#like the early stages/setup for the ship

[kankuroplease]

I don’t know if I missed any information in previous posts about her where you have answered this, if so I’m sorry for the repeat question.

I love chiha so much! As a little sister myself I cling onto little sister characters, and I am actually appalled at the fact that more characters don’t have younger siblings in naruto. Sorry that was a lot of typing just to not get to the point😅

In a previous post you said Gaara is not her type and sasuke is a no no, so is there an example of a canon/oc character that is her type or maybe a ship you already have setup?

Also if it’s not too much to ask what are her relationships like with some of the other characters (team10, team8, etc…)

These questions are more for your new au, but I completely understand if I’m thinking too far ahead

Very sorry about the length of this

In general, Chiha loves being the youngest to as it gets her out of trouble (no one suspects the youngest) and it’s fun to give Naruto a little sister

In this au, she’s still a menace, she’s just more small town coded

Sasuke

Chiha would definitely have a huge crush on bull rider Sasuke. He’s in a cowboy hat, keeps cats, let her feed the baby animals, never complained about her tagging along, gave her his old guitar (which yeah, she read too much into), and she’s not blind 🤣 (the main thing she doesn’t like about him in TSAU is that he is hung up on another girl and would tie her down to the city she wants to leave). They just get in stupid arguments because Chiha doesn’t know how to handle having a crush/her crush being so popular and they both have tempers.

Sakura

She ADORES Sakura so much. She helped Chiha practice to get on the cheer team, taught her how to do her makeup, and how to throw a mean punch. Sakura Graduating early and going to college meant she didn’t get to spend her teen years with her pseudo big sis, but they called and texted regularly so they are still very close.

While she likes Kisame as a person, she’s bummed that once again, Sakura is leaving her in the dust with different life stages. So she doesn’t spend too much time with the happy couple.

Shikamaru

Or Nara, as she calls him, don’t have much to do with each other. She’s convinced he’s the laziest cowboy ever and she’s not sure why him and Naruto are friends or what Temari sees in him 🤨

Choji

He is Menma’s friend and her favorite rodeo clown tbh. She’s so happy that he’s always willing to share snacks with her and always gestures for her to take a deep breath when she’s nervous in the arena. Good friend 10/10

Ino

Ino’s family was on a whole different level to the rest of their town financially and Ino was this spoiled rich girl that got to go live in a city, so she really doesn’t know her. Chiha is very sucked to see her again in this au as a regular girl

Tenten

Tenten is her other pseudo big sis that thought her how to lasso ~~she could’ve asked Naruto or Sasuke, but that was embarrassing as a kid when she said she already knew how~~ and let her borrow her moms old records to play when she was little.

Tenten and Chiha often run into each other for different town events as Chiha is a singer and Tenten does bar tending too. So they usually catch up at those functions if not at the rodeo.

Lee

He will always have a hero’s cape as her first actual dance partner (bros don’t count at parties). It was awkward as heck being a wallflower and then he came along and asked her to dance 🥹 they’ve developed a great friendship due seeing each other during Naruto’s training and even have a secret handshake

Kakashi

He’s a legendary bull rider from their town and Naruto’s mentor. She doesn’t know much about him, but he’s kinda always been around because he knows her parents?? All she knows everyone wants him and he can carry a note, so he better get his butt on stage and do these duets so she can make more money/get more attention 🤣

She also doubles as his errand girl during rodeos do to his injuries that have left him sidelined this season.

Obito

All she knows about is that before he was a rodeo clown/announcer, he was also a bull rider and that some big bad bull ended that career.

Oh and he’s loaded and his wife is too hot and cool for him, but his son is cute.

Konan

Obito’s wife that doesn’t do box seats even though she could. Anytime they’re around her hometown, she hears a lot of whispers and rumors about her, but Chiha doesn’t really care to listen to them.

Konan seems cool and she often sees her (and her kid) sitting with Kakashi and Gai.

Gai

He’s that funny guy that’s always around Kakashi and has a positive outlook on things. She likes finding new dad jokes to tell him because he always laughs like it’s the funniest thing.

Kisame

He’s cool for a cop, she guesses. The only times they interact really is when Sakura comes to see her perform

Gaara

He is not cool. She tried the clueless cute act and he gave her a ticket anyways. He’s not cool and he’s not that cute, she doesn’t care what anyone says 💀

Zabuza

Chiha is so freakin’ scared of him. His aura is intense, but he’s another poplar cowboy who unlike Sasuke and Kakashi, will actually sign things for her (she resales it).

He thinks she’s a big fan of his and she’d like to keep it that way (for the money)

Haku

This beauty. Honestly only met him because Naruto gave her, Zabuza’s number one fan, his number to pass on to Haku. They’re just getting to know each other, but they have swapped jackets, so Chiha considers him a friend ✨

Hinata

Like Ino, she never actually met Hinata. She saw her here and there when she was younger because she and Menma were close, but now she sees her every Saturday morning on her cooking show. Girls supporting girls and what not.

Seems like a sweet girl and her and her mother will try to recreate some of the dishes for fun. She teases Menma about it being his old gfs recipe and tells him he should try reaching out to her 😏

Asuma

Her old high school principal. He wrote her a letter of recommendation when she asked (that she never used) 😭

As for her type, she just likes people that are free thinking and will show her (and only her) affection~

[mappinglasirena]

The Stairs Under the Bridge

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that one of the many mysteries/points of discussion that come up repeatedly is: what is happening in the space under La Sirena's bridge? There's a door leading there from the mess hall and we see Picard walk through it in S01E06, "The Impossible Box", but we never find out what that space is being used as.

(At least, we don't know what its in-universe use is. We know from set plans that in the studio, the space apparently held the playback setup.)

We got a glimpse of a cross-section of the ship in the Blu-ray set tour, which has some impossible geometry happening under the bridge...

(That is not a proper floor and something is definitely clipping through it!)

... and if you remember my post from a while back, I speculated that the most likely explanation is that the model has an extendable ladder there, that would allow people to board/leave the ship by a means other than the loading ramp. This would fit with the early idea of the season 1 writers to have Picard board La Sirena in a space port, rather than beam him on board while she's in orbit.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we got confirmation that this is indeed what the production team originally intended.

Dave Blass, the production designer for PIC Seasons 2 and 3, tweetet some images showcasing a cross-section of the Sirena set/model:

As you can imagine, this gave me enormous joy (and a not too small amount of glee)! I have long insisted that the panorama windows, i.e. the exit the Motley Crew use to get off the ship once she crash-lands on Coppelius, don't really work as a proper access point to the ship. There is a three foot drop right inside the window the crew needs to bridge, no proper hatch, no ladders, etc. The only reason it makes for such a convenient exit is that Sirena is buried in a few metres of dirt, bringing the window level with the ground.

And indeed, La Sirena has, or at least was originally intended to have, a proper access to the front of the ship, one with a ladder and hatch and everything! And it's located in the mysterious space under the bridge!

But, me being me, this schematic also immediately raised a question: Isn't that ladder a bit too short?

If you remember this post, it seems like one of the changes made during Sirena's design process was that the wings were dropped quite a significant amount. Where the early concept art has the ship sitting fairly low to the ground, she is raised much higher when she reaches her final form.

Essentially, we went from a configuration that might have looked something like the version on the top to the actual model on the bottom:

This change increased the ship's clearance significantly.

For the non-imperial-measuring among us, the height of the ladder given in the schematic shared by Blass, 14' 10 1/2", translates to about 4.8m. However, when you line up the orthogonal view of the ship with the cross section, the length of the ladder is not really enough to reach the ground once the ship has landed.

(The green line indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

There is some speculation that maybe Sirena can fold up her nacelles for landing, and that might be true. There are rooms extending into the wings that would end up at an odd angle, but I suppose with artificial gravity, anything is possible -- if somewhat unlikely.

