#like apparently we're expecting one more snowfall

[dragonsbluee]

So it's getting close to Easter, which means I am once again thinking about Rise of the Guardians

Since I also live in Canada we're currently experiencing (at least where I am) what I like to call fake-out winter, I have a new hc.

Fake-out winter, btw, is when we get a few days of spring weather and temperatures and then BAM, snow/cold temperatures. And we fall for it every year.

So my headcanon is that it bleeds into spring a lot because, apparently, winter doesn't like leaving without a fight. Or at least a petty argument with the poor groundhog as mediator.

Just imagine Jack Frost, the spirit of Spring and the Groundhog meeting up every year in some random field so Winter and Spring can argue. And every year it escalates into pranks, stubborness and nonsense, which is why fake-out spring exists or we get those unusually sunny or warm days in winter.

Meanwhile the Groundhog is only here because they refuse to leave him alone, and he has a reputation to defend dammit!

(ROBTG fans, feel free to imagine the spirit of spring as Rapunzel; I know you want to.)

[shandoratheexplorer]

WIP Monday

Thank you for @strixamans for nominating me! I nominate @finnamin @andauril and @fartasticdurge

Snippet for my "A Winter Wonderland" Christmas Story!

Did I watch over 6 hours of documentaries about ice wines and vineyards for this one shot? Yes, yes I did. Do I regret it? No.

Premise: Snowed in at their country estate after having sent away all their servants beforehand Tav and Astarion are left to their own devices. Sharing of old memories that have resurfaced after the defeat of the brain are shared, new bonds are made.

I'll post the link once it's out :)

****

This clearly isn't how Astarion imagined having an estate in the countryside is going to go. He's trudging through snow in search for his husband because he got bored with the servants in the main house. Sure it was nice and comfortable to be pampered by people, but he definitely expected some pampering from his husband too.

But ever since they got to the vineyard, Tav's been busy helping with the harvest of their grapes. Apparently if the grapes aren't all brought in until the next snowfall they'll lose part of the harvest or something.

Astarion doesn't get it. The grapes are already overripe and frozen but for some reason that's exactly how they need to be harvested and shoved into the wine press. The temperatures of the past few days have been freezing day and night and the workers have been going at it nonstop. Tav too had been out here more often than not but promised him to return when the sun went down.

This is the third night in a row that Tav has been late to return to him and so, Astarion - being the stupid supportive husband he decided to be - is out here with Octavian's scarf in his hand and a cup of piping hot tea which he can only carry because of the thick gloves he's wearing.

He's grumbling and cursing to himself for marrying a maniac like Tav.

"Why can't he just delegate everything to his little worker bees? Why must he be out here and doing manual labor and shit", he mutters, "As if he's not the boss of all of those people here."

As he makes his way uphill he only curses harder. "Why do vineyards have to be uphill?!", he growls, "As if treading through snow isn't enough of a horror already!"

Once he reaches the top of the hill, he finally sees his husband, talking to one of their employees, while two more work on getting the horses going with a cart loaded up with frozen grapes.

When Tav spots him he smiles and waves. "Astarion! What are you doing all the way out here?"

"You said you'd come back to the main house when night fell", the Vampire grumbles, nearly pouting, "Yet, you didn't."

"I'm sorry about that", his husband frowns, hugging his waist and kissing his lips, taking the cup of tea from him with a grateful smile, "But the good news is, we're finally done with the harvest so from now on I'm allll yours."

"Really?", Astarion smiles, his mood instantly lifting.

[cringecompanionapologist]

Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma: Chapter 2

This one's called Duo, because it's the beginning of Turlough and Juras working together. Other than that, I only half-understand a fair amount of this chapter.

This chapter gives us more of Turlough's PoV than the first. He's been visiting various ancient ruins on Trion and one of its moons to learn about stuff that I'm still not sure how it ties into everything else he's doing.

First, brief vocab definition:

The Old Regime is when the Imperial Clans were in charge. The Revolutionary Regime was Rehctaht's little reign of terror. The New Regime is the congress/parliament/whoever is in charge with Rehctaht overthrown.

There is a bit of insight into the Old Regime here. This particular moon of Trion has a poisonous atmosphere. Apparently the old Trion scientists sent animals to the moon in hopes that they'd adapt to the atmosphere, but they all died. This shows a bit of the Imperial Trion "Science above all else" mindset, since it's a bit cruel to do that to so many animals. I guess it's not as bad doing it to people, but it feels a little disturbing.

After finishing his moon research, Turlough meets up with Juras again and invites her back to his house. It's apparently his house from before his exile, so you'd expect like a palace or something, but it's only described as a house. Other, later depictions of places Turlough lived during his childhood tend to go with palaces.

Earlier research I did about this book said that Turlough lived in a rainforest, but this is not that at all. Interestingly, the place is given a latitude of 50 degrees north. We don't know the exact size of Trion compared to Earth, but we can see what sorts of places are 50 degrees north on Earth.

That line would be here:

So around the border between the US and Canada as well as going right through the middle of Germany and Poland.

Here's a climate map:

The climate of this entire latitude line is naturally gonna vary, but we're mainly looking at Dfb with a bit of Cfb thrown in.

You probably don't know what that means. Most people don't spend as much time staring at maps as I do.

C and D both refer to temperate climates with distinct seasons. The main difference is that, while it can snow in some C climates, the temperature of every month averages above freezing. D climates have winter months where most days are below freezing.

