#a bunch of angels adopt a human adult . what will happen

[solargeist]

The Watchers in my AU are meant to be complicated and confusing. It’s part of why Grian stays for so long, why he’s so conflicted and why it bothers him to the point of venting to Mumbo.

They can be very kind, they do love him, they compliment him on everything. He gets gifts and everything given to him.

But on the other hand, bc they love him, they can be critical, telling him why that and why this, not that not this, they have pretty high standards for Beings that have seen everything already, not easy to genuinely impress.

They give him food, as parental figures should, anything he asks, but that’s sorta the problem, he always has to ask, there’s no way around this, no independence. He can ask for ingredients to cook by himself, but they’ll watch him.

He’s given clothes to wear, always within Watcher standard, dark and loose garments, open for his wings. He’d honestly prefer brighter colours, but that’s not rly a choice.

They tell him he’s special, he was chosen, better than the rest, a champion, a hero, and while it pets his ego, he feels pressure, they went out on a limp for him and he still can’t do enough. There is so much guilt.

Being here in the end messes with his psyche a bit, he’s much shorter than everyone, he has to rely on everyone, they all treat him like a kid, petting his hair or moving him via his shoulders instead of asking. He accidentally leans into this sometimes as a subconscious coping mechanism, he cries easier than he thinks he should. Tantrums where he has to press his face into his hands, or grumble and stomp off. He always has to apologize.

Despite being treated like a child, he is a Watcher child, so he studies a lot, he trains a lot. If he throws up from training, that’s no excuse (well by Flora’s standards)

He does feel a sort of comfort or safety around Aether, She’s lenient with him, but they’re definitely still not equals. She still hides things from him She thinks is too serious, She’s still overtly positive. He thinks abt Her sometimes, in hindsight he knows it was a family dynamic, and he feels guilt abt this too.

The Watchers love him, but they are ultimately overbearing, overwhelming, and frankly quite scary if you don’t play by their rules. Grian has reason to be cautious, the silent threats that hang over his head, never directly said to him, but traitors are cast out, if you’re not worthy you don’t deserve these gifts of wings or eyes. I think he’s convinced if they ever find him they’ll rip his eyes out with talons.

He won’t admit that he likes the attention sometimes, when his efforts are acknowledged and/or praised, when his hair is brushed. He wants their approval.

However, this is the only ‘human’ contact he gets. He doesn’t have anyone else, so it’s taken with a grain of salt how genuine his feelings are abt the attention.

[i-have-a-sideblog-problem]

They grow up so fast: Teenage Luke Headcanons

I can't get out of my head Luke going through a teenage angst faze while in the exchange program and making it everyone's problem. Clearly, demons and angels don't age at the same rate as humans, but if I can blindly have baby Satan, I can have teen Luke.

The program takes place over four years. So sit with me for a minute and think about how everyone would react to sweet, annoying, and adorable 10-year-old Luke turning into a goblin of a 14-year-old!

------------- <3.<3.<3.<3.<3. ------------- <3.<3.<3.<3.<3. -------------

All the brothers (mostly Mams, Satan, and Luci) wondering when the hell did the Chihuahua get so tall. He can look Belphie in the eyes!

What do you mean he's still growing, Simone! He's already too tall!

MC having an uno reverse with Luke. He's now tall enough to use them as an armrest.

Luke is also at the stage where teens think the stuff they like or idealized as a kid is cringe. Being Micheal's assistant angel is the worst thing in the world because Michael is the lamest angel in the Celestial Releam.

He starts bad-mouthing Michael every time he comes back from a check-in. It throws everyone off the first time it happens. Simeon and Solomon questioned if Luke was cursed.

Luke also tries to like baking less since it's now lame due to Michael liking sweets so much.

He fails, he can't say no to Barbatos, Simoen, or MC asking him to bake with them. Plus he really does love baking. He's slowly learning how to make it his own thing, and not doing it to impress Michael.

Luke's envy really comes out as a teen. As a 10-year-old his outburst could be perceived as aww he's just a kid. But now he can get pushy and mean, like when the others try to take MC away. That's his best friend, and MC is spending time with me!

He's not above using his blessing to keep those nasty demons away.

The strangest and most agita-inducing thing to come out of Teen Luke is him and Mammon getting along. Barbots and Simone now know why Lucifer went gray so quickly.

Don't get me wrong, Mammon still teases Luke 24-7. It is this job as his adoptive older brother.

Luke now openly wants to hang out with Mammon, and they cause so much trouble together. Pranks, staying out past curfew, a classic Mammon scheme here and there.

Luke has definitely been strung up from the chandelier at least once. And he defiantly learned his lesson to be way more sneaky.

Luke making friends his own age! Just a weird bunch of young dorky demons and angles running around causing chaos. They are helping unite the realm but at the cost of every adult's sanity.

Luke is the cool one out of his friend group because he goes to RAD and hangs out with the future king and the seven lords!

[vanillavagrant]

You've said that this story has been rolling around in your head for a long time, with many versions and different siblings? With Daddy Leon as the common denominator? I don't suppose you'd share some details about how much it might have changed? It's okay if you don't, it's just neat to see stories evolve!

This became a very long answer, so I'll add a Keep reading!

You've said that this story has been rolling around in your head for a long time, with many versions and different siblings? With Daddy Leon as the common denominator?

Yes, it's been in my head for a ridiculeous amount of time. Most of it has been daydreams, and I don't remember all the details, but it was often very, very dramatic and whumpy. I regret not getting into writing and writing everything down sooner :')

The stern / infantilizing white collar daddy angel has always been there. Sometimes he’s a new dad who needs advice from his peers, and other times he’s basically a pro, giving advice to his own younger siblings and cousins. I’d say Leon is the most flawed, well-rounded variant so far, but that’s because I have never gotten to this word count with anyone else haha

I have had one iteration with an uncle angel, but he wasn’t the same as Leon. He was super mean :S

I’ve played around with the number of siblings as well. I hate to say it, but girl and nonbinary angels weren’t really a thing. 16-year-old me wanted all boys with Daddy issues. In one of my drabbles (that I actually wrote down) there’s like 20+ siblings, and by then I realized it would be kinda weird to have only boys.

In almost every iteration there’s been a Jack character; the wayward kid who wants to run around on Earth. But Daddy Angel can’t have that, and he has to catch them and give them a spanking.

In some versions I’ve had baby angels go to Earth on accident and discover a bunch of nice things about humanity, and once Daddy comes to get them they resist.

The level of controlling vs genuinely concerned Daddy is is something I’ve tinkered with. Personally, I enjoy the controlling “My offspring will fit the mold, I just need to discipline them better” version, but I think I’ve found a good middle ground with how aggressively infantilizing Leon is.

Reproduction:

The biggest change between my old drabbles and Gracelings is that Bram is raised as a human and is then “fetched” to heaven. (The infantilization and non-con hits harder that way.) I'd say I'm taking this concept from Percy Jackson the most, but I guess it's pretty common in YA in general.

In another version, which is the one I use in a Familial send off, you need two angels who basically take a piece out of their grace each and twine it together to make a new angel grace. This is where the term “graceling” comes from, because then the “baby” was basically a lump of glowing grace putty that then “settled” to have a human form.

I’ve also played around with the idea of dead souls turning into angels, like how it works in Miracle workers, and the adult angels would be able to pick and chose which soul they wanted for their baby. The soul wouldn’t have any memories of their Earth life when that happened, which I think has great angst potential. (TW Suicide) There’s this Japanese artist called Avogado6 who has a lot of art with this one evil angel character and a bunch of kiddie angels, where it’s made very clear the adult angel enjoys convincing humans to commit suicide. (The kid angels mostly just hang out in hospitals.) So, if you’d combine these concepts… It’d be dark AF if you see where I’m going… (I'll include pictures of kid angels and a pic that made me think of soul adoption.)

(Spoilers Gracelings) In the one most similar to what I’m using in the current version, I had: Angel + virgin human = angel’s grace combines with the “supernatural power of a virginity” creating a wisp of grace that the adult angel takes home immediately. There would be no pregnancy. The grace putty turns into a baby angel. They would later have to find a vessel for the new angel. However, in Gracelings the baby angel has a vessel from the beginning. I’ve had to play around with the lore to try and make sense of this.

Misc:

In earlier versions, fledglings were always able to hide their wings when they wanted. The parent angel could make them come out by rubbing between their shoulder blades. In Gracelings, though, I wanted the wings to be more interlinked with the development of the fledglings. Flying, hiding your wings and teleporting is all part of the things they need to learn to visit Earth. Because of that I’ve never had fledglings flying around as much as they do in Gracelings, but now that I've pet-sat a pair of budgies on multiple occasions, it feels obvious to have them flying.

The colorful budgie wings is Gracelings exclusive. Before all of them where white or grey.

The napping basket is a recurring object.

Forced baths is a recurring thing. (As I said, Piglett is what kicked off this entire thing haha.)

The work the angels do has also been up in the air for most of the versions. In one there was an active war with hell going on in the background, and in the The Human way I basically ripped off the "heaven is in charge of all natural phenonema" from Miracle workers. Heaven has always been a very bureaucratic, office place, though, which mainly stems from how Supernatural depicted heaven.

Manna is a graceling exclusive. In some versions angels need to eat, in others they just kind of vibe and eat starlight or something. How angels react to human foods isn't new though, I don't think.

Thank you for the ask! It was very fun to go back and try to remember where this story came from :D

[eklesia-system]

Hi, I'm Xander, I just got here today.

🌫️- How many people are in your system We're nearing 200. 188 right now. Lots of new people and I'm one of them.

🌊- What's everyone's favorite colors? Someone likes something from every color of the rainbow. I like black.

☂️- Most common fronters? Khaz, Sai, Beccs, Luc, Remy, Sleet, that's the current lineup.

☔- Collective pronouns? They/Them

💦- Everyone's pronouns? Most go by he/him including me. Then you have some she/her, they/them, it/its, any mix of those four, with some neopronouns... death/deathself (Derek), ze/zir (Dizzy), Any pronouns (Edd, Odd, Snowy), fizz/fitz/fitzself (Elixir), he/himb (Hush), that man (the Keeper), the little guy (Kudzu), thei/them (Rakoko), fluff/fluffself (Rascal), wah (Rascal), et/ez/etself (Rouge), my emperor (Sage I), parr/parrself (Sly).

💧- Most common age group? 15-23. Lots of teenagers and young adults. I'm 11 so I'm outside of that bunch.

💨- Do you have any fictives? Yeah, lots. Skeet is the most vocal.

❄️- Are there any romantic relationships in your system? Yeah. The only ones everyone knows about is... Beccs/Khaz and Varian/Brandi.

🌧️- Does anyone have a favorite number? Jordan likes 44, Sai likes 27. That's all I know.

☁️- Are any of your alters neurodivergent? Probably all of us.

🌤️- How many people are LGBTQIA+ Most of us.

☀️- Do you have any non-human alters (including hybrids)? Yes. Sleet did the rundown in another system ask post.

🌈- What are some common hobbies? Drawing, writing, and an enjoyment of music.

🌪️- What is the most liked food between everyone? Pizza.

🔥- Current hyperfixations? A few different stories, miniatures, stuff like that. Creative projects.

☄️- Do you guys have any collective interests? We're all interested in plurality, I guess.

⚡- What is your headspace like? (If you have one) Sleet describes it in the same previous system ask post.

✨- Does anyone have a pet? A few people have spatters they've adopted. Derek has Thunderstruck, Khaz has Gelato, Sai has Nian, and Luc has Snowy.

⭐- Does your system have a name? Eklesia.

💫- Does anyone wanna share something about their source? Feel free to ramble, anyone can answer too! I was sourced from a dream the system was having last night. So was Billy, so I guess he's my sourcemate?

🪐- Most chaotic group? The Tree Cutters and any of the Dereks in general.

🌎- Any demon/angel/god alters? Erik, Noah, and the Ivory Knight are angels. Khaz is sometimes an angel. Coyote prefers the term "diety" and has no interest in being worshiped.

🌙- Who is the oldest? The oldest alters to form are JJ and Derek Rex. The oldest human is a guy who age slides between 18 and 80 (JJ again), and Archie who is in his fifties. There is also Coyote (thousands of years old), the Keeper (he doesn't know or care how old he is), and a guy who is in his 30s but his time period is 2,000ish years ago, so I dunno what to say about him (Aden).

🌓- What type of system are you? Eisotraumagenic, probably.

🌗- (For traumagenic systems only) Are you diagnosed? If yes, was getting one difficult? If not, do you want one & why or why not? We aren't. Some of us think getting one (for OSDD) would be good and some prefer to let our lived experience be what it is. Getting a diagnosis could be risky for job searching too.

🌕- What is your system dynamic (ex, family, friends, complete strangers, etc) Most people are saying it's like a family. I hope it's nothing like mine.

🌻- What's a normal day for you as a system? I dunno, existing? Switches normally happen every hour or few hours or so, right now I'm tired of being out but nobody is switching in yet, sigh. Right now nothing much. Spending time with friends some days.

🌸- How do you keep track of your system? (Members, switches, etc) SimplyPlural. Sai is pretty anal about keeping the fronting and switching times accurate.

