#and will not be near any grain silos

[asterkallium]

congrats on your deserved large audience! here is a piplup from me, the flowing grain

AWWWW

Thank you so much (for the piplup and the kind words!)!!

[teslacoil-wizard]

If a Wizard spends enough time in one location, a Wizard tower will slowly grow around it. It starts out small. Just a few piles of loose stones that are easily swept away. But the longer the Wizard stay the bigger the tower. A particularly stationary Wizard might find their tower sprouting new stems and windows and growing so tall it dwarfs the near by castle.

Similarly, if a Wizard lives inside a structure, the structure will slowly morph itself into a Wizard tower. The most common instance of this are grain silos. Young wizardlings are naturally drawn to tall tower like structures that resemble Wizard towers for protection, and the abundance of grain means they have easy access to food and supplies for their early experiments while they accumulate magic and grow into fully fledged Wizards.

Removing a Wizard tower is usually pretty easy. Simply remove the Wizard and the tower will naturally crumble away over the corse of about a week. However this does destroy any structures absorbed into the tower, so it's best to do this before any such damages can occur. If you wish to keep a Wizard towers size in check rather than just destroying it outright, and adventuring party can be employed to clear out the tower like a dungeon and destroy the magic orb in the top room of every tower keeping them magically upright.

A particularly nasty Wizard infestation can cause a whole town to morph into a garden of Wizard towers, each only slightly resembling their former buildings as new tower stems sprout and grow over time. Luckily, Wizards are naturally solitary and are not likely to take up residence in an area with a preexisting tower. Some communities have taken to letting one Wizard live on the outskirts of town and keeping their tower size in check with adventurers to ward off a full investstion. Wizards can tell the difference between a real Wizard tower and one made by non Wizards and aren't fooled by decoys.

[thoughtlessarse]

A Saskatchewan farmer’s near miss with potentially lethal debris falling from orbit highlights the skyrocketing risks and murky politics of space junk The e-mail arrived, like a bolt from blue, on the otherwise typical Thursday afternoon of May 9. The message was from a journalist, asking me, an astronomer, for an interview about a farmer who had reportedly found space junk while prepping his fields for springtime seeding, just an hour’s drive from my home in Saskatchewan. “Yeah, right,” I said to myself as I tapped out my affirmative reply. The odds are already long for any particular place on Earth to be struck by orbital debris—so the chances for it to happen practically in the backyard of someone like me who studies the issue felt astronomically low, simply too far-fetched to be true. A quick check of my news feed proved me wrong. One of the top stories was about the space junk strike, and even included a photo of the farmer, Barry Sawchuk, standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semitruck covered with woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions. My jaw dropped in shock: The object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “trunk” is actually the size of a small grain silo, and is ejected in orbit well before the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry, to naturally and chaotically reenter on its own and, supposedly, burn up completely. To confirm my hunch, I immediately e-mailed my collaborator Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, who maintains probably the best public database of launches, reentries and other space activities. McDowell responded within minutes, forwarding a graphic tracing the path of a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk ejected by the Axiom 3 private astronaut mission that had reentered over the Canadian prairies on February 26, 2024. My hunch was confirmed.

continue reading

It's only a matter of time before someone dies.

[doshmanziari]

Brick By Brick is moving to Substack

Hi, everyone.

As 2022 nears its end, I’ve made the decision to migrate to Substack.

Although I’ve written on, and for, various sites over the years, my personal hub has, since 2014, been this blog, originally organized around the videogame series Castlevania, and later switching emphases to titles including Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, and Bloodborne. As I wrote in Brick By Brick’s first post, “This site was also born out of the perception that there is a lack of critical engagement of the series that balances strong mechanical/structural comprehension and a micro-focus on audio/visual design.”

Below are some examples of my writing on videogames:

The Soul of Place: My Favorite Dark Souls Sites || No Escape

Ruins of Memory || DEEP HELL

Souls Games are Great, Except for the Messages from Some Players || Kotaku

Secret Geometries || Heterotopias, Issue 2

My Inner Scales || Unwinnable

Understanding the Sublime Architecture of Bloodborne || Kill Screen

Where Did the Fun Street Fighter Music Go? || Kill Screen

Economy and Thematic Structure: Symphony of the Night's Level Design || Gamasutra

A Study of Michiru Yamane’s “Dracula’s Castle” || VGMO

Masashi Hamauzu Piano Works δ・ε・T_Comp 1 || VGMO

Final Fantasy XII Piano Collections || VGMO

And here are some examples of my writing for this blog:

What is the “Deep”?

Formalism, Dreams, Souls

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth

Putting Names to Built Things

Demon’s Souls || 2020 Notes [1]

Size and Sensibility || Elden Ring

Dark Souls 3: “More of the Same”

Selective Chromophobia & Castlevania

Overestimating Overviews of Overworlds

Rune Worth 2 and 3 and PC-98 Aesthetics

Aldrich and the Desacralization of Dark Souls 3

The quote above is reflective of my general approach to writing: that is, to perceive a discursive and/or analytic lack, and then to enter from that angle. In a certain sense, this is the basis of all criticism. But apparently inseparable from my person is an argumentative spark. Sometimes this has been to my detriment, as any characterological aspect can be. At its best, however, this “contrarianism” is insightful, and helps to form various pathways between apparently disparate fields and ideas. See, for example, my piece for DEEP HELL, and how it uniquely forms a through line between grain silos, Disney World, Umberto Eco’s work, nymphaea, and . . . Demon’s Souls.

In 2020, I felt that the subject of videogames was no longer interesting enough to be a topical go-to, and so, for the sake of expanding my range, I switched over to an alternate Tumblr blog. Then, in 2021, I migrated most of my posts over to a preexisting, now-renamed Medium account (originally intended for conversations about Boston’s newer architecture), which began to take priority. But Medium has long been in a place where the most visible articles, and perhaps the predominant associated audiences, have an intellectually thin and corporate bent; and, of course, the writing is done for free.

Below are examples of my more recent writing to demonstrate its combination of range and specificity:

Stop Hitting Yourself: A Brief Examination of the “Karen” Meme

Femboy Hooters as Consumerist Ephebic Sexuality

UFOs, Disclosure, and the Religious Impulse

What is Radical Music in 2021?

The Age of the Class Clown

DALL-E 2 and Objective Art

What is “Wholesomeness”?

A Phenomenology of Gazes: Nope

A Response to a Critique of Betsy DeVos’ Mansion

The Obfuscating Effect of Contemporary Non-Materialistic Ufology

Strangled and Mangled: Classicism and Its Ersatz After Architecture’s Commodification

To be transparent: I’ve also maintained a Patreon page since 2016, uploading the totality of my material — visual art (including comic books), music, and writing — at the end of each month. If that sounds more appealing than a purely text-based subscription, I’d point you that way. I’ve created an account on Substack as a way of consolidating and compartmentalizing my written work on a by-subscription basis, and to give it a more suitable platform.

None of the above means that I’m flat-out done writing about videogames. In fact, I have plans for an upcoming piece on the Castlevania series and Michiru Yamane’s music, with a focus on Symphony of the Night and (probably) Lament of Innocence. I’m excited to get to work on this, since practically all of the writing I know of on these soundtracks is of the interchangeable Consumer Reports variety. I’ll also continue to share any visual material here, whether it’s my own artwork, others’, or more sets of screenshots.

The original Thoughts Thought While Walks Walked was, I think, ultimately one of the many byproducts of the pandemic and its transformative effects (some good, some bad). As I began to open new doors and admit a fuller range of my abilities, sympathies, and antipathies, I started writing much more frequently and voluminously, and treading into areas which, beforehand, I might have considered nonsensical, off-limits, or not worth considering.

If you’re interested at all in the topics covered above, and are looking for considerate, exacting, and particular writing on them, please support me with a subscription on either of the aforementioned platforms.

I hope to see you on Substack!

[darkspine10]

GF Fanfic - Critical Meltdown

Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Past (40,456 words) by darkspine10

Chapters: 8/9

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Rating: Teen and Up

Surrounded by a giant field of solar panels glistening in the evening sun stood a pair of conical grey towers. Out here in the desert they seemed a resolute fixture of the landscape. Pacifica wondered how long they would last. If humanity vanished tomorrow, how many centuries would pass before those circular towers crumbled into dust? How much longer still might the elements within, hidden in the core deep below, linger on as a persistent danger.

She read the name on the signs, ‘Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Plant’. It seemed a remote spot, nearly 2 hours drive out from Piedmont and miles from the city centre. An odd place to end this. Rusting sirens stood on poles. They would be silent if anything dangerous happened.

She heard the screech of tires and saw the Mini pull up to the plant. Her husband practically fell out of the car, followed by Mabel, Zera, and his father.

Dipper looked immensely worn out. Making the round trip to pick up the others was the cherry on the cake of a very long day. He wasn’t the only one. Zera was wiped out from all the spellcasting and running around too.

Mabel seemed as peppy as ever though, bounding over to her mother and Merrise with a spring in her step. “Heya guys, how’ve you been? We went to the zoo!”

Merrise bounced on the spot. “Ooh, we went to this science museum place, and fought a dinosaur, and now I’ve got a toy dinosaur!”

“That’s great kiddo!” She turned to Pacifica, suddenly dropping her exuberance. “Any sign of tulpa number 3?”

