#it DID however give me a lot to think about re: my own book

[witchern]

okay has anyone here read kay chronister's "the bog wife" because i finished it a few days ago and while i liked two-thirds of it i need to complain about the ending :|

[stupidphototricks]

It's interesting re-reading Sir Terry Pratchett's books in a random order, because there are connections that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I read Johnny and the Dead immediately after The Wee Free Men, and these two passages struck me in a similar way:

And what there was about the Queen's voice was this: It said, in a friendly, understanding way, that she was right and you were wrong. And this wasn't your fault, exactly. It was probably the fault of your parents, or your food, or something so terrible that you've completely forgotten about it. It wasn't your fault, the Queen understood, because you were a nice person. It was just such a terrible thing that all these bad influences had made you make the wrong choices. -- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

The words would fill up the hall until they were higher than people's heads. They were smooth, soothing words. Soon they'd close over the top of all the trilbies and woolly hats, and everyone would be sitting there like sea anemones. They'd come here with things to say, even if they didn't know how to say them. The thing was to keep your head down. But if you did keep your head down, you'd drown in other people's words. -- Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead

Both of them describe dealing with an adversary who is smooth-talking, articulate, eloquent; someone who is apt to win the argument by saying things perfectly and making you look stupid and silly and wrong, no matter how right you actually are. Someone who can even make you question whether you are right.

I feel this in my bones because in pretty much any situation, no matter how much I believe in my own opinion I can never coherently explain it to anyone else, if they don't already agree with me. I stammer, and get confused, and can't find the right word, and lose the thread, and give up. It doesn't matter, I think.

Of course the stakes are a lot higher for Tiffany and Johnny in these books. And of course (spoiler, but not really) they find the strength, and the words, to not be overridden and out-talked and silenced and gaslighted (gaslit?), but to push back and say what they need to say.

I wonder if Terry Pratchett drew on his own experience with having a speech impediment, here. I imagine that there were a lot of occasions in his early life where people talked over him, didn't take him seriously, didn't let him finish what he was saying. And, well. We all know that as it turned out he was extremely worth listening to.

Just because someone has difficulty speaking doesn't mean that they don't have something worthwhile to say. Be patient.

Just because someone is eloquent and well-spoken doesn't mean that they're telling the truth or have your best interests at heart. Practice critical thinking.

And most importantly your opinion matters, and you should express it, however imperfectly.

[happyk44]

Ya know what I find really weird in PJO but I can't find an alternate explanation for/scene for and so it must stay in my brain as a "I can't find the solution for this and it's making be rage" thought?

The whole "Greek and Roman Deities Fighting Each Other" for the same brain/body. Like, I somewhat get it from the author's standpoint but as someone who knows both of their myths, I'm like??? They literally both have their own gods without "counterparts" like Bellona, which Rick acknowledges within the series and each deity literally has different values within somewhat same domains. Like, Juno? Entirely different epithets from Hera, although they share the same "place" within their pantheons. And, yes, there are some overlaps which come from the fact that Rome came after Greece and has a lot of influence from the Greeks, just like our books and literature has a lot of overlap with ancient cultures and, very specifically, America with European roots. That's just how humans work! Look at literally any fictional book with its own "world" and see all the things it took inspiration from! Even Tolkien! Especially Tolkien! And now look at the things we took from Tolkien.

It's just. I don't know what to do about this and I'm mad about it. Do I like, make the whole scene change when the gods change. Do I replace their entire beings with the other culture's. Do I make them coexist and just pop up everywhere? Answers, brain, answers.

[Coming from an author who's especially enraged bc he's trying to write a Mortal!Big Three AU after the series with a lot of roman influence but a majority of the series is based on Greek Influence--even Camp Jupiter, who has child soldiers??? Dude, they should be adults-. "Oh what about Jason and Reyna?" Make a funny little plot thing where literal adults are tasked by one of their Patron Goddess to take care of a Small Child which they literally did not ask for and raise him/it to be a functioning soldier. Make it so when we're introduced to The Camp via Percy, the soldiers groan because they're literally being run over by children, wtf man. Anyway, if someone writes this into something or finds a fic with an idea similar to this, send it to me <3--and so now he has to do a lot of research based in roman culture with very little Referenced Points.