Still, if we presume Sirena's wings are rigid in general, the distance from the tarmac to the belly of the ship (here: the stage floor in the schematic) is a bit larger than 4.8m.

I wanted to adapt the ladder accordingly, but getting good measurements by converting between feet, pixels, and metres is a bit of a hassle. So instead, I simply used the measurements already on the schematic and extended the ladder so that the ship's clearance would be 5.5m or around 18ft.

This brings the total length of the ladder to about 21ft or 6.5m, and overlaid on the orthogonal ship view, it looks like this:

(The green line once again indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

As you can see, this length requires for the outer engines to fold up a little bit and would have the lowest point of the nacelles basically sitting on the ground. I personally think that would make a lot of sense, and in season 2 we did see that the outer engine pods are on hinges and can definitely fold down.

(It's subtle, but they do move back into their resting position towards the end of the gif.)

It was never confirmed that the engings can fold farther up as well, but looking at how they're attached, I think it makes sense that they could.

Now, in the adjusted S1 concept art of Sirena at the space port, the outer engines are in their normal positions and the wings are actually fully off the ground, with the ship resting on extended landing gear:

So, my extended ladder is the absolute minimum length needed to account for the dropped wings. In all likelihood the ladder would have to be even longer than that, because the clearance would be over 5.5m.

One thing that playing around with all of these views and measurements made me realize, though, is that La Sirena is quite a bit larger than I usually picture her. I have this realization about once every two or three months, so to make it easier to internalize, I asked the wonderful @regionalpancake to assist me.

Google helpfully suggests that 5.5m / 18ft is about half the size of a telephone pole or of three Michael Jordan's standing on each other's shoulders. It is also the size of...

... one average adult giraffe. (This is more or less helpful, depending on when you last went to the zoo, but I really enjoyed that as a visual aide.)

And because Regionalpancake is a good sport (and extremely proficient at adding animals to La Sirena), she also gave me this second edit:

(She also helpfully removed the spacedock workers who were a little to tall in comparison to Sirena. Hopefully, the friendly Averagely-Sized Adult Giraffe will make the ship's real dimensions slightly easier to gauge.)

So, now we have an idea of what might lurk beneath La Sirena's bridge!

I imagine in-universe, there is more stuff stashed under there than just the stairs, though. Perhaps the space gives easier access to the phaser banks in the nose of the ship, or to some other flight control or power distribution machinery. And there's still the question of why Picard, after a very emotionally draining conversation, chooses to head into this space rather than going straight upstairs to his cabin or to his study on the holodeck. (Yes, I know the Doylist answer is because it was the more dramatically satisfying blocking/staging choice, but on this blog, we like to dig for Watsonian explanations, too!)

My personal guess is still that there's some communal washroom down there, because those have to be somewhere on the ship, and that space would actually make sense, being in such close proximity to the bridge and mess hall.

But, since we never saw any of it on screen (and won't ever see La Sirena on screen again), I guess the space under the bridge will always remain a canonical mystery -- and thus available for any interpretation your writing /mapping/ headcanon might require ;)

[allthishumanityforfree]

https://people.com/gracie-abrams-paul-mescal-dating-romance-still-early-stages-exclusive-8697587

Shedding light on the pair and the nature of their relationship, a source tells PEOPLE that “they’ve been hooking up and it’s still early stages.”

lmao getting cold feet on the PR stunt and not wanting people to think they're really dating?

I have had a few asks about this. This whole thing is so public and so setup it feels icky. This is not necessarily about shipping or rpf but just, I work in the media so I see patterns in it.

The timing is always so weird and connected to promoting stuff. Also stuff dropping to cover his drug usage, promote the trailer and her album.

The deuxmoi messages about them seem super scripted and unnatural. Like they were talking loudly in public about their past, they were well lit during a pap walk with no chemistry.

They did this super public rollout the weekend (the same weekend everyone was talking about that bisexual mirror photo, but that might be coincidence) and then saw how unpopular it was, and now their team are dropping 'it was casual'. If it was believable, it would read about 'blossoming love' and 'taking it slow.'

I think they probably have hooked up, but now it's purely business. Plus, they share management, so it reeks of rehabilitating Paul and his queer, wild ways. Maybe they are just friends, maybe it's casual, but it's certainly being pushed to help his image and boost her profile

[league-of-blorbos]

Hi, I write fanfiction sometimes but my biggest issue is that I'm very slow at it and I always end up leaving my half finished drafts to rot and never get posted. But I started writing this Heartsteel Yone fic in like 2 sittings and I really wanna try and finish it since I like the direction it's going.

It's mainly about my transfem Yone headcanon and them struggling with both dysphoria and the music industry, and maybe lead it into some Aluyone content since I love that ship in this au. While what I have is just set up for how Yone first met the band, I would LOVE any feedback on stuff I could improve or just some motivation to help me finish this draft.

(One last note, I'm referring to Yone with he/him so far but the pronouns will change later in the story as Yone sorts their gender out more)

Yone had very strict parents growing up. He knew it ultimately came from a place of love, but sometimes it was like they kept raising their expectations for him as soon as he started to get close to meeting them. When most looked at the two brothers, they would never guess Yone was the only one their parents had to constantly pull back in line while they never seemed too concerned about what his brother, Yasuo, was doing. Maybe it was because Yone always did better in school as a kid and had more potential in their eyes, or their parents had just long given up on trying to keep their younger son in check when he was always on the move. Whatever the case was, it felt like Yone’s parents wanted a say in everything he did, from trying to push him towards a more “respectable” career than music, to not allowing him to to buy the more gaudy and revealing clothes that he admired. It took so much convincing to even grow his hair out long and dye it, his mother telling Yone how handsome he looked with short hair, or his dad warning him that others would think he’s a woman. Of course, they relented after Yasuo also started growing his hair out to support his brother. 

Needless to say, Yone was relieved when he finally built up enough money from gigs to move out, and was able to have a bit more freedom in his self-expression. He wasn’t even completely sure why having long hair or pretty outfits meant so much to him, he just knew it somehow felt natural when he brushed his fingers through his long locks, felt his ponytail swishing behind his back, or how clothes that brought out his slender figure made him stare at himself in the mirror for a little longer than usual. 

But Yone didn’t have the time to question these little things as his career quickly took off, and a lot of those familiar restrictions from Yone’s childhood started to return. Now he was stuck where the people he’d DJ for had specific requests for what to play, and he’d gotten big enough to have agents and managers that kept him from straying too far from the mainstream sound. On top of that, Yone still cared for his parent’s approval to a degree, even if he didn’t live under their roof, and didn’t want to squander any big opportunities just because he felt a little constrained. 

But as the bar everyone expected him to meet flew higher and higher, Yone felt all the restrictions growing tighter and tighter, weighing him down more and more. He felt he had barely any time and absolutely no energy to work on any passion projects, the actual experimental and groundbreaking music that got him into the scene in the first place. His frustration reached a breaking point after a particularly tiring show. The equipment kept acting up despite there being no issues during setup, Yone kept having to play the same few songs over and over, and the set had to be cut early after a drunk fan rushed the stage and tried to get handsy with him. Yone was on his way home, feeling irritated, violated, and just so fucking exhausted. 

The very last thing Yone wanted to do when he got back to his flat was argue with a stuck up manager over the phone who insisted he should’ve continued the show after the crazed fan was dealt with. With Yone’s mind not in the best headspace and absolutely sick of never getting to do things his way, he finally lost his cool and got into a shouting match with the agent that went well into the night. When he hung up, tears were streaming down Yone’s cheeks, and he couldn’t tell if they were from all the yelling or if they were from the relief of getting everything off his chest right at the people who, at this point, felt like they were just there to make things worse.

