#Continuous World/narrative to figure out what is going on/going to happen next

[your--isgayrights]

ok we are feeling kid of cute rn actually I rewrote/reread everything i was like afraid of looking at again and I feel like the whole thing is just so much nicer of a foundation/experience now to reread. I'm pausing at a part that is a bit tricky because I want to do kind of a transition/montage between a couple of days/weeks before the big ending scene that I need to rewrite from the version that's been in my drafts for YEARS, but i need to decide which kind of amorphous transitionary scenes I can put in this space vs which ones i need more space in the timeline to develop. Part of why it's hard is that some key scenes in the chapters have these sort of core seasonal settings that are important to the atmosphere and I don't want to break realism too much by fudging the timeline eg being like they knew each other for months but its still february bc you know it was january in chapter 3 but for the big ending scene of chapter 4 it is important to have kind of mid to late february vibes visavis the emotions and headspaces and seasonal depressions at play but is that enough time for the emotional states of the characters to shift to where they need to be for some of the scenes I want? Ok maybe I have to like move some of the things to the next chapter.. OH ok like i had a part that I wanted to have KDJ be confused about something YJH wrote at the end of this chapter but maybe he gets to be confused/allarmed about it next chapter instead.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

SFX Magazine Issue 368, August 2023

THEY’RE BACK – AND THIS TIME THEY’RE IN ALL-NEW TERRITORY. NEIL GAIMAN TALKS RETURNING FOR SEASON TWO OF GOOD OMENS

THE RASCALLY DEMON Crowley (David Tennant) and the neurotic angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) put aside their differences to pull off one doozy of a Hail Mary and prevent an impending Apocalypse in Good Omens’ first season. The task cemented the pair’s unconventional friendship. So what are divine beings, who have fallen out of grace with both Heaven and Hell, to do for an encore?

The answer lies with archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm), who shows up unannounced on the doorstep of Aziraphale’s London bookshop. Suddenly, Aziraphale and Crowley are caught up in a caper of biblical proportions – but also a more intimate tale.

“It’s a mystery,” showrunner Neil Gaiman tells SFX. “It kicks off a story that doesn’t have giant consequences for the universe, even if it does have consequences for Aziraphale and Crowley. We have a lot of the marvellous Jon Hamm, who is the angel Gabriel and turns up at the beginning stark naked, carrying a cardboard box with no memory of who he is. In the same way, it is about Aziraphale and Crowley having to get involved with humanity in a way that they haven’t before.

“They get dragged in slightly against their will to try to sort out the love life of Aziraphale’s tenant,” he continues. “Her name is Maggie [Maggie Service] and she runs the record shop next to the bookshop. You’ll see the coffee shop over the road, which is Nina’s [Nina Sosanya]. The relationship between Maggie and Nina is one that Crowley and Aziraphale try to fix, and mess up, because they are not good at human relationships, even if they can do miracles.”

Truth be told, Gaiman never originally intended this arc to serve as Good Omens’ second instalment. The TV series was based on Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel. The two collaborators had partially hashed out the details for a sequel to the fantasy comedy, late one night in a hotel room. This, however, is not it. Gaiman instead plotted a new narrative that could provide the connective tissue between the first season and a theoretical season three, if it happens.

“Because the hypothetical season three exists, there is a story that is there, and I didn’t feel that we could drive straight from season one into that,” Gaiman explains. “I knew what the stakes were. I knew what the parameters were. I also knew that I had David and Michael. I had the angels from plot number one.

I had demons from plot number one. And with anybody that I wanted to bring back, but didn’t have room for right now, I did not have to bring them back as themselves. “I had absolutely nothing for Madame Tracy to do in this plot, but I would be damned if Miranda Richardson wasn’t going to be in this. She is one of my favourite people in the world. She is hilarious and is so good. And I knew I was going to have a new demon replacing Crowley as Hell’s representative in London/ the UK. Miranda’s demon Shax is the best demon you could want.”

It’s late February 2022 and SFX is in Edinburgh for a set visit. A soundstage in Pyramids Studios has been transformed into a street in Soho. The visible local stores include the aforementioned book, coffee and record shops, as well as a magic establishment. In the middle of them all stand Aziraphale and Crowley, the latter in close proximity to his classic Bentley. It’s close to the end of the six-episode season, so exactly what the duo is discussing constitutes a spoiler. We can say, however, that Aziraphale has picked up the pace. Time is of the essence as Shax marshals her forces to descend on Aziraphale’s store and retrieve Gabriel.

“This is really Shax’s first time out on Earth,” Gaiman explains. “She is working very diligently and very hard in Hell for a long time. Now she is on Earth, trying to figure it all out. She’s just discovering what Crowley has known for 6,000 years, which is that if you’re a demon and come up with a brilliant plan to screw up the lives of humanity, people will get there first and do worse than anything you could have imagined! She’s coming to terms with that.

“She is having to deal with the first crisis on her watch, as well, which is the disappearance of the archangel Gabriel from Heaven. It would be fair to say that by the end of the story, she is leading as much as she can get from Hell’s requisition department – a legion of Hell – in an attack on a Soho bookshop.”

When audiences catch up with Aziraphale again, he’s enjoying his time among humans. He owns most of the block in a Soho neighbourhood, and he’s meddling in Nina’s love life. Meanwhile, Crowley has been living in his car, with his plants sitting on the back seat. He’s grumpy about his current status quo, but frequently hangs out at Aziraphale’s. The duo began as antagonists, but their history and blossoming relationship will be fleshed out in flashbacks.

“One of the enormously fun things I came up with is the idea of minisodes,” Gaiman explains. “They are 25-minute-long episodes within the episode. We have three of them over our six episodes. Each of them is like one of those chunks of episode three [in season one]. Whereas the longest one of those was four or five minutes, if that, these are full stories.

“You get to have the story of [put-upon Biblical figure] Job, and you learn Aziraphale and Crowley’s part in the story. Then writer Cat Clarke takes us to Edinburgh in the 1820s for a tale of body-snatching and attempted murder that the boys get involved in,” he adds.

“Finally, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman reunite the League Of Gentlemen in a Nazi-period story that takes place very shortly after the episode in the church. That one was the only one I said had to be there, because I fell in love with our Nazi spies in the church. I kept thinking, ‘What would happen if they essentially came back as zombies, with a mission from Hell to try and investigate whether or not Crowley and Aziraphale were actually fraternising?’”

Gaiman admits that one of the greatest challenges has been filming Good Omens simultaneously with his upcoming show Anansi Boys. The two shoot within throwing distance of each other, but are both timeconsuming endeavours.

“If I could go back in time, I would go back to 16 September 2020, when Douglas Mackinnon [co-producer] and I got the phone call from the Amazon bigwigs to say, ‘We have good news for you and interesting news for you,’” Gaiman recalls. “‘The good news is we are greenlighting both Good Omens and Anansi Boys. The interesting news is you are going to have to do them both at the same time.’

“I would go back to then and I would throw myself on the call and say, ‘Neil, don’t! This is unwise.’ That we are doing them both together is great. The amount of sleep I am not getting is monumental and monstrous.

“It’s a little bit like childbirth, in that I managed to forget all the things that drove me nuts about the first one. Having said that, I managed to fix all the things that really drove me nuts making season one, which is great. We just have a whole new set of problems making season two…”

The Odd Couple - David Tennant and Michael Sheen talk character and sets for season two

Crowley and Aziraphale come off as the best of frenemies at times. Where do they stand with one other now?

DT: They are indeed. What’s different in season two is because of what happened at the end of season one, they no longer have head offices that they have to report to. They are in a very different position. Whereas before they were trying to get away with things, now they are kind of free agents.

MS: Although sort of fugitives as well. They are sort of in-between. But this amazing life they have created over a millennia, they are now able to enjoy in a slightly different way. They are not having to put on a front for their respective teams. There is a different kind of freedom.

DT: While at the same time being cut off, so they are also strangers in a strange land.

MS: That kind of connects them in a slightly different way. They have always been the only two beings who could understand each other’s position. Now they are pushed even closer together.

Now that they have the run of the place with no obligations, does that bring its own set of problems, being cut off?

DT: They have this sort of uneasy relationship. They are not entirely cut off from their head offices. Indeed, their head offices are quite keen to exploit that sort of adjacent connection, as we will see as the story unfolds. They exist in this grey area, neither the supernatural nor of the Earth.

MS: By the time we pick up their story in this series, they have appeared in time where they were kind of let alone a bit more. When we pick the story up, they are being bothered again.

The depth and the richness and the detail of what we are seeing on set here in Edinburgh is mind-blowing. How is it for you having it all in one place now, rather than having filming scattered around the UK?

MS: It’s completely changed the experience of doing it. Just being indoors… The Soho set on the first season was freezing cold.

