#even got a Royal Revenant to assist him

[largemandrill]

I like to imagine that it’s the same Tibia Mariner every time. He just moves.

[somegirlsnerdywords2]

Anime i’ve Watched

Koukyuu no Karasu (Raven of the Inner Palace):

Synopsis: Among the royal court, there is an individual feared as much as revered: the Raven Consort Ryuu Jusetsu. Residing in her jet-black palace and isolated from the emperor, she is the subject of countless rumors. Claimed to possess mystic abilities, she is said to take on any request—from finding lost items to inflicting curses. While some call her an immortal sage, others believe her to be a terrifying revenant. But such comments fail to faze Jusetsu, who prefers to spend her days in quiet solitude. That is, until the emperor, Ka Koushun, barges into her court and asks for her assistance with a mysterious case. The young emperor's request requires Jusetsu to step out of her palace for the first time. Despite Ka Koushun's frequent visits annoying her to no end, she cannot bring herself to turn him away. Her predecessor's teachings echo in her ears: the Raven Consort is destined to remain forever alone and never desire anything. Yet Jusetsu finds herself making the first of several bonds when she asks Jiujiu, an innocently inquisitive court girl, to be her sole attendant. Together, they begin fulfilling requests from the people of the palace. However, unknown perils lurk in the outside world, and drawing attention to herself may bring Jusetsu face-to-face with a past that is better left undisturbed. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

Status: Completed

My Rating: 9.5/10

Finished airing in 2022 with a total of 13 episodes.

This one was a pleasant surprise! I originally added it to my watchlist simply because it looked pretty and expected very little from it.... I got far more than I expected. It’s a historical fantasy set in China to sum it up but it has tons of depth.

Pros:

The lore, especially the different artwork while telling stories. I liked that.

Amazing opening and an even better ending theme

The story is intriguing and the characters are likeable

Feels a bit more fresh due to the setting

Cons:

Not really a con but it sure was a bit odd to hear Chinese names in between all of the Japanese speaking

I have so many questions left unanswered..

Overall I very much enjoyed this series, it was interesting and refreshing. Visually it was beautiful and my only real complaint is that I wish there was more! Recommend to anyone looking for some Historical fantasy without an pervy nonsense.

[piermanwalter]

Thief’s Apprentice Trivia

Fleetfooted Housebreaker secretly weighs 500 pounds. His prosthetics look terrible on the outside, but he has a steel skeleton inside of him. His bones have been crushed into powder and stored in his head. Bonehead. Being 5′7″ and this heavy leads to some problems, such as getting stuck in sand and falling through floors.

3 is a recurring motif. There are 3 bros, the bros technically have the same 3 dads, there are 3 remaining people who were alive before the plague, 3 Gehenna royals were sent on a death march into Surenia, and so on.

Tax Collector hires skeleton prostitutes to throw bath tokens at him and it’s not even remotely a sex thing. A series of increasingly extreme prostitution regulation laws led to skeleton prostitutes having a majority ownership of his soul after he put way too much of it into bath tokens. 

“Pirate” is a blanket term for any criminal who relies on a terrifying reputation and wants everyone to know of them. It doesn’t necessarily mean sea criminals. “Bandit” is a blanket term for criminals who want some level of local notoriety but not any serious government attention. “Thief” is a blanket term for criminals who don’t want anyone to know they are criminals. Ironically, this means Master Thief is technically a pirate, but he got that name before etymology changed.

The camera zooms out to ensure the largest person is completely in frame. If a large person is approaching, you can tell in advance by the camera slowly zooming out before they show up. A terrifying thing to happen in the wastelands, as the camera zooms out until you are a speck and you realise The Necromancer is here.

For the most part, the camera is fixed path third person that zooms in or out depending on who is tallest, but you can go into first person by crouching. Many recently dead revenants can’t sustain the soul to look intently in a single direction and stand up straight at the same time. This means you can’t go into first person when there are hockey children nearby.

You gain full control of the camera by losing control of your body and sprawling on the ground motionless. Sometimes you will see other people sprawling. Aside from freeing enough soul to intensely focus on surroundings, sprawling also serves social roles by playing dead in front of the living, emphasising sentences (”I can’t pay that much!” sprawls), surrendering fights, and showing deference, but in general, if everyone else is sprawling, you should sprawl too.

