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personnage-neutre · 7 months ago

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"Tintin, quel âge as-tu ?"

Today marks 96 years of The Adventures of Tintin, and readers have spent at least the last 78 of those years asking the same question: "How old is Tintin?"

The series is infamously coy about giving a definite answer, as was its creator, but I argue in the first part of this post that 1) there was indeed a specific intended age range for Tintin and 2) it is very much possible, using evidence from many different sources including the albums themselves, Tintin magazine, other BDs of the time, and interviews with Hergé, to say exactly what that age range was. Let me be very clear: I'm specifically making an argument about how old Hergé saw him as and how old Hergé wanted him to be seen as.

The second part is less concrete; it presents how a few scholars have interpreted the ambiguity of Tintin's age, plus some of my own thoughts about it that build on their claims. That part is less trying to find an answer to the age question and more trying to explain why his age is so much in question.

This is a long post.

I. Intent

Official sources

When asked about Tintin's age in a 1960 interview for Cinq colonnes à la une, Hergé judged that "il doit rester aux environs de quinze ans" ("he must still be around 15 years old," 0:33-0:44).

In 1962, he gave a very similar response on the Canadian program Premier Plan: "Une quinzaine d'années ? Quinze ans, seize ans, je ne sais pas, moi" ("About 15? 15, 16, I don't know"). "Donc c'est l'adolescent" ("So he's a teenager"), pursues the interviewer, and Hergé answers with a firm yes.

Nearly ten years later, in 1970, he added some nuance: "What age do I give him? I don't know... 17? In my mind, he was about 14 or 15 when I created him, a Boy Scout, and he practically hasn't budged. Let's say that he's picked up three or four years in forty years... All right, let's take the average: 15 plus 4, 19." (translation mine)

In 1979, his interviewer on Apostrophes preempted him on the age question, saying that "c'est un reporter de quinze ans" ("he's a 15-year-old reporter"). Hergé agreed: "C'est ça, à peu près" ("That's right, more or less").

Today, the official Tintin website run by Moulinsart declares him to be "Seize, dix-sept ans (dix-huit tout au plus !)," that is, "16, 17 years old (18 at most!)."

Responses to reader questions in the Journal Tintin

Early in the Journal Tintin's run, between 1946 and 1954, readers who wrote in with questions had a chance to see the responses to their letters published in the magazine each week. Supposedly it would be Tintin himself who was answering - questions addressed to him would be answered in first person, which probably only increased the urge to ask about personal details. So there were naturally many questions about his age, which provoked a range of responses.

Who was actually answering the letters? It's hard to say. But seeing as the responses were being published in the official Tintin Magazine as the voice of Tintin himself, Hergé would surely have been at least consulted on questions concerning his character, especially as the team running the magazine was still very small when it was regularly publishing responses.

The most common response was to dodge the question entirely. The stock phrases were "Qu'importe mon âge ?" and "Tintin n'a pas d'âge !" ("What does my age matter?" "Tintin has no age!").

In a small number of cases they related Tintin's age to that of his readers; an 11 1/2 year old was told that Tintin can be "l'âge que tu souhaites : entre dix et vingt ans !" ("whatever age you want: between 10 and 20!", 1953), and for a couple others, where the age of the writer wasn't listed, Tintin's age is "un peu plus que le tien" ("a little older than you," 1951) or "un peu moins que le double du tien" ("a little less than twice your age," 1950). The target audience of the Journal Tintin - as it was for the Petit Vingtième, and for comics magazines of the time generally - was 8-15 year olds.

The only definite answer that appeared with regularity put Tintin's age between 15 and 20:

(TIntin nos. 19, May 8, 1947; 26, June 26, 1947; 6, February 5, 1948; 2, January 12, 1950; 9, February 27, 1947. The second and third examples also have Tintin declare that "I've travelled so much that I no longer remember where I was born," a fine example of the de-Belgicanization he underwent after the early years.)

("As I've already told several of my friends, I'm older than 15 but younger than 20." (1947) "My age? Let's say 15… or a little older." (1947) "My age? Between 15 and 20 years old." (1948) "Tintin? He has no age! Seeing him move about, he seems to be about 15." (1950) "I'm not yet 20 but I'm older than 15." (1947))

Real-life incarnations of Tintin

When the end of Soviets was celebrated with "Tintin" arriving at the Gare du Nord in Brussels, the role was played by 15-year-old Lucien Pepermans. When the event was repeated for the end of Congo, two years later, Pepermans was replaced by Henri Dendoncker, age 14. About thirty years after that, Jean-Pierre Talbot was declared Tintin's spitting image at 16 ("Same age, same silhouette, same face, same hair," reads the announcement of his casting in the Journal Tintin). He was 20 at most when Blue Oranges (released 1964) was filmed. Hergé told Numa Sadoul that he unconsciously based Tintin in Soviets on his younger brother Paul, who was 16 when it started. Additionally, Palle Huld, often cited as an inspiration for Tintin, completed a tour of the world in 44 days in 1928 at age 15 (and in plus-fours).

(Lucien Pepermans, Henri Dendoncker, Jean-Pierre Talbot, Palle Huld)

In the play Tintin et le mystère du diamant bleu (1941), which Hergé was very involved in the writing and production of, the role of Tintin was played by Mlle. Jeanne Rubens, a woman - a common theater trick for portraying young boys. He was played by a woman again in Radio Luxembourg's 1950s audio adaptations: Claude Vincent, "qui interprétait à merveille les rôles d’enfants et d’adolescents" ("who played children's and adolescents' roles wonderfully"), was the voice of Tintin. Sadly those broadcasts appear to be lost, but she can still be heard in the likely similar role of Alix.

(Shared on forum-tintinophile.com, "Tintin aux Indes, ou le mystère du diamant bleu." Certainly the only adaptation that got his height difference with the Thompsons right.)

In 1959, the Journal Tintin invited readers who thought they looked like Tintin to send in their pictures; five candidates for "Tintin's lookalike" were chosen by the magazine and presented to the readers for them to vote on. The winner was a 15-year-old, and while the ages of the other contestants aren't listed, they appear to be the same age or younger.

(Tintin nos. 25, June 24, 1959 & 31, August 5, 1959)

Comparisons with contemporary characters

Mainstream BD in the first half of the 20th century was not particularly inventive, especially as it was contending with its relative youth as a medium, a focus on the children's market, and, especially after WWII, heavy scrutiny from both religious and secular moral watchdogs. In the specific case of the Journal Tintin, Hergé's iron-fisted artistic direction in the early years led to a high level of artistic homogeneity across the magazine, while restrictions on the types of stories that could be told (from both the threat of censors and expectations about reader interests) limited variety in plots, characters, and settings.

All that is to say that a lot of what was being published alongside Tintin in the 40s and 50s looked more or less like Tintin, and even was likely directly modeled on it, which makes it useful for comparison. The protagonists of the time can be generally divided by age into children, the "15-20" range, young men, and middle-aged men. Each category is visually distinct (comics are a visual medium!) and each results in a slightly different kind of story with different character dynamics.

Here's Tintin with a couple of the teenage protagonists that appeared alongside him in his magazine:

(L'Affaire Tournesol (1956), p. 51; La Griffe Noire, Tintin no. 6, February 5, 1958; Les Deux Visages de Kid Ordinn, Tintin no. 1, January 2, 1957)

Hergé's no. 2 collaborator Jacques Martin created Alix (center, 1948), a Roman Gaul confirmed to be 16 in the original albums. Chick Bill (right, 1955), who in looks and narrative role is effectively just Tintin as a cowboy, is identified (by none other than Franquin) with the 15-20 age range. Some shared visual markers of their youth are a short and slight build, rounded shoulders, a round head, and a soft jawline. While all very independent, they are all three semi-accompanied by a much older man and a child sidekick.

Now, here are some examples of characters from the next age range up:

(L'énigmatique Monsieur Barelli, Tintin no. 44, November 2, 1950; L'ouragan de feu, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 37, September 15, 1960; Défi à Ric Hochet, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 8, February 25, 1964)

Hergé's no. 1 collaborator Bob de Moor had a humor-adventure series using the same style as Hergé, but his character, stage actor Georges Barelli (left, 1950), is a grown man. Martin's second series was required by publishers to somehow be a modern AU of Alix, but Alix's counterpart, reporter in the same way that Tintin is a reporter Guy Lefranc (center, 1952), is clearly older than him. So-called reporter, really amateur detective Ric Hochet (yes, that's his name, right, 1955) is kind of an odd case; he started out a child, then looked basically exactly like Chick Bill (they were both drawn by the same artist, Tibet), then finally settled into his final form as a young man in his mid-twenties - a 1969 album places him at age 26. All three own their own cars (admittedly a moot point for Alix and Chick), and, compared to their teenage counterparts, they're much more likely to have friends and colleagues their own age instead of being supervised by someone older.

It should be clear from these six pictures that Tintin was not drawn in a way meant to make readers think he was an adult. And besides, there's really no reason to believe that Hergé, who once declared that "my primary objective is to be legible. The rest follows," would have chosen to give his main and titular character an appearance that was somehow deceptive. I'm prepared to say with confidence that Tintin looks young because he's supposed to be seen as young.

Textual evidence

For this section, I first look at a few ways that the albums actively present Tintin as a non-adult character. However, most of what follows is about showing that what happens in the albums does not contradict the argument that Tintin is intended to be a teenager. The Adventures of Tintin may be deceptively timeless, but not only is the series nearly a century old, it also was written during a time of extremely rapid and intense social, cultural, and technological change. Consequently, I want to make sure that I'm not judging the past with the attitudes of the present; in order to put the series in its proper context, I try to identify viewpoints and conventions expressed in texts created at the same time (and, when possible, by the same author) to see if a teenaged Tintin fits in with them.

In looking over how other characters refer to him across the albums, one sees that Tintin's most distinctive feature to those around him is his youth. This is, I think, more visible in the original French, where other characters address or describe him with a whole array of words commonly used for children: jeune homme, (jeune) garçon, gamin, galopin, blanc-bec, enfant de choeur, fiston, freluquet, moussaillon, (mon) petit (used as a noun), and morveux, not to mention many, many instances of characters appending "jeune" or "petit" to another word ("reporter," for instance). In English, he's variously (a) young man, (young) boy, kid, boyo, whippersnapper, wonderboy, lad, brat, puppy, young fellow-me-lad, and cabin-boy, along with liberal use of the corresponding adjectives "young" and "little." (I've collected specific panel examples for reference in another post.)

