#but goddamn i hope i don't

[jonnywaistcoat]

Hi Jonny! 🦇 I've heard mention of a discord server and I was curious if it's a closed server or if there's a way to obtain the link. Thank you!

If it's when we're streaming, it refers to a private Discord me and Sash maintain with our stream mods, where they send through messages from chat (and sometimes give me advice if I'm stuck on a game).

The idea of being in any way responsible for any sort of public or semi-public discord server makes me break out in a cold sweat.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

"Put on the lab coat science boy!" I cheer while half of the fandom is still reeling from the minor skin changes he's already made

[hydrachea]

All of the quest menu descriptions for Aventurine's quest "All the Sad Tales".

(... And the one from "A Walk Among the Tombstones.)

[kals-kool-blog]

ok this is ACTUALLY fucking insane. did we as a whole learn NOTHING from what happened with welcome home. even from a strictly logical standpoint! if you make the creators uncomfortable, they leave, and if the creator leaves, so does the content. oh my *god.* just because they make music and tell stories doesn't mean they don't deserve to be respected. to quote keath itself: LEAVE IF YOU ARE UNKIND.

[noxious-fennec]

"الخيل و الليل و البيداء تعرفني ... والسيف و الرمح و القرطاس و القلم" ، المتنبي

Translation: "the stallions, the night and the wasteland know me ... and the sword, the arrow, the parchment, and the pen", Al-Mutanabbi

A tribute of sorts to a man of many attributes.

[nguyenfinity]

This month's feature is Crazy:B, with this edition releasing alongside their new Valentine's Day single 'Lovebug'! (written and produced by my hopes and dreams)

art-only version below the cut!

[lesbianwyllravengard]

People who don't enjoy horror can play Resident Evil games by pretending every zombie/boss is going after the playable character because they want them sexually. Trust me it works everytime. Mr. X ain't so scary now that you know he just wants to fuck Leon

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[blondeaxolotl]

Sighs, got inspo to draw them after seeing @nullbutler 's post about them, of all pairs, these two were the least I expected to end up drawing together but here we are

Here's the post in question, the ✨inspiration and motivation✨:

[tropicalcontinental]

"If i don't come back I love you all."

how about your lungs first?

[bossuary]

[covington-shenanigans]

christ alive I love my parents and I'm glad I got to see them but they are just. so fucking exhausting

[overchromatic]

COMMISSIONS ARE HERE!!! I'm broke as hell so I gotta draw for cash. If you're interested or have any questions DM me. <3

I'm Liazrad on Paypal, Cashapp, Venmo, and Ko-Fi!

[scattered-winter]

there's something sooooooo heartbreaking about quests as a narrative piece. you set out on this journey to rescue someone or defeat a great evil and along the way you face hardship and horror and you grieve and fight and love and lose and then when it's all over you come home. everything is the same as when you left, but you're so irrevocably different that you no longer fit in the one place you used to be truly at peace. you're tired from your journey but you find no rest or recovery, only ghosts. and you almost wish for another quest, another dangerous mission, because at least then you know your purpose.

[rainbow-crane]

hey this is the opposite of what I wanted from season 6, actually. Why do these writers hate me personally

[jacks347]

The bell on the coffee shop door jingled as Raven pushed it open, the familiar "Welcome to the Regrets Cafe!" greeting barely being processed. She ordered her usual, hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and a peppermint stick. Call it childish, Raven found it comforting when she was wallowing in her own thoughts. Blame it on her growing motherly instincts from raising Paloma.

She carefully cradled the warm mug in her hands when her name was called, watching the steam peek our from the gaps in the melting whipped cream as she settled into her usual table by one of the massive front windows with a world weary sigh. What she failed to notice was that, for once, the table wasn't empty.

"Rough day?"

Raven just about fell out of her chair, head snapping up to see a person sitting across from her, the barest hint of a smile peeking out from behind the coffee mug they were sipping from.

When Raven finally recomposed herself in her seat, she cleared her throat before answering the question. "That's a word for it, sure." The person hummed, setting down their mug and leaning forward over the table. "Mentally or physically?" "...what?"

