#irl railway history

[hazel-of-sodor]

I'm gonna start going through my folder and posting the up to date versions of all my engines. Tonight’s is the Avonside B3. Specifcally Margaret, a Engine that worked at St. George quarry and the Kinmel Railway with her sister Eleanor.  The right version is her in @denbigh-and-wrexham​ ‘s Au version of her, owned by the Denbigh Quarry Company.  Heres the real Margaret looking worse for wear.

#irl railway #irl locomotives #irl railway history #avonside b3 #0-6-0st #margaret #charming little saddletanks #Denbigh and Wrexham Railway #Denbigh Quarry Company #Kinmel Railway #the railway is now a cycling path irl #Hazel's files

[edwards-exploit]

The Bournemouth Belle, and The Last Shunter.

More OCs! SteamNav and Missus are rather new so some info might be subject to change, and they were AU versions of certain characters (3 points if you guess who) buuut they spiralled into new characters. SteamNav is tranquil fury incarnate, trying to take control of his life after so long being something humans have tinkered with and throwing herself into making Incredibly Bad Descisions; and Missus can and will judge your (engine) sins, but she keeps losing at poker and that's why Sodor is so damn haunted. If anyone has any more questions or just want to help me brainstorm send me an ask and I'll answer :]

#live from tidmouth #creative on the mainline #ttte #thomas the tank engine #thomas and friends #thomas & friends #ttte oc #ttte oc steamnav #ttte oc missus #missus is NOT engine devil shes just the one who shunts you to engine heaven or engine hell accordinf to folklore #theres other reaper like figures in engine folklore esp worldwide. in indonesia where many steam engines left in depots got scrapped illegal #*illegally the reaper figure is a lot more ominous. humanoid figures with cutter torches. #irl general steam navigation is still being restored and unrebuilt to her original shape #which is taking a LONGASS time. shes been purchased from barry in the 80S. #I imagine she's going stir fucking crazy. and she has a documented history in her own website btw #did you know that br warships are from the western region. made in swindon. THEYRE GREAT WESTERN ENGINESSSS #and apparently the great western railway and the southern railway had rivalry #which makes any animosity duck and thomas had a bit funnier in hindsight. literally gwr and sr behaviour

[sanctus-ingenium]

Inver - relief map relative to the continent with otherworld territory marked, broad habitat map, detailed local landmarks map, and political map of the northeast atlantic peninsula as of 1862

i was just having map fun for two days lol. i make habitat maps a lot already but the difference with this one is that i can't just download a handy shapefile and do some GIS magic. this was hand drawn (but obviously. somewhat traced over the actual irl map)

for the outline of the north sea coast i used bathymetry data to figure out where the true coastline would occur. the north sea recedes but the atlantic doesn't (to the same extent). because this landmass was formed through some ancient Event, i felt pretty okay about changing the bedrock because like, whatever, we can't be fully realist all the time. so the northern half of inver is mainly limestone, the southern half is silicaceous - so we got the bog/marl divide there, though lough cánamac (in volume slightly larger than any of the north american great lakes) appears to be the remnant of the north sea, it is freshwater with a relatively low pH. the water of the lough is black to dark brown due to the run-off from the southern bogs and swamps.

in the north, the mountain ranges are calcareous. calcareous grassland, scrubland, heaths and fens dominate with a largely alkaline profile. limestone marl lakes which regularly flood due to groundwater input make the region pretty unsuitable for crops other than rice.

the ruad is the name for a stretch of otherworld territory which contains the lough, though generally used to refer to the forested area. it is completely uninhabitable throughout the majority of its range due to the non-euclidian structure of the land making it impossible to navigate consistently, and the strange and frequently hostile creatures living there. the ruad is faery territory and belongs to an entity known as the Red King, who uses the symbol of a stag. so although inver may look like a large country compared to its neighbours, it has a relatively small population concentrated on the west coast.

however, sailing across the lough is the quickest way to trade with countries in the east, far quicker than trekking through the forest and over land. the trade route through the ruad from invergorken to the cánamac town is one of the most valuable in the continent. it consists of an old road with regularly-spaced ranger safehouses and patrols, and a newer pair of railway lines which can cut through the supernatural aura of the ruad due to their iron rails. the first and older line is no longer in regular use. it was constructed before the development of wrought iron and before the build crews learned how to blast through rock, so it takes a very slow and winding route and required a lot of maintenance. safehouses were constructed to board the workers while the tracks were laid. but without this original track, the construction of the second, far more advanced wrought iron track would have been impossible. workers for the second track were able to commute and sleep on the first track's train, keeping them from harm. the second track can fit two trains side by side and is in constant use ferrying cargo and passengers between the two towns

the country of inver, once The Event wiped out all of its original inhabitants a couple thousand years ago, was settled by hibernians and vikings from the north moving south, and aquitanians from the south moving north (thus the place names). the ruad mostly blocked incursions from the east. there was a long history of dispute over who truly owned the land, and that remained sort of up in the air for most of its history until the 1400s when armorican warlords (like Olivier) decided to make it theirs for realsies and waged war against their old hibernian trade partners (like Finbarr) for control of the land. the hibernians lost because finbarr fucked it up at the last second, and this cemented a ruling class of werewolves in inver until the 1860s

inver consists of three large duchies which cover 70% of the population. Moya in the west is the heart of lycanthrope rule, everybody worships a faery known as the immortal hound and the ruad is far enough away that it is not a fact of life as it is for everyone else. Inver duchy covers the capital city and the south-western farmland, the main sites of production in the country. And Cánamac duchy covers the trade port in the lough and surrounding territories, where forest clearing has led to new farmland and a thriving population. There was a fourth duchy in the north, Aber, but it was historically somewhat isolated and cut off from the south of the country and had developed its own customs and traditions, and its own form of the country's currency. In the 1840s, the duchy of Aber was dissolved and reconstituted into the king's lands, and southern customs were enforced in the north to prevent any more divergence. the palaces of the ruling families in each territory are shown in the local map alongside the family names.

Due to The Event causing massive damage in this region of Europe, forbidding the development of britain and france etc as colonial empires, the last great Empire of this continent was the roman empire, and even that didn't manage to overcome the Ruad. technology is rudimentary in Inver and the people living there are largely considered to be weird backwards superstitious barbarians. aquitan has been threatening annexation for decades, led mainly by the church of suzette, which forbids interaction with otherworld entities. the church holds in disregard the nobility of inver and their cultish ways, and as a result has been banned from attempting to convert inver citizens. but the church is still allowed to make minor inroads into inver for one very important reason: penicillin and antibiotics are the sole creation of the church, and the secret of how they are made is unknown outside suzette. so for the sake of good, advanced healthcare, the church is allowed to set up clinics and hospitals, on the condition that nobody is converted, and members of the church are strictly banned from engaging in any business but importing and selling antibiotics

#ignore me using the wrong orthography in several places #setting: inver #northeast atlantic peninsula bro what happened to u... oh no.. he died... #none of that is spoilers under the cut it's just like. basic history everyone knows

[bruhstation]

You seem like a Train Professional so where would one begin in order to get into the funny little talking train show?

these are all my own opinions so take it like a grain of salt -- the common go-to would be the thomas and friends tv show. start off from season 1 then work all your way up to the top (not actually really. you can skip some later seasons like s17 if you want to). the model seasons are considered to be some of the greatest because 1) they set the foundation of the cast (besides the railway series books) 2) they contain some of the most iconic scenes from the show like gordon's ronan kirk crash, the flying kipper accident, james and the shoelaces, etc and 3) they're the originals so you know what their personalities and relationships to their peers were like and how their characterization was supposed to be like before the cgi era flip flopped them up

also check out the railway series books in the meantime! the funny talking train show was based on the book series created by reverend awdry for his sick son! the first book feature edward, henry, and gordon. thomas appears in the second book. fast forward decades later and britt alcroft created a tv show called thomas the tank engine. there are many eras of the show, from models, to model/cgi hybrid, to computer animations where the show gets passed around like a volleyball from studio to studio

here's a google spreadsheet that contains all the thomas and friends episodes in various languages. feel free to watch the show for yourself and decide which seasons you like the most

some more of my thoughts under the cut

I recommend you steer clear of the big world big adventures seasons and specials because it's probably the most controversial seasons in the fandom. replacing two of the core cast members, "pandering" to certain audiences, putting in lackluster representation for the sake of selling toys, SAID representation turns out to be racist depictions, all of it reflected the current state of mattel when handling thomas and friends. they also didn't contribute anything to the overall show, like by the time the bwba seasons were out, people dgaf and just focused on the older seasons. you can ignore bwba and you won't miss anything important about ttte. not that I'm stopping you! you have your own free will.

the thing about ttte that made many adults get into it (if not for train autism) is how ttte was a show grounded in reality. idk if that makes sense but basically despite being a show about mean talking trains for little kids, reverend awdry and britt alcroft handled the characters with care. they gave the engines so much charm by making them bicker with each other like the cranky old engines they are BUT they're not reduced to singular personality traits too. thomas is cheeky and kind of a meanie but he wants to prove himself useful. edward is old and acts as a mentor to thomas but he also wants to show that he still got it despite his old age. gordon went from being a pompous grand young express engine to a humble old engine being a mentor to the newer ones and so on! they also put a lot of historical references related to the engines' basis too and tie their backstories in (henry's a stolen faulty design hence his cynical, miserable personality at the early seasons of the show). there's even irl engines mentioned in both the books and show (flying scotsman and city of truro) and it's just neat!!! because awdry cares about history so much!!!! that he even made an "encyclopedia" about sodor, its railways, and its history

the books and the earlier seasons of ttte didn't shy away from themes of death and usefulness and all that (the story of godred, henry being a faulty engine and getting cask of amontillado'd for being uncooperative, all of gordon's siblings scrapped sans flying scotsman) because the thing about them being engines are important to them. it's their reison d'etre. they get scrapped if they cannot be of use anymore, because that's how things have always been. they get into accidents often because their ego got to them. dieselization is starting on the island of sodor and the diesels are asserting their dominance over the oldschool steam engines. the engines just exist there. they just happen to have faces and talk. idk. I think it's interesting how they view life a bit differently than humans. thank you for listening to my ramble

#asks #anonymous #also I'm not the most professional!!!! dozens of my mutuals are more qualified in this field than me

[thatcheeseycandle]

//tw for mentions of war, death, breakdowns, fighting, hurt, and Buckle up Buttercup ITS TIME FOR THE FIRST FANFICTION I'LL EVER BE POSTING

Now before reading I'd like to point out the possibility of the characters here being somewhat out-of-character since each bit was written in 10 minutes (IT WAS FOR A SPRINTING BOT DISCORD SESSION OKAY- But I did clean it up a bit by redoing some of the bits) and then to add on I used a wheel to pick what I should do

And the wheel chose "do a story where a side character actually shows emotion for once" so uh would explain why Spencer might might be like half out-of-character

To add on this is basically my take on the whole.. "Irl History affects the plot" thing (also being set in my Candle-lit Railways AU which also explains the humanoid descriptions) so yup, PREPARE FOR WAR-

-----------------

As the candle dimmed down it's light, The shed doors would close with silence filling the air, simply another night to rest then waste all that energy again.

