#albeit in a bunch of smaller separate bits

[siloupy]

ended 2 years ago today :( miss her

[heilos]

Living Harmony AU relevant character sheets/info: Harmony aka the "Tree of Harmony" Shadow Lock Somnambula Starswirl the Bearded Stygian might be my favorite of the Pillars of Equestria and it's always made me sad that he wasn't used more in the show. So I decided to team up with my new friend Orin who's taken the time to make a bunch of amazing Pillar redesigns (same person I made this Starswirl animation rig for as a gift) that i'll be incorporating into my future animation project. The Pillars are very important characters to Harmony's story so I wanna do them justice. Listed below is some context for these sketches provided by my friend Orin and some written bits from myself. This is a Stygian who's been separated from the Pony of Shadows for some time, but is now dealing with the consequences of dark magic. I've had so much fun throwing ideas back and forth for this AU and I can't wait to share more in the near future.

Unicorn from a small sea side village in ancient times

Dedicated scholar and battle strategist

Special talent is writing. An incredible wordsmith in his own right

Wrote a very popular autobiography about his time possessed by the Pony of Shadows called “Me and My Shadow” (his third novel)

Name means "dark and gloomy" and also relates to the river and deity "Styx" of Greek mythology

Brought the Pillars of Equestria together in a bid to save his home town from the Sirens (the Dazzlings)

Wanted to become a hero in his own right even though he tried to convince himself otherwise

Lacks the physical strength and magical prowess of his fellow Pillars. Compared to any other run of the mill unicorn, however, Stygian is actually decently above average in terms of magical ability, though he downplays himself significantly

Ousted from the group after a misunderstanding involving him taking the other pillar’s relics to make copies of them so he too could be a hero and join them as an equal. His friends thought he was out to steal their power instead

Becomes bitter and seeks revenge afterwards when discovering the Well of Shade, which leads to the Pony of Shadows claiming him as its vessel

Banished along with the pillars to “limbo” for 1000 years through a powerful spell conceived by Starswirl and planned out by the rest of the pillars

Is freed from the Pony of Shadows' influence in modern Equestria thanks to the Mane 6 and the pillars with Twilight and Starlight being the main catalyst in helping Stygian where Starswirl had failed before

While no longer claimed by the Pony of Shadows, the consequences of using such powerful dark magic as well as being possessed by a being of pure shadow left its mark on him

Has dark magic scarring visible on his body. His eyes, inner mouth, teeth and magic color are permanently altered in appearance. It gives him a rather unsettling aura, much to his displeasure

The Pony of Shadows mark is not so easily purged, even with the combined strength of the past and present Elements of Harmony. A fragment of the shadow lives on in Stygian, inextricably bound to him, but small enough that it can no longer influence him.

Has abilities superficially similar to King Sombra's, albeit on a much smaller scale, and needs extensive practice before he can comfortably wield this new strength.

Luna becomes Stygian's second mentor, after Starswirl, to help him gain control over his new abilities. Her direct experience using dark magic to become Nightmare Moon makes her an effective teacher

As Stygian exerts better control over the shadow fragment, he eventually gains the ability to "Shadow Walk" or travel between shadows. This temporary form makes him look eerily similar to the Pony of Shadows. Pretty spooky

Can tell when the Pony of Shadows is close in proximity due to the shadow fragment, like a magic tracker

Stygian is a lucid dreamer. He appreciates dreams a lot more now that he’s sleeping on a proper schedule. Once in a while he’ll meet up with Princess Luna in the dream realm when they can’t find spare time in the waking world, outside of mentoring sessions, to enjoy each other's company as friends

Stygian redesign by Orin331

[adobe-outdesign]

Would you be able to review the Magmar line, please?

Magby is a cute little thing. What kind of thing is impossible to say, as it's really one of those Pokemon that are just monsters with no real-world inspiration, but it works well as a pre-evo and is really the best out of the three in terms of overall design.

Visually, it looks like it goes with the rest of the line, but is still plenty distinct enough on its own instead of just looking like a smaller Magmar. I like how the weird lumpy head becomes less lumpy as it evolves, and how the underbelly marking does the opposite and becomes more complex. The noot-noot snoot and the perpetually worried expression are also charming.

My sole nitpick is that the shape of the underbelly marking is a bit weird with how angular it is—something more rounded or flame-like would've been better. Everything else is pretty enjoyable.

Magmar, much like its pre-evo, is an ambiguous lava monster with no specific inspiration, and I'm always a big fan of those. And there are a lot of things about Magmar I like, such as the duck beak and flame markings, which are mimicked by the flames on its head.

However, there are also a lot of things I don't like. I always felt like the egg-shaped body was too ill-defined, especially with the legs being completely separate (compare to Magby up there, which has a more organic body shape). The ruffled shapes on the hands are interesting, but they feel out of place when they're not used elsewhere in the design—they could've been on the tail or something for balance. The back spikes also feel very extranous. It's got the right idea overall, but those elements hold it back a bit.

Also, it has a butt head. I always saw it more as brows so it never bothered me, but I need to point it out or else someone else will.

And Magmortar is... okay. I like some parts of it more than Magmar but there's also parts of it I like a lot less. The canon theme with the arms is a good way to work off of Magmar's arm ruffles, and they've been simplified so they no longer look as out of place. It also no longer has a butt for a head, always a plus, and I really like the menacing expression.

However, it still has a few of the same problems that Magmar does, such as the egg-shaped body, which is now even more noticeable because the arms sit higher up on the torso. Same goes for the spikes, which are even more unnecessary here.

It also adds a few problems, such as shortening the beak and changing the color; before it had an interesting duck-like look, whereas now it just kind of looks like it has weird lips. The flames also look very plastic-y.

I also really dislike the random addition of pink into the design. Maybe they were trying to call back to Magby, but it's so low-contrast and similar to the red that it adds nothing yet somehow makes the palette more complex. All the pink areas could've been yellow and nothing would have been lost (the arms could've been red, if that change resulted in too much yellow). Like I said, I like the general idea here and the overall vibe, but the execution just doesn't quite do it for me.

Overall, a refreshingly abstract line of creatures with some interesting albeit sometimes questionable designs. Magby's the best of the bunch, but all three at least work together surprisingly coherently considering they were all designed for different gens.

[thecurioustale]

I agree with a fair amount of this despite the fact that Fip and I take different bottom-line views of both the book as a whole and the character of Herschel Schoen in particular.

The Frederick angle was my favorite part of the book too, aside from, first, the delicious and extraordinary feat of the biblical language style that Herschel uses (which I did note in my own review could be a liability for others just as it was an asset for me, since I love that stuff), and, second, the (in my opinion) very impressive characterization of Herschel's deeply weird perceptions of the world (which I can relate to in my own way albeit not one-per-one). I absolutely loved...well, not Frederick himself, who is well and good, but the picture of Frederick that Herschel has in his mind, and the dynamic between the two of them in real life. They're great together on-screen, and Herschel is great when he's thinking about Frederick.

Like you Fip I would have liked to see more interactions with Fredericks and more school scenes in general. The book took a turn with "The Burden of Babylon" (the train ride chapter) into something fairly different from what it had previously been setting itself up to be. But perhaps one area where we differ is that I don't count any of the above as a negative. The way I want a story to go is something I try to treat independently from my assessment of where the author decides to actually take it. At least up to a point! I mentioned this to Rob somewhere in my line-by-line commentaries: that I have a problem of getting too interested in my own preferences and tastes and focal points, and have long since made efforts to separate that from my ability to enjoy other people's art on its own terms. Other people's stories never go in the directions I want them to, just about; that's one of the reasons I write mine. When The Wheel of Time Season 2 came out a few months ago, and Lanfear made her big splashy appearance, it was like it had been back in the books: Here is this amazing character with all this potential. And the TV show did a much better job with her than the books did. But I'm not an idiot. You can only fool me so many times. She's gonna have the same dumb and wasted arc that Book Lanfear has. I don't need to see the future to know that. In The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen, when I realized that we weren't going in a direction of more school / more Frederick / etc., I took a moment, stepped back, and was like "That's okay. That doesn't mean anything. It just means Rob had a different direction he wanted to go in." And I'm to the point in my life where that mostly works for me, now. So I think it took it a little better than you did, from the sound of it.

beyond that i get the impression this book is made of a lot of different ideas rob wanted to explore and play around with but all these ideas dont necesarily cohere thematically

Maybe? Rob can speak to that definitively, but my read on any "thematically non-coherent" subject matter is that he was pressed for time due to a self-imposed deadline. I can't be sure, though, and I do know that coherency and completeness in plot, theme, and narrative is probably the hardest part of authorship. I don't doubt that Rob had a bunch of different ideas that all got fed into this project, but I don't see it as, say, a collection of smaller works trying to masquerade as a single whole.

ill rip the band aid right off, i dont think i enjoyed it very much.

I did enjoy this book quite a bit, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. I went into it wanting to be able to say at the end that it was my pick of the year. But it wasn't; my favorite book in 2024 was either my reread of Best Served Cold (because I am intensely interested in powerful female characters who are also vicious and screwed up and take no prisoners) or my reread of The Lord of the Rings, which has an authorial style and depth that is among my favorites of any work of literature and whose message of wholesomeness and love of life was so effortlessly easy for me to enjoy. In contrast, I am not in the core target audience of The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen—perhaps except as an enjoyer of Herschel's style of speaking. I spent many pages in my commentary detailing what I did enjoy about it, beyond the top-line stuff, but, to boil it all down, I really appreciate how smart this book is, and how it has such interesting things to say. Reading some of the other reviews about it, I honestly think that some of the best qualities of this book are being lost on those who dwell heavily on the AI stuff. To me, that's really not what this book is about. Even in "Of Nativity," the big Santa chapter...even that is less about AI and more about, to borrow Rob's own phrasing, having a "mystical experience." AI was merely the conduit for that to happen. Mystical experiences are one of my core interests in stories, which I'm sure you know because I've written about it in my own way many times over the years. I'm always trying to capture and evoke "magic"; that's a big part of why I rate Mate of Song as highly as I do among my own work: It is the most magical story I have worked on, to date.

Interestingly, and something I didn't directly say in my commentary, the most "magical" part of The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen for me wasn't Chapter 21; it was those moments earlier in the book when I was able to entertain the possibility that Herschel's delusions were true. Like when he's going on about how the city that replaces New York is going to be the one and only city needed in all of existence, because it will be so perfect and complete. That's really grand to think about. And Herschel's elaborate yet indirect paintings of his Adversary are truly exquisite. I really enjoyed that characterization, even though the character himself never actually existed. I love it when characters are painted indirectly in this way; it takes on the heft of myth and legend, and rises above the mundane, face-value, worldly prose with which most characters in most stories are characterized. Sort of like how the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation as literally depicted in Star Trek: TNG was so different from the memories and recollections of that era as painted in Star Trek: Picard. That latter show took advantage of our own real-world 30-years passage of time, and really gave a feeling that the adventures of the USS Enterprise D were like a legend, compared to the mundanity of the PIC setting. The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen did a great job of this in its own way, implying layers of reality that aren't really there but which are delightful and compelling and romantic to think about, like legends and myths are.

i love how frederick clearly is very weird in his own way because of how he doesnt mind interacting with a clearly younger kid when that could be social suicide in high school

I had that exact same thought, and the way I rationalized it is that being Damien Eggert's kid means your friends aren't real friends anyway, and they'll put up with your "eccentricities" in exchange for proximity to you. Just as Frederick was Herschel's only real friend, I think Herschel was Frederick's only real friend, too. I think, although it isn't said in words, this is why Frederick was so animated and longwinded around him. I'm the same way when I'm around people I genuinely like. 😅

Anyway! I'd been looking forward to your review, Fip, so thanks for posting it! And I value your willingness to pull no punches; I hope you'll do me the same honor when my next book comes along and you inevitably find things about it that don't land for you.

ok, ive read a few reviews, i have marinated on the story a little. i think i can put together a more thorough review of the apocalypse of herschel schoen.

ill rip the band aid right off, i dont think i enjoyed it very much. it is dense, and it is morose, and it is very sad and tragic. It takes effort to read and your reward for those efforts are pages upon pages of a sad family coming apart and self destroying, with a hefty serving of deranged theological disquisitions. all written on an ornate portentous, reiterative style that eventually wears off its welcome.

@thecurioustale claimed that for him this book dignifies and humanizes herschel. that hile it presents us someone with severe mental issues and deliriums, it puts things from his perspectiv, it makes us empathize with him. this story had no such effect on me. in fact quite the opposite: i found that the more i understood herschel the more i disliked this guy, for one simple reason. he is gurion mccabe.

there have been many comments drawing parallels between nostalgebraists previous stories and other famous works of fiction. people have said that floornight is his evangelion, that northern caves is his house of leaves, that almost nowhere is his homestuck.

well, the apocalypse of herschel schoen is very much nostalgebraist's The Instructions. a text written and compiled in-universe as a sort of testament/conversion book/biography about a jewish kid with mental issues and his own delirious interpretation of judaism who tries to ennact by force his beliefs upon the world. the only diference is that herschel is a lot more realistically pathetic and less threatning than gurion. but he IS gurion.

he is how harry james evan verres potter comes off to anyone who doesnt like hpmor. he is a self important, arrogant, sanctimounious, deranged little shit with all the makings of a cult leader. and he ends up sacrificing all of humanity to the AI overlords, for all this i had a hard time enjoying the time i spend following him around.

beyond that i get the impression this book is made of a lot of different ideas rob wanted to explore and play around with but all these ideas dont necesarily cohere thematically (the vague anacronistic feeling of it all, the shared narration between herschel and miriam, whatever was going on with miriam's own strange ideology, the meditations on AI risk, the numerous inconsistencies in the narrative and the plot, the entire chapter of SHE OF HIGH MIND). these are all cool ideas on their own but the whole feels less than the sum of its parts. there are a lot more questions than answers in this book and by the end of it i was left with the vague and dissapointed impression that most of these questions dont really have answers and are there just to look cool.

but really i cant call any of these things flaws necesarily, i know they are here by design and they were indeed done masterfully. im sure there is a lot to get out of this book if you are into that sort of thing, and i could even see myself getting into all this if one key element wasnt missing that i personally really need in my stories and that is "human conection".

there is a thing that happens in this genre of stories, stories like RA or Fine structure or Unsong, or Worm or homestuck or even almost nowhere. there is only so much you can dial things up to eleven before i stop caring, before i lose all emotional investment on the story. is just talking about great cosmic inhuman things and i read stories for human drama. as i read chapter 21 i couldnt help but wonder what happened to frederick, (who was an continues to be my favourite character in the whole story, oh how i wish this could have been an entire book only about his conversations with herschel, those were far and above my favourite sections) would we get to see one final conversation between him and herschel or was their sad encounter with damian all we get? what happened to ruth and her plan to presumably bomb the eggert labs? will mirian be happy with vincent? but no, by all means herschel, keep talking to that ant.

no to be fair, this book had me hooked all through out the first half, up until herschel takes the train to manhattan. and the entire reveal in chapter 21 was riveting and i couldnt stop reading this thing once i got there. i want to insist, this book is indeed masterful, and if i complain is simply because of how it didnt manage to dance to MY taste.

overall i could have done with more scenes of herschel at school. herschel interacting with other students, with the teachers, with madeline, with frederick, sweet satanic brilliant frederick.

(complete tangent but frederick is so fascinating. i love how he doesnt mind any of herschel strange beliefs or his childish behavior or his cringe inducing moments, all he cares about is that he got them all on raven, and as far as frederick is concerned that is all that matters to him. i love how patient he is, how he knows that herschel finds the machines abominable but he doesnt mind, he appreciate he weird new perspective herschel brings into his conversations, i love how frederick clearly is very weird in his own way because of how he doesnt mind interacting with a clearly younger kid when that could be social suicide in high school, how he doesnt mind that his mom is a wanted criminal, herschel is his friend and he understand him whent he talks to him and he got them all on raven. ultimatly i loved him because his conversations with herchel reminds so so so much to my conversations with @ericvilas hen he sits down to patiently explain quantum mechanics to me, ok tangent over)

strange fascinating story hat i cant say i enjoyed but i AM glad i read. 8/10

[thesunicarusfellfor]

CC!Ranboo, CC!Tubbo and CC!Tommy with a Sweet but Scary F!Reader

can you write tommy, ranboo, and tubbo (platonic ofc) with a 14 year old fem streamer reader that is short, adorable, and has a cute voice; but is a master at all sorts of martial arts; have won lots of championships; and does not take shit from no one; mess with her and you’ll get an ass beat. doesn’t care if you’re from a different state or country, she will hop on a plane and be at your doorstep to give you a well deserved round house kick;;; but after that she’ll be all fluffy and adorable again 🥺🥰

Ooooohhhh. This sounds adorable. I'm gonna do it as separate headcanons if that's alright with you? If you want me to write a full story on it just send another ask ^^

Cussing is censored in an attempt to get on Tumblr's good side.