DT: I was in a car park. Even inside the bookshop I was exposed to the elements! There’s a greater percentage of the show set here. There was a practical imperative to making it a manageable environment. If we had been in a car park, the elements might have impinged our ability to film.

Hellraiser - David Tennant is Crowley

You and Michael know these characters inside out. Do you have a shorthand?

It’s a hard thing to be objective about. Although I didn’t know Michael that well before we shot season one, it was always easy and exciting working together. It’s well-oiled now, for sure. It’s certainly fun to come to work. We enjoy bouncing off each other.

How comfortable are they about becoming involved with Gabriel?

I suppose Aziraphale is a much more enthusiastic detective. We are very much voting for the spin-off called The Azirafiles, which will follow this! As with most things, Crowley is reluctant to get involved or to exhibit any kind of energy or enthusiasm about very much. He is dragged kicking and screaming into this. Necessity forces him to get involved, whereas Aziraphale rather likes it.

Where does Crowley hang out these days?

He spends a lot of time in the book shop. He only has one friend. He can only have one friend. That is the great liberation, and also the great prison, that they find themselves in. They have no one else. They have come to rely on each other more than they ever did. And more than they care to admit.

Crowley is a rock star, in a way. Were there any particular musicians that inspired you?

Not consciously, no. The look was assembled accidentally during the first costume sessions. The Crowley of the book is of the mode when the book was written. He is more kind of Wall Street, the way he is described. We just decided that Crowley should always be of the moment he’s in. We were just trying to find a look that we felt fitted.

Divine Being - Michael Sheen is Aziraphale

How has knowing your characters better informed this series?

The first series was the first time we really properly worked together. It feels like we haven’t stopped working together since. Everything that has happened in-between plays into coming back to these characters. I am sure it is all feeding into it. It’s very difficult for us to know how that is informing the characters and their relationships.

With the flashbacks to various points in Earth’s history, is there a period of time Aziraphale enjoys the most?

One of the most enjoyable things for the audience and us is moving through different historical periods. It’s a great source of joy, and people thoroughly enjoyed that episode in the first series, so that has been expanded on in season two. But in terms of which Aziraphale enjoys the most, I think it’s not actually a period of time that we’ve seen him in on this series.

He would have been happiest at the end of the 19th century, in the Victorian era, which is considered the golden age of magic. He would have loved being with the greats like Harry Houdini. He loved the Victorian period. It was a great period of time for philanthropy and doing good works in a municipal way.

How has it been going from something dark like The Prodigal Son to a more whimsical show?

That’s the nature of an actor’s job. You go from one thing to another. In some ways, it’s even more useful to have big differences between the characters. What tends to happen, and I think most actors feel this way, is if you are playing one character for a long time, part of you yearns to play the bits the character doesn’t have. There’s a naivety and an innocence about Aziraphale. But at the same time, underneath that, there is eons of knowledge and experience.

[andy-wm]

Back to WHO : the MV

This is a continuation of the earlier post that discusses the song WHO, by Jimin. That post was a first impression focused on the lyrics - while this one looks more closely at the MV.

(Remember this is my interpretation, not an official statement by Hybe)

The more times I watched the music video, the more I wanted to yell, because look...

IT'S REALLY STARING US IN THE FACE.

And again, kudos to Jimin's team because it's the most obvious thing in the world ever but only if you ALREADY KNOW what's going on.

Here's a summary:

The music video loosely represents Jimin's attraction/sexuality/love life as a timeline.

New colours - a new spectrum shall we say - filter into his life even though he's trying so hard to 'keep to the program'.

He searches high and low for a girl to love, but alas, nobody makes the fireworks happen for him. Then Billboard Boy crashes into his life, threatening to destroy everything. Jimin has to weather the storm and figure out where his place is because Billboard Boy is a major disruptor - a tornado in fact. In the end, the fireworks are popping and the chaos is happening, and Jimin has to just go with it and finds his place again. His colours have been getting brighter and louder as he goes along and in the end he's prepared to walk away from everything in order to be the spectrum he is.

<<I'm not saying it's literally a count of how many girls or boys or enbys he's kissed. I hope his kissed all of them and then some, frankly, but that's none of my business.>>

A few things to pay special attention to:

Burning cars > cars = masculinity. fire = hot. 1+1=2.

Dancers > people he's interacting with

Rough weather, as represented by the wind-whipped papers and eventually even cars being tossed about the set > His attraction to men (and dare I say it, culminating in a focus on one man in particular)

Colour flares, machine text, and marks on the tape (horizontal lines etc)

Are you ready? Let's go...

Jimin enters the scene looking like sex on legs (no surprises) and strolls casually onto the road. Immediately our view of hm is blocked by a pop-art style poster blowing across the screen. It's immediately followed by a car coming around the corner onto the road. The car is on fire. Jimin watches it pass by and follows it.

He follows the burning car.... and so it begins.

The narrative starts from before BTS even exists. Jimin encounters several female dancers who he has brief and sexy interludes with. In fact i don't think there's a single woman in this MV who he doesn't at least look at. He really does try everything (and everyone) in his efforts to find HER.

BUT WAIT.... rewind...

Let's go back to the poster... it depicts a street scene much like the one we see here, with the words:

WHO IS!! TORNADO OF LOVE

Note: those are exclamation points not question marks.

It's not a question. This is telling us UP FRONT IN BIG LETTERS that 'WHO' is tornado of love.

I could probably stop here and just say 'ok go watch it again' but it's too much fun to go through all the details.

So let's continue...

Jimin has a little more steamy choreo with the female dancers before the lyrics tell us he has so many people to see and places to go, and he leaves them and joins 6 other men in what looks like a work environment....

Hello we are BTS!

Yes you guessed it... like Yoongi did in Haegum, Jimin has his members represented here. (Fan chant going off in my head...) and more delicious choreography follows.

Notice that while Jimin was dancing with the girls, the only signs of rough weather were a few glittery specs floating through the air, barely noticable. Those bits of glitter multiply when he joins the 6 men, and instead of a sprinkling of glitter, it starts looking like a light snowfall.

That's all about to change....

The first moment of reckonning:

At the end of this section of choreo, as Jimin sings 'who is my heart waiting for' and moves into the next phase we have a barely visible flash of light across the screen and rainbow colours bleed into the footage (at 1.14).

This is also the moment the significant rough weather starts. I'd say this is where Jimin starts noticing how he feels, and the turmoil begins, because this is also where he makes eye contact with the camera (1.23).

He sees us watching.

Fuck. I had a moment here. There's a look on his face as he walks past the camera and stares right into it.

AUTO CALLIBRATION...

As another millisecond flash of light and rainbow colours seep into the footage, The machine text 'AUTO CALLIBRATION' appear on the screen and flash there for a couple of seconds.

CALLIBRATE: To standardise... by determinning the deviation from a standard so as to ascertain the proper correction factors (Meriam-Webster definition).

"Get a hold of yourself, Jimin. Reset (your behaviour and desires) to correspond with expectations"

Jimin makes a very determined bee-line for the nearest girl and dances with her, ignoring the burning car in the foreground.

This brings us to the next phase of the narrative, and the next location - the performance space in front of the OASIS cinema.

(Do you see the doors of the cinema - BTS referenced again).

As he dances with this girl, the camera zooms out and we see that a crowd has gathered outside the cinema, watching them, but the crowd does not seem friendly and the dance seems performative - the movements are exagerated and obvious. The girl has Jimin in a headlock at one point and then she pushes him away and leaves. All in all it's an unpleasant event.

At this point the BTS members return (Although now there's one missing) and they dance with and around a number of female dancers. flashes go off in the crowd as the choreo is performed.

As they dance the wind picks up quickly and papers and cans are blown about. Even when Jimin is obviously interacting with female dancers the weather continues to pick up. Dancing with the girls isn't helping.

The camera pulls back and we see the same car as before, still on fire.

This is the moment when the penny (or billboard) drops.

All the other dancers scatter, dissapearing in a matter of seconds as the billboard comes crashing down. The billboard blocks his path. Wherever he had been planning to go - or whatever course of action he had planned to take - this man on the billboard forces a new decision. Jimin has to rethink his plans.

Jimin turns and goes in the opposite direction to everyone else. (A similar scene occured in Like Crazy, Jimin going the other way, rejecting the norm, going against the tide).

The machine text flashes "REWIND ... REWIND" on the screen and we see Jimin heading back to where all this started... where the original car on fire was seen.

He's travelling his own path now, but as he walks, alone in what seems to be the wrong direction, we see the store lights brighter, reflecting off cars and filling the space around him.

He's going through the motions with the girls he passes but the interactions are brief and in one case he actually dodges the girl completetly.

He retraces his steps amidst the chaos, and the weather really goes nuts. Now there are cars being thrown through the air, streetlamps exploding. The storm is almost upon him.

