#And watched two episodes of house that priced really relevant

[animazed]

and i can’t tell if you’re laughing

between each smile there’s a tear in your eye

there’s a train leaving town in an hour

it’s not waiting for you,

and neither am I

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I Thought About "Hunting Palismans" From The Owl House

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Today, I present to you reason #4,693 for why The Owl House is the best thing at the moment: It's the perfect balance of serialized storytelling with an episodic format. The story always moves forward with an exact order for how episodes should be watched, but each episode still functions as its own standalone tale. Having prior knowledge of what happened before adds more to the experience, but you can still watch whatever you want and still have an enjoyable time. Take "Hunting Palismans," for example. It adds so much more to the overarching narrative while slightly continuing other threads. But it's still something you can watch as is without remembering the past or wondering about the future.

However, to properly explain how requires spoilers. I wasn't kidding when I say that this episode adds so much, so you're going to want to be wary of that when you continue reading.

With that said, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Coven Heads Meeting: We already saw these fellow schmucks in the trailer, but that doesn't take away how cool they are! It's not explicitly stated which head belongs to which coven, but you can already tell who goes where just from their designs alone. And I love that. I love that just by showing us some excellent character designs, anybody with half a brain can already figure out the particular type of magic each Coven Head specializes in. It's a perfect example of the show-don't-tell level of storytelling that is always at its best through animation, and I'm all for it because of it.

What the Day of Unity is: Several fans, myself included, have already speculated that the Day of Unity was that Emperor Belos planned to combine the human world with the Boiling Isles and rule it all with an iron fist. That being said, figuring it out is one thing, but being told that it's true is a whole different level pants-s**ting horror that I AM NOT READY FOR! Even when it's going to happen, I can assure you that I will not be prepared to witness it ...and I am scared of when it does.

Belos Body Horror: ...Disney, I was already scared s**tless of this guy. I DO NOT NEED THIS!

That being said, seeing Belos do...whatever the f**k that was, helps explain further why he needs the magic in palismans. I always assumed because it's like fuel for a car, giving him the power he needs. Now, even though the answer is more apparent, there are still some questions to be had. Is he cursed, and the magic keeps it at bay like Eda's potions? Or did he experiment with the wrong type of magic, and the palismans keep him stable? Only the future can say for sure...and I'm also not prepared for the answers from that either.

Golden Guard is Belos’ Nephew: Gosh dangit, THE INTRO HASN'T EVEN STARTED YET, AND THIS EPISODE IS ALREADY GIVING SO MUCH!

But, yeah, the most powerful witch on the Isles is apparently Golden Boy's Grunkle Belos. That very knowledge is incredibly interesting to discuss while presenting possibilities for future narratives. I don't know about you, but I see the Golden Guard going down the path of Zuko, learning that the magic of friendship is worth much more than whatever power he gains from being Belos' nephew. And possibly earning his uncle's love seeing how he's the only family he has. It's a situation that's vastly different from Amity's because even when she defies her parents, she'll still have Edric and Emira at the end of the day. For Golden Guard, knowing that he lost a great family to wild magic, the inclination to go against Belos is a lot weaker due to him being all he has left.

Oh, and also, Belos' family getting wiped out because of wild magic. Yeah, not only does that give the best type of motivation for Belos' distaste for it, but it also explains the Golden Guard's hesitance to use it. He's inclined to so he can save his uncle, sure. It's only the fact that he knows what happens with wild magic that causes some resistance...Also, we're less than a minute in, and I'm already getting all of this from one discussion between two characters.

HOW IS THIS SHOW SO GOOD?!

Intro Changes: It's about time too. It seems weird that the crew waited to change Eda and King's designs in the intro this late in the game, but it also tells me that Amity dying her hair lavender is the last huge change this season will present. Otherwise, why change the intro at all if you were going to alter Luz, Willow, and Gus' designs anyway? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Luz Keeping the Echo Mouse as a Pet: The fact that she keeps the most important creature in the world to her as a pet...it's...it's adorable, alright? And as we established several times, I cannot hate adorable things.

Don't judge me!

Amity Staying Home: There are two plausible ways why Amity didn't go to school that day. Either she's getting punished for dying her hair or because she's trying to avoid Luz so they won't talk about the you-know-what. Either could work and seem understandable to Luz, thus explaining why she admits how "that makes sense." Although, there is something to discuss in how Luz is curious as to where Amity is. Judging from the tone of her voice, it's pretty clear that she wants to talk about the little peck on the cheek and maybe get some confirmation as to what it means. Because there is no going back from that. You can explain away saying or doing something stupid, but you cannot un-kiss a cheek. That is a point of no return, and if Amity really is avoiding Luz because of it, that means it's up to our favorite weirdo to make the first move. As for what that may entail...we'll just have to wait and see.

Frewin: We get two bits of information here for the price of one reveal here. Knowing that Frewin is a palisman is shocking enough, but the knowledge that Bump is partially blind and needs Frewin to see? That is an intriguing piece of intel that I would have never expected to get revealed. This is reason #5,279 for what makes The Owl House so good. Even when the show presents information you wouldn't guess, it's all so interesting anyways that you can't help but go along with it.

Adopting Palismans: First of all, love the fact that the Bat Queen makes a return to provide a solution to the palisman trees being rare and solving her own problem regarding the discarded palismans. It's a situation where everyone wins in a way that is so clever that I can't help but admire it.

Second, the idea of students choosing to adopt palismans instead is cute. I'd say it gives further insight into who these characters are in how they say what they want to be, but there's nothing really new added that fans couldn't figure out from the get go. But I will say that it's pretty cool to know that these characters have official staffs now. Speaking of which, if you're upset that their palismans don't match up with your headcanons...grow up.

This was a cute and smartly written scene that should not be bogged down by whiney fans who can't accept a series doing something different from what they expect.

Little Rascal: I’d take a bullet for this bird. That is all.

Luz Being Uncertain of her Future: A lot of fans offer several ideas of what the future could look like for Luz. Will she stay in the Boiling Isles? In Connecticut? Or will she go back and forth? We don't know, but one question we rarely brought up is what does Luz want? More specifically, what does she want to do? After everything Luz went through, the adventures she's gone on, and the lessons learned, what is something that Luz wants her future to be? That's an answer she doesn't really figure out, and I'm genuinely ok with that being a question that's tabled for another day. Most kids who ask that question themselves aren't always going to find an answer after a short amount of time and sometimes even need to spend their lives trying to figure it out. So having it be something Luz has to consider and probably find out in a future episode is the smarter option, as it allows time for it to simmer in her own mind and provides more insight into her character. As stated several times in this episode, she doesn't think things through, so it's nice that the writers finally allowed her some time to wonder what's next when the adventure is over.

Luz Having to Improvise Without Paper Glyphs: You want to know what my favorite Spider-Man moments are (this is relevant. Trust me). My favorite moments are when Spidey's web-shooters run out of fluid, and he's forced to improvise with that big brain of his to find a solution. That's sort of what happens with Luz in "Hunting Palismans." She didn't bring her glyphs with her (why would she), so she's forced to use the environment around her to make new ones. Plus, Luz also flexes her knowledge of the Boiling Isles by mixing her glyphs with a magical plant (which Willow certainly told her about) so that she and the Golden Guard could knock out Kikimora's dragon. It's yet another showcase of her intelligence that a lot of fans are too keen to overlook. Unfortunate to see, too, because looking at how well Luz can craft the perfect solutions by fighting smarter, not harder, is a fantastic add-on to her personality. I love characters who win through their wits rather than their raw powers, and I once again hope more people will catch onto that aspect of her too.

Golden Guard Whistling the Theme: Look, I love it when a show acknowledges its own theme song, ok? Leave me alone.

Luz and the Golden Guard: This is one of those dynamics you didn't know you wanted until you have it. And now that I have it, I DEMAND MORE!

Seriously, seeing these two interact off of each other was a ton of fun to watch. When Luz and GG are initially at each other's throats, their threats and mockery towards one another aren't out of spiteful anger between two mortal enemies. It's more like...two siblings who get on each other's nerves yet are supposed to deal with one another. It's equally adorable and hilarious, and yes, I absolutely loved that they're forced to work together in this episode because of it.

Although, while the entertainment value is fantastic, it also adds more proof of why Luz is the best character in the series. She spends one night with this guy, and that's more than what she needed to make a difference with him. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're buddies now, but Luz definitely sowed the seeds into his redemption. He's far from willing to join her side, but he still does something he rarely does with anyone else: He told her that his name is Hunter. And this is what Luz does. Through nearly every person she meets on the Boiling Isles, she always manages to change them for the better. It'll be a while before Hunter deflects from Belos, but if Amity proves anything, Luz has a way of sneaking into people's hearts. They just need to spend more time with one another, and I can't wait to see what happens next because of it.

Kikimora Wanting to Kill Hunter: This shows a lot about who Kikimora is, but it potentially proves just how dysfunctional the Emperor's Coven can be. If Kiki proves anything, the coven must be filled with people willing to backstab and cheat their way to get on Emperor Belos' good side. Just look at Lilith. She literally cursed her own sister just to get in and received all the rewards because of it. The Emperor's Coven may be the best choice for witches to do magic, but if you're surrounded by people you can't trust, then is it really worth it?

The Guards Not Knowing Who Hunter is: This helps add to how much of a big deal it is for Hunter to reveal his name to Luz. If people can't even recognize his face, there's a chance it means that he keeps his true identity a secret except for those in his inner circle.

And the coven guards brushing off his brand is more than believable to me. They may be aware that Belos' right hand is young, but teens will be teens. Anybody with enough artistic talent can fake a brand. So it isn't too far off for those two to think Hunter was just a kid pulling a prank.

Hunter is Powerless Without his Staff: Not much to say here. It's just some more neat insight into Hunter's character that makes me wonder if even Belos' magic is real magic.

But I will say this: The fact that Hunter comes from a lineage of powerless witches, well, who's to say that isn't because of a...certain ancestor?

(*Cough* Hunter is related to Philip *Cough*)

Hunter vs Kiki: A pretty well-animated fight scene that adds potential drama to the story for the future. Now that Kikimora knows that Hunter helped Luz escape with the palismans (albeit unwillingly), she may or may not hold that over his head when the time comes. Or, at the very least, decides to keep a closer eye on him whenever he makes a slip-up.

Eda and King Getting Luz her own Palisman Wood: These last two weeks have been severely lacking in the Eda and King department, but scenes like this more than make up for it. Those two have formed such a bond with Luz to the point where they would do the impossible if it meant she would feel better. It proves just how much of a family they all are and the lengths they would go for each other. After all, weirdos have to stick together.

Little Rascal going to Hunter: Hunter is right. That was surprising.

Given how much Little Rascal stuck by Luz, I was more than positive that she would be the one he chose. So seeing Little Rascal pick Hunter instead is a much nicer twist. There could be multiple reasons why, and I'm just going to leave that to the analyzers in this fandom to decide. Especially since the answer isn't really all that important.

So, instead, I'm going to go ahead and sit in the corner as I wOrRy AbOuT tHe DaY tHaT bElOs FiNdS lItTlE rAsCal!

IT'S GONNA HAPPEN! AND I SWEAR TO ALL THAT IS HOLY, IF THE WRITERS KILL HIM, I WILL NOT BE HAPPY!

WHAT I DISLIKED

First, there's...um...

Well, there was this...

Ok, as much as I liked--No, that turned out well anyways...

…

...

...I've got nothing.

I, honest to goodness, have no complaints about "Hunting Palismans" Not even the tiniest of nitpicks I would usually ignore due to how well-executed everything else was.

It's all written fantastically to the point where it's...perfect.

IN CONCLUSION

"Hunting Palismans" is an easy A+. It introduces even more plot threads, gives insight into characters, and despite being essential to the story, it still manages to be a fun episode all on its own. And, I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the best, if not the best, episodes in the series. There's nothing bad about it, and that surprises me. I rarely find nothing bad to say about any story, even the ones I enjoy greatly. I'm sure there are some flaws that others would be more than happy to point out, but why bother hunting for the imperfections when I could accept that, for once, an episode is simply perfect.

(And that’s six hits in a row...THAT STINKER IS GOING TO HAPPEN! It hasn’t happened yet, BUT IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN! I CAN FEEL IT!)

[darling-i-read-it]

Releves

1x12

Hannibal Lecter x reader x Will Graham 

Hannibal Re-Write Series Masterlist

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: spoilers for hannibal, murder, mental health problems 

Author’s Note: Me being angry at hannibal despite it conflicting with my plans for this series are something else 

I took lines directly from the script so some may seem familiar. Those sentences are not mine. 

Official Episode Summary : The BAU team finds evidence linking Abigail to the Minnesota Shrike victims; Will checks Abigail out of the hospital; Hannibal convinces Jack that Will is capable of murder.

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director 

Tag List: @llperfectsymmetryll​

(not my gif) 

You woke up and Will was gone. You must have fallen asleep on the chair beside his bed. You started to panic which had become a much too familiar feeling. You got up and started to walk around. You thought about asking a doctor or something but didn’t want to worry anyone but yourself just in case it was nothing. You walked through the halls, peeking in rooms for your boyfriend who slept walked more often than not these days. You got to the room of the girl who had been under your bed and Will was inside. 

“Will?” you whispered. He turned around.

“Hi. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Dont’ worry about it.” You glanced at her. She looked so much better than you had seen her last considering. 

“I don’t think we’ve met properly,” she said. “Georgia.”

“Y/N.” 

“I’m sorry, I heard I kinda crashed under your bed.” You shook your head and laughed.

“No worries there.” You turned to Will. “You should come back to your room.” He turned to Georgia sarcastically.

“Helicopter girlfriend,” he teased.

“Yeah I wouldn’t have to be if you slept through the night,” you confessed. Georgia laughed and you grabbed Will’s pole that he was holding. He nodded and waved goodbye to her before following you out the door.

You walked out of the room and he turned to you.

“She said they would never figure out what’s wrong with me,” he whispered.

“She’s not a doctor.” He glanced at you and then the ground as he shuffled along.

“You’re optimistic.”

“I gotta me. You’re pessimistic,” you whispered teasingly as you made it back to his room. He nodded.

“So you think they’ll figure it out?” You shook your head softly.

“I hope they do. But honestly, I think you’re too complicated for them.”

-

Will woke up later to a light conversation. You were sitting on the bed and Hannibal stood at the edge of it. 

“Well it is complicated,” Hannibal was saying quietly.

“What’s complicated?” Will asked. You looked over at him and smiled comfortingly.

“Nothing.” 

“You keeping secrets now?” Will teased, sitting up.

“We were talking about how to make this soup. Y/N said she couldn’t quite cook and I was sharing the recipe,” Hannibal explained.

“He’s brought food,” you said happily.

“Smells delicious.”

“Silkie chicken in a broth. A black boned bird prized in China for its medicinal value since the 7th century. With wolfberries, ginseng, ginger, red dates and star anise,” Hannibal explained.

“You made me chicken soup,” Will said and Hannibal offered a supportive smile. 

“Y/N says you’ve been wandering.” 

“I was awake. And wandering with purpose and good intentions,” he promised. You nodded.

“Just visiting around,” you promised. 

“Visiting that unfortunate young woman suffering from delusions?”

“She’s my support group,” he joked. You hit him gently. “You are also my support group. Relax.” Will got out of bed and sat down at the table while the three of you ate the broth together. “Could all of the things have been the fever Hannibal? Like the hallucinations or the sleepwalking, the loss of time,” Will asked as he sat down.

“It’s possible.”

“What else is possible?” you asked.

“Fevers can be symptoms of dementia. Dementia can be a symptom of many things happening in your body or mind that can no longer be ignored,” Hannibal said. 

“Does Jack know?”

“That this could be a fever? No I haven’t told him,” Hannibal said.

“He wouldn’t do anything about it either,” you muttered bitterly. 

“But shouldn’t you?” Will asked. 

“I believe Y/N may be right. Additionally we don’t know for certain.” 

-

Will walked with you into the room of Georgia who you felt as though you had just spoken to. Her charred body laid across the burn tank. 

“Hospital speculates a short circuit could have ignited the fire,” Jack muttered. 

“Unit looks well maintained. No exposed wiring,” Price said.

“Don’t know if she suffocated or burned to death. We’ll look for soot in the lining of her airways,” Zeller commented. Will lets out a shaky sigh and puts his hand almost protectively on your arm.

“Horrible way to die,” he whispered. 

-

Will woke up with a start and it woke you up. It was odd not to be laying beside him but you were sitting in the uncomfortable chair beside the bed. He breathed heavily.

“Do you need something?” you whispered. Will grabbed your arm and pulled you to the bed. He wasn’t sweating and didnt’ feel hot. You wrapped your arms around him and he put his head on your chest.

“Sleep here,” he whispered. You nodded

-

The next day you walked into Abigail's room. It was the first time you had been away from Will since he had been admitted to the hospital. Hannibal had urged you to leave but not come back to work just yet although you would be back the next day.

She looked up and let out a sigh of relief.

“I thought you were Freddie,” she muttered. 

“Or Alana who is also watching you like a hawk?” you asked. She nodded. She knew you knew and that was a good thing when it came down to it. She didn't feel like she had to hide with you.

“Just anybody else,” she murmured. You walked inside and sat at the window sill with her.

“How have you been?”

“Do you know that Hannibal is in love with you and Will?” she asked. You choked on the air at the change of subject. She was a teenager. But still. 

“Excuse me?” 

“I thought it was weird when I noticed. I wanted to know if you had noticed,” she said. You shook your head.

“Will, Hannibal and I are close friends,” you said lightly.

“But you and Will are dating,” she suggested.

“Yeah so?”

“Hannibal loves the two of you as a unit I think,” she said. “I told him I thought of all of you as a weird parental group and he got oddly happy.” 

“Abigail-”

“It’s just an observation,” she whispered. “I’m fine.” You laughed at the change of tone.

“Good to hear.”

-

When you got back to the hospital Will was gone. You were notebally pissed. You walked right into the building where he worked and up to Jack Crawford's office. You could hear Will’s voice from down the hall. 

You opened the door aggressively and they both turned around. 

“Did you do this?” you asked at Jack.

“He checked himself out. I told him to go back,” he said honestly. You walked up to Will and put your hand on his forehead. Still warm but not boiling like he had been. 

“Why did you-”

“Jack thinks she killed herself. I think it’s the copy cat of Garret Jacob Hobbs.” You blinked twice. Even for Will, that was a stretch. But you trusted his instinct more than your own.

“And you can wait to catch them. It’s been this long,” you said, removing your hand. He shook his head. 

“I have to do it now. I’m thinking clearer, I’m finally thinking clearly.” His eyes pleaded but they still looked undescribingly broken. You glanced at Jack who clearly didn’t believe Will at all. “Jack also thinks Abigail had something to do with the murders.” 

“What?” 

“I’m not explaining this to you. You don't’ work for me,” Jack said.

“Neither does Will! He’s not on a payroll is he?” you asked. Jack let out a sigh.

“Will go talk to Hannibal,” Jack said simply.

“Finally something I can agree on,” you murmured.

-

Will ran up to you. It had been a few days since he released himself from the hospital and you were still annoyed about it. You turned to him, raising an eyebrow as he came out of the office of Hannibal's place. 

“The copycat,” he said. You nodded, curious to hear what he had to say. He rarely talked to you about any kind of stuff with his work. “Was planning to frame me for the murder of the doctor.”

“He wouldn’t have been able to do it. I was there,” you said.

“But you’re unreliable,” he said.

“Excuse me?” He shook his head.

“You’re my girlfriend. You would have been accused of lying,” he said. You shook your head.

“I am very reliable. Why are you telling me this?” He shrugged.

“You need to know.” 

-

First day back at work. This was a mistake.

You ran your hand over your head and Jack Crawford walked in. He thought about asking you what he was about to ask Hannibal but decided against it. 

“You don’t have an appointment,” you said bitterly.

He opened the door anyway. You were still working when Hannibal and Jack opened the door quickly. Hannibal looked at you and you thought about what Abigail had said. That he was in love with you and Will. You pushed it aside when you saw the pity in his eyes.

“Where’s Will?” he asked.

“At home. Hopefully. Why?”

“Will Graham is at Garett Jacob Hobbs house with Abigail,” Jack said. You scoffed.

“You on something?” 

“Where was Will on the night of Marrisa Schuur’s murder? ‘

“Again, at home presumably.” Hannibal stared at you. Hard. “What?” 

“Will dissociates into other personalities. Whose personality is it?” Jack asked. “Will got close enough to Hobbs to think he was him.” 

You scoffed again.

“Sorry, what the hell is your point?”

“Will is going to kill Abigail. And he killed the girls before,” Hannibal said. You stared in Hannibal’s eyes.

“You can’t be serious.” 

“I’m serious.”

“Hannibal you know him! He trusts you to know him,” you seethed, standing up from anger and audacity. You pointed a hard finger at him. “Will Graham didn’t kill anyone he didn't’ have to.”

“The evidence suggests-” Jack started

“Hey Jack, I don’t really care what you’re about to say and so if you say it I’ll have to hit you or Hannibal or something.”

“I’m going to get Abigail,” Hannibal said. Jack walked out of the room but your gaze stayed steady on Hannibal’s. 

“You don’t think he did this,” you said. 

“A statement and not a question?” You shook your head.

“He didn’t do this.”

1x13

[dex-xe]

I’ve made Spotify playlists inspired by each of the ghosts and I’ve made these little written pieces to talk about them. if you wanna read them, please go ahead - if not then enjoy the music!!

This is Pat's playlist:

Dancing In the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

A 1984 hit that Pat definitely would have loved, it’s brilliant tbh.

I Will Follow You into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie

Poor Pat. I feel so sorry for him having to leave his family so young, like as someone who lost a parent very young (although I’m assuming slightly older than Daley would’ve been) it breaks my heart to see Pat’s family turn up at Button House. I’ve been to the place my parent died a number of times since and every time it makes me feel kinda sick. It’s an interesting idea for the show to explore, sometimes I forget just how dark this show actually is but like it’s a comedy but it’s literally about the trauma of death like???

Kids In America - Kim Wilde

I too adore Kim Wilde, Pat.

Dance With Me - Alphaville

RIP Pat Butcher you would’ve loved this song. Like Pat’s a dancing king as has been shown in ALN (one of my favourite episodes O.o) and that’s legit one of my favourite scenes where Pat and the Captain are arguing on the dance floor. I say “naff off, you wazzock” more than is socially acceptable XD

Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond

Pat was obviously a fan of Sweet Caroline, man was a DJ extraordinaire and a huge football fan therefore obvious. It’s kinda weird to imagine Pat at the local game on a Sunday afternoon but like he definitely did, maybe he took Daley a few times. More of Pat’s life please, Parent Pat plsss.

Radio Ga Ga - Queen

The Grey Lady is one of my absolute favourite episodes cause I think ghosts hunters are a really great concept for an episode and Pat trying to host a radio show is just so incredibly funny. Pat’s little “apologies to those still waiting for the pop quiz” is just so good. But yeah, radio guy.

Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles

More radio references but also, I think Pat (and Julian as well) are most indicative of the increasingly rapid passage of time through technology. Like when Pat’s like”knocks the socks off Betamax!!” And Julian says “that must be two CD noms max” or something (I can’t remember exactly what he says). There’s a thing called Moore’s Law that states that technology doubles in capability and halves in price every two years (I know that’s not right but that’s the basic gist don’t come at me) but that means that growth in technological accessibility is increasing at a more rapid pace every year. Anyway, I think watching Pat and Julian struggle with modern technology is so fascinating cause they’re so different to today despite only living a few decades ago.

Together In Electric Dreams - Phil Oakey & Giorgio Moroder

Pat would’ve just missed this and honestly big sad. Such a cheesy song and just pure 80s cringe and I adore it XD But yeah, “we will always be together”.

