#I already predict everyone’s future for free so might as well get paid for it 🤣🤣🤣

[heyovivi]

ACOTAR 6? (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ACOSF)

Okay! I just finished A Court of Silver Flames and absolutely love Nesta’s journey and this is coming from a person who didn’t really like Nesta from the beginning. Her journey of healing and finding herself was beautiful and her journey with Cassian was heart-wrenching and sexy and I just loved it all! But anyways, more on that later, I have some predictions for the next book. 

So I usually don’t go into anything without spoiling myself so before I even picked up ACOSF from a bookshelf at Target (don’t worry I was able to read both bonus chapters; meaning Azriel’s and the Feyre and Rhys’ chapters) I knew a little about ACOSF already. Now, ACOSF wasn’t deeply plotted and there wasn’t any world building like there was when we read the first three book--although it didn’t really matter to me I still enjoyed the book. ACOSF was all about Nesta and her journey and an insight to her thoughts and why she is the way she is and although I felt that at some points I hated Nesta I could still understand her frustrations and I could understand that she was deeply flawed as a character--which is fine. 

Now, even if ACOSF didn’t have a huge plot there were some key elements that will probably be very important in the next book such as Koschei, the remaining Mortal Queens, the Band of Exiles, Azriel’s journey, and Elain’s journey. But one key thing I noticed was Eris. Now he didn’t appear that much in the book and if he did it was during moments where his presence was essential to the plot (such as being kidnapped by Queen Brialynn and Koschei), but in that last chapter he appeared in it seemed like there was more to the story, to his story specifically. I think that maybe we might be getting a book on Eris. 

A lot of people say that ACOSF is reminiscent of Tower of Dawn from the Throne of Glass series, where instead of following Aelin in her quest to free her kingdom and stop Maeve, we instead venture into a Chaol-centered book where we kind of try to understand his point of view and character growth. So maybe, and this is just a theory or prediction, maybe we’ll get a similar thing with Eris. 

From that one little conversation we get with Cassian and Eris, it appears that Eris is kind’ve jealous of the Night Court and it’s relationships with the other courts in Prythian. A lot of people have already pointed how much Eris could be a lot like Rhys in the manner that Eris wants the Autumn Court to be seen not as the fiery court of rage and misery, but instead wants to be a beacon for those who dwell there. And you do see some parallels between Rhys and Eris and their upbringing with their fathers being very strict figures in their lives but with Eris there was an emphasize of abuse somewhere along the line. 

Now I’m not saying that Eris is getting a book or that his book even next, but I think that we have not heard the full story of what happened between both him and Mor, and I really want to know the entire story of what had happened in Eris’ life to make him seem like such a conniving person. But if I’m being honest I would much rather read a book about Eris’ efforts to lift the Autumn Court than a book about Mor--just my preference you don’t have to agree with me. 

Now here are my runner ups for who could be the possible voice of ACOTAR 6. 

Azriel

Elain

No, not Azriel and Elain, but Azriel or Elain. Now there were a lot of people saying that the book is either about Elain and Azriel, or Azriel and Gwyn, or Elain and Lucien--and I’m not going to shut down anyone’s theories but I’m going to share my own. Again, if you feel peeved about what sides or ships I support then stop reading when you get pissed because I can live with the fact that not everyone is going to agree with my theories.

First off, Azriel. 

I’m going to be honest, from what I read on Tumblr mainly I thought Azriel’s role in ACOSF was going to be way bigger, but I still enjoyed his dry humor and presence when he was there. Though when it comes to Miss Sarah J Mass we have to pay attention to every little detail in her books and if you caught onto his distance from Mor during the Solstice party or his reluctance to hold baby Nyx because of his scarred hands then I think it’s pretty telling that the next book could be about Azriel and his journey with coming face to face with his trauma, his past, and maybe his unsteady relationship with the Illyrians; not to mention his five century one-sided love with Mor. 

If you know me, or looked at any of my content, you should know that I am a hardcore Gwynriel shipper. I love Gwyn and fell in love with the ship almost immediately so much so that I’m embarrassed that I entertained the idea of shipping Azriel with Emerie or Clotho. I think that she might play a pivotal role in his journey to healing and that he might also play a large role in hers as well. Through his bonus chapter we can kind of see the sparks of something starting between them, I’m guessing it’s tied to theories that they are mates or to the theory that Gwyn could be a possibly lightsinger. All I know for sure right now is that Gwyn’s story is definitely not over with and I except see more of her in the future along with the other Valkyries as well. 

Finally, Elain. 

Now I don’t think the next book is about Elain but I do feel that out of all of the other characters her story is in the making? I’ve been told numerous times that Elain will be getting a book of her own, but we don’t know when and we don’t know what it is going to be about. Now, I’m not the hugest fan of Elain and it all goes back to her and Nesta just sitting around when Feyre was in the woods fighting for her life and there's as well. I know that she apologized and felt guilty afterwards but her excuse was “we gave up and she didn’t” just did not do it for me. 

It was in this passage from A Court of Thorns and Roses, where my distaste for Elain blossomed: 

The mercenary transferred the coins to my waiting palm, and I tucked them into my pocket, their weight as heavy as milestone. There was no possible chance that my sisters hadn’t spotted the money--no chance they weren’t already wondering how they might persuade me to give them some. 

...I felt my sisters sweep closer, like vultures circling a carcass. 

Like at least we knew Nesta was the “wolf” as she described herself. We knew she had a sharp-tongue and we knew she could be a bitch with her words. But Elain, she was described as innocent and nice, and yes when you paint her in a garden with flowers and frilly dresses she does just seem like some Cinderella-like character but after five books, especially after ACOSF my hate for Elain has just grown. Like after ACOWAR, I just thought she was boring--yes, she had a hand in killing the king of Hybern but that hype was kind’ve stolen away when Nesta ripped his head from his body. 

Since then, we haven’t really, really got a full look through with Elain and a large part of that is because we haven’t gotten her point of view, like not even in A Court of Frost and Starlight. From what we know about her, canonically, no theories or anything, she likes to garden, she likes to cook, her friends are Cerridwen and Nuala, she doesn’t want to confront that bond she has with Lucien, and she has an attraction to Azriel. But beyond that we don’t know anything--there were things that I kept out even though they were mentioned in ACOSF but there is also a lot of mystery around the things she said and claimed to do--even Cassian questioned them but didn’t approach her about the topic. 

I don’t think we have enough of a story to build up on Elain. For the most part I feel like her presence in ACOSF was mostly there to just piss Nesta off. Literally, in every scene she has with Nesta, she is pissing her off, setting her off, making her yell or scream, or making the silver flames ignite. And this is extremely out of character for Elain. Yes, we don’t get enough of her, but from what we can gather, Elain usually is not one to push buttons but I wonder why she did with Nesta. 

Here are a few passages that I just found beguiling while reading Nesta’s interactions with Elain: 

Elain stepped closer, brown eyes wide. Undoubtedly wholly convinced of her own innocence, her innate goodness. “It’s the truth. We did this because we love you, and we worry for you, and if Father were here--”

“Don’t ever mention him.” Nesta bared her teeth, but kept her voice low. “Never fucking mention him again.” 

Mentioning their father? A very taboo subject for Nesta. And Elain stans like to argue that Elain is quiet and docile because she is an observer. She takes things in and she tucks them away in her memory, but if she’d paid so much attention then why would she mention their father to Nesta? Feyre noted Nesta’s relationship with their father in book one, so there is no way that Elain herself didn’t know about it. 

Here is  another line from their conversation I thought were very weird to read about and I’ll explain why: 

Elain crossed her arms and said calmly, sadly, “Feyre warned me this might happen.” 

Bullseye. Nesta doesn’t like to be talked about, to be judged. We learned that in ACOSF and again if Elain was this person who sees and pays attention she should’ve known this or caught on. 

I think in this scene, Elain was purposely trying to set off Nesta. 

Nesta cleared her throat. “Cassian said it might be good if I came.”

Elain’s eyes flickered. “Did Feyre pay you, like last year?” 

“No,” shame washed over her. 

Elain sighed, glancing over Nesta’s shoulder to the open doorway across the entry. The party within, only for their small inner circle. “Please don’t upset Feyre. It’s her birthday, first of all. And in her state--”

“Oh, fuck you,” Nesta snapped, and then choked. 

Nesta was actually trying to get better at this point. She even risked going to a party despite not feeling welcomed just because Cassian told her it might be good for her to be surrounded by her family and for her not be alone on the holiday. You could even tell how by the way Nesta is keeping herself away she is still uncomfortable but the thing is she still showed up which is a sure sign she is improving. 

I don’t know why Elain started talking about the year before or about upsetting Feyre--literally wanted to slap the bitch in this scene. Like I just want to know why Elain pressed so hard. Then afterwards she waved it off as if she hadn’t just said what she said and acted normally. I can not tell you how mad I was at this--like especially for a sensitive character like Nesta who is ALWAYS In her thoughts and always takes things to a deep level. Like what Elain said could’ve just broken a vital part of Nesta and caused her to relapse. 

Anyways, I think Elain’s behavior in ACOSF could hint at the Evil Elain theory. Although I don’t think it’s going to come in the next book--it might build in the next book but at most I think Elain’s story will come to fruition in ACOTAR 7 or 8 and isn’t going to be about her journey or soul searching but maybe we’ll be getting the point of view of a villain. Like there were many mysterious hints dropped in ACOSF and the way I interpreted them is that Elain is planning something and if her behavior matches her actions, it’s something that could possibly affect her sisters. 

Plus, you have to wonder how Brialynn and Koschei knew everything. They knew all the IC’s moves and all of Nesta’s moves...but how? A lot of the time when Nesta was given a mission by Rhys it was in the River House and we also know that Elain has been getting better at sneaking around without being detected so it’s not too farfetched that Elain could be the spy. You don’t have to agree with me but I think it’s a pretty solid theory as far as they go. 

But do tell me your thoughts I would love to hear them. I’m sorry if I offended anyone in the end but we all have to just respect everyone’s opinion so no fights or slander, especially in my comment section. 

#eris vanserra #azriel #elain archeron #gwynriel #gwyneth berdara #nesta archeron #evil elain #cassian #a court of silver flames #a court of thorns and roses #acosf spoilers #acosf #acotar6

[merlinssaggyyfronts]

BBC Merlin Rewatch:

01x01: The Dragon’s Call

—

FIRSTLY THE FUCKING DESCRIPTION LMAO “Merlin, a young country boy” COUNTRY BOY AHAHDHSNDH IF ONLY YOU KNEW!!! ITS LIKE SETTING SOMEONE UP FOR DISASTER BUT THEN AGAIN THEY WERE SO LIKE I MEAN-

aw look at merlin all happy and smily, walking into camelot like he isnt going to witness the death of his best friend/king and basically everyone he loves

LOOK AT HIM HES SO HAPPY!!! HE DOESNT KNOW YET

“like everyone, he must live and learn” yo shut ur bitchass up lizard man u literally tried to murder everyone in camelot that one time

“his name: traumatised 😍😍”

AH YES THE OPENING!!1!1!-!-! AHHH THE AMOUNT OF HAPPINESS I FEEL HEARING THE OPENING

fuck ur bitchass uther no one likes u

“i pride myself as a fair and just king” sir didnt u like basically kill ur wife... and thousands of peo- OH MY GOD MORGANA BB ILY

oh jesus okay hes dead um chile-

“when i came to this land” wait i thought he was raised kn camelot brb i forgot im an idiot wait,,, does this mean before this it was the du bois family on the throne of camelot?? also, mired in chaos? u mean like.... before ur wife died and everyone was living peacefully? ....okay

“merlin, seeing a person who's been stated had been studying magic get beheaded: [a magical being himself] ah,, welcoming.” -my gf

“since the great dragon was captured” ....so did no one think about where they put a dragon?? a captured one at that. ud think he’d be more smart but nah he just left a random ass dragon under his castle like THAT is going to end well

YUHH MARY COLLJNS HATE HIM!!! YELL BABEY YELL!!! “you took my son!” YES MURDER HIM OMG I CAN FEEL HER PAIN

“a son for a son!” omg why couldnt u have killed uther bb ur the perfect villain i love u ur literally just a loving mother i-

OOOOO GAIUS

.....why is there a bunny mask in there

why is thERE A BUNNY MASK-

why didnt merlins eyes glow when he dragged the bed to gaius to save him

also whats this slomo magic why didnt he do this after this why did season one haveso much magic and like every other season was just everyone throwing it back

like i get instinctual magic but like.... if its instinctual wouldnt it happen more especially when his powers get stronger-

gaius: what did you just do?!

also gaius, five seconds later: i know what it was!! i just wanted to know where you learned it

merlin: 😐

merlin, about his magic: i was born like this

gaius, who knows full well warlocks exist: impossible!

(are warlocks naturally born knowing how to use magic without learning? i mean if u have to learn magic like a sorcerer then whats the difference between a warlock and a sorcerer cuz wouldnt sorcerers atleast have to have some magic in them to actually cast spells? am i dumb or do i just not get it)

wait so merlin arrived in camelot on a wednesday

merlin, walking into camelot: it is wednesday my dudes

merlin: [witnesses an execution] aaaAAAAAA-

“someone that might help him find a purpose of his gifts” oh honey he’ll get something mUCH LARGER THAN THAT-

—

oH MORGANA

SHUT UR BITCHASS UTHER SHE WILL KILL YOU-

“the more brutal you are, the more enemies you’ll create” oh the waY SHE PREDICTED THEIR FUTURE OO

ah bless u lady helen/mary collins we love them spicy villains

...why do you have a dressing table in a tent

[watches mary collins murder lady helen] i never snitch on dadd- ...someone pls delete me

merlin, about his instinctual magic: i just do it!

gaius: ...lord have mercy what did i just sign myself up to

what ever happened to sir olwen did he die from accidentally overdosing

—

oHHH THERE HE IS THERE HE IS THERES MY BOY!!! MY LIL PRAT MAN!!!!

merlin looks so offended, oh god i could watch this whole scene for HOURS

oooOOOO YES MERLIN FUCK HIM UP!!! SHOW HIM WHOS BOSS

“do i know you?” “im merlin” “so i dont know you” ugh theres already sexual tension

“i would never have a friend who could be such an ass” “or i one so stupid”

also them, ten years later: “i use my magic for you arthur, only you” “just hold me” “i cant lose him! hes my friend!” “thank you..”

