#the out of context compilation this season is going to be WILD

[ender1821]

The beauty of minecraft smp improv is having a great storyline of Pearl ‘leaving her tower’ only for Mumbo and Gem to turn around and pull her into the goddamn tower-off

[copperbadge]

I knew when I gave my stepfather all twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory I would likely be watching some of it with him, and it's a real experience. I watched a couple of early seasons of the show when it was airing, partly because my folks liked it so it was something we could text about and bond over, but I was usually half-paying attention.

When my stepdad put on a couple of episodes from the season nine DVD, at first I thought we were watching a clip compilation of some kind, because they were jarringly abrupt -- most scenes only seem to last about thirty seconds and rarely are you in one for more than two minutes; often the scenes seem to cut off prematurely. A lot of the time you can read from context what happens next in a scene, but the actual action of it is skipped over in favor of leaping to another weird mini-scene.

There are even sometimes scenes where within the action of the moment there's a slice of conversation very clearly missing -- for example, three of the characters are testing out a retinal scanner, and after finding that it works in conventional ways, two of them try to fool it by showing it one of each of their eyes to scan. But between the "this is how it works" moment and the "let's try and trick it" moment, there's a really rough cut where them coming up with the idea to trick it was clearly meant to go.

It's evident that this was done to tell the most story in the least amount of time, since at this point in television even a 22-minute sitcom was pushing the boundaries of length. But in a way I think it also suggests some reasons the show was so popular. Watching a show cut in this way, your own mind is doing about 40% of the storytelling, and if you're telling a story to yourself you're more likely to enjoy it than when you're being told a full cohesive story, since you have more control over the narrative and can tailor it to your preferences.

It's truly wild to see a fevered collage of mildly suggestive innuendo and jokes designed to appeal to a 4chan teen from 2005 semi-convincingly pass itself off as a narrative, and be viscerally aware that it did it for twelve years.

[accirax]

initial thoughts on DCAS episode 21

AKA, the finale :O this will be a doozy...

for Going Through It as frequently and as strongly as Jake does, i find it hilarious that all of his promotional material always looks like it was ripped straight from a dorky high school girl's instagram feed. also, go Ashley, roast that clown (/lh)

that's such a cute drawing omg!!! i always have fun thinking about how good the drawing is in the context of the universe it was drawn in. like, to us, his proportions look kinda off, but in their universe, the giant heads and tiny waists are actually really accurate. Hunter is going to be the next great artist fr.

... i thought that the point was supposed to be that Jake grew more than anyone here, which is why he was facing down Riya. i mean, i guess you could say that Ally had to grow a new personality for the beginning of the season, and then have that character develop. she is more changed from s2 Ally than Jake is from s1 Jake because Jake had more of a character in s1.

and boy, would it suck if that promise was left unfulfilled! (/s)

it is true that this (if she actually remained on Riya's team the whole time) is kind of a win-win for Ellie. either Riya loses, or she gets $100K. both are acceptable.

this was such a cute/fitting response for Jake to have. it's a really great button on their relationship.

i love how smug they look at no one wanting to help Riya.

WHEN THE FUCK WERE YOU WATERBOARDED???

actually, we know that Tom is a terrible liar, so maybe he got waterboarded by the mob boss after they figured out he was lying in the interrogation.

w... what...?

dare i say iconic

i know that they didn't really have time, but with Alec and Ellie working together (and Alec protecting Ellie, as he did here), i had kind of hoped that we'd get a bit more closure on their relationship. like, does Ellie still hate Alec for betraying her? or is the fact that they were going to be in the villains alliance together mean that they'd cross that bridge? maybe i'm just forgetting, but their relationship feels somewhat unresolved. (i mean relationship platonically btw; no hate to people who ship them but i don't need to know if they're a couple or not because the canon answer is obviously no)

i don't know if this was really necessarily but good for you girl

this is like the first time Fiore has cared about anyone ever :,D Fiore and Alec the duo ever!!!

A GENUINE SMILE????????

why are you preventing this from happening? you know Gabby, so you should know that this would absolutely work.

rewatching the beginning of the episode after knowing the end, i sorta wanted to question whether Ashley abstaining from helping could have accidentally lost Jake the win. however, Tom is just so doggedly determined to cover his man that i think he probably was the best guy for the job. like, would Ashley dive for him? idk.

okay, 1) WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK THAT WAS GOING TO DO, RIYA?!?!, and 2) HOW THE FUCK DID GABBY NOT LOSE HER ARM FROM THIS. IMAGINE IF SHE DID. THIS WAS WILD.

... does Riya understand how pain works? or the American healthcare system? Ellie surely wanted to use that money for something else, dude.

so they are kinda sweeping Tom's wrongdoings under the rug, huh? sigh. hopefully it's just a "for now" thing to be further explored in the miniseries.

i love Trevor's little :3 face

and boy, would it suck if this favor was left unfulfilled! (/s)

i watched a compilation of each Disventure Camp character's first and last lines, and let me just say, it's really weird that "Go, Jake!" (said with Aiden) is James' last line ever.

GIVE UP ON HERRRRRRRRR

(also, glad his foot seems to be doing better)

i know i probably would have made fun of this scene for being super corny/moving too fast if Tom had said "i love you," but it's perhaps equally funny that he didn't. like, c'mon bro, you can't even muster the L word in this incredibly dramatic and heroic moment?

COPE

oh boy...

y'know, beyond just not having a good time slot in which to do so, i also kinda put off writing these initial thoughts because i just really didn't feel like having to write anything about ONC's choice regarding the winner of the season. everyone online seems to have these really radical opinions-- either saying that this was a brilliantly subversive and poetic choice, or that the entire season (and perhaps even s2 before it) are ruined by the choice to let Riya in. the truth is, i'm incredibly neutral.

on one hand, i'm incredibly disappointed. if you've been keeping up with these initial thoughts throughout the season, or especially my episode-by-episode power rankings, you'll know that i've very firmly believed that Jake was going to be the winner of this season since the beginning of the merge. and it's not because he's my favorite character and i really wanted him to win or anything-- i have a generally favorable opinion on Jake, but it was mostly because i thought that the arcs and messages of the season would be best capped off with a Jake win. therefore, it's saddening to believe that they didn't capitalize on all that potential just for the sake of shock value.

then again, i really appreciate what ONC was trying to do with Riya. i can tell that they must have felt like they had a lot to prove with Riya in DCAS given how mixed her reception was in s2. so, they put in a lot of work to "fix" her character in DCAS, and, on the whole, i think they got a lot better! as much as i was predicting the Jake win, i was also kind of dreading it, just because it was the sort of cheesy, fanservicey ending that could be predicted from a mile away. so i appreciate the boldness to go for an unexpected ending, and the refusal to stagnate in cookie cutter fan-pleasing storylines when your artistic heart is driving you in another direction.

which is why, in the end, i have no strong opinions. i think that the character writing absolutely could have been set up to establish viewer expectations better, but i also don't think that the entire season is unwatchable because Riya wins. the truth of the matter is still that all of the other contestants besides Yul are the real winners of the season, because they made friends and grew as people. if you rewatch the season, you can still see the gang do just that. but the equal truth is that all of the promises those friends made and the goal that drove them to improve might all feel a bit more hopeless with the knowledge that Connor never did get to one-up Riya. People who needed the money more, like Ashley, Alec, or Ellie didn't get a cent of it. and unlike it would be for Jake, who had a lot of connections with a lot of people, many contestants had pretty much no bearing on the winner of the season at all.

i want to believe that the Disventure Camp writing can and will continue to overall get better, but i also can't ignore the obvious signs of growing pains. can't bring myself to get all too mad at them either, though. mostly, i just want to stay out of any drama.

it really shows that Jake hasn't been able to look at social media since the beginning of the show. trust me, buddy, not everyone was rooting for you.

unsurprising that tomjake gets the last kiss of the season/era.

cite your sources, please (/j)

i guess the real person Riya was lying to all along... was herself. *vine boom* because, seriously, how the fuck did she not realize that it wasn't just acting anymore? when she double-broke Connor's foot and tried to make Ally think that Jake lied about being suicidal???

[batbetbitbotbut]

my slow cooker smells like cinnamon. MAKE IT STOP - A Reddit Saga

With thanks to Direct-Caterpillar77 for compiling this as a BestOfRedditorUpdates post here.

THE PROLOGUE: Too many apples. how to use them (that isnt a pie)? Oct 8, 2024

unicornfarthappyhour: went apple picking and ended up with wayyyy too many macintosh apples. ive already made 6+ pies, apple tarts, apple mini pies, baked apples... and i still have 2 dozen apples ..please share any ideas on how to get through a horde of apples

EDIT - THANK YOU!!! so far tonight i made applesauce and have 2 trays of dried apple slices in the oven right now! 14 apples remaining!!

mrmadchef: Apple butter? I think you can even make it in a slow cooker.

THE MAIN EVENT: my slow cooker smells like cinnamon. MAKE IT STOP Oct 15, 2024

i made apple butter and now my slowcooker has a permament cinnamon smell. i tried soaking the lid in soapy aater for an hour. i washed every part 8 times, unscrewed the handles and cleaned every nook any cranny.. but IT WONT GO AWAY!!! and its not a faint smell its a cinnaMAXIMUM smell in the lid.

is there a product i can use? or do i just have to accept my fate?

fruithasbugsinit: Try slow cooking two cups of 1:1 vinegar and water. Then let it air out and cool down for a day or so for the vinegar to go away. ETA: Unless you have birds as this can hurt or kill them with their sensitive systems.

unicornfarthappyhour: have I wronged you in the past? my home. my santuary. is being forcibly air marinated. I'm dry heaving with each breath as the tiny vapors of this weaponized witches brew of Cinnamon Vinegarette Salad Dressing deep dives into my esophagus.

FIVE HOURS LATER:

unicornfarthappyhour: the mixture of vinegar and cinnamon scents wafting through my kitchen is permeating through my eyeballs and directly into my soul.

wawa2022: Throw a piece of fish in that baby. You won’t smell the cinnamon anymore unicornfarthappyhour: squinting really hard at you lol

THE FOLLOWING DAY:

unicornfarthappyhour: As i drifted off to sleep last night i still smelled it, covering the inside of my nose. and dreamed i was pickled.

it seems that the cinnamon has effectively mutated in the fiery hell of its vinegar battle, and has has now become a biohazard. i soaked the lid in a big plastic tub with water, soap and vinegar mixture, because why not double down?

my sunk cost fallacy arguement has now made the bin ALSO smell like a spicy formaldehide.

my next attempt is sunlight, and open space....aka sneaking into my in laws home while theyre on vacation and leaving it on their kitchen table for a week.

im 99% sure my nasal membranes have adopted these defiant particles and have begun incorporating them into my mucus. my sneezes are spicy...

FIVE DAYS LATER: Update Oct 21, 2024

unicornfarthappyhour: Welcome back to my cinnightmare.

I had to drop off my ILs mail, so I checked on my lid. I was hoping that sunlight and fresh air would help, but my lid is not made of vampires.

Accepting temporary defeat I moved the fight back onto home turf, and got a new set of supplies. Shout out to u/generic-curiosity who reminded me about the hydrophobic properties of my cinnenemy. With this knowledge, I was ready to reengage in this battle

I armed myself with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a Love is Blind sized wad of paper towels, and…olive oil.

I scrubbed with alcohol, then rubbed it down with the oil, then back at it again with the alcohol. Out of context, that would make for an amazing party game.

this Sisyphean deodorizing battle will haunt my dreams for years to come.

I don’t remember how many times I repeated this alcohol and oil endeavor, but I’m going to choose the number 6, because of the evil connotations of the number.

Much like my spirit, the smell has died down and has become a repressed whisper of the wild soul it once was.

Satisfied that my slow cooker no longer bore the tonsil-coating scent of a season craft store mid-december, I went on my merry way. Ignorant, I Know.

As the days went on, and I continued to use more kitchen supplies, I began to think this was all in my mind – I just. Kept. Smelling. It. SOMEWHERE.

Like any sane person I started sniffing around my kitchen like a tweaked out 2 legged bloodhound. I had used a rubber spatula to stir my cinnncoction. Immediately binned it. I refuse to bend my will for the $2 spatula. And now, it will never see the light of day again, forever to think about how it failed to serve its culinary master. Forever to miss the hot broth it once knew. It must suffer in perpetuity for its betrayal.

And I am NEVER using cinnamon again.

the apple butter tastes amazing.

[kit-penman]

A slightly unhinged Interview with the Vampire theory of mine:

tw: references to episode 5 and also mention of suicide, nothing more than what's in the show.

Also; spoilers for season 1 and the Vampire Lestat (and if I'm good at theorising, potentially for season 2&3)

Ok, so, this may be a bit wild. But I've binged Interview with the Vampire and reignited an old passion for Lestat as a character. So, this is not unbiased. Also, a lot of this is a compilation of parts of theories I've seen circulating around the community, so I don't claim to be the originator of a lot of this, but also there are too many posts for me to competently credit here.

