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easays · 1 month

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This Shawl, This Chair: Materiality and Worlds Beyond Number

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for thoughts on Worlds Beyond Number, an audio-only actual play show, and how it crafts a visceral, material experience.

For an audio of this mini-essay, please click this link. I'm new to audio recording, so please excuse the quality!

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of parental death, discussion of grief (general) Minor spoilers for episode two and seventeen

Ahead of @worldsbeyondpod Arc 3, I've been thinking about what sets this show apart from so many. Charlie Hall at Polygon recently showcased that WBN leans into Dungeons and Dragons, giving them free rein in playing the show without focus on combat because once they arrive at that combat, the system is already there. I think Hall's astute observations help articulate why WBN has retained (and grown) its Patreon (and wider audience), even though it's an audio-only, every other week podcast that takes month long breaks between arcs. None of these factors are bad, but the questions of audio versus visual, pacing, content production, and audience engagement are part of every actual play's design. It takes what we think Dungeons and Dragons can be, breaks down those assumptions, and builds something better. To me, this is best seen in how its narrative crafts masterclass materiality without using visuals or minis of any kind.

WBN taps into materiality often. Materiality is a fancy term for the physical properties of an item being considered as essential or important to the significance of the item. It's something I'm constantly aware of. The show builds its world through the hyper-individual experience of these three characters, tapping into how human experience is being woven into and through each other. The world of Umora, from its earliest moments in the show, come to us through the sensory experience of a small girl, held under cloth. The listening experience can be overwhelming at times, jetting back and forth between the interiority of the characters, the setting of Umora, and the endless material pieces mediating the interior and exterior. The cast and the sound design (thanks to Taylor Moore with additional design from Michael Gelfi studios) work in tandem to stoke the audience’s minds eye towards the embodied experience of being in a world that is simultaneously only your experience and impossibly infinite. Unsurprisingly, then, is the show's ability to tap into material in new, innovative ways, even as an entirely audio medium.

Aabria Iyengar was the first person I heard use the phrase "paint me a word-picture." Whether she originated (or not) the phrase, the kenning-ness of it sticks out to me as capturing the thrill of "theatre of the mind" actual play done at the level WBN has achieved. A word-picture gestures to both the process of creation and the creation as completed, simultaneously. Word, in this instance, is the ephemeral improvisation of the performance; picture is the scene completed. Alternately, word is the inscription of that picture, already completed in the player's minds-eye, waiting to be described. The way the phrase collapses created, waiting to be created, and being created captures perfectly how materality becomes weighted and real through the lack of visuals and minis and battlesets.

My personal affinity for materiality stems from what I've always called "Southern mausoleum decorating." Like Ame, I grew up in a home filled with dressers, beds, mattresses, couches, photos, clothes, books, and other physical items connected deeply to people and sentiment. Specifically, the winding thread between myself and various dead relatives across both sides of my family often strung itself through these objects.

I hail from Missouri and Arkansas (paternally) and the Carolinas (maternally). Growing up believing this kind of home decorating was normal fit right alongside knowing it's the humidity that gets you, not the heat. Right now, the oldest thing in my home is a 90 year-old horse hair wingback chair that belonged to my great-grandmother, then my mom, and now, me (though it's been reupholstered a half dozen times). When Suvi scavenges her favorite, slightly-threadbare shawl from Grandmother Wren's cottage in episode two, I was a bit struck because Aabria Iyengar (who plays Suvi) showed perfectly how an item, carried from home-to-home, accrues meaning rather than changing. Her word-picture in that moment contained her childhood, her present grief, her home in the Citadel, as a site incongruent to said shawl, all simultaneously. Transporting that item with her to the Citadel creates a rip in time Suvi might (or might not) access later and goes beyond the momentary solace of holding a piece of her fictive kin.

Thinking of her summer at the cottage or even to the night her parents were lost, those precious last moments of being held under a different cloth, Suvi exists in multiplicity to the audience as well as to her fellow player characters. This character depth through materiality speaks, in my view, to how WBN shakes up the expectations of a Dungeons and Dragons-based show. Combat is not trotted out to make the world or more real, and there's no mini for anything, from the shawl to the Citadel. Suvi's reality and her Citadel justification machine (a self-described mechanism on Iyengar's part) is not given to us primarily through movement speed or action economy. Rather, it reveals its self methodically: a shawl, from a cottage run by a witch, carried to Port Talon and beyond, stretched across Suvi's bed*, nestled in the heart of a Wizard of the Citadel's tower, a thread jutting through space-time, signifying to us and Suvi how many ways to be "out of place" in the Citadel. Over time, I've accumulated new furniture and items that are just mine, like Suvi does in her tower, but I constantly orbit around and to that chair. Some days, I can't sit in it for too long because the black hole of grief from losing my Mom comes hurtling up through the wood, the springs, the fabric. Others, I sit in for hours, cocooned. I wonder often what other objects in Suvi's world mock or tease or beckon or enamor her.

I poke and ponder about Suvi likely because, of all the characters, I identify with her most directly. In future, I hope to write more on Erika Ishii's striking portrayal of spirituality as communal responsibility, or Lou Wilson's tender, grief-filled approach to found family, or Brennan Lee Mulligan's portrayal of the Fox as a narrative tool. But for today, three days after what would have been my Mom's 64th birthday, I sit in my chair, writing about that shawl, forging what feels like connections to a world beyond this.

*Covering the current Witch of the World's Heart, but that's another GlassHeart post for another time.

Image description: a wingback chair, with pink fabric that has gold filigree, is centered in frame, against a tall, terracotta colored wall and abstract painting

#worlds beyond number #wbn: wwwo #wbn: www #aabria iyengar #suvirin kedberiket #Erika ishii #ame #lou wilson #eursulon #brennan lee mulligan #actual play #wbn #wbn pod

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indigoraysoflight · 6 months

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I can't believe we're still having this discussion. But here we go again. This is where I stand.

Many Carylers have shown over and over again how much we value Melissa McBride's input on the show. We've shown how much we want compelling stories and a strong explicit canon. We want strong story arcs that honour Daryl and Carol as characters.

If they're even considering going for something that doesn't guarantee any of the above then I hope they understand the seriousness of gambling with their core audience that is hanging on by a thread. Many people are a single instance of shipbaiting away from leaving forever.

If they don't follow through with what fans have been anticipating from the show, then they risk losing a huge chunk of the audience (who won't be persuaded to come back). I say this because in my short time here, I've seen people leave the fandom because they got tired. Many have taken mental health breaks (including myself) because of how taxing it can be here. A TV show with your beloved characters should bring you joy, thrill, and excitement – not endless anxiety. It's not sustainable for many and I don't blame people for choosing their mental health over a show that doesn't guarantee solidarity and expected payoff.

Giving the audience what they have been anticipating (for years) inspires them to stick around because we get a story that's worth the wait. Viewerships skyrocket, the longevity of the show is preserved, and their ride-or-die audience is retained.

As a reminder, this is the audience that will continue to invest in the franchise (through conventions, merchandise, subscriptions etc). An audience that will continue to create content (edits, fan art, podcasts, articles) not to show their criticism for the show but to praise it and provide free promo to influence more audiences to tune in.

I say that as a Caryl podcast host. The only reason @kryptoniancape and I co-started the podcast was to bring hope because we thought we were headed towards greener pastures. We wanted to share our perspectives on the ship that deserved a story that honoured them. We wanted to promote a show that was finally showing up for their audience. We've been explicitly vocal about our hopes for this show's future, just like many Carylers.

So this sounds like a no brainer to me.

