#The Piecemeal Men

[gengarghast]

Entity description + images below, for any that are unfamiliar with the ones listed!

Anxious Dog: Appears to anyone it's not currently hunting as a large white dog, specifically a greyhound. Seeing it from your peripheral vision shows it for what it truly is. Constantly laughs, though most can't hear it. Will act like a dog, if you treat it like one.

Bonesworth: Once Bonesworth (named after a once-popular phone game said to be key to summoning him) has latched onto "his favourite", he's almost impossible to get rid of. Only able to be seen by the person he is currently following, Bonesworth often brings insomnia and sickness.

The Smile Room: A wormhole between our universe and the mouth of some sleeping, near-dead entity of unfathomable size, any abandoned room or space could become a "smile room". Anyone drawn in is decimated (much like a black hole), though it may make ambulatory hosts as a last resort.

Good Boy: Absolutely not a dog.

The Angel: Those who see the angel receive visions and swear that they've been touched by divinity, despite the unique appearance of the entity. When it shows itself, witnesses swear that it's an ethereal being not of this world, though the marks it leaves behind say otherwise.

The Man in the Red Room: People who dream him insist it's a man. Not much is known. The red room is his prison, the specifics of which tends to change depending on the person. Always dirty and empty. He can reach out while people dream. He needs us. He is trying to escape.

The Needle: A cryptid seen in small cities and rural towns across the Midwest. Often seen clambering through the trees, giving a lucky hunter just enough time to snap a blurry photo. The unlucky ones are found pinned to the trees, their skin loose and sagging.

The Piecemeal Men: They think they're from the government. Small men in hats and coats, like a paranoiac's dream. If they decide you owe, they will get into your house each night and take a piece of you, pulling rusted saws and knives from beneath their coats, until you are gone.

Smile Owls: Carnivorous and predatory hunters that work together to take down larger prey. Very adept at mimicry, often learning and repeating snippets of words and phrases from stalking previous kills to use as bait later.

The Clatter: Lonesome entity made of discarded antlers of all shapes and sizes. Haunts rest stops, hunting blinds, and tourist traps in secluded woodsy areas. It’s named after the horrendous noises it makes when it moves, and its cry is like the wind blowing through bones.

Mr. Bag: ERROR: NO OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION FOUND

[dood1e-bug]

So my friend @feralghoulium and I watched The Secret Saturdays together and many jokes where made.

Drew/made the ones I remember.

[toothyblowjob]

so i recently decided that, while i am still An Entire Man, my gender is complex in a way that i feel can only really be described as genderqueer. and i really like the way i explained it to my boyfriend today--"identifying as genderqueer is my way of acknowledging that there's no blueprint for what i am. i have to carve out a space for myself, because there's not one already."

[vigilskeep]

this is probably bad feminism or whatever but ultimately i really don’t care at all that society in thedas is sexist. i think it’s fine. yes it might have made sense for a matriarchal chantry to have a wider impact on thedas’ culture, and yes there’s sexism in the writers instinctively baking misogyny into the world, because their fundamental inability to imagine a “grimly realistic” world without it reveals their implicit assumption that sexism operates on some kind of universal logic and will always occur unless ideals change things. i also think dragon age operates on quickly-assembled flatpack worldbuilding taken piecemeal from established fantasy tropes and from real-world history (or assumptions/myths about real-world history), and is never and was never going to do something that drastic and inventive. that just isn’t what dragon age is bringing to the table. even if it somehow had done that, do any of us really want the timeline where 2009 dragon age used a genuinely matriarchal society as the setting for its sexy dark fantasy where everything is terrible? sure it was dumb that the origins cc said men and women were equal in ferelden when they clearly aren’t, and people make a lot of good and creative points about how things could have been done, i’m not denying that. i don’t think other people are wrong to be bothered by it even if it doesn’t bother me. i guess i just think there are other conversations we could be having, and sometimes they all get dragged into this one talking point

[pmamtraveller]

DANTE AND VIRGIL /1850/ by WILLIAM-ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU

This work is inspired by Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy explores the prevailing beliefs of the Middle Ages regarding the different stages of the afterlife. In the poem, Dante is led by the Roman poet, Virgil, through all the realms of the afterlife.