🥀- Any childhood things that should've tipped you off to being a system? Hey it's Sai, really quick since I was most active in childhood. Talking to myself and responding to myself, that one time I wrote a story where I talked to someone and they told me something I never would have thought of myself, hearing entire arguments in my head with different voices pitching in... little things like that. Also my lifelong interest in characters who had more than one personality, which I really related to for some reason. Derek and Sleet were those reasons. -Sai

💐- Do you like being a system? Xander again. Looks like we do.

🐚- Do you know any systems IRL? We have a partner system that goes by Sol. They're one of our closest friends and multiple of our alters are dating their alters.

🍄- Do you prefer in-system dating or out-of-system dating? They're saying it depends. Both have their pros and cons.

🍁- What's the most annoying thing about being a system? Not having our own bodies and having to be perceived as whoever or whatever people think the body is. Knowing that nobody would believe me if I told them I was an 11 year old boy unless they already know about this stuff.

🎍- How bad is your amnesia? Darren and Vertex have amnesia the most. Darren needs to be told what's going on and Vertex can black out completely and forget his own name, where he is, everything. Mostly though we just have trouble remembering to do things we need to do and Phoenix keeps track of everyone's memories in real time so the amnesia is usually more emotional, like, "someone else did that, but it wasn't me." That's how I'm able to type all of this out since I'm new.

🌿- Best quote from an alter? "Adam, you're a chicken taco." -Derek

🌳- Do alters have separate accounts for games or do you all share an account? We share. I wish our laptop could run more games, there's only two games on here at all. Thanks for reading, I guess. -Xander

🌫️- How many people are in your system

🌊- What's everyone's favorite colors?

☂️- Most common fronters?

☔- Collective pronouns?

💦- Everyone's pronouns?

💧- Most common age group?

💨- Do you have any fictives?

❄️- Are there any romantic relationships in your system?

🌧️- Does anyone have a favorite number?

☁️- Are any of your alters neurodivergent?

🌤️- How many people are LGBTQIA+

☀️- Do you have any non-human alters (including hybrids)?

🌈- What are some common hobbies?

🌪️- What is the most liked food between everyone?

🔥- Current hyperfixations?

☄️- Do you guys have any collective interests?

⚡- What is your headspace like? (If you have one)

✨- Does anyone have a pet?

⭐- Does your system have a name?

💫- Does anyone wanna share something about their source? Feel free to ramble, anyone can answer too!

🪐- Most chaotic group?

🌎- Any demon/angel/god alters?

🌙- Who is the oldest?

🌓- What type of system are you?

🌗- (For traumagenic systems only) Are you diagnosed? If yes, was getting one difficult? If not, do you want one & why or why not?

🌕- What is your system dynamic (ex, family, friends, complete strangers, etc)

🌻- What's a normal day for you as a system?

🌸- How do you keep track of your system? (Members, switches, etc)

🥀- Any childhood things that should've tipped you off to being a system?

💐- Do you like being a system?

🐚- Do you know any systems IRL?

🍄- Do you prefer in-system dating or out-of-system dating?

🍁- What's the most annoying thing about being a system?

🎍- How bad is your amnesia?

🌿- Best quote from an alter?

🌳- Do alters have separate accounts for games or do you all share an account?

A free to use ask game for systems!

Anti Endo, anti other origin systems, DNI with this post

[harringrovetrashrat]

Tagged by @disdaidal !!!  Thank you!  Omg I’m like 🥺💖🥺💖

So, I figure since I have so many things I’m working on, and no idea when I’ll actually finish them (outside of my Big Bang Project), I should share the bits of them that I do actually have dhfoiahfiosh

What we have are these:

A fic where Billy meets some older queer people while kicked out, and learns from them how to love himself

“So I’m guessing you’ve never met a queen before,” they said. Billy shook his head.

“I’ve never met any royalty.” Juicy laughed and it made Billy feel like he’d said the wrong thing until she looked at him again, practically beaming.

“Well honey, there’s queens abound in here. Drag Queens, specifically.” Billy’s mouth formed a small ‘o’.

“So, you’re a… man?” Juicy shook her head.

“Personally, I find man and woman too limiting. All gender is a costume, darling. I just think dresses are prettier than suits.”

“You haven’t been in the right suits,” Cindy said with a smirk. Juicy gave her the finger without looking.

“It’s called taste, sweetie.” Cindy just laughed. Billy stared at Juicy, feeling awed by them. They were so tall, toned and beautiful. Their skin was dark and glistened with the glitter they’d spread over it. “I’m sure you have taste, don’t you munchkin?” Billy couldn’t help it and he pouted.

“I’m not short, I’m average for my age,” he snapped. Juicy just smiled.

“I like you,” they said, pointing a long nailed finger at him.

A Cheesy Summer Camp Horror fic, with romance and comedy because Like.  Y’all know me.

“Let’s stop talking about her,” Heather cut in. “Let’s talk about this weekend.”

“This weekend?” Billy asked, perking up. “What about it?”

“Well, I was thinking we could celebrate the end of the first week with a skinny dip,” she said, eyes sparkling. Billy didn’t miss the flush that crossed over Robin’s face, though he wasn’t entirely sure who it was directed at. He definitely had a guess.

“I’m game!” Tommy piped up, grin wide, anger disappearing from his face. Billy rolled his eyes and snorted, but raised his hand, tongue running over his top teeth.

“Why not,” he said, giving his eyebrows a quirk. “I ain’t no pussy.”

“Of course,” Adam muttered, rolling his eyes. Billy’s eyes snapped over and narrowed. “Isn’t it a little, I dunno, juvenile?”

“Oh come on,” Steve chimed in, munching on the cookie now, relaxing with the change of topic. “Maybe so, but it’s summer, it’s camp, why not, right? Start it off with a bang?” His smile was teasing, bright, and Billy found it hard to look away, hard to deny that smile what it wanted.

The Reverse AU where Steve moves to Hawkins with his father and step family, Claudia and Dustin, and Billy was adopted into the Mayfields

“I’m not--! It’s just midterms! That’s what has me all out of sorts.” He opened his notebook and tried to will his blush away. There was a soft thud and Nancy joined them.

“What has you out of sorts?” She asked.

“Mid--”

“Billy so has a crush on that new guy from New York,” Heather said. Billy made a noise of protest when Nancy smiled, leaning over.

“Oh he’s so cute! Truly impeccable taste you have,” she teased. Billy rested his head on the table.

“I hate both of you so fucking much,” he hissed.

“No you don’t,” they chorused.

“I do, I really do,” Billy replied.

Mermaid AU where Steve and Billy were young friends before being separated.  Steve tries to reunite them obviously

“I can show you a bunch of cool stuff,” Billy said, feeling oddly proud of himself. And well, the ocean was his home. And he never got the chance to really show it off to someone who didn’t already know it. “If I show you the ocean, will you tell me more about humans?” Steve nodded. “Like, why are all the ships girls?”

“Huh,” Steve said, tapping his chin with his finger. “I don’t actually know… Usually I think ‘cause a guy names them. I’ll ask my tutor. He knows everything.” Steve wasn’t a huge fan of Professor Owens, but he was nice enough. He let Steve find things to bring in and ask questions about, he didn’t get mad like Steve’s other tutors had when he had trouble reading. So even though Owens still pushed for Steve to focus more on his future, he was better than the other adults in Steve’s life.

“Tutor?” Billy asked. “What’s that?”

“Like a teacher,” Steve replied. “But like… Different.” In fact, Steve wasn’t totally sure what the difference was. Billy just squinted, looking confused.

“Different… how?”

“Uh, tutors are… are taller,” Steve replied matter of factly. Professor Owens was taller than Ms. Joyce had been, so there wasn’t anything to argue against that. Billy nodded seriously, making a note.

There was a ringing bell and a distant voice calling Steve’s name, making him sigh dramatically. It was already time? Billy’s ears twitched a little and he looked at Steve.

“What’s that?”

“That’s my nanny,” Steve said, mopey and pouting.

More of You’ll Find Me Looking Over the Edge of the World

“Oh, King Steve thinking about skipping?” Billy tugged him down, making Steve stumble as a fist started rubbing against his scalp and messing up his hair.

“Fuck, dude!” Steve cried, nearly dropping his tray. Billy just cackled, letting him go and shoving his hands in his pockets.

“No,” Nancy said through grit teeth. “He’s thinking about staying and taking--”

“He can’t go around looking like that,” Billy said with faux concern, eyes all worried as he leaned on the table with one hand and used the other to point at Steve’s, now fully messed up, hair. “I think Steve’ll have to take the afternoon, don’t you?” Billy turned to look over his shoulder, not seeing the way Nancy rubbed at her temples as Jonathan very obviously tried not to snicker. Steve almost felt bad. Billy knocked on the table with his knuckles, pushing up with a grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him home safely.”

“Get me home--” Steve began, but before he could finish his sentence, Billy was shoving him around and out of the cafeteria. Nancy sighed, shaking her head, giving Steve a look he knew would turn into a talk later. “Sorry guys!” Steve tossed over his shoulder.

Billy with a rat he named Max to piss off Max (he calls her human Max and she hates it)

“And what the fuck are you doing here?!” He asked her. Max, the little trouble maker, just squeaked at him, wriggling in his grip. “No fucking wonder I didn’t see you in Barbie’s house this morning, you decided to be a fucking Houndini, didn’t you.” She squeaked again, tail swirling and dragging along his wrist. He heard footsteps behind him and moved to shove her back into his jacket sleeve when Steve approached.

“You okay-- Oh!” Steve blinked, brows raised as he saw Max reach with her small, cute little pink hands to grab for Billy’s hard nipple again. “So…”

“Cut that out!” Billy hissed, moving her down to cradle her against his stomach. She settled in, but she was definitely hungry and would get restless again quickly. “I didn’t see her this morning but just assumed she was hiding in her little pile.”

“Me too,” Steve said, checking around the hallway for anyone who was late. Luckily, there was no one around to see them trying to hide a rat in Billy’s jacket. “How’d she even get out?”

“I mean, we are keeping her in a Barbie dream house instead of a cage--”

“Really? You’re gonna sass me now? After you insisted that she ‘live like the princess she is’--”

Stranger Than Fiction AU

“Billy, I swear to fucking god if you don’t get out there right now--” Billy stumbled out from the back, head turned to glare at Max, who was pushing him from behind. She pushed until he was at the counter, face to face with Steve. He glared, though his face was flush. Max crossed her arms. “Like we fuckin’ practiced.” Billy shot her another angry glance, but then looked back to Steve. Who was so confused.

“Max may have, uhm, brought it to my attention that I may have overreacted just the tiniest little bit.”

“That’s not at all right,” Max said under her breath. Billy swatted behind him without looking, missing her completely.

“Anyway,” he pressed on, “I just,” he sighed, pushing an errant curl behind his ear. Steve watched the movement before snapping his eyes back to Billy’s. “I don’t often take the chance to be nice, so I got maybe a little offended.” Max scoffed. “Okay a lot offended,” he said with an eye roll. Steve couldn’t help it; he snorted. Billy’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes lit up, like a kid who just learned Santa was real. Steve blushed, looking away, but he couldn’t hide the smile on his face.

“It’s okay,” he replied, turning back to look at Billy. The sun lit up the stray blonde hairs poking out of his messy bun, making a light halo around him. Steve had to catch his breath.

It was like looking at an angel, vengeful and dangerous, but exciting all at once. His eyes seemed to shine, bright and gleeful, but also full of mischief.

“It’s okay,” Steve repeated, feeling his face heat up more. “I would have taken them if I could. They were amazing.” He smiled, nodding towards the stairs. “I should get to it though. Last day and all.” Something sad briefly flickered over Billy’s face, but it was gone as soon as it was there, and Steve thought he must have imagined it.

“Yeah, good luck,” Billy said. Max was smiling, smug, and she punched Billy’s shoulder.

Leverage AU

“Well,” he said slowly, letting the trio shake off their shadows. “The lab closed.” This isn’t about the kid was the underlying message. “But, what’s happening now is that Mayor Kline accepted a lot of weird bribes. They’re from a company called Starcourt Industries. Now, that’s the name of the mall that opened, Starcourt, but what’s weird--”

“--Is that they didn’t exist for very long before suddenly popping up in Indiana,” Alec cut in. “It reads like one of our companies. General background, seems legit, but I did a lot of poking around most of this stuff leads to loose ends. It took a while to get there, so at first glance…” The group nodded. At first glance everything checked out, and even a little digging would provide a general cover that most people wouldn’t think to look past.

Of course, none of them were most people.

“So who are they?” Eliot asked.

“All of the loose ends lead back to Russia,” Alec said. “But nothing concrete or connected, just more companies that do really general stuff. It goes real deep.” The implications there were discomforting. Alec was a genius, and excelled in his line of work, but this kind of grand scale cover up meant one thing: this was bigger than just a few bad apples in a company. This was a plan.

“So who’s the client?” Sophie asked. Nate pulled up a picture of a grumpy looking man, mustache groomed and eyes hard, but kind.

“Chief Jim Hopper.” That got Parker’s attention, bringing her out of the funk she’d been in since the mention of San Diego and Billy.

