#to Stalky and Co

[neil-gaiman]

Now THIS was unexpected. But incredibly lovely. We debuted at #1.

I'm so proud of what we made and the genius that the Four Play String Quartet brought to the project.

If you want to find out how to listen or buy it on CD or Vinyl this will point you to the right places.

Meanwhile, I gloat. Hear me.

[rebouks]

Question time about our least favorite sim, Gael. If it's spoiler territory, ignore me. Was this Gael, watching Bryatt?

If it was, was he stalking them or was that a chance encounter? Did he think this was a vacay fling (when she moved in with Kaito for a week) or was he worried Brynn would stay?

Also, because I like to peer into your OCs brains… During Gael’s Very Bad Day (with three scary men in his apartment) and Oscar saying (to Wyatt), “You haven’t got the connections to get away with this shit anymore” give Gael a light bulb moment? Did Gael realize that Brynn’s past (and current choice in a partner) was a darker place than he ever imagined?

ewwwwwww who wants to talk about GAEL?! jkjk I DO!!! 🤸‍♀️

first of all, that's definitely Gael! t'was never supposed to be a secret but i suppose his intent was up to interpretation at the time.. now i can say that it wasn't particularly stalky/malicious, he just wondered where the hell Brynn had wandered off to and spotted her with Wyatt, he was a lil sus if y'all remember, asking if she'd given him her number but he was asking mostly in good humour tbf

i don't think he thought much abt it until Brynn decided she wanted to go back to Mt Komo.. at which point he definitely felt like smth was going on (or she WANTED smth to be going on) either way he wasn't too pleased abt it cos it jeopardised their lil agreement but he's a pussy n' didn't refuse to take her there again so joke's on him! i reckon he definitely felt Brynn slipping during that trip but "Kaito's" general vibe intimidated him even BEFORE he kicked his face in so he didn't say shit at the time.. then Brynn didn't say a word when they got home so he thought he was safe.. SIKE 🤭

hmmmmm Oscar said the shit abt connections to Wyatt pretty quiet like so idk if Gael would've fully heard him, and even if he did idk if his mind would make that leap 🤔 he deffo pissed his pants tho, assuming they're at least a little dodgy (i rlly think he's too naive to jump to mobster conclusions ngl lmao) i also think he'd probably be a bit more wary of Brynn if he ever saw her again LOL.. safe to say he stayed somewhere else that night n' never went back 😆

[sharky857]

Jade Shadows - A Bit More of Two Cents

This post is to better elaborate on the one I posted last night, right after finishing the quest. There are a few spoilers this time, so everything is under the cut.

My brain is still in some kind of BSOD mode.

As I discussed also with a friend on Discord, the quest itself felt like some kind of fever dream.

Did I hate it? Of course not! Did I like it? Ehhh... Sorta?

Let's just say that at this point I'm giving up on trying to make any sense of any "Warframe lore" and just go with the flow: nice quest, pretty animation and voice acting. Clap clap, now let's go get the new goods. 😅

I mean, it was nice to play entirely as Stalky, he made the only mission that would've actually required a braincell (spy) a real piece of cake, between "Smokescreen" and "Autobreach", and am now interested in the grind & farm to get the new 'frame and weapons.

But as someone else in the tags pointed out, the quest didn't exactly deliver what the devs promised. Sure, it shed some lights on Stalky's past, but also created even more confusion than actually answering questions.

"We will tie all loose ends together, but first get a load of this: PREG-FRAMES :D"

The only clear "answer" out of all this so far, to me, is only one: at least now we know why Rebb & Co. answered like that a few months prior, when someone dropped the bomb some question about "can warframes be preggies?"

And I now have only one question back for DE:

Was it really necessary to have Tenno of all ages and gender identities have a full "child birth extremely painful/uncomfortable labour" experience like that?!