{The author's starting to but it's gonna take a while and they wanna write this fic now-}]

<3

Fair warning it's like 4:30ish in the morning as I write this and I haven't slept yet so this might be all over the place but, yeah, Risk doesn't do enough to differentiate between the two sides within canon. So I think a lot of people come out of the series assuming that there's little to no difference between Greek and Roman gods and culture, aside from the change of their names. And since there's no perceived difference, they don't really do their own research.

Plus adding in details that aren't accurate to ancient culture/ideology (re: Neptune being hated because Romans weren't seafaring. Like. They were. They had a navy. And they didn't hate Nepetune) and then not elaborating any further on those details (we never see Neptune so we don't get to be exposed to how terrifying or different from Poseidon he is, we have no active child of Neptune to give us a reason why the modern day campers would be fearful other than a story about an earthquake, which I still find ridiculous because really? None of your siblings have ever made a devastating fuckup?)

It definitely could've been more well thought out. I mean I wrote a book featuring different gods, and a key player is Kali. In some text, Kali is an aspect of the goddess Durga. Durga has other aspects as well, such as Parvati. It's sort of similar to how the gods are presented in PJO/HoO. However, I wanted to clarify that Kali is a separate entity, so over the course of the last few centuries and as a result of colonization, she and the other aspects separated out from the principal goddess to be their own. She was the last to sever out. While she is worshipped as an aspect of Durga, she's still a goddess in her own right! But the aspect wording caught my attention and I wanted it to be obvious

With PJO/HoO canon, it could be the opposite. They started as separate entities but public perception caused them to merge. We know through TKC that public perception affects the gods - gods that have been forgotten become senile. Why can't public perception affect them in other ways? In my book, less known mythologies and gods become weaker and weaker, especially as colonization has erased knowledge and artifacts, which is why I had them centralize their power into a collective that equalizes belief among the whole of them (with a little boost for the well-known and worshipped), because hey, if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

Anyway, a fun way to go about this is maybe making a joke that Hermes and Anubis can't interact because otherwise they start to combine and separating them takes time and energy and other people's help because of Hermanubis. The Greek and Roman gods want to be separate but because public perception tends to conflate them way more than they're already conflated, they're stuck battling it out. Greek gods tend to win more because, again, public perception tends to prioritize Greek mythology (at least I think so anyway) which is one of the reason legacies are so commonplace in Camp Jupiter in a way they aren't at CHB.

By this you can have "designer" legacies - kids with more than one godly ancestor (like Frank) in order to continue on the powers or strengths of multiple gods rather than just the one. With the way New Rome is structured, I can't imagine why demigods wouldn't hook up with one another. With CHB, you can leave so relationships between demigods may fizzle out after the summer or when demigods choose to stop coming back to camp for whatever reason. They also don't have to send their kids to camp, and can train their kids on their own, so less interaction with legacies is had with CHB, and thus godly influence slowly dies out as the legacies don't hook up with one another or other demigods. There's also the ever present risk of monsters, so Greek legacies may survive less.

With CJ, everyone tends to migrate into New Rome when their service is done. Between school, work, and homing options, there's less reason to leave, less likelihood of relationships fizzling out, higher likelihood of multiple godly ancestors among legacies.

One of the things that I've complained about with the Greek vs Roman battling it out thing before and what I wanna reiterate again is that Frank should not have been the one to deal with both aspects of his dad arguing in his head. It should've been Jason!! The one who actually was unsure of his standing as a Roman or Greek demigod.

But there's no differentiation. Even the arguing in Frank's head is just "kill everyone!" and "war is great!" There's no line between Mars as war god and Ares as a war god, despite the reality that there was - Mars being more disciplined and Ares being more bloodlust.

And attempts at describing a difference are either unclear or delivered through secondhand information, like when Thalia claims that Jupiter seemed different to her when he came in that aspect of himself but in text, the actual exposure we get of him feels no different to what we've experienced of Zeus in PJO. Neptune vs Poseidon.

Why does Athena have kids but Minerva doesn't when both are virgin goddesses born from their father's head? Why does Minerva's status as a virgin goddess bear more significance than Athena's to the point she doesn't simply replicate the actions of her other self to have her own kids?

The only line of clarity I can