Bouguereau skillfully illustrates a line from 'Inferno', the first part of the poem that portrays the never-ending circles of hell. This is a scene of 'Inferno', Canto VII, lines 112-114, which reads, “They smote each other not alone with hands, but with the head and with the breast and feet, tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.”

This realm is reserved for fraudsters and deceivers. Dante and Virgil observe from afar as two damned souls battle. Gianni Schicchi, the man on the left, is sinking his teeth into Capocchio's neck on the right. Other struggles can be seen behind the main subjects, with a man lying on the ground just behind the two fighting.

Bouguereau demonstrates his painting abilities by depicting nude male figures. Their muscles contract, extend, and rotate while they wrestle each other. The men appear to be shining brightly while the rest of the surroundings are dark. The academy had a high admiration for Bouguereau, especially for his skill in portraying skin tones.

[daincrediblegg]

I love all the little metaphors of colonialism that hickey latently displays through modes of dress. Every single thing about him is piecemeal. His coat, his boots, his very name, and even his mentality all stolen artifacts of a society that will never be his. They wanted nothing from him so he took from them piece by piece until he was able to construct a simulacrum of a man. Things that he takes and then disposes of when the next most powerful thing comes along until when he's naked again and wills to give his tongue to acquire something even higher than men only for his hubris to eat him and render him into pieces in turn... truly a magnificent metaphorical experience.

[woman-respecter]

that ask you got saying it’s a dangerous pipeline to blame men for their actions is so fucking condescending. i hate when people tell women they need to be a little more niceys… no this time be extra niceys and men won’t try to make you miserable… please women dissect yourself and give away your body piecemeal to men to make them happy and maybe just maybe they’ll protect your rights! get a fucking grip.

being niceys to men hasn’t worked for the past few milennia but trust me it will i this time i prommy

[ceilidho]

prompt: pretty little witch who lives in a cottage in the forest who sometimes eats wayward travellers but Ghost has some kind of magic repulsion aura that doesn’t allow her to use her powers on him (part 1)

-

He moves at a pace too slow for you to make out with the naked eye, but you feel it creeping through you.

The vision of him appears in a dream first, a premonition. A hulking figure trekking through the woods. You snuggle deeper under the covers and scrunch up your nose in your sleep. In the morning, you go outside to harvest the holly leaves and buttercup and return home dreaming of tender, slow cooked meat. It’s been awhile since you last had a proper meal. When you hang up the laundry to dry, you chew on peppermint cuttings and try not to salivate. 

In the centuries you’ve lived in these woods, travellers have come and gone. You don’t eat every single one that happens to pass by—that would be a surefire way to get your forest branded as bedevilled and a longer route established circumnavigating your grove. You might be hungry, but you’re prudent, careful. Not like some other witches these days, greedy for any morsel that happens to pass in front of them. 

No; you take care of your woods. You have to, if you plan on remaining here for the centuries to come. If a few travellers happen to disappear here and there, that’s simply life. Not everyone can make treacherous journeys. 

You always have a sense of when a traveller is nearby. It’s as though your being is embedded within the forest itself, privy to those who dwell within it. You feel him along the outer regions of the forest, a lone traveller hauling not more than himself and a rucksack filled with the bare essentials. He appears to you in flashes in your dreams, not the full image of him but piecemeal, a shadow obscuring his full face from you. You see only tendons and meat on his bones, a rough hewn strength to his limbs, touch muscle and fat wrapped around his middle.

It makes you giddy to think of him circling ever closer to your spider’s web at the centre of the forest. After him, you won’t be hungry for years. 

Your restless leg acts up the day you know that he’s close enough to approach. All morning, you sit at the little table in your kitchen and rip lavender buds from the stems, black shoes tap-tapping away at the floor. The broom sweeps by itself in the corner, sweeping the dust into a neat pile. When you snap your fingers, it’s brusque, impatient. The broom halts in midair and then clatters against the floorboards. The chair scrapes against the floor as you rise to your feet. 

“Come, come, Asphodel,” you whisper to the black cat curled up on the windowsill, which barely lifts her head enough to blink at you. “No more dallying. Mommy’s hungry.”

In a show of great defiance and disrespect, Asphodel merely meows at you and lays her head back down. Insipid little familiar. 

You go off on your own then, keen to see the travellers with your own eyes. Jowls growing tighter. Robe cinched tight around you and hair pinned back by a thin strand of velvet. The days have just begun to shorten, just begun to exhale frost and rot. The leaves however, by agreement, do not crunch under your feet and give you away. You are a phantom amidst the trees as you flank the lone traveller, following the breadth of him as he traversed past your homestead. 