The relief was short lived, as the agent had quit the next morning, leaving Yone with no one to help him manage the business side of his job. 

Yone felt at his lowest possible point. Maybe his parents were right that this wasn’t the path he should’ve taken, and that he should’ve just stuck with his robotics classes. But that all changed one night, it was a rare night when both he and Yasuo had time to meet up and just chill together like they used to. Of course, with both of them being DJs, the siblings naturally talked about music often, and while discussing up-and-coming artists, Yasuo brought up a duo trying to start a group; their names were Sett and K’Sante. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"

Tonight (May 30) at 6:30PM, I’m at the NOTTINGHAM Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast).

Tomorrow (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Then it’s London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

Have you ever read a novel that was so good you almost felt angry at it? I mean, maybe that’s just me, but there is one author who consistently triggers my literary pleasure centers so hard that I get spillover into all my other senses, and that’s Ian McDonald, who has a new novel out: Hopeland:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765375551/hopeland

Seriously what the fuck is this amazing, uncategorizable, unsummarizable, weird, sprawling, hairball of a novel? How the hell do you research — much less write — a novel this ambitious and wide-ranging? Why did I find myself weeping uncontrollably on a train yesterday as I finished it, literally squeezing my chest over my heart as it broke and sang at the same moment?

Hopeland is a climate novel, and it’s not McDonald’s first. Hearts, Hands and Voices (published in the US as The Broken Land) is a climate novel (that also happens to be about the Irish Troubles). So is his stunning debut, Desolation Road, which I picked up at a mall bookstore in 1988 and lost my mind over:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/07/02/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-mars-book-desolation-road-finally-back-in-print/

But those were climate novels written in the early stages of the discussion of the gravity of the anthropocene, and so climate change was more setting than anything else. In Hopeland, the climate is more of a character — not a protagonist, but also not a minor character.

The true stars of Hopeland are members of two ancient, secret societies. There’s Raisa Hopeland, who belongs to a globe-spanning, mystical “family,” that’s one part mutual aid, one part dance music subculture, and one part sorcerer (some Hopelanders are electromancers, making strange, powerful magic with Tesla coils).

We meet Raisa as she is racing across London in a bid to win a rare, open electromancer title. She is on the brink of losing, but then a passerby pitches in to help: Amon Brightborne, part of another mystical family whose stately, odd manor in the English countryside can only be reached by people who can work the “gateway,” which makes the road disappear and reappear. Amon is a composer and DJ who specializes in making music for very small groups of people — preferably just one person — that is so perfect for them that they are transformed by hearing it.

Amon’s intervention in Raisa’s bid for electromancy unites these two formerly disjoint families, entwining their destinies just as the world is forever changing, thanks to the decidedly un-magical buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. They have a romance, a breakup, a child. They are scattered to opposite ends of the Earth — Iceland and a tiny Polynesian island.

Their lives are electrified. Literally. On her passage to Iceland, Raisa confronts a ship-destroying megastorm, speaks its true name, and sends it away before it can sink the container ship — captained by a Hopelander who gives her free passage — that she is sailing on. In Iceland, she falls in with more Hopelanders, tapping a thermal vent to create a greenhouse cannabis farm, which begets a luxury salad greens business, then an electricity plant that attracts cryptocurrency weirdos like shit draws flies.

Amon, meanwhile, is sinking into drunken ruin on his island paradise, where he becomes a kind of mascot for the locals, who respect his musical prowess. The island is sinking, both figuratively and literally, as its offshore king, hiding in a luxury mansion in Sydney, drains its aquifers for the luxury bottled water market and loots its treasuries to fund his own high lifestyle.

McDonald takes a long time getting to this point. This is a 500 page novel, and the build to this setup takes nearly 300 of them. Every word of that setup is gold. McDonald’s prose often veers into poetry, or at least poesie, and he has this knack for seemingly superfluous vignettes and detours that present as self-indulgences but then snap into place later as critical pieces of a superbly turned narrative. How the fuck does he do it?

How does he do it? How does he deliver a sense of such vastness, a world peopled by vastly different polities and populations, distinctly different without ever being exoticized, each clearly the hero of their own story, whether they live on a tiny island or captain an American battleship?

I mean, cyberpunk — the tradition McDonald most obviously belongs to — was always about a post-American future, but no one ever managed it the way McDonald did. He delivered a superb, complex, Indian future in 2004’s River of Gods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/06/12/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-new-novel-river-of-gods-bollywoodpunk/

And then did the same in Brazil with 2007’s Brasyl:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/04/30/ian-mcdonalds-brasyl-mind-altering-cyberpunk-carioca/

And Turkey in 2011’s Dervish House, a novel of mystical nanofuturism set in an Istanbul that is so vividly drawn that you feel like you can reach through the page and touch it:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/07/12/ian-mcdonalds-dervish-house-superb-novel-of-the-mystical-nano-future-of-istanbul/

Those were ambitious books, but Hopeland puts them to shame. It draws on so many threads — music and art, climate justice, mysticism, electrical engineering, economics, gender politics — and has such a huge cast of finely drawn characters. By all rights, it should collapse under its own weight. I mean, seriously — who can write multi-page passages describing imaginary music and make it riveting?

McDonald is just so damned good at writing love-letters to places that turn them into characters in their own right. The first third of Hopeland treats London that way, bringing it to gritty life in the manner of Michael de Larrabeiti’s classic Borribles trilogy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/16/the-borribles-are-back/

Or, for that matter, China Miéville’s debut novel King Rat, itself out in a fancy new Tor Essentials edition with an introduction by Tim Maughan, who absolutely bullseyes the appeal of Miéville’s novel of underground music, mystical societies and urbanism:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250862501/kingrat

(It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Miéville is a giant Borribles fan:)

https://www.tor.com/2014/03/13/the-borribles-excerpt-introduction-china-mieville/

I have loved Ian McDonald’s work since I picked up Desolation Road in that mall bookstore when I was 17. One of the absolute highlights of my writing career was writing an introduction for the 2014 reissue of Out On Blue Six, a book that mashes up David Byrne’s solo projects, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Dick’s Do Androids Dream in a madcap dystopian comedy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/20/out-on-blue-six-ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-novel-is-back/

I’ve read everything I could find about how he manages these giant, weird, intricately constructed novels, like this fascinating 2010 interview about his research process:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100726181934/http://www.cclapcenter.com/2010/07/an_interview_with_ian_mcdonald.html

But despite it all, I find myself continuously baffled by how manages it, but each book just stabs me. For one thing, he’s such a good remix artist. His three-volume, essential retelling of Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress starts with Luna: New Moon (2015):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Which substantially out-Heinleins Heinlein, adding thickness and rigor to the tropes Heinlein tossed in as throwaways. Then, he topped himself with the sequel, Luna: Wolf Moon (2017):

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/28/ian-mcdonald-returns-to-the-harshest-mistress-in-luna-wolf-moon/

Before bringing it all in for a screaming landing that tied up the hundreds of threads he pulled on in the course of the previous two volumes with the conclusion, Luna: Moon Rising (2019):

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/05/16/luna-moon-rising-in-which-ian-mcdonald-brings-the-trilogy-to-an-astounding-intricate-exciting-and-satisfying-climax/

In each volume, McDonald proved — over and over — that he understood precisely what Heinlein was trying to do, then outdid him, and, in so doing, shredded Heinlein’s solipsitic, simplistic, seductive argument about a libertarian utopia.