Spencer would let out an exhausted sigh. He knew how devastated Mallard would be once he heard the news  about Gadwall, the more innocent one among the Gresleys, always naive yet a charming one in his own unique way.

Unique enough to get Great Northern, of all people, to soften up to him. It still surprised Spencer til' this moment that he got North to become soft. Though that uniqueness left a gap in reality, a horrible reality, that's now began a world war.

Which was the same exact thing that led to Gadwall's demise. The demise of the only light that was left in darkness. They killed an innocent engine just because of humanity's selfishness.

They killed his brother. His youngest brother.

The Shed doors would open, snapping Spencer out of his thoughts as he looked to who was near the doors. He would see it to be Sir Nigel, in his humanoid form.

He would sigh in relief, maybe Sir Nigel could keep him from his night terrors for just this night. Just for an hour at least.

Sir Nigel would look up to Spencer, sitting on a stool next to him. Simply looking out the shed into the moonlight knowing that Spencer needed some company.

"I miss him too."

Sir Nigel suddenly said in a mournful voice.

"I-.. I miss him more than.. More than anything, honestly."

Spencer replied back, depressingly.

As the two sat there, simply tranquil together, they would mourn in silence. For their brother. Because nothing was louder than their younger brother's joyous aura.

That aura was gone for good.

———

He was in the rain, running as fast as he could towards Top sheds. He knew his crew would say something about Gadwall's death. He can't be held back by his engine form, not now. Even if he wasn't steaming he was able to shift into his humanoid form.

Spencer’s fire kept burning and burning inside his chest as he ran through the rain. Running like someone who was rollerblading, technically he was skating with his wheels.

But he kept running and running. He didn't care if his crew would scold him, he wouldn't care if Sir Nigel Gresley himself would come to scold him after. He needed to save what was left of Mallard's innocence, what was left of his hope.

With World War II currently escalating into more madness, Spencer had to hold onto each bit of hope he could keep or at least save. He had to hold onto Mallard's innocence more, even just for a week or a day he had to hold onto it a little bit longer.

As he got to top sheds, he already felt the atmosphere shift as he caught a glimpse of Quicksilver and Mercury's mournful faces. Silverfox was in Polly's arms, sobbing, grieving as the news sunk into her mind. He knew that his crew told them as well, he already knew by the shift, by the faces.

He would bust open the doors to Mallard's shed, his black silver-lined coat falling to the floor, but he wouldn't bother to pick it up as he saw Mallard's fallen face. Spencer saw the tears slip down Mallard's cheeks more quicker than water pouring into an engine's boiler. It was too late.

Mallard had the news sunken into his mind and Spencer knew that well enough to not take one more step near Mallard, afraid that he'd lose his mind more than he looks like he already has.

He simply stood there, letting Mallard grieve as his crew comforted the glossed-black locomotive as he grieved for his younger sibling. Spencer would take off his hat, in respect of Mallard currently breaking down.

Spencer didn't even need to look back to know that the others were watching Mallard slowly breakdown, he already could vision how Merlin would react to Mallard breaking down this much.

The thoughts inside Spencer's mind would inflict more anxiety through his veins as his breathe became shaky and his chest heavy, though wouldn't even flinch a single bit out of respect for Mallard.

It was a known rule that if you show weakness around someone who's in terrible condition physically or/and mentally, it is a sign of selfishness slipping through your mind.

And Spencer held that rule more higher than his pride, it was the only rule that really stuck to him underneath all his pride and “glory” for some reason. He didn't know that reason.

But he does know that, as of now, he needs to show his respect towards Mallard in his time of grief.

———

The rain would be pouring heavily atop of Top Sheds as the engines rested in their assigned sheds, some of them shivering from the cold while the rest would be sleeping tired of the workload for today. Though some engines wouldn't be either of those.

Silver Fox and Pretty Polly were the only ones awake at the time, Donovan was doing his last runs of the night so technically he counted as awake too. The two would sit in their sheds, which were next to each other. Polly would be looking up at the sky, not trying to guess any constellations, simply grieving silently.

Silver Fox on the other hand was trying to hold back tears from what's happened today, it was devastating seeing Silver King having to get hurt, even worse that Quick Silver started to lash out. She just wanted all this to stop.

She wanted everything to go back to normal, she didn't want to be apart of this war, even if it meant her being in her shed for decades. She never wanted to face all this. She thought frustratingly to herself.

She wouldn't realize until now that she started to have warm tears flow down her eyes onto her cheeks, dripping onto the ground, which would be heard due to the silence that hung over Top sheds.

As she blinked away her tears she would look over to Pretty Polly, who wasn't backed in her shed not caring for the cold, she simply rested outside as her gaze was focused at the sky above.

Silver fox would watch her silently, slowly going forward to get a better glimpse as her. Though Polly would sense her warm aura come near her.

“What do you think of the stars, my dear Fox?”

Polly asked Fox, in a soothing tranquil tone, Silver Fox would flinch a bit at Polly calling out to her, though would go forward a bit going next to Polly. As she got closer she would see tears flowing from Polly's eyes as well, shining in the moonlight as she gazed at the sky above them.

Silver Fox would be surprised at this. Though she couldn't really blame Polly, she thought to herself. With the war going on, and all the deaths that's been happening she must've felt the warmth of each soul disappear by the days passing by, Silver Fox thought as she continued her train of thought.

Finally she'd gaze up to the dark-royal blue sky, with the stars shining like the sparks of fire from an engine's firebox, a new star popping up by a few minutes. Each group of stars forming a shape, a symbol, a constellation.

It's.. It's gorgeous. Silver Fox thought through her grief. Though it didn't feel like the right words to describe the sky somehow, the view felt more than gorgeous. It felt serene yet overwhelming with all the stars in the sky.

Though she'd finally come up with a phrase, that almost, perfectly describes the feelings she has about the sky.

“It makes me feel at home, Ms Polly.”

————————————

YKNOW REREADING THAT IT MADE ME REMEMBER TOO MANY HEADCANONS I HAD FOR THE CANDLE-LIT RAILWAYS AU BEHAHDBXBX BUT YUP IT WAS NICE TO REWRITE THIS PIECE TO IT'S (near) POTENTIAL

SO YUP I'LL JUST POST ANOTHER FANFIC RIGHT WHEN MY BRAIN GETS AN IDEA-

#cheesyversial rants #ttte fanfic #ttte young iron au (??) #technically this is inspired by how the war played out in YIAU but just with my designs BUT YEAH CREDITS TO YIAU- #candlelit storytime #cheesey writes

[transsexualunderground]

so, let's talk about clara, the scrapyard engine no longer!

aka my latest ttte oc! this infodump involves quite a bit about scrapping and death, just fyi. more below the cut!

First things first, I'd like to talk about her basis. IRL none were preserved, but I present to you...

The L&YR Hughes 4-6-4T!

Real big tank engines, aren't they? 49 feet long, apparently! They were nicknamed Dreadnought tanks after the engine they were based on, L&YR Class 8, which were in turn nicknamed Dreadnoughts.

In regards to Clara herself, she has a bit of a history. On her old railway, though she has long since forgotten it, she was once nicknamed "Little Dreadnought," a rather funny nickname considering how large her class is.

But as dieselization occurred, she wasn't needed any longer. One fateful day, she was visited by some men from a scrapyard and given a choice. Either come with them and work at the scrapyard, or be scrapped. With a life or death decision before her, she decided she would live.

It just so happened this scrapyard was on Sodor.

She was granted a new nickname - Ol' Smokestack.

Life in the scrapyards wasn't easy for her at all. She bore direct witness to engine scrapping and sometimes had to bring other engines to be scrapped. She was some of their final company and even then, she didn't think she was very good company.

But eventually, she got desensitized. She continued working simply to live, and to prevent anyone else from having to bear the burden of her job. She thought she no longer felt guilt about it, but in reality, she did. Her guilt presented itself in the form of her dreading what was to come after the scrapyards, an undying feeling of her being undeserving of forgiveness or a new chance.

It was rare engines who weren't about to be scrapped spoke to her. After all, who would? She didn't blame them for it, she was the scrapyard engine. Sometimes diesels from the Other Railway who had some sort of scrap based deal with the yard came by, but they were never good conversation. Some of her best conversation lay in some boys, apprentices, who briefly visited the scrapyards. They seemed to be genuinely interested in steam engines and soon found themselves leaving after learning about what scrapping was truly like. She learned of some things then - medieval times especially from one of the particularly chatty ones.

But nevertheless, life went on for Smokestack. And it started to hurt, both mentally and physically. She did not complain about her ails, though, for fear of being scrapped. She did what she could. She was not willing or happy to be there, but she was compliant, for her own life's sake.

Then, came Wesley. At that time, he had barely been exposed to the concept of scrap. Before he arrived at the scrapyard to take one scrap train from the larger scrapyard to the smaller one on Edward's branch line (where, at that point, not many engines had been scrapped anyways, to his knowledge, despite Trevor almost having been scrapped there, but that was after that), he was warned to not talk to the scrapyard engine. He disregarded those warnings, wanting to give her a fair chance. The two struck some light conversation before Wesley left, uncomfortable in the scrapyard. Then, Wesley came to the realization that no engine would... choose to be there, right? There were two outcomes about her presence there and neither were good. Either she was there and wasn't happy to be there, or she was *enjoying scrapping other engines.* Though wary of the scrapyard, he needed to know more.

He continued working with that scrap train for some time, getting to know Smokestack. She opened up rather quickly, happy to have some better conversation. She also started informing Wesley about the scrapyard, finding it strange such an old engine barely knew about them. Wesley's realizations about how horrible this place was kept growing. He asked about what was done with the scrap, and learned that as well: it was simply put to a new use, usually. He found himself curious about it, so in between then and his next visit, he started inquiring about death, and scrap, and other things with various people and engines and rolling stock. Despite his newfound knowledge of new concepts, his thoughts on scrap remained the same: something new just happened to it.

When he arrived to the scrapyard next, Smokestack had a train for him, but something else drew his attention: what appeared to be some very fresh scrap, a husk of an engine. This started some awkward conversation between them, revealing how resigned Smokestack was to the concept of scrapping being simply something that had to happen. After some silence, Smokestack decided to change the subject. She started talking about how she once pulled a post train before all this. Wesley asked why she wasn't doing that anymore. She explained: dieselization. It wasn't the fault of the diesels themselves, and... sure, it's hard to maintain many engines. In the end, diesels were just more effective. Then she told Wesley how she came to work at that Scrapyard.

Wesley asked if she wanted to be there. She admitted she didn't. But certainly, whatever came after that would be horrible. Scrapping, or something else. She wouldn't be forgiven for the engines she had brought to their deaths, at least, that was what she thought.

Wesley opened up about his thoughts on scrap being a new beginning, and how, even then, scrapping wasn't necessarily the only option. Smokestack said the job had to be done. Better her than another engine.

So he asked what the job was like.

She answered. Listening to last words and final calls for help. Knowing how various engines took their final moments, with pride, with humor, with silence, or with fear. Some even tried to convince her to help them escape. Those were always the hardest to deal with.

