#but if the stars somehow align perfectly and the very universe gives me all its luck | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tillidontneedfantasy · 4 years

Text

A Track-by-Track Breakdown of Taylor Swift’s 9th Studio Album: ‘evermore’

“My collaborators and I are proud to announce that my 9th studio album and folklore’s sister record is here. It’s called evermore,” is how Taylor Swift introduces us to this album in its foreword. One might assume a “sister record” would entail b-sides, or tracks that didn’t quite make the cut for folklore, despite Taylor’s explanation that “we just couldn’t stop writing songs.” evermore’s release came at a strange time, upon the heels of the Folklore: Long Pond Studio Sessions film on Disney+, as well as 5 Grammy nominations for folklore. The world still captivated by folklore, it’s understandable why one might not consume evermore as critically. Even as a die-hard fan, I felt some whiplash by this announcement; I am still processing folklore! Hell, I’m still processing reputation!

If this was the Taylor from two years ago, this may have been a big enough fear of hers to hold off on releasing evermore. But as she explained upon folklore’s surprise release, life is too unpredictable now, and there are zero givens or guarantees. So she followed the same path this time (although making sure it fell in line with her birthday weekend). But it’s not just the strategic timing of the release that she’s thrown out the window for now, but also her mindset whilst making records. As she explains in the evermore album foreword,

“I’ve never done this before. In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one as soon as an album was released. There was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning. I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales. I loved the ways you welcomed the dreamscapes and tragedies and epic tales of love lost and found. So I just kept writing them.”

This is a revelation for Swift, to let the music lead her into artistic freedom, which is what makes evermore such a triumphant return. Truly folklore’s sister record, Taylor wrote evermore with the same creative team: Aaron Dessner of The National (Swift’s favorite band), long-time pal and collaborator Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and William Bowery aka Swift’s boyfriend, Joe Alwyn (as officially revealed in the Long Pond Studio Sessions). Additionally, former 1989 tour openers and close friends of Taylor, the HAIM sisters, join the crew, along with Marcus Mumford for some dreamy backup vocals.

The production is just as wistful and mesmerizing as it was on folklore, yet the storytelling on evermore is kicked up a notch, expanding on the topics and worldbuilding established in its sister record, with even sharper lyrics and an effective and elaborate use of alliteration. The best thing about Taylor is that no matter what she does, her masterful lyricism is always at the heart of her art, and somehow, she keeps getting better. Once again, I wanted to explore the rich stories she’s crafted in this woodsy universe. This is how I’ve interpreted the album, but I hope you find your own meaning in the songs as well.

1. willow It is fitting that the opening track to folklore’s sister album, where we wade further into the forest that is Taylor Swift’s imagination and storytelling, would center on the type of tree that is a symbol of hope, belonging, safety, stability, and healing. “willow,” one of the few more obviously autobiographical tracks on the album, is a hymn of gratitude for her man (as she wants you to know, yes, thirteen times), Joe Alwyn, and how the invisible string tethering them together pulled her to him in a time when everyone else was counting her out. Though not as present on many of the other songs later to come on this record, you can feel the lightness in her heart on this song as she embraces the way in which the willow has bent, wrecking her plans, throwing her into the water and leaving her happily lost and afloat in his current. The downward key modulation throughout the last two repetitions of the chorus is beautiful and very fitting for Swift vocally, but also sounds like the feeling of finding your comfort and settling into it, basking it in while you wait for the next place the wind pulls you. Best lyric: “Now this is an open/shut case / I guess I should’ve known from the look on your face / Every bait and switch was a work of art.”

2. champagne problems On the second track of the album, Taylor dives back into the fictional worldbuilding she began to explore on folklore. While on folklore high school relationships and dramatics took center-stage, evermore graduates from adolescence to young adulthood, not that it is any easier emotionally on the listener’s heart. “champagne problems” chronicles a rejected marriage proposal between two college sweethearts at their old dorm building. Taylor sings as the narrator, a reflective, self-deprecating young woman who jokes about belonging in a madhouse and dismisses all her turmoil as champagne problems. The term ‘champagne problems’ itself could have various meanings here: their trivial concerns, the fact that their “sister splashed out on the bottle” of champagne that they will not be using to celebrate as they had hoped, or perhaps it could even hint that excessive drinking is a piece of all the ways the narrator is “fucked in the head,” as they said. Although the person she is singing to is the one who got hurt in the story, the hurt in the narrator’s heart is just as palpable and relatable, because you only have yourself to blame when you self-destruct. Best lyric: “’She would’ve made such a lovely bride, / what a shame she’s fucked in the head,’ they said / but you’ll find the real thing instead / she’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred.”

3. gold rush On her YouTube live chat prior to the album’s release, Taylor explained that this song “takes place inside a single daydream where you get lost in thought for a minute and then snap out of it.” The daydream consists of a love story so pure that the town had never seen such a thing; it could only happen in a fantasy for the narrator. How could she possibly have the gall to call them out on their contrarian shit, or end up with her Eagles t-shirt hanging from their door, when they are so coveted by all, and when she cannot withstand the thought of even competing? She sings, “My mind turns your life into folklore / I can’t dare to dream about you anymore,” a sweet little connecting piece to this album’s older sister, effectively convincing herself out of the idea of jumping into the chaos of the gold rush because even inside her own imagination it’s too dangerous. Best lyric: “I don’t like that falling feels like flying ‘till the bone crush.”

4. ‘tis the damn season According to Aaron Dessner, Taylor had written the lyrics for “’tis the damn season” in the middle of the night amidst their Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions recording after a long night of chatting and drinking with their co-conspirator, Jack Antonoff. The lyrics perfectly encapsulate the guttural ache the track evokes. It is a tale of two people who always find their way back to one another in their hometown, which acts as the ever-returning fork in the road. The path taken, back to L.A. in pursuit of her dreams, is the one she chose and continues to choose, but whenever she returns home, she takes a ride down the road not taken, just to get a taste of what could have been, even if just for the weekend. What starts off as an icy homecoming always transforms into the warmest intimacy. The success of this track is aligned with the success of Taylor’s entire career; even with such specific details, it feels so deeply personal to the listener. You know the street you’d drive along late at night laughing, the spot you’d park the car, the person who stars in every what-if. You will never really know if the road not taken is as good as it seems, but that might be ok; sometimes, the fantasy is better than the reality, anyway. Best lyric: “It’s the kind of cold / fogs up windshield glass, but I felt it when I passed you / There’s an ache in you / put there by the ache in me.”

5. tolerate it Inspired by the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, “tolerate it” is an agonizing track from the perspective of a devoted wife who polishes plates and paints portraits and waits by the door for her husband with a battle hero’s welcome, who at best tolerates all her adoration. There are few things as painful as idolization being met with indifference, when you have all this love to give to someone who just leaves it there untouched. “tolerate it” captures that desperation for the approval you know will never arrive, but you sit and watch, waiting for it just in case you’re wrong, but you know you’re not. Best lyric: “I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life / drawing hearts in the byline”

6. no body, no crime feat. HAIM “no body, no crime,” the one evermore song solo-written by Taylor, has the clearest plot from beginning to end. In the same vein as the female powerhouse country classic “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks, Taylor is out for blood to avenge her friend, Este (named for one of the HAIM sisters). The story goes as such: Este’s husband kills her for calling him out on his infidelity, and then Taylor kills the husband and frames his mistress. The HAIM girls, who are long-time friends of Taylor’s and former touring mates, lend their vocals to reinforce the accusation on the husband and to provide Taylor’s alibi. “no body, no crime” is so far the closest we’ve gotten to a return to “country Taylor,” proving that she is still the master of a killer country tune (yes, pun intended, it had to be done I’m sorry). Best lyric: “Good thing Este’s sister’s gonna swear she was with me / (she was with me, dude) / Good thing his mistress took out a big life insurance policy”

7. happiness Written a week before the album’s release, “happiness” is one of Swift’s strongest and most reflective breakup songs. Although she writes it as though it is recent, there’s a lot of power in knowing that she’s been happily in love for four years, and that she is even better now at doing the thing that has always been best at. She is finally “above the trees,” as she sings, and is able to see it all for what it is, but her character is still in the heat of it all, trying to navigate the stages of grief when a relationship ends. We see the narrator grapple with many of those stages throughout the song. Most striking is the anger displayed in the second verse when she sings: “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool who takes my spot next to you / No, I didn’t mean that, / sorry, I can’t see facts through all of my fury.” That section is jarring and feels like one of the most honest moments in a Taylor song, the insanely difficult emotional balancing act when we are grieving a relationship. The devastation of loss can distort our perception, and a part of that is the difficulty of understanding how multiple seemingly opposing things can co-exist in our hearts, such as happiness because of someone and happiness after them. But when you leave it all behind and finally find your place above the trees, you can find happiness after someone and also look back and appreciate the happiness they once provided. Both of these things can be true. Best lyric: “Showed you all of my hiding spots / I was dancing when the music stopped.”

8. dorothea Taylor Swift has the uncanny ability to create such developed and well-rounded characters with such little information, which is what makes her storytelling so compelling. In “dorothea,” we learn much about the title character through the narrator’s eyes, and the relationship they once had. The lyric “skipping the prom just to piss off your mom and her pageant schemes” alone tells an entire story in itself. “dorothea” is also the companion song to “’tis the damn season,” just from the other person’s perspective, which helps shine even more light on the story. The narrator of “dorothea” reveres her but wonders if she’s still the same soul in L.A. as she was back in their never-changing town. Whatever the answer, they’re still willing to support her no matter where she is, but she’s always welcome back in Tupelo by her hometown love’s side if she ever just wants to be herself rather than someone known for who they know. Besides, they’re the only soul who can tell which smiles she’s faking. And you can always return to the road not taken. Best lyric: “They all wanna be ya / but are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers? / Well, I guess I’ll never know / and you’ll go on with the show.”

9. coney island feat. The National What really started the folklore / evermore journey was Taylor’s love for The National. Taylor has cited them as one of her favorite bands for many years, and as we know, this led to her beautiful new collaborative relationship with Aaron Dessner. So it would make sense for the track written with the intention of this duet to be so well executed; you can feel the love and care Taylor put into writing this song. In her press for these sister albums, she has spoken about trying to channel frontman Matt Berninger’s writing style. But what actually happened was she just produced her own signature lyricism at its sharpest. “We were like the mall before the internet, it was the one place to be / the mischief, the gift-wrapped suburban dreams / sorry for not winning you an arcade ring over and over,” is a hall of famer Swift-ian lyric. “coney island” explores the confusion, hurt, and self-reflection when a passionate affair burns out fast because you did not prioritize that person. And to top it off, Swift and Berninger’s harmonies are achingly beautiful, transporting you right there in the story, on the bench, wondering, over and over. Best lyric: “Do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into paradise and left you there? / Will you forgive my soul when you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?”

10. ivy Leave it to Taylor Swift to make a song about an affair sound so romantic, and so sympathetic to the narrator, that you’re rooting for adultery. “ivy” tells the tale of a woman in a lifeless marriage, likening her home with him to the tombstone that the widow in town visits each day. I like to think this is the same wife whose husband was out there building other worlds without her in “tolerate it,” because then that means she found someone who celebrates her love, who holds her pain for her, who blooms all over her; they started it, but she’s fighting for it all the way to the end, nonetheless. “ivy” showcases Swift’s gorgeous vocals and her sharp lyrics, with a melody so infectious it is bound to permanently plant its roots in your dreamland. Best lyric: “Oh, I can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland / my house of stone, your ivy grows, and now I’m covered in you.”

11. cowboy like me With the beautifully blended backing vocals of Marcus Mumford, “cowboy like me” is an entrancing love story of two con artists who lost at their own game and got conned into forever with each other. She’d gone from swindling old men for their money and fancy cars to falling victim to the danger of dancing with someone who only has eyes full of stars, and she knows she’ll pay for it. “cowboy like me” is one of the most romantic tracks on the record, proving that life never plays out quite as we plan. Best lyric: “Now you hang from my lips like the gardens of Babylon / with your boots beneath my bed / Forever is the sweetest con.”

