#the sequel trilogy does not exist for me

[marinamar4]

i think the most unreal thing about the sequel trilogy isn't anything about rey… it's the fact that ben didn't know his grandfather

and i don't mean the fact that he was vader, but that, having proven the existence of force ghosts, i'm 100% sure that anakin would have done the impossible to keep an eye on his only grandson

(and cry to obi-wan for being so good to leia that he even named his son ben. obi-wan keeps an eye on him too, but less, he's dealt with enough skywalkers in life to continue stressing out in death, even if baby ben doesn't do any crazy maneuvers yet)

(i imagine him flying toys and spaceships over baby ben to make him fall asleep, and when he grows up, teaching him mechanics and how to deal with r2-d2 and c3-po)

(leia wouldn't be too happy about that, but hey, she's a free babysitter and she knows how to deal with a sensitive little one. the force. anyway, if anyone can figure out how to shoot a ghost with a blaster, it’s her)

(luke has played mediator more times than he can count between father and sister)

so when snoke starts whispering to ben, well, the kid doesn’t pay much attention. he’s heard enough stories about the dark side from his grandfather anakin and his grandfather obi-wan to believe him blindly

and then the darth vader reveal happens. and the first thing ben does is not demand answers as to why he wasn’t told sooner, but laugh. because he finds it funny that one of the most feared creatures in history is the same one who disappears when his mother gives him a dirty look, who looks like a scolded puppy when his friend tells him something, who runs away from a green goblin so he doesn't hit him with a cane, and seriously, why doesn't anyone believe ben when he says he's seen darth vader's ghost cry during sad moments in romantic holo-movies?

and when snoke insists that his grandfather would want ben to continue his "legacy" of oppression, ben dismisses him and says "yeah, no. all my grandfather wants is for me to continue flying spaceships and fixing droids. oh, and also, the only thing he agrees with my mother on is that I should get a good girlfriend, marry her, and have lots of babies. for something they both agree on, i'm not going to ignore that!

[presbierue]

This is a head canon I have held for so long I have to frequently have to remind myself it’s not real but here we go.

I think Armitage Huxes mother was half Alderaanian, half Arkanian.

Hear me out.

So this head canon was born in the year 2016. I had just watched my 3rd Star Wars movie (TFA) and was desperate to know what would happen next. I had watched Phantom Menace and most of the Clone Wars growing up, so I trusted the consistency of lore across tie-in media (I am the only sci fi fan in my family and relied heavily on what was available on television). And very quickly after TFA I read Bloodline by Claudia Grey and it remains one of my fav Star Wars books. I trusted everything in Bloodline would be used to help define the prequels as it was one of the only canonical post-original trilogy media pieces at the time (it was an optimistic time where I thought they 100% knew exactly where they were going with the sequels).

There are a few short sequences in Bloodline that justify this line of thinking, but they all reinforced the idea that Arkanis and Alderaan have been allied for hundreds of years. It’s like a D plot, but Leia Organa was in line to potentially take over as the figurehead monarch of Birren but turned it down and it went to an Arkanian. This was because Birren was settled by both Arkanis and Alderaan, so either planet could put forward a noble when the current monarch died without children and Leia just happened to be the closest living relative (and Alderaan was gone). But that’s kind of weird, right? Like, Canada and Denmark technically share jurisdiction of Hans Island but no one lives there so there isn’t a division of national allegiances. But either way, it implied Alderaan and Arkanis were on good terms; they didn’t war over control of Birren and shared it to the point that which monarchy takes priority is a matter of who married in last (it is somehow not a conflict of interests in terms of an independent world being influenced by other monarchs). Dual citizenship might have been a thing (loyalty to two or more monarchs). Like yeah, Leia not being eligible for her own throne was a thing but it does imply that if the Organas adopted Luke as well and they never fought the Empire, Luke would be king of Birren.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Arkanis. Armitage Hux’s home world.

So these two worlds functionally had split custody of Birren in terms of who could be constitutional monarch. So both Arkanians and Alderaanians would have probably intermarried and shared cultural knowledge with each other on Birren for hundreds of years. They likely still visit their extended relatives on their progenitor worlds and have good tourism opportunities with each other and have exchange programs for children and stay engaged with each other via things similar to the commonwealth games (all the British Colonies meet up every few years and have their own separate Olympics). Like these worlds probably have a high degree of influence on each other and would ally with the other under duress because their citizens needs are kind of interlinked in this relationship. And when Alderaan is destroyed, the largest remaining communities of Alderaanians would be on Birren and potentially Arkanis. The Empire probably intensified their presence on Birren and Arkanis immediately after Alderaan to prevent the Rebellion from getting a foothold there (too many sympathetic relatives), and may have contributed to why it was so late to leave Arkanis afterwards (they had a stockpile of resources to help suppress any public uprisings so they could fight there longer).

Arkanians also look incredibly human (just super pale skin and hair if you squint at Dagan Gera you can’t even really tell he isn’t human and he is in the canon so Arkanians as a species do exist). So it could be hard to distinguish who is descended from who on these worlds after a few generations.

This isn’t really enough to tell me what Armitage Huxs mother looks like, but it does tell me a little about the kind of worlds she might have grown up in and why a very human looking maid was on Arkanis. Because yeah, Armitage Hux is definitely very human looking (Star Wars genetics are unclear and trait expression is really varied in our world but they don’t have the actor in any makeup for the role so I’m leaning on that). But Arkanis has its own species, so why is a human woman on Arkanis as working as a maid (a role in literature that is usually used to indicate a character is low class/impoverished). Either she didn’t have better options (no access to Alderaan or other wealthy human worlds) or took the position in order to spy on imperial inhabitants of the house (likely for the rebellion or Saw Gerrera). Either way, she probably would have looked like she belonged on Arkanis. She fit the environment she was in enough that it didn’t warrant analysis or note. But also she probably didn’t look alien enough to gross out the Imperials living there.

So Hux’s Mum might be an Arkanian who largely appears Alderaanian. Her parents may be a first or second generation Alderaanian and Arkanian or entirely from Birren. It wouldn’t likely be super apparent based on her appearance alone. The Empire probably wouldn’t super care about the differences either after the destruction of Alderaan. She’d be the worst of both worlds: an alien (the Empire doesn’t like them) and a human traitor (any Alderaanian is likely going to be a rebellion sympathizer by the time Armitage is conscious). If this theory is true, she was probably executed as a traitor, regardless of whether she was a spy or not. It would have been easy for Brendol or Maratelle to have her killed at any time and both of them have reasons to hate her (mistress/mother of a child they see as embarrassing).

I just like the angst it add to Armitage Hux’s character. Because a part of why he builds Starkiller becomes an affirmation of his Imperial/First Order identity: that he IS human, he ISN’T Alderaanian or Arkanian, and that he IS as good if not better than the original Imperials. He DESERVES to lead, to hold power. He isn’t a traitor like his mother who he would have been compared against for his entire childhood. Hell, he probably never met an Alderaanian or Arkanian who wasn’t in objectively horrifying conditions and he would probably would be at least a little terrified of ending up like them (my guess is he would have seen them as prisoners of war towards the end of the Empire). So he aligns extra hard with the Empire.

On a deeper, more subconscious level he’d lack the insight to get into, he probably hate Leia Organa for her role in Alderaans destruction. For her being strong enough to stop the Empire but not save her people (his people, to an extent). For her not being able to stop whatever suffering his mother was (or maybe worse, is still being) subjected to. Hux wants Leia and the New Republic to suffer as much as he’s seen others in his boat suffer. Because Leia is a Nobel who escaped the worst of the war but is the visible link between the Death Star and Alderaan. Yet she escaped starvation. Years of abuse. Losing absolutely everyone (the originals do end on a happy note). And it isn’t fair. Any suffering Armitage Hux causes would be justified in his own mind as an equalization of the horrors he and others have been through.

Also, betraying the First Order because you see an opportunity to reconcile your traumas and complex identity, and that others deserve that as well feels a bit more narratively fulfilling than spite.

[katyspersonal]

Gotta point this out for certain though, SOTE is definitely not the first time Fromsoft was creating the story with the direction of "well we thought it was the final draft, but we then decided to continue it which resulted in a retcon that makes it awkward"! Dark Souls 3 IS this thing too!

Dark Souls 2 pushed very hard for the idea that Drangleic was build on the ruins of countless kingdoms that raised and fell for absurd amount of cycles on the earth where Lordran stood all this time ago! This is why there are so many weapons and sorceries owned by characters from Dark Souls 1 "whose names were long forgotten" and more importantly, this is why "Old Ones" are reincarnations of Gwyn, Nito, Witch of Izalith and Seath! Not the first reincarnations, mind you, as Vendrick also beat them up back in his time! Literally the "How many times do we have to teach you, old man" moment hdhygnm

But, Dark Souls 3 kinda retconned this into a situation where all these magics, objects and legends just mysteriously got washed into Drangleic through all these traveling people, and "names being forgotten" is just a severe case of long distance and lack of communication with their places of origin... all while Anor Londo and Lordran literally still exist this whole time and only very few people had enough braincells to just go there ghthfyh (Aldia to convince Lothric to not be a Melina, Bearer of the Curse for some reasons but they told the world about Lucatiel, Creighton moving in Irithyll and.... fuckin Gilligan to become father to Sulyvahn, it isn't even a joke..)

And it makes the Old Ones + Daughters of Dark really funny because it just makes the original Four Lords and Knuckles Seath still end up in the same place after having somehow traveling away from Lordran despite not being quite themselves anymore. It is like fate. They are always destined to meet again only to be beaten by some human. Red strings of HATE.

