Hardy's The Return of The Native, so I went out and read some more on my own initiative (mostly I liked them except for Jude The Obscure), and I also liked Dickens and Twain and Victor Hugo, and to some extent George Eliot and Jane Austen. But most of it just doesn't scratch that itch and give me what I want in a read.

I am already somewhat familiar with the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn milieu. Which is to say, I had a tape of the soundtrack of a Tom Sawyer musical when I was a kid (lost decades ago, I couldn't even hum any of the songs, but I remember the bit about the fence whitewashing and the confrontation with "Inj*n Joe" at the end), and I had the Classic Comics version of Huckleberry Finn so in theory I know basically how it goes. I read the actual Twain version of Tom Sawyer a few years ago, but I haven't read this one yet.

So, is it the greatest American novel ever written? Chyeah, right. I mean, it was fine, I guess. It had its moments. It was very episodic as they went down the river (and, as was lampshaded in the text, why would you head south down the river, apart from the obvious answer of "it's hard to go upstream", when you're trying to help a runaway slave get to free states)? It was entertaining in parts, when Huck was coming up with regular off-the-cuff entire fictional backstories. Constant use of the n-word, which I was expecting, though perhaps not quite that much. But it's first-person POV so I guess it's just Huck's vernacular. Still, I can see that it would be off-putting.

The most annoying parts of the book, I'd say, were the parts actually involving Tom Sawyer. Tom apparently has a mental disorder where he reads a lot of bad books and absorbs their clichés and then insists that all of the clichés have to be present every time or else you're not doing it right. We see it near the beginning of the book where he's trying to set up the local boys as bandits or something (though grudgingly he admits that it's all really pretend), but it also dominates the last quarter of the book. Due to outlandish coincidence, Huck is staying with Tom's uncle and aunt who think that he's Tom, and when Tom actually shows up he has to pretend to be his own brother Sid. But Jim has also been captured as a runaway slave and Huck wants to free him. And Tom insists that Jim has to do all of the prisoner clichés and make the actual rescue 1000% harder, to the point of having to spend days digging a tunnel, warning the household in anonymous notes, getting a grindstone for him to scratch messages on (which they have to actually let Jim out to help them do), giving him random animal companions, and I was not there for it. It was trying to be funny but mostly it just came across as stupid.

And the reason Jim got captured in the first place was because of these two con artists they'd been traveling with, who were generally referred to as "the duke" and "the king" because of their respective claims to alleged nobility. They are nasty pieces of work (well, not so bad as Huck's actually-abusive father that he fakes his own death to get away from in the early part of the book, but highly distasteful) that at least do manage to get themselves tarred and feathered by the end, but I didn't enjoy most of the time we spent with them. So if we take the other third of the book without them or Tom Sawyer, it was pretty enjoyable. The rest of the time it was mostly just tolerable.

Kim Stanley Robinson: Sixty Days And Counting, completed September 21

After the laugh-fest that was Huckleberry Finn, I didn't want something too light-hearted, and I was still feeling a little off fantasy, so I went through my male-author books looking for something else, like maybe some science fiction. It had been more than a year (my usual "long-enough" criterion for continuing in a series) since I read the last book in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science In The Capital" series, so I thought it might be a good choice.

I'm not always the biggest Kim Stanley Robinson fan. His Orange County trilogy was middling, and while I did enjoy the Green Mars trilogy, some parts were a bit of a slog. But, to my surprise, this series has been pretty readable. It focuses on a group of people in and around the National Science Foundation in what is presumably a near-future or, by this time, possibly-alternate-near-past. (The books were published during the second Bush administration.) We have the Quibler family--Charlie and Anna, and their kids Nick and Joe, and then we have Frank Vanderwal. Frank starts out in San Diego but comes to Washington to work for the NSF, Anna also works there, and Charlie was an assistant for Senator Phil Chase. In the first book, Forty Signs of Rain, there's a big rainstorm and the capital floods; in the second, Fifty Degrees Below, there's a very cold winter and the Gulf Stream starts shutting down. Because the series is primarily about climate change.

Frank seems to have the most interesting plotlines--he meets a mysterious woman mamed Caroline during the flood, whose husband seems to be into some shady dealings such as election tampering, and they have an affair, and during the second book he starts sleeping rough in his van and in a treehouse in a local park; he may also have gotten a brain injury that affects his decision-making processes. Meanwhile, Senator Phil Chase ends up running for president (spoilers: he wins) and somehow manages to commit to trying to deal with climate problems (which is how you can tell this is actually science fiction).

