#as presented his plan is Inscrutable and Bizarre

[sunlight-shunlight]

I kinda viewed Solas’s “people die, it’s what they do” as: people (specifically elves) die because of Solas. Every ‘natural death’ since the veil came up is Solas’s fault. He ‘murdered’ all those people. With the veil still up, Solas will be an eternal murderer, even after Solas is gone. He will never stop killing in that respect. So it’s kill the people who are already condemned to die by him already, or save people in the future in that they are no longer subject to ‘natural death’. Or maybe I’m way off base 🤷‍♂️.

maybe! but i don't think you ever get to ask him about it... if his motive was "i want to bring back immortality for everyone" then he should be allowed to do like a sales pitch for rook or the inquisitor about it lmao 😭

the bizarre thing is that they started off in trespasser with his plan sounding really ambiguously nostalgia-fueled, with vague hints of a Blight Trolley Problem lurking. so people had all kinds of guesses on whether he was just hung up on arlathan, or thought it was the only way to save the modern elves and spirits, or whether he had an actually objectively necessary reason to cause that much destruction to solve another problem.

and then in veilguard it's like... THE most sympathetic version of the problem he thinks he's solving, in that the blight WILL actually kill everyone without his intervention. so it's a very clear trolley problem. but then they handwave solving that part, and remove the elf and spirit stuff, and then his remaining motives are about mythal and the veil just having general bad vibes i guess(?). and also he went through as many rounds of layoffs as bioware did, so he has no agents who can weigh in on what they think he's doing either...

i just think it's incredibly flop writing for a major antagonist if at the end of the story you're like "wait, why WAS he even doing all that?" haha.

[agent-of-sam]

Wheel of Time - Christmas/Bel Tine Gifts

(show characters only- no spoilers)

RAND - Only gives gifts to people he's very close to. Puts a lot of thought and planning into each one. Willing to shell out a decent amount if he's convinced it's the right thing for the right person.

Still somehow manages to offend at least one person every year.

MAT - There is a very short list of people who will get extremely thoughtful, personalized gifts. Enjoys being extravagant if he has the money on hand.

For everybody else he waits until the last second and randomly grabs handfuls of whatever's cheapest. 

Through pure luck manages to achieve an 80/20 ratio of people being please/impressed with what he gets.

PERRIN - Likes to give practical things to people, stuff he knows they can use. Often makes gifts himself, usually small stuff, well-made but not flashy or ostentatious.

EGWENE - Puts a lot of pre-planning into her gifts. Has lists of what she got everybody last year. Tries and fails to get everybody to co-ordinate with her so there's no overlap.

Carefully budgets so everything is in a reasonable price range and no one feels slighted. Still silently offended when her gift is not a clear favorite.

Keeps an updated mental list of people who will NOT be receiving presents this year because they pissed her off.

NYNAEVE - Gives people stuff she thinks they need. 

Will include a passive-aggressive card when appropriate, stating things like, "I told you so" or "So you'll stop borrowing mine."

Gets something for everyone, purely on principal. Has thrown packages at people.  

MOIRAINE - Gives each person a specially chosen gift. Carefully wraps each package in fancy paper and includes a handwritten card. 

The gifts inside are absolutely inscrutable, including books in foreign languages, bizarre figurines, and strange-looking rocks.

No one can figure out if she's fucking with people or just weird (it's a little of both).

LAN - Moiraine and Nynaeve get very special items, sometimes expensive and sometimes not, with a lot personal touches (engravings, thoughtful words ext.)

Everyone else gets a pocket manual consisting of basic self-defense tips for Warders with some Borderlander sayings in the back. Gives the exact same manual every single year.

---

THOM - Loudly invites everyone to his next performance and considers that gift enough.

Secretly gives small, highly personal gifts to a small handful. Usually a note with some words of wisdom or a small item with sentimental value.

LOIAL - Gives everyone books, every single year. The selection is always well-intentioned but ranges in quality. Somehow manages to never give the same book to the same person.

[valhahazred]

Something I really like doing is imagining how Cryptids would fit into the Cthulhu Mythos. What would a gormless Miskatonic Alumni find when investigating a cryptid hotspot?

So I'm doing a split, top row is actual sightings of Mothman and similar creatures, bottom row are Mythos entities that might "explain" the sightings. Not all of them have to be true at once. Consider them possibilities, CoC investigation prompts or even in-universe theories by people "in the know".

Mothman

Your ordinary every day Mothman, best known for its appearance in Point Pleasant West Virginia preceding the collapse of the Silver Bridge. It was seen again fairly recently, during the Chicago flying humanoid flap of 2017. Some also claim it was present for several tragic events including a German mine collapse, the Chernobyl meltdown and even the 9/11 attacks, although I believe these are apocryphal.

Contrary to its name I don't believe I've ever read an account of a Mothman sighting that gave it any insectoid features whatsoever. It is usually described as a furry or feathered biped of approximately 6-7 feet tall, winged, headless and featureless aside from glowing red eyes. It is usually dark, although some of the early sightings in Point Pleasant reported that it was white or ash-grey.

Mothman sightings often coincide with other anomalous phenomenon; including UFOs, poltergeist activity, hairy hominids and strange inhuman men, specifically the Grinning Man Indred Cold.

