#catch me going with shadow centric lore

[heiayen]

hellooo any ideas on where to start studying albedo’s lore 🤲🏻✨ he’s like a gold mine that I’d like a guide to properly dig into/write

hello !!! <3 albedo is a very funny guy because... lot of him is hidden behind time limited events and if you miss them then... you have a lot of to catch up on 😭😭 which is an issue on hoyo's part because they love making lore heavy events. sigh anyway

first thing you'd want to check is obviously his character story/quest/voicelines for basics about him! his story quest is followed by the chalk prince and the dragon event that was the first albedo-centric event in the game

moving foward you'd want to catch up on shadows amidst snowstorms which is second albedo-centric event and it's quite the lore drop! we learn more about his origins, about rhinedottir, even about durin and i think this event is probably the most important when it comes learning his lore, it's a must! if you don't feel like watching gameplays on youtube the wiki has quest transcripts <3

if we have that done, you can check out other events where albedo appeared! he plays bigger roles in midsummer island adventure (which is a very adorable klee-centric event), hues of the violent garden (inazuma festival themed event with albedo appearing) and windblume's breath (mondstadt event!) those events don't really give you major lore drops regarding albedo, but i think watching how he interacts with others will help understand him more!

if i had the words i would happily give you some pointers regarding writing him but unfortunately im very bad at things like so and i often just go by vibes </3 but i think one thing worth remembering is that he's not a cold serious scientist character that doesn't care about others-- no, no, he's soooo far from that! he's a lovely man and a sweetheart !! it always irked me a lot to see people act like he's some ohh uncaring man cold scientist he's bad at relationships blah blah because. i really don't think he is that kind of a character. he's a silly sweet man give him some credit. he literally eats spiders. so silly 😔😔

you can also read his birthday mails!! they are nice. cute. i like them

i hope this helped HAHA 😭 i am. absolutely terrible at giving advices when it comes to studying a character but i did try ueue have a great day <3

[vultures-and-scavengers]

faded

she has no great power. she’s not a duelist. she has no talent for telekinesis. she is good at hiding and she is good at listening and she is good dreaming things that will happen or things that could happen but these are not the talents of a knight. she is seven years old and she already knows no master will pick her. she is a pebble among gems. she is fodder for the agricorps.

she is eight years old and when she fails her gathering no one is surprised. her sister, a bright shining star, is the first to succeed. it is the day their sisterhood changes. the jedi order demands something different from them both. it will pull them apart.

she is eight and a half and she is training at night in the training rooms in desperation that she could be a knight. she knows she can be a knight, she knows it in her bones that it is a path she could walk. she knows there’s others, too, but she wants so bad to walk the path of the knight. she is eight and a half and she knows there is a jedi who has been watching her sneak to the training room each night.

she is nine and she has been bundled into a shuttle with the jedi who watched her: master xua distombe. master distombe has told her that she needs to finish her gathering. miyala argues, says she has failed it already, but master distombe shakes her head. that was not the right gathering for you, little one. you are no knight.

she is ten and she is a padawan and for the first time in her life she is good at something. the shadow masters show her and three other initiates the skills a shadow uses: stealth, shadowstriding, and force tracking. they indulgently tell younglings how to do it, so miyala focuses on where she wants to be (17 meters away, next to master xua) and then shes there. the room goes silent. the masters exchange looks. master xua looks defiantly proud.

she is 13 and she knows her connection to the force isn’t normal. she is very very good at shadow skills. she can barely manage anything else. once she had been able to lift things. it had been a struggle, but she had been capable. now she has no power beyond shadow striding, enhancing her sense, listening, and invisibility. but she no longer resents the knights. what good are their dueling skills if they cannot sense her right behind them? she needs only one hit.

she is 24. she is alone in the cockpit with a traumatized healer in the cargo bay and an arc trooper in a bacta tank. she dreams every night of a world without order 66. she dreams of worlds where there was no jedi order, and thus no sith order. she dreams of all the other paths they could have walked.

she despairs.

[vampire-himbos-of-santa-perdita]

#showyourprocess tag game!

Rules: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Full disclosure, I’m not directly tagging anyone, but if you see this post and think it’s cool, consider yourself tagged!

Thanks so much @mr-writes for the tag! This one sounds super fun!