12. long story short One of the more pop-sounding tracks on evermore, “long story short” is pretty much a summary of the long story behind reputation (2017). The song is filled with various metaphors for her reputation crumbling around her, and then finally putting her defenses down to be with her lover, someone as “rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky.” It is a sweet ode to her boyfriend, and a gentle comfort to her past self that it will all work out. But it is also an oddly relatable example of how we shrug off our struggles and minimize them to just a “bad time,” when the time she is singing about was obviously something that deeply affected her (as will be further explored in the title track); but sometimes it actually feels good to just shrug it off as just a blip in your life, because at the end of the day, you survived, and that’s what counts- even if you’re not keeping score anymore. Best lyric: “Pushed from the precipice / clung to the nearest lips / long story short, it was the wrong guy. / Now I’m all about you.”

13. marjorie Whereas track 13 on folklore was a tribute to Swift’s paternal grandfather, evermore’s track 13 is a tribute to her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who was an opera singer in the 50s, and passed away in 2003 when Taylor was 13 years old. “marjorie” is quite possibly the most touching track Taylor has ever written thus far in her career. Grief is one of the most difficult topics to tackle in a song; the genius of “marjorie” is that it is simple, yet not understated. Swift reflects on the profound lessons she learned from her grandmother, about the difficult balances of kindness and cleverness, and politeness and power. She curses herself for not cherishing the moments she had with her, for complaining rather than understanding in the moment how admirable her spirit was, for all the amber skies she’d love but will never see. The chorus, blunt and hard-hitting, reminds us that someone does not have to be living to be alive, to be all around, to be with us. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to me now,” Taylor sings towards the end of the song, right before you hear a sample of Finlay’s opera singing in the background, a truly eye-swelling moment. It is clear that Finlay played a pivotal role in Swift’s own ambitions, as she sings, “all your closets of backlogged dreams, and how you left them all to me.” Marjorie knew she was leaving them in good hands. If you haven’t yet, check out the moving lyric video for the song, where you can see photos and video clips of Marjorie, both throughout her career and in her time with Taylor. Best lyric: “Never be so polite you forget your power, / never wield such power you forget to be polite.”

14. closure On the most experimental track musically on the record, Taylor writes off her need for closure from a relationship of some sort, whether it be romantic or platonic or business, all of which can cause hurt of equal intensity. The subject of the song is trying to make nice with Taylor, and she is just not having it, as it is not coming from a genuine place, but rather to ensure that their life remains picture perfect, or to clear their guilty conscience, or to preserve their own ego. This is a deeply relatable sentiment; as valuable as forgiveness can be, sometimes the person who hurt you just doesn’t deserve it, and all you can do is forgive yourself for blocking their number or shredding their letters. Best lyric: “I know I’m just a wrinkle in your new life / staying friends would iron it out so nice.”

15. evermore feat. Bon Iver To close out the standard edition of the album, Taylor joins forces once again with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, with whom she collaborated on the Grammy-nominated duet, “exile” for folklore. However, Swift leads most of the track this time, lamenting the difficult time she went through in 2016. The piano and Swift’s vocals are haunting, particularly when she describes this time in her life as “catching my death,” consumed by a pain that she feels will never end. If you’ve ever been depressed, you know what that feels like, and the dark places it leads you. Although she is singing about a time four years prior, it sounds so present, and it is heartbreaking to hear her in such a state. When Bon Iver comes in, the tempo of the song picks up, the piano riff becomes more erratic, like a winter storm hitting you in the face, and he voices all the anxieties of the cost of such a downfall. But through those anxieties, Taylor finds not a cure, but an anchor in love, and then the tempo slows back down. By the end of the song, Taylor has the foresight to understand that although it may not feel like it now, the pain she is experiencing is not permanent (a sentiment my therapist has been trying to instill in me for years). In her Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Taylor explained how the lyrics parallel the times we are in currently, and so it feels really special to have the album end with someone who knows how it feels to be imprisoned by your pain gently comfort us with the wisdom that “this pain wouldn’t be for evermore.” I hope one day soon, as we leave 2020 far behind, we can all truly believe her. Best lyric: “I was catching my breath / barefoot in the wildest winter catching my death.”

16. right where you left me (bonus track) The first bonus track on evermore, “right where you left me,” captures a moment so earth-crushing, a piece of you is trapped in it forever. In this song specifically, the narrator finds herself stuck in the same corner of a restaurant where she was told by someone she loved that they had met someone else. “Glass shattered on the white cloth, everybody moved on,” she sings in mourning. We have all experienced those moments that we could teleport back to if we just closed our eyes; the scenery, what you wore, the smell and taste of the season, the very point in your body where it felt like your insides were collapsing. Or that one particular person, who is long-gone from your life but seeing them is like time-travelling back to that person you once were, ready to pick up where you left off. But as much as you want to stay in that moment forever, just in case it changes in your favor, the cold reality is that the world stops for no one. Best lyric: “If our love died young, I can’t bear witness / And it’s been so long, but if you ever think you got it wrong / I’m right where you left me.”

17. it’s time to go (bonus track) “right where you left me” was Taylor’s cry for help to get out of restaurant, and “it’s time to go” is the answer to the call, as she sings in the first line, “when the dinner gets cold, and the chatter gets old / you ask for the tab.” This song is about gathering the strength to leave situations and relationships behind that no longer serve you. She grieves the betrayal of someone she thought to be a twin from her dreams (almost definitely referring to former friend, Karlie Kloss), acknowledges that keeping a marriage together for the sake of the kids often actually has the opposite intended effect (possibly- but not certainly- something she and her brother experienced), and recounts attempting to bargain with someone consumed by greed, only able to leave with herself (absolutely referring to the end of her fifteen-year long business relationship with Scott Borchetta, her former record-label owner). But as painful as leaving all of those situations was, Taylor has gained the wisdom to understand that walking away sometimes takes as much strength as persevering. You can’t stay at the restaurant, or at the mercy of someone else forever; you have to forge your own path, even if it’s in the opposite direction of what you envisioned for so long. And even with all her past success behind her, as folklore and evermore have proved, there is so much more ahead of her. Best lyric: “That old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in your soul / You know when it’s time to go.”

In a time where we are all trapped in our homes and in our heads, the folklore/evermore experience has been the sweetest escape. If anything, the creation of these wonderful sister records has taught me that our most powerful tool in times of distress is our own imagination. Even just the ability to close my eyes while listening to one of these tracks and feel the character’s story is a gift. The way I’ve always been able to pick up Harry Potter and escape to Hogwarts when I’ve felt alone and friendless, I can listen to folklore and evermore when I feel scared or hopeless and escape into this enchanted forest Taylor has built, where I can climb above the trees and see it all for what it is. I feel so lucky to watch Taylor’s imaginative world unravel around me. I can’t wait to see what she creates next.

DISCLAIMER – REVIEWER’S BIAS: I would literally die for this bitch.

610 notes · View notes

thedeathdeelers · 4 years

Note

Okay just because I fucking love your writing unmm something about Julie maybe reflecting on how Luke was brought to her, by the universe or her mom etc, and just fucking soulmate fluff. I loved your religion drabble btw!!

thank you so much!!!🥰

sorry for the delay :$ but i hope you like it!! (ps it turned out to be way longer than i anticipated, so, ya)

pps: you can now find this on my AO3 🤗

——

i think i dreamed you into life

It was a Julie & Luke writing session, just like any other. They were sat, hunched over their shared journal on the faded black couch, too absorbed by the words and notes scribbled on the pages in front of them to pay any attention to anything else.

Julie had just had an epiphany, finally finding the right words to lead them into the chorus following the first verse. With a stiff neck and a cramping hand, Julie stretched her arms over her head, sitting up for a second before collapsing back onto the back cushions of the couch. She heaved a large sigh, looking around and only just registering the low setting sun. They had somehow managed to lose track of time, again, spending well over what she assumed was 4 hours working on this one song. She shook her head, a small smile on her lips as she looked back at her writing partner, still fully focused on the journal in his lap.

They were so alike sometimes, it scared her a little. How could they be so perfect for each other when they were never meant to meet? Cross paths? She often found herself wondering about the way they were brought together, the reasons they were in each others’ lives. But then as soon as her mind wandered towards the mysteries of the universe and its guiding powers, she always ended up spiraling - no matter how she looked at it, Luke and her were somehow meant to be. Fated. Star crossed....whatever.

Her train of thought would always start off innocently enough - she was part of a ghost band. She could see ghosts (well three particular ghosts, at least) - the only lifer who could without Caleb’s help (as far as Willie could tell). She had never really been one to believe in the supernatural, but she was now so intrinsically involved, that she frequently wondered whether everything about her life wasn’t just a dream. Maybe after years & years of practice, she had managed to hone in her daydreaming skills to a point that allowed her to create a world that sounded a little too much like she was the protagonist in a movie or a show. This couldn’t actually be real life, could it? Her life?

The couch shifted, Luke reaching over to grab his guitar, testing out a line before placing his guitar back on the ground, and crossing out a whole section. No, she doesn’t think her mind could have ever managed to dream up Luke.

Don’t get her wrong, there were definitely moments where Julie felt just as normal as she used to. She’d forget that the boys were anything other than her lovable, goofy bandmates. Normal teenage boys, messing around and playing music in her mom’s studio. But then she would look up and see bright hazel eyes staring back at her, and she‘d unexpectedly be hit again by the storm of emotions that washed over her the first time she had accidentally walked through Luke. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She had felt cold, then warm, and then this peculiar feeling of being....whole. Like she had just come home after a long tiring trip. She couldn’t describe it properly even if she tried, but the only thing that came close to summing it up was home.

Julie closed her eyes, trying to recreate the feeling, bringing it back up to the surface.

Her logical side knew soulmates was just a term used to romanticise romance, she knows that, but whenever she remembers that feeling, just like she is now, she wonders whether she had somehow felt his soul in that kitchen - sneaked a peek before latching onto it. These thoughts made it harder to hold onto logic.

Ugh, she was spiralling again. Julie lifted her hands to her face, rubbing furiously at her eyes, trying to dislodge some of the thoughts clouding her mind. She could feel a headache coming on, and that was the last thing she needed right now. She rolled her head back, resting against the old cushions, and looked at the floating chairs on the ceiling.

Her mother. Didn’t her mother always tell her that there was more to the world than meets the eye? That it wasn’t always wise to think only with one’s mind, but to trust your gut, your heart?

It used to be comments like those that led Julie to believe that her mother was more than just her mother. Could Rose have been an angel in disguise all along? Fate, Love, personified? Julie would be lying to herself if she said she had never thought about her mother being the key instigator behind the boys’ presence in her life. She just somehow knew that Rose had handpicked these boys, and sent them to her. Sent Luke to her. She had known that Julie would need divine intervention to pull herself out of her slump, and who better to do that than the one person, the one soul in the universe that perfectly aligned with hers?

Julie rolled her head to the side once more, staring at Luke’s profile, his brows drawn, deep in thought. If he hadn’t died all those years ago, if he hadn’t eaten that unfortunate hotdog, this never would have been possible - they never would have met. Julie shuddered at the thought, her heart and soul aching in protest.

A connection of heart, mind and soul, her mother had told her. “They really do exist, mija” she‘d say, but Julie would only smile and nod, never truly believing that soulmates were real, that they were part of the universe’s grand design. But now-

Oh. Soulmates.

“Did you say something?”

Startled, Julie blinked herself out of her daze, realising too late that she was thinking out loud.

“N- no, no, nothing. Just uh- just thinking of the next verse, you know,” she chuckled awkwardly, avoiding Luke as she tried not to fidget. “Always working!” She pointed to her temple, immediately regretting the movement, cringing at her awful attempt at a cover up.

She could feel Luke’s unwavering gaze, focused on her as he sat up, pushing the journal onto the seat next to him. He shifted, turning towards her, even as she continued to face forward. Her cheeks were definitely getting warmer. Not good.

“Did you-” she saw him tilt his head to the side from the corner of her eye, “did you just say Soulmates?”

A lie was on the tip of her tongue, ready to burst, but as she reflexively slid her eyes to meet his, the words died out before they could be vocalised.

