#specifically for the muldoon one

[sophieswundergarten]

My brain came up with this while I was half asleep, and then I proceeded to promptly forget about it for the seventy-two some-odd hours. But I remembered tonight! So here you go:

Sophie Assigns the "Good" MBS Humans to the Fellowship of the Ring

I just thought the other day, "Hey, four kids plus four adults and one Miss Perumal makes nine! Guess what other book I enjoy has an initial grouping of nine protagonists?" And then the rest of this followed

Of course, I made the Hobbits the kids. It just worked really well with the route I was going.

Frodo - Constance. They both have a lot on their shoulders, and whether they like it or not they are instrumental in the success of their friends

Sam - Kate. I waffled a bit on Sam, but I think Kate fits best here. She has her bucket and is very prepared, and she also goes on solo missions with/carries Constance a lot.

This means the boys are Merry and Pippin!

Merry - Reynie. If I'm remembering right, Merry is a little older than Pippin, and tends to look out for him. I know they're cousins in the books, but I really like the idea of them as a brother-like duo that works together a lot.

Pippin - Sticky. Slightly less life experience than the others his age, but still doing his best! Also very close with his friends and gets put in a position of power under a Not Great Guy (Denethor/Curtain) and learns to break away from him and look out for the people he loves.

Okay. So. I know that initially it seems like Mr. B should be Gandalf. But hear me out.

Gandalf - Milligan. He's there sometimes, sometimes he's off doing other stuff that is still vital to the mission but not immediately visible! He jumps off things (Granted, Gandalf has the Eagles to help him), and has that kind of general colour scheme. He advises the kids both individually and as a group.

Gimli - Number Two. I don't even know. I just felt this one immediately. She's really intense and strong and a good fighter, but sometimes she needs someone to tell her to calm down and loosen up a bit.

Legolas - Rhonda. Also felt this one as soon as I thought about it. Something about Rhonda having slightly better people skills and the general charisma of an elf, but she's still super close with Number Two and they make fun little competitions out of working together.

Boromir - Nicholas. Now. This gave me a lot of trouble, but I think it works because this is the character he would give himself. The one with a brother, who gets "favoured", but ultimately falls prey to his weakness. He genuinely wants to help the kids, but in the end he puts them in danger. This does not mean Curtain is Faramir. We're not even getting into that can of worms here.

And we all know what this means!!

Aragorn - Miss Perumal. I love this one, even though it kind of happened by process of elimination. Her "bit of a puzzler" traits as a ranger who can track people all over the place is so good. Also, this means that she'd get a girls team up with Rhonda and Number Two as the Three Hunters! And, come on. I really want to give her a cool sword.

[nobodysdaydreams]

🌹

Dipika’s mother made a disgusted face and shook her head at the television.

“You can tell he’s full of himself by the way he talks,” she noted, “and why is he always wearing blue? Does the man not own any other colors?”

“I think the bigger concern is the crimes he has committed, not his wardrobe, Mother,” Dipika replied.

[doyouknowthisactor]

By "roles" I mean playing a different character, and in a different piece of media; someone playing one character across a franchise only counts as one thing for the purposes of this poll, as does playing multiple characters in one franchise/piece of media

Below are some of this actor's roles. Please only check after voting!

The World According to Garp as Roberta Muldoon (Oscar nomination)

Terms of Endearment as Sam Burns (Oscar nomination)

The Crown as Winston Churchill (Emmy win)

3rd Rock from the Sun as Dick Solomon (3 Emmy wins & 3 nominations)

Lithgow has been nominated for an additional 4 Emmys in Lead or Supporting roles

Lithgow's son Ian Lithgow is also an actor

More roles

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Consequences of Getting Lightly Stabbed

I have been WAITING to get the hardcopies of the re-releases of this fabulous series to do individual reviews of each book, because this series is my ultimate comfort series. This series hits a ton of my favorite points. It is urban fantasy, does some amazing things with both Irish and Native American lore, has a fabulous slow burn romance, has GARRISON MATTHEW MULDOON, and a protagonist with attitude. It also has one of the strongest writer voices ever. Literally every CE Murphy book SOUNDS like a CE Murphy book, but without compromising the voice of the protagonist. That is a skill that is a hella rare delight. So let me introduce you to Joanne Walker--nee Siobhan Walkingstick--as we talk Urban Shaman.

This is you SPOILER WARNING because this book is too damn good and I want to talk all about it. This is also a CONTENT WARNING for anyone sensitive to novels focusing on cops, because while this series is not entirely uncritical of them, we do spend a lot of time with and around them, and Morrison in particular has idealized being a cop. The book was originally published in 2005, so a LOT has happened since then. Your mileage may vary.

So this series has a bit of a story to it, and if you've been hanging out around my bookshelf for a while, you've seen me mention this series before. It was originally published traditionally starting in 2005. The author had to make a couple of concessions for the series (including relegating a novella to "book 1.5" rather than making it book 2 and a title that she SUPER did not like), but the series did well and its fans love it deeply. I picked it up in...like 2010? Ish? It was early in my undergrad, because I made a dear friend who did not stop talking about this series. So I picked it up, read it, loved it. Fast forward to the 2020s and I believe it was sometime during the pandemic that Murphy got the rights back to this series and decided to rerelease them with new covers, a new order that includes book 1.5 as book 2, and a title change for book 4/5. I tend to be a practical reader; it's rare I collect for titles or special editions. This time though? I made an exception. I want these beauties on my shelf and I want to support this indie rerelease. Also I haven't done a reread of the series in a few years, so this is going to be just a sheer delight for me.

Ok, context having been contextualized, let's jump right into this book.

Joanne Walker is a hot mess. On page one of book one, she is in her mid-twenties, is estranged from a messy relationship with her father and her Cherokee heritage, met her very Irish mother four months ago and buried her days ago, is estranged from her Irish heritage, has lost her job because she overextended her bereavement leave, and is carrying around a metric ton of trauma related to getting pregnant with twins at fifteen and losing one baby shortly after giving birth and giving the other up for adoption shortly after that. And that's literally square one.

I honestly don't know how well I would handle getting fatally stabbed by the god of the Wild Hunt after not sleeping for over 24 hours, but for Joanne, this is just the start of tracking and catching a serial murderer who is killing people who are powerful in or connected to "another plane of existence." It's also the beginning of a new journey for Joanne, because she has power--specifically healing power--and the cost of not dying on a fae blade is learning to use it. She gets help from Marie D'Ambra--who Joanne spots from a plane and briefly rescues from Cernnunous--Coyote, Billy Holliday (a coworker and family friend), and Garrison Matthew Muldoon (Gary; cab driver extraordinaire and kickass septuagenarian sidekick). However, baby shaman (or gwyld, depending on which language you want to use) Joanne is super caught on her back foot and just barely manages to stay ahead of Hearne and Cernunnos long enough to stay alive and keep the Wild Hunt bound into its endless cycle.

The fact that before she met her mother Joanne was also a hardcore realist and pragmatist doesn't help either; she has to not only change her worldview, but she has to get out of her own damn way to do it. And she has to do it while changing jobs. She was a police mechanic who went to the academy on the recommendation (and pressure) from a previous boss. So when her current boss, Captain Morrison, is told by HIS superior that he is not allowed to fire the half-Cherokee woman in his department whose only crime was overextending her bereavement leave, he ends up "promoting" her to foot patrol. Admittedly this was on the expectation that Joanne would leave on her own, because this woman doesn't want to be a cop. This would have worked with lots of other people, but Joanne and Morrison are the most awkward of ducks, and she is too stubborn to quit.

There's also the small matter that when Morrison and Joanne first met, she didn't know he was the new boss and she mocked him MERCILESSLY for misidentifying her muscle car, Petite. And they never really recovered from that little incident, but Morrison is damn good at his job, so when Joanne can produce actual results, he grinds his teeth and coaches her in her new position to be the best she can be, help people, and get the job done. And he manages to be the best grouchy boss with a heart of gold even in this first book where he isn't the most sympathetic and I don't think is MEANT to be the most sympathetic. But when Joanne wipes out on concrete stairs, he's the one there with the smelling salts until it's clear she's ok. When Joanne has to deal with the death of a witness to a school stabbing who was under police protection and Joanne feels guilty for putting a target on her back, it's Morrison who is there going "It's not your fault. But you can do something about it."

Guys, I ship Joanne and Morrison so hard, even in this first book. They're honestly a really interesting and solid couple. I don't want to derail this with Morrison, but I do want to just highlight my favorite interaction between Morrison and Joanne in this entire book. This is Joanne being deeply sleep deprived and filterless, and while Morrison manages to stay pretty much professional, he's HONEST with her:

"Why do I bug you so much?" This was probably not the time to get into it, but I was suddenly incredibly curious. Morrison arched his eyebrows. "No, really," I said." I mean, I know we got off to a bad start, although I still can't believe you didn't know a Mustang from a Corvette--" "I was never into cars." "Obviously. What were you into?" Morrison stared at me over the edge of his coffee cup, then put it back down. "Being a cop." "What, when you were like nine? Fifteen? You wanted to be a cop, not to drive fast cars and pick up girls?" I took an incredulous bite of the apple fritter. "Yeah. I never wanted to be anything but a cop. And that, Walker, is why you irritate me." Morrison looked like he was at war with his own body language, trying to force himself to relax back into his seat while the intense low pitch of his voice drove him to lean forward, speaking to me sharply. "You fell into a job I spent my whole life working for. You irritate me because I think being a police officer is a calling and a solemn occupation and you're carrying a badge without it meaning a damn thing to you. You hang out with my officers in your off time, being just that damned cool, an attractive woman who talks cars and drinks beer and arm wrestles. None of them give a damn that you were in the top third of your class at the academy and that you're wasting your skills in the Motor Pool playing with engines. But it bugs the hell out of me. That is why you irritate me."

