#I know it’s not explicitly rg but it was down the line of thought of rg so I’m tagging them anyway

[tecnestheim962]

Guys. It’s 5 AM and I have two exams, a lab, an interview, and a concert today, I’ve gotten no sleep, and yet in the time I was meant to be sleeping, all I could think about was Rosegarden because of course they take up any and all down time I get but

Guys.

What if. At the end of it all. Salem and Ozma have departed the world. The gods have left for good. Everyone is standing in one place, uncertain. And someone asks, “so… what do we do now?” And Ruby and Oscar look at each other and say at the same time, “whatever we’d like”

BECAUSE THEIR CHARACTERS ARE FOILS OF OZMA AND SALEM AND WHEN THEY FINALLY REACHED THEIR GOALS TWICE THATS WHAT THEY SAID BUT FIRST IT WAS OZMA AND THEN IT WAS SALEM BUT THIS TIME ITLL BE OSCAR AND RUBY AND ITLL COME FULL CIRCLE AND-

[wench-and-jezebel]

The Musketeers Reaction: The Challenge

Jezebel (@typicalopposite) reacts [with occasional asides by Wench (@scripted-downfall)]

Now with BONUS: meta analysis :) (But Wench might post that separately later too... she hasn't decided)

[Oh, no, a prisoner transfer!  That always goes badly; just ask CTU (from 24)]

Well shit 

Well…. SHIT THIS MAN A BEAST [Yup!]

“Stay out of this, damn you”  Let us get our asses kicked by one man.. on our own  [Red Guards be prideful dumbasses]

Wot?  WOT?!  WHAT!?!  [Tenth Doctor-coded, you are]  ☠️☠️☠️ [But also, agreed.  They explicitly warned the Red Guard.  And then tried to help.  Not their fault the RG didn't listen 💀]  Right!?!

No one asked you, man child

WHAT, ARE THEY ALL CHILDREN??? [Yes]

OOOP- awwwwww  [Dangerous for him and Constance to do that in broad daylight tho]  

Well their relationship has escalated

[OH, LOOK, HER HUSBAND; WHAT.  DID I SAY.]  ☠️☠️☠️☠️ [Awkward, that is.]

Blech

Sweet lord  [Indeed]

Do they not get paid?  [Kinda but also... money got spent… It's not much, I don't think]

[They're Tinder-ing in church ☠️]  Im dying  [Porthos swiped right on the widow alkdsfj]  Trying to say something and these two are distracting me  [I adore them] Ok, so anyway… I’m guessing D’art does it, wins, and then becomes a Musketeer

Poor d’Art

Y’all two really trying to swindle money from grieving women… MEN  [Only one was grieving.  The other was having an affair, since those are highly common]  ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

Imma.  Oooop… Second-hand embarrassment  [She's covering for him :)]  ☠️☠️☠️

☠️☠️☠️ Oooop she ain’t grieving too hard  [I'm sorry, but they're kinda cute]  They are

“You’re cute”

☠️☠️☠️ Aramis is gonna get the money and Porthos is gonna get a wife  [adslkfjlksadjf]

Candle sniffer?  Is that a person?  ☠️☠️☠️  [Candle snuffer, dear]  I know 😂

["Too often, you let your emotions get the better of you"  "Can we just get on with it"  Sir, that.  Proves the point]  ☠️☠️☠️

Oooop, I see what you’re doing, Athos

Blech

[I love Peter Capaldi]

Oooop.  That might not go well

[Love lines like "I can see you are a man of quick intelligence"... they’re always passive-aggressive digs]

How did he not see him?  Or hear that?  They are quite incompetent

[OH SHIT I REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THIS]

Oooooop

“You killed my father”  [he’s making a habit of this]  “I mean, burned down my farm.  Prepare to die”

Well damn  [This has gone badly for young d'Artagnan]  d’Art, how do you really think this is gonna play out

[Of course Athos had to save him ☠️]  ☠️☠️

Awwww  [They turned it in a different direction, but I usually detest "I'm not like *you*" statements]

“Get some rest!”  How about dry off?

Bruh where did the rain go?

Bitch (Milady), why ain’t you ded?

[This is what I meant by “I remember what happens after this” btw]  Let me breathe on your mouth for a moment  [Shut up]

“Leave me alone, Athos”  Ma’am you came to him???  Womennnn

“I thought you had brains, but clearly not.”  Athos, what has he done for you to think that?  [alskdfjlsakdjf This is a valid question]

– – – 

Jezebel: Welp! First off the level of ack I feel about friends having to fight each other in a competition is like…. Skyrocketing.  Idk if it’s gonna be as awkward (they each think they will win, disappointment if they don’t) but I feel awkward about it lol!

Wench: You underestimate their loyalty, dear… I'm reasonably — like 90% — confident that they're only, like, half-competing.  Because this is the current main way they know to get d'Art his commission and he's running out of time.  And these three are, it's heavily implied, the best of the regiment so it’s kinda foolish to send a new recruit unless it’s more about getting him the commission.

Jezebel: Ohhhh they letting him win?

