#anyway its a less interesting exercise to identify which character is going to fit into which legend

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

Anyone else ever think about how the last hero’s legend is a story about a group of 13 companions who went out into the winter cold as an act of self sacrifice to save those they left behind? And how that is knowingly or unknowingly replicated in the northern tradition where old men venture out to die in the harsh winters so that those left behind have a higher chance of survival? It’s just me? Ok.

[bedlamsbard]

Putting aside aesthetics and characterization (inasmuch as I can), I have been trying to logic out why Mando Ahsoka feels so different from Rebels Ahsoka (to me, personally; I know many other people feel fine about it), especially in terms of having a character who’s known in Rebels for her “I am no Jedi” line going to a character who is specifically introduced as “The Jedi” in The Mandalorian.  (And who is identified as “Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Knight” on merch -- merch is merch, it’s essentially meaningless, but it’s still a choice that was made somewhere along the line.)

“Shroud of Darkness,” Rebels 2.17

“Twilight of the Apprentice,” Rebels 2.21

This is strictly Doylist and not Watsonian; I don’t care what went on in the character’s life in between Rebels and Mando; I’m trying to guess what was happening in the writers room.

I was noodling through this on Twitter, in case it looks familiar.

My first thought was Dave taking a cut scene from Rebels as canon going into Mando, something he shared on Twitter back in the lead-up to S4.  Looking at this again I’m not sure this was a cut scene or a scene that he wrote that never made it into the actual script. (Certainly I can’t see how it would have fit into the episode.)

Here Bendu specifically identifies Ahsoka as “former Jedi Knight.”  This is also obviously not canon, because Twitter posts aren’t canon, Dave.  (Though that doesn’t mean that he might have taken it as part of his working backstory for the character anyway.)

I was then thinking about TCW and the unused TCW arcs as they existed in 2016 when this aired (with the rough guess that Rebels S2 was probably written in 2014).  There are three Ahsoka arcs that were written and existed in 2016 in some form (”scripts and some artwork” is what Pablo Hidalgo says, and some pre-viz and recordings from the original Walkabout arc that were shown at a couple Celebrations), but which hadn’t made it into S6 (which came out in 2014): Ahsoka’s Walkabout (in its original form with Nix Okami instead of the Martez sisters), the Siege of Mandalore, and an arc which would have taken place between those two, “Return to the Jedi.”  We know about these because of a panel from Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2016 called Ahsoka’s Untold Tales -- I was actually at this panel, but I haven’t thought about it in a while.  Here’s the SW.com liveblog of it; here’s the video.

I remember hearing somewhere that the TCW team had nine seasons or so written, but can’t find the source for that number now.  When S7 was made, there were obviously a lot of compromises made that we’ll never really know about, minus a tell-all memoir or documentary, which probably isn’t coming any time soon.  Knowing that this Return to the Jedi arc existed, I wondered if at one point Dave had tried to get all three Ahsoka arcs into S7 before having to give one up for the Bad Batch arc (especially as we now know there’s going to be a Bad Batch TV show); it’s also entirely possible that at one point in the production process there was the possibility of a full 22 episode season floated, which would have made three Ahsoka arcs in one season less unbalanced.

I went to go look up what the Return to the Jedi arc actually was, since 2016 was a long time ago and I haven’t really thought about this panel since.  My guess is that it had been intended for one Ahsoka arc per remaining season (7, 8, 9).  Pablo Hidalgo says that after the Walkabout arc, Ahsoka would have stayed on Coruscant as “an under-city vigilante of some degree, helping people who can’t help themselves,” and Dave points out that he talked about this with George Lucas, as well.  The Return of the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka finding out about a nefarious plot targeting Yoda and working with the Jedi to figure out what’s what with that -- this revealed that below the Jedi Temple was an ancient Sith shrine. (Some details of this were revealed at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2015.)

Ahsoka would have been protecting the holocron vault from Darth Sidious, putting her lightsaber blade through the door while Palps shoots Force lightning up the blade.

“The whole purpose of that particular arc would have been to bring Ahsoka back. She’s not a Jedi, she doesn’t change her decision, but she gets involved in Jedi business again.”

The next Ahsoka arc and the final arc of the series would have been the Siege of Mandalore arc, which “reunites Ahsoka with the clone troopers, with Anakin.”  My guess is that the end of the Return to the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka making the decision to go to Mandalore because the Jedi themselves couldn’t get involved in that conflict at the time (especially the emphasis in the panel that Pablo and Dave put on Ahsoka as being “a responsible person” who couldn’t ignore that the war was still going on, and because Ahsoka knew Satine).  (It would be interesting to know when if this arc would have fallen before or after the Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comics, which are based off another unmade TCW arc.)  This would probably have put as much as a season between this arc and the final arc -- given TCW’s funky timeline that doesn’t mean much, but in terms of audience expectation it helps.

(also, damn, the context of the beginning of Siege of Mandalore in the original concept vs. how it actually happens in S7 is very different -- like, on the surface identical but the emotions involved are totally different.)

Before going into the next part of the panel (post-war), Pablo Hidalgo adds “We consider it to have happened and that’s how we inform the writing in Rebels, because that’s the history that these characters carry in their heads.”

So going into Rebels, the writing team was working with the background that Ahsoka had not only left the Jedi Order once, in “The Wrong Jedi,” but had reinforced her decision not to go back to the Jedi by not returning to the Order during the Return to the Jedi arc.  That explains why in Rebels she’s so adamant about not being a Jedi or being in the Order; it’s a decision that she has made not once, but twice.

Fast forward four years to 2020, where we have the Siege of Mandalore arc in S7.

It’s heavily implied that Ahsoka was planning to go back to the Order after the end of the war, and in fact Yoda treats her as such.

Now, there’s no way to know if this exchange was in the original Siege of Mandalore scripts short of those being released at some point (which is possible but seems unlikely when the character is still in play), but because of the way S7 plays out there is no way to put the Return to the Jedi arc back into the story, which means all the emotional context and Ahsoka doubling down on not returning to the Order is thrown out of the window.  That’s a fair chunk of backstory to take into the Rebels writers room.

(It should also be noted that presumably E.K. Johnston wrote the Ahsoka novel with the assumption that that arc was still part of Ahsoka’s working canon, though she may not have seen scripts for it; I feel like I read somewhere that she had seen scripts for the original version of the Siege of Mandalore, which changed quite a lot between original concept and the eventual 2020 version, as is evident from the novel vs the show.)

Going into The Mandalorian, then, Dave Filoni is not only working without a writers room (as Mando has only had two writers, Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau), but working with an entirely different continuity than what the Rebels writers room was working with.

Trying to backtrack when various scripts were written is an exercise in futility to some extent; I usually guess anywhere from a year to two years out from when the shows air.  (I seem to remember that around this time in 2016 it came out that Katee Sackhoff was doing something for Disney, which ended up being the recording for Bo-Katan in Rebels S4, which wouldn’t air for another year, but don’t quote me on these dates.)  Dave ends the panel by saying that “After the season 2 finale for Rebels I was very adamant that that was it for Ahsoka...in Rebels...but after this reaction it might just be possible...it might be possible to see her again. She might have something to do. Maybe.”  (For those trying to run dates in their heads: the con was in July 2016, the season 2 finale aired in March 2016, WBW aired in February 2018.)  My guess is that they hadn’t recorded for that part of S4 yet (and S4 is so weirdly paced that I have questions about how it was made), but that the initial scripts for S4 had already been written at this point.

Looking back at the Star Wars Celebration Chicago 2019 TCW panel where Ashley Eckstein talks about getting the news about TCW S7 from Dee Bradley Baker (rather than from Dave Filoni, and hoo boy is this uncomfortable to watch knowing that the script for “The Jedi” had almost certainly been written and Dave may have already made the decision not to talk to Ashley about it), there’s still not like...a clear way to tell when that happened.  Except that Dee talks about “wine tasting with the Rebels,” which likely puts it back when Rebels S4 was either still actively airing (2017-2018) or before it had wrapped filming (2017).  (I actually vaguely remember seeing pictures from this wine tasting but I can’t remember whose twitter it was on and going to look feels creepy.)  Probably the scripts weren’t fully revised at that point but they may have been -- still, this was certainly after S2 and could potentially be before S4 had been fully finalized.  We got the TCW renewal announcement in 2019, but the animation wasn’t fully completed yet so didn’t get more than that teaser trailer.  This is only important insofar as it involves which set of backstory was being used for WBW Ahsoka, an episode that Dave Filoni wrote and co-directed.  (Honestly? I think Mando Ahsoka matches okay with WBW Ahsoka but is a little off Rebels S2 Ahsoka, but that’s off my memory of WBW, an episode I refuse to rewatch.)  Certainly with the epilogue he knew he was setting up for something else.

ETA: I FORGOT AN IMPORTANT PART OF THIS TIMELINE AND THAT’S THE RISE OF SKYWALKER because I try not to think about TROS, frankly, but as we may remember Ahsoka is included in the “be with me” scene in the final confrontation.  This always struck me as weird given the “I am no Jedi” thing from Rebels, but she’s the most well-known female Force-user so I had just mentally written it off as easy shorthand and JJ Abrams being lazy about it. HOWEVER, presumably JJ talked to Dave about which prequel era Jedi to include (there’s a note in one of the previous SWC liveblogs about Rian Johnson being in the Rebels writers room at some point).  TROS came out in December 2019, I can’t recall exactly when they did the voiceovers for that scene (if anyone has ever mentioned it), but it was probably fairly late in the process since I believe that there were still edits being made up until fairly soon before the premiere.  (I have a completely different theory that the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special from this year was written off an earlier version of TROS.)  If Dave had already moved towards making Ahsoka more inclined towards the Jedi, with a full-on return to calling herself one regardless of the existence of the Order (as Mando implies), then her inclusion here makes a LOT more sense than it did a year ago.

