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ilynpilled · 8 months

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GRRM on morality, heroism, villainy, and parallax in ASOIAF:

Time magazine wrote of you, “What really distinguishes Martin and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a struggle between good and evil.” Do you agree?

I think the struggle between good and evil is central to fantasy and, indeed, in some ways, central to most fiction. It's certainly a worthy subject for fiction. But I regard the struggle between good and evil as being waged within the individual human heart. […] You know, the greatest monsters of history, as we look back on them, thought they were the heroes of the story. You know, the villain is the hero of the other side, as sometimes said. That doesn't mean that it's all morally relative. That doesn't mean that all things are equally good and evil. I think there is good and there is evil in the world. But you know, it's sometimes a struggle to tell one from the other and to make the right choices. I've always been attracted to great characters, maybe because that's what I see when I look around the real world, whether I read about it in history books or the news or just people I meet. I mean, all of us have it within ourselves to be heroes. All of us have it within ourselves to be villains. We've all done good things in our lives, and most of us have also done selfish things, cowardly things, things that we're ashamed of in later years. And to my mind, that's, I don't know, the glory of the human race. We're such wonderfully contradictory, mixed-up creatures that we're endlessly fascinating to write about and read about.

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In your work, you have essentially captured Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of polyphonic fiction, where the characters are equal, and the reader can root for any of them. This has been impossible to convey on the TV series.

I wouldn't say all the characters are equal, but they have (hopefully) human traits, especially the viewpoint characters. I have seven viewpoint characters in the first book, and each book has a few more. So, by now, we're probably up to 12 or 13 viewpoint characters, and those are the ones where I go actually inside their skin, so you're seeing the world through their eyes. You're hearing their thoughts. You're feeling their emotions. And I try to paint over those viewpoint characters, and some of them are noble and just, and some of them are kind of selfish, and some of them are very intelligent, and some of them are less intelligent and even stupid. But they're all human, and I want to portray their humanity. […] I think the battle between good and evil is fought all over the world, every day, in the individual human heart, as we all struggle with the choices that define us and define our lives. And we have to choose what we are going to do, and sometimes the choice is not easy; it's not this absolute juxtaposition of the good guys and the bad guys. And I wanted to get to that with my characters, and show some of the difficulties that they face.

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Another element I liked about the series was the moral relativism of many of the characters. Too many Fantasies rely on the shorthand of truly evil villains in the absolute moral sense, but your characters, while they might commit terrible acts, generally do so either from short-sighted self-interest or because they truly believe they are acting for the best. Was this a deliberate decision, or is it just more interesting to write this way?

Both. I have always found grey characters more interesting than those who are pure black and white. I have no qualms with the way that Tolkien handled Sauron, but in some ways The Lord of the Rings set an unfortunate example for the writers who were to follow. […] Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that's not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.

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Do you purposely start a character as bad so you can later kill them?

No. What is bad? Bad is a label. We are human beings with heroism and self-interest and avarice in us and any human is capable of great good or great wrong. In Poland a couple of weeks ago I was reading about the history of Auschwitz - there were startling interviews with the people there. The guards had done unthinkable atrocities, but these were ordinary people. What allowed them to do this kind of evil? Then you read accounts of acts of outrageous heroism, yet the people are criminals or swindlers, one crime or another, but when forced to make a choice they make a heroic choice. This is what fascinated me about the human animal.

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Martin's realm is not one of unambiguous heroes and villains. His characters, from royals to peasants, tend to be ethically mutable. So-called good people, like the noblemen Ned Stark, his son Robb Stark or the indomitable Daenerys Targaryen ("the Mother of Dragons"), make terrible mistakes - out of weakness, pride or an overly rigid sense of right and wrong. And horrible people, like Jaime Lannister, known as "the Kingslayer," do terrible things and then, over the course of several books, reveal themselves to be capable of heroism and sacrifice.

As we're discussing this in the theater, Martin quotes Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" from memory: “The evil that men do lives after them ;/ The good is oft interred with their bones.” Then he adds his own version: “We shouldn't forget about the evil that good men do. But we shouldn't forget about the good either,” he says. “I do think a society needs heroes. They don't have to be flawless.”

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Your books have a very strong storyline associated with the atonement of sins. For example, the way of Jaime Lannister, do you yourself believe in karma?

I don’t believe in karma per se, although sometimes I have my doubts because sometimes I think I see things that could be explained by karma. But no, I don’t really have any beliefs in the supernatural. I do believe in the possibility of redemption. And I believe that human beings, all human beings, are grey. And I try to remember that when I write my characters. We are all heroes, we are all villains, we all have the capacity for great good and we all have the capacity to do things that are selfish and evil and wrong. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. In your lifetime, you can be both. And it’s making choices that defines us as human beings. There’s this sensation of compartmentalism. This eagerness to judge everybody based on the worst thing they ever did, not the best thing they ever did. And you know, I think Shakespeare in "Julius Caesar" wrote “The evil that men do lives after them ;/ The good is oft interred with their bones.” And sadly that’s true. And I think it should be the reverse. We should remember the good things and the noble things that people did, and forgive them for their failures and moments of selfishness or wrongdoing because we all have them. When we forgive them, we are essentially forgiving ourselves. Redemption should be possible.

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Are there any characters that you've kind of fallen out of love with, that you just don't, you know, get excited about any more?

I still love all the characters. Even some of them who aren't very lovable. At least the viewpoint characters. When I'm writing in the viewpoint of one of these characters, I'm really inside their skin. So, you trying to see the world through their eyes to understand why they do the things they do. And we all have, even characters who are thought of to be bad guys, who are bad guys, in some objective sense, don't think of themselves as bad guys. […] “What evil can I do today?” Real people don't think that way. We all think we're heroes, we all think we're good guys. We have our rationalizations when we do bad things. “Well, I had no choice,” or “It's the best of several bad alternatives,” or “No it was actually good because God told me so,” or “I had to do it for my family.” We all have rationalizations for why we do shitty things or selfish things or cruel things. So when I'm writing from the viewpoint of one of my characters who has done these things, I try to have that in my head. And I do, so there's an empathy there that makes me love even people like Victarion Greyjoy, who is basically a dullard and a brute. But, he feels aggrieved and sees the world a certain way. And Jaime Lannister and Theon Greyjoy, they all have their own viewpoints. I love them all. Some I love more than others, I guess.

Who do you think to be the most important characters?

They're all important. I don't favor them, or I don't think of them in terms of importance. The viewpoint characters in the first book I have are Bran, Tyrion, Catelyn, Ned, Jon Snow, the two girls Arya and Sansa. There is the core of the Stark family plus Tyrion to represent the Lannister family. Then I have Dany on the other side of the sea, Daenerys Targaryen, whose story runs parallel and some ways doesn't connect to the others, but some day I'll eventually bring those two stories together. In each subsequent volume I drop some of my viewpoint characters and add new ones. Although the same core still dominates, the cast changes somewhat, and I like to do that. In the third volume which you haven't gotten to yet (he refers to me) I have a new viewpoint character. He's been a major character, but now you see things for the first time through his eyes. Which I think changes your perception of things somewhat. I like to play that kind of game, because we all have our own way of looking at the world. Something occurs and two people witness it. They might have very different versions of what happened, and very different explanations. I like to play with parallax in my fiction, and get different versions of the same thing.

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A Song of Ice and Fire has much of the complex texture of authentic history, both generally and in its specific echoes of actual historical episodes. What laws and principles (if any) in your view govern human history, and how has your understanding of historical processes shaped the series?

Historical processes have never much interested me, but history is full of stories, full of triumph and tragedy and battles won and lost. It is the people who speak to me, the men and women who once lived and loved and dreamed and grieved, just as we do. Though some may have had crowns on their heads or blood on their hands, in the end they were not so different from you and me, and therein lies their fascination. I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable "heroic" school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible. That is certainly the approach I have taken in A Song of Ice and Fire.

A Song of Ice and Fire undergoes a very interesting progression over its first three volumes, from a relatively clear scenario of Good (the Starks) fighting Evil (the Lannisters) to a much more ambiguous one, in which the Lannisters are much better understood, and moral certainties are less easily attainable. Are you deliberately defying the conventions and assumptions of neo-Tolkienian Fantasy here?

Guilty as charged. The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black. I wanted to stand much of that on its head. In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

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When you are writing the different conflicts in Westeros, do you personally pick a side? Or feel that one side fights for a more just cause than the other?

Yes, certainly. I mean, I’ve often said that I believe in grey characters, I don’t believe in black and white characters. But that’s not to say that all characters are equally grey. You know, some are very dark grey, and some are mostly white but they still have occasional flaws. I’ve always been fascinated by human beings and all of their complexity— even human beings that do appalling things, you know, the question is ‘Why?’ And it’s interesting to get inside their head and see why. Some of my viewpoint characters have done some incredibly reprehensible things: Theon, for example, or Victarion Greyjoy. Why? Were they born a monster? Weren’t they born like a cute little kid wanting to be loved and all that? We all start out that way, right? But things happen to us on the way that lead to junctures in our lives where we make decisions, and those decisions and the consequences of them color everything that comes after. You look at [historical figures] and what’s the verdict on these men? Are they heroes, are they villains? Are they great people, or people we should despise? I mean, they are fascinating characters because of their complexity.

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“I don't concern myself over whether my characters are “likeable” or “sympathetic.” (I had my fill of that in television). My interest is in trying to make them real and human. If I can create a fully-fleshed three-dimensional character, some of my readers will like him/her, or some won't, and that's fine with me. That's the way real people react to real people in the real world, after all. Look at the range of opinions we get on politicans and movie stars. If EVERYONE likes a certain character, or hates him, that probably means he's made of cardboard. So I will let my readers decide who they like, admire, hate, pity, sympathize with, etc. The fact that characters like Sansa, Catelyn, Jaime, and Theon provoke such a wide range of reactions suggests to me that I have achieved my goal in making them human.”

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“You want the reader to care about your characters — if they don’t, then there’s no emotional involvement. But at the same time, I want my characters to be nuanced, to be gray, to be human beings. I think human beings are all nuanced. There’s this tendency to want to make people into heroes and villains. And I think there are villains in real life and there are heroes in real life. But even the greatest heroes have flaws and do bad things, and even the greatest villains are capable of love and pain and occasionally have moments where you can feel sympathetic for them. As much as I love science fiction and fantasy and imaginative stuff, you always have to go back to real life as your touchstone and say, ‘What is the truth?’”