Wench: I suspect they've already gone to Treville and been like.  “Don't consider us for the tournament.”  I don't know for sure, but that's always been my interpretation.  Also, it's less "letting him win" and more "nudging him in the right direction and giving him sway with Treville."  Buddy's from Gascony and got that hot-headed pride thing going; he wouldn't accept their charity any more than he'd accept their money

Jezebel: Ohhhhhh! I see!!  I love them! 🙂

Wench: At least Athos, since he's heavily training d'Art to compete.  I'm less sure about Flort because they seem to kinda need the money 💀 

Jezebel: ☠️☠️☠️☠️  Gonna be another: (Athos) “We weren't gonna try to win” -> (Porthos) “Weren't we?” -> (Aramis) “Next time let us know” things

Wench: aslkdjflkadsjf Exactly!!!

Jezebel: It feels like as of rn they have put Milady in the ep…. Just so she’s in the ep ☠️ Not that I’m complaining she’s aight but she just seems random

Wench: You ain't seen shit yet.  Also, in case you missed this, they're Heavily paralleling Athos and d'Artagnan in this ep.  Her being there is definitely intentional.  

Jezebel: Yes! I have 😂 Athos even said it ☠️

Wench: Ma'am.  He said one overt "you're more like me than you know"; that is not paralleling ☠️  And, if it were, it’s not the extent of the paralleling either 

Jezebel: Aight lay me out the parallels ����😂

Wench: I'll tell you in endpoint; it's easier to avoid mincing my words

Jezebel: Speaking of tho!  I LOVE ATHOS TRAINING DART SM OMG!!!  And Flort are just fucking chaos. ☠️☠️ I love them! Porthos trying to talk to the widow tho was fucking adorable

Wench: I adore them all

Jezebel: Ready?

Wench: Yup!

– – – 

Ooooop

Ma’am!

She is so pretty tho 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

Oooooop!  Oooooooooooooop!!

No, she didn’t

Oh nooooo  ["Who else is just going to walk up and hand me 30 livres"  Well, ya see-]  THIS IS WHY YOU ARE DUMB  [Constance was]  

PORTHOS!

OOOOP she’s giving him that look

[never trust "it doesn't matter"s]

HE BRUSHED HER HAIR BACK WITH HIS PINKY!?  THAT WAS ADORABLE

Ooooop!

[I kinda adore them; sorry to your Portamis plotting ☠️ ]  (Porthos) “What was I supposed to be getting again?”  (Aramis) “….. NOT THAT”

[Shocker, the marksman won the shooting competition alksdfj]  Aramis and that damn hat ☠️☠️☠️  [Oh, and the close-combat dude won the close-combat skirmish; who knew? :)]  OH THIS GIF SET!

Athos watching all proud  [*simultaneously* Also, in point of fact, I'm not actually sure Athos is competing at all]

Angry face

HE DIDNT FLINCH

“No control….”  Buddy. You knew this. Ahead of time. Why are you acting like it's new???

I see what you’re doing… Le gasp!  CARDINAL YOU ARE INSANE!  

PORTHOS!

Dawwwww

Ma’am!  SO ARE YOU 

Okay, not the last one.  But two out of three isn’t bad!

[Whoops]

Ma’am… It- Y’all- Sir.  THEY ARE SO PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER�� [Because they're so dumb? :)]  Yes

OOOP

He gone beat the hell out of herrrrr… Those things were allowed back then

Oooop

OOOOP

[Protective!Athos unlocked asldkfj]  Ooooop!

Treville knows he’s letting the guy fight huh?  [Not saying :)]

POOR DART!  [Poor Constance]  I KNOW

💔💔💔💔  The break in his voice when he said I want you

POOOR CONSTANCE

“Her name’s Alice”  Oooop-  [Callback to your earlier “Aramis is gonna get the money and Porthos is gonna get a wife” !!!]  Jealous Aramis

The Musketeers are like WOT

[Bruh.  Swordsman???  It's a.  Sword contest.  I know Athos didn't seem to be competing in the initial bracket.  But also. If the point is to win. ???]

They look like guard dogs ready to attack

[Once again, a very Doctor Who score… (Again, same dude, but it especially shows here)]  lol!

There goes the hat

[Also, gotta love Athos getting ready to throw hands the second Treville's arm got injured alksdjf]  Yes!!!  [Man was taking off his cloak in 0 time]

Welp ok.  King making up for all the childish behavior

[d'Artagnan needed to have his heart broken to not let it sway his actions ☠️]  💔💔💔💔

Ooooop!  He’s doing the thing! The thing Athos did!  [:))))]

Whoooop whooooop!  [I must say.  It's.  It's kinda biased.  To have the King.  Judging an assessment.  Involving the King's Musketeers]  ☠️☠️☠️☠️

Oooooo!  Whoooop whoooop!

[Adore the fact that Athos gets to give it to him]

Ooooop!  She’s been had!  [Why is she surprised that the scheming, manipulating, control-freak Cardinal was being a scheming, manipulating, control-freak??]  ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️  [Also, I'm sorry, but the Athos/Milady storyline is something that is so delectably twisted I can't even... I'll explain some in endpoint]  ☠️☠️☠️☠️

“d’Art is the key”  ‘Cause he’s dumb

Sighhhh, womennnn

💔💔💔💔💔

Ack!  DON’T DO IT

HE DONE IT

HE DIDN’T DO IT

OOOOP!  She’s confused!

– – – 

Jezebel: Basic summary: Poor d’Art!  But also YAY D’ART!  But then poor Constance.  No really 💔💔💔💔 POOR CONSTANCE.  But Miladys face when he didn’t get in the carriage?  stunned 😀

Wench: Indeed

Jezebel: Also I didn’t absolutely hate the king this episode.  He seemed competent ☠️☠️ I retract my earlier statements about him 😂😂

Wench: Ma'am. He was still being the same childish king he's always been; he just happened to be childish in favor of the protagonists.

