#in other news we are sticking with this style of footnotes because I have not come up with anything better yet

[stylishanachronism]

Cool, we have a sheep vote, @brightwaterforarainyday thanks babe I love you, unfortunately this is still... mostly not about sheep? It is about food though, and there’s definitely a sheep tangent. Also an extremely terrible rainfall chart.

So @yanara126 brought up a really good point two? weeks ago, about butter in Eir Glanfath cooking, namely that there’s a fuck ton of it for a country that has no grazing pasture, basically, or any visible dairying tradition, and after a lot of fruitless searching for swamp based dairy (if you know of any let me know okay? something has to produce a useful amount of milk without grassland that’s not camels I’m sure), I actually sat down and opened the cookbook(1), which says that they import all their butter but my guys. my dudes. Dyrwodian cooking culture makes no fucking sense.

Last time around, I talked about the fact that there’s a very good argument to be made that the Dyrwood mostly produces textiles, and pretty much just enough food to get by. I would like to amend that statement to include a rich and deeply extensive dairying tradition (Obsidian why aren’t they all obsessed with cheese), including cow, sheep, and goat cheeses. (Also a lot of butter. Which they export. To Eir Glanfath. In large enough quantities to have fundamentally changed at least one tribe’s cooking culture(2). This is never once brought up in game.) I’m taking this from the fact that most if not all of the Dyrwodian recipes involve lots of dairy, from variously named sources (mostly goat, for some reason) and in various forms, and while the major protein is chicken, they also call for beef specifically, in a recipe canonical enough to make it into the game proper (one of five that do, two of which are supposedly of Rauataian origin), which leaves us with sheep as the only not explicitly confirmed dairy animal involved, but you already know my thoughts on that.

I also said, last time around, that your guess was as good as mine where their planting was concerned, as long as you didn’t pick corn, and I am apparently extremely wrong about that because the cookbook says everybody in the Dyrwood (and Eir Glanfath) loves cornbread (to the disgust of their Aedyran relatives)(3), which, on further thought, actually fits in with the game canon better than I’d thought, so strike that, corn is definitely one of their major grains.

Having (finally) looked into what little information there is about their planting schedule (literally three pages, one of which is about why this information is probably not useful from an in-universe perspective, thanks Obsidian, and one of which is actually the (not terribly helpful) rainfall chart), I am unfortunately required to rely mostly on real life sources, which means I am making this shit up out of whole cloth and may be wandering in the entirely wrong direction. Take the rest of this with an even larger grain of salt than usual.

Starting with what little canon information there is about Dyrwodan crops(4): there’s a 99% chance the winter wheat we see in Gilded Vale has Scabs, given what we’re told about it, (and we know it’s winter wheat because it’s past flowering when the game starts), there’s a mill that’s been around long enough to prove there’s been a need for it for a long time, so cereal grains aren’t a new thing in the Vale’s rotation, and they grow a great deal of ‘vegetables’ (“A varied collection of celery, carrots, and other common vegetables.”, in game description) and ‘fruit’ (”Dyrwoodan fruits include the imported sonnread, staple of Aedyran orchards, and the common pear, though Vailian figs are quite popular among the wealthy.” igd), and apparently they either grow or import rice (”Simple but effective, this stew contains a pleasing blend of meat, vegetables, and rice.” igd), with the bias on grow given where and how often it shows up (I’ve got... one reasonable location for it, but otherwise it makes like, no sense, but more on that later), and... that’s about it. I know more about the drugs they like than the food they eat, and I’m not even thinking about medicine in this context yet.

Pulling from non-game canon, we’ve got a tiny bit more. The cookbook is more specific about their grains (oats and corn to go with the wheat), and indicates at least three varieties of nuts, the almanac more specific about their vegetables (...but not in a particularly useful manner), plus it has a rainfall chart! Which, y’know, only has five entries(5). Again, that’s about it.

So here’s where I start making this up whole cloth. (Gilded Vale has the literal only field we get to see, so it’s the example I’m using.) Given that the wheat has scabs, the previous, probably cash, crop was corn, possibly with a cover crop of forage root vegetables or a legume of some sort over winter, depending on where they were in their cycle. (scabs are a much bigger danger after corn, because the fungus survives best on corn mulch.) Given where the wheat is in it’s growth cycle, that gives us a solid guess at that year’s crop rotation(6), namely a winter cereal (wheat), followed by a cash crop (corn), which is usually followed by a legume or a grass, (it’s entirely likely you might nurse the legume with the grass, as well), and then either a winterkilled cereal or some sort of forage tuber. They had a wet, warm winter and a dry spring, followed by a wet summer (but that last’s canon for plot reasons). Given the cookbook, they probably cycle their wheat with oats, rye, and barley, and they probably cycle beets, turnips, and maybe carrots as their forage. I would not be surprised with buckwheat as a short season cover crop, between the corn and the legume, tilled back into the soil when said legume is seeded, or a mustard let grow to seed. Their vegetable gardens probably have more legumes, both peas and beans, for kith consumption, as well as vine vegetables, like cucumbers and squash, maybe peppers, if it’s a warm year, cabbage, alums, and root vegetables, also for kith consumption, most likely beets, carrots, and turnips. Tomatoes may or may not be a thing, again, depending on how warm the year gets. (They’re tentatively a Dyrwodan staple, given they’re in two apocryphal sources, but also I’m not sure where the equator is, so I’m not sure where it would be warm enough for them. My gut says closer to Readceras, but who the hell knows.) As for fruit, a variety of apples, most of Aedyran import, most likely, as well as plums, pears, and probably apricots and possibly peaches, as well as pecans, almonds, and walnuts.

I would expect an equally extensive pickling tradition to go with their dairying tradition, though I’m undecided on the heat level involved (lots of spices are an absolute, though I’m not yet decided on what they are, outside of the basics.), and they pack a lot of their perishables in pie crust for transport. They also import so much cinnamon, but probably not a lot of sugar, given they’re exporting that to Eir Glanfath.

Next time: Let’s actually talk about sheep, hopefully, but also what’s up with their food culture, outside of what’s actually available.

-

1. This is a weird bit of esoterica for me, and I’m torn in how much I’d like to consider it part of my canon, so to speak. On one hand, the lore itself is pretty fun, and it’s a good augmentation to the lore we get in game, and the recipes themselves are uniformly excellent (except the pie crust, which is the Worst crust recipe I’ve ever seen in my life, and also much too involved for the period. Please ignore it even exists. Cut the page out of your copy and burn it.), but on the other hand, they’re Extremely Modern recipes, with little to no thought given to the foods available where they were supposedly invented (lemons in the Pearl Coast before the advent of a major farming industry? Unlikely to say the least, but more about citrus in a later essay.), and the lore is very clearly stapled on to the recipes that were picked to be included, which makes it Suspect.

2. “Glanfathan nut cookies are a relatively recent invention in the Eastern Reach. Not known for sweet foods, it took the Glanfathans generations of interaction with Aedyran settlers to begin incorporating sugar and copious amounts of butter into their recipes. Their early experiments were considered vile by both natives and settlers alike, but when the Guided Compass tribe began incorporating a variety of local nuts into butter-rich cookies, even discriminating Aedyrans agreed that the natives had succeeded. While the treats are now common throughout Eir Glanfath and the Dyrwood, locals consider cookies from east of the Bael River to be the most authentic.” (TCB, p. 19)

3. Disgust might be a strong word, but “In Aedyr, Wyflan cornbread is not well-liked by many outside of the Wyfla Valley. Because many of the Dyrwood’s early settlers were from Wyfla, the cornbread became a common sight at family tables in original colonies. Glanfathans also quickly took a liking to the settlers’ cornbread, so it has since achieved far more popularity in the Dyrwood than in Aedyr.” (TCB, p. 17)

4: We’re not covering animal husbandry in this part, despite the fact it was (still!) supposed to be about sheep, but it’s really a whole different topic, and anyways the relevant bit is this: I’ve got canon evidence of cows, goats, pigs, and chickens (and horses but nobody’s eating those), and then, of course, the sheep, plus I’ve got a good feeling about doves. All of those produce manure, that highly important fertilizer, and some of them can even be induced to produce it on the fields where it’s needed.

5: The rainfall chart is particularly not very useful because it only tells me things I pretty much already knew, based on the geography the map gives us. I did, however, transfer the information over and make a couple of educated guesses as a color-coded (unlabelled, sorry) map:

Dark is what’s listed, light is the guesses to go with it. As you can see, there’s a giant blank area where I have no information whatsoever. I’ll get around to doing extremely badly informed weather predictions at some point, but here’s what the map shows us so far: the rain’s coming in from the NW, getting squeezed out between the White March and whatever the hell the mountain range between the Republics and the Dyrwood is called (it is not labeled on the map), and then flowing back out mostly through Defiance Bay and the Bay of Crowns. The Bay of Crowns probably has some interesting finer grained geography, given it’s less of a bay and pretty much ends in a marsh, unlike Defiance Bay, but this is the only map I have so who knows.

6: An extremely basic primer on crop rotation: the idea is to both restore your soil between plantings of your cash crop (the thing that makes you money, or in this case, the thing that provides most of your food), and prevent it from eroding and/or being infested by weeds in the meantime, which will take all the nutrients you need and leave none for your next planting, by instead planting a cover crop (something that gets tilled straight back into the soil, either before it fruits or after it’s been harvested, depending. You also might grow something your animals can eat, and add their manure on the spot, tilling it and whatever they don’t eat back in instead). This is done on both an annual cycle (i.e. cereal, corn, legume, grass, repeat), and a longer one, typically five or ten years (i.e. you swap the grass for tubers, or winterkill another cereal before it flowers, or swap your cash crop for a different one), and it’s highly personalized, down to individual field if necessary.

Anyways it is once again Watcher Wednesday who wants more nonsense about sheep?

[teamhawkeye]

unfiltered and massively spoiler filled thoughts on RE8 below the cut [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]:

The Good

The first half of the game

The initial village segment and the castle portion and even “the house in the mist” sections were all pretty taut and well put together. i loved exploring the castle - was more than a little disappointed that you get locked out after Alcina’s boss fight, i didn’t explore it fully D: - and the unexpected terror of Donna’s section really pulled me out of the sense of comfort i had started to fall into, right as i was saying to myself “this hasn’t been scary at all”

The return of some series high notes

Revisiting things in previous Resident Evil games is not always a bad thing. I really enjoyed the return of weapon customization and treasures, those were aspects i enjoyed in RE4 and RE5. The return of the Merchant, in the form of the Duke, was welcome as well. The Duke is a G - he’s a good guy and i respected him most

Graphics, scenery, etc.

It’s a pretty game to look at, there’s no getting around that. I liked the set pieces, especially the Castle portion

Ammo crafting

Now this was something i greatly enjoyed. There are often times you get too much ammo for the gun you use least or you run out of ammo in harder difficulty levels. Being able to collect scrap material and make your own ammo was a very nice addition that i greatly appreciated

The Bad

(some of these are going to be personal opinions about the storytelling and narrative choices, so be prepared for that)

Pacing and direction

RE7 was a return to the series’ “roots”: so back to the footnotes of RE1 and RE2. If that was the case with 7, then RE8 did a speed run of RE3, Code Veronica, RE4, RE5, and RE6 all at once.

I know i said earlier revisiting hallmarks from previous games isn’t a bad thing, and it’s not - but while RE7 did it masterfully with sticking to mainly RE1 and RE2 and pulling in just a few old hallmarks, RE8 went absolutely buck wild in trying to cram in as many past enemy types and encounters as possible. A callback to one standout enemy is one thing, ala the Stalker type that is Mr. X, Nemesis, and Ustanak that Lady Dimitrescu also serves as...but then also the giant water monster from RE4, the Executioner of RE5, the “chainsaw” enemies (here, drills instead) of RE4, RE5, and RE6. hell, even the Lycans after a time started to feel very Las Plagas-esque in their ability to use weapons and track and coordinate. And you can’t tell me you didn’t see very similar designs/similarities between Miranda’s boss battle that you did with Alexia’s in Code Veronica...

The pacing started off solid with the initial few segments, but quickly seemed to lose its footing once it oscillated violently between wildly different styles of play and storytelling and didn’t regain its stride the rest of the game. One moment, it’s classic RE. The next, it’s P.T. + Outlast. The next, back to “a mash up of action and horror, leaning more on action” styles of RE4 + RE5. Then the finale straight up started to feel like an entirely different game before you reached that final boss fight - it felt like i was jerked in one direction one minute, and a completely different one the next

There is a lot of exposition and explaining that doesn’t happen until legit the last 45 or so minutes. Not new for the series to withhold information until the back half of the game, but there was legit almost no build up to the very sudden plot bombs that got dropped successively in the last throes of the story. Previous games rewarded you with fragments at a fairly even pace - i felt like all of RE8′s story gets dropped on you in a single monologue and a handful of notes just before the endgame

I’m not even gonna go that deep into how hard it was to keep up with all the different infection methods the mold managed to have - it was just A Lot and i’ve played a lot of Resident Evil in the past, so i know just how many different ways a single pathogen can have on humans and animals...and it still felt excessive

I honestly felt like the third segment with Moreau wasn’t even necessary. they really played up these “four lords” to not have them do a whole lot of anything. and i know there’s always been mini bosses before you actually reach the final Big Bad, but seriously, Moreau’s segment can be blitzed through in a span of 20 minutes or so first playthrough. the castle segment with Dimitrescu was solid, the house segment with Donna was nightmare fuel, lmfao, but still engaging and challenging. by the time you get to the third and sprint right through, you’re left wondering what the point of it even was. you can tell that was the least cared about narrative arc in the whole story

A giant point of note is that a huge chunk of RE8′s story could have been avoided or altered had Chris just actually fucking spoken to Ethan at the start about what the fuck was going on. And for him not to is completely unlike Chris past RE5 and RE6, that made no narrative sense whatsoever. Just another opportunity to pile on some more trauma and guilt onto Chris’ shoulders by making him “responsible” for Ethan being pushed to far and dying as a result

“Ethan actually ‘died’ when first meeting Jack Baker and was completely taken over by mold, it’s a big secret to everyone but Mia. also, he’s gone too far, there’s no saving him, he had to die”

You’re going to tell me that Ethan still being infected or impacted by the mold from RE7 is some big secret??? did the BSAA not run tests on him and Mia to make sure they were back to normal levels??? how do they not know?!? the government was able to figure out that Sherry’s exposure to the G Virus altered her permanently and study her healing capabilities, how the fuck was that not the same with Ethan???