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astrosky33 · 1 year

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PLANET MEANINGS IN ASTROLOGY

[READ] People often question why there’s so many meanings for each planet/house and the reason is so that you can learn more than just one thing about yourself through each placement. Otherwise astrology would be very vague and boring. These are all meanings that I’ve learned from my astrology classes at Kepler College

THE SUN: your ego, your identity, your vitality, attention, spotlight, leadership, creativity, authority, royalty, pride, generosity, individuality, development, dignity, consciousness, things that make you happy, festivals, validation, and self expression

THE MOON: your inner emotions, emotional responses, emotional instincts, care, your comfort zone, femininity, your mother/motherly figure, family, your childhood, your nurturing instincts, fertility, baking, maternal instinct, adaptability, nursing, menstruation, pregnancy, boobs, the ocean, habits, and comfortability

MERCURY: communication, speaking, the mind, health, perception, lower education (pre-k, elementary, middle, and high school), writing, social media, cell phones, short trips, transportation (not flights only ground transportation), mannerisms, twins, gestures, reason, change (in general), forgetfulness, clumsiness, the press, trading, publishing, correspondence, profanity, gossiping, literary works, daily routine, mathematics, youth, and printing

VENUS: love, attraction, romance, who you fall in love with/who you’re attracted to, your love languages, beauty, sympathy, pleasures, art/artistry, self love, harmony, femininity, rhythm, sentimentality, compromise, sharing, cooperation, aestheticism, dancing, entertainment, values, festivities, possessions, luxury items, cheerfulness, sloth/laziness, jewelry, your vagina, and sensuality

MARS: passion, desire (in general), confidence, ambition, lust and sexual desire, sexual preferences, sex style, anger/aggression/aggressiveness, competitiveness, athletics, temper, impulse, courage, fire, self-assurance, tasks, masculinity, assertion, dominance, activity, physical energy, heat, sexuality, enthusiasm, forcefulness, friction, combativeness, war, your dick, tattoos, motivation, and violence

JUPITER: luck, abundance, wealth, success, opportunity, popularity, expansion, knowledge, honesty, wisdom, travel, air travel, ease, blessings, philosophy, higher education (college/uni), optimism, religion, justice, the law, exploration, profit, vision, devotion, study, growth, faith, fulfillment, speculation, and gambling

SATURN: hard work (and rewards), achievement and mastery, challenges, struggles, karma/karmic lessons/karmic debts, your father/fatherly figure, work (in general), fears, guilt, delay, longevity, old age, limitations, discipline, responsibility, your work ethic, contraction, the past, deficiency, bones, skinniness, practicality, confinement, effort, self-control, stability, endurance, maturity, detachment, consistency, grudges, and history

URANUS: friends/socialization, technology, film, unplanned/sudden changes, uniqueness, ups and downs, fluctuation, rebellion, independence, invention, freedom, originality, the unexpected/surprises, freaks/freakiness, p*rnography, shock, chaos, natural disasters, science, engineering, fans/followers, and electricity

NEPTUNE: kindness, compassion, creativity, glamour, sensitivity, selflessness, escapism, intuitiveness/intuition, the hidden, dreams, imagination, deception/lies, delusion, mysteries, hallucination, disguise, confusion, disappearance, evasion, divinity, spirituality, inspiration, mysticism, transcendence, hypnotism, prophecy, fascination, and idealism

PLUTO: transformation, power, sex, orgasms, destruction (ending in renewal), rebirth, intimacy (not just sexual), death, intensity, magnetism, regeneration, infatuation, obsession, black magic, seduction, manipulation, sexual organs, evolving/evolution, extremes, and purging

MY MASTERLIST

MORE BEGINNER ASTROLOGY

HOUSE MEANINGS

#astrology #astro community #zodiac #astro placements #astrology tumblr #astro chart #birth chart #planet meanings #planet meanings in astrology

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ganondoodle · 19 days

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Hello 👋

Swallowing my nerves at last to send you an ask! I was just wondering, what inspires your designs? Are their inspirations in stuff like movies or games? Or just things you come up with yourself?

i .. honestly its kinda hard to tell, sometimes i just randomly think of something, like some detail, or color combination and try to incorporate that into a design somehow; it can come from anywhere, like the color scheme of a pithaya/dragonfruit is something i have been wanting to make a design with for ages but havent come up with anything good in all those years ;O;

im a very easily fascinated by color, espeically in nature, like sometimes i just stop and stare at something like i froze in time bc i just woooooooooooooah color! i probably look like a weirdo doing that though

its really hard to pinpoint anything specifically, the most is probably .. other artists? i guess? which always makes me nervous bc my memory is shit in most areas of life and i worry myself to pieces whether i unintentionally "stole" an idea and just dont remember and think it was my own, it goes further that sometimes i see something that makes me want to draw a similar concept but dont bc i dont want to 'steal' even if that couldnt be further from my intention (have been accused of that before ..)

that said for my ocs specifically .. most are rather old and have just kinda evolved out of their awkward first iterations (shargons first iteration was a hauro-howl- copy that was really just some human covered in feathers .. another oc was once a hellboy copy but in green- havent drawn nor redeisgn them in ages lol), the biggest inspirations for them is a mix of animals, bonus if you dont see them often- im a big shark, whale and sea creatures in general nerd so i tend to take from them as a priority but always trying to be less directly animal and mostly just .. features that work together

Eadrya is one of the newer OCs- i started to write but then looked at my folders and oh they are from 2017 .., i even made a design timeline for them how much they, and my art, have changed back in 2020, so thats also way outdated now lol (they apparently started as a whale .. thing? its like a pokemon evolution lol)

this is them now (i like this sketch still, though shargons design is now also outdated lmao)

this ones from early 2023 so also outdated now but you get the point

for demons i try to be a bit more wild on shapes and colors while still adhering to the rules of how they work (humanoid form, demon form, animalistic, one element each and more or less made to fit that, 4 arms is very common, look to be bost scary and wild but also something that would make you stop in tracks and stare in awe and fear if you crossed paths)

often times designs just kinda .. happen, i have maybe the idea ok i wanna make something with a white and red pattern also moose or those big horned cows are cool and kinda scary so maybe sth akin to that (though this one is technically a redesign too- its also pretty much entirely different)

for non demons but still non human i go for a much more restrained design, mainly inspired directly by an animal and giving the color scheme a good spin, plus adding unconventional body shapes, like ki'ita is also a good example, her old idea was just orca anthro pirate and just by making the white green instead in her most recent redesign already adds that little spin to it

that can have its pitfalls though, as i often fall into the big arm small head small legs scheme over and over xD

alot of it is trial and error, deciding on the colors can take me hours bc im always searching for my little rule of having one contrast color that shows up in very few places to draw attention to it (like with Eadrya its those bright yellow eyes and thingy at their tail)

and that is all about myy own ocs, when its fandom stuff it works kinda similar though, either in the connections i wanna draw or just thinking it further- like how deities in destiny work also just kinda .. happened like an ever derailing train

like for demise i was at first really just im gonna give him horns bc horns are cool and he got those on the starting mural in the game- so how his hair work? well maybe it isnt hair actually and just unbound energy, im making him a deity too and fit hylias design to his so, yeah, then so how does it work, ok he gotta have a skeleton still, but what if his entire actual body is made up of pure magical energy with its core in the ribcage? with the core in the ribcage >:3c and the scales you see are just like cooled down lava as an armor bc his thing is fire and earth !! the normal blood? is a thin layer of skin imiated from mortals to keep the scales together and flexible so if he ACTUALLY gets hurt hed bleed magic that looks more like lava and any normal blood you see is just the armor- so why does he have a skeleton still instead of being just energy? maybe its gotta be bound to something OH and what if all of the deities started as mortals like a mirror to the trio later on and the gods cannot have direct influence to the worlds so they needed a right hand that is neither god nor mortal but both by killing a mortal by whatever their element will be (demise burned, hylia drowned etc) and their skeleton and spirit is kept but put into a body of magic- OH what if their spirit core is like almost piloting their bodies like a mech in a way bc if youd look close youd see that every strand of magic is actual a hand of their spirit so it makes it more weird and other bc hed be able to reach out with thousands of burning claws of all shapes and sizes like the beheaded forest god at the end of mononoke- SO if hed lose and arm or something all those strands would untangle and rearrange his bones back together-OH MY GOD the whole armor idea works so well for ghirahims dark armor so what if demise had two swords once and lost one and since has forged an armor similar to his own for ghirahim out fo fear of losing him t---

and that all is a process that happens over several weeks and months not rarely while i am drawing something mindlessly and suddendly *have a thought* and omg that makes so much sense-

so "what" inspires my designs? an ever derailing train of thought about making cool thick monsters that arent the evil thing to get rid of for once? cool color schemes? idk it just kinda happens??

#ganondoodles answers #dont think this was the point of the ask #maybe i shouldnt actually try to answer any questions bc im inherently bad at ... having an answer #i havent even gotten into the anatomy of demons in my oc stuff #yes they ... they got organs #i dont know why id need to think about how and what and their arrangmeent #but i ssure did #I DIDNT EVEN GET INTO HOW DEMONS WORK-#wasnt the ask #my brain is an unstoppable train that never lets me rest #writing soem stuff out like that really makes me realize just how MUCH THERE IS #no wonder i got not space left for any actually important information #like i couldnt tell you my phone number i have had for years but i sure could draw an anatomical study of a demon oc lol #this took me an hour to write.#why am i like this

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demi-shoggoth · 2 months

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2024 Reading Log, pt 2

006. Gardening Can Be Murder by Marta McDowell. I honestly thought that this book was going to be about something else. With the subtitle “how poisonous plants, sinister shovels and grim gardens have inspired mystery writers”, I thought it was going to be about, you know, that. True crime themed to gardens, discussions of poisonous plants, that sort of thing. The book is actually about the mystery books that have gardening as a theme. And while the author’s dedication to not spoiling anything (seriously, anything, even 150 year old stories like The Moonstone or “Rappacini’s Daughter”) is admirable in its own way, this leaves the book feeling like endless buildup without any payoff. Big fans of murder mysteries might enjoy this—especially the last chapter, which interviews writers about their gardens—but I found it more boring than anything else, and finished it only because it was very short.

007. Antimony, Gold and Jupiter’s Wolf by Peter Wothers. This book is about how the elements got their names, and most of it deals with the early modern period, as alchemy transitioned to chemistry and then into the 19th century, when chemistry was a real science, but things like atomic theory were not yet understood. The book goes into fascinating detail, and has a lot of quotes from primary sources, as scientists then were just like scientists now, that is, opinionated and bickering with each other over their preferred explanations. And names! Many of the splits between elements and their symbols (like Na for sodium) are due to compromise attempts to appease two different factions with their preferred names. A book covering arcane minutia of history always has the risk of feeling like a slog, but this is a fast and fun read.

008. Doctor Dhrolin’s Dictionary of Dinosaurs by Nathan T Barling and Michael O’Sullivan, illustrations by Mark P Witton. This book is an odd concept, but one that I was immediately on board with—a D&D book written by paleontologists with the intention of bringing accurate and interesting stats for prehistoric reptiles to the game. The fact that it’s mostly illustrated by Mark Witton definitely clinched my backing that Kickstarter. And this book is a lot of fun. So much so, that I read it all in a single sitting. I don’t know how accurate the stats are (like, a Hatzegopteryx has a higher CR than titanosaurs or T. rexes), but they seem like they’d be fun in play, and the writing does a good job of combining fantasy fun with actual education. Even for someone not running a 5e game, the stuff on how to run animals as not killing machines, and the mutation tables, could be useful. There are multiple types of playable dinosaurs, all of which seem like they’d work well at the table and avoid typical stereotypes, and a lot of in-jokes and pop culture references (like the cursed staff of unspared expense, which looks like Hammond’s cane in the Jurassic Park movie).

009. Romaine Wasn’t Built in a Day by Judith Tschann. I’m a sucker for books about etymology. And this one, on food etymology, is a pretty breezy read. I had fun with it, and it even busted some misconceptions that I had, etymologically speaking. Like, there’s no evidence that “bloody” as an explicative originated from “God’s blood”? Wild. Etymology books tend to be written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, where talking about one word may lead down a garden path to the next one. The book also has a couple of little matching quizzes, which is something I haven’t seen in a book since like the 90s.

010. The Lives of Octopuses and their Relatives by Danna Staaf. I was previously a little disappointed in The Lives of Beetles, another book in this series, but I knew I liked Staaf, who wrote the excellent book Squid Empire about cephalopod evolution and paleontology. I’m pleased to report that this book is also excellent. Staaf takes the “lives” part seriously, and the book is arranged by ecology, looking at different marine habitats, the challenges that they pose to living things, and the cephalopods that live there. Cuttlefish get slightly short shrift in this book compared to squids and octopuses, but that’s about the biggest complaint I had. I like how the species profiles cover more obscure taxa, and information about the best studied (like Pacific giant octopus and Humboldt squid) is kept to the chapters.

#reading log #marine biology #cephalopods #etymology #food history #tabletop rpgs #dinosaurs #D&D 5e #chemistry #periodic table #history of science #mystery #horticulture

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xanthippe74 · 4 months

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Masterlist of my “12 Days of Fandom” recs, inspired by this post. As always, please check the tags and author's notes before reading. Enjoy!

🔸 Terminal Lucidity by @romaine2424 (Drarry, HD Career Fair, rated G, 3K) This bittersweet fic has Harry putting his abilities as Master of Death to good use by comforting those close to death themselves. We see him at work here, adeptly easing the way for someone dear to him with compassion and care. I found this story incredibly moving and a beautiful portrait of family ties in the face of an impending loss. Featuring older, established Drarry and the Black-Malfoy family.