And yet, it isn't as if DS2 and DS3 are just two variants that are both sequels to DS1 and you just choose which variant you like more! Dark Souls 3 calls back to Dark Souls 2 too much, DS2 events happened and their aftermath is in DS3 plot. The thing is.. here, Dark Souls 3 existing after all this doesn't make the overall trilogy story bad, but it does make it awkward, and absurd in some places! How everyone "forgotten" people who literally lived overseas and are still remembered there. (And imagine how much more awkward it would be if they DID include Patches in DS2 like they planned to! xD Also more fuel for me to not consider Queen of Lothric to be Gwynevere as to not create a character who ran from her problems twice, from the same problem :p)

I guess my point here is like... Fromsoft just kind of does it, and they might do it again. Dark Souls 2 was developed with the idea in mind that it would be it, every character in it hammers it into your brain, but then Dark Souls 3 happened! And it good that it did, the whole game is a meta commentary on what happens when people don't let the story end! And Elden Ring, by Miyazaki's admission, was created with cropping a lot of lore, plotlines and some characters (like Messmer) from original vision as the game was already too massive... but then they decided to make DLC with those ideas anyways! That likewise created retcons of some ideas that had previously fell into their places very neatly and made stories of Miquella, Malenia, Radahn and Marika flow less conveniently, but! they!! didn't even know at the moment!!! that they'd get to make the DLC!!!

I think they always could just do it again; give their product everything just in case if it flops and sequel/DLC doesn't get made, so the standalone thing feels self-suffucient! Fromsoft just looks like they don't take calculated risks but always act through the prism of "assume it already didn't sell well", and never abandoned this philosophy even while making base Elden Ring! Despite how much their reputation was proceeding them by the time! And honestly, when I understand there is likely pattern, it is hard to be mad at their decisions or how awkward they make the story. Like, yeah, sometimes the "the product made as if it already fropped" and "the surprise sequel/DLC" bits are practically Frankensteined rather than blend harmonically, but that's their thing! It isn't a perfect philosophy of creating their stories, but it is individual, and no company or specific writer could ever be perfect. (I think to truly enjoy someone's unique approach is to accept the sharp, inconvenient bits too rather than trying to "fix" it into perfection, but that's just my perspective on creativity process)

[inquisitor-apologist]

All right guys, since apparently no one gets it: Star Wars has THREE continuities. Each continuity has different rules, interpretations, and canon, and you cannot, CANNOT use evidence from different continuities to support your argument, because those are different timelines. Let me explain:

Continuity 1: High Canon/Lucas Canon

The most Canon of the three Canon continuities, High Canon includes everything that George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, actually worked on. High Canon is absolutely tiny compared to the other two continuities, and it is a part of both of them, since it is foundational and central to the Star Wars universe. All High Canon is Canon, but not all Canon is High Canon. High Canon includes the Original trilogy, the Prequel trilogy, and the Clone Wars. Novelizations (except Revenge of the Sith, as Lucas worked closely with Stover on that one) are not really considered High Canon. Deleted scenes and storylines from TCW and the trilogies are not considered High Canon, since they didn’t make it to screen, but can generally be used to support, inform, and expand pieces of High Canon that did make it to screen.

TLDR: High Canon is everything George Lucas made. It includes TCW, the PT, and the OT, and is Canon to both other continuities.

Continuity 2: Legends Canon/The (old) EU (extended universe)

The largest of the continuities, Legends includes everything outside of High Canon written for the Star Wars universe from the creation of Star Wars to the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm. Everything (not High Canon) created from the 70s to April 25, 2014 is considered Legends. Legends has its own timeline for Star Wars, and has distinctly different interpretations of the characters, worldbuilding, and magic system (The Force) than either High Canon or Disney Canon. While some ideas from Legends might show up in or influence Disney Canon, but all of Legends is decanonized and exists in a separate timeline from Disney Canon. Legends includes the Knights of the Old Republic video games, the original Thrawn Trilogy, the Jedi Apprentice series and many, many others. No new content is being released in the Legends continuity, and I don’t think there are any plans to make more. No, you cannot support your argument about George Lucas’s intentions with the Jedi (or whatever) with Legends material, because Legends is not Canon to Lucas’s Star Wars.

TLDR: Legends is every piece of non-High Canon Star Wars media up to April 25, 2014. It wasn’t made by George Lucas and isn’t canon to Lucas’s Star Wars. Its timeline is distinct from both the Disney Canon and High Canon timelines.

Continuity 3: Disney Canon/Current Canon

The newest of the three continuities, Disney canon is the only one actively being created and added to. It contains all Star Wars material created since April 25, 2014. Disney Canon was created to reboot the Star Wars Extended Universe and create a new timeline. Disney Canon generally tends to stay closer to George Lucas’s intentions and interpretations of Star Wars, but it is no more canon to Lucas than Legends is. Disney Canon’s timeline, worldbuilding, and interpretations of High Canon all exist separately from Lucas’s Star Wars. Disney Canon often takes inspiration and ideas from Legends, but that does not recanonize Legends or anything from it. You cannot support your argument about Rebels (or any other part of Disney Canon) with evidence from Legends, as they exist in separate timelines, with separate characters. (Yes, even if they are the same character. Legends Obi-Wan is different from Disney Obi-Wan and Lucas Obi-Wan. Different timeline, different context, different interpretation.) Disney Canon includes the Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels, The High Republic, and many others.

TLDR: Disney Canon is every piece of Star Wars media made under Disney. It wasn’t made by George Lucas and isn’t canon to Lucas’s Star Wars. Its timeline is distinct from both the Legends and High Canon timelines.

This rant is brought to you by someone supporting their analysis on the Jedi Order in Rebels with Knights of the Old Republic 2. Please don’t do that.

[taradactyls]

The research that went into the Chapter 40 journey from London to Pemberley, as promised. With photos, maps, and a tangent or two!

I wanted to sprinkle in a few names of real places into Elizabeth’s journey, similarly to Pride and Prejudice, but for that I had to do some research. In the book she and the Gardiners take a scenic route further to the west, whereas this needs to be more direct, so I couldn’t copy those references. Unfortunately, we don’t know the way that they returned from Pemberley after Lydia’s elopement, because most of that would be the same (reversed) as what I needed.

So, I set out to find out what would be plausible.

‘Aw, the author did a little bit of research, that’s nice,’ you might think.

No. I did an excessive amount of research. Of the ‘it has consumed my entire soul and I need to know this information even though it’s barely relevant’ variety. When the toddlers went to bed and I was too tired to write, I did this. For weeks. It was basically the only time I could devote to this story, as the illnesses going around prevented me having time to actually write.

For context, I had ZERO background knowledge on this topic, and my first google search was to find out where Derbyshire is in relation to London.

Luckily, there was a road that seemed the most obvious direct route! But, following it closely to see what was nearby, I saw it avoided most of the villages; which is the exact opposite of what horse drawn carriages (which need to rest and water the horses, or switch them out entirely) would do. Sure enough, the M1 is a 20th Century road. So, then I went down the rabbit hole of seeing if the A5 or anything like that has older roots (it does) but after some more research into 18/19th C roads I realised I should be looking for turnpike roads/Post roads. Whichhhhh don’t exist in that form anymore.

And that’s where the fun began.

Warning, for a VERY long post.

FINDING THE RIGHT TURNPIKE ROADS

I couldn’t find an online list of which modern roads used to be turnpike roads, because it turns out they were managed in sections by turnpike trusts. And so, one half of a road might not be one and then the other half would but perhaps broken up into three different sections managed by different trusts (or the same trust but still separately, because local management was easier, I imagine).

I mostly wanted maps though, so that wasn’t a problem. Then I started searching for maps… and searching… and searching…

Basically, I looked at a lot and met a lot of dead ends but I’ll share some of the stuff that was useful.

I found a source which is all about research into turnpike roads and has an 1830 map.

But the map doesn’t have much detail so I can’t really tell much. Still, if you want to learn about turnpike roads have a look. I tried to compare it to other maps to see if I could figure out where those roads were but it just wasn’t detailed enough for me to be sure.

Then I found this old map of English towns and roads:

Which is comprehensive and amazing except for being blurry as anything when you zoom in, but does help give me a basic idea of what existed (though doesn’t specify turnpike vs … normal? roads). And I was able to track basic paths and use other maps and google maps to help me actually read the names of places. But It’s absolutely going on my wish list (along with that map of 1804 London I’ve linked before) of things I would like to have full sized posters for if I ever have space for a study. If I start writing regency novels as an actual occupation (around when I started this fic I also began planning a P&P sequel trilogy – though something tells me this fic might end up with nearly as many words as the whole trilogy combined) I shall insist I need the maps for work.

Anyway,

I eventually stumbled onto the pot of gold!!! Maps for each county with the roads and towns clearly marked! The dates are not all there, so I can’t say it’s 100% accurate, but it feels better than my other options.

(Not posting individual images of each county because you’ll see them altogether later, but I do recommend checking them out if you find this interesting, there’s places mentioned there that get omitted in bigger maps.)

I cross referenced with this map:

To double check they’re post roads (aka they had stops every 10 miles or so to switch out horses, and I did my best to find villages that had post houses or coaching inns).

Of course, those detailed images of counties are all separate, and for my own sanity I need to see how they link up. Going back to google maps to see what counties I would need I pretty quickly noticed discrepancies between the map borders and google maps. Turns out the counties changed in 1974. So, I had to go find an old map of British counties. That was the easiest part of my research, and I used this one:

Using that, I decided to print out, with a view of physically sticking them together: Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Rutland, Staffordshire, and finally Derbyshire. Because when the map you want doesn’t exist, sometimes you just have to collage together your own.