There's also a subplot about a group of climate refugees from a fictionalized place called Khembalung in alternate-Tibet, who were displaced onto islands in the Indian Ocean which are now disappearing as ocean levels rise. Charlie deals with parenting young Joe (who some Khembali suspect might be a reincarnation of a Dalai Lama-type figure) while his job for Phil Chase becomes more important.

I guess the nature of the plot (and the fact that it's supposed to be mostly realistic) means that, without a large timeskip to the future, we can't have a strong resolution that ties up all the climate loose ends. We deal with the Caroline plot, and there is progress made on the climate problems, but the rest mostly seems to just…end at a point. Plus there are plenty of scenes which are just there for theme or atmosphere or something (did we really need to see so much of Charlie and Frank hiking the Sierra Nevada with some of Charlie's friends?) It didn't gel for me, and it's gotten to the point where it feels like alternate history more than extrapolation. I'm sure it won't be the last Kim Stanley Robinson I read, but I liked the other books in the series better.

Terry Pratchett: A Hat Full of Sky, completed September 24

Reread time again, and now that I've finished the Vorkosigan reread, what's next? Well, some of the series I've been rereading have been longer ones, but I couldn't settle on another one of those. I kept thinking of shorter series to reread instead. And when I did the Katherine Kurtz Deryni series in four trilogies, I found it was nice to stick my interstitial rereads one at a time in the middle of the series rather than put them all at the end, and that's also what I did during the Vorkosigan reread. So this time I am going to be doing three shorter series rereads, and my four interstitial rereads before and after each one.

Among the "interstitials" is my slower Discworld series reread. I elected not to reread the whole thing all at once, because that's like 40 books, that would have taken too long, so instead I've been doing one book per other series reread. In fact, I started the reread before I got into doing all the series rereads, apparently, way back in like 2005, before Unseen Academicals was even out, which explains how I've managed to get this far into the series at this pace. One or two a year, and it kind of adds up. (In the interim I did read a lot of the series to my daughter as well, from Mort through to where we bogged down and abandoned The Fifth Elephant) My wife, who had fallen behind in the Discworld series apart from Amazing Maurice and the Tiffany Aching books, elected to read the books she'd missed just fast enough to stay ahead of me. (And now that I'm actually reached the Tiffany Aching rereads she may end up pulling even further ahead.)

When I first read The Wee Free Men I had no idea that there would be more Tiffany Aching books (and I don't know if Terry Pratchett did, either). I don't recall that it made a huge impression on me at the time, then. It was definitely aimed at younger readers, with a young protagonist and the Nac Mac Feegles for comic relief (and tiny but sort-of-adult reinforcements), and I, at the time, was not a younger reader. But I did like later books featuring Tiffany, and so this is the one where things do start to pick up a bit.

Now she's no longer trying to do everything on her own, she's being taken into the witching apprenticeship track, such as it is, which is a bit of an adjustment. And this ain't no Harry Potter. This is more like, say, the first part of A Wizard of Earthsea, before Ged goes to the wizard's college on Roke and is still studying with Ogion on Gont. Or maybe Tehanu, which I haven't read nearly as much and don't remember as clearly. But we also have a spooky creature, like Ged's shadow, for Tiffany to confront.

Apparently when I first read this I was kind of meh on it, since I only gave it three stars on Goodreads, but this time around I liked it better, and I'll bump it up to four. The Nac Mac Feegle scenes no longer strike me as gratuitous comedic pandering, and the book does a good job of showing Granny Weatherwax's power as a witch, as well as Tiffany's burgeoning powers. (And one has to wonder if Lois McMaster Bujold read this before "Penric's Demon" or if it's just a coincidence.)

C.L. Polk: Soulstar, completed September 28

"Female diversity" slot time again. (Anyone else getting tired of hearing me call it that? The more I repeat it the worse it sounds. How about "non-white non-male"?) Last time around I snuck in another Michelle Sagara, and perhaps I should be trying one of the new authors I have piling up for this slot, but I did kind of want to finish this C.L. Polk series first. She(/they) is a person of colour from the Calgary area, though I've never managed to see her in person.