“Not from out here. I haven’t stepped inside yet.” Pacifica lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Merrise going anywhere near a radioactive building.”

“You don’t have to worry about radiation,” Dipper said loudly, making it impossible for anyone not to hear. So much for sensitivity. “This place was decommissioned 50 years ago. The only active nuclear plant in the whole state is Diablo Canyon, south of the city.”

“So how’d you find this place?” Mabel asked, turning her head to look around and doing a 360 degree spin in the process. “There are no news crews anywhere. No anyone, in fact.”

“That’s where there might be a problem.” Dipper turned on his energy scanner. A large green pulse was flashing brightly on the map. Its location corresponded to where they were currently standing. “It’s possible the tulpa here is leeching power from some latent potential energy remaining in the core. Or maybe doing something with contaminated waste. Either way it’s not good. The tulpa could use the energy to manifest as something even more powerful than what we’ve witnessed so far.”

“They already did a convincing T-Rex,” Pacifica said, unimpressed. “How much bigger can you get?”

“I’m talking universal level threat.” He mimed an explosion by expanding his hands out in a wide area. “Something that won’t merely terrorise the city, but could destroy it instead!”

“Oh, so no pressure then,” Mrs Pines said. “I suppose the seven of us are going to walk right inside and save the world?”

“That sounds like the Pines MO,” Zera said. She was still slumped in the back of the car with her eyes half-lidded.

“I suppose, if no-one else is going to do it… it falls to us.” Mr Pines unexpectedly led the way towards the facility, with the others, besides Zera, following in lockstep. She stayed where she was to nurse her head, making a half-hearted thumbs up.

As nuclear plants go, the site was modest. Besides the two cooling towers there was a small main building, consisting of a bunch of functional square units with a squat cylindrical tower attached, resembling a grain silo. Behind was an electrical substation and pylons trailing off to the horizon. Over to their left, a row of storage unit sheds containing used fuel rods. A sign saying ‘trespassers are prohibited’ did nothing to stop them. As the sun went down, electric lamp posts automatically switched on, bathing them in a harsh artificial glare.

“A nuclear plant after dark, what a place for a mystery hunt,” Dipper said, his voice echoing slightly.

“Reminds me of that derelict hydro dam we went to once,” Mabel said. “There’s something eerie about a place that used to give power now sitting lifeless.”

“Don’t get poetic on us, May,” Pacifica said. “You can rhapsodise all about this place when we’re cosy and warm at home, sipping hot chocolate and unwrapping presents.” She shook her head. “What are our lives like? I mean, of all the places…”

Dipper pointed over the plains to the south. “There were actually some cryptid sightings near here once. There’s a lake and a park over there. People said they saw a ‘raptor’ flying above.”

“I remember that,” Mabel said, snapping her fingers. “We camped out by the lakeside and staked it out. Back in ‘21.” She poked her brother in the side. “You got bitten by sooooo many mosquitos that night.”

“That wasn’t long before the wedding,” Pacifica said, lost in thought. “Then we moved away from Mabel a short while after.”

“Dark days,” Dipper said jokily. “We never did find any raptor. At least this time our outing won’t be wasted. We know for a fact that the tulpa is here at the plant.”

“Dad, what is a nuclear power plant anyway?” Merrise asked, neck straining to look up at the cooling towers. Red LED lights shone around the rims of each, making them seem like the bastion of an evil fortress.

Mr Pines was the one to explain, glad to be able to provide something from his wheelhouse. “It uses the splitting of high-mass elements to generate heat, which causes water to turn into steam and rotate a turbine to produce electricity. Like… a really big water wheel, essentially.”

“Cool,” Merrise said. Though she didn’t always get overly excited by science topics, she still had a voracious desire to understand more about how the natural world worked.

“This one isn’t doing anything though,” Mabel said, scoffing. “They should have never built it in the first place.”

“Oh yeah, cause it’s so totally dangerous to the environment.” Dipper rolled his eyes.

“Well it is!”

“Only if you buy into the anti-nuclear propaganda”

“You’ll be the one regretting it if a place like this melts down and makes half of California unlivable.”

“Just so long as you admit that you’re encouraging a return to fossil fuels if you bash nuclear!”

“Can you two shut up for a second?” Pacifica hissed. “Debate later, when the city isn’t at risk.”

Merrise raised an eyebrow at the twins. “I thought you two were meant to have some super special, epic sibling bond or something like that?”

“Oh, we do,” Mabel said. “Sibling relationships are just like this. It’s not always sunshine and roses. What, you think we never argue? Never want to have our side heard?”

“I believe it,” Pacifica said, “I’ve got two decades of first hand experience of you two bickering.”

“I’ve got three,” Mrs Pines gleefully added.

“The point is,” Mabel said, returning to her niece, “is that we may disagree and have differing views… but we’re still family. We still love each other, no matter how much we drive each other up the wall. I keep forgetting, none of you guys ever had any siblings. Even Z, who had a crazy amount of tadpole siblings, doesn’t count.”

“It’s like having a ‘default friend’,” Dipper said. “We’re so close, but we also know exactly how to drive each other mad. We share a bunch of family in-jokes and memories that’s hard for anyone else to appreciate, even with you, Paz.”

Merrise thought for a moment. “I guess then we’ll have to act like a family now. So we can all know what that’s like. Like you said before. Family traditions can start whenever we want to make some.”

Dipper smiled, proud of his daughter’s initiative and desire to heal their fractious family make-up one way or another. He glanced at his parents, walking ahead along the silent alley. He resolved to reconcile with them as soon as possible, so they could put the whole sorry lying business in the past for good.

To no-one’s surprise the doors to the reactor building were locked. A metal chain and padlock were slung across. Mr Pines pushed it to no avail. “Oh well, guess we’ll have to go home. He gave a weak laugh that nobody else reciprocated and it died in his throat. “Worth a shot.”

“Step back everyone, I’ve got this.” Mabel smugly pushed through to examine the doors. She squinted and focused with her glasses, before standing up and wiping her hands. “Oh, this’ll be easy. I won’t even have to pick the lock.” From her jacket pocket she removed a pair of wire clippers and snipped the rusting chain. The padlock clanked to the ground. “Voila!”

“I’m constantly amazed by the stuff you happen to be carrying,” Pacifica said, shaking her head.

“I always carry wire clippers with me. Usually bolt cutters and a couple of spray cans too.” Mabel shrugged. “Never know when you have to do an impromptu bit of political activism.” She pushed the double doors open and peered into the dark gloom.

Dipper switched on his flashlight and entered the reception area. There was a smell of dry must, as well as a clinical antiseptic scent. They’d probably sprayed the whole place down to reduce any chance of leakage or waste. His scanner showed the same bright pulse, but it was once again poor at giving him the fine detail needed to pin down the tulpa. He turned off the tracking feature and extended twin aerials on either side of the boxy device. It instantly started making a constant clicking noise. “Geiger counter reading is looking alright, only a little above background. Even though this place isn’t too big I think we should stick together for now. That way we won’t accidentally go anywhere with higher risk levels.”

“And you’re still sure Merrise should be in here?” Mrs Pines asked. “Might it be worth her going back to wait by the car?”

“I don’t want to go.” Merrise said, frowning. “This is a family adventure.”

“I’m being conscious of your wellbeing, my dear. It’s not even something out of the ordinary. Radiation poisoning is no laughing matter.”

“She knows the risks,” Dipper said absent-mindedly. “It’s dangerous, but if Pacifica and I are willing to stick our necks out then nothing we say can stop Merrise tagging along. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“I suppose child endangerment is what you’re used to,” she said sharply. “You said it yourself, you started out so young.”

“That’s… that’s not important right now,” he mumbled. Resting his flashlight in the crook of his neck he shone it down at Journal 9 while he sketched a rough layout of the facility. “Ok, there’s the parking lot, cooling towers over here.” He drew two circles off to the right side. “Main entrance here, reactor core should be… there.” In an empty space at the middle of his drawing he marked a cross.

“Seems the most likely spot,” Mabel said. “Let’s go

“Then we have to deal with that Errata guy,” Pacifica added, a sour look on her face. It had already been a long enough day and she didn’t relish the idea of dealing with yet another cryptid on the loose.

The group passed through a series of functional grey corridors, only briefly shining their lights into side rooms and moving on. Dipper kept adding to his map, drawing more lines at every junction they went by. At the next turn he abruptly went left. They entered a large control room, with banks of dusty computers along the walls and ranks of freestanding consoles. A window running the length of the far wall looked down onto the reactor core itself. Walkways crisscrossed a large hall with empty circular pits.

“Most of the components were stripped out ages ago,” Dipper said. “The power generating equipment was all removed, the control rods, and the turbines. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made sure to clean it all too, before you ask, Mabel, so in theory it should be safe.” His geiger counter was still ticking away at the same rate.

“Hmm, I’m still not convinced,” Mabel said, peering through the window. Given her poor eyesight she wasn’t able to make out much. “There must be something, or else why would the tulpa come here?”

“Fair point.” Dipper shone his light down into the reactor area but it barely made a dent in the enclosed darkness. “It makes you sad, doesn’t it? This place used to harness the power of the atom to create incredible amounts of power. Now it’s a husk.”

“Doesn’t make me sad,” Pacifica said. “It’s just a grimy industrial hole in the ground and I’d rather we don’t stick around chatting all evening and got the hell out of here.”

