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#i would guess that the very high shipping cost on this one is an error
littleguymart · 2 years
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notsosilentsister · 11 months
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The Diplomat
I kinda get why one might keep the awful husband around - he's a loose cannon who gets results, an asset as much as a liability. And while Kate often disagrees with him about the means, they do seem to be on the same page regarding the ends, which does matter, after all. You do get the sense that they share certain core values. So keeping him around is a high risk, high reward strategy.
It also seems like Kate's living a bit vicariously through him - she's so very restrained (as signified for instance by the eating disorder), and in a way he's a permission mechanism, sabotaging the restraint, and at the same time a cautionary tale, justifying the restraint. Maybe he's her Jungian shadow, doing what she doesn't allow herself to do. I also kinda get how you might love someone while not at all trusting them, and that always makes for an interesting dynamic. He still has to go - I'm on episode four - at least for a while, because I ship Kate with the State secretary. Competence porn, for sure, but I'm so jaded about politics at this point that it's starting to break my suspension of disbelief. People are all so professional, focussed on the task at hand. Sure, there may be some personal vanity involved on occasion, but the show does a good job showing how seemingly frivolous things can be valid concerns when you're in the business of reputation management. (Kate acknowledges that the presidend is right to worry about looking old and weak - there's an undeniable cost to it, it's just that the cost of a show of strength would be higher in this particular case). And sure, people fuck up, but so far all the fuck ups are the sort you easily might make when you have to make quick decisions based on insufficient information, and it's often easy to see how every alternative option could have led to something disastrous just as well. It want to see some unforced errors! But unforced errors are made at one's leisure, which no one has in this show and that brings me to my main issue: pacing and stakes. Which are too fast, and too high, respectively, for my taste. I tend to prefer the sort of character study, where characters get some room to breathe (and rope to hang themselves with; for that, you gotta cut them some slack). That's what I really loved about the Americans, where the pace could ramp up to nail-biting degrees at the drop of a hat, but also linger, allow for a slow, downright torturous build-up of tension, for treacherous lulls in the action, a temptation to succumb to the lure of mundanity, the American dream in suburbia, a false sense of security. You might easily lose track of something, that would later come back to bite you in the ass, which added to the suspense, and made the sudden eruptions of violence, always simmering below the surface, seem more shocking and at the same time more inevitable, less contrived. I always kinda had to steel myself to watch the Americans and would be left reeling for a while after a lot of episodes. Well, this is more of a comedy, but the pace for me is is too constant, I guess. I'm also not sure that I buy into the central thesis as formulated by the awful husband, that the person most suited for power is the one being thrust into it by circumstances instead of actively seeking it out. It's a very popular sentiment (why your average hero first has to refuse the call), but a bit too romantic for my taste. 
I mean, obviously you'd want someone in power who sees power only as a means to an end - to protect, to promote - and not as an end in itself. But that seems less about "wanting power" vs "not wanting power" and more about what precisely one might want the power for. And personally, I do actually feel more comfortable with someone in power who does care enough about power to study it, to find out how it works and how it doesn't work in any given situation, and who can hold onto it long enough to actually implement a proper reform. Being naive about power has never helped any cause. For what it's worth, I do think that both Hal and Kate actually care very much about power in this way. But right now, they both would rather be the power behind the throne, and that's not gonna work, because someone also has to sit on it. I mean, Kate would argueably still be a power behind the throne as a VP, but one suspects that Hal's idea is more about Kate pulling the president's strings, and Hal pulling Kate's. It's a good conflict! Anyways, I would have always watched this for Kerri Russel no matter what, and would certainly watch another season as well.
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phoenixyfriend · 3 years
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The Naruto/Frozen Crossover
So I was planning on just doing an image ID thing for this post, but apparently the formatting on desktop is such a mess that it’s easier to just make a new post that’s text only. I can also like. Bulletpoint it so that it can be a little neater. All ideas were made with @firebirdeternal​‘s help, because they are the most efficient enabler I have.
Also I added some bits at the end.
Under a cut, because it’s Long As Heck.
I originally had two options: either Mid-teens Elsa and Anna being transported to ninja land sometime pre-canon and running into Haku and Zabuza... or just like. Born as a Daimyou's daughters.
Spoiler alert, we’ve got nukenin and I’m a sucker for an intrusive crossover, so transported to ninja land it is.
Suggestion from Birdie:
Mechanism for crossover: Elsa ices over a Wishing Well by accident after having Wished for someone else who understood her, Anna and her fall in and get Ice Mirror Portaled to Ninjaland, falling out of an iced over pond near a shrine that Haku recently prayed at for similar lonely child reasons?
Which I like! They don’t end up there soon enough to run into Haku, because I want a dramatic chase first, but I like it.
Obviously, Anna is forced to learn about Elsa's powers because it's the only thing keeping them safe
Or at least alive
(Elsa will do ANYTHING to keep Anna safe, and if that means she has to get her hands dirty...)
...neither of them knows Japanese, so, you know. There’s that.
I'm thinking that they end up in/near Kiri at first
And they aren't FAST ENOUGH to get away so Elsa panic-enchants a giant reindeer made of snow to run away across the suddenly-frozen ocean.
She and Anna have to ride and Elsa is probably crying the whole time.
Oh shit this is like. RIGHT after their parents die, I forgot. So that’s a thing! They are in mourning and all that fun stuff.
Point is, they use the powers for a Self Defense thing and BBY Haku is just !!! "Master can we rescue them for Ice Cousin reasons?" Zabuza: Yes, and only for those practical reasons and not because I collect endangered children like people collect pokemon cards.
I imagine that maybe they track rumors of a Yuki-onna down, or the Giant Snow Reindeer rides by and Haku’s just like Wat
The girls just tag along with Zabuza because. Like.
Do they like him? No. Do they trust him? No. Do they enjoy the fact that he considers them pathetic civilians? No.
However, Haku is Baby.
Zabuza is REALLY annoyed at them being Useless Civilian Royals “but Haku likes them so I guess they can stay.”
Age at meeting, three years pre-canon:
Zabuza - 23
Elsa - 18
Anna - 15
Haku - 12
Elsa is 90% anxiety/depression master combo BUT if Zabzua protects her then she's WILDLY dangerous so like. Whatever
Elsa's bingo book nickname options, uninspired:
Winter Witch
Winter Queen
Ice Queen
Snow Queen
Something about a Yuki-Onna maybe
She's Very Stately and kinda breakable but Winter is her Bitch
I mean like, the fact that, if protected, she can shut down the agriculture of a fucking country? That's an S-rank even if she's not that useful in a fight.
She's like. Jinchuuriki-level destruction. Generally speaking she wouldn’t. But she could.
Elsa: What the fuck is a chakra? Elsa: my snow monsters are self-sustaining. Elsa: I'm gonna build us a house.
Zabuza has NO idea how her powers work and it is INCREDIBLY frustrating but “there’s no chakra cost to keep these things going and we have shelters on demand” is too convenient to question after a while.
Haku: Delicate, deadly, incredibly fast ninja work. Elsa: I can't dodge a kunai but watch me wreck your entire country's ecosystem in under a day.
Elsa is a siege weapon.
Meanwhile, Anna is really, really into the physicality of ninja practice.
She's clumsy and she's not very good at ninja stuff, but she sure is determined!
Anna also gets on Zabuza's nerves because she keeps insisting that Haku get to be a kid.
Anna: Let's make flower crowns! Zabuza: No, he needs to train, not- Anna: FLOWER CROWNS
Consider: Haku saying Elsa-nee-sama and Anna-hime.
Or just calling Elsa “onee-sama.”
Anna is also younger than Elsa and way more Fun so she probably gets adjusted to Anna-chan or Nee-chan.
If Zabuza calls Elsa “Hime-chan” or “Elsa-hime” or, Sage forbid, “Elsa-sama/dono” then he’s VERY MUCH making fun of her and he’s probably getting his soup frozen that night.
At one point, Elsa... tries to like. Convince herself to have a crush on Zabuza or Kakashi or something until Zabuza just puts a hand on her shoulder and asks "do you even like men?" "...that's an OPTION?"
Zabuza urging her to try and ask out a Cute Kunoichi and Elsa's like.... I can't decide if she's bright red and a useless lesbian or uncomfortable and ace.
I am SO invested in the siege weapon thing.
SHE IS THE SQUISHIEST WIZARD.
It's not her fault that every single other combatant on the continent is Massively Dangerous in melee! She took a very traditional back-line build!
Enemy: Doesn't it GRATE to protect someone so pathetic, Zabuza? Zabuza: She literally froze an entire castle of enemies to death because they harmed her sister, so. No.
Most Ninjas: Sharp Knife. S-Rank Mega Ninjas: Gun. Elsa: High Yield Explosive Rocket Launcher. Literally loses fights to the Knife People, because she can't bring her power to bear on that scale. But if you can give her Time and Prep? No contest.
Long distance AoE
Like  you know how Nagato is literally dying of starvation due to illness and can't walk, but he's also capable of leveling powerful villages more or less on his own?
Elsa is the same Vibe.
It’s like sealing a bijuu in a civilian.
She's honestly both more and less powerful? Like it'd be hard for her to kill everyone in Konoha in the snap of a finger? But also, she could starve out the Country of Fire in a summer.
She WOULDN'T, but she could.
I always read Elsa as gay or ace but my brain keeps trying to ship her with dude ninjas and I have to yank it back on a child leash.
People insinuate that Zabuza is interested in Elsa and he's just "What? Ew she's like five."
"I'm eighteen."
"Five."
BUT
Elsa! Might mistake trust and companionship for a crush!
I can see THAT happening despite gay/ace.
Also like. I don’t think Zabuza is straight.
So mlm/wlw solidarity?
And Haku is probs genderqueer.
So Anna is THE TOKEN STRAIGHT.
Anna is like, the Straight Friend who will go to the mat for her queer friends. Like vicious. In-your-face barking like a mean dog at people who were being bigots.
You know how Elsa in the second movie uses her powers to make toys for kids out of ice?
Okay, so her practicing by making things with Haku.
But yeah, Elsa can't really do "throws ice senbon," but she can do Delicate Geometry Things since she apparently, canonically studies math for fun and loves fractals.
Haku: I can trap you in a prison of ice mirrors, and you are at my mercy. Elsa: LOOK AT THIS CASTLE I MADE???
Haku wants to do Pretty Things like Elsa
OH.
Elsa makes... snow bunnies..
For the ninja distraction reasons but also because it's a Soft Thing that makes her feel better about, uh, everything. And Haku likes bunnies.
Zabuza still takes The Dirty Missions but Elsa gets upset when he does something that hurts innocents and Nobody wants Elsa upset. Even Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset.
When Elsa gets upset, overnight accommodations are suddenly Very Uncomfortable for everyone except her and Haku.
And then Anna gets upset, which makes Elsa even MORE upset.
And then things just keep getting colder.
Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset for many reasons, not limited to: "Is actually capable of killing me from outside of Sword Range if she's mad enough, even if it’s not that easy" and "the Small Children would be unbearably sad if she died and honestly so might I."
She's more of a friend than a ward and he's not entirely sure he's okay with that.
Zabuza: "Ew, friendship."
He has absolutely no idea how to have a social interaction with people he isn't Bullying, Raising, or Threatening to Kill.
Elsa and Anna have no trouble convincing people they're related, at least. Different coloration with almost identical bone structure.
A tendency to burst into song when they feel emotions.
Identical weird accent that nobody can place.
FOOD
The girls are royalty, they don't know how to COOK.
But they also want food from HOME.
It's a lot of trial and error.
More error than not, since they have both no knowledge and also a language barrier to overcome. It probably takes YEARS before they can describe things like Unfamiliar Flavors well enough for people to say "OH that sounds like spearmint."
When they run into something they know that’s familiar, it’s life-changing.
Chocolate is more common in the elemental nations than in Arandelle and Anna may or may not cry about it.
Anna is loudly bossy, even at Zabuza.
Zabuza is gruffly commanding, to everyone.
Elsa doesn't actually like being in charge, but when she talks, people LISTEN.
(Haku is just happy to be here.)
Elsa radiates two things: Anxiety, and Natural Command, and she basically just fluctuates between those.
"I don't want to be in charge but also I'm vetoing this."
So, obviously, the main reasons that Zabuza keeps the girls around is that Elsa is a living siege weapon and he thinks she could be convinced to help him run a revolution in Kiri, and also that the Ice Queen schtick is like. Really good for Haku and Zabuza can’t really say no to the kid.
HOWEVER, Anna is clumsy and messy and all that, so Zabuza starts training her in Ninja stuff. Elsa joins in on the “I need to know how to Run Fast to get away from fights I don’t want to have in the first place,” but Anna’s the one that’s like “TEACH ME HOW TO SWORD.”
It’s honestly not that hard to teach her, she’s just really, really, REALLY enthusiastic.
Once or twice someone asks why she’s so bad at this yet running around with an A-rank nukenin and Zabuza’s just like “I’ve only had her for a year and a half, shut up!” because it’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s that she was a very pampered civilian until like a week before he met her.
He should get a MEDAL for even getting her to low Chuunin.
Zabuza: I'm taking a job from Gato Elsa, who has Training in economics and politics and bureaucracy: I have a better idea.
This is actually not entirely what I’d do but I wanted to make the joke first ANYWAY here’s an actual plot or something.
Oh, also by this point everyone is Canon Ages so Elsa’s 21 and Anna’s 18 and Zabuza’s 26 and Haku’s 15.
Elsa is getting paid to keep the water from interfering with construction, by way of....
ICE COFFERDAM
Elsa with Haku as her Guard while Zabuza is off running his own mission? Which Anna begged to go on because Cool.
Elsa also kind of keeps her involvement on the ice front semi-secret by claiming she’s there as an engineering consultant.
LISTEN canon made her like geometry, I can ENTIRELY believe she’d be excited about the bridge-building.
Gato has hired someone else on the danger level of Zabuza, who is Threatening to Team 7 + Haku? But then when things look bleak Anna and Zabuza arrive and then Scary Sword Man is on our side and oh dear that's a lot of blood.
Which, you know, fun!
Birdie suggested Raiga which I’m not feeling but I do feel the need to bring up as an option.
It’s also not Kisame BUT
Kisame: [giant lake dome filled with sharks]
Elsa: uhhhhhhhhhhh...
Giant lake dome: [is now a giant ice dome]
Anyway
Gato: I'm hiring an army. Elsa: [giant ice wall around his compound] Gato: ... these guys can walk up walls! Elsa: [adds snowman guards] Elsa: ... Elsa: [adds a ceiling]
Just puts Gato's entire mob in a fucking snow globe.
Zabuza shows up twenty minutes late with (Throwing) Star(buck)s just like "Oh, they dead? No? Want 'em to be? Okay cool I'm gonna go pick up Haku, I'll be back in like an hour."
Anna would... LOVE Naruto
ENERGETIC FRIENDLY GOOFBALL
"I found us a baby brother!" "No, we already have Haku." "BUT LOOK AT HIM."