As @professorcalculusstanaccount has pointed out, there's no question of Tintin being called up for the draft as Haddock is in Black Gold; that album also contains the only example of Tintin's competency being questioned because of his age, on page 7: "So you're the new radio officer... You look a bit young to me..." (There's one similar remark, in America, after Tintin is injured in a car accident on page 6: "The poor kid..." "He looks so young...") Him not being called to war is particularly striking because Belgium historically required young men to do compulsory military service at age 18 or 19, after which they would be enrolled in the reserve army (p. 274). Thanks to a hard-to-translate joke in the original French for Emerald (below), we know that military service exists in Tintin's world and that the Thompsons have done theirs; Hergé did his at age 19, and then was called up from the reserves in 1939, interrupting the magazine publication of, precisely, Black Gold. Given his longtime anti-war stance and the peace sign sticker he wears in Picaros, though, one can easily imagine Tintin becoming a conscientious objector after it was legalized in 1964 - but by 1964, most of the series was already over.

(Les Bijoux de la Castafiore, p. 37)

He also doesn't dress like an adult: the plus-fours look very childish after the 1930s, as @illegally-blind-and-deaf pointed out. He also never wears a proper hat, only a flat cap in a few early adventures, and from Temple on (that is, after 1948) he runs around in his shirt and sweater with no tie or jacket. Some of that can be put down to the importance Hergé placed on his characters being maximally recognizable, but it certainly doesn't make Tintin look any older - look at a few of Hergé's crowd scenes and compare how the background characters are dressed.

Next, he doesn't seem to ever need to shave. In fact, in the original French for Black Island, Tintin remarks that the bad guys have gotten away "à mon nez et à ma barbe," an expression equivalent in English to "right under my nose" but literally "at my nose and at my beard," to which Snowy incredulously responds "Your beard? What beard?"

(L'Île Noire, p. 29)

It's true that nearly everyone who meets Tintin, including his adult friends, addresses him respectfully with the formal pronoun "vous" instead of with the informal "tu," as you typically would for someone much younger than you. However, Pierre Assouline attributes this to a dislike of over-familiarity on Hergé's part, citing him as saying that "Le tutoiement est la fausse monnaie de l'amitié" ("Using 'tu' is the counterfeit money of friendship").

(There are a few moments where Haddock slips and uses tu with Tintin, but I won't go into them here. Suffice to say that the majority of them are indeed moments where he's treating Tintin more as a child.)

Much has been made of Tintin's nonchalance about drinking alcohol as proof of adulthood, but evidence from other BDs indicates that this perception is a result of a shift away from historically looser attitudes towards drinking. Early comics for children frequently carried moralizing messages, but there's no marked moralizing present around youths drinking like there is around them smoking.

Compare, for example, the difference in tone between these two Quick & Flupke pages, where the kids are sternly warned off from tobacco...

(Originally published in Le Petit Vingtième nos. 4, January 28, 1932 & 43, October 24, 1935)

...Versus this gag, where Flupke's own relatives getting him drunk on New Year's over his protests is played entirely for humor.

(Le Petit Vingtième no. 1, January 3, 1935. "Tu es un homme et tu dois boire!")

There was even a follow-up comic at the same time the year after, in which Flupke imagines the alcohol he'll be plied with on January 1st and attempts to move to the North Pole to avoid it.

If a kid as young as Flupke is being given alcohol, then Tintin really doesn't have to be much older to be drinking as well. In fact, one might even note an echo between Flupke's reluctance to drink here and Tintin's in Picaros, when he's pressured to take a swig of whisky by Arumbaya custom (p. 34). On the other hand, since Quick and Flupke are so young, the ban on smoking is stronger for them. Tintin is old enough to occasionally be offered a cigarette, but still young enough that he always must refuse: Hergé was adamant that Tintin remain a good model because of the children who identified with him, while Haddock smoking his pipe, for example, never raised the same issue.

Beyond that, for a non-Hergé example and a later one (from 1960), here's child tennis prodigy Jari, hero of an eponymous strip in the Journal Tintin. He's just bicycled from Belgium to the Netherlands and wants a refreshment, so he goes to a drink stand and orders a beer - and no one bats an eye. Similarly, the only alcohol that Tintin orders casually, in a cafe or pub, is beer (Golden Claws p. 2, Black Island p. 41).

(Jari et le Plan Z, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 40, October 6, 1960)

At the same time, this relaxed attitude has limits. Tintin won't share a friendly drink with Haddock, for example when returning to Marlinspike after an excursion (though Haddock pours two glasses anyway in Affair (p. 3)). Calculus scolds Haddock severely when he thinks that Haddock has given Tintin champagne at breakfast in Tibet (p. 4: "Vous avez bien tort de lui faire boire du champagne de grand matin, à ce garçon !…"). Later in that same album, Haddock drunkenly warns Tintin against alcohol, telling him it's "very bad for young people like you!" (p. 38).

Next, while Tintin is undeniably capable of driving a car, there's actually no indication outside of the earliest stories that he can legally drive. (A quick Google search also tells me that Belgium has historically been notoriously lax on road safety.) At no point after the first four albums - that is, after Hergé became interested in telling a story that makes logical sense, a development typically placed at Blue Lotus - does Tintin drive a car that was acquired legally, not commandeered or outright stolen. (In Soviets and Congo he buys a car; in Cigars he drives the two Rajaijah victims to the asylum, though I doubt anyone was worried about him getting pulled over in the jungle.) On the few occasions where there isn't an emergency, it's always Haddock who drives; see for example Crystal Balls or the few pages of Thérmozéro. When Tintin finally gets a vehicle of his own, in Picaros, it's... a motorbike, which one can get a license for at a younger age than for a car. And in Alph-Art, where the motorbike plays a much larger role, Haddock still drives Tintin into town (p. 25) - and then gets left in the car while Tintin investigates!

Hergé also apparently didn't think flying a plane was particularly difficult. In Jo et Zette, one of his other series, Hergé has little Jo be able to fly his father's "Stratonef" and even land it from a glide, despite only ever hearing his father talk about how to fly it. Over the course of the two-part story (Le Testament de M. Pump and Destination New-York), Jo manages multiple successful flights - more than Tintin ever does! - despite unambiguously being a child.

(Destination New-York, p. 41)

And as with the cars, every plane Tintin ever flies is stolen, so whether he has a legal license or not really doesn't matter.

The same goes for his guns. In all but the first albums and Ear where, surprised in his flat, he really does pull a revolver out of nowhere, Tintin's guns are explicitly either given to him or taken from a disarmed enemy. The series doesn't make a point of him owning and carrying his own gun - just the opposite. And while it seems to us now that Tintin has a lot of firearm use for a children's comic, proficiency with guns was honestly a genre expectation for all adventure heroes of the time (just don't put a gun on your cover). For example, Chang, who from his introduction on acts like a second Tintin, wields a pistol at the end of Lotus and is even implied to be the one who makes the shot that breaks Didi's sword despite appearing even younger than Tintin. (See also the previous section of this post; Chick Bill is carrying a gun in the picture I included.) What's more, the gunplay in Tintin is actually a step down from its predecessor Totor, where Hergé's titular Boy Scout kills a man with a rifle shot to the face.

In short, Tintin is able to do a lot of things he shouldn't legally be able to do by simply not doing them legally.

The fact that Tintin lives alone isn't necessarily a mark of maturity either. It's hardly uncommon for a young adventure protagonist to be unusually unsupervised; it's effectively a demand of the genre. Hergé learned why that is from experience when he created Jo et Zette for the editor of the French, ultra-Catholic children's magazine Coeurs Vaillants, who had raised concerns about how unrealistic Tintin was. In Hergé's own (translated) words:

(From Entretiens avec Hergé, reproduced & translated in The Comics Journal no. 250, p. 191)

Parents are a nuisance, one that Hergé was only too happy to dispense with in Tintin's case. And besides, Tintin isn't completely alone forever; with the introduction of the Marlinspike "family," not to mention Marlinspike Hall itself, during the war, he at least ends up with a home and some adult supervision, however dubious it may be at times.

As for his schooling, according to a report on the Belgian education system from 1932, education was only compulsory there (not to mention free) from ages 6 to 14. That same report records that in 1928, the number of students in the higher level of secondary education - corresponding to high school in American terms - was only 1% of the number of students enrolled in compulsory primary school. Even adjusting for the fact that primary education enrolls children for twice as long, the percentage is still a paltry 2.6%. And then the number of students in university that same year was only about three-quarters of the number of students in secondary education.

What that means is that at the time when Tintin was getting started, only very, very few people stayed in school beyond age 14. Hergé himself was one of those few, but to many of his readers in the early years, the idea that Tintin was already working at age 14 or 15 would have been not just reasonable but recognizable - especially as he has no apparent family to support him. (Not that Tintin isn't knowledgeable: judging from the number of books in his apartment, we can presume that he's quite the autodidact.) Of course public education was broadened after WWII, but by then the character was already firmly established.

As for how Tintin is already a reporter, well, Hergé freely admitted that he gave him the job just because that's what he thought was cool at the time. "Of course it was a pretext," he said on British radio in 1977. (The announcer for that interview describes Tintin as "a 16-year-old Belgian boy with a strange lick of hair, a pair of plus-fours, and a terrier." In it Hergé, questioned about the outsize success of his series, responds that for him "he [Tintin] keeps to be a little boy. Only that.") The tone of the series would be very different if Tintin were just an office clerk or a paperboy, after all - and besides, all but the youngest readers of Le Petit Vingtième would have understood that it's not a real newspaper, just a little children's magazine, so the idea of it having its own official reporter was not to be taken fully seriously.

It's important to remember that our current cultural idea of the teenager as a separate, unique stage between childhood and adulthood was largely a post-WWII American innovation - in fact, the word "teenager" only entered popular use in the 1940s. By contrast, fully half of the Adventures of Tintin (up to the first 2/3 of Crystal Balls) were written either before or during WWII. Hergé himself, born in 1907, began submitting illustrations to a magazine (Le Boy-Scout) at 14, was hired at the Vingtième Siècle at 18, created Totor and did his military service, reaching the rank of sergeant, at 19, and before turning 22 had been given full responsibility for creating and running the Petit Vingtième, gotten engaged to his first wife, Germaine Kieckens, and created Tintin. Being young looked different then.

To close this section I'll also note that, as far as I can tell, positioning Tintin as a teenager never seemed to pose much of a problem to anyone reading the series while it was actively running. Anecdotally, nearly every published source I've read takes for granted that he's an adolescent, and an exception like writer of multiple books on Tintin Renaud Nattiez saying on the air in 2016 that he thinks Tintin is at least 22 (~03:30-03:50) seems to be a uniquely 21st-century development.

TL;DR: Everything I can find indicates that Tintin was always intended to be around 15, and never older than 20, years old.

