#get to know aurora

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

I might have gone a bit over the top about this.

text from here. I used 1.11.8-11 as references. panel 1 here is kind of a redraw of panel 6 of 1.11.11.

@comicaurora

[pencilofawesomeness]

So, I've been reading a lot of Ghost King AUs recently and... my hand slipped.

[malthedreamer]

If nobody got me I know The Mechanisms got me

[hailsatanacab]

“To whom,” Alfred rasps, pausing to clear his throat and establish his sense of decorum, “May I ask, to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

The creature stops, blinks its owlish eyes at him, and lets out a bark of laughter.

“Forgive me,” it says, still chuckling lightly, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck. Alfred is suddenly struck by the feeling that this creature is not as timeless, nor as old or as wizened, as it wished to present itself. “I am making a terrible first impression. My name is Phantom, current High King of the Infinite Realms.”

Contractual Obligations by me!!!

I couldn't get the image of Ghost King Danny out of my head, so here he is!! Acrylic on canvas, and I'm so happy with it - he came out a lot better than I thought he would 😅

[asexualbookbird]

do you have any sci-fi book recommendations?

SO BROAD! I polled the choup grat for variety :D

Murderbot, obviously. Quick reads full of defensive humor.

The Broken Earth by NK Jemisin is a fave of mine. Mind the content warnings, but the world she builds and her writing style is PHENOMENAL.

Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace is like. What if Ready Player One was good. What if, instead of being an 80s wet dream, it actually examined the implications of a world wide MMO that you live in. What if it actually unpacked the dystopian aspect of it all. What if the supersoldiers were brainwashed babies that should've died.

Wayfarers by Becky Chambers is slow and meandering and character focused. It's like an old slice of life scifi show from the 90s. Think Firefly or Star Trek. You don't have to read them in order, but like Discworld some of them play off of each other.

Monk and Robot by Beck Chambers is similar but their feet are on the ground and each one is like 100 pages so it's a smaller commitment for similar fun. These two are often chategorized as "cosy scifi", but they actually deal with their world problems, it's just the problems that we see are more often internal character problems.

Space Opera by Cat Valente is like. What if Hitchhiker's Guide was good and also queer.

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie, starting with Ancillary Justice. My favorite was actually Provenance which isn't connected to the main trilogy. What if your spaceship loved you so much it started a civil war between one person.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee if you want a challenge. I started this two or three times before I got through it all and I ended up enjoying it a lot. I didn't know "strange guy in your head makes decisions for you" was a genre, but here we are.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine if you like the "annoying guy in your head" genre. This is more a scifi mystery which was nice, and reminded me a lot of Provenance. (or Provenance reminded me of this as I read this first.)

Leech by Hiron Ennes, @bigcats-birds-and-books says it counts as scifi, we both liked it a lot! Won't say much about it, I think it's good to go in not knowing too much :3

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone if you haven't read it and want something short and flowery. The audio of this was very nice!

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling if you have a fear of caves :3 A good blend of scifi and horror. The romance is a little bit fucked up too.

Skyhunter by Marie Lu omg a good YA duology! Monsters! Bird people! Found family! Pain! It was very good.

[coatl-cuddles]

New Eden friend :)

[the-mountain-flower]

Hey, hey. Erin Ruunaser in a time loop >:)

[bewyldered]

we fw sky cotl here right

[notbecauseofvictories]

There is an underrated pleasure in opening the Chicago Tribune---known for being a deeply conservative paper even before the Alden hedge fund got in there with a machete---and reading articles about both the Chicago and suburban protests. Obviously there are much bigger things to talk about in almost every respect, but I do feel a certain puckish glee in knowing that the editorial board can grind its teeth to dust but can't refuse to talk about it.

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

"The soul is subject to the mind and my mind is my strongest weapon" and yeah we knew that the soul could be shaped by the mind slowly already thanks to exposition in arc 1 chapter 8 and that seemed feasible - makes sense that the mind can shape the soul- but then today's page! Erin reshaped his soul! And yeah we knew that from arc 2 chapter 2 but! Not just malformed, unusually high capacity soul channels that needed some shaping and sealing so he didn't have headaches always but like. He opened his own soul. He moved the channels. WHAT?? okay yeah I can see why he's "my mind can do anything I can handle all this" guy his mind literally reshaped his soul. "No one has mapped the Storm of Magic because I haven't tried yet" guy made his own miniature maelstorm as a teen no wonder he was so confident he could navigate the Storm.