This is where @kryptoniancape and I stand – every show should be about creating a compelling narrative. It's not about who gets the most control, it's about equal contribution and autonomy of everyone who is involved. Most of all it's about respecting the talent, the stories and the audience. The fact that it also guarantees audience retention is just the cherry on the top.

There is no moving forward without that (for me personally anyway).

Creating a show that is solely focusing on the "vision" of a few people is going to create a show that they want. But it won't guarantee a strong run. Prioritizing the audience they can count on, however, will keep the show running for years.

Do the right thing.

#caryl #melissa mcbride #caryl spinoff #twd caryl #do the right thing

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dnickels · 8 months

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I was listening to a very good podcast and it come me thinking about Henry V and Endeavour-- obviously Russ (may I call you Russ, Mr. Lewis?) is having a little fun with Roger Allam's wonderful performance as Falstaff, but what does it mean, to position Morse as Hal in their definitive rupture? To draw that immediate and direct comparison (I know thee not, old man)? Thursday is a killer (a murderer, if the semantics are important) and has a number of other flaws we've known since the first episode, but is he Falstaff? Thursday's not a drunk. He's not a thief. He's flirted with prioritizing his own comfort and personal wealth over his duty, but he's not a coward. A bully, maybe, on occasion, but a bully in someone else's service and operating under an ideology of 'preserving social order', which doesn't make much difference to whoever he's beating up today but its relevant for literary critique.

So when Morse rejects Thursday, what is he meant to be rejecting here? He's hardly a Prince Hal himself, outside of his problem drinking. And Morse is undeniably a moral actor and scrupulously so, but Morse of his later years is hardly a white-horse-riding rousing-speech "the mirror of all Christian kings". I could see an argument for Morse as Harry in a negative reading of Henry V, where there are questions about the justification of his war and the single-mindedness with which he pursues it, or Morse deluding himself into thinking he's ever going to win his long, endless siege at Harfleur. He did spend his thirties desperately trying to die leading various forlorn hopes, and perhaps no longer knows what to do with himself.

But looking at the denunciation in the pub compared to Hal's dismissal (and banishment!) of Falstaff more literally, there's a thread to pull apart: the prince is putting away childish things to become a man, to finally clean his act up and take up the mantle of duty he's spent the play dodging. It's ludicrous to say Morse has been thus far neglecting his duties, but here I think we see the apotheosis of the cranky old man: rejecting Thursday, no longer looking the other way on his little (and big) peccadilloes, means closing his heart to everything the Thursdays plural-- Fred, Win, Joan, and Ringo-- brought back into his life after his breakdowns and directionless drifting. He's going to take up the sword. Hal ascends to Harry, but Morse seals his own fate. He'll make Inspector, but at what cost? If he starts to believe that Fred was his Falstaff, leading him astray, he'll lose that fragile ability to trust, to be open, to make a connection that lasts.

What infinite heart’s ease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?

Long story short: Watch My Show

#morsewatch #you are lucky I didn't start web weaving here #oooohhhh out of context....#God Save Thee My Sweet Boy!!!!!

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bookgeekgrrl · 20 days

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My media this week (31 Mar-6 Apr 2024)

lady constance is a seven foot tall badger and knows acab

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

pretty much nothing! It was a rough reading week! The first part of the week I was fairly consumed with the D20 I was watching & not reading much. Then I spent FIVE DAYS reading a little over half of a 258K fic before finally accepting that though it was pretty well written and not bad, I just wasn't into it and the thought of fighting thru another 120K was appalling, so I bailed.

and I did read about 20K of shorter stuff but nothing I want to shout out so.

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

This Is Going To Hurt - s1, e1

QI - series S, ep 10-12

Death In Paradise - s11, e2-3

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Stabber of the Evening" (s9, e4)

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Eye of the Storm" (s9, e5)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Busted" (s9, e6)

D20: Mice & Murder - " I've Been Here the Whole Time" (s9, e7)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Outfoxed" (s9, e8)

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Belly of the Beast" (s9, e9)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Unfinished Business" (s9, e10)

D20: Adventuring Party - s4, e4-10 [Mice & Murder]

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Infernal Conflict" (s21, e13)

D20: Adventuring Party - "All Pulp, No Juice" (s16, e13)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

What Next: TBD - The Psychological Toll of Mars

Working - How a Magician Designs Original, Mind-Blowing Tricks

Hit Parade - The Bridge: Like a Revamped Stone

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #7: Kahuna

WikiHole - Greek Easter (with Ellie Kemper, Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson!)

Welcome to Night Vale #245 - Fridge-worthy

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep7 "Kahuna"

Today, Explained - Making taxes less taxing

I Said No Gifts! - Tig Notaro Disobeys Bridger

⭐ Switched on Pop - Cowboy Carter: This Ain't Country

Consider This from NPR - Measuring The Economic Impact Of Baltimore's Port Closure

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter

⭐ Vibe Check - This Ain't Texas, This Is Vibe Check

Better Offline - Wikipedia Is All The Web Has Left ft. Molly White

Wiser Than Me - Julia Gets Wise with Bonnie Raitt

Short Wave - How To Make The Most Of Next Week's Solar Eclipse

Ologies with Alie Ward - Heliology (THE SUN/ECLIPSES) with India Jackson and Michael Kirk

99% Invisible #576 - Chambre de Bonne

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #8: The Catch

Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Untranslatable Words

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Ripley

Song Exploder - Shania Twain - You're Still The One

Off Menu - Ep 238: Katy Wix

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep8 "The Catch"

Choice Words - Live in Fear or Love? (with Karamo)

What Next: TBD - Truth Social’s Rocky Week

Short Wave - The "Barcodes" Powering These Tiny Songbirds' Memories May Also Help Human Memory

⭐ Pop Culture Happy Hour - Monkey Man And What's Making Us Happy

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Nevada Week: The Martin

Endless Thread - Nerd Fight

Strong Songs - "The Way" by Meshell Ndegeocello

Today, Explained - The Sephora kids

It's Been a Minute - Is DEI a slur now? Plus, control & basketball

Radiolab - The Moon Itself

Choice Words - Choices We Made: Stay Silent or Sue the Cops? (with Eric André)

Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! - Chris Pine

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #9: The King of Cups

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep9 "The King of Cups"

Under the Influence - Cheeky Advertising

In Defense of Fandom - Season 2 Episode 1: What makes a TV ending?

Dinner’s on Me - Kristen Bell

Dinner’s on Me - Dax Shepard

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Louis Jordan

Ozzy Osbourne

Meshell Ndegeocello

Cowboys + Queens

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stars-by-the-pocketfuls · 3 months

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Agggtm microfic, 711 words, pip x ravi

As good as dead spoilers

But it’s been six hundred and 97 days of our love blackout

Three minutes.

It had taken him three minutes to press send.

Haunting the news channels on TV had become one of his favourite pastimes. A cure to his endless rereading of her messages. He could hear her voice in his head, the slightly sarcastic tone with the syllables bumping together in a rush to escape, unless she was doing a carefully articulated interview of course. The way her eyebrows would pinch together slightly at his out of context song lyrics he would randomly send her, and then her face would twitch with a badly concealed smile followed with an eye roll. He should have protested harder, done something more than stare at her in helpless horror. But the shock of her plan had wiped his heartbeat silent, replaced with the bassline of her reasons.

Under duress.

He wasn't scared of her, any idiot living in Little Kilton would have seen through that lie in an instant. No, Ravi was scared of losing her. He had forgotten how hard it was to lose someone you loved, the way it tore you open and refused to heal. Some days it was easier to ignore the gaping hole in his heart. The empty space on the sofa next to him, devoid of any Pips with miss-matched socks and half filled notebooks. The hairbrush that had somehow found its way under his bed, the brown hair still entwined, like his thoughts, tangled with memories of a girl who he wished would be easier to forget. He still had her headphones. The sticker had faded slightly, the red into a pale patchy pink. It was the only item not gathering dust in his neglected room, he used them religiously, sometimes just sitting in the empty silence with them slung over his head.