“Right right, let’s stay on mission.” He laid out his journal on the nearest desk and the others huddled around to look. Dipper’s finger slid along the page. “There are two passageways that lead down there, one on each side of the complex leading from this control centre. I recommend we break into two groups and meet again in the middle. Since the core’s likely the most likely place for the tulpa to be hiding, and also probably has the highest chance of radiation. I'm going to take a page out of your book, Mom. Merrise, I want you to stay up here, and before you argue,” she’d already opened her mouth to complain, “you can still help. From here you can watch everything that goes on down there and warn us if there’s trouble. The lights outside had electricity, so there should be an intercom.”

He hurried around the consoles, but his father found the microphone first. He clicked the button and they heard a quiet feedback sound from the main chamber.

“Good good,” Dipper said. “Now, Pacifica, I know you’ll hate me for this, but I want you to stay up here and look after Merrise.”

“What, and play babysitter while you go down there?”

“If my hunch about the core is wrong then we need someone to watch our flank if the tulpa shows up where we aren’t expecting it.” He put his palm on her cheek. “You and Merrise are our backup if something goes wrong.”

Pacifica clutched his hand and kissed it. “When you put it like that… don’t be reckless down there.”

“Hey, you know me. As long as I don’t eat any uranium rods I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He flashed a crooked grin and she giggled.

“Go on, get out of here and finish this.”

“I’ll go with Mom down the right corridor,” Mabel said. “You take Dad a go around the other way.”

Dipper nodded and both he and his sister strode out of the room. Mr and Mrs Pines shared an uneasy look before following their respective children out. “Relax,” Pacifica called after them. “It’s only a monster that can turn into any other monster in the multiverse, sitting on top of what could turn into a ginormous ticking time bomb. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Ignore her,” Dipper said to his dad. “She’s trying to lighten the mood the way only Pacifica can.”

“You can sure pick ‘em,” Mr Pines replied.

They were only a few feet down the corridor when the air was split by an ear-piercing shriek. “Pacifica!” Dipper cried. “Dad, stay here.” He immediately bolted back down the corridor. When he got back to the control room he bumped into Mabel who’d had the same idea. They found Pacifica cowering in the corner, while Merrise was in hysterics. She pointed to the corner of the room, where a mass of cobwebs were tangled up. “I walked right into it!” Pacifica said, stamping her feet.

Mabel dropped down onto her front and watched a spider scuttling along the floor. “Aw, poor cutie.” She held out her finger and let the arachnid crawl over her fingers. “That tickles.” She set the spider down over by the webs and let it wander off. “You were scared of that tiny thing, Paz?”

“I wasn’t expecting it ok! It got in my hair! It’s not mutated is it?”

“Nope. Looks perfectly average. The girl who’s fought demons one-on-one can’t handle a small bug. Wow.”

Dipper coughed into his fist, “Moth.”

Mabel screamed and leapt to her feet. “WHERE? KILL IT!” The look of amusement on everyone’s faces made her straighten. “Uh, I mean. Wooh. Crazy.” She cupped her hands together then pointed down the corridor. “Let’s… let’s keep going.”

“Wait!” They turned to Merrise, face and palms right up against the glass. Down in the reactor room Mr and Mrs Pines each emerged from either side.

“They went on without us,” Mabel said, furrowing her brow.

“That’s why!” Merrise pointed but they’d all seen it. Following Mr and Mrs Pines into the room were two shimmering golden humanoids. They were short, only children. Dipper was confused. Where were the terrifying enemies, the cosmic entities hellbent on destruction that the tulpa would surely have turned into?

The two tulpas had taken the shape of a boy and a girl. The boy had a baseball cap and wore a sleeveless vest and shorts, while the girl’s colourful woollen sweater was hard to miss. Dipper had been wrong. The tulpa didn’t want the energy in this place to turn into something powerful. It needed the vast sums of energy to create another emotional connection, similar to his own repressed internal turmoil at the golf course. The tulpa had turned into perfect replicas of the Pines twins, circa 2012.

Zera’s eyes flipped open. She’d managed to drift off peacefully in the car. The lights from the plant hadn’t reached her and it was perfectly pitch black in the desert. Or it had been. A bright light made her cover her eyes and sit up. The glare was covering the entire plant and its surroundings in a diffuse halo. It wasn’t a golden illumination, as the tulpas and their creator had been. It was a harsher, lifeless light, like the glow of a distant forest fire over the horizon. An unholy aura.

Zera didn’t know what was causing the sudden luminance, but she knew it couldn’t be a good sign. She was worried it was radioactive in some way. That was silly though. Radiation didn’t actually glow like in a cartoon. It was an invisible, insidious killer. This must be related to the tulpas.

A dark shape flew past the car and she turned her head to catch it. Her mouth dropped open as she recognised the four-legged, top-heavy monstrosity lurching towards the main reactor building. “Oh May. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Mary? What are we doing? I’m not so sure this was a good idea.”

“Me neither. But what else are we supposed to do?”

They’d each seen a tulpa manifesting in the hallway, taking on the almost cherubic representations of their children. The children beckoned Mr and Mrs Pines onwards. Since they had no clue how to fight back they’d not demurred, and let the creatures guide them. Once all four of them were in the reactor room, the tulpas stood side-by-side and faced the parents. They each held one hand aloft, casting an ominous light to outshine the feeble flashlights. It enveloped the chamber, blocking all vision from the outside. Since then the tulpa twins had stood lifelessly in the reactor hall, staring vacantly ahead. They were like clockwork automatons waiting for the strike of noon.

Up in the control room, blinded by the glare, Pacifica and Merrise tried desperately to come up with answers. “We’ve gotta do something!” Merrise said, throwing her arms down in frustration. “This is a control room, right? Can’t we do anything from up here? I don’t know, turn off the power, stop the reactor. Control rods, those are a thing, right?”

“That’s just it, there are no controls.” Pacifica slammed a fist on the nearest console, which resounded with an echoing clang. “Like Mason said, all the power regulating machines are already gone. There shouldn’t be anything down there that’s capable of generating energy, let alone allowing us to switch it off!” Even the intercom had proven useless, giving nothing but static. Whatever the tulpas were doing to shine such a bright glow was also blocking radio waves too.

“That light, it hurts to look.” Merrise shielded her eyes with her hand and tapped the glass overlooking the floor below. “This is like bulletproof or something. They’re my grandparents!” Merrise said, on the verge of tears. “We’ve gotta be able to do something.”

“It’s up to the twins now.” Pacifica set her lip in a resolute line, determined not to show any fear in front of her daughter. “Why does it always have to fall on their stupid shoulders?”

That, as a matter of fact, was what Dipper was thinking at that same moment, creeping along the corridor to the reactor. He had no plan, no backup magic artefacts or clever tricks to win the day. He had his journal, his sister, and a fleeting hope his parents weren’t about to be disintegrated in a ball of fiery death.

Mabel ran up to the door to the room where her parents were. She pressed herself against the door, commando style, readying her gauntlet and squaring her shoulders. She nodded to Dipper as if expecting him to match her stance. He simply walked up to the door and shoved it open. Forget surprise; the tulpas must know they were coming.

He thought it would be burning hot inside but found all heat was being leached from the air. As they passed through the blazing nimbus of light the twins’ eyes adjusted quickly. It was like being underwater, the light speckling in bands which caught dust beams suspended in the air. “Mom, Dad!” Mabel yelled.

The tulpas and their parents were in the heart of the power plant, the eye of the storm where the light dimmed to acceptable levels to stare without squinting. Mr and Mrs Pines didn’t seem aware of the real twins outside the core, and hadn’t heard Mabel’s calls.

“Finally.” The multi-faceted voice ricocheted into the twins’ ears. The doors leading to the opposite corridor exploded off their hinges. The twins ducked. Swooping in was the enormous four-legged chimaera they’d last seen downtown. He was flying via a pair of wings that had sprouted out of the bark on his back. Each flapping wing was made of a tight coil of paper strands, brown and weathered, covered in scrawl from multiple writers.

Errata hovered above the tulpas and then set himself gently behind them. He held out his arms as if beckoning Mr and Mrs Pines forwards, like an evangelical preacher welcoming his flock. “Oh, that is good!” He primarily sounded like Dipper now, blocking out most of the other voices vying for dominance in the beast’s throat. “One happy family, back together. Isn’t that how it should be?”

Mabel ran towards her parents but came up against the wall of light. She pushed against the translucent barrier, finding herself repelled. “Don’t hurt them! Dipper, do something!”

“I- I don’t know what to do.” From out here the tableau within looked as still as the surface of an undisturbed lake. Neither the fantastical creatures or his parents were moving in the slightest. He reached out with his fingers and brushed the edge of the light core. To his astonishment they passed through the outer barrier.

Mabel watched him intently, then patted her brother on the back. “Dipper, it has to be you!”

“What, why me? You’re a part of this too, we both lied.”

“It’s not about that anymore. Dipper, don’t you get it? Errata, he’s a reflection of you more than anyone else. Think about it. Ford started the journals, sure, but you’ve written the most! You made them your entire life, devoted yourself to mysteries and adventures. You can break through. I believe in you, bro.” She hugged Dipper, then gently guided him towards the core.