He was looking at her with a peculiar look in his eyes, a slightly awed expression etched on his face.

“I- I was just thinking...” She stuttered, unable to take her eyes off of Luke’s, even as her fingers fiddled with the loose threads of her jumper.

“About?”

“You know,” she lifted her hands, gesturing at the space around them, trying to be as vague as possible. “Life.”

Eyebrows shot up, disappearing under his orange beanie.

“Life? Really?”

“Yes. Life. Just..you know, how things change. Like the way you grow up thinking one thing but then something happens and it completely changes the way you see the world around you, the way your beliefs...shift.” She shrugged, trying and failing to seem nonchalant.

“Hm, deep thoughts for a Saturday afternoon.” He studied her for a second, before cocking his head to the side. “Any reason this led to the conclusion of Soulmates?”

Julie shifted uncomfortably, trying hard not to look away even as she felt her cheeks somehow growing even warmer.

“I...I was just thinking about my mom. And things she used to talk about and believe in with a certainty that always...confused me I guess. How could she believe in something so easily, when she couldn’t even see it? Feel it?” Julie diverted her gaze, choosing to look at her mom’s piano instead. Her voice took on a quieter tone, almost reflective as she continued with her new train of thought. “What if she wanted me to believe again? What if she had somehow found a way to not only get music back into my life, but to believe in love and fate and-“ Julie stopped short, her eyes darting back to Luke - his face was now frozen, showing her nothing of what he might be feeling.

Julie suddenly felt very silly.

“Never mind,” she laughed awkwardly, trying to play it off as just silly musings. “My mind was just wandering, but now I’m back and maybe we should just get back to that second verse...” Her voice trailed off, Luke’s face still giving nothing away.

Crap. She just made it weird - this is what she gets for letting her mind go down the rabbit hole that is the universe and its misguided mysteries. Way to go, Julie.

Just as she was about to jump up and flee to her bedroom, hoping that maybe her floor would do her the courtesy of swallowing her up, Julie felt the couch dip further down to her right, Luke’s knee pressing up against her thigh. Resisting the urge to look at him, her eyes flickered to her fingers, to their journal and then back to her mom’s piano.

“You know,” Luke spoke up, voice soft, almost a whisper, “I never gave fate much thought back when I was alive. I always figured a person forged their own fate by believing hard enough in what they wanted and then working even harder to get there.” He reached over, grabbing hold of her right hand, ceasing the fidgeting motions of her fingers. “Even when it came to my soul, I only ever considered it when thinking about music and the power it had over me and my life. If music was so important, wouldn’t it mean my soul was constantly connected to it? My instrument, an intrinsic part of who I am?”

He went quiet for a few seconds, prompting Julie to turn her head back towards him, as his calloused thumb started rubbing gently against her knuckles. His gaze, which had been glued to her face the entire time, was now locked on their hands.

“So I always figured I was “fated”, I guess you could say, to follow that connection I had with music, and just see where that took me.” His fingers were now tracing little circles on the back of her hand. “But then we died, and became ghosts, and it changed the way I think about things, but at the same, my core beliefs remained the same. I’m still not sure about fate, and the role it plays in how things are dictated in my life, but I know that music is still such a major part of me. Because, I mean, if that wasn’t the case, how could you have possibly pulled me back from the dead and down to earth by playing our song? How could you, a lifer 25 years after I died, have been the one to pull me back, and make me feel alive again?” He shook his head before he continued. “And every time I ask myself these questions I just come back to the same conclusion,” he stops for a second, lifting his eyes back up to hers. “You embody music to me. You, Julie, have always been what my soul was connected to - not my guitar, not just music in general - but you, my own personal musical goddess.” His lips tilted up at the corners at his last words, his eyes boring into hers.

“So yeah, I know what you mean about not necessarily wanting to believe in something unless you can see it or feel it. But at this stage, how could I not believe in soulmates when you’re right here, somehow a part of my life, 25 years after I’ve died?” He shook his head again, his smile getting a little sad. “We technically never should have met, would have never crossed paths, but fate....fate had other plans for us I guess. Our souls just couldn’t bare being separated, and the universe just....found a way to rectify that.”

Julie could do nothing but stare at the beautiful boy in front of her, her mind trying to process the prose he just recited to her. Almost as if by reflex, Julie slowly lifted her hands up, cupping his face and held onto him like he was the most precious thing in the entire world - because he was.

Luke mirrored her actions, his eyes soft, as his fingers traced her cheeks, wiping away tears she didn’t even know were there.

And just as she was about to let loose the words that had been rattling around in her mind ever since he had stumbled into her life, Luke beat her to it.

“I think we might be soulmates, Jules.”

FIN

#ask #jatp #juke #julie and the phantoms #jatp fics #my fics #ask fics #luke patterson #julie molina #luke x julie #julie x luke #thedeathdeelers fics

109 notes · View notes

expectingtofly · 4 years

Text

Tradition (or, Two Hunters, a Former Angel, and the God of the Universe Walk into a Kitchen...)

post 15x20, pure fluff. like fwp. fluff without plot. tfw 2.0 bakes xmas cookies together

also on ao3

Day 4 of @bend-me-shape-me‘s SPN Advent Calendar 2020 prompts

“You roll the dough out like this,” Sam said, demonstrating with the rolling pin. He handed it to Jack. “Here, try it.”

Jack flattened out the sugar cookie dough, his tongue stuck out in concentration, and Dean grinned. He glanced at Castiel, who was watching Jack with a small smile on his face. After only a week away, Jack had returned to the bunker, for good this time. And just in time for the holiday season and all its trappings. Dean took no small measure of pride in introducing the new God of the universe, and a former angel (now Dean's boyfriend) to every Christmas tradition, even if he and Sam were pretty hopeless themselves in celebrating the holiday.

They’d already set up their freshly cut Christmas tree (it took them an hour just to get it through the bunker door and down the stairs), decorated the bunker (Dean couldn’t take two steps without bumping into tinsel), and may have gotten Jack tipsy the other night by accidentally giving him the alcoholic eggnog. Now they were attempting to make Christmas cookies. Dean was cautiously optimistic they’d have better luck with this tradition than the others.

Once the dough was flattened, they began cutting out shapes and decorating them. Soon trees, stars, gingerbread men, and snowmen covered the flour-dusted kitchen island.

Dean gave a gingerbread man two bulging frosting eyes and a lopsided smile. “What the fuck?” he muttered, seeing the pristine green lines of frosting Castiel had drawn on a tree-shaped cookie. “Of course you’d be good at this.”

“Yours look great, Dean,” Sam said. “Very rustic.” Dean threw flour at him and Sam waved it away, grinning.

“No, Sam’s right,” Castiel said, leaning over with a bag of frosting to give Dean’s gingerbread man a tie and a shirt. “Very unique.”

Dean shoved him lightly, making one of the lines of the gingerbread man’s shirt wrinkle. “You guys suck.”

“This one is named Arnold,” Jack said, dumping a frightful amount of sprinkles on top of what might’ve been a gingerbread person underneath all the frosting. “They can be friends with your cookie, Dean.”

“You can’t start naming the cookies, kid,” Dean said. “You’re not gonna want to eat them.”

Jack stared at Arnold with some measure of horror and Castiel laughed. The sound made Dean smile. Castiel had been happier in the last few days than in all the years Dean had known him. Watching him, Dean realized he was happier than he’d ever been himself. Catching his eye, Castiel smiled at him, and Dean noticed a dab of frosting on his cheek. Leaning over, he licked it off.

“What the—?” Sam held a hand up in front of Jack’s eyes. “Gross!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop,” Dean said, holding up his hands.

Castiel tried fighting back a smile, then leaned over and kissed Dean. “We’re done,” he promised, pulling away, and Sam rolled his eyes.

Jack looked down at the mess they’d made and the frosting covering his hands. “This is very unsanitary.”

“All the germs will burn off in the oven,” Dean promised. He helped Jack align the cookies on a pan, making sure none of them got too bent out of shape. Sliding the pan inside the oven, he turned on the light inside. Jack sat down in front of the glass door to watch the cookies bake. Miracle padded to his side and rested his head in his lap.

Sam was looking at his phone, and Dean hit his arm as he went to the sink to wash his hands. “Where’s Eileen?”

“She’ll be here tomorrow,” Sam said, looking not a little disappointed. “She says the highways are really bad.”

“I don’t think Arnold is going to look so good when they come out of the oven,” Jack commented. Dean snorted and Castiel elbowed him in the side.

The oven timer beeped and Sam took the pan out of the oven. He set it down on the island with a frown. “Hmm.”

Snowmen warped into blobs, Christmas trees with frosting stuck to the pan. Dean tried not to laugh at the misshapen cookies on the pan, but each one was worse than the next and he couldn’t keep it back.

“They’re so bad,” he managed through his laughter, wiping at his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mine turned out perfectly,” Castiel said. “Jack’s too. Arnold looks great.”

Dean looked at Arnold and burst out laughing again. Sam turned away, trying to hide a smile.

“I don’t understand,” Jack said, staring mournfully at the colorful monstrosity Arnold had become, spilled out onto the other nearby cookies.

“We’ll make more another day,” Castiel said, somehow keeping a straight face. He nudged Dean and Dean tried to bottle in his laughter.

“Right, yeah.” He tried to stay serious. “No, really, Jack, yours look fine. I mean, look at the ones I made. They’re a mess.”

Jack studied the cookies, then looked up at him and slowly smiled. “We’re really bad at this, aren't we?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed.

“The point is we made them,” Castiel said. “It’s the act of creation that makes them so special.”

Jack nodded solemnly. “What he means is,” Dean plucked one of the better looking cookies off the pan, “all that matters is that they taste good.”

They settled in the Dean Cave to watch The Grinch—Jack’s first time seeing the movie. Jack cheerfully bit off Arnold’s head, and Dean pulled a blanket around himself and Castiel. Sam glanced at his phone, then got up and rushed out of the room.

“Where’s he off to?” Dean asked, glancing at Castiel, who shrugged. In a few minutes, footsteps echoed in the hallway, and Sam returned with a wide smile and Eileen in tow.

“I thought you weren’t getting here until tomorrow,” Dean said, sitting up straighter.

“Surprise,” she said, grinning.

“Eileen, you have to try one of these,” Jack said, holding up the plate of cookies from where he sat on the floor with Miracle. “They’re really good.”

“They taste a lot better than they look,” Sam said and Eileen’s mouth twitched with a smile as she took one.

“What’re we watching?” she asked, sitting next to Sam.

“Not Lost Boys,” Jack said. “Thankfully.”

Dean started to protest and Castiel grabbed the remote from him. “Just start the movie, Dean.”

The Grinch began and Dean settled back, leaning against Castiel. He watched Jack smooth Miracle’s fur with one hand, eating another cookie with the other. Sam and Eileen were huddled on the other end of the couch, signing to each other. Castiel slipped his hand in Dean’s, and Dean smiled. No matter how much they screwed up every holiday tradition, he couldn’t help hope that these activities would become just that—traditions. That they would get to bicker over how best to decorate the tree and make messes of cookies and be together the next year and the next. For the first time, he felt sure they would.

Tag List

@becky-srs @xojo @marvelnaturalock @cas-you-assbutt-dean-needs-you @aelysianmuse @prayedtoyou @letsjustdieeveryone @spookyskeletonsandallthezombies @good-things-do-happen-dean @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @theninthdutchessofhell @madronasky @famouspsychicpizzabandit @multifandomdisorder

Let me know (message, ask, comment) if you’d like to be tagged in my other destiel fics or removed from the list :)

#this is canon #fight me #SPNAdventCalendar2020 #established dean/cas #saileen #fluff fluff fluff #expectingtofly writes

148 notes · View notes

signetofworlds · 6 years

Text

The Rolling Tide (Yog-Sothoth)

(art by Satibalzane)

I was mesmerized by the rolling tide

I lay on that shore and gazed into the skies Like a shooting star, my dream was gone I made up my mind I don't want to wake up

-Markus Toivonen, “Celestial Bond”

On all worlds I have visited, the name of Yog-Sothoth is known within the hearts of the populace. Although few could utter it, every intelligent being implicitly understands the concept of a cosmic order, a binding force behind conceivable reality that sits so far beyond their science and rationale as to be incomprehensible but that remains undeniable in its omnipresence. This wholeness is the true name of my inscrutable master, with Yog-Sothoth being nothing more than a simple shorthand utilized by those possessing humanoid tongues and a (mostly) linear understanding of spacetime.