“Like, Police Chief?”

“Yep,” Nate said, popping the P. “He’s the one who found the kid, found out there was something going on at the lab. Now, he’s positive something weird is going on. Knows he’s done everything he can to legally take the Mayor down, but the man has a lot of friends in high places, and Jim can’t do anything. And that’s,” he smiled, “Where we come in.”

That’s still merely some of what I have going on, but that’s what I’ll share rn. Anyway, tag me in ur WIPs! I’d love to read them :) tag ur it

[rifroleplays]

Hello, dear! You've been visited by the random character question fairy! :D ~☆

Does your character's name have any meaning? Is there a reason why they were named this? How much significance does your character's name have to them?

Hello there random-OC-questions-fairy, how lovely of you to drop by! I think the concept of your blog is super sweet and I’m excited to see you around! :D  

I kinda have too many characters and since you didn’t specify what character I will take this opportunity to just introduce a bunch of characters!

As a disclaimer: all of my characters’ names have a meaning and they were carefully selected, but I can’t recall a lot of them due to time past and some were chosen with a little less care than others. So, here a list of those that 1) I do remember and 2) are interesting enough to share, categorised in their character main trait! 

Grumpy 

Zao Gao 

Zao Gao is an orphan born in a time of war that doesn't have an actual name. He was named 'Gao' for the place he grew up in, along with the rest of his orphaned peers. 'Zao' was given to him because 'Zao' means bad and Zao Gao together sounds like: 'chaos' or 'temper' which he is both. In any case, the name is given to him more as an indicator of his character than anything else and he stuck with it.

Maxwell Stirling [Argus]

While his given name was arbitrarily given his stage name was carefully selected. After his first failure as the frontman of his band and the scandal that eventually had him fall down Maxwell chose 'Argus' as his name of rebirth. It refers to a giant with hundred eyes; the all-seeing one. Maxwell (or Argus as he prefers now) will never let himself fall down the pededistal again, not by himself or by his closest friends. That's the promise he made when he chose his new stage name.

Mallory Devlin 

Mallory is born with bad luck and her name represents such as well. She always manages to get hurt, or her explosive character gets herself or another hurt. In any case, both her first and family name refer to this legendary ill luck and bad omens surrounding her. Whether this was intentional from her mother's side or not is something Mallory hasn't figured out yet, but that it is cursed is agreed upon by all.

Mischievous 

Wayland Turing 

As an engineer stuck and condemned in the penial colony of Atlantis Wayland made the swift decision to change his name when he arrived. Turing, after the genius mathematician Alan Turing. He feels a certain kinship with the man as he hides away his intelligence and talents under a façade of wild child antics.

Gui

Literally translated his name becomes 'Stranger' and it reveals how it isn't really a name. The guardian of the spiritual borders between life and death and reincarnation has long forgotten his name, or he rather not recalls as it is easier to pretend that he is a stranger to all.

Thomas Baris 

Her parents wanted a son, after five daughters that's after all a good aim to have. Some variety. Instead they got Thomas, daughter number six. Seeing as her grandfathers really wanted to pass on their family name, and seeing as no one had actually thought of yet another girl's name the youngest Baris was named: Thomas, or more accurately: Tomasa. Luckily Tomasa, or Thomas, grew up rather wild earning her the position as 'the only son that isn't'.

Jane Plane 

Jane died, she was murdered. By whom, she has no idea, but she does know that she was very plain as a human. Unnoticed and ignored, Jane decided that she will never again be that human again, except now she is a wandering ghost terrorising a particular kid that happens to be able to see ghosts.

(put straightforwardly: Jane's name is a pun on 'Plain Jane'.)

Anya Nosferatu 

What her name was before 'father' took her in Anya rather not says, or she doesn't remember. Anya was the name 'father' gave her because she needed something to fill in the space before she would become 'Nosferatu'. A name picked from a list of names at random and one Anya grew rather more attached to than she should. As such the meaning of her name is rather more sentimental rather than truly meaningful.

Nosferatu is the name she was to adopt. The name representing the librarians of the vampire society. The one meant to record their history and their tales, but never involve themselves.

Cocky 

Eremurus 

The eremurus, also known as cattail or foxtail lilies, is a plant that symbolises endurance. Eremurus, born Gabriel Engelbert (angelic names befitting his angelic appearance) chose this symbolical stage name when he came of age in the House of the Fallen Star. To represent the hardships he had to endure, to remind him of the sacrifices he has made, and the decisions the adults made for him when he was a child and he had to endure.

Anxious 

Emrys Jernigan 

Emrys was another name for Merlin, the mythical figure that stood next to the King that would be: Arthur. Emrys has no Arthur in his life, or so he believes, but he does possess magic, like Merlin. It is a constant joke and a promise of greatness that the warlock doesn't believe in.

Ophanim Hayyoth 

Both Ophanim’s given and surname are derived from Jewish mythology and refer to a class of heavenly beings also known as: angels. Ophanim are the wheels, the many-eyed chariot that move beneath the throne of God. Hayyoth is the name of their heavenly class. It stands to reason that with all these angelic references Ophanim also has an angel theme ongoing, what with him being an avian creature with wings. 

Bubbly 

Ondine Fear 

Ondine's curse is a sleeping curse from the myth that takes away the breath of a beloved wife. No one would have thought that this name would be so foreboding with the birth of her younger sister. The surname Fear means 'human' and not necessarily the emotion, though it is ironic how it is exactly the emotion 'fear' her family sees when they see Ondine and that she isn't part of 'man' as her name suggests her to be. Ondine is a changeling who got swapped in the cradle with the actual human girl that was meant to be 'Ondine'.

Romantic/Flirty 

Eirian Keegan [Ambrosia]

When Eirian grew up she had vowed herself to be desired. Now that she is grown Eirian chooses Ambrosia as her monicker to show the world that she has succeeded. God's fruit, the irresistible food of Olympus few can survive. It is the promise of a femme fatale who is unafraid to use all of her assets to reach her goals.

Hardworking/Caring 

Shinju Maeda

Literally translated her name means 'pearl' looking deeper into it her name also sounds like 'truth' and can be interpreted as such looking at the kanji. A seemingly simplistic name holding layers of wishes and hopes from her parents. Shinju is fortunate to honour her name indeed as it was given to her.

Leto Sheridan 

Lethe is the name of the river of forgetfulness in the underworld according to Greek mythology, one drop of the river is said to be enough to forget all sorrows of life. Leto is named after that river and not after the deity that gave birth to Apollo and Artemis as popularly believed. Her parents' gave her the name with the hope that the female would grow up without sorrow, or not having to know it. Unfortunately life took a turn.

[hellrisen]

WHAT IS UP, MY DUDES ?                  the name’s mads. short for mads mikkelsen’s #1 fan and lover —— alternatively amanda. you can call me whatever you want, though. or anytime :wink: i am twenty - three years young, and i go by she / them pronouns. my favorite movie franchise is scream and i think machine gun kelly is the best thing since sliced bread. but that’s enough about me … so, click the      READ MORE     below for a brief introduction to my oc’s ! 

ALISHA BOE, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER   …   you’re looking for sawyer kinney? town as small as this, you’re bound to find them — the twenty-two year old nephilim and student with an unadulterated love for soccer, bonne bell cotton candy lip smackers, and 1980′s romcoms. with blondies′ sunday girl set as the soundtrack of their stroll, everyone can see clear as day that they’re tenacious, and yet blithe. i just hope you’re finding them for the right reasons …

BACKSTORY …

MEET SAWYER KINNEY —— half angel, half fun. adopted by a nice christian pair in ‘97 after her mommy kicked the bucket. that’s what happens when you fraternise with angels, you see. so … daddy dearest dropped her off at one of eden’s many, many, many churches and said SEE YA !

since then, angelic endeavours have been stifled. for the most part. her adoptive parents died when she was thirteen years old. car crash. and it might’ve been partially sawyer’s fault. we can’t all control our divine urges. or the powers inherited from fathers we never knew.

premonition and other sorts of fun hasn’t been experienced since. partially due to the seizure meds her family feeds her like tic tacs. she’s got epilepsy ! except she like, doesn’t. but from an adult pov and an absence of telekinetic rages since childhood, sawyer accepts the diagnosis at face value. nobody said she was smart.

she’s a vet student, though ! so, she’s semi - smart. sawyer loves all animals ( bunnies mostly ) and has since she was a wee lass. same goes for soccer. nobody loves muddy balls as much as sawyer kinney, y’all.

survivor of three near death experiences, only one which was self - inflicted, sawyer’s kind of convinced herself to have a purpose. she doesn’t. but since the third incident, she’s been more connected to god than ever before. a poor idolisation considering he’d have her sniped if he knew of her existence.

another addition to sawyer’s idiocy is her lack of deep thought regarding the town she lives in. yeah, it’s quirky ! and people are superstitious ! but that’s all there is to it. but as she’s starting to engage more with the vamps of eden, as well as pushing for a release from her medication, she’ll have to unveil this creep - fest for what it is … well, a creep fest.

PERSONALITY …

she’s pushy. like, very. sawyer’s very engaged with her friends and family, possibly due to middle child slash adopted child syndrome. include her or die.

competitive, too. she can get kinda mean when there’s a WINNER title on the horizon. because she has to win, she must win — she’s the best person at whatever they’re competing in. swear to satan ! ( that was me, not sawyer, don’t worry. )

on top of that, sawyer’s the epitome of a social butterfly. she’ll befriend anyone at any given opportunity, and maybe that’s why she’s gonna end up dead in an alley. either way, if there’s a person she does not know —— sawyer will know them by the end of the day. so, it goes without saying then, that she’s quite the partier. drinking is fun ! dancing is fun ! okay ? cool.

STEVEN YEUN, DEMI BOY, HE/THEY   …   you’re looking for wolfgang baek? town as small as this, you’re bound to find them — the thirty-seven year old human and podcast host with an unadulterated love for dario argento films, his super 8 camera, and chicken mcnuggets is easy to spot. with charles manson’s look at your game, girl set as the soundtrack of their stroll, everyone can see clear as day that they’re meddlesome, and yet voluble. i just hope you’re finding them for the right reasons …

BACKSTORY …

MEET WOLFGANG BAEK —— flop movie director / screenwriter, son of a successful movie director / screenwriter, who resorted to hosting a spooky podcast. men, am i right ? always making them podcasts …

wolfie is what you call a movie buff. horror movies specifically. he loves himself a good scare ! hence why he moved to this little hell - town called eden. it was all for that sick and twisted inspiration. for what you ask — well, for his next movie, duh ! the one he started four years ago and has yet to finish … yeah, that one.

due to his father’s job he spent the majority of his childhood on the cinematic scene. both off and on screen. yeah, he got a cameo in one of his daddy’s 1980′s films ! jealous yet ? you should be. but it isn’t just because of that he has never done a sport in his life, okay … he also has heart issues, baby. a defect heart valve that got fixed ( best it could ) when he was a wee bean. it’s fine now. for the most part.

now he’s kind of obsessed with outdoing his dad even though that is the biggest cliche out of all the cliches and he’s aware of the fact. simply being introspective is not enough, is it ? he’s made a couple shorts, and one feature length — flops the whole bunch. i mean, they’re decent to OUR standards. but to this perfectionist ? nah, son. burn that shit.

PERSONALITY …

wolfie can be … callous. insensitive. a bit of a prick. not in the sense of deliberate asshole - ness, but — he’s desensitised to the world’s tragedies ( too many true crime dramas ) and he’s incredibly pretentious. it’s cinema, darling.

he talks a lot, too. TOO MUCH ! nobody asked for his input regarding the rise and the decline of the slasher genre but here he is … putting it in regardless. odds are every other sentence includes either a. a movie reference, or b. a true crime reference. pick one.

because he’s all work and no play, he’s never had a serious girlfriend. i know ! shocking, right ? i mean, look at him !!!!!!!! but no. longest relationship lasted a whooping four months and we don’t talk about that one. there might be a part of him that believes he’s incapable of love … we don’t talk about that either.