[siena-sevenwits]

Thank you, @rowenabean, for tagging me to share twenty(-five) books dear to me. Insert ramble full of caveats and non-definitiveness, because I am an overthinker. But whatever. Let's do this. Here's what I got off the top of my head:

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

How a Book is Made by Aliki

Stalky and Co. by Rudyard Kipling

The Works of Shakespeare (but most especially "Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Richard III," and "Romeo and Juliet")

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

Great Tales from English History by Robert Lacey

The Man from Rocca Sicca by Reginald M. Coffey OP

The works of G. K. Chesterton (but especially The Ball and the Cross and The Napoleon of Notting Hill)

"The Man of Destiny" by George Bernard Shaw

Rosie Backstage by Amanda Lewis

Emily of New Moon and Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery

The Shadow of the Bear by Regina Doman

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healey

The Iliad of Homer

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Works of C. S. Lewis (but especially The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, and The Chronicles of Narnia)

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller

The Dialogues of Plato

The Works of Charles Dickens (especially David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers. A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol... um, better reel it in here.)

The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson

The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy L. Sayers

"A Man for All Seasons" by Robert Bolt

The collected works of James Herriott and Gerald Durrell hiding in the cloakroom and holding out a single calling card in hopes of passing for one book.

No-pressure tagging anyone who's interested, but especially @informedimagining, @kindredspiritsnotsorare, @marietheran, @firefly-nightsky, and @mademoiseli.

Feel free to do 5, or 10, or 15, or whatever makes you happy.

[k00262172]

Stalker (1979)

A science fiction film directed by Russian filmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, loosely based on the book Roadside Picnic (1972). It explores themes of philosophy, psychology, theology, belief, and hope.

The term stalker is became part of the Russian language as a result of these books. In Roadside Picnic, stalkers are people who trespass into a forbidden area known as the Zone and steal valuable extraterrestrial artifacts, which they then sell. It's claimed that the author's took the term from the English novel Stalky & Co. It is a collection of stories about three school-going protagonists display a "know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority". After Tarkovsky's film the term acquired the meaning of a guide who navigates forbidden/ uncharted territories.

[thinkforaminute]

Rudyard Kipling's Poetry, part 3

From Complete Verse by Rudyard Kipling.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Verse-Rudyard-Kipling/dp/038526089X

part 1, part 2, part 3

Bees here means just people, the masses. I believe this use comes from the ancient Romans. Appian Way means road with a lotta people.

Kipling collected his stories about being in school in Stalky and Co.

[audiobooks535]

audiobook : Stalky and Co. By: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

[denimbex1986]

'The system was as predictable as it was brutal. It was at Haileybury, caught between the indignities of space and the pressures of time, that Christopher Nolan realised he was going to die.

Everyone knew the pecking order at Haileybury and Imperial Service College. The hierarchy was built into the boarding school’s dormitories. Long wooden-floored barracks, under low ceilings, without any decoration. Two parallel rows of identical iron-framed institutional beds faced each other, stretching along the walls. The youngest boys at one end, the eldest boys at the other end. With each year that passed, a boy would steadily advance up this chain, gaining in status and strength, and with it, the ability to police the younger boys.

Haileybury was founded in 1862 as a hothouse for the sons of the Empire to grow into Indian Civil Service officials. It’s the sort of school that Rudyard Kipling writes about in Stalky & Co. (1899): a rigid training ground where the latent savagery of young men is repurposed – not reformed out of them – for the service of muscular and supposedly noble moral codes. A prison, in other words, though with better hymns, and one where the prisoners eventually graduate as prison guards. “Survive your first two years at Haileybury,” claimed RAF group captain Peter Townsend, “and you could survive anything.”

When Nolan arrived there in the autumn of 1984 Haileybury had diminished. Every morning the entire school squeezed into the chapel and mouthed the words to prayers; every lunch time they queued to enter the refectory and ate in a room that smelled like boiled cabbage beneath oil paintings of men who once dictated the fate of the Punjab. They played rugby; they said Latin grace; they took cold showers; they wore the scratchy uniforms of the Combined Cadet Force. But these were rituals designed for an objective reality that was long gone. Haileybury was a finishing school for a dead Empire.

Nolan never slept well there. This was the early Eighties; he believed the world would soon end in a nuclear holocaust. In the dormitory each evening he would lie in his bed after lights out listening to the scores for Star Wars, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, or Vangelis’s score for Chariots of Fire on his walkman. If the environment at Haileybury during the day was, in Nolan’s recollection, “Darwinian”, at night he could escape. “I certainly prized the imaginative space of listening to music in the dark,” he told Tom Shone, the film critic who is the closest thing Nolan has to a Boswell, decades later.