🔹 Our Objective Remains Unchanged by @citrusses (Drarry, rated E, 46K) Gorgeously and vividly written, this university rowing AU drew me in right from the get-go, despite the fact that Muggle AUs are not my typical cuppa. The enemies-to-lovers tension is perfectly paced as Harry and Draco fight for the same spot on the Oxford team. Citrusses did a fantastic job translating their backgrounds and personalities (as well as those of other familiar characters from the books) into this world. Class divisions and the pressure of a highly-public sporting event stand in very effectively for Harry’s canon experiences. All in all, the story has the poignancy and drama of a lush coming of age film, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

🔸 The Pile by @b-vul (Drarry, not rated, about 1.5K) This hilarious ficlet was born out of littlewinnow’s tumblr post about Veela!Harry performing an intricate mating dance to impress Draco. Delightfully, it’s from Harry’s POV as he blindly “trusts his instincts” to guide him into increasingly bizarre actions. And the evolution of Draco’s reaction is pure comedy gold. I’ve come back to reread this one a couple of times, and it never fails to have me in stitches. (The tumblr thread also contains adorable art by regretfulcorrine!)

🔹 Shine on, You Crazy Diamond by @lagerloutfic (Drarry, HD Mpreg Fest, rated E, 42K) This is one of those fics that you can’t stop reading once you start (something I confirmed this morning when I went to skim through it for this rec and wound up spending a few happy hours devouring the entire thing again). It’s laugh-out-loud funny and deliciously smutty, with a full cast of delightful side characters and just the right amount of feelings. The story begins with the discovery of Draco’s surprise pregnancy, then switches to a long flashback of Harry’s gay awakening and his fast sexual/slow emotional burn relationship with Draco. The entire fic has a joyful feel—banter-filled pub nights, chaotic family dinners, audacious curse breaking—culminating in the baby’s arrival, which left me in happy tears and wishing for another 40K of this fabulous story. Featuring confident Harry, supportive friends & family, hot Charlie, and some shamelessly kinky Unspeakables.

🔸 Silhouettes by @sweet-s0rr0w (Draco/Ron/Harry, Dronarry Fest, rated E, 16K) Draco/Ron/Harry is not a ship I’d ventured into before I read this fic, but I’m so glad I did! Sweet’s writing always hits the right spot in my brain, and her alternating POVs and spot-on characterizations of all three boys are delightful. I especially loved Ron’s sexy self-assurance here. The unique magical theory around sentient houses is fascinating and ultimately poignant, once Draco gets to the root cause of the Burrow’s behavior. Sweet-sorrow surely lived up to her username with this one, weaving grief with humor and a heartwarming resolution.

🔹 Harry Potter Gets a Job (A 106-Page Comic) by dustmouth (Drarry, HD Career Fair, rated M) Dustmouth’s comics never miss, I swear! In this one, we find Harry overcoming his distrust of Draco with the help of the Weasleys, especially Ron (who is definitely up to something himself). All of my favorite Dustmouth elements are here: the expressive characters, Draco’s wild wardrobe choices, and punchy dialogue galore. Also featuring drunken shenanigans at the Burrow, adorable Teddy, and some first-class Slytherin-ing by Draco to win his man (and find Harry that job). What a treat!

🔸 the earth from a distance by spqr (Drarry, rated E, 15K) A whirlwind time-travel fic with breezy humor, bedsharing, and spqr’s unmatched smut with feelings… What more could you ask for in a fic? Oh, yeah: fantastic worldbuilding for Hogwarts in 1599, brilliantly clever Draco, and a dash of enemies to lovers. I can never get enough of this author!

🔹 A Year In The Life by @ladderofyears (Drarry, HD Career Fair, rated M, 19K) I swear, the author conjured a little bit of magic to write this story. It’s told entirely with 50-word microfics, one journal entry for each day of 2006 (an impressive feat, by itself!), and yet it reads just as smoothly as any traditional fic. Draco’s voice is perfect here, full of wit and subtle emotion, as his and Harry’s developing romance takes a sharp turn with an unexpected pregnancy. Draco’s anticipation, worry, and joy are mixed with deftly-chosen details of his daily life, all captured with Emma’s trademark tenderness and warmth. This fic is a perfect comfort read for family feels and gentle romance.

🔸 try to fix you by @maesterchill (Harry/Ron/Hermione, HP Snooze Fest, rated M, 2K) A beautifully and tenderly written hurt/comfort fic set in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts. Ron is the glue that holds the trio together here, caring for Harry and Hermione with gentle devotion. There’s no dialogue needed to tell this story, just Ron’s perceptive POV that captures the grief and love that compel him. I have a soft spot for this triad forming immediately after the war, as a way of holding onto each other and holding themselves together. Maester’s fic makes their transition from friends to lovers feel like the first step towards healing.

🔹 The Scent of Soft Rains by @dodgerkedavra (Drarry, HD Career Fair, rated E, 20K) When Harry is left housebound and isolated by a traumatic injury, magical prosthetist Draco gets called into help. But Harry’s struggles go far beyond the physical ones. This recovery fic combines magical and non-magical therapeutic treatments in a way I can’t remember reading before. The hurt/comfort is just as it should be—both heart-wrenching and soothing—but there are enough surprising revelations to keep the story from feeling predictable. Draco is wonderfully unflinching and patient, and the ending left me crying happy tears. With lovely, restrained prose and vivid magical imagery, this one’s an absolute stunner.

🔸 Connecting Lines, Connecting Crimes by @sleepstxtic (Drarry, H/D Career Fair, rated M, 15K) With its intriguing careers, fascinating magical theory, and well-researched worldbuilding, this story captured my attention immediately, and the mystery at the heart of it kept me engrossed. This was one of the more thought-provoking fics I’ve had the pleasure of reading, exploring the intersection of magic, the environment, and colonialism. Harry’s first-person POV is lovely, and it feels like we’re learning to love India and the people he meets along with him. The getting-back-together romance is gentle but satisfying, propelled by pent-up yearning that’s palpable. There’s so much to enjoy here, all in only 15K words!

🔹 Waking Up Slow by @sweet-s0rr0w and @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm (Drarry, H/D Wireless Fest, rated E, 22K) The first word that comes to mind while reading this fic is charming. First there’s the novel setting: a Christmas shop in the tourist destination of Cheddar Gorge, in the middle of a July heatwave. Next, there’s the shop itself, so imaginatively described and full to the brim with clever Muggle and magical details. Then there are the delightful OCs, Draco’s seemingly unhinged enthusiasm for all things Christmas (including ridiculous jumpers), and Harry’s complete disregard for professional behavior. But underneath the playful banter and humor, there’s also a layer of poignancy to tug at the heartstrings, especially when we find out the backstories behind Harry’s and Draco’s unlikely careers. And to top it all off, like the glowing star on the tree, are Joy’s exuberant, colorful illustrations. This is a Christmas-y fic I’d reread any time of the year.

Thanks to all these brilliant creators for sharing their work with us!

Happy New Year!

#12 days of fandom #2023 favorites #drarry #dronarry #harry/ron/hermione #fic recs

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terrestrialnoob · 1 year

Text

Strange Friends

Fandom: Danny Phantom, Young Justice (cartoon)

Ships: N/A

Rating: Gen.

Word count: 8,228

Summary:

Being heroes has a negative affect on Danny and Valerie's grades, but luckily, they can sacrifice a weekend with Tetslaff to get their History grades up. A two hour bus ride to Chicago, and they find themselves in an anthropology museum when a nearby robot attack drives everyone outside. Luckily, the local heroes, The Martian Manhunter and his never-before-seen sidekick, are there to save everyone! Or maybe the Martians are the ones who need saving?

Danny and Valerie stepped off the bus in front of the Chicago Museum of Anthropology. The two stuck together mainly because there were only a dozen students there and everyone else were nerds and jocks these two didn’t have the time or patience to deal with. Coach Tetslaff checked the bus for stragglers then shouted at the assembled teens before her.

“Alright, everyone here is in danger of failing history, whether in my class or another teacher’s. So this is your punish- I mean, extra credit opportunity; you’re going to spend your entire weekend here with me. Today, you and your partner are going to choose any exhibit currently on display in the museum and write a report on it. Then tomorrow, you’ll both present your report not only to the class, but also the museum curator Professor Summer Davies.”

She stared out at the unfocused faces that had heard this speech ten times already, then she sighed and continued, “Meet here in front of the museum at 12:50 for the group lunch, if you didn’t sign up for the group meals, you’ll have to go find and pay for your own food. Now, let’s get to it people!”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I have to spend my hard earned weekend doing school work.” Valerie rolled her eyes and glanced at Danny. They’d chosen to sign up as partners on this fieldtrip because Danny knew Valerie would take him seriously and listen to his ideas, and Valerie knew Danny was dependable, despite being a goof, and neither of them would push all the work onto the other.

“Tell me about it,” Danny said as the two made their way into the museum. It was as interesting as most museums are when you’re forced to go instead of choosing to go; Danny would have loved to visit and learn about this stuff any other day, but today it was homework. There was a display on the history of kitchen technology, an intro to forensic anthropology, a collection of Native American musical instruments, and something about the evolution of Victorian house design.

“This should be fascinating,” Danny said, taking notes in a spiral notebook he’d been carrying with him.

“I’m very fascinated by the development of the knife,” Valerie said as she took a photo of some restored kitchen knives that were over a hundred years old when the security guard was turned away.

“I don’t know, they can’t cut ghosts,” Danny teased.

Valerie raised a playful eyebrow at him, “They do when I use them.”

“We both know that’s not how that works,” Danny chuckled and made another note, though, the Forensic Anthropology might be the best option, it was the widest category, and it could be useful with superhero work, two birds - one stone. They had been trying to improve that part of their lives. Valerie and Sam were trying to drag Danny to a workout every day, while Danny was working with Tucker to refine their ghost database and improve their equipment. There had to be something useful they could learn from researching forensic science, even if it was specifically focused on figuring out human history.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion from outside.

Danny rolled up the notebook and stuck it in his jeans pocket as he and the rest of the students left the building in a group under the shouted orders of Coach Tetslaff. Outside, there was a crowd of scared citizens running past the museum. Danny and Valerie shared a look and, while Tetslaff was distracted by the other students, turned and headed towards the source of the commotion instead of away from it. Barely a block away from the museum, there was a large figure fighting two smaller figures in the air.

Once they got close enough, Danny recognized one of the smaller figures as Martian Manhunter, and another was smaller but very similar in appearance. She looked like a teen girl with Martian green skin, long red hair, a navy blue skirt matching the color of both their capes, and while she wore a white shirt instead of Manhunter’s black body suit, they both had the same red X’s on their chests and gold pins holding their capes (that probably only Danny could see at this distance with his weird ghost eyes). They were clearly working together despite Danny never having heard of Martian Manhunter having a sidekick.

Their enemy looked to be an nine-and-a-half-foot tall robot, with six long spindly arms sticking out from it's extended torso. There were sharp claws on two with arcs of electricity flitting between its fingers, blasters on two others that shot globs of white hot plasma, and the last too were fucking flaming swords. It flew around in the sky about fifteen feet in the air using rockets built into its feet, but it wasn’t a stable floating, the way its rockets were designed, it couldn’t stay still in the air.

“Wow, a real superhero fight!” Danny marveled as he watched, uh, Martian Girl? – sure – as she dodged one of the robot’s plasma blasts.

“And what are we? Fake superheroes?” Valerie shook her head, but watched with deep intrigue as Martian Girl kept the robots attention on her while Martian Manhunter flew up behind it, raising his hands towards it.

Danny could almost see the psychic energy radiating off Martian Manhunter as the robot’s two blaster arms were torn from its body followed quickly by the two claw arms. Then Danny felt more, stronger psychic energy coming from Martian Girl as she turned to face it. The rest of the robot was immediately crushed into a ball of jagged metal and electrical sparks. Danny couldn’t tell if it was because it was stuck between the two Martian’s telekinetic powers or if it was all Martian Girl. But Danny could practically see it, the psychic power rolling off her in waves and hitting the robot along with Martian Manhunter’s power at its back. Looking closely, Martian Manhunter had a lot of control, he could thread a needle with his psychic abilities, but Martian Girl had so much raw psychic energy flowing out of her, it sent shivers down Danny’s spine. It almost lit up his ghost sense, like it was enough emotional energy for him to sense it but not the right type of energy to fully ping for him; it kind of left him wanting his sense to go off to just acknowledge the power the two of them had up there. He glanced at Valerie to see if she felt it too, but no, it was just him.