“tell me merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?” OOOOH THE BOYS ARE FLIRTING

NOT THE “would you like me to help you?” SIR YOU ARE FLIRTING SO INTENSELY AND DONT EVEN REALISE IT SIR DO YOU KNOW YOURE FALLING IN LOVE

im convinced atleast half the knights with arthur were like “ayo thas kinda sus bro 😳😳 ayo 😳😳”

arthur: tell me merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees? would you like me to help you?

merlin: ....i really dont know how to answer that

imagine being paid to throw fruits at colin morgan omg id be so thrilled

OOOH HERE COMES OUR QUEEN GWEN!!! MY LOVE MY EVERYTHING YES ILY

gwen: well, arthur looks like one of those, save the world kinda men... and you dont

merlin, 1500 years later, having failed his destiny: well i mean you’re not wrong

—

gaius: uther banned magic a long time ago

merlin, flabbergasted as if he wasnt raised on tales of the death of his kind every day in the kingdom right next to his: why?!?!?

gaius: the dragon is imprisoned where nobody can free him

merlin:

(that is the face of someone knowing full well hes going to free that dragon. look at him. he’s already made up his mind.)

—

[sees merlin and arthur in the marketplace] oh heres he is again heres the lil bitxh ooo theyre about to FIGHT

god hes flirting so hard without even realising it, oh my god

“i could take you apart with one blow” “i could take you apart with less” um sirs this is a mcdonalds drive thru 😃

arthur: ahah, you’re in trouble now~ 😏😏

i had to pause cuz wHAT THE HELL WHY DOES HE SOUND LIKE THAT-

—

....yall are yelling very loudly, um, arent there guards near yall? people passing by? please relax

“im just a nobody, and i always will be” OH IF ONLY YOU KNEWWW

“if i cant use magic, i might as well die” ....well, ive got a surprise for you-

“maybe theres someone with more magic than me?” like... a whole dragon? i mean if you say so 👀

merlin about why he was born like this: if you cant tell me, no one can!

a fucking dragon, basically every magical creature and the druids: WELL-

the camelot guards are so stupid how the hell is this kingdom still standing

how does kilgharrah know merlins name? in prophecy hes known as emrys (and we see basically every magical being call him emrys and not merlin,, i think). so how does he know? did he stretch his neck long enough that he could somehow hear merlin? is it cuz theyre kin? is it cuz merlin and gaius were yelling so loudly that kilgharrah could hear them all the way in his cave? ig we’ll never know 🖐

merlin: where are you?!

kilgharrah:

kilgharrah: without you, arthur will never succeed.

merlin: ....oh look, im already paranoid

the amount of sadness i feel hearing kilgharrah say “none of us can choose our destiny, merlin. and none of us can escape it” is INSANE cuz in season one you can SEE merlin trying to escape it. hes doing his damned best trying to have some control over his life. and then in later seasons you can see the light slowly drain from his eyes as he becomes just another toy for the gods to be entertained by. he realises he cant control a single thing about his life so he does the one thing he can: protect arthur. and he loses SO MUCH because of it! its not fair, he deserved so much, and when he finally got everything he could ever ask for, it was taken away from him by his own mistakes.

arthur, seeing morgana in a beautiful dress: god have mercy 😍

uther: .....um

the way they set arthur and morgana up as if they arent gonna make them siblings i- what the fawk 😄

person A, who knows arthurian lore: oh no! arthur is going to have an affair with morgan(a) and have mordred! oh no!!

person B, whos seen merlin: oh no in this show its worse

person B, knowing full well theyre siblings: much worse....

gwen: who’d wanna marry arthur? 🙄

-

gwen, getting crowned queen of camelot: well fuck

hhhnghnh yes queen sing them to sleep yes murder his bitchass (and fail but like its the thought that counts)

on a sidenote tho this is such a fun way to murder someone, id try this

the absolutely OFFENDED “FATHER!” and the horrified look in arthurs eyss when uther announced merlin would be his manservant is PRICELESS OMG

oh the way uther unintentionally plants the first seed of his sons love story omg 😍😍

Conclusion: this episode is a 10/10 greatest episode with so many iconic scenes omg. mary collins u will forever have my heart for unintentionally kickstarting merlin and arthurs relationship destiny. i loved the whole thing and oh GOD does it already hurt knowing full well how the show ends

#this was a RIDE #eli’s merlin rewatch #yes i have to say everything that happens in the episode pls leave me alone #01x01: the dragon’s call #merlin #arthur pendragon #uther pendragon #morgana le fay #morgana pendragon #guinevere #guinevere pendragon #gwen #gaius #kilgharrah #lady helen #mary collins #bbc merlin

[czechforrain]

CR Quarantine meta thoughts

So I thought I’d give a quick approximation of where I am with Critical Role and where I think C2 will go and where the characters still have to go before the campaign comes to a close. 

In order name-wise

1. Beauregard 

As of right now she seems to be in not the best place. Her major goal along with Caleb’s for the last 40 chapters was to bring an end to the war. Now that there’s an uneasy peace, she’s partially conflicted on what to do next and how the people behind this war should face justice and whether the costs of that could outweigh the risks. She also wants to tell jester about how she feels and her apprehension to this seems to be based on her self worth. This came up again as a result of visiting her father and she seems to think that she could lose everything and go back to being an outsider without a place again. There’s also her old girlfriend who was arrested that the party might run into. Not to avoid mentioning, Yasha and her having some feeling toward each other before E69 and how her returning may complicate her feelings with Jester. A lot of moving pieces. How she deals with her feelings and her family is something I’m definitely interested in. 

2. Caduceus 

Caduceus is currently finding his purpose in helping others find theirs and seems to be committed until some arbitrarily defined point where everyone seems fine off on their own. I do think part of him will realize that he’s not beholden to these people and that he doesn’t owe them anything and they like him for who he is. I think he knows this subconsciously but he’s a very duty driven man and it’ll be interesting to see how this changes when he realizes the M9 have developed over time and might not need him but still continue to want him. There’s also still the grove and whether what he has done is enough to save it. This remains to be seen and might be handled more towards the endgame depending on how powerful the source of the corruption is. 

3. Caleb 

Caleb seems to have progressed a lot on overcoming his desire to change fate. He straight up mentions “ you can’t change the past” in talking about personal compliance in causing harm but I don’t think he’s completely over the ideas of going back in time and erasing his sin from happening. He’s certainly much more comfortable with where he is now and has found himself a family again. His main goal right now still seems to be finding away to bring the Cerebrus Assembly (or more accurately the bad seeds in the assembly) to justice without jeopardizing the unsteady peace they’ve won. This seems to be leading into Mighty Nein Navy Seals Vigilantism but might involve a ton of investigative journalism as well. I have no doubt that his plot hook and that of his former organization will continue to play a big role in the story going forward. The extent he can change the organization and possibly even turn his childhood friends away from the path of trent is another interesting side plot. The same goes for his buddy Essek and how he decides to react to Caleb wanting him to make amends for the mistake he’s made. 

4. Fjord

Fjord is a super interesting character especially when comparing him before and after the Pirate Arc. A lot of people, for clear reasons, separate Fjord’s attitude based on when he lost his accent but to me his change in personality came a bit earlier than that. His role as a character for the Mighty Nein early on was as one of the faces, the badass Texan smooth guy who was able to get what he wanted generally easy and was afraid of flexing his martial might. This kind of escalated a bit, one of the moments which really stuck with me was when he cut off Algar’s hand after he already had him beaten. It’s mentioned by Fjord later on that he found himself using more power / violence as a short cut to get where he wanted and that he feels he started to cheat himself by doing so. Once they ended their pirate adventure, Fjord seemed like he took more of a backseat with his role as a leader in the group and I think part of that was due to him questioning if he really deserved to be a leader. This also tied in with him questioning whether following Ukotoa was the right choice and his realization he couldn’t game the system and earn powers with nothing expected in return. This culminated in him renouncing Satan...I mean Uka’Toa and following the Wildmother as a paladin. Since he has done so he’s starting to act more reasonably and less impulsive when there’s a possibility of conflict. He’s humbled himself and I think he feels it’s more freeing than what he was before he changed as a person. The one thing that has accompanied this though is a string of combat misfortunes (due to dumb luck) which is a neat perpendicular to his personal growth. He feels more free and more himself but he may feel weaker than he did when he was putting on a mask. I don’t think this will lead to him having second thoughts as a Paladin but I think it’s building up to him eventually assuming a larger role asa leader once he truly realizes that he can be both himself AND great. Caduceus has mentioned this before about ‘one day someone will ask for a miracle and you’ll be there to help’ and I cannot wait for the moment where Fjord is able to get a HDYWTDT and be generally badass in his New Voice and prove to himself that he had nothing to worry about. 

5. Jester

Jester is my favorite version of a cheerful but awkward person, earlier on she kind of had me worrying about how much trouble she’d get them into but I over time realized that she has control over what she does and when she’s chaotic randomly vs when she has a purpose behind it. Case in point, the Cupcake Scene which was excellent and super risky but really paid off. Right now she’s dealing once again with how she feels as a disciple of the Traveler and the revelation he’s not a god revealed to her right before Travellercon. Now she’s kind of wondering what to do with several other devotees and what even will happen with him in the future regarding his divinity. I’m very interested in how this event will shape out and if there’s any 3rd party intervention into the story that will occur at this place during the time. It just seems like a narrative point where Matt could reveal something huge. But then again everyone expected fireworks at the meeting at Sea and cooler heads prevailed so maybe everything will work out swimmingly. Anyways I can’t wait to see what her next journey is after Travellercon, it will probably involve her dad and mother and may involve Darktow and is sure to not be predictable. There’s also her romance options but there’s a myriad of ways that could go and everyone else on tumblr has mentioned it so I’ll leave my peace there. 

6. Veth

Veth essentially got exactly what she wanted and there’s no grand reason for her to stick around besides her enjoying the company of these people and possibly something similar like Caduceus’ “To the end of the road” type thing. She loves her family obviously the most of all, which was most pointedly seen when she insulted Caleb and blamed him for what happened to her husband after being super supportive of him for the first 49 episodes. I think she still has a lot of growth to do as a character and there might be an avenue with her prejudices. Someone else on here has mentioned it before but basically, Veth is kind of a suburban wine mom who believes a bunch of stereotypes and has a “us vs them” type of mentality. That’s one possibly route for her to go if she decides to stick around for awhile. It is possible a huge event is around the corner that throws Wildemount into disarray and requires her to stay for awhile but we’re currently in a limbo where her leaving after travelercon would make sense. 

7. Yasha

Yasha is right now in a bit of a floating period. She really wants to make up for her role in Obann’s schemes even though it’s not her fault. She had a heart to heart with Caleb where he basically told her the pain never really goes away but it can be eased by the company by the company you keep. So her redemption can be pretty open-ended. I really want to see her wings again and please let them be white and feathery, I would love it. There’s also the possibility of her wife being alive / them running into her old tribe, with the boss behind it still being alive and there being some sort of conflict like how Grog had his issues with the Herd of Storms. Ashley is a full time member for the first time so hopefully there’s a lot to do with her on the cards and we get to see more juicy fireside interactions with the Nein. 

#critical role #critical role c2 #the mighty nein #yasha #beau #fjord #caleb widowgast #beauregard lionett #jester lavorre #caduceus clay #veth brenatto #nott the brave #critical role spoilers #cr meta

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

I've worked in the service industry my entire adult life, and as I've moved through the strata of it the attitudes are weird and toxic in only ways that capitalism seems to deliver. At the very bottom there's the pervasive "The Customer is always right" attitude. Everyone who's ever worked anywhere knows that just isn't true. Hell, it's not even good appeasement marketing. It's just a path of least resistance for conflict resolution that doesn't address the fundamental problem that businesses still don't have a good way of judging actual customer happiness. Surveys don't work because you're asking your customers to do work, and even if we happy with what you do, our work has more value than a coupon for a free taco or a chance at a video game console.

But if you're lucky enough to make the climb deeper into the belly of the beast, the moment you're providing something considered a "skilled" service, that mentally flips entirely on its head and suddenly customers are so inept that they must be protected from themselves (or your industry is too certain that if customers knew how easy it was they would just eliminate you all together). And this is toxic too. I honestly believe people are smart as a whole. That doesn't mean they're not gullible or wrong sometimes, but they are genuinely intelligent. Not everyone is or has to be, but it's much healthier to approach everything as if you are talking to someone who only lacks your experience until they ask or demonstrate that they require more accommodations than that.

And this lack of trust is everywhere. It's in how locked down Apple phones are, why you can't disable automatic updates in Windows 10. But in my experience, most customers don't need to be protected from themselves. They like having the option, and it should be available if they want it, but even the horror stories I've heard mostly come down to mistakes that everyone makes when they don't know better, and not things that happened because they can't understand what's happening.

I never hide information from my clients. I'll tell them what I did, what lines I changed in what files, why I chose what I did. I know the vast majority of them don't need or want that information, but it doesn't change the fact that to me when they paid for me to do the work, they deserve to know what I did and why. In this age of automated backups, and well configured permission systems I also don't discourage my clients from attempting to do things on their own. I firmly believe that the complexity of what I'm doing doesn't come from the fact that any individual act I'm doing is somehow beyond the scope of what someone else can do, but rather because of the interactions of all those simple tasks. And that kind of knowledge is less about your ability to predict (even though that can help), but more about the experience you have and the solutions you've found in the past.

Sure, sometimes I have clients that want to pay me to teach them to replace me, but there's nothing wrong with that. My experience and knowledge is highly specialized, so unless they switch industries entirely they'll still need assistance with the kinds of tasks I can charge hours upon hours for, the kinds of tasks I take great pleasure in solving, and their extra knowledge even occasionally lends new respect for what I'm doing.

But by the same token, I'm not going to sit idle while a client attempts to do something I've seen fail before. I'm not going to circumvent their will, but I will tell them about my experience and why I don't recommend it.

I don't know. I've been thinking a lot lately about how I got here and how unstable it all is. Like a lot of people this last year has been hard on me from a professional perspective (hard other ways too but that has less weight on these thoughts). The fact that I was able to build this experience with my background is entirely due to a combination of luck and privilege, and there are far too few people where I am that are willing to honestly admit as much. But even as I admit to myself that there's nothing inherently difficult about what I do, I'm not afraid that I'm easily replaceable or that I won't be able to survive if other people get the experience that I have. I'd like to make more money so that I'm in a more stable financial situation, and I want to have enough time to enjoy my life and my family. I know that one of the dangers of capitalism is how it takes those reasonable needs and dangles them just out of reach until you're nothing but a husk, but it's still how I feel.

I am worried that as I start to transition away from being perceived entirely as male, I'll lose some of the ground that privilege helped me gain. Maybe in a year I'll feel more worried about the skills I do and don't have, and have more of a drive to keep bettering myself, but I don't know. I think bettering yourself is kind of just something that happens as you live life and solve problems. If you tire yourself chasing things that might be important sometime in the future rather than just leveraging what you can already do, you run the very great risk of exhausting yourself. Maybe that's a privileged thing to think? I honestly don't know.

#long post #ye ol' navel gazing #just thinking

[nour386]

Furry Fortune teller

Stan and Ford are stuck with a dilemma, Filbrick has told them to either find a way for Shanklin to earn his keep, or else the Stab Possum will be kicked back to the streets. Can they find a way to save their pet from the cold cruel outside world?

also on ao3!