It’s fortunate that you are not beholden to physics because he is formidable. Broad as a man might be, no less sizable than in your dreams, but much more menacing in the flesh. He too moves quietly in the brush, with a care and precision that you have not seen many humans employ. 

He conceals the lower half of his face with a black piece of fabric, which you had mistaken for shadows. Not so. It is a deliberate concealment, meant to unnerve. Without magic, you might not have approached. 

His size alone isn’t enough to frighten you though. You are two hundred years old and you have eaten men twice his size when you were naught but a babe. 

You step out into the clearing just a few paces from him, halting the man in his tracks. 

“Hello,” you call out tentatively, raising a hand to shield your eyes. “C-can you help me? I think I’ve lost my way.”

At this point in your career, it takes a bit to hide the smile that threatens to break. You are like the spider posing as a fly. The show is half the fun though. 

The man doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem shocked at your presence, arms loose by his sides. It makes your stomach clench, the script flipped a bit. It should be you, loose and limber, and the wayward traveller tense and nonplussed, then eager to help the lost girl. You wait a moment longer for him to respond, but he remains silent, blue eyes unblinking. 

“Can you help me?” you repeat, taking a step closer. The tendrils of your magic slither out of you, snaking across the forest floor towards him. “I’m lost. Can you help me find my way out?” 

Your magic finds his boots in the dirt like mycelium threads, the pulse of him rich and earthen. It makes the saliva pool in your mouth, hunger gnawing at your guts. He will taste so good. Meaty and huge, enough to last you the winter. You take another step closer despite his continued silence, a tad too eager. You only need a moment though, long enough for your magic to take root, to render him febrile and inert. When he collapses to the ground, you will float his body back and rend him limb from limb by your hearth. 

Another step brings you closer to him when your magic suddenly recoils, unwinds from him. You frown. You try sending it back, but your magic shrinks away, an atavistic fear blooming up in you. It does not want near this man. 

A cold sweat breaks out on your neck. The hairs on your neck and arms stand on end. 

The hooded man staring back at you tilts his head, the skin under his eyes crinkling with a smile that you cannot see. Suddenly eldritch, blood-curdling. 

“Now, what are you?” he asks with a rumbling voice, rough from disuse, and takes a step towards you.

[apoemaday]

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I’ve a choice of how, and I’ll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it’s all in the timing. I sell men back their worse suspicions: that everything’s for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can’t. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape’s been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it’s the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretence that I can’t hear them. And I can’t, because I’m after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slab of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meanings are lilting and oblique. I don’t let on to everyone, but lean close, and I’ll whisper: My mother was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That’s what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They’d like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look–my feet don’t hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I’m not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn. 

[plo-koons-favorite-padawan]

Last line challenge from @biscuityskies

Actually putting two snippets in here. As a treat! I'm not sure who to tag so you can consider this your invite to post anything you want!

From my Codywan fic (on my extended Clone Wars timeline AU—this is year 7):