Tommy

Honestly, he felt a constant need to protect you. Even if he didn't act like it.

In his eyes, you were still young and unaware of the dangers that comes with being a streamer. Let alone a Minecraft one.

He begged you to become a mod in your Twitch chat.

He joked that he was going to cause violence and chaos constantly, but in reality, he wanted to make sure there were no creeps going after you.

If there was, Tommy would either ban them or ask Father of Minecraft Philza to start crafting a belt for them.

When you mentioned that you won a lot of martial arts championships, he was taken off guard a bit, but also didn't seem to believe you.

"But you're so small... And you're... Small."

"That's poggers and all, but you don't seem like the kinda girl to... Be able to beat someone up."

"Your voice doesn't seem threatening in the least, (F/n)/(S/n)." (Streamer name)

Boy. He ate those words quick.

You were both streaming and had finished a lore bit for the SMP, and he heard you GO OFF on a creepy donation.

Because he was focused on his chat at the moment, he didn't have the time to carefully graze through your comments.

Tommy was left visibly reeling from the threats you gave for a solid few seconds before slowly leaning over and murmuring.

"Little (F/L) (first letter), You weren't muted... Also. Holy- I think you... Uh.. Un alived them! Twitch that's a joke. Please."

When you showed your trophies on stream (via face cam or picture), Tommy definitely began to believe you.

Lowkey bragged about it to his twitch chat later on.

"Yeah guys, she's actually really pog and strong. But she's short and young so I can easily beat her."

Feared for his life when people clipped that part of the stream and tagged you on Twitter with the video.

Tubbo

While Tubbo is protective, he's not as protective as Tommy is.

He does get mad at the creepy donos or comments that you would receive, but he believes you can handle it on your own.

Some days though, he will find himself getting worried enough to watch your stream and hyper focus on the chat. (Yes he's a mod as well.)

This man was in absolute awe when you showed off your trophies and ribbons to the chat.

"When you come and visit... Can you show me how to do those things- OH MY GOD CAN YOU DO A KICK FLIP?"

"Could you technically throw me over your head?"

"Have you ever broken anyone's bones?"

Mans is very curious and asked you a bunch of questions in rapid succession.

I mean he asked you everything.

"Ever karate kicked a man in the balls?"

"Tubbo!"

"WhAT?! It's a fair question!"

He was very confident in your ability to protect yourself in person, but he was still a bit weary of the twitch chat.

One day he went into the VC you were already in to ask if you wanted help with building something on the SMP.

He certainly did not expect to hear someone being verbally ripped apart then suddenly-

"Oh hello, Tubbo!"

"How did you go from threatening to rip a person's intestines out to saying hello in the sweetest voice ever?!"

"...Is there a Karate move where you rip someone's intestines out?"

Ranboo

If you thought Tommy was protective.

Oh boy. This man is easily twenty times worse. EASILY.

You both met when you were smaller streamers and since then, this man has been so protective over you.

People have even started nicknaming you Sisterboo because of his heavy protectiveness of you.

You have stated before that you did know martial arts, but that didn't stop him from trying to ward off the creeps.

"Did you just insult Sisterboo in MY presence?" While he was joking, the person who insulted you got heavily banned.

Chat clipped that and it went viral on twitter within an hour.

While you did think Ranboo was over reacting a tad bit, you were kinda glad.

Albeit you were still young, but you weren't stupid. You knew the internet was a dangerous place.

If you ever streamed, you could guarentee that Ranboo was always one of the first 20 people to show up and mod the chat.

Even if it was 4am his time! He purposely has it so the notification when you're live can go through his Do Not Disturb function on his phone.

One day, he was a little busy with finishing building something for Karl's Tales of the SMP, and missed the notification by about 20 minutes. He felt like the scum of the earth.

When he arrived, he already was typing an apology but he was quickly shut up by you telling off some creep.

"-I don't care what state, province or even country you live in, bud. I will hop onto a plane to come to your house and- Oh! Ranboo's here! Hello!"

This man WHEEZED for easily ten minutes

He literally got on call with you to congratulate you on telling the person off, although he kept cackling with laughter every ten seconds as he remembered what you said.

Did relax on his protectiveness a tiny bit but sometimes let a few of the (lesser mean) hate comments through just to hear you rip them a new one.

"Wait can you actually do that though? Is that a martial arts move?"

[icarushasfallenfromthestars]

can you write tommy, ranboo, and tubbo (platonic ofc) with a 14 year old fem streamer reader that is short, adorable, and has a cute voice; but is a master at all sorts of martial arts; have won lots of championships; and does not take shit from no one; mess with her and you’ll get an ass beat. doesn’t care if you’re from a different state or country, she will hop on a plane and be at your doorstep to give you a well deserved round house kick;;; but after that she’ll be all fluffy and adorable again 🥺🥰

Ooooohhhh. This sounds adorable. I'm gonna do it as separate headcanons if that's alright with you? If you want me to write a full story on it just send another ask ^^

Cussing is censored in an attempt to get on Tumblr's good side.

Ranboo, Tubbo and Tommy with a Sweet but Scary F!Reader

Tommy

Honestly, he felt a constant need to protect you. Even if he didn't act like it.

In his eyes, you were still young and unaware of the dangers that comes with being a streamer. Let alone a Minecraft one.

He begged you to become a mod in your Twitch chat.

He joked that he was going to cause violence and chaos constantly, but in reality, he wanted to make sure there were no creeps going after you.

If there was, Tommy would either ban them or ask Father of Minecraft Philza to start crafting a belt for them.

When you mentioned that you won a lot of martial arts championships, he was taken off guard a bit, but also didn't seem to believe you.

"But you're so small... And you're... Small."

"That's poggers and all, but you don't seem like the kinda girl to... Be able to beat someone up."

"Your voice doesn't seem threatening in the least, (F/n)/(S/n)." (Streamer name)

Boy. He ate those words quick.

You were both streaming and had finished a lore bit for the SMP, and he heard you GO OFF on a creepy donation.

Because he was focused on his chat at the moment, he didn't have the time to carefully graze through your comments.

Tommy was left visibly reeling from the threats you gave for a solid few seconds before slowly leaning over and murmuring.

"Little (F/L) (first letter), You weren't muted... Also. Holy- I think you... Uh.. Un alived them! Twitch that's a joke. Please."

When you showed your trophies on stream (via face cam or picture), Tommy definitely began to believe you.

Lowkey bragged about it to his twitch chat later on.

"Yeah guys, she's actually really pog and strong. But she's short and young so I can easily beat her."

Feared for his life when people clipped that part of the stream and tagged you on Twitter with the video.

Tubbo

While Tubbo is protective, he's not as protective as Tommy is.

He does get mad at the creepy donos or comments that you would receive, but he believes you can handle it on your own.

Some days though, he will find himself getting worried enough to watch your stream and hyper focus on the chat. (Yes he's a mod as well.)

This man was in absolute awe when you showed off your trophies and ribbons to the chat.

"When you come and visit... Can you show me how to do those things- OH MY GOD CAN YOU DO A KICK FLIP?"

"Could you technically throw me over your head?"

"Have you ever broken anyone's bones?"

Mans is very curious and asked you a bunch of questions in rapid succession.

I mean he asked you everything.

"Ever karate kicked a man in the balls?"

"Tubbo!"

"WhAT?! It's a fair question!"

He was very confident in your ability to protect yourself in person, but he was still a bit weary of the twitch chat.

One day he went into the VC you were already in to ask if you wanted help with building something on the SMP.

He certainly did not expect to hear someone being verbally ripped apart then suddenly-

"Oh hello, Tubbo!"

"How did you go from threatening to rip a person's intestines out to saying hello in the sweetest voice ever?!"

"...Is there a Karate move where you rip someone's intestines out?"

Ranboo

If you thought Tommy was protective.

Oh boy. This man is easily twenty times worse. EASILY.

You both met when you were smaller streamers and since then, this man has been so protective over you.

People have even started nicknaming you Sisterboo because of his heavy protectiveness of you.

You have stated before that you did know martial arts, but that didn't stop him from trying to ward off the creeps.

"Did you just insult Sisterboo in MY presence?" While he was joking, the person who insulted you got heavily banned.

Chat clipped that and it went viral on twitter within an hour.

While you did think Ranboo was over reacting a tad bit, you were kinda glad.

Albeit you were still young, but you weren't stupid. You knew the internet was a dangerous place.

If you ever streamed, you could guarentee that Ranboo was always one of the first 20 people to show up and mod the chat.

Even if it was 4am his time! He purposely has it so the notification when you're live can go through his Do Not Disturb function on his phone.

One day, he was a little busy with finishing building something for Karl's Tales of the SMP, and missed the notification by about 20 minutes. He felt like the scum of the earth.

When he arrived, he already was typing an apology but he was quickly shut up by you telling off some creep.

"-I don't care what state, province or even country you live in, bud. I will hop onto a plane to come to your house and- Oh! Ranboo's here! Hello!"

This man WHEEZED for easily ten minutes

He literally got on call with you to congratulate you on telling the person off, although he kept cackling with laughter every ten seconds as he remembered what you said.

Did relax on his protectiveness a tiny bit but sometimes let a few of the (lesser mean) hate comments through just to hear you rip them a new one.

"Wait can you actually do that though? Is that a martial arts move?"

[thesquareinthecircularhole]

best friend [MCYT: Dream x F!Reader]

not requested but im having feelings

"best friend" the cavetown cover in particular

lyrics in italics

did somebody say some angst? i think i heard someone say some angst! happyish implied ending idk

unintentional slight wilbur!

I should have stayed at home 'Cause right now I see all these people who love me but I still feel alone Can't help but check my phone

The majority of the Dream SMP had decided, after the whole pandemic was over (k pretend), to meet up and have a hangout/party. So, as of right now, there was a bunch of streamers chilling in a rented out AirBNB mansion that was relatively cheap and believed by a few to be haunted- but anywayyyyyyy...

Dream stood around talking to George, Snapchat, and Punz. While he was conscious in the conversation his mind continued to drift elsewhere. In the absence of a need for him in the conversation- George and Sapnap getting into a heated debate in regards to a recent video with them and Punz mostly failing at calming the boys, Dream looked down at his phone. 10:48pm, it read, with no messages but plenty of twitter notifications. He put his phone to sleep again and slid it into his pocket, looking around at the group, with his eyes immediately drawn to one person.

I should have made you mine But no it wasn't meant to be and see I wasn't made for you and you weren't made for me Though it seemed so easy...

[Y/N] sat on the couch with Fundy on one side and Wilbur on the other. A couple of drinks were shared between them, and they watched the TV which had a show playing, though you couldn't really hear it with the music and chatter. It was more for background, much like everything in life. The trio weren't actively watching but more talking amongst themselves.

Dream couldn't make out anything they were saying from this far away. His heart pained at the happy expression on [Y/N]'s face. It looked very different than the last face he had seen on her, the face he caused as he broke her heart in hopes to maintain friendship. God did he love her but relationships weren't his thing and haven't been in so long and holy shit did he regret it after seeing the tears stream down their face that night and right now as he saw Wilbur put an arm around [Y/N]'s shoulders which cause Fundy to probably make an inappropriate joke, knowing him.

And that's because I wanna be your favorite boy I wanna be the one that makes your day The one you think about as you lie awake And I can't wait to be your number one I'll be your biggest fan and you'll be mine But I still wanna break your heart and make you cry

Jealousy soared through Dream. [Y/N] was his friend first, and she agreed to continue being the great friends they were after the rejection, and those two have just decided to take his place practically instantly? It had been a month since it, and [Y/N] had already pulled back from streaming with him as frequently-the fans had begun to take notice as well. While the Dream Team was a thing, the two of them were the Dream Duo. Taking names and kicking ass was the catchphrase. It was also part of the reason [Y/N] wasn't invited to the manhunts, she'd either get him to fast or betray the others and team with him. They started out together and been with each other every step of the way. From the first subscriber (other than each other of course) to the millionth-though [Y/N] ended up staying smaller than Dream, the support never left. They were each other's biggest fans and #1, if they weren't streaming together they were definitely watching the other's stream. They had been with each other through the highs and lows, and [Y/N] had even seen his face long before Snapmap (and most certainly pointed it out on twitter in a reply to his tweet).

But won't you wait You know it's too late I'm on my own shit now And let me tell you how it feels to be fucking great I feel great

[Y/N] was thriving in their neck of the woods. Despite the dead silence on her end for a week after the rejection, she came back swinging and better than ever, or at least presented herself in that way. She had branched out away from purely minecraft and minecraft speedruns into other territory. She even got featured on the Technoblade channel in one of his many bedwar videos. She quickly befriended Valkyrae too and joined that crew for a bunch of Among Us streams. She hated to say it, but it felt great to not be on a one track grind anymore. Sure, she missed Clay and his antics, but despite her happy demeanor her heart still hurt over the situation. 

You need to be yourself Love someone for lovin' you instead of someone really cool that makes your heart melt Who knows what you truly felt

Wilbur was well aware of the feelings [Y/N] had for Dream as one night she called him drunk and near tears about how wonderful he was. The next day when [Y/N] woke up she forced Wilbur to not spill the beans and Wilbur was happy to have blackmail material over her, albeit jokingly. Nothing better than getting free minecraft labor using someone’s drunken love confession that should’ve won an Oscar. However, Wilbur didn’t understand her feelings towards Dream at all. Sure he was a cool dude and really good at everything he does, but nothing he has done has shown more than friendly love towards [Y/N]. Wilbur personally thinks [Y/N] was blind in love with him and deserved someone better, and hey...if it was him...

You're still my favorite girl You better trust me when I tell you there ain't no one else more beautiful in this damn world In this damn world

A couple of days after the group hangout, [Y/N] found herself alone in a call with Dream. With the streams of the Dream SMP having ended and everyone involved leaving the VC to do their own things, it left the dynamic duo alone. Dream was hyperactive about it, though it seemed [Y/N] didn’t notice as they were texting on their phone, until Clay piped up.

“Hey [Y/N]...” his voiced trailed off.

“Oh hey! What’s up Dream?” She responded suddenly reminded of the discord.

“We’re still friends right?”

“Of course we are, why wouldn’t we be?”

“Well it seems like lately you’ve been ignoring or avoiding me.” He huffs. They sigh, a mix of a frown and a smile on their face.

“Clay, you have to understand, I really like you, but I’m working on putting that behind me. If you can manage a little bit where I can separate those feelings from our friendship feelings while being a bit distant, our friendship will be better than before! Remember, you’re still my favorite boy in the whole world.”

“And you’re my favorite girl.”

I still wanna be your favorite boy I wanna be the one... I might just be the one...