So Nolan buried himself in Vangelis’s synthesisers. Unable to decide whether to conform to Haileybury’s grim systems, or to rebel against them, instead he disappeared into the world in his head. Was he imprisoned by the school, or liberated by it? Either way, the story of Nolan’s career is how he took the rest of us into his mind, and into the dormitory with him, without ever giving away just how troubled that interior really was.

It’s impossible to imagine Christopher Nolan wearing a t-shirt, binge drinking or being late. A thirteen second video of him exists, taken at the MTV Awards in 2002. Eminem is screaming “Without Me” on stage, the crowd is screaming too, and the camera pans across them. Nolan is stood utterly still, wearing a shirt and a blazer, arms fixed tight down his sides, as the actress Brittany Murphy gyrates next to him. He looks like a Victorian scientist, defrosted after a deep sleep, realising with horror that modernity has become more deranged than he could possibly have imagined.'

[vtgbooks]

RUDYARD KIPLING Stalky and Co 1982 Vintage RUDYARD KIPLING hardcover Book

[brucequeensteen]

do u think if i followed from here my old mutual who blocked me on my other blog theyd take me back?

[bibliobachbooks]

available for sale: Stalky and Co. By Rudyard Kipling c.1899

[neil-gaiman]

Sir, so can we safely assume you don’t like Harry Potter :( ?

I never got interested in it enough to like or dislike it. I went, as a scholarship kid, to two British "public schools" so I have a deep lack of interest in any school fiction that makes that kind of education seem anything other than monstrous and inhuman. (Honorable exceptions being Tom Brown's Schooldays and Stalky and Co, neither of which, I felt when I read them, romanticized the British boarding school experience.)

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

I don't have a tumblr so there are people I can't ask things. So thanks for the chance. Neil said he didn't know of any pro-bullying books. I submit for consideration Kipling's Stalky and Co.; though I try to believe that it is an expose, it doesn't read that way because of the last page (I wish someone authoritative would say that was added by an editor against Kipling's will).

Hiya :), yes I allow anonymous asks - Neil had them too but had to turn them off when he got a lot of anonymous hate asks.

This topic is though too distant from Good Omens for me ❤, I suggest you make a tumblr, if only for discussion and asks for Neil :)

[mcheang]

Who will be queen?

The yearbook is coming out soon and everyone is sucking up to the editors, hoping to not get stuck with an unwanted label like “most likely to smile herself to death” (thank you Girl meets Yearbook)

Andy and Jasper are the yearbook editors and they want to make a yearbook with labels that everyone agrees with.

And face it, no matter what protests about cruelty will come their way, Bustier’s class will be labelled with as the Akuma class. If that doesn’t motivate them to improve whatever keeps attracting akumas, then what will?

Let’s see…Adrien has a few titles. Andy wanted to call him cinnamon roll. Jasper insisted on sunshine prince.

But there was always a princess in the class.

Andy: Chloe? She doesn’t deserve the label.

Jasper: not to mention she would chew us out for not calling her queen

Andy: we’re not going to do that, right?

Jasper: Hell, no. She wasted Ken’s (the photographer) time because she wouldn’t accept anything but the perfect shot for her.

Andy: Dethroned queen?

Jasper: I don’t want her having anything to do with a crown.

Andy: tyrant? Dictator?

Jasper: wannabe loser?

Andy: she is the mayor’s daughter. We can’t provoke her too much.

Jasper: Fine. Wanna-bee. Because she won’t stop declaring herself as a hero even as Ladybug refused, like a gazillion times.

Andy: that’s settled. So who’s the class princess? Lila? She’s influential. She’s done lots of charity work, is Ladybug’s best friend, and even has her own court.

Jasper: and I would consider it, if she actually bothered to help the class.

Andy: what do you mean?