Perhaps this is McDonald’s greatest gift: his ability to rework others’ ideas, tropes and tales, without ever trying to hide his influences, and then vastly outdoing them. That’s certainly what was going on with his wild-ass, deiselpunk YA trilogy, which started with 2011’s Planesrunner:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/12/06/planesrunner-ian-mcdonalds-ya-debut-is-full-of-action-packed-multidimensional-cool-airships-electropunk-and-quantum-physics/

One important McDonaldism: being deadly serious about his whimsy. The books are all very whimsical, but never frivolous. To get a sense of what I mean here, consider his 1992 graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, a deadly serious comic book about the Klu Klux Klan, told entirely through adorable teddybears in a noir cityscape, whose dialog is heavily salted with Tom Waits lyrics:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/24/ian-mcdonalds-kling-klang-klatch/

No, really. And it’s fantastic.

Back to Hopeland. It’s a climate novel, because what else could you write in this time of polycrisis? The book is vast enough to convey the scale of the crisis. The storms that ravage the world are both personified and realized, a terror to compare to any literary monster or Cthuhoid entity. But it’s called Hopeland for a reason, because it’s a book about hope, not nihilism, a book about confronting the crisis, a book about solidarity and love, about overcoming difference, about challenging the way things “just are.”

That’s why I was crying and holding my heart yesterday on the train. The hope. What a ride.

One of the reasons I was in such a hurry to read this novel now is that I’m appearing on a panel with McDonald this coming Saturday, June 3, at Edinburgh’s Cymera festival, along with Nina Allen, author of the new novel Conquest:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

I’m so looking forward to it. I’ve written a couple dozen books since I read my first McDonald novel as a teenager, and while I still have no idea how McDonald does it, there’s something of his work in every one of my books.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Nottingham, Manchester, London, and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/30/electromancy/#the-grace

[Image ID: The cover for the Tor Books edition of 'Hopeland.']

[stepswordsen]

JuAli WIP doodles

So, I'm just gonna post my old JuAli doodles from November ~ April. Obsessed with them. I've been thinking about them non-stop. Judar is wearing traditional Chinese hanfu in these :) 

Here's my JuAli doodles for now <3 They're pretty messy, so I'll put them under the cut. Also I'm putting my thought rambles under the cut too. They’re snippets of thoughts I had, including ones with friends, feel free to read them if you’re curious!

Some rambles

I was considering whether I should post my JuAli doodles since I usually prefer to keep my art account for finished arts only, but I wanted to show my love for them. I still have to refine and redraw these tbh, but I'm excited to work on these in the future! 

I also didn’t know whether to post these rambles under my art or make a new post on my side blog. Well. It’s going here now. I’ll post the rest of my sketches and another rambles in another post 

The first two Judar in hanfu doodles are some of my fave drawings ever. I really want to finish this one soon...

I think Judar has red eyeliner in the manga, and the Magi anime has Judar's eyeshadow as purple? In Ohtaka's coloured arts, it looks like a more saturated red colour to me.

I like Judar with red eyeliner/eyeshadow like how Ohtaka colours in the manga. I like how the colours pop and the contrast against his design, and how it matches his red eyes. Also cuz black and red are his image/representative colours to me anyways

I want Judar to wear black, white, red, and gold hanfu... I’ve also been looking into hanfu earrings for him. I'm thinking of red and gold. I want him to have red eyeliner and black painted fingernails.

Also, in the future, I'd also like to draw Desi inspired Alibaba wearing kurta with churidar!

Some thoughts on JuAli

I love how my friends described them as besties and one-sided enemies/worsties dynamic (from Judar’s end lmfao), it’s soooo funny. I feel like they’d have a sort of Love-Hate relationship at first, like when you hate someone so much it’s love...

My friend mentioned that because Alibaba is so different and the complete opposite of him, it makes sense he doesn’t understand it, but it only shows that he’s curious and that deep inside he wants to know.

And Judar would just constantly be like “I really don't get this guy at all” and “I don't understand what he's thinking at all!” Like how he was with Alibaba on the Dark continent. I think it’s interesting how he recognized that Alibaba has qualities that draw people to him, but just couldn't understand why.

I love their Fire and Ice duality. Light/Darkness. Angel/Devil. Hot and Cold. Enemies to Lovers. They’d bicker and kiss and make out. Twink on twink violence is their love language /lh

I feel like in the early stages of them catching feelies they’d both be really awkward around each other and constantly headbutt each other… They'd always be pretty competitive with each other, but they'd warm up to each other over time.

I love their setup, I’m obsessed with them and their vibes. They’re so funny and cute… I love their dynamic, their vibes are impeccable. I could sense the sen-core with them, I love them so much.

I awaken to my final form. Meow meow mf x Empathetic, loving ball of sunshine… It's the sen-core ship formula: meow meow mf x ball of sunshine. Morally questionable/morally bankrupt x morally agreeable <3

Also I love Light/Darkness, Yin/Yang and Sun/Moon/Eclipse themed ships. And Rivals/Enemies to Lovers. Opposites contrast :)

I love Opposites Attract ships that are also combined with any of these tropes: Narrative parallelism (Yin/Yang, Light/Darkness, Sun/Moon/Eclipse tropes), Protagonist x Rival/Antagonist/Opposing Figure, Reconciliation of Opposites, Fated Enemies/Rivals, etc.

Sen-core characters/ships: being a menace to A) the world and/or B) their rival/enemy/lover.

Alibaba is the sun, and Judar’s leitmotif is the black sun (just like Douman). And he’s also technically the moon. One of my friends told me she sees him with Eclipse symbolism, which is really interesting.

[spell-cleaver]

This a deleted scene from Chapter 10 of The Protégé - if you’ve read the chapter, you can see why I deleted it. It’s an early draft of the puppet play scene, but I was still figuring out the worldbuilding so it had to be totally rewritten. Hope you enjoy!

Biggs perked his head up. “Look—I think that’s Luke over there!”

She turned her head, rising to her tiptoes to try to see over the crowd. It was him, she thought—with what looked like his sister and other Naberries as well. She clenched her jaw in resolution to not deal with Pooja and forged her way towards them through the stream of people. Sabé was way ahead of her, having already made a beeline for her charge.

The throng of people actually kept away from that stall, and once Leia was close enough she could see why: it was a puppet theatre. She’d walked past a few for kids already, but this one seemed more sophisticated, with elegant dolls attached to numerous strings and a clear voice singing the events. There were a few large stone placed in a semicircle around the box to indicate the space for the viewers to stand. Leia sidled in next to Luke and breathed a sigh of relief at the reprieve from the crowd.

He was staring, enraptured, at the puppet play on before him. There was a woman wearing a large, stiff dress currently singing on the bridge of a spaceship. The stage shuddered as they changed the background and the spaceship crashed into the Great Plains of Naboo. The woman—surely the queen?—stepped out and surveyed the planet, despite attempts by shadowy advisers to pull her back. It’s not safe! It’s not safe! they cried in song.

The woman gave a speech in return, and the scene shifted to the shadow of a village and a river. The river meandered around where they first built the village, but as the settlement bulged in size and the number of cardboard ships zooming in and out of it grew and grew, the river changed as well. It ran clear, then muddy, the waterfalls a strange, unnatural colour. Just as the music and songs of distress crescendoed, strange ships emerged from the river. A Gungan puppet joined the scene—and the curtains closed.

Everyone clapped loudly. One of Luke’s sisters even whistled. Leia frowned. “Is that it?”

Luke started, turning to her. “Oh—Leia! I didn’t realise you’d arrived. How are you finding the fair?”

“It’s wonderful,” she said, a little amused. “Sorry to interrupt the play. What story was it? Was that it?” She glanced back at the closed curtains.

“Yeah—it’s the story of the explorer ship the Naboo that first crashed here. It’s a pretty inaccurate play, the queen wouldn’t have been on that first ship, and the outfits”—he glanced at his sister, the one who wasn’t Pooja, then back—“are apparently hideously inaccurate, but it’s a fun epic. A murder mystery on a scientific expedition.”