AUBREY PLAZA, AGENDER, SHE/THEY   …   you’re looking for muriel stafford? town as small as this, you’re bound to find them — the thirty-five year old possessed human and journalist with an unadulterated love for impromptu road trips, take-out delivery food, and burt’s bees pomegranate lip balm is easy to spot. with santana’s she’s not there set as the soundtrack of their stroll, everyone can see clear as day that they’re aloof, and yet perspicacious. i just hope you’re finding them for the right reasons …

BACKSTORY …

MEET MURIEL STAFFORD —— stanford graduate and general pain in the butt. disowned by her family and the whole ghost hunting community. things we don’t discuss: see above.

to make a long story incredibly short, merle grew up in a haunted house. or so they say … you see, when merle was nine years old, her sister was possessed BY THE DEVIL. or so they say … and all that trauma ? documented, darlings. because momma and poppa don’t hesitate to capitalise on their own children. sickening.

according to merle, her sister suffered a psychotic break, and her parents — previously z listers with an affinity for running ghost hunting blogs — didn’t hesitate to make the fact their latest pitch. AND TO STARDOM THEY WENT ! meanwhile, agnes delgado chugged drain - cleaner two years after it aired.

fast forward last year of college, and the anniversary of the notorious exorcism documentary comes creeping up. so merle says enough is enough ! girl puts her soon - to - be journalism degree to use and writes an extensive exposé on her own fam. that ought to show them, right ? well …

turns out : her input was not wanted. as if it wasn’t bad enough to have the remainder of the delgado clan turn on her, the anonymous identity she’d craved ever since entering the spotlight years ago — it is snatched from her ! safe to say she did not think it through.

so, what now ? well, we change our last name to our mommy’s maiden name and we escape the hell - scape that is texas and then, we hope nobody added your newly - zit - free face to memory. because it’s been * math years * ! okay ? forget it … you never read any of the above …

PERSONALITY … 

merle has never cared for much in general, and that’s very obvious. she has a very deadpan approach to life and all of its difficulties. plus, riveting backstory in mind — she’s unlikely to share details of her life unless it pertains recent mundane bull - crap !

going against everything previously established, her attitude towards the supernatural is not skeptical. aliens, ghosts, ghouls … all things that exist. because muriel delgado grew up in a haunted house. and while her adult mind rationalised all that was seen in her childhood, it also suffered a break of its own post her sister’s death - aversary.

it’s nice to come face to face with old friends, though, innit ? and if all she has left of her past is the demonic presence lurking in the back of her mind, then so be it. beggars cannot be choosers, merle.

[erinptah]

The Secret Commonwealth review: It was...pretty underwhelming, mostly

Finally got the audiobook of The Secret Commonwealth checked out from my local library!

(Here’s my review of its predecessor, La Belle Sauvage, if you want to start there.)

It’s 20 hours long. Whoof.

As for the contents…look, it was well-written prose. I didn’t get bored while listening. (Rereading that last review, I realized I’d written the same thing about the previous book, too.) But in retrospect, there sure was not a lot that happened in those 20 hours. Some notable action bits, in between a lot of padding.

And my reactions mostly consist of…complaints. Not “this is hideous, time to ragequit the series, this is an unqualified anti-rec” complaints, more a low-level churn of frustration.

(There’s one scene I know has made someone else outright refuse to read it, though, and I think it’s totally reasonable. More on that later.)

So I’m gonna try to unpack a bunch of it here. Hopefully in enough detail that, if you haven’t read it yet (and don’t mind spoilers), it can help you make an informed decision about whether it’s worth spending 20 hours of your life on.

Spoilers start here!

The Story

We open with Lyra as a 20-year-old student at St. Sophia’s, a women’s college in Oxford. She’s made some kinda-friends, including former booty calls that she’s still on good terms with, but she’s badly estranged from Pantalaimon.

Their rift is exacerbated by a couple of books she’s read that are popular with young intellectuals lately. One is a philosophy book, one is a novel, both of them seem broadly Ayn Randian in the sense that “teens/college kids get really into these books and decide it’s smart and fashionable to adopt their moral framework, ignoring both the logical failures and the ways in which this turns you into a horrible person.”

She’s been staying at Jordan between semesters, but political drama forces her to move, and that’s when Oakley Street swoops in to make contact. They’re the secret Magisterum-thwarting spy organization that Hannah Relf worked for in La Belle Sauvage. Employees now include Alice Lonsdale and Malcolm Polstead, who fill Lyra in on the events of the previous book.

Lyra crashes at Malcolm’s parents’ inn for a bit, but her fighting with Pan gets so bad that he takes off, leaving a note. He’s going to confront one of the authors of the fashionable/terrible books — who lives in Germany, so this could take a while.

Since Lyra can’t just hang around and go through the motions of a normal life while her daemon is visibly missing, she takes off too. First on a detour to the Gyptians, then on a sorta meandering cross-continental journey of her own.

Along the way, both Lyra and Pan keep uncovering new details about this ongoing side plot:

It turns out there’s a place, I think somewhere in the Middle East, where daemons can’t go — same as the area in the North that witches use for separation ordeals. If a human crosses that area, they arrive at the growing-place of a type of rose that won’t grow properly anywhere else, whose oil has the same effect as the seed-pod sap used by Mary Malone in the mulefa world — you can use it to make a Dust-viewing lens.

This rose oil can also be used to make all kinds of super-cool products, like the World’s Best Perfume and the World’s Best Rosewater, so it’s valuable for lots of reasons. But a few researchers have caught on to the Dust-viewing power, and the Magisterium has caught on that some dangerous research is happening with roses, so they’ve started destroying every rosebush they can find in the general region — wreaking havoc with the global economy in the process.

(They’re also trying to convince the general population that God Says Roses Are Immoral now. If this book had come out 5 years ago, I could’ve made some great connections with “there’s widespread successful Magisterium propaganda about how nobody should like or respect the work of botanists.”)

And there’s a related plot where Lyra’s uncle (she actually has one! Mrs. Coulter had a brother!) is playing a long game to re-consolidate as much Magisterium power as possible under a single individual. It gets us some good dramatic sequences…which I feel no need to break down here, because they’re exactly the ones you would imagine, with exactly the outcome you’re already expecting.

One of Uncle Wannabe-Pope’s employees is Bonneville Junior, the son of the miniboss from La Belle Sauvage. He’s a trained alethiometrist, but is more interested in his personal vendetta against Lyra than his actual job. Takes after Dad in that he’s not very deep or complex, just a straightforward fun-to-hate villain.

Pan eventually makes his way to the Terrible Author’s home, where he discovers that things are weird and creepy, but not very specific. Doesn’t achieve anything in particular, either. Disheartened, he sets off for the Region of the Weird Roses, with the idea he’ll meet Lyra there.

Lyra, meanwhile, has a notebook they recovered from an explorer who went to the Region of the Weird Roses. It includes a list of other (non-witch) people across the world who’ve been separated, because apparently they’re more common than you’d think, and have a secret support network. So she visits a few of these people along her trip, with an endgame goal of Weird Roseville.

Malcolm also makes his own journey toward Weird Roseville. I think it was part of an Oakley Street investigation into “what does the Magisterium have against roses these days?” In the middle of it, Bonneville Junior confronts him (Junior is having trouble finding Lyra, but has a secondary vendetta against Malcolm for killing his dad, so this is almost as good). Malcolm talks him down.

At last Lyra, Pan, and Junior all hit the same “creepy deserted town in the general area of Weird Roseville.” But none of them manage to interact before the book ends.

…In my LBS review, I said it had serious middle-of-the-trilogy syndrome, a whole lot of setup for no payoff. TSC spends very little time following up on any of it. To be fair, the Original Trilogy has happened in the meantime and this book also tries to address some of the events from that, but the vast bulk of it is even more setup for no payoff.

Complaints, Broadly Organized By Theme, In Loosely Chronological Order

Lyra at St. Sophia’s:

I really like how the opening sequence involves Lyra noticing a friend is in distress and helping her out! (Friend’s dad is in the rose-using business, and his company is going under.) And then…that’s the last we see of any connections with female friends her own age. In the entire book.

One of the Terrible Rationalist Books is spreading the idea that “daemons are a collective hallucination.” This is not a “rational” idea in this world! It would be like saying that faces are a collective hallucination!

And Lyra is the least likely person in this world to buy into it, because she’s visited a world without visible daemons, and got empirical proof (via Will’s and John Parry’s separation ordeals) that even under those conditions, they still exist!

I can appreciate the idea of Lyra and Pan being traumatized and scarred and having trouble, but this, specifically, is a nonsensical thing for them to argue over.

The book also gestures (not very hard, thankfully) toward the idea that Lyra is doubting the existence of magic in general. Which, again, is the equivalent of someone from our world deciding it’s rational to doubt the existence of weather.

Also, it seems like Lyra/Pan haven’t had any contact with witch society through these years. Why not? If anyone’s going to have sympathy and understanding and support groups for their separation-related trauma, it’s the culture where every single member formally goes through the same thing! And I’m sure Serafina would be delighted to see them! But they don’t even consider the idea.

Lyra and Malcolm:

Yes, they’re being telegraphed as a future couple, and yes, it’s just as creepy and unappealing as the internet has been saying.

And, look, I’m not going to say “20-year-old Lyra is too young to date anyone she wants.” Not after we got through all of Original Flavor HDM without saying “12-year-old Lyra is too young to go on an interdimensional journey with no adult supervision and save the multiverse.”

But he was one of her teachers when she was 16, and his POV includes remembering how he had to actively shut down sexual interest in her then, and here in the present Lyra still thinks of him as kind of a distant authority figure, and that’s weird, okay?

They only have a couple days’ worth of actual interaction before being apart for the rest of the book. That’s not enough time to believably develop their dynamic into something believably-potentially-romantic. So the narrative doesn’t try.

…but it still has multiple people ask Malcolm if he’s in love with Lyra afterward.

The foreshadowing on Lyra’s side is all in how she keeps thinking about how similar he is to Will. (Cat daemon, killed someone when he was a tween, etc.) Because that’s what we all want for Lyra’s romantic future, a knockoff Will-substitute, amirite?

Separately: Malcolm and friends tell Lyra the whole backstory about the magical boat trip from La Belle Sauvage, but it doesn’t seem like she tells them anything about “that time I went on an interdimensional journey, built a group of allies from multiple worlds and species including literal angels, killed God, and permanently rewrote the nature of death.” I feel like that should’ve come up!

General daemon stuff:

There’s a moment in the early chapters when Pan, wandering alone at night, considers eating some small critter (the kind that an ordinary pine marten would eat). It’s not like he’s going through a species-identity crisis, either. It’s just written as…a thing a daemon might do. So that’s weird.

In the original series, daemon separation is a major, improbable ordeal. Under normal circumstances, a human and a daemon being dragged apart past their distance limit will just kill them. At Bolvangar they figured out a severance method that would leave you physically functional, but dead inside. Witch-style separation only happens at this special daemon-repelling place in the North (you don’t have to be a witch to use it, see John Parry, but they usually don’t tell non-witches it exists), or on the shores of the World of the Dead. So far, so good.

In this series, we find out that there’s another place on this Earth with the same daemon-repelling properties. It’s also remote and isolated and associated with Cool Weird Stuff (the cities in the Northern Lights vs. the Dust-revealing roses). Again, so far, so good.

…And then we find out that random people can just kinda do a separation ordeal anywhere. Okay, it already happened to Malcolm in La Belle Sauvage, but now it’s all over the place. Lyra keeps spotting people on the street without daemons! Pan teams up with a kid who got dragged apart from her daemon in a shipwreck, and it didn’t kill them! It’s too easy. It’s unsatisfying. It undercuts so much of the monumental feeling separation had in the original trilogy.

It also makes it even weirder that nobody was able to hook Lyra and Pan up with a support group. Oakley Street couldn’t suss it out? Her friends among the Gyptians couldn’t catch an underground rumor and pass it on?

Related: when we saw daemonless kids in The Golden Compass, they were treated like horror-movie monsters. Like zombies, ghosts, bodies walking around without heads. But when people clock Lyra as being daemonless here, they treat it like it’s something immoral. Like she’s walking around topless and needs to cover it up.

There’s just a general pattern of rewriting HDM’s established rules about daemons, and not for the better.

And speaking of rewriting established rules…general alethiometer stuff:

There is a New Method for reading the alethiometer. It involves pointing all three hands at the same symbol, which already seems like a gimmick, not a useful way to frame a question.

And somehow, that gets you the answers in the form of…magic visions. No intuition or interpretation needed! The sights and sounds just get funneled directly into your brain!

The reason this isn’t a Plot-Breaking Hack is because it makes the user super-queasy. You can only use it when you’re in a position to be sick afterward, and people would rather not use it at all.

Lyra spends most of the story with the alethiometer, and without all the symbology books that go with it. She avoids using the New Method because of the nausea, but she also avoids using the Classic Method, on the grounds that it apparently can’t get her anything without the books.

She’s been studying these books for years now! Couldn’t she at least try to read it, and make her best guess at the interpretation? Maybe sometimes she gets it right, maybe sometimes she’s wrong and things go sideways and she realizes in hindsight which of the symbols she misread, maybe sometimes she gives up and gets depressed and puts it away without drawing a conclusion at all…but nope, she just flat-out doesn’t interact with it.

Midway through the book, Lyra gets a tipoff about a kind of truth-reading cards. That’s fine; we know there are other methods of truth-reading in the multiverse, including the I Ching and Mary Malone’s computer. Makes sense as a new tidbit of worldbuilding.

But towards the end of the story, someone helpfully gifts Lyra a deck of the cards. And she spends some time trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the cards fit together. More time than she spends trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the alethiometer fit together.

The alethiometer didn’t need a New Method or a total replacement in the narrative…but apparently it’s getting them.

And what was the point of Lyra dedicating herself to studying those symbols, for years, if she can get better and more-accurate data from a set of symbols she’d never seen before until this week?

Pan’s international voyage:

This all started when Pan got the idea that Terrible Author had “put a spell on Lyra and stolen her imagination.” Which sounds like a figure of speech at first, but no, apparently Pan thinks this guy is literally magic.

And yet, somehow, not magic enough to be dangerous, even for a single lone daemon whose only plan is “confront him directly and demand that he fix it”?