Also, how is it that the mold’s impact on him is so much higher? he was at the Baker estate for like, 2 days max and while, yes, he did sustain some serious damage, he never fell prey to Eveline’s control and showed absolutely no signs of infection outside of being able to heal/use his hand after it was chopped off. and depending on how you played RE7, the only major injury he sustains aside from probable bruising or broken bones is that hand being cut off as mentioned before

You’re also going to tell me of the number of Resident Evil characters who have been infected with viruses and parasites and what have you and have been cured or had the negative effects negated, Ethan was the only one “too far gone” to be saved??? Jill got infected with T Virus, Claire has been infected by two separate viruses, Leon has survived a parasite infection, both Zoe and Mia were exposed to mold for years and seem to be okay...why is it that Ethan was the only one who couldn’t be saved? because he “died”? how in the world did he get infected so fast - he’d been there an hour, max! - that he was able to be revived in the first place and it wasn’t even noticeable that he had changed at all???

“the BSAA can’t be trusted anymore, they’re involved in shady shit, like deploying bioweapons into battle”

we already went through this a bit back in Revelations 1 with the blackmailed director and double agents. but to full on go “well, the entire organization is now dirty” after it was legit founded by Chris, Jill, and Barry to combat bioterrorism really sits wrong with me. all i can think is that they are running out of villains at this point and now are poising the BSAA to be a Big Bad in the future. which, again, doesn’t sit right with me

Retconning

Tying Ozwell E. Spencer back to Miranda wasn’t such a huge dealbreaker for me, but it is a bit obnoxious to now have to go back and amend “he came up with the idea for Umbrella and its pursuits with Marcus and Ashford, its other founding members” to “well, he didn’t actually come up with the idea for Umbrella and its research with Marcus and Ashford, he already had the idea from his time spent with Miranda uwu”

More so, the retconning around Eveline is a bit of a pain in the ass. So she only came about as a result of Miranda crossing paths with the Connections and giving them some of her mold to work with? And Eveline was only a failed experiment to Miranda in her attempt to be able to transfer her daughter’s essence/subconscious/whatever into a living child? And there are pictures of ‘10 year old” Eveline in Miranda’s possession - how come Evie didn’t have any memory of her at all (speaking of Evie, why the fuck did she appear in 8 briefly as a hallucination [?] to explain to Ethan his condition???)

How are you going to try and tell me that some village from prior to the 19th century was using the “Umbrella” symbol and Spencer just snatched it for himself? that was just stupid, honestly - even more stupid how Ethan didn’t recognize the symbol, despite flying off in a Blue UMBRELLA helicopter at the end of RE7

Mocap and cutscenes

Was it just me or did parts of this game look severely unpolished compared to RE7??? some parts looked good - like the Dimitresus all seemed to be rendered very well. It became very noticeable to me in the back half of the game, mainly with Chris and Mia, but a little with Heisenberg too, where their mouths didn’t match up with the dialogue a lot and they looked a lot less put together than previous scenes and characters. Mia in particular, i was struck by how much better her mocap seemed in RE7 compared to RE8. Maybe because there was a bigger ensemble cast in 8 that they spread themselves a little too thin in that regard?

[skeletorific]

man i just wanna throw this out there and i think you'll catch it, how do you think some of the ancestors would take an invite to a human thing like a party or a ceremony? like if it was prefaced with 'compared to troll events there's a strict no one dies policy and a be human-style nice to people you don't particularly like or care for rule as well' idk if even the first ship crew would come along, and tbh i wouldn't really fault them because it's new and spoopy and they're dead after all

Ok, so you have thrown it, and I have caught it. I am unsure if I caught it in the direction you threw it, but I have caught SOMETHING and it is something I love dearly.

So, this question: I had to think for a moment. What scenario results in every single ancestor being in the same locale, in such a capacity that they are forced to interact, not only with each other, but with humans, to the point that not only can they not kill anyone but there is literally no point in killing each other?

....

....OH WAIT EARTH C-

So yeah, everyone say thank you paradox space. There had to be at least one dream bubble out there from a timeline where the alphas got yoinked into sburb as their Alternian selves by mistake right?

So, let’s assume they’ve had a few months to settle in, adjust to modern life. Troll kingdom has issued an ultimatum to the more....chaotic Ancestors in terms of the rearranged hemospectrum. They will, to quote Karkat, “FUCKING DEAL WITH IT”. Not an easy pill to swallow for a few of them, but then, a few millenia in the dream bubbles has forcibly mellowed them quite a bit and eventually its just more trouble than its worth.

I have a lot of thoughts on this timeline (ancestors get apartments are you kidding me, the potential), but let’s return to the question at hand.

The invitation makes the rounds through a lot of ghost communities, but a particularly bold human approaches the Ancestors themselves with an invite to one of the bigger ragers being thrown in the human kingdom. The celebration of the return of the gods is always a blowout, and this year promises to be especially so, with something between a gala and a block party planned to be pitched.

So here’s why they all show up, and here’s what they do:

The Handmaid is an odd duck. Sure, there’s a certain morose pleasure in watching the cosmic plans of the man who abused her from childhood fall apart because of a handful of chump kids, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy to be back here with these assholes, and it doesn’t mean she’s looking to build a social life. She’s perfectly happy to spend the rest of her days haunting the abandoned house she found on the outskirts of the carapace kingdom and terrorize any local teens that stick their noses where they aren’t wanted. When the uni student turns up with a flyer she cusses them out but good and sends them on their way with a couple of threats to life and limb.

And then shows up anyways.

Not to socialize, mind, just to watch. From the rafters probably. Snickering at all the drama going down, dropping spiders in Makara’s drink and stealing Dualscar’s watch when he’s not looking. And maybe see if Condy gets drunk enough to want a rematch. Laws be damned. Now THIS is a party.

The Signless’s entire crew is a bit of a chain pull. The Disciple wants to go extremely badly, so of course she manages to purrsuade The Signless to come with her. The Psiionic doesn’t want to go period but he’ll be damned if he’s letting Vantas out of his sight into an unguarded area. The Dolorosa wanted to go this whole time and is the one who got Leijon all riled up about it in the first place, but pretends she’s just doing it to keep an eye on Vantas and Captor.

Once there, they’re not exactly social butterflies, but compared to the others they’re practically savants. Leijon prowls on the edges of crowds, listening for snatches of information, and enjoys constructing narratives in her own mind about the relationships between all of them. Vantas finds himself pulled into a lot of conversations just to explain his life’s work (and, to his chagrin, to destabilize a few myths he’s accrued over the centuries). He tries to keep a level head but after a few beers though he’s hotly debating politics with three or four Kankri ghosts and has to be dragged away by Captor, who’s been following him and Leijon like a kid following their parent at a family reunion. Maryam disappeared hours ago and doesn’t get back home late, looking a little bit smug but tight-lipped about her evening. All four of them avoid the other Ancestors like the plague.

Neophyte Redglare of all of them has probably adjusted the best to this new life. Unlike the others, she’s actually gotten some friends that weren’t a part of the dream bubbles, and would happily spend most of the evening chattering with them. Still, for reasons we’ll get into it later, she spends most of it babysitting Makara and doing a bit of pitch-flirting with everyone’s favorite pir8.

Speaking of the Marquise Mindfang Spineret, like the Handmaid she protested loudly she was too cool for this party and then showed up anyways. Still, its not like she’s there to socialize. Most of what she does is spot the people who look like they might be heading off to bigger and more illegal things outside the party and without a word installing herself as part of their social circle. She invites Nitram, but her matesprit is a little occupied with an old enemy. That’s fine, she appreciates a score to settle, but its not fun if someone isn’t paying attention to her antics. Fortunately, Pyrope is happy to oblige her, and Dualscar is a delightful enough lackey while he’s still sober enough to handle it (so, for about five minutes). All told, an entert8ning evening indeed ;;;)

Executor Darkleer shows up for roughly ten minutes, near the very end, and does what he’s done at most social gatherings since they left the dream bubbles: stand awkwardly in the corner, stare at Leijon, and wonder if they’re still cool. Are they still cool? Probably? Right? But who’s to say. He absconds early to go work on his personal projects and probably punch something.

The Summoner is in peak form. Like Vantas, he has plenty of questions coming his way, and while no Nitram has ever been arrogant, he’s at least a little indulgent about some, shall we say, popular headcanons that have popped up since then. He’s slamming beers to cover up the usual low level of social anxiety (a battlefield he can handle, but a soiree is another matter altogether), and its working. He’s flirting a storm through the ballroom, something Serket is probably going to give him repercussions for. Its also making him a little, uh....confrontational, shall we say. So when he spot an old, clowny foe, well...

Oh, The Grand Highblood. 

He didn’t want to come. Full stop. Picked the wriggler with the flyer up by the back of their shirt and turned them around. Damn lucky he didn’t just throw them out. He wasn’t going to show up at this meaningless little heretical shindig, bump shoulders with strangers and be bored out of his motherfucking skull to boot. The only reason he got dragged in is Peixes didn’t give him a lot of other options. So here he is. Standing like a grim spectre of everyone’s demise, sullenly scowling at anyone who approaches and snarling at anyone who opens their protein chute in his direction.

For about five minutes.

What can I say, clowns love parties.  A couple of faygos later (if you think Condy didn’t come prepared you’re crazy) and this brawny ass goat is getting turnt out of his mind on the dancefloor. Nobody knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing with his body but its definitely deeply explicit and more than a little alarming. Still, it suits the environment, and there’s this unaccountable field of manic energy that just sort of erupts around him, escalating the party wherever he goes. Redglare has to babysit him (because Peixes, Serket and Ampora sure won’t, and who the fuck knows where Zahhak is), and even still he ends up with a busted keg dangling from one of his horns. He is feeding off of this motherfucking rhapsody tonight, fellas, and the grisly bastard has more than a few sick bars in him.

Orphaner Dualscar is decidedly less enthused. Nothing quite like being a failed romantic footnote in the only surviving account of your life to kill your rep as an intimidating pirate. He’s not adjusting well to modern life, and mostly spends the night in the corner with a solo cup, scowling at any and all. For a while he joins Serket in her activities but eventually is too soused to really participate, and she ditches him. Which is starting to become a recurring trend. He spends the rest of the night trying to seduce someone, literally, anyone, just get him out of this fucking stupid party, he’s so FUCKIN LONELY GOG-

up to you if it actually works or not.

Meanwhile, Her (Formerly) Imperial Condescension.....look, Peixes can’t stay away from a party. Even a lame-ass one for guppies 3>8(. I mean, the no killing thing is REALLY fucking cramping her style, but to be frank its more trouble than its worth. Most of them just come back as ghosts and try to bonk you back. Annoying is what it is. So, fine, she agrees, no culling. 

Doesn’t mean the party can’t at least be interesting, and that’s damn well what she brought Makara to do for her. Works like a charm, too, Makara might be a grumpy basshole but he knows how to cut loose when he wants to. She’s chanting him through chugging an entire keg on his own with a small crowd of people when she spots a familiar pair of impossibly wide horns. Ohhh shit, get the grubcorn-.....wait, is that Megido in the rafters?!

No trolls or humans were (fatally) harmed in the making of this evening’s closing act, but suffice to say the building wasn’t so lucky. Two reenactments of the more legendary battles in Alternian history (which is saying something) was more than the palace could handle. In the end they were separated and sent to dry out in separate cells, Dave using his time powers to keep a handle on the The Handmaid. 

Suffice to say it’ll be a while before any of them get another invitation.

[jeannereames]

In your opinion, what did Alexander and Hephaestion mean to each other?

For Alexander that answer is pretty easy: by the end of Hephaistion’s life, he was Alexander’s emotional lifeline, the only person Alexander seems to have trusted unconditionally. When the king lost Hephaistion, his very foundation crumbled. I’ve said (repeatedly) that the king did not “go crazy” with grief, or not any more than anyone would who’d just lost somebody who functioned emotionally like a long-time spouse. Hephaistion seems to have been the one person Alexander knew would support him, even while telling him the truth. And he let him tell him the truth because he trusted why he was doing so (for his own good and in his own best interest, not just to get ahead).

I fear it’s hard to guess what Alexander meant to Hephaistion, as our evidence is mostly obscured and circumstantial. We try to figure out what Alexander meant to Hephaistion by measuring what Hephaistion meant to Alexander…and assume it’s the same.

And maybe it was. Probably at least it was close. But Hephaistion doesn’t step forward anywhere in the sources to tell us what Alexander meant to him.

We have a letter, in Diodorus, supposedly written by Hephaistion to Olympias that was translated by Welles in the Loeb edition at the end as, “…you know Alexander means more to us than anyone.”

Unfortunately, that letter poses two problems. First, we can’t be sure Hephaistion actually wrote the letter. I won’t go into why, because it’s “footnote stuff.” *grin* But suffice to say, good reasons exist to suspect it may not be real.