But despite the desperation to search up the case, search up her podcast and that stupidly brilliant girl, he couldn't. Couldn't risk everything he had suffered so far, couldn't risk her. He knew that if she ever got arrested he would hand himself in, no hesitation. They were a package deal. Team Pip and Ravi. She would've killed him, cursed his stupidity but he would have done it. Yet it was the shattered look in her eyes that had made him comply. If she wanted him to cease contact he would do it. For her. Just to see that relief balance on her conscience, to help her see she had done all she could.

And then the headlines had flashed up, and finally, finally, his head had broken the surface of the water and he could breathe again.

His thumb had found her contact with the familiarity of replaying a childhood game. And suddenly he didn't know what to say. What was one supposed to do in this instant? Congratulations on getting away with murder, it's been 697 days, yes I've been counting, can we please talk again?

His fingers ghosted the keyboard, what if she had moved on? Left him behind in this messed up neighbourhood. He knew he should've moved out, after everything, but he was clinging on to the last threads he had tying him to Sal. And Pip. She had left, but her mark on the town hadn't, and everything had changed. He despised the way tourists would flock, with their cameras and loud gasps. The way high-end companies tried to paint over the scars, dramatise them into bloodcurdling tales. They would never experience the pure fear of racing against time to save someone. Why couldn't they see this wasn't a horror story, it was people's lives? But whispers and secrets still crowded every shadow. If there weren't any mysteries people would create them. And rumours had slipped between the cracks murder had left behind. So perhaps, in the end nothing had changed. He certainly hadn't. But what if she had? What if he was nothing but an accomplice of her past?

But a flash of her murky green eyes had dissolved his doubts. He glanced at the doorway as if by some miracle she would appear with a squinting smile and messy hair. The hallway remained dark.

It had been three minutes already.

Take the risk, the Pip in his head urged. So he did.

Hey Sarge, remember me?

#a good girls guide to murder #as good as dead #pippa fitz amobi #ravi singh #ravishing

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impossiblescissorspeachpaper · 2 years

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Mixtape

Elain Week Day Four: romance

Obviously I ship our flower girl with Azriel, so here’s another installment of my secret dating modern AU. Enjoy!

Fluff. Modern AU.

Elain sat with her face tipped up toward the sun, her bare feet resting on the front dash in Azriel’s car. The sunroof was open, and the windows were all rolled down, taking full advantage of the balmy, late summer afternoon as they cruised along the empty winding road along the coast.

The sun was warming her tanned skin and the wind was whipping her hair all around. She just closed her eyes and enjoyed the moment, getting lost in the rumble of the car and the warm sun on her exposed arms and legs. As her wandering thoughts brought her back to earth, Azriel’s true crime podcast broke through her bubble of bliss, causing a truly dignified snort to escape her. Glancing over at her boyfriend, she saw his eyes fixed on the road behind his Wayfarers as he listened intently to Episode 200: The Zodiac Killer (Part 3).

Elain held out her hand across the centre console, palm up, and Azriel’s eyes whipped over her face before focusing back onto the winding road. He smiled before threading his fingers with hers, clasping her small hand securely in his.

A laugh escaped her lips.

“As nice as that is, Az, I was after your phone.”

“Oh, I know,” his lips tugged up at the corners causing the dimple in his cheek to pop. Damn he was beautiful. “But this is a really good episode.”

“Azzz,” she half-heartedly groaned. “It’s too nice a day to be listening to murder mysteries! I swear you were a spy in another life.”

“I could’ve caught him,” Azriel huffed, having lamented the same statement many times before with every unsolved case he had made her listen to. She didn’t mind the podcast usually, but the morbid details of mass murders really did hinder the bright mood.

“Of course you could have,” she placated, holding out her palm again.

Fishing his phone out of the front pocket of his jeans, he handed it to her after holding it in front of his face to unlock the screen. “Fine, pick whatever you like.”

Swiping through his apps, she found Spotify and started scrolling through his music. Unsure of what exactly she wanted to listen to, Elain just knew that the vibes of the narrators monotonous voice on the podcast was not it.

As she scrolled through lists and lists of songs, something made her halt, her thumb pausing over the illuminated screen. There, amongst Azriel’s endless archive of songs, was a playlist simply named Elain.

Sliding her eyes in his direction, she noticed he was still focused on the open road, so she clicked into it, hoping she wasn’t violating his privacy in doing so. After all, it was named after her. She hoped.

Clicking on Elain, the playlist that revealed itself turned out to be a collection of songs far longer than she had expected. Azriel was known to listen to a wide range of music, his taste ranging from alternative rock to deep house, Latin pop to old school hip-hop, even classical scores when the mood struck. And what she saw on the little screen was an eclectic compilation of all the above.

Falling For You- Alex Harris… Forever To Go- Chase Rice… My Universe- Coldplay… At My Worst- Pink Sweat$... I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing- Aerosmith… There You Are- Zayn… Heaven- Bryan Adams… Clair De Lune- Debussy… Somebody Else- The 1975…

On and on it went; love songs, make out songs, songs about pining, songs about summer flings, about matches despite imperfection, about yearning and belonging and lust.

Young & Beautiful- Lana Del Ray. She smiled softly at the phone screen. She sang this whilst cleaning her loft every Sunday. For whatever reason, her Sunday cleaning sessions felt a lot less like work when Lana was involved.

Petite Fleur- Jill Barber. She hummed along to this when she stress baked, needing to get her fingers into dough after a long day of studying or when the restaurant had been particularly hectic.

Linger- The Cranberries. He’d twirled her around his apartment to this song only a few weeks ago, after he’d shared the many stories that haunted him from his childhood. The story of how he’d received the scars on his hands. She’d kissed them and told him they were beautiful, just like every other scar that was flecked across his skin.

Team- Lorde. A laugh bubbled from her lips. This song had been playing the first time he’d kissed her, right here in his car after they’d gone on their first date. They’d been making out passionately, parked outside of her apartment building before her cranky neighbour Mrs. Morris had walked by with her elderly dog Ernie and had tsked loudly at their exuberance.

On and on it went; track after track that told the story of them, through Azriel’s eyes. A soundtrack just for them, carefully curated by him.

She gaped at the screen. He’d put together an Elain playlist. Her boyfriend had an Elain playlist. No one had ever done such a thing for her, and she found herself falling a little harder for him. Her insides were melting, and she knew if he happened to glance in her direction in this moment, he would have seen the goofiest grin spread across her face.

She desperately wanted to ask him about it, but she’d let him have it to himself for now. She wouldn’t confront her big scary boyfriend about the cute playlist he’d made for his flower loving girlfriend. It was sweet enough knowing it existed.

Tapping her fingers across the screen, she couldn’t help but think Spotify playlists were just todays answer to the mixtape. She giggled again. He’d be mortified to learn he was the Cliff to her Torrance.

Exiting out of the playlist, she scrolled down to Classic Rock and hit shuffle. As the opening bars of Sweet Child O’ Mine rang out from his speakers, she heard him mutter a quiet fuck yeah. Turning the volume up and reaching over the console to lace his fingers with hers once more, he brought her hand up to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of her palm.

With their intertwined hands coming to rest on her thigh, Elain settled into the passenger seat. She sighed contentedly, wondering how the hell she’d scored such secretly romantic, secret boyfriend.