When choosing a religion (if they are even afforded the freedom to do so), most potential disciples will stress the idea of a personal relationship with their deity. They cling to the idea that Osiris or Asmodeus or whatever other strange and mighty being they throw their prayers at cares about their dedication, or at the very least appreciates their contribution. The Outer Gods do not operate in this way, do not trifle with the answering of prayers and observation of rites. Many a poor soul has deluded themself into thinking that their bloody sacrifices somehow matter to Cthulhu or Shub-Niggurath, and never once do I suspect that their beloved masters ever noticed.

One cannot help but ask, then, why we disciples of the Elder Mythos wield powers which can rival or even surpass the delivered-with-a-smile spells of more palatable divinities. As one who has tapped into Yog-Sothoth’s incredible abilities with relative frequency over the last few eons, the best answer I can provide is that beings of the Elder Mythos are powerful enough to exude tremendous divine magic without their noticing. Raw magical energies of obscene magnitude flow from the wake of an Outer God’s path, which is why so many who are exposed to these mind-boggling forces wind up with their minds very thoroughly boggled. When I call upon the complex and incredibly powerful esoterica that enables many of my miracles, I am little more than an ant carrying off crumbs which fall from a great multiversal picnic basket.

The divine magic of a being such as Yog-Sothoth is only powered by belief insofar as one’s personal discipline shapes these energies into a comprehensible form. Whereas most divine spellcasters see their devotion as a source of strength, to us it is a crucial limiter without which our minds would completely break. The immense strength of will one finds in disciples of the Outer Gods is what anchors us to earth, for without such filters of mental stamina we would all be reduced to hysteric babbling (a fate I have seen forced upon too many and that I would wish on nobody). The sagacity of most disciples ties them to immortal, but it keeps us disciples of the cosmos anchored to the mortal.

The question then arises as to why I, a reasonably sane individual by most accounts, would constantly risk losing myself when there are so many more benign gods out there willing to hand over power. The simple answer is that I’m too skeptical to pledge myself to a finite entity, a being that was born from something and will one day pass into nothingness. Even as a child, I could never muster a prayer to any god which the priests explained as having a plan for me, because that meant forcing my view of the universe to revolve around a being which was either finite or petty enough to be miffed if I didn’t do what its priests told me to. Harnessing of the Gate and Key’s power garners not the entity’s attention nor its respect, just as the forces of gravity and magnetism care nothing about how you use them. I approach divine magic much in the same manner that I approach arcane magic, utilizing understanding garnered through study in order to expand my perspective and capabilities within the universe, caring not for concepts such as good or bad but rather craving an empirical appraisal of what lies before me. This of course begs the question of why I would utilize divine magic at all, and my answer is that I am not one to waste perfectly functional reality-warping powers. Ever since my studies of the Dark Tapestry first produced a Sanctuary Spell, I’ve found great use in tapping these energies which even the most knowledgeable arcanists fail to manifest.

The biggest draw for the worship of Yog-Sothoth is none of these, however. What swells the entity’s congregation is the simple fact that once you learn of The Gate and Key’s existence, there is simply nowhere else you can sensibly turn. All other faiths are ruined for you, ruined by the fact that whatever god is slapping you on the back can’t hold a candle to the reality-defining force that is Yog-Sothoth. Disciples are drawn to power, even if that power can’t be bothered to acknowledge the planet you just sacrificed to get its attention.

Besides, taking an hour every morning to siphon a smidgen of eldritch might from an infinitely intelligent, infinitely powerful, infinitely-nonchalant-about-your-existence entity gives one some distinct perspective on your place in the universe.

Yog-Sothoth, The Gate and Key

Alignment

Pantheon

Outer Gods

Areas of Concern

Gates, Space, Time

Domains Darkness, Chaos, Evil, Knowledge, Travel, Void Subdomains Dark Tapestry, Exploration, Memory, Night, Portal, Stars, Thought Favored Weapon Dagger (which is to say that he doesn’t have one. Daggers are just convenient for sacrifices) Symbol Black spiral Sacred Animal(s) None Sacred Color(s) None Obedience Draw out a series of arcane symbols in ink, chalk, or blood while meditating upon the finite nature of your own existence (honestly, if you’ve gotten this far, it shouldn’t be too hard). Gain a +2 insight bonus on all knowledge checks.

Divine Gift The recipient learns of the perfect path to success in regards to one specific goal or task, gaining a +4 insight bonus on all d20 rolls made as part of trying to complete that goal for 1 day. (Note: This “Gift” is not usually the result of Yog-Sothoth taking a liking to you. Every time I or someone else has obtained this gift, it is a consequence of unleashing some particularly powerful and out-there form of magic tied to Spacetime. This is, also how the Signet of Worlds was created).

Boons - Deific Obedience

Evangelist

1: Temporal Initiate: Burst of Insight 3/day, Ally Across Time 2/day, Haste 1/day

2: Magical Insights (Su): The character learns a new spell of every level they are capable of casting, adding them to their spells known or to their source of prepared spells (such as a spellbook or familiar). These spells must be those on the character’s spell list.

3: Facet of the Eternal (Su): You gain a single feat as a bonus feat. You must meet the prerequisites for this feat, but may exchange it for another feat that you also meet the prerequisites for whenever you perform your obedience.

Exalted 1: Spacetime Insight: Hermean Potential 3/day, Twisted Space 2/day, Blink 1/day

2: Probability Mastery (Su): Whenever you roll % dice to determine the effects of a spell or class ability on yourself, you may roll twice and take whichever result you choose. 3: Traveler of the Gates (Su): As a move action, you may teleport up to your movement speed, or four times your movement speed as a full-round action. In addition, you may increase or decrease the size of any portals you create (such as those created through a Gate spell) by 50%. Sentinel 1: Mastery of Possibilities: True Strike 3/day, Mirror Image 2/day, Borrow Fortune 1/day

2: Forewarned is Forearmed (Su): You gain the uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge class features as a monk of your character level. In addition, you can always act in the surprise round even if you fail to make a Perception roll to notice a foe, but you are still considered flat-footed until you take an action. 3: Path to Victory (Su): You have learned to witness many possibilities at once, picking and choosing the ones which you feel will lead to your greatest success in combat. Once per round, you may reroll a single attack roll or damage roll and take the higher of the two results.

For Followers of Yog-Sothoth

Archetypes

Chronomancer (Wizard. It’s just good sense really)

Elder Mythos Cultists (Cleric, because some fools just can’t handle their unbelievable power)

Portal Seeker (Investigator) Secret Broker (Occultist)

Stargazer (Oracle) Feats

Dimensional Agility Dreamed Secrets

Eldritch Eye

Practiced Ritualist

Magic Items

Ring Gates Monsters Ancient Ones

Hounds of Tindalos

Khaei

Spawn of Yog-Sothoth

Tawil At-Umr Spells Akashic Form

Borrow Fortune

Borrowed Time

Burst of Insight

Gate

Haste

Slow

Time Stop

Time Stutter

Traits Arcane Researcher

Horrifying Mind

Lucid Dreamer

Two-World Magic

Unspeakable Bond

Unique Spell Rules

Clerics, Oracles, and Warpriests who have Yog-Sothoth as their patron add Burst of Insight to their spell list as a 1st-level spell, Haste and Slow as 3rd-level spells, and Akashic Form and Time Stop as 9th-level spells.

Inquisitors who have Yog-Sothoth as their patron (don’t ask how they enforce doctrine for a god apathetic to mortal worship) add Burst of Insight to their spell list as a 1st-level spell, and Haste and Slow as 3rd-level spells

Sorcerers and Wizards who worship Yog-Sothoth add Burst of Insight to their spell list as a 1st-level spell, Borrow Fortune as a 3rd-level spell, and Akashic Form and Major Mind Swap as 9th-level spells

Unique Summon Rules

Summon Monster IV: Khaei

Summon Monster VI: Hound of Tindalos

Summon Monster VII: Spawn of Yog-Sothoth

Ancient One CR 22/MR 2

Invincible Hundun XP 614,400 CE Large aberration (chaotic, extraplanar, mythic) Init +10; Senses blindsense 300 ft., detect law; Perception +36 DEFENSE AC 41, touch 23, flat-footed 35 (+8 deflection, +6 Dex, +18 natural, -1 size) hp 380 (27d8+259) Fort +18, Ref +23, Will +21, Second Save

Defensive Abilities block attacks, entropic mind, evasion, negative energy affinity, spacetime shifting; DR 15/epic, lawful and piercing; Immune aging effects, cold, disease, mind-affecting effects, petrification, poison; Resist acid 15, cold 15, electricity 15, fire 30, sonic 15; SR 34 OFFENSE Speed 60 ft.; air walk Melee unarmed strike +32/+32/+27/+27/+22/+22/+17 (4d8+12/19–20 plus 1d6 negative energy) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks befuddling strike (6/day, DC 29), punishing kick (6/day, DC 29), strange attractor Spell-Like Abilities (CL 21st; concentration +29) Constant—air walk, detect law At will—chaos hammer (DC 22), dimension door, enervation, greater dispel magic, mass inflict moderate wounds (DC 24), plane shift (DC 23) 3/day—quickened dimension door, disintegrate (DC 24), quickened mass inflict moderate wounds (DC 24), word of chaos (DC 25) 1/day—orb of the void (DC 26) STATISTICS Str 34, Dex 22, Con 29, Int 18, Wis 23, Cha 27 Base Atk +20; CMB +33; CMD 57 Feats Befuddling Strike, Blind-Fight, Combat Reflexes, Dimensional Agility, Dimensional Assault, Dimensional Dervish, Greater Blind-Fight, Improved Blind-Fight, Improved Critical (unarmed strike), Improved Initiative, Improved Unarmed Strike, Punishing Kick, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (dimension door), Quicken Spell-Like Ability (mass inflict moderate wounds), Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) Skills Acrobatics +36, Climb +30, Escape Artist +36, Intimidate +38, Knowledge (planes) +22, Perception +36, Sense Motive +27, Spellcraft +22, Stealth +32, Swim +30 Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Protean (can’t speak any languages); telepathy 300 ft. SQ faceless, no breath SPECIAL ABILITIES Entropic Mind (Ex) An ancient one’s mind is a maelstrom of utter chaos. An ancient one is immune to mind-affecting effects, and any creature that attempts to affect an ancient one with a mind-affecting effect gains 1d4 temporary negative levels (Will DC 31 negates) from entropic feedback. These negative levels disappear automatically after 8 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based. Faceless (Ex) An ancient one has no eyes, but detects infinitesimal gravitic distortions through its skin, gaining blindsense 300 feet. An ancient one is blind and deaf, and is immune to effects that depend on sight or hearing. It subsists on negative energy and doesn’t breathe, eat, or drink. Spacetime Shifting (Ex) Reality constantly reconfigures in the vicinity of an ancient one , correcting the paradoxes the creature’s existence in space and time generates. This causes all attacks against the ancient one to suffer a 20% miss chance, and grants the ancient one a deflection bonus to AC and a racial bonus on Reflex saves equal to its Charisma modifier. Strange Attractor (Sp) An ancient one can activate or deactivate the stafflike strange attractor it carries as a free action. While active, a strange attractor hovers in place, and the ancient one can mentally move it up to 60 feet through space as a move action, to a maximum range of 300 feet. If it enters a space with a creature, it stops moving for the round and that creature must attempt a DC 31 Will saving throw. The creature falls unconscious for 1 round if it fails this save, or is nauseated for 1 round if it succeeds. The space around an active strange attractor twists and warps, trapping creatures within its gravity well. This functions like repulsion but in reverse: creatures within 60 feet attempting to move away from it are prevented from doing so, wasting their move actions (Reflex DC 31 negates). Lawful creatures beginning their turn within 60 feet of an active strange attractor are nauseated for 1 round (Will DC 31 negates). Nausea caused by a strange attractor is a mind-affecting effect. Creatures with the chaotic subtype are immune to all effects of the strange attractor. The save DCs are Charisma-based. A strange attractor can’t be attacked or harmed by physical attacks, but disintegrate, mage’s disjunction, a sphere of annihilation, or a rod of cancellation affect it. A strange attractor’s touch AC is 18 (+8 deflection), and attacks against it suffer a 20% miss chance. If an ancient one’s strange attractor is destroyed, the ancient one can create a new one after 1d8 hours of uninterrupted meditation. If an ancient one is slain, its strange attractor disappears. Unarmed Strikes (Ex) An ancient one’s unarmed strikes deal 4d8 points of damage, and function as chaotic, magic, and adamantine weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. An ancient one can make a flurry of blows attack with its unarmed strikes as a 20th-level monk, without increasing its base attack bonus or taking the –2 penalty on attack rolls. This ability also grants the ancient one the befuddling strike rogue talent and the punishing kick hungry ghost monk class feature.

