patience-reine-blog

[skycowboys]

Sometimes flying through a chasm is more fun than flying over it :) Just be careful to stay above the mists!

I want to get more comfortable with color and carving out forms without relying on lines. There's nothing wrong with drawing, of course, but practicing painting is definitely beneficial.

~

Discord | Patreon

[ruderubicante]

Commission for Paladin North of their Lancer party

[elliegoose]

some quick character portraits for @rotten-spaceymage 's pegasus pilot, Meda (left), and the NHP who lives in her circuitry and uses her brain as an ontologic bridge, Ella (right). the foxgirlsssss!!!!

[ardentinwoe]

Lancer oneshot tomorrow! Here's my pilot, Hargrave.

[b0nelessdoodles]

my lancer dm kept joking that my pilot's nhp treated things like a twitch chat and that escalated to the little co-pilot cat being the twitch mod which ya know very fun when things are going to shit

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Θαρσείν χρη, τάχ’ αύριον έσσετ’ άμεινον. Eλπίδες εν ζωοίσιν, ανέλπιστοι δε θανόντες.*

- Theocritus

You need to have courage, because tomorrow will be better. While there's life there’s hope, and only the dead have none.*

My ex-regiment proudly traces its lineage back to the Glider Pilot Regiment which spearheaded British airborne forces to take Pegasus Bridge on D Day 6 June 1944. During my service I had the privilege to travel there and take part in the commemorative ceremonies whenever D Day came around. I loved listening to the stories of some of the surviving veterans and also some of the local French too. The British taking of Pegasus Bridge - re-named partly after the emblem of pegasus of airborne forces - was one of the stand out events of the first days of D Day by British forces.

Airborne landings in the British Sector were targeted mainly at the Orne River/Caen Canal crossings and the artillery installations of the Merville Battery. The strategic purpose was to secure river crossings for the beach break-out and to reduce enemy defences.

At 00:16 hours on 6th June parachutists and gliders from the Airborne Division, consisting of D Company of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, began to land east of the River Orne and the Caen Canal.

The small force of 181 men was commanded by Major John Howard and joined with a detachment of Royal Engineers who landed at Ranville-Benouville in six 28-men Horsa gliders. Having taken off from Dorset, the gliders were towed across the Channel by Halifax Bombers. With perfect navigation and piloting skill, the gliders landed on time and on target within few yards of each other.

Major Howard’s glider landed within a few feet of the canal bridge. The bridge was captured after a fierce ten minute fire fight, the action all over by 00:26, a full six hours before the beach landings.

But the success of the mission was also down to intelligence gathered by locals and passed onto British intelligence through the French resistance channels. 

One of these was Georges Gondrée and his wife, Thérèse. Georges and Thérèse moved to Bénouville where they bought a small café in 1934 on the shore along the Bénouville Bridge, called Café Gondrée. During the Invasion, they had three small daughters: Georgette, Arlette, and the newborn Françoise.

The family certainly hated the German occupation. Among other things, they refused to allow their café to serve as a billet for German soldiers. But they went further by joining the French resistance at great danger to themselves.

As the war progressed, the more risks and dangerous activities they undertook against the Germans. Thérèse, who grew up in Alsace, knew quite a bit of German. Local residents did not like her Germanic Alsatian accent  but she took care to keep her knowledge of German secret from the German soldiers themselves. This often helped her to eavesdrop on conversations of the soldiers and then pass on important information to the resistance through her husband, Georges. There were a few times when they were nearly caught but somehow they survived.

The information gathered by the Gondrée family contributed greatly to the insight of Major Howard and his troops to better assess the defensive positions around the bridge. Among other things, Thérèse was able to pinpoint the exact location of the detonator that was supposed to have detonated the bridge during the attack. Georges was also known to British intelligence and even Major Howard had heard his name mentioned during the planning of the invasion itself.

The importance of the family’s contribution to the success of the British attack can also be seen from an example during early May 1944. When Field Marshal Erwin Rommel came to inspect the bridge, he had given the order to place an anti-tank gun beside the Bénouville Bridge. Within two days Major Howard had been informed that a new structure was being built along the bridge and within a week Georges’ observation had helped to confirm both its function and exact location.