As Jimin steps into that original street again, the one with the neon letters spelling BLISS, the machine text reads PLAY. It's almost ike he's having a redo, where he accepts who he is from the start and allows the chaos to happen. And the chaos DOES happen, because the tornado has arrived.

THE TORNADO OF LOVE.

There's a flash and the whole screen is flooded with colours, blanking out the footage.

Jimin can no longer dance in step with everyone else at this point. He's doubled over, belting those high notes at the climax of the song while the chaos rages in the background. Without the music to give his actions context, it almost looks like hes in agony.

Sparks fly, lights flash, even the film itself is affected...

He eventually gets it together and rejoins the choreography, picking up his life so to speak. But his callibration is forever changed. the colours that bled into his life are there for good now, and and as he walks away after the music stops, we see that those colours are not just for the performance, they exist outside of that.

A note about the light flares we see throughout the MV:

It was really hard to catch these, some of them were literal milliseconds. I had to slow the MV down to play at .25 original speed and even then they were fleeting - well hidden.

Only the one at the very end was really visible.

In this one, the word PAUSE appears, as the MV ends. I wonder if that relates to their military service?

The flares of light and colour, those rainbow flashes, aren't always easy to find. Youvhave to be prepared to seek them out.

We will find them if we look for them, but i think Jimin won't show his true colours until after the lights go down and the performance is over.

I respect his decision (if that's what that is) and i will continue to meet him here his stands. I'll support everything he does knowing what I know and I'll continue to search for and uncover the hidden messages he sends us.

[tonydaddingham]

Source

Transcript of main article under the cut:

THE RASCALLY DEMON Crowley (David Tennant) and the neurotic angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) put aside their differences to pull off one doozy of a Hail Mary and prevent an impending Apocalypse in Good Omens' first season. The task cemented the pair's unconventional friendship. So what are divine beings who have fallen out of grace with both Heaven and Hell to do for an encore?

The answer lies with archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm), who shows up unannounced on the doorstep of Aziraphale's London bookshop. Suddenly, Aziraphale and Crowley are caught up in a caper of biblical proportions- but also a more intimate tale.

"It's a mystery" showrunner Neil Gaiman tells SFX. "It kicks off a story that doesn't have giant consequences for the universe, even if it does have consequences for Aziraphale and Crowley. We have a lot of the marvellous Jon Hamm, who is the angel Gabriel and turns up at the beginning stark naked, carrying a cardboard box with no memory of who he is. In the same way, it is about Aziraphale and Crowley having to get involved with humanity in a way that they haven't before.

"They get dragged in slightly against their will to try to sort out the love life of Aziraphale's tenant," he continues. "Her name is Maggie (Maggie Service) and she runs the

record shop next to the bookshop. You'll see the coffee shop over the road, which is Nina's (Nina Sosanya). The relationship between Maggie and Nina is one that Crowley and Aziraphale try to fix, and mess up, because they are not good at human relationships, even if they can do miracles."

Truth be told, Gaiman never originally intended this arc to serve as Good Omens' second instalment. The TV series was based on Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 1990 novel. The two collaborators had partially hashed out the details for a sequel to the fantasy comedy, late one night in a hotel room. This, however, is not it. Gaiman instead plotted a new narrative that could provide the connective tissue between the first season and a theoretical season three, if it happens.

"Because the hypothetical season three exists, there is a story that is there, and I didn't feel that we could drive straight from season one into that," Gaiman explains. "I knew what the stakes were. I knew what the parameters were. I also know that I had David and Michael. I had the angels from plot number one. I had demons from plot number one. And with anybody that I wanted to bring back, but didn't have room for right now, I did not have to bring them back as themselves.

"I had absolutely nothing for Madame Tracy to do in this plot, but I would be damned if Miranda Richardson wasn't going to be in this. She is one of my favourite people in the world. She is hilarious and is so good. And I knew I was going to have a new demon replacing Crowley as Hell's representative in London/the UK. Miranda's demon Shax is the best demon you could want."

It's late February 2012 and SFX is in Edinburgh for a set visit. A soundstage in Pyramids Studies has been transformed into a street in Soho. The visible local stores include the aforementioned book, coffee and record shops, as well as a magic establishment. In the middle of them all stand Aziraphale and Crowley, the latter in close proximity to his classic Bentley. It's close to the end of the six-episode season, so exactly what the duo is discussing constitutes a spoiler. We can say, however, that Aziraphale has picked up the pace. Time is of the essence as Shax marshals her forces to descend on Aziraphale's store and retrieve Gabriel.

"This is really Shax's first time out on Earth," Gaiman explains. "She is working very diligently and very hard in Hell for a long time. Now she is on Earth, trying to figure it all out. She's just discovering what Crowley has known for 6,000 years, which is that if you're a demon and come up with a brilliant plan to screw up the lives of humanity, people will get there first and do worse than anything you could have imagined! She's coming to terms with that.

"She is having to deal with the first crisis on her watch, as well, which is the disappearance of the archangel Gabriel from Heaven. It would be fair to say that by the end of the story, she is leading as much as she can get from Hell's requisition department - a legion of Hell - in an attack on a Soho bookshop."

When audiences catch up with Aziraphale again, he's enjoying his time among humans. He owns most of the block in a Soho neighbourhood, and he's meddling in Nina's love life. Meanwhile, Crowley has been living in his car, with his plants sitting on the back seat. He's grumpy about his current status quo, but frequently hangs out at Aziraphale's. The duo began as antagonists, but their history and blooming relationship will be fleshed out in flashbacks.

"One of the enormously fun things I came up with in the idea of minisodes," Gaiman explains. They are 25-minute-long episodes within the episode. We have three of them over our six episodes. Each of them is like one of those chunks of episode three (in season one). Whereas the longest one of those was four or five minutes, if that, these are full stories.

"You get to have the story of (put-upon Biblical figure) Job and you learn Aziraphale and Crowley's part in the story. Then writer Cat Clarke takes us to Edinburgh in the 1820s for a tale of body-snatching and attempted murder that the boys get involved in," he adds.

"Finally, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman reunite the League of Gentlemen in a Nazi-period story that takes place very shortly after the episode in the church. That one was the only one I said had to be there, because I fell in love with our Nazi spies in the church I kept thinking, "What would happen if they essentially came back as zombies with a mission from Hell to try and investigate whether or not Crowley and Aziraphale were actually fraternising?"

Gaiman admits that one of the greatest challenges has been filming Good Omens simultaneously with his upcoming show Anansi Bays. The two shoot within throwing distance of each other, but are both time-consuming endeavours.

"If I could go back in time, I would go back to 16 September 2020, when Douglas Mackinnon (co-producer) and I got the phone call from the Amazon bigwigs to say, "We have

good news for you and interesting news for you," Gaiman recalls. "'The good news is we are greenlighting both Good Omens and Anansi Boys. The interesting news is you are going to have to do them both at the same time.'

"I would go back to then and I would throw myself on the call and say, 'Neil, don't! This is unwise.' That we are doing them both together is great. The amount of sleep I am not getting is monumental and monstrous.

"It's a little bit like childbirth, in that I managed to forget all the things that drove me nuts about the first one. Having said that, I managed to fix all the things that really drove me nuts making season one which is great. We just have a whole new set of problems making season two."

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: August 2024

The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler. The summer is waning. But the monthly media posts carry on. Here's how I spent the month of August.

……….FILM……….

Wendell & Wild (2022) I don't want this to be one of the last major stop-motion film to ever be made, but the filmmakers put so many stories into this that I wonder if they thought this was their last shot. Essentially a 12-course meal from a great restaurant: the accomplishment is impressive but the whole is overstuffed and some of the smaller portions were undercooked.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024) The lightly surreal elements of the movie were great, but there's a point late in the story when that surreality kills all of the momentum.

Spice World (1997) Still holds up.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) Still amazed at how well this pulls off what it seeks to do. But maybe I'm biased because I love practical effects, puppets, and action scenes that serve the narrative. We may not get another D&D movie but I'm glad we have this one.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) Based on other live-action multiverses, I went in with modest expectations, and this was a pleasant surprise. Maybe it's because it continues to do what Deadpool does well. Thoroughly entertaining in the moment.

……….TELEVISION……….

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Episode 1.14 to 1.20) It's been a couple of years since I stopped watching (mid season!) but luckily one of the episodes was essentially a recap of what's happened so far. Really ramping up in the abstract and the philosophical and I'm a big fan. These kids are meeeeeeeessed up.

Made for Love (Episode 2.01 to 2.08) I only really caught the first season in pieces but I knew enough going into this season that it really clicked! It hit me the same way early Black Mirror episodes felt, only with more humour, depth, and nuance. It's a real shame there's no plans for season 3.

……….YOUTUBE……….