The Martians lowered to the ground now the robot wasn’t a threat, and Danny heard the girl say, “- didn’t have a mind for us to read, so it’s not like we could have found out what its plan was.”

“There are more ways to get information from an enemy than simply reading their mind,” Manhunter explained, “And if this machine had remained intact, we could have downloaded information from its memory.”

“Oh, hello Megan, of course we could have!” Martian Girl said and facepalmed. “I’m sorry, Uncle J’onn, I shouldn’t have destroyed it like that.”

“Miss Martian,” Martian Manhunter pointedly said, and she meeped and mumbled an apology.

He sighed and said, “You are still new to this. I had years as a m’hontrr before coming to Earth, and more as a private investigator before becoming a superhero. You will learn these things with time and experience.”

Danny glanced over at Valerie, a familiar red glow in her eyes. “See anything useful?”

Valerie sighed, blinking the nanites away from her eyes, “No, there’s too much pollution to get a clear rocket trail, and its power signature isn’t unique enough to stand out.”

“And how would you know that?” Martian Manhunter asked, turning and flying over to them.

“And why are you here? We told everyone to evacuate the area!” Martian Girl said, coming up next to, apparently, her uncle.

“Sorry, it’s my fault,” Danny said rubbing the back of his neck and trying to look embarrassed on purpose, “I wanted to see real superheroes; I just couldn’t help it! You guys are so cool!”

Martian Girl blushed a little herself and tried, and failed, to firmly state, “It was still really dangerous and - you know, shouldn’t do it again.”

“Yes ma’am,” Danny said and gave an over-serious salute. She smiled and nodded at him.

“We should get back to the rest of the class,” Valerie quickly said pushing on Danny’s shoulder, “We don’t want our teacher to get worried about us.”

Danny weaved out from her hand and quickly pulled his notebook out of his pocket, “Actually, real quick. Can we get your autographs?”

Martian Manhunter nodded, and Martian Girl, or Miss Martian as she wrote it, signed her name before handing it over to her uncle to sign as well, and finally back to Danny.

“Good luck on your robot hunt!” Danny called as he dashed to where Valerie was already walking down the street.

Once they got back at the museum, Coach Tetslaff gave them an earful about running off alone during a supervillain attack, they should really know better. The two then learned it was going to be about three hours before the students of Casper High were allowed back into the museum; security needed to do a routine check to make sure nothing was stolen in the confusion. Coach Tetslaff decided the kids could go to the library to get a head start on their projects or go for lunch early, but made it abundantly clear that Dangerous Robot Attacks will not excuse them from doing their reports.

>><<

The boy had felt weird to M’gann. She almost didn’t notice it, after her own guilt of messing up by destroying the robot and the chaos and fear she still felt from both herself and everyone around them at the beginning of the fight. It was odd enough that she hadn’t sensed any fear from either of the two teenagers, but she wasn’t sure what counted as a scary experience for the normal human teenager. It was similar to how the rest of the team was, so maybe this was just something teens on Earth were used to? But her uncle had heard the girl say something strange, and when he and M’gann went to see who had been watching their fight, she’d gotten a strange aura from the boy.

He had dark hair, light skin, and blue eyes, and he wore a white t-shirt with red stylized Saturn-like planet symbol in the center, and normal looking jeans despite the notebook he’d managed to stuff in one of its pockets. Very normal in appearance. But, the unusual thing was that he seemed to put out an aura of – it wasn’t quite emotion, but it wasn’t not emotion – and if it was emotion then it was so extremely raw and concentrated compared to most humans, like there wasn’t anything physical keeping the emotions in, or no, that’s not it. He just wasn’t quite… Solid? Human? No, no. She could see he was definitely solid and human, but there was just something off about him.

And the girl he was with. She wore a yellow tank top and an orange skirt with thick gold bracers on each arm and a red backpack, that seemed off somehow, but M'gann hadn't seen a lot of backpacks yet to be sure. She had dark skin and hair, but her eyes seemed to change color the closer she got and M’gann couldn’t tell if they were a shade of red or brown or green - or somehow switched in between. But she didn’t feel unusual to other humans, no matter how inhumanly her eyes behaved, and who was M'gann to say that human eyes couldn’t change like that?

But then again, Uncle J’onn seemed to have sensed something off too. He psychicly told her that he suspected the two might be involved with the robot, perhaps sent there to observe how easily the Martian duo could dispatch with it. He asked her to follow them to see what they were doing in the city while he tried to find clues off the remains of the robot.

M’gann wasn’t sure if he actually thought the teens were important or if he was just getting her out of the way after her screw-up. While the psychic link was a lot clearer on Earth, there was also an expected level of polite, what she deemed, “not looking”, not just for normal humans, but other psychics as well. She’d learned from the team too, that entering anyone’s mind without express permission and forewarning was not a good thing to do and could even hurt a human, or Kryptonian, who wasn’t expecting it. And Uncle J’onn wanted her to practice vocalizing her words more and only use a psychic link to communicate with other heroes. There were still so many rules she needed to get used to on Earth.

She followed the two humans to The Chicago Museum of Anthropology. She’d gone there with Uncle J’onn for one of her first days on Earth; it gave her a basic understanding of the history of humanity, how the species and society developed on Earth. She’d enjoyed the visit.

She stayed at a distance and morphed into her human form before venturing closer. She watched as they stayed with a group of about twelve high school students under the supervision of a large, muscular woman who liked to give orders. The group of students soon dispersed, apparently they’d come to the museum for a school project but the museum would be temporarily closed.

She quickly hurried to close behind her two targets, she wasn’t going to lose them. This was her first solo mission on Earth, she had already messed up with the robot, she wasn’t going to disappoint her uncle again by letting her targets get lost in a crowd. She got close enough, she herd the boy say, “Did you pay for the provided meals?”

“No. Full offense to Tetslaff, I do not trust her taste in food,” The girl responded.

“Yeah, I bet she’s taking the poor idiots who signed up for it to a sports bar or something,” the boy said and took out his phone, “The restaurant finder app I downloaded so we could find places that were vegan friendly for Sam doesn’t have to be used just for vegans. We can put in whatever kind of food we want and it’ll find something for us.”

“Anything but burgers,” the girl said.

“There’s an amazing pizza place a couple blocks down this street,” M’gann said behind them, and suddenly realized - she was just supposed to be listening this conversation. Hello, Megan! How could you mess this up already!

All three stopped and the two of them turned around to give her funny looks. “Sorry, I was just… uhm… also hungry and trying to think of a place to eat! And I’m – I…”

No, no, you’re making it worse! She panicked and suddenly shouted, “Do you want to be friends with me?”

The two stared at her in shock, then the boy made sure his friend was looking at him before he gripped his hands in the air in front of him. The girl shook her head, raised an eyebrow, and held a hand towards M'gann. The boy nodded and smiled and repeated his hand movements from before and then tapping his thumb and pointer finger together twice and rubbed one hand over the side of the other? Then, for some reason, the girl sighed and nodded.

The boy turned to M'gann and smiled as he said, “I like pizza.”

“Yeah, pizza’s good,” The girl added, dryly, each word, taking effort to but still, becoming less hostile, more friendly. “You live around here?”

M’gann smiled, she wasn’t going to fail. All she had to do was keep an eye on them, right? And it wasn’t like she didn’t want more human friends. “No, but my uncle does. I’ve visited him a couple times now, so I know where some of the good places are. I’m Megan, by the way. Megan Morse.”

The girl looked unimpressed, but held out her hand for M’gann to take. “I’m Valerie and he’s Danny. We’re not from around here either.”

“Oh? Then what brings you to Chicago?” M’gann asked as she shook Valerie’s hand. She used the physical contact as a bridge - a cover to scan the surface level of thoughts in her head without her knowing. There wasn’t anything too bad. Valerie was suspicious of M’gann’s eavesdropping and on guard against her. She didn’t want to trust some random girl who seemed way too friendly, but not wanting to come off as on guard to tip her off to just how suspicious she was. There was something else, she felt Danny was being too trusting? But that did nothing for her instincts. She reminded M’gann of Robin; his mind also raced with worst case scenarios and possible threats and solutions to those threats, even if they weren’t real.

“School trip,” Danny answered not taking M’gann’s offered hand and making her awkwardly have to put it down again. “We have to make a report-presentation-thing on one of the exhibits at the anthropology museum.”

“Oh, yeah, humans are very interesting,” M’gann said before she could stop herself.

“I love those humans and all their humanity,” Danny said with a snort and Valerie elbowed him.

“So, where’s this amazing pizza place?” Valerie asked and M’gann pointed behind them.

“Down a little further, I don’t know if it’s “amazing” amazing, but I like it.”

“Lead the way, M’lady,” Danny said, and motioned for her to walked next to him. He was starting to remind her of Wally, tying a little to hard to make her laugh, but still succeeding.

The three made their way down the street where M’gann had pointed; Danny talked a lot while Valerie watched M’gann with wary eyes. They were from a smaller city called Amity Park, northwest of Chicago and surrounded by a lot of wilderness, near Lake Eerie, with two E’s.

Danny chuckled at his own joke, then asked, “So, did you see that superhero fight? I didn’t know Martian Manhunter had a sidekick, but she seems pretty cool.”

M’gann tried to hide her blush and lie, “I didn’t get a good look at it. It can be pretty dangerous to get too close.”

“What do you know about them? Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian?” Valerie said her first thing since they started walking together.

M’gann thought for a moment about what she could and should say. “I’ve seen them around and heard the news talk about them. I don’t know if she likes being called a sidekick though, I know that other heroes don’t like it. Like Robin and Kid Flash.”

Valerie rolled her eyes, “She’s fighting crime with Martian Manhunter, wearing a matching outfit, and has a matching name all for the purpose of learning how to be a superhero from him, right?”

“Well, I guess so,” M’gann admitted. Is that what a sidekick is? M’gann thought there was a translation issue or something, that it was an insult. Why do Wally and Red Arrow hate it so much?

“Then she’s a sidekick, and there’s nothing wrong with being a sidekick,” Valerie confidently said and M’gann decided that she was right.

“And! It’s a good idea to learn from people who’ve been doing it longer than you and have more experience.” He gave Valerie some kind of look as he continued, “Even if you’re the same age, the extra time spend doing a thing can make one person a lot better at it.”

M'gann understood that, the rest of the Team were way better than she was and all of them are younger than she is.

Valerie raised her eyebrow at Danny, “Even if the newer person does more training than the older one because she actually takes being a hero seriously?”

M’gann looked between the two of them and asked, “I’m sorry, are you still talking about the Martians?”

Danny shook his head, “Sorry, there are heroes in our town too. Phantom, who’s been a hero for over a year and a half now, and Valiant, who’s only just started being a hero.”

“But she’s a better hero even though she’s newer,” Valerie added quickly to Danny’s explanation.

“You think she’s a better hero,” Danny corrected, “But I think she’s still really wild, overly violent, and messes up a lot. Valiant doesn’t have to try to intimidate everyone she thinks is a bad guy, it’s better being friendly sometimes. And Phantom does take it seriously, he’s just having fun while being a hero.”

“Valiant is just driven to get the job done!” Valerie defended, “And Phantom goofs off too much. Not everything needs to be pun, you can just catch the bad guy and be done with it, no jokes necessary.”

“Excuse you, puns are an artform,” Danny said with an overdramatic handwave.

“Oh please,” Valerie said exasperatedly.

M’gann laughed, they really reminded her of Wally and Robin; they must have been best friends for a long time now. They finally reached the pizzeria her uncle had taken her to when they’d had their trip to the anthropology museum. It was a quaint little family run place that was pretty emptied out. It should have been the second half of the lunch rush, but the robot attack must have scared everyone off.

“So, do you know how old she is?” Valerie asked as the three ordered their food.

“Sorry?” M’gann asked, she’d been distracted wondering what was a normal food order for a human. Last time she’s coping Megan’s order from episode 24 , and that was apparently too much food for a normal human teenage girl.