Anna is only a year or two older than Itachi.
OH RIGHT
I wanted to make a joke about how Naruto also vibes with her because he's less judgmental that she can't really... talk properly.
Sasuke is Judgy and Kakashi is Paranoid and Sakura is Uncomfortable.
Meanwhile Naruto is just like "And I Shall Scream."
Anna, who learned Japanese from Zabuza (rude) and Haku (uber polite): WELL FUCK YOU, GOOD SIR Naruto: YEAH WELL FUCK YOU TOO, LADY Elsa, overly formal: I am... so very sorry.
Anyway, generic missing nin fights and all that.
Elsa gets injured in the process and after a variety of arguments, Naruto manages to convince them to take her to Konoha for medical attention.
Elsa is... usually the one getting injured.
Zabuza and Haku are FAST and Anna is at least learning (even if she’s only been doing it for three years), but Elsa is The Squishy Wizard.
If someone throws a kunai... she can’t... really dodge...
So yeah, gut wound.
Normally they find a nukenin medic to patch them up but Konoha is reasonably close and has some of the more skilled medics on the continent and they DID technically help the Konoha nin so like. Gah.
That’s Zabuza’s final thought. Gah.
Just “Fuck it, let’s save the ice queen.”
Elsa ends up in a half-literal-ice stasis state on the way there and it’s happened before (it is not the first time she’s been stabbed), but it’s always terrifying.
Especially to the Konoha genin who are just like WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.
So they get to Konoha, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about extradition treaties and “you are bringing a literal WMD of a woman into our town” and “we can’t just let MOMOCHI ZABUZA in.”
Anyway, it ends up being that Zabuza has to wait outside the village while Elsa is treated inside, and one of the Teenagers goes in. Obviously, it’s Anna, because Zabuza is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with letting Haku enter a village that’s known for having lots of bloodlines, and anyway, Anna’s the sister.
Bunch of stuff, she’s healing, etc, and then one day Anna comes in and is told “your sister had a bad reaction to the anesthetic, we couldn’t save her, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”
She flips out, gets shown the corpse, flips out MORE, gets escorted out to the village walls where Zabuza and Haku are waiting.
Horrified reactions
Zabuza doesn’t want to admit that it’s EMOTIONS because this is his FRIEND, he is clearly just upset about losing the living siege weapon.
Haku is just super confused and goes “But she’s not dead.”
“What.”
“She’s not dead, I can feel her, I can always feel her, it’s like sensing but just her, because we’re both ice. She’s alive, somewhere over... there?”
And points right in the direction of the Hokage Mountain, which for the purposes of this fic and also Drama is where ROOT headquarters is.
YEP we absolutely have that plot point.
Is Danzo overused as a plot device? Probably. Am I going to diabolus ex machina him anyway? Ye.
They kick up enough of a fuss that the Hokage gets called down.
He wouldn’t, normally, he’d leave it to a couple of skilled jounin and call it a day, except Naruto got involved so like. You can’t. Ignore that.
There’s lots of shouting.
Just like. A lot.
And then part of the mountain explodes!
AS ONE DOES
Elsa comes flying backwards out of the hole, catches herself on a spontaneous ice slide, gets to her feet.
Girl is swaying like MAD.
There are absolutely ANBU (both fake and real) coming after her.
At least one of them gets speared through by an ice spike.
Anna runs up to her, tries to hug her, gets batted away.
Elsa’s staring at her in sheer TERROR and starts muttering something about how Anna died years ago, this isn’t real, etc.
Nobody except Anna understands most of it, but Haku picks up enough to translate when Anna’s freaking out.
Elsa starts doing her Ice Castle thing in the middle of Konoha as a coping mechanism, mostly so she can get Up and Away and Shielded By Ice.
This is not a good look.
Especially because she’s singing, which Zabuza always thinks is a bad omen because it means shit is getting real and one or both of the girls are about to get a powerup or be beaten even harder than otherwise. When they start singing, things get More Dramatic And Extreme).
(Zabuza does not like Disney Musical Rules)
Danzo shows up.
There’s a bunch of arguing.
All the medics insist that nothing she was given at the hospital should have caused amnesia, psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, etc.
It’s. Not hard for Hiruzen to guess what happened.
Namely that Danzo, upon finding out that chakra dampeners didn’t do shit since none of Elsa’s powers come from chakra, decided to keep her drugged up and start using genjutsu to make her more malleable.
Because like. An injured WMD just showed up in your village. What are you supposed to do, not try to kidnap her and turn her to your side? Like, come on. What was he supposed to do?
Not that, Danzo. Literally Not That.
IDK how it gets resolved, probably Anna getting to her with the power of love, because Elsa is ultimately Super Disney.
I also don’t really know where to go from there other than “Maybe Jiraiya can get you home, but also I’m pretty sure Zabuza wants you all to get the hell out of here and take over Kiri” but who knows.
Also
IMAGINE ELSA MEETING GAI.
Imagine Ino getting a puppy crush on Elsa.
IDK that’s it for now.
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felassan · 3 years
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Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 annotations & additional pages/art compilation
Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 is a hardcover collection of some pre-existing Dragon Age comics that was released in 2014. It comprises of all issues of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. In places, it includes additional annotations/commentaries by the illustrators and authors, as well as a few additional pages with additional art. iirc these additional annotations and pages/art aren’t featured or available anywhere else (in the franchise I mean; other people have probably put them online at some point I’m sure).
From what I can see at least, Library Edition Volume 1 is no longer in print, and as such listings for it on resale sites etc are.. price-inflated & prohibitively expensive (~£100+, which I’m sure we can all agree is just not reasonable or accessible to most people). Due to this, I’ve compiled the additional annotations and pages here in this post. Thank you and credit to @artevalentinapaz, who kindly shared the material with me. This post has been made with their permission. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.
These commentaries are in the context of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. If you notice any errors or annotations missing, or need anything clarified, just let me know. I think the annotations are in chronological order. In places I elaborated in square brackets to help explain which part of the comics an annotation is referring to. A note before you proceed further: some of the topics referenced in the annotations/additional pages are heavy or uncomfortable. The quotes here are word-for-word transcriptions of dev/creator commentaries, not my personal opinions or phrasings.
(Also, I do recommend always supporting comic creators by purchasing their comics legitimately. I own each issue of these comics having bought other editions of them all legitimately. The reason I put this post together is because this specific Library Edition volume has been discontinued and the consequently-inflated cost is so high, rendering the additional material inaccessible to most.)
-----
The Silent Grove annotations
Illustrator Chad Hardin: “I used to be an environmental artist for video games, so I built a 3-D model of Antiva City using the program Silo. Many of the buildings are simple cubes, but a few are more detailed. Overall, I spent the better part of a day building it, but I used it again and again throughout The Silent Grove to maintain continuity in the backgrounds.”
Script Writer Alexander Freed: “Even working with David Gaider, it took me several drafts to find Alistair’s voice. His narrative had to convey his humor and self-doubt from Dragon Age: Origins while suggesting a newfound weariness earned during his years on the throne. For readers familiar with the character, he needed to seem like a changed Alistair - but Alistair nonetheless.”
Chad Hardin: “If you read a lot of comics, you might wonder why the majority of the heroes wear skin-tight suits. Well, I can tell you: they are easy and quick to draw. In video games, you build the model once and then animate it, so details don’t slow you down. In comics, everything has to be rendered by hand. Varric and Alistair’s outfits were quite detailed. It took me a long time to get used to them, and even longer to memorize the designs until drawing them was second nature - Varric’s knee armor in particular! Oy vey!”
David Gaider: “One of my favorite scenes in the entire series [when Varric and Isabela are disarming traps and picking locks together while Alistair looks on]. Isabela and Varric, doing what rogues do. I had a suggestion for how to put it together, but Alex managed to make it fit and did a great job with it.”
Chad Hardin: “I never used to keep any of the artwork I created for comics. I would just hand the pages over to my agent to sell. This page [when Alistair, Varric and Isabela are in a tavern together, with hookah in the foreground] I kept for myself. I love the hookah-smoking elves in the second panel and Isabela’s face in the last panel. I rendered the first four chapters of The Silent Grove in grayscale using ink washes, gouache and Copie markers.”
David Gaider: “For a little while, Varric [in these comic stories] was supposed to be Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins, which would have made sense, Zevran being Antivan and all. I know that some fans would have loved to see him, but the dynamics of the group just didn’t work as well. Then a planned cameo later had to be cut for space. Ah well, Zev, another time.”
Alexander Freed: “Isabela at her most dangerous [climbing up the side of the cliff]. This scene - featuring a scantily clad, dripping-wet woman who tends to flaunt her sexuality - could easily have come across as exploitative, but Chad did a lovely drop portraying Isabela as purely focused and deadly.”
Chad Hardin: “Isabela rising out of the water and scaling the cliff with the knife in her mouth is one of my favorite parts of The Silent Grove. It is one of those moments where the writing really inspired the art. Hats off to Alex and David. This is another page I kept for myself.”
Colorist Michael Atiyeh: “This is one of my favorite Dragon Age pages. Chad is such an amazing artist; I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him.”
Chad Hardin: “I love that this page [when a guard spots Varric and shouts ‘Intruder!’] made it in uncensored. So many times in comics, I draw something and some stuffy lawyers come out of the woodwork and tell me to tone it down. Dark Horse and BioWare always let me have fun, and this turned out to be one of my favorite pages with Varric and Bianca. Any guesses to which word he is mouthing in the second panel?”
Alexander Freed: “Note the simple decency of Alistair as he gives his cloak, without comment, to Isabela. For all his flaws, he’s genuinely kind at heart - a rare enough trait in Isabela’s world that I think it’s much of what she values in him.”
Chad Hardin: “I love the opening panel to this chapter [the opening panels to Chapter 3, when the team are on a ship at sea]. It’s the image I use on the homepage of my website. This page was a gift to my cousin Wendy, who loves pirates. Seascapes with sailing ships might be clichéd in fine art, but for me it was a first.”
David Gaider: “I wanted to have this story center on the group travelling to a Witch of the Wilds other than Flemeth, and originally I had set it somewhere else - until I remembered a Codex entry from Dragon: Age Origins that offhandedly mentioned a witch in the Tellari Swamps. Brilliant! It’d look like I planned it all along. I didn’t.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love opportunities where I can show a change in the time of day as you move from panel to panel [when the ship heads towards and the team arrive in the Tellari Swamps]. I feel the palette of each panel is very distinct and beautiful.”
Alexander Freed: “Why did Alistair choose two people he barely knows to be his companions on this quest? We never make this explicit, but of course Varric is on the right track. Alistair wants to surround himself with people who don’t know him and won’t judge him, yet it’s Alistair’s idealism that Isabela and Varric work to preserve.”
Chad Hardin: “Another page where the writing inspired the art [when the group suddenly encounter a dragon]. I love the dragon bursting onto the scene and Isabela’s stare. Some writers will try to cram six or seven panels on a page like this and the pacing just doesn’t allow the artist to give each moment the right punch. Can you imagine if the first panel was crammed into a single square inch?”
Chad Hardin: “Yavana was one of the only characters that we did no preliminary sketches for. I don’t know how that happened, but thankfully it worked out.”
David Gaider: “I love how Yavana looks like a cross between Flemeth and Morrigan. Flemmigan? She’s totally Chad’s design, and it’s great. Typical for these witches, she never says things straight. In my mind, this Alistair is the one who did the Dark Ritual in Dragon Age: Origins - and I was half-tempted to have him lose his cool in this first scene [opening panels of Chapter 4] with her. Too early, though.”
Alexander Freed: “Through this whole sequence [the page when Varric aims Bianca at Yavana], Yavana is dropping cryptic hints and Alistair is refusing to play along. He’s met Flemeth and Morrigan - he knows Yavana won’t give him a straight answer, and he won’t give her the satisfaction of asking needlessly.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Sometimes it’s the little things on a page that spark my interest. Here [when the team navigate vines and mud to get to the temple], the sunset panel came out great and the mud looks really thick and gooey. It’s fun to focus on these details and make them stand out.”
Chad Hardin: “I hated drawing this scene [when Isabela gets kicked] where Isabela gets the boot to the face. Call me old fashioned, but I was raised to believe that only a coward would ever hit a woman (even a battle-hardened pirate adventurer). I draw at home, and my girls often watch me work in my studio. This was a page I didn’t want them watching me draw. I do like, though, that Isabela gets up, yanks the arrow out, and then soldiers on (and later extracts brutal revenge).”
Michael Atiyeh: “Poor Isabela. It seems I gave her more bruises and black eyes than any of the other characters. [when Isabela is yanking the arrow out]”
Chad Hardin: “It’s always interesting to go back and look at artwork because it reminds me of what was going on in my life at the time. I inked this page [opening panels of Chapter 5] at a ‘draw night’ session at an anime convention in St. George, Utah. I was one of the special guests, but I missed the first day because I was at my grandfather’s funeral in Las Vegas, Nevada. Seeing this page brought back those memories.”
David Gaider: “‘Bianca says hello.’ [quoting the panels being referenced] I adore Varric. I was tempted to have him narrate the entire series [in reference to these three comics], but then again I liked the idea of having each series center on one of the trio’s viewpoints. This book belongs to Alistair, but that doesn’t stop Varric from getting all the best lines.”
Alexander Freed: “Claudio, of course, is not a terribly sympathetic figure. But I wanted to emphasize that he takes this fight as personally as Isabela - he sincerely loved Luis and blames Isabela for the man’s death. I think it’s important to give every character, even the most loathsome, some dignity. [when Isabela and Claudio are fighting]”
Chad Hardin: “Payback! Here is where Isabela extracts her revenge on Claudio [when Isabela stabs Claudio]. I never enjoyed killing off a character so much. I particularly enjoyed putting the look of shock in his eyes. He had it coming. There is something satisfying about killing a ‘made man’.”
Chad Hardin: “Every now and then when drawing comics, I wish I could animate some panels and watch them as a cartoon. It would be great to see this sequence [when Yavana catches Claudio’s soul] in full motion as Yavana snatches Claudio’s soul, makes it reenter his corpse and then extracts information from him until he bursts into flame. It was a very Hellboy-ish moment. I enjoyed the movie that played in my mind while drawing this scene. Hope everyone liked the result.”
Chad Hardin: “As I mentioned on page 17, I rendered the first four chapters in grayscale, which made the black-and-white art look great, but had a neutralizing effect when it came to colors. By the time I drew chapter 4, I had seen the effect it was having and decided to stop using the grayscale so the colors would pop. When I saw this page [when Alistair says to Yavana ‘And we helped you find it’] in print, it confirmed to me that I made the right decision. I honestly feel this art was the best of The Silent Grove.”
Chad Hardin: “I practically painted these pages [when Yavana says ‘It is permitted. Tonight and only tonight’] in thumbnails hoping it would help me choose how to render them in ink. It is so hard trying to figure out how to get a full range of value out of just black and white. There are some artists and inkers that make this look easy. Mark Schultz comes to mind. Michael saved my bacon. Colorists really do so much work when it comes to rendering; this page came out awesome because of him.”