*******

@elainarcheronweek

tagging: @offtorivendell @fawnandshadows @the-laughing-bubble @swankii-art-teacher @pagemasters @tswaney17 @sakurakittypeach @thefangirlofhp @wingedblooms

#elainarcheronweek2022 #day four: romance #elain archeron #t writes #secret dating modern au #azriel #elriel #acotar #elain x azriel #elriel fanfiction #elriel fic #mixtape #azriel shadowsinger #elain #elriel fluff

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bending-sickle · 8 months

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We Walk Into A Bar

so there's this post which talks about the earliest known example of a bar joke ("x walks into a bar and...") which no one knows or understands the punch line of, if it even has one, since it's a proverb.

it is followed up by selected screencaps of a (now deleted) thread wherein someone claims to have deciphered it all (with - also deleted - linguistic receipts) and figured out the pun.

with me so far?

okay let's go down a rabbit hole.

How We Found Out: https://www.tumblr.com/bending-sickle/723007901258711040

We Know Nothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_joke

“[Assyriologist Dr. Seraina] Nett suggests that the punchline could be a pun that is incomprehensible to modern readers, or a reference to some figure who was well known at the time but similarly unfamiliar to us today. Gonzalo Rubio, another Assyriologist, cautions that this ambiguity ultimately means it is simply not possible to definitely categorize the proverb as a joke, though he and other scholars like Nett do point to the recurring use of innuendo in such proverbs as indicating that many were indeed intended to be humorous.”

We Know Nothing, Part 2: Podcast Boogaloo

“What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.” Endless Thread podcast, August 5, 2022 https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one

Hosts: Amory Siverston & Ben Brock Johnson

Guests:

Dr. Seriana Nett (Assyriologist and researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University, Sweden)

Dr. Gonzalo Rubio (Assyriologist and Associate Professor of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA)

Dr. Philip Jones (Associate Curator and Keeper of Collections of the Babylonian section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, a.k.a. the Penn Museum, USA).

Excerpts:

Amory: Seraina Nett works at Uppsala University in Sweden, where she studies ancient Mesopotamia, including a region called Sumer and its language Sumerian. She spends a lot of time translating Sumerian, looking for clues about early human development.

[…]

Ben: Seraina was one of several thousands of people who happened upon this joke in March on Reddit and initially on Twitter.

Amory: That’s where the account @DepthsOfWiki posted a screenshot from an unlinked, unnamed Wikipedia page. It reads like this: “One of the earliest examples of bar jokes is Sumerian, and it features a dog.”

[…]

Amory: The humor of the dog-in-a-bar joke was probably related to those Sumerian ways of life, perhaps the middle class or well-off, people with downtime and drinking shekels.

Ben: But while some experts know some things about Sumer, the nuances have been lost, and it’s the nuances that bring jokes to life.

[…]

Seraina: It could have been a pun that we don’t understand. It could have been a reference, I don’t know, to a local politician or some famous figure. So it’s very hard for us to tell.

[…]

Seraina: This proverb is in no way special. It’s part of a larger collection of many, many, many proverbs.

Amory: The bar joke — or proverb — is Number 5.77 in a collection of hundreds of other proverbs about dogs, donkeys, husbands. Some read like sayings. Others like weird short stories. But jokes? Depends on how you see things. Like this other proverb Gonzalo told us:

Gonzalo: It’s something like, “Behold! Watch out! Something that has never occurred since time immemorial; the young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

Ben: Sorry, I’m going to be really dumb for a second.

Amory: I am too because this is—

Ben: I’m not sure I get the joke. Is the joke that the woman would never admit that she farted in her husband’s lap? Or is the joke that the woman always farts in her husband’s lap? And that’s the joke, that we’re suggesting that it’s never happened before.

Gonzalo: I think the joke is precisely the latter. The joke is that it is expected to happen. To set up the joke by saying, “Watch out, this is something that has never happened, not once.” And then the sentence is, well, “The young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

[…]

Seraina: There’s quite a lot of innuendo — things like sexuality or, I don’t know, excrement. For example, one of my favorite ones is, “A bull with diarrhea leaves a long trail.”

[…]

Gonzalo: The word for tavern, “ec-dam,” for us, it conveys the idea of a pub or a bar. But really, in ancient Mesopotamia, a tavern is also a place where sex trade takes place. So it’s a tavern, but you could also translate it as a brothel.

[…]

Seraina: It could have been the dog walks into the bar with his eyes closed; “Let me open this,” as in the eyes. Or open, I don’t know, a door. There is also a word that sounds very similar to one of the words that is a word for female genitalia.

[…]

Ben: There’s another complication, though, because it still doesn’t make sense. Or, at least, we’re not laughing. Plus, the translations are too loose and feel kind of unreliable. We mentioned this to Seraina, who dropped one more tantalizing clue about the clay tablet — or tablets that hold our proverb.

Seraina: So this particular proverb is attested on two different versions of the text. And actually, they’re not identical. So, already, somebody screwed up. One of them is also a little bit broken, so it’s hard to tell.

Amory: This thing that everyone’s struggling to understand: No fricken wonder! Because there are two copies. They’re actually both broken, and they don’t match.

[…]

Ben: These two ancient tablets, he tells us, were etched around 1700 B.C.E. At first, this means nothing to us, really, but Phil explains. By that time, Sumer had actually been overtaken by the Babylonian empire. The culture was pretty similar, except that the Sumerian language had already died out.

Amory: Kids at the time spoke Babylonian, also called Akkadian. Only scribes continued to learn Sumerian. It was considered more dignified — kind of like learning Latin today. Knowing this, it seems now even more likely to us that there are mistakes in the text. For instance:

[…]

Ben: Ignoring the random non-Sumerian word, the dog enters the taverny brothel or brothely tavern. He can’t see a thing. He opens this one. Only, Phil says the word “open” is very similar to the word for “close.”

Phil: I mean, not in this case. I think it obviously means to—. Well? It obviously means to open in this case because they do spell—

Amory: Are you sure?

Ben: Yeah, you sound unsure.

Phil: I think I’m fairly sure because normally, if they mean “to close,” they’ve ended up using a different spelling than this one.

[…]

Amory: But he [Phil] adds that everyone’s missing some very important context about the dog.

Phil: The dog is a specific character type. It’s a guard dog whose job is to keep the wolves from the sheep. And in the proverbs, you know, it’s operating on the basis that it’s a personality type that is fairly brutal and not really to be messed with.

Ben: Interesting. That puts like a whole ‘nother layer on this thing because I feel like I wasn’t making any assumptions about the dog other than its general doggyness.

[…]

Phil: I think usually in proverbs, when they say “this,” it refers to something you’ve already heard in the proverb, not to something new. So I think the idea that he’s opening rooms and revealing, you know, couples in flagrante doesn’t quite go with how I would see the word “this” functioning. So I did wonder whether this is more the idea that letting the guard in negates his use because, basically, he wants to see out, he’s going to open the door, and so everybody else outside the tavern can now see in. I mean, I think that’s a legitimate way of looking at it.

Ben: Phil covers the old clay. We wistfully shuffle out. And, at this moment, we buy his theory. A brothel’s guard dog is sitting outside the door under the bright Sumerian sun. He’s scaring away unwelcome Peeping Toms. But then he leaves his post.

Amory: He goes inside, and his eyes aren’t used to the dark, so he can’t see anything. He opens the front door again, propping it to let in a little light. Now, outside, all those Toms are looking in, seeing their politicians and neighbors in flagrante, as Phil said. The guard dog messed up. Get it?