II. Interpretation

Finally, it's important to not overstate Hergé's commitment to realism. At the end of the day, Tintin can do whatever the story needs him to be able to do, because he's the protagonist of a very straightforward adventure serial. He's always been aspirational, even for Hergé himself: "Tintin is me the way I'd like to be: heroic, flawless." And yet Tintin, victim of its own success, has always been held to a higher standard of realism than its fellow comics, not to mention a higher level of scrutiny in general. Even if, as I've tried to demonstrate, Tintin's feats aren't entirely out of the range of possibility (or at least the norm for comics characters) for his time period, I'm not arguing that he's supposed to be a perfectly accurate representation of the average boy of any point in the mid-20th century. I also don't deny that he typically does act like an adult. So the guiding question here is: How can this dual nature of Tintin's - his adolescent status and adult aspects - be interpreted?

Jean-Marie Apostolidès writes that as "il unifie dans sa personne deux aspects opposés de l’existence, l’enfance et l’âge adulte" ("he brings together in his person two opposing aspects of existence, childhood and adulthood"), Tintin represents "un mythe réconciliatoire" ("a reconciliatory myth") of which the "fonction implicite est de ressouder entre deux générations une confiance brisée" ("implicit function is to mend a broken trust between two generations"). He names this type of child-adult character the "surenfant" ("superchild"), and argues that it is specific to the 20th century and the cultural shock of WWI.

For Pol Vandromme, who wrote the first book of analysis on Tintin (or on any BD), Tintin is simply a perfected version of the teenage boy, one that other teenage boys can aspire to. First, he cites as conventional wisdom that Tintin is around 15, and concludes that "c'est dans tous les cas un adolescent" ("in any case he's a teenager"). While Vandromme accepts that Tintin is presented as a teenager, he also points out that Tintin doesn't represent the experience of being a teenager; Tintin "ne présente [...] que les apparences de l'adolescence" ("only displays the appearance of adolescence") because he's so self-assured and stable, traits antithetical to "l'époque de la métamorphose" ("the time of metamorphosis") that is adolescence.

And yet "il [Tintin] demure malgré tout suffisamment proche pour que les garçons se disent qu'ils auront un jour la chance de lui ressembler, d'imiter son style de vie. [...] Ce que Tintin propose à ces garçons de quinze ans, c'est la figure achevée de leur âge. Il les venge de leurs insuffisances" ("he [Tintin] remains all the same close [i.e. similar] enough that these boys tell themselves that one day they'll have the chance to be like him, to imitate his way of life. [...] What Tintin offers to these 15-year-old boys is the perfected version of their age [group]. He makes up for their shortcomings"). Consequently, having put themselves in Tintin's place, these boys "ont l'illusion d'être déjà de la tribu des jeunes gens qui ont découvert dans leur sac de voyage les clefs qui ouvrent les portes de la fable du monde" ("have the illusion of already being part of the clan of young people who have discovered in their travel bag the keys that open the doors of the world's fable"). In plainer language, being able to identify with Tintin as an apparent peer lets teens imagine themselves as being more capable and powerful than their age allows in reality, an attractive illusion.

I'll add that the static quality of Tintin as a character that Vandromme identifies is dictated by the form of the series. When presented with a teenage protagonist in a work, the novelistic expectation is that what follows will be some kind of bildungsroman, where the events of the story will push the protagonist to change and mature into adulthood. However, I believe that it's a mistake to approach The Adventures of Tintin as a novel when it is fundamentally a serial - even late in his career, when he didn't need to do prepublication anymore, Hergé's approach to plot was still oriented around the page-a-week format. Serial characters, as a rule, change very little. Tintin gets compared to Sherlock Holmes more than once in the series, and it's also true on a meta level: Holmes has a few minor moments of character development, but he largely remains exactly the same over the course of Conan Doyle's stories, which were likewise published in a magazine. In a true serial, the status quo is god, because the main aim of the serial is to perpetuate itself - theoretically forever. And so Watson always finds a reason to return to Baker Street, and Tintin never gets old enough to think of settling down and getting a real job.

Like Holmes, Tintin does change and grow somewhat as a character over the course of the series, but also like Holmes, that growth is not a planned arc with an endpoint, as you would expect in a novel. Instead, it's just a result of Hergé himself maturing and changing. In his contribution to L'archipel Tintin, Benoît Peeters notes that "Grande est la tentation, pour beaucoup, de lire la série comme une totalité, un monument où tout signifierait" ("The temptation is great, for many, to read the series as a totality, a monument where everything has meaning"). And yet he declares that "si accomplies soient-elles... Les Aventures de Tintin se sont élaborées en l'absence de tout grand dessein" ("however polished they may be... The Adventures of Tintin were created in the absence of any grand design"), citing the testimonies of both Hergé and those who knew him at the beginning of the series. Hergé never really had a plan for Tintin as a character; he really did just put him in situations over and over again for a little more than fifty years. However, now that the series is only read in album format and serial publishing is less common, the "temptation" Peeters describes is even stronger. This mismatch in narrative expectations may be part of why modern readers might struggle to view Tintin as a teenaged character.

There's one more element to Tintin's strangeness: the world of the series was built around Tintin himself to facilitate his adventures. Vandromme recalls the fact, so obvious that it's easily forgetten, that "Tintin étant ce qu'il est et ne pouvant être un autre, infléchit l'intrigue d'une certaine manière. [...] Remplacez Tintin par le père Fenouillard et il vous faudra modifier l'album de fond en comble. Dans un roman les personnages déterminent les événements avant d'être déterminés par eux" (Tintin, being who he is and unable to be anyone else, influences the story in a certain way. [...] Replace Tintin with the father of the Fenouillards [character from a 19th-century comic about the misadventures of a French family abroad, n.b.] and you'll have to change the album from top to bottom. In a novel, the characters define the events before the events define them"). This point is especially relevant to Tintin given that the series' beginning was, to put it mildly, haphazard. Starting from Soviets, where Tintin is alone with his dog in a bizarre world where he can sneeze down a sewer grate, cut down a tree with a pocketknife, or fistfight a bear - whatever it takes to keep the plot moving - set a precedent for the character: that Tintin, and nobody else, will always triumph over whatever enemy or obstacle he is faced with.

Because it's founded on Tintin himself, there are no real adults in the Adventures, and in fact there can't be any. Preserving Tintin's Soviets-era boy hero status as the world of the series became steadily larger and more realistic created a kind of 'competency warp' where Tintin, along with his young "doubles," Chang and Zorrino, is effectively always the most capable, the master of the situation, while those closest to him who are much older (the Thompsons, Haddock, Calculus...) tend to act rather childishly. I think it's telling that the 1946 introduction of Blake & Mortimer is often hailed in terms like these: that "pour la première fois, les héros n'étaient pas des enfants, mais des adultes responsables dont la psychologie était en parfaite harmonie avec leurs fonctions" ("for the first time, the heroes were not children, but responsible adults whose psychology was in perfect harmony with their roles," emphasis mine). All the major adult characters in Tintin had been introduced at that point, but apparently none of them qualified as "responsible" or properly suited for their positions.

Apostolidès similarly notes a deforming effect: "Tintin est un adolescent qui, sans jamais entrer dans l’âge adulte, rajeunit le monde en se confrontant à lui. Au lieu que le personnage se soumette passivement au monde adulte, s’intègre dans une histoire, vieillisse et meure, c’est l’univers extérieur qui se fige dans le temps au contact du héros" ("Tintin is an adolescent who, without ever entering adulthood, makes the world younger by confronting it. Instead of the character submitting himself passively to the adult world, fitting in to a history, getting older and dying, it's the outside world that freezes in time at the hero's touch"). Not only does Tintin resist adulthood himself, he also protects others from its effects.

There are characters who escape the warp, but they must stay on the very edges of Tintin's orbit. One example is the efficient and no-nonsense Mr. Baxter from the Moon books. He has a real job: he's director of the atomic center, and every time we see him he's actually doing it. He also remains disengaged from the antics of the Marlinspike crew, often exasperated and confused by them. They don't belong in his serious space program, and he doesn't belong in their funny adventure series - hence the clash. Another (and very different) example is Jolyon Wagg. I wish I could remember where I read it, but I once saw it pointed out that Tintin and Wagg almost completely ignore each other; their only direct interaction in the whole series is saying hello to each other exactly once (Emerald p. 17). The unidentified author's point was that Wagg inhabits a world so intensely banal, so different from Tintin's - one with community organizations, salesman jobs, an old mother, an Uncle Anatole, a wife and (a lot of) children - that the two can't even come into contact. Wagg may be almost preternaturally obnoxious, but he's also a genuinely ordinary man in a way that the major characters really aren't.

Tintin must remain the sole and main driver of action, because if he isn't, the series would have to change fundamentally. That means no other character can threaten his role by being more competent and responsible than him - and so the adults become ridiculous and/or irrelevant, and Chang and Zorrino are only allowed to act for one album each. And yet Hergé created Tintin as a teenager, and suggested that a Tintin who progressed past teenagerhood would also grow out of adventure: "Il est difficile, pour un personnage comme ça, à le faire vieillir. Parce que s'il vieillit, il va avoir vingt ans, il va avoir vingt-deux ans, il va rencontrer une jolie fille, il va se marier, il va avoir des enfants..." ("It's hard to make a character like that get older. Because if he gets older, he'll be 20, he'll be 22, he'll meet a pretty girl, he'll get married, he'll have children..."). Tintin passing into adulthood, 'real' adulthood, symbolized here by settling down and starting a family, would make the series just as unsustainable as demoting him to a more technically age-appropriate role would; both sides of the tension between Tintin's youth and his maturity are required to make him a proper adventure hero for children.

And so he remained, as he remains today, the world's most competent teenager.

