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seaglassandeelgrass · 1 year

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In which I trip over 30 seconds'-worth of incidental instrumental music, fall very very far down a mudcat research hole, and emerge with a compiled playlist an hour and a half long of every song I can find using the same tune.

In my usual magpie-manner, I've been stricken with the urge to note down every identifiable bit of folksong scattered throughout the Sharpe series (thank you, John Tams, et al.), so during my most recent re-watch I kept notes as I watched- most I knew, the few others I could reverse search by phrases of lyrics, and the only real stumbling blocks were any un-named instrumental ones since I have a terrible ear for tunes I can't attach the mnemonic of lyrics to.

[If you only care for the playlists, scroll to the ✨️ at the bottom; if you want to look at my brain under a microscope, keep reading] [7 Feb, 2023 eta: the playlist has now more than doubled in length, both in # of songs and run-time]

In Siege though, starting at about 29:15, there's a brief bit of plaintive fiddle I did recognise as being the tune used by Judy Collins and others for 'Farewell to Tarwathie'. Which led, when I came to transferring my notes to playlist-form, to searching up the name of the tune itself so I could find an instrumental rendition, with my first port-of-call being the ever-faithful mainlynorfolk index, which quoted A.L. Lloyd as calling the tune 'an old favourite, best known in connection with the song called 'Green Bushes'. Which, being Bert Lloyd, we take with a substantial grain of salt.

So off to the mainlynorfolk index entry for 'Green Bushes'; not a lot of additional info there, so thus-armed, over we go to the Fresno State Trad Ballad Index entries, and their cross-references and then...

From which, the chain looked something like this: Mainlynorfolk -> Trad Ballad Index -> Scots Language Centre -> Trad Tune Archive -> Mudcat forums(1)

And then, through a marvelous stroke of serendipity, and the sole reason you're not currently reading the dissertation-length essay I was writing in my head; I stumbled across this article which is the exact manifestation of that incipient train of thought/red-string corkboard:

Song Archeology: From "Earl Douglas' Lament" To "Farewell Angelina"; The Long And Twisted History Of An Old Tune Family by Jürgen Kloss

So I could then simply get on with the playlist-making. Thank goodness for equally pedantic people in this world doing the hard work for me. (definitely do go read Kloss's article tho)

[(1) Which is fairly well what my usual oddly-specific folk playlist forays look like, only scanning for breadth rather than depth in their case. Mainlynorfolk is excellent for finding recordings of songs; the Trad Ballad Index for figuring links between songs/tunes themselves; and Mudcat, my beloved, for decades-old forum threads on particular themes and genres. Add to those the other *mumble*-dozen sites and books in my 'Folk Music Resources' bookmarks folder, such as the VWML Roud Index, and I can get real granular in my playlist-themes.]

(incidentally, 'Wild Rover' also scans near-perfectly to the tune and vice-versa 'Tarwathie''s lyrics to 'Wild Rover', though I don't think the tunes are actually that similar; I also keep slipping into 'Sweet Betsy From Pike/Vilikens and His Dinah' whilst humming it, though the metre there is entirely different; and i could halfway believe an evolutionary relation to the classic come-all-ye tune such as 'Blow-ye-winds-westerly/Fish in the Sea')

So anyway, the upshot of this is I now have two new playlists to show for it: the intended Sharpe's Soundtrack one [here] and the subsidiary hour-and-a-half 3-hours+ tune family compilation [here] ✨️

Sources:

DigiTrad: https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=8972

Kloss's site: https://www.justanothertune.com/html/tarwathie.html

Mainlynorfolk: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/farewelltotarwathie.html ; https://mainlynorfolk.info/joseph.taylor/songs/greenbushes.html

Mudcat forum threads: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40025 ; https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=93528

Scots Language Centre: https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/400

Trad Ballad Index: https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/DTtarwat.html ; https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/R061.html ; https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/LP02.html ; https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/FJ180.html ; https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/R740.html

Trad Tune Archive: https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Kennet%27s_Dream ; https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Johnny_Armstrong

[If any links cease to work, I've added them all to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine as well]

#particularly rapid unintelligible patter #i may have lost my mind slightly #it's been a while since i went so deep into the hyper-focus zone #i blame john tams' choice of fiddle tune that he absolutely did not put half so much thought into as this post. although maybe he did.#this post mostly for my own future reference but ah if you're interested enjoy #sharpe's rifles #er. increasingly tangentially.#anyhow this is how i so employed yesterday evening #[next day edit: we have now doubled in length; both no. of songs and play-time]#folk music

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allbeendonebefore · 4 months

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hiya, would you have any book or podcast recommendations for a brief overview of Roman/Classical history? not looking to get into the academia side of things, just wondering if there's a go-to Coles' notes with more of a critical rather than reverential eye!

Hi there!

I don't really listen to podcasts and the only one I've really heard is History of Rome by Mike Duncan. It was complete by 2013 but you can still find it on spotify etc. I listened to it and jumped around a lot between events when studying for exams and I also played episodes for my dad while he was driving when we were watching HBO Rome together.

I also recently listened to a two part series on Thucydides that CBC Radio's Ideas produced, not sure if this is accessible outside of Canada or not: part one is from 2011 and is about Thucydides as the first journalist/war correspondent and what set him apart from other early historians, part two is from 2020 and revisits pieces of that podcast in order to talk more about Thucydides' experience with the great plague of Athens. It's not exactly the sort of general overview of history you're seeking, but I bring it up because its something that is immediately relevant to the world today and thus easy to get into without context (particularly because reading Thucydides is a pain)

you've caught me Not-At-Home-With-My-Books which means I can't look over my shoulder and peruse my own shelf, alas. Apart from textbooks though, I'm not sure what I have for somewhat entry level books that I have even actually read and can vouch for. I really like my Classics 110 textbook but I can't remember the title/authors for the life of me. If you come ask me again in February when I'm for sure back home, I'll be able to tell you that, at least!

If you are interested in the how-we-know-this historiography side and writings from people in antiquity themselves, I'd also recommend seeing what's out there about specific ancient historians for periods or places you might be particularly interested in. For instance, you might look for books on Herodotus, Thucydides, Pausanias etc. for Greek history, or Livy, Tacitus, or even Suetonius (who is a hell of a gossip) for Roman, and so on. There might be some good annotated versions out there that have nice introductions with maps and context, etc.

If you're thrifting or browsing bookstores, generally I would avoid pop history books that focus on shock value ("eww i can't believe how depraved those romans were!") or, as you say, anything too reverential ("i cannot believe how downhill civilization has gone since the parthenon!"). The tricky thing about classics is that many if not most authors with a background in the scholarship will specialize in either literature or archaeology and not both, so you might want to look for authors and co-authors who talk about a little of each.

Thanks for asking, I'm sorry that I'm a bit less than helpful at the moment since I haven't formally been studying classics for a few years and I'm out of town away from my own collection where I keep my brain.

And of course as always, if anyone reading this has particular recommendations, please do say so in the notes! :)

#Anonymous #hapo replies #oh and as always SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY

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opinated-user · 1 year

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So the Sith Resurgence Page was locked which caused me to investigate a little further into its history. This is a long one.

So the page was made by morpmorp, an account that is widely believed to be Lily's sockpuppet. A stance I agree with as morpmorp's edit history is dominated by pages associated with Lily. The only non-Lily pages they edited were ones related to her interests such as the character page for the Hoarde or the Steven Universe brokenbase page. (Sidenote but this is how I learnt that Lily's Harry Potter fic has a TvTropes page so expect a repeat of this nonsense in about two years) I also have to mention that morpmorp was very bad at formatting. That's not really relevant but a large chunk of the edits was one person just reformatting the page to be presentable.

The majority of the page's existence it's been standard, a large group of people adding stuff in at their own pace. I will mention something of a minor edit war over the YMMV, specifically on 'Ron the Death Eater' and whether that could be applied to Leia. But I have reason to believe that the majority of the people who worked on the page were real and not Lily's sockpuppets. The biggest fight was on the main page over the 'Moral Dissonance entry' which was added and deleted by another user without reason. This was repeated three times back in 2021.

Unusually for a fanfic page, it has a fanfic recs page associated with it. This does happen sometimes when fics grow so big that they spawn a lot of recursive fanfiction (think Fallout Equestria or My Immortal) but the Sith Resurgence really isn't anywhere near that scale. The user who made the page for fanfic recommendations has not made any other edits ever, one and done account. Infer from that what you will. The reason I mention this is that two of the four fics recommended are the side-stories that Lily wrote for TSR. Normally side-stories would be included in the main page. However, they were added for completeness sake. What's interesting here is that there are two users who fought over the inclusion of a "hate fic" on the rec page.

These two users are the most recent editors on both the main page of the Sith Resurgence and the YMMV page. While they aren't in a direct edit war it is pretty clear that they are divided on how they feel about the fic. To be pejorative, one is probably a Lily fan while the other is decidedly not.

