#apparently I still had Things To Say about Cad

[my-sun-m00n-and-stars]

My review and analysis of the Bane arc in Tales of the Underworld.

I’m going to keep this separate from my own headcanons:

Episode 1:

Seeing how Bane was as a kid was really interesting. I like how he had that child like innocence, but was still crafty and clever. It closely aligns with how I envisioned his childhood.

I find it hard to believe that Laszlo was THAT invested in these little kids to hang around them during the day, and then actually take Bane with him at the end. Then again, we don’t know much about Laszlo as a character, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I’m guessing he was specifically looking to build out his gang, so that would explain it.

As far as the name Colby goes, I actually really like it. It speaks to the simple life that he lived and his humble beginnings, and I think it’s ironic that this bad ass man has this goofy little name, and it makes sense he would change it.

Episode 2:

Oh I don’t like that his name is already Cad Bane. I would’ve thought he would’ve changed it to that after all of the betrayal. Now it’s just his street name? (like a stud name hehe). Whatever, minor nitpick.

I know these are only supposed to be snapshots of a period in time, but I would have liked to see more of Laszlo and what he meant to Bane. I didn’t quite feel the emotion when he died. As far as Bane picking up his style, I think in-universe it makes sense. Young men are impressionable, especially towards father figures, and him picking up the hat is almost akin to him “taking up the mantle”. He’s going to continue living the life Laszlo started for him as a way to honor him, consequences be damned. Also, he really only gets the hat and toothpick from him. Everything else he fashioned for himself, and you can see the Mandalorian influence in the future.

Arin. I can buy that Bane has deep feelings for her. First love and all that. But they don’t SHOW it enough, but once again only 15 minute episodes. With the time they had, it was fine. Wanted to see more fleshing out, but it’s fine.

I want to touch on the “traitor” scene. Like I mentioned above, Bane taking up Laszlo’s hat was a commitment to both himself and to Laszlo’s memory. He was going to avenge his death. Arin taking that away from him was an affront to his sense of honor, and in his eyes a betrayal of Laszlo’s memory. Better to go out, guns blazing, than be a coward, which is how he viewed her in that moment.

I don’t have much to say on the Bane-Niro relationship. I think it was handled well. I think Bane stating that his revenge “will be” worth it shows that he already has bad blood for him at the end of this episode. In his mind, Niro aligning himself with the law is near unforgivable.

Episode 3:

I think it’s interesting that Bane is apparently back “for Arin”. He’s never been publicly known to care for people later in his life. However, I have a caveat to this.

This is a classic case of Arin, as a woman, being treated as an object. She’s a “prize” in Bane’s mind. He hasn’t heard from her for years. She “betrayed” him by surrendering. And yet, she’s all he has left. This IDEA of someone who still loves him. That’s what he wants. He doesn’t take into consideration that she has her own wants and desires. That maybe she truly grew to love Niro. That maybe she was just with him for protection. No, in his mind she is a thing to be obtained. A symbol of his masculinity. The fact that she was with Niro was Niro’s fault, not hers, because she has no internal thoughts or desires. She’s just a thing to love him.

I like that after years in prison Bane has this much aura. I also like that he comes in at “high noon”. What I don’t get is what he expected after not receiving any communication from Arin via letters. But I would say it tracks for him to be delulu at this point in his life.

Once again, once he finds out that Arin married Niro, he views it as a fault of Niro’s, not a joint thing. That’s more delulu and copium on his part. Cognitive dissonance. He blames Niro for Arin, for Laszlo, and for prison, even though Niro really had no fault in any of it. He’s a scapegoat for the consequences of Bane’s own actions.

And finally the duel. I think it’s a bit contrived that NO ONE could communicate the information to Bane that he had a son. I get it, maybe they wanted to tell him in person, but come on guys. Niro couldn’t have just blurted it out?

This ending is definitely the best part of the arc. It’s so hauntingly tragic—Bane discovering his son after just killing his father figure, thereby ruining any possible chance for connection. I love how you see him instinctively reach out for him, before coming to this realization. And when the kid looks up again and he’s already walking away? Damn. You know this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Will it change him for the better? Of course not!

Overall, I rate episode 1 a 7/10, episode 2 a 6/10, and episode 3 an 8/10 for an average of 7/10. Solid plot, but needed more fleshing out and has some inconsistencies. I mostly appreciate it for what it did for Bane’s character

[enlitment]

Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre – doomed by the Revolution?

a second part of the answer to the ask kindly sent by @iron--and--blood - first part can be found here

Okay, so I tried to follow the sources and I ended up missing what is arguably the key question. I think that there is enough evidence that warrants seeing Camille and Maximilien’s relationship as a ‘friendship torn apart but the revolution’, but could it in fact be something more that the chain of events of the mid-1790s ended up destroying?

(aka the good old “were they gay?” question)

It’s probably not surprising to anyone that there is no conclusive evidence that would suggest that either of them was definitely queer or that they were involved in some kind of a relationship. For context, the French Constitutional Assembly did decriminalise homosexuality, since there was simply no mention of private same-sex relationships it in the penal code of 1791.

Of course, there would still be a stigma surrounding queerness, seeing how France was a Catholic country – well, up to that point. On the other hand, it is also important to remember that anyone who received a higher education at that time would be well versed in classical authors (Greek and Roman that is), so they would have a framework for a positively viewed queer attraction/relationship (I'm mostly thinking of a kind of Alcibiades/Socrates vibes here. I think it sort of fits? Well it does in my headcanon anyway...). Camille especially seemed to be really into classics, making references to classical authors, history or mythology in approximately every other sentence.

CAMILLE – VICES HONTEUX AND A POSSIBILE BICON

If we consider Camille, I think it is clear that he was attracted to women. I think that the historical sources show that he genuinely did love his wife - Lucile - although it may also be true he was bit of a cad. There is a whole deal with him and Lucile’s mother with whom he apparently exchanged some flirty letters? I honestly need to look into it more at some point.

That said, attraction to women of course doesn’t exclude attraction to men. The one thing that would suggest Camille might have pursued a same-sex relationships is the reference to “vices honteux“ (shameful vices), which Saint-Just claims were attributed to Camille by Danton. We also learn from Robespierre’s note that this refered to something that was ‘totally unrelated to the revolution’.

So we know it’s something that would be seen as ‘shameful’ behaviour, but nonetheless a private matter. Could it be interest in same-sex relationships? It’s of course hard to say, but the theory is not completely implausible. For a discussion about this, I recommend this article.

MAXIMILIEN – A CONFIRMED BACHELOR?

With Maximilien Robespierre, it gets a little more complicated. He was essentially a confirmed bachelor, living with a family that adored him but that was not his own (and also a dog. He had a dog.) Talk about a found family trope!

Some sources claim that he was engaged to Éléonore Duplay, but Robespierre’s sister for one vehemently denies this. It’s true that he could probably easily have married her – I can’t imagine her family being opposed to it, far from it probably – but the fact is that for one reason or another, he did not.

He also didn’t really seem to capitalise on his massive popularity among the Parisian women. (Though, to be fair, neither did Rousseau and he was… well I guess he was his own version of heterosexual.)

Sure, one can interpret that as Robespierre being a workaholic or putting the revolution above everything else, but I personally think it is very possible that he would be considered to be on the asexual spectrum by today’s standards.

That said, although France was moving away from institutionalised religion at that point, Catholic guilt could certainly play a role, especially in someone who prided himself in his moral conduct and was told to be rigid about the rules. So the possibility of him being closeted as an explanation for his lack of interest in women would also not be completely off the table.

As to Camille and Maximilien being together in some way? I think there is certainly a precedence for this type of relationship in adolescence. Seeing that they have studied together (and shared enthusiasm for classics probably), it is not impossible, though of course, it is highly speculative.

I think it is also fair to say that Robespierre went above and beyond for Camille until the last few months. That is something he probably would have not done for many other people. He actually said as much himself:

“Learn, Camille, that if you were not Camille, one could not have so much indulgence for you.“

Was it because Camille was universally liked by the revolutionaries for all the good he has done? Possibly, but I think one can also read more into it. It certainly suggests that Camille was special in some way, and the fact that Robespierre uses ‚one‘ instead of ‚I‘ does not necessarily mean he is not speaking about himself here.

CAMILLE AND MAXIMILIEN IN THE MEDIA

When it comes to media portrayal, the relationship often comes across as queer-coded - to an extent.

In La Révolution française, this aspect is more prominent between Robespierre and Saint-Just, but with some well-timed smiles and glances, it almost reads as a tragic love triangle between the three. There are some unfortunate implications however, mainly that the hints of Robespierre's queerness in the movie are implicitly associated with his descent to tyrany. Ugh. (And let's face it, a kind of effeminacy linked to villainy as well. Honestly, who thought that kind of portrayal would be a good idea? Kudos for making a historical movie about the French Revolution come across as homophobic I guess.)

Hilary Mantel straight-up makes Camille Desmoulins bisexual (ish?) in A Place of Greater Safety, though there are <a lot of> issues with that portrayal, as discussed here (watch me linking another mutual's great post! Frevblr is truly the best). Not sure how the relationship with Robespierre is presented here since it’s one of the books I’ve been in the middle of for months.