Owlman

Often considered the British counterpart to the Mothman, it was sighted a few times in Cornwall in the 1970s through to the 90s before crossing the pond in time for the Chicago flying humanoid flap. The main difference between it and the Mothman is the presence of a well defined head. It also has clawed wings in some reports.

While it was never connected to any major tragedies, the British Owlman sightings supposedly coincided with severe weather and bizarre animal behavior. If the Owlman is the same kind of entity as the Mothman and they are attracted to disaster, perhaps something esoteric was going down in Cornwall at the time?

Bat Beast of Kent

Another British offering, although this one actually precedes the Mothman by three years! Four teenagers witnessed a golden "star" floating behind some trees before a black humanoid figure shambled out of the woods. They said it was a headless humanoid, about 5 feet tall with webbed feet and large batlike wings.

While both Mothman and Owlman were seen during a time of increased UFO activity, only the Bat Beast was (to my knowledge) actually witnessed at the same time as an apparent craft, although nobody actually saw it leave the UFO.

Interestingly a similar UFO was witnessed the week before in the same area but accompanied by a human figure with a red cape. If all these phenomenon are connected, perhaps the red caped person was the Bat Beast's equivalent to Indred Cold?

Spiderbat

Sighted in southern Alberta Canada, the Spiderbat was seen ducking into the witness's barn. He said it was huge and bulky and described it as "kind of like Mothman but with spider teeth and small white eyes". It perched in the barn's window even though it seemed like it should be too large to fit. As soon as he saw it, the witness turned to run for his house. He felt as though it was rushing at him as he fled, even though it never reached him. Although it hasn't been seen again thel witness claims he still hears strange noises from the barn at night and often feels watched in the area.

This is a weird one and I don't normally take this sort of sighting very seriously but I really wanted to draw it! Besides, it's way better than the Batsquatch.

Spectre

This is less an actual sighting and more personal speculation with artwork fueled by the Mothman Prophesies movie. The Mothman sometimes seems less than a physical creature and more like a haunting force, impressing supernatural terror into those that witness it and behaving in impossible ways. It flies without flapping its wings, it seemed to have an effect on nearby electronics and poltergeist activity was also reported in the area.

Perhaps the Mothman is a spiritual entity, either a warped human ghost or some elemental creature of the Astral realms?

Mothman in the Mythos

Fungi From Yuggoth

The story "Documents in the Case of Elizabeth Akeley" implies that the Mothman are a simple misidentification of the winged sporecrab forms of the Migo and that certainly makes some sense. The Migo are connected to alien folk-lore already. Their biodrones look like the archtypical Grey alien, their gateships are certainly disk shaped and they have human allies and waxen masked Migo infiltrators to serve as the Men in Black. But I'd like to go a little further.

Perhaps they are in fact another form of the Fungi's encounter drones? A heavily armored surveillance platform, the encounter drones where deployed to Point Pleasant to investigate strange psionic energy readings in the area. As the locals were gripped in Mothman hysteria, the Migo hunted for the source of their readings. Unfortunately they were unable to find it before the bridge fell and the psionic energy dissipated. Now it's 2017, the same energy has appeared in Chicago and the Migo aren't planning to fail twice...

The Million Favoured Ones

The so-called "Grinning Men" were in West Virginia around the same time as the Mothman, often in the company of UFOs. Some theorists posit that they are the Mothmen, taking a human form in order to interact with us. Indrid Cold is the best known Grinning Man but supposedly two more named Demo Hassan and Karl Ardo where also encountered in the area.

Perhaps the Mothmen are members of the Favoured Ones, shapeshifting alien sorcerers who do Nyarlathotep's inscrutable bidding. What purpose would they serve in prophesying or orchestrating the collapse of the Silver Bridge? It's unlikely that anyone would be able to find out until long after the fact.

Living Pterosaur

You might ask, "hey, isn't this an actual theory on what Mothman could be? Why is it down here in the Mythos section?" Well hypothetical person; in the Triassic era the Yith encountered a species of sapient pterosaurs, described by a captured human mind only as "black-snouted, winged creatures".

The Yith keep hidden stasis vaults of specimens and artifacts, serving as museums or supply caches and safe-rooms for their brain-casting operatives throughout time and space. Occasionally these vaults open unpredictably, their mechanisms failing after millions of years or by sabotage from the Yith's many enemies. It has happened before, a vault released populations of Cretaceous megafauna onto the Thurian continent during the pre-Hyborian age.

Now the pterosaur-folk are just the tip of the iceberg as Mythos forces converge on Point Pleasant, searching for the secrets of the Yith and their valuable artifacts.

Byakhee

It is unlikely that most witnesses would neglect to mention the sensory impressions of searing yellow light and psychic demands for space mead but regardless, some of the smaller species of Byakhee bear a more than superficial resemblance to the Mothman phenomenon.

Tskohmoi Independent Race

The Tskohmoi are an alien species from a distant part of the galaxy. Although they are entirely composed of physical matter, they are capable of sorcery and use it in their exploration of the universe. They can wrap themselves in plasmoid shells, racing through the void of space as blazing orbs. Although they are not shapeshifters the Tskohmoi are masters of mental influence and can impress all manner of images with their magic, including making themselves appear human to an observer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mothman is one of my favourite cryptids, constantly jockeying for position against the Flatwoods Monster and high-strangeness Sasquatch sightings. Chupacabra used to be up there too but now that it's just a mangy dog it's not as interesting. I plan to make at least a few more of these but it kinda depends on what I get good ideas for.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-04-13

Happy 4/13 upd8!  Glimpsed part of the title when I was checking but otherwise blind.