Dancing in the Moonlight - Toploader

I put this on so many character playlists (I have literally hundreds of private character playlists on my personal spotify, there’s legitimately tons) because it’s just a nice song and yeah, Pat would love it :D

Alright - Supergrass

This was more placed here as something for Pat’s scouts. Like the song is so often used to show young people having fun and being care-free and I just love the image of Pat driving the scouts out into the country and it being a superrrrr long drive and then finally they get off the bus and just run free with this song playing. I loved being in Scouts and most of the Masters were so much fun and I just really wanna see more of Pat making sure his scouts have a great time!!

Come On Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners

(Dexys Midnight Runners are actually the reason behind my username on here…) But yeah just the 80s personified this song. And I hope your proud of me for not making the classic Australian Radio joke I always make when this song comes up… XD

December, 1963 (Oh What A Night) - Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

Pat was born in 1945/6, right?? Well then he would’ve turned 18 in 1963. I always forget that Pat was not just an 80s guy like he was a teen in the 50s and 60s and then in his 20s in the 70s like that’s sick!! But yeah sorry, this is just a great song!!

(Feels Like) Heaven - Fiction Factory

Pat, my guy. My heart breaks in that scene where Pat really thinks he’s going to heaven. My. Heart. Breaks. I’m assuming the ghosts don’t know what happens when you “move on” but Pat immediately assumes upon seeing a bright light that that’s it for him?? Maybe it’s just based on films and pop culture that he’s aware of?? Or maybe it’s just because he was emotional and had had a massive revelation of sorts and assumed he would move on??

You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) - Jimmy Somerville

Just a good song againnnnnnnnn, but also since Alison turning up like how incredible would it be to finally have a living breathing human who you can talk to. Like how real would that make you feel?? Like okay Jimmy, come back to me once you've been dead 40 years and meet a woman who half died and can now see you, then that's real!! XD

Don’t You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds

I feel like Pat more than anyone is concerned about being forgotten but is also one of the least likely to be forgotten for the time being. Like he has a whole family who won’t forget him for at minimum two generations in addition to God knows how many scouts who will clearly not forget him. He passed on skills that they will pass on to others who will pass on to others like one day his name will be forgotten but not what he imparted onto the world. Okay got philosophical but yeah, you shan’t be forgotten any time soon Pat!!

Top Gun Anthem - Harold Faltermeyer & Steve Stevens

A great film, good choice Pat.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go - Wham!

1980s icon George Michael. Just a fun song.

Somewhere in My Heart - Aztec Camera

Pat still loves Carol despite what she did to him… That is either an incredibly emotionally mature man or a man in denial who knows?? But this song is just so lovely, like it feels very pure and uncomplicated if that makes sense.

I’m Still Standing - Elton John

Having just said that, I feel like this is part is just kind of a fuck you. Like just a moment to be like ‘i’m still living (hehe dying) a good life (hehe death) despite what you did to me.'

The Wanderer - Status Quo

This is the song that plays when Pat gets into the bus after being shot. It’s basically just about being a player and hitting on loads of women, so not particularly relevant but it’s still a good song and I genuinely find that scene really eerie and yeah, *shudder* just find it weird.

[alexannah]

MLB Crack: The Story of Gabenath

This was originally titled “One Theory on How Gabenath Will Happen”, and intended to just be a collection of quotes from the relevant episodes followed by the ending section. But I got a bit carried away … especially on certain episodes … and now it’s this. Enjoy me lovingly making fun of my two precious idiot villains.

~*~

***HEROES’ DAY***

Hawk Moth: *for once doesn’t look excited as he akumatizes his assistant, despite it being the beginning of his first big plan he’s so confident in*

Hawk Moth: *gives Catalyst an outfit that is completely accidentally complimentary to The Collector’s*

Hawk Moth: Oh, no, I can’t believe I’m cornered!

Mayura: I’m going to give you a giant butterfly to literally blow away your enemies.

Hawk Moth: No! Don’t do that! I don’t want a giant butterfly!

Mayura: Seriously? Who wouldn’t want a giant butterfly? Also, you’re getting one. Accept it. It’s that or prison.

Hawk Moth: Okay, fine. As it’s just the once and if I go to prison I won’t be able to get my wife back.

Hawk Moth: *escapes*

Nathalie: I was willing to risk not just my health but being identified as an accomplice if you’re ever unmasked to keep you from being defeated, but I am most definitely not in love with you.

Gabriel: My assistant/just-a-friend, thank you for helping me escape so I can continue my plan to bring back my wife.

***REFLEKDOLL***

Nathalie: Let me risk my life and prison again to help you. Still not in love with you, by the way.

Gabriel: Okay, that’s fair. But as long as I get to cradle you in my arms in a concerned but completely platonic way afterwards.

Nathalie: Ooh, yeah.

Duusu: *is the cutest thing ever*

***FEAST***

Nathalie: *drops Gabriel*

Gabriel: Ouch! Oh, wait, that was just a tablet. Never mind. I guess I just like being held by Nathalie so much that it felt like it hurt.

Adrien: Nathalie, are you okay? Are you sure? Maybe we should go home. Yes, I’m acting like the parent now even though you’re basically my mom.

Gabriel: She’s fine. Well, not really, she could end up in a coma and unrevivable short of a wish to change reality, but obviously I’m not going to tell you that because that opens a whole can of worms that I’m not going to try and address for another few episodes. Ask me again when we get to Félix.

Nathalie: I’m fine, Adrien. I don’t care what happens to me because I want you, and your idiot dad with whom I am definitely not in love, to be happy. And I’m telling you I’m fine now because I don’t want you to worry about me. Also I’m touched that you’re concerned because although I’ve basically raised you throughout most of your life, I’m still lingering under the delusion that I’m only an employee and don’t have a real place in this family.

Adrien: *leaves but worries about his mom anyway*

Nathalie: *excited at the thought of a new plan to get the Miraculouses*

Nathalie: *or maybe she just enjoys criminal activity*

Gabriel: I am definitely not looking at you in a loving way. Nope. Just admiring your dedication. Which is completely within the norms of what an assistant will do for her boss.

Nathalie: Can I break into the museum now?

Gabriel: Maybe later when you’ve had a break. And I have the excuse of watching you sleep because you’re adorable but, you know, I’m just doing it because I need to make sure you’re okay.

***STORMY WEATHER***

Gabriel: I’m doing all of this so Adrien can be happy again!

Nooroo: Er, Adrien is happy. And I thought you were doing this because you wanted your wife back?

Gabriel: … Yeah, that too.

Nooroo: So, you haven’t fallen in love with Nathalie then.

Gabriel: Don’t be ridiculous.

Nooroo: I’m not the one in denial.

Gabriel: Shut up. You’re not right.

Hawk Moth: Is Nooroo right? *thinks about all the times he’s inadvertently put Adrien in danger*

Hawk Moth: I’ll just be a bit more careful. After all, I’m basically doing this for Adrien now. So he can have his mother back. Because I can’t understand that Adrien has moved on with his life and Nathalie is a better mom to him than Emilie ever was. Also obviously I want my wife back because she’s my wife and I’m still in love with her and definitely not with anyone else.

Hawk Moth: I have to succeed, at any price.

Hawk Moth: Which is clearly a stupid thing to say that I don’t really mean, because I am definitely not willing to sacrifice my son or my assistant-with-whom-I-am-definitely-not-in-love.

Hawk Moth: So, I’m going to make a volcano that will push the whole planet out of orbit and freeze us all to death now.

Hawk Moth: Nathalie, fetch some blankets and hot water bottles. It might get a bit chilly if Stormy Weather doesn’t get Ladybug and Cat Noir’s Miraculouses in time to stop the world plunging into a new ice age.

***LADYBUG***

Nathalie: I want to be the one to give Gabriel what he believes will be his happy ending!

Duusu: *cries* It’s so romantic!

Nathalie: I’m not going to correct you on that.

Duusu: I’m the Kwami of emotion. It would be pointless to try.

Duusu: Would it be pointless to try and tell you that Mr Gabriel is falling in love with you?

Nathalie: Yes, because I’m in my own form of denial.

Duusu: Fine. I guess if you keep risking your life long enough, maybe he’ll realise how he feels about you.

Duusu: Eventually …

Hawk Moth: Release her! Emphasis on ‘her’ not just because Ladybug just said “Release him” in reference to Cat Noir, but because I’m extra-concerned for my ailing assistant/accomplice who went behind my back because she’s stubbornly insistent on risking her life to help me!

Mayura: Don’t mind me. Hawk Moth winning is more important than my life. Although I probably should be concerned because if Ladybug unmasks me, it won’t take a genius to work out who Hawk Moth is.

Hawk Moth: I will willingly give up my opportune moment to get Ladybug and Cat Noir’s Miraculouses to protect you! I’m not even thinking about my identity being exposed.

Hawk Moth: But we’re definitely not a couple.

Ladybug and Cat Noir: *sensing Hawkyura*

Gabriel: Don’t do that again. You’re more important to me than bringing my wife back.

Duusu and Nooroo: *sensing Gabenath*

Nathalie: *completely misses the meaning of his words*

Nathalie: I will keep risking my life to help you if you give me permission to.

Duusu and Nooroo: *facepalm*

***FELIX***

Nathalie: *watches Adrien remember Emilie, feeling so sorry for him, labouring under the delusion that he hasn’t moved on either*

Nathalie: You should tell him. Before he gets some crazy ideas about us in his head.

Adrien: Too late.

Adrien: Gabenath.

Gabriel: How dare you!

Amelie: Hello, brother-in-law. Happy anniversary of the day your wife mysteriously vanished. Can I have your wedding rings? I’m assuming she left hers behind when she skipped town because, unlike you, I don’t put her on a literal pedestal and I know she was a selfish bitch like me so I assume she just left you and the son she doesn’t deserve.

Gabriel: I’m too proper to tell you to shove off. And no, you cannot have them.

Félix: Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll steal them for you.

Félix: Right after I’ve had some fun pissing off Adrien’s friends for no reason, because I’m a brat that way.

Lila: *does the only good thing she has ever done in her entire life (that she wasn’t persuaded to do by Adrien) by sending a copy of the video to Nathalie*

Nathalie: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Gabriel: Yes. A perfect opportunity to boot my bitch sister-in-law out of the house. One of the perks of being a supervillain is so much potential for being vindictively petty, and they won’t even know I’m the one behind it. Mwahaha.

Hawk Moth: *sends out an akuma which gives Lady Wifi digital teleportation powers*

Hawk Moth: Hang on a second. Nathalie, why didn’t you remind me that Adrien is in the same room as Félix and therefore in the line of fire when the villains come after him?

Nathalie: Oops! I’ll see to it now.

Lady Wifi: Too late, we’re here! Hang on, two Adriens?

Nathalie: *displays impressive combat skills*

Hawk Moth: *trying to focus on his mission and not get distracted by how awesome she is*

Félix: Hey, Hawk Moth! I’m about to prove not just what a sneaky little creep I am, but also demonstrate that I’m willing to make a deal with a supervillain just to get yours and my aunt’s wedding rings. Not that I know it’s you I’m talking to, obviously.

Hawk Moth: Yeah, okay. I’m definitely not going to help you get MY rings, but I’m willing to promise anything in order to get what I want.

Gabriel: *shakes hands with Félix even though he knows Félix wants his ring*

Gabriel: Oops. Shouldn’t have done that.

Amelie: Ah, my little criminal in the making! I’m so proud of you for doing something so cruel to your grieving uncle.

Nathalie: So, what did Adrien say earlier?

Gabriel: Er … nothing I currently accept as reality.

Nathalie: …?

***BATTLE OF THE MIRACULOUS***

Whole Episode: Hawkyura Hawkyura Hawkyura

Gabriel: Nooo, Nathalie!

Nathalie: It’s okay. Now we can fix the peacock Miraculous so Mayura can be a full-time partner.

Nathalie: And give the Parisians even more reason to think Hawkyura.

Gabriel: Stupid Parisians.

***SEASON FOUR***

Adrien: Gabenath.

Gabriel: Never!

***SEASON FIVE***

Adrien: Gabenath.

Gabriel: Stop doing that! She’s just a friend!

***SEASONS SIX TO ONE HUNDRED AND SIX***

Adrien and the majority of the rest of the cast: Gabenath

Gabriel: JUST! A! FRIEND!

Parisians: Hawkyura

Hawk Moth: JUST! A! FRIEND!

Adrien: Huh, that’s exactly what Father says about Nathalie …

***SEASON ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN***

André Glacier: *spends five minutes alone with Gabriel*

Gabriel: Okay, Gabenath.

[virtual-toast]

Scream Queens VH1 recap - Season 1 Episode 2

Michelle, Sarah, Kylah, and Jessica come back from the grand ballroom and the rest of the girls are shocked and/or pissed that Jo-Anne went home instead of Kylah. Lindsay says “This house will mourn the loss of Jo-Anne” and Sarah, in tears, calls her “such a sensational actress”, which are both super melodramatic reactions, you knew Jo-Anne for three days, but okay. Meanwhile Kylah has no idea why everyone is upset that she’s still there haha.

The following day sees Kylah declaring the house has been divided into the “queen bitches” (herself, Michelle, Lina, and Angela) and the “more homely girls” (Marissa, Lindsay, and Sarah). I’m assuming she’s put Tanedra and Jessica in the latter category too but she doesn’t mention them specifically. The bitchy girls talk shit about the other girls behind their backs, specifically about how they think Sarah didn’t deserve to win the previous episode, that she’s ugly and annoying, etc.

The girls meet up with Shawnee who tells them they have 15 minutes to dress themselves up and impress a casting director (Kelly Wagner, who seems pretty cool tbh) with the winner getting a guaranteed callback. While getting ready, Michelle and Angela mention that if the winner is not one of the bitchy girls, the competition must be rigged. An awful lot of confidence for week 2, lol.

The girls go back into the room with Shawnee and meet Kelly. They take turns doing a sort of one on one interview / audition, which I’m gonna summarise in dot points because they each get a small amount of screen time:

Lindsay talks about being a child actor and Kelly says that means she probably actually has a harder job than someone just starting out. Lindsay is wearing a weird sort of frilly top and skirt with polka dots but it somehow doesn’t really work for her shape, and Kelly mentions it as well as Shawnee straight up calling her frumpy. True, but also, rude.

Lina goes up and immediately shakes Kelly’s hand. She doesn’t even get a word out before Kelly is like “yeah no, don’t shake casting directors’ hands, personal space / germs” etc.

Kylah talks about playing Price is Right with her brother which Kelly says is a bad choice because she’s automatically associating herself with being a model rather than an actress. Kylah proceeds to mention that she wants to “get ugly, get dirty, like Halle Berry did in Monster.” cringe

Marissa gets up and starts off on this huge spiel about how horror films are like modern Greek tragedies and everyone is just staring at her like GIRL WHAT.

Michelle introduces herself and Kelly asks if she primarily does theatre because of her big personality. Michelle proceeds to brag about being Miss Teen Texas.

Jessica is wearing a smart-casual outfit of jeans and a simple white top with her trademark giant hoop earrings. Kelly comments on her look being unique. Jessica is kinda speaking like a cute little girl who doesn’t want to let the evil out??

Angela mentions how she thinks she has the stereotypical horror “look”. Her outfit isn’t relevant but I have to mention it anyway - it honestly looks like she cut the top off a blue evening gown to wear as a shirt?? and then just jeans. Like idk.

Sarah introduces herself and Kelly immediately comments on her unique nasally voice.

Tanedra tells Kelly that she has no formal training. Kelly says “And you think you can beat out all these girls?” and Tanedra’s like YES. Fuck yeah get it girl.

So Kelly goes ahead and gives her overall impressions - Kylah has no personality, Angela has the best horror look, Lindsay looks like the best friend rather than the leading lady, Marissa is the one she didn’t remember, and she liked Jessica’s personal style. Ultimately she gives Jessica the guaranteed callback, and also sends Lindsay and Marissa for makeovers which Michelle finds hilarious.

The girls go back into the house and Kylah proceeds to have a tantrum about not winning, stating that if the casting director was a man the results would have been different. But get this, she DOES NOT CHANGE EXPRESSION THE ENTIRE TIME. Even when she’s yelling “I’M ABOUT TO CRY” she literally just has this blank look on her face like is she actually made of wax?? Meanwhile Lindsay and Marissa have their makeovers, Lindsay gets a cool short reverse A-line bob cut and looks really badass, while Marissa gets her hair dyed jet black and cut in choppy layers. It looks fine but you can tell by her face Marissa is not happy.

The girls go to Homa’s class and since the week is all about first impressions, they have to do freeze frame shots of particular expressions, I guess so they can see what they actually look like vs. what they think they look like or something. Most of the girls do pretty well, Tanedra kills it again, Marissa bombs, and Kylah once again LITERALLY DOES NOT CHANGE EXPRESSION. What the fuck.

Back at the house the girls are all gushing over Lindsay and Marissa’s makeovers, Michelle voices her jealousy despite earlier thinking it was hilarious, and Angela is mad that she’s no longer the only one with her “look”, even though she and Marissa don’t look the same at all, the only similarity is the colour of their hair?? Marissa goes and has a cry about her hair because she’s now lost all her confidence and honestly it’s actually kinda sad / hard to watch.

The next day they find one of the rooms in the house has been filled with creepy dolls and of course one of them is actually a person that jumps out and scares them because omg what a funny prank haha. The “doll” tells them their director’s challenge is a photoshoot which many of the girls are stoked about. They’re basically given generic horror themes and have to shoot the poster. Dot points again!

Lina gets “Tie Die” and her costume is literally a length of rope that’s wrapped around her. She immediately cracks the shits and goes into full blown diva mode, complaining about her costume, how apparently difficult her theme is compared to other girls, telling the makeup and hair people how to do their jobs, etc. Whaaaaat, Lina is a bitch?? This is brand new information!! Unfortunately she still does a really good job with the photoshoot.

Lindsay gets “Blinded By the Fright” and her costume is a hospital gown and white contact lenses, which she has difficulty putting in but is EXTREMELY polite about it with the makeup lady (a nice juxtaposition to Lina’s bitch fest). Lindsay also does really well in the photoshoot.

Kylah gets “Thin Skin” which she comments sounds like a porno, lmao. Her costume is literally just black liquid latex painted all over her body and the other girls are fucking FROTHING with jealously. Kylah proceeds to completely bomb the challenge, giving absolutely no emotion and James literally has no idea how to direct her.

Michelle gets “Don’t Go in the Water” and is basically just wearing a bikini, but then James dumps a bottle of cold water all over her. She does really well in the photoshoot.

Sarah gets “Blood Skate”, her costume is just a bloody ice skating outfit, and she does okay.

Tanedra gets “Prom Scream”, she is wearing a bloody prom dress, and she does really well.

Jessica gets “The Butcher’s Girl” and she’s literally wearing a hat, gloves, no shirt, just an apron and shorts? And there’s blood? This one confuses me. She does okay.

Angela gets “Monster’s Wedding” which some of the other girls (correctly) complain is SUPER easy - she’s literally in a wedding dress posing with a bloody hand prop. She does fine but I mean all she has to do is stand there and smile??

Marissa gets “Mummy Maker” and she’s wrapped in what I assume are bandages but it looks like toilet paper? She’s pretty covered, including the bottom half of her face, and she’s supposed to be seductive but honestly it kinda just feels like an awkward interpretive dance??

The next day back at the house, Marissa vents to the other girls about her insecurity with her new hair. Like I know it’s just hair but it’s kinda sad, they completely changed her look which obviously fucks with her confidence. The girls get their photoshoot posters and everyone is stoked except Marissa (rightfully) and Lindsay, who basically has an anxiety attack and hates hers even though everyone is telling her how great it is. Whoo boy I relate to Lindsay so hard. Jessica reads the list which summons Marissa, Kylah, Lindsay, and Lina to the grand ballroom. They all think they’re at the bottom except Lina, who of course thinks she’s top shit.

In the grand ballroom, Lina gets pulled forward and despite doing well in the challenge, the judges straight up read her for being a bitch, which is hella satisfying let me tell you. Lindsay gets pulled forward and the judges tell her that she did an awesome job and that she needs to go easier on herself, before awarding her the week’s leading lady. Marissa and Kylah are predictably the bottom two, Marissa gets told she’s overthinking everything and Kylah just that she’s completely emotionless. Kylah gets the axe and Marissa lives another week.

Stay tuned for Season 1 Episode 3!

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany's actions as Queen of Meereen and the advice she received

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She's still massively inexperienced when it comes to leading, and has a tendency to slavishly follow the advice of those around her. (x)

~

She makes a show of paying attention to all sides but never takes their concerns about culture or the economy seriously. And, surprise, this leads to violence. You could argue that it’s fine since the majority of the city clearly wants to punish the old slave masters, but here’s where she really screws up: she doesn’t even listen to the majority of the people. It’s not like she spares the former slave who kills the Son of Harpy or finds better housing for the poor. But we can’t pretend that she’s doing it all for show; her problem is that she cares more about individual petitioners than about open debate. (Wisecrack)

~

Dany used to take control. [...] But then she got comfortable. With an army, a legion of followers who think she's "Mhysa," and a council that are all fighting over being her favorite, she's relaxed into letting other people "help" her rule (you're the Queen! YOU DO THE RULING!) and basically doing not a whole lot other than lock two out of her three dragons up in a dungeon, while the other is who-knows-where breathing fire on everything. (x)

~

[W]e haven’t really gotten a chance to get to know the people she’s (often literally) burned. They’ve been depicted as two-dimensional villains, two-faced schemers, and backwards-thinking haters committed to enslaving people. They don’t deserve pity; They deserve to be conquered! The problem here is that they actually are all people and while their values might be abhorrent to Daenerys, you can’t course correct an entire culture with a couple of decrees and a bit of gusto. Hence why Daenerys kind of deserves the wrath of the Sons of the Harpy. Conquering a city is easy — making people love you after you’ve conquered them is hard. (x)

~

It’s true that Daenerys embraces the responsibilities of her role, but unless setting everything on fire is an option, she seldom knows what to do when faced with difficult challenges. (x)

Does Dany "[make] a show of paying attention to all sides but never takes their concerns about culture or the economy seriously"? Did Dany "[relax] into letting other people "help" her rule" and "[did not do] a whole lot"? Does Dany "kind of [deserve] the wrath of the Sons of the Harpy" (disgusting)? Is it simply that "Dany seldom knows what to do" if "setting everything on fire" doesn't work? Does Dany "slavishly follow the advice of those around her"?

I would argue these claims certainly cannot be made after reading the books (some can't even after watching the show's first 71 episodes, but the show can be all over the place and ... I digress), so take a look at these passages.

NOTE: For this list, I organized the chapters chronogically because I think the progression of events works better that way, which is different from other lists (that were focused on Dany's characterization), in which I ordered the chapters back to front because I felt it highlighted Dany's character development.

Also, I separated passages about Dany's actions from passages where Dany receives advice to prove that Dany makes decisions critically, i.e., taking into consideration both her counsellors' perspectives and her own without "slavishly" following neither. However, since they aren't always mutually exclusive, I had to repeat many of them and cut them short according to what I wanted to show. Still hope I got my point across with this collection.

 Dany’s actions in Slaver’s Bay

ASOS Daenerys VI

“Was the night as quiet as it seemed?” Dany asked.

“It seems it was, Your Grace,” said Brown Ben Plumm.

She was pleased. Meereen had been sacked savagely, as new-fallen cities always were, but Dany was determined that should end now that the city was hers. She had decreed that murderers were to be hanged, that looters were to lose a hand, and rapists their manhood. Eight killers swung from the walls, and the Unsullied had filled a bushel basket with bloody hands and soft red worms, but Meereen was calm again. But for how long?

~

“Your Worship!” he cried. “My name is Ghael. I bring greetings to the Mother of Dragons from King Cleon of Astapor, Cleon the Great.”

Dany stiffened. “I left a council to rule Astapor. A healer, a scholar, and a priest.”

“Your Worship, those sly rogues betrayed your trust. It was revealed that they were scheming to restore the Good Masters to power and the people to chains. Great Cleon exposed their plots and hacked their heads off with a cleaver, and the grateful folk of Astapor have crowned him for his valor.”

[...]I have given Astapor a butcher king. Dany felt ill, but she knew she must not let the envoy see it. “I will pray that King Cleon rules well and wisely. What would he have of me?”