“Why did it cut off just as the Gungans arrived?”

“It’s setup for the next play—the sequel. I don’t think they’re playing it now, but they usually play it directly after. It’s about first contact with the Gungans and how a working relationship was established between the two races.” Luke gave a wry smile. “It’s also used in schools to teach kids about the importance of not polluting the rivers. We live on a different part of the planet to the Gungans, but we form a symbiont circle. The ecosystem is a part of that.”

Leia raised her eyebrows. “How much of these plays are accurate?”

“This one we just saw—nothing. Depends on the performer. You get the same pattern with Gungan aquatic ballet—lots of different takes on myths and origin stories. Any of them that try to present the Cradle Queen in a positive light, like this one, tend to have a positive spin on them. She was the grandmother of the Tyrant Queen, and her line was overthrown and the monarchy reformed fairly quickly.”

“I wondered about Naboo’s monarchy,” Leia mused. “It did used to be hereditary, then?”

“A long time ago. That bloodline claimed rulership over various other worlds in the sector as well—Karlinus, Jafan, Lofquar, even Chommell Minor. The Tyrant Queen had aspirations of being Empress.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

Luke grimaced. “As I said. There’s a lot of different stories. Which ones are told depends on the political persuasion of the teller.”

“How much do people know about what really happened?” Leia understood the importance of foundation myths and cultural touchstones—it was the reason the monarchy still existed on Alderaan. Her mother was a figurehead for the planet, even if the parliament had all the real power. But truth was still a necessity of democracy.

“A lot. Not enough, but a lot.” He stared wistfully at the curtains. “Naboo has a lot of inherited baggage—especially with the Gungans—that people would rather not dig into.”

He blinked. “Oh! Speaking of.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small, token book. Most things were accessed digitally nowadays, but physical flimsi books were still used for the sensory experience, and for older texts. He handed it over. “I got this for you at one of the stalls. It looks good for research.” He looked her up and down. “Also the white cover reminded me of you.”

She took it with amusement. “I’m pretty sure my dress won’t be fully white by the end of it. There’s already been some close calls with various drinks stalls.”

Luke snorted. “It wouldn’t hurt to wear a bit of colour.”

“White is the colour of democracy, at home,” she explained. “It’s harder to hide corruption on a blank sheet.”

[puppyxaegon]

bestieee, i need more details about the lords of chaos/an arrangement WIP, please and thank you 😩❣️✨

Hmmmmm now why did I have a feeling you'd be asking about that🤭🤭🤭

Sooo this idea for a Ramsay/Aegon ship was planted in my head by @ginwicche and I haven't known peace since honestly. 'An Arrangement' is my working title for the shorter oneshot kind of fic that immediately came to my mind, it would probably be a few chapters with just setup, them meeting, the wedding ceremonies and the very beginning of their relationship/dynamic and how they'd react tho each other ig. If I'm able to actually develop it into a full fic I like the name 'Lords of Chaos ', which comes from a biopic about the band Mayhem by the same name and I'll just say if you know the history of Mayhem, it's quite fitting. Fighting for my life trying to have this to make just a little bit of logical sense and the idea rn is (in an alternate dimension where they exist at the same time obv) Rams and Aegon somehow end up in an unprecedented arranged marriage. Maybe Alicent decides that Aegon is truly a lost cause for doing anything useful so she marries him to Ramsay to strengthen her connection to the north. Maybe Rhaenyra wins power, and instead of choosing to kill the green children she marries them off in far flung regions of the realm to weaken them as a unit while also spreading the Targaryen presence. I truly don't know, it's very early stages but I have a lot of ideas for fun scenes between them and about how their two worlds might blend together. Thinking of Ramsay anywhere outside of the North kind of hurts my brain, but with this setup I feel like anything is possible lol. I am a bit apprehensive about working on this one tbh, this may sound silly because yk, he's him, but Ramsay is a very important character to me personally and the pressure I feel to write him well is insane. Bestest boy ever and so many people write him so amazingly it's just like aghhh intimidating. But anyway I'm getting ahead of myself, there's the basic premise! Lmk if you'd like a teaser/snippet I'll get working on that too <33

[cosmomoore]

I hate to be the "well akshually" person, but as much as I would like to blame Mattel for this, this likely is not their fault for an assortment of reasons.

It's important to take a few things into account here:

1) Toys, and dolls in particular, have potentially the longest development process in all of licensing. This has to do both with where the toys are manufactured (because toys are shipped via container ship and take 6+ months to arrive to retailers) and also because sculpting likenesses, bodies, and accessories, tooling those items, distilling the clothing textiles and patterns into doll forms, and then receiving approval on all the aforementioned from both the studios and actors involved.

2) Mattel's usage of AI is for box art *only* at this time. They use Adobe Firefly, which as of this writing (11/13/24) does not generate text.

3) Due to NDAs, the packaging design for the Wicked dolls would almost certainly have to be done by humans because licensor agreements would not let them feed those assets into an AI due to the potential for leaks.

4) Because the AI they use only handles graphics, the text, logos, contact information, legalese, etc would have had to be put into place by a human. Templates may have been setup and used, but the information would still need to be input by a human.

5) This is probably the biggest factor of it all, Universal would have provided that information, including Universal's copyright information, URLs, etc to Mattel along with the branding and identity kit once they had reached a licensing agreement. Upon accepting, Mattel would have received branding guides, logo files, font packs, etc to allow them to move forward with the packaging design stage.

So this is speculation on my part, but as a graphic designer I think this is the most likely thing that happened:

• Universal provided all the information and assets to Mattel with an intent to secure the URL.

• Mattel does the packaging design, goes through revisions, and receives design approval from Universal.

• Mattel fills in all of the aforementioned text, legalese, contact info, etc and requests final approval from Universal (this also probably involved a physical proof of some sort so that Universal's marketing team could verify all of the printed information).

• Universal approves, meanwhile forgetting to secure the wicked.com URL, and packaging production gets underway.

So this is likely an oversight on Universal's part, and the marketing team forgot to secure it (or provide an updated URL to Mattel prior to production) during the year or more before the dolls reached retailers.

It is important I recognize the last bit is speculation on my part, but as a graphic designer who is familiar with doll production timelines and has seen some pretty wild things get approved and produced, this is the most likely scenario I could see happening. (I once saw a customer, unknowningly to us at the time because we were using the information provided, approve their competitors phone number on their graphics. This only came to our attention *months* later when the customer called to get replacement phone numbers after mentioning they incorrectly approved the wrong phone number.)

The TL;DR/main takeaway from all of this is that this it is highly unlikely this is Mattel's fault largely because that information would have been provided by Universal and also because verifying the information provided, especially extremely early in the design process, when that information wouldn't be public knowledge, much less readily available to verify, isn't the responsibility of Mattel and isn't the result of AI.

Wicked dolls by Mattel have the wrong website of the film printed on the packaging which directs you to an adult film website.

[siliconsignalsblog]

4 Essential Stages of IoT Prototyping

The first stage in creating an IoT product is IoT prototyping. The perfect prototype includes:

Hardware device

User interface, like a smartphone app or web frontend

 Backend software that carries out business logic

Connectivity

Our offices, manufacturing facilities, homes, and numerous other processes will all be managed by the Internet of Things. Prototyping is the first step businesses take when developing a new product to minimize any chance of failure. Prototyping an IoT product, however, differs from actual prototyping.

Confusion to be avoided– IoT prototype products are highly complex because the hardware used in the prototype process is different from that used in IoT mass production. Due to the complexity of the software, numerous third-party integrations will need to be taken into account.