Literally I think this is my favorite exchange of theirs in this book, but it cannot be said that this is comfortable or amicable. It's tense and frustrated and I kinda love that.

Now, Morrison is amazing, but even Morrison does not hold a candle to Gary. Gary picks Joanne up from the airport and then spends three days tagging along and snarking as she figures out her powers and gets entangled in murders and goes on a self-directed crash course in healing magic. Gary is HERE for an interesting time with a lifetime of diverse experience, an open mind, and honestly a big squishy center. We are gonna spend like the next six books with people accusing Joanne of dating him and it is the best thing ever because she makes herself an easy target about it and Gary is deeply entertained by it. I've talked about Gary's backstory in detail here, so I won't go too much into it here. But Garrison Matthew Muldoon is the best person in the series, end of conversation. We love him so much.

We can mostly skip over the other cops, but we should address Billy. Because aside from being aware of other planes of existence, Billy is pretty awesome and will become a pretty important secondary character in further books. The poor man leans into his name as best he can, he's a wonderful dad and a decent detective. We also adore Billy.

We also need to address Cernunnos and Suzy. Because despite a fairly antagonist relationship in this book, Joanne and Cernunnos sort of settle into the friends who have sheer animal magnetism and a snarktastic dynamic who nonetheless have each other's backs. We get a lot more of Cernunnos and he is kind of the first touchpoint for the Irish half of Joanne's heritage and powers as Coyote is for the Cherokee half. (We'll address Coyote later; for now he's just cute and furry but that's gonna change.)

Suzy shows up again in book 4/5, and she kind of represents Joanne's first save. Because until Suzanne Quinley at the end of this book, Joanne can't save ANYONE. Hearne's body count is like seven shamans, Suzanne's adoptive parents, a 60-something schoolteacher, and four high school kids in this book before he heads for his biological daughter to sacrifice her to unbind the Hunt. Joanne can't save any of them, and it eats her. She DOES save Suzy though, and Suzy is really the person who proves to Joanne that she really can make a go of the shaman thing and she really can make a difference in people's lives.

This is the book I recommend to people who tell me they like the Dresden Files, because the vibes are similar without the paternalism, chauvanism and dickheaded machismo. Also, where Dresden Files make me FURIOUS, Joanne makes me cry good tears, especially in later books. Her story is about healing and finding humanity and community when you think you've lost them forever. I adore these books, and we'll definitely be talking more about them as the the rereleases keep coming.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Jurassic Park Daily - ‘Stegosaurus’ and ‘Control (V)’

Well now the chapter name looks like I want to paste something, ha.

It seems like it says something that the Jurassic Park staff couldn’t figure out why the stegosaur was sick for all this time, and then Ellie, an actual paleontologist, figures it out in about ten minutes.

It’s the “life finds a way” speech! Choss theory in general - Malcolm just saying - “this is complicated and unpredictable, so it won’t work” - feels too broad to qualify as scientific evidence to me, but I am so glad he brought up oxygen content, because that’s been bugging me since the earlier chapter that mentioned the air in the hatchery room was 33% oxygen, matching what they guessed to be the Jurassic atmosphere. Present-day oxygen content of air is 21%. These poor dinosaurs can’t breathe! But that’s not chaos theory, that’s a perfectly predictable problem.

I trust Grant to be able to identify a fragment of dinosaur eggshell and the general size of the animal it came from, but I do not believe he can identify a fragment that small as velociraptor specifically rather than a similar-sized animal (othnelia?). But it gets cleared up fast when they get the real numbers (Malcolm really is good at identifying the issues when he’s focusing on specifics rather than his theory) - statistically, if nothing else, it’s likely be a a raptor, because they’ve been breeding more than any other species.

This is the point where I really feel that Hammon’d determination to ignore problems has crossed the line from negligent into delusional. You have 29 raptors that you don’t know where they are. Muldoon knows how bad that is.

What I don’t get is how that could happen. The other species, sure. But all 8 original raptors are locked in a cage. The staff have video monitoring, and they can count to 8. Am I supposed to believe that the raptors are escaping from their cage every night and then all sneaking back in the next morning, like kids going to a party? (I want to say that’s way too intelligent for animals, but I think I did hear a story of an octopus doing that at an aquarium…though even so, that’s still one animal, not a group doing it in a coordinated way.) And even if they did, how could they raise young that way? The newly-hatched chicks would need round-the-clock care, which the raptors can’t give if they’re in a cage during the day.

Anyway, in the short/immediate term, 29 raptors loose in the park should be considered a crisis situation that warrants getting the guests back to the lodge immediately.

[phtalogreenpoison]

Reynie Muldoon Part 2

To start off this second post about my blorbo Reynie Muldoon, I would like to correct a former vagueness.  To credit the person who mentioned the Heart and Leader roles, I would like to give a shoutout to @sophieswundergarten!  I would also propose that this contributes to why Constance is so kidnappable and chased after, but I digress. 

So besides Reynie’s roles in the society, something that I find absolutely fascinating about him is that he is repeatedly described as a completely “average boy” and easily the most personable of the four (with maybe Kate coming as a close second in a different kind of people smarts way though).  But though he is seen as the most “normal” of the group, not everything adds up.  Before the Mysterious Benedict Society formed, he really didn’t have any lasting friends, and the only people he could maybe count as friends would be Seymour the orphanage cat (meow!), the significant portion of time he spent alone with himself, and his teacher Miss Perumal (I love her, but this is more of a mentorship/parent role).  Even considering them, one is a nonhuman animal, and Miss Perumal is not his age, certainly does not give any cool points for people his age, and has not been in his life until more recently.  But yet the fact remains that he is still able to appear friendly.  All of this is not to say I don’t think Reynie is a good person (because he really, really is a good kid), but it points to the fact that he gets his people skills from something a little more mentally ill.  And to me, that points to neglect.  As someone expected to be a golden child situations paraded out for the orphanage in certain situations, with his further development being ignored by the director until Miss Perumal, and as someone who is also able to evade his longtime bullies (for being a nerd or something I don’t remember) by seemingly being uninteresting and boring, he learns to adjust how he presents specific aspects of his personality to people.  Again, most people have different sides of themselves they show to different people, but this errs more on the side of having different masks for survival.  On a related note, as an emotionally neglected child myself, you learn that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself and cannot ask for help, contributing to Reynie’s desire to control the situation he’s in and in a weird way, forcing him to develop his leadership skills.

I feel like to some people, this could seem that I am painting him in a bad light.  I am not, merely that he is a deeply hurt child who has found certain ways to cope.  Obviously, once he meets Miss Perumal and the society, he begins to develop these coping mechanisms in a way that is healthier for himself, which really points out the fact that how people develop is so tied to what support they receive in childhood or adolescence.  Again, while the other kids have had to fend for themselves in similar ways, it is specifically this that brings out Reynie’s traits of intelligence, even though they could have developed in better circumstances.  Anyways, I am trying to say here that his ability to read a room is tied to his life experiences, which leads me to my next point that Reynie’s form of intelligence is often tied to cleverness.  For example, I heavily relate to the way that Reynie took the entrance test for the Mysterious Benedict Society, in that he viewed it as a puzzle to solve.  He did not know all of the facts straight up, but he did know how to use the information provided to him and extract what he needed out of that.  While he is also a certain level of book smart, he uses what knowledge he has available to him a shrewd manner. 

While I won’t finish in this post how this all ties in, he occasionally uses these abilities to manipulate the situation around him.  This for the most part is redirecting his bullies (considered acceptable), working information out of Mr. Curtain (considered acceptable), and later throwing the radio out from his friends (considered not acceptable).  But remember the false dream he has which causes him to fear that he would side with Mr. Curtain in the first book and betray his newfound friends?  This fear roots out of the fact that he is unsure of where to draw the line with his manipulative abilities early on, but he is ultimately different because of his care for the people around him.  While he may make mistakes, he is doing this for the people around him, and he is able to listen to others’ opinions.  He does not always think that he knows best, and if there is a better, easier way, he will probably take that route.  And as I hinted before, I do not necessarily think this is a bad thing to utilize, but the key thing that makes its usage a mistake is if he rates his opinion higher than the people he trusts.

This is all a really long way of saying that I love Reynie, and he is a nuanced individual who learns how to direct these same impulses in a far healthier way once he receives proper support, leading him to grow into a wonderful person.  I may seem a little morally gray here, but I just want to emphasize that sometimes, it is the situation that pushes a kid in a certain direction with their natural abilities.   (Next up will be parallels to Mr. Benedict and Mr. Curtain!  Among other things!)

