#gonna do a post mortem post my self at some point

[foyle-writes-things]

No worries!!! There's like 50k steps to publishing. It's hard to remember them all. A couple of other things that are useful:

Atticus for bookformatting is a bloody fookin life saver.

Bowker for ISBD, barcode, and copywrite

Reedsy can be used for artists, editors, and also for requesting reviews- and your manuscript is NDA protected (my biggest fear with doing e-arcs).

Consider not enrolling in KU initially if your ARC period is short. This is because KU limits how much of your ebook you can distribute for the 90 day period. This only applies to ebook though.

Consider using electronic mailboxes( ipostal or physical mail services)/Google voice (or sudo) for addresses and phone numbers. That way you keep your identity safe. (copywrite and website ARIN records can be public. Don't dox yourself by using your direct info. Proxy it babbes #becybersexyandsafe)

Also- before enrolling in KU, consider if you want to go wide or stay limited to Amazon. There's benefits in both methods but make sure you read the contracts (like comfy already said).

Tools like Buffer make social media management much less painful

And sorry @thecomfywriter for co-opting your already glorious post. Please feel free to remove if you want 💚

✨👾 thecomfywriter’s guide to self-publishing 👾✨

navigation post get my book, Throne of Vengeance! TNV anthologies ToV community!

hi, fools! this was long overdue. forgive me—i got distracted. anyhow! welcome to the official guide to self-publishing, as requested by satoh (@@satohqbanana). i’m going to give you tips based on my own process, but by all means, feel free to deviate and add/remove steps for your own process. some steps are mandatory though. no skipping 😤

okay i’m not going to yamble too much, lets get into it.

1.0 finishing the draft

2.0 the editing process (copyediting vs line editing vs beta reading)

3.0 the latent period (!!!)

4.0 pre-publication marketing

5.0 the cover + blurb

6.0 the final read-through

7.0 pre-orders and marketing

8.0 publish!

1.0 finishing the draft:

stop procrastinating and write, dodohead. words on the page. it doesn’t have to be perfect. you don’t have to agonize over that one line for an entire afternoon. stick to the vision and get the words on the page.

if you’re wondering why i’m saying it doesn’t have to be perfect when we’re talking about publishing a (hopefully good) book, it’s because there’s still the editing process later down the line to worry about typos, grammar issues, beta reader feedback, and all that jazzy good stuff. right now, you need to have your vision and get it down. this isn’t your polished copy. but you need to have your draft completed before you go anyways. so stop moping over whether “elucidate” is the word you want to use in that sentence and finish the sentence.

lol. with love <333

2.0 the editing process:

now you can worry about elucidate and its purpose in the sentence. the editing stage has many sub phases. copy-editing and the line editing. you can hire someone to do this for you or do it yourself. maybe get a friend to help. doesn’t matter. you just have to be critical and thorough. no sugarcoating. no, “oh ill just let this slide” or “i don’t wanna be mean so i won’t give real helpful feedback” editors. proper editors who will say it as it is.

copy-editing (as i understand it) is big book concept editing:

are there plot holes? is the lore consistent? does it make sense? is it unclear? is the story even interesting? how’s the pacing? what about the characters? too many? not enough? the voices aren’t distinct? the style is inconsistent? none of the characters feel like separate or fully formed people?

this is the phase where all those questions are addressed. once the overall concepts and structure of the book has been editing, constructively analyzed, and you’ve gotten feedback for it, go back to step one and revise your draft based on the critique. you don’t move on until those big concept issues are addressed.

done? okay, now it’s time for line editing.

exactly as the name implies, you’re going line per line, word per word, and catching any typos, grammar errors, punctuation—all that jazzy good stuff. REALLY BE THOROUGH. get a fresh pair of eyes on it. hire someone. put it through an editing software like grammarly. but be THOROUGH.

do the words you use make sense? are you using british or american english? slang? are you writing too much purple prose? do the sentences flow? are you using too many commas (stop that. don’t be afraid of periods).

you really need to understand the grammar and syntax rules of the english language to do this step on your own. otherwise, get help. or learn. whatever works with your budget lol.

done line editing? great! send it to a beta reader/ a friend, a writeblr mutual, someone you hired—just make sure they aren’t dancing around feedback and they give it to you as it is. i had a friend straight up tell me one of my drafts was ass LOL because the characters voices were too blurry and she never knew who was talking. there were some slow pointless chapters and the pacing was inconsistent. thus, i went back to step 1 and revised based off her feedback and came back with another draft.

don’t be afraid of critique. you need it to grow.

3.0 the latent period:

this is where you take a step back from the draft, preferably for months, and avoid interacting with it to give your mind a break and reset your eyes. this is a huge stage because this is where i want you fools to get your copyright and isbns in order.

GET. YOUR. BOOK. COPYRIGHTED.

do not share it until it is copyrighted. you can copyright unpublished materials. technically it is your intellectual property even before you copyright it, but that little ©️ is your legal shield. COPYRIGHT YOUR BOOK.

it costs ~$60 to make sure no one can steal your shit. this is nonnegotiable. do this.

i also got an isbn for my book so i could publish it with other services apart from KDP and expand the market. hence why some people were able to buy it off barnes and noble, for example. i highly recommend.

this is also the phase i started looking at platforms i wanted to publish on/with and reading the contracts. i’m being serious. read the contracts. make sure it aligns with what you want and what you’re comfortable with. don’t skim. don’t just accept. you’re putting your signature on that, bro. read it properly.

the publishing platforms i used were ingramspark and KDP. you’re gonna need to know your book dimensions too. so have an idea so you can estimate the printing costs.

the settings i did for mine were off white, 6x9 paper with the recommended gutter margins (used KDPs excel calculator to determine) and black and white ink (no colour) to get the lowest printing cost per book. ingram spark was similar. only thing with ingram spark is you need your page number to be even (no 575–it has to be 576) and KDP has a 600 page limit. so bear that in mind.

4.0 pre-publishing marketing:

you have to generate hype for your book. now that its copyrighted, its safe to share excerpts, little quotes, make edits for your characters or oc profiles to generate an audience. i did this mainly on tumblr vis tag games and whatnot, but honestly? that's the BARE MINIMUM lol.

don't be like me. i hate social media so i honestly did not market my book the way i know i should have (and still should). i still don't market my book because lol... i dont wanna 🥲

BUT! like it said--dont be like me. make an author website (a proper one. pay for the domain if you can, otherwise use the free domain, but make a professional author platform for yourself and your biography. you'll need this to set up a goodreads author account and claim your book on there). use instagram and make an author instagram profile (i technially have one here, but i never use it lol womp womp i just hate instagram sue me) and promote your book with the teasers. go on pinterest and make moodboards or "book trailers" through a carousel of images. USE TIKTOK. i know it's a plague platform (i dont like it, clearly), but it is where you will find the most fruits for your marketing.

this stage is all about generating hype for your book. why? so when you set your book up for preorder (and, yes, you will be doing that so you have a general idea of market demand and interest), you have people who are genuinely invested and want to buy your book.

marketing ideas because apparently i'm your free publicist:

oc edits

character moodboards

quotes and excerpts

that one trend on tiktok where you give the vibe of the book and a soundtrack // song to it

oc / book soundtracks

"would you read a book about..." [list the themes / enticing tagline elements of your story] -- it's a trend on tiktok

platforms to promote your book:

tiktok (#booktok)

instagram (#books, #readers, #bookstagram)

tumblr (#readers, #bookblr, #writers of tumblr, #reading, #writers, #book reccs; don't just use writer hashtags, is what i'm saying)

wix or the like to make your website

twitter (a lot of authors have official twitter accounts. once again, i never bothered OOPS)

youtube (making videos talking about your book--the ogs of this blog know LOL-- compiling playlists, etc)

also, don't be afraid to make or commission art for your ocs. speaking of which...

5.0 the cover and the blurb

you can't avoid it anymore. you need to make a cover and write a back of the book blurb // synopsis for your book.

YES i know its hard to describe your book in a non-spoilery, enticing way. work on it. struggle through it. get help. but get it done. you can't finish your cover until it is done.

NOTE! if you are making your own cover, the dimensions are only going to be .25" longer than your page dimensions if it is hardcover. ALSO you gotta make it a pdf file. one pdf file that contains the back of the book, the spine, and the front of the book laid out as one page. this is why you need to get the blurb down.

if you're making it by yourself: play around with fonts, use canva + photopea // photoshop. add chrome, but not too much chrome. use references and easter eggs of important plot elements for your visual pieces. current book trend is text-dominant covers with interesting font and stylistic elements. i.e. tov has the title "throne of vengeance" as the main eye-catcher, in a metallic, legible but stylistic font, BUT there is the dragon ouroborous ring and the iron-rose dagger on the cover as well. the colours are intentional. the entire cover is an easter egg for the book, almost like a spoiler for those who know. make it engaging. enticing. you wanna draw readers in, but also make fans hyperanalyze and interpret the elements you chose.

another thing--you'll need to know your page count to know how thick the spine should be. so bear that in mind.

commissioning an artist may be expensive. i actually did commission someone for tov. i probably wont for the remainder of the series since this was the most expensive part for me. depending on who you get, it can range from $300 - >$1000. so just keep that in mind. i queried a lot before i commissioned the artist for my cover. and she was very in tune with the books themes, the symbolic motifs, and the general aura of the story when she created the cover. that is a good cover artist. don't pay someone if they dont take the time to learn about your book before making the cover.

resources to use:

photoshop/photopea

canva

reedsy (for finding artists to commission)

i can't think of anymore on the top of my head oops. ALSO if you're gonna use images, pay attention to copyright. you can't use copyrighted pinterest images for your covers. just saying.

6.0 the final read-through:

it should have been some months by now. time to read through your own book, start to finish, and see how you like it. catch any last minute errors, see whether you're satisfied with the end product, make any final revisions. this is the draft you're going to submit for preorder. the pdf cover will be your cover. the blurb will be your blurb.

also, in this phase, add your dedications, your acknowledgements, and your author blurb. oh yeah babes you need a headshot. i just used a picture from vacation LOL oops i dont like taking headshot pictures i got lazy womp womp.

anyways, your author blurb should describe you in a tag line (G.K> Multani, otherwise known as Naveena Khedar, is a pre-med student with a passion for writing... or something like that). then describe your credentials. have you written before? doesn't have to be same genre, but you want to represent your portfolio. list other books, articles, or journals you've written. then you as a person--hobbies, interest, etc outside of writing. finally, list your socials or where people can find you.

7.0 preorders and marketing:

publish the draft on KDP and ingram spark for preorder. announce that your book is available for preorder. it should take about a week for it to be approved and the preorder link to go live. and then repeat the marketing steps from step 4, but this time with your cover and a link to shove down people's throats :)

8.0 publish!

the date it goes live, make it an event! host a live-publish session! do something fun! have a party! do a book signing! go buckwild go crazy!

i did a live-vc session and unboxing.

oh yeah, also... while we're here. go buy/read my book.

Throne of Vengeance Official Synopsis

Buy my book, Throne of Vengeance: Volume One

Read Throne of Vengeance: Volume One PDF

lol :)

--

okay i have to go back to studying for exams. let me know if i missed anything.

COPYRIGHT YOUR BOOKS.

okay cheerios bye!

[batsplat]

sooo, you bring up casey/vale dinner quite a lot right. and you always empathize how the rivalry was very different from their povs and how it obviously was so much more for casey. how casey doesn’t really know vale as a person and how it’s more like casey vs the consent of valentino rossi he has in his head. that at the same time vale kept the distance in their rivalry and was ‘cold’ about it not emotionally driven.

anyways, in your version of that dinner, do they reach some kind of REAL understanding of each other? on a competitive and personal levels. is it possible? or is there’s always gonna be a disconnect between these two?

hm lovely ask. yeah I like the dinner conceptually because it's just,, easy shorthand for a central tension of their rivalry: this gulf between the two of them that cannot ever be breached. I've been talking enough recently about the similarities between them, let's get back to the unbreachable, the unreachable, that which is impossible to resolve. to quickly include what casey actually said:

obviously this was an off-hand comment from casey and not something he put a massive amount of thought into, but it still captures something about that rivalry in a way that's really stuck with me (hence me referencing it every other day). like you say, anon - the disparity between the pair of them, in terms of how they were experiencing the different stages of the rivalry, the significance of it to them, the emotional investment. how valentino enforced a certain amount of distance, how he played the game as he wanted without wrestling with anything more complicated, no moral dilemmas or hand-wringing or capacity to get hurt. and how casey had to reckon with this.... just, lack of care, this thoughtlessness, this empty malice from his main rival. casey's desire to be understood is key to getting his whole deal, I reckon, and this quote really is an expression of that. it's almost like... I don't know, I just find something really compelling about the idea that this mutual lack of understanding bothers casey. as if there's something that casey could say to valentino that would make him get how shit the whole thing was for casey, that would prompt some kind of moment of self-reflection from valentino, of realisation even. maybe there still is a little bit of casey that's still searching for a little bit of catharsis

anyway, I think the crucial thing about the dinner is that it never happens. like, the key detail here is that casey would like to have this kind of conversation, whereas valentino is decidedly uninterested. this is the whole problem, right, because valentino really hasn't spent much time unpicking this rivalry or figuring out what his feelings are or trying to make his peace with it or any of it. to him, that rivalry very much ended when casey retired. he doesn't even harbour any particular ill will towards casey, because as far as he's concerned the things they did to each other all existed within the realm of what is 'acceptable' for a rivalry. there's not really anything to discuss here. so in that sense, some kind of post-mortem simply... isn't something valentino would be all that interested in, I don't think. but let's just play with the thought for a little longer, let's say that somehow valentino can be convinced to engage with this whole dinner scenario. some combination of politeness, curiosity, lack of animosity towards casey, nostalgia for the good old days... let's say he goes along with this idea, what does that conversation look like? I did give my general take as to the vibes here:

that's the starting point, right: the mismatch in emotional investment between the pair of them means they also have a very different conceptualisation of what the list of grievances even is. with most of the things casey could bring up, valentino's likely response will be 'hm when did that happen' or 'don't think it was that bad' or 'actually that bit was fine'. the british crowd thing would be a classic example: you'll get some combination of valentino pointing out casey could be his own worst enemy and probably pissed off the brits all on his lonesome, minimising what actually happened with the fans, and also fundamentally believing that a little bit of psychological warfare is basically fine. this does not feel like a divide that can be crossed, y'know

laguna, of course, is the big one. I'm quite glad I waited with posting this to let my thoughts marinate a little longer, because it meant that podcast thingy came out and provided a new valentino take on the laguna 2008 situation (first proper one we've had in ages):

(very grateful for the transcription, taken from here)

now, look, this quote does deserve more thorough attention, I will eventually get to the laguna 2008 post - but this is obviously a stance that is fundamentally incompatible with casey's approach. valentino straight up says he was willing to make them both crash if that's what it took, which, yes, you can tell from watching the race... and as far as casey is concerned, this is a line that should never be crossed. this is not something the two of them could ever find any agreement about. given casey's furious aversion to any suggestion his mental game might not be up to scratch, valentino emphasising the... psychological dimensions of that race would also extremely not be appreciated. it's not something where communication would really help, because... well, they do both know where the other stands here, right? there are some parts of the rivalry where one or both of them does fail to understand the other, but this is categorically not one of them. if casey pointed out his objections to what happened at that race, valentino would not be surprised by casey's opinions or be forced to reflect or anything like that - he just fundamentally would not care. it's not simply a difference in racing philosophies, it's a mismatch in moral values. the best dinner in the world couldn't solve this

maybe it's not entirely a lost cause. like I said, there are issues where they fail to understand each other in ways that - in an ideal world with perfect communication - they theoretically could clear up. casey's assessment of valentino's assessment of him, for instance, feels pretty off base at times. it's worth pointing out that valentino does in the podcast quote call casey his most talented rival, an opinion he has expressed before and probably believes and that would presumably be well-received by casey. (obviously the second half of that sentence goes in a direction casey would be less enthusiastic about, but let's try to work with what we've got here.) the eternal bike vs rider debate and some of the more circumstantial nastiness they levelled at each other to discredit the other... you'd assume that wouldn't be impossible to talk over. even some of the thornier aspects of their respective relationships to fame, to publicly performing, all of it - hey, maybe they really could tell each other what their 'challenges' there were. there are some things valentino sincerely believes that casey could probably benefit from hearing directly from valentino's lips. maybe casey could gain something just from knowing what valentino truly thought of him

really, though, at the end of the day, what is fascinating about the dinner is not as much the hypothetical meal itself (which would likely be deeply unsatisfying), but instead the fact that casey even wants it. like I said above, casey's desire to be understood is a key motif in this rivalry. it is the reason why he has to copy valentino's media tactics - because otherwise, he is doomed to being hated without being known. he needs to become a better communicator as a result of just how frustrated he is by how the world perceives him. casey has ended up using those same tools he learned from valentino against him, both when he was still a rider and since his retirement. and he wants to be understood by valentino... is there a part of casey that thinks valentino would have been kinder, gentler, if he had simply understood the effect he had on casey? does casey want to hear valentino's side of the story to finally make sense of how valentino behaved towards him? what answers exactly is he looking for here? none that would be easily forthcoming, most likely. perhaps he would at least get some kind of closure, the knowledge that valentino was exactly what casey thought he was all along. to the extent that casey has built up an inaccurate version of valentino in his mind, it probably is not one that he can tear down in a single dinner conversation. in some ways, he is already primed to believe the worst of valentino - and he is generally not a character predisposed to look for the best. his issues are often so abstracted from 'valentino the person' that he would not always find it easy to articulate a specific grievance at all. there's just too much to disentangle, here, and not all of the indignities he has suffered could reasonably be addressed by even a well-intentioned version of valentino. and if casey is looking for an apology... well, that just isn't happening, is it. maybe valentino really would find a little more empathy within himself for some of casey's struggles, maybe time really has mellowed him a little in some regards. maybe he would understand casey a little bit better. maybe it'd fill in a few for the blanks as far as his own conceptualisation of casey is concerned, explain a few things he never bothered to find out about. but there's only so far he would ever be willing to go. and he will almost certainly never feel particularly sorry for any of it. which means that there's a yearning here from casey for something that seems impossible to resolve... how can you fail to be compelled by that

all that being said. not to sound arrogant, but I do fundamentally believe that if anyone could make this dinner work, it's me. as a brave advocate for peace and harmony and love and all that stuff in every walk of life, I'm willing to take one for the team and volunteer to moderate their conversation. perhaps none of this is fixable, perhaps some divides simply cannot be crossed, but I believe it is my solemn duty to try. valentino, casey: call me. let's make this happen

[mmmmalo]

why does gamzee manifest for dave wrt considering the icp video blasphemy?