[janiedean]

Is it bad that I really enjoyed reading the kinda fandom history/fanw*nk history posts abt j*nsa? XD Tbf I'm also a bit addicted to fanlore articles. XD Anyway I think in the tags of one post you mentioned j*imexs*nsa starting as an antijb thing? Would you mind elaborating on that? Sounds like an interesting, albeit bonkers, story, too.

dw I don't think it's bad I mean... we all enjoy catching up on wank we weren't part of (and my friends the things I could tell you abt spn fandom or when I was around at the sidelines for the worst rpf fic ever..) but anyway *deep breath* SURE THING LET'S SAY IT I mean....... it's not like it hasn't been years and I can talk abt it so whatevs, under the cut because reasons, also I'm saying now that a lot of this was what I deduced from circumstances and you've got to take my word for it unless someone who was around then remembers it and can confirm my impressions bc it was a lot less obvious than the j*nsa stuff

but going from the premises again:

I got a tumblr in like may 2011, read asoiaf june-july of that year, started being active on the tags around august-september 2011 so it was before S2 aired and 95% of the people that were bnfs/around then aren't on tumblr anymore/are here rarely these days so you've gotta take me at face value

in the main asoiaf bnf group there was this one jc shipper who like... I mean she's still active on twt and blocks everyone shipping jb on sight but good bc let's just say she's a piece of work not to mention that she spent months/years writing meta abt how jb was like fanfic stuff and had no book basis and how if you liked j but not c you were a misogynists which was wildly popular

I would like to add that person is basically... let's say everyone in jb fandom who ever got harassed knows exactly who I'm talking about and I'll leave it at that and was not for ship and let ship let's put it like that

so basically this person was on my dash bc I followed ppl who followed her and I saw a lot of jaimes*nsa stuff from her

in the sense that like... she was doing with it what I did with jonc/brynden back in the day when I was wanting to convince the world they were the crackship that was promised as in posting abt it/spamming it/discussing how it made canon sense/more canon sense than jb anyway and the likes, and like there was a fairly numerous amount of stuff for that ship back in the day - like before S2-3 aired jaimes*nsa had pretty high fic numbers/fanwork numbers considering that in canon they haven't interacted once

and that went hand in hand with keeping on trying to burn ground around jb before S2 aired/before they met in canon with that meta

and like... it's not like it started as an antijb thing in itself bc I'm sure that there must have been someone into it before the show aired same as there were ppl who as I was reminded lately wrote brienne/loras hatesex and so on, but the explosion which was during S1-3 (then it lost a bit of traction I think mostly bc jb exploded and sansa/tyrion happened on the show and the ppl involved kind of went more on twitter and didn't produce that much content anymore tho it still has numbers™) was also continuously fanned by person above + her followers who most likely were like... genuinely into it but again the antijb meta was around quite enough at the same time, so

also like... let's just say that back in the day I was the main t*robb ship contributor and I also wrote jb though less but jb was smaller as a fandom so I did post when the ao3 tag was at like... 30 fics or smth so I separately had my foot in both ponds and like until S3-S4 any t*robb fic where jb was the sideship would get tangentially less views/reviews than ones where they were not which in itself wouldn't be a problem bc obviously maybe ppl wouldn't ship one of them, but then there was this uuuh specific case

where someone who followed me for the t*robb who also followed her at some point asked me in private if a 22k t*robb fic that was the sequel to... my most famous/popular jb one let's put like that had a lot of jb in it because they were die hard jc people and it was triggering to them (which... I mean fair enough but in retrospective using that term instead of 'you know I really don't vibe with jb and I'd rather not read it' felt a bit like they were trying to guilt trip me ngl), I said that they showed up together in two scenes and were in the background and at most it was 1k worth of fic and the answer was that it was way too much so they were going to have to skip and like again their prerogative but idk that conversation kind of left me like is this some kind of roundabout way to say that it'd be better if I didn't sideship them? idk but until S3-4 I had the distinct feeling that at least for my own stuff having both ships together meant less readers and ngl I didn't update the infamous t*robb wip fic for a year because I was planning to make jb fairly prominent as a sideship there and I was there like 'oh god what if I get wank over it' and I didn't but again I would like to state it wasn't just because of one person, it was... the general atmosphere that seemed unfriendly unless you stayed on the jb tag/kept both separate

and I would like to add that the moment S3 happened and it sailed anyway bc it was going to was when the targeted harassing of anyone who was active on the tag started ssssso :|

basically like... I have a lot less evidence to go on re ^^^^ than the j*nsa stuff because that is well-documented the rest is my very humble opinion about the background of when j*aimesansa started getting popular but like it also was v. prominent in between jc people (same with the jcsansa threesomes) who were also following that person - I would like to also add that a bunch of ppl who shipped both were absolutely lovely and nice to interact with in other situations and not harassing anyone about it and again nothing against ppl into it as a thing but the moment of its peak was in conjuncture to the burning ground around jb moment driven by that specific person so *shrug*

[goofygomez]

Why do people hate on Ron? Like bruh, he Is a good friend

Thank you for asking, anon! Any excuse to rant about Harry Potter is good for me.

People like to cling to the few times in the books that Harry and Ron's relationship took a dip without looking much further than surface level. They usually list "a bunch" of examples of Ron being a bad friend (he's not) but they mostly agree on two distinct moments: In Goblet of Fire when he's tired of being in Harry's shadow, and in Deathly Hallows when they fight and Ron ends up leaving.

Ron haters like to cling to these particular moments because, at face value, they paint a really bad picture of Ron, especially in comparison to the ever-perfect Hermione, who stood by Harry on both occasions. But if you dig deeper, there are very real and understandable reasons for what Ron did, and very real arguments to be made that he's an even better friend for rising past those reasons and deciding to come back to Harry.

Adding a read more because this will go on for a bit.

In Goblet of Fire, Ron has already been best friends with Harry for three years. Keep in mind, this is a guy who: sacrificed himself in first year, faced his greatest fear in second year, and stood up to an alleged mass murderer in third year. Ron is incredibly brave and selfless. On the other hand, Ron is a very insecure person from the moment we meet him. Overshadowed by his older siblings, he feels the need to rise above them and prove his worth (even though no one should have to prove they matter, but that's beside the point). He feels inadequate, both at being a wizard and being Harry's friend because once again, he's the "weak link" in a relationship. Harry's fame and popularity, both positive and negative (see Chamber of Secrets), always puts a strain on their relationship, but they always face it together and their bond is made stronger each year. But in fourth year, Harry is chosen as the mysterious fourth champion, unbeknownst to wizards such as Dumbledore and Fudge, and most certainly, Ron. He feels betrayed by his best friend, but not because he doesn't trust him. Their entire arc fighting is the culmination of years of Ron's insecurities holding him back and convincing him he's "not good enough". It takes his best friend almost dying to the dragon for him to be the bigger person and admit his mistake, and then proceeds to try to make it up to Harry all year, even going as far as offering his own body as a metaphorical and literal punching bag when Harry is practicing spells for tasks 1 and 2. He's Harry's best friend and makes sure to remind him of that through his actions. Also, for those unfamiliar with the books (because the movies made such a poor job of showing this dynamic), Harry and Hermione were barely able to hold conversations without Ron during their separations. Harry himself says she's a great friend, but "she's not Ron".

Now, in Deathly Hallows, people love to point out Ron leaving them but fail to realize two key elements that, while not excusing Ron's actions, put them into perspective.

1. At the point where they fight, Ron has been wearing the Horcrux for an entire day, even longer than they usually wore it in shifts (and I still maintain that they should have kept it in Hermione's bag, but that's J*R creating stupid conflict). But Gomez, I hear you say, the other two had been wearing it just as much as him. While that is true, it is very obvious that the Horcrux affects Ron's mind even worse than his friends. That is not to say he's weak, far from it, but it is evident that the locket tries to push you away from people and poison your mind and soul by drawing from things such as your insecurities, of which we have established Ron has an abundance. Harry and Hermione are spending a lot of time together, and while neither of them thinks about the other that way, Ron's insecure mind doesn't know that. Plus, Ron has been established to be the equivalent of "street smart" and at the moment, book smarts are much more prevalent as they are researching really old magic and, essentially, magical history (Voldy's past). Once again, he feels inadequate in his standing within his friend group, and the Horcrux takes advantage of that.

2. Something people don't usually realize is that, while his sentiment is flawed, Ron's words aren't entirely without merit. That is to say, Ron reminds Harry that both he and Hermione thought Harry had something more to go on than "we must find various objects". That is obviously not Harry's fault (once again, blame Dumbledore for that one), but the truth is still there, albeit magnified by the locket's power. Ron feels like they're making no progress (because honestly, up until that point, they weren't doing very well). As an aside, the movies paint Ron's argument as much pettier than it actually is in the books, namely by changing this line:

"My parents are dead!" Harry bellowed.

"And mine could be going the same way!" yelled Ron.

which basically frames Ron as being worried about his family, a VERY prevalent fear of his. Remember that, while Harry's family is dead and Hermione's is safe in Australia, Ron's are out there in the open, some even actively fighting Voldemort themselves. The movie, unfortunately, twists this into:

Harry: You think I don't know how this feels?

Ron: No, you don't know how this feels! Your parents are dead, you have no family!

This just invalidates his entire motivation, and frankly, his entire character in the past 6 years. It makes Ron seem like an unsympathetic character. Instead of having Harry bring out his parents as an argument for him having it bad, Ron does so to highlight that Harry does not know what Ron is feeling and that he doesn't have a family, even though they've already established that Harry is essentially already part of the Weasleys.

All in all, there are many smaller moments, both in the books and in the movies, where Ron's character is put into question (as with every character) but people don't like to acknowledge all the good qualities he displays in between those moments. It is in part Steve Kloves' (writer for all movies but one) fault for giving A LOT of Ron quotes to Hermione and turning him into a bumbling buffoon who just wants to eat and is a somewhat funny comedic relief, instead of the sarcastic genius he is in the books.

[ripmybnhadays]

moral dilemmas and greater good mentality: so…what now? (aka me yelling about one specific panel in bnha 292 and definitely jumping the gun on aftermath talks)

so 292 happened.

and a lot happened. one miraculous return to another. injuries. and some battlefield conversations. and there’s a lot we could talk about in regards to what might happen in 293 or 294 or anything coming up next since this battle is still very much up in the air.

but one panel had me screaming and i want to talk about it. and since none of my irl fans are able to yell about it with me: tumblr void here i come!

so reading through bnha 292 i had a lot of thoughts. “where’s endeavour?”, “POWER!”, “NOT HADO”, “way to go midoriya for acknowledging todoroki’s current suffering on this terrible no good day that just won’t end”, and more! but there’s one panel that kind of brought up something that i have been thinking about in vague terms since 290 with the reveal. so i’m using this as an excuse to think about it in less vague terms.

the panel in question?

and why do i like this panel so much that i’m writing a tumblr essay about it?

it’s kind of the first glimpse we get at what could be very prominent in the fallout of this reveal. with best jeanist not dead, and as we know - hawk’s having a recording of the twice fight - dabi’s narrative is falling apart a bit. and if the public finds out that the stuff about hawks wasn’t necessarily completely true — they may be willing, and want, to question if the situation with endeavour is true. after all, why should they believe a villain?

but as best jeanist arrival begins to point out that fact, dabi isn’t concerned. after all, his story about endeavour is true - right shouto?

and here’s the thing, this very well could come down largely to what shouto has to say - what all the todoroki’s have to say post-war. the public is going to turn to the todoroki family to tell them it’s not true. and the todorokis — all of them — are going to have to decide how they will answer that question.

now my forewarning here, is this is pretty much baseless theorizing. it’s just something i find interesting and i’d love if the story explored it. nonetheless: whether the story will or not, i’m going to explore it.

say this fight ends as it is, with no more major casualties or reveals happening. the public is left with dabi’s reveals, destruction and wavering faith in heroes — but turns out best jeanist is alive, and i’m going to assuming hawks’ recording is released.

maybe the villain was lying. maybe hero society isn’t as corrupt as it seemed to be from the villain’s video. so what’s the next step?

statements from the todoroki’s.

first and foremost enji, the number one himself. so does enji deny everything? admit to some of it, but claim dabi was over exaggerating? or admit that the villain was telling the truth? and right off the bat, narratively speaking this puts us in a major moral conundrum.

because as a father — enji todoroki, who is seeking atonement for his actions, has an obligation to do what’s best by his family. by as the number one hero — endeavour, who just recently earned this position in the eyes of the public, has an obligation to the public and hero society to protect them. the pro-hero arc went out of its way to show us exactly what the stakes are on both sides.

and throughout this entire story enji has demonstrated extreme difficulty being able to separate being a father with his aspirations of being the number one hero. and while he has been trying to atone, this will be his first major decision to see if he has really changed.

but it’s more complicated than that. because layered into this: choosing his family would, in a lot of ways, mean choosing against the general public — who desperately needs stability and to be told it’s not true, lie or not.

if endeavour goes down for this, it means that arguably at this point in the story: the villains have won. the public lacks the stability all might built with no one really to replace him (which is a whole other conversation about how that might go down and what the hero commission and agencies might try to prevent that). the public doesn’t trust their heroes. hero society as we know it, is falling apart (whether that’s necessarily a bad thing in the long run is debatable but in the short term it is very bad if it goes down this way)

but it isn’t only enji’s choice: there’s four other members of the todoroki family to consider — and what they want should be a big factor in his decision.

but what would they want?

the family, while not necessarily functional, was steadily improving. fuyumi, natsuo and shouto all spending more time together. rei making colossal improvements. and while sure, that does not in no way erase the suffering they went through, at large the family was choosing to deal with it privately. even natsuo, who was the most against enji out of the bunch.

but now that choice has been taken from them, which say what you want about dabi, is probably one of the worst parts about this reveal.

so will fuyumi want to try and bury the damage, deny these claims and try and move on as normal, or will she want to try to minimize it? will she want to leave the choice up to other members of her family and do what’s best for them?

what will natsuo want to do? rei?

shouto?

and let’s talk about shouto for a minute here. because if anything, this puts shouto in an even greater massively difficult position.

not only is he the “main” one of the bunch, he has stakes in both worlds — his family and hero society. he also has very clearly acknowledged the fact that he hasn’t decided how he feels about endeavour seeking atonement yet and if he wants to forgive his father. in addition, shouto has said that as a hero he wants to be able to put people at ease.

does shouto distance himself from his father or stand by him as a hero? does he come out with his side of the story? what does he personally choose to do? because it affects his mental and emotional wellbeing, but it also affects his prospects as a hero. already he’s dealing with so much, and if the world looks to him to confirm or deny his brother’s claims, as dabi just did (albeit in that case probably tauntingly) — what will he choose to do?

and if this is the direction things take, this is a huge deal that i think shouto will play a critical part in deciding the outcome of. and it’s an awful heart-breaking decision but on a narrative level brings up some of my favourite character moments.

where characters are forced to choose between their morals, and ideals, choose what they feel like is right — but ultimately there are no good options. no way to get out without compromising something important regardless.

it’s those moments that we really get to see what is most important to a character. right now, it’s the choice of the family or the public. the choice of do we lie and hide our suffering, to put the general public at ease — to make them feel better. and by their professions endeavour and shouto both have obligations to the public. but natsuo, fuyumi and rei don’t.

is it fair to ask them to lie or downplay the truth “for the greater good”?

and i have no idea how everything would play out if this happened. if all the todorokis spoke out and denied dabi’s accusations would it be enough to convince the public to still place their trust in endeavour? if they acknowledge the accusations as true — where does it put them, where does it put shouto’s future hero career? can they find a middle ground and try to minimize damage on all sides?

and arguably, is preserving hero society the right choice? is it better to bring it down and try and build it back up? or is it too much to fast?

nothing is clear cut here.

and more than anything else i love when stories force it’s characters to pick between their own needs and the good of the public. if i may take from another franchise: it’s the age-old question, do “the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”?

should they tear endeavour down — an action that despite at long last revealing the truth, will probably cause tension within the family because that isn’t universally what the whole family wants?

because that’s the component on the smaller scale: the needs and wants within the todoroki family itself. no matter what — someone in the family is probably going to have to give up their ideals. because the key right now is that the remaining todorokis (meaning fuyumi, natsuo, rei and shouto) kind of have to present a united front. an agreement on what happened to present to the public. or else not only would tensions continue to grow between the family itself (although unfortunately this may happen regardless) but also probably confuse and sow chaos into the public because it would become apparent that someone is lying — not necessarily just the villain.

it’s a really complicated moral situation. and i’d be beyond excited (read prepared to get my heartbroken) to find out. as a writer myself, these are the moments that really determine who a character is. and i’m very excited to find out how the todorokis will respond to all eyes suddenly being on them and their private lives.

anyway that’s all i’ve got. these is really less of a theory and more of just yelling about what if’s and moral dilemmas because these are my favourite moments in narrative.

(small disclaimer as well: obviously this is a very serious situation and its absolutely heart-breaking that the kids + rei are being put in these types of potential situations. it should be simple — endeavour was awful. he was abusive. dabi wasn’t lying about that. but it’s not. because of society, because unfortunately in this story, it’s a lot bigger than just them and their family. endeavour is getting what was coming to him but in light of seeing his character move and change and the different depths, and the work the whole family has put in to try and be a family, the fact that this is how things are coming out, and the fact that this is so much farther reaching that simply did endeavour do it or not, is heart-wrenching. they don’t have a “right” choice at this point in time. no matter what it will either cost them, or the world something. and that’s awful. but its these moments that make this arc and the todoroki family so good and well executed. because it doesn’t shy away from touching on the fact that sometimes there aren’t right choices. that sometimes, especially in a world like bnha, you have to sacrifice something and its those devastating moments that make the story all the richer. when i say “im excited”, i’m excited to see the narrative consequence + feel the pain of what the characters are going through. narratives are powerful because they can make us feel things, so the fallout of this is exciting to me because i’m expecting to absolutely feel uncomfortable and upset and as distraught as the characters because that's what good stories do.)