David Gaider: “Here we reveal the existence of Great Dragons (as opposed to High Dragons), and also that Yavana was the source of the return of dragons to Thedas after their departure for so many centuries. But why? There’s the rub, and not even Alistair can trust that she’s telling him the truth.”
David Gaider: “Here’s the controversial scene [Alistair killing Yavana]. I think some fans don’t like that Alistair did this, and have said they consider it out of character. I don’t. From his perspective, Flemeth and her daughters have been toying with the world for reasons that can’t be trusted. They dragged Maric away from his family, from him. One might think his judgement foolish, but considering what Alistair was capable of deciding even back in Dragon Age: Origins, it’s certainly not out of character.”
Chad Hardin: “[same scene as above] This was a controversial page, and there were a lot of people who thought it was out of character for Alistair to kill Yavana (I didn’t see it coming - I mean, you just don’t kill a Witch of the Wild), but here is the thing: this page is Alistair acting as a king. Yavana has been manipulating him, trying to play him like a pawn, and he just can’t allow that. There’s too much at stake, for himself and for his subjects.”
Alexander Freed: “The end? An end, at least [the trio walking off into the distance]. The series needed a note of closure while leading into Those Who Speak (which wouldn’t arrive until many months later). David tweaked the ending in the outline several times, and I did my best to balance resolving Alistair’s emotional journey without resolving the quest. It’s not as clean as I’d have liked, but fortunately, now it’s all in one volume...”
Those Who Speak annotations
Alexander Freed: “Capturing Isabela’s narrative voice was much easier for me than capturing Alistair’s - partly because I’d already written The Silent Grove, and partly because of my own writing proclivities. Rereading now, I wonder if I laid on the (mild) profanity a bit too thick. I’ll leave you to judge.”
David Gaider: “I like the additional detail Alex and Chad put in, letting us see more of Qarinus and more of Isabela’s crew. Alex wanted to give her crew more of a presence, and let her first mate have some face time, so they weren’t just parts of the scenery. Good call on his part.”
David Gaider: “I’m really fond of the formal getups Chad made for the party. Isabela’s actually comes from a concept we didn’t use from the cancelled Dragon Age 2 expansion, if I remember right. And Maevaris came from me asking for ‘someone who looks like Mae West’ - with the wonderful outfit all Chad’s doing.
Chad Hardin: “Maevaris. I love Mae. When David and Dragon Age art director Matthew Goldman spoke to me about designing Mae, they wanted her to be fully female with the exception of her biology. They told me to think ‘Mae West’. Well, when I think of Mae West, I think of her... womanly shape. So, drawing Maevaris was always walking a fine line between portraying Mae’s identity and her biology. The process endeared her to me.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Just like in The Silent Grove, we are introduced to another gentleman from Isabela’s past [when the team meet Lord Devon and Isabela threatens him]. As was the case with Claudio, he will meet his fate at her hands.”
Chad Hardin: “When I was drawing Titus, my kids asked me why I was drawing ‘angry Jesus’ or ‘evil Jesus’. I can’t remember which term they used exactly, but it made me chuckle. I was going for a mix of Rapustin and Joe Stalin, but ‘evil Jesus’ would do.”
David Gaider: “I’m not sure it’s apparent here [when Alistair says ‘I’d really rather not’], but Alistair was supposed to be using one of his Templar powers on Titus (that’s why Titus recognizes what he is on the next page) and disrupting his magic.”
Alexander Freed: “Isabela is witty and charming enough that it can be easy to forget that she’s not, in fact, a nice person. Even after finishing the outline, David was concerned about making her too unsympathetic - but I loved his approach in this series. The dark deeds Isabela commits - this murder included [Isabela killing Lord Devon] - are what make her guilt tangible and no easy matter to overcome.”
Alexander Freed: “I thought the notions of Isabela’s pride in her captaincy and dedication to her crew were some of the most interesting aspects of her character in David’s story. In scenes here [when Isabela is on her ship saying ‘Keep them focused and keep them sober’] and elsewhere, I did my best to emphasize their place at the core of Isabela’s world.”
Chad Hardin: “Most of the time I draw from imagination, but because of the complexity of this page [Qunari trying to board Isabela’s ship] I decided it would work better if I had photo reference. On this page are my nephews Jared (Varric) and Adam, my niece Melissa, my kids Erica, Tasey Michaela (Isabela) and Chad (Alistair), my friend’s daughter Amy, my wife Joy, and the neighborhood kids as Isabela’s pirate crew. (The crew member mooning the Qunari is out of my ol’ noodle.) I paid their modelling fee in pizza and root beer. Also, I had originally drawn cannons on Isabela’s ship, so if there are parts of it that look slightly wonky, chances are there was a cannon there.”
David Gaider: “Ever since the BioWare artists finally did a concept for female Qunari, I’ve been itching to include one in the game. It’s always slipped through my fingers, so I was going to be damned if I’d have a Qunari plot in a comic - without the same technical limitations - and not have one present.
Chad Hardin: “I had no idea this was the first time anyone outside of BioWare had seen a female Qunari.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I really like the lighting in this sequence [Isabela in her cell thinking ‘I haven’t eaten in days’], especially the strong white light and the characters in shadow.”
David Gaider: “The entire sequence of Rasaan interrogating Isabela was something I plotted out in detail when this series began. Here they discuss names - something treated in a manner peculiar to the Qunari, considering how much importance they apply to what things are called (and not called), because it forms the core of their identity. Isabela brushes it off, but as we find out later it’s also at the core of her identity. I liked that parallel.”
Alexander Freed: “To balance out the relatively static talking pages elsewhere in the issue, I hoped to make the interrogation and flashback sequences beautiful and full of information. I proposed an approach to Chad, and he wisely reshaped it into what you see here [the page with the scene where Isabela says ‘I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes’]. Anything that succeeds on these pages should be credited to him; anything that fails is my fault.”
Chad Hardin: “Probably the most challenging spread I have ever done. My friend Stacie Pitt was the model for Isabela on this page, and my wife Joy was Rasaan. I saved these pages [around the scene when Rasaan says ‘Mistakes can be corrected’] for myself.”
David Gaider: “Sten from Dragon Age: Origins becoming the new Arishok of the Qunari was something we'd planned even during Dragon Age 2. This was a great opportunity to show that, and also to show that Sten didn’t acquire horns even despite the makeover the Qunari received in DA2. Hornless Qunari are considered special, and Sten is no exception.”
Michael Atiyeh: “I think that David, Alex and Chad handled Isabela’s flashback [to when she was sold by her mother] in an interesting way, and it created a nice flow to the story.”
David Gaider: “This was a controversial scene [what happened to the slaves Isabela was transporting], the end result of a lot of discussions between me and Isabela’s original writer on the team, and it went through a lot of revisions over that time. It needed to fit with the story Isabela told the player in DA2, but fill in the blanks of what she didn’t tell. We didn’t want Isabela to be someone who became who she is because she was ‘broken’ but instead as a result of her own actions - yet also not be completely beyond redemption.”
Chad Hardin: “These were hard pages [as above] to draw. It was difficult knowing that events such as this are part of human history, such as the Zong massacre in 1781, where the British courts ordered the insurers to reimburse the crew of the Zong for financial losses caused by throwing slaves overboard when faced with a lack of water. Horrifying beyond words.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Here, Isabela visits here crew, and I wanted to play up that she was in the light and they were in a dark cell. The light streaming through the bars gave me the opportunity to highlight Brand, who also had dialogue in the scene.”
Alexander Freed: “I struggled to find a way for Varric to contribute to victory without distracting from Alistair and Sten’s big fight. I’m happy with the solution: a brazen lie seemed appropriate to the character without taking away from the main show.”
David Gaider: “I believe my original plan had Isabela’s and Alistair’s fight scenes happening separately, but I like how Alex intertwined them in the script and I especially like how this ends up highlighting the differences between their characters when their fights are resolved. Isabela is defiant, revealing her name not because Rasaan demands it but because it’s her choice. In both cases, mercy is strength.”
Michael Atiyeh: “The brush I created for the clouds really gave them a nice watercolor effect here [on the deck of the ship, Sten calling Alistair ‘kadan’]. That brush has become a staple in my toolbox.”
Alexander Freed: “With the strong theme of names running through these issues, I liked the notion that Isabela had outgrown being, well, ‘Isabela’. When her name comes up in Until We Sleep, it’s largely played with ambiguity.”
Until We Sleep annotations
Alexander Freed: “The story of ‘Arthur’ is one of my favorite minor sequences [Varric infiltrating and fighting his way into the fortress]. It tells us something about Varric and it delivers plot information - and it’s also a reminder that our heroes kill an awful lot of people during these series and cope with it in their own ways. In general, writing Varric let me skirt the edge of metacommentary, which I greatly enjoyed.”
David Gaider: “Varric, as always, is my ‘voice of the narrator’. Here he’s expressing some of my own amusement at Alistair’s growing list of peculiarities [‘Your majesty is quite the special snowflake’]. To think, back at the beginning of Dragon Age: Origins he was just the player’s goofy sidekick who grew up in a barn.”
Michael Atiyeh: “By the third series, Until We Sleep, I really started to have a complete feel for what I wanted the final art to look like. As an artist, it’s important to continue to evolve and grow. The close-up of Sten’s face [same page as above] is a perfect example of how I wanted the rendering on the characters to look.”
Alexander Freed: “David’s outline called for a short, somber reveal of the Calenhad story by Sten. Fueled by my desire to avoid ‘talking heads’ sequences, I scripted it as a full-on storytelling flashback. David made sure the history worked (at least from the Qunari point of view), and Chad did a beautiful job handling it in a mere two pages.”
David Gaider: “Blood is important in Dragon Age, as a theme. Here we tie in the dragon blood that was mentioned all the way back in The Silent Grove and explain what it means at last. I was a bit hesitant to tarnish the legend of Calenhad the Great in this way, but I comfort myself with the knowledge this tale is but a viewpoint and not necessarily the entire truth.”
Michael Atiyeh: “Titus melting the attacker is a great example of classic comicbook storytelling and exactly what made me fall in love with the medium.”
David Gaider: “I was really happy with how Chad handled the reveal of Mae as transgender [the scene with Mae in the cell]. My worry was that Varric finding her disrobed might be potentially titillating, but I think he handled it nicely. I only wish there was more time to have Mae properly respond to being exposed in this manner, even to a friend.”
Chad Hardin: “I originally drew Mae as female [same scene as above], then changed her anatomy, so the psychological violation and humiliation she felt would be the focus. Hope that came across.”
Chad Hardin: “When in doubt, have Bianca shoot it [Varric shooting the artifact].”
David Gaider: “This scene [Varric and Bianca the dwarf] with Varric was one I wanted to do for a very long time. We’ve hinted that Varric’s crossbow was named after a real person, someone he never wants to talk about. Now I finally had the chance to show why.”
Chad Hardin: “Of all my Dragon Age pages, this scene was hands down my favorite, because Varric is my favorite. It was awesome to get to draw Bianca in her dwarven form. These scenes give you a glimpse of the love Varric and Bianca shared. It doesn’t tell you the whole story, but you can assume plenty from what is shown. You get to see Varric mostly naked (you’re welcome), but most of all you witness Varric’s heartbreak. I felt privileged to draw it. I got so obsessed with drawing this page I did an entire watercolor painting based on the last panel [Varric gets up to leave, ‘This isn’t right’ - ? or perhaps the scene where he opens the door to leave].”
Alexander Freed: “Unreliable narrators are always tricky - done wrong, they can just confuse the reader. But I’m fairly happy with Varric’s lies throughout this series, most of which are used to downplay the emotional cost of events rather than whitewash the events themselves.”
Michael Atiyeh: “This palette worked perfectly [Varric standing in front of the doorway/portal in the Fade proper], but I can’t take all the credit because BioWare provided reference for the Fade. I added the hot orange energy for the doorway, which looks great with the sickly green sky.”
David Gaider: “This scene [Isabela’s Fade nightmare] was actually inspired by a fan named Allegra who did a cosplay as a Qunari version of Isabela. I knew I wanted something like this for Isabela’s Fade section of the comic, but it didn’t really solidify until I saw the cosplay.”
Chad Hardin: “Isabela is more affected by her encounter with Rasaan than we were led to believe. A portent of things to come?”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love this shot of Mae in the fourth panel [on the page where Isabela is affected by vines]. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention what a great character she is in the series, and Chad captures her beautifully in this shot.”
Alexander Freed: “I saw this issue as a sort of downbeat victory lap. Over the course of the previous series, our protagonists largely came to terms with the inner demons the Fade confronts them with here. The fact they’ve come so far lets them win this last battle... but they still have scars that will never completely disappear.”
David Gaider: “Maric was in the first two novels I wrote for Dragon Age. Seeing Chad’s rendering of him as a regal, grown-up version of Alistair made me incredibly nostalgic. Some characters you just never let go of.”
Alexander Freed: “I feel Varric’s lines (‘tell yourself the stories you need to tell’ but ‘never live your own lies’) are the natural endpoint of all the exchanges he’s had with Alistair, starting from the end of Chapter 1 of The Silent Grove. And of course it plays off the story of ‘Arthur’, as well.’’
Chad Hardin: “I’m happy with the way Titus came off in these pages [Titus attacking and saying ‘The last magisters of Tevinter were so close’]. He looks threatening and powerful when fighting Alistair, Isabela and Varric, but genuinely confused by his inability to defeat Maric. Bye-bye, evil Jesus.”
Alexander Freed: “I can’t help but feel for Titus. He was unthinkably corrupt, but I see him as genuinely motivated by Tevinter’s glory. (The fact Alistair reads zealous ideology as a lust for power says a lot about both characters.)”
Michael Atiyeh: “I love the seamless transition of color from Titus’ magic to the dragon breath and then back into the orange remnants of his magic in the smoke. This was a really fun panel to color [Titus saying ‘Die by what wrought you’].”
David Gaider: “‘You are not the dreamer here. I am.’ I always have a scene or a line that’s in my head when I begin a tale, and this line of Maric’s was one I wanted all the way back when I started working on The Silent Grove.”
Chad Hardin: “I love this page [Maric and Alistair clasping hands]; Mike’s colors are spot on. We get to see all our heroes in an ideal state for the last time. This is the last Dragon Age page I saved for myself.”
David Gaider: “This scene kills me [Alistair destroying the Magrallen]. I knew it needed to happen; I knew I wanted it to happen even back when I began the story. Alistair lets Maric remain in the Fade rather than dragging him back to a world which has moved on. Alistair’s ready to move on, but forcing him to give up that hope... it makes me feel like a bad person.”
Chad Hardin: “Heartbreak for Alistair as he realizes that once again, as a king, he must kill: this time, his own father (granted, the Magrallen did most of the work). I really like how Maric crumbles away in the end. This was my last page, and the emotions on the page and in my studio were very final. Altogether, this was a year of my life in the making. On my last page, I wrote a thank you to everyone involved, the crew at Dark Horse and the crew at BioWare. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them again. It was a thrill. Finally, a huge thank-you to the Dragon Age fan community, whose support was overwhelmingly awesome.”