Jasper: just because she was put in a position to help others more prominently, doesn’t mean the rest of our own charity work should be overlooked. Mylene is the one who actually does more work for the environment. Lila likes to split between hanging with celebs and going overseas for volunteer work. But to answer your question, I think a class princess should actually be seen helping the class. And while Lila has made promises to introduce everyone to her celebrity friends, I doubt she actually can or will. Even Adrien never introduced his fellow movie voice co-star to Alya or Nino or Mylene. Marinette works for Jagged, and you don’t see her asking him to visit.

Andy: You think Lila’s all hot air?

Jasper: let’s call her Jester for being such a good source of entertainment

Andy: isn’t that a bit mean?

Jasper: maybe I’m being reckless with this but I want to see if this barking dog has any bite. If she does, we know she’s more than all smiles and whatnot. If not, then who cares?

Andy: then who’s class princess? Rose? No offense, I mean, she’s got all that pink, but she’s also a bit…clueless?

Jasper: Nah, she doesn’t really have a leader vibe. I’m thinking Marinette.

Andy: I was going to label her as “most likely to work herself to death” or “martyr”. hmm…maybe a saint cause they get martyred too, right?

Jasper: I doubt a saint would get stalky with prince sunshine. Hence, princess. She works herself to the bone for this class, she likes pink too, she likes the class prince, and she’s so nice to give me a free lunch when she saw I forgot my wallet.

Andy: so you’re just settling your debt?

Jasper: do you agree or not?

Andy shrugged. “Sure. but can we call her Princess Cinderella? Or Snow White? Both girls were worked as slaves for evil stepmothers and rotten stepsisters, or in this case, incompetent teacher and lazy vice class president.“

Jasper: Cinderella, since she has the stepsisters.

In 3 weeks, the class yearbook was released.

Caline was disappointed her class was dubbed the akuma class. Her teaching methods were going to be questioned after this.

Chloe’s mouth was frothing at the insult. “Wanna-bee! Oh they are so gonna get it! I’ll see that they’re fired.”

Except Jasper’s mother was on the school board and Andy’s father was the ambassador of France. They had influence too and were not afraid to use it.

Lila gave a fake smile at being called jester. Those bozos will pay for this. Her reputation will take a hit from being made a clown. Get ready to be framed.

Only, having such influential parents made Jasper and Andy uptight about their security. They installed hidden cameras in their lockers, tied their phones to their belt loops, and locked their bags. Granted, it was also because they were cursed with a prank-obsessed classmate. But anyway, Lila got caught framing them and was promptly suspended. Her reputation was shattered after this.

Nino looked at Adrien’s photo and burst out laughing. “Cinnamon sunshine?“

Adrien shrugged. “Well at least it sounds nice.”

Marinette frowned at her title. “Princess Cinderella? How did they even know my grandfather has pet mice?”

Alya: I think they’re saying you’re working too hard and need a break.

Marinette: you want to be class president?

Alya: no way. But I think you can skip the next election.

Marinette: and let Chloe reign? No chance.

Alix: I still don’t care for all the responsibilities, but I think it’ll help me prepare for the future. If nothing else, it’ll be good credentials.

[siena-sevenwits]

From @valiantarcher: 1-5, 7, 9, 29, and 30, please? (cont'd)

A book you love that it seems like no one else has read.

I am going to briefly highlight three whilst I have the opportunity.

The Man From Rocca Sicca by Reginald M. Coffey, O.P., is a slim out-of-print biography of St. Thomas Aquinas. Like many a liberal arts student, I tended to think of Thomas Aquinas as a book rather than a man. This book changed all that for me, offering a picture of a man so vibrantly in love with Christ and His Cross, with a distinct and wonderful personality, for whom theological scholarship was charged with all the passion of a first love, the banner of academic orthodoxy and fidelity to Scripture as robust and red as the banner of a triumphant army's banner.

Three Religious Rebels by M. Raymond is a set of historical novellas about the fore-founders of the Trappist movement to reform the Benedictine Order. The first one, about St. Robert, is especially great. I have never forgotten the line "to do something gallant for God."