This was my piece for the @lost-legends-zine. I hoep you enjoy this short adventure with the stans as they try to save their beloved pet possum.

“I can’t believe pop called me bologna!” Stanley threw himself onto his bed with a huff.

“He didn’t call you bologna,” Stanford corrected. “He called your idea bologna.”

“That’s the same thing! My ideas come from my head, my head is me, so he’s calling me bologna.” Stanley threw up his arms angrily.

“To be fair, you didn’t have much of a compelling argument,” Stanford said from behind his math book. “You can’t say he’s got stage fright to explain why we can’t show Pop Shanklin’s laser eyes.”

“I can too say that,” Stanley said. He slunk down to the floor. “I mean, you can’t prove he can’t do it just because you haven’t seen it. It’s like Santa or the Tooth fairy. Just because you didn’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

“I can’t argue with you there. However, Pop isn’t going to take that kind of reasoning.”

“I know. It stinks.” Stanley flailed on the floor of the bedroom. “Like old socks.”

“We’ve already tried testing his strength, agility and speed.” Stanford pointed to the obstacle courses that they had set up in their bedroom. “And he hasn’t shown any progress in any of them.”

“He’s made progress in being the toughest possum. Right Shanklin?” Stanley asked.

The stab-possum in question gave a small yawn before curling back to sleep. He’d nested in the shirt that Stan still hadn’t returned to the Sibling Brothers.

“Oh yeah, he’s tough,” Stanley said, grinning.

“Tough isn’t going to be good enough.” Stanford pursed his lips. “Pop said we needed something sellable with Shanklin or else he’ll put him out on the streets. Remember?”

“Don’t worry. This is just like in the latest issue of the Stilted Investigator Dogs! The pack is about to lose their dog house to some snooty poodle who wants to make it into a snooty salad bar unless they can raise the funds and stop her.”

Stanley continued his explanation of the plot line while Stanford nodded along, asking the occasional question about how dogs are able to communicate with humans yet still need to earn money.

“If they can talk to people why don’t they just put on a show and wow a bunch of locals and make money that way?” Stanford asked.

“I don’t know. Besides, if they did that they wouldn’t be able to stop the bank robber and get paid reward money for bein’ heroes!” Stanley said excitedly.

“That sounds contrived.” Stanford rolled his eyes.

“You’re just sayin’ that because there isn’t numbers on every page,” Stanley defended. “I bet if you read the first issue you’d see it’s really cool.” Stanley jumped to his feet and started to rummage through his drawers. “Now where did I leave it? I was reading it last night.”

He felt something bump against his leg. Looking down Stanley saw Shanklin with something in his mouth.

“Whatcha got there buddy?” Stanley asked, reaching down for whatever Shanklin was holding. “C’mon Slick, let ‘er go.”

Shanklin held tight with his teeth, but he was no match for the might of the one and only Stanley Pines. After a minor shake, and the accidental vaulting of Shanklin onto the lower bunk, Stanley found the comic he was looking for.

“Oh my gosh!” Stanley cried. “Sixer, did you see that?”

“I don’t think a possum shot-put will win us many friends,” Stanford deadpanned. “The last thing we need is some animal rights group giving Pop a whole bunch of calls.”

“No, not that!” Stanley bounded over to his brother. “Look, he brought me the comic I was looking for. It's like he knew what I was thinking.”

“He’s in the room with us. He could have just recognised what you were looking for from last night,” Stanford said. He watched as Shanklin scratched at Stan’s leg. “But that does raise the possibility of him having near-canine intelligence.”

“No way. He’s psychic. Like Ma!” Stanley waved his arms excitedly, dropping something from his comic book. “Oh no, my book mark.”

“You used a candy bar as a bookmark?” Stanford questioned. He watched with bemusement as Shanklin snatched the treat mid-fall and scampered under the bed.

“Hey give that back!” Stanley reached under the bed. “I was gonna have it for a midnight snack, but I didn’t stay up long enough.”

“Maybe that was why he took your comic?”

“Nuh-uh,” Stanley said, successfully pulling Shanklin out from under the bed by his tail. “He’s a mind reader possum, like Ma. But less hairy.”

“Probably shouldn’t say that around Ma.” Stanford stifled a giggle.

“That’s why you’re the smart one,” Stanley said, grinning.

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

"So you're saying he needs a bigger curtain?" Ma Pines said, grinning.

"No way," Stanley said. "If we make it any bigger then no one'll see him. And then what's the point of setting up the show if no one is gonna see him?"

"Mystique, of course." Ma held up a fabric light. It was covered in stars and constellations. "When you start a show, you need to make a grand entrance. And what, my little free spirit, could be grander than a shadow puppet show?" She pinched Stanley's cheek before getting back to work.

"She does have a point," Stanford said from his perch on the floor. He had his nose in a fortune telling book, the current chapter titled 'Onion predictions and you!' "If we want a large number of people to come and watch Shanklin, then we'll need something really eye catching."

"He's Shanklin! What could be more attention-hogging' than that?" Stanley asked. "How many people have seen a stab-possum before?"

Shanklin was taking another nap, this time on an empty seat in the living room. He had been rushed downstairs the moment the brothers had agreed to ask their mother for help. And while he wasn't necessarily pleased with being so roughly picked up and moved, he was rather excited to smell the delicious lunch that Ma had been cooking.

"Everyone's seen a possum before, Stanley," Stanford said.

"Yeah, but he's a stab-possum!" Stanley insisted.

"The suckers won’t know that. Without his knife, they'll think he's some regular old possum, like your Pa," Ma said. She cut a small square from the fabric in her hand and laid it on Shanklin's back. "Oh, this could make a nice cape for you."

"Well they're dumb," Stanley muttered.

"Maybe instead one belly-aching, maybe you can help your Ma with cleaning up all this possum hair." Ma nodded to the lint roller.

"Aw, why do I have to do chores?" Stanley huffed.

"’Cause - uh, we need him prepped for his show," Ma said quickly. "Yeah, we're gonna need to clean Little Shanklin before his show so that the customers see his best side. You don't want him to get a bad picture do you? Imagine how bad the publicity would be. 'Failed Possum Performer Ruins Tourist Ice Creams with Fur.'"

"Oh no! Not the ice cream!" Stanley gasped.

"Yes the ice cream!" Ma smiled wickedly. "Are you gonna let all those delicious treats get spoiled by Shanklin's messy hair?"

"Never!" Stanley cried. He brandished the lint roller over his head as he ran to clean Shanklin of his loose fur.

"And make sure you get your clothes clean too," his mother called after him. She picked up her fabric once more and started to measure out the length of the curtain bar her sons had decided upon.

"You don't really think that would ruin his show do you?" Stanford had tucked away his book for now. He'd read enough methods of predicting the future that he was seeing stars.

"That depends on how you define 'ruin'," Ma said, smiling. "You know what they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

"But if people spread the word of how messy Shanklin is, then less people will come our way," Stanford said.

"That's why we need a good show to put on. How often do you think a tourist comes to this broad walk?"

"Once a vacation?" Stanford adjusted his glasses.

"Correct," Ma said. "And if new people are coming every day, then we've got new people to scam. And if more good news spreads about how amazing Shanklin's fortune telling is, then people will more likely take the risk of coming to see his show. And do you know why?"

"Because people could get their ice cream before coming to watch Shanklin's show?" Stanford asked.

"I knew you'd say that," Ma said, grinning. She reached down and pressed Stanford's nose, who giggled in response. "I was thinking that curiosity killed the cat."

"But satisfaction brought it back," Stanford rhymed. He was about to enjoy a well-deserved break when he heard his brother scream with pain, followed by a loud thud.

"Sixer, help! The lint roller attacked me!"

Stanford stood up to see his brother wrapped in the lint roller paper. It looked like a poorly designed Halloween costume, but stickier.

“I’m coming,” Stanford sighed.

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

“Come one, come all!” Stan cheered. He danced along the boardwalk, catching the eye of every tourist and uninterested beach goer. “If you’re bored outta your mind from seeing the same old sand and water, then boy have I got what you’re missing!”

“I have been getting bored,” a tall man said. He wore a line of sunblock across his nose.

“I do hate sand and water,” the woman next to him agreed.

“What do you wanna show me? Is it a dinosaur?” The child with the couple asked.

“Even better!” Stanley hopped from one foot to the next. “A possum that’ll tell you the future!”

“That’s so cool!” A grin spread along the child’s face. “Mum! Dad! Can we go see the magic possum? Please please please?”

“It’s not by the beach is it?” His mother pursed her lips. Stanley wondered why she wore a swimsuit if she hated the beach this much, but chose to not say so out loud.

“No way. The sand makes his outfit uncomfy,” Stanley said.

“Well, if the possum is that understanding about the dangers of sand, then we have to go see them,” the child’s mother said smiling.

Stanley ran ahead, leading the vacationing family, and a few curious passersby towards Shanklin’s stand. His Ma had taken her crystal ball and its table out of the pawn shop and onto the boardwalk. Sitting on top of the crystal ball, in the centre of a mess of tarot cards, was the possum in question. A star-patterned hat adorned his head as Shanklin looked out at the audience. The possum gave a happy squeak when he saw Stanley return.

“Now Ladies, Gents and Germs, who's brave enough to have their fortune told by the most magical possum in the world?" Ma asked the crowd.

A young girl with pigtails, looking only slightly younger than Stan and Ford, bravely marched over to Shanklin's table.

Ma grinned. "Ah, a brave young lass aren't we?"

"All who approach Shanklin must place an offering in the gift bucket," Stanley  tried his best to put on a mysterious voice. He held out a bucket towards the girl. She ran back to her parents and returned with a five dollar bill, which she dropped in the bucket before staring at the possum.

"Mr. Shanklin, where will I have the most fun today?" she asked.

"Take out a card, tell us what it says, and he'll tell you what he sees," Stanley said.

The girl nodded and drew a card from the many that surrounded the crystal ball.

"The Chariot?" she read.

Shanklin chattered his teeth to her.

"Sorry, I don't understand possum," she said in a small voice.

"Normally, a translation costs extra. But for such a pretty little lady, Stanley will give it to you for free," Ma said quickly, before Stanley could shove his bucket in her face again.

"Sure thing." Stanley put his bucket down next to the table. He tucked something into his pocket before walking over to the girl.

"The great Shanklin says that a Chariot card tells you of great enjoyment at the bumper cars at fun land. Or maybe with a toy car car you could get at the local pawn shop,” he added with a wink.

"What if my card was upside down?" the girl asked. "And I read it without turning it around?"

"Well, Shanklin says..." Stanley paused to let the possum in question squeak. "The exact opposite. If it was upside down then you should be careful, you might get bored out of your mind from the bumpers. Or maybe you should check out a doll from that pawn shop instead."

The girl gave Stanley a serious look before putting her card back. "Thank you, Mr. Shanklin," she said, before running back to her parents.

There many hushed whispers as Ma walked around, a small bucket in her hand. "So who’s up next? Shanklin takes advance payments." She grinned as various people dug out their wallets and threw a dollar or two into her bucket.

“Line up and Shanklin will read your fortunes!” Stanley said.

“Psst, Stan! That wasn’t the plan!”  A harsh whisper came from somewhere unseen.

Stanley grinned. “C’mon Ford, this is more fun.”

“If we give a wrong prediction, people will be upset,” Stanford insisted. He poked his head out from under the table cloth, careful that no one from the crowd could see him.

“Half these people are here for the fun of it. I don’t think they’ll mind a bologna fortune,” Stanley said grinning, his bucket already full of ‘translation’ fees.

“Can you at least give a couple of the ones I’m suggesting?” Stanford asked. “This book is heavy, and writing predictions super-fast isn’t easy.”

“Are you sure you don’t wanna join me up here?” Stanley whispered. “It’s like storytelling, but more fun!”

“I’ll stick to the facts,” Stanford muttered.

“Here’s a fact. After this pop won’t call Shanklin a waste of space ever again,” Stanley said grinning.

“Definitely,” Stanford agreed.

----

Make sure to check out the companion piece for this fic found here by @garbagegnomes 

#Gravity Falls #Staley Pines #Stan pines #Grunkle Stan #Stanford Pines #Ford pines #Grunkle Ford #Fic #Lost legends #Epilogue: Lost legends Zine #Caryn Pines #ma pines #Shanklin The Stab possum #mine

[tabarnaks]

It’s around 7 p.m. on a day in the middle of December, and, for the first time, Duck has just told Minerva that he won’t be her pawn in the crazy future she predicts. The air in the room is cold, numbing the tips of his fingers. The heating broke last week, and money’s been just a little too tight to comfortably pay to get it fixed. Duck knows he should get up and turn on the space heater in his room, but he’s laying on his bed staring up at the ceiling, considering the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars he stuck up there as a child. He knows he’s avoiding the actual questions he should be asking himself. He knows, he knows, he knows. He wonders why he hasn’t taken them down. They haven’t glowed in years, and he isn’t a child anymore. He knows it doesn’t matter, and the real issues he should be thinking about sit heavy in his chest. Duck moves his arms, ignoring the needles in his cold fingers, and crosses them over his chest, pushing everything he desperately wants to avoid down.

It’s around 11 p.m. on the last day of March, and Duck doesn’t know it yet, but, today, he saw Minerva for the last time in decades. It’s been a rough few months for everyone. They fixed the heating on the first week of March, just in time for the temperature to start rising again. Duck had a long tumultuous talk with his mother. A new inn opened, apparently unaware of the failing tourism industry in Kepler. Duck cut his hair, gave half his clothes to Jane and Juno, and slowly got used to the stares on the street and whispers in the school halls. They stopped on the second week of March, when the new gossip finally came in. It’s much more interesting to talk about the kid who disappeared in plain sight by the river. But Duck can’t think about it. Duck won’t think about it. He’s been forced to consider many things since his initial refusal in December. He’s considered things about the state of the world, about himself, about his choices. He’s made the right choices. He must have. Still he doubts.  “Juno,” he says, knowing there’s little chance he’ll remember the conversation the next morning, “Do you think I made the right decision?” And Duck knows she’s just as messed up as he is right now, and Duck knows they’re not talking about the same thing, but he decides to just let her words ease all of his guilt. For now.  “Of course you did,” she smiles at him, and the weight on Duck’s chest finally melts off, joining the snow spring has slowly been eating away. He wakes up the next morning, and though it’s all a blur, the heaviness hasn’t come back.

It’s around 3 p.m. on a special day in November, and Duck has just woken up from surgery. He knows already that he has no regrets about any of it. He feels like a new man. Jane is so proud of him. So is Juno. His mother is too, according to Jane. He’s a grown man, he shouldn’t be so hurt by her absence, but he is. 

It’s around 2 p.m. on a more regular day in December, and the doctor has just finished telling Duck how amazing he’s healing. A memory that’s not quite yet an old dream comes to Duck. Something about having superior protection from harm. Duck shakes the thought away, and thanks the doctor for her work before leaving.