As he’d anticipated, he passed through without resistance. The light parted like a curtain to let him approach. “Plus it was your decision to lie in the first place!” Mabel shoved Dipper the rest of the way through the light barrier. “You got this Dip! No backsies!”

“Hey, Mabel! Not fair!” He stumbled and nearly fell over until he righted his sense of balance. He looked forward and swallowed hard. “Oh crap.” The tulpas and his parents had turned to look at him with unanimous blank expressions. Dipper almost felt like laughing when he saw the copies of himself and Mabel up close. Him with his hat down firmly over his forehead, still mired in embarrassment about the birthmark that nowadays he considered nothing more than a fun quirk. Mabel’s purple sweater with a doofy cat wasn’t so different from something she’d still wear, but Dipper recognised the specificity. Both twins looked exactly as they had on the day Dipper had found Journal 3 in the woods. They were unchanged, a snapshot of innocence from that warm summer’s day 17 years ago.

His first thoughts were on practical matters. Ignoring his parents he fixed his glare on Errata’s starry face. The chimaera seemed to be smiling, though as always it was hard to discern. “First things first,” Dipper said. “I want to know how you harnessed the radiation. I’ve no idea where it’s coming from, but I demand you stop. Every second I spend bantering with you we’re all getting irradiated. I’d prefer if my parents didn’t end up mutated. Plus Pacifica and I have already dealt with enough infertility issues to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”

Dipper thought irreverence would be the easiest way to project his authority. Errata didn’t care. He gave a small grunt and shrug of the head that Dipper took to be a laugh. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” Dipper frowned at the perceived insult, both to him and the rest of his family. “There is no radiation.”

Dipper’s jaw dropped open. “But how-“

“Easy. I fed off the symbolic energy of this building.” Errata swept his hands around the room. A faint ectoplasmic glow appeared to hover off the walls before fading. “After you dealt so efficiently with the chaos I’d sown across the city, I was ready to embrace the lurking power. This place is practically drowning in…” Errata sniffed, “significance. All those technicians working here, they couldn’t help but express the way the world thought about it. The totemic fear, cracking the atom, the scientist’s dream of ultimate power. Of course it seeped into the very foundations of the brickwork! Then when it was abandoned it grew to an even greater significance. An enduring relic of man’s folly, of a path science went down before being treated as a dead end. I couldn’t resist the ritual of it all.”

“And now your tulpas are done harvesting all the energy up.”

“Not quite, you still have something of mine.”

Dipper felt in his pocket and found the two tulpas they’d caught, still locked in the form of the amulet and key. Seeing no other option, he held the objects out for Errata to take. He passed one each to the twins’ tulpas, handing the amulet to Mabel and the key to Dipper. It was then that the real Dipper realised the significance of the items. They’d managed to collect each others’ items, but it didn’t matter. These were in fact the very first artefacts the twins had acquired on their adventures, even if only temporarily in the amulet’s case. Dipper even still had the real President’s Key, framed back home.

Dipper slapped his forehead. “I should’ve realised sooner. You’re empathic. I’ve met a few empaths before. All those complicated foreign emotions swirling around must be enough to drive you mad.”

“Very nearly, boy. But I like the aftertaste of discord, the bitter swill of recriminations, smothered sentiment and… regret. Oh, how it feeds me. I was born in the crucible of lies and now it nourishes my soul!”

Dipper stood his ground and scowled. “Don’t think you can scare me. I’ve faced all kinds of psychic assaults. Dream demons who think they know me, regression to past events, I’ve seen it all. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Oh, I don’t want your fear, at least not this tawdry primal stew.” The chimaera’s paper wings swept down to surround Dipper’s parents, who remained oddly unresponsive. “No no no, not the shakiness of terror, the risk of physical hurt, even the potential harm to your loved ones. It’s all part of the game to you. The fear I want is much richer. It’s the fear that people could find out your secret: that you get off on all this.”

Dipper began to sweat and dropped his prepared stance. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” Errata snapped his finger, bringing Mr and Mrs Pines back to life.

“Dipper? What’s going on, where are-” Mr Pines gazed up to see Errata towering above him.

“Hi there,” Errata said wickedly. Pacifica’s tone of voice had floated to the top of the pile.“You’re a sick, dirty little addict. Mason ‘Dipper’ ’Ursus’ Pines. You and your sister, sneaking out at night, skipping school, repressing everything. How scrumptious it will be when those emotions come pouring out!”

Mrs Pines began to whimper. “He’s trying to make things worse, don’t listen to him.” Dipper’s parents tried to run free, but the wings kept them surrounded in a cruel embrace.

“Stop it!” he yelled, pushing forwards.

“Not yet.” Errata held out a single one of his six fingers and held Dipper back by the forehead. “Let’s have more of that juicy turmoil hidden behind your astronomical ego. Get the pun?” Dipper shoved the finger away from his birthmark but Errata had another trick up his sleeve.

“Boy, I can’t believe we defeated all those gnomes!” The tulpa of Mabel had spoken, and Dipper knew it was his reflection’s turn next.

“Who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked thanks to this journal!” The copy sounded so eager, so carefree. He was ready to deceive his own parents if it meant there wasn’t even the slimmest chance of losing this new window of opportunity. Both of his parents could see this for themselves, giving disappointed glances at the golden twins, at least when not being intimidated into silence by Errata’s freakish thuggery.

The chimaera himself seemed overwhelmed with pleasure. “Oh, that’s decadent. Who knew one measly human boy could generate such drama.”

“Shut up!” Dipper shouted, surprising Errata. Defiance wasn’t an emotion he’d been expecting. “I’ve had it up to here with your petty taunts! Forget it. I don’t care if my parents don’t approve of my life. I’m an adult, I’ve got a family and responsibilities that I chose, alright. This doesn’t define anything anymore.” Dipper opened Journal 9 and held it for all to see. “Haven’t you got the memo yet, Errata? My parents have all the time in the world now to get to know me and my secrets. You said you were an open book? Well I’ve got dozens of the things lying around at home.” Errata was stunned into silence, and Dipper couldn’t tell if it was from his outburst or the sudden severing of his precious food source.

Dipper looked down from the irrelevant monster and approached his parents. “Yes, Mom, Dad. I lied. I did it because I wanted to have it both ways.” He pointed at his 12-year old self. “I could be ‘Dipper the investigator’, ‘Dipper the cryptid expert’, ‘Dipper the romantic hero’, and still come home and be ‘Mason the ordinary kid’.”

“Oh Dipper.” His mother knelt down and hugged him. “You could have told us and not had to hide any part of yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said, lightly hugging back. “Try telling that to me back then. You might not have understood, even if someone like Ford tried to explain it. There were times that first summer where I thought I couldn’t trust Grunkle Stan, or Mabel, or even my own doppelgangers. The idea of someone who didn’t even know the first thing about magic accepting it off the bat seemed laughable.” He rubbed his neck. “And if we’re being honest, I never really had any friends before that summer. I was a nerd, with freaky forehead acne. Then I found people I could relate to, who lived and breathed weirdness. I didn’t want to lose them as much as the actual adventures.”

Dipper sniffed, and Mr Pines put a supportive hand on his shoulder. “Hey now, we might not get all of this craziness, but we still love you son. None of this can change that. I mean, it’s not like you turned out to be hiding something bad about yourself, is it?”

“Exactly!” His mother was smiling now, almost forgetting where they were. “We never knew you had such a capacity to draw and write, in such detail.”

“Yeah, those tulpa things could only be so accurate if the source material already was, right? Lifelike doesn’t even begin to cover it! Then there’s Mabel, doing all those fancy spells. I never thought my little girl had it in her! Or Zera, she leapt into action to save us, near-strangers. If that isn’t heroic I don’t know what is.”

“And what about little Merrise, who was so brave to endure so much. If you hadn’t told us the truth we’d never know har far you’d all come.”

“And Pacifica, she… did we learn anything new about Pacifica, Mary?”

“I don’t think so.“ His parents laughed. “Well she’s a wonderful person as well, I’m sure she’ll be a great mother to Wendy and Merrise.”

“Thanks,” Dipper said, smiling and holding back tears. “It means a lot, to hear all that from you after so long.”

“C’mon Dipper!” Dipper looked up. Errata was frozen with a pensive expression. The tulpa of Mabel was leading her brother away. “Let’s go find another adventure in Gravity Falls.” The echoes of the twins wandered away, past Errata, before disappearing into the light. A cascade of golden energy flowed into Errata a moment later, but he didn’t react.

“I think I get it now,” he said, with an almost eerie calmness. He stumbled on his hind legs as if drunk. “I thought the potential of that trapped doubt and guilt was all I needed. But this, this cocktail of missed opportunity and exuberant acceptance, a new beginning… It’s a heady mix.”

“It’s an all new flavour of emotion. I like it too,” Dipper said softly. Errata smiled, and for the first time it wasn’t in a mocking way.

His brutish hands were almost graceful as they reached out to a sunbeam, catching falling dust motes in his palm. “Here I was thinking I knew you Dipper Pines. Perhaps I only knew your imprint. All your years jumbled together on the pages of the journals. None of them could quite capture who you are in the present.”

Dipper noticed the mood around them had subtly changed. There was a satisfying warmth in the reactor room, and the light was no longer harsh to the eye. It was a pleasant orange, like the light of a roaring campfire or a homely hearth. Dipper saw his sister waving, back by the entrance. She could tell something positive had taken place.