And then there’s Stanisława Przybyszewska of course. She would honestly warrant a separate post, but long story short: in her works, there is no doubt about the fact that she portrays the relationship between them as queer. She invokes the Erastes/eromenos dynamic between them (quite explicitly, referring to Camille as an ephebe at one point) and makes the attraction between the two seem palpable. There is plenty of queer (under)tones to be found in The Danton Case, but in Last Nights of Ventôse , she straight up interprets the fall of the Dantonists as Camille running into Danton’s arms to spite Robespierre for snubbing him and rejecting his devotion (romantic advances?). And it gets quite physical – not in a way that would warrant an E rating, but it would certainly deserve one for the sheer emotional intensity.

[hollow-lime-green]

ok so i had a once in a lifetime experience yesterday and i want to share!

cw: scarification (branding) (not what you thought you'd see on this blog i'm sure)

[2010s Youtuber Voice]: Okay, STORYTIME!!!

so, i am friends with a verified, 100% GMO-free, USDA-approved Florida Man. he has catfish noodled and wrestled gators. he doesn't really drink. in the winter he and the girlies were doing polar plunges every thursday. this man is very nice, very open-minded/#woke, and he is getting a phd.

and over the past few months he's been planning on getting a brand (on his own body). last night was the night. we made hot dogs.

pictured: hot dog (brand in the fire behind)

now, we all study/work in metal, so the technical considerations of this are pretty well under control. while body modification is super not for me, when a homie wants to do something, and you know your homie is gonna do something, it is homie imperative to make sure your homie is as prepared and safe as possible, so that's what we did.

my buddy pictured here is the main student guy in charge of our forging/blacksmithing lab (there is also a faculty member but she has a bit more than that under her scope (glassblowing, welding)). florida man actually got the brand made himself using some of our stuff on campus (for those curious, he did some CAD work and got it EDM cut here for like $25, then welded the design piece onto the handle (we have... a lot of spare metal lol))

anyway we did our homework on the thermodynamics of the thing, and tested on some ham to make sure we had the right timing, pressure, etc. human bodies are angled, so there are some considerations there. forge man and florida man had everything figured out from a technical perspective (forge man is also extremely tatted up on his left side, so we've got some tat aftercare knowledge in the room too). forge man also got filmed consent, they went over everything medical like 3x, and we are all very invested in the healing process making sure he's got everything he needs.

now, the only time i have ever seen scarification/branding is in a hard bdsm context (and full disclosure, this is not something I do in my life; it is something I know lots about academically and have not put into practice, until now i suppose, sort of).

so i went into this with that context. what can i do to make this person feel more comfortable doing something that is kind of insane, physically? and i'm very glad i did that, because someone needed to. one of my friend's gfs was there - the only non-metallurgist. she apparently worked in a skin lab (to reduce scarring, somewhat ironically) although now she does birds. (biology, couldn't be me)

anyway, something that made florida man more comfortable about the process was cleaning with an alcohol wipe beforehand. this is pointless, as we are using fire here, notoriously not going to be carrying bacteria. but it's something you'd do for a tattoo, and something that made him feel better about the process, and it literally costs nothing to do so. so we did it. and she kept being like "well this doesn't matter". LADY that is not the point.

we marked the location with a marker, it got a little faded after that, but it was still clearly visible from the front. however, florida man couldn't really see it. some of them were trying to say "oh, it's fine, don't worry, it's visible". well, it also costs nothing to go get the marker and do it again, so we did that.

forge man and his gf (forge girl we call her) had to dip almost immediately after because she is insanely allergic to pet dander and forge man did not know there was gonna be a dog (roommate's pet not his), so she was dying in the club. but clearly like, you gotta sit with the guy a little bit after. so we did that, and added extra tape to the dressing even though it definitely didn't need it, because it costs nothing to do so and made him feel better oh my goodness.

i am glad that he trusted us to do this, and very glad that it went well. all you can really do in these situations is be as prepared as possible, use your brain, and do your best. while i love forge man (he is my office mate/desk buddy as well) and he is 100% the man for the job, forge man also has anxiety lol so I was also glad to be there to be his emotional support. because for all the emotions that come with permanently modifying your body, there are also lots of emotions that come with permanently modifying someone else's body! and i am super glad i could be there to keep people calm and check in with everyone.

anyway, i'm certainly not an expert on any of this, but i just wanted to talk about this because a.) it's bonkers and i'm so glad i got to be a part of this, and b.) it was an interesting observation about how little the average person is thinking about emotional well-being/aftercare.

we have been texting this morning and he's doing well. i sent him all the pics of the process, and i'm excited to see how the healing goes!

[voxiiferous]

Yeah I'll take all the blame The front page and the fame But you'll all know my name

River Below - Billy Talent | apparently now the inspiration for an AU in which Vox and Alastor’s falling out is staged.

"I’m thinking of getting a new head,” Vox says, straightening his bow tie. The broadcast starts soon enough, but the habit of talking to Alastor before had become part of it. Gradually, Vox's employees had stopped panicking every time they saw him.

“Hideous choice,” Alastor scoffs, and Vox finds his partner’s eyes in the mirror. “I don't see what's wrong with your current one,"

"The decaying cathodes might play a role in it," he answers. One could only knock things loose a few times before the damage stuck, and it’s typically considered poor form to give your employees low level radiation poisoning form your presence. There was also the fact it has a nasty habit of switching, unceremoniously, to black and white-- or, god forbid, the times his entire display just descended into static.

Alastor waves a hand dismissively. "Sign of a flawed medium," Which would be more insulting if they hadn't had this debate for years already.

Vox doesn’t turn to look at Alastor, keeping him in view of the vanity mirror. “I think it could be useful. Something new,"

Alastor twirls his staff, coming to lean against Vox's chair. "Yes, about that,"

Vox pauses where he's adjusting his collar over the bow tie. "The rumours?" He questions. The rumours had, of course, followed them from the start. Accusations, fears, from those who would never amount to anything, and those discontent nothings that littered Pentagram City. But they had become more notable recently, and some of the more... important people had started looking more carefully at their monopoly. "They've never bothered you before,"

Alastor spins his staff again, looking at it, with a faux casualty. "Things can change,"

Vox laughs, and leans against the opposite arm of the chair. "You, darling? You're categorically adverse to it," it’s the source of half their disagreements. He’s half expecting a camera to burst into the room like some unexpected joke.

"Still, I think it's high time we cut this... ménage à deux short," Alastor says, and Vox’s amusement sobers.

He turns to look at his partner, directly this time, rather than through the mirror. It’s a sort of incredulity that needs direction, rather than diffuse through the reflection. "You want us to pretend to have a falling out?"

"You said it, not me," Alastor says, resting his arms on top of the staff. "Play up the existing differences, and no one looks twice,"

“No one thinks you’re going soft, or that I’m reliant,” which he’s not. Their friendship hadn’t even begun until Vox had already started making a name for himself. But Hell’s memory is a strange thing, simultaneously too short, and eternal.

“You want me to play the cad,”

“You’re so good at it.” It’s a role he’s used to certainly, even if for different reasons. The more things change…

“There will be doubt,”

Alastor waves his hand again. “You’ll hardly need to search for someone to act as an unwilling collaborator.” Alastor says, with a pointed look at the letter Vox had forgotten on the desk. It’s got the faintest whiff of perfume on it. He’s there justification, the explanation. The thing that makes Hell stop looking at them with narrowed eyes.

“And you’re certain it should be me? That they’ll believe it?”

Alastor smiles, fixing Vox’s forgotten collar. “Indubitably. You’re a talented performer. No one else could pull such a farce off,” He taps his microphone against Vox’s cheek, almost like a kiss. “You have a show, insufferable picture box,

Vox pauses, a slight moment that would have been a dry swallow if he still had a mouth. “I do,” he says. “I trust I’ll have one less viewer than usual?”

“Indeed,” Alastor says, and he’s turning, the shadows swirling to carry him away.

Vox takes a deep breath, the scripted narrative already coming together. He takes one last look in the mirror, and then heads to the stage.

[lauratheghost]

My trip to Montreal

& the Sleep Token show

(long post below)

The Trip:

I went with my sister, who did the driving. The drive there was awesome. We left at 5:30 a.m. and there was no traffic at all. The border took five minutes. We laughed at the "warning Canada ahead" sign (that was like five feet in front of the border 😂)

It was like an hour of driving through massive farms before we reached the city? Idk why but I didn't expect the farms.

Driving in Montreal was another story. It was terrifying 😭 I have car anxiety in general but it was so stressful. It made traffic in Boston not seem so bad. The way the lanes were marked was confusing to us, and some of the signs were also confusing. We hit a speed bump going crazy fast because we had no idea what the sign meant and the actual bump on the ground wasn't yellow (now it seems obvious though, ok 🤷🏼‍♀️😂) and the buses drive crazy fast and one cut us off and almost hit us.