Mythic Feats

Dreamed Secrets (Mythic)

Profound and powerful magics invade your mind

Prerequisites: Dreamed Secrets

Benefits: Increase the number of spells learned from Dreamed Secrets by your tier. In addition, you automatically know the mythic version of any spells you learn with Dreamed Secrets, but casting these spells as mythic spells causes you to take 1d4 points of wisdom damage with no saving throw.

Eldritch Eye (Mythic)

You are attuned to strange energies that move all around you.

Prerequisites: Eldritch Eye

Benefits: Your Eldritch Eye lasts for as long as you desire rather than just one minute. In addition, you can spend a point of mythic power to gain the benefits of True Seeing for one round.

Practiced Ritualist (Mythic)

You handle forces far beyond your ken with aplomb

Prerequisite: Practiced Ritualist

Benefit: You gain a bonus equal to your mythic tier on skill checks to perform occult rituals, and on Intelligence checks to learn the method of casting an occult ritual. In addition, while performing an occult ritual, you may spend a point of mythic power to gain a +10 bonus on a single skill check made as part of the ritual.

NOTE:

This website uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This website is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

Like what you see here? Want more? Donate to my Patreon for more content in this vein.

#pathfinder #cthulhu #yog-sothoth #deity #golarion #lovecraft #cleric #mythic #feats #monsters

6 notes · View notes

anniekoh · 6 years

Text

elsewhere on the internet - feminism, celebrity and the media

Writer Jo Livingstone has written some excellent articles for the New Republic, particularly on feminism and the media. A few things bolded that I especially liked from the excerpts below.

Time is a Feminist Issue

...the so-called generational divide in the #MeToo debate is a pernicious fallacy. It is a form of essentialism that says all women of one age think one thing, all those of another think another.

... Under the assumptions of the discourse, the public feminist has to speak universally, and so she cannot ever really write a feminism that is properly commensurate with her own lived experience. Jia Tolentino told me that “women are still wrestling with an artificially inescapable compulsion to be exemplary.” The conditions of publishing online exacerbate this pressure, because feminists have to “continually enact (and implicitly vindicate) their identity online.”

... For Gornick, “It isn’t their generation. It’s their moment in history.” That’s a crucial difference. When disagreeing feminists frame their differences as generational, they essentialize as permanent and biological something that is in fact simply in negotiation through time.

Against Instagram

“Your life consists of voluntary participation in an advertising economy that exists to make money and . . . what else? I can’t figure it out.“

As a youngish woman who uses social media, it is impossible for me to avoid “sponcon,” a genre of post in which users with a large enough following, or “influence,” are paid to post advertisements in their feeds. An Instagram user might post a picture of herself in a cute outfit by a particular fashion line, or pose in a bikini with a mug of laxative tea held next to her abs. On the one hand, there’s nothing very new about endorsement deals. Celebrities have always advertised products...

But there’s something so abject about social media shills. A few weeks ago on Twitter, I came across this Macy’s ad for shorts. This lady, a YouTuber named Sierra Furtado, wears the shorts and poses in front of a bicycle. She seems perfectly nice, and I suppose it’s good that she doesn’t have to share her paycheck with an agent or any of the other traditional intermediaries in advertising. But the fact that she is the brand, not Macy’s, is totally bizarre. Her look is as flattened and generic as any ad on the side of a bus, but she somehow also has to maintain the illusion that this is her authentic life. The whole thing feels recursive and dizzying. I think the ad sucks and I don’t want the shorts.

The Task Ahead for Feminism

...this model for gender justice, in which a villain is brought low to give the public their satisfaction, does not eradicate the power imbalances and resulting fear that animate harassment. There is no on/off switch for sexual intimidation, and workplaces are not cleansed as if by magic when one man is fired, or even if many of them are swept away by the “tsunami” metaphor so favored by the press.

Transphobia Redefined

A politics of solidarity demands that my ally’s needs are my own. I do not have children, but affordable high quality childcare is a priority in my feminism. My trans woman friends do not menstruate, but my particular health needs are a part of their feminism.

Agendas do not have to melt together or shed their distinctness or lose their efficacy when they “correspond or get along.” They do not have to align, at all. There are many who will never be convinced that trans women are women. But they will benefit from using mutually agreed-upon language and keeping a respectful distance, because that way, the patriarchy cannot use the rifts that exist between feminists against us.

Oprah, the Golden Globes, and the Trouble with Red Carpet Activism

it is nigh-on impossible to amplify a voice on the red carpet, because it is not a space for speech.The red carpet is a space for visual merchandising. It’s where actresses’ faces and bodies increase or devalue their stock in the market of flesh. Who looks good, who doesn’t? Whose outfit betrays their lack of self-awareness, whose is forward-looking?

... Hollywood is a generator of sexist and racist standards of beauty, and those standards emanate, cumulatively, into many forms of broader social injustice. How can that generator be retrofitted to resist itself?

...

A podium is a podium, whether in entertainment or in politics. (This interchangeability has of course played well into President Trump’s hands.) A speech is a speech. If there is a positive outcome to the election of a racist reality television star to the presidency, it may lie in his reconfiguration of political messaging itself. Trump helped create the conditions for Oprah’s speech to sound presidential.

Rather than bemoan the celebrification of government politics, as some in the commentariat have already done, we should value the politicization—the new gravitas of its speech, the new responsibility for its consequences—of celebrity.