They talked longer. Eventually Wesley said he was sorry she had to deal with all that. She said that she wasn't without blame, she said yes to the offer of those men.

And Wesley wondered who could blame her. It was life or death, after all.

And she told him that she could. And so could all the engines she brought to their deaths. The husk of an engine, the new one, all he wanted was to be ready before beint scrapped. The cutters didn't let him get ready. She didn't even tell them to give him a moment. She was too afraid to.

To that, Wesley said this was place was horrible and horrible for her. She could do so much better than this if only given the chance. Smokestack thought she was the only one who could handle it. Regardless of that, Wesley thought no engine should have to deal with this. He chuffed off, leaving Smokestack with much to think about.

Upon their next meeting, she asked for something. To be coupled to Wesley's train. She wanted to escape.

And she did. And it went off without a hitch. Even when she told The Fat Controller that if he simply called the scrapyard, they wouldn't have cared.

The worst part, was that, they didn't. They didn't even want her back unless it was to scrap her, or perhaps whoever was answering the phone was just very cross. They took the answer at face value, though.

And with that, Smokestack became a part of the NWR. She was granted number 42 and a coat of green paint.

Her earliest days on the railway were rather rough. She was trialling around the railway in order to figure out where she best fit, and who should be driving her and who should be her fireman and all that. It was certainly strange for some engines to be meeting the scrapyard engine as one of their own. And it was rather awkward for both parties.

She started catching onto the fact that engines around this railway had proper names, and she requested one. She ended up being named Clara by The Fat Controller. She took pride in that name. It made her feel like she fit in a bit more.

Eventually things got a bit less awkward for everyone. Clara started to adapt to the railways... after a trial in trying to hide her past from a certain diesel engine she wanted to befriend and realizing she didn't want to do that despite knowing she didnt know about her history as a scrapyard engine. She found herself enjoying work. She even found one of the old apprentices from the scrapyard, who became her fireman. And she made friends with other engines, who finally regarded her with some kindness and sympathy, and regarded her as not just the scrapyard engine. And she had good conversations. And she finally got to pull the post again, even if it wasn't exactly like before.

I'm still working on her stories. I haven't even drawn her yet. But Clara... she's getting better. And I'm very happy to say that. I love exploring lore like this so when the concept struck me to write about a scrapyard engine who didn't like their job but did it out of necessity, I had to. I'll have to post her concept poem here next (aka the poem I wrote when sudden creative spirit overtook me and made me write about an engine), and perhaps the old Scrapyard Poem I wrote from Wesley's POV even before I conceptualized Clara.

#ttte #thomas the tank engine #thomas and friends #ttte oc #secondman says #the railway series #rws #railway series #clara the scrapyard engine no longer #wesley the show engine #me summarizing my fanbooks ig LOL #secondman storytelling

[wastehound-voof]

What is the most interesting historical artifact you have seen IRL?

The British Small Box Respirator used in WWI that is currently sitting in my closet. First thing that I thought of.

I've touched a piece of the moon (allegedlyyyyy!) at the Kennedy Space Center.

I've been to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC multiple times and I like the little bone guys. That's probably my favorite museum.

Been to the Air and Space Museum in DC and saw more space modules, landers, and shuttles. And the Wright Brothers' plane. My cousin and I did the flight simulator together and we were doing all these flips and barrel rolls and flying upside down. I miss her.

Oh! I've been in old trains at the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge, VA. It is awesome, you pay $8 and you get to just roam around unattended onto all their old trains and train cars and even ride a little mini train. I never posted the pictures, I should do that (lots of photos I never post).

But I'm sure you mean something a little more grandiose when you say a "historical artifact." There's a ton of history around where I live from the American Revolutionary War. Campsites, travel roads, places where Washington passed, battles, etc.

When I think of something more significant or interesting I'll add to this post. Good question, though.

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

98462 and 87546 as TOPS numbers?

This is just spitballing. I don't need to be told how much of a stretch it is, but I thought it would be fun to kick the idea around.

Rev. Awdry's numbers for the Two Unnamed Blue Tender Engines are nonsensical and meant to be nonsensical, presumably a riff on nationalisation. (I don't know when exactly he dropped the Word of God to inquiring readers about these engines' "names," but I suppose he could have been asked this by young correspondents pretty early on. Perhaps even before he had backdated his early stories to the '20s-'30s.)

But I can't be the only person to have noticed that 98462 would actually be a valid TOPS number after 1973... if this engine had survived that long, then it would have been assigned a number in the 98XXX series for "steam engine" (all our Sodor standard-gauge steam friends should have TOPS numbers in the 98XXX series too).

So that's interesting to work with. This would mean 98462 is preserved, did at least some railtours after the end of steam, and is rated power class 4 (which is less than Henry at 5 but more than James, Donald, and Douglas at 3, if you're wondering... also, it's funny to me to imagine Mr "I'm Sooooo New and Strong" making it to the end of steam only to be slapped with a power rating of 4... like, it ain't nothing, but it just seems a little less than the grandiosity that he is supposed to have displayed back in '22. Though to be fair none of this ever stopped James.)

That leaves the '62, meaning its original number would have ended with these digits. I played around on the BRDatabase to see if we had any IRL candidates that might have fit the bill.

There are no perfect fits, but one that jumps out as promising is Minoru, numbered 62 immediately after WWII, a Gresley A3.

One could imagine 98462 starting life as another Doncaster prototype, similar to Gordon, sent over to Sodor for testing and running-in. Returned to the LNER before 1925 (when the real-life Minoru was built), it was presumably found unsatisfactory in its original built and was modified based on the findings and/or rebuilt a standard A1.

Of course, we have to continue to modify real life further to say that a) Minoru was preserved rather than scrapped in '65, and b) that somehow it wound up with the 4 power rating. This implies to me a fun backstory/alt history where Minoru continued to serve as a radical testbed and was rebuilt further?

Honestly I quite like this as a history for 98462. Fits a good deal of what we know and offers some fertile grounds for fic...

The only other halfway-plausible Real Life candidate I see for a TOPS!98462 is a Lancashire and Yorkshire class 11 0-6-0, which you could pretend was repurposed as a testbed and rebuilt (with at least one set of pilot wheels) by 1922. This one seems more of a stretch, but it would be useful in positing an early NWR that has more than a passing connection with Horwich and Hughes—between James, the James lookalike, and now a third experimental Horwich engine elaborately modified from a basic 0-6-0 design. This gels especially for those who prefer to headcanon that James was an 0-6-0 originally and only later rebuilt.

I also find the idea that the early NWR snagged all these prototypes better/more likely if they were not all Eastern products, lol. If it somehow got Doncaster and Horwich to compete with each other, it's easier to understand why the NWR had all these nifty/weird prototypes on hand. (This also meshes with the notion that the NWR retained its autonomy/position by continuing to be the "testbed region," trusted to give impartial verdicts on other railways' designs, and that its own early famous engines were famous precisely because they were of engineering interest and not just kid appeal.)

Above: Minoru and an Aspinall Class 11

So that's 98462. 87546 is much harder to rationalise... the TOPS 8XXXX series is for electric locos/units (or 89XXX for heritage diesels)... so, to make it a plausible steam engine number, I have tried to find a way that this number could have been carried before the 1973 TOPS rehashing. But I do not see a way to make it work. The original BR numbering system reserved 8XXXX for new-build Standard steam tank engines.

It did, however, use 7XXXX for new-build Standard steam tender engines. You might say 87546 was really 78546 (whoops! typo), still around in the early '50s and, found unsatisfactory in assignments even after Sodor, was repurposed as (yet again, lol) another prototype.

However, to my knowledge Riddles didn't do this sort of Wild-West-engineering, with rebuilt prototypes'n stuff. He had the benefit of decades of steam engineering, and his designs used concepts already so proven that there was no need, at this date, for prototypes. (Many of the classes already had 'prototypes' in the sense of tried-and-true precursor LMS classes of which the BR standards were slight upgrades.) So, this one seems tough to pull off.

Besides, that take would rely on saying that either FC1/2 or the Thin Clergyman got the digits slightly wrong. And if there was a transcription mistake, well, we can go well and truly nuts, right?

So I've played around with 87546 a good bit... "What if this digit were off? What if the NWR told the Thin Clergyman the number backwards in order to obscure a real engine's identity for Reasons?"... turned the number backwards and inside-out... there are a lot of possible variations, but the only one I found myself vibing with was: What if the real number was 97546?

It's easy to see how the first digit was obscured, either to make things easier for the reader... or to keep a few secrets. For in the 1973 TOPS system, 97XXX is a series for departmental engines.

So what if code name 87546 (real name 97546) was also still around by/after 1973, but as a Research Division engine?

Now, that Wiki article is interesting reading. You will, however, probably note that the 97 class consists entirely of diesels. Still, what of it? If there was an entire BR region that still had working steam, the Research Division could see a need to do test runs with steam engines, too.

Or what if that is why the readers were given '46's wrong number? Because his existence is not supposed to be public knowledge... so the Thin Clergyman had a number he could tell readers but the NWR had the plausible deniability to be like "lol, don't take that so seriously, we didn't disclose any secrets! those are fake numbers lol."

... stretching this one last bit, however, maybe they didn't want the responsibility of revealing to the public that the Research Division was doing questionable things to steam engines. But they are dropping hints in hopes that independent observers pick up on it and break the story.

Okay Jobey just get to the point; if I accept this cockamamie idea that 87546 was really 97546 then what basis do you have in mind?

So this would give us power class 5 and (though I don't ascribe much weight to the illustrations, plus the power of positing ✨ Modificaaations ✨) something with pilot wheels that looks vaguely Eastern.

There is another A3 with number '46, plus an NER T2/LNER Q6 0-8-0 (you'd have to posit someone giving it pilot wheels), both power class 6. They could be made to work, but for my money I'll take LNER 46—a Gresley K3 2-6-0 built in 1924. Power class 5F6P.

Make this one another earlier prototype, like Gordon, and have it also sent to Sodor. Boom! Like Gordon, it's successful enough for Gresley to go on to build the K3 class. 46 is sent back to the LNER and given its number. But, instead of being scrapped in 1962, it serves again as a testbed under BR's Research Division, where ten years later when the new TOPS numbers come in it is still suffering in interesting ways that could be well beyond the scope of karma for a bit of youthful boasting and rudeness.

Well, I am not gonna write the fic. But I would totally read it.

Above: a LNER K3 and Q6

#real true railway stuff #ttte plot inspiration #ttte analysis #the railway series #this is ttte #ttte #thomas the tank engine #the blue bastards #ttte gordon #ttte james

[rev-1832]

please for the love of all fuck explain mcyt to me

Omg I've been waiting for this

So mcyt means minecraft youtube, but usually also includes Twitch streamers. It's like a in general thing, and not pointing to anything specific

But since you sound so confused, I'm gonna explain to you the Dream SMP lore 'cause why not

TL;DR: Chaos and war, basically also like a hamilton, heathers, and les mis crossover (but i mean if you want to understand everything you should read.)