In Veilheim, religion and public transport are the same thing. Since the Floating Goddess allows people to levitate, and many Veilheimers are physically incapable of moving in certain ways, statues of the Floating Goddess are installed in buildings or near stairs so people can pray and go places. If you are a tremendous asshole, the souls inside the statues don’t like you, so you can’t use them.

An early Mayor of Veilheim banned The Necromancer from setting foot in the city, so he destroyed the area that would become Old Veilheim in retaliation. The Necromancer spends a lot of time in Old Veilheim and sometimes he reaches over the new containment wall and grabs people. The entire area adjacent to the new wall became The Bad District and nobody willingly lives there, although it is a great place to hide things for tax evasion.

Although the area outside the city walls is technically called the wastelands, there is a lot going on. Aside from the farms I already covered, there is also a quarry, a tar pit, an astronomy tower, a race track, roads, and some other things. Most of the time these places are abandoned, and when The Necromancer is confirmed to be in Old Veilheim, all the reapers, masons, and other people rush out to get some work done, because when The Necromancer is in Old Veilheim, he can’t be anywhere else.

A later Mayor of Veilheim finally made a successful deal with The Necromancer to stop him from setting foot in the city, because even free reign over Old Veilheim wasn’t enough for him. The violin-shaped badges of office worn by guards have pieces of The Necromancer’s soul in them and he uses them to see how things are going in Veilheim without setting foot in it. To be fair, The Necromancer has sometimes warned Veilheimers of impending disasters through the badges and assisted guards, and they are extremely powerful magical items in their own right, but more often than not The Necromancer just uses them to terrorise people and complain.

Veilheim and Villa Princeps, despite being trading partners and having no past conflicts, actually hate each other for reasons ranging from petty and stupid to racist and blasphemous, and the only things preventing open warfare are physical distance between the two cities and how Veilheim, surrounded by dangers and with a population 14 times Villa Princeps’, would absolutely stomp. But if Veilheim was weakened by another conflict, and/or if Villa Princeps was backed with Beringian weapons, there would definitely be a war. 

[azvolrien]