I think this will be a Short Video by Matthew Colville A really great reflection on making art in the social age, the algorithm, communities/audiences, and how these can clash with the natural impulses of creativity. VIDEO

I'm What the Culture Feeling (The full story of Kendrick Vs. Drake) by F.D. Signifier Almost 3.5 hours but for someone like me (who knows next to nothing of this world, these artists, or this conflict) it expertly breaks it all down to paint a complete picture. Really great watch. VIDEO

……….READING……….

Cards On the Table by Agatha Christie (Complete) Top-tier Christie. The premise is so fun, and while I know the multiple detectives appear in other stories, it's a nice introduction to these characters. This book made me want to learn how to play Bridge.

The People of the Black Circle and A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard (Complete) I have this collection of Conan stories and after a years-long break, decided to read a few more. Both great! The latter puts Conan in an almost supporting role and it's fun to see him take on a secondary role to the story. Keeps it interesting. And the former is such a classic pulp story (cults, magic clothing, a giant snake) that I can't help but love it.

Delicious in Dungeon Volume 14 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) It's been a 6-year-long journey for me and while I couldn't be happier with how it ended, I'm sad that it's over. Still so impressed with how well it stuck the landing for me. Do I wish there was more of a wind-down with these characters? Sure. But I really respect an artist who knows what they want to say/do and says/does it. Very excited to see what Ryoko does next.

Hellboy Library Volume 1 by Mike Mignola with John Byrne (Complete) Without being hyperbolic, this is one of my favourite contributions to the craft. So confident and fully-formed right out of the gate. Excited to reread this series.

……….AUDIO……….

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappel Roan (2023) Technically I started listening to this at the end of July. I saw a positive review, figured I'd check it out, and it felt like that was at the same time everyone else in the world was talking about her. Love an album with such a focused perspective.

Currents by Tame Impala (2015) In recent years I've been really enjoying Tame Impala's one-off songs (Barbie and Dungeons & Dragons soundtracks, their collaboration with Gorillaz, etc.) so I figured I'd really dig into this album. Easy to listen to both casually in the background and with a magnifying glass just pouring over the lyrics. Love it.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) Only got a few sessions in this month but the crew is still reassembling the skeletal pirate they trashed years (real time) ago. Now they're about to face a big electric centipede to recover his legs.

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 crew split the party and one half casually shopped and planned while the other half discovered a secret testing facility full of captured magic-users.

Wonderland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) We got in a single session of Wonderland and it was a small party but a lot of fun! Also the first true character death of our playtesters. Luckily we had backup characters though character 2 ended the session losing their arm. Hey that's Wonderland.

And that's it. See you in September!

[punkpandapatrixk]

Full Hunter’s Moon in Taurus ♦︎ Moon Magick Pick A Card

I read around the Internet; it seems this year’s Full Hunter’s Moon in Taurus is a big deal for all people, because it marks the end of a 2-year long cycle of Taurus-Scorpio eclipse. That cycle began in November 2021. So, if you could remember what specific misery started then, this year’s eclipse is the end of that suffering😊BANZAI!🎉Or, for some people, an intense healing journey might’ve started then and this eclipse marks your full-recovery or something along those lines🥰

Aenergetically, I feel that this Hunter’s Moon in Taurus is inviting us to take stock of many elements in our lives that no longer serve us. That’s such a cliché, right? We do this every full moon anyway, but with this powerful eclipse, and it being in the Taurus-Scorpio axis, this releasing of old narratives extends far back into childhood conditioning. And in some cases, childhood traumas.

Taurus is the ruler of the 2nd House of personal autonomy and how we view ourselves in relationship to our immediate, closest environment: the family environment. This sign/house tells us how we perceive our individuality in relation to the grownups immediately near us, and how they perceive us. When elements of life ruled by this sign/house is afflicted, disregarded, ignored, dominated and manipulated, traumas in childhood develop and…

Scorpio as the ruler of the 8th House of traumas can tell you a lot about ways you could pull yourself out of this loop of misery caused by terrible conditioning or bad parenting. Often, for many people, the development of new traumas continues to happen way into adulthood and so, when you carry a lot of pains, you will need to heal yourself over and over again until almost all of those layers of a false concept of your Self are taken down.

This full moon eclipse in the Taurus-Scorpio axis, I feel, brings immense relief from the maelstrom of a healing journey that is often quite world-shattering. I have faith that even now as you’re reading these words, many things in your world—your inner world—are already calming down and the winter season will allow you plentiful of rest, before the spring of your Life begins again next year🌱😜🎍

‘Chill…

You’re going to end up where you’re supposed to be.’

[Masterlist] [Patreon] [Paid Readings]

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 1 – King of Your Own World

outdated patterns, DISSOLVED – King of Pentacles

I sense you’ve come from a very restrictive background. When you were growing up, parents or teachers were incredibly strict. They placed so much cruel expectations on you without caring for your feelings as a person. For some of you, this debilitating sense of restriction could also have come from religion, tradition, custom, race/ethnicity bullshit, and all such things. You felt like there were so many things you weren’t supposed to do because you belonged to a certain religion or because of your ethnicity or whatever. Meanwhile, for the same reasons, ridiculous expectations on you were abound as well.

You constantly felt like the sky above your head was so low and you couldn’t do anything about it. Naomi Campbell’s quote fits perfectly here: ‘The sky has never been the limit. We are our own limits.’

Recently, you’ve been able to overcome so much of this bullshit patterning from your childhood. I think you’ve been working on this unravelling for a number of years. You are free now. Quite nothing is restricting you anymore; you’ve figured out how the Matrix works. And now, you’re the King of your own Reality. What are you going to entertain and create in this brave new world of your own making? Your North Node sign and house placement will have some hints for you to know what options would make you feel the best about yourself in this incarnation!🥰

authentic self, EMBRACED – 4 of Wands

In spite of all the conditioning you were subject to, you’re essentially a Soul who’s always been rather clear about who you are on a fundamental level. Actually, you knew yourself, you knew what you liked, you knew what you wanted to become. But yeah, those restrictions put around your sky caused you to feel confused a lot. Or that you felt helpless on so many levels. What you wanted, what you knew you could be so good at, and what you were allowed to do… they seemed all to be separate circles.

But now, now that you are your own person, you’re reclaiming those bits and pieces of your authentic self that became dormant as you were trying to survive! They are all coming online one by one. For some of you, I feel old skills/abilities are going to get reactivated and this will point towards what you’re meant to do in this incarnation. For some others, you may suddenly gain insane skills you never knew you were capable of and this might shock you a lot. These are actually skills you’ve polished in past incarnations. They’re coming back to help you ascend into New Earth more easily! This is your time to shine, baby!🌤

life purpose, EXPRESSED – 4 of Cups

Okay, let’s get to the real stuff here. For a lot of you reading this, I sense you may be occasionally dealing with stagnation or a sense of feeling absolutely stuck in the manifestation of your ideal world, ideal reality. There’s this feeling like, even though you know what you’re supposed to do as part of your Life Purpose, you feel like there’s just no way you can build that bridge towards that life purpose at the present moment. Don’t worry, honey, I promise you that you can’t fuck up what’s meant for you.

Many of you, you’re currently in that gestation phase where you’re supposed to gain a lot, A LOT, of spiritual strength before you’re ready to take on the world. Your path may sound unnecessarily tougher than other people, but it’s because you have a higher calling to be of service to your community. Maybe even the world, WHOA. Your experiences have shaped the amazing individual you’ve become, and even now you’re still becoming even more awesome than you could ever imagine in the meantime.

You are where you’re supposed to be. Learn as much as you can, enjoyably. Breathe as deeply as you can, enjoyably. Play your videos games. Watch your favourite series. Aren’t you aware you’re having so much time on your hand now to be building new positive habits, too? All of these seemingly unrelated activities are leading you towards your Life Purpose; embrace everything nice and calm that you have now. It is going to get wild sooner than you realise!🎆

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 – Comfortable New World

outdated patterns, DISSOLVED – 5 of Cups Rx

Not to touch on conspiracy theories, but if there’s a new world order on a microcosmic scale, you’re having it all to yourself XD You are dissolving an old world order that involves mental lethargy and a general sense of spiritual confusion, which I think you’ve needed to deal with for almost your entire Life. I sense, for many of you this was caused by a very traumatic childhood in which you were constantly, systematically let down by the people around you, or your environment in general. It feels like, you were never given what you wanted, what you needed; whatever you asked, if you asked, you would be granted its non-delivery.