Our phones didn't work as soon as we crossed the border. We tried to add a global package to our plans but it still didn't work. This was only a major problem because we needed GPS. If we missed a turn we would have to find a Harvey's or Starbucks or something to get their wifi and reroute. It took us a long time to get to Laval 😂

Once we got to the hotel we parked the car and didn't use it again until we left. But we took taxis and that was cool! I don't think I've ever taken a taxi before and the drivers were really nice.

We loved our hotel and we could see Place Bell from our window. The area was so nice, and very clean for a city. It feels like Laval is an up-and-coming city because of all the construction we saw, and our hotel was also new apparently.

Everything was so cheap? The lattes I bought were like $6 CAD so $4.40 USD. In my hometown, lattes are double that. All the food and snacks were such a good deal. I stopped obsessively checking my bank account after a while because everything seemed so inexpensive 😂 (Also, I'm a cheap person so this is saying something lol)

It was more of a culture shock than I expected. I knew it was going to be a lot of French but I guess I didn't grasp the reality of that until I was there. Thank God I took french in high school. I could not really hold a conversation, but I could read some signs and menus and kind've get the jist of what people were saying to me.

Everyone was so kind and helpful. We asked a lot of strangers questions and they were all very nice. I only had two small experiences with rude people (and I laughed about it)

Crosswalks were also a bit scary lol. It was weird that some cars still go when the crosswalk button goes off. In my area, all directions of traffic stop while people cross.

My hotel was 50 % people with Sleep Token shirts and 50 % hockey players 😂

We LOVE Tim Hortons 😍 Their iced mocha latte was amazing. I wish I had one in my town now.

Three days went by so fast! It felt like one day.

We went to Mount Royal Park, the Cosmodome, the Biosphere, and La Rhonde. I rode the ferris wheel even though I'm scared of heights. I think my heart stopped for a second but the view was beautiful. 😂🥰

Some random things we noticed- nobody really wears jeans or Crocs 🤷🏼‍♀️😂 everyone dresses a bit nicer. And we didn't see any cops besides event security the entire time we were there, which is unheard of in Massachusetts, I see cops drive by twenty times a day everyday probably. There were lilacs everywhere which I loved. So many people biked- it made me want to be more healthy and active. Public transport seemed very available and I'm jealous of that because public transport where I am is trash.

Can you drink in public? Idk, but we saw a guy drinking a twisted tea while casually crossing the road lol.

The Show:

People were lined up starting around 7 pm the night before 👀

At 5:30 a.m. there was maybe ten or fifteen people camped out with tents and everything. I applaud their dedication, but I could never 😭

I kept an eye on the line and once the merch stand opened I went over and bought a shirt beforehand. I got a t-shirt with the tour dates on it 🖤

The line system seemed really unorganized. Nobody knew what line went where. Besides that, getting inside was easy and I liked the venue.

Our seats had a good view, but we were so high up it made me a bit anxious. It was a little hard to see III because of the fog/lights, and Espera was kind've blocked by a light fixture, but I had a great view of IV and II which made me really happy 🥰

ESB's opening set: So, they are not exactly my cup of tea BUT I don't think they deserve the hate they've been getting. My only problem was that the singers scream sounded the same over and over. I wasn't sure if he was saying the same phrase or not, but it made every song sound the same. They did have some good moments though! There was a moment where he screamed lower/more gutteral and I liked that more. There was also a moment where the guitar and instruments sounded really cool but I can't explain it. I was glad to see they had a little mosh pit going too.

Sleep Token was amazing as expected. I'm forever in awe of how good Vessel sounds live. I was so happy I could see II good too, I loved watching his little dances and hand gestures. I saw III do his little swimming motion and he did get a pit! A pretty big one too from what I saw. I didn't expect them to hand out drumsticks and stuff so early, because they didn't play TMBTE or Euclid yet- but they were just doing that fake-out encore thing I guess. 😂

I love the diversity of the fans at their shows- all types of people and all ages and it's so nice to see 🖤 The guy sitting beside me did not look like someone I would expect to listen to Sleep Token, but he was singing every word and recording all the same parts of their songs as me 😂

After the show I got to meet @shatterthefragments !!! It was so great, and they made awesome ST keychains- I will treasure mine forever 🖤

I still haven't really processed any of this yet because after the show I was constantly busy- between packing up and doing the few last things we wanted to do in the city, and then driving five hours back home. There's videos and pictures from this weekend that I haven't even looked at yet. I will definitely post some videos or photos here soon though

Overall, I give this trip a 9/10

I'm so glad I impulsively bought tickets and got my passport renewed. It was so fun and it makes me wanna travel more in the future. 🖤

[beardedmrbean]

i have returned from oregon and i have decided i like it more than texas. i actually returned a week or so ago, but then i ended up in the hospital because of an incident that involved a 450F hot iron (although it wasn't the burn that sent me to the hospital, it was the part where the painkiller my roommate gave me turned my intestines to concrete). anyway i saw the trees, it was a religious experience. i pulled over in the first turnout as soon as i got into the park (the drive down from oregon was something, though. you gotta drive through a little pit stop when you come into california, what a concept.) and just stood and stared at that tree for something like half an hour. i felt god in that tree. it wasn't even one of the special ones with a name, it was just there, on the side of the road. also apparently california was on fire. my beloved husband (have i ever mentioned him? he's twice my age and lives in my apartment from time to time. he's broke, though, it's not like that. i just don't find young people attractive.) gave me hell for not knowing that, but i don't watch the news or use the internet (my phone is strictly a work phone, it makes phone calls and has a gps but that's it, and i use my computer to follow your blog and two others, play mahjong, and build things in CAD). so i'll be buying property up there, it was the most beautiful place i've ever seen in my life, and since the land i'm looking at is pretty steep, i'm gonna get a pair of llamas instead of the donkeys i had originally wanted (to watch over the property, you know).

That can happen with opioids, lots of pain killers actually, think it was a week+ after I had my knee surgery before I went, had to get a stool softener too, as if surgery wasn't bad enough.

Still doing the produce inspections up north? That's wild, figured they'd have finally dropped that one by now, something about fruit flies iirc.

I get that with the trees, I'd do that at times when I was hiking out when I could actually get some camping in and no you haven't mentioned him before that I know of, age thing is nbd to me took reading the 'he's broke tho' bit 3 times for it to register you were saying that you're not a sugar baby, and CA is always on fire in the summer and fall.

When in doubt just assume CA is on fire somewhere.

I envy your ability to do that too, make sure to do your homework on the llamas, not terribly difficult animals to care for but still good to know some of their care quirks ahead of time.

I am 100% looking forward to hearing all about how things progress with all of this, it's sounds like a perfectly wonderful time to me and I wish you all the luck in the world with it.

[enkisstories]

Daniel: "Damn, Cad, you're good!"

Ben: "It's in my blood."

Daniel: "Yeah, because of the midichlorians. I'm familiar with that concept. But I didn't mean to say that you're just strong in the Force, you're also a good fencer. Almost as good as General Finn!"

Ben: "Come again? What do you mean by that: "Almost"?!"

Daniel: "Trust me on this! Finn is trained in a variety of weapons, whereas you specialize in the lightsaber. With this particular weapon you could give him serious trouble."

Daniel: "Why are you laughing?"

Ben: "If you knew all the shit I can do with my powers..."

Daniel: "...that would still make you the inferior fighter."

It's ridiculous! Everyone, friend, enemy or passerby, has always told Ben how incredibly talented he was. That he could achieve the loftiest heights of understanding of the Force. Do whatever he wanted. Hadn't he ruled the world?

But now here is Daniel, stating that Ben could become second best with a little more work. It's probably true; ever since having returned to life Ben's powers are diminished. He has much to re-learn, not just re-adjust to accessing the Force through the light side, also long neglected mundane skills.

Daniel, however? Daniel doesn't care. Being second best, or the very best for that matter, doesn't mean anything to this man. If Ben told him that he had conquered the galaxy, Daniel would probably study him intently in an attempt to gauge if he had also had a nice day.

"Did I have a nice day when I was in power...?" Ben finds himself wondering and the answer is apparent immediately.

Ben: "My force powers... I never wanted them, Daniel. I wanted to be a pilot, like my father. My grandfather worked in a space ship factory. He told dad not to follow into his footsteps, but instead go out and fly the damn things. See the galaxy. Be free."

Ben: "But in the Republic, when you're born with those powers, the only way to hone them is to join the Jedi. It wasn't for me. I wasn't meant for that kind of life. Things went off the rail real badly."

Daniel: "I've heard. When Kylo Ren burnt down the Jedi temple and recruited you for the knights, that must have felt like a liberation. I bet you didn't think in that moment. The Jedi Order had felt restricting to you, so you equaled that to the light side and threw yourself at the opposite. The dark side must have had a field day that night!"

Ben: "Uh... something like that?"

Daniel: "I'm not as good a fencer as the other surviving force sensitives of our time, and your grasp of the force may vastly outpace mine, but I know how to balance living an actual life with having this gift. I could teach you. About a lot of things.

