#the language is somehow made so clear that it’s like they’re speaking modern English

[cosmoshunger]

Why is no-one talking about RSC’s 2018 Romeo and Juliet when I say Shakespeare should be accessible THIS IS WHAT I MEAN

[danteinthedevildom]

So, talkin abt multilingual Mams, 

I was gonna make this post anyway but then I saw @cheerypining​​ put this in the tags of my post re: Mams’ English in his character song:

I would like to hollar out a hell yes! 

The thing with Mams is that he isn’t stupid. He’s smart as fuck, he’s just motivated by self interest and fixation. It’s easier for him to learn things that are of interest to him, or that expand his interests. He’s got that sweet, sweet ADD brain.

So, if language helps him spread out his influence, make money, expand his contacts? It’s gonna be that lil bit easier for him to figure out. It might even be a fixation of his. Learn a language; open opportunities in the place that language hails from. Gain an interest in how language works. Learn other languages bc it’s fun. 

Consider, then, if you will, for some of that tastey lore-building, 

Mams starting out learning the languages of the most influencial/opulent human powers. It’s beneficial for him to figure out how to speak their language if he really wants to get at their pockets, and you can’t really smooth talk someone if you barely understand the way their haggling works. How is anyone going to trust you if their idioms go over your head, or if you miss some slang that marks you very starkly as an outsider? It’s a lot easier if they think you’re like them; if you know the little things that’ll get them lowering their guard around you. 

He’s great with dialects, too. With differences between the upper and lower classes. It only takes one slip-up using court language around the common folk, or using the dialet of the north in the south, for him to recognise how important those divisions are. He works with trust, and the eventual corruption of that trust, and it becomes pretty clear to him pretty quick that trust can only be attained the more like his target he sounds. 

Dead languages still live on in Mammon’s brain. He’s fluent in them, and even though he hasn’t really had to use them in some time, for some reason they’ve just never faded away. You can pretty much use him as a way to track how languages changed over time, how regional variants were influenced by other languages or cultures, when various languages died out and what replaced them. 

It’s not something that he really thinks about. It was beneficial for him, so he learnt it. Beyond that, it was fun, and he enjoyed it. He doesn’t really give himself credit for just how much linguistic history he has stored inside his head, and he really doesn’t put much credit into how goddamn useful it is - or would be - for modern historians. That’s not what he’s interested in. He’s content to leave Satan to the books, to the past; he’s got more of a propensity for the practicality, anyway. 

Listening to him talk is actually pretty astounding. The ease with which he slips into each language, the depth of his understanding for even the slight nuances between regions, makes him seem like a native speaker. The speed, too, is absolutely stunning; you’ve never seen a more baffling sight than Mammon, speaking mild-mannered in Russian to a witch, switching mid-sentence into heavily-flirtatious French to order from the waitress that came to their table. It’s like he doesn’t even stumble between the two, both as natural to him as breathing. 

He has his preferences, of course. When he’s not using the language for his own goals - doesn’t need to, for instance, be careful about his word choice to ensure a bond of trust is made - he quickly slips into a dialect that is most comfortable for him. He might use ‘watashi’ or ‘ore’ when he’s on the job, might tack on the ‘gozaimasu’ to his greetings to make them polite, but when he’s just generally speaking Japanese? That’s when he starts using ‘ore-sama’, when he drops all the humble or stilted phrases; uses ‘ja ne’ instead of ‘sayounara'. That’s when, in English, he stops making sure to enunciate fully; starts shortening ‘you’ to ‘ya’, cuts off the ‘g’ from ‘ing’ words, starts peppering in ‘crap’ instead of ‘stuff’, lets his words slur together to make ‘whaddaya’ out of ‘what are you’. 

He’s naturally an informal guy! It’s just the way he prefers to talk. He hates the pompous lingo, even if it’s usually the most beneficial to learn for what he does. If the language he’s speaking has a way to show belligerent informality, he will absolutely use it whenever he can. It’s a choice, make no mistake; he can arguably speak better in most languages than the stupid high academics. He just doesn’t enjoy that crap when it’s not immediately useful to him. 

(Yes, that does mean he can comprehend even the most pompously written academic papers. No, that doesn’t mean he wants to read them. He would much sooner stab a fork into his giblets than sit down for any period of time and read that wordy bullshit. Same goes for a lot of Satan’s literature; it’s just not enjoyable for him to read, even if he can perfectly understand it.)

Sometimes a word works better in one language than another. It can get extremely frustrating for him, if he has a very specific point to get across; unless someone knows both languages, they’re never going to fully understand. And why use five words in the inefficient language when one in the efficient language would have been even better for his intent? ‘Fernweh’ works much better than ‘imagine being homesick for a place you’ve never been’, after all.  

Mams has a tendency to drop in words he likes from other languages, which makes some of his speech sound a little confusing. He doesn’t think it makes him sound smarter, and he’s not doing it to show off; just, sometimes, he thinks ‘hey’ sounds better than ‘ohayou’, or that ‘ciao’ is cooler and more aloof than ‘au revoir’. Plus, it’s kinda funny when you’re talking to someone Lucifer and you insult them in a language they don’t understand. 

(I mean, in English, we literally say stuff like “it has a little je ne sais quoi,” [it has a little something that I can’t adequately express] so we merge languages into our own in order to better express ourselves. Mams does the same. He just does it with words and phrases that aren’t always naturally used together within that language.)

Do you understand the amount of skill that comes with being able to do this without even stopping to think? He somehow manages to do it in a way that makes each sentence still perfectly fluent and understandable in translation. It’s a little incredible, actually, considering he doesn’t put any stock into this ability. It’s just natural for him. Why’s he gotta think on it more than that? 

(This does mean, the few times someone points it out, that he gets incredibly flustered. Especially if they say it in awe, or in praise. It really is just second nature to him, not even something he’s putting on for show or something that he’s trying to be good at, so being given so much positive attention for it is... well. It’s surprising, and a little nice, actually. But also genuinely embarrasing. It’s perhaps the only time he’ll struggle to find words in any language.)

In conclusion:

Hell yeah I love reinforcin the idea that Mams ain’t stupid and that there’s a lot of goddamn skill that comes with learnin languages and learnin them to such a degree you can accurately pepper their words into your speech without stoppin to think. 

[iztarshi]

Boatswain’s Call

In which I reread the episode and, despite how much I love him, will probably wind up dragging Peter Lukas.

Why is Peter drinking black coffee in a seedy bar? It does serve black coffee so he can’t be the only one, but still.

Even by those standards he was very pale, weirdly so for someone who apparently lived their life on the sea.

This could be a Spooky Lukas Thing, or it could be because Peter never comes out of his cabin.

His eyes only moved a fraction of an inch to focus on me, but it felt as though the movement had the weight of a heavy stone door. Like a tomb. Don’t know why that’s what popped into my head, but there you go. I asked if he was Peter Lukas, and he said, “Yes”. I’d gone blank on what to say next, and it was then that I noticed the silence. I looked around to see that the place was now completely empty.

Spooky! Also really funny once you know Peter, although it probably does feel like stone doors and tombs to have someone suddenly focus on you while connected to the Lonely.

He seems to drag them halfway into the Lonely, which might be because he doesn’t want this conversation overheard, or might just be that she startled him while he was having a quiet coffee and not paying attention to his surroundings.

He’s much less talkative than with Martin, but he always initiates social contact with Martin, so I think we see him there having actively prepared to be “on”.

Tadeas Dahl is very interesting. Presumably that’s a fake name, because Peter decided to be weird about names, but he’s someone who almost fades into the background of a “Lukas statement” despite doing 90% of the work in it. He’s the one who both carries and uses the Boatswain’s Call. Normally contact with an artefact for that length of time either messes someone up or converts them into an avatar eventually, but he appears to not threaten the Lukas monopoly on the Lonely, or at least he doesn’t automatically spook people the way Peter does.

It was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other. It took me less than a day of ignored hellos and grunted answers before I fell into line, becoming just as quiet as my crewmates.

This seems to be a reaction to what they’re about to do, but they don’t just avoid the new crew members who are likely to be sacrificed, but others too. Later someone says it “wasn’t an easy choice”, implying they may vote (rather than Peter choosing), meaning it’s possible any of them could be in danger even if it’s nearly always the new crew members.

The only person who spoke was Tadeas Dahl. The mate would walk among the crew, giving instructions and orders in a dozen different languages, as the crew scrambled to carry out his commands. He was just as composed as he had been when I met him, and it soon became clear that, if he had emotions, he kept a tight wrap on them.

He’s clearly a very useful person, since I am very sure Peter only speaks English. Not to mention that Peter doesn’t actually run the ship anyway. Tadeas seems to be the Martin of the Tundra, the one who actually knows how to do the job that Peter has officially. But it does make me wonder about his relationship with Peter -- Peter lumps him in with the crew as “loyal to my money” but Peter also lumps Simon -- who is visibly fond of him -- in with avatars who can’t be bothered to murder him. So I don’t necessarily take his word for it.

I didn’t see Captain Lukas at all that first week. I only knew he was onboard because every meal time the cooks would hand a tray of food to the mate, who’d take it up to the captain’s cabin.

See? Not doing his job.

Also, as @odetoviscera pointed out to me, Tadeas feeds Peter both physically and metaphysically.

Which made me think, because the only other place we see that relationship is Eugene making candles for Agnes. It’s clear you can feed an avatar on someone else’s work, but it’s very rare.

I’m hoping for Tadeas to turn up in season 5, tbh.

There was one crewmember who did catch my eye. He was a young guy, white and, from what I could tell, Scottish.

Does Peter specifically eat white people?? With a crew implied to be heavily multi-racial heading out from a port in Brazil, he’s somehow picked up two white people from the UK as potential snacks.

Then there’s the racial profiling of the Silence Tower Block.

If this is racism it’s a really weird form of it.

From a distance it looked fine, new paint shining in the sun, but looking closer I saw that it had rusted all the way through. Not just that, but checking out where the rod connected to the container, it became clear that they had rusted together.

Peter, WHY!?

Why on multiple levels at that.

First he’s travelling cargo routes with a full crew, it would take nearly no extra effort to ship cargo.

Second, he can take the time to have someone paint over it but not to get new containers? Or clean up the rust?

Is this just his aesthetic?

I like that the lifeboats are not the lumpy orange modern ones. First, those actually would be more awkward to get in and out of regularly. Second, they would definitely ruin the aesthetic.

The only time Peter turns up and it’s to get in the lifeboat with the rest of them. Is his presence actually necessary? Does he just want to be there? Is the Boatswain’s Call powerful enough it would actually be a bad idea for him to remain?

I have never heard a whistle sound like that. It was shrill, so high and piercing that I felt my hair stand on end, but it also seemed distant. Like I was hearing it from far, far away. I don’t know how long he blew that boatswain’s call for, but by the end, I realised we were surrounded by thick sea smoke. We should have far too far south for it, but it rolled and billowed around the lifeboat, obscuring the Tundra.

The Boatswain’s Call is really complete overkill for what it’s used for? It engulfs the ship in order to throw one person into the Lonely, something Peter can do on his own without disturbing people in the next office.

I suppose the spookiness and the fear it spreads among the crew are also ends in themselves.

No-one said a word, but I could have sworn a few of my shipmates were crying.

Peter says in his statement that his crew have no qualms about what they do. Which is either him being extremely unobservant or lying to himself (I doubt he can lie to Jon at that point) given that some of them are crying here.

I don’t know how he feels about it either. He seems to have no trouble throwing people into the Lonely, either physically or emotionally, when he’s working at the Archives. But here he seems to prefer to have as little to do with any of it as possible. He’s just sort of there while it happens.

Possibly he’s just lazy and/or depressed, because “not doing anything” seems to be Peter’s default state.

After that night, the atmosphere on board changed. People talked, and you’d occasionally hear actual laughter on board. Games were played, people drank, and there was this sense of relief to it all.

It might just be a relief once you’re not waiting to commit murder? It doesn’t seem like it’s a Lonely ship, though. The crew are probably lonely, isolated by what they do, but they only act unwilling to socialise while waiting for the ritual to happen.

I didn’t even think about my pay until it came through a couple of days later: twenty-five thousand pounds. For barely two weeks work. I don’t mind telling you, it was almost enough to tempt me back.