I think you had toxic parents? Grandparents? Maybe teachers? Just incredibly venomous adults who actually saw your potential for success, and so, they deliberately attempted to murder your Light from a very young age. At this point of reading, I think you’re healing and transitioning into more peaceful waters by your own conscience. I’m sure you’ve worked really hard to heal yourself, work on your inner demons, defeated negative thought patterns that weren’t even your own, and created new neurological pathways all on your own. You’ve successfully made the unconscious conscious. You have better control over your own emotions, thoughts, choices and conducts now. Congratulations!🎊

authentic self, EMBRACED – 3 of Pentacles Rx

Before this point, you were probably a people-pleaser of sort, right? You thought too much about other people and I think you were conditioned to think that self-love or prioritising yourself is incredibly selfish. That choosing to live Life on your own terms was incredibly selfish! The adults around you were probably the type of parents that would say, young people choosing not to have babies is incredibly selfish! Whereas such adults are choosing so precisely because they don’t want to bring into this miserable world babies that are unloved and unwanted. That’s all gaslighting, you know that, right?

With this energy, I’m seeing you choosing to cultivate solitude for the time being. You’ve finally been able to tap into this consciousness of calm and harmony. You are in rest and recuperation mode for both your mental and spiritual. You are not yet ready to connect with people. Right now, it’s time to build a deeper connection with yourself, perhaps your inner child and all the things that make you feel joyous from the inside. This is also your time to feel more connected to the Planet herself as well as understand your unbreakable bond with the Cosmos itself. If you ask me, I think you’re currently in a really good stage where you’re being led to your best Life as of yet!🌞

life purpose, EXPRESSED – 2 of Pentacles Rx

As of right now, your Spirit Guides and Higher Self are sending you many synchronistic messages that give you a clearer idea as to what your next steps should be. It’s perfectly OK to be casual and relaxed about them though. You are not at all in a rush. Even when you see these YouTube readings that say crap like URGENT MESSAGES FROM THE UNIVERSE, no, you’re not in a rush anywhere. Your new world order is gestating right now and you can be patient with yourself. Those types of titles are just for the algorithm or for grabbing your attention, but in reality, there is no such thing as the Universe or Higher Self or Spirit rushing you towards anything. You can’t fuck up what’s meant for you, trust that.

When you allow the process of your new world of comfort to unfold naturally, in the future, you will always know when to make the right decision for almost every life choice you will be making. You will be guided more by your intuition and so, whatever choice you make will reflect the highest good of you and those you care about. That’s the spiritual lesson you’re learning as of right now and I think it’s such a wonderful stage to be in! Trust that you’re being prepared by your Higher Self to receive so much abundance and joy in the next chapter of your Life. You’ve come so far😊

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 – Bittersweet Transition Into the Light

outdated patterns, DISSOLVED – 6 of Pentacles

In spite of the title, I feel that your transition into the Light is actually a pretty lighthearted one! More like, all the rough times are over, for realz for realz. You’ve been to the depths of hell and returned safely; scathed, yes, but you’re still alive, so you’ve won! For this Pile, I feel like you might’ve been attracted to the other piles, too, and they contain insights about the kind of struggles you’ve had to deal with. But if you feel that this Pile is your main pile, you’ve literally crossed over many bridges and the Light is dawning fast on you! You’re travelling at light speed towards a world of your ideal!

If up until now you’ve been the character who receives help and charity from other people, soon you’ll finally embrace a transcendent version of yourself with which you’ll be the one sharing your riches and knowledge! You are now the enviable main character but without the envy… hopefully XD But those who are actually envious of your transformation or success are not your people, so I hope you know how to protect yourself from the beady eyes of those who will be seeking to harm you in the future if you let them!

authentic self, EMBRACED – 7 of Cups

For the most part, I’m sensing that you didn’t necessarily come from extreme poverty or anything like that. But the manifestation of your dreams has been nothing short of difficult damn near impossible at times. I hope you understand now that this has been your script only because the things that you want to see manifest in this world are so precious, pure and high-vibrational that Earth herself was not ready to assist their manifestations. Do you understand? Often we hear about needing to raise our frequencies so become a vibrational match to our higher desires. But what happens when our desires are SO high-vibrational Earth herself couldn’t contain those dreams? LMAO

So it was that the collective of Mankind needed to collectively raise their frequencies enough for your time to come. It may sound weird to some people but I didn’t make the rules, hon, so just take these words, I promise you it will make sense soon enough XD And with that said, have faith that you will see all that you’ve ever dreamt of manifest in the physical. Never lose your sight on the prize and don’t settle for less; you’re meant to see it all happen😉

life purpose, EXPRESSED – 5 of Pentacles

Do you perhaps have significant Capricorn, Scorpio or Aquarius influences in your birth chart? These three, in all of the zodiac signs deal the most with a sense of restriction (Capricorn), ridiculously dangerous people/situations and traumas (Scorpio), as well as a disturbing sense of not belonging anywhere in the world (Aquarius). These energies tend to be really difficult to navigate through, but there’s always a great prize to be had when you’re through! Essentially, you needed to go through your experiences to really understand how poverty mindset works or how it’s developed in the first place. Poverty mindset can deal with many things beyond just the conception of money.

It is part of your life’s blueprint to come in touch with it, transmute it via first-hand experience, and dissolve it for all of Mankind. It is part of your Life Purpose to help other people learn to overcome this lack mindset on their own. You don’t necessarily need to become a teacher, but through your own example, or your self-expression whatever it may be, you help others realise their beggar patterns and tendencies. This energy is reminding me of both Bob Marley and Bob Ross though as you can see, their expressions or styles were very different from each other, but they showed people there was more to Life than just numbers in your bank account and that there is so much joy in giving and sharing your gifts with the world. That at the end of the day, what truly matters is Love and what’s truly exciting is charity to others💝

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

[valenteal]

Ok I finally got it. Natsume had the book, either he created it or it was given to him or he found it, then he gave it to Oda (the third installment of the series that’s so rare because it’s literally the book) then Oda gives up the book when the kids die by telling Dazai about it (or at least giving him enough information to figure it out there by making Dazai the new owner). But Oda had written in the book, created an opportunity for Dazai to have a better life and do good. But he left it at his own death so Dazai would still be making the choice himself. Dazai finds the book among Oda’s belongings and tries to bring Oda back and give him happiness and then BEAST happens. He creates a world in which Oda is happy, uses Akutagawa as the protagonist and creates Atsushi using the Book to be the antagonist/shapeshifter, bases his ability on Natsume’s and lets the story unfold. But because of a singularity caused by his ability interacting with the Book instead of changing his own realities past he creates an alternate reality that only he is aware of. In that alternate reality he cannot die until the story is completed and he passes the Book on to the next Author/Authors. So he passes it to Akutagawa and Atsushi and kills himself knowing there is a reality in which Oda is happy. Back in the main universe Dazai struggles to continue the story/find a successor, because he can’t die unless he doesn’t own the book but he can only alter the future, not the past or present. So he writes a story about 6 organizations vying for the book beginning 2 years in the future, it takes him 2 years to write. He uses Atsushi as the protagonist this time and sets him up to inherit the book with a heroes journey to prepare him and Dazai as his mentor to guide him.

Dazai will die at the end, no doubt about it. The entire story is written by Dazai, which is why he always knows what’s going to happen. He gave the single page to the special operations division to set up the decay of angels arc. He and Fyodor are so similar because Dazai wrote him. Well, he wrote his actions and how it played out, but the DoA existed before he got the book.

I think maybe his suicide attempts, at least serious ones, stopped while he was in the Mafia. He was searching for meaning in life and he caught a glimpse of it in the Mafia. He wasn’t invincible while he was there, he was just not trying to die. But after Oda died his suicidal tendencies came back in full force, but Oda had made him unable to die without writing a story with narrative consistency so he couldn’t just say “then Dazai Osamu died painlessly in his sleep.”