Michael Atiyeh: “As the story came to an end, I knew I was going to miss these characters. Writing these annotations reinforces the fact that I hope to work with this great creative team again one day. Many thanks to Dark Horse and BioWare for the opportunity to work on Dragon Age.”
Alexander Freed: “The tension between the art and the narration on this page [the one with Alistair sitting on his throne while nobles argue] is something you can only pull off in comics. Neither tells the full, bittersweet story alone. Similarly, these issues wouldn’t have been possible without everyone on the team; thanks to David, Chad, Michael, and everyone I lack space to list!”
Additional pages / art
Library Edition Volume 1 also came with some additional pages, with additional art and commentary. These are as follows (I’m including them for the sake of completion, click the links to see):
1. Alistair and dragon concepts
2. Rasaan and Maevaris concepts
3. Sten, Titus and Yavana concepts
4. A series of cover pages 1
5. A series of cover pages 2
In case anyone has trouble reading the notes that accompany these images, I’ve transcribed them below:
1. Dragon Age Sketch Book
Alistair Concept 
Dragon Age / Dark Horse
Chad Hardin: “The headshot of Alistair is from a finished sketch with a rejected armor design. In order to save time, the redrawing was completed on the computer, where tweaks and changes are quick and easy, if somewhat less glorious.”
[Dragon] Head #1 / Head #2
Chad Hardin: “Everyone liked this dragon sketch so much that Dark Horse printed it for signings at conventions. You can see I did multiple proposals for the dragon’s head. It was more effective than drawing the body over and over.”
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2. [arrow pointing to Mae’s sleeve] concealed [I think that’s what it says anyway] daggers / shurikens?
Chad Hardin: “When designing Rasaan and Maevaris, I wasn’t exactly sure how their roles would play out in the series. Maevaris’ outfit was inspired by brothel madams of the Wild West. I thought it would be cool to have some weapons concealed in the formal wear. These never came into play in the series, but they were there in my mind.”
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3. Chad Hardin: “Although we only see Titus in his battle garb in one issue, I really liked the design of his armor. The sketch of Yavana was done on the fly and served as both a rough preliminary sketch and as a panel layout. You have to work hard and smart in comics to keep up with the deadlines.”
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4. Cover Artist Anthony Palumbo: “This was my first assignment for Dark Horse, and I was both excited and nervous. I drew pencil sketches of the main characters, scanned them and played with different arrangements, poses and color schemes in Photoshop.”
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5. Anthony Palumbo: “Fellow illustrator Winona Nelson helped me by sitting for photo reference. I created the mock-jewelry with gold-painted Sculpey. That’s a quick photo of my own gaping maw, to help with the image of Varric.”
63 notes · View notes
theadorablespderman · 5 years
Text
Everything to love about Far From Home not in this order:
Literally seeing that opening with all our loved avengers that are no more.
Whitney Houston “I will always love you” made me cry because damnit Tony’s face was right THERE! NOT OK!
The blip footage was pretty damn funny not gonna lie.
Peter’s cute ass plan to tell MJ how he feels.
MJ’s favorite flower being a Black Dalia because of the murder. Literally a girl I can relate too. Murderinos for life sister. Idk but it just made her sooo relatable!
The fact that Brad is a kid grown up from the blip and that made him seem all the weirder for MJ.
Jealous Peter was so freaking amazing! Oh my gosh! That face he’d get. I’m a sucker for jealousy and they did it so good.
Making MJ this awesome character she was before but also obviously has this softer layer where she does have flaws and insecurities and she’s really sweet but also so badass. That was amazing.
The starting relationship between Peter and Beck. It was cute and so I was sad knowing that Beck was somehow going to be the villain.
Also let’s talk about how Beck is basically Syndrom from the incredibles.
That scene with Peter and Brad....the pure terror when he snapped that picture
Also seeing how big of a dick Brad is and how unhealthy jealous he was.
“Nick Fury” getting ghosted, showing up in Venice, tranquilising Ned (don’t touch him you monster) and then promptly highjacking Peters Summer trip.
Showing the emotional trama Peter is going through. The anxiety, the greiving. It was very reminiscent of Iron Man 3 when Tony suffers from PTSD after the battle of New York. I loved that they showed Peter reacting as any kid would, many adults too, which is to just try and forget anything happened but being faced with the reality every day. So well done.
Happy and May’s relationship. Enough said 😂😂
I feel cheated we didn’t see Mr delmore again.
Addressing all the problems the Blip/Snap created. High school aging, school, drinking ages, homelessness and housing issues. That’s just the start of it I’m sure but they covered those pretty well and I love that.
The technology that made Beck into Misterio was so well done. Instead of some frankly, kinda far fetched story that he came from an alternate earth (which I was willing to believe but felt it was a cop out in terms of plot and character) they showed the real world issues that superhero’s can create. The Enemies that have a real deep rooted hatred for hero because they’ve personally been betrayed or wronged by them. Because marvel has always made clear, everyone is not on the hero’s side.
Steeping Misterio’s powers in tech which is classing marvel but again, so brilliantly done in this movie. I loved the development. Because at first glance, half way through, I was thinking “wow this is really kinda weird and unexplained and too witchcraft for what marvel usually brings to the superpower backstory” I know it’s weird to say after everything marvel has done. But it seemed just a tad out there without being too hard to grasp. Which again was brilliantly done because that was the whole point.
The nod to Misterio’s helmet even when Beck was in the hologram suit watching everything play out. I guess it was his screen? But I loved the staple of even without his big over the top suit he still had the trademark helmet. Great costume design.
Peter’s soft gazes towards MJ. Nearly gave me a cavity they were so sweet! Ahhh sooo cute
Mr. Harrington’s marital problems nearly made me pee my pants....we all knew here in the fandom that shit like that would half to happen but my god lol
The opera scene was sooo freakin cute and that one step Peter took when he saw Brad move in was so freaking cute and hot!
MJ running after him and finding the critical peice of information to crack the case wide open. Loved it.
Betty and Ned’s Sicily sweet romance that you knew couldn’t possibly last. They really nailed the realistic high school romance. But I still ship it.
The bus scene was epic. And when Peter knocked Flash out...god it was amazing.
Mj obviously having love eyes towards Peter same as he does for her.
THE FACT THAT HE ACTUALLY BOUGHT THAT NECKLACE FOR HER OH MY GOD! I CANT GET A GUY TO TEXT ME BACJ LET ALONE BUY A NECKLACE LIKE THAT WHICH PROBABALY COST A GOOD CHUNK OF CHANGE IT WAS SO FREAKING AMAZING AND CUTE AND TOUCHING.
All the iron man images got me feeling depressed as hell
“are you being serious because I was only like 67% sure?” That was amazing. Seeing MJ get so excited and trying to keep that hidden was awesome
The fact that she was so pleased with herself but also played it hella cool when Ned walked in and she said she figured it out. Literally that is me.
The shirtless Peter trope that we all wanted and freaking got! So freaking cute how she tried to peak at his abs. Like understandable girl.
The fucking illusions. Turning our sweet trusting Peter into a ball of mess. I was too.
God when he had to tell himself it wasn’t real but it still totally feels like it is.
Him trying to save MJ when she’s “thrown off the Eiffel Tower”
Every traumatizing thing Beck shows and tells him during the illusion. So shitty.
Seeing Tony’s grave, seeing iron man come out. That was awful and we all felt it in the movie because we’ve lost him too. We could FEEL that slap same as Peter.
Beck telling Peter that Tony’s death was his fault. I was abouta hurl myself at the movie screen.
Every illusion done in a way that just when you think it’s over, it’s never stopped. You forget what’s real and you feel trapped in it same as Peter does.
WHEN HE GETS HIT BY THE TRAIN!!!!!!!!!! Nearly had a damn heart attack!!!! My mom had to look over and ask if I was ok because I literally stopped breathing for a solid 30 seconds.
Showing gradually just how insane and evil Misterio was.
HAPPY BEING CONCERNED FOR PETER! LIKE SINCERELY AND HONESTLY CONCERNED! It’s good to know he’s got Happy to take care of him and May but that Peter still has a father type figure he can count on after Tony. Because you know Tony wouldn’t have put up with any of that getting hit by a train shit.
Also where the hell was Karen? We missed her. We got Edith but Karen wouldn’t have let Misterio take her over. WHERE WAS KAREN!!
Peter crying and needing to know Happy was real. Broke me heart
That hug between them was so sweet and you can see the concern on Happy’s face
Happy and Peter opening up to each other was so awesome considering their relationship in Homecoming.
ALL THE TONY and PETER PARRELLS! All of them!!!!!!!!! Not the people saying “Spider-Man’s the next Ironman” no the actual hints and glimpses at how similar him and tony actually are. The hologram gauntlet shot, a straight parallel to Iron Man when Tony is building his first real suit. Obviously “Back in Black” by Led Zeplen (formally known as AC/DC) playing. Another obvious hint toward Tony. The Stark sunglasses. Peter falling with the parachute and it literally looks like Ironman with his jet stream behind him from a distance. There’s so much more I’ll do a whole other post on.
Of course: “I love Led Zeplin!” Hahaha it’s such a kid thing to say! I’ve said it before I knew the big differences between AC/DC and Led Zeplin. It was so freaking perfect.
Peter making his suit and Happy’s face. Bittersweet and I live for the affection he holds for Peter now.
The Netherlands Holding cell...must I say more?
Brad’s downfall and MJs amazing comment about him taking pictures of people in the bathroom. Ep-ic. Even flash was like “bro that’s so weird”
Mr. witchcraft was hilarious and I loved his aside with Brad “I’m gonna be the cool teacher and tell you you can’t do that anymore.”
Flash is definately Gay or Bi and I’m so here for it. That wink he makes to Peter proves it.
All the near death truths in the vault of the tower.
MJ BADDASS COMES SWINGING WITH THE MACE AND IT WAS LEGINDARY OH MY GOD! YES GIRL! She’s my idol I love her so much.
Peter and his “Peter Tingle” And while we’re on the subject the banana he gets to the face while packing.
Important. His amazing skills at the end trusting his instincts (which is great because May says in regards to MJ, but it applies to this too) May tells Peter to trust his instincts and don’t think too much. And that’s what he does when he defeats Beck.
The bad ass “you can’t fool me anymore” after redirecting the gun away from his head at the end. Literally was so intense and well done.
Peter and MJ’s kisses! I loved how awkward it was at first and the slightly less awkward one. They really accurately captured the awkwardness of teenagers in love. Like that’s what it’s like guys.
Show me MJ’s parents you cowards, or show me something. Anything. I just want to know the nature of the situation.
Ned and Betty’s breakup. So funny and honestly not surprising at all. But still I ship them.
The hand hold. So cute.
May and Peter still being the cutest aunt and nephew duo there ever was.
I totally thought Peter was going to end with telling the world he was spiderman....BUT SOME OTHER ASSHOLES DID IT FOR HIM AND MADE HIM INTO A VILLAN AND IM PISSED. LOOKING AT YOU MR JAMESON YOU PEICE OF SHIT.
The movie ended and I have no idea what’s next.
Mid credit of MJ swinging through New York. Home girl doesn’t like and neither do I. Looks full on terrifying we don’t blame you hun.
After credit where the skrulls have been playing Maria and Nick fury for the whole movie. Honestly it made more sense because Nick fury seemed just a bit off. ALSO WHERE IS THE REAL NICK FURY at and I’m so psyched to see where this new movies are gonna go!
Alright that all for now folks!!!! Everything about the movie was great!!! I will have to watch again ad see if anything more pops up. Sorry for any spelling errors I’m on my phone.
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wesleydaltonsblog · 3 years
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Learn How I Lost 150 Pounds in Just 4 Months
This is not just another fad diet book of which fill libraries, bookstores, and the internet, but the true story of how I lost 150 pounds in about 4 months (and kept the pounds off). A story, which I believe anyone who can walk, will benefit from.
First let me back up a bit and explain how a middle-aged 6 0 male with a medium to large frame got to be 335 pounds. Well, it wasnt hard and didnt seem to take all that long. It was eating lots of fast food, burgers, and little to no exercise over the course of a few years. Sound familiar? In my 30s and 40s I was fairly active with scuba diving and just in my job itself. Then all of a sudden my job changed to where I sit at a computer eight hours a day (and still do), instead of being a busy technician building and testing things.
With age also came the slowdown of my bodys metabolism (I am now 54), coupled with a sit down job and eating lots of fatty burgers and other high calorie meals. Especially bad was eating big meals just before going to bed. It didnt take long to find myself at 335 pounds. I blew up like a big fat whale and my huge belly hung way over my belt line. I had to buy 3X shirts and 50 waist trousers to go around my bulk. I looked and felt just awful.
The time came when I finally said enough is enough! I was not feeling good, was out of breath all the time, and could hardly walk up the stairs to the bedroom. I went out and bought a good digital bathroom scale and weighed myself the next morning (undressed and after using the bathroom). The max limit on the scale was 330 pounds. The scale gave me an error message (a big fat capital E). That meant I was heavier than 330 pounds! Oh my God I thought! It cant be! That morning, I weighed myself at work on the shipping scales. My weight was about 340 pounds fully dressed and after eating breakfast. That meant my true morning weight was around 335 or so.
Steps I took to lose the pounds
I knew I didnt want (or could afford) to buy expensive exercise equipment. Nor did I want to spend a lot of money to join a health club. There had to be a better way. I did some research on the internet about aerobics and metabolism (the rate at which the body burns fuel) and came to the conclusion the answer to my weight problem was to increase my metabolism through aerobic exercise, and by changing my eating habits. The strict definition of aerobic is with oxygen. The body uses oxygen to burn fuel. Aerobic exercise improves oxygen consumption by the body and burns fuel more efficiently. I learned that aerobic exercise (like walking at a brisk pace for 20 or more minutes without stopping), will increase the bodys metabolism (perhaps up to several hours), even after you stop exercising. This is just one of the added perks of aerobics.
I would encourage everyone reading, to search the internet on metabolism and aerobics. There is much more information there than I can possibly put here, or need to. The information is abundantly available no need for me to re-invent the wheel.
After getting freaked out when my new digital bathroom scale went Tilt, this is what I did
1. I created a spreadsheet on my home computer so I could track and record my weight each Saturday morning (you can choose any day you wish, as long as you are consistent on when you weight yourself). Once a week is best.
2. I researched the internet about losing weight, and learned about metabolism, aerobics and aerobic exercise (and how they affect the body and calories). I figured I should be about 180-185 pounds for my height and frame, so I adjusted my daily calorie intake for that body weight. No special diets to speak of, just calorie intake adjustment, although I do try and eat healthy foods most of the time.