The journey to Moraband saw the revival of the 212th hull-ball tournaments. Cody watched Wooley lead Team Bridge Command against Team Parjai, who were the undefeated champions, in the opening rounds. Five days in, Team MedSurg upset Team Bomb Squad in the day’s quarter-finals. Cody, as the highest authority on the rules by which the game is played, found himself adjudicating point disputes. He started using his HUD to give him an action-replay to analyze particularly close calls. Watchdog acted as a second pair of eyes when necessary.  Obi-Wan commed him every night. He filled Cody in on details of his Temple life. He had been mobbed by Jedi Initiates that morning in one of the meditation halls. He was spending more time teaching. He was thinking about taking another Padawan, after the war. They spoke in code about information not available in reports: Vos was alive. Fox had eaten a meal that day. The full journey took three weeks. By the end, Parjai were still undefeated, and most of the men had moved on to gambling at cards. Vos was still alive. Fox was going for a lot of long runs.  Cody had decided somewhere around year two of the war that ferruginous planets were his least favorite. The reddish, oxidized soil rubbed into armor or mixed with sweat on skin always looked like blood. It took days to polish the red scuffs out, and that was after the actual blood was all washed away. Obi-Wan had told him that Moraband used to be known as Korriban, that it was the homeworld of the ancient Sith race. Cody was not sure what else he could have expected, other than this blood-colored mess of mountain ranges and sandstorms that vomited hundreds of thousands of battle droids into the galaxy each week. Watchdog stood with him on the bridge, looking out at the rotation of the planet as the atmo transports were prepared.  “Ugly fucking thing, isn’t it?” he asked. Cody hummed in agreement, hands folded behind his back. “First wave leaves in fifteen. Figured you’d want to be on it.” “Thank you, Watchdog. Keep everything locked down up here,” Cody said, nodding to him. “You have the bridge.” Watchdog saluted.  In the lift, Cody sent a typed message to Obi-Wan’s comm. Landing soon. Will report tonight. The doors opened to a rush of astromechs and GNK droids. Mechanics, pilots, and troopers flowed along walkways and into larties, into Nu-Class shuttles, and smaller fighters.  Moraband did not get any prettier when they got closer to the surface. Breaking atmo revealed hideously jagged mountain ridges. The droid foundry was ten heavily-armed kilometers from the drop zone. Cody was not looking forward to the trek.  He never got that far.  He was glad that he was wearing his jetpack, because when the first round of anti-air artillery hit the LAAT, he had less than two seconds to react to the gaping hole in the hull, to the sudden absence of eight other troopers, to the breach alarms wailing, before the next blast hit. He grabbed two of the other men and leapt out the side of the ship. His jetpack was not designed for this heavy of a lift, and they were falling too fast. The propulsion was sputtering; the explosion of the ship above them hailed flaming debris and blasted them towards the surface of the planet. His comms were screeching in his ears as fighter pilots scrambled to support. The ground was coming too fast. One of the men, Quarter, was shouting to drop him so that he could save himself and the other man, Piecemeal. He started to beat on Cody’s wrist, but Cody held on. The ground was coming too fast. Cody’s jetpack sputtered out, and they fell the remaining one-hundred and sixty feet to the surface of the planet. Cody went out on impact.

From my QuinFox fic (same timeline, this is year 1):

Fox’s office was empty when he opened the door. It was empty when he tugged his helmet off and set it on the shelf by the door. It was empty when he keyed the door closed and locked. It was not empty when he turned around.  “So,” said the man leaning against Fox’s desk. “Pretty interested in Kenobi, hm?” He had a lightsaber clipped to his belt. The gold tattoo across his nose and cheeks flashed in the light.  Fox had a hand on his blaster. “Don’t move,” he warned.  The man raised his hands. “I come with peace in my heart and curiosity in my mind. You’re a great slicer, for what it’s worth. Took me forever to figure out that it was you.” “That what was me?” Fox was grinding his teeth. His right hand was itching. “You pulled Obi-Wan’s records. Don’t totally understand why you covered your tracks so thoroughly, though. That’s what I want to know.” He stepped forward, hands still raised. “It’s not like you were breaking any regs. What gives?” “Get out of my fucking office,” Fox snarled. “Ooh, you’re mean,” the man said, smiling at him. Fox stepped back and adjusted the grip on his blaster. “I like that in a guy.” Fox knew he was blushing. Idiot.  “And shy, how charming.” The man had crossed his arms. He had a matching gold tattoo on his bicep.  Fox called to mind the standard punishment for murdering a superior—firing squad—and weighed his options. “How did you get in here?” “Oh, it’s a fun trick. But if I explain it, it’ll ruin the fun.” “I’m not very interested in fun,” Fox retorted. “Somehow I don’t think that’s true,” the man said. “But if you insist…” He vanished. “Fuck,” Fox whispered, followed by a much louder, “Fuck!” when the man reappeared inches from his face.  “Part of the job,” the man said, smirking at him and not the least bit uncomfortable being within striking distance. Fox swallowed. “You’re a Shadow?” The man nodded, spreading his arms.“Quinlan Vos, at your service. No need for any formalities—I’m not technically a member of the GAR.” “Fox.” “So, back to my original question. Why so interested in my friend Obi-Wan?” “I think you probably already know. Why come if you know who I got them for?” “You caught me,” Vos said, smiling. He had a small gap between his front teeth. “I know you got those records for your batchmate, who they call Kote.” “Cody,” Fox snapped. “Cody, sorry. He wouldn’t have had access to those without going through Obi-Wan. You don’t have a Jedi overseeing you,” Vos said. “So you can get any records you want.” Fox raised his eyebrows. “I fail to see how any of this warrants sneaking into my office.” “Well, this was more for fun,” Vos admitted.  “You have a strange definition of ‘fun,’” Fox said, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. “And you don’t?” Vos had one eyebrow raised. “Well, you’ve had your fun,” Fox said. “So, now you can get out.”