Btw if anyone else came up with the same thing I swear I didn’t steal it. I didn’t look at any theories currently in circulation. Mostly because I’ve been focusing on canon but also because so many people just don’t understand the fundamentals of the story or characters so I knew if I did I would be sifting through endless painful misinterpretations. (Yes I’m a bit of a bitch and a lit snob im not gonna deny it. But I took an advanced accelerated college lit class at 17 so I would say my confidence is warranted)

[luthordamnvers]

Hell was the journey (but it brought me heaven)

Chapter 7 - Lavender

“Are you sure you are okay with it?” Kara asked for the umpteenth time, pacing in front of Lena’s couch. Lena chuckled slightly, “What are you gonna do if I say no? You already sent it to print.” She extended her arm, offering her hand to Kara. “Relax. Yes, I’m sure. I trust you. We can’t keep hiding forever.” “I– I don’t mention you, it felt… invasive. Like giving too much.” Kara confessed, taking Lena’s hand, and interlocking their fingers after sitting next to her. “I just hate having to do this, because of one disgruntled ex-employee.” “Everyone important in your life knows,” Lena offered. “You are in a relatively public position as Editor-In-Chief. I am a very public figure and you are already terrible at controlling the PDA.” She teased Kara with a smile that made Kara smile back. “Even if you decided to do this now because you fear retaliation from one asshole, you are doing this for yourself, too. Also, you can control the narrative, if you say it first, you are doing so on your terms.” Kara bit her lip, thoughtfully. Lena was right, of course. It was already a struggle to keep her hands to herself while they walked next to each other or while having lunch, not because she wanted anything inappropriate, but it was nice to have Lena’s hand in hers, and she wished she could do it in public. The casual touches, the peck on the lips as they said goodbye, walking next to each other in an embrace. She felt like she was missing out on those.  Kara lifted Lena’s hand to her lips, and kissed the palm of it. “You are right. I don’t want to miss out on milestones about our relationship because we are hiding. We are two of the most powerful women in the city, we can deal with what happens next.” Kara finished, with a smile. “You are the most powerful woman on Earth, Kara. Don’t sell yourself short.” Kara laughed. “Yeah, Supergirl might be, but this is Kara Danvers’ life we are talking about. She needs to have some privacy, fade in the background, even.” Lena frowned. “You know, to me Kara Danvers could never fade in the background.” “I don’t know, I seem to remember you gushing about Supergirl being so solid and powerful.” Kara teased her. “I am going to kill Sam for telling you that. How does she even remember that?” Kara laughed. “Clearly it was important for your friendship.” “In any case, since I met you, Kara Danvers has been my favorite person in the world, did you know that?” “Are you being cheesy?” “A little, but it doesn’t make it any less true, darling,” Lena smiled.

Continue Reading on AO3 || From the start

[coraniaid]

More than any specific plot details, the whole concept of the post-Chosen comics as published by Dark Horse simply doesn't work for me in principle.

Partly that's because the idea that they are, or could ever be, meaningfully "canon" continuations of Buffy's story strikes me as almost offensively absurd. Buffy was a television show and so its characters were a collaborative creation on behalf of both the writers and the actors who play them. The actors aren't just there to read out the scripts the writers came up with; they played a fundamental role in bringing their characters to life.

Surely an attempt to film a putative "Season 8" that recast Buffy in SMG's absence wouldn't have been accepted as canon by most of the audience? But then how can a Season 8 that effectively gets rid of not just SMG but all of the other actors be any different?

[Although worth acknowledging here that the show actually did recast Nikki Wood between Seasons 5 and 7 -- and did so despite the original actor wanting to come back as well -- and nobody seemed to particularly care about that. But I think the general point stands anyway.]

Since comic books and television are very different mediums, the Season 8 comics can either choose tell stories that make sense in that medium or it can pretend to be a glimpse into what the show would have been like if it had continued beyond Chosen. (Or neither, I guess.) But it can't really do both: and once you start telling stories that would never have worked on the screen it becomes harder still to pretend that this is in any sense "canonical" or that it somehow reflects the way that the story "would have" gone if Buffy had had additional seasons.

But also, and even more fundamentally, the post-Chosen comics don't work for me because the whole point of Chosen is surely that Buffy escaped the narrative: she doesn't have to be The Slayer anymore. She changed the rules of the game; she broke the cycle. She won!

Which doesn't really work, as an ending, if it turns out she's still trapped in the role of the Main Character after all, still having to live separate and apart from the rest of humanity -- arguably, in the comics, even more so than she ever was as a high school student! -- and that she's doomed to have to save the world from supernatural horrors on a regular basis again and again and again. The whole appeal, to me, of the Season 7 finale is that it leaves Buffy at a moment of almost infinite possibility. She doesn't know what she's going to do next, or where she's going to go, or who -- if anyone -- she's going to end up with romantically. As she tells us herself, she still hasn't figured out who she's going to be. That's why the ending works: because it's a beginning to whatever direction you want to imagine Buffy's story going from this point on. And that simply doesn't work at all if you then insist there's a "canon" answer to the question of What Happens Next? It robs Chosen -- or at least, it attempts to rob Chosen, if you take it seriously -- of something important.

On the other hand, the premise of the more recent Boom! comic series is a lot more appealing to me. A full reboot, starting from the begining of the show, not claiming to replace the original but telling a parallel story alongside it? A version of Buffy with, from the start, a much better idea of where it's going or what type of stories it might want to tell, which can introduce minor recurring characters and prophecies and foreshadowing early without having to worry about the vagaries of casting actors to play the roles? A story in a different medium that can play with the audience's expectations and flesh out minor characters or bring them into the story at a different point or give them a different fate than they got the first time around? More Kendra? More Robin Wood? That sounds like exactly my thing. I love that.

And yet, genuinely, I don't think I've heard a single specific detail about the Boom! comics -- and over the years, without really trying, I've picked up a lot of details -- that hasn't made me think: well, no, that's really stupid, I don't like that at all.

[acourtofthought]

elucien will prevail

elucien will come home

elucien is the way

do i sound like a cult??? because that how elriels sound, they give such MAGA vibes. 😂

Also, not elriels using a clickbait site to "confirm" elriel haha, their lack of understanding of how media works and what click bait is really explains why they also don't understand genres and tropes, did you look at the site, the site gives "wordpress free trial" our together by college students - they couldn't even get a legit development team to build out the site!

But yes, SJM would relay details of her upcoming release to a random website vs a reputable media outlet, or you know, do what she has always done, post on her social first ... god they are such clowns 😂

The article starts off by saying SJM assured fans ... assured where? If that were true, don't you think everyone in the fandom would've shared that update, but only this random person has that news? Also, the article referred to the next acotar book as an epic conclusion...when there's more books to come - all the red flags of a poorly written article with no real research, are right there ... no citations or actual quotes from Sarah, elriels once again can't read for shit, embarrassing for them to share the article as "proof of elriel" this reads like some Elriel figured out she can submit a random article to a bait site so long as she meets the minimum word requirement 😂

Elriels can believe all the click bait articles they want, it's just going to make it that much more funnier when their ship stays sunk in the bonus and the narrative continues without any mention of elain and Az romantically again...

Sarah's own friend can't stand elriels and I wouldn't put it past her for making fun of them in private 😂

I really cannot understand how they've convinced themselves that a clickbait article written on a site that doesn't even focus on media and book reviews with contradictory information written by a journalist that doesn't seem to actually exist is proof of something but they'll insist Sarah's own friend who did a podcast saying that she doesn't think E/riel is happening and that, not to break their hearts, not everything that's written on page is meant to be taken romantically (my guess this is in direct reference to the Power Point presentation done by an E/riel that Steph said she shared with Sarah and was laughing about). And you're right, the constant refrain of "E/riel is coming home!" each time they think they spot a clue that's not actually a clue does give cult or overly religious "our savior will return!" vibes. Absolutely nothing is proven in regards to who is getting the next book, NOTHING, yet they want to act with their whole chest that there is zero possibility of them being wrong though the bonus ended with Elain returning Az's necklace and him giving it to another female. With the bonus telling us his shadows disappear around Elain but are playful towards Gwyn. With SF showing zero interactions between Az and Elain after Solstice but with Az showing admiration and encouragement for Gwyn. With the fact that Sarah really hammered home the concept of mating bonds in a world that has completely different creatures from the fae indicating it's a trope she really likes. I don't know, I've just never known anyone to have that sort of overinflated confidence and not set themselves up for being proven wrong.

[chubbydino]

In honor of the completion of HLS, the most hopeful and heart wrenching piarles and maxiel narratives ever, what inspired you bring phantoms and la madrague together and continue their stories?