[...] “As you wish. Great Cleon bids me declare his devotion to the Mother of Dragons. Your enemies are his enemies, he says, and chief among them are the Wise Masters of Yunkai. He proposes a pact between Astapor and Meereen, against the Yunkai’i.”

“I swore no harm would come to Yunkai if they released their slaves,” said Dany.

“These Yunkish dogs cannot be trusted, Your Worship. Even now they plot against you. New levies have been raised and can be seen drilling outside the city walls, warships are being built, envoys have been sent to New Ghis and Volantis in the west, to make alliances and hire sellswords. They have even dispatched riders to Vaes Dothrak to bring a khalasar down upon you. Great Cleon bid me tell you not to be afraid. Astapor remembers. Astapor will not forsake you. To prove his faith, Great Cleon offers to seal your alliance with a marriage.”

“A marriage? To me?”

Ghael smiled. His teeth were brown and rotten. “Great Cleon will give you many strong sons.”

Dany found herself bereft of words, but little Missandei came to her rescue. “Did his first wife give him sons?”

The envoy looked at her unhappily. “Great Cleon has three daughters by his first wife. Two of his newer wives are with child. But he means to put all of them aside if the Mother of Dragons will consent to wed him.”

“How noble of him,” said Dany. “I will consider all you’ve said, my lord.” She gave orders that Ghael be given chambers for the night, somewhere lower in the pyramid.

~

“Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman.” She raised a hand. “But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife.”

“In Astapor the city took a tenth part of the price, each time a slave changed hands,” Missandei told her.

“We’ll do the same,” Dany decided. Wars were won with gold as much as swords. “A tenth part. In gold or silver coin, or ivory. Meereen has no need of saffron, cloves, or zorse hides.”

“It shall be done as you command, glorious queen,” said Daario. “My Stormcrows will collect your tenth.” if the Stormcrows saw to the collections at least half the gold would somehow go astray, Dany knew. But the Second Sons were just as bad, and the Unsullied were as unlettered as they were incorruptible. “Records must be kept,” she said. “Seek among the freedmen for men who can read, write, and do sums.”

ADWD Daenerys I

“Grey Worm, why was this man alone? Had he no partner?” By her command, when the Unsullied walked the streets of Meereen by night they always walked in pairs.

~

“Stalwart Shield shall not be forgotten. Have him washed and dressed for battle and bury him with cap and shield and spears.”

[...] “Send men to the Temple of the Graces and ask if any man has come to the Blue Graces with a sword wound. And spread the word that we will pay good gold for the short sword of Stalwart Shield. Inquire of the butchers and the herdsmen, and learn who has been gelding goats of late.” Perhaps some goatherd would confess. “Henceforth, no man of mine walks alone after dark.”

~

Selmy was training knights for her, teaching the sons of slaves to fight with lance and longsword in the Westerosi fashion … but what good would lances do against cowards who killed from the shadows?

~

Dany had dispatched her tiny khalasar to subdue the hinterlands, under the command of her three bloodriders, whilst Brown Ben Plumm took his Second Sons south to guard against Yunkish incursions.

The most crucial task of all she had entrusted to Daario Naharis, glib-tongued Daario with his gold tooth and trident beard, smiling his wicked smile through purple whiskers. Beyond the eastern hills was a range of rounded sandstone mountains, the Khyzai Pass, and Lhazar. If Daario could convince the Lhazarene to reopen the overland trade routes, grains could be brought down the river or over the hills at need … but the Lamb Men had no reason to love Meereen. “When the Stormcrows return from Lhazar, perhaps I can use them in the streets,” she told Ser Barristan, “but until then I have only the Unsullied.”

~

“How much gold have we offered for information concerning the Sons of the Harpy?” Dany asked.

“One hundred honors, if it please Your Radiance.”

“One thousand honors would please us more. Make it so.”

[...] “Skahaz,” she told the Shavepate, “I thank you for your counsel. Reznak, see what one thousand honors may accomplish.”

~

“King Cleon would be wise to tend his own gardens and let the Yunkai’i tend theirs.” [...]

“I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of war,” she told Lord Ghael, “but we have heard that Astapor is starving. Let King Cleon feed his people before he leads them out to battle.” She made a gesture of dismissal. Ghael withdrew.

~

When Dany had closed the city’s fighting pits, the value of pit shares had plummeted. Hizdahr zo Loraq had grabbed them up with both hands, and now owned most of the fighting pits in Meereen.

[...] “...How many times have I refused you?”

“Five times, Your Magnificence.”

“Six now. I will not have the fighting pits reopened.”

~

What he desired turned out to be gold. Dany had refused to compensate any of the Great Masters for the value of their slaves, but the Meereenese kept devising other ways to squeeze coin from her. The noble Grazdan had once owned a slave woman who was a very fine weaver, it seemed; the fruits of her loom were greatly valued, not only in Meereen, but in New Ghis and Astapor and Qarth. When this woman had grown old, Grazdan had purchased half a dozen young girls and commanded the crone to instruct them in the secrets of her craft. The old woman was dead now. The young ones, freed, had opened a shop by the harbor wall to sell their weavings. Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be granted a portion of their earnings. “They owe their skill to me,” he insisted. “I plucked them from the auction bloc and gave them to the loom.”

Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done, she said, “What was the name of the old weaver?”

“The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”

“Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

~

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel. The whores had bedecked themselves in her jewels and clothes. She wanted her house back, and her jewels. “They can keep the clothes,” she allowed. Dany granted her the jewels but ruled the house was lost when she abandoned it.

~

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The man had recently taken to wife a freedwoman who had been the noble’s bedwarmer before the city fell. The noble had taken her maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble’s bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding. “When he lay with her, your wife was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape.” Her decision did not please him, she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of eunuchs.

~

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father's household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father's house, and the other had joined the queen's soldiers as one of the Mother's Men. He wanted them both hanged.

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.

~

“Pay them for the value of their animals,” she told Reznak, “but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis.”

ADWD Daenerys II

“Give them to the Shavepate. Skahaz, keep each apart from the others and put them to the question.”

“It will be done, Your Worship. Would you have me question them sweetly, or sharply?”

“Sweetly, to begin. Hear what tales they tell and what names they give you. It may be they had no part in this.” She hesitated. “Nine, the noble Reznak said. Who else?”

“Three freedmen, murdered in their homes,” the Shavepate said. “A moneylender, a cobbler, and the harpist Rylona Rhee. They cut her fingers off before they killed her.” The queen flinched. Rylona Rhee had played the harp as sweetly as the Maiden. When she had been a slave in Yunkai, she had played for every highborn family in the city. In Meereen she had become a leader amongst the Yunkish freedmen, their voice in Dany’s councils. “We have no captives but this wineseller?”

“None, this one grieves to confess. We beg your pardon.”

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

~

“I will have no more Unsullied slaughtered. Grey Worm, pull your men back to their barracks. Henceforth let them guard my walls and gates and person. From this day, it shall be for Meereenese to keep the peace in Meereen. Skahaz, make me a new watch, made up in equal parts of shavepates and freedmen.”

“As you command. How many men?”

“As many as you require.”

Reznak mo Reznak gasped. “Magnificence, where is the coin to come from to pay wages for so many men?”

“From the pyramids. Call it a blood tax. I will have a hundred pieces of gold from every pyramid for each freedman that the Harpy’s Sons have slain.”

~

“but Your Radiance should know that the Great Masters of Zhak and Merreq are making preparations to quit their pyramids and leave the city.”

[...] “Let them go, but see that they take no more than the clothes upon their backs. Make certain that all their gold remains here with us. Their stores of food as well.”

“Magnificence,” murmured Reznak mo Reznak, “we cannot know that these great nobles mean to join your enemies. More like they are simply making for their estates in the hills.”

“They will not mind us keeping their gold safe, then. There is nothing to buy in the hills.”

“They are afraid for their children,” Reznak said.

Yes, Daenerys thought, and so am I. “We must keep them safe as well. I will have two children from each of them. From the other pyramids as well. A boy and a girl.”

“Hostages,” said Skahaz, happily.

“Pages and cupbearers. If the Great Masters make objection, explain to them that in Westeros it is a great honor for a child to be chosen to serve at court.”

~

“The freedmen work cheaply because they are hungry,” Dany pointed out. “If I forbid them to carve stone or lay bricks, the chandlers, the weavers, and the goldsmiths will soon be at my gates asking that they be excluded from those trades as well.” She considered a moment. “Let it be written that henceforth only guild members shall be permitted to name themselves journeymen or masters … provided the guilds open their rolls to any freedman who can demonstrate the requisite skills.”

~

Her name had been Hazzea. She was four years old. Unless her father lied. He might have lied. No one had seen the dragon but him. His proof was burned bones, but burned bones proved nothing. He might have killed the little girl himself, and burned her afterward. He would not have been the first father to dispose of an unwanted girl child, the Shavepate claimed. The Sons of the Harpy might have done it, and made it look like dragon’s work to make the city hate me. Dany wanted to believe that … but if that was so, why had Hazzea’s father waited until the audience hall was almost empty to come forward? If his purpose had been to inflame the Meereenese against her, he would have told his tale when the hall was full of ears to hear.

 [...] Dany chose to pay the blood price. No one could tell her the worth of a daughter, so she set it at one hundred times the worth of a lamb. “I would give Hazzea back to you if I could,” she told the father, “but some things are beyond the power of even a queen. Her bones shall be laid to rest in the Temple of the Graces, and a hundred candles shall burn day and night in her memory. Come back to me each year upon her nameday, and your other children shall not want … but this tale must never pass your lips again.”

ADWD Daenerys III

The Stormcrows were returning from Lhazar. Her captain was riding back to her, bringing her the friendship of the Lamb Men. Food and trade, she reminded herself. He did not fail me, nor will he. Daario will help me save my city.

~

Skahaz mo Kandaq had given her the new watch she had asked for, made up in equal numbers of freedmen and shavepate Meereenese. They walked the streets both day and night, in dark hoods and brazen masks. The Sons of the Harpy had promised grisly death to any traitor who dared serve the dragon queen, and to their kith and kin as well, so the Shavepate's men went about as jackals, owls, and other beasts, keeping their true faces hidden.

~

“I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but older, wiser men tell me that to hold Meereen I must control its hinterlands, all the land west of Lhazar as far south as the Yunkish hills.”

~

“[...] A ditch, to bring water from the river to the fields. We mean to plant beans. The beanfields must have water.”

“[...] Meereen needs beans more than it needs rare spices, and beans require water.”

~

“You spoke of help. Trade with me, then. Meereen has salt to sell, and wine …”

“Ghiscari wine?” Xaro made a sour face. “The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.”

“I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive. What of copper?”

“A pretty metal, but fickle as a woman. Gold, now … gold is sincere. Qarth will gladly give you gold … for slaves.”

“Meereen is a free city of free men. [...] Go to the Dothraki if you must have slaves.”

~

“Two companies. The Yunkai’i will send twenty against you if they must. And when they march, they will not march alone. Tolos and Mantarys have agreed to an alliance.”

That was ill news, if true. Daenerys had sent missions to Tolos and Mantarys, hoping to find new friends to the west to balance the enmity of Yunkai to the south. Her envoys had not returned. “Meereen has made alliance with Lhazar.”

That only made him chuckle. “The Dothraki horselords call the Lhazarene the Lamb Men. When you shear them, all they do is bleat. They are not a martial people.”

Even a sheepish friend is better than none.

~

“My freedman—” Dany started.

“Bedslaves, barbers, and brickmakers win no battles.”

He was wrong in that, she hoped. The freedmen had been a rabble once, but she had organized the men of fighting age into companies and commanded Grey Worm to make them into soldiers.

~

“...The ships are yours, sweet queen. Thirteen galleys, and men to pull the oars.”

Thirteen. To be sure. Xaro was one of the Thirteen. No doubt he had convinced each of his fellow members to give up one ship. She knew the merchant prince too well to think that he would sacrifice thirteen of his own ships. “I must consider this. May I inspect these ships?”

~

As ever, Lord Ghael was the first to present himself, looking even more wretched than usual. “Your Radiance,” he moaned, as he fell to the marble at her feet, “the armies of the Yunkai’i descend on Astapor. I beg you, come south with all your strength!”

“I warned your king that this war of his was folly,” Dany reminded him. “He would not listen.”

“Great Cleon sought only to strike down the vile slavers of Yunkai.”

“Great Cleon is a slaver himself.”

“I know that the Mother of Dragons will not abandon us in our hour of peril. Lend us your Unsullied to defend our walls.”

And if I do, who will defend my walls? “Many of my freedmen were slaves in Astapor. Perhaps some will wish to help defend your king. That is their choice, as free men. I gave Astapor its freedom. It is up to you to defend it.”

“We are all dead, then. You gave us death, not freedom.” Ghael leapt to his feet and spat into her face.

~

Late that afternoon Admiral Groleo and Ser Barristan returned from their inspection of the galleys. Dany assembled her council to hear them. Grey Worm was there for the Unsullied, Skahaz mo Kandaq for the Brazen Beasts. In the absence of her bloodriders, a wizened jaqqa rhan called Rommo, squint-eyed and bowlegged, came to speak for her Dothraki. Her freedmen were represented by the captains of the three companies she had formed—Mollono Yos Dob of the Stalwart Shields, Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers, Marselen of the Mother’s Men. Reznak mo Reznak hovered at the queen’s elbow, and Strong Belwas stood behind her with his huge arms crossed. Dany would not lack for counsel.

~

“My lord, I will gladly have those ships, but I cannot give you the promise that you ask.” She took his hand. “Give me the galleys, and I swear that Qarth will have the friendship of Meereen until the stars go out. Let me trade with them, and you will have a good part of the profits.”

Xaro’s glad smile died upon his lips. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you will not go?”

“I cannot go.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.”

~

“Peace is my desire. You say that you can help me end the nightly slaughter in my streets. I say do it. Put an end to this shadow war, my lord. That is your quest. Give me ninety days and ninety nights without a murder, and I will know that you are worthy of a throne. Can you do that?”

~

When he was gone, Daenerys called Ser Barristan back. “I want the Stormcrows back in the field.”

“Your Grace? They have only now returned …”

“I want them gone. Let them scout the Yunkish hinterlands and give protection to any caravans coming over the Khyzai Pass. Henceforth Daario shall make his reports to you. Give him every honor that is due him and see that his men are well paid, but on no account admit him to my presence.”

ADWD Daenerys V

Ser Barristan remained. “Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”

~

“How fare your orphans, ser?”

The old knight smiled. “Well, Your Grace. It is good of you to ask.” The boys were his pride. “Four or five have the makings of knights. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

“One would be enough if he were as true as you.” The day might come soon when she would have need of every knight.

~

“How many pyramids has he visited?” asked Dany.

“Eleven.”

“And how long since the last murder?”

“Six-and-twenty days.” The Shavepate’s eyes brimmed with fury. It had been his notion to have the Brazen Beasts follow her betrothed and take note of all his actions.

“So far Hizdahr has made good on his promises.”

~

Skahaz was convinced that somewhere in Meereen the Sons of the Harpy had a highborn overlord, a secret general commanding an army of shadows. Dany did not share his belief. The Brazen Beasts had taken dozens of the Harpy’s Sons, and those who had survived their capture had yielded names when questioned sharply … too many names, it seemed to her. It would have been pleasant to think that all the deaths were the work of a single enemy who might be caught and killed, but Dany suspected that the truth was otherwise. My enemies are legion. “Hizdahr zo Loraq is a persuasive man with many friends. And he is wealthy. Perhaps he has bought this peace for us with gold, or convinced the other highborn that our marriage is in their best interests.”

~

“No,” she said. “I do not trust these confessions. You’ve brought me too many of them, all of them worthless.”

~

“Every man on that list has kin within the city. Sons and brothers, wives and daughters, mothers and fathers. Let my Brazen Beasts seize them. Their lives will win you back those ships.”

“If I send the Brazen Beasts into the pyramids, it will mean open war inside the city. I have to trust in Hizdahr. I have to hope for peace.”

~

She turned to Ser Barristan. “Send riders into the hills to find my bloodriders. Recall Brown Ben and the Second Sons as well.”

“And the Stormcrows, Your Grace?”

Daario. “Yes. Yes.” [...] “The Stormcrows too. Send riders after them at once.”

~

“...Grey Worm, are my freedmen ready for battle?”

The eunuch crossed his arms against his chest. “They are not Unsullied, but they will not shame you. This one will swear to that by spear and sword, Your Worship.”

“Good. That’s good.”

~

“Ben, I will need your Second Sons to scout our enemies. Where they are, how fast they are advancing, how many men they have, and how they are disposed.”

“We’ll need provisions. Fresh horses too.”

“Of course. Ser Barristan will see to it.”

Brown Ben scratched his chin. “Might be we could get some o’ them to come over. If Your Grace could spare a few bags o’ gold and gems … just to give their captains a good taste, as it were … well, who knows?”

“Buy them, why not?” Dany said. That sort of thing went on all the time amongst the free companies of the Disputed Lands, she knew. “Yes, very good. Reznak, see to it. Once the Second Sons ride out, close the gates and double the watch upon the walls.”

~

“...We cannot have the Astapori in Meereen.”

Dany looked at him helplessly. It was good that dragons did not cry. “As you say, then. We will keep them outside the walls until this … this curse has run its course. Set up a camp for them beside the river, west of the city. We will send them what food we can. Perhaps we can separate the healthy from the sick.”

~

[...] “I cannot fight two enemies, one within and one without. If I am to hold Meereen, I must have the city behind me. The whole city. I need … I need …” She could not say it.

“Your Grace?” Ser Barristan prompted, gently.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

“I need Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

 ADWD Daenerys VI

“...Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”

“On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see.”

~

Daenerys dare not open her gates to let them in. She had tried to do what she could for them. She had sent them healers, Blue Graces and spell-singers and barbersurgeons, but some of those had sickened as well, and none of their arts had slowed the galloping progression of the flux that had come on the pale mare. Separating the healthy from the sick had proved impractical as well. Her Stalwart Shields had tried, pulling husbands away from wives and children from their mothers, even as the Astapori wept and kicked and pelted them with stones. A few days later, the sick were dead and the healthy ones were sick. Dividing the one from the other had accomplished nothing.

Even feeding them had grown difficult. Every day she sent them what she could, but every day there were more of them and less food to give them. It was growing harder to find drivers willing to deliver the food as well. Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

~

Many shat where they slept now, too feeble to crawl to the ditches she’d commanded them to dig. 

~

“The gods have sent this pestilence to humble me. So many dead … I will not have them eating corpses.” She beckoned Aggo closer. “Ride to the gates and bring me Grey Worm and fifty of his Unsullied.”

~

“You should not linger here overlong, Your Grace. The Astapori are being fed, as you commanded. There’s no more we can do for the poor wretches. We should repair back to the city.”

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares.”

~

There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow. “His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?”

By the time Aggo returned with Grey Worm and fifty of the Unsullied loping behind his horse, Dany had shamed all of them into helping her. Symon Stripeback and his men were pulling the living from the dead and stacking up the corpses, while Jhogo and Rakharo and their Dothraki helped those who could still walk toward the shore to bathe and wash their clothes. Aggo stared at them as if they had all gone mad, but Grey Worm knelt beside the queen and said, “This one would be of help.”

Before midday a dozen fires were burning. Columns of greasy black smoke rose up to stain a merciless blue sky. Dany’s riding clothes were stained and sooty as she stepped back from the pyres.

~

The priestess and the seneschal were happy to see her garbed in a tokar, a proper Meereenese lady for once, but what they really wanted was to strip her bare. Daenerys heard them out, incredulous. When they were done, she said, “I have no wish to give offense, but I will not present myself naked to Hizdahr’s mother and sisters.”

~

“Hizdahr zo Loraq may inspect my women’s parts after we are wed.” Khal Drogo found no fault with them, why should he? “Let his mother and his sisters examine one another and share the special cake. I shall not be eating it. Nor shall I wash the noble Hizdahr’s noble feet.” ~

“As you wish,” she sighed. “I shall marry Hizdahr in the Temple of the Graces wrapped in a white tokar fringed with baby pearls. Is there anything else?”

~

“After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine. She rose. “If my husband wishes me to wash his feet, he must first wash mine. I will tell him so this evening.”

~

“Continue as we planned. Gather food, as much as you can.” If I look back I am lost. “We must close the gates and put every fighting man upon the walls. No one enters, no one leaves.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

“...Will you hold court today?”

“No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will be king. Let him hold court. These are his people.”

[...] “...Will you come hold court?”

“After my wedding, perhaps. After the peace.”

~

“...Bring your frog to court tomorrow. The others too. The Westerosi.” It would be nice to hear the Common Tongue from someone besides Ser Barristan.

~

“Summon the first petitioner.”

It had been so long since she last held court that the crush of cases was almost overwhelming. The back of the hall was a solid press of people, and scuffles broke out over precedence.

[...] The rest was a tedium the queen knew well. She sat upon her cushions, listening, one foot jiggling with impatience. Jhiqui brought a platter of figs and ham at midday. There seemed to be no end to the petitioners. For every two she sent off smiling, one left red- eyed or muttering.

It was close to sunset before Daario Naharis appeared with his new Stormcrows, the Westerosi who had come over to him from the Windblown. Dany found herself glancing at them as yet another petitioner droned on and on.

~

“Would that you had come a year ago. I am pledged to wed the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

[...] “This changes nothing,” Dany said, as Irri removed her crown. “What good are three men?”

~

“Your Grace, I must entreat you. My father’s strength is failing, but his devotion to your cause is as strong as ever. If my manner or my person have displeased you, that is my sorrow, but—”

“If you would please me, ser, be happy for me,” Daenerys said. “This is my wedding day. They will be dancing in the Yellow City, I do not doubt.” She sighed. “Rise, my prince, and smile. One day I shall return to Westeros to claim my father’s throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this day the Yunkai’i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves.” Dany kissed his cheek. “Come. It’s time I wed.”

ADWD Daenerys VIII

When the gluttony was done and all the half-eaten food had been cleared away—to be given to the poor who gathered below, at the queen's insistence—tall glass flutes were filled with a spiced liqueur from Qarth as dark as amber.

~

“Is there some man in the Second Sons who might be persuaded to … remove … Brown Ben?”

“As Daario Naharis once removed the other captains of the Stormcrows?” The old knight looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps. I would not know, Your Grace.”

No, she thought, you are too honest and too honorable. “If not, the Yunkai’i employ three other companies.”

“Rogues and cutthroats, scum of a hundred battlefields,” Ser Barristan warned, “with captains full as treacherous as Plumm.”

“I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but it seems to me that we want them to be treacherous. Once, you’ll recall, I convinced the Second Sons and Stormcrows to join us.”

“If Your Grace wishes a privy word with Gylo Rhegan or the Tattered Prince, I could bring them up to your apartments.”

“This is not the time. Too many eyes, too many ears. Their absence would be noted even if you could separate them discreetly from the Yunkai’i. We must find some quieter way of reaching out to them … not tonight, but soon.”

“As you command. Though I fear this is not a task for which I am well suited. In King’s Landing work of this sort was left to Lord Littlefinger or the Spider. We old knights are simple men, only good for fighting.” He patted his sword hilt.

“Our prisoners,” suggested Dany. “The Westerosi who came over from the Windblown with the three Dornishmen. We still have them in cells, do we not? Use them.”

“Free them, you mean? Is that wise? They were sent here to worm their way into your trust, so they might betray Your Grace at the first chance.”

“Then they failed. I do not trust them. I will never trust them.” If truth be told, Dany was forgetting how to trust. “We can still use them. One was a woman. Meris. Send her back, as a … a gesture of my regard. If their captain is a clever man, he will understand.”

“The woman is the worst of all.”

“All the better.” Dany considered a moment. “We should sound out the Long Lances too. And the Company of the Cat.”

“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger … for gold, for glory, for blood.”

“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters. “Do as you think best. But do it soon. If Hizdahr’s peace should break, I want to be ready. I do not trust the slavers.” I do not trust my husband. “They will turn on us at the first sign of weakness.”