Inspiration: It’s no secret that Heaven’s Tiny Daggers is my My Chemical Romance novel... It didn’t really start out that way though. I jokingly started rumbling about a girl punk novel after watching Mad Max: Fury Road and seeing that three second shot of the pyromaniac guitarist harnessed to the stereo rig. I knew I wanted to write some sort of rival girl gangs novel, but it didn’t wind up that way...

As any OG emo might tell you, MCR’s breakup was a true tragedy that took several years to recover from. I couldn’t listen to “Welcome to the Black Parade” without having a complete breakdown until 2019, where I finally decided to bite the bullet and listen to their entire discography. I started catching myself up on all the MCR lore I missed over the years and stumbled upon the story of how they wrote The Black Parade in a haunted mansion. All the pieces started coming together from there...! It somehow became this novel about grief and the intensity of that feeling when you find out your favourite band breaks up. ...and then MCR promptly got back together a few months after I started writing it...

Preparation: I didn’t know anything about punk rock music beforehand, so I took about a year to listen to so much music, reading so much music history, and generally  immersing myself in the culture. The fun thing about writing a music-centric novel is any reading you’re doing can be easily supplemented by listening to whatever artists you’re reading about at the same time. So it was a lot of that and a lot of learning how to put on messy eyeliner and red eye shadow and sobbing it all off, watching old MCR concerts on Youtube. A lot of that.

Art Process: Prior to Heaven’s TIny Daggers, I was something of a pantser, but I was just coming out of a year of query rejections and a lot of editors telling me my best bet would be to start planning my plots more thoroughly. So, this is the first novel I really put my head down and plotted everything. I downloaded Scrivener and plugged in the Save the Cat 3 Act Structure into separate folders to keep everything in order. To keep myself on task, I would write every morning on my ipad Notes app and then copy/pasted scenes into Scrivener when I was done. First draft was just getting it all out of me and onto the page and then when I had wrung myself out of as much plot as I could get, I went back and refined and filled in scenes here and there, moved things around... all that good stuff.

I think one of the biggest changes that happened between the three drafts is I had this one scene that happens reasonably early in the original draft that I couldn’t figure out, so I just kept pushing it back until I realized it was sequel fodder. I had this idea that the main villain would be behind this big scheme where they were creating doppelgangers of female artists whenever they started standing up for themselves too much. I was feeling the Avril Lavigne is Dead conspiracy fantasy, but it wasn’t gelling with where I was going with the characters over all, so I moved it to the second book.

 The original plot was going to end a lot more tragically, and I’ve changed the ending about ten times by now and I’m still not 100% sure what is happening yet (which is why I keep going back and playing with more drafts instead of actually finishing it, RIP). I also don’t think it was going to be a murder mystery until the second draft. Once I cleaned out the doppelganger angle, the main concept was just a bunch of punks in a haunted house. As soon as the mansion became sentient and started fucking with everyone’s nightmares, it all came together in this demonic crescendo between drafts 2 and 3.

...and now I’m just finishing up Act 2 so I can finally fully write up Act 3 and send it out for querying by September!

Thoughts: I think in this whole process, it’s been so important for me to write something I love because it’s what teenage me would’ve been obsessed with reading. When you get stuck in a rejection spiral, it’s easy to forget why you’re writing what you’re working on. At the end of the day, it should be for you, and if you love it, you will find people out there who love that same topic too.

[omegalomania]

i fucking love hearing suitehearts au stuff, and au stuff in general... so like tea i wanna hear the fun stuff

LMAO well then anon i will do my best to deliver. idk if i’d call it an au exactly? i visualize the characters of the suitehearts as their own thing independent of the people portraying them, but i won’t bicker over people reading it how they like!

opens up my bigass disorganized Fucking Document of suitehearts lore i have frankly mostly invented

SO the thing about the suitehearts is that i view the world they occupy as kind of...an exaggeration of reality. it is not literal reality. in part cause we get this handy shot in the video

which implies to me that people can actually cross into this world via portals from “normal land” i.e. reality as we know it. normal landers are humans, ordinary people, and they can cross into the reality of...the suitehearts. i call it Hollywood Hills because like, thats definitely what it’s emulating, but it’s not the literal Hollywood Hills. 