3. I invested in a good pair of walking shoes. This is critical!
4. I measured out one mile (using the odometer of my car), and timed how long it took me to walk one mile at a brisk pace (brisk pace meaning walking fast enough to elevate my heart and respiration rate). It took me 20 minutes to walk one mile. A 20-minute mile is not all that fast, but fast enough for someone weighing 335 pounds. And 20 minutes is the minimum workout time for aerobic exercise to be beneficial to the heart. My course was nothing more than the sidewalks of my neighborhood. Partly homes and apartments, and partly businesses.
5. I walked one mile per day, everyday, for about the first month (a 20-minute walk after dinner). I noticed my energy level was building and I felt better. After about the first 10 days, my digital bathroom scale began to give me a number instead of the big fat E error message. Definite progress!
6. The second month I increased my distance to one and a half miles a day (or a 30-minute walk after dinner). The soreness in my legs gradually disappeared.
7. I continued this pattern of increasing the distance by one-half mile until I was up to six miles per day (doing three miles before work and three miles after work). Six miles a day may be a bit extreme, so you may want to adjust your walks accordingly. But it worked for me and got to the point where I could walk three miles without breaking into a sweat. The pounds melted off!
8. After I lost nearly 100 pounds, I scaled back to four miles a day (two before work and two after work). I walk the miles faster too, about a 17-minute mile).
9. After 4 months, I reached 185 pounds and thats apparently where my body wants to be. I continue to walk four miles everyday, watch my daily calorie intake, and have stabilized at 185 pounds.
Do I still eat a big fat juicy burger and ice cream once in awhile? OH YES! I love that stuff! But I religiously weight myself each Saturday morning and my weight seems to be happy and steady at 185. I dont deprive myself of the foods I love, but I have learned what, when, and how much I can eat and get away with. One has to experiment and adjust accordingly.
I look forward each day to my walks. In fact, I get a sense of accomplishment after each walk. A fringe benefit I guess. Another fringe benefit is that walking is a great stress reliever especially after a hard day at the office. All in all, I am in much better health. That 150-pound barbell I was carrying around all day is gone. My heart and cardiovascular system is much healthier all due to walking.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits (other than the obvious health benefits) is that the people in the neighborhood and the storekeepers stop me all the time and comment on how I look. These are the people who would see me walk by their homes and stores each day. They saw a once very fat person transformed into a thin person.
The bottom line
I was sick of being obese and I knew it was killing me and that I needed to do something and quick. I was a sure candidate for a heart attack or stroke. After doing a little research, I found the best way for me was aerobic walking coupled with a change in eating habits. There other types of exercises that will work too, but I believe nothing is as good for the human body then walking. The benefits are enormous and the cost is, well, the price of a good pair of walking shoes and comfortable clothes. Its enjoyable too! Forget those expensive boring indoor treadmills! Go for a walk in the great outdoors!
If you can walk, have a place to walk, by all means go for it! If you are like me, you will increase your energy a hundred fold. Start off slow at first if you are way out of shape, a few minutes a day. Walk briskly and swing those arms. Increase until you can do a mile, then a mile and a half, and so on and so on until you reach your goal weight. This is a lifelong commitment, so dont stop after reaching your goal weight.
My family and friends at work all say I am half the man I used to be. They are not very far off! I went from wearing 3X shirts and 50 waist trousers, to wearing large shirts and 34 waist trousers. Yeah, I had to buy all new clothes but I didnt mind the expense one bit. 
To hell you more I have prepared a full presentation to teach you how to lose weight in less than 4 months.
Click the link below to watch the presentation.
Click Here to learn about my secret strategy used by thousands all over the world to loose more weight even faster and in less than 4 months.
Take care and happy walking.
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chaoskirin · 4 years
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The Seven Seas--Chapter Three
Fandom: Queen Genre: Sci-fi/Gen Rating: PG Chapter 3 Word Count: 1720
Freddie spent the next several hours (and hours and hours) pacing the barn and outlining a plan. For the sake of suspense, said plan will not be described here, although, wonderful readers, it might be described as amazing and daring! Filled with intricate precisiveness and wild creativity! Genius! And most importantly, incredibly unlikely to succeed!
Somewhere around the five o'clock mark, Roger ordered a pizza which never arrived due to the rather remote location of the farm. He spent the next excruciating hour complaining about his insatiable hunger, until John raided the chicken coop and fried some eggs.
Brian was torn between being appalled and relieved. After all, the chickens ought to be allowed to keep their eggs... since they made them, after all. Roger asked Brian what he thought cakes were made of, so Brian swore off cakes for at least the next couple days, at least until he could scrub the vision of affronted chickens out of his mind.
John said "at least they aren't being vaporized," which was quite sobering and put everyone directly back on task.
It should be said that the appearance of aliens on earth had a rather profound effect on Brian, who, up until that point, only hoped aliens existed. Ever the pragmatist, though, he never believed earth would make contact with the various other denizens of the universe until far after he was dead and buried. After all, relative physics still reigned supreme as the dominating theory of everything in the universe. And with no way to travel faster than the speed of light, aliens simply couldn't reach it from wherever they made their home.
Except they had. And they'd dropped by like a very undesirable relative during Christmas celebrations--everyone wanted them gone, but they had to be appeased and placated first. Perhaps even force-fed copious alcohol until they passed out in a peaceful stupor, while the kids drew fake marker mustaches under their noses.
"Do you think," Brian said to John after the four of them split into two groups. "Do you think they'd let me question them about the stars? How they got here? Where they're from?"
John blinked slowly.
"It's not a stupid idea to ask!" Brian insisted. "Just because they want to raze the planet doesn't mean I have to stop learning. And if they really think I'll spill all their secrets then they must not want to destroy me very much. I can't tattle if I'm dead. Don't you think?"
"If I say yes, will you get back to work?" John asked, flicking the end of a soldering iron at him.
Brian grunted and went back to poring over the star map Glasses left behind. He vastly preferred absolutes, whereas Freddie's "plan" just happened to be chock full of conjecture and dumb luck and a good measure of stupidity. Absolute stupidity, which Brian supposed counted as an absolute, just not the kind he wanted. That made him nervous, and therefore talkative.
"It's just..." he said as he tried to figure out Denmark's location in relation to an earth star chart. Thankfully, he never left home without one, just in case. "They could have the secrets of the whole universe stowed away on that little ship of theirs."
"And if they did, and you end up dead?" John asked. "What would you do with them?"
"Well, I'd know."
John rolled his eyes. He'd set aside the soldering gun in favor of a welding torch, and so he was able to dramatically flip the black welding mask down over his eyes to signal the end of conversation. The git. Brian looked away as John ignited the flame.
"I don't even know if it's in the right bloody hemisphere," Brian muttered to himself, returning to the star map. He couldn't read the alien language scrawled out across it, plus it appeared the aliens preferred some odd derivation of base-8 math... which meant he couldn't even parse their coordinates. He was sure it made sense to them, but in the moment, it was infuriating.
That meant he had to manually study every sector of the alien map, then line it up to the earth map. If he could figure out the first sector, he might be able to proceed. The problem was parallax. After all, why would the aliens make a map meant to be viewed from earth?
Damn parallax. Why couldn't all the species in the galaxy just decide on a standard map!
Meanwhile, John got to build... Well. Brian wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't just another cat tree for Freddie's cats.  Freddie assured everyone this little bit of the plan was critical, though. And it was up to Brian to find the proper angle of whatever it was so he could--
Ah. Wait a minute.
I'm sure you're all very bored by now, and I wouldn't blame you. After all, this is just filler really, since one can't just go from aliens arriving to aliens being defeated. The point is, all the great writers in history somehow universally decided that a story can't be told without costing its readers vast amounts of time when they should be doing other things. Say, filling their washing machine with lemonade, or ironing their socks, or stacking teacups on a sleeping cat. Or watching egg whites dry as they drip down the siding of your irritating neighbor's house. Not that the author has ever done that.
In order to create suspense and drama, most writers masterfully fill their stories with plot dynamics. However, this plot is fairly cut and dry as far as stories go, and the author is not masterful in any sense of the word, so she's just decided to waste your time with this rather pointless filler text.
However, as you've been reading this, Brian May--brilliant scientist that he is--has been using his time with all the wisdom and efficiency one would expect from a future astrophysicist. As John continued to weld his rather confusing scaffolding, Brian chanced upon the exact miniscule plot detail he could utilize to make sense of the alien map. Thusly did he shout "Eureka!" ending this particular section of the story.
You're welcome.
---
"You can't just write a whole song in one day," Roger said.
"Well, I don't intend to. We have five days," Freddie returned, straightening a bit in his seat and looking down his nose in haughty confidence. Into the phone, he said "No, I won't hold. I'm Freddie-Fucking-Mercury--What do you mean who??"
The line went dead. Not because the other side had hung up on him, but because rats had chewed clean through the phone line again. Bother of all bothers. If only he had his cats here, the damnable rats wouldn't be such an issue!
"Roger, be a dear and chase the rats off again, would you?" Freddie asked. When cats weren't an option, Rogers did just fine, and as a bonus, they didn't leave rodent corpses on your pillow in the morning. At least Freddie hoped they didn't. He probably should have asked.
"Five days or no," Roger said, returning from his chase, "the pressure must be intense. I mean, if it's going to work, it has to be perfect, doesn't it? No room for error. And you have to trust not only yourself to remember the lyrics, but you also have to have absolute faith in your bass player, and your guitar player, and your drummer who's a bit of a flake."
"Just a bit?"
"Last I checked."
Freddie tut-tutted. "It'll work. Look, it's a short story, and the author always writes happy endings. What makes you think it won't work?"
"Well, I have to be disagreeable, don't I?" Roger asked, flopping down on the couch next to Freddie. "Let's see what you've got so far."
Freddie handed over the notepad.
After a dozen quiet minutes of earnest contemplation, Roger said, "All you've written is the title."
"The Seven Seas of Rhye," Freddie declared. "It's a good title! I was thinking a sort of... Bar song, I guess. Maybe a--"
Roger was shaking his head.
"Oh, what. We've been bleeding out all our creativity lately." Freddie stood, hands on his hips. "There's none left, is there? You're right. Five days to put together a song and get people here so they can bear witness to my amazing plan? It's not long enough. We'll just have to cancel! There shouldn't be consequences for that."
"There probably won't be," Roger agreed. "Just the annihilation of humanity, I guess. Nothing major."
Freddie pursed his lips. Yes, that was a problem. He'd have to power through. As always.
"Look," Roger said, pulling a comic book out of his back pocket. He always carried one, just in case. We've got aliens on earth.
"Rhye."
"Whatever. We've got aliens. Make it epic."
Freddie paged through the comic book. Although the cover seemed to hint at an epic space battle far into the future with high-tech space suits and murderous monsters, the inner pages had been replaced by porn. Porn Freddie didn't even particularly like. "Roger," he said, holding up the least scandalous image he could find.
"Well, you weren't supposed to open it." Roger at least had the wherewithal to appear sheepish as he snatched the magazine out of Freddie's grasp. "If it gets boring in the barn, do you think I'm going to want to read comics?"
"I'd hope that you'd be writing like we're supposed to be," Freddie said, curling his nose up as Roger tossed the magazine on the end table. "Not--"
He paused as inspiration struck, and a single phrase popped into his mind.
I Stand Before You Naked to the Eye.
The basis of the song began to form around it. "Listen," Freddie said, handing Roger the phone, which was still not connected to anything. "First, I need you to take over securing the advertising to get us a proper audience. Make some calls. Get the people here. Can you do that?"
Roger nodded. "And?"
"Yes. Second, I need you to never, ever tell anyone that I got the idea for this song after looking at your raunchy porn."
Roger smiled. Narrowed his eyes. "Put I'm In Love With My Car on the B-Side to Bohemian Rhapsody and you've got yourself a deal."
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youzicha · 5 years
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could the Chernobyl disaster have happened outside the Soviet Union or the communist bloc? was there anything socialist or autocratic about it? or could it have happened in any similarly-dangerous and similarly-complex engineering project?
My immediate reaction is to group the Chernobyl accident with other high-tech accidents like plane crashes, industrial fires, or radiation incidents in the west, but maybe that’s because I like to read step-by-step accident descriptions which focus on the technical aspects! It was definitely the case that Soviet nuclear power plants were much less safe than the western ones, although it’s not obvious if that is due to authoritarianism…
From an outside view, I think the various western incidents should make us less comfortable that it couldn’t have happened here.
• The radiation releases from the Fukushima accident were ten times smaller than at Chernobyl, but it still represents a failure of reactor containment. Apparently quite a lot of Cs-137 was in fact released from Fukushima (like a third of the Chernobyl release), but most of it went into the Pacific ocean rather than the atmosphere.
• The Three Mile Island accident showed that U.S. reactor operators can make mistakes too. I used to dismiss it—in the end there were no big radioactivity releases, so no big deal, right?—but after the Fukushima accident maybe we should re-evaluate it. TMI had a core meltdown and a hydrogen explosion, much like Fukushima, so I guess it could have gone badly.
• The Windscale reactor was also graphite moderated, so the 1957 Windscale fire might have developed into a miniature version of the Chernobyl accident. (The physical size of the reactors were similar—180 tonnes uranium and 2000 tonnes graphite at Windscale, versus 190 tonnes uranium and 1700 tonnes graphite at Chernobyl 4—but the Chernobyl burnup was 10.9 MW-d/kg while a typical value for making weapons plutonium is 0.5 MW-d/kg, so the Chernobyl reactor contained 20 times more radioactivity.)
At Chernobyl the core was scattered and caught fire, and then over the course of a few days almost all the graphite burned and the radioactive material was dispersed in the smoke. At Windscale, the graphite caught fire inside the reactor and there were no plans for how to extinguish it. According to the post-accident report,
[After the fire had been going on for about a day] the use of water was first considered. Two hazards had to be examined: first the danger of a hydrogen-oxygen explosion which would blow out the filters, second a possible criticality hazard due to the replacement of air by water. The Management were informed, however, of the danger of releasing high temperature Wigner energy if the graphite temperatures were to rise much higher than 1200°C. It was thought that this might well ignite the whole pile.
Happily the water worked well and the fire was put out before it spread to the rest of the core, but the filters in the air stack basically did nothing, so a large fire would have created a major radiological disaster.
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Chernobyl was much bigger than all western accidents, but to me it feels like an extreme point on a spectrum.
If we take an inside view, the Chernobyl accident happened because of a combination of operator error and poor design, and we could try to trace either of these to Soviet authoritarianism.
As for the operator errors, there were three fateful decisions. First, the Chernobyl chief engineer Nikolai Fomin approved the plan for the turbine draw-down experiment, classifying it as an “electrical” experiment which could be signed off locally. In hindsight, because the experiment involved manipulating the power level of the reactor and the flow-rate of the cooling loop, it affected the dynamics of the reactor and should have been referred to physicists at Scientific Research Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET) and the Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor) for analysis and approval. It’s unclear if that would have changed matters, because the experiment would have been safe if executed according to the plan, but the physicists could perhaps have drawn attention to the safety aspects. As it were, the Chernobyl staff were quite complacent—perhaps because they had already tried it several times before, making various adjustments to the turbine control logic each time. On the day of the accident they seem to have treated it as a routine matter, and Fomin did not even notify plant director Brukhanov.