#writing #popular culture #feminism

2 notes · View notes

candlespetalsandstarrynights · 7 years

Text

Starry Night

It was a gorgeous night in Paris. Truly gorgeous. The sort of truly gorgeous night which inspired masterpieces and love affairs. The sky was blue like midnight, with diamond starlight spattered across its expanse, imbedded like precious jewels in the universe’s evening gown. It was a magical night in Paris. If you stood outside and breathed the air and listened to the conversations between the stars and the moon, you would be able to feel it. Like all the world was holding its breath and waiting for something marvelous to start. Every leaf rustled with anticipation, every star simmered with impatience, every essence of the night searched for something to hold on to, an opportunity to create something beautiful. It was a perfect night in Paris. Or, it would have been. If the stars had aligned all perfectly, two selfless souls would have found the love they wished for so desperately in each other, next to the light of Paris and under the silver moon. He could imagine it so clearly that it was as if his fantasies were reality and he was living the moment he had played in his mind countless times. Just the two of them perched upon a rooftop; the city skyline spread before them and welcoming their embrace; a sky just like the one which possessed this night; they would be close, so close that their bodies would be touching; he would be holding her against himself; his heart would soar within her bluebell eyes; he would tell her everything, how he loved her as soon as he lied his eyes upon her, how he’s tried to tell her, how he’s thought about this very moment nearly every night before falling asleep, how he would give his life for her and wishes to give his life to her someday, even if he is just a boy in her eyes he would convince her that his feelings were as real as any man could feel; and lastly they would kiss, long and languid-like. He had planned it for this night. He had asked her to meet him above the streets so that they could watch the stars together. But she didn’t show up. This had hurt more than anything, more than every other form of rejection she had ever given him. He was starting to understand that their relationship was purely professional and she had no interest of making it into anything more than saving the world together - as if that wasn’t enough to signify that their relationship meant more than the average acquaintanceship, but that was just his bitter thinking. Just because they worked together like they did, didn’t mean they were meant for each other like he wished they were. The mechanisms had started to turn within his chest, having been just switched on that night after being stood up. He would go through the long, horrid process of getting over someone you’re close to. The emotional anguish would only grow as he wrestled with his dreams and with reality. He would have to constantly remind himself that she would never feel the same way for him and always wonder if maybe she could if only he told her. It was like a disease, his mind would feel plagued for a very long time. His thoughts were already starting to boil together when he stopped to take in where he was. He had landed on the railing of a rooftop balcony, one that looked suspiciously familiar though he couldn’t place exactly who it belonged to. He sat back on his haunches much like the feline species from which he took his name, and cocked his head to the side to take in the flower pots and modest decor. Ah, this was Marinette’s home. Somehow, he had traveled nearly across the city and landed here. He wondered for a second if perhaps it was his subconscious which lead him to a friend in order to seek out some form of comfort, but decided that doing so was pointless as it was past midnight and therefore past the time when sensible people fall asleep, and Marinette seemed like a sensible person to him. He was wrong, however, and who the balcony belonged to quickly became confirmed, destroying any little doubt of familiarity he may have still had. The door that lead to the bedroom which the balcony jutted off from opened without hesitation, clearly whoever was behind it failed to see the dark figure lurking atop the railing, or was not smart enough to be cautious. Chat Noir clicked his tongue with disappointment at his princess. Marinette had fully emerged from the safety of her home, holding a lumpy mass close to her chest which was most likely a pillow and a blanket. As soon as her eyes recognized the shape of someone crouching on her railing, she went stiff with fear. But, when she realized the silhouette belonged to someone she knew, her stance relaxed itself so far as to almost become annoyed. She tapped her bare boot against the floor of the balcony and gave an unseen, scolding glare to her visitor. “Chat Noir, to what do I owe this pleasure?” She mocked the voice of a swooning maiden, one she believed he expected to hear from any lady he came across. His ears twitched at the sudden break of silence. “I…” He hopped down from the railing and landed on her balcony with a dull thud in order to buy himself some time to make up an ample excuse. “I was on patrol, princess. I hadn’t realized this balcony belonged to a familiar face.” Of course, she knew it would be a lie even before his words left his lips. “Oh, I see…” She played along, however, for no other reason than out of sheer necessity. Either that, or feed any suspicion that may be lurking around concerning how well exactly Ladybug knows her. Marinette was already a bit anxious to see Chat that night, on a night he requested to speak to her. A little piece of her mind that always sought out the worst possible scenario was certain that he knew of her true identity and came to her when she failed to come to him. “Well, I’m sure you have a bunch of important superhero things to get back to- Wouldn’t want to keep Ladybug waiting and all- I’d hate to get her on my bad side- Who knows what she’d think of me if she knew I was keeping you away from your responsibilities-” She spoke hastily in the hopes that her urgency would resonate within him and get him to hop right off of her roof. “Actually, I’m a free man tonight. Paris is quiet and my lady is nowhere to be found.” He clasped his hinds behind his back and grinned rather mischievously, finally bringing real meaning to “like a cat that ate a canary”. The smile radiated impertinent confidence which set Marinette’s teeth against each other. Chat took his act with pride, as he always did whenever he possessed enough inner strength to hide the internal pain he so often found himself partnered with. The smile faded and his eyes began decoding the pillow and blanket she held limply by her side. “Where are you going with that? You aren’t planning on making a parachute with the blanket, jumping from up here and trying to land on the pillow are you? Because I’m about ninety-five percent sure that you’d be hurt.” “I’m not going to jump of the roof, Chat, I’m not stupid.” She scolded him just as she would if she were behind a mask. She caught herself, and but her lip for good measure. Hopefully the sharp pain would remind her that she needs to be less abrasive with him now that she’s playing the role of damsel in distress. She hesitated. Her eyes roamed up to the sky. Her heart sent a shock throughout her chest as it sparked a thought into her mind. “I came out here to watch the stars actually…” She was cautious. Almost regretful. As if she was being forced to say what she was saying. But strangely, she found herself saying it of her own accord. “A friend of mine told me that the sky would be clear tonight, and that I’d be able to see hundreds of them.” As she spoke, her eyes never faltered from the blackness above. Chat followed her gaze. “Your friend was right.” “It’s been awhile since you’ve visited me.” She smiled, finally. Marinette began to relax, and she was decided about what she was going to do. “Yeah, it has been.” He caught her smile, and a warm glow of satisfaction swelled in his chest. He said nothing about it. He would, in fact, visit her from time to time. The meetings were scarce and lasted merely minutes but it gave her the rare opportunity to see him in a new light entirely. One where she wasn’t his partner, where they didn’t depend on each other, and where he wasn’t seemingly madly in love with her. In all honesty, Marinette found it refreshing to interact with him without all the joking and flirting - though he would occasionally do such things to Marinette, but they were much less often. She unfolded the blanket, draping it from her hands to the floor and letting the pillow drop with a plop. She fanned it out in front of her until she was able to smoothly lie it down upon the wood. “Since you aren’t doing any important hero work would you like to stay and keep me company?” His glowing, green eyes blinked in surprise. Chat mulled over the offer in his head for a moment before accepting. Marinette sat down upon the blanket and patted an area next to her, indicating for him to do the same. He obeyed like a good little kitty and rested his bottom beside her. He folded his arms across his knees and watched the sky. A few minutes went by in quiet. Crickets chirped unseen in the murky darkness of the night. The moon sang a soft love song that could only be heard by the breeze. The stars stood in vigil to what was happening down below them. Both could feel the beauty emanating around them from the world. Their heads buzzed gently with a strange sense of significance. Their bodies were filled up with a passive knowing of what the universe around them knew, that something very extraordinary was starting that night. They just weren’t privy as to what. Chat spoke first. “I was actually having a bad night before you came out here.” She could guess why, and for some strange reason she felt guilt twist her insides. “Why’s that?” “Lady troubles.” “Really? I doubt the charming Chat Noir has women issues.” Marinette huffed lightly, but it was soft enough to be unheard and hidden from the other. “No, really! Even a stunning guy like me can’t win them all.” His words were riddled with humor, as almost always, but his chest held all the sorrow such a young person could. There was silence between the two of them once again. Marinette simply watched him. He was too preoccupied with the sky and marveling at the irony of existence - at how he was under the stars with a girl, but not the girl he was in love with - to notice her stare. She simply looked at him. His mask. His hair. His nose. His lips. His eyes. His shoulders and his arms and his knees and his legs and his feet and even his tail. That was her Chat. He threw himself into danger to protect her. The spoke every day. They laughed together. They fought together. They risked their very lives together. They were partners. Marinette spoke this time. There was a tangible shift, then. She dropped her scornful tone and addressed him softly and deeply like she would a friend. A real trusted friend. Because that’s what Chat was. Perhaps he was even her best friend, in some ways, and though he had no way of knowing that - especially that moment - Marinette had. For the first time that night, she saw him as her friend. How close the two of them were to each other. How much she trusted him. She appreciated him. She loved him. She smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, I suck in the love department, too.” “A pretty princess like you? Impossible!” “Really. I can’t even speak when my crush is around. I get all red and start spouting gibberish. He probably thinks I’m crazy.” Chat chuckled. “I’m sure someday he’ll realize that you can form coherent sentences.” “I hope so.” Marinette’s thoughts rested upon Adrien for a second, but somehow the stars before her seemed to twinkle and draw her attention to where she was right then. In that moment with Chat. Adrien faded fast like a ripple in water and was gone entirely. Chat sighed. He let go of his jovial demeanor and let his true colors fade in. “I’m in love with Ladybug.” Marinette blinked in shock at the sudden declaration. Her heart hammered five times as hard as it had been before. It didn’t hurt, though, just echoed in her chest. “It’s kind of obvious…” She made a noise that was a horridly awkward and forced laugh. Chat leaned backwards until his back hit the blanketed floor. His eyes steadfast to the night. “I mean it. I really really love her. I think about her every night. I even dream about her sometimes. I dream that she tells me that she loves me. That’s how much I want to hear her say it. I wanted to tell her tonight. I asked her to meet me but she never showed up. I wanted to tell her how beautiful she is. Her gorgeous eyes put this sky to shame. She’s strong and she’s funny and there’s never any doubt in my mind about what she says she’s going to do because I know that she can and will do it. I trust her with my life. She has the most amazing smile that I’ve ever seen. I want to tell her that. No matter what sort of day I’m having, no matter what I go home to when I see her smile I’m just so damn happy to be alive and grateful that I can be with her and I wish that she knew that and I wish that she felt the same way.” There were diamond teardrops falling from the corners of his eyes. He was pleading with the moon and asking it why just for once he couldn’t have something he truly wanted. He could feel the darkness of the night surrounding him, oppressive and threatening, holding horrors in the shadows no person could imagine. It would have swallowed him if he had not looked to his side where Marinette’s hand was resting just a few inches away from his lips. He wasn’t alone this time. It dawned upon him like the sun breaking free from the horizon to fill the world with light. He was breathless at the realization that for once he had someone next to him to hear him. A friend. He smiled. Tearfully. But the tears were nearly dried and the few which remained were grateful for Marinette. He met her eyes with his own, but was disappointed to see her reaction was not positive. She was scared. She was hurt. But she was happy. She was confused most of all and shocked out of her mind to hear him say those things about her. She was scared because she believed him. She was hurt because he was hurting. And she was happy because, well, she really didn’t know why. “I’m sorry…” Her cheeks felt hot and wet. She had teared up along with him and now they were dropping down her cheeks and staining her shirt. “I just…. I didn’t know that you cared about her so much.” Her chest burned more than she had ever felt before. “I didn’t know that you really loved her.” This was love. He loved her and she loved him. Maybe not in the same way, no, but that night for the first time she felt love for him. She was overcome by the sudden realization and ache in her chest. She lied down beside him and threw an arm around his chest and one beneath his back and lied half upon him and hugged him. She wished that she could comfort him. That she was behind the mask and could tell him that he meant so much to her as her partner and as her friend. She wished she could explain why she was so moved by his words, but she couldn’t. Neither of them quite felt the satisfaction they had wished for that night but they both found something entirely unexpected. Chat was shocked still by her sudden embrace. After a moment he was able to pull an arm around her waste and hold her tightly to his body like she was doing to him. He really didn’t want to think it, but she felt so warm and her body was so soft and her hair smelled amazing and crazily enough she felt so familiar in his arms, as if he had held her against him countless times before. It lasted less than a minute and they parted ways soon after. Each to replay the moment a thousand times in their head and marvel at all the bright new feelings within them. The celestial bodies above them had gotten what they wanted. Their magic had not been in vain. That night was the start of something big and beautiful, their fate having been written by the stars. Together.

#marichat #my words #I didn't have any plans for this my friend just told me to write something so here it is #miraculous ladybug #fanfic #mlb fanfiction

30 notes · View notes

willswalkabout · 8 years

Photo

Ho Chi Minh, El Nido.

I can guarantee this blog will be the hardest to write of my travels. These have been the toughest and most unforgettable 9 days of my trip so far, but not without some great moments thrown in. (On completion I’ve also just done a word count and it’s really long again, sorry, but maybe one to print!)

When I left off last time I had just landed in Ho Chi Minh. It was about 11pm and although I was shattered, I really didn’t want to pay £15 for a taxi, so after some searching I found the 80p bus, which would drop me off 5 minutes from my hostel. On arrival the place seemed closed, though only because the reception desk didn’t function after 10pm. A security guard who spoke zero English met me in the lobby and took my passport in exchange for a key. Other than that he just motioned for me to go up the stairs, with no further direction. Unlike most hostels my bed number had no correlation to the floor number, which led to some confusion before eventually finding my mattress for the next 3 nights.

The next day was to be my touristy day, though it didn’t start till quite late due to tiredness from Thursday’s travel. I walked to the Independence Palace first. Ho Chi Minh’s attractions have odd opening times, as I discovered the palace was not to open till 1pm. It was around 34'C and so I decided to sit outside in the shade for about 40 minutes watching Vietnam’s most crazy city fly by. The palace itself is quite odd. It’s very typical 60s architecture, after its rebuild in 1966, and doesn’t really resemble a palace at all. On top of this it has never been inhabited by a King, and now only functions as a tourist attraction. It did play a pretty symbolic roll however in the “fall of Saigon” something that coincided with America’s evacuation of the country, so was a good reinforcement of my grounding in the events of the war. I find it sort of crazy that it doesn’t make up even a small part of any history course taught in school, despite it being the most monumental post-WW2 ideological war.

After this visit I engaged in culture of a different form, heading to the nearest Starbucks so I could stream Ed Sheeran’s latest album, which had just been released. I have been playing it practically nonstop since, through some incredibly arduous journeys which will be described later in the blog.

I then visited a very old post office, and Ho Chi Minh’s attempt at the Notre Dame, though, as mentioned earlier, odd timings prescribed that this building closed at 4, preventing me from going inside. I went back to the Hostel, which is effectively run solely by travellers who ran out of money and thought they’d chill in Ho Chi Minh for a bit. Although Flipside Hostels is Kiwi owned, the only staff I met were Canadian, British and Vietnamese. My route back to the hostel is actually a mini story in itself, as I had my first and last experience on a ‘Grab MotoTaxi’. Grab is Asian uber, and for 25% of the price you can sit on the back of a driver’s moped (helmet included!). It was more like a thrill ride than a taxi, as my driver swerved through non-existent gaps, and used the pavement as a 'shortcut’ when he got bored of the traffic. At one point during the ride he asked me to rate him 5 stars on the app at the end of the trip, to which I replied that I would do, if we made it that far. Beers at the hostel were cheap, and I spent most of the evening with a Canadian girl, and 2 Norwegian guys, all of which were in my dorm. It is fair to say we were all feeling the effects of the previous night on Saturday morning, but it was to my delight when at about midday a hilarious English guy called Joey, with a helicopter hat (baseball cap with the spinny thing), burst into our room announcing that we were going to a pool party. At this point I will admit that there many more cultural options in the city that I didn’t explore. For example the war museum, or tunnels. On the other hand I liked the people in the hostel, and in the past I thought pool parties only existed in LA, Vegas, or movies set in LA or Vegas, so I went. I would definitely like to return to see more of the city in the future.

It was a good laugh, and a very relaxing way to spend the day, with good food, and some fun conversations with one girl who was half Russian half Swedish, but about to go to University in Spain so she could be fluent in 4 languages by the age of 20. As well as a French man who decided we should try and have a conversation where we could only speak our native languages. This was a stupid idea, albeit with amusing consequences, given I got my French GCSE over 2 and a half years ago, and he was 30 and working in English. It did however give me the smallest of glimpses of how possible it could be to learn a language if you were forced to speak it full time.

I went out again that night with the same guys, and spent much of it playing ¾ rounds of pool with 2 Indian guys while discussing the IPL.

I left Ho Chi Minh the next morning with an English traveler who was heading to Sydney, my next stop being Manila. I hijacked his pre-booked taxi, my 3rd time doing so on this trip, however due to his nerves about missing his flight I did arrive at the airport 3 and a half hours before my own. Something I was prepared to take for the ease and cheapness of getting to the airport. El Nido is impossible to reach from an international destination in less than 2 days realistically, unless you align everything perfectly and don’t take a single rest. It is 7 hours drive north of Puerto Princessa, the island’s only airport, which is an hour and 50 from Manila. Therefore I spent Sunday night in Manila, in a small hotel about 15 minutes from the airport. People generally don’t hang around in Manila, I can’t honestly pass judgement on the claims of dirtiness and roughness, however my hotel’s location was certainly not somewhere you wanted to spend any time. I was able to locate a McDonalds a 10 minute walk away, but that was enough of Manila for me in this case.