On a less spiritual note, let me note that while for some reason Rudyard Kipling's works don't tend to click for me, I have a deep-rooted love of his Stalky and Co (get the "complete" edition if you can.) These rollicking tales were inspired by his own school days, about the most outrageous kings of mischief you can get up to in a British public school. They burst with both affection and hatred for late Victorian military schools. The amount of culture-based in-jokes is and delightful and mind-boggling, much like one finds in the Wimsey books. These stories are some of the most quotable works on earth, and Mr. King, the Latin master, deserves to be remembered among literature's great characters - his assertion "it sticks" has often encouraged me as a teacher.

A book that left you feeling overwhelmed with happiness.

The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy L. Sayers. This cycle of twelve plays on the life of Christ was insightful, reverent, but most of all, such an ode to the humanity of Christ. She knew how to show him, as down-to-earth and real as fresh-baked bread that needs no butter, it's so good and hot, but without any need to downplay his divinity to do it. She realizes, unlike so many authors, that there is no need to "humanize" Jesus, for He is human. The characterization of each of the apostles is great. The joy and understanding, the wit and sacredness of these plays is amazing, and fanned my desire for scripture while loving it as a literary work in itself.

A book that you found yourself thinking about a long time after you finished it.

The White Rose by Inge Scholl was recommended to me by a trusted professor. It was my introduction to the Munich student resistance and their infamous pamphlets calling upon their fellow citizens to rise up on behalf of the true Germany, rejecting the false Germany Hitler had stained over it as a veneer. Inge was the younger sister of Sophie and Hans, university students who, along with several others, established a basement hideout from which to print and prepare their pamphlets for mass dispersal. They were caught while attempting to secretly leave piles of pamphlets in the university corridors while no one was about, and were executed after a few days' interrogation. Their heroism, in death and life, resounded with me on so many levels - spiritual, political, passionate. Inge's account is especially poignant, because while she strives for impartiality she was still a little girl at the time these events took place, and she never knew what he her siblings had become involved in until their final days. To read the six pamphlets themselves one must do some honest self-examination in their light. The story this book introduced me to stayed with me so long I ended up writing and directing a play about the White Rose in the following years, and incorporating the story and pamphlets into at least two curricula. One of my actors still texts or emails me on the day of the execution to remind me of it, even after all this time.

An author you recently discovered and would like to read more of.

I must admit I haven't done much in the way of discovering new authors lately. Other than Katherine Addison (whose other books don't look like something I plan on reading,) I've mainly been exploring or rereading authors with whom I am already familiar lately. Shakespeare, the Pentateuch, Homer, Austen, Tolkien, Sanderson, Beagle. I suppose I did just begin The Thief - the world and its dog have recommended the series to me for years, but I'm not far enough in to call myself properly invested. Oh, Andrew Peterson, possibly?

A fictional book that taught you about/increased your interest in a real-life subject.

George Bernard Shaw's gem of a one-act play, "The Man of Destiny," kickstarted my fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte. The play concerns him before his rise to power, as a young general who ran before cannons to secure the victory. It's about an encounter he has at an inn with a lady known only as "the strange woman" who has stolen his military dispatches, and the cat-and-mouse game of wits they play for who shall walk away with the letters. As usual, Shaw is tremendously wordy in his commentary, even during the play itself, enough to ignite me on a true kick of learning about the real life Napoleon.

Thank you so much for the ask! The original ask post is here. My asks aren't working, but if you'd like to ask, feel free to tag me in a comment!

[sepublic]

Kipo Season 2 Thoughts!

-Wolf smiles a LOT in this Season, at least moreso than usual, and I’m living for it! Maybe one day I’ll make a “Smiles I want to protect” montage, but it’s just every shot of Wolf smiling...

-I have to wonder, is Fun Gus a result of the lab experiments as well, or did he just sort of move in after the place was blown open by Song?

-Emilia though... Ugh. Not really much else to say about her. She talks big about humans having built an empire or whatever, but she also seems to conveniently forget that it was humans who also brought it down. Or, not- Maybe Mutes deliberately had an uprising, but still. I wondered if we’d have Human characters who are very pro-human, but at the cost of Mutes as a result... I guess we got them, and in the form of a genocidal jerk!