[misfitwashere]

ROBERT REICH

FEB 14

Friends,

I want to talk today about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup. 

I’m not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators. 

I’m referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — and the mainstream media abroad, such as the BBC and The Guardian. 

By not calling it a coup, the mainstream media is failing to communicate the gravity of what is occurring. 

Yesterday’s opinion by The New York Times’ editorial board offers a pathetic example. It concedes that Trump and his top associates “are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War” but then asks: “Are we in a constitutional crisis yet?” and answers that what Trump is doing “should be taken as a flashing warning sign.”

Warning sign? 

Elon Musk’s meddling into the machinery of government is a part of the coup. Musk and his muskrats have no legal right to break into the federal payments system or any of the other sensitive data systems they’re invading, for which they continue to gather computer code. 

This data is the lifeblood of our government. It is used to pay Social Security and Medicare. It measures inflation and jobs. Americans have entrusted our private information to professional civil servants who are bound by law to use it only for the purposes to which it is intended. In the wrong hands, without legal authority, it could be used to control or mislead Americans. 

By failing to use the term “coup,” the media have also underplayed the Trump-Vance-Musk regime’s freeze on practically all federal funding — suggesting this is a normal part of the pull-and-tug of politics. It is not. Congress has the sole authority to appropriate money. The freeze is illegal and unconstitutional. 

By not calling it a coup, the media have also permitted Americans to view the regime’s refusal to follow the orders of the federal courts as a political response, albeit an extreme one, to judicial rulings that are at odds with what a president wants.

There is nothing about the regime’s refusal to be bound by the courts that places it within the boundaries of acceptable politics. Our system of government gives the federal judiciary final say about whether actions of the executive are legal and constitutional. Refusal to be bound by federal court rulings shows how rogue this regime truly is. 

Earlier this week, a federal judge excoriated the regime for failing to comply with “the plain text” of an edict the judge issued last month to release billions of dollars in federal grants. Vice President JD Vance, presumably in response, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Vance graduated from the same law school I did. He knows he’s speaking out of his derriere. 

In sum, the regime’s disregard for laws and constitutional provisions surrounding access to private data, impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, and refusal to be bound by judicial orders amount to a takeover of our democracy by a handful of men who have no legal authority to do so. 

If this is not a coup d’etat, I don’t know what is. 

The mainstream media must call this what it is. In doing so, they would not be “taking sides” in a political dispute. They would be accurately describing the dire emergency America now faces. 

Unless Americans see it and understand the whole of it for what it is rather than piecemeal stories that “flood the zone,” Americans cannot possibly respond to the whole of it. The regime is undertaking so many outrageous initiatives that the big picture cannot be seen without it being described clearly and simply. 

Unless Americans understand that this is indeed a coup that’s wildly illegal and fundamentally unconstitutional — not just because that happens to be the opinion of constitutional scholars or professors of law, or the views of Trump’s political opponents, but because it is objectively and in reality a coup — Americans cannot rise up as the clear majority we are, and demand that democracy be restored. 

[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Wattignies

The Battle of Wattignies was a significant battle in the War of the First Coalition, part of the wider French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It was fought on 15-16 October 1793 between a ragtag army of the First French Republic and a professional army of the Coalition. A French victory, the battle hindered the Coalition's encroachment onto French soil.

The battle was the capstone in a trilogy of French victories during the Flanders Campaign of 1792-1795, in which the French defeated the Coalition armies piecemeal; they defeated the British on 6-8 September at the Battle of Hondschoote and then beat the Dutch at the Battle of Menin on 13 September. Wattignies, fought against a mostly Austrian force, solidified the victories gained in the previous battles, weakening Coalition presence in Flanders and ensuring the survival of the French Revolution (1789-1799) for another year.