Time to liveblog this quickly and pile into RevScarecrow’s first-readthrough stream of Cascade.  It REALLY hurts to see him tortured having to read through long conversations with dyslexia, but at least he gets to draw purer enjoyment out of the huge flashes.

EDIT:  Added an important clarification from a friend to the bottom, regarding the tail end of the upd8.

Well here we go.  Whose daughter?  Candy Vrissy as Rose/Kanaya’s?  Or some weirder metaphorical Roxy/RoboRose thing.

> CHAPTER 8. A Daughter Astray

Huh, not where I thought we’d start a chapter named like that.  We can’t leave Candy so soon after cutting to it though.

JANE: Assassinations, open warfare, so-called "revolution," and where has everyone gone? JANE: They've ABANDONED me. They've taken our precious son. And now...

Are we going to see some of the beginnings of John’s plan in action, from her perspective?

> (==>)

Steven King novels???  Like an IT joke?  Sure, I guess?

DIRK: Itadakimasu.

I mean he would.  Especially the Jake-imagined version of him.

JANE: "An eye for an eye." JANE: Once we have rescued our son from their clutches, I'm going to take something of my own; something as valuable to the rebellion as Tavvy is to me. JANE: Two can play at the hostage game. That loathsome daughter of theirs should fit the bill nicely.

Okay.  That’s certainly a plan, I guess.

Wow, she really runs everything by the seat of her pants, doesn’t she.

(She seems less murderous than usual now that the spotlight of HS^2 is on her instead of Epilogue darkness, though, all things considered.  Walking back some of the negativity of the Epilogues in general.  That’s the impression I get anyway.)

> (Kids: Converse.)

Vriska, come on.

--Oh!  Oh and there’s:

That middle photo!  Harry, Roxy, and Calliope hanging out, yes!  Glad to see Candy Roxy and Callie were definitely not as distant as they appeared throughout the Epilogues when we were being convinced everything was going out-of-character as a Meat!Callie-written fanfic instead of what Roxy would plausibly actually do.  (Which... it kinda was, so they need to soften the blow by showing not everything was ruined by the way it was written.)

((And there are lots of cats everywhere, but this is outside Harry’s room so it’s all Roxy, no classpect.))

HARRY ANDERSON: so... HARRY ANDERSON: um. vriska? VRISKA: The one and o........ VRISKA: (Ughhhhhhhh) VRISKA: I mean, yeah. That's me!!!!!!!!

It’s hard to get enough of Vriska’s irritation with her reduced relevance.

VRISKA: From now on your name is just Harry. HARRY: o... k?

Dick move, but I have to thank you for shortening his chat handle there.

HARRY: but um, yeah. john and roxy are my parents.

Yeah, deal with that, Vriska.  Nice job wooing John.  :)

Aaaand then Harry’s Egbert genes kick in and he starts going off on a tangent describing a piece of media he likes with a situation barely mappable onto this one.

HARRY: ok, so have you ever seen the musical calamity jane? HARRY: i guess you probably haven't. HARRY: but so there's this part at the beginning, where the title character comes back from chicago, and she talks to all of the old-timey locals about how bizarre and new-fangled everything was, and VRISKA: Godddddddd it really is like talking to teenage John all over again. VRISKA: No I haven't seen Chastity Jane or whatever the stupid title was. It sounds like a total snooze!!!!!!!!

Calamity Jane and Chastity Jane.  Probably means nothing.

VRISKA: And anyway, what are you trying to say? VRISKA: That I sound outd8ed?

HA.  Now you’re a boomer!  Eat that Vriska.

HARRY: i mean, we've done stage fighting before, but never the real stuff. HARRY: but i bet i could learn. i took kickboxing with my mom for a month and half when i was nine.

Yaaay Roxy-style martial ar-- oh wait only a month and a half, huh?

We’ll have to see if he’s really as inexperienced and kinda-thinking-too-well-of-himself as he looks, or if this is all just a joke setup for when he proves to be pretty combat capable later.

VRISKA: He totally freaked out the first time I told him I killed some8ody. HARRY: haha, that sounds like my dad.

Harry and Vrissy look clearer together by the minute, dynamic-ways.

But now he's not so sure. Ever since hearing that one of his dad's old friends had turned up, that border between past and present has felt fainter by the minute. And as they talk, he begins to think that Vriska seems so much... fresher. More real. An actual, authentic, bona fide god from another universe. Harry can’t imagine his dad even talking to someone like her, let alone punching her in the face.

Freaking out about murder, though; that's definitely something Harry can see his father doing.

Kind of like a fresh breath of relevance, huh?  I mean Vriska had to carry a little in with her.

HARRY: i'm not allowed ONE vriska in my bedroom. HARRY: i don't even want to THINK about how much trouble i'll be in if she finds out i had TWO of them up there.

PFFFF.