The second letter is about dry seasons. In some parts of the world it rains/snows far more in one half of the year than the other. The "f" means there is no dry season.

The last letter is about how hot the summer gets. Climates with "a" get hotter summers than climates with "b".

So, a Dfb climate has warm, but not too hot summers, cold, snowy winters, and no dry season.

Cfb has warm, but not too hot summers, coldish, sometimes snowy winters, and no dry season.

The descriptions of the summers around Turlough's house staying cool and the winters bringing regular snowfall would fit with a Dfb climate. Very far from what could be called a rainforest. It's more like Toronto.

Look, I got distracted by geography because this chapter was hard to read. The talk of physics and engineering makes me feel dumb so I switched to something I can be smart about.

Anyway...Turlough and Juras talk about what Turlough's been up to. She still doesn't get why he's visiting ruins instead of going into politics.

There's still a lot of exposition going on and a lot of it is in dialogue.

Turlough is studying Trion's past because he's found a weird connection between Trion and Earth. The New Regime's main allies are people called the Gardsormr. If that sounds vaguely Norse to you, it did to Turlough as well. On Earth, he heard of a myth about the Midgardsormr and the myth was very apocalyptic, making him suspect that the Gardsormr, who apparently also worked with Rehctaht, are up to no good.

His reasoning isn't Science enough for Juras' liking.

Also now it's four years away. It was two last chapter and the number will continue to change.

Turlough has one more set of ruin to visit: Slotsruin.

So, as well as Trions, Trion has another intelligent species called the Slots who are (spoilers!) descended from the Laima, who were the ancient astronauts who visited Trion and ate people back in ancient times. The Slots don't eat people, though. They have an island to themselves and they mostly keep to themselves.

So Turlough stops by Slotisland to visit Slotsruin.

So was Turlough previously pronouncing "Slots" the way it's spelled? The correct way is apparently Schlootz. Okay.

So Turlough checks out more ruins, mostly of a giant monument with a forcefield around it so nobody can learn what it is.

Once he gets home, Turlough spends a few days trying and failing to contact Juras again, but she's gone AWOL. So he gets into his own personal spaceship (a small ship meant for around four people) which he's building a new engine for: one that travels in time.

Turlough had helped the Doctor with TARDIS repairs and was able to learn a bit of how the TARDIS worked. So now he's building his own time machine. Not a TARDIS, just a small time machine. Previous Trion attempts to figure out time travel all failed at the last minute and it's suspected that the Time Lords might've been involved. So, Turlough worked in complete secrecy to avoid his work being sabotaged.

Turlough reflects a bit on not knowing whether he can trust Juras or not and how Rehctaht sucks, in his opinion.

You'd think they'd give Thatcher-Spelled-Backwards some more upsetting dictator shit to believe in but she apparently genuinely believed in egalitarianism of some sort and rich boy Turlough complained about it until he got exiled, something he apparently hasn't learned anything about. Considering that Rehctaht is Thatcher-Spelled-Backwards in 1986, we're probably not supposed to like her. Turlough is supposed to be the good guy who stood up for what he believed in, but this really isn't making him look good.

Apparently, another thing the Imperial Clans believed in was sharing knowledge. Everyone told everyone else what they were working on. But, Juras, while working for Rehctaht, got involved in secret projects.

So the Clans believed in the superiority of a minority of the majority based on genetics, valued scientific progress above all else, and didn't believe in the right to privacy. Okay then...

But this does create a sort of interesting insight into Turlough's perspective on secrets and lies. For such a dishonest character, he came from a society that didn't really do dishonesty. He was apparently a good, dutiful, Imperial Clansman who was driven to keep secrets and tell lies. He probably felt like he'd abandoned his principals in order to survive well before he met the Black Guardian.

Turlough's thoughts about Juras are interrupted by finding out that Juras stowed away in his time machine, so now they kinda have to have a conversation. Juras, an engineer, fangirls over Turlough's stories about the TARDIS for a bit and then the subject switches back to politics and the Gardsormr. The Gardsormr are the New Regime's first allies and nobody is gonna believe they're evil. They won't even listen to the evidence.

So...uh...wow. Turlough was almost driven to murder by exile. His main conflict in Planet of Fire was being afraid that he'd face exile again if he did the right thing. And now he doesn't care. He just wants to make Trion the way it was again and he doesn't care if he'll be exiled again trying. After all that trouble, he doesn't care.

Yeah, I don't buy it.

Anyway, there's going to Earth to test the time machine because Turlough apparently left some stuff at Brendon that he wants to retrieve. He still doesn't get what the Doctor likes about Earth so much and assumes that he knows something about this Planet in the Middle of Nowhere that makes it interesting.

My guess is that the story is going to imply that Turlough is right when the truth is that the Doctor's first companions whom he learned morality from were from Earth. He did, in fact, just like the inhabitants.

So, they get the time machine together. Turlough does some physics technobabble, Juras does some engineering technobabble, I fail to keep with it, and it can easily be summed up as, "Turlough and Juras, with their knowledge of two different fields, work together to build a time machine." And that's the chapter.

So, still a lot of exposition with a lot of characterization coming out as variations of : "X, I know that you have, Y personality trait!". The characterization we can see is a tad questionable. When it comes to characters like Juras, who were made up for this book, I don't have much to say. But, yeah, Turlough's characterization definitely doesn't feel quite right, though we're still early in the book and this could go in a better direction later.