While I think this definitely influenced the decision to lock the page, Lily's actions potentially had a greater effect as the official reason given for locking the page was "The page is locked because the author encouraged her followers to edit her fanfic pages to her liking." Given that the majority of the edit wars happened over a year ago, I find it strange that Lily was even mentioning it. The activity on the pages were pretty minimal (both from people criticizing the fic and defending it) then.

Hope that was interesting

it was, thank you so much for informing us!

#lily orchard

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wtficedance · 1 year

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On the definition of team: gender, power, and equality in skating

Skate Canada made waves this week by announcing that it is updating the definition of 'team' with regards to pairs skating and ice dance to no longer refer solely to a partnership composed of a man and a woman, but to include two skaters regardless of gender identity. Skate Canada president Karen Butcher said on the revision, "This change is about removing barriers to participation in skating, and we believe it will have a significant impact in ensuring all gender identities are recognized and accepted equally and without prejudice."

For skaters who identify as non-binary or queer with a gender identity outside of the gender binary, this allows them to compete with lessened gender dysphoria if previously competing under their sex assigned at birth, such as non-binary pairs skater Timothy LeDuc who made history as the first out non-binary Winter Olympian in Beijing. But it also makes history as the first skating federation--and one of the three traditional skating powers--to allow for same-sex partnerships in pairs and ice dance.

It comes at an interesting time in international ice dance where elements have very recently been gendered where they weren't previously, with step sequence and twizzle levels now designated to the woman and man separately. And where in the past year, the ISU's big strides towards equality has consisted of revising communications to say "women" instead of "ladies" and allowing ice dance women to wear pants in the free dance. How progressive. (Men who wish to wear anything other than pants, like John Kerr's kilt for his Scottish OD in 2008, will still need an exception or face a costume deduction).

Gender in Ice Dance

Previously, the only gendered element was the spin, with men able to get a difficult position credit for a basic camel while women had to choose another variation. This change will likely affect dance far more than it will pairs due to the lower barrier for entry and due to far more mirrored elements than in pairs where the skillsets developed for lifting and throwing vs. twisting and balancing and landing are more highly gendered. Especially as only 4 lifts are required across two programs for dance--in comparison to eras where it was 7--ice dance’s brute strength and endurance requirements have evolved greatly in the last decade.

For now, by the nature of this ruling by Skate Canada as opposed to the ISU, unfortunately for the most elite level of skaters this change for young girls will result in partnerships between two women being seen as transitory as a stepping off point to a partnership where they can compete on the international level. But in a sport where young girls often retire due to lacking number of boys to partner with, this provides a massive developmental pathway where these young female athletes can continue growing with one another and increasing their skill levels. While the decision from Skate Canada (IMO) seems to be primarily motivated out of a desire for inclusion of queer athletes, it also could have a massive impact on improving the quality of training and experience for young girls. Whether it encourages them to challenge themselves by choosing a partnership with a stronger peer as opposed to sticking with a stagnant partnership that they are afraid to leave because it means giving up a chance at competing internationally, or just renewing their love of skating by doing it with a friend, this is a massive step forward for young athletes.

Madison Hubbell gave an interview to Russian media about her desire to do a show project with fellow Olympic medalist Gabriella Papadakis specifically about what skating between two women looks like.

"people have to see it. There are so many solo girls that want to do ice dance. And so many that spend years and years searching for a right guy, and I am sick of them sitting there searching. They need to find a way to perform, explore, express themselves, and share what they love about the sports. What would be a better way for two women than to skate together? But many of them are not used to the idea; they have not seen it, and for them, it’s almost like a lower tier. If I skate with a woman, maybe it means that I will never find a boy; it’s almost like admitting the fact that they might never be in competitive ice dance, which is too much to take on. We want to show them that there is no difference and that you can create amazing things – maybe even more amazing than what we are used to see."

Hubbell went through a transition early in her career after her brother Keiffer first split and then retired in 2012. Hubbell proceeded to pair with Donohue, and went on to a very successful career debuting at worlds in the same year. Most successful ice dancers are in fact not partnered since childhood, with the exception of sibling teams and the rare Virtue/Moir or Papadakis/Cizeron who go onto partnerships long enough that they can drive a car or drink. Many young girls spend half of their young careers waiting and wasting their talent because they don’t see another option, or settling for a partnership with a poor personality and/or skill fit.

"Of course, it’s only one aspect of this, but we are both very excited about this initiative to have a non-gendered event, more than creating a female-female event or male-male and then mixed. We think that everyone should be allowed to compete with everyone."

From a body image standpoint, skating has long denigrated and devalued women and girls seen as "too muscular" or "too tall" or "not feminine" enough due to their strength as skaters. Ranging from disgusting comments made to Kaitlin Hawayek this year, to Madison Hubbell and Tessa Virtue speaking about body shaming during their careers, this decision stands to empower young girls to lean into their strength as opposed to being shamed for it. While women have been permitted as lifters since 6.0 rules, very few teams have taken advantage of it in the last decade. The only team to do so being the Brown siblings during their first junior season. Many women in ice dance are afraid of challenging themselves in more athletic or reverse lifts that showcase their strength for fear of seeming less feminine.

"So many things worked really easily right away: transitions, skating skills, twizzles, one-foot, footwork, to track each other close – all have been really easy for both of us. But obviously lifts and tricks – things that we are used to do in one part of it – we have to learn how to be the base or to do a slightly different skillset."

In ice dance particularly, often there is a false gendering of strength in lifts that stems from the traditional mindset of stem and flower presentation: the woman is simply there to be lifted by her partner in a pretty position. She is simply a burden and any extra weight from muscles is not useful because the strength comes from the person lifting her. Incredible lifts like the stationary position achieved by Laurence Fournier Beaudry below involve the most power from the liftee, and are not possible without exceptional core strength.

Image taken by Ronda Churchill/AP Photo

Olympic Silver Medalist Tanith Belbin credits a switch to the coaching camp of Natalia Linichuk for forcing her to confront the toxicity of this regime in ice dance where young women are pressured to lose weight to make their partners' lifts easier. Linichuk ordered to her gain 10lbs and make an nutritionally informed diet to sustain her energy levels and improve her performance on ice. In the 2010 New York Times article on the subject, her partner Ben Agosto said he noticed a huge difference in her skating, "during lifts, she was no longer a sack of potatoes, holding on for dear life. She could hold her positions much better, and that made it easier for Agosto because she did not move around as much."

Hubbell alludes to this change in thought and challenging the notion that men need to lift because they are generally taller and stronger by noting the work that the IAM camp does with Cirque du Soleil acrobats: "often, acrobatic partners are almost the same size and height, so it’s all about leverage and technique."

Challenging this mindset is essential to valuing the amount of work that women in the sport do as incredible athletes and skaters. We see a large culture that values the strength and quality of men in ice dance and pairs, often at the expense of their female partners, where even in partnerships that are equally matched in talent and execution technical panels and officials will value male partners higher levels. We see this especially in reputation evaluation when it comes to individual step sequence levels. Of the top three teams last quad looking at OfSt levels, only S/K had the majority of their unequal level calls favor the lady. Despite for significant portions of that quad, all women were the stronger skater in their partnership looking at edge quality and control. Yet reputation or simply officiating bias, caused phantom no calls for clear mistakes made by men or simply attributed them to their cleaner female partner.

One Foot Step Sequence Level Calling Distribution

While culture changes at the officiating level are unlikely to happen on a scale faster than glacial, challenging the traditional gendering of technical strengths can only be seen as a step forward and potential at the skating community level to challenge the even unconscious bias that we all hold.

Community Reaction

Comments on the announcement have a varied mix of comments from full-throated support, to general trans and queerphobia, and a fair number of Blades of Glory references, but a strikingly common theme was that this change by Skate Canada is pointless because the ISU won't similarly follow--likely for years if at all. And while this is just my two cents on the matter, I truly believe that this is maybe the most positive change in skating in the past two quads. Momentum to make changes does not arise from nothing, this shift by a major federation, and one of the two currently non-sanctioned powers in the sport, provides a template for other federations to follow going forward. The ISU and the Olympics are highly important, what starts most dreams in the rink is thinking about that Olympic podium. But the fuel for the work put in is enjoyment of the sport at all levels. The vast majority of skaters will not see the Olympics or Worlds or international competition at any level. Their largest governing body is their domestic federation and it dictates what skating clubs they are apart of, what goals they work towards, what tier of development they can test into, and where they compete. This change is a massive step forward for not only the most elite tier of skating but those who lace up twice a week just to have fun doing something they love.

I would challenge everyone to view this change with as much idealism as possible. With the events of the past quad it is easy to fall into sheer hopelessness and despair at the state of the sport when it comes to the sheer amount of abuse and mistreatment of athletes, to feel the sheer scale of harm done. But this change provides a massive step forward when it comes to inclusion and equal treatment: for queer athletes and for the sport as a whole.