“We were just talking about how it doesn’t matter how old you are,” Danny said, and M’gann couldn’t tell if he was trying to avoid their previous argument or still trying to win.

“She’s the Martian equivalent of a teenager,” M’gann said, but realized halfway through that, a human wouldn’t know that. “Probably.”

Danny looked at her with wide eyes, “Really? So Martians really do age at a different rate than humans? That’s so cool!”

“You might too,” Valerie said under her breath, but Danny ignored it and M’gann didn’t understand what it meant.

“Do you know how long she’s been on earth?” Danny asked with growing excitement as they sat at a booth in the corner; the two of them on one side with her on the other.

M’gann couldn’t resist feeling that same excitement, very few people showed interest in her normal life. “Yeah, about three months!”

“How do y- I mean, does she like it here?” Danny asked, his excitement becoming so strong, M’gann didn’t think anything of his tripping over his words.

“I re- really think she likes it.”

Valerie raised an eyebrow at her, “Why do you think that?”

M’gann floundered for a moment, “Uh, prob- probably because she’s still here. Like, if she could get to Earth, then she could get back to Mars, but she’s chosen to stay.”

Valerie gave her an oddly intense look, “Is that really how you know?”

“I bet she has a lot of friends here,” Danny said, seemingly saving M’gann from answering, before he added, “I mean, you are really friendly and I like you well enough.”

M’gann blushed, “No, no! I’m not…”

“You don’t hide it very well,” Valerie said and M’gann dropped her head in her hands.

“Oh, come on, don't be hard on her!” Danny said and playfully shoved Valerie's arm, “I only knew because you have the same, like, aura as Miss Martian. If you hadn’t come up to us so soon after we met you in costume, I wouldn’t have made the connection. And don’t let Val get to you, she only realized after I pointed it out.”

Valerie glared at him as she pulled her wallet out again and passed some money over to Danny. “I had all the clues though, and would have put it together eventually. Unlike you, I don’t cheat.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” M’gann had to ask while peaking between her hands. She can’t believe she messed up this much in one day. Who knew some humans could read Martian auras?

“Of course not! We’re not snitches,” Danny said, and shared a glance at Valerie, who shook her head violently and mouthed the word “no”. Danny shrugged and turned to M’gann to whisper, “We’re actually in a similar situation.”

M’gann blinked at them, and was just about to ask what he meant when there was an explosion. The front wall of the pizzeria was blasted open and a robot that looked exactly like the one they’d seen earlier stepped through the hole. Its featureless face locked onto M’gann; it lifted one of its blasters and shot a ball of hot plasma at them.

All three teens ducked under the table and Valerie asked, “Didn’t you just junk that guy?”

“It must be a new one!” M’gann said as another blast tore through the wall behind them, shattering the plastic table and dropping a pile wall and roof on top of them. A second robot stepped through the new hole in the wall and locked onto M’gann.

M’gann had somehow ended up on top of the rubble, but Danny wasn’t visible and she saw Valerie’s arm sticking out from under a chunk of table for a moment before it gave a thumbs up and was pulled completely under. She did a quick psychic scan the pizzeria, there was only the three of them and the robots in the building. Her eyes glowed red and her skin shifted to Martian green, her face became slightly less human proportioned and her red and white cloths turned into her hero costume. She telekinetically lifted herself from the rubble and motioned to lift the debris off her new friends, but they acted before she could.

Danny, or who she assumed was Danny, phased through the rubble and floated above it. If she hadn’t been looking at his face moments ago, she might not have recognized him. He was the same general size and build, but subtle changes. He had a sharper chin and ears and nose, and even sharper teeth, but he also had bigger, rounder eyes that glowed a toxic green. His hair was the same length, but so pure white, it looked more like mist than strands. His clothes changed too; his t-shirt and jeans had been replaced by a jumpsuit. It was mostly black but with a big white rectangle around the neck that became a little thicker and lest plastic-like as it curved over his shoulders. There were white gloves that reached half way up his forearms, and a pair of white patches on his elbows that looked to be made of the sturdier white material around his shoulders. Thick white lines went from his armpits down the sides of his torso to a white plastic looking utility belt. His boots were white too, coming up to half his calves and having patches of the sturdy white over his knees. There was a hero symbol over his heart, a white P where the long straight side of it looked almost like it was either on fire or fading into mist. Phantom.

At nearly the same time, the rubble shifted and some of the smaller bits flew out in different directions and something that looked like a robot stood up. A black helmet that encircled her entire head with only a red triangular faceplate breaking up the black, except for small lines that seemed to mimic the look of computer circuits that branched off the sold red into the black. The small pattern pulsated red light from a set of red triangles on the center of her chest, one solid while the other was a thin line around it. There, the pattern branched off in all directions, but with specific places where the red energy settled into solid lines that didn’t fade with the pulsing energy. Two solid red triangles on her shoulders, mimicking shoulder pads, and a thick red line around her waist like a belt that had a sharp downward point in the center that echoed the points of the triangles on her chest. There were also red lines around her wrists and calves that made it look like she was wearing gloves and boots. It was like she was covered in a black and red circuit board, but after a moment, the red pulsating glow of the circuitry faded, leaving her in a mostly black armored suit.

M'gann had been distracted by the sudden appearance of these two and was shocked when Danny appeared in front of her, hands raised in a defensive position as a bast of white plasma shattered across a shield of green energy that suddenly surrounded them. There was the sound of a machine powering up and a blast of red energy shot from a blaster that sprung into existence on Valerie’s arm, the red circuitry around it glowing momentarily before fading to black again. The blast hit the robot that shot at them from across the building. Valerie hit the joint of one of its arms, partially melting it and limiting its movement. Two shots hit the shield behind them, as the second robot moved closer to them through the wall leading behind the pizzeria. It reached its electrified claw towards Valerie.

“Look out!” Danny shouted and lowered the shield so he could fire a blast of green energy at the robot reaching for Valerie, causing it to stumble backwards. But she ignored it and fired at the first robot again, hitting the exact same place as last time and melting off its arm completely.

M’gann used her telekinesis to throw the robot that tried to grab Valerie out the hole in the wall it had come through. Danny flew out after it, firing his green energy at it. She followed outside and saw him flying around erratically. She was worried for a moment before she realized, Danny was too fast for the robot to be able to aim its blasters at him, continually firing into the open sky and missing its target. M’gann decided to take advantage of its distraction and telekinetically tore the blaster arms from the robot’s body. It turned its attention towards her and must have seen her as an easier target. It dived for her and she pushed it back with her mind so it stood frozen in air, rockets blasting with greater force trying to break through the invisible wall she’d put in front of it. Suddenly, it was hit with a rain of green energy balls, they burned holes through its outer shell and melted through its electrical insides. Its rockets failed and it crumbled to the ground in pieces.

The two quickly returned inside to find Valerie in the middle of a sword fight. There were melted stumps where the robot’s blaster arms and left claw arm had been melted off, and Valerie was wielding a black sword made of the same material as her suit that glowed with red energy. She was able to block the two flaming swords that bore down on her with the all the artfulness of a poorly rendered video game opponent. But it had one too many arms for her to keep up with and a clawed arm weaved its way through her defenses to grab onto her shoulder. It tried to send an electrical shock into her, but the black suit turned red under its touch as it absorbed the energy. M’gann could actually follow the energy through the suit’s circuitry over to her sword, that glowed brighter and started to melt through the flaming blades it was pressed against.

M'gann decided that was enough of that and threw the robot against the wall with her telekinesis, and regretted it immediately. The clawed hand had been embedded deeper into Valerie than M’gann had realized, and as it flew across the room, it tore through Valerie’s shoulder, taking some of her suit and skin with it. She cried out in pain and turned to look at M’gann who threw her hands over her mouth.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” She quickly hovered over to Valerie, but she didn’t know what to do about the injury. She didn’t have any medic training yet. It was on her list, and there was even a training session for the team planned for it, but she hadn’t done it yet. How was she going to fix this? Valerie had just risked her life to help M’gann and she’d been repaid by getting her shoulder torn up!

“It’s fine,” Valerie said in a such a firm voice it almost convinced M'gann, but it was clear by the way Valerie moved; it wasn't fine but she didn’t want attention drawn to it. Valerie cautiously walked over to the robot, her sword was somehow pulled into her suit and replaced with a blaster that she trained on the downed robot. When it didn’t react to her coming up to it, she placed her hand on it. M’gann could see the red circuit board pattern spread from the red pad of her hand over to the robot like an infection. After a moment Valerie said, “I have a source, and we should go now.”

Danny nodded and asked, “What did you find out?”

>><<

J’onn was worried. He sent M’gann to follow the odd teenagers who had watched their fight with the robot much closer than any sensible person would. He knew teenagers were often unaware of the level of danger around them, especially when famous heroes were present, but there was something strange about these two. The girl had something strange in her eyes, something that glowed and changed color, and the boy - there was simply something wrong about him, something wrong with the way psychic energy moved around him made him seem – less physical somehow, but J’onn couldn’t begin to guess why, what, or how. He sensed no malicious intent from them, if anything, he sensed a strong desire to protect from the boy and a powerful desire to fulfill responsibility from the girl.

He wasn’t sure if M’gann would have been safer following them or staying with him, but this was her first public excursion as his sidekick and he knew for certain that he didn’t want her fighting a robot that seemed tailor made to hurt him. The flaming swords, the hot plasma, the projected electrified field to prevent phasing into them, and no mind to read. The only clues they had were the strange teenagers and a serial number on the hunk of metal that had once been part of the robot. He would trust M’gann not to get too close to the humans or come to him if trouble stirred. She was naive and inexperienced but not an idiot or a pushover. She would keep proper distance, he was sure; reconnaissance was what she was learning with the team after all.

J’onn’s personal computer was patched into a number of databases, and it was a simple task to search for the source of the serial number. It belonged to a robotics company that specialized in custom joint systems. The piece with his serial number had been part of a large order by the Defense Lab of Classified Exobiology, a lab that researched alien life. The D.L.C.E. was a private organization that was owned by a parent company called VladCo. that also owned an advanced technologies development firm, a paranormal research lab, a pop-technologies designing firm, and several other smaller labs and factories, including the company that made the specialized joints. It was an unfortunately common scheme of a company buying from itself to make money; not illegal but shady nonetheless.

J’onn went to the listed address of the D.L.C.E. and found a very normal looking office building. He did a mental sweep of the building but didn’t find anything other than the usual office drudgery. He disguised himself as human, one of his usuals of a white man in a white suit under a beige trench coat and matching fedora, and entered the building. There was a middle-aged woman sitting at the front desk that J’onn didn’t need psychic powers to know was bored.

He pulled out an old police badge and prepared to sweet talk his way past the bored woman. “Excuse me, miss, but I’m from the-”

She didn’t wait for him to finish before pushing a button on a dashboard on her desk, “There’s another goo here for you, Dr. Copen.”

“I told them to give me a few more days!” Dr. Copen seemed to respond from the other side, and then said, “Send them down, I’ll come up with something.”

The woman hummed disbelievingly. She stood up, “Follow me, please.”

J’onn didn’t correct her and followed her down a hall to an elevator bay. She waved her I.D. card in front of a scanner and one of the elevators opened. Once inside, she scanned the I.D. again and the button panel lit up completely before a symbol lit up indicating they were going down. The foundations of the building went deeper than they should have, but eventually, the elevator stopped and they were let out into a large underground laboratory.

A man came up to them in a disheveled lab coat, wild dirty blond hair, circles under his eyes, coffee stains and burn spots on his cloths and arms, a pair of safety goggles pushed up on his head. “Ah, welcome Agent – uh?”

“Operative J,” J’onn provided from the top of the woman’s mind.

“Right, Operative J, sorry, yes, I remember you now.” The man said, “I know I told Director Beta that I’d have results by the end of the week, and while things didn’t go as planned, I assure you, by the end of today, I’ll have something big to show you.”

J’onn scrutinized the man, then probed, “What is this big thing? And why is it worth my time?”

“Yes, Dr. Copen, what have you got?” The woman asked incredulously.