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Pelagornis

By Ripley Cook

Etymology: Sea Bird

First Described By: Lartet, 1857

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostaylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Pelagornithidae  

Referred Species: P. chilensis, P. longirostris, P. mauretanicus, P. miocaenus, P. orri, P. sandersi, P. stirtoni, P. tenuirostris, P. wetmorei

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: Between 30 and 2.5 million years ago, from the Rupelian of the Oligocene through the beginning of the Pleistocene (in the Gelasian age) 

Pelagornis, being an extremely common seabird, is known from nearly everywhere around the world, usually associated with the coast. 

Physical Description: Despite the incredibly generic name, Pelagornis was quite an interesting bird. Like other pseudotooth birds, both its upper and lower beak bore toothlike spikes, in an alternating small/big/small/big pattern. Its beak was robust and fairly long compared to the back of the skull. These pseudoteeth appear to have grown in relatively late in Pelagornis’s growth, implying the keratin covering the beak may not have been fully hardened until close to adulthood. Interestingly enough, fossil evidence indicates that Pelagornis probably held its head upright at a vertical angle. 

By José Carlos Cortés

Pelagornis was fucking huge, m’kay. P. sandersi has an estimated wingspan between 6.1 and 7.4 meters! This makes Pelagornis the bird with the largest wingspan (but not the heaviest flying bird - that record belongs to Argentavis). Its wings were even more proportionally long and narrow than those of the largest flying birds alive today, the albatrosses. In comparison, its body was fairly small. There were, of course, some species of Pelagornis that were smaller than this, reaching only 4 meters long in terms of wingspan. Still, this large wingspan size is really only characteristic of these birds in flight - compressed, they would have looked much smaller, especially given that they were very light weight. They had stout legs and shorter tails, which indicates that they weren’t very good walkers, and spent most of their time in the air or sitting on the land. 

By Jack Wood

Diet: Probably fish. The pseudoteeth are likely an adaptation to grab and hold onto large fish. Similar toothlike serrations are seen, albeit much less exaggerated, in modern mergansers, which also eat fish. In addition, the vertical position of the head would have allowed Pelagornis to skim-feed, grabbing fish and other aquatic organisms from the top layer of the ocean and scooping them into their mouths. Thus, the fake-teeth would have allowed Pelagornis to grab onto fish better than non-toothed skim feeding birds. It may have also used these sharp fake teeth in order to grab onto the slipperiest fish and cephalopods - rather than harder shelly animals. 

By Scott Reid

Behavior: As with modern seabirds, Pelagornis likely spent most of its time out at sea. Gliding on oceanic thermals would have helped to support its huge body in the air without wasting energy just to stay aloft - which was important, since it wasn’t very good at flapping its wings and would have had trouble staying aloft long enough to get food if it had to flap too frequently. Think an albatross, but a giant, evil albatross. Landing and taking off would have been more awkward, though. It probably needed to take advantage of headwinds, drops in elevation and/or air gusts to get into the air at all. Albatrosses also kinda have this problem, but nowhere near to the same extent. The late appearance of the pseudoteeth implies that Pelagornis may have fed its young back on land like many modern seabirds before they could feed themselves out at sea. As such, they would have sought out good nesting sites, which may correspond to where fossils of Pelagornis are found - indicating that their spread around the world was greater than that we know of. Since it was a sea bird, it probably would have been very social, living in large colonies - and it would have cared for its young in similar social groups. In fact, it seems more likely than not that it would have laid its nests on cliffs and in rocky areas and plateaus, where being able to take off would have been easier than flatter, sandier beaches. Whether or not these animals were as noisy as modern seabirds is really another question altogether. 

By Jack Wood

Interestingly enough, Pelagornis had a salt gland in the eye that would have allowed it to excrete excess salt, which was an extremely helpful trait when Pelagornis ate almost entirely seafood. That seafood diet didn’t meant it wasn’t a danger, however - today, seabirds will venture away from the coasts in order to scavenge food on the beach, and they are certainly defensive of their nests, young, and territory. Also fascinatingly, it had a very very very long skull - with all of those pseudoteeth packed in - which had similar shapes and organization as to the extinct really toothed birds of the Mesozoic. This implies that there was a certain amount of evolutionary regression in Pelagornis, allowing it to better support its teeth and chomping ability than it would otherwise. There is also an interesting furrow in the skull, which allowed it to be better support the head and possibly to better grab prey in the ocean. 

By Scott Reid

Ecosystem: Pelagornis lived around coastlines worldwide. Because of this, it is difficult to pinpoint with certainty the types of animals it lived with. In fact, it was so long-lived and widespread it is more likely than not that Pelgaornis interacted with any ocean-going creature or animal found along the coast. It doesn’t seem to have a preference in the fossil record between rocky coasts or beaches, though it did seem to stay in at least somewhat warmer ecosystems and where cliffs would have been present for easier take-offs (and it is reasonable to suppose that cliff areas would have been its preferred place for nesting). Some notable animals it would have interacted with include extinct penguins, cetaceans, the famed giant shark Megalodon and… humans. Yup, Pelagornis is known from locations where early members of genus Homo ventured to. So, if you can imagine being afraid of a giant bird with fake teeth a little too well, that would be the instincts of your ancestors talking. 

By Scott Reid

Other: Pelagornis is a fun time, classification wise, for multiple reasons: one, a whole bunch of different types of Pseudotoothed birds are actually, apparently, species of Pelagornis; and two, we don’t really know what Pseudotoothed birds really are. So, let’s break this down into those two parts. What’s going on with the species? Well, in the 2010s, a lot of research has been made that shows a bunch of the Neogene Pseudotoothed birds that we’ve counted as different genera are actually… just… part of Pelagornis. Why Wikipedia has not chosen to update their information as to this effect is beyond me, but the fact remains is that a lot of Pseudotoothed birds are just different shades of Pelagornis, primarily due to the fact that they really… aren’t different. In fact, a lot of the differences were just based on time and place, and the fact that Pseudotoothed birds weren’t really well known at all. The loss of Osteodontornis is a bit of a bummer, but there aren’t any major differences between this genus and Pelagornis, so it’s gone. We’ve also lost Pseudodontornis, you know, the name that actually means “fake toothed bird”, unlike the crappy name for Pelagornis, which just means Sea Bird. Like, come on people. Why are we here. Just to suffer. We’ve also lost Palaeochenoides, Neodontornis, and Tympanonesiotes. Hence the extreme amount of art in this article - the last time I covered Pseudotoothed birds, these were separate. So we have an abundance of terrifying tooth art. 

By José Carlos Cortés

Finally - what the heck are Pseudotoothed birds? We don’t know. We really don’t know where they go. Are they related to the sea birds we have today (the Aequorlitornithes)? Are they related to ducks? Are they something else entirely? We have no idea, because, frankly, they seem to just appear in the fossil record without any sort of origin whatsoever. Like magic. Suddenly, toothed birds were back like the asteroid never hit. Honestly if I were to hazard a guess, based on the fossil characteristics, they’re probably none of the above - but an early branching group of Neognathous (aka, all birds that aren’t ratites and their cousins) birds that evolved from a non-easily fossilized ancestor. Whether that ancestor had weak bones or just lived in places where fossils don’t happen is a different question entirely, but either way, so far we have nothing. They just appear, in the Paleocene, out of nowhere. And, eventually, Pelagornis also disappeared. 

By Jack Wood

Why did Pelagornis, the latest surviving species disappear? The most likely answer is climate change. The onset of the ice age would have caused extreme changes to the water patterns, currents, and air flow. Since Pelagornis didn’t flap its wings much, and relied almost entirely on soaring and thermals, it probably would have been greatly affected by changes in these weather patterns. So, changes in the ocean and the air by the ice age would have decreased its ability to reach food, and then the dramatic changes in its home climate would have been a further death knell. Interestingly enough, they only began to become uncommon right before they became extinct - indicating that Pelagornis really was finished off by this change in climate. Which is sad, because that’s right around when humans were becoming more of a thing, and it would have been nice to see one of these things in life. Except it wouldn’t have been. Because they’re terrifying. But I laugh in the face of danger. I think. I dunno I just think they’re neat. 

By Scott Reid

Species Differences: The different species of Pelagornis differ primarily due to location and time, though there are some differences in shape and size - those fossils that were once assigned to Tympanonesiotes, for example, were on average smaller than other members of this genus. The largest known species was decidedly Pelagornis sandersi, though the best known species is Pelagornis chilensis. For now, however, Pelagornis is kind of a mess, since so much research is needed on this species complex to make sure things are where they belong and one genus is enough, so species differences are difficult to parse out until more research has been published on the subject. Just know that there were a lot of Pelagornis - and they came in all kinds of different shapes and sizes all over the place.

~ By Meig Dickson and Henry Thomas

Sources Under the Cut 

Becker, J.J. (1987): Neogene avian localities of North America. Smithsonian Research Monographs 1. Prentice Hall & IBD.

Bourdon, Estelle (2005): Osteological evidence for sister group relationship between pseudo-toothed birds (Aves: Odontopterygiformes) and waterfowls (Anseriformes). Naturwissenschaften 92(12): 586–591.

Brodkorb, Pierce (1963): Catalogue of fossil birds. Part 1 (Archaeopterygiformes through Ardeiformes). Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences 7(4): 179–293.

Cenizo, M., C. Acosta Hospitaleche, and M. Reguero. 2016. Diversity of pseudo-toothed birds (Pelagornithidae) from the Eocene of Antarctica. Journal of Paleontology 89 (5): 870 - 881.

Hastings, A. K., and A. C. Dooley. 2017. Fossil-collecting from the middle Miocene Carmel Church Quarry marine ecosystem in Caroline County, Virginia. The Geological Society of America Field Guide 47:77-88

Hopson, James A. (1964): Pseudodontornis and other large marine birds from the Miocene of South Carolina. Postilla 83: 1–19.

Ksepka, D.T. 2014. Flight performance of the largest volant bird. PNAS 111: 10624-10629.

Louchart, A., Sire, J.-Y., Mourer-Chauvire, C., Geraads, d., viriot, L., de Buffrenil, V. 2013. Structure and Growth Pattern of Pseudoteeth in Pelagornis mauretanicus (Aves, Odontopterygiformes, Pelagornithidae). PLoS One 8(11): e80372.

Mayr, G. 2009. Paleogene Fossil Birds. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Mayr, G., D. Rubilar-Rogers. 2010. Osteology of a new giant bony-toothed bird from the Miocene of Chile, with a revision of the taxonomy of Neogene Pelagornithidae. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 30 (5): 1313-1330.

Mayr, G., J. L. Goedert, S. A. McLeod. 2013. Partial Skeleton of a Bony-Toothed Bird from the Late Oligocene/Early Miocene of Oregon (USA) and the Systematics of Neogene Pelagornithidae. Journal of Paleontology 87 (5): 922 - 929.

Mayr, G. 2017. Avian Evolution: The Fossil Record of Birds and its Paleobiological Significance. Topics in Paleobiology, Wiley Blackwell. West Sussex.

McKee, Joseph W.A. (1985). "A pseudodontorn (Pelecaniformes: Pelagornithidae) from the middle Pliocene of Hawera, Taranaki, New Zealand". New Zealand Journal of Zoology. 12 (2): 181–184.

Mlíkovský, Jirí (2002): Cenozoic Birds of the World, Part 1: Europe. Ninox Press, Prague.

Olson, Storrs L. (1985): The Fossil Record of Birds. In: Farner, D.S.; King, J.R. & Parkes, Kenneth C. (eds.): Avian Biology 8: 79-252.

Ono, Keiichi (1989). "A Bony-Toothed Bird from the Middle Miocene, Chichibu Basin, Japan". Bulletin of the National Science Museum Series C: Geology & Paleontology. 15 (1): 33–38.

Rincón R., Ascanio D. & Stucchi, Marcelo (2003). "Primer registro de la familia Pelagornithidae (Aves: Pelecaniformes) para Venezuela [First record of Pelagornithidae family from Venezuela]" (PDF). Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Espeleología (in Spanish and English). 37: 27–30.

Scarlett, R.J. (1972): Bone of a presumed odontopterygian bird from the Miocene of New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 15(2): 269-274.

Zouhri, S., P. Gingerich, S. Adnet, E. Bourdon, S. Jouve, B. Khalloufi, A. Amane, N. Elboudali, J.-C. Rage, F. Lapparent De Broin, A. Kaoukaya and S. Sebti. 2018. Middle Eocene vertebrates from the sabkha of Gueran, Atlantic coastal basin, Saharan Morocco, and their peri-African correlations. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 350(6):310-318

[hollywooduniversityalumnus]

2. where are you now when i need you most?

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

Crew members wrapping for the day spilled out of the open-doored set of Love is Everywhere when she arrived. In lieu of the typical mid-morning lecture for Hollywood 101, the professor had arranged for a special off-campus field trip that evening to a studio warehouse for a tour with one of the producers. When he had announced it, Professor Hunt had emphasized the importance of arriving on time with a particularly snide side-eye at her, so to play it safe, she had shown up even earlier than he had asked of the class. Finding the doorway he had specified for them to wait nearby, she leaned against the adjacent wall, glanced at the time on her phone, and let out a heavy sigh.

It had been weeks since the masquerade, and that side-eye had been the only time he had dared to acknowledge her existence. But, to be fair, she hadn’t given him much to work with; her proclivity for exchanging quick-witted barbs and snark with him had all but vanished, something that had all her friends, but especially Addison, worried.

Margot’s phone rang, making her jump, the sudden movement startling one of the people exiting the warehouse with a big roll of fabric in their arms. Mouthing apologies, she rounded the corner and put the phone to her ear.

“Keep your phone on you,” Ethan Blake instructed. She could tell without seeing him that he was in full agent mode – his professional voice was different than his speaking voice – so she bit her tongue from making a sarcastic remark. “This is going to be huge. Huge.”

“What is?” she asked.

Ethan sounded like he was smiling, which made his professional voice sound a little less so. “That tape you sent in a few weeks ago has captured the attentions of a certain rising director and his casting director currently looking to hire for a highly anticipated art house horror film.”

Her heart leapt in her throat. “Ethan.”

“I know. Keep your phone on you,” he said. “Even if you have to wrestle with alligators, even if you have to punch Masika in the face, whatever it takes, just keep that phone on you. This could be It. The golden egg. The golden goose. The-”

“Have you been watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory again?”

Her agent’s voice went from professional to sheepish. “Perhaps.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll take no more of your time. Keep that phone on and on you. Call me as soon as you hear anything. And I mean anything.”

Once she hung up, she headed back to the doorway to find a handful of her classmates idling around. Beside the doorway, the professor and a man, presumably the producer giving the tour, stood. The man, upon seeing her, held out a light brown wicker basket.

“No phones allowed on set,” he called out.

Her eyes flickered to Professor Hunt’s, who immediately focused his attention elsewhere.

Subtle.

“Actually, I have a call I’m waiting for,” she said. “It’s really urgent. Would you mind if-”

“No exceptions,” Professor Hunt emphasized. “Phone. Now.”

Margot shook her head. “I may be getting a job offer. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

This piqued the producer’s interest. Lowering the basket to his side, he asked, “May I ask what offer you might be receiving?”

She felt Professor Hunt’s gaze burning a hole in her forehead, but she kept her attention firmly on the producer. She was not unaware that her classmates had begun listening in, apparently eager to see if she would finally stir the pot after weeks of being curiously silent.

“With all due respect, sir, I’d rather not disclose that information just yet. Don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch,” she said.

The producer looked her over for a moment. “Understandable. Just keep your phone on vibrate, and step away from the group if that call comes, okay?”

She nodded.

Turning away, she made a point to immerse herself within the growing crowd of classmates gathered by the door a little way from the two older men. Addison and a few other people whose varying projects she had helped with immediately absorbed her into their conversations.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

At precisely six p.m., the professor stepped before the doorway and clapped his hands once. That was all he had to do to command their attention. All conversations ceased and the class – minus a handful of students who would be dealt with later – focused on their stern professor and his producer friend.