THEN, of course, it was brought forcibly to my awareness when I tried to make the different borders align, that old maps often have inaccuracies.

There were little knobbly protruding bits of counties that were claimed by both neighbours in their individual maps, and random gaps which weren’t claimed by any. Counties were too long or too wide and sometimes too just entirely distorted to make the borders fit together as they should, and then the alignment of the roads would sometimes not match the alignment of the physical characteristics and it would get even messier.

I gave up on that idea less than halfway through cutting and sticky taping them together.

But all was not lost! Husband has a photoshop account through his work! I have a very basic understanding of photoshop thanks to taking graphics in high school, another one-off lesson for a Communications elective at uni, and then experience with similar programs for digital art. My confidence thus knew no bounds and I was certain I could photoshop a suitable map together in 30mins or so!

I was half right: I absolutely made the map, but it took me a few hours one night and I went to bed late.

We must all suffer for our craft, and sometimes my craft is niche research that I refuse to simplify BECAUSE I’VE COME TOO FAR TO GIVE UP NOW AND I WILL NOT ACKNOWLEDGE SUNK COSTS FALLACY TODAY!

Here is my beauty:

(You can see I didn’t care about all the dates and names of the turnpikes, but if you do, definitely click the link above which has the counties individually. It also gives you an idea of just how the same road could be divided into multiple trusts.)

I had to warp and stretch some counties pretty drastically to make them jig-saw together enough to be useable, and when clashes between making the roads or the borders line up I prioritised the roads. Seeing them aligned was the whole point of this, after all, but if you look closely, you can see some weird spots between counties where there’s a void or overlap from not quite matching up properly.

I printed this off and did some highlighting of potential routes from London to Derby, which I figured they would probably pass through on the way to Pemberley (more on that later). I ended up with a few slight variations which are all, to the best of my knowledge, feasible options. There seemed to be mostly an obvious route with options for variation, which I labelled option a, option b, etc. (this will help you understand my notes later). If road quality, or inn quality, etc., would create a decided favourite in late winter of 1812 nothing had popped up in my research and, honestly, did I really want to open that can of worms after all the hassle just to get to this point?

I then took my highlighted routes, and kept the individual maps of the counties, and the really huge complete one of Great Britain, up on my computer so I could zoom in for greater detail, and went to Google maps. I had to do a lot of cross-referencing with the various old maps with google maps so I could figure out which roads I were meant to be following, since not only have their names often changed but the settlements along the way have considerably changed in shape too. I felt a little bit like I was doing forensic work to identify what in the old maps lined up with the modern day, especially in places like Leicester which have grown so much larger in the 200+ years since. It was very satisfying when I was able to find the roads I needed.

There were three things I determined would decide which route I went with:

Was there a village (and better yet, evidence of a coaching inn) every 10-15 miles?

Did this route remain consistent with Pemberley being 150 miles from London?

Does it have interesting places I can mention in the narrative?

I started with the first two, since they were the options which could veto pathways or mark them for further research. I figured that out by going onto google maps and using the measuring tool, and then jotting down my notes in a word document. This is what one optional path from that research looks like:

Route a)

Edgeware 9 miles

Stanmore 10-11 miles

Watford 16 miles

St Albans is 22 miles

Redbourn 27

Flamstead 30

Markyate 31

Dunstable 34-36

Hockcliffe 39 miles

a)d)

Woburn 44

Woburn Sands

Newport Pagnell 53 miles

Stoke Goldington 57

Horton 61 miles

Hackleton 62

Northampton 67 miles

a)d)e)

Chapel Brampton 72 miles

Spratton 75

Creaton 76

Thornby 79

Welford 82 miles

Husbands Bosworth 85 miles

Arnesby 91 miles

Leicester 100 miles

To Derby following a)d)e)

Mountsorrel 106 miles

Quorndon (Quorn now) 108 miles

Loughborough 110 miles

Hathern 113

Kegworth 117 miles

River Trent 120 miles (actual river, and means definitively in Derbyshire)

Shardlow 121 miles

Derby 127

I fairly quickly learn that pretty much every option I had drawn on the map could work with both the distance and requirement to change horses, so I definitely would not declare that the route I ended up choosing is *the* route Mr Darcy would travel up to Pemberley on. My choice came down to what locations I thought were cool and useful.

As a side note: during this plotting of the miles on the map and keeping track of every 10-12 miles, I was initially very surprised by something.

Without fail, no matter how blank the countryside had been, there would be a village or larger town there. It really made me realise for the first time just how much English settlements along throughfares grew because of the needs of horses. It makes total sense, travel times stayed largely the same and reliant on horses or feet for thousands of years until trains, but it never occurred to me. It’s so entirely different to my own city, Brisbane (yes, the one from Bluey).

With Australia being such a recently colonised country the permanent British settlement that became Brisbane wouldn’t even come into being for more than a decade after the events of Pride and Prejudice. It would be decades more until the penal colony became big enough to warrant a proper name and municipality. Even Australia only officially became a country instead of a colony in 1901. As the best way to reach Brisbane from the other colonies (like Sydney) was by boat, consideration for horses travelling really hasn’t dictated much here. Instead of different settlements within (at least) about 10 miles of another we ended up with basically one settlement surrounded by vast amounts of farmland and nothing else the settlers considered civilisation (we all know how native peoples were viewed by colonising nations).

The fact that we didn’t have another settlement 10 miles (or really, at all,) nearby meant that that extensive farmland ended up being included as part of the Brisbane city border – which is why area-wise Brisbane is the third largest city in the world despite our population not even getting to three million. Even without traffic I could easily drive for an hour in one direction from my home and still be within Brisbane.

Looking at all these tiny English villages so reliably spaced just feels like a whole different planet to me. And crossing so many shires! From Brisbane to the top of Queensland (our state) is a 31-hour drive along direct highway. Which, for context for my American and European readers, Google Maps says is the same driving time (not distance) as London to Greece, or New York to Montana. Size wise, Queensland (which is our 2nd largest state) is 215 times the size of North Yorkshire, more than 3 times larger than France, over 100,000km2 larger than Alaska, and more than 2.6 times larger than Texas. I’ve never before really understood that Australia (and parts of the USA) don’t adhere to the old rules of human settlements and travel because our cities are crazy new.

Well, now we all know. Back to the research.

With a focus on information about the actual places near my potential routes, I returned to google maps, zoomed in real, real close, still using the measuring tool so I could keep track of every 10-15 miles, and noted every landmark and village that popped up. I was then doing lots of googling and searching Wikipedia to discover what I could about each location so I could figure out which one I preferred to use. I learnt a lot, particularly that English villages are very proud of how many Indian restaurants they have and often list it on their Wikipedia page, but I only recorded the bits I felt might be relevant to the story. Here’s an exert of my notes with that research when added to the distances:

Day 1 (more exploring allowed)

Edgeware 9 miles

Stanmore 10-11 miles

Watford 16 miles

St Albans is 22 miles

Lizzy seen before. Casually mention St Michael’s church and the ruins

They then follow the old roman road of Watling Street (to Hockcliffe?)

Redbourn 27

(important coaching station – ‘Owing to its proximity to London, Redbourn became an important coaching station in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it was known as the "Street of Inns", with at least 25 pubs and inns at its peak.’)

Talk about stopping for a meal here? Mention Dunstable might serve better, for it has the chalk escarpments?

Flamstead 30

Markyate 31

Markyate's position on Watling Street made it a coaching stop on the stagecoach routes from London to Birmingham and Holyhead, especially after the road was upgraded by Thomas Telford in the early 1800s, when it became known as the Holyhead Road. At one point Markyate had over forty inns and public houses along the main road.

Dunstable 34-36

has chalk escarpments (Chilton Hills/Dunstable Downs)

with barrows!! (though maybe too far south?)

Highest point in Bedfordshire (at the time? Pre changed borders?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstable_Downs

market town

priory

very ancient façade

where Henry VIII’s annulment from Catherine was delared

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstable_Priory

They think they might as well explore here a long time because there is nothing more exciting awaiting them in their final two stops for the day

Hockcliffe 39 miles (where they leave Watling Road?)

Woburn 44

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Bedfordshire

Near Woburn Abbey (Family seat of the Duke of Bedford) Darcy could show no inclination to see it – though Elizabeth knows she might have if she were travelling with others. As she does not much mind seeing stately homes she does not care. Could tease him about whether he’s worried that a duke’s home will make his own seem unimpressive? Mention his uncle doesn’t like John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford due to clashing in the past in the house of Lords

During the English Civil War, the Cavaliers burned down much of the town and in 1724 a third fire destroyed much of the town, which was rebuilt in the Georgian style that remains today

 important staging post on the London–Newport Pagnell–Northampton turnpike. The town had 27 inns and the first 24-hour post office outside London. 

Bolded locations are where I theorised made the most sense to change the horses. I did this more casual research for multiple places, and then once I’d decided which was the most enticing for me, I had my turnpike roads from London to Derbyshire. Now I had to make it interesting.

THE LOCATIONS I CHOSE TO SHOW

First, I did the whole confirmed route again in google maps with more in-depth research. This involved a lot of google street view, as well as finding local webpages for villages and the more historical buildings. I have now virtually driven through dozens of little villages and I CANNOT believe how much history and prettiness is just right there as part of everyday life??? Australia doesn’t have history like that in our random small towns or big cities (the ancient sites we do have from 60,000+ years of aboriginal Australians living here weren’t the sort the settlers would respect or even noticed in many cases during colonisation). We have amazing things that I have travelled to see, don’t get me wrong, but of a different sort than still-habited buildings and not so ingrained into our ‘normal.’