Reddit Redux: User serainan (Seraina Nett) To The Rescue

1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tbgetc/this_bar_joke_from_ancient_sumer_has_been_making/

"We usually translate the word esh-dam as 'tavern'. Yes, they are associated with prostitution, but it is not primarily a brothel. There is eating and drinking and sex. So, the joke could be sexual, but doesn't necessarily have to be.

The verb ngal2--taka4 in its basic meaning means 'to open' without any sexual connotation. However, there's a noun gal4-la that sounds similar and means 'vulva', so there could be some double-entendre there...

Essentially, the interpretation of the proverb depends on the demonstrative 'ne-en' 'this' and what it refers to – grammatically, I'd agree with you and say it seems to refer to the eye, but there's really no way of knowing for sure.

The problem with jokes is really that they are so culture-specific. Maybe this joke makes fun of a local politician or it is using a very crude word that is not otherwise attested in our sources (written texts, particularly in ancient cultures, of course only cover a limited part of the vocabulary).

Bottom line: We don't get the joke! ;) ”

The Unknown and Deleted: A Story in Four Sources

1 - https://twitter.com/lmrwanda/status/1505648702119202823?t=IHkQWeElTa0T63o3lbr12Q&s=19

2 - https://twitter.com/lmrwanda/status/1505646738627088389?t=06aHTTZkf1ZaJyCDhWUzTg&s=19

3 - https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/subversive-walex-kaschuta-1979505/episodes/lin-manuel-rwanda-the-twilight-158022618

4 - http://im1776.com/author/lin-manuel

There was one person on Twitter claiming the joke was, “A friendly dog walks into a bar. His eyes do not see anything. He should open them.” Or “He should crack one open.” (1) They add “It’s a ‘man walks into a bar and hurts his head’ tier dad joke, basically. The ‘pun’ in Sumerian is centered on the fact that the verb ‘to see’ also literally means ‘open (one’s) eye’.” This was at the end of a long word-by-word translation thread (which I can’t judge the quality of, and no other experts were chiming in) dated March 20, 2022 (2). I did not save the thread and Twitter is saying the page doesn’t exist anymore, so that’s a dead end now.

I hesitate to trust this source because I can’t find any of their qualifications (are they an assyriologist? A linguist? A candlestick maker?) and other experts in the field do not seem aware of this (if true) ground-breaking cracking of the highly-debated pun. (Dr. Seraina Nett’s gave an interview five months after this thread was made, and still called the actual pun a mystery.) I could only find out that their Twitter name is “Lin-Manuel Rwanda, @lmrwanda, Epistemic trespasser” and that, according to the podcast Subversive w/ Alex Kaschuta (December 14, 2022) (3), they are “a Twitter poster” with essays on the online magazine IM-1776, where they are credited as “Lin Manuel” (4). (Their introduction in the podcast also reveals they are a British national and resident, but the host is very coy about revealing even that. Lin Manuel corrects them, adding that they are “half Rwandan”, which explains the Twitter name. I am not listening to the whole hour and a half to look for more clues.)

#hey kids wanna learn about an obscure joke #you can see why i can't put this in a fanfic footnote #and putting it in an appendix is just...insane #anyway this has been eating my brain for a while #randomness #and now you know #a dog walks into a bar #linguistics

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leiyahime · 10 months

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Tour de Fleece- day 10

Not much spinning today. My wrist tells me I need a rest which is unfair! I'm so motivated! I wanna turn my beloved spindles and draft yarn for my wheel project...

But I did a little bit. First I wanted my new baby empty. All my wheel bobbins are occupied so i couldn't instantly ply and i want to get at least one other load of green from the mermaid spindle on it before emptying it... sooo I made my first storage bobbin. At first I wanted to use a toilet paper roll and my hand mixer, but it was too fast and the thread broke... buut I absolutely did not want to wind it on manually. So I made the bobbin out of a sheet of paper wrapped it around one of my lazy kate sticks and taped it together as a roll. Then I put it on my electric screwdriver, secured it with another piece of tape and started to wind the thread on. It was a little slow as it is just a small drill so I will only use it for spindle threads and not endless bobbin threads but it worked!

And I did a little balcony spinning but not quite an hour. As i said my body demands rest... And I listened to a podcast a friend recommended. An interview with a NB author who won a few big book prizes in the German speaking area.

#fibre arts #hand spinning #spinning #tour de fleece 2023 #tour de fleece

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mollymauk-teafleak · 1 year

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it's called freefall (you can let it all go)

Sometimes you're deep in your Top Gun obsession and you also happen to be listening to a podcast reviewing House of the Dragon (which you haven't seen) and things happen and now Ice and Maverick have dragons. A huge thank you to @hangsters who continues to be my most favourite person <3

Please reblog and comment over on Ao3 if you enjoy this!

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People said a lot of dragon riders.

They said they could talk to their dragons with their minds. They said they felt pain when their mounts did, that the two of them shared one soul and the death of one would bring the death of the other. They said dark magics were performed on them at birth, to strip them of all desire, take away their human needs and the associated body parts so they could bind them inextricably to their duty. They said they were cursed, that the gods spat at their attempts to breach the heavens and pulled them down for it.

And of course they said they were mad.

Tom supposed he wasn’t doing much to dissuade them of that one at least, standing on the balcony of the Crooked Tail tower nearly every night and staring up at the sky. He’d heard serving girls and grooms whispering, though they shut up quickly when they heard the clink of the light armour he never took off. All the usual horseshit, longing for a love lost when he took up his scales, going sky blind from too much time in the air, listening for calls in the secret dragon language. Tom wondered how people told such wild myths of men who used the same bathouses as they did.

Though maybe he was mad. The thought at least crossed his mind, as he watched the sun sink into the grasp of the capital’s many towers, draining through those crooked stone and timber fingers and leaving night behind. But none of the shadowy clouds up there were shifting, none of the stars winked as something passed over them. Maverick hadn’t returned.

Tom sighed, knowing he was high enough that none of the people threading through the narrow, crowded streets below would hear him. The Crooked Tail tower might list like a drunk against a wall but it at least gave the dragonriders who lived there a bit of privacy in a very crowded city where that was hard to come by. Tom could stand here, able to stare up into the endless sky and let the noise of the rest of the world fall away, like none of it existed, inside the curtain walls of the castle or outside it. And he would, gladly, if there were not that voice missing behind him, where the other riders laughed over cards and hurled jokes back and forth.

Tom knew what he should do. He should turn around and join them, integrate himself with the men he wanted to lead some day. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure why leading them mattered to him. Those men were his brothers, the only ones he’d ever have, the only ones who had a chance of understanding him. He knew he should go and laugh with them, drink a cup of wine and work on letting himself be comfortable around them.

But Tom also knew what he was actually going to do. So maybe he was mad after all.

No one tried to stop him, not the other riders who perhaps knew more than they would admit, not the guards on the main gate as he rode past them, not the people on the street, nobles or merchants or humbler city folk. Being known for a cold unapproachable nature had some benefits to it.

The keepers at the dragon pits were even less likely to stand in his way, as Tom rode through gates designed specifically to look blackened and half melted, up to the enormous stone colosseum like structure on the highest hill in the whole city. People who worked with them every day, who cared for them in the strange way you could with something you feared so deeply, they’d never keep a rider from their mount, whatever the hour of the day.

The pits didn’t look like a place anything would enjoy living. It was dark and imposing, an undeniable dungeon so thick black stone and heavy iron chain curtains, the wall sconces kept low so the sight of flame didn’t excite any of the younger residents, projecting every movement up the high walls in shadow. It was dank too, cold water running through the walls like blood in a stone giant, ready to burst forth with a well placed hammer strike if worst should come to worst. The smells of damp and raw meat and smoke were inescapable, clinging to the stone like the layers of soot caked into the mortar. And of course, every so often, there would come a noise that could have been the earth shifting and breaking open, echoing eerily through the labyrinth so it felt like the walls were caving in,

It made for a dismal, gloomy home for any living creature. But then dragons were unlike any other living creature in the world.