#tintin #hergé #journal tintin #le petit vingtième #resources #also featuring:#jean-pierre talbot #quick et flupke #jo et zette #alix #chick bill #monsieur barelli #lefranc #ric hochet #jari

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hamilando · 1 year ago

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ੈ✩ my muse (smau) ੈ✩

pairing : max verstappen x fem reader

summary : the chaotic private account of an artistic soul 💫

tw : fluff, a little chaos, suggestive

a/n : So this was requested anonymously, so if you are seeing this, Hope you like it 💫

·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ

liked by max1, lordperceval, albono, lilihye, alexamiuex, and 37 others

maxwife the italian view 💫 one for the day ☀️ one for the night 🌝

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albono you stare at him, he stares at the podium ✊🏻

max1 stop being sour about driving a cart

lordperceval your just lucky you have a good car

max1 “ i have the longest contract ferrari has ever offered” lordperceval dw max, lewis is joining the misery gang 😮‍💨 hamsandwich fuck you mate

maxwife the only way you are staying at Mercedes is if you bang Toto 😮‍💨

hamsandwich he already is fukinh me 🤺

maxwife Toto follows me -

hamsandwich WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU LET 40 YEAR OLD FOLLOW YOU! norizz and you are what- 18 ?

max1 YOU ARE MY WIFE Y/N, STOP FOLLOWING DILFS, TOTO 🤺🤺🤺

maxwife I was joking - fransisca.gnomes it's alright y/n, they all have a thing for Toto

totomercedes everyone, I am married and do not harbour any feelings for the same gender with all due respect

hamsandwich TOTO WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE !? max1 I will sign to Mercedes just for a shirtless pic 🚗 totomercedes check dms.

maxwife can. everyone. stop. simping. over. toto.

chillisainz lando, that ass be looking smashable 😮‍💨

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lordperceval max,kiss me the way you kiss the trophy

maxwife OYE, STAY AWAY FROM MY HUSBAND 🤺🤺 maxwife MAX IS MINE 🤺🤺🤺🤺

max1 charles, in another lifetime 😞

maxwife yall are supposed to be driving cars on the grid

lordperceval yet we drive each other crazy @ max1 max1 🤭💌

maxwife yall are banned, that's it, OUT 🤺

liked by max1, albono, hamwich, fransisca.gnomes and 28 others

maxwife the muse and the art 💫

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max1 she gifted me the painting y’all

max1 I won in life 😙😌

alexmiuex love, we need to visit the museums together 🫶🏻

maxwife let��s ditch the men species carmenvroom count me in ✊🏻 fransisca.gnomes me too 🫶🏻😗

pierreneedsgas for gods sake, keep you wife away from mine

norriz did I miss something -

fransisca.gnomes when did I become your wife ?

lordperceval oh lord, GASLY KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT 🤐

maxwife OMG, KIKA mcdkcmdkcjdicjdicjdcijdcidjcidj

pierreneedsgas ITS OUT NOW, I SHOULD JUST TELL IT

hamsandwich my phone is out ☺️

albono his hands are shaking while typing 🌝

pierreneedsgas STOP ALEX ALBON

fransiscka.gnomes amour ❤️ ?

pierreneedsgas well, I wanted to do this in person, but ig my mouth spoiled it

pierreneedsgas Happy April’s Fool day 😊

maxwife that’s it, YALL ARE OUT INCLUDING MY HUSBAND

fransisca.gnomes girls, number 44

hamsandwich what?

carmenvroom ignore the real number 44

lordperceval Pierre, Alexandra just left the house

albono so did lily … max1 so did this account user

maxwife I have a name

max1 you are the love of my life, the reason I look forward to every day, the muse and the thrill to win each and every race max1 if you were not there, I would have not survived the lowest of my life max1 I want you to know that whatever I may say, I hold you above anyone else, and if needed, I would die for you without anything asked maxwife I am crying now 🥹 I love you so much my wdc ❤️ Pierre, take tips pierreneedsgas yes ma’am 🫡

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dudududuumaxverstappen · 3 months ago

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PUBLIC. LH 44 x f. READER

“Lewis Hamilton and stranger seen leaving restaurant in Miami. Who is the secret beauty?”

“Is Lewis Hamilton officially off the market? ”

“Lewis Hamilton sparks romance rumors as he steps out of restaurant with—”

A deep sigh parts your lips as you toss your head back against the pillows and drop your phone to the mattress.

You‘ve been trying so hard to keep it a secret but obviously either a fan of his or some really, really good paparazzo caught a snapshot of you leaving the restaurant together.

It‘s getting exhausting and quite frankly you are tired of this hiding game. You love Lewis, and you don’t care if the whole world knows about it. It‘s better than hiding, better than always trying to stay under the radar of those curious eyes just waiting to spot you two together.

You turn your head to the side, looking at your partner for a moment, silently admiring him - his beauty. All the sculpted, hard muscles of his chest on display just for you, his defined face, his long lashes drawing shadows on his cheeks as his eyes are focused on a video on his phone.

You roll onto your side, slowly reaching out to rest your hand on his chest as you snuggle close to him. “Lewis?” you find yourself asking in a voice tinged with nervousness, tipping your head back to meet his gaze that has now also left his phone and wandered to you.

“Hm?” He lifts a brow, something like worry shimmering in his eyes at your tone. He places his phone down beside him and slides his hand over yours, interlacing your fingers.

“Why don’t we make it official?” Your throat seems to tighten the moment the question leaves your mouth.

Lewis‘ eyes widen for a split second before he closes them. He takes a deep breath, his chests lifts beneath your palm and then he exhales audibly.

“Yes,” he finally breathes, although there’s uncertainty in his voice. “Yes, actually why not.” He leans down and presses his soft lips to your forehead. “But are you ready for everything that comes with it?”

“Yes,” you answer firmly. “We’re already getting pictured together, there are already headlines about you and your mystery girlfriend. Spekulations…”

You push up on your elbow so you can look at him, your eyes slowly travelling over his face before meeting his again. “I want the world to know that I‘m yours and you’re mine. I want to attend races as your girlfriend and not make sure to hide somewhere or go everywhere and hopefully not get caught by paparazzi. I just … I want to be part of your life, of your world, with everything it includes.”

He keeps looking at you, somehow thoughtfully, and then his throat works on a swallow before a smile appears on his lips. “And I want you to be part of every small part of my life. I want you to be there, in the paddock, after the races. I want to hold you, kiss you and find peace in your arms after races.”

“So no more hiding then?”