So, just 90 minutes after taking off from RAF Tarrant Rushton in England, Major Howard was able to send the code words “Ham and Jam”, indicating that both bridges had been captured. In this early action of D-Day, the first house on French soil was liberated, and the first British soldier of the Normandy Invasion was killed in action: Lieutenant Den Brotheridge.

It was No. 1 Platoon which knocked out a machine gun position firing from the bridge and rushed across to capture the far side, firing from the hip and lobbing grenades during the charge. Lt. Brotheridge was mortally wounded by gunfire as he made a grenade attack on a second machine gun position. The bridge had been prepared by the enemy for demolition, although the Royal Engineers removed the unset charges.

Within half an hour of the bridge being taken, 6th Airborne parachutists landed to provide reinforcement. The Ox & Bucks were reinforced half-an-hour after the landings by 600 men of 7th Battalion, the Parachute Regiment who were the relieving force to bear the brunt of German counter-attacks to the west of the Caen Canal throughout the 6th of June.

The Battalion distinguished itself in holding a wide bridgehead around ‘Pegasus Bridge’ against constant enemy attacks which were often armour supported. In particular the “A” Company, based in the nearby village of Bénouville, suffered the most severe fighting and were eventually cut off from the remainder of the 7th Battalion.

The first relief in force was from 6 Commando, led by the commander of the 1st Special Service Brigade, Lord Lovat, who arrived to the sound of the Scottish bagpipes, played by the 21–year-old so-called ‘Mad Piper’, Private Bill Millin.

The remnants of the 7th Battalion’s “A” Company continued to hold out until 9:15pm on the 6th June when British infantry, in the form of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Warwickshires, arrived from the invasion beaches and secured Bénouville, and so allowed the evacuation of “A” Company’s many wounded.

In honour of the distinctive emblem of the Parachute Regiment, the distinctive bridge at Benouville was renamed and will forever be known as “Pegasus Bridge”.

Arlette Gondrée being kissed by two veterans who remember her parents.

Over the years, many thousands of pairs of British boots have crossed the threshold of the Café Gondrée. General Montgomery in 1945, veterans paying tribute to fallen comrades and numerous members of the Royal family.  Arlette Gondrée, the daughter of Georges and Thérèse, still recalls with crystal clarity the very first occasion a British soldier arrived at the cafe on the night of June 5, 1944, when she was just four-years-old, cowering with her family in the basement during the start of the D-Day invasion.

Commemorating the landings in 1945, General Montgomery visited the Café Gondrée Pegasus Bridge, renamed after the winged emblem of the British 6th Airborne Division, with some widows of the soldiers lost in the Normandy campaign. Georges produced some of the vintage champagne he had hidden, including a 1926 Pouilly-Fuissé.

Over the ensuing years, the family never ceased to celebrate their liberation. “Daddy would make a large U-shaped table in the café and we would eat together as a happy family, and very, very thankful to the British for what they did for us. And that remains so to this day.”

Life was hard for years, made worse by rationing. The effect of the ordeal on the girls was subtle, but not invisible: in November 1944, the Red Cross visited and told Arlette if she stopped biting her nails, they would give her a real doll to replace her cardboard toy. The café didn’t open properly again until June 1945.

To this day, Mme Gondrée keeps her “little house” as a shrine to the British Airborne forces that liberated her family. She has said that she always felt honoured to have the privilege of being custodian of the memories of that fateful day.

Photo: Major John Howard is flanked by George Gondrée and Lt. David Woods raising a glass to the successful capture of Pegasus Bridge that day.

[midbyte]

in order to maintain my sanity during these trying times, ive started to design characters for ttrpgs i may ever end up even playing

[lukore]

obvi taylor pilots a balor but “taylor’s balor” just sounds so silly i wanna shove her in a locker hydra

[vexwerewolf]

If we talk about the aesthetics of technology in Lancer, we can divide each of the Big 4 along lines of form and function.