I'm having a low ache everywhere, high pain in a few areas, pain day and Erin is feeling even more relatable than usual. He can feel his channels opening, so he'll be able to properly channel and not have chronic headaches or however his malformed soul links affected him- he's been there for months and is so close. So close to a solution and is told to wait. Of course he immediately overstretches his abilities and injures himself again. His smile in panel 7 feels like that of someone finally able to do something they haven't done in a long time, he's marveling in what he can do, of pushing through whatever pain or difficulty is there and being- and then there's the consequences of that.

I just. He.

okay I don't have a good ending to this post Erin's just neat

[bucketsandraincoats]

dainix and alinua are besties. to me

[kuukorppi]

SWSSRORA TRENCHES ARE SO DEEP

(credit: @/aethersghoul video on twitter)

[irenespring]

Thoughts on Bertha Russell (Many Thoughts)

I am So curious about Bertha Russell's backstory. We have little snippets:

Her father was a potato farmer.

She has lots of mommy issues. (George mentions her mother said she was the only child "worthy of her dreams" to which Bertha angrily responds that her mother's dreams were worthless because she died with nothing which is A Lot)

She has sibling issues. (George offers to invite her sister to a thing and she refuses)

She and George met when they were both poor, they made the fortune together.

She had a distinct learning curve when they first got to New York. She bought The Wrong House and made The Wrong Friends and had to learn and relearn things over a period of years. (I am especially interested about this time, because she would know Nothing, being the ultimate outsider, but she is a tactical genius and viciously ambitious...I want to see young!Bertha in the early stages of the struggle before she knows how to dress/talk/act).

I hope we will learn more about her because more than any of the other characters she wants things. Things that are nebulous, but she doesn't seem to realize are nebulous, because she has clear goals but they don't satisfy her so she has to make another goal. Loving husband doing well? Not enough. They have enough money to hear the call of the guillotine? It's not enough, they need status. They have status? Not enough, they need to beat Lina Astor. Now they've beaten Lina Astor, but I don't think anyone thinks that's going to be enough. George points out multiple times that he is content where he is and content to let their children marry for love to people of what Bertha considers middling station. She's the sole driving force for continued social climbing. And it doesn't matter how high they get, she wants to go higher, she wants to go "all the way" but there isn't an all the way unless I guess you're Empress of the World. But then the moon starts looking awfully conquerable.

She claims she's doing it for their children, but both children have said her suggestions aren't what they want. And it is heavily implied she just sold her only daughter to the Duke so he would attend an opera performance. She wants Gladys to marry the Duke so that she will be grandmother to English nobility. It's for her. So she is willing to use her children, her alleged motivation, as pawns. They aren't her real motivation after all, even if she may think they are. I do think she loves her children and George. I also think that she thinks she's helping Gladys, but I also think there's a limit to that love because it exists beside the yawning void of hunger within her psyche. George outright asks her if his love for her is enough to make her happy early in s1, because her love is enough for him. She says it's "almost enough" and that's significant and enough for him, which is telling, when usually any answer other than "yes of course" would be taken by a love interest as a searing betrayal. Anyway, the point is, her kids/her family are, at least, not her entire motivation and might not factor into her motivation at all, if she is fully honest with herself.

So, the hunger. The call to Rise. The rage that has her hyperventilating in bed alone after her failed party instead of crying in her husband's arms like most television characters would do. The instinct to look upon a room of people and think you will all bow to me you sniveling mortals. Why is it there? Like...why is she Like This? I think some of it has to come from what we can learn just from George's comment about impossibly ambitious, ruthless, low empathy Bertha being the only one "worthy of her mother's dreams." Which means her mother had dreams that were very important to her and that she never achieved. Her mother also guarded said dreams and judged her children harshly, we know Bertha has at least one sister, who is apparently judged not worthy in the eyes of her own mother. We know Bertha does not like talking about this and tries to dismiss it. Was there pressure on Bertha to be worthy? When could that have started and how did it manifest? Circling back to my interest in young!Bertha in NY, if the social rejection was bad in s1, it was probably worse then, and constant social failures would have made her angrier and more determined to both to become the queen of New York society and to see it burn. This is all stuff I want to learn more about in season 3.