The other problem is, even if the letter is genuine, that’s not what the Greek actually says. It says (more or less), “…you know that Alexander is more powerful than anyone.” The new edition does a better translation job. Why did Welles translate it so loosely/badly? Well, unfortunately, sometimes translators stick their own ideas into translations. The correct translation makes more sense, as Hephaistion is basically telling her to stop harassing him in letters to her son, but even if she doesn’t, it won’t matter, because Alexander is more powerful than anybody (including her).

That’s a WHOLE lot less romantic. It also removes the one possible instance we have of Hephaistion’s first-person expression of what Alexander means to him. The rest of the letter is actually rather arrogant, not sweet. Hephaistion takes the Queen Mother to task for bad-mouthing him, and uses the Royal We…because he can. That’s the unspoken side of the letter. Alexander is more powerful than anyone, and Hephaistion isn’t worried about her swaying Alexander because he’s just that much higher in Alexander’s estimation (than the Queen Mother). Wow. Kinda a dick move.

But, before we completely throw him under the bus, remember that humility is not a virtue in the ancient world, Olympias had apparently been bad-mouthing him in letters for a while, and he’d been the target rather recently of a smear campaign by Krateros, then got into it with Eumenes over the housing of a famous musician from Greece, in the run-up to the Games, right before he got sick and died. Both these latter quarrels appear to have been in the last 1-2 years of his life, exactly when he was rising to the top of the Macedonian court. Contra Heckel, there’s not really much evidence earlier that he was any more difficult to get along with than the rest of that lot (and some evidence in Curtius to the contrary). So, it may just be that Hephaistion was having a bad year, and was so done with Olympias’s back-avenue machinations. (Antipatros was annoyed with her for the same things, but in her day, back-avenue machinations were about all women had to work with.)

And again, there’s a good chance this letter was written some years after his death, during the Hellenistic era...and not by him. Perhaps it came from a deliberately hostile source, or even just as a schoolboy exercise in, “Write a letter in the style and dialect of ____ famous person.” (Yes, they gave those sorts of assignments.)

[terramythos]

TerraMythos’ 2020 Reading Challenge In Review - 9/10s!

See Master Post

Here's the 9/10 books of this year -- books I really liked but not to the point of perfection. 

1. This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Full Review Here)

This is a beautifully-written novella about two women from enemy time travel societies. They start as rivals who pass taunting letters to one another and gradually fall in love with each other through their writing. There’s some really beautiful and interesting locations, and I love the longing and emotion in the letter sequences. I think using a science fiction setting for a love story is super cool; especially with time travel, there’s a sense of predestination not found in other genres. I also like the idea of each author writing one of the two leads, so the style is slightly different between them. 

2. The City We Became (Great Cities #1) by N. K. Jemisin (Full Review Here)

Jemisin is a fantastic author and created my favorite series ever (The Broken Earth), so I was stoked to read book one of a new series by her. The concept here is that cities become sentient beings over time given enough people and cultural influence. New York City is about to be born into a human avatar, but something goes wrong. An eldritch foe known simply as The Enemy seeks to sabotage the nascent city and almost succeeds. Proto-avatars of the city’s boroughs have to find their inner power and band together to rescue him and save the city. 

I really dig the ensemble cast, especially Manny (Manhattan), Bronca (The Bronx), and New York City himself. The book is also a great middle finger to Lovecraft, as the cosmic horror element is steeped in structural racism and oppression, with the Eldritch Aesthetic being a creepy pale white. Super excited for the next book. 

3. Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells (Full Review Here) 

I’ve already said plenty about the Murderbot books on my 10/10 list. I really like this one in particular because it introduces ART, one of the best supporting characters in the series. It’s super interesting to see how Murderbot interacts with a non-human person (or... spaceship. But ART is also a person for sure) similar to itself and I really like the banter and friendship between the two. Like the rest of the novellas, it’s short, but it packs in a lot of story and heart. 

4. Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells (Full Review Here) 

My other 9/10 selection for this series! There is a heavy focus on Murderbot’s past and how far it’s come ever since it freed itself from the company’s mental slavery. This probably has the strongest character development in the series outside of Network Effect, with a genuinely sad and sobering ending. 

5. Finch (Ambergris #3) by Jeff VanderMeer (Full Review Here) 

I think this book is where I really “got” the Ambergris series; it’s a pseudo-trilogy with a lot of postmodern elements, but this one is the most straightforward. Finch is a fascinating mix of noir, dystopia, and cosmic horror. I even called this “nontraditional cyberpunk”; there’s elements of a surveillance state, underground resistance/revolution, artificial implants/bodily enhancements-- but all related to fungi and eldritch horror. 

Anyway, this book stars Finch, a detective working in the city of Ambergris, who is tasked with solving an impossible double-murder case. In his investigations, he soon stumbles upon a web of conspiracy related to the downfall and takeover of the city by the gray caps, the humanoid mushrooms who enslave and oppress the human population. It’s just as weird as it sounds, but if you made it to book three, you'll be plenty familiar with how bizarre the series is. Technically, this book is a standalone, but I recommend reading the other two first as they are integral to understanding the plot. 

6. The Last Sun (The Tarot Sequence #1) by K. D. Edwards (Full Review Here)

This is a really impressive debut novel with an interesting world concept and great characters. The idea is that Atlantis was a real thing and got destroyed. The surviving inhabitants decided to build a new city by magically stealing a bunch of buildings throughout the world and transporting them to Nantucket. The result is a cool patchwork urban fantasy setting. There’s a huge tarot motif, hence the series name. It’s also gay! 

I fell in love with the excellent character banter, especially between Rune and his soul-bonded bodyguard Brand. While I had some criticisms on the plot structure and a reliance on same-y action scenes, everything else was so good I gave Edwards the benefit of the doubt. And it really paid off in the sequel, which improves on basically everything. 

7. The Princess Bride by William Goldman (Full Review Here) 

I mean, the movie’s a beloved classic. If you haven’t seen it... go do so? It’s a great adventure story with lots of memorable characters, lines, and moments. Honestly I’m more surprised I hadn’t read the book before, and I’m glad I did. It often felt like an extended cut of the movie, with a few key differences in the frame story and some locations. While I think I like the film just a little more, I appreciate the novel for giving me a broader perspective on the story and characters. 

8. A Choir of Lies (A Conspiracy of Truths #2) by Alexandra Rowland (Full Review Here) 

A Choir of Lies is a standalone sequel to the book A Conspiracy of Truths and can be read on its own if desired. It stars Ylfing, a fan-favorite character in the previous book. He’s processing grief and depression in the wake of his mentor (the last book’s protag) suddenly abandoning him. A (sort of--it’s complicated) professional storyteller called a Chant, Ylfing tries to make it in the Netherlands-inspired fantasy city Heyrland, and writes a diary about his experiences. However, another Chant has found his manuscript and writes scathing commentary on his decisions in the footnotes. 

I had a difficult time getting into this one, as Ylfing is both relatable and infuriating, and a depressed protagonist can be hard to get behind. However, it's well worth sticking through, as the sheer catharsis of Ylfing realizing his horrible mistakes and doing everything he can to fix them is... well, pretty inspiring. Multiple characters own up to their failures, often at great personal cost, for the wellbeing of others. I think it’s a great message, especially reading it in 2020 when the future feels hopeless. A Choir of Lies also has two of the things I liked most about A Conspiracy of Truths-- lots of meta commentary on storytelling, and surprisingly interesting economics. 

9. The Harbors of the Sun (The Books of the Raksura #5) by Martha Wells (Full Review Here)

I thought this was a nice finale to the series. It has some satisfying thematic bookends regarding the Fell and Moon’s character development. It’s also probably the most “epic” fantasy of the series, with super high stakes and a broad cast of perspective characters. I have to wonder if there are plans for further books or a different series in this universe, since the setting has a lot of depth and potential. Either way, I really enjoyed it! 

10. A Killing Frost (October Daye #14) by Seanan McGuire (Full Review Here)

Another year, another October Daye book! Obviously I like this series if I’m fourteen books in and still reading it. A Killing Frost has some slow-ish pacing, but ramps up a lot in the second half of the story. It’s the conclusion to my favorite storyline in the series -- the redemption arc of Simon Torquill. He’s a really interesting morally gray character, and I think serves as the poster child on how the series plays with the idea of heroes and villains. Also, this book casually drops probably one of the craziest twists in the series at the end, and I am super interested to see the fallout of that. 

11. The Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura #4) by Martha Wells (Full Review Here)

This is basically part one of Harbors of the Sun and involves the main cast going on a long journey to an ancient ruin. The first half of the book is pretty slow and probably could have been pared down -- lots of travel sequences. However the second half is super tense and action packed. I found the ancient ruin itself really interesting and creepy, and the book sets up a lot of things that pay off in The Harbors of the Sun. 

[moscarific]

Yuletide Letter 2020

Dear Holiday Hero,

It’s a weird Yuletide this year. Normally, the arrival of Yuletide is a bittersweet marker of the passage of time, but this year, it’s a sign that 2020 can only abuse us for so much longer before it goes away. I’m certain that the story you write for me will be one of the bright spots of this year! I’m a gold star Yuletide participant: I’ve signed up every year, and written at least one story every year, since the challenge began. That’s great news for you, because over the years, I’ve learned that the best Yuletide gifts are the ones that weren’t quite what I had expected, and also that gifts are satisfying and joyful for me as long as it’s clear that the author put effort and care into them. Basically, as long as you avoid my Do Not Wants and run spell check, I’m going to be over the moon with excitement at whatever you write for me.

My biggest non-obvious DNW is babyfic. No pregnancy, no babies, no little kids. I’m also a grumpy Jew, so I’d prefer not to receive stories with strong Christmas themes. The “five things” format is not my favorite. Please don’t center your story around ships that I did not ask for.

But I like a lot more things than I dislike! Normally, I would be reading my Yuletide gift on the way to my annual family dim sum lunch, but I’m pretty sure that’s canceled this year. So give me something I will laugh out loud at while waiting for the takeout to arrive, or just escape into. Porn is optional, obviously, but: oral sex, eroticized hands, exhibitionism, shower sex, gender play. I like experimental structures and styles, as well as more standard ones, and I am fine with whatever POV and tense you choose. If you are the kind of person who does multimedia or interactive fiction, or just clever footnotes, I am all for that. All of my requests this year have strong and distinct voices, and I would love to receive a story that embraces their sound and feel. I like stories that stick close to canon or present interesting “what if” canon divergences, and I also like superhero and In Space AUs.

I tend to write the fic I want to see in the world, so you’ll get a good sense of me by browsing my AO3 account. My AO3 bookmarks are a recs list, and therefore a great way to see what kinds of fic appeal to me and make me happy.

Here are the individual requests from my sign-up, with a little more detail added here and there. 

And Then We Danced (2019): Merab, Irakli

I am deeply invested in making sure that these two are going to be all right. I'd prefer for them to be all right together, although genfic that focuses on a happy or hopeful future for one or both of them would work for me, too. I'm fine with a little canon-typical violence and homophobia here, as long as it's something they overcome and not the focal point of the story. Maybe they run away together shortly after the events in the movie. Maybe they reconnect years later and realize they're still in love. Maybe they're living in the same real-world trash fire we are, and reach out in the midst of the pandemic and the impending war in Armenia. Maybe they exist in a happy fanfic fluff bubble where they cook each other delicious Georgian food and have sex in the woods. Maybe it's an AU, and they meet on a spaceship 500 years in the future. Maybe it's just an extended description of the two of them dancing together beautifully.

DNW: Stories centered around pregnancy, babies, or raising children. Strong Christmas/winter holiday themes. Featured or endgame romantic/sexual relationships other than Merab/Irakli.  Extensive, graphic descriptions of homophobic violence. Character death or serious, lasting physical harm to requested characters.

Doom Patrol (TV): Danny the Street, Maura Lee Karupt | Agent Wilson

Danny and Maura, and the episodes that feature them, are a glitter ball of hope in a dark time. I'd love to read stories about what happens within Danny: adventures or problems that occur, or explorations of the traditions and culture that develop among the Dannyzens. If you want to go in a romantic or sexy direction with this, I'm up for it, not least to see how you'd do it. Danny loves everyone, but they do seem to have a special place in their heart for Maura, which I would enjoy seeing explored. Both Danny and Maura represent queer diversity in ways we don't often see on TV - play with that and celebrate it in whatever way you wish. I also love how heroic and fundamentally good both characters are, in quirky ways that suit their abilities, so I'd enjoy seeing them face and defeat a villain in a unique way. A self-contained story centered around the Dannyzens would be great, but feel free to bring in the main Doom Patrol crew if you want - I'm especially interested in Danny's relationships with Larry and Dorothy, if that's a direction you want to go in.

DNW: Stories centered around pregnancy, babies, or raising children. Strong Christmas/winter holiday themes. Stories where transphobic or queerphobic violence is a central plot point or threat to the requested characters. Direct engagement with real-world political events or the COVID-19 pandemic (metaphors are fine). Character death or non-canonical serious physical harm to requested characters.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist: Mo

I want to know so much more about Mo. Get her out of her sassy best friend rut and put her in the limelight, please! The glimpses of her relationship with faith and her church were fascinating, and I'd love to know how that grows and changes. If you want to go in a romantic direction, I'd be happy with Mo/Eddie, Mo/Simon, or Mo/Zoey, and I'd be excited to read anything that celebrates her fat, Black, genderfluid body. I'd also enjoy reading the AU where she, and not Zoey, has the heart song superpower. Or an In Space AU. Or a musical.

DNWs: Stories centered around pregnancy, babies, or raising children. Strong Christmas/winter holiday themes. Stories where transphobic or queerphobic violence is a central plot point or threat to the requested character. Anything more than a passing mention of Zoey/Max.