“Listen up, everyone. We’re fortunate the producer, Jaxson Mitchell, is giving us this opportunity. That means you will behave in a way that reflects well on the university, no exceptions.”

Margot felt his gaze burning another hole in her forehead.

The tour began earnestly, with Jaxson taking the class through several of the smaller sets that had been erected in the studio warehouse for use within the next few days. Some of the sets looked like showcase rooms in furniture stores, but with a wall missing for viewing purposes. A few of the sets, like the ornate dining room that was to be used for an important monologue, were completely enclosed for the night, and they were allowed a brief peek into them before moving on.

She was keenly aware of her phone waiting in her pocket, silent and intimidating. Though she was enjoying the tour and the amusing anecdotes that Jaxson shared, she was desperately willing for the phone to ring.

“Here’s part of the ballroom set. We’re still working on it, but as you can see, its marble pillars and glazed tile flooring will help add a sense of extravagance to the climactic scene we’ll be filming in here,” Jaxson explained.

She looked at the ballroom set and felt her stomach twist. It was beautiful, albeit unfurnished and unfinished, and it reminded her far too much of the night she was hoping not to think of.

She didn’t dare glance up to Hunt to see if he was having any similar reaction to the ballroom set. He probably was as unaffected as usual.

At long last, the tour came to a close. As they all gathered by the doorway from which they had entered, Jaxson weaved through the class, handing back the phones. Once reunited, Jenni Whitman gave hers a kiss on the back of her glittery phone case. She chuckled to herself, then felt her whole body freeze up at the feeling of her phone vibrating urgently in her dress pocket.

Oh my God.

Oh my God!

Stepping back into the warehouse, away from the din of chattering classmates, she clapped one hand over her free ear and answered her phone. “Hello?”

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

As he ticked off the attendance sheet on the clipboard in his hand, Professor Hunt tutted under his breath at the names of the no-shows who would be getting a very stern warning from him in the near future. Bianca Stone, of course, was one of them, but her father kept so many people in his pocket that any misconduct she did was waved off with little more than a slap on the wrist and, at worse, a ten-page essay that was more of a punishment for him to read and mark than it was for her to write (and he suspected it wasn’t even her writing it).

“What a nice bunch of students you have, Tommy,” Jaxson said, coming to stand beside him. “So polite. I can’t say I approve of how . . . attached some of them are to their devices, but that can’t be helped, eh?”

“Oh, Miss Whitman has a serious problem,” he said, setting the clipboard down. “God forbid she and her purchased social media following be parted for more than an hour.”

Jaxson laughed. “Cold as ever.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s been good seeing you.”

“And you as well. Thank you once again for allowing us onto the set,” Professor Hunt said. “Reminded me of old times.”

Jaxson smirked. “Any chance of there being any ‘new’ times?”

Professor Hunt cocked his head to the side. “I don’t believe so. Too much to critique, so many to teach.”

Jaxson nodded solemnly. Then he lifted his gaze past Hunt and into the warehouse. “Like her, for example.”

Hunt didn’t really need to turn his head to see who Jaxson was talking about, but he did so reflexively.

Miss Schuyler stood further into the hallway separating the sets, her phone clamped to her ear as though it was the only thing providing her life. Her elated expression betrayed her; she was clearly hearing something she liked.

“What’s that smile for?”

Hunt looked at Jaxson. “What?”

“That smile.” Jaxson was genuinely curious. “I’ve not seen a smile on you in ages.”

“You haven’t seen me in ages, either,” Hunt rebutted. “And it wasn’t a smile.”

Jaxson laughed. “It’s okay, Tommy, I get it. It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Seeing one of your students spread their wings and fly.” Jaxson nudged him. “C’mon, man, don’t tell me you’re not happy for her. She must’ve gotten that offer.”

“She gets a lot of offers,” Hunt said evenly. He wasn’t wrong; within a month of her attending Hollywood U, she had managed to procure key roles for projects with pop star and wild child Lisa Valentine, action film star Chris Winters, and several other celebrities who had all found her work satisfactory or better.

“All the more reason to celebrate,” Jaxson said. “But look, I’ve just got to pop over to my car real quick with some materials, and then I’ll be back to get the doors locked for the night. Do you mind getting your student? I won’t be long; I’ve still got to stop at the grocery store.”

Hunt nodded.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬 

“Thank you again, Mr. Cattrall. I look forward to working with you. It’s actually somewhat of a career goal for me,” she said. “It’s an honour.”

The velvety voice of the director she would soon be meeting for a table read for his newest film sounded pleased. “Well, then I hope I live up to your expectations.”

Upon hanging up, she felt all feeling returning to her body, beginning from her unwavering, wide smile that was beginning to hurt her cheeks. She felt her heart pounding in her chest, her lungs rapidly filling and emptying, as she looked deep into the warehouse and let out a small burst of laughter at what had just transpired.

She was going to be in a Cattrall. A Cattrall! The Spielberg of art house films, he had burst onto the scene with riveting dramas and unsettling experimental horror films and had already won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix.

And he wanted her.

Still numb, but fizzing over with excitement, Margot did a little spin and promptly bumped into another body, which knocked her off-kilter.

“Sorry, I-” She looked up to find the man she had temporarily forgotten about.

Well, that was a nice five minutes while it lasted, she thought.

“Miss Schuyler. While I assume congratulations are in order, I believe we’ll have to make them outside,” Hunt said briskly. “This set is officially closed.”

“Right, sorry,” she said. “It’s just – I’m so happy.”

Margot heard herself say it and immediately cringed. It sounded so childish, as if she was amused by everything, like finding a dime on the ground.

“And what exactly has you so happy?” he asked. “A soap opera cameo? Dancer number three in a music video?”

Without thinking, she replied, “I don’t like to reveal all my secrets just yet, professor.”

They both froze in place as the memory washed over them, a crashing wave that knocked them both off kilter.

And then he was dragging her by the elbow to the first open doorway he saw on the set, which was, ironically, the ballroom set that had yet to be finished. Before she could open her mouth, he began speaking harshly in low tones.

“That night didn’t happen, do you understand? I’ve already said everything that needs to be said. Our circumstances haven’t changed. Nothing’s changed. I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but-”

They both froze again upon hearing the loud screech that interrupted his diatribe. Pushing past her, Hunt stepped away just in time to see the giant doors of the warehouse swing shut.

“Hey! Wait! We’re in here!” she cried from behind him.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

All but running to the door, he pulled at the handle desperately, but the cold metal refused to budge.

“Let us out, you idiot!” Hunt yelled.

But it was no use. Jaxson had swiftly locked up and gone, as quick and precise as he was when he used to work for Hunt. Except, clearly, he didn’t bother to check the set one last time to confirm that absolutely no one was present. He would have to talk to him about that later.

And then Hunt sighed.

No, he wouldn’t, because Jaxson had asked him to get his student out of there. Upon seeing the presumably empty set, he had assumed that the director and his student were well on their way. No fault but his own for pulling them away for privacy.

“Oh, great,” he muttered, turning to lean against the door. “Now I’m stuck with you for who knows how long on the set of this idiotic romance film.”

Petulant as always, Miss Schuyler narrowed her eyes. “There are worse ways to spend a night.”

“I assure you, there are not,” he bit back. “Let’s just find a way out as quickly as possible. I don’t want to have to deal with you.”

Logically, the back of the warehouse would have an emergency exit. With that in mind, he began walking, weaving around miscellaneous props and tables to get as much space between her and him as possible.

From behind him, she called out, “No offense taken, in case you were wondering. Assuming you actually have emotions, or a heart at all.”

You would know, wouldn’t you? he thought bitterly.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

“Unbelievable. This is clearly a fire code violation. I’ll be drafting a strongly-worded email as soon as we get out of here.”

“If we get out of here.”

“We are not going to die in here. But someone will pay for this.”

The back of the building was glaringly bereft of exits, emergency or otherwise. As soon as Hunt had realized this, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, trying his hardest not to feel panicked at the low percentage of his battery.

Searching through his contacts list, he called Jaxson, but didn’t get an answer. He waited a minute and tried again, but to no avail.

Hm. Would Marianne still be at Faux Pas? he wondered, thinking of his magazine editor friend who was in town overseeing a shoot. This warehouse would be a bit of a detour from her drive home, but she did say she’d do anything for me.

No answer from her, either.

He huffed.

“No luck, huh?”

He turned to find her sitting on a prop chair, watching him with great interest. He rolled his eyes.

“Just look for a way out,” he snapped.

She stood, brushing off the skirt of her dress. “Prof- Hunt. Can we at least talk to each other like regular people instead of constantly being at each other’s throats? That’s going to get old fast if we’re stuck here for the night.”

He ignored that. “Perhaps there’s a side exit I missed.” He sped up his walking and felt dismayed to hear her shoes clicking against the floor as she followed.

“Who could blame a professor and student for talking when they’re accidentally locked on a set together? And we have to talk about . . . that night. Why can’t we?”

“It’s not about blame, it’s just-”

Seeing the handle jutting out from the wall made him feel relieved. But, upon pulling it and having the weak wooden door that had been propped against the wall almost fall on him, he began to lose hope that they weren’t getting out.

“Damn it!” he shouted to the fake door. And then a string of curse words that he usually wouldn’t dare to speak in front of a student, or really outside of his small circle of friends, but he didn’t feel dignified enough to stop himself.

They really were locked in for the night. And of all the rotten luck, it had to be them.

Behind him, she let out a long exhale. Then-

“Are you going to talk to me now?” Miss Schuyler asked.

His jaw clenched. “No. Not about that.”

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

The lights shut off ten minutes later.

By then, Hunt had firmly seated himself in a chair by the only doorway, rifling through his contacts list for anyone who might be able to help them on short notice. He had managed to find a signal strong enough to send a few emails, one of which was a particularly strongly-worded note about the warehouse’s glaring lack of emergency exits to Jaxson and several of the studio’s warehouse managers, but as it was well past nine o’clock on a Friday, the chances of anyone answering before sunrise were slim.

In the only other chair they could find, the one she had been perched in earlier, Margot sat shivering in the cold air of the warehouse. She had not dressed like someone who had anticipated such a predicament, with no sweater or jacket to be seen. But she had pride, and she didn’t want to ask for his jacket, nor did she believe he would give it to her.

Her phone stayed in her pocket, brightness cranked to its lowest setting and on battery-saving mode. She was sure he was draining his phone battery with all the calls and emails. She didn’t want them entirely without means to contact anyone, and it seemed pointless to try when his attempts were failing. She silently thanked the universe for letting her have what must have been the last good signal to receive her call from Penn Cattrall.

When they were suddenly thrust into darkness, Hunt let out another swear word, one that made her smile despite herself. It was so strange and alien hearing him swear, like hearing Mr. Rogers or a Sesame Street character cuss out a kid or something.

And then he fell silent, and the whole warehouse was silent, and the shivers running up her spine were not just from the cold.

Margot sniffled. “Hunt?”

No reply.

The sound of shuffling, somewhere a little ways away, or perhaps closer. It was hard to tell.

“Can you say something please?” She hugged herself pathetically, feeling tears spring to her eyes as they failed to adjust to their pitch-black surroundings. “This really sucks.”

More shuffling. The sound of impact. Another swear word, murmured so low she wondered if she had heard him think it.

Then nothing.

The silence stretched on, broken only occasionally by the sound of scratching so faint that she wondered if her mind was making it up.

Tears slid down her cheeks. She was a grown-ass woman, but as the darkness swallowed her up, she felt dizzy, weak, like the child she once was, waiting, waiting . . .

Her stomach rumbled, and she instinctively curled up on the chair, knees to her chin.

It’s okay, she told herself. He’s still here. Somebody’s still here.

“Please, Thomas,” Margot whispered.

And then a brilliant spark broke through the darkness, living for one beautiful moment before extinguishing on the concrete.

And then another.

And another.

And then-

“Got it.” Hunt’s voice was a balm to her nerves. “Now, where are those candles I saw?” As he rifled around, bumping into things, she squinted at the little flame on the tip of the match he held, desperate to see anything – an eye, a cheekbone, his chin – to confirm that he was really there, and it wasn’t a hallucination. The flame was too small to make out any of his features, but its existence was enough.

She watched from her chair as he touched the flame to the wicks of several jarred candles he managed to find on a nearby table. As the candles began to melt, strong scents began dispersing into the room, clashing with one another in a way that made her feel dizzy, like after passing around one of Crash’s “Satanic cigarettes” after a night on the town. Cinnamon and spice, something tree-like, pumpkin pie . . .

Her stomach growled, loud enough for him to hear.

“Stay there,” he said, picking up one of the smaller candles. In the dim light she could see the sharp shadow of his jawline. “I’ll see if they left any catering.”

“Okay.” Her voice was hoarse.

He seemed to pause then. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just – let’s hope they have something. I didn’t really eat dinner.” She offered him a smile that was lost to the darkness.

She heard his footsteps recede, and his dim light faded into the darkness. Once she felt she was alone, she rested her chin on her knees again, squeezing her eyes shut as a few more tears pricked at them.

It’s okay. He’s still here. Somebody’s still here.

You’re not alone.

Margot took a deep breath of pine and citrus air and repeated it to herself until she heard his return.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

He had never sworn so much in one night.

As his hip met the jutting corner of a table, Hunt found himself directing his exclamation of pain to the floor. Gasping, he leaned against the table for a moment to breathe and mutter a few more curses before continuing on his venture into the blackness.

All sense of dignity and professionalism had gone once that stupid fake door had almost knocked him down, and once the power went out, he felt his sanity slipping away like granules of sand through a sieve.

That is, until he heard her cry.

How weak Miss Schuyler’s voice had sounded, speaking desperately into the darkness as though he had somehow disappeared into it, leaving her beside herself, cold and scared. He had briefly considered giving her the silent treatment, but upon hearing that, he had shrugged off his jacket and was prepared to make the potentially treacherous journey of heading over to her chair to give it to her when his mind cried out to him, reminding him of the box of matches he’d confiscated from Spencer Yamaguchi a day earlier. What that boy, aptly nicknamed Crash, had planned with those matches, he did not know. But now, as he strained to remember where he had seen those obnoxious scented candles in the warehouse during the tour, he was grateful for the stunt major and his affinity for having campus contraband on hand.

He pulled the matchbox out and began striking the matches. The first few gave him no flame, and he wondered if perhaps he had confiscated a matchbox prop.

But then he heard it.

“Please, Thomas.”

The sniffle that accompanied those words conjured up a painful image that had seared itself into his memory. A woman in a beautiful blue gown standing before him, the glimmering night sky a backdrop to the tears sliding down her face, cowering as he yelled at her for deceiving him, for making him enjoy a night with her, for making him feel.

He didn’t like feeling. Didn’t like when other people made him feel. Only a few had been able to, but he had let them, because he-

Don’t think about that, he reminded himself.

He struck the next match with vigor, and the small flame that burst from it made his heart soar, even as it extinguished itself almost immediately. He let it drop and pulled another out.

Hunt shook his head as his next attempt also puttered out quickly. What kind of weak matches are these?

He worked through a few more matches, lighting them for seconds before they went out, until . . .

“Got it.”

Now he was on another search, this time for a crumb of food to feed the hungry woman he was unexpectedly stuck with for the time being. And, as he bashed his knees and hips against props and furniture that seemed to move directly into his path, he prayed that he would find something that would sustain her for the evening.

The mini fridge he found had a few large glass bottles of . . . something. Assuming they were not alcoholic – though, since this warehouse neglected to have an emergency exit, he couldn’t entirely rule out other blatant violations - he took them out and replaced them with a five-dollar bill from his wallet, hoping that whoever owned those drinks wouldn’t mind.

And then he felt his way around nearby until he nearly upturned a fruit bowl and took the lone banana within it. A paper plate close to the fruit bowl teetered over the edge of the table, but he set down his candle to catch it. Two slightly stale blueberry bagels and a few little packets of room-temperature cream cheese spread. More than he had expected to find.

He took great caution in maneuvering around the furniture he’d knocked into, but he still caught himself a few times on the hip. He had a death grip on the candle, the food plate held close to his chest. He hadn’t found utensils but was more grateful to have found anything at all.

As he neared the light emanating from the candles on the table, he heard her whispering. He didn’t have to strain his ears to hear her.

“He’s still here. Somebody’s still here.”

He set his candle down and she let out a yelp.