I never figured that out! And that made me mad, so I gave it another shot. Results range from solid to utterly indefensible.

Page 4027

I like the how the shared pose and neutral expression concealed by sunglasses emphasize the parallel between Gamzee and Dave. 

The first weird thing for my method is that this scene takes place (for Dave) just before he opens John’s present and gets the new shades, so there’s no context leading up to this moment. Meaning, there is no event to which Gamzee could have been an emotional response – unless the mere arrival of John’s box has somehow warranted a crisis of faith on par with Gamzee’s. Alternatively, the lack of context could implicate Gamzee’s crisis as Dave’s default emotional state prior to receiving the gift…? But then there’s no particular reason for Gamzee to troll him at this moment…

Tavros manifesting in response to Dave reading John’s letter (henceforth Log B) retroactively becomes the resurrection that Gamzee is attempting to achieve? So since in Log B Tavros kind of… represents Dave’s sudden feeling of wholeness, of being in touch with his emotions and expressing himself freely, the decapitated Tavros above represents the emotional constipation/self-alienation that characterized life under Bro?

Which would mean that when Gamzee talks about his miracles having been stolen away, Tavros represents (for both Gamzee AND Dave) the lost richness of experience he idealizes. (Even if Eden never existed, even if the paradise planet is a FUCKING JOKE, to desire it is to experience it as having been lost) You cannot put the bunny back in the box, you cannot revive Tavros. CHILDHOOD RUINED!!!

Gamzee’s mournful “IT WAS GONNA BE US AND MOTHERFUCKING THEM” comes off then a unity denied – like Tavros’s head is denied unity with his body, or Dave is denied unity with himself. So all of this actually supports the ‘default emotional state’ reading – Gamzee is kind of dramatizing Dave’s basic emotional dilemma, just before John’s letter seems to briefly resolve it. (Intrusive thought: Nic Cage’s line in Con Air “I’m gonna show you God’s real.”)TC: IT STRIKES AT ME AS ANOTHER HERETICAL FUCKING BASTARDIZATION OF SOME SACRED SHIT I TAKE SERIOUSLY IN MY PUMP BISCUIT. TC: i mean i guess, took seriously…..so you get a sense that Dave laments his inability to take things seriously, to be ironic and detached all the time? Which is common knowledge by now, but here’s how it looks voiced through Gamzee.

More to that effect: Gamzee uses castration/decapitation imagery to describe how knowledge ruined his miracles: “YOU ALL CRACKED OFF THE TOP OF THE BOTTLE TO THOSE FUCKIN CLOWN IMPOSTORS.” Since “knowledge ruined miracles” rings close to “english destroys reality”, it’s very strange to me, as with Caliborn, that Gamzee decides to serve Lord English. Also, I still don’t get why the servants of English tend to be characterized by silence.

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The DELIRIOUS BIZNASTY thread alludes to a Fall and SNAPPED neck (well, collarbone), kind of underlining the Paradise Lost vibes that accompany castration from the miracles. This is related to how the UNREAL AIR skateboard floats up and away to the sun like a piece of garbage, which is exactly what ICP does at the end of the Miracles music video, which Betty Crocker links here.

But now things confuse me again – Gamzee reaching inside himself for the chucklevoodoos is akin to…? Dave looking inside himself and finding rage? Or is Gamzee claiming responsibility for initiating all of the kids’ fears only relevant in that it establishes that all of the kids’ fears are similarly related to their trauma / crisis of faith / whatever? But I feel as though I’m missing something here somehow.

Page 4031

TG: also you have me confused for somebody else we never talkedTG: i guarantee i would have remembered you TC: ALL THAT MOTHER FUCKIN MATTERS IS I REMEMBER YOU AND WHAT YOU DID. TC: i’m just all letting you in on the ways i set the high justice in motion. TC: MADE US MOTHERFUCKING SQUARE, YOU AND ME. TC: me and you.This page starts off with the topic of identity confusion – Dave’s line most directly, Gamzee making reference to the indivisible perfectly generic object (the square) and repeating the phrasing he used earlier to invoke spiritual unity, to suggest that he and Dave are one. I assume this will lead into talk of Dave identifying with Bro, since he’s wearing the shades…

Okay, here’s something really indulgent:Gamzee’s declaration YOUR BRO’S DEAD BRO had me expecting some kind of Sixth Sense sort of twist – like Jade wasn’t the only one with a dead guardian, and Bro would be revealed to be a ghost not unlike Aradia. Like Gamzee’s “now that my other buddy managed to be having his head chopped off” had me thinking like Dave had actually chopped off Bro’s head at some point, and all their conflict was like Jade fighting with her dead Grandpa, except more convincing because Dave himself were convinced, having suppressed the memory of having already killed his Bro (again, just like Jade and Grandpa).Of course since death is ideality, the degree to which Dave idealizes Bro (cutting a meteor in half??), Bro being “dead” could also be an expression of the unreal expectations Dave has of his Bro. On the other hand, it would be fucking /fascinating/ if Dirk and his unbreakable katana were cosmically bound to seek their own undoing because a prior iteration of himself that only existed in Dave’s imagination post-mortem. But again, I don’t think the above is literally true. It’s fanciful and borrowing liberally from stories that have already been told elsewhere. I’m just struggling to make sense of the words….I think if Bec is literally an offshoot of Jade, it would at least make sense for Dave to indulge in the idea that Bro stems from himself…? Or vice-versa. It’s already been established that Dave views himself as a shitty copy of himself and/or of Bro… 

And with Gamzee talking about Bro keeping Lil Cal captive, just before Dave receives a letter about being in Bro’s shadow, I wonder if Cal is like… a figure of the blurring between them? Sometimes representative of Dave, as when Cal’s evisceration accompanied the breaking of Dave’s emblem… But otherwise controlled by Bro, with Cal’s dead-gaze indicating Bro’s observation…? (It should be noted that I never successfully integrated Lil Cal into my reading)

But if ‘captive’ implies Cal being /within/ Bro, it becomes suspect that Cal’s eye is within Gamzee’s eye, in a conversation where Gamzee is claiming identity with Dave? So then it again becomes as though /Dave/ is ultimately the only one controlling Cal… Bluh???I’m psyching myself out here something FIERCE, but it makes me wanna reevaluate lines like “Shit is basically flying off the hook. It’s like shit wants nothing to do with that hook. The hook is dead to that shit.” and go AHA IF DAVE IS THE SHIT THEN BRO IS THE HOOK AND HE’S DEAD CONFIRMED CONFIRMED CONFIRMED OH WAIT CAPTAIN HOOK IS ALWAYS PLAYED BY THE KIDS’ FATHER DOUBLE CONFIRMED, but luckily I am a sane person… Unless…? ;)

If all of the madness above bears any fruit, Dave calling Gamzee a murderous psychopath would amount to calling /himself/ a murderous psychopath, with Lil Cal’s whispers of carnage representing his own inner voice. If not…. I dunno what the deal with Lil Cal is! Very mysterious.

Bonus: Dave having already killed Bro would mean he’s wearing his sunglasses as a trophy, just like Gamzee was (falsely) implied to have done with Terezi… so maybe the suggestion that Dave has killed THE LAW (Bro) actually holds water? Though the falseness of Gamzee’s trophy still leaves room for the whole scenario to be a delusion of Daves.

This went in directions I had no way of anticipating, but I’m gonna spend the rest of the evening vaguely unsure of if Dave is a murder or just indulging in fantasies about murder. Homestuck confuses me.

[spicyhoneyheart]

Cycle

Hi! I hope you're all doing well! I've been quite busy this week with my own projects but I also helped with a fundraiser event with my printmaking collective. It went very well and some of my donated prints went home with such lovely people! It was a very nice evening. Another wholesome thing: while the Commissions for Cause was a bust, I had one person follow up after the event in hopes of a commission. I told him that he could wait until the next charity event (so the proceeds could go for a cause), or pay directly to me as the artist, which he ended up deciding without hesitating. I kept the rate as it appeared on the charity event though; I had hoped the lower-priced items would invite more to donate but it did not! So I will adjust the list to directly reflect the materials and labour. This one was fine though, aside from translating the difficult pose it wasn't any trouble. As thanks for being the first to commission at all, I gifted him a complimentary print to choose from. I really enjoyed the experience! News aside, it's time to dive into another section of my concepts: Narrative. More specifically, the narrative of Hope and Despair. I was first invigorated to pursue this topic from one of my favourite video games, Shadow of the Colossus. It's been through a few remasters but it's been an influence of mine since its first release in 2005. Fumito Ueda, the creator of the game, tells a story of cruelty through abstraction and minimalism, dubbing his approach as design by subtraction. This approach is a method he developed to ensure that the idea or “feeling” of his concepts are unclouded by overt substance and clear narrative, oddly reminiscent of Romantic sublime qualities. To be more specific, the size of the monsters the player is faced to kill, the picturesque landscape spanning countless leagues, and the instances of overwhelming saturations of light fulfill some of Edmund Burke's guidelines. The narrative one can derive from this game is one of cruelty and senseless sacrifice, as illustrated by this quote: “when you have killed all sixteen colossi, you feel loss rather than triumph”. I feel that the basis of Shadow of the Colossus' narrative lends to the relationship between hope and despair, in which the confrontation of certain consequences results in further sacrifice, but this time in the form of reconciliation. In literature, Paradise Lost is a great example that explores this narrative. John Milton's epic poem recounts the fall of humanity through a more elaborate retelling of what occurred in the Garden of Eden, starting with Satan's own fall from heaven and ending with Jesus' resurrection. It is through the consumption of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that original sin is birthed and final death is introduced to the world, the consequence for disobeying God: “Greedily [Eve] engorged without restraint, and knew not eating death” (Milton, Book 9: 791 – 792). When further investigating the significance of the gardens that exist in Christianity, consequences of Adam and Eve's actions are thus noted: “No longer would Adam and Eve enjoy a flawless environment. Instead, among other things, childbirth pains would intensify and man's labour became toilsome and less efficient as thorns and thistles would infest the ground – the ground to which they would ultimately return in death.” ​It is this mistake taking place in Eden that creates a deep despair in which neither Adam nor his ancestors can ever personally repent. However, the poem expresses that this ordeal may have been somewhat fortunate. According to Christian belief, it is in the coming of “the second Adam”, Jesus Christ, that humanity can also experience salvation. Jesus suffers in Gethsemane and dies in Calvary, absolving the sin Adam and Eve committed under Satan's advice. The story of Paradise Lost provides a much more personal conceptualization of Christianity's pursuit of redemption and everlasting life by explaining the birth and conquest of the final death, which relates to my interest in post-mortem beauty and a beautiful death. Which we'll get to later!! In my process document, I go into a very quick explanation of what hope and despair contribute to our lives. Experiencing a balance of both in your life contributes to the growth and maintenance of the human soul. A surplus of either entity will result in overconfidence and complacency (hope) or debilitating anxiety (despair). Nobody chooses to experience tragedy, nor do they enjoy it, but it's important not to live life fearing it or treading delicately through life to avoid it, because it's inevitable. It's going to find you at any point and in any form, and what you can choose to do is be open to it and its presence. Address it as what it is and come to an understanding. I feel the most prevalent despair that we share as a sentient species is the fear or dread of death. Romanticist artist Francisco Goya, in the later years of his life, composed the Black Paintings. These murals displayed horrific scenes on the walls of his living room, dining room, hallways... I believe these to be results of Goya coming to terms with his fear of death and mental state. Frescos such as The Drowning Dog and Saturn allowed Goya to release all tension accumulated during his lifetime. He was able to explore themes of sorrow, pathos and panic with complete freedom. I argue that this form of expression is a way of confronting despair and crafting hope for self-care. Experiencing close encounters with death, he bought a property away from the city and chose to express himself in ways that no patron would have the mind to request. These paintings were meant for his own private viewing, in which he expelled these morbid scenes from his mind and onto his walls. Upon given a form, despair and death seemed much more manageable.

Other instances can be a bit more subtle in terms of addressing death. Vanitas still-life acted simultaneously as a comment on Dutch citizens' vanity for their material possessions and as a prompt that mortality is temporary. Memento mori, the reminder of death. The presence of certain iconography, like skulls, timepieces, or cracked walnuts imply something or someone that no longer exists elsewhere exists in the painting. The commissioning of such pieces connotes a belief that paintings immortalize the presence of whomever the vanitas is referring to. Artists often inserted small self-portraits of themselves for this reason, given that any of the objects have a reflective surface. I believe that this idea helped artists and patrons alike with handling the idea of death, reminding them that their worldly possessions will not serve them in the afterlife. The idea that there is an afterlife at all strips death of its finality, making it more easy to accept.

