And Once Again Actuator Refs. 😊☕

Mycroft Territory (Part One)

This is the second of my blog resources for fanfic writers who want to create a better sense of place by including stuff about London that is relevant to specific areas. 

In this case, I’m talking about St James, Westminster and Whitehall,, all three of which add up to the seat of British Government. 

St James

Let’s take St James first.  Bounded to the north by Piccadilly and Mayfair, to the west by Green Park, to the south by The Mall and St James’s Part and to the east by Haymarket. The home of the Buckingham Palace, St James’ Palace and Clarence House, royal residences to this day. Think  aristocrats, think of Savile Row and Jermyn Street. The Mall, and of course, The Diogenes Club.

If you’ve been a tourist in London, this is an area you are highly likely to have been to visit. You may, however, be less familiar with its history. 

The area’s name is linked to St James the Lesser (where have we heard THAT name before? Mary’s skip code and John’s bonfire night) It was the name of a leper hospital in the 12th century which was knocked down to build St James’s Palace. 

In the 17th century the area developed as a residential location for the British aristocracy. Clarence House, Spencer House, Lancaster House, Marlborough House- these are all masterpieces of English architecture built for the aristocrats to enjoy the “London season” before returning to their estates in the country. 

By the mid-19th century, it was the chosen place for a whole slew of gentlemen’s clubs: The Reform, The Travellers, The RAC, The Oxford and Cambridge Club, The Army and Navy Club, The East India Club, etc. Since the re-development of London post WW2, the area has moved from residential to more commercial premises. That said, many of the gentlemen’s outfitters of Savile Row and Jermyn Street have been there for centuries, and Fortnum & Mason’s was their local grocery store.

Whitehall

Whitehall is small but packed with power because this is civil service land. The Ministry of Defence, Horse Guards, etc now, but the history is even more interesting. Ever since the 12th century Whitehall was the route from Charing Cross to Westminster. Henry VIIth built “York Palace” on the route, which Henry VIIIth re-named Whitehall Palace. It was a rather splendid place. He married Anne Boleyn here. It was the palace of the Stuarts, too. By 1680 it looked like this: 

If you zoom in, you will notice something interesting. 

Yes, that’s SCOTLAND YARD, the very first one. As the Stuarts were Scottish kings, this is what the area was called. And it was the site much later of the very first home of the Metropolitan Police. 

When New Scotland Yard moved from Victoria to its new home, it was to a site on the Thames that is on this map, just above the V in River. 

So, now you know why it was called Scotland Yard. 

To be continued in Part Two, Westminster (which includes Belgravia

This scene is so good I really love it so much, the blocking and shot composition is great, and tense and I love it.

The way Deckard subtly recoils in disgust

And Silco juuuuuust sliiiiiiightly turns to him and it's like... dude you said the wrong thing.

I LOVE THIS SHOT framing it through the blood-spattered, cracked glass? Amazing choice. And the body language is so good. Only Silco can feel predatory while standing perfectly still and unbothered.

"Power" Silco spits. I made a post earlier commenting on how Arcane uses spit, it's gross. And they do this with Silco a lot. He's icky, he makes your skin crawl. And it was a good choice, because Silco is charismatic and the grossness counterbalances that, it maintains this unsettled feeling about him. If you're starting to like SIlco it helps keep you ambivalent towards him, because ew.

And then yeah this shot is just super cool

“You felt your sins crawling on your back.”

Can’t stop listing to Megalovania… > w >;;

Book 3, chapter 18 ‘the Old Masters’

The Lives of the Gaang ep. 1 ‘Kyoshi’s advice’

Part 0

13 year old Peter Quill to go w/ the Yondu I did yesterday. He’s a little moody. For that mini comic that I’ll totally work on, probably. 

anti-papyrus-babyification brigade forever but you can tear sans' mom moments from my cold dead hands

The Pre-Undertale Timeline 

[ View at Full Size ]

A visual compilation of the events before Undertale based on research from @nochocolate​. Special thanks to the mods of NoChocolate for all the help and proofreading! 