[quickdeaths]

【ME & 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗜'𝗗 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪 𝗕𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥】

- ALIAS / NAME: Bryn, Ya Girl, Hey You

- BIRTHDAY: March 20

- ZODIAC SIGN: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh pisces/aries cusp but I will be honest I don't know much about astrology - I consider it harmless fun but it is harmless fun that I do not participate in, feel free to drag my ass because that's EXACTLY what a pisces/aries/pisces-aries would say

- HEIGHT: 5'11

- HOBBIES: Reading, writing, video games, dungeons and dragons/other TTRPGs, hanging out with the fam and/or the squad, watching tv sometimes when I can get the adhd to be quiet and focus on something. I like studying, too, to a point, and I would like to get back to like Working On A Skill in some way. Maybe polishing up my Japanese back to where it was when I lived abroad?

- FAVORITE COLOR: I say purple, which is kind of true, but actually a like, darker blue purple, like an indigo.

- FAVORITE BOOK: I'm annoyingly that girl you went to school with who loved all the books that they made you read. If there is a classic novel from like, 1800-1960 that they made you read in school, I like it, probably. I would also say, when I was in high school, which probably was (along with college) the time that I read most for pleasure, as well, I was really emotionally affected by Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and considered them faves.

Probably what I would say now though is Imogen Binnie's Nevada. I read it on a flight down to a weekend work retreat, read it on the flight, in the cab, and skipped dinner/informal meeting to read it all in one sitting. It's not an easy book to read, nor a "fun" one in a lot of ways, but I read it over 5 years ago and I think it about it constantly. It feels very raw and honest, and like 10 years after publication, I feel its influence on so much queer literary fiction.

There's also some books of poetry that I hold in high regard. I have Paul Muldoon's Poems: 1968-1998 and Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground, Selected Poems 1966-1996. I also have a story about being in college and writing a capstone essay for a notoriously difficult class where we were supposed to write about a book of poems of our choice. My laptop had broken, so I was confined to one of the shitty computers in the computer lab, and I had been working on the essay about a book of poems I found in our school library for maybe three weeks before the due date, and by happenstance, I ended up reading The Captain Asks for a Show Of Hands by Nick Flynn. I immediately had the thought of "I need to write about this," deleted my entire existing essay, and crunched for basically the entire remaining week to write a new one about Flynn's book instead.

- LAST SONG: I'm not sure what song specifically, but I was listening to the entire album Bon Iver by Bon Iver while writing RP replies earlier. I'm very much a full album girlie most of the time. Before that we've got "POPPY (Japanese Version)" by STAYC, "Champions of Red Wine" by The New Pornographers, "Biohazard" by Momma, and "Star" by LOONA (they're still together I swear here is how LOONA can still win-)

- LAST FILM / SHOW: I started watching the She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat live action drama last night. Probably gonna start watching Shogun with my mom soon when I go to have dinner and visit with her? As for movie... I saw Origin with my mom in theaters last month. I thought it was a very creative choice to adapt a nonfiction book into a narrative about the author writing the book, while still managing to incorporate a lot of the themes and content of the book into the film.

- RECENT READS: A lot of manga tbh... I read the She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat manga recently, as well as reread My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness after twitter drama thrust it back into my consciousness. I've been meaning to read Dungeon Meshi so probably soon? In terms of non-comic books, I read this nonfiction book called The Digital Closet: How The Internet Became Straight by Alexander Monea recently that was very engaging! In short, it's a dissection of the way that the American government's attempts to regulate and censor the internet (for a variety of reasons) have had the knock-on effect of things like age-gating even non-sexual queer content on youtube, or social media algorithms burying queer posts. I'm slowly working through Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett, which is about a woman trying to hold things together and run her family's taxidermy shop after her father's sudden death. It's weird, but good. It's probably also time for my annual(ish...) reread of Stephen King's On Writing, too.

- STORY BEHIND URL: It's a Maki quote! Her and Shuichi are talking about Tenko's death, and Shuichi says something about Maki's insight coming from experience, and she responds, "Of course. Quick deaths are my specialty."

- FUN FACT ABOUT ME: I used to be an elementary school English teacher in Japan, probably everyone knows this by now, but it is my funnest fact. I used to be a decently good soccer player and I was a pretty high-ranked doubles tennis player in my middle school district district for a little while (my partner carried me but still!) I honestly spend WAY too much time doing D&D prep - I spent basically the entirety of summer 2021 rewriting the entirety of the Curse of Strahd published D&D adventure to fit my preferences, and that of my players, complete with new characters/maps/statblocks/items/plot points/etc. Before the campaign had even started, I had absolutely dumped probably 100+ hours into it.

TAGGED BY: @more-than-a-princess the bestie thank youuu

TAGGING: @lunaetis @hopeds @honoosenshi @amoriscustos @wouldhope and you!

[ragecndybars]

top 5 mbs characters, bc im predictable, and then top 5 persona ...ships? if you don't do a lot of shipping than characters works.

unfortunately i don't actually follow persona all of my knowledge of it is just me voting for whatever you say to in the various polls you reblog (i gotchu homie).

and then just for the sprinkles on top, top 5 favorite birds. they can be specific birds (ie steve the magpie, a local magpie in your area, or big bird) or bird breeds (parrots, a titmouse, lilac breasted roller, etc) up to you. 🎉

or only do one, or two, or all of these! no offense will be taken. im giving OPTIONS

aaaaa thank you!!! for the ask, for the options, and also for supporting my little blorbos in those silly polls 😭

Top 5 MBS Characters:

Kate Wetherall. I. Was. OBSESSED with Kate as a kid. I do prefer her in the books but I love her show incarnation as well!! The weird girl energy, the autism, the ADHD, it's all off the charts. Fav line from book Kate is still "Well of course it's not funny, but what do you want me to do? Cry?" List of sentences that changed my brain chemistry as a child.

Not to be a basic bitch, but Nicholas Benedict. Oh my god, I loved him in the books already -- we love to see a "wise, all-knowing mentor" character with actual personality and limitations -- but the direction the show took his character in was truly inspired. His discussion with Reynie about the white knight in the books is PEAK.

Reynie Muldoon. Understandably, since he's the POV character, he was the one I actually related to most as a kid. I love the "always trying to stay calm" thing he has going on, and how the narrative never punishes him for trying to be kind and genuine and earnest even though so many books and shows nowadays feel the need to equate niceness with naivete.

My funky little Milligan. Yet another character who I loved in the books already and adored seeing more of in the show. I especially love how much more autistic they made this man. "Geez, how 'bout a hello?" "........Hello." / "I'll be back." [vanishes] [reappears] ".......I'm back." King shit. And no matter what incarnation it is, his reunion with Kate will always reduce me to tears. The memory that was so deeply ingrained into his brain that even Curtain couldn't take it from him... was just that memory of his little girl asking him to go to the mill again... AUGH.... 😭

Constance Contraire. Like Kate, I prefer Book!Constance, but I adore the way the show portrayed her as well. First of all, she's hilarious. Second of all, while she's often being irrational, she also can be a voice of reason in some ways, and we love that. Funky little psychic child. And I just ADORE how kindly the book treats her. Even when she's getting on the other characters' nerves in a big way, the book never suggests that she's a detriment to them, that she needs to sit down and shut up, that they would be better off if they ditched her, or any number of other things that a less understanding narrative would be claiming.

Top 5 Persona Ships

Hamugis. Ohhh my god. MFW the overwhelming guilt I feel for having potentially ruined someone's life by sealing Death inside of her as a child slowly transforms into admiration as I meet her again and begin to see her as a strong leader and then love as I begin to discover my own humanity through her. MFW "I don't want you to love someone else... I don't want that, even if that's what would make you happy!!" MFW I touch my robot GF's literal heart and leave an indelible mark on her very being. Also uhh that one post. "I do not understand hookup culture!!! Die in my arms!!!" yeah. Aigis and Kotone for number one love story of all time.

Akimina. Much less canon interaction to go off of with these two but stay with me here. T4T autism4autism. I love Akihiko's earnestness and Minato's bluntness and how they combine to make a relationship that lacks miscommunication while also leaving a lot unsaid because neither is much one for conversation. I like the idea of Akihiko's intense desire to be strong to protect someone playing off of Minato's much more reserved, almost lackadaisical attitude, despite Minato's strength, and I think it would be so interesting to watch them move in opposite directions -- Akihiko learning to cut himself some slack and trust others rather than thinking he has to protect everyone alone, while Minato learns to break out of his shell and actually care about those around him and want to protect them -- while they also, at the same time, are learning almost identical lessons about relying on other people.

Ulamaya. The two girlies of all time. I adore how Ulala's combined jealousy and affection for Maya play off each other and how Ulala is one of the only characters in the game who feels like she's fully seeing Maya as she is -- a human like any other, even if she presents herself as eternally optimistic and strong so that others can lean on her. Their relationship feels so... equal. If that makes sense. Which, as much as I appreciate KatsuMaya, can feel a little lacking in other Maya ships imo, bc it always feels like other characters (ESPECIALLY the masked circle) tend to idolize Maya. And Maya's forgiveness of Ulala's betrayal... what's that one Hozier line... "I'd be the immediate forgiveness in Eurydice." Yeah.