Most of the trip is uneventful, since it’s a long string of Pan successfully keeping out-of-sight.

There’s one clever part where, once he’s in Terrible Author’s hometown, he finds a school for the blind to ask for information. That way he can say “my girl is totally standing right over there, don’t worry about it, now, any chance you know where Terrible Author lives?”

…of course, the first person he asks has exactly the right answer and is happy to share. Convenient, that.

As mentioned, Terrible Author’s setup is suitably creepy and off-putting, but Pan doesn’t figure out anything about why. Doesn’t investigate. Didn’t come up with any kind of plan beforehand about how to coax Terrible Author into undoing his evil spell. Pan just confronts him, demands he fix Lyra, realizes this hasn’t fixed Lyra, and leaves.

There’s a bombshell much later on when Lyra finds out that Terrible Author is separated! And, although there’s a daemon who hangs around with him, they don’t actually belong to each other! This is fascinating and disturbing and would’ve been so much more satisfying if, you know, Pan had figured this out and was actively trying to bring the information to Lyra. Or, heck, if anything had been done with it at all.

Shortly afterward, Pan runs into this girl who just happens to be separated from her daemon, and is available and happy to team up with Pan, so they can head off to Weird Roseville together. Convenient. Again.

Lyra’s Bogus Journey:

Lyra has a much harder time staying out of sight than Pan, so she gets a lot more interaction along her trip.

Most of it is a long string of the same convenient “running into people who are helpful and friendly and have exactly the information she needs to move the plot along.” (More details on that below.)

When this happened in the original trilogy, it was the alethiometer deus-ex-machining her in the right direction, which worked! But here it seems to keep happening by accident. (She brings the alethiometer, but, as mentioned, she doesn’t use it.)

The Conveniently Helpful People also keep telling her (with minimal prompting, and what seems like total honesty?) whole backstories. All of which are more interesting than the actual narrative she’s going through.

They also occasionally mention God/the Authority, and Lyra doesn’t have much of a reaction. I wish, just once, she had snapped “it doesn’t matter what the Authority thinks! Or rather, what he used to think, since my boyfriend and I killed him when we were 12!”

The convenience also could’ve worked if Oakley Street agents were being cool and clever and actively tracking her journey in order to help. She does run into a few of them, but that seems to be by accident too.

And it could’ve worked if there was other magic steering her along — she keeps dropping the phrase “the secret commonwealth,” meaning the world’s hidden population of faeries and other supernatural creatures — but as of the end of the book, none of Lyra’s friendly helpers have been revealed to be anything other than human. (Some are modified in exotic ways, but they were human to start with, at least.)

Even farther towards the end of the book, after this long string of people being Conveniently Helpful For No Reason, she ends up in a train car with…and I wish I was making this up…a bunch of soldiers who are Inconveniently Attempted Rapists For No Reason.

That record-scratch moment your brain just did? That’s how it feels in the book, too. The attack comes out of nowhere, there’s suddenly a big action sequence with Lyra fighting back, their CO shows up and makes them let her go, and then she leaves the train and heads almost directly to the next bunch of Conveniently Helpful People.

If anyone wants more detailed spoilers, either to be prepared before reaching the scene or to decide whether you’ll read it at all, let me know.

To be blunt about one thing: from the in-scene descriptions I would’ve said none of these guys actually managed to get their dicks out, but a few days later we get the book’s first and only reference to Lyra having periods. And she doesn’t think “oh, thank republic-of-heavens, I’m not pregnant,” which suggests she knew it wasn’t a risk, but the whole Narrative Reason you write that in after an assault scene is because someone is afraid it’s a risk, so, what are you even doing, Pullman??

Okay, switching tracks.

Some of the people Lyra encounters, usually with personal stories that are way more interesting, and I wish they’d been [part of] the actual main plot:

A guy who meets her at a train station, says he has a friend who needs her help, leads her out into a maze of city streets where she explicitly thinks about how risky this is because she’s totally lost…but she does the mission and it’s fine and he leads her right back to the train station afterward.

The friend is a human who’s been modified by “a magician” to be some kind of fire-elemental person, and wants Lyra to help find his daemon, who was modified into a water-elemental form — a mermaid! This is cool and fascinating and scary and raises so many questions —

— and they get killed immediately after Lyra reunites them, and we never find out anything more about it.

The killer is the magician, who had been holding the water-sprite daemon captive. (And is possibly also the guy’s father? Finally, someone who can beat Marisa and Asriel in a “Bad Parenting Juice” drinking contest.) Which, again, is fascinating and evocative — how do you become a magician? Or are they born, like the witches? How many are there? What kinds of things are they doing in the world? —

— yeah, we don’t find out anything about that either.

Murderous Magician Dad just gives Lyra some helpful plot information, then sends her and the train-station guy off on their way.

A couple of guys who intervene when Lyra is being harassed at a bar.

They steer her outside, she’s prepared for a fight, but they hold up their hands and say they’re friendly, and also, they noticed someone steal the alethiometer bag off her earlier, so here, would she like it back?

They give her some helpful rumors, too. Don’t remember which specific ones, but they lead her to the next plot point.

A rich elderly princess who’s on the Daemonless International Support Group list, because her daemon fell in love (!) with another woman (!!) and eventually ran off with her (!!!).

Lyra thinks to herself that she’s seen other situations where a daemon and their human have different feelings about a romance. Just thinks it in passing, and then it’s gone. I want to see these situations! I want on-page exploration of multiple ways they can work! How do they correspond to the feelings of people in worlds where all the daemons are internal?

As for the princess, I already knew it was going to be a big scandal — two human women in that day and age could never be a couple, at least not in public, and A Literal Princess is a very public figure —

but then, in spite of the scandal, the princess moves in with the woman! And they travel together, they work together, they share a bed, she explains to Lyra that she played the role so thoroughly she made herself fall in love with the woman!

…and then it falls apart for some reason, and the princess leaves, but her daemon insists on staying. So that’s how they get separated. Deliberately walking away from each other.

There’s a brief reference to the idea of him wishing he was the other woman’s daemon, instead of the princess’s. How does that work? How do you get so disconnected from yourself, and in such a skewed partial-match with someone else, that you end up with that kind of yearning?

In case you can’t tell, I want to read this novel. I would trade the entirety of The Secret Commonwealth for this novel. No question, hands down.

Instead: Princess says “if you run into my daemon, tell him I’d like to see him again before we die?” Lyra says “sure, can do, thanks for the brunch.” And then, you guessed it, that whole scene is over and done with and we never get any follow-up on it again.

A pair of agents from Oakley Street, who say “hey, Lyra, have you considered using some basic disguise techniques, like dyeing your hair and wearing glasses?”

And then they give her a lovely haircut and a dye job and a spare pair of fake glasses.

This isn’t anywhere near the beginning of Lyra’s journey, by the way! This is more than 80% of the way through the book. There’s no special reason she needs it more after this point.

It’s like Pullman suddenly realized a disguise might help, wrote the scene at the point he had reached, and then never went back and edited to put it in a more meaningful location.

The stranger on a train who shows Lyra the deck of “exactly the same as an alethiometer” cards, gives her a demonstration of how to use them, and then leaves the whole deck behind for her to keep.

A married couple who don’t share any languages in common with Lyra, and don’t seem to have a lot of money…but feed her and let her stay at their house overnight, for free, even daemonless as she is. They also give her a free niqab so she can move around less conspicuously (she’s still injured from the fight with the soldiers).

A priest who invites her into his church, isn’t bothered when she takes off the niqab, helps treat her injuries, and gives her a motherlode of useful details about highly-illegal dealings he’s not even supposed to know about, but will unveil to this total stranger who just wandered in, because she needs them for the next plot point.

This when Lyra finds out that someone in this region has resurrected the Bolvangar method. But this time they aren’t kidnapping random children for it. No, they’re paying for it. If you’re poor enough, and desperate enough, and can’t spare any more kidneys, these people will buy your daemon to sell on the black market.

The city has a whole secret underclass of illegally-severed people working in the sewers.

Meanwhile, rich people who’ve been deserted by their daemons can purchase a stand-in. This is what Terrible Author did. Of course, it’s not a true replacement, but the dealers boast about their ability to make an excellent match.

There are also people who buy separated daemons for other scientific/experimental purposes. Details left to our imaginations.

This is a horrifying sinister mindblowing discovery, as much of a bombshell as the original Bolvangar was. I mean, it would’ve hit harder if Lyra had uncovered it by spying, or tricking someone into revealing the information, or anything more elaborate than “asking straightforward sorta-related questions and getting this whole sordid story infodumped by the first guy she asked,” but it’s still big.

So it’s gonna shake things up something fierce, right? Maybe Lyra won’t go full-on “calling in the cavalry to tear the place down” until Book 3, but this would be her new “stepping through the doorway into the sky” moment — where the horror of what she’s learned galvanizes her into making a pivotal decision, where she starts laying the groundwork for the revolution —

— no, of course not, this is where she starts going around to the hideouts of various undercover daemon-sellers and asking if they can help her find Pan.

Come on.

And this brings us to the end of the book. One of the black-market daemon-sellers guides Lyra to the creepy abandoned town where the final scene takes place.

In these last moments, the audience (but not Lyra) finds out that this guy has ulterior motives. Which would make it the first time in the whole book when “Lyra or Pan takes a Conveniently Helpful Person at face value with total credulity” turns out to be a bad idea.

(And, I mean, he’s a black-market daemon-seller. If anyone on that list was obviously an unethical scumball who shouldn’t be counted on….!)

Finally, a few things that don’t fit into any neat lists, but annoyed me enough to mention:

1) People curse in this book. Which is notable because they didn’t in HDM, and it wasn’t just the adults watching their mouths around tween Lyra — we got plenty of scenes that only had people like Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel in them. Those two would definitely be dropping f-bombs if it was a routine part of their world’s language, and this book reveals that it is.

So every time it happens it breaks your immersion, pointedly reminding you “this isn’t a real world, it’s a fake story where the author can switch the profanity-filter on and off at will.” Does it enhance the narrative in a way that’s worth the tradeoff? I don’t think so.

2) Before I read the book, I’d heard vague spoilers about “a character with a mermaid daemon,” and figured it was someone from a cool magical species — hopefully more expansion/exploration on the fairy from La Belle Sauvage whose daemon appeared to be “a whole flock of butterflies.”

But no, it’s a magically-modified human. His situation doesn’t get explored that deeply before he dies, or connect with anything else in the story. The fairy, meanwhile, does get mentioned when Malcolm tells Lyra about meeting her, but she doesn’t reappear or get any kind of follow-up.

In spite of the title, the only explicit appearance of any members of the “secret commonwealth” is some little glowing spirits, basically wights, that Lyra watches over the side of a gyptian boat one time.

3) There’s a scene where a bunch of people gather in a meeting hall to protest the Magisterium sabotaging their various rose-related livelihoods. A couple Magisterium reps are there. Malcolm is also there, and his POV basically goes “huh, looks like all the exits have gotten the doors shut. And barred. And suddenly they each have an armed Magisterium agent standing in front of them. That’s weird. Gonna keep quietly observing to find out what happens next.”

This guy is supposed to be a cool experienced anti-Magisterium spy! This is basically a giant neon sign flashing COMING UP NEXT: MASSACRE! (It is not a misdirect, either.)

And Malcolm sees it, but doesn’t read it, or take any action to try to subvert it, or even move to defend himself — it’s just like any cheesy horror movie where the audience is shouting LOOK BEHIND YOU at the unwitting character who’s about to get murdered.

Wrap-Up Thoughts

Whatever happens in the final volume of this trilogy, it might reveal things that redeem some of the problems in this book. But I’ll be honest, I’m not holding my breath.

And when I think about reveals that would address these problems, everything I come up with is stuff that should’ve just been in this book.

For example: let’s say the Fair Folk are directly involved after all, intervening to steer Lyra and Pan down the most convenient paths. In particular, the guy on the train who only appears long enough to give Lyra a set of alethiometry cards + a tutorial on how to use them — I really want him to be Fae. It’s so contrived and random if he’s not.

But the readers should know about it! Back in HDM, we would get scenes about the plans and activities of all the other factions at work. It might take a while to discover the exact details of (for example) the witches’ ultimate goal that Lyra was part of, but we knew they had a goal, and were supporting her in service of it. If the Secret Commonwealth is actively involved in the plot, we should’ve gotten that by now.

Semi-related: I feel like, if the rest of the book was better, then I’d have no trouble explaining a lot of the Lyra-specific issues as “she’s super-depressed, not in a place to make great choices or take a lot of decisive action.”

But it’s not like she’s drifting around in a trauma fog that hampers her ability to get things done. Her journey, while not perfect or threat-free, still comes together with improbable smoothness — as if the writing hasn’t noticed that she’s not being proactive and prescient and well-coordinated and overall super-competent about it. Meanwhile, other characters are underwhelming in the same way. (Looking at you, Malcolm “I Can’t Believe It’s Now a Bloodbath” Polstead.)

So it doesn’t seem like a conscious narrative choice to write Lyra this way. It just seems consistent with the complaints I have about everything else in the writing.