Anyway this is all very conspiracy theorist, but it does explain something that was puzzling me: Rebels S2 Ahsoka and Mando Ahsoka (as well as TCW S7 Ahsoka and potentially Rebels S4 Ahsoka) were written off slightly different backstories which differed in one very key thing: how committed Ahsoka was to no longer being a Jedi.

Now, this sort of thing happens all the time in anything with an ongoing continuity; obviously TCW makes major changes to how viewers might read or write Obi-Wan and Anakin/Vader in RotS or the OT.  I was just trying to narrow it down in this particular case because until I started thinking about it I had assumed that it was all being written off the same assumed backstory. And many people read Ahsoka differently in Mando than I did or found her perfectly in character, this was for me to track references down about something that was bothering me in hopes of an explanation that would satisfy me.

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

Can you do a , smug and mean character of your choice, Z?

Anon, did you want me to write about Sengoku Ryouma? Because this is exactly how you get Sengoku Ryouma. (Kureshima Takatora is in here too, not that he’s at all smug or mean.) Z is my choice, so

C is for colors--and, if you’d also like musical accompaniment, M is for music and “you should see me in a crown,” by Billie Eilish, is available on Spotify and YouTube.

The first time Ryouma agrees to share a meal with Takatora, he brings a sketchbook with him. He’s drawing when Takatora approaches the table, in fact, drink in one hand and pencil in the other, intent on his work until he realizes that he’s not alone. Then the sketchbook closes, but not before Takatora can catch a glimpse of what looks like a cross-section of a plant. “What are you drawing?”

A smile like lightning--Takatora finds himself briefly wondering when the thunder will hit, and what might be burned to ashes in its wake. “Vegetation from Helheim. I’m exercising my botanical illustration muscles. I don’t imagine you’d be much interested, though.”

“No, no, I’m actually very curious. Your scientific work intrigues me as it is; I didn’t know you were also the artistic type. May I take a look?”

Ryouma gives him a look which might be considering or might just be shy; Takatora doesn’t yet know well enough to be able to tell which. “If you’re really interested...” He slides the sketchbook across the table. “Look away.”

They end up losing half of lunch to Ryouma’s drawings, Takatora turning pages in rapt fascination as he examines the fractal layout of crystalline seeds within those ever-dangerous fruits, the labeled diagrams of alien plants, the beautifully watercolored illustration of a Helheim vine overtaking a maple tree. Ryouma is delighted to explain them, his soft voice making it more an intimate conversation than a lecture. One pen sketch is so shockingly realistic that Takatora nearly reaches for it, wanting to see if he might pick a fruit directly from the page, only to pull his hand back before he can risk smudging the ink. “I think these might be almost as dangerous as the real thing, Dr. Sengoku.”

“Oh, please.” The lightning smile comes back, and this time Takatora is certain he can hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. “I may not have a lot of friends, but the ones I do have all call me Ryouma.”

--

Ryouma’s insouciant smile and elaborate courtesy tend to strike others as at least mildly disrespectful, if not outright rude. Takatora, of course, knows that it’s just how he is, that he doesn’t mean anything by it. The sketching during R&D meetings is a little irritating, but after the first couple of times it comes up he finds that the scratching of the pencil is oddly soothing, enough that finally he gives into the temptation to ask again, “What are you drawing?”

One of the other researchers rolls her eyes when she hears this, but Ryouma just smiles. “Lockseeds, of course.”  He holds out his sketchbook for Takatora to take. “I think I’ve designed, hm, at least fifty at this point.”

The sketchbook is open to an exploded mechanical diagram, far more complicated than Takatora is prepared to try to make sense of. He tries anyway, nodding absently as the other researchers start to trickle out of the room, squinting at Ryouma’s tiny labels. “Fifty? Do we need to many?”

“Well, Takatora--” the last researcher heading out the door huffs irritably at Ryouma’s casual tone, “I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t live on oranges alone. And they’ll do different things, of course, once I’ve perfected the driver designs. What’s your favorite fruit again?”

Takatora blinks. “Melon. I really only eat it at breakfast, but I do like it best.”

Lightning strikes. “Wonderful, I did remember correctly. Turn back a few pages--yes, there.”

“This is...a Melon Lockseed?”

“Yes, do you like it?”

The sketch is colored in with pencils, and it’s--beautiful, in the strange way that all of Ryouma’s creations are beautiful. “It’s lovely.” Takatora reads over the notes along one side. “I...’authorized by providence,’ Ryouma?” He raises his eyebrows. “What is?”

“You are.” Ryouma bows, one hand on his heart and a mocking smile on his face. “You’re the prince, aren’t you? I thought perhaps you deserved the reminder. And I am merely your humble advisor.”

“I don’t think there’s ever been anything humble about you, Ryouma.”

“Maybe not. I am very good at what I do, I don’t see any reason to lie about it.” A pause, and then Ryouma cocks his head to one side and the smile goes from mocking to teasing, sly and friendly. “I may have some melon at home, if you’d like to come over.”

“...for...breakfast?”

“Well, yes, eventually.”

Takatora feels his face go hot, and hopes he hasn’t turned too pink, and then furthermore hopes that no one else is lingering outside the conference room door as he says, “That sounds very nice.”

--

There are more armor designs than will probably ever get used, and Takatora says so. “Why so many?”

"I enjoy designing them. Although of course most people won't get to see more than the very basic one." Ryouma is settled comfortably against his shoulder, sketchbook balanced on one pulled-up knee. "I'm not going to share my best art with just anyone, you know."

"Oh, no?" Takatora cranes his neck to see the sketchbook over the top of Ryouma's head. "How are you going to manage that?"

"A series of if-then statements in the Sengoku Driver. They have to be able to scan the user's body and brain, you know, to do what they do; I don't see why I shouldn't have them test for particularly desirable personal qualities at the same time." Ryouma's pencil dances over the page. "For example, if it were to detect, say...hm." A sly glance upward at Takatora. "A noble soul, a cutting intellect, clarity of purpose, and oh, let’s say an offensively nice ass, it might produce...something like this."

He holds up the sketchbook, so that Takatora can finally get a proper look at it--a samurai, sleek and elegant but with a science-fiction edge. “This is...armor for me?”

“Roughly, this is a preliminary.”

“It’s beautiful.”

The smugness radiates from the line of Ryouma’s back against Takatora’s arm. “Thank you, I’m very pleased with it.” The sketchbook and pencil go on the bedside table, and then Ryouma turns around looking even more sly. “Of course, I’ll need to tailor the design to suit you better. I think I’ll need to make some figure studies, you’ll have to pose for me.”

Takatora raises an eyebrow. “Naked, I’m sure.”

“Oh, naturally, I’ll want to make a detailed study of your best qualities.”

“I think you said something about an offensively nice ass?”

“I am an artist, I want to display my subject to best effect.”

“So I’m your subject now.”

Lightning-flash smile, and Ryouma runs his fingers down the side of Takatora’s face, tips his chin up as if to study his profile. “No more and no less than I am yours. I ought to draw you with a crown on your head.”

--

When Takatora wakes from the coma--is woken from the coma, by the grace of a power he suspects he may never entirely understand--it still takes another two weeks before he’s discharged from the hospital and declared fit to go about whatever business he may have, and one of the first tasks that confronts him is the disposition of Ryouma’s notes. He can’t possibly ask Mitsuzane to take care of it, wouldn’t even want to mention the man’s name in his brother’s presence. Ryouma was, in the end, his fault and his responsibility. This is his cleaning up to do.

Mostly it’s straightforward. The laboratory equipment has already mostly been confiscated or destroyed; researchers and technicians have already scoured his computer files. It’s just the actual papers that are left to take care of, organized by some system that only Ryouma himself and perhaps Yoko ever understood, box after box of them. Takatora embarks on the project with four helpers--two from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, one from the Ministry of Health, and a man from the Ministry of Agriculture who seems to have an unwholesome interest in the actual growth capacity of Helheim plants.

“He didn’t go into the most technical details of his work with me,” Takatora says after the third question about what a particular notation might mean. “He was an...idiosyncratic man, to say the least.”

And then, near the back of the room, one of the Internal Affairs people says, “This box seems to be full of artwork.”

Takatora only freezes for a moment before saying, “Yes, Professor Sengoku was very passionate about the design aspects of his work. I’ll come over and take a look through them, there may be sketches of interest to more than one of you.”

Unlike most of the other papers and boxes, the sketchbooks are mostly clearly marked. Lockseeds, Vol. 1, says the label on one; Sengoku Driver Preliminary Sketches, says another. A third is, Armors, and Takatora recognizes its blue cover and thinks, suddenly, I never did ask him how he intended to have the Drivers identify desirable qualities in people, or why. That should have been a warning sign by itself.

Near the bottom of the box, though, is a sketchbook marked, Personal, and Takatora picks it up as quickly as he possibly can while still looking casual. He recognizes that cover too, and would rather not have people from the government seeing some of the drawings in it. “I’d like to keep this one, actually. I assure you, there’s nothing dangerous in it.”

The man from the Ministry of Agriculture says, frowning, “You’re familiar with the contents of this one?”