Maybe you can see the Soviet penchant for centralization here. I don’t know how it works in America, but Swedish nuclear power stations employ staff physicists who carry out calculations about how the plant will respond to various abnormal scenarios. That seems like it may be helpful for ensuring that the operating staff has easy access to physics expertise, compared to the Soviet system where those calculations where done far off in another city, and under a separate bureaucracy (NIKIET was under the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, while the reactor staff was employed by the Ministry of Energy).
Then in the reactor control room, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov gave two crucial bad orders. First, he had the operators deviate from the plan and start the experiment from a 200 MW power level instead of 700 MW. It’s unclear why he would do that—at the trial it was suggested that he might have thought a lower level would be safer, although it actually made the reactor dangerously unstable. Then, when the reactor was inadvertently shut down, he insisted that the operators violate regulations and start it up again, which created the conditions for the explosion. Interestingly, Dyatlov’s position was administrative, outside the operational chain of command, so formally he had no authority to give orders to the operators on duty, but he still expected to be obeyed and threatened to have them fired if they didn’t comply.
The Chernobyl tv-series tries to sell this as part of Soviet authoritarianism too—they insert a fictional scene where plant director Brukhanov pressures Dyatlov to complete the test so that Brukhanov can get a promotion—but that still would not explain the 200MW order. Perhaps some of the blame should go to Dyatlov’s personality: his coworkers say he was knowledgeable but stubborn and intolerant of dissent. Either way, it’s hard to believe that that overconfident, authoritarian managers were unique to the Soviet Union. I don’t have any examples from the nuclear industry, but maybe you could look at e.g. ship captains—it is easy to find examples of captains making bad decisions, either because of pressure from their bosses or because they are just being stupid.
Meanwhile, the reactor design also suffered from several problems that contributed to the disaster. On paper, this should not have happened. The Soviet nuclear energy industry was monitored by the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor), who produced a set of Nuclear Safety Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants (NSR), and then approved the technical safety report of a reactor design. The Chernobyl plant was approved in May 1975.
It shouldn’t have been. A 1991 report points out that the regulations include NSR Article 3.2.2, the total power coefficient of reactivity is not positive under any operating condition, and NSR Article 3.3.26, the reactor’s emergency protection system must ensure that the chain reaction is automatically, quickly and reliably terminated—which point to the two major flaws which caused the accident. At the time of the approval, Gosatomenergonadzor was part of the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, and the same ministry also controlled the NIKIET and the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, the two main designers of the reactors. In this way, there was very little external checks of what the (notoriously secretive) Ministry was doing. Former Chernobyl physicist Vladimir Chernousenko writes:
How could a reactor with so many defects be built and put into operation? Firstly, no-one analyzed the RBMK plans at the design stage (that is, there was no independent, external scrutiny). Secondly, the designers themselves did carry out an analysis, but on a very superficial level (because of the poor experimental facilities, the chronic backwardness of the available computer technology, etc.).
Thirdly, thanks to the monopoly that exists in Soviet nuclear science, the RBMK reactors, unlike airplanes, automobiles, etc., were not subjected to any serious tests or trials of their durability. That is why 16 reactors were brought on line without even a Technical Basis of Safety of Reactor Installation (TBSRI) or a TBS of Nuclear Power Stations (TBSNPS) certificate.However, with these obligatory parts of the project missing, it is illegal to not only operate a nuclear power station, but even to build it (GSG §§1.2.3, 2.1.14). It was only in 1988 that the chief designer made an attempt to officially certify the safety of the second- and third-generation RBMK stations.
As for why the design had these flaws in the first place, both of them can be traced to schedule pressures and cost-cutting. First, the choice of a water cooled/graphite moderated reactor is inherently risky, because a disruption of the water supply can cause a power surge. When drawing up the plans for civilian nuclear power the Ministry of Power had considered three possible designs named RMBK-1000 (water-cooled/graphite-moderated), RK-1000 (gas-cooled/graphite-moderated) and WWER-1000 (water-cooled/water-moderated), and in September 1967 they announced that the RK-1000 had been selected. However, this was too technically ambitious to meet the schedule, and one year later they instead opted for the RBMK-1000, which was similar to the reactors already used to produce weapons plutonium.
A graphite moderated reactor has a positive void coefficient, and as it turned out, when the control rods were fully withdrawn this could get big enough to overwhelm the thermal coefficient and make the overall power coefficient positive. This effect had not been anticipated ahead of time, but was noticed experimentally when the reactors were taken in use:
Neither the designers, nor the plant operators, nor the regulatory body attached proper importance to the large positive coefficients of reactivity which became apparent from experiments, and they did not attempt to find acceptable theoretical explanations. The obvious discrepancy between the actual core characteristics and the projected design values was not adequately analysed and consequently it was not known how the RBMK reactor would behave in accident situations.There are a number of explanations for the poor quality of the calculational analysis of the safety of the design. These include the fact that, until recently, Soviet computer techniques were chronically outdated and the standard of computer codes was very low. Three dimensional non-stationary neutron-thermal-hydraulic models are required in order to calculate the physical parameters of an RBMK reactor under different operating conditions. Such models first became available only shortly before the Chernobyl accident and were not really developed until after the accident.
Second, the scram rods were poorly designed. In addition to the too-short graphite tips (which makes the reactor explode instead of stopping), the system was much too slow—the rods were forced through a water-filled channel and took 18 seconds to fully deploy. Actually, the 1969 technical drawings had neither of these problems, because the scram rod tubes were water-film cooled, so the rods could be inserted in 2.5 seconds and did not displace water. Film-cooled channels are more difficult to construct and more expensive, and the final design reused the water-filled channels for control rods for the scram rods as well.
In addition to the above two flaws, western publications after the accident generally pointed at a difference in design philosophy. Western power plants follow a “Defense in Depth” philosophy, with redundant systems designed to handle multiple simultaneous failures. The USSR took a “different” approach:
The Soviet philosophy of safety with both breeder and conventional reactors places heavy emphasis on excellence of design, reliability of equipment, and careful operating procedures to prevent any releases of radioactivity to the environment. Special containment structures are not thought to be justified because of the improbability of any serious accident, and such domes are therefore judged to be costly and superfluous precautions. The design-basis accident also does not include loss of coolant in the core, and thus the reactors do not have a special emergency core cooling system. Soviet writers question the philosophy of designing redundant systems, for:
 “An excess of such backup systems, where the need or the reliability is not clearly assured, introduces operational complexity and reduces over-all safety.”
It is acknowledged that some types of accidents might release radiation accumulated in the coolant, or possibly even some of the activity from unsealed fuel cans, but such releases are not projected as exceeding the daily permissible releases from power stations (1,000-10,000 Curies or less).
The Soviet equipment reliability was far from excellent, so I guess this difference in outlook was mainly due to a more relaxed attitude to radiation leaks. In the 1957 Kyshtym disaster the USSR had suffered what was then the worst radiation accident in history, and successfully kept the whole thing secret.
Indeed, the first six RBMK reactors (Leningrad 1&2, Chernobyl 1&2, and Kursk 1&2) had no structures at all to contain water/steam leaks, so any break in the cooling circuit would lead to a radioactivity release. (A 1991 report about post-Chernobyl safety improvements comments, “The main aim in these units must be to reduce the probability of large diameter pipe breaks to a point where such accidents may be termed hypothetical. With this in mind, some computerized and experimental research was carried out into the processes which cause cracks to appear.”)
Later RBMK reactors, including Chernobyl-4, added some containment structures more similar to Western reactors, by enclosing parts of the cooling circuit in pressure-tight concrete rooms that vented into a pressure-suppression (bubbler) pool. However, the reactor itself was too big to contain in this way. It was given pressure relief pipes, but they were only dimensioned to handle breaks in at most two of the 1661 fuel channels—the pressure from more extensive breaks could tear apart the entire core. NIKIET estimated the probability of a simultaneous two-channel break as 1e-8 per reactor-year, and three or more as negligibly improbable.
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Although a lot of western publications after the accident highlighted the lack of containment, it is not known if a western-style containment building would have prevented the disaster—it’s impossible to say for sure, since it is not even known exactly what caused the explosion or how big it was. But in any case, it clearly shows the higher Soviet risk tolerance.
The risk tolerance is even more visible in the way that accidents were treated. The positive power coefficient was noted soon after the first RMBK reactor (Leningrad-1) was started, but never properly investigated. There were about 10 major accidents at Soviet nuclear reactors between 1970-85, killing at least 17 reactor workers and leading to multiple radiation releases to the environment. RBMK reactors suffered partial core meltdowns at Leningrad-1 in 1975 and Chernobyl-1 in 1982, proving that the supposedly unlikely simultaneous fuel channel rupture could happen quite often. And in 1983, the positive reactivity effect of the scram rods were noticed at both Ignalina-1 and Chernobyl-4. These accidents were more serious than Three Mile Island, and in the west any one of them would had prompted big efforts, but in the USSR they were kept secret.
The reactor designers at NIKIET were notified of the scram anomaly, and started to consider improvement to the rods to eliminate it, but it was not treated as a priority; the Chernobyl-4 reactor was to be upgraded after the next shutdown in 1986. They sent out a short and inconspicuous notice to the reactor operators. NIKIET also revised the operating instructions for the RBMK-1000, specifying a new minimum “operational reactivity margin” (ORM), i.e. a limit on how far the control rods may be retracted. In 1980 the ORM  limit was set to 10, and then in 1983 it was increased to 15. (After the disaster, it was increased again to 30.) If this limit had been respected, it would have kept the power reactivity coefficient negative and prevented situations where the scram-rod could cause a reactivity increase, so the NIKIET engineers might have considered the two main flaws of the reactor solved. But the updated manual only stated a number for the ORM; it didn’t flag it as a safety-critical limit. The RBMK reactors were plagued by shoddy workmanship and the operators were in the habit of constantly improvising to work around issues.
So the safety standard of the Soviet reactors was low. But are these failings particular to east bloc authoritarianism? For each cause I listed above, it seems one can find examples of the same thing happening in the west.The RBMK designers assumed there would be no safety issue as long as the reactor operators followed the ORM in the manual; this seems very similar to how Boeing reasoned about the 737 MAX. Very low failure probabilities were invented out of thin air; much like in Feynman’s description of the space shuttle program. Equipment was in disrepair forcing the operators to improvise; much like in the U.S. Navy. Reports of safety incidents were ignored; when the crew was evacuated off the Deepwater Horizon, the installation manager was heard shouting “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen” into a satellite phone.
And there was trouble even in the western nuclear program. The 1944 Hanford B reactor was also water cooled/graphite moderated, and it was placed in remote location since the core might explode. In the 1950s there was several core meltdowns in small American research reactors. And as we saw above, the Windscale reactor was rushed into service with no containment at all. Instead of asking why Soviet reactors were shoddy, perhaps we should ask how the western reactors became safe.
Part of the credit must go to the open society. From 1954 onwards, the U.S. government invited commercial companies to build nuclear power plants. Unlike secret military reactors, the application to build such plants were public, as was the Atomic Energy Commission’s decisions to judge them safe or not. And the first serious study of a worst-case nuclear accident, WASH-740, was done because Congress was considering a law to indemnify nuclear power companies.
But the nuclear industry is not unique in being regulated in this way, and nuclear power plants still seem safer than, e.g., oil rigs. Perhaps the other part of the credit belongs to the anti-nuclear movement. The very first commercial nuclear power plant was planned to be built at Bodega Bay near San Francisco—local activist started to organize against it already in 1958, and in 1964 the public pressure forced the AEC to reject the plant. In other words, from the very beginning, America has had a third party which reviews the government/industry decisions and pressure them to take safety seriously. And reading the Wikipedia historical description,
By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Critical Mass became involved.[43] With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:[42]
In 1975–76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.[42]
In 1976, four nuclear engineers -three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission- resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming.[47][48] These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country.[49][50]  […] These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy.
it is striking that every single aspect here—the grassroots organizing, the ballot initiatives, the whistleblowers—would be impossible in the Soviet Union. So according to this story, democracy is not sufficient to create a safe industry, but it is a necessary condition; without it, you can’t get the environmentalist movement.
The U.S. environmentalists got things done. Starting in the mid-1970 there was a dramatic increase in construction costs of nuclear power plants in the U.S., with the capital costs increasing several times over, and in the 1980s companies basically stopped building plants. (You can’t get any safer than that!) Although there are several reasons for the cost increase, the most commonly cited factor is increased safety regulations. Lovering et al. show the following graph, and analyze it as follows:
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Between 1967 and 1972, the 48 reactors that were completed before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 began construction. Their OCC rise from a range of $600–$900/kW to approximately $1800–$2500/kW. These reactors follow a trend of increasing costs by 187%, or an annualized rate of 23%. Phung (1985) attributed these pre-TMI cost increases to emerging safety requirements resulting from pre-TMI incidents at Browns Ferry and Rancho Seco. Two outliers, Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, cost about $4100/kW in overnight construction cost, and were completed 17 and 15 years later, in 1984 and 1985.
A break in construction starts is visible around 1971 and 1972,which is likely attributable to a confluence of events affecting nuclear power construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These include the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971, and the AEC’s gradual loss in public trust and its eventual replacement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. Golay et al. (1977) determined that 88 reactors in various stages of permitting, construction, and licensing were affected by the 1971 Calvert Cliffs court decision resulting in revised AEC regulations that included back-fit requirements.Finally, the last 51 completed reactors represent a set that began their construction between 1968 and 1978 and were under construction at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. For these reactors, OCC varies from $1800/kW to $11,000/kW. Thirty-eight of these reactors fall within a mid-range of $3000/kW to $6000/kW, with 11 between $1800 and $3000/kW and 10 between $6000 and $11,000/kW. From the OCC of about $2,000/kW for reactors beginning construction in 1970, OCC increases another 50–200%, or an annual increase of 5–15% between 1970 and 1978.
In particular, the safety factors Phung (1985) highlight for the mid-1970s cost increase were as follows.
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Phung also notes that due to new safety regulations, power plants that had already been completed in 1978 then had to be back-fitted to fix issues that had been discovered during the 70s, which increased the cost by 28% on average compared to the original construction cost. This is a rather glaring contrast to the Soviet experience, where reactors were notably not back-fitted to fix the multitude of issues that were discovered. As late as 1983, one Soviet offical boasted that “the evolution in capital cost of Soviet WWERs has no comparison with the increase of pressurized-water reactor costs in the West during the same period.”
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Anyway, the environmentalist story seems convincing as long as you only consider the the U.S. and the USSR, but I still kindof doubt it. Environmentalism and the anti-nuclear movement came to the U.S. first, and didn’t really emerge in Europe and Japan until in the first half of the 1970s (with a strong inspiration from America), when it would be too late to have a big effect on the main nuclear build-up. In Sweden, the reactor fleet was designed in the 1960s, by experts who knew best and didn’t particularly talk to outsiders. (Holmberg and Hedberg describe an Edenic state of affairs: “In the beginning of the 1970s all parties in the parliament supported a plan to build eleven nuclear reactors in Sweden. No debate, no conflict, everything calm. At the time energy policies were the topic for experts and a very limited number of politicians. Mass media were silent and the general public ignorant. In this atmosphere, the first Swedish reactor started operations in 1972.”)