This book is the third in the Kingston Cycle, set in a kind of analog of Britain, where they use magic to keep huge storms from devastating them. The only trouble is, having magic is illegal unless you're part of the existing group of magic families, who guard their prerogatives jealously, and illegal witches are locked up (to secretly power the weather magic). The first two books concern two siblings, Miles and Grace, from one of these families, one of whom was hiding his identity after undergoing experiences likely to get him locked away, and the other trying to use her political power for good ends. For the third book, though, we switch to an unrelated side character, Robin Thorpe, who was one of these hidden witches, but the political landscape has now changed and they can come out of hiding--and need to, to save their country. Robin is heavily involved with an anti-monarchist group who wants a full democracy in the country; with all the upheaval, is it the right or wrong time to move forward?

The books also have romance subplots, which are…well, let's just say none of them are heterosexual. In this one, Robin is reunited with her nonbinary spouse who has been a captive for decades, so it's a renewal of relationship rather than a new relationship, but still with a romance feel to it.

There were times in the book where I was just seething at some of the horrible things the (generally rich and arrogant) antagonists were able to get away with, but in the end they got their come-uppances. It's a kind of a short book, actually, and at the end I did feel like I wouldn't have minded more of some plot threads, but overall it did feel like a satisfactory conclusion to the trilogy. We also have Polk's The Midnight Bargain and clearly that will have to go on my shelf.

I also read a few more comics from April 1994 on Marvel Unlimited (and a handful of back issues, now that they've started putting those in again), and then I started reading the Ed Yong book An Immense World that I believe I got for my birthday a couple of months ago. It's about the senses that various animals and other living beings use to experience the world. My progress has been kind of fitful, depending on how my fiction book reading progresses in a day and whether I feel like just doing puzzles or games or something, but I can often manage a few pages near the end of the day.

[hope-ur-ok]

Surprise Song Master post ~ European Leg

5/9 Paris, FR: Paris + LOML

5/10 Paris, FR: Is It Over Now?/OOTW + My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

5/11 Paris, FR: Hey Stephen + Maroon

5/12 Paris, FR: The Alchemy / Treacherous + Begin Again / Paris

5/17 Stockholm, SE: I Think He Knows / Gorgeous + Peter

5/18 Stockholm, SE: Guilty As Sin? + Say Don't Go / Welcome to New York / Clean

5/19 Stockholm, SE: Message In A Bottle / How You Get The Girl / New Romantics + How Did It End?

5/24 Lisbon, PT: Come Back... Be Here / The Way I Loved You / The Other Side of the Door + Fresh Out the Slammer / High Infidelity

5/25 Lisbon, PT: The Tortured Poets Department / Now That We Don't Talk + You're On Your Own Kid / Long Live

5/29 Madrid, ES: Sparks Fly / I Can Fix Him (No Really Can) + I Look In People's Windows / Snow On the Beach

5/30 Madrid, ES: Our Song / Jump Then Fall + King of My Heart

6/2 Lyon, FR: The Prophecy / Long Story Short + Fifteen / You're On Your Own Kid

6/3 Lyon, FR: Glitch / Everything Has Changed + Chloe Or Sam Or Sophia Or Marcus

6/7 Edinburgh, Scotland UK: Would've Could've Should've / I Know Places + 'Tis the Damn Season / Daylight

6/8 Edinburgh, Scotland UK: The Bolter / Getaway Car + All of the Girls You Loved Before / Crazier

6/9 Edinburgh, Scotland UK: It's Nice To Have A Friend / Dorothea + Haunted / Exile

6/13 Liverpool, England UK: I Can See You / Mine + Cornelia Street / Maroon

6/14 Liverpool, England UK: This Is What You Came For / Gold Rush + The Great War / You're Losing Me

6/15 Liverpool, England UK: Carolina / No Body No Crime + The Manuscript / Red

6/18 Cardiff, Wales UK: I Forgot That You Existed / This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things + I Hate It Here / The Lakes

6/21 London, England UK: Hits Different / Death By A Thousand Cuts + The Black Dog / Come Back Be Here / Maroon

6/22 London, England UK: thanK you aIMee / Mean + Castles Crumbling w/ Hayley Williams

6/23 London, England UK: Us w/ Gracie Abrams + Out Of The Woods / Is It Over Now? / Clean

6/28 Dublin, IE: State of Grace / You're On Your Own Kid + Sweet Nothing / Hoax

6/29 Dublin, IE: The Albatross / Dancing With Our Hands Tied + This Love / Ours

6/30 Dublin, IE: Clara Bow / The Lucky One + You’re On Your Own Kid

7/4 Amsterdam, NL: Guilty as Sin? / Untouchable + The Archer / Question...?