Background

The First Coalition was an alliance of Europe's great powers, united against the French Revolution. Unnerved by the trial and execution of Louis XVI and by the revolutionaries' promise to spread their revolution into the corners of Europe, the rulers of Europe's Ancien Régimes had assembled a multinational army to kill the infant French Republic in its cradle. Commanded by the Austrian nobleman Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, this army numbered over 100,000 men at its peak, comprised of soldiers from Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Hanover, Hessen-Cassel, and the Dutch Republic. Sweeping the French out of Belgium in March 1793, this massive army laid siege to the French fortifications near the French-Belgian border, taking Condé-sur-l'Escaut and Valenciennes in July. With the French Army of the North still in disarray after a second defeat at the Battle of Raismes, it seemed to most observers that the Coalition was within arm's reach of victory.

Yet in August 1793, the mighty allied host split in two. After Valenciennes fell to the Coalition, the British contingents received orders from the government of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, instructing them to capture the port city of Dunkirk with all haste. Over protests from Coburg himself, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, commander of the British army, dutifully peeled his 35,000 men off from the main army and marched westwards to Dunkirk. Coburg, determined to finish capturing the French border fortifications, turned his 45,000 Austrians in the opposite direction, laying siege to Le Quesnoy, while detachments of Dutch soldiers maintained a thin line of communication between the British and Austrian armies. Many military historians consider this move to be a massive blunder that might have cost the Coalition victory.

Meanwhile, France was busy reorganizing itself. While the Coalition was preoccupied with the border fortifications, the Committee of Public Safety, France's de facto executive government, prioritized the defense of the Republic. Implementing the Reign of Terror to uncover counter-revolutionary enemies and foreign spies, the Committee purged the armies of officers suspected of disloyalty. Scores of generals and officers were carted off to Paris where they were arrested, tried, and in some cases, executed. Meanwhile, the Committee applied a policy of mass conscription, the levée en masse, which allowed France to field 14 armies and 800,000 soldiers by year's end. By September, these policies had the effect of swelling France's armies with undisciplined, untrained conscripts commanded by officers reluctant to act against the orders of the representatives-on-mission, lest they find themselves without heads. The effectiveness of these reforms was yet to be seen.

Continue reading...

[foibles-fables]

HZD's opening scene with Rost's exposition & demonstatiom about the tribe's culture & really cool artworks/crafts & also hints of Rost's personal story & Teersa blessing the naming of Aloy is sad to look back on now bc— as mystical & magical as it feels the first time around —all of Rost's exposition feels flat when the Nora are kind of a footnote to brush past/turn away from once Aloy's POV sets in. Even moreso in HFW when all that exposition & lore gets watered down to 2 or 3 "well ig that's the guy who raised her" namedrops in lieu of the futuristic Apple Vision Pros 3D printers AIs & immortal CEO's in X-men suits flying around. As much as the opening is awestriking, it feels like the Horizon games themselves don't really enjoy the world they've built at all & instead push to recenter focus on near-future 21st century corporate tech metropolises that feel so lifeless by comparison to the original hook of the games. I mean, this is obvious just from comparing the amount of "Datapoints"(21st century texts on near-futuristic USB thumb drives) vs "Scanned Glyphs" (actual written material by Aloy's supposed contemporaries). There's like 5 times as many filler useless lore texts written from the POV of a random civilian/tech businessman/USA military personnel complaining about their consumer tech gadgets & robots taking their jobs or w/e vs the amount Scanned Glyphs from contemporary tribal peoples, especially the Nora, Rost's people and culture, which are practically nonexistent despite being the opening sequence that invites players to immerse themselves in their world. After 5 minutes, the games themselves doesn't seem to want to immerse itself into that world or its artistic vision either, & instead yap exposition via holograms for 40+ hours, twice, abt some Ultron/Magneto type villain that feels more & more detached from the original setting.

I do genuinely enjoy the way HZD handled the paralleled storytelling of action taking place in the new world while slowly making piecemeal revelations about the old world, through both main quest information and world datapoints. I think the reason we see fewer glyphs from the new world is that the Carja (adopted by the Oseram) and Quen are the only ones to have a codified system of writing. Which is why I'm glad we got to see the Nora oral history in action during the Proving!

Here's hoping we get to see the Nora in a new light come H3, given Aloy's growth. You're correct that our perception of them was skewed, given the fact that we're playing in Aloy's POV. The Nora are an awesome tribe and I highly recommend folks do some reading about their culture.