They gestured to the shop around them. "This is the Regrets Cafe. Hardly the place people go when they're just tired from a hard day at work but it wouldn't surprise me. So, I ask again, mentally or physically?" Raven blinked a couple times before sitting back in her chair, deflating a little. "Mentally." "I figured. What's on your mind?" "Are you always this prying?" "Only to the people who sit at my table looking like they hold the weight of the world on their shoulders."

Raven highly considered just getting up and moving to a different table at this point just so she wouldn't have to actually talk about what was going on in her head but by now, this person had caught their attention. "You first. Why are you here?" They chuckled at that, sitting back and crossing their arms over their chest. "Should've expected that." They turned and stared out the window into the setting sunlight. "Just thinking about someone I shouldn't." "Ex?" A whirlwind of emotions passed over their face at the question; anger, betrayal, sadness, regret, before landing on a cold mask of apathy with a click of their tongue. "Tsk. Nah, he's burning in hell where he belongs. Just...a friend who got caught in the crossfire." They finally turned their gaze back to Raven. "Now you. Got an ex on the mind?"

Raven sighed, laying their forehead on the table with a quiet thunk. "Ex feels too strong of a word for him. Like yes that is his title but it doesn't feel right." "Was he a good ex or a bad ex?" "What's the difference?" "Physical and/or psychological abuse. The fact you have to ask is a touch concerning." "Oh, well, by that definition he was a good ex." "Okay, where's the regret?" Raven paused for a moment to swallow the rock in her throat that had formed as she lifted her head off the table. "...he didn’t deserve to die. If it wasn't for me, he'd still be alive." "Ah, there it is. Survivors guilt." They nodded sagely. "Can't say it's an unfamiliar feeling, though it is an unfortunate one." "Did you lose your friend too?" "Mm, not quite. They're still alive just...don't remember me. And I can't talk to them again." "Can't bring yourself to?" "No, legally I cannot speak to them again. Trust me, I would if I could."

Raven almost laughed. Legalities, boy was she familiar with those. "Yeah, I get that. I lost my name the day I lost him. I lost...everything. Everything I'd ever known died with him. It had to." "Run away? Start a new life?" "Not exactly? Went into witness protection." "Ahhh, that explains it. So you had to start all over, leave everything behind whether you wanted to or not." "Pretty much." "Are you scared?" "Of witness protection?" "Of forgetting. Forgetting who you were, who you used to be. Are you scared of the day you forget your own name?" The intense stare the person was leveling them with made Raven shudder. She almost felt like she was back on trial. "Sometimes. But at the same time, that life brought me nothing but pain, I'm glad to leave it behind."

They sat back, eyes turning to the ceiling like they were searching for something in the tiles. "Do you regret loving him?" Their tone was softer, more thinking out loud than an actual question. Raven smiled the smallest bit, taking a swallow of her now significantly cooled cocoa. "Sometimes. But then I look at the people I have now and remember that I found them through loving him. So maybe it was all worth it." She watched their head tilt back down, looking at Raven again. "What about you? Do you regret loving your ex for what happened to your friend?" They sighed, chewing on their lip as they contemplated their words. "Every day. Every day I regret loving him because if I hadn't, they would be fine. They wouldn't have had to go through everything that they did. They wouldn't have had to get their mind wiped and all the memories taken away. They wouldn't have...had to forget me. Had to forget how they helped me in the lowest point of my life. Had to forget how much I cared about them." They paused, their jaw clenching to hold back tears. "But then I see the domino effect. The things that happened because of it. The person I met because of it. And then I wonder if it was all worth it and if fate really does exist. It's-" "Confusing. And complicated. And frustrating as hell." Raven finished for them, making them chuckle. "Sounds like you've done this before." Raven shrugged with a smile. "Not so much a reoccurance, more so just a more recent one." "Oh? So then miss recent expert, what's your opinion?" They leaned forward with a smile and a quirked brow. "What's your advice?"

Raven considered what to say for a while. What would her advice be? "Others can't write your story for you. They can hand you the pen and paper but they can't put the words on the page. You have to write your ending yourself. It's up to you to decide if you want to write it happily or not." The words rolled off her tongue easier than she thought they would. Her own spin on the words that kept her from running away from the best thing that happened to her. Would Crow be proud of her? She hoped so.