As much as I loved the show, and all the tiny details in Sam Reid's performance, episode 5 left me with some 'feelings'. I know I'm not alone when I say that that episode and that fight felt quite out of character. I mean, Lestat and Louis never fought like THAT. Sure, their relationship was toxic, but it seems very strange that the showrunners would call Louis and Lestat endgame when they've made their relationship that much more violent and abusive. Not to mention that it goes directly against what Lestat says about never showing Louis even half his power.

Plus the scene was shot in a weird way; the oh so rarely used first person perspective, the shot hovering over the city so far up that the background faded away...

Almost like...

It could be anywhere...

New Orleans,

Or...

PARIS!!! (Dun-dun-daaaa)

I HAVE SOME THEORIES AND NO ONE TO TELL THEM TO SO I'M GOING TO SHOUT THEM INTO THE VOID NOW.

So, I re-read the Vampire Lestat and re-watched the show with the context of that book combined with the knowledge of Armand hovering around Louis while his is telling his story. It provided some extremely interesting depth on Lestat as a character, the way that he thinks and what might be happening in the more questionable moments of the show.

I'm not sure how to put this, so I'll get to the point. I think Armand is manipulating the absolute shit out of Louis' story. I think three big moments for this are the fight between Lestat and Louis, the death of Lestat and the upcoming death of Claudia.

What I think happened:

I've arrived at the conclusion that I think that fight is likely real, but the end of the fight at least; is not in-fact a right between Louis and Lestat but instead Armand and Lestat. From what I've read Louis and Lestat never fight like that, but Lestat and Armand absolutely do. Particularly the 'dragging him along the pavement' was extremely similar. (Though, they never do fly up in the air and Armand can fly anyway... Though I'm pretty sure at that point in the fight, he wasn't able to fly anyway, since he was barely conscious and seemingly unable to use his other powers) I intend to make another post going into detail on this fight, as I don't want it to overtake the point of this post just being an overview of the theory. That said, I did read out the two fights (omitting some dialogue to not give it away) to someone not familiar with the books after watching the scene and they thought it was an adaptation of the Armand fight, so it's not just me. (also, that fight was in Paris, hence the joke at the start)

We already saw that Armand had likely influenced Louis to think he had Left Lestat for dead, Daniel was right and I think that Louis didn't think the death was justified, like in the books, and I think that was a big part of the Armand story making Lestat look worse. There are a couple of moments when Lestat's actions are framed very uncharitably; like in the theatre when they are talking before the show and Louis said he was trying to 'seize his opportunity to disarm me' but in reality, Lestat was likely reminded of the past, the theatre reminding him of Nicky, because he looks for a second like he's going to cry. It seemed more like a moment of sentimental vulnerability from Lestat to me, but I am biased. I think it's all part of a clearly well-rehearsed (as we can see when the interview is compared to the one from the 80's) effort to poorly characterise Lestat. (Something which makes sense since Lestat is the villain of Interview with the Vampire, but was re-written into a more nuanced and sympathetic character in the next book, so they had to account for people being against him for these first two seasons, but then routing for him in the next)

I believe that they are actually trying to sanitise the relationship between Louis and Lestat quite a bit, because if you look at what actually happens, like things that would be too big or unmotivated of a lie for the writers to write, he actually has a lot of tender moments, and the manipulations are cruelty are kept to only a few moments rather than weaved through the entire relationship like in the books. Claudia is a big part of that, they seem to be changing the relationship between her and Lestat quite a lot, I'm not sure how much of that is trustworthy, but one part that is obviously true is the change in how/why she was made a Vampire. In the book (and movie) Claudia was made because Louis was starving himself eating only rats and was in a plague district trying to find rats when he stumbles across a little girl and feeds on her in a desperate frenzy for blood. Lestat finds him and the girl and turns her to keep her as a constant reminder of Louis' guilt, so that he won't leave. But in the show, Louis is only kind-of indirectly responsible for her death and Lestat only turns her because Louis begs him, not out of a plot to force Louis to stay with him. This keeps the dynamic of Louis feeling responsible for her (though not out of guilt as much as because he wanted her to be turned) but now Lestat never really wanted her, so they aren't very close, she's just sort of in-between him and Louis. It's a little sad to see since Lestat was never a good parent in the books, but he clearly loved Claudia a lot. Though, they might be making Lestat and Claudia look more distant than they are because Armand has a lot of motivation to portray Lestat as hating Claudia.

Also, I almost forgot. When Lestat goes to get Claudia on the train- Antionette was shown in episode 7 standing in the park while Claudia is saying goodbye and I bet anything that she heard that Louis was considering killing himself and relayed it to Lestat, who then went to get her so that he wouldn't. That entire scene was very 'cartoon villain' of Lestat, like what a child would write of a parent she was mad at so it probably shouldn't be taken at completely face value anyway.

Speaking of which,

What I believe the motivation was:

So, in the Vampire Lestat, Armand is a reoccurring antagonist to Lestat. Lestat is not a fan of him (though he does think he's pretty, because it's Lestat and he can't not) and he is not a fan of Lestat (Debate-lorded his cult away, kicked his ancient ass as a baby vampire, had the absolute gall to be created by Magnus and born only a country lord (fake bourgeoise, they had to hunt to survive the winter) and, the worst grievance of all; he rejected him.) In the books Armand loves Louis, and travels with him after Claudia's death but Louis is unable to move past her death and it causes them to drift apart, clearly that has not happened to this Armand and Louis, so what changed? Could it be that he fixed Louis' damaged psyche by channelling that damage onto Lestat, so that he might feel as though he has closure? I don't believe this Louis knows that Lestat didn't come to Paris vengeful and get Claudia killed for standing against him, that in-fact, Lestat came to Paris to get help from Armand and was instead starved and tormented into saying it was her, by Armand.

How could it have been done:

Reading the Vampire Lestat has given me insight into the way that Armand treats people, even the ones he cares about and how easily he uses his powers to extract information, manipulate, delude and distort the reality of the people around him. I have no doubt that he has dabbled in the memories of Louis, making him a more unreliable narrator than the mere passage of time. Claudia's diaries are untrustworthy not only because despite how long she lives, she still has the brain of a child, but also because Armand has been tampering again. She is prone to exaggerate and dramatize with no thought to making a moderate and unbiassed account in her personal diaries.

There are two instances of Daniel pointing out that her diaries have had pages removed. The first was when she gets assaulted and the pages are torn, I believe that that was Louis being heartbroken and angry and tearing out the pages in the heat of the moment, he seems genuinely upset and protective over her memory, no reason to doubt it. However, the second instance, after Lestat's 'death' the pages are removed neatly, calmly omitted, Daniel says 'with a ruler' I believe that instance was Armand, trying to hide that Louis didn't want Lestat dead.

So that's mostly my theory for now. I'm still gathering screenshots and quotes from the book; I'm going to redo this post with a lot more evidence and probably better worded, but I wanted to float what I have so far and see if anyone had any feedback, areas that could use more elaboration, anything to add to the theory or counter anything I've said here. All feedback is welcome! I'll use it when I make my more polished post.

Also, just to be super clear, I absolutely love all the characters. This is my favourite show at the moment, and this is in no way meant to be unfair to any of the character, I'm just trying to predict what is coming since I can think of little else, and the next season is so far away.

Thank you so much for reading! Sorry if it was a little jumbled, just trying to get my thoughts out there.

[balillee]

tommy's character gets far too much shit.

hi tumblr. i'm gonna need a few bitches to spread this post everywhere, essentially because i want someone, or just tommy really, to see it. so if you really want, you can screenshot it and post it on twitter, reddit, link it everywhere - go absolutely buck wild. i know he reads the VODS comments a lot, but they're chock full of people just insulting him, his character, his writing and everything about his story in the dream smp simply because they don't understand it and because they refuse to acknowledge his character's perspective (mainly because they only care about the pig). reading that many critical comments on something you've created can only make you feel worse about it eventually, and in light of all the awful techno apologist takes on his character, i wanted to basically just word vomit about how wonderfully crafted c!tommy is, as well as compile some other tumblr posts about his character.

there is a massive fuckin community of people who enjoy the character of tommy, because the character is incredible. i myself have made post after post after post commenting on and analysing tommy's character because i find that there's so much to pick apart. but that enthusiasm for his character only seems to be found on tumblr. reddit and twitter seem to hate his character, the VODS seem to be filled with comments from people who only care about techno's perspective (and treat techno as a reliable narrator, which, is the furthest thing from the truth - that guy lies through his teeth all the time), and the smp wiki is a hellscape of godawful takes and mistruths, not even on just tommy's character.

c!tommy is brilliantly acted and brilliantly written, and almost everything he does is either justifiable or has been rectified or admitted as a mistake. you can clearly make connections as to where he got his conclusions from. you feel what his character experiences, as a member of the audience, vividly.

if you look in the more objective sense, c!tommy, and this is especially in the context of him being the youngest character, is a scapegoat. people claim he's awful and destructive when in reality he's a lot less destructive than most characters on the server. a moment that comes to mind is where he diverts schlatt and quackity's attention from pogtopia by breaking part of the flag in manberg, and then replacing it so as to buy tubbo some time - he literally monologues after it about how he doesn't want to destroy but instead rebuild, and how he feels as if nobody else seems to understand that.

his arc in season two was incredible. it was very character driven, and it gave a spotlight to his motivations. at the start we see him in new l'manberg, and he's enjoying his time there, he's skeptical of his friend's presidency, but his main goal is to get back the discs so that he can stop dream and eliminate that threat. he made one screw up that didn't even matter to george, and he paid for it tenfold, even after dream had spent a while with puffy griefing the server and framing it on tommy - what tommy and ranboo did was convinient. then, in exile, we see c!tommy straight up get abused. he's gaslit and conditioned into being c!dream's friend, and in his brain he teaches himself that those acts of abuse are moments of bonding, and it eventually brings him to the point of wanting to end his own life - he's been torn away from his friends and his support system, and nobody will visit him consistently anymore because they only showed him pity, and all he had left was dream, who had hurt him.

but he doesn't die there, because while he didn't understand the full gravity of it back then like he does now, he recognises that dying isn't an escape, and he can beat dream, even if he doesn't know how. so this is where he goes to techno's place, and here's where the fandom starts to misinterpret the situation wildly.

it's the problem similar to when your parents tell you that they're owed something back because you put a roof over their head, despite that being Not How It Works. techno took tommy in and severely mistreated him emotionally. sure, and i understand this, c!techno is a bad communicator who isn't really that empathetic to anyone who isn't phil or wilbur, but that doesn't excuse the blatant lying to c!tommy's face, the guilt tripping, the friendship buying and the degrading. the day before the festival, tommy finally does something violent in his interrogation of fundy, and only then does techno tell him,,,,

that tommy's not equal to him, that techno doesn't respect him all that much, and that they're not friends.

from techno's perspective, and at the time, this was viewed as a positive development in their relationship. oh, he's starting to warm up to tommy! this friendship could really blossom!

no. from a more objective standpoint, what techno has just said to tommy is : 'i respect you only a little bit more now, because while you're starting to act more like me, you're still annoying and a burden.'

and i haven't even touched on the whole 'erasing the words 'Destroy L'manberg' from techno's to-do list' thing, because that instantly refutes the point of 'techno was upfront with his intentions the whole time' - because he wasn't! he may have said it the first time, but you also know what else he did? he repeatedly told tommy that they'd 'air the details out later' whenever the discs were brought up, and from a tommy viewer's perspective at the time, it was framed as if techno was no longer going to do that.

and i also haven't dared touch the 'i would have fought them all for you', because that's major guilt tripping if ever i've seen it.

so, the day of the festival comes, and here's where c!techno and his apologists completely misread c!tommy's thought process, and why he makes the decision he does.

tommy instantly regrets valuing the discs over tubbo, and it's framed as the culmination of tommy having become all the people he said he would never want to be like. and what does he immediately do? he tells tubbo to give up the disc, and he sides with tubbo. he puts his value in his friends, and, by proxy, l'manberg. and when he betrays techno, he tells him 'i'm sorry'.

from a more objective standpoint, tommy's time with techno is him valuing the discs over almost anything else. so, in leaving techno to be with tubbo again, he is valuing people above the discs. so when, on doomsday, techno says his 'discs aren't people' line, what he doesn't realise is that he himself fueled tommy's valuing of discs above people when attempting to fuel tommy's vengeance against tubbo and l'manberg. techno doesn't realise that he was an unhealthy presence for tommy, and an even worse influence.

what techno also doesn't seem to understand is that tommy never hated tubbo or l'manberg - tommy recognises, now at least, that his exile wasn't a product of tubbo, but a product of dream's manipulation, likely in part because at the time, especially with dream lying about tommy blowing up the community house, tommy was the only one who could see it because he had experienced it firsthand. so when techno sides with dream, it's like kicking tommy in the teeth.

and i want to mention that betraying someone doesn't necessarily make the person who was betrayed good, or in the right, or even justified, because tommy was entirely justified to leave techno. you know who else was betrayed? schlatt. but i don't see many schlatt apologists around angry at quackity for joining the rebellion.

tommy stole the axe of peace? good. it was a moment of tommy defining his self-worth, instead of having it defined by others. gone is the age of c!techno belittling him and deciding how much c!tommy should be respected. NEXT!

here's a moment i wanted to talk about that will forever be funny to me.