Pegoryu. God I just love how ride-or-die Ryuji is right off the bat. You meet him, have a near-death experience with him, and ten minutes later he's shoveling more food onto your plate insisting that you need to eat more. Even before then, it may be Akira who saves Ryuji from Kamoshida, but it's Ryuji who tackles him away, yells at him to run and save himself, who gives Akira the faith in humanity that the rest of the world had eroded away at that point.

Tie between Saoriham and Kannao. Saori's social link is one of the best parts of Persona 3 straight up, and Kanji and Naoto are just so goddamn cute together.

Honorable mentions: TatsuJun ("I... have nothing to give you in return..."), YukiChie ("Yes, Chie is my prince..."), ShinjiMina ("If the burden of command gets to be too much, just let me know."), KatsuBao ("Idiot... What were you going to do if I pulled the trigger?" "I knew you wouldn't.")

Top 5 Favorite Birds

Orioles!!! I have such fond memories of helping my grandma skewer orange halves and fill jars with grape jelly as a kid to attract the orioles (though I thought they were called oreos for the longest time, lmao)

Robins. We get a ton of them around here and I love seeing them hop around on the sidewalk.

Magpies. Haven't seen one meself but they're such cool birds. If I could have wings I'd want them to be magpie-style.

Crows. Another bird we get a lot of around here, their calls are so Autumncore.

Falcons. They're just cool and I like them. (insert Madge joke here)

[survivoirs]

𝗠𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗗 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗢𝗥𝗗: ​𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑡 & 𝑀𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑜𝑜𝑛

GRANT: Don't you mean extinct? Had been Malcolm's words to Grant's own discussing feeling out of a job. In a way this whole day was pulling his emotions in a handful of directions. The sense of awe at their first sight of a dinosaur, a real, living, breathing dinosaur upon their first arrival on Isla Nublar. The gargantuan Brachiosaurus that their jeeps had driven up on had left Alan speechless for a moment. However the news of a T-Rex being on the island -- now that had brought him to the ground. He'd felt a mixed dizziness for a bit after, his thoughts trying to catch up even with the questions he had for Hammond. On the other hand, as more and more of the wonders of this park was revealed, Alan couldn't help but still think of Malcolm's words and what they meant for him and his field. Hell, he'd based his entire career on the study and excavation of dinosaurs. What use was that path anymore to the world when living, breathing specimens could be walked up on like an elephant on a safari? 

Alan's questions towards Hammond came at many but they were specific, almost methodical as he navigated all this new world that was unfolding before his eyes. However at dinner he'd grown a bit quiet. Quiet that was filled by young Tim seated next to him asking him question after question or bringing up points about his books. Grant would nod along, answer briefly when he was able to get a word in and lift his gaze to meet Ellie's amused eyes across the table from him as she watched Grant navigate the world of curious children as well. 

 Belly full and a can of beer, three quarters full and still chilled in hand, Grant made his way outside after giving Tim the slip slightly. The kid seemed content enough though, giving Ian Malcolm a quizzical look as the man tried to explain what his work entailed. 

"Where are you disappearing to, Dr. Grant?" Ellie's voice came behind him, formality an obvious teasing. 

Grant turned with a simple reply. "Just for a walk."

“Are you going to be okay? Not going to faint on me again, are you?” More teasing from his familiar colleague. 

That earned a small smile from Grant and a slight roll of his eyes. “I did not faint, Ellen.”

“Sure seemed like you were close. Pretty amazing this place of Hammond’s, huh?” 

“Sure is,” Grant agreed, taking his hat off to readjust it as he glanced around. He spotted one of the nearby Jeeps with a man loading up the back in earshot. He recognized him as the Warden that Hammond had introduced them to inside the control room and again at the raptor pen. Grant had very enthusiastically asked the man many questions about the behaviors he’d noted about the terrifying animals. 

 “Hey, Ellie I’ll catch up with you later—going to take that stroll,” said Grant, tapping her forearm before speed walking a bit over to Muldoon. “Uh — Mr. Muldoon? Alan Grant, we met earlier,” he said quickly, realizing he doubted the man had exactly forgotten that, it had just been a handful of hours prior. “Think you could point me in the right direction of somewhere I could take a walk? Don’t want to wander off into an enclosure or something,” he said, fanning himself with his hat for a moment.      

MULDOON: Breaks would be fewer with the evaluation team at the park. As the guests and Hammond ate dinner, Muldoon stood at the operations exit with Arnold earlier that evening, discussing the busy day. 

"They're mulling it over. Since they have the week, I doubt they'll approve of the park overnight." He shrugged, glad he'd been omitted from the VIP room dinner. 

"That's the last thing Hammond wants," Ray shook his head. "You heard him. He's worried Malcolm's already trying to convince them—even the lawyer—his park won't work." 

"Can you blame them? They were brought here to test the park and give suggestions, Ray. We both have our own reservations with it." 

The park game warden himself had grown increasingly alarmist in his time there, even threatened to quit months back over Hammond initially denying his request for weapons. 

Ray lit a cigarette. "We've already got over a hundred bugs. I don't know about you, Robert, but I wanted this week to go as quickly and painlessly as possible, then John invited the kids." The chief engineer and warden ran the park with little over a dozen others, and despite the automation and system touted as state-of-the-art, Robert didn't quite trust it. It was the most complex zoo he'd ever consulted for in his life, and yet the old eccentric 'spared no expense' with the most frivolous choices like adding more carnivores they knew so little about, rather than adequately bolstering the park's security measures and hiring additional support staff.

 * * *After driving a gas jeep out from the back garage, he parked it close to one of the back entrances, then quickly loaded up two tactical black cases of tranquilizer for the next morning.

He wondered if the evaluation team had any idea about that upcoming attractions, like the river tour or coaster. The InGen bastards had to have their other exciting attractions as well, because carnivore paddocks in the vicinity wasn't enough. 

He heard the voice from his side. The paleontologist, Grant. "Dr. Grant," Robert turned around, closing the jeep door, and gave him a nod. His deep blue eyes held a bit less of their usual caution, as he glanced to the man's beer, then his gaze darted beyond the scientist to spy Hammond within, mingling with their guests and a few of the available staff. Malcolm had boisterously made himself the center of attention, and Muldoon guessed he was glibly pointing out the park's failure and something about the folly of science. He spied Dr. Sattler standing nearby, as well as the lawyer, who was always injecting himself into the expert conversations.

"Sure, I was about to go for a stroll myself," he responded casually, relaxing. Grant was genuinely interested in the park from what little they'd conversed earlier, and it was his expert opinions Robert wanted to hear most, along with those of his partner. He glanced to his watch and his lips twitched up. "It's nearly 7. Ah, well you're in for a treat. There's a staircase here that leads up to the back observation deck of the visitor's center. Displays aren't finished, but it's a good view of the island. Follow me up, doctor, let's keep you out of any trouble."

Robert ascended the concrete staircase, leaving room beside him for Grant.  As they reached the balcony level at the back of the visitor's center, he stepped out to the railing and gripped it with both hands. One of the three pointed roofs was behind them, the starry night sky overhead, and a gentle ocean breeze reached to the tops of the balconies. 

"Looks as though you've survived the dinner. Hopefully we'll get a chance to show you the park and some of the dinos and habitats tomorrow." He realized he was musing aloud, rather than trying to converse with the guest. There was damn much on his mind. 

Right on cue, the quartz lights illuminated the island right in the waning twilight, marking roads, gates, enclosures, complexes, and other key points across the island. They were like an anchor throughout the island's numerous and complicated problems, something Robert could always rely coming on every night, and focus on in the moment. Up close, they were another story, too bright for his taste. 

"How are you liking the park?" He waited until he could see specks of light illuminate the farthest reaches of the northern coast, before turning back to Grant.

[misterrogers22]

Episode 28 - Control

Welcome to the Juras-Sick Park-Cast podcast, the Jurassic Park podcast about Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park, and also not about that, too. 

Find the episode webpage at: Episode 28 - Control 

In this episode, my terrific guest Dan Rose joins to us chat with me about:

The story of the velociraptors in the seminal dinosaur film Jurassic Park (1993) by Steven Spielberg, post-production duties, Sinking Ship Entertainment, foley artists, Dennis  Nedry's death scene, dilophosaurus attacks, the specific moment when Jurassic Park goes from fun-loving to Friday the 13th, the Dino Dana Movie, working with dinosaurs, Robert Muldoon, the Big One, the raptors in Jurassic Park, the film raptors v. the book raptors, all the raptor scenes from the movie, a little bit of Girl Power, gender bending velociraptors, and way more! 

Plus dinosaur news about:

A new chasmosaurinae ceratopsid from the upper Cretaceous Farmington member of the Kirtland Formation, New Mexico (Bisticeratops froeseorum)

Gnathovorax cabreirai: a new early dinosaur and the originand initial radiation of predatory dinosaurs (Gnathovorax cabreirai)

Featuring the music of Snale https://snalerock.bandcamp.com/releases

Intro: Grow Old or Don't.  Outro: Centipede.

The Text:

This week’s text is Control, spanning from pages 138 - 143.

