#aa abridged

[cyberphuck]

Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged: Part One

EDIT: Tumblr randomly swallowed like 500 words in the middle of this, so I've added that back in.

I am finally embarking on my long-threatened project to summarize all of the Farseer Trilogy for my friend Razz so they can understand my shitposts about it but don’t actually have to read it. I started with this post about the cast of characters in the first book.

This is being broken up into sections because the trilogy and AA in particular (as well as Royal Assassin... whew, that one’s gonna be hard) is so insanely long and complex.

And now, Ladies and Gentlequeers, AA Abridged: Part One.

We open on the narrator musing both about writing a history of the Six Duchies (but being unable to because every time he tries it turns into a salty rant about everything bad that's ever happened to him) and also about how very old and decrepit he is. He is hunched over his writing desk, his fingers gnarled and knuckly, literally crumbling away like a Thanos-snapped MCU character as he sorrowfully attempts to make some record of the long and storied life he's lived before he lapses into the sweet void of death.

Fitz is 35.

"I bet you're wondering how I got here," Fitz writes. "It all began when I was born. Neither of my parents bothered to show up."

Actually, the curtain opens on Fitz as a six year old, being hauled up to the front doors of a fort by a cranky older man. "Surely you must have memories of your childhood before six," someone in the audience asks, but Fitz replies "No, I definitely don't, I never did and I'm tired of you asking me that." It never really becomes super important what he was doing before he was six, unless you count the time where he was traveling from the King-In-Waiting's ballsack to the sweet hot vagina of Some Lady He Never Spoke To Again.

Fitz is scooped up and brought inside the fort, and presented to Prince Verity. You'd think Verity would be at least a little upset that his older brother has muddied the line of succession with his long-ago nut, but Verity acts as if Fitz's existence is the funniest thing he's ever seen. "Yep, looks just like him," Verity confirms, then instructs a soldier to bring Fitz to Burrich.

That's right, the cranky old man hammers on the front door, waits for someone to open it, says "this is Prince Chivalry's kid and I'm tired of dealing with him," and then walks off. Despite this, Fitz never develops any abandonment issues and only has healthy and honest relationships with people for the rest of his life.

"Those are all the memories I have of that fort," Fitz writes, "except for that one night that Prince Verity, Burrich, and Prince Regal stood and looked in on me in the stall and Regal complained that I was muddying the line of succession."

Burrich does not think this situation is as funny as Verity did.

But he's honest and loyal, so he sighs and says "C'mon, Lil Accident, I'll find a place for you to sleep." That place is in a horse stall with Vixen, the hound dog, and Nosy, her pup. Burrich looks down at all of them, mutters "Patience is gonna have a fucking aneurysm" and then walks off.

After a couple of weeks, Burrich puts Lil Accident on a horse behind him and they ride away from Moonseye and towards Buckkeep. During this time, offstage, Fitz's father Chivalry gets word of his appearance and does the only sensible and logical thing, which is to ollie out the window while flipping everyone off and yelling "GOOD LUCK FIGURING THIS ONE OUT, LOSERS!" He abdicates and retires to a farm with his weirdo wife, which pisses off basically everyone.

Burrich and Fitz arrive at Buckkeep, the capital of the Six Duchies, a tall castle on a hill overlooking the ocean. Burrich is the stablemaster, in charge of all the critters large and small at the keep. He'd also been Chivalry's right hand man until he'd jumped in front of a boar to keep it from killing the Prince and fucked up his leg. Burrich comes home to Buckkeep with a bad leg and a six year old bastard to find that his bestie has just fucking peaced out without saying anything to him. He's kind of having a bad day. He hands Fitz off to stableboy Cobb, who leads him and pup Nosy to the kitchens to get something to eat.

Cobb sits FItz-and-Nosy just outside the kitchens and goes inside for delicious pie. A burly man walks by Fitz, does a double-take, then points and yells, "Hey everyone! It's Chivalry's Bastard!"

Fitz shrinks down.

"I heard you don't even have a name!" Burly man hollers, then gets right up in Fitz's face. "Is that true, tiny and defenseless six year old boy that I'm accosting? You don't have a name?"

Fitz yells "NOOOOOO" and, like a tiny, dirty Jedi master, force-shoves the man onto his ass. The crowd, assuming that the dude was just a coward who couldn't handle being yelled at by a toddler, has a laugh and carries on with their tasks. Fitz gets up and he and Nosy run away and spend all day hiding in a hole.

Burrich does eventually find him, and with a hearty "what the fuck you can't just burrow underneath the shed, get out of there," returns him to the stables, where his new home is Burrich's little bachelor pad above the stalls. In the days and weeks that follow, Fitz wakes up, eats breakfast, and immediately escapes the keep to go down to the town and run around with a bunch of street kids.

Fitz doesn't say much but he's game for anything and he has a dog, so he's accepted into the gang as "Newboy." He and his new friends generally just run around making trouble, stealing food, and bothering people. One of the notables in the bunch is Molly Nosebleed, called that because she always looks like someone just got done beating the shit out of her. Wholesome!

One sunny day, Fitz, Molly and Nosy are on the rocks near the beach looking for sheel to eat. I have no idea what sheel is and neither does Google. Then Molly's dad shows up to hit her with a stick to teach her a lesson about having a drunk, violent dad.

Alarmed, Fitz force-shoves Molly's dad into the sand. Molly immediately freaks out and struggles to get dad back on his feet to stagger back to their candle-making shop (or chandlery if you're feeling fancy). Fitz is confused at the intricacies of abusive relationships, but relieved that no one yet knows that he has force-shoving powers.

Aside from his brief encounter with childhood trauma, everything is going great for Fitz. Then one day, while he and his fellow urchins (and Nosy) are running from a dude whose sausages they just stole, Fitz runs right the fuck into Burrich.