Dr. Copen ignored her as he turned and waved for them to follow, “Earlier today I almost got a subject. The data was inconclusive on why the retrieval unit failed, the hyper connection antenna was damaged somehow before it was able to send any useful information, but I’ve sent out two retrieval units with the same tracking system.”

“Tracking system?”

Dr. Copen grinned and nodded, “Didn’t Director Beta tell you? We got a sample of a an enzyme that’s created when a Martian shapeshifts, we can use it to locate any Martian that has recently changed form, no matter how human they may seem.”

They stopped in front of a large monitor array and the doctor pressed a button and it flickered on. Two robots like the ones that had attacked J’onn and M’gann earlier that day, one with the other in its camera view, they few over the city and started to lower themselves towards … a small pizzeria J’onn recognized.

“Now, so long as whatever interfered with the previous hyper-link connection doesn - uhg…” Just as he said it, and the first robot broke through the front wall of the pizzeria, the camera feed turned filled with static, not receiving a clear image of anything within the building.

“Damn, what is messing with the signal?” The doctor typed furiously at the keyboard under the monitors, there were occasional flashes of clear video.

M’gann was there - and another person in black futuristic armor? There was a clear video, but only of the black armored person shooting the robot to pieces with some kind of arm mounted plasma blaster, before they charged the robot, the blaster somehow being replaced with a sword. After a minute, everything went black. The monitors weren’t off, but they stopped receiving information.

“AGAIN? What are they doing to my retrieval units?” Dr. Copen groaned as he desperately tried to pull data from the robots. He was saving the clearest images of M’gann and the armored person, not enough to identify them, but too close for J’onn’s comfort.

J’onn’s anxiety was increasing, he needed to get to M’gann to make sure she was okay. While the doctor was distracted, J’onn would find a way to destroy the lab. There were plenty of dangerous chemicals lying around; looking back the way they’d come, he saw some large containers with a label warning “oxygen-flammable liquid”. He reached out with his psychic power, only to be suddenly struck in the back of the head and filled with an electric shock. He felt his form revert to its most familiar shape, the form of The Martian Manhunter, the hero he’d created all those years ago.

“Mildred?” Dr. Copen shouted.

“He’s one of them,” The woman said with disgust dripping from the words and a taser pointed at his head.

J’onn’s vision blurred and he felt something latch around his neck. He couldn’t concentrate past the pounding in his head and he couldn’t get to his feet until he felt a hand grab his arm and pull him up. Then he was shoved into a tight confined space, between a wall of glass and a bed of hard metal. Just as he forced control over his movements again, he was suddenly cut off. He could feel his powers being shunted behind a wall, out of reach from him, as energy radiated from the black collar around his neck.

The woman stared in at him, a grimace on her face and the doctor behind her, clearly confused. “Wait, but- My retrieval units? They were just locked onto the Martian signal?”

“There must be two of them,” The woman said, her eyes narrowing and teeth gritting, “It’s multiplied like a cockroach, at this rate, they’ll be crawling all over the place.”

Panic was setting in, not just for the situation he was in, but M’gann was fighting off two Martian Hunting robots by herself, he didn’t know or trust the armored person who could have been working with these people for all he knew. He needed to get out, but without his powers? He was helpless and trapped, and M’gann needed his help! What-

Suddenly, there was an explosion, and the lab filled with thick grey smoke. The black armored person burst from the smoke behind Mildred and slammed her to the ground. Mildred jumped up with the taser discarded for a gun and fired at her assailant, who was apparently bullet proof. J’onn barely caught sight of something glowing green impacting Dr. Copen deeper in the smoke. Suddenly, M’gann was in front of the pod he’d been put in, worry written in her face. She looked around the pod for the way to open it, but she was too panicked.

The grey smoke started turning black and a fire could be seen spreading through the other side of the room. J’onn couldn’t hear what M’gann was saying, but after a moment, there was a boy next to her. He had white hair, green eyes, and a black and white jumpsuit. He phased his hands though the glass front of the pod, grabbed onto J’onn’s clothes, and pulled him through. Once out, J’onn saw M’gann and the person in black (on a flying surfboard?) carry his two captors up through a hole in the ceiling, and the boy flew J’onn out as well.

M'gann and the girl in black left the receptionist and the doctor outside the D.L.C.E. building. The four of them went to the roof of the building across the street from the D.L.C.E. and they watched as first responders put out the fire.

“Thank you,” J’onn said as the boy set him down. It was interesting, the way the boy flew was different from the way J’onn flew. The boy seemed to have gravity simply not affect him vs a Martian's telekinetic flight.

“No problem, Valiant?” The boy said, hovering back and allowing the girl in black to approach him. She reached up and pressed the red pads on her fingers to the black collar around his neck, and after a moment, it clicked and came off.

“Thank you as well,” J’onn said.

“Uncle J’onn, are you okay?” M’gann asked rushing forward for a hug as the girl in black stepped back and examined the collar.

He returned her hug and looked her over, “Yes, and you?”

M’gann smiled broadly, “Yeah, but –“ She looked at the girl, “Are you sure you’re okay, Valiant?”

The girl rolled her shoulder, and when she spoke her voice was slightly distorted through her helmet, “I said it’s fine.”

“Her suit takes care of stuff like that,” The boy said, “It’s a pretty cool piece of technology.”

Valiant, as the boy called her, growled, then sighed. “Now that this is taken care of, we have our other work to do, Phantom.”

“That’s right, you two have to get back to the museum,” M’gann said and smiled at them.

“Is there anything we can assist you with? It would be rude for us to not thank you for your help,” J’onn said, both from honesty and curiosity. He wanted to learn more about these two teenage heroes. They had to be the two from earlier, Phantom had the same somewhat ethereal bend of psychic energy around him as the black haired boy they’d seen earlier.

“Oh, no, we’re literally just here on a school trip. We’re supposed to do our own work,” Phantom supplied. “But, it was super cool meeting you!”

Valiant took a step towards J’onn; he couldn’t see her face through her helmet, but he could feel an intensity radiating from her. She took a deep breath and said, “If you’d like to repay us, then I’d like to make a request.”

Phantom gave her a questioning look, “We don’t need a reward or anything.”

Valiant nodded in agreement, “But we do need training.”

“He’s already got a sidekick! And a pretty cool one, I might add,” Phantom winked and M’gann blushed. "He doesn't need to waste time on us."

“I would not mind an occasional additional tagalong. Though, there are other’s out there who would better suit being your mentors," he glanced over Valiant, "such as experts in human technology, that I can introduce you to.”

J’onn felt the sudden connection of a psychic link, Do you think they could join the Team?

He looked at M’gann and replied, I will speak with Batman about the matter. But there is no guarantee that he will agree to it.

She giggled happily, then pulled a cell phone out of her pocket, “Uncle J’onn just got me this, I’d love to have your numbers, maybe we can team up or have pizza together again sometime?”

Phantom blinked at the two of them, then widely smiled, “That’d be cool!”

There was a second where J’onn saw something in Phantom’s eyes. He ventured a guess, “Did you hear any of that?”

Phantom paused in typing his number into M’gann’s phone, taking a second to process what had been asked and responded with, “Were you talking?”

Phantom went back to typing as J’onn clarified, “You looked at us, each in turn, as we had a psychic conversation.”

“Oh!” Phantom said as he handed the phone to Valiant, “I could tell you were doing something. Like, I felt you using your powers, but I didn’t know what.”

“I see.” J’onn would have to investigate further. If Phantom could sense the use of psychic powers, and it seemed those with psychic powers could sense him, then learning to work together could be an immense advantage when devising countermeasures to either ability. As it stood now, though, J’onn was a little proud. It was hard to get his niece out of her shell; he’d learned from his recent call with his sister that M’gann’s life on Mars had been a hard one, but here she was, making friends remarkably quickly and easily. Even if Batman didn’t agree to them joining the team, even if there wasn’t the possible advantage of training with someone who could sense their psychic abilities, J’onn would keep an eye on his niece’s new friends.

"I'll call you next time I visit Chicago!" M'gann said as they prepared to fly off.

Valiant paused on her hoverboard just over the edge of the building, "I guess you're not too bad. We'll have to bring you down to Amity some time too."

"You'll have to come around a lot actually," Phantom said, "I need you to tell me all about space and Mars and how you got here, and-"

"Okay, space boy, let's get going," Valiant said, grabbing Phantom by the scruff of his jumpsuit.

Then Phantom shout to the heavens as he was being dragged off, "I love having an alien friend! Please text me all the time!"

Yes, J'onn was definitely keeping an eye on these kids.

#dpxdc #dcxdp #danny fenton #valerie gray #m'gann m'orzz #j'onn j'onzz #martian manhunter #miss martian

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vintagerpg · 10 months

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This is Shannon Appelcline’s indispensable Designers & Dragons. The set is four volumes, with each book tackling the history of publishers founded in a given decade (so, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s). Thus TSR’s history is entirely contained in the first book, the ‘70s, even though the company survived through the ‘90s. It is primarily a business history, too, which is nice because that’s the sort of material that is hardest to dig up and it tends to be less subjective than pondering the various threads of game design evolution over the years. So if you want to get insight into just how miraculous the survival of Chaosium as a company to the present day is, or to get a sense of the terrifying cycle of boom and bust that besets the industry at large is, this is the series for you.

That isn’t to say there’s no insight into the way tabletop RPGs have developed creatively since 1974. There is plenty to learn on that front, Appelcline just favors the lens of the nitty gritty business side of things here. That makes for fascinating reading, since I can think of no other industry that routinely turns large numbers of amateur hobbyists into legendary professionals. Even the glossiest productions are only separated from the field’s DIY origins by a couple of degrees.

The big takeaway from these books for me was just how massive the RPG industry is while still being fairly niche. There so many publishers, both alive and defunct, with massive product lines, the idea of getting a handle on all of it is daunting. I’ve been seriously attempting just that for several years now and the main lesson I’ve learned is that there is ALWAYS another thing to discover. It’s crazy.

Needless to say, this was a crucial set of books to have on my shelf while writing Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground.

(Repost from May 1, 2020; lightly revised)

#rpg #d&d #dungeons & dragons #tabletop rpg #ttrpg #roleplaying game #Shannon Appelcline #Designers & Dragons

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lizzybeth1986 · 4 months

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Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like Your Side Character So Much, You Gift Her a Shiny New LI

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Previous - Liam and Olivia: When You Prefer the Side Character to the Main

A/N: There won't be a lot of exploration on Maxwell x Penelope, as there is very little the pair gets in canon. I will be largely looking at their individual characterizations and the changes and retcons made there. There will be a lot of exploration on Penelope x Ezekiel.

CW: Mentions of Penelope's actions as part of Constantine's nefarious plot against the MC in TRR1 & 2, mentions of Penelope's social anxiety.

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube Channel, Drake playthrough)

Compared to the other three alternative romances, Maxwell x Penelope turned out to be a bit of a one-chapter wonder. It was extremely short-lived, and the only indication that it had ever happened was one conversation between Penelope and the MC in TRR2 Ch 6, after which there is no reference to it, ever again.

In my mind there are two major factors behind this pairing being left behind, which I will get into later in this essay. However, what I find even more interesting is what the narrative and the writing team did with Penelope after they set aside that subplot. What did TRR3 give her in lieu of this alternative romance, and why, and what does it tell us about the narrative that she alone got that?

But before we can get into that, we need to look (separately) at how Maxwell and Penelope were written in TRR1, and how it culminated in the characterizations they got by TRR2.

The Evolution of (White) Side Characters

One thing that fascinates me about TRR1 is the trajectory of some of the characters, when you observe them on rereads. We often go into those rereads with a strong impression of their character type (or stereotype), before we learn to our surprise that the initial writing doesn't always match the image we carried in our heads.

In the case of some side characters, we may find traces and hints of a totally different characterization, before the team zeroed in on a trope or characteristic that may have hit the right chord with the audience. When done right, this could result in a more rounded character. But in the wrong hands, the writer may keep falling back to that one trope that made the character click, and turn them into caricatures instead.