so the way i read it is this: when the Hollywood-centric entertainment industry got big in Normal Land, an extant mirror world entailing all of Hollywood's greatest sins and triumphs formed as well. the Hollywood Hills we see in the video are like a funhouse mirror. they’re exaggerated, hyperbolic reflections of all that the industry there represents. it’s hard to say which is the more “real” version of reality. do things happen “first” in Normal Land and see themselves reflected in the Hollywood Hills here? vice versa? do the events in one version of reality trigger similar events in another? or are they just echoes of the same song?

the answer to that is who goddamn knows.

putting the rest of this under a cut cause....goddamn this got FUCKIN LONG.

the point is that the Hollywood Hills we see in the video and the reality the suitehearts occupy is....bizarre. it’s full of grotesque exaggerations. and at the center of it all of it are the Suitehearts, and the Suitehearts are....i’m not sure how to describe them other than i guess maybe avatars? conductors? in the context of this world. each of them represent and have mastery over an “element” or aspect that’s intrinsic to the entertainment industry. that’s what i really zeroed in on here when i started building this whole thing, mostly cause a) that’s what the america’s suitehearts song/video focuses on so Obviously yeah i’d go that route and b) those themes resonate very nicely with the rest of the folie a deux album which is nice.

anyway! the suitehearts.

mr. sandman is the suiteheart of dreams. this one is a given, since he’s named after the sandman, which is a folklore creature that puts people to sleep and gives people dreams. in the context of this universe, he presides over dreams and by extension sleep in general. he can’t create dreams (because dreams come from the SELF this is very important) but he can alter them and manipulate them. dreams are an important thing to have when you’re in any kind of massive industry, but in this case i don’t mean dreams in the abstract like motivation. i mean more dreams in terms of inspiration, and the seeds of your subconscious in dreams that can be harnessed into facilitating creation. sandman exists kind of partially out of the reality of the Hills; he can’t actually sleep or dream on his own, so he more or less slips in and out of people’s sleeping subconscious...es. so the “physics” of the Hills apply a little less to him. he can float slightly, he’s got this shadowy/smoky aura that never dissipates, and he’s always shrouded in darkness.

horseshoe crab is the suiteheart of luck. another given, since the video title card calls him the “luckiest man alive.” he can alter anyone’s luck, make them extremely lucky or extremely unlucky. he is also himself preternaturally lucky to a really really horrible extent. he can’t turn it off, so there are like...no stakes in his life. he has no regard for personal safety because he’s so absurdly lucky that he never has to worry about it. concepts like hope are just obsolete to him. he knows the outcome to everything that happens to him before it happens because he’s always going to come out fine on the other side. this results in this intense nihilism and apathy and difficulty in giving a fuck cause like...it’s all gonna be fine man. why bother worrying about literally anything?? he’s been known to describe his luck as being able to see this perpetual set of rolling dice in his head. the dice always keep rolling, so he knows his luck will always hold. he...doesn’t know what happens when they stop. they never have. it doesn’t really bother him though. it’s hard for anything to bother him.

donnie the catcher is the suiteheart of attention. i wasn’t sure about what he would represent since “catcher” plus donnie’s title card just kind of hinted at something related to sports, which isn’t reaaaally an intrinsic part to the entertainment industry. but the “america’s suitehearts” song makes a very explicit parallel between sports and paparazzi/media attention in the lyric “down, set, one, hut, hut, hike / media blitz” - which is especially clever since “blitz” is an actual football play. plus “catcher” can have a lot of meanings, such as to “catch” someone’s attention. and this is VERY important if u wanna make it in any big industry like the entertainment one! so donnie has the ability to alter how much he or others are noticed. he can make himself so forgettable and imperceptible that he might as well be invisible, or someone so eye-catching that they’re wholly impossible to ignore, and so on. there are limits here that will depend on context, like it’d be difficult to make someone performing on stage nearly imperceptible mid-performance, but it’s very easy to make someone disappear into a crowd if they want. he indulges in this very often in fact. any time donnie is confronted with a situation he doesn’t want to be in he can more or less just disappear from most people’s perception and not deal with it :T donnie also has the uncanny ability to notice things most people wouldn’t, which comes w the territory of being what he is.