Pretending as though he hadn’t heard anything, he laid out the food on the table so she could see it. “I found some bagels and drinks. And a banana.”

Miss Schuyler emerged slowly from the darkness, barely illuminated from the dancing candle flames. Dragging her chair closer to the table, she sat and twisted the cap off one of the bottles. Her eyes met his as she took a long sip. Finally, she set the bottle down.

“Snapple.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Half and half. Half iced tea, half lemonade.”

“Oh.”

She pulled apart one of the bagels and ripped one of the cream cheese packets open before turning back to him.

“Are you coming to eat or what?” she asked.

For a moment, there was silence again, but then the screeching of chair legs against concrete made her wince. And then he was in view, sitting close – but not as close as he had weeks earlier – and unpeeling the banana enough to break it in half and take the top piece.

“The rest is for you,” he said. “I had the foresight to eat dinner.”

“Lucky you,” she drawled.

He sighed.

“Are we going to talk now?” she asked. She sounded defeated, already knowing the answer.

But they were the only ones stuck in that warehouse for the night. Just him and her, and no one would blame them for talking. Just himself, but he knew her well enough that she wouldn’t usually let up so easily. Something was wrong.

“About the masquerade? I suppose we could.” He chose his next words carefully. “As long as we talk about what happened a little while ago. When you were crying.”

“You heard that.”

“There’s not much else to listen to.”

She sighed, swallowing a bite of banana. “I would say ‘don’t feel sorry for me,’ but I already know that’s not going to be a problem.”

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

“I’ll be right back. I promise.”

She had always been afraid of the dark, but her parents were determined to rid her of that fear. When her Dora the Explorer nightlight broke, her father refused to repair it. Her mother caved and bought her a new one, but only let her plug it in on school nights. For two terrifying nights of the week, she huddled under her covers, armed with her favourite stuffed animals and a flashlight she borrowed from the clutter drawer in the kitchen.

Once, when Margot was really afraid, and the world outside her window was dark and storming, her mother taught her how to pretend she was somewhere else. The sky was falling, but in her head, the sun bore down, warming her skin, the crashing waves of the beach they’d visited the day her father left disguising the thunder that shook the windows.

Later, her mother taught her how to pretend to be someone else, too. They were in a car, and her mother had put an itchy thing on her head made of hair the colour of straw. As she braided the dry strands, she wove a backstory for the new person she would play, a young girl off to see her grandmother for the weekend with her mother, and fed her lines to repeat to the border patrol officer.

“Can you do that for me, sweet pea?”

When the officer asked her questions, she parroted the responses with as much enthusiasm as a tired seven-year-old could muster when she was cranky from being in the car too long. The officer let the car through, and her mother rewarded her with an entire kid’s meal to herself. A few hours later, her mother chucked her free toy out the window for being too noisy.

The little house they moved into was really one room with plastic curtains separating the bathroom from the kitchen and the bedroom. They had to share the bed, but her mother let her keep the nightlight on.

It wasn’t working. Neither did the light switch, which was supposed to tell the eclectrickle creature in the ceiling to brighten up the bare bulb in the ceiling. There was no space for a clutter drawer in their kitchen, so she didn’t know where she would find a flashlight, or if they even had one.

The world outside the window was blotted out by the darkness, and with nothing to break through it, she felt achingly alone. No stuffed animals to snuggle, no covers to protect her from the cold. No mother to run to.

She’ll be back. She promised.

Every time she woke up after slipping into a sleep, she was alone, lying on her side on the barren mattress. No sign of her mother returning yet. She passed the time by counting the popcorn bumps on the ceiling and the ants gathering crumbs from the floor and slipping through the crack on the windowsill. But she didn’t keep count of the days passing. It really felt like one big endless one.

Eventually, a neighbour lady came knocking. She didn’t like that her mother hadn’t come back yet. Other people showed up, men and women with water and fruit and cookies for her. Just like Miss Peaches, they had a weird look on their face when she told them about her mother’s promise.

Miss Peaches gave her a room of her own, a bed piled high with stuffed animals, and all the food she could cram into her mouth. After many attempts at soothing her in the middle of the night, Miss Peaches gifted her a beautiful lamp that emanated a gentle glow. When she curled up in bed, she thought of the beach again, of her mother holding the hand of a girl with straw hair.

Pretending came to her as easily as breathing.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

“What happened to her?”

“My mother? I haven’t seen her since.”

He swore. “What about your neighbour?”

She kept her gaze focused squarely on her knees. “Miss Peaches died a few weeks before I came here.”

It sucked, losing a maternal figure twice. She really had grown to like her, even if the first year was rocky because she was still adamantly waiting. Miss Peaches had been the one to encourage her into acting and had cheered her on for the few roles she had in high school plays. When she got accepted into Hollywood U, she promised to be there for her first ever movie premiere, walking the carpet as her companion.

Another promise broken.

Hunt let out a heavy sigh. “You’ve been through it, huh.”

“And still going through it, clearly.” She chuckled to hide the sniffles. “Not a fan of the dark, obviously.”

“It should be afraid of you,” he murmured.

As weird a statement as that was, she felt the laughter bubbling from her belly. Looking up at him, her face split into a huge smile as she let herself laugh.

“What an idea. The dark being afraid of a person. I’ll have to run that by Cattrall. If anyone could pull it off, it’s him.”

“Penn Cattrall?” Hunt said. “The director?”

She nodded. “The phone call earlier. He wants me to be the lead in his next film.”

“Penn Cattrall?” Hunt repeated.

And just like that, any good mood she had dissipated. “Yes, the Penn Cattrall. Why does that surprise you so much? You’ve been monitoring my progress at Hollywood U, haven’t you? Seen all the projects I’ve contributed to? I’ve earned this and you know it.”

Silence.

Of course.

She turned her attention back to the Snapple. It must be the unsweetened kind, she mused, because the taste was slightly bland and-

“I know you have.”

Slowly, she looked back up. Hunt’s face was hard to read in the darkness, but she assumed he must’ve pulled his mouth into a grimace, like he always did once he said something he thought he shouldn’t have. She strained to see it on him now.

“Since you came to Hollywood University, you have been extraordinarily prolific with your projects. Though, obviously, you had to be in order to stay enrolled after the tiff you had with Miss Stone-”

“Her false accusation, you mean?”

He brushed off her interjection. “-That incident helped accelerate your career in ways that your fellow students only dream of. You’ve amassed an impressive catalogue, and your growth, both professionally and personally, is palpable with every credit.”

Though her cheeks warmed with his unexpected kindness, she sensed a “but” coming up.

“But,” he said, then paused thoughtfully. “You’ve got a long way to go still. A lot more to learn. Things you need to know to make sure your career has longevity and meaning. I have so much more to teach you.”

Her heart twisted.

“My place is behind the lectern, guiding you. Not . . . whatever it is that you think you want from me.”

The second part of his statement should have bothered her more than the first.

“No, it’s not.” She set the glass bottle on the table and straightened in her seat. “Your place is behind the camera. It’s what you were meant to do, it’s your passion!” She squinted at him. “I don’t understand why you retired. You were one of the greats. Are one of the greats, I mean.”

Hunt exhaled, a sound bordering on sadness. “Some things cannot be,” he said cryptically.

And then he stood, picked up his candle, and disappeared again into the labyrinthine set.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

He just knew the heart-shaped bed in the honeymoon suite set was a middle finger from the universe. Gaudy and overloaded with the cliché colour scheme of nauseating reds and pinks, the sheets were slippery silk and the pillows were fluffy from lack of use. He set his candle on the end table and pulled off his suit jacket, before remembering that he had meant to give it to her earlier.

He could practically hear Priya scoffing at him. “You’ve gone soft,” she had accused him, his office suddenly too small to have such clashing egos within it. He had denied it then, but now . . .

“So I tell you about my whole thing with the dark, and you leave me in it again?”

He winced at Margot’s harsh tone. “I was just-”

Standing in the doorway, she set down her own candle and crossed her arms over her stomach.

“And here I thought we were actually getting to know each other. We weren’t done talking. You said we could talk about-”

“We did talk about-”

“No, we didn’t!” She stepped forward, closer. “I know you feel something for me. And before you say anything, remember we’re not in class right now. You don’t have to teach me all the time. Don’t act like it’s your cross to bear.”

He didn’t budge, staring down at her with furrowed brows. “It is my job to always push you, to be firm if it means you reaching your full potential.”

“So you do care about me.”

“As a student. Look, this thing you feel for me, it’s just a crush. It’s fake love, the kind people eat up at the movies.” Gesturing around the room, he scoffed. “Look around this set! None of this is real, yet when this movie comes out, people will swoon for the romance as though real love can be like that. But it’s all fake. Manufactured. Lies.”

He heard her swallow hard. The next words she spoke came out weakly.

“My feelings for you are not fake. What I feel for you is more than just a formulaic Hollywood romance. It’s real. And real feelings are about spending time with someone and enjoying their company, even when you’re just eating stale bagels together. Sharing our vulnerable sides, our deeper thoughts. Trusting one another. Even when the other person is being ridiculously stubborn.”

He turned away from her, ignoring the pang in his chest as he did.

“Thomas.”

“Don’t,” he said, but his voice didn’t come out as stern as he wanted. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. “I just want to rest. It’s clear no one’s coming until morning. Might as well take advantage of this silly set piece. I’m sure there’s another bedroom you can stay in.”

“You-” She picked up a pillow from the bed and screamed into it. “It’s not like I want this. I would love to not have feelings for my surly professor.”

“Great. Then it’s settled.” He primly pulled back the silk sheets and slipped under them, sliding a little too far from the texture. “Good night.”

He closed his eyes and stilled.

And then, once he heard her walk away, he opened them again.

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

She didn’t bother trying to navigate through the warehouse in the dark. Knowing her luck, she would probably trip and break her leg, or bleed out on some fancy imported carpet and get billed for the damages.

And Hunt would scold and scold, because that’s all he does, she thought bitterly.

For a while there, she might have thought they were getting somewhere. She didn’t expect him to do a complete one-eighty and want to dive head-first into a relationship or anything, but she did think that the progress they’d made would’ve lasted.

Two steps forward, five steps back.

Like she had done when she followed him into the garish honeymoon sweet set, she clung to the wall until she caught sight of the other candles still lit up on the table. Instead of sitting on her chair, she opted to slide to the floor, placing her candle beside her.

The warehouse’s temperature had dropped even more. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but there was even more of a chill about the air. She hugged herself and tried to keep her mind off the cold. She tried to imagine the beach, then any other memory that included the sun and its blessed warmth.

None of it worked.

After what felt like an eternity of grinding her chattering teeth together, she pulled out her phone and turned on the screen, blinking at the bright light. Just past midnight.

It was going to be a long night.

“Your cell phone has been charged this whole time?”

Hunt stood over her, jacket draped over his shoulder.

She curled her knees up to her chest. “I was just checking the time. Still no signal, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Did you think to try to call or text one of your little friends to help us?” he asked. “You could have tried. I did.”

“I was watching you drain your phone battery and thought it might be a good idea to preserve mine.” She rolled her eyes. “Go back to bed, professor.”

She heard him step closer. Then, something draped over her lap, a shock of warmth and textures with an exquisitely quilted inner layer. Instinctively, she snuggled underneath it, but she looked up at him in confusion.

“There are enough pillows to make a barrier,” he said quietly. “That way we won’t touch at all, and we can both get some sleep. Come along.”

“Seriously?” she asked.

He held out a hand, an olive branch. “Seriously.”

🎬🎬🎬🎬🎬

The screech of the warehouse doors opening startled them both from sleep. Jackknifing out of his lying position, he immediately dove for the suit jacket that had fallen to the floor as he slept. She was a little slower to get up but finally stood and dusted herself off.

“Tommy?”

Hunt clenched his jaw. “In here.”

Seconds later, Jaxson warily poked his head through the doorway, apprehensive of the wrath he was sure to receive from his old friend. What he didn’t expect was the presence of the student, groggily rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands at the opposite side of the room. But seeing the disturbed sheets and pillow strewn about the heart-shaped bed and the deliberate space between them now, he couldn’t help but smirk even as Hunt stalked towards him.

“Where do I even begin?” Hunt seethed. “Who was the absolute idiot who approved of this studio warehouse’s design? I need numbers, and I need them now. This is absolutely unacceptable . . .”

As Hunt began his rant, Jaxson watched as the student slipped past them and through the doors, bringing her phone to her ear as she walked.

[pdchronicles]