IPS-N: Pure Function

IPS-N cares only what a mech does. It doesn't need to look good or pretty doing it - it only needs to be able to do that thing well. It's notable that the Raleigh, arguably the most form-oriented of the IPS-N frames, is also considered to be the company's biggest commercial failure - they strayed from their core design principles and got punished for it.

Harrison Armory: Form Follows Function

Harrison Armory still leans pretty heavily towards the functionality side of things, but it isn't satisfied with doing a good job alone. Yes, the mechs have to perform well, but they also have to look good doing it. There's no practical application for the Sherman's sleeveless coat or the Tokugawa's dainty little tassels, but they don't hinder combat functionality and they make the mechs look dashing. In comparison to IPS-N's coarse, industrial, almost unfinished look, HA mechs look stern, austere and imposing. There's a smoothness to them that you just don't get on IPS-N frames.

SSC: Function Follows Form

SSC is where we start to plunge into aesthetics-forward mech design. The Death's Head isn't six-legged because it's a sniper - the Death's Head is a sniper because it's six-legged. SSC came up with a mech design and asked: "what would this do best?" A six-legged chassis provided a more stable firing platform for precision weaponry, so that was what it did. Shapes and appearances are invented, and then a use case is discovered for them.

HORUS: Pure Form

It might seem weird to classify HORUS as "pure form" when their mechs largely don't have a consistent visual identity outside of the examples in the book. However, if we look a little deeper at the definition of "form," the explanation becomes clear: in some ways, HORUS is in the business of making statements, not mechs.

For anyone who's actually played a HORUS mech in Lancer, you may have noticed how awkward they are to actually pilot. Their statlines are, on paper, often very poorly suited to the sort of work they have to do. The Gorgon is built to attract attention and draw fire but has no armor. The Manticore is meant to be a front-line fighter but is quite slow. The Minotaur is meant to be a tech platform but has a low sensor range. The Pegasus' one functional trait doesn't apply to any of the weapons in its equipment package!

This is because HORUS mechs are designed purely as a testament to a certain discipline of technology. I remember expressing irritation with a friend's NeoGeo-for-X-Box emulator once, that you couldn't reconfigure the controller mapping so that it was easier to play with the X-Box controller. He remarked that it was meant as a historical preservation tool that perfectly duplicated the functionality of the NeoGeo, and that the only reason you could even play games using it at all is because that was a function of NeoGeo arcade cabinets.

That's how HORUS mechs are - their usability as chassis is broadly a side-effect.

[brattytenshi]

It's oft forgotten that amongst the Pegasus-pattern, the Ushabti Omnigun is no mere paracausal existence; the nature of its containment and rumoured-intelligence points to it being a yet-to-be categorised NHP.

No attempts of breaching the containment has yielded intelligence, yet accounts from surviving pilots of cascading SISYPHUS NHPs have noted the NHP conversing with an unknown figure manifesting from the containment field.

As footage of this are often rare and/or tampered, their existence is still under debate.

[skycowboys]

You wanna start flying pegasi? Here's a gear list to get you started!

Waystops will have fire rings and communal saucepans for cooking. Keep an eye out for bandits!

–

Discord | Patreon | Art Prints

[stinalotte]

Happy 19th Birthday, Stargate Atlantis!

On July 16th, 2004, the pilot aired. Here's a handy little primer for anyone who doesn't know what the heckity heck this show is about. Everything is totally accurate, 100% true and very, very serious.

So.

This is the lost city of the Ancients, Atlantis, in the Pegasus galaxy, about 3 million light years from Earth. (The Ancients can go fuck themselves. Long story.) Atlantis is a city/spaceship approximately the size of Manhattan. She's semi-sentient, but not really, except actually yes, maybe, sometimes, totally. The whole city can go underwater or into hyperspace. Loves her humans. Home. Declaration of independence imminent.