"You get your butt right back up to the castle, young man," Burrich says, dragging Fitz along by his ear. "And if I EVER find out you've been down in town hanging out with someone again, I will personally have sex with them a bunch of times," he added foreshadowingly.

"I don't have to do what you say," Fitz barks.

"Bark," says Nosy.

Burrich's eyes narrow. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asks.

"I don't really know numbers," says Fitz.

"Bark," says Nosy.

"Nosy says that's three," Fitz translates.

"Alrighty then, no more puppy for you, the puppy is going to live on a farm upstate," Burrich says. He drags the puppy outside.

Presumably something cool happens to it.

So now instead of slumming around Buckkeep Town, Fitz spends his days following Burrich around and being taught how to manage horses and dogs but not birds because birds apparently hate bastards. Fitz is careful not to let Burrich see him being friendly with any animals.

One day, Fitz is sitting underneath a table in the Great Hall, being friendly with a bunch of puppies. It's the morning after a party and there's plenty of leftover food to be had, and he's happily stuffing pies down his shirt and sharing pieces with the pups. Then he hears footsteps and who should show up but KING SHREWD!

Shrewd is technically Fitz's grandfather but has never really spoken to him. He's walking along with Prince Regal (*crowd boos*) and the king's new fool, a weirdo albino child who's just cartwheeling along behind them.

Fitz goes "hmm, time to bounce" and crawls out from under the table. Shrewd stops to look at him. "Ah, the Little Accident," he says. "If you leave weapons laying around, someone will eventually pick them up and stab you with them."

"What?" says Regal.

"What?" says Fitz.

"I am not going to leave you laying around for someone else to kill me with," Shrewd says. "Lil Accident, take this pin. I am going to to feed you, train you, house you and clothe you. If anyone's got shit to say about it, show them this pin. It means you belong to me."

"...Okay, sure," Fitz shrugs. He puts the pin into the collar of his shirt. Shrewd nods magnanimously and walks on. Regal flips him off. The Fool cartwheels out the door as they leave.

That night, Fitz goes home to Burrich's bachelor pad, but Burrich turns him right back around. "You done gone and did it now," he says. "King Shrewd noticed you and now you're gonna have to go live inside the castle like a fancy lad. Go on."

"But despite my fear and resentment of you, I see you as a protector and father figure," Fitz says.

"Oh little boy who blew up my life, I love and resent you too," Burrich assures him. "If you get lonely, you can come back down here and I'll murder another puppy for you."

Fitz trudges up to the castle. He has a room of his own. There's a fucking weird tapestry on the wall of the ancient King Wisdom consorting with... what is that thing? Slenderman? It's creepy.

Weeks go by. Fitz is kept busy with new lessons in reading and writing and 'rithmetic, as well as swordery. Once in a very long while, he makes the trip back down to the town to visit his buddies, but those trips become fewer and farther between.

It's the middle of the night.

Fitz wakes up to a draft and a light in his face. There's an old man at the foot of his bed, holding up a lantern. "Come with me," the old man says.

"Oh," Fitz yawns, getting out of bed. "It's the call to adventure."

The old man leads Fitz to a doorway in the wall that hadn't been there before. This is where the draft was coming from-- a steep staircase leading up between walls. Old man leads Fitz up a maze of passageways and then finally to a huge hidden room with all the amenities a crazy old wall-man could want, like a fireplace and comfy chairs and a big bed and a library and a science lab.

Also, the old looks like he took a hot frying pan to the face. Like he really looks like hell.

"Wrow," Fitz says.

"Wrow indeed, boy," the old man agrees. "My name is Chade. I bet I look familiar to you. Well it's because I'm King Shrewd's brother and I blah blah blah I have a weasel named Slink. Next you're going to ask what the fuck happened to my face. I can tell everything you're thinking, because I'm a master spy and assassin and-- now this part you should take to heart-- I am always right about everything. Never doubt me."

"Okay," Fitz says.

"Good. That out of the way, let's train you to kill people."

#rote #robin hobb #farseer trilogy #fitzchivalry farseer #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[dire-kumori]

Gumshoe: But how did you work all that out, pal?

Phoenix: I looked at the crime scene for longer than five seconds.

#if Phoenix were a detective instead of a lawyer then the AA world wouldn't have the problem of arresting the wrong person 99% of the time #Ace Attorney #Phoenix Wright #Dick Gumshoe #incorrect quotes #source: Danganronpa Abridged Thing

[pennamepersona]

This kinda sucks but I watched the first ep of the ace attorney anime and I couldn't stop thinking about this

#ace attorney #ace attorney anime #mia fey #phoenix wright #aa #i'm gonna guess no one's going to get the reference here #but ftr the screenshots are from sao abridged #pls don't call me an sao liker tho i swear to god i'm not #anyway this is how everytime mia shows up to possess somebody goes

[lazycranberrydoodles]

its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3

all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):

hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also

his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.

the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)

a whole lot of AU stuff

the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.

cases include:

Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)

Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)

Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))

The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)

Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)

The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)

Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)

Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)

the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao

there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.

the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.

for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.

it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.

tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me

Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost

#PLEAAAASE send it to me if you do actually use my animations in a case🥺 #here im adapting mdzs to aa gameplay rather than making a mdzs AU where they are lawyers #so jiang cheng is not a prosecutor in this hes just angry. and on the right side of the screen #that man has not graduated law school but then again no one in ace attorney has either #the names are based off of how ace attorney cases are either named after a distinctive item/location (bigtop bridge samurai etc) #or the main emotional/character type thing that happens (goodbyes reminiscence farewell) #the mdzs/aa au where the stories get blended (ie my tags on the nhs post) is very interesting but i would have to think about it very hard #and i dont want to . i would rather think about what the court record would look like (its full of severed limbs) #MDZS' EXPLORATIONS OF MORALITY MAKE ME CHEW ON ROCKS #urrgh i got carried away writing this post & wrote a couple hundred words comparing aa and mdzs' attitudes towards morality & public opinio #i could write an essay on this topic tbh. #can i call this an au? its the same story in the same universe just in a different format. hmm #mdzs #aa #art #mo dao zu shi #ace attorney #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #cql #the untamed #jiang cheng #jin ling #objection.lol #flashing image tw #pixel art #animation #my art #franziska von karma #i guess?? #mdzs aa au

[utmvarchive]

File name: introduction.txt

Note: the following entries are abridged versions in the event that they are accessible to other readers.