Thank you so much! You are a Yuletide treasure!

[pupa-cinema]

Happy Go Lucky Heads - えんがちょ(Engacho) - English Translation

Lyrics：Sekihan and Ponikingdom Music：324

えんがちょ　犬のクソ踏んだ Engacho, I stepped in dog shit こりゃ　いじりの的だ　青天の霹靂 Easy now tiger, I’m the target of sleights of hands, it’s a bolt from the blue えんがちょ　とんだ災難だ Engacho, what a a major fiasco この　穢れを誰に　なすりつけてやろうか How about I just foist all this evil energy unto somebody else

何でいつも俺ばかりこんな目に遭う Why am I the only one who can never catch a break 実は'身から出た錆’ Actually, ‘You're the one who shoots your own foot' ここで気付かなければ If I don’t acknowledge this soon, then everything will- スパイラル Spiral

悪い縁を断てえんがちょ(往々) Cut ties with bad vibes, with engacho (again and again) 開運の鍵だ　起死回生 It’s the key to success and good fortune, to be reborn anew 悪い縁を断てえんがちょ(往々) Cut ties with bad vibes, with engacho (again and again) 断捨離のススメ　執着心 I recommend to let go with alobha, then cling to that! 己の人生(ライフ)加速させていく(往々々) Up the tempo of our lives (again and again and again) '無駄な過去は1つもない’ ‘I have not 1 useless past experience on my belt'

えんがちょ　鳩のフン落ちた Engacho, pigeon poop landed on me こりゃ執念深い　青天の霹靂 Now this is some real conviction, a bolt from the blue えんがちょとんだ災難だ Encgacho, what a a major fiasco この　穢れどこから　降り注いでるのか Where on earth is all this evil energy pouring down from

何回やったって　遠回りだったって I’ve done things a bajillion times, I’ve taken the high road, 勘違いされたって　諦めたくないから I’ve been misunderstood, but I still don’t want to give up so ぐちゃぐちゃにされて　へし折られた牙 My fangs have been twisted and torn apart, but nevertheless 取り戻してやる　覚悟決めたのさ I’ll take back what’s mine, I’ve steeled my resolve

悪い縁を断てえんがちょ(往々) Cut ties with bad vibes, with engacho (again and again) 開運の鍵だ　起死回生 It’s the key to success and good fortune, to be reborn anew 悪い縁を断てえんがちょ(往々) Cut ties with bad vibes, with engacho (again and again) 断捨離のススメ　執着心 I recommend to let go with alobha, then cling to that! 己の人生(ライフ)加速させていく(往々々) Up the tempo of our lives (again and again and again) '無駄な過去は1つもない’ ‘I have not 1 useless past experience on my belt'

エンピ・ミッキ・ブッチ・バリヤ Enpi, Mikki, Bucchi, Bariya がっぴ・めんち・ぎっちょ・バーリア Gappi, Mechi, giccho, baarrier やめち・めんき・ガッキンバリア Yamechi, menki, gakkin barrier えった・ビッキ・グッピバリア Etta, bikki, guppi barrier

縁を知れ因果性(往々) Now this what ‘en' ties are, this is causality 大抵は他者の相対性 A big chunk of it has to do with natural human relativity

悪い縁を断てえんがちょ(往々) Cut ties with bad vibes, with engacho (again and again) 断捨離のススメ　執着心 I recommend to let go with alobha, then cling to that! 残り��人生(ライフ)掛けて叫びだす(往々々) Scream like the rest of our lives are on the line (again and again and again) '無駄な過去は1つもない’ ‘I have not 1 useless past experience on my belt' '過去がなけりゃ今はない' ‘Without a past, there would be no today I say'

Footnotes:

● Engacho is an apotropaic crossed finger hand sign. “縁En" meaning “ties/destiny” while “cho” is short for “chon-kireru [to snip]”. It's used to dispel any dirty things or impurities found. Though it was originally religious, it was modernized instead to be used among children as a fun and easy way to promote cleanliness.

Similar to the ‘Father son and the holy spirit’, or ‘Knock on wood’ hand gestures.

If someone steps in dog shit, is the target of pigeon poop, or any such minor but ill omens… Engacho will detach you from that bad luck!

● Enpi, Mikki, Bucchi, Bariya~~~. The name for the engacho hand gesture differs by region in Japan. Most ring similar to ‘chop’, ‘cut’, ’stop’ sounds, or even just the English word ‘Barrier’. The difference is due to regions in Japan each bearing their own unique cultures and accent, or… Just 'Barrier' being influenced from action shows like Anpanman on TV.  

● Appearing in the MV are toys commonly used by children, all which are long and attached: a kendama, a hula-hoop (looks like a ◯ (album name) / rising sun at the end) and then bandages.

● 縁・起死回生・断捨離・因果 All inherently buddhist concepts. 縁: destiny. 起死回生: rebirth. 断捨離: minimalism 因果: karma.

断捨離 I translated to alobha because I felt the ‘detachment from possessions’ part of buddhist minimalism was the main focus here. However, to give it the recognition it deserves, 断 indicates the rejection of nonessentials 捨 indicates the disposal of nonessentials 離 indicates the detachment from possessions.

As a whole they create an ideal.

● Quick digest from Poniki:

Completely stripped of tomfoolery, it’s an Omedeta style “Minimalism song”! True to the word “Engacho, meaning ‘cut ties’”, a word I’m sure everyone heard at least once in their childhood, I sing about my desires to cut bad ties and move forward. Our seemingly shameful past are the exact reason we’re all where we are now. There’s not one wasteful moment in life! That’s the message!

● Blog post from Poniki

It’s a story about a boy unable to find motivation or purpose. Screaming feverishly just trying to become somebody.. Only to get ensnared by corrupt adults who devise to manipulate him. He’s conflicted by “the misfortune which befalls him” and “baseless words”, but nevertheless he’s meeting allies, finding his way through life, and through self-actualized change is he able to move forward.

That’s the deal.

Sekihan was the one who initially brought the base concept to the table. “That ol’ custom of the past generation to dispel bad luck, Engacho”, he had said.

So I said “What if we didn’t only work to dispel bad luck but, we linked that icky past to the present and the future!"

Then took it and made it into a story. As such, it’s even stated in the lyrics as follows! ⇩

"I’ve done things a bajillion times, I’ve taken the high road, I’ve been misunderstood, but I still don’t want to give up so My fangs have been twisted and torn apart, but nevertheless I’ll take back what’s mine, I’ve steeled my resolve." Stigma and misinterpretations pressure him into taking the high road, where he ends up manipulated, broken, and marred. But even if the fangs he once boasted end up twisted and torn apart, you gotta believe that one day other people will come to understand you, and that’s when you’ll take back your fangs. My such passion is tucked into this song.  With that said and all things considered, The final words of the last chorus are the key piece to this puzzle. It’s easy to just sing of hate and cynicalness. Omedetai Atama de Nani Yori are “A band who turn negative energy into positive energy." After all.

At the studio, we even could not settle on a direction for his song until halfway through recording.

Back then Sekihan was even reconsidering the song all by himself in the concert hall next to us. One day I realized that my current state was being projected into these lyrics. Moving up the big city of Tokyo, sticking in an band making no sales, Desperately chasing dreams despite being a starving artist with no time on his hands Ultimately splitting up the band after yielding zero, he stepped away from music for a while. Until this new band came along, Ever since we formed Omedetai Atama de Nani Yori, I’ve been helped by a surprising amount of my past acquaintances, boosted and supported.

Before we formed Omedeta I wanted to clean my slate, I deemed my past useless and fruitless, but that past is exactly what lead me to where I’m standing here today. This point right here was it! This is what got the last puzzle piece to fall into place. “‘I have not 1 useless past experience on my belt’ ‘Without a past, there would be no today’" This song is the story of some nobody protagonist At the same time as being like a biography to me It’s a ‘fight song’, designed to help somebody, anybody, to move forward It’s ‘Engacho'. The song.

[rukakikuchi]

My speculation/theories on LOONA’s next comeback.

Oh boy, oh boy… As we’ve been waiting for LOONA’s next comeback, we’ve had plenty of time to speculate on what the concept for what said comeback will be like. And it seems like the girls are just as excited as us, as they seem to be dropping hints as to what it’s going to be.

We’re going to look at some possibilities based on the hints we’ve been given so far, as well as some speculation as to what else we could see coming from LOONA in the near future.

Flowers and nature

As soon as promotions for “So What” ended, LOONA wasted no time dropping subtle references to flowers and nature, leading many fans to believe their next concept could be flowers or nature related.

References made to flowers:

Chuu participating in King of Masked Singer as “Spring Girl”

Using flowers and nature related emojis (i.e. rainbow) in social media posts

Yves and Chuu Frequency of the Moon topic was “spring”

Heejin being called “a goddess among the flowers” in the post promoting her appearance in Ben’s “Bad” MV (Source)

ViVi, Jinsoul, and Chuu Frequency of the Moon topic was “flower”

Gowon, Yves, and Jinsoul took a photo with a tulip in behind the scenes photos of a magazine shoot (Sources: 1, 2, 3)

Yves posting a photo of her with roses (Source)

Mentioning “blooming” and other flower/nature related phrases

In a post celebrating Choerry and Olivia’s coming of age: “Things will get better with that rose” (Source)

Yves mentioning flowers blooming in different seasons in her fancafe letter on her birthday and saying she’ll bloom more vibrantly each year (Source)

Kim Lip saying “keep walking flower paths only with us” in her Orbit 2.0 anniversary fancafe letter (Source)

Gowon saying “photosynthesis time” (Source)

We’ve already had it all but officially confirmed that LOONA’s upcoming comeback is happening in August (Yves told Nature they were planning on an August comeback during filming on Fact in Star back in June.) (Source)

With it being the summer season, I could see them either doing a bright, fun concept with an energetic sound, or they could go for a dreamy concept with beautiful visuals and emotional vocals.

Royalty and elegance

Another concept the group has been dropping hints about is a royal concept.

Firstly, we’ve been seeing several recent instances of the girls wearing these fancy black dresses. 

These outfits were first seen during promotion for the group’s premier greeting “Meet & Up” event. Since then, we’ve seen them on the official Japanese fan club website, the post commemorating one million subscribers on Youtube (Source), the celebration of Orbits’ 2nd anniversary (Source), and even during LOONA the TAM Season 2.

There’s also their official light stick, which is designed like a crown. 

Not only that, but they come with a golden cape that you can wear. We also got a photo of the girls in these capes and white dresses in what appear to be a palace.

There’s also their cover performance of “Love Battery” on Immortal Songs 2, which took a very jazzy and theatrical spin on the song, adding their own LOONA flair to it. The members have stated in the past (Yves specifically I believe) that their covers were hints to their next comeback, since their boy group dance covers prior to the release of [#] hinted at the style “So What” would be like.

This could just be a general group concept rather than just a comeback concept, but if they do go for a royal or elegant concept, there’s honestly a bunch of possibilities for what it could sound like. It could range from an elegant, ethereal vibe, a fun yet powerful dance number, a big band jazzy style song, or even a pop-ballad.

And speaking of ballad���

Return of LOONA the Ballad?

It has been over half a year since it was announced that LOONA the Ballad, or La Maison LOONA, a ballad album that had been teased since 2018 was cancelled. I only very recently became an Orbit, but was nonetheless disappointed when I heard an entire album they had planned to release had been scrapped for release.

...Or was it? Because recently, the girls have been hinting that maybe LOONA the Ballad isn’t completely gone.

Now I’m not sure whether this is true or not, but supposedly during a fansign event, a fan asked Chuu if there was a possibility that the album could still be released, and she just smiled and said “Soon!”

But then we had the moment during Yves’ birthday VLive where we heard what sounded like a snippet of “Stay with me babe (aka “Hyper Ballad”)” playing. (Source)

If BBC didn’t have backup files for the original planned album, there’s probably a chance they had to re-record the album altogether. It might even be possible they’re going to repurpose the songs they planned to release on LOONA the Ballad for something entirely new.

Japanese debut?

LOONA’s Japanese debut was another delayed project I learned about after becoming a fan. And since we recently got the launch of their official Japanese fan club, I think they have had plans on releasing their Japanese debut soon.

Now, these plans might have changed with what’s going on in the world right now, but I think it’s possible that we will get more news regarding this some time this year.

The only question is, what would they do? Would the royalty concept be utilized here while the Korean comeback focuses on the floral/nature concept? Could it be possible that the tracks that were meant to be for LOONA the Ballad were repurposed to become a Japanese release? Will the Japanese debut be a new song or just a translated version of a song they already released like “Hi High” or “Butterfly”?

Again, there’s several possibilities and until we hear more from the staff or the girls themselves, we’ll just have to wait and see.

“Day and Night” official release?

This is something I’ve been curious about for a while. We’ve gotten hints that we’re going to get something related to “Day and Night”, the hidden track released on the CD only version of [#].

Digipedi posted a video on their Instagram of them listening to “Day and Night” in the car. Now, this can simply be that they really like the song and nothing more. But what if it means there’s a music video for “Day and Night”?

Also, in a LOONA Kick where Olivia was filming herself with a moon face filter, we hear the girls singing “Day and Night” in the background. (Source)

Personally, I thought this meant they would be performing “Day and Night” at KCON:TACT 2020, but that ended up not being the case. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll actually get to see a performance of it in the future, or at least a dance practice video.

I also wonder if they would do an official release of the song, either as a digital single or have it included as an official track if they decide to do a repackage of [#] for the next comeback. Whatever the case, it feels like the girls are planning something related to it.

What will the album be called?

Aside from the concept and sound of the comeback, one of the big things fans have speculated on is what the name of the album is going to be. The album names for the OT12 releases have had significant meanings; [+ +] is about how the girls and units combine into the full group (addition), [X X] is about that power being amplified (multiplication), and [#] is about realizing their strengths and what they can accomplish when they are together.