Building your own components - Since there isn't a clear path to take, you must concentrate on making your own path and coming up with new ideas. It is not possible to rely exclusively on pre-existing architectures or libraries because developers will have to begin from the beginning. Pre-built parts will, however, become accessible as the Internet of Things sector expands.

Long term feedback loops and testing cycles – Sending the software to beta testers and receiving their feedback for any web or mobile application is a straightforward process. IoT products come with a hardware and software layer that must be shipped and provided to your beta group in physical devices. Furthermore, since most customers are unfamiliar with IoT technologies, it is imperative to provide comprehensive setup and user instructions. In general, compared to traditional software products, the testing and feedback are more involved and take longer.

The 4 key stages of IoT Prototyping:

Choose the toughest problem first: When prototyping your IoT product, it is critical to plan your approach in relation to your product risks. Your primary focus should be on determining device compatibility if you are unsure. This will assist you in making critical decisions in advance, saving you from having to deal with a defective product months into the development cycle.

Effective research & development: Once you are aware of the issues that need to be solved by your prototype, you must determine which technologies to employ in order to build the product. This process is similar to experimentation. Your investigation will reveal which technologies are unsuitable for a given product.

Building: You can begin developing after determining the primary issues you want to address and the kinds of technologies you want to employ. One of the most important phases of the prototyping process is this one. The primary goal is to power through the gap and begin building early.

Enhancing your product: After your IoT prototype is operational, begin resolving the remaining problems. Both software and hardware may have bugs. Certain features might take longer than anticipated to complete; hardware and user interface adjustments might be necessary.

Silicon Signals is a prominent embedded company based in India. Please subscribe to our blog to learn more about embedded systems and embedded product design. For any sales-related inquiries, please call +91 98798 60944. We can also be reached by email at sales@signals.io, and we will be pleased to help.

[careerfortune123]

Understanding the Consumer Funnel

In the world of marketing, the consumer funnel is like a roadmap that helps businesses navigate the journey a potential customer takes from awareness to making a purchase. Consumer Funnel is the path a person takes from first learning about your product to becoming a customer.

Stages of Consumer Funnel:

Awareness:

Meaning: The moment someone discovers your brand or product.

Communication: Informative content to generate interest. Examples include social media posts, blog articles, and videos.

What to Avoid: Hard-selling or overly promotional content can turn people away at this early stage.

Interest:

Meaning: The potential customer is intrigued and wants to know more.

Communication: Provide detailed information, FAQs, and customer testimonials. Webinars and email newsletters can work well here.

What to Avoid: Avoid bombarding with too much detail or asking for a purchase too soon.

Consideration:

Meaning: The customer is actively considering your product or service.

Communication: Offer comparisons, case studies, and trial options. Interactive content like quizzes or product demonstrations can be effective.

What to Avoid: Don't oversell or be too pushy; let them decide at their own pace.

Intent:

Meaning: The customer is ready to make a decision.

Communication: Provide clear pricing, shipping information, and any last-minute incentives. Personalized emails or targeted ads work well.

What to Avoid: Ambiguity or hidden costs can make customers hesitate.

Purchase:

Meaning: The customer makes the actual purchase.

Communication: Thank them, provide order confirmation, and offer post-purchase support. Encourage reviews and referrals.

What to Avoid: Neglecting post-purchase communication can leave customers feeling unsupported.

Loyalty/Advocacy:

Meaning: The customer becomes a loyal fan and may recommend your brand.

Communication: Exclusive offers, loyalty programs, and engaging content. Encourage them to share their experiences on social media.

What to Avoid: Ignoring existing customers can lead to dissatisfaction.

By understanding these stages and tailoring your communication accordingly, businesses can build stronger connections with their audience, guiding them seamlessly through the consumer funnel. Remember, it's not just about selling; it's about creating a positive and supportive journey for your customers.

Career Fortune Institute in pune is where your digital marketing aspirations take center stage! Their Pay After Placement Digital Marketing Course is carefully crafted to guide you towards a successful career, prioritizing a human approach to learning.

An institute where faculty are not just educators, but mentors who are genuinely invested in your growth. In today's business landscape, the importance of digital marketing is paramount. Keeping this in mind, career fortune has designed an advanced curriculum that goes beyond the basics, immersing you in practical skills essential for thriving in the dynamic digital realm. If you imagine yourself landing roles in esteemed companies then this will be made a reality with Career fortunes extensive network that opens doors to exciting opportunities, building a strong foundation for your career.

What truly sets them apart is their 100% Job Guarantee. It's not just a promise; it's a commitment to ensure a seamless transition from learning to a fulfilling career, empowering you to step confidently into the professional world.

Understanding diverse preferences, career fortune offers both online and offline classes. Whether you prefer the flexibility of online learning or the traditional classroom setup, they adapt to your needs. With Career fortune you don't need to be worried about the financial aspect. Their unique Pay After Placement in Pune initiative helps  you to focus on learning first and pay fees only after securing a job.

[linuxgamenews]

Desynced base building constructs its way with Steam Play

Desynced sci-fi strategy automation game releases with solid support for Linux with Proton via Windows PC. Thanks to to Stage Games for their non-stop efforts. Which is available now on Steam Early Access with 92% Very Positive reviews. Imagine you're in space, looking down on a mysterious planet. Your ship has seen better days; it's stuck in orbit, and it's up to you to collect what you need from the planet below. This world and its challenges are at the heart of Desynced, which just released into Early Access for Windows PC, for roughly one year. Likewise, the developer's email reply also states, "It seems to work very well on Proton." And at this point, does not look like a native Linux build will take place. But thanks to Unreal Engine 4, Desynced plays very well with Steam Play. So, how does Desynced work? Think of your main tools as drones and buildings. These drones and structures can be customized and built to your preference. Picture them as modular parts, like computer parts. Now, both drones and buildings use modules. These modules can perform tasks, like pulling resources from the ground or scanning the setting. They can also harness the sun's energy. In Desynced you're not limited to one type of setup either. Want a drone that mines? Go for it. Prefer a stationary mining tower? That works too. It's a lot about testing and finding out what works best for you.

Desynced: Early Access Date Announcement Trailer

When it comes to power, location matters. If you're up on a mountain, you could set up a series of wind turbines. Or, make a drone that’s like a mobile power bank, supplying energy wherever it's needed. The real beauty of Desynced is that there isn't just one right answer. You can approach challenges in a myriad of ways. You might want to dive in solo, taking on this world and its surprises alone. Or, if teaming up in online co-op is more your style, partner with a friend and work together. You can also play Desynced in PvP. Since the environment is dynamic, which means building and defending your base becomes an evolving puzzle. Plus, there's a bit of automation. Drones can be set up to run tasks on their own. But, for those who like to tinker and optimize, there's an option to program specific behaviours. As you explore, there's a mix of old and new to discover. Ruins hinting at past civilizations could hide essential resources. And then there's "the blight", uncharted territories promising amazing new findings. As you delve deeper, the tools and technologies available to you grow. Also paving the way for more exploration and innovation. So, if you're looking for an experience that blends creativity, strategy, and exploration, Desynced. Available on Steam Early Access, priced at $25.49 USD / £21.24 / 24,64€ with the 15% discount. Playable on Linux with Proton via Windows PC. I know its not a native build, but it's worth playing.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Have you read anything by Kylie Scott? I just finished the first book in her Stage Dive series and although I initially thought it was fun I ended up absolutely hating it. I’m trying to decide if the other books are worth reading. I read and fell in love with the VIP series by Kristen Callihan after you posted about enjoying them. I thought maybe Stage Dive would be a fun follow up but now I’m not sure.

I love Kylie Scott overall, though I did just finish her Dive Bar trilogy and it wasn't my favorite... To be fair, it's basically a small town romance thing, and those are always hard sells for me. I did enjoy End of Story quite a bit, and Stage Dive is actually a favorite series of mine.