“The Yunkai’i grow weaker as well. The bloody flux has taken hold amongst the Tolosi, it is said, and spread across the river to the third Ghiscari legion.”

The pale mare. Daenerys sighed. Quaithe warned me of the pale mare’s coming. She told me of the Dornish prince as well, the sun’s son. She told me much and more, but all in riddles. “I cannot rely on plague to save me from my enemies. Set Pretty Meris free. At once.”

“As you command. Though … Your Grace, if I may be so bold, there is another road …”

“The Dornish road?” Dany sighed. The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn’s rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband. Hizdahr did not seem to be of a jealous nature, but no man would be pleased by the presence of a rival suitor near his new bride. “The boy seems pleasant and well spoken, but …”

“House Martell is ancient and noble, and has been a leal friend to House Targaryen for more than a century, Your Grace. I had the honor of serving with Prince Quentyn’s greatuncle in your father’s seven. Prince Lewyn was as valiant a brother-in-arms as any man could wish for. Quentyn Martell is of the same blood, if it please Your Grace.”

“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet …”

“Sunspear has never been a sea power, Your Grace.”

“No.” Dany knew enough of Westerosi history to know that. Nymeria had landed ten thousand ships upon Dorne’s sandy shores, but when she wed her Dornish prince she had burned them all and turned her back upon the sea forever. “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”

“Dornishmen are notoriously stubborn, Your Grace. Prince Quentyn’s forebears fought your own for the better part of two hundred years. He will not go without you.”

Then he will die here, Daenerys thought, unless there is more to him than I can see. “Is he still within?”

“Drinking with his knights.”

“Bring him to me. It is time he met my children.”

ADWD Daenerys IX

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” Dany smiled for him. “You fret too much, ser. I will have you beside me, what other protection do I need?”

“I am one old man, Your Grace.”

“Strong Belwas will be with me as well.”

“As you say.”

~

“Your Grace. We set the woman Meris free, as you commanded. Before she went, she asked to speak with you. I met with her instead. She claims this Tattered Prince meant to bring the Windblown over to your cause from the beginning. That he sent her here to treat with you secretly, but the Dornishmen unmasked them and betrayed them before she could make her own approach.”

Treachery on treachery, the queen thought wearily. Is there no end to it? “How much of this do you believe, ser?”

“Little and less, Your Grace, but those were her words.”

“Will they come over to us, if need be?”

“She says they will. But for a price.”

“Pay it.” Meereen needed iron, not gold.

“The Tattered Prince will want more than coin, Your Grace. Meris says that he wants Pentos.” “Pentos?” Her eyes narrowed. “How can I give him Pentos? It is half a world away.”

“He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros.”

And if I never march for Westeros? “Pentos belongs to the Pentoshi. And Magister Illyrio is in Pentos. He who arranged my marriage to Khal Drogo and gave me my dragon eggs. Who sent me you, and Belwas, and Groleo. I owe him much and more. I will not repay that debt by giving his city to some sellsword. No.”

~

“A boy,” said Dany. “He was only a boy.”

“Six-and-ten,” Hizdahr insisted. “A man grown, who freely chose to risk his life for gold and glory. No children die today in Daznak’s, as my gentle queen in her wisdom has decreed.”

Another small victory. Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad. Daenerys would have prohibited contests between women as well, but Barsena Blackhair protested that she had as much right to risk her life as any man. The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented.

It had been the custom to sentence criminals to the pits; that practice she agreed might resume, but only for certain crimes. “Murderers and rapers may be forced to fight, and all those who persist in slaving, but not thieves or debtors.”

Beasts were still allowed, though. Dany watched an elephant make short work of a pack of six red wolves. Next a bull was set against a bear in a bloody battle that left both animals torn and dying. “The flesh is not wasted,” said Hizdahr. “The butchers use the carcasses to make a healthful stew for the hungry. Any man who presents himself at the Gates of Fate may have a bowl.”

“A good law,” Dany said. You have so few of them. “We must make certain that this tradition is continued.”

The advice Dany received

ADWD Daenerys I

“Your Grace,” he said, “I fear your eunuchs are ill suited for the tasks you set them.”

Dany settled on her bench and wrapped her pelt about her shoulders once again. “The Unsullied are my finest warriors.”

“Soldiers, not warriors, if it please Your Grace. They were made for the battlefield, to stand shoulder to shoulder behind their shields with their spears thrust out before them. Their training teaches them to obey, fearlessly, perfectly, without thought or hesitation … not to unravel secrets or ask questions.”

~

“The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare.

~

“Your Grace has not asked for my counsel,” said Skahaz Shavepate, “but I say that blood must pay for blood. Take one man from each of the families I have named and kill him. The next time one of yours is slain, take two from each great House and kill them both. There will not be a third murder.”

~

Reznak squealed in distress. “Noooo … gentle queen, such savagery would bring down the ire of the gods. We will find the murderers, I promise you, and when we do they will prove to be baseborn filth, you shall see.”

~

“Your Magnificence,” whispered Reznak mo Reznak in her ear, “it is customary for the city to claim one-tenth of all the profits from the fighting pits, after expenses, as a tax. That coin might be put to many noble uses.”

~

Reznak and the Green Grace had been urging Dany to take a Meereenese noble for her husband, to reconcile the city to her rule. [...] The Shavepate had offered to set aside his wife for her, but the notion made her shudder. Hizdahr at least knew how to smile.

~

Grazdan, she had been forewarned, was a cousin of the Green Grace, whose support she had found invaluable. The priestess was a voice for peace, acceptance, and obedience to lawful authority. I can give her cousin a respectful hearing, whatever he desires.

~

“...Must we pay good silver for every lamb that goes astray between Yunkai and the Skahazadhan?”

“No, Magnificence.” Reznak bowed. “Shall I send these rascals away, or will you want them scourged?”

ADWD Daenerys II

“Magnificence,” murmured Reznak mo Reznak, “we cannot know that these great nobles mean to join your enemies. More like they are simply making for their estates in the hills.”

“They will not mind us keeping their gold safe, then. There is nothing to buy in the hills.”

“They are afraid for their children,” Reznak said.

~

Dany grimaced. Even her own people would give no rest about the matter. Reznak mo Reznak stressed the coin to be made through taxes. The Green Grace said that reopening the pits would please the gods. The Shavepate felt it would win her support against the Sons of the Harpy. “Let them fight,” grunted Strong Belwas, who had once been a champion in the pits. Ser Barristan suggested a tourney instead; his orphans could ride at rings and fight a mêlée with blunted weapons, he said, a suggestion Dany knew was as hopeless as it was well-intentioned. It was blood the Meereenese yearned to see, not skill. Elsewise the fighting slaves would have worn armor. Only the little scribe Missandei seemed to share the queen’s misgivings.

~

"[...] Will you hear my friends? There are seven of them as well.” [...] They have come to add their voices to mine own, and ask Your Grace to let our fighting pits reopen.”

Dany knew his seven, by name if not by sight. All had been amongst the most famed of Meereen’s fighting slaves … and it had been the fighting slaves, freed from their shackles by her sewer rats, who led the uprising that won the city for her. She owed them a blood debt. “I will hear you,” she allowed.

One by one, each of them asked her to let the fighting pits reopen. “Why?” she demanded, when Ithoke had finished. “You are no longer slaves, doomed to die at a master’s whim. I freed you. Why should you wish to end your lives upon the scarlet sands?”

~

The Shavepate had urged her to put the man to death. “At least rip out his tongue. This man’s lie could destroy us all, Magnificence.”

ADWD Daenerys III

“Daenerys, let me be honest with you, as befits a friend. You will not make Meereen rich and fat and peaceful. You will only bring it to destruction, as you did Astapor. You are aware that there was battle joined at the Horns of Hazzat? The Butcher King has fled back to his palace, his new Unsullied running at his heels.”

“This is known.” Brown Ben Plumm had sent back word of the battle from the field. “The Yunkai’i have bought themselves new sellswords, and two legions from New Ghis fought beside them.”

“Two will soon become four, then ten. And Yunkish envoys have been sent to Myr and Volantis to hire more blades. The Company of the Cat, the Long Lances, the Windblown. Some say that the Wise Masters have bought the Golden Company as well.”

[...]“I have sellswords too.”

“Two companies. The Yunkai’i will send twenty against you if they must. And when they march, they will not march alone. Tolos and Mantarys have agreed to an alliance.”

[...] “And whilst you are razing Yunkai, my sweet, Meereen shall rise behind you. Do not close your eyes to your peril, Daenerys. Your eunuchs are fine soldiers, but they are too few to match the hosts that Yunkai will send against you, once Astapor has fallen.”

[...] “Bedslaves, barbers, and brickmakers win no battles.”

[...] “Not all your enemies are in the Yellow City. Beware men with cold hearts and blue lips. You had not been gone from Qarth a fortnight when Pyat Pree set out with three of his fellow warlocks, to seek for you in Pentos.”

~

“Of him, little and less. These ships, though … Your Grace, with these ships we might be home before year’s end.” [...]

“If they were so unseaworthy, they could not have crossed the sea from Qarth,” Ser Barristan pointed out, “but Your Grace was wise to insist upon inspection. I will take Admiral Groleo to the galleys at first light with his captains and two score of his sailors. We can crawl over every inch of those ships.”

~

Ser Barristan went to one knee before her. “My queen, your realm has need of you. You are not wanted here, but in Westeros men will flock to your banners by the thousands, great lords and noble knights. ‘She is come,’ they will shout to one another, in glad voices. ‘Prince Rhaegar’s sister has come home at last.’”

“If they love me so much, they will wait for me.”

~

“My lord, I will gladly have those ships, but I cannot give you the promise that you ask.” She took his hand. “Give me the galleys, and I swear that Qarth will have the friendship of Meereen until the stars go out. Let me trade with them, and you will have a good part of the profits.”

Xaro’s glad smile died upon his lips. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you will not go?”

“I cannot go.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

“The Shavepate would feed them to your dragons, it is said. A life for a life. For every Brazen Beast cut down, he would have a child die.”

Dany pushed her food about her plate. She dare not glance over to where Grazhar and Qezza stood, for fear that she might cry. The Shavepate has a harder heart than mine. They had fought about the hostages half a dozen times. “The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids,” Skahaz said, just this morning. “What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?” In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.”

~

“Then heed me now and marry.”

“Ah.” Dany had been expecting this.

~

“I am sworn to serve Your Grace, and to keep you safe from harm wherever you may go. My place is by your side, whether here or in King’s Landing … but your place is back in Westeros, upon the Iron Throne that was your father’s. The Seven Kingdoms will never accept Hizdahr zo Loraq as king.”

~

“Attack,” he said at once. “A man surrounded by foes cannot defend himself. Try, and the axe will take you in the back whilst you are parrying the sword. No. When faced with many enemies, choose the weakest, kill him, ride over him, and escape.”

[...] “You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them,” Daario went on. “Kill them all and take their treasures, I say. Whisper the command, and your Daario will make you a pile of their heads taller than this pyramid.”

“If I knew who they were—”

“Zhak and Pahl and Merreq. Them, and all the rest. The Great Masters. Who else would it be?”

He is as bold as he is bloody. “We have no proof this is their work. Would you have me slaughter my own subjects?”

“Your own subjects would gladly slaughter you.”

He had been so long away, Dany had almost forgotten what he was. Sellswords were treacherous by nature, she reminded herself. Fickle, faithless, brutal. He will never be more than he is. He will never be the stuff of kings. “The pyramids are strong,” she explained to him. “We could take them only at great cost. The moment we attack one the others will rise against us.”

“Then winkle them out of their pyramids on some pretext. A wedding might serve. Why not? Promise your hand to Hizdahr and all the Great Masters will come to see you married. When they gather in the Temple of the Graces, turn us loose upon them.”

Dany was appalled. He is a monster. A gallant monster, but a monster still. “Do you take me for the Butcher King?”

“Better the butcher than the meat. All kings are butchers. Are queens so different?”

“This queen is.”

Daario shrugged. “Most queens have no purpose but to warm some king’s bed and pop out sons for him. If that’s the sort of queen you mean to be, best marry Hizdahr.”

ADWD Daenerys V

Her admiral’s counsel had proved worse than useless. “Let them see your dragons,” Groleo said. “Let the Yunkishmen have a taste of fire, and the trade will flow again.”

“Those ships are strangling us, and all my admiral can do is talk of dragons,” Dany said. “You are my admiral, are you not?”

“An admiral without ships.”

“Build ships.”

“Warships cannot be made from brick. The slavers burned every stand of timber within twenty leagues of here.”

“Then ride out two-and-twenty leagues. I will give you wagons, workers, mules, whatever you require.”

“I am a sailor, not a shipwright. I was sent to fetch Your Grace back to Pentos. Instead you brought us here and tore my Saduleon to pieces for some nails and scraps of wood. I will never see her like again. I may never see my home again, nor my old wife. It was not me who refused the ships this Daxos offered. I cannot fight the Qartheen with fishing boats.”

[...] “There must be something we can do.”

“Aye, and I’ve told you what. These ships are made of rope and pitch and canvas, of Qohorik pine and teak from Sothoros, old oak from Great Norvos, yew and ash and spruce. Wood, Your Grace. Wood burns. The dragons—”

“I will hear no more about my dragons. Leave me. Go pray to your Pentoshi gods for a storm to sink our foes.”

~

“And how long since the last murder?”

“Six-and-twenty days.” The Shavepate’s eyes brimmed with fury. It had been his notion to have the Brazen Beasts follow her betrothed and take note of all his actions.

“So far Hizdahr has made good on his promises.”

“How? The Sons of the Harpy have put down their knives, but why? Because the noble Hizdahr asked sweetly? He is one of them, I tell you. That’s why they obey him. He may well be the Harpy.”

“If there is a Harpy.” Skahaz was convinced that somewhere in Meereen the Sons of the Harpy had a highborn overlord, a secret general commanding an army of shadows.

~

“If he is not the Harpy, he knows him. I can find the truth of that easy enough. Give me your leave to put Hizdahr to the question, and I will bring you a confession.”

“[...] The Great Master Hizdahr plays Your Worship for a fool. Do you want a serpent in your bed?”

~

Skahaz drew a parchment scroll from his sleeve. “Your Worship should have a look at this. A list of all the Meereenese ships in the blockade, with their captains. Great Masters all.”

Dany studied the scroll. All the ruling families of Meereen were named: Hazkar, Merreq, Quazzar, Zhak, Rhazdar, Ghazeen, Pahl, even Reznak and Loraq. “What am I to do with a list of names?”

“Every man on that list has kin within the city. Sons and brothers, wives and daughters, mothers and fathers. Let my Brazen Beasts seize them. Their lives will win you back those ships.”

“If I send the Brazen Beasts into the pyramids, it will mean open war inside the city. I have to trust in Hizdahr. I have to hope for peace.”

~

“Mouths on feet. And sick, you say?” Reznak wrung his hands. “Your Worship must not allow them in the city.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Brown Ben Plumm. “I’m no maester, mind you, but I know you got to keep the bad apples from the good.”

~

“Them, and dragons,” said Brown Ben Plumm, with a grin.

“In the pit, in chains,” wailed Reznak mo Reznak. “What good are dragons that cannot be controlled? Even the Unsullied grow fearful when they must open the doors to feed them.”

~

“If there’s no dragons in the balance, well … we should leave before them Yunkish bastards close the trap … only first, make the slavers pay to see our backs. They pay the khals to leave their cities be, why not us? Sell Meereen back to them and start west with wagons full o’ gold and gems and such.”

~

“I defeated the Yunkai’i before. I will defeat them again. Where, though? How?”

“You mean to take the field?” The Shavepate’s voice was thick with disbelief. “That would be folly. Our walls are taller and thicker than the walls of Astapor, and our defenders are more valiant. The Yunkai’i will not take this city easily.”

Ser Barristan disagreed. “I do not think we should allow them to invest us. Theirs is a patchwork host at best. These slavers are no soldiers. If we take them unawares …”

“Small chance of that,” the Shavepate said. “The Yunkai’i have many friends inside the city. They will know.”

~

“Your Grace, I have known the bloody flux to destroy whole armies when left to spread unchecked. The seneschal is right. We cannot have the Astapori in Meereen.”

~

“What do you counsel, ser?”

“Battle,” said Ser Barristan. “Meereen is overcrowded and full of hungry mouths, and you have too many enemies within. We cannot long withstand a siege, I fear. Let me meet the foe as he comes north, on ground of my own choosing.”

ADWD Daenerys VI

“I would feel better if Your Grace would return to the city.” The many-colored brick walls of Meereen were half a mile back. “The bloody flux has been the bane of every army since the Dawn Age. Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”

~

It was growing harder to find drivers willing to deliver the food as well. Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved.

~

“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan, “the Unsullied are your best fighters. We dare not loose this plague amongst them. Let the Astapori bury their own dead.”

“They are too feeble,” said Symon Stripeback.

Dany said, “More food might make them stronger.”

Symon shook his head. “Food should not be wasted on the dying, Your Worship. We do not have enough to feed the living.”

~

“If we were to share our food equally …”

“… the Astapori would eat through their portion in days, and we would have that much less for the siege.”

~

“You should not linger here overlong, Your Grace. The Astapori are being fed, as you commanded. There’s no more we can do for the poor wretches. We should repair back to the city.”

~

“But,” said Reznak mo Reznak, blinking, “but you must, Your Worship. Before a marriage it is traditional for the women of the man’s house to examine the bride’s womb and, ah … her female parts. To ascertain that they are well formed and, ah …”

“… fertile,” finished Galazza Galare. “An ancient ritual, Your Radiance. Three Graces shall be present to witness the examination and say the proper prayers.”

“Yes,” said Reznak, “and afterward there is a special cake. A women’s cake, baked only for betrothals. Men are not allowed to taste it. I am told it is delicious. Magical.”

And if my womb is withered and my female parts accursed, is there a special cake for that as well?

~

“Magnificence, you do not understand,” protested Reznak. “The washing of the feet is hallowed by tradition. It signifies that you shall be your husband’s handmaid. The wedding garb is fraught with meaning too. The bride is dressed in dark red veils above a tokar of white silk, fringed with baby pearls.”

The queen of the rabbits must not be wed without her floppy ears. “All those pearls will make me rattle when I walk.”

“The pearls symbolize fertility. The more pearls Your Worship wears, the more healthy children she will bear.”

~

“If we should wed by Westerosi rites ...”

“The gods of Ghis would deem it no true union.” Galazza Galare’s face was hidden behind a veil of green silk. Only her eyes showed, green and wise and sad. “In the eyes of the city you would be the noble Hizdahr’s concubine, not his lawful wedded wife. Your children would be bastards. Your Worship must marry Hizdahr in the Temple of the Graces, with all the nobility of Meereen on hand to bear witness to your union.”

~

“One more small matter, Your Worship,” said Reznak. “To celebrate your nuptials, it would be most fitting if you would allow the fighting pits to open once again. It would be your wedding gift to Hizdahr and to your loving people, a sign that you had embraced the ancient ways and customs of Meereen.”

“And most pleasing to the gods as well,” the Green Grace added in her soft and kindly voice.

A bride price paid in blood. Daenerys was weary of fighting this battle. Even Ser Barristan did not think she could win. “No ruler can make a people good,” Selmy had told her. “Baelor the Blessed prayed and fasted and built the Seven as splendid a temple as any gods could wish for, yet he could not put an end to war and want.” A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself.

ADWD Daenerys VII

“...Will you hold court today?”

“No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will be king. Let him hold court. These are his people.”

“Some are his, some are yours. The ones you freed.”

“Are you chiding me?”

“The ones you call your children. They want their mother.”

“You are. You are chiding me.”

“Only a little, bright heart. Will you come hold court?”

“After my wedding, perhaps. After the peace.”

“This after that you speak of never comes. You should hold court. My new men do not believe that you are real. The ones who came over from the Windblown. Bred and born in Westeros, most of them, full of tales about Targaryens. They want to see one with their own eyes.[”]

~

“This changes everything,” the old knight said.

ADWD Daenerys VIII

“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger … for gold, for glory, for blood.”

“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters.

~

“As you command. Though … Your Grace, if I may be so bold, there is another road …”

“The Dornish road?” Dany sighed. The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn’s rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband. Hizdahr did not seem to be of a jealous nature, but no man would be pleased by the presence of a rival suitor near his new bride. “The boy seems pleasant and well spoken, but …”

“House Martell is ancient and noble, and has been a leal friend to House Targaryen for more than a century, Your Grace. I had the honor of serving with Prince Quentyn’s greatuncle in your father’s seven. Prince Lewyn was as valiant a brother-in-arms as any man could wish for. Quentyn Martell is of the same blood, if it please Your Grace.”

“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet …”

“Sunspear has never been a sea power, Your Grace.”

“No.” Dany knew enough of Westerosi history to know that. Nymeria had landed ten thousand ships upon Dorne’s sandy shores, but when she wed her Dornish prince she had burned them all and turned her back upon the sea forever. “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”

“Dornishmen are notoriously stubborn, Your Grace. Prince Quentyn’s forebears fought your own for the better part of two hundred years. He will not go without you.”

Then he will die here, Daenerys thought, unless there is more to him than I can see.

ADWD Daenerys IX

“I would be happier if you had Unsullied guards about you today, Your Grace,” the old knight said, as Hizdahr went to greet his cousin. “Half of these Brazen Beasts are untried freedmen.” And the other half are Meereenese of doubtful loyalty, he left unsaid. Selmy mistrusted all the Meereenese, even shavepates.

“And untried they shall remain unless we try them.”

“A mask can hide many things, Your Grace. Is the man behind the owl mask the same owl who guarded you yesterday and the day before? How can we know?”

~

Ser Barristan glanced uneasily to left and right. Ghiscari faces were visible on the terraces, looking down with cool and unsympathetic eyes. “Your Grace, I do not like this halt. This may be some trap. The Sons of the Harpy—”

“—have been tamed,” declared Hizdahr zo Loraq. “Why should they seek to harm my queen when she has taken me for her king and consort? Now help that man, as my sweet queen has commanded.”

~

Daenerys would have prohibited contests between women as well, but Barsena Blackhair protested that she had as much right to risk her life as any man. The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented.

[lex1nat0r]

Gracious, I almost missed Spooky Season 2020.

Just kidding, everyone knows Spooky Season goes until the new year. Anyway, instead of posting a movie the day I watched it, here’s a masterpost of all the horror movies I watched in October 2020.

Silent Hill: I remember liking this when it came out and I was young and foolish and didn't actually know a whole lot about the games. Watching it now, it just feels soulless, emptily aping the game without much impact. Has some neat imagery sometimes I guess.

Color Out of Space: It's good! A lot more tense than I was expecting, has the payoffs I was hoping for, and several fun nods (several to mythos stuff, at least one Thing homage). Also some classic Nic Cage freakouts, which are always welcome.

Silent Hill Revelation: Slightly more engaging than the first movie. Nonsensical retcons. The mannequin spider is still the best thing about the film.

Masque of the Red Death: fun visuals! A colorful movie, which fits. The satanism thing was unexpected, but I'm okay with it.

The House That Dripped Blood: No actual blood in this movie! Disappointing! The thing about the house feels like a flimsy reason to make this an anthology film, but the individual stories are fine.

Night of the Living Dead: Still a classic. Still relevant.

Theatre of Blood: Kind of feels like an excuse to get Vincent Price to dress up in weird costumes. A fun, I dunno, proto-slasher movie? Veers into comedy occasionally. Dunno how intentional that is.

WNUF Halloween Special: A fun gimmick, but commits to it a little too hard with all the commercials. And the actual haunted house story doesn't end up being that interesting.

House on Haunted Hill (1959): A wild, absurd ride. Deserves to be a Halloween classic. I cannot recommend it enough.

Scream and Scream Again: I don't actually know if this counts as a horror movie. Stitched together from like two and a half different stories and doesn't quite manage to mesh them seamlessly. At least it has a vat of acid I guess.