The most common guesses I’ve seen for the album title are [*] and [O]. Before I give my thoughts on which one it could be, let’s look at what each of the symbols could mean if used.

First, we have the asterisk symbol (*). This symbol is used to call attention to a footnote, indicate an omission, point to disclaimers, and dress up company logos. Basically, it’s meant to draw attention to an otherwise minor detail.

This seems to match up with LOONA as a group, as the girls always work their hardest to perfect even the slightest details of their dancing or singing in order to put out a quality performance for their fans. And in the context of the LOONAverse, it could mean that even the smallest detail can become significant.

The symbol has also been pointed out to resemble a star or flower. If they really are going with a flower concept, it would be a clever choice if they went with this.

Now for the “O”. This isn’t really a symbol; it’s a letter. But there are quite a few reasons why it can become a meaningful symbol should they name the album [O].

Firstly, most frankly, the letter “O” resembles a full moon, and we know LOONA is all about the moon.

Secondly, in “So What” there’s a line that references the “O or X” in tic-tac-toe. One way fans have interpreted that line is that it’s them talking about how most girl groups in K-pop fall into either a cute concept or a girl crush concept, and the song as a whole is about not being restricted by anyone or anything.

We’ve already had the “X” in [X X], so it would make sense if they did “O” next.

Also, if you replace the “#” in “B#RN” with an “O”, it becomes “BORN”, which plays into the idea that the next concept could be about rebirth. Again, this would fit into the flower concept as flowers always bloom again as the seasons come and go.

I already theorized that [#] and “So What” would be about the destruction and rebirth of LOONA and the LOONAverse, so maybe the next comeback will continue from that.

“So What” was specifically about the “destruction” part of this; the girls are breaking out from their old image and everything that held them back. Olivia quite literally sets the moon on fire to symbolize this action. And at the end, we see the bird feathers being revived after being burnt.

So this next comeback could possibly focus on the “rebirth” part, showing just how much stronger LOONA have become as a whole.

As for which one I think the title of the album would be, I’m leaning more towards the asterisk symbol, since it lines itself up with the potential flower/nature concept and the meaning and usage of the symbol can become significant to LOONA when put in the right context.

My thoughts

As of right now, it feels like a flower/nature concept focused on rebirth is most likely what we’re going to get. Sound-wise, if their cover of “Love Battery” really is a hint for what the song will be like, I could totally see it working with LOONA.

However, if they are in fact repurposing the LOONA the Ballad tracks for a new comeback, I could see them actually using both the flower and royal concepts. In my mind, “Daydream” would be the flower/nature concept with an ethereal dreamlike look and feel, while “Stay with me babe” would be the royal/elegant concept and be more mature. Not straight up sexy, but more like an alluring feel.

I also think it’s possible that they would use the royal concept for their Japanese debut, with a new style that’s not something we’ve seen in their previous releases but also feels familiar to LOONA’s overall concept and style.

Also, while I don’t think they plan on doing this for their next comeback, I think it would be nice to see the group do solos and units again. Not just for pre-existing units, but new units as well. The members have talked about the possibility of them doing new units in the past, and fans have speculated on things such as the “day and night” units (which are basically the tall line and short line lol), but we don’t know if those plans were also postponed or cancelled.

With everything that’s going on in the world, we may not know just yet, so for now it’s all a matter of if and when. Regardless, I’m so excited for what this next concept will be like.

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this discussion! Feel free to share your own thoughts on what you think the comeback will be like!

Until then... Stan LOONA! 🌙💖

[d0nutd0g]

Bait bags

So. I've recently gotten back into more Serious dog training* (how serious can dog training really be if we are all having fun**)... And I've been thinking about bait bags. More specifically, I've been thinking about what my ideal bait bag would look like.

Right off the bat it would be orange, because that's our colour in this house and Ares & I need to match!

My first bait bag... Was definitely too small. It would fit maybe a cup of food in it, or 30-40 high value rewards, and it was too difficult to get my hand into the bottom of the bag, especially in the winter. It did the job for an amateur dog trainer, but didn't cut it when I really got into what I was doing.

My next bait bag lasted about 2 years before it fell apart. (It actually started falling apart about 6 months in, but nowhere critical.) It was a good bag: wide enough to fit my hand, even in winter with gloves on; deep enough to hold all the regular value treats (aka kibble) I would need for a 1-2hr hike; AND it had a poo bag holder. The biggest issue I had with it (aside from the fact that it was slowly falling apart) was that it didn't have any practical closure, so when it rained or snowed, I ended up with soggy treats. Gross. It also only had one big pocket for treats so I ended up mixing my high value rewards with the kibble. It worked but.. eh.

A few months ago, I finally decided to uh... Retire my old bag. RIP. Got myself a fancy one with two internal pockets and an easy to use hinged open. I could finally keep my treats dry!! I didn't have to be careful when bending over to pick up Ares's poop on our walks! Yay!!

Downside of the bag: no poo bag pocket; the second pocket inside is small and velcro closure, so it gets caught on my gloves and doesn't hold nearly enough high value treats; and as with all mechanical parts, the hinges will eventually break down and stop working.

For now, though, it is a very good bag.

What I would love to see in a future bag:

Large treat pocket with a sturdy divider for high value rewards AND kibble. I wanna be able to pick up one or the other without digging or tipping the dog off to which reward he's gonna get.

Magnetic close. No velcro anywhere. That stuff sticks to winter gloves and makes things very difficult. Maybe even a magnetic flap-style close.

Front pocket for poo bags.

Extremely sturdy and well-formed connection where the belt attaches to the bag.

A clip or loop attachment on the bag for a slobber rag, cuz yuck! (Or your clicker, whatever.)

A clip or loop attachment on the other side of the belt for leash, slobber rags, boot claws, long line, etc.

I may... Idk, engineer this. Have it made. I'm sure there are some obedience and bmod trainers out there who would REALLY appreciate these upgrades to the classic bait bag.

I know the Doggone Good pro bag is quite good but... Velcro, Ugh.

In the meantime, here's Ares and I at the dog park. Yes, he has an eyebooger.

(EDIT: I forgot to add the footnotes!!!)

*Beyond the usual stuff with Ares, I’m helping my parents with their new puppy and looking into Professional training/obedience on the side. You know, use those certifications for something. (I’m not touching “advanced” b-mod till I’m more comfortable with it).

**B-mod/Obedience is serious stuff, but the dogs don’t learn if they’re not having a good time. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Sen. Elizabeth Warren played to a friendly crowd when she visited Brooklyn last week. The rally at King’s Theatre on Flatbush Avenue — an ornate people’s palace kind of joint with fleur de lis in the molding and vaudeville ghosts in the rafters — was a 4,800-person shot in the arm for her campaign, which had been flatlining of late. Julián Castro, young, Latino and recently out of the presidential race, had just endorsed Warren and there seemed to be a sense in the air — with a heavy hint from the mass-produced “We Julián” signs circulating — that the campaign was looking for a little good news out of the evening. The crowd scanned as largely young and professional, and a little girl sitting just in front of me waved another sign: “I’m running for president because that’s what girls do.”

Just under a week later, the Warren campaign would be at war with Sen. Bernie Sanders over Warren’s claim that Sanders told her in a private 2018 meeting that he didn’t think a woman could win the 2020 presidential election. This salvo from Warren’s camp was seen as a response to reports that talking points for Sanders volunteers characterized Warren as the choice of “highly educated, more affluent people,” a demographic both key to Democratic electoral success and associated with Hillary Clinton’s supposed out-of-touch elitism. Within a few hours, what had been a cold-war battle to define the left wing of the Democratic Party had gone hot. The handshake-that-wasn’t between Sanders and Warren at Tuesday night’s debate seemed to inflame tensions even more.

What’s curious, though, is that the rift isn’t over policy particulars. The Warren vs. Sanders progressivism fight seems to be more stylistic, an unexpectedly tense class war of sorts within the broader progressive class war. Should progressive populism be wonky and detail-oriented and appeal to college-educated former Clinton voters? Or a more contentious outsider assault on the powers-that-be from the overlooked millions of the middle and lower-middle class?

The groundwork for more open hostilities was perhaps laid at the start of last weekend with some numerical tinder. As I boarded a plane for Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday night, I scanned the results of the just-released Des Moines Register poll. The survey showed Sanders leading in the state with 20 percent of the vote, a notable shuffle in the race from the last poll from that pollster, which showed former Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the lead and Sanders scrapping for third place with former Vice President Joe Biden. Saturday afternoon I found myself in Newton, Iowa, listening to Larry Hurto, 68, reciting the full results of the poll to me from memory as he waited for Sanders to arrive at a rally. With Sanders, Hurto told me, “What you see is what you get.” Kim Life, 60, told me she’d voted for Clinton in 2016 but felt that, this time around, Sanders was the man for our times. “Things in the world are so unstable,” she said. “He hasn’t changed in 40 years.” Warren, she told me, was more influenced by corporate America than she let on.

Variations on this theme — Sanders as credible progressive curmudgeon and Warren as vaguely deceptive opportunist — popped up as I followed Sanders across the state. America is a country whose politics are pheromonal; voters are largely attracted to certain candidates not for their policy positions but for the cut of their jib or the familiarity of the story at the heart of their self-mythology. And among the Sanders-committed, there seemed to be a sense that the candidate’s famous frankness was his greatest asset — and it could well be with certain groups.

The other part of the controversial Sanders campaign talking points on Warren was that her supporters — the wealthy, well-educated ones — would already “show up and vote Democratic no matter what … she’s bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party.” At his rallies, Sanders was putting his electability foot forward — supporters waved “Bernie beats Trump” signs while he spoke. In November, The New York Times polled battleground state voters and found that persuadable, white working-class voters had policy views that aligned with some Sanders/Warren proposals, but “by a margin of 84 percent to 9 percent, they say political correctness has gone too far. They say academics and journalists look down on people like them.” Nonwhite persuadable voters supported systemic change candidates and single-payer health care, but 50 percent approve of Trump, a man known for pushing the boundaries of correctness, political or otherwise.

The anti-political-correctness voters and Trump-approvers are perhaps the demographics where Sanders has the greatest chance to make inroads. While his trademark directness isn’t anti-PC, it’s of a sympatico strain, in a way: “I don’t care what you think, I’m going to say and do what I please.” The Sanders brand is based entirely on that slippery, overused quality that politics so prizes: authenticity. He has believed in the same things for decades and advocated for them in the same polemical style. Even his heavy Brooklyn brogue remains unchanged despite his having left the borough in the ’60s. It speaks to being from a place, not a rootless cosmopolitan class.

Of course, Warren still has the flatness of the plains in her voice, but maybe that’s harder to pick out of the American pantheon of dialects and accents. Plus, the patina of Harvard elitism might stick more to a woman, with voters being more apt to see her as overly liberal in a cultural sense rather than an economic one — ironic, in Warren’s case, given that the cornerstone of her candidacy is radical economic reform. Her tightly constructed, loosely delivered stump speech in Brooklyn — Warren likes to pump her fists while she talks and bend down as if she might jump across a stage — was adept at connecting her famous plans together as a bid for “big, structural change.” Whatever issue brought people to the rally, Warren said, “I guarantee it’s been touched by money.” It was a solutions-oriented 45-minute verbal march; though, of course, both Warren and Sanders know that unless Democrats win the Senate in 2020 (unlikely) and hold onto the House, much of their potential agenda as president would be stymied from the get-go.

But each know that rhetoric wins the day. While they share so many policy goals, it’s obvious their appeal is somewhat divergent. There is certainly a gap between the demographics of Sanders and Warren supporters. According to FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos polling, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel,1 about 34 percent of people considering voting for Warren’s have household incomes of over $125,000, compared to around 22 percent of potential Sanders supporters. And Warren’s potential backers are particularly skewed toward college-educated Democrats, while people considering Sanders and Biden are more evenly distributed across education levels.

Sanders is not wrong in pointing out that Warren’s populism — and make no mistake, it is that; she does her fair share of billionaire-bashing — has resonated with a different audience than his. In part, it’s because her packaging of populism is meant to extend an ideological hand to the establishment Democratic voters who cottoned to Clinton in 2016 but regretted, perhaps, their inability to see that the country was ravenous for system-busting talk. She scratches the itch of big ’ole change but understands that the Democratic Party is filled with people who are still comfortable within the system, even if they have intellectual critiques of it.

Sanders’s selling of populism is conscious of its place in the sweep of progressive history. In Iowa, he talked about how not so long ago, public education was seen as a radical idea and cited the aphorism, “It always seems impossible until it’s done,” to explain the mental block the country could overcome to accept Medicare for All.

On Saturday evening, Sanders held a rally in Davenport that opened with performances by a collegiate singer-songwriter — “This one is about my babysitter and how as you get older your relationships change” — and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Tlaib’s voice rose in emotional peaks and cracks as she spoke of her childhood in Detroit, which in her memory is perfumed with the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide. She bemoaned the building of “bougie” condos in her city. “We need somebody that’s courageous, that won’t sell us out,” she said. “I’m exhausted about the broken promises, these polished speeches — I don’t care if you said the same thing.” With Sanders, she said, “you see this person and he’s real.” It was as succinct an endorsement as a 2020 Democratic candidate could ask for; though, as we all well know by now, what’s “real” is ambiguous and mutable and very much according to one’s taste.

But of course, the crowd cheered; there was no higher praise.

Laura Bronner contributed analysis.

Make sure to check out FiveThirtyEight’s Democratic primary forecast in full; you can also see all the 2020 primary polls we’ve collected, including national polls, Iowa polls, New Hampshire polls, Nevada polls and South Carolina polls.