There are multiple iterations of our reality all running on code. Even one world may contain repetitions of a timeframe. But variants of the world may have more altered content than just timelines.

The first step to studying this multiverse, the alternates that compose it and the codes that generate them, is to observe it. To collect data.

Archival will now begin.

* Classifying alternates * Index sorted alphabetically * Index sorted in order of archival

Search alternates by: classification or feature

Search files by tags (newest-to-oldest): archive, index, input, masterpost, relay, summary, txt Search files by tags (oldest-to-newest): archive, index, input, masterpost, relay, summary, txt

Search summaries by classification tags: AT, AU, UA, (indeterminate/intermediate between AT/AU) AA (alternate alternates), AP (outcodes, interversal phenomena, etc.) Search summaries by feature tags: assets, broster, dadster, ex-Sans, genderbend, no Barrier, reference, rewritten reality, roleswap, soul exchange (absorptions, splits, etc.), time-travelling memories

Note: paste sidepage links into browser if on mobile.

#undertale #utmv #archive #txt

[requiesticat]

@arcticflakes said there weren't many fanfics that show Blaise Debeste in a postive light, or at least lighthearted ones that have him and Sebastian bonding, so I wrote this:

It was also inspired by this image, featured in the notes. More info under the cut

Kay: "Awesome! Imma deck you in the schnoz!"

(If people get all the references I'd be surprised; that line's from DBZ abridged

A large majority of Investigations fics put Sebastian through so much trauma that I kind of wanted to give them both a break. People really don't explore different scenarios there, which is a shame since there's a lot of potential for it.

This is more part of the AU, but Blaise actually did lose his wife to illness in that as opposed to what's hinted at in the game here. I originally wanted to feature Agnes Debeste in this, but wasn't sure if her creator would be okay with it, so Lilith is a reference to that OC.

(And he apparently does collect toy motorcycles in canon, lol)

I'm planning to release more aa-related things before Flame Resistant, including one based off another user's interpretation of Kristoph Gavin's backstory, but for now there'll just be worldbuilding.

#seyu talks #my fics #ace attorney #aa investigations #blaise debeste #sebastian debeste #kay faraday #there are sad moments but it's mostly just characters hanging out and goofing around #next will be kay and seb making a blanket fort #jk

[attystark]

I’ve been watching Ahsoka and playing Ace Attorney at the same time but have no energy to write at the moment, so Tumblr gets the abridged version (I say abridged, this is like 600 words and I’m not sure any of them are coherent) of the consequences to that below that cut. TL:DR is that I’m writing a Star Wars setting AA Au. I’m struggling to work out the details of arc one though, so any ideas/advice would be appreciated.

Okay so. 

Dl6 is order 66, obviously, in the sense that it’s the event which separates the fey sisters from their mother and the reason Edgeworth ends up with Von Karma. 

Von Karma is Sith, training Franziska and Edgeworth. All three are working with the Empire. 

Mia is Captain of the Fey ship, so named because I can’t think of a better one. Maya and Phoenix are both with her. Maya and Mia are both force sensitive, specifically in tune with force ghosts. Due to increasingly dumb circumstances they keep picking up force sensitive kids (Pearls first, Trucy and Apollo together, Athena.) Phoenix is not force sensitive and is SUFFERING. 

The first arc is them collecting kids and fighting Edgeworth & Franziska, with the final confrontation being that Manfred learns Edgeworth is helping the rebellion (equivalent to him aiding Phoenix catch De Vaspques in Turnabout Samurai) and deciding he has to be wiped out. Phoenix and Miles get caught in this dramatic fight with Manfred. When the battle comes to a close Phoenix shoots Manfred in the shoulder opposite the one he was shot in during his attack on the Jedi Temple. 

Arc Two is the Apollo Justice arc. Klavier is technically working for the Empire but is betraying them, leading a Rebel Broadcast and making protest music. He’s working with Ema, who’s an imperial science officer but not because she wants to be. Kristoph is working with the Rebels but allied to the Empire, he gets info from Klavier then tells the Rebellion the exact opposite. 

After a series of confrontations with Klavier (force sensitive but hiding it, he has a Purple lightsaber he got from a parent. Either that or he’s an Inquisitor- can’t decide.) Apollo meets the Rebel persona he puts on (the Amethyst) and is like “oh so that’s the person. Alright. Fuck you.” Ema is the person who explains the whole double cross thing. 

Klavier and Ema have this whole plan to defect, but it’s not going well because Kristoph keeps stalling them. Because he’s an asshole. Investigationing Kristoph with Trucy and Athena, Apollo figures out that Kristoph is working with the empire. He relays this to the other two who are not pleased. Obviously. 

Kristoph’s plan should work, but it crosses over with Klavier and Emas’. In a dramatic confrontation with Apollo, they and a load of disposable Storm Troopers have him surrounded. The plan is that Apollo will pretend to kill Klavier, so they have this big dramatic lightsaber fight. It goes well and the distraction means the rest of the crew isn’t as attacked. Kristoph’s plan semi-failed but he defects anyway, now claiming that the rebels murdered his brother and he wants vengeance. Klavier and Ema semi join the crew but are really their own unit. 

The next arc is another simple shenanigans section until the new Inquisitor pops up. An ex-Imperial convict working with them to find Athena. For a while that’s all they know until a second venture gets them stuck in a force heavy area which reflects a person’s fears back at them. This is important for Athena because while not affected personally, she’s hearing how everyone else is and is Not Handling This Well. Simon shows up, gets everyone else out and helps Athena. Gives a dramatic, we will meet again soon and vanishes. Athena assumes she made him up until he shows up to ‘fight’ her. 