'i am a person.'

techno's very famous line from doomsday. techno says to tommy that discs aren't people, and that tommy should value people, despite not understanding that by leaving techno, he did just that. and what does tommy say in return, which has been omitted from every c!tommy-critical analysis, and every animatic?

'yes you are, but so are we.'

an acknowledgement of techno's hurt, to which tommy has already apologised for. a statement that says 'your hurt does not excuse, nor justify, the hurt you have inflicted onto us.' an acknowledgement that tommy has already learnt the lesson techno seems to be trying to 'teach' him. but you can't teach him anything by destroying.

c!tommy has had almost everything he has ever owned or built either taken from him or destroyed. ranboo even points out that the only two things of tommy's left standing are his house and his hotel, and if i'm honest, his house is dissheveled. it's a labyrinth of terror due only to how many times it's been torn apart. l'manberg being blown up didn't teach anyone anything about anarchy, or about valuing people over possessions. logstedshire being blown up didn't teach tommy to be obedient.

i could honestly ramble for ages about how nuanced tommy's character is and how much depth and complexity there is to his character's process and his relationship with others, but more than that, c!tommy is forgiving. he invites almost everyone who hates him to the grand opening of his hotel - if that isn't an indicator that he just wants friends, and not to be treated like the embodiment of evil, then i don't know what is. he holds grudges, but he doesn't really actively hate anyone, other than c!dream. but, we'll let him. c!dream deserves nothing but to be pummeled into the floor.

tommy doesn't spoonfeed his character nuance, and he doesn't really spell it out for his audience. he'll mention things like trauma and triggers in passing, but a lot of analysis on his motivations has to be picked up from what is said in passing or from what can be seen in between the lines.

i'd be here for hours if i were to talk about everything i love about c!tommy, because honestly he's one of my favourite characters, and there are so many angles you can look at his character from in terms of his age, his relationships with others, his motivations, his personality, his character arcs etc etc. so instead of doing that, i'm going to compile some much more specific analysis posts below to skim through because they highlight so many good aspects of his character.

^^ A thread about the 'yes you are, but so are we' line.

^^ About how shit the VODS comments are.

^^ A comment on how c!Tommy is actually pretty peaceful, and is actually less destructive than most characters on the server.

^^ Possibly the best c!Tommy analysis thread I've ever seen in relation to his trauma, which gives multiple perspectives.

^^ About how c!Tommy is treated as a scapegoat, and how, from an objective standpoint, he is no more violent than any other character, it's just that the little violence that is committed is blown far out of proportion.

^^ Tumblr user flypaw being a bad bitch, as per usual.

^^ c!Tommy being incredibly intelligent, and talking about wanting to rebuild and not destroy. A very underrated monologue of his.

^^ Something short about c!Tommy and c!Wilbur's relationship in Pogtopia.

^^ Less about c!Tommy, more a meta on L'Manberg. Really interesting to think about.

^^ A take on Doomsday.

I'll add some more posts in a reblog in the notes, but if anyone's post(s) is on this and they want me to take it off, let me know and I'll do that for you! Feel free to add your own banger c!Tommy takes or ones that you've found.

[macgyvertape]

thoughts on season of splicer ending

warning: spoilers for the entire season, general discussion of leaks, and absolutely being Bungie critical. Basically trying to write this out and figure out my own thoughts in the writing

I guess my first thoughts are what everyone's talking about: Osiris.

All the wild theories about if he's been replaced, controlled, playing 5d chess, etc. tldr: leaks say that from season of the Hunt it hasn't been Osiris but Savathun. Yeah I've read people's compilations of proof until I rapidly got bored with them. I'll be bluntly honest, if Bungie is going for some sort of imposter story-line then they're doing a fucking awful job at telling it.

a) A good imposter story-line needs to establish to the audience that there is the possibility or replacement/control

b) characters in the story themselves should be aware of point A and be actively considering it in their decision making

c) if the imposter is doing something the original didn't than clearly show audience the imposter is there.

I would say Bungie didn't do any of these, no the lore page of Savathun's human disguise falling apart around her doesn't count, because Bungie has long had a problem of putting story relevant plot details in lore pages and then not referencing them ingame. Lore should accentuate story, not provide key details to the story.

If you want to see a good imposter story-line look at Forsaken, and how they worked to make it obvious to someone who didn't know who Mara Sov was that something was up.

Most of the proof people cite is either cherry picking ambiguous things Osiris has said, or pointing out inconsistencies in writing. IMO not much of the evidence holds up because multiple characters this season (Saint, Lakshmi, Mithrax) have been written inconsistently with past appearances and without nuance; because their character has to carry the plot in a certain way or there are limits on recording dialogue for override/expunge.

My point in recapping the Osiris thing, is that from a thematic view at the end of the season Osiris is Osiris and I'm judging the story from the view of the season not how will the story be in the future.

very cynical take that as much praise as Bungie wants for working to make a high profile gay relationship be shown in game after a writer confirmed it on twitter

if leaks are right: if  Osiris hasn't been Osiris for the past 3 seasons then none of the scenes with Saint are real or matter, and it invalidates all the emotional grief of Sagira being dead. It's 3 seasons of character development and effort wasted

or: they took the first chance they could to make one of them an unsympathetic villain and write him out of the story.

(yeah destiny has other queer character but how many of them are alive and matter to the story? When was the last time Ana's girlfriend was mentioned?)

The game is clear that for all the talk about "vex tech influence" Lakshmi's views and choices were her own, so the same for Osiris: he is responsible for helping Lakshmi and is responsible for all the civilian deaths, he's the 2ndary Human villain of the season.

Which brings me to my point (that I've seen others say) is that Bungie should have given a second thought to having their all of their human antagonists be PoC characters this expansion. Osiris, Lakshmi, and Saladin last season. For Lakshmi and Saladin they weren't just antagonists, they were written to be bigots for the community to dislike. Yes Destiny has a lot of PoC characters and anyone can be a villain, but IMO its a bad look from a company who talks so much about social justice. It wouldn't matter except Bungie wanted the message of the season to be anti-racism, and I'm comparing it within the context of how often minorities are the villains in games/US media. I don't think it was deliberately done, I just think it is something that like last season's issues with proving grounds and antisemitism they didn't care or bother with a sensitivity reader.

It's obvious this season they were going for a very obvious reference to Trump and modern day fears about refugees with Lakshmi, and it's a bad look that they did with a Indian female character and refugees are the enemy crab aliens. I'm also not saying that female characters can't be villains, but did the Bungie writers not think about just how nasty gamers would get in either slurs, insults, or expressing wishes for violence, and how pervasive and visible it would be?

I'm genuinely curious why the writers went for such a heavy handed analogy, and a story-line that feels like it comes from an afterschool special. The Eliksni have been enemies in atleast 4 expansions now, there could have been a more nuanced story other than "House of Light is good keep on killing all other Fallen". At the end of the season the game treated the attack on the City being Lakshmi and Osiris' fault, and all the people who don't like the Eliksni (say the people doing hate crimes in the lore) left with the factions so "problem resolved" . Lakshmi gets a simple karmatic death, in an area where multiple reddit threads express how they love tbagging the corpse. The ending cutscene didn't feel super inspiring to me it just felt unrealistic not just in real life where things aren't that simple but also within Destiny's story; the "you are my family" line felt cringe to me, probably because it felt unearned.

That's kind of the problem of the season isn't it, that the earliest planned game based decisions like having a Vex seasonal enemy and getting rid of the Factions determined the cast of characters with ties to the Vex and factions. So you just fight x many Vex bosses until you defeat Quria, then there's a break for Solstace, but on Reset-Tuesday with no warning things escalate because its epilogue time.

Sadly I forget who said that "it felt like the plot needed to hit one beat a week" meaning one issue had to get resolved enough for the community to talk about (except for when we take 3 weeks off for solstice). Each week there has to be some sort of hook to avoid the overblown "content drought". So multiple times you will have characters change their mind or their deep held beliefs after one counter argument is presented. (big example is Saint changing his mind not over the season but after one cutscene). City politics and factions don't matter aside from dialogue in a few different weeks because they'll be gone at the end of the season but in the meantime characters needed to talk about something to prompt fandom engagement. example: the fandom argues about governance of the last city for a while before the argument burn out since the relevant lore wasn't designed to hold up to close scrutiny.

just, I'm a politically active leftist in a red conservative state so maybe i just find this exhausting since I deal with similar issues irl and am more prone to thinking this season was tone deaf.

tldr: that wow this turned out really negative. Which I didn't really expect considering how much I enjoyed the first few weeks of the season. I enjoyed a lot of the gameplay this season (I really enjoy fun gambit aka Overrides and VoG). But as for replaying the story on my other characters, I don't think I'll bother.

[dontbecattyratty]

Wind in the Willows Masterpost

I have created a master list of adaptations/pastiches and works inspired by The Wind in the Willows that are available to stream for free online. This list includes professional productions (although the recordings themselves may not be professionally produced), and does not include either audiobooks of the original text or amateur productions, or the list would be fairly endless. I will continue to update this list as new versions are posted/uncovered online, by me or by others. I will also try to remove any links that go dead. If you find a dead link, feel free to let me know. I may or may not be able to re-upload any dead links, depending on if I was the uploader of the video.

Feel free to reblog and share, but please do not repost this list!

I have put a lot of time and effort into compiling this list, so if you enjoy it, please let me know and consider checking out my other Wind in the Willows content if you haven’t already.

Thank you to @tremendousdetectivetheorist for help on tracking down the 1996 and 2006 live action films, and to @sardinesandhumbugs for supplying The Willows at Christmas and the UK Tour audio, and for recording the Pitlochry Festival Theatre audio!

A Note on Content Warnings: Due to historical context and the age of The Wind in the Willows, please consider this a blanket content warning that any entries on this list may contain antiziganism, transmisogynistic humor, and misogyny. I have done my best to include more specific content warnings for individual entries with possibly triggering content that falls outside of these general warnings.

List under the cut:

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad - Disney (1949) Note: in spite of including the opening credits for the whole film this is the Wind in the Willows portion only. Still an excellent find!

Toad of Toad Hall - A.A. Milne - BBC Radio Drama (1973)

Counselling for Toads: A Psychological Adventure - Robert De Board (1983) Note: This is a self-help book and an introduction to transactional analysis through the framework of The Wind and the Willows. Trigger Warnings for: Child abuse, suicide, depression, mental health problems, dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, etc.

The Wind in the Willows - Cosgrove Hall Movie and Series (1983-1990) Note: Movie and all episodes  in parts

"Extended Edition" Movie Note: This is a fan cut of the Cosgrove Hall film, featuring footage from "The Further Adventures of Toad,"  "Wayfarers All," and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," in order to restore cut chapters from the book.

Cosgrove Hall Season One (Full Episodes)

Cosgrove Hall Season Two (Full Episodes)

Cosgrove Hall Season Three (Full Episodes)

Cosgrove Hall Season Four (Full Episodes)

Cosgrove Hall Season Five/Oh, Mr. Toad! (Full Episodes)

A Tale of Two Toads The Wind in the Willows - Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment (1987)

The Wind in the Willows - Broadway (1985)

The Wind in the Willows - Burbank Films Australia (1988)

The Wind in the Willows - Eddie Hardin and Peter York (1991) Note: This is a concert loosely based on The Wind in the Willows, narrated by Toad in his later years. It is extremely difficult to sum up beyond that.

Tales of The Willows - William Horwood (1993-1999)

The Willows in Winter (1993)

Toad Triumphant - Abridged - (1995)

The Willows and Beyond - Abridged - (1996) Coming Soon!

The Willows at Christmas - Abridged - (1999)

The Wind in the Willows - The Martin Gates Collection (1994-1996)

The Wind in the Willows (1995)

Mole’s Christmas (1994)

The Adventures of Mole (1995)

The Adventures of Toad (1996)

The Wind in the Willows and The Willows in Winter- Television Cartoons (1995-1996)

The Wind in the Willows (1995) - Television Cartoons

The Willows in Winter (1996) - Television Cartoons

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (1996)

The Wind in the Willows (2006)

Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: A Musical - Douglas Post (2010) Note: This is a musical from 1987, but the cast recording itself was released in 2010, so after a lot of consideration I’ve chosen to place it according to its release date.

The Wind in the Willows - Andrew Gordon (2013)

The Wind in the Willows - UK Tour (Audio) (2016)

The Wind in the Willows - London Palladium Cast Recording (2017)

The Wind in the Willows - London Palladium Proshot (2017)

The Wind in the Willows - Mike Smith and Keith Dawson - Junior Version (2020)

The Wind in the Willows - Audible and Dina Gregory (2020)

In the Willows - Metta Theatre (2021) Note: This is the EP recording of Metta Theatre Company’s hip hop musical, In the Willows. Music videos, behind the scene content, etc., available on the Metta Theatre website.