Luckily for me the English are very proud of their buildings and natural sites and this bit of research was really easy and straightforward. I’ll just show you the locations I focused on in chapter 40 (and very slight spoilers for the start of 41, too). Everything I talk about is real (though the great house with a drive straight off the village road I mention in passing no longer survives, and other things look different), so if you want to explore the places mentioned in the fic but I don’t show here, google maps and Wikipedia will help you get started. In the order that Elizabeth and Mr Darcy explored them, we have:

The Dunstable Priory

This is exactly the view of the building that I imagine they had during their conversation about the history and impressiveness of a place. It really is VERY grand.

Other views of it:

The interior has changed since the 1800s a little, but the bones of the building are the same.

The Dunstable Downs

Those are the sorts of street view photos that made me want to use it; but honestly, I don’t think I can possibly show you enough to do it justice. See what I mean?

I like hills, and that’s a good one.

The Wikipedia page has cool information about it if you want a starting point for learning more about the barrows or stuff I didn't mention.

Hardingstone Eleanor Cross

The research told me it looked a little different in the early 1800s, which is why this photo doesn’t have the Malta Cross I mention in the chapter.

Highgate House, Creaton

That’s the view from the road, on the left is where carriages would enter and that’s the front courtyard Elizabeth walked in.

And there’s the south side of the house, with the more impressive architecture that Elizabeth mentions.

Unfortunately, it’s raining in the street view photos, so you can’t see any of the countryside that Elizabeth was looking at when Mr Darcy found her, but here’s what the view of the same is from one of those upper story windows she ponders about:

Minor Places Elizabeth Sees (in chapters 40 or 41) that I Liked

The Glimpse Elizabeth got of the Newarke Gateway:

The Cavendish Bridge as I believe it was at the time (it’s been replaced twice since):

The view of the Derwent from the centre of (the then, very new) Duffield Bridge:

St Aulkmunds Church, Duffield:

Black Rocks, which Elizabeth only saw from the road but here’s the view anyway:

At the end of all that exploring as I travelled the route I ended up with google maps looking like this:

Each of those little circles is a mark I made on the map, because I really wanted the distance to check out. And honestly, I was pretty pleased at this point. It took a lot of unexpected effort to get here, but in the end I did it, and the locations and distances worked out SO satisfyingly for me. Not that it’d be noticeably different if it didn’t, but I know.

It was great to see I was following fairly closely the path of the Eleanor crosses, because it confirmed the route I chose had historical basis. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing glaringly implausible about this being a pathway that Mr Darcy might use and thus the sights that might be seen along the way.

Of course, it’s very possibly not what Jane Austen (or someone actually living in 1812 England who has more baseline knowledge of this than me) would do. I’m confident that I did my best, but not confident that my understanding of this subject is good enough to have made me come to the right conclusions. But I am writing fiction, not history, so this level of research is sufficient for me to go on.

But now that I’ve gotten to Derbyshire, I’ve realised it’s a very big place. Derby is ‘only’ about 127 miles from London, Pemberley is 150, that’s a lot of distance that is unaccounted for.

Where would Pemberley be, based on the book’s clues and the distances possible with the research I just did?

FINDING PEMBERLEY

So, Firstly, I want to make it clear that I don’t think we will ever be able to point to a place on a map, say ‘this is where Pemberley is’ and have it work perfectly with both the book and the real world. Nor with any of the other locations which aren’t preexisting real places. As grounded in reality as Austen’s works are, they are still works of fiction, and I keep that in mind when applying real-world nuance to the locations, distances, and finances mentioned. I also generally don’t want to mess with headcanons too much, nor stray into territory where glaring errors can be made, as well as honouring that Jane Austen liked to keep locations vague.

That’s all why (in chapter 41, so very mild spoilers) I only definitively mention Duffield (5 miles North of Derby) for that last leg of the journey. Even that Black Rocks Promontory I showed you above is vaguely enough mentioned to be elsewhere. I’m happy for Pemberley to live as a place of suspended reality in my mind, but for the sake of this research I wanted to define a specific patch of Derbyshire which I would use as a vague location in my fic. Also, when it comes to research, I Have A Problem and I justified it in this case by wanting to know what was plausible just in case the only places it could be were in the south-west or north-east of Derbyshire and that might alter the pathway. This was done at the same time as a lot of the other research, but that would’ve gotten too messy to explain so I chose to detail it all here instead of interspersing it.

But how exactly to pinpoint likely locations?

Note: I am sure this is going to overlap with research others have done before me, but I have my own goals (for setting it somewhere for a fic) so I stayed away from other reasonings as I might value things differently. I’ve got to do this myself.

Luckily, Elizabeth mentions “before we left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately expected in the country,” (Ch. 43) so we can assume the village they discover that in, and depart from the following morning before soon reaching Pemberley and then going on to Lambton, is Bakewell. A real location!!! It’s about 22 miles north of Duffield (which checks out with the distances already measured) and puts us firmly in the peak district.

It's also just to the south-west of Chatsworth, which I calculate to be barely over 150 miles from London. Adding more credence in my mind to the idea that Jane Austen used it as her true idea of Pemberley – even though the real thing also exists in the book. But though it might be her base for Pemberley I’m not about to replace a very well known and book-canon location (though feel free to continue imagining it to be so, I don’t contradict the possibility, I even looked at Chatsworth floorplans for inspiration for describing Pemberley’s interiors) so I’m going to find what else might work.

Now, from what I could tell, Bakewell isn’t included in the modern-day ‘Chatsworth Core Estate’ (see the map on page 46).

It might not have been the case two centuries ago, but I’m going to presume it hasn’t changed, so basically, I can pick anywhere from the north-west, sweeping down west and south, until the south-east, safely without infringing upon Chatsworth. All the other, lesser-known landowners of the era we shall pretend don’t exist. I’m more going for a general area, anyway.

The Gardiners were likely travelling with considerable economy, and not changing horses every hour, so Pemberley can’t be a far distance away from there (if we want to mirror Chatsworth, 4-5 miles is best). We don’t know when they left Bakewell or arrived at Pemberley but it seems likely it was fairly early in the day, given how much time they spent there and then still drove on Lambton afterwards. So, we can look at places that are within a few hours journey from Bakewell for the Gardiners (let’s say 20 miles as an absolute maximum) and cross reference that with what is about 150 miles from London.

A brief note on the ‘150 miles’ number – the way I round numbers makes me think this is anywhere between 145-154 miles, but Jane Austen does seem to work in quarters rather than tenths, (approximately 25 miles from Meryton to London, 50 from Meryton to Rosings, 125 from Meryton to Pemberley, etc) so it might be fairer to say the distance from London is too much to be called 125 miles, but too little to be called 175. Which, assuming normal rounding of numbers, is 137-188 miles from London. For this estimation, I’m going to be sticking closer to my initial, tighter, understanding; but the possibility of the distances being broader than I interpret is worth mentioning.

Given all of those considerations, here is the area that I chose for Pemberley to be set within for the fic:

The Blue highlighted area is a general area that I think Pemberley House could be situated in, and probably Lambton too. The Estate itself can stretch beyond the borders, this is only for the house/park.

Bakewell is just above that section, and I’ve highlighted the other places mentioned in Pride and Prejudice as being part of the Northern Tour. White peak being the only option for ‘the Peak’ as far as I know. Fun fact: in my version of Pride and Prejudice (Penguins Classics 2003), and another online copy I used, Jane Austen has a spelling/consistency error by saying ‘Dovedale’ first and then ‘Dove Dale’ soon after. It’s a little comforting for me whenever I see that even my favourite author makes mistakes she misses despite all her reviews and rereads.

Anyway, there is a bit of a conflict for me with this location (as well as the location of Chatsworth, and any other places around 150 miles from London and still in the Peak District) when we take into account that Elizabeth and the Gardiners saw those highlighted places before going to Bakewell. It seems a very circuitous route, whatever order those sights are seen in. The best I can imagine is that it goes Dovedale (which I think should always be first, given the places we know they visit on their way to Derbyshire), then a more southern, partially unseen on that image, road to Matlock, followed by Chatsworth, the Peak, and turning around there and going back to Bakewell via a different road.

If Elizabeth’s trip to Derbyshire was based on the real travels of Austen or someone she knew, I don’t have knowledge of it. So, if there is a definitive pathway that’s agreed she intended to be followed that could change my deductions.

But as it is, with what I presume in mind, we might even be able to narrow down that blue area more, ruling out the most south-easterly portion because otherwise why wouldn’t they have seen Pemberley on their way to Matlock? If we were really looking for other ways to narrow it down, we might say that Dovedale and Matlock, which Elizabeth and Mr Darcy discuss at Pemberley, were the chosen subjects because they’re quite close to the house, and so that might place it in the south or south-west section of that blue area. I don’t think the latter concern does mean much: Chatsworth is also very close by but not discussed; and if Chatsworth itself is Austen’s location for Pemberley, then neither of those places are closer than the peak so the topics can’t be based on proximity. Perhaps they’re just what was seen most recently (implying an odd pathing of the Peak, Chatsworth, Matlock, Dovedale, and then way back up to Bakewell); or, as I think most likely, just mentioned to give vague specifics of the conversation and the locations chosen randomly out of all those that could be said.

And there we are.

I have a basic location for Pemberley and the journey thither that works for my fic and matches the book and the real-world as much as my knowledge of distances and turnpike roads allows. It’s not relevant enough for it to matter if you veto this idea and instil your own headcanon for Pemberley as you’re reading the fic, I certainly leave it open enough for other interpretations. But I did the research, and I must share it, because it took a lot of pain and effort to get to this point.