Basically, Simon is hunting Athena down because they were both at the temple (I should clarify here that I’m fudging ages a bit, so the AJ trio characters are younger) when Order-66 happened. Simon was Metis’s apprentice and the last thing she managed to tell him was to keep Athena safe. He managed for a while but was captured, because he was young they kept him alive to use and Athena was abandoned. He’s trying now to make sure she’s safe and can protect herself. The closest he’s coming to working with the empire are Miles and Franziska, who’ve both been basically just rebels with red lightsabers since arc one, so this arc is less about flashy fights than it is about emotional resolution, as is fitting for Athena. 

#Not main tagging SW for this y’all have enough going on rn #Ace Attorney #Phoenix Wright #Maya Fey #Mia Fey #Apollo Justice #Klavier Gavin #ema skye #Kristoph Gavin #Miles Edgeworth #franziska von karma #Athena Cykes #Simon Blackquill

[royaltyfreeramblings]

I know I literally made the ask game and said that it's supposed to be a skin and not character name but I need to know more about fish daughter and I forget their skin if you told me

Behold, a fish! This is Mazu (skin 7 corrin), she's a member of an alien royal family who was sent to Earth to conquer it as a part of a coming-of-age ceremony. And then she didn't do that at all. instead she was taken in by team charge, which is basically the team for people who just like fighting a lot, befriended a snowboarder who has almost all of wikipedia memorized and swept the second tournament, became the second champion in one of the most clutch fights in AA, learned how to fish from Tony the Tiger (not affiliated with kell or oggs. there's a post abt him on my blog somewhere), and then her imposter syndrome arc kicked in after losing a fight to a fucked up robot named Auto-Crat. things just keep happening to her all the time. also she hangs out in an abandoned lighthouse too! more recently she's actually had time to talk about stuff with Autocrat and the two are actually friendly rivals. and she wears glasses now too. and she ran into her cousin who has no memories of the person he used to be so that's fun. this is so so so abridged but. funny fishe

fun fact ! she was originally submitted by @lemmmmmmmmmmonade.

#ai altercation #fanfuffle #asks

[snappiderg]

Abridged chain of events

I went on a walk today, and I thought I saw/heard a dog under aa bridge with a squeaky toy. Nope, it was just a care with messed up brakes. Clover: whitecloverwolf, Delta: DeltaWolf443, Xhhy: xhhy17

#snappi art #snappiposting #snappi #dragon #stretchy #shapeshifter #delta wolf #wolf #clover wolf #headline #cat #modular

[moonjellee]

a text conversation between me and a friend while we were both seriously ill (abridged) pt. 2

how are you holding up

                           i am at the moment                           spontaneously producing several                            new lungs

sounds lucrative start ur own organ harvesting business

                          alas they are not                           grown from new material                           im just ripping my old lungs                           into pieces

unfortunate

                          if only sickness could harvest organs                           id make so much money

do you get sick often? i don't i hate it

                          i get sick easy                           and i get sick bad                           and i stay sick long

im so sorry

                          me too                           but the good thing about                           being in a lot of pain                           is that you are no longer scared                           of anything                           so

LMAO very cool of you

...

i wish i were a mr potato head with a removable nose

                          i wish i could take my head off                           and power wash it                           open my chest cavity                           and vacuum my lungs

you could write a poem about this

                          I WAS JUST THINKING THAT                           im gonna.

godspeed kindly consider not dying

                          i will attempt to do so                           you as well 

aa

                          lol

#poem #poetry #friendship #poets on tumblr #moonjellee poem #i love my friends we are soooo silly goofy #being sick fucking sucks

[cyberphuck]

Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged: Part Two

Read Part One (My friend Razz wants to understand my Farseer Trilogy shitposts but doesn’t want to have to actually read the books, so I decided to summarize them. This turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be! Here’s part two of ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE: ABRIDGED!) When we last left our hero, Fitz was a little baby following an old man into a hole in the wall.

"Gosh, Chade," Fitz says, after a wholesome montage of him learning how to steal things and poison people, "I love hanging out with you. It sure is neato to have a friend. I get to do all sorts of pranks around the castle, and once in a while the King even calls me to his rooms to remind me I'm a tool of the Crown!"

"You know what would be really funny?" Chade asks, eyes alight with glee.

Jump cut to Fitz's Twilight-esque depressive episode. He lays in bed for days, staring at the wall, refusing to get up. Burrich comes up to his rooms to ask Fitz what the fuck is going on with him and assumes he's dying.

Fitz can't tell him that Chade asked him to steal from the King and he refused, because everything about Chade is a secret. Burrich doesn't know that Chade told Fitz that if he wasn't game to yoink something from Shrewd's chambers, that he could get the fuck out and never come back.

"Watch this, Shrewd! You can actually pinpoint the second when Fitz's heart rips in half!"

(Burrich tries to cure Fitz's ailment by introducing him to alcoholism. He's like ten.)

Sitting in his room alone and drunk, Fitz starts wailing. He cries and cries until Chade finally comes back down through the secret wall-door to hug him. "Me and Shrewd wanted to see if you were really loyal," he says. "So we traumatized you. We really wanted to introduce you to depression, alcohol, and abject betrayal at a young age and this was the quickest way to do it."

"I want my mommy," Fitz sobs.

"There, there," Chade says, drugging him and leaving.

Later, Fitz is summoned to speak to King Shrewd again, who explains that it was all his idea to give Fitz borderline personality disorder and absolutely does not apologize for it. Fitz takes a knife from the breakfast table in Shrewd's room, brings it back to Chade, and stabs it into the mantle above the fireplace.

I like to think that every time Fitz throws himself into needless danger for the next ten books, Chade looks up at that knife and goes "lol. lmao."