And Roxy grew up the kind of mom to set those limits, huh?  Nice.  She’s definitely proving a less lonely and inscrutable mom than she was to Rose.  (And Rose had the additional disadvantages of Horrorterror- and Gamzee-induced fear- and certainty-amplification to help drive her to believe her mother hated her, on TOP of all of Mom’s glaring flaws/abuses vis-a-vis drunken responsibility-aversion.)

HARRY: of course i am freaking out vriska! HARRY: i'm freaking out what i think is probably a good amount about this. the fashionable amount of freaking out.

I’m starting to really take a liking to this asshole.

HARRY: he's going to absolutely flip his fucking lid if he ever finds out about this!! HARRY: or worse, it might just make him as miserable as before, and he'll be really disappointed in me, and then he'll just leave again, or... or SOMETHING!!

Auugh.  God damnit, Past!John, raising him to believe this.  Luckily, Current!John will most likely disabuse him of the notion at least SOMEWHAT by the end of this story.

BECAUSE JELLICLES CAN AND JEEEEEEELLICLES DO JELLICLES DO AND JELLICLES CAN JELLICLES CAN AND JEEEEEELLICLES HARRY: oh fuck.

Why is he hiding the CATS poster in his room, but has a whole ringtone set up with it?  Either a global one or a John-specific one?

Is it John-specific because he has to outwardly play it cool about how much he loves and needs his dad, just like Cats?

VRISSY: Check it out, someone's already cospl8ying my fit from tod8y.

Oh nice!  Inborn popularity at work.

VRISSY: Good? It's Infuri8ing!!!!!!!! VRISSY: UGH! So many f8ke accounts pretending to 8e me. Stealing my hard-earned Clout. Fakey f8ke F8KES.

Mhmm, why give up any attention?  She wouldn’t want to share it.

VRISSY: Damn Right it's import8nt Tavros! Image is a8out as Important as it gets.

(classpect blah blah)

VRISSY: Relax Tavvy. VRISSY: You're starting to Sweat Nervously. You know I H8te it when you Swe8t Nervously. TAVROS: Thank you,, VRISSY: Th8t wasn't a Fucking H8mance Complim8nt, I do genuinely Hate it and not in a Fun Way. TAVROS: Oh,, TAVROS: I'm,, sorry,,,, VRISSY: Ugh. Whatever. VRISSY: I'm just... 8eing a 8itch. Forget about it.

Look how INCREDIBLY much more mature Vrissy is right here than Vriska ever was.

And Vrissy’s understandably a lot more worried than we are about Vriska moving in on Harry.  Even though with Vriska’s experience she would hardly be likely to see anything in him to--

Oh.  Fuck, what am I saying.  Of COURSE Vriska would be tempted to move in if it meant stealing attention from Vrissy.  I keep forgetting this is ORIGINAL VRISKA we’re talking about.  That’s got to be a conflict at some point, right?

TAVROS: I know you don't like to talk about these kinds of things,, TAVROS: Having said, on previous occasions, stuff like,, TAVROS: "Feelings are for adults and babies, not real people," TAVROS: And i'm not,, necessarily, saying that you have some unaddressed feelings, TAVROS: But,, maybe if we're going to be around her, TAVROS: You should try to be honest, about the feelings, that you don't have,,

Nailed it like a true Tavros.

VRISSY: It's Something about the W8y she Looks at him. VRISSY: The Rest of us too. VRISSY: Like we're not even Real.

That’s right.  Making it important that you be extra careful that she doesn’t hurt you, because she’ll undoubtably or neglectfully TRY.

VRISSY: And to 8e Honest, I think I Understand why! VRISSY: Everything Here is so dwee8ish and 8oring!!!!!!!!

A little more complicated than that, Vrissy.

TAVROS: Because you're worried harry anderson thinks she's cooler than you,, TAVROS: Because you're jealous,,,, VRISSY: W8. VRISSY: What? VRISSY: No! VRISSY: Tavros, were you Listening to 8NYTHING I was Just Saying? VRISSY: I'm not worried a8out Harry Fucking 8nderson right now! VRISSY: Hell, I'm so Unconcerned that I think I'm going to start just calling him Harry from now on! It'll Save Everyone a lot of Valua8le Time! VRISSY: Listen Tavros, Vriska will get 8ored of Harry in a Heart8eat! VRISSY: That's the whole point!!!!!!!! VRISSY: She shouldn't 8e w8sting her Time on someone like Him! VRISSY: SHE SHOULD BE T8LKING T8 ME!!!!!!!!

Hm, jealous of the attention Vriska’s giving Harry, not the other way around.  Huh!

And here come the Crocker cops...

> (Harry: Pick up.)

Wait, I don’t understand this picture.  Who are those two silhouettes outside?  Isn’t this Roxy’s house?  (Is that Jake facing away on the left? Them being already here would be pretty good reason for alarm.)

HARRY: ok everyone, my dad's calling. HARRY: if he finds out you're here then he will definitely put two and two together, so PLEASE just keep quiet and let me do the talking.

Is John going to play along?  That could be fun.

Hm.  If Harry hasn’t turned off his phone’s signal, then that could be a way Jane can find and use him to find Vrissy.  (Or already have.)

HARRY: er, HARRY: hi dad. VRISKA: HI JOHN!!!!!!!! VRISSY: Hi Mister Eg8ert!!!!!!!!! HARRY: oh god dammit.