Does Peter just have infinite funds? No one in his family seems to care how he spends their money, and he never makes any.

Solus Shipping PLC, a company founded and majority owned by Nathaniel Lukas.

Did Nathaniel found a shipping company just so the family heirloom can get some use? Or does he actually ship things on other ships? Or is Peter not the only Lukas out there on a boat?

The Lukases funding the Magnus institute is also interesting, although this statement isn’t the first time we hear about it. A lot of their pull -- and a lot of what Peter is implied to use to carry out his deal with Martin -- is more to do with them funding other avatars than being dangerous to them. Both money and favours get traded a lot, and of course for Peter there’s gambling.

Even though the official crew manifest for the Tundra has remained the same for the last ten years.

Obviously the immediate implication here is that Peter doesn’t register people he’s going to eat as crew. But I also wonder whether ten years ago marks when he went back to sea after the Silence.

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

[antialiasis]

Frozen the musical

So, thanks to Frozen musical anon, I did listen to the soundtrack of Frozen the musical adaptation! Several times, even! I wrote down some notes about it on my phone, which I’ve now expanded on below.

nooooo they cut Frozen Heart which is my favorite song in the entire movie (dead serious). There are some musical allusions to it later, and yeah of course they’re not actually going to do an ice-chopping montage with baby Kristoff on stage and it’s a perfectly sensible cut, but THE SONG

Holy shit there’s Icelandic, kind of. In the middle of Dangerous to Dream there’s this coronation speech and I was immediately like *squint* is that somebody trying to speak Icelandic with a heavy accent. Looking it up it seems like old Icelandic/Norse, and I’m not an expert on how the pronunciation has changed since then so maybe they got it right and it just sounds funny to my modern Icelandic ears.

I can’t quite tell what they’re doing with Hans. It’s been a while since I saw the movie, and this was just the soundtrack, but it sounded like they were making his villainous self seem more sympathetic by making more of a point of how insignificant and powerless he feels? But I can’t quite tell how they handled him overall since you only see glimpses of him on the soundtrack.

Something about musical Kristoff’s acting performance feels kind of flat to me somehow, but less so when I listened to it more, so eh.

I can’t believe the longest song in the whole thing is a completely pointless joke song about the Danish word “hygge” that feels like one of the writers read one of those “useful words that don’t exist in English” articles and then just made a song about it because Frozen is vaguely Nordic. Also, the country with the naked saunas is Finland! If you’re going to have an entire song about a specific word from one specific Nordic language it feels a little incongruous to make a bunch of it be jokes about the culture of an entirely different Nordic country. I guess we’re all just an indiscriminate generic Nordic soup, and wow this is what every African and Asian culture must feel like all the time

Elsa having a new song about how she’s a dangerous monster, in which she contemplates killing the monster, sure pressed some of my buttons.

In general, in my original post reviewing Frozen when it came out I wrote about how I wished the movie had spent more time developing Elsa and Anna’s relationship as children on the one hand and Elsa’s issues on the other hand. Guess what the musical very much seems to do! I am very happy about this.

ALSO in my original post reviewing Frozen, I talked about how the Kristoff/Anna romance came completely out of left field for me, probably because Disney didn’t actually want to show Anna developing clear, explicitly romantic feelings for a dude while she’s engaged to another dude and fully intends to marry him. Their romance is way better developed here as they just ditched that concern (I guess they figure they can get away with being a bit more grown-up in the musical adaptations without outrage from angry conservative parents, see also Elsa considering suicide); they get a fun and very they’re-totally-getting-together-later song about their contrasting views on love early on, they save each other on the mountain and the way Anna delivers her comment that he’s strong is absolutely totally a yyyup she thinks that’s kind of attractive, and all in all there’s just a much better sense that they actually do come to be into each other.

All in all, seems like probably a pretty good adaptation! Don’t have the entire context of how the whole thing hangs together, but.

[sleepymarmot]

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

[fictioninmyblood]

Protector of Her Heart

Chapter Two

Note: I am new to writing fanfic (this is my first one). I welcome constructive criticism as well as pointers and tips for bettering my blog. Thank you for reading :)

Summary: Elinora is an empath’s version of Professor X, only a lot more powerful. She is an enhanced human with the ability to read the world’s emotions. Nick Fury has welcomed her into the fold, but with a fear of herself she has been quite reserved. A forced bonding night with the newly discovered Wakandan royalty brings her out of the shadows of fear and into the light of lust.

Warning: some language, implied smut, 18+

Previous Chapter

--------------------------------------------

As everyone grabbed a plate and sat down Elinora could not help but be wary of the giant warrior who succeeded in what she had always assumed was impossible. Not knowing what to do with the emotions swirling around her head she decided it was best to just avoid him. Unfortunately everyone else thought it best that he stayed by her side. She sat in between Tony and Natasha hoping for some time to process, but Tony got up for M’Baku, dashing her silent plea.

M’Baku turned his chair towards hers, getting as close as possible placing his left arm on the back of her chair in a protective manner.

“So, since this is basically the first time everyone at the table has gotten to meet you, why don't you properly introduce yourself?”

Elinora glared at Natasha while trying to muster up the courage to speak to such a large group of intimidating people, well except for Peter, he was too young and adorable to scare her. While staring and picking at her food nervously…

“Um, well, my name is Elinora, but I uh mostly go by Nora or Eli, well Nora. Only my little brother and sister call me Eli. Well, Ewi with a w cause they're still toddlers, but that's not important and I’m babbling.”

M’Baku sensed her distress and started rubbing small circles at the base of her neck. She relaxed into his touch ever so slightly, taking a deep breath, she continued...

“And I'm uh, an empath, um as previously demonstrated, sorry about that. And I’m uh also a keep to myself person so I'm not used to a whole lot of interactions with people I don't know. So um can I be excused from whatever Natasha roped a 4am me into?”

She finally looked up and saw determined looks on most everybody's face. Except for Okoye, because she was still skeptical of this girl who could not even string a full sentence together, but could somehow control how they all acted. And M’Baku whose face was mixed with determination and confusion. He could not understand how such a beauty could be so intimidated by the people around her and life. It would seem they had all decided as one that she needed to get out of the house either way.

Ignoring her request Natasha took control of the situation…

“If everyone is done eating I was thinking that us girls could help Nora with some shopping and her hair. Mostly F.R.I.D.A.Y. for the hair because I haven't the first clue.”

“Who's that? I don't remember a Friday being introduced. Isn’t that a day of the week? You Americans have such weird names.”

T’Challa leaned in and half whispered,“That is Tony's A.I. Shuri.”

“You would leave the beautification of natural hair to an artificial intelligence born from a colonizers mind? I don't know how to respond to that kind of stupidity.”

“Shuri!” The king looked at her with a silent look of please shut up before you get us kicked out or killed.

“What?! I'm just saying, you leave beautiful hair like ours in the hands of white people and bad shit happens, like straightening it in a non natural way. Burnt hair smells man and I'm really not in a gas mask mood.”

“I apologize for her bluntness.”

Natasha laughed the king’s apology away, she understood the young woman’s concern and welcomed the bluntness of her words.

“It’s quite alright T’Challa. I appreciate her concern because it is the same as mine.”

Nora spoke up just a little putting the lot of them out of their misery.

“Um guys, I kinda already have that covered, no pun intended.”

“For bast sake woman! How long were you going to keep this to yourself?”

Nora didn't know how to process Shuri’s question. Was she truly angry? The young woman had a way with words, always so passionate, but Nora could not tell the true emotion behind them.

“I’m sorry, I uh understand why Natasha and the rest of the gang didn't know, but I kinda assumed that you all would be able to deduce that I did something to my hair underneath the scarf. It’s in braids, all I have to do is take them out.”

Nakia jumped in hoping to ease the skittish woman's worry.

“It is quite alright, we understand your silence, right Shuri?”

She looked pointedly at Shuri, but there was no budge until with a cross of M’Baku’s arms and a lift of his eyebrow she produced a shake of her head in agreement.

“So shall we leave?  And do you boys want to join us?” Natasha locked eyes with T’Challa and Tony hoping that they could see that M’Baku being nearby would be wise.

M’Baku was too busy watching Nora even though she still refused to look at him, so T’Challa answered for them both.

“We will come, I need to help M’Baku not stand out as much possible as well anyway.”

Okoye laughed picking on M’Baku in a sisterly manner, saying in their native language, “no matter what clothes you put on him, a monkey is still a monkey, just in a suit.”

Shuri giggled and thought to add more fuel to this amusing fire, in Xhosa of course.

“And I'm sure the monkey would surely do some tricks if it pleased his master.” She looked between M’Baku and Nora hoping to get her point across.

T’Challa was amused by this banter but he felt bad for the big guy. He was obviously falling hard and fast for this girl. Switching to English...

“For bast sake, leave the man alone lest you run him back into seclusion.”

“For Hanuman’s sake, I have told you time and again that i will not jeopardize the Jabari’s shift into modern society any further. I will go with you and let you dress me in the suffocating fashions of this place.

Nora inadvertently whispered out loud...  “Such a beautiful language, I could listen to them bicker all day.”

Everyone’s head swiveled to her and this became one of the moments that she was grateful for her mocha skin tone because boy was she embarrassed. She shrunk back accidentally making contact with the exposed skin of M’Baku’s arm making her jump up and start clearing the table.

“Is everyone done?”

She moved quickly gathering and putting all of the dishes in the sink and rushing to her room.

“If you give me 10 minutes, I’ll uh go change and meet ya’ll at the front door.”

She scurried away chastising herself for being so careless with her thoughts. It didn’t help that her traitorous body, was protesting with every step she took away from M’Baku. It was like walking up a mountain, every step away from him made it harder for her to breathe. At this rate she was going to have a stupid panic attack whenever he wasn’t next to her.

M’Baku watched her dart towards the elevator and walk in, head down in shame. He wanted to go after her, comfort her, and figure out why the hell his chest was getting tight when she left his sight.

“Do you think you can make me match her clothes T’Challa?”

The Wakandan king looked at the Jabari leader with humor in his eyes. This guy really has it bad. Shaking his head...

“Only if the ladies work together with us, but why do you want to match?”

“I want her to see us as a unit and I want to try and woo her, make her see she is mine.”

Sam crossed his arms and went into big brother mode.

“You just met her, and by the looks of it, you scare her and make her even more jumpy than usual.”

Bucky defended the Wakandan to everyone’s surprise, “But did you see how he calmed her, without even knowing her name, he knew her soul and she knew his. It’s like what Natasha and Bruce have only stronger. I wish I had someone to bring me out of my dark place when I was still....well you know.”

“When did you become so sentimental Buck?” Steve asked.

“I agree with Buck. She may be more jumpy, but it’s obviously just from not knowing how to react to the strangeness of their relationship.” Natasha put her two sense in.

But Sam was still skeptical, “if we can even call it that, but whatever. Just don’t hurt her, I like her happy cooking.”

“Do not worry, I would die for her. I know her deep in my bones and I can’t deny whatever connection we have so I will nurture it instead. Please help me, I don’t want to waste time.”

“No need to beg man, we will help.”

They all nodded in unison.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are they almost ready F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“They are still getting ready Mr. Stark, I will notify you when they are coming.”

“Come on Mr. Stark, I wanna go!”

“No Peter you are too young to even get into a club let alone drink. I’m not risking jail time. Vision and Wanda will keep you company.”

“Ms. Natasha will be down shortly”, F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted.

“Fucking finally?! Are the rest with her?”

“No sir”

“This is not fair!” Peter wailed, proving to be the child everyone thought.

“What is?”

Natasha walked out of the elevator in a slimming black dress with her black red bottom Louboutin’s.

“Is she ready yet? The big guy is getting more and more antsy.”

Tony looked over at M’Baku bouncing his knee nervously and rubbing his chest every now and again.

“They’ll be down soon. Don’t get your panties in a wad Tony.”

“Well, you'd understand if you had to deal with the antsy giant and the annoying king.”

“They are arriving Mr. Stark.”

T’Challa and M’Baku stood at the sound of the elevator ding. Out walked Okoye, Shuri, Nakia, and finally Nora. M’Baku immediately locked eyes with his beauty.