But we don't know what lies in the realm of death. A garden, a kingdom, or pure darkness. We can believe what we've been taught or believe the accounts of those revived when they flatline. Or call it all lies. We believe what makes us feel better about it because we know it's inevitable. The key, I feel, is to not be consumed with a fear for it, neither be so careless or apathetic to its existence. You know, a balance of hope of despair. Coming full circle, baby! Personally I try to take a more positive outlook on death. I focus in on the idea life goes on even when our life doesn't. I am in love with the idea that once I'm gone, some new form of life or spirit flourishes in my remains. There is something so dang gorgeous about post-apocalyptic scenery, where nature reclaims the industrial landscape. Life and death, hope and despair, are not simply cycles to me, but coils. It's gonna be different, but the same, every time. Things got a bit grim, but we'll get over it. This one has a few paragraphs from my research essay two years ago, which provided a basis for my process document and my 2019 thesis works, Anthrocopia and Self-Vanitas. Next week I'll dive into how all of this relates to the contemporary sphere and to my practice. Take care, Gosia

[t-underneaththeradardancing]

fuck - idk how  - well to do lots of things  - and we do know tech hate t  - thats not quite on point or en garde either  - but tonights post performance post mortem - paint it black 

the good - tree climbing leaf and dirt hair  - once unconfused t can plaze guitar  - lox and bagel  - some made up on the spot music  - some magic  - lots of love  - love aint always enuff  - uh chili dogs and fries - vitas voice  - liam showing and again doing the hard but right thing/s  

the bad    chili dog hair    t gets confused sometimes ez tho we find workarounds  - its not cheating to tell him the key and a couple chords specially if u usin a capo on a song he never herd - just sayin 

the ugly    uh duz blood and pain count   im ok      shame       the people and soul less beings who cause/d the feelings of shame  ketchup hair 

we end up laffing way too much  -  thing is  - today  started fucked up and pretty much stayed on track  - u know its been uh different since the biz  - and yah there still is one  - its changing gonna change more  prob  - maybe not better just different 

we cries a lot also  

we heal then 

well when u wear ur heart on ur sleeve and ur food in ur hair  

a step back may be in order 

me i prefer to wear my food on my clothes  - it stains better - hair is ez to wash 

did i mention i lissened to crywolf angels ep like 3 or 4 x yesterday  and some el vy   - theres maybe half a dozen ppl readin who will unnastand  - if i mention sad bastards duz it help - no - well just move along then it dont matter much 

( translation  - t is being maudlin again cuz he depressed and future trips heartache and rejection  - no not a romance  - tho the looks - nevermind )

so y is ketchup hair ugly - its a condiment  - now we know that dirt is an excellent conditioner - ask any potato u happen to  - i have gazed more than a few x at the moon  -  this eve tonight   - i wuz gonna say that life had gotten 2 surreal then forgot when it even more happen  - and not the good kind of surreal either  - another luxury problem the wrong kind of surreal - did u get it a amazon  or ikea and yah - that splains it manstyle  - if u cant laff about ketchup hair - i mean wtf 

ok t  - u so fukken cryptic and in group mindfuck - can u bottom line it or readers digest condensed milk  - damn it - its contagious - ( another editor quits ) 

it started a little fucked up - was sposed to meet for acupuncture b4 java - things ran late - acu close early on weekends earlier than i thot so no - vita been going thru lots of hard uh lifestuff  - it manifests and affects  - we both been uh stressed at best - self destructive on various levels at worst w a little delusional thinking inna mix moi at least  - we feel deeply and connect and empath sometimes for an instant completely - its not always pleasant cuz we human  - despite everything going on - we go to do wat we do - play music  w transcendence aim for attained rarely for more than glimpse but sometimes - magic  - we trance in and out and different levels  and different reality layers conflict  - and too much too soon specially w a broken heart  ( no not me  - my heart is good - well yah the heart attack thing but we talkin soul heart )  and some ugly inna mix but not aimed at  and self directed  - we at our different homes safe  or mostly  - hope so - its late now unless u a musician or a barfly and last call wuz a few minutes ago even at the hardcore - there is love in my heart - a bit of dread  - hope a smidgen maybe an ember that i fan boy - oh yah  - we played  - some barely ok - some goodish - a few really good moments  - hearts not completely but then in it  - a baddish incident  - then we play a couple more songs like something proving  not a victory lap not at all sir  - prolly vita and i and i last performance in a while  - slight chance madrone tomorrow but not prolly and im exhausted but maybe  - we get together maybe 2 x this week if we lucky  - she has a last jazz concert i think sat  - imma meet her mom who tuff as nails north korean  born and raised - really  - that will b uh - interesting t  interesting  and a pleasure - maybe ask vita her name and practice - nah - she might as well meet the awkward fucktard  albeit a well behaved version  - but i will do wat i always - apologize in advance and assure by the 3rd time i will at least b very close lol   prolly not socialize much after  - it would b nice if she likes me but tbh expecting disapproval - extreme wariness at least - i would if i was her   - then off to college  - imma wait till she settle in maybe has a friend  - dont want ppls 1st impressions of her to b w a weird af and old as guitar playing friend  - at some point we b recording maybe podcast of some healing writing she been doing w music  cuz low key but an ep  - or album - theres enough good songs and we fuck around w a few more half maybe mostly written inna works  

its after 2 am exhausted not sleepy wired cuz its been that kinda day - sorry but not for the cryptic  - things happen not to b ashamed of  - we played music and performed as well  - real as fuck if nothing else  - it could b a month or more before we perform again together  - there is still a biz  - how much vita will b able to contribute uncertain   - sometimes fucked up things happen - nobodys fawlty towers no guilty party 

love

[riviae]

just venting abt my own indecisiveness lmao: 

i’m so stressed rt now :/ 

i’m graduating which is great, but i honestly don’t know what to do next. i’ve got a few viable options but i’m frozen at the crossroads of my education out of sheer indecisiveness. what’s the right choice?? is there such a thing as a ‘right’ choice?? should i fight for the hardest path or should i take the easier path, the one with the least remaining schooling? if i make a standard cost-benefit analysis then of course the easiest option is the best--but it feels like i’m giving up on my original dream. 

option 1: med school. that’s what all this work’s been abt--there needs to be doctors that are knowledgeable & supportive of lgbt+, neurodivergent, and disabled ppl as well as poc & understand how these identities intersect/overlap. the state of biomedical ethics is absolutely awful right now--it’s not a required course/topic in the majority of medical schools & so doctors are never really challenged to think past their inherent biases or how they should treat their patients or how knowing a patient’s background can aid in the patient-doctor relationship. patients aren’t a commodity, yet i can count on 1 hand the amt of doctors who know the 4 established virtues of medical ethics or can even explain them: beneficence (you must do what is best/good for the patient), maleficence (”do no harm”), justice (i.e., appropriate rationing of health care, services, supplies, & actively keeping historically-targeted groups of medical malpractice from harm), & autonomy (arguably the most important imo--the patient has their own autonomy & a doctor can /never/ take that away/do things against the patient’s will, which, by definition, makes mental health institutions unethical but i digress).

rt now i’m interested in working as either a neurologist, psychiatrist, pathologist, or specializing specifically in rural medicine (i.e., underserved populations/small towns), but can i really devote the next 8 yrs of my life to an occupation wrought w/ sky-high suicide rates, 36 hr shifts, & all the emotional trauma that comes w/ a field so intertwined w/ death?? idk if i’m strong enough for the demands. i don’t have any interest in money or prestige (i’d prefer to have no attention at all honestly), but i just wanna use my love of science to do some good, no matter how small. 

option 2: PhD in neuro. makes logical sense since i’m getting my MSc in a month & also neuro is my fave science of any subfield. i could do a lot of good w/ my research interests (that being of neurodivergent populations--seeing as i have adhd myself). understanding the neurological mechanism(s) behind neurodevelopmental disorders, for instance, can help in reducing harmful symptoms of certain disorders ((note: i do not mean wanting to ‘cure’ autism or anything that obtuse. more like providing pharmacological or genetic-based approaches to therapies. so for instance, i’m a big supporter of the cortical excitability hypothesis of autism which basically states that difficulties in sensory processing, insofar as being especially attentive to stimuli i.e., hypersensitivity/hyposensitivity is concerned, is due to the cortex’s inability to mitigate excitatory signals. so an ASD individual will experience sound or touch/texture aversion bc their brains are truly experiencing the sensory inputs at an incredibly high or low signal, as if their brain is a radio stuck continuously at a volume of either 100 or zero. it’s also why ASD & epilepsy are so often found to be comorbid--hypersensitivity to stimuli is more common & cortical excitability/excess firing of neurons outside of phase synchrony can explain the mechanics behind epilepsy too. oh, & this could also explain adhd symptoms since adhd and autism have considerable overlap both in symptoms as well as brain structure pathology). long story short, academia is great for me bc i love teaching, learning, and putting my brain to use (studying other brains). it’s a good fit & i’d be happy......... but i still have my own hesitations bc academia, esp science, is historically a field wrought w/ misogyny, racism, classism, u name it. it’s a mess™ 

option 3: pathologists’ assistant. the easy road. i could matriculate in jan (assuming i’d be accepted) & complete the degree in 2 yrs. i’d be able to teach, do clinical stuff (tissue sample analysis, post mortem autopsies, etc.), all w/o having to do all the paperwork, patient-juggling, & long hours that doctors do. i could specialize in pediatric pathology (by applying for a job at a children’s hospital) and really feel like i’m doing good work, helping to make accurate diagnoses of samples & leave it to the docs to tailor their treatment to my diagnosis. i love puzzles/solving things. this would give me a lot to do & it’d be good, honest work. it’d be behind-the-scenes so i wouldn’t need to overextend my naturally shy personality too much either. & the starting salaries are a real nice bonus (insofar as paying off my current student loans are concerned). but idk if i’m as passionate abt tissue sampling as i am abt the brain. i don’t wanna settle for a job simply bc it’s arguably easier than my other academic pursuits and makes good money or is ‘safe.’ ughhh can someone make the decision for me lol? 

& all this doesn’t even touch upon my own inferiority complex/inability to recognize my achievements as actual achievements. like sometimes i wonder if i’m even smart or capable of reaching any of my academic goals :/ as they say, u are always gonna be ur biggest critic. 2019 was supposed to be the yr i learned to love myself (or at least my brain), but i fell off at some point & i’m struggling to see my self worth as more than what i ascribe by default to myself & others (since all humans have intrinsic value no matter what imo). 

[kayoiwritingarchivies]

TITLE: Post mortem viventem

CHAPTER TITLE:  ONE: The Death of Two

WARNINGS AND RATINGS: Rated T for swearing, major character death and suicide

FANDOMS:  Detroit: Become Human 

SUMMARY:  So, if androids don't have souls, why does Connor see the ghosts of shut down Deviants? Why does he see ghosts in general? (In which Connor sees more than he is meant to, and it changes less than you think.)

Daniel is the first ghost to stay with Connor.

His body falls to the floor, but something is still standing there. It’s Daniel, but he’s translucent and there’s a strange blue outline around him. He keeps saying “You lied to me Connor. I trusted you, and you lied!”.

Connor blinks, trying to understand.

Connor sees ghosts, something he’s accepted when he walked into the apartment. He saw the spirit of John Phillips, kneeling in his own blood, whispering “Shouldn’t have done anything, should have listened to Emma…”, oblivious to Connor staring at his transparent figure.

He’s seen the ghost of the DPD officer that was first on the scene, who does notice Connor and tells him what he does and doesn’t know.

The second police officer that died that night, his spirit dripping wet yet the floor remaining dry tells him that he shouldn’t take the gun.

Both officers know they’re dead.

Daniel doesn’t, until he tries to punch Connor in the face and fails to do so, his arm going through. That’s when he says “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

Connor nods.

Daniel sticks around after that. It’s kind of strange, seeing an Android having a ghost, which meant that deviants had souls, and it leaves a strange sort of feeling in Connor’s chest.

-LINE BREAK-

“The sign clearly says ‘No Androids’.” Daniel mutters, one foot through the wall of the bar. “What if they break you?”

Connor looks at him and says “I have a mission to complete. And this is the 5th bar we’ve checked.”

“I have a mission to complete” Daniel mocks as he follows Connor into the bar. “God, you’re horrib-is that a kid?”

Connor looks at where Daniel is pointing, to show a six-year-old kid standing next to an old man.

“My name is Cole Anderson! What’s yours?” He says to Daniel, who’s still trying to process the shock.

“Uhm, my name is Daniel, the android over there is Connor…kid, what are you doing here?” Daniel replies, pointing at Connor, who is now trying to convince the old man to come with him.

“My dad’s here to drink the weird stuff. Are you guys gonna take him home?” Cole asks, looking up at, what Daniel is now assuming, is Hank Anderson.

“Uh, no, actually he has to go do his job…yeah…” Daniel says, looking back at Connor with a “Help me.” Expression on his face.

Connor looks back with a “You’re programmed to take care of children idiot, how am I meant to help?” Hank tells him to stick his instructions somewhere, prompting Connor to say “No, where?”

Daniel snorts at that.

They finally convince Hank Anderson to leave the bar, through bribery of all things, and they head to the crime scene.

-LINE BREAK-

Upon arrival, Hank turns in the car seat and tells Connor to stay in the car.

“You’re not going to listen, are you?” Daniel says, deadpan as he and Cole phase through the car door.

“Yep.” Connor replies, stepping into the rain.

“You can see us?” Cole whispers, stars in his eyes. “That’s so cool.”

Connor blinks and says “Um, sure.” And Daniel bursts out laughing because Connor might be the latest in CyberLife tech but he doesn’t know how to deal with children which is hilarious.

They follow Hank, who groans and tells Connor not to touch anything, and they enter the house.

Daniel is very thankful that he is dead and that he cannot smell. There’s also the ghost of Carlos Ortiz, yelling at the police officers to find justice for him, and Daniel, sighing, walks over to Mr Ortiz and introduces himself. “Hello, my name is Daniel, can you tell us what happened so we can find the android that did this to you.”

Carlos spits at him, says “Not going to have an android solve my case. Fuck off!”

Daniel blinks, and jabs a thumb at Connor, who is licking the blood off the knife and says “Well, you’re out of luck there buddy. And I’m dead, so tough luck trying to break me.”

Carlos splutters, and walks off, cursing the entire time. “That could have gone better.” Daniel mutters before going over to Connor. “Find anything useful?”

“Someone’s defaced the bathroom.” Connor says, kneeling down and picking up a small statuette. “Where’s Cole?”

“Cole is…uh…whoops.” Daniel says, turning around. “Ah heck I lost the squirt.”

Connor blinks at him, goes “Good job. Go find him.” Before analysing the scene before him and relaying the information he knew. Daniel sighs, mutters “You’re not the boss of me.”, before going off to try find Cole. He finds him next to a table, reading a pamphlet with the words “Eden Club” typed across the top.

“Daniel? What’s the Eden Club?” Cole asks, eyes wide as he looks at Daniel.

Daniel immediately grabs his arm and drags him away, saying “You’ll know when you’re older kiddo”

“I’m technically eight!”

“Still too young.”

In the time it takes Daniel to find Cole, Connor finds the deviant upstairs, and hearing “It’s here lieutenant!” jars him, and he looks down the corridor, frowning.

Then Cole punches him in the stomach and runs off, leaving Daniel somehow wheezing on the floor, and there’s a mutter of “Damn brat.”

-LINE BREAK-

“I’m bored.” Cole complains, sitting on Daniel’s shoulders.

“Kid, not exactly alive, can’t really do anything.” Daniel shoots back, frowning.

Hank was in the interrogation room with the HK400 Connor had captured. Connor kept sneaking glances at Cole and Daniel, who are watching the interrogation getting nowhere.

Hank storms back in, saying “We’re wastin’ our time interrogating a damn machine, we’re getting nothing out of it!” collapsing into a chair. Cole climbs down Daniel to be near his father, and Connor can’t really blame Cole for being near his parent.

A voice from the corner, Which Connor identifies as Gavin Reed, speaks up with a “We could always try roughing it up a little, maybe it’ll get it to talk. After all, it’s not human.”

Daniel sneers at Reed, and mutters “You’re a real piece of work aren’t you, you waste of ai-”

“Androids don’t feel pain.” Connor replies to Reed, turning to face him. Daniel says “You butt, deviants somehow do, getting shot actually hurt.”

Connor ignores Daniel and continues with “You’ll only damage it and that wouldn’t make it talk. Deviants also have a tendency to self-destruct when they’re in stressful situations”

“Okay smartass.” Reed pipes up, pushing off the wall to approach Connor. “What should we do then?”

“I could try questioning it.”

The whole room is silent, save for the living people’s breathing and Daniel’s muttering of “Why would you say that, why the heck would you say that?”

Then Reed starts laughing, finding the whole concept of Connor interrogating the android hilarious.

Hank only sighs and asks “What do we have to lose?”, before gesturing to the window showing the HK400. “Go ahead, suspects all yours.”

Connor hesitates, before leaving the room, Daniel following behind with a look at Cole saying “Don’t you dare.”

Once in the hallway, Connor says “Can’t you go through the wall into the interrogation room?”

Daniel shrugs, and they both go into the interrogation room, and Connor sits in front of the HK400 and begins to talk.

-LINE BREAK-

Connor ends up being forced to probe its memory for the event.

“Uh Connor? The HK400 is sort of…twitching?” Daniel says, hand passing through the deviant’s head. “Connor, I think it’s going to…self-destruct.”

And that’s when, our dear readers, the HK400 self-destructs.

Daniel and Connor just stare as the deviant begins slamming its head onto the table, blue blood beginning to pool onto the cold metal surface.

The other officers make their way in, one trying to stop the android. Connor isn’t doing anything, and Daniel is covering Cole’s eyes from scene.

The deviant smashes it’s head into the table one last time and ends up dying.

Connor frowns, and Daniel does as well, while Cole manages to remove Daniel’s hands from his face and gives out a soft whine at the body.

The spirit of HK400, registered under Carlos Ortiz, is still there, tears running down it’s face as it whispers “Why couldn’t you have let me go?”

Hank mutters a “Holy shit…” and Connor, the only one to see the three ghosts in the room, says nothing.

-LINE BREAK-

The HK400, much to Daniel’s irritation, stays with Connor as well.

Henry, which is what he named himself (When had it gone from ‘it’ to ‘he’?), is a lot quieter than Daniel. He’s timider, and stays rather close to Connor, which irritates Daniel because damnit, he was here first.

Connor, who at this point is sadly still a machine, doesn’t really care, which irritates Daniel further, because the damn 4-month-old, socially inept android can see ghosts and his only reaction is literally “How did you die?”

So, at the Detroit Police Department Central Station, at 9:56AM, Connor is sitting in a chair near Hank’s desk, waiting for Hank to appear, while Daniel sits on the arm rest and complains loudly about everything and Henry just sits there on the floor and quietly wrings his hands.

Connor then gets up, startling Daniel off the chair, before going to Hank’s desk and scanning what was on it. Daniel, bored out of his mind, looks around at the desk, pushes a hat off a board, frowns at the anti-android slogans on said board, Connor finds some dog hairs on Hank’s chair, then Connor goes “I’m going to go to the break room” under his breath, leading Daniel to say “Yeah, but Reed’s in there, and also no.”