The Atlantis expedition consists of civilians and military from at least 34 countries (in later seasons, the original expedition was just over a dozen). In no particular order:

Dr. Elizabeth Weir. The first leader of the expedition. The only adult. Sometimes. Okay, not very often. Is not above a little war crime for the good of the galaxy—or at least, for the good of Atlantis. Left a boyfriend and a dog on Earth, but we all miss the dog more than the boyfriend. Eats UN representatives for breakfast. Is terribly awkward on dates and really good at solitaire. Loves her chaos children. Which are:

Lt. Colonel Suicide Mission John Sheppard. Walked through the Gate and Atlantis said, "dibs". Thinks people who don't want to fly are crazy. Not good with emotional stuff. (He's getting better.) Loves his found space family and would die for them, often literally. Stop that. Also loves Ferris wheels, things that go fast, and Rodney McKay. And no, we don't know how he gets his hair to go like that.

Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay. Four degrees, two of which are PhDs, none of which are in social skills. Smartest man in two galaxies. Used to be an asshole, but got himself some friends who loved him such a stupid amount that he had no choice but to change. Still a work in progress. We love to see it. Blew up three quarters five sixths of a solar system. (It was uninhabited.) (Mostly.) Deathly allergic to citrus. Loves fully charged ZPMs, arguing with Dr. Zelenka, MREs, and John Sheppard.

Lieutenant Aiden Ford. Went ass first through the Gate with a grin and a whoop on his very first trip. One of the youngest members of the expedition. Is not allowed to name anything, ever. Mild case of hero worship when it comes to his commanding officer, which is totally understandable. A cautionary tale of how addiction messes up not only you, but the people around you.

Ronon Dex. Used to be hunted by the Wraith, lost his people in a terrible war, and is now a member of Sheppard's team where he gets to shoot things and beat up bad guys. Doesn't talk much, but when he does, he has something to say. Good friend. Excellent hugs, but have Carson check you out for any cracked ribs after. Is one bottle of Athosian wine away from staging an intervention regarding the Sheppard/McKay situation.

Teyla Emmagan. In possession of the team's one brain cell. Leader of the Athosian people. Will rock a baby to sleep and then go outside where a Wraith is dangling from the highest tower of the city and stomp on his hands until he falls 800 feet. Can either beat you up in the gym or force you to meditate on your problem, your choice. Has the aforementioned bottle of wine ready and loaded.

Dr. Radek Zelenka. Keeps the science team sane because Rodney sure as hell doesn't. Loves pigeons, cursing in Czech, and overseeing the thriving black market underground economy that has developed in the city. (Thanks @shaddyr for that lovely headcanon). Zachránil všechny naše zadky víc než jednou.

Chuck the Technician. Aggressively Canadian. Doesn't have a last name, doesn't need one. Is ALWAYS in the control room, seriously man, when do you sleep? Reads trashy sci fi novels on night shifts and organized a betting pool in 5 different currencies when Ronon was fighting Teal'c. Needs to share his eyelash routine because we're jealous.

Dr. Carson Beckett. The most Scottish Scot to ever Scot. Brilliant medical doctor who is not above the occasional unethical unorthodox treatment method. Sweet cinnamon roll of a man. Beloved by all. Loves his mom and wee baby turtles. Someone should take him fishing soon. 🥹

Colonel Samantha Carter. Member of SG-1. Legend. Awesome. Boss. Absolute BAMF. Punched a Goa'uld system lord in the face once. We all have a crush on her.

Dr. Jennifer Keller. Is very doctor-y, for better and for worse. Was all of us when she freaked out being on an alien planet for the first time, like a normal person would. Should totally have gone on a date with Captain Vega in that one deleted scene. [WE COULD HAVE HAD IT AAAAALL]

Jeannie Miller. Rodney's sister. Gave up a career in science to be a mom. Solved Rodney's math problem in her spare time, with finger paints. Loves her brother even when he's being an idiot. Fanfic canon says: her house is always open for him and certain Air Force Colonels to crash in. Don't you dare get a hotel room. Yes, the guest room has Only One Bed, Mer, what's your point?