HERE IS WHERE I PRETTY MUCH JUST DO PREDICTIONS (WHICH MAY BE TINFOIL, IDK):

Because I think we will finally get to see Bertha Russell: Season Villain. Every season needs a villain, and Bertha has pretty much vanquished all of them. The first couple seasons the overarching villain has been New York Society with its inequalities and pointless social cruelty, if that holds, Bertha is now the head of that system, having beaten Lina Astor and set herself up as the queen. Additionally, side opponents (not really villains) like Agnes also aren't in a position to make major problems for the protagonists because the Van Rhijn household is now the Forte household and cinnamon roll Ada is now in charge. Unless Agnes attempts to usurp her sister in a subplot (which I don't think will happen except for maybe one episode of hijinx) she's not in a powerful spot. The Society character is indisputably Bertha. And Bertha has been up to some serious villain shit. If she did agree to marry Gladys to the Duke, she's now against All the Protagonists---a sure sign of villain status. She's even against her husband, who swore to back Gladys in her choice of love match, and Gladys doesn't like the Duke. If Gladys wants out, Larry will almost certainly help her. And Saint Marian will help Larry either for love reasons or moral reasons, and hopefully Peggy has better things to do but she will probably get dragged into it somehow and if Marian's involved Ada's also involved and you see where this is going.

Also, show pacing wise, Bertha is due for a loss. I love her and I want her to win everything and be declared Empress of Earth and Moon but realistically that isn't going to happen. In a show where villains lose, it checks out. Gladys isn't going to marry the Duke, and if she does, everyone is going to regret it. One reason I think we will learn more about Bertha and her history is because if she loses she's going to Lose It. Dramatic monologue style. When she had a party and no one came she swore eternal vengeance and spent the night Angry Breathing and presumably fantasizing about the Red Wedding. She doesn't handle losing well. A big public loss after achieving every status symbol she could think of would probably break her mind, and she'll probably tell whoever she's talking to (probably George) enough backstory info that we the audience can fill in stuff. This is also where I would guess she and George would reconcile where he would see she is the person he loves and has not transformed into an automaton, she's just Messed Up, which he always knew and loved so he is Back In.

IN CONCLUSION:

This is who Marina was writing about. She is a primadonna girl, and all she ever wanted was the world. She cannot help that she needs it all, in this case the primadonna life: both the rise and the fall. She also knows exactly what she wants and who she wants to be. This is why she walks and talks like a machine. Unfortunately, she is becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Oh, oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh.

[abirddogmoment]

Rory opted in to a training session for the first time in like two months I'm so happy I'm gonna cry 😭

[mydaylight]

Another aspect of the Bertha/Gladys dynamic that I am obsessed with but I am not sure if they plan to explore is how much they have been an ubiquitous presence to each other over the years. Not in terms of companions, since they don't have much to offer to each other in that regard due to their age difference, but in how much their entire life revolved around each other. George and Larry have more flexibility in the things they can do and with whom they can meet, but Bertha and Gladys are more confined to the domestic space, and if they go out, they are expected to accompany each other most of the time. Just imagine all the endless social calls, carriage rides, dress fittings, luncheons, Newport seasons etc etc. Even more so because before the start of the show, Larry was at Harvard. This means potentially years when it might have been a regular occurrence for George to be working late, and Bertha and Gladys to only be seeing each other during the day. It's not just Gladys who has been sheltered and controlled by Bertha, it's also the fact that Gladys has been Bertha's constant shadow for years. This is all about to come to an end, and I really wish they explore how each of them will be adjusting to it.

[wytchisle]

Everyone else in The Gilded Age fandom is verklempt over the possibility of a Russell divorce. (Or a Aurora Fane divorce in some cases?)

Meanwhile me and Mamie Fish will be thriving no matter what happens or doesn't happen because we're just here for the drama.

(I get it though - I'm verklempt over a divorce in another fandom. And I honestly doubt Bertha/George will get divorced because the stakes are never that high. Have heart! Plus I'll root for them to stay together because I don't want any of you to be children of divorce❤️)