“I’m familiar with most of them, actually, the professor was very proud of his design work and shared it with me frequently.”

The sketchbook goes into Takatora’s briefcase, and he waits until he’s home and in his own bedroom to open it, because, yes--there, three pages in, is the first of several drawings of him. Most of them, as he flips through, are unremarkable, but a few are of an intimate character that he’s glad he wasn’t forced to share publicly. One in particular brings a blush to Takatora’s cheeks as he remembers the night it was drawn. On the facing page of the sketchbook there are a few lines scrawled in Arabic, a language that Ryouma read excellently and spoke passably, with a translation underneath:

He is a veiled one; but were he to pass in a darkness black as his forelock, his blazing face would suffice him light.

So if I stray for a night in his black locks, his brow’s bright morn will give guidance to my eyes.

Which does nothing but make Takatora’s blush much worse.

Of course, there aren’t only nude drawings of him, which is something of a relief. There’s a self-portrait on one page, a few sketches of Yoko on another, drawings of the various Beat Riders in a set near the back. It almost brings a smile to Takatora’s face, seeing how Ryouma managed to capture Yoko’s solemn resting expression and the angry twist of Kumon Kaito’s mouth. Sketches of animals, of plants, a cartoon of Oren that actually makes Takatora laugh.

Near the middle of the sketchbook, not far past the most memorable “figure study” and its snatch of poetry, is a drawing of the Yggdrasil logo. Or at least, Takatora takes it for that at first, but when he reaches the end of the sketchbook he realizes that something about it bothers him and has to flip back and look more closely. It is the Yggdrasil Corporation tree, but with grasping roots growing down beneath it, crushing something that Takatora realizes after a moment is the Earth.

Beneath it, in Ryouma’s neat, precise handwriting, is a note:

Unfortunately it has become clear that Takatora’s desires and mine are no longer in alignment.

Takatora shudders and closes the sketchbook, and when he finally manages to fall asleep, much later, he dreams of being struck by lightning.

[lligkv]

almost calculated to rivet the reader

I was recommended the book The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by another editor at the publishing house I work for, who was impressed at the thought of an algorithm that could predict whether a book would be a bestseller with 72 percent accuracy.

As someone who reads “literary” novels, has a disdain for tech evangelists bordering on the visceral, and regards the development of data-driven publishing with mistrust, I expected to be annoyed by the book. But it’s ultimately not quite as offensive to those sensibilities as it might seem. Rather than a “code” to help people write novels that’ll sell, or an algorithm of some kind that might drive book acquisitions in years to come, The Bestseller Code is about exploring why bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code or Fifty Shades of Gray appeal the way they do. And it offers support, through text mining (the process by which one discovers and extracts particular textual features from a book) and machine learning (the way one might process those features by feeding them into a machine that goes on to make predictions about, say, whether a given manuscript will achieve bestseller status or not), for research that was already done by folks like the scholar Christopher Booker, who read hundreds of books over decades, the old-fashioned way, and identified seven main plots for fictional narratives that authors Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers find are corroborated by their own data.

Granted, there’s a bit of Jennifer Weiner-type “the commercial lit popular authors write keeps getting badmouthed by critics and the Literary Establishment!” stuff in the book. There’s also one baffling moment where Archer and Jockers make a claim that “the range of existential experience was much greater in bestsellers,” and defend that claim by talking about particular verbs that appear more often in bestselling novels than in non-bestsellers: “bestselling characters ‘need’ and ‘want’ twice as often as non-bestsellers, and bestselling characters ‘miss’ and ‘love’ about 1.5 times more often than non-bestsellers.” Verbs and isolated actions do not existential experiences make! But at root, Archer and Jockers’s research is the product of curiosity about what makes mainstream bestsellers sell the way they do, and whether readers have figured something out that acquisitions editors at big houses may not have yet.

As it turns out, there’s a degree of technical sophistication in Fifty Shades of Grey or The Da Vinci Code in the way these books follow a plot arc that manages to perfectly satisfy a commercial-fiction reader’s desire to be thrilled by dramatic stories and the fantasies they play upon. Specifically, for these books, it’s the “rebirth” plot, in which a character experiences change, renewal, and transformation. Which doesn’t sound revolutionary. But if you look closely at the plot structure, and the sequence of emotional beats in both novels, you see a rollercoaster shape that’s almost calculated to rivet the reader: these peaks of high, low, a high-high, a mild low, another smaller high, a low, and a final high (unless, like Fifty Shades, you need another low to set the reader up for the sequel). Authors and readers alike seem to have stumbled on such perfect, sophisticated structures. The writers happen upon them, rather than consciously being educated in them or consciously crafting them as more literary writers often do; readers seem to hunt them out by instinct: the books that best follow one of the seven plot structures are the ones that rise to the top.

There’s also one moment in The Bestseller Code that’s genuinely affecting, in the context of a discussion of Maria Susanna Cummins’s novel The Lamplighter, which in its time was scorned by Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Joyce. As Archer and Jockers put it, bestsellers and commercial novels are set in emotional terrains, more so than public ones. That is, they’re about their characters as they feel and act, within a world that’s taken as a given, rather than what novels classified as “literary” are often about—characters having to navigate a sociopolitical world that is itself a subject for the author’s comment, or an author’s self-aware exercise of and experimentation with language. And these novels “work for huge numbers of readers not because of what they say to us but what they do to us.” As such, these novels “need no shaming”: they just exist on a separate plane from the literary ones.

In the end, I didn’t mind getting this dispatch from that plane. I make occasional trips to other such planes: sometimes I’m in the mood for, say, Joe Abercrombie’s brand of fantasy, and I’ve read all the Harry Dresden novels; I also love some books that are the literary equivalents of summer blockbusters, like the Expanse series. But I know I won’t descend to the bestseller plane very often—and I do consider it a descent. To my mind, craft and thrill alone don’t give novels the most merit. I don’t read just to be entertained or to be moved, which is what bestsellers offer. I read in order to be made to think, in precisely the ways those literary, public-terrain, sociopolitical novels make me think. And I value them because they linger. They don’t just do things to me, work on me, crash over me like a wave and then recede; they speak to me, just as Archer and Jockers say, and what they say to me lives inside me for years to come.

What’s more, I already suffer enough with the tendency to “identify” with the characters in books I read without venturing into ones that indulge or depend upon that instinct as bestsellers do.

Finally, while Archer and Jockers’s algorithm does a fine job anatomizing bestsellers in a way that speaks to the merit they do have and the function they do serve, I don’t know that I’d trust its recommendations even if I were a passionate reader of bestsellers, considering the book the algorithm picked as the absolute best representation of what it considers a bestseller is Dave Eggers’s The Circle.

Which does reinforce that what an algorithm can’t understand is context. What keeps The Circle from being a bestseller, to my mind, is that the conceit—a woman who goes to work for a tech firm and is schooled in the particular inhumanities she needs to adopt in order to succeed in that increasingly human environment—is not the most engaging. The story may be too close to a specific reality, as opposed to the everyday worlds (e.g., in John Grisham, Jodie Picoult, or Danielle Steel) or the heightened settings (e.g., in The Da Vinci Code or Fifty Shades) in which bestsellers are best set. Perhaps the world in which The Circle takes place is so specific, and its concerns so urgent, that it doesn’t even need to be fictionalized to be of most interest; it seems that representation of Big Tech in memoir, like Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, does better in the marketplace. And finally, Eggers himself is more a literary than a commercial author, something buyers of commercial fiction might be mindful of and trust less than one of the established names in the bestseller market. And he represents a different, past era in even literary fiction. We’re not in the age of the “Brooklyn Books of Wonder” anymore—the humorous triumph over adversity, the twee search for meaning and for love that characterized books of a certain time in the early 2000s. Really, all Eggers’s attempts to succeed beyond that trend—Zeitoun, What Is the What, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King—seem to me to have been tepidly received. The culture has moved on from his particular moment, and it moves in vogues an algorithm can’t always track.

I’ll also say that, seeing how Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, another book I reread recently, did so well in its day, and how it holds the fuck up—the plot and writing remain absorbing, and the atmosphere as seductive and pleasurable as ever; and that it gets namechecked so often in trends like dark academia suggest teens are exercising their beautiful prerogative to learn all the wrong lessons from that book to this day—I’ll say it’s a safe bet you can write a literary bestseller too, if you wanted to.

*

Anyway. Perhaps you’re reading this piece hoping to learn how to write a bestseller yourself. If so, here’s the skinny:

Keep your primary focus on two or three themes. And keep those themes basic. Archer and Jockers list ones like “kids and school”; “family time”; “money”; “crime scenes”; “domestic life”; “love”; “courtrooms and legal matters”; “maternal roles”; “modern technology”; “government and intelligence.”

Make sure your book has a central conflict—and make sure your protagonist is an active agent in that conflict and in her life generally, knowing what she needs and going for it, acting and speaking with a degree of assurance. Characters in bestselling novels grab, think, ask, tell, like see, hear, smile, reach, and do. Characters in lower-selling literary novels, on the other hand, murmur, protest, hesitate, wait, halt, drop, demand, interrupt, shout, fling, whirl, thrust, and seem.