Similarly, Lovering et al. notes that the pattern of construction cost increases in the U.S. is somewhat unique, and in other countries you either see more moderate increases (France, Canada), or no clear pattern of increases (Japan). You can see a small increase in French construction costs after the Chernobyl accident, but nothing like the huge jump in American costs after Three Miles Island, so does that mean that the reactor designs also didn’t benefit from the additional democratic scrutiny? By the above logic we would expect the Swedish reactors to be as crappy as the Soviet ones, but as far as I know they are actually perfectly fine…
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cindylouwho-2 · 4 years
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, September 2019
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Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across in the past 5 weeks, although some may be older than that.
I am still working on scheduling enough time to post these every 10 days or so, but lately luck is just not on my side. Writing this elsewhere then cutting & pasting it here is creating some significant formatting issues, so if you find any errors or broken links, please let me know. 
Are there types of news you would like to see here?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 
Etsy introduced Etsy Ads at the end of August; I covered it on my blog. Some people are seeing decent returns, but many are not. I started a forum thread here for continuing discussion. 
A day later, Amazon announced it has waived their $40 a month shop fee for Handmade by Amazon shops. See the pinned post on their Facebook page. 
A large study of click-through-rates (CTR) on Google reveals that the top link gets over 30% of the clicks, titles with questions get 14% more clicks than those without, and moving up one slot in the results leads to more clicks, unless you move from 10th to 9th. They cite Etsy’s study of titles & CTR (which showed that shorter titles get more clicks, something that this study also found).
Trend watch: a suggestion that Americans can avoid most of the tariff pain in the pocketbook by buying used clothing & other items. “Secondhand and vintage is no longer synonymous with a dusty pile of outdated sweaters in the corner of a church basement, or a yearly rummage sale. Online resale, including high-end designer items, is booming, thanks to start-ups like The RealReal, Depop, Poshmark, eBay, and Etsy. It’s possible to fill your entire closet this way”. Pre-owned & rented clothing also makes fans of sustainability happy. 
Also, “grandmillennials” are a thing. 
ETSY NEWS 
Etsy US searches often now have a full first page of items that ship free or have the $35 free shipping guarantee, as of September 6 (although they were testing it earlier than that.) I was seeing the rare exception, beyond searches that have fewer than 48 items shipping free, but it wasn’t clear if these are tests or personalization. Then on September 21, we started seeing many items with shipping charges on the first page of even very large results, & most smaller results didn’t give much if any priority to free shipping at all. There has been no statement from Etsy, so your guess is as good as mine ...
In the meantime, they’ve begun promoting free shipping to buyers, which has led to some media coverage. Some note that the timing is good, since most US holiday purchases online in the past several years have included free shipping. 
There is a new chapter in the Ultimate Guide To Etsy Search, involving attributes. The accompanying podcast with Etsy’s head taxonomist [transcript with links to the podcast] is quite interesting. She says that one of the reasons that some attributes haven’t shown up yet as search filters is that not enough sellers have applied them to listings. “If we have 100,000 items in the search results and a buyer uses a filter, and that filter causes the results to return just 20 items, that makes it seem broken. The buyer no longer trusts the results. If only 20% of sellers fill out an attribute, showing a filter based on that attribute to buyers isn’t going to be helpful because such a drastic reduction in results makes them lose confidence in those search results. We have to wait until a large number of sellers fill out that data to show it to buyers as a filter. When we do, sellers who have filled out that attribute show in those filtered search results. Sellers who haven’t, don’t.” Also, “[w]e know that shoppers who interact with these filters tend to buy more expensive items.” And, there aren’t separate jewellery attributes for “gold”, “gold-filled” & “gold-plated” because “[m]any jewelry buyers don’t have your experience and don’t know the huge difference between these things.”
The new commercials were launched earlier this month; you can check them all out here, and here is some media coverage. Some analysts think this is a good thing for the stock. 
Vox published  a review of Etsy’s latest free shipping push, in contrast with its history. [I am sure most of you have seen that, but if not, it is a good read!] “Silverman doesn’t like the words “handmade” or “craft” because they “don’t communicate anything to buyers about when to think of Etsy.” he says now. Nobody wakes up thinking, “Gosh, I need to buy something handmade today,” he tells me, which may be true but I rarely wake up thinking I need to buy anything at all, and more commonly wake up in horror because I’ve already bought way too much. “You need to furnish your apartment. You need to prepare for a party. You need to find a gift for a friend. You need a dress. Handmade is not the value proposition — unique, personalized, expresses your sense of identity, those are things that speak to buyers.” [emphasis added]  Also, apparently Etsy founder Rob Kalin “didn’t know what seed funding was when he took it”  😮
The new tool for creating country-specific sales is finally out. You still can’t create the equivalent of the $35 free shipping guarantee for countries other than the US, however, which makes this pretty useless for people wanting to offer free shipping in the US and to their own country. The only way to come close is to set a 30 day free shipping sale to your own country, but it won’t show up in search (unless people filter for free shipping) or get the Canadian search boost for items that ship free, and you still need to renew it every 30 days. In short, Etsy is telling us to overcharge our customers in other countries with no way to offer them the same deals Americans are getting.
Sellers can now use Etsy Labels for USPS First Class letters & flats. 
Holiday tips continue to roll out: here are some ideas for running holiday sales and promotions on Etsy.
Advanced content on machine learning: Etsy is employing its data on styles to serve up personalized recommendations, including the “Our Picks for You” section on the home page. The purchase and favouriting rates are part of what gets shown. They’ve discovered that some styles are more popular are different times of the year. 
For those of you who think Etsy doesn’t spend enough on advertising, they are actually buying spots on tv shows now, including this Las Vegas morning show. [video]
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 
Sad to report that Keywords Everywhere is becoming a paid tool starting October 1st (although it may take longer to roll out to your account). https://keywordseverywhere.com/news.html  They need to do this because they were being scraped by bots, which was affecting user experience & costing them a lot of time and money.  Fortunately, it is still going to be very cheap - 10,000 keywords for $1 USD, purchased ahead of time as credits. They say that the average user will spend less than $2 a month, & I suspect that the average Etsy user will spend less. Once your account moves to a paid one, you will no longer see the search volume, cost per click & competition numbers under search terms until you buy credits, although the "related keywords" & "people also search" sections will still show up on the right side of Google search.  I usually do not recommend any paid tools, but I do think this will still be worth every penny, especially if you remember to turn it off when shopping instead of researching! Every comparable paid tool costs way more than this. And despite the rush of attention since their announcement, I still received a personal reply to my email within 24 hours. 
You know how I always talk about nofollow links? They still exist, but Google has expanded their link attribution codes to include “sponsored” &  "ugc" (user generated content), and all might be crawled at any point after March 1, 2020. Moz did a top level explanation, and here is Google’s (shorter) summary. But it may not really matter much to the average site. 
Want to rank well on Google and other search engines? Create “complete content.”  
A followup on last edition’s discussion of canonical URLs - Google gets the final say. [video]
Google is now releasing monthly videos of their search news; first one is here. 
Some of you will remember Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series on learning SEO in one hour. They’ve now compiled all 6 videos in one place. 
And if you want to learn the basics of link building quickly, Moz has a short version of that chapter from their Beginner’s Guide to SEO. 
If you are afraid you are missing some SEO rules on your top pages, check out this complete checklist for on-page SEO. 
There are tons of SEO tools for Wordpress; here are 15 of the best. 
Many people will find your blog through search engines, so make sure you use keywords in your blog posts. 
If you have a website, check out 16 things that can harm your search engine rankings [semi-advanced in part, some points are discussing coding]
Success on YouTube involves SEO, something I find many users forget.
Mostly advanced: reminder that as of September 1, you can’t use robots.txt to tell Google not to index pages or sites. 
Advanced content for website developers: you need to make sure the site is ready for SEO work. 
There are always more Google updates; this one is still rolling out, and was confirmed by Google, but very few details were given. Sistrix did the first comprehensive analysis, although it is still early, and health and media sites seem to be the most dramatically affected. 
CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 
Marketing emails need to be carefully designed for success. Everything from the layout to the “preheader” matters. 
If you have content on one medium that is doing well for you, it’s time to “repurpose” it for different platforms. 
Infographics are very popular in content marketing; here’s how to make one, with 15 free templates.
Some Instagram posts do better than others; here’s why. Among other study findings, “smaller profiles which use more hashtags actually do see better engagement rates per post.”
If you aren’t getting much interaction on Instagram, you could be “shadowbanned.” There are ways to avoid that happening, and ways to fix it when it does. 
“Content factories” are a big part of Instagram traffic. Maybe Facebook should crack down on this? 
Pinterest is combining image recognition visual search with Shoppable Pins. 
Facebook is considering hiding the like counts on News Feed posts, as Instagram is testing in 7 countries right now. “The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and possibly feeling inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.”
Video app TikTok can be confusing, so here is a step-by-step guide for beginners. And here’s a podcast [with text] on the basics. 
Twitter chats are a great way to attract interest in your business.
ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 
Facebook is testing new shopping ads, but they are only available to small groups at the moment: checkout from the Facebook app, and turning Instagram shopping posts into ads. Here’s more on the latter. 
Snapchat now has longer ads and different formats. 
I see a lot of questions on what you can advertise on various platforms; here’s a good summary of items/topics prohibited on major sites. 
Since so many sellers are interested in other types of advertising right now, here are a few primers, most of which I have posted here before: Setting up Google Shopping for your website Instagram Sponsored Posts How to beat Facebook’s ad algorithm Setting up Pinterest ads
STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 
Have Google Analytics set up on your website but don’t know how to use it? Here are some common features [text and video] you may want to take advantage of. Note that the part about setting it up doesn’t apply to most marketplaces and many website builders, which have a more simplified set up, as Etsy does. 
The old Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is now almost entirely converted to the new version. Expect all of the old reports to be moved to the new version soon. 
ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 
There’s new evidence that Amazon has skewed its search algorithm to favour its own products & third-party products that make Amazon the most money. ”Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers at A9 to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions said.” In case that WSJ article goes back behind a paywall, here is some news coverage of it. “Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.” Amazon denies this, of course. 
Despite the legal agreement in Germany, Amazon is still suspending accounts without 30 days notice. 
Want to use cash to pay for online purchases? Amazon is now offering that option in the US. 
eBay listings now default to 1-day handling; if you ship slower than that, make sure to remember to change the default on each new listing you make. 
eBay managed payments (the equivalent of Etsy Payments) are now available in Germany. 
A review of major shipping trends in ecommerce notes that “[t]he accelerated supply chain is putting small sellers at a crossroads regarding if they can afford to take a hit on margins” when discussing Etsy’s free shipping push. 
BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 
Over ⅓ of US adults have bought something on social media, over 50% of 18-34 year olds are in that group. Far fewer had used visual search or virtual reality. 
More people are shopping online late at night; women are more likely to do it, but men spend more when they do. [I’ve noticed this trend on my site and Etsy shop for a few years now,compared to when I first started selling in 2008.]
The majority of shoppers worldwide who are online use videos to make some purchase decisions, as shopping lists, how-to research, and to check reviews. 
Gen Z (the generation after millennials) is more concerned about their health than the the previous 2 generations, and sometimes avoid the stresses of social media by shopping in brick & mortar stores. “About two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z prefer products made with ingredients they can understand, and tend to buy products in health and wellness categories more frequently than other generations. On environmental issues, 65% said they prefer simple packaging and 58% said they want eco-friendly packaging. Half of the group seeks products that are locally sourced or made, and 57% are seeking products that are environmentally sustainable, but fewer are willing to pay a premium price for them.”
For the 2019 holiday season, “65% of holiday shoppers will use a mobile device to shop, and 65% will make an online purchase via mobile.”
How do different industries get their online traffic? Google sends sites 8 times more traffic than all social media sites combined, and Facebook drives nearly ⅔ of all visits from social media. Instagram is responsible for less than 1%, while Twitter tops 10%. The author notes that “faster-growing social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed from the ground up in a way that makes it difficult to drive traffic to external sites.”
MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 
Google is working on letting you search your Google Photos for text; it seems to be using AI to identify & store the text in your screenshots and other images. It’s interesting technology that will likely be used in many ways, including search engines, if it works well. 
If you like convo snippets on Etsy, here’s a tool that will make them possible in many more places. 
Need a photo editor that works on mobile? Here’s a list of 12, most of which are free or cost only $1 USD. 
This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier. 
Stuff that probably shouldn’t taste like pumpkin spice. [humour]
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casual-romantic · 5 years
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Battle Event Review: Bonds of the Radiant Shadows
@otome-reviews​ and I were discussing just how interesting the new battle event was and I commented it could really use a review. Since she has enough on her plate cranking out excellent reviews for stories, here's my first attempt at going over the pros and cons of an SLBP event. :) Comments welcome.
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So, this was it! Finally, the ninjas joined the lords (and Saizo) in a knock-down, no-holds-barred, all-out battle! I don't play the Japanese versions, but my understanding is this is a first for the franchise - and it felt like it. Bugs, confusion, and really good prizes abounded. SLBP has never been more interesting or nerve-wracking.
First, let's talk about those prizes. Most of them were really good, as befitting such a historic BE. And if the next BE mixes the clans up (as I think it should), this'll be the only time for a while when you could get thematically and regionally linked characters together fairly easily.
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Road to Victory Prizes I liked these! They were very cute and different from what I've already got in my box (caveat: I started playing early this summer). I especially liked the foxes, and the butterflies are a cute touch of whimsy. I doubt how much use most of them will be with indoor backgrounds, but I'm always down for cute and different.
Rating: :)
Loyalty/Serving Prizes Birds: Boooooring. I'm tired of recolors of random objects that I can't bring myself to get rid of because they were BE prizes. When do we get items with personality to them again, like the rain ghosts? Plus, they can't fly very high because they're not wall objects.
Rating: :/
Chibis: Excellent! They can be secondary samurai, they have cute sayings, and (favorite aspect) even characters like Mitsunari who usually frown are smiling (Mitsunari is still a smug-looking little bastard, though). The outfits don’t vary by character (just recolors for each lord/ninja), but the other qualities make up for it. Plus, we got both the lords and the ninjas!
Rating: :D
I was disappointed there were no story/letter prizes, but given how fierce the competition already was adding another reason for people to aim for completion was probably not in the cards. Still, I like story prizes the best and hope we get them for the next BE.
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Ranking Prizes Overall ranking: The dress was interesting with the new pose and the warning about non-compatibility was funny (dress may not work with literally anything). Not the best BE dress prize, but not bad at all. The hair is very nice (though it comes with a non-removable bow) and the make-up generic. Plus, there was a preview all button so you could see how the whole outfit would look on your character.