Like dates. Not tonight, but since my boss wants to stay here for the opportunity to meet Supreme Leader Stern in person, I, too, will be in town for a while longer. How about we meet again tomorrow - "apprentice"?"

---

On a sidenote, just once I want to hear Kylo gush about his grandfather again, only for Hux having made his homework and replying: "Oh, right, he worked at a shipyard."

[forensicated]

04x24 - Blue For A Boy

Taffy and Viv are patrolling an estate together. Taffy shoos a group of children that have gathered together in a large group and searches one of their bags. Alec calls Viv to ask her and Taffy to attend a call. Ken is trying to take a report from a burglary victim at the same time and a group of uniform are chatting loudly outside CAD. It all makes it very difficult to hear what's happening. Viv clearly agrees as she has to ask multiple times for Alec to repeat himself.

Burnside and Mike discuss the Yuppie Factor cos today's villain is upwardly mobile. "....You've been reading again haven't you!" Burnside sniffs derisively. As they return to the CID office Bob brings them a notice of a man who has been burgled twice in 24 hours. "Yuppies?!" Frank scoffs. "Hello, Heartbreak!" He greets Christine before escaping to his office leaving Bob looking very confused.

Taffy and Viv find a man behaving aggressively to a woman with a pram and 2 young children. Sam, played by Robert Glenister, claims they're friends. Brenda, played by Gerry Cowper agrees and insists it's a personal matter. Brenda hurries off to get her kids to school. Viv asks if there was anything she wanted to tell them once she'd walked on a few steps but she insists there isn't. Taffy asks Sam why he was threatening Brenda and he snaps back that he wasn't. Viv asks Sam who the carrycot in his car is for. Sam says it's his daughter's.

Bob is heard shouting at a drunk to leave the station. He tells him that he won't get any more warm cells or free breakfasts from them and tells him to bugger off. Alec approaches with what sounds like a mini-crisis, a broken water main and gas leak alongside a rash of dubious characters on the same street. Bob is on the way to do a Stranger Danger discussion so he promises to drop by on the way.

Malcolm and Robin are passing too so have a nose and can't see any of the reported issues. They do however spot a lady undressing by her window...

Best to be safe and all that!

Frank and Mike have had 5 sneak thief style robberies of soft porn videos. He reckons the thief is copying them and selling them on cheaply to the public. A snout of Mike's arrives and arranges to meet him in 10 minutes. Frank is amused - he's been charged with indecent exposure. "So he'll be cheap!"

Robin and Malcolm are still watching the lady changing as she's apparently been trying on lots of different outfits. "Perhaps she's a model?" Malcolm muses. Bob spots them loitering and Robin explains that they're 'worried about the young woman in case she didn't realise she was changing by the window'. Bob sends them on the way with a warning to take their hands out of their pockets.

On his way to meet his snout, Mike is almost knocked over by Sam from earlier as he speeds by. Mike spots a pram rolling freely and is sent flying by a kid. This in turn causes the radio to fly out of his pocket and across the road. A van is coming round the corner and Mike lays where he is rather than trying to get up until the pram is hit by the van! Thankfully the pram turns out to be empty! He hobbles to a group of nearby people and finds Brenda in the middle screaming that someone has taken her baby. Alec and Ken forward the call about the abduction to everyone. June arrives and helps get Brenda to her feet. Brenda gives June a picture of her son, Billy, but claims she has no idea who the man was. "I don't know him, I don't know who he was. He's a stranger to me!" She shouts.

June brings Brenda back to the station and sits with her whilst Viv is in Christine's office with Frank, telling them what happened that morning. She tells them that Brenda definitely seemed to know Sam and refused to lay a complaint against him. Frank claims Viv and Taffy must have been half asleep. Christine says no one knew the situation would escalate like it has. Viv points out that Brenda didn't want help, Sam didn't want to take things further and had calmed down so it wasn't police business. "I still like that perfume by the way...." he murmurs after dismissing Viv (a) to try make Christine jealous and b) a nice bit of continuity from The Chief Super's Party)

Mike visits Brenda's house and speaks to one of her neighbours. Brenda is a single mother whose husband left 5 years ago. She works part-time as a supermarket cashier to help make ends meet though money is tight. Mike asks the neighbour if she thinks Brenda works as a prostitute. The neighbour says no, but she has had has occasional boyfriends and reckons that's who the father of her youngest is. He describes Sam to her and she says she can't help him.

Tony spots a red car that looks similar and flags it down to speak to the driver however it's not Sam.

Frank takes a hard line with Brenda and claims she's a liar who lied about not knowing Sam. "He just came up and started. I've no idea who he was." She says that she couldn't report it or speak to the police because she was in a rush. Frank says his officers heard talk of money and her owing him something and that they won't find her son if she keeps lying. Christine takes Frank to her office and tells him that he's handling it wrong and the concern should be for the child. The priority is locating the baby. He agrees to let Christine talk 'woman to woman' with her. "I'm not sure that being a woman has much to do with it." she drawls as she leaves.

Uniform search a nearby alley and gardens. A drunk Taffy and Viv spotted outside the library on their way to deal with Sam and Brenda that morning is found asleep in one of the garden sheds but there's no sign of the baby or Sam.

Christine looks through the pictures of Billy as she talks to Brenda. She asks if the man who has Billy will do anything to him and she says she doesn't know him so has no idea. Christine points out that he must know her routine given that he's spotted her twice the same day. She asks if he has any right to contact with Billy. Brenda insists he doesn't but refuses to answer who Billy's father is. Christine says he could have dumped him somewhere but Brenda snaps he wouldn't do that. She then asks if he knows how to look after a baby and that he has snatched him knowing that the police will be on his case. What kind of state of mind could he be in? Brenda pauses before telling Christine the man's name is Sam Rice and he's Billy's father. He's an estate agent who lives in a posh close with his wife.

Frank leads the way over and directs officers to surround the house and search the back garden. Frank tells Mrs Rice that he's there to speak to her husband. She is in shock and admits his office has rung and asked the same thing several times. Mike has a look around and finds an empty nursery that appears to be for a little girl. They don't have any children and were going to adopt an 'unwanted child' from Brenda who then refused to hand the baby to them. She says they were 'so good to her' and then asks what Sam has done.

A man called Henshaw played by Paul Bradley arrives, moaning he's been waiting to be let in for 10 minutes. He wants to make a complaint with someone in authority as he's been stopped three times in one day for driving a red car...

Brenda tells Frank that Sam wanted a biological child of his own but his wife couldn't have them. She agreed to have his child the natural way 'he was so clinical...' and he paid for her to give birth in a private hospital. At first, she insists she wasn't paid for it but then she admits he gave her £2K (now almost £5.5K) upfront.

Sam has taken the baby to the hospital as he panicked when Billy kept crying as he had no idea what or how to feed him or how to change him. He tells June that it's important to him that his wife, Martha, isn't told that Billy is biologically his. June leads him along after he takes one last long look back at his son.

Frank tells Brenda that the Chief Super will look at the statement and read her file and he will decide what will happen to her. Christine comes through and tells Brenda that her son is at the hospital and is being kept in overnight for observation but he's absolutely fine.

[sugarcoatedmechanic]

"It is big. We're lucky it's not as big of a deal in our universe." He'd done some work to make sure it stayed that way, too. Rather not go from obscurity to some disastrous kind of seen. Had to be ready in case society decided they needed to "do something" about the robots popping up.

"We're still a thing. Why wouldn't we be? I love CAD." Without hesitation. But he did hesitate after. "Lark made things...a little odd. But-" Stopped. Landmines. So many landmines.

"...I can't speak for Lark, but I'm still with CAD." About the best he could say there.

"I'm sure we'll find something worth the trip." On the sashimi. He lead the way, looking for a viable stall. "This one has some small trays of sashimi, thin sliced. Toro, which is tuna apparently...salmon, yellowtail...They also have some whole fish if you're interested in that." For cooking, or for eating. Whatever. He could see Charlie mowing down on a whole fish in lizard mode.

“…Fightin’ for robot rights seems pretty big,” Charlie replied honestly. He didn’t have many more conclusions to draw from that. He’d purposefully kept himself from knowing the droid too deeply. Was too strange.

“Hope he’s alright then. I know you and him were like… a thing.” If they weren’t anymore. Were they? Charlie thought it best to not pry too deeply.

The smell of fish grew stronger - and the bustle of the locals grew denser - as they neared the edge of the market’s boundaries. Merchants and buyers both speaking in Japanese filled the atmosphere, though now that they were there, Charlie was having a hard time parsing what was what. Discerning fish smells was difficult.

“Think we can find some decent sashimi?” He asked. “You might hafta be my eyes here… Too many sounds and smells.”

[c-is-for-circinate]

I've been trying to figure out why I dont like Caduceus and your last meta reply got me closer to figuring it out. Like, I've been trying to like him, or at least figure why I dont, and describing him as 'a good person who doesnt have the self awareness to realize hes a jerk' I think got close to my issue with him, so thanks for the Good Meta

This is in response to this post, which I know some people agreed with very strongly and which made some other people very upset.  I’m glad it clicked with you, at least, and that it helped clarify some Cad stuff for you!