Lag time by the ISU for follow up is truly not the worst thing either as time is needed for partnerships with same-sex and gender non-conforming skaters to be developed at the domestic level to be ready for international competition. I truly hope we can see massive evolution in the sport, with athletes free to bring new new styles, new techniques, and new modes of expression that allow them to be their most authentic selves.

#ice dance #isu figure #pairs skating #gender equality #skate canada #wtficedance #curious cat #figure skating #gabriella papadakis #madison hubbell #papadakis #hubbell

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tokidokitokyo · 1 year

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2023年3月31日

TL;DR - Much busy, no time, some study!

March was my busiest month so far this year. Between rushing to finish work projects and getting sick, I am surprised I found time to do anything else! The reality of not having a lot of time but still wanting to fit in Japanese study is that I just have to use the time that I do have wisely.

When I worked late I had very little time to fit in Japanese study before bed, so I switched it up and did a bit of study right before work started. When I wasn't working late and had put the baby to bed I was usually exhausted, and I had to choose between watching something easy and letting my brain relax (sometimes you just need to do that!) and putting in some study time.

Life is about balance, and so is studying Japanese. You have to be consistent in your studying to make real progress, but you also have to make time for rest and self care. When I was sick I prioritized rest and myself so that I could get better, and let everything else go. When I was exhausted after work I prioritized rest and sometimes just studied for 5-10 minutes or even not at all.

The moral of this story is to take care of yourself. Studying is important for progress, but if you just don't feel like it or you need rest more than you need to drill 50 kanji, just take a break! I see people who feel guilty for taking a day or two or even a year off, but Japanese is more forgiving than that. Take some time to rest and refresh, and come back whenever you're ready!

Now, on to my study habits!

3月ってすごく忙しかった。仕事がめちゃ忙しくて、風邪も何回引いてて、休む時間も少なかったです！時間が無くてもどうしても日本語の勉強を進みたいと思って、頑張って少ない暇の時間で勉強する動力しました。

仕事の残業があった日は寝る前に勉強時間が無くなって、朝早く仕事始まる前にちょっと勉強しました。残業が無くても、息子の面倒を見て、寝かしつけの後でもめちゃ疲れてやる気ない日もありました。そして空っぽでテレビを見るか勉強するか、どっちか選べないといけませんでしたね。

人生というのはバランスが大事だから、日本語の勉強も、それともどんな勉強でもバランスが必要ですね。風邪を引いてたときはゆっくり休んで、勉強なんか諦めました。風邪が治るまでに休むしかやらなかったです。仕事の後めちゃ疲れたときも休みました。

つまり、自分のことを大事にしてください！勉強も大事だけど、無理してはダメですね。休みたいと思ったり、元気がなかったりしているとき休んでいいよ。一日、一週間、そして一年間でも大丈夫ですね。勉強がいつまでも待っているので、ごゆっくりどうぞ！

じゃ、まとめをはじめよう！

My 2023 Goals Progress

I laid out some broad goals for my Japanese study in my 2023 Japanese Language Goals post, so here I will update my progress towards these goals.

1. Read one page a day of 日本の歴史366 (にほんのれきし366) everyday in 2023.

In March, my routine schedule of reading one page (one entry) a day fell apart because of work and illness. I am still behind, but I am not (too) stressed out about it. I am back to reading one or two pages a day, and while part of me is frustrated that I am not caught up, I am trying to be calm about it and to enjoy the history readings, rather than have it be a chore I have to catch up on.

2. Finish 日本語総まとめ N3 (にほんごそうまとめ N3) workbooks.

I still haven't had as much time as I would like to go through these workbooks in detail, but I have made some time recently to work through some of them. I prefer to go through the four books I have (Vocabulary, Kanji, Grammar, Listening) at the same time, but I am trying to be satisfied with doing one "day" of one workbook at a time, since that is the best way to work it into my schedule.

3. Review and learn the first 6 levels of the 常用漢字 (じょうようかんじ), specifically the 教育漢字 (きょういくかんじ) up to grade 6.

This has definitely suffered in March, but I hope to get back into these kanji with flash cards in April.

4. Read at least one book every two months.

Do you see me laughing and crying at the same time? I did read a book club book from the Seitokai Bookclub but only because it was very short! But I read none of the books I wanted to read and hoped to have finished by April. Oh well!

5. Improve my speaking and writing by finding a tutor.

April is my month! I will find someone who will help me with speaking and writing (italki?) and I will finally achieve my writing goal in Japanese! (I hope!)

6. Study Japanese for at least 10 minutes a day.

Despite my hectic schedule, massive amounts of time dedicated to family, work, and illness, I managed to keep this going most of the time. Studying Japanese for AT LEAST 10 minutes a day has been a habit I have been keeping up since at least 2021. It also helps that I communicate with my family in Japanese daily. I spoke with someone the other day about learning Japanese, and my best advice, no matter how you choose to start learning Japanese, is to make it a habit to work on your Japanese every day. This is the one habit that all successful language students have (this one cool trick!).

March Study Log

March's study distribution graph and percentages reflects the lack of time I had to study and the ways I tried to fit in studying anyways.

Listening - This was the biggest area of study because I was not only spending more time trying to fit in Japanese study with podcasts, but I was also watching a lot of educational shows with my son. I don't count passive listening in my study log, but I also did quite a bit of that (other TV shows that I had on whilst doing other things, or Japanese shows with English subtitles).

Vocabulary & Kanji - I usually study most of my vocabulary and kanji with reading or with renshuu flash cards, but I also learned a lot of new words through conversation and through educational children's shows this month.

Vocabulary & Kanji flash cards (renshuu.org)

言葉で遊ぼう (Japanese wordle)

Speaking & Reading - I had to basically cut out reading for the month of March, except for the page-a-day history book (日本の歴史366) and the Seitokai Bookclub manga that I read. I still have 3 books I'd like to finish!

とつくにの少女 - manga, read in March

Writing & Grammar - These subjects really suffered. I prefer to spend a bit more time learning grammar, and writing really fell by the wayside as soon as I got busy. There's always April, though!

Going Forward in March

Work through 総まとめ workbooks more often, broken up into smaller chunks

Work more on 漢字 and specifically focus on the 教育漢字

Read 満月珈琲店の星詠み to the halfway point

Find a new study method to try out!

I try to make my goals reasonable, but it always seems like there is something that comes along and forces me to reduce them even more ^^;; I guess this month's lesson is to be flexible, take care of yourself, and stay 元気! I hope that everyone fulfills their study goals in April!

毎月、達成可能な目標を作ろうとしても、毎月、なんかあって、また目標を減らさないといけません。仕方ないね…　今月の一言は：頭が柔らかくして、自分を大事にして、そして元気でね！4月にみんなの日本語の夢が叶えるように！

#日本語 #japanese #japanese language #japanese langblr #japanese studyblr #langblr #studyblr #日本語の日記 #japanese diary #japanese goals 2023 #japanese studyspo #tokidokitokyo #tdtphoto #my photo #japanese goals march 2023

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eccebitch · 3 months

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hotd & the anarchy

I did a poll recently about how much people knew about the Anarchy, a period of civil war in early English history, and most people said they were not familiar with it, or not very familiar. I was originally going to do a really long post explaining all the historical context, but let's be real, you have access to wikipedia and nothing I'm going to say is going to be more researched than a wiki entry. what I can do for you is put it down quickly and easily, so! the anarchy, and what it has to do with asoiaf / hotd / the conflict known as the Dance of Dragons* in Fire & Blood.

*From here on, when I'm referring to the Dance of Dragons, I'm specifically referring to the events that take place in F&B, not the book with the similar name in the main ASOIAF series.

THESIS:

the Dance of Dragons is based on the Anarchy.

making Rhaenyra based on, or at least inspired by, Empress Matilda.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN:

The way the Anarchy ends historically is extremely similar to how the Dance of Dragons conflict ends in Fire & Blood, and will probably have some bearing on the ending of HOTD. So stop reading if you want to avoid spoilers.

WHAT ARE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THESE CONFLICTS? The granddaughter of William the Conqueror (the obvious basis for Aegon the Conqueror), Empress Matilda was a really interesting historical figure who isn't well-remembered today, which is a shame because her life was batshit interesting.

Below is a very (very!) brief overview of her actions, and how they compare to the events in the Dance of Dragons:

While Matilda's father King Henry I had many children, he only had two in his legal marriage. One was the prince and heir, and one was Matilda.

The prince, and about 298 other people, fucking died in the White Ship Disaster. (The White Ship Disaster is really interesting in and of itself and I could go into more detail, but you ain't here for that, so I'll spare you. But at least give the Wikipedia page a look if you're interested in bizarre episodes in royal history. Anyway, moving on!)