Connor glances over to the breakroom, to see Detective Reed in there with another police officer, and a ghost with a perfectly clean bullet wound going from one side of their head to the other, standing silently beside Detective Reed, and before Connor can tell him not too, Henry stands up and slowly approaches the ghost.

Daniel is now muttering child-safe curses under his breath, and Connor is trying very hard not to watch the two ghosts in the Break room talk in low tones. Henry comes back, looking more upset than he originally was.

Daniel asks Henry about him, but Henry doesn’t say anything except “It’s not my story to tell.”

Connor frowns, and that’s when Hank Anderson walks in, followed by Cole, who runs up to the two ghosts and they talk about nothing much, while Hank goes and talks to Captain Fowler.

Connor doesn’t follow, and instead listens into the conversation he can only hear.

[lilaxthegreat]

✨✨✨. That is three facts, not just enthusiasm.

Oh boy three facts! I'll do three completely separate OCs. We'll start with Trireme. Trireme was designed as a 'take that' to my old self who was obsessed with not creating Mary Sues and shit. I decided 'You knwo what I'm just gonna have fun" so I designed a Kirby OC who has pink gems and looked like a pretty princess. Trireme eventually got remodeled to a more humanoid form. And yes! She is inspired from Diancie! Quicksilver is one of my oldest OCs and he was actually originally an evil villain with a terrible backstory (some of my friends may remember all of that, but it's ooold). When developing the personal Mega Man timeline I had, I fucked up and had him created BEFORE a defining event for another character (Crystal) and I was like "Welp I'm just gonna dump Arachnid on Crystal's backstory" and then remade Silver's story into a fairly detective-like one. With a bit of trauma. He recently got redesigned to look more unique from the other Mega Man characters, as my intention was to separate anybody who was created by Benjamin Armstrong be extremely unique. It worked. Speaking of Benjamin McFucking Armstrong, he was originally NOT the defining evil villain in my early stories, it was Silver! But over time he went from a faceless post mortem plot device that defined Quicksilver and his family, to a living being (who may have came back to life multiple times in the RP me and my friends have because I could not make up my mind about fixing his character and personality). Ben finally got fleshed out in multiple versions of himself, one of them being a point where he ascended into near godhood. And then Nakri punched him in the face and he died. Ben dies in more RPs than Jake ever has at this rate.

[alisterthatchel]

Cyrus Proposal (Remastered)

“…And that will be the last time that any more quarrels between you two shall be resolved with magical means,” Alister stated with frustration lacing his firm tone.

“But he-!” Ezav stammered in protest, his shoulder-length hair falling in front of his eyes as he shook his head in exasperation of his own.

Alister shook his head and stared down Ezav as he cut him off. “It will be the last time, correct?” His voice had a subtle growl to it now. “Or must I make that apology both of you need to give into a detention or a public service stipend?”

Gavrick remained silent, discontent about the situation, but stoic, not wishing to make the situation worse.

Ezav stammered, but became silent, standing still. He nodded silently, turned and walked out of the office.

Alister closed his eyes as he sat down in his chair, giving a sigh. As Gravrick turned to leave, Alister said in a calmer tone, “Gavrick, I know it wasn’t your fault for Ezav’s attack, but in the future, you shouldn’t antagonize him. Otherwise, situations like this happen. I know you can’t prevent Ezav or his friends from antagonizing you, but you can control yourself and your actions. From now on, do your best to keep from making situations worse. If not for you, then for the sake of other students in the event of potential collateral damage.”

Gavrick, who hadn’t turned back to the Headmaster when he was talking to him, but he nodded quietly and walked out of the room.

Alister took a deep breath before opening his eyes and reaching for his mug of tonic. “Sonnofa-…! Ugh!” Alister stifled the scream, forgetting the wounds on his hands and the strength of his passive grip strength. The wounds continually healed and reopenned despite Reya’s best efforts. Ever since he grabbed that sword the wound had felt different then a normal cut, and the perpetual bleeding seemed to be an obvious reminder now. His hands were bandaged with excess fabrics from his stored materials, now stained crimson, threatening to drip its stored liquid on anything that came in contact. Between Reya and his own efforts, they were able to find a sealing ritual that made the blood at least capture in the cloth, so he didn’t have to worry about accidentally repainting all his property, or eliminating his stores of linens after half a day from changing them out every five minutes. Alister mused at the cloth Reya had come up with, surprised at the ingenuity of his new staff, tailoring a fabric with runes and arcane symbols into such a fine bandage. He ran his right hand’s fingers across the fabric of the left’s, surprised at the softness of it. His fingers slipped and accidently prodded the wound, causing him to grimace at the pain. ”What it doesn’t do is easy any of my damaged nerve endings...” Alister muttered to himself as he tried to pick up the cup again without putting too much pressure on his palms, or moving them.

“Did you just almost fucking swear?!”

Alister leapt out of his skin, his cup flying as he jumped in his desk chair. The shattering of porcelain and the spilling of the tonic was not noticed by Alister, whose head dropped firmly to the top of his desk, red from the shock, pain and frustration. Through gritted teeth, “Cyrus, one of these days, the heart attack will be real, and you will have to explain to my staff why I’m dead!”

Cyrus’ smile was the first thing to become visible, the shit-eating grin of a troublemaker. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I was never here to begin with.” The rest of the tall, lanky man became visible. Black feline ears rose out of the spiked hair that had a shine like quill ink. A strong contrast to his ashen complexion. His clothing matched his natural colors. A worn combat jacket, once black now charcoal, over top a fit white shirt. Black cloth pants with pockets littering the sides. He was leaning against the nearest bookcase to the desk. “You just keeled over and died from looking at the scores of your students’ exams.”

Alister, after taking a deep breath, sat up and leaned into the back of the chair. “I see you’ve been observing my school’s classes before visiting me.”

“Yeah, there may be one or two students that have a new feline friend in-and-around the campus.” He closed his cobalt-blue, slit eyes and shrugged.

Alister smiled a little, and held up his wounded hand. “Well I’d offer a formal greeting to you, but as you can see, it would require me to go through great pains to do so.”

Cyrus opened his eyes again, the self-satisfaction in his smile shifting to that of entertainment. “Ah, and the rare siting of a joke, I see. I truly have caught you in a rare mood.” After a half chuckle from Alister, “Occult magic or barroom brawl?”

Alister had lowered his hands to rest on his lap. “Barroom brawl with an oversized minotaur from the nearest vault.”

Cyrus let out an elongated whistled and sauntered over to the desk, playing with a miniature globe that hovered above a small pedestal. “Now what would make you do a silly thing like that?”

“Gabriel.”

The globe wasn’t touched after the name left Alister’s mouth. Cyrus lost his smile, and when he looked at Alister, he saw he wasn’t joking. It took all of three seconds after for Cyrus to return to his playing with the globe.

A new record, Alister noted.

After two more seconds, “He’s dead.”

Alister sighed as he looked past Cyrus into his own mental void, “Supposed to be, but appears to be a case of spontaneous reanimation.”

“Apparition?”

“Physical body.”

“Replicant?”

“He had his signature toxin.”

“Copycat.”

Alister’s gaze drew back to Cyrus as a scoff left his nostrils. “I see you’re full of jokes today as well.”

Cyrus’ massive grin returned as his cat ears flicked. “I thought you might enjoy that one.”

Alister took a deep breath, gingerly got up out of his chair, and slowly walked back onto his balcony. “No, he’s alive, with apparent vendettas. Whatever he is planning, it has so far involved manipulating my students into thinking they can get useful information, power and wealth from what lies inside the vaults.” He rest his forearms on the wooden railing, looking out upon the view, as he frequently did.

Cyrus stopped playing with the globe and followed Alister to the balcony, hopping up to balance on the railing. “Any idea of his end game?”

“Only that I’m one of his targets, and I’m presuming the others from the institute as well.”

Cyrus turned away to walk atop the railing, thinking all the while. “So that’d probably be me and a handful of others that lived after the dissolving of our merry band of misfits?”

“I would hazard to guess.”

“Sounds like you’re getting yourself into trouble as always.” Cyrus had walked to the end of the arc, turned around and started back before another word was said.

Alister scoffed again, sarcasm dripping from his tongue, “Oh yes, I always enjoyed finding your side plans in the middle of our missions.” He looked back into the office, waved his hand absently, and the shards of mug reconstituted itself, and the spilled liquid flew up and pooled back in the container. It flew over to Alister, who, wincing as he did so, caught the cup with his fingertips. He brought it to his lips, smelled it, and then licked the tonic after a moment of contemplation. He grimaced and shot the liquid off the balcony, still holding the cup. “Usually led to me getting reprimanded while bedridden in the nursing station.” He waved his palm over the cup as he righted it. The container filled with heated water with a few leaves that slipped out of his pocket and flew up into the newly made drink. He took a few sips as he leaned on the railing.

Cyrus, amused by the tricks, continued his semicircle stroll back towards his friend. “Yeah, but you enjoyed it though. Got to spend plenty of time with your girl. Besides,” he said as he hopped over Alister’s head, landing on the other side of the railing. “It’s not like we ever failed a mission because of whatever ‘nefarious’ or ‘underhanded’ concepts you seem to think I may or may not have had at the time.”

“If you’re referring to the many times I was hospitalized from those antics, then I assure you I barely remember any who visited, let alone enjoy their company. Also it’s been two centuries, and to this day I’ve never found killing a brainwashed barkeep to extract information post-mortem a worthy response, when we can just give the known telepath a few gold pieces to unlock his mind so he could willingly tell us and go on his merry way.”

“But it took so long,” Cyrus whined, overlapped his hands over the back of his head as he continued to the end of the railing, giving a brief sigh. “And you wondered why I always called you a killjoy.”

Alister shrugged as he took another sip, the mildly sweet taste of the tea contrasting nicely with the slightly bitter tone forming on Alister’s tongue. “One of my many warranted nicknames from the institute that I earned. Some of which were from you.”

Cyrus turned around at the end of the line, heading back towards Alister. “Hey, it legitimately wasn’t all bad. We had a lot of fun despite the assassinations and espionage.”

Alister shrugged again, his agitation slowly starting to recede as he began recalling a few of the “good” times.

Cyrus took a moment to filter his memories. “What about when you got eaten by the kraken?”

Alister shrugged again. “That was the mission in Lestox, right?”

“Mhm.”

“What about it?”

Cyrus reached Alister and hopped off the railing next to him, back to the railing, elbows resting on it as he stared through the office, space and time, watching the memory in his head. “Remember, we were sent there to stop the cultists from worshiping and feeding that giant, sentient cuttlefish.”

Alister set the cup on the other side of him than Cyrus. “And I got swallowed while moving Itzal and another of his team out of the way. First time I used Mage’s Coating, too.”

“Yeah, not gonna lie, a lot of us thought you were dead at that point, despite us still trying to kill it.”

“All I remember from after I got swallowed was trying to disintegrate it from the inside out. All of a sudden electricity pulsed throughout its body, and started to damage the shield, which was already damaged due to the stomach acid. I passed out after that point.” Alister as well was revisiting the memories. “I fail to see how any of that was pleasant or enjoyable.”

Cyrus’s mischievous grin returned and he looked up at the sky. “So I never told you about what happened during that time?”

Alister shook his head. “You just kept saying ‘I’m not losing my dick so you can know who your savior was,’ so I just gave up on it.”

Cyrus laughed as his memory was triggered. “Oh yeah! I forgot that she threatened that, and after what happened I kinda believed her!” Cyrus slowly let his laugh die, but then it stopped abruptly before it could trail off as he looked around the vista, under the balcony and in the sky quickly. “Well, since she’s not here, I suppose she’ll never know.”

Alister, curious to where Cyrus was going with this story, simply waited.

Cyrus, returniong to his previous resting area next to Alister, “Tallia saved you.”

A name Alister hadn’t heard in many years, and the surprise of it was visible on his face. “I thought her electrokenetic powers hadn’t awaked at that point.”

The excitement at seeing Alister’s shocked face was all too clear on Cyrus’. “Yes and no; it was the moment she broke that threshold.”

Alister picked up the cup again gingerly, and took another drink. “I haven’t seen her since shortly after I made the school, roughly 86 years if I’m not mistaken.”

Content with Alister’s reaction, Cyrus carried on. “So you remember how good ol’ Reggie ordered the Catalysts within assault range of the kraken?”

Reginald Alagar, one of the Wardens, most known for making awful tactical mistakes and taking it out on the Wards. “How could I not remember him?”

Cyrus ignored the comment. “Well after that whole debacle, a few of the Catalysts got injured, and ended up in the medic tent. Tallia was working on one of them when the kraken swallowed you, and she apparently became hysterical. From what people said, she stopped healing the wounded and just ran full speed at the Kraken, her powers drawing the static from the storm, but surging through her enough that she was leaving glass footsteps.”

Alister remained quiet, just picturing the scene in his mind. He refilled the cup and drank more.

Cyrus continued. “So there were a few Brothers and Sisters running after her until she got into range of the kraken. That stupid, oversized octopus was so preoccupied with Itzal, having recovered and regrouped his unit, that it didn’t even notice this five-foot-nothin’ girl running up.”

Alister was starting to get invested in the story. Cyrus always had a way with storytelling that he enjoyed. He also noticed Cyrus’ eloquence was disappearing, a sure sign he was losing himself in the story as well.

“So I’m booking it to get her out of there, but I stop when I notice some of the nearby rocks are starting to crackle. Turns out the rocks on the beach were conductive, and they were harmonizing with Tallia. On top of that, I’m close enough to see her hands, and guess what she had clutched in her mitts.”

“I’m not guessing,” Alister said flatly. “With all the items and weapons littering those sands that day, I’d spend half a day guessing.”

Cyrus, un-phased, “A fucking auger.”

Now that was a surprise. “What?”

“You heard me, Nightshade. An accursed auger.”

Another name lost to time. Alister raised his hand and pointed his index finger at Cyrus. In an audibly tempered tone, “That is a name never to be said with others in potentially earshot, least of all people who might know what that name means.”

Cyrus looked at the finger and held up his hands, laughing a little. “My apologies, got too far into the past.”

After both lowered their hands, Alister turned back to the vista. “So how did Tallia get her hands on one? They were only given out to Wardens to keep wards squarely under thumb.”

“I thought that to, but apparently that catalyst she was working on was having a relationship with one of the Wardens, and was given an auger. Tallia just happened to have it in her hand when she fled to the beach, hoping to save you.” He ran a few fingers through his hair as he continued. “What’s even better, is that it resonated with her electrical abilities that at the time weren’t strong enough to be noticeable.”

Alister was taken aback. “But the augers were meant to only enhance psionic powers, how would that help her?”

Cyrus chuckled. “Yeah, ‘suppose to’ is the predominant idea. But she either broke it with what electrical powers she already had, or they had more power in them then what the director wanted even the Wardens or Wards to know about. Either way, a bolt of lightning dropped right next to her, and it crashed into the hand that had the auger. It apparently caused the device to supercharge, and a beam of light shot out, vaporizing a hole in the kraken’s head about the height of Ol’ Reggie himself. All anyone else could see was her getting hit by a lightning bolt, her screaming, and sending a plasma beam right through its grey matter. Before the beam dissipated, she brought the beam up, and split the beast’s head wide open. It must’a cause residual shocks, cause not only did it put you out, but half the population of the key’s fish were floating on the water by the time she was done. Hell, the only reason any of our troops didn’t get electrocuted was because I saw it coming and yanked almost all of them onto the beach away from the water. Itzal also snagged a few and flew them back to camp. No casualties, but a couple people were given a good wake-up call, including myself, despite also having a static personality of my own.”

Alister at this point had moved away from the railing, had raised his hands, palms up, and the wooden panels making the balcony floor warp up into the shape of two armchairs. He sat down in one and just watched Cyrus as the story reached its conclusion.

“So after that the light vanished, she dropped the auger, and ran to the corpse to try to find you. Apparently, her friend Quin ran over from Itzal’s platoon and they cut through the digestive system till they found you, your defensive spell still active despite you being unconscious. That being the case, though, you still suffered internal damage. Quin was able to use her powers to disable your coating after about 5 minutes, and Tallia went to work healing you, which went faster than she expected.” He hopped up to sit on the railing. Sarcastically, “I wonder why that could have been.”

Alister, who had been visualizing the tale in his mind, was now suddenly taken out of the daydream. Perturbed, he simply rolled his uninjured hand in the air, signifying for Cyrus to continue.

“So after they healed you and you still didn’t wake up, they brought you out of the kraken. Quin mentioned that Tallia was inconsolable until they were about to leave. She supposedly calmed Tallia down to keep from having the Wardens see her that way. They also came up with a dumb excuse for the sudden power, saying that Tallia couldn’t bear to see any more of her comrades dying, and she channeled her gods through her secondary power.” When Alister gave him a look he knew well, he laughed. “Of course the Wardens didn’t believe it, but they didn’t have any proof that it was anything else, or that she believed anything otherwise. You remember how devoted she was to that god of hers. Fuck if I remember what the name was.”