I think that a very big thing about Taliesin’s characters across the board, for me, is how intensely judgy they have the capacity to be.  In many ways, Caduceus is less judgmental than Percy or Molly, which is a fascinating thing to think about.  And I have found that fascinating since pretty much my second or third episode of Critical Role, because so much of that judgment tends to be couched in, ‘I judge you for not accepting other people the way I think you should’.  Percy loves Keyleth but also thinks she’s naive, too idealistic about what people ought to be rather than acknowledging and planning for the flaws he’s sure he knows they have.  Molly dresses and talks and walks and presents himself in such a flamboyant way specifically to elicit reactions, specifically so he can decide who to write off completely and not worry about any more.  In both cases it’s this super-interesting, incredibly relatable picture of a person who judges other people for their judgments.  

Because Critical Role is such a long-form show, we got to see Percy be proven right and be proven wrong, we got to see him smug and we got to see him humble, and we got to see a lot of different angles on both his standards (what other people ought to be doing) and his stubbornness (how ready he was to dismiss people who didn’t meet them).  Because we lost Molly so early, we only really got to start scratching the surface of his assumptions and certainties, and one of my biggest regrets is that we didn’t get to explore them so much more.  In both cases, that stubborn sureness--I know how the world works, better than anybody around me--was one of my favorite parts of the character.  It’s such an interesting flaw, because it wasn’t always detrimental.  Both Percy and Molly were often right, or at least they acted in line with their assumptions and the universe responded how they expected, and the team benefited from it.  Both of them had a certain amount of ‘and it’s our job to be decent to other people’ as part of that worldview, which really helped in making them likable.  Both of them made sense, which led to the (for me) really great cognitive experience of, “okay, I agree with this character, but also I don’t think they’re the ultimate authority they believe themself to be!  but I do think they’re right!  but maybe they shouldn’t be so sure they’re right!”  I find internal narrative conflict like that extremely compelling, and in particular the exploration of being judgmental about other people’s judgment resonates with me a lot.

So I’ve been waiting for cracks and criticisms with Caduceus, because I suspected from very early on that he, too, would be Extremely Sure He Understands How the World Works At All Times.  I have been looking for the places he Knows He’s Right, and I’ve been eating them up.

Cad’s certainties are completely different than Percy’s and Molly’s, but once again, it’s incredibly difficult to say he’s wrong.  He believes in fate--well, if you declare that everything that happens was supposed to happen, how is it ever possible to say he’s wrong?  He believes Melora is watching and guiding and wants for him to do things--it’s D&D, she literally is watching (and if she happens to be a lot less invested in any specific outcome than Caduceus thinks, she’s not about to tell him so).  He believes he has a job, has a purpose.  Because it’s D&D, because it’s a story, because the story needs to go places and as the PCs it’s their job to do things to get there, on a very real meta level he’s literally correct.  

He thinks that his job and his purpose is to help people--and how can we say he’s wrong?  How can we say he shouldn’t try to be a good person, try to help?  And he’s doing his best, and his best so often does help, and when it doesn’t, then it’s not his fault because there are other circumstances.  It’s almost impossible to argue with that.  Objectively, Caduceus is doing his best.  Objectively, in many cases it is helpful.

And yet, that doesn’t mean that Caduceus objectively knows the best way to help in every situation--which even he readily admits.  It doesn’t mean Caduceus necessarily knows the “best” way to help even in the situations where he is helpful.

Because right, the other thing about D&D is, Caduceus fundamentally cannot be the Sole Correct Authority on Everything, no matter how much sense his sureness makes.  He literally can’t be, because Tal is one of eight people at that table, and he’s not the one running the world.  He can be absolutely justified in being mad at Nott, which he absolutely is, and it still isn’t a universal truth that Caduceus Is Right and Nott Is Wrong.  There are no universal truths at that table.  Not even Matt has universal truths, not about what characters think or feel or do, not about moral absolutism.

(I’m someone who gets really twitchy around people who are Extremely Sure.  I’ve known a disproportionate number of them in real life, and I’ve got very specific instinctive skills for not pissing them off that I occasionally wish I hadn’t had to develop.  Part of turning from a conflict-averse 20-year-old into a grown-ass adult on my part has involved learning not to automatically agree that the universe must work a certain way, just because a very smart, very sure person who makes sense says so.  Part of it’s involved learning not to be that very sure person myself.  

I think I grab at moments when Caduceus very clearly isn’t 100% correct because of that.  I love the fact that, in Critical Role, we have this multi-layered, many-voiced story proving that even if a character is right, they’re not necessarily the bearer of Objective Universal Truth.  Rather than a story where it feels like the author and the universe are trying to make me agree with one person, it’s a story where a character can be right and not right from a thousand different directions at the same time.  (Which, if nothing else, makes the story and the character feel so much safer to me.))

Caduceus is a little bit passive-aggressive sometimes, going back to Caduceus and Nott and the original discussion of that other post.  And, right, he wants to avoid conflict within the group so he doesn’t make a big deal out of certain things, and just like all of his opinions, it’s hard to say he’s wrong in that.  And he has every right and reason and justification for having emotions about some of the many very big things that have happened to him lately.  He’s right (he’s not wrong) about a lot of things.  He’s actually really good about recusing himself from situations where he doesn’t have the background or knowledge to be right at least to his own standards.

The thing that has me calling Caduceus a little childish is that he’s so utterly disinclined to acknowledge the possibility of nuance.  He knows how to help Fjord (he’s decided that he knows how to help Fjord), so he does.  He doesn’t know how to help Nott, so he doesn’t.  We’ve never seen him take so much as a moment to consider whether or not he’s right in his assessment of his ability to help in either case.  And yeah, to me that does feel a little immature.  It’s not that he’s got a philosophy and he sticks to it, it’s that he lacks the self-awareness to even acknowledge the blind spots it might give him, let alone try to amend them.

And that’s okay.  Acknowledging that Caduceus might possibly be a little bit of a hypocrite, a little judgy, a little wrong in his mental image of the universe and his place in it, makes him so much more interesting.  It makes him a person.  Not an infallible mouthpiece from God; not a perfect sage holding all the wisdom of the ages.  He’s a good person, trying to do his best.  

He’s a good character, because he’s an examination of how all these traits both hinder and sometimes help his attempts to be a good person.  Stubborn certainty got the M9 up on their feet after Yasha left, comforted Fjord away from U’kotoa, saved a tribe of giants.  Caduceus is multifaceted, and the game is multifaceted, and the very same characteristics can be great in one situation and a real problem in another, just like life.

[marzipanandminutiae]

articles about the “wild new trend” of piercing from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s are fascinating to read. a selection of excerpts:

- one doctor cautioned that girls with pierced ears would be “required to constantly wear earrings to hide the holes in their heads” (or you could just not be weird about a tiny dot on someone else’s earlobe?)

- Genevieve Dariaux, then director of the Nina Ricci couture house, said in 1965 that “Pierced ears are unthinkable for an elegant woman, and even more dreadful for a young girl.” bear in mind that, as I’ve said, earrings that made your ears LOOK pierced were still common. what the difference was, nobody has yet made plain

- lots of evidence that going to a doctor was the preferred “safe” method for piercing at the time. but many doctors refused to do it, or said they would but that they strongly discouraged patients from having the procedure done. this checks out with my mother’s experience in 1965- her schoolmate’s anesthesiologist father did free piercing for all his daughter’s friends

- some teenagers around 1965 called clip and screwback earrings “chicken earrings” (implying that the wearers were too scared of pain to get their ears pierced, I think)

- one advice column, also from 1965, implied that pierced ears were just a passing fad. the previous several centuries of western history would like a word, Mx. Columnist...