Daddy needs an heir! He grabs his daughter - who had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor (thus the title Empress) - and made all the lords in England and Normandy swear to accept her as heir.

(exactly like Viserys does with Rhaenyra)

Matilda is extremely hesitant to marry - after an emperor (he's dead now), everyone's a kind of a letdown. Eventually, she marries a foppish French duke, Geoffrey V of Anjou. (This is where the Angevin dynasty started, for those keeping track.)

(could Geoffrey V be an inspiration for Laenor? Entirely possible! I do think one of Rhaenyra's kids being named Joffrey is a homage; Matilda's second son was named Geoffrey after his father.)

When King Henry I dies, Matilda is away in Normandy with her family.

(similar to how Rhaenyra is away at Dragonstone when Viserys dies)

Matilda's cousin Stephen of Blois takes this opportunity to crown himself king as the eldest male heir.

(could Stephen of Blois be an inspiration for Daemon? I think it's possible - at the very least, the Dance of Dragons feels partially like a what-if scenario: what if Matilda had been able to shore up her support by marrying another male heir? What if Henry I had more legal children? etc)

When Matilda finally comes back to England, she does so with full military force, and the conflict between her and Stephen's forces plunge England into a period of war so bad it's commonly known as 'the Anarchy', because no one was in charge.

(Similarly, the period of civil war between the Greens and the Blacks gets its own soubriquet, though, in the Fire & Blood book, it's noted that the 'Dance of Dragons' name is too poetic and hides the real bloodshed)

During this conflict, Stephen's wife - also named Matilda, but we'll call her Maud to differentiate - briefly commands some troops in London; Maud is held up by contemporary sources as an ideal woman for her daring and bravery... things that Matilda is castigated for in the same sources.

(This is, to me at least, similar to how Alicent is treated vs Rhaenyra, because Alicent tries to work more within the extant political systems - only claiming power for male heirs, not herself etc - while Rhaenyra does similar but is seen negatively for it. I do think that Maud is a partial inspiration for Alicent.)

Neither Matilda nor Stephen are ever able to completely claim victory over each other, and eventually, the war ends in a stalemate.

By this time, Matilda's son Henry II is grown. (This is the Henry II who married Eleanor of Aquitaine and is played by Peter O'Toole in The Lion in Winter, for those keeping track.)

Matilda stops trying to claim power for herself and begins putting her son forward as heir. Henry II is an excellent commander who becomes known to the people of England. When peace talks with Stephen finally begin, they're between Stephen and Henry; Matilda stays in France.

Eventually, Stephen agrees to declare Henry II as his heir, and it goes smoothly enough; Henry II is king of England.

(This is similar to how Rhaenyra never definitively 'wins' the dance of dragons, but her son is king.)

tl;dr the clear similarities between these two events, one historical and one fictional, point to GRRM's interest in medieval history and his continued use of it as a source of inspiration in building out Westeros. I think his tragic ending for Rhaenyra is extremely intentional because it reflects Matilda's real life.

#asoiaf #hotd #house of the dragon #a song of ice and fire #game of thrones #shut up pel #medieval

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lordeemailarchive · 2 years

Text

HOW’S IT GOING TO END?

(16/07/2022) (Solar Institute Bulletin No. 17) (From New York City)

(Probably written on July 15th 2022, by date written on it)

Still from The Truman Show; still from being still

FORTY. TWO. SHOWS. Shows played in beautiful theatres with gold filigree and red seats, in modernist amphitheatres looking out at the lit ends of your cigarettes, in fortresses on clifftops and thousand-year-old castles and sweaty clubs that smell like old beer. Shows played with 39 degree fever, with nausea that required a quick banana being eaten, with a salty body from the pre-soundcheck swim, with a sore knee from the Prada loafers I refuse to stop jumping in, with mood swings and shyness but never, ever stage fright. And four shows played as a blonde. It’s taken me a week to sit down and write to you as I pull the last bits from the suitcase, only just processing what a magical few months this was. It was by far one of the best seasons of my life! I cannot thank you enough for making these shows what they were. The way you jumped in the air as a group, every single show, even when you had seats hitting the backs of your knees. The bright colours you wore, the glittery eye makeup, so much care and thought going into your outfits. The way you looked out for the people around you in some of the sweatiest rooms I’ve ever been in - Paris, Birmingham - and sung EVERY FUCKING word and blew my whole crew away with the depth and force of your love. I just wanna do it again. So happy there’s still more to come.

We finished the tour in Stockholm at a festival. It was the perfect last show of tour, we all had that school’s out feel, loose and relaxed, but excited to do it well one last time. We went on at 8:30pm, the sun was glowing gold. For that hour, I watched the dream solar power scene like my own personal movie, bodies swaying, flocks of birds in V formation, dusk on the trees, a hot air balloon floating on the horizon… and this happened, for sure a first at a show of mine, just all so fun and beautiful and shit my kids will be sick of hearing about when I’m old.

Now I’m back in the city, panic buying shorts, seeing an SP hat in the Japanese grocer, cooking for myself again. Can’t stop working……. why stop when it feels like play??? Went to a Mets game, had a blast, thought about the human desire for ritual/ceremony/theatre, and how religion or the monarchy scratch this itch at various times in history, and how elaborately ritualistic and beautiful sports like baseball also hold it down. Went to Carbone for the first time in years last night and had the same feeling, beyond how delicious the food is the real thing that enchants people is the service, how it’s theatre, how in these grim times we all just love a little magic trick. Doing heavier deadlifts. Haven’t discussed getting stronger, I’ve always seen the gym as this thing I just haul myself through in order to do my job, but have recently realised I actually love it in a kooky way. I feel specifically like a human being (and not a computer/animal/supernatural entity commonly found in folklore) picking heavy things up and putting them down, I really think building muscle is one of the best things you can do for your body image and sense of physical accomplishment. Reading Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City and Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women, both of which my mum brought me mid-tour, could she have better taste in books no she could not, thanks mum. Trying to find a secondhand copy of Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, also Manet and his Critics. Obsessed with music again and listening to it all the time, not telling you what though, hihi huhu.

Taken by one of you, apologies for no credit, love it

Growing out my unibrow as an entry point for playing with conventions of beauty/gender/form. I was at the Walter Sickert show, in the room which is just his paintings of nude women. The shock my brain got seeing these not particularly idealised versions of the female form shocked ME. I realised my brain is getting programmed to want what the algorithms want when it comes to female physical form, just by sheer exposure to these systems and the current beauty standards. The algorithm doesn’t want to see certain things, and therefore I’ve stopped looking for them, if that makes sense. It sounds soooo obvious, but I realised, like, fuck if I’m not careful I’m just gonna end up striving for conventional (albeit alternative/chic) hotness until I die. And wouldn’t that be…. kind of a waste??? To have this incredible canvas or raw tool that can be manipulated to such great effect, and to only use it to try to… titillate and appeal? In the same way I eat bitter greens or dank fermented foods, going to make an effort to incorporate different flavours when it comes to form. Incorporate the grotesque, the masc, the statuesque, the jacked, the magnificent. Call it “refusing to believe that’s all there is to a fire". Okay, some life dispatches in photo form.

Hot girl munchies… greenmarket is going crazy rn… kuku with kewpie one of the crazier but sicker things to emerge from this brain.

The acne is active but the fits are cute

God tier snack… that’s all I’ll say….

Glasto by Lauren

Some snaps from Oslo/Stockholm… god damn it was beautiful

Turtle pond in Central Park

Everyone who was at Ally Pally, I wanna say thank you — you guys raised over $33k USD for the Brigid Alliance, thank you so much for that, I’m really grateful. I felt really supported at that show too, I was feeling really emotional about Roe v Wade, felt special being able to kick and rage and sweat it out with you.

Last thing: Really enjoyed this profile of Yuval Sharon, who makes me want to get into opera. “I wanted it to feel like Japanese calligraphy, where you can’t remove your brush from the page,” he said in a talk before the show. “That’s what I’d like this production to feel like: one brush stroke, quick. Like being young.” I’ll drink to that. Love you. Stay cool. E

(source: received this email)

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necarion · 1 year

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The Song of the Gifts of Christ

Ankara, Turkey December 10, 2022

At high noon on December 25th, the Monks of the order Dona Christi will once again engage in their unique holy tradition, one begun nearly 2000 years ago. For nearly two weeks straight, they will celebrate the Missa Donorum Christi (Mass of the Gifts of Christ), during which they will sing the longest piece of vocal music in the world.

The Dona Christi Monastery was founded in 73 AD in the Turkish highlands by Christians fleeing persecutions and revolts in the Levant. According to their history, these brave Christians rejected the trauma of displacement to feel only gratitude for their survival. After a decade of wandering, the refugees were led by sweet birdsong to a lone fruit tree blooming upon a mountain peak. Seeing it as a sign from Christ, they chose to make the peak their new home. And upon the day that the first shovelful of earth was moved, every man, woman, and child swore a solemn vow: that they would consider each and every day a Gift from Christ.