Five Vignettes about Asta in Stormhaven - Museum

The Stormhaven museum has been mentioned a few times and is marked on the city map I drew a while ago, but we’ve never previously ‘visited’ it, so to speak. I perhaps inevitably picture its interior as a kind of hybrid between the National Museum of Scotland here in Edinburgh (before the recent renovation) and the Natural History Museum in London, those being my default mental images of ‘museum’.

~~~

           “So that’s it,” said Mia. “It’s over?”

           Asta bowed her head and massaged her brow with her fingertips. “Look… It – sorry for the cliché – it really isn’t you. You’ve been nothing but kind to me and I’ve enjoyed our dates. It’s just…”

           “There’s someone else,” finished Mia.

           Asta nodded. “Not – not physically. Not here. I haven’t been seeing anyone else. I wouldn’t do that to you. But… in here?” She touched her heart. “Yes. I’m still thinking of her, and that’s not fair to you. You deserve someone less… less distracted.”

           Mia sighed, but nodded. “I have noticed you’re not always… totally in the moment,” she said. “If you want to call it a day, well… Fair enough. But let’s finish this last date first, eh?” She lifted her teacup in salute. Asta smiled sadly and clinked her own cup against the rim.

           They said goodbye outside the café and went their separate ways. Asta tightened her scarf against the early spring breeze and crossed the road to the National Museum of Stormhaven. It was hosting a touring exhibition that sounded interesting, all about the ancient royal tombs of Kemet; Calburn had mentioned they had a genuine revenant on display, and those hardly ever left the desert province. She climbed the front steps and passed through the wide double doors into the main hall, a high, airy space that felt more like a temple than a museum, cool, quiet, and flooded with light from the glass roof three storeys above.

           The Kemet exhibition was all that had been promised, though the revenant was so fragile with age that it could no longer move without disintegrating. Asta dropped a half-crown coin into the donation box by the door and wandered off for a look around the rest of the museum, past the mounted skeleton of a huge bull mammoth at the door to the natural history wing, and on into the shadows of a leviathan skeleton suspended from the ceiling by thick hawsers bolted into the supporting columns.

           The escaped slaves who had founded Stormhaven had hailed from all over Stranatir, and that showed in the wide array of permanent exhibits. One hall was devoted to the Hawk Steppes, its back wall dominated by a mural showing a band of mounted hunters facing off against a fearsome thuru and its floor space filled with exhibits from well-used weaponry to a ceremonial caparison draped over a horse mannequin. Another detailed the founding of Stormhaven itself, outlining the story with such artefacts as chains from the slave ship whose wreck had freed them, the slightly moth-eaten original national flag, and paintings of the architects of the escape. Queen Eleri the First stared regally out from her canvas, grasping a broken chain in both hands and daring anyone to take her people back into slavery. The Falkari warrior prince Garaaz toth Kossu folded his brawny arms, but seemed to look over his audience rather than directly at them. Lady Meredith leant on her enormous battle axe, her eyes cast into shadow by the hood of her bearskin cloak and her face painted with woad and kohl.

           Asta paused in front of that last painting for a better look at its accompanying notice. Meredith, it explained, had hailed from the Sea Loch Country where she had worked as a village blacksmith, but Stormhaven had needed her more as a warrior and so she had fought to defend her new home until her death on the battlefield decades later, on the site of what would become the city of Northold. The notice concluded with a quote from Queen Eleri, describing Meredith as ‘at once a stalwart friend and a terrifying berserker’.

           Asta ran the tip of one finger over that final sentence, and carried on to the next room. That one turned out to be about the Sea Loch Country itself. Ancient carved stones circled the walls around a display of other artefacts; the preserved prow of a historic longship loomed over a reconstruction of a warrior’s burial, alongside weapons, tools, harness-fittings and more besides. In one corner, a glass case protected a scale model of a broch. Asta sat down on a nearby bench and, for several minutes, did nothing but stare at the model.

           How could she be homesick for somewhere she had only stayed for a month? It made no sense – and yet, more than a year after leaving, she still missed Dun Ardech so much that it made itself felt as a physical ache in her chest. She missed the smell of the sea, the cry of the gulls, and the main room of the broch with its central hearth and its squashy driftwood-framed couches. She missed the water horses resting on the rocks after dark. She even missed the chill wind, colder than it ever got in Stormhaven. But above all else, she missed Roan. Her cheerful grin and no-nonsense compassion. Her warm, solid presence alongside her at night, curled up together under the reindeer-skin blanket, and the unexpected sense of safety it brought with it. Her tattoos like the symbols on the stones, curving their way across her smiling face and strong arms. Asta shuddered and hugged herself, the memories now rising unbidden. The feel of Roan’s arms around her, Roan’s lips against hers. Her words on the jetty, the last time she had seen her. Forget me, if you have to.