It’s around 10 a.m. on the first weekend of May, and Duck is walking through town holding a tightly wrapped relic of his strange past in his right hand. He almost misses his destination, though the new owner has apparently made sure it’s impossible to miss. The new sign is big, and very bright. Duck’s sure Victoria would have hated it. Well, at least the guy waited six months before putting it up. Duck walks in, ignoring the exhibits, and heads straight for the main desk. The man behind it is entirely unfamiliar, Duck knows instantly he’s not from Kepler. The man starts talking, introducing himself as Ned, and starts trying to sell his museum. Duck interrupts him, “Sorry, I’m not here for any of the exhibits. I just heard you deal with strange objects and I have something I think you might be interested in.” He puts Beacon on the counter with a heavy thud.  The man’s face shifts, from cheesy salesman to an unreadable half smile, “Well, what is it? Please, I’m always open to making deals, especially in regards to things directly from this beautiful town.” Duck pulls away the cloth tied around the sword, letting Ned eye it for a few seconds before motioning for him to inspect it more closely.  “It’s a sword…” Duck’s mouth suddenly feels very, very dry, “that I have.” Ned picks it up, puts on a pair of small glasses that Duck suspects are just for show, and starts slowly inspecting Beacon, “And what’s so special about this thing?” he asks. “Well,” Duck swallows, biting his tongue to keep from saying anything he’ll regret, “Well, it talks sometimes.” It doesn’t make sense, but Duck knows it’s true. It had talked this morning when he’d taken it out of the box at the bottom of his closet. It’s the final proof that Minerva was something more than a weird side effect of teenage hormones, dysphoria, and weed. And Duck’s determined to get rid of it right now, leaving it with this stranger. Ned looks up at him then back down at the sword, “With the mouth?” “Y-yeah. Also, you’ve never seen anything like it, right?” The other man puts the sword back down on the counter and puts his glasses away, “Well, you’re right about that.” he pauses, finger gently tracing the sharp blade, “It actually is a real sword, huh? How much for it?” “Oh, you can have it for free. Consider it a donation to your museum.” Ned smiles, a genuine smile this time, “Why didn’t you tell me that immediately! Of course I’ll take such a fine item if it’s a donation from one of Kepler’s esteemed residents, the very generous, um, I don’t believe you’ve introduced yourself.” “Oh, sorry. I’m Duck Newton,” he reaches out a hand to shake Ned’s, “I’m a forest ranger.” “Well, it’s great to meet you Duck,” answers Ned, “and it’s even greater to humbly accept your donation to The Cryptonomica.”

It’s around 1 p.m. on the second Sunday of May, and Duck knows he’s already dreadfully late, but he’s dragging his feet anyway. He doesn’t know how his sister looped him into this. He finally pulls up in front of his childhood home. He wants to stay in the car, he wants to turn the ignition back on and drive away, he wants an escape. He wants to do the easy thing. But Jane had made him promise before leaving for her first international trip. Duck gets out of the car, locks the doors, and doesn’t even have to knock before the door is open. “Duck,” his mother says, the word feels foreign in her voice, Duck almost doesn’t register it as his name, “I’m so glad you came.” She looks a lot older than she did before. Duck guesses he must look older now too. He looks into her eyes, and he knows the conversation they’re about to have. Maybe she’ll push it back for a while, maybe she’ll wait until dessert, maybe they’ll finish eating and then she’ll ask him to stay. Duck doesn’t know her well enough anymore to know what she’ll do. But he looks in her eyes, ignoring the ache in his chest, ignoring the old wounds that never really healed opening up again, and he knows what he’ll say to her. He knows she’ll be genuine, he knows she’ll mean her apologies. He knows he won’t be able to forgive her. He’s not ready.  “Me too,” he answers.

It’s around 7 p.m. on a hot day in July, and Duck’s looking at the sword sitting heavy in his hand. It’s still as heavy as when he’d first held it when he was a teenager, but this time there’s something different about it. He knows he’s not ready to accept the destiny Minerva’s imposing on him again. He can’t do that, even now, it’s too much for him. He’s just a regular guy. But the sword sits in his hand, steady and warm to the touch, and Duck knows that he has to at least do something. He’s never going to save the world, Duck knows that, but he can at least do some real good using Minerva’s gifts.

It’s around 2 a.m. on one of the days following Christmas, and the world somehow doesn’t make sense anymore. Duck is awake, and has been for too long now. His eyelids shut despite him, even though the light is open, even though he’s on his old couch and not in his bed, even though he desperately wants to stay awake until things start to make sense again. He never wanted Minerva’s powers. He never wanted to be some hero doomed to save the planet. Still, he finds no relief in the possibility that he doesn’t have that responsibility anymore. Sure, he’s still part of the Pine Guard and he’s going to continue that, but the pressure’s off. It all feels meaningless. The cat makes something fall in the other room, and Duck can’t remember what he was thinking about anymore. A few moments pass, and the realization of how easy it would be to kill him right now comes back to the forefront of his mind. One unlucky step, one scratch, one bite, anything, anything, anything could kill him now. His eyes close for a second and he opens them back up fifteen minutes later. He passes a hand through his tangled hair and lays down on his couch, ignoring how uncomfortable it is. He closes his heavy eyes again. He hopes Minerva’s okay. He needs Minerva to be okay. His world fades away for the night.

It’s around 4 p.m. on one of the last days of February, and Duck’s burying a friend. Not many people are here, just Aubrey, Kirby, Dani, and Barclay. He can’t really blame the other Sylfs for being absent. Being out like this with all the FBI presence around is dangerous. He sticks close to Aubrey, who’s holding Dani’s hand tight. Duck wants to cry, feels like he should be crying, but he can’t muster up any real emotion right now. Kepler’s cemetery is small. Duck’s acutely aware of how close he is to the last person he buried here. He wants to stay for a few minutes after they’ve paid their respects to Ned. He wants to tell her about what’s going on in Kepler right now. He wants to tell her about what’s going on with him right now. But then Aubrey’s hugging him, and he’s hugging her back, and there are tears in her eyes, and, finally, finally, Duck is crying too, and he knows he can’t go wandering off, even for a few minutes. He needs to stay with his friends, at least for tonight. 

It’s around 4 a.m. on the first hot day of March, and Duck is woken up by some shuffling in the living room. Since the mountain, it’s been a pretty common occurrence, between Minerva who seems to follow a different sleep cycle and some of the Sylfs who are just naturally inclined to get up at various hours of the night. He turns in his bed, ready to go back to sleep, when he hears a fumble, the breaking of glass, all followed by a soft “Fuck” which Duck recognises immediately. He sighs, silently moving out from under his covers and heads to his living room, where Aubrey is picking up pieces of glass off the floor. “At least use the broom,” he says, heading to the kitchen to get it. “It’s just for the big pieces,” she answers, but she takes the broom anyway when Duck hands it to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.” “It’s okay, it happens.” They stay silent while Aubrey finishes cleaning up. As the last pieces of glass go in the trash, Duck speaks up again, “Are you alright?” “Yeah, yeah, I didn’t get cut or anything. Though we should probably pass the vacuum when everyone’s awake just for the super tiny pieces.” Duck shoots her a look, and Aubrey sighs throwing herself down on the couch next to him, “I just keep thinking about Ned.” She moves her hair out of her face, showing the tired, impossibly sad look on her face, “You know the last thing I ever said to him was essentially to fuck off and never come back to Kepler again.” Duck’s surprised, but it does explain the state of The Cryptonomica when they’d gone back there, “I’m sure you didn’t say it like that,” It also explains the letters he’d left both of them, Duck realizes. “It might as well have been. What difference does it make? He died-” Aubrey voice breaks and she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, “Ned died thinking I wanted him gone.” “Did you?” “I don’t know. Maybe? I did before he died.” They stay in silence for a few more minutes, staring at the black screen of Duck’s old TV. “You know, Aubrey, when I came out to my mom, she took it really bad. Like, real bad. She didn’t,” Duck bites his tongue, he’s never talked about this with anyone. It’s always felt like a bit too much, but if someone’s ever going to hear him out, it’s going to be Aubrey, “She didn’t kick me out or anything, but it was rough. I went into dorms for college, and I chose not to go back to the house until a decade later. She apologized when I came back. We had lunch, we talked, she explained how she was obviously wrong. She meant every word of it. She regretted her old actions, she regretted every wrong thing she’d done to me, every wrong thing she’d said about me. I still couldn’t forgive her. I wasn’t ready.” “Oh,” Aubrey gasps, barely even audible in the quiet of the room. Duck sniffs, and wipes away the tear that had started to fall down his face, “We saw each other a little after that, Christmas dinners here and there, but nothing real. She died a few years back. She died and I hadn’t ever really forgiven her. Well, I hadn’t told her if I had anyway.” “I’m… sorry.” Aubrey says. There’s another pause, this one feeling even heavier than the last one. “Do you regret not telling her?” “Oh yeah, definitely. It’s hard, because I think that I only would have really forgiven her last month if I still could, but, man, people dying makes forgiveness way easier than it actually is.” “Do you think I’ll ever… I don’t know. Do you think I’ll ever stop feeling so guilty about Ned?” “Yeah, of course you will, Aubrey. ” Duck takes her hands in his, squeezing reassuringly, “It’s awful to live with, and maybe it’ll never be easy to think about Ned’s death, but life continues on, and your grief will slowly ease away.” She looks at him with her bright eyes, and Duck thinks for a second that she’s about to argue, about to tell him he’s wrong, but she just sighs, “Thanks, Duck. You’re a good friend.” She pulls her hands away from Duck’s to get a tissue, “I guess we should go back to bed now, huh?” “Only if you want to.” They watch the sunrise that morning, both smiling at the memories of Ned’s shenanigans.

It is 9:30 p.m. on the day of the apocalypse, and Duck is surrounded by friends. He’s been terrified of this moment for his entire adult life, even when he wouldn’t acknowledge it. But now that it’s here, now that he knows that every part of their plan is in place, now that there’s no choice but to face the monster that lies just beyond the gate, Duck is calm. Well, as calm as he can be anyway. He’s holding Beacon in his hand, Aubrey to his right, and Arlo to his left, and they’re waiting for it all to kick off. He takes a deep breath, and realizes, that maybe for the first time in his life, he’s ready.

He’s ready.

#duck newton #taz amnesty #taz #The Adventure Zone #the adventure zone amnesty #trans duck newton #ned chicane #aubrey little #juno taz #a moi

[javajunkieao3]

I’ll Be Seeing You (A Post-Endgame Story)

In all his thoughts about how he and Peggy would reunite, he never imagined her pointing a gun at him.  

Or, how Steve and Peggy’s reunion didn’t go quite as planned.

Steve Rogers had always been a pretty sentimental guy, but this was almost even too much for him.  Traveling back in time to get the girl.  It’s exactly the sort of thing that would have made Tony roll his eyes.  Nat would have punched him in the arm and called him a softie.  But, everyone kept telling him to get a life, and dammit, if this wasn’t the time then he didn’t know when.  So, he popped into the 70s to return the time stone, pocketed some extra Pym particles, and got on with it.

Well, first there were technically other stones to return, and a somewhat awkward run-in with Red Skull - “I thought I killed you.” - but then he got on with it, traveling back to what should have been immediately after the crash, overshooting, and ending up halfway through 1948.

It was close enough.  The extra years hadn’t done much to change the city that Steve remembered, the conspicuous Stark Industries building still towering over the lesser high-rises on Fifth Avenue.  Steve was glad he found it easily since his first stop was to visit Howard.  It seemed that no matter what decade Steve was in, he turned to a Stark for help.

He walked into the lobby, his time travel getup drawing more than a few stares as he walked to the main desk.  He saw a small boy point at him, only for the boy’s mother to softly chide him while she drew him closer to her side.  

The woman at the desk was writing something on a pad of paper when he approached and she looked up, her mouth dropping open slightly, eyes scanning his travel suit, before she stammered, “How can I help you?”

“What floor is Howard Stark’s office?”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I don’t.  But I really need to speak with him.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you need an appointment to see Mr. Stark.  Can I perhaps direct you to another individual?”

“Marjorie, did this young man say he was here to see Mr. Stark?” a tall Englishman asked, joining them and looking at Steve appraisingly.  

“Yes, Mr. Jarvis, but he doesn’t have an appointment."

“That’s alright, I know for a fact that Mr. Stark has some free time right now.  I’ll take him up.”

“Are you sure?” she asked nervously.  “I know how much Mr. Stark doesn’t like being surprised by people without appointments.  And if he finds out that I’m the one that sent him up-”

“Trust me, Marjorie, you have nothing to worry about.”

She nodded quickly and took a deep breath before saying in a rehearsed voice,, “I hope you enjoy your visit to Stark Industries.  Make sure to check out the gift shop on the way out.”

“There’s a gift shop?” Steve asked with surprise.

“Mr. Stark has always been enterprising.”

They walked to the elevators, Jarvis holding the door as Steve walked past him.  Jarvis stepped in and closed the doors, and Steve said, “Thank you.  I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name before.”

“Edwin Jarvis,” the man returned pleasantly.  “I’m Mr. Stark’s butler.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”  Silence hung between them before Jarvis said, “You are him, aren’t you?”  Steve didn’t answer and he continued with, “I recognized you from a picture she saved.”

“She?”  Steve asked, his pulse suddenly quick.

The doors opened and Jarvis gestured for him to walk first.  He glided past Howard’s secretary and said, “I have a visitor for Mr. Stark.  I think you will be wanting to hold his calls for the time being.”

Jarvis gave the door two perfunctory knocks before opening the door and saying, “Mr. Stark, there is someone here to see you.”

“Is my 2:00 here already?”  Howard said, draining the last of his bourbon.  “That lady never knows how to read a clock.”

Jarvis stepped aside and Steve walked in, watching his friend’s face go white.  Howard looked down at his empty glass and murmured, “How much of this have I had?”

The door closed softly and Jarvis left, leaving the two men alone.  Howard stared at him, slack-jawed before he bolted forward and wrapped his arms around him, the sheer force of the embrace surprisingly strong despite his lack of super powers.  

“How in the hell is this possible?”  Howard said, pulling back and looking at him.  “And what are you wearing?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Steve told him the whole saga and Howard predictably became distracted at the time travel part, engaging in exhaustive questioning about the tech and Pym particles.  When he learned that Steve had a vial of the particles on his person, Howard nearly imploded, whipping a microscope out from under his desk and begging for a vial.  Steve handed one over and then changed into one of Howard’s spare suits, grateful for a less synthetic material against his skin.

"So, is that why you’re here?”  Howard asked, looking up from the microscope. “To return one of the stones?”

Steve was just about to answer when the door opened and a brunette woman walked in, Howard’s secretary rushing behind her and exclaiming, “He’s not ready for you yet, Ms. Carter!”