His eyes traveled from the black and gold platform heels that brought her just under his head to the dark skinny jeans that made her legs look a mile long highlighting every curve up until her waist. He lingered on the peek of skin at her torso and grazed over the black crop top that hung off her shoulders exposing her neck but slightly hid her buxom breasts with ruffles. When he got to her lips and just about passed out. Her lips were a deep red matte lipstick that gave him all manners of sinful ideas like him eating blackberries from her full breasts and feeding her in return, but with...something else. She left her face bare with just enough mascara on for her eyelashes to lightly brush her cheeks every time she blinked. Her hair was styled with a few cornrows on the left pushing her full curly hair to the right brushing her shoulder and covering her eye if she leaned forward slightly.

Licking his lips he realized that he was suddenly very parched. Adjusting himself as discreetly as possible as he walked towards her, he thought to himself...

This night is going to kill me, I have to make her mine.

Nora felt self conscious about what the girls had helped her pick out, she thought it clung too much and showed too much skin. She had always been told, “big girls shouldn’t wear stuff like that” but when she saw the way M’Baku devoured her with his eyes, she couldn't help but feel desired. He looked like a starved man and couldn't help but imagine what it'd be like if she was on his menu. Slowly she realized that they were somehow matching and assumed that their collective group of people set this up. He was clad in an all black outfit like her except his gold was on the lapels of his blazer. Next she noticed how his outfit hugged him in all the right places, and she flushed with sudden heat. She envisioned climbing into his lap and snuggling into his neck, basically acting like a cat and oh how she wanted him to pet her kitty. Taken aback by the thought she shook off the feeling and tried to ignore the pulsing in her panties. The latter was basically impossible to do with him now standing so close so she went back to looking at the floor to avoid her thoughts running out of her mouth again.

Damn this night is going to kill me if he keeps standing this close.

Chapter Three

Tags: @skysynclair19 @biglipsandafropicks

[thelastspeecher]

Some Untitled Stansort AU Nonsense

I wrote this a while back, and it’s almost 4k words, but my recent Laptop Issues have been impeding my ability to post it.  So, here it is: the start to the Stansort AU, which is like a crossover of the Modern Royalty and Stay-at-Home Stan AUs (because I cannot control myself when it comes to AUs), but with a dragon.  Enjoy~

              Ford bowed to the king and queen.

              “Your majesties,” he said carefully.  As he straightened up, he caught sight of another person, standing just behind the queen’s throne.  He frowned.

              “The crown princess is with the king and queen today,” one of the royal guards supplied.  Ford nodded.

              “Ah, I see.  Your highness.”  He bowed again.  The crown princess left out a stifled giggle.  “Your majesties, are these handcuffs really necessary?” Ford asked. The king’s eyes narrowed.

              “You broke one of the most sacred laws of our land, young man,” he said in perfect, lightly accented English.  “Criminals of the crown are to be kept in restraints.  First, tell me your name.”

              “Stanford Pines, PhD,” Ford said.  The crown princess’s eyes widened.  She cleared her throat.

              “Where are you from, Stanford?” the crown princess asked.  

              “The United States of America.”

              “Where?” she probed.  Ford blinked, surprised by her insistence.

              “A small town in New Jersey called Glass Shard Beach,” he answered. The crown princess nodded, as though this didn’t surprise her.  She whispered something in the queen’s ear.  The queen said something back, just as quietly.  The crown princess left her spot behind the thrones and exited the room through a door on Ford’s right.  “Uh, what- what was that-” Ford started.

              “You’ll see,” the queen said regally.  She sighed.  “Stanford, why did you trespass into the royal forest?”

              “For my research.”

              “Trespassing is trespassing, no matter the reasoning behind it,” the king said.

              “I tried to go through the proper channels.  I made multiple appeals to be allowed into the forest,” Ford explained. “But each one was denied.  I had no choice but to trespass.”

              “No, you did have a choice,” the king rumbled.  “You had the choice to either follow the law or not.  You chose not to.”

              “My research-”

              “There are many forests in the world,” the queen said.  “Why were you so insistent on going into this one, knowing full well you’d be breaking the law?”

              “Well, you’re going to think I’m crazy,” Ford began.  He was cut off by the sound of the large doors behind him opening. A voice said something very loud in Lironian, the language of the country.

              His accent is familiar.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was-

              “…Ford?” the voice said quietly.  Ford turned around.  His jaw dropped.

              “Stanley?”  Standing in front of Ford, the crown princess holding onto his arm, Stan nodded. “What- what are you doing here?” Ford asked his estranged twin.

              “I could ask you the same thing, Sixer,” Stan said, shoving his hands into his pockets.  Ford looked him over quickly.  Stan was clean-shaven, well-kempt, and wearing a T-shirt and jeans that somehow seemed slightly formal.  

              They fit him so well.  And they’re clearly made of good material. Stan raised an eyebrow, waiting for Ford to speak.

              “He trespassed,” the crown princess interjected.  Stan groaned.

              “Ford…”

              “I had no choice!  It was for my research!”

              “Where’d you trespass?” Stan asked.  Once again, the crown princess answered for Ford.

              “The royal forest.”

              “Dammit, Ford.  Why?”

              “We were just getting to that, Stan,” the king said in a carrying voice. The crown princess muttered something to Stan in Lironian.  He nodded.

              “You do what you gotta do, Ang,” Stan said quietly.  The crown princess smiled and kissed him on the cheek before walking back to her parents.  Ford gaped. “Well?  Why did you go in the forest?” Stan asked.

              “Why did the princess kiss you?” Ford asked.  One of the guards standing nearby scoffed.

              “That’s how people act when they’re engaged,” the guard said.  Ford stared at Stan.

              “…What?”

              “Answer the question, Sixer,” Stan said tiredly.  Ford shook his head.  “Okay, fine, I’m engaged to Angie.  Now will you answer the damn question?”

              “You’re engaged to a princess?”

              “Young man, tell us why you went into the forest,” the king said.  Ford abruptly remembered he was being questioned by people with the authority to have him executed.  He turned back around to face the king, queen, and crown princess.

              “Of course.  Like I was saying, you’re going to think I’m crazy when I tell you why,” Ford said. “But I went in there to study the dragon.”  The king rose up off his throne and stared Ford down.

              “How do you know about that?” he hissed.  

              “I, uh- wait, you know?”

              “Of course we know about the dragon,” the crown princess said, waving a hand.

              “Your people certainly don’t.”

              “They’re not supposed to,” the queen said.  “The dragon is a secret, not meant for the non-magical folk of this country to know of.  Should knowledge of Fenestra’s existence come to light, it would have devastating consequences.”

              “Fenestra?  That’s her name?” Stan asked.  Ford looked back at Stan.  Stan shrugged.  “Yeah, I know about the dragon.  But seriously, how did you find out about her?”

              “Through meticulous research,” Ford said.

              “That’s not good enough,” the king said.  “Until we find this potential leak, you are not to leave the castle.”

              “You- you’re not going to take me to the dungeon, are you?” Ford asked.

              “You broke one of the greatest laws of this land,” the queen said.  “Where else would you expect to go?”  Stan stepped forward.

              “Sally, Mearl, look, I- I get where you’re coming from,” Stan said.  “And trust me, I’m not on very good terms with him, either.  But Stanford’s my brother, and in a couple weeks, he’ll be Angie’s brother, too.  I dunno, I don’t think the dungeon’s the right place for the crown princess’s future brother-in-law.”  The crown princess looked at her parents.

              “He’s right,” she said quietly.  The king sighed.

              “All right.  Guards, take Stanford Pines to one of the solitary rooms.  I need to speak with my daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law.”

              “Thanks, Mearl,” Stan said.  He nudged Ford slightly.

              “Oh, uh, thank you, your majesties,” Ford said with a bow.  

----- 

              The door to Ford’s room opened.  Ford looked up from his book.

              “Stan?”

              “Yeah.”  Stan took a seat on the bed next to Ford.  “Pretty sweet digs, huh?  I mean, not as nice as mine and Angie’s room, but still a step up from sharing a bunk bed, am I right?”  Stan looked over at the guard standing in the open doorway.  “Marley, you can leave us alone.”

              “I’m not supposed to,” the guard said.

              “Ford won’t attack me.  And even if he does, I think I can handle it,” Stan said.  The guard sighed.

              “Fine.  Shout if you need anything.”

              “You got it,” Stan said with a wink.  The guard closed the door.  “Sorry about that.  I got guards following me everywhere now.”

              “Yes, because you’re engaged to the heir to the throne,” Ford said flatly. Stan nodded.  “How on Earth did that happen?”  Stan rubbed the back of his neck.

              “Well, after I got kicked outta the house, I took the Stan O’War out to sea. But, uh, I got lost pretty quick, and she ended up drifting into a nasty storm.  I ended up washing overboard.  Next thing I knew, I was being pulled outta the water by Mearl and his oldest son, Harper.  Good guy, both of ‘em.  Not afraid to get their hands dirty.

              “Anyways, it turns out that I had been near one of the royal family’s tiny island territories in the Atlantic.  They were taking a boat there, saw me about to drown in the water, and fished me out.”  Stan shrugged.  “They offered to get me a plane ticket home, but when I said I didn’t wanna go back to New Jersey, they told me to stay with them.  All of this, by the way, was before I knew they were royalty.  Up until I saw the castle, I just thought they were rich foreigners.”

              “But you got engaged to the crown princess,” Ford said.  

              “When I first met Angie, she wasn’t the crown princess.  Just a princess.  Her older brothers gave up their claims to the throne while we were dating.”

              “Just a princess,” Ford said drily. Stan rolled his eyes.

              “Shut up.  She helped me get my GED, and she and one of her brothers, Lute, taught me Lironian. So we got pretty close, and then, I dunno, we just sorta ended up together.”

              “But you’re a commoner.”

              “Nah, I’m a knight.”

              “Wait, really?”

              “When I got my GED, the king knighted me as a graduation gift.”

              “Damn.  I wish I’d received a knighthood when I graduated.”  Ford eyed Stan’s clothes.  At some point, he had put on a hoodie, which, like the T-shirt and jeans, seemed more formal than it had any right being.  “And I assume your clothes are tailored?”

              “You can tell?” Stan asked, tugging at his hoodie.

              “Nothing fits that well without it being altered to do so.”

              “The royal tailor – can you believe that’s a thing – says that I’m the first person he’s ever worked for that wanted hoodies and T-shirts.”  Stan grinned crookedly.  “Angie actually likes ‘em.  Pretty sure that’s the only reason the rest of the royal family puts up with me not wearing suits or polo shirts or capes or whatever.”

              “Are all your clothes tailored?”

              “Nah.  I managed to hide some of my old clothes in my room.”  Stan’s small grin grew wider.  “Angie likes wearing my old hoodie when she’s reading.”

              “…That sounds nice.”

              “Yeah.”  Stan sighed. “Look, Ford, I talked to the king and queen, and here’s the deal.  If you sign a non-disclosure agreement, promising you’ll never tell anyone about the dragon, you can go home.  We’ll get you a plane ticket back.  First class.”

              “I can’t do that, Stanley.  It’s for my research,” Ford said.

              “If you tell people about the dragon, it’ll majorly fuck up my fiancée’s family,” Stan said firmly.  “There’s a lotta stuff you don’t understand about this situation.”

              “I’m a scientist.  I have to share my findings with the world.”

              “You can’t tell people!  Angie’s-”

              “Your fiancée comes before your own twin brother?” Ford interrupted.  Stan’s face reddened.

              “This is such an easy fucking thing to do, but your head is so far up your own ass, you won’t,” Stan said.  “If you don’t tell people, it won’t hurt you.  If you do, it’ll hurt Angie big time.  She might not be anyone to you, but I- I love her, and hell, she’s gonna be your sister-in-law soon enough.”  

              “Like you’ve ever cared about anyone except yourself,” Ford snapped, old grudges bubbling to the surface.  A sour look settled on Stan’s face.

              “Are you really gonna bring up the science fair thing?”

              “You ruined my chances of-” Ford began angrily.  Stan stood up, cold anger emanating from him.

              “These guys are gonna officially be my family in two weeks,” Stan said.  He walked away.  “I thought maybe you’d understand that I want to protect them. Guess not.”  Stan paused at the door.  “Enjoy your nice prison, asshole.”