Jezebel: ☠️☠️☠️ ok fair

Wench: He just threw a competition as a way of proving that his men were better than the Cardinal's, and then he rigged that competition, and then he took the prize money on top of that laksdjf

Jezebel: This… is also true 😂😂  Anyway 😂 ummmmm… oh yeah! Porthossss 💔💔 he was so soft and non-tough-guy with Alice it was adorable.  And the “Who’ll look after you?” to Aramis???? 💕💕  (When she leaves)

Wench: Yeah  :) 

Jezebel: And Papa Treville! And how they all was like yeah fuck the competition soon as he got hurt! I love it!  And I did mention up there the look on Milady’s face when the lil dummy she was so sure she could seduce didn’t take the bait ☠️☠️ Now that may change I guess! But that was satisfying that he wasn’t like “well, bye, Constance; hello, Milady!”

Wench: This is true, and it's nice that he's not fickle... Fits in with his character, though, for the most part, so I'm not horribly shocked

Jezebel: Athos tho! I loved him this whole episode!  And his little "get down there before he changes his mind" (with a smirk)

Wench: Yesssss

Jezebel: Uhhhhh… the only thing I can say about Athos and Milady’s scene together was already said in the react, but how she was all “lemme stalk you” and then all “HMPH stop stalking me”... Like!?!?

Wench: You still don’t see the parallels?

Jezebel: Nope ☠️☠️ Just tell me

Wench: *sigh* Okay

Jezebel: 🙂

Wench: For reference, btw, we only have two more s1 episodes left.  Now, first, some contextual parallels: Have you noticed the running theme of scarring/binding/tying in Athos' and Milady's backstories?

Jezebel: Um. I- no? Maybe? You say that and all I think is her being hanged but I can’t remember where else it is happening or do you mean figuratively

Wench: Yes and no.  That’s the obvious example.  She was hanged.  She still "bears the token of [his] love" in the scar that remains.  She covers it up with a fine necklace --- a choker --- to obscure her past.  But less obviously... He still wears her locket.  She says that he gave her a necklace, and he still wears the chain that represents her around his neck.  Half the time he's drinking, his head is literally bowed by it.  Also, in his intro, the locket is the first real thing we see of his character.  He's hungover and drinking first, yes, but the second he gets his bearing/sits up, he pulls out the locket.  And that's before he even gets dressed/does his wake-up ritual.  Within that locket is a pressed forget-me-not (or an icon of the flower, but the point remains... a forget-me-not).  Additionally, the first time we see her, she's manipulating things so that he gets imprisoned --- weaponizing justice the same way she feels was done against her --- and quite literally manacled in the process.  Et cetera, et cetera.

Jezebel: Ok, so see! This is what I mean by I may see a parallel but would never see it that deep! I would see he wears her locket with a forget me not inside and be like ohhhhh he is like tormenting himself. And this I would not think about it again.  I would have never caught the choker being symbolic just that she needed something that fit to her neck… or she couldn’t hide the scar

Wench: And that's shown in their interactions too… In "Commodities," for example, when they both are back at Pinon: after she’s knocked him to the ground, she literally pulls him up to meet the dagger by the locket chain.

Still Wench: And yet it’s also why she can’t go through with killing him; she's so distracted by it that she takes too long and d'Artagnan shows up.

Jezebel: ☹️☹️☹️☹️ see now I caught that that threw her off ☠️☠️ I’m not fully unaware! 😂

Wench: Not surprised by this, but the scene still means more in context of the larger symbolism.  Then you've got the episode we just watched, where you have the alley scene, in which she literally tugs him closer via the chain.

Once again back to Wench: But even beyond the literal symbolism that's emphasized overtly on screen, it's their literal storyline… They're each orbiting the other, unable to let go completely but unable to forgive and forget and move on either.  Tied together by their mutual scarring --- whether literal or metaphorical --- and the literal ties that bind.

Jezebel: ☹️☹️☹️☹️ that is so sad and makes so much sense once pointed out omg

Wench: So.  Why have I spent so long yapping about this?  Because all of this context boils down to Milady deciding to sponsor d'Art.  And what does she do for him?  She gives him money, BUT.  Attached to that money.  Is nothing less than:

Still Wench: A necklace.  More than that, a forget-me-not pendant on a chain.

Jezebel: I meant to mention that more! I think I was like oooop or something but at first I thought it was THE locket! Like i thought she’d got it off Athos

Wench: It's not, but what it is is a cheaper-quality pendant.  It's not a locket; it's just an oval with a carving.  It's stark and cold, harsh and engraved.  Molded.  Like, one might say, a woman who's been through shit and decided to embrace the role of criminal she feels shoved into.  Athos', meanwhile, is a locket.  It's got the actual flower, soft and natural and encapsulated in time.  A happy memory encased in pendant form.  But it's also not intact.  It's old and withered and slightly tarnished: the necklace equivalent of that warm and happy glow they always use for the Athos/Milady flashbacks.