Errata creaked as he stretched out his trunk neck. “Thank you. For showing me there can be other paths. Perhaps we will meet again, and I can return the favour.” Errata stood in place, but the room began to shake.

Dipper was the first to cotton on to what was about to happen. He took his parents by the hand and backed away from his indirect creation, offering a grin of support before turning to leave.

“What the heck is-” Mabel was cut off as Dipper ran past, adding her hand to the list and dragging her away. Sprinting out, they stopped in the control room for only a second.

“Time to go guys,” Dipper said to Pacifica and Merrise, who looked relieved to see them all unharmed. The quakes became more violent, knocking over desks and computers, which let off a flurry of electrical sparks.

Dipper spared only a single glance down into the reactor. The light was building in intensity again. Errata was blurred and indistinct. Dipper lingered until he became completely obscured, and was the last to run out of the main block after his family. They continued to run until they reached the parking lot. Zera was standing outside the car, mouth agape watching as the entire plant shone like the sun.

A sudden gust of air blew inwards toward the reactor, dimming the light as it went. The Pines family watched in amazement as there was sudden implosion, with all the light focusing into one point at the centre of the plant before shooting upwards like a searchlight’s beam straight up into the night sky. The roof of the reactor room blew outwards, sending concrete walls catapulting away. Amongst the devastation, Dipper smiled when he saw a brief vision of Errata, racing away into the stars up above.

Then it was all over. The light dissipated, the earth was still, and the danger was over. They all let out deep breaths of relief and looked around at each other, celebrating the fact they’d survived together.

“It’s over.” Mrs Pines had spoken. Her gaze was fixed on the sky. “Where-”

“It’s not important,” Dipper said. “He’s nothing anymore. Merely a footnote. What’s really important is the story we write next.” He showed his parents the cover of Journal 9, with the same starry pattern as Errata’s face. It glimmered in the half-light of the moon. Dipper looked expectantly at the two of them. “So? What do you say? Want to add your own touch?”

His parents shared only a short look, before taking Journal 9 and turning it to the latest blank page. Marc and Mary Pines would be the latest in a long line to lend a small part of themselves to the ever expanding tapestry started in Gravity Falls so many years ago.

“Great, world’s saved again,” Zera yawned. “Now can we please go home and get some sleep?”

[govindhtech]

Amazon Redshift: A Quick-Start Guide To Data Warehousing

Amazon Redshift offers the finest price-performance cloud data warehouse to support data-driven decision-making.

What is Amazon Redshift?

Amazon Redshift leverages machine learning and technology created by AWS to provide the greatest pricing performance at any scale, utilizing SQL to analyze structured and semi-structured data across data lakes, operational databases, and data warehouses.

With only a few clicks and no data movement or transformation, you can break through data silos and obtain real-time and predictive insights on all of your data.

With performance innovation out of the box, you may achieve up to three times higher pricing performance than any other cloud data warehouse without paying extra.

Use a safe and dependable analytics solution to turn data into insights in a matter of seconds without bothering about infrastructure administration.

Why Amazon Redshift?

Every day, tens of thousands of customers utilize Amazon Redshift to deliver insights for their organizations and modernize their data analytics workloads. Amazon Redshift’s fully managed, AI-powered massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture facilitates swift and economical corporate decision-making. With AWS’s zero-ETL strategy, all of your data is combined for AI/ML applications, near real-time use cases, and robust analytics. With the help of cutting-edge security features and fine-grained governance, data can be shared and collaborated on safely and quickly both inside and between businesses, AWS regions, and even third-party data providers.

Advantages

At whatever size, get the optimal price-performance ratio

With a fully managed, AI-powered, massively parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse designed for speed, scale, and availability, you can outperform competing cloud data warehouses by up to six times.

Use zero-ETL to unify all of your data

Use a low-code, zero-ETL strategy for integrated analytics to quickly access or ingest data from your databases, data lakes, data warehouses, and streaming data.

Utilize thorough analytics and machine learning to optimize value

Utilize your preferred analytics engines and languages to run SQL queries, open source analytics, power dashboards and visualizations, and activate near real-time analytics and AI/ML applications.

Use safe data cooperation to innovate more quickly

With fine-grained governance, security, and compliance, you can effortlessly share and collaborate on data both inside and between your businesses, AWS regions, and even third-party data sets without having to move or copy data by hand.

How it works

In order to provide the best pricing performance at any scale, Amazon Redshift leverages machine learning and technology created by AWS to analyze structured and semi-structured data from data lakes, operational databases, and data warehouses using SQL.

Use cases

Boost demand and financial projections

Allows you to create low latency analytics apps for fraud detection, live leaderboards, and the Internet of Things by consuming hundreds of megabytes of data per second.

Make the most of your business intelligence

Using BI tools like Microsoft PowerBI, Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, and Amazon Redshift, create insightful reports and dashboards.

Quicken SQL machine learning

To support advanced analytics on vast amounts of data, SQL can be used to create, train, and implement machine learning models for a variety of use cases, such as regression, classification, and predictive analytics.

Make money out of your data

Create apps using all of your data from databases, data lakes, and data warehouses. To increase consumer value, monetize your data as a service, and open up new revenue sources, share and work together in a seamless and safe manner.

Easily merge your data with data sets from outside parties

Subscribe to and merge third-party data in AWS Data Exchange with your data in Amazon Redshift, whether it’s market data, social media analytics, weather data, or more, without having to deal with licensing, onboarding, or transferring the data to the warehouse.

Amazon Redshift concepts

Amazon Redshift Serverless helps you examine data without provisioning a data warehouse. Automatic resource provisioning and intelligent data warehouse capacity scaling ensure quick performance for even the most demanding and unpredictable applications. The data warehouse is free when idle, so you only pay for what you use. The Amazon Redshift query editor v2 or your favorite BI tool lets you load data and query immediately. Take advantage of the greatest pricing performance and familiar SQL capabilities in a zero-administration environment.

If your company is eligible and your cluster is being formed in an AWS Region without Amazon Redshift Serverless, you may be eligible for the free trial. Choose Production or Free trial to answer. For what will you use this cluster? Free trial creates a dc2.large node configuration. AWS Regions with Amazon Redshift Serverless are included in the Amazon Web Services General Reference’s Redshift Serverless API endpoints.

Key Amazon Redshift Serverless ideas are below

Namespace: Database objects and users are in a namespace. Amazon Redshift Serverless namespaces contain schemas, tables, users, datashares, and snapshots.

Workgroup: A collection of computer resources. Amazon Redshift Serverless computes in workgroups. Redshift Processing Units, security groups, and use limits are examples. Configure workgroup network and security settings using the Amazon Redshift Serverless GUI, AWS Command Line Interface, or APIs.

Important Amazon Redshift supplied cluster concepts:

Cluster: A cluster is an essential part of an Amazon Redshift data warehouse’s infrastructure.

A cluster has compute nodes. Compiled code runs on compute nodes.

An additional leader node controls two or more computing nodes in a cluster. Business intelligence tools and query editors communicate with the leader node. Your client application only talks to the leader. External apps can see computing nodes.

Database: A cluster contains one or more databases.

One or more computing node databases store user data. SQL clients communicate with the leader node, which organizes compute node queries. Read about compute and leader nodes in data warehouse system design. User data is grouped into database schemas.

Amazon Redshift is compatible with other RDBMSs. It supports OLTP functions including inserting and removing data like a standard RDBMS. Amazon Redshift excels at batch analysis and reporting.

Amazon Redshift’s typical data processing pipeline and its components are described below.

A example Amazon Redshift data processing path is shown below.Image credit to AWS

An enterprise-class relational database query and management system is Amazon Redshift. Business intelligence (BI), reporting, data, and analytics solutions can connect to Amazon Redshift. Analytic queries retrieve, compare, and evaluate vast volumes of data in various stages to obtain a result.

Multiple data sources upload structured, semistructured, and unstructured data to the data storage layer at the data ingestion layer. This data staging section holds data in various consumption readiness phases. Storage may be an Amazon S3 bucket.

The optional data processing layer preprocesses, validates, and transforms source data using ETL or ELT pipelines. ETL procedures enhance these raw datasets. ETL engines include AWS Glue.

Read more on govindhtech.com

[classicjalopy]

Planning a 2024 Classic Mercedes Road trip - The Long way Euround

Each of the last two years, I have done an extended road trip in Classic Mercedes.   I have found them so enjoyable that it has become an annual event.   There is such a sense of adventure exploring our beautiful country in a classic car.   There is even more of a sense of adventure avoiding motorways and driving exclusively on back roads, through great scenery and interesting towns. In 2022, I went with a group of friends to Adelaide via Victoria and The Great Ocean Road, before returning via Broken Hill.   Last year, we attended the MBCV concours event taking the mountain roads there, and the inland route back. This year, the same group that went to Victoria are going back, but this time the Long way Euround.

Like last year, we have built the trip around a car show.   In this case, the Australian National Show and Shine in Euroa.   This is a big car show set in Seven Creeks park.   We had a bit of a scare earlier in the year when the show was slated to be cancelled, but the organizers were able to get more volunteers in time. As with last year, these will all be classic Mercedes, including two 108s - a 280S and a 280SE 3.5, three 107s - two 450SLCs and a 500SL, a 126 380SEC, 123 280CE and three 124s - a 300CE, 300TE and E280T.