I also fully agree, however, that HFW made that full pivot into sci-fi WAY too quickly. We deserved one more game of familiarizing with/leaning into the current world. The idea of stabilizing the biosphere was right there. Again and again, I'll say that the Zeniths would make the perfect culminating threat in game three instead of game two.

[inkformyblood]

celebrate the sunrise and set (CWFKB #19)

Celebratory kiss @codywanfirstkissbingo Canon Divergence - Rebel Cody, Obi-Wan doesn't die

Ben Kenobi tucks himself away, creases the name he has worn for decades along barely-there folds and places it in the bottom of the pack that he had somehow managed to keep with him from Tatooine to a rebel base. There’s a flurry of activity spilling out from the corridors, rushed footsteps heading everywhere at once, and Obi-Wan sets his back against a sturdy looking pile of crates and watches them move. The Force bleeds through his veins, warmth spiralling down his spine like a caress and he’s home and has never been further from it in the same breath. Obi-Wan looks to his left, the gesture ingrained into him and reinforced from a lifetime of expectation and disappointment when he is alone, and returns his careful sentry to the mismatched collections of ships spilling across the hangar bay. 

Some are more organised than others, spaced the regulation distance apart and Obi-Wan knows without needing to walk it heel-to-toe the exact dimensions of the bay marked out onto the floor by nothing more than a handful of stern words and a glare. Someone in this base has been trained by a clone. He won’t tear his heart into shreds anymore by thinking that the clone could be one of his men, that they could have escaped the whispered commands of the chip implanted in their head and somehow found their way here. The universe is too big to consider and his men deserve some peace after everything Obi-Wan could have protected them from. Another glance at the empty space at his side. Another breath that catches on every barely-healed wound in his soul. 

There is a group moving towards the hangar. Their footsteps echo and, for a moment, they’re in perfect unison, a wall of sound that carries as much of a presence as the men wearing the armour. Obi-Wan closes his eyes, he is old and he can be foolish for a moment, and listens to the sound of an army mobilising. Not as organised as his men but he can pretend.

“Should have let me reorganise the ships.”

That voice. 

“I know it’s an older system but it works. Less of this unorganised milling about like a group of lothcats let out into a solarium. Alpha-17 would have beaten me over the head with my own vambrace if I let my squad run around like that.”

Obi-Wan looks. He couldn’t stop himself if he tried. 

Cody looks like how Obi-Wan remembers. He’s aged, silver overrunning the black in his curls and fresh lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth. More from sorrow than joy, Obi-Wan thinks, and likely matches the passage of time imprinted on his own features. His scar is still striking, dark despite the decades it had been since he had first received it, and there is a fresher tattoo covering his other eye, a broken red line from his scalp to his chin. His armour is piecemeal, some painted plastoid over his chest and the sheen of beskar on his vambraces, and his clothes beneath it are equally mismatched in various shades of dark brown. He’s breathtakingly beautiful even so.

“Disgraceful,” Cody continues, settling his hands on his hips before they slide down to his sides. His back is perfectly straight, the posture that Obi-Wan couldn’t believe he had forgotten about burning bright across his thoughts. How could he have forgotten anything about Cody? He loves him more than anything else in the universe and he had left him behind because of his duty. They had both known it would be a possibility, but that hadn’t made it hurt any less. 

He doesn’t know what to say.

He doesn’t know if he should say anything.

Cody seems happy here, balanced enough to grin at a teasing remark one of the pilots call over to him, to swipe at the back of another’s head as they pass in a gesture that is all showmanship and no substance, and Obi-Wan wouldn’t take this piece of stability away from him. He begins to back away, attempting to circle the edge of the crates so he would be hidden from Cody’s gaze, and his heel catches the side of the crate. It’s loud, far louder than it should be and it is just another sign that the universe wants to see him suffer that Cody looks over at him. Recognition is a quick-moving thing and Cody has always been exceptional in every regard. His eyes widen and his mouth moves in a soundless whisper of Obi-Wan’s name before he begins to move forward. Straight line, direct, and Obi-Wan braces himself for a blow. 

He isn’t expecting Cody to crash into him, wrapping his arm around Obi-Wan’s torso tight enough to break and secure enough to put him back together. For a moment, everything is right in the universe and Obi-Wan could tear the fabric of existence open and weave something new from the tattered shreds, then Cody steps away. He doesn’t move far, his palms remaining pressed to Obi-Wan’s elbows as he looks him over from head to foot before Cody glances down at his own torso. 