-The Rats were my favorite Mute group followed by the Umlaut Snakes, so OF COURSE the show had to mess with me by having Scarlemagne attack them! Thankfully, Brad and Amy made it out alive and good, but I’m still depressed over them! Ratland was THEIR dream- Which confirms they were in charge, but also we saw other background rats? WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM??? But hey, at least Brad and Amy are okay, I just wish they got their Goat Cheese! Maybe they can make a NEW Ratland from the ruins of Aurum, that’d be fitting! Also the Umlauts are fine, although I didn’t see one of them... I think she was the one voiced by a famous celebrity? That’d explain the absence, guest voices can be hard to reprise. However...

-DANG, I did NOT expect the Mod Frogs to die like that! After Brad and Amy got away fine, I just... YIKES. I knew Scarlemagne was going to be upset at them for messing with his family, and in his own house no less, but... OOF. RIP to those frogs, they shall be missed- Really, I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed the designs and vibes of them before, y’know... Jamack really dodged a bullet there, huh? And talk about MESSED UP... The Mod Frog Boss got to choose her own place in Aurum, and that’s why she and the others were there before everyone else! That blessing by Scarlemagne led to a Butterfly’s effect of their horrific execution, I just... It’s messed up, especially knowing that their bodies are forever buried under who knows HOW many karats of gold?!

-I realized that the Goats adopted a reverence for Cheese because Goats have their milk used to make cheese (as well as other culinary purposes), but like... It didn’t really SINK IN that it was their milk until Dave asked. Brilliant way to end THAT episode, I tell you!

-Back to Wolf... WE GOT TO SEE HER SING! We saw her make Stalky! RIP Stalky... hopefully she makes a new one- Possibly from that same Death Stalker she beat, though I’m not sure if it’s still alive? Regardless, it was a TREAT to see more backstory for her, and how she learned to fight off the Death Stalkers, and then chose to attack one for its stinger! Anyhow, I need to hear her sing Heroes on Fire at least... TWELVE more times after this!

-Did NOT see that twist over the masked figures being the ones to put the collar on Song, not Scarlemagne! One might say that the show is ‘predictable’ in some ways, but in those ways that predictableness FEELS good and proper! Like how an actual story should go... At the same time, KatAoW still saves its genuine twists for what really matters!

-Love the usage of Mulholland by the way, glad to see the friendships made along the way have paid off! I wonder if he’ll be used to help Song speak to Kipo and Lio more! Also, it was weird to see some Fitness Raccoons boo Kipo and Co. while at Cappuccino’s place, but I guess the animators just needed some background variety.

-And, hey! Cappuccino has a fun design, although it feels awkward since I’ve just recently eaten shrimp... Although I HAVE recently visited some brunch places, so I can still appreciate her cafe!

-Did not expect the potential plot thread of Kipo losing control and hurting others as a Mega-Jaguar. I was legit concerned when she almost went for the kill on Gerard, and I love how Wolf, who is very much survival of the fittest, still respects and admires Kipo’s compassion to save her from doing that!

-Good for Jamack, by the way, getting the fame he also desired with those The-Otters! On a small note, I love the gag of the whole gang being unmasked, before we see one Otter, because then you remember that there was that one dude who was also in a costume! Pretty surreal seeing the gang play caricatures of themselves, in COSTUMES of themselves...!

-Zane and Greta are himbos, they’re total Kronks. Not much else to say, I just like that about them! I’ve seen TWO buff, himbo ladies working for the bad guys by Dreamworks -Scorpia and Greta- and I’m down for more!

-It was ADORABLE seeing Mandu try to mimic the tusks of those Boar-Mutes, and how they low-key were encouraging Mandu as well?

-Also, will Kipo’s community NOT LISTEN TO EMILIA SHUT UP YOU’RE THE WORST CHARACTER NOW I WAS WILLING TO GIVE SCARLEMAGNE A CHANCE BUT THEN YOU-

-Dave is apparently so immortal that he can survive being blown apart from the inside? Those Bats made a point that I’d become desensitized to, but... He really IS the weirdest character now that I think about it!

-Poor Kipo, each season ends with her thinking her journey is over, only for someone else to come in and change the current objective after the previous one was fulfilled! Give Kipo a break, dang it!