Day 0 To avoid getting stuck in Sydney traffic on the first day, our trip starts in Bathurst.   The plan is for everyone to make their way to Bathurst in their own time, refuel their car and allow us to make an early start the next day.   I'll be working a full day, so this will be like another night drive for me.    The distance will be different for everyone in the group, but for me it will be 216km. Day 1 On our first official day of the trip, we're taking the inland route to the Murray river, before following the river west.   We'll initially go through mid sized towns such as Cowra, Young and Gundagai, while avoiding the M31.   There is a very short section of about 10km which is shared with the route from last year, but otherwise it's all different. Once we hit the river, we'll alternate between the NSW and Victorian side, going through some of the smaller towns before finishing up in Cobram.   We'll cover 657km on the first day and it should be a fairly relaxed day as we don't have any specific deadlines. Day 2 The second day will be a busier day.   We'll continue our Murray River tour, getting as far along as Robinvale.   This will take us through famous Murray towns like Euchca and Swan Hill. In the afternoon, we'll do a portion of the western Victorian silo art trail.   This is a series of grain silos with murals from artists painted on them.   The official silo art tour is quite extensive, however, due to time constraints we've planned to visit 7 of them.   Depending on how long it takes, we can cut out the last couple.    On Day 2, we'll cover 746km, finishing up in Horsham. Day 3 Day three will be an easier day.   We'll start by doing a scenic drive through the Grampians National Park.   In the afternoon, we'll visit a Benz wrecker, and optionally a metal working shop.   We'll finish our day in Bendigo, where we will be able to wash our cars for the show on day 4.   On day 3, we cover 414km. Day 4 Day four is the Australian National Show and Shine in Euroa.  We've got a section for our ten cars near where MBCV have their allocation.    We'll stay at the show for the morning, before taking some scenic roads to the eastern side of Melbourne.   These roads are quite windy and should be far more interesting to drive on than the motorway.   We cover 510km on day 4. In the evening, MBCV have kindly offered to host us for a BBQ at their club rooms.   Having visited their club rooms last year, our group from NSW has serious club room envy!

Day 5 Day five we leave Melbourne and tour through Gippsland hugging the coast.   Last year due to time constraints we took the more direct route through Traralgon. In the afternoon, we'll stop at the Gippsland Vehicle Collection in Maffra.   After that we continue along the coast through Orbost, before turning north to Bombala where we stop for the night.   Day 5 is a fairly relaxed day where we cover 604km. Day 6 Our final day we head north from Bombala towards Cooma.   We couldn't take the more alpine roads, as chains are required until after the long weekend, and we are driving on the actual long weekend. From Cooma, we continue north towards Canberra.   This is the only repeat leg from last year, but in the opposite direction.   However, from Canberra, instead of taking the road through Oberon, we take the parallel road through Tuena.   This takes us up near Bathurst and Lake Lyall.

As with last year, we go our separate ways at Lithgow.   The shared drive is 515km, and overall I will do 658km on day 6. Read the full article

[firelord-frowny]

trigger warning for discussion about rape as a concept omggg

for fiction-writing purposes, i’m reading about the history of rape and laws about rape, and apparently one law from an ancient mesopotamian culture is...

55. In the case of a seignior's daughter, a virgin who was living in her father's house, whose [father] had not been asked (for her in marriage), whose hymen had not been opened since she was not married, and no one had a claim against her father's house, if a seignior took the virgin by force and ravished her, either in the midst of the city or in the open country or at night in the street or in a granary or at a city festival, the father of the virgin shall take the wife of the virgin's ravisher and give her to be ravished; he shall not return her to her husband (but) take her; the father may give his daughter who was ravished to her ravisher in marriage. If he has no wife, the ravisher shall give the (extra) third in silver to her father as the value of a virgin (and) her ravisher shall marry her (and) not cast her off. If the father does not (so) wish, he shall receive the (extra) third for the virgin in silver (and) give his daughter to whom he wishes. (Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (1969), p. 185.)[1]: 152 

obviously the entirety of this law is grotesquely repugnant, but also 

WHYYYYYYYYYYY DID THEY SPECIFY SO MANY LOCATIONS LMAOOO like damn they did not want to leave one single loop hole! Like, can you imagine what the ~norm~ must have been like in order for anyone to even think to add these weirdly specific stipulations?? men just going around raping women in the middle of the town square or out in them there pastures over yonder or at midnight smack-dab in the center of the alleyway or in the fuckin grain silo at the farm and AT THE COUNTY FAIR???

barbarians! 

just raping women anywhere any time all the time! like jesus fucking christ if you’re going to violate a woman’s mind and body, could you AT LEAST do it in private???

 *panic at the disco voice* haven’t you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door????

[mediadiscord]

 The Last of Us – Season 1 Episode 2 – Review

Hey everyone welcome back to my review of another episode of The Last of Us. The show which I'm liking, based on a video game I've never played on a system that that I didn't continue after the second generation. As per usual this review will not feature any Easter eggs, because frankly I wouldn't know what one would be. The only Easter egg is that this show is based on a video game and the stories are, from what I hear, somewhat similar. In this episode we continue the journey of Joel, Elle and Tess as they travel through two buildings in front of a lot of green screen. The episode starts off with two things, the show earning it's M rating with some tasteful corpse nudity and the fact that this fungus infection cannot be stopped. Apparently it started near a grain silo, which a mycologist that didn't get to finish the last bit of her salad was told after viewing the corpse mentioned a few lines above. In the review of the body you can see a single bullet wound smack dab in the middle of the forehead, a bite mark and some fungus pulled out of the mouth. The mycologist is told this person was working near a grain silo and started acting violent towards others. I didn't see her checked the wrists for handcuff marks and apparently in this version of Earth, sharp shooters are everwhere. If this person was really acting eratic then they would be moving all around and not going slow, but some marksmen nailed a bullseye in the third eye of this person with a very small bullet. There wasn't even a second bullet hole shown, so the practice of a double tap has not been taught yet. We learned what I had mentioned last week when I was talking about this being not a virus, and that they just happen to come across this infection and not have any cure for it. Well, they did just come across this infection, there is no cure or vaccine and being blown up into little bits with a bomb is the most effective way to stop the spread. I suppose if there was a vaccine or cure this season would be 6 episodes and it would be an indie game that takes four hours to complete. The story picks up with the most comfertable way to wake up, in a grass as a teenager with two adults staring at you. Joel and Tess have no idea what to expect with Elle and even though she said she went to school, Elle doesn't know how long the infection goes before completely turning someone. The posters in the first episode shows a range from a few hours to a few days, I think, depending on where you were bit. I'm sure that I could easily look that fact up, but hey let's stick with a few days. In fact Joel tells Elle that it could be quick or take decades to show. This seems silly and makes Joel look like he's the person to do his own research, plus has he really know anyone affected for more than a few decades? From watching The Mandalorian and all the behind the scenes stuff, I quickly can point out all the green screen used for the background. It really helps out that if you watch the group walk towards the background, the quickly turn directions before they hit it. The group decided to travel through two buidings that they deemed the easier way on the way to meet the fireflies to get Elle smuggled out. You get some glimpses of a fungus farm of people on a street hagnging out getting some sun and we're told that they use the fungus like a spiders web. Vibrations can be felt by all infected. In the buildings they find dried up fungus and new corpses, a couple of clickers come say hello and they forget all about being quiet and fire away knowing sound travels and that there is a great chance the infected not too far way can hear them. Elle gets bit again and it's realized she has been give the game genie code for infinate lives. On the other hand Tess is bit and during the second building they go to to find the fireflies she admits to this after Elle points it out. Sometimes it's best to mind your business. The fireflies they were suppose to meet are all dead and now the infected hear them and want to come in and say hello. Tess decided to give the ultimate sacrafice, frenching an infected and then blowing up the building they're all in which adds up to post kiss instant regret. Way to hit the ego of an infected. We don't get any more 80's music, but Joel is given new directions, before Tess turns into confetti, to take Elle to two individuals. I think the two people are part of the firefly funhouse and can use somekind of alchemy to turn Elle's blood into something useful. Again, I haven't playing the game so I'm hoping that's what's going to happen. Read the full article

[ultraheydudemestuff]

John Scott Farm, Barn, and Granary

3681 Hamilton-New London Rd. east

Shandon, OH

The John Scott Farm is a historic farmstead in Ross Township, Butler County, near the community of Shandon, Ohio, United States. Established in the nineteenth century and still in operation in the twenty-first, the farmstead has been named a historic site because of its traditionally built agricultural structures. The farm was established in the early nineteenth century; while its precise date of establishment appears to be uncertain, it had definitely been formed by 1829, when future journalist Murat Halstead was born there. It has continued in Halstead's family since that time, taking the name of his brother-in-law John Scott, and passing through various relatives descended from Scott. During the late nineteenth century, the farm was used for stock-raising purposes, and accordingly the barn was constructed in 1884 with a trio of concrete silos.

Although the operation had been abandoned by 1895, the farm was purchased in 1900 by relatives of the Scotts, and they reopened it as a dairy farm to raise Jerseys. All three historic structures on the farmstead were built between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth: the granary in 1875, the barn in 1884, and the milkhouse in 1915. The milkhouse was in use for a comparatively short time, being closed in the 1950s by a health board order, and an electrically powered milking facility was added to the barn at the same time.