Jezebel: I am sitting here reading this like…. Bruh, these are blink and you’ll miss them moments and here she is just pulling full detailed parallels out of her ass…. But they make sense and make the characters so much deeper and sadder… ack

Wench: I'm boutta add a bit more, whoops :)  Because this shows up in the context of Milady offering to sponsor d'Artagnan, right?  She's offering him money.  But the chain comes with the money.  Her influence comes with the money.  They have to go together, or they don't go at all.  If he takes that money, he becomes even more indebted to her than he already was.  And he does take it.  And he takes the necklace (her "care," her influence, his debt to her) too.  AND… this is what gets him and Constance in trouble.  It's Bonacieux seeing d'Art and Milady together and discovering that necklace that prompts him to follow d'Art.  It's Milady's meddling influence that keeps screwing things up for them.  BUT it’s not all bad because, when the necklace goes missing and Constance asks about it, he dismisses it --- her influence, his debt to her --- as unimportant.  He lets it go.  She does it again --- not with a necklace, but still --- at the end: she offers him a ride in her carriage, and it’s just a simple offer, but with strings --- literally --- attached

Jezebel: (I was waiting cause it seemed you were gonna add more to that! Since he declines the offer)

Wench: Oh, no.  Nothing immediately attached.  But I will say... The more I (re)watch, the more I realize that she's got a lot of the archetypes of the devil figure.  (That's the character who offers a temptation but gets control of you in return)

Jezebel: Oooooo! 👀 I can see that

Wench: She consistently offers things to people --- love to Athos, power to the Cardinal, a hodgepodge of things for d'Art --- but it's not as easy as it seems.  With the sole exception of the Cardinal (because he's an unstable force that she can't fully manipulate), she gets nearly interminable power over the people who take her up on it 

Still Wench: Anyway, that's the main but extensive parallel between Athos and d'Artagnan in this episode.  Athos outright says, "you're more like me than you know" (paraphrased), and they show it, bit by bit, with this running symbolism.  They're alike, but not the same.  They have similar necklaces --- similar ties to Milady --- but not identical ones.  d'Art hasn't and never will have the same opportunity to be influenced by her as Athos did --- he first met her when she framed him for murder, so he's not quite as inclined to trust her as Athos (who met her when she was either not the same person or pretending to not be the same person, depending on your interpretation) --- but he's nonetheless swayed by her.  Similar, but not the same.  See?

Jezebel: Yes! I do! 😂 though I never would have before! So thank you 😂😂😂

Wench: :)  np!  Any overall responses though?  ☠️ I kinda took over

Jezebel: More of a question… Am I just seeing her look confused he didn’t get in the cart, or is that gonna play into this little “she can sway Dart to come to the Cardinal men” thing she had because she doesn’t have the hold over him she thinks?

Wench: Wot

Jezebel:

Wench: Hellooooo?

Jezebel:

Wench: Good night, dear

-- -- --

*the next morning*

Jezebel: I was falling asleep ☠️ but I can’t remember if you ever commented on if there was a point to be made about him not getting in the cart with her. Like he can resist her and she didn’t expect that, or something. And because it seemed like you hadn’t responded I was asking basically if I was looking too deep into it. Like sure maybe she was like: oh ok then. But to me she looked legitimately shocked, as this came right after her telling the Cardinal it would be easy to sway him in their favor. If that makes more sense ☠️😂

Wench: It does a bit, yeah, and, to answer…  I kinda adressed it, but only a bit, with the "She does it again --- not with a necklace, but still --- at the end: she offers him a ride in her carriage, and it’s just a simple offer, but with strings --- literally --- attached.”  It's another way of drawing him closer/getting him under her influence.  And she's feeling Really Confident --- as you said --- about her skill at influencing him.  But what he does is a) show loyalty and b) show love.  (Both for Constance, but still).  This is particularly important because, if you think back to the pilot when they *coughs discreetly behind my fan* laid together, he saw the scar around her neck, asked about it, and, upon hearing that her husband had her almost killed, offers to kill said husband for her.  So what we have here is a conflict between her influence and the other people in d'Artagnan's life, and she's been counting on her influence being strongest.  (Which is partly because that's how it worked with Athos... even now, buddy can't move on.)  But she just got proof that it's very clearly not.  He just prioritized Constance (someone who'd just broken up with him, too, and seemingly very cruelly, even if Milady didn't know that) over her, and that's a sign that maybe she's too used to her own allure working and she's misjudged d'Artagnan's character,  But it's just a minor thing, so it's not panic yet, just confusion.  Does that make sense?

Jezebel: Yes! 🙂

Wench: Good... I feel like half of this shit is not what it is in my head laksdfj

Jezebel: ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ doubt it, because everything you say makes so much sense

Wench: ☠️😭

Jezebel: The emojissssss

Wench: Shut up  But I have had months to think about this.  And more since the book.

Jezebel: That was all I had for endpoint though! I just really wanted your two way more than two but I love it cents on that look

-- -- --

Wench edit, many days later: It's occurring to me that those "oop"s are very incomprehensible but idk what they referred to, so I can't put in signal phrasing... sorry :] (Blame Jezebel)

[noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth]

What are your predictions for the ending of game of thrones? I’m hoping all the starks survive but can see bran or Arya dying. I think Jaime May be the only Lannister to survive. Really hope Jonas is end game think dany will end up dead. Think lesser characters are either or. Also wonder if we are going to see wight hodor, summer and benjen

Thanks for asking! This is pretty broad so I’ll just hit on the major stuff and if there any other specific things you’re wondering about, let me know. Also I change my mind like every other day, but the two predictions I feel very strong about are: 

D/ny is an antagonist and will end up on the opposite side of the Starks

Sansa will survive the series

Admittedly, #2 feels less absolutely guaranteed, but assuming Westeros is still standing by the end of season 8 (which I do believe it will be), there are very few people who’ve demonstrated they have the competence to rule well and keep the world from falling apart in the aftermath of the wars. Sansa strikes me as the best candidate for that particular task, given that she’s the only person we’ve seen emphasizing the practical and logistical needs for surviving winter.