If theres spelling mistakes, sorry

Note: Everyone on the smp has three canon lives, and when you loose all three you're canonically dead (except philza minecraft. he has one canon life bc hes known as the hardcore guy bc he had a minecraft hardcore series for 6 years until he was killed by a spider while trying to fight a baby zombie lmaoooooo)

IMPORTANT: THIS IS ALL RP. IRL THEY’RE ALL FRIENDS. THERES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PLAYER AND THE CHARACTER. THE RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T ACTUALLY TOGETHER IRL. ITS ALL THEIR CHARACTERS THAT THEY MADE UP. (obviously the best friends stuff are irl)

In the beginning there were 8: The Dream Team (Dream, Georgenotfound [the guy in my pfp btw :)] , Sapnap), Badboyhalo, Awesamdude, Ponk, Callahan, and Alyssa. Around this time, nothing much happened since it was all brand new, uhh yeah (this was around may-july of this year)

Then around late july new members joined: Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, Eret, Skeppy, Fundy, Punz, Purpled, and Schlatt. This part is very important to the lore, because the lore kinda started off with the british (so tommy, tubbo, wilbur, eret) Schlatt was banned, cause Sapnap was the one who invited him and Dream didn't know who he was. He'll come up later.

So Wilbur and Tommy decided to create a new nation called "L'Manberg". Also around this time (i think) Nihachu and Jack Manifold joined. They also were part of L'Manberg. There was this huge revolution between Dream Smp and L'Manberg. Very historical period on this smp. In the end, (i think it was?) L'Manberg who won (if memory serves).

After that, L'Manberg had started growing bigger, with a lot more buildings added and stuff, notably Church Prime, which where they created a religion for Twitch Prime, which is how you can sub to your favorite twitch streamer for free if you link your amazon prime account. I'm pretty sure around this time, Quackity, Karl Jacobs (if you watch Mr. Beast; yes, that karl jacobs), HBomb, Technoblade, and Antfrost joined. And then the railway war started. It happened when Tommy accidentally ran over Dream with a Minecart and then took his stuff. This is how the disc war started (once again, if memory serves). The two discs Tommy owns are his prized possesions, and Dream took them. Also around this time the Pet War started, with Sapnap killing someones(i forgot oops) pet. And then more pet killing. Annnnd then even more.

Then there was the L'Manberg eletion. There was POG2020, who was Wilbur and Tommy, SWAG2020, Quackity and George, Coconut2020, Fundy and Nihachu, and Schlatt2020 which was Schlatt. Oh yeah and he got unbanned btw

SWAG2020 and Schlatt2020 decided to combine their votes, thus Shclatt became president and Quackity his vp. Oh and ever since the election Quackity has this grudge against George bc he slept through the election. Schlatt renamed L'Manberg to Manberg, and exiled Tommy and Wilbur from it.

Schlatt is a evil dictator who likes power. He and Quackity started fighting, and so Quackity became part of Tommy and Wilbur's side. Around this time was The Battle of the Lake and The Burning Eiffel Tower, both part of the pet war. (It seems like a innocent war but its actually brutal lmao) Also (irl) Mr. Beast had a $10,000 Taco Bell gift card hunt. Eret won. It was at the cords 6969,420, because haha funny number haha weed number. This has nothing to do with the lore but yeah. Eret also became King of the SMP 

Then there was the Manberg festival. It was to celebrate democracy, but Tubbo puts it as "i decorated my own execution" bc he helped decorate it, but he was murdered there. At the festival was the Manberg Massicare, where Technoblade was forced to shoot tubbo, but he released a firework rocket kiling Tubbo, Schlatt, Quackity, and a few others. Many people lost one of their canon lives. Wilbur went all J.D like and planted 11 stacks of TNT underneath Manberg, and wanted to blow it up.

Pogtopia was formed, which is a ravine which i think is underneath? manberg? Which included basically everybody who wasn't neutral or with schlatt. On November 16 was the Manberg VS Pogtopia war, but the Badlands were also there. The Badlands is a nation of four people: Bbh, Skeppy, Awesamdude, and Antfrost. They faught with the loosing side, so the chaos could continue. Eret disobeyed Dream and got stripped of his royalty, and gave it to George. Oh and during this time, George had no idea there was a war and was building a cottagecore mushroom house with callahan and was very confused with all the death messages in the chat. Schlatt died canonically of a heart attack or stroke (no one knows tbh). Tommy became president, passed it to wilbur bc he still has unfinished buissness with dream (the discs), and wilbur passed it to Tubbo, who made Tommy his vp. Technoblade then argued about how government is bad, and they're just repeating history. Philza Minecraft joined the server, but no one could find him, until Wilbur blew up L'Manberg (they rechanged the name also). Wilbur then made Philza kill him, so Wilbur also became canonically dead. Then Techno, still mad at L'Manberg and governments, summoned two withers and made it attack the others. The Geogre decided to check out what was happening and helped fight. After the chaos, Captain Puffy and ConnorEatsPants joined the smp. About one to two weeks later Vikkstar and LazarBeam joined, then about three months after that Ranboo joined.

They rebuilt L'Manberg on stilts, and there water where the explosion was, but now with coral and stuff to make it all pretty. Tommy and Ranboo decided to go steal from Georges mushroom house, but then also griefed it and burnt it, and Dream, being a George simp, built obsidian walls around L'Manberg. They took Tommy to court, and was put on probation. Then Tommy got exiled (again) but this time by his own best friend. This made Quackity vp and Fundy secutary of state. Dream also took Georges king thing and gave it back to Eret because Eret has a good relationship with everybody, whereas George being King just caused chaos cause hes close to Dream. Quackity and Karl made Mexican L'Manberg, and George and Sapnap joined in also. War against Dream SMP, it was a negotiation and it got renamed into El Rapids (reference to Chilling in Cedar Rapids, which Hilary Clinton once said, and Quackity referenced it, got it trending #1 one twitter (well i mean dsmp gets things trending like everyday but), and got DONALD TRUMP TO SUBTWEET HIM. (This happened irl)

In his exile, Ghostbur (wilbur as ghost) and Tommy made Logstedshire, and Dream was often there to watch him. Dream then blew it up, and now Tommy is living with Techno in his arctic place. Currently, Quackity made a thing called The Butcher Army, so they could execute Techno. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy, and I also think Ranboo? are trying to get another festival, and yes its a secret execution plan, but for them to kill Dream, who they realized is who they need to kill first. The disc war is still not over. Tommy has one of his discs, but Skeppy is in possesion of the other one.

Unluckily for Tommy (reguarding the discs), something happened in the Badlands. Bbh was digging out his underground statue room (he plans to make a statue of everyone of the server) and found this crimson egg. He, Antfrost, and Captain Puffy kinda got possesed. Also since Skeppy didn't really hang out on the server at night, but bbh does (OF FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HE AND BBH ARE BEST FRIENDS) Captain Puffy created Discount Skeppy, which is her in a Skeppy skin. Skeppy found out, had a little conflict with her during her stream, but it was resolved, and at one point in the stream, he asked bbh to choose between him and the egg, and when bbh didn't answer, he went to the egg, put himself inside it, and logged off. Couple days later, bbh and puffy got him out, hes now possed by the crimson, called Technoblade his "best friend" infront of bbh, and is now living in a grass hut. Bad is convinced theres still some skeppt left, but yeah. Skeppy also wanted to burn the disc.

End of lore for now, bc its like if you miss ONE STREAM YOU MISS LIKE A REALLY IMPORTANT EVENT AND ITS STRESSFUL

Not much part of lore but Nihachu and Captain Puffy once went on a date. They’re both bi irl and Puffy was on Nihachu’s Love or Host (twitch dating show. its really entertaining) Captain Puffy was a contestant, and chose love. (LoH is also how Nihachu and Wilbur met.) 

Funfact: Theres 5 irl lgbtq+ ppl on the server (people who came out, anyways cause you never know, ya know?) Antfrost is gay, Eret, Nihachu, Captain Puffy are all bi, and Karl Jacobs is ace spec 

Family stuff: Philza Minecraft (he'll come up later) had two twins with a Samsung Smart Refrigerator in the 70's. The two twins being Wilbur and Technoblade (he'll come up later also) and also had another son, Tommy. They also adopted Tubbo, who they found in a box on the side of the road. When he grew up, Wilbur met Sally the Salmon, and they had a fox together (dont ask just go with it), which was Fundy. (The character) Fundy is trans, and yeah . Bbh is a dad to sapnap and yeah

Oh and a new member is coming on today on Quackity’s stream (twitch.tv/quackityhq at 5pm CST if you want to watch) 

I left out some parts, sorry, but theres always the wiki...

Wilbur Soot is also a musician! He wrote I’m In Love With an Egirl, The Internet Ruined Me, and Your New Boyfriend. (did you know the last one beat taylor swift for #1 trending on youtube? idk why but im really proud of him for that) They’re all catJam’s. Go listen!

#dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #sapnap #tommyinnit #technoblade #wilbur soot #philza minecraft #tubbo #karl jacobs #quackity #nihachu #badboyhalo #skeppy #ranboo #schlatt #eret #punz #awesamdude #purpled #captain puffy #antfrost #fundy #hbomb #lazarbeam #vikkstar123 #callahan #jack manifold #dream smp #mcyt #minecraft

[balticprincess]

Crash landing on you - perfect for K-drama-beginners. Just watch out - it‘s addictive

I may not be the target audience, but this has really got me. After watching it for the 3rd time back to back (with 16 episodes that are about 70 -90 minutes it’s ok, I guess, when finishing it, I want to see the start again) I now need to put some thoughts down.

Why do I (and apparently millions of others) love it so much?

It‘s funny, tragic, super romantic and suspenseful. The actors are great, not only the main couple Ri Jeong Hyeok ans Yoon Se-Ri as star crossed lovers, but also the second couple, which is even more star-crossed and one half of it is for a lot of episodes hopelessly tied and in love with the elusive RJH. Also the supporting actors are great, especially the band of brothers from Company 5, who do everything to help their leader and YSR. The villain is great and so vile, you hate him - until you see him in the Behind the Scenes-vids, where he is most charming.

It‘s a bit like fanfiction in a series: found family, vile brothers, destiny, star-crossed lovers, fake fiancee, reversed makeover, sleeping in one bed, all the tropes are there, but never blatant, but lovely and well executed. A lot of people who watched it say it’s also enemies to lovers, but I seriously doubt that, seeing Captain Ri‘s face at the end of the first episode. It’s more like love at first sight, smitten and whipped.

While he is a kind of super-hero („Do you think you‘re in the Avengers“) he also has flaws, is sometimes jealous, easily flustered by Se-Ri and exasperated by the whole set up. Still, he does everything for her to make her feel better and to help her escape to the south. He is an ace at fighting, can cook, is a very quick thinker, a good shot, plays the piano and is endearingly truthful (most of the time). Not to say extremely easy on the eye. She, and that is very important in my pov, is no damsel in distress. She is, actually, but she does not act like it. Being a very successful ceo, she takes the North and its people in her stride and instead of whining, heats water and helps poor kids. She cries sometimes when she is overwhelmed, which is a totally normal reaction in my opinion, making her relatable. She is beautiful and successful, he is super handsome and from an upperclass family, but both are supremely unhappy before she literally falls down on him. How they are helping each other is one of the main attractions for me. F.ex. After Se-Ris first really bad meeting with the villain and him coming to the rescue, he asks her if she is allright and not hurt. You can really see how much that surprises her, which is in turn heart-wrenching. He doesn‘t talk much, but one of his catchphrases is: „I am alright“ - which is mostly untrue, whether he stands on a mine, was shot or beaten or impending doom is coming at him. She calls him out for that, which is lovely. Both actors are nearing 40, although they look impossibly younger, but for me, being ever so slightly over 40 it was great that this was not a series with CEOs that look as if they are still in High school.