The Wind in the Willows - Green Matthews (2021)

The Wind in the Willows - Pitlochry Festival Theatre  (Audio) (2021)

[walkingcontradiction42]

Doctor Who Roundup: Season 19-21

Okay so I finished all of Five’s episodes now and I thought it would be nice to do a small recap and say a bit about my experience. Please feel free to ignore my rambles.

For context: I started with Mawdryn Undead  and Terminus, then went to The Caves of Androzani, only to go back to Enlightenment and finish season 20/21 in the right order. I then watched season 19 and the beginning of season 20 last. Please don’t question my flawless logic.

Overall impression: Had its ups and downs, but it managed to entertain me for the most part. Although I really did enjoy Turlough’s story arc in the 20th season I must admit that season 19 had the stronger episodes. Great new monsters, fucking crazy ideas. The Visitation is great, Kinda manages to dispose of one of the main companions without even feeling sorry and Earthshock lives up to its name and is shockingly heart breaking. Also I think season 19 made better use of Tegan and Nyssa than season 20 did.

Fav Episode: Probably The Visitation, although Four to Doomsday might be a close second (I take no criticism). I love how the Doctor’s and Tegan’s relationship is a focusing point throughout the whole episode and oh sweet sweet emotional conflict q.q. Also Mace is a great character. The acting would seem out of place or over the top in most other episodes, but it somehow fits perfectly with the tone of the story. Also the Doctor’s annoyance about his kleptomania and his reactions to modern technology are pure gold. And last but not least: The Tardis crew starting the London fire is just fucking wild and I can’t believe how casual everyone is about it.

Fav Companion: Tegan. (I’m sorry Turlough *pats head*) I didn’t really like her at first. The dialogue and acting were usually great, but I didn’t really understand what she was there for? Going back to her first seasons it suddenly made a lot more sense (who would have thought). It’s great how travelling with the Doctor actually has a noticeable impact on her. I like how she and the Doctor grow closer over the course of the seasons. Still I can’t believe they gave her the same unsatisfying ending twice!!!!

About the Doctor: Solid, likeable, charismatic. Everything you would want. I find Five noticeably calmer and more reserved compared to previous (and later) incarnations. He seems more like a father figure for his companions, which reminded me a lot of William Hartnell’s Doctor. I love how he simultaneously works as the stilling Anker point in the stories, whilst also being incredibly enthusiastic and giddy about the things he does. His dress sense is impeccable, his athletic activities legendary. I think his regeneration might also my favourite so far. It’s really heroic and giving his life only for Pery and not for the entire universe (again) gives it a much more personal touch. I should revisit it again now that I have spent more time with his character.

Random shit that I wrote down while watching:  

The “no man can open this box unless he is an idiot” in Kinda is fucking hilarious and no one can convince me otherwise.

Five catapulting himself through space with a cricket ball really makes my physicist heart bleed. Please babe listen to me: Throwing the ball alone will make you fly into the other direction!!! You don’t need to throw it against the ship argafafhaskhföadsaewfl

The Doctor flipping a coin only to turn it to the other side and do something else sums up their entire character.

Turlough telling Tegan that the Doctor has drowned after five seconds of him being in the water is medical genius.

I love how the Doctor constantly places himself between his companions and danger? Every time there is a danger he just kinda (lol Kinda)…moves in between? It’s not really important, but it’s a nice little detail???

Season 19 really gave the most the Doctor being annoyed by his companions vibes and it was fucking amazing. Someone should do a compilation or something.

I’m surprised no one came up with the mini Master before

One, Two, Three and Five are all equally incapable. I love the little gossip group the companions have going at the end of The Five Doctors. They should meet up for tea every month.

[belladxne]

i will see you where the shadow ends | chapter 3

[see notes for ao3 and ff links]

part of the put your faith in the light that you cannot see series AU: Breath of the Wild pairing: KiriBaku word count: 4,454

chapter 3: who do you follow when there’s no one else around you? (tell me where i need to go)

Eijiro’s quiet while they prepare lunch, but Inko doesn’t press him. She seems content to wait for him to express what’s bothering him, while they both go about their parts. She keeps up a constant commentary, explaining the steps to everything she does to prepare and cook the food, and all the seasonings she uses, even though Eijiro hasn’t asked.

She’s either determined to teach him to cook, or just to keep him distracted from the thoughts weighing in his head, but either one is appreciated. At one point, he struggles to keep his hair out of his face as he cuts up the pork he’d hunted down earlier for their meal, and she jumps up from her seat with more agility than he’d expect from someone her age, proclaiming that she has just the thing.

She rummages for only a few moments in a pot at the other end of her small, one-room home, before coming back to him with a few short lengths of string and handkerchiefs.

“Here, sweetie,” she says, as she folds one of the handkerchiefs a few times until it’s a thin strip, and then helps him secure it around his hair as a headband. “You can keep these. They’ll come in handy with that hair of yours.”

She’s maybe the absolute kindest person in all of Hyrule, and Eijiro’s so glad she was here when he awoke. One hundred years—in which he’d been… been resurrected, apparently. And in which the kingdom had fallen apart around him. He could have woken up alone up here, with no help, but instead he has Inko, and he’s so grateful.

He must have been silent too long, though, because eventually as she’s just finishing up the cooking, she sighs gently and asks, “Eijiro, dear, what’s on your mind?”

“Oh.” He echoes her sigh, though his is a lot heavier, and looks down at his hands. He’s been thinking about it, too much, on and off ever since he saw the words on the map. “Well, it’s… I found out the name of the place I came from, the one I was asking about. It’s, um, it’s the Shrine of Resurrection.”

He knows what that word means, okay, he knows—and—and why else would he need to sleep for so many years? And how else could he sleep for so long and come out of it so young? He looks up at Inko, chewing nervously at his lip.

“Inko, do you think I’m dead?” he asks, somewhat pitifully.

She stares at him for a couple of moments, before “Oh, honey,” escapes her abruptly in what sounds like a laugh, though it’s not unkind. She just sounds sympathetic, if a little amused. “No, no, sweetheart. Of course you’re not.”

“But… I mean, what if...”

How could they know, really? He can feel himself pouting again as he looks at her with big, worried eyes, but she tilts her head at him with a fond, if concerned expression. “Eijiro, trust me. I’ve been in this world a very long time. I’m probably one of the most qualified people around to tell you you’re not dead. By the time you get to be my age, you’ve learned a thing or two; I promise I could tell if you were.”

Eijiro nods, but he continues to gnaw at his lower lip in thought. A slightly amused huff escapes Inko, and she stands, wiping her hands clean on a rag she’s had set aside, before she marches around the table to pinch at his cheek teasingly.

“Ow, ow!” he whines, wiping at the spot she’d pinched even though it hadn’t hurt that bad. She chuckles, moving back around the table to move their lunch—sautéed mushrooms and herbs, with seared pork—onto plates for both of them.

“See?” she asks, the laughter lines around her eyes deepening once more. “Couldn’t feel that if you were dead. You’re flesh and blood and very alive, dear, I promise.”

He sighs again, but he does feel better, and he manages a small smile that he’s surprised to realize is genuine.

Gods, Eijiro loves meat.

Inko was right, and he’s glad he waited to eat before tackling the shrine. There’s a monster camp just outside of it, and he’s downright gleeful about getting to have that fight on a full stomach—and he can’t imagine how much worse it’d have felt, to have to fight past them with arms still shaky and achy from the climb down the Great Plateau Tower.

When he finally steps up onto the level surface before the shrine, admittedly, his shoulders and muscles all feel sore and protest at most movements, but they’re still steadier than they might have been. There’s a pedestal, just to the side of the gate into the shrine. The gate looks similar to the doors that had kept him sealed into the Shrine of Resurrection, with interlocking panels pressed together—but these ones lie horizontal, instead of vertical.

He hears a tune sound from the Sheikah Slate, and as he pulls it from his hip to approach the pedestal, he sees that the map now displays two new emblems—another bright blue one, where the tower is, and an orange one here, at the shrine. It also displays a name over this shrine—Oman Au Shrine.

It’s a little less straightforward than ‘Shrine of Resurrection’, but it doesn’t really matter, he guesses.

He looks down at the pedestal, and the incredibly helpful advice of, ‘this isn’t complicated,’ flashes through his mind, making him chuckle as he moves to press the Sheikah Slate to this pedestal, the same as he did to get out of the Shrine of Resurrection. This time his slate has to confirm instead of authenticate, whatever either of those things even mean, and then the voice delivers another new phrase.

“Travel gate registered to map.”

He wonders what travel gate means, turning to look behind him curiously as the large circular emblem in the platform behind him lights up blue, again with that strange blue energy clouding off of it for a moment. And then, after a chime of “Access granted,” the door just past the pedestal begins to open—this time the panels swiveling in, instead of sliding past each other.

It’s… just a hollow little nook? He expected maybe a stairway or passageway leading down, but it’s empty in there, but for another slightly smaller circular emblem on the floor inside. It’s patterned differently, but it’s also lit up. Cautiously, Eijiro goes to stand on it—gods, he hopes this structure isn’t about to shoot up into the sky, too.

Instead, the circular marking on the floor shifts, and smoothly—and gently, thank the Goddesses—it begins to sink down. Eijiro watches, wide-eyed as this apparent platform just—floats? Seemingly suspended by nothing, as it slowly lowers him through a dark tunnel, lower and lower into the ground. He can’t quite see yet where the platform is taking him, so he cranes his head instead to watch the sliver of sunlight up above slowly shrink with distance.

When he finally emerges from the bottom of the chute he’s been descending down, and the shrine opens up around him, it’s—

Oman Au Shrine is otherworldly. It’s hard to believe that the rest of the world even can exist, somewhere far above this.

It’s not dark and claustrophobic like the Shrine of Resurrection was, and there isn’t a thick layer of dust choking the air or the same atmosphere of abandonment, despite what Inko had said about no one being able to enter. There’s an unnaturally bright, blue-ish light that beams down from the entirety of the ceiling. Unlike the Shrine of Resurrection, this space is—it’s huge, much more open, and instead of the curved walls of the Shrine of Resurrection sealing him in, nearly everything here is angular, compiled of rectangles or squares.

Something… something about the structure reminds him of a child’s construction out of blocks—like not all of the shapes fit together quite how they’re supposed to, bits of black and tan stone jutting out just a little farther here and there. It adds all the more to the unreal feeling of this place.

An altogether new feeling hits him as soon as he steps down from the platform—unlike with the voice that calls to him from the castle, which he almost hears, though the sound is more in his mind than in his ears, now a sensation of words washes over him, but it’s not at all like hearing them. It’s barely even like feeling them. It’s like the words are just… appearing in his mind.

To you who sets foot in this shrine… I am Oman Au. In the name of the god Bakusatsuo, I offer this trial.

There’s a sensation just ghosting at the edges of his mind with the words, something that feels ancient, but… not malicious, at least? It’s deeply unfamiliar and unsettling, and he knows he’s never experienced anything like it in his life, but he gets the sense that whatever entity or force just—spoke?—to him, it’s very, very old.

Off to his left is another pedestal with a black, somewhat-pointed stone suspended above it, just like at the tower, so Eijiro gets to work.

This time, when the glowing fluid drips onto his Sheikah Slate, it’s not a map that appears on the screen. It says it’s a... rune? He doesn’t know exactly what that means in this context, but he does know that Sheikah use runes in their magic—is that what this is? Is this gonna let his slate do magic? Let him do magic? Oh, he so wants to do magic.

Eijiro can fucking do magic.

He’s never felt this cool in his life, slinging giant chunks of metal around like they’re weightless, through the power of whatever odd tether forms out of the slate when he activates the rune. After he’s worn out the fun of marveling in his new unchecked power—(okay, it’s a little checked; he can lift anything made of metal, but he can only move it so fast and only up to a certain distance, and he can’t even lift metal objects that he’s standing on, which is lame)—he finally moves on to the trial that’s apparently set before him.

It feels like less of a trial and more of a hands-on lesson to get him used to the rune. There’s more than a few opportunities for him to get creative about moving obstacles, finding things that are out of his reach or not immediately visible without use of the rune, and stacking or arranging things to get around to places he otherwise couldn’t reach.

He quickly feels like a pro at toppling walls of obstacles, making metal bridges, and climbing metal boxes. It gets almost boring fast, and the only things that throw him off, and that he could have done without, are the automatons sprung on him about halfway through, when he still has the slate out and isn’t suddenly ready for combat.

By the time he’s using the rune to heave open the hulking metal gates at the end of his trial, wincing from the results of that battle—the machines had shot lasers at him, lasers! And though he’d hardened in time, his skin still stings, feeling burnt and raw where the beams had hit—he feels like he’s been here ages. The slate says it’s been more like only an hour and a half, but he’s still way too ready to be done already.

Past the gates is an odd, elevated—platform? Or altar, or something like that. Eijiro freezes in his spot when he lays eyes on the spectacle before him. There’s two tiny sets of stairs, only six shallow steps to each, leading up to the odd platform, which is encased on all sides by some glowing blue screen or window. But it’s what’s inside that transparent blue wall that gives him pause, because—

Because that’s definitely a dead guy. Oh, gods, that’s so a dead guy, sitting there.

Eijiro only continues forward very begrudgingly, closing in to notice that this freaky, shriveled and mummified form with long white hair is in some sort of meditative pose, with his hands shaped together to form a triangle. He’s also pretty distinctively wearing clothes that remind Eijiro of traditional Sheikah garb, a hat slung over his back that’s of obvious Sheikah make, and, oh, Eijiro shouldn’t neglect to note the shadow people’s symbol painted blatantly on this man’s forehead. He’s also shirtless, which Eijiro can respect.

Reluctantly, he climbs the steps, coming to a stop at the small, railed-in landing at the top of the second set. Oh, he’s way too close to this dead guy for his liking. Is there something he’s supposed to do here…?

There are a few seconds spent shuffling awkwardly in place, hoping for something to happen as he alternates between looking at the mummy and the Sheikah eye that hovers between them on the glowing window, before Eijiro finally sighs. He’s gonna regret this, but fuck it. He clearly is supposed to do something, so he—with every instinct in his body screaming at him not to—reaches up to touch the Sheikah symbol on the partition in front of him.

The whole thing shatters, and he jumps.

Again, he gets that suggestion of words, not heard or felt but still somehow there, and he knows without a doubt that their origin is this dead Sheikah before him. They’re a little stronger now that he’s closer to the source, but still a foreign and indistinct feeling.

You have proven to possess the resolve of a true hero. I am Oman Au, the creator of this trial. I am a humble monk, blessed with the sight of the god Bakusatsuo and dedicated to helping those who seek to defeat All For One. With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled. In the name of the god Bakusatsuo, allow me to bestow this gift upon you. Please accept the strength of my spirit.

Eijiro blinks, brow furrowing as he wonders what that means—but then he sees what it means, as suddenly, a compact, hazy cloud of purple—he doesn’t even know, energy?—seeps out of the monk’s chest, and—and begins to drift towards him.

A little alarmed, Eijiro staggers half a step back in a probably less-than-manly move, eyes flicking between the monk and the approaching haze—but before he can make the decision to bolt, unsure what the hell that substance is exactly, it touches his chest and begins to absorb into him. He yelps, one hand reaching up to clutch over his heart like he can somehow pull the essence back out of himself, the other clinging at the railing like a lifeline so he doesn’t tumble down the stairs in his attempt to reel away.

He feels… he doesn’t know, something blanket and course through him, the feeling deeply unsettling and he wants to ask this guy to take it back.

May Bakusatsuo smile upon you.

As Eijiro watches, the monk before him starts to—to disintegrate, freaking him right the hell out as the mummified Sheikah dissolves into greenish particles that float away upwards. His eyes feel like they’re about to bug out of his head and he’s half a second from hyperventilating as he stares, mouth agape.

Oh, gods. Oh, gods, did he just get possessed? He doesn’t want to be possessed! He does not want some weird ancient monk to pilot him around! Not cool! It’s not cool!

He needs to sit and have a moment before he can make his way back to the platform out of the shrine.

Inko is waiting for him when he does get out of the shrine. He steps out into the sunlight, still unsettled but comforted by normal fresh air and surroundings again, and she steps up onto the surface at the entrance of the shrine, meeting him.

“How did it go, sweetie?” She looks him over, eyes crinkling warmly in the way he’s used to. “You have a different sense about you. You look a little heartier.”

This is the last thing Eijiro wants to hear right now, and he looks at her in alarm. “I seem different? What do you mean? Different how? Do I still seem like me?” Oh, he’s so possessed. He’s so possessed by a weird old dead monk man. This is the worst.

Taken aback, Inko blinks owlishly at him. Concern coloring her expression, she steps closer with furrowed brows. “What do you mean? Of course you do.”

“But are you sure?” he asks, a little desperate.

“Yes! Eijiro, sweetheart, what happened in there to have you in this state?”

The story comes pouring out of him all in one breath, voice only getting more hysterical as he goes. “I don’t know, I—I went in there and there was a trial? Sort of? It wasn’t really hard at all it was just kind of teaching me how to use a new thing on my Sheikah Slate and there were machines that attacked me and then there was this weird old dead guy at the end of it and he said he’d give me ‘the strength of his spirit’ and then this weird purple stuff came into me and now I think I’m possessed!”

Inko stares. Eijiro stares back, probably a little wild-eyed and frightened. Not for the first time today, Inko’s eyebrows lift high on her face, and then she shakes her head as she reaches out to place a hand on his arm. “Eijiro, honey, don’t you think you’d notice something different about yourself if you were possessed?”

“Maybe?” He’s so desperately hoping she’s right, but he’s just a little freaked out right now. “Just—I don’t know, what if, like, my own thoughts are different so I’m not even thinking like me and that’s why I don’t notice?”

“I think if you were possessed by something that made you think differently, you wouldn’t be worried about being possessed at all,” she reasons, firm in her stance. After a beat, she tilts her head and asks, “Are you always this paranoid about silly things?”

“No!” He can’t help but be defensive. “I mean. I don’t think so?” Given a moment to process the whole conversation, he finds himself a little embarrassed, dropping his face into his hands with a groan. “I’m sorry, I’ve had a really weird day, Inko.”

She chuckles sympathetically, patting his arm comfortingly. He doesn’t want to come out from behind his hands, but he appreciates the gesture nonetheless. “How about we get to thinking about your next step, hm? What happened while you were in there? Did your voice speak to you again?”

Eijiro doesn’t even want to get into the happy little jump his heart performs when she refers to the voice he’s heard so much as his, so instead he focuses on taking a deep breath and removing his fingers from his face. He shakes his head, trying not to be disappointed.

“No, I haven’t heard from him again.” He’d really been hoping that using Sheikah technology was the key to prompting him to speak but… apparently not. “Um… okay, so. I got down into the shrine, and this, um, really old Sheikah monk, who was like, shriveled up and mummified? He said it was a trial. And when I finished the trial, he said...”

Eijiro’s brow furrows as he tries to remember, exactly. He’d gotten pretty distracted and weirded out, afterwards, so the words hadn’t exactly had time to stick.

“He said… that I have the resolve of a true hero? And some stuff about Bakusatsuo, and that he was supposed to help anyone who wants to fight All for One.” Thinking back on it, Eijiro definitely starts to feel a little silly, now. Obviously, the monk wouldn't possess him if he wanted to help him. “And then he said he was giving me a gift, and he, like—disintegrated, after sending some weird purple… stuff into me, I don’t know, that’s when I got weirded out.”

Inko hums thoughtfully, considering. Just when she’s opening her mouth to respond, Eijiro spots an old, battered metal crate nearby and remembers.

“Oh!” He’s already whipping the slate out in his excitement, activating the magnesis rune. “And I can do this now!”

He uses the slate to grab the box, lifting it into the air—Inko lets out a quiet cry of, “Goodness!”—and moving it away from them, before dropping it with a heavy thud and beaming at her.

“That looks awfully handy,” she admits with an indulgent smile. “Just be careful with it. So, if that shrine gave you an ability like that, and was placed there to help you fight All for One, it stands to reason that the others will probably help you, too? There are a few more shrines even here, on the Great Plateau. Maybe you could go to them, while we figure out how to get you down?”

Moving to clip the slate back to his belt, Eijiro’s eyebrows raise. “There are? Where?”

Admittedly, he’s not exactly eager to have more of that weird purple… mist, or whatever, thrown at him, but this magnesis thing is cool. If the other shrines have other runes for him… maybe one of them could be something that grants him the ability to get down from the plateau. So, even if the thought of dealing with that again makes him a little uneasy, he knows he has to man up. He’s not going to save anyone if he’s too scared to even face dead guys trying to help him.

“You could probably see them all from the top of that tower you raised,” Inko suggests helpfully. “Your Sheikah Slate should also have a scope feature that will let you mark the shrines on your map from far away.”

“Really?” He hasn’t even found that feature. It’s not his most pressing issue though, because he finds himself looking dubiously at the tower in the near distance, ahead of them. He sighs. “Man, I’m not looking forward to climbing all the way up there. Down was hard enough.”

Inko chuckles agreeably, clearly understanding of his plight. “Your slate has something for that, too. To help you travel places faster.”

“You mean the map?” he asks, brow furrowing. He guesses that would make sense; having a map that moves with you and shows you exactly where you’re facing in relation to your destination probably speeds things up a lot more than using a regular map and constantly having to orient yourself.

“Oh, you know about the fast travel on the map already?” Inko asks, sounding pleasantly surprised, and Eijiro blinks. The shrine had said something about a fast travel gate, right?

“Um… no?” he answers honestly. “Wait, how do you know all this about my slate? I thought you said you didn’t know a lot about Sheikah stuff?”

An amused huff escaping her, Inko gives him a chiding look. “Sheikah Slates were around one hundred years ago, young man. I may not know much about Sheikah buildings or how they all work, but your slate is another matter entirely. I’ve heard quite a bit about what they’re supposed to be able to do. Now, pull out your map.”

“Oh.” He does as she says, but as he’s bringing up the map he can’t help but furrow his brow as he realizes her wording. She made it sound like she was around one hundred years ago. But she still doesn’t look old enough for that—unless she was, like, a baby, and aged really well, and even then, a baby couldn’t work a Sheikah Slate. Probably.

“All right,” she begins, moving beside him to peer at the map with him. He notes with some interest that the emblem for the shrine where they stand is no longer orange on the map, but blue like the other emblems. “So if you tap on the tower on the map, it should let you move there quickly.”

He does as she directs, watching as a message appears on the screen, bearing two words, each separated and outlined: ‘Travel’ and ‘Cancel’. “Like this?” he asks, finger already moving unthinkingly to tap the word travel.

Before Inko can answer, Eijiro is ripped violently out of his body.

Describing the sensation of fast travel would probably be impossible. One moment, Eijiro is normal, and the next—it’s like he’s blacked out, except not at all because he can still think and panic, but he can’t feel his body, like at all. Can’t keep track of any part of himself. He feels so disjointed, unable to gain any sense of equilibrium or awareness of his surroundings or the orientation of his own limbs, and the whole while he feels like he’s hurtling through the air at horrifying speeds.

And none of that comes close to describing the discordant sensation of all of his senses reassembling themselves all out of order, as he’s placed on the circular symbol on the top of Great Plateau Tower—placed gently, but that’s too little too late.

The instant his feet hit the surface, Eijiro topples over, and it’s all he can do to scramble to the edge of the tower before he’s emptying what’s left of his lunch over the side. Oh, gods. That was the most jarring experience of his life. That was so bad. What the fuck.

Pressing his forehead to the tan stone that ridges the edge of the tower, Eijiro groans, wind whipping his hair all around his face.

“I’m never doing that again,” he swears under his breath to himself, voice thick and arms wrapped around his stomach. He fucking means it, too. That was godsdamned awful.

It takes more time than he’d like to admit to compose himself after that, but once he’s finally pulled himself to his feet he can at least say that the scope feature is way easier to find and use than it could have been. There’s tons of shrines, it turns out—he can make out so many from up here, but most of them are well out of his reach, until he can get off of the plateau. It’s not even a full minute before he has the three shrines Inko had told him about marked down on his map, with glowing beacons that appear on the scope when he moves it over them.

One of them, he notes eagerly, is easily reachable, too; not far at all where it sits surrounded by ruins.

It’s just… he can’t help but despair, just a little, because now begins the process of climbing all the way back down. After the worst ascent of his life. Again.

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany is (relatively) frugal and modest

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

 *Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

Even when Daenerys was kidnapped by a then-hostile Dothraki in season 6, she didn’t look this disheveled. In fact, her hair and outfit were impeccable in the face of relentless desert grit and threatened imprisonment in the Dosh Khaleen. Dany, a woman who has believed she was fated for greatness since birth, has never let herself look anything but perfect. That is, until now. (x)

Dany has not believed she was fated for greatness neither since birth nor as of ADWD. This meta and these lists make it clear enough. But this list is about something else: has Dany "never let herself look anything but perfect"? I would argue that the books tell a very different story.

NOTE: There are few moments in AGOT because Dany is among the Dothraki, so several behaviors that could be considered "frugal" and "modest" are normalized. In other books, she's among other nobles, which highlights these particular traits of her.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

The sun was hot this morning, the sky blue and cloudless. That was good. Dany’s clothes were hardly more than rags, and offered little in the way of warmth. One of her sandals had slipped off during her wild flight from Meereen and she had left the other up by Drogon’s cave, preferring to go barefoot rather than half-shod. Her tokar and veils she had abandoned in the pit, and her linen undertunic had never been made to withstand the hot days and cold nights of the Dothraki sea. Sweat and grass and dirt had stained it, and Dany had torn a strip off the hem to make a bandage for her shin. I must look a ragged thing, and starved, she thought, but if the days stay warm, I will not freeze.

~

Hers had been a lonely sojourn, and for most of it she had been hurt and hungry ... yet despite it all she had been strangely happy here. A few aches, an empty belly, chills by night ... what does it matter when you can fly? I would do it all again.

~

The sun grew hotter as it rose, and before long her head was pounding. Dany’s hair was growing out again, but slowly. “I need a hat,” she said aloud. Up on Dragonstone she had tried to make one for herself, weaving stalks of grass together as she had seen Dothraki women do during her time with Drogo, but either she was using the wrong sort of grass or she simply lacked the necessary skill. Her hats all fell to pieces in her hands. Try again, she told herself. You will do better the next time. You are the blood of the dragon, you can make a hat. She tried and tried, but her last attempt had been no more successful than her first.

~

Once I dreamed of flying, she thought, and now I’ve flown, and dream of stealing eggs. That made her laugh. “Men are mad and gods are madder,” she told the grass, and the grass murmured its agreement.

~

Dany wedged herself into that corner, making a nest of sorts by tearing up handfuls of the grass that grew around the ruins. She was very tired, and fresh blisters had appeared on both her feet, including a matched set upon her pinky toes. It must be from the way I walk, she thought, giggling.

~

She wondered how the ants had managed to climb over it and find her. To them these tumbledown stones must loom as huge as the Wall of Westeros. The biggest wall in all the world, her brother Viserys used to say, as proud as if he’d built it himself.

Viserys told her tales of knights so poor that they had to sleep beneath the ancient hedges that grew along the byways of the Seven Kingdoms. Dany would have given much and more for a nice thick hedge. Preferably one without an anthill.

~

Dany, starved, slid off his back and ate with him, ripping chunks of smoking meat from the dead horse with bare, burned hands. In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario ...

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her.

 ADWD Daenerys IX

Behind her, Reznak leaned in to whisper in her ear, “Magnificence, hear how they love you!”

No, she knew, they love their mortal art.

 ADWD Daenerys VII

Reznak mo Reznak bowed and beamed. “Magnificence, every day you grow more beautiful. I think the prospect of your wedding has given you a glow. Oh, my shining queen!”

Dany sighed.

~

She sat upon her cushions, listening, one foot jiggling with impatience.

~

Dany envied the Dothraki maids their loose sandsilk trousers and painted vests. They would be much cooler than her in her tokar, with its heavy fringe of baby pearls. “Help me wind this round myself, please. I cannot manage all these pearls by myself.”

~

“The day is too hot to be shut up in a palanquin,” said Dany. “Have my silver saddled. I would not go to my lord husband upon the backs of bearers.”

“Your Grace,” said Missandei, “this one is so sorry, but you cannot ride in a tokar.”

The little scribe was right, as she so often was. The tokar was not a garment meant for horseback. Dany made a face. “As you say. Not the palanquin, though. I would suffocate behind those drapes. Have them ready a sedan chair.” If she must wear her floppy ears, let all the rabbits see her.

 ADWD Daenerys VI

The bride is dressed in dark red veils above a tokar of white silk, fringed with baby pearls.”

The queen of the rabbits must not be wed without her floppy ears. “All those pearls will make me rattle when I walk.”

~

“Daenerys, my queen, I will gladly wash you from head to heel if that is what I must do to be your king and consort.”

“To be my king and consort, you need only bring me peace.[”]

~

Dany hurried off, calling for her handmaids. She would not welcome her captain home in a tokar. In the end she tried a dozen gowns before she found one she liked, but she refused the crown that Jhiqui offered her.

 ADWD Daenerys IV

Oft have I heard that yours is the blood of Aegon the Conqueror, Jaehaerys the Wise, and Daeron the Dragon. The noble Hizdahr is of the blood of Mazdhan the Magnificent, Hazrak the Handsome, and Zharaq the Liberator.”

“His forebears are as dead as mine. Will Hizdahr raise their shades to defend Meereen against its enemies? I need a man with ships and swords. You offer me ancestors.”

~

“Bright queen,” he said, “you have grown more beautiful in my absence. How is this thing possible?”

The queen was accustomed to such praise, yet somehow the compliment meant more coming from Daario than from the likes of Reznak, Xaro, or Hizdahr.

 ADWD Daenerys III

“Let us speak instead of love, of dreams and desire and Daenerys, the fairest woman in this world. I am drunk with the sight of you.”

She was no stranger to the overblown courtesies of Qarth. “If you are drunk, blame the wine.”

 ADWD Daenerys II

Dany seated herself on a cushion, crossed her legs, and gazed up at him.

 ADWD Daenerys I

The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Dany had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her advisors had convinced her otherwise. “The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare. “In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conqueror. Meereen’s queen must be a lady of Old Ghis.” Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. “Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.”

~

The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep.

~

In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the Plaza of Purification with one cast in Dany’s image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could muster.

~

As Dany stood, her tokar began to slip. She caught it and tugged it back in place.

  A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

Her audience chamber was on the level below, an echoing high-ceilinged room with walls of purple marble. It was a chilly place for all its grandeur. There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen.

Her bloodriders were waiting for her. Silver bells tinkled in their oiled braids, and they wore the gold and jewels of dead men. Meereen had been rich beyond imagining. Even her sellswords seemed sated, at least for now.

 ASOS Daenerys V

“I must have this city,” she told them, sitting crosslegged on a pile of cushions, her dragons all about her.

 ASOS Daenerys IV

Dany sat crosslegged on a cushion, and Viserion spread his white-and-gold wings and flapped to her side.

~

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one ... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss.”

~

When the old man came, she was curled up inside her hrakkar pelt, whose musty smell still reminded her of Drogo.

 ASOS Daenerys I

The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a hundred times as a girl, running from one Free City to the next half a step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives. She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion, slicing through the waves like silvery spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again. She even liked the sailors, with all their songs and stories. Once on a voyage to Braavos, as she’d watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor.

~

But later that night, as Balerion plunged onward through the dark and Dany sat crosslegged on her bunk in the captain’s cabin, feeding her dragons—“Even upon the sea,” Groleo had said, so graciously, “queens take precedence over captains”—a sharp knock came upon the door.

[...] Dany pulled up a coverlet and tucked it in under her arms. She was naked, and had not expected a caller at this hour.

 A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

She was breaking her fast on a bowl of cold shrimp-and-persimmon soup when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of ivory samite patterned with seed pearls. “Take it away,” Dany said. “The docks are no place for lady’s finery.”

~

"I have won no victories," she tried telling her handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.

Jhiqui disagreed. "You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell."

That was Drogon's victory, not mine, Dany wanted to say, but she held her tongue. The Dothraki would esteem her all the more for a few bells in her hair.

~

“I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told, we were not certain, we expected someone more ... more ...”

“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her, and her raiment was hardly queenly.

 ACOK Daenerys III

Rhaegal hissed and dug sharp black claws into her bare shoulder as Dany stretched out a hand for the wine. Wincing, she shifted him to her other shoulder, where he could claw her gown instead of her skin.

~

“Weep, weep, for the treachery of men.”

Dany would sooner have wept for her gold. The bribes she’d tendered to Mathos Mallarawan, Wendello Qar Deeth, and Egon Emeros the Exquisite might have bought her a ship, or hired a score of sellswords.

~

The crown was the only offering she’d kept. The rest she sold, to gather the wealth she had wasted on the Pureborn.

~

“Did I not give you an army, sweetest of women? A thousand knights, each in shining armor.”

The armor had been made of silver and gold, the knights of jade and beryl and onyx and tourmaline, of amber and opal and amethyst, each as tall as her little finger. “A thousand lovely knights,” she said, “but not the sort my enemies need fear. And my bullocks cannot carry me across the water[”]

~

“The Milk Men shun him. Khaleesi, do you see the girl in the felt hat? There, behind the fat priest. She is a—”

“—cutpurse,” finished Dany. She was no pampered lady, blind to such things. She had seen cutpurses aplenty in the streets of the Free Cities, during the years she’d spent with her brother, running from the Usurper’s hired knives.

~

“No trick,” a woman said in the Common Tongue.

Dany had not noticed Quaithe in the crowd, yet there she stood, eyes wet and shiny behind the implacable red lacquer mask. “What mean you, my lady?”

“Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets.”

[...] “And now?”

“And now his powers grow, Khaleesi. And you are the cause of it.”

“Me?” She laughed. “How could that be?”

The woman stepped closer and lay two fingers on Dany’s wrist. “You are the Mother of Dragons, are you not?”

 ACOK Daenerys I

“I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts.” And figs are more important.

 A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys III

“You dare!” he screamed at her. “You give commands to me? To me?” He vaulted off the horse, stumbling as he landed. His face was flushed as he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her. “Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!”

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here.

AGOT Daenerys II

Other gifts she was given in plenty by other Dothraki: slippers and jewels and silver rings for her hair, medallion belts and painted vests and soft furs, sandsilks and jars of scent, needles and feathers and tiny bottles of purple glass, and a gown made from the skin of a thousand mice. "A handsome gift, Khaleesi," Magister Illyrio said of the last, after he had told her what it was. "Most lucky." The gifts mounted up around her in great piles, more gifts than she could possibly imagine, more gifts than she could want or use.

AGOT Daenerys I

“We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

~

When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo's manse.

[ambitionsource]

Hey I’m sorry but I’m new to this blog where can I watch or read the episodes also do you have like a beginner introduction cause I’m very confused but want to watch

First of all, WELCOME!!! Ambitionsource is your go-to stop for all things AMBITION, the Glee-like fake television show that was once just a silly AU and spiraled into this whole full-fledged series. While it had its roots in fanfiction (and still is one, by all technical standpoints), AMBITION really does feel like its own entity and for all of us who work on it it feels like a completely separate… world from its small origins. We have a lot of fun here in our lil community watching this fake show, and we are excited to have you come join the family!

So although we use the show terminology to talk about it, obviously we can’t actually… “watch” the show so to speak. Watching an episode refers to reading the latest update (in which we refer to chapters as “episodes,” because each installment of the series is treated like a season of television). The easiest the way to access all of the episodes and just start from the beginning is through the AMBITION series on AO3, but you can also find episode listings on the page made for it here.

But let’s say you want to start from the very beginning. The very very beginning, when all of this was first starting out. In that case, you’ll want to reference the character introductions that were made before the show was released.

Riley | Farkle | Maya | Zay | Isadora | Lucas | Charlie | Dylan & Asher

So you’ve been introduced to the cast of characters. Great! You’re ready to venture into Season 1, where you’re going to learn so much more about all of our main ensemble. I’ll say two things about jumping into the first season – if you’re going into with any sort of preconceptions based on the fandom the show was inspired by, toss those right out. Just leave them at the doorstep and embrace the new world. Also, like any show, give it 3 - 4 “episodes” before you totally decide if you want to keep going. I personally feel we actually hit our stride in “Under Pressure” (1.03), but I cannot stress enough how much the dynamics and characterization and storytelling deepens over the season. So best of luck, enjoy the ride, and please come back to share your thoughts as you take the journey!

AMBITION Season 1 on AO3

Once you’ve survived the first season, you might have a Lot of thoughts. That’s fine. Understandable. You just took a journey, and the next ride is about to be even more wild. In the meantime, you can find out which AMBITION character you are, or which techie crew member you fit most (I, Maggie, co-creator, am an Asher Garcia through and through). Or if you just need reprieve, watch this fan-made vine compilation.

By the time you’ve emotionally recovered and decide you’re ready to venture into what happens next, you’ll want to take a stop at the hiatus bonus content. The summer between S1 and S2 is captured in a piece called Cruel Summer, and really helps you reorient yourself before you dive back into the chaos. However, it is recommended that you read the Season 2 Premiere first so you have certain reveals not be spoiled – but then you should go dig around in the hiatus stuff for context. And boy, is there a lot to explore. You can also follow the character takeovers that were done as promo, in which the front nine each took turns “taking over” the ambition blog and answered questions. They’re quite insightful little spells…

Maya’s CT | Riley’s CT | Asher & Dylan’s CT | Zay’s CT | Isadora’s CT | Lucas’s CT | Jack & Eric’s CT | Charlie’s CT | Farkle’s CT

Cruel Summer

So you’re almost ready for Season 2 – but you’ll want to get the vibe for what you’re stepping into. You can find the front nine’s character profiles on the following promotional materials. Also, if you’re ever wondering what someone looks like or get confused about the characters, feel free to reference the character guide which has a visual representation of all the cast members in the show.

Farkle, Maya, Isadora | Riley, Zay, Charlie | Lucas, Asher, Dylan

You’ve made it. You’re ready. You’re ready to embark on Season 2 of AMBITION – which was actually the start of the idea. We plotted the major beats of S2 before we even wrote S1, so there’s a lot of really good and important stuff buried into this season. We’re really proud of it, and we hope it’s enjoyable for you to experience as it was for us to write it. Be ready for an emotional, but hopefully cathartic, whirlwind. Without further ado…

AMBITION Season 2 on AO3

Crazily enough, time has passed where I can now UPDATE this post with TWO (yes, TWO!) new seasons of content. Before you dive into Season 3, if you please, check out the character takeovers and promotional materials for that season -- there’s some interesting stuff and some fun laughs mixed in there. But if you’re itching to just dive in, I understand completely. Without further ado:

AMBITION Season 3 on AO3

And same hat for the current season -- promotional materials to peruse, but if you’re just ready to dive right in:

AMBITION Season 4 on AO3 (ongoing)

Then here you are. You made this far – welcome to the AMBITION family! There’s tons for you to explore on this blog alone, from fanworks to conversations to fandom events we do. Dig into the AO3 series page linked at the top, which contains all the bonus content I write (including my Dylan & Asher fic and other bonus fics).

The main creators are Maggie (me) and Esther, and you can send us an ask here at any time. We also have a team of amazing betas and are promoting some writers to join the team with us, so you’ll be hearing much more about them as well. Seriously, the best way for you to get acquainted this far in is just to poke around yourself and then join in the conversation – we love the show so much and will talk about anything. So feel free to send us an ask and start the conversation!

But if you’re still on the edge, feel free to take into consideration these testimonials from some of our long-time readers:

“I’m very honoured you want to join our family 😉 (we’re not a cult at all dw about it) and I hope you enjoy it, always wild when someone shows interest in our lil show so please do keep us updated with any thoughts or feelings you may have!” – @rapunzles​ (co-creator)

“AMBITION ruined my life, reading it was the best decision I’ve ever made.” – @cassiehatheway

“I’d like to sue both creators for emotional reparations!” – @paigemelendez

“Ambition is a journey like no other, it’s inspiring and heartbreaking and gives me emotional rides that nothing else can.” – @lorelaisrorys

“Ambition WILL own your soul and heart, but in the best way possible.” – @leoleofitz

Genuinely, such warm welcome from everyone here on the AMBITION team. We love this passion project so much, and getting to share it with y’all and have such a great responsive community come out of it has been amazing. So go forth. Jam out. Get emotional. Enjoy the story. We’re not going anywhere.

Heidy-ho!

– Maggie

[mitigatedchaos]

Banished

(1,400 words, ~ 6 mins)

Banished, Colonial Charter, The North, and the 4 gigabyte Megamod

I purchased the game Banished (2014) some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to actually playing it until recently. (I also replayed the excellent Populous: The Beginning, a game released back in 1998, and thus presumably older than some of the people that read this blog. Both are or were going for around $5-7 lately.)

Reviews described death waves, crop infestations, entire towns lost due to starvation, families killed by frostbite, and fires wiping out house, smithy, and storage barn alike. And sure, I could micro-manage a hundred tiny medieval villagers in a never-ending fight against the crushing poverty of the era, slowly grinding away surplus on meagre human and animal power, always one harsh winter away from ruin in an unforgiving wild landscape... or, having bought it on sale, I could wait and test it out when the mood struck me.

After playing vanilla Banished, I wasn't sure who wrote those reviews.

(The old way would have been to attribute this to console gamers, but this is a forward-thinking blog and we embrace inter-system solidarity.)

Build the hut to gather some berries, then plunk down some houses and a woodcutter before the winter hits and you, too, will soon be waiting impatiently for the randomly-determined traders to bring the specific variety of seed or animal you were hoping for and finally give your villagers the nutritionally-balanced breakfast they deserve. Yields will vary with the climate and seasons (and you'll lose some yields when winter comes early), but stored food in Banished doesn't rot and only about a quarter of your villagers will need to be assigned to food production.

If you're used to these kinds of games - say you racked up some hours in Anno 2070 - vanilla Banished will seem light on content. The production chains are short, the variety of goods is low, and there are only two kinds of houses. If it seems as it were made with a development budget of "just one guy," well it more or less was.

Once getting a grasp on vanilla, it was time to get some mods. More specifically, mod compilation packs, something I've learned to appreciate from industrial minecraft.

Colonial Charter

Colonial Charter is a mod pack with a relatively unified aesthetic and theme (although less unified on either count than The North, which we'll discuss later). You're (implicitly) a colonial governor working on behalf of some European power perhaps in the 1600s or 1700s. If you were hoping to engage in the true violence of the colonial era, setting out to conquer a continent with only muskets of iron and a will of steel, you will be disappointed - Banished does not feature combat. With one fierce touch, hunters transmute a deer into venison and leather without even the pretense of a bow and arrow, and so Colonial Charter represents your colony's entirely-optional military adventures as just another production building, this time masquerading as a rocky outcrop. (It does dutifully note your soldiers will require snazzy uniforms, the 'full livery' itself the result of a production chain.) If you want to build the rest of the fort, though, with cannons and wooden palisades and the like, you're in luck. Vanilla Banished has certain rustic charm to the art, and that's still on display here, so you may well find yourself taking a picture of your snow-covered frontier fortress with canons that don't do anything.

Both vanilla Banished and Colonial Charter lack a capstone building, like Anno 2070's 'monuments,' as well as, it seems, specific victory conditions. Disasters, when activated, seem relatively rare. In one game two wooden houses burned down, hardly a major setback for the Mitigated East Pensachussets Company. In another, a tornado tore through an uninhabited part of the map, and in another, a disease outbreak resulted in the (ordered) slaughter of about 75% of my supply of beef cows - a herd which was itself only one third of my supply of farm animals. In fact, with traders taking food in trade, I was often swimming in supplies, the only real constraints being the slow rate of production for Building Supplies or Fancy Homewares and waiting for traders to bring the right kinds of seeds (either for specific industrial purposes, for diet balance, or for a diversity of crops to resist blight).

But buildings don't require maintenance, so even a relatively slow production of Building Supplies is just a cap on the rate of expansion (while in real life, if you don't continuously produce the same, your building stock will gradually decrease in number and condition). Banished could use some elements from Anno 2070 - the combat or the missions help to liven things up and create breaks in the periods of building and stringing up production chains, and present a bit of risk/reward in how you allocate your resources. Alternatively, a genius aspect of The Sims 3 was the "wishes" system, both the "lifetime wish" and the more ephemeral ones that came up in response to immedate context, which could be "promised," creating a stream of game-seeded player-directed mini-goals that implicitly create a narrative around the relatively empty vessels of the sims themselves.

Story aspects presented in either way might be interesting - and a good resource sink.

The North

The North is a mod best acquired from its website. The Steam Workshop edition is out of date.

The North is more-or-less everything I thought Banished would be, but Norse, and still without unpreserved food rotting. Starting with only a chapel, one man's worth of rye, and around 20 nomads, none of whom were in the posession of tools, I subsequently struggled to reap enough surplus production to afford a charcoal pile in the hopes of maybe one day using it to fuel a blacksmith, as often even if the grain were planted early, winter would arrive early, and despite throwing every villager in the village at the fields, not enough grain could be collected to survive the year before it succumbed to bitter cold. In one village an entire population froze to death. In another, they starved. It was, in a word, brutal.

But the difficulty of The North depends a lot on the starting conditions. In the Shepard start with three families for a total of nine villagers (six adults), each with tools and the village starting with a herd of sheep, the situation was much easier. The North requires a lot of micro-management. It extends the idea of the game's developer of a more personal style of city-builder, where each villager and each family matters. In this case fewer villagers was better - while rotating one or two through the production chain to replace the tools, there were fewer mouths to feed, and thus less overhead needed for manual hunting and gathering.

The buildings are nicely-made, but while in vanilla and Colonial Charter child villagers reach age 18 after about 4 game years, in The North it appears villagers age one year per game year. This makes the situation easier to handle (as The North is tough!), but growth takes longer. Ultimately I didn't want to micro-manage the village for 100 years to get it up to size, though it might be worthwhile to visit it every now and again for the gentle gardening feel of the shepard's hamlet.

Megamod

The problem with the 4.67-gigabyte (once uncompressed; it's 1.5 GB compressed) Megamod is that it has too many mods. This makes it in some ways reminiscent of Minecraft modpacks like Feed the Beast (long live Industrialcraft). If you want to build the perfect-looking little village, Megamod is probably the best - especially if you want to stretch across the whole map, rigging up canals, moats, ponds and castles. But it's unfocused, with too many concepts and too many buildings. Some of the buildings are great, while others are clearly novice efforts. With so many options for everything, it would likely be easy to min-max and lose the element that makes Banished a game. Had all the effort that went into these mods been, instead, applied as one project with a relatively coherent vision of gameplay, it would have been able to produce a game that is 'complete' in a way that vanilla Banished is not.

Alas, with normal Banished food yields in Megamod, I set my villagers off to gathering up food and farming and wandered off to look through the piles and piles of buildings. I'd say that maybe somewhere in Megamod is a tornado shelter, but I doubt the base game code supports it. In the Early Summer season, a tornado ripped through what very little existed of the whole town, destroying every building and carrying off all the villagers to the great beyond.

[redscullyrevival]

Vid Notes

The process behind my Star Trek: Discovery vid “Flickering”.

Get a drink, this one is a dozy. 

There is a lot (a lot, a lot, a lot) I love about Discovery’s first season as a trekkie and on many specific personal levels. But I’ll be honest, making this vid had me a little nervous because the fandom for this series and perceptions on this series’ connection to the wider franchise is a very intense place to be putting forth any fan works. Especially, I feel, a fan work such as the one I was deeply compelled to try and make; something free flowing that isn’t exactly directing any one solid opinion or thought on the series. 

It feels to me that a very vocal part of this show’s audience wanted reassuring morals explained at face value more than they wanted to wade around in the presented media. Like, some of the Discovery crowd really wanted those captain log wrap ups y’all - at least that’s the take away I got through lurking the fandom tags in real time as the season progressed. Which isn’t necessarily a criticism, but personally I find the gimmie-info-and-answers-now approach towards art limiting and as a result was left feeling very out in the cold fandom-engagement wise with this series (which is something that’s really foreign to my experiences with Star Trek).

Which in turn has made for a new experience in me choosing to make this fan vid: As a form of self-assurance due to feeling dopey and jilted by strangers I wasn’t engaging with. Fuckin’ wild! I’m a mess.

“Flickering” is exactly the kind of vid I would not have shared last year, but I’m trying to push the boundaries of my comfort zone and continue on in the progress I’ve recently made. Years past I never would have wide shared “Dark Doo Wop” or “Take You There” either but here we are. 

What I’ve tried to do with my edit is string the season’s contexts, primarily in the form of emotions and repeated imagery, together (in a previous post I explained it as “sewing seemingly unrelated contexts together like a big cozy feelings quilt”). I did not try to directly answer or comment on anything Discovery was saying except in the broadest sense of “lives are connected”.

I know though that the nature of vidding, of re-arranging given footage and stories, I can’t help but comment on them. It’s all a transformative act. The music and images I choose shape a new take on a shared audience experience. Cutting up Discovery changes the media to my will and thoughts even if I try to be impartial, but I wasn’t editing impartially anyway - that was never my goal! 

My goal was to try and NOT shape a direct thesis. Which of course naturally shaped one, lol.

I have no desire to dictate my thought process for picking which scenes to use for which lyrics and why or any of that - I feel like the vid is pretty straight forward once you see it (as long as you have ~context~ of the show anyway). I will say though that this was one of the most extensive vids I’ve ever made planning wise. 

Usually I make an outline of what I want to do in my vid and usually I’m vidding from media I know well so a simple outline with key words is enough to keep me on track as I fill in scenes towards my goal. This time around though, I basically edited the entire video on paper first with episode numbers, scene times, and lyrics; once at the computer I played seek-and-find and plugged in the numbers. The entire base edit was done in under three hours! But I had been compiling those chosen scenes on paper for almost two months. It was like a taste of the old VHS days. 

As for the song, most of the time I hunt for songs for my vid projects; I tend to have an idea based on the media and then I find a song to best fit my preordained goal. That wasn’t the case this time around. I was kicking around two songs in my head when a few episodes into my rewatch I remembered a completely different song and suddenly an idea came with it, so that was kind of a new experience as well. Serpentwithfeet (Josiah Wise) is a phenomenal talent and the entire album Blisters is heavenly. If you hate my vid that’s fair but I don’t believe for a second anyone will fault the song. 

Editing to a slow song is something I’ve rarely done and don’t have a lot of practice with. It was nice to be less held hostage by rhythmic editing but the freedom was at times a bit scary. I have to dictate my own cuts?! My god.

Using stock footage of “space” (ink on water) just felt right, to zoom out of the context for a moment. I found it helped with the pacing and gives things a more reflective bent. Maybe to some seeing the vast indifference of space makes them question, does anything matter? Personally I feel like zooming out into the cosmos doesn’t put the vid’s drama into perspective of “it’s all trivial” but rather “in all this, there are things that matter”. 

Also, I just liked it. That’s the answer in tandem with the ‘artsy’ answer a lot of the time, okay?! I just liked it! Space is pretty!

I feel it’s obvious but there was no way to do this vid in narrative order. Most of my vids aren’t in strict chronological order of the media they use - but I absolutely rely on withholding narrative points until they are best exposed. Which is dumb editor talk for “I utilize narrative moments in my vids for impact.” I tried to not do that this time. Which was challenging as such a choice completely goes against my usual rhythm and tactics. I’m glad I tried it, it’s a form of experimentation I’ve thought about before but never got around to playing with until now (which factors into what makes me so nervous about sharing the final product - but I’m always nervous soooo). 

While I was actively trying to not edit towards a build up (boy did it help that there is no chorus) I did go along with the turn of tone in the song and used it to direct the vid into a more positive outlook, although absolutely keeping everything still tied up with the negative. I wanted to try and parallel character’s successes with their failures, I wanted to show that how we respond to our failures can inspire successes. These characters, and of course we the audience, all have our own personal contexts of emotion and response but we’re also all linked and connected to other’s emotions and responses for good and for bad. No man is an island and all that. 

Anyways, blahblahblah, literally none of that matters. 

What I want is for people to feel a whimper of hope and the effort of improvement radiating off my vid, and if that happens even once then I’m happy. Other than that, I hope everyone brings whatever else they want to it.   

[thatbanjobusiness]

Ok so i was stuck in a rut for music to listen to while working (working form home man...busy season just gets to ya quicker) and as a follower of this account i thought “lets try out bluegrass! Haddock says its cool, and ive heard a banjo before, see what that does” so i find a version of foggy mountain breakdown and about keeled over when steve martin was in it (Fun fact for the uninformed such as mysef, steve martin plays the banjo lol) and i’m like oh that was fun! So youtube took me to one of those hour long compilations of flatt and scruggs songs and i was like oh that was fun! So i’ve been interspersing some bluegrass into my work playlist (thank you much for the introduction!)

Now the real reason i’m sending this message is because i finally got around to watching a video of the supposed original 1949 recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown and

DUDE.

WTF.

ITS GLORIOUS.

Earl Scruggs in his prime is absolutely wild, i see why you keep yacking about him, ITS AMAZING🤩🤩🤩 like just, the energy and just like, idk man its simultaneously relaxing and energizing. How does that even work?? I dont know lol but yeah, thanks for sharing this corner of the music world with us, its been fun😁 lol

Hgnghgngngngngh oh m;y gosh. Oh my gosh. I’m sorry for taking this long to respond, but I want to say, from Day One when I received your message, I was STOKED. Thanks for making my day! I took so long to respond because I was trying to make sure I DIDN’T write too long an essay of excited babbling in return (but at least I should start our conversation, so here we go!).

The original Foggy Mountain Breakdown is so freaktastically good and I would love to write an analysis on why every musical element combines to a perfect finish. For instance, one thing I find perfect about Foggy Mountain Breakdown’s 1949 recording is that this arrangement is like a tense duel: the bass driving forward with repeated notes to add drama, while the banjo and fiddle square off against each other, and the banjo wins the fight (great fiddling by Benny Sims here, of course, too, but the banjo won the fight). That banjo sparkles, man. I want to emphasize all the more that Earl Scruggs in his prime in the late 1940s and early 50s was playing bounds ahead of most others, so just imagine how that would’ve sounded in context where people weren’t used to hearing a three-string banjo like that at all! The fact that seventy years later, after everyone’s figured out tons more techniques for the banjo, after we’ve gotten hundreds of new skilled professional musicians and better recording equipment... we’re still blown away by THIS MUSIC... speaks to how timeless the music is and how alluring Earl’s banjo playing truly is.

Now. I looove what you said about “simultaneously relaxing and energizing.” I feel that too when I listen to Flatt & Scruggs! For the high majority of their repertoire! And for that matter that goes for many first generation bluegrass artists. The reason I draw to first gen is that I find it the perfect combination of down-home heart and technical skill.

They’re performing music with simple lyrics, basic chord progressions, and easy-to-sing-along-with melodies. It’s simple, homey, and familiar there: these are songs we might sing at church, or old folk song recitations, or are just good everyday man songs about everyday human things. So it makes the music relaxing. But at the same time, these are musicians who brought a heightened caliber of technical skill, improvisation, and intensity to the string band format. They understand drive. I forgot where it was I read this, but someone said first gen bluegrass performers didn’t have to do anything more than stand onstage with a serious face and play their music, because their music alone was enough to excite audiences. And there’s truth in that. The music isn’t so rhythmically complicated it takes a music degree or a heavy-concentrating arts lover to parse what’s being played... it’s not inaccessible like that. But it’s SKILLED. The music is improvised with gripping skill, speed, technicality, musicality, heart, and genuine homegrown talent. 

And ergo, hearing a man tear through his banjo at eleven notes per second while hitting every note with machine-gun precision, separating melody from background, and adding a whole ton of gripping melodic motion, can’t help but be exciting. For me, a band like Flatt & Scruggs, of which extraordinarily talented instrumentalists like Earl Scruggs, Josh Graves, Benny Martin, and Paul Warren existed, has that perfect match of “whoa” talent and comforting homeliness.

ANYWAY.

If you are still checking out Flatt & Scruggs intermittently as you go about your listening life, but you’re not sure what to hone in on, the first album by Flatt & Scruggs I’d throw at anyone would be Foggy Mountain Jamboree. There’s an extended edition of it released in 2005, I believe, that makes it even better. This album is Flatt & Scruggs from their mid-50s period, and it alternates between some of their best and most well-known instrumentals, with a variety of damn solid and memorable sung tunes, too. It is the perfect representation of what F&S is as a band. For people wanting just instrumental, Foggy Mountain Banjo from 1961 is a godsend album for banjo pickers.

As for my personal favorite period? I’ve got two. For recorded audio, Flatt & Scruggs’s vintage years are my favorite listens. All their Mercury Record releases are spectacular, their early Columbia stuff is GREAT. I listen to it constantly. But I have a huge heart for a specific band lineup that was consistent between the mid 50s to early 60s, I’ve seen a ton of videos of them (DON’T GET ME STARTED ON WHY I LOVE THE VIDEOS), and when I think of Flatt & Scruggs, I think of those six men. Those boys are my quintessential Foggy Mountain Boys. If you want to watch videos, seeing the black and white videos of them are going to be that period, and there’s a ton of personality and charm there because you can tell they all love each other and have a hoot playing with each other.

ANYWAY THAT IS ENOUGH BABBLING FOR NOW. Feel free to chat right back at me! I’ll be here, as you know. XD

[duncanwrites]

Books I read in 2017, reviewed in 2 sentences or less.

Among other things, in 2017 I tried to read more books by authors from different eras other than our own. I also ended up putting down more books half-read than usual. I’m sure those two things say something about our year in anxiety.

But here’s what I finished and what I thought:

Birds of America - Lorrie Moore: This book contains some of the very finest short stories I've ever read. Every word, sentence and paragraph seems perfectly put together to draw out the real humanity of flawed people in a flawed world.

Wolf in White Van - John Darinelle: Among other qualities, I think Wolf in White Van has the best title of any book on this list: in the context of the novel itself it provides a perfect framing device that allows you to see the poetry of a dark twisted staircase of a story.

The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen: If I talked to you about The Sympathizer this year, it probably came out as an excited rant about any number of things - its dark humor, brilliant structure, mind-bending narration - but I promise you that beneath the exuberance there's a genuinely stunning novel sort of unlike anything I've otherwise read.

The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein: I re-read this book to get ready for Trump, and it did help, but it also reminded me about how angry I still am about the war in Iraq and so many other things. Still my favorite book by one of the best political writers out there doing the work.

Hegemony How-To - Jonathan Matthew Smucker: Another pre-Trump read, I think Smuker's book is one of the most useful -- as in practically, real-life make your work better -- books on politics in a long time. My only complaints is that I didn’t have a chance to read it years earlier so I could have avoided a lot of the things Smucker describes so well.

Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest and Death's End - Liu Cixin: The first two novels of this trilogy I thought were some of the finest science fiction I've ever read: both grounded in real human suffering, sweepingly large in their approach to theory, and bringing out some exciting ideas. The third book dragged itself down with the darkness that already ran through the start of the series, but that shouldn't at all stop you from taking these on.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson: Another re-read, this is a classic science fiction novel that contains the kinds of themes and concepts that you begin to see everywhere around you once you finish it. Noticed a few more plot holes this time around.

The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson: Set in the same world as Snow Crash, The Diamond Age never reaches the same wild intensity of the previous book, and is plotted more in the model of a shaggy dog story than a sci-fi thriller.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn: A classic text, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the source of a lot of conventional wisdom that was revolutionary in the 70s when it was published. Maybe a bit more tedious that it needs to be.

Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver: I think Barbara Kingsolver is a terrific novelist, and although this book moves quite slow through its paces (and is a bit stressful if you spend your days already thinking about climate change), the payoff towards the end is real. She does a lot, with a lot of heart.

The Mother of All Questions - Rebecca Solnit: Humane, withering, lyrical: Rebecca Solnit is one of the writers I most admire, and this is a really wonderful compilation of some of her best work on feminism, hope and politics.

In Dubious Battle - John Steinbeck: I love John Steinbeck as much as the next left-leaning American, but only up to a point. This is a rough book about Men doing Men Things, full of people named Mac and Doc who do a lot of fighting and dying and it's just not his finest work.

Native Speaker - Chang-rae Lee: I re-read this book for the first time in about 10 years, and found myself coming across passages that had still somehow stuck with me through all that time. I could recommend Native Speaker as one of the best novels about New York City, relationships and language all at once, and its the kind of thing that will bear re-reading again in the future.

Trauma Stewardship - Laura van Dernoot Lipsky: I dunno, this one just didn't work for me. It felt over-broad, attributing so many behaviors and outcomes to trauma to render the concept almost meaningless.

Moby-Dick - Herman Melville: An epic that earns its place in the canon, I gushed wide-eyed about Moby-Dick at strangers for several weeks/months. Chapters on chapters about whaling history, seeming diversions, pile in between portraits of personal and collective madness: so much of this book is not about the White Whale and yet all of it is at the same time.

Direct Action - L. A. Kauffman: Direct Action is deftly written, insightful in its analyses and one of the best practical histories of contemporary organizing I've read. Hugely recommend for anyone trying to get a handle on What to Do Now.

What is Populism? - Jan Werner-Muller: I put this book next to The Shock Doctrine, Hegemony How To and Direct Action as one of the crucial books to read about Trump and the moment we're in. A book that covers the things that really need saying about Populism, but with the good sense to be brief, approachable and clear.

Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay: I am late coming to this book of essays, but I was thoroughly won over from the very start, because Gay has this way with short, direct but vulnerable language that makes her polemical points land with so much more intensity. I can't quite put my finger on it, but her manner of writing is so special, and she uses it to say such necessary things.

Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk: Let's just say this book is an acquired taste: you need some ready familiarity with Istanbul and a lot of patience for detailed personal stories and obscure asides in service of a memoir with a small focus. I quite like Istanbul and admire the literary goals of the book but didn't quite have the patience needed to really enjoy this throughout.

Dune - Frank Herbert: Apparently some people still haven’t read this book? They really should.

The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A book of short stories that are all elegant windows into the lives of people who are coping with distance, displacement and dread. They cover a lot of the thematic territory she addresses in other books, but with little experiments in style and structure that usually work.

Fear City - Kim Phillips-Fine: I've been waiting for years for someone to write the history of the New York City Financial Crisis that we all need, and I just don't think this book is it. It ended up being a sort of surface level history of a handfull elites involved in the crisis that never dove into the depths I hoped for.

Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson: I didn't always care for Larson's potboiler narrative style but I think the 1900 Galveston Hurricane is interesting and important and I'm glad someone wrote a book that lots of people could read about it.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Hakuri Murakami: Since I read this (all at once, on a beach), I've been drifting back to certain points of it that just seem to stick with me. It's only in part a book about running, but also about writing, and I quite like both of those things.

Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson: Apparently there are 8 more books in this series. I'm not going to read them.

A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara: I can't remember the last time I was quite this obsessed with a book, to the point of being driven to read into inappropriate hours of the morning and setting aside other obligations to make time for it. I also can't remember a book so devastating and frustrating to read, that puts its characters and readers through so much trauma and then describe in claustrophobic detail how it curtails their experiences of joy and success. There's nothing like it, and you need to experience it to understand.

The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin: I didn't love this book as much as everyone else I know who has read it. The story is clearly brilliant conceptually, but something about the melodrama in the writing style just kept getting in the way for me.

Radio Free Vermont - Bill McKibben: A Monkeywrench Gang for the modern age, but with less weird macho nonsense, and a better sense of humor.

Waiting - Ha Jin: What I most admired about this book was the ascetic, unadorned language that the author uses to follow a simple but elementally powerful plot line. You do end up waiting a lot as a reader, but there's much to observe as you do.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou: You don't need me to tell you that Maya Angelou knows how to write exceptional sentences. Instead, you should read some of them and learn the real power of a well-placed metaphor, or how you honor the half-formed, overpowering complexity of a child's feelings.

The Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri: I've lost track of how many times I've read these short stories, but they destroy me pretty much every time.

Rules for Revolutionaries - Becky Bond and Zack Exley: There's some useful stuff in here.

The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri: This was the first novel of Jhumpa Lahiri's that I had ever read, and I just don't feel like she was able to stretch her voice -- which is so concise, spare and evocative -- to meet the scale of this novel.

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald: One of the greatest books of all time, a perfect picture of the spiritual depravity of money and consumption.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley: It turns out this book is very little like the pop culture Frankenstein myth -- there is only a glancing mention of dead bodies, the monster is articulate and an almost wholly private terror. Instead it's a nested doll of stories about nature, knowledge and spiritual purpose. Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks: A perfectly fine pulpy space opera. I’ll probably read more of the Culture books at some point.