Peggy stopped short when she saw that there was someone else in the room, and quickly said, “Sorry, Howard, I didn’t realize you had someone here.”

“I told you that repeatedly,” his secretary said unhappily.

“I’ll just...” Peggy trailed off when Steve turned to face her fully, her cheeks flushing nearly as red as her mouth.

“Can you get the door, Susan?” Howard asked, eyeing the pair apprehensively. 

His secretary nodded and closed the door, shooting Peggy and unmistakable glare before the door slammed shut.  Peggy, though, paid little notice.  Her eyes were trained on Steve, both disbelieving and unable to not believe what stood before her.

“Hi Peggy.”

Her eyes shifted back to Howard and he nodded.  “It’s really him, Peg.”

She was quiet for a long moment, her expression impassive, before she reached at her waist and pulled out a gun, leveling it directly toward Steve.

“Jesus, Peggy, what the hell are you doing?”  Howard said hurriedly.

“Who are you?”  Peggy asked directly.  “And if I were you, I wouldn’t lie.”

Despite having a gun pointed at him, Steve couldn’t help but smile.  In all his thoughts about how he and Peggy would reunite, he never imagined her pointing a gun at him, and yet now, it seemed like the most natural course of events.

“My name is Steven Grant Rogers.  And I want to tell you everything.  You have no idea how much.  But, do you think you can put the gun down?”

“Not likely,” she returned.

“Alright, well, it was worth a try.”

He launched into the story again, leaving out some details and adding others.  He watched the gun sink every so often, only for Peggy to snap back to attention and raise it to its appropriate height.  But as he went on, describing Thanos’ destruction and the team’s desperate attempt to make amends, the gun slowly lowered until it hung loosely at her side.

“I returned the stones and that’s what brought me here,” he said.

Peggy re-holstered her gun and that was when he saw it, the slim gold band with a single diamond.  He didn’t have much time to process it, however, before she strode forward and hugged him tightly.  He wrapped his arms around her, letting himself momentarily sink in to the feeling of her body pressed against his.

“You really are alright, then?”  she murmured against his chest.  “We all thought...well...we thought the worst.”

“I’m okay,” he said softly. 

Peggy pulled away, sniffling slightly as she wiped at her eyes.  “What will you do now?”

“I thought I might stay a while,” he said.  “See what I missed during all those years in the ice.”  He reluctantly dropped his hands from her waist.  “Anyway, I won’t keep you two from your meeting.”

Peggy nodded, smiling without it quite reaching her eyes before she turned away.  Steve walked out, not noticing that Howard trailed behind him until the latter grabbed his arm.

“Hey, are you really staying?”

Steve nodded.  “Yeah, for the time being at least.”

“You must need a place to stay.  Why don’t you stay at one of my apartments.”

“Howard, I don’t-”

“It’s no problem, honestly.  Go talk to Jarvis and tell him to drive you to my Brooklyn apartment.  You’ll love it.”

Steve nodded.  “Thank you, Howard.” 

His friend paused for a moment before asking, “You came back here for her, didn’t you?”

Steve thought of the ring and shook his head.  “I missed home.”

“You know, it’s new.  The engagement.  The guy’s nice and all, but...”

“I’m not here to cause any problems,” Steve said.  “If she’s happy that’s all I want.”

“Right, right, okay, I have to get back in there before she pulls a gun on me.  I’ll bring over some dinner tonight, yeah?  We can catch up more.”

“I’d like that.”

Howard flashed him one more grin before slipping back into his office.  Jarvis stood nearby and said, “Did I hear something about Mr. Stark’s Brooklyn apartment?”

****

So, I basically fell in love with the idea of Steve accidentally time traveling to when Peggy is already engaged to the future husband, and what that would look like.  I’m planning on this being multi-chapter.  Let me know if you’d like to see more!

#steggy #steggy fanfiction #steggyweek #steggyweek2019 #steggyweek2k19

[jaimetheexplorer]

PROBABILITY DISTORTION - Or why Jaime Lannister is less likely to die than you think (part 1)

I am kicking off my metas with a prickly topic that is perhaps one of the most frustrating for me to come across (and one that is pretty much impossible to avoid, these days): Jaime Lannister’s (allegedly inevitable) death. I think the reason his death is so widely accepted as inevitable is due to probability distortion. Probability distortion means that the probability of events that are unlikely is overestimated and/or the probability of events that are likely is underestimated, and the degree with which this happens is often due to individual differences and personal biases. So, for example, people who are afraid of flying overestimate the probability of dying in a plane crash, while underestimating the probability of dying in a car crash.

This is what I believe is happening with most discourse and predictions about Jaime’s fate. While present, there are actually only a handful of hints that Jaime might die in the end, and these are weighed disproportionately heavily against the substantial amount of hints to the contrary. I am NOT saying it is impossible for Jaime to die. I just believe that, if we look at the material, the probability is actually far far lower than fandom and the general audience would have you believe.

Before I get started, DISCLAIMER: While I am obviously a huge Jaime fan, I want to stop the shouts of “You just want him to live because he is your favourite” right there. No, actually. Brienne is my favourite. And, while it would break my heart, I would not feel necessarily as dissatisfied with the story if she were the one to die (see part 4 for more on this). The way I see it, death is not a punishment nor is life a prize, for a character. What matters to me is whether a death fits and makes sense for that character’s story and the ones it affects, and if it is satisfying in terms of overall style, tropes and messages. That’s the stance from which I’m analysing Jaime’s odds in this meta.

I will look at his trajectory in the story and towards the endgame from three angles (narrative arcs, the use of foreshadowing, GRRM’s writing style and story management) to explain why I think the odds of his death are highly overestimated.

When looking at narrative arcs, we have to keep in mind one thing about ASOIAF: all arcs (especially POV arcs) are important, connected and affect one another - the so called “butterfly effects”. This is not a story with one or two protagonists the story follows, and everyone else playing supporting roles (have a look here for GRRM’s take on the matter). I believe one reason why so many people distort Jaime’s endgame odds is because they look at his arc as if it were its own, standalone story. But in order to predict where it’s going to go, we need to not only look at his arc, but also at how events in his arc are going to affect and make sense with regards to OTHER POV character’s arcs (and viceversa), and particularly the two who are most closely connected to his: Cersei and Brienne.

Jaime: the man he’s meant to be

Let’s start by looking at the man in question. Jaime’s arc has three prominent themes: redemption, identity and love/family. The common point across all three is the idea of “the man he’s meant to be”, a man that is different from the one we meet at the beginning of the story.

One reason I believe predictions about his fate are skewed, is because not only too much emphasis is placed on redemption, at the expense of the other themes, but the concept of redemption most seem to have in mind is of the classic “paying for one’s crimes” variety, where the villain redeems himself at the last minute by sacrificing himself for the greater good. In Jaime’s case, the crime is (mainly) pushing Bran from the tower and the redemption comes in the form of either killing Cersei and then killing/dying himself, or dying to protect one of the “good guys”.

However, this fails to take into account the huge thematic and narrative significance of losing his sword hand - which is ironic considering that is the most iconic visual trait of Jaime’s character. 1) Jaime has *already* paid for this crime when his sword hand was chopped off, as that destroyed his life as he knew it, just like Bran losing his legs did.  2) Losing his hand is a punishment that is comparable to the crime committed (Bran lost the legs; Jaime lost his sword hand - the one he used to push him, no less), while death is rather disproportionate. 3) His redemption has *already* begun in that moment, as he saves Brienne from rape. So Jaime has paid and has been working to “make up for his bad deed(s)” ever since, while the traditional format of redemptive death usually applies when the “bad guy” only does the right thing at the last minute (usually because he’s just a plot device for the one or two main characters to be saved, - see Darth Vader - whereas in this story main POV characters are not just plot devices). Indeed, GRRM said he is interested in exploring the process of redemption; whether and how someone who has committed some terrible act can come back from it. And he has stated that he wants to believe that is possible. His outlook on redemption arcs seems to be far less authoritarian than those who seem to presume that the answer to the question “can someone be redeemed” is either a yes which is equivalent to life or a no which is equivalent to death. There are tons of shades of grey in between those two options. Furthermore, as I will discuss in part 3, George is all about trope subversion, making the traditional redemptive format rather unlikely.

The handchop not only marks the beginning of his redemption arc, but also sets Jaime on his identity arc. In most predictions, much less emphasis is put on the identity arc, which is equally as important. 

“They took my sword hand. Was that all that I was? A sword hand?”

From that moment, we see Jaime having to reinvent himself and he seems to begin falling into a leadership role (not unlike Jon’s penchant for ending up with jobs he didn’t apply for); first trying to reform the Kingsguard as Lord Commander, then sent on diplomatic missions in the Riverlands and, on the show, Dorne. While he trains with Ilyn Payne in the books and we see him in occasional fights and battles on the show, it is clear that while he can somewhat function on a battlefield, he will never be as good as he was with his right. Yet, most of the predictions, especially lately, see him die a hero in battle. Sure, some may say that he will die in battle precisely because he’s not that good anymore. However, that ignores authorial intent:

“And Jaime, losing a hand, losing the very thing he defined himself on is crucial to where I think I want to go with the character. And he questions what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost that.” (GRRM).

With Jaime, GRRM doesn’t seem so interested in telling the story of a hero that will save the world in battle, he seems far more interested in exploring how a broken man can reinvent himself after the  *loss* of his identity as a fighter. When you think about it this way, the idea that the climax of his story will be a heroic death in battle becomes a rather unlikely scenario. Decrease the likelihood of this particular scenario, and the overall probability of his death does too.

Finally, there’s the theme that is perhaps most overlooked: love and family. Most commonly, this is associated with Cersei, - who Jaime is willing to do horrible things for - their incestuous children, and Jaime being guilty of his father and sister’s crimes, no matter his direct involvement in them. Whatever little thought is given to how this theme is relevant to predicting Jaime’s fate usually revolves around foreshadowing tragedy: Jaime will kill Cersei, die himself, the Lannisters are all meant to go extinct, and, at most, Tyrion will survive because he is “the good one” (although even that is being revisited now).

But the love and family theme has far wider implications for Jaime’s story. The big crux of this theme in Jaime’s story isn’t just that he’s sleeping with his sister and fathering bastard children with her, but also that, in the name of some misguided notion of star-crossed love for her, he joined a celibate order that required him to give up his role as heir and future leader of his house, as well as his right to marry and father legitimate children (as Tywin and other characters like to often remind us). Fast-forward to S6 of the show, and, in one of the most overlooked scenes, Jaime is released from the Kingsguard. While this is show-only, by that stage, the show was ahead of the books, and the idea of releasing Jaime from the KG is also floated around in the books, most recently by Kevan. Given where his arc seems to be taking him at the end of S7, there is literally no narrative reason for Jaime to be released from the Kingsguard, as he can be accused of treason for going against Cersei’s orders and leaving to fight in the North (and die) just the same. Unless the narrative reason is to free him up for something his Kingsguard vow does not allow him to do.

“Other men could be fathers, [..], husbands. But not Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair.”

Fathers, husbands… the man Jaime was meant to be had he not taken up the white cloak. Once again, this is juxtaposed with his “sword”, the identity as a fighter that he lost - what is Jaime if not a white cloak and a sword hand? Perhaps a father, husband and the head of his house? The man he was meant to be?

So, here we have a character who has embarked upon a redemption arc, which involved losing the thing that defined him as a fighter for his whole life, so that he has to reinvent himself into a role that increasingly looks to be the heir and leader he gave up in the first place, and that the show now put him in a position to legally pursue, with six more episodes to go. Once you take all this development into account, does it sound like an arc where death is a likely, logical and satisfying conclusion that the story is pointing towards? I’d say not really.

The odds of his survival are increased further once you look at how his potential death would affect the arcs of the two other named POV characters who are most closely intertwined with his: Cersei and Brienne.

Cersei: the twin who wasn’t

When we are first introduced to Cersei and Jaime, we only see them from the POV of other characters and one thing is drilled into our heads: they are twins in every sense of the word, from their golden looks to their despicable, arrogant, and shallow personalities. One of the plot twists, and what makes the POV structure so powerful, is that that first impression starts to unravel as soon as we are introduced to their POVs.

Turns out, Jaime and Cersei are actually fairly different people. Jaime is a man who’s grown cynical and bitter but once strived to be a honourable knight. Cersei, while undoubtedly having suffered being Queen to a drunken, abusive, and unfaithful King, showed a streak of sociopathy from a young age - as physically abusing Tyrion when he was a baby, and murdering her best friend by pushing her into a well. Through the story they are both growing to recognise their differences: Jaime realising Cersei was not the Maiden to his Warrior but “the Stranger, hiding her true face from my gaze” and Cersei being alienated by Jaime’s redemption-driven changes, and realising that he has wishes and a moral compass that do not match her own. GRRM sets them on completely opposite trajectories - Jaime on a redemption/identity arc, reinventing himself as a different man, while Cersei doubles down on her psychopathy, getting caught in all sorts of self-made drama and self-destruction. So much for being twins.

Why is this important in terms of Jaime’s death odds? As anyone who has spent five minutes online knows, Cersei has a certain prophecy that has her most likely marked for dead. I am not going to go into the theories about who the valonqar might be (although I will say that the corollary of the valonqar dying after killing Cersei is 100% fanon and nonexistent in the actual prophecy), but this is relevant because, from a narrative arc standpoint, if their arcs are heading in totally opposite directions and Cersei is marked for death, then the odds of Jaime also being marked for death are actually rather low. If one dies, the other, most likely, lives. (Could it be Cersei? Sure. But I think it’s unlikely based on her trajectory - not going to go into it now. Regardless, I think their endings will likely be diametrically opposed).

Brienne: the (plot) armour

And, finally, we come to Brienne. Her chapters are perhaps some of the strongest plot armour (irony, much? - IRON-y? Sorry. I’ll stop now.) Jaime has in this story.

Brienne embodies the concept of knighthood Jaime used to have before joining the Kingsguard. While her views are initially naive and unrealistic, one of her main purposes in the story is to ignite Jaime’s renewed desire to be the honourable knight he wanted to be when he was younger. But if this were Brienne’s sole purpose, she did not need to be a POV. She is a POV because GRRM wants us to see how meeting Jaime affected HER. While challenging her views of knighthood and oaths is one aspect of it, one thing he brings up over and over is that she is terrified of failing Jaime.

The feeling of failure over past events is a staple of Brienne’s inner thoughts (also towards her father, who she feels she couldn’t be an adequate daughter to, and Catelyn Stark, who she couldn’t protect from dying in the Red Wedding). But whenever she thinks about failing Jaime, her thoughts more often than not draw a parallel between failing Jaime and the way she “failed” Renly, the man she loved; i.e. being unable to prevent his death. We meet Brienne in book/season 2 and, shortly after her introduction, we see her holding a dying Renly in her arms. Once we get inside her head in book 4, we see that she has nightmares where she watches Jaime die the same way Renly did, or where he walks away, leaving her alone (“Jaime! Come back for me!”). The show had her voice this fear to Podrick: 

“Nothing is more hateful than failing to protect the one you love”.