The next day I had to leave at about 5 to get my 7am flight. I got a van from Puerto Princessa at 11am, getting me to my El Nido hostel at about 5pm. The bus journey is infamously horrific, not a view I can personally attest to. The road itself is reasonable for South East Asia, and my driver was fast and very friendly. The ticket was 1000 pesos return, about £16. I also managed to persuade a girl that had somehow booked the front seat of the minibus next to the driver, that with long legs in comparison to her stature of no more than 5ft1, my need was greater. I think the driver had in fact invited the woman to that seat, no reservation had been made, and she was quite relieved to move.

To reach my hostel you had to tramp 50m along the beach, to a view I don’t think I would ever get tired of. There are maybe a couple of photos of it on here, but I may have taken close to a hundred. My roommates were Catie and Lucie, recently qualified nurses from Northumbria.

I haven’t planned how to write this next paragraph, but am aware I would like to print this entire blog on its completion as a permanent memory of the adventure. El Nido is somewhere I will never regret visiting, with crystal clear waters, stunning sunsets and perfect weather. There are factors however that take a little away from the paradise, these being next to no internet connection and frequent power cuts. For these reasons notifications come in sporadically and in clumps. On Monday evening I suddenly had missed calls from mum and dad across 3 different platforms. This is a sight that truly does make your heart skip a beat. The connection was not strong enough for us to attempt any of the video calling methods of the last 5 or so weeks, WhatsApp, FaceTime or Google Duo. I slipped in my UK SIM card to the phone and made an international phone call from the beach, where I found out my Granddad, mum’s father, Reginald Flatman had passed away. Reg first got ill around Christmas, and had been in and out of hospital since, with various issues that were increasingly hard to diagnose.

I visited Reg a few days before I set off when he was in high spirits. I discussed my trip with him, and witnessed him as his trademark jovial self, as he laughed at mum’s gardening course exam, where she had somehow managed to hit the pass mark exactly…

Reg was possibly the kindest man I’ve ever known, with hardly a bad word to say about anyone. His only criticisms were directed at the attitude of the Ipswich Town football team, something I always found odd given his total indifference towards competitive sport of any kind. I’ll never forget walking the fields of Zoe and Des’ farm with him and the dog, when I would go down to Suffolk to work in the summer. I also had a memorable conversation with him 18 months ago at the reception of James and Vicky’s wedding, where he was utterly bemused by the 'racket’ coming out of the speaker system during the reception. I was delighted to be able to invite him to our school’s big band concert at Chelmsford cathedral last year.

Reg was a man of simple pleasures who would always refuse as best he could to trouble anyone for anything. We would rarely be able to contain our amusement at dinner, as when Reg was asked “would you like some more food”, he would reply with “that was great thanks”. Nana’s firm toned “Reginald”, uttered when he made a funny face across the table, nudged one of us under it, or tried to steal a roast potato, never failed to make myself or Kate laugh. Reg was to us polo mints, shredded wheat, and a day concluded with cheese and biscuits. Reg never bothered taking life too seriously, a characteristic summed up by a set of four photos in a frame at home, of him and Nana. He is screwing his face up in an effort to make the photographer laugh, in three of the photos. If this was a school photo session with a 10 year old, you would pretend the first 3 didn’t exist and just print the fourth large. The first three however said far more about Granddad than a composed shot ever could.

I will fly back from Melbourne to London on Sunday 19th to be with family for the funeral on Thursday 23rd. Then fly back out on Friday 24th to Auckland, NZ.

So El Nido. The nights are all very boring here as I did not have the energy or desire to go out. On Tuesday I accomplished a goal I’ve had for a long time, to visit a particular beach by the name of Nacpan. There is a particular travel blogger on YouTube by the name of Christian Le Blanc. While I was doing my exam revision last year, Christian was traveling the Philippines, and his trip to this particular beach was one that really drew me to the area. You have to drive 45 minutes north of the main town via scooter to get there. This is 25 minutes of glorious winding road up the coast, before a horrific 20 minutes along an unpaved dirt track to the beach. The reward is one of the largest and most untouched spots along the coast. Fine white sand and beautiful water. However I imagine it is becoming less and less 'secret’ by the month. Even in comparison to the video I saw 8 months ago there are now a few more food and drink stalls, a relatively organised parking scheme, and a far bigger sign from the main road. The one way in which El Nido has developed impressively is in its number of high end restaurants run by Europeans, in order to serve those visiting the town from nearby resorts. This did mean I enjoyed a great pizza that night, with about 10 others from the hostel.

The next day I did the hostel’s combined package of Tour A&C. The El Nido bay is very comparable to Halong Bay in Vietnam, except for more islands with beaches, as well as individual lagoons, in comparison to Halong’s mystical 1969 limestone rocks. At some point the tourist board must of grouped different combinations of the lagoons, beaches, islands, viewpoints etc, into tour A, B, C and D. There are now dozens of outlets selling these tours at prices from 1000-2000 pesos, (£16-£32). In the vast majority of cases you should try not to book tours and other items through your hostel. They will rarely be providing the service themselves, and will therefore be taking a cut simply for making a phone call to one of the companies on the street on your behalf. For example hiring a scooter from the hostel was 700 pesos a day, though I found one in town for 350. Saying all this the hostel ran their own in house tour which was a combination of tour A and C. It was 1700 which was nearer the pricier end, but the advantages were that it left from the hostel’s own beach, and you could do it with people you knew. I did love the experience, the videos of which online were another draw for me visiting the area. I snorkelled and got some decent GoPro footage of a small jellyfish that went on to sting me as I swam away. Taking photos on my phone and proper camera though was a more hap-hazard venture, with the boat being occupied by 16 soaking wet passengers constantly walking up and down around the kit. I also started to wonder if I was really getting the most out of the day, when seeing it partially through a lens. I was never going to get the greatest of photos, for that you’d need a chartered boat where you could specify time in each place. So I put the camera away for the most part of the trip, and enjoyed just sitting on the edge of the boat and taking it all in. Sunburn was the only tarnish on the day.

Thursday started with a torrential storm, which in typical Philippines style concluded with the weather returning to normal service in the space of 5 minutes. Myself, Catie, Lucie and a Swiss guy called Kevin went to do a zip line which was pretty awesome. I’d thought at the start of the day that I would be riding, and so brought my bike helmet with me. This meant rather embarrassingly this was to be my head protection for the experience, complete with visor. I managed to fashion my camera bag shoulder strap into a way of securing my phone to my harness, so I could film and photograph the ride. After this I returned to the hostel to relax a bit before planning to return to Nacpan to try and capture the sunset. This plan in hindsight was rash. Though cloudy, I was overly trusting on one German guy’s words that “his app said the sunset would be good”. It was not, with the clouds concealing nearly the entirety of the sun. I still enjoyed seeing the light shade of pink that took over the bottom third of the horizon, but it was not something I managed to pick up on the camera. What made the decision particularly stupid was that I then had to go back down the entirely unlit gravel path in the dark. I dropped off my scooter in town before meeting the girls for a meal at a traditional Philippino restaurant that had been recommended.

What followed was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life, something I think I am only now really coming back from 2 and a half days later. Food poisoning hit me bad all night, as it did Lucie also. The plot thickens however, when we both awoke in the morning to find at least 7 others in the hostel had experienced identical symptoms overnight. I could not join up any dots with any of them leading some people to wonder if there was something airborne going around. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it made Friday’s van journey even more daunting.

As mentioned earlier I had booked a return trip with the company that had brought me up, however the way it seems to work is that nobody drives if their vans are not full. This meant when I arrived at the bus terminal all the other companies that were present were enquiring about my departure time. My theory is that they knew my provider wouldn’t show. So at 1:35, five minutes past my supposed leaving time, a bidding war ensued. I was eventually bundled onto someone’s minibus. I can only assume after they took photos of my ticket, that they will get a refund off my people. This was not the main frustration of the journey unfortunately. The driver still had 4 free seats, and so he transformed into a hop on - hop off service for the whole island. This meant stopping for every random person on the side of the street, negotiating a price for their destination before letting them on. We must have made around 15 stops, something my stomach was not pleased with. 6 hours later we had arrived at Puerto Princessa airport. Advice I am giving myself for the future is not to book the cheapest hotel for short 1 night stopovers. This decision on Friday night involved a 20 minute tuk tuk ride to an area I was advised “not to walk at night”. The only pleasant anecdote in this experience was the fact my driver’s sister was a nurse in Ipswich, probably at the hospital granddad was receiving such good care. It was an incredibly odd and heartwarming meeting, as the driver spoke enthusiastically about his new brother in law, who runs a barber shop on the Woodbridge road. My room itself would be more accurately described as a cell. The bed was like a roll mat, and my troubles were furthered in the morning, when the building “ran out of power”. This was an impressive feat in itself as I was the only occupant in the entire 12 room hotel. I’ve got no idea how it copes with more than 5 customers… The power cut meant I woke up with no air con and no running water. I think I may have left without paying but the owner was so confused and I was so angry at the whole situation, I think the 600 pesos might remain in my pocket.

The next day I took a flight to Manila, then another to Kuala Lumpur. I’m writing this from the final couple of hours on what’s been a pretty grim overnight flight into Melbourne. I think when flying west-east you’re supposed to sleep, something I’ve completely failed to do.

I have a 2 hour domestic to Sydney and then the 47 hours from El Nido are complete. I think I have 14 hours to Abu Dhabi and then another 8 home next Sunday, so will try and summarise my week in Australia then.

Till the next time.

#Vietnam #hochiminh #Philippines #elnido #outpost #travel #gapyear

9 notes · View notes

faithdlee · 7 years

Text

Fan Service Fantastico!

Last night I spent a very happy evening re-watching Rogue One. Well, I say happy because of course I ended up in floods at the end of it. But I digress.

I’m pretty sure the internet doesn’t need to me to tell it, but Rogue One is bloody terrific.

It is also totally a fan service film. I’d actually even go so far as to say it’s a fan fiction.

And this is what makes it good. Saying something is “for the fans” should be a bench mark of quality, and yet somehow this phrase is being used to justify sub par movies and tv shows.

Let me explain...

Rogue One is fan piece.

I mean seriously, arguing about the Death Star is a staple of the fandom, right?We’ve surely all seen Kevin Smith or the like cover it in glorious, verbose, geeky fan analysis. And how often have Star Wars peeps wondered about the exhaust port thing?

youtube

Rogue One is as fan fictiony as fan fiction gets, it also just happens to be official. (Pause for a moment and imagine the sheer joy and terror of being given that writing task).

Let me back up my point.

Fan fiction authors are “readers who appropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves different interests”, according to Jenkins (p. 23).

Honestly, I think the whole of the new Disney Star Wars cannon aligns with this definition. Disney have (to depressing controversy) made real strides in opening up the Star Wars universe to different groups, including having its first two movies feature female and POC protagonists and background characters.

I’ve already written elsewhere about the significance of Diego Luna portraying Cassian Andor with his Mexican accent, something which the actor himself has commented on.

One of the things I love most about fan fiction is the fact that it gives voice and reinterprets existing cultural artefacts to better represent groups and ideas that are often, for many reasons, under-represented or un-represented in the original.

Secondly, “In fanfiction, all offstage events are possible, whether they take place before, during, or after the established action” (Burns and Webber, p.27).

Does that not perfectly describe Rogue One? What even is Rogue One but a little self-contained bubble in Star Wars lore? It wasn’t necessary to learn how and why the Death Star has such a glaring weakness, but my God isn’t it awesome now that we do?

Rogue One is fan service. It’s opened up the word, filled in blanks, shown different view-points and given voice to characters (and representations) that have only enhanced the cannon.

And it also happens to be brilliant.

It’s sad, funny, poignant, and it adds to the mythology. The production values, direction, acting and special effects are super high class.

Which is why it annoys me so much when sub-par fandom films and tv shows excuse themselves by saying “it’s for the fans”.

No. You don’t get to make something badly and then ignore the criticism by saying you made it for the fans. Your fans deserve better than that.

Suicide Squad, Batman Vs. Superman and Iron Fist have all, in different ways, come out against the negative critical reception they received by saying their product was designed with the fans in mind, not the critics.

But everything - everything - should always be produced with the fans in mind. That doesn’t mean you get to make something haphazardly, incoherently, or simply too quickly to be good.