Major Evan Lorne. If you are a moron and get yourself captured and imprisoned off world, he will swing by real quick with a couple Marines and bust you out. Co-parents Atlantis with Dr. Weir. Is actually a really talented painter. Needs a raise, a holiday, and a drink.

Colonel Steven Caldwell. Grumpy. Has to deal with Elizabeth's chaos children on a regular basis. Will make the enemy ship go away with a big boom and save your sorry ass in space. AGAIN.

Richard Woolsey. Used to be a New York City lawyer, one of the most ruthless creatures in the universe. His wife got the Yorkie in the divorce. Broke his heart. Is actually pretty cool if you let him do his thing (like get you out of an intergalactic war crimes trial by bribing the judges).

I know some characters and all the villains are missing, but this post is already longer than a trip on the Daedalus, so there you have it.

Stargate Atlantis. A show about wormholes, life-sucking aliens, ancient civilisations, space battles—and family, friendship, allowing yourself to love and be loved, and what it means to be home.

Happy birthday, fam.

[horus-unofficial]

Pegasus pilot here. I like to leave 'em on as much as possible, give the NHP in there a real sense of personhood. I don't like the way we treat those, but Union doesn't let enough data out for me to know anything actually meaningful. Anyway, I swear to GOD every time I perform maintenance on that thing it is intimate. It feels more like sex than sex does, fiddling around with those actuators and wires and shit. Thing is, my little frame-mate in there only talks to me when I'm mounted - radio silence whenever I'm doing repairs.

I just gotta wonder like... should I be asking for more clear communication? They've never stopped me. Do I bring this up? What, next time I mount up I just say "Hey, hi, listen, is it as sensual for you as it is for me when I go rooting around your insides? Do we need a safeword?" help

theres no harm in asking we guess???

[wiingdings]

Can you show me an Mlp au?

i'm just gonna take this as an excuse talk about my mlp au destinyswap

during the mane six simultaneous cutie mark event and twilight sparkle's magic meltdown, she sees into the future and involuntarily casts starswirl's spell (the one from magical mystery cure that switches everyone's destinies)

this spell ripples across equestria and changes the mane 6's destinies the same moment they receive them so it goes unnoticed. the mane 6 all settle into their new lives except for twilight, who always has a sense that she's forgotten something important. she can just barely recall starswirl's spell like a fading dream and tries to look for any clues she can about it, resulting in her being even more reclusive than normal and celestia sending her to ponyville before the events of the pilot.

when she meets the other mane 6, the "bad feeling" gets really, really bad, and she becomes unsettled and paranoid, especially around the mane 6, and mostly stays shut in her library. her encounters with the mane 6 do give her a feeling about what to research, though... she combs her collection for anything having to do with cutie marks and pony destinies.

everyone else seems to have settled into their new roles pretty well, though?

fluttershy is still very shy, but she's very good with kids, and lives with the cakes as pound and pumpkin's nurse/babysitter but takes other jobs as well. all the foals in ponyville adore her, and she is more comfortable being herself around young ponies than adults, who are scary.

applejack lives in manehattan with her aunt and uncle orange as a popular fashion who gives out free blankets and coats for charities, but frequently visits ponyville to check on her family. she can use her hooves to sense gemstones in the ground, and integrates them into her designs.

rarity's magic developed very late, and when it did, it took a while for ponies to realize that instead of unicorn magic, she had pegasus magic. she had to train herself to use her horn to control her magic, but once she did, she joined the ponyville weather team. she is fanciful and loves making patterns in the sky - ponyville always praises rarity for a particularly striking sunset or when cloudgazing is especially entertaining.

the pie family had worked with the apple family for a while, so when pinkie pie discovered her talent for baking, she moved to ponyville and was hired on by the apples to fill applejack's role, and uses the apples produced by the farm to make lovely homemade treats! the apple family stand always has freshly-baked confections now, and a friendly but slightly intimidating pink workhorse running about with big mac and apple bloom.