----- 

              Someone knocked on the door.  Ford got up and opened it.

              “Stanford, I am not pleased,” Fiddleford McGucket said, shaking his head at him.  Ford rubbed the back of his neck.

              “Fiddleford, I’m sorry they dragged you into this.  You had to fly across the Atlantic and-”

              “I had to come back home for my lil sister’s wedding anyways,” Fiddleford said with a shrug.  “The travel’s not what I’m upset about.”

              “Oh, I forgot you were Lironian.”

              “Mm-hmm.”  Fiddleford crossed his arms and stared Ford down.  His look felt familiar to Ford, but he couldn’t quite place it.  “Why did you insist on breaking a federal law? And why won’t you sign the dang form so you can leave?  This is a really good deal.  You shouldn’t turn it down.”

              “I trespassed specifically so I could publish my research.  I can’t let it go to waste!” Ford protested.  “You of all people should understand my reticence.” Fiddleford sighed.

              “Stanford, you make things so difficult-”

              “Fidds!” someone shouted.  Fiddleford looked over.  The frustration on his face was broken by the appearance of a broad grin.

              “Banjey!” he shouted back.  Fiddleford was promptly tackled in an immense hug by someone Ford quickly realized was the crown princess, Angie.  He gaped as Fiddleford affectionately noogied the heir to the country.  Angie wiggled out of Fiddleford’s hold and began speaking in rapid-fire Lironian.  Fiddleford let out a good-natured laugh.  “Now, now, not everyone here speaks Lironian, Banjey.  Be polite and speak English so Ford can understand you.”  Angie scowled at Ford.

              “Oh, that’s right.  Your work associate never bothered to learn a single word of your native tongue,” she spat at Ford.  “How long have you known Fiddleford?”  Ford opened and closed his mouth several times, at a loss for words.  Fiddleford chuckled softly.

              “Oh, dear, I see what’s going on,” Fiddleford said jovially. “Stanford, I never told you, but I’m one of the princes of Lirone.  I gave up my claim to the throne years ago, so I could move to the US.”  He smiled fondly at Angie.  “And now my sweet baby sister’s going to be the queen, and she’s got such a wonderful man to be her consort. Speaking of, where is that fiancé of yours?”

              “He’s having lunch with Ma and Pa,” Angie replied.  “But ever since Stanford got here, Stan’s been acting squirrely.”  Angie narrowed her eyes.  “Stanford, what did you say to him?  He was excited and happy before you showed up.  Now, I keep catching him talking to himself about the wedding.  And not in a good way.”  Fiddleford frowned at his younger sister.

              “You think he’s getting cold feet?” Fiddleford asked quietly.  Dread filled Ford.

              I’m pissed at Stan, but I wouldn’t want to break up his engagement!

              “What did you do?” Angie asked.  Her blue eyes bored into him.  

              What did I do?

              “I-” Ford started.

              “Seeing Ford probably just brought up some less-than-nice feelings and memories,” Fiddleford said smoothly.  “Why don’t you go to lunch with Ma and Pa.  Reassure your fiancé a bit.”  Angie nodded. With another withering glare, she walked away.  Fiddleford turned to Ford.  “Stanford. Start talking.”

              “I- I don’t know what I could have said that made Stan want to leave your sister.  We just talked about how he wears tailored clothes now, and-”

              “He hates the tailor,” Fiddleford muttered.  He kneaded his forehead.  “Lute called me when he was getting fitted for his suit.  For the wedding, y’know.  Lute said that Stan didn’t say a thing the entire time he was there.  When the tailor told Pa what the suit was going to cost, Stan just…ran away.”

              “It’s a big change,” Ford said.  

              “I suppose.”  Fiddleford bit his lip.  “A person from his past, bringing up one of the things he hates the most about royal life…that’s not a good combination.  I’d better go talk to Pa.  See what he thinks.”  Fiddleford frowned at Ford again.  “Don’t think that you’re getting off the hook.  Your problem just isn’t as pressing.”

              “I’m flattered,” Ford mumbled.  Fiddleford put his hands on his hips.

              “Do you want to get a dressing-down?”

              “Not particularly.”

              “Then count yourself lucky.  For now.”

----- 

              “Uh, guard?” Ford said cautiously.  He knocked on his door.  “I need to use the bathroom.  Guard?” There was no response.  Ford cautiously tested the handle of the door. It was unlocked.  He opened the door and poked his head out into the hallway. His guard was nowhere to be seen. But he could make out the sound of a familiar voice, muttering something.  Ford exited the room.  Now that he had a better view, he could clearly see Stan pacing back and forth near a large painting of the king and queen.  “Stan?” Ford asked, walking toward his twin.  Stan’s head jerked up.

              “Oh.  It’s you.”

              “Are you all right?” Ford asked.  Stan laughed hollowly.  He was completely disheveled, wide-eyed, and wearing old stained clothes Ford recognized from high school.  “That was a stupid question.”

              “No shit, Sixer,” Stan snapped.  He ran his hands through his hair.  “It’s 2 fucking am, I can’t sleep, and I-”  Stan sighed.  “I packed a bag.”

              “You packed a bag?”

              “I can’t stay, Ford,” Stan burst out.  “I- I’m gonna fuck up.  I’m gonna fuck everything up.  I was- I was getting a bit worried, ‘cause my first big diplomatic thing was supposed to be convincing you to sign the goddamn form.  And I couldn’t get you to do it.  But, y’know, you’re a stubborn ass, so it was whatever.  But then- but then I heard that fucking tailor say how much money Angie’s dress is gonna cost and- Ford, her dress is more money than Pops could make in five years.  I can’t be trusted with someone who- who’s in charge of a country, and buys a dress for one goddamn shindig, and it’s that much.  Angie- Angie’d be better off without me.”  Stan finished his long-winded ramble softly.  He gestured to Ford.  “But you know that.  You know that I only fuck everything up.”

              “Stanley…”

              “At lunch,” Stan said quietly, “Sally – the queen – she started talking about how Angie’s coronation is gonna be a few months after the wedding, and it’s that way because if it was much later, she- she wouldn’t be able to fit in the dress she needs to wear for it.  You shoulda heard them.  They’re all expecting me to knock Angie up right away, so there can be an heir.” Ford nodded silently, unsure of what to say.  “But I can’t- I can’t do that to Angie’s family.  I can’t do that to her.  She deserves better than getting stuck with my dumb kid.  The papers definitely think so.”

              “Could they have been joking?” Ford asked.  Stan stared at him.

              “Joking.”  Stan clapped a hand to his face.  “Fucking- duh, they were joking.  That’s why Angie got all worried afterward and kept telling me that it was okay, and kids aren’t that big a- dammit.”  Stan laughed, but once again, the sound had no real humor to it.  “I’m an idiot.”

              “No.  Stan, you’re having a natural reaction to a major, life-changing event.”  Ford looked down at his feet.  “If I’d known you were feeling these…doubts, I would have gone easier on you.  I wouldn’t have brought up the science fair.”

              “Not everything’s about you, Stanford,” Stan said shortly.  “I’ve been feeling weird about this whole thing for ages. You just- you broke the camel’s back.” Stan looked off to his left.  Ford followed his gaze and saw a familiar, dingy duffle bag.  

              “Oh, Stan.”

              “I told you I packed,” Stan grunted.  Ford sighed.  

              “Stanley.  I realize that I’m probably the last person you want to talk to right now.  I should probably go find one of your fiancée’s brothers; you seem fairly close to them.  But…do you love Angie?”

              “Hell, yes,” Stan said firmly.  

              “And she loves you?”

              “Yeah.”

              “People say that that’s enough.”

              “I dunno,” Stan mumbled.  Ford grimaced.

              Okay, try again.  You can’t be the person who ends up breaking Stan’s engagement to a literal princess.

              “Think about it this way,” Ford said, suddenly inspired.  “If you weren’t going to be a good fit for Angie, her parents would have said something.  If they thought you wouldn’t be able to handle being king, they would have stepped in.”

              “Technically, I won’t be king, I’ll be king consort,” Stan mumbled.  “And before Angie’s coronation, I’ll be prince consort.  I don’t really have a noble title, so I wouldn’t be allowed to rule the country.” Stan shook his head.  “But, I get it, no, you- you have a point.  Sally and Mearl like me, but they still ran me through manners and diplomacy lessons and things like that before they said that Angie and I could be together in public.  Maybe- maybe I won’t fuck it up.”

              “You’ll do more than that.  You’ll do an amazing job,” Ford said.  Stan scoffed. “I’m not just trying to make you feel better.  I’ve seen how the royal family acts around you.  And you’ve got a natural knack for diplomacy.”

              “So you’ll sign the thing now?”

              “No.”

              “Worth a shot.”  Stan looked down at his feet.  “It’s probably for the best, anyways.  If you signed the thing, you’d be outta here.  And...it’d be tough to go to the wedding if you were back in the States.”

              “What?”

              “I’m inviting you to the wedding, Sixer.  Don’t make it weird.”  Stan cleared his throat.  “Uh, I’ll have Lute get you a suit.”

              “Stan?  Stan!” a voice shouted.  “Angie, I found him!”  Stan and Ford looked over.  The guard that normally stood outside Ford’s room, Marley, was rushing towards them. Marley frowned.  “Dr. Pines, what are you doing outta your room?”

              “It’s all right, Marley,” Stan said.  “We were just talking.”

              “Do you feel better?” Marley asked quietly.  Stan groaned.

              “Marley.”

              “Oh yeah, you have to be all macho or whatever,” Marley said with an eye roll.

              “Stanley!”  Stan was tackled with an overwhelming hug by Angie.  She kissed him deeply.  “Are you all right?” she whispered after breaking off the kiss.  Stan nodded.

              “Ford and I talked through it a bit.”

              “…Oh.”  Angie looked carefully at Ford.  “Thank you, Stanford.”

              “It was no problem,” Ford mumbled.  

              “I invited him to the wedding,” Stan said.

              “I suppose that makes sense,” Angie muttered.  “Even if security looked through his belongings and didn’t see a stitch of formal attire.”

              “I’ll tell Lute to find him a suit,” Marley said.

              “Uh, no, you should probably escort Ford back to his room,” Angie said.

              “Right.  Come on, Dr. Pines.”

              “I’ll see you at the wedding then, Stan,” Ford said.  Stan nodded.

              “I’ll be the one in the crown.”  Angie cleared her throat.  “The tall one in the crown.”

[taz-writes]

10 Questions Tag Game

@micastarsandmirrors tagged me on my main blog for this, but I’m posting it here because it seemed more appropriate. :>

1. Which author(s) inspires you the most?

Oof, hard question! Recently I’ve been really inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series--I love how he deconstructs fantasy as a genre. Guards! Guards! is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. 

2. Someone from a different world asks you, “Show me the song of your people” which earth song would you play for them?

Madeon’s Pop Culture. It’s such a genius reimagining of SO many other songs, and it encapsulates modern pop musical culture in a way that’s really fantastic. I love it. It’s not actually my favorite song, but as an example to an alien of what Earth music is, it’s a pretty good case study. 

3. How did you get the idea for your current WIP?

Feilan is drawn from the mythology of a recess game I used to play with my friends in elementary school. My friends and I would team up and LARP as our super cool powerful fairy avatars and fight the annoying boys from the classroom next door evil! As we grew up, the lore of Fairyland grew darker and more complicated, and I borrowed bits and pieces of dozens of other stories to glue them to my self insert and my friends’. We grew out of the game, but the paracosm we’d created stuck with me. Around sixth grade, I started putting those old recess games into writing! 

4. Which of your characters is a lover not a fighter and which is a fighter not a lover?

Honestly, most of my characters are both! Feilan is an action story and the majority of the cast is prepared to throw down at any time. I think Lavender is the lover-not-a-fighter. She’s a healer, after all, and she prefers to avoid conflict. The fighter is definitely Amalie. 

5. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what do you listen to?

Sometimes! It depends on my mood, and what kind of scene I’m trying to write. Usually, I prefer instrumental music. I have a class at school where the homework is just listening to a few hours of classical music, so I’ll do that a lot while I write. Otherwise... video game music is the way to go. Undertale has a freaking amazing soundtrack. Also, I’m still quite fond of the Homestuck music albums.... They have a lot of great songs for setting a mood. 