As for the rest of the Starks, I’d love for them to survive as well, but I too fear that we may lose either Bran or Arya. Not both, but one or the other. I tend to think Bran, because of his obvious Big Destiny (he’s gonna be instrumental in defeating the NK), but the thought of him dying makes me so sad that I can’t dwell on it too long. As for Jon … I don’t think he’ll die, and I especially don’t think he’ll die if Westeros remains centralized under a single government OR if Jonsa happens, but part of me worries that Jon is in a sense living on borrowed time.

Other deaths I anticipate: 

D/ny for sure, though I have no predictions on how it’ll happen. As I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t want Jon to be the one to kill her (and if he does, the odds of his own death go way up imo). Jorah makes a certain sense but I also hate that, so I’m pulling for Arya at this point.

If Jorah kills Dany, he’ll definitely die, but actually either way he’ll definitely die

Tyrion will die, possibly by execution

Cersei will die (unfortunately), and if Jaime’s the one who kills her then the odds of his death go way up too; otherwise, I’m 50/50 on Jaime. I used to firmly believe the Lannister line would die out as the ironic and tragic result of Tywin’s obsession with legacy, but it’s possible Jaime doesn’t have to die to make that happen. I’ve seen theories that he ends up in the Night’s Watch, which I like the idea of.

Either Grey Worm or Missandei will die. Probably Missandei, given that she’s explicitly been acknowledged as Grey Worm’s weakness and this might be what spurs him to abandon D/ny’s cause. I really really don’t want this though. Grey Worm and Missandei deserve to live happily ever after.

Theon is 50/50 for me. Part of me thinks he’s suffered enough, but it’s feasible that he might die protecting Yara.

Brienne will live, I think. No good reason for thinking that except that I love her and I think Westeros will need people like her when all is said and done.

The Hound will die. I’m just hoping it’s not in some unnecessary Cleganebowl that I don’t care about, but instead while protecting either Arya or Sansa. Or Brienne! Bookverse that wouldn’t make sense but given their interactions on the show, it could work.

Melisandre will die. Varys will probably die but he might surprise us.

Euron will die, obviously.

Who else is there? Oh, Gendry! Gendry … I go back and forth on. The theory that Gendry dies and rises as a wight and that’s who Arya’s running from in the trailer … is compelling. I don’t necessarily think D/ny will be the one to kill him though. She’s gonna be trying to play nice in the first few episodes and by the time she’s not playing nice, she’s gonna have another king’s son she needs to worry about way more.

I haven’t given much thought to who we’ll see as wights, but it would be interesting to see previous seasons’ characters. Hodor seems like a real possibility. We’ll definitely get a few fan favorites who are currently still alive turned too – which is why Gendry feels like a good guess. Tormund, maybe? Bronn? Characters that are well-liked but “expendable” in a sense.

As for some other popular theories, I am enthusiastically in favor of political!Jon and think it’s necessary for salvaging Jon’s character after season 7, but I wouldn’t put money on it. It is in a weird way the only explanation for everything that’s happened, but… I don’t know. I get worried!

I’m even less optimistic about Jonsa because I’ve been burned by shows and books enough times to know not to trust my deepest hopes to them, but the fact that I think it’s even POSSIBLE that it might be canon is a major step up from my thoughts at the end of season 6. If Jonsa isn’t canon, though, I’m gonna need Kit Harington to answer A LOT OF QUESTIONS for me.

Re: pregnancies. D/ny is sadly probably pregnant, but I think she’ll have a miscarriage. There won’t be a T/rg baby at the end. Cersei won’t be having a baby either. I don’t buy that Sansa will get pregnant at any point in s8 but who knows.

I’m on board for the kidnapping plot but I admit the show has every chance of fucking it up.

The Iron Throne will be melted down or destroyed by the end, but Westeros may or may not remain centralized under one ruler.

Also: I do a podcast and funnily enough our next episode is gonna be devoted to Game of Thrones s8 predictions, so I’ll make sure to share the link for that when it comes out. I’ll be doing a bit more prep for that and hopefully be able to talk more in depth about other characters/theories.

Thanks for the ask!

[batterymonster2021]

Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education

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Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education