- A GIRL WITH RESTRICTIVE PARENTS BRINGING UP THE ARGUMENT THAT HER GRANDMOTHER HAD PIERCED EARS. YES. FINALLY SOMEONE REALIZED THE LOGICAL FALLACIES HERE. the argument against that is, indeed, a sort of “that was the Bad Old Days and we know better now” deal as some other commenters have hypothesized

- one article mentions that the trend could be part of the Victorian revival that was just becoming popular in the mid-60s, which is a fascinating thought I’ve never considered before

- many doctors complaining that they were suddenly being called upon to pierce ears despite not really knowing how. this is interesting, because before the Great Ear-Piercing Taboo, jewelers offering piercing services were more like modern piercers than Claire’s employees (and doctors weren’t involved at all unless an infection set in). descriptions I’ve read of Victorian piercer-jewelers mention a lot of things we’re familiar with today- needles designed with a hollow for inserting the starter jewelry, for example, and even “freezing” solutions to numb the earlobe. so in those early resurgence days, going to a long-established jewelry store for your piercing might actually have been a better option than a doctor’s office

- two young women in a 1964 Canadian article (from Calgary) mention that they think screwback earrings look cheap and gaudy, and the pierced version is more conservative and tasteful, in an interesting reversal of mainstream thought

- a newspaper columnist saying pierced ears give him “the wim-wams,” so they are to be avoided. whatever the hell that means

- a LOT of people seem to think that ear piercing was popular in the Victorian era because wealthy women didn’t want to lose their expensive jewelry. sorry folks- my collection of Victorian costume earrings (all pierced) says otherwise

- much confusion as to why modern girls want to do something so old-fashioned

- one woman marvels at how comfortable it is to wear earrings in pierced ears, as opposed to clips and screwbacks. I feel infinitely blessed, as an earring-lover, to have been born when I could escape the scourge of ear-vises altogether

- apparently an eccentric elderly man on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, literally bribed all the women of the community to pierce their ears because he liked the way it looked. one of them mentioned that she held out for $25- $244 CAD or $188 USD in today’s money. all because some rich Victwardian codger had a very specific fetish

- this absolutely incredible response of an Indian diplomat’s wife when asked, in New York, why she wore a diamond nose stud: “Because I feel [diamonds] become me more than rubies or emeralds.” QUEEN

- “when the fad changes, as it indubitably will-” are you certain of that, ma’am

[utilitycaster]

Hello! I’m interested in that redacted meta rant about Fjord and Caduceus’ friendship mentioned recently; especially in context of why Cad would bow out of this adventure.

Is the implication that he might want to see Fjord grow without further clerical guidance in regards to worship of the Wildmother?

Hi! So it's actually much simpler: Caduceus does not care for the ocean and very much wants to have some time to spend at home with his family. As he puts it in 2x141, he occasionally goes on walkabouts and adventures, but "every couple of years". It's been a few months since the campaign ended for this adventure; he is still having his Much Needed Downtime.

I think I do need to address the obvious which is that if Caduceus's Divine Intervention that resulted in Kingsley had failed, then yeah, Caduceus would probably be here. But it didn't, and this is the story, and it's not out of character for Caduceus to politely decline.

The reason I specifically mentioned this is that the fandom often assigns greater import to Caduceus and Fjord's relationship than there ultimately was. It's very understandable, but Caduceus and Fjord have long since realized that they are incredibly different people with rather incompatible ideals who worship very different aspects of one deity in very different ways. While the fandom often thought Fjord should become more and more like Caduceus, in-game, both characters fairly quickly come to understand that Fjord's arc is his own, and Caduceus plays a crucial part at the inflection point, but Fjord then continues on. They're friends! Everyone in the Nein is! But even setting aside Fjord's romantic relationship with Jester, he relates more to and is closer with Beau and Caleb than Caduceus, and both of them are well aware of that.

I'd have to do more digging than I have time for, to be honest, to find all the Talks and episode references, but Taliesin said that Caduceus does tend at times to see people like projects, and once Fjord is back on somewhat even footing - the reforged sword, the return of his pact magic, the tentative beginnings of a paladin oath - they have one more conversation, the one where he gives Fjord the holy symbol and talks about deception. It becomes pretty quickly apparent to Caduceus that actually, Fjord is pretty comfortable with his personal moral code, and needed guidance specific to the Wildmother but is going to follow his own path - as he should, since a paladin of the oceanic aspect of a deity would, logically, have a very different relationship to her than a cleric of the mortality and natural order aspects.

I don't want to diminish Caduceus's role in Fjord's development, because it is absolutely crucial, and I don't think anyone else could have been there for Fjord right after he broke his pact in 2x72 in quite the same way. But Fjord has been quite confident in how he worships the Wildmother since at least post-Rexxentrum arc, or at least confident that he needs to find his own way forward, which is why taking his oath is a private thing and why, pretty much from the start of the Eiselcross arc, his and Caduceus's relationship turns to more of a bantering one and even one in which Fjord is the one wondering what Caduceus might need and being the one on which Caduceus and others can rely on. (More generally...for all people talk about wanting more gray area w/r/t the deities, they actually really struggle to grasp the vastness of the Wildmother's domain and how Fjord and Caduceus are actually great examples of the diversity in-world in divine worship; this is frankly also a giant separate tangent but as always, I do blame evangelical protestantism.)

Basically what I was trying to say there is "Fjord and Caduceus are good friends, but if you're asking 'how could Fjord defeat Uk'otoa without Caduceus there', you clearly skipped the entire post-hiatus story in which Fjord does quite a lot without Caduceus's guidance, and Caduceus has his own quiet crisis that Fjord and Jester monitor from afar."

[emberphantom]

You get it.

Overall, the entire battle felt very clunky the more I think about it. And I don't know what the point was having the Cobb reveal in the mid-credits like...I know I love him way too much for a character with two episodes of screen time so, while I was insanely hype, I don't see how that was much of a moment to anyone else.

It would've be epic AF to have Cobb as part of the finale battle. Would've gave Din someone else to interact with, would've added to the emotions of Cad Bane being there especially for people who don't know the history behind Cad and Boba bc they don't watch the Clone Wars (or saw part of a lost, unfinished episode).

They clearly have a direction they're going with Cobb and I'm v happy about that, but he could've played a part in the finale battle, been even more mortally wounded, and still had the same result--him in the bacta tank getting modded.

listen I’m beside myself with relief that Cobb is alive BUT I am SO UPSET that they deprived us an injured Cobb swooping in at the last moment with the people of Freetown–jumping out of that landspeeder, tossing his hair or something and looking at Din like “Sorry we’re late, partner.” And Din just swooning as they fight side by side. JON FAVREAU I AM OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE. 

[arabellaflynn]

I went down a few rabbit holes while researching the Advent Calendar last year, that didn't make it into the queue because they got too long or went too far afield. Here's one of them!

One thing you notice when you watch a bazillion videos about old games consoles is how the design of circuitry has evolved. If someone says 'circuit board' today, you think a light piece of leafy green board, filled with parallel lines of copper at 45° and 90° angles, dotted with lots of tiny inscrutable plastic and metal doodads. But it took a long, long time for them to get that way.

If you look at really old circuit boards -- and I mean really, really old circuit boards, like from the beginning of the transistor era, they look completely different. They're brownish, for one thing. And kind of... wiggly?

Apologies for the transfer quality. It's not your connection, it just sucks. This piece appears to be some sort of promo-tainment thing from Tektronix themselves, from 1969. The rounded corners and bluish fuzz at the edges is an effect called 'vignetting', and it means this is originally from a 16mm film reel. There's no earthly reason for film to look this terrible. The uncentered picture means someone copied it by pointing a camera at a projection screen instead of bothering to get a proper kinescope setup, and the fact that it only goes up to 240p makes me feel like it was originally transferred over two decades ago for RealPlayer and nobody bothered to fix it for YouTube. VHS is about 240 lines, but if this were a crap transfer from a VHS tape you'd also see scanlines. It's possible there's a better copy at VintageTek, a museum dedicated to the history of Tektronix; they are an all-volunteer institution, and they probably have more important things to funnel funding to than updating their YouTube channel.

Point being, it looks like porridge and I'm sorry, but at least the content is interesting.

The brownish color, which is actually from an evolutionary stage earlier than what's covered here, is because many early boards were milled of bakelite rather than electrodeposited onto a glass or fiberglas backplane. If you want to see some of what that might have been like, you can hop over to Usagi Electric. He uses CAD to mill boards, rather than the photochemical process described by Tektronix, but it's pretty much the same idea. He does a lot of it in pursuit of his mad obsession with building a vacuum tube computer here. (If you're curious, his logo says うさぎ電気, "Usagi Denki". "Usagi" is Japanese for rabbit or bunny -- there is one who appears at the end of some videos -- and the spelling of "denki" here specifically means electrics, as opposed to 電機, which is usually rendered electronics. It still pops up in the names of some engineering or technology firms, but generally only the really old ones.)

The wiggly nature of early boards is neatly explained by watching the drafting process, starting about three minutes into the video. It was originally done by hand. The rest of the half-hour video goes through the whole multi-stage process, but the gist is that when you lay out the board, you draw dark lines where you want the conductive traces to be on the final product. To get a consistent size, tape is used for "holes" and tape lines are uses for the traces. If you've ever used stripe tape in nail art, it was apparently something like that -- vinyl tape with a bit of stretch, so you could curve it around. It was a methodical sort of art form. Ever solved one of those "connect the same-color dots without crossing lines" puzzles? It's basically that. If you can't find a topologically-appropriate solution on a single plane, you can produce boards with traces on both the front and the back, as Tektronix does here, and these days you can actually bury traces in internal layers as well. It's just a pain and makes the cost go up exponentially. 

The mention of "holes" is interesting. Early circuit boards were nothing but holes. Everything had legs and was soldered on from the underside. Today these are known as "through-hole mounted" components; the alternatives are "surface-mount" components, which are generally smaller and fiddlier to solder on by hand, but considerably easier to lay down and solder in place by machine. Surface-mount technology has been around since before this Tektronix piece, but remained NASA-grade esoterica until the automated assembly process became cost-effective in the 1990s. Today the conductive holes are referred to as "vias" and the little medal dots surface-mount things are soldered to are "pads".