I won’t go off on a tangent now about Jaime and Brienne’s relationship and where that might go (although, as a full disclaimer, I believe all evidence points to a romance - check out bonus part 4 for more on that topic), but one does not need to see their relationship as romantic to appreciate that protection and failure are big themes in Brienne’s arc, that she starts the story precisely failing to protect the man she loves from death, and that those feelings of protection and fear of failure are transferred from Renly to Jaime. So, if Jaime were to die? It would bring her arc right back where she started, her story having gone nowhere. It does not really matter whether Brienne dies alongside him, or Jaime dies after Brienne is dead. From a narrative standpoint, it would still mean Brienne’s efforts were ultimately in vain. I think it’s unlikely GRRM’s decision to make her a POV character and spend so much time on the theme of failure of protecting the one(s) she loves, was merely to engage in circular storytelling and end the story with “You know what, Brienne? You were right all along. You are a failure. Now go and mourn Jaime for the rest of your lonely life, the way you mourned Renly and everyone else in your life who’s dead (i.e. 99% of your family).”

To summarize, if we look at narrative arcs, Jaime’s arc tackles three themes that all seem to point in a direction other than death as the most likely/logical outcome. Furthermore, Jaime’s death would void two other important themes/arcs George is exploring with two other POV characters. Therefore, while of course it doesn’t rule it out, the odds of him dying, when looking at narrative arcs alone, look much lower than the general consensus would have you believe. 

Up next, in part 2, foreshadowing.

#jaime lannister #jaime lannister meta #game of thrones meta #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #game of thrones #my meta #essay #thank you for coming to my ted talk

[fleetingfigures]

Superhero/villain :3

(This is mostly a spin off of a near future Yakuza AU I was imagining with a few friends, and as such I’ll use the picrew I used for that for this as well!)

“PENTAKILL!” 

“Ace!”

The incessant sound of a mechanical keyboard fills the small studio apartment, as the flashing displays from a multi-monitor setup illuminate a singular hunched figure in front of it all. A Miqo’te, no older than his mid twenties sits, or rather perches upon an elaborate office chair, typing away at inhuman speeds as his eyes dart to and fro, focused on the game at hand. He reaches over, grabbing hold of a now room temperature crêpe and takes furtive bite out of it, his eyes still glued on the monitors before him. And this is how most nights proceeded for this Miqo’te -  wherein he sits for hours, stuffing his face with all manner of snacks, plays a few games, then heads to bed. Though, tonight is not his usual night as, before the match he’s in can reach its natural end, his whole desk vibrates as his phone lights up. The man is tempted to just shut off the phone, and go back to his game, but, seeing the caller ID, he supposes he has to pick up. Typing a “brb” in chat, the Miqo’te grabs the phone, and flips it around in his hand before pressing the accept call button. 

“Yello?” The Miqo’te answers lazily, going to wedge the phone between his shoulder and ear to free up his hands. 

Loud breathing is the only thing that greets his question, accompanied soon after by the keen sound of gunshots and the dull thud of distant, yet hurried footsteps. Things seem to die down for just a bit as a gruff voice breaks the silence. “Sae. You have some Fucking explaining to do. You told me no one was going to be at the Garlean Warehouse by Pier 5, and yet what do I found except an armed squadron of their best guards!”

The Keeper rolls his eyes, moving the phone away from his mouth as he abandons his game mid-match. After closing its tab, he pulls up a non-descript program, displaying its two main windows upon the monitors before him. There he can see the man on call with him currently, a Midlander who, besides the wild mop of hair upon his head, which is probably due to the mad sprint he had to perform to not get shot, seems rather pedestrian. On the other window, he can spy the Garlean guards he had mentioned, armed to the teeth in their finest magitek assault rifles as they fanned out to scan the area. He takes another bite of his crêpe before he finally addresses his caller. “Well, seems someone didn’t ask for enough details.”

“Gods… Is now really the time to reprimand me on such a thing, Sae?!”

“Well, yes, considering we’re only bound by the cash you paid me, and the limited info I gave you was well worth the pitiful sum you provided.”

“Just, ok look… I’ll double your payment, alright? Just divert their attention somehow, you’re the fanciful hacker here.”

“Finneeeee, just give me a minute, alright? I’ve gotta get around a few of their security systems, kay?” 

“Make it quick.”

Sae begins to type quickly again, as he pulls up a third tab, and types into the minimalist chat box that greets him. 

Sae: “> Hey, saw a strange thing on watch. Seems someone’s lurking around your warehouse. Told ya that hiring a squad tonight was gonna be a good idea.”

Soon after hitting send, the Miqo’te gets a response back.

R.V.H “> Seems you aren’t insane after all, Sae. I assume the squad is handling the intruder as we speak, yes?”

Sae: “> Not quite. Seems the dude’s pretty good at evading them, and he’s got your canister in his hands. I could try my hand at stopping him directly, but that’d require me to gain full access into your systems, and maybe a little extra cash too.”

R.V.H “> Damnit. Are you sure they can’t restrain him without your aid?”

Sae: “> Yup. Pretty certain. The dude’s holed up in a room and is gonna slink away into the night if I don’t lock that grate above his head.”

R.V.H: “Fine. I’ll send the system’s master code, as well as an extra sum of cash.”

Sae: “> Thnx. And how much is that extra sum?”

R.V.H “500k gil, in addition to the 2 mil I’ve already given to you.”

Saerno begins to type even faster as he brings the phone back to his ear. 

“Hey bud, still there? You didn’t get shot yet, right? I’ve just gotten through the secruity’s, well, security. Seems you’re at a dead end, but that grate right above you might prove useful.”

The Hyur on the other end breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh thank fuck. Seems you’re not as useless as I thought you were, Sae.”

“Hey, I’m the reason why you even knew about this whole place anyways. No need to be so aggro, jeez…”

The Keeper reclines back in his chair, placing his phone down upon his desk as he finishes the last of his crêpe. Of course tonight of all night’s he had to deal with the stuff he’s been preparing for weeks. Couldn’t they have at least waited till after his match was done? God... He’s gonna have to grind again to get back into his ranked promos. But, he supposes, in some way, that this is a tad better than that cesspool of a ‘fun time’. It’s always so fun setting up two sides and letting things pan out from there; that is, of course, with a little of his tinkering sprinkled here and there. It’s one of the last things that brings him true enjoyment in this shitshow of a world anyways. With everything so orderly under the thumb of Garlean reign, and the Resistance trying to swoop in like knights in shining armor, it’s as if Saerno’s living in one of those stupid fantasy novels he used to like as a kid. It’s all so trite, so predictable, and he’s not going to let the world continue to lose what little flavor it has left. However, Saerno is soon broken out of his reverie as two notifications ping to life upon his phone, both banners indicating payments he’s just received. Smiling to himself, he stretches, and reaches for his phone once again and begins to lazily imitate static noises. 

“Hey -kshh- I think I’m -stssss- Breaking up on you.”

“W-wait what?! What do you mean, Augh goddamnit, it must be th-”

“Call Ended.”

With that, Sae tosses his phone on his bed, and leans forward to inspect his screens once again. Inputting the master code he had just received, the Keeper begins to toy with whatever catches his fancy at the moment. 

“Hmmm, Water boiler? Why not? Gas pipes? Let’s loosen em’ up just a tad, and- Oh! There it is, the canister’s main control panel. How about we just disable all safety protocols and…”

Saerno stands up for a brief moment, wheeling his chair over to the large window of his apartment and sits squarely on it. Reaching downwards, he grabs a bag of chips, honey barbecue of course, and begins to slightly part the curtains. Just then, a brilliant cerulean flame erupts on the horizon, as the shockwave produced by it shakes the very foundation of Saerno’s building. In the darkness of his abode, Saerno claps silently to himself, stopping to much on a few chips every once in awhile.

In this world, there’ll be heroes in capes, and villains in suits, but none of that really strikes too well, you feel? No matter what side they’re on, the life these super-whatevers lead is oh so boring and drab. And that’s why I’m here, to spread a little chaos, and to remind everyone that life isn’t like a picture book, or some trashy romance novel. This life we lead is called reality because it can never be predicted, never be truly under control. Though, I guess you could say that these words I’m spouting are absolute horseshit and I just want to see the world bounce between extremes for my own sick pleasure which, well, isn’t wrong, but can’t a guy enjoy some of the finer things in life? After all, sitting here and eating these chips would be way less interesting if there wasn’t a fireworks display going on in the background.

#Supervillain Sae? #More like shitposter who took things way too far #This is so OOC for him even in the other AU I mentioned #but hey #I love giving characters questionable morals and motivations #Reading over this #I basically just made Sae into a less insane version of Junko Enoshima #Just shoot me now #entry-1258

[lichlairs]

Checkout our new post over at http://lichlair.com/the-curse-of-strahd-curse

The Curse of Strahd Curse

This article is going to be a little different from my normal articles and I think the first in perhaps a little anthology series depending on how things go. Get yourself a nice drink and a snack and get comfortable as I take you down the dark path of my personal experiences (as well as some of my friends’) with everyone’s favorite Gothic horror module.

Mild spoilers ahead!

For the night is dark and full of spoilers…

Four times.

That’s how many times I’ve tried to unsuccessfully make my way through this cursed module. In fact, CoS was, I think, the first official module I tried to play my way through but I still remember as if it was yesterday; I had joined the campaign late as a fill in player. The original group had already collected Ireena and were now on their way to the Winery after being turned away from their destination. At the time I still didn’t quite know what I was doing and had opted to simply play my first Paladin, who was predictably an Aasimar.

We got to the Winery, talked to the family, and saved the day… not too bad for my first session having joined. Second session comes and we make our way to Yester Hill. A couple of player characters die but nothing too out of the ordinary for this module. Session three DM never shows up. Everyone sort of just sits around as makes awkward small talk as we wait to see if he’ll show up but eventually we begin to filter out. Strike one.

Flash forward a handful of months later and I’m still intrigued by CoS and very much decided to finish it. In my desperation I turn to the interwebs and discover that there are various platforms from which you can find a group and play online. It took a couple of days but I did eventually find a paid Cursed of Strahd campaign that looked promising and decided to join and what do you know… this group is also just now headed towards Kresk. I bite my tongue to not spoil anything and just enjoy playing my cool shadow monk. After another couple of sessions we eventually fight the druids again and…the DM kicks everyone out of their server after arguing with one of the players… no refunds. Strike two.

Hello, darkness my old friend

Months pass, I meet some pretty great friends along the way and forget about this cursed module for a bit until someone in our little group expresses their interest in running Curse of Strahd. I have a couple of seconds of doubt but eventually do agree to join the campaign as I had recently freed up some of my time. After a few sessions it happens again. Strike three.

Flash forward once again to about two months ago when another friend informs me that he will be running the game for some people and very hopefully asks if I am free to join. Now, at this point I’m very much reluctant and doubtful on whether I will ever actually be able to play through the damn thing, so I sigh and do what any friend would do…I play an Ancestral Barbarian Orc. Long story short, by the time we’ve made it out of the Death House three players had already dropped and with them the campaign came to an end once again. Final strike.

Now, if you’ve read this far I’m sure you understand why I’m not exactly fully knowledgeable on the full Curse of Strahd Module (since I really don’t like reading ahead on things I’m playing through) but for the most part I did find the story interesting enough and was very much looking forward to progressing through it.

After four attempts at playing this module I have some ideas as to why it might be difficult for a player but having never tried to DM it myself, I’ve done my rounds and asked a few people who are knowledgeable in this module about their own personal experiences running it and here’s what they had to say:

The module’s strength is also its weakness. While most people love a good sandbox adventure, CoS takes it a little bit too far by making it very difficult for the DM to prepare anything. We asked some of our friends who have run the module and they told us that they basically had to have the entire thing prepared because there was no way to know when the players would simply decide to change directions at the drop of a hat.

This overwhelming amount of material confined to such a small sandbox can also feel a little directionless for both players and Dungeon Masters. With so many quests and missions appearing all over the map and no “guiding” NPC to rely on, there’s just too many things to do and too few ways in which to nudge players in the right direction.

Another big complain that I personally experienced and something that got brought up quite a bit when asking for feedback for this article was that CoS seems to be built specifically to make the players’ lives miserable. At lower levels, every encounter is skewed to be deadly to the extreme, this coupled with the fact that 5th edition has an inherent tendency for players to not want to run away from encounters, it makes it extremely easy for total party wipe outs to happen. Now, don’t misunderstand me, player character deaths are completely natural and can lead to some amazing in character moments… when death is meaningful. Unfortunately that’s something that gets stripped away very quickly when your party has cycled through an entire rotation of characters.

“You can’t just play the same character and ad a ‘the 3rd’ at the end of their name!“

For a module that everyone seems to claim as their favorite, there seems to be a lot of unhappy experiences surrounding it. At the end of the day, after writing this article I think I’ve personally officially come to terms with the fact that I will never play through the entirety of Curse of Strahd and you know what? I’m okay with that.

If you’ve read this far I’d like to thank you for checking out our first article in our anthology series. If you’d like to read similar content in the future or simply want to rage at our writer for bad mouthing your favorite vampire module let us know by dropping a message in our new forums. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media to never miss any of our daily articles.

#Anthology Series #CoS #Curse of Strahd #dnd #dnd5e #dungeons and dragons

[arabellaflynn]

I always have a hell of a time finding jobs. The conventional wisdom is that it's easier to find a job if you have a job, so take whatever you can get and keep looking. Unfortunately, the McJobs of the world don't want me. Employers who just need a warm body who can show up sober-ish and demonstrate a basic skill do not call me back. A temp agency got me an interview once -- once -- with someone who needed a phone dispatcher. It went very confusingly until the hiring manager and I compared paperwork and realized that the resume the agency had sent him was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the resume I had sent them. He then told me, and this is an actual quote, "You're too smart to be here," and that was the end of that. The only time I ever managed to get one of those jobs was by volunteering to work graveyard, which everyone else hates, and by lying on the application and telling them I'd dropped out of college. I've been bidding on pet-sitting on Care.com for months and gotten nothing. They are massively, worthlessly underpriced in my area anyway -- they want to give me $12/hr (minus their cut), when cat-sitting in the Camberville area runs more like $35/day, more for a plurality of cats or if they need any special care. I could probably charge more than that, since I have long experience with cats and even the psycho ones tend to like me, but I have a hard enough time with this already. I'm also signed up with Lessons.com, but they're equally useless. I made an account and promptly abandoned it when I discovered they wanted to charge me up front for submitting quotes. They emailed me asking me why I wasn't using their service and I promptly bitched them out for demanding money for giving me the chance to maybe possibly investigate the opportunity to get hired by some rando I had never met with no references. They comped me a few credits. It did not help, because they keep sending me requests to teach ballet to 8-year-olds 25 miles away, all boxes which I have left unchecked on my profile for a reason. On the other hand, once I finally run into a job that plainly needs me, I can get hired more or less by showing up. I've just been hired on by the Boston branch of the Murder Mystery Co, run by American Immersion Theater, which I think is going to be great. There were three very good signs right off the bat: One was that the earliest audition slot I could even sign up for was 1:30 in the afternoon. I do not function before brunch so I liked them immediately. Two was that they do not schedule you. You indicate availability and are cast for shows accordingly. Whatever job I get needs to have either a perfectly regular schedule that I can predict and work around at all times -- which lets out retail and food service -- or a gig-based schedule that requires people to ask if I can work at any given time -- which means contracting everything. There is a very hard limit on how much work I can do. I can choose to overextend myself for short periods of time, essentially borrowing against future effort, but I also need to know exactly when that will end, and be able to schedule recovery days afterwards that cannot be interrupted. I can't do that if I'm always waiting on a manager who may or may not care much about my health and sanity to hand me a weekly roster. Historically, asking if I can be excused from shit I cannot handle has not worked out very well, so now I just tell people I won't be doing the thing and let them cope accordingly. I have had to quit jobs in a hurry because the stress and exhaustion led me to an actual, medical collapse. My main goal for the foreseeable future is to not have any more breakdowns. Three is that it is an acting job that pays in actual US dollars. Don't underestimate this. I have never found it that difficult to get myself on stage (or on the radio, or in front of a camera) but apparently other people do, and a lot of them derive some sort of visceral emotional validation from being there, so they'll throw themselves at any chance to do it, even if it means wading into a cesspool of abuse and exploitation for free. This murder mystery gig is largely improv. The mysteries are all fair-play, and it's expected that at least some of the guests will solve it correctly, but there's very little script and most of the time the actors are roaming around playing the suspects. The main point is to be entertaining while giving out a few very specific clues. I don't know how other people handle this, but for me, that means the gig is about 20% knowing how the event runs and 80% just showing up and chattering at people while pretending to be someone else. I will never have to think about this if I am not physically at work, and frankly I don't have to think about that much while I'm doing it either. Working a room is energy-intensive, so I will have to limit how many shows I do in a given span of time, but it's not mentally stressful for me. Doubly so if I'm in character and don't have to give two shits about what any of these people might think of me if I run into them in CVS later. I get the feeling that I am an acquired taste. I get surprisingly little work from open auditions. I'm on the list with a couple of general casting services, but almost all of what they put out are 'cattle calls' -- auditions or film extra gigs that want to draw hundreds of people who can act as background scenery for long hours and very little pay. I have learned the hard way that they, and large dance companies, do not want me, I suspect because I cannot make myself look generic if I try. I auditioned for a corps-style modern company downtown once and I was the only person in the room wearing turquoise eyeliner. In a room full of modern dancers, who have a well-earned reputation for weirdness. Also the only woman there with noticeable boobs. I got a lot of compliments from the other hopefuls, but I was clearly not what they were looking for. [There's also a local event staffing service I'm signed up with, which provides promo models and smiling reception staff for premieres and club events and so forth. They, like Lessons, keep sending me notices for things that are a million miles away and not what I indicated interest in, so they're of basically no use.] The lion's share of my paid work comes from people hunting me down and asking. I still sign up and audition if that's how they're casting the production, because they haven't necessarily seen me do that specific thing yet, but I know about the audition because they have asked me to be there. Dance and acting I usually audition; modeling is because someone's seen one of my profiles and wants a model who fits vintage/art fashion or has crazy long hair. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Ly9Bx0 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

#IFTTT #Blogger #Unsolicited Advice

[minatsuki-on-main]

BTB and the free will debate

The post I was planning to make for the longest time.

Most of BTB — especially Koku's plotline — is centered around Fate and whether events are predetermined so it's only natural to ask how it's connected with the question of free will and what the central message ends up being. I noticed a lot of confusion around this issue among people who have watched the show because, without concentrating on the right aspects, what it tries to convey can come off confusing and ambiguous. The first impression one might get is that Koku's subplot was headed in the classical direction of the protagonist changing their own fate through willpower, but this then gets negated by the fact that Koku winning his final fight was predicted so free will didn't prevail despite the positive closure. And, as a sidenote, there's nothing wrong with this interpretation either, as BTB was clearly meant to have a 'half-satisfying' ending on Keith's side as well; after all, Gilbert got exactly what he wanted even if he died and the world went back to its natural order. I wouldn't say this is all there is to the issue, though.

The deciphering of the Jetblack Epitaph was what kicked of practically everything in BTB, in a chain of events that started before the plot. Not only does it act as a bridge between the two plotlines, it also frames the supernatural in a completely different way than humanity did before and how we would. One of the main concepts is the question "What would happen if humans had access to divine knowledge through science?" And the surprising answer BTB gives is: not much. Of course, Keith's mindset is still stuck in an era preceding the adjustment to this knowledge and he has his moments of bewilderment towards it, but otherwise the few who know about the supernatural adapted to it in a pretty anticlimactic way. Their reaction to the existence of literal gods and demigods wasn't a radical change in attitude but an instant attempt to exploit them for profit. Science and magic coexist in an awkward way since the latter has become part of the former, people see it as nothing more than a new discovery despite it having the power to change the world around them drastically. This produces the biggest paradox in Keith's and his father's way of thinking: as a scientist, you have to believe in some form of God, because it was discovered through science. The two of them manage to digest this fact and have the necessary respect for the supernatural only because they're fundamentally open-minded people; in contrast, someone like Gilbert used a divine power as a tool without reverence, which made him unable to fully comprehend what he was dealing with (hence his breakdown in the car). 

Keith quite literally calls the Jetblack Epitaph 'God', it being the source of all the seemingly absurd things he now has to believe in. The option to disregard it is excluded by premise, and since the Jetblack contains a prediction of future events, the dilemma is the exact same as the real world scientific/philosphical debate around free will. We know complete freedom isn't a possibility (this would come from neuroscientific research in reality), so the question is whether it's possible for us to make our decisions while the events are already predetermined. All BTB does is make this debate much more urgent since safety of the whole world is on the line. Compatibilism is the belief that free will is compatible with determinism because the impression of making a decision remains the same for human beings despite knowing there's only one possible outcome; furthermore that the reason behind this is that we'll never know enough to accurately predict everything and this is how we still feel free. The opposing viewpoint is hard determinism, that we don't have the power to influence the future in any way and free will is an illusion.

In BTB's context, Keith represents compatibilism ("Don't fear the future, Koku. The hope and despair, see it for yourself.") and Laica a downright fatalistic determinism (see: everything he says in the last two episodes, basically). Koku is in the position of being conflicted between the two and trying to decide which is true — he already starts out with a mindset of following the Jetblack strictly, which makes sense considering it's what his creation was based on. His personal crisis stems from the fact that he mistakenly thinks the prophecy is going to compromise his own happiness by interpreting it as meaning he and Yuna will die, and — possessing a healthy amount of egoism — he desperately wants to believe in something that gives him a way out of this fate. Even more interesting is Gilbert who brings up a viewpoint that, though not technically a philosophical stance, is largely represented among real people: not caring about the free will issue at all. In fact, his motto about a neverending cycle means something completely different to him than it does to Laica (who Gilbert deliberately lets misinterpret it); it's mostly a jab at Keith and how he's planning to make his life spiral down in despair. Note that it's never clear whether Gilbert thinks there's any truth to the prophecy or not — for him it could be true or false, it's simply irrelevant as long as he can use it for his own benefit. 

So what conclusion does the show reach? Compatibilism does, in fact, turn out to be the correct view in the exact way I mentioned before; the only reason why almost everyone is somewhat convinced Koku is going to lose that fight is that they made a wrong assumption about what the prophecy said (Koku and Yuna 'meeting the same fate' meant that they would both live). They didn't know enough, or rather, they thought they knew more than they actually did, and Laica — the representative of determinism — paid for this presumption with his life. The only person who maintained some hope and still told Koku to fight was Keith, showing that the real source of his intelligence was his ability to consider every option unbiased and be open to even the possibility of not understanding something. He didn't have any certainties about how the Jetblack had to be interpreted but he had faith in it which, paradoxically, was the scientifically rigorous thing to do, and this way of approaching the supernatural made it so he was the only one who wasn't wrong on the matter. The cynical side to this is the additional message that Gilbert's attitude does pay off; maybe not the most optimistic message, but it's realistic, aside from the fact that Gilbert's life was incredibly unhappy and tormented even while reaching his set goal. 

BTB is a case for compatibilism and once one knows the current state of the real life free will debate, it's not half as depressing as it looks.

#b the beginning #b: the beginning #meta #some of you enjoy my reading way too much into this show so here you go #lets hope this shows up in the tag

[genesisnanotech]

In this Two (2) Part Re-Post from MIT Technology Review, Guest Curator Bill Gates has been asked to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better.

Part I: Bill Gates: How we’ll Invent the Future

I was honored when MIT Technology Review invited me to be the first guest curator of its 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Narrowing down the list was difficult. I wanted to choose things that not only will create headlines in 2019 but captured this moment in technological history—which got me thinking about how innovation has evolved over time.

My mind went to—of all things—the plow. Plows are an excellent embodiment of the history of innovation. Humans have been using them since 4000 BCE, when Mesopotamian farmers aerated soil with sharpened sticks. We’ve been slowly tinkering with and improving them ever since, and today’s plows are technological marvels.

  But what exactly is the purpose of a plow? It’s a tool that creates more: more seeds planted, more crops harvested, more food to go around. In places where nutrition is hard to come by, it’s no exaggeration to say that a plow gives people more years of life. The plow—like many technologies, both ancient and modern—is about creating more of something and doing it more efficiently, so that more people can benefit.

Contrast that with lab-grown meat, one of the innovations I picked for this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. Growing animal protein in a lab isn’t about feeding more people. There’s enough livestock to feed the world already, even as demand for meat goes up. Next-generation protein isn’t about creating more—it’s about making meat better. It lets us provide for a growing and wealthier world without contributing to deforestation or emitting methane. It also allows us to enjoy hamburgers without killing any animals.

Put another way, the plow improves our quantity of life, and lab-grown meat improves our quality of life. For most of human history, we’ve put most of our innovative capacity into the former. And our efforts have paid off: worldwide life expectancy rose from 34 years in 1913 to 60 in 1973 and has reached 71 today.

Because we’re living longer, our focus is starting to shift toward well-being. This transformation is happening slowly. If you divide scientific breakthroughs into these two categories—things that improve quantity of life and things that improve quality of life—the 2009 list looks not so different from this year’s. Like most forms of progress, the change is so gradual that it’s hard to perceive. It’s a matter of decades, not years—and I believe we’re only at the midpoint of the transition.

To be clear, I don’t think humanity will stop trying to extend life spans anytime soon. We’re still far from a world where everyone everywhere lives to old age in perfect health, and it’s going to take a lot of innovation to get us there. Plus, “quantity of life” and “quality of life” are not mutually exclusive. A malaria vaccine would both save lives and make life better for children who might otherwise have been left with developmental delays from the disease.

We’ve reached a point where we’re tackling both ideas at once, and that’s what makes this moment in history so interesting. If I had to predict what this list will look like a few years from now, I’d bet technologies that alleviate chronic disease will be a big theme. This won’t just include new drugs (although I would love to see new treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s on the list). The innovations might look like a mechanical glove that helps a person with arthritis maintain flexibility, or an app that connects people experiencing major depressive episodes with the help they need.

If we could look even further out—let’s say the list 20 years from now—I would hope to see technologies that center almost entirely on well-being. I think the brilliant minds of the future will focus on more metaphysical questions: How do we make people happier? How do we create meaningful connections? How do we help everyone live a fulfilling life?

I would love to see these questions shape the 2039 list, because it would mean that we’ve successfully fought back disease (and dealt with climate change). I can’t imagine a greater sign of progress than that. For now, though, the innovations driving change are a mix of things that extend life and things that make it better. My picks reflect both. Each one gives me a different reason to be optimistic for the future, and I hope they inspire you, too.

My selections include amazing new tools that will one day save lives, from simple blood tests that predict premature birth to toilets that destroy deadly pathogens. I’m equally excited by how other technologies on the list will improve our lives. Wearable health monitors like the wrist-based ECG will warn heart patients of impending problems, while others let diabetics not only track glucose levels but manage their disease. Advanced nuclear reactors could provide carbon-free, safe, secure energy to the world.

One of my choices even offers us a peek at a future where society’s primary goal is personal fulfillment. Among many other applications, AI-driven personal agents might one day make your e-mail in-box more manageable—something that sounds trivial until you consider what possibilities open up when you have more free time.

The 30 minutes you used to spend reading e-mail could be spent doing other things. I know some people would use that time to get more work done—but I hope most would use it for pursuits like connecting with a friend over coffee, helping your child with homework, or even volunteering in your community.

That, I think, is a future worth working toward.

Read Part II Here 

MIT’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2019 – Introduction by Bill Gates: Part I In this Two (2) Part Re-Post from MIT Technology Review, Guest Curator Bill Gates has been asked to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better.

#AI #Cancer #Energy #Genesis Nanotechnology #MIT #Nanotechnology

[hopevalley]

I thought these might interest you! Here are descriptions for the next two episodes: 6x07: Hope is with the Heart: Trying to stay on Elizabeth's good side, Lucas sets up a library for the town. Rosemary shares the struggle on her heart. Bill serves as judge in Hope Valley when Jesse sues Gowen. 6x08: A Call from the Past: Lucas' past comes back to haunt him and others in Hope Valley; Lee and Gowen compete for workers; meanwhile an old friend arrives with a new orphan. (via Hallmark)

Thanks Anon! These do interest me!

I’ll do my own little predictions/guesses!

6x07:

Trying to stay on Elizabeth's good side, Lucas sets up a library for the town

After the looks he’s been throwin’ her, I’m not sure if i trust his motivations at all. He has no reason to specifically want to be on Elizabeth’s good side except that he wants a relationship with her.

Rosemary shares the struggle on her heart

They’re gonna talk about her inability to get pregnant and it’ll be wholesome as heck and maybe they’ll consider other options (like adoption or staying child-free). I’m rooting for Lee to bring up the possibility that he could be the problem, too.

Bill serves as judge in Hope Valley when Jesse sues Gowen

Unless Jesse can prove Gowen paid the geologist to lie to him about his chances of striking oil (by which I mean the geologist is willing to testify to this), there’s no way Bill’s going to rule in Jesse’s favor lol. I think Gowen will win. Also, I predict Clara hating the whole thing and being embarrassed by it.