The Chemistry between the leads is so amazing that one comment said that it could light up North Korea for real. I‘d say it’s not chemistry anymore, it’s Physics, waiting for the inevitable chain reaction/explosion. Captain Ri aka Hyun Bin and Yoon Se-Ri aka Son Ye Jin started dating IRL after the show (or long before, who knows) and are still going strong. That’s really romantic, especially if you watch the BTS. 🔥🔥💥

If you are not interested in history: skip this! Another point in this far too long post is that I asked myself why I could relate to these main characters who are so different from me, being a tall, sturdy blond highschool-headmistress. My husband is a pianist, but that is not it. But I lived long enough to still remember the iron curtain slashing through my country. Not to liken the then existing GDR with NK, but while we West-Germans were allowed to visit in the East, different from the Koreas, the East-Germans were not allowed to come to West-Germany. I had friends in the GDR near Dresden. My parents met them in Hungary and I was pen-friends their daughter. It was super difficult to go to Dresden, but we could meet in Berlin where it was easier to cross the border. In 1986 we met for the first time in person. I was ateeneager on a classtrip. My teacher brought me to the border in Friedrichstraße Railway station, called „Palace of tears“ by the locals. I crossed the border on foot and was in a different county and world in the same city. The cars, how the people dressed, the shops - it was strange, old fashioned and for my 20 years backwards. But the people where lovely. We met like a blind date, they were carrying a white rose. The banners seen in CLOY promoting communism and heralding the states own greatness were everywhere. When they brought me back to the eastern entrance of the railway station I had to cross, I knew why this was called Palace of tears. We cried, everyone there who had to let go family or friends to the west cried. It was heartwrenching. Unification 3 years later was a wonder I had never expected. Never. So, although our situation was not as bad as Se-Ris who knows she cannot visit NK, it is still very relatable. It wasn‘t the 38th parallel but still a nearly impenetrable wall. One of my highschool friends was in love with *drumroll for cloy-watchers* a cellist from the GDR. He was devastated to leave her at the border when we left east-berlin. Our poor teacher - I off to meet unknown people (with a permission slip from my parents but still, no phones etc) and Frank off to meet his gf at the suburbs of east Berlin. But we both came back unscathed. They got married after unification btw.

My favourite scene: Very difficult to choose, the whole set up in Pjöngyang possibly, their argument about destiny, his jealousy and him telling her to stay in his sight and 2 seconds later him being so ashamed to have said that. Also: the scene with Daddy Ri.

Strange things that happened after watching: I really want a Range Rover, preferably red. I own a cloy t-shirt and watched all behind the scenes-vids multiple time.

Why I am so late watching it: the subtitles. Apart from Shtisel, which I love, I watch English dubbed (I am German) all the time. We are used to dubbing here. What can I say: it took me 10 minutes to forget that.

For my fellow Miss Fishers murder mysteries/Phrack-lovers: I know nothing can compare the Phryne and Jack. But: The extremely dashing Captain Ri has a lot of Jack Robinson vibes going on. Dealing with trauma, being honest and respectful, accepting and encouraging the woman he loves, being so handsome and dependable. He also does not talk much but has very speaking eyes. And while Se-Ri accepts more help than Phryne does she is also a badass woman in her own right who dresses sharply and is self-sufficient and smart. CLOY is very romantic though, you can‘t really say it is a slow-burn, the aforementioned chain-reaction happens very fast. The whole thing is quite chaste, but in my mind a lot happens after the camera roll stopped...The OST is beautiful and I listen to it all the time.

Give it a try and see if you are not hooked at the end of the first episode like I was... #fighting!

#crash landing on you #kdrama #hyun bin #yoon se ri #son ye jin #ri jeong hyeok #miss fisher's murder mysteries #cloy #mfmm #personal

[hazel-of-sodor]

LNER A2/1 Appreciation post

#lner #a2/1 #irl railway history #irl locomotive

[smpe-cscoop]

#2 - november 23rd, 2019

(cooper uploaded a video with clips from the first and second smpe stream, found here)

cooper and travis joined after playing as team make a wish in mc saturdays #2

cooper joined and immediately joke flirted with wilbur in chat ->

WilburSoot: cooper you free for a proposition? cscoop: im free if you know what i mean, wilbur ;) WilburSoot: i do ;) WilburSoot: omw

cooper read a sign from tommyinnit and immediately declared that tommy ‘was not allowed on his land’, despite never having met him before??

cooper: i don’t know tommyinnit, and i don’t care. he’s not allowed on my land! if i catch him on my land i decree SanDiego law, he’s dead, ight?

(unbeknownst to cooper, this would be foreshadowing).

wilbur, charlie soot and tommy joined his voice chat. 

wilbur desperately tried to talk to cooper about his railway but kept on getting interrupted by the following:

- travis vibing on 160mg of caffeine

- tommy being a schlatt stan and also a bastard

- cooper attempting to murder tommy

travis was freed from the grand canyon and started attacking tommy and also fucking barking at him because he’s an actual furry apparently

charlie and wilbur left and abandoned tommy to be dealt with by travis

tommy killed travis and was declared an official enemy of the state by cooper

after tommy left the stream calmed down, and josh joined the call. cooper made it clear he didn’t actually have anything against tommy, and was just doing a bit.

tommy raided cooper and cooper mispronounced his name as ‘timmy’. 

travis continually asked cooper to let him murder, but cooper played the older brother and wouldn’t let him.

weest joined the call and he and travis got into an argument about geography because travis is a brainlet. travis doxxed himself by saying he failed history twice and had to retake geography, but that he did well in all his other classes (and somehow got a fucking 102% in economics??)

this screenshot basically sums up the first half of the stream ->

cooper went into travis’ room irl and insisted he not murder anybody on the server (clip of the following transcript here)

cooper: alright that’s it i’m fuckin [indistinguishable] cooper, distantly: TRAVIS travis: what? cooper: no murder travis: i’m not murdering! who said that, who said that? cooper: no murder! travis: who said that? cooper: no murder! travis: who said that? cooper: no murder!! travis: who said that? weest: what’s happening? what am i hearing? cooper: i had to go tell travis not to murder everyone.

someone paid cooper $50 to make a killing machine, and cooper changed his mind on letting travis murder by asking travis to make a guillotine.

tl;dr - cooper declared tommyinnit an enemy of the state, travis was off the goop and was given homicide permissions.

#smpe cscoop recap #number:two #month:november #year:2019 #has:cscoop #has:traves #has:wilbursoot #has:tommyinnit #has:charliesoot #has:itsjawsh #has:weest #has:lukeorsomething #links:youtube #links:twitter #links:external smpe recap post #links:twitchclip

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

#ACLA24 #ACLA24Leaders #youtube #youtube video #climate leaders #climate solutions #climate action #climate and environment #climate #climate change #climate and health #climate blog #climate justice #climate news #weather and climate #environmental news #environment #environmental awareness #environment and health #environmental #environmental issues #environmental justice #environment protection #environmental health #Youtube

[lap-of-the-gods]

i would LOVE to hear your cats review

i’m just,,still reeling honestly

i wanna start by saying that jennifer hudson singing memory is the sole reason why i went to see this in the first place and it’s the only thing that made it worth it,,, the song itself is beautiful i got chills and she made me cry okay

nOW

it’s painfully clear that they rushed the cgi to get it out in time for christmas,, and i’d like to present the mice, terrible green screen during the railway line scene, and those fucking cockroaches as evidence

i’d also like to know who decided to make the last scene 90% judy dench making uncomfortable eye contact with every single audience member

also i get that irl cats can’t kiss or hug each other but was all the rubbing really necessary

sleep paralysis demon except it’s the james corden cat wearing shoes

i’m gonna go back to the cockroaches for a second bc that shits gonna haunt my nightmares for months. i just don’t understand?? i’d like to speak with whoever made that decision?? who made them tap dance badly on the worst cgi cake i’ve ever see. in my life??

those 2 random dancers who wore trainers for no reason at all

rebel wilson’s apparently normal cat fur having a fucking zipper with a pink outfit and a different, bedazzled cat fur underneath it. thats it.

the single worst use of idris elba in cinematic history

without the coat he was no more naked than the main character but it was the worst thing i’ve ever seen in my life. i didn’t want to see it but i couldn’t look away. every time i close my eyes the scene plays again and i don’t know how to make it stop.

sir ian mckellen i’m so sorry

WHY DID THEY HAVE SHOES

#this is all ive got so far im still trying to process whatever the hell it was i watched #i just wanna know why they made idris so horrifying #from liz #cats rant #cats 2019

[borderlandscast]

what happens when you let a bunch of vault hunters loose in digart (aka, virtual reality minecraft)

vox downloaded the game at the request of panda, who needed to prove to teep that the game has undergone massive updates and is now capable of supporting custom mods and excessive cheating.

within an hour, the two broke the server from spawning far too many bosses so that they could do a nonstop boss rush and update teep’s achievements.

vox rebooted the server and put a restriction on the amount of bosses that could be spawned in a single world and space.

this didn’t stop panda and teep from making pocket dimensions and fighting the bosses one by one, making the game lag horribly, and vox gave up on stopping them because they kept finding loopholes.

this leads into vox making their own avatar and joining the two on their never-ending quest to subjugate each world. if they can’t stop them, then join them.

panda and teep generally explore brand new worlds, and are usually the first to chart said worlds since they cheated in all their equipment and skills. vox shrugged and let it happen so they could explore with them faster. the two rock up into town to drop off maps, loot and materials before heading off again. they’re considered founding figures.

honeydew joins (from the grass room) to put down his roots, and begins a miniature spawn hub town. he names it ‘digfarts’ and it becomes a permanent fixture on the server. he’s the mayor thanks to self voting.

curious about why honeydew is spending so much time in the grass room instead of making them coffee, xephos logs in and begins a bee factory on the outskirts of digfarts. they accidentally breed a type of extreme killer bee which kills players and has to be confined in a massive sphere. otherwise, the bees produce honey, beeswax and other assorted products used in the market, magic or as trading.

players who break the rules are subjected to the ‘bee farts’ (xephos was against the naming but honeydew won by majority vote). the bees cause hallucinations, tingles and the heebee jeebies. remember that this is in vr. good, now wonder why nobody ever breaks the rules.

the bridge and frigate crews start a town market, and run their own supply chain and exploration crews. each of them have their own gangs, motifs and specialities. they’re all very into the game, and plan their shifts accordingly so they can log in.