Maxwell and Penelope are representative of different tiers of side characters, at least in TRR1 - which means that what we may expect in terms of treatment will vary as well. Even before TRR2, Maxwell was more LI-tier adjacent; until he got his LI-upgrade in TRR2, he was a frequent presence in the story and the MC's life, enough that his fans started a "Make Maxwell an LI" campaign. Penelope (along with Kiara) was a far less important character with infrequent appearances.

So of course their trajectories wouldn't be the same. It's interesting, nonetheless, to see how the writing changed over the course of the series, what parallels or complementary traits made the team consider Penelope as an alternative for Maxwell by TRR2, and why they ultimately let go of the pair after one chapter.

As we go through these stories, I think I'd like my readers to keep one thing in mind throughout - Penelope is an anomaly as a character. There are very specific things she is given that at least one other character in the same position doesn't get. Why?

I might not be able to give the answer in this specific essay, but I do think it's a question we need to keep asking ourselves as we go through her story.

Maxwell and Penelope - TRR1

A truly interesting thing about Maxwell was that he was initially not even conceptualized as a prominent character in the books! In their promotional interview for TRR2, Kara mentioned this about the creation of his character:

Excerpt from The Royal Romance: Book 2 interview.

Maxwell was initially conceptualized as a fun foil for Bertrand, the MC's tentative guide for the social season - who the writers considered too stiff and boring to stand alone as a character. Owing to his proximity to both Liam (close friend) and the MC (sponsor), it made sense that Maxwell was a part of the group scenes from the jump.

Going by the interviews, clearly Maxwell's 'fun nature' was his main USP for the writers. TRR1 does try to balance this aspect of his personality with scenes where he shows perceptiveness (such as pointing out opportunities to ally with Kiara or Penelope), but as time goes on he is viewed more and more as the 'funny guy' of the group. He also has a side-story connected with his older brother, who isn't very impressed with his work during the social season (tbh, for good reason!). This side story allows us to view him with sympathy and perhaps overlook all his failures as a sponsor (and there are many examples of this throughout TRR1. Most of the opportunities to connect with the main LIs emerge from all the times Maxwell failed to adequately guide her - teaching her the Cordonian Waltz, explaining the significance of the Regatta Race, finding the right tents, telling the MC to get swimwear for a beach party!).

Of course, because TRR2 (where the Beaumonts are her staunch allies from the jump, even before the LIs return and pledge their support shortly after) and the "Make Maxwell an LI" campaign created such a strong impression on the fandom, people remember him most as the "person who was always there for the MC".

Though he doesn't become an LI in TRR1, we do get our first ever hint of the possibility midway through the book:

(Screenshots from the HIMEME YouTube Channel)

Most of the people I know joined the TRR fandom either in the middle of Book 1, or after Books 2 or 3 - therefore, much of what I'm about to say next is down to conjecture. It is possible that either some stans did pop up in the initial chapters, resulting in the hint in Ch 8, OR that the writers tentatively teased this pairing with the dialogue at the Lythikos Ball, and were gratified enough by the response to continue teasing it. By TRR1 Chs 10 and 11, there was already plenty fanfic on Maxwell x MC. The writers were clearly encouraged enough by the response to toss a few more hints (the MC asking Maxwell about taking his shirt off at the beach, the implications of the MC telling Maxwell she is falling for someone else). Before the fandom knew it, Maxwell had already become the beneficiary of two diamond scenes focused on him in TRR1 (a flashback scene that introduced Savannah, and having fun sliding down banisters in the finale).

Penelope's trajectory in Book 1 didn't experience as meteoric a rise in popularity, but there were changes made throughout the series until she did become somewhat popular. Her trajectory could be categorised in three parts:

1. A minor noble who was very poised and proper (snobbish, if you weren't fitting in well enough)

2. Adorable ditz

3. The lady with social anxiety (TRR2)

From their entrance in TRR1 Ch 3, both Penelope and Kiara were written as extremely minor characters compared to the three frontrunners (and one female LI) of the social season. They accept early on that they don't have much of a chance in the competition, and are the first contenders (barring Hana) that the MC can get on her side. They represent the opinions and mindsets of the royal court.

Because of this, Penelope and Kiara initially appeared almost indistinguishable from each other. The only thing that seems to set them apart is perhaps the introduction Olivia gives at the Masquerade, pointing to Penelope's lineage and Kiara's linguistic skills and diplomatic pedigree. She was the titled one, Kiara was the "smart" one.

(Penelope's scenes from my failplay, in order:

1 & 2: Ch 3, while speaking about Olivia's connection to the Prince, and if you ask her and Kiara why they allow Olivia to call them 'harpies'

3 & 4: Ch 4, Penelope's response to the MC saying, "Penelope, hands off my man"

5 & 6: Ch 6, if you don't fall in line behind the Queen and bump against her instead

7: Ch 6, when Olivia is shocked that Liam chose the MC

8: Ch 8, reaction to Olivia kissing Liam)

Penelope's early scenes in TRR1 didn't showcase the traits she is now so well-known for. She wasn't the "adorable ditz" until the Applewood chapters; in fact her scenes in the first half often showed her as poised and very proper. At the Masquerade she calmly points out to the MC that there is no reason to be offended, when Olivia bluntly declares that no one else has a chance with Liam. She expects decorum from the MC when she cuts in during her dance with Liam, and even comments on the inappropriateness of some of Olivia's behaviours and cautions her when she gets a chance. If your MC makes mistakes in public in certain scenes, Penelope doesn't hesitate to laugh at her.

Her allyship scene in Ch 10 hinges on the MC's ability to convince Penelope of the advantages of supporting her, and rescuing the lady from a crab bite. She is extremely rude in certain options, and ends their conversation with the sentence "I'm not nice" if she isn't convinced the MC is worth supporting. In fact, she is allowed to call the MC a commoner wench in a certain dialogue option!

(Screenshots from my failplay. The top half shows a response to one of the MC's dialogues (she is merely sad if you choose the second one). The second is the end of the conversation when the MC asks for her support)

In a failplay especially, she can be very, very mean-spirited, which is truly ironic given her later characterization as someone who is herself uncomfortable in court and makes more than her fair share of silly mistakes. Fortunately for most of the players, the more "positive" version of the scene sounds a bit more like she's scared and uncomfortable and not equipped to handle the rigors of court. Which makes the "adorable ditz" direction that PB takes, post Regatta, a bit more believable.

Once Penelope is no longer a contender, both she and Kiara recede to the background. You don't see much of her in Applewood and Ramsford, but the little you do see primes us to view her as "sweet and silly" with a bit of a poodle obsession. Two very good examples of this is the "cheating scene" at the pie competition (TRR1 Ch12) and the aftermath of the Beaumont Bash (Ch 16). At the pie competition, Olivia and the MC can team up to distract Penelope so they trick the rival team into adding salt in their pie instead of sugar, by getting her to talk more about her poodle obsession. At the end of the Beaumont Bash, she is shown exchanging drunken chatter with a horse. The book also makes her preoccupation with poodles way more obvious, where before it was brought up only once at the Masquerade Ball.

Discrepancies between portrayals in the first book vs the latter ones is par the course for TRR. Every character has those in some way or form. Maxwell's story in TRR1 and 2 at least could make sense with enough headcanons to fill in the gaps (for why he was inefficient in his support of the MC, for why his relationship with Drake was so fraught) and his characterization is a little bit more consistent. But Penelope's, on closer observation, is a complete mess and her story doesn't make any sense when put together.

Maxwell and Penelope - TRR2

Compared to the other three pairings, Maxwell x Penelope doesn't go beyond a single chapter.

(Screenshots from Skylia's YouTube channel)

This solitary hint pops up in TRR2 Ch 6, right after the Big Clue about Penelope's social anxiety. We're given the usual options one gets for alternative LIs - a "matchmaking" one, a gently discouraging one and an insulting one, the last two of which could be read as jealousy from the MC's end. In fact, the MC's third dialogue option in this scene is so mean spirited that Hana is required to soften the blow!

There's something interesting about the matchmaking response for this scene, and I think it says plenty about the writers and the lasting impression of these characters they wanted us to have.

"You're both a bit silly...but in a way that works." It's a reading of Maxwell and Penelope that leans very strongly into their potential as comic relief, that views the two characters as alike. Both "cute", both "silly", both there to give the characters (and readers) the occasional laugh.

Is this completely accurate to their characterizations in TRR1? Probably not. But it's clearly what the writers imagined would work well for those characters.

Interestingly, TRR2 is also where the team seems to experiment more with these two characters, and finds the characterizations they think would land with the audience. Maxwell's changes are related more to the belated buildup the narrative was giving him to be an LI, and most of Penelope's was related to her role in the plot against the MC. Maxwell is given more heroic traits (eg. the Savannah storyline and his involvement in the investigation) to beef up his story a bit, and plenty of hints are scattered specifically to tease a romantic route with the MC for more than half the book. The narrative also leans far more into his position as comic relief than TRR1 does, making it his most identifiable trait.

There are tiny nods to his "perceptiveness" (Liam mentions it twice in TRR2), but he does a lot of things that you wouldn't see a TRR1 Maxwell do, like tossing a bruschetta at a foreign dignitary or playing with food to get the forgiveness of his friend (btw the Drake Maxwell friendship reads very differently from the first book; they're remarkably chilly in their vibes towards each other initially. Of course, one could headcanon what caused a rift, but that's still us doing the work instead of the writers!!).

Because so much time has to be spent bringing Maxwell's romantic route up to speed with the rest, the progress of the relationship is different from the other three and his romantic scenes cost less (until TRR3 Ch 10, his first 30 diamond scene). Much of this is par for the course for an LI who has entered the game late. In addition, the narrative also tries in TRR2 and 3 to balance his role as the MC's sponsor with his new role as LI, and it doesn't always land (eg. his excitement for Liam's proposal to the MC two chapters after becoming an LI, or his weirdly impersonal reaction in the TRR3 Ch 11 Armory diamond scene in his playthrough, in response to Madeleine mocking Liam for the MC favouring Maxwell). In part this is a result of laziness from PB's end, and in part it's because navigating Maxwell's new role itself may have been a tricky business.

Penelope's TRR2 trajectory, in contrast, is the textbook definition for "throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks". Hints of her involvement in the plot don't even show up until Ch 6, just one chapter prior to the reveal. The reasoning given for Penelope's actions in TRR1 - social anxiety - also directly contradicts what is shown of her during the timeline when she was supposed to have been involved in the plot. TRR1 Ch 14 and the Coronation at the finale shows her acting calm, collected and enjoying herself. A lot of Penelope's actions in TRR1 and 2 - esp at the Coronation and in Fydelia - cast an extremely poor light on her when you take into account that she knew the MC was innocent, and that she'd played a part in framing her. From the way the reveal of her condition was done, and the way we're expected to brush her wrongdoing aside immediately, it's clear that Penelope's "social anxiety" was more about tossing in a last-minute Hail Mary to excuse her actions, rather than any real interest in exploring the subject.

Given the sloppy execution of this reveal, it is entirely possible that Madeleine could have been the "lady" in initial drafts (the strongest evidence of this is TRR2 Ch 1's "constitutional clause", which is never referenced again once Madeleine is no longer a suspect), and they made a switch in the nth hour.

It is also possible that writers in the team liked Penelope enough that they wanted readers to still like her after she'd betrayed their MCs. She hasn't been referenced or mentioned in any team interviews, but the writing speaks for itself. No matter what she's done, the narrative insists the MC center her, sympathize with her, and coddle her. I will speak more at length on how in the TRR3 section.

Why did Maxwell x Penelope Not Take Off?

(The first three screenshots are from the Abhirio YouTube Channel, and the rest are from the Radiance Guardians YouTube Channel)

Unlike in the case of the other pairings, not a lot was said in the fandom about this pair either way, even among Maxwell stans. You did have the occasional "hands off my man!" post from a Maxwell shipper, but not to a great extent. At this point many of them were still unsure whether a Maxwell route would be finalized, and even kept Liam as a standby in case all that teasing from the team came to nothing.