As Above So Below: I like how there isn't really an explanation for the creepiness, just an evil series of tunnels. Almost has a cosmic horror vibe, I guess. The shakycam stuff kind of turned me off though.

House of Wax (1953): A good film, but I do kind of wonder if it would have been better not to just show what's going on right away. There doesn't end up being a whole lot of mystery.

House of Wax (2005): A fun slasher film, with all its mid-2000s excesses.

Session 9: A film about literal toxic masculinity, I guess. It's pretty good, I like it's style.

Exorcist III: Has some fun dialog, the exorcism scene is pretty good. There's a long shot that I guess is supposed to be scary that comes off as downright comedic, but I'm not complaining.

The Monster Club: A fun, goofy anthology film with some nice musical numbers. The makeup and effects are cheap but that just adds to the charm.

Horror of the Blood Monsters: Well this is a weird one. All the summaries I saw online say that the astronauts take off to find a cure for the vampire plague on Earth but I don't actually remember that being mentioned. It's mostly colored-over footage taken from a Filipino film.

Battle: Los Angeles: It's, like, fine if you can deal with the military-entertainment complex. The alien designs are okay. Nothing too memorable though.

Snowbeast: Has a surprisingly good bigfoot costume. No gore though, which is disappointing. And not as much mayhem as I was hoping.

From Beyond: I'd really like to recommend this one because it has some great practical effects, but it does get very uncomfortably rapey. So just kinda disappointing.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe: A nice return to the old Mulder and Scully dynamic after the last two seasons of the show. It's basically a standard episode of the show stretched out to move length. I would have preferred it to be a little weirder though.

House on Haunted Hill (1999): Probably works best as a companion piece to the original. Sticks pretty close to the original but takes some twists that mean it's not exactly the same movie. Some of the effects are surprisingly good.

The Blair Witch Project: To me, today, it comes off as people yelling at each other in the woods for an hour and then the movie finally picks up in the last ten minutes when they find the house. I guess I can see how it would be groundbreaking when it came out though.

[cyclone-rachel]

👀

I’m not really working on anything except for the next chapter of Pay the Asking Price right now (because I want the chapter to come out on January 15th, when 3x10 first aired) but here’s the beginning of that chapter!

@ithinkthingsaboutstuff because I think you might like this too

Querl carried three pints of ice cream in his hands, as he walked from the freezer to the living room, and handed two to Kara before settling down on the couch beside her with one for himself.

“Wow.” Kara commented, starting to eat her ice cream, as he slowly did the same. “Six seasons in, and Kira and Odo finally got together.”

“Yes.” Querl said. “However, even though they have faced many challenges in their relationship, it is still questionable whether or not said relationship will last.”

“How can you say that? You saw how he admitted to the fake Kira that he was in love with her in season 3. And you’ve seen how much she cares about him, too.”

“Yes, but they are in the midst of a great conflict- and you, too, know the kind of people that they are. They would uphold their responsibilities above that relationship without question.”

Kara sighed.

“I guess you’re right. But they’re so perfect for each other…”

“If you do want peace of mind on this, you could always look up how things end for them.”

“Never. I wanted to make sure neither of us are spoiled on this.”

“And I am glad that you made that decision, as this has been quite an enjoyable experience.” Querl answered. “Even though television is still a primitive concept, and this program’s depiction of the future is highly inaccurate.”

“Well, it was what they thought the future would look like at the time.” Kara said. “You want to see an even older portrayal of the future? I should take you to Disneyland.”

Querl stared at her.

“…You probably don’t have that in your time, do you.”

“No… there are records that mention it, but its location was assumed to be the headquarters of a Mus musculus- or, house mouse- worshipping cult.”

“Oh.”

“But that is not relevant.” Querl said. “And I should stop interrupting. Are you sure Alex isn’t coming to join us?”

“Yeah, she said the DEO was keeping an eye on something that’s moving toward Earth. Apparently they just passed the moon.” Kara answered, continuing to eat one of her pints of ice cream. “If it’s trouble, she’ll let us know.”

“Right.” Querl said, trying to focus on the program, and isolating his very real fear into one of his thought tracks. This was supposed to be a date- a calming night in with Kara, and what, despite his criticisms, was one of his favorite sources of entertainment. She’d introduced him to it, as she had said he should get educated on the classics, and this one was something both her parents and Winn recommended, but she’d never seen. They were drawn into it together, watching episodes at a time in between their own responsibilities and the occasional other movie that Alex would bring for sister night or Kara would put on during game night.

But all that seemed trivial compared to the science fiction story that was playing out in their lives.

[theonyxpath]

The M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter starts at 2pm Eastern US time tomorrow, Tuesday, April 28th!

We’re looking to create a Deluxe-style book to match the M20 Deluxe on the shelf, so the Kickstarter is to add all the Deluxe bells and whistles. The inside will, of course, feature the full-color design and beautiful art our Deluxe books are known for, and includes these features:

An Operative’s Handbook that provides a detailed overview of life in the Technocratic Union, describing the organization of the Union, the Conventions, and the roles that sympathizers, extraordinary citizens, and Enlightened Operatives play in the overall structure of the Technocracy.

An examination of Technocratic initiatives on a global scale.

Devices, procedures, and hypertech used by the Technocratic Union that explores the Enlightened Science, allowing operatives to apply similar effects in the field, if they have sufficient understanding of the principles that allow these gadgets to function.

A comprehensive list of citizens, cyborgs, operatives, progenitor creations, and allies to use as NPCs.

Storyteller support that explores story seeds and metaplot to shape a chronicle for their needs.

More than a year ago, I polled our original M20 KS backers to see if they even wanted a KS for this project, as well as Victorian M20, and WOOO! did they! Original backers know that we never reached the final Stretch Goal that would have been used to finish and create this book – it was a big one – so I think they’ve been revved up for it for quite some time!

So, we’ve planned the project in order to bring this forward and we hope both those M20 backers and the many folks who discovered M20 since the original KS get a chance to check this out tomorrow!

What Else Are We Doing During Our Shut-In Time?

Titanomachy art by Shen Fei

We’re adding some sales and project options to our current schedule in order to make it easier to buy and play our games during this time when our community has both shut-in and with financial challenges:

The IPR Bundle sale featuring our extra KSed books and Screens bundled together is still ongoing, and you can find the info below in the Blurbs! section featuring our sales partners!

Then, starting Wednesday, all of our Jumpstart PDFs will be free on DTRPG with a new sale we’re doing to give folks a chance to try out our many game lines! If you’ve ever wondered about a line, wanted to try it out, then this is a great chance to get a starting adventure and some pre-generated characters to give it a try with!

Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

We’ve also been looking at ways we can provide lower price-point projects beyond the sales, and we have started a few initiatives with that in mind.

For example, in addition to their larger, planned, PDFs, we’ll be offering some of our current projects broken into separate, smaller, PDFs. We’ll be starting with Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2, and when the single-volume PDF and PoD goes on sale in a couple of weeks, we’ll also offer individual chapter PDFs.

We’re hoping that will allow folks to pick up the chapters relevant to their current gaming for a much reduced cost. We’re also looking at other projects we can offer in the same way, that I’ll announce as we move on them.

For our community that has discovered the wonders of gaming with their friends virtually, through streaming or through Virtual Table Top venues like Roll20 or Astral, we’re building token and adventure/map packs to make that experience easier. I’ve already seen and OK’d packs for Scion, Scarred Lands, and the Trinity Continuum which we’ll have up and available very soon.

(Maybe even this Wednesday?)

Vigil Watch art by Alex Honore

As always, we also continue to look to ways to help the many creators who we rely on for all their phenomenal work on our projects. Especially during this time of uncertainty. So we’re doing another Developer Town Hall Day next week where our Onyx Path crew will be available for our developers to check in with in a couple of designated time blocks since our devs live around the world and some are still doing their full-time jobs.

Our Dev Town Hall last month went great, so we’re hoping this one will be helpful for all our devs as well. This time though, I’m opening up the discussions just a bit to all of you folks.

Please pass on to me any questions you want us to discuss with the devs, and I’ll make sure we bring them up during the chat.

We hope you are all doing as well as can be hoped, and we’re hoping that this time is made a little bit better for you because you have access to our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

The M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter will start at 2pm Eastern US time on Tuesday, April the 28!

Highlights of M20 Technocracy Reloaded include:

An Operative’s Handbook that provides a detailed overview of life in the Technocratic Union, describing the organization of the Union, the Conventions, and the roles that sympathizers, extraordinary citizens, and Enlightened Operatives play in the overall structure of the Technocracy.

An examination of Technocratic initiatives on a global scale.

Devices, procedures, and hypertech used by the Technocratic Union that explores the Enlightened Science, allowing operatives to apply similar effects in the field, if they have sufficient understanding of the principles that allow these gadgets to function.

A comprehensive list of citizens, cyborgs, operatives, progenitor creations, and allies to use as NPCs.

Storyteller support that explores story seeds and metaplot to shape a chronicle for their needs.

Onyx Path Media!

This week features part four of the Trio’s Scion Actual Play sessions!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

In advance of the Kickstarter launch this week, the popular and high quality Mage: The Podcast spoke with Danielle Lauzon and Travis Legge about M20 Technocracy Reloaded:http://magethepodcast.com/index.php/2020/04/25/technocracy-reloaded-kickstarter-preview-with-danielle-lauzon-and-travis-legge/

Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter Preview with Danielle Lauzon and Travis Legge

Back to our regularly scheduled broadcasts, on as ever, we’ve got a lot on Twitch. Matthew was in the audience for the fantastic Scarred Lands: Purge of the Serpentholds last week, and really recommends you check them out!

If Scarred Lands isn’t your thing, that’s okay! We’ve got lots more, including two sessions of V5, Behind the Screen – Chronicles of Darkness, Pugmire – Paws & Claws, Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion, Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale, Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous, Dark ErasWerewolf: The Forsaken, and Chronicles of Darkness – Tooth and Claw!

You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/oY9gGocsTtU

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/rrGUattOO_o1OiLEtvunkM

Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood City – Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/FEYdTKI-NgI

And MORE Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/o_mcjV0uEAs

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Occultists Anonymous are here with a new special Mage: The Awakening series:

Richmond Mini-Series 01: Hubris in Richmond Meet the new Mages for this special short story arc. Drifter the manipulative Mastigos, Amanita the assassin Thyrsus, and Vicar the haunted Obrimos. Something is going on in Richmond, Virginia, and these Mages are barreling right towards it.  https://youtu.be/0x_0K-SqIaQ

Richmond Mini-Series 02: Tele-Commute Vicar duels with an Angel sent to kill him in a church. Drifter speaks with the Arrow Sentinel, Guan Yu, about working together. Amanita begins to research the Seer agent’s plans. https://youtu.be/SyrLzMRY-rI

Here’s the Story Told Podcast first episode in their new actual play series of Demon: The Descent:  The Aggregate Choir Welcome to Berlin, 1971. The Unchained hide themselves in the surveillance state of the GDR in a city under greater scrutiny by mortal eyes than almost any other city in the world. When Demons hear a radio station from the West, long thought silenced by the God-Machine, they gather and begin to investigate…   http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/the-aggregate-choir-file-1

Additionally, Monica Speca joined the Story Told Podcast to dive deep on the Great Houses of the Realm for Exalted 3rd Edition: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/exalted-great-houses-of-the-realm-part-2-with-monica-speca

One of Matthew’s personal favourites, Devil’s Luck Gaming, continues their Werewolf: The Forsaken chronicle over here: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming 

Please do give them a follow!

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS; here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for Android. It will look the same as the current design. My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues. This will be a beta type thing. This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken. We’ll do another Android beta through Facebook. This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to Android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition continues its fantastic sale at IPR, soon to be joined by Game-Line Bundles! Check them out!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week we present the Vigil Watch 2: The Yorling of Mansk PDF for Scarred Lands available in PDF versions on DriveThruRPG on Wednesday!

This Wednesday, we’re also adding two new Art Packs to our Community Content sites! A new Scion Art Pack on the Storypath Nexus, and a new Scarred Lands Art Pack on the Slarecian Vault!

Plus, we might have a few extra surprises for our online gaming friends we’ll announce on Weds!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 The Faithful Undead (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

Manuscript Approval

Post-Approval Development

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy

Tales of Aquatic Terror

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Getting ready for Josh.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red

WoD Ghost Hunters – KS art being worked on.

Aberrant – Contacting and contracting. On the homestretch.

Pugmire Adventure 

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Backer TShirt going out.

Mummy 2

Deviant – Rolling along.

Legendlore – Kickstarter on hiatus.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Tuesday.

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch – Part 2 out Wednesday!

Duke Rollo Book – Yep… laying that one out.

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart 

Pirates of Pugmire – Backer PDF out to backers this week, I think.

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – 2nd Proof.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – At WW/Paradox for approval.

Scion Companion – Just waiting for two tweaked pieces.

Contagion Chronicle

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

At Press

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – PoD proof ordered.

Dark Eras 2 – PoD proof shipping.

VtR Spilled Blood – PoD proof shipping.

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Geist 2e Anthology – PoD proof shipping.

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – PoD proof ordered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

On this date in 1948 was born Frank Abagnale Jr., CEO of Abagnale & Associates and criminal. Check out the film “Catch Me If You Can” for the quick version of his life. Definitely took roleplaying way too far.

[mst3kproject]

607: Bloodlust

Guys.  For the sake of yourselves and everything you love, never look for material related to this movie by searching the tumblr tags for bloodlust.  Just don’t.  While you will find the odd bit that’s actually relevant, you will also find… look, I’m sure your imaginations are equal to the task.  Some of the bonus material this week will be stuff from the episode, but there will also be a few things I found in the tag that just made me go whaaaaaat?.  None of them are gross, I promise, they’re just… odd.

A couple of blond dumbasses, who I think are named Johnny and Betty, and a couple of brunet dumbasses, possibly Jeannie and Peter, decide to have a picnic on a tropical island.  Unsurprisingly this turns out to be the home of a transparently evil Vincent-Price-looking asshole, whose hobby is murdering his guests and taxidermizing their corpses (apparently ‘taxidermize’ is a real word – my spellcheck doesn’t underline it).  Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s drunk flunky and cheating wife have an escape plan, but once that’s been foiled it’s just these idiots against the world’s self-proclaimed greatest hunter.

I am apparently in a minority, but I think this episode’s host sketches are brilliant.  Pearl’s first appearance is classic and Crow ruining Mystery Dinner Theatre is great, but my favourite part is when the SOL’s hoedown descends into anarchy.  I can watch that over and over.  If I ever witness a riot I’m going to be very tempted to just shout, “and now promenade!” and see what happens.

Anyway, The Most Dangerous Game is one of those things they make you read in English class, and like many things I had to read in English class it left me mildly traumatized.  It’s a deeply distasteful story about man’s bloodthirsty nature and how the only way to overcome evil is to sink to its level, and every so often I’ll remember it, or Harrison Bergeron, or The Lottery, and it makes my day seem a little more dismal.  I’m pretty sure nobody ever reads it except high school students and the Zodiac Killer.

So if you were wondering why it took me so long to get around to reviewing this one… well, I felt like I had to revisit the story in order to do justice to a review of this movie, and I really really really didn’t want to do that.  Just thinking about it gives me flashbacks to things like Sonnet 116 and that horrible story in which the floor was both lava and snakes.  But I said every episode and so here I fucking am.

Anyway, my return to The Most Dangerous Game, or at least to its Cole’s Notes, proved very educational – it taught me that not only is Bloodlust a lousy movie, it’s also one of those adaptations that completely misses the point of the work it’s attempting to adapt.  The main theme of The Most Dangerous Game is how the only difference between the hunter and the hunted is which one is in a position of power. Rainsford is himself a big game hunter, and discusses this with his friend Whitney.  Upon finding himself on Zaroff’s island, he becomes the prey, because Zaroff is the one with all the power.  At the end, Zaroff had believed Rainsford is dead, which gives Rainsford the advantage of surprise and turns the tables again.

Bloodlust completely discards this theme.  There’s never any real discussion of the power imbalance. Worse, while Rainsford was an experienced hunter and fighter himself, somebody Zaroff considered a worthy adversary, these four clowns are just young people who blundered into this situation and aren’t even Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s preferred prey.  He doesn’t hunt them like he does his escaped criminals, because he thinks it’ll be a challenge, he does it because the only other alternatives are to straight-up murder them or to let them go, neither of which are acceptable to him.

Rainsford was an expert on traps and tracking, which meant he could offer Zaroff a meaningful  challenge. Of the four young people in Bloodlust, only one of them is kind of barely competent, that being Betty the judo expert.  She’s smart enough to figure out how to get away with breaking the window, and manages to keep her head and chuck the lackey into the vat of acid.  When confronted with the John the Baptist dude, however, she freezes and screams along with Jeannie.  The group survives through nothing but sheer luck.

It was luck that allowed them to get out of the house and then back into it without getting seen.  It was lucky that Vincent-at-half-the-Price chose to go after the drunken sea captain first and the boys later.  It was just good luck that Jondor survived the quicksand and showed up in the nick of time to take revenge on his master.  The supposed heroes are barely involved in their own salvation.  At the end of The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford had to sink to Zaroff’s level and become a murderer.  The four idiots in Bloodlust just stand and watch.

The one kind of interesting spin the movie tries to put on things is when it takes some time to explore why Vincent-at-half-the-Price is the way he is.  He describes how war inured him to killing until he came to consider it a pleasure. This invites us to think about people who become murderers – prevailing opinion seems to be that people like the aforementioned Zodiac Killer are born without compassion, that their killing sprees are inevitable.  Some killers, like BTK or the Green River Killer, have stated themselves that they need to kill and couldn’t put it off forever, even when they managed to take long breaks.  It’s true that many of these murderers come from terrible backgrounds – but other people are abused as children and don’t grow up to kill people.

Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s killing spree is not inevitable.  He claims to have found it distasteful at first but it later became a pleasure as repeated kills eroded the value of human lives in his eyes.  This is actually a bit more thoughtful than Zaroff, who started out killing animals and moved up when it no longer offered him enough of a challenge.  He kills people because he thinks if they can’t escape him then they don’t deserve to live.  Once again, however, this change loses one of the points The Most Dangerous Game was trying to make, which is that killing animals for sport is brutal and pointless.  At the beginning of the story Rainsford and Whitney were on their way to the Amazon to hunt jaguars – not for food, or because the jaguar offers any threat to them, but simply because they can.

So while the source material may have left stains on my young psyche, it at least had something to say.  I will also say that it’s pretty suspenseful, and leaves you honestly worried for Rainsford as Zaroff evades his traps and closes in on him.  Bloodlust, on the other hand, is mostly just boring. You know they’re not going to kill off any of the four protagonists, because the movie just doesn’t have the guts to do it.  It can’t kill the girls because they’re girls, and it can’t kill the boys because then the girls would be sad.  Sandra and the two drunks are nothing but sacrificial victims, because the writers think you can’t have a horror movie without a body count.

Even aside of that, though, this movie would still be boring.  Sandra and Drunk #2 come to the girls’ room (not the boys’ room, because they couldn’t afford another set) to tell them a bunch of things we’ve already figured out for ourselves.  Vincent-at-half-the-Price monologues endlessly as if one of his tactics is boring his guests to death.  We never actually believe that Sandra and Drunk #2 mean to come back for the protagonists, so it doesn’t really matter to us when they’re killed.

I keep wanting to refer to the main characters as ‘the kids’ but I refuse to do so.  They’re at least not as annoying as the cast of your average 80’s slasher film, but they accomplish that mainly by being very bland.  Johnny is Brave, Peter is Nerdy, Betty is Tough, and Jeannie is Scared, and that’s it.  It’s really hard to care about any of them except Betty, who earns a modicum of sympathy by being the only really proactive one (and from my longstanding crush on June Kenney).  Once we realize the movie isn’t going to kill any of them we just stop caring.

I’m not sure what to make of Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s cheating. This seems like they’re trying to make some kind of point with it – he takes a crossbow with three bolts, one for each intended victim, and gives them a gun with one bullet.  This is supposed to be sporting.  But the gun has been disabled, and when he uses the bolts he pulls them out of the corpses, cleans them off, and recycles them.  Since the ending has him just pulling out a gun to shoot his cornered victims at point blank range, I guess the point is that for all he justifies it as a form of sport, really he just likes killing people.  The story managed to say that about Zaroff in other ways.

So yeah, this one really sucks.  Even Mike and the bots couldn’t save it.  There’s a few odd lines that are really funny but most of them are so-so, and there’s stretches when the movie just doesn’t offer them anything to riff.  Watching it without the intermittent relief offered by the host sketches was a chore, and it forced me to re-visit a bad experience from my childhood.  Fuck this movie.

[anthonyguidetti]

Pluto TV: Viacom's Different Answer to Streaming

First, Some Context and History

All the major media conglomerates are beginning to reign in their content from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, and are bringing them to their own streaming services for maximum profits. AT&T, who owns WarnerMedia, Comcast, who owns NBCUniversal, and Disney, who also own Marvel and 21st Century Fox, have all announced that they are developing their own streaming services to house all of their valuable content available for a monthly fee. Want to watch Friends? You'll have to subscribe to AT&T's thing. Want to watch The Office? You'll also have to subscribe to Comcast's thing. They'll both probably cost around $10 a month, and you're also going to want Disney+, the home to Marvel. All of these companies are taking a non-linear subscription approach to delivering content, something that we first fell in love with when Netflix introduced their instant streaming service back when they were better known for delivering DVDs through the mail. One major conglomerate has been left out of the mix: Viacom. The parent company to Viacom is National Amusements, a company that also owns the CBS Corporation. Because Viacom and CBS operate independently, of which negotiations are constantly rumored that they are in talks to join as one, CBS runs their All Access streaming platform with just CBS content, priced at $5.99 with commercials and $9.99 commercial-free. Viacom initially chose to keep their content off streaming platforms in order to please linear cable providers from dropping their channels. This, however, is not a future-proof solution. Viacom has grown to understand the importance of staying relevant through streaming, and now embraces social networking services where they post original content, and clips from current and classic content from their library. There's more money to be made in delivering the full content, as the other conglomerates have noticed, however, Viacom has chosen to acquire a streaming platform rather than develop their own. The one they chose, however, is very different from what the other companies either have or will develop.

Enter a New Kind of Streaming Platform

Meet Pluto TV, a linear streaming platform. Founded in 2013, the platform started out as a YouTube playlist aggregator run on a schedule. The playlists were disguised as channels, complete with channel numbers, and names, with commercials and bumpers in between content. Channels were separated by genres. There was a tech genre with content from various companies, like CNET, with videos randomized. Another example from their music genre was a Weird Al channel, where Al's music videos were on a repeat cycle. The unique part about Pluto TV was the fact that, at the time, the content could be easily found elsewhere, but what was so intriguing for a person like me who is very indecisive is the fact that the content is pre-programmed like regular TV, and it never ends, in addition to being free. As years went by and their funding improved, they moved away from YouTube and into their own hosted streams. This brought more content acquisitions, like Mystery Science Theater 3000, and content from companies like Shout Factory. More news, sports, movies, and TV shows were added over time, and it grew to reach over 15 million monthly users.

Viacom's Acquisition

In January 2019, Viacom announced they had acquired Pluto TV, and in May, brought much of their content older than 18 months onto new channels named after their brands like Paramount, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and so on. They aren't the same national feeds you can watch on cable, but they feature both content from their brands and acquired content. All of this brings further value to Pluto TV for people like myself who want to see more of the content I am familiar with on linear cable. The reason Netflix is as big as it has become is because of syndicated content like The Office and Friends, coincidentally, two shows that air on Viacom's cable channels like Comedy Central and the Paramount Network. People want to watch current content, and the Viacom content can bring in more viewers onto the platform.

Pluto TV's Positives and Negatives

One of the things I love about Pluto TV that no other streaming platform does is have a linear never-ending stream of scheduled content. Netflix, Hulu, and the rest of the streaming platforms are all on-demand only. Sure, they offer autoplay to whatever the platform believes would make sense to play next, or they autoplay the next episode. None of the platforms offer a smart playlist option, where users can either program a never-ending playlist of different shows and movies, or it develops playlists that never end like a TV channel. I'm not sure how many people are with me on this, but I like having something else choose something for me to watch. I don't always know what I want, and many times linear cable doesn't either, but I like having the option to just play a channel and the content shows up.