Not every event is captured on this timeline, but the main chronological order of events and the rare, specific mentions of dates are included. In order to be as objective as possible, theories and speculation have been omitted. All data has been taken at face value (including possible hyperbole, such as Bratty claiming they’ve been underground for “millennia”).

Source content and in-depth analysis:

[ Undertale takes place in less than a day ] [ How long has Flowey existed? ] [ The Undertale Timeline ] [ Mettaton Added Last Week ]

(Kindly do not delete the comments above.)

taking on water

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Snape’s Supposed Great Love

Here’s an old HP meta post about Snape I wrote right after The Deathly Hallows came out. I scavenged it from my deleted LJ and I’m reposting it here. Before you send me nasty asks, remember I wrote this over ten years ago!

더 보기

Why is Count Dooku's characterization vastly different in The Clone Wars then Attack of the Clones? In AOTC he's all like, "I'm sorry old friend" and "Back down", in TCW he seems to take pleasure in killing Jedi. What happened?

Okay, so I lightly touched on this back in this post where I compare the Dooku we see in the Legends continuity to the Dooku we see in Canon and in this video. George Lucas quotes used as sources can be found at the end.

To start with: there's a dichotomy to Dooku.

On the one hand... he makes good points. His concerns are the same that many Jedi share: the Senate is corrupt, and its representatives are abusing their power for their own selfish needs, sometimes even using Jedi to do so.

On the other hand... Dooku's a Sith. Which means he - like the Senators - is also after power, if not moreso. He's greedy, selfish and ambitious. Sure, he makes good points but he’s part of the problem; he knows it, but he doesn’t care.

More importantly, like Maul and Grievous, the primary purpose of Dooku, as a character, is to show us who Anakin is going to turn into:

An evil, corrupted old man. A prodigal son of the Jedi Order (with closet fascist-leanings) who, in his unquenchable thirst for power, was reduced to being a slave of Darth Sidious.

One of the big differences between Dooku and Anakin, however, is that Dooku was always more politically savvy.

Count Dooku has a public image.

He uses his past as a Jedi to cultivate this persona of a wise intellectual, a rational man with fair and just demands, one who fights for the little guy.

He is the head of the Separatist movement, a charismatic figure known throughout the galaxy for his political idealism, even giving lectures at universities.

But it is just a persona.

I mean, that's probably how he started out, sure, but by the time we see him in Attack of the Clones, Dooku is a Sith Lord, and he's been one for over 10 years, because we know he was going by "Tyranus" while ordering Sifo-Dyas' death and hiring Jango Fett a few months before the invasion of Naboo.

QUICK NOTE: In Canon, Dooku left the Jedi Order 10 years before Qui-Gon’s death. So chances are, he's actually been a Sith for almost 20 years, as we know he was already a darksider 8 years prior to The Phantom Menace because he tried to recruit Rael Averross at the end of the book Master & Apprentice.

Which means he's pure evil.

Deep down, Dooku's the guy we see in The Clone Wars: Darth Tyranus, a ruthless, sadistic killer whose only goal is to destroy the Jedi Order and bend the galaxy to his will.

But the galaxy can't know this, right? They think he's Count Dooku, a kind-hearted man whose beliefs are controversial but ultimately altruistic. Hell, even the Jedi remember him fondly.

So, like Palpatine, he keeps up the facade.

He does this with Obi-Wan, as he secretly tries to recruit him to overthrow Sidious (who Lucas compares to Vader trying to do with Luke in Empire Strikes Back):

He does this with the Jedi, calling Mace "old friend", telling him he's sorry he's about to have them executed.

He plays this charade up to the very end...

... but when Obi-Wan still won't back down, he is left with no choice but to kill him the fastest way he can: with a lightsaber.

A red-bladed lightsaber, in signature Sith fashion. One he’s been careful to keep a secret.

But Obi-Wan's seen it, he's seen the Force Lightning... he's been given a peek behind the curtains, so now he has to die. 

And you see the change in Dooku’s behavior. He starts to taunt Obi-Wan, he’s grinning, there’s a sadistic glimmer in his eye. For a brief moment, he drops the mask and goes to town.

Oh and Anakin joins in, whatever the more the merrier. But then Yoda joins in... and Dooku can't beat Yoda. Crap, he's gonna tell everyone. 