“No more hiding,” he smiles and his lips close over yours.

~~~~~~

Racing Hearts: Lewis Hamilton Makes A Stunning Paddock Entrance with Mystery Partner

Lewis Hamilton Turns Heads As He Appears With Secret Beauty on the Paddock

F1 Lewis Hamilton Sparks Dating Speculation When Appearing to Race With Mystery Partner

How fast the news articles about you spread is beyond you. The race is only about to start, you have entered the paddock a few hours ago, and now the articles are booming. It‘s another reminder for you just how famous your partner actually is. It‘s crazy. And wonderful at the same time. You are so proud of him, so proud of what he has achieved. So proud that you can call him yours.

After kissing him good luck, Lewis goes over to his engineers and to his cars. This is when you take your place, headphones that have been given to you in one hand, your phone in the other.

You shouldn’t look, shouldn’t check social media, knowing what will expect you there - comments about you and Lewis together, comments solely about you, your looks, your intentions…everything. Negative and positive things.

Still you find yourself opening instagram … just too look. There are already posts, many of them and your eyes widen in surprise as you flick through them.

OMG OMG … hamilton‘s off the market???!!!

She‘s stunning

might be a bit young??

her style is hilarious … hilarious meaning awful

Why would he choose someone like her?

i can‘t believe he’s cheating on me with her?! jokes aside, she looks stunning, great couple

POWER COUPLE!

ngl they look really good together

she‘s probably just after his money…

You put your phone away, a smile on your lips. Of course, there are bad things amongst all the lovely messages, but none of these comments matter. Nobody knows how the relationship between you really is, how much you love each other, and how real this bond between you truly is.

You put the headphones on, eyes focused on the screen in front of you.

And this time when he finishes, you are right there. Hugging him, kissing him, holding him.

I wasn’t sure about posting this, it’s super new for me to write about actual people. Still hope you liked it❤️

#formula one x reader #formula 1 #f1 #lewis hamilton #lewis hamilton x reader #formula one #lewis hamilton x you #lewis hamilton x y/n

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ahllohehn · 1 year ago

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HERMITS AND THE OLYMPIANS MASTERPOST (07/31/2024)

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Hermits and The Olympians/Emperors of Olympus is a Hermitcraft/Empires SMP based Percy Jackson AU based off my art and headcanons!

(Please do not use the tags for other PJO AUs as I use them to specifically label what's based off mine.)

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Seperated by art/doodles, headcanons/discussion, fanfics:

# 1 MUMBO PORTRAIT # 2 GRIAN, PEARL, SCAR & MUMBO ART # 3 HaTO FAN CREATION GUIDELINES # 4 GEM, CLEO, DOC PORTRAITS # 5 ETHO & BDUBS THANK YOU CARD # 6 STRESSMONSTER THANK YOU CARD # 7 CAMP EMPIRES FIRST APPEARANCE; BAD BOYS DOODLE # 8 OUTDATED CAMPERS GODLY PARENT SUMMARY # 9 CHIBI MUMBO THANK YOU CARD # 10 GRIAN CLOSE UP # 10.5 WATCHERS CAMEO??? # 11 BDUBS & SCAR; DEMETER CABIN'S HONORARY CAMPER # 12 RENDOG PORTRAIT # 13 MUMSCARIAN / RE: AU SHIPS # 14 IS THERE A CANON PLOT? Answer: I stick with what is canon to me, but I do not force others to follow so. As I am too lazy to do an actual plot. # 15 CHIBI STRESS & MUMBO # 16 BDUBS..? # 17 ETHO PORTRAIT / 1ST AU FICLET # 18 I JUST THINK THEATER KID ARES KID REN IS FUNNY # 19 JOEL AND LIZZIE; SOULMATES IN EVERY UNIVERSE # 20 ORACLE GEM...? # 21 oh snappers! (LOW QUALITY ETHO DOODLE) # 22 AT THIS POINT, DIONYSUS, ARES, AND APOLLO SHOULD FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO SEE WHO GETS CUSTODY OF REN # 23 SKIZZ & IMPULSE PORTRAITS / HEADCANONS # 24 ZEDAPH PORTRAIT

# 25 Camp Oracle’s Journal; Hermits and The Olympians # 26 GRIAN - THE DEATHLY ACTIVITIES MANAGER # 27 ISKALL & TANGO PORTRAITS # 28 KERALIS & XISUMA'S PERSONALLY MADE CAMP PIN # 29 I REALLY LIKE MAKING FUN OF REN /AFFE # 30 I ALSO REALLY LIKE INCLUDING MARTYN INTO THE MIX /AFFE

# 31 TREEBARK ARE MY BOYFAILURES # 32 RENDERED CAMP LOGOS (PNGS IN DISCORD SERVER) # 33 SHELBY & SCOTT PORTRAITS # 34 ETHUBS MY BELOVEDS :) # 35 INTRODUCING: GIGGS # 36 RE: CAMP EMPIRES AND CAMP HERMITCRAFT DOUBLES # 37 LET OLD MEN BOND LIKE OLD MEN (ETHO & TANGO) # 38 OFFICIAL HaTO DISCORD SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT # 39 MYTHICALSAUSAGE PORTRAIT # 40 XISUMA PORTRAIT # 41 HaTO FIRST COMIC SHITPOST # 42 FALSE, KERALIS, & BEEF PORTRAITS # 43 WELS & HYPNO PORTRAITS # 44 MUMSCARIAN FIRST MEETING DOODLE # 45 WHY IS WELS AN ATHENA KID? # 46 HOW IS GEM THE ORACLE # 47 HaTO SECOND COMIC SHITPOST (PRIDE MONTH) # 48 DESERT DUO ANIMATIC; INSPIRED BY BEAN'S TRAITOR SCAR FIC

# 49 MARTYN PORTRAIT / HEADCANONS # 50 IF SCAR WERE TO BE APHRODITE'S.... # 51 REN VS JARS # 52 LIZZIE PORTRAIT # 53 HaTO SCAR & GEM EMOTES # 54 HaTO CHIBIS BOUQUET DOODLE # 55 GRIAN AND HIS SON # 56 KATHERINE ELIZABETH PORTRAIT # 57 MUMSCARIAN MATCHING ICONS FOR PRIDE # 58 HOW ARE YEAR ROUNDERS GETTING EDUCATION? # 59 SHINY DUO MATCHING ICONS # 60 AROACE PEARL (PRIDE MONTH) # 61 BISEXUAL CLEO (PRIDE MONTH) # 62 CAMP CUDDLE SESSIONS # 63 TREEBARK COMEBACK # 64 When Does a Man Become a Monster?; Hermits and The Olympians

# 65 BOAT BOYS MATCHING ICONS # 66 WHAT DOIN'? CAMP HERMITCRAFT EDITION # 67 "I'M A CHILD OF DIVORCE" GESTURES TO ETHUBS # 68 MORE ETHUBS HEADCANONS CUS IM GAY AND SO ARE THEY # 69 DO NOT ANGER THE NON-ZOMBIE WOMAN, MR. ETHO # 70 NATURE WIVES # 71 I COMPLAIN ABOUT THE HEPHAESTUS CABIN'S ABILITIES # 72 TREEBARK MATCHING ICONS # 73 OLI PORTRAIT & HEADCANONS # 74 IT'S NOT ME IF THERE'S NO ETHUBS # 75 WELCOME TO HERMITCRAFT: GRIAN TEXT ADVENTURE # 76 GEM'S ORACLE CAVE TOUR

#77 THE BOYS (+ GEM) GO SHOPPING FOR SUITS #78 PEARL CHARACTER CARD #79 Camper Files; Hermits and The Olympians #80 STRESS PORTRAIT #81 CUBFAN PORTRAIT #82 FWHIP PORTRAIT

#83 PIXLRIFFS PORTRAIT #84 RANCHERS #85 WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH TREEBARK IN MY INBOX? #86 IDK HOW SAD I'M SUPPOSED TO MAKE SCOTT #87 LONG TIME, NO NATURE WIVES? #88 AREN'T WE ALL A LITTLE SILLY FOR GRIAN SOMETIMES? #89 I HOPE YOU ALL KNOW I JUST BE SAYING ANYTHING ATP

# SECOND MASTERPOST LINK

OTHER HaTO Related Links:

HaTO Roleplay Blogs Masterpost by gem-the-oracle HaTO Archive of Our Own Series HaTO Discord Server

#Hermits and The Olympians #Emperors of Olympus #hermitcraft #hermitcraft au #hermitcraft fanart #hermitshipping #trafficshipping #Percy Jackson AU

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imperator-kahlo · 8 months ago

Text

OK what even is happening with the Crows

I’ve just been trawling through the wiki and World of Thedas for a few hours trying to figure out what we (a) know, (b) can guess, (c) can speculate wildly about the inner workings of the Crows during the Dragon age.

(I am by no means an expert on the lore so please let me know where I have wildly missed the mark).

I'm definitely not trying to propose any kind of fanon consensus, where's the fun in that?! Just trying to figure out a timeline that makes sense to me. Possibly also toying around with a pre-canon Rookanis fic.

Loooong and probably insanely disorganised text post under the cut. I should have been in bed hours ago but I am hyperfixating on this and will not sleep until I hit post.

Spoilers, so many spoilers below: Veilguard, Tevinter Nights, The Silent Grove, Origins, Awakenings, the entire franchise basically.

So, a speculative timeline. Events in black are fairly or very well supported by the lore; events in blue are inconsistent/uncertain in the lore; events in purple are guesses that I can sort of back up; events in red are me throwing a dartboard at the wall.

Note: The wiki puts the events of "Eight Little Talons" in 9:44 Dragon, but I can't find any source for that. I would have guessed a little later, but let's roll with 9:44.

Also, I'm pretty unclear on the guildmaster/grandmaster distinction. I'm just going to say 'head of house' for whoever is in charge of a Crow house, or Talon if they're head of one of the eight Talon Houses.

Blessed Age

8:70 Blessed - Caterina born (she's described as well into her 70s during Eight Little Talons and as around 80 in the data-mined character descriptions for Veilguard, so give or take a couple years this seems right).

9:00 to 9:29 Dragon: House Arainai Shenanigans

9:00 Dragon - Antivan civil war, beginning of the "much maligned" Three Queens era (Codex, History of Kirkwall - Chapter 4). Unclear exactly what happens or over what period of time, but seems like the Crows would be in the thick of things.

9:05 - 9:10 - Caterina maybe reaches Talon status (not First, though). Around 8:98 Blessed would be the absolute earliest she could get there given Teia's holds the record (youngest Talon at 28). But I think Teia was at least three or four years younger than any previous Talon so I'd put it somewhere around here, if not a few years later.

9:12 Dragon - Zevran, aged 7, is purchased from a Rialto brothel by House Arainai. The House is led by First Talon Talav Arainai and described as rolling in coin after the "Three Brides" contract - they purchase 17 other slaves that year, including Taliesen (World of Thedas, vol 2, p. 96). I think based purely on vibes that House Arainai is fairly secure in First Talon position and has been there at least a couple years, probably longer.

9:15ish Dragon - Teia born (she's described as 28 in the data-mined descriptions, but she's already a Talon in 'Eight Little Talons', which says she was the youngest ever to reach the rank at age 28. I'm assuming she got there a year or two before the events of the story. See 9:17.

9:16 Dragon - whoops, sometime over the last four years it all went to shit for Talav Arainai! The House dropped to Second Talon, and he was executed in 9:16 after trying to take back the seat of First. Isadora Arainai takes over, and the House hangs on as Second Talon... for now. Rinna joins House Arainai and immediately works well with Zevran and Taliesen under the mentorship of Eoman Arainai (World of Thedas, vol 2, p. 96). This would be the earliest that Caterina could reach First Talon, but I'm not sure I'd put it this early. I think the latest she could possible reach First would be 9:25ish based on my guesses about House Velardo (see below).

9:17 Dragon - Lucanis born (described as 36 in the data-mined character descriptions. I know I threw out those descriptions for Teia, but I think we can be pretty certain Lucanis is mid thirties).

9:17 Dragon - Teia born. I was going back through Eight Little Talons and my initial read was wrong. Teia is 28 during the events of the story.

9:24 Dragon - House Arainai, having the sort of shitty luck they absolutely deserve, falls entirely out of the rank of Talons when Second Talon Isadora dies. They wallow amongst the cuchillos (minor houses) for a few years (World of Thedas, vol 2, p. 96).

9:22 - 9:27 - House Velardo attempts to usurp First Talon from House Dellamorte? The resulting war kills all of Caterina's children and grandchildren, save Lucanis and Illario. My reasoning here is this: Lucanis says he and Illario would have ended up with Caterina to train, but being orphaned sent them to her younger than anticipated. Zevran was purchased at age 7, so we know Crow training, at least for House Arainai slaves, begins very young. Perhaps the non-slave children of influential house leaders start later, but I would guess not much. So I'm assuming they end up with Caterina sometime between ages 5 and 10?

9:25 Dragon - King Maric is thought lost at sea, but is in reality being held by Third Talon Claudio Valisti in a Crow prison on behalf of a Tevinter Magister, Aurielion Titus.

Side note: I had the same reaction to finding out the Crows have a super-fun torture prison as I did to finding out Weisshaupt has dungeons. Just... why? That feels like mission creep? Does the assassin skill set at all overlap with the prison guard skill set?

9:26 - 9:28 - Eoman takes over as head of House Arainai. He eliminates House Ferragani, which was Eighth Talon, thus clearing the way for Arainai to claw its way back into power. Unfortunately, he needs the support of Third Talon Claudio Valisti to take over the position. Valisti wants Rinna Arainai dead (cult / royal bastard reasons) and Eoman tricks Zevran and Taliesen, her lovers, into doing it. This was a very stupid decision (WoT vol 2, p. 96).

9:30 to 9:43 Dragon: Zevran's Revenge

9:30 Dragon - Zevran, depressed and angry about Rinna's death, bids for the contract on the Warden's life. House Arainai is said to have accepted this contract because they believed Loghain to be the best person to defeat the blight (WoT vol 2, p. 96).

Side note: This sort of, if you squint, reconciles the contract on the Warden's life in 9:30 with the memento found in Veilguard that says the Crows had treaties with the Wardens to fight the "next blight". But also they tried to kill the Warden-Commander in Awakenings, too. I guess one could argue a new blight was unlikely so soon but like. Come on, guys. Is your word to the Wardens worth anything or not?

9:31 - 9:34 - If Zevran survived, he comes back from Ferelden with a spring in his step and murder in his heart (and possibly a Warden on his arm) and wreaks absolute havoc on House Arainai. Eoman is first to go, then like half a dozen more of their top people. The House loses Eighth Talon and falls once more into obscurity. The Crows call Zevran (or an unnamed assassin if Zevran is dead) the "Black Shadow" and speculate that he has allies among the cuchillos (WoT vol 2, p. 96).