7/5 Amsterdam, NL: imgonnagetyouback / Dress + You Are In Love / Cowboy Like Me

7/6 Amsterdam, NL: Sweeter than fiction / Holy Ground + Mary's Song / So High School / Everything Has Changed

7/9 Zürich, CH: Right Where You Left Me / All You Had To Do Was Stay + Last Kiss / Sad Beautiful Tragic

7/10 Zürich, CH: Closure / A Perfectly Good Heart + Robin / Never Grow Up

7/13 Milan, IT: The 1 / Wonderland + I Almost Do / The Moment I Knew

7/14 Milan, IT: Mr. Perfectly Fine / Red + Getaway Car / Out Of The Woods

7/17 Gelsenkirchen, DE: Superstar / Invisible String + "Slut!" / False God

7/18 Gelsenkirchen, DE: Speak Now / Hey Stephen + This Is Me Trying / Labyrinth

7/19 Gelsenkirchen, DE: Paper Rings / Stay Stay Stay + It's Time To Go / Better Man

7/23 Hamburg, DE: Teardrops On My Guitar / The Last Time + We Were Happy / Happiness

7/24 Hamburg, DE: The Last Great American Dynasty / Run + Nothing New / Dear Reader

7/27 Munich, DE: Fresh Out The Slammer / You Are In Love + Ivy / Call It What You Want

7/28 Munich, DE: I Don't Wanna Live Forever / Imgonnagetyouback + LOML / Don't You

8/1 Warsaw, PL: Mirrorball / Clara Bow + Suburban Legends / New Years Day

8/2 Warsaw, PL: I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) / I Can See You + Red / Maroon

8/3 Warsaw, PL: Today Was A Fairytale / I Think He Knows + The Black Dog / Exile

8/15 London, England UK: Everything Has Changed / End Game / Thinking Out Loud w/Ed Sheeran + King Of My Heart / The Alchemy

8/16 London, England UK: London Boy + Dear John / Sad Beautiful Tragic

8/17 London, England UK: I Did Something Bad + My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys / Coney Island

8/19 London, England UK: Long Live / Change + The Archer / You're On Your Own Kid

8/20 London, England UK: Death By A Thousand Cut / Getaway Car w/Jack Antonoff + So Long, London

[first-frost-fallen-snow]

Charlie hiccuped, lifting their head to look up at him. They were clutching a plush that had ripped almost in half, trying to keep the stuffing from falling out. They looked up from their knees, squinting at Ed through tears.

As soon as they fully recognized hum, they scrambled over. Immediately tackling Ed's shins in a tight hug, dropping their plush in the rush to get to him. They gripped onto him, sniffling and shutting their eyes as tight as they could.

( console ) : one muse finds the other sobbing uncontrollably 

Mackey was nowhere to be found, yet his child, Charlie, was heaving sobs just outside of Ed's office. It was impossible to tell how they got there, or even why they were there. Unfortunately for poor Ed, he was the only responsible adult nearby.

@first-frost-fallen-snow

The day had been quiet. Suspiciously so. No arguments or drama with the rest of the development team, and no Mackey barging into his office with whatever fire he needed to put out. No attacks on the Encom server. For once Ed had a productive morning and managed to accomplish his his project goals on time. He'd been so productive, he forgot about lunch until 2:30 in the afternoon.

Of course something had to go catastrophically wrong as soon as Ed let his guard down. He'd just returned from the deli around the block, lunch in hand, when he found the Mackey's child outside his door.

"Charlie?" Ed asked dumbfounded. "What's wrong?"

[gooperts-gunk]

i saw someone on twitter writing qsmp names in korean and im trying so hard not to be bothered i know they have good intentions but it was just so wrong in parts so instead here's how qsmp names would be written in korean BY THE SOUND not how they're written. note that i am not korean nor on the korean side of qsmptwt but as a casual kpoppie it's a rite of passage to learn hangul and try to learn korean at one point therefore though i am not a trusted source i do know the basics of the phonetics LUL

alphabetical order & categorized!

get ready for me to infodump on mouth sounds

update from the morning after this post: fixed/optimized some!!!

english speaking creators:

badboyhalo: 밷보이헤이로 (baed-bo-i-he-i-ro/lo) i infer it'd be easier to just call him 헤이로 out of every part of him name please let's halo-truth bbh. the 헤이 slurs into the "hey/hei" sound, very little accentuation on the just one part, it works as one!!