           I can’t do that. Asta hadn’t said it then; she wished she had. She lowered her face into her hands and cried, her shoulders quivering with each near-silent sob.

           “I’d ask if you’re all right,” said a vaguely familiar voice after a while, “but the question seems redundant. Is there anything I can do to help?”

           Asta sat up, sniffling, to see a man looking at her with concern and offering her a handkerchief. She recognised him – he was one of the wizards from the College, and he was a very recognisable man – but they had never been introduced or even shared more than a few words in passing. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I just broke up with my girlfriend, and – I don’t know. Probably not.” She took the handkerchief and wiped her eyes as well as she could. “Thanks.”

           “Keep it for now,” he said when she tried to return the handkerchief. “I can get it back at the College later. Would a sympathetic ear be of any assistance?”

           “…Maybe.” She shuffled along the bench to make room for him and he sat down at the opposite end, more than an arm’s length away. “If – if you chat to people at the College much, you probably know I was a slave,” she began.

           “Yes, Fayn mentioned it to me once,” he said.

           “Oh, you know Fayn? I wasn’t sure if you’d have spent much time talking to the non-wizard staff.”

           “Fayn is a little more than a work acquaintance to me,” he said with a chuckle, holding up a plain gold ring strung on a fine silver chain around his neck, an identical twin to the one she had seen Fayn wearing.

           “Oh, you’re her husband? How have I been working at the College for the better part of a year now and I never heard that?” The man – Wygar, Fayn had called him – shrugged, smiling. “Well, so… I was a slave. I escaped, and eventually I got to Stormhaven. But in between those two points, there was this woman who helped me, and, well…”

           Slowly, not fully sure why, Asta told him the whole story from taking shelter in Dun Ardech to stepping off the ship in Seacourt. “…and I have tried to move on like she asked. I have. Got a job. Moved out of Ari’s house once I found my feet. Tried seeing other people. I just… I miss her. I really, really miss her. But then sometimes I wonder – she sent me away. Maybe she doesn’t miss me as much. And that’s… That’s a hard thought to bear.”

           Wygar looked down at his hands, the palms covered by fingerless gloves. “I don’t know this woman,” he said. “I can’t claim to know what she was thinking – though I do like what you’ve said about her style,” he added with a grin, not dissimilar to Roan’s. Asta giggled despite herself. “But usually when a person says they’d kill to protect someone, they’re speaking in hypotheticals. To actually do it is not the mark of a woman who is prepared to just forget about what you had with her. It sounds to me like she cared entirely too much about you to see you in danger, and I expect she misses you a great deal.”

           “Do you think I’ll ever see her again?”

           “I think you can take steps to make that happen,” said Wygar. “Duncraig isn’t terribly hard to get to these days. But all things considered, it might be wise to lie low in Stormhaven for a while longer. Fayn and I were in the Northern Forest last winter-”

           “Oh, is that where she disappeared to? I wondered why I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks. Sorry, go on.”

           “Yes, it was… quite an experience. But we ran into another escaped slave there – an elf from one of the clans, who’d killed his owner and made a run for it years ago. I gathered he’d never left the Forest since, in case he ran into his owner’s family. I don’t see why you shouldn’t return to the Sea Lochs one day – but it might be worth giving these MacArra people a bit time to forget what you look like first.”

           Asta sighed. “Will that ever happen?”

           Wygar inspected his nails. “They don’t sound like the type to look too closely at the faces of their slaves.”

           “That’s… actually not a bad point,” said Asta. “Daro would have recognised me instantly, but the rest… Hmm.” She steepled her fingers and gazed at the opposite wall without really seeing it. “Fayn didn’t send you to look for me, did she?”

           “No, in fact – she and Ari have gone to something at the theatre. I’m just very fond of this museum; it was something of a refuge for me when I was a child. I was looking at the dragon prow over there when I heard somebody crying.”

           “I was trying to be quiet…”

           “I have good hearing,” said Wygar, almost apologetically.

           “Can… can I ask you a question?” said Asta. Wygar nodded. “What does your tattoo signify?” She tapped her own cheek to indicate the blue stripe inked down his.

           “Overconsumption of alcohol,” he said wryly.

           “That’s very irresponsible,” said Asta, frowning.

           “Yes, you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

           “Not you! The tattooist! They should never have agreed to tattoo someone who’d been drinking!”

           “…You are actually the first person to tell me that.”

           Asta half-sighed, half-laughed. “Well… Thank you. For listening.”

           “You’re very welcome. The gods know I’ve had plenty of practice.”