Translator: Morton Bast Reviewer: Thu-Huong Ha Like lots of you, i am one of the vital fortunate individuals. I was once born to a household where education was once pervasive. I am a 3rd-iteration PhD, a daughter of two teachers. In my childhood, I performed round in my father’s college lab. So it was taken for granted that I attend one of the fine universities, which in flip opened the door to an international of possibility. Lamentably, many of the persons on this planet are not so fortunate. In some elements of the world, for instance, South Africa, education will not be without problems available. In South Africa, the academic approach was constructed in the days of apartheid for the white minority. And as a end result, in these days there may be just no longer sufficient spots for the various extra folks who need and deserve a high quality education.That scarcity resulted in a drawback in January of this year on the institution of Johannesburg. There have been a handful of positions left open from the ordinary admissions approach, and the night time before they had been speculated to open that for registration, hundreds and hundreds of persons lined up outside the gate in a line a mile long, hoping to be first in line to get a kind of positions. When the gates opened, there was once a stampede, and 20 people have been injured and one girl died. She was once a mom who gave her life seeking to get her son a risk at a better lifestyles. However even in parts of the world like the us where schooling is available, it could now not be inside attain. There has been a lot discussed in the last few years in regards to the rising cost of wellness care. What would now not be particularly as obvious to humans is that for the period of that same period the cost of greater education training has been increasing at practically twice the price, for a whole of 559 percentage considering that 1985. This makes education unaffordable for many individuals.Eventually, even for individuals who do manage to get the better education, the doorways of opportunity would now not open. Simplest just a little over 1/2 of contemporary school graduates in the U.S. Who get a higher education definitely are working in jobs that require that schooling. This, of course, just isn’t genuine for the pupils who graduate from the highest associations, but for a lot of others, they don’t get the value for his or her time and their effort. Tom Friedman, in his latest ny occasions article, captured, in the best way that no one else would, the spirit at the back of our effort. He stated the colossal breakthroughs are what happen when what’s instantly possible meets what is desperately necessary. I’ve talked about what’s desperately necessary. Let’s speak about what’s immediately feasible. What’s all of a sudden possible was verified by way of three huge Stanford lessons, every of which had an enrollment of a hundred,000 folks or extra.With the intention to realise this, let’s look at one of those classes, the computer learning classification furnished by means of my colleague and cofounder Andrew Ng. Andrew teaches one of the higher Stanford classes. It can be a computing device learning category, and it has four hundred folks enrolled every time it can be furnished. When Andrew taught the computer learning category to most of the people, it had one hundred,000 people registered. To be able to put that quantity in viewpoint, for Andrew to reach that identical size viewers with the aid of teaching a Stanford classification, he would have to do this for 250 years. Of course, he’d get quite bored. So, having seen the have an effect on of this, Andrew and that i made up our minds that we wanted to relatively try to scale this up, to convey the exceptional best education to as many persons as we might. So we shaped Coursera, whose intention is to take the quality guides from the first-rate instructors at the fine universities and provide it to each person around the world without cost.We presently have 43 publications on the platform from four universities across a range of disciplines, and let me show you just a little little bit of an outline of what that looks like. (Video) Robert Ghrist: Welcome to Calculus. Ezekiel Emanuel: Fifty million men and women are uninsured. Scott web page: items support us design more robust institutions and insurance policies. We get fantastic segregation. Scott Klemmer: So Bush imagined that someday, you’ll put on a camera right in the center of your head. Mitchell Duneier: Mills needs the student of sociology to increase the nice of intellect … RG: hanging cable takes on the form of a hyperbolic cosine.Nick Parlante: For every pixel within the photo, set the red to zero. Paul Offit: … Vaccine allowed us to do away with polio virus. Dan Jurafsky: Does Lufthansa serve breakfast and San Jose? Well, that sounds humorous. Daphne Koller: So that is which coin you choose, and that is the 2 tosses. Andrew Ng: So in huge-scale computer learning, we might like to give you computational … (Applause) DK: It turns out, probably not particularly, that scholars like getting the quality content material from the exceptional universities without spending a dime. Considering that we opened the website in February, we’ve 640,000 pupils from one hundred ninety countries. We have now 1.5 million enrollments, 6 million quizzes in the 15 classes that have launched thus far were submitted, and 14 million movies have been viewed. Nevertheless it’s no longer almost the numbers, it is also concerning the individuals. Whether or not it can be Akash, who comes from a small city in India and would in no way have access on this case to a Stanford-fine path and would in no way be ready to find the money for it. Or Jenny, who is a single mother of two and wishes to hone her talents so that she will be able to return and whole her master’s degree. Or Ryan, who are not able to go to school, because his immune poor daughter can not be risked to have germs come into the residence, so he couldn’t go away the house.I’m particularly joyful to claim — recently, we’ve been in correspondence with Ryan — that this story had a joyful ending. Child Shannon — you’ll discover her on the left — is doing a lot better now, and Ryan bought a job via taking a few of our courses. So what made these guides so exceptional? In any case, online course content has been available for a even as. What made it special was that this was once real direction expertise. It started on a given day, and then the students would watch videos on a weekly groundwork and do homework assignments. And these can be actual homework assignments for a real grade, with an actual cut-off date. You will discover the points in time and the usage graph. These are the spikes showing that procrastination is international phenomenon. (Laughter) at the end of the path, the scholars bought a certificate. They might gift that certificates to a prospective enterprise and get a greater job, and we know many pupils who did. Some scholars took their certificate and presented this to an educational college at which they had been enrolled for actual university credit score.So these students have been rather getting something significant for his or her funding of time and effort. Let’s speak a little bit bit about one of the most components that go into these publications. The first aspect is that while you move faraway from the constraints of a bodily school room and design content explicitly for a web based structure, that you could break away from, for illustration, the