I am a big believer in personal taste. I think, genuinely, that ‘quality’ is subjective. So, regardless of whether you loved or hated the above Marvel and DC offerings, if you’re a fan, I genuinely think that excuse should rile you.

It’s insulting.

Let’s take another couple of recent examples of fan service done right.

Deadpool is amazing! Slick, funny, in tune with the character, original... Well made. Well thought out. Well written and well acted. And totally, completely made for the fans, by fans.

I think by now it’s an unspoken truth that Ryan Reynolds leaked the original Deadpool footage online to force Fox’s hand when it looked like they were going to bail on production.

But that gamble only worked because, ultimately, what they had produced was good enough to get the fans excited.

Next up:

Oh. My. God.

LOGAN.

How totally amazing is this film? I mean, seriously, this is the X-Men film I know I’ve been waiting for! I’ve already taken to the ‘net to rant about Days of Future Past, and I couldn’t even bring myself to talk directly about Apocalypse.

But Logan knocked it out the park. It’s a beautiful movie, part character study, part Western, all awesome.

And what about this lil’ piece of terrific:

I’m not even sure I can imagine the pitch meeting for Legion...

“Hi. I wanna do an X-Men TV show. About a possibly schizophrenic mutant who is totally OP, in which the Big Bad is a incorporeal monster which is sometimes Aubrey Plaza and sometimes not. And I’m gonna set it mostly in an asylum. I’m thinking a kind of Catch 22-esque plot structure as well. Basically, it won’t even begin to make sense until about midway through. And colour - wow, have I got some ideas for colour! I also really want to visualise the inconsistency of the lead character’s mind, so I’m also gonna do some pretty trippy stuff with camera angles, focusing effects and set design. Think Wes Anderson, but more so. The fans will love it, honest!”

And we did!

Basically, the point I’m trying to make here is that fan service does not need to be, and should not be, an excuse for making something poorly.

It should be a call to action for making something amazing.

1 note · View note

elizabethrobertajones · 8 years

Note

lizzy? what are your 10 top supernatural episodes?

D: what sort of a question is this? Do you know how MANY episodes there are??

Let’s see… Desert Island Discs… What would I take with me?

Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie

On The Head Of A Pin

Monster Movie

The Man Who Would Be King

LARP and the Real Girl

Safe House

Baby

Heaven Can’t Wait

Clap Your Hands If You Believe

Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets

As you can see I am A: Edlund and Robbie trash and B: helplessly sold on the Perfect Monster of the Week concept over any plot episode.

Can’t tell if my buzz over 12x10 is going to last but it feels like an all time great and I want to roll around in it forever. It also seemed to directly reference at least 2 of the episodes also on this list (like all the clowns) and live up to all my standards of melodrama and characterisation I eat up, and is possibly the most perfect Destiel episode we’ll ever get (it’s like the overtness of 11x18 crossed with the style of an old Edlund or Robbie episode in delivery… Mmm) so… I put it last on the list cautiously because it’s had to usurp yet another Robbie episode to get on there.

The fairy episode is just a weird little favourite of mine, because I was busy procrastinating writing an essay about fairies for university and realised this silly show was still on the air and binge-watched all 6 seasons and somehow or other, the stars perfectly aligned that I crawl from the library after researching folklore and fairies all day, boot up my laptop to get some downtime, and bam, there’s a kid looking dubiously at the cornfields and I’m just like oh shit this show would never do aliens, it’s more fucking fairies. Obviously my kink is being right, so.

9x06 is one of those nuggets of an episode that’s STILL got brilliant mileage for analysing it, and the Dean and Cas stuff is amazing, and… I practically don’t have anything profound to say about it? I just really love watching it and experiencing first hand everything it showed us about Dean and Cas’s relationship.

Baby, Safe House and Meta Fiction I all debated being on here, and any one of them could have been ditched for Lily Sunder. When all’s said and done I love 9x18 with all my heart and it’s what got me into fandom, and I will always be thankful for it, but on the other hand it’s pretty gruelling to watch, I’m 50:50 on if I LIKE Gabriel’s depiction in it or not so half the time I watch it he grates my nerves and half the time I roll around in glee at the ridiculous fan fic version of him… But it’s pretty bleak and better in context, so you can just extract the important speeches from Metatron and hang them on a wall like a trophy but in the end, not necessary to be on this list as a favourite… Which leaves Robbie’s parting gifts of the 2 best-written MotW episodes this show has ever had, just for pure showing off or filming glee. His overall contribution to season 11 was just loving all over the show, but these were the stand-alones and they’re just really really excellent writing and I think can also make you fall back in love with the show when you watch them.

The LARP episode is also Robbie, I know, but I love it again for the fairies (I’m easily bought) and CHARLIE and the fact that the episode’s message was about having fun. It’s a little blob of light in between some dark storylines. It’s a really neat little episode, not exactly transcendent, but again it’s got some great stuff to analyse in it, and it had Charlie making out with a fairy, and… I’m so easily bought, okay. It’s perfect how it is :P

While 9x18 convinced me Destiel was canon, 6x20 convinced me it existed at all… I have shipped it basically since that episode aired, and watching Cas watching Dean and hurtling into all his bad decisions and slowly unravelling… Ugh, I can watch it over and over and find more reasons to be miserable for Cas every time. I also think you can basically watch 5x22 followed immediately by 6x20 and not actually miss out on anything :P It’s written as a direct answer to it as well as to fixing and explaining everything that happened in season 6 so far. I appreciate the episode a lot for tying the whole story together, and it inspires me to be the sort of writer Edlund is - running screaming at a story and tripping over hundreds of ideas too ridiculous or terrible or implausible to ever fit in the story, before scraping together the horrendous mess you’ve made of it and hopefully by trying to explain it to yourself, also create a masterpiece along the way with some well-applied framing devices to pretend like you meant to do it that way all along :P (9x18 also is bad writing advice for me because it implies you know what you’ve been doing all along, and Robbie sometimes strikes me as the only writer who planned ahead more than maybe the next episode, rather, I suspect he’s planted foreshadowing for season 15 that we still haven’t discovered, and basically this is not my process at all :P)

Monster Movie cracks me up every time. Dracula. On a scooter! HE HAS A COUPON. And Dean and Jamie is possibly my favourite romance subplot in an episode on the whole show. I love them! Jamie is a favourite character of mine, and the episode is completely hilarious, and I’m absolutely fascinated by Dean immediately post-Hell, and this is a good break from all the drama and trauma to see how he would try and cope and be normal, so despite how weird and kooky the episode is, I’m always coming back to it to try and analyse Dean because I just find him so interestingly written there. If/when I get to season 10 in my lengthy rewatch notes, I’m going to have to give myself a gag order on this episode of comparing Dean’s weird coping methods with the nonsense of this episode :P

Also 4x16 is basically a stage play but happens to be on TV, randomly dumps the formula of the show entirely by forgetting Sam and Dean exist halfway through to focus entirely on Cas, Uriel and Anna having a domestic, and was the first episode that really delved into Cas and began to show the potential of the angels as a seriously powerful force in the story; not that they’d be great for the plot because it seems like they’d have to be involved with the apocalypse one way or another, but it just sells that Cas’s story is worth telling at all. I’m not sure other writers at the time could have sold it quite as effectively and made Cas worth writing about in the same way, but there was a serious risk involved in hospitalising Dean practically at the halfway point, and letting Cas stomp off to deal with it. Please take a moment to stop and think of one very important fact: this was the first episode Edlund wrote with Cas in it :P

It’s not coincidental that my favourite episode on the entire show is ALSO my favourite episode when you ask me to list top 10 Sam episodes. Funny Sam episodes are rare and perfect little gems. Episodes where Sam gets to be what I think of as an ideal, perfect Sam… That list is even weirder than this one because it’s all about when I end up emotionally screaming about Sam and he beats out anyone else on screen for my attention (with my very particular emotional response to what is my favourite version of Sam, which immediately disqualifies all the serious Sam fans’ fave episodes because I don’t like the show getting emo about Sam because it always vaguely embarrasses me and feels like the show’s working too hard with the puppy dog eyes. You know that bit in the The Hobbit where Bilbo spares Gollum because he’s being too wretched and he just can’t kill him? And the movie didn’t play it subtle at all, it had Gollum looking up at the screen doing the eyes from Puss in Boots from Shrek with a perfect man tear running down his pallid face and you really just want to punch Gollum instead of understanding why Bilbo spared him…? When the show gets all saccharine about Sam it just reads like that to me - trying too fucking hard and over-selling something that doesn’t NEED selling in the first place because it’s already sold and like, I don’t know, a favourite armchair or something that’s by now a 12 year old bit of furniture in your house you favour and would never dream of getting rid of and is just always there for you to flop down on when you need it…) I mean, fair cop, obviously I am a Destiel fan and Dean and Cas occupy like 90% of my waking life. But SAM FUCKING WINCHESTER and episodes where Jared gets to play him FUNNY? It’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. This episode is ridiculous, and hilarious, and plays to all the strengths the show and its actors and writers have, and maybe it’s just because it’s in the middle of season 7 where everything is bleak-bleak-bleak-bleak, but it’s… I don’t know. Same feeling as LARP and the Real Girl, but with extra glitter, and Sam Winchester getting his ass handed to him by the most perfectly choreographed clown fight in the history of visual media.

#Asks #@ future me: please still like 12x10 THIS MUCH #12x10 #6x09 #9x06 #11x04 #11x16 #8x11 #4x16 #4x05 #6x20 #7x14 #edit: I would also dropkick any episode out of this line up for The Chitters but I didn't find a way to mention it and... i dunno #if you'd rather not watch Baby or Safe House #watch 11x19 #season 11 has the best motw episodes since like season 1 and 2 #everyone brought their A game for those #even the ones that were embarrassing or weird weren't BAD

28 notes · View notes

sciencebulletin · 4 years

Text

New findings suggest laws of nature 'downright weird,' not as constant as previously thought

Not only does a universal constant seem annoyingly inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction, which is downright weird. Those looking forward to a day when science's Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all. In a paper published in Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant. UNSW Science's Professor John Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force). "The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force," Professor Webb says. "It's a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck's constant and the electron charge, and it's a ratio of those things. And it's the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force." The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universe—without it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different. "We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if it's correct ... but that's what we found." Looking for clues Ever the sceptic, when Professor Webb first came across these early signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of the electromagnetic force, he thought it could be a fault of the equipment, or of his calculations or some other error that had led to the unusual readings. It was while looking at some of the most distant quasars—massive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energy—at the edges of the universe that these anomalies were first observed using the world's most powerful telescopes. "The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us," Professor Webb says. "So if you can study the light in detail from distant quasars, you're studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, only a billion years old. The universe then was very, very different. No galaxies existed, the early stars had formed but there was certainly not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets." He says that in the current study, the team looked at one such quasar that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didn't provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident. A weird universe "And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed," Professor Webb says. "So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics—one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it. "In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just that—constant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before." In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planets—with life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of it—the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. Professor Webb is still open to the idea that somehow these measurements made at different stages using different technologies and from different locations on Earth are actually a massive coincidence. "This is something that is taken very seriously and is regarded, quite correctly with scepticism, even by me, even though I did the first work on it with my students. But it's something you've got to test because it's possible we do live in a weird universe." But adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webb's, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality. "I didn't know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature," he says. "And they're not testing the laws of physics, they're testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and there's a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours." Life, the universe and everything While still wanting to see more rigorous testing of ideas that electromagnetism may fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is the way it is, and why there is life in it at all. "For a long time, it has been thought that the laws of nature appear perfectly tuned to set the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a few percent different to the value we measure on Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life may never have got going. It raises a tantalising question: does this "Goldilocks' situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine structure constant are 'just right' to favour our existence, apply throughout the entire universe?" If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision. "Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions," he says. "That standard model itself is built upon Einstein's theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics." Professor Webb's team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the world's largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision. Provided by: University of New South Wales More information: Michael R. Wilczynska et al. Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago. Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9672 K. Migkas et al. Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LX–T scaling relation. Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936602 Image: Scientists examining the light from one of the furthermost quasars in the universe were astonished to find fluctuations in the electromagnetic force. Credit: Shutterstock Read the full article

0 notes