Again, most of the theories for why this pairing had just one scene are mere conjecture, since there isn't much evidence overall. But looking at the placement of this scene and what happens before and after it, I can think of two possible reasons why it was nipped in the bud:

1. Maxwell being a late-in-the-game LI could have made balancing an actual romance route and interactions with an alternative love interest tricky in the long run. As it is, his writing was subject to gaffes and mistakes in TRR3 even without this added storyline. It's possible they decided to just ensure that they got Maxwell to the point where he could have his own 30-diamond love scene (which happened in TRR3 Ch 9 btw (half a book after Drake and Hana got their first 30-diamond scenes), and not focus on anything else.

2. This teaser scene came up in Ch 6. Ch 7 is when Penelope is revealed to have tricked Tariq into coming to the MC's room, and paid the photographer to take intimate photos of her. Now to be fair, the narrative does insist she be sympathized with rather than judged. But I do think a subplot like that would automatically make her an unpopular candidate for any LI, much less one who hasn't even been clearly established as an LI yet! Having Maxwell fall for a woman who did the MC dirty wouldn't reflect very well on him, social anxiety or no. In fact, in Ch 8, Maxwell's reaction to the news is the strongest - he calls Penelope "a few dogs short of a pack", "downright diabolical" and even suspects she was lying about having poodles.

3. It is just as likely that Maxwell x Penelope was never a serious consideration for the writers in the first place. Possibly, Penelope's scene here was simply another hint in a rising pile that teased a Maxwell romance route. Players often do get an added pleasure from watching their MCs mouth a catty dialogue or two to a romantic rival, so this scene may have been more for the benefit of a Maxwell stan who wanted to "fight for her man" rather than an actual possibility if he wasn't getting picked.

Whatever their reasons, Maxwell and Penelope's chances as a couple ended pretty much in the same chapter that it began. It didn't create much of an impact, and no one really seemed to notice this pairing, or the lack of it. It basically started and finished with a whimper.

TRR3 and Beyond - Penelope and Ezekiel (ft. A Flanderized Maxwell)

Penelope is an anomaly among the side characters (and even among certain mains!) in both series'. She is the only person seriously involved in the plot against the MC, who needs massive coddling to even answer our questions about her betrayal (if not, Hana has to take over for you). She is the only lady-of-the-court who can refuse to attend your wedding. She is the only lady-of-the-court who can choose to travel with the entourage to another duchy, despite not being part of the Unity Tour. She is the only one among the three former ladies-in-waiting who can openly complain about Madeleine's bullying, and expect protection against her from the group. Until TRH2, Penelope was the only side character for whom massive divergences in the narrative would be made as well, to accommodate her comfort and mental health (More on that in this essay).

She is also the only alternative LI to be "rewarded" with a brand new character, crafted specially for her.

Until TRR3 Ch 7, the fandom didn't even know Kiara had an older brother. Even though the person we know best in Castelserraillan is Kiara, we actually spend less than a minute with her, and far more time with Ezekiel Theron. There is an entire diamond scene that's about pampering and complimenting him, making him comfortable around us, getting him to open to us - even though his sister was the one injured at Homecoming Ball. And of course, the entire reason for Penelope to even be present at Kiara's estate is so that she and Zeke can be paired up by default! Even at the Food and Art Festival, Kiara's only real default dialogue apart from winning over her mother (or not), is about moving Penelope and Ezekiel's romance along.

Both Penelope and Ezekiel join the Unity Tour only by option, so the narrative puts in a great deal of effort to get the romance going (by having Penelope only stop at Kiara's estate by default) and allowing the two to still have a fledgling courtship going on if they weren't together at the Unity Tour (Penelope still gets to meet people who inspire her into dog fashion and she and Zeke still show their interest in each other, propelling the parents to discuss their match).

The only thing we know about Ezekiel, and pretty much the only thing that really matters, is that he loves animals. In a court that views Penelope's love for dogs as an oddity, Ezekiel is a character tailormade to romance her. He rarely features in scenes that don't show her (the only exception is the menagerie scene in Ch 14), he rarely has dialogue outside of his scenes with her, he doesn't even have a personality beyond what would best suit Penelope. This character exists only to romance Penelope, which is depressing esp when you consider that she is a white woman, and he is a black man - and she is clearly the only one who even matters in this relationship!

There wasn't any real reason to give Penelope a partner. "Penzekiel" doesn't really do much for the story in general, and not a lot would change if you dropped them. But the narrative deems it essential to give her a "reward", which is ironic considering what she put the MC through and how much we had to coddle her for her to even consider cooperating, either in the investigation or during the Unity Tour. Presumably this "reward" is for her "niceness" and "sweetness", which only works because the narrative completely erases her misdeeds in the social season after TRR2. She never has to remember what she did, nor does anyone in the core group remind her.

With regards to Maxwell, by TRR3 he is a full-fledged LI who gets a wedding with his MC, in certain playthroughs. Much of his playthrough focuses on trying to catch up with the other 3 LIs - you can sleep with them if they're your fiancé/ée, but you have to wait until Ch 10 to sleep with Maxwell. The narrative mentions him taking up "responsibilities" for House Beaumont in lieu of Bertrand, but without any real scenes that show us what he is doing, nor any tangible results (we will not talk about Maxwell's book here!).

He doesn't have any alternative romances. In fact even his romantic playthrough is kinda bare - his only individual scene is the Armoury scene which isn't even about him, and there were glitches that were very noticable particularly in his and Hana's playthroughs. There are no references at all to the alternative romance Maxwell was given in TRR2; it's almost as if that option had never existed.

Penelope being a romantic option for Maxwell doesn't stop the two from having friendly exchanges in TRR3 though. Maxwell was not only allowed - but expected - to treat Penelope with sympathy and respect.

(First set of screenshots is mine, the second is from Skylia's YouTube Channel)

Not only Maxwell, even Drake - who hates most nobles - is shown being extremely protective of Penelope in both TRR3 (promising Penelope to protect her against Madeleine) and TRH3 (showing anger at Guy's blackmail of Penelope and her family). The narrative is very clear that we are expected to make Penelope feel safe, even if she has never made us feel anything but unsafe.

This relationship - and the level of coddling that Penelope has always received from TRR2 onwards - continues into TRH, where she and her beau Ezekiel are shown together, there are occasional updates on their relationship when either one appears in a chapter, and where they eventually marry and start a family. An interesting pattern begins to emerge once we get into TRH.

(Screenshots from Skylia and HIMEME's YouTube Channel)

As the only courtly lady in a relationship in TRH, Penelope gets a nicer, cleaner, more luxurious and more drama-free parallel to the MC's romantic journey. Like the MC, she finds a suitor who falls for her and wants to be with her. Like the LI, he eventually stages a grand proposal for her (TRH2 Ch 18), after they have spent a significant amount of time together. Like the MC, she has a widely publicized wedding (though tbh Penelope's was better customised to her tastes, and as the MC we put even more work into her wedding than we ever did our own!! (we were both her bridesmaid and her officiant, our daughter is the flower girl, we give her the perfect bachelorette, we rescue her from her asshole ex-husband, we help her select lingerie!!!)). And when the MC announces her second pregnancy, Penelope announces to us her first. Penelope's storyline has all the romantic trappings that the MC had with her LI, but without the tension, the conspiracies, the attacks and kidnappings, or the constant fear that someone is out to get her and her family.

Penelope is basically treated like MC-lite. Quite the upgrade for a mere side character who actually did us dirty at one point.

Does Maxwell - her potential LI for all of one chapter - suffer as a result of this upgrade? Apart from the Flanderization, I would say no, he actually didn't.

He doesn't get the lavish Drake treatment, true, but he is centered in the issues that bother him. The MC, by default, has always been expected to defend him to Bertrand from TRR1 onwards, and often argues that Maxwell tried as hard as he could to help her, even when he didn't. Her sympathy towards him whenever Bertrand justifiably berates him for his negligence is by default too. And while he improves in TRR2 and (somewhat) 3, in TRH3 the entire group is thrown into this position again. Even though Maxwell exaggerates events in his friends' lives to an insulting degree in his book and the subsequent movie adaptation, the group often brushes their discomfort aside and supports him instead. And even though his lies in said book about Bertrand (TRH2 Ch 11) indirectly cause the latter to give up his lands to their father (resulting in Bartie Sr's attempt to usurp the throne), the MC spends all of the next book comforting him, involving him in her investigations, and patting his hand sympathetically while he moans about the father who killed the former queen of the country, all while ignoring the son of the woman Bartie Sr. killed, and raging against the elder brother who is secretly supporting them (even after the reveal, the group judges Bertrand heavily and even suspects him of being part of Via Imperii in TRF). Very little is said - either by Maxwell himself or by anyone else - about his role in facilitating this awful takeover.

All in all, Maxwell may have not gotten an alternative LI at the end of the day, and his overall LI path was pretty messy - but there was some thought and consideration put into his writing. The focus on Penelope and her new romance never actually harmed Maxwell.

Fandom

As I've mentioned before, Maxwell wasn't an LI in the beginning, but rose to LI status in Book 2. While the writers did make claims once in their TRF finale livestream that they had planned to make him an LI all along, I find that a bit hard to believe. From the way the hints were dropped it's way more possible that this was a development that came up once enough people in the fandom found him attractive enough to be LI material.

As the Make Maxwell an LI campaign grew in popularity, the fandom often held a rosy view of him, calling him "the only valid white guy", celebrating his queerness (as they should! It was hinted that he was pansexual in TRR2 Ch 18), showered him with sympathy and called Bertrand names for berating him. None of the nitpicking that certain other LIs would get for not supporting her properly, ever touched Maxwell. Nor did the fandom - who did criticize him quite a bit for his trashy book, and protested his Flanderization - ever view him with anything besides sympathy when he struggled to believe his father was evil, after he'd encouraged his brother to make said father the head of Beaumont House. This was the same fandom that didn't hesitate to find the most nonsensical excuses to trash Liam.

The Maxwell-Penelope scene was a fun way for some Maxwell stans to allow their MCs to act a bit possessive of him, and they were very critical of Penelope's betrayal later. But the overall response to Penelope's storyline was overwhelmingly positive. Many related to what she said about suffering from social anxiety, and especially to the lines about her emotional support poodles (ironically in another book, Sloane Washington got scant sympathy or respect despite clear indicators that she suffered from social anxiety too), and were quick to forgive.

(I must confess I was among this portion of the fandom too, but with the belief that she would address it more strongly herself in TRR3)

Fandom didn't mind buying into the canon myths that Penelope was a "sweet, naive" girl, and part of this is understandable because not many got to see what she was like in the failplay. So it was easier to presume that she would still take a little responsibility and wholeheartedly regret her actions, without seeing the failplay scenes where she is shown expecting to be treated like royalty by the woman she screwed over. Penelope and Ezekiel were viewed by most as a cute pair, with some (justifiably) liking this interracial match initially. Many readers who were fond of Penelope even criticized Kiara for being "mean" to her or "joining in Madeleine's bullying of her", when Kiara's behaviour was clearly more protective than harmful.

There was a slight rise in a general negative attitude towards Penelope in TRH3, when she could prioritise her wedding over the looming terror of the MC's child being taken away from her, and only speak up when the MC encouraged her at the altar. But very often people who made these criticisms clubbed her and Kiara together, as if they were a single unit...as if their actions and choices throughout the series were the same. As if Kiara got the same concessions and pampering that Penelope did. In reality, the choices the two women made - and the narrative treatment the two women got - couldn't be any more different.

Individually, Maxwell's and Penelope's stories show us what happens when the writers of a story lean too much towards fandom adulation, and allow it to dictate the way their stories will go. In both cases PB found a beat that the readers liked and stuck with it, never expanding beyond that one trait and causing the two to be caricatures of themselves. In Penelope's case especially, once her anxiety story resonated, the narrative used that to encourage readers to pamper her ad nauseum, and justified her lack of genuine care for anyone but herself through constant reminders of her mental health condition.

I will repeat the question I'd asked at the beginning of this essay - What did TRR3 give her in lieu of this alternative romance, and why, and what does it tell us about the narrative that she alone got that? That's a question I hope you'll keep asking in the next two essays.

Next - Hana and Madeleine: When You Reward Your Favourite Bully with One of Her Victims

#maxwell beaumont #penelope ebrim #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #essay series: trr's alternative lis

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