Three buildings compose the historic section of the farmstead: a barn, a granary, and a milkhouse. These form a tight complex centered on the barn; the milkhouse is placed to the north, the granary to the east, and a family cemetery to the south. The complex sits above the valley of Paddy's Run, creating a scene that late-nineteenth-century journalists deemed more picturesque than any other farm in Butler County.

The barn is a vernacular two-story building, constructed with concrete walls on a concrete slab foundation and covered with a gabled metal roof. The floor plan is that of a simple form of the letter "T", divided into three bays on the front and six on the side. Inside, the barn relies on wooden frame construction, mixing small and large timbers. Some of the original frame was removed soon after construction, apparently because it interfered with the owner's hay storage needs. New feeding stanchions were installed soon after the farm's reopening in the early twentieth century.

One story high, the granary is a wooden frame structure on a foundation of fieldstone and a gabled metal roof. Also built in a "T" shape, the structure includes corn cribs as well as space for steam-powered grinding machinery, which was installed to simplify the process of preparing grain for consumption by cattle in the barn. The sided exterior comprises seven bays, while the interior framing features unusual timbers: the beams display evidence of being both hewn and sawn, so it appears that the builders reused framing from a previous building.

The milkhouse is a smaller single-story rectangular structure with a concrete slab foundation and a gabled metal roof. Only one door pierces the walls, which are built of vermiculated and glazed brown tiles rather than metal or concrete. Inside was originally placed a concrete structure for bulk storage of milk: after milk cans would be placed in the structure, spring water would be poured among them in order to keep the milk cool.

In January 2003, the farm complex was recorded by the Ohio Historic Inventory, a historic preservation program of the Ohio Historical Society. Nearly three years later, it was officially named a historic site, being added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 4, 2005. It qualified for designation based on its architecture, which was deemed important because comparatively few changes had been made since the 19th century. The farmstead also includes an archaeological site, designated 33BU85. The entire property embraces 240 acres, or ½ square mile, although the historic site's boundaries include just 1.9 acres.

[parpindolls]

Name suggestions

Ire - meaning anger.

Spire - a tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, typically a church tower.

Civil - courteous and polite.

Tallow - a hard fatty substance made from rendered animal fat, used (especially formerly) in making candles and soap.

Absinthe - : a green liqueur which is flavored with wormwood, anise, and other aromatic herbs.

Aniso - Unequal, unlike, or dissimilar.

Ember - a small piece of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire.

Cinder - a small piece of partly burnt coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still has combustible matter in it.

Solace - comfort in times of grief or worry. 2. : something that gives comfort.

Realm - 1. a kingdom. 2. a field or domain of activity or interest. 3. a primary biogeographical division of the earth's surface.

Rival - a person or thing competing with another for the same objective or for superiority in the same field of activity.

Jovial - characterized by good-humored cheerfulness and conviviality.

Sonder - sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

Oblivion - the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening around one.

opulent/opulence - rich in appearance; showing great wealth.

swallow - take in and cause to disappear; engulf. A bird.

spar - making the motions of attack and defense with the fists and arms.

Hue - the attribute of a colour by virtue of which it is discernible as red, green, etc., and which is dependent on its dominant wavelength and independent of intensity or lightness.

satur - full, sated. well-fed, replete. saturated.

Revolt - 1. take violent action against an established government or ruler; rebel. 2. cause to feel disgust. 3. an attempt to end the authority of a person or body by rebelling.

Riot - a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.

Somber - having or conveying a feeling of deep seriousness and sadness.

solemn - formal and dignified.

Alure - a passageway, as the walk along one side of a cloister.

Dill - an aromatic annual herb of the parsley family, with fine blue-green leaves and yellow flowers. The leaves or seeds are used for flavouring and for medicinal purposes.

Cedar - any of a number of conifers that typically yield fragrant, durable timber.

Requiem - a musical service or composition in honor of the dead. Etymology. Middle English requiem "a mass for the dead," from Latin requiem "rest," the first word of the phrase Requiem aeternum dona eis "Eternal rest grant to them," said or sung at the begining of the mass.

Palaye - palaye means elder brother.

Shire - a rural area with its own elected council.

Silo - 1. a tall tower or pit on a farm used to store grain. 2. an underground chamber in which a guided missile is kept ready for firing.

Sorrel - any of various plants or plant parts with sour juice.

Noble - having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles.

Coastal - of or near a coast.

Elixir - a substance held to be capable of changing base metals into gold. (2) : a substance held to be capable of prolonging life indefinitely. b (1) : cure-all. (2) : a medicinal concoction.

Creating some pronouns because I’m bored

She+he+they prns

Shiy/shim/shir/shirs/shimself

Non gendered they

Tey/tem/teir/teirs/temself

Shi + hym

Shy/shym/shyr/shyrs/shyrself

Xenic she

Shu/hur/hur/hurs/hurself

Xenic he

Hu/hum/hus/hus/humself

Obscured they

Vey/vem/veir/veirs/vemself



Dhampyric they (Thampire)

Dhey/dhem/dheir/dheirs/dhemself

Iy/ir prns

Iy/im/ir/irs/imself

Ay/ayr prns

Ay/aym/ayr/ayrs/ayrself

Floral based prns

Flo/flora/flora/floras/floraself

[blueiscoool]

Russians Loot $5M Farm Vehicles From Ukraine -- Then Find They've Been Remotely Disabled

Russian troops in the occupied city of Melitopol have stolen all the equipment from a farm equipment dealership -- and shipped it to Chechnya, according to a Ukrainian businessman in the area.

But after a journey of more than 700 miles, the thieves were unable to use any of the equipment -- because it had been locked remotely.

Over the past few weeks there's been a growing number of reports of Russian troops stealing farm equipment, grain and even building materials - beyond widespread looting of residences. But the removal of valuable agricultural equipment from a John Deere dealership in Melitopol speaks to an increasingly organized operation, one that even uses Russian military transport as part of the heist.

The equipment was removed from an Agrotek dealership in Melitopol, which has been occupied by Russian forces since early March. Altogether it's valued at nearly $5 million. The combine harvesters alone are worth $300,000 each.

We are not naming a contact in Melitopol familiar with the details of the case for their own safety.

The contact said the process began with the seizure of two combine harvesters, a tractor and a seeder. Over the next few weeks, everything else was removed: in all 27 pieces of farm machinery. One of the flat-bed trucks used, and caught on camera, had a white "Z" painted on it and appeared to be a military truck.

The contact said there were rival groups of Russian troops: some would come in the morning and some in the evening.

Some of the machinery was taken to a nearby village, but some of it embarked on a long overland journey to Chechnya more than 700 miles away. The sophistication of the machinery, which are equipped with GPS, meant that its travel could be tracked. It was last tracked to the village of Zakhan Yurt in Chechnya.

The equipment ferried to Chechnya, which included combine harvesters -- can also be controlled remotely. "When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realized that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely," the contact said.

The equipment now appears to be languishing at a farm near Grozny. But the contact said that "it seems that the hijackers have found consultants in Russia who are trying to bypass the protection."

"Even if they sell harvesters for spare parts, they will earn some money," the contact said.

Other sources in the Melitopol region say theft by Russian military units has extended to grain held in silos, in a region that produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of crops a year.

One source said that "the occupiers are offering local farmers to share their profits 50% to 50%." But the farmers trying to work in areas occupied by Russian troops are unable to move their produce.

"Not a single elevator works. None of the ports are working. You will not take this grain from the occupied territory anywhere. "

So Russian forces are simply taking the grain, the source said. "They steal it, take it to Crimea and that's it."

Last week the mayor of Melitopol posted a video showing a convoy of trucks leaving Melitopol allegedly loaded with grain.

"We have clear evidence that they unloaded grain from the Melitopol city elevator. They robbed the elevator along with private farms," the mayor said.

By Olexsandr Fylyppov and Tim Lister.

[ukrainenews]

Daily Update July 21, 2022

Updates may be sporadic until Wednesday, July 27. I’m going to be traveling and with family.

Under the cut:

Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, are to sign a deal on Friday to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports

Russian bombardment killed three people and injured 23 in Kharkiv on Thursday, according to the regional prosecutor's office

EU agrees on new round of sanctions, targets Sberbank and bans Russian gold imports.

Seven missiles struck critical infrastructure in the southern city of Mykolaiv overnight

Ukraine has said it wants to establish a one-off international tribunal to try Russia’s top regime members for the act of aggression, which could see it issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin

“Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, are to sign a deal on Friday to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports, the Turkish president’s office has said.

Russia and Ukraine are both major global wheat suppliers, but Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour has sent prices soaring and stoked an international food crisis. Kyiv’s exports have stalled, with dozens of ships stranded and about 20m tonnes of grain stuck in silos at the port of Odesa.

On Thursday night, the office of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said a general agreement was reached on a UN-led plan during talks in Istanbul last week and that it would now be put in writing by the parties. The details of the agreement were not immediately known. It is due to be signed on Friday at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 13.30 GMT, Erdoğan’s office said.”-via The Guardian

~

“Russian bombardment killed three people and injured 23 in Kharkiv on Thursday, according to the regional prosecutor's office.