Long Post about Trolls in WoW

I have, for a very long time, had an issue with the way Trolls are portrayed in World of Warcraft.  On the surface, this must sound like a rather pretentious and borderline entitled statement to make, and I understand that.  I’m not trying to sit here and tell Blizzard how they should portray a group of people that they’ve created in their own game and in their own intellectual property.  Instead, I’m trying to explain a potential that I see in them.  I’ve mulled over making a post about this in a place where someone at Blizzard might actually see it, but I’m concerned it will come off as a bunch of complaining in an already saturated echo chamber.  I’m also not confident enough in my own ability to effectively capture my thoughts and articulate them into carefully ordered words.   Before I continue, be aware that I’m going to be referencing things that I’ve seen in BfA’s beta, so there will be heavy spoilers in this post.   I was prompted to make a post like this after seeing the outdoor content that will be released with the new Warfront feature in Arathi Highlands.  Before this content was datamined, we learned that Witherbark Village got an overhaul in its design, with new assets added to spruce the place up and make it look quite nice, and very Troll (even Zandalari) themed.  The Warfront content includes a quest to kill 20 Witherbark Trolls in order to drive them out of Arathi Highlands.  The quest for both the Alliance and the Horde are the same, albeit with slightly different text.  Here is the quest text for the Horde-side quest: “The bloodthirsty Witherbark tribe has always refused to join the Horde... and now that the Horde holds Arathi, we will succeed where the Alliance has failed. Drive the forest trolls from the Highlands.“ In a war between the factions, wouldn’t it make sense for the Horde to try to gain any allies that it could?  A bloodthirsty group of Trolls seems to fit right into the Horde that Blizzard is currently portraying to us.  It’s right there in the quest text.  The Horde’s mentality here is “if they’re not with us, kill them”.  It’s true that this convenient alliance has been done before, such as way back when the Orcs aided the Darkspear Trolls.  Or, when the Taunka joined the Horde in Wrath.  And it’s likely being done again with the Zandalari, because I don’t understand how they would join a Horde led by an undead unless the circumstances were incredibly dire.  (More on that later.)  However, I think the only thing more tired than “convenient alliances” is the “Trolls being driven away from their home” trick.  Darkspear by the naga.  Drakkari by the Scourge.  Amani by the elves.  Frostmane by the Dwarves.  And so on, and so forth.   I think that it’s totally in-character for the Alliance to want to drive the forest Trolls out of Arathi.  However, I think it would make more sense for the Horde to try to work with them, even if it’s just leaving them be and perhaps encouraging them to attack the Alliance for them.  It’s possible that I’m stuck clinging to an idea about the Horde that is no longer relevant.  Before we had Garrosh, who was interested only in orc superiority, and before we had Sylvanas, who cares only about herself, we had a Horde that served as a refuge for the people of Azeroth who suffered because they were different.  This was something that I could relate to, deeply, because I have always felt different myself.  I’m a gay man living in a predominately conservative part of the United States, a country that seems on the brink of a moral crisis, where the people in charge, if they had their way, would deny me basic human rights in the name of their religious beliefs.  I live in a country where the current “president” jokes that his vice-president wants to “hang all the gays”.  I don’t think I need to explain this in any more detail to show how my own feelings of being an outsider made me relate to what the Horde was.  They were a group of misfits who banded together to help each other because the other people around them hated them and didn’t want them to be a part of their world.   The Horde feels much different now.  I struggle to both relate to it, and feel like I’m a part of it.  Still, it would be nice to see a little bit of that from time to time, and the situation in Arathi Highlands offers a small opportunity to do so.   Another reason I felt I needed to rant about all of this is because I’m simply tired of the Trolls being the go-to bad guy fodder.  As if it wasn’t obvious, they are my favorite race in the Warcraft universe.  I love the fact that they are one of the oldest sentient civilizations.  Zuldazar is the oldest city, still standing, in the world.  They mastered magic before the elves.  Elves are descended from Trolls, the magic of the Well of Eternity mutating them into what they are.  Trolls, through their Prelates of Rezan, also mastered the art of the holy warrior before Human paladins ever came into existence.  The Amani Trolls hunted down the C’Thrax and sacrificed almost everything they had to defeat Kith’ix.  They saved the world.  Trolls are the oldest (we think) non-Old God or non-Titan created beings on Azeroth.  They called the Titans “The Travelers”, and they witnessed the Titans first battle with the Old Gods.  Trolls never enslave anyone.  When the lower castes of the Zandalari wished to leave the Empire and go out into the world, the Zandalari encouraged them to do so.  These lower castes would eventually become the Gurubashi, Amani, and Drakkari tribes.  It’s because of these tribes that the Aqir haven’t destroyed Azeroth.  The Trolls’ persistence at hunting them down forced them to split up into separate groups themselves:  Azjol-Nerub, Ahn’Qiraj, and the Mantid Empire. That was quite the history lesson, but it helps to articulate my point.  The Trolls have a long, deep, and varied history.  This makes it an absolute travesty that they are used for little more than villain fodder and comic relief in the game itself.  Every circumstance of the Trolls doing something evil can be traced back and attributed to one thing:  Desperation.  They are constantly losing their home to outside invaders.  The first example of this was the elves, who stole the Troll’s lands because they wanted the magic within it.  The Great Sundering, a fault of elves, caused terrible destruction, death, and starvation for the Trolls.  In desperation, the Trolls called out to their gods, and these calls were answered by Hakkar, and this led to even more suffering.  The Drakkari killed their own gods for their power in a desperate attempt to stop the Scourge from destroying their tribe.   I could go on like this for a really, really long time, but I think you get the point.  For a people so ancient, with so much history, and so much potential for their culture, they deserve better than to be slowly and efficiently erased from existence.  But, that’s what’s been happening over the course of WoW’s history.  Just look at the Darkspear.  They have gotten so little development that we don’t even know who’s leading them right now.  We don’t even have very many of them left to be candidates for the role.  The elephant in the room, of course, is the incredibly disappointing end to Vol’jin’s character arc by unceremoniously killing him off by a random demon in the opening act of Legion.  There are so few notable Darkspear characters that Blizzard invented a new one, just so the Alliance could kill him during the Battle of Lordaeron.  They have already killed off so many of the Tribe that they had to invent one...to also kill off.  This, in a game that felt the need to add two more “races” of playable elves in a game that already has two.  And a new class that’s only playable by elves.  I have never understood this direction. With all of this on my mind, I hope you can see where I’m coming from when I say I’d like to see something other than “kill the Trolls” in a quest.  But, let me shift gears here, and maybe be a little more optimistic for a while.   I’m thrilled that the Zandalari are being added as an allied race for the Horde, and I’m excited that we’re going to get to explore and experience Zandalar.  I do think it’s unfortunate that these things are being added to the game now, because the faction war is really putting me off.  More specifically, the direction of the Horde, and Sylvanas leading it, is really dampening my enthusiasm and I’ve been really struggling to get past that.  It’s going to be really depressing if their methods for getting the Zandalari to join the Horde will be to make them suffer so incredibly that they have no choice but to ally with them.  But hey, I said this was supposed to be optimistic now, so let’s get to that.   In the novel Shadows of the Horde, Vol’jin mentions that King Rastakhan has a plan to unite all of the Trolls once more.  This plan is only hinted at, but it’s described well enough that it is clear that whatever this plan may be, it is different from that of the Prophet Zul.  Vol’jin denied Zul’s offer of joining with him (along with the Drakkari, Farraki, and Gurubashi), and the events of BfA fully reveal what Zul’s plan ultimately entails.  (Hint:  It’s not good.)  King Rastakhan’s plan appears to be different from this, and doesn’t seem to involve any of the shady shit that Zul’s been up to over the last several years.   In that same novel, while Vol’jin is conversing with the spirit of his father Sen’jin, the elder Darkspear seems to indicate that perhaps it is time that a Shadow Hunter once again leads the Trolls, like it was before the formation of the first Empire of Zul.   Fast-forwarding ahead to BfA itself, there is an area in Zuldazar that is sort of a Troll embassy.  It’s a place where a representative from the different Troll tribes meet, each tribe represented by speakers.  The Amani, Farraki, and Gurubashi, being the largest of these tribes, have their own specific areas.  The other, smaller tribes all hang out together.  The existence of this area might just be for flavor, but I like to believe it has some other purpose.  It could be there to give further merit that King Rastakhan is working on a plan to unite the tribes once more.   In addition to this, there is a Zandalari NPC in Zuldazar who offers to give you a glimpse of your future, in a way.  One of the possible things that she tells you mentions the unification of the Troll tribes.  

Again, it could be here for flavor.  But, why?  I’d like to think this is another hint that Rastakhan has some sort of plan for the Trolls, and that we, the player, could be a part of it.  And since this is seen during the Horde leveling experience only, it means it’s the HORDE player that could be a part of it.  The optimist in me hopes this is foreshadowing an eventuality where many, if not all, of the Troll Tribes join the Horde.   Naturally, there are a thousand holes that can be poked into this.  But like the Trolls I love so much, all of this wishing and hoping is a result of desperation, because we’ve been given so very little in regards to the Trolls for years now.  Blizzard just can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to making Trolls suffer.  It doesn’t stop in BfA.  Nazmir is an entire zone dedicated to killing Trolls (Blood Trolls), and there is no option or hope of saving them.  The Zandalari, in turn, are made to suffer through the murder of several of their most revered Loa by both the Blood Trolls and Zul’s fanatics.  It’s questionable whether King Rastakhan will even survive the expansion.   These thoughts, this negativity that I have has been plaguing me for a very long time.  It started in full with Vol’jin’s death.  I don’t mind admitting that watching that happen made me cry, if that’ll better articulate how strongly I feel about this race of misfits.  I’ve felt a pang of sadness and regret every time I’ve watched Blizzard unceremoniously kill off a Troll character before they could be fully developed or their character arcs brought to a meaningful conclusion.  Zuni.  Torunscar.  Zul’jin.  Vol’jin.  Durja.  Zin’Jun.  Not to mention the countless “cannon fodder” NPCs.  The voice line of a dying Troll on the Broken Shore yelling “Da pain!” still fucking haunts me.  Blizzard’s portrayal of Trolls is heartbreaking.   As you can probably tell, I care a bit too much about this.  Trust me, I recognize that.  I’ve been dealing with this in a number of different ways, not least of which is continuously reminding myself that WoW isn’t for me.  It’s for a huge audience of different people with different interests and different passions, and it’s unfair of me to expect my own desires to be fulfilled.  At the end of the day, my point here is that I see incredible potential for amazing stories and it frustrates me that I seem to be in the minority about that.  Games are an amazing medium and they offer this unique ability to make the player feel like a hero.  That feeling is the main reason why I play games in the first place.  The real world is complicated, ugly, confusing, and it’s not always clear which choice is the right one.  In games, it can be different.  You can see the wrong and you can stand up against it or help to fix it.  I’m finding that more and more difficult to experience in WoW because I’m playing a race that I feel its creators care very little about.   In an attempt to wrap this up, because I’ve been at this for way too long already, I want to see what Blizzard has in store for the Zandalari.  Their portrayal will likely decide if I still stay invested in WoW to any degree, or if I finally leave it behind for good.  None of the characters I have exist canonically in WoW’s story any longer.  Why the hell would I put them through that?  But, I still enjoy the gameplay and getting inspiration for my own stories from Blizzard’s creativity.  This is their game and their story to do with as they please.  I’m just hoping they recognize the potential that they have with the Trolls and start utilizing them for something better than they currently are.  Thank you for reading.  

[martinlawless]

National Masters Circuit Race Championship 2021. Age Category 45-49 Race.

British Cycling, National A Race E1234 Leicester Cycle Circuit Sunday 4 July 2021

The National Masters Circuit Race Championships… a chance to win a proper National jersey for the year as recognition by British Cycling. There are separate category races in 5-year bands from 30+. Men and Women.

This year is my last in the 45-49 year band. Everyone’s UCI birthday is 1st Jan, so I’ll be 50 next year on the final bong from Big Ben. I did this race two years ago and really enjoyed the event and scene. So I made it a priority to sign up to this one early on and focus in on it.

The race would be on the Leicester Cycle Circuit. I’d never been there before. Turns out to be a very good 1km loop. Tarmac quality excellent and good safe run-offs onto grass (take note Colchester). It’s not technical, really. Though racing makes things technical. A simple circuit means more speed. More speed means more reaction times required on challenges and opportunities that appear in the bunch. And, as ever, the wind and weather makes a virtual hill - turning a stretch into a danger zone that can challenge riders and generate a split. The course is dumbbell shaped, with the northern loop being tighter than the southern one. The northern one rises a bit too.

I set off in the car in very good time. I didn’t have anything to hold back for and get there to see teammate Chris in his 40-44 category race. His field is smaller than ours. Maybe 25 riders. It’s a tough race. Chris goes heroic and into the first break of four from the gun. Hauled in and blitzed, he finds it hard to stick at the back recovering while fresh breaks occur. It’s a reminder to me that in my 75 mins race there will be several attacks. If I find myself in a break, it has to be decisive - or I’m bailing out back to the bunch. I’ll burn up easily otherwise.

I’ve got my crit wheels on. New second-hand Dura-Ace C35 tubular wheels. Ramped up to 110psi just to feel extra bad-ass. Super quick and nippy. I sign in. Pin up. I nearly forget to put on the transponder, which would be a disaster. There’s a good chance of a heavy shower, but it’s warm. So race suit only. Becoming less racy with every wash. Factor 50 suncream. I love my Koo eyewear, but for close-quarters crit stuff, I prefer my “100%” wraparounds that give me brilliant peripheral vision and eyes in the back of my head. I feel like a bit of a doofus Daft Punk wannabe. But - hey, safety first. I do a regular back garden workout. I always add in stretching around the neck and shoulders in simulation of the constant need to look around you in a tight race. I should do pilates and yoga as I get older too.

I have a good little chat with James from Cinnamon-Contour. He’s bandaged up like Roglic having had a crash in the sprint at Hillingdon in one of the rehearsal races last week. I’m impressed he’s back. I also bump into Chris from Verulam. I’m confident he’ll do well. The course suits his atomic finishing sprint power. He finished 3rd in one of the rehearsal races. Other than that, I don’t really know anyone - jut a few of the usual faces and backsides. It’s a good thing: it means the race is bringing in people from all regions - not just the south and east. I hear all sorts of accents. I’m concerned by how fit looking some of these old boys appear!

Our race is the most popular. I’m unsure why, but I have a theory it’s because mid-life crisis is peaking as people get to 50. One last chance to pretend to be Sam Bennett, Cav or Caleb.

This is a proper British Cycling event. The briefing is more stringent than the usual “rock-up with a banana and go” race. This adds nicely to the drama ahead. It feels significant. Points go down to 15th place. The top-third will score today. I am in a bit of a downward points spiral from my current 2nd Cat licence. The points started late this season - early races were zero-points post-COVID. And now I can’t see where I’ll get them from. I simply can’t find the time or BC events. To be honest though: a gentle relegation into 3rd Category doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll have more options to race.

There’s always something to forget or nearly forget. It’s a gel at the start this time. But I remember in time on the start line. I will have another halfway I reckon. I put my finger on my Wahoo to ensure I don’t forget to start the all-important Strava. We have two neutralised laps behind the car to get used to the bends and we’re released.

It’s a steady start. I expect we are all mostly unfamiliar with the course and each other and just want to walk into this one. Eventually, there’s a break and the peloton cranks up.

In a rather unconventional prep, I’d ridden a Hilly TT the Sunday before, a Zwift crit Monday, a tired chaingang Tuesday. Then did the Fred Whitton loop in the Lake District on Thursday with three friends. I’m unsure 110 miles featuring the toughest ascents in England, three sleeps before a short high energy effort, is in any training manual. After the Fred, I did not turn a pedal. I was unsure where my legs would be. In the first few laps I’m relieved to feel they are fine. A sports massage helped. In fact, I feel good. The Fred had raised my pain threshold it felt. When asked to dig deep, it was no problem.

I’m pleased to be lolling around the top third or so in the bunch. The first break gets a third of a lap gap. But the bunch aren’t really bothered. All the same, there’s always a rider or two getting frustrated about the lack of coherence in hauling them in. The laws of physics prevail, and the first break fizzles out eventually.

I can hear Chris cheer me on each lap which is motivating. I concentrate on my line, holding it, seizing gaps where possible and generally keeping my nose clean. As expected, I don’t feel I can be in a small break. I just need to watch out for a big split. I can feel this isn’t going to happen though after a while.

The wind is a bit tasty. As much as it’s valuable to look at those big flags you get at events for the direction, you can’t beat throwing a bit of grass up in the air before a race for the truth.

It gets tight at times. This Leicester doesn’t feel that wide. I go onto the grass on one lap to avoid a clash. In these situations you don’t panic, just glide back on and everything is all right. I get a good backside push on another lap. No problem. ‘On your left’, ‘On your right’. All the good calls you want in a race. No daft riding here which was appreciated.

A second break is brought in. Then on 37 minutes, the decisive break from Ian, who everyone seemed to fear, was made. He would take another rider with him and the bunch would let him go pretty easily.

The last laps approach and the race dynamic changes. The bunch gets top heavy as people prepare for the sprint. The last few laps are very twitchy. We are wide across the lane and very tight as everyone jostles for the sprint. I find myself in the middle of the bunch at times and hate it: locked in shoulder to shoulder. There’s few oohs and aaahs as riders barge each other. I see one rider barged and he has to unclip to save himself. He skips along the road on foot at 30mph+ and re-clips without losing too much momentum. It’s impressive control regained. I can see Verulam Chris inching forward. I want to keep on his wheel but the way through is blocked. It’s always remarkable how you might have a few laps to make a simple move up a few bike lengths - yet it’s just not doable. Stuck.

Into the final lap and final bend, it’s high speed but I’ve got something extra in the tank to give. I am forced wide if I’m to apply any sprint. This puts me out of the draught, and I lose momentum, but I gain a clean run. My sprint is OK. I can hold a decent effort for 10 seconds, albeit I won’t be strong enough to gain ground. The front of the tight sprint pulls away while I come in just off the back of it but ahead of the string of others behind.

I replay the last moments over and over. It’s hard to see what else I could have done except to maybe find more confidence in my endurance to move up and hold a premium position early on. I eventually scan the data. I’m 21st and ahead of me are many names I know to be strong. I’m happy with that.

I return to the car park and change. I have a good post-race chat with Chris. He has crazy high power and he’ll smash a race soon, with a bit of luck, choosing the right break. I decide to have a peep at the Cat 3-4 race going on after ours. As I rock up, there’s a crash at the most basic point of the course. Four riders down. Three get back up gingerly, one a lot slower. I’m thankful our race ended safe and well. Take out the neutralised laps and our race is well over 27mph average. Dynamic and speedchess-like reactions required at all times.

Tired of sugary things, I crave salt, so stop off at the nearby McDonalds on the way back. The most biblical thunderstorm kicks off in the drive-thru. I wonder what would have happened to our race in such conditions. As I carefully navigate the motorway with Lance Armstrong’s ‘The Move’ on Spotify, I wonder if they black flag circuit races for lightning as we all go around a big open field sat on quite metallic things.

I think about next year’s Masters and take a look at the results for this year’s 50-54 category. I’m slightly disappointed to see names of strong riders I know struggle to reach the points. It’s a useful reminder that it never gets easier - we just get older.

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/5574763935

[askmalal]

A few, overly wordy, thoughts, as I've been chewing over this subject for a while myself. Not saying I'm right or wrong: this is merely my perspective.

Before I begin, though, let me say two things. First, that Roboute is a lovely being, and that if you are truly giving him hell over these views you're a genuine pain in the ass and should simply disconnect yourself from social media all-together. All the charm of Perturabo after months of no sleep.

Secondly, understand my bias going in. favor and am happy to play with, and against, 3D prints and Third Party models. I've not really got a problem with the pirated stuff either. I don't play in tournaments anymore, and I have worked for GW, with friends in the industry. I know how the sausage is made. And I'm telling you: it ain't made with rare and precious material.

Furthemore, I love converting. Currently working on a new army, albeit using official GW models, and converting the hell out of it. The new minis are much, much harder to convert. You simply don't have as many bits as you used to, GW refuses to sell them separately (as they once did, for those of you who aren't aware), and as such, 3D printed bits are sometimes my best and only option.