Synopsis:

Arnold and  Hammond quarrel over the difficulties the park must overcome to have Jurassic Park ready for its grand opening, because they have all the problems of a major theme park, all the problems of a major zoo, and the added difficulties of caring for animals nobody’s ever observed before. It’s revealed that Dennis Nedry is here to fix the bugs in the system this weekend. On the tour, the guests visit the venomous dilophosaurus

Discussions surround:

Tension, Contrivances in the plot, Timeline, The Dinosaurs, Voice Acting, Park Management, Errors, and the Island's Layout.

Side effects: 

May cause you to have trouble removing venomous sacs from anesthetized dilophosauruses. 

Find it on iTunes, on Spotify (click here!) or on Podbean (click here).

Thank you!

The Jura-Sick Park-cast is a part of the Spring Chickens banner of amateur intellectual properties including the Spring Chickens funny pages, Tomb of the Undead graphic novel, the Second Lapse graphic novelettes, The Infantry, and the worst of it all, the King St. Capers.

You can find links to all that baggage in the show notes, or by visiting the schickens.blogpost.com or finding us on Facebook, at Facebook.com/SpringChickenCapers or me, I’m on twitter at @RogersRyan22 or email me at ryansrogers-at-gmail.com. 

Thank you, dearly, for tuning in to the Juras-Sick Park-Cast, the Jurassic Park podcast where we talk about the novel Jurassic Park, and also not that, too. Until next time! 

#JurassicPark #MichaelCrichton

[dodofour]

This was an OC question prompt I filled out for fun in the discord

01. Oldest OC: My oldest OC is a black wolf named Galar. She has purple boot markings and usually stained with blood. She was actually a side character to a larger story that has long since been scrapped.

02. Newest OC: My newest oc is an unnamed witch from a story I have about magic, fantastical creatures and the scientific world coexisting in one place.

03. Favorite OC: My favorite original character answer at some point easily would have been either Sharu or Lamis, with Fifi coming close behind, but at any given moment I usually have one or two ocs I'm particularly infatuated with and couldn't be for sure.

04. Favorite OC Design: My favorite design I've done that I still own is Scarlet, a "foxpixie"(original species). His design is simple and pleasing to me without being unnatural.

05. Main Reason For Making OCs: Self expression, connecting with others by creating characters that harbor relatable aspects of myself, and just the challenge of it.

06. Character Creation Process: World > Vague Archetype > Vague Appearance > Refining Character Traits > Refining Appearance > Complete Character

07. Do You Ship Your OCs W/ Someone Else's: Romantically, not at the moment, but I wouldn't be opposed to it if I thought the characters would make a good match beyond just their aesthetics

08. Fav OC Ship?: Sharu x Chotsea favorite. Runnerups Taka x Scarlet, and Dusty x Fifi though those two make the best friends already.

09. Weirdest OC: Currently I believe Adek would have to be weirdest. They're a nervous wreck who just as easily switches and finds unwavering confidence as they take different forms while shapeshifting.

10. Villain OCs: Pelona the plant. He is redeemable to a point but his self hatred governs all his actions and he commits terrible acts against those around him in order to isolate himself. Then he turns into an uncontrollable mass of hatred. So yeah, him.

11. Would You Consider Yourself Nice To Your OCs: My older ones, yes. My newer ones, not so much. They go through much more pain.

12. An OC You've Killed (If You Haven't Killed Anyone, Who Would You Kill?): Pelona dies at the end of their story and comes back as a sad, small plant with no semblance of consciousness so I guess that counts. I have multiple alternate endings to Scarlet's story, where the character Muldoon can die in one of them, his loyal knight Ettore along with him.

13. Are Any Of Your OCs Parents: Yes, a few of my cantin OCs are parents (Ixias, Nelif and Paraiba). Sharu and Chotsea were once going to be parents but I undid that.

14. Are There Any OCs You Find Yourself Neglecting: Absolutely. I have neglected all the humanoid OCs in my "solarwitch" world for years. I also neglect most of my OCs made from 2014-2018. I still love them though.

15. An OC That's Difficult To Write/Draw/RP: Dorothy the skunk/cow hybrid has been unnaturally difficult for me to write any backstory for, let alone draw. I don't RP.

16. Tallest And Shortest OCs: Going by relative height to other developed (fully grown) characters in their worlds; CG, Yuuma. Fairy Queen, Periwinkle. As for OCs with no specific universe, Chotsea or Under might be the tallest, Fudgey is the smallest.

17. Oldest and Youngest OCS: Tellstruths and an unnamed dragonfly are ancient in age, while Clauze is the youngest developed OC I have. All are from the Redgrass world

18. Do You Dislike Any Of Your OCs: Dolores is an OC I made my sona as a joke as he is very unlike me. He's high strung and doesn't get along with my other sonas. Therefore he is the closest to disliked, though even then I can't really dislike any of my characters since I made them.

19. Have You Ever Made A Self Insert: I assume this is referring specifically to making a fancharacter for a piece of media that is supposed to represent myself if I were in said world. None come to mind.

20. An OC Regret: I don't give enough love to my OCs and that is regrettable. A design I regret making maybe? I don't have one...

21. An OC You Didn't Expect To Be Popular: Speagle. I knew kidcore stuff was popular but I didn't think people would like him enough to be downloading his pics to put in moodboards and adding him to their kin tags. As for a more recent example, Marbol was more well received than I thought he would be for a little green gremlin thing, so that was nice.

22. An OC You Didn't Expect To Love: I expect to love any OC I design to keep, but Adek in particular was just so silly to begin with I didn't think I'd be so attached to him. His name literally used to be obscenities bc of how much of a joke he was. He's stupid and a scaredy cat and I have a special soft spot for him now.

[bi-demon-ium]

ok umm i've really not seen any kate stuff? anywhere? so i'd like to hear your thoughts on kate (preferably angst) please!! you are awesome btw <3

ok i don't actually know if you are intending to talk about book!kate or show!kate but i will be mostly if not completely discussing show!kate rip if that was not what you meant but i've seen the show a lot more recently

OKAY. so. i'll start small with some headcanons:

kate is soooo autistic. and adhd. audhd my beloved. yes i say this about pretty much every character i like but with kate it's PARTICULARLY true. (i believe i said in the mbs server the book!kate feels like she has adhd with a side of autism while show!kate feels like she had autism with a side of adhd and i stand by that. but it's vibes based not like, literal.)

but like she can have trouble expressing her feelings, even to herself. she'll either be unable to hide her reactions/expressions, or she'll barely have one at all, and seem unbothered. she's also very blunt and unafraid to state her opinion to anyone, even if it seems "rude". but she isn't rude, really, as it's not that kind of "blunt truth" some assholes like to parade about when they're really just being dicks to everyone. she's still kind, she only says something negative if someone has done something negative (ie, "you are very unpleasant" to someone actively antagonizing everyone in the room is on the table, but just randomly insulting someone for the sake of "blunt honesty" is not. she's never like, mean.)

also shes GAYYYY. or possibly bi, i don't have an opinion on that. on one hand lesbian energy on the other i could definitely see bi bi bi. but if you don't think her and martina got something on i don't know what to tell you. that being said i could also see her as a-spec, but not necessarily in a way that conflicts with Whatever's Going On With Martina. (to be fair, hpwever, one could argue martina was more into kate than vice versa, i could see an argument for aro kate for sure)

green beanie is comfort beanie. she very rarely takes it off. where do you think she got it? angsty answer is somehow it's from her dad, but realistically she probably got it later in life. (doesn't mean she didn't choose it for similar reasons, though... not knowing why she was drawn to the green hat, not remembering it's the same shade as one her father wore....)

also the bucket. i do wonder when she got the bucket. this one, while again a milligan-related reason would be super fucked up (in the fun sad way), i feel like. i feel like it's more that as a kid she felt like she needed to be Prepared. maybe something happened where she wasn't, or maybe she just felt like she wanted to be ready, just in case, all the time. but like. her getting a bucket, modifying it herself, experimenting with different ways to put it on her belt, the inventory changing over the years as some things were discarded or added over time... idk i just think. kate developing her bucket

kate & constance was so good and i want to see more of their friendship. so bad. each realizing the other isn't so bad bc they're forced to work together... chefs kiss. also, the only person other than mr benedict we really see constance actually seem to openly like in some capacity.

kate & sticky underrated. their talk before the cheating was such a good scene. i also want more of this dynamic

i should also mention kate & reynie, which i do genuinely like--the hug is sweet--but i admit is my maybe least favorite of the society dynamics with kate. although i do enjoy the contrast between kate "IM GONNA GO CLIMB THAT TOWER" wetherall and reynie "please why am i the only voice of reason holding this group together" muldoon

i've only explored it in that one fic but i actually think kate & mr benedict would be such a good dynamic, especially because in the show it's inexplicably established he's into engineering. LET THEM BOND OVER BUILDING WEIRD SHIT PLEASE

okay to get a little more into specifics methinks,

i just think a lot about kate like. immediately after season one, and--we'll just. we'll ignore season 2 for now, let's set this in my current anomalous idea of them all in season one (which, rip wetherall farm, but is currently number two & rhonda off at the airshows with mr benedict, constance, milligan, and kate in the house) so like just.