dantdm: 단티디엠 or 댄티디엠 (dan-ti-di-em, daen-ti-di-em) i've heard both pronunciations for the name dan, it's a matter of preference here! EDIT: also possibly 댼 instead which is also daen but like, not really? but also they're really similar? and i don't know how to hear the difference but there is one and nevermind don't worry about it man

fit: 피트 (pi-teu) directly would be 핕 but that's just a tricky one it's bound to have a soft ㅡ sound following

foolish: 푸리쓰 or 푸리쌰? (pu-ri/li-sseu, pu-ri/li-ssya) THIS ONE IS TRICKY if it does go 쌰 it's be a soft one, but more likely 쓰 EDIT: IS IT 풀리쎠 (peul-ri-ssyeo) ?!?!?!? IM STILL ON THIS FOOLISH IS SO TOUGH TO PUT INTO HANGUL IM NOT GONNA BE OVER IT

ironmouse: 아이욘마우스 or 아이룐마우스 (a-i-yon-ma-u-seu, a-i-ryon/lyon-ma-u-seu) this one feels tit for tat, same same, just a minor difference in accentuating the r in iron or not! EDIT: could also be 아이런 (a-i-reon) or 아이론 (a-i-ron) !!!

jaiden: 제이든 (je-i-deun) no notes very easy and straightforward one

lenay: 르네이 (reu/leu-ne-i) same with jaiden's!

nihachu / niki: 니하추 or 니아추, 니키 (ni-ha-chu, ni-a-chu, ni-ki) another same same thing with ni-HA or ni-A, just depends on accentuation or not! the 추 may possibly be said as 츄 instead, but im unsure of which

philza: 피르쟈, 피르 (pi-reu/leu-jya, pi-reu/leu) no notes, straightforward! as you will come to notice, f's usually translate to ㅍ's, and z's usually translate to ㅈ's!

quackity: 콰키티 (kua/kwa-ki-ti) no notes! i heard like months back that quackity's korean fandom endearingly calls him 키티 i think?? fun fact i remembered :)

slimecicle / charlie: 스라임씨컬, 챨이 (seu-ra/la-im-ssi-keol/keor, chyal/chyar-i) wow okay so how do you write charlie in korean because i KNOW there's no way it's 챠르리 (chya-reu-ri) my tongue is tripping over the 르리, it has to be 챨이, or 챠리, or 챨리 right??? okay the more i think the more 챨리 (chyal-li) sounds right ok everyone go home i think it's 챨리 LUL

tinakitten / tina: 티나키던, 티나 (ti-na-ki-deon, ti-na) no notes! straightforward!

tubbo: 터뽀 (teo-bbo) no notes! but also i feel like there's other ways to write it that im just not convinced are correct LUL

wilbur soot: 윌버 쑽 (wil/wir-beo ssut) no notes!

spanish speaking creators:

carre: 카레 (ka-re) no notes!

elmariana: 에르마리아나 or 엘마리아나 (e-reu/leu-ma-ri/li-a-na, el-ma-ri-a-na) the reason why i included 에르 alongside 엘 is because it ends up sounding like "ed", the L/R sound in korean is in that same range and when said fast or cut abruptly like 엘, it sounds like a D, if not for context :) so 엘 COULD work! but it'd be hard to recognize it as an L/R sound without some extra space made for the sound. this is also relevant for elquackity!

german: 헤르만 or 헬만 (he-reu/leu-man, her/hel-man) same thing as last note applies here! it'd sound like HED-man more than HER-man but, still, could work!

luzu, arin: 루쥬 or 루주, 아린 (ru/lu-jyu, ru/lu-ju, a-rin/lin) no notes! i see luzu more said with the 쥬 sound instinctively but it's one of those either or i think EDIT: if it were the spain pronunciation i think it'd be 루튜 (lu-tyu) or 루뜌 (lu-ddyu) ??? the thhh sound doesn't exist in korean but this is the closest it gets i think

maximus, maxo: 맠수머스, 맠서 (mak-su-meo-seu, mak-seo) okay at this point my brain is mush and im sure there's a better way to write this but it's a tricky one. the 맠 could also be 막 (mag) but im unsure where in the mouth the difference is between 맠 and 막, because hangul is very mouth oriented, it's allll about tongue placement, and i am SO not on that X_X EDIT: i change my mind it's 막 for maximus but 맠서 is fine i think idk how to explain is just is. also alternate pronunciationfor maximus: 막씨머스 (mag-ssi-meo-seu)

missa sinfonia: 미싸 씬퍼냐 (mi-ssa ssin-peo-nya) yeah that seems about right (my brain is melting everything is hangul) no notes! EDIT: ok but IS it possibly 미사 (mi-sa)??? im doubting myself here

polispol, pol: 폴에쓰폴, 폴 (pol-e-sseu-pol, pol) no notes!