(Besides, do you really think I'm going to get any Malal themed stuff in the near future from official sources? I mean, aside from a few obvious in references, no. Not at all likely.)

So, the main meat of my take, here. Points to consider anyway:

I have a friend who owns a small miniatures company. He is well informed about the prices of the production of miniatures. And he, like me, notes several things that are unique to the GW take on "miniatures gaming." Here's where the lengthy part of this begins - as we recently spoke about this, and I'm essentially spitballing based upon that conversation.

They do not acknowledge that other games exist. This persists to the point that GW continues to refer to its' games as the "GW Hobby," and that as recently as 6th Edition, GW claimed to have "invented" miniatures gaming (this is patently false. Miniature wargames were popular before GW, and will be popular after. The first miniatures games date back thousands of years.)

Now, this is important to the discourse above because the average GW player, irrespective of age, has no idea that other games exist, or assumes that they are all just "Warhammer rethemed." This means that they are often stunned, not only by the existence of other games, but that GW is still massively, and I do mean massively, overpricing its miniatures. Only Infinity Miniatures have a higher average price and that, at least, requires far fewer minis. Don't even get me started about how they have no idea how Historicals work, and assume that they are a bunch of boring "simulationist games."

2. The cost of the average master mold for miniatures in metal or resin is about $150-$250 US/UKP. The cost of the average master mould for vehicles usually runs a little less.

Now, assuming that we're dealing with 28mm/32mm "Heroic Scale," a vehicle mold typically holds one or two vehicles, sometimes more if the vehicle is smaller. Infantry and Cavalry can hold, depending upon the molding method used, anywhere from eight to sixteen models on average.

You never cast from the master mold, and so, you create production molds. These run, on average, about half the cost of master molds, and are good for dozens of spins, if not hundreds, if properly maintained.

Average production cost, even with the increased cost of metal, for such miniatures, is about 1.50 per miniature. As such, the standard industry price is around about 3.00-5.00 per miniature if mounted or afoot. Vehicles cost more to produce - say, 10.00 to 30.00 depending upon size.

By this metric, GW overcharges by anywhere up to 500%, and that's merely the US/UKP rate. They sell at even higher prices in Aus and NZ.

3. GW claimed it was going entirely to plastic in order to "save money for customers and grow the hobby" around 2002-2003. While plastic dies are much, much more expensive than molds for metal and resin, sometimes upwards of $1,000 dollars. However, it costs less than 1USD, sometimes pennies, to produce a 28mm miniature using a die for injection molding.

4. Sculpting: A. (aforementioned friend) estimates that costs for sculpting, digitally, are around about half the cost of physical sculpts, which can vary between $150-400 per sculpt. There are higher rates, but these are rare. He tried to contract Werner Kloch and was quoted a nuisance rate of $1,000. This was unheard of five years ago, and is still much, much higher than the miniatures gaming market allows. Even -with- these costs, GW is still massively overpriced. (As a matter of record, their sculptors are neither paid well by industry standard, nor well credited for most work.)

5. Two other market factors to consider. First, there are no other miniatures games presently on the market that routinely outlaw their models or deliberately re-publish their rules every three to five years with inbuilt "obsolescence." Players who start other games having begun in GW games are often shocked by this:

A popular game, Bolt Action, released a new edition about four years ago. Players routinely ask about whether a new rulebook will be released, and the publisher (which is in no way perfect) has continually assured them a third edition of the game is far away, at best. First edition was in circulation for more than ten years.

Another game, Flames of War, has many flaws, but there's a standard policy for all Battlefront games: so long as the points follow the current system (and they have converted all of the older units to the new points system at this point) there are NO obsolete armies. The new books simply add new options and new rules. Want to use your Italians from two editions ago? Feel free. But you must use the rules from -that- book, and none of the new, potentially better, stuff.

Second is that GW is the only company I'm aware of that routinely outlaws entire armies and designs its games to force you, as the player, to buy a huge quantity of new units.

Example: I built a Loyalist Wordbearer army in the early days of Horus Heresy. Forge World decided that Loyalist Word Bearers didn't exist in their version of the Horus Heresy setting, and outlawed them. There I was, on the budget of an archaeologist, with an army that I'd lovingly painted and modeled and could no longer use.

Second edition HH, and here I am able to use Loyalist Word Bearers again.

Another example? I have a Purge army for Chaos. Guess what? The Purge no longer have rules of their own. Well, shit...

I've never actually had an experience with that in other games. Even my old Warmachine minis have been updated with cards to keep them in line with the current state of the game, even if the characters are canonically dead.

6. GW's managing partners have not been gamers since the company went public. Certainly very few members of the board are gamers. They still maintain in their corporate filings that they sell "primarily" to model builders. I have never, in over twenty five years of miniatures gaming and model building, known a model builder who bought large quantities of GW models -solely- for display purposes. I've known those who paint Space Marines from time to time, people who collect tanks from various sci-fi universes, certainly, but I've never known a modeler who would buy in the quantity necessary to provide a profit.

Now, I could be wrong. These people may be out there. But I guarantee that the majority of GW customers are NOT people who build models and -do- not play the game.

Incidentally, there's no way to know for certain. Why? Because GW does not do market research as a matter of policy. It was certainly policy by the time I worked for them, and it is certainly current policy.

Why? Beats me. Nobody I asked could tell me. I can tell you that my standard advice was to "avoid asking directly" for things from GW, because for whatever reason, those in charge were less likely to authorized production thereof. I've always sort of harbored the theory that this was due to limited space on production lines (apparently still a problem with the new facilities built during lockdown.)

Let me say that again: it is GW's policy not to do market research. GW does as GW will.

3D printers are cheaper than they have ever been, but NOBODY prints army sized projects to order outside of individual vendors who don't sell to large numbers of people. Having worked for GW for a time, I can tell you that the in house logic was that "the more aggressively customers request something, the less likely Corporate will want to produce that item." Now, nobody could quite define why, but the theory had it this was due to limited space on production lines (continues a new problem with the new facilities built during lockdown.) As such, we'd often tell friends in the hobby that, if they wanted to see something, they were actually best suited by avoiding directly requesting such things.

7. GW regularly refuses to credit its sculptors. It doesn't even credit most of the writers of its codices. It considers the customer base to be too ignorant to understand what it wants, and I can assure you, this attitude (while not at the level of those who sculpt the minis and help to design the games) is very prevalent in upper management. You may be loyal to GW, and there is nothing wrong with that (so am I, for the record), but GW is -not- loyal to you. Never forget that, for them, this is not about the fandom. It's about squeezing as much money out of you as possible, particularly in the wake of the rather poorly performing financial decisions of the last two decades.

There is a reason that GW is referred to as the "Evil Empire." It's made itself famous for being ridiculously litigious (despite borrowing ideas from others, to put it mildly), and it has attempted a number of odd schemes. At one point, they were even experimenting with a requirement that only GW paints could be used with GW miniatures for official events, which was quickly dismissed when those in the loop said, "what the fuck are we going to do, implement chemical testing?!" And that's a thing that very nearly became standard practice.

Talk to the employees of Heartbreaker, Ral Partha, RAFM, Grenadier. Ask them about what GW did to them in the 1990s. And be prepared for a raft of hell. Let's not even get into what they did to Armorcast-Forgeworld.

Profit? Not a sin. But overt greed? Yeah... I have an issue with that.

<I also have an issue with their Fan writing and film policy, and while that's a whole thing, it essentially slew the last of my resistance to the use of such models on a significant scale.>

Ultimately, regardless of where you set your own "lines" that can't be crossed, people aren't hurting GW by using 3D Prints, or 3rd party models. It costs them nothing. What -does- hurt GW is piracy. That piracy exists because GW prices make the game inaccessible to many players. Rightly or wrongly, it's an option many choose. This, in turn, hurts GW's bottom line.

This is why most new models are monopose, with oddly designed spruing. It's a deliberate tactic to make recasting more difficult, and to increase the value of the product compared to recasters. That was the motivation for moving Horus Heresy to plastics and away from GW.

SO: Do I have a problem with using 3rd Party Models or 3D prints? Absolutely not. Do I have a problem with them requiring mostly GW models or converted GW models in official events? Absolutely not.

But I don't really care. If you want to use models, I'll let you use them, so long as you paid the points for them, so long as it is clear what everything is intended to be. And quite frankly, I'd rather see more GW players (tournament and casual) actually PAINT their armies than I'd worry about testing to see whether they are using real FW Resin or a Chinacast Thunderhawk. Another way to think about it is this way:

Those are her dudes. These are my dudes. I know where I got my dudes from, and they should be my only concern. Not hers. So long as she didn't steal them from another gamer, it's really none of my business.

So... how do we solve a problem like Mari...ermm... Games Workshop?

My own take...

The solution is a complicated one. GW has lost money over the last few years (no matter what fanboys tell you), they aren't starving or in danger of going out of business, but they are competing with increasingly successful competitors for the first time since the 1990s. There are many other games on the market in fantasy and sci-fi alone (GW got out of the Historicals business because it simply couldn't compete in that arena), and so GW has to contend with this.

They've also got to contend with the fact that a good percentage of their sales goes to pirates (again, no idea on numbers, but this a statement that's been repeated many times.)

So, how do they do this? The most common sense solution seems to be to produce miniatures games that aren't designed to be republished every three to five years, something which now seems to be the plan for Horus Heresy. But the second solution would be to reduce costs for entry across the board. Despite the fact I no longer have any ties there (aside from friends who work for them now), it doesn't appear to me that they are willing to do either of these entirely.

If I were a betting man, my thought would be this as a potential roadmap of the developing strategy for the main game lines.

AOS and 40K are being marketed to younger and newer players. These will continue to be re-released for the forseeable future, because the current GW model seems to work to sell these, for the most part (we don't talk about 1st edition AOS;) )

2.Horus Heresy and The Old World are meant for, and will be marketed more toward experienced players, and players in the 25-55 age range. They will therefore be updated less frequently in terms of points or rules changes (aside from FAQs and new armies).

Prices are unlikely to go down, but as of now, Horus Heresy plastics are a better deal for the price and for the number of models required.

Will this be the future? Will they adapt to the new economic reality of the world as it is and adapt? No idea. Not an expert.

-M.

3D printing is not supporting the hobby.

Your minis may be cheaper (After a ludicrous set up cost) but they are not tourney legal.

So what is the point?

[sciencespies]

Researchers build a particle accelerator that fits on a chip

https://sciencespies.com/physics/researchers-build-a-particle-accelerator-that-fits-on-a-chip/

Researchers build a particle accelerator that fits on a chip

This image, magnified 25,000 times, shows a section of a prototype accelerator-on-a-chip. The segment shown here are one-tenth the width of a human. The oddly shaped gray structures are nanometer-sized features carved in to silicon that focus bursts of infrared laser light, shown in yellow and purple, on a flow of electrons through the center channel. As the electrons travel from left to right, the light focused in the channel is carefully synchronized with passing particles to move them forward at greater and greater velocities. By packing 1,000 of these acceleration channels onto an inch-sized chip, Stanford researchers hope to create an electron beam that moves at 94 percent of the speed of light, and to use this energized particle flow for research and medical applications. Credit: Neil Sapra

On a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long. In this giant accelerator, a stream of electrons flows through a vacuum pipe, as bursts of microwave radiation nudge the particles ever-faster forward until their velocity approaches the speed of light, creating a powerful beam that scientists from around the world use to probe the atomic and molecular structures of inorganic and biological materials.

Now, for the first time, scientists at Stanford and SLAC have created a silicon chip that can accelerate electrons—albeit at a fraction of the velocity of that massive instrument—using an infrared laser to deliver, in less than a hair’s width, the sort of energy boost that takes microwaves many feet.

Writing in the Jan. 3 issue of Science, a team led by electrical engineer Jelena Vuckovic explained how they carved a nanoscale channel out of silicon, sealed it in a vacuum and sent electrons through this cavity while pulses of infrared light—to which silicon is as transparent as glass is to visible light—were transmitted by the channel walls to speed the electrons along.

The accelerator-on-a-chip demonstrated in Science is just a prototype, but Vuckovic said its design and fabrication techniques can be scaled up to deliver particle beams accelerated enough to perform cutting-edge experiments in chemistry, materials science and biological discovery that don’t require the power of a massive accelerator.

“The largest accelerators are like powerful telescopes. There are only a few in the world and scientists must come to places like SLAC to use them,” Vuckovic said. “We want to miniaturize accelerator technology in a way that makes it a more accessible research tool.”

Team members liken their approach to the way that computing evolved from the mainframe to the smaller but still useful PC. Accelerator-on-a-chip technology could also lead to new cancer radiation therapies, said physicist Robert Byer, a co-author of the Science paper. Again, it’s a matter of size. Today, medical X-ray machines fill a room and deliver a beam of radiation that’s tough to focus on tumors, requiring patients to wear lead shields to minimize collateral damage.

“In this paper we begin to show how it might be possible to deliver electron beam radiation directly to a tumor, leaving healthy tissue unaffected,” said Byer, who leads the Accelerator on a Chip International Program, or ACHIP, a broader effort of which this current research is a part.

Inverse design

In their paper, Vuckovic and graduate student Neil Sapra, the first author, explain how the team built a chip that fires pulses of infrared light through silicon to hit electrons at just the right moment, and just the right angle, to move them forward just a bit faster than before.

To accomplish this, they turned the design process upside down. In a traditional accelerator, like the one at SLAC, engineers generally draft a basic design, then run simulations to physically arrange the microwave bursts to deliver the greatest possible acceleration. But microwaves measure 4 inches from peak to trough, while infrared light has a wavelength one-tenth the width of a human hair. That difference explains why infrared light can accelerate electrons in such short distances compared to microwaves. But this also means that the chip’s physical features must be 100,000 times smaller than the copper structures in a traditional accelerator. This demands a new approach to engineering based on silicon integrated photonics and lithography.

Vuckovic’s team solved the problem using inverse design algorithms that her lab has developed. These algorithms allowed the researchers to work backward, by specifying how much light energy they wanted the chip to deliver, and tasking the software with suggesting how to build the right nanoscale structures required to bring the photons into proper contact with the flow of electrons.

“Sometimes, inverse designs can produce solutions that a human engineer might not have thought of,” said R. Joel England, a SLAC staff scientist and co-author on the Science paper.

The design algorithm came up with a chip layout that seems almost otherworldly. Imagine nanoscale mesas, separated by a channel, etched out of silicon. Electrons flowing through the channel run a gantlet of silicon wires, poking through the canyon wall at strategic locations. Each time the laser pulses—which it does 100,000 times a second—a burst of photons hits a bunch of electrons, accelerating them forward. All of this occurs in less than a hair’s width, on the surface of a vacuum-sealed silicon chip, made by team members at Stanford.

The researchers want to accelerate electrons to 94 percent of the speed of light, or 1 million electron volts (1MeV), to create a particle flow powerful enough for research or medical purposes. This prototype chip provides only a single stage of acceleration, and the electron flow would have to pass through around 1,000 of these stages to achieve 1MeV. But that’s not as daunting at it may seem, said Vuckovic, because this prototype accelerator-on-a-chip is a fully integrated circuit. That means all of the critical functions needed to create acceleration are built right into the chip, and increasing its capabilities should be reasonably straightforward.

The researchers plan to pack a thousand stages of acceleration into roughly an inch of chip space by the end of 2020 to reach their 1MeV target. Although that would be an important milestone, such a device would still pale in power alongside the capabilities of the SLAC research accelerator, which can generate energy levels 30,000 times greater than 1MeV. But Byer believes that, just as transistors eventually replaced vacuum tubes in electronics, light-based devices will one day challenge the capabilities of microwave-driven accelerators.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of developing a 1MeV accelerator on a chip, electrical engineer Olav Solgaard, a co-author on the paper, has already begun work on a possible cancer-fighting application. Today, highly energized electrons aren’t used for radiation therapy because they would burn the skin. Solgaard is working on a way to channel high-energy electrons from a chip-sized accelerator through a catheter-like vacuum tube that could be inserted below the skin, right alongside a tumor, using the particle beam to administer radiation therapy surgically.

“We can derive medical benefits from the miniaturization of accelerator technology in addition to the research applications,” Solgaard said.

Explore further

Paving the way: An accelerator on a microchip

More information: “On-chip integrated laser-driven particle accelerator”, Science (2020). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aay5734

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