I'll also note that they show the automatic soldering process for these boards late in the video. It involves skimming the boards across the surface of a pool of molten solder. Solder in the 1960s contained a lot of lead. I would not personally like to be in that room. Today a machine places little surface-mount doojiggers in place along with solder beads, and then melts it all very gently in a very hot oven until it all melds together, not unlike a pan of slightly too-runny cookies. If you do it right, the surface tension of the solder keeps it on the pads and out of the traces. This is particularly useful for placing CPUs, whose myriad tiny pins in a tight grid would be far too difficult to solder by hand, and the origin of "reflow" repairs for electronics that are exhibiting symptoms of flaky solder joints.

The "silkscreening" process here does not use silk, but originally it did -- it was invented in Asia, logically enough. The gist of it is that you take a piece of finely woven mesh, traditionally light silk but in modern times also metal or synthetic fiber, and you plug up all of the little holes in it in the areas where you don't want ink to get through it, usually with some sort of water-repellent substance. In the days of yore, you painted on some kind of sap or wax, but nowadays it's usually a light-sensitive plastic that's scraped across the whole mesh, topped with a stencil that is opaque where you want ink to flow, and exposed to UV light that sets the substance. The unset areas that were in shadow are rinsed clean, leaving the mesh permeable in those places. The ink emulsion is then applied to the printing surface beneath in the reverse process: Ink is spread across the mesh, then squeegeed through with enough force to push it through the holes in the weave and onto the surface beneath. The dots of ink bleed just enough to flow into one another, producing a solid area of pigment. The circuit board designs were originally drafted in black on a white background, then photographed and reduced to 1/4 their original size, and the film used as the stencil for the silkscreen.

Holes are drilled mostly by hand(!) in this clip, which is an error-prone process, as you can see from the Usagi Electrics guy. The worker uses what's called a pantograph drill. A pantograph is a device that translates motion from one place to another, often with a change in scale. Typically pantographs are mechanical in nature, based on the complimentary motion of opposite corners of a parallelogram, but you could make a pretty good argument that modern systems that accept movement inputs from a user and translate them elsewhere by computer are also members of the class. Robot-assisted surgery comes to mind. If you cared to have an even longer argument, you could also consider systems that scan items with laser photons in order to reproduce them on a lathe or CNC machine pantographs in spirit, if not in fact. 

A visual or optical comparator is just a device that projects a magnified view of something up on a screen, along with a point, grid, or profile it needs to match, not unlike a microfiche viewer with a targeting reticule. They're still used in some areas, although software image processing is steadily gaining ground. 

You'd be amazed at how many things still need a look-over by a human with a brain. The lack of human brains is how we got the sharply-angled board traces we have today, in fact. Computer-aided drafting was developed to a usable level in the 1980s, and predictably the people using it were mostly engineers. The kind of route-finding you do in those connect-the-dots puzzles, and that the electronics engineers did when drafting the boards, is one of those very slippery human things. You want to find the shortest path, to save on the precious metals you use as conductors, but the absolute shortest path (with reasonable tolerances) is often a very snaky curve that would require a large number of points to define. It's much simpler to work on a grid, hence the 45° and 90° angles -- this ensures that all trace paths can be defined exclusively by where their corners lie on a square coordinate system, and is much less calculation-intensive. This was a lot of what early graphics tablets (or digitizers) were used for, and some light pen systems. 

Having watched my father do a lot of this as a kid, I gather that at least in modern CAD software, you can just pick things up and put them wherever you want, but that the autopathing gets very confused if you do it too much -- mostly it's better to let the computer figure out where the traces go and tell you if you want something impossible in 3D space. And if you screw up anyway, there's always blue wire.

Circuit boards don't have to be the ubiquitous green, either. That's just the color of the solder mask, a lacquer painted all over the parts of the board you don't want solder to stick to. It's mostly tradition at this point, but you can get boards in pretty much any color you like -- the second most common I've see is a dark navy blue, probably because copper traces and white silkscreening stand out best on those two colors. You're welcome to get neon purple, if you can find anyone offering it.

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[sporadicthingcollection]

Hondo would be that kind of mfer who would show up to Cad and Irno’s wedding despite being explicitly not invited.

So fun fact about Zeltron weddings: you don't actually need an invite to go to one. It's like a big block party! Complete strangers show up, wish the happy couple well, and get fucked up at the bar. It's a beautiful thing.

So it's not really crashing a wedding if there's no cultural concept of wedding crashing.

---

Cad Bane is a very... actually, he's a pretty happy man right now. Kind of impressive, considering the week he's had. 

It's mostly because he's almost too drunk to stand. Zeltron liquor packs a punch and people have been sliding him shots all night: your brothers and your in-laws and your cousins and your neighbors and complete strangers that have shown up because Zeltron weddings are apparently a free-for-all...

But it's not every day he gets married. Why not cut loose a bit? You're off doing the same thing, probably.

...Where are you, anyways?

He scans the crowd for you, but the things he usually identifies you by are useless right now. Everyone here is pink, you're not in your usual attire, and he's seeing double.

...well, not everyone is pink. There are some Humans, a few Twi'leks, he thinks he saw Harch a few minutes ago, and a Weequay with a stupid hat...

He gets a stabbing pain right behind his eyes, and he knows it's not the liquor.

Hondo Ohnaka is drunk enough to slur a single word. "Cad!" he warbles. "Small galaxy!"

Ohnaka goes to embrace him, and, for the first time in forever, Bane lets him. He's in a good mood and he refuses to let Ohnaka ruin it.

"Hondo," he says. "Hell're ya doin' here?"

"Same thing as you! Party hopping!" He leans in conspiratorially. "The wedding bars are cheaper than regular ones!"

"Wouldn't know." A Zeltron shoves a drink into Bane's hand and says something that sounds like 'salute ya.' He considers tossing it back like the rest, but he hands it to Ohnaka. "Here."

Ohnaka grins and tosses it back. Over his shoulder, through a part in the crowd, Bane sees little Anthunia, her brow knit up in confusion. She spots him and trots right for him.

Anthunia crawls right between Ohnaka's legs. The pirate nearly trips over himself to get away as she pops up.

"I can't find my mama," she says loudly at Bane.

And here's his out.

"Probably with yer Auntie Irno," he says. "Go find 'er."

Ohnaka's brows shoot up as he hears your name. He lowers one as he peers at Bane.

Bane just shrugs. "Who's weddin' do ya think dis is?"

Both brows shoot up again, and then a grin splits Ohnaka's face. "You dog," he chuckles, shaking a finger. "One last fling before she's gone forever? Or are you the backdoor man?"

Bane wrinkles his rostrum. "Not in front of de kid," he says to Ohnaka. "Why don't ya go find de bride? Steal one last dance off 'er."

Ohnaka's grin grows wide and lecherous. Had he more faith in his coordination, Bane would have smacked him, but as it stands, he's barely standing.

He turns back to Athunia. "Bring dis guy to see yer aunt," he says. "He's an ol' friend."

Athunia appraises the pirate, her little hair puffs bouncing as she looks him up and down. But he meets whatever criteria she had, so she grabs his hand and drags him off into the crowd.

Bane waves him off. She'll be fine. She's a tough little cookie -- if she's not afraid of him, she definitely won't be afraid of Hondo.

Another shot gets shoved into his hand. He drinks this one, praying that it tastes a little bit better than the rest.

It does not. It still tastes like battery acid and it burns going down, adding to the uncreasingly inpleasant burn in his belly.

...unpleasantly increasant. Increasantly unpleasing. Increasing unpleasant--

A short, surprised shriek splits the air. Your shriek. If he sits up straight, he can see you staring wide-eyed at Ohnaka, hands over your mouth. Your mother, standing behind you, looks as confused as you are shocked.

And just like that, Ohnaka is officially not his problem anymore.

Bane throws back the rest of the shot and waves the bartender over for a chaser.

---

"Catch Us If You Can Masterpost" | To the Mastahpost | Tip Jar

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E129 (March 16, 2021)

Tonight’s guests are Matt Mercer and Taliesin Jaffe!

Matt, on DMing Luc’s Revivify: “That was weird. It’s one thing when it happens because of player action and circumstances and the choices they make. When it’s entirely on me, unintentional, and just realizing different chess pieces you’ve set up, that’s rough.” It was especially rough since this was a child NPC related to a PC. “I was hoping somebody had a spell slot left.” He kept in mind that there are two clerics in the room and that they could resurrect the next day even if the Revivify went poorly. “A good chance, since it’s his first time. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I think we’ll be okay, we’ll see how this goes. It was really stressful in the moment! I did not set out to have that happen, but when I realized what was going to happen, I tried to see it through.” He wouldn’t have prevented a chance to bring him back. “There may have been an offshoot short-run series of games to find a way to bring him back. I would have found some way to correct the circumstance so the players could feel good about moving forward with the story and there was no undue punishment beyond their control.”

Taliesin on Cad’s response: “This is a big thing if you’re a cleric. It was very much coming in like an EMT. Everything should be fine... hopefully. Just focused in and got it done. The minute things started to go south it was like, okay, that’s the next problem.”