rivers: 리버스 (ri/li-beo-seu) no notes!

roier: 로이예 or 로이옐 (ro/lo-i-ye, ro/lo-i-yer/yel) this is one of those scenarios where an abrupt L/R sound works just fine! don't know how to explain it! but it just works!

rubius: 루비어스 (ru-bi-eo-seu) no notes!

spreen: 스프린 (seu-peu-rin) no notes!

vegetta: 베헷따 (be-het-dda) okay i don't know how to explain but tonalities of how you say vegetta in spanish make me think 베 and that the tta would be equal to the sharpness of 따 stick with me here i've been doing hangul names for so long now i can't see the end of the horizon EDIT: for some reason im changing my mind it might be 페헷따 (pe-het-dda)

willyrex, willy: 위리렉스, 위리 (wi-ri-reg-seu, wi-ri) okay again idk how to explain but the reason why ㄱ and not ㅋ is because it just feels like it instinctively, like that's a deep ㄱ abrubt stop, not a high ㅋ abrupt stop. im losing my marbles

portuguese speaking creators:

bagi: 바지 (ba-ji) no notes!

cellbit: 셀비트 (sel-bi-teu) guys this is getting hard. yes it's somehow sel and not se-leu. yes it's bi-teu and somehow not bit. if it were bit it'd be missing the aftermath TCH sound and i think it sounds good with it. the sel has space to breathe and isn't abrupt. stay with me. we're almost done EDIT: fellow hangul enjoyer anon in ask box said 셀빛 (sel-bich/bit) or 셀비츠 (sel-bi-cheu) if with the accent, i like these, ur getting put on the fridge with the best magnets. 빛 is a fun one because it sounds pretty much the same to 빝 or 빗, all end in the same stop of the tongue going to the roof of the mouth, but 빛 in particular means "light" and i think that's nice :)

felps: 펠릅스 (pel-reub-seu) holy moly i didn't expect this to be a tongue twister but i think i nailed it

mike: 마이크 or 마이키 (ma-i-keu, ma-i-ki) i've heard mike being called mikey so i included it for fun because there's been so much hardship. so so much. we're in this together.

pac: 팩 or 패크 (paeg, pae-keu) paeg and not paek because it's just a more throat based sound to say pac idk man. pae-keu is a hypothetical im losing it man i don't know anything anymore EDIT: okay i change my mind it's definitely 패크 over 팩 im so loopy from hyperfocus overload man EDIT EDIT: i can also see 팍 (pak) being used though that isn't how it sounds for us, i can see someone saying it that way in korean if they were to read it before hearing it and then go from there

french speaking creators:

antoine daniel: 안투완 단옐 (an-tu-wan dan-yel) in french the a's are long so 단 over 댄 is a guaranteed. the yel could be accentuated more but you get the point by now

aypierre: when french accent, 아이피에히, when english accent, 에이피에어 (a-i-pi-e-hi, e-i-pi-e-eo) (thank u anon for contributing 피에어 that makes much more sense)

baghera jones: one way is 바게라 전스 the other is 바길라 전스 (ba-ge-ra jeon-seu, ba-gil/gir-ra jeon-seu) a baGERa or bagEARa dilemma.....

etoiles: 에투왈 (e-tu-wal/war) no notes!

kameto: 카메토 (ka-me-to) no notes!

THERE!!!! IT'S DONE!!!! this was hard but i feel like i got most right. and when im wrong let's just say this was just hangul practice and not serious right guys, just practice round, right??? we don't take me so serious, right??? just stick fight with totem??? if you know korean especially the phonetics better than me which is NOT a high bar at all, you can step over that bar EASY, tell me a better way to write these thank u! smile :)

bonus round coming at you live from the morning after!!! some others that i thought "yeah let's include you"

im gonna be working on this on and off all day i think so don't be scared if someone isn't here chances are brain is doing something else but will add it later :)

cucurucho: 쿠쿠루쵸 (ku-ku-ru/lu-chyo) no notes!

walter bob: 월터 법 (weol/weor-teo beob) could also be 봅 (bob)

chayanne: 챠얀 (chya-yan) or 차얀 (cha-yan) no notes!

tallulah: 타룰라 (ta-lul-la) no notes!