Thank you for sticking with me until the end, I hope you found it all interesting!

[extremely-judgemental]

Even when I don’t like an artist’s works, I have respect for them for their discipline and dedication to the craft. But that’s hard to muster for SJM. I was told one of her favourites is Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewels series which could have been an influence for the vivid and unnecessary violence in her plots. I haven’t read those books and so I googled it.

One of the major character is Lucivar Yaslana who is Half-Hayllian/Half-Eyrien which sounds suspiciously close to Illyrian. And in fanart, he is depicted with (surprise surprise) bat like wings which are uncannily like the Illyrian wings, and mind you, the first book in this series came out in 1998.

Going through the plot in wiki, there are a lot of names or titles that are similar to the ones in ACOTAR. Prythian. High Priestess. Whore/Consort. Dark Court and First Circle. One of the books’ title is Dreams Made Flesh, and that instantly reminded me of the Made weapons and the phrases often associated with them but that could be nothing. Even the male lead Daemon has quite similar experiences as Rhysand.

Since I don't have much authority in this case to call out SJM or her books, here are some from people who have read both series.

This on Reddit listing the obvious parallels between the two.

And this from @alexcollix7 is by far the best and detailed post I could find on this topic where they address all three series.

I would love for the SJM fans who think she invented commonly used genre conventions to read the Black Jewels trilogy and tell me Cassian isn't a direct result of Lucivar existing (or Rhys and Daemon, for that matter).

By author Katee Robert although she said this in favour of authors reimagining tropes.

Black Jewels is explicitly dark fantasy and deals with and normalises strong themes such as abuse and sex slavery to name a few. It explains why abuse is romanticised in ACOTAR as well since SJM seems to have copied so much from these books. Given the initial drafts of the sequels were scraped off after TAR received much appreciation, there’s no excuse that this was only a fanfic that developed into an original series. Though the plot development and most characters like Tamlin are her own, some key plot points or motivations leading up to it might not be. Her books are applauded as original and unparalleled fantasy of this age by many young readers but the foundations of her world-building heavily imitates Bishop’s own.

A quick google search proves Maas is more popular than Bishop, so is ACOTAR over the Black Jewel series, and maybe it’s the reason why not many are talking about this. Drawing inspiration from real world and existing art or paying homage to one’s favourites is understandable and healthy but what SJM does seems dangerously like rip off.

Thank you @thrumbolt for giving me new reason to hate her.

[rocrown]

One reason the books in the Millennium series following the original trilogy don’t work for me is because I don’t feel like David Lagercrantz hates misogynists and fascists enough.

He very well may really hate them but it doesn’t come through in his writing the way it did with Larsson.

Stieg Larsson’s loathing was so explicit and so immense that I knew more than anything he really really despised misogynists and fascists. And the sequels lack that. They get bogged down in techno thriller and lame Marvel references and making Lisbeth a more palatable heroine, which misses the point for me.

Lisbeth is rage manifest: against a misogynistic and fascist society, its systems and institutions. She does the work she wants. She follows a rigid moral code of her own. She dresses how she wants. Goes where she wants. Associates with who she wants. Fucks who she wants. And if people don’t like that she dresses like a goth, hangs out with communists, is bisexual, is an abrasive unfriendly unsmiling woman, and punishes those who deserve it, well that’s too bad. She is rebellion against misogynistic conventions and expectations. She exists despite the fascists in her own government. And she hates them all. She is a storm Larsson set loose on his fictional but very real enemies. She is the embodiment of his hatred, made manifest to destroy and seek retribution in fiction in ways women like her rarely get to in real life.

I don’t get that from the other books. They’re too interested in the cyber aspects and too plot focused. They’re conventional thrillers and that’s where they fail. I didn’t want a conventional thriller with the characters from the Millennium trilogy because they lacks the soul. The beating heart of Millennium. It’s about justice—a righteous and furious justice, a kind of wish fulfilment in which women best their abusers and defy misogyny, and our heroes defeat fascists within their neoliberal governments.

Lagercrantz likely did what was asked of him. He wrote a thriller continuing the stories of these characters. You can’t fault him for that especially with the rising popularity of the series. He met the brief. It’s broader and the rougher edges filed off. In that way they were successful. But in doing so they lacked the character and tone of the originals. You could hear Larsson screaming Fuck You to misogynists and fascists on every page, just as abrasive and blunt as Lisbeth. That’s missing. And it’s a shame.

[lastoneout]

As someone who's curious about star trek: where would you recommend I start? It's a lil overwhelming, but yall seem to be having fun!

Oh lord that is the question isn't it. Honestly the real answer is anywhere, while all of the shows take place in the same universe aside from Picard and Lower Decks they don't really require a huge amount of knowledge about any other series(and hell if you don't mind not getting some references and enjoy raunchy comedy with a heart of gold shining within it Lower Decks is a really fun time), they really do all stand on their own and even ones that are prequels or continuations like Prodigy and Strange New Worlds are pretty self contained.

Personally though(and people will likely kill me for this but whatever) I started with the 2009 Star Trek film and I legit do think it does a really good job of getting a new audience the info they need on how the universe works and who some of the big characters in The Original Series are while also being fun and accessible and, crucially, not a huge time sink. I think a LOT of people get intimidated out of Trek because most of the shows are long as fuck and while I say this with love...not all of them hit the ground running. So yeah, it's snappy, it's exciting, it preserves whats important, and it's basically designed as an entry point, so it's worth a watch. And I'm just a huge sucker for Chris Pine, his Kirk is a bit more openly feral than the original and I honestly love that for him <3

However!! I would NOT recommend watching the other two films, Into Darkness and Beyond, right away. Star Trek '09 is essentially an AU of the Original Series so the story is unique, but Into Darkness is just a remix of The Wrath of Khan and NOT A GOOD ONE at that! Plus it's just...kinda dark and miserable and deviates heavily from the established feel of Star Trek that every other show managed to hold onto, which sucks. If you really wanna watch Beyond you can, and you genuinely should at some point regardless, it also is an original story that stands on it's own and to be honest is the best film of the trilogy and one of my favorite Star Trek anythings ever. It's got all the good Trek energy from the original shows while still keeping it's own identity and that's a joy to watch. So yeah, if you start with '09 I would recommend diving into a show before continuing. And maybe just not watching Into Darkness at all. It's bad.

Now, if you are a fan of animated shows for older kids like Avatar The Last Airbender, Star Trek Prodigy is genuinely a GREAT entry point. It is technically a sequel to Voyager but it is also it's own story with new main characters and it's legit meant as a way to get kids into Star Trek for the first time so it's very accessible while still being engaging and unique, and they explain stuff very clearly in a way that never feels patronizing or like it's talking down to the viewers. I legit got tear-y eyed watching the scene where they explain Starfleet just because I'm so glad it exists to welcom people in to a world I love so dearly. That and it's also SO good like I cannot stress enough this show fucking rules. It even has a nonbinary character in the main cast who I adore!! I love the animation and the whole cast and the story and just ough 100/10 for sure. I would even say for people who prefer ATLA style shows over big sci-fi/action films this is the better start than '09, so it's up to you.

Moving on, as much as I love it I'm not entirely sure if I'd recommend The Next Generation as a starting point, if only because the first two seasons are REALLY rough. Like they def have some good episodes, one of my faves of the whole series is in season 2, but it's clear the show needed a couple of seasons to figure itself out before it really took off. I personally did watch TNG after Star Trek '09, but I have a very high threshold for...weird and kinda bad sci-fi so idk, take that as you will. I was willing to buckle down and get through the weird because I knew how good it was going to get, but that's just me. However, I will say once TNG gets it's legs under it there is no looking back, it gets SO good that basically all Trek shows that came after it up until very recently have been living in it's shadow for better or worse. It does ofc have some issues with racism and misogyny and other isms that are clearly due to it coming out in the 80s, but it's also incredibly progressive for not only it's time but often times ours, and overall it's a phenomenal show that is absolutely worth watching and was a lot of people's introductions to Star Trek, so it's a decent start if you don't mind dealing with some weird energy at the start.

As for Voyager, I won't lie, I fucking love it! It's also fairly self-contained, it doesn't even take place in the same part of the universe as the rest of the shows aside from Prodigy and so you don't need a lot of series knowledge to follow it. It is one of the...campier shows, def gets weird as hell at some points but it's got this wonderful spirit at the core of it that imo it always seems to find it's way back to. It is sadly a product of it's time, however, and the first officer Chakotay, while certainly not the worst Native American rep I've seen, certainly isn't the best either. I've heard Prodigy does a very good job at correcting this, but Prodigy came out like 25 years after Voyager so yeah, it is something to keep in mind if that's gonna be a deal-breaker for you. The show does at least let him be a person outside of The Problematic Bit and I appreciate that, it gives him room to shine without the baggage of writers who have no clue what they're doing weighing him down and thus he's genuinely a really great character and probably one of the best first officers in all of Trek, and again I have seen FAR worse bad rep.

Aside from that while it does get weird in it's own bad sci-fi way, all of Trek is weird in that way sometimes, and anyone who says otherwise has no clue what they're talking about. I really enjoyed Voyager, I like it more than The Next Generation for sure and is a better jumping on point than it as well. It does reference a lot of stuff from TNG though and some characters do make a reappearance, but again it's really not that hard to get the gist as the show is more than willing to explain itself. Also it had the first female captain and truly Janeway is peak I would die for her, and the opening theme makes me feel shrimp emotions.