rainbow dash lives on the edge of town in a cottage. she is a pegasus, but nopony has ever seen her fly since crash-landing in the forest during a race. she is still capable of flight, although weakened, but prefers to keep her hooves on the ground - that's where the animals that stayed with her and helped her after her crash are, anyway. she is timid and particularly afraid of confrontation, but ponyville regards her as their best veterinarian and animal expert.

and twilight sparkle... she's the princess's student from canterlot. the new unicorn that never leaves her library. her assistant, spike the dragon, stays near the door and gives you your books from the window. if you see twilight out and about on a quick errand or grocery run, don't approach her... she's timid and aggressive, like a wild animal, and will glare at you while she trots in the opposite direction.

sometimes the princess herself comes to visit the library. she's the only one allowed inside.

(some misc destinyswap art)

[dr-futbol-blog]

Our hero, Major John Sheppard is stationed at McMurdo base in Antarctica at the start of the series. We learn that he likes it there. Sheppard himself tells Teyla in Sateda (S03E04): "Well, that [having no social skills] is why I enjoyed flying choppers in the most remote part of my world before all this craziness."

This is what John Sheppard tells us but we learn that what he tells us is not always the truth and certainly not the whole truth.

The alien AI that created a hallucination from Sheppard's own subconscious in Remnants (S05E15) poses him the question: "You're either someone with a death wish or someone running away from something. So tell me: what are you running away from?" Running away to the most remote part of his world, running away to another galaxy.

In fact, he has both been banished to and self-isolated in the most remote part of his world ("You torture yourself every day, John.") due to his "black mark" acquired in Afghanistan. We are never explicitly told what this black mark was, only that it bothered Gen. O'Neill and was something that Dr. Weir could live with. We are left wondering.

While we are shown something of what happened in Afghanistan during the episode Phantoms (S03E09), through the hallucinations from Sheppard's past of him failing to save Capt. Charlie Holland, it isn't until toward the end of the series that we find out what happened through the mirror of a parallel reality in Vegas (S05E19), where alt!Rodney tells us "You were a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan but were dishonourably discharged for disobeying orders and trying to rescue a field medic trapped behind enemy lines. You were shot down – obviously survived, but unfortunately the crash killed four American soldiers along with eight civilians. You avoided jail time; the record was sealed for various political reasons."

The field medic in the Vegas-verse, one where "infinite variations of our own known reality where alternate versions of you and I play out events", is female; this revealed in a mumbled 'ur' (I didn't even catch it on first viewing even though I knew about the gender swap in advance; it might just as well have been "knew 'em") in alt!Rodney's line: "That field medic – the one you defied orders to go back and try and rescue. You knew her personally. You were... involved."

This was one of the differences between the two realities, perhaps even the most defining one of them, the point of divergence.

Vegas Sheppard dies to the tune of Johnny Cash's Solitary Man because that's what he was, a recluse (and note that the importance of Johnny Cash was underlined in the episode by Sheppard taking nothing but his poster, the same Johnny Cash poster that our Sheppard had in his quarters for all of the five years, with him once he walked away from his job; it carries weight):

I know it's been done havin' one girl who loved me Right or wrong, weak or strong Don't know that I will, but until I can find me The girl who'll stay and won't play games behind me I'll be what I am

But our Sheppard is not a Solitary Man (he has self-confessedly found something of a family in Pegasus). He's the Man in Black (in fact, he is dressed in black throughout the series even in situations where other fatigues would have made more sense; it is only in the very last episode that we see him in lighter colours):

I'd love to wear a rainbow every day And tell the world that everything's okay But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'Til things are brighter, I'm the man in black

We know the background. When the series begun, DADT was still in full effect, the franchise had a long-standing co-operation with the USAF, Prop 8 was still several years into the future. The non-normative sexual orientation of an All-American Action Hero was never going to be main-text. Even heterosexual romance between characters was mostly eschewed by the franchise. But damn if the subtext doesn't lay it out thick for us.

There are so many obvious parallels and comparisons in the show that I need to write them down somewhere, and while this is a day late and a dollar short, this fandom could do with some meta. So this marks the beginning of my journey through Stargate Atlantis with an eye on its bisexual protagonist.