9:34 - 9:43 - Where the fuck is Zevran?

9:37 Dragon - Corypheus is freed (Legacy DLC). The Venatori will start to be a thing in the next few years, so Lucanis is going to pick up his nickname between now and, say 9:50 Dragon. I'd put it between 9:45 and 9:49 because of vibes (and because he talks about not immediately specialising in mages. Crows get started very young, but I dunno. I see him starting on mages in his mid twenties because, again, vibes.)

9:38 - 9:40 - Events of The Silent Grove (comic - I haven't read it in a while but I'm throwing it in here for complete-ish-ness). Alistair, Varric and Isabela break into the Crow archive and Velabanchel prison (which side note is a totally heinous operation). Isabela kills Claudio Valisti (Third Talon passes to Ezio Valisti). This, for me, raises the question again: Where the fuck is Zevran (sob). Valisti was implicated in Rinna's death, so either Zevran never found out or he couldn't get to Valisti while he was cleaning house.

9:44 Dragon - Ongoing: We're Entering Our Freedom-Fighter Era

9:44 Dragon - The events of 'Eight Little Talons'. Briefly: Caterina calls all the Talons together to plan for the imminent invasion of the Antaam, but a whole bunch of murder happens. Turns out that Fourth Talon Emil Kortez made deal with the Antaam and was trying to wipe out the Crows' leadership. He was killed by the survivors and Viago suggests--correctly, I think--that Caterina will wipe out the whole house.

The following Talons are killed but it seems like their houses will probably retain their status, with somebody else taking over as Talon:

Dante Balazar, Second

Lera Valisti, Third

Giuli Arainai, Eighth (having only just managed to lift that fucking house back up to Talonship, shame lol)

In addition to Caterina, Viago, and Teia, Sixth Talon Nero Bolivar survives, but he um, isn't much help. I would guess that Caterina, in a pretty strong alliance with Viago and Teia and with all the other Talons being new, might fuck his shit up and try to get someone more solid in before the Antaam invade?

9:44 - ongoing - WHERE THE FUCK IS ZEVRAN???? He can't have taken control of any of the eight Talon houses, because he's not at the summit in 'Eight Little Talons'-- and however much he damaged House Arainai, they've clawed back some power by 9:44. Is there a breakaway faction of cuchillo houses that Caterina won't even dignify with an acknowledgment? Is he not interested in any kind of Crow power and is just fucking shit up for them - we can assume House Valisti has had a lock on Third Talon since at least 9:28 (Claudio or Ezio Valisti pop up periodically in this position), and my guess is House de Riva have held Fifth a decent period of time, but as far as I can tell we know nothing about Second, Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Talon Houses in this period. So maybe Zev is toppling houses left, right and centre? Seems like that sort of instability might have changed Caterina's approach in 'Eight Little Talons', though...

9:51 - Lucanis imprisoned in the Ossuary.

9:51 - Antaam invasion of Antiva, starting with Treviso. The Antaam rebellion begins in 9:44 and is ongoing; the failure of Kortez in 9:44 delayed the invasion somewhat. I wouldn't have thought it would delay it this much, but I'm pretty sure that it happened while Lucanis was imprisoned, right? So since we free him in 9:52 after a year in the Ossuary, the invasion must have been delayed until 9:51? Maybe very late 9:50?

"Conclusions"

(I haven't read the comics in a bit and I know there's some Crow stuff that goes down in there beyond the Silent Grove... but as best I recall its just Teia and Viago running into Varric and Harding, and some stuff setting up Solas and the Antaam. Please let me know if I'm mistaken!)

I think it's safe to say the Crows are in chaos for pretty much the entire first half of the Dragon age: Arainai are causing chaos from 9:16 to 9:25, then they pass the torch to Velardo, whose war against House Dellamorte must have lasted a few years if it wiped out almost all of Caterina's family. Zevran is on a murder spree at least between 9:31 and 9:34, and possibly (much) longer depending on your headcanon.

After, at very best, a decade's peace, 9:44 sees the plot to wipe out the Crow leadership, which fails but does kill half the Talons and lead to the elimination of at least one, maybe two of the Talon Houses. Half a decade after that the Antaam invades.

I've been completely on board with the critiques of Veilguard's portrayal of the Crows, but I think writing it all out like this has helped me reconcile things a little bit? This is a deeply chaotic network of feuding families, and no single Talon is going to have the secure political power to make sweeping changes. Which isn't to say the child abuse that was definitely still occuring in Houses Dellamorte and de Riva during Rook and Lucanis' childhoods is just fine. But it makes more sense to me now that Houses Dellamorte, de Riva and Cantori could have wildly different ideas about slavery and torture prisons than, say Houses Arainai and Valisti--and have extremely limited power to shift the culture of competing Houses. Even the First Talon's position is deeply precarious.

Whew. Good night!

(Just realised as I was tagging that I haven't slotted The Wigmaker Job in anywhere. I thiiiiink Viago mentions in 'Eight Little Talons' that Lucanis is currently in Tevinter for a job, maybe a sly reference to Wigmaker? But I cannot possibly get sucked in any deeper, my dog is losing her entire mind at me STILL being at the computer.)

***

Waking up and editing to add: At some point in her time as a Talon (probably First but I guess maybe not?), Caterina wiped out another house so completely that Teia doesn't even recognise the name, Gaspari, when Viago mentions it in 'Eight Little Talons'. Given House Velardo was the one that made a play for First Talon, this is a whole 'nother big intra-Crows conflict that slots in somewhere on this timeline. Caterina is ruthless, y'all.

***

Editing again a few days later to report that I was flicking through WoT and spotted a WHOLE-ASS ENTRY on Claudio Valisti that I’d managed to miss. I was… not happy. I’m begging you BioWare, no more information. I cannot reconcile it.

Anyway. World of Thedas, vol 2, p 44, has Claudio Valisti taking over from his father as Eighth Talon in 9:34, quickly getting the house to Sixth Talon and appearing to be going places. This appears to contradict p. 96 of the same, which has a Third Talon Claudio Valisti helping House Arainai in 9:28, as described above.

I thought very carefully about tearing the page out, burning it, and forgetting I ever knew this particular piece of lore.

Instead I have decided fuck it, we have a father-son pair here. Senior helped out Arainai in 9:28. His house later fell to Eighth (in my incredibly unwieldy and underdeveloped headcanon this is partly because helping Arainai really pissed off Caterina). Claudio Senior dies in 9:34, Claudio Junior inherits. By the time Junior dies to Isabela in 9:38-40 he’s got the house properly back on track, so the loss of a leader doesn’t destabilise them too badly.

Ezio Valisti is Third Talon in 9:41, according to the Winter Palace announcer in Inquisition, and the house still holds the third seat in 9:44.

(Also edited Teia’s birth year from 9:15 to 9:17; I misread Eight Little Talons. She’s 28 during the events of the story.)

#dragon age veilguard #dragon age #lucanis dellamorte #caterina dellamorte #antivan crows #zevran arainai #dav spoilers #veilguard critical #just a smidge and mostly I'm talking myself out of the negativity #dragon age lore

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devildomwriter · 2 years ago

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Their First and Last Words in the OG Game

*not including text* in this list is the vert first dialogue they are given, even if it’s not in-person (such as over a call) or not fully formed words like a distant call for help*

Lucifer

First (1-1): “I will explain everything to you.”

Last (80-22): “I knew it wouldn’t stay quiet around here for long…”

Mammon

First (1-1): “Huh? Who the hell are ya? You ain’t Lucifer” or “Are ya foolin’ around? Who the hell are ya?”

*first words via call are dependent on player choice*

Last (80-22): “Nuh-uh!!”

Leviathan

First (1-7): “How about this? I vote for YOU to die, Mammon.”

Last (80-16 Hard): “AAAAAAAAH!”

Satan

First (1-2): “Hmph. At least he didn’t ignore you altogether. How do you think I feel?”

Last (80-22): “No, MC’s mine.”

Asmodeus

First (1-2): “Oh, come now. Really? You should be honored that you get to introduce such a sweet and charming little brother like me!”

Last (80-22): “Oh MC! I’ve missed you sooo sooo SOOO much!”

Beelzebub

First (1-2) “Nope, I haven’t eaten any souls…yet.”

*this dialogue is only available by choosing a specific option in the game but it is the earliest available speech he gives*

Last (80-22): “In that case, we’ll be able to see each other whenever we want from now on, huh?”

Belphegor

First (2-15) “…el…”

Last (80-22): “Right, exactly. Because MC’s mine.”

Solomon

First (2-2): “Hey, you there.”

Last (80-16 Hard): “All right, all right…fine. We’ll go to the book signing with you. Okay?”

Simeon

First (2-13): “Ah, but I notice that you didn’t deny the part about him being cute, did you?”

Last (80-16 Hard): “Anyway, I feel like maybe I’ve made a bit of progress on my personal journey now?”

Raphael

First (60-22): “I can see that, yes…”

Last (80-19): “…Have you forgotten that I’m standing right here? If you’re about to have a “moment”…don’t.”

Luke

First (2-13): “Pff, of course not! Duh! That was a put-down! An insult! He’s taunting you!”

Last (80-22): “Aww… I want to see MC too, but they aren’t leaving me enough space to get through…”

Michael

First (38-17): “Hello there, MC.”

Last (44-18): “Goodbye. Until we meet again, MC…”

Thirteen

First (65-3): “Ahahahaha!” or “Ugh, what was THAT?! Honestly, I don’t believe it!”

*her first dialogue is dependent on player choice*

Last (80-17): “No. This is my first time studying at RAD, remember? My program runs for a full year.”

Little D. No. 2

First (7-10): “Now, now, I think it’s nice to have at least one foolish character in the group you can tease. It lightens things up a little, don’t you think?”

Last (68-16 Hard): “Y-Yes sirrr…”

Mephistopheles

First (63-1): “Don’t touch that!”

Last (80-17): “It’s the same with Solomon. Your terms should be ending soon, right?”

Barbatos

First (2-13): “Huh. Whenever you make an important announcement, the demons here couldn’t care less. But rumors… they really do spread like wildfire.”

Last (80-22): “Shall I go make some tea?”

Diavolo

First (1-1): “Welcome to the devildom MC.”

Last (80-22): “Ahaha! Come on, take it easy…all of you. You’re going to suffocate MC.”

First (1-1): “Where am I?”

*technically these are just thoughts but I’m counting it*

Last (80-16 Hard): “I think you’re taking it a bit too far…” or “Just don’t summon Lotan by accident, okay?” or “Now you’ve got ME bawling, too!”

*dependent on player choice*

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mydirtyvalentine · 6 months ago

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my radio malevolent theory

this is my masterpost for my malevolent radio theory which includes heavy spoilers for the series featured below the cut.

so as you may have guessed by the name of this post I have this working theory that malevolent, and what we hear of malevolent, is all, a radio show.

now before i go further explaining my theory I wanted to say that I do not want this to be the case and I don't want my theory to be right. I'm not a fan of narratives that end with a twist of, everything you just witnessed, this entire world, these characters, all of it was fantasy or a dream. i don't want malevolent to share that same narrative. but given things with the dream world and just cosmic horror in general it wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility for either the entire narrative of pieces of it to not be real. (also just clarifying I know malevolent is a work of fiction when I talk about things not being real its in reference to canon events in the show not having actually taken place within the world of malevolent)

with that out of the way, let me share my woes with you all.

so this theory started to take root for me after listening to part 43 the witch, and then following that immediately after with my listen of part 44 the deliverance.

the way that arthur is brought back to life, screaming after his brief time in the waylay, and his screams are immediately cut off by a lyric-depraved tune of "come easy, go easy love" by hoagy carmichael just haunted me for weeks and I couldn't stop thinking about it and out of that this theory was born.

i think music in malevolent is incredibly important. both diagetic and non diagetic music has an extensive impact on the way listeners perceive the events of the show.

malevolent literally begins with radio, the static shifting between stations until we land on "you call it madness" setting the tone for the narrative we are about to embark upon. this paired with the way that every episode fades out with radio static really cemented this idea of mine that what we are listening to had the potential to be a radio show. perhaps we stumbled across the broadcast, we are sitting by a radio, shifting through channels and come across this story that's unlike any we've ever heard before.

circling back to part 43 the witch, I think its incredibly interesting that the episode ends being cut off by that song, "come easy, go easy love" specifically, cause if you listen to part 34 the butcher one of the songs playing on a radio during the butcher's hunt after arthur is "come easy, go easy love". to me the ending of part 43 felt like such an interruption, it wasn't just arthur screaming and cut off or the sound fading away with static like most episodes but his screams being cut short by a song that in canon has been shown only explicitly playing on the radio. almost as if the 'broadcast' was being cut out and overlayed with a pleasant tune, to mask the horror and shock of hearing the screams of our beloved protagonist.

another big part of my theory is kayne and his overall narrative awareness. when it think about my radio theory I remember his line about fate in part 20. "it's not your choice, or his choice... it's fate, it's alllll predestined, everything you believe in and you desire you feel its allllll true." to me this reads as arthur and johns journey as something that has already been constructed, they are puppets on a string. they, very much so in their world and the world they perceive as true and real and their own feel that they have choice and control over their fate but the way kayne frames this, hell, even the way the show itself operates shows this isn't true. it isn't arthur or john's choice in the end, it's the listeners. we are the ones who are the masters of arthur and john's fate, the captains of their souls. weekly patreon members vote upon what choice arthur and john will make and of course in the narrative arthur and john will feel as if those choices are their own. they don't see that everything is scripted for them.

it reminds me almost of benevolent in the way that they are operating in a narrative that has already been prepared for them.

also benevolent is a small part of this theory cause it's fairly common for shows and radio shows to have a Christmas special and I think benevolent was a great example of that. the entire episode reads like a weird radio radio play you tuned into, it even features a musical guest who performs an entire song, very much like something you'd hear on the radio.

another big part of my theory is when we hear radio static/sounds. there are three cases where I have notated that we hear these sounds, the first being at the beginning and end of every episode, the second being whenever john touches a dead person/being, and the third being whenever the hand of malevolence is used.

all of these are instances in the show that deviate from the reality of what john and arthur are experiencing. all of these instances are reaching beyond the narrative of what's actually happening. i find this really interesting especially when looking at the ladder two cases. both when john touches someone dead, as well as when the hand of malevolence is used, both of these are instances where john and arthur are striving to look or 'be' beyond the current world they're in. they are trying to witness or experience a narrative that is not the one they are currently experiencing, hence this static sound, hence this 'interference'. they are challenging the very structure of what they are trapped within. it's in these moments that I feel arthur and john are the closest to being masters of their own fate.

there's more i could add to this theory that has to do with patreon experiences of the show but the only thing I'll add here which I find fascinating and that isn't a spoiler for anything in the show is that he's called 'booth john'. something about that title just screams host/recording booth. again this figure with narrative awareness.

this is a very clunky collection of my current thoughts about my radio theory. i know in the future I want to make a more organized post and I will definitely add to this post with more ideas of mine as they develop.

if you read all this thank you so much, I adore you.

I hope you enjoyed the chaos of this post and if you have any thoughts or a similar theory i'd love to hear them!

#malevolent #malevolent podcast #malevolent theory #arthur lester #john doe #john doe malevolent #kayne malevolent #the butcher malevolent #benevolent christmas special #radio show theory #malevolent radio show theory #dennis collins #malevolent spoilers #malevolent the witch

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berrychanx · 7 months ago

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Comiket 105 - December 2024

Sun, Dec 29, 2024 – Mon, Dec 30, 2024 Satoshi Ishino just released a tweet, announcing that he's gonna be at CM with a booth, in it will be a couple of books for sale, including History of Studio Hercules, Team Imozuka volume 44 with Mew Zakuro on the cover, drawn by him. Other artbooks available

Moonlight Coaster vol 3

Smash Color (Artbook by Keisuke Watabe, usually contains original artworks by Keisuke or douga for animes he worked on)

PHOTO NOT MINE! IT BELONGS TO SATOSHI ISHINO!

Contents are unknown at the moment.

Textless cover HERE

#tokyo mew mew #mew mew power #tokyo mew mew new #mew zakuro #team imozuka

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daisymbin · 8 months ago

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prompt list for requests!!!

requests are open!!!

check out my masterlist!

please allow me some time to write them though I promise to get them out as fast as I can within my capabilities! word count will vary for each prompt!

prompt list includes: fluff, suggestive, second chance romance & angst

+ please let me know which genre + no.

+ for angst, please indicate if you want a happy ending or not, or if you would like for me to decide!

full prompt list under cut! check here for all completed req works: #daisymbin: reqs

fluff ⤵️

1. "you look good in my clothes/hoodie/sweater."

2. "you looked cold, so i brought you a blanket/jacket/sweater."

3. "do you wanna come over and watch that movie we always talk about?"

4. "stop stealing my food."

5. "you can stay over if you want."

6. "your hands are freezing—here, take mine."

7. "your laugh is my favorite sound."

8. "why are you hiding behind the door?"

9. "i didn’t mean to fall asleep on your couch."

10. "do you ever think about us like… as more than friends?"

11. "you remembered my favorite drink?"

12. "you can’t fall asleep without your goodnight hug, huh?"

13. "i kept this photo of us—don’t laugh."

14. "oh, so now we’re holding hands?"

15. "you’re my favorite person, you know that?"

16. "how do you look good even in sweatpants?"

17. "you forgot your umbrella, so i came to walk you home."

18. "wait, don’t fall asleep yet."

19. "you can borrow my jacket, but don’t lose it, okay?"

20. "you can braid my hair if you want."

21. "we should bake something together—it’ll be a disaster, but fun."

22. "do you think you could ever love me back?"

23. "you stayed up all night taking care of me?"

24. "you’re the only person who knows how to make me smile like this."

25. "your playlist is basically my soundtrack at this point."

26. "are you… blushing? because of me?"

27. "did you plan this whole day just to make me happy?"

28. "you’ve been carrying that photo of us in your wallet this whole time?"

29. "you’ll always have me, no matter what."

30. "is that my shirt you’re wearing?"

31. "you’re like my personal sunshine."

32. "hold my hand—just until we get there, okay?"

33. "you fell asleep on my shoulder again."

34. "you make my world feel a little brighter."

35. "i know you hate hugs, but i’m giving you one anyway."

36. "i couldn’t imagine my life without you in it."

37. "you brought me flowers? just because?"

38. "stop looking at me like that—it’s unfair."

39. "you talk about me in your sleep, you know?"

40. "i can’t believe you remembered my favorite ice cream flavor."

41. "you’re staring again—what’s on your mind?"

42. "sometimes, i wish time could just freeze when i’m with you."

43. "you’re my home, more than anywhere else."

44. "let’s stay up all night talking, just like we used to."

45. "you really trust me with your secrets, huh?"

46. "you doodled hearts in my notebook again."

47. "did you really save the last piece of cake for me?"

48. "you’re the best part of my day."

49. "what would i do without you?"

50. "you’re my person—always have been, always will be."

suggestive ⤵️

1. "if you keep looking at me like that, i might kiss you."

2. "are you trying to distract me on purpose?"

3. "you’re lucky you’re cute, or i’d be mad right now."

4. "you’re playing a dangerous game, sweetheart."

5. "is that your way of asking me to stay the night?"

6. "you can’t keep teasing me like this."

7. "come closer, i won’t bite—unless you want me to."

8. "you don’t have to pretend to be innocent with me."

9. "your hands feel good on my skin."

10. "you’re thinking about me, aren’t you?"

11. "that’s not what you were saying last night."

12. "stop biting your lip like that, it’s distracting."

13. "don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing to me."

14. "you’ve been staring at my lips for the past five minutes."

15. "if you keep talking like that, i won’t be able to hold back."

16. "do you have any idea what you do to me?"

17. "come here and let me take care of you."

18. "why don’t we skip the movie and go straight to the good part?"

19. "you’re going to be the death of me, i swear."

20. "you’re not as innocent as you look, are you?"

21. "do you want me to kiss it better?"

22. "your place or mine?"

23. "i didn’t say stop."

24. "you know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?"

25. "do you trust me?"

26. "if you don’t stop teasing me, i might have to do something about it."

27. "come here, let me help you out of that."

28. "you’ve been on my mind all day."

29. "don’t make promises you can’t keep."

30. "you’re too tempting for your own good."

31. "what are you doing in my bed?"

32. "i think we’d both be more comfortable if you took that off."

33. "you’re cute when you’re flustered."

34. "what if i said i wanted more than just a kiss?"

35. "you have no idea how much i want you right now."

36. "is that a dare?"

37. "you look so good like this."

38. "tell me what you want, and i’ll make it happen."

39. "you’re mine, remember that."

40. "don’t look at me like that unless you mean it."

41. "you’re not as shy as you pretend to be."

42. "i love it when you get all worked up."

43. "keep talking like that and see what happens."

44. "you drive me crazy, you know that?"

45. "you have no idea what you’re doing to me right now."

46. "i’m not sure i can behave if you keep looking at me like that."

47. "let me show you how much i missed you."

48. "is it bad that i like seeing you all flustered?"

49. "you’re the best kind of distraction."

50. "you’re irresistible, and it’s so unfair."

second chance romance ⤵️

1. "do you ever think about what we could’ve been?"

2. "i never stopped loving you."

3. "if i could go back in time, i’d do everything differently."

4. "do you think we could try again?"

5. "i still keep your picture in my wallet."

6. "this place reminds me of us."

7. "do you ever miss me?"

8. "you’re the one that got away."

9. "i can’t stop thinking about what we lost."

10. "i wasn’t ready to let you go."

11. "you always had a piece of my heart."

12. "every song reminds me of you."

13. "it’s been years, and you still feel like home."

14. "i hate that i lost you."

15. "you deserved someone better than me."

16. "you still wear the necklace i gave you?"

17. "i saw you in my dream last night."

18. "we were so close to forever."

19. "do you think we could ever be us again?"

20. "seeing you again feels like a second chance."

21. "i thought i was over you, but then i saw you smile."

22. "you were my first love—you still are."

23. "i thought i’d never see you again."

24. "every road i take somehow leads back to you."

25. "do you remember the promises we made?"

26. "it’s always been you."

27. "i thought i was okay until i saw you with someone else."

28. "why did you have to come back into my life now?"

29. "i wrote you so many letters i never sent."

30. "you’re the only person who ever truly knew me."

31. "i don’t think i ever really moved on."

32. "i kept the gift you gave me."

33. "can we start over?"

34. "it still hurts, seeing you."

35. "i thought leaving was the right choice, but now i’m not so sure."

36. "you’re still the first person i think of when i hear good news."

37. "i was so stupid to let you go."

38. "do you think we could fix what’s broken?"

39. "we ended too soon."

40. "i never wanted anyone else—it was always you."

41. "you’re the reason i came back."

42. "i miss the way you used to look at me."

43. "it feels like i’ve been waiting for you forever."

44. "you used to love me."

45. "i wanted to call, but i didn’t think you’d pick up."

46. "i still dream about you."

47. "do you regret what we had?"

48. "you taught me what love is, and no one else has come close."

49. "it’s not too late for us, is it?"

50. "i still believe we were meant to be."

angst ⤵️

1. "i saw you with them—don’t deny it."

2. "you promised you wouldn’t hurt me."

3. "why didn’t you just tell me?"

4. "i thought i meant something to you."

5. "is that all i am to you?"

6. "you chose them over me."

7. "i don’t know if i can forgive you."

8. "was anything real between us?"

9. "i can’t keep pretending i’m okay."

10. "you don’t trust me, do you?"

11. "do you even love me?"

12. "did you even think about how i would feel?"

13. "don’t act like you care."

14. "you never really loved me, did you?"

15. "i’m not enough for you."

16. "do you even know how much you hurt me?"

17. "please don’t go."

18. "i thought you were different."

19. "it’s too late to fix this."

20. "i wish i could hate you."

21. "you don’t get to walk back into my life like this."

22. "i can’t lose you again."

23. "you broke me."

24. "i waited for you, but you never came."

25. "how could you keep this from me?"

26. "i wish we’d never met."

27. "this isn’t how it was supposed to end."

28. "you always put them first."

29. "stop pretending you care."

30. "i saw you with them—it’s over."

31. "don’t lie to me."

32. "you said you’d never leave."

33. "what about us?"

34. "you made me believe in us."

35. "why am i never enough?"

36. "you could’ve told me."

37. "don’t walk away from me."

38. "it wasn’t supposed to hurt like this."

39. "why are you pushing me away?"

40. "i thought we were forever."

41. "did you ever really love me?"

42. "please don’t make me choose."

43. "how could you think i didn’t care?"

44. "i loved you with everything i had."

45. "you were my everything."

46. "we can’t keep doing this."

47. "saying you're sorry isn’t enough this time."

48. "you knew this would destroy me."

49. "you’re too late."

50. "i hope they’re worth it."

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redgoldsparks · 8 months ago

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Podcasts I love and recommend

I spent a truly extraordinary amount of time listening to podcasts this year, including my perennial faves and some new discoveries! I wanted to write up a bit about each of the ones I recommend the most highly, and give them some of the same attention and love I put into my book reviews. Recs below the cut. (This post brought to you by my patreon).

MATERIAL GIRLS- This is, hands down, my favorite podcast of all time. Friends and scholars Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman take on a new pop culture subject in each episode and examine the material conditions and historical setting that made their subject of the week zeitgeisty. They bring an expansive feminist lens, different types of critical theory, and tons of humor to each topic. I feel like I am slowly getting a media studies degree one episode at a time as I listen to this show. Some of my favorite episodes tackled Jurassic Park, Dopamine, Twilight, Taylor Swift, Bridgerton, and Queer Eye. I have guested on this podcast and also support them on patreon so I can get all of that sweet sweet bonus content! (This show uploads full transcripts but they lag behind the audio episodes in updates).

GENDER REVEAL- Journalist, writer, and now small-press founder Tuck Woodstock interviews trans folks on a wide range of topics. A characteristic episode includes some deeply intimate or tender moments mixed with wild tangents, extreme silliness and irreverence. I listen to every single episode and also back them on patreon for the extra episodes; some recent conversations that have really stuck with me include Colby Gordon, a founder of Early Modern Trans Studies; trans historian Susan Stryker; Jewish anti-Zionist comic author Solomon J Brager; writer Lucy Sante; and multimedia artist (and friend of mine) Shing Yin Khor. This podcast gets a special award for recommending more books that I actually end up reading than any other podcast. This year alone I’ve read at least 6 books by authors Tuck has interviewed (I Heard Her Call My Name, Heavyweight, Hijab Butch Blues, Transgender History, Boys Weekend, Practical Anarchism, Falling Back in Love With Being Human) and I have more on my TBR (The Prospects, When Monsters Speak). (This show also uploads full transcripts).

PUBLISHING RODEO- This is a new fav! I discovered this podcast over the summer and binged all 44 available episodes in about a month. Hosts Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford are friends and fellow Tor authors. In 2022, they both released debut novels in the same genre, in the same year, with the same publisher, to very different results. They are remarkably candid about the nuts and bolts of their publishing deals, and in each episode interview another author, usually one early in their publishing career, on signing agents, selling books, the size of their advance, resulting royalties and more. I have learned so much about the publishing industry from this show- I’ve sold 3 books, and yet it turns out there’s still loads I don’t know. I’d recommend starting with the intro episode in which Sunyi and Scott introduce themselves and then you can jump around to any interview which interests you. Their recent conversation with Chuck Tingle was especially delightful. (This show also uploads full transcripts).

PRINT RUN PODCAST- Another new discovery, also about the publishing/writing industry. Hosts Laura Zats and Erik Hane are both literary agents at a small agency they founded together. They discuss current events in the book news world or focused single subjects, often for early career writers. Because this show is more focused on current events, I haven’t dived super far into their back catalog, but listened to a handful of episodes from the past two years and plan to continue listening as new episodes are released. Laura and Erik also have a very cool patreon special bonus offering- they will critique query letters and first pages submitted from listeners. I haven’t written a query letter since probably 2017, so the refresher course was extremely valuable! I’d recommend the episode The Books That Made Us as a good starting point in this show. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

FIC CLIQUE- This is an old favorite I have recommended before. In a standard episode, the three hosts Nic, Reid, and Brenna each bring one fanfiction to read and discuss book-club style. In the past year, I’ve been particularly enjoying some of the mini-episodes that break this format. If you want to give it a try but you’ve less interested in hearing people talk about a fandom you aren’t in, I’d suggest the episodes on Mapping Fannish Migration, Books and Fandom, and Genre and Subgenre in Fanfiction. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

FANSPLAINING- Tragically (for me), this beloved long-running show wrapped this summer with its final standard format episode after 9 years and 200+ episodes. However, there’s still more to look forward to! Fansplaining has shifted to become primarily a publisher of fandom related journalism, and they’ve been releasing audio versions of each article along with the text, generally recorded by the author. I find these so charming, almost like new mini episodes of the show. Find a full list of their articles here; I especially loved the recent ones on The Beatles RPF fandom (still going strong!) and Bringing Fanfiction into the Classroom. (This show has full transcripts).

SHELVED BY GENRE- In this show, the three hosts re-read popular sci-fi or fantasy book series and record long rambling episodes which both summarize and analyze their current texts. When I say they ramble… most episodes are over 2 hours, some pushing 3 hours. I started on this show when they began reading the Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin, which I have read multiple times in past years. I skipped their episodes on Gene Wolfe, who I haven’t read, as well as some movie and horror focused episodes. But I happily dived back in for the unit on Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald Mage Trilogy, which was perhaps the first book with an out queer character I ever read; the queer host on the show, Michael, similarly remembers this as a foundational queer text from his teen years. I am very happy that the next author the hosts plan to discuss is William Gibson, who I might re-read to keep pace with the show. I recommend checking out their 40+ back episodes to see if there’s something you are interested in! (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

STUFF THE BRITISH STOLE- I found this 3 season podcast sometime in the middle of the year, hosted by an Australian journalist following the trail of objects (or sometimes animals or people) the British stole during the height of their colonial reign. The episodes generally run 35-45 minutes and feature interviews, history, and usually live records of the host seeing the item, whether it’s currently in a museum, a private collection, a random high school, or the site of a foreign grave. You can jump around to whatever topic that interests you, but I can definitely recommend the episode Blood Art as one of very few in which an item is repatriated! (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

LIVE LIKE THE WORLD IS DYING- A Margaret Killjoy and a group of queer anarchist friends rotate the hosting of this show. Once a month they release a “This Month in the Apocalypse” update which I started listening to in November and plan to keep up with going forward, but probably won’t listen to back episodes of as it’s very current-events focused. However there are other conversations/interview style episodes released between the monthly updates. Two recent interviews that really stuck with me were Spencer Sunshine on his zine “40 Ways To Fight Fascists” (which I subsequently downloaded and read) and Henri Feola on their zine “The Veil Between Worlds is Plexiglass”, which chronicles some of their experience spending 96 days in jail after being arrested protesting Atlanta’s Cop City and the police murder of Tortuguita, a protester defending the Weelaunee People’s Forest. I have a friend in Atlanta who was arrested at the same protest so I’ve been following this case; this conversation felt important and needed, as I expect there will be even more arrests of protestors in the coming years. (As far as I can tell, they do not release transcripts.)

BORROWED AND BANNED- The Brooklyn Public Library released this 7 episode limited run podcast on book bans, book challenges, how it’s affecting teachers, students, librarians and authors. I was one of several authors interviewed for the show, and you can hear my interview as a separate bonus episode; but I highly recommend listening to the whole thing because it’s a very close and personal look at these national issues- which I expect to get worse under the Trump administration. (This show has full transcripts).

SOLD A STORY- This is a 10 episode limited run podcast about how a misinformed educational specialist’s incorrect idea of how children learn to read damaged the literacy of a whole generation of school children. This podcast explores different research on reading, how sweeping educational policies like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” impacted schools and how textbook companies pushing expensive reading-kit book sets have all negatively impacted schools. The later episodes contain messages and voicemails from parents, teachers, and students reacting to the show and some hope of change on better educational resources. I’ve probably made this sound dry but it’s genuinely a very emotional journey- as someone who really struggled to learn to read, I found this show riveting. (This show has full transcripts).

THE REDEMPTION OF JAR JAR BINKS- This 6 episode limited run show is hosted by Dylan Marron, better known as the host of Conversations with People Who Hate Me and for his role as Carlos on the podcast Welcome to Nightvale. Marron was the target of a fair amount of internet hate himself, which made him interested in how people express hate towards public figures online, and why. This led him to investigate what is possibly the first ever case of cancellation online: the rage directed at the character Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel series which began releasing in 1999, and how that hate destroyed the mental health of and nearly ended the acting career of the young Black actor who voiced and helped develop the character. Marron is a deeply compassionate interviewer, and a good researcher. He finds and talks to fans who built “kill Jar Jar Binks” websites in the days of the early web, he interviews the actor, Ahmed Best, he interviews folks involved with the production on the Star Wars prequels. I am a lukewarm Star Wars fan at best (lol) but I loved this podcast. (This show has full transcripts).

WIND OF CHANGE- I picked up this 8 episode limited run podcast because it was researched, written and hosted by Patrick Radden Keefe, the author of Say Nothing, one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. In this show, Keefe digs into rumors of the CIA using cultural productions, especially pop music, as propaganda weapons against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In particular, he’s interested in one song, “Winds of Change”, by German rock group The Scorpions which became an anthem of change shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the end of the Soviet Union. Keefe is friends with someone who does a lot of recruiting of ex-CIA folks and has also written a whole book on the CIA, so he’s not without background or connections on this subject; but the question he most wants an answer to might not be one he can ever answer. This was gripping and intriguing, and made me think a lot about soft power and propaganda more generally. (This show has full transcripts).

#podcasts #podcast recommendations #podcast recs

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