Rating: :)
Clan ranking: Okay, these were especially interesting and what really made the battle so fierce. TWO chibis per character and they can be used as secondary samurai and they interact and you could get a regional set! But, you had to serve that clan and rank high enough. Not too bad if you prioritized just one clan or wanted characters on the losing teams (especially Yellow), but very tricky if you wanted to go for multiple clan sets. God help you if you went for both Hotaru and Saizo.
Rating: :D
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New Rules See here and here. There was no additional explanation of this battle's rules despite it differing significantly from previous ones. And during betrayal we learned there was no way to go from a losing clan to a losing clan or a winning clan to a winning clan - you had to include an extra betrayal to go from, say, Blue to Red, which of course cost pearls.
That said, most of the rules, once I figured them out, were just fine. Like, betrayal only netting you triple fever going from winning to losing. That was fine - once I understood it. (I usually only betray once per battle event so the point has never come up for me before and the betrayal page says "every time you switch.")
I'm torn as to how I feel about the cost of betrayal. You still get one for free, and it's pretty cheap to do a few, but serving everyone now costs a minimum of 6 pearls, assuming you started on a winning clan. And unless your ending losing clan becomes a winning clan you'd need another 3 pearls to get the winning side prizes.
On the other hand, the higher cost gives an edge to anyone willing to commit to just one character, which is handy for newbies and those who have a very strong bias. That's not the worst thing in the world. And with 18 characters, is it still reasonable to expect to be able to serve everyone in every event? Possibly not.
As long as the rules are crystal-clear in the future and explained before you choose your starting clan, I think they're fine. But the way they were handled in this event was incredibly poor.
Rating: :(
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Strategy For once, you actually had to have a strategy beyond just trying to start on the winning clan. And, you had to wait to execute that strategy for the best chance of success. You didn't want to jump ship before you'd assured yourself of your rank, but you also didn't want to spend more items then you had to.
The obvious strategy was to wait as long as possible before betraying. Waiting before you push a button ought to be easy, but it was haaaaard and I jumped the gun on all of my betrayals. Whoops.
In the future, if Voltage keeps this format (and I'm guessing they will based on how hard people went for the prizes), I'd like to see the clans mixed up a lot more. Give each clan one of the top 6 characters, one of the middle 6, and one of the bottom 6, then see how it goes. It  would make it much harder to predict which clans end up on top and make betrayal more interesting (...and stressful).
Rating: D:  :(  :/  :)  :D (Depends if your strategy worked or not.)
Note to future!self: Any ranking prior to betrayal should NOT BE TRUSTED. Just because you have T300 in Blue doesn't mean you can waltz back in 12 hours prior to event end and think you can get anything other than a lace dress.
Incidentally, this was the first time I had trouble overall ranking T300 (and ultimately didn’t even get T500). Every other BE since July I've placed T300 as long as I tried. People were clearly going all out for the chibis. Plus, there was the effect of having 18 characters instead of 12. If you usually only serve 2 characters and your competition usually serves 2, but this event they decide to serve 4 because ninjas, well, you're down farther than usual.
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Errors The game sometimes got a little stuck after serving and you had to jump the home page or your castle or somewhere and then back to the battle to see your results. Not a major problem, but irritating if you were carefully serving calculated increments.
Speaking of the results screen, I have no idea what it thought my rank was. The number was always low and never matched anything else - not my character rank, my clan rank, my overall rank, how many times I'd served, nothing. Weird. Voltage, please fix.
Rating: :/
Rating:  D: (Not everyone noticed the results screen was an error and thus ended up serving way more or less than necessary.)
Shigezane What, still no Shigezane? If he can't be part of the battle because of the numbers, why not make him a bonus prize somewhere? Put him on Victory Road or make him a ranking prize. Just let him participate - he's probably silently crying in a corner over being excluded from helping the Date again.
Rating: D:
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Conclusion
Overall, this BE was really interesting. I'd love to see graphs of how all the ranks changed over time, and the numbers for T300/500/700 for each clan. For example, I noticed in Green the fight for T300 was fierce, but T500 was quite doable and my rank didn't sink too fast after I left. There must have been fewer but very dedicated people serving.  Just right for Ieyasu
Rating: :)
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ladililn · 5 years
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What Rogue One taught me about the Jedi, despite no Jedi actually appearing in it
So I initially started writing this for @rogueoneanniversary last year, and then Real Life happened and I disappeared from Tumblr and then Tumblr disappeared from me and now here we are, a full standard year later, and guess who still has (now very belated) Thoughts she wants to share? This girl! Because guess who still hasn’t gotten over this movie? This me! (Not sure whether @celebraterogueone is the correct place for this now?)
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The first time I saw Rogue One, I completely missed the fallen colossus in the sands of Jedha. I just thought it was an overhead shot of some weirdly-shaped mountain. The second time, it took a moment for my brain to register and make sense of the image, and then I wondered how I'd ever missed it.
This one object, one blink-and-you-miss-it set piece, tells us so much about Jedha and the "ancient religion" of the Jedi and themes that run through the entire saga and even, I think, characters who aren't even in Rogue One (there's a reason the fallen Jedi statue looks exactly like Old Ben). It immediately calls to mind Shelley’s Ozymandias:
I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies[…]
[…]Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
To return for a moment to Admiral Motti’s “ancient religion” line in ANH—I’ve seen people point that out as a plot hole, or at least an early inconsistency, given that the Prequels show the Jedi faith alive and well a mere nineteen years earlier, which doesn’t seem very ancient. I find that charge specious for several reasons—first of all, “ancient” doesn’t mean “dead." I think you could easily and accurately refer to Judaism or Christianity as “ancient religions,” and both of those are alive and well now. The religion began a long, long time ago; thus it is “ancient.” I’d also argue that we hardly needed the Prequels to belie the idea that the Jedi Order was beyond human memory. We know in ANH that Obi-Wan used to be a Jedi Knight, and although Alec Guinness looked (and was) older than Obi-Wan’s actual age, there was nothing in that movie or the other two OT movies to indicate human lifespans differ significantly in the GFFA.
Still, I see the disconnect. On the one hand, we have a not-that-ancient man who was once one of the “guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” On the other, you have Luke, who’s never even heard of the Jedi, and Han, who doesn’t believe in the Force. Again, some see these as errors, considering Han was already ten when the Republic fell, meaning the Jedi were still getting up to their incredible and well-documented feats when he should’ve been old enough to be aware and remember.
Explanations for this seeming disconnect can be found across the franchise, and they boil down to two main points: the Jedi’s (relative) lack of reach throughout the galaxy, and Order 66. 
Here’s a fun figure: how many Jedi were there in the galaxy before Order 66? 10,000. Ten fucking thousand. That’s a ridiculously tiny number. A laughably tiny number. A Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale number. An entire galaxy, all those planets and star systems, billions and billions (trillions? quadrillions?) of sentient beings, and you could name every single Jedi in a few hours. Put them all in the smallest NFL stadium, and they couldn’t even fill half the seats. 
Sometimes I find the Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale-ness of the GFFA frustrating (although IMO the “why is this galaxy filled with the same 10 people?!” complaints fans like to toss around ignores the history of the mythic storytelling tradition Star Wars is very much a part of and how the franchise fits into/plays with those genre conventions, but that’s a rant for another day). But in this case, I fucking love how ridiculous a number 10,000 is. I think it’s perfect. Our view of the Jedi’s relative size and stature in the galaxy is warped by the lens through which we see the galaxy; up until Rogue One, we’re pretty much just hanging out with Jedi. Not only that—in the Prequels and TCW, we’re hanging out with the best of the best, the council members and the freaking Chosen One. They’re the elite among the elite. The 1% of the 1%, only more like the .001% of the .0000000000000001%.
There’s an excerpt from the Rogue One novelization that I think illustrates my point perfectly. This comes from a section of the book that’s meant to be “supplemental data [from the] personal files of Mon Mothma,” a document entitled “Short Notes on the History of the Rebel Alliance Navy” (side note: how much do I love in-universe archival material? a whole fucking lot) (all emphasis mine):
What worked in the Clone Wars cannot work again: the partnership of Jedi Knights and Kaminoan clone armies constituted a peerless weapon that no longer exists. 
Consider a brigade of clone troopers served by a Jedi commander: Such a unit might penetrate a world’s orbital defenses and seize control of the entire planet while taking (and inflicting!) minimal casualties… [W]hat blockade could be thorough enough to keep out a handful of determined star fighters and a single clone drop ship? 
...With the Clone Wars’ end, the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the decommissioning of the Kaminoan cloning facilities, the self-proclaimed Emperor and his military advisers determined that the future of warfare was in large-scale naval weaponry—in a fleet of battleships and battle stations that could atomize any enemy, whether on a planet’s surface or among the stars. They rebuilt a military not for precision strikes but for hammerblows… No potential rebellion could dare eschew infantry altogether, but—lacking the elite support of the Jedi or clones—the cost in lives would be abominable…
From an in-universe perspective, the Jedi are OP as shit. Guys, these are a tiny handful of beings with the ability to move shit with their minds! They can run and leap insane distances at inhuman (yeah, I know that’s an impossible term in the context of a galaxy filled with humans and aliens, but you know what I mean) speeds, they can move in ways other people could never imagine, they have the sort of reflexes that allow Anakin to participate in a sport other members of his species, the most populous in the galaxy by far, physically cannot. They can manipulate the environment around them telekinetically. They can manipulate people telepathically. Their weapons can cut through anything. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: they are literal space wizards. I know this is all obvious, but think about it from the perspective of your average galactic citizen: here is a microscopically tiny group of people who can literally do magic.
Why are there so few of them? Well, the Force moves in mysterious ways. But also, there don’t really need to be more. Talk about casting an outsized shadow: 10,000 people holding the entire galaxy together. Like Mon Mothma says, one Jedi (and their handful of trusty clone troopers) = an entire fucking battle station in terms of military power. And with the Sith so long in hiding (side note: the Rule of Two makes the Order look positively overpopulated), the Jedi have had no real opponent of their own stature and ability level to contend with for a long, long time. (We see, especially in TCW, how difficult it is for a non-Force user to be made into a credible threat for the Jedi in any circumstances. Those plotlines almost always require characters to be nerfed, either by having to hide their powers (because undercover), being restrained by the Code and not wanting to harm civilians (a Jedi’s primary weapon—though obviously not their only weapon—is hard to make nonlethal, or at least non-maiming), or conveniently forgetting most of their powers.)
Now, it could be argued that there do “need” to be more, because are they actually doing such a great job guarding peace and justice? Are they successfully holding the galaxy together? Even before the Clone Wars, we see in TPM that their power doesn’t extend all the way into the far reaches of the galaxy. Of course, you could also argue that the lawlessness of the Outer Rim has less to do with the Jedi’s inability, in terms of sheer forcible (sorry) power, to do anything about it, and more to do with the politics of the Republic, and you could be right. But that’s part of the point. The Jedi are enforcers of peace, not rulers. They’re not supposed to be making decisions on galactic policy. (That “supposed to” is key, but again: a story for another day.)
So my point is: sure, on Coruscant in the year 20 BBY, you’re not going to have anyone blinking and saying “Jedi who?” It’s a Core World—the Core World—and most of the characters we’re familiar with in the Prequel Era are by necessity among the upper echelons of galactic society, or at least moving in circles that bring them into contact with the upper echelons. High-ranking politicians, rulers of various worlds, heads of planetary militia—people who have reason to be interacting with the Jedi. (Even the criminals they interact with are top-level, crime bosses and legendary bounty hunters. You’re not going to call a Jedi to arrest a petty thief.)
99.999% of the galaxy’s citizens have never seen a Jedi in person. (We’re going to leave beside the issue of the media in the GFFA, because that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of, uh, mynocks?) The farther you get from Coruscant, the farther removed you are from galactic high society, the less you probably know about the Jedi. Han, growing up on the streets of Corellia, has no reason to be an expert on Jedi. I’m sure he’s heard rumors, but he is perfectly justified in being a skeptic, particularly once the Jedi disappear seemingly easily.
Which brings us to the Jedi Purge. Here’s the thing: Order 66 wasn’t just about literally killing all the Jedi and burning their Temple down. It was a planned cultural genocide as well. A revision of history. We all know the line from 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Palpatine destroyed the memory of the Jedi as surely as he destroyed the Jedi themselves. We’ve met, in various canon sources, history professors who lost their jobs because any mention, scholarly or otherwise, of the Jedi Order had become verboten. We’ve seen kids studying for their galactic history class in which one of the questions concerns Mace Windu, leader of a “criminal gang that interfered with a legal execution on Geonosis and sparked the Clone Wars.” Talk about revisionist: that goes against everything Palpatine himself said and did during the Clone Wars, a not-insignificant timespan of at least three years of his own personal history he has to revise, but in his role as Emperor, he can pull that off. This is what totalitarian governments do. We already see it begin in RotS, when Palps tells the Senate all about the Jedi Order’s attempt at a coup. And it’s effective! Five years on, Tarkin himself says the Jedi already feel like a distant memory.
And of course it’s fairly ludicrous (though not, I suppose, impossible) to assume that the statue on Jedha fell and was partially buried in sand within the last 19 years. But that’s one of the things I love most about Star Wars, something it’s particularly famous for: its Used Future aesthetic, the continued reminders that this is a galaxy with a history, one as complex and mysterious and tangled in its own legends as our own. That fallen colossus is one of many clues throughout canon that the Old Republic, the Jedi Order, belief in the Force—all were in decline long before the events of the Prequel Era.
Similarly, it’s clear that Jedha itself, once among the most holy sites in the galaxy, was also only a shadow of its former glory long before it got wiped off the map entirely. From Wookieepedia (again, emphasis mine):
As more of the galaxy was mapped, more direct hyperspace routes were discovered. These new passages made the old, winding routes, such as those connecting with Jedha, obsolete. The once-popular Jedha became an antiquated curiosity rather than a relevant destination, a location for those who desired spiritual guidance, a deeper purpose, or to simply exile themselves from the larger galaxy.
It’s typical Imperial excess to take the idea of Jedha’s long-buried secrets lost to the sands of time and literalize it by blowing the damn thing up. Horace Smith’s Ozymandias is less famous, but as (if not more) relevant to our discussion (“The City’s gone,” anyone?), and I leave you with its last stanza:
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
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lolita-tips · 6 years
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So I'm super confused and I wondered if you could help - I found a nice blouse on the Anna House website. It's like $27, and I figured hey why not - but when the cart total came to, it said shipping cost was "USD177.10" With the order total being, "USD204.40". Is this normal? Or is this to be read as HKD? It's one item, is that why the shipping might be so high in USD?
That’s very odd... I’ve honestly never seen that, nor have I heard of Anna House having such ridiculous shipping prices. I would guess that it’s an error because even if it was HKD it wouldn’t add up. My recommendation would be to send them an email explaining what you’re coming across and asking if it’s a mistake. I imagine it’s some sort of glitch because I’ve never had an issue like this with them. I’m going to send them an email as well because I”m really curious and when I get a response I’ll share it.
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