ramon: 라몬 (ra-mon) or if you're pac you say 하몬 (ha-mon) heehee :)

dapper: 답퍼 (dab-peo) or possibly 답뻐 (dab-bbeo) but im not so sure about that one

leo / leonardo / leonarda: if you speak english it's 리오 (li-o) if you speak spanish it's 레오 (le-o), then add on 날도 (nar/nal-do) or 날다 (nar/nal-da) :)

richarlyson / richas: 리찰리손, 리차스 (ri-chal/char-li-son, ri-cha-seu) no notes!

pomme: 펌 (peom) or 폼 (pom) both work here!

trump: 트람프 or 트럼프, to make it trumpet change the 프 to 펫 (pet/ped)

tilin: 티린 (ti-lin/rin) no notes!

juanaflippa: 환나프리파 (hwan/huan-na-peu-li-pa)

bobby: 법비 (beob-bi) or 봅비 (bob-bi) both work here!

empanada: 엠파나다 (em-pa-na-da) no notes!

pepito: 페피토 (pe-pi-to) no notes!

sunny(sideup): 선니사읻엎 (seon-ni-sa-id-eop) this one works nicely because the 읻 bleeds into the 엎 and sounds like it's one full iddeop :) this one is an ending in ㅍ not ㅂ moment but i don't know how to explain why

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I am absolutely shocked that we're still seeing claims that Ed is illiterate. Aside from the racism of it all (why is that we have to debate if a brown man can read?), it's just clearly disproven in the show.

Aside from the massive interest Ed shows in Stede's library (part of that is class, of course, books were a rarity even on land and Ed has probably never seen so many in one place before), and the papers on his desk in his cabin, Ed is literally shown reading on screen at the party in episode 5. He seats himself at the table before most of the other guests have filled in, so it's not a matter of chance, and we're clearly shown the placecard that he had to read to let him know where to sit.

If that's not conclusive proof that Ed can read, I don't know what is.

Okay, then why did Ed sign the Act of Grace with an X? Historically, it's true that signing with an X was often used for people who were illiterate, but you know when it was also used? Indigenous leaders in North America often signed treaties with colonizing forces with an X, symbolizing that the treaties were being made under unfair conditions and they did not approve of the terms but they had no other choice. (If you're interested in this topic, check out X-Marks by Scott Lyons; it's a great book.)

I'm open to discussion about how and when Ed learned to read. Did he teach himself? I read a fanfic once where his mom smuggled books from the estates where she worked so he could learn, I love that idea. Does he like reading, or is it another upper-class thing he struggles with convincing himself he can have? Ed's relationship with literacy is definitely a worthwhile conversation to have. But there's no question that he can read, and I am so sick of reading about how a White man has to teach him.

[nigrit]

I've got a little list…

Here’s something to get your teeth into over the weekend.

I recently found this “Liste des hommes sûrs aiant de la tête et du cuer” in Albert Mathiez’s collection of articles and speeches, Autour de Robespierre (1957, reissued in deluxe edition 1976, Eds Famot), between pp.64-65.

Now the funny thing is that apart from Max’s lousy spelling, few people seem to have seen this list, which is currently missing from the Archives (although it is credited here as from the B & AN), and is not published in the Courtois collection of the Robespierre papers that fell into his hands after 9 Thermidor. Almost certainly he wished to spare a few blushes to some of the freshly blooded Thermidorians!

So a couple of mysteries to solve here.

1/ When was the document written?

I’m guessing not before December 1793, as there’s no Marat, Danton or Desmoulins but Fouché & Carrier are on it.

However, assuming there was no need to list “sound men” if they were already in positions of power, why list Moyse Bayle and PFJ Le Bas who were appointed to the Committee of General Security (Aug & Sept? 1793)?

I’m also assuming that reports of the crimes in Lyon and Nantes, which led to the recall of Fouché and Carrier (sent “en mission” in the summer of 1793), would not have reached Paris/the CPS until Jan/Feb 1794?

I think all the names listed are Convention deputies from the Mountain but happy to be corrected

2/ What does L.R. no.23 mean? “Liste (de) Robespierre��?

Was it written by Max or added later by a clerk? Does this mean there are at least 22 other lists waiting to be discovered?! Has anyone seen the originals of the ones in Courtois? Do they also have L.R. (x)?

3/Why does he refer to his own brother as Robespierre jeune?! Perhaps because the list was intended to be passed on to someone, but then why would it be found in Robespierre’s papers?

Thoughts?