monolithic one-hour lecture. Which you could spoil up the material, for instance, into these quick, modular units of eight to 12 minutes, each and every of which represents a coherent thought. Pupils can traverse this fabric in one-of-a-kind approaches, relying on their background, their talents or their pursuits. So, for example, some scholars might advantage from a little bit little bit of preparatory material that other scholars might already have. Different pupils probably concerned with a distinct enrichment matter that they need to pursue in my view. So this format makes it possible for us to break free from the one-dimension-fits-all mannequin of schooling, and allows for pupils to follow a way more personalised curriculum.Of course, we all know as educators that scholars do not study by sitting and passively gazing movies. Perhaps one of the vital biggest add-ons of this effort is that we have to have students who apply with the fabric with a view to relatively realise it. There may be been a variety of studies that reveal the value of this. This one that seemed in Science final year, for instance, demonstrates that even simple retrieval follow, where scholars are simply presupposed to repeat what they already learned gives substantially accelerated results on more than a few fulfillment tests down the road than many other academic interventions. We have now tried to construct in retrieval follow into the platform, as well as different forms of practice in many approaches. For illustration, even our videos will not be simply movies. Each couple of minutes, the video pauses and the scholars get requested a question. (Video) SP: … These four things. Prospect concept, hyperbolic discounting, status quo bias, base fee bias. They may be all good documented. So they are all good documented deviations from rational conduct. DK: So here the video pauses, and the pupil varieties within the reply into the box and submits.Absolutely they weren’t paying concentration. (Laughter) in order that they get to try again, and this time they received it proper. There may be an not obligatory explanation if they need. And now the video strikes on to the subsequent part of the lecture. This can be a sort of straightforward query that I as an trainer could ask in class, however once I ask that type of a query at school, eighty percentage of the scholars are still scribbling the last thing I mentioned, 15 percent are zoned out on fb, after which there’s the smarty pants in the entrance row who blurts out the reply earlier than anybody else has had a risk to consider about it, and that i as the teacher am terribly gratified that someone actually knew the reply.And so the lecture moves on earlier than, quite, lots of the students have even noticed that a query had been requested. Right here, each single scholar has to engage with the fabric. And of direction these easy retrieval questions are not the tip of the story. One needs to build in far more meaningful observe questions, and one also needs to provide the scholars with feedback on those questions. Now, how do you grade the work of 100,000 pupils in case you don’t have 10,000 TAs? The answer is, you need to use science to do it for you. Now, fortunately, science has come a long way, and we can now grade a range of interesting varieties of homework.In addition to more than one alternative and the forms of short reply questions that you noticed within the video, we will additionally grade math, mathematical expressions as well as mathematical derivations. We can grade items, whether or not it is economic items in a trade type or physical items in a science or engineering category and we are able to grade some lovely subtle programming assignments. Let me show you one that’s certainly pretty simple however fairly visible. This is from Stanford’s pc Science a hundred and one type, and the students are imagined to colour-proper that blurry pink photograph. They’re typing their program into the browser, and you will discover they did not get it rather right, lady Liberty continues to be seasick. And so, the scholar tries once more, and now they obtained it proper, they usually’re instructed that, and they may be able to transfer on to the next task. This capability to engage actively with the material and be told when you are correct or flawed is relatively main to pupil learning. Now, of course we can’t yet grade the range of labor that one wants for all guides. Primarily, what’s missing is the form of vital considering work that’s so most important in such disciplines because the humanities, the social sciences, business and others.So we tried to persuade, for illustration, a few of our humanities college that multiple alternative was once not one of these dangerous technique. That did not go over rather well. So we had to come up with a further solution. And the solution we ended up using is peer grading. It turns out that earlier experiences show, like this one by way of Saddler and just right, that peer grading is a surprisingly mighty strategy for offering reproducible grades. It was tried best in small classes, but there it confirmed, for instance, that these pupil-assigned grades on the y-axis are clearly very well correlated with the teacher-assigned grade on the x-axis. What’s even more surprising is that self-grades, the place the pupils grade their possess work significantly — so long as you incentivize them appropriately so that they can not give themselves a ideal ranking — are definitely even better correlated with the instructor grades. And so that is an amazing method that can be used for grading at scale, and is also a priceless learning method for the students, on the grounds that they sincerely gain knowledge of from the experience.So we have the most important peer-grading pipeline ever devised, where tens of hundreds of students are grading each different’s work, and particularly effectively, I have got to say. But this isn’t practically pupils sitting alone of their dwelling room working by means of problems. Around each and every one among our guides, a community of scholars had fashioned, a global community of men and women round a shared intellectual endeavor. What you see here is a self-generated map from pupils in our Princeton Sociology one zero one direction, the place they have put themselves on a global map, and that you may fairly see the global attain of this type of effort. Scholars collaborated in these courses in a form of one of a kind ways. First of all, there was once a question and reply forum, where scholars would pose questions, and other pupils would reply these questions. And the really effective factor is, for the reason that there have been so many pupils, it means that although a student posed a question at three o’clock within the morning, somewhere around the world, there would be someone who used to be unsleeping and dealing on the identical problem.And so, in lots of our publications, the median response time for a query on the query and answer forum used to be 22 minutes. Which isn’t a degree of carrier i have ever offered to my Stanford scholars. (Laughter) And you’ll discover from the pupil testimonials that pupils clearly to find that given that of this colossal online group, they bought to interact with every different in lots of methods that have been deeper than they did in the context of the bodily school room.Scholars also self-assembled, with none kind of intervention from us, into small be trained businesses. Some of these were physical study corporations along geographical