[dustedmagazine]

“1, 2, 3, 4!”: Jennifer Kelly’s 2018 review

Jennifer Kelly is a frantic romantic.

Rock and roll forever, sure, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that the guitar/bass/drum idiom has been pushed way off to the side in the cultural conversation. Mainstream sites list “best rock records” as a weird, subcultural genre, with a slightly bigger audience, perhaps, than best cumbia records or top Hawaiian slack key recordings (but not much). Worse, to come up with a reasonable size list they include all kinds of things that don’t belong. I mean, really, is Mount Eerie rock by any definition?

Rock isn’t dead, but it’s been made to sit in the corner. The only time in 2018 when everybody thought at once about a guitar band was when Pitchfork’s Jeremy Larson dropped his scathing, hilarious review of the Greta Van Fleet. For a moment, we all snickered as one.

Big rock was terrible in 2018. It almost always is. Yet there’s something disingenuous about the genre of year-end write-ups that laser in on the absolute worst and most bloated of rock bands to make a point about the art-form as a whole. Sure, Imagine Dragons suck. Yes, “Africa” is a soul-destroyingly awful song no matter who sings it. No, I’m not wading into the whole 1975 thing. Who has time? Who has the heart for it?  

Because this year, against a tide of commercially viable horse shit, against a backdrop of monolithic indifference, rock bands of all configurations, from all countries (but really especially Australia), continued to make great punk and rock records. And, I, for whatever reason, heard more of them than usual, and it made me happy. And maybe that’s the secret to being happy in music, in any year…find your niche, listen to the best in it, forget about what the mega-corporations are trying to sell.

Also see it live. My big highlight this year was seeing the Scientists in October (with Negative Approach, too!), but it was a pretty great 12 months for live music. It started with a fantastic show comprised of Mike Donovan, the Long Hots, J. Mascis and his Stooges cover band and Purling Hiss (with J on board for one song) at the Root Cellar, a venue I’d never heard of before that show, and that ended up putting on a string of great events. I saw Marisa Anderson, Paul Metzger, Speedy Ortiz, Howling Rain, Trad Gras Och Stenar with Endless Boogie, that Scientists show and Gary Higgins at the Root Cellar this year, and I missed a lot of shows I would have liked to see. Other great shows happened outside the Root Cellar – The Thing in the Spring in Peterborough with William Parker, Bonnie Prince Billy and others, Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Parlour Room, Messthetics at the Flywheel. Western Massachusetts has been in a commercial chokehold for years, with one organization controlling most of the venues, but there were a lot of options this year.

So, here’s to the drummers with their sticks in the air, counting off the four. Here’s to the guitar player wrecking his knees jumping up and down as he/she furiously slashes away. Here’s to the sweat and muck and black humor of $10 shows with four bands on them, two of them still in high school. And here’s to the people (me at least and possibly you) who like these things. Eddie Argos of Art Brut, who used to top these lists and now merits a footnote, spoke for this tiny, beleaguered sub-cult when he urged “Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s rock out.”

Indeed. Let’s.

Amy Rigby—The Old Guys (Southern Domestic)

The Old Guys by Amy Rigby

Let’s just set aside the fact that the first and best song on this album is an imagined email exchange between Philip Roth and Bob Dylan on the eve of the Nobel ceremony or that Rigby namechecks three of my favorite ever TV characters in “New Sheriff.” Let’s forget, too, how rare it is for a woman of roughly my age to be making her own music and controlling her own destiny even now in 2018. No, let’s focus on the songs which are sharp, smart and full of hooks, the clean, romantic chime of Rigby’s electric 12-string, the viscous pleasure of the arrangements. This is the very best kind of rock record, one that doesn’t attempt to remake the genre but somehow makes it bigger, brighter and more necessary. The songs sounded great, live, too, with the great Wreckless Eric in tow, and the two of them bickering like old married couples do, and Rigby glowing with triumph by the end of the show.

 Shopping—The Official Body (Fat Cat)

The Official Body by Shopping

Bubbly in a hard way, strict and minimal in a manner requires body movement, this album arrived early and stayed on my go-to list all year. For Dusted, I wrote, “You could bounce a quarter off the bass lines in this third Shopping full-length. They’re pulled hard and tight against minimalist syncopated drums, the leaning, waiting, anticipating space between the thwacks as important a character as the beats themselves. The London-based trio harks back to the funky, stripped down post-punk of bands like ESG and Delta 5, with hints of the boy-girl bubble and pop of the B-52s and Pylon.

 Salad Boys—This Is Glue (Trouble in Mind)

This Is Glue by Salad Boys

Always weak for NZ lo-fi and equally a fan of the early R.E.M., so of course I fell for this buzzy daydream of a record. “Psych Slasher” bursts with immoderate, glorious joy in the chorus, then cuts back to uncertainty in the verse, the ideal blend of rambunctious rock and wistful pop. “Exaltation” is a gentler sort of classic, just as radiant but moodier, its murmur-y vocals disappearing into cloud banks of fuzzed guitar tone. The whole record sits on the knife edge of rock and indie pop, leaning one way and the other, but never falling over.

 Patois Counselors—Proper Release (Ever/Never)

Proper Release by Patois Counselors

I went all in for “So Many Digits” in my Dusted review this year, but the two great punk songs on Proper Release are “The Modern Station” and, especially, “Target Not a Comrade.” This latter song chugs and lurches on guitar and bass, trembles with wheedly keyboards and crests in a massive, hummable refrain. It’s a catchy, twitchy punk tune that’ll hit you in the part of your brain where you keep Wire and the Buzzcocks, hooky as hell in a weird, distorted way.

 Bodega—Endless Scroll (What’s Your Rupture)

Endless Scroll by BODEGA

Flipping the gender cliché, Bodega is an all-woman band with a male singer. Its tight, nervy, jangles wrap around themes of internet-age dislocation and movie references. Smart, sarcastic, ironic, sharp, Bodega bristles with what you want from a garage punk band but reveals a surprisingly soft heart uncovered round about “Charlie,” a wistful song about a boy who died too soon.

 Bardo Pond—Volume 8 (Three-Lobed)

Volume 8 by Bardo Pond

The eighth in a series of improvised albums, this year’s Bardo Pond record towers and surges with monumental heaviness. I wrote at Dusted that, “The sound, vast and muscularly monolithic as ever, seems more like a demon summoned periodically from a ring of fire, than the product of any sort of linear development.”

 Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore—Ghost Forests (Three Lobed)

Ghost Forests by Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore

This year’s most beautiful album, Ghost Forests undergirds lyric folk melodies and angelic pizzicato harp plucks with roiling, violent darkness. My Dusted review observed “The best and most interesting [tracks] juxtapose the muted violence of electric guitar with a harp’s serenity. A guitar howls from a distance throughout “In Cedars,” pushing a simmering turbulence up under sun-dappled lattices of harp picking. Later “Painter of Tygers” does the same trick of joining muscle to fairy dust, the electric guitar raging from far away, while harp and voice spread delicate magic over the tumult.”

 Seun Kuti & Egypt 80—Black Times (Strut)

Black Times by Seun Kuti & Egypt 80

Fela Kuti’s youngest son inherited his dad’s fierce political commitment, his rhythmically unstoppable Afrobeat style and a few of his band members, but this wonderful album is more alive and present than a tribute. “Struggle Sounds, “ with its hard-bounce of a beat, its blurting sax, its ecstatic backing chorus, its swagger of horns and fever-dreamed keyboards dances through history right up to the modern day. “Last Revolutionary” enumerates past African heroes and connects them to the now. I wrote, “Kuti extends his father’s legacy, its tight rhythmic interplay, its fervent political engagement, its relentless exhilarating uplift, while bringing it a bit further into the present.”

Ovlov—Tru (Exploding in Sound)

TRU by Ovlov

I first noticed Ovlov at the Thing in the Spring Festival, on an eclectic Thursday night in a book store, where the sweet surge of guitar sound felt solid enough to body surf on. Later, for Dusted, I said of Tru that “Ovlov churns a monumental fuzz, a wave of surging, undulating, feedback-altered sound …. You can almost poke it with your finger, this onslaught is so palpable. It stirs your hair like an oncoming breeze.”

Speedy Ortiz—Twerp Verse (Carpark) 

Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz

There’s something so bendy and unpredictable about Sadie Dupuis tunes. They hare off in unexpected ways. They stop and start. They interpose weird little intervals of pop and noise. They refuse to behave, and end up exactly as they should be, though never what you’d expect. Twerp Verse takes more pop turns than other Speedy joints, but in the tipsiest, most eccentric way, with acerbic asides in the lyrics that catch like fishhooks and stay with you. “Speedy Ortiz offers a serrated sort of pop pleasure, full of rhythmic complexity and gender confrontation,” I observed in my Dusted review.

 Had enough rock? Me neither

Here are some more punk rock and garage records that I couldn’t squeeze into the top ten overall, mostly in the order that I thought of them, but Constant Mongrel and Richard Papiercuts are pretty great and that’s probably why I thought of them first.

Constant Mongrel—Living in Excellence (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Richard Papiercuts— Twisting the Night (Ever/Never)

GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Hank Wood & the Hammerheads—S-T (Toxic State)

Obnox—Bang Messiah (Smog Veil)

Zerodent—Landscapes of Merriment (Alien Snatch!)

Sleaford Mods—Stick in a Five and Go (Domino)

Ethers—S-T (Trouble in Mind)

IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)

Bad Sports—Constant Stimulation (Dirtnap)

Lithics—Mating Surfaces (Kill Rock Stars)

Art Brut—Wham! Bang! Pow! (Alcopop)

 Whoa, slow down!

Also a shout to the musicians who made more than one really excellent album this year. Ty Segall made five, I think, but I didn’t love all of them as much as Freedom Goblin and Prestrike Sweep.

Obnox—Sonido del Templo/Bang Messiah (Astral Spirits)/(Smog Veil)

Mount Eerie—Now Only/(After) (Elverum & Sons)

Ty Segall—Freedom Goblin (Drag City)/GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)

Ryley Walker—Deafman Glance/The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans)

  Nevertheless, they persisted

And finally, hats off to the bands and artists that have been going forever and continued this year to produce great music.

Kinski—Accustomed to Your Face (Kill Rock Stars)

Low—Double Negative (Sub Pop)

Loma—S-T (Sub Pop) (Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg plus Cross Record)

Oneida—Romance (Joyful Noise)

Wreckless Eric—Construction Time and Demolition (Southern Domestic)

Messthetics—S-T (Discord) (The great Fugazi rhythm section plus a young guitar ripper—one of the best live shows of the year for me.)

Charnel Ground—S-T (12XU) (This is Kid Millions from Oneida, Chris Brokaw and James McNew from Yo La Tengo, and as you’d expect, it’s really good.)

[reasonableapproximation]

Copying over a bunch of comments I made on reddit, about Elm.

("Anyone using Elm in production?")

My team is. I have mixed feelings, along the lines of "I'm not a fan, but I wouldn't be surprised if I liked all the other options less". Being able to integrate with Haskell is very nice.

I haven't been looking forward to this release, which removes native modules (i.e. makes it much harder to interop with JavaScript; ports still exist, but they don't compare). It also removes user-defined operators, which I think is a shame.

("What parts of Elm do you like most and less?")

They're not really "parts of Elm", but...

I really like autogenerating the API. If I change my backend types, my frontend won't compile until I change that too. We've had some bugs with this (mostly in Haskell libraries), but for the most part it works fantastically. I just wish Haskell's records were as nice as Elm's.

Oh, and the timetravel debugger is super great. You can step back through the history of your page state and see exactly where things went wrong.

My list of dislikes is longer, but I should clarify that my prior frontend experience was stuck in 2012. And, well, I'm still not entirely convinced that we shouldn't all just go back to JQuery; but I can't compare Elm to any of its actual competitors. Just to my expectations, which may not be realistic.

Most concretely, there's a lot of boilerplate. If I add a new page, or a new widget, I need to edit several different places to tell them about it. There's no way to use Elm widgets like regular HTML ones, so if I have a lot of them there's just line after line of "if a message for widget1 comes through, run the widget1 update function on the widget1 model, and update my own model with the new widget1 model and whatever else it returned. If a message for widget2 comes through, run the widget2 update function..." There's no way to generate a dropdown list from a union type that doesn't involve just listing all elements of the union (and no way for the compiler to verify that you've got them all).

Less concretely, there's something of an all-or-nothing vibe. If you're writing in Elm, then either you use Elm components or you put in a bunch of effort to make it work with Javascript components. And the ecosystem isn't mature enough to reliably have great Elm components[1]. (I don't really blame Elm for this, it was probably unavoidable when writing a new language, but it's a pain.) For a while, we were using style-elements, which does the same thing again, you use components specifically written for style-elements. (You can embed elm components, but it doesn't work very well. I do somewhat blame style-elements for this.)

For the most part, I like elm. But it has enough annoyances that I wish I was using something kind-of-similar, without really knowing if that thing could exist even in theory.

And least concretely, there's also a paternalistic vibe, which I get especially strongly from this new release. Native modules are dangerous, so they're forbidden[2]. (We've been using one for handling XSRF cookies, and we have no clue how we're going to handle that now. Most of our others will just be annoying to lose, we'll rewrite with ports or pure Elm. But "annoying for no good reason" is even more annoying.) Some people wrote silly custom operators, so they got taken away. Deeply-nested records are a bad idea, so nested record updates are left super ugly. I'd like to be treated like an adult.

[1]: And I feel like in Javascript, the equivalent components would be easier to beat with a stick until they work. Elm doesn't really let you do that, once an HTML node has been generated you can't edit it, not even to add event handlers. It either goes on the page or it doesn't. That's good for making things work reliably, but sometimes you just need an ugly hack. This is related to the paternalism thing. (Not that I claim it was a deliberate choice. But I don't imagine that if someone offered a PR to add that ability to Elm, that it would be accepted.)