daltos starts a cheese cult, ‘the cheesers’, monopolizing all production and selling of cheese. weirdly, he and his cult encourage the consumption of cheese. all registered, owned and named cows must pay a milk tax to the cult so that more cheese can be made. people who break this law have their whole house filled with cheese.

zylus and rythian become tower wizards. they look after the tainted zones and research magic; rythian eventually goes ‘insane’ and constantly needs guarding against the phantoms and weirdness that happens to him whenever he logs in. zylus can cast almost every single spell and is undefeated in pvp. his only weakness is ironically, cheese, thanks to shenanigans. touching cheese robs him of his powers. he has a deal with daltos so daltos doesn’t take advantage of this. in return, zylus has to buy weekly cheese from him or daltos will tell everyone and zylus has to reset to get a different weakness. and no, zylus hasn’t realised.

nanosounds and ravs become the ‘buff hooligans’ (a rejected nickname for the foursome ravs was previously involved in), and run around killing things for the wizards, people, and protect the wizards from themselves.

nilesy runs a cat museum. he collects anything cat related, and also cats. it took him two weeks to build the whole thing, and it’s always expanding. minecarts are needed to tour all fifteen sections. he also runs a fishing business.

hatfilms run an honest exploration and needs club (‘the thumb of truth’), and provide a lot of the fuel from oil, grease and energy deposits found all over the world. they have a contract with the cheesers, wizards, digfart’s mayor, etc. you name it, they’ll get it, for a price. the only thing they don’t traffic is bees. that’s...a sore topic for them. each of them specialise in certain areas, trott being the engineer, contractor and main cultist, alsmiffy in beasts, magic and tomfoolery and ross in materials and building. hollie is the ever patient receptionist of this venture.

will strife and parvis manufacture weapons, guns, somehow, and also, missile launchers. after accidentally nuking digfarts twice on two separate occasions, honeydew forces the two to put everything that could wipe the server into a secure and hidden vault. needless to say, strife installed an emergency backdoor, just in case the server ever needs to ensure a winning side. parvis is the key. he doesn’t know it.

zoeya and saberial logged in briefly to build an island as a monument to their eternal love. it has since become a protected zone for unicorns, neutral and friendly mobs. nobody is allowed to touch it or risk bee farts. the island is shaped like ravs the rooster. it’s also populated by special chickens. said chickens lay precious metals and materials. only a few parties have a permit gather the goods. there’s a real art to breeding the chickens; zoeya and saberial did not wisely pass this knowledge on to anyone. except for one person: arsenal.

chicken smuggling is a real crime in digfarts. the fine is a in-game week’s confinement in the bee fart sphere, plus a handwritten letter of apology to every single other player on the server for disappointing them and a pledge of loyalty to the poor chicken/s to protect them for life from any harm and neglect. killing a chicken results in a softban and a townwide funeral procession. killing multiple chickens is a permanent ban.

lalna and lalnable dabble in mad science, and for once, the two get along. they accidentally clone one another, forget to lock the doors and have to slaughter their runaway clones. the scene caused an investigation done by the thumb of truth and an official hearing. cloning isn’t against digfart’s laws, so lalna and lalnable clone everyone and preserve the bodies underground posed in entertaining dioramas. they charge five gold ingots for the tour, and a chest full of diamonds for a specific one to be constructed.

vox and their siblings build a giant monument to bebopvox. it goes as high as the sky and is perfectly symmetrical from top to bottom. they harvested materials and built it without hiring anyone, a testament to their diligence and determination. they even applied early for the building and statue permit. honeydew was unsettled when they all visited at once to seek the permit. this was because they all wore the same skin, just in different colours. only larry robert spoke. the rest stared at honeydew. it’s hard to say ‘no’ to that.

fyreuk run a history tavern, which charts the development and founding of digfarts and notable town achivements. they keep it up to date, and in exchange for music discs, will write ballads to honour said achievements.

lomadia logs in when nobody is on the server, and moves a single object to the left by one space, or switches items around, or leaves signs saying ‘i know what you did’, etc. so far, everyone is convinced that the server is haunted. vox pretends not to know about it.

martyn and minty run law enforcement, and swagger around town keeping the whole place in order. they have their fingers in every pie. their motto is ‘you do the crime, you do the time’ which is cheesy as hell but they’re actually pretty good at their job. they talk to vox to arrange trials and how long a ban should last if someone breaks the law multiple times.

sherlock refuses to join the server because he knows that people will bully him into playing their secretary, treasurer, errand boy, etc. he has a secret identity though, and logs in as ‘hulmes’. people play along with his pretend investigations since he actually writes pretty good newspaper articles as a result. fyreuk collect said articles too.

larry robert and their siblings are builders; the thumb of truth usually hires them to build things. the reason why larry robert and co can’t be left alone to build is beause they’ll keep building and never stop until it’s done. they crafted the entire road and railway system in one night, which sparked riots and fights due to everything needing names, all at once. honeydew put the permits into place as a result, which states that ‘only one party can build at any given time, and it can be completed at one’s leisure and has to be realistic so that fyreuk doesn’t cry over piecing the timeline together’.

bebopvox isn’t allowed on the server due to their irl identity but that doesn’t stop their kids sending them updates. the street surrounding te statue of them is called ‘ridge avenue.’

arsenal has to have someone watching him whenever he logs in since he has ‘the devil’s hands’. he runs a monthly auction house. he auctions off especially rare materials and custom goods needing a new owner. more importantly though, he’s the only official party who can sell the special chickens, which means that his auctions are a big event that nobody wants to miss.

the bloody bandits operate as blacksmiths attached to strife and parvis’ business. they’re expert miners, and for some reason, also operate the local cemetary. they note down how many times someone has died, and update the headstones. the cloning business caused a real hang-up as none of them could agree what to name the clones of lalna and lalnable.

i know i left some people out but the server is limited to frigate peeps to stop breaches into vox’s systems since the whole server relies so heavily on vox. there’s been jokes that they’re all playing in vox’s brain...which isn’t actually that far off the mark.

vox devotes quite a bit of processing power into maintaining and keeping the whole thing running smoothly. they’re unusually fond of what the frigate created, which possibly explains why any henious world breakage is treated as a in-game crime and punished accordingly.

#long post #borderlandscast: extras

[automotia]

The odd and unusual things people leave in their cars

IRL/GB

A study in the UK has revealed some of the weird and wonderful things people have kept in the cars.

Some of the odd and unusual things that people have kept in cars are Mannequins, bales of hay, 52 pies and a false leg the study has found.

More of the wackier things have been a wicker reindeer, two single mattresses and even a container to contain urine! People have also stashed away cat litter and even a wedding dress in their boot.

The poll conducted involved 2,000 drivers and it was found that one quarter of all surveyed were embarrassed by the lack of cleanliness of their car, with an equal number admitting to regularly losing items in their vehicle and one in twenty admitting to never even cleaning the inside of their car.

Simon McCulloch, from comparethemarket.com, which commissioned the research said:

“Many motorists are on the road so much that it’s no surprise that our cars can become a home away from home.

“However, with this comes a greater risk of attracting unwanted attention from car thieves.”

The study also revealed that some had a hamster cage in their vehicle. Others still, kept extra underwear and even handcuffs in their car! These are just some of the items hoarded by the Brits’ in their cars. We can only imagine that here in Ireland, the contents of our cars are equally as interesting.

Other things found during the study included dirty nappies, parts of a railway engine and a tank of water filled with fish. One car owner even had 160 hats in their car and still another driver had stashed away 24 rolling pins in their wagon.

The research also showed more normal contents of cars such as empty bottles, bags and make-up in their car for at least a month before clearing them out.

We all have moments where we say we will go to the gym but never get around to it, which is probably why one in 10 are hoarding their gym kit in their boot.

Others keep clothes, toys or even personal documents in their cars but it’s probably not a good idea to keep important and personal documents in your car.

The study, conducted via OnePoll.com, also found just under one third of motorists are stowing away objects in their vehicles for months at a time.

And one in 10 admit they leave things to fester in their “fendered-friends” for over a year.

IRL/GB

Full History Check Irish & UK Check Finance Check

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[learningrendezvous]

Asian Studies

AROUND INDIA WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

By Sandhyu Suri

Award-winning filmmaker Sandhya Suri (I for India) skillfully weaves together archival footage - including hand colored sequences - with a new score by composer Soumik Datta to create an emotionally resonant story about life across India from 1899 to 1947.

Drawn exclusively from the BFI National Archive, Around India features some of the earliest surviving film from India as well as gorgeous travelogues, intimate home movies and newsreels from British, French and Indian filmmakers. Taking in Maharajas and Viceroys, fakirs and farmhands and personalities such as Sabu and Gandhi, the film explores not only the people and places of over 70 years ago, but asks us to engage with broader themes of a shared history, shifting perspectives in the lead up to Indian independence and the ghosts of the past.

DVD (Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 72 minutes

DEAD SOULS

By Wang Bing

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as "ultra-rightists" in the Communist Party's Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui reeducation camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure and what became their destiny.

DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2018 / 495 minutes

SPARK

Directed by Hu Jie

SPARK opens by the side of a road in Lanzhou City, northwestern China, as trucks rumble through a blasted hillside. An elderly man walks along the dusty road and pauses to point to a nearby spot - the former execution grounds. "They executed many," the man says. "Then fewer and fewer."

Two of those executed were contributors to Spark, a short-lived magazine from Gansu Province whose young, intellectual contributors bravely shone a light on the horrific realities of life during the Great Leap Forward. More than 35 million people died of famine between 1959 and 1961, in large part because of Communist Party policies. To this day, the Party has never fully acknowledged the scope of the disaster.

In SPARK, filmmaker Hu Jie - who has been described as "China's most important unofficial historian-filmmaker" - tracks down the surviving men and women of Spark, including founder Gu Yan, allowing them to tell their stories.

Weaving together their interviews, the film is in an oral history of the magazine and the tumultuous period that from which it arose. The interviews are striking in their clarity and their emotional immediacy 60 years later. The son of Du Yinghua, a local Communist Party county committee secretary executed for his sympathy for the Spark writers, breaks down in tears after laying out copies of his father's books. Tan Chanxue seems completely at ease - even smiling - as she recalls being herded, bound, through throngs of schoolchildren brought to witness and cheer the Spark members' public outdoor trial. Remarkably, Hu even gets the Tianshui City leader at the time, Tao Yanlie, to admit that authorities prevented people from leaving town, while 100,000 residents died of hunger. Their deaths, he says, were "recorded but useless. We had to report it, but so what?" At one point, Hu suspects he is being followed. During an interview, the phone rings. The interview subject replies, then refuses to continue the conversation.

The writers who contributed to Spark were not all driven by the same motives. Xiang Chengian, who describes thousands of bodies lining the railway tracks between station and city, thought Party officials must be unaware of the extent of the disaster and would intervene if they knew. In contrast, Zhang Chunyuan wondered how the Communist Party could have become so corrupt in so few years, and said it was clearly fascistic. And Lin Zhao, one of several women contributors, couched her critiques more obliquely, in the form of poetry. All were branded as rightists and faced persecution during the Anti-Rightist Movement of the late 1950s, and both Lin and Zhang were sentenced to hefty prison terms, subsequently changed to death sentences.