6. What’s the best way to piss off your main OC?

Tell her she’s not good enough to be worthy of something. Bonus points if you imply her opinions don’t matter, or bring up her birth status. That’ll get her riled up in half a second flat. 

7. What inspired you to write your current WIP(S)?

Oh boy here we go, here’s the novel. Feilan’s backstory is long and very emotional.

When I was growing up, I could never find stories to read that actually gave me what I wanted. I was raised on that early-2000s strand of Girl Power(tm) that was really obsessed with characters who are girls fighting the patriarchy and everyone cares that they’re girls because there’s clearly nothing more important about their characters........ Either that or they were just straight up annoying. I adored Winx Club but every time the girls went shopping another piece of me died. I had a well-established Not Like Other Girls complex but at the same time reading characters who thought like that was really annoying? There were a lot of things I hated in the stories I read growing up: inescapable love interests, tiny sparkly boring fairies, the anti-sue genre of Plain Modest Protagonists who aren’t allowed to be powerful or even aware that they could be, female characters who can’t do anything without reminding us that they’re girls and girls can’t normally do this but I can and look how special that is!!, the inevitable Girl Media Shopping Montage... et cetera. 

I didn’t want that. I wanted Lord of the Rings, but with girls, and maybe a cute boy!Galadriel. I wanted a story where girls being heroes wasn’t a big deal, or even worth questioning. I couldn’t find those things, so I decided I’d make my own, drawn out of my shameless childhood power fantasies. Feilan is an aggressive defiance of pretty much all the tropes in the last paragraph. I’ve stuck to it so doggedly because even now, I still have trouble finding stories with the kinds of characters I want to read about. I’ve always been super invested in stories about characters who are Like Me, who are girls with feminine and masculine interests, who have ADHD but are still smart anyways, who are short and built strong instead of slender. I used to refuse to watch cartoons unless there was at least one blonde girl that I could latch onto who wasn’t a stereotype Popular Girl. More recently, I want to see characters who are bi like me, where nobody makes a big deal out of it. I don’t even like romance stories, I don’t understand why it has to matter if X likes girls and boys! Just let her do that and get her girlfriend and get back to saving the world! And I fucking hate stories that pretend to be progressive by driving in over and over again how X character is a girl, X character is so gay--the ultimate result is just reminding me that I’m weird somehow. By... being a person, I guess. I hate those narratives so much but especially in mainstream YA, they’re practically inevitable? 

So I wanted to write Feilan so I could have the story I wanted to read but never found, about characters who are like me and dealing with my problems and my strengths and my fears. And I’ve kept writing it because I still want that, and I want Feilan to be that story for other people too, because I don’t think I’m alone here. It’s also a major outlet for my emotions. 

This is a long answer, but I think it’s pretty clear why. :)

8. What is the last book/series you finished reading?

The last book I read was an English translation of Ghost Opera by Mercedes Roffe, which I read for a class I’m taking right now in the art of translation. It’s very far away from my usual fantasy genre, but I really enjoyed it! If you like neat artsy poetry, give it a look sometime, especially if you speak Spanish and can experience it in the original language. 

9. What finally made you say, “Wow! I really like writing, I’m gonna keep doing this”?

When I was in fourth grade I won a local writing contest with a cute little poem about nature, and I got to go to a book fair event and read it out loud in a fancy auditorium, and I was SO UNBELIEVABLY STOKED. My mom was really proud of me, too. A couple people complimented the poem to me afterwards and it made my year. I decided that I wanted to win again the next year, and started taking poetry more seriously. 

10. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

Rereading my work. It’s so incredible to me sometimes, because I can and will cry over events in my own story, and I get so happy reading over the triumphs of my own OCs that I wrote out with my own hands and there’s something so beautiful and powerful about seeing these ideas that I created in my brain grow wings and fly. I cried a lot, when I printed out the first draft of Feilan’s book 1 and held it in my hands. That’s mine! I did that! I did all of that, and now I can hold it and see it and show people! 

I’m now tagging @pumapauus @greenhousewriting @jaidynwrites @hklunethewriter and anyone else who’s interested to answer these 10 questions, then write your own and pass it on! Feel free to ignore if you don’t have the time :) Anyone else who sees this and is interested, you’re welcome to answer too and say I tagged you!

1. What does your workspace look like? Do you have a designated ‘writing area’? 

2. Do you prefer to write solo heroes or ensemble casts? 

3. Which of your characters reminds you the most of yourself?

4. What’s one trait your main OC has that you wish you had, too?

5. Have you changed or removed any major elements of your current WIP since its original draft/concept? What was the biggest change, and why did you make it? 

6. If you had to give your main WIP a theme song, what would it be?

7. What’s your favorite non-writing-related hobby?

8. What are some of your favorite books? 

9. What’s your favorite trope to read and/or write? What’s your least favorite? 

10. What do you love most about your own work and why? 

[fivepercentgodsandearths]

The Allah Team: Modern Day Gobots in a Transformers Universe

Friday, November 24, 2017

Gobot Road Ranger knock-off of Transformer Optimus Prime

  Nothing could rival the #Transformers when they came out in the 80's. Nothing! And just like with anything good, eventually comes the cheap knock-offs. In this case it was the pitiful #Gobots. When the Tonka company heard that Hasbro had that fire coming, they [Tonka] hurried up and dropped the Gobots; one of the biggest duds in toy making history. While Transformers took several elaborate steps to transform into these well crafted sophisticated robots, Gobots took maybe a few steps and ended up looking like a burnt-out sometimes faceless version of the same thing; a Burger King kids meal toy. The bootleg cartoons were just as horrible and torture for a Millennial to watch today. Bottom line is Tonka shoulda stuck to trucks and that's the same advice that many of us should take when it comes to sticking to what we know. Let me tell you about an archetypal Transformer before I get to the Gobots.

A common misconception some people have about The Five Percent is that we are a Muslim group; some religious spin-off, branch or denomination of the Islamic faith. Some believe this because our founder Allah, The Father, was once a Registered Muslim in the Nation of Islam [NOI] under Minister Malcolm X at Harlem's Mosque #7. When he left the NOI in 1963, he also left their belief system, religious hierarchy and name Clarence 13X behind. What he did retain were a series of lessons, 120, that became an integrated part of a unique cultural curriculum. A curriculum which primarily included Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet; an Alphanumeric system of principles and values that was uniquely devised by him. This non-religious curriculum formed the basis of the Five Percent cultural worldview, which contained an original language, standards and customs that the Father and his companions began to teach youth in the streets of Harlem, AKA Mecca, in 1964.

  As the Five Percent we honor The Father's legacy, from his upbringing in Danville Virginia, his military service in Korea, his brief time in Mosque #7 and his formation of the Five Percent Nation in the mid 60's. As with the The Father and every human being, all of our experiences were and are important in making us who are and neither experience single-handedly defines our identity. This is important to communicate because some Muslims have a very bad habit of claim-jumping when it comes to successful people like Yahweh Ben Yahweh, Muhammad Ali, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz [Malcolm X.], Dr. Sebi, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Kool and the Gang Musicians, The Father and etc. who left their religion behind. It's like a high school basketball coach trying to claim credit for a player who became a superstar after they left or were cut from the team. In my mind, if it's multiple players that left or were cut from the program but then go on to do become superstars, the program starts to look questionable; its system, its coaching staff and possibly its athletic director. Five Percenters are like street ball players who questioned that Muslim program, either as former players or those who never wanted to play for that program, in that system or with that coaching staff. Some Five Percenters are highly critical of that program while others really don't give it much thought. Sometimes you have those who can't make their mind up; they want to play for that program yet also play in the street. If they are undecided, the program makes up their mind for them because there are certain restrictive laws that go along with being a part of that program. And if you don't follow the program, you're not eligible to play. You also have those who started playing street ball but then decided to join the program. That's fine, when it's respectfully articulated to those in the street. A problem arises when players who join the program try to act like they're better or even front like they're in the street in order to recruit street ball players to that program. This is like the religious program being NOI Muslims and street ballers as The Five Percent. The above group of undecided/Muslim recruiters are synonymous with a clandestine group called the Allah Team that operated in secret before making themselves public on the campus of Morehouse University in 1998. As can be surmised, this caused friction with the Five Percenters and these undecided/Muslim recruiters called the Allah Team separated themselves from the cipher. While there have always been short lived bootleg versions of us since the 60's, it was at this moment that we, the Transformers [Five Percent] began to see the creation of the Gobots.

Allah Prince Sha'Divine builds on his experience with The Allah Team

  A couple of famous quotes of The Father during a November 15th 1967 Interview regarding religion are "

you gotta keep the children together and kill all religion

" and "

And the Five Percenters, I'm teaching them that they can't go on under religion because religion has never did anything for them

." Obviously this wasn't a declaration to kill people, this, along with other quotes from this Interview, made it absolutely clear that The Father wasn't an advocate of organized religion. The Father wanted us to

kill

or destroy the division, hierarchy, lies and manipulation that binds religious people: as religion comes from the Latin

religare

meaning "to bind." Some Muslims would argue that, "Brother Clarence 13X used some of the religious teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad so he must have been religious" to which I would retort, "using the Arabic numerals 0, 1-9 doesn't make everyone a Muslim." The principles and values The Father learned throughout his life, which included as a registered Muslim, were mathematically practical, not religious. This is the reasoning behind the Five Percenter's creation of Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet; it's an Alphanumeric system that practically unlocked 120 lessons, and lessons in life, that were often purposely veiled by religion. Most of the words we speak in English are derived from a different language, culture and associated religion. It doesn't automatically mean we are that culture or associated religion if we use them. To call us Five Percenters Muslims even though we clearly do not practice the 5 Pillars of Islam, follow the Sunnah, attend a mosque, temple or masjid or follow an Imam/Minister is disrespectful to Muslims who do. A core belief of Allah Team group members is the confusing idea that you can somehow be a Muslim and Allah simultaneously. In their mind you can submit to the will of Allah as a Muslim, be a demigod [small "g" god], pray to THE God in the person of Prophet Master Fard Muhammad who wasn't the first God to create the universe, but we're all "Allahs" [yes, with an "s" on it].

Five Percent Universal Flag and Allah Team Logo

  The Father taught the youth our culture for five years until he was assassinated on June 13th, 1969. In May of 1965 after being arrested with several other men for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct at a rally in front of the Hotel Theresa in Mecca [Harlem, NY], he was arraigned in criminal court before Judge Francis X. O'Brien and held on a $9,500 bond. Four months later he was shipped off to the Psychiatric Unit at Bellevue Hospital. Allah would remain there until a final psychiatric report submitted to Judge O'Brien stated that "he did not understand the charges against him" thus remanding him to the NYS Department of Mental Hygiene for indefinite confinement. At the age of 37, Allah was confined in these institutions, Bellevue and Matteawan State Hospital, for two years, and released in April of 1967. During this time he taught, different youth received different instructions. Instructions that often sound like contradictions. While it's clear that The Father was anti-organized religion, he did instruct some, not all, young Five Percenters to become Muslims by joining the mosque when he was gone. They obviously would benefit from the structure that religious program would offer them and it also shows that the Father wasn't confident in their ability to manage without that and him. I teach preschool and facilitate an after school program for 9 to 12 year olds so I definitely understand his reasoning. Some students I encourage to do some things while others get a different set of instructions. However, regardless of those individualized instructions, there were always anti-religious Five Percenter axioms that the Father taught regardless who he was speaking to, and those axioms were rooted in the unique language, standards and customs of our cultural worldview.

  Two of the main axioms of the Five Percent is that we don't adhere to a hierarchical structure and we do not have a single leader. We teach collective leadership and that each person should follow to the extent of learning to lead themselves; self-sufficiency. If you're a believer, registered Muslim in the Nation of Islam who follows a leader, whether it's John Muhammad [Elijah's brother], Silias Muhammad, Solomon Royall, The Son of Man [Marvin Muhammad], Ahmad A. Muhammad or Minister Louis Farrakhan, you cannot simultaneously be non-religious and without a leader, it's a fundamental contradiction. Now I've heard some say that if you work or go to school your Manager or Teacher is your leader but here's the difference; they cannot tell you what to do at home like a religious leader does. If Minister Farrakhan says to his believers, "I want you all to start wearing this green & yellow Dianetics pin on your lapel every day to display our partnership with the Church of Scientology", you have to do it as a follower, at home and abroad. If you question or disobey that order you're considered a hypocrite, disbeliever and etc.