[2]: Honestly, I think removing native modules is the main reason I wouldn't recommend Elm to someone right now. Elm is young, it doesn't do everything yet; and that's fine, it can't be expected to. But in 0.18 it had an escape hatch, and now it doesn't, and I don't trust it not to need one.

(I just now realised that those footnotes were visible on old reddit and my mobile app, but not new reddit. Wtf, reddit.)

Some things I wish I'd mentioned here: the lack of cookie support, more explicitly than I did. And we haven't done much error handling yet, but it looks like that's going to be boilerplate up the wazoo; I wouldn't be shocked if we need to decorate every single Http requst.

(rtfeldman: "We resolved [XSRF cookies] with a few lines of back-end code - hit me up on Elm Slack and I can talk you through it!")

Thanks, I'll get in touch tomorrow.

Um, but at the risk of sounding churlish - I'll say another thing I don't really like about Elm. I get the distinct impression that a lot of discussion happens on slack instead of in public forums (like reddit or stack overflow), making it somewhat inaccessible. And then a lot of the supplementary material seems to come in the form of videos, which are also somewhat inaccessible.

I assume this works for many people, maybe even better than the forums-and-blog-posts thing that I like. But for me personally, it's just a (minor) barrier.

Still, I do appreciate your offer. If we get something that works, I hope you don't mind if I share it outside of the slack?

Update: so rtfeldman's suggestion is, in a nutshell: follow the OWASP recommendations, and instead of using a double-submit cookie (our current approach), switch to custom request headers. Elm sends content-type automatically with Http.jsonBody, and setting another custom header is also really easy.

It's a good suggestion, and we're checking whether it works with our backend auth libraries. If it does work, it'll have other advantages. I'm grateful to rtfeldman for his time and expertise.

Still, I think it reflects poorly on Elm that we're considering changing our auth mechanism because Elm can't handle cookies (at least not in a way that's at all easy to work with, without a hack that's been taken away).

I just can't get over that cookie thing. I think the reason they're not supported is that Evan decided local storage is better. I do not want Evan to make these kinds of decisions for me.

Like, if I was contemplating picking up Elm, and someone told me it couldn't handle cookies, I wouldn't even bother investigating further. Even if I didn't expect to need cookies, what else is missing?

And as it turns out, cookies are the only thing we've found that we absolutely needed Native modules for. But I still think that's a sane reaction.

("Elm's records seem to just be Haskell records with lenses built in.")

Among other problems, Haskell makes it hard to have multiple record types with the same name, hard to have one record type which is a superset of another, and hard to write functions which accept "any record type with this field". Even accessing them is a pain, you need to import everything.

It's improving, but slowly. Meanwhile, elm records have none of those problems. They're not perfect (I'd love to have shorthand syntax for a general update function), but they're miles ahead of Haskell.

(It's possible that "Haskell with a lens library" compares more favorably, but I haven't tried. My team is making tentative explorations into generic-lens, but that's it.)

In my foray on the Slack, I got nosey and seached to see if there was discussion of my comment. There was only a little. Evan recommended against people engaging with me, which I find a little annoying but I think partly because I get the vibe from that of "dismissing a troll", which is probably unfair of me. There's also a place he could be coming from of "this guy is making valid points, but yeah, Elm isn't doing what he wants and arguing about it won't help".

One thing he did say was like, «I guess that guy didn't find my points about optimising the generated code compelling. [ascii shrug]». I didn't reply on reddit because it wasn't intended for me to see, but my response might be something like:

Well yeah, when you were talking about the generated code you said it was important that there was no Javascript in the ecosystem. I don't want Javascript in the ecosystem, I want Javascript in my own codebase, like it worked in 0.18. Maybe I misinterpreted what you mean by "ecosystem", but to me that means "the packages that get shared and distributed".

Are the new optimisations incompatible with native modules? The thought never occured to me, and your comment doesn't give me a clear answer. I suppose it's possible. (But then how do the whitelisted packages handle it?.)

(Why did the thought never occur to me? Because removing native modules was never, that I saw, justified with "enables optimisations". If that was given as the reason, I would honestly find it significantly less annoying. Because then it feels like you're making difficult tradeoffs, not like you're treating me like a child.)

Still, even in that case I feel like you have a bunch of options other than removing native modules. You can say "native modules or optimization, pick one". You can say "native modules work, but optimization might fuck with them, be careful." (And probably we can find some hacks that make it work fairly reliably.) You can say "native modules work, and here are some ways to get the optimizer not to fuck with them." One of those feels like approximately no dev work, another feels like literally none.

Or maybe those solutions are all DOA, I dunno. I don't even know if there's a problem for them to solve.

[genresubversion]

I am not trying to pick fights but this fandom really went off on the lack of reading comprehension. The original tweet thread (made by Katrina Leonoudakis, who is being sent death threats because of it) was not at all critical?? She wasn't saying that the translation was bad, just that the style was interesting and unusual in the field, that the publishers decided to stick to catering to the niche fanbase (us) rather than localizing the language to make it more accessible to a general audience.

The original thread also didn't even mention honorifics (other than OP acknowledging that they had made a mistake not translating one directly in the past) so what a weird thing to stick to.

Like!! That's interesting!!!! It's interesting that the publishers have so much confidence in us niche group of people to make publishing the novel worth it for them.

I'm happy they are keeping the footnotes and not changing the grammatical flow, keeping with what we know and more true to the original work. That does not change that it is hard for new readers to adjust to, and seven seas made a deliberate choice to prioritize established fans over the general public.

Please stop assuming the worst of people and maybe actually read what they say instead of picking a fight through the grapevine. The original twitter thread was not negative or argumentative in the slightest. It was an insiders scoop of the situation.

This reminded me of that one post about dropping honourifics and keeping languages separate to make the text flow smoother and I'd like to put in my two cents as an Asian myself:

I've clowned on people who use oppa and unnie with random strangers but I genuinely feel uncomfortable if honourifics aren't used the way they are used in canon text or in that culture in general. Not using them in narration is one thing, but in dialogue it just feels wrong to take them out.

Like in malayalam, "edthi" is used for your sister by girls, "oppol" by guys and "chechi" for any unrelated lady. How on earth do you get the same impact across if you just use 'sister' or an 'excuse me'?

Like imagine if you replace "gege" in tgcf with "big bro" or "Xie Lian". Boom, 25% of the spirit of the novel goes bye bye.

And then we come to the dilemma of Jin Ling's Uncle. In my family, the aunts from your mother's father's side are called "chittashi" and those from your mother's mother's side are called "ichamma". Your aunts from father's mother's side is "achammal". (and stuff like chittamma which I'm pretty sure belongs to the great aunts, I gotta research that)

If I had to write "paternal aunt from father" or "maternal aunt from father" or some shit every single time I'd quit writing instantly.

FOOTNOTES AND INDEX ARE THERE FOR A REASON PEOPLE. DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE IT.

[whitechrysanthemumsandlilies]

Taking Bomb Ass Notes on a Budget

Yes I am a Capricorn 

Not all of us can afford the top of the range stationary of our dreams and with Enrolment day for colleges in the UK fast approaching, I thought Id share a comprehensive guide on everything I’ve learnt on how to make and take successful notes and how to get the grades you want on a low income budget.

Be warned: This post is mammoth.  

A plan of 3 phases. 

Phase 1- Pre School year

1.1- Gather supplies 

For this to work, you need only the bare necessities- coloured pens/pencils, a ballpoint/gel pen, a 5 pack of highlighters (in place of midliners), and 2 notebooks (In Class and At Home)

In Class notebooks- Your In Class notebook is for scruffy notes taken on the fly. All these notebooks need is a lot of pages and a flexible margin. I recommend the metallic, geometric, spiral bound notebooks from Poundland for this. They’re simple but surprisingly good quality for a £1 product, the pages dont even bleed!

At Home notebooks- This is where the actual fun lies. At Home notebooks are the notebooks you use for your studyblr posts when you slip up and procrastinate an hour into your studies (we’re all human). Anything that gets you excited to rewrite your notes is good for this (re-writing your notes not only means you’ll be allowed bragging rights because you’re technically revising every night, you can sneak in the formatting and extra info you need without compromising on your note taking time in class)

Coloured pens/pencils/highlighters and a pen- These are pretty obvious supplies, used for the AH notebook’s colour coding and general decoration. The type of pens you use depends on how much your notebook pages bleed. Some recommendations I have are- 0.3mm assorted colour fine liners from The Works (The colours are great and they don’t bleed as much as other budget brands), the 20 pack of ballpoint pens from ASDA, and the 5 pack of highlighters from EITHER The Works or WHSmith if there’s a Back to School sale on.

1.2- Learn how you learn

This is possibly the most important step of all, you need to figure out how you can best take notes for your brain, i.e- what type of learner are you? This will greatly dictate how you format your AH notebook since different learners access different content to help them memorise, for example- a visual learner should fill their pages with arrows, diagrams and colour but a auditory learner would be better off writing summaries of their notes in the form of a speech to speak aloud later on. 

(See x for a free quiz to determine your learning type :) )

1.3- Format your notebooks 

Hannah Witton has a philosophy that if you’re spending more time on the organisation than actually executing your plan, you’re being inefficient. This step is to ensue you don’t fall into that habit. Formatting your notebooks before you start school means you have a pre-prepared resource that you can work straight onto, cutting the time you need to spend on your school work. Also its super fun! There are a few basic pages you need in both notebooks before you seize total creative freedom. 

In Class- Really the only thing you need here is a Key page (see bottom of the section for an example) and a footnote at the bottom of your note pages to put the textbook reference in (this’ll save you so much time when you revise for tests and wanna expand on your notes honestly just so it, its worth it in the end)

At Home- Since this is a more traditional BuJo, you need a few more pages- A Key, a Index/Contents page and more heavily formatted pages (Ideally: A header (for the chapter name), a title (page contents/subject) and a footnote (revision guide reference))

For my Key, I like to include the colour code system (e.g- red for key vocab) and symbols for stuff like ‘needs more info’ and ‘info found’, relevant context ext. In my Index I like to break by chapter and then mini units (like how this is set out) but that’s a personal decision, that may or may not be how you choose to do it! I also like to include a Grade Tracker as a motivational tool but, again, you may decide against that. 

P.S- For my note pages, I like to include a 2cm margin in which I can jot down symbols and colours without interrupting the flow of the page. Do with that what you will

1.4- Create a study space

The problem a lot of us have is procrastination and a catalyst for that is distraction. You’re never going to be able to focus sat on your bed near your phone and laptop with WiFi as well as you will in an environment where those distractions are removed (That’s why coffee shops and libraries are so popular!) Creating an environment that you associate productivity with can help to focus you on your task. 

Study spaces dont have to be extravagant. Even if its just a chair and a desk in the corner of your room with a plug, a nice cushion, and a pencil pot. As long as it separates work and play, it will be more than enough for your studies. 

Personal preferences will change the layout and atmosphere of your study space (e.g- background music or no background music, relaxed or stimulating, personal or detached) but I do recommend looking at the psychology of colour and doing some introspection to decide what will and will not work for you.   

Phase 2- Study schedule

Once you’re back studying, you need to implement a schedule that’ll guarantee you stick to all the planning you did in phase 1 as opposed to having it sit there looking idyllic while you procrastinate by binge watching Stranger Things for the 9th time this month. 

Obviously from 08:30am to around 15:30pm you’re out of your house and away from your study space, even longer if you travel via public transport, and unless you’re the worlds biggest morning person I wouldn't recommend studying from 06:00am unless its desperate cramming before a big exam SO that leaves the evenings. 

A big mistake a lot of people make is taking a break before starting to study. This is the worst thing you can do, you know how the brain resets when you enter a new environment? Think of it like that. Once you sit on that sofa and watch some TV or start to scroll through Instagram, you’re not gonna want to move. 

As soon as you get in, grab a big drink of water and a small snack and head up to your study space (it sounds painful and will be at first but as soon as it becomes a habit you’re gonna be much better off) I recommend devoting from 16:00pm to 18:00pm to studying, allowing time for you to make a dent on the piles of homework you’re definitely going to get without creating an antisocial and impractical eating schedule. Two hours is more than enough time to rewrite up to 4 subjects worth of notes (consolidating your knowledge and adding in any extra info “class you” wanted you to find) and to start on up to 4 subjects of homework, even if its 20 minutes for each task with a 5 minute break in between. 

Those of you who work, like me, will have to negotiate this weekly to make sure you can slot the time in around your shifts, not forgetting weekends can be optimised as well. On weekends, operate on the basis of Hannah Witton’s schedule (my organisational mom)- The day is split into three segments, Morning, Afternoon, and Evening, work at a 2:1 ratio of Work:Play (unless you work weekends, also like me, in which case just aim to optimise the time you have left wisely while also not overworking yourself)

Additionally, make use of study periods!! If you know you have a study period that day, take one of your AH notebooks with you (I recommend the one you have the most notes for) and get ahead of time OR do your homework in the period so you only have to do your notes at home. Snatch up every bit of free home time you can! Its important to be allowing with yourself during this time, you’ll be doing heavy studying and while it is important to complete your tasks and not make excuses for not doing something, its equally important to relax and wind down and see friends because not doing so impacts greatly on your mental health and you come first!

It can be helpful to make study groups (as long as they’re used for actually studying) or meeting up with friends and studying together in order to get that interaction and escape from the stresses of student life. Having other students there means they can offer insight on any questions you have as well as being there as moral support, even if its just to compare notes with or to be talked to&at while revising. This is especially true near finals week and end of year tests, which leads me on to...