Tom knew these dripping, cavernous corridors the way any other man would know the home he grew up in. Without thinking, his feet took him to the largest of the pits, the oldest, the ones built to house the dragons of old who grew to sizes where their wings could eclipse the sun over a whole city.

There was only one dragon still alive who was growing to rival them.

Tom walked through the enormous doors, familiar with their deep, low groan as tons of steel and stone cracked open enough to let him pass. They closed behind him much swifter than they’d managed to open, as if in panic. Tom understood.

It seemed as though the vast pit in front of him was full of nothing but shadow and a slow, echoing drip. But Tom smiled all the same.

“Suivon?” he kept his voice soft, knowing it would echo, knowing she would hear, “Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”

And she did. One of the shadows high above him detached, unfurled, swelled in size as it broke through the others. There was a single shaft of moonlight coming in through the grate in the ceiling and as the shadow passed, it turned to brilliant white.

As it always did, the sight widened Tom’s smile into a grin. The dragon rider all had titles of some kind, the way many traditional knights did when they gained some renown. His was The Iceman and of course people would insist it had nothing to do with his personality in the slightest, however apt it had ended up being.

And Tom could hardly challenge them on that, when he rode Suivon, The Dread Blizzard.

A tremor ran through the ground as she landed before him, a towering wall of brilliant white scale that relaxed into the form of the biggest dragon the world knew, enormous black iron claws each as long as Tom himself, tail that unfurled out and out and out, bristling, ice blue points until eventually it came to a dagger sharp point. Those jagged icicles continued up her spine as well and into a crest that looked like a crown about her craggy head, the tip of each wickedly sharp enough that they could, and had, impaled a man. Her face was spiderwebbed in brilliant blue cracks, like ice breaking to show water beneath, ones that could also be seen when she let her phenomenal wings loose. She looked like something that had pulled itself free of an icy mountainside, something wholly natural, cold and uncaring and old as the earth.

And when she brought her head down to Tom’s level, when she opened her mouth to show row upon row of shining white teeth and blackness between, he laughed.

“Don’t give me that look now. It’s hardly past your bedtime.”

Suivon made a noise that might have been a growl but was just enough of a purr, the noise trembling the loose stones on the floor. Tom smiled, stepping towards her and resting his hand on her snout, feeling the unexpected heat of her, her exhales sending a warm, wet gale blowing around him.

“I know, I know…” he soothed, his voice lost beneath her rough, admonishing purr and yet Tom never doubted she could hear him, “But it’s Maverick.”

Suivon gave a huff, the sudden gust nearly blowing him back.

Tom felt his cheeks warm, “Hush. We’re going. You owe me for those two extra sheep carcasses at dinner today.”

He ignored her irritated grumble, resting his forehead on her warm scales for a second before moving to climb onto her back, like scaling a steep hill that breathed. He slid his lobstered gauntlets into the locks on the harness, settling comfortably into the crouched stance between her wing joints that he’d been practising and perfecting since he was a child.

“Come on,” he inhaled deeply, matching his breathing to the beast already stretching and shifting eagerly despite her minor tantrum, “Let’s go drag him home…”

He dug his heels in and Suivon responded, their bond had long grown past the verbal commands. She extended her neck fully and exhaled three short bursts of flame that gouted up the throat of the pit and through the grate at the top. The signal to open. Within moments, Tom heard the creaking of that massive metal grinding to one side, some keeper having seen their command. Suivon gave a chirp and began skittering up the walls towards the moon. When she was right at the mouth, she leapt, wings snapping open with a sound like the sails of a warship, carrying them effortlessly into the air.

The lights and smoke and noise of the city fell away so quickly as they escaped up into the night. Like always, Tom couldn’t help but feel the weights he carried were left behind too, the frustrating wall between himself and everyone else, the pressure to be the perfect knight and the perfect dragon rider, the need to look as though he’d stepped straight out of a tale of heroism and chivalry so no one looked any closer. He never felt like The Iceman when he was on Suivon’s back and racing the moon across the sky. He wasn’t sure he even felt like Tom. Things like that just stopped mattering and he simply felt like someone who could breathe.

He pulled Suivon gently into a slow, mid air roll, wings tucked tight then snapping out, propelling them low across the sea the capital city was backed by. The air currents stirred by the roiling, inky waves buoyed them easily like a sea of its own kind, Suivon only beating her wings because she liked to feel the salt spray on them. She even dipped down enough to let one of her dagger-like claws cut through the water, rising and falling with the swell of the waves as they grew tall as houses that collapsed down into deep valleys, following this restless horizon closely. Tom laughed, the spray harsh on his face, enough to sting, but in a way that woke his nerves up and made his heart beat faster. He gave Suivon her head, letting her duck and roll and chase the waves, never once trying to pull her up into safer air. They didn’t ride the dragons for safety.

And besides, they both knew where they were going.

There were a myriad of rocky islands scattered throughout the sea, the frayed edge of the continent. Most were small enough for a gull or two to make their home, some even smaller, only a handful were large enough to support caves, spires, colonies of seals. But only the sailors and the dragon riders knew that further out they grew bigger, large enough to be bolt holes for pirates and smugglers, places to swim for if you were shipwrecked or if you didn’t want to be found.

So it was these Tom steered Suivon towards, not that she needed much direction. This was a route they were familiar with.

The largest of these islands was surprisingly empty of any sailors, legal or illegal, mostly because it was hard to reach. The water around it was famous for riptides and snags and other invisible dangers, hidden rocks that were actually the spires of sunken islands, ready to rip out the belly of passing ships, and of course there was a ghost or two if you believed the tales. So it was useless to the pirates but perfect for a dragon rider who was staying out past curfew.

Or two dragon riders who just wanted to get out of the city.

Suivon glided easily over those waters that would prove deadly to any ship, circling the island a few times as she drew lower. But, almost instantly, she wasn’t the only thing in the air. With a loud, raspy cry, another dragon leapt from the rocks and joined her, to neither Suivon or Tom’s surprise.

Udrayatis was Suivon’s opposite in every way. Inky black instead of bright white, small and lightning quick instead of formidable, always chittering and squawking instead of the stony silence. When she took to the air, she immediately began flying about the larger dragon’s face, turning like an acrobat in a mummer’s show, rolling and showing off. Tom immediately felt Suivon stiffen with haughty disapproval, forcing him to hold back a laugh.

Though they were opposites, the dragons had one thing in common. Their names suited them well. Suivon was the Old Tongue word for ice, Tom having been apparently struck by a chronic lack of imagination when a snow white, unusually large dragonling had broken free of the egg he’d chosen as a boy. While Udrayatis, born a little twisted and so small it was feared she wouldn’t survive, her name had come after her rider disappeared into books for days, thinking on it for longer than he’d ever given any decision. Tom could still remember the delighted grin on Pete’s young face as he’d told him the word meant rule breaker. And, sure enough, she kept to that name, stubbornly surviving and growing to take a rider when it had seemed impossible.

Tom rolled his eyes and squeezed his heels, urging Suivon down before she decided to take a snap at the other dragon. With a growl and a gout of smoke from her nostrils, she obeyed, though not before not so accidentally letting her tail whip at Udrayatis and sending the black dragon tumbling and shrieking.

“That wasn’t nice,” Tom admonished gently, as his mount settled on the rocky outcrop at the edge of the island.

Suivon grumbled, narrowing her eyes at Udrayatis and apparently not caring whether it was nice or not. Though, as he always had, Tom suspected her dislike was a little feigned, an act that was wearing slightly thin as the two dragons grew up together.