you've been alone your entire life. you've been independent, and you've grown up thinking that the only person you ever had just left you one day for no reason, and in doing so broke a direct promise. and then now, you not only have friends who've you learned to rely on and not just try and do everything yourself, but suddenly you have reliable adults. and more importantly, more specifically, your dad, who never left you but had been taken. had been erased, and even brainswept had never truly stopped looking.

and kate isn't stupid. she heard his story. she knows he must have been through Some Shit. and that he'd have come back if he could. but there's still that pain, that ache, of how long he was missing, for like, more than three quarters of her life! he vanished when she was 3! but now it's like. oh. he did want me. he was taken. he was taken.

so that's an almost identity altering shift in her worldview. and on top of that, her current world is now so completely different: rather than independence and circus life, she's got friends her age who genuinely like her, who she's bonded with through major adversity, and she has adults who actually listen to her and like her. and she has her dad.

and it grates sometimes--she's independent, she doesn't need to be treated like a baby! but also it's like. it's bizarre, because they care, but they don't condescend to her, they do understand she's intelligent and capable even if they want to protect her. and she's never really had adults like that before. not since she was three

so it's a weird mix of like being sort of happy/pleased, because they care, she can rely on them, and being kind of annoyed/frustrated because while she's learned she doesn't need to be entirely independent she still struggles with it. because she's kate wetherall, and she's always prepared, and she feels like she has to be prepared for what will happen if they leave if they're taken from her. she can't rely on them completely, can she? what happens when she loses them again?

and then the mix feelings of old long-buried resentment/anger under buried sadness/loneliness under a crisp crust of i'm perfectly fine, mixed with the new feelings of anger on his behalf, at curtain, sadness at the missing time, at how close he'd been for all these years without either of them knowing it, sadness for him, for herself. but like all of it is still like. under her trying to pretend like she's fine. (and her difficulty expressing emotions, even to herself, does Not Help.)

not to mention as much as genuinely loved the mission in some ways--her new friends (including martina), the adventure, helping people, her bucket coming crazy in handy, etc.--it wasn't exactly a cake walk.

she has nightmares, sometimes: about martina's face when she walked into the waiting room. about sticky's face when he walked out of it. about falling and falling and falling except there aren't warm, safe arms to catch her. about the nodes attached to her face and the long, metallic spires pointed at her, ready to wipe her like her father had been wiped. about her father leaving and never coming home, never being found. about being caught. about losing her friends. about curtain. about all of it.

but she doesn't want to share it because one, she doesn't want them to feel guilty: she did what she had to, and she doesn't regret it. two, and more importantly, she doesn't want them to not let her come on the next mission. (kate had already kind of had the idea that they would have another--they were a team! teams didn't just split up!--but now she's sure of it. curtain's still out there, after all, and he didn't seem the type to just give up.)

i think maybe constance might bully her into talking about it--we already know she can feel dreams (with her comment about sticky dreaming about steak and sticky asking her how she knew that) and as they're on a more even ground she'd be more likely to actually say something. but constance would poke at her about it and probably get her irritated in the process.

(also possible, she talks to mr benedict about this, bc again im a sucker for their dynamic + part of the problem is not wanting to hurt milligan's feelings, and one thing i like about this is i think mr benedict would be extremely kind and understanding about it, and really help like, gently guide her through it, and she'd be like wow adults have never actually helped me before, wild, and then the second she leaves he's like [collapsing into a mess] oh god. oh god. because on one hand he just desperately hopes that helped, and on the other hand, he's having a million crises. oh god. he put actual kids in danger. she's so small number two. number two she's so fucking small and she's having nightmares and it's my brother that took her dad and ohmygodohmygodohmygod. like literally it's like he goes from "kalm" to "PANIK" the second shes out of range. like the dissonance between mr benedict (around the kids, a calm and kindly mentor who seems to know what he's doing for the most part) and nicholas (0.0003 seconds from a panic attack rn, full to the brim with anxiety and guilt) is. hilarious, in a sad way. but i digress, mr benedict tangent over, sorry)

ANYWAY also kate and milligan. like. getting to know him again, and vice versa. this is personally painful for me. like so many years, this disconnect between them hurts, but like. it starts with that hug, with her letting herself lean into his side, letting him put an arm around her shoulders, and he's like. in tears a bit. and like. then over time just. trying to tell each other about their lives--particularly kate recounting her adventures--and marveling a bit at how similar they are in many ways. milligan slowly getting memories back and remembering her as a little girl and seeing her now, all grown up but so small and hurt still, and like. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

i also have so many thoughts head full on them & mr benedict, and also throwing in constance and everyone really, but that's too many and this is already long and i dont even know how to put it to words so i'll refrain for now. anyway my point is: kate wetherall. hug her please

[rpmemesbyarat]

I said at the end of THIS rant that I’d talk later about how all the heroes in the examples I gave had friends, and now I’m going to: If you give your protagonists a secondary cast, they have to matter. You don’t HAVE to give your protag any allies or friends, doing a “one person against it all” story is a totally valid route. But if you DO give them allies and friends, those people need to actually do something, not just be props that watch the protag do everything on their own. They don’t necessarily need to be as skilled or special as the protag. After all, being skilled and special is usually WHY the protagonist is, well, the protagonist (though that doesn’t have to be the case either, and I’d in fact like to see more stories where it’s NOT, but that’s besides the point) But that doesn’t mean that other characters can’t contribute to the story. For instance, in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” the titular Buffy is (at first anyway) the only one with any kind of enhanced abilities, and the only one who can contend with the supernatural head-on. But Willow, Xander, Giles, and later secondary characters all still are able to pitch in and move the story along in various ways, and all of them also have personalities and lives that get spotlighted. You couldn’t take away any of the gang and still have the same story, and I think that’s a good test for if your secondary characters matter enough. This doesn’t mean they all need awesome abilities or mad skills, just that they do SOMETHING that makes them a part of the story; even someone who is always causing fuckups or getting kidnapped is still technically moving the plot along by leading the other heroes into conflict (though this sort of character tends to GREATLY irritate audiences, so giving them some sort of purpose for the other characters to benefit from having them around is recommended) In fact, I’d go so far as to say that EVERY character in a work should matter in some capacity, however small. Yes, including the “protagonist vs the world” stories. Even very brief interactions with a no-name character, like a mailman or a diner waitress, can tell you SOMETHING that serves some kind of narrative purpose---how the world views/treats the character, and how they respond in kind, for instance. Let’s take the kid in Jurassic Park. Not Lex or Tim, but that kid at the beginning in THIS SCENE. This interaction fulfills MULTIPLE purposes: - The kid says what a lot of audiences might be thinking, that “dinos = birds” makes them way less scary. And Grant answers this by explaining just how damn scary these big birds actually were. - He speaks specifically about velociraptors, which end up being the most fearsome and dangerous and, alongside the T-Rex, iconic dinosaurs in the movie. He sets us up to fear them before they’re even revealed as an exhibit. - The scene he describes also foreshadows/describes the future death of Muldoon, who does indeed get killed by a raptor from the side that he doesn’t even know was there. - It establishes Grant’s distaste for kids, which is a major aspect of his character arc as he learns to protect and care for Lex and Tim. This is is his first interaction with a child onscreen, and one of his earliest moments. Contrast it with his final shot in the movie is in the helicopter with a sleeping child clutched to either side of him. He tells Ellie after this scene he doesn’t like kids, but the fact we’re SHOWN it first does so much more, while also accomplishing multiple other purposes as described. - It shows Grant’s passion and respect for the subject of dinosaurs, and his irritation when dinosaurs aren’t treated with the respect he feels is due to them, which as we know also becomes a source of contention later in the movie with live dinosaurs. - It gives him an opportunity to pull out the raptor claw. Besides foreshadowing the deadly claws of the actual raptors later, showing the claw now lets us know he has it and carries it (showing, again, his respect and passion for this subject) so that we recognize it when he throws it away later in the film. If he’d just pulled it out randomly and we’d never seen it before yet, it would be confusing. This kid is on-screen for less than two minutes. He doesn’t have a name, or a backstory, or an arc, nor does he need one, and, yes, technically you could have absolutely had the same story without him. But he’s INVALUABLE for telling you a ton about Grant in the beginning through showing rather than telling, and for setting up Grant’s character arc. That’s what I mean when I say every character should matter. They don’t all need fully fleshed out arcs, there’s not reasonably time for that, nor should they have them if it’s not relevant to the story, but they do need a purpose for being there. And, as this scene shows, you can cram a LOT of purpose into a small interaction if you’re good at it.

[isfjmel-phleg]

Tagged by @valiantarcher and @scarvenartist to list my top ten favorite male characters. Thank you!

A small selection of many (including ones from the same book/series as one unit because I can’t separate them), in no order whatsoever with a scandalous lack of the requisite LOTR man :P

Rupert Psmith (series of the same name)

Lord Peter Wimsey (series of the same name)

R. D. Sheen (The White Feather)

Howl Jenkins (Howl’s Moving Castle)

Christopher Chant (The Chrestomanci series)

Reynie Muldoon, Sticky Washington, and Nicholas Benedict (The Mysterious Benedict Society books specifically)

Brendon and Hugh Tenthragon (Tenthragon)

Henry Tilney (Northanger Abbey)

Kiro Velkhirin (An Illusion of Wings)

Logan Sweet, Miles O’Leary, and Philip Ransford (The Candymakers)

[duncandriver]

Little lambs, dragonflies and interpretive fallacies.