As far as the negatives go, there's a few.

The linear side of Pluto TV is very well done. The on-demand side, however, could use some work. There's no search function, and it doesn't work like cable, where individual channels get an on-demand feature. You either watch the show when it is scheduled, or you don't. There's a ton of movies from the Paramount library, as well as other distributors, in addition to some TV shows, but if Viacom wishes to position Pluto as their streaming platform to compete with the other conglomerates, this needs to change. Considering Viacom also jointly owns Philo with A&E Networks, AMC Networks, and Discovery, and is an over-the-top online cable provider which emphasizes on-demand content heavily over live TV, maybe they could combine these services, or perhaps develop a paid version of Pluto which is reworked to be a more traditional streaming platform. Any plans they may have in the future are irrelevant. What matters now is Pluto does not feel 100% ready for primetime in the on-demand side.

The other negative is platform instability and interface design. The app on most platforms is heavy to load, and sometimes crashes when changing the channel, or loading a menu on my Roku Ultra. Also, I'm not a big fan of the overall layout of the app, which automatically opens to a guide of the live channels. The guide format works for actual cable boxes you get a company like Comcast or DirecTV, where their remote has a large amount of buttons. With a Roku, Fire TV, or Apple TV, you generally just get arrow keys, an enter button, a back button, and a menu button. As such, I really don't think companies like Pluto, along with Sling and others, have figured out an elegant way to interact with the screen with the limited amount of buttons. Cumbersome is a word I would use for Pluto, and other streaming platforms. The app also opens right away in a channel, meaning without selecting a channel, a show is already playing, which I would like the option to turn off as the app can be slow to respond, so if something inappropriate or loud is playing, you have no way of knowing beforehand what will play. As such, it would be nice if there were an option to turn off autoplay at startup.

One last con: there's no schedule of the channels past around three or four hours, so how am I supposed to wrap my life around Pluto TV when I won't know what is on? There's a ton of great content on Pluto TV, but if I don't know it exists, I'll never find it. I'm sure this is done to prevent piracy, but it would still be nice to have some sort of schedule so I know what will be on.

Overall, I love the idea of Pluto TV, and I love that because it has the financial backing of a large conglomerate, it will continue to greatly evolve into something more competitive. Until that time comes, we have to keep in mind that because the app is free, we can excuse some usability issues as there's a lot of valuable content for the price. Because viewership is growing, I'm sure the app will get better over time, but for right now, be patient. For anyone looking to cut the cord and find a free alternative, an antenna plus Pluto TV is a great value option for consumers who prefer a linear TV platform, but are not looking to pay cable prices.

[fullmetalirin]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Episodes 50-51

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 50: "Death"

As zeppelins rain bombs upon London during World War I, Edward and Hohenheim flee the city. As they watch the attack from a distance, Hohenheim explains that in this world, on the other side of the gate, the science of physics has developed instead of alchemy but, because Edward's soul was transferred over without his body, the Gate of Truth within himself can be used to return to Amestris. Meanwhile, with Hawkeye's help, Mustang has sneaked into the Führer's mansion to confront him and avenge Hughes. Gluttony, moping over Lust's death, is forced by Envy to begin gradually eating Alphonse's armored body to complete the Philosopher's Stone within him so Dante can use the stone to switch bodies with Rosé. Annoyed with Gluttony still mourning the loss of Lust, Dante alchemically destroys his mind so he can be nothing but an eating machine just as he begins gradually eating Alphonse. Wrath, still moping over Sloth's death, tries to intervene by using alchemy so he can use Alphonse to revive Sloth, but Dante has Edward's original limbs removed from Wrath's body so he can no longer perform alchemy in doing so. After repairing his relationship with Hohenheim, Edward returns to Amestris and tries to stop Dante's plans and set Alphonse and Rosé free, only to be distracted by Envy, who begins tormenting him in battle. When Edward angrily demands to see Envy's true form, Envy gleefully obliges, transforming into Hohenheim and Dante's deceased son, causing Edward to hesitate in sorrow. Dante reveals that Envy was the first ever homunculus, created when Hohenheim attempted human transmutation to revive his son who died of mercury poisoning. As Envy admits this is the reason why he hates Hohenheim for abandoning him to start a new family, the homunculus instantly transforms his arm into a blade and heartlessly kills Edward by piercing him through the heart while a horrified Alphonse, Rosé and Wrath watch.

Hm, I forgot he transferred to WWI London. I thought Amestris was equivalent to Nazi Germany.

Ed is impressed by zeppelins and airplanes. Hohenheim says their mechanical engineering is better than in their world, but Amestris has pretty sophisticated manufacturing too. Trains are apparently about a century old, which is about on par with our timeline. I guess you could presume that technology hit a plateau as people figured alchemy was better for more advanced applications.

Bradley keeps his remains in his house. He's read the Evil Overlord List! Selim saw the safe, so Bradley entrusts him with the key. That's pretty smart, since it's unlikely Mustang will think the kid is relevant.

Riza has dispatched Bradley's guards and is at his door. I presume this is a diversion, because we cut to Mustang sneaking in by… jumping over the wall? I'll presume that was alchemy-assisted.

Archer is still not dead.

We cut to Ed and Hohenheim and get my other favorite scene. Hohenheim explains conservation of energy, explicitly drawing a comparison to our very first example: Al fixing the broken radio. The souls of the dead from Earth pass into their world and provide the fuel for alchemy. This makes perfect sense: we already know the Philosopher's Stone, which amplifies alchemy, is powered by souls, so it's only logical that regular alchemy work the same.

Hohenheim explains he really did love Trisha, but left because he didn't want them to see the rot. I think this is a flawed but reasonable explanation. The rot represents more than just itself: it's a mark of his sin, a reminder that this body is not his own and that he's committed atrocities to obtain it. I see this more as him being unable to bear the answer to the inevitable question, "Why are you rotting, Dad?" It's horribly selfish and cowardly of him, but at the same time, it's understandable. Humanity is flawed.

Back in Amestris, Dante needs Gluttony to eat Al to complete the Philosopher's Stone. Apparently Dante designed him to refine red water. However, Gluttony is still BSODing over Lust, so Dante destroys his mind by removing his ouroboros tattoo.

Hohenheim confirms that Dante can't create a Philosopher's Stone on her own.

Hohenheim leaves us with the bright side of Dante's philosophy: you can gain something for nothing too. When a parent loves their child, he says, there need be no cost or reward.

But Ed still clings to equivalent exchange, admitting his only argument is that he doesn't want to believe a sacrifice could go unrewarded. He believes he just has to keep trying.

And then a zeppelin falls on him! He returns through the Gate just in time, but the poor boy he was inhabiting is still certainly dead.

Back in Central, Riza tells Bradley Mustang is after him… why? To get his family out of the way? Bradley goes into the wine cellar to fight Mustang, and the door is alchemically sealed behind him.

Bradley gives basically the same speech as Dante, saying really he's helping people by keeping the Philosopher's Stones from them.

Bradley explicitly says Mustang's fireballs will be less effective in an enclosed space. Thank you!

The Gate takes Wrath's arm and leg, but not the rest of him.

Ah. Ed realizes he used Earth!Ed's life to make the jump.

And now we get confirmation Gluttony killed Marcoh way back then.

Envy has a lot of fun running through forms to taunt Ed.

Alchemy can't be used because the activation of the Philosopher's Stone makes it too reactive. What does "activating" it really mean, though? We haven't seen alchemists need to do anything special to use it before.

Seeing Envy's true form stuns Ed, but… it doesn't look that recognizable? Ed says it looks like Hohenheim, but Hohenheim had a beard, and we just established he was willing to punch his mom's face. I remembered it as him looking like Ed, which would have made more sense. Still, it's a neat reveal. I've heard Brotherhood fans say it's a worse motivation than the one he has in Brotherhood, but, eh, his Brotherhood motivation was clever in theory but felt totally contrived and out of left field. Daddy issues might be cliché, but it's fitting for the more human homunculi, and it makes for a powerful parallel with Ed – further emphasized by them both being his children. I still think it'd have been stronger if we didn't learn it earlier, though.

Also, I do like that Envy violates talking-is-a-free-action to shank Ed while he's distracted.

Dante says Envy was the first homunculus ever created, so I guess Dante and Hohenheim were the first alchemists?

Rose appears to break out of her trance upon seeing Ed die.

Let's update our homunculi list real quick before the last episode:

Greed is wasted.

Lust defects, and is killed out of vengeance for a loved one.

Sloth is paralyzed.

Gluttony refuses to eat, and is made a slave to base desires.

This one is actual irony. He's spent the whole series only caring about eating things, but now, when he's actually ordered to, his human emotions get in the way. He's killed by an absence of gluttony, and becomes the embodiment of gluttony – a slave to base instincts. I find that a lot more clever than "Gluttony is eaten" – that is just so utterly trite and banal, you don't get points for that.

Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 51: "Laws and Promises"

Alphonse breaks free and attempts human transmutation as he sacrifices himself - using what's left of his Philosopher's Stone within him to revive his brother. Envy appears at the Gate of Truth, having failed to stop Alphonse, and encounters Edward's soul. Learning that Hohenheim is still alive on the other side, Envy gleefully decides to head through to kill him against Edward's advice, disappearing into the distance as a green, serpentine dragon. Edward reawakens to see his body fully healed as well as his right arm and left leg are now flesh and blood. However, Alphonse has been taken by the Gate of Truth as a consequence. After having Rosé take an injured Wrath with her and flee to Resembool, Edward attempts human transmutation, offering his own life, allowing Alphonse to return to his body, albeit his memory is recalled up to when the brothers tried to resurrect their mother. Meanwhile, Mustang successfully kills Führer Bradley with the help of his son Selim, who unintentionally weakens his adoptive father by bringing him the remains of the human from which the Führer was originally based. The Führer responsively strangles his son to death out of anger before Mustang takes his advantage. As he takes Selim's body and leaves the mansion, Mustang is confronted by Archer, who apparently shoots him in the left eye. Hawkeye arrives in time to save Mustang's life and kills Archer. Dante escapes into an elevator to find the Führer to help her exact vengeance, only to be devoured by Gluttony, who fails to recognize her. Alphonse is back in Amestris now and Edward is pulled through the Gate of Truth and is currently in Munich. The brothers both resolve to reunite again someday.

Dante snarks that maybe Ed just didn't pay enough to deserve survival – "We always come just a little short of the price."

We actually see Mustang drawing the transmutation circle with his blood. So much cooler than him doing it offscreen!

Al destroys Gluttony's jaw. Gruesome.

Mustang successfully destroys Pride. Since he didn’t use a sealing circle, I’m guessing he really did exhaust all of Pride’s lives. See, that’s acceptable to do once as a climactic cool moment. Notice also that we skipped straight to the end instead of watching him use fireballs for two minutes straight.

Riza saves Mustang by being the only person smart enough to shoot at Archer's human half.

Envy jumps into the Gate in pursuit of Hohenheim, and even manages to shake off the souls trying to eat him. Hardcore.

After the scene with Dante and Gluttony, we see the elevator open to an empty chamber. Creepy.

Ed's lost limbs are restored when he's resurrected, but it costs all of Al's Philosopher's Stone.

Sheska says Amestris is no longer a military dictatorship, but the current wars will still continue. However, they've become more tolerant towards Ishbalans.

Roy has an eyepatch. Just like Bradley! Riza said her outing him and then doubling back was part of the plan, but I'm not sure how or why.

How did Hohenheim get to Germany? The year is 1921, so he somehow survived 7 years even though his body looked to be at its limit.

Ed thinks Einstein's theories are bunk. Heh.

Ed says he planned to offer his life as the price for restoring Al. The fact that he didn't makes him wonder if he got something for nothing.

The ending spiel is a twist on the standard opening spiel: Al recognizes that equivalent exchange is not the law of the world, but he still hopes that hard work will pay off, and that one day they'll be reunited: a promise, not a law.

Conclusion

I think this is a good finale. The cutting around is a bit disorienting – it perhaps might have been better to resolve Mustang's side of things earlier? – but not uncalled for. I like how Mustang is actually challenged and injured in his fight scene instead of just effortlessly coasting his way to victory; he's cool without being overpowered. The final boss fight with Envy is a bit meh, but huge fight scenes were never what I was watching for in the first place (and Mustang vs. Pride kind of has us covered on that front). In terms of how this interacted with and resolved the story's major themes and questions, I think it was excellent. We learn what is behind the Gate, we learn the truth behind alchemy, we get discussion on the theme of equivalent exchange, and the protagonists' driving motive, the restoration of their bodies, is resolved. It's an open-ended finale, but not an unsatisfying one. The villains are defeated, the characters have learned important lessons, and they're going to keep on living.

Mustang's side is probably the weakest part here – Cyborg Archer is really weird and random and seemingly just there to add more tension and battles. His fight with Pride feels a bit truncated since we keep cutting away from it. I'm still not totally clear what his plan was or if it made sense, and it was very dumb of Ed not to tell him how to fight homunculi. I do like that Riza saves him in the end, though.

Ultimately, this is again the rare OG arc that I feel could have been better spread out over more episodes. Getting all the characters into position is rather rushed and relies on a bit of contrivance, and the finale itself feels like it's trying to say more things than it really has time for. But I'm still happy with what we got.

Now, this is more subjective, but I find the dual sacrifices way more emotionally meaningful here. I plan to do an ending comparison post where I will discuss this further, but for now, I think it's very powerful that Al finally has his moment of triumph. He's spent the whole story as a damsel in distress, even getting literally turned into a MacGuffin for this finale, only ever watching helplessly as people make horrific sacrifices for him while he can do nothing to save them. So here and now, he says screw it, for once he has the power and he's going to use it to save the person he loves more than anything in the world. It's so strong that it's an absolute mirror of what Ed did for him, and extremely meaningful that in a series that started with and revolved around the impossibility of resurrection we end with a true one.

But Ed, stupid, stupid Ed, can't be content with what Al gave him and refuses to learn his lesson, so he puts them back where they started. I'm not sure how I feel about that – it makes him into a very stagnant and stubborn character who refuses to learn the narrative's lessons even when they've been so firmly pounded into his skull. The point of Dante's speech, to me, was that you cannot keep throwing good lives after bad – Ed has hurt himself and so many others on this journey, justifying it to himself with sunk cost fallacy. The correct option is to cut his losses and go home, to be happy with what he still has instead of throwing away even more. Even the very fact he planned to kill himself to bring Al back shows he's still ignoring him – Al has said over and over again he doesn't want Ed to do that. Are these brothers doomed to be trapped in an endless spiral of self-sacrifice for the other? But… I gotta say, Al staying dead would have been too much of a downer. They've been through so much that they do deserve a miracle. (There's that stories-as-just-worlds striking again!)

I actually have never seen the movie, so maybe it resolves some of these things! I shall see. But for now, let's complete our list…

Greed is wasted.

Lust defects, and is killed out of vengeance for a loved one.

Sloth is paralyzed.

Gluttony refuses to eat, and is made a slave to base desires.

Envy kills himself out of jealousy.

Pride is killed by his son.

Wrath outlives them all.

An ironic pride death is easy – hoist them by their own petard. This show takes it a step further, and has Pride undone by his namesake. I'm pretty sure it is said somewhere that Selim is his biological child in this continuity, and that the capacity to sire children was one of Pride's human traits. That makes it deeply ironic that the son is the reason he dies.

I never bought Wrath's Brotherhood death as "irony". Wrath being killed by wrath… I don't even know if that's poetic, it just kind of… is. We say those who live by the sword will die by the sword, and for good reason. Wrath dying to wrath isn't unexpected or at all clever. The volatile, self-destructive sin being the only one to live, though? That's irony.

And oh my god you guys Brotherhood!Envy kills himself out of PRIDE not jealousy, he could not have been more explicit about it! Know your sins if you're gonna be smug about what deep symbolism they are!! This one is still a bit of a reach – wrath is a closer fit – but there is a case to be made that he is doing this out of a desire for the connection and satisfaction that other children have yet was denied to him.

Lastly, I think you could make a case that Dante embodies all the sins and is undone by all of them simultaneously. She believes herself above humanity, yet she is easily frustrated, slothful in her attitude towards the homunculi, envious of others' bodies, and greedy, lustful, and gluttonous for life and power. Wiping Gluttony is an act of impatience, frustration, greed, and arrogance in the assumption she could still control him.

Even aside from that, though, this is such a fitting end for her. She's spent her whole life plotting in the shadows, never allowing herself into a position of personal harm, and just as she tries to slink away to do it again she's undone by her own tangled web. Work behind the scenes, die behind the scenes.

[januaryisnotanartist]

“Nirvana in Fire” watch summary

Spoilers NOT Welcome: (I’m posting these to help myself keep track of where I am, not so people can spoil things for me please and thanks.)

Episodes 13 & 14

With the New Year upon them, Prince Jingyan visits his mother: Detective Concubine Jing, who catches him up with her investigation. Jingyan takes the news to MCS, revealing that the Empress was non-fataly poisoned and is thus unable to attend the New Years Ceremony as planned.

Meanwhile, Fei Liu refuses to eat the Mandarins Yujin brought over from house Yan, because he doesn't like the smell. Yujin also brought gossip of plot relevance.

Prince Yu attempts to help one of his people, but organising a son swap, but Marquis Ning catches wind of it, and manages to take out two of Yu's men for the price of one.

Meng Zhi manages to roll really high on perception during his security sweep of the Ceremonial Stage for the upcoming New Years Celebration, and finds a hidden trap while MCS manages to put together the clues and confront the perpetrator:

Yujin's absentee dad of the year: Marquis Yan Que

Yan Que tells MCS everything, including his Motive, which is his friendship with MCS's deceased parents, aunt Chen and cousin prince Qi.

MCS reminds Yan Que that he still has Yujin, and Yan Que tries to be a better dad.

During the New Year's Feast most family tensions run high, and Fei Liu is almost deprived of vital dumplings, but MCS comes to the rescue... just not the rescue of the guards who have been entangled in Marquis Ning's latest scheme.

With several Imperial Guards killed just outside the palace walls, the Emperor once again shows off what a douchebag he is by ordering Meng Zhi to solve the crime in thirty days, before promptly having him flogged 20 times before he can even start while the clues are fresh.

MCS and Duchess hear the news and begin to plan while Fei Liu enjoys the Mu family gardens.

[hydecurator]

Must-See TV: Sotheby’s Sale (Episode 1)

https://www.sothebys.com/en/series/masters-week-1?locale=en

I’ve discovered a new form of engrossing pandemic-era online viewing. This week is my favorite week for January sales. Late in the month, various auction houses and dealers in New York host Masters Week. This year, despite a global pandemic, Sotheby’s outdid itself and watching the first of the sales today was, at times, edge-of-the-seat thrilling. 

In a normal year, like the start of last year, I like to go down to New York on the weekend before the sales and preview the lots. The galleries at Sotheby’s and Christie’s are hung just like a museum. The walls are sometimes painted to enhance the paintings and the lighting presents them at their best. The only difference is that the labels include auction price estimates. It’s a form of glorious window shopping for me. I dream of what I could buy for the collection, if.... It is also an educational experience for me. For this is the week when scholars and curators of European paintings, sculptures, and drawings come to town from across the country, if not the world. You never know whom you might bump into in the salerooms. Often you can overhear or join, if you dare, an interesting discussion about the attribution, quality, or associations of a work up for sale. One thing to bear in mind is that not everyone agrees with the attributions of the auction house experts. Last year, I tagged along with my former professor, David Stone, as he dissected the Old Master drawings on offer at Christie’s. He introduced me to a curator from The Morgan with whom I discussed some Hyde drawings. All useful networking.

Christopher Easton (English, Exeter), Anglican Communion Cup, 1582, silver (6 3/8 in.). Chicago, Loyola University Museum of  Art, Martin D’Arcy, S.J. Collection. 2013-05. Photography by Michael Troppea.

I tend not to attend the actual sales, which happen during the week. I have never myself bid at auction. When at the Loyola University Museum of Art, I really wanted to acquire a Protestant communion cup to contrast with the museum’s Catholic chalices, I had to commission an agent to bid for me. The auctions were in England and it took us two attempts to secure one. My agent, Wynyard Wilkinson, had to drive to opposite ends of the country to see the pieces and then bid for them. We were ultimately successful at a sale held by a small regional auctioneer, whom many collectors simply overlooked. 

Today, there were a number of works I was interested to follow. The first six pieces were sold by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. The museum has decided to refocus itself towards Modern and Contemporary art. Over the last few years, they have steadily sold off works that fall outside those parameters. Deaccessioning collection pieces is permitted under rather strict guidelines. The rules have been eased a little during the pandemic because of how badly lockdowns have effected museums’ incomes but, in general, a museum should only deaccession works that fall outside their mission or, are duplicates not of exhibition quality, or irreparably damaged. The funds generated should only be used to acquire more art. 

The Master of 1518 (Flanders, active 1518), Adoration of the Magi, early 16th century, oil on panel (17 7/8 by 13 1/2 in.). Sotheby’s sale, New York, January 28, 2021, lot. 1. Photo credit: Sotheby’s.com

The Albright-Knox should be quite pleased. Four of the six pieces, among them the one illustrated here, sold for a total of $3,163,100. Some of that is commission for Sotheby’s, but still, the museum got roughly $2.5M to put towards new pieces of Modern and Contemporary art. 

Had I been able to go down to the city and stroll the galleries, I may have seen or heard from others why two of Buffalo’s pieces didn’t reach their reserve prices. Were the reserves too high? Did collectors and curators not think either their quality or their attributions were quite right? Perhaps, they just weren’t to anyone’s taste. Selling at auction can be a gamble. You need at least two people, who really want a piece, to bid it up. The museum could wait to see if tastes and the market change, or it might negotiate a private sale after the auction.

At a normal sale, the auctioneer stands at a podium at the front of the saleroom. Major pieces hang on the walls and each piece is brought to the front, in turn, as the bidding takes place. For today’s sale, however, the auctioneer was in a room in New York on his own, watching screens linked to salerooms in New York, London, and Asia. In those rooms, in place of rows of bidders, there were tiers of Sotheby’s staff, standing physically distanced, holding telephone receivers to their ears. They spoke to invisible bidders, and, when instructed, called out a price, raised an arm, or simply shouted “Bidding.” 

“What’s so gripping about that?” you ask.

I have learnt to sit towards the back in saleroom to take in the scene. Admittedly, I see only the back of bidders, but, unlike in the movies, you really do have to make a pretty obvious gesture to catch the attention of the auctioneer. You’re not going to accidentally buy a Picasso by absent-mindedly tugging at your ear or scratching an itch. Salerooms are busy, and surprisingly noisy, places. People come and go freely; quite a few chat away about all sorts of things unrelated to the sale. The auctioneer is a combination of master of ceremonies and instigator and coaxer. Unlike a conductor, he has no score. He doesn’t know, for sure, how the sale will go, or from which direction the bids will come. He has to monitor the bidders in front of him, the bank of staff manning telephones to the side, and a screen, suspended from the ceiling, indicating online bids. And what has always captivated me about an auctioneer at work is that whereas a conductor keeps time, the auctioneer makes time. Time in a saleroom is surprisingly fluid and flexible and that was masterfully on display today with this online sale.

Today’s auction was sponsored by Bulgari. Sotheby’s staff in New York wore Bulgari jewelry. In the midst of bidding, the auctioneer drew attention to the glint of a jeweled bracelet on one staffer’s wrist, to glistening earrings, a stunning brooch, or an eye-catching neckless on another’s. He introduced the models to us by name and title. The staff making bids were called out too. Alex in London, by the by, was a year ahead of me at undergraduate. A fun fact I learnt, of no earthly relevance to the lots, is that there are two English Georges in the New York office. Thus the auctioneer made time, created moments in the seeming onward rush of bids for Sotheby’s staff to coax the bidder at the end of the telephone line to keep in the race. In this extra moment there’s still a chance, for that lucky final bid that will clinch it. 