Russia attacked a public transport stop near the market in the Kyivskyi district of Kharkiv with Uragan rocket launchers on July 21 at 9:30 a.m. local time, the prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram.

The Russian military also shelled the Saltivskyi district of Kharkiv, hitting a residential building and injuring three civilians, the office added, saying it launched a criminal investigation into these attacks.

"The Russian enemy attacks streets of the city, trade pavilions, and residential infrastructure only," said Oleh Synehubov, head of Kharkiv region military administration.

There was also heavy shelling of the town of Chuhuiv overnight, according to the regional military administration. Chuhuiv lies to the west of important Russian supply lines for its offensive in the eastern city of Donetsk.

The administration said the water treatment plant was damaged.

Synehubov said despite relentless shelling in the Kharkiv region, "since May, the enemy has not taken new territory — not a single meter."”-via CNN

~

“The new package of EU sanctions against Russia is expected to be formalized later on July 21, Politico reported, citing diplomatic sources.

The measures will target 48 more individuals, nine groups and companies. They will also include a ban on Russian gold imports, including jewelry, and restrictions on the Russian Sberbank.

However, the EU is also expected to introduce exceptions for "the purchase, import or transport of agricultural and food products, including wheat and fertilizers" of certain banks that have been sanctioned. The move is made in an attempt to counter Russia's accusations blaming the EU sanctions for the global food crisis.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the new package, saying that it sends a strong signal to Moscow.

“We will keep the pressure high for as long as it takes,” she wrote on Twitter.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Seven missiles struck critical infrastructure in the southern city of Mykolaiv overnight, according to the city's mayor.

"Today at 3 a.m. (local time) it was chaotic shelling of the city," Oleksandr Sienkevych said.

"I cannot think of any explanation for this shelling, as none of the military objects or warehouses were hit. Critical infrastructure and objects in the vicinity to the civilians were hit. Luckily, there are no casualties." Seven S-300 missiles had been fired at the southern Ukrainian city, he added.

Sienkevych said months of shelling has destroyed about 540 multi-story apartment blocks, "including six which are impossible to restore." About 680 private homes have been damaged and 121 people killed in the city.

Mykolaiv lies close to the front lines dividing Ukrainian and Russian troops along the regional border with Kherson.

Out of 480,000 Mykolaiv residents before the war, only around 230,000 remain in the city, according to Sienkevych.”-via CNN

~

“Ukraine has said it wants to establish a one-off international tribunal to try Russia’s top regime members for the act of aggression, which could see it issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.

Andriy Smyrnov, Ukraine’s deputy head of the presidential administration, said on Thursday that Ukraine believed trying Russia separately for the act of aggression, with international participation, would speed up its quest to hold the Russian president and his inner circle accountable.

The act of aggression – accepted by UN members as an international crime – cannot be tried by the international criminal court due to lack of jurisdiction, but is considered the gravest international crime because of its subsequent consequences. On Thursday, three people were killed and 23 injured by two Russian attacks in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office.”-via The Guardian

[the-ravenscry]

The DREADSPORE is one of the most unique creatures of GRIMM on REMNANT. While many aspects of GRIMM are indeed still a mystery, common traits can usually be found among all species. Or rather, among most species. The DREADSPORE is one of the most flagrant deviations from the typical GRIMM characteristics. Many GRIMM have a discernible animal counterpart, and those that don't are still recognized as animalistic. DREADSPORE on the other hand, appear to be the GRIMM approximation of a conscious fungal colony.

From a certain standpoint, they are one of the weakest GRIMM species on all of REMNANT. They cannot give chase, nor can they cause physical harm. A simple, untrained civilian could easily crush one underfoot, killing it. But while the DREADSPORE may lack strength and speed, like all GRIMM, they are designed to kill.

If a DREADSPORE isn’t found and eliminated in a timely manner, the creature will soon multiply, infesting whole villages if given the chance. But of course finding one is easier said than done. An URSA in your backyard is hard to miss, but the diminutive DREADSPORE could be growing and multiplying right under everyone’s noses. In sheds, grain silos, sewer systems- any place they can go undetected. And if a DREADSPORE colony is allowed to grow too large, it spells utter disaster for everyone near.

As the name suggests, this GRIMM uses spores as a weapon. Almost invisible to the naked eye, they spread on the breeze and saturate the air. As a colony grows, so too does the dispersal area of their spores. As more and more of these invaders are breathed in, the psychological assault begins. It’s not noticeable at first. The DREADSPORE is a subtle killer. It manifests as paranoia for some, horrible nightmares for others. Acute depression and even suicide has been recorded in some of the most severe cases. Everyone is affected differently, but the end result is always the same: the abundant and rampant increase of negative emotions.

From what we understand, this appears to be the DREADSPORE’s role in the GRIMM hierarchy. From single households to entire settlements, the DREADSPORE causes mental strife, all for the purpose of attracting stronger, more ferocious GRIMM. Of course, direct exposure to an ejection of spores results in a much more volatile mental and physical response. Violent hallucinations have been known to paralyze a person with utter fear, crippling them from fleeing or fighting back. This certainly makes them easy prey for the other GRIMM that will soon follow.

[dev-the-dm]

Creature: Rat King

The town had been robbed of food and stores for weeks, leaving the people hungry and restless. Cattle was stolen, disappeared, and every night, hooded intruders broke into shops, the tavern, and grain silos - taking what they could carry and disappearing into the night, leaving few tracks and fewer clues.

Cruel royalty. Rat kings are monstrous almalgamations that only barely resemble rats, growing extra heads, dirty, scruffy fur and an insatiable hunger. The process of a rat king's creation remains uncertain, but it is probably a mutation that forces them to keep consuming food until their bodies grow fat, deformed and hulking. Rat kings are often the most dominant creatures within a rat nest, and their presence requires other rats and rat-adjecent creatures to constantly bring them food, stealing from the local populace that is unfortunate enough to live near a rat king's nest.

Ferocious feeders. Rat kings create their nest and home base somewhere dark and damp, preferring no natural light at all. There, it feeds and grows and continues feeding and growing until it outgrows the nest's entrance and cannot leave any longer. It forces other rats to fetch it more food, continuing the endless cycle of consumption and destruction until there is no more food left to gather. At that point, its rat subjects have two options: rebel against the merciless being they have created, or become its next meal.

Friends and companions. Rat kings prefer the companionship of other rats, and swarms of rats, giant rats, and wererats are most commonly found in their presence. Beasts that are larger than rats may be kept as cattle or fed to the rat king, and these creatures tend to avoid humanoids. Rat kings that employ wererats may attempt to have their shapechanging subjects convert an entire town into wererats.

The rat king miniature is the rataclysm from Steamforged Games' "Rat King of Gullet Cove", which I used for a oneshot I ran yesterday. I rewrote the rataclysm's stat block because it was too powerful, ending up with the rat king. I hope you enjoy this monstrous rat!

[wellbelesbian]

time for my daily overanalysing of Carry On!

so i just got my hardback bookshelf edition of Carry On, and i’m a bit confused by these different maps of Watford

this is a completely pointless thing for me to get so hung up about, but i’ll put my thoughts as to why under the cut anyway because it’s really bothering me.

so. all the named buildings like Mummers House, The Cloisters, The White Chapel and the Weeping Tower are in the same places and look the same, as does the building between Mummers House and The Cloisters.

but down from The Cloisters we can see one building on the blue map, and two on the green map. neither on the green map look like the barn-and-silo looking structure on the blue map, they’re more like long warehouses. you do get those on farms and can keep cattle in them like a barn, but they don’t look the same, do they?

the building beside the Weeping Tower looks the same, but appears to be labelled as Ebb’s Place. There’s no way Ebb lives in a huge building like that. i had assumed that it was more student housing, as in Carry On, Simon says there is a new building for students called Fraternity House, which isn’t labelled on the map.

truth be told, i thought that Ebb lived outside the walls, in the hills beyond, since there are little goats pictured there on the blue map. however I scanned the book for any mention of it and it does actually say she lives in a barn near the Weeping Tower. i’m just going to assume that Ebb’s Place is that warehouse beside the Weeping Tower on the green map, and ignore that it looks entirely different on the blue map. even if it’s just the angle making it look different, i should be able to see the tall structure on its side (not sure if it’s a grain silo or a tower)

this building appears to be the same, and the placement shows that there is more space between the buildings and the wall than there appears on the blue map, hence why some buildings may be cut off.

and then there’s these three buildings… on the blue map, the top building is a long building that also looks like accommodation, and then beneath it is a church-looking building to the left, and a castle-looking building to the right. on the green map, the bottom buildings are technically okay, though they look a bit different, but the top building is completely different. it also looks like a huge church now (how many churches and chapels does one school need?!), with a tower at each corner.

so yeah, that’s basically everything covered. all the things outside the walls like the football pitch and the wavering wood are the same.

and look, i understand that the blue map is stylistic while the green one is more like a 3D model, but I can’t understand how you can add a whole other building and make so many others look so different!

i managed to muddle my way through a lot of this while writing down my thoughts here, but i feel like i shouldn’t have to make assumptions and reread parts of book to make the two maps compatible. it takes like 5 minutes to consult a pre-existing map when making your new one, just how exactly did this happen?

uh. i think i’m more invested in this than regular people because i made my own map of Watford based on the blue map for a d&d campaign, and now i’m going to have to edit it.