As much as I love Lower Decks I would not recommend it as a starter show, it's very referential and it has some Pretty Bad Episodes, the end of season 2 is dead to me, and it's also an adult comedy so if that's not your vibe you won't enjoy it. I do think it's a wonderful show but yeah, def targeted at adult fans who like some vulgarity(Trek isn't exactly a kids show but it does try to stay away from swearing and sex jokes and the like) and already enjoy Star Trek. Great show, got some rocky bits for sure, and maybe not the best start for someone new. Interestingly tho I do think out of the shows I've seen it does have the BEST first season of any Trek show. It really hits the ground running and the finale is like up there with Holes in terms of a perfectly tied together narrative. Def great to see!

As for the other shows....I sadly can't say because I haven't watched them yet. I know Deep Space Nine is regarded as one of the best Trek shows overall for too many reasons to list, The Original Series has been one of the longest lasting active fandoms in all of history and is beloved by most fans(I'm really excited to watch it) for both it's depth and it's campy nonsense as well as the insane gay energy going on between Kirk and Spock and you should watch it at some point, I hear Discovery had it's own rocky start but has had fans going to bat for it for years, and Enterprise has a rep for being mid but also to this day has fans who swear more people would love it if they were willing to give it a fair shot(plus Beyond pulls from it heavily which is awesome!), and while I've heard mixed things about Strange New Worlds it also seems to be a pretty well regarded entry point and a lot of people genuinely adore it, and it's nice to see some attention get paid to TOS inspired stuff rather than everything being oops all TNG for so long.

And Picard exists. For better or worse. Maybe worse I've heard. Im not interested in watching it because I genuinely do think Trek needs to get OUT of the shadow of TNG for it's own good at this point but that's just me. Def one that should be watched AFTER The Next Generation though as it's a direct sequel and you probably won't get anything that's going on without that context.

Anyway sorry for the essay it is now 3am and I am an idiot I just LOVE Star Trek more than I could possibly ever say and overall aside from Lower Decks and Picard(and Into Darkness I am sorry I truly hate that film to an perhaps unhealthy degree) you really cannot go wrong with your starter. Also I fully welcome anyone who has seen the other shows to chime in here! I wish I could speak to them but there really is so much Star Trek and only so many hours in a day. I hope this helped though, and I wish you luck!!

(Also sorry if I dissed on anyone's faves this is my opinion ofc everyone is going to like different things and I know plenty of people enjoy the stuff I can't stand. There's a show for everyone in here and we won't always agree, but overall I think it's best to just live and let live, especially given the rare but vocal assholes who swear anything made after DS9 is bad. They are idiots and I will attack them on sight.)

[maxwell-grant]

Thoughts on The Penguin trailer?

This one has a more generic mob show vibe out of the ones we've seen so far, and I'm not gonna lie a part of me is still skeptical regarding it, but the emphasis on post-flood broken Gotham besieged by a crime family fighting for the scraps of the kingdom kept me piqued, and then the words "Post-Apocalyptic Sopranos" crossed my mind in the elevator and oh Yes, Ha Ha Yes

It's one thing for a show about mob power struggles and troubled dynamics to happen in a regular society where they exert power and there are structures in place to abide to, it's another thing entirely for said mob power struggles and troubled dynamics to be happening in the wrecked ruins of a city in the process of rebuilding all of it's structures and for said mob to be simultaneously on free-fall and poised for new beginnings as the world itself is changing (if anything Tony Soprano wishes he could be living like this, with more carte blanche to cut through his stresses with a machine gun every now and then)

It's a decent shake-up on a crime show formula even on it's own, without factoring that oh yeah this is Gotham City and said destruction was caused by a nerd obsessed with riddles and all of these mobsters will have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives in case the freak in power armor decides to show up and suplex them into the pavement, and things are only going to get worse and weirder from here on out.

Clancy Brown once again showing up to play the Final Boss / All-Father / Divine Judge of organized villainy, we love to see it, it's what he does and he does it better than anyone. Here breathing a whole new life and power and significance into the other major throwaway Gotham gangster.

What I'm interested in regarding Sofia and the Falcones in general is that they've said several times in the past that Oz is modeled after Fredo Corleone, and this trailer goes out of it's way to paint Sofia as the Michael with direct references. For the contrast between Penguin and the actual gangsters to exist, for this to explore the divide and collapse on regular crime vs super crime that the movie kicked off, this thing needs a standard Prestige TV Crime Show protagonist to work, and that seems to be Sofia, the protagonist of a story, just not this one.

The trailer's placing a big emphasis on Oswald as a guy who's still a long way from the top, contrasting with Sofia holding what's left of the reigns of power. Sofia stares at political protestors behind windows and attends fancy dinner conversations and dwells on the scars of her past and makes threats on how she's been pushed aside too long and it's her turn now, and Oz is out there in the ruins hauling corpses and mentoring an understudy and getting into machine gun fights and doing all the grunt work himself.

She gets the dramatic close-door boss shot, and the trailer ends with her cornering Oswald and leaning in real close to tell him she was always onto him and threaten him, because again, she is entirely convinced he is just the Fredo, and that she is in her girlboss Michael Corleone era. She does that, and then it hard cuts to all the violent destructive cool shit Oz is gonna be doing instead, because she is catastrophically wrong about how this thing is gonna work.

Sequel this, Reevesverse that, Trilogy whatever, none of that is gonna cut anymore. I will no longer accept any way of referring to this that isn't The Batman Epic Crime Saga. I'd say the crimelords of Gotham are asking Oswald if he has it in him to make it epic but he's already giving his answer.

The Falcones are right, Oswald IS just a goon who'd never hack it in the old system. It's just that there isn't an old system anymore, and the future looks a lot more like him than it looks like them. She and Alberto think of themselves as troubled scarred underdogs next in line for succession poised to get what is owed to them, while Penguin opens this by walking up to the former ruler of the entire city and telling him, hey head's up, I'm calling the shots now, as he laughs and snorts and plots to burn down the empire and shank them at their weakest and machine gun battle for what he's decided is his. Even if his name wasn't in the title, it wouldn't even be up to debate who's going to win this fight.

Really what is Batman as a whole about, if not Epic Crime?

[tidalskii]

It was announced yesterday that LittleBigPlanet 3’s game servers would be closing indefinitely, putting an end to the remaining online support the original LBP trilogy still had. I’ve managed to collect my thoughts and pay my tributes to the series before I part ways with it.

This game series means the world to me, and I am extremely proud and honored to have been apart of it’s community. I started playing the games in 2010 with the demo for LittleBigPlanet on PS3 and… I wasn’t impressed. I got stuck before I even played the game! I had a second controller turned on somewhere so 6 y/o me was presented with the “Select Profile” screen.

Having no clue why none of the buttons on my controller were working, I think I just turned it off and didn’t play it for months. Idk what got me to play it again, but I’m glad I did because I fell in LOVE with the game. Everything about how it controlled just… clicked with me. I thought it was genius, the sheer amount of expressiveness you could display; tilting the controller to move your head or your hips, using the D-Pad to change your facial expression, moving each individual arm with both sticks and the limb buttons on the back, it was all so intuitive and fun to do. Although, once me and my cousin learned how to slap each other in-game, it was over for my parents’ ears lol, we’d be screaming and yelling at each other. Sure enough that Christmas, I got the full game, specifically the special kind with some of the DLC pre-installed. That’s where the REAL fun began. Nearly every night after school I’d bring a couple of friends over and we’d try to play through as many levels as we could in one-sitting. The Metal Gear Solid DLC levels I often died immediately in and I would wait for an older kid I knew to get to a checkpoint and revive me. Regardless of how bad I was at the game, it was so much fun, especially now that we were able to experience the create mode. My mom actually started playing it, too. I don’t have any pictures of it sadly but she made a really expansive house with separate rooms and secret passages everywhere, it was really cool. I’d say I spent a good year or so playing the first game, then Christmas 2011 arrived. That’s when I got LittleBigPlanet 2.

LBP2 is my favorite video game of all time, it does what every good sequel should do: expand on what made the first game so amazing without straying too far away from its core appeal. For starters, if you already owned LBP the game will ask you right off the bat if you wish to import all of your collected items, costumes, and levels into LBP2. This absolutely BLEW MY MIND and in a weird way it kind of made playing the first game obsolete. You mean to tell me EVERYTHING I’ve ever made is already here, I can just… continue working on it?! I can still rock the same costumes I had, I can play music from the FIRST game in the SECOND game?!?! That alone made LBP2 so much of a gem in my eyes, it was LITERALLY the first game and MORE. But the fun didn’t end there! It was around this time I got a PSN account, so I was able to experience everyone else’s creations online and… wow. A whole new world just opened up, a whole community to engage and interact with. I met so many amazing people, some of whom are my closest friends to this day, over a decade later. It was through a group of some older kids that I often tagged along with that started getting into anime and comics more. 2011-2014 was a magical time to be on LBP, those years really felt like “The Golden Years” of the online community. Oh yeah and LBP Karting and the portable games existed too, I guess. I played LBPK, I thought it was fun… I still own it, but I’ve barely touched it after all these years. From what I’ve heard PSP and Vita seemed like a lot of fun, I’ve just never played them. Around early-mid 2014, it was announced that there would be a third LBP game for both the PS3 and the newly-released PS4. New characters, 16-LAYERS in create-mode (!!!), and a weird purple lightbulb as the new main-antagonist of the story mode… “Newton”. I remember being so excited for it to release. We were FINALLY getting a THIRD LittleBigPlanet, for a new console, too! We sure did, alright.