Adding to the drama, at least on my computer screen, was a clever engineer’s manipulation of windows. Salerooms came to the fore and were relegated in time with the bidding. New York outbids London. Here’s Asia jumps in. Two sale rooms are stacked, one over the other, as bids are batted back and forth. At times, it got as thrilling as Wimbledon or the New York Open. Tennis for a Tiepolo.

Sandro Botticelli (Italian,1445/5-1510), Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, n.d., tempera on poplar panel (23 by 15 ½ in.). Sotheby’s sale, New York, January 28, 2021, lot 15. Photo credit: Sotheby’s.com.  

The sale of Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, was breathtaking in the sums bandied about, but actually quite sedate in execution. Bidding started at $70M and increased at increments of $2M, topping out at $80M ($92.184,000 with commission). Even though it is extremely rare for such an archetypal example of early Renaissance portraiture to come on the market these days, there obviously aren’t too many collectors or institutions with the wherewithall to bid for one. 

Much more exciting was to watch the bidding for one piece that started at $450,000 and reached $1.65M. With commissions, etc., it cost its new owner over $2M. Before the auction, Sotheby’s had posted an sale estimate of $700,000-$1M. The bidding for a small Dutch work, measuring 10 x 7 1/2 inches, began at $30,000 or so, breezed past the upper estimate of $90,000, and finally came to a breathless stop at $390,600, including commission. I’ll tell you what these two works were and why I was interested in them in Episode 2 of your must-read Hyde blog.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch,1606 – 1669), Abraham and the Angels, 1646, oil on panel (6 ¼ by 8 ¼ in.). Sotheby’s sale, New York, January 28, 2021, lot 9. Photo credit, Sotheby’s.com.

One mystery I can’t explain is the unexpected withdrawal from the sale of its star lot, no 9, Abraham and the Angels by Rembrandt van Rijn, Sotheby’s had hyped it with a promotional tour around its international salerooms and online (https://www.sothebys.com/rembrandt). But oh-so discreetly, referring only to its lot number, the auctioneer announced at the start of the sale that number 9 had been withdrawn. More to come on that, I hope and expect. So, keep reading your Hyde blog!

[daynamartinez22]

Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 315

Click on the video above to watch Episode 315 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

What’s up everybody, and welcome to your reason to like Wednesdays. As always, my partners and I are here to bring you what’s working in SEO and mark to market to answer your question, what’s working online, whatever it is that’s working. That’s what we’re going to ask your questions on. Whatever is not working for you. Hopefully, we’ll work it out.

And as you can see, probably if you’re watching this live, we have a new new in the show watching it on replay, we have a new person joining us today. It’s my pleasure to introduce se, to all of you She is the person who has been working with Bradley and me behind the scenes. So we can bring you the new and improved syndication Academy, so se, say hello to the world, tell them who you are, where you’re from all that good stuff, let them know who you are. Okay, hello, everyone, I’m a bit excited. So I will need to apologize for any type of that I make type I can call it so while I speak. I’m not an English native speaker. I’ve been working with the syndication Academy three Oh, it will be released, hopefully soon, actually, later than we thought it would in the beginning, but it is taking a bit longer however it will be soon available. Um, Marco says I’m going to replace Bradley, but I’m ofcourse only replaced him as a number, I cannot possibly replace Bradley as a character. So to introduce myself a little bit, I am 28 year old obedient girl. But 28 in two days, actually. And I’m really new in this whole SEO thing. My name is se but I don’t know much about it. I’m starting to I’m learning I’ve been learning the, for the couple, three months, I’ve been working with it. And in a way, it will probably be relatable to you since what I’m learning is new for me as well. So I will try to explain it in the way that I understand it. So you will be able to understand it even better than you would from a professional person like Bradley, because he knows all the terminology. While for a beginner, it might be a bit difficult. So I really hope you guys will enjoy the final result results.

Well, Happy birthday. Thank you. In today’s Actually, yeah. Happy early birthday. And thank you, thank you for all your hard work. I know you’ve been hard at work, people don’t see what you’re doing. But you know, we keep track. We see what you’re doing. We’re trying to help you out. And I’m glad you mentioned that because the reason why we went and got you is because you had no idea what SEO was, you know, listen, if you can go through the training, apply it and show people how it works and make it work, then there’s no reason why anyone else can take the same training and do exactly what you did. So thank you, and just hang out in case anybody has had any questions or whatever, or just hang out with us for the rest of the year. Welcome to stay. And as I see you on my screen from left to right, I’m gonna go through the rest of my partners. Let them say hello, Chris. What’s up, man? Hey, doing good here.

Yeah, excited for all the Black Friday stuff that is upcoming, but I’m pretty sure we’ll talk about it in a bit. So yeah.

Thanks, man. Bradley. Man. I see you next What’s up? Uh, yeah, I’m good. You know, thanksgiving tomorrow, I’m looking forward to that. It’s like my favorite holiday because the food is amazing.

I’ve got we always kind of get together with family. I’m a big my, my sister and her in laws, or my in laws, I should say. We always go out to their house and they have some huge spread. And it’s it’s amazing. So I’m really looking forward to that. But just a quick note, SEO SEO. I could see that being a brand se SEO name now that I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. It just kind of worked out that way. So anyways, glad to have you. Welcome to our Hump Day Hangouts and look forward to seeing what the syndication Academy update. version three looks like when it comes out. So you know, I’ll be working closely with you over the next several weeks or a couple of months really, or whatever to get it. Get it finalized. But um, so far it’s been good thing for someone.

And then I see that somebody let her Nan back in. Yeah, man. The guy should end you guys shouldn’t. What’s happening, everybody. Thank you, Marco, for seeing. Thank you se for being here. It’s excited to have you on the team. Thank you, everybody that’s watching this live and everyone that’s watching the recording as well. And yeah, excited for what’s coming up for Black Friday. So really excited to see how that comes out. So that’s I mean, I’m glad you mentioned that because anyone who’s on our list, it already has Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday available, and so they got an early start on the holidays.

So guys, if you’re on our list, check for that mail, check your spam, make sure it didn’t go in and make sure you got whitelisted in case you got another email coming, because we’re gonna have goodies all through the weekend and on Monday May be extended a little bit more. It depends, you know, you know how we do the due guys. And as you can see, I’m still Groundhog Day.

I can’t help it, man. I like it’s a no, it’s the price I pay for the life I live. What can I say man? Yeah, somebody. Somebody’s got to do it. And so with that, guys, let’s go to the questions. Bradley. Okay, cool. Let me grab the screen.

Standby. One moment. We got all right. Y'all are see my screen, correct? Yep, we’re good. All right.

Not a whole lot of questions, but it is the day before Thanksgiving. So I’m not surprised. If we get done with questions early guys. We’ll just wrap it up early. I’m sure everybody’s looking forward to apparently the night before Thanksgiving is one of the biggest drinking days in the US.

Is There Such Thing As Too Many Links When Creating MYGB Short Links, GSite, PR, And Citation Pages?

So I can imagine a bunch of people are gonna go get hammered anyways. So anyway, starting with Ivan, he says hi SM crew when it comes to boosting properties, like the mgib shortlinks, along with the G site, organization, PR page, and other citations and assets. Is there such a thing as too many links? My thought was that if everyone is building tiered links, it will devalue the sites over time. A Marco I think that’s a great one for you. What do you think is there’s so such a thing as too many links. We’re about to find out as I’ve built software. And I just broke it today at creating one, one plus 300 and 316 zeros links.

That was the limit, I ran into the 64 bit limit on a PC. And so I’ll have to rework that. But we’re about to find out what Google’s limit is as far as links and when we can come back and talk about it from what I’m seeing. And we’ve done of course, you know, but the million link tests on DC plumber, and the you know how keep Melanson earlier this year came in and he mentioned his test his million link test, then I ran another million link test. And then Rob came in with it with 10 million, like, and we’re talking pure spam, right? Yeah, it’s any type of link building that you do is a spam because you’re not supposed to be building links. And it just seems that the more you give Google the merrier. here’s, here’s what I found. When Google tells you not to do something, you have to go find out why. They tell you don’t don’t do this. So you got to go. Why are they telling me not to spam, and then you come to find out because it works really well. Now the whole point is don’t get caught. Because if you get caught, you get mad Smackdown. So if link building works, then it stands to reason, by logic, if we do more of those links that work, then it’s going to work even better. What the threshold is, would be, for example, if you start out ranking a website like Amazon, for the keyword, Amazon, they’re going to come and bitch and moan then they’re going to come and look at why you’re out ranking amazon for the keyword Amazon.

And then that’s your problem. But as far as I know, and as far as I understand how it all works, building links is alive and well. tiered link building works. Even better, it’s it works phenomenally well; iframes plus link building is killing it. So the key word in all of that is link building. Now, Ivan, take that with a grain of salt. I’m not saying for you to go out and order 100 million GSA links from Fiverr. Because if you aim those straight at us that you’re gonna kill yourself, you’re gonna choke yourself off. It’s just totally unnatural for your website to receive those. What we do is we filter them. And we don’t worry, like, people get really anal about about indexing. Like we don’t care. If we want if we do 10 million links, we know that a portion of those are going to index naturally. Another portion of those are going to get indexed by dedhia. And another portion will just end up in in whatever digital space things end up in. We don’t care. We know what the effect is going to be. Not only of those, but the ones that we build up behind those over time. I here’s his my thought, yes, everyone is building tiered things for a reason. And they’re working for a reason. What we’re doing is we build PageRank into the ranking score algorithm. And then it’s the art of art that takes over activity, relevance, trust and authority. That makes everything work, absent any of these things. And you could have problems if you incur a manual. But when you look at your little dinky website, in the website, and I say thank you could be making a couple of million, which is nothing on the web. And nobody’s going to pay attention to you. Unless, you know, just, it’s just one of those random things where it pops up. And you get on the list of people to be looked at manually. But think of the millions of websites that are on that list for manuals to get a look at by a person

so that they can tell what it is that you’re doing. If you’re good enough at hiding it. If you’re good enough at filtering, it won’t go past that. It won’t go oh, I don’t see anything wrong here. The guy just did what he’s supposed to be doing. more power to you.

Bradley, in all honesty, I don’t see any issues with link building right now. Unless she get caught LinkedIn. Yeah. Which by the way, I just have to give you a shout out Marco because I started watching the most recent heavy hitter club webinar last evening, I got to about 46 minutes before I ended up pausing it and I’ve got to finish watching it, but was damn good. So anyways, a very, very good webinar talking about, you know, what you talked about in it. And so I would encourage people that are looking to get the best kind of results from what we talked about, like the heavy hitter club is insane. Marco and Robert, just, it’s just crazy what you guys give away in there. It’s insane. So just want to give a shout out for that.

What’s The Best Way To Build Links To Pass The Most Value Across The Entire Domain?

All right, next question is from Christian says question for Marco, another one, what’s the best way to build links to pass the most value across the entire domain? I read somewhere about link building to the XML sitemap, but this seems unnatural. Yeah, and I wouldn’t recommend that either. Because link building, the XML sitemap is directly linking to your domain. I mean, if you’re I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t recommend that. I know I wouldn’t.

But this seems a natural would love any opinions on this thing. So Morgan, what do you say on that? It can have great effect, because you’re building links directly to all of the links on your website. The problem is that you’re building links directly to your website and through all of the links on your website. What we would do is we would take that XML sitemap and iframe it on a G site, of course, and link built to the G site.

You know, that’s not my problem. So I’ve never done that iframe to a sitemap. Yeah, I’ll be damned. Can’t believe I’m not giving much away. Huh?

I didn’t say that.

We have to test that. I even thought to do that, man. Nevermind. But yeah, dude, we do everything through the power shield. Everything that we do is done through the SEO power shield. And so why wouldn’t we go and put that on the shield? Right? So now we’re shielding ourselves off from incurring a penalty cuz he’s an iframe iframes don’t pass penalties.

And then you bang.

You know, get a that is set up, set a bunch of thoughts off in my head.

This category Sitemaps post Sitemaps tag Sitemaps. There’s video Sitemaps image image sitemap. There’s all kinds of stuff you could do with those if you can iframe Sitemaps. And I never even thought about that. That’s insane. That is not it.

Keep it a secret.

Don’t tell anyone publicly.

What Are Some Good Tips On How A Starting SEO Agency Get Consistent Leads?

Abdul’s Up next, for those starting an SEO agency. What are some good tips to get consistent leads dried LinkedIn and some video audits was zero success. So far along with Upwork.

I would recommend video email, video lead gen system, there’s a few different ways that like our product called video lead gen system is a method that I’ve used to land clients I started, I really developed the first version of it that I used for many years, way back in 2012.

That was very time intensive, it was very effective. I was getting consistently a 35% response rate on cold emails. But it was very slow. So in other words, like I would, I would always do a video emails in batches of 10. And I would get on every single time I would do a prospecting campaign with a batch of 10 video emails that were customized for each recipient, I would get either three or four responses, right And out of those three or four, I would typically close at least one but sometimes to two of those responses into some sort of retainer model or lead generation. You know, they would become lead buyers or whatever it was that I was I was approaching them for. So that’s why I say 35% because every time I did 10 it would either be three or four responses.

About two years ago, I updated video Legion system to make it more to basically add in another module that talks about how to streamline the process a lot better, to make it way more efficient and you can use a VA for a lot of it.

To where you can just record, you know, what’s called a common. A common section or common video, like like there’s going to be a big portion of the video is going to be common to all of the recipients. And it’s just the intro that is unique to each recipient. So the intro can be very short, like 90 seconds or less so that therefore you can literally record a whole bunch of intros to unique to each recipient, in very, very short period of time and then have a VA do all the other work the splicing of the intro to the common video, and then even do the emailing and everything else. And all of that process is taught in video lead gen system. More recently, the PO foo live 2020 art. So our live event kofu live 2020. So our live event from this year, I did another prospecting training on setting up what I call a prospecting machine. It’s using the high level platform, it’s freaking fabulous. I’ve been able to use cold emails, not even video emails, but just straight cold emails and get a 30% response rate, which is insane for cold prospecting. And it works really, really well. And I taught that specific method, including all the process Doc’s on how to build that out in high level. And everything is part of my POFU Live presentation, which is available in the POFU Live 2020 recordings. So those are the two products that I would recommend that you check out because that’s exactly how I prospect and I do a lot of prospecting. I’ve more recently, it’s been for lead buyers for my lead gen assets, you know, I’ve got a bunch of leads coming in that I needed to monetize. So I’ve been doing it for lead generation, but in about probably right after the first of the year, I’m going to be going really heavy on prospecting for some activity based services for Tree Service contact, contractors not doing like full on SEO and everything else. But like doing like GMB posts and video ads, I’m getting really heavy into YouTube ads for local right now. And that’s a service that I want to provide. So it’ll be kind of like a lesser expensive service. So I’m going to be doing a ton of prospecting and I’m going to kind of repurpose the high level prospecting machine for that. And that will be updated and added to the POFU Live recordings. And again, that’s probably gonna wait till January to start really prospecting heavy for that. But I’m just telling you that because both of those products have been very successful, like those methods, excuse me have been very successful for my own business, my own agency, my own lead generation business. So I would highly recommend that you check those out, and know that it’s going to be updated once again in January the POFU live recordings anyways, and maybe video lead gen system as well, with the, with my results from my new prospecting campaign that I’m going to commence with on in January. So anybody else want to talk about? Yeah, I tried LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and I’m surprised that he had zero success. But was it free? Or was it Abdul I need to know if he tried the paid or the free? LinkedIn? Cuz cuz through the through the paid? Like, you’ll get notified when there are leads available in the air you choose? And profinder? Yeah, LinkedIn profile profile. Yeah, but here’s the interesting part. But you can change the areas, you can change that, like, I was doing Virginia, because we had a I had a phone number. Then I went and got a phone number in New York. And I changed it and I changed the area. And I got leads from New York. And it was really interesting, because you’re supposed to submit a bid but I but I would do is a you know, let’s set up a call. Let’s let’s do call so I can properly go over what your needs are. So I would get them on the call. And and once you get them on the call, and they see who you are what you do. And you can you show them it, here’s the the most important part of anything that you’re doing is you have to be able to show that you can do what you say you’re going to do. Yeah, you can’t just tell them, this is what I’m going to do for you. And then you have nothing backing up what you’re saying, like I could take them to clients and all of these different things that I have to show, this is what I can do for you give me 90 days. And at the end of those 90 days, then we’ll discuss what my fee is going to be because it’s never it’s never going to be as low as those first 90 days. Right. I’m really surprised seeing that the 06. So maybe we should do something with that LinkedIn profinder.

I don’t know. So something to think about. I don’t have time to do it. But when I tried it, I did have success. So that’s just a couple other things came to mind as Marco was talking and you know, there’s the old tried and true method of going to like local meetups, lead share groups, that kind of stuff. You can go to meetup.com And I mean, I’m assuming if you’re in the US, you can go to meetup.com and you can probably find a local lead sharing groups, your chamber of commerce, Local Chamber of Commerce like that, that in person networking, it works you can get local clients that way I prefer to stick with within a particular industry now which is the tree service industry or or tangent industries like you know, land clearing, perhaps landscaping, you know some other things like that, but primarily Tree Service stuff. And so because of that I can’t stick to just local areas. So you know, I’ve developed my own method which I talked about the video lead gen systems that works really really well. But something else would be like using you know, inbound marketing from you know, ads you set up your own and I thought we talked about this in two x your agency as well.

The fool the first part 2xyouragency.com if you go there, you can, you can check out our training for two x your agency. But we talked about there’s three parts to that there’s the pipeline, there’s the results, and then in growth or scaling. So in other words, that whole training is divided up into three sections. The first section being completely about filling your pipeline, as an agency, that’s the most important thing. You know, if what we hear a too many times with people coming into like Semantic Mastery mastermind, for example, is they come in and they say, you know, we get this often to that client getting landing new clients is the hardest thing for their agency that or the the biggest obstacle to growth. And whenever we get on our, you know, mastermind new member, our new mastermind member calls, because we always do you know, a 30 minute call with new members. One of the questions that I often ask is, you know, well, what are you doing for prospecting? You know, are you filling your pipeline with prospects, and it’s, it’s very poor, most of the results are like, most people just aren’t prospecting, consistently, they prospect when they need some clients, they go through a week or two of heavy prospecting, they get some leads coming in, then they work those leads, and they stopped prospecting while they work those leads, and then hopefully, they get a client out of it. And then they got to start that process all over again, a lot of times, once they get a client instead of prospecting throughout, you know, while they’re working the leads, they stopped prospecting. And then once they land, the client, they go through the onboarding process with the client. And so they they don’t prospect during that time, either. So once they finally get the client up to a part where they, their time is freed up a little bit to where they can go back to prospecting, and it started against, it’s always peaks and valleys, right peaks and valleys. And that’s really not the way to do it prospect consistently. So that you always have a pipeline full of prospects, so that whenever you you know, that that’s one, a couple things happens when you have a pipeline full of prospects. Number one, you don’t, it’s not as critical to close every prospect that you’re talking to. and desperation comes through guys, like people can smell desperation from, you know, across the globe. And what I’m saying is, if you are desperate to close a sale with a prospect that you’re talking to, because it’s the only prospect you have, that comes through, and people can detect that or, or pick up on that. And so, and I think that kills conversion rates. And I know because I’ve been there something else is when you have a, you know, a pipeline full of prospects, you can cherry pick, and only work with those that seem to be the best fit, the ones that you’re most comfortable with through communication and everything else. Whereas when you only have a handful of prospects, again, you cling to those prospects and try to make the deal happen, even if you know, it’s not a good fit. Once again, how do I know this, because I’ve been there. And every time that I’ve done that, and I’ve taken on a client for money sake, but I felt like in my gut, you know, I had this gut feeling that it wasn’t a good fit, it turned out to be that turned out to be the case, like it’s a nightmare engagement. It’s a pain in the ass to deal with, it causes a lot of stress and it’s the money’s just not worth it. And so again, having a pipeline full of prospects is incredibly important. So when I say inbound marketing, again, go check out 2xyouragency, very inexpensive. But there’s a ton of training in there on how to fill your pipeline. One thing I recommend is branding yourself, you know, or your agency however you want to do it. I think a personal brand is a little bit better than a corporate brand. It gets better results and from from my experience, but do things like YouTube ads, guys like YouTube ads are so incredibly inexpensive right now especially it’s insane, you can get a ton of reach targeting options have gotten incredibly good, you can create custom audiences now. So you can literally create a bucket of people that are interested in you know, bucket of prospects, essentially that you can market to on YouTube and display network. Those are all inexpensive ways to get to be Brent to brand yourself and bring create exposure to your ideal prospect. So I would highly recommend that and Hernan I know you’ve got a ton of really good prospecting advice to what can What can you give?

for non stop? I was talking to a mute mic.

I think that went into it’s your agency. We actually have a full module, which is, which was one of my presentations for pool for like 2018. And I kind of expand that last year, but it was about the eagle method, right. And on that method like, which is explained, by the way into it’s your agency, a walk you through step by step on how to create a personal brand and how to create content that people come in and consume, so that you don’t have to go out there and do any pretty much any of the heavy lifting, because you’re putting together those systems so that people will reach out to you. Right, so you’re not depending that much on referrals. referrals are great, but they’re not consistent. So if you put a system like that, where you’re putting out content, and you’re advertising content, that helps you, you know, getting features and experts. So choose your agency, it’s everything, you know, everything is explained step by step. So you know, Bradley has a more like outbound approach, I have a more like inbound approach. And if you combine the two of them, you can grow up an agency pretty quickly. So that’s what I would say.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Unknown Speaker 26:12 Somebody posting questions and doesn’t realize, I guess, maybe they came to the page before the video up updated. So I don’t know she’s even gonna sit or egg is even going to hear our responses. But we’ll get to that in a moment. All right. So the next question is, where am I lost it?

Should You Delete A Person Schema If There’s An Existing Organization Schema?

Okay, BB. BB is up. What’s up baby? He says, should I delete the person’s schema? When there is organization schema? It depends on like, what, and it depends on where like, how the schema is being used on what type of in which situation? Like, what is what are you marking up, for example, if it’s like blog blog, you know, Article markup for a blog post, or a news release or whatever. You know, it depends like, there’s there’s a section for the author, and then a section for the publisher. And if the author if you want to designate a person, and you have your schema connected, properly writes called nested schema or connected data items, or there’s enough number of terms for but if you haven’t connected correctly, then you would list the author, which would have person schema for the author, if you want to do it that way. And then the publisher as the organization, which is organization schema, and all of that is nested correctly. And again, it’s just, it depends on what you’re doing most of the time for the articles that I mark up, I’m using the organization as the publisher and the author. So I don’t use person schema. But it depends, again, if you’re if you’re branding a person, a professional, for example, then you might want to use their person schema. So it the standard SEO question without more content, or the standard SEO answer, excuse me, without more context, as always, it depends, it depends on the situation, what you’re marking up.

I know BB from your question last week, if you’re not connecting the schema correctly, then you can ambiguous the main entity of the page to begin with. So you got to be real careful about you know, if you’re using schema, and you’re marking things up that you do it in a proper way, having different you know, sex, different schema types on a page, but not nested correctly or connected properly, can actually create issues, right? So it can confuse the bot. And that’s what you don’t want to do. And I was doing that wrong for quite some time. I’m not gonna lie. I just recently started learning about how to do it correctly, thanks to rob, and the pope who live training. So but I would say yeah, it’s just really going to depend mark, do you want to comment on that parent child, you’re always going to have an organization that’s full of people. And these people are each going to have some kind of whatever it is you want to call it, or whatever the job is, whatever the position is, inside the organization. And if that’s the case, and if you want to go go into that much detail, you can so you should have person schema within the organization schema, what is their job, what is their function within the organization schema that you’re building. And if there is no place for a person to be used within that organization schema, then don’t try to push that in just because you want person schema within the organization schema. So as Bradley said, it depends on what function that person has within the organization. Or I’ll say again, the parent child relationship. And then if it’s on a page, what that person’s relationship to that page is within also the organization.