The person's eyed widened for a moment, blinking in surprise. "That was...shockingly profound. And actually really good advice. Huh. I'll have to remember that." Raven stirred her mostly melted peppermint stick through her cup. "Your turn now. What sage wisdom do you have for a newcomer to grief?" Raven half teased, not really expecting an answer.

"The world isn't out to get you. You're allowed to rely on others, the people around you want to help. You can't keep throwing yourself at the wall and expecting it to break every time. One of those times, it's going to be you that breaks. But when you do, you don't have to pick up all the pieces by yourself." They spoke softly, sounding like they were repeating a mantra. Maybe they were repeating advice of their own. Raven couldn't help laughing. "Sounds like we both are rehashing the words of someone far better at this than we are, huh." "Aw damn, you can tell that easily?" They both dissolved into laughter, not noticing the jingle of the bell at the door.

"Darlin?" A smooth Southern accent made Raven turn her head. Standing behind her new friend was a man, flannel shirt and worn blue jeans with a cowboy hat. Looked like he'd walked off the set of a western movie. Her friend tipped their head back to look at him and smiled. "Hey there cowboy. Come to find me?" "Clearly. I've been trying to text you but you haven't been answering." "Ah shit, have you? Sorry, got caught up talking, I haven't been checking my phone." They pulled their phone out of their pocket and scrolled through what Raven assumed was their missed messages. The cowboy just smiled and ruffled their hair. "It's fine, darlin. I'm glad you made a friend." He turned and faced Raven. "Sorry, should've introduced myself. Name's Sam. Their partner." Raven almost slapped herself when she realized she'd spent this whole time talking and never bothered to introduce herself. "Oh, hi. Sorry, I never actually introduced myself. I'm-" "Miss Raven!!"

A familiar excited voice interrupted her, the girl it belonged to running up to cling to her in a hug. "Paloma, don't run, you could slip." Ivan chided softly, coming up behind her. Raven just laughed, squeezing the little girl in return. "She's fine, Ivan. What are you even doing here?" "Well you weren't home at your usual time and hadn't texted so I figured you stopped on your way home somewhere and came to take a look. I'm just glad we found you." Ivan leaned down and kissed Raven's forehead, earning an amused look from her new friend. "He yours, I'm assuming?" "Yeah, he's mine. And the cowboy belongs to you?" "Who, this guy? Nah, he's just some puppy I picked up off the street one day." "Darlin..." Sam warned but his smile made the threat hollow. "Well, I thank you two for finding my girlfriend and keeping her in one place. Made it easier on me." Ivan offered, earning a wave from Sam. "Ah, don't thank me, thank my partner here. I only came in a minute before you did to find them myself. So I should be thanking you." "Please, it was no trouble. It was...quite the productive conversation." Raven waved off his thanks, smiling softly at her friend. They shrugged, returning a half smile. "Yeah, you could say that. Have a few less regrets than when I walked in here. Maybe one day I'll get rid of them all." They downed the rest of their drink and stood, taking Sam's hand. "Well, it was nice to meet you Raven. Maybe we'll run into each other again." "Maybe. Stay safe out there." "You more." They gave a final wave and headed out, leaving Raven with Ivan and Paloma.

"So, who were they?" Ivan questioned, taking the now empty seat. "Honestly...I have no idea. I never asked for their name. But they gave an interesting perspective for me to think about." "In a good way or a bad way?" "Good way, definitely." "Well that's nice." Raven hummed in agreement, turning to look out the window. "Maybe one day I'll stop having regrets too." "Miss Raven, are you going to finish your drink?" Paloma asked, poking the now cold mug. "Ah crap, my cocoa! Aw, now it's all cold." Raven pouted sadly, making Ivan laugh. "Oh Raven, has held the weight of lives in her hands yet pouts when her hot chocolate gets cold."

"Oh we'll see how funny it is when I pour it over your head mister!" "No, wait, I concede! Ah!"

(I have no idea why I wrote this. I had the thought "What if Darlin and Raven had a conversation about how dating their exes changed their lives" and boom, this was born. Okay this post is long enough, I'm shutting up now.)