dr. benzedrine is the suiteheart of euphoria. again i wasn’t super sure what to do with him until i did some research into the “benzedrine” drug and that was super fascinating. point is that benzedrine is a trade name for a pharmaceutical that among other things is very energizing and can induce euphoria. and euphoria is of course pretty essential to anyone chasing their hollywood dreams, PLUS it’s very topical for anyone who ends up chasing a chemical high in any industry, given how rampant substance abuse can get in that context. benzedrine is in theory capable of controlling and altering the levels of happiness in himself and others. in theory i say, because benzedrine is very much Unique and Not In A Good Way as i’ve mentioned before, and one of the consequences of this is that he can’t moderate his own happiness levels. he can experience it organically or not at all but he can’t induce it in himself - only in others. benzedrine more or less defaults to being kind of cranky and is seldom very genuinely happy, though he has been known to whip out a downright terrifying, completely insincere, and very, very wide smile if he’s really pissed off. he’s also got that giant, grinning shadow that literally always follows him and he. really doesn’t know what is up with it. and he doesn’t like that he doesn’t know what’s up with it cause it’s obviously linked to him in a very demonstrable way. and it’s creepy as all shit and he kind of hates it and so do the others.

the “job” of the suitehearts is basically to give what visiting Normal Landers require from them. if someone wants attention, luck, euphoria, dreams - the suitehearts give it to them. and it costs a little something of course, just a little portion of their mortal souls, but the Normal Landers are willing, for the most part. not all of them are - some wander in by accident - but inevitably they succumb to the kaleidoscopic lure of this technicolor world and the temptation of perpetual luck without compromise, bliss without fear of a comedown, dreams that will forever inspire you, all the attention they could possibly want. and maybe it helps them get big in Normal Land. but more likely and most frequently, it just brings them back and back and back for more and more and more until eventually they’re mere hollow caricatures of who they were. and at that point, they sink into the acid green moat and the Hills claim them for good.

do the suitehearts like that they do this? well...they have varying opinions. sandman fucking loathes it. horseshoe doesn’t really care because it’s hard for him to care about anything. donnie finds it unsettling. benzedrine thinks it’s very irritating because he’d rather be getting important studies and work done since he’s the most dedicated to learning everything he can about the world they’re in. but the crux of the matter is that they don’t really have a choice in it. that’s what they’re there to do. they facilitate the trade of souls in exchange for the boons and benefits they boast. they can no sooner stop being a part of this than they could remember anything outside of their lives in the Hollywood Hills.

which they can’t, by the way. they have no memories of anyone or anything outside of their existence in the Hills. they’re not human, but what are they? were they human once? did they ever have actual names? how long have they been here? does time even pass normally in the Hills? they can’t leave the Hills after all; the portals to Normal Land simply refuse to allow them through, and the boundaries of the Hills are impossible for them to surpass.

these are their roles. (who decided those roles?) so they play their parts. (don’t think about it.) they do as they’re meant to. (how do they know to do that? no one ever told them.) this just their lot in life. (are they even alive?)

and what happens when some of them start to get the feeling that there’s something important that they’re forgetting?

[vorthosjay]

Let’s Talk About Chronicle of Bolas: Perspectives

The penultimate story for Chronicle of Bolas is here! Chronicle of Bolas: Perspectives gives us another glimpse into a Nicol-centric retelling of the history of the Elder Dragons, with some real meat on it’s bones to dive into. Yeah... I trust Ugin’s recounting of events better.

I’ve also got a note about the Let’s Talk About series going forward.

Nicol Bolas, the Arisen by Svetlin Velinov

I opened my wings to catch the air. Ugin may tell you that he and I were wrapped together like one creature, born together, falling together, minds waking together in bewilderment and curiosity. He may tell you that as we realized we were beings—minds—consciousnesses—that we unfolded together. Flew together.

But that is wrong.

I just want to quickly remind everyone that Bolas is full of crap, so he’s version of events should be taken with a grain of salt. I’m sure the events themselves happened but how they played out - and what Bolas leaves out - are highly suspect.

I beheld the majesty of the sun and the splendor of the heavens and understood the magnificence of my mind in those first instants. Then I recognized the curled-up creature falling helplessly beside me. Of course, my instinct was to help.

In case you were wondering how full of crap Bolas is, I doubt his first instinct was ever to help. Bolas is merely re-framing events to diminish Ugin and make himself look superior.