To this day, I’m still not sure how to feel about LittleBigPlanet 3, and it feels like the greater community more or less can’t ether. This game… SHOULD be better than the 2nd game, and you know what? Catch me on a good day and I might say that I prefer LBP3 to LBP2. Everything’s there, a new story, cross-compatibility with LBP and LBP2, a fleshed-out create mode, all of it’s there and what we have in the game is phenomenal, however there’s one big, glaring issue that distracts it from being superior to its predecessors… this game is BROKEN. I know people like to throw out that term a lot with somewhat buggy games but oh my god, LBP3 is DANGEROUSLY glitchy and exploitative. By this point, Media Molecule had moved on from the LBP series to continue developing new games, leaving Sumo Digital to oversee LBP3’s development. I feel so bad for Sumo Digital because it’s painfully obvious Sony rushed their time to complete the game for a holiday 2014 release date… and the quality of the final game reflects the time-crunch they must’ve gone through. Joining friends can take you up to a half-hour if you’re unlucky, it’s a gamble if the game will even function properly. Often you’ll be sent back to your pod after the game rapid-fires it’s loading screen (btw serious warning for anyone with epilepsy: DON’T play LittleBigPlanet 3, it does stuff like this all the time), but when the screen fades in, Sackboy doesn’t respawn, soft-locking the game. Fun! I’m not sure if anyone else suffered from this one specific, GAME-BREAKING bug as I’ve never seen anyone else talk about it, but around 2015 or so my game’s gravity just… freaked out, regardless if you were in hover-mode or not, Sackboy would float off to the left of the screen and phase through all of the walls. I tried restarting the game, cleaning off the physical disc the sink, but nothing would fix it, I literally had to reset my game progress. Very fun! Another weird thing I ran into is the inability to place down stickers with the PS Eye Camera Tool. It just stopped working entirely at one point, even in previous games like LBP2. No idea how THAT happened, very strange bug. Despite all this… I powered through, because truthfully I do think the content in LBP3 is superior to the previous games. The music is great, I found myself genuinely invested in the story and it’s characters, the DLC packs introduced in LBP3 were all very fun, and the create mode is a GODSEND compared to the first 2 games. Honestly, that’s one of the 2 reasons why I chose to stick around with LBP3, there is SO MUCH you can do with the tools it provides you. For those of you who don’t know, for the last couple years or so I’ve been building full working models of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters in LBP3, and that’s led to me gaining a humble but amazingly awesome following in the game. I love Thomas, I love LBP, I just wanted to put those two interests together and I’m very happy people seemed to have liked what I made, which is very wholesome and sweet.

I am devastated that the game’s online services are now gone for good, but it was kind of inevitable. LBP3’s lack of quality opened the door for a lot of nasty exploitation and modifications people made to their games. The servers were hacked in 2021, and that led to the termination of the PS3’s servers. It wasn’t hard to deduce that PS4’s servers were running on borrowed-time. Regardless of how unfortunate it’s closure was, this franchise was supported for 16 years. That’s not a bad run at all. I would say I’m surprised it wasn’t closed sooner, but then again… I’m not surprised. The LittleBigPlanet community is so amazing and passionate over these games. When the 2021 server attacks happened we all rallied together online to keep it alive, if just for a little bit longer. Even at its very end, a lot of us had so much more creativity to share with the world. To all those out there listening, I hope you’re able to channel that creativity outlet even further beyond in the future, whenever and wherever that may be. As for me, I’m going to attempt to learn “Dreams”, Media Molecule’s spiritual successor to the LBP games, released on PS4/PS5. From what I’ve seen and played of that game, it scratches that itch LBP left on me. It’s so good.

Rest easy, Sackboy. Thank you for some of the best experiences I could have asked for in a video game. Here’s hoping for a LBP4 one day, old friend. 🌎

[jetwhenitsmidnight]

Sargassa by Sophie Burnham

Release date: 8 October 2024

Genre: adult speculative fiction

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Synopsis

In a world where Rome never fell, an unlikely group of protagonists are ready to burn down the empire in the first of this new speculative trilogy.

Selah Kleios is twenty-two years old and suddenly one of the most important women in the empires. The role of Imperial Historian is her birthright, something she’s been preparing for since birth--but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives. There’s also the question of the two puzzling classified items her father left in her care—an ancient atlas filled with landscapes that don’t exist, and a carved piece of stone that seems to do nothing at all.

Soon, though, it becomes clear that the Iveroa Stone is more than just a slab of rock. With the reappearance of an old lost love who’s been blackmailed into stealing it for an unknown entity, Selah finds herself in a race to uncover the mysteries the Stone holds. But she isn’t the only one with an interest in it—she’ll have to contend with the deputy chief of police, an undercover spy, and her own beloved half brother along the way. What begins as an act of atonement and devotion ultimately pulls her into the crosshairs of deep state conspiracy, the stirrings of an underground independence movement, and questions that threaten to shake the foundational legitimacy of Roma Sargassa’s past, present, and future.

Content warnings

Death, murder, violence

Sexual assault, sexual harassment, mentions of rape

Slavery

Classism

Misogyny, patriarchy

Unintentional misgendering

Enbyphobia, slight homophobia

Review

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

Not gonna lie, the beginning is pretty rough. The first 20% introduces brand new PoV chapters one after the other, with each PoV character being in a different place doing different things, plus time jumps, which made it hard to understand who's who and what's going on. I seriously considered DNFing, but I am so glad I decided to push through.

Once all the main characters have been established, the book kicks into gear. The plot is fast-paced and engaging, the story beats are on point and the build-up leading to the reveal at the end was so well-executed, I couldn't put it down. Speaking of the big reveal, looking back, there are elements that make so much more sense in hindsight, which shows how the author really thought everything through.

One part that was kind of lackluster for me was the characters. There isn't anything wrong with them, and objectively, the character work is great! But I just couldn't connect with any of them. The romance sub-plots are also kind of meh. I didn't dislike them, but I also didn't root for them.

At its heart, though, this book is about classism and injustice. The author does an excellent job of tackling these themes with the portrayal how the caste system works, as well as how the system is built to discriminate against the lower class while protecting the upper class. I find this especially timely, with everything going on in the world right now. This book is brimming with visceral rage, from rage against the system of oppression, to rage against personal injustices.

Besides the rough beginning, this book is fantastic, with a brilliant plot and well-developed world-building and themes. I cannot wait to read the sequel!

[aggressivelyarospec]

90spiderbros submitted: Aro Movies Rec List!

Hey, guys! I have some more aro movies to recommend. Not sure if these already have been submitted but so far my searches haven’t shown them so I’m posting them here.

Kung Fu Panda

2024

Romance-Free! All of the characters have completely platonic/familiar connections and bonds with each other. There are no romantic couples, partners are never mentioned or acknowledges, romance just doesn’t exist throughout.

4 stars!!

As a Kung Fu Panda sequel to the trilogy the lack and complete non-existence of romance makes absolute sense and it’s very refreshing to have a movie franchise that doesn’t rely on it for anything or even include it at all.

Inside Out 2

2024

Romance-Free. Riley’s concern is about getting accepted by her new peers while completely shunning her old friends. The lack of an emotion called “Love” or any of the sort convinces me that Riley doesn’t have a crush on any of the characters and simply just wants to be accepted by them and her actions back this up. The new emotion, Anxiety, specifically acts because they are afraid that Riley will be alone for the rest of her life.

3 stars!

The movie presents an idea that I as the viewer was able to appreciate. No spoilers but it’s a concept that many of us have to accept so that we can move forward and mature emotionally and mentally, which is what Riley eventually does.

Additional Information: Kung Fu Panda 4 | PG | Animation, Family Trailer:

Additional Information: Inside Out 2 | PG | Animation, Family Trailer:

Added!

[mhevarujta]

A Curse For True Love thoughts

I have THOUGHTS.

So this book was fun but at the same time it left me wanting.

-EvaJacks were perfect. We got Evangeline's heart recognizing his even as she did not remember him. We got Jacks who supposedly doen't believe in happy endings 'staying away and 'just protecting her' and still being so hurt that she did not remember him. Their day at the Hollow was Jacks' Best Day Ever. Jacks snapped when Castor gets close to Evangeline and even when he doesn't, it's pretty clear that he is traumatized. The way Evangeline remembers is not what I expected, but it was absolutely perfect and has more emotional depth. The bad-timing of it all was predictable but still good and Jacks needing to destroy his heart to be free... this is the kind of -literally- heart-wrenching drama I want to devour. Her confession too is EVERYTHING.

-Evangeline: I loved that Evangeline's feelings for Apollo were no more than very superficial attraction but she 1)kept feeling that something was wrong and 2)kept being turned down by the way he was acting. The female character being this girly girl who cannot defend herself and gets some 'training' but only to slip out of situations enough to be saved rather than suddenly being this amazing warrior-queen was fulfilling because I find that trope tired. This girl was always determined, headstrong, reckless, but I think that many of us would like to have more of her hope.

-Jacks. For starters, Jacks was not in approximately 1/3 of this book, which was SOCKING to me. I mean, I LOVED what we got, but come on. Teasing us with the answer about the apples and not actually giving it fully? Almost no interactions with Lala and Castor? What we got with Evangeline and the details about his curse and his pain were A+. But I needed more. Evangeline DOES notice the broken-heart scat and Apollo does too. Why doesn't it play more of a role? She owed him one last kiss and we all expected that he'd 'claim it' but that's not how it worked. The tracking of Jacks through Evangeline's blood was also set up but then it was forgotten.

-I really liked how Apollo was handled. The moment it was mentioned that the tree would have to take the one he loves the most, I was certain it'd be himself. He had Gaston vibes and it was done well. That said, I also like how it's acknowledged that, while not everyone who gets cursed becomes a monster, at the end of thte day Jacks IS partly responsible of how Apollo turned out.