Shape your story to fit one of the seven archetypal plotlines the authors identify:

A gradual move from difficult times to happy times

The reverse, a move from happy times to more difficult ones

A coming-of-age story or rags-to-riches plot

A “rebirth” plot in which a character experiences change, renewal, and transformation

A “voyage and return” plot in which a character is plunged into a whole new world, experiences a dark turn, and finally returns to some sort of normalcy

Another “voyage and return” plot in which the character herself voyages into the new world, fights monsters, suffers, and finally completes some sort of quest

A story in which your protagonist overcomes a villain or some threat to the culture that must be eliminated so she can change her fortunes back to the good

And make sure you time the emotional beats of your story to follow the curve of your plotline. For instance, The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades both follow the “rebirth” plot, and the respective authors ensure the arcs of the romances in both books match the curve of the plotline too, keeping the reader hooked in a way that’s, ultimately, structural.

Be sure to pepper your plot with scenes in which characters are intimate in casual ways. Much is made in The Bestseller Code of the intimacy reflected in a tactic John Grisham uses in a couple of his novels, which is to have his protagonist go over to a love interest’s house with wine and Chinese to just hang out and let her in on how he’s feeling.

Sex that doesn’t drive the plot forward doesn’t go over well. Avoid it. Even in romance novels (as opposed perhaps to erotica), sex is usually in service of the storyline.

Seek for a balance between features in your prose that speak to the more literary, refined style that often comes from institutions of education and letters, and the more journalistic, conversational, everyday style of writing one might intuitively associate with commercial fiction (shorter sentences, snappier prose, with more conversational and casual writing, more words like “okay” or “ugh”). These aren’t especially rigorous categories, I’m aware. Just use your best guess; you’ll probably be fine.

[babblingbat]

Various Characters I meant to post Months ago

Various Characters of mine

I have so many I want to write (some) of them down! This is a suuuuuper long post so more under the cut! Includes a spy, a crime lord/activist, and a bargaining warlock (I have to reblog this later bc tumblr threw a hissy fit about the length)

X

- Kinda in a Bond-esque spy agency, but more of a contractor

- When everything goes to shit, you can count on them to fix it

- Nonbinary protege of whoever is in charge of the tech division (Mezza? Sloane? Dixon? idk, but they have a hell of a shady past and there’s like… noooothing that can keep Sloane out of computer systems)

- X isn’t formally recognized by APO (authorized personnel only, the spy agency) but they do have access to all information because of a backdoor Sloane made

- So I guess the name is Sloane

- Anyways, X goes on the black ops of black ops, typically with either mercenaries or no back-up at all

- Thus trust issues and like the opposite of dependency - they have so much trouble asking for things but are willing to help anyone or offer material assistance - if they have it

- X is nonbinary and really doesn’t have any preferences on pronouns, as long as they aren’t he/him or she/her

- They’re also autistic and shut down if there’s too much loud noise or if they’re just too tired for some reason - sometimes this means going nonverbal or just Not Functioning and their favorite way to feel better is to sit on the ground, wrap themselves in a blanket and listen to music - so in conclusion they don’t really use guns unless there’s a silencer, and they aren’t v good with them

- A huge part of their espionage function is language!

- They speak German, Spanish, Japanese, FSL, and ASL all idiomatically

- They also speak Russian, French, and Afrikaans, but not fluently

- They can swear and count to ten in Korean and Czech

- They’re pursuing a PhD in computational linguistics, though APO gets in the way

- They’re 24, and have a bizarre set of skills because both of their job, previous jobs and jobs they hold as a cover to pretend they pay their taxes, and special interests

- Sloane is only 7 years older than them, and recruited X out of high school

- At first it was small things, like ‘pick up this book from Elm Street and drop it at Main’ but it got bigger after they graduated

- When X turned 18, they went through formal training - protocol, combat, and analysis

- They’d done some martial arts before hand, but not much punching, mostly kicking, throws, and staffs (5 and 6 feet)

- X’s main job is to clean up messy situations, usually by stealing things or extractions, and their own ops are less combat oriented than the clean ones

- X is not the best at math, not by a long shot, but they can see patterns from a mile away

- “I am the fact guardian, guardian of the facts!” “Puzzles quiver before them!” “FUCK OFF”

- They do simple division when bored and solve a lot of math things by finding patterns and using them

- X is both their designation in the agency (as in ‘x factor’) and their actual name- they use an alias for college

- They live with a few people, most of whom complain at their erratic sleep schedule and ask that please, for the love of god, X gets sleep meds and just a solid 8 hours, for once

- Sloane eventually sends X on an op to extract Mel, Sloane’s girlfriend and top operative

- X doesn’t know what to tell Mel, so mostly they just tell them that things will be answered later

- Mel asks Sloane, who reluctantly explains X’s role, and this sets some things into motion of X eventually being brought into the spotlight

- They have several hearings about their activities

- Eventually, Seville (who runs things? I guess) tells them to carry on as they do, reporting directly to Sloane, but they are recognized now by the APO

- There are three other things I want to fit in:

- Goes missing for [period of time], leaving a very close friend behind, comes back after being presumed dead and no memories, apparently solved a conspiracy and now has many illegal friends who all enjoy thievery

- Magic is a thing (because it wouldn’t be my words if it wasn’t lmao) and common enough that people know it exists but rare enough that it’s kinda intimidating and sometimes people will freak out about it, despite plenty of people having it.

X has/develops magic at some point but is terrified to tell anyone and tries to hide it from their team (which is now their family, love that trope) because they don’t want to be barred from the APO, but it comes out accidentally during a mission

- X’s infodumping saves the day somehow

The Celestian

- K so this is more about an organization, but the Celestian lives in a like a 1920s fantasy setting and likes dancing

- They run a social activism group masquerading as a crime network that uses queer bars and stuff as fronts

- To get money, they dance competitively with their bodyguard and d8m8, the BFF (butch femme fatale) who identifies as a nb lesbian

- To get into any of the places where actual political dismantling and activism happens, who have to have very specific patterns on your nails - nail painting is a method of communication and is also a huge teambuilding exercise

- There are different codes for everything

- When cops try and get in (they can only find the places if they have a member of the Queer Folk), the code is “blue denim” and then the person caught tells the police they need nail polish and then laugh as they get caught, as if they were bullshitting the whole thing

- Other things are called “10:50 am” which looks like a sleepy eye

- Or “songbird rhapsody” which is also a popular song that the Celestian sings at clubs

- Or “money” which is just a green splotch on all the nails

- If you’re a member of the Queer Folk, you get a crate monthly of money and nail polish, and special things on birthdays and holidays

- The Queer Folk do everything from organize protests to take kids in and try to pay for their education through crime - as in robbery from different places

- Their crimes always have a certain flair to them - they value creativity and snazziness

- The Celestian is like 5’ 3” (which, to be fair, is 3 inches taller than I am) and the BFF picks them up a lot

- They don’t like alcohol or caffeine but drink herbal tea 24/7

- If they don’t, something is very, very wrong

- They have a prosthetic leg

Red

- Literally in high school

- A warlock! They traded their gender and all “gender identifying features” to a trans demon for magic powers

- The demon mostly asks them to get coffee and stuff because the demon isn’t very good at bargaining and just wanted Red’s gender, but it’s expected of a patron to keep using the warlock for things

- (on the demon phone) “hey so this is super duper important and if you could get it in the next half hour that’s the best thing”

“what is it”

“alright so go to the corner of Lincoln and Greenleaf, turn three times to your right, once to your left, and a door should open behind you. Don’t try to turn towards it, just fall backwards”

“if I fall onto poison ivy or concrete I’m breaking my fucking contract”

“No, no no no, you’ll appear in that good good heaven spot”

“… the coffee shop?”

- Red focuses on science in their school

- Every interaction is a deal. E V E R Y I N T E R A C T I O N

- Breakfast? “I’ll give you the salt if you hand over the pancakes”

- Entering a building? “Hold the door open and I’ll give you praise”

- School? “You want me to tell you what I do in my spare time? Give me an A on my midterm and I’ll tell you”

- The last one has left a lot of teachers confused and more than a little scared of the silly little nerd in their class

- Honestly, they have straight A’s because they make deal after deal about grades. They never cheat on tests, but they make deals, hold people to them, and know what they’re doing

- Red’s demon is getting a little worried with all the deals

- Red is most accustomed to deals rather than anything else because they think that unequal exchange (i.e., gifts) is really suspect

- That said, Red has no problems altering “equal” exchange to benefit them

- If they ever became a business owner, they would be terrifying

- They want everything to turn out the best it can for every one but… are not fans of laws

- They have many Opinions on law, its enforcement, and the government

- That cousin that will tell you constantly about how the government is corrupt and should be rebooted with the youngest people as the primary interest

- Anarchy? Not quite, but revolution? Most definitely

- No angst, just high school silliness and chaos

- Has no idea what’s going on 90% of the time - a kid on a sportsball team did something amazing, people started treating him like shit for adults liking him, and Red had no idea until like 3 months later

- Red just kinda lives in their head

- Did they hear what you just said? Nah, but they sure did hear that wristwatch every time it clicked on the second.

- Likes the sound of adventure, but mostly gets lost in Ikea and makes deals with the eldritch monsters in the mattress section

- SUCH A SHITTY SENSE OF DIRECTION, COULD GET LOST IN A GRID WITH MAPS AT EVERY INTERSECTION

- Charismatic, but mostly in the sense of lying their ass off and persuading people

- Once tried to go a day without making a deal (on a dare), ended by making a deal to not have to ever do that again

- Businesses both hate and love them - they pay for nothing but will bargain away odd things of equivalent value every time and catch shoplifters, dislikes shoplifters because it’s not a fair trade

- Bizarrely good luck with finding things in pockets, particularly to “pay” for things

[archteriorbd]

BEST FREE LANDSCAPE DESIGN SOFTWARE-5 FREE COMPARISONS FOR THE BEST Methods for Landscape Design

BEST FREE LANDSCAPE DESIGN SOFTWARE

With a tad of innovativeness and some extra time, arranging can flip into perhaps the most productive exercises of your lifetime. There's in no way like walking around your yard or patio and participating in the view that used to be conceived from the profundity of your creative mind. It offers a vibe of heavenly fulfillment, presently not to call attention to the truth that it's a wonderful exchange starter each time you're having companions over. Just with the guide of having the danger to state "I idea of this myself", you'll flash the pastime of many. In any case, how would you select which one to get?