‘McCartney ... has at least a partial regard for what the French philosopher Roland Barthes described as the “death of the author”, the idea by which the act of reading necessarily involves a degree of writing, or even rewriting, the text. In his case, the song becomes what it might most truly be only when it is heard and heralded.’

- Paul Muldoon, ‘Ken Dodd, Stockhausen and Psycho: Unlocking Paul McCartney’s Musical Genius’, The Guardian, 30 October, 2021

Paul McCartney has told two different stories about the inspiration for ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’, and both are specific to the first (‘Little Lamb’) section of the song. In a 1974 interview, he recalled the song’s genesis in an emotional vigil held for a lamb that lay dying on his Scottish farm in 1970: ‘It was early in the morning and I had brought my guitar and I thought I couldn’t have done nothing for this lamb [sic], so I started singing “I have no answer for you little lamb”.’ Nearly 40 years later, McCartney would tell Tom Doyle that the song was inspired by the process of helping a neighbouring farmer by nursing his near-frozen lamb back to health: ‘He knew we were soft-hearted. He wasn’t sure it was gonna survive, so we took it in and warmed it up and fed it and it did survive.’ 

Which of these two stories represents the authentic inspiration for the song? Did the lamb die or live? Sadly, the safe bet may be laid on the former tale: it was recounted four years after the event (as opposed to 43) and it refers to a specific lyric from the song in question (one which sounds more like a plaintive elegy for a dying creature than a celebratory ode to the McCartneys’ nurturing powers). There are lyrical details in the song that don’t match those of the second story, either: if McCartney ‘took [the lamb] in and warmed it up and fed it’, why would he go on to lament in song that he ‘cannot help [the creature] in?’ I don’t suspect McCartney of telling fibs to Tom Doyle: the amount of time, energy and love his family have devoted to lambs over the years encourages the belief that both stories are based on truth but that an older McCartney misremembered which of them inspired him to write ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’. 

I don’t draw attention to the discrepancy between two versions of the song’s origin to impugn McCartney’s powers of memory or to discredit him as an authority in analyses of his work; my aim is to demonstrate that an artist’s stated intentions for their work do not always determine the meaning(s) that may be gleaned from it. This is more apparent when an artist changes their mind about what a work ‘means’ or, in the case of ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’, when an artist tells conflicting stories about a work’s genesis. 

In 1954, W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley introduced the concept of the ‘intentional fallacy’ into literary criticism in order to guard against what they saw as an interpretive error: the assumption that the questions raised by art could be definitively answered by the artist. They recognised five problems associated with this assumption which are too theoretically dense to be fully unpacked here, but which may be summarised and applied to ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ as an illustrative example. 

From one perspective, McCartney’s intention in composing ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ was simply to write a song, and it is only the fact that he succeeded in this primary aim that a secondary and speculative interest in the song’s potential inspiration(s) develops. From another perspective, a critical appreciation of ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ is no different to a critical appreciation of a cheese soufflé or a reverse-cycle air conditioner: your focus should be on the qualities of the thing itself - does it work? Is it good? Whether ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ was inspired by a lamb’s death or not doesn’t change a note. From yet another perspective, while ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ may express something about McCartney’s personality or biography, the song is also constructed according to a set of pre-existing musical conventions (its key shifts from D Major to C Major and then E Major, for example), which means that the song’s qualities, good or bad, exist at a remove from their composer. The ‘I’ referred to in the song (‘I have no answer for you, little lamb’) takes on a dramatic aspect with this in mind - it may or may not be the same ‘I’ who composed the song. 

Wimsatt and Beardsley write that ‘[A] poem is not the critic's own and not the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public.’ We could apply this logic to ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ and argue that once the song was released to record buyers its potential meanings were open to anyone who could make a convincing argument for what they heard. If I said that ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ was about the marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, you’d be right to discredit my theory as historically impossible, but that doesn’t mean that only one interpretation of the song is ‘correct’, it means there’s differing subjective degrees to which interpretations are meaningful. I don’t know about you, but I find that exciting: the song’s relevance becomes universal and you get a degree of ownership over your interpretation of it, whatever MPL might have to say about its copyright. 

Once you realise that meaning is a fluid and dynamic thing, it can be fun to open the door to a range of possibilities and let ‘em in. This needn’t imply that you’re making a claim for the primacy of one subjective ‘opinion’ over others; better to think of it as entertaining different notions, trying them on for size. Well before the term ‘intentional fallacy’ had been coined, Oscar Wilde was encouraging this kind of thing as a distinguishing feature of what he called ‘the Oxford temper … play[ing] gracefully with ideas,’ as an antidote to the more extreme and limiting ‘violence of opinion merely.’ 

One of the most popular ideas associated with ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ is that it projects aspects of the Beatles’ break-up onto the fictional relationship its singer has with non-human creatures, reflecting some of McCartney’s ongoing concerns with his ex-bandmates. The case for this is usually made with reference to the second (‘Dragonfly’) half of the song, the inspiration for which McCartney has been conspicuously silent about. ‘Since you’ve gone I never know / I go on, but I miss you so … Don’t keep me waiting’ are oddly intense sentiments to feel for a dragonfly; they may, however, represent their composer’s longing for the presence of his old songwriting partner. The question ‘How did two rights make a wrong?’ could acknowledge the equal-but-opposite directions dividing Lennon and McCartney over 1969 and 1970 while also recognising that a refusal to compromise would keep them estranged. Perhaps lines like ‘You and I still have a way to go’ and ‘You and I can find a way to see’ offer hope for reunion - we may not have found the way forward yet, but there must be one; our story isn’t over yet. 

When you entertain this possibility for long enough you eventually want to ask why an anthropomorphised dragonfly has taken the place of John Lennon. Perhaps a real encounter with a dragonfly allowed McCartney to unburden himself of feelings he had toward Lennon or things he wanted to say to him but couldn’t bring himself to; perhaps McCartney himself didn’t realise this. If so, all the more reason to resist the ‘intentional fallacy’ when searching for meaning in the song. As with ‘Yesterday’, the personal circumstances of the composer’s life may have permeated the song’s atmosphere, independent of his conscious intentions. In a roundabout way, a dragonfly might be a rather apposite lyrical rendering of Lennon’s persona - there’s an exotic, restless and mercurial quality to both, and it’s a short syntactical jump from ‘dragonfly’ to ‘gadfly’ (someone who annoys you in such a way that you’re stimulated to action), a role that Lennon and McCartney certainly filled in each others’ lives. 

If the ‘Dragonfly’ section of the song is about the Lennon-McCartney relationship, how does the ‘Little Lamb’ section figure in this reading? Is that also about Lennon? It’s harder to make the argument convincingly: there’s little evidence that McCartney considered Lennon to be a helpless innocent in need of his protection, still less an indication that McCartney was inclined to provide it in 1970. I’m sure that McCartney recognised Lennon’s insecurities, but there’s none of Lennon’s jealousy, paranoia and manoeuvring present in the song’s lamb. Perhaps McCartney saw himself as the lamb left out in the cold by Lennon’s refusal to allow him ‘in’ any longer, though I’m unconvinced that a twenty-eight-year-old McCartney considered himself that helpless or vulnerable; in his contemporaneous songs, at least, he strikes a defiant attitude, drawing strength from within his family circle to push purposefully forward - a headstrong ram more than its tremulous infant.

No, if the ‘Little Lamb’ of the song is representative of any of the Beatles, it’s more likely to be the second-tier figures of Harrison and/or Starr, band-members who took a more passive (or passive-aggressive) role in the break-up and whose future seemed less assured (at least until the phenomenal success of All Things Must Pass). Until the end, McCartney would speak of Harrison as his ‘baby brother’, a description that some might find condescending but which also carried a measure of care and responsibility. This better-suits the cruel-but-kind way the singer draws boundaries: ‘I can help you out, but I cannot help you in.’ Such a reading of the song is open to the charge of speculation, but there’s nothing so very dreadful about speculating - it’s a way of playing gracefully with ideas. 

As potentially revealing (and enjoyable) as such biographical readings are, perhaps there are reasons for being a little wary of them too. One can have too much of a good thing. The same critics who warned us of the dangers of the ‘intentional fallacy’ also did the same for the closely-related ‘biographical fallacy’, which may be understood as ‘the unqualified conviction that one can read the author’s life from the work and vice versa ... the business of wrenching passages out of context as evidence of the artist’s personal beliefs usually reveals more about the critic than about the artist.’ This is certainly true of Shakespeare studies, in which the Elizabethan playwright has become conveniently homosexual in queer theory and suitably nihilist in atheist readings. In more general terms, the danger of the biographical fallacy is that its emphasis on art as an extension of the artist neglects the powers of the imagination and the aesthetic conventions of form and genre. Perhaps this anecdote can illustrate the danger in a way that anchors abstract theory in creative practice:

A few years ago on Radio 4’s Front Row, Mark Lawson conducted a memorable interview with the author Sid Smith, who had won … [an] award for his book Something Like a House. Set in China during the Cultural Revolution, the novel was widely praised for its evocation of peasant life … Lawson, impressed by Smith’s depiction, asked if he spoke fluent Mandarin. Smith said no, he didn’t speak Chinese. Lawson asked if he had worked in China. No, he hadn’t. At this point Lawson became agitated. ‘But you’ve been to China,’ he said. There was a short pause, followed by Smith’s calm assertion that no, actually, he had never been to China … [Lawson] found China in the London Library, and from films, newspapers and the internet.