-The Valors were underdeveloped. The glimpses we got were interesting enough. But I really needed more of them and Lala. Frankly, I wanted this book to be longer, but Apollo's persepctive and the bonus-epilogue, Luc's absense, the Castor x Lala tease and the last sentense about more stories in the Magnificent North were spelling out the existence of another sequel trilogy.

-The magic was utterly whimsical and vivid.

-Garber's big flaw? There is no plot. There never was. Both in Caraval and in this one, her stories are junk. They are addictive, serotonin-inducing, but hardly well-crafted or with real substance. Still addictive though.

[anretc]

2024 Master List

https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr

Like Bullets on Skin There's a bar, once. Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Din Djarin/Bo-Katan Kryze. Teen And Up Audiences. January 2024.

Where the Light Goes Space feels cold, after. Star Wars: Sequel Trilogy. Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren. Teen And Up Audiences. February 2024.

Building a Reprise "We should go," she says, but she doesn't move, and neither does he. (aka, Five times Tony and Ziva are together at dawn.) NCIS. Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo. Teen And Up Audiences. February 2024.

A Harbour in the Tempest The baby stirs in her arms as Beru walks forward to take him, and Padme's broken heart splinters again. Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy. Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi. Teen And Up Audiences. March 2024.

Skin to Bone One-two-three and pause. (aka, Five times Elizabeth doesn't escape, and one time she does.) Stargate: Atlantis. John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir. Teen And Up Audiences. April 2024.

Bonfire Hearts There are worse ways to survive an ice storm than sharing body heat. Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Din Djarin/Bo-Katan Kryze. Explicit. April 2024.

Shatter Into Constellations Sliding his arm around her shoulders, Cassian tugs until she's pressed tight against him, his lips grazing her temple. (aka, Five times Cassian and Jyn kiss.) Star Wars: Rogue One. Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso. Teen And Up Audiences. May 2024.

A Moment of Warmth When Vala makes a break for freedom as soon as everyone's backs are turned, Daniel doesn't hesitate to follow along. Stargate SG1. Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran. Teen And Up Audiences. May 2024.

Miles and Miles of Mountains He's never really done a long distance relationship before but he couldn't bring himself to walk away from her back when the town of Dante's Peak still existed, and that feeling hasn't really changed in the aftermath of it disappearing. Dante's Peak. Harry Dalton/Rachel Wando. Teen And Up Audiences. June 2024.

This Is Our Place "If you don't mind me sayin' so, y'all certainly seem to have some very mature opinions for ones so young," says their realtor, locking the door after them and placing the key back in its little lock box. "Old souls," says Jack, straight-faced. (aka, Mini!OTP go house hunting.) Stargate SG1. Clone Sam Carter/Clone Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill. Teen And Up Audiences. June 2024.

As the Pendulum Swings The last time she left LV-426 she lost fifty-seven years and her daughter. She doesn't want to think about what she'd lose this time. Aliens. Dwayne Hicks/Ellen Ripley. Mature. July 2024.

This Way Forward It's unexpected but not unwelcome. Stargate: Atlantis. Asuran | Replicator John Sheppard/Asuran | Replicator Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir. Teen And Up Audiences. July 2024.

Born in a Thunderstorm It was late when they got back to the hotel. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. UEF James T. Kirk/La'an Noonien-Singh. Explicit. August 2024.

Just to Feel You by My Side When his hand slips under the edge of her shirt, his palm flat on her warm skin, she sighs a little and he feels it. Star Wars: Rogue One. Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso. Explicit. September 2024.

Tracing Shadows on Your Back They'd promised each other they wouldn't have to be alone anymore. Star Wars: Sequel Trilogy. Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren. Explicit. September 2024.

How Endlessly You Fall Morgause holds out her hand and begs, "sister," but Arthur has her snared, hands her his sword and a dagger and crown of gold and ruby, "please." She stays. Merlin. Morgana/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin). Teen And Up Audiences. October 2024.

Locked Inside Your Heart-Shaped Box She needs to put an end to this -- them -- now, before it goes any further. (It should probably bother her to know that she won't.) Star Trek: Enterprise. Mirror T'Pol/Mirror Charles "Trip" Tucker III, T'Pol/Charles "Trip" Tucker III. Explicit. October 2024.

Love Is Just a Dream Away She smiles. "One more time then." (aka, Five times John dreams of Elizabeth.) Stargate: Atlantis. John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir. Teen And Up Audiences. October 2024.

Tonight and the Rest of My Life A thin curl of sweet satisfaction. (aka, Five times Cordelia dreams of Angel.) Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. Angel/Cordelia Chase. Teen And Up Audiences. October 2024.

It Must Be Light Wherever You Are The Doctor touches her cheek. "I'll see you soon." Doctor Who. The Doctor/River Song, Tenth Doctor/River Song, Eleventh Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song, Fourteenth Doctor/River Song. Teen And Up Audiences. November 2024.

When the Whiskey Burns She's been dreaming on this ever since that first night after Liberty Island when she'd woken up craving a drink and a smoke and the warmth of another body pressed up naked against hers. X-Men. Logan/Rogue (X-Men). Mature. November 2024.

Blue as the Sea She's tempted, she is, but she also knows, deep down, that she still likes him too much and he probably only likes her just enough. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. James T. Kirk/La'an Noonien-Singh. Teen And Up Audiences. December 2024.

Accretion The growing together of separate parts into a single whole. (aka, Five times Cooper and Brand touch.) Interstellar. Amelia Brand/Joseph Cooper. Mature. December 2024.

It's Here That I Belong "I'm alive," he whispers, his voice raw, "how?" She could ask the same thing about herself. Ready or Not. Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas. Teen And Up Audiences. December 2024.

[oodlyenough]

4-2 turnabout corner

alright finished this case and i guess i'm doing case review posts now. i'm playing this for the first time so no spoilers for future stuff please:

this was pretty fun! and for the most part the problem-solving remained coherent, so that was nice. i feel like i never got any answers about the hit and run though...? i kept expecting it to be more relevant in the end and it just never was. i guess we had no time for that because we had to talk about trucy's panties for the three billionth time

but it was the first case with trucy and first real chance to see apollo do anything, and they're pretty fun. i like unsettling baby genius trucy. even if she totally stole my glory in court because i personally had also figured this out, catch up apollo, stop thinking like a normal person

apollo as the long-suffering straightman is more entertaining than i expected. the dynamic he has with the wrights is pretty funny, just like constantly ganged up on and bamboozled by their double act. poor apollo bawling after trucy fake kidnaps herself lmfao oh buddy

beanix cracks me up. it's so easy to wind apollo up and everyone does it with gusto. i think like 80% of what he says to apollo at any given time is a lie. it's a very funny dynamic to me lmao, "if anything i see you more as a BOTHER figure". i keep thinking of a text post i saw on here, i can't even remember if it was talking about AA specifically or just fandom in general, but talking about how fandom tends to ignore the existence of relationships besides "literal family" or "lovers", and ended with "normalize coworkers". anyway i think about "normalize coworkers" like every time apollo and phoenix interact.

the game is definitely inviting me to question his integrity at all times but the thing is i like phoenix more than anyone else in this game and it's not close, so...

i said it in other posts but adult ema rules!!! i love cranky sarcastic women. related to the point above, i really appreciate having her there as the other tie to the trilogy, and as someone who knew phoenix from before and is loyal to him. same girl same.

i also like klavier, he's fun. i'm curious to know what his deal is since it's not at all apparent why he's doing any of this to me, he doesn't seem to hold any grudge on kristoph's behalf. (what, he just likes law? a normal motivation? in my AA??? is that allowed)

on more negative notes:

i could really have done without an entire running gag for the entire case being about panties and panty snatching and especially a 15 year old telling me about her panties like every line of dialogue. i get that the "joke" is that it's meant to be weird and uncomfortable and apollo is uncomfortable. but like. christ lmao free me

the alcoholic phoenix jokes are not it for me, man! feels sleazy and uncomfortable and i know the game is never even going to like. treat it seriously. they can't even say the word wine. i can excuse weird cryptid phoenix who speaks in riddles and is generally kind of an asshole but i draw the line at "alcoholic single father". fuck off lmao.

in general, a lot of the stuff they're doing with phoenix here so far is, like, tolerable to me only inasmuch as i've been spoiled for it and i also can approach it as a sort of midpoint; i know most people don't like aa5+6, and my opinion may change a bit after i play them, but right now the idea of the series ending here, with washed out (alcoholic????) loser phoenix is so bleak and depressing, and falls into a lot of sequel media tropes i find tired. you often see franchises end their original run on a high note only to follow it up years later with a sequel that's like "but it was all for nought, everyone went their separate ways and Our Hero kind of sucks now". if i'd played this unspoiled in whatever year it was it came out i'd've been so pissed lmao

[e-adlirez]

Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr

So this sequel... exists :D

Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D

So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?

Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.

Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.

Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?

Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur

Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.

Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D

-

Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.

Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']

-

With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.

(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)

Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--

The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--

So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.

The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)

With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:

Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--

Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.

Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking

Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.

So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.

So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)

The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.

While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D

The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:

Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.

One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.

The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE

With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.

Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.

The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!

Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D

Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.

Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j

Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE

So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D

Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE

The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.

Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!

Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?

In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.

The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.

So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.

For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.

So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.

As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.

Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.

Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.

Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L

The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD

Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that

And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j

And that's the book :D

... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo

The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.

Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see

I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.

ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE

Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.

So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.

The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.

Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/

Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.

Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.

Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.

Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).

The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.

In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!

Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.

Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".

The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.

Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.

Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--

Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha