#campaign two: the new Continent | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reasonsforhope · 29 days

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Note: I super don't like the framing of this headline. "Here's why it matters" idk it's almost like there's an entire country's worth of people who get to keep their democracy! Clearly! But there are few good articles on this in English, so we're going with this one anyway.

2024 is the biggest global election year in history and the future of democracy is on every ballot. But amid an international backsliding in democratic norms, including in countries with a longer history of democracy like India, Senegal’s election last week was a major win for democracy. It’s also an indication that a new political class is coming of age in Africa, exemplified by Senegal’s new 44-year-old president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

The West African nation managed to pull off a free and fair election on March 24 despite significant obstacles, including efforts by former President Macky Sall to delay the elections and imprison or disqualify opposition candidates. Add those challenges to the fact that many neighboring countries in West Africa — most prominently Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, but other nations across the region too — have been repeatedly undermined by military coups since 2020.

Sall had been in power since 2012, serving two terms. He declined to seek a third term following years of speculation that he would do so despite a constitutional two-term limit. But he attempted to extend his term, announcing in February that elections (originally to be held that month) would be pushed off until the end of the year in defiance of the electoral schedule.

Sall’s allies in the National Assembly approved the measure, but only after security forces removed opposition politicians, who vociferously protested the delay. Senegalese society came out in droves to protest Sall’s attempted self-coup, and the Constitutional Council ruled in late February that Sall’s attempt to stay in power could not stand.

That itself was a win for democracy. Still, opposition candidates, including Faye, though legally able to run, remained imprisoned until just days before the election — while others were barred from running at all. The future of Senegal’s democracy seemed uncertain at best.

Cut to Tuesday [April 2, 2024], when Sall stepped down and handed power to Faye, a former tax examiner who won on a campaign of combating corruption, as well as greater sovereignty and economic opportunity for the Senegalese. And it was young voters who carried Faye to victory...

“This election showed the resilience of the democracy in Senegal that resisted the shock of an unexpected postponement,” Adele Ravidà, Senegal country director at the lnternational Foundation for Electoral Systems, told Vox via email. “... after a couple of years of unprecedented episodes of violence [the Senegalese people] turned the page smoothly, allowing a peaceful transfer of power.”

And though Faye’s aims won’t be easy to achieve, his win can tell us not only about how Senegal managed to establish its young democracy, but also about the positive trend of democratic entrenchment and international cooperation in African nations, and the power of young Africans...

Senegal and Democracy in Africa

Since it gained independence from France in 1960, Senegal has never had a coup — military or civilian. Increasingly strong and competitive democracy has been the norm for Senegal, and the country’s civil society went out in great force over the past three years of Sall’s term to enforce those norms.

“I think that it is really the victory of the democratic institutions — the government, but also civil society organization,” Sany said. “They were mobilized, from the unions, teacher unions, workers, NGOs. The civil society in Senegal is one of the most experienced, well-organized democratic institutions on the continent.” Senegalese civil society also pushed back against former President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to cling to power back in 2012, and the Senegalese people voted him out...

Faye will still have his work cut out for him accomplishing the goals he campaigned on, including economic prosperity, transparency, food security, increased sovereignty, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. This will be important, especially for Senegal’s young people, who are at the forefront of another major trend.

Young Africans will play an increasingly key role in the coming decades, both on the continent and on the global stage; Africa’s youth population (people aged 15 to 24) will make up approximately 35 percent of the world’s youth population by 2050, and Africa’s population is expected to grow from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion during that time. In Senegal, people aged 10 to 24 make up 32 percent of the population, according to the UN.

“These young people have connected to the rest of the world,” Sany said. “They see what’s happening. They are interested. They are smart. They are more educated.” And they have high expectations not only for their economic future but also for their civil rights and autonomy.

The reality of government is always different from the promise of campaigning, but Faye’s election is part of a promising trend of democratic entrenchment in Africa, exemplified by successful transitions of power in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone over the past year. To be sure, those elections were not without challenges, but on the whole, they provide an important counterweight to democratic backsliding.

Senegalese people, especially the younger generation, have high expectations for what democracy can and should deliver for them. It’s up to Faye and his government to follow."

-via Vox, April 4, 2024

#senegal #africa #bassirou diomaye faye #elections #2024 elections #democracy #voting matters #young people #political corruption #coup attempt #good news #hope #international politics #african politics #fair elections #autocracy #macky sall

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littledeadling · 6 months

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Introducing: Horatio Ignatius Heronwillow III, my new DND character!! He’s a human paladin knight following the Oath of Glory. Also, he’s a pompous bitch with an ego the size of a small country.

Our campaign is (I’m told) heavily inspired by Steel Ball Run, so we’re all racing across the continent on various different mounts to win a prize. Horatio has a golden Akhal-Teke horse named Marvellous Moondance. He’s racing for the honour of the queen of his nation. Much to his chagrin, his nemesis/rival/best friend/worst enemy (who he’s totally obsessed with, and who happens to be a centaur) is also running in the race, because he’s the queen’s real favourite. They’re worsties

Here’s some more doodles from our first two sessions :•) ft the other player characters and some NPCs!

#you;l be seeing lots of these guys I’m sure :))#dnd #Dragonshard Derby #my characters #Horatio #my art #artists on tumblr #doodles

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louisupdates · 6 months

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The Habit He Can’t Break, 1/4

IQ 123 | Gordon Masson | 9.11.2023

Usually, when an act completes a world tour, they come off the road for an extended period to rest, record new material, and then typically two or three years later, the wheels are set in motion for an album, released, promo, and tour dates.

Louis Tomlinson did not get that memo.

His first solo tour ran late due to the pandemic restrictions, meaning that by the time it concluded in September 2022, his second album, Faith in the Future, was scheduled to drop and tickets for the associated tour were ready to go on sale.

“This tour went on sale late October or November - basically a year in advance,” explains agent, Holly Rowland, who represents Tomlinson alongside Alex Hardee, internationally, while Wasserman Music colleagues, Marty Diamond and Ash Mowry-Lewis do likewise for North America.

Despite that quick turnaround between tours, Rowland reports that ticket sales for the current tour are going very well indeed. “The first leg went through Scandinavia before doing the Baltics and Eastern Europe – Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece – places that most people, especially arena-level acts, don’t really go. And the second leg, which is more mainland Europe, started 2 October.”

The tour is big. Very big for just a second outing in his own name.

Between May and July this year, Tomlinson played 39 dates in the US and Canada across a mix of amphitheaters, arenas, pavilions, and stadiums. In August, he returned to Europe, where he currently is in the midst of another 39 dates in arenas across the continent and the UK, which will take him to 18 November. Then, in early 2024, the Faith in the Future tour goes to Australia for two outdoor dates in Melbourne and Brisbane, before he takes the show to the country’s biggest indoor venue, the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney.

And, as IQ went to press, Louis Tomlinson released dates for a return to Latin America in May 2024 for a mix of indoor and outdoor shows, including stadia, across Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay.

“We’re going to Australia and part of Asia early next year,” states artist manager Matt Vines of London-based Seven 7 Management. We then go into Latin America in May and June. And then we’ll handpick a selection of festivals next summer, before we draw the line on the campaign at the end of the summer.”

Rowland comments, “The tour before obviously was a Covid tour where the dates had to be chopped and changed. The positive aspect of that was that we were able to upgrade venues where that made sense. But it was really nice to start from scratch on this tour to make sure the routing was all going in the right direction.”

Back to You

Playing a major role in shifting that ticketing inventory is a network of promoters also enjoying Tomlinsons rising star.

“On this tour, it’s mainly Live Nation – we use a lot of the One Direction promoter,” explains Rowland. “But for Greece, we used Honeycomb Live, Charmenko did Romania, 8 Days A Week promoted the three shows in the Baltics, All Things Live did Finland, Fource are doing Orague, it’s Gadget in Switzerland, Atelier in Luxembourg, and when we get to the UK, it’s SJM, and MCD in Ireland.”

With a total of 39 European dates, Rowland split the outing into separate legs, scheduling a break after Scandinavia, the Balkans, Baltics, and Athens, Greece, and another after mainland Europe, ending in Zürich, Switzerland.

“It’s a perfect ratio, if I do say so myself,” she laughs. “It was right to split it up – 39 dates is a long, long tour, especially with the American tour throughout the summer being 11 weeks! We made sure to schedule days off, for everyone to recharge their batteries.”

In Spain, Nacho Córdoba at Live Nation promoted Tomlinson’s shows in Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona, and reports sell-outs at each of the arenas involved.

“When Louis was last here, it was three days before the pandemic shut everything down in Spain. In fact, I think he played the final show before the market closed because of Covid.,” says Córdoba.

“Last year, Louis organized his Away From Home Festival in Fuengirola, and that also sold out, so we know he has a big following in Spain, and we also know that Spanish fans are super loyal. So, on this tour we sold out 7,000 tickets at Bilbao Arena Miribilla, 13,600 tickets at Wizink in Madrid, and 11,200 at Palau St Jordi in Barcelona.”

Already looking forward to Tomlinson “and his fantastic team” returning on the next tour, Córdoba believes it will be important to see what happens with the next album – and Tomlinson’s expectations – before making any plans.

“The most important thing is to keep the fans happy and keep the momentum building with Louis,” he states. “I am a big fan of the arenas, because the atmosphere at his shows was incredible. So, rather than look at going bigger, it might be a case of looking at other arenas in other markets. Whatever he does, we cannot wait to have Louis back in Spain.”

Stefan Wyss at Gadget abc Entertainment in Switzerland promoted Tomlinson when he visited Zurich’s Hallenstadion on 23 October and explains that he previously played the city’s Halle 622 venue on the first tour.

Recalling the debut solo outing, Wyss tells IQ, “At first, we announced a mid-size theatre club show, 1,800-capacity, but it sold out instantly. Then we moved it to Halle 62, which is 3-500-cap and that also sold out immediately, so it was a really big success.

“They’ve invested a lot in the production of this current tour, and it’s doing really strong numbers, so that’s why we decided to go to the arena this time around, where we set a mid-size capacity of 7,000, which is good for a small market like Switzerland, especially because he’s coming back just one year later and playing a much bigger show.”

Wyss adds, “He’s kept the ticket prices reasonable – and he never wants to do any gold circle or VIP tickets. I think that’s why he’s so close to his fans, because it’s not about maximising profits. Another reason for his success is that in addition to attracting a mainstream audience, he’s also getting the music lovers because he’s just a very good songwriter and has brilliant songs.”

Wyss also notes that with many young fans typically arriving the day before the concert, the responsibility to look after them is extended. “We set up toilets, we have security overnight, we give water away. It’s part of the organization that we will take care of the fans.”

Fresh from announcing 12 dates across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, promoter Fabiano Lima De Queiroz at Move Concerts reports that Tomlinson will visit a mix of arenas, as well as stadiums in Santiago, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, during his May tour.

“Our first tour with Louis was supposed to be in 2020 and we’d booked half arenas everywhere – 5,000–6,000 capacities,” he informs IQ. “Louis was one of those acts who connected very well with the fans during the pandemic, so when we shifted the dates, first to 2021, and then to 2022, we ended up selling out and having to upgrade in certain metropolitan markets.”

2/4, 3/4, 4/4

#iq magazine #louis tomlinson #louis press #9.11.2023

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dailytomlinson · 6 months

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Faith In The Future Tour (Behind The Scenes) for IQ

Full interview with Matt Vines, tour promoters, agents and more people involved in the making of the tour under the cut:

Usually, when an act completes a world tour they come off the road for an extended period to rest, record new material, and then typically two or three years later the wheels are set in motion for an album release, promo, and tour dates. Louis Tomlinson did not get that memo. His first solo tour ran late due to the pandemic restrictions, meaning that by the time it concluded in September 2022, his second album, Faith In The Future, was scheduled to drop and tickets for the associated tour were ready to go on sale.

“This tour went on sale last October or November ‒ basically a year in advance,” explains agent Holly Rowland, who represents Tomlinson, alongside Alex Hardee, internationally, while Wasserman Music colleagues Marty Diamond and Ash Mowry-Lewis do likewise for North America.

Despite that quick turnaround between tours, Rowland reports that ticket sales for the current tour are going very well indeed. “The first leg went through Scandinavia before doing the Baltics and Eastern Europe ‒ Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece ‒ places that most people, especially arena-level acts, don’t really go. And the second leg, which is more mainland Europe, started on 2 October.”

The tour is big. Very big for just a second outing in his own name.

Between May and July this year, Tomlinson played 39 dates in the US and Canada across a mix of amphitheaters, arenas, pavilions, and stadiums. In August, he returned to Europe, where he is currently in the midst of another 39 dates in arenas across the continent and the UK, which will take him to 18 November. Then, in early 2024, the Faith In The Future tour goes to Australia for two outdoor dates in Melbourne and Brisbane, before he takes the show to the country’s biggest indoor venue, the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney.

And, as IQ went to press, Tomlinson released dates for a return to Latin America in May 2024 for a mix of indoor and outdoor shows, including stadia, across Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay.

“We’re going to Australia and part of Asia early next year,” states artist manager Matt Vines of London-based Seven 7 Management. “We then go into Latin America in May and June. And then we’ll handpick a selection of festivals next summer, before we draw the line on the campaign at the end of the summer.”

Rowland comments, “The tour before obviously was Covid tour where the date had to be chopped and changed. The positive aspect of that was that we were able to upgrade venues where that made sense. But it was really nice to start from scratch on this tour to make sure the routing was all going in the right direction.” She reports, “We’ve done nearly 16,000 tickets in Amsterdam, and 14,000 in Paris, which I think just underlines his credibility as an artist and his growing reputation among fans.”

Playing a major role in shifting that ticketing inventory is a network of promoters also enjoying Tomlinson’s rising star.

“On this tour, it’s mainly Live Nation ‒ we use a lot of the One Direction promoter,” explains Rowland. “But for Greece, we used Honeycomb Live, Charmenko did Romania, 8 Days A Week promoted the three shows in the Baltics, All Things Live did Finland, Fource are doing Prague, it’s Gadget in Switzerland, Atelier in Luxembourg, and when we get to the UK, it’s SJM, and MCD in Ireland.”

With a total of 39 European dates, Rowland split the outing into separate legs, scheduling a break after Scandinavia, the Balkans, Baltics and Athens, Greece and another after mainland Europe ending in Zurich, Switzerland.

“It's a perfect ratio, if I do say so myself,” she laughs. “It was right to split it up ‒ 39 dates in a long, long tour, especially with the American tour throughout the summer being 11 weeks! We made sure to schedule days off, for everyone to recharge their batteries.”

In Spain, Nacho Córdoba at Live Nation promoted Tomlinson’s shows in Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona and reports sell-outs at each of the arenas involved.

“When Louis was last here, it was three days before the pandemic shut everything down in Spain. In fact, I think he played the final show before the market closed because of Covid,” says Córdoba.

“Last year, Louis organised his Away From Home festival in Fuengirola, and that also sold out, so we know he has a big following in Spain, and we also know that Spanish fans are super loyal. So, on this tour we sold out 7,000 tickets at Bilbao Arena Miribilla, 13,600 tickets at WiZink in Madrid, and 11,200 at Palau St Jordi in Barcelona.”

Already looking forward to Tomlinson “and his fantastic team” returning on the next tour, Córdoba believes it will be important to see what happens with the next album ‒ and Tomlinson’s expectations ‒ before making any plans.

Recalling that debut solo outing, Wyss tells IQ, “At first, we announced a mid-size theatre club show, 1,800-capacity, but it sold out instantly. Then we moved it to Halle 622, which it 3,500-cap, and that also sold out immediately, so it was a really big success.

Wyss adds, “He’s kept the ticket prices reasonable ‒ and he never wants to do any gold circle or VIP tickets. I think that’s why he’s so close to his fans, because it’s not about maximising profits. Another reason for his success is that in addition to attracting a mainstream audience, he’s also getting music lovers because he’s just a very good songwriter and has brilliant songs.”

Fresh from announcing 12 dates across Argentina, Brazil (x 3), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Pery, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, promoter Fabiano Lime de Queiroz at Move Concerts reports that Tomlinson will visit a mix of arenas, as well as stadiums in Santiago, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires during his May tour.

“Our first tour with Louis was supposed to be in 2020 and we’d booked half arenas everywhere ‒ 5,000-6,000 capacities,” he informs IQ. “Louis was one of those acts who connected very well with the fans during the pandemic, so when we shifted dates, first to 2021, and then to 2022, we ended up selling out and having to upgrade in certain metropolitan markets.”

“In Santiago, for instance, we’d sold out two full arenas of 13,000 cap, but then the government declared that for mass gatherings the numbers needed to be limited to 10,000 people.”

Rather than let fans down, Move added a third date, which again ended up selling out. “I remember being on a night plane from Miami, while Matt Vines was flying in from Dallas, and we were both using the aircraft wi-fi to negotiate via text for that third show,” says Queiroz. “It was an interesting way to confirm putting the third date on sale, just three days before the actual show!”

He adds, “We’re taking a big bet on this tour when it comes to the number of cities and the capacities of the venues, but we’re hoping for the best and we’ve gone out strong. We feel that the artist is in a good moment and that the latest album has just created more interest, so we’re looking forward to when he arrives in May.”

Further north, Ocesa will prompte three dates in Mexico, including a stadium show at the F1 circuit, Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, deepening Tomlinson’s footprint in that crucial North America market.

Meanwhile, in Tomlinson’s homeland, Jack Downling at SJM is promoting seven UK dates in November at arenas in Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Brighton, Cardiff, London, and Birmingham, which will round out the European leg of the tour.

“SJM has done every show Louis has been involved with, including all the One Direction arena and stadium shows,” notes Dowling, adding that on the first tour, the London show was originally pencilled in as a Roundhouse, then two Roundhouse shows, before finally being upgraded to Wembley Arena.

“This time, The O2 arena show in London will be sold out, while all the others have passed the expectations of where we wanted to be on this tour. In fact, when the UK dates were announced, it ranked as the fourth most engaged tour on social media in SJM’s history ‒ his fans are just nuts.”

But Downling also reports that the fanbase for Tomlinson is expanding. “The demographics are pulling not just from pop but also from indie rock now.”

Downling adds, “Louis really looks after his fans. On the last tour they did a deal with Greggs {bakery chain} to give free food to the people waiting in line, as some of them camped out for days in advance.”

Ensuring his fans are looked after properly is the number-one priority in Tomlinson’s live career.

Noting that Tomlinson’s audience comprises mainly young women and girls, Rowland reveals that, at the artists’s insistence, a safety team has been added to the tour to ensure everyone that attends his shows is looked after. “Thry manage all the safety within the shows for the fans,” she explains. “They came in for the Wembley show last year and have been with us ever since ‒ they’ve been beneficial to the running of the tour.”

“When he played in South America, some of his fans were camping outside for a month. So we have a responsibility to look after them. Coming to a show should be a safe space, it’s where they find joy, and we have a responsibility to protect that.”

Manager Vines comments, “One issue we came up against almost all last year was crushing and fans passing out. We adopted a system where we could communicate with fans, who could hold up a mobile phone with a flashing red-and-white sign if they were in trouble but then we’d see them all popping up.”

“I don’t know whether some of that was a hangover of the pandemic where fans just weren’t used to being in venues. But we experienced a number of situations where hydration and temperatures in venues became an issue. I know Billie Eilish went through similar issues.”

With Tomlinson determined to meet a duty of care towards his fans, Vines says that the team now sends a “considerable advance package” to promoters ahead of their tour dates. “Our safety team goes into venues in the morning and basically ensures that a number of different things are in place ‒ making sure that water is given to the fans, where the water comes from, and at what points in the show it happens.”

And on the crushing phenomena, he reports, “We’ve worked out how many fans it’s safe to have without a secondary barrier. So we instruct promoters to have certain barriers in place to relieve that pressure and avoid crushing.”

He adds, “I get detailed incident reports after each show, which lets myself and my management team know exactly what happened, and so far on this tour, we haven’t had any issues with crushing or hydration, which is fantastic.”

Production manager Craig Sherwood is impressed by the way the tour has pivoted to protect the ‘Louies’. “The welfare officers are vital for the young girls who are aged from, I guess, 14 upwards. They can get dehydrated and malnourished pretty quickly if they are camping out for days, so it’s important that we look out for their wellbeing,” says Sherwood.

Citing the extremes that the Louies will put themselves through in an effort to secure themselves prime positions at the front of the stage, Sherwood recalls, “The first show on our US tour was in February, and it was freezing, but we found out that girls had been camping out on the pavement for five days. It’s crazy, as we know these young girls are coming from all over the world to see Louis.”

However, Tomlinson’s connection with those fans is evident in the level of merchandise sales at each show. “It’s a huge part of our business,” says Vines. “In America, we averaged about $36 a head, and it’s not much shy of that in Europe ‒ we’ve set a few national records in terms of spend per head. But we spend a lot of time on merch plans, and we do venue-specific drops and give it a lot of care and attention, as it’s a really important element of Louis’ business.”

Making sure that the Faith In The Future tour delivers Tomlinson to his growing legion of fans, PM Sherwoord’s long association with artist manager Vines made him the obvious choice when the artist first began his solo career.

“I remember doing a lot of promo dates around the UK and US before we started touring properly,” says Sherwood of his work with Tomlinson. “In fact, one of the first shows I remember doing with Louis was in Madrid when he played in a stadium, and I could see it was a taste of things to come.”

The partnership between Sherwood and Vines is crucial.

“In terms of the show growing, our biggest challenge is keeping costs down, because we’re extremely cautious on ticket pricing,” says Vines. “We don’t do dynamic pricing, we don’t do platinium ticketing, we don’t do paid VIPs, we don’t increase ticket prices on aisle seats ‒ all those tricks that everyone does that most fans don’t know about: we don’t do any of those.”

“So, when it comes to the production side of things, we need to be incredibly careful. But I’ve been working with Craig for a decade, and he knows the importance of trying to keep costs as low as possible. For instance, we’ll run the show virtually a number of times so Louis can watch it with the show designer, Tom Taylor, make comments and tweak things. Then we’ll go into pre-production. But we try to do as much in virtual reality as possible before we take it into the physical world.”

Sherwood states, “Basically, we started out with two or three trucks, but now we’re up to nine, and things seem to be getting bigger day by day.”

Thankfully, Sherwood has amassed a vastly experienced crew over the years, allowing them to handle even the most unexpected scenarios. “I’ve been touring since the dawn of time, but the core crew I work with now have been together since about 2010, and I trust them implicitly, so I leave it up to them who they hire, as long as they think I’m going to like them, and they’ll get along with everyone. So far, it has worked well,” Sherwood reports.

And that veteran crew has dealt with some terrifying weather extremes on the current tour, including a show at Red Rocks in Colorado where the audience were subjected to a freak storm with golf ball-sized hailstones injuring dozens of people.

Elsewhere, the crew has had to act quickly when the threat of high winds in Nashville caused problems on that outdoor run. “We didn’t want the video screens blowing about above the heads of the band, so it must have been amusing for the audience to see us taking them down,” Sherwood reports.

Indoors in Europe, the environment has been more controllable. The production itself involves an A-stage set 180 degrees across the barricades, although Sherwood says that on occasion a catwalk is also used by the performers.

“It’s a great lighting show and fantastic for audio, as we have a phenomenal front-of-house sound engineer ‒ John Delf from Edge Studios ‒ who makes life very easy for the rest of us,” says Sherwood. He also namechecks Barrie Pitt (monitor engineer), Oli Crump (audio system designer), Tom Taylor (lighting designer), Sam Kenyon (lighting technical director), and Torin Arnold (stage manager), while he praises Solo-Tech for supplying the sound, and Colour Sound Experiment (CSE) for taking charge of lighting video, and rigging equipment.

Indeed, CSE has ten personnel out with the Faith In The Future tour. “We have eight screens on the road ‒ six on stage plus two IMAGS that we use wherever appropriate,” the company’s Haydn Cruickshank tells IQ.

“We need to tweak the rigging on a daily basis, as we move to different venues, but other than that it’s a fairly smooth process thanks to Craig Sherwood. He is old-school and planned and worked on the production very far in advance, which is a great scenario for all involved. Craig is definitely one of our favourite production managers to work with.”

Garry Lewis at bussing contractors Beat The Street is also a fan of PM Sherwood.

“Craig split the European tour into different runs. So, from Hamburg to Zurich, we had two super high-decker 12-berth buses for the tour party and two 16-berth double-deckers for the crew,” says Lewis. “After the show in Athens, we still have the two super high-deckers, as Louis loves them ‒ he prefers to spend time on the bus, rather than in hotels ‒ but we also have two 12-berth super high-deckers for the crew, as well as another crew 16-berth double-decker.”

Lewis continues, “We’ve worked with Craig for a good few years, and we have a great relationship with him. He plans everything way in advance, so it means it’s all very straightforward for us with no issues. So, we use single drivers for each bus, except on the longer runs or when our drivers are scheduled for prolonged breaks, and then we’ll fly in extra drivers as needed.”

With the production travelling to Australia in early 2024, before shifting to Latin America, Andy Lovell at Freight Minds is gearing up to become involved with Tomlinson once again.

“We did the Central and South America dates on the tour last year, and onto Mexico,” says Lovell. “It was very challenging back then as we were still coming back from Covid, and various systems and infrastructure were in pieces. But it all went well in the end, as we kept an eye on things and worked on it every day to make sure we had solutions to everything that was thrown our way.”

Lovell continues, “Things on this tour kick in early next year for us. Historically, Australian services were quite reliable, as we could use any number of airlines. But post-pandemic, the number of long-haul flights still aren’t as frequent as they were. As a result, the production is being reverse engineered with the budget being worked out before we can see what we can afford to take as freight, and then we try to plan accordingly.”

“Similarly, in Central and South America there are still just a fraction of the flights operating, compared to pre-Covid, so that makes it very challenging. If there aren’t the flights to handle the gear, then you have to start looking at chartering aircraft, or alter your schedule, and that can become very expensive, very fast.”

With everyone working on the artist’s behalf to make sure the tour remains on track, being able to call on such experienced production experts is paying off on a daily basis.

Sherwood notes, “There are a few back-to-back shows over long distances that occasionally mean we don’t arrive at the next venue until 11am, rather than 6am. But we’ve never failed anywhere to open the doors on time, so we know we’re capable of getting things done, even if we have a late start at mid-day.”

Such dilemmas are not lost on agent Rowland. “It’s not so much the routing, it’s more like the timings, because Louis does have two support acts, so the show starts at 7 o’clock, and then when we’re done, we need to load out to get to the next show in good time for loading in the next morning and soundchecks, etc.”

Nonetheless, Sherwood admits that he loves the trickier venues and schedules. “Because I’m a dinosaur, I relish anything that makes things difficult or awkward for us on the production side of things,” he says. “I think everyone on the crew looks forward to challenges and finding the solutions to problems.”

Having amassed millions of fans through his association with One Direction, Tomlinson very much has a ‘pay it forward’ attitude to music and is building a reputation as a champion for emerging talent, wherever he performs.

“He’s a great advocate for alternative music,” says manager Vines. “Louis realises that he’s in an incredibly privileged position in terms of what he can create in terms of awareness. He loves alternative music and indie music, and he understands how hard it is for that music to be heard. But we have this amazing platform where we can put these bands in front of these audiences as a showcase that allows them to build these authentic new audiences. It’s a hude part of his love of music, wanting to help younger bands.”

Rowland agrees. “He took an act called Andrew Cushin ‒ a very new artist ‒ on the road in America with him as his support, and he’s doing the same for Europe. Louis is a fan and is championing his career.”

Indeed, Tomlinson’s A&R skills have knock-on effects for his agent, too. “He asked me to confirm the Australian band Pacific Avenue as support for his Australian tour last year. The music was great and they didn’t have an agent, so now I’m representing them!” says Rowland.

As the European tour speeds toward its conclusion, agent Rowland is enjoying every minute of it.

“It’s incredible ‒ they’ve really stepped things up,” she says, fresh from seeing the show in Athens and Paris. “They’ve got 6 hanging LED screens on the stage, and the whole production just looks polished and professional.”

And Rowland is especially excited about next year’s Latin America dates, which will deliver her first stadium shows as an agent.

“The return to Latin America is going to be huge ‒ Louis is playing arenas and stadiums in South America and Mexico: 15 shows in 11 countries,” she says.

Vines is similarly enthused. Harking back to the Covid situation, when a show would go on sale, sell out, be postponed, and then rescheduled in a bigger venue, Vines says, “For example, in Chile, originally the show was scheduled at a 5,000-cap, half-capacity arena in Santiago. And what we ended up doing was three nights at 10,000-cap in that same venue.”

Vines contends that Tomlinson’s work ethic is outstanding. “He loves his fans, and he loves performing for them, it’s as simple as that,” he says. “He just loves being on the road and seeing how the songs connect live. In fact, the second album was very much written with the tour and live shows in mind ‒ ‘This song could work live,’ ‘This one will open the set,’ ‘This is the one we can do for the encore.’”

Another element to Tomlinson’s psyche has been his decision to visit places off the usual tour circuit.

“Louis has a real desire to perform to fans in markets that are often overlooked,” says Rowland.

Manager Vines explains that while the Covid-delayed first tour allowed them to upgrade venues pretty much everywhere, “On this tour, we’re a bit more competent on venue sizes, but we still speculate a little bit in different territories. In Europe, for example, we’ve gone into the Baltics and a number of different places to test the markets there, while in America, we are looking at A and B markets but also tertiary markets as well ‒ we go to places where people just don’t tour in America, just to see what the reaction is. That was something that very much interested Louis ‒ to play in front of people who don’t normally have gigs in their town. So there’s been a lot of experimentation on this tour in terms of where we go and what room to play.”

That concept is something that Vines has employed before. “I manage a band called Hurts who were pretty much overlooked by the British radio system and we have spent 15 years building a business outside of the UK. And that was built on going to play at those places where people didn’t normally go. They built to multiple arena level in Russia, for instance.”

“If you can build fanbases in lots of different places, you have festivals that you can play every summer, as well as youring those places. It allows you to have more consistency over a number of years, by having more opportunities.”

Such a strategy found a convert in Tomlinson. Vines tells IQ, “Louis also is extremely fan-focused in everything that he does. He comes at it from a perspective of ‘I want to take the show to them,’ meaning he’s always more willing to take the risky option to try something out.”

And the results? “It’s a combination,” concludes Vines. “There have been a couple of places where we now understand why tours don’t go there. But there are more places where it’s worked incredibly well. For example, we enjoyed incredibly good sales in Budapest. And overall, it’s allowing us to get a clearer idea, globally, of where the demand it, which will help us when we go into the next tour cycle.”

#louis tomlinson #iq magazine #matt vines #interview #faith in the future tour bts #holly rowland #this was a PAIN to transcribe my god

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quietsnooze · 6 months

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Info dumping about my homebrew DnD world ahead!

Eidholme is a low magic fantasy DnD campaign setting wherein magic is very limited, feared, and persecuted. The continent is split into 5 kingdoms & 2 empires.

Here's a visualization using Azgaar's fantasy map generator, then painted by me using Inkarnate to show the landforms:

Long ago, there were racial variations (many of the expected DnD races), but war and mistrust tore apart the continent and drove out many as humans struck down the remaining.

Now, there are heritages in the bloodlines of many current day humans that lie dormant as also magic does

(Basically my way of saying "this is an all human campaign... mostly." When the players get to higher levels, they will manifest traits from their heritages if they want to have that aspect included. Most left that up to me to surprise them!)

The deities are known as Guardians. There are twelve who are revered across the continent in different capacities - the kingdom of the Reamers is highly religious and worships all 12, whereas others pick & choose their preferred "endorsed" Guardians.

The Guardians' sigils I designed:

• Pandor, of Pleasure

• Lilabet, of Patience

• Elnos, of Creation

• Phiphine, of Growth

• Aisling, of Endings

• Cohara, of Mercy

• Bodhi, of Progress

• Llyr, of Dominion

• Niamh, of Hearth-keepers

• Keros, of Justice

• Ashtur, of Aggression

• Ryasis, of Curiosity

The event that caused the humanization of Eidholme was over a millennia ago, but the hurt caused by the End of Magic is more recent - a little more than 200 years prior, with fear and abuse of it at an all time high, magic was almost universally banned across Eidholme.

What was the straw that broke the camel's back? The population does not know, other than it was surrounding the tensions that broke apart the Mountainlands into two empires: Marboke in the north, and Oakham in the south.

(My voice game players know tho! They participated in it in prologue)

The continent shares the equinox and solstice celebrations, but have differing, more local traditions for them. Here’s a calendar I created that shows them! In Launlia for example, the Primavernal is celebrated as the Awakening Festival locally, for Niamh, Guardian of Growth.

Another fun fact about Eidholme: the vast majority of the continent's trees and its ONLY forest exist in Duskhollow. The kingdom is shrouded in mystery, in ancient Woods magic, in protections that keep any out who it doesn't want to be there.

The Woods is alive. It decides.

I have a lot of documents my players can comb through for information at their leisure. This one factually lists information that the PCs would know. It is not necessarily Wiki-level accurate, however, as propaganda is a heck of a thing.

Cantrips aren't exactly rare, but depending on where you are, you wouldn't even want to risk casting one. Privilege allows some of higher station to play around with magic in a badly kept secret. Otherwise, you are licensed or regulated by the governing body on your usage.

And that, of course, is why both of the parties who play in this world stumbled across Wanted posters for their questioning and arrest! "Wanted in connection to blasphemy and magic usage in Launlia", while their allies are "wanted in connection to actions against the Crown"...

For as much as I limited in character creation for lore purposes, I gave back through the same world building. Characters can interact with the world, seeking lost ways of old magics, ancient techniques, connections with the natural world… even be taught new (homebrew) cantrips

This is one of those instances where the PCs fit the trope of “chosen one” levels of power, as few ordinary people are powerful like they are and will be. The catch? That also makes them HUGE targets for backlash. Without the right support, they’ll be on the run… everywhere.

That makes it a very socially driven, political ties sort of campaign story. They also have befriended nomads, who can help them in their own way.

Nomads are, expectedly, nomadic people dissenting of law and homeland. They are expectedly hunted or outlawed for their magic use.

Some places welcome them as a novelty, others allow them under tentative circumstances for services granted (easy to locally wash your hands of it and assign blame to nomads who are long gone by the time you’re found out). Their trust is notoriously difficult to gain.

Why? Because they’ve been lured by royals to perform, only to be mass incarcerated. They’ve been promised sanctuary and found instead themselves given to their enemies. The groups do not inherently trust one another, either- friendship with one doesn’t mean friend to all.

As for beyond the continent… not many know what lies beyond. Those who travel out rarely come back, those who do are driven back by storms and critical failures of their ships. The Brackish Tears is the only kingdom who receives imports from beyond the vast waters.

There's a tale of a Tearsian prince memorialized in statue: Eóghan Griogal - a prince, second son to King Cian and Queen Siobhan, beloved by his people in the 17th century, about 200 years BME (Before magic’s end) or prior to the new age. His romance to the wispy foreigner - had many people talking, some excited in the chattering and others devastated by his betrayal. For he found love at sea, a man whose affinity with water was undeniably clear, closer bonded to it than even the water births of the Reamers would boast.

The lore creates a very interesting challenge for a fantasy world:

- wood is expensive and rare, so describing anything, from building materials to origins of fruit, is adjusted

- gemstones are extremely rare and not mined anywhere anymore as the source died with the elves

- magic is mostly outlawed

I'm currently running two games in this world. One traditional DnD via voice sessions who adventure across the continent, one written/play-by-post mixed with Good Society ttrpg, sandboxed in the Brackish Tears' capital.

Here is the star map and constellations. I have so many documents for my players to chew on, and I’m adding to them constantly.

#dungeons and dragons #DnD #DnD homebrew #fantasy #fantasy worldbuilding #worldbuilding #good society #ttrpg #inkarnate #my art #long post

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underspacegame · 4 months

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Welcome starchasers! It’s a new year! A new you! A new us! New gods, built to burn down the old ones and establish a new pantheon inside their corpses! We like to do yearly recaps at this point, to summarize everything that’s happened in the past 2023s. So… what is done?

The answer: Everything. The game is content complete. Both campaigns (multiplayer and singleplayer), every quest, system, station, dungeon, boss, random mission, party member, flyable ship. There’s several hundreds hours of play here. As our testers can attest to, the game is absolutely MASSIVE.

Last year saw some of our most important changes ever. In addition to pumping out the majority of the content, we signed on with a publisher, started uploading our first steam builds, got quite a lot of coverage, and acquired a secondary orange cat.

The publisher’s probably the biggest one there. Our publisher, Camlann Games, will be spinning all the plates that my decaying and bruised body simply can’t spin anymore. That includes promotional work, community management, translations, ports, and the eventual subsumption of the continent into our lunar-based hivemind. Typical stuff. They even filmed a fancy new trailer for us, check it out!

youtube

So with all this in mind, you’re probably asking “what’s left?” or more appropriately you’re probably asking “where the hell is my quirky space game you train-eating bastard?”. The answer: It’s coming. And sooner than you might think. We’re now in the polishing and completion stage, which brings with it a LOT of testing, which itself takes time.

Still, two major blockers remain: The first is station detailing. This is going at a breakneck pace, in no small part because we have multiple level designers out there turning stations into stations with things on them.

The second is finishing up multiplayer. Again, this is going at a breakneck pace but testing can often be slow. If anyone ever tells you developing a multiplayer game is easy, they’re right. If anyone ever tells you that testing a multiplayer game and making a stable multiplayer game is easy, they’re wrong and you shouldn’t be speaking to them.

With that in mind, our release on Steam will be considered Early Access. The game you will be getting will be content complete and utterly massive, but at the end of the day this is a very small studio taking on a game as large as my ego. An early access release will allow us to better incorporate feedback on systems and tweak the game to make it as good as possible. There will not however, be less trains. There will be more trains if you ask for less trains.

As part of that release, Underspace’s demo will officially be coming to Steam quite soon! This brings with it a whole host of advantages, not the least of which is a much smaller download size and an easier way for us to push patches.

And that’s our yearly recap! We’ll return to your regularly scheduled updates now.

#underspace #game development #gamedev #video games #game design #unity3d #space #indie games #space games #space game #Youtube

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b0rtney · 2 months

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you want homosexuals in every conceivable scenario?

Boy oh boy do i have the substack for u: mine!

NO PLEASE LEMME TELL U THE STORIES BEFORE U LEAVE--

Current is Cinnamon Muffins. TLDR: Six queer boys in a homophobic tiny town in Iowa are trying to survive winter break dodging awful parents, social stigma, and mental health crises.

Next up is How to Get Away with Marriage. TLDR: Guy with awful, religious parents marries guy who is living paycheck to paycheck so they can both get all their younger sisters out of their shitty situations (but they fall in love ofc).

Longer desc of these plus the stories coming in the next months are below the cut! (Genres include fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, mystery/thriller, coming-of-age)

Cinnamon Muffins centers on Taylor Macready, a homeless senior in high school holed up in a sleeping bag under a bridge after his parents kicked him out. He's fully ready to just accept death when it starts snowing on him while he's stargazing, but social outcast Wes Post is taking his nightly walk in a new direction and stumbles (literally) on his longtime crush, Taylor. Dragging Taylor home, Wes's parents prove themselves the only reasonable parents in this book by setting Taylor up on their pullout couch and nursing him back to health. Then Wes, whose closest school relationships include the kids who bully him for his anxiety-related speech impediment, has to get in touch with Taylor's friends to let them know the situation. Meanwhile, the mean girls of Swisher High School are starting a campaign to get homosexuality banned at school. Administratively, it gets nowhere, but it inspires several small-minded shitwads to take matters into their own hands. While Taylor is used to getting into fights, Wes isn't, but he'll have to sink or swim, because the teachers are not paid enough to care what happens in the hallways during lunchtime.

How to Get Away with Marriage opens with Luke Providence, son of a devoutly Baptist family in Nebraska, proposing to Patrick Demden, son of a recently-deceased alcoholic mechanic. The wealthy Providence parents have a longstanding agreement that once their children get married, they will receive a trust of $100,000 to use on the down-payment of a house and to start a life with their spouse. Patrick's younger sister tutors Luke's younger sister, but Patrick's sister is 16. This age gap doesn't matter much to the Providence parents, but it matters a lot to Luke, so he strikes a deal with Patrick: tell the parents he'll marry the sister, legally marry the brother, everyone gets to move to Colorado and escape abusive religious parents and crushing poverty. He needn't have done something so elaborate, Patrick would have married him for any reason at all. But the secret doesn't stay secret forever, and the Providence parents eventually come knocking, trying to recollect their children and their money.

Future stories I'll keep shorter, but feel free to ask about them either in the replies or my askbox and I'll elaborate!

Assassin x Demon King will be getting books 2 and 3! ADK is about an assassin and the king he was supposed to kill, both of whom have quit their jobs and started trying to save as many people as the assassin killed before he dies of a slow-acting poison in twelve months. Books 2 and 3 will have things getting awfully tragic and somewhat more horny than before! (No smut will make it into the print versions of these, that will remain on my substack alone)

How to Find Your Friends After the End of the World is a fantasy inspired by the isekai anime genre. Five friends in their 20s are on earth as it is wracked by a violent battle between the Heroine of the Gods and her Nemesis, and then, suddenly, they aren't. Earth has been destroyed and they are now on a new planet, in new (non-human) bodies, strewn across continents! On their new wrists, they have tattoos with each others' names, plus one (or two) new ones: their soulmates. Court politics and wastelands of monsters await them as they try desperately to reach each other, and their soulmates try desperately to reach them.

HtFYF will also have a prequel, focusing on the events that led to earth's destruction, and the battle between the Heroine of the Gods, a young woman, and her Nemesis, who seems to know more about the gods than she says. Why do the gods keep choosing such young heroes? What has the Nemesis done to put the world in such peril? Will the Heroine get to graduate on time despite the sleep she's been missing!?

The following do not yet have titles, but are fully fleshed out works ready to be thrown onto Substack:

A trilogy of eleven teens assisting in the fight against an agency that traffics, tortures, and then sells children with preternatural powers and abilities, and an exploration of the trauma those kids emerge with.

A murder mystery where a woman's sister dies, the police rule it suicide, and the woman enlists the help of a rumored contract killer to help her solve the murder-- but why does this rumored murderer-for-hire seem to know so much about her sister's death? And who was truly responsible?

A campy novel about a woman who graduates college, goes back to her hometown, and finds her highschool crush is still there, still single, and has since come out as gay. Of course, the only solution is to co-adopt an at-risk child from a neighbor.

This post will remain pinned on my profile, but for the next few days I'm having a sale on my substack tiers-- 20% off! That makes the cost to you just $8 per month to get a chapter every other day. 15 chapters for $8; that's a steal!

#support the author #indie author #substack #book recommendations #queer fantasy #queer scifi #queer mystery #queer romance #queer ya #wlw #mlm #queer rep #mlnb #wlnb

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mariacallous · 2 months

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In February 1994, in the grand ballroom of the town hall in Hamburg, Germany, the president of Estonia gave a remarkable speech. Standing before an audience in evening dress, Lennart Meri praised the values of the democratic world that Estonia then aspired to join. “The freedom of every individual, the freedom of the economy and trade, as well as the freedom of the mind, of culture and science, are inseparably interconnected,” he told the burghers of Hamburg. “They form the prerequisite of a viable democracy.” His country, having regained its independence from the Soviet Union three years earlier, believed in these values: “The Estonian people never abandoned their faith in this freedom during the decades of totalitarian oppression.”

But Meri had also come to deliver a warning: Freedom in Estonia, and in Europe, could soon be under threat. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the circles around him were returning to the language of imperialism, speaking of Russia as primus inter pares—the first among equals—in the former Soviet empire. In 1994, Moscow was already seething with the language of resentment, aggression, and imperial nostalgia; the Russian state was developing an illiberal vision of the world, and even then was preparing to enforce it. Meri called on the democratic world to push back: The West should “make it emphatically clear to the Russian leadership that another imperialist expansion will not stand a chance.”

At that, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, got up and walked out of the hall.

Meri’s fears were at that time shared in all of the formerly captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe, and they were strong enough to persuade governments in Estonia, Poland, and elsewhere to campaign for admission to NATO. They succeeded because nobody in Washington, London, or Berlin believed that the new members mattered. The Soviet Union was gone, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg was not an important person, and Estonia would never need to be defended. That was why neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush made much attempt to arm or reinforce the new NATO members. Only in 2014 did the Obama administration finally place a small number of American troops in the region, largely in an effort to reassure allies after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nobody else anywhere in the Western world felt any threat at all. For 30 years, Western oil and gas companies piled into Russia, partnering with Russian oligarchs who had openly stolen the assets they controlled. Western financial institutions did lucrative business in Russia too, setting up systems to allow those same Russian kleptocrats to export their stolen money and keep it parked, anonymously, in Western property and banks. We convinced ourselves that there was no harm in enriching dictators and their cronies. Trade, we imagined, would transform our trading partners. Wealth would bring liberalism. Capitalism would bring democracy—and democracy would bring peace.

After all, it had happened before. Following the cataclysm of 1939–45, Europeans had indeed collectively abandoned wars of imperial, territorial conquest. They stopped dreaming of eliminating one another. Instead, the continent that had been the source of the two worst wars the world had ever known created the European Union, an organization designed to find negotiated solutions to conflicts and promote cooperation, commerce, and trade. Because of Europe’s metamorphosis—and especially because of the extraordinary transformation of Germany from a Nazi dictatorship into the engine of the continent’s integration and prosperity—Europeans and Americans alike believed that they had created a set of rules that would preserve peace not only on their own continents, but eventually in the whole world.

This liberal world order relied on the mantra of “Never again.” Never again would there be genocide. Never again would large nations erase smaller nations from the map. Never again would we be taken in by dictators who used the language of mass murder. At least in Europe, we would know how to react when we heard it.

But while we were happily living under the illusion that “Never again” meant something real, the leaders of Russia, owners of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, were reconstructing an army and a propaganda machine designed to facilitate mass murder, as well as a mafia state controlled by a tiny number of men and bearing no resemblance to Western capitalism. For a long time—too long—the custodians of the liberal world order refused to understand these changes. They looked away when Russia “pacified” Chechnya by murdering tens of thousands of people. When Russia bombed schools and hospitals in Syria, Western leaders decided that that wasn’t their problem. When Russia invaded Ukraine the first time, they found reasons not to worry. Surely Putin would be satisfied by the annexation of Crimea. When Russia invaded Ukraine the second time, occupying part of the Donbas, they were sure he would be sensible enough to stop.

Even when the Russians, having grown rich on the kleptocracy we facilitated, bought Western politicians, funded far-right extremist movements, and ran disinformation campaigns during American and European democratic elections, the leaders of America and Europe still refused to take them seriously. It was just some posts on Facebook; so what? We didn’t believe that we were at war with Russia. We believed, instead, that we were safe and free, protected by treaties, by border guarantees, and by the norms and rules of the liberal world order.

With the third, more brutal invasion of Ukraine, the vacuity of those beliefs was revealed. The Russian president openly denied the existence of a legitimate Ukrainian state: “Russians and Ukrainians,” he said, “were one people—a single whole.” His army targeted civilians, hospitals, and schools. His policies aimed to create refugees so as to destabilize Western Europe. “Never again” was exposed as an empty slogan while a genocidal plan took shape in front of our eyes, right along the European Union’s eastern border. Other autocracies watched to see what we would do about it, for Russia is not the only nation in the world that covets its neighbors’ territory, that seeks to destroy entire populations, that has no qualms about the use of mass violence. North Korea can attack South Korea at any time, and has nuclear weapons that can hit Japan. China seeks to eliminate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group, and has imperial designs on Taiwan.

We can’t turn the clock back to 1994, to see what would have happened had we heeded Lennart Meri’s warning. But we can face the future with honesty. We can name the challenges and prepare to meet them.

There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others. We might not want to compete with them, or even care very much about them. But they care about us. They understand that the language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice is dangerous to their form of autocratic power—and they know that that language originates in the democratic world, our world.

This fight is not theoretical. It requires armies, strategies, weapons, and long-term plans. It requires much closer allied cooperation, not only in Europe but in the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. NATO can no longer operate as if it might someday be required to defend itself; it needs to start operating as it did during the Cold War, on the assumption that an invasion could happen at any time. Germany’s decision to raise defense spending by 100 billion euros is a good start; so is Denmark’s declaration that it too will boost defense spending. But deeper military and intelligence coordination might require new institutions—perhaps a voluntary European Legion, connected to the European Union, or a Baltic alliance that includes Sweden and Finland—and different thinking about where and how we invest in European and Pacific defense.

If we don’t have any means to deliver our messages to the autocratic world, then no one will hear them. Much as we assembled the Department of Homeland Security out of disparate agencies after 9/11, we now need to pull together the disparate parts of the U.S. government that think about communication, not to do propaganda but to reach more people around the world with better information and to stop autocracies from distorting that knowledge. Why haven’t we built a Russian-language television station to compete with Putin’s propaganda? Why can’t we produce more programming in Mandarin—or Uyghur? Our foreign-language broadcasters—Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio Martí in Cuba—need not only money for programming but a major investment in research. We know very little about Russian audiences—what they read, what they might be eager to learn.

Funding for education and culture needs rethinking too. Shouldn’t there be a Russian-language university, in Vilnius or Warsaw, to house all the intellectuals and thinkers who have just left Moscow? Don’t we need to spend more on education in Arabic, Hindi, Persian? So much of what passes for cultural diplomacy runs on autopilot. Programs should be recast for a different era, one in which, though the world is more knowable than ever before, dictatorships seek to hide that knowledge from their citizens.

Trading with autocrats promotes autocracy, not democracy. Congress has made some progress in recent months in the fight against global kleptocracy, and the Biden administration was right to put the fight against corruption at the heart of its political strategy. But we can go much further, because there is no reason for any company, property, or trust ever to be held anonymously. Every U.S. state, and every democratic country, should immediately make all ownership transparent. Tax havens should be illegal. The only people who need to keep their houses, businesses, and income secret are crooks and tax cheats.

We need a dramatic and profound shift in our energy consumption, and not only because of climate change. The billions of dollars we have sent to Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia have promoted some of the worst and most corrupt dictators in the world. The transition from oil and gas to other energy sources needs to happen with far greater speed and decisiveness. Every dollar spent on Russian oil helps fund the artillery that fires on Ukrainian civilians.

Take democracy seriously. Teach it, debate it, improve it, defend it. Maybe there is no natural liberal world order, but there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect; our own has deep flaws, profound divisions, terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. Few of them have existed across human history; many have existed for a time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside, but from the inside, too, by divisions and demagogues.

Perhaps, in the aftermath of this crisis, we can learn something from the Ukrainians. For decades now, we’ve been fighting a culture war between liberal values on the one hand and muscular forms of patriotism on the other. The Ukrainians are showing us a way to have both. As soon as the attacks began, they overcame their many political divisions, which are no less bitter than ours, and they picked up weapons to fight for their sovereignty and their democracy. They demonstrated that it is possible to be a patriot and a believer in an open society, that a democracy can be stronger and fiercer than its opponents. Precisely because there is no liberal world order, no norms and no rules, we must fight ferociously for the values and the hopes of liberalism if we want our open societies to continue to exist.

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thepringlesofblood · 3 months

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An Attempt at Explaining Bulbian Church Theology

so I watched ACOC a year or two ago, and I watched TRW as it came out, and now I’m going back and re-watching ACOC with that context in mind, and I have many questions.

a few disclaimers

this shit rules. it’s wild how much thought and effort Brennan & Matt put into Bulbian theology and the history and inner workings of the church. at no point am I implying anything to the contrary. this is “tf, guys? (affectionate)” not “tf, guys? (derogatory)”

the order of things is fucked up bc prequel, and bc Matt necessarily did a bunch of it w/out Brennan bc he was a PC. some things have the simple Doylist explanation of “Brennan didn’t think they were ever coming back to that bit” or “it’s a metric fuckload of lore written several years before Matt came onto the project, of course some things are going to contradict.” I know and agree with these reasons. I am coming at this from as Watsonian a perspective as I can - trying to find in-world reasons for things rather than real-life reasons - because I think it’s a fun thought exercise.

at no point am I talking shit about either Brennan or Matt. ik people have a lot of feelings about Matt’s DMing in TRW, but I think he did great, and he added some fascinating new lore about the theology of Calorum which I am eager to sink my teeth into. he seems like a cool dude, he and Brennan wrote some extremely cool lore, and that’s all I’ll say about that.

so. let’s get crack-a-lackin’

Let’s define our terms.

we got our two Big Terms from ACOC - the Prophidian Heresy and the Ramsian Doctrine. The Prophidian Heresy is the only one to re-appear in TRW, as the Prophidian Theodicy. this is bc it was not declared to be heresy (aka fake/against the church’s beliefs) yet, so it was just another theory within the church

we’ve got about four big factions, very unequal in power:

Belizabeth Brassica (& the church under her rule)

the Sanctis Putris

the Archbishop Camille Colliflour (aka the Avatar of Deus Pa’Zuul)

The Few Good Individuals in The Church*

we’re mostly talking about Brassica and Sanctis Putris.

*Saint Citrina, local churches in Candia, certain Bulbians in the Dairy Islands, individual churches here and there across the continent that are mentioned as rejecting the Ramsian Doctrine in ACOC.

The Prophidian Heresy/Theodicy

What it says:

The Hungry One is just as powerful as The Bulb

Reasoning:

this is an attempt to explain the questions of “if the Bulb is good and all-powerful, why are there bad things in the world? If the Bulb is more powerful than the Hungry One, why hasn’t it beat the shit out of him yet, if it is truly a force for good?”

What it means in the world:

this is a part of Brassica’s plot to start the apocalypse, but is not the most important thing for her.

It is however important for the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris, who fight to keep the Hungry One at bay.

Questions/observations:

In ACOC Ep.13, when Brennan first mentions the Sanctis Putris, he describes them as “an order of the Church that did not subscribe to the Prophidian Heresy at all. It looks like they are not about the Ramsian Doctrine and causing the apocalypse.”

I think this is a mixing up of words, and that he meant to say “the Ramsian Doctrine” both times, since the Sanctis Putris is against the Ramsian Doctrine. at this point in the campaign the two beliefs have gotten kind of conflated bc they’re both part of the big Brassica Apocalypse Plot.

the in-world explanation could be that after the war the Sanctis Putris pivoted to a different belief - perhaps that the Hungry One is more powerful than the Bulb. very interesting...

in TRW ep 3 Colliflour says “We know the clarity of the Prophidian Theodicy and the terrible shadow that grows outside of the Bulb's light”

so we do know that before the war at least the Sanctis Putris were into it.

The Ramsian Doctrine

What it says:

The Hungry One cannot be destroyed and the final salvation of all souls cannot occur until the Hungry One devours the world

Some souls are healthy and delicious, but some are unhealthy and garbage - Junk Food (Candians)

The Junk Food souls prevent the Hungry One from devouring the world because it wants a “healthy meal”

Reasoning:

in order to work towards this prized final salvation of all souls and destruction of the Hungry One, one must first work towards the apocalypse. Junk Food must be eradicated from the world for that to happen - whether by conversion to the Bulbian faith* or by death.

*it’s at least implied by Calroy’s letter to Brassica in ep. 13 that since he “renounced his pagan ways” and wants to be re-baptized in the Bulbian faith, he gets to live. whether this is true or not we do not find out.

What it means in the world:

This is the excuse Brassica needs to invade and destroy Candia and its magic. Fun fact: she was actually planning to launch a crusade on the Meatlands too before she got got.

Meat isn’t junk food (i don’t think??), so it’s clear that what she’s really after is destroying the rest of Calorum’s ability to access magic - making it so they have to go through the church to get “miracles” rather than using the magic of the deities in their homelands. that’s not Ramsian, it’s just Brassica being power-hungry and mean.

In regards to the Sanctis Putris, they believe they are preventing the apocalypse by bringing rot and mold into the world. they don’t want the Hungry One to devour the world, and since they believe the Hungry One is as powerful as the Bulb, they want to work to bring mold and rot into the world themselves, to give the Bulb a leg up on the opposition, so to speak.

so, the idea that the Hungry One could devour the world, and that that would be a sort of apocalypse, is shared between Brassica and the Sanctis Putris. the difference is, Brassica wants that to happen so the Bulb can finally defeat the Hungry One, and the Sanctis Putris does not want that to happen, so they bring mold and rot into the world so the Hungry One can’t devour it.

Questions/observations:

So while it sounds kind of like the Sanctis Putris are buying into the last tenant of the Ramsian Doctrine - that the Hungry One will only eat a “healthy meal” - they’re not buying into the rest of it, because their definition of “healthy” is different from the one outlined in the rest of the Ramsian Doctrine. The Sanctis Putris don’t seem to care about “Junk Food”, just rot & mold.

TRW ep. 3 Colliflour: “Through prosperity and peace, Calorum becomes ripe and pliable. It becomes the perfect meal to forever roil and burn within its belly. The hidden scripture, the Festered Tome, it holds the truth that will save us all. The Hungry One will not eat that which is spoiled...Only through death can the lands be stained and unclean. Only through rot can the world be saved and endure under the Great Bulb's light”

the Sanctis Putris depend on conflict vs peace and rot vs growth across the whole of Calorum, while the Ramsian Doctrine depends upon specific people (Candians) being eradicated

in ACOC ep. 13 Brennan says this “The correspondence between the Archbishop Oliver Onionpatch and the Sanctus Putris saying the Sanctus Putris has located the home and high temple of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, and have found the Ice Cream Temple. The date they give, they say that their expedition should arrive there the morning of Harvest Dawn the seventh”

onion boy is a Brassica lackey - a Ramsian. swapping letters with the Sanctis Putris, famously anti-Ramsian. ???

my question is this - why are the Sanctis Putris running errands for Brassica if they have fundamentally opposing beliefs? why are they sending out an expedition on the orders of someone trying to start an apocalypse that they’re trying to prevent?

3 potential reasons

blackmail - Brassica says “I am the head of the Church, this is what’s happening, put up or shut up. Do what I want or I eradicate you”

quid pro quo - a favor for a favor, Brassica is giving them something in exchange for them doing this for her

common enemy

it serves the Sanctis Putris to have the Church be more powerful since a lot of their people are in the Church, and of course it serves Brassica to empower the Church. Killing the Sugar Plum Fairy is one way to do that.

im uncertain though, as the Sanctis Putris has people from all over the place, and potentially at least one Candian who is against it.

although, if the Sanctis Putris intend to split with Brassica, if may also not serve them to have the Church be more powerful.

Compare/contrasting Brassica v Sanctis Putris

Both beliefs are Prophidian, since for the Hungry One to eat everything it would need to be at least equal in power to the Bulb (both groups believe in the Bulb’s inherent goodness, and that if it had the power it would stop the Hungry One from doing this).

Both see themselves as helping the Bulb overpower the Hungry One, Brassica by causing the Apocalypse and the Sanctis Putris by preventing it.

Both identify an aspect of the world that is preventing the Hungry One from devouring it. Brassica points to “junk food”, while the Sanctis Putris points to mold and rot.

I saw a post a while back that positioned the two terms as Belizabeth Brassica’s beliefs vs the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris. This is not the case.

The Ramsian Doctrine [in its totality] is exclusive to Brassica, yes, but the Prophidian Heresy does not encompass the totality of the beliefs of the Sanctis Putris. It just says that the Hungry One is as powerful as the Bulb. the rest of their shit is their own.

the Sanctis Putris do subscribe the last tenant of the Ramsian Doctrine (that the Hungry One wants a healthy meal), but interpret “healthy” as meaning something else, so I wouldn’t say their beliefs are Ramsian overall, even if one idea overlaps.

plus, Brassica also needs the Prophidian Heresy to exist, since it offers a reason for why the Bulb doesn’t just come down and make everything better - it can’t, since it and the Hungry One are equal in power.

now where the fuck does Deus Pa’Zuul fall into this?

Brennan described the feeling of discovering Deus Pa’Zuul as “eldritch horror” and frankly I agree. A lot of the genre of eldritch horror revolves around the unknown, and specifically the unknowable, so as a result we the audience know very little about it.

What we do know

it’s a garbage disposal, and all the implications that carries, included but not limited to

the place you dispose of rotten food

the physical description - blades, tearing, ripping, whirring

it is a force of pure destruction. the things it destroys are erased from existence. there is no eternity in the Hungry One’s stomach, no salvation in the light of the Bulb, you just end.

it can interact with the world of Calorum through visions and impart magic like the Bulb and the Hungry One do, but does so very, very rarely.

The only two Calorans we know of that it ever contacted directly were Colliflour and Raphaniel.

the rest of the Sanctis Putris had no clue that this was where their leader was taking them - Gemelli straight up fights it.

Speculations

while Colliflour certainly seems to think it fits into the main cosmology of the universe, it feels very clear, to me at least, that it does not.

the Hungry One and the Bulb have next to no physical manifestations in the world of Calorum the way Deus Pa’Zuul does.

sure, a spell might sound like a stomach rumble or emit holy light, but no one ever turns into a lightbulb.

The closest thing is that the Bulb is the Sun, but it remains untouchable and unknowable (until some crazy ass pepper shaker makes a spaceship or something).

the physicality of it makes me feel like it’s a smaller, though no less deadly, force than the Bulb and Hungry One.

there’s also the specificity - we’ve seen the magic of Bulb and Hungry One alike do a million different things. Deus Pa’Zuul’s magic seems less flexible - we only really hear it described or emphasized when Raphaniel casts a more destructive spell, like Shatter, and of course in the finale when it took over Colliflour’s body and the room around them.

(this is also probably bc TRW was a way shorter campaign and thus had much less opportunity to show off new fun ways for it to wreck shop)

The Bulb and the Hungry One are balanced - creation and destruction, light and dark. Deus Pa’Zuul feels like an extraplanar monster. I’d say “demon” but that implies that it’s working for the Hungry One, as he’s the Caloran equivalent of the Devil.

but then again, is that incorrect? in-world, it certainly feels separate from Bulb and Hungry One alike. but if we think about the implications of real-life garbage disposals...people are the ones that operate and control them. if the Hungry One is a person, he would be the one controlling what (and who) the disposal grinds up.

Finally, we have the Few Good Individuals in the Church.

Saint Citrina, in the limited scenes we have from her,

encourages Amethar to follow his heart and not divorce Catherine Ghee if he loves her.

creates a holy relic that forces you to tell the truth

has an argument with Archmage Lazuli about the goings-on with the Order of the Spinning Star

Queen Pamelia says in TRW ep. 1 - “Citrina and myself and many others have taken quite lovingly to the Book of Leaves. We just are careful with which sects of the church wish to impose disparate law and rule upon how we worship.”

later we see her sort of disagreeing with her mom as she is steered away from Raphaniel though, and we don’t really know what’s in the Book of Leaves, except that Saint Citrina enchanted it to force truth-telling at some point before her death.

is “useful” to Calroy and his conspirators until Brassica orders her killed. So, one can assume she was anti-Ramsian in some way.

We know that Primsy and most Dairy Islanders are Bulbian, but don’t get much of their specific beliefs.

There is the scene in the Abbey of the Shimmering Cream with Saccharina, where we basically just learn that that abbey (and potentially area in general) is extremely anti-magic and terrible. We don’t get anything about their feelings vis-a-vis the Ramsian Doctrine though.

Primsy opposes the Ramsian Doctrine & Brassica in general once she hears about it though, so one can assume that she and the people around her don’t prioritize or agree with that in their worship.

We know Caramelinda is Bulbian, and she married Archmage Lazuli, so presumably she does not have the same issues with her use of “pagan” magic as Saint Citrina may have.

Other than that we don’t have a lot on her religious beliefs, except that she wasn’t super stoked about Saccharina as Queen, but I think that was less because of her magic and more because of how violently anti-Bulbian and generally chaotic Saccharina is.

When Brassica’s whole Ramsian Doctrine plan gets set into motion, she gets a whole bunch of letters from churches across the continent that are like “um no??? please don’t cause the apocalypse??”, mostly from Candians (who we can assume are generally anti-Ramsian because they don’t want to die) but also from all the other countries.

So. There we go. Lmk if there’s any inconsistencies or anything ^v^

#dnd #d20 #dimension 20 #d20 spoilers #dimension 20 spoilers #trw spoilers #trw #the ravening war #the ravening war spoilers #acoc spoilers #acoc #original post #theology #cw: religion #cw: religious themes #i'm having a neurodivergent 'i need to talk about this or i will die' episode #so here yall go #I lowkey forgot this post was in my drafts #or it would’ve been out while TRW was actually going on lol.

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thewalkingfishttrpg · 28 days

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Hey fishsticks, today I will be talking about the beautiful world of Vundabar! Where all our campaigns take place!!!! SO WORLD LORE INFO DUMP BABY!!!!

Vundabar is a world filled with magic, emotion, love, hope, and despair. At times it can get a little silly but underneath it, lies a hopeless goddess yearning for her love, a dark fog that creates to destroy, a walking fish that started it all, and eldritch horrors that represent nothing and everything.

Let's dive in shall we!

Here's a map! Created by our good friend @theccrowsnest (go follow them) On the left is Dehd and to the right is Vundabar!

Let's talk about Vundabarian history!

It all started about eleven thousand years or so with a fish that could walk, he was born in the middle of nowhere but he looked up to see the moon so he spoke to her. She answered and told him how to build a beautiful world with magic so great it'll make a mark on the universe for as long as it stands. So he tasked a wandering giant to help build the new world and more. The giant could mold rivers with a kick, build mountains out of dirt, and breathe fire into the world for everyone to use. After a hundred years or so of creation, the fish wished to give the world a gift so it tasked the giant once again to build a mountain like no other, an enormous mountain as big as itself, one that could reach the moon, so that everyone could see it no matter where u were. "Bauhaus". The giant created smaller giants to help and those giants created smaller giants called "Dwarves" to help some more. It was around this time though that a malevolent entity grew aware of Vundabar and began to lurk... "The Dark".

It presents itself as a black fog never revealing anything else for if you saw its face then you're already dead. The Dark is the representation of evil in the universe, going by many names throughout history, it created "The Symbols" horrifyingly powerful abominations with one goal in mind. The Moth, The Owl, The Bear, The Beast, and The Wolf. Each one is stronger than the last, each one a different horror story on its own, each playing a different part in the darks mission to destroy all life. Thankfully none are seen around as much anymore except for one...

But back to the history lesson!

After another hundred years or so Bauhaus was almost finished WHEN SUDDENLY.

"Her." arrived. The Goddess of the Moon and Creator of the Universe.

It's not known what exactly happened that day but the fish and giant both disappeared abruptly afterward and a great war commenced against her. She sat at the top of Bauhaus while her army laid waste to the few who stood up against her, this was a time of great peril, and many lives were lost. Thankfully the first group of heroes rose from the stardust called "The Miracle".

QUICK SIDE NOTE BEFORE WE PROCEED!

In the universe, there is a "god" aka "The L1ght" The Creator of Life. The L1ght is also the energy that flows through all living creatures and is what is known as your "soul". Back to history class!

The Miracle. The first group of heroes on Vundabar, all representations of one of seven virtues and filed with the L1ght. They formed when the world needed them most and so they established peace, order, and kindness. They defeated all those with "Her" and The Dark's abominations sadly though during the final war that gave them their victory against her their leader was killed and a deity called "The Mother of All Creatures" died to her hand. This act caused "The Great Crack" to happen that split the sky in four and the land in two which created the continent "Dehd". Now "Her" is said to still reside at the top of Bauhaus to this day but no ones ever confirmed it as for whatever reason during the war Bauhaus was cursed to be unclimbable and unescapable except for giants of course who could come and go as they please due to building it but anyone who dare enters is certain to die.

So yeah that's pretty much it and there's a bunch more I could talk about like "Dehd" or "The Woods" or even "The Thin Place". Maybe I'll talk about "N0TH1NG." next? Who knows but until then have a great day!!! Though I'll probably talk about Vundabarian Gods, Deities, and Creators next!

#dnd #dnd campaign #dnd homebrew #lore #worldbuilding #history of Vundabar #the walking fish #writing

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felikatze · 9 months

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roy is my boy. my beautiful boy who is so bad at combat which is also A DELIBERATE CHARACTERIZATION DECISION.

it's his support with lance, i believe, which questions why roy is at the front lines at all. and roy acknowledges that he sucks. he's weak compared to everyone else, he knows this, but he fights on the frontlines anyways because it's about respect. he doesn't want to be the commander giving orders from up high - he wants to fight together with his men, remain connected with the people he leads. he never wants to lose sight of them.

and it's a thing about self-confidence, too, and how little he has of it - this lad has some massive imposter syndrome. again, he knows all his faults intimately. his combat performance is poor, he's studied the art of war but lacks any actual experience, and he considers himself, well, a loser, overall. but people love him anyway, because he still gives it his all, and it's in his lance support, too - roy's charismatic. not in the bold way, but in his demure nature. he's a steady presence to draw people together, with an earnestness that inspires others to help him succeed. they can tell he just wants to make things better for everybody, and they want to be better for him, too.

also, he's not just a soldier on the battlefied. he's the tactician. you don't see mark sweeping maps, right? roy is canonically the tactical mind behind the entire campaign, and he's damn good at it, too. i forgot whether it's lalum or elffin route, but in one of the two, it's said that it was roy's decision to rebrand to the etrurian army. that name change alone shows keen political awareness. being the lycian army when you're just a hodgepodge of lycians is fine, but when a etrurian general starts backing you, and you've now got the the whole of the continent's biggest nation behind you, well - the snooty bastards from up high aren't gonna let tiny little lycia hog all the glory. roy's conceeding recognition of the war effort to etruria to appease the new etrurian soldiers under his watch who'd balk at being lead by a pheraen nobody. (they probably dont even know where pherae is).

roy's a scholar, not a warrior. he wasn't present when bandits attacked pherae's castle cuz he was on his way home from summer break at college. he's good at this shit cuz he studied it. he has elffin and cecilia as advisors later on, but the early game is all him.

and he still doesn't recognize that cuz it's not physical. he's not in the action. to him, he is just leading people to their deaths. it's his duty to prevent it. it's the inherent guilt of leadership. and how inferior he feels compared to his father and hector - both great warriors in their own right (even if eliwood's combat performance in fe7 is equally poor). this is the only way to prove himself to himself. agrh.

roy is also just so deeply deeply kind. he will give anyone the chance to change, but he's not softhearted. if he must kill, he will. still, though, he has to try. he's always searching for that silver lining, always searching for a way to spill less blood on all sides.

if there is one thing he believes in, it is the goodness of the heart. he's optimistic, but not naive. he knows the world is rotten. the history of the scouring proves that well enough. but the world is made of its people, and if people choose to improve, the world will, too. just as roy tries, anyone can try. anyone should be able to try. humans, dragons, he doesn't care. if you do good, you are good. i just. i know i'm talking vague but it's such a hard thing to pin down.

i really think fe6 is let down by it's lack of emotive portraits here. if you wanna get emotion out of the story you really need to read into it yourself and let your imagination do the work just because there's no portraits or voice acting to sell it for you.

i love my boy. if you mischaracterize him as "hehe dragon racist" ever again i'll kill you.

#feli speaks #fe6 #I LOVE BINDING BLADE HOURS

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darkwood-sleddog · 3 months

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Hey!

I'm having a hard time tracking down any info on the origin of different sleddog breeds, especially their names, and I remember you've talked about it before.

I searched your blog but only managed to find a post about malamutes.

Any chance you could tell me about the etymology of other breeds like the Siberian Husky and if there are names I should use instead, like Inuit Qimmiq for the CID? Or if maybe you could point me towards good sources?

Thank you.

(also your dogs are lovely)

I mean some names are pretty self explanatory such as "Greenland Dog" and "Yakutian Laika" and "Inuit Sled Dog" (note that any indigenous breed is also going to have its own name in its native language as well, an example of this being Qimmiq).

I talk about the general etymology of the word "husky" and its usage as a generalized term HERE.

I talk about the etymology of the term husky and its use as a racial slur, as well as the use of racial slurs as dogs names HERE.

I talk about using alternative names for said racial slurs and some problems you may come across in the dog world when doing so HERE.

Also CID, as in Canadian Inuit Dog, and Inuit Qimmiq are both considered perfectly fine to use as it uses the proper term for the people originating the dog. It is the Canadian Kennel Club's official breed name of "Canadian Eskimo Dog" that there are (obvious) issues with. The campaign for name change desired "Canadian Inuit Qimmiq" as a compromise but did not go through.

Beyond listening to the various indigenous groups affected by these particular racial slurs and the racially charged and bizarrely still prevalent theme of naming new dog breeds after random, unrelated indigenous groups as a nod to their "wildness" I would not say there is a concrete source. Indigenous people are not a monolith and two individuals from the same community could likely have very different feelings on particular word usage. As an example of this divide, some people who are involved in working Canadian Inuit Dogs in their historical way take issue with the (many) campaigns to rename the breed, seeing the Canadian Inuit Dog as the true working dog and the registered Canadian Eskimo dogs as more pet bred and different. HERE is an article from the Fan Hitch about that. Now I personally know breeders of registered CEDs that are non-native across multiple continents who take great care to import dogs from their native country and from native sources so....not my circus, not my monkeys, but an interesting argument in this discussion nonetheless.

As with any of my etymology posts I merely seek to bring awareness to the origin on these terms so we can all have a greater sensitivity when interacting with the breeds of dogs that we love. I don't have answers and perhaps there is not really a one size fits all answer to this problem. I myself am not of any of the groups affected by these slurs and mythologizing, so I also don't think i can be considered a definitive source on the subject.

#dogblr #canadian inuit dog #canadian eskimo dog #qimmiq #sled dogs #husky #siberian husky #i wish i had good answers for this every time people came looking for them in my inbox #but to tell you the truth this issue is far too nuanced for me to know one besides CID being a better choice than CED.#Siberian Husky and the issues with that term and the wide usage of husky in general is a problem i don't see being solved #and i don't see a very wide push to rid ourselves of those terms at this time #so not using them can make communicating clearly about dogs that use the term husky in their name very difficult #as always i will come for the tamaskan's ass since its not too late for them to change their breed name

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sesamenom · 22 days

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alright you’ve been extremely extremely kind and indulgent to me about my oc and i cannot possibly thank you enough <333333 so MY turn now to ask YOU about YOURS. please tell me about maglor’s distant granddaughter who is also your bbeg?? .w. or about the chatty hobbits i would very VERY much love to hear about both!!!

~ @nelyoslegalteam, reporting from main <3

(long post, sorry for the random people stumbling upon this lol)

so I'm the dm for the chatty hobbits campaign and essentially it's set in a beleriand-adjacent continent, but with a few extra races and stuff. of the founders of the original settlements, the king of elende (the elf kingdom) is Gil-galad's (invented for the campaign) twin brother Finellach/Finwain. originally he was inspired by the fact that gil galad has a ton of names but only uses ereinion/gil, so I just invented a new character and gave him half the names. I headcanon gil galad as maglor's son, so finwain is in universe maglor's son (left at the havens with gil bc his wife divorced him for kinslaying and his kingdom, being next door neighbors with morgoth, is far too dangerous for small children).

Anyways, his descendant Elinyel (also known as aramire or elinnor) is the current queen of Elende! she's an evil fire-themed bard who is extremely feanorian in all the worst ways - her actual kingdom prospered under her reign, but she just does not care about everyone else as long as she's protecting her people. There were some tensions with one of the major kingdoms to the north (conflict over unclaimed territory between the kingdoms and some tariff stuff), so instead of risking the other kingdom starting a war and hurting her people, she just preemptively invaded it and started burned all the border territories to the ground.

her actual coronation was pretty weird- so she's the second child, but her older sister was born in wartime and there's a general belief in elende that children of peacetime make better rulers, so Elinyel was chosen as her family's heir. her grandfather (the crown prince of his generation) died defending Elende in one of the major wars, but his younger brother and two young kids survived. there's a whole feud between their houses because the brother chose to retain the kingship even after the kids were old enough to take the throne. anyways, two generations later Elinyel killed her cousin Arendil (the previous king of Elende) over a dispute about the legitimacy of his house (and what she believed to be a dishonoring of her grandparents' sacrifice) and took the throne.

obviously she has many Issues. arendil also has two surviving kids who are now essentially trying to stop her from murdering all their neighbors in proactive defense of her people.

however, when she first ascended she recruited her friend group as her elite guard/vassals of the kingdom. (aka the other bosses in the storyline). so it escalated to a war between her forces and the children of arendil, which ultimately culminated in her beloved sister being killed by one of arendil's children. this in turn led to her having basically a massive mental breakdown and feeling like she failed to protect her loved ones (exacerbated by some of her other friends being killed in battles she led). a normal person might decide this is was kind of her fault for starting a war and putting her friends in charge of the army. instead she decided she needed to destroy everyone who could ever potentially pose a threat. which is, in her eyes, literally everyone on the continent (except for her kingdom, of course).

so now she is at war with absolutely everyone of all factions! She is also somehow winning by virtue of Song almost on the level of maglor himself, and ten (now six) also incredibly powerful friends. Anyways, she has decided that the best way to wipe out the continent (except her kingdom) and start fresh is to literally find an ancient lost stone that can break the Doors of Night, summon Morgoth himself, and start the Dagorath. obviously this will Not go well for anyone at all if she succeeds, but she is on a full-on rampage and genuinely believes she (plus friends) can protect her kingdom from Morgoth's army while he wipes out everyone else.

Here's some old art of her btw!

And some slightly more recent unfinished art of her and the Evil Friend Group from when they were younger:

and here's (L-R) her cousin who is the 3rd boss, Elinyel, and her sister from before the war!

#asks #THANK YOU FOR THIS BTW #i only have 1 friend irl who plays dnd and is also not affiliated with the campaign #and they aren't a silm person #so i cannot talk w anyone irl about the Lore #one of the few kingdoms who could really oppose her is the magic one #bc max level wizards might as well be ainur and the monarch of the magic kingdom is Very Powerful #however. said monarch is also the twin sibling of one of elinyel's friends #(who is also an evil lich now and also maybe dating a diff friend who is an evil sorceror? not sure of details yet)#so the super powerful battlemage monarch is remaining Politically Neutral so they don't have to fight their literal evil twin #currently the party is level 6 and just defeated the very-weakened wraith of one of the friends #she was a druid but sort of decayed when she was corrupted and was kidnapping untrained/low level sorcs as servants to siphon power from #and also living in the Grove of Resurrection in order to stay intact #i forgot her dialogue while running the battle so while i looked through my docs i just had her say 'loading please wait' lol #also more chatty hobbit stuff #the grove is a huge grassy area with a walking tree in the middle #so the whole thing is constantly roaming aroudn #the wraith-druid had her castle built on it so she could have a moving castle that also heals her #the grassy part will resurrect any dead thing put on it #for the battle they had to drag her off the grass in order to kill her #technically shes been dead for some years but is surviving via constant contact w the grove #the hobbit (Shade) is from the Alder family who has historically been the guardians of the grove #he discovered he could talk to the tree in the middle and immediately started trying to figure out a way he could use the grove to #clone one of the party members #the tree does not approve of intentionally cutting off people's arms to see if it regenerates into a clone lol #oh! and they found anglachel in the grove. the dragonborn monk wants to keep it

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dragons-clause · 28 days

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The Dragon's Clause

Sabo x Fem Reader CW: Forced marriage, intrigue, character death, fantasy violence, blood, magic, language, smut, 18+ mdni

Tag List: @mfreedomstuff @manachiichan

Chapter 10: Delicious

You hadn’t seen much of the Duke after your initial meeting over tea, until the two of you had dinner together. He’d been busy with work he’d been unable to do during the campaign along the border, and according to Koala it would take him a couple days to get caught up, even with help from Hack.

Early next morning you were at the training grounds, warming up when Sabo came out to join you. The estate guards were lined up around the training grounds, at ease and talking amongst themselves while they waited. Word had gone through the entire estate like wildfire, and you were certain there were quite a few servants watching as closely as they dared.

Over dinner you’d both talked about certain limitations to the spar, and agreed on wooden swords, and no magic. It wasn’t that you couldn’t use it, it was that you’d never been allowed the chance to meld your magic and your sword play together. The kind of magic needed for it was advanced, and that level of magic left evidence that you couldn’t risk. You didn’t believe your Uncle was himself checking to see what magic residue was in your room, nor was he requesting someone else check.

But the risk was beyond what you were willing to take, and practicing your forms alone was enough to appease your own desires.

That conversation at dinner is probably how the entire estate knew by morning. Not that you could blame anyone, if you were a maid in a household and heard the Lord and his new fiance talking about crossing swords, you wouldn’t be able to keep your mouth shut either.

Sabo yawns mightily as he stands across from you, and gives you a smile as Hack and Koala sit down nearby. “Koala thinks you might break my nose, since I didn’t get much sleep last night, but I promise if you do I’ll accept it as my own fault.” His smile is bright, despite the weariness in his eyes.

He appeared to be in the same clothes he had on yesterday, having shed the dress coat, in nothing but loose long-sleeved shirt and a vest. The pants and the boots were the same, but there was no ruffled tie around his neck, and no pocket watch chain at his belt. He might have prioritized his work, but he wasn’t being dismissive of the spar by any stretch.

“That’s reassuring to hear, your grace.” You say, stepping into your opening stance.

The sword style your father favored, the one that he taught all the northern border knights, was more fluid than other styles of the continent. It was developed for the beasts of the wild, but it was just as effective against human opponents. The differences in shifting from one form to another could be disorienting, and when paired with magic created a larger effect than should be possible.

To you, that was what made it beautiful, and while there was no magic dancing around your blade you’d always been able to envision it. You were looking forward to requesting the right to begin training it properly from Sabo. Win or lose, your current impression of him is that he wouldn’t deny you.

The stances for the forms were also a little wider than was common, and the actions were less like stone and more like water. The sharp clipped movements of most knights were efficient and effective, but the fluid transition of your style wasted less energy, maintaining movement and momentum from one step to the next. It was harder to learn, and harder to master, so it wasn’t ideal for large groups to learn.

“Are you requesting I go easy on you?” You question as he moves into position himself.

A smile slips across his lips. “Not at all, my lady.”

You dash toward him, watching as his eyes widened a little, his wooden sword coming up to meet yours almost a split second too late. The parry was at an awkward angle for him, but he was heavier than you and shifting his weight was enough to give him a chance to push your sword away and give himself a little space. The flurry you unleashed after that was knocked aside a little more easily than the first strike and you smiled.

“You’re much faster than I expected, Lady Lulusia.” He admits.

“You’re a little slower than I expected, my lord.” You reply with a devious grin.

Sabo’s smile twitches a bit. “It wouldn’t do to disappoint you,” he says, a soft growl prowling at the corners of his tone as he seems to wake up before your eyes. His completely defensive actions shift and he begins to test for openings in your moves to push you back.

“I wouldn’t be disappointed,” you clarify, focusing more of your movements on trying to keep him off-balance at least a little. The wooden swords are well-crafted, but you didn’t want to test if the Duke’s strength was enough to break one when you needed it to block a strike. “Though I could offer to instruct you-.”

You clip the tip of his sword, knocking it away by snapping the upward arc of your follow through to break his momentum, and then using the tip of your sword to keep his pushed wide as you stepped in close. Almost nose to nose you watch as blues eyes, wide with shock, look away from his sword into your smiling eyes. Instead of landing a blow you stepped away as quickly as you’d stepped in, putting space between the two of you as he brought his sword back in. “-alongside your guards?”

Sabo steps back from you, putting a more comfortable space between the two of you. His eyes flick from the tip of his sword to you, keeping you in sight while trying to discern how you knocked his weapon so wide.

“How’d you do that?” He questions, body tense and more on guard than he was a moment ago.

“Leverage.” You answer casually, stepping lightly and shifting your lead foot before stepping in again. You double stepped again just before crossing swords, putting your dominate foot ahead again to cross the blow from Sabo.

You shifted lower and slid your blade against his, repeating the move from earlier, but instead of knocking his sword wide, he twisted it and broke the connection between the two. You moved through the release, not letting it put you off-balance, and brought your arm up into his elbow as you moved under his shoulder.

Ducked down as you were you let yourself tumble forward, somersaulting against the ground before coming back up to your feet. It gave you enough space to avoid being struck in the back as you cleared the reach of his weapon before turning back to face him.

“So this is how that style works.” He muses, pivoting to face you again. “The precision of the strikes must make it difficult to master.”

You nod. “Most of the people my father taught knew at least one other style. He always said any sword was good enough if it could fell a beast and protect a knight.”

“Why such a difficult style then?”

“Two reasons, but -.” You dash in again and aren’t surprised to see Sabo’s handling your strikes much better now that he’s seen them. “I can’t demonstrate the main reason.”

Sabo manages to adjust to the angle of your strikes, and the swords lock for a second before he moves to shove you back. Once you feel him lean in you drop your stance again, using your lower center of gravity to bring him forward. His foot shifts ahead of him and you feel the wood of his sword press against your back as yours presses into his chest.

“I’ll have to practice more.” You say, trying to ignore just how close the young Duke is right now. The two of you part slowly, the shape of his amused smile lingering in the back of your head.

“The primary reason is that causes a kind of magical feedback, right?” Sabo questions and you nod. “Secondary to that it seems like a style that is meant to give better odds to a singular fighter versus multiple enemies. I imagine when coupled with magic it’s quite terrifying.”

“I’m surprised, usually people think the secondary part is giving an advantage to a smaller fighter. Since most beasts in the wilds are larger than a single human.” You say stepping back a couple paces.

“Height between humans wouldn’t vary enough.” Sabo shrugs. “The stance already starts a little wider than most, and drops lower with ease, so it’s a core part of the style to be sure your center of gravity is lower than your opponents, but the fluid style also allows you to steal your opponent’s momentum. The end result in both cases, is someone who is skilled at staying within the striking range of their opponent regardless of size.

“If you can’t outrun what you’re fighting, being able to fight right against a singular opponent forces the others to stay back and wait. Even beasts won’t lash out against their own.” He agrees. “It loses some value in a one on one fight, but it’s so unconventional compared to most other styles that it makes up for that loss easily.”

You just smile through his evaluation.

“Ahhh, you had me when you come in after knocking my sword aside.” He sighs, admitting defeat from the earlier maneuver where you pointedly avoided striking him. “How embarrassing.”

“Best two of three, your grace?” You offer and Sabo laughs.

“It would be my pleasure,” he says, dashing toward you this time without giving you a chance to begin things.

The Duke’s style was more dependent on his magic, but his skill wasn’t lacking by any means. A quick study and a man tested in far more combat than you were, his blows came in efficient and heavy. You could feel the strikes rattle all the way up your arm even as you turned them aside.

Whether he was finally awake and warmed up, or if he’d stopped holding back out of concern, didn’t matter to you. Getting to see more of his skill was as interesting to you as his getting to see your style was interesting to him. You understood now that the estate guards weren’t necessarily lacking. They were border guards in training whose skills hadn’t developed enough for a campaign. Their style was identical to Sabo’s, but far less practiced and controlled.

There was less being said this round, but more being learned as the two of you took in all the small details of one another. The line of sweat that made his hair stick to his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the tension of his swing that started practically in his neck, and slid down his arm. The repetition of skill that was drilled into each taut muscle.

A dedication you both knew well. A clear understanding shared between you both, even if the style of your skills were different, the hours and years of effort were similar. Sabo’s own experience out pacing yours simply by virtue of his position. In this particular instance, however, his skill and power were a hindrance, as he was constantly on alert not to hurt you even in the midst of the spar.

It was a testament to his skill that he’d been able to walk such a fine line this entire time, especially on so little sleep. You wanted to prolong this, to entertain all three rounds. It was fun, and challenging besides, but a third round would only keep him from work that had piled up, and that would keep him from sleeping, and you could the lack of sleep at the edges of his eyes.

And at the edges of his swings.

You stepped into the swing, blocking it and taking the full brunt of the blow. Sabo stumbled, he’d expected you to slide under the swing again and had adjusted accordingly. Instead you’d leaned into things and forced him a half step off balance, giving you enough room to smack your sword into his side, with enough force to make him grunt.

“You’re a bit more ruthless than expected.” He admits with a smile.

“Your considerations were appreciated.” You reply with a smile. “But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use them to my advantage.”

“Alas, it seems my break from work has ended then.” He looks completely crushed, with a sigh almost as dramatic as his forlorn expression.

“I promise I won’t start any rumors about having bested you in a sword fight.” You say with a smile, tapping your wooden sword under his chin once to get his attention.

“Oh but I will.” Koala says, as her and Hack come over to the two of you. “No matter how many times I see you fight, it’s always so beautiful.”

“There’s not much beauty in losing,” Sabo huffs, nearly pouting.

“I wasn’t talking about your sword style, your grace.” Koala corrects, smiling tersely. The Duke sighs, hanging his head even lower in defeat. “Honestly you look like a troll with a club comparatively.”

“I mean it was developed with pipes, so that’s hardly surprising.” Hack interjects. Your eyes widen a bit at the implication, but you decide not to ask any questions.

Despite the teasing there’s no tension in the air and Sabo’s smiling kindly when he straightens up and gives you a small bow.

“Defeat is never sweet,” He says, looking at you and ignoring Koala. “But it was still my pleasure, Lady Lulusia, thank you for indulging me.”

“Thank you for your kindness as well, your grace.” You say in return, curtsying.

“Eh?” He tilts his head, feigning confusion, but you can see pink dusting his cheeks. He’s been caught and he’s realized the fact a second too late.

“Magic or no, you’re certainly strong enough to shatter a wooden sword.” You say evenly, shaking the tingle that was still in your fingers from blocking his blow so directly. Koala’s eyes go wide as she looks from you to Sabo. “I appreciate your restraint.”

“I may have held back my strength for the sake of the swords, my lady, but don’t doubt the skill you possess.” He insists. “I really meant to claim that second round as my win.”

“Hmm… but not the first one?” You muse.

“Ah, haha, I… am disinclined to answer that.” He says, his flustered expression taking on a more serious tone. “Excuse me, but I do have a lot of work to get done, will you be okay having breakfast by yourself?”

“Of course, your grace.” You reply with a smile. You’d been eating your meals by yourself for a while, and it would be more efficient for him to eat while he worked.

“Your understanding is appreciated.” He bows a little more deeply, before leaving with Hack close behind.

Koala looks over at you and smiles. There’s a question on that smile she’s only holding back due to etiquette, but you don’t need her to ask it.

“It was nice to be challenged, thank you.” You answer, handing over the practice swords to a guard before heading to your room with Koala beside you.

“Of course. We can spar tomorrow morning if you’d like.”

“Oh? I didn’t realize you were a swordsman, Koala.”

“More of a marksman, but I have skill enough.” She clarifies with a smile.

“It would be my pleasure then.”

“Reach out to the Kingdoms,” Sabo instructs, sitting down at his desk, inwardly sighing at the stacks of paperwork still left to review and file.

“Your grace?” Hack is rarely confused by Sabo’s requests, but he’s not sure he’s following this time.

“Yes, my father will not be happy when word of the engagement party reaches him. We need to inform the other kingdoms and invite them first.” He clarifies. “I’ll let the others know.”

“The Lady is staying then?”

“Unless she requests otherwise, Hack, yes.”

“Seems the spar was not a waste of time, my apologies.”

“It was not. For better or worse though, it means there’s much more work to do. Even if it was by father’s decree, the idea that I would be wed before Sterry is going to cause a stir, but now might be the right time to use that to our advantage.”

“Truly?”

“Mm, depending on a few other factors, yes. Germa has stabilized, and Dawn will see it’s crowned prince made King soon. Alabasta and the Queendom will support, I’m sure. My only concern is Ilisia.”

“They have Wano to consider, they won’t be able to make any hasty moves.”

“… True.” Sabo bites his lip and then shakes his head. “The statesman is still in position?”

“Yes, Inazuma is still working well with them too.”

“Good, and Karasu,” Sabo starts and after a second the man in question forms seemingly from the shadows. “Keep an eye on her for her safety.”

“Nothing more?” Karasu raises a brow.

“Nothing more.” He asserts, not looking up from his paperwork. “You’re going to be busy with Ilisia, use the energy you would have otherwise spent and just… find me some reassurance.”

“I will do my best, your grace.” He says, disappearing from sight again.

“A timeline, your grace.”

“Thre-.” Sabo pauses, setting the quill back in the ink jar and thinking. “Three months, Hack, but please speak to the Lady Lulusia. The time line considers many factors, but I would prefer her input be taken into consideration as well.”

“I shall speak with her after breakfast. Which, for you, I’ll go and fetch now.”

“Yes, thank you.” Sabo leans back in his chair after Hack leaves and closes his eyes for a moment.

The way you moved, the control of the sword. The style was certainly authentic, and your skill was no mere pretense. Three months for the engagement party, and six months for the wedding, barring any other variables. Nine months was a long time, and with your skill, it should be more than sufficient to allow you to merge magic with your sword.

Would it be enough time? And would you agree to things when the time came?

Your smile flashes across his vision, the words buzzing in his ears.

“You’re a little slower than I expected, my lord.”

He smiled. So long as your skill passed the threshold he had no doubt you would agree.

#The Dragon's Clause #sabo the revolutionary #revolutionary sabo #sabo one piece #sabo #x reader #reader insert #Fantasy AU #Royal AU #mdni

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