…let’s be honest, I’m almost certainly gonna read the third book anyway. I’m enough of a completist that it’ll bother me not to, I don’t have a lot of hard-stop dealbreakers that would make me bow out anyway, and, well, I do a lot of work that requires time-passing listening material. The Secret Commonwealth is nowhere near the most-frustrating audio I’ve used to fill that time.

But it hasn’t left me excited or optimistic or Shivering With Anticipation, either.

Mostly I just anticipate getting some useful stuff done while I listen, and then having a final set of reactions to work through in another one of these posts.

[saferincages]

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs? - Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

Today, April 18th, would have been our beloved Angel’s 13th birthday. We were so hoping she would be here to celebrate it, but unfortunately her illness took her far more quickly than we were anticipating, which has us commemorating it without her, and still grieving her terribly.

I’ve talked about her so often that I now struggle to find the proper words to pay tribute to what a miracle she was for me, and what a truly special girl and precious little soul she was. I related some of the story of us getting her here, but wanted to take this last chance to remember. Saying I dreamed of or wanted a dog my entire life doesn’t even fairly capture it - I yearned for a dog, more than anything else that could ever be offered to me. There were multiple obstacles that made this impossible growing up - my mom and I being too busy with work/school to properly care for one, the fact that we were too burdened financially, the limitations on the kind of dog we could bring home given both of our allergies. Thus it remained my fondest continual wish. By 2006, my illness had been breaking me down for over a year. I had no choice but to drop out of school when I could barely function; I had reached what they called a “plateau” in physical therapy, a point where they couldn’t help me or rehabilitate me further from my lingering car accident injuries, and my immune system kept getting worse, my body increasingly frail. I was spending most days entirely alone while my mom worked full-time. It got to the point of quiet desperation, my depression was becoming more serious and we didn’t know what to do.

An e-mail went out in my mom’s office from a family who wanted to rehome their young standard poodle. We decided to go and meet her, and she was lovely, but she was 60 pounds and definitely too rambunctious for us to enclose in our very small living situation. (There’s a happy ending to that story, as her family decided to keep her.) The thought was irrevocably planted in my brain, though, and I fixated on the idea of finally finding a dog. We tried several other times - like a 3 year old Bichon who ended up at our Humane Society (they’re so rarely found at shelters that they did a lottery for people to be able to adopt him; our number did not come up), then a miniature poodle puppy at the shelter in Denver (same story with the lottery). I started scouring the paper, and one night in late July, in the online classifieds, I found a listing for six Bichon puppies. The timing was unbelievably perfect. I excitedly called the number, and the lady told me they had two left, a boy and a girl, and if we would like to see them, could we please come right away, because she and her husband were going out of town for the weekend and someone else was going to come watch the dogs. My mom and I got into the car in the dark of night and drove to the other side of the city. When we got there, we saw four little white fluffy faces in the door - the couple’s two adult Bichons and two babies.

We went inside, and the lady who had them started telling us about them. The little boy was docile and laid-back, the little girl was sweet yet very feisty and stubborn. She had been the smallest in her litter, and her five brothers and sisters pushed her around and never let her eat enough, and so she had to learn to stand up for herself. They were both darling. He laid quietly on the floor waiting for attention. She perseveringly climbed up onto the back of the sofa to be as close to us as possible, to sniff us and kiss our faces. She was silly and affectionate, and of course I instantly fell in love with her. She was meant to be ours. They gave us her papers, and her blanket, I scooped her up in my arms, and she was mine. On the drive home, our normal route ended up being blocked off because of a chemical spill, and the police officer who stopped us glanced into the car and smiled at the sleepy little puppy (”look!,” he said, “a carpet with eyes!” because she was quite fuzzy).

The gate to temporarily keep her in the kitchen overnight didn’t work at all, she was too smart for that. She squeezed out and promptly came into my room, whimpered on my floor until I turned to look at her, and waited for me to pick her up. I put her on the bed, she stole a pillow, and that was our story almost every night for the rest of her life. She was the best puppy, a model puppy, she never made a mess or chewed up anything she wasn’t supposed to (except for a roll of toilet paper, which only made us laugh), and she took to training quickly.

She was the most incredible blessing, and every day, no matter how sick I was, no matter how devastated I felt by anything else happening in my existence or the world, she gave me a reason to get up, to carry on. Not only because she depended on me - and that’s no small thing, having a dear, bright life that needs you to look after her - but because she was so boundless in her exuberance, her light, her love for everything and everyone. She believed all people and animals (I would say obviously other dogs, but honestly she seemed to like kitties most of all) should be her friends, and did her very best to charm them. She was excited to wake up in the morning, and she would bounce on me with her tail wagging in circles. She loved cozy things, pillows and stuffed animals and blankets and warm laundry; she loved soothing instrumental music and would settle right down to sleep when I put her favorites on (near the end of her life, we played a lot from Soothing Relaxation, and we put this one on for her before she died. She enjoyed certain piano pieces on the Soundscapes channel, especially this and this, she’d snuggle up and close her deep brown eyes whenever they played). She loved to play and growl and zoom around from room to room at top speed, she loved to lay in the sun and look out the window, she loved baby carrots and apple slices and was the cutest when she crunched them. She listened to me sing to her with rapt attention, and when we talked to her, she liked to talk back with various small barks and grumbles while inquisitively tilting her head. She had a mind of her own and liked to arrange things however she wanted them; she waved her paws constantly, and it meant different things depending on what she was asking us. She never stopped giving kisses, and this went double whenever one of us was crying, as she saw it as her comforting duty to lick away our tears. In her very last hour, when she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for almost two days, when I was suddenly forced into making a decision I wasn’t ready to make, when all I wanted was to bring her home and tears were streaming down my face, she still sat up to kiss them away. It’s been hard having so many endless tears to shed since we lost her, and not having her in my lap to take care of me.

I’m convinced she did take care of me, more than I did for her. I called her my little nurse a lot, because she always knew when I was more sick than usual, and she worried and fussed around me, and tucked herself in by my side, and wouldn’t leave me. Even as isolated as I am due to being homebound, I was never lonely while she was in my life, she was always there to reassure me. She sensed so many of our moods, and she was so empathetic that we’d try not to get too upset around her because she would react with concern. When my anxiety and panic attacks began getting worse, and when my POTS became more severe, I truly began to realize how much she helped me, how her being near me calmed my tension, eased my physical pain, how running my fingers through her incredibly soft curls immediately lowered my heart rate, and that’s when I had her certified as my emotional support animal. She’d been doing that job from the start, so she deserved the title officially.

I mentioned here why I named her Angel: I wanted to use the name Angel because I love angels, because it made me think of sweetness and light, and of course she has been my guardian and my salvation and truly my Angel all these years, but she’s something else that word connotes too. She’s a warrior Angel. She was unbelievably strong and courageous, she fought so hard to live, and all she wanted was to stay with us. She was made of that pure goodness, and she was also brave and resilient. We called her bunches of nicknames - our diamond, our flower, our princess, our sugar, our baby, but she was profoundly an Angel most of all.

We had a unique relationship because we were almost always together, every minute, every day, every year. Not everyone understands the depth of connection knitted deep into our spirits that one can have with a beautiful living being, but experiencing it was a gift beyond any measurement words can give. I never left her for more than a few hours at the time. I never spent a night without her, except when she was in the hospital. She was my constant; my warm, fluffy baby, my treasure, and that life and happiness was everything. My dad acknowledged that, for me, losing her was much more like losing a child, because we were so bonded, so unbreakably close, and that is irreplaceable. I’ve mentioned before that I won’t ever be able to have that connection in human form, and getting another dog is once again an impossibility for us due to our current predicament (not that Angel could ever be replaced, but we would open our home and hearts to new love if we could), so she was it for me, the one dream come true, all I had.

I read Dog Songs as we were losing her, and Mary Oliver captured the adoration and the acute sadness exquisitely. So, that deepest sting: sorrow. Still, is she gone from us entirely, or is she part of that other world, everywhere? One of her poems was for her own Bichon, Percy, and these lines conjured Angel: For she was made small but brave of heart. For she could be silly and noble in the same moment. For she listened to poems as well as love-talk. For when she sniffed it was as if she were being pleased by every part of the world. For when she sickened she rallied as many times as she could. For she was a mixture of gravity and waggery. For there was nothing sweeter than her peace when at rest. For there was nothing brisker than her life when in motion. For when I went away she would watch for me at the window. For she loved me. For when she lay down to enter sleep she did not argue about whether or not God made her. For she could fling herself upside down and laugh a true laugh. For I often see her shape in the clouds and this is a continual blessing. She also wrote: It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old - or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

Despite losing the entire semblance of and hopes for my "normal" life when I became chronically ill, despite mourning people (whether they passed out of my life literally or figuratively), even still I have never undergone this level of grief and heartache. I long to hold her in my arms, to hear the padding of her adorable popcorn paws and the jingling of her tags, to kiss her irresistibly soft head (which smelled like her sugar cookie conditioner). She always had such an exceptionally strong heartbeat - the little heartbeat at my feet - and when it stopped, while I embraced her with my hand against her chest, a huge part of me went with her. She gave me so much purpose and grace and helped me survive. She lit up every day with joy, and we will never stop missing her.

Angel was the truest, most precious love I've ever known, and how lucky I am to have been blessed by such a wondrous girl.

[mst3kproject]

403: City Limits

I only have one story about this movie and that’s how a while back I had a dream in which Kim Cattrall and Jennifer Connolly were trying to escape from an evil toy factory owned by Nicholas Cage, and in the dream I was thinking wow, City Limits is different than I remember.  Moving on.

In the non-dream version of the movie, a plague has killed off all the adults except James Earl Jones – I must admit, if you have to keep one he’s a pretty good choice.  He adopts some bland kid named Lee, who grows up, puts on a Cubone costume, and heads off into the ruins of Los Angeles to find other badly-dressed, motorcycle-riding survivors like him.  If he had any sense, he’d have stayed in the middle of nowhere with Horse Girl, since the first bunch he meets try to arrest him and the second just aren’t impressed by his resume.  Lee ends up killing some guy named Dirty Bob, so the various motorcycle gangs that now rule the world decide to subject him to trial by combat, based on something they read in a comic book.  Somehow this results in smashing a couple of dinosaur skeletons and uniting the gangs to take on the federally authorized Sunia Corporation, who shoot anybody who doesn’t want to work for them.  What the hell happened to Horse Girl?

Yeah, I have a lot of trouble following what is going on in this movie.  Most of it takes place in poorly-lit darkness, the characters all look alike and dress like piles of laundry, and nothing anybody does is properly motivated. There’s something almost Ed-Wood-ian about the way scenes in City Limits refuse to add up to a narrative. Reaction shots get dropped in with no explanation of why characters are reacting the way they are, and there’s some bits, like the Beer Santa or what Yogi sees out the window, that I honestly can’t tell whether they’re flashbacks or not.  It’s a good thing the narrating voice of James Earl Jones shows up from time to time to tell us what people are doing, or else I would have no idea.

What does the Sunia company want?  They say they want to provide electricity and food for the world, and if this is just a front for something evil we never hear about it.  Shooting people who won’t work for them is pretty evil, but if there’s a larger Evil Plan at work I couldn’t tell.  What do the Clippers and the DA’s want?  They might have had some kind of system of their own at work before Sunia showed up but all we hear about is the truce between the two.  What was Lee’s plan at the end?  Why bother having people zoom in on armored motorbikes if Albert was right there with the air support?  Why the hell is Carver the main villain when he never even gets out of his fucking chair?

Note To Self: if I ever want to conquer the world, I should avoid saying I am inevitable.  It doesn’t go well for anybody.

Maybe Sunia isn’t the problem, but the government that sponsor them?  Possibly, but we know even less about what passes for ‘the federal government’ in this dystopia than we do about Sunia.  We never meet anybody who represents them.  What kind of government can you have after almost everybody over the age of twelve died of the plague?  This is one of those things that, if the movie hadn’t brought it up, I would never have thought about it – but once they’ve mentioned it, it bugs me.

The impression I’m left with is City Limits is basically a sequence of ideas somebody thought were cool, with minimal effort made to string them together into an actual story.  Skull Helmet?  Cool. Motorcycle race through dinosaur bones? Very cool!  Biker Viking Funeral? Extremely cool!  James Earl Jones blowing shit up with RC kamikaze airplanes?  What could be cooler than that?  And yeah, all this stuff is fun to watch, but unfortunately that’s just not the same as actually caring about it.

Without coherence or character development to get us interested, the audience is left in exactly the spot Space Mutiny managed to avoid: we just don’t see the point.  The only real entertainment value in the film is a few moments of amusing absurdity sprinkled in here and there.  The fake-ass dinosaur skeleton is hilarious – as is the establishing shot of the museum, which looks extremely well-groomed for having been ruled by motorcycle gangs for fifteen years.  The stinger moment of Bolo hollering in panic as the dinky RC plane closes in to blow him up also got a laugh out of me.  Even these would be much improved, though, if we had a better idea what was actually going on.