The secret of him being a Sith Lord is gonna get out...!

But this is Palpatine and Dooku we're talking about. Political geniuses, masters of spin and flipping the story. If the secret got out... who cares?

Seriously, who cares if the Jedi know he’s a Sith, now? The war's already started, Order 66 is right around the corner. He won't even bother pretending he's a good guy, with the Jedi.

Him playing the role of the "villain" when facing the Republic also makes it so that the Senate will want to keep the war going until he's captured or dead.

And because they're at war, he can simply wave the fiendish acts the Republic lays at his feet as "slanderous propaganda" in front of the Separatists, they'll just eat it up.

Furthermore, Dooku being his true, ruthless self when engaging with the Republic also has a second perk: it'll make the Jedi look bad.

'Cause the galaxy doesn't really get what a Sith Lord is, they think it's just some Jedi variant. So that's still a Jedi, right?

As such, Dooku's cruel actions and cruelty then feed into the anti-Jedi conspiracy theories about them "starting the war" and the growing distrust that'll make it so that - when the Jedi are eventually wiped out - the general public will just go "good riddance".

Which was the main goal of the entire Clone War conflict.

TLDR:

The guy we see in most of Attack of the Clones is Count Dooku, political idealist, AKA who he presents himself to be.

The characterization we see at the end of Attack of the Clones, in The Clone Wars and in Revenge of the Sith is that of Darth Tyranus, Sith Lord, AKA his true self.

George Lucas Quotes:

About Dooku’s valid points:

“I wanted a more sophisticated kind of villain. Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the [Republic] is actually valid. It’s all valid. So, Chris plays it as, “Is he really a villain or is he just someone who is disenchanted and trying to make things right?”” - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

“The confrontation between Obi-Wan and Dooku originally was a confrontation between Padmé and Dooku, and it was a political thing. I decided, after seeing the movie, that I didn’t need that scene with Padmé and Dooku, it was in the wrong part of the picture, and this one, with Obi-Wan, would be more appropriate. It would work better if Dooku would actually tell the truth about what’s going on and then create a situation where nobody believed him. And it also allows you to kinda have some sympathy for Dooku in that he carries the sympathies of most of the Jedi which is that the Senate is corrupt and is incapable of carrying out any meaningful actions because they argue about everything all the time.” - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

About the similarities between Anakin and Dooku:

“[In the garage scene, Anakin] sort of lays out his ambition and you’ll see later on his ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku’s. He says “I will become more powerful than every Jedi.” And you’ll hear later on Dooku will say “I have become more powerful than any Jedi.” [...] And Dooku is, kind of, the fallen Jedi who was converted to the Dark Side because the other Sith Lord didn’t have time to start from scratch, and so we can see that that’s where this is going to lead which is that it is possible for a Jedi to be converted. It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful.” - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

“I needed to get across the point that Jedi can leave the Order, to set up what happens with Anakin later on. Also, in the end when you realize that Dooku is Darth Tyranus, it explains what Darth Sidious did after Darth Maul was killed: he seduce a Jedi who had become disenchanted with the Republic. He preyed on that disenchantment and converted him to the dark side, which is also a setup for what happens with Anakin.” - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

About Dooku’s true nature:

“If you put two Sith together, they try to get others to join them to get rid of the other Sith. Dooku's ambition here is really to get rid of Darth Sidious. He's trying to get Obi-Wan's assistance in that [...] so that he and Obi-Wan could overthrow Sidious and take over. And it's exactly the same scene as when Darth Vader does it with Luke to try to get rid of Sidious.” - Attack of the Clones, Commentary Track 2, 2002

“In the midst of this turmoil, a separatist movement was formed under the leadership of the charismatic former Jedi Count Dooku. By promising an alternative to the corruption and greed that was rotting the Republic from within, Dooku was able to persuade thousands of star systems to secede from the Republic. Unbeknownst to most of his followers, Dooku was himself a Dark Lord of the Sith, acting in collusion with his master, Darth Sidious, who, over the years, had struck an unholy alliance with the greater forces of commerce and their private droid armies.” - Shatterpoint, Prologue, 2004