We need to be wary of assuming that all creativity is encoded memoir; Paul McCartney is quite capable of singing about something that doesn’t come directly from his personal experience - indeed, his imagination can do a lot of heavy lifting (think of character studies like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Another Day’). 

If you’re trying to steer clear of both the intentional fallacy and the biographical fallacy, how are you supposed to interpret a song like ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’? I think the answer lies in some of what literary theory sketches above - you pay attention to the powers of the imagination and you look to the conventions of form and genre for how the song works. A good rule of thumb is to compare the song to other songs and other works of art. You may not have to look very far. A comparison to ‘Three Legs’ (another McCartney song written at roughly the same time) reveals an intriguing connection in the way flies and flying are musically depicted. Both songs emphasise the brevity of the singer’s encounter with the nimble creature (‘Fly flies in, fly flies out’; ‘Dragonfly, fly by my window’) and both draw inspiration from flight to express a sense of boundless freedom. In ‘Three Legs’, this is achieved in the unconstrained ‘When I fly above the clouds’ section of the song; in ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’, it is the bridge connecting the song’s two halves that mimics flight in the pure joy of sound (‘La, la la la, la la la’). 

If we’re looking outside of the McCartney canon, perhaps a valuable comparison can be made to two of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). These works are generally conceived as lyric poems, but we know that Blake set them to music (as others have done) as well as depicting them visually in his illuminated manuscripts. With this in mind, it’s worth remembering that ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ was, at one time, intended for an animated film adaptation of Mary Tourtel’s Rupert Bear character, to which MPL obtained the rights in 1970. Both Blake’s and McCartney’s songs, then, were partially intended for a younger audience, despite subtle qualities appealing to the adult listener. Both are also multimodal works combining visual, musical and textual elements. 

Here is Blake’s song, ‘The Fly’ (from the Experience section of his book):

Little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away.

Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me?

For I dance And drink & sing: Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life And strength & breath: And the want Of thought is death;

Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

The singer of both Blake’s and McCartney’s songs identifies with a non-human other (a fly/dragonfly), and both use their encounter with the creature as a spur for some rather intense soul searching. There’s an extent to which neither singer raises their respective fly up to the level of human consciousness so much as they reduce themselves to ‘fly’ status: an incomprehension of situations that aren’t fully understood and over which the singer has little control emerges from both songs. There’s also an illogical or troubling quality to both that makes it hard to reconcile all their elements: in the case of Blake’s song, you’re left with the feeling that being a fly isn’t a good thing at all, despite the singer’s strained claim to happiness; in McCartney’s song, you wonder just what it is the singer wants from the dragonfly - he complains of the creature ‘hang[ing] around [his] door’ yet still appears to yearn for its presence (‘... fly by my window … come on home’). Make up your mind, McCartney. 

If we turn to ‘The Lamb’, one of Blake’s most celebrated songs of innocence, a more direct and revealing comparison might be achieved. It’s entirely possible that the education McCartney received at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys exposed him to the song, lodging the phrase ‘little lamb’ in his memory for later use (it’s commonly taught, and Alan ‘Dusty’ Durband’s A Level English Literature classes aren’t likely to have been the exception):

Little Lamb who made thee?      Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing wooly bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice:      Little Lamb who made thee?      Dost thou know who made thee?

     Little Lamb I'll tell thee,      Little Lamb I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb: He is meek and he is mild, He became a little child: I a child and thou a lamb, We are called by his name:      Little Lamb God bless thee.      Little Lamb God bless thee.

There are obvious differences between Blake’s and McCartney’s songs (Blake’s singer is a preternaturally wise child where McCartney’s appears to be an adult), though their shared use of the alliterative phrase ‘little lamb’ is striking enough to invite comparison. Both singers’ encounters with their respective lambs unlock their capacity for empathy, and both contain a deceptively complex spiritualism. Blake’s song appears childishly simple until you realise the double meaning of the final, repeated line: ‘Little Lamb, God bless thee / Little Lamb-God, bless thee.’ It’s just the kind of play on words that appeals to McCartney’s lyricism (‘This one / The swan’). In his song, the experience of suffering appears to unite the singer with the lamb, hinting at the same pantheism present in RAM’s ‘Heart of the country … where the holy people grow.’ It would be a stretch to call these songs of Christian faith, but they certainly borrow the iconography of Christianity for the sake of a little spiritual weight. Blake is more overt in his lamb-singer-God identity confusion, but he’s doing a version of the same thing: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

With both comparisons to William Blake in mind (Dragonfly and Lamb), perhaps this ramble can end by circling back to where it began: McCartney’s two different stories about the inspiration for ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’. Although both his anecdotes refer only to the shorter ‘Little Lamb’ section of the song, it may be appropriate for a song of two distinct halves to point in two different directions, towards both life and death. There’s something of this same division in Blake’s songs more generally, where those grouped together under the rubric of innocence exemplify the ‘soft-hearted’ care bestowed upon lambs by the McCartney family, while those demonstrating experience are plagued by similar doubts, difficulties and disappointments to those within McCartney’s 1974 story about the lamb’s death. 

Songs that combine musical fragments in the complementing-contrasting way of ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ have a tendency to resist a single definitive interpretation. With this in mind, I must admit to feeling rather like the singer of the ‘Little Lamb’ section in that I, too, have no answer for you. My intention, though, has been to ‘help you out’ by sketching the ways in which the frames of literary criticism reveal the richness and complexity of one of McCartney’s most affecting (though sometimes overlooked) songs. 

[livesdngrsly]

Do I try to keep this blog ‘relevant’ and reference the new movie (when some of the developments disturbed me), and maybe open it up a bit more for JW chars/etc with later verses? Idk. Will it matter? Doubt it! But I’m going to try.

Ideas under the cut/Muldoon’s JW era/JWD verse.

Bob, God bless him, didn’t make it to the 2000s, so anything in that era with him is a bit strange to me.

What’s a natural progression of Rob as I write him surviving JP and living into the 2000s? Read on.

Masrani couldn’t buy him for World, despite him working for TigerWorld in the past (he didn’t return there either). He’d oppose military use of dinosaurs, very specifically raptors of any kind, and all of those ridiculous projects. He opposed World. He’d side eye anyone saying they train raptors.

Ultimately...Rob went back to Africa. I don’t think events would have played out the same in all of the films if Rob lived..sorry.

With the bankruptcy of InGe.n/Hammond’s death, he got Animal King.dom in John’s will (I really do HC Rob was that close to John, despite all their estrangement in later years). It might sound like a stretch but Rob helped open Anima.l Kingdom...and John knew it wouldn’t have happened without the help of a young game warden back in 1969.

Masrani would have tried buying out Rob and getting AK (with plans to possibly add prehistoric animals - I’m talking cloned mammals which the company was apparently working on). Rob did not, and instead gave it over to the KWS/Ken.yan government, where it was combined with Nai.robi National Park. For some years, he was head warden there.

With Fal.len King.dom’s developments/Dominion he became senior warden of the country’s new Exotic Wildlife Service under the KWS, that’s nothing unbelievable, as everyone would know who he is there, and he never hid the truth about the dinos if he survived.

I considered him being a part of the one in the films, Dept of Prehistoric Wildlife, but they frankly seem too much like a government stooge outfit with a lot of paperwork, and my Rob doesn’t trust that type of thing - is it global, is it yank? Who knows. Doesn’t really see eye to eye with them either.

He did vote they should all be destroyed and still thinks that. Unfortunately he’s tied to the damn dinos for the rest of his life, and he was involved in their return. He’s obligated to help and since they aren’t going anywhere, they’re his problem.

Of course the DPW would check in with him & the EWS of Kenya, but the big deal in Af.rica is...Dinos are going to really tax the ecosystem and poaching is already a massive problem. Dinosaurs would not simply integrate without a care, they’re vastly different creatures and they’d be competing for the same food. We’re not even discussing the human crisis. Therefore DPW and EWS do not always see eye to eye, because the EWS is going to take into account the sustainability and management needed for the changes in the bio-diversity.

Senior citizen Rob has more credentials and done some writing in his snr yrs, as well as lectured and trained locals involved with conservation and local wildlife. KWS and (and everything preceding it) have been part of his life, he’d finish out a stint with the local service to try making sense of the literal nightmare thrust on conservationists in Afr.ica and train the younger generation to take over.

[ If Tem.bo’s also still around, he’d love to wrangle some dinos w/ Rob (Ajay and George would as well). They’d be buddies by now, and their shared experiences with the islands in the 90s (and InGxn being a piece of shit) would bring them together. ]