--

"Hey Lil Accident," says Head Scribemaster, "you're pretty good at writing. You wanna be my apprentice?"

"Gosh. I'd get to go places and do things," Fitz marvels. "And almost none of them would involve poisoning people!"

Chade Mission-Impossible drops from the ceiling and hangs above Fitz for long enough to tell him that no, he can't be a scribe's apprentice, for one thing he's already learning to be an assassin, and for another Fitz is kind of an important political tool, being a bastard of a Prince, and someone would definitely murder him.

"Sorry," Fitz tells the Scribemaster, "my uncle said no."

"But you can go down into town and buy some stuff for me, since you've been good," Chade says, reeling back up into the rafters.

Fitz jumps to his feet. "Oh, boy, social interaction! I haven't seen my hoodlum friends in a year! And you know who ELSE I haven't seen in a long time? MY MOM!"

He strides happily past a sad woman in the street wearing an anime mom side ponytail, completely ignoring her in favor of his old friend Molly Nosebleed, who goes by Molly Chandler now that her dad has stopped punching her in the face.

"You're the only girl I know, besides that hysterical woman over there screaming that I'm her son," Fitz says. "I think I have a crush on you."

"Neat," Molly giggles.

Lovestruck Fitz gathers his groceries and heads back up the road to the keep. Princes Verity and Regal ride by, carrying a banner that says "CHIVALRY'S DEAD. THE PRINCE, NOT THE CONCEPT. I MEAN THE CONCEPT IS ALSO DEAD, BUT THE MAIN POINT OF THIS MESSAGE IS THAT PRINCE CHIVALRY FARSEER HAS FALLEN FROM HIS HORSE AND"

Burrich shaves his head. And his beard. And his eyebrows. And his dog's hair. And Fitz's hair too, for good measure. Fitz, rubbing his new buzzcut, says "God, if you loved him so much, maybe you should have married him," and Burrich flings himself into the sea.

"We should be careful," Chade says, later. "Because Chivalry was probably murdered. Anyway, you're going on a road trip. tl;dr one of the dukes isn't properly manning the watchtowers that keep vikings from viking the coast, and Prince Verity has to go deal with it, and you're going with him."

"What's a teal deer?" Fitz asks.

Wandering around outside the castle later, Fitz runs into Shrewd's Fool with a capital F, the albino freak-child that cartwheels around in the King's wake all day.

"Oh no," Fitz says. "Are you lost, little freak child?"

"fjdaklfdafds," says the Fool.

"Come on little fella, I'm not gonna hurt you," Fitz smiles.

"FDAJKFDLALSDFAS," the Fool repeats, louder.

"Do you need an adult?"

The Fool steps up to Fitz, grabs him by the shirt, yanks him down to eye level, and says, "Fitz Fixes a Feist's Fits. Fat Suffices, you fucking beautiful dumbass."

Fitz stares at him.

"I thought you were too dumb to know how words worked," he says finally.

The Fool flips him off and cartwheels away.

"...Weird," Fitz mutters. "Whatever, time to go to NEATBAY! I hope I get to kill somebody!" On the way to Neatbay (in a riding party consisting of Prince Verity and like half the staff of Buckkeep), Fitz pals around with stableboy Hands, and meets Mysterious Old Person Lady Thyme, who is a person that sucks in every way possible.

Hands whispers to Fitz that everyone in Buck knows that Lady Thyme sucks and avoids her. Lady Thyme shrieks that you whippersnappers better not be liking yourselves up there!

Fitz and co. finally arrive in Neatbay. It's a walled city like the place in Attack on Titan, with concentric fortifications like an obstacle course that Vikings have never been able to Vike all the way past (this will not be important again until the next book). It's ruled by Lord Kelvar and his trophy wife and if Kelvar doesn't get off his ass and start manning the watchtowers Fitz might have to poison him to death.

They have dinner. Fitz hates rich people. He eyeballs everybody at the table.

That night before bed, Verity calls Fitz into his room. "What's going on with Lord What's His Face?" He asks the boy.

Fitz explains a very complex situation about how Lord Kelvar is clearly trying to impress his Young Hotness Wife with lots of jewels and shit and his Young Hotness Wife is trying to impress everyone else with her jewels and shit and meanwhile all those jewels and shit could be going to pay to man the watchtowers and the roads, and Kelvar has to take some pride in doing it or else he'll become embittered and...

"I'm going to tell Lord Kelvar to stop being a puss and man the watchtowers," Verity says, and turns over to go to sleep.

Fitz facepalms.

Late in the night, Fitz wakes up starving and ninja-sneaks down to the kitchens to grab a midnight snack. While he's there, a woman comes in with a little doggie wrapped in a blanket.

"My poor little doggie is dying," she sobs. "This type of dog is a small hunting dog called a 'feist,' by the way."

"Hack," says the dog.

"I think your dog is choking on something," Fitz observes, whipping out his stethoscope. "Yeah, there's definitely something jammed down there. Let's get it out. Hold your dog steady."

Fitz finds a long hook, slathers it in butter, and wiggles it down the dog's throat while the dog yowls and pees and scratches the Mysterious Blanket Woman. It takes a minute, but eventually he manages to dislodge a chicken bone from doggie's gullet and they all sit back, panting, while LeVar Burton comes onto the screen and lectures the audience about never letting your pets eat poultry or fish bones and the importance of limiting table scraps and keeping them on a healthy diet. Thanks LeVar!

"You saved my doggie's life," Blanket Woman says, and pulls back her blanket to reveal that she is actually Lord Kelvar's Young Hotness Wife! "I shall repay you in any way you wish."

"I'm thirteen," Fitz says.

"Any way you wish," the woman repeats.

Fitz scratches his head. "Oh! Tell your idiot husband to man the fucking watchtowers before you get Vikinged to death. I mean," he amends, "I had a prophetic vision that a strong and graceful trophy wife spread out her arms to protect the laaand wooooo~"

Then he goes back to bed.