I actually prefer Stage Dive to VIP, largely because while I looove Managed and Fall and super enjoy Exposed, I did not like Idol…. At all. So I have to take it down a notch there.

But for a Stage Dive breakdown...To be honest, I gave Lick a 4/5 but I wouldn’t say it was especially memorable to me. I largely remember the one rough sex scene, the general setup, and Jimmy Ferris: The Early Days. The issue with David is that he's honestly a pretty sanctimonious hero, and he has a very classic "first hero syndrome", where you can tell that Kylie had a MUCH stronger idea of what the next few heroes were like, but she wanted to ease you into the world. He has the least personality , his story is the least impressive.

I think that the second book (Play) is better if you are up for a kind of unusual m/f ship with a manic pixie dream guy (but not really because he’s actually got some tough shit to deal with). Mal definitely has ADHD, whether or not the book makes it explicit (can't remember) and his hyperactivity is a lot for me in other people's books, but his dynamic with the heroine made it work for me here. It's when he gets serious with her that you're like "oh, he's in LOVE".

Lead (Jimmy's book) is my favorite in the series, in part because Jimmy is SOOOO bad in Lick, and you really get this very sort of closed off guy at first in his own book. Reading Lick first does help with context, imo, because you know how bad off he was. But the arc of emotional intimacy he has with Lena is super beautiful. They have one of my favorite kissing scenes I've read in romance, AND! One of the greatest "let's just do it once to get it out of our systems" followed by the hero having an existential crisis I've ever read. Jimmy's emotional issues--his rigidness with his routine, the way he isolates from his friends and family, his guilt and shame--also read very similarly to those of recovering addicts I've known, too. I don't know, I found his book super lovely. And I should add--Lena is for sure my favorite heroine of the series. Tough and hard-nosed and also just, sadly, completely smitten with her boss, who is her friend, for whom she's supposed to act as a sober companion. MESS.

Deep is also really good, I love it almost as much as Lead. Its plot is very.... spoilery, but there's a very good buildup to it, especially in Lead. Parts are a bit contrived, but I really enjoyed the couple, and I was kind of trash for their antics. Like, Ben FUCKS UP. I was there for the drama.

So yes, I would recommend reading the others--Lick is probably the weakest for me. Lead is the strongest, followed by Deep, but I did enjoy Play... Though again, Mal is not a traditional romance hero. You may like that, you may not. It's a gender dynamic you don't see a lot of, tbh, though not in any kind of like, kinky way (.... :().

Both Stage Dive and VIP actually suffer from First Book Syndrome, imo, where the author kind of plays the safest, least interesting book first and then is like "okay, now I can show you the people I was really excited about". I do think Kylie does some very good shit with buildup in Lead especially because Jimmy like, literally sexually harassed his sister in law and overdosed in Lick... and then has to own himself and like, accept love in Lead.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Settlement: Alvenburg Valley, The Cradle and the Grave

Today’s towns and roads are built with Yesterday’s blood and stone 

Adventure Hooks: 

A river which carries trade down from the mountains has reached an unseasonable low, forcing merchants and travlers to make plodding caravan routes up into the highlands. After joining one of these caravans, the party ends up ambushed by what seems to be an overwhelming number of bandits, only to be saved when three of their fellow travelers reveal themselves to be veteran adventures returning to their shared homestead.  After fighting side by side with the party, the trio invites them back to share their hearth, offering to share what they know of the region and maybe a few tips on sellswording. 

While the house of Tolvoa has ruled the mountainous lands surrounding Alvenburg (more or less) justly for generations, its most recent head is finding the job all a bit overwhelming. Ascending to the position after the recent and unexpected death of her father Argus ( a man beloved for his heroism in the previous war and charitable attitude), the Countess Ionee is forced to contend with what seems like an endless series of crises. Desperate to extend her reach and put out atleast a few of the fires that seem to be closing in around her, Ionee is willing to take a chance on a party that proves themselves as capable agents early. 

While traveling through town, the party sees the image of a particular knight in rusty armor plastered everywhere from the signs of taverns to puppetshows, seemingly alternating between quiet contemplation to cartoonish bloodlust. This is “The Quiet Knight”, a local crypid who’s said to have dwelt up in the mountains for decades and attempted to behead anyone who got too close.  Perhaps the party will find out if there’s any truth to these rumors after a bit of drinking goes too far and they end up challenged to face the Quiet knight in combat, possibly while still intoxicated. 

Setup: Most know the Alven valley for two things, Beer and Marble, and while the former is produced by hardy mountainfolk who’ll endlessly sing the praises of their brews, it’s the Icy white stone that’s defined most of the regions history and a good deal of its current troubles. Back in the days of the old imperium, a great slave quarry was built up in the mountains to feed the endless need for temples and monuments, and since the reestablishment of the kingdom in the old imperial lands, that hunger has awakened once again.  “The Slab” is a dirty secret among merchants, nobles, and architects alike, and prisoners from all over the kingdom are shipped to Alven to work in the old imperial quarries only a few days travel from the folksy little town. 

Some ingenious imperial engineer figured out that if you built a revivor and a series of locks into the fortress walls, you could have amazing control over the flow of the river to aid in transporting marble. This all worked out great, until two centuries and one fallen empire later a group of prisoners stage a takeover and realize that they now have the ability to not only affect one of the duchy’s greatest trade routes, but also a defense against anyone trying to claim the fortress. These prisoners are now extorting the countess and looking to build up their strength in case of any reprisals. 

Future Adventures: 

Risking life and limb while traveling together is a crucible in which some of the most unique and precious bonds can be forged. Such was the case for the bellicose brawler Gerrik, the shy and insightful archer Ibrahim, and Mayra, the steadfast guardswoman, who realized after a particularly harrowing battle with a barn-sized toad demon that A) none of them could live without the others B) maybe it was time to take all the treasure they’d looted from haunted ruins and find a place to settle down. That was well over a decade ago, and the three now have a gaggle of children and a cute little farmstead upon wich to raise them. The party are welcome to visit, provided they help with the chores and don’t let any foul language slip around the little ones ( Gerrik handles that on his own).  Along with some delicious homecooked meals, the party can expect guidance on their current adventures, training in some of the tricks the trio picked up along the road. Ibrihim in particular is delighted to pass on some of his journals, which contain information on a multitude of places and plenty of mysteries left unsolved. 

Countess Ionee is really in a bind regarding the prison situation: not only are the prisoners extorting her for gold and weapons and marauding around her lands, since they’ve all but halted the flow of water out of the old imperial revivor as part of their intimidation tactics it’s only a matter of time before the centuries old construction bursts under the pressure and unleashes a torrential flood through the valley. People’s lives and livelihoods are at risk and she can’t risk sending in her soldiers to attempt to take the fortress outright. What she needs is a small team to sneak in through a secret passage (known only to her family and the now gruesomely slain warden), temporarily disable the dam mechanism, open the gate, and signal her forces to move in.  it’s a daring move, and the party will likely need to prove themselves before they qualify... but if they manage to pull it off ( and maybe take a head of the outlaws’ leader in the process) they’re sure to be rewarded. 

The prison riot could only occur because the Slab was packed to bursting, fed by the greed of a neighboring duke who realized that the Tolvoas policy of paying for slaves labor with blocks of valuable marble meant that he could build a grand temple by selling off his “excess” subjects. If you were looking for a start to your campaign, having the party play a few of these escaping outlaws, innocents, and dissodents lost far from home could be a great start. 