Thus began the monastery’s holy mission: collecting and singing of Christ’s Gifts to the World.

Throughout the year during evening services, the Avowed of the church select a new Gift to be entered into the Book of the Gifts. These can range from the abstract (“Truth”, August 30, 508; “Justice”, May 11 1042), to the ephemeral (“Sunlight in a Daughter’s Hair,” October 16, 1501) to the highly specific (“the repainting of the great hall’s lintel by Brother Johannes,” March 7, 1753). More noteworthy gift entries include “Movable Type” (April 5, 1462), “the Dawn of the Peace of Westphalia” (24 October, 1648), and even “The Eleven Fifes Accompanying Last Week’s Dinner” (May 21, 1165). While there are naturally boisterously divided opinions about many of the new Gifts, there is usually little rancor; after all, if one’s preferred gift was not selected today, it may very likely be accepted tomorrow.

The choice of gifts is not entirely open-ended. There exist two ironclad Laws of the Gifts: (1) that the gifts be unique (maintained and enforced by the Master of Lists)* and (2) that they be singular in number (a change enforced in the 3rd century after the list’s recitation became cumbersome after the monastery was gifted multiple flocks of waterfowl).

Dona Christi is a relatively liberal order (in the classical sense), given its open ties with the rest of the world and its foundation by diverse refugees. Therefore, many things that are new are accepted as Gifts, even if the culture around them might be new and strange. As an example, when “The Beatles” (May 21, 1972) were added to the Book, a few of the older members disliked the music - as a compromise, the Turkish singer “Selda Bağcan” was added the following day (May 22, 1972). Nominees that are truly controversial, or that even one Monk truly believes to be Not a Gift, are left aside for reconsideration for the following year. That said, this has only happened on 72 occasions in the last 19 centuries.

The monks do not and cannot isolate themselves given their mission of finding and bringing back Christ’s Gifts to the world. However, since the ordained members of the church are exclusively Christian, there has been a long-term western bias to the gifts, which the members have recently begun to broaden. Monks on the holy mission are commanded to make no attempt at conversion, only to bring back Gifts to be entered into the list. Nevertheless, many missions do return with one or two people who wish to join the order in person.

New Gifts are informally debated throughout the year, and most monks have favored and disfavored options. Children take this both seriously and as a sort of game. Rhetoric classes feature regular debates about whether entries deserve to be added, and whether entries should be stricken, with results judged by older monks. There is also the annual Young Debate of the List in which two gifted students argue before the entire convocation about which of two Gifts should be added to the list, with the winner given the honor of entering it (despite having not sworn final vows). For example, in one famous student debate in the 1940s, “Batman” (April 10, 1947) beat “Superman” and became the first superhero in the List although the latter was added a few months later (June 30, 1947).

Entries to the list are Final, with rare and extreme exceptions, stricken only by a Formal Vote and unanimous consent. “Adolph Hitler” (April 10, 1938) was added by request of a German veteran of the Great War after he finally unified Greater Germany and was unanimously stricken upon his invasion of Poland the following year. Upon reaching each stricken entry in the Song, the monks fall silent and bow their heads for 10 seconds, and then resume. Other stricken entries include “The Holy Crusade” (August 17, 1096), the “Fall of Rome” (September 1, 477) (the refugees had originally fled Roman persecution, but later learned that the power vacuum was an unmitigated disaster for their order), “Brother Karl’s Canada Geese” (March 6, 1932),** and, for reasons that are no longer remembered, “Sister Beatrice’s Ale” (April 3, 709). In all, there have been 27 stricken entries.

But it is not merely the List for which Dona Christi is best known. For Dona Christi, Christ’s birth is canonically Christmas Day, 4 BC, 2026 years or 739996 days ago. And beginning on noon on Gregorian Christmas (December 25), each and every year, the monks sing through the entire list in reverse chronological order, completing the entire thing by high noon on Orthodox Christmas Day (January 7)!

Naturally, the monks take turns, and overlap each other, lest the list take far more time than allotted. (This year, they will average approximately 1.4 seconds per entry). Every monk participates in the chanting of the last year’s 365 gifts (“The Hope for Peace in Ukraine” (December 25, 2022) has been pre-selected to be this year’s Christmas Day gift; last year’s was “The COVID-19 Vaccine” (December 25, 2021). Following that, monks will rotate in and out over the following twelve days, except the Abbot who remains awake and participating.***

At 11:00 on January 7, the entire community will reconvene in the chapel to together sing the final twelve gifts, starting with “The Spiritual Leaps of the Lord’s Twelve Apostles” (January 18, 79), through the metaphysical “Rings Upon the Right Hand of Christ that Symbolize our Five Devotions” (January 11, 79) to the “Two White Doves That Sit Upon Our Lord’s Shoulders” (January 8, 79). The Song of the List will finally conclude with the Monastery’s most prized gift, the still-living reminder of the day Christ gave them their new home, which serves today as the sigil of their order:

"A Partridge in a Pear Tree” (January 7, 79)

Notes.

* Batman accidentally appeared twice in the list (in the 1940s and 1990s), so the list was amended in 2004 to clarify that the monks had referred to “Batman from the Comics” and “Batman from the Films”.

** Brother Karl returned from a mission with sufficient eggs to form six breeding pairs, as he found them beautiful. It thereafter took several years for the monastery to rid themselves of the scourge.

*** Dona Christi is one of the few monastic Christian orders that accepts both men and women as monks, which it does with complete gender neutrality in members and leadership; the current Abbot is the 96-year-old Georgiana Selenikos from Cyprus who has led Dies Christi since she was 57. The order also encourages marriage between members, as True Love is one of the foundational gifts to the world.

Children born to the order or taken in as foundlings are treated as acolytes and are trained in theology, mathematics, rhetoric, and numerous world languages. In their 18th year, these children are given the choice as to whether to swear their holy vows or to remain an acolyte. This choice is not final – the monastery considers their children to be a gift and so strives to keep them in the family – and the offer is presented all members thereafter.

Many do swear to the church, however, in a formal ceremony occurring at the introit to the Mass. This ceremony concludes with the Final Vows, the commencement of the Song, and that year’s Final Gift, chosen by the newly ordained. They then receive the great honor of leading the Song through that entire year’s gifts.

Other privileges given to Ordained Monks include the right to touch and read the holy Book of Gifts, to select new gifts, and to travel abroad searching for New Gifts.

Latin Terms:

Perdix en Arbor Piri – Partridge in a Pear Tree

Codex Donorum – Book of the Gifts

Leges Donorum – Law of the Gifts

#creative writing #silly #I committed far too hard to this bit #story

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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I'm a Chinese, nationally and racially. Racial projection seems to be a common practice in western fandom, doesn't it? I find it a bit... weird to witness the drama ignited upon shipping individuals with different races, or the tendency to separate characters into different "colors" even though the world setting doesn't divide races like that. Such practice isn't a thing here. Mind explaining a bit on this phenomenon?

Sure, I can try. But of course, fish aren’t very good at explaining the water they swim in.

Americans aren’t good at detecting our own Americanness, and a lot of what you’re seeing is very much culturally American rather than Western in general. (In much of Europe, “race” is a concept used by racists, or so I’m told, unlike in the US where it’s seen more neutrally.) Majority group members (i.e. me, a white girl) aren’t usually the savviest about minority issues, but I’ll give it a shot.

The big picture is that most US race stuff boils down to our attempts to justify and maintain slavery and that dynamic being applied, awkwardly, to everyone else too, even years after we abolished slavery.

There’s a concept called the “one drop rule” where a person is “black” if they have even one drop of black blood.

We used to outlaw “interracial” marriage until quite recently. (That meant marriage between black people and white people with Asians and Hispanic people and others wedged in awkwardly.) Here’s the Wikipedia article on this, which contains the following map showing when we legalized interracial marriage. The red states are 1967.

That’s within living memory for a ton of people! Yellow is 1948 to 1967. This is just not very long ago at all. (Hell, we only fully banned slavery in 1865, which is also just not that long ago when it comes to human culture.)

Why did we have this bananas-crazy set of laws and this idiotic notion that one remote ancestor defines who you are? It boils down to slavery requiring a constant reaffirming that black people are all the same (and subhuman) while white people are all this completely separate category. The minute you start intermarrying, all of that breaks down. This was particularly important in our history because our system of slavery involved the kids of slaves being slaves and nobody really buying their way out. Globally, historically, there are other systems of slavery where there was more mobility or where enslaved people were debtors with a similar background to owners, and thus the people in power were less threatened by ambiguity in identity.

Post-slavery, this shit hung around because it was in the interests of the people in power to maintain a similar status quo where black people are fundamentally Other.