~~~

Asta has seen Wygar enough times for the shock of his appearance - that is, how, like Roan, he is also a tall, fair-skinned redhead with obvious blue tattoos - to have worn off, but this is the first real conversation they ever had.

We’ve never seen Mia before and probably never will again, but she seems like an understanding sort of person.

For anyone who’s interested, these are the two museum interiors referenced in the intro:

NMS:

NHM:

[clayray3290]

Clayray Closeout 2016

Oops, I was too busy celebrating New Year to post about these. I’ve tracked my music tastes using Last.fm for ages and had posted about my top tracks each year for the past 5 years, so here we go again. But first!

Music - Artists

Glass Animals

Beyoncé // Britney Spears

Secret

Civil Twilight

Jeon Hyosung

Tegan and Sara

Heather Maloney

Jesse & Joy

Sonamoo

I got really into Glass Animals this year. I had first heard them back in 2013, but their most recent album How To Be a Human Being (which you will soon see is very high on my albums list this year) really snagged my interest. I saw them live in September and was in the Top 1% of listeners on Spotify this year, so yeah, I was in deep. Not only do they make fantastic music, they are adorable British boys and I also just love how the album was such a fully engrossing creative project for them with other offshoots in different media.

I also saw Civil Twilight and Heather Maloney live, which is why they’re so high on the list. I almost went to see Jesse & Joy this year, but didn’t end up getting to go, but their album from late 2015 was great. In addition, I saw Aaron Tveit in concert, but considering that a lot of his music is ensemble work from musicals, they don’t scrobble as him individually, so he’s not on this list. There was a lot of Aaron Tveit this year, lol. I went to New York a bunch this year with my new roommate, and so after seeing him in concert, we went to NYC for a gala thing that he was also at. And I spoke to him!

Secret hit their 7th anniversary and then Sunhwa left the group, so there has been a lot of reminiscing about the last seven years and also, in a way, mourning the loss of the OT4. As Admin of Secret4Times, obviously this hit me pretty hard. But, looking forward to what’s next in store for Secret, and also for solo efforts. Hyosung’s solo album this year was excellent, landing her at #5 on this list. I actually am usually slightly biased towards Jieun, but her solo album came out later this year and actually I found it weaker than her previous albums (though I love I Wanna Fall In Love) so you don’t see her here.

Other music trends with me that aren’t necessarily reflected here: Went to the World Figure Skating Championships this past year and was there for the ShibSibs’ heartachingly beautiful Fix You in person and words can’t even express how much the emotion of it just filled me up. Also, what with Sing Street (which will you see on the Albums list below) and Stranger Things, there was a lot of 80′s in my life. I also went to the opera twice this year, The Merry Widow and Carmen, so I have felt quite cultured.

Music - Albums

Beyoncé - Lemonade

Glass Animals - How To Be a Human Being

Jeon Hyosung - Colored

Sonamoo - I Like U Too Much

Tegan and Sara - Love You To Death // Sing Street - Sing Street (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Royal Pirates - 3.3

Yuna - Chapters

Rooney - Washed Away

Glen Hansard - Music from the Motion Picture Once

Look, of course Lemonade is #1. Obviously. What more is there to say.

Most of these albums are recent releases by artists that I have been a fan of for a while. I have generally liked Tegan and Sara, but this album is just chock full of great, incredibly catchy songs. Many of the other tracks on that album almost made my top tracks list. On kinda the other end of the spectrum, I really enjoyed Yuna’s and Rooney’s albums, but it is more of a general wash of appreciation, rather than certain standout tracks.

I’d been a fan of Royal Pirates since their rock covers of Super Junior days, but to be honest, many of their actual releases up until this hadn’t quite made it into my heart. This album, though, finally crossed over that threshold for me.

This year I watched a lot of movie musicals. I’m generally a fan of musicals and a fan of movies, so there ya go. You can see the Glen Hansard ones - Sing Street and Once - both made this list because they had the advantage of being viewed earlier in the year. But I also watched Grease Live (TV not film in a way but whatevs), The Song (LOL does this count? This Christian kinda-musical drama was a fun watch with Sarah), 2gether (Also not exactly counting, but I’m being broad in my categorizing here), The Music Man (a rewatch obviously), Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, The Last Five Years, La La Land, Sweeney Todd, and my Christmas rewatch of In the Good Old Summertime. I did listen to more 2gether and if La La Land had been out earlier, I would definitely have more listens to that soundtrack. Speaking of movies...

Movies

Now I don’t watch movies multiple times like I listen to music over and over again, so this is a subjective ranking and not numbers-based. I’m also only going to do Top 5 because I watch far fewer current movies as they are released than listen to music and also because I am tired lol.