  Another Five Percenter axiom is the propagation and preservation of our unique cultural curriculum; 120 lessons, Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet. I emphasize "unique" because no one does this. No religion or other culture. Not only are we required to share and maintain our culture, we consistently test one another on it. I remember in the late 90's being at a Wu-Tang Clan concert and A Son Unique [Ol' Dirty Bastard], upon seeing my Universal Flag, questioning me on one of the lengthiest lessons in 120. Knowing 120, extracting and articulating the wisdom of 120 and understanding 120 equals 360 degrees; a complete cipher [120+120+120=360]. It is through one's immersion in our unique cultural curriculum, via Five Percenters who live it, that they learn our chronology, gatherings, honor days, language, standards and overall customs. It's impossible to learn this as a cultural tourist, academic or undecided/Muslim recruiter. So whenever I've looked at or engaged members of the Allah Team, males and females, there was always a clear disassociation from some of the chronology, gatherings, honor days, language, standards and overall customs of the Five Percent. In terms of chronology, they didn't have or maintain a strong lineage to a family tree actively connected to the root. They didn't actively attend or participate in any of our cultural gatherings or honor days and if given a choice they primarily honor religious days such as the Muslim's Annual Savior's Day and fast for Ramadan. They weren't fluent or couldn't properly articulate our language nor our lessons. When is came to standards and overall customs, it was obvious they were not like me and other brother and sisters of the Five Percent. Now some would and have argued that they do live the culture "personally" but just don't come around because of so and so -but that actually proves the point that they aren't living the culture. Why? Because it's impossible to live the culture, share and preserve, it by our lonesome. In fact, it will die with us. Always keep in mind that we received it from somebody. Plus civilization requires socialization, collective work and responsibility and cooperative economics. In the most simplest terms, if a person isn't adding on, they're taking away. Some would argue that one of our Prophets, W.D. Fard, "came to North America by himself" and that is true in a sense that no one personally traveled with him to his destination. It's also true that his family sent him, he most likely took a vessel with other travelers, and when he got to Detroit he became a part of his uncle's community. He still wasn't "alone", even when Elijah was supposedly looking through a keyhole to see if he slept and saw an eyeball staring back at him.

  I know this was kinda lengthy, and will probably be revisited, so let me wrap this up. The main reason for this article is to point out that since out formal 1964 inception to today, there has been and continues to be people, impostors, trying to call themselves Five Percenters when they are not. Whether it was Robert Walker in the 60's or the Allah Team, they are not us. Even though some of them are aware of our way of life, none of them "primarily" share and preserve the unique chronology, gatherings, honor days, language, standards and overall customs of our Five Percent culture. That's fine to be aware, other Muslims, Moors, Nuwaubians, Khemetians, Hebrews, Christians or etc. are also. Just don't claim to be something you're clearly not. It's disrespectful, disingenuous, confusing and outright clownish to those of us who are the real Five Percent.

Peace,Saladin

Source: https://atlantisschool.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-allah-team-modern-day-gobots-in_24.html?m=1 

[hyosubteam]

[PAPER MAGAZINE] DJ HYO: Girl of the EDM Generation by By Bradley Stern | 23 April 2018

Her name is Hyoyeon, but call her DJ HYO.

As a member of Girls' Generation — one of the defining girl groups of modern pop, considered "The Nation's Girl Group" at the height of their fame in South Korea — the 28-year-old singer and dancer has already experienced international success over the past decade to a degree most of her fellow K-pop idols could only dream of achieving.

Now, with each of the members of the group focusing on individual endeavors following their 10 year anniversary celebration in 2017, HYO's opted to pave a musical path of her own, but with a slight twist — record scratch! — she's a DJ now, too.

While the career shift might generate some skepticism, rest assured, this is far from a pop star putting on a pair of headphones and pretending to twist the knobs behind the booth: HYO's been putting in the work training on turntables and learning the technical ins and outs to prepare for her official debut as a DJ for years. With this month's release of her tropical House reintroduction, "Sober," a collaboration with Dutch DJ Ummet Ozcan released in both Korean and English, DJ HYO confronts the expectations she's up against — both as an established pop superstar and as a woman — by making it clear that she's not looking to be tied down... by any one genre or person. When it comes to doing things in her own way, HYO is just getting started

Q: The music industry is very different from the days of your debut with Girls' Generation, from the introduction of streaming services to the type of music that's popular on the radio. How do you feel it has most changed, from your perspective as an artist?

HYO: Over the years with Girls' Generation, we focused on powerful performances and exciting visuals. Video streaming became very popular during the middle of our activities, which is why Girls' Generation videos garnered millions of viewsthroughout the world. Since then, different types of streaming services and influential platforms have emerged, so the quality of the music has to be even more detailed and top-notch. As I have more control over my solo projects, I do my best to create something I love by working simultaneously as an artist, DJ and producer.

Q: You appeared on Mash Up in 2015, a DJ competition. How was that experience? Did it inspire your solo transformation?

HYO: As a performing artist, I was always interested in mixing songs and worked on it during my own time. Mash Up helped me to build a solid foundation which was very important, and I was able to learn skills like scratching, mixing, and splicing from numerous DJs on the show, which gave me a huge boost.

Q: What inspired the decision to record "Sober" in Korean and English?

HYO: I strongly suggested to my company that I wanted to do an English version. My fans are all over the world, and I wanted to reach out to them in any way I can — and music is the best way to reach them. My native language isn't English, but I wanted to make sure that I understood everything I was communicating to my fans, so I took more time to really understand what I was expressing though the lyrics.

Q: Can you describe the meaning behind the music video?

HYO: The music video is about liberating girls who feel trapped, and tired of the norm. I wanted to express that they can get out there, rebel against social norms and show everyone who they're really meant to be.

Q: You worked with Ummet Ozcan on "Sober." How did you two meet, and what was the experience of collaborating like?

HYO: There was a big festival in Korea, and I had a chance to meet Ummet. When I met him, I was able to play him a song that I made and we started to discuss a collaboration from that point. The funny part is — obviously Ummet doesn't speak Korean, and I don't speak English! — so it was kind of fun just to work in two different languages. It was definitely interesting, and somehow we were able to get each other's thoughts in order and come out with "Sober."

How is preparing for an EDM debut different from preparing for a pop comeback? Or is it the same?

I'm a performing artist, so when I was doing pop songs, it was important to focus on the choreography, performances and visuals. With EDM, I have to channel my focus and energy in different ways to connect with my audiences. Many people think it's my first time trying out this genre, but I've been studying a lot over the years. I've been on Mash Up and I've put a lot of time and investment into learning all the details of DJing and how to engage through various types of music.

Q: What is the most difficult thing about DJing?

HYO: Besides the technical part, I'm working on composing the songs with the MIDI keyboard, which I know is going to take some time. I make small mistakes here and there, and it's a fun experience. For now, I'm learning as I go, and I want to continually produce and DJ my own songs. Eventually, I would also like to produce, mix, and collaborate on songs by other artists.

Q: Are you planning to perform at any EDM festivals? What songs would be in the DJ HYO set?

HYO: If there was a given opportunity, I'd definitely want to show fans the new DJ HYO side. I believe I'm going to be at Spectrum Dance Music Festival in Seoul in September. As I grow in my experience, I want to build a brand and do a tour in the near future. DJ HYO's set would include a lot of Girls' Generation songs because there are so many songs both in Korean and Japanese, and this would be a good time to spotlight songs that didn't get highlighted.

Q: Any specific songs?

HYO: "Genie" and "The Boys." We were able to do a lot of different versions of "The Boys," and it was released worldwide in multiple languages. There's a Snoop Dogg remix of the song as well, and I want to remake it in my own style.

Q: You've already established yourself a pop star. Do you think it will be difficult to have success in EDM? Have you had any negative experiences while learning to DJ, or criticism about crossing over from pop to EDM?

HYO: When I initially started getting into DJing, I was a bit of worried about how fans would react to the transition — or just the public in general. Most people probably think that I don't have much experience in this field, but I've been dropping hints and posting photos and videos on social media to show this side of me. Now that "Sober" is out, I'm more confident about how I'm portrayed as a DJ, and I'm always full of energy so I'm hoping to share that with anyone who listens to my music.

Q: So many different DJs dominate the EDM scene. Who are some of your all-time favorites? And which other DJs and vocalists would you love to collaborate with on your music in the future?

HYO: I love Martin Jensen and DJ Snake. Those are two of my favorites right now. I find Martin Garrix very good looking, too. [Laughs] For vocalists, I'd want to collaborate with my fellow Girls' Generation member, Taeyeon. Besides her, I'd definitely love to work with Justin Bieber, Camila Cabello and my all-time favorite, Britney Spears.

Q: There are plenty of DJs doing residencies all over the world, like David Guetta'sresidency in Las Vegas and Paris Hilton's Foam & Diamonds party in Ibiza. Have you attended any residencies? Would you ever consider doing that?

HYO: I've gone to Vegas and seen a lot of DJs perform, but I haven't seen a lot of residencies. If there was an opportunity, I'd definitely want to try it out and experience it in the future. Until then, I'd love to do brand events and parties so I can build my experience as a DJ.

Q: Have you received any advice from other DJs?

HYO: There weren't any specific DJs who gave me advice, but on Mash Up, years back, they showed me the basics and I was able to build a strong foundation from it. Ummet was also a great producer and I couldn't have made "Sober" without him.

Q: Last year, we saw the return of Girls' Generation with Holiday Night. Can you speak to anything that's coming up with the group in the future?

HYO: Girls' Generation never disbanded, so we can always come back when the time is right. It could be an 11th anniversary, a 12th anniversary project... we're currently focusing on our individual solo projects, but one day, sometime soon, we'll definitely come back to our fans. Together.

Q: Have any of the girls reached out with feedback or advice about the DJ HYO debut?

HYO: The members don't really DJ, so they couldn't really give me advice. [Laughs] But when I posted "Sober" in our group chat, the response was explosive. We're all very encouraging, loving and supportive of each other.

Q: Do you have any advice for the girl groups coming up?

HYO: A lot of girl group trainees train for years, and once they debut, it's like a dream come true. But when they face reality, and see how hard the entertainment industry can be, they'll be hit with new types of obstacles that they wouldn't have imagined. I want to tell them to never lose faith and never lose sight of what your dream is. Just keep going through it, and just be strong.

Q: Knowing what you know how about the music industry, and success in general, would you give your younger self any advice?

HYO: When I first debuted, there was no time to think for myself. My schedule was set, and everything was so busy — it was basically a whirlwind. I would tell little Hyo to keep reading a lot of books on top of her dancing and singing practice. She should never compromise herself or her goals for anything, and always stay centered in challenging situations.

Q: What should we expect from DJ HYO in 2018?

HYO"Sober" was a great start. I want to keep up the energy and get a few more songs out as well, and then go to festivals. I'd also like to do a tour, or at least visit other countries, so that I can share my music with the fans I love.

Original source: https://www.papermag.com/dj-hyo-2562629361.html?rebelltitem=11#rebelltitem11

[absynthe--minded]

The English School of Mongolia Mini-Review (part 1)

Performance Date Unknown (video uploaded August 7, 2017) Cast Unknown (Uploaded by a Batkhuyag Gansukh)

The opening titles are all in English, with a voiceover in (I think) Mongolian - I’ve never heard Mongolian before so I can’t confirm it but considering this was made in and filmed in Mongolia I think it’s a safe bet. Before we get going we have a few lines from Music of the Night, and then the title in plain serif font against a backdrop of swirling smoke. This is professionally filmed, with the school’s logo in the top corner and well-done titles.