A lot of our obsession with who counts as what is simply a legacy of our racist past that produced our racist present.

The other big factor in American concepts of identity is that we see ourselves as a nation of immigrants (ignoring our indigenous peoples, as usual). A lot of people’s families arrived here relatively recently, and we often don’t have good records of exactly where they were from, even aside from enslaved people who obviously wouldn’t have those records. Plenty of people still identify with a general nationality (”Italian-American” and such), but the nuance the family might once have had (specific region of Italy, specific hometown) is often lost. Yeah, I know every place has immigrants, and lots of people don’t have good records, but the US is one of those countries where families have on average moved around a lot more and a lot more recently than some, and it affects our concepts of identity. I think some of the willingness to buy into the idea of “races” rather than “ethnicities” has to do with this flattening of identity.

New immigrant groups were often seen as Other and lesser, but over time, the ones who could manage it got added to our concept of “whiteness”, which gave them access to those same social and economic privileges.

Skin color is a big part of this. In a system that is founded on there being two categories, white owners and black slaves, skin color is obviously going to be about that rather than being more of a class marker like it is in a lot of the world.

But it’s not all about skin color since we have plenty of Europeans with somewhat darker skin who are seen as generically white here, while very pale Asians are not. I’m not super familiar with all of the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, but I think this persistent Otherness probably boils down to Western powers trying to justify colonial activities in Asia plus a bunch of religious bullshit about predominantly Christian nations vs. ones that are predominantly Buddhist or some other religion.

In fact, a lot of racist archetypes in English can be traced back to England’s earliest colonial efforts in Ireland. Justifying colonizing Those People because they’re subhuman and/or ignorant and in need of paternalistic rulers or religious conversion is at the bottom of a lot of racist notions. Ironic that we now see Irish people as clearly “white”.

There are a lot of racist porn tropes and racist cultural baggage here around the idea of black people being animalistic. Racist white people think black men want to rape/steal white women from white men. Black women get seen as hypersexual and aggressive. If this sounds like white people projecting in order to justify murder and rape... well, it is.

Similar tropes get applied to a lot of groups, often including Hispanic and Middle Eastern people, though East Asians come in more for creepy fantasies about endlessly submissive and promiscuous women. This nonsense already existed, but it was certainly not helped by WWII servicemen from here and their experiences in Asia. Again, it’s a projection to justify shitty behavior as what the party with less power was “asking for”.

In porn and even romance novels, this tends to turn up as a white character the audience is supposed to identify with paired with an exotic, mysterious Other or an animalistic sexy rapist Other.

A lot of fandoms are based on US media, so all of our racist bullshit does apply to the casting and writing of those, whether or not the fic is by Americans or replicating our racist porn tropes.

(Obviously, things get pretty hilarious and infuriating once Americans get into c-dramas and try to apply the exact same ideas unchanged to mainstream media about the majority group made by a huge and powerful country.)

Politically, within the US, white people have had most of the power most of the time. We also make up a big chunk of the population. (This is starting to change in some areas, which has assholes scared shitless.) This means that other groups tend to band together to accomplish shared political goals. They’re minorities here, so they get lumped together.

A lot of Americans become used to seeing the world in terms of “white people” who are powerful oppressors and “people of color” who are oppressed minorities. They’re trying to be progressive and help people with less power, and that’s good, but it obviously becomes awkward when it’s over-applied to looking at, say, China.

Now... fandom...

I find that fandom, in general, has a bad habit of holding things to double standards: queer things must be Good Representation™ even when they’re not being produced for that purpose. Same for ethnic minorities or any other minority. US-influenced parts of fandom (which includes a lot of English-speaking fandom) tend to not be very good at accepting that things are just fantasy. This has gotten worse in recent years.

As fandom has gotten more mainstream here, general media criticism about better representation (both in terms of number of characters and in terms of how they’re portrayed) has turned into fanfic criticism (not enough fics about ship X, too many about ship Y, problematic tropes that should not be applied to ship X, etc.). I find this extremely misguided considering the smaller reach of fandom but, more importantly, the lack of barriers to entry. If you think my AO3 fic sucks, you can make an account and post other fic that will be just as findable. You don’t need money or industry connections or to pass any particular hurdle to get your work out there too.

People also (understandably) tend to be hypersensitive to anything that looks like a racist porn trope. My feeling is that many of these are general porn tropes and people are reaching. There are specific tropes where black guys are given a huge dick as part of showing that they’re animalistic and hypersexual, but big dicks are really common in porn in general. The latter doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the former unless there are other elements present. A/B/O or dubcon doesn’t mean it’s this racist trope either, not unless certain cliched elements are present. OTOH, it’s not hard for a/b/o tropes to feel close to “animalistic guy is rapey”, so I can see why it often bothers people.

A huge, huge, huge proportion of wank is “all rape fantasies are bad” crap too, which muddies the waters. I think a lot of people use “it’s racist” as an easy way to force others to agree with their incorrect claims that dubcon, noncon, a/b/o, etc. are fundamentally bad. Many fans, especially white fans, feel like they don’t know enough to refute claims of racism, so they cave to such arguments even when they’re transparently disingenuous.

Not everyone here thinks this way. I know plenty of people offline, particularly a lot of nonwhite people, who think fandom discourse is idiotic and that the people “protecting” people or characters of color are far more racist than the people writing “bad” fic or shipping the wrong thing.

But in general, I’d say that the stuff above is why a lot of us see the world as white people in power vs. everyone else as oppressed victims, interracial relationships as fraught, and porn about them as suspect. Basically, it’s people trying to be more progressive and aware but sometimes causing more harm than good when those attempts go awry.

#Anonymous

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atopfourthwall · 3 years

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Ive only recently gotten into classic Star Trek so I don't think I can properly answer but what is it specifically about Discovery and recent Star Trek that classic Trek fans hate?

Putting this behind a cut because... it's a lot.

Well, first of all a big rejection of it is just on an aesthetic level. Up until the 2009 movie (which was considered a reboot, even with time travel elements), Star Trek tried to treat the original series and how it was portrayed as pretty sacrosanct. Sure, they might occasionally make jokes about goofier aspects of it and discard some of the stupider stuff (like how in the final episode, penned by Gene Roddenberry himself, that women weren't allowed to Captain starships), but how TOS looked? That's how the 23rd century looked. Buttons and multi-colored outfits and boxy computers and smooth, undetailed ships WAS what was appropriate for the time. When Scotty came back in TNG, they had him on the holodeck and it was the TOS bridge. When DS9 traveled back in time to that era for an episode? They went onto the Enterprise and visited it. When in an Enterprise 2-parter we had a TOS-era ship? It looked like a TOS ship. They even did a 2-parter on Enterprise to explain why Klingons had smooth foreheads when later (and earlier) they didn't. Star Trek up until then cared about maintaining that continuity of appearance. But Discovery is set in the TOS era... but nothing looks like TOS. Even when we got the Enterprise and those uniforms and we saw inside the ship, it was an upgraded form. The only logic I've seen people try to argue about WHY it doesn't look like it actually did was "Well, audiences won't accept something as cheap as TOS being futuristic." Well, then you've got a few responses there: -Don't set in TOS era, then. -That's horseshit, because audiences from the 90s through the 2000s accepted it just fine. Even a piece of dialogue from DS9 explained it perfectly: "I LOVE 23rd century design." It LOOKS cheap, but it was just the aesthetics of the period. And the Enterprise 2-parter it still looked good in HD. Hell, arguably it looked BETTER in HD because they knew how to light it and create mood and its own unique flavor. -It's even more horseshit because people are STILL going back and watching it even today, as indicated by you saying you've started watching it, so clearly it's not that much of a barrier. But what's even more egregious is the TECHNOLOGY. You might be able to accept updated aesthetics if at least matches what was present during the period... and it doesn't. Holographic displays and communication (holodeck technology AT ALL, frankly - it's possible it was there, but TNG seemed pretty adamant that the holodecks were fairly new, very impressive technology), weapons not looking or acting like they traditionally did, Enterprise and Discovery having R2D2-style repair droids that certainly did not exist in TOS, the wrong sound effects being frequently employed, replicator technology for good-looking food instead of food dispensers that gave out marshmallows and cubes, and honestly the tech level shown in Discovery looks just as advanced - if not MORE advanced than seen on TNG 100 years later. And this is a minor thing, but despite the attempt to make the future LOOK futuristic, from a cultural perspective, the future looks... way too damn similar to now. The excessive swearing (it was said in particular in Star Trek 4 that while they certainly did cuss, it was less common and they sure as hell weren't dropping F-bombs), a party on Discovery that looked like a rave (when previously it seemed like the most popular music and culture of the 23rd/24th century was considered fairly high-brow entertainment [classical music, Shakespeare, great works of literature and plays, etc.] - and while you could certainly argue that that snootiness and love of that stuff is a problem with Star Trek and a sign of how sterile and homogenized it is, THAT is the future they presented and a character in Voyager loving some of the goofier parts of 20th century culture like jukeboxes and old sci-fi serials was considered unusual), and just the general way people talk betrays the idea that the writers aren't thinking about how society changes in the future. It's just the modern day, but with cooler technology. But hey, let's set aside the general aesthetics - some people aren't going to mind that and find