...And is woken up YET AGAIN by a servant telling him that Lady Thyme is demanding his presence down in town.

Oh. Joy.

Fitz gets dressed, saddles up Sooty the horse, rides to the inn that Lady Thyme is staying at, knocks on the door. "I heard you're calling for me," he sighs. "Are you dying or something? Please say you're dying."

Chade opens the door. "Fooled you, boy," he cackles. "I am Lady Thyme! And we have to go to Forge right now."

"You made me empty out a pot full of your shit every single morning for five days," Fitz says.

"Get on your horse," Chade orders, and they're off.

"You know, I've never actually seen you outdoors before," Fitz says as they gallop down the coast. "It's-- are you snorting coke right now?"

Chade sneezes, wiping his nose. "Stay in school."

They ride hell-for-leather for Forge, a little town known for two things: iron exports and being raided by Vikings. They manage to get there twelve hours after the nick of time because Chade had to return some VHS tapes, and find little more than a completely burned-down village and some zombies.

"Chade, are those slow zombies like in Dawn of the Dead, or fast zombies like in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake?" Fitz asks, watching the zombies shambling around and fighting over pieces of rotten bread and pairs of pants.

"Run," Chade advises, and they do.

On the road out, they pass a bunch of non-zombie survivors moving all their slightly singed possessions to another town. Nobody wants to stay in a town infested with zombies, which the people of the kingdom start calling Forged people, or just Forged, because one of the rules of zombie movies is that none of the characters can say "zombies."

Over the course of the next few months, more and more people are kidnapped by Vikings and Forged, but no one can agree exactly what should be done about it.

And then one night, Fitz is picking his nose alone at a table in the kitchens when another mysterious woman approaches him…

#rote #assassin's apprentice #Fitzchivalry Farseer #robin hobb #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[contremineur]

A German zeppelin caught in searchlights over London, from The Sphere (18th September 1915)

On September 8th 1915, a German zeppelin commanded by Heinrich Mathy, one of the great airship commanders of World War I, hit Aldersgate in central London, killing 22 people and causing £500,000 worth of damage.

There were thuds from the bombs and a moaning scream and explosion from our own AA guns – there was one quite near in Finchley Road. The raids got less enjoyable as they went on. The cook used to sit and, with a kind of melancholy relish, tell us stories of disaster from the last raid. And after what seemed a very long time, the boy scout’s bugle would be heard signalling the all clear.

quotes from here (abridged) and here

#ww1 #zeppelin

[draamaaaalert]

Any UNUSUAL MUTATIONS youve seen? ive had the WORST LUCK with this one MUTANT who had their HORNS coming out of their FACE

...Aalright, I do suppose I saaid aask me aanything. Here, I'll give you aan excerpt from aa caase file aabout aanother mutaant triaaled for unlaawful mutaation.

"The defenseless was, at least outwardly, bearing the appearance of a gilled-one; its air bladder, gills, and swimming functions were all perfectly normal, and it... displayed no psionic capability. However, the legislacerator heading the case revealed the... deformity plaguing the defenseless; it seemed to have gold blood, shimmering like any true empirial battery... Of course, this was all the court needed, and he got his desired verdict very quickly."

(From Legislacerative Casefiles And Their Historical Significance; A Long-Winded, Detailed Account Of The Author, Mister Dogene Artrix, And His Experiences In His Many Nobly-Served Sweeps Of Service To The Empire, His Honorable Tyranny, And Her Imperial Condescension; In Which Mister Artrix, Henceforth Referred To As Simply Artrix, Recounts His Journey From Bulge-Sniffing Cullbait To Legendary Legislacerator And Veritable Legislaceration Icon- A Tale That Artrix Was, Is, And Will Be Readily Able To Retell For Sweeps And Sweeps Of Just-Wriggling Tealbloods And Higher Despite The Only Practical Purpose Of This Epic Tale Being The Education And Training Of Teals- Vol. 23 of 64. Sections abridged to meet modern standards of politeness.)

#tyriaa speaak #notn #aasks #aamaa #For future reference. Ideaally I will not be working on unlaawful mutaation triaals.

[whileiamdying]

William Burroughs - the original Junkie

On the centenary of William Burroughs' birth, Will Self on why he was the perfect incarnation of late 20th‑century western angst – self-deluded and narcissistic yet perceptive about the sickness of the world.

📸 Like some terminally cadaverous butler’ … William Burroughs. Photograph: William Coupon/Corbis

ntitled Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict and authored pseudonymously by "William Lee" (Burroughs' mother's maiden name – he didn't look too far for a nom de plume), the Ace original retailed for 35 cents, and as a "Double Book" was bound back-to-back with Narcotic Agent by Maurice Helbrant. The two-books-in-one format was not uncommon in 1950s America, but besides the obvious similarity in subject matter, AA Wyn, Burroughs' publisher, felt that he had to balance such an unapologetic account of drug addiction with an abridgement of the memoirs of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent, which originally appeared in 1941.

Since, in the hysterical, anti-drug culture of postwar America, potential censure could easily induce self-censorship, it's remarkable that Junky (as it was published under his own name) found a publisher at all. Despite its subhead, Wyn did think the book had a redemptive capability, as the protagonist made efforts to free himself of his addiction, but he also insisted that Burroughs preface the work with an autobiographical sketch that would explain to the reader how it was that someone such as himself – a Harvard graduate from a Social Register family – came to be a drug addict. Both Junkie and Narcotic Agent have covers of beautiful garishness, featuring 1950s damsels in distress. On the cover of Junkie a craggy-browed man is grabbing a blond lovely from behind; one of his arms is around her neck, while the other grasps her hand, within which is a paper package. The table beside them has been knocked in the fray, propelling a spoon, a hypodermic, and even a gas ring, into inner space.