On Yeza’s feelings: “It is a very complicated situation. I think he, much like how Veth is trying to figure out what it is that she wants, I think he’s trying to help her find that while also figuring it out for himself. I think Yeza’s also noticing that because Veth’s the more active of the two of them she also takes the weight of the responsibility and the blame for things when they go wrong, unnecessarily. Especially when he himself acknowledges that he’s partially at fault for even dragging everyone in with the Conclave. As much as he’s appreciative for them coming back for him, there’s a lot of back and forth. He’s filled with a lot of regret, too, but he’s very much trying to convince Veth that it’s a burden that she doesn’t have to keep to herself, that they can share it and work through it together.” Matt mentions that, as an actor, he really loves exploring interactions between characters first and foremost. “Especially when you don’t know where it’s going to go.” He also praises Sam as a scene partner - “I really cherish that.”

How does Caduceus feel about Revivify and Speak with Dead? “Speak with Dead is an interesting middle ground, because he knows that it’s not actually speaking with the dead. It’s really just-- it’s almost medical, really. This is just reactivating a brain at a certain point. It’s practically just a muscle twitch at this point. That doesn’t really prod him in that direction. Revivify is interesting, because it had never really come up. At first I thought of it as bending the rules, but it’s not bending the rules. You knock over a plant, you replant it, you don’t stare at it and go ‘Well, that’s over.’ This is just doing the work. No, we can bring this thing back to health. This is all part of the circle of life, that sometimes we can save something. Especially given the stress that he’s put himself through over the past year of being with these people. He’s started to think of himself a bit as a battlefield medic, and triage is just part of the deal, and it’s completely acceptable.”

Did Trent really just want to talk? “Yeah, that circumstance, as it came together, Trent would never have arrived if there wasn’t an indication that there was some kind of infiltration or attack. Even beyond that, it was Jester breaking the concentration on her charm on that one guard when she created her duplicate.” The guards’ job is to inform a member of the Cerberus Assembly, and Trent lived the closest. “He didn’t know who it was, didn’t have any expectation necessarily. The minute he saw the illusion, he knew a powerful magic user was involved.” Seeing Caleb was an unexpected surprise. “I don’t think he wanted to throw down necessarily. He was more interested in figuring out exactly what the nature of this was.” Matt had multiple battlemaps that didn’t get used. “They managed to cleverly out-maneuver him in his surprise of seeing them.” The Nein rocketed up his priority list after that very quickly. Taliesin: “We’re so fucked.”

On Cad being “Uncle Caduceus” to Luc: “It’s the thing he misses most about home, is being a juvenile shit. It’s nice to be able to express that part of him again, as opposed to the serious, life-threatening, constant intensity. I’m very at home just being a little difficult.”

Cosplay of the Week: an amazing Beau! (_rumor_king, photography by kourtyardproductions on Instagram)

On Marion: “Like a lot of people in this whole narrative from the beginning, getting swept up in things larger than her and trying to adapt. This is a circumstance she’s avoided for a long time. She’s having a rough time in some ways, but simultaneously, she’s enduring. Like a mother would. She’s adapting, she’s making it work. Without much of a choice, you just kind of do the best you can and lean on the people around you to help you where they can. Luckily she has a daughter there. She’s probably surprising herself at how well she’s doing given the circumstances.” Matt talks about how weird it is to feel proud of character he’s created. “Of the many things Marion is incredible at, she’s a studier of the human condition. She’s seen and heard the stories of so many. That gives her a very special perspective. She can see elements of that fractured individual within Caleb, and knowing the good that he’s brought to his friends, and knowing he’s possibly saved her life from bad circumstances, she couldn’t not speak up. She very easily falls into that role of maternal comforter, because it’s one of the many things she’s really good at, she enjoys it, and she can see well when people need it.” He’s been enjoying having Marion along for this (despite the difficult circumstances) because he was always a little sad that they only got to see her for short periods of time.

On the Blooming Grove’s safety: “He’s afraid that it’s a premonition. He’s not pinned it down, but he’s happy to let his imagination wander. He at the very least feels like there’s a reason he’s having these thoughts, and that there’s a reason to go there. He’s a big believer that these things don’t just happen. He’s more likely to think that there’s a good reason to go versus a danger to go. He’s had a couple of ominous warnings lately, and he’s not used to them and not a fan. He’s more likely to read something like that as, there is something there waiting for you that you have to discover. There is something that is going to be helpful to you, even if it hurts.”

On Astrid: “While maybe not as readable in overall personality as Trent is, I still want to be careful to not discuss things that are still being discussed within the game and tossed around as possibilities. Astrid is another complicated character, as anyone would be who’s been through the life she has. I can’t say too much. I can say she’s definitely legitimately happy to see Bren/Caleb after all this time.” His reemergence definitely caught her off guard. “We’ll have to see where it goes from there.”

On Cad’s successful Divine Intervention: “He’s definitely hit the ‘on a mission from god’ stage. He’s been that way for the entire campaign of, this, this is what I’ve been waiting for. Even when it sucks a lot, it’s been nice that those things have popped up to remind him, no, no, you’re doing it right, everything’s good. Probably not going to survive the next week, but you’re doing good! Not quite 1 in a 100 chance, but I forget so often to make that roll, and it’s such a great roleplaying roll. I don’t know how at level 20 you could deal with the fact that you can do that every day.” 

On Zeenoth getting his comeuppance: the kidnapping was a concept Marisha brought up for Beau’s backstory, and Matt went with it even though it was opposed to the Cobalt Soul’s philosophy because he knew rooting it out would make for an interesting story. “I felt it was an important beat to bring to her, because it was something that she was wronged by. And to show that there are still some good people out there who are trying to make things right.” After the tentative peace, dealing with this became Dairon’s next focus. “I was glad we finally got to it. So many people don’t have the opportunity in their lives to get that sort of justice and vindication, so if I can bring elements of that justice into our world, even for our own hope, I’m going to do that. Especially for my wife’s character, especially for a character that deserves that.” Taliesin points out that if it had come too early, Beau wouldn’t have believed it.

Cad’s thoughts on the Tomb Taker betrayal? “He knew it was gonna come at some point. There was no way that was gonna last. He was hoping it was gonna last a little longer. He was really hoping they had a vested interest in getting them all the way to the end. Nope, this is apparently as far as we go, and he was not prepared for that.” He was expecting the potential for de-escalation. “Caduceus is the only character in there that doesn’t have a history with Lucien. I think he sees him a little more clearly than everybody else does. They’re all looking for this person that Clay, at least, is of the opinion that he’s just not there. This is a very manipulative, very dangerous infernal human. Just smarter than all of them. Really aware that there is no calculating what the hell is going to happen. Conversation is the only way you can deal with someone like that.”

Fan Art of the Week: An amazing Caleb closeup! (rynn_birb on Twitter)

Taliesin on Lucien: “I’m excited he’s the one that’s going to kill us all. Poetic that this is how the game ends.” Matt was delighted when Taliesin handed him carte blanche to do what he wanted with Molly’s past. “I was like ‘shit... oh, wait!’ The character of Lucien was always intended to be an antagonist so that it would have been Molly being chased by the person who wanted their body back. But then it happened that he got his body back.” Taliesin: “He’s so much worse than I ever hoped.”

Matt, on the Holy Avenger: “I hadn’t thought to initially even give that sword.” The good roll was the only reason Kima handed that over. “Well, sure, you get the sword. It was very reactionary, it wasn’t my intent originally. I was like, well, I mean, there’s two avenues she can take with this.” Multiclass into Paladin, or lean into the fact that her subclass is essentially a barbarian paladin. “This really works out in a uniquely beautiful way. Let me see if I can lay out a path for her to earn it.”

On Cad’s attempt at lying blowing up in his face: “He was like that kid that had a really bad day in high school and was like, you know what? I’m going to let loose. This is it. I’m gonna dye a streak in my hair. And then tries to give himself a haircut and ends up with half bangs. Well, okay, obviously I’m not that person. I was feeling a little distraught and I didn’t handle it well. Maybe I’m going dark... no, I’m not going dark. Nope.” Matt mentions how much he relates to Caduceus.

Matt, on the Eyes: “What can I tell you? I’m enjoying the hell out of it. The moment they began to really push to read that book, I was like, okay, this is on you. I’m excited for the point in the narrative where the march continues back to Eiselcross. I am almost impatient - not really - because we’re on the cusp of getting to more of the meat. There’s so much to learn, so much to see, so much to explore. I love instilling my players with absolute terror.”

Thoughts on Jester’s Tarot reading? Taliesin cackles. “Molly made the cards, so. Did it to himself, he did, he did.” Matt: “Once again, another example of things working out unexpectedly and too perfectly for an improvised moment. Fuck.” Taliesin: “Bless the wisdom of chaos.” Matt: “I love that even at this point in the campaign, Molly continues to fuck with people. I’m just so proud. That deeply shook Lucien, for reasons.” Taliesin: “It’s the everlasting gobstopper smoke bomb.”