A brave and powerful document, SPARK is a testament to the threat to power that comes from people willing to speak out about what they see - and an invaluable contribution to understanding the period of the Great Leap Forward.

SPARK makes an excellent companion to Wang Bing's monumental DEAD SOULS, about victims and survivors of the Anti-Rightist Movement, and Hu Jie's SEARCHING FOR LIN ZHAO'S SOUL - which details the persecution of Lin, a Christian, and is a testament to her legacy of courage and conviction.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color) / 2018 / 114 minutes

MARLINA THE MURDERER IN FOUR ACTS

By Mouly Surya

In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina, a young widow, is robbed and raped for her cattle. To defend herself, she kills several men of the gang, including decapitating the gang leader. Seeking justice, she goes on a journey for empowerment and redemption. But the road is long, especially when the ghost of her headless victim begins to haunt her.

DVD (Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 93 minutes

OBSERVER, THE

Directed by Rita Andreetti

By Rita Andreetti, Matteo Bosi

In August 2014, the 11th Beijing Independant Film Festival was shut down after repeated threats from local authorities. The government wouldn't tolerate the screening of some 'sensitive' works, particularly a historical documentary called "Spark". The news shook filmmakers and public opinion alike and filmmaker Rita Andreetti couldn't help but begin on a search for the man whose work had pushed the government to the edge of tolerance.

The Observer is the portrait of the extraordinary and undetected work of Chinese dissedent artist, Hu Jie. Despite making huge contributions to historical research by uncovering essential testimonies from China's past, his body of work hasn't been recognized the way it deserves.

Carefully ducking away from the spotlight, he has managed to make more than 30 documentaries throughout his career. The content of his work is vital to understanding Chinese society and the preservation of the memory of its past; he is the first artist to dare talk about the Great Famine, the labor camps (Lao Gai) and the Cultural Revolution in an uncompromised way. For that, he is commonly considered the first historical documentary maker of China, despite his blacklisted status.

Rita Andreetti, director and young Italian film critic, allows viewers to discover Hu Jie's humanity and social commitment as she searches herself for Chinese identity. Inspired by the tenacity and the inner strength of Hu Jie himself, the documentary shows how his prolific activity has recently turned into a more intimate pictorial production. Although under increasing pressure, Hu Jie continues today, with different means, to tirelessly fight for the truth.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color) / 2017 / 78 minutes

TOKYO IDOLS

By Kyoko Miyake

"IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS - an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet popularity.

This ever growing phenom is told through Rio, a bona fide "Tokyo Idol" who takes us on her journey toward fame. Now meet her "brothers": a group of adult middle aged male super fans (ages 35 - 50) who devote their lives to following her-in the virtual world and in real life. Once considered to be on the fringes of society, the "brothers" who gave up salaried jobs to pursue an interest in female idol culture have since blown up and have now become mainstream via the internet, illuminating the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

With her provocative look into the Japanese pop music industry and its focus on traditional beauty ideals, filmmaker Kyoko Miyake confronts the nature of gender power dynamics at work. As the female idols become younger and younger, Miyake offers a critique on the veil of internet fame and the new terms of engagement that are now playing out IRL around the globe.

DVD (English, Japanese, Color) / 2017 / 88 minutes

WE THE WORKERS

By Wen Hai, Zeng Jinyan

Shot over a six-year period (2009-2015) in the industrial heartland of south China, a major hub in the global supply chain, WE THE WORKERS follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers, helping them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions. Threats, attacks, detention and boredom become part of their daily lives as they struggle to strengthen worker solidarity in the face of threats and pressures from the police and their employers. In the process, we see in their words and actions the emergence of a nascent working class consciousness and labor movement in China.

DVD (English, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 174 minutes

WIDOWED WITCH, THE

By Cai Chengjie

Winner of the top prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival, director Cai Chengjie's debut feature is, like its titular protagonist, defiantly low-fi, unexpectedly powerful and fiercely unpredictable.

Deemed cursed by the local villagers, three-time widow Er Hao (played by Tian Tian) has her hands full with a rogue fireworks explosion, a tagalong teenager, and a veritable army of crazed local men who can't keep their hands off her. Turned away when she seeks shelter from her neighbors and forced to take up residence in a cold camper van, Er Hao's future looks as bleak as the stark, snowy countryside.

But a series of fluke changes in fortune causes Er Hao to embrace the mystical identity her villagers have assigned to her. As a sort of modern shaman, she steers superstitions into small subversions, helping others who once shunned her and proving that to survive as a woman is a kind of magic.

THE WIDOWED WITCH fearlessly addresses the power of religion in China which, according to the dictates of Communism, is effectively banned. It also conveys the cruelty that can come with village life, and counters the Western narrative of China as a superpower by showing a place where the rule of law is all but nonexistent. Not only is there no recourse or safety net, even the rape that Er Hao suffers goes unpunished. Abused and shunned, Er Hao gains power over the men who have wronged her - but can she find a place in a misogynist, patriarchal and deeply lonely social structure? With a stunning array of visual styles and a genre-exploding approach to storytelling, THE WIDOWED WITCH is a simultaneously idealistic and despairing film - a bleak view wrapped in a fabulist aesthetic, and one that encompasses both magic realism and crushing social satire.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color, Black and White) / 2017 / 118 minutes

APOLOGY, THE

By Tiffany Hsiung

THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former "comfort women" who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called "comfort stations," the three "grandmothers"- Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines - face their twilight years in fading health. After decades of living in silence and shame about their past, they know that time is running out to give a first-hand account of the truth and ensure that this horrific chapter of history is not forgotten.

Whether they are seeking a formal apology from the Japanese government or summoning the courage to finally share their secret with loved ones, their resolve moves them forward as they seize this last chance to set future generations on a course for reconciliation, healing, and justice.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2016 / 104 minutes

BITTER MONEY

By Wang Bing

BITTER MONEY documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou, one of the busiest cities of eastern China (with the highest number of part-time workers), to labor in its textile factories. But what they find are few opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. The camera follows Xiao Min, Ling Ling, and Lao Yeh closely, capturing the emotions of their daily hard work and disappointments upon receiving their wages. The film deals directly with the effects of 21st-century capitalism, as filmmaker Wang Bing acts as witness to the lives of people forced to adapt to a new economic landscape.

DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 152 minutes

COMPLICIT

Directed by Heather White, Lynn Zhang

Benzene-poisoned, Foxconn factory worker takes his fight against the global smartphone industry from his hospital bed in China to the international stage.

Yi YeTing is struggling with occupational leukemia and trying to obtain compensation from his employer. Wanting to help others, he begins working for a non-profit that assists workers with occupational illness and injuries.

He discovers there are dozens of workers in his local area who were poisoned while making smartphones. Through research in the community, he discovers a leukemia cluster in the neighborhood surrounding Apple's main supplier Foxconn. Yi's research leads him to several workers and their families trying to survive while burdened with their health care costs. Powerful forces are unleashed as he confronts local factories, putting his own safety at risk.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 89 minutes

DEMOCRACY ROAD

By Turid Rogne

After more than 20 years in exile in Norway, the Burmese journalists of DVB are returning to their homeland to establish their independent news station there. Editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing and reporter Than Win Htut have dreamt about this for years, but their struggle for freedom and democracy is not over yet.

DEMOCRACY ROAD is a road movie documentary following the journalists of DVB in Myanmar in a critical phase of the establishment of the newborn democracy. With their existence as an independent news channel and Myanmar's future as a democracy at stake, senior reporter Than Win Htut and his colleagues hit the road with their groundbreaking show "Our Nation, Our Land." Their goal is to investigate the living conditions of ordinary people off the beaten path in Myanmar, but the machinery of the old dictatorship is still running. Simultaneously, editor-in-chief, Aye Chan Naing, has to negotiate with DVB's former enemies in the infamous Ministry of Information. The road towards democracy has only just begun...

Director Turid Rogne has followed the journalists of DVB for more than 10 years. With both boldness and sensitivity, she tells the story of life in a former dictatorship through the people who try to influence history.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 60 minutes

INSIDE THE CHINESE CLOSET

By Sophia Luvara

In a nondescript lounge somewhere in Shanghai, men and women giggle, eyeing prospective partners, visibly nervous about making the first move. This isn't your average matchmaking event - it's a "fake-marriage fair," where gay men and women meet to make matrimonial deals with members of the opposite sex in order to satisfy social and familial expectations of heterosexual unions. Inside the Chinese Closet is the intricate tale of Andy and Cherry looking for love and happiness in vibrant Shanghai. They are both homosexual but their families demand a (heterosexual) marriage and a baby from them. Because being single and childless would mean an unacceptable loss of face for their rural families, particularly in the remote countryside where they live. Will Andy and Cherry deny their happiness and sexual orientation to satisfy their parents' wishes? The stories of Andy and Cherry mirror the legal and cultural progress that is happening in China against the backdrop of a nation coming to terms with new moral values.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 70 minutes

MRS. B., A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN

By Jero Yun

"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the very poor families, like my husband's. In the third type, the man is handicapped... mentally handicapped too. They're all poor. We're sold to families like that."

Mrs. B (we don't learn her real name) is something of an expert when it comes to the trafficking of North Koreans. In 2003, at age 37, she left her husband and two sons behind in North Korea, crossed the icy Tumen River into China, and was sold into marriage. When we meet her a decade later, she's running a robust trafficking business from her home on a small farm in northern China. While her husband fixes equipment and brings in the harvest, she's on her cellphone negotiating with people smugglers, bringing in karaoke girls, and advising newly smuggled clients on how to avoid detection and deportation.

MRS. B, A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN is a closely observed verite portrait of a world-weary woman who finds herself between countries, between worlds, and between families. Unable to bring her North Korean family to China, Mrs. B eventually arranges to get them into South Korea (where her husband was originally held under suspicion of espionage). Now, she plans to return to Seoul herself, seek refugee status, see her Korean husband and sons again, and then send for her Chinese husband and his octogenarian parents.

Director Jero Yun runs considerable risks, jammed into the back of a car with Mrs B as she welcomes a newly smuggled young mother into the country, and joining her and a group of women as they travel all the way across China to Thailand - by bus and car, and on a long night-time trek through fields with a crying baby - seeking a better life.

By focusing so tightly on one person, Yun offers a powerful look at the mundane realities of life for both trafficker and trafficked, overturning cliched notions about a necessarily mysterious trade.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 71 minutes

PATHS OF THE SOUL

By Zhang Yang

An astonishing journey of redemption, faith, and devotion. Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yang (Shower, Getting Home) blurs the border between documentary and fiction to follow a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes in the small village of Nyima to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage"-laying their bodies flat on the ground after every few steps-along the 1,200 mile road to Lhasa, the holy capital of Tibet. Though united in their remarkable devotion, each of the travelers embarks on this near impossible journey for very personal reasons. One traveler needs to expunge bad family karma, a butcher wants to cleanse animal bloodstains from his soul, another nearing his life's end, hopes that the prostrations will break the chain of cause and effect determined by his life's actions.