This cover illustration is, in fact, just that: an illustration of a scene described by Burroughs in the book. "When my wife saw I was getting the habit again, she did something she had never done before. I was cooking up a shot two days after I'd connected with Old Ike. My wife grabbed the spoon and threw the junk on the floor. I slapped her twice across the face and she threw herself on the bed, sobbing … " That this uncredited and now forgotten hack artist should have chosen one of the few episodes featuring the protagonist's wife to use for the cover illustration represents one of those nastily serendipitous ironies that Burroughs himself almost always chose to view as evidence of the magical universe.

From double book to stand alone; from Ace Original to Penguin Modern Classic; from unredeemed confession to cult novel; from a cheap shocker to a refined taste – the history of this text in a strange way acts as an allegory of the way the heroin subculture Burroughs depicted has mutated, spread and engrafted itself with the corpus of the wider society, in the process irretrievably altering that on which it parasitises. Just as – if you turn to his glossary of junk lingo and jive talk – you will see how many arcane drug terms have metastasised into the vigorous language.

Burroughs wrote Junky on the very brink of a transformation in western culture. His junkies were creatures of the depression, many of whose addictions predated even the Harrison Act of 1922, which outlawed the sale of heroin and cocaine in the US. Burroughs viewed the postwar era as a Götterdämmerung and a convulsive re-evaluation of values. With his anomic inclinations and his Mandarin intellect, he was in a paradoxical position vis a vis the coming cultural revolution of the 1960s. An open homosexual and a drug addict, his quintessentially Midwestern libertarianism led him to eschew any command economy of ethics, while his personal inclinations meant he had to travel with distastefully socialist and liberal fellows. For Burroughs, the re-evaluation was both discount and markup, and perhaps it was this that made him such a great avatar of the emergent counterculture.

Janus-faced, and like some terminally cadaverous butler, Burroughs ushers in the new society of kicks for insight as well as kicks' sake. In the final paragraph of Junky he writes: "Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the ageing, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh."

Let's return to that cover illustration with its portrayal of "William Lee" as Rock Hudson and his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, as Kim Novak. When I say Burroughs himself must have regarded the illustration – if he thought of it at all – as evidence of the magical universe he conceived of as underpinning and interpenetrating our own, it is because the first draft of the book was completed in the months immediately preceding his killing of Vollmer on 6 September 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs wrote in his 1985 foreword to Queer (which was completed in the year after Vollmer's death, but remained unpublished until 34 years later), "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realisation of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing."

Much has been written and even more conjectured about the killing. Burroughs himself described it as "the accidental shooting death"; and although he jumped bail, he was only convicted – in absentia by the Mexican court – of homicide. However, to my mind this rings false with the way he characterised his life, and his writing, thereafter: "I live with the constant threat of possession and the constant need to escape from possession, from Control." Burroughs saw the agent of possession implicated in the killing as external to him, "a definite entity". He went further, hypothesising that such an entity might devise the modern, psychological conception of possession as a function of the subject's own psyche: "since nothing is more dangerous to a possessor than being seen as a separate invading creature by the host it has invaded".

Personally, I think Burroughs' definition of "possession" was tantamount to an admission of intent. Certainly, the hypothesis of murderous impulsiveness squares better with the impromptu "William Tell act" (whereby he called upon Vollmer to place a glass upon her head, which he would then shoot off) than his own bewilderment in the face of an act of such cruel stupidity and fatal rashness. (He knew the gun to shoot low, and what would have happened to the glass shards even if he had succeeded? There were others in the room.)

I belabour these events for two reasons. First, because I think an understanding of the milieu within which Burroughs and Vollmer operated, and the nature of their life together, is essential in disentangling the post hoc mythologising of the writer and his life from the very grim reality of active drug addiction that constitutes the action of Junky. When Burroughs was off heroin he was a bad, blackout drunk (for evidence you need look no further than his own confirmation in Junky). However much he cared for Vollmer, their life together was clearly at an impasse (their sexuality was incompatible and she was even beginning to object to his drug use); and what could be more natural – if only momentarily – than to conceive of ridding himself of an obvious blockage?

📸 The original cover of Junkie by William Lee

Second, although the bulk of Junky was in place before the killing, Burroughs continued to revise the text at least as late as July 1952, including current events such as the arrival from New York of his old heroin-dealing partner Bill Garver (whose name is changed to "Bill Gains" in the text). The meat of the text of Junky is as close as Burroughs could get to a factual account of his own experience of heroin. In a letter to Allen Ginsberg (who had worried that the book constituted a justification of Burroughs' addiction), he inveighed: "As a matter of fact the book is the only accurate account I ever read of the real horror of junk. But I don't mean it as justification or deterrent or anything but an accurate account of what I experienced while I was on the junk. You might say it was a travel book more than anything else. It starts where I first make contact with junk, and it ends where no more contact is possible." All of which is by way of saying: Junky is not a novel at all, it is a memoir; "William Lee" and William Burroughs are one and the same person. Burroughs' own conception of himself was essentially fictional, and it's not superfluous to observe that before he began to write with any fixity he had already become a character in other writers' works, most notably in Jack Kerouac's On the Road. He also signed his letters to Ginsberg, Kerouac et al with his nom de plume, as well as using his correspondence as a form of work in progress, peppering his epistles to the Beats with his trademark riffs and routines. By the time Burroughs was living in Tangier in the late 1950s, his sense of being little more than a cipher, or a fictional construct, had become so plangent that he practised the art of insubstantiality with true zeal, revelling in the moniker "El Hombre Invisible".

Burroughs was the perfect incarnation of late 20th-century western angst precisely because he was an addict. Self-deluding, vain, narcissistic, self-obsessed, and yet curiously perceptive about the sickness of the world if not his own malaise, Burroughs both offered up and was compelled to provide his psyche as a form of Petri dish, within which were cultured the obsessive and compulsive viruses of modernity.