How To Convince Someone That Does Google Paid Ads, Content Marketing, And Link Building Campaigns To Get Leads From A New Source?

That question number two is how to convince someone that does paid ads, Gmail, YouTube search, ads, and little content marketing and backlinks to add new source of some site and get the leads through a new source. Yeah, I get the question. Okay. What he’s saying, Can you interpret it? Yeah. All right. So he knows how is doing ads. He wants to tell this person Hey, look, there’s another way for you to get leads other than what you’re doing. This new source is this online marketing thing where you can go get organic, you get into maps, you can get leads that way. He wants to know, how do I convince this person who only does ads to try something else?

Yeah, it looks like he’s also talking about if you provide, if you have leads that you can sell to somebody that’s already doing ads to I think that’s the way I’m interpreting it as well. Um, hey, that’s a great, you know, maybe you should go watch the lead simplify webinar that we did. I think it’s semanticmastery.com/leadsimplify, but anyways, you should go watch that webinar, because Mike Martin talks about the hybrid lead generation model. And, you know, I’ve got clients that I’ve do that are retainer based clients, so traditional clients, right, you know, they pay me a monthly retainer, and I optimize their assets. But if I happen to have lead generation assets that you know, provide in their area that’s within their service area that I, you know, generate leads for, sometimes clients will even ask, like, Hey, you know, I’ll buy leads from you, too. So it’s not that you need to convince anybody, remember, if you’re trying to convince somebody that they need your service, you’re talking to the wrong damn person, like you, that’s the thing, because then you’re trying to do to sales, right, you’re trying to sell them, the idea that they need what you have, and then you have to sell them, that you’re the one that provide that service, right, so you got to sell them twice. And that’s, that’s, that’s very, very difficult. And I don’t recommend it. And that’s, again, going back to the question we had earlier about filling your pipeline full of prospects. If you have a pipeline full of prospects, and you talk to 10 of them, and six of them, you’re trying to sell them on the need for what it is that you provide like that, they you have to sell them that they need that to be first before you can sell them on you providing that, then, like those are six people that you can disqualify very quickly, right, because you’re saying you know what, you’re not the best fit for me, not not that I’m not the best fit for you, you’re not the best fit for me, because you’re not already, you don’t already know that this is good for your business. And I’m not saying don’t try to educate people. But when you start to catch resistance from that, again, you have to sell them twice, in my opinion, is the wrong type of prospect. And that’s where, again, having a pipeline full of prospects is good doing inbound marketing, inbound marketing is great, because people have been exposed to you or your service, or what you can provide the results you can provide before they contact you.

So remember, an inbound lead, somebody already is aware of what it is that you do, and they’re interested in you giving them a proposal, or at least having a conversation with them. Right. So you only got to make the sale one time as opposed to twice. So again, it comes back to you know, who you’re talking to. So when it comes to like, for example, I’ve got a, you know, recently got a newer client in Fort Lauderdale, area of Florida. And in our initial conversation when we were, you know, during the proposal process, right, when I was prospect when they were just a prospect, and we were, you know, I was talking with them, we did the discovery call, like I always do all this is covered into x ray, to x your agency. But I did a discovery call with them. And during that discovery call, I mentioned them by the way, I also do Tree Service lead generation, if you’re interested, I while I’m working on developing your assets and your brand, building your presence online, I could also build some lead gen assets in your area that will be generically branded. But the leads that come in, I can sell to you. And they said Yeah, that would be great. So they were interested in both a retainer and a lead generation business model, like a hybrid of the two. And so that’s why I’m saying, you know, again, it, some people are going to be really open to that, or some business owners are gonna be really open to that, and some aren’t. And the ones that aren’t, just don’t bother. Don’t waste your time. Go find some that are. Does that make sense? Yeah, I see two things here. And I always like like to talk about, like my personal experience on on things like this. Because I talked to someone not not too long ago, who was doing about 50 million a year on ads, ad spend, right? So it’s a little bit of a 4 million a month. And the guy was convinced that there was no other way to make money online than to do ads, because he was getting a three to one return on fit. You can imagine how much he’s doing a year, right? If he’s getting a three to one, return on what he’s doing. So he’s making about 100 million.

And so when you get a person like that, and they want to talk to you, but they’re convinced that they’re already doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Probably does it, I have to come if I talk to him, I have to convince him that there that there’s another way So first, I have to convince him that there’s another way then I have to convince him or show him

My way works. And I have to be able to show him how my work. So you get into a multiple step thing where every step of the way, you’re going to run into a whole bunch of objects if the conversation gets heavy, and it doesn’t make sense, because at the end, he’s still going to be convinced that he’s doing it the right way. And that your way might not work, no matter how much you show him.

That you have to find someone who’s open to the idea, first and foremost, who is an already convinced that they’re doing it and that there’s no other way. And then this goes back to what I was saying before, it all depends on whether you’re able to show the results that you can get you look that you get if you get me in front of anyone, any I mean anyone, and nine out of 10, I’m gonna close that person, because I can take them through a whole lot of shit that I’ve done.

And it’s and I’m going to give them a 90 day out. So there’s really no reason to say no, unless they were already looking to say no, because they’re at least going to take that 90 day out, look 90 days, at the end of those 90 days, you will see. Because then they come six months, and every six months, I look it over because I always want to leave an opening to fire the client. No matter how much money we’re making, I always want that opening, because I get tired of people. But this whole comes from you being able to show this person, this is what I can do. These are the types of types of results that I can get. This is what I can do for you. Now when you’re speaking, when you’re speaking results, you’re speaking money. And if this person is any type of business person, they’re absolutely going to see the numbers, man. And it doesn’t even get to a heart close. Because there were by the time you get to, when do we start? It’s already Yeah, like, just build me. invoices, send me the invoice or I got cut you the check. If it’s person to person, like it’s sometimes they just cut you the check, it gets really good. But you have to get to the point where the presence open first and foremost, and where you can deliver the goods. Because if you guys can’t, they have to start figuring out how maybe your own leads and like I see maybe bV bV is doing and show those Look, I want to get these over to you person should be able to say, the person should be able to see profit in your conversation, you have to get them into that mindset rather than you trying to convince them that you can do what you say you can do.

Yeah, if you’ve got leads already for that particular industry, for that business owner, you mentioned baby, then, you know, why not send them, you know, a couple of leads, I do five I do a tree leads trial is what I call it, it’s a tree leads trial for Tree Service contractors, and I allow them, I make them get on the phone with me, it’s a brief conversation, it takes literally five minutes. But it’s just so that I can have a quick conversation with them to make sure that they can speak English, you know, we’re speak clearly I should say, communicate well, if they’re, you know, if they’re really terrible, I don’t want to send them to leads that were just, you know, to go, you know, to customers homes for leads that I generated anyway, so I require a phone call. But it only takes a couple minutes. And I add them to my lead simplify system, which does the lead distribution for me. And I give them five leads for free. And then I tell I tell them look, once the fifth lead has been delivered, I’m going to call you again to discuss continuing the service. And that’s that’s how I do it. Because a lot of the times people say, you know, like the guys, the contractors that I talked to will say, you know, I bought leads before and they were shit. You know, I’m not sure that and I just tell them, Look, I’m gonna give you five, no harm, no foul, you don’t want them after that it’s not going to hurt, why not take five free jobs. And the reason I do that is because I tell them Look, my my goal is that you get you close at least one job out of the five leads that I send you. And if you’re any good at all, at closing, you ought to be able to close at least one job right out of the five leads that I sell you, that means you’re going to make some money. And once you’ve made some money from the free lead that I sent you, you can reinvest that money in purchasing leads from me going, you know, I hope that you spend that money purchasing leads from me. So it’s it’s my way of like earning their trust. And so I you know, for me, that works really, really well. So instead of trying to convince them, I just tell them flat out Look, I’m not here to convince you or sell you on anything right now. I just want to get your verify your information so I can send you five leads, what you do with those leads is up to you. At the end of those I’m going to give you a call back and see if you want to continue the service at which point I’m going to ask for money. Is that fair? That’s what I say. And it’s a very short, brief conversation and it tends to work well. So

What Are Your Thoughts On Local Viking And How It Keeps EXIF Data On Images?

Okay, moving on. Next question is from Blake SEO. He says, Hey guys question about local Viking. They claim that this tool keeps EXIF data on the images and it doesn’t get stripped because they use the Google API. Is this possible or do you think it gets stripped anyways? I don’t know. I can’t speak for local biking or really what Google does.

You know people say that it scripts the exit data when you upload a video or a word an image or a video to Google My Business anyway.

But you know, when, when you if you upload an image with EXIF data to Google My Business and then you once it’s uploaded you go download it from Google. Yes, the EXIF data has been stripped. But does that mean that Google didn’t see that EXIF data when you uploaded the video? Does that? Does that make sense? So I don’t I don’t know whether the Google API strips in or not, maybe Marco does. But in my opinion, doesn’t really matter. If if when you upload the video that data gets, you know, Google sees that data when the image gets uploaded originally. What do you say Marco? Well, first and foremost, what I recommend is local images.

Forget the spoofing. I mean, don’t forget it. Let me just say this, nothing works better than when you take the image, at the location around the location, around the geographical area around the centroid of the business extending out about 10 miles 1020 and extended 20 local images, local images, Google gets so much information, guys, they even get the like, the attitude that you’re the wind speed is sometimes on on those images. Google gets all that information. And they have the satellite info, right. But they’re tracking you they know where the fuck you are. Put it on airplane mode, it doesn’t matter. They track you. Yeah, Google knows with a QR man. So you’re giving them all that information and you’re making relevant to the location. Next Best is trying to spoof the information but make sure that they’re locally relevant image and not just any image, but locally relevant, which I showed how to do. In local GMB Pro. That was done a couple of years ago, it might be time for an update for local GMB Pro. Yeah, it’s working really well anyway, like I hate update, updating something that works. Just to say I just updated and sell it more expensive. At any rate, if you have to spoof it, the idea is getting the info into the Google database. What Google don’t does with that image after it doesn’t matter, because we’re giving them the information. And you’re making it relevant because you’re placing it in your GMB. And hopefully, you’re doing it right, because you’re doing it multiple ways, not only one way, because there’s no GMB, that’s legit. That only gets images one way. Yeah, so so you have to take all of these things into account when you’re spoofing images, instead of trying to talk to clients into uploading images. And whoever comes to the client’s business, or wherever the client goes to a job to take, take pictures and upload video upload image, oh, all of these different things that are natural looking, and natural looking GMB should, how it should look how it should behave, the things that it should get, right. So when you get that anal about it, whether exit data is there or not, we can show whether it is I’m not gonna do it here. But we can show whether it is you can go take a look and see if the exit data is there or not. But once again, it doesn’t matter. And if you’re spoofing the data and and you can upload local images, then you’re doing yourself and or your clients a disservice by not taking local images not hiring someone to do it. Because it works so much better. I can’t tell you how much better I am. I mean, I could show you how to do it here. But I mean, when I get results in GMP light light, like it’s the simplest thing is because it’s done right. And, and you can hire somebody on Craigslist just to take images for very inexpensive I know because in my real estate business, one of the areas that I was flipping a property in a piece of vacant land and required in order to be in the MLS it required actual photos from the property not like aerial photos, like most everywhere else that I sell properties, I can just use Google satellite images as the property photos and that’s fine. But there’s one particular property this county, the MLS in that area required that there was photos taken of the property and from the property. And so I just posted an ad on Craigslist in that area and said I’ll pay $30 for somebody to go out and snap half a dozen photos from their camera, their their phone, they don’t even need it, you know, don’t you don’t need to be a photographer, just anybody snap from their phone, six images, I’ll pay 30 bucks. And I had like 18 people reply to me in a matter of an hour. It was insane. And so and I hired this one, this one girl, it was all done via email, you know from the Craigslist ad and within 45 minutes I had my six photos and I ended up paying her like I gave her $10 tip via PayPal so I paid her 40 bucks because I had it so quickly and so again you guys it’s very inexpensive you can get people to do that for you. I think Marco used a bite Korea at one time.

So and that’s somebody can make money on you know, additional income doing their their job, you know what I mean? So again, there’s a lot of ways that you can get those local images if you can’t get the business owner

To contribute, so, courier, Uber, people, people going back and forth from more people. commuting back. Have I used it all? It all works? Yeah.

Okay, on By the way, I see I think you’re you’ve got some job security in the future because it sounds like local GMB pro might be the next thing on the block a bit updated. So you might have to learn local GMB pro to come on ready for everything now. One at a time, though. There you go.

Is There A Limit To The Amount Of Power A Link Can Have?

Alright, so the next question is from my love, Gabe says, Hello, everyone. My question is, is there a limit to the amount of power a link can have? Is it capped? Or can we send an infinite amount of GSA spam to a G site, for instance, and get more and more link juice? That was kind of like what you already answered? Marco, you want to kind of revisit, I link, the both power that a link can have is from an infinite PageRank 10. website, and the only infinite PageRank 10 websites that I know, is Google. It’s capped at PageRank 10. Of course, because it’s in the algorithm it’s in it’s in the the What do you call it the PageRank patent that was incorporated into the ranking score path, right? So we know that’s the cap. Now, can you say can you send an infinite amount of GSA spam to a G site? and get more? Yes, of course you can. But why?

What’s the point? I’d say when people ask this? And this is this is I love bV for them because he has this type of question. My question is always, why would you do that? We know that tiered link building, the way that Dahlia does it at mygb.co.

The way that he does, it works perfectly well with what we do, because we worked it in conjunction in conjunction with him. He and I have and Bradley and everyone in the crew, we’ve sat down with Dahlia, and talk to him about the link below. This is how we want it and and then he has come up with his own flavor on how it should be done to the point where it just goes hand in hand, you’re supposed to get the SEO shield and get videos link building.

So that you see what the results are from that. So now what you do is you look at your analytics, you look at your search console, and you should know where your money is where the money is, in your niche, and what the money keywords are in your niche. So you start tracking those, and then you start targeting those, but you’re never going to send an infinite amount of links at those, because that’s easy to spot. If that link building the way that the way that you’re talking about, you never want to do that you want to do a tiered, you want to have link building cycles to different properties. So that everything so that your entire entity or your entire thing on the web is constantly getting juice, it’s constantly getting powered up. And so you’re constantly ranking for new keywords in your niche, because of all the power that you’re accruing, which is really PageRank and ranking score, what you’re accruing. And of course, it’s all powered up. Alright. So once you’ve done all this, if you have no people coming to your website, which I don’t see how you could have no people. But if you’ve got no people coming to your website, or if the people that are coming to your website and not taking action, meaning that they’re not closing the deal, whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, then you’ve got a big problem, because you will not sustain the rankings that you have. This is all attended upon you getting a real person into your website and that person doing whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, whether it’s filling out a form, watching a video, downloading a PDF, download, whatever it is that you’ve set for them to do, so that Google can see the final piece of the puzzle, which is that person trusting you enough to click on whatever you have to give you their information to give you the money, whatever it is, I mean, you could build links, infinite links, that if if people don’t eventually come and take action, you’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble because Google is going to get signals other than what you’re sending you sending them great signals, because you’re getting all of this PageRank and ranking score. But then there’s no one taking action. And you don’t want to do that. There’s no validation to create. That’s That’s it. There’s no entity validation. Yeah. No validation. Yep. I totally agree.

All right, so the wall of text here from org. Typically, we asked not to post this much because it’s difficult to read through but since we don’t have a lot left, we’ll go ahead and run through it. Question is, by the way, and there’s a comment that says fantastic approach using se for the rework. Good move all of you. So as he got some fans already.

Thank you. Awesome.

Have You Encountered Problems Reinstating GMB Listings In The Towing Industry?

So it says hello, I have a couple of GMB listings for towing services. They are spammy listings within a county. Lately I have been creating listings and as soon as I verify the listings, they are automatically getting suspended when I contact Google to reinstate the listings they want proof of business license or utility bills showing my business name and address. Is anyone else having this problem when creating listings or is it just the towing industry? Well, first of all, I do know that the towing industry is one of the spammy or niches and it has been for years when it comes to GMB’s. So that was already a sensitive industry for GMB suspensions.

That as well as there’s a number of them overhead garage doors or overhead doors, they call them you know, there’s a number of them that have been that are like payday loans would be another one, right? Those are really spammy type listing things, the locksmith, the locksmith things a locksmith as well. So I know towing is one of those that are particularly sensitive to suspensions.

But that said also just right now period, it’s difficult to spam GMB listings to create spammed GMB listings period. It’s just across the board in any industry doesn’t mean it can’t still be done. But they are very sensitive right now I know because I just had a couple of them delivered that I ordered way back in June. And they were just finally delivered a couple of weeks ago, I went in and cleared the physical address because it was a service area business. I cleared the service the physical address as per Google’s terms, right? Because it was a service area business and it was showing the physical address in the verified GMB. So I went in to clear the physical address to remove it from the street address from being published. And as soon as I did that, and click Save it instantly suspended it. So and it was in the tree service industry. So again, you know, it’s it is a problem right now, which is why a lot of people aren’t offering verified GM B’s right now where you can purchase verified, you know, spammed GMB listings. because of that reason. And remember, Google is trying to combat spam, GMB listings. And one of the things one of the ways are doing it is they’re just like algorithmically automatically suspending things that are making edits, or that it determines is like, again, with towing industries, that being one of the more sensitive ones, the moment you verify it, or make a change, or an edit, boom, it gets suspended. And then they require you to go through that process of providing documentation that that a, that business physically resides in the location that you tried to verify. And that’s just their way of reducing spam. And so in my opinion, I would you know, I wouldn’t bother trying to reinstate those if you know, it’s a spam listing and it gets suspended, start over try again. And then towing. I don’t know that you’re going to have any success right now. So any comments on that? Nah, Google’s trigger happy right now, man, they they’re killing everything. Yeah, everything, they can just stick your head out, you’re liable to get shot. I always tell people, right, someone’s got an ak 47. And they’re firing. The thing to do is never let’s look and see who’s shooting? Yeah, you’re gonna get shot. The thing duck, duck, duck, and don’t stick your head. It doesn’t matter who’s shooting somebody shooting man. That’s, that’s the important thing. Oh, let me see who’s gonna boom, right. between the eyes. That’s what’s happening right now. You go change stuff. And sometimes it’s just posting versus not posting for a while, that’ll get you and then making changes and not making changes, and then adding images, not adding images. It’s going really crazy right now. And of course, their idea is, anyone who doesn’t have a real business isn’t going to call us or if they do, they can’t provide the paperwork, right? to reinstate their business. So fuck it, we just kill them. And then we’ll worry about whether they can they can get their suspension lifted some some other way. But right now, I mean that that’s just the way it is. I know that there’s some ways to create these spammy lessons, but if you have if it’s your towing business, or if it’s a client’s towing business, and get a legitimate listing there.

So the follow up question is also with towing services. Do you think I should build up every listing? Or should I focus on having a lot of listings in the county and hope their proximity does its thing, okay. I know from experience that having too many GM bees, in close proximity to each other will, they’ll filter themselves out, they won’t even appear in maps, it’s not that they’re they get d indexed or suspended. They just won’t show in maps. So there’s there really isn’t, there can be too many too close to each other that where they start to cancel each other out. Literally, Google will filter those out. So I don’t recommend that. If you’re going to do multiple GM B’s, you have to have an it varies. It could vary by industry, I don’t know but I know it varies like the the how close they can be together varies before they start getting filtered out. What I would recommend is a minimum of 10 miles between each but it depends on what type of with the towing business. The service area is generally fairly large for a towing business, at least from what I understand, and so therefore, it wouldn’t makes sense to have two that are only 10 miles apart, right? It would be it would, it would probably be more natural to have two that were, you know, 30 miles apart or something like that right or 40 miles apart, because towing businesses, by their nature, our service area businesses that typically have a fairly large service area, right. So I would recommend that if you were going to do multiple GM bees, that they would be spread out in a strategic way, but far enough apart to where they don’t cause any filtering issues. But that said, because of the fact that GM bees are so sensitive right now, to suspension, you’re better off having what you do have that’s verified and valid or that you know, has some age to it right. Building that up, which is what local GMB pro teaches we teach exactly how to how to really get the most exposure and expand your maps footprint, so to speak with local GMB pro methods. And that’s the better way to go. Because there’s more longevity, in my opinion with those than having multiple GM B’s that, especially when they’re brand, you know, newly registered GM B’s that are very trigger happy or suspension happy, right? very prone to suspension. So I would recommend that you take some of that made might have some tenure, so to speak, right? that have been around for a bit that have some age to them some authority, they’re less likely to be suspended. And you can do more with those, in my opinion, I think that’s the smarter long term route to go. That’s my opinion marketing, I would say, absolutely. Especially if these are if this is my business, my tow truck, my drivers, man, you can do so much damage with that. You can have all of Oh, fuck, you could have all of those people extending your centroid left and right.

I mean, I’m serious. And then you you hook up those posts the right way. And then you do your press releases, again the right way, and then hit it with link building. And it’s, it’s stupid, simple. And it’s the results that you’re gonna get nobody else can because nobody else will be doing what you’re doing.

Do You Think Google Will Suspend Listings From The Same IP In The Future?

So the last question, and then we’re gonna wrap it up, because we’re four minutes away from the end of the show anyways, says one more question. I had been using ghost browser to log in, to log into all of my listings and work on them in different browsers without having to log in and out and use VPNs and such things like that. I know. And one of your videos, you said Google doesn’t mind all the listings coming from one IP anymore? Do you think Google can one day change their mind and suspend all listings coming from the same IP? For example, if there was too many listings created from one IP? You know that? I don’t know. I don’t work for Google. And I don’t know what that threshold may be. I mean, it’s likely that if you’re doing, you know, dozens and dozens of GMB verifications from the same IP, even if it’s different browsing sessions, like unique Google profiles with different browsing sessions and browsing histories, and all of that, that’s what goes browser does, right? It keeps all of that intact. But if it’s all coming from the same IP, that could that could be a flag that triggers suspension of all of them. I don’t know. I don’t work for Google. I can’t answer that question. It’s logical that that could happen. But I will I will bring se in for this last, this last question. Because I’m going to ask her, we went through this, we went through whether to use browser to whether to use ghost browser or whether to use a Firefox, Chrome Firefox session. Ha, how did you solve it? I mean, don’t give away what you did, but or exactly how you did it, but solve it?

Well, I’m not sure first about the how much it can be triggering to Google. If you’re doing all this listings, with what is actually the limit of listings, I don’t think it will have any impact in the end. And Firefox works in a similar way as ghost browser with its private profiles. So what it does, it keeps all of your information separated from one browsing session to the other one login to the other. So um, but of course, they are all connected to one IP. We’re not using proxies anymore, which means that if it’s going to trigger some negative impacts on Google, it will do it anyway. So on the terms of deciding if it’s going to be Firefox or ghost browser, in my opinion, it will end up being almost the same thing.

For his question on in the end, though, I wouldn’t actually be sure. I think you guys would be able to give a more certain answer on that, of course, but But my question is, what was more you work with Firefox, but you’re not using proxies, although you could use.

I’m not using, yes, I’m not using proxies. I’ve been using Firefox and the option that it offers with Firefox profiles. And it works. Basically the same way that grows browser works with itself.

The sections and different keeping everything separated for from one another. So if we’re going to compare those two, I would say they work in the same way. Now we are going to determine if this way is going to cause Google to, I don’t know, suspended listings in the end, this is something that I cannot say for, for sure. All right. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I see.

So there you go. And remember, like, you know, goes browser, I think just add some convenience makes a little bit easier than doing like separate Firefox profiles or sessions. But you know, it can be done manually to without the monthly expense. So, there you go. And that will be covered in syndication Academy, version three. Thanks, Jesse. So yep. Thanks, everybody for being here. Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it. Thanks, guys for sticking around by everyone. And thanks for showing up se we appreciate that. Thank you. Bye.

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