THEIR NEED FOR ATTENTION BYPASSES ALL SURVIVAL INSTINCT.

JOHN: HELLO SON! JOHN: I AM JOHN: SO JOHN: VERY JOHN: PROUD OF YOU!!!!!!!! HARRY: JOHN: PHEW, that felt good to say. JOHN: or to yell, i guess. heheh. JOHN: sorry about that, harry anderson. JOHN: i just didn't think i'd be seeing your handiwork all over the news quite so soon!

Yeah, John really needs to take a page or two out of his Dad’s playbook right now!  Because Harry really fucking doubts that his father is proud of him, and John’s Dad would never have let him come under such a misconception.

JOHN: it looks like you tried to pull one of the biggest pranks i can think of. JOHN: and it backfired! HARRY: y... yeah. JOHN: but that's ok!!! JOHN: it could have happened to the best of us. JOHN: ok, so maybe it wasn't the most original idea. JOHN: and you should probably have steered clear of such a blatant nod to weekend at bernie's without seriously planning some of the logistics in advance.

John, please stop so aggressively framing this in terms of YOUR interests.

JOHN: heh. two vriskas is NOTHING. JOHN: when i was your age i lost count of all the vriskas i had to keep track of. JOHN: it was probably some preposterous number.

¬_¬”

JOHN: now, harry anderson, i know that you and tavros haven't always gotten along. JOHN: but i am going to have to ask you to try and look out for him for the time being.

Harry could really use some reassurance from YOU you know?  That you’re working to make sure he’ll be okay through all this?

JOHN: your uncle jake and i... well, i'll explain later. JOHN: let's just say that gamzee isn't the only family member jane is losing today. HARRY: dad... if you wanted me to KILL tavros, you only had to ask. TAVROS: (Um,,,) HARRY: couldn't resist.

What?  Moved for custody in the divorce?

I feel like the divorce is SOMEHOW involved in whatever John is referring to here.  Even though the Epilogues say that Jane initiated it.  Maybe we’ll find out later that in the cut from then to now, Jane apologized a bit and didn’t go through with it, but he still had the papers to finalize it, or?  No, that doesn’t quite add up with what Jake was afraid of before... hm.

> (==>)

Oh, the paparazzi.  THAT’S a problem.

JOHN: the word "fuck" was invented for moments like this.

Nothing to comment on, just had to quote it.

JOHN: some guidelines that any budding prankster or newly fledged fugitive should know. JOHN: don't panic, JOHN: don't make a scene, JOHN: and whatever you do... JOHN: don't get caught!!

This is a reference to something, right?

> (High above the clouds...)

Jesus, that’s a visual. Hi, probably-the-only-source-of-happiness-between-Kanaya-and-Rose-we-might-have-onscreen-up-until-the-very-end.  (Are those cat chairs, or just headrests with lil horns?)

As the world seethes with the acid sting of war, they have stood steadfast and resolute; when hope has seemed at its most distant, they have shone as a beacon of possibility.

Further cementing Hope’s ties to possibility, then.

Individually, they each represent immeasurable gains for the rebel faction. The rebellion's stratagems have never had a fiercer bite; their uniforms have never looked so fucking sharp.

Why you gotta do Kanaya like that, narrative?

> (==>)

Full glow?  Kanaya must be nervous.

(I don’t think this short hair on Rose quite does the justice that short hair on her should.  I suppose it’s punk to match her clothes, though.  Still, I feel like short hair should look SO GOOD on Rose and the style chosen just doesn’t here.)

ROSE: I just wish I had answers!! My useless powers aren't being any help, and what's worse, ROSE: I can't see ANYTHING useful on this stupid news channel!!

I can imagine that a Seer of Light might find it harder to operate in a realm long void of most of its relevance, not to mention whatever measure of strength she gave up to concede herself into the “specific” and not ult-self manifest... but there are two Thieves of Light involved here and no Void players, beyond this being at Roxy’s house.  Are they really stealing that much visibility from the situation to not blaze like beacons in Rose’s vision?

ALFONZ: excuse me mA'Ams

I don’t know how to feel about this troll’s name or quirk.

Kanaya’s ending every sentence with a shout pole, by the way.

> (==>)

ALFONZ: the reconnAissAnce teAm is bAck eArly, mA'Ams ALFONZ: the ship docked A few moments Ago ROSE: And the scouting party??? ALFONZ: i expect she's Zipping her wAy up here now, mA'Am

Karkat and Meenah?  That’s just a singular “she”-- ah fuck it’s Jade isn’t it.  The Jade here who had Dave ditch her suddenly to become a robot and abscond without telling her.  That’s why there was so much talk about Jade in the background today, dammit.  Please still be generally not despairing???

> (==>)

What is that bulky suit?????  Is it seven layers of sweaters?  Was she scouting the arctic??

> (==>)

Angry camo?

> (==>)

KANAYA: Jade It Is Okay JADE: its........ JADE: *sniffle* KANAYA: Please Take Your Time JADE: we dont HAVE any time!!! JADE: its too late!!!!!! JADE: janes forces were just too fast... KANAYA: Oh No ROSE: You don't mean... JADE: theyve taken her

Jade, you aren’t talking about Vrissy.  Who the fuck ARE you talking about?  Is this gonna be a punchline again?