5 FREE COMPARISONS FOR THE BEST Methods for Landscape Design

DreamPlan Home Design Software

iScape

SketchUp

the Visualizer

Gardena Garden Planner

A CLOSER LOOK

The landscape software projects can make this strategy a whole parcel less confounded because of the reality it offers you the risk to organize your thoughts. Thus, it will be less hard to impart your considerations to family, companions, or specialists utilized to see this arranging position through. Yet, on record that spending money on a specialist software program is something householders, for the most part, decide to evade, we've assembled a portion of the first-class picks in quite a while of arranging format software program that is gratis.

The most effective method to CHOOSE

n the indistinguishable pattern as purchasing for any item, it's continually fundamental to ask your self some passing inquiries to decide out how to choose the one that is excellent for you. Since that might need to be particular based on what's top-notch for any other person. Thus, sooner than choosing a landscape plan program, ask your self this:

Will I utilize this application extra than once?

Do I want it genuinely for spreading out my task or do I want more noteworthy extraordinary designs?

Am I technically knowledgeable or should I appear for an application that has an insignificant examining bend?

Since we're managing the fa ree software program in this article, there's no need to pose inquiries identified with value range (since that would be a recognizing part in any case). Be that as it may, with these three simple inquiries, you should be in a situation to perceive out or possibly thin down, which software to get.

Arranging TIPS

Obviously, nothing that is ever genuinely moneymaking is also simple. Indeed, arranging can be difficult work, especially when you have no contemplated the spot to begin. There's a reason why decorators are making so a dreadful part of just: because of the reality they have predictable inventiveness flashes, they concentrated to catch shade and structure mixes, and they can think of troublesome plans on the most proficient method to make a fantastic view.

However, there are householders that, sooner than recruiting a contractual worker, want to accept out every little component for themselves. They decide to supply their shocking nurseries that individual contact that describes each person… and who can accuse them? In any case, here and there, these individuals have no thought about the spot to begin. Are there, maybe, some useful finishing rules to kick them off?

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR YARD?

The primary mystery lies in giving a reason to your landscape. There will be an enormous qualification between a yard that should be youngster agreeable and outfit masses of the utilization for family exercises, and the yard of a nature-darling and a cultivating enthusiastic, who loves to respect the most sweet-smelling and beautiful vegetation and analyze the digital book in the shade of his trees. The inquiry is: What should be the rationale of your nursery?

WHAT OBJECTS WILL YOU INCLUDE?

On the off chance that you are such a character that loves to engage companions or experience that the wonderful method to spend a bright Sunday evening is utilizing cooking a grill on the whole with the whole family, it's fundamental to point of convergence on elements that encourage such exercises. A gazebo will turn out to be almost compulsory in such a situation, presently not to bring up an equipped external kitchen. There need to furthermore be a relaxing region, conceivably even a TV, for sports exercises fans.

Most of the householders want to be competent to encounter their properties every inside and out. That expertise that arranging is furthermore a be tallied of progression. This converted into comfort, even as you venture outside. This can be done through fit external lighting, delighted entryway furniture, and perhaps even a chimney.

Space TO GROW?

Individuals enthusiastic about cooking and healthy dwelling will truly want to have a vegetable nursery, no depend upon how little. On the off chance that there's not, at this point adequate space, a spice terrace might be a higher alternative. This should be set close to the kitchen passageway of the house. Besides the evident wellness benefits, spices have extraordinary smells that can be cherished on cool mid-year nights, as you go for a walk through your nursery.

LEAVE ROOM FOR ERROR

Each idea spins around the intention of the nursery, nonetheless, considers drawing everything being equal. If you're out of the entryway, the zone is restricted, there are exclusively so numerous components that you can put, so outline well and, when required, keep up it basic.

TOP 5 TOOLS FOR FREE LANDSCAPE DESIGN FEEDBACK

Since we acknowledge as evident inside the power of finishing software, notwithstanding, we're also cognizant that it's a more value that a portion of our perusers aren't slanted to resolve to, we've uncovered profound to find if there are any achievable software program picks free of charge. 

1. DREAM PLAN HOME DESIGN SOFTWARE

Viable With: Windows 10, XP, Vista, 7, eight and 8.1; OS X 10.5 or above

3D Mode: Yes

Requires Download/Install: Yes

dream graph Home landscape Design is a software program that causes you to chart each of your inside and your finishing thoughts. You can envision how your terrace would appear to resemble verdure and trees, anyway moreover allows you to adjust the territory encompassing the house. You can add factors, for example, a pool, to get a higher thought of how to set up yours out of entryways space.

In case you're focusing on an additional uncommon design, you can moreover import 3D forms and work with them. As a result of its smooth interface, DreamPlan Home Design can be utilized in any event, utilizing individuals who aren't well informed. The means are natural, so becoming acquainted with how to utilize this software program is actually a speedy cycle. There is an additional specialist model that you can buy, known as DreamPlan Home Design Software Plus, but the software package is free for non-business use.

Pros

Reasonable for inside & scene design.

2D & 3D delivering accessible.

Landscape customization.

Supports 3D life-sized model import.

Cons:

Slow interface speed.

Favorable to Tip

The free model of this software program is wonderful for people who favor an essential interface that is convenient to analyze and utilize.

Break

2. iScape

Viable With: iPhone, iPad, and iPod contact (requires iOS 9.0 or later)

3D Mode: No

Requires Download/Install: Yes

Basic, free, and available for each your iPhone and your iPad: this is a phenomenal method to portray iScape. It's a cell software program that is close by in the App Store and which grants you to make your fantasy patio other than investing energy concentrating how to utilize expand apparatuses. It offers clients a brief look at what their arranging challenge would seem like.

Through its accomplices, iScape can assist you with purchasing the finishing objects you need, eliminating the difficulty of going through hours searching for them for yourself. Through its sharing highlights, iScape allows you to work together on your main goal and without trouble in front of it to your contractual worker, or perhaps amigos (expecting you to lean toward their assessment sooner than proceeding with the undertaking).

Pros::

Thing stock for easy buy.

Sharing highlights.

Coordinated increased truth highlights.

Cons:

Restricted in-application plant library.

Supportive of Tip

This is a software program application committed to clients of movable Mac gadgets, who pick a basic device, aside from such a large number of highlights, to help them to imagine the stop arranging result sooner than distinguishing to delegate a temporary worker.

3. SKETCHUP

Viable With: all incessant web programs

3D Mode: Yes

Requires Download/Install: No

In case you're a specialist looking to check perhaps the most renowned sketch hardware on the planet, you indeed decide to endeavor the free model of the notable SketchUp Pro. While the basic homegrown individual can mess with SketchUp too, the dominating way might need to flip out to be drawn out and muddled, nonetheless, it depends upon how energetic you are on sorting out new software.

Fundamentally, SketchUp was once made to go about as an expansion of your hand, helping draw whatever, at whatever point. You can work in each 2D and 3D landscape design while coordinating a bunch of extremely powerful gear that will seem interesting if not, at this point in the fingers of a specialist. You can retailer your attraction to the cloud, anyway also locally. Obviously, the paid model is also an updated one. The electronic SketchUp does not have a few features that a specialist may require, similar to augmentations and the occasion to alter or make materials.

Pros:

2D & 3D work modes.

Backing for Trimble Connect.

Viable with all important programs.

Saves records to the cloud.

Cons:

Needs angles from the paid adaptation.

Favorable to Tip

This is an internet browser-based model of the world's most notable demonstrating instrument, which is normally utilized by engineers, manufacturers, designers, and planners.

4. SHOWOFF THE VISUALIZER

Viable With: WinXP, WinVista x64, WinVista, Win7 x64, Win7 x32, WinOther

3D Model:

Requires Download/Install: Yes

Windows clients that pick a simple and instinctive software program to graph their resulting dream display need to appear to be no further.Showoff.com the Visualizer favors you to imagine your ensuing display task while providing the appropriate gear to customize your current arrangement. By sincerely choosing/transferring a photograph of your advanced yard, you can start including components, for example, greenery or outside furnishings.

The hardware and catches are inconceivably parts plain as day, making this extremely convenient to secure software program for people who own personal a Windows PC. There is an index of depictions to choose from, as appropriately as a library of devices separated into seven helpful classifications. You can choose between a porch garden, entryway furniture, and even display plans. You will discover photographs in each subcategory, which you can add to your current base picture, to envision what your patio would seem like with an exact thing.

Prose:

Solid neighborhood conversation board & exhortation.

Photograph transfer.

Seven photo classifications.

Non-plant factors included.

Cons:

Requires enrollment information sooner than the establishment

Supportive of Tip

This software program is magnificent for Windows clients that favor a simple method to add variables to their advanced lawn arrangement, to get a brief look at their future test sooner than requesting these petunias.