With rampaging bandits, rivertrade at a standstill, and her father’s spendthrift behavior, the Countess’s treasury is running on empty. Worse yet, she’s expected to put on a grand festival to mark her father’s passing or else risk offending the gods and common people alike with her impiety. Hope however has come from the most unexpected place: The outlaws appear to have stumbled upon a trove of imperial artifacts, as well as the possible location of the famed engineer who built the Slab’s great revivor in the first place. This long lost hall of marvels could be a tremendous windfall for the Countess, though things may get heated if the party decide to horde most of the treasure for themselves. 

[seakittens]

Some commentary that I might elaborate on later. I have seen a number of posts here and on Twitter emphasizing that KyoAni dropped the ball on canonized MH and pushing the claim that canonized MH was narratively set up. As well as tying all this back to the ongoing belief that Haru shouldn’t be a pro swimmer because it’s not his personality. I am going to right now provide the single biggest reason why MH was never going to be “canonized” as so many seem to have convinced themselves. 

Free! has never been their story. 

Even in High Speed, the movie where so much of the “definitely canon” MH beliefs were born, the story was still largely Haru dealing with the absence of Rin and reeling from the impact Rin made on his life. This is not me saying RH was going to get canonized either because it was pretty dang obvious throughout Free! that no ship was going to sail because $$$. But the fact that Free! has always been Rin and Haru’s story essentially makes the claim that canonized MH was narratively established to be unfounded. Because that relationship is not presented as a crucial component of the overall narrative and rarely, with the exception of the well-handled Eternal Summer maturation plot, drives Haru forward. Instead, the relationship has primarily been Haru’s support for the decisions he makes. Again, shipping is one thing but claiming canon and declaring no argument can be made against that statement is where I have to :/ a bit. (Disclaimer: I take no issue with people saying "Omg canon" and "omg married" since that's shipping. My concern is only the claim of narrative setup for canonization and lack of payoff.)

Adding to this is the ongoing aversion people have to Haru going pro and the perpetual misunderstanding of Haru’s issues with the professional world. Haru's issue with pro swimming has always been two things -- Fear of change and fear he's not good enough. He mostly conquered the first thanks to Rin but Albert pushed him back to second. It has never been innate discomfort with the idea. Haru pushes himself so much against Albert because he wants to prove to himself he belongs in this world he dreams of. And he does. He LIKES globe hopping. He likes seeing new sights, new pools, new challenges. 

I have seen people suggest that Haru should have become things that are never even established in the narrative and often connect Haru’s future to that of Makoto. Usually in ways that undermine Haru’s character growth and keep him stuck in the same stage essentially. 

I understand it’s confusing for some fans to see Haru grow from an introverted change-fearing boy to a man that pursues great sights. But again, that is the character journey established from as early as the High Speed novel. It is the reason Rin shakes up his life so dramatically. The intent is to completely alter Haru’s life course and push him toward realizing his full potential. Haru is *supposed* to change significantly. And Haru even tells Rin often after Eternal Summer *how* he’s impacted his life course. It’s not going to be as simple as young Haru pictured. And there’s going to be growing pains along the way. That’s just facts. But Haru also isn’t unhappy with the new direction, as he also tells Rin. He wants to keep seeing these sights. That is part of his drive now. No, it’s not early Haru. But it is fully developed character Haru. And just because it’s not the development some wanted for him does not mean it has not been narratively foreshadowed from the start.

KyoAni did, for sure, drop the ball on certain characters and arcs and I’ve discussed my issues with the dumb drama in Final Stroke Volume 2 and with the lack of proper focus on Haru’s growth in Dive to the Future, but that growth itself has always come from a well-established place. Being upset that the story continued the path it set up (especially if that upset is connected to the belief that a ship should have been canonized) is just kind of pointless. The basic fact is that the story has always been about Rin and Haru and was going to end, in some way, with Rin and Haru. And I will honestly never understand how this is still surprising or seemingly jarring to some when it has been repeated by creators time and time again. This has always been THEIR journey. Together. That’s why their relationship remains one of the few solid arcs that can be followed from start to finish, unlike many other Free! arcs. To that point, I welcome debate because I enjoy discussing narrative construct and intent.

To conclude this mini-ramble, I leave you with these critical non-spoiler Haru quotes that showcase his feelings about his character arc:

“Rin, I want to be like you too.” -- High Speed Starting Days

“Another three years until I become an ordinary person. I guess it couldn't hurt to wait a little longer...” -- Free! Season 1, Episode 1

"But then, Rin took took me with him and showed me all these different sights. I realized how big the world really is. And then, I found it... I want to swim in that world." -- Eternal Summer, Episode 13

"I was able to walk toward the future thanks to you." -- Take Your Marks

"Let's go find out what lies ahead of us. [Yeah, let's dive]... toward the future!" -- Road to World

"But the reason I have this feeling of wanting to fight right now is because you were there, Rin." -- Final Stroke Volume 1

[tuiyla]

re: liking Faberry and Quinntana in fics - do you have any recs? 😃 even if not, what about them would you say pulls you towards reading/enjoying them? are there certain themes/tropes that stand out? i haven't really delved into fics, just a few here and there but i really do appreciate how writers can flesh out certain aspects of those relationships and turn it into something super great

Oh Anon I'm so terrible at bookmarking fics so I don't think I have any Faberry ones BUT I know I saved at least one Quinntana one. Actually, I'm just gonna recommend anything by tellmeagain on AO3 ('tis the damn season) and then:

The O-Axis by HeadCannon

Elements of Style by nirav

I'm sure other peeps have fic recs for both Quinntana and Faberry, please chime in!

As for what I enjoy about them, it really is the fandom being so talented. Like you say, they flesh out such interesting things. With Quinntana, it's funny because I actually rank it relatively low on my Santana ships list but I did want a midgame for them. I suppose I, personally, don't see a ton of romantic chemistry there but there's chemistry of every single other kind and I always want to see more of my girls. Quinntana have one of my favourite dynamics because there's so much there thematically and then of course the way Naya and Dianna played them was just amazing.

With them, I mostly enjoy post-graduation fics. Either set in season 4 or somewhere further down the line. I think they'd need to mature a lot before they stand a chance of making it work. I also love how writers focus on their respective traumas and how differently they deal with them. Quinntana, perhaps more than any other Santana dynamic are two sides of the same coin, processing things in equal but opposite ways and that makes for really juicy stories. I enjoy character studies in fics I read and there's so much potential there for Quinntana. And then of course Quinn's coming out being part of their journey, how Santana would help with that and how this aspect is again something so similar yet so different for them.

Faberry, well. I never quite know where I stand with Faberry but I always enjoy a good fic about them. It's delicious when people take the canon things, like them going from enemies to good friends and the love triangle and make it so, so much gayer. And like, let's be honest it was already gay. I generally tend to prefer fanon Rachel anyway because I do adore her character but the way the show treats and frames her just gets too much for my nerves at times, so fic writers who get her personality right and put her in better situations are my favourite people. I prefer Pezberry in many ways but Faberry fics allow me to still have Brittana and explore Faberry if they were nudged slightly to the right.

As for tropes, well, I'm a sucker for a love triangle ending with two girls pulling a Korrasami lol. Frankly I don't think Finn and Puck deserved Rachel and Quinn, so. That is already an appealing setup. From Rachel's pov, I like that she's relentlessly trying with Quinn and showing her such kindness. And I like my Quinn to be pining, pining so hard from an early stage but being in denial first to herself and then to everyone else until there's no point in lying anymore. Even in the actual show, I think there's a reading where it's Quinn who falls for Rachel first and rejects it at first because of her background and issues. You know what, I do have a Faberry fic rec, I think this was one of the first ones I read but it's quite the canon divergence and please take the content warning seriously. It's Much More Than by CopperTine.

I hope that made at least some sense and was what you're looking for haha. They're both fun ships, especially in fanon! I still feel like I'm new to Glee fanfiction myself, there's always so much to explore.