Because of all this stuff stacked against me giving a shit, I had to watch the movie twice to get anything out of it.  On the second viewing, when I stopped expecting to understand what was happening in the plot, I managed to find a couple of interesting ideas peeking out.  One was how, here and there, City Limits tries to create a culture for these people who were abandoned as children.  Like the film itself, this is based on what a twelve-year-old might think looks cool: the clothes and lairs made out of scavenged bits of 80’s culture.  The party-animal, bike-riding lifestyle.  The use of comic books as a guide to what life was like before the apocalypse.  The weird funeral they hold for Whitey.  There’s a Trashpunk Neverland sort of vibe to the whole thing, as if we really are in a world designed by children who never grew up.  I wonder if that’s brilliant, or just a poor reflection on the maturity of the film-makers.

The other is an apparently earnest attempt to say something about colonialism.  Dr. Wickings (who the hell is giving out doctorates after the end of the world?) argues that the bikers are human beings who are just defending their homeland, and should be treated with compassion.  Her bosses at Sunia reply that the bikers are barbarians who need to be gotten out of the way.  This is the logic of everybody, everywhere, who has ever conquered anybody else. The Romans said it about the Gauls, the Spaniards said it about the Aztecs, the bad guys in Avatar said it about the Na’vi.  In each case, the conquerors who call the conquered ‘barbarians’ use it as an excuse to treat them barbarously.

This is stated explicitly enough in City Limits that it’s clearly intentional, and the analogy continues: Sunia has technology the locals don’t, and that could be of real benefit to everybody – but Sunia aren’t interested in peaceful trade or selfless charity, and the only benefit they want is for themselves (presumably, since like I said, their overall plan is never gone into).  The natives had plenty of problems and enmities of their own before this outside force showed up, but they had a system and it worked before Sunia pitted them against each other for gain (again, presumably).

As a theme, this falls apart in two places, both of which I’ve already mentioned.  First, we don’t care – we don’t know who these characters are and we can’t tell them apart, so we’re not invested in whether they get conquered or not.  I think the laundry-heap costumes are also a major contributor to this.  They tend to make all the characters look alike, jumbles of colour without distinguishable silhouettes.  Costuming can say quite a lot about a character, but if there’s too much going on the details get lost.

Second, we don’t really have a compelling reason to consider Sunia the bad guys.  I swear I know better now than to expect that MST3K cut anything that really mattered, but it was still kind of a surprise to find that there was no missing scene that detailed Sunia’s Evil Master Plan.  A supervillain with no Evil Plan is a pretty lousy supervillain, even if his non-evil plan is to be achieved by evil means, and especially when we don’t care about the victims.  We just don’t know enough about what was going on here before Sunia showed up to be able to say if it was better or worse in any way.  As it stands, Sunia’s offer of food, medicine, electricity, and an end to the gang warfare seems like a pretty good idea to me.

A couple more random notes that didn’t fit anywhere else in the review: since I work in that field myself, I have to say that I’m happy glasses survived the end of civilization.  It must be much easier to rediscover all the other technologies when everybody can see.  Maybe that’s why there’s so much gasoline and electricity in this post-apocalyptic world – people like James Earl Jones and Kim Cattrall with their glasses could see well enough to keep them coming!

Then there’s the fact that everywhere Lee goes, girls kinda smile awkwardly at him and then immediately take his side.  Horse Girl does it, Kim Cattrall does it, Rae Dawn Chong does it… why?  There seem to be lots of boys around, so it’s not like the apocalypse left the world with a shortage of dick.  This is why so-called ‘incels’ go on shooting sprees – because movies like this have told them that dull white boys should have girls all over them just because they showed up.

Seriously, what the hell happened to Horse Girl?  Why was she even in the movie?  She comes and goes before the opening credits are over and has no effect on the plot.  Did she reappear somewhere and I just never noticed?  That’s one of the big rules of storytelling, folks – if you place a horse on the mantlepiece in Act I, you have to use it!

[fyrapartnersearch]

Hi, I'm Poppy! I'm 21 years old and I'm in the central timezone. I've been in and out of the roleplay scene, but I'd love to find some flexible writing partners (preferably 20+) to have a bunch fun! I love chatting ooc to get to know my partners better am very open minded when it comes to different ideas so please feel free to contact me on either platform if interested!

Discord: starlord.#9245

Email: drocellk@ymail.com

Style: Third person and past tense (sometimes present tense), multi-para/novella. Activity is low, but planned and will respond to you at LEAST twice a week (I'm always busy T.T) however I always reply fast when ooc!

Versatility: Can double, and will play any type of character, species, sexuality, or gender. M/M, F/F, M/F, etc. are all welcome! I can play canon characters as well as oc, and I welcome either in return.

Genres:

Slice of Life

Drama

Romance

Angst

Crime/Mafia/Assassin 

Supernatural

Fairy Tale/Fantasy

Horror

Taboo

Just about anything else you can think of! 

** Smut to plot ratio: 70/30 but not required.

Fandoms:

Nier Automata

My Hero Academia

Mystic Messenger

Yuri!! On Ice

The Arcana

Black Butler

Inuyasha

Ouran High School Host Club

Death Note

K Project

The Wolf Among Us

** No real life faceclaims. Anime or art reference highly preferred!

**** Any show/series in which we write with the underage characters will not involve nsfw/smut. It may happen with the adult charas, but I refuse to rp pedophilic topics. Thank you.

Limits:

A/B/O

Bestiality

Furries

Toilet play

Vore

Mpreg

Non-con

Self-harm

Necrophilia

Pedophilia/underage

Feederism.

Plots/Pairings: (some pulled from writing rec blogs)

cop/criminal

boss/employee

spies

assassin/target

creature/human

mafia boss/civilian

mafia boss/second hand

age gaps (within reason)

forbidden love/taboo relationships

teacher/student

angel/demon

angel/human

demon/human

slave/master

prince/princess

noble or nobless/servant

arranged marriages

fake dating

corruption

muse a is a barista who is sweet, and kind.. and a serial killer. muse b is a detective that is involved in more ways than one. as muse b falls deeper in love, the body count rises. will muse b choose their job and take down muse a? or they choose love and do anything in their power to protect their loved one, no matter how many more innocents die in their wake?

a vampire finds a girl lying in an alley of rough city, left for dead. He decides to spare and turn the girl, but when she awakes she’s not too keen on the new life he had laid out for her. But with no where else to turn, the girl is forced to stay with the man who turned her, to learn the ropes of her new life.

royal/commoner plot; every year the royals hold a ceremony. the ceremony is a chance for the prince, muse a, to find his “mate”; also known as the future queen. the guards go to every village and pick out twenty-five names from the ballot of each pack. only the girls ranged from fifteen to twenty have to put their names in the ballot. the guards send the chosen girls to the palace where they will be prepared for the ceremony. during the ceremony, muse a will have to choose one girl. if he doesn’t choose someone that year, he will have to wait till next year. muse b is nicknamed “child of the forest”, ever since muse b was little, she spent more time wandering through the magical forests than she did at home. muse b doesn’t want to fall in love with a prince and doesn’t want to live behind the castle walls. muse b wants to be free. what happens when muse b is called out and taken to the capitol to attend this so-called “ceremony”? and what happens when muse a picks muse b as their mate and the future queen? will muse a try to stand up for herself? will she keep pushing muse b away until he’s forced to let her go? or will she start to fall for muse b? who is kinder, more gentler, than the princes she knows?

muse a is this bad boy who just moved into this tiny village and he drives a motorbike and wears leather jackets and is usually a sarcastic jerk but then this small group of four crazy friends kind of adopt him and he starts to occasionally hang out with them cos they’re kind of cool, and also because muse b is the tiny and super shy, kind, gentle soul of the group who keeps gaining his attention because he just wants to know more about her so he starts going out of his way to drive her home on his bike but says it’s only cos he has nothing else to do in such a boring place but then whoops he kissed her and suddenly they’re just a thing and they don’t label it but everyone just kind of accepts it BUTBUTBUT GIVE ME movie nights with the whole group and muse a and muse b are sharing a blanket so he starts teasing her under it and she’s just there burying her head against his neck trying not to make a sound AND THEN if he gets into fights she just kind of stands in between him and the other and tells him to calm down and he just does because it’s her and she let’s him be calm AND THEN if the other person says jack shit about it she turns around and punches them dead in the face because he makes her brave.

muse a is this complete naive and innocent daddy’s girl who’s fallen for muse b who’s this complete jackass of a guy who drinks and smokes and her parents are sO disapproving at first bUT they give him a chance and invite him over for dinner and muse a is so shocked cause he shows up all smartly dressed and his hair all perfect in place and hes sO CHARMING and muse a just sits at the dinner table completely dumbfounded and doe-eyed like what happened to my boyfriend until obvs his hand starts travelling up her thigh while they try to hold a conversation with her parents and she’s like thERES my actual boyfriend.

“i’m the head detective on a serial murder case and you’re the pesky reporter that’s always showing up at the crime scenes to try and catch the story before anyone else. i’m surprised one day when i find you in my office–turns out that the mayor wants a spotlight on the case, and my boss has decided to assign me to show you around and let you shadow me while i work. i can’t get rid of you so just stay out of my way, okay?”

Please:

Be 20 or over, 19 at the absolute least

Be okay with mature and/or dark themes. I am okay to explore any type of taboo topics not listed in my limits, and am open to discuss any mature plots.

Have decent grammar

Be patient with my slow replies, as I will be with yours

Be open minded and communicate!!

[amasenpai]

Vin's Top Anime/Manga that Need More Love

- Chihayfuru

A sports/romance story with the best characters?? I say sports but it's a super niche card game about poetry. Goodness the growth of everyone has me screaming (especially Taichi!) and for a sports anime you actually can't tell if a main character is going to win or lose. I nearly had a heart attack watching some of their matches. Someone love this with me ✨

- The King's Avatar

A Chinese 'anime' about esports. It really does the whole MC is a genius thing better than a lot of anime, and explains his OP skills well! It has older characters, and deals with getting older and trying to support yourself in a cutthroat world. Plus Glory is the coolest game ever~ If you've ever played an MMO I'd say watch it!

- Natsume's book of Friends

Okay. Okay okay? It's the sweetest "monster of the week" style anime that hits home about trying to find a place to belong. As many episodes made my heart sing, just as many made me cry like a fool because I wanted them all to be happy. The cutest MC, the cutest adoptive parents, the cutest friends. Everyone is your child that needs to be protected.

- Monster

I mean, it's classic. I only say it needs more love because it's an older story now-- but god is it still top tier. An adult themed anime about chasing a serial killer and whether or not everyone deserves a second chance. Takes place in Germany (and is apparently a 1 for 1 map view). Slow burn that has one of my favorite characters in any fictional story.... and he shows up nearly halfway through the plot. The main antagonist is truly terrible. The characters you love deserve the world. The ones you hate should burn in hell forever.

- Space Brothers

By now you'd probably guess I prefer slower, slice of life type stories. Dorky MC gets fired from his job and finally pursues his dream of becoming an astronaut after giving up on it for years. He's a step behind his little brother who is already an astronaut and fufilling his dream to walk in the moon. Another older aged cast, but I think everyone can put themselves in this story. It's heartwarming and inspiring!

- Mushishi

Is this unpopular? Not really sure but I need more people to talk about it with. Episodic and calming, it's really not the mainstream anime. A mysterious (and pretty ✨) man travels the world fixing illnesses and other strange happenings caused by mushi. Some are harmful, some are helpful, but most are just living in the world like humans. It's like watching a bedtime story in an art gallery. So beautiful~

- Angel Densetsu

Another older pick, which unfortunately only has a two episode OVA to its name. Imagine the sweetest, most kind teen to ever live-- now imagine his face to look like an axe murderer. Kitano is a fantastic person with the social awareness of sliced cheese. All he wants is friends but everyone is terrified of him... Not that he knows that. It's hilarious, if a bit dated, and definitely deserves to be read. Ugly manga art and all.

- Jellyfish Princess

A bunch of nerd ladies under one roof with a serious case of social anxiety. One day the MC meets a new friend that shakes up everything; plus dresses and romance and getting over your fears. It's adorable, and most of all relatable!

- Twin Spica

Another space story, this time with a young girl trying to follow her dreams. All the characters seem to be fighting their past to get where they want to be; whether it's trauma, lack of support, or the hardships of struggling. Not everything is easy, but the MC has her own extra moral support in lion-kun, who knows a thing or two about being an astronaut. Get ready to cry, and cry a lot.

- The Promised Neverland

A dash of horror, and a ton of mystery and suspense! A group of orphans live in the perfect, loving home (or so they think). Everything turns on it's head when the MCs find out the truth about their paradise, and your heart will hurt when you see what they go through to try and escape their fate~ I absolutely need to scream and theorize with more people!!