How long did you imagine the events of HSL before you began writing it?

originally i was going to publish a different maxiel fic but the story just wasn't working and it wasn't sad enough imo. i started daydreaming about PAPM but i didn't want to be entirely in pierre's POV again and i felt like going into charles's would be cheating, since a lot of what i love about PAPM is that we're never in charles's head.

the original arc of HLS had a much darker ending, and the fic was going to be very piarles focused. more under the cut (+ spoilers)

i don't remember exactly what spurred me to bring the two stories together, but once i started thinking about it, it really worked. of course, PAPM has a chapter where max is married to a woman with a daughter, but that was the only retcon i really needed, and it wasn't the important part of that story. i didn't want to develop a whole new maxiel, and then the parallels between max and pierre started showing and i dove in.

originally, pierre was going to regain his memories like he did, but then the side effects would get so bad (essentially his brain never turned completely off so even while sleeping he would be burning his brain and exhausting himself) that eventually he would have to choose between being bedridden but with memories, or choose to forget himself every few months and start over each time. it was going to end with pierre waking up after making that decision, once again not knowing who charles was.

but every time i thought about max and what he was going through, it hurt so much more. pierre's memory loss isn't painful for him, just confusing and frustrating. max was just surrounded by pain and grief and his worldview is so fucked up, and his family is so fucked up, there was just so much to explore. so, i gravitated toward that story. max took center stage and i decided not to add more angst with pierre's original arc--it just didn't work the way i planned, and max's role took on a new life.

i said it in the discord, but max was also supposed to go through with the suicide attempt on the houseboat. i planned for him to wrap the anchor chain around his neck, slip on the deck, then get up and jump in and go to "heaven"... only for us to figure out that when he slipped on the deck, he hit his head and went into a coma and never actually jumped in the water. but one night while i was playing the story out (i "watch" the next chapter before i go to sleep lolol) i thought about mack truck and the accident took shape. that fit a lot better with the story, especially for daniel, who would never have forgiven himself if he found out max actually tried to kill himself (daniel still doesn't know max was planning to, the same way max doesn't know his family went after his money).

the museum scene with daniel was heavily inspired by What Is And What Should Never Be aka S2 Ep30 of Supernatural aka the Djinn episode, when Dean realizes his perfect world is fake and he's actually dying in real life. That episode hit me so hard and every time i watch it, it still hits. I wanted the same type of scene with Daniel finally appearing in Max's world and making him realize what was really going on.

the supernatural elements of HLS aren't particularly supernatural to me. many people i know have seen or experienced something they can't explain. there are plenty of weird happenings in my own extended family that aren't scary, just strange and maybe unsettling. kids also see the world differently and i feel like theo seeing marshmallow or the kids seeing squalo goes along with that. maybe max only sees it because of his grief, or maybe that's the part of the boys that's always with him.

overall, i wanted to end HLS with the understanding that there is no way to completely heal from what max went through. he'll always, always grieve for his babies, but he doesn't have to hold space for that grief anymore. it will always be there, but he's living life despite that. he's carefully choosing daniel, over and over, and now he knows it's okay to do that. his love for daniel doesn't have to detract from his love for his boys. i don't think he ever would have learned that without the supernatural element at play.

camp bluefin is the purest form of max's love for his daniel, not only because he's allowing children back into their lives, but because he's allowing himself to enjoy having a "family" again. <3

[emmebearpaw]

hey, completely random question to people who actually play reverse 1999. Like... how does it handle the implications of time travel. Vertin, is fucking with time. She is taking whole people that otherwise would have continued existing and having them join the team and go to different points in the timeline. So like... how does this work. Time travel, of course, has different schools of thoughts so I'll posit what I figure is most likely for the game. If we don't know yet... I figure we will eventually. 1. No consistent logic within this time travel, aka fast and loose. The game will stick with history when it wants, travel into fuzzy, more personal history when it wants, and even go into alt history with no specific ruleset (most likely) 2. Everything Vertin does is "predestined" and has already occurred in history, therefore not disrupting any events and not altering history. This option allows the game to more closely stick to real world history but is absolutely horrifying in my opinion! It's more likely than the next one because I think it would be easier to write since you don't have to think about the ramifications. 3. People joining Vertin's team is slowly, irrevocably altering the future timeline, leading to the game slowly becoming less and less real world history accurate over time. This is, I think, the most interesting option because... wouldn't the foundation still have a pre-Vertin!history book, being disconnected from the time travel occurring via the storm (at least that's how I, with my like 45 minutes of gameplay videos understand it, please correct me if i'm wrong). Which would mean Vertin, as per her job description would probably be sent to places to attempt to figure out why it's not happening as it's supposed to. What would the foundation think about time literally changing in front of them? This is the least likely because writing convincing alt history is hard, and complex time travel narratives are hard but it would be the coolest option in my opinion Do we know what Reverse 1999's philosophy is? Did I miss any potential options for what it could be?

[heartofstanding]

I continue to read Dan Jones's Henry V biography so you don't have to.

I've read 11 chapters now and, ngl, did take a break to read two novels for fun. It's not, like, hard to read - it is very readable and since he likes Henry V, I'm not grumbling at the book (he's not a fan of Richard II still but, like, he's not rubbing his hateboner all over the pages when he does talk about Richard).

[citation still needed]

There's a lot of stuff Jones says that I'd like him to really drill down on but there's usually no citation. I also don't trust him when he does give a citation because I don't know how much he's editorialising from what his source claims.

This has lead me to twice actually check the citations he gave and it appears they're legit but it also meant I caught a typo in his endnotes (he left the "d" off "Allmand"). It also meant that I looked at his bibliography and it seems very short, though it did amuse me that he only cited Ian Mortimer's 1415, not Mortimer's The Fears of Henry IV. Nature is healing.

I've progressed to shouting "show me your working!" at the book. Like, he says the wound Henry received at the Battle of Shrewsbury had closed by September. Now, I spent days trying to figure this out and I ended up thinking September too but there was a whole lot of guessing going on because Bradmore doesn't say how long anything took besides the twenty days he used the ointment he claimed "regenerated flesh". It would be nice that either Jones had a footnote that explained how he came to that conclusion or like... not claimed it at all.

I can't believe I'm going to say something nice.

Jones makes the point early on that a lot of biographies of Henry tend to skip quickly over Henry's time as Prince of Wales to focus on his kingly years. And, yeah, that's true. It's also true that all of the biographies of Henry since Christopher Allmand's have tended to be under 300 pages so they don't have the space to get into detail.

Jones's biography is the longest since Allmand and unlike Allmand's, dedicated entirely to biography and because he's writing a pop history narrative with more speculation, he makes a lot of connections that I hadn't really considered. He talks about, for example, Henry going on pilgrimage following his recovery from the Shrewsbury wound.

Allmand is, I think, the only biographer who even mentions this pilgrimage and since he doesn't seem to have known how serious the Shrewsbury wound was when he was writing, he doesn't make much of it. Jones, however, does. And, look, I'm not criticising at the other biographers, especially when a lot of them were for written for series of short biographies, but it does make me wish we could get a biography of Henry that was long and detailed and academic.

It also makes me want to reread Allmand.

The present tense continues to annoy me.

It doesn't annoy me as much as it did at first, possibly because Jones has gotten into the swing of it, possibly because I'm mostly used to it. I think one of the things that grates is that Jones will switch to future tense to foreshadow ("he will come to do this..."). I don't know. Jones says in the introduction that he uses it to bring us as close to Henry as possible, to get to know him - "we must wrestle with the medieval world in real time, with him". I don't think that it's necessarily a bad impulse to use present tense to remind the read that history wasn't history for the people involved and they didn't have the benefit of hindsight and alternative perspectives that historians do. But I think the present tense bugs me because it undermines Jones's point - how can we live with Henry, as events happen, when Jones is always there nudging us and saying "this is going to come up next chapter/later". IDK.

[danidoesathing]

wait hello I just saw that ‘feelings about the cowboys’ post and am EXTREMELY INTRIGUED by the “Lonesome Dreams is a time loop” thing??? 👀

ok ok ok so like. the plot of the lonesome dreams MV always kinda bothered me cause like if it's Huron and Blaquefut's first encounter, just. huh? How does Huron have a picture of Blaquefut in his pocket? why does he have a picture of Blaquefut in his pocket? is he searching for Blaquefut, if so, why? did he take this journey in search of him, and if so what could Blaquefut possibly offer to make him take such a dangerous journey? it just. never made any sense to me.

the island is implied and often theorized to be the afterlife or some kinda limbo. And Blaquefut does die during the Time to Run music video, so the idea of Huron going out to save his brother isn't really that much of a stretch. But he knows Huron at that point so Lonesome Dreams couldn't take place afterwards, right?

but like. what if its not their first encounter?

Time and death have always been a bit fucky in LH lore and like. lets say Blaquefut dies right? and somehow, Huron figures out this island exists and even though its insanely risky and may not work, he's willing to try. Because he can't just abandon his brother and he's willing to risk life and limb for it. So he does, and he does make it to the island. And then things just get...weird. it already doesnt make sense already with the changing biomes and the seasons changing within too short of a time. But even memories start to blur, even if the feelings remain. And washing up on the shore with nothing but a picture of man and the strong urge to find that man, Huron's left with no choice but to follow his instincts. It does eventually lead him to find Blaquefut, whose got no clue who he is either and well. we see what happens next. They form a close bond and get off the island together, and set off to all their future adventures together. They grow as close as brother and form a loyalty to the other unlike any other.