“The Veiled One.”

Cyrus scoffed and threw up his hands momentarily, looking towards the vista to his right and closing his eyes. “Whichever that one is, they knew she was a devotee of them, but didn’t believe a word of it. They scoured the beach trying to find what she could’ve used, but found nothing, thanks to yours truly. Swiped that nifty little gadget up as soon as the Wardens were scrambling to get the Wards from fleeing after seeing that display of power. But since they couldn’t find it, and Tallia kept to her story despite interrogation, they chalked it up to wild magic and fear off loss. Thus, the reason why you, her and that one Warden were always being sent on ‘top secret missions’ that were near impossible to complete.” Cyrus looked over to Alister, who was mulling over his own memory. Cyrus hopped off the railing and walked over to the other chair, falling back into it, folding his hands behind his head. “But luckily for Tallia, she knows how to pick’em, cause you found ways through all the missions they threw at you guys, and even showed a bit of your own true powers.”

Alister took a deep sigh and closed his eyes. “It all makes sense now. I did wonder why they chose her and I to go on those missions, and why they created the hybrid classes, but that would explain why.” Alister opened his eyes again and looked at his friend. “And the perfect distraction.”

“Quite,” Cyrus uttered as he snapped his fingers on his right hand, and a ring on his right hand glimmered briefly.

A brilliant glow emerged from the left corner of the balcony. Requal, who had been hidden under a cloaking spell, became iridescent, and she screamed in surprise. As she shed the magic like pulling off a blanket, she caught a glimpse of the boards underneath her, and recognized the shape of a ritual circle, formed out of blood that had pooled from her wounds. She got the cloaking off, but wasn’t able to move out of the circle in time for Alister to say a quick chant, the rituals’ lines to flash a bright purple, and her to be stopped in time.

Both Alister and Cyrus got up, walking over to the time-locked student. “This the troublemaker who helped the bastard?”

Alister knelt down next to Requal, having seen red marks on her pant legs, and pulled them up just enough to see perpetual bleeding coming from the wounds. “Yes, and can you please stop swearing in front of my students.”

Cyrus knelt down next to Alister and looked the injuries, smelling the blood. “Yep, and wreaks of demon.” He looked at Alister. “What’s her loss?”

Alister looked back. “What do you mean?”

“Thatch, you don’t go looking for a vault unless you have a damn good reason. It takes weeks to months of preparation, and you generally do research prior with what information you can get your hands on on what resides there, living or otherwise.” Cyrus looked back to Requal. “I know my kind when I see them; intelligent, quick-witted, sharp looks.”

“Humble,” Alister commented as he looked at the residual cloaking magic, half disappeared before also being stopped in time.

“But!” Cyrus interjected back, an agitated look on his face, “Also impetuous, head-strong, and can get in over their head if they haven’t been bested a few times.” He then looked back at Alister. “There’s a reason she tracked down the vault with little-to-no knowledge of what lay inside. You only take drastic measures when you meet drastic times. So, what is she losing?”

Alister was surprised at Cyrus’ insight and directness. Maybe Cyrus had changed a little bit since they had last met. “I know she has a good home, despite the father perishing when she was younger. Her mother, Oliven, and her older brother Wynd, a student at the school, are the only other family members. The family was attacked by a spell caster who demonstrated some powerful and strange magic, leading to Wynd losing his legs, and Oliven receiving some kind of internal damage. Last I knew, both were healing well enough, though magic prevents the brother’s legs from being restored. Oliven runs a garden and sells excess food at the market, but they’re barely getting by since Wynd can’t help with the work. Wynd has stopped coming for the time being till he feels he’s ready to come back to classes. I haven’t been in contact with Oliven as of late, though, to know if the situation has changed.”

Cyrus nodded. “So vaulting for prestige for the family and potentially to help her brother. If that’s the case the kid is too fuckin’ noble.”

Alister looked at him. “Despite the conversational jumps to murdering anyone to make things convenient, I remember you taking up a couple causes that were fairly reputable and selfless when we were younger.”

Cyrus rolled his eyes and grinned. “Fine, you got me there. But if she’s going to work under me, I’ll need her thoughts in the moment, not on the homestead.”

Genuine shock darted across Alister’s face. “Cyrus, you basically swore off the idea of having a protégé when I offered it to you before.”

Cyrus shrugged and propped himself up in a sitting position against the wall near the frozen Requal. “Yes, I admit I did. But, I suppose after looking around this school, seeing all the kids learning from your training, and your teachers even having understudies of their own, in addition to their classes…” Cyrus had started sounding wistful, and gave a gently sigh. “I guess jealousy has gotten its talons hooked on me.” Cyrus looked at the sun as it began to set across the other side of the balcony. His tone suddenly got a nostalgic and morose edge to it. “If the institute was anything like what you had here, maybe all our ‘classmates’ would still be alive, and we wouldn’t be such broken individuals.”

Alister sat there, taking in the words that came out of his old friend’s mouth. After all these years, it was always refreshing to know Cyrus wasn’t too stubborn to grow as a person. “Well, it was an open offer, and it still stands: You may pick a student to have as an understudy, so long as you keep them safe-“

“‘-Like they were my own blood, and teach them how to benefit society,’ and to be a goody-two-shoes like their headmaster, and to tuck them in after a bedtime fable, and...” Cyrus trailed off as he had looked back at Alister during his recitation-turned-ramble, and seeing the unimpressed expression caused him to break into a massive smile. “Shut your face, you love me and you know it!”

“You do have qualities that I enjoy in a friend, but that has no bearing on the matter at hand,” Alister said as he started to massage the bridge of his nose before the pain from the hand wounds set in, then he promptly dropped his hand. “Do you agree to the rules of it?”

“I wouldn’t’ve postulated if I wasn’t serious.”

“Ok, then the only other thing is to ask the young lady herself if she wishes to make the pact with you.”

Cyrus flung his hands into the air and flopped them down on his legs, giving an obnoxiously loud scoff. “You and your forsaken pacts!”

In a flat voice, “Keeps people honest to their word. It’s for her just as much as it is for you.”

Cyrus rolled his head as an audible groan, a mixture of exasperated and frustrated, led into an elongated, “Fine.” Cyrus grumbled about being flung in shackles whenever he visits.

Alister pointed a finger at him in a way that told the Fellinian to watch his tongue, before using the same index and the neighboring middle finger to gently tap the edge of the ritual circle. The light slowly started to fade, and the blood that had constituted the circle’s formation soaked into the wooden beams and vanished. As soon as the light had faded, Requal continued her momentum as if time had never stopped. She fumbled, and tripped over Cyrus’ splayed out legs from where he sat. She fell forward, but Cyrus brought up his right hand, an ethereal hand stopping her by the collar bone, and reduced her rate of descent till she was just above the ground. She immediately rolled off the hand, spun around while getting herself on her feet. She had pulled knives from her sleeve pocket. Her eyes had darkened noticeably.

Alister stood up carefully and looked at Requal. “Put those away, enough blood has been spilled in the last couple hours.”

Requal tried to lower the knives, but her body was not listening. “H-Headmas...” She stuttered it out, her mind foggy from the whispering voices and blood loss.

Alister saw that Requal was having trouble, and formed a chair right behind her from the boards. Cyrus, also seeing this, finally got up, having suspicions on what was going on. “Do you know the name of the demon you faced?”

“Not yet, but it was the brother of the minotaur that we fought,” Alister stated as he had moved slowly closer to Requal.

“H-Headmas…d-don’t co…any…closer, p-please...” The voices were compelling her to spill blood, and she couldn’t shut them out, let alone regain control. Her blades were slowly raised, not of her own choosing.

“Oh yeah, I know whose work this is,” Cyrus said as a spark of lightning crackled across his face. A blur in space and half a second later he was in front of Requal. His left hand gripped her right wrist tight to halt a reflexive stab, and his right hand upside down over her mouth. Requal’s eyes instantly became afraid and her body tried to free herself. Cyrus began to whisper a chant, barely audible, not able to be discerned. Requal froze, her eyes locked in shock with Cyrus’. The Fellinian’s pupils, normally slits in a turquoise circle, expanded till the entire eye was black. Requal’s body started to go limp, and when it did, Cyrus dropped his hand from her wrist and brought it to the center of her back. With this he eased her back into the chair, their faces never losing or gaining distance nor breaking level with each other. After she was sitting, Cyrus’s whispering gained an aggressive tint to it, and his left hand slid out from behind her and hovered over her wounds. A black tendril of mist came out of his hand and seeped into her wounds around the blood, and, after a few seconds, bone shards oozed out. Black vapors rose from the fragments as they settled on the floor. The wounds themselves started closing before the tendrils receded back to his hand. He then moved his left hand over Requal’s right ear, palm an inch away. His chanting was almost discernible as his volume increased, Alister, listening closer to the chanting, couldn’t discern the language even after Cyrus’ chant grew louder. After a few seconds, a small amount of black and violet sludge oozed out of her ear, disappearing as it ran down her ear. After the liquid finished evacuating from her ear, Cyrus’ pupils slowly receded back to being slits. His chanting slowed to a stop and he removed his hands. Both him and Requal gasped air as both regained control over their bodily movements, Requal doubling over in the chair she sat in, and Cyrus had staggered back towards the railing.

Alister ran to Requal and eased her back in the chair while she caught her breath. He looked over to his friend, who was holding his head as if he’d been struck in the eye. Black tears ran down his face. “What was that? What did you do?”

Cyrus, trying to wipe away the black liquid being wept, “Old world exorcism. The Yulidrum couldn’t kill the demons, but could cast them out good enough.”

“Is that normal when you do this?” Alister, indicating the tears.

Cyrus gave out a chuckle as he reached into is open black jacket and pulled out a black cloth and wiped his eyes. “Only if it’s the legitimate thing.” He looked down at his white shirt under the jacket and saw that some droplets ran down the front, staining it. “And boy was that the real thing. I’m going to use your shower.” Cyrus walked into the office and into the bathroom.

After Cyrus left, Alister pulled up a chair next to Requal for him to sit in. “Take some time, just breathe.”

Requal, who had just started to calm down enough to start using deep breaths, released her death grip from the wooden arm rests, and nodded slowly.

“Are you ok enough to talk, or do you need more time?”

“I…I think…I can.” Requal was still visibly shaken, but had a firmness enough for Alister to believe it.

“Alright. Let’s start with why were you on my balcony tonight?”

Requal’s deep breaths slowed more. “The voices...the whispering...they wouldn’t stop. I left the infirmary...then ripped the bandages on acc-…accident, a-and the voices got worse, wanting me to hurt…anyone. I came here to see if I could find you, but you weren’t here, and I the voices were too much, and I passed out on the balcony” She pulled her legs close to her chest, feet on the chair as she continued, her voice getting more frantic and distraught. “It almost made me kill Vivian! I couldn’t control my body. I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t even know if you’d know what to do, but…I was so scared…but you weren’t here.” Her voice deescalated and ended in a mumble, resting her head against her knees.

It was true that it is rare for Alister to be in his office during the day, and Alister felt awful he was away when she needed him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you. The most I could have done was have Reya make new bandages again. Lucky my colleague has the information he does, as these wounds are beyond my knowledge.”

“Yeah.” Requal squeezed her legs close, trying to become as small as she felt. “All of this is my fault. I just wanted to help my brother and mom. Instead I just got myself and others hurt.” She couldn’t look at the headmaster, the shame she felt before just came flooding back.

Alister looked at her quizzically. “What’s happened at home?”

Requal hesitated at first, but then slowly started telling the headmaster what she had told Reya about the new issues, and how Gabriel preyed on the idea that there’s lost knowledge about cures to disease & curses. In the middle of the explanation Cyrus returned, hair messy and wet, dressed in his black pants & jacket, a towel he was rubbing on his head, but missing his undershirt. He hopped onto the railing & sat, listening to the later part of the explanation. After she finished, there was a prolonged silence before Requal broke it herself. “Is it ok if I ask a question, headmaster?”

Alister, who had been deep in thought, nodded. “What do you wish to know?”

Requal hesitated before asking in a soft, worried voice, “What happens now? I doubt I’d be alive if I was going to be killed for what I’ve done, I’m not in a dungeon, and it wouldn’t make sense to have me here if you were going to cast me out...”

“Brazen and straight forward,” commented Cyrus under his breath in a thoughtful tone as he set the towel aside and twirled his fingers, manifesting an apple in them. Before he took a bite out of it, “I can work with that. Also it appears you’re spell worked too well; she’s missed the whole ‘options’, ‘choices’ and ‘pact’ part of our little conversation.”

Alister sighed, closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “Cyrus, please just let me answer her question before she gets more confused.”

Requal experienced a myriad of emotions within the span of a second, and Alister held up a hand to halt her mind’s progression. He openned his eyes again and regaining his composure.

“What my colleague and I were talking about is that we had a discussion about what went on yesterday and why what happened in the vault happened. From that conversation I came to two optional conclusions to your attendance and residence at my school.” Alister dropped his hand, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “First option, is that you get expelled and return to your home for stealing artifacts and endangering staff & student. You’d have to utilize what skills you’ve gained so far to make a living for yourself and support your mother & brother.” Alister opened his eyes and saw silent tears streaming down Requal’s cheeks as she stare past the vista to her left, away from both adults. “Or, you have the option to become Cyrus’ understudy, and continue to attend classes.”

That was not an option Requal expected. She turned her head towards Alister, baffled. “W-What?”

Alister nodded slightly. “You heard me correctly.”

Requal didn’t understand. “But…why?” He wasn’t a professor, so why was being his understudy even being discussed?

Alister opened his eyes again, looking back at Requal. “My colleague here, Cyrus, is what we call an Infiltrator-”

“She might be working with me soon, Thatchel,” Cyrus interjected. “Tell her the full truth, or I’ll say it.”

Alister’s face shuddered as his eyes closed momentarily and let out a sharp groan. “Fine! He’s also an asshole.” He turned his head to glare at his friend. “Happy now?!”

Cyrus had his usual grin on his face. “Eternally, thank you,” he said as he set the half-eaten apple on the railing, leaned back of the balcony and fell off. Before he fell past the floorboards, he burst into dozens of crows, making Requal jump a little in surprise. They flew around the balcony, sparking her curiosity and wonder. Each crow eventually landed next to each other on the railing and taking turns chattering softly to each other. One landed next to the apple and started to snapping chunks off and eating it.

Alister audibly sighed as he turned back to face Requal, seeing no more tears in her eyes, just the face of a genuinely curious student. That brought a small smile back on his face. It always brought joy to him to see students in awe of what magic could do, or intrigued by mysteries. “An Infiltrator is someone who specializes in magic traditionally dealing with phasing, apparating, stealth, subterfuge, and speed. In many circles, the purpose of infiltrators can range from espionage, thievery, investigation, and assassination.” Requal’s turned back to him at this news, once again gaining worry and confusion. Before she could speak, he nodded. “You’d be correct in thinking many with these talents would be hunted and killed for fear of those factors. During the Architect Wars two centuries ago, most knowing this art were slaughtered for working on different sides, and many of my friends died because of it. Cyrus, however, survived and found use for his learned talents outside of combat & espionage; raiding vaults.”

The murder cackled loudly where they perched. Even the one almost finished with the apple paused to join in the cacophony.

Requal looked over at the birds momentarily before turning back to Alister. “You’re saying he opens vaults to loot them?”

Alister shook his head. “There are other ways into vaults that don’t require them to be opened. Cyrus manages, and avoids demons while pilfering what he can. Which leads to the matter at hand. He has offered to teach you after seeing your abilities, as well as being informed of your tenacity, your zeal.”

The crows began chattering even more. They hopped closer to each other, melding together, forming bigger crows as the fused. They continued to merge until they formed a black mass that formed Cyrus’ original shape, and then the black peeled away to reveal Cyrus in the same position and condition he’d been in before falling off the railing. He was watching Requal intently. “He’s right. You’re move was the epitome of Reckless Abandon, but show a raw talent and knowledge that could be molded into something worthy of the job,” Cyrus knocked what little remained of the apple off the railing. “That is if you don’t fuck it up.”

Requal dropped her legs off the chair again, thinking over the options.

“If it helps, with this agreement, there would be a pact drawn up. It would outline the agreements, terms, and rules around the apprenticeship. You’d be signing for things such as following his directions to the letter, assist in preparation for vault runs, and being subject to knowledge testing within safe environments. The latter being directly related to your permission into the field. In turn, he would be signing that he would do his best to keep you safe and free from harm, assist in finding aid to your brother via connections within the clerical order, and that you will be given forty percent of the profits-“

Cyrus’s eyes went wide. “Halt your silvered-lined tongue! I’d never agree to that much, and you know it!” He leaped off the railing and was coming over towards him.