ways to handwave away a lot of stuff (even Discovery season 2 TRIED to handwave away stuff like the holographic communications, but did a piss-poor job of it). This brings us to the problem of the WRITING. And the problem with the writing is a big Michael Burnham-shaped indentation. To be clear, I don't mind Michael as a character or her actress - there are interesting aspects to her, centering a Star Trek show around the science officer is a neat idea (though that means you should probably NAME IT AFTER HER and not around the ship, because it suggests this is a standard ensemble group and not JUST her)... but the actual execution is that it feels like the entire universe bends over backwards for HER. She has a unique relationship with a beloved longtime character that is retconned in. She has unique relationships with several important characters to the point where the fate of billions of people hinges on her and the decisions she makes. She is presented as almost always correct about everything, and those that oppose her are often wrong, naïve, or active enemies. Now, this is less of an issue in the third season - but that has its own unique problems - but in the first season, the resolution of two major storylines (mirror universe and the Klingon war) revolves around her and her relationship to the Terran Emperor and Lorca. In season 2, her mother trying to help or save her is the basis of the ENTIRE friggin' plot with time travel and the like, with special knowledge and history having to do with her and everyone ready to abandon their lives for her so she won't be alone when she has to go to the future when arguably they barely know her (the timeline of the show is debatable). Season 3 has a few different problems with her - the first is that she keeps being involved in things that don't concern her (why is she going down to Trill?) and she keeps violating orders. Now, her violating orders is a problem throughout the entirety of Discovery - in fact, it's kind of the instigating factor OF the series. And arguably, other Star Trek characters are guilty of that and they face no consequences, just as she faces none... and yet it's the brazenness with which it happens, and in those other series it's arguable because the series tries to avoid excessive continuity changes for its episodic nature, so the status quo MUST return to normal... but Discovery is pivoted as one of MAJOR continuity, so her lack of consequences (and indeed eventual PROMOTION) is baffling to the point of frustration. Now again, let me be clear here - she is not a bad character in and of herself. Honestly what it shows is that being the science officer on a starship is not where her talents lie. She should be in a position where she has a lot more freedom to act and not in a major command structure... but being in that command structure, what we see in season 3 is that she lacks the discipline, emotional maturity, responsibility, leadership qualities, and general other traits necessary to be a Captain. Only once during season 3 did she display such a quality - putting the safety of the Federation above a friend and colleague... but other times she will happily disobey orders and put herself and others in harm's way, creating potential new problems. Now, again, Star Trek is rife with characters doing that... but usually not the Captains. And, in fact, when this happened once on DS9 with one officer disobeying orders and putting their own personal feelings above the greater responsibility, it was made VERY clear that the incident would mean that they would never be able to command a starship because of the unofficial reprimand. What's even more frustrating about her is that the character is ALWAYS shoved to the forefront so much to the point where we just get sick of her. SHE is the one giving log entries (usually pretty piss-poor ones, at that - very flowery and nonsensical and kind of dumb) and not the Captain. SHE is the one given so much focus and how the plot of the episode affects her. Barely anyone else gets any focus episodes - I STILL can't

remember the names of some of the secondary characters because they're so rarely said, and a PTSD-related plotline in season 3 for one of the secondary characters basically gets resolved OFF-SCREEN. Michael would be fine if we actually had a chance to miss her... but we never do. Arguably one of the best episodes of the show is in season 2, when it focuses on Saru and his people because Michael DOES take a back seat. It's his story and his development and problems relating to him and his people. And even if, again, we forgave the idea of so much focus on her even in plots that aren't about her... she never seems to really change that much. She'll TALK about how she's changed, but I see no real difference in the way she acts (MAYBE season 1 to 2, where in season 1 she was stiffer and more Vulcan-like, but that's it). But hey, let's assume that's not a problem for you - you really, REALLY like Michael and are fine with so much focus on her. Simply put, the writing of the rest of the show... is just kind of dumb. The ship is powered by magic mushrooms that let it teleport everywhere because the universe has super fungus capillaries throughout it that nobody can see and also it's magic and can resurrect the dead. The time travel plot of season 2 doesn't make any sense when you sit down and diagram it. Well-established Trek lore is just kind of sprinkled in, but now in ways that doesn't match what it was before or at least in ways that completely recolor how it's supposed to work, because it needs to serve THIS plot. Everyone remembering a murdererous monster fondly after she leaves because "Hey, she was coooool." The explanation for the big mystery in season 3 is just fricking stupid and one of the two big reasons why I've finally given up on Discovery, because it's just so absurd, doesn't match how anything works, and just feels like the writers giving the middle finger to the audience because they care more about "YOU MUST FEEEEEEL THINGS!" instead of it making sense. And indeed, there is certainly a balance to be made of plot vs. emotion-driven storytelling - some stories are dumb, but are forgivable because the character writing and emotion are so strong that they override how goofy the plot is... but sometimes a plot is just so dumb it overrides anything I'm SUPPOSED to feel. And it would help if I already liked the show, already gave it some benefit of the doubt... but I don't and it hasn't done enough to impress me. A little thing that's a problem with ALL of current modern Trek shows is that whole sprinkling lore thing - I don't think a single episode goes by in ANY current modern Trek series that doesn't have a random reference to classic Trek lore. A name, a line of dialogue, etc. It comes across like the creators don't trust you to enjoy it on its own merits, but want you to like it because "Hey, remember thing? We know about thing! Like us because we mentioned thing!" But hey, I recognize that these are things that other people may not have any problem with or just disagree in general. But for me and my family, these are the big ones that keep us from enjoying it. Hell, my brother and dad still watch it for hatewatching purposes, but I was done after season 3. I gave it plenty of chances to impress me, and while each season MARGINALLY got better as it went along, I'm tired of waiting to actually like it and to stop feeling like it thinks I'm a fucking idiot. If other people still like it, great - it clearly appeals to them in a way that it doesn't appeal to me and they are free to enjoy it. Other people probably have their own issues, but this long, rambly bit is the major stuff for me.

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justaddgame · 2 years

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GOTY 2021: Honorable Mentions

POWERWASH SIMULATOR

This year I got really curious about simulation games. Growing up, I shared playtime with my sister over things adjacently similar like The Sims and classic management sims such as Roller Coaster Tycoon and Zoo Tycoon. Just about everyone can find the fun in games like those, but sims like Euro Truck Simulator and Farm Simulator? I think they take a certain kind of appreciation; an attention to detail that largely speaks to people who already get it, or have the urge to explore something unfamiliar on familiar ground.

Thankfully, for those like me that are afraid of the deep end, there’s been a recent trend of oddly specific simulator games. These sims don’t require a companion manual or serious tech like a racing wheel. Sims like PowerWash Simulator may not even teach you very much, but I’ve learned it’s an appreciation for the mundane that’s being tapped into. I can’t tell you why I enjoy power washing someone’s rusted-over car or polishing a driveway. It’s just something you feel while playing a sim like this one.

It wouldn’t be worth mentioning if the game itself wasn’t well designed for what it wants to accomplish, and even in its Early Access state, there’s a great foundation here, and developer FuturLab continues to update it on a frequent basis. If you fancy a need for something urgency-free, the continuous developments within PowerWash’s Career and Challenge modes will help you discover what the genre is all about.

TONY HAWK’S AMERICAN SKATELAND

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s surprise release on Nintendo Switch offered fans a modern Tony Hawk game on handheld, but there’s a long history of this franchise going portable. From Sony’s PSP to, surprisingly, Nintendo’s GameBoy Advance. But nestled in between those was Vicarious Vision’s excellent Nintendo DS entry, Tony Hawk’s American Skateland, a sort-of demake of the similar Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland released on console.

This was one of the first games I completed this year kept me glued to my DS from beginning to end. It was praised at the time for being more than just an experimental port; everything from the art style to the controls takes advantage of the hardware it’s on while also managing to deliver an authentic Tony Hawk experience. The classic tricks, the authentic soundtrack, the free-roam level design, the story mode packed with creative missions, and the ability to create your own skater. Vicarious Visions left nothing behind.

If you find yourself feeling nostalgic about the DS, I highly recommend making time for this gem.

LITTLE NIGHTMARES

Little Nightmares was one of a handful of brief games that took only a couple of days to blast through, making each one a nice reset between those games demanding more hours as you’re quickly losing daylight. Of them all, I especially liked this twisted, creepy journey wrapped in a puzzle-platformer with an outcome that definitely stuck with me for more than a day or two.