And he had to say he empathised with her.

Tom unlocked his gauntlets and slid gracefully down Suivon’s mighty back, sighing down at the young man now stood grinning up at him with a smile. Ink black hair instead of light blonde. Small and lightning quick rather than tall and broad. Mouth endlessly running, even when it shouldn’t rather than taciturn and distant. Constantly forgetting his duty rather than being unable to let go of it.

In some ways, dragon riders were supposed to forget any life they could have had before they entered the order. The titles helped with that, distancing them from the names they were given, from anyone who might have cared for them before they took to the air, from any other path they might have taken. And no rider clung to their title more fiercely, lived it more fully, than The Maverick.

How a man could look so dangerous while standing there in nothing but trousers and an unlaced shirt billowing in the wind, Tom didn’t know.

“You were supposed to be back at the tower by now,” he called down, trying to keep some tone of a future commander in his voice.

Maverick laughed, his smile not dimming even slightly, “I could say the same to you, Ice!”

Tom tilted his head, “And I assume there’s no way to convince you to come back with me?”

“Well why would I want to go back now?” he grinned wider. He couldn’t see from this height but Tom knew there were creases around those dark, playful eyes, “You’re here!”

Tom also knew that Maverick shouldn’t be able to see the way his ears reddened at the tips. But he had a feeling he knew regardless.

His resolve was clinging by a thread by the time he climbed down the rock, “I don’t know how we’re going to explain this…”

Mav was perched, cross legged, on a boulder by then, happy to lounge as Tom descended a few feet of wet rock, “Giving the girls some air. Scouting to the east. Extra patrols. Gods know we need them with the corsairs massing on the coast. I’m sure you’ll think of something to tell them, Iceman.”

“I can’t tell them that every night, can I?” Tom prickled a little at the use of his title. Whenever Maverick said it, it always seemed as though he was poking fun, like he knew how poor it fit him, “They will start to suspect something, even more than they already do.”

“Well…” Maverick’s eyes danced with a light that wasn’t there, a light he seemed to conjure up all by himself, “We don’t need to steal away every night, I suppose…”

Tom had reached him by that point and without another word he pulled the smaller rider into his arms, crushing him into a kiss fierce with need, longing and no small amount of desire to just shut Maverick up for a moment. He responded instantly, wiry strong arms wrapping around his shoulders, triumph and challenge on his lips.

“That’s not happening,” Tom murmured, voice rough with how long he’d made himself go without air.

“Thought as much,” Maverick grinned, dragging him back in.

The first time they’d kissed, nearly a year ago now, Tom had only felt fear, panic, the sense of falling like he’d slipped off Suivon’s back too far from the ground. All he could think of was what would happen if they were caught, the shame, the inevitable execution for breaking their oaths and with another man, no less. Condemnation from men and gods alike.

But he’d done it again. Because even that was better than going another day with that need burning inside him.

That feeling, that voice, it had grown quieter each time, Tom had gotten better at recognising that it wasn’t his own. Of course there were still the nights where it found him again, usually when he was alone in his cell and trying to fall asleep, when Suivon was far from him and Maverick was too damn close. Though it had shifted, it was no longer they’ll all see you, they’ll all know. It was they’ll take him from you and they’ll kill him.

But it all felt far away right now, lost in the roar in his ears that might have been the crashing waves and might have been the blood rushing through him. He kissed Maverick harder, hands coming up to hold his face.

“Easy,” Maverick laughed into his mouth, shuddering a little at the touch of the cold steel, “You’ll leave marks…”

Tom withdrew his hands, sighing as he began to shed his black iron armour, “Well, look at you, out here in your shirtsleeves. I’ve told you, Maverick, if you fall-”

“I’ll be killed and there’ll be nothing a tonne of steel can do to change it,” he stole the end of his sentence, helping him unbuckle his breastplate, “Udrayatis hates the weight anyway, it slows her down.”

Tom would remind his fellow rider that his dragon was no longer the sickly, struggling thing he’d nursed so diligently, so much that Tom had found him asleep in the pit’s nursery more than once. He would point out that risking a broken neck at lower heights for the sake of having the fastest dragon in the sky was idiocy. But he knew Maverick too well to do either of those things.

So he just kissed him again, pressing close into the other man’s warmth as layers of steel fell away to let the cold air in. With the speed and skill of the best of squires, he had him down to his linens and quickly drew him over to the cave mouth they’d made use of since they started whatever this arrangement was. The moment they took that first step away, Suivon began to growl, like those handful of inches more were simply unacceptable.

Maverick gave a coy smile and drew away from the other man’s lips reluctantly, “She still doesn’t like me, does she?”

Tom sighed, “She’s just protective…” He glanced back, trying not to think about how his dragon saw Maverick as something she needed to protect him from.

Suivon was still on her rocky perch, staying where she’d been told to stay, obedient as ever but doing it with very little grace, eyes narrowed and horns raised and teeth bared. Tom squeezed Maverick’s arm and walked back to her a little ways, standing firm.

“It’s fine,” he called into the wind, putting the edge of command in his voice, “Go fly, go hunt. I’m safe.”

Suivon shivered unhappily, eyeing Udrayatis disdainfully as she cartwheeled up above, snapping at gulls. With a hard rush of smoke from her nostrils that made plain what she thought of his command, she took to the air, out over the sea on a few beats of her heavy wings. Undeterred, Udrayathis gave a loud shriek of delight and shot after her like a black bolt from a crossbow, apparently eager to show her the gull she’d snagged on her onyx teeth. The dark shadow chased the white across the rising and crumbling waves until they disappeared amidst the swell.

“You know,” Maverick observed lightly, running fingers through his hair to sweep away the sea spray gathering in it, “We raise our dragons from eggs. We take care of them, we feed them and we teach them to fly. And yet somehow, Suivon sees herself as your mother.”

Ice shouldered him gently, rolling his eyes, “Let’s not think on that too deeply…not when there are much better things to do…”

He took the initiative then, catching the smaller man’s hand and drawing him in smoothly like they were at a court dance, other hand alighting on his waist. His kiss interrupted a purr of delight from Maverick, who bent into his embrace willingly. The wind had long since pulled Maverick’s shirt from his belt and Tom took advantage, sliding his hand up and under, against skin that shivered too his touch.

“You’re freezing,” he murmured in the desperate snatch of air between one kiss and the next.

“Getting less so…” Maverick smirked, taking the chance to nip at his lip, “But I take your point.”

He drew him towards the nearest cave mouth, a place that looked yawning and uninviting, all black stone, stalactites and stalagmites like rows of spiny teeth. But it was familiar to them, even when the rocky mouth swallowed them and left the moon behind, he still knew where to step in the gloom. They went further down the gullet until the wind and rain grew quiet, replaced with rhythmic dripping from a ceiling closer than was comfortable, soft trickling from hidden rivers that had never seen the sun. The walls shrank around them, forcing Tom to bend. Just at the point when the tightness became unbearable, when apprehension would tip over into fear and panic, there came that breath of air, a current in the stillness. Tom squeezed Maverick’s hand and let himself be pulled forward, having to crawl for a moment though he never let go, until they came to a vast, sudden emptiness and a strange light.

It took a moment for Tom’s eyes and mind to adjust, it always had. To let himself believe he actually was seeing what he thought he was seeing, to accept the impossible scene. The moss or fungus or whatever it was that grew along the walls of their hidden cave held its own, eerie light, a dim green that carpeted the floor and crawled up the walls, making it look and feel like they’d crossed some veil into a different world. And it wasn’t just the walls, the pool that steamed with impossible heat towards the back of the cave, somehow warm as a man’s blood, was alive with light too. It was a cool blueness that would shift and swirl when they put a hand in it, like motes of light were suspended in the otherwise inky waters. Maverick had sworn that he’d seen fish in there that also shone, eel things that moved like lightning across the sky, though Tom would wait until he saw them with his own eyes to truly believe that.