At least until it loops back around to the Time to Run MV and Blaquefut dies again.

and like. lonesome dreams the song is also weird in the sense that like. its not actually about the events of the MV and more about Huron having a strange dream about a lonely world that makes no sense. Maybe, one he's been to before 👀.

seriously like look at these

and hey hey. you wanna know another fun aspect of it that ive completely pulled out of my ass? with this theory and the fact that Huron is the one perpetuating the loop, it keeps with the "doomed both by the narrative and their own actions" and "I love and care about you a lot and that will be the death of us" things. Because the whole thing in the album is like. Huron really wants to go home to Helena. and as time goes on, he becomes more and more desperate to actually get back to her.

but in this scenario, its a timeloop. one he's causing, because he just...can't let go of his friend. He wants to get back to her more than anything but how could he just abandon his brother? if there's even a slim chance of saving him, how could he not take it? so he goes after his friend, and brings him along to this journey to get back home, and then Blaquefut dies again and Huron is going to go save him again and he just. isn't going to get home because he can't let go. Maybe if he took a different path, maybe if he stopped trying to go home and accepted that the life with Helena is unobtainable to him, then maybe they can avoid that fight and maybe Blaquefut can get out it alive. But Huron can't let go of Helena either, so he'll keep trying to return and Blaquefut is loyal enough to follow him to the ends of the earth and it just. keeps going. He can't have the life with both that he desperately wants but he refuses to make the choice necessary to free them from this loop. and thus the cycle continues.

[this-is-lit]

Collapse of the Time Web

by Q E Daniels

The goddess Meandyra, in her first job as a braider of time, watches helplessly as one world after another destroys itself. She refuses to stand by and let it happen again. Against all rules, she creates offshoots to the braid of time, parallel worlds made up of the same people, starting fresh after having made a better decision. She never dreamed she'd get caught. But now two braids have broken free; people are crossing over; two worlds are at war. They may bring down the entire web with them. The enraged mystic witch Caprice, seeking unlimited power and vengeance, faces the Least High Druid, talented enough to be careless, out to prove he was always meant to be the true hero. Meandyra's only hope lies with Herb, the gentle itinerant spirit guide who trained them both. To fix this, Meandyra crosses lines that haven't even been drawn yet. The more she intervenes, the worse things get, and the deeper she goes. She's driven her friend and mentor, Futz Knotworth, to the edge. He would never betray her; but he can't stop her. And she won't let him go.

Collapse of the Time Web by Q E Daniels is the second book in a series and it follows a higher-level being and braider of time, Meandyra, as she attempts to guide the lesser beings in the world she’s tasked with overseeing after she creates the problem of colliding multiverses. The lesser beings from Book 1—Thundersquat, Herb, Least High Druid, Wolfmini, Blundren, and Smidgel—must contend with the alternate universes Meandyra has created as they attempt to stop the witch Caprice from wiping out the human race across the time braids.

Daniels has crafted an excellent fantasy tale in a rich world that’s sometimes philosophical, sometimes humorous, immersing the reader in the foibles of low and high beings who haven’t quite figured out what they want or are doing. This narrative has its main focus on the characters’ self-reflection of their actions and trying to do better (…or not), with action sequences having briefer screen time; the plot ushers the characters along as they try to make sense of their successes and failures with little time for them to breathe before the next potential catastrophe. Each character has their own grievances and rationalizations, which is refreshing and keeps the reader invested in their outcomes. Meandyra’s drive is a blessing and a curse to her, and as the de facto main protagonist, readers will simultaneously root for and scream at her actions. However, with the lesser beings, there are oftentimes too many alternate versions of characters in the same place at the same time with a web of overlapping connections to keep straight, even though they all have their own unique inner journeys; there’s too little novel and too many of them for the readers to glean more than a high-level glance at their hopes and dreams.

Collapse of the Time Web is a well-crafted story with engaging characters that any veteran fantasy reader will enjoy, especially if they like Terry Pratchett. Still, casual readers may find the worldbuilding inaccessible. Readers who historically annotate their tomes will find their habit useful in keeping track of who-what-where, whereas casual readers may not have the patience to keep the versions straight. Daniels’ third as-yet-unreleased book, A Crawlspace Under Heaven, will continue in this world for readers who prefer a series to a standalone novel.

I received an ACR from Discovery.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Yes, They Want Race War

OK so this title is KINDA click bait but also not really.

Recently there are trends where in media, Characters, historical figures, etc are being race swapped. And there are primarily 4 sides to this argument.

-The type that does not care about race swapping at all

-The type that is giddy and happy when white characters are removed and replaced by black or brown characters. (More often black) but are extremely pissed off if it's done to a character or historical figure that's black or brown and they are race swapped or the person playing them "Isn't brown enough".

-The type that think that people think race swapping is fine so long as it makes sense or is generally consistent across the board.

-The type that think you should never race swap anyone ever for any reason.

Now me personally, I land between the third and fourth. I think that if you are exercising artistic freedom, certainly you can swap people around. But I mostly land on the idea that you should not do it in general unless you plan on doing something like the new Annie With Jamie Foxx. Because it makes sense. It's a very "from a different perspective" version of the story. I didn't hate it. But they were very.....tactical with how they did the swaps in that movie and it was not just one or two characters.

Now I will say this. People who are in category 2 piss me off to no end. Why? Because what they want isn't representation. They want ONLY them to be present in media. And I'm not afraid to say that. These people laugh when you say terms like white erasure but that's what they really want. And I'm not talking conspiracy either. I'm not talking that BS "White replacement" crap.

The reason I know that's what they want is because this is a very American Black/Progressive problem. It's gotten so bad that our media personalities are now going out of their way to replace REAL LIFE historical figures and it keeps happening lately. You see it with Cleopatra. You see it with Anne Boleyn. And frankly it's getting out of hand. These are real life people in history. If these were stage shows I would not care how you depicted them. However history is a tricky thing at times. 20 years from now there are going to be people who have seen those shows, probably black youths, and they will fight people when approached and argue that those shows DO represent what color these people were in history.

So for historical characters I DO NOT think you should ever race swap them at all. It's also the reason I'm negligent to be ok with race swapping at all now with fictional characters. Because for the next 10 years, all the little mermaid books coming out WILL be with Ariel being black. In essence outright replaced. Which is a years long trend now in regards to red heads. *See Below*

All for the sake of "Inclusivity" right? By replacing one of the worlds smallest minorities. But all "White people" look the same right. Sounds pretty f*cking racist to me. More so considering skin tone varies from country to country and "White" is a very Americanized concept idea. And though it may not have started here, it was popularized here. Porto Ricans, you know from Porto Rico? Yeah most people would say a lot of them are "White" or "White passing" despite globally, this is a very American view of race or ethnicity.

Now why bring this up at all? Because it needs saying. And I think the reason why is because neo progressives want there to be failing race relations in the US. Where most of this media is present or presented. Because if "all white people are evil and bad" Neo Liberals continue to scare monger and propagate a narrative of "White supremacy" somehow existing, despite there being SO MANY CASES of white characters being erased. I'm sorry but if we are a racist country we are THE WORST at it.

And what made me bring this up?

The new Live action adaptation, is going to erase nordic history by making of of it's characters specifically the female lead, a light skinned black girl. Meanwhile, The last listed case was one of the ones that people got pissed off about DESPITE the fact that this girl is mixed race and fully native Hawaiian. BUT that's not all they did.

Which.......Excuse me? I don't know if Cobra Bubbles is Hawaiian or if he's black, but based on looks alone?

Right here. Ving Rhames. I'd even be annoyed if they replaced him with Don Cheadle it's just not the same.

The thing is I'm all for artistic freedom but if the people who do it, do it wrong, I'm going to be upset. Reason why? If you are not staying true to the character, what are you even doing. Why are you co-opting a story that you either don't care about, hate, or are just using as a "cash cow" using a name sake. LEAVE IP's ALONE.

The reason this matters to me is because I'm tired of the hypocrites. I'm tired of the people being butthurt over ethnicity swaps, SOMETIMES but not other times. Either you are consistent or you are not. And more times than not, YOU ARE NOT.

Fact of the matter is, there are a lot of light skinned people in this world and they are not all, "White" because they are not tanned, brown, or black. Which funny enough is all dumb as far as classifications. We are all different shades of peach Except redheads. They are just see through. But saying, "white people" is probably one of the most western xenophobic things I hear day to day that is a term that has been normalized. Just like the SUGGESTION that all "black people" are somehow all African. They aren't. Just like there are more types of people native to Africa than darker skinned people.

I'm not Spaniard. I'm not English. I'm not Russian. I'm not Polish. I'm French/Irish and I was born in the US. So first and foremost I'm American. And I can imagine that most other people from other countries HATE being called "white". Stop classifying people by the color of this skin. I think it's stupid. BUT more over, when it comes to media, Stop ethnic/color swapping.

Also can I take a second to refer to how STUPID it is that we use "Race" in the context we do? We are HUMANS as a race. And I frankly think the fact we have normalized usages or "race" in the manner we have has actually done more to damage ethnic relations in general.

*Sigh*

Look please understand I know I was a bit everywhere in this post. I didn't even get into the fact that this color swap crap is HARMING ethnic relations in general. Or if you want the normalized term, "Race relations". Things will get worse if people continue to normalize this practice. Just making sure you realize that.