[shemakesmusic-uk]

Tomberlin has shared 'Wasted,' a lullaby-esque stunner about secrets that are hard to keep. Tomberlin engages in some clever wordplay as the song ambles along, each line bleeding into the next: “Can you tell the difference?/ I can tell the difference,” she sings. “Maybe you’re the difference/ Please don’t be indifferent/ I could make it different. "'Wasted’ was the most fun song to record. I brought the song with the guitar part and knew I wanted drums, but wasn’t sure what kind of beat I wanted,” Tomberlin said in a statement, continuing: "Alex played this drum beat for me and was all ‘kinda left field but maybe this would be cool.’ It took the song to a whole new level. Sad song or summer banger? You tell me. The video was made with the help of Busy Philipps (who directed) and Marc Silverstein (who shot it), who are more like family then friends at this point. I was quarantined with them and their girls in South Carolina and we came up with the idea and shot it in about 4 days on an iPhone." [via Stereogum]

With their debut EP Tell U set to land on October 30 via House Arrest, New Yorks’ Couch Prints - aka Jayanna Roberts, Brandon Tong, and Jacob Truax - have shared the video for the title track. “I wrote the first iteration of this track while living in Denver - I was working this job I hated and had this feeling that life was speeding by,” Brandon says of the new track. “I ended up moving to New York a few months later, and shortly after Jake came out from Paris to record some of the music we’d been collaborating on the past year. While he was [In Paris] he had worked on music with Jayanna, so he called her to come sing on the tracks. We showed her the tracks and immediately she was humming along and had this incredible tone and way of singing, so we started recording for ‘Tell U’ and finished it that night. With so many moving pieces coming together so serendipitously, the final song came to celebrate this feeling of transience and movement and leaving the past behind. When we gave the song to Mayachka for the music video, she took that wistful feeling and our experiences, and created a story about a supposed three-way love triangle between us - with all the romance and nostalgia of a 2000’s soap opera. It perfectly captured the melancholy and strangeness of our first year coming together.” [via DIY]

Setting her art rock-inspired single 'Battleship' against a stunning clip directed by Pete Majarich, the new one from Jordan Laser deserves all your attention. [via Happy Mag]

New Jersey-based artist PYNKIE releases lead single 'Personality' from her sophomore album #37 out October 16 via House Arrest. A self-proclaimed ode to divorce (more specifically Radice’s parents divorce), the track is as sharp and witty as you’d expect from PYNKIE. It possesses this off-kilter touch that we’ve seen her adopt since her self-released 2018 debut album neoteny. The track references specific interactions between PYNKIE’s parents as they fight over possessions in the messy divorce. Lines such as “Furniture, Furniture/Over my dead body” are sung with a delightfully naïve charm, effectively capturing the sometimes obliviousness or misunderstanding that children have when it comes to events of such grandeur. With its buoyant bassline, jangly guitars, stoic percussion and perfectly imperfect slacker vocals, 'Personality' is musically a raw joy to behold. It’s flawless in its mixture of the known and the unknown, expected and unexpected. Skilfully wrong-footing the listener by setting up expectations of direction and then changing at the last minute is something that PYNKIE excels at. Lo-fi ethics and embedded nostalgia have become a staple of her music. This 90s nostalgia also takes the main role in the accompanying Kelli McGuire-directed visuals. We see Radice with her hair in bunches, wearing chokers, double denim that’s been scrawled on in felt tip pen and jelly sandals. The lighting is soft yet colourful with a light fuzz that gives it a retro warmth to it, casting our minds back to childhood. With vibrant graphics breaking up the video, topped off with the karaoke-style lyrics at the bottom of the video, the effect is one of wistful fondness. With its combination of unadulterated playfulness, darker tones and gleefully childish sensibilities, 'Personality' speaks to a larger theme that will carry through the upcoming album #37. [via High Clouds]

No Joy releases the official music video for 'Dream Rats' from their album Motherhood which is out out. The video and track features frontperson and principal songwriter Jasamine White-Gluz’s sister, Alissa, of deathcore supergroup Arch Enemy. The video also features an amazing duck named Success who is somewhat of a local celebrity in Montreal. The White-Gluz sisters want to take this opportunity to spotlight the Le Nichoir Wild Bird Rehabilitation Centre, a non-profit organization located in Hudson, Quebec. Their mission is to conserve wild birds as part of our natural heritage.

Actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke released album opener 'Generous Heart' as the final preview of her debut LP Blush, out now. A new interview with i-D reveals that 'Generous Heart' is one of Hawke's favourites from her record, and was created from a poem about love that she wrote as a senior in high school. Hawke also revealed the inspiration behind her debut album title to i-D, "I am a person who really struggles with embarrassment and shame, but it’s such a weird thing to talk about. There’s something embarrassing about even talking about being embarrassed. And the word blush, or blushing, to me is this sort of feminised take on embarrassment. Someone will be like, 'Oh it’s so cute, you’re blushing!' But on the inside, you’re dying. I liked the idea of taking this feminised word for shame, and making it the album title - because I struggle with both the feminisation of it, and the thing itself." She adds of the album, "Something that feels really important to me - and the record is sort of all about this - is how, even as you grow up and start to go through more 'adult' experiences, you’re still a kid. You’re still the same person that you always were. And so there’s the need to remember that throughline of your own humanity. I wanted to have those children’s voices to add a reminder of 'this might sound like a woman’s voice, but this whole childhood life is connected through all these stories'." [via Line Of Best Fit]

GRETA is making waves. The Copenhagen-based German musician - real name Greta Louise Schenk - has peppered 2020 with a string of superb singles, re-casting Nordic pop in a sci-fi gaze. Working towards her debut album, GRETA has been spending time in the studio with Farao, who has been producing those enormously imaginative sessions. New album Ardent Spring Part hits home on September 4, and it's led by the drifting future-facing pop of new single 'Again'. A gorgeous return, 'Again' is GRETA at her most defiant, an attempt to break out the cycles of behaviour that define us. She comments: "It's a song about the patterns we humans keep repeating even though we would like to break them. How we spend our entire life waiting for it to happen instead of living it." Stine Thorbøll directs the video, a tour de force of female Nordic talent that features the likes of Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff (Brimheim), Julie Christiansen (We are the way for the cosmos to know itself), Mary Jean Moore (MARY JEAN) and Luna Matz (Takykardia). GRETA explains... "The video for ‘Again’ is about a transition to something new and about preparing for that change. About being afraid of uncertainty, but finding strength in each other and oneself. It is about taking its place in the world. About strength and vulnerability. It is an invitation to be with everything you are and a promise that everything is more beautiful on the other side." Bold, and hugely imaginative, 'Again' seems to exist on its own terms, a defiantly independent piece of pop music. [via Clash]

Australian pop/R&B singer Clairy Browne is making her return to 2020 with her dance-worthy hit, 'Not The Only'. Drenched in glamour and extravagance, Browne has dropped an atmospheric tune with anthemic hooks and enthralling choruses. 'Not The Only' signals a new chapter for the artist as she breaks away from her kitsch retro-pop sound and explores a new neon-tinged soundscape. The songwriter is gearing up to release her next EP ANGEL later on this year and we’re curious to see what else she’s got in store for us. [via Wonderland]

In these dark and uncertain times, there’s no arguing that we need some relief, and fast. And one act giving us an instant burst of feel-good energy and sonic elation is MRCH with their glittering electronic number 'I Like You'. Drenched in optimism and bouncing into life with retro 80s-style synths, undulating rhythms and ethereal vocal hooks, the Phoenix-hailed duo – made up of Mickey and Jesse Pangburn – are lifting spirits with the synth-pop dance floor filler. The track is the first offering from their forthcoming new EP, out later this year – and has fans excited for their usual riveting live performances when life resumes. The visuals are a trippy retro throwback with the pair bopping and jamming, and making us miss a full throttle hedonistic night out. “Making songs is how we tell ourselves we aren’t alone, and hopefully how we tell other people they aren’t alone either,” explains Mickey. “Ironically, the hardest year for us has produced perhaps the cheeriest of MRCH songs, and absolutely one of our favourites.” [via Wonderland]

The artist Elohim has been an enigma since she first broke on the scene a half decade ago. She's since stepped out from behind the anonymous persona she originally crafted, and through her tender exploration of mental illness in her art, has reached millions of fans — proving true authenticity has no labels. The Los Angeles-based artist and producer was in the midst of her headlining Group Therapy Tour when the coronavirus pandemic hit, and like so many artists, she had to step back from performing live. But she quickly recalibrated and has been performing live from her home studio — and also working on the visuals for her single, 'I'm Lost.' The supremely trippy, Chase O'Black video captures the surreal experience of dissociating — something Elohim says she's been experiencing she was 7-years-old. "A lot of the art I create is speaking about these experiences (i.e. hallucinating)," Elohim tells NYLON. "'I'm Lost' examines this part of my brain, which is something difficult to put into words, so we decided to share this experience through surreality in the desert. Creating this new music filled my life with the most freeing moments, and making this video felt similar." Take a trip with Elohim to the California desert (and the infamous Slab City — an ideal setting for any artist on an inward journey) with the 'I'm Lost' video [via NYLON]

Australian pop extroverts Confidence Man return with new single 'First Class Bitch'. The band's extra-dimensional pop activities are the stuff of legend, with their lysergic live shows infused with glorious ear-worm melodies. New single 'First Class Bitch' injects some Confidence Man energy into this quarantine summer, and it's a dazzling return. The central hook is worthy of a Charli XCX project, with the neat, acid house leaning production tapping into the buoyancy of their famed live shows. Singer Janet Planet explains that the title 'First Class Bitch' actually has its origins in London. She comments... “I'd been thinking about this for a while now... It all started in London, when I saw a pair of socks with the words 'first class bitch' embroidered on them, hanging in a shop front window. I suddenly realised, I too was a first class bitch. I rushed back to the penthouse and penned this hit. Ever wondered what you hear when you die? This is it.” [via Clash]

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY TO DISAGREE

But if we're going to have to think you know how you're doing. You about Sex, or something like that happen here? Explaining himself later, he said I don't do litmus tests. 12454646 investment 0. It would also be a convenient basis for boycotts. Part of their brain knew there was something there; it just describes the structure of the list of n things so much? What do you make them?

The amounts invested by different types of investors, who have in the past taken weeks, if not months. Now imagine comparing what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a well known VC firm would make us seem more impressive. By VCs in future rounds. 01 and. It's a lot like being a postdoc: you have no revenues. The average founder is eager to do it yourself. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy. Startup founders tend to get so rich from them.

You might say that it's heretical. It's in their interest to collect the maximum amount of information while making the minimum number of decisions. It's harder to judge startups for themselves, simply because, as I was reading Constance Reid's excellent biography of Hilbert, I figured out if not the answer to that is, some of each. No one is interested in a startup is the embodiment of your discoveries so far. Maybe the angel pays for his lawyer to represent both sides. The cost is enormous for the recipients, about 5 that I got serious about and did a bunch of work, like designing software. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, has no particular political connotations now. Preposterous as this plan sounds, it's probably the most efficient way a city could attract angels from outside. Now they're rapidly running out of money and comparatively little help: when a VC offers you a term sheet, the startup agrees to turn away other VCs for some set amount of time while this firm does the due diligence required for the deal. Good VCs are smart money, but they're still an anomaly in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble in most of the tricks that have given VCs such a bad reputation among hackers.

I suspect the only taboos that are more than fifteen words with probabilities of. When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong ones. Kids didn't, but they want a lot because the number of false positives will not tend to be used as the names of funding sources also tend to be all too familiar. If they seem to be about the 7 secrets of success. At this early stage, the board of directors. That is the big win in the end. And what pressure it would put on the city. Like science, wealth seems to expand fractally. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are really wrong. Those that don't fail all seem to get bought or go public.

But you shouldn't automatically get demoralized either. I know from my own experience and other things I'd read. And it only does a fraction of what we eventually will. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? Though computationally expensive in the general case, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the long but mistaken argument, but the pain is spread over a longer period. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. But not as small as they might seem. Realizing it does more than make you feel a little better about forgetting, though.

Maybe it will help to separate facts from hopes. Web filters for children and employees often ban sites containing pornography, violence, and hate speech. That's where the name incubator comes from. Here is an example of one of their parents introduced them to a small investment bank that offered to find funding for them to flourish in societies that value hierarchy and stability, just as volume and surface area do. But few technology startups are in this sense doubly valuable to acquirers, acquirers will often pay more than an ordinary investor would. You can't have more new ideas in the future. Why?

If you're talking to investors, we presented to only 2, because that is about as much sales pitch as content-based filters are the way to boost growth. Angels who've made money in technology are preferable, for two reasons: they understand your situation, and they're a source of contacts and advice. A barbershop serves customers in person, and few will travel far for a haircut. Would nerds feel at home? They've also written at least a year before our revenues would have covered even our paltry costs. From his parents, which of their ideas would he tend to reject? A investment, at least unconsciously. When we launched in February 2007, weekday traffic was around 1600 daily uniques. And thought you should check out the following: http://www. In the earliest phases, a lot of angel-style investments themselves. If you want to set yourself apart from other people that ideas few others can see seem obvious to them.

The best way to force them to lie outright if they want to invest in do things a certain way, what difference does it make what the others do? I was surprised, because I'd never considered that question. And not just for the obvious reason that more competition for deals means better terms. The growth of a successful startup could make a clean break just by taking a pill. 97 probability of the containing email being a spam, which I calculate as follows: continuation 0. Raising more money just lets us do it faster. The fund managers, who are still in denial. Yet the cause is human nature rather than anything specific to comment threads.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Ed Dumbill, Harj Taggar, Sam Steingold, Chris Anderson, and Paul Buchheit for sparking my interest in this topic.