[rainbowgod666]

*inalazione di "io irl non canto manco se mi ferrano"*

È L'UOMO TIGRE-

Il nostro eroe❤️

[lucawrites11]

i need you all to know when evie is older and starts making her senior debut for barça she is put in a press conference and instantly freaks out journalists. everyone knows she's evie bronze-walsh england youth international so they all collectively decide they need to speak english to her because she's so young and all practice the night before and rehearse their questions.

then evie shows up is given the microphone to introduce herself and does so in the most perfect catalan and no one asks her questions for a solid minute because they are so shocked and scrambling about what to say but evie thinks oh catalan was the wrong choice, apologises and says the same thing in PERFECT spanish. the journalists are in awe.

the only journalist that picks their jaw off the floor to get a question in is from the BBC and they ask in english about the international fight for her from the likes of bayern munich, man city, lyon, arsenal, the nwsl etc and whether she'd ever consider a move and evie pulls out the most manchester british accent ever and is like:

yeah no i'd absolutely lovta play for citeh obviously they were like me childood club and ulimaly the club i've always suppor-ed in me har- but righ- nah i'm appy in barça. me famly is ere an all but in the fu-ure i can defin-uh-ly see meself potentially playing for lyon or citeh. like me mum, i luv winnin' an it wud be fun oexplore diferen leagues and -eams ya know an i alredy speak like spanish, ca-alan, german, french an por-ugese so i'd ne-er rule any-hing ou- bu- righ- nah i'm buzzin' ta mayke me debu for barça

(let me know if you need a translation to spell a manchurian accent phonetically)

the non-english journalists have NO idea what she's saying, what questions to ask anymore or what language to speak and eventually the barça manager intervenes and says that all questions directed at can be asked in spanish, catalan or english, whatever language the journalists are most comfortable speaking. evie is just sitting there smiling innocently, completely unaware of the chaos she's causing.

she's asked a question by a french journalist and a german journalist in those languages as well and the whole press conference goes completely viral mostly for her perfect accents (though her german is notably austrian) that would make you think the language she is speaking at the time is her first language. (some people question how she's keira's child but her language skills are so good but then others point out the english accent is VERY keira)

[kairaloi]

AITA for involving the whole city in my petty revenge plot?

For the last five years, I (26F) have been fighting to defend my country against the neighboring empire. I’ve tried to keep my gender under wraps (literally) because the camp was mostly men, and I just don’t want the trouble. But the problem is that my father was the general leading this section of the army. He’s seen me on the battlefield. He’s acknowledged what I did to win certain battles. He’s SEEN me use my bloodline ability, which is THE SAME as HIS. But even though I’ve been his aide for the last two years and saved his life five times, he had the AUDACITY to ask me to investigate where his daughter went.

When I was eleven, my mother k****ed herself. Father immediately packed me up and sent me to live with my aunt. As soon as his carriage was out of sight, she started abusing me. Dragging me by my hair, hitting me… she threw hot coals in my face and burned me pretty badly the first night I was there. I didn’t think the scars were bad enough to make me entirely unrecognizable to my family. But I guess they did. Or my father and twin brother are just incredibly stupid.

But the war is over, and Father returned to the capital to get Felix and me. When Aunt Karen said I’d run away, Father ordered me to find his daughter. He looked me dead in the eyes and told me to investigate what had happened to his daughter.

I tried to resolve it peacefully by resigning after I destroyed Aunt Karen by exposing everything she’d done in the last twenty years. But Father won’t let me go. He still calls me “Sir Mortuary” even though I attended the celebration ball in a dress, revealing that I’ve been a woman this whole time. Even though I’ve started dating the four most powerful men in the country. Even though Felix climbed out of his drunken stupor and finally recognized me. Everyone ELSE has figured it out. Why hasn't my father?!

Am I the a-hole for involving the whole city in my petty revenge against my father? Because I want to embarrass him. I want the truth to hit him like an avalanche. I want him to be so MORTIFIED by his stupidity that he retreats to some remote cave in our duchy and never shows his face again.

[rainbowgod666]

Basta con ste segate sulla solitudine VOGLIO MEMES SU YOUTUBE ITALIA

[vaelynez]

So we’ve established that Lyon’s an animal nerd. That’s basically canon. You can’t tell me he doesn’t know how to identify birds and spout off fun facts on a whim.

HOWEVER. A few weeks into an ecology course (whooo….gen eds. I am not a science girly) I’ve decided he’d live for that shit. Like trees can communicate about diseases so the other trees can protect themselves from it? Wild. He’d live for that shit. He’s a giant nerd.