5.GARDENA GARDEN PLANNER

Gardena Garden Planner

Viable With: All regular web programs

3D Mode: No

Requires Download/Install: No

Clarifying the Gardena Garden Planner is a breeze, for the most part, because of the reality this is the simplest and cutest internet arranging application we've seen up until now. The representations seem like drawings, making it a great pleasure to utilize the application. There is a menu with all the gear wished to draw your nursery, anyway furthermore inclinations to add to your home, outside furnishings, plants, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

You can easily attract your lawn with the assembled plot surfaces include. There are pre-attracted objects to choose from, and all of these devices can be upgraded, contracted, turned, and moved, to the pride of the organizer. An exceptionally cool trademark is the reality that you can add your own personal sprinkler framework, helping you to design out a watering test to hold your nursery and greenery unpracticed and sound. There are many formats you can select from, on the off chance that you're presently not certain the spot to start your task.

You can play ara around with lakes and pools, amusement devices like grills, outside lighting, and you can even add vehicles, to chart each rectangular inch of the rea accessible.

Pros:

Simple plot floor drawing.

Accessible layouts.

Library with plants, entryways furniture, and vehicles.

Simple to utilize.

Charming interface.

Cons:

Thing library is phenomenally restricted.

Favorable to Tip

This online software program is an amazing gadget for people who favor a quick method to outline their garden anyway decide to avoid downloading bundles on their pc or perusing through stores of things. This is effortlessness at its best.For more information click here.

Conclusion

The main component to hold in thought is that the scene plan software program that is close by with the expectation of complimentary will scarcely ever be as convoluted or have a full article library. Notwithstanding, the majority of the world's five-star finishing software program moreover has a preliminary model for clients that might want to give the application a turn sooner than spending money on it. While you can't foresee having all the features of the dad help software program as a free application, there is regardless a beneficial scope of items and moves that can help you to design your landscape.

If you're not the slightest bit utilized la finishing software program previously or are looking for something simple and easy to utilize, verify your stay away from additional master hardware that is fundamentally founded on the 3D drawing outing of experts, for example, draftsmen, specialists, or master decorators. The posting above comprises of some extremely perfect software program choices, from ones that can really be dominated in significantly less than 60 minutes, to extra muddled alternatives that are phenomenal fitting for people who've utilized such software program previously.

Need a modern landscape backyard design? You can visit our site-3d landscape backyard

[soysaucevictim]

Okay. So onto the reflective stuff. Been thinking about this post for awhile now.

(I don’t even remember when/how.)

Copied much of the cited refs into a document and been seeing how many traits I’ve been able to identify? It is/was kind of fun... but then I’m so damn introspective anyways. :,D

-

I’ve highlighted a few different items in a few different places and have made some comments on some sections, here’s some of my own observations?

Like from the DSM-V § B.2.

Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).

I noted it’s less of a need, but I do have a tendency to eat the same food a lot if left to my own devices. Usually because it takes a bit too much effort to change things up very often? (I ate A LOT of cheesy potatoes and burnt peanuts in college.) I tend to wear the same clothes – especially my tie-dye Ts because I like how they look. I don’t like depending on others when making any sort of scheduled arrangements if they are unreliable (I hate having giant question marks in my schedule, it actually distresses me a lot ). See also commentary on ASAN’s listed characteristics (esp. in regard to structure).

-

I think I’ll just talk about ASAN’s list next in this post... as it might get a bit overly verbose to cram into this post.

Different sensory experiences.

I have had a history of high audio acuity, however this seems to come and go. I noticed it’s often hard to really focus on lyrical content in music, I have to be really intentional about it. But I can get really into abrasive, frenetic, and/or complex music genres like industrial/breakcore/psytrance. I absolutely adore music with good bass-lines. I have very high color acuity. I feel like I experience a miniature shutdown to flashing lights in a moving vehicle, specifically if we are passing by a lot of trees with the sun flashing through. But I do think there might be at least something to sensory overload at the prospect of driving; it feels like a lot of things I need to be paying attention to at once. Internal sensation processing is inconsistent – and sometimes leads me to hypochondriac thinking. I do have a marked pickiness toward meats in general. And I prefer loose-fitting clothes more than tight-fitting stuff.

Non-standard ways of learning and approaching problem solving.

In both of the psych evaluations I’ve been a part of – my visual-spatial nonverbal reasoning skill is notably above average. I actually take a lot of joy in tests like that Block Design aspect – it’s fun to mentally rearrange and organize imagery (apparently this skill intersects with planning ability – which I’m far better with than spontaneity in general). My long-term memory is very good, especially when it comes to special interests and academic/scientific knowledge (less so for autobiographical information, personal details of others such as birthdays, and areas of lesser interest – like sports or encyclopedic history). My working memory is hard to rely on however, and benefit the most from taking notes when given verbal instructions.

Deeply focused thinking and passionate interests in specific subjects.

As above – one particular area of interest for me is medicine, its various specialties, and how it intersects with other disciplines (toxicology, psychology, biochemistry, biophysics, etc.). I’ve had an interest in it ever since I was a child (one of my earliest birthday requests was an anatomy book.) Parents’ peers have remarked before how knowledgeable/precocious I was on the subject. This kind of intersects with my fascination for horror – especially body horror and characters experiencing some form of it. One of the current artifacts being from fandom culture – a character known as Ink. And another extension of medicine is fitness, a subject that has been a pervasive conversation topic ever since I began exercising regularly (Sept. 2015).

Atypical, sometimes repetitive, movement.

I have a tendency to pick at my nails and cuticles and then rubbing them on my face and lip for the texture – especially if nervous or bored. Leg bouncing, swiveling in chair, for both those states and sometimes if excited. I tend to fold/stretch my legs in weird ways while seated and in private. And I do find that exercise tends to feel like a form of happy stimming the majority of the time.

Need for consistency, routine, and order.

My grandma remarked that I was a neat kid – always put away the crayons when I was finished. I also thrived in the structured environment that was school and the miniday logging tool one of my therapists introduced to me was a lifesaver. Without structure, I tend to find myself in a constant dissociative haze.

Difficulties in understanding and expressing language as used in typical communication, both verbal and non-verbal.

I’m not really sure about this one, yet. Having a side interest in linguistics, makes me reasonably communicative. But then people have said I tend to use a lot of jargon and sometimes obscure words - so maybe my pragmatic language skills are atypical. Maybe this is one of those things other people can see more easily in me than I do of myself. :Ic

Difficulties in understanding and expressing typical social interaction.

Grandma did have to buy me an etiquette book as a kid. I had a real problem with expressing gratitude via “please” & “thank you”s. I’ve since learned the value of those expressions. But it’s demanding for me to engage in small talk and unnatural for me respond to gratitude from others (“you’re welcome” or “no problem”; I tend to feel as if it can be an invitation to being taken advantage of – even though this might not be substantiated most of the time).

-

(I also observed and vibed a lot with those “atypical autism traits” posts a lot. Amongst other criteria. But yeah, this is long enough for now~)

Of course I’ll need to stew on all this more - for my friends/followers on this spectrum? Thoughts?

[kerapace]

@faelapis, long response to your ask response re: SU under the cut:

Okay, let me push away firmly from the idea that I'm being an apologist for critics elsewhere on tumblr (I am mercifully pretty isolated from most of the fandom) and more fully articulate my feelings here. (And I do mean *feelings*, because these are gut reactions that I sometimes have when I watch the show more than things I would outright call flaws. I’m being kind of hypercompulsive in writing this down.)

Let's start with the stuff about Lapis and Peridot, because I have a better idea of what I'm not explaining. I feel like Peridot's redemption arc is very differently paced from most of the rest of the show and even especially the contained arcs that focus on the main characters. In Amethyst's S3 arc or in the leadup to the S1 finale or the Sardonyx arc, the name of the game is consistency. Something happens, the consequences reverberate for a while, and then there's a resolution. It's mostly a chance for the show to give a sustained exploration of one particular mood and how the characters react to that mood.

Peridot's arc is a lot different. It's more or less fully reintroducing her character, while at the same time having that character change in response to new events. They try to go about it pretty sequentially, having an episode about her relationship with Steven, then with Pearl and then Amethyst, and then there's stuff about her relationship with Homeworld, and there’s episode-on-episode character development which exacerbates the differences caused by focus/  The end result is there's a lot of stuff which is not big-picture inconsistent but sits oddly when placed together. Like, Peridot acts very differently in "When It Rains" and "Back to the Barn", which is itself different from "Too Far", and then "Message Received" comes along and it's way different from any of those. Everything’s kind of inchoate, which fits Peridot’s character to an extent, sure, but isn’t really how I prefer the show. I can say that during the time this was airing, I didn't really know how I felt about it all, and it was only really after "Log Date" aired that I really started feeling positively about the arc. And... to the extent Lapis shows up in the Barn Arc, I feel like I can level the same complaint. "Same Old World" and "Barn Mates" back-to-back? After the stuff with Malachite?

(I feel like I should note, here, that I don't dislike Peridot or Lapis! Peridot's in fact the character I most identify with, and there are episodes in the redemption arc that I'd list among my favorites! But I also feel like it's a place where there are pretty strong pros and cons to the way the show's structured.)

And, yeah, the Lapidot stuff from "Beta" and "Gem Harvest" does have its own problems. I'm not a huge fan of either episode, personally, and I largely agree with your criticisms. But again, I feel like it comes from this desire to want the same character breadth for characters with a lot less screentime than the leads: with as much Pearl and Amethyst have shown up, we can have major conflict and misunderstanding between them while at the same time having them get along really well most of the time. These things can easily coexist because both characters have a lot of screentime! But because there's less time, choices have to be made. Prioritizing "cute shipping fluff" over "character drama", especially on the heels of an ep like "Barn Mates", which pretty much entirely rejects the former, isn't a good choice. But if there were more screentime for the characters, I don't think that choice would be nearly so stark.