constraints and met on a weekly foundation to work via quandary sets. This is the San Francisco gain knowledge of crew, however there were ones in every single place the arena. Others had been digital be taught companies, typically alongside language lines or along cultural traces, and on the bottom left there, you see our multicultural universal be trained group where people explicitly desired to attach with folks from different cultures. There are some large possibilities available from this form of framework. The first is that it has the skills of giving us a wholly unheard of appear into figuring out human studying. When you consider that the data that we are able to gather here is certain. That you would be able to collect each click, each homework submission, each forum put up from tens of hundreds of pupils. So that you would be able to turn the be trained of human studying from the hypothesis-pushed mode to the info-driven mode, a metamorphosis that, for instance, has revolutionized biology.You should utilize these data to realize foremost questions like, what are just right finding out techniques which can be amazing versus ones that are not? And in the context of particular courses, which you could ask questions like, what are one of the misconceptions which can be extra normal and the way will we support pupils repair them? So here is an illustration of that, also from Andrew’s machine finding out type. It is a distribution of mistaken answers to one in every of Andrew’s assignments. The answers occur to be pairs of numbers, so that you may draw them on this two-dimensional plot. Each of the little crosses that you just see is an extra wrong reply. The big pass at the high left is the place 2,000 students gave the unique same wrong answer.Now, if two pupils in a category of a hundred give the same wrong answer, you can certainly not become aware of. But when 2,000 scholars give the equal mistaken reply, it is kind of tough to miss. So Andrew and his students went in, looked at a few of those assignments, understood the root cause of the misunderstanding, after which they produced a exact error message that may be offered to each student whose reply fell into that bucket, which means that pupils who made that equal mistake would now get personalised suggestions telling them easy methods to fix their misconception much more with no trouble. So this personalization is some thing that you could then build via having the advantage of tremendous numbers. Personalization is might be one of the vital biggest opportunities here as good, considering it presents us with the skills of fixing a 30-yr-historic drawback. Educational researcher Benjamin Bloom, in 1984, posed what’s called the 2 sigma quandary, which he observed with the aid of learning three populations. The primary is the population that studied in a lecture-centered school room. The 2d is a population of pupils that studied utilizing a standard lecture-based classroom, but with a mastery-headquartered strategy, so the pupils couldn’t move on to the following topic before demonstrating mastery of the prior one.And finally, there used to be a populace of scholars that had been taught in a one-on-one guideline making use of a tutor. The mastery-established populace used to be a full general deviation, or sigma, in success scores higher than the standard lecture-headquartered type, and the person tutoring gives you 2 sigma improvement in performance. To realise what that means, let’s seem at the lecture-situated study room, and let’s choose the median efficiency as a threshold. So in a lecture-centered classification, 1/2 the pupils are above that degree and 1/2 are below. In the character tutoring instruction, ninety eight percent of the pupils are going to be above that threshold. Assume if we could train so that 98 percentage of our pupils could be above typical. For this reason, the two sigma concern.In view that we are not able to have enough money, as a society, to furnish every student with an individual human tutor. However possibly we are able to afford to furnish each and every pupil with a pc or a smartphone. So the query is, how can we use technological know-how to push from the left side of the graph, from the blue curve, to the right side with the green curve? Mastery is handy to obtain utilizing a pc, considering a pc does not get tired of showing you the identical video 5 occasions. And it does not even get worn out of grading the equal work a couple of instances, we now have noticeable that in some of the examples that I’ve proven you.And even personalization is some thing that we’re establishing to see the beginnings of, whether or not it is through the personalised trajectory through the curriculum or one of the vital personalised feedback that we’ve proven you. So the purpose right here is to take a look at and push, and see how a ways we can get toward the golf green curve. So, if this is the case first-class, are universities now out of date? Good, Mark Twain certainly proposal so. He mentioned that, "university is a location the place a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the scholars’ lecture notes, with out passing through the brains of either." (Laughter) i encourage to vary with Mark Twain, though.I consider what he used to be complaining about is just not universities but as a substitute the lecture-established format that so many universities spend so much time on. So let’s go back even additional, to Plutarch, who stated that, "The intellect isn’t a vessel that wants filling, but wood that wants igniting." And maybe we should spend much less time at universities filling our students’ minds with content by lecturing at them, and extra time igniting their creativity, their imagination and their challenge-solving advantage through definitely talking with them. So how do we do that? We do this by means of doing energetic studying in the study room. So there’s been many stories, including this one, that exhibit that should you use lively studying, interacting along with your students in the study room, efficiency improves on each single metric — on attendance, on engagement and on finding out as measured through a standardized test. You will see that, for example, that the achievement ranking almost doubles on this distinctive experiment. So perhaps that is how we must spend our time at universities.So to summarize, if we could present a high nice education to every person world wide for free, what would that do? Three matters. First it will establish education as a essential human right, where someone around the world with the capacity and the inducement would get the skills that they must make a greater life for themselves, their households and their communities.Second, it could allow lifelong learning. It’s a disgrace that for so many folks, learning stops once we conclude excessive institution or after we finish school. By using having this amazing content material be to be had, we’d be in a position to learn some thing new every time we desired, whether it’s simply to increase our minds or it’s to change our lives. And ultimately, this might permit a wave of innovation, when you consider that potent ability may also be determined wherever. Maybe the following Albert Einstein or the subsequent Steve Jobs is dwelling somewhere in a far flung village in Africa.And if we would present that person an schooling, they’d be in a position to come up with the following colossal idea and make the sector a better place for all people. Thank you very a lot. (Applause) .