Phase 3- Revision 

So you’ve got your selection of notes that you spent hours slaving over and you’ve got a perfect track record because of how efficient you were with your homework, what now?

Revising, much like this post, works in a rule of 3 trials- Reading, Creating, Applying (Id like to take a moment to thank my GCSE Geography teacher for this golden method of planning that I did not use but ShOUD HAvE) 

Reading- 1 month (per subject). From start to finish, cover to cover, read your notes. Since they already include the relevant bits from the workbooks and revision guides, they are a vault of everything you need to know. Reading them in their entirety will refresh your memory of the stuff you forgot and allow you to see the subject as a whole, a perspective you might not have had previously since you were still learning it.

Creating- 2 months. Using what you’d forgotten, create resources (mind maps, flashcards, presentations, speeches) for you to revise from. This can be in the notebook or separate (I like to have them separate but that’s just me) just as long as they make sense for the learning style we talked about earlier.  Use the resources and memorise them.

Applying- 4 months. Once you think you’ve done memorising, find past exam questions and papers  and do them. Mark yourself (on the harsher side, just to be safe) and then check your grade. If you’re dissatisfied, go to the questions you didn't do well on, figure out what concept it was based on, re-revise it and find another question to try (repeat until happy) If satisfied, find harder and harder questions until you run out of material then get friends to make some for you OR think of the worst possible question you could get and then create it, answer it and mark it. Do this until exams happen or you feel like you’ve done enough. 

Once you’ve finished the Applying phase, create a A4 page of max. 10 bullet points (for each exam) to peruse up until you enter the exam hall (bin it before you enter) then go in and kick ass!

A really good tool for this is GetRevising, a free site which helps you make study timetables and gives you thousands of pre-prepared resources (made by teachers and students) specified to your exam boards and subjects. Not spon i just fcking love GetRevising

If you do all this, you should find the work and stress load of studying greatly reduced and it’ll give you more than a fighting chance against the generation of harder exams that they’ve sprung on us.

Go fourth and get good grades babes. 

All graphics were made with Canva

[rosalindrobertson]

The “should I run for office” question.  Short version: No.

I’ve been watching the administrative chaos out of the White House - hey, even George W and Carl Rove are saying it’s a disaster so park your partisan rage and listen  -  and we’ve now got our own version of a business celebrity running for party leadership here, and I just had major surgery, so while I recover, I feel I need to offer some unsolicited advice to wealthy business folk everywhere who think they should be the leader of a democracy: 

Don’t do it, you’ll absolutely hate it. 

I mean, you will really hate this job. You will be miserable. I can’t begin to describe it. You are doing the opposite of what you love: giving folks marching orders, being the master of your little universe. I don’t know what you saw on TV but leader of a G7 country is not at all like Hollywood portrays it.

1. You’re not actually the boss of anything. I don’t know what elected office looks  like to you, but it’s a grind and you cannot do it alone. You need a huge team of cabinet, of staff, of people who you need to listen to and consider because you’re not going to be right on most things. And it will grind you down. 

2. You’re used to being in charge and people working for you and thinking your farts don’t smell - and that’s now suddenly reversed. You work for your citizens - all of them - even the ones who don’t like you. And hoo boy, if they don’t like you they will absolutely make themselves known. And you don’t get to go hide when they get angry because THEY are your boss now. You gave up being the boss. You literally work for the people you are used to barking at. We will laugh at your dinner order, make fun of your tie. People are mean - you’re just not used to the short end of the stick. 

3. You’re used to no rules. You’re used to making all the rules and people following them without question - but ohmygod there are so many rules to being the leader of a country, a state, a city... it will make your head spin and then fall off. Everything from who you can call to whether you can accept a birthday gift to the kind of car you drive to who you give jobs to. And you don’t get to make the rules because they’re already there and really hard to change. You can try to make some new rules, but you’re going to have to really make your case and get others to agree with you. It’s a democracy, not your kingdom and you cannot rule by CEO Fiat anymore. 

4. You like to go wherever you want, whenever you want. That ends. You want to piss off and go golfing? NOPE. You don’t like where the office is? Tough luck. If you don’t want to spend most of the year in Washington, or Ottawa, for that matter, or even Canberra - don’t apply for the gig. You don’t show up for work? Expect the boss  - your constituents  - to notice immediately and start looking at ways to fire you.

5: You are used to people thinking everything you do is The Best and Most Awesome because their livelihoods depend on it. That ends. Entirely. Not only does a democracy enshrine criticism of your every move through things like Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Media, and the people from other parties who also got elected, it’s part of the job to get excoriated on the daily. 

6. You’re used to you being the important one. It’s now the job that is important, more important than you. Your ego is going to get hammered. 

7. Most of the work is painstaking and boring and you will own all of your mistakes. I don’t know what you liked to do for fun, but the devil is in the details, and you’re responsible. You can’t get away with firing some underling because you don’t bother to read what you sign. 

8. You’re not prepared to deal with constituents. Particularly in Westminster style governments, it’s all about your constituency work. Really good politicians love it. Could do it all day -and DO do it all day on Saturdays back in the riding. You may be the head of the party or the Prime Minister but you are also the Member for Your Riding and if you don’t like hearing endless tirades and be willing to personally work to get someone’s great aunt a visa in time for a wedding.... this is not the gig for you. You lose your seat, you lose your job. It’s that simple. 

9. You’ve never had lives in your hands and you’re not prepared for it. If you are not willing to watch actual military operations where people die? Get another job. People do actually live and die by the decisions you make, either directly through the military or indirectly, like not funding the CDC to deal with the next Ebola outbreak. 

10. Government is not a business. Yes, we can benefit from some business practices, but we deal with human beings, not cars or resorts or software. That is the full end of the job: try to keep people safe and warm and healthy to the best of your ability. Keep roads from collapsing. Keep the lights on. Keep the water safe. Keep infectious diseases at bay. We measure success by outcomes, by quality of life, and not bottom lines. It’s not straightforward, it’s a jenga-tower of careful balance. 

And one last thing: Park Your Rage. I know people who have been pissed off taxpayers and made a run. More often than not, they’ve been miserable in the job and wind up historic footnotes. Some embrace the learning curve and thrive - but not until after having a flaming metric tonne of hubris dumped on their doorstep. Rage gets you nowhere. Your staff will quit, the department heads won’t brief you - you’ll wind up shouting at the walls and getting nothing done.

 If you have ideas - great - but do research them first, because I guarantee you someone tried your brilliant thing already and it failed for good reasons. 

It is okay to not want this job. You got super lucky in life, please enjoy your gilded cage and your minions. Write a cheque, start a foundation if you want to do good. 

But do not sign up for Public Service unless you know exactly what the job is. 

[moscarific]

Yuletide Letter 2019!

Dear Holiday Hero,

It's Yuletide time again, and I'm happy you're here on this journey with me, you beautiful stranger! I’m a gold star Yuletide participant: I’ve signed up every year, and written at least one story every year, since the challenge began. That’s great news for you, because over the years, I’ve learned that the best Yuletide gifts are the ones that weren’t quite what I had expected, and also that gifts are satisfying and joyful for me as long as it’s clear that the author put effort and care into them. Basically, as long as you avoid my Do Not Wants and run spellcheck, I’m going to be over the moon with excitement at whatever you write for me.

My biggest non-obvious DNW is babyfic. No pregnancy, no babies, no little kids. I’m also a grumpy Jew, so I’d prefer not to receive stories with strong Christmas themes. The “five things” format is not my favorite. Please don't center your story around ships that I did not ask for.

But I like a lot more things than I dislike! Unless the Yulegoat arrives late, I’ll be reading this on the train to Chinatown for my traditional family dim sum, so please do make me laugh out loud on the L. Or make me uncomfortably aroused on the L. (Porn is optional, obviously, but: oral sex, eroticized hands, exhibitionism, shower sex, gender play.) I like experimental structures and styles, as well as more standard ones, and I am fine with whatever POV and tense you choose. If you are the kind of person who does multimedia or interactive fiction, or just clever footnotes, I am all for that. All of my requests this year have strong and distinct voices, and I would love to receive a story that embraces their sound and feel. I like stories that stick close to canon or present interesting "what if" canon divergences, and I also like superhero and In Space AUs. When I've provided gen options, I promise I want those just as much as the ships - they're not just "gen outs," but stories I very much want to read.

I tend to write the fic I want to see in the world, so you’ll get a good sense of me by browsing my AO3 account. My AO3 bookmarks are a recs list, and therefore a great way to see what kinds of fic appeal to me and make me happy.

Here are the individual requests from my sign-up, with a little more detail added here and there. I've divided each request into three sections: things I do not want, things I very much want, and ideas for things I'd love to read in the fandom.

Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers: Rosemary Harper, Sissix Seshkethet, Dr. Chef

Do not want:

Shipping Rosemary or Sissix with people other than each other, death of characters who are not dead in canon.

Very much want: To read fic set in this universe! I ship Rosemary/Sissix very hard and would love some hot cross-species femslash porn. Canon-consistent depictions of humans as weird aliens. Worldbuilding.

Ideas: I will be equally happy with sexy shippy fic about Rosemary and Sissix (with a line or two for Dr. Chef), or with fic centered around Dr. Chef that puts the other two requested characters in smaller roles. Or a story with all three of them having an adventure or solving a problem together! I love the xenophilia aspects of Rosemary and Sissix's relationship, so explore Sissix's affection for, or exasperation with, Rosemary's alienness. Show Rosemary bringing Sissix into an aspect of human culture that Sissix hadn’t encountered before - perhaps something uniquely Martian - or take us on a more in-depth tour of Aandrisk culture. Alternatively, write me a story focused on Dr. Chef: give me more insight into his earlier life, or send him on a culinary adventure. I’ve read all three novels, so references or character cameos are fine. This is a fandom where it's okay to make me sad, and where I'd prefer a touch of angst, hardship, or grief to lighthearted fluff.

Delicious World (Video Game): Frank Truffaut, Felix "Monet" Wilson

Do not want:

Fic centered around Emily/Patrick or Emily/Jean-Paul (background mentions are okay if you must). AUs outside the general setting or premise of canon (so, like, no In Space for this one).

Very much want: Sappy, shippy, porny Frank/Monet fic. Competence kink. Loving and detailed descriptions of food and cooking. For people who do not play this kind of game to watch the cut scenes on YouTube - you can pick up the canon in a couple of hours.

Ideas: Is there anything more Yuletide than nominating the casual time-management game I play on my phone? Especially since this one blew my mind with its sweet, believable m/m romance. Please give me the AU where they stay together and make their relationship work while the contest continues, or the one where they encounter each other again after the contest ends and get back together. Mostly, I am sad that the game narrative has split them up and want them to be together making crepes forever. I'd be more than content with domestic fluff, just to spend more time with Frank and Monet's relationship. Or go the other direction and give them more plot than canon would: send them on the run from an underground restaurant crime cabal, or have Frank save Monet from deranged paparazzi. Send them to parts of the world that the game hasn’t traveled to yet - it’s mostly been North America and Europe so far.  I very much enjoy the best friendship between Frank and Emily, and would be happy to see her play sidekick to Frank for once. 

For the People (TV 2018): Jay Simmons, Seth Oliver, Tina Krissman

Do not want:

If you write Jay/Seth, then I DNW fic set before Jay and Seth were roommates, or focus on their prior romantic relationships. For RL/job related reasons, court cases related to the US education system, both because they will make me sad and because I will not be able to turn off my nitpick brain.

Very much want: Romantic and/or angsty roommates-to-lovers Jay/Seth. A fun role for Tina, whether she's the protagonist or just gets a few choice lines in. Well-researched, plausible legal scenarios as plot. Love letters to New York City.

Ideas: There are two ways to go with this that would make me equally happy. The first is Tina character building, because she is one of my television heroes and never had enough to do on the show. "This Is America" is my favorite episode of the series, and anything in that vein, with Tina as the hero, would please me to no end. I'm an angry American progressive, so feel free to engage with my politics (or not, if that's uncomfortable/unfamiliar). Backstory would also be great, especially if it's Young Tina Saves the World. Talk about race, gender, and immigration. Let her be the soothing, fearless mouthpiece about the scary stuff. Or just send her on a relaxing vacation, "Captain's Holiday" style.

The other way to go is to give me Jay/Seth romance and/or porn. They're roommates and adversaries who are clearly also boyfriends. And now the show is canceled, so we can pretend that's where the showrunners were going with it! Jay's parents canonically love Seth, and I would enjoy a sweet story about Seth's growing relationship with them, and Jay's mixed feelings about it. Or give me a court case where they're directly opposing each other, especially one they're both passionate and both kind of right about. If you want, tell some or all of the story from Tina's POV, or do an epistolary/"found documents" structure.

Crooked Media RPF: Ira Madison III, Louis Virtel

Do not want:

For RL/job related reasons, centering stories around political discussion related to the US education system. Major roles for Crooked-Media-adjacent people, such as spouses, who are not public figures (mentions are fine). Stories formatted as a script or transcript of a podcast.

Very much want: Silly, sexy Ira/Louis with a friends-to-lovers or frenemies-to-lovers vibe. Canon-consistent engagement with progressive US politics.

Ideas: Oh, just write me something fun, and I'll love it. Tell about the wacky or apocalyptic event that makes these two cross the line into sex/romance. Or show them in a secret long-term relationship and tell about the wacky or apocalyptic event that makes them go public. Show how they're adjusting to Aida, or tell it from her POV and show how she's adjusting to their relationship (or non-relationship that turns into a relationship, or long history of FWB hookups). Show what happens when they land the Beyonce interview of their dreams. Or throw them into a fandom trope (sharing a bed? sex pollen? aliens made them do it?) and have them respond with their signature wit.