Prologue/Overture: - the auctioneer has a top hat - the set is relatively simple but that serves it well - the curtains open partially to reveal the auction, with the chandelier behind a scrim curtain reading ‘Lot 666’ on it and the actors arranged around it. auctioneer is stage left/house right, with three other people beside him; on the other side are Raoul and Madame Giry and a boy who I think is supposed to be Raoul’s nurse. the whole scene is done in bright light, with elements of blue and purple, and the costumes seem to be at least attempting Victoriana - behind the chandelier are several boxes (they look like instrument cases) - it gives the stage a nice “abandoned” look - this is professionally filmed, with multiple cameras - Raoul’s voice sounds really stilted, kind of stiff - a lot like a typical relatively untrained high schooler. He might be effecting a character voice due to his supposed old age, though? - the chandelier looks nice, and the electrical effects are really neat, though the lights started before the organ did - SPEAKING OF THE ORGAN there is heavy abuse of synth here. Whoever’s playing somehow missed the “pipe organ” key and decided to settle on “church organ/baseball field organ”. The effect is… interesting. - the chandelier just rises into the air and strobes, before going dark so that a scene change can be done - while I understand the necessity of a blackout in high school theater to cover over any errors or problems, I do wish we could have seen the opera house being transformed. - I think this overture is being played live, organ-only? mad props to whoever’s doing that - the rest of the orchestra joins in for the latter part of the overture and the organ completely drops out, or at least goes quiet enough that i can’t hear it, and they’re really very good. This is hard material to play for high schoolers and they’re doing a nice job.

Hannibal: - Carlotta is a little off-pitch? but her voice is good, and I get the sense that it’s just because she was completely a cappella with nothing to guide her, because she maintains a good consistency? - the costumes range from original pieces to attempting a Bjornson feel - Reyer is a woman!! a very pretty woman with short hair in a tuxedo. - the corps de ballet doesn’t do ballet? but their choreography is obviously based on the original and it’s nice to see that kind of consistency - as I see closer shots I think there might be a few pointe dancers, since I see pointe shoes? but I don’t see any actual pointe (some demi pointe maybe but I don’t know enough about ballet to say for sure) and the choreography involves minimal leg movement. - Giry is pronounced “gear-y” here but I’ll give them a pass - this a really small stage, but every inch of it is used pretty well. Things only feel crowded when everyone is in the same spot. - Carlotta sounds AMAZING with orchestration to keep her in the right key - there’s a flat elephant brought in at the end

Think of Me (Carlotta): - Madame Firmin, who already existed in the ALW show, has been turned into her husband and is one half of “the couple who now own the Opera Populaire”. I’m loving the blind casting here - Carlotta’s Italian accent is not half bad considering it’s originating from somebody performing in a language that isn’t anything close to their native one - the crown used in Elissa’s costume looks more South Asian than the tiaras used in most productions, and I don’t know if it was an intentional cultural choice or if it was accidental, but either way I like the way it frames the actress’s face - the “backdrop collapse” is done really interestingly here - the backdrops are projected onto a screen, and so when the Phantom drops one, it just switches to the next slide on the screen with some shaking animation effects, flickering lights, and a thud sound. The cast reacts very well a la Star Trek, but it is frustrating because there’s not even the slightest indication that Carlotta was close to being hurt, which was her impetus for quitting before. She even continues singing for a while in the flickering lights. - Meg, whose voice is crystal clear, begins with “He’s there, the Phantom of the Opera!” and the rest of the cast joins in, and Andre cuts them off with his ‘insolence’ line - this is really slow, and kind of ponderous, and whenever this happens it’s my least favorite part of high school productions - “If you need me, I shall be in Frankfurt!” is delivered hilariously, with M. Lefevre dashing offstage after Carlotta and Piangi make their dramatic exit (punctuated with Carlotta throwing her scarf at the corps de ballet, which explains how Christine wound up with it) while Mme. Firmin and M. Andre just look on in horror at their situation. - Meg literally shoves Christine out of the corps de ballet while shouting “Christine Daae could sing it, sir!”. That’s such a lovely friend move, there, Meg. - This Christine really sells the “nervous, terrified at first” bit - I can hardly hear her singing until “far away and free” - Christine’s voice is very nice. Not the best high school voice I’ve heard (that still belongs to Asia Stewart) but it’s light and capable of singing the notes,even if it does go sharp now and again. For those of you keeping score, “August when the trees were green” shows up here. - the most distracting thing here is the scarf choreography, because instead of the typical scarf movements (which show up in the silent bits) Christine just keeps moving her arms back and forth like she’s pulling something toward her - A lovely Broadway cadenza turns up here - why is it that so many times it’s the cadenzas that are my favorite part of this?

Angel of Music/Little Lotte: - Immediately after the song, almost before the curtains close, Christine is mobbed by her fellow ballerinas. They’re in Degas-esque costumes, though modern (and glittery!) tutus dominate, with ribbons in their hair. It’s generally adorable. - I think the Phantom is singing through some kind of filter-adding microphone here, but he sounds pretty intimidating anyway - Meg’s voice is really nice. None of these high schoolers are, like, stellar? but none of them are horrible, and all of them sound like they know what they’re doing to some extent. - I think Christine’s actress is imitating Sierra Boggess, though, and I wish she’d explore her own stylings (but that’s just because I unconsciously imitate timbre and tone in other voices I hear singing and I want to help other people be more original than mine) - The orchestra is struggling more here than they were in Hannibal - Christine’s mirror is broken, with shards of glass sticking out around the inside of the frame. I’m left hoping it’s meant to be representational, with the glass being there diagetically? Because if not, Christine would definitely be able to see the creepy secret passage. - Raoul’s voice is the real weak spot here, which is really a shame. His chemistry with Christine, because he’s not acting that well either, does seem kind of lacking?