Alister, paying him no mind, “What is your choice, little one?”

Requal, who at first was taken aback by Cyrus’ outburst, was drawn back by Alister’s words. “I...” She knew which she wanted, but she needed time to process the offer. “I need to think about this. Is it ok if I take the night to think?”

The headmaster nodded to his student as Cyrus reached his chair, gestured to run along.

Requal didn’t need to be told twice. She got up and promptly left, closing the office door as she did.

Alister waited for the click before standing and turning to Cyrus, who was still visibly upset. “Argue with me about it and it’ll increase in percentage.”

Cyrus’ face started getting red with frustration. “Now listen here, fuzz face, I have a lucrative business here, and I’m not about to have it supplanted by your need to feel noble! I offered to be nice, I’m not here to give handouts.”

“You are beyond well to do, my friend, you can spare that amount of your income easily and retain your present lifestyle.”

“That’s beside the point; I do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to this job. She’s just the understudy, and shouldn’t take home anywhere near what I make out of the plunder!”

“If you are teaching her, you’ll eventually be letting her lead the raids on the vaults, minimally giving instructions, and eventually just profiting off of her skills while you either laze about, or loot even more than you normally can because of having twice as many hands to help.”

Cyrus was finding it harder to argue his point. “If you feel that bad about her situation, you should pay for it yourself! My connections, time and money are valuable. If anything you should be paying me as an outsourcing agent!”

Alister sighed, knowing how Cyrus can be when his obstinance starts growing roots. “How much would you prefer?”

“Five percent.”

“No, she needs a wage to build a future off of. Thirty.”

“Seven, and that’s because we’re old friends.”

“We’re older than old friends. Twenty-five.”

“Ten then, but only because it’s you.”

“Twenty.”

“It’s staying at ten.”

“Sixteen.”

“Ten’s as far as I’ll go, Thatchy.”

Alister closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Fourteen, and I’m not going down any further.” Alister held out his hand.

Cyrus, who had been looking gruff this entire time, got his mischievous grin again. “To be honest I would’ve accepted twenty percent, but I guess you’re negotiating powers have dropped!” He reached his hand out to shake. Forty it is...” Cyrus halted his hand as soon as he realized the slip-of-the-tongue. He looked up at Alister’s eyes, seeing the goldenrod-yellow with that deep violet inside seeping out, before the yellow transitioned back to the familiar teal to contrast the purple. He knew what had happened instantly, and Cyrus’ grin got even bigger. “You sack of s-“

Alister thrust his hand forward and caught Cyrus’ before Cyrus could pull his hand away. A violet aura burning over their skin, leaving no pain to either party. As it burned, hands locked, a symbol began to be etch in the back of their connected hands. Each line vanished as it appeared on the skin. When it finished, the aura dissipated as well, leaving no visible trace.

Cyrus pulled back his hand and examined it, flipping it over. Calmly, still smiling, “Never gonna get use to that.”

The pain pulsed in Alister’s hand from the wound, but he did the best to play it off. “I’ll finish the rest of the contract when we get back from killing the demon.”

Cyrus shrugged and put his hands in his pants pockets. “Who said I was helping with that either? Especially after being swindled by you?”

“Because you enjoy it,” Alister stated with a small smirk of his own while heading back into his office.

Cyrus, pulling his head back in surprise at Alister being so blatant. “I mean, yeah, but fuck you too,” he said as he joined the headmaster in the office. “But before we do, let’s see if we can get your hands back to working order again.”

Forgot to post it here last night, I’ll fix the “See more” when I get home tonight

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- Outlier

With how busy I’ve been doing uni work recently, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to let the stress out. The brief lockdown obviously hasn’t helped matters. Sometimes you just need to get the frustration out, you know? And there’s not a lot of healthy efficient ways of doing so.

Anyway so I’m just gonna relisten to this underrated metal album and talk about it for a bit, yeah?

Twelve Foot Ninja is an Australian alternative metal/djent group that makes up for having the stupidest band name I’ve ever heard by having a solid couple albums full of bangers that take a few steps off the expected path. Outlier, their sophomore work, would end up nominated for the 2016 ARIA Award for Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Album, but lost to Nonagon Infinity, which to be fair is one of the best rock albums of the decade so not hard to get beat by. It is unbelievably edgy, but has some twists that make it all the more worth it. Let’s get into it, shall we?

The album’s opener, One Hand Killing, makes a strong opening statement. You’ve got an extended guitar note and a fucking gong, some handclaps, and then the main instruments come in and what the fuck is the guitar doing. These stutter, almost glitchlike riffs give the track such a unique sound, and their being interspersed with these lyric sections with the claps and the bass just churning keeps it from getting too stale. The chorus is more melodic than you’d expect from the verse’s vocals, though they don’t properly kick in until the second verse to be fair. And then about two minutes in, suddenly the song is, uh. A soul track? I think that’s what’s going on there? It’s kind of a rug-pull moment the first time you hear it, and though it only lasts about 20 seconds or so it’s just so jarring- not necessarily in a bad way. The thing with Twelve Foot Ninja is their ability to weave what would otherwise sound absurd or ridiculous more naturally into what are otherwise really heavy sounding tracks, giving them this unique flavour of prog metal I haven’t really heard elsewhere (outside of some tracks on Between the Buried and Me’s Colors). The soul? jazz? bit comes back to close the song, piano having a really fun little ditty as the song fades out. I’m going to be honest, this song is the opener, and also the best track on the album in my opinion, so if you don’t like this then probably don’t keep going?

Sick opens on a much funkier line, almost Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque, before the song proper cuts in. Yeah, get used to that. This track more fluidly combines its two…genres…? I feel woefully inadequate to describe this to be honest. But the funkier elements are folded into the verses rather than being separately delineated like in One Hand Killing. The backing vocalist is doing a lot of work on this track, lots of “ooohhoahahaaaah” sorta in the background that works pretty well. The guitars are doing this thing where it feels like they ratchet between chords which sounds pretty sick. Pun not intended. Anyway.

Inivinciblllllllllllllllllllllllllllllle is again, opening heavy, falling away to a quiet acoustic bit for parts of the verse, but this song really like building up towards its choruses which said quiet bits really accentuate. It’s kinda coming in waves, self-reflective quiet turning into regret and frustration into rage- it makes the very djent bridge feel earned. The final build skipping a step into yelling but going back to the singing at the end does feel a bit poetic, like the maturity gained through the reflection is showing through. Of course, then old mate sceams INVINCIBLEEEE again, so who knows.

Oxygen opens on this really bouncy rhythm, with these little mysterious riffs, punctuated by some shredding because why the fuck not. I really wish this part of the song stuck around for longer, though I could see it overstaying its welcome. The song goes between this and more, like groove-rocky instrumentation for a fair while, busting into a big chorus like a lot of these tracks do, and following up with just this really lovely little jazzy piece. I feel like I need to re-explain, there is little to no overlap between these sections in these songs, but it doesn’t feel wrong. Even when this song is just bongos for a bit, it connects, even as that bit leads into the closing minute of the track- the heaviest it’s been so far, repeating and slowly fading out as percussion that’s been there the whole time becomes more audible and too fades away.

The fifth track , Collateral, feels like it’s having the most fun with the vocal delivery so far. There’s a flow to the lyrics in the verses, and the way the chorus has little falsetto bits in between the usual deep delivery is really fun. That’s not even getting into the instrumentation, with that, like, koto? line? They’re kinda leaning into that Japanese theme, I guess. This is as good a time as ever to mention that the album art for the previous album was a giant fuckoff shuriken and their upcoming one is apparently titled Shinobi Voyage. God, I don’t think this is racist, but I’m obviously not the one to say it. Hell of a thing to talk about on what’s probably my second favourite track here, but that’s what we signed up for, right?

Post Mortem’s verses are the closest thing to rap-rock/nu metal on the record, though the funk influence is clearly still there, and there’s like a fuckin flamenco breakdown on this which you kinda have to hear to believe. Honestly this track goes in a lot of directions I wasn’t expecting, like I forgot about half of this, I have no idea what’s going on with those backing vocals at 2:30ish. I dunno, it’s about this point in the album that I start checking out. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love this album, but normally at this point I’m thinking about things while listening to it so I miss like half of it.

With that said, I’m listening to the next track, Point of You, and it’s way, way better than I gave it credit for. It’s an almost bubbly track with verses that wouldn’t sound out of place in like, a café song. It’s got trumpets going off in the background, yes! Also assuming I’ve got these lyrics right, this is secretly just a really romantic song, which I am occasionally a sucker for. I dunno man, what’s this doing buried at the back here, y’all should promote this.

Considering I’ve had a pretty long day and I’ve already written a lot (both here and in the essay I was writing for uni earlier) I’m going to miss talking about the final 3 tracks, though I will note that they really have a song called Adios and it isn't the last song on the album, that just seems like such an obvious move. Of course, seeing as how a lot of these songs are built on surprise directions, it’s probably intentional. I think part of what makes this album great is the sheer spectacle of it, where it’s just trying to keep you guessing at every turn where it’s going to go. But within that sporadicity is a consistency- no matter where these tracks go, you know it’s going to be built around these immense metal choruses, these similar guitar tones, and these killer riffs. The three tracks I’m not specifically discussing- Monsoon, Adios, and Dig for Bones- all of them might be more of the same, but the same here is great.

And I’ve seen these folks live, and it was a genuinely excellent experience. All that energy shifting as the songs develop, the fact that they were clearly having a lot of fun being there, it was just awesome- especially considering it’s the only time I’ve been to a concert on my own. Like, there’s no pretention with these guys, they’re just a bunch of blokes, they’re out here making goofy music that they enjoy, and doing a good job in the process.

I do legitimately think this album deserves it’s place among the royalty of the ARIA award King Gizzard denied it. Like, aside from the other King Gizz albums on the list of nominees, I can’t see anything I like more on here. This album fucks, but in such a unique way that it gets to stand on its own among dozens of other heavy records. I’m admittedly not super familiar with Twelve Foot Ninja’s first album, Silent Machine, and they are supposed to have one coming this year, but as it is Outlier is easily one of my favourite metal albums, ever.

[mybizarrenwmadventure]

MARCH 2021.

I have way more Tumblrs than I need. Some are dead, some are now irrelevant. My tumblrs are like a trail of periods in my life.

So why this one? Because I’m on the biggest adventure yet. (Yes, all of them seemed big at the time, but this one’s way up there if it pans out.)

Network marketing, by someone who really would prefer not to talk too much to other people, much less sell them anything.

This, in essence, is a lesson in (over-)stretching myself using something that makes me not only uncomfortable, but downright scared. Worth doing? Yes. If not for the lessons, the promise of income in these awful times when decent-paying jobs are non-existent for people like me.

I jumped into it not really understanding any of it. Managed to score one large customer, which I now realise was really just the springboard for the next good thing. The commission paid for a NWM coaching course which introduced me to a new friend AND my next NWM company with a great support system more suited to me.

But I didn’t do shit. Full of self-doubt and self-loathing. My efforts were lacklustre and lacked conviction.

Then someone decided do to a 100-day livestream challenge on FB. I wanted to do it too. I needed something like this. I mulled over it for a whole month. What was I supposed to talk about? What time? How many days? Bla bla bla. 

Then I decided to just go and do it. I pressed the button with NO PLAN. It’s all over now, so I can summarise the experience.

It was hard, at first. The fear of being judged, the fear of looking yuck on video, sounding stupid. Then it became easy. I started not caring how I looked or what topic I chose. I never had a plan more than a day in advance. I decided sometimes minutes before I went live. There were days I did NOT want to go live. But I forced myself and I didn’t care about the results. Some days I put in loads of effort, with not much response. Most importantly, however, there were always a few hardcore “fans” who were always there to support my effort. Most surprisingly, an aunt who watched EVERY SINGLE EPISODE and very often messaged me about the topic of the day. I didn’t really mind talking to the void (I get more candid when I feel I’m talking to the void) but I was really grateful there were people who cared what I was talking about.

So the lesson from my 100-day challenge is: No matter how hard, just do it. Some people who know what you’re doing, will support you 100%.

My job isn’t really hard. Because the product is so special, it’s actually really exciting to tell people about it. Practically no one has heard about redox signaling molecules and what it is. It was NOT possible to stabilise them outside the human body just 10 years ago. (Contrast that with my previous effort, which was like selling iPhones to a Nokia user. A saturated market and SO MANY cheap copycats.)

So my job isn’t hard. But there are days I still cry and do the self-loathing thing because I’m not earning even a fraction of a minimum wage. Even today. Even after the 100-day thing. Even though I started a 30-day blitz which isn’t much of a blitz because I can’t hit the numbers I need to. 

I’m almost halfway through the 30-day blitz. It’s gonna turn into a 90-day blitz. I’m slow, I need a longer schedule. I know I’m lacking a lot of skills. And I’m horrible at following up because it starts feeling like hardsell at that point. And I hate that. But if I don’t follow up, will they even remember I sent them stuff to look at? Fat chance. So I need to get over this hang-up. It’s no different from the way Oxwhite sends me emails reminding me of them. (I like what I bought from them, I know the best brains behind marketing are behind this brand, and I actually want to see how they do their thing.) 

I know my problem though, and it’s because I’m not setting up the next appointment. I’ve listened to the Eric Worre book - I know that’s what I should do; I don’t know why I’m not doing it. I’m just being stupid. The steps are there. Just fricking follow them, idiot.

So this is super long because I’ve been on this for months now. Months. And I have nothing to show for it. Well, besides the tears, fears, frustrations and self-loathing, that is. OK OK. A few customers too. (We have to celebrate the wins, no matter how small, come on.)

I used to be a teacher. I know about self-reflection and post-mortem-ing my work. I just need to tap back into that flow. 

I’m not stupid, really. I just have these huge mental blocks that are stopping me from being the person I know I can be. 

[romijuli]

AND NOW: THE REST OF THEM, starting with the fam and ending with the gremlin. These are generally gonna be constructed as like a paragraph for personality and a paragraph for Post-Incident stuff.

Rose: Cole’s mom, single parent to five kids ever since her husband passed away (eighteen-ish years ago). She’s a pretty doting mom, albeit one with a lot on her plate, but she’s always kinda anxious about speaking up, especially as far as Cole is concerned. She’s not really sure how the rest of Viannok would react if she called them out, and she really can’t afford to be cast out or ostracized or anything like that.

After The Incident she greatly regretted not saying anything previously with regards to their treatment of Cole and is absolutely pissed that their reaction to her son literally dying was “you failed us.” But she has yet to shake her fear of what ifs. She’s convinced that, had she said something, Cole wouldn’t have left home, or at least would have told her where he was going.

Aster: Oldest daughter of the Martina household, though she shares the title of “oldest child” with her twin brother. 26 at the time of the campaign. Rather prim and proper, to the point of being kind of stuck up; she wants to be the next town mayor and apparently views this demeanor as what a politician “should be like.” She cares dearly for her siblings, she just…doesn’t show it much. She viewed Cole’s whole “chosen hero of Pelor” thing as an honor and a blessing, and was always encouraging him to roll with it, urging him to become more self-reliant so he could truly be a hero.

Immediately following the Incident, she found herself kinda conflicted, torn between the thought that that was far too much for a teenager to handle on his own and the idea that maybe they hadn’t trained him hard enough. But over time, watching him do nothing while the town suffered from bandit raids (unaware that the rest of the town refused to let their “disappointment” near a fight anymore) soured her opinion, and when he took off without a word, she concluded that he was running away from his failures. This position has, naturally, caused a rift between her and some of her siblings; she’s only really close to Lazuli these days, though Jasper still talks to her from time to time.

Jasper (Jay, Jayjay, Jaybird, really any nickname): Oldest brother of the Martina household, Aster’s twin brother, and self appointed “man of the house”. 26 at campaign time. Always there with a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on; he’s in my notes to the dm as “doting but exasperated.” (Why are all my a3 followers looking at me like that?) Following his father’s death by illness, he decided to become a doctor to help whoever he could, opting to study under the town’s healer and learning healing magic. But, notably, never any resurrection magic; people only die in Viannok when it’s their time, and even if there was an attack, their Lumen would save them, so, the healer reasoned, there was no need for that.

Which is to say, Jasper tried very hard to revive Cole during the Incident but was unsuccessful, only managing to stitch together his injuries post-mortem before having to pass him off to a mysterious traveler who “knew someone”. This was….traumatic, to say the least. He made a point of learning resurrection magic but he can’t really handle the deceased or combat at all, and the thought of losing more family in particular is deeply upsetting to him. He makes a point of trying not to let anyone worry about him, so he tries to keep that bit under wraps…but his littlest brother taking off to god-knows-where without a word is not really helping with that.