Tom inhaled, letting himself sink into the cool, damp, fresh scent of the place while Maverick went off to strike flint against the obsidian walls and light some of the candles they’d smuggled down here when they realised this was a place they’d visit frequently. They’d brought other comforts too, some blankets Tom neatly draped on stalagmites to keep them out of the damp, a few bottles of summer wine from the city markets, a smaller bottle of oil purchased much more secretively from a brothel on the Street of Silk. There were even some books, piled up safely away from the water, Tom insisting that it was hard to concentrate back in the Crooked Tail tower with the snoring of their fellow riders.

Altogether, it made this dim and dripping cave more of a home than either of them had ever known. It meant Tom was smiling as the warm candlelight spread, even though he knew it would be hard to explain their absence, even though he knew the risks they were taking.

Maverick wasn’t in the mood to waste time, sweeping his shirt up over his head and beckoning him over to the pools.

“Come on,” he grinned, his smile beckoning, “You stink from the ride over…”

“Is that supposed to be seductive?” Tom laughed, undressing too, “You’d made a terrible whore, shouting that down from a balcony.”

“I’d make a fantastic whore,” Maverick feigned woundedness, kicking away his riding trousers, “Though I suppose I wouldn’t be a rich one…”

“Why is that?” Thomas eyed him, letting himself be generous with his gaze, up and down Maverick’s tight, lithely muscled body. Clinging to a dragon’s back for ten hours a day did wonderful things for a man’s form, the lot of them were as strong as any knight.

“Well, I’d only have one client, wouldn’t I?” The lightness in his voice told Tom he knew he was staring, that he was enjoying it immensely, “You.”

He bent and slid into the pool, with none of his usual reckless abandon, like even he understood it would be sacrilegious to disturb these glowing waters. Once in them, up to the waist in iridescent, shining water, he looked like something mythical, like some elf king out of a storybook. Or like some tempting trickster god, a siren ready to reach out and snag a passing sailor.

Tom was more than willing to be snagged. He finally stripped off the last of his clothing, the cold, hard rock under his feet softened slightly by the glowing lichen, the thin sheen of that oddly warm water. All of the chill from the ride and the sea melted helplessly before it, reigniting his nerves, bringing life back into his limbs.

Maverick made a chase of it, sliding back to the very edge of the pool, making Tom come after him simply because he could. Grinning, Tom hunted him down, caught him about the waist, pressing him against the far wall and pinning him under a fierce kiss.

“Gods, Ice…” Maverick breathed, his voice a tremble, a wisp of breath unlike his hands which closed tight as a trap around the taller man’s shoulders.

Tom showed no more restraint, hands slipping down to grip Maverick’s hips, his thighs, feeling that dizziness that usually only came with being miles above the ground. Kissing him was like taking flight, that same sense of freedom and danger all at once, woven together so tightly it was impossible to know one from the other. Knowing you could fall and believing you wouldn’t, letting something so much stronger and more powerful than you take hold and run wild.

Before long, Maverick’s collarbone was covered in bite marks, thankfully all well below where his armour would cover, and he was begging shamelessly, “Please, Ice…please…”

“Please what?” Tom growled against the hollow of his throat, that edge of a command in his voice again, for no other reason than to hear the words.

“Fuck me,” Maverick gasped, voice heavy with need, his nails raking thin white lines on Tom’s shoulders.

The plea worked as well as the command. Tom’s hand reached for the second of those little red glass bottles, the one they rested in a convenient divot in the cave wall just by the pool. The stuff inside was thick and filled the air with a fresh, grassy scent, cool on Tom’s fingertips, even cooler when he reached below the water and pressed it against Maverick, into the crease in his body. He jolted in response, grinding down into it hungrily with a wanton groan.

“Easy now…” Tom gasped, taking his earlobe between his teeth.

“You take so damn long,” Maverick whined, fighting to keep his hips still though he didn’t seem entirely in control of himself, “Fuck…”

“I take long so I don’t break you,” he punctuated his words by sliding his fingers in deeper, more suddenly, making Maverick kick and yelp.

Through gritted teeth, he gasped, “Who says I don’t want to be broken?”

Tom had to laugh at that, working two fingers in and out of him, feeling those strong, wiry legs wrap around his hips so he could take him deeper, “Let’s see what I can do…”

More oil in his palm, this time along his own length, already hard and hot in his hand. He rose out of the water a little to slick himself and Maverick groaned at the sight of it, as though they hadn’t been doing this for a year, as though they hadn’t shared a bathhouse since they were boys. As though even now, even as he knew him inside and out, better than anyone ever had, Maverick still found something beautiful in him.

“Take me,” Maverick’s voice was raw, desperate, his eyes so wide and dark that Tom felt he could pitch forward and fall into them.

He answered with a kiss, with hands tight on Maverick’s hips, lifting him enough that he could begin the slow roll and press into his body. He swallowed the high, fractured cry Maverick gave at the stretch and burn of it, pushing beyond into the closeness, the dizzyingly sweet blurring of their two selves.

“More, more, yes, fuck, oh fuck, yes-” Maverick rambled in senseless want, heels pressing into the small of Tom’s back, both body and voice willing him deeper until he just couldn’t.

So Tom moved, bracing himself on the cool rock under his feet, one hand on the slick, black wall, the other around Maverick’s back. Like the waves somewhere up there, he rocked, gentle at first but then harder at a pleading whine from his lover, a press of those heels. Growling deep in his chest, he slowly gave everything he had, every ounce of strength in his body, to Maverick, fucking into him then drawing all the way back, only to surge forward again and make him scream. Tom lost all sense of time, of place, everything in the world becoming him and Maverick and the dense, tangled forest of their joined nerves, that soaring feeling. It was like flying. It was like falling.

It came apart too soon, too suddenly. Tom broke first, hips stuttering, a low, throaty moan torn out of him as he spilled his heat deep inside Maverick. He took his lover down with him, a shriek of his name echoing off the cave walls as his release hit him hard. The landing at least was easier than a fall from dragonback, the tension unwinding and leaving the two of them panting softly, last embers burning out in each other’s arms.

“Tom…” Maverick murmured, voice weak, pressing soft, feather light kisses against his neck, “I’ve got you…it’s alright…”

Tom burrowed into his arms, feeling the broken pieces of himself rattling loose inside his chest, letting Maverick’s gentle words, the soft fingers through his hair, slowly, painstakingly, fit them back together, “Pete…”

“I know,” Maverick whispered and for a moment, Tom could believe him. If Maverick couldn’t know, if he couldn’t understand, who would?

It was a long time before he could pull himself away, let them become two separate bodies again. Maverick was still smiling, those words they weren’t allowed to say plain in his eyes as he looked at Tom.

But fuck that. There was no one else to hear them.

“I love you, Pete,” Tom murmured, resting his forehead against his lover’s.

That smile broke through, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, those creases in the corner of his eyes. “I love you too, Tom.”

They would have to leave the cave soon, they would have to whistle their dragons back to them and return to the city. They would have to take this thing they had, tuck it away, hide it in a chest and push it well out of sight.

But they could have another moment here, in their strange, safe, glowing world.

A moment was all they had.

#top gun #dragon rider au #icemav #tom kazansky #pete mitchell #iceman #maverick #tg86 #tom iceman kazansky #pete maverick mitchell

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