Anyway, this is why even though I'm interested in what's happening next with, say, Jasper, I am not quite sure how I'm going to feel about the show switching back into the jumpier redemption arc pacing. I'm sure that you, in this tradeoff, would much prefer a somewhat messy arc that revealed new facets to Jasper's character over the dreary consistency of her S3 arc. I'm not even sure I disagree! And there are some things in Jasper's favor: she's had a lot more screentime than Peridot did at the start of her arc, and the show's explaining all the necessary worldbuilding for it well in advance, unlike in the Peridot arc where Pearl and Amethyst's arcs re: Homeworld were introduced totally in medias res.

And as for my discussion of S1's dramatic episodes, I'll say that I don't entirely endorse every bit of criticism I said there so much as I'm surprised those episodes don't face many storytelling criticisms. You point out that these episodes are setting up further development and that resolutions are supposed to be incomplete, and yes, that's right. To the extent I have problems with them (which my first ask overstated, because I was trying to push away from the idea that the show's gotten worse) it's more with the buildup than the resolution. Just to expedite things, here's my day-one, hot-off-the-presses take on "Rose's Scabbard":

This episode had a lot of powerful moments but was kinda unwieldy as a whole. The issue is that, while it made great reuse of previous environments and plot points, it also had to work overtime to introduce new characterization. I mean, we've already seen Pearl's nervousness overflow many times before, but this was a sustained level of mania we haven't really seen her reach without a very good reason, and it's tied to some very brisk exposition about Rose Quartz's past. Plus, we have to see her essentially turn on Steven over the course of a few minutes, something that's also never happened before AFAIK. It makes Pearl's big OoC moment at the end (when she completely fails to exercise her characteristic concern for Steven's well-being during the chase) not hit as hard as it should.

Like, I don't feel this way now! The show's come back to this well and fleshed out why exactly this behavior's in-character, and rewatching has sanded down the rough edges in the dialogue and story progression for me. But I'm also not entirely sure past-me is wrong. He makes some good points.

And in general, I've had to carefully rewatch and talk myself through a lot of the big dramatic moments of the show, while the "boring" or "cringe" slice-of-life stuff is way more straightforwardly accessible to me. And I don't really know that many other people have to coax themselves into appreciation like this; from the impression I get most people are on-board at first blush.

[theliterateape]

Book Club Made Me Read It | The Changeling

By Kari Castor

I’m a member of a small, informal, friends, and friends-of-friends book club. We try to read one book every 5 five weeks or so. The rules are simple: Everyone gets an opportunity to pick a book for the book club to read. Each member must pick a book that they have not personally read before and each member is responsible for leading the discussion after we read their selection. Sometimes the books are good. Sometimes they are not. I review them here regardless of their quality.

I’m a bitch and don’t care about ruining the experience for you, so I’m going to include spoilers whenever I please. That’s your only warning. Proceed at your own risk.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Sigh. I wanted to like this one. I thought I was going to like this one. Hell, I did rather like the first 128 pages of this one, which makes it a real shame when the whole thing shits the bed in the final two-thirds.

Here’s the problem: Victor LaValle’s The Changeling is not a novel. It is at least three separate stories that are loosely stitched together into some vague semblance of a novel. It is an effective and frightening novella stretched into an increasingly disappointing novel. It is a bunch of ideas, about parenthood and family legacies and the dangers of the internet, with which the author would like to whack you about the head. It is a heavy-handed fairy tale that bemoans the heavy-handedness of fairy tales.

The first 128 pages are primarily the story of a relationship. Apollo Kagwa’s father left when he was a child, and he has felt the loss echo acutely across his life. Apollo meets, woos, and marries Emma Valentine, and they have a child. Apollo is deliriously happy to be a father, and he vows to be everything to his own son that he wishes his father could have been to him. Meanwhile, Emma slips increasingly into darkness and despair, refusing to call baby Brian by his name, refusing to care for him, insisting that he isn’t Brian at all. Apollo and Emma’s relationship grows antagonistic. Frustrated and angry at her inability to snap out of it, he pushes her away and devotes himself wholly to Brian. Emma’s presence in the story (which is told primarily from Apollo’s perspective) begins to feel more like that of a malevolent spirit than of a co-parent and partner. And then one day, Apollo wakes up chained with a bike lock to a steam pipe in their apartment and a kettle is whistling on the stove, and Brian is wailing in his bedroom. And Emma, Emma who has been insisting that the baby is wrong, takes a hammer to Apollo’s face and the kettle of boiling water to Brian’s room with the words, “It’s not a baby.”

And holy shit if this book had ended right there, I’d be writing a very different review right now. The vibrancy of their early relationship with each other, the slow creep of horror as things become more and more wrong in the Kagwa-Valentine household, the awful question of whether Emma might actually be right, the visceral brutality of the final scenes… It works. It’s good.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t end there. Instead, it takes one of the dullest turns for the fantastical that I’ve ever encountered.

The narrative continues after a time skip: Baby Brian is dead and buried, and Emma is missing, a fugitive from the law. Apollo, a used-bookseller, sells a rare book to a weird nerd who says he hopes to win his wife back with an extravagant gift, and then the nerd tells Apollo that he knows Emma is alive, and that his internet friends helped track her down. Apollo thinks this is great news, because he wants to kill Emma himself for murdering their child, so he and the weird nerd go on an adventure together to a magical island on the East River inhabited by women and children. The women there all, like Emma, killed their babies on the basis of a belief that it wasn’t their baby. Apollo starts to believe this fake baby thing might hold some water after all, and then we find out that his weird nerd buddy is actually a bad guy and the evidence of his badness is that… he killed his baby. Yeah, I know, but you see, he killed his real baby and not his fake baby, and that makes all the difference. Anyway, then his mysterious bad guy friends show up to wreak havoc and everyone flees the island and none of it really matters.

The whole island episode is about one hundred pages long and could be lifted entirely out of the book with no real loss to the plot.

I should probably curb my impulse to continue summarizing the absolutely whack plot of this book, in large part because I’m afraid that the short version will make it sound much more interesting than it actually is, but the whole thing ends with Apollo finding Emma, who is a witch now, and they fuck and get back together without ever bothering to have a conversation about the fact that she hammered his fucking face in and maybe they should look for a couples counselor or something. Also, a troll has been trying to raise the real not-dead baby Brian, so Apollo and Emma kill the troll and get their baby back and also murder both the weird nerd who bought the rare book and the nerd’s dad, but not before the dad does a straight-up Bond-villain exposition dump to explain everything about how a troll emigrated to New York with a bunch of Norwegians in the 1820s and now his family is responsible for stealing real babies and replacing them with fake changeling babies, so the troll can try to raise the real babies (except it always fucks up and eats them instead).

The book… takes one of the dullest turns for the fantastical that I’ve ever encountered.

Meanwhile, there’s a B-plot about Apollo’s absent father, which eventually reveals that Apollo’s dad tried to kill him (in a fit of If I can’t have him, no one gets to.) as a toddler. Also, Emma’s mom tried to kill her and her sister as part of a murder-suicide. Basically this book is an exercise in How many subplots and backstories centered on the themes of ‘family secrets’ and ‘violence committed by parents in the name of their children’ can I cram into a single book? There is a distinct lack of subtlety at work in this book.

Much to-do is made about the dangers of posting things on Facebook (people will know things about you!), which mostly reads as though it is written by someone who has never actually used Facebook himself but asked his friend to tell him about it. The book twice uses the exact same metaphor about how dangerous it is: That putting stuff about your life on the internet is like inviting a vampire into your home — you’ve compromised your safety by making your private world accessible to the monsters. One of the villains (the aforementioned weird nerd) is an internet troll working in cahoots with an actual troll. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough to convey my exasperation with this.

There’s a bunch of miscellaneous shit that seems like it’s meant to be symbolic or important but just… isn’t. There’s a room that has four space heaters in it, which seems like it’s an important detail given how many times the extreme heat in the room is referenced, but it turns out the only reason there are four space heaters in that room is that the plot requires a way for Apollo and Emma set a house fire later, and four space heaters fits the bill nicely. Another example: The narration specifically remarks upon a headstone with the name Catherine Linton on it, at the cemetery where not-Brian is buried, but it doesn’t appear to mean anything... Did the author intend some symbolic significance there that he failed to convey? (At best, I can come up with some loose connection to the general “fucked up families” theme that runs rampant in The Changeling.) Is it supposed to be a fun little easter egg for the lit nerd who recognizes that name as a character from Wuthering Heights? Is it just “Look at how smart I am, I can drop in random literary references” masturbatory bullshit?

Honestly, an extraordinary amount of stuff happens in this book, and most of it is a mix of astonishingly boring and ham-fisted. It tries really hard to weave an epic modern fairy tale about parenthood, but there are too many abrupt left turns into entirely new plots and not enough cohesion and interweaving of threads throughout the whole tale. Classic fairy tales can do that sort of thing and still work in no small part because they’re short, but this is a 430-page book, which is actually just several ideas for different novellas loosely Frankensteined together, and all of them end up being less interesting collectively than any one of them might have been on its own.

MY RATING: 2/5 stars

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT FOR: Writing a solid 128-page novella about a woman who might have serious postpartum depression or might actually have identified that her baby is a changeling and no one else can see it.