La La Land I saw La La Land in a free preview and it is so so delightful. Another one of those movies that I came out of thinking, this is the culmination of everything that Clara loves. Except if I think about it more in-depth and critically, I get mad about the problematic mansplaining, white-splaining Ryan Gosling character (Shouldn’t have read that article), but as an experience, it just inspired wide-eyed splendor. Damien Chazelle went to Harvard, y’know, and I didn’t know this until recently, but he was in Chester French, and I’m friends with D.A. Wallach from Chester French on Facebook so I’m basically like two degrees away. Also I know someone from college who was like the assistant to one of the producers of this! So a lot of Harvard-ness around this, I guess.

Ghostbusters I didn’t see Ghostbusters in theatres, which I regret, but I saw it on a plane recently and it was so so great. Badass ladies were great, the humor was great, the theme song is forever great.

Zootopia I care a lot about children’s media and Zootopia deftly demonstrates how children’s media is so significant and meaningful for everyone. I thought it was going to be a cute animated movie and it was, but it delivered nuance and message in that cute animated package.

Train to Busan I watched Train to Busan only like a week ago with my family over the holidays. It’s an excellent zombie movie with some emotional heft to it, thanks to the always great Gong Yoo, and also I just marveled at the visual effects of the zombies just piling on top of each other.

The Handmaiden For some reason, I had gone into The Handmaiden thinking it was a Victorian lesbian vampire thriller. There are no vampires involved, and I honestly waited the entire time for them and was baffled. I went by myself to a screening at the Brattle and it was one of those things where I was like, is it weirder if I go by myself or is it weirder to ask someone to go with me? But anyway, it’s a lushly beautiful movie and I’m glad I got to see it.

Television

Signal This was actually really really tough between the top three shows. Signal won out in the end because of its tight plotting and emotional impact. It is def not a happy show, by any means, (really. NOT a happy show) but it is certainly engrossing and amazingly well-crafted.

Speechless The power of this show, on the other hand, is how light and happy it is. Micah Fowler is so sassy and the show overall is supremely funny.

Insecure As I said, it was really really tough to decide about placement for these top three shows. I had watched a little bit of Awkward Black Girl so I knew that Issa Rae was great, but this show is even greater than expected. The stories are so real and the performances are excellent.

The Good Place I don’t know how this happened but I guess I’m more into comedy now? I’m usually more of a drama kind of gal, bonus points if there is death involved. I guess this show does involve death, though, and it also has Kristen Bell so that works out? This show indulges in a little more silliness, which I appreciate.

The Wine Show Not a scripted show, but this show earns this place because it is just a ridiculous thing that it exists. Literally it’s just about Matthew Goode and Matthew Rhys sitting around and talking about wine. Well, they go on like missions or whatever, but that’s basically it. I found out about this earlier in the year, I think, I remember talking about it at the airport on our way to some tour stop, and then after Harvard-Yale, started watching it a bit with Raafi and Zuzanna. I’m all about educational television made entertainment, so this is great.

The above list is of new shows that premiered in 2016, but there were also some other fantastic shows that I watched in 2016.

I got really really into the Norwegian show Skam over the holidays. I had been meaning to watch it for a while, because it is a teen drama! Exactly the kind of show I like! I marathoned it all during the break. The second season is the weakest (I have my qualms about the trite plot devices and it made me like Noora less than I did, which made me very sad), but the first and third seasons are excellent. The protagonist of the first season, Eva, developed so real-ly and it was this development that gave what the best teen dramas offer. I love the Russ Group Girl Squad, and so in a way was a bit sad that S3 didn’t focus on them quite as much, but Isak’s story was done so so well.

Also in 2016, I started watching Alias, Fresh Meat, Superstore, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend... And I watched the French show Les Revenants which is SO SO GOOD. Another big TV thing for me this year was The Bachelor franchise. I had somehow gone 26 years without ever watching anything in the franchise, despite my unabashed enjoyment of dating shows, and I got sucked in this year. Like really sucked in.

I also finished my Veronica Mars rewatch as my gym TV show and for a hot second tried to watch The Wire as my next gym TV show. That was a bad idea. I have since switched over to Gilmore Girls. I haven’t finished that rewatch yet, so obviously hadn’t finished before watching the revival series.

Alrighty, I have now egotistically reflected on my tastes of the year. Onto the next!