it takes years for terry pratchett's books to get consistently good. I would argue that the series doesn't really hit its stride until Feet of Clay, which means that pratchett was writing and being published for 12 years before he found his groove.
and I genuinely can't imagine that. in part because I do think that pratchett's publication calendar looks different than what's expected of writers today---he had about 2 books published per year for his entire career. he must have been writing furiously, and the publisher must have relatively quickly gotten these to press.
but also....I just can't imagine any modern-day publisher keeping an author on their list for twelve years, unless that author is a prestige get or a constant presence on the bestseller list. And what does it say about the state of publishing that you can't go on publishing someone's good-but-not-revelatory books until they figure out what story they're trying to tell?
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tbh my latest biggest theory for why HoO and onwards is such a dramatic drop in quality and consistency is just. Rick stopped making teaching guides.
Like, the Lightning Thief teacher's guide is SUPER in-depth with even stuff like sources about middle grade child psychology and exact specifications of where he's applying that, explaining what different character's goals/motivations are, their dynamics with each other and their environments, etc etc. Even specifying which specific myths certain plot elements are supposed to reference or be about.
That stuff just doesn't exist for later books. There's activity guides and smaller, significantly more simple teacher guides for later books but they don't go into anywhere NEAR the same level of depth. The TLT one is a full lesson plan that breaks down the book at every level and explains what's going on and more or less why Rick did that. The others are all basically just glossaries of terminology and some simple question guides.
And they didn't even use the TLT teacher's guide for the Disney+ show because they clearly aren't adhering to any of what's discussed in that breakdown of the book.
By creating a teaching guide alongside writing the actual book, that's forcing you to document what you're doing, why, your sources, and information about your characters and the story they're in. It's like an even more in-depth version of a series bible. But that's lacking for later books (and etc) and it shows because that level of thought and depth and attention just isn't there anymore.
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i'm still so disappointed that potd wasn't a bodyswap episode. think about it. think about it. the master turns on the machine. the machine suddenly stops and the doctor stumbles out. "everything is fine," she says. "the master's plan, it didn't work!" yaz believes this because her faith in the doctor is so absolute that she believes that the doctor would just magically not be affected by the master's plan. they fly off in the tardis together as the doctor smiles. the camera lingers on her smile for just a moment too long. over the next few scenes, as they deal with the cybermen or whatever, it becomes increasingly obvious that this is not the doctor. the things she says, the actions she takes, hell, even her simplest mannerisms aren't hers. and yaz realizes. they're the master's. his plan did work. he lied to her, and now she's in real danger. yaz having to defeat the master somehow while they wear the face of a person she adores, commandeering the tardis from them, and going back to the machine room. and there's the doctor, the real doctor, in the master's body. together they figure out how to reverse the effects and swap back again, but something went wrong. the forced regeneration was too much stress on the doctor's body, and now she's regenerating for real. as she realizes this, yaz looks at the doctor and realizes she will never truly be able to trust the her again because of how the master lied to her, and asks to be taken home.
just think about it. yaz having an actual reason to leave other than the doctor going "bye now!" giving thirteen a reason to regenerate that wasn't "hit by large, slow moving beam". not to mention that whittaker and dhawan playing each other's characters would be so fucking delicious. chibnall i will never forgive you for this absolute waste of an opportunity
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i keep thinking about the possibility that if there's ever a senior year, emily might choose to come back as a different player than fig. i say might because even if she felt like she wanted to play as someone else before junior year, by the time senior year rolls around (if ever) she might change her mind again, or feel that fig's story has taken a unique enough path at the end of junior year that it's compelling to continue playing with it.
and while i would certainly miss fig, and i think the team dynamics would change a lot if a new sixth character was pal-ing around with the bad kids, i hope that if she goes that route, she takes inspo from murph, and the greatest replacement character in d20 history: cody walsh.
because what was great about cody was that finding someone everyone would like as much as kugrash was a very tall order! so instead he veered the other way (on his moped) by creating this perfectly annoying drip of a loser, that everyone else would have strong feelings about, and more importantly, conflict with.
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Time to spread my Charles and Edwin are Orpheus and Eurydice reincarnated agenda
Dream, please come get your son, he keeps going down to hell to save his partner
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been counting the number of wilson scenes per ep and s1 has 140 total with 1x10 having the most at 18 and 1x22 having the least with only 2 he also got a total of 0 separate plots all season and only 4 episodes had any kind of inquiry into his character he truly is just Also In Those Episodes in s1 they didn’t give a fuck about him
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