It’s a well-directed story that tasks you as a small child, named Six, to escape The Maw with nothing to defend herself or even a clue of why she’s there. The narrative itself remains silent throughout the game, forcing you to decipher the meaning through dread of the surroundings and the unimaginable things living there. The first encounter of Little Nightmares’ ghoulish creatures was enough to give me pause, and not something I’ve felt outside of something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. It isn’t especially difficult in terms of gameplay. There are no real game overs and the puzzles won’t leave you scratching your head. Solutions are largely driven by outwitting your captors, which can lead to several failures until that “ah-ha” moment arrives. It was sometimes repetitive, but there are several tense scenes, and one in particular near the finale that had absolutely stellar camera work.

You’ll spend far more time with other games, but Little Nightmares, and other games like it, know we’re busy, and can still succeed to entertain with less.

MARIO GOLF: SUPER RUSH

It hasn’t been easy to be a Mario Sports fan in recent years.

While Mario Kart continued as strong as ever, practically eclipsing all other recreational activities in the Mushroom Kingdom, games like Super Mario Strikers, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, and Mario Power Tennis were yet to be replicated as Nintendo entered the HD era. Glimpses of a revival often turned out to be more experimental and disappointingly safe, such as the Wii U’s Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash.

Are the glory days back with Mario Golf: Super Rush? That remains to be seen, but it’s a promising step in the right direction. If nothing else, the opening cinematic was a brilliant nod to the fans of Camelot’s chaotic shorts featuring Wario and Waluigi hijinks. The core gameplay is solid, though, and actually made a better golfer—only virtually, but still. The story mode itself was far more in depth that I expected and had enough surprises for a fun distraction. Recent updates have rounded the package out to a respectable degree, as well.

Super Rush didn’t meet fans’ expectations unanimously, and those reasons aren’t without merit. But in many ways Super Rush felt like it was at least acknowledging the past games unwillingness to go beyond good enough. And I think it rose above that in places. Let’s hope someone at Nintendo keeps the fire burning, meanwhile.

WARIOWARE: GET IT TOGETHER!

Among the numerous franchises within the magical Nintendo well, WarioWare seems to spring up when we need it most. After a hiatus that saw a couple of spinoffs in the form of Wii U’s Game and Wario and 3DS’s WarioWare Gold, the next evolution in microgames appeared this year on Switch with WarioWare: Get it Together! The initial trailer was both promising and exciting—it certainly looked like WarioWare.

But the latest twist was putting us in direct control of Wario and his Diamond City cohorts. I got the impression after release that not everyone was sold on this new idea, but it ended up being one of my favorite features. What makes WarioWare unique is that repetition is a feature—not a detraction. Each character controls in a unique way, meaning your perspective within every microgame changes slightly upon revisiting them. Flipping light switches is easy when you can move in any direction. Now try doing it when you can’t move. How does jumping over and over again sound?

I’d argue it was a smart design choice given that the WarioWare formula has seen many iterations now, and was in need of a strong comeback. I’m not sure where Nintendo will go forward with WarioWare in the future, but Get it Together! was a neat surprise this year, and a reassurance that innovation is alive and well in Diamond City.

#powerwash simulator #tony hawk's american skateland #little nightmares #mario golf super rush #warioware get it together #goty 2021

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whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst · 3 years

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To Steal From A Thief:

A Lost Tomb fic

Prologue

“I’m so glad I don’t live in the real world.” —Leverage

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” —Virginia Woolf

Although he could sleep through the noise of storms, dogs barking, and passing cars honking at each other, the boy was always easily awoken on the nights when the soft but insistent buzz-buzz-buzzzz of the intercom outside the front door whispered secrets into the cool, misty air. Only three kinds of people would request entry to the Wu family estate in the middle of the night: Wu San Xing on several occasions when Wu Erbai had gotten mad enough at his brother’s activities to lock him out, business clients seeking a discreet meeting for their problems, and thieves. It was this third category of visitor that the boy was most excited by, and he was more likely to slip out of his bed and sneak down to the door that connected the living space with the insurance business when he knew that thieves were within.

Certainly, the first two possibilities were entertaining on their own. The most recent passive-aggressive standoff between the Wu brothers had involved Uncle San-ye sprawled out in the street at 3am, drunkenly yodeling a 1990s pop song about betrayal in love while pelting gravel at Uncle Erbai’s bedroom window with surprising accuracy (Erbai pretended to be asleep inside, but Pan Zi finally took pity and secretly let San Xing in).

The midnight clients for the uncles’ business were also interesting to peek at from around the hall corner: they ranged from statuesque women whose faces were shadowed by large hats, to elderly couples clutching each other close, to nondescript suited men who came “on behalf of my employer”. These clients invariably had one common denominator that the boy noticed: they were all desperate.

Why else would you come to people like Wu Erbai and Wu San Xing for help? Why else would you throw your lot in with a den of thieves?

If you asked one of their neighbors about the gossip on the Wu brothers’ house, the reluctant answer would likely be, “not much.” The Wu brothers were the ones that ran that little insurance business attached to the house. Established in the neighborhood for decades. Took out the trash on time, no loud parties. That young nephew was living with them right now and going to school at the local university, such a sweet boy. Now, once in a while you might glimpse someone entering or exiting the house who didn’t look normal at all, but as Wu Erbai would explain with an unblinking and discomfiting stare, these were simply some paying customers from out of town. The insurance business takes all types, after all. Everyone has something they consider valuable.

Within a very different community, however, the Wu reputation was only normal in the sense that they were an established family of thieves (freelance goods retrievers, Wu Erbai hissed) going back to Wu Xie’s grandfather.

It had all started, as Uncle San Xing would tell an awed young Wu Xie during warm evenings in his childhood, when Grandfather Wu had come across an old friend stumbling his way through the street with tears streaming down his face. The friend’s story was sad but not unheard of; he had gambled too much during a game one evening at a private party and drunkenly bet away his prized family heirloom, a carefully maintained watch that had been passed down to him upon the death of his father. Once sober, the horrified man had rushed to the game winner’s house and explained his mistake. He offered the watch’s estimated value in cash, as he had scraped together the money for it, but to no avail. The winner of the watch liked it too much and wouldn’t exchange it for any money. To make matters worse, as the man grew increasingly desperate and upset, the winner (a powerful man in town) had him removed from the house and publicly thrown out onto the street. Humiliated and grieving, he stumbled home to tell his family about the loss. Wu Xie’s grandfather had caught him only a few houses away from his own. Grandfather Wu found himself angry on his friend’s behalf. Certainly, his behavior had been foolish and irresponsible—but for the other man to refuse a reasonable deal to restore someone’s family heirloom, particularly when he didn’t need the money himself, and to publicly embarrass this friend to boot?

Grandfather Wu never explained to his sons just how or when the thought came to him, but it was an idea that would change the family line forever: taking the watch back is the right thing to do.

His journals didn’t provide much information about how he accomplished it; a reference to a sympathetic servant in the house, tips jotted down for making an innocent diversion at the right moment. However he accomplished the watch retrieval (leaving the money in its place), Grandfather Wu got a taste for it after that—and other friends and acquaintances who had heard about the watch incident came by or wrote to him with their own problems and a tidy sum to ease the way. The rest, as Uncle San Xing would say while tucking young Wu Xie into bed, was history.

In the next generation, however, Wu Xie’s father pointedly set up a legitimate business in antiques insurance. Nothing against his family, he let them know, but he wasn’t going to get mixed up in that business. The Wu family was going straight from here on out. The uncles shrewdly went along with it, setting up their own business—as a cover for their real work. The job was still simple: clients came and told the uncles their stories about what they needed to get and why. After deliberating, and with Grandfather Wu’s input while he was still alive, they would decide on whether to take a case. As for their collaborators, the imagination required for planning a robbery invites all sorts of colorful characters to the table, and Wu Xie’s summers at his uncles’ house growing up were full of grifters teaching him pool, cardsharps giving him tips on how to make an ace vanish in his hand, and hackers showing him how to get the media he wanted for free. All of this, mind, under his elders’ noses. He was meant to be learning the insurance business, and summers were for learning to mind the store and keep the accounts, not for getting involved in that immoral thieving business.

Wu Xie unwittingly grew up as a sort of living olive branch between the brothers; the one thing that Wu Xie’s father and uncles seemed to really agree on was that their beloved Wu Xie, sheltered as he was, would not become involved in the shadowy world of “freelance goods retrieval.”

Or rather, Uncle San Xing claimed to agree. This would change.

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As you can see, it’s very much an AU (a leverage themed AU, to be specific) and I’m sure I’m getting stuff wrong about the family structure from the books. Apologies, please just think of it all under the banner of it being an AU!

Please let me know your thoughts, it’s just starting out!!

#the lost tomb #ultimate note #pingxie #dmbj #whomst #leverage au

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