"Six?" Naiva asked. "Weren't there eight of you? Didn't two fall without waking? Didn't their bodies shatter atop the mountain?"

One of his foreclaws swatted down next to her, the impact shaking her off her feet. Her knees hit the ground hard. Pain stabbed tears into her eyes.

"Do not interrupt me again!" he thundered.

Lol, I think Bolas might be a wee insecure.

At last, I alone had the courage, and the hunger, to dare fold my wings and set my claws upon the ground. Of course, that momentous decision presaged all that was and is to come: my wings span the heavens, and my presence, my weight, my size, my claws, all these give me dominion over the earth and all that lives on the earth. So, I named our home Dominaria, because I claimed its song for myself.

Dominaria is actually named after Dominia, the old name of the multiverse (not typically called that anymore). Dominaria is the song of Dominia.

Again. Bolas. Crap. But hilariously in line with his character. I genuinely loved his retelling.

RAGE

How dare he have what I had not!

A white-hot spark kindled deep in my chest with a flash of such sunlit brightness that it blinded me. Impenetrable blackness filled my vision. Tumbling, I fell, totally disoriented, until with a gut-wrenching twist I righted myself.

This is very much Bolas. His spark ignited through anger, avarice and jealousy.

Notice the inconsistency in his story, though? He claims Ugin wasn’t a planeswalker until later... so why was he jealous of Ugin?

Only to find myself no longer atop the birth mountain but gliding over a boundless stretch of oceanic waters as flat and still as a mirror. I was the only thing in motion, my wings shadowing the sea's surface. There was no sun in this peculiar place, only the water and many craggy islets and a constant shushing whisper of secrets just out of my reach. By a faint humming vibration deep in my bones, I suspected this was not a plane but some manner of artificial construct, built by an unknown agent that had left neither claw nor footprint to mark its authorship. Who, or what, possessed so much power? And why had it been abandoned?

This is a cool lore tidbit! By now, my theory has borne out, this is the Meditation Realm (described as such later). But Bolas notes that it’s an artificial realm, not unlike Rath or Serra’s Realm.

Bubbles floated peaceably in the sky, drifting downward until they touched my scales and popped

With each pop, a sweet vista sprang open before me for a breathtaking moment before it vanished: other lands, other worlds, other planes.

This is new. I mean, we saw some of this with Naiva’s visions last time, but this is probably how Te Ju Ki knew of other planes, she’d reached the Meditation Realm through Meditation!

What wonders lay beyond the meager treasures of Dominaria! A hundred worlds I visited, and then a hundred more. Yet in all that time I found no trace of any other creature who could walk between worlds. I was the first among all sapient creatures to discover the possibility of traveling between planes. No wonder eternity and infinity welcomed me, having sojourned alone for so long!

Sure you were, Bolas. Sure you were. What’s interesting is he doesn’t think to describe what he does to those worlds.

There I found the wars between the elder dragons over long since. A tenuous peace had taken hold throughout much of the land. Of all the elder dragons and their children, only Chromium Rhuell, Arcades Sabboth, Palladia-Mors, and that vexatious beast Vaevictis Asmadi had survived.

If we take Bolas at his word, this is probably during the time of Legends, as Piru is unmentioned. Piru would probably be unmentioned regardless, or beneath Bolas’s notice, but if we’re taking it literally this is somewhere between -5,000 AR and 0 AR.

This also brings up some timing issues. If the Dominaria timeline is to be believed, we’ve skipped right over the Primevals, the Numena, and Bolas dueling the Demonic Leviathan (which should have happened shortly after Bolas became a planeswalker). I assume Bolas is editing his story for relevance, but it’s improtna

He regarded me with his usual patronizing superiority. "The battle you fled from, abandoning your troops? I gathered them under my wings. They were grateful for my protection, I assure you."

"Did you not see him, flying between our armies?" I demanded, utterly astonished by his obliviousness.

"You were not yourself that day, Bolas. No doubt you were seeing illusory things. You have always felt shame about Ugin's death, haven't you? Did you blame yourself for not protecting him? Or did you stand aside and allow him to be killed by some venomous sorcery? I've always wondered. I've always suspected you envied him because he was cleverer and wiser than you."

THIS is interesting. Why wouldn’t Arcades have seen Ugin? Even in Nicol Bolas’s story?

Is this Bolas attempting to diminish Arcades? Hmmm. Bears more thinking about.

But I was bigger than that. Much, much bigger. I was a Planeswalker, first and only one of my kind. To rule in Dominaria was all very well for a small-minded despot like Arcades, while I had grown as far beyond him as he was beyond pathetic, weak, short-lived humans.

I love that Bolas is unironically looking at Arcades like Ugin looked at him.

Also, I hope Arcades didn’t turn on his people. He’s the only one of the five to never get any characterization and that would be such a tragedy. More so than how they all die, anyway.

So, you may imagine my shock and my joy when I walked out of the blind eternities into the place I had come to call my Meditation Realm only to find Ugin there! He was floating atop the waters staring at himself as if he could imagine nothing better than to look at his own reflection.

HERE IS THE CONFIRMATION OF THE MEDITATION REALM!

He attacked, viciously and without warning, all raw fury and malignant resentment. I had no choice but to defend myself. First above the wide waters of the Meditation Realm and then on a wild pummeling path through the planes, we struggled for days, years, generations.

Okay, so obviously this is bullshit because this is not Ugin. The question is, what drove Ugin to this? Did he see the destruction his brother wrought across the Multiverse?

In the end, by diverse paths, we returned to the Meditation Realm. There, purely in self-defense, I killed him.

With a mighty splash, he fell into the still waters. The impact resounded like thunder. Monstrous waves rose from the displacement and swept across the craggy islets, crashing and destroying as they went. The waves ran on and on, washing far beyond the bounds of the Meditation Realm into the web of connection that links the planes themselves and maybe even into the blind eternities whose depths even dragons cannot plumb. The waves spilled out of the Meditation Realm as if Ugin's death had, like a weight dropped upon a ceramic bowl, broken cracks in the vessel itself.

The violence of the waves swept me out of the Meditation Realm. Like a cast spear, I was flung through ten or twenty or a hundred planes before I fell hard back into Dominaria, onto the island chain of Madara at a time when the memory of the Elder Dragon Wars had faded into legend. Bruised and stunned, I struggled to recover my strength, but recover it I did. Many battles lay before me, and I met them with ease.

Okay, so some questions here.

Did Bolas actually kill Ugin here? Was Ugin revived like Bolas was?

Did Ugin’s death collapse the Meditation Realm? When Bolas was killed in the Meditation Realm in the Legends II cycle, it did. And Bolas is spat back out on Madara. And if it did collapse, was it later restored for Legends II?

Is this before the Demonic Leviathan battle? Because we used to think that was the first planeswalker duel, but it might have just been the first one on Dominaria itself. Why did it spit Bolas back out on Madara? Was it because of the rift from the Demonic Leviathan battle?

I have so many questions about this battle that I really hope we get answers to next week.

Yet when she thought of the young ghostfire warrior, of his courage and sacrifice, a shudder passed through her frame and ripped a gash in her certainty. What would Tae Jin say when he learned she had handed over the great Yasova Dragonclaw to Nicol Bolas?

"Little Naiva, you mustn't believe I want to hurt Yasova. I want to help. That's all. Now go." His voice hardened. A pressure built in her head until she thought her skull would burst. "Now."

Kneeling, she pulled aside the fragment of broken hedron and crawled in. There, in the dim, stuffy confines of the space, Baishya lay as if asleep, breathing evenly. Grandmother sat cross-legged in mediation, eyes closed, left hand resting open on a thigh while her right hand grasped Baishya's bare fingers with an affectionate clasp. The gesture ate a hole of envy right through Naiva's heart. Grandmother had always preferred Baishya. She loved her more than she loved Naiva.

She would have to bodily haul Grandmother outside. But that could wait. Pulling her knife from its sheath, she pressed the blade against Baishya's vulnerable throat.

Where is Tae Jin in all of this? I wonder if the ghostfire warrior saves the day, shocking Naiva back to her senses.

Finally, I wanted to say that I’m going to be putting “Let’s Talk About” on indefinite hiatus following the conclusion of Chronicle of Bolas. “Indefinite” does not mean ‘cancelled’ in this context, just that I don’t know when I’m going to have time for it again.

I really appreciate everyone who has been a faithful reader, but I can’t sustain the amount of time and energy I put into it - almost as much as one of my biweekly articles! I’m moving next month and I genuinely don’t know if my new work situation will allow me the leeway to get these out every week around lunchtime. So overall, things are just up in the air.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop talking about the story week by week! Please continue to send me asks and I’ll try to clarify lore or give background whenever possible. It may just be in a much shorter format than this or as ask responses.

[daleisgreat]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Four

-Welcome back to my semi-annual Star Trek: The Next Generation coverage! I need to get better at watching only one episode a week so I can make better progress than only two seasons a year. Today I am covering season four (trailer) of the BluRay collection I am gradually marching through. To catch up on my entries on the first three seasons, click here! Yes, all these photos for this entry were taken via outdated smartphone, so apologies for the lack of quality, but I felt it was worth it for some of the captions! -Continuing the trend in past entries let us kick off with notable cast changes for season four. The most noteworthy one is Mr. Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) finally landing that spot in Starfleet Academy and departing the show a third of the way into the season. He had a great sendoff episode where Wesley and Picard (Patrick Stewart) go on one last adventure and he winds up saving Picard and the two have a couple emotional final exchanges I could not help but get wrapped up in. I thought Wesley was finally coming into his own the last dozen or so episodes he was on, but in the extra feature interviews he stated he was displeased by how we was treated by the producers in his final year on the show and did not want to pass up other acting opportunities for being the two main reasons he departed. I believe we get a couple more guest appearances from him in the remaining seasons, and for the rest of season four there is a rotating non-essential crew member every couple episodes filling in at the helm.

-If you recall the previous entry, season three wrapped with the critically acclaimed Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger where Picard became assimilated by the Borg. The season four opener wraps up that arc in a gratifying manner in how the crew rescues Picard from the Borg threat and restore him back to his original form. I want to emphasize again how important this episode was in terms of gripping narrative, near theatrical quality special effects and CG and how it was the catalyst for TNG finally being accepted by ardent fans of The Original Series and managing to overcome that show’s huge shadow. It was so groundbreaking that the two-part special eventually got its own special home video release. -The follow-up second episode of the season proved to be the quintessential ‘calm-down’ episode after the intense season opener. Picard takes some much deserved shore leave and visits his family back on Earth and we get to see them reconcile their differences when Picard’s brother gets him to break down his emotions from his Borg assimilation in a moving scene that will always stay with me. The secondary plot of that episode focuses on being introduced to the adoptive human parents of Worf (Michael Dorn) and how Worf overcomes the embarrassment of his loving family and they all wind up embracing each other. Normally, getting all wrapped up in an overly ‘lovey-dubby’ episode can be overkill for me, but I cannot think of a series that captured the perfect moment for it any better after the thrill-ride of the season opener.

-Speaking of Worf, season four proves to be a showcase season for everyone’s favorite Klingon. Aside from meeting his human step-parents, he later on becomes a sudden grieving widow in the same episode he meets the son he never knew he had. Season four finale is another two-part cliffhanger called Redemption and the first part that ends this season is all about Worf finally acting on Picard’s pleas to win back his family’s honor from the Klingon race after the big episode in season three where he covered up a Klingon controversy by taking a fall for a crime his family did not commit and being ex-communicated from the Klingons. The aftermath from that over the next year and a half was constantly referenced every couple episodes as a reminder from the consequences Worf had to live with so it felt like a justifiably big deal when Worf finally stepped up to overcome the shame cast upon his family name. Season four felt like a breakthrough season for Worf where his episodes no longer felt like ‘another Klingon episode’ to tolerate and I am now on board with all the way. -The holo-deck use seemed more dialed back this season. There is a fun mini-Dixon Hill excursion with Picard and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) which regrettably gets put to a halt early on. Picard shows off some funky laser racquetball skills, and Worf duels with Guinan in a laser-target shootout I never caught the name of. Also dialed back this season was the poker games which I only think appeared in one or two episodes this season and one poker scene wound up on the cutting room floor in the deleted scenes. I hope to see both of these fun distractions become more featured in the proceeding seasons. The Ten-Forward tavern scenes continue to impress however as much needed breather scenes where Guinan offers her sage bartender wisdom like only she can and she even gets to put a badass halt to a stereotypical barfight that erupts!

-For the rest of crew, Data (Brent Spiner) has a memorable episode where he plays three characters at once that sees the return of Lore and after a few teases finally seeing the on-screen debut of his creator, Dr. Soong. I usually am a fan of Geordi (LeVar Burton) centric episodes, but his season four episodes where he is brainwashed by Romulans and infected by an alien race were more headscratchers that did not have me quite invested. The same can be said for Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) with her big episode where she is romantically involved with a symbiote who needs to constantly change hosts that proves to be too much for her. I will recognize however season four for her emerging as a competent doctor for a change and finally saving some lives! Transporter Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) gets a first name this season, and more importantly gets married too! Like last season, the use of telepathy from Troi (Marina Sirtis) is sparingly used, but whenever implemented it is noteworthy and actually helpful. The use of Ryker (Jonathan Frakes) as a key crew member also seemed a little more toned down this season, with him only having larger roles in a couple episodes. -Season four I will chalk up as a win for recurring once-annual recurring characters for TNG. I was delighted to see Picard’s treasure hunter partner Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) return in the Q (John DeLancie) episode this season that has Q whisk away the Enterprise crew for a memorable mission in the Robin Hood universe where Patrick Stewart shines as the ‘Prince of Thieves.’ I will also mark season four as the first time the annual episode with Troi’s mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett) as a legitimate entertaining episode. I previously could not stand her, but in season four she stood out in imploring an ambassador she fell for to go against his culture’s protocol of mandated suicide at age 60. I liked the ways to get Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) involved in the show again via estranged family members and more alternate dimension cliffhangers to wrap up this season. Props to them bringing back Reginald Barclay (Dwight Shultz) as a recurring crew member and his episode this season cracked me up where a cosmic blast leads to him overcoming his SAD to becoming overwhelmingly brilliant.

-Like previous seasons, I could not help but take notice of a couple episodes of TNG in season four I saw Seth McFarlane pay homage to in his current sci-fi show, The Orville. First Contact (yes a TV episode shares the same name as the eighth Star Trek film) establishes the rules for when the Federation of Planets recognizes the right time to well, establish official first contact with a new race, but only to see it be too much for the race to take in. Orville puts a twist on its first contact rules, but sees their own entertaining dilemma pan out when their cultures clash. In Theory has Data attempt to get involved in a romantic relationship with a crew member and that was replicated on McFarlane’s show when Isaac tries to maintain a relationship with that vessel’s doctor. Click or press here to see how the two shows contrast from each other with their respective androids trying to get romantically involved. -Like the previous seasons, Paramount does not disappoint on the extra features. Besides recycling past DVD extras, there are all new HD bonuses for the BluRay. Excluding a handful of commentaries, according to my notes I tallied up about four and a half hours of behind-the-scenes interviews. Yes, I watched them all for you dear readers! I will once again try to highlight the standout extras. Being a fan of Wesley and Picard’s father/son relationship I like how that is dissected in Selected Crew Analysis. Chronicles of Final Frontier and Homecoming provide valuable insight at the injection of new life a stable writing staff brought onto the show this season. Departmental Briefing indicate how Frakes and Stewart made the move to directing episodes starting this season, with Frakes especially getting more out of it and how it lead to him eventually directing a couple Trek films.

The showcase new HD extra is In Conversation: Star Trek’s Art Department which gathers several of TNG’s CG and special effect artists as they talk shop on how they were brought onto the show and share some of their favorite anecdotes for a little over an hour. I will admit some of it goes over my head, but it was mostly fun being a fly on the wall seeing these colleagues reunite and celebrate their favorite war stories. Random factoid I will forever remember from this was the artist’s disappointing writers for forcing them to tone down amount of phaser blasts they requested because they cost approximately $2000 to produce per individual blast at the time. -Damn, I babbled on for incredibly longer than I wanted to once again, but season four was a damn good season that warranted it. As breakthrough of a great year season three was for The Next Generation, I have to give credit where it is due for season four somehow surpassing it with a better overall quality of episodes. There are landmark moments for most of the crew throughout the season, and once again there is another two-part cliffhanger that has me anxiously awaiting to dive into the following season. Hopefully I will be back sooner than later this time…..no promises!

Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap 2017-18 TV Season Recap 2018-19 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Baseball: A Ken Burns series Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7 Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5