Stunningly photographed over the course of an entire year, with non-professional actors and no script, PATHS OF THE SOUL is a mesmerizing study of faith that will inspire viewers to reflect on their own journey through life.

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2016 / 117 minutes

TA'ANG

By Wang Bing

Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta'ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta'ang minority as they flee to China to escape an ongoing and escalating civil war. In a pair of refugee camps, those displaced by the war attempt to create reasonably safe living conditions, while others go deeper into China where they may find work in sugarcane fields or try their luck in urban areas. Meanwhile, those still in Myanmar must journey across the mountains, belongings and livestock in tow, as the sounds of gunfire and artillery echo around them.

Ta'ang captures the constant insecurity, instability and disorientation that come with life as a refugee, the complexities of the choices the Ta'ang face, and the emotional toll they take.

DVD (Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 147 minutes

FORGETTING VIETNAM

By Trinh T. Minh-ha, Jean-Paul Bourdier

One of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam involves a fight between two dragons whose intertwined bodies fell into the South China Sea and formed Vietnam's curving S-shaped coastline. Influential feminist theorist and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha's lyrical film essay commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the war draws inspiration from ancient legend and from water as a force evoked in every aspect of Vietnamese culture. Minh-ha's classic Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) used no original footage shot in the country; in Forgetting Vietnam images of contemporary life unfold as a dialogue between land and water-the elements that form the term "country." Fragments of text and song evoke the echoes and traces of a trauma of international proportions. The encounter between the ancient as related to the solid earth, and the new as related to the liquid changes in a time of rapid globalization, creates a third space of historical and cultural re-memory-what local inhabitants, immigrants and veterans remember of yesterday's stories to comment on today's events.

DVD / 2015 / 90 minutes

NUCLEAR NATION II

Director: Atsushi Funahashi

Nuclear Nation II follows a new group of people exiled from Futaba, the region occupied by the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since the 1960s, Futaba had been promised prosperity with tax breaks and major subsidies to make up for the presence of the plant... until the townspeople lost their homeland on March 11, 2011.

The film portrays their lives as refugees in an abandoned high school, and in temporary housing. The political fallout from the nuclear disaster results in conflict between residents, and the mayor is forced to resign. Many decide to move back to Fukushima prefecture, just outside the evacuation zone. The town finds itself divided by the arbitrariness of evacuation, radiation levels, and compensation guidelines from the plant's operator. And then, the Japanese government announces a plan to turn Futaba into an official, literal wasteland.

Is it possible to truly compensate the townspeople for what they have lost? Through their agonies and frustrations, the film questions the real cost of nuclear energy and unbridled capitalism. But perhaps more important, this film gives a fully textured, all-access account of governmental bureaucracy's attempt and ultimate incapacity to adequately deal with displaced peoples. This is a problem we continue to face: Hurricane Katrina uprooted over a million people in the Gulf Coast region, more than a million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015, and over 11 million unauthorized immigrants seek home in the United States. There are over 60 million refugees worldwide.

Teachers and students looking to understand the depth of challenges facing the fair and efficient administration of human rights in times of crisis will be pleased to find Nuclear Nation II.

DVD (Japanese with English subtitles) / 2015 / 114 minutes

OKINAWA: THE AFTERBURN

Director: John Junkerman

Okinawa: The Afterburn is the first documentary to provide a comprehensive look at the battle and the ensuing 70-year occupation of Okinawa by the United States military.

On April 1, 1945, American troops landed on Okinawa, beginning a battle that lasted 12 weeks and claimed the lives of some 240,000 people. The film depicts the Battle through the eyes of Japanese and American soldiers who fought each other on the same battlefields, along with Okinawa civilians who were swept up in the fighting, with carefully selected footage from the U.S. National Archives.

The film also conveys the complex postwar fate of Okinawa, an island that has had to live side-by-side with an extensive array of US bases, and the related crimes, accidents, and pollution they have caused, while coexisting, on a personal level, with the occupying soldiers.

In Okinawa, the legacy of the war translates into a deeply rooted aversion to military force. This has been expressed in recent years by the island-wide rejection of the plan to build a new US base at Henoko, a source of controversy to this day. Okinawa: The Afterburn explores the roots of this resistance and Okinawa's vision for the future.

THE FILM IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR PARTS:

PART 1: The Battle of Okinawa depicts the ferocious battle through the testimony of Japanese and American soldiers who faced off in the conflict.

PART 2: Occupation reveals how military occupation policies were implemented.

PART 3: The Afterburn confronts the history of sexual violence that has accompanied the American military presence on Okinawa.

PART 4: To the Future explores the Japanese government's decision to build a new base in Henoko.

DVD (English and Japanese with English subtitles) / 2015 / 121 minutes

PEOPLE ARE THE SKY

By Dai Sil Kim-Gibson

Director Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (MOTHERLAND CUBA KOREA USA) is the first Korean American filmmaker to be given official permission by the North Korean government to film inside its borders. In PEOPLE ARE THE SKY, Kim-Gibson's eighth and most personal film, the filmmaker makes a pilgrimage to her place of birth in North Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, to explore if it is still home.

Kim-Gibson seamlessly weaves her own personal story as a native born North Korean, with the fractious history of the North/South division and pinpoints the roots of North Korean's hatred of the United States, giving Americans a much better understanding of the conflict. A mix of interviews epic images and graceful musings, PEOPLE ARE THE SKY offers some of the best political and social history of the relations between North and South Korea, and also a contemplative exploration of the meaning of home. The result is unprecedented, at times startling, for hers is an up close look of the hurts and desires, beauty and contradiction, pride and aspirations of the long held demonized nation.

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 94 minutes

THARLO

By Pema Tseden

"Renowned Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden returns with his profoundly moving new feature (adapted from his own novella) about a Tibetan shepherd named Tharlo. Visiting a Tibetan town in Qinghai province to obtain a proper ID card from the local police station, Tharlo surprises Police Chief Dorje by reciting from memory a lengthy excerpt from one of Chairman Mao's essays. But things develop in a romantic rather than a political direction. To prepare for his ID photo, Tharlo needs his hair washed, and so meets Yangtso, a beautiful local hairdresser. Their courtship is both exquisitely awkward and enthrallingly suspenseful. Tharlo is smitten, but town-dweller Yangtso's ideas of fun are not quite Tharlo's, and he spends an uncomfortable evening with her at a local karaoke joint.

"This is a passionate love story with darker undercurrents, where basic pastoral imperatives such as protecting his sheep from hungry wolves run against Tharlo's discovery of the contemporary pleasures of smoking, drinking, singing and sex.

DVD (Black and White, Tibetan with English Subtitles) / 2015 / 123 minutes

SURVIVING THE TSUNAMI - MY ATOMIC AUNT

By Kyoko Miyake

Film director Kyoko Miyake remembered Namie, a fishing village ravaged by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, as her childhood paradise. Revisiting her family's hometown after 10 years abroad, Miayke's multilayered documentary examines the disaster's profound personal, social and environmental impact.

While Namie's younger generations have permanently relocated elsewhere, Miyake's Aunt Kuniko, like other older residents, has clung to dreams of eventually returning to her home. Over the course of a year, Miyake follows this warm, indomitable businesswoman as she recalls happy family memories and strives to adapt to life outside the contamination zone. In the process, Kuniko starts questioning her unconditional trust in Fukushima's plant operators and pro-nuclear past in a community that once hoped to house a nuclear power station.

A timely reminder of Fukushima's continuing meltdown, this insightful, often funny film offers fresh perspectives on Japanese national identity and today's most pressing global concerns around nuclear energy.

DVD (English, Japanese, With English subtitles) / 2013 / 52 minutes

FUTURE FOOD: FAT OR SKINNY? (INDIA)

Directed by Arjun Pandey

The people of India are faced with a choice: indulge in a Western-style fast food diet, or embrace healthy and indigenous alternatives.

Everyday, as India awakes, 1.2 billion people need to be fed. By 2050 it could be 1.7 billion. Half a billion small scale farmers supply most of India's food. Traditionally, Indians have eaten the healthy cuisine of India's 29 states, but as people move to the cities there's a growing demand for fast processed food, the so-called 'junk food' accused of causing obesity and chronic health problems.

Now India is a country on the edge of two possible futures: a future that's well fed and healthy; or a future with Western diets and Western obesity. With so many hungry people to feed, is it possible to eat in ways that are nutritionally and environmentally sustainable? What role do governments have to play in creating economic incentives for sustainable diets?

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes

FUTURE FOOD: STAY OR GO? (CHINA)

Directed by Alex Gabbay

Who will grow China's food as young people leave the countryside for the cities?

In many remote areas of China young people have little choice but to stay on the land, and yet they may face a destitute future, with millions of farmworkers in China earning less than two dollars a day. Although there are some exceptions, farming is not generally seen as a "sexy" career choice.

The reality is that in China and around the world, young people are fleeing the countryside and moving to the big cities. Who will grow the food that feeds future generations? How can young people be convinced that farming is a good option? Californian-born Rand and his wife Sherry are the founders of Resonance China, a social media agency in Shanghai. They use the internet to create and identify trends and tricks that can create a buzz for global brands. FUTURE FOOD sets Resonance a task: can they make farming popular with young people?

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes

11 FLOWERS

Director: Wang Xiaoshuai

One of China's foremost Sixth Generation directors, Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams) tells a striking, autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in the final days of China's Cultural Revolution in his new film 11 Flowers.

Eleven-year-old Wang Han lives with his family in a remote village in Guizhou province. Life is tough, but they make the most of what little they have. When Wang is selected to lead his school through their daily gymnastic regimen, his teacher recommends that he wear a clean, new shirt in honor of this important position a request that forces his family to make a great sacrifice. But one afternoon, soon after Wang is given the precious shirt, he encounters a desperate, wounded man, who takes it from him. The man is on the run, wanted by the authorities for murder. In no time the fates of Wang and the fugitive are intertwined.

Beautifully performed by a troupe of child actors, and vividly creating a sense of time and place, 11 Flowers is a delicate and moving film about growing up in a time of great upheaval.

DVD (Mandarin, Shanghainese with English Subtitles) / 2011 / 115 minutes

MADE IN INDIA: A FILM ABOUT SURROGACY

By Rebecca Haimowitz & Vaishali Sinha

In San Antonio, Lisa and Brian Switzer risk their savings with a Medical Tourism company promising them an affordable solution after seven years of infertility. Halfway around the world in Mumbai, 27-year-old Aasia Khan, mother of three, contracts with a fertility clinic to be implanted with the Texas couple's embryos. MADE IN INDIA, about real people involved in international surrogacy, follows the Switzers and Aasia through every stage of the process.

With its dual focus, this emotionally charged, thoroughly absorbing film charts obstacles faced by the Switzers and presents intimate insights into Aasia's circumstances and motivation. As their stories become increasingly intertwined, the bigger picture behind offshore outsourcing of pregnancies - a booming, unregulated reproductive industry valued at $450 million in India alone - begins to emerge. So do revealing questions about international surrogacy's legal and ethical implications, global corporate practices, human and reproductive rights, and commodification of the body.

DVD (English, Hindi, Color) / 2010 / 97 minutes

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