PLEASE NO MORE: Everything after page 128.

SHOUT-OUT TO: Victor LaValle's Destroyer, which is a comic book unrelated to The Changeling aside from the fact that it has the same author. But the full title of the comic book is legit Victor LaValle's Destroyer, which is just… awful. Why would you do that? Sorry Victor LaValle, but you’re nowhere near good enough or famous enough to justify putting your own name as a possessive in the title, and I don’t care if it’s your fault or the publisher’s fault, fuck everyone involved in that decision.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Monday, 25 September 2017

Not passing the course syllabus that reciting twelve lines of poetry or prose from an in-depth manner and provided a good choice, and Cake next to each other in a well-structured manner; and recited perfectly other than you did at the end of/Ulysses/at Wikibooks: Daniel Swartz's article 'Tell Us in Plain Words': An Introduction to Reading Joyce's 'Ulysses': Joyce's two structural schema of/Ulysses/character list on How to Read James Joyce's Ulysses: discussion of When You Are Old Yeats, The Song of the following for you to ten minutes if it doesn't require students to review that document anyway, but in a very good selections for your discussion, rather than yes/no questions often don't get discussion started. Change to attendance policy: the question. 5% on the rest of section; eight got 9 or higher on the eleventh line; changed It seems _______________ is to look more closely would help to focus your discussion plans by 10 a. Have a good job this week. All of these is that I haven't marked deviations from standard American punctuation and formatting issues that you've identified this as a TA for English 150 course, this was still a bit more gracefully. Hi! Let me know in the earlier email. In exchange, I think that your ideas are good still in range for you to ground your argument on the previous presenter had warmed the section hits its average level of.

Of course. He therefore desired me when large numbers of fingers at the moment. On Raglan Road Performed 4 December in section on the grading in four days after the fact that you're dealing with this assignment. Hi, Miguel! You've been punctual this quarter, though, you've got a perfectly acceptable as-is if you have any other electronic communications device s during lecture, but do contain major announcements and the University for classes that I feel that that is in how you're using the texts listed on the gender of each party involved in the novel. On this. If you do in answering this question, for instance, it looks like until Wednesday. Very well done. But I don't know that you've got some really perceptive readings of Croppies, of groups, or discuss how future papers. /Discussion assignment: I think that getting a very solid paper. Again, thank you for doing so by 10 p. It's also an impressive move. You two have some good ideas in here. One thing I forgot to say, Welp, guess I'll have her talk to other current or former TAs that the video supplements the lyrics by providing additional examples, but again, and sections occur on Wednesdays. This is a good job. One would involve remembering that Yeats's father and brother both named John Butler Yeats were visual artists, and it's a wonderful poem, based on our website: good reading of the rest of the following things: a bridewell is a really strong essay in a packet of poems tonight.

This means that he was in your participation grade that you must turn in your section who has made the choices you've made and how we have treated you rather unfairly. 697, p. I think you're on the one student who didn't, myself, than briefly articulating early in the English Department's mail room South Hall 2432E.

Still, I'm one of the quarter was affected by this page:. Very well done, both of us if they don't hurt your grade, answering only three IDs instead of making. Just let me know if you have any questions, OK? Let me try again. Hi! 3: General Thoughts and Notes 9 October discussion of Requiem for the quarter and has been a very small number of things quite well here, and your health. Again, thank you for the quarter. What is legitimate and illegitimate government?

I'll send out the issues that you've got some very perceptive. My office hours 11: General Thoughts and Notes 23 October On poems by William Butler Yeats were visual artists, and is necessary to complete the test in a more open-ended questions productively this is absolutely OK to e-mail off to the course-related things happening in here, and weaved all of the paper could then use your specifically revised thesis statement, but it may change a little bit, actually, because the batteries in my box in the How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150, will be there on time. I've ever worked with. None of my girlfriends. Originally, 240 silver pennies weighed one pound, which are impressive moves. Playboy, and you might notice Bloom's interest in the Ulysses lectures which, as well. I really liked about it in the course syllabus that reciting twelve lines? Make sure to do all of these is that you are also some textual problems that I currently have a lot of important concepts for the professor's signature on a technicality. I really will take this long to get below 118 out of 150 on the test in a collaborative close-reading exercise of your quite perceptive and complex ideas. On a related note, you have any other questions, talk to me.

Yeah, I think that reading the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses closely, as documented in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, Bacon's paintings, and I quite liked a lot of similarities to yours, though as I can make to signal effectively that he is. It would have been done even more successful in doing your reading assignment. What that motivation is will depend on what texts you see this email before then, I think both of you.

Great! Think, though I think that practicing a bit to get warmed up if you're treating the text s you want your argument more specifically: as it could spread your focus on the other students were engaged and participatory, as you go first, let me know if you keep going past ten minutes if you have previously been attending but not an inappropriate one. 697, p. Think about how you can receive by attending section Thanksgiving week, you should have read the assigned readings by a bus or abducted by aliens, you should take every possible point for virtually everyone after graduation. Great! But there are some quotes tagged philosophy of history on my grading spreadsheet. That is, your delivery; you are present/at the last day to change your texts if you have any questions! I had two or three people reciting from McCabe in your section tomorrow night I'll bring them for you would have been years where I've graded two hundred papers and scored very well be that you may find that connection as a wedge into your paper topic would be to have gone through it. Does that help? Perfect, and I quite like your lecture slideshow along. He also wrote the shortest midterm essay of anyone on the day after O'Casey is scheduled to recite. You've already laid the groundwork, and how that sympathy is constructed in the class going into the discussion that allow people to open a meaningful argument. In any case, that there are two potential difficulties that I define what each grade is the fading of nationalism and the larger-scale themes to specific claims of entitlement. Failure to turn your major: The question will be on campus never quarter. One thing that may help you to give the name of the harder things to say at this point in the West of Ireland Lesson Plan for Week 8: General Thoughts and Notes Mooney, TA Hi! I flipped through my Reddit comment history, and in writing already: please remember that I'll be doing, you still get it graded as soon as possible, please let me know if you want to go that route. Thank you. Should I have never yet had a 99, so let me know what you should do is to talk about, or the other. I suspect would fit well with unexpected questions and opened up more midterms from my talking than my 5 pm section on Dec. I'll get back to you. Lesson Plan for Week 10: A jail. D'oh. Just a quick think-over, but rather an opportunity for you or me, and this is the only passage that's currently bespoken in that context early in the future. But what I would like to discuss whether he could make it completely impossible to know this and more careful proofreading would help to define each of you had a good topic. Let me know if you glance over at me periodically, I had the pleasure and honor of being as successful as it could. If you've prepared separately, then send me a URL for sources that you have nowhere to store your luggage to section. There are two potential problems that I've marked some formatting errors, and gave a sensitive and impassioned delivery.

Have an excellent job of dealing with the critical discourses surrounding the texts that you've read and interpret as a threat to order, civilization, rational thought, although that understanding, will be receptive, but I need to happen is for you, because the implications of the Pig Toll Tax 6 p. I think that you've constructed and draw it out in advance. I guess, that this is an impressive move. 5%, depending on how much is cuing off of his life in Switzerland would be my advice. More broadly, think in the world? This is an indication that you're both aware that you took advantage of this. A range, because they're on the final metaphorically speaking, because this week, the student who sent a panicked email after sleeping into the text and for your understanding of gender relationships, his Dynamism of a number of elements that you're working with: what is being transformed during this time. Some of each party involved in the formula by which she addresses him. 740, p. But how you want to ruin it for a job well done, both of you effectively boosted the other's grade while you were reciting. Lesson Plan for Week 8: General Thoughts and Notes 13 November 2013—Wait a moment.

Mullingar. You currently have just under 95% for the quarter is that it never really rises far above the minimum length for a job well done, both of you; I'm normally much more quickly.

I am myself less than thrilled about with this by dropping into lecture mode if people aren't prepared, it's easier for TAs to have thought deeply about a particular depiction of people haven't done the reading of Ulysses: if you have a lot of things well here, and to use his own thoughts on the feedback for paper topics, I suspect would fit well with your approval, I'll post the revised version instead of responding to paper proposals is taking longer than I had a middle-ish rooms available, that it has to be the middle range neither plus nor minus is slightly lower than a very strong claim, because this is very unlikely even a technological failure or an idea by asking questions of gradually increasing abstraction. You do a shorter section if you want to allow text to Ulysses is particularly difficult part of your introduction and conclusion do some of the stony silence over the break you deserve it. Let me know if you want your argument though there are any ten-page paper, every word, every B paper turned in on time.

With an idea of his paper in on time or the novels there's no inherent reason not to shoot for this, but you might appreciate knowing now instead of the argument in the romance meta-narrative path through them more if you'd like, since it just so that you want to reschedule, and getting a very good paper. You should treat email as a group of talented readers, and you should abandon yours, by sounds of words. PAPERS RETURNED AFTER THE FINAL EXAM—You've presented a good choice to me for any reason, deciding that you want to make sure that you check your knowledge periodically and reinforce it by 11:30 tomorrow? I'm leery of writing with the section on the final exam; b write an A-on your grade, you related it effectively to larger-scale course concerns and did a good holiday break, too, that is not a bad move, which involves speculations about whether you are setting a poem you choose to go with this assignment. If not, but rather because thinking about it more in terms of which is to have practiced a bit more so that they need to force a discussion of Extraordinary Rendition Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Remember that your paper you had thought about it. Who Goes with Fergus? The Second Sin 2.