Willow (Will): youngest daughter and middle-est child, 24 years old at campaign time. Seemingly stuck in a permanent rebellious phase, as far as Viannok is concerned; she’s incredibly outspoken, never letting her opinion go unheard, especially when her family is involved. She was by far the most critical about the town’s treatment of Cole; blessed or not, he was a kid and deserved to be treated like such! Some folks said she was just jealous, which couldn’t be further from the truth. (Well, maybe she was a bit jealous for a while.)

Post-Incident, she was even less able to hold her tongue, constantly stepping in to defend Cole and, eventually, being the only one still referring to him by name. (The night before he left, the two got into a huge fight over the name thing, actually.) Her anger towards the town only grew after Cole left, and after a particularly nasty fight with Aster and El in response to their criticism of her brother, Willow took off as well, setting out for, well, anywhere else. She still writes here and there, mostly to her mom and Jay. (After what Aster pulled? She has no right to know.)

Lazuli (Laz): second-youngest brother. 22 years old at campaign time. He’s pretty hard to read, all things considered: he’s a pretty chill, go-with-the-flow, generally unmotivated kind of person. Lazy? Perhaps.

Well, he was, anyway, until The Incident. It turned out to be the kick in the pants that he needed, and in the years following he began studying magic and became the town’s “new” protector. It’s not uncommon to hear folks in the town praise him as “what our Lumen should have been,” and a few even claim that they made a mistake all those years ago and that Laz was the hero-to-be all along. The attention was nice at first, but now he’s starting to realize that all this attention isn’t really what it’s cracked up to be.

El: Cole’s childhood best friend, same age he is (so 20) and the closest thing he has to a “first love.” They had one of those will-they-won’t-they deals where they clearly wanted something more romantic but both weren’t really sure where to go with it. El is a gremlin at heart, always stirring up trouble in a fun way. They greatly encouraged some of the…less good parts of Cole’s whole Hero Thing, encouraging him to solve every problem with his magic or his strength instead of reaching out to others for help.

Which is to say, she bought into the whole Lumen thing hard. The Incident brought their little would-be romance to an end, with El declaring that he was a failure and that he hadn’t tried hard enough to save them. They’ve been training on their own since then. “Well, if our ‘hero’ can’t do it, someone has to.” It’s kinda their fault that Cole left, as his fight with them prompted him to leave.

PALADIN BOYE NPC COMPENDIUM (plus the boye himself)

okay i said i’d do it! so here we are. i’ll get image refs up later i just wanna write some text down. This specific initial thing is dedicated to The Boye, because his rant is going on foooorreeevvverrrrr; I’ll add the rest under a cut on a reblog.

worth noting that while pretty much everything leading up to The Incident is canon to the campaign, anything written about a character that isn’t The Boye after that point is not necessarily campaign canon! just me havin fun :3

Oh also if you’re familiar enough with crit role to make sense, we’re running this campaign in wildemount! So that setting’s godly bullshit applies and I’m not gonna go too in-depth on it

content warnings for both this and the reblog: HELLA talk about death (he gets better), trauma, some…potentially-distressing issues of self, honestly i really don’t know how to tag this, boy’s got issues and so do a bunch of the folks here actually

Keep reading

[swan-archive]

so: ya gal viewed a Certain Notorious Play the other night in SF

a little post-mortem, because i just KNOW you all needed another one of THOSE

Michael Luwoye was a wonderful Hamilton. i know it’s catty to rag on LMM’s voice, but really, the sheer DIFFERENCE it makes when you have an actor with a powerful voice in the role. doesn’t even compare. he roared and howled and bellowed and felt like a tiny compact hurricane bursting off the stage. amazing.

- i specify “tiny” because he was VISIBLY SHORTER than both Solea Pfeiffer and Amber Iman. TINY HAM IS CANON

- Luwoye’s act 1 young Ham was maybe the cutest thing i’ve ever seen! he was SO thrilled to meet Burr and SO excited to make friends and SO jazzed to go out drinking and revolution-ing with them, just so desperate to be liked and find a place and make his name. cute boy. excitable boy.

- not to monster au at yall but Luwoye literally SNARLED “call me son ONE MORE TIME” and uuuuhhhhhh it’s all canon, all monster aus are canon now, i don’t make the rules, i just live in fear of them like yall do

- and then the turnaround between that and a more tired, more morally compromised, running-out-of-options Ham in act 2! a really deft character shift and one that was delightful to watch.

- interesting little character moment: from what i’ve heard/seen most Hamiltons jump right back into the game after “Say No To This,” bantering with Burr and bouncing off to the meeting with Jefferson and Madison to Get Shit Done. Luwoye did not play it like this. his Hamilton was visibly wrung out and sick at heart at the beginning of “Room Where It Happens,” answering Burr in clipped monosyllables and not looking at him and standing all stiff and still until he started to mimic Burr’s “talk less / smile more” in an intentionally crude and sorta nasty style. this Ham was not happy to have to take a page out of Burr’s book.

- Luwoye’s “Hurricane” was a powerhouse. the rapped section was this howl of defiance that nearly knocked me out of my seat, Ham standing there and daring God to do His worst and vowing he’d get back up again. ooooooof. intense.

- Luwoye emoted like a MOTHERFUCKER. his break in “It’s Quiet Uptown” was gutting. tears literally dripping off his face.

- this cast seemed...lighter on the Lams than other productions, which was a bit disappointing, but at Laurens’ first verse in “My Shot,” Luwoye did that hilarious deer-in-the-headlights fullbody freeze at him as he had a Strong Gay Moment

Joshua Henry’s Burr felt very different from Leslie’s as it comes across on the cast album/b**tl*g, but in a super compelling way. i think i saw an article that referred to his Burr as more of a “showman” than Leslie’s, and if i’m remembering right, i agree with that description. Henry!Burr was very mobile and raggedly charming, always had a disingenuous wide-eyed smile hitched up, except for...when it slipped. the untrustworthy self-serving mercenary Ham sees by the end of act 2 was very much in evidence here. 

- and his Burr broke SO EARLY! by “Winter’s Ball” he was already visibly/audibly like WHAT THE HAP IS FUCKENING re: Hamilton’s ascent. his “Wait For It” right on the heels of that was so angry. you could feel his desperation as he tried to justify his methods to the audience, and his unspoken understanding that nothing he is doing makes sense. this was a Burr who, on some level, KNEW that his schtick was not going to remain tenable for long, even if he didn’t know the exact nature of his own breaking point. suuuuuuuuuper engaging to watch.

- ahhahahaha and his delivery of the “...Okay,” in “Non-Stop” was HILARIOUS it was like “hmm yes please keep doing this thing where you say nice things about me perhaps”

- ...also, not to be crass, but somewhere around “Non-Stop” i became suddenly and powerfully aware of how his thighs looked in his costume and uuhhhhhhhhhhh. can we just like. get a Yell Heah real quick for Buff Burr? Yell. H e a h

- act 2 Burr spiraled REAL quick. his “Room Where It Happens” was wild-eyed and electric and frantic and by the time they got to “Your Obedient Servant” and TWWWE he was just a WRECK. where Leslie’s Burr gave at least the impression of making a measured choice to shoot to kill, Henry’s was clearly running on fumes and not in control, and it was terrifying and great.

- and not to go too out of order but can i just say, “Aaron Burr, Sir” is kind of a throwaway exposition-y song, but having it played between two black men? REVELATORY. INCREDIBLE. “fools who run their mouths oft wind up dead.” we were five minutes into the play and i was already like ulp

Emmy Raver-Lampman is the great love of my life and she will be my bride one day, even if i have to defeat Daveed Diggs in unarmed single combat for the privilege. i will do it. i will do whatever it takes to know the touch of her hand. are you listening, Emmy? i’m right here. i’m right h e r e

- my favorite thing about her act 1 Angelica was how YOUNG she played her. which, granted, she is a younger actress than Renee/Karen/Mandy, but i thought it was a really powerful interpretation given that Angelica really is only two years older than Eliza, is still not all that old herself when Eliza’s doing her giddy “Helpless.”

- okay. okay, so. Emmy’s “Satisfied.” okay. a YOUNG “Satisfied.” instead of a mature regretful reflection on a decision that had pros and cons on either side, the regret and the loneliness and the love felt incredibly raw and immediate. Emmy’s interpretation was very “yes, i made this choice, and oh my god what if this was IT, what if this was the END what if there is nothing like this for me ever AGAIN, i cannot take it back and i would not take it back but oh god oh god oh god” and it. destroyed. me. she had that flutter in her voice that you get when you’re crying and laughing at the same time at the second “to the groom / to the bride” and holy shit it was devastating

- also: G5 BITCH TEAR OUT MY THROAT WITH YOUR TEETH

- another fun thing about Emmy’s Angelica was how utterly unimpressed she was with every man she interacted with! her teardown of Burr almost felt like an afterthought in how easily it came out. her chemistry with Luwoye wasn’t as immediately sparky as, say, Renee and Javi’s, but their back-and-forth was very banter-y and instantly comfortable and you really got the sense of two people who could have clicked together given the chance.

- her act 2 interactions with Ham were delightful too—at the end of “Take a Break,” the staging has Angelica start to chase after Ham when he leaves all “i can’t stop until i get my plan through congress.” this was not an “i languished in a loveless marriage in London i lived only to read your letters” chase as Emmy played it. it was a “bitch i have been on a boat for THREE MONTHS and if you think i’m gonna just be like oh hahah whatever we don’t need to hang out when i came all the way over here to see your wife and you then THINK AGAIN—” chase. it was Good. her rejection of Ham in “Reynolds Pamphlet” was so complete and crushing too—it was obvious that Ham was not even on her mind, she was there for Eliza.

i expected to like Amber Iman as Peggy/Maria, but i didn’t expect the extent to which she would steal the stage whenever she was featured in a song! she was so lively and read so well from the audience and was just a joy to watch.

- her Peggy was HILARIOUS. where Jazzy’s Peggy in “Schuyler Sisters” seemed more bratty-kid-sister-i-wanna-go-home-i’m-tiiiiiiiiiiired, Amber’s was like “you guys. you guys. we’re going to get mugged. we’re going to get shot. we’re going to get mugged, and then shot, and then murdered for good measure and WHY IS NOBODY LISTENING TO ME FUFKDCHSDKSFKHEJ” and the fact that this came across so strongly when she was sharing the stage with The Great Love Of My Life and could not have rightfully expected to claim any part of my attention is a credit to her

- the faces she was making at every male cast member who came within 2 feet of her were HILARIOUS. THE FUCK IS THIS. THE FUCK IS YOU. this was a Strong Lesbian Peggy for sure.

- and then her Maria! her Maria was magnetic. she played her as complicit but very obviously unhappy about it; whenever she stepped away from Ham as he did one of his monologue bits you could see the tension and nervousness and distaste on her face, but then he’d turn back to her and the mask would snap back up. not to toot my own horn but like...I Have Been Right This Whole Time.

- and then that red dress just draws the eye whenever Maria’s onstage, such that you couldn’t help but seek her out and watch her standing there silently as Ham drove himself over a cliff into the ocean. she was RIGHT THERE for all of “We Know,” standing there under one of the staircases next to Ham as he went off, watching watching watching and UGH it was such a little thing but it was so good.

i was surprisingly not as sold on Solea Pfeiffer as Eliza as I thought i would be? she had some great moments and was overall a strong performer but for whatever reason they never quite added up to a cohesive whole for me. whatever. still gonna marry her

- her “That Would Be Enough” with Michael Luwoye was actually deeply tragic in a way i’ve never seen/heard from any of the other Eliza/Alex pair-ups. these were clearly two people on completely different pages, having conversations right past each other, and that hurt me very deeply as someone who ships the thing. but it was in my mind also very believable characterization! whatever. i wanted to die. TALK ABOUT YOUR FUCKING FEELINGS, CHILDREN

- actually one of my favorite moments of hers was a teeny tiny one in “Take a Break,” during the verse where Angelica is reading the comma sexting letter. Eliza is onstage but out of the spotlight at this point, tidying up, and she’s bent over and closing the piano when they get to the “my Dearest...Angelica.” for a second she raised her head and half looked over her shoulder and i was like OOOHHHHH SHIT because it felt very, like, “Eliza knows about this flirtation but trusts Angelica not to overstep her bounds BUT is still deeply unsatisfied with how it is playing out” and i just. liked it. good shit.

- i think there’s a spectrum of “Burn”/post-“Burn” Elizas; in my mind i look at it as the spectrum of ice Elizas (exemplified by Pippa) to fire Elizas (exemplified by Aubin Wise/Lexi Lawson). Solea’s “Burn” fell closer to Pippa’s on that scale, very cold vengeance and restrained but ugly hurt, but after that song she ran even colder than Pippa’s Eliza. she didn’t break at all in “It’s Quiet Uptown,” not even when Ham did. her air was this frigidly magnanimous “yes. you did this to us. don’t presume to do it again,” and she looked to be the one supporting him as they exited. i don’t know that that’s my Eliza, but it was interesting to watch.

didn’t have super strong feelings about any of the revset/dual cast folks, aside from surprisingly Jordan Donica as Laf/Jefferson! was not expecting to jive on him, given Daveed is such a charismatic actor in both those roles, and he was clearly working hard for the trickier raps, but he was very funny and fun to watch.

- as Laf, he really got across the sheer Badness of Lafayette as a person, in the sense that he was deeply uncool and trying real hard and just. not. quite. making it. he was also very good at the physical comedy bits given that he is built like a man who is half human, half giraffe, and half random bag of pipe cleaners stashed in the back of the crafts closet of an elementary school classroom.

- seriously he is ALL LIMB. he TOWERED over everyone else onstage. A MONSTER. A MISSHAPEN GIANT

- he also played a very slick and menacing Jefferson who was constantly using his height advantage to attempt to intimidate Ham. didn’t work, obviously, but made for some very striking tableaux in the cabinet battles.

Ruben Carbajal had a lovely voice but i believed him more as Philip than as Laurens because HE LOOKED LIKE A LITERAL CHILD. HOLY SHIT. chubby cheeks and petulant pout and all. it was nuts. where is hamilton casting getting ahold of all these FETUSES

- as i mentioned i preferred Anthony’s Laurens but i did enjoy what a fratty little fucker Ruben’s Laurens came off as. like a hummingbird given human form. that was fun.

Mathenee Treco was a good Herc, kinda camp gay dad friend? which was unexpected but fun. his Mads was a little more vital than it seems like other people’s tend to run; he came off as someone who would overreach himself and then break down into coughing. something a little different.

i eh...didn’t particularly care for Isiah Johnson’s Washington. it was a fairly played straight Local Dad Fed Up With This Shit, Just Wants To Go Home And Build A Deck, which like...isn’t wrong, but there could be more, you know? eh. nothing’s perfect i guess.

i think it was @duckbunny who characterized Rory O’Malley’s King George as “bratty spoiled rich child throwing a temper tantrum” to Groff’s “sleazy abusive bf” King George? or maybe that was someone else? anyway i believed it, both because of his very round babyish face and because of his lack of poise compared to Groff’s King. he was scaryfunny. i habitually skip kgiii’s songs when listening to the cast album, so i was pleased to find myself enjoying all of them live. still think either “What Comes Next?” or “I Know Him” could’ve stood to be cut and replaced with...almost anything else to cover the costume change, really, but they’re fun, no big deal.

this has very little to do with anything but the ensemble featured dupes for Carleigh Bettiol, Betsy Struxness, and Ariana DeBose, i wasn’t sure what to do with this information, perhaps you are not sure what to do with it either, we can just hang out and be puzzled together, it’s chill

[joaniebluetoes]

Aidan at the BFI / RT Television Festival 8/4/17 - some thoughts.

I took no pictures. I just listened and watched very carefully. It was the first time I had seen him irl and didn’t want to waste any time with buttons, shutters and seeing if my thumb was in the way again.

The audience were incredibly polite in how they received him and asked him questions, and gave him gifts during the Audience Question section at the end.  It was through courtesy or blind and utter shock, put it that way, but it was not a melee.  Someone should have served tea and cucumber sandwiches on best china.

He came onto the BFI IMAX theatre stage to no special fanfare, no rapturous or out of place applause.  It was quite muted.  We had been told to come and take our seats before he arrived, so the reception committee outside must have been pretty thin and according to some he was just left with the professional autograph hunters to receive him (I didn’t see any of that - I was in there and up in my seat pretty quickly, like a greased ferret through a drainpipe actually).

They showed 2 clips from Series 3.  This perhaps was the reason behind the request “no recording of any sort whatsoever” at the beginning.  People did though.  Some of the ushers were moving around trying to stop people recording or taking pictures using mime gestures (”cut it” slashing fingers across throat), which reminded me of the old days when they would try and stop teenagers kissing in the back row at the pictures.  That approach worked just as well as it did all those years ago.