6x08: 

Lucas' past comes back to haunt him and others in Hope Valley

I have no guesses for this, but I hope it’s not another Frank-storyline where he ticked someone off and they come to town and act out against other people because of it.

Lee and Gowen compete for workers

Oil is a lucrative business so I could see people in town wanting to work for Henry, especially if he hires them at a higher wage. This can’t end well for everyone...!

An old friend arrives with a new orphan

Old friend... new orphan. This is tough. Either it’s one of the WHC girls back with an orphan (Lee and Rosie could have contacted them about it, and she brought this child to town to settle in), or it’s a character we’ve seen before who is coming back with a child (Rev. Anderson, AJ, Frank, etc). “Old friend” seems a goofy term to use to refer to one of the WHC girls since they’re hardly old friends already, but the orphan thing makes me think it has to be someone likely to be bringing an orphan with them, so...that’s the most feasible option.

6x09:

At the Founder’s Day Festival, Elizabeth makes a move that might affect her future

I don’t think she’s going to pick a man; I think she might make a commitment to a child. That is to say, they could be building up her relationship with Allie so that Elizabeth offers to take Allie in if Nathan ever gets restationed so that she doesn’t have to keep dealing with being uprooted. Even if Nathan is never stationed elsewhere, this could be a really wholesome and sweet story. Imagine Nathan getting up the courage to ask a favor like that!

An orphan struggles to accept his new life

This could be anything, but we might have a real troublemaker on ou hands with this guy. Or, maybe he’s really shy and struggles to feel good. Heck, maybe he’s even an older teenager; that’d be a nice twist for a plot. Older kids need homes too, and oftentimes have an even harder time adjusting to sudden shifts in environment!

Bill finds starting information about Gowen

This could be anything. He’s been communicating with Nora. He paid off the geologist to lie to Jesse about his chances of striking oil. He’s been to seminary school and is taking over as the town’s pastor. He’s planning to run for mayor. He’s working with Lucas. The issue is that this has to be something that is startling to Bill and also manages to exist as one of three major plotlines in the episode. Easier said than done; this could be so many different things.

#anonymously asked #answered mail

[dailytechnologynews]

The world is utterly unprepared for artificial intelligence in the near-term: "Media Synthesis", the phenomenon which includes deepfakes, is further along than almost anyone realizes and is prepared for, and this will result in a lot of fun and angst come the 2020s

I run the /r/MediaSynthesis subreddit, collecting links and discussions surrounding this technology. The other day, I asked /r/MachineLearning about a topic that I've been tossing about my head for almost a full decade now: when will we be able to use style transfer on audio reliably?

In the simplest possible terms, "style transfer" is when you make one thing like another using machine learning. You upload a picture of a sunny day as an input, upload a bunch of pictures of night time as variables, and then get the original picture but now it's night time. The algorithm didn't fetch a picture of the scene at a different time of day. It altered the very pixels, turning day into night.

Here's a few examples:

Color transfer

Video transfer, turning a street scene with trees into one with buildings or more trees, among other things

Musical transfer, changing instruments and genres.

All of which are from 2017 or 2018.

There's a lot more, and this includes deepfakes which I'm sure plenty of people are aware of. The potential of this technology over the next 5 years— and yes, I'm saying five years, not fifteen or twenty five or fifty— is going to lead to people with no skill in machine learning or artistry to be able to alter existing media almost completely as well as generate some kinds of new media.

Back specifically on the topic of audio style transfer, this includes being able to take a song, any song, and altering at your leisure in a variety of different ways ranging from adding or subtracting instruments, swapping the vocalist or removing them entirely, and perhaps even extending the song in an "intelligent" manner— meaning the algorithm can actually generate more sections of that song that didn't previously exist (within reason). You could turn any top 40 pop song into a 20-minute-long pop epic.

My classic desire is taking TLC's Waterfalls and turning it into a barbershop quartet, complete with the mustachioed men singing in tune with all the 1920s graininess you'd expect. Did you like Bohemian Rhapsody but could do without the heavy guitars? Why not transfer it into a polka song? That's indeed very possible. Covering songs in a different style is obviously a thing that you can already find on YouTube and "X Goes Pop" compilations whatnot, but that involves actual musicians and artists putting in the time and effort. We're not far away from having a theoretical "Audacity 2.0" where you could do the same thing with a few clicks of your mouse.

One of my more esoteric desires goes a step further, and it's also very much on the horizon. I love Witchfinder General, but they've always been a bit too amateurish. They were almost a great band, if only a few lyrics were changed and some instruments were tightened up. In the future, I could be able to "correct" these "mistakes", going in to change the lyrics myself so that Zeeb Parkes is singing something a bit different over a band that's even slower and doomier than they actually were. In some cases, that means adding lines where there weren't originally.

It would obviously still be a laborious process because vocals in songs can be complex and heavily individualized.

But that was only ever a problem for the old era of digital software, where things had to be cut up and easily able to fit into bits and pieces and then essentially standardized as if you're playing something on a synth. This new era is something entirely different and infinitely more capable. You couldn't replicate Bob Dylan's soul if you had his voice in a voice synthesis software program as might exist today.

There's no style nor soul that'll be beyond my fingers with the right neural networks.

For someone like me, who loves creating entire musical scenes and movements from playlists and imagination, that's a godsend. For an actual musician or any creative who prides themselves on their humanity, it sounds like the worst dystopia.

I'm not overselling this either. Audio is, fundamentally, a bunch of waves. If you can edit those waveforms, you can create any audio you wish. It's just that the way we edit those waveforms is usually by hitting drums, strumming guitars, pressing keyboards, and singing.

Of course, there are much darker applications of this technology. The very first thing to come to mind is putting words in someone else's mouth for political purposes, as can be demonstrated here:

Deepfakes on Obama, Putin, and others

Making Trump say new things

If the latter sounds too robotic, don't fret/relax. Making voices sound audiorealistic is just a matter of parameters and data, of which the likes of Google, Baidu, Facebook, OpenAI, and many others have no shortage. The crappy free text-to-speech programs you might find with a Google search or in a PDF file is as representative of the state of the art as a bottle rocket is of the military's explosive ordinance.

And that's literally just the tip of the iceberg. Just because I'm focusing on audio doesn't mean there's nothing for images and video, obviously. Just the opposite— everyone is so focused on deepfakes and image synthesis that we're overlooking audio synthesis.

It's not coming in stages, nor is it arriving slowly and at easily digestible and tolerable speeds as might be written in a shlock cyberpunk novel. We're not going to struggle with image synthesis for 20 years, then struggle with audio synthesis for 20 years, and so on until we reach a point in the distant future where you can't trust anything you see. We're developing them all simultaneously and seeing progress come at breakneck speeds, and we'll be well within that future this time next decade.

In fact, this time next decade we'll have entirely different zeitgeists when it comes to art, entertainment, and the news. There's no refuge in cartoons. Neural networks are in the early stages of learning how to do caricatures and exaggerations— the fundamental root of cartooning. Others can generate short animations from text alone. Even more can be used to remaster old video games and create games from scratch.

And no, you can't find refuge in writing either. Scarily enough, it's the text synthesis network that shows the most signs of general intelligence. It's not AGI by far, but it's most general AI ever created and it isn't even a very complex machine at that. But it's apparently too dangerous to be released.

If you have a passion for all of this and create art for art's sake or are willing to accept fewer (but likely much higher paid) commissions rather than a "career" as we understand it to be, you're fine. If you're someone who wants to become a career artist/model/voice actor/musician/animator/writer/comic artist/newscaster and expect to find consistent work for the next 50 years, (first, good luck regardless) make these next five to ten years count and/or try considering jumping into the former category.

We don't need AGI for any of this either, so don't think that we have to wait until we "solve intelligence" to see any of this. Nor should you expect it to cost a fortune to use. We only need GANs and most of this tech is open source.

The final and most sobering realization of all this is the cold fact that, ironically contrary to all those predictions of how automation would unfold, entertainment and the arts will be the first field to go. Everyone said that all the drudgery of the world would be automated first, freeing up workers to pursue the arts because "a machine could never write a poem, pen a song, or paint a work of art".

This is something so stupefyingly far from public conscious that there is virtually nothing being done or said about it. You might initially think that it doesn't warrant much discussion until it actually arrives, but when you really start looking at this in-depth, you have a tendency to grow a bit fatalistic. One of my future-shock angsts is about schooling and how public and private schools in their current form are utterly unable to prepare children for the future into which they will graduate (a future in which school itself may become obsolete because there will be little point for it besides social functions and raw education, which isn't what American schooling is for). This is related, but a bit different.

We have a technology that didn't exist 10 years ago and yet will almost certainly upend the entire entertainment industry within 10 years from now. Photoshops and photo manipulation, "dumbfakes" if you will, weren't even a pre-meal mint, let alone the appetizer. We ought to be having a dialog on this, but we aren't.

Many of us refuse to believe it exists at all, that it's just some schizophrenic pipe dreams found on /r/Futurology and /r/Singularity. Others so desperately want to leave a place for humans that they will deny that machines will be able to do these things competently despite being shown the evidence. And those who accept it can only say "So what?" Even though I eagerly await a world where I could generate a multimedia franchise (and the global reaction) in my bedroom on my laptop, there are still pertinent risks.

As /u/ksblur said:

Strange how we live in a world of trust-based security. It would be relatively easy for cryptography to solve that issue (your phone could automatically reject calls without proper signatures or encryption), but people grew up "trusting" the systems so there's not a lot of incentive to change it.

Could you imagine inventing the telephone in 2019 and either A) not encrypting the data (landlines) or B) using weak 64bit A5/1 encryption (GSM)?*

TLDR Skynet wants to become a singer and artist, and Dad (i.e. Humans) doesn't realize it yet.

#Futurology #Technology #Tech #Studies #Humanity #Development #New #Gadgets

[timeclonemike]

Just In Case.

So the CRA is coming down to the wire. While I don’t think it’s impossible that somebody will cross the aisle at this point, I wouldn’t put money on it. Of course, after the CRA come the lawsuits, and of course all the states trying to pass legislation to protect net neutrality. The battle is far from over.

But we could still be looking at some unsavory stuff in the future, if not outright Bad Shit Going Down.

So I’ve compiled a list of resources here. I would advise everyone who sees this post to go to the links, if they still work at the time of reading, and save the content locally. Bookmarks might not be enough at some point, you want to have this information on a drive or USB stick somewhere. Maybe even print it out, just have it some place where somebody else can’t keep you from seeing it or hold it hostage.

1. IP Addresses

It’s possible that an ISP censoring content might only think to mess with the Domain Name stuff and not actually block IP Addresses, or there may be technical or legal problems with blocking IPs themselves, so it might be a good idea to know what address a particular site or service uses. You can find some advice on how to do that here.

In case the links no longer work, for whatever reason, there are several methods that get listed. The online version involves this website:

https://ipinfo.info/html/ip_checker.php.

The windows OS version involves using the Command Prompt to send a ping command to a given website. A lot of people who do computer and network troubleshooting will be familiar with this already, because pinging google is a quick benchmark for connectivity and speed issues. Macs use the same ping command, inside of an app called Network Utility, which can be found using the Spotlight. iPhones an Android phones have a specific app for this kind of thing called, surprise surprise, Ping and PingTools respectively, but if you can’t access the app store anymore than you probably have bigger problems than simply navigating a censored and divided internet.

2. VPN Software

Virtual Private Networks have previously been used as a means of staying anonymous online, among other things, but they may be useful as a way to bypass content restrictions imposed by ISPs, acting as a middleman and allowing access to sites and services that the ISP itself may have blocked outright. Of course, whether or not they will work depends on exactly how the ISP is monitoring and restricting content, and whether the VPN itself is hosted in a region where an ISP is blocking and throttling with abandon. Some information on the subject can be found here. There are some obvious concerns about free versus paid VPN services, though I imagine if ISP censoring becomes common enough they’re going to basically “grow” a market of companies and software designed specifically to get around restrictions. Whether or not you can trust a particular type of software, well, if I could predict the future I’d be picking lottery numbers and using the winnings to start funding municipal broadband all over the country like some sort of Guerilla Philanthropist. Keep your antivirus software as up to date as possible, go with your gut, and do not write anybody a blank check.

3. Mesh Networks

This is both a hardware and last mile issue that is not directly connected to the problems of ISP censorship and throttling, but worth mentioning. Simply put, a mesh network is a more redundant system than a single line line of cable. Transmitters and receivers connect to each other on an ad-hoc basis in order to hand off information requests from one device to another to another until they reach a portal to the internet at large, and the process works in reverse to deliver that information to the person who requested it. These have been built in a lot of regions where investment in broadband has not happened, and they have their drawbacks such as requiring a critical size threshold to stay healthy and functional. But the advantage is that no one person can control what goes on over the network, and it can survive a loss of some of the transceivers as long as the minimum size is maintained. A community based organization could use a mesh network to get around restriction on landline communications that are filtered by an ISP, and such an organization might plant the seeds of an actual cooperative broadband arrangement in the future. An article that goes into more technical details can be found here, although it is not entirely technical and there’s more complete sources out there. Keep in mind that this article was written back in 2013, so not only has the technology improved, but the conditions that resulted in it becoming necessary back then pretty much knocks the legs out from under the claims that the internet was doing absolutely fine before the 2015 Open Internet Order.

4. Cut The Cable

I mentioned this in my last big net neutrality post about what to do if push came to shove, but I think it’s worth repeating. The essential idea behind paying for internet is that you get information and communication resources in exchange for money. If your local company is not providing you with the videos and fanfic and news and games and chatting with friends that you want, then do not provide them with your money. Cancel your account, and make sure that they know why, and then use that money on anything else. They did all of this so they could make more money, so starve them out of necessity and / or spite. Being separated from friends, well, that’s going to be traumatic, but if your company won’t let you communicate with them anyway then you might as well spend that money on something else, even if it’s just a box of envelopes and a book of stamps. (On that note, consider exchanging mailing addresses, or rented PO boxes / General Delivery in a nearby municipality, with people you absolutely want or need to keep in contact with, and do that while you can still talk online. Not over open channels, obviously.) As for the rest of it... heck. Maybe a lack of constant bad news from various websites will put us all in a better mood and frame of mind so we can actually come up with plans of action to fix this mess, without struggling under a constant psychological drain.

5. Get Your Voting Stuff In Order

Come November of this year, we all need to go into the polls and kick out all the cowardly, craven shills that sold our world, our futures, and everything that makes our lives tolerable to a bunch of greedy corporations. Make sure you are registered, make sure you have everything you need to bring to the polls if your state has a voter ID requirement like mine (thanks for nothing, Kobach) and mark the date on your calendar. And when the day comes, vote. Find the time to get away from whatever you’re doing, be it classes or work or whatever. If you know, or just suspect, that you won’t be able to vote on the appointed day, look into getting an advance ballot and use that instead.

Good luck, everybody.

#save the net #just in case #possible workarounds #precautions