“I am surprised to not be stabbed,” Cody says as easily as he would comment on the weather, it looks like it will rain later, I expected you to kill me. 

Obi-Wan flexes his fingers, feeling the absence of anything in his hold, the light void of any kind of blade or a saber. He tucks his fingers beneath the curve of Cody’s vambraces, the first joints digging into the rumpled fabric and luxuriating in the warmth emitting from his skin. “I wouldn’t do that to you, love.”

“I would have.” Cody’s mouth twitches into a grimace, his lips drawn tight, and he blinks up at Obi-Wan. His brow is furrowed like he’s trying to stare into the sun, determined to push back such a fragile thing like human limitations. “Well, before. Do you— Do you know?”

“I do.” It is such a small phrase to try and encompass the forgiveness of a lifetime for his mistake, swearing himself to Cody as if he is pledging himself to the other man forever. Cody’s vambrace bites into his fingers but he doesn’t pull away, instead tucking his fingers further beneath the curved metal. It is a disadvantageous position with his hands occupied and he wouldn’t be able to defend himself if the same blank look would descend over Cody’s features again. He wouldn’t want to. 

Cody hums a noncommittal sound, shuffling closer until the tips of his boots press against Obi-Wan’s. His thumbs smooth over the sharp topography of Obi-Wan’s elbows, hollows exposed just as easily as the desert would strip flesh from bone. “I can’t believe you’re here,” Cody murmurs, his eyes dark and wavering with tears. “We should celebrate.”

“This isn’t something I wish to celebrate,” Obi-Wan answers. He should step away, stop intruding on the peace that Cody has managed to find for himself but Obi-Wan wants. He craves in a way he isn’t sure he has experienced before and he knows like he knows the twin suns will rise over Tatooine tomorrow that when he walks away from Cody again, he is going to die. His body will continue walking, his mind will continue thinking, but he will be dead. 

“Obi-Wan.” Cody moves impossibly closer, knocking Obi-Wan’s feet further apart with own, making a space for Cody to step into. “I should have died decades ago. If not from a Seppie, then from the Empire, a stray shot in a firefight, or just sheer bad luck. I should have aged into obsolescence and died like I was planned to, but I’m still here. We are still here. So I am going to celebrate every morning when I wake up and every evening when I go to sleep, every meal, and every breath because I am still here. So, please, Obi-Wan, let me celebrate with you.”

Obi-Wan swallows against the grief wrapped around his throat like a noose and nods, unable to speak. Cody raises a hand, Obi-Wan’s desperate grip moving with him, not to stop but only to hold, and cups Obi-Wan’s jaw. 

“Kiss me?” Obi-Wan murmurs, his voice ragged and ruined and so full of tentative hope. Cody nods and leans in. It’s gentle, the cautious press of his lips against Obi-Wan’s, his stubble a dull rasp against Obi-Wan’s skin, before he draws back just enough to breathe. Obi-Wan follows him, kissing him again and again and again until they’re laughing into each others embrace, tears streaming down their cheeks. 

[mordredsheart]

i decided to finally get around to watching the lord of the rings for the first time and filling the gaps in my piecemeal pop culture osmosis about it. my top three takeaways so far include:

saruman hot

i am only the trillionth person alive to observe this but damn the specter of the war to allegedly end all wars sure the fuck haunts this narrative

i cannot believe i got attached to the one character i knew for a fact dies (albeit not the when, why, or how, and certainly was not expecting him to AT THE END OF THE FIRST MOVIE). rip boromir you are a credit to men :(

[stevebattle]

Sakura No. 2 (2013), Future Robotics Technology Center (fuRo), Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan. "If Sakura No. 1 is Quince’s “compact” version, Sakura No. 2 might be called Quince’s “power up.” Because Quince was designed to investigate rough terrain in earthquake zones, not the interior of a nuclear plant, all of its door-opening, wireless, and camera features had been developed in a piecemeal fashion as the team thought of possible complications inside the plant. The Quince robots themselves had not been created to maneuver inside a nuclear plant. As a result, when the team created Sakura No. 2, they decided to build a more powerful robot capable of accommodating more functions than Quince." – Fukushima Rescue Robots and the Men Who Made Them, by Wataru Tsuchiya.