He didn’t move around a great deal.  I’d heard stories of Restless Fidgety Turner, but no, he wasn’t.  Mostly sat there with his left leg crossed across his right, and his hands out in front resting on the bucket lounge type of chair you find in Costa Coffee (other coffee retail outlets are also available).  His hair was down to start with.  It had obviously been cut since filming but it was still mid neck length.  He had brought his elasticated hair band with him, and this was on his wrist most of the time.  The beard was in good health but not out of control.  It wasn’t Odessa level of frizzy.

There were minor issues with technology.  One of the clips was shown right in the middle of someone answering a question (forgive me, I think it was Damien) and it took them a while to realise and halt the clip half way.  It involved a scene with Demelza’s brothers who are new characters in series 2. 

The other minor issue was with Alison Graham’s voice microphone which packed up too.  Aidan was able to project his voice beautifully to the back of the auditorium without any assistance, and all those lessons from Ian MacKellan on not muttering must have sunk in and stayed there from his days on the Hobbit and from 5 years in theatre too of course. [note to self - his mike was working just fine, but attached on very securely to his paler than usual tee-shirt].

I am not able to remember everything.  There were times I even forgot

to keep watching him like a hawk.  Alison Graham from Radio Times asked all the questions initially, and I agree with others who said she was a bit Series 1 focussed and of course “ The Elephant in The Room question” had to be mentioned.  Yada-yada.  We’ve moved on already.  We also already know the history of how he got the role, the story of only ever one name in the ring, that he had the scripts Fed-Ex’d over (but it was the first time I’d heard it was about 3 months after he got back from filming the Hobbit)

There was not much talk of what had gone on in series 2.  To those who follow him as slavishly as I do there was not much new to report, but that wasn’t the point.  It was the opportunity to see and hear him that counted.  I was personally glad.  I didn’t want a post-mortem on who said or didn’t say the right thing at the wrong time to the person who should have been as they were in the book.  The television series is a separate entity in my mind.  It was said again, and it can’t be said enough, this is a 21st century adaptation by a woman, from the source material written by a man in the middle of the 20th century, about a FICTIONAL set of characters in the 18th.  It changes even further between the script and the screen.

Everyone knows by now that series 4 has been announced to start filming in September. It was announced as an aside comment from Aidan as a throw away comment and there was a little ripple of applause [which I think I started].  He seemed a little surprised that he should get such a reaction.  I did seem to notice that Debbie and Damien did a little stiffening, but only for a second.  Bless him again, for going ahead of message.  Debbie’s still writing series 4 at the moment.

The audience questions seemed to try and get closer to the theme of the session which was “Ross Poldark - an old fashioned hero for a modern time (sic)” than the questions asked by Alison Graham.  But I agree that was never really addressed in any depth.  Out came the “We never called him a hero” response and well trodden explanations of the flawed, real, certainly not emotionally heroic figure. But it was my feeling that everyone already knew the answer to that one before they came.

An hour in Aidan land goes by in a fraction of the time.  I’d like to borrow the Tardis and go back again and hear it all again.  It was never ever going to be enough time for everyone to get everything they wished for.   

The best part for me were: The questions from the audience.  They knew the really important questions.

Most seemed quite shell-shocked once handed the roving microphone but all were very, very brave through their fear - and he responded to them carefully and tried to answer the whole of the (often several questions-in-one) question posed to him.  And he did it with honesty, wit, charm and as if no-one had ever asked him that question before ever.  His fingers sometimes drummed lightly on the edge of the chair arms and he tied his hair back at some point (he’s definitely done that before - whoosh and it was done).  He was much more animated answering the audience’s questions, and it was a real lottery as to who got the chance to ask their question.  But no matter, everyone stayed in their seats (pretty much) and there was no fighting, pushing or actual biting.

Congratulations to those who got their questions asked, answered, had their gifts delivered to the stage, got to the stage to deliver their gifts and in one very special case received an actual hug.  Warm fuzzy feelings all round.

He seemed to me to be saying “I am a working actor, doing the best I can with what I’ve got on the day.”  Of course I’d like to go back and play scenes differently.  I won’t be playing the same role over and over again because that doesn’t keep my interest.  I’m not going to be, or want to play socially morally responsible man in every role.  To him, his characters are complete and distinct units to each other but he can see how others can draw parallels between his different roles.  He wouldn’t mind if Ross Poldark had a beard in series 4, but from the reaction of Debbie, that ain’t never gonna happen in any universe she has any say in ever.  He’s still not too comfortable sat in front of a big picture of himself, but did ask if he could turn around and watch one of the clips on the screen [as if he needed to ask permission].  At one point he offered to take his tee shirt off for Alison Graham.  I wonder how she’s been since then?

What really struck me was the way he said goodbye to everyone. Even though he’d announced he had to go because he had a wedding to go to in Dublin, it still took him a few minutes to leave the stage.  He paid attention to those who had come forward (it wasn’t a stampede, just a polite gathering), signed the odd thing, shook a couple of hands. And then stood at the edge of the [very narrow] stage and thanked everyone for coming, did a little theatre bow with his hands together and received a very, very polite and restrained round of applause.

We didn’t see him leave.  He was gone [in a puff of smoke, I’d like to pretend], but no. Just went.  And then hellos and goodbyes were said amongst the online fans [just as long as you looked like your profile picture or someone said your name] and the fans gathered in their little pockets of preference and talked about their favourite subject for the rest of the night.

So, the burning question for a first timer is ..... how was it for you Joan?  Oh pretty much like the real thing, mostly an out of body experience with very little real recollection of each moment by moment.  But yes, when can I do it again?

Sorry if I didn’t see you or get chance to talk to you whilst I was there.  It may take me some time to recover, but special mention must go to the lady who greeted me on the way out of the auditorium with “You’re Joan Ellis?” in an excited tone “I just loved your nipples!”  The things that you get recognised for, hey?  I am a serious blogger I will have you know...  oh yeah?

[withacorkscrew-blog]

Sherlock: The Final Problem

In which some people fail to understand that “the legends, the stories, the adventures” are not the whole point. 

And in which “some people” are definitely not Sherlock Holmes. 

For the last couple of weeks I’ve tried to get to coherence, but if Moftiss can’t be arsed to do that, why bother? So, some lightly edited analytical notes on this disaster of a finale. 

What was the purpose of the entire intro? Mycroft watches sexy noir crime videos for fun? And has interspersed his sexy videos with family footage to the extent that he is no longer surprised by the segue? 

There are 38 fics on AO3 with titles that are some variation on “rarely pure and never simple.” I will bet that at least 30 of them are better than this episode. 

“It’s family” “That’s why John stays” - Is Sherlock saying that he loves John and considers him family, or that he has so little trust in/for his family that he won’t discuss family business without a witness? 

“In the early days Sherlock was an emotional child.” - If this episode served no other purpose, it was to demonstrate that Sherlock is deeply, deeply traumatized. Has there every been a relationship in his life that isn’t abusive? Is that what drew him to John at first? The simplicity and straightforwardness of John’s admiration and respect combined with John’s understanding/experience of trauma? And if so, how much more tragic is this season and the change in Moftiss’ depiction of John? 

Blowing up the flat - why? What was the point? Why was it a necessary impetus for anything? They wouldn’t have gone after Euros otherwise? Please. Gratuitous pyrotechnics, aka this show’s new MO.

Mycroft’s bit about badges and titles and satirical costumes was a momentary sort of spark. Could’ve been political allegory, if it had any context instead of being a sloppy throwaway.

Euros does the same mid-piece pause that Sherlock does when he hears Moriarty on 221B’s creaky stair in TRF, and that nod to deliberateness and continuity was almost painful in an episode that otherwise feels so distant from the show’s strengths. 

Mycroft doesn’t want blood on his hands? Mycroft - who is the British government, who is involved with ~plots, who works with assassins and thugs, who controls the secret service, who is about to make a cold calculation about whether to crash a full plane into a city or into the water - can’t have blood on his hands? Is he making a distinction between literal and figurative blood or is this another loss of continuity?

"Is it not in the end selfish to keep one's hands clean at the expense of another's life?” - More ethical threads that could have been interesting if they gave a shit, but that are rendered empty and irrelevant by their disinterest in distinguishing between characters (people?) who are capable of making ethical judgments and those who are not

Just really loving the idea of Moriarty planning his post-mortem chaos by making choo-choo noises into the camera. I would be so much happier watching an hour and half of Andrew Scott hamming it up villainously.

“She’s very clever.” “I’m beginning to think you’re not.” - You know, this could’ve been an interesting thread too. This could’ve been a great storyline. Sherlock rejecting others’ derogatory assessments of him and coming to own his unique set of intelligences? Sherlock confronting abusive influences in his life and recovering his self-esteem? That could have been so universal and rewarding and so well-integrated into the show. Not this show, as it is now, but isn’t that a damn shame. 

Is this what they think of female genius? 

This whole arc would have been so much better if John and Mary's love had been believable. 

This is a really fucking shitty thing to do to Molly and a really shitty last place to leave her. 

“Emotional context...it destroys you every time.” NO ACTUALLY IT DOESN’T. COULD DO WITH A BIT MORE HERE THANKS.

Why is Sherlock so angry as to destroy the coffin? Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons why. Plenty. Euros has pushed him to an emotional breaking point, he’s done something cruel (though ethically justifiable) to someone he cares about, he’s spent the last few minutes contemplating the possibly imminent death of someone he cares about, he’s under intense stress, he’s failed to make a correct deduction about Euros’ reach, he’s failed to make a correct deduction and that always influences his sense of self - there are lots of reasons. But which one is it? Because I can’t tell.

Sherlock’s choice to shoot himself is clever and emotional and he knows it, or he wouldn’t have counted down to it, and it’s that combination that makes him the best Holmes sibling. Another thread that would have made for incredible stories, if this show was still in the business of telling those. 

“This is where I get off.” Oh, Moriarty, you were such a delicious villain. And I have closure about you. Bless.

Euros....is the child on the plane? Was the child on the plane? What? What is this? What is happening? Sherlock calls it “the perfect metaphor” So, how did they get audio?

Someone reallllllly needed to buy the Holmes parents a book on raising gifted children.

John has a shock blanket. Greg says Sherlock is a good man. That’s some nice symmetry, in the most basic possible sense. 

Lestrade is going to take care of Mycroft - at least there might be some happy shippers in the world tonight.

"Sherlock? Well? You were always the grown up. What do we do now?" - Wow Sherlock was the most abused. That is such an odd conclusion to leave us with. Probably not the one they intended, but I am at a loss - and I think a reasonable one - for what Moftiss did intend, beyond having a laugh amongst themselves.

Are these Holmes family violin jams like........gonna be a thing now?

“The desperate, the unloved, the persecuted” have never had a place in 221B. (Or on the show, other than as victims and villains.) One of the core premises of the show is that Sherlock is exponentially more interested in the clever, intelligent, mysterious, and challenging, that he wants an intellectual puzzle rather than an ethical or emotional one. How on earth could Mary conclude that 221B was a place for the downtrodden, when Sherlock could never be bothered with much more than writing them off as low IQs with limited life expectancies? 

Except, oh wait: these characters are completely inconsistent and nothing makes sense and there are no rules and, therefore, no point in being invested. 

Things to watch:

Questions to which we will probably never have answers:

WHO SENT MARY'S FUCKING TAPES? We still don’t know. They’re still coming. Moriarty’s dead, Euros is incapacitated, Mary didn’t have friends or family... Does this show care about logic anymore? At all?  (Okay, we maybe have an answer to that one)

What happens to Molly?

What happened to Anderson and Donovan?

Remember in the first episode where it was intimated that Anderson and Donovan were boning? What happened to that?

What happened to Anerson’s wife?

What happened to Lestrade’s wife?

What happens to Lestrade? 

Why did they introduce that lady detective in the first episode of this season?

John got shot but had no injuries. How? 

Presumably he went to the hospital and was out of commission for some time and childcare arrangements needed to be made and Sherlock probably would have come to visit and just...no? 

When not serving as an unusually active 221B tchotchke, where does Rosie go and who takes care of her? 

John and Sherlock got blown up and thrown through a second story window with no apparent injuries. How? 

What was that high tech cave that Sherlock was lurking in in TST? Does he just have a bunch of caves around just in case? 

What was the point of reminding us of Irene Adler? 

What was the point of Mycroft’s interaction with Lady “here’s my private number” Smallwood?

“I had no one” and then the flash to Nemo Holmes’ grave - Is Nemo Holmes someone or something Euros loved? Or just a convenient segue to this codebreaking problem that Sherlock cracks immediately and that doesn’t engage the audience at all? Is there any point in even having this kind of puzzle when they haven’t made any attempt to follow through on audience engagement in the mystery since TRF?

Do you think that after TRF Moftiss just discovered a whole new level of visceral pleasure in fucking with their fans and that’s been their underlying motivation for the last two seasons?

Are we supposed to think that Euros was the child on the plane? Euros, the plane....seriously, what the fuck is going on?

If John is chained to the bottom of the well, how can Sherlock have saved him by throwing a rope down, which John then apparently climbed? 

Are they even trying for continuity, if they’ve lost track of someone being chained up vs not within a five minute sequence of the same episode? 

What was the point of this episode? Why did they make it? Why?

The actual unedited last note I made about this show:

This was dumb and that last frame was stupid

[sagitaninta]

Ecology meets Genetics and the Models in the Between: Notes from My Presentation about a Research in Phylogeography

They said you can be anything, so I became a [insert lifelong dream here] as long as you put a correct assumption. 

Yep. I have seen a lot of stuffs were done by modelling just because they were realistically impossible to investigate with natural system, hahaha. The fact does not change that with current progress of modelling, you basically can do almost anything. The problem is just how far you can interpret your result and how believable it is. 

Because of my paper presentation assignment, I came to researches about how we use information on species distribution along with microsatellite DNA to infer what makes species likes to exist in certain places. The paper was actually a follow up of previous researches done by the authors, so they are all in the same gang. I would say the paper is confusing, but thanks to the paper that they cited which I found easier to read, I can understand what they are doing. The paper is also open-access so better read that one, too. Hahaha. 

Their research was not the first attempt to use species distribution data to infer population demography. However, merging these two is an emerging approach in phylogeography, the stuff I intend to do as thesis for my master, but impeded by the unavailability of population genetic data and to address my question. *cries* Six months of master thesis period definitely not enough. Choosing this paper hence kinda cheer me up because I can understand how to do the research when I later could. Basically I need occurrence data, environmental data, and DNA sequences. However, this will still address one species only. I wonder how can I do it for several species, but community distribution is a much different question; they can’t even decide on a good predictor yet.

I find the questions from my friend after my presentation important to reflect on this kind of research:

1. What do you think about how far can we trust results from modelling?

Luckily, that evening, a guy named Daniel Wegmann came to our university to give a talk on a bunch of approximation methods. How to correct sequencing errors? Model them. How to calculate waiting time for allel change? Model it. How to anticipate post mortem damage of ancient DNA? Model again. He is so into modelling and I enjoy his talk so much as he explained the necessary step. Too bad he only speak for an hour. Hahaha. I then asked him after the talk, how does he deal with approximation stuffs. They are estimation anyway! He said there are only two ways to test if the model are trustworthy: you test it with a data that the properties are in your control, i.e. simulation, or, you test it with empirical data, which most of the time will lead to the rejection of your model *cries in mathematical notations* There are ways to test if a model is reliable for a certain data set, but they are never telling us if we are closer with the truth. Well, a model is always wrong anyway. And, it is more of a philosophical point of view: how do you know that you are seeing the real deal? You should read his works, most are mathematical stuffs and statistical methods, but they were written as good as they were presented in his talk. Truly, it’s great *Trump voice*. If you are interested on this topic, this is where statistic and philosophy meet. You should see this lecture for more enlightenment.

2. Why are they using microsatellite data?

No idea. I am not the authors. Hahaha. Our discussion is fruitful nevertheless to conclude that microsatellite data is not catching local adaptation by population, if any. That is perhaps why their model that incorporate local factors did not match their empirical data. The research is only finding pattern nevertheless so the choice of marker is not so fatal. In a more intimate search for this question, I found a paper on historical demography research that state "mtDNA variation in species with male-biased dispersal can imply deviations from neutrality that do not reflect actual population expansion or selection”. I don’t think this is applicable for plants that do self-fertilization nevertheless.

3. Could this be applied to conservation biology and help the practice?

I said it definitely could, but I felt that I did not give a satisfying technical step toward this question. I found that finding a practical approach of this will be valuable on conservation management and a potential research topic. AAAAND in fact I found some researchers had discovered that human modified landscapes highly affect the genetic structure of a reed deer population in France. I am gonna quote SAS on this:

The world of ecology is still so vast that we will not do the same exact research at the same time anyway *self-cheering*. 

Modelling is in the end useful for simplifying your thoughts. Make a simple equation and try if it is working or not. Sounds simple, right? As my professor said, “Maths are there to make things easy,”

(All papers linked here is on my possession. If you want to read more than their abstract and cannot access it, feel free to contact me.)