The Mirror: - Again, the Phantom is very intimidating here. Less vocally strong than Christine (in a lot of these shows, I find that the girls are more comfortable and more capable - is it because girls are more likely to take voice lessons, or because girls are more likely to have seen and memorized ALW’s music, or…?) - that being said, the Phantom’s voice is not bad. He can hit the notes and doesn’t get lost in the mix of the orchestra. His mask is also a sparkly silver (let it be known I typed ‘orange’ there first for some reason , and he emerges completely from the mirror to get to Christine. - Raoul finally gets into the dressing room after calling for Christine, and when he sees it’s empty, he turns to face the audience and says his ‘Angel’ line in a forlorn, sad voice as the lights dim and the curtains close. Now, when our more mellow organ playing begins, it feels almost funereal, and there’s a palpable sense of loss that is surprising and jarring because it’s so new.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Should publishing neonazi material be tolerated among anarchists? To almost every anarchist the answer is and has always been no. This is not a matter of censoring or hiding from ideas, it’s a matter of not giving shitty people with shitty values and goals the legitimacy of a platform and connection with us. Social association matters, it maps networks of trust and collaboration, it declares degrees of affinity, and provides points of entry. When you hang with nazis, when you allow them into your spaces, or when you promote their propaganda you’re quite reasonably gonna get treated like a nazi collaborator. The world is not a formless and consequenceless forum for the airing and interplay of ideas. It’s particularly sad that — in the drama surrounding Little Black Cart publishing the defacto English-language mouthpeice of a terrorist group targeting anarchists — anyone should have to point out to self-proclaimed “post-anarchists” the limits of the “marketplace of ideas” notion and the dangerousness of privileging the pretense of civil dialog. Ideas rise to prominence for lots of reasons, their evolutionary fitness in a given context is not solely or often even chiefly determined by their epistemic value. When more rational or accurate ideas win out they often do so only very slowly, laboriously tearing down vast edifices of bullshit that can be raised quickly. Nationalism is fucking stupid, but nationalist propaganda is particularly effective — it’s simplistic resonance persuades faster than critique can keep pace. It hooks into our shallow monkey brain instincts, feeding off our worst desires for status, power, belonging, and community, and providing an excuse to shrink the circle of our concern for others and avoid all the fatiguing intellectual responsibility such empathy brings. While we waste time critiquing its lies and misdirection nationalism happily continues building an army and preparing to crush us. This doesn’t mean that we should expunge nationalist appeals from the historical record or make them totally inaccessible — epistemic closure is dangerous and it’s important to understand our enemies — but we shouldn’t make their dissemination easy, and we shouldn’t help in giving them slick packaging, prominence, and legitimacy. Since nationalism primarily recruits not through reason but through displays of social positioning and brute force — displays that promise power and demonstrate how much can be gotten away with — dialog is often a trap. Almost everyone gets this. An esoteric text dump online is different than something gilded in book form. The role of a publisher — even more so in the era of the internet — is to give social prominence to certain things. To leverage social and financial capital to disseminate something and lend legitimacy to it. Anarchists don’t publish flat earth nuts or climate change deniers because those perspectives have simply nothing in common with anarchism; they are not relevant or coherent with or even arguably reconcilable with anarchy. And while there is immense space for complexity, novelty, exploration, and contention within anarchism it is not yet so undermined as a concept as to be infinitely expansive. There are boundaries and a core locus of concern with the liberation of all. We certainly don’t publish neonazis or tankies. It doesn’t matter that Mao was once an anarchist or that Mussolini ran in anarchist circles — they were clearly at fundamental odds with the anarchist project. But even those genocidal ideologies pale before the mass murderous ideology of ITS, who have even more stridently sought to embrace the opposite of anarchism. Rejecting the defining anarchist goal of liberation for all, ITS derides this as “humanist” and “moralist” — valorizing instead the murder of strangers for sport. Instead of freedom and the abolition of domination, they’ve devolved into worshiping a silly macho “wildness” that’s just decentralized domination with some residual environmentalist affectations and a laughable cloak of subalternity. Once upon a time it was possible to quibble that their ideology shouldn’t be taken seriously as a declaration of intent. That the entire philosophy was self-evidently empty posturing by edgelords. And that when some brats declare that they want to kill all humans or that they’re “worse than Hitler” the extremity of such statements revealed their insincerity. But ITS’ attacks on anarchists, children’s hospitals, students, hikers, etc. long ago made such continued deflection impossible. The Journal Atassa’s website is filled with translations of ITS communiques and interviews — Atassa has effectively operated as ITS’ press office in the anglosphere. That Little Black Cart would seek to publish Atassa as a journal and insert it in anarchist spaces follows the same trajectory of assisted entryism that has led to ITS communiques being repeatedly published on AnarchistNews.org, hosted on TheAnarchistLibrary.org, read aloud enthusiastically on Free Radical Radio, laughed about approvingly on The Brilliant, etc. All from the influence of roughly the same circle of self declared nihilists. Let’s be clear that Little Black Cart’s defense of their publication of Atassa in terms of whether “calls to action” are present in the print version of Atassa is as absolutely and transparently ridiculous a defense as could be imagined. Whether a while nationalist journal makes “calls to action” is completely irrelevant. A neonazi text that speaks in airy abstract terms and avoids making a direct call to exterminate is in no real sense different than a neonazi text that lets slip such calls. This distinction is purely a legal artifice and one that should be largely irrelevant to anarchists. We all know this game intimately because we’ve played it continually over the last few decades when struggling with the liberal legal regime. The ELF had cells and the press office, legally distinct entities, but functioning as a single whole. Such positioning may save someone from prison but no anarchist actually buys that they’re ultimately distinct, they are but different organs within the same movement or project. What’s intolerable about white nationalism isn’t merely its specific acts of violence, it’s the fucking white nationalism itself. Similarly what is intolerable about ITS isn’t merely their violent acts but their fucking values and goals. The violent acts are merely proof that they are actually serious about their vile ideology — even if they have not as of yet figured out how to for example sabotage nuclear plants and kill at a larger scale. LBC contextualizes their publication of Atassa with, “The ideas we wish to publish are visionary, world-wrecking, ideas about a passionate, critical, fiery anarchy unleashed upon the world.” And similar statements have repeatedly been made across AnarchistNews.org and associated media projects — framing ITS as anarchist. But there is no sliver of anarchy to be found in ITS unless we are now — after years of attempted twisting and corruption — to accept a notion of anarchy as merely ANY fiery world-wrecking. ITS does not seek to end domination and expand freedom, the wildness they worship might as well be called fractured fascism. Broadly contiguous with and reflective of the sort of “national anarchists” that have cropped up among modern fascists with a decentralization fetish. The same almost sociopathic myopia and localism of nationalism, except to an even greater extent. That some of the folks slinging ITS have now hey now, I have a few disagreements with Hitler and the historical Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.” It’s true that now at long last a couple folks in this circle have voiced a critique of ITS. Yet in his essay in Black Seed inveighing against anyone loudly opposed to ITS, Bellamy’s “critique” of ITS functioned mostly as an attempt to distance them from anticiv nihilism, “Despite their many references to egoist and nihilist [sic] strands of anarchism, including quite recent ones concurrent with the above this is quite plainly a holy war, not a deconstruction of civilization through individual liberation. I see no room for a praxis of individual or small, intimate group liberation in conjunction with such an ascetic, semi-suicidal religious imperative“. Notice how askew this analysis is. Bellamy casts the problem with ITS as that they’re not focusing myopically enough! In this picture what’s wrong with ITS is the intensity and scope of their values. God fucking forbid someone feel strongly committed to action or some large goal. Surely that’s what’s actually intolerable about ITS. And never mind the values of “individual or small intimate group liberation” that Bellamy casts as somehow both nihilist and desirable instead. The problem with ITS is apparently that they care about shit beyond their friend circle. Such critiques of “moralism” are hard not to read in vein of the “the problem with all these cucks is they get triggered about shit” nihilism at the bedrock of the alt-right. Myself, being a “feverish” moralizing cuck, I diagnosed ITS as being too myopically focused in the immediate. The simple macho and subrational rush of brutal domination involved in murder, mixed with the visceral instinct of trees good concrete bad, both instincts fetishized by a all too nihilist failure to intellectually probe deeper or wider. Just as Richard Spencer admits that race or ethnicity is an arbitrary and contradictory construct, so too do they essentially admit that “the wild” is not ultimately an intellectually defensible category or concept, just as they’ve admitted they don’t get the science they castigate. They’re gonna go with the arbitrary value that psychologically resonates with them given their personal history, and fuck any sort of intellectual reflection that might undermine such or reorient them towards different values. Unlike certain fascists ITS is obviously not trying to convert large numbers of people to their cause, but they’re just as obviously leveraging the same sort of irrational psychological resonances that underpin fascism. A fetishization of violence and a return to mythologized lost tradition, a shrinking of one’s empathic circle to a closer relationships and othering of the rest, a ridicule for reason, truth, and intellectual diligence. It’s this latter trick that allows them to value their self-aware nonsensical construct of “the wild”. Note how these few nihilists only now “critiquing” ITS can’t bring themselves to actually make an argument for some values and not others. They never address how murder for sport is wrong or why the lives of strangers should matter to us. They don’t want to get drawn into such an explicit metaethical conversation because it would bare just how arbitrary their values of “self” interest and privileging a few immediate relationships over others are. They want to duck such with trivializing moves like “of course we’re against bad things” when said bad things are overwhelming socially recognized (and only when those bad things are overwhelmingly socially recognized), but the entire project of anticiv nihilism has increasingly seemed to be about expanding the overton window of what’s socially allowable. If they’re trying to distinguish themselves from ITS it’s obviously incumbent upon them to explain the walls holding their myopic focus on immediacy from devolving into the even more extreme reductio of that demonstrated by ITS. After a decade of attempting to erode anarchism’s capacity to say anything, to uproot its ethical foundations, they’re now left grasping at the air trying to assert that there’s no slippery slope between them and ITS. Despite a number of individuals in the anticiv nihilist milieu long praising or expressing delight at ITS (see Free Radical Radio for some of the more public individuals). When former anarchists reject not just the strawmen they set up with “moralism” but all ethics, declare that the abolition of oppression is impossible and undesirable, say “might makes right” and misanthropically fetishize mass die-off in a civilizational collapse, but then protest “sure, I don’t support killing random people” how honestly should we read such a deflection? And does it really matter if they do happen to arbitrarily draw such a line? Richard Spencer can say he wants “peaceful” ethnic cleansing, but we all know the inevitable conclusion of his values. And what else could he really get away with saying in public? To many of us ITS has laid bare the inevitable and boring conclusion of most of this most recent misbegotten “nihilist” project in North America. A notion of anarchy increasingly stripped of all ethical content and rendered into a shallow aesthetic of revolt and attack. By now we should all realize that such an aesthetic is entirely swallowable by and deeply reconcilable with reactionary forces. Let me clarify where I am personally coming from here, because I am certainly not suggesting that we banish everything remotely problematic or deviant. I am quite loudly reviled in a few of circles for taking iconoclastic stances in anarchism, as well as encouraging and facilitating critical dialog with ideas or circles deemed verboten. I have consistently been about challenging orthodoxies and expanding overton windows. I have built up and published writers that I have sharp and public disagreements with. While I have been vitriolic in my critiques of them I’ve nevertheless tabled and spoken at libertarian conventions, debated reactionary non-anarchist transhumanists, and even helped a bit in negotiating the original St Paul Principles — an influential treaty with maoists and liberals. I was once staunchly primitivist and have continued to engage at length with various branches of those ideas, even undertaking lengthy dialogs with some of today’s “eco-extremists” like John Jacobi (even despite Atassa’s inclusion of his writing). For a decade and a half since I worked up the backbone to stand up to the anarchist and leftist orthodoxy I’ve dealt with plenty of suspicious would-be scene police hoping to make a name for themselves by running me out of things for crimethink. Last year the LA Anarchist Bookfair side-eyed my application to table because they thought mutualism smelled like “propertarianism” — I would be certainly excluded by any ban on “individualists.” I’ve even hilariously been accused on Anews of trying to build a “red brown alliance” because a think tank I’m involved with engages in dialog with libertarians and the notoriously thirdpositiony Counterpunch has republished a few of our public domain essays (never mind that we’ve been the most consistent and outspoken critics of the fascist creep in libertarian circles, have converted thousands of libertarians, and are frequently targeted by actual fascists for our work). Syndicalists, Platformists, and “anarchists” in spitting distance of Maoism have said far worse about me, happily making up shit or conflating (“ancap” etc). I am well aware of how opportunistically “fascist” can be thrown by some and how hungry certain beurocratic dinosaurs in the red branches of anarchism are for inane ideological purges and unfair litmus tests. Anarchy is complex and varied in its application and we must embrace the often weird and unruly ideological mess that people make of it. We must continue to make sure there’s room for varying kinds of people with varying takes. But there are nonetheless still some boundaries to the anarchist project. There have to be or else anarchism would be absolutely indistinct from anything else and also immediately overrun. We don’t let fascists in our spaces. We don’t let a very large array of fucked up shit in our spaces. We don’t think that our goals justify literally any means, nor do we believe that a number of means can feasibly lead to the ends we desire — or else we would have no problem with state communists and claim that mass slaughter and imprisonment are capable of building a world we could ever be interested in. Many of the exact same people now wailing about someone ripping up a copy of Atassa at the Seattle Bookfair I remember once laughing in approval at state communists getting water dumped on their books when they tried to table anarchist bookfairs. There are and have always been things rightfully considered utterly beyond the pale in anarchism. It is not remotely acceptable to distro fascist propaganda, and certainly not at an anarchist bookfair — even if the writers originally came from the anarchist movement (as again in the case of some “national anarchists”). I know that my repeat comparison to nazis will be dismissed out of hand by a few — and shrieked about from the residual anews peanut gallery — as rank hyperbole, but when pressed no defender of ITS and Atassa has so far coughed up any attempt at meaningful distinction in why we should treat them differently. What’s so infuriating is that many of these people clearly perceive ITS as just some “misbehaving” comrades who are only a little bit lost. They know that they can’t just openly say that ITS’ values and analysis are close to their own because they know that anarchists at large would then revolt and kick them from the milieu like the “national anarchists” were once. Since Scott Campbell raised the profile of ITS’ targeting of anarchists and anarchist spaces, some folks involved with LBC have felt pressured into backpeddling a little. But these same cheerleaders knew damn well that ITS had tried to kill an anarchist years back and didn’t raise a peep then. It behooves us to ask what other random idiotic monsters these “ITS isn’t that bad” folks would thus invite into our spaces and discourse. Are they going to start publishing shit like Keith Preston’s “national anarchist” propaganda? This isn’t rhetoric — Aragorn has already done this. In the late oughts Aragorn facilitated “national anarchist” entryism on anarchistnews.org, on antipolitics.net, and in the Berkeley study group. Defending the inclusion of BANA members and publishing national anarchist writing. It’s great that he stopped, but it’s concerning as hell that such retractions only happened after a loss of social capital. (Honest props to those nihilists who called him out and cut ties with him over it.) What’s also flabbergasting is the audacity with which ITS apologists have instead tried to reframe the conflict around a motte and bailey of “indiscriminacy” in violence. As if the only thing objectionable is that some perfectly valid anarchist comrades are getting a little too sloppy when it comes to collateral damage in their actions. It’s insulting and disturbing that they think this reframing will work. ITS declares they want to kill everyone and proceed to target randos and anarchists — and their apologists try to turn the discussion into a re-litigation of the late 90s nonviolence debate. No anarchist project nor any manner by which anyone might move through our world, occurs without some form of violence — even the violence of nonviolence. But we can still recognize varying degrees of violence, and of domination, and subjugation. We can engage mindful of the context of our actions and the various feedback loops attendant to certain tactics or strategies. We can also — and this is the critical bit — seek to fucking minimize domination in the world, to expand things like agency and consent. The pretense that ITS’s murderfest and wish for mass death poses any serious or interesting questions for anarchists would be laughable if so many in LBC’s orbit haven’t somehow claimed such. Of course Atassa — as ITS’ English language press office — doesn’t even bother with such deflections. The only pretense of defense it conjures is feigned outrage at gringos talking shit about something in a (not so) distant country. What a laughable pastiche of anticolonialism and white liberal insecurities! Are anarchists not to condemn the North Korean government or the Assad Regime? Must we refrain from critique of the Muslim Brotherhood or Daesh when communists laud them? Where does this “can’t critique distant things” nonsense end? Can’t develop an opinion on someone widely called out for rape in a slightly distant city? Someone in our scene snitches and we get to say “well I’m not super close with all the relevant individuals“? I mean I know that a number in these circles actually would like us to be so de-fanged, but I wish they would explicitly step to with that argument so it can be roundly rejected. I mean is the level of bullshit used to equivocate and condemn condemnations of ITS really to be our future? Halfassed concern trolling and “whaddaboutism” where any restatement of what should be ethically obvious but somehow isn’t is in turn silenced as “virtue signaling?” When the same folks who condemned those speaking out against the bombing of an anarchist infoshop then whined about civility, free speech and the disrespect of LBC’s property in Seattle, the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair organizers proclaimed that they wouldn’t exclude vendors based on their content. Immediately alt-right, anti-feminist, MRA, and pro-Israel material cropped up. Because. This. Is. What. Fucking. Happens. There are so many more reactionaries than anarchists in this world that they could sneeze and flood us out of our spaces or drown out our voice. Some bare community norms or expectations are inherent and necessary. I’ve pushed for tolerance and ecumenicalism for years, but it’s hard to imagine what could even remain if we accept publishing the de facto press office of a group that opposes freedom and is out to kill all humans. The alt-right literature was promptly removed from the Bay Area Bookfair by spontaneously organizing attendees, but however horrible the alt-right is let’s remember they at least don’t champion the extermination of literally everyone. Look, again, I get that there are dangers here. LA’s condemnation of “individualism” wholesale is obviously absolute trash. But just because something as central to anarchist practice as No Platform can be abused doesn’t mean anarchists can afford to suddenly discard it. Anarchism at core is an ethical stance against all domination, seeking the liberation of all — there should be room for vibrant intellectual diversity in discussing how this is applied, differences in strategy, prediction, and preferred implementation — but we cannot afford to erode the beautiful idea itself, to lend space and legitimacy to its avowed enemies. And we certainly shouldn’t be helping those actively trying to kill anarchists. LBC’s decision to publish Atassa, Anews’ publication of ITS manifestos, their continued hosting on AnarchistLibrary.org and as audio recordings on Free Radical Radio are obviously beyond the pale in the same way that nazi or tankie texts would be. Not because anarchism cannot survive forbidden readings — although it is shameful we’ve done such a poor job enunciating and defending our values that somehow a small number found ITS’ inane perspective to have resonance — but because such publication legitimizes a profound watering down of anarchist values and basic norms. http://clubof.info/