One ex-blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to

I’m rekindling my love for Harry Potter. As much as I’m fond of the movie versions, my childhood idea of the golden trio was due a revamp.

I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

The reason this stuff is judged to be seriously superior for some baking is that—unlike baking powder and baking soda—in the finished product you can't taste that any leavening product has been used. The heat of the baking process drives off the ammonia (and you betcha, you'll smell it then!). But the final baked product will be light and beautifully risen, and will taste of nothing but the non-leavening ingredients. It's frankly kinda magical.

butt-licking cat

see original here

Book of Hours, Lyon, ca. 1505-1510.

it would be REALLY, REALLY FUNNY….if Roach has been the same horse for like…..fifty years…..and Geralt doesn’t notice his horse is magic, because how long do horses live? 100? This is Fine. Horses, he’s found, are surprisingly sturdy. One time a catastrophic storm sank Geralt’s ship and drowned literally everyone on board but Roach was found chilling on shore, a-okay. 

Jaskier: So I didn’t want to bring this up at first, because I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t cool with your magic horse–

Geralt: Jaskier. This is a normal horse.

Jaskier, who has seen this horse appear on rooftops, in the middle of lava fields, refusing to swim but two seconds later showing up on the other side of a lake, and one time doing this for half an hour:

Eliot gets over-absorbed because he gets really into what his character does (chef, baseball player, etc.) and loses focus on what the con is trying to accomplish, which isn’t helpful but tends to add authenticity to his individual role. Eliot’s main risk is getting so immersed that he forgets it’s just a con and tries to be that persona rather than doing just enough to fool the mark. He may have some broad-strokes backstory in his head in case someone asks, but his main way to sell his character is just to play the role to the hilt in the current moment. (Prior to the team, he didn’t have a hacker or do long cons, so his main grifting option was to keep things simple, play the role, improv as needed, and hope no one asked too many questions before he finished the job. And be prepared to punch his way out if they did.)

Hardison doesn’t forget he’s playing a role. The part he overdoes is building an “interesting” (often meaning complicated) role and tending to over-act, which tends reduce the authenticity of his performance. The obvious example is “The Ice Man Job,” but it’s the same thing with the overall con in “The Gold Job”–he’s thought out every backstory detail and how to deliver it to the mark, but he lays on the perfectly constructed backstory too hard without reading when to dial back the complexity or exposition. (Prior to the team, it’s implied that he did most of his criminal activity on-line rather than in-person, so the exhaustive planning and documentation was his practical grifting approach.)

If you assign Eliot to be a chef, he’s gonna be a chef. He’ll get distracted from the con by the fact that they’re running out of onions and he just can’t get the flavor of this sauce quite right, but everyone around him will believe he’s a chef. If you ask him where he went to culinary school, he’ll glare at you and maybe throw out some sparse details (trusting Hardison to back it up if anyone tries to check it)–dig too far, and he’s probably gonna be relying on dodging questions or having Hardison in his ear feeding him backstory details.

Hardison’s grifting in the style of a dedicated D&D player.

The difference is Hardison is just making up characters. It’s fiction to him, here’s what a millionaire diamond smuggler would be like, here’s a fun adventure story to tell.

Hardison is a planner, so he plans everything – including what his teammates should do. He gets frustrated and confused when they deviate from a script or don’t appreciate (or use) the artifacts he’s painstakingly made for them.

Eliot is an improviser, so he improvises everything – instead of planning around his teammates. He gets frustrated when he has to hold off on hitting someone because they need that person later, and resentful when the team suddenly seems to want him to pivot his role.

Both of them are actually good at planning and good at improvising, they just don’t value those skills enough until working together forces them to improve. Just like Hardison learns to read a mark, Eliot learns to tell a consistent story.