Burroughs never managed to recover from his addiction at all, and died in 1997 physically dependent on the synthetic opiate methadone. I find this a delicious irony: the great hero of freedom from social restraint, himself in bondage to a drug originally synthesised by Nazi chemists, and dubbed "Dolophine" in honour of the Fuhrer; the fearless libertarian expiring in the arms of an ersatz Morpheus, actively promoted by the federal government as a "cure" for heroin addiction. In the prologue to Junky and the introduction to The Naked Lunch, Burroughs writes of his own addiction as if it were a thing of the past, but this was never the case. In a thin-as-a-rake's progress that saw him move from America to Mexico, to Morocco, to France, to Britain, back to New York, and eventually to small-town Kansas, Burroughs was in flight either from the consequences of his chemical dependency, or seeking to avoid the drugs he craved.

As for the text itself, it reads today as fresh and unvarnished as it ever has. Burroughs' deadpan reportage owes as much to the hard-boiled style of the detective thriller writer Dashiell Hammett as it does to his more elevated philosophical inclinations. In eschewing rhetorical flourish or adjectival excess, Burroughs sought to remain silent about what could not be said, just like the drug subculture he was so enchanted by: "She shoved the package of weed at me. 'Take this and get out,' she said. 'You're both mother fuckers.' She was half asleep. Her voice was matter-of-fact as if referring to actual incest."

What it isn't is any kind of true analysis of the nature of addiction itself. Burroughs' own view – that "you become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default" – is a deceptively thin, Pandora's portfolio of an idea that raises the question: for what kind of person could drug addiction represent a "strong motivation"? Surely only one for whom alienation, and a lack of either moral or spiritual direction, was inbuilt.

Indeed, this is the great sadness of Junky (and Burroughs himself) as I conceive it. You can reread this entire text, assuming the hypothesis of addiction as a latent pathology, present in the individual prior to his having any direct experience of chemical dependency, and everything that Burroughs says about habitual heroin use begins to make perfect sense. But taking him at his own, self-justifying estimation (predicated on a renunciation of drugs that never came), Burroughs' Junky becomes the very archetype of the romanticisation of excess that has so typified our era: "I loosened the tie, and the dropper emptied into my vein. Coke hit my head, a pleasant dizziness and tension, while the morphine spread through my body in relaxing waves. 'Was that alright?' asked Ike, smiling. 'If God made anything better, he kept it for himself,' I said."

It is Burroughs' own denial of the nature of his addiction that makes this book capable of being read as a fiendish parable of modern alienation. For, in describing addiction as "a way of life", Burroughs makes of the hypodermic a microscope, through which he can examine the soul of man under late 20th-century capitalism. His descriptions of the "junk territories" his alter ego inhabits are, in fact, depictions of urban alienation itself. And just as in these areas junk is "a ghost in daylight on a crowded street", so his junkie characters - who are invariably described as "invisible", "dematerialized" and "boneless" - are, like the pseudonymous "William Lee" himself, the sentient residue left behind when the soul has been cooked up and injected into space.

#william s. burroughs #junkie

[ivyteas]

BUG CHOIR  •  late summer,  budding harvest

ー recently XP-Pen kindly sent special edition Innovator 16 for review for their 15th anniversary. It’s the perfect time to stew in nostalgia for summer’s end, so I drew some noisy little bugs to try this tablet. The full review can be found below.

  I’ve been very taken with Dvorak’s piano pieces as of late, so I tried to incorporate some of his works into the backgrounds and motifs for these pieces. You can glimpse some of the sheet music (waltz op.54 no1) particularly in the stag beetle/kabocha, and night’s journey (allegro moderato, in cicada&yam) is a really pretty piece too.    The anniversary edition tablet came with cute stationery - pen, stickers, postcards, keychain - centered around the theme of “identify your colour”; everything was packaged very nicely and a joy to look through. The Innovator 16 itself is surprisingly light. It doesn’t quite fit into standard laptop case, but the daring may tuck it into a bag ー I’m clumsy, so won’t push luck taking outside! it also has 8 shortcut keys + mechanical&virtual wheel (though i didn’t really get into habit of using both haha)     For this tablet too, I was struck by the vividness of colour display, it may have been a little crisper than even 13.3 pro. While adjustments were made to mirror the laptop screen, colours nonetheless seemed to hold more depth on tablet. To this point I’m still not sure which screen depicts more ‘accurate’ colours; regardless it helps to have multiple points of colour reference while drawing. I really think that the colour display is one of XP-Pen’s strongest suits. The drivers ran smoothly the entire time, though it should be noted that mirror mode isn't supported fr left hand use; I continued using extend mode.

(i wanted to record drawing cicada, but got carried away and only remembered to record yam leaves :-o !!) the drawing experience wasn’t so dissimilar from analog.    

(for the morbidly curious, this was the state the sketches were in before starting illust. am trying something fresh and fun called not obsessively helicoptering control over sketch lines, and working on display tablet gives a lot of freedom to consider composition more directly.)   Taking into consideration tablet size & attributes, i do recommend Innovator 16 for those aiming to move further in digital projects; the quality of experience is on par w/industry-type tablets at an accessible cost - moreover, they seem to be holding an anniversary sale on their tablets, if anyone is interested in checking out. I feel very fortunate for having had the chance to try this tablet, and my sincere gratitude to XP-Pen for this opportunity. links to XP-Pen shop: US: https://bit.ly/33Z87Wf AU: https://bit.ly/2DRVIZx UK: https://bit.ly/310wUrf EU: https://bit.ly/2DRVIZx

#xppentablet #bugs #insects #summer #watermelon #kabocha #yam #cottagecore #??? #murasaki imo #2020 #o #had to abridge the review for twitter aaaaaaa aa a hh ah

[agentqv]

Editing for AA Ep. 3 has resumed as of last week, and scenes are being completed. We've already reached the halfway point an editing, so expect a preview clip in the coming days.

#AA #Avatar abridged #ThunderferretProductions #AgentQV #Katara #ATLA #avatar the last airbender