> (==>)

JADE: THEYVE TAKEN YIFFY!!!!!!! D:

Okay, I’m hoping for the best but there’s precedent that this is Jade in full fucking despair mode right now.  Having named pets like that and being this concerned about them.

Then again, if Dave and Jade had a pet they WOULD name it that wouldn’t they.

> (==>)

Sigh.

Well, let’s hope it’s mostly sunshine and rainbows on Jade’s front, unlike what it looks like?

That can be a caption for HS^2 going into the next two thirds of 2020 like this.  “Let’s hope it’s mostly sunshine and rainbows.”  Catch y’all another time.

EDIT:  Oh fucking MAN, it might not be a pet after all.  Quoting Discord:

[REDACTED] Today at 5:20 PM there’s a reason Rose knows but Kanaya wouldn’t possibly and look back at the chapter title BlastYoBoots Today at 5:21 PM I'll... correct that possibility. Did NOT realize it could have been a pet name for Dave instead of a pet. wait, what? no, they'd never have named a daughter that, Dave is NOT that cruel. (unless it could be nickname-shortened to that, that's just enough plausible deniability for Dave to hide behind.) [REDACTED] Today at 5:22 PM If it were a pet name for Dave, why would they use she/her in reference to him? JANE: Two can play at the hostage game. That loathsome daughter of theirs should fit the bill nicely. BlastYoBoots Today at 5:22 PM oh, and you're implying that the surrogate daughter thing happened with Jade and Rose-- [REDACTED] Today at 5:22 PM yes BlastYoBoots Today at 5:22 PM OH, and that they meant like, not Vrissy? [REDACTED] Today at 5:23 PM perhaps BlastYoBoots Today at 5:23 PM Why would Rose NOT tell Kanaya about her then? or is Kanaya just not interested in keeping up to date? [REDACTED] Today at 5:23 PM unless the yiffy ruse is a distaction BlastYoBoots Today at 5:23 PM it would be a pretty spectacular thing to spring on us though, a child the epilogues didn't mention, so...

SO, this could be a cheeky pet name for their daughter, who we’ve never met and Jane just legitimately planned to kidnap in front of us.  Making Davebot’s abandonment of this timeline all the more dickish, essential as it might be.  On the upside, new interesting HS^2-original characters that have nothing explicitly to do with the epilogues!  (Beyond Jade hinting at how a surrogate child would be conceived possibly!)  Plus another reason for Jade to steel herself and buck up about Dave not being there, to take care of her daughter, possibly.  On the downside... Robo!Dave is going to be a little infuriating.  Maybe to make him a little more palatable to miss if he goes down doing anything dramatic.

((EDIT2: "ROSE: Where is John? KANAYA: Where Is Dave" --ah FUCK, I missed that line. So if Kanaya's asking that, Dave probably only just vanished... I really was hoping she wouldn't have to deal with that onscreen.))

[us-essayexamples-blog]

The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

The chicken cover by Gilman\n\nGilmans briny character is the medical students married adult female that had yet gave pay to a bobble in 1870. She suffers from post-partum belief and is treated by her brinytain. The glide byling rule consists in organism locked in an upstair sleeping accommodation with disgraceful dis strain wallpaper.\n\nalong with her husband fundament they had temporarily go into a colonial mansion for common chord months to rest and recuperate from her slight neurotic tendencies and noisome natural depression. everyplace her stay therein, she does not contact many another(prenominal) people, and denies socializing with her friends. worsened than that, fleck staying in the mansion she is unaffectionate from her baby cared for by another cleaning woman, called Mary.\n\nThe precisely contact she essentially holds is with a housekeeper Jennie. Furthermore, the woman is forbidden to write, and she writes despite the prohibition. In ac cordance with the treatment plan, she is strongly back up to stay in spite of appearance despite the delightful grounds touch the e realm. She is also convince not view as into fancies and brace as more pile as possible.\n\nHer bedroom is dark with bars over the windows, scratches on the floor and holes and dents in the plastered walls. At that, her bed is nailed to the floor, and trustworthy sections of the walls hold patches of chickenhearted printed wallpaper contemn by her.\n\nIn spite of her claims to decease the house or at least change the rooms, her husband adamantly refuses claiming that her wellness is improving disregardless that her behaviour has real become twisted and bizarre.\n\nAs a result, she take ons vision of postures in the wall-paper in the progress to of faces with bulging eyes. Subsequently, the faces alter into inscribes, and the latter into a woman. Gradually the woman begins to despise the immature image. Without noticing John or Jen nie, the woman starts to compute out the secrets of the yellow wallpaper. \n\nShe actually hates the pattern, its program and colour, which al get her irritated and confused, as well as repelled and provoked. All this ultimately destroys her sagaciousness transforming it into the secern of virtual insanity. non the wallpaper take away her state of headspring calls for readers attention: The colour is repellent, almost imp desire; a smouldering unclean yellow, oddly faded by the slow-turning sunlight.\n\nShe permanently thinks of her nervous depression and is overloaded by her thoughts. She worries more or less her nervousness and feels guilty for world a incubus to her husband. overall, she is psychologically obsessed, which state is worsened by hallucinations. She imagines that she is able to agree a strange, provoking, shapeless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that wacky and conspicuous presence design.\n\nThe wall-paper becomes an obsession. to begin with it was an interpretation of the life of wallpaper which easily transfers into the movement of the woman. season paying much attention to refined fanciful expound and the woman, her psychological warmheartedness provokes a big deal of mistrust from John and Jennie\n\nHerewith, Charlotte Perkins Gilman emphasizes on the importance of physical exertion self apply and hold ascendence over imagining; conversely, anyone stinkpot allow his/her mind dominates them to stop imagining. The master(prenominal) characters fanciful flights of imaging are timeless: nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to found way to such fancies..... He verbalise that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and so the barred windows, and matchly that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.\n\nCritics bespeak that The Yellow Wallpaper is a semi-autobiographical fable providing readers with extreme radicalism that was scantily understood in 1892. This vivid story of female indulgence assumes that 19th-century patriarchy was the of import cause of females want of sanity.\n\nThe text requires mensurable reading with the counseling on the correlativity between first-person construe of gradual spillage of rational get the hang and the guiding hand of the author star sign a composite plant social and sexual urge politics.\n\nThe woman oratory to us obscurely recognizes that her conforming to the thence stereotype of perfect womanhood of the time is the core power for her nervous depression. The main dilemma confront by the woman consists in any being penny-pinching and mad, or unattackable-for-naught and sane. Ruled like a squirt by her tyrannical husband John, Anita Hegh is curb to the room papered with poorly(p) yellow wallpaper.\n\nOver the story she had been transferred from the care well(p)y schooled enunciation of a lady to the unrestrained creature dragged roughly the hateful, yellow walls of her shackles. Nonetheless, she manages to capture the stir intimacy while recording her thoughts and oral presentation them to us. At that, she struggles to offer the fiction of the good wife, mother, sister-in- police force and patient.\n\nThe womans subtle emanation from bewilderment to fury indicates the males patriarchal bureau and control finical to the then society. Hence, the wallpaper symbolizes the inscrutable and oblique social codes according to which the woman is disempowered: On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law that is a immutable irritant to a normal mind. The warp is hideous enough, and treacherous enough, and infuriating enough, merely the pattern is torturing. You think you have know it, but just as you get well current in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: < br/> Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '

[raystart]

One House, Two Opinionated Designers, and the Joy of Collaboration

Ettore Sottsass was one of the most influential designers of the 20th century and David Kelley founded the design firm that ushered us into the 21st. But more than an ocean and a generation separates these two creative iconoclasts: Kelley is an unpretentious engineer from blue-collar Ohio who enjoys nothing more than a good tuna melt. Sottsass was the epitome of the Italian designer—mercurial, oracular, and slightly mischievous. Sottsass never knew what to make of Americans who eat fish out of cans (and then put cheese on it). Yet they remained the best of friends.

So in 2001, Kelley, flush with the success of his design firm, IDEO, asked Sottsass to build him a house in the horsey foothills above Silicon Valley, and Sottsass agreed. What followed was an elaborate courtship as the 80-something Italian architect and the 50-something American client, each of whom casts a long shadow across contemporary design, circled and sparred, thrust and parried, and together created an extraordinary house.

    The friendship between Kelley and Sottsass goes back a couple of decades to the glory days of Silicon Valley when “disruption” was not the only thing on everyone’s minds and interesting people were naturally gravitating toward each other. Kelley had just founded what was then David Kelley Design, and a mutual friend—Was it Steve Jobs?  Was it the art collector Johnny Pigozzi?— suggested that he seek out the legendary architect who had just jolted Milan’s fashionable design world with the opening of Memphis.  

Each was, in his own way, a bit of a renegade: Kelley had barreled out of Carnegie Mellon University with an electrical engineering degree and visions of rewiring the world. After six months spent at Boeing designing the circuitry for the “Lavatory Occupied” sign on the 747 he decided that this was not for him, and migrated toward the Valley just as the digital revolution was confronting designers with an endless wave of unprecedented challenges.  First he formed the Intergalactic Destruction Company; then Hovey-Kelley Design; then David Kelley Design, and finally IDEO. Sottsass, meanwhile, had just reinvented himself for the umpteenth time: The Memphis collection—with its bizarre collection of furniture objects crafted out of rare Brazilian hardwoods overlaid with cheap American formica, chrome tubing, and a red lightbulb—was only the latest provocation. At the opening of the Memphis showroom in 1981 one of Italy’s most revered furniture designers was heard to whisper, “You see? This lot has fucked us up for the next twenty years.”

As opposites attract, they were drawn to each other by a kind of mutual fascination. Sottsass lectured Kelley about the importance of metaphor while his muse, Barbara Radice, curled up on a sofa translating Sanskrit poetry. Kelley, not to be outdone, presented Sottsass with a package of Jiffy-Pop, which the architect spent days cleaning off the ceiling of his apartment in the Via Pontaccio. They liked each other, they respected each other, they complemented each other, but most of all, each got what the other was about without yielding one inch.

    Once they even decided to go into business together, launching a venture—Enorme—that would have been fatal to any normal friendship. The first product was a telephone: Sottsass designed a pure objet, accented with hints of Mondrian, Rietveldt and de Stijl, while Kelley’s firm handled the engineering. The Enorme telephone, with its logo of a gigantic Sumo wrestler, was instantly acquired by museum curators around the world—and by nobody else. From opposite sides of the Atlantic the partners watched in dismay as it passed from design to art, which is to say, became magnificently useless.

The friendship flourished, however, even as the partnership collapsed, and both began to think about what came next. Sottsass returned to architecture and to his newly-formed firm of Sottsass Associati. Riding the wave of Silicon Valley innovation, IDEO grew steadily to become certainly the largest and arguably the most influential design consultancy in history.  In time Kelley decided to move out of his loft in downtown Palo Alto and build himself a house. He did not spend a lot of time looking for an architect. 

Sottsass had already done some building in the United States—most notably a house in Ridgway, Colorado (1987-89) for the art collector Daniel Wolf and his wife, the celebrated sculptor-designer Maya Lin. But neither architect nor client had reckoned with the perversities of Silicon Valley, whose culture of technological adventurism is matched only by its hidebound architectural conservatism.  After endless applications, negotiations, inspections, and outright threats, the village elders of Woodside yielded, plans were approved, permits issued, contractors contracted, and the project got underway.

Ettore Sottsass, who believed that he understood David Kelley better than Kelley understood himself, did not begin by asking his client how many bathrooms he wanted. He asked him about his point of view on love, on food, on politics. Design, after all, is not about marrying form and functionality. It is, as he once reflected, “a way of discussing life.” Kelley tried to be helpful: He and his wife created a detailed process book of their daily life; they rented a helicopter and supplied aerial photographs of the building site; he shuttled back-and-forth to Milan, and fired off thousands of faxes. His confidence in Sottsass was great, and his requirements few: The only thing he specified was plenty of space to showcase his stuff.

    David Kelley had, after all, spent twenty years at the forward edge of design, and a fair amount of stuff had come his way: a canary-yellow Ducati that he parked in his living room; a coin-operated mechanical horse (“Sandy”) spirited away from outside of a grocery store; a 1948 Wurlitzer jukebox; an old bathroom scale that gives you honest weight and your fortune for a nickel; a shoebox containing the world’s first commercial mouse (which IDEO designed for Apple); a Braille edition of Playboy, complete with a pointillist bas-relief centerfold.

Sottsass told him to get rid of it. All of it. A house is for interrogating the present, he insisted, not memorializing the past. It is a space for meditating, for conjuring, for plotting against one’s enemies, and for writing a poem. It is not a machine for living in, as the Modernists had claimed, much less a warehouse of machines for living with. And so they circled one another, warily, tentatively, like a pair of giant Sumo wrestlers.

In The Art of War, the 4th century military strategist Sun Tzu argued that the most decisive victory is one in which your opponent believes that he has won. So it is with the house, which manages to express the intellectual vision of both architect and client.  In contrast to the sprawling trophy houses built for the princelings of the Silicon Valley dotconomy, the Kelley residence is not precious, lavishly-appointed, or large.  It takes the form, rather, of a spatial meditation on what is distinctive about California, and that proves to be the landscape.

      The result is a house consisting of five inside rooms with five outside “rooms”—courtyards, patios, play areas—negatively defined by the articulations of the building itself and blurred together on a single grade. Seen from the hillside above, there is absolutely no focal point, axis, or grid. Seen from a distance, it looks more like a village of little buildings than a house, with each room governed by a different architectural idiom: shingles on one, wood siding on another, brick on a third; there is a room with a flat roof, a room with a pitched roof, and a room with a barrel vault; a child’s room resembles a stylized playhouse—much as a child might have drawn it. 

The interior, likewise, bears the marks not of compromise but of a series of negotiated solutions.  Kelley’s approach to furniture is that of a hard-wired engineer:  (1) go to the store; (2) look at what they’ve got; (3) choose one. Sottsass takes a different approach: articulate a vision, then do what is necessary to make it happen. Kelley wanted smart-looking “Italian” chairs around the kitchen table. Sottsass refused: “No,” he thundered! “You want stupid American chairs,” and the solution was for Kelley to select a domestic icon—the ubiquitous, ladder-backed “schoolteacher’s chair” from which Mrs. Wormwood might have presided over the third grade. Kelley said he wanted a large open space for entertaining, but Sottsass forbade it because large rooms violate the human scale.  The solution is to break up the expansive living room-dining room-kitchen space with a forest of mysterious six-foot towers—“inscrutable Japanese boxes that make you wonder what’s in them”—that articulate the space without interrupting it.

    But on one account Sottsass prevailed: The collection of industrial detritus that is Kelley’s pride and joy has been exiled to his office, relegated to his garage, given to his friends, and consigned to the landfill. In their place stands a collection of Sottsass’ own ceramics, the architect’s secret first love but in their very uselessness an affront to the practical engineer: I have always imagined them, Sottsass once wrote, as “catalysts of perception,” emblems of a cosmos that is “neither measurable nor predictable nor controllable.” Ceramics are “older than the Bible, older than all the poems ever written, older than goats and cats, older than metals, older than houses.”

Older, even, than houses.

  ***

This essay was originally conceived as the Kelley-Sottsass house was being completed in 2001. Ettore Sottsass died in 2007 at the age of ninety, and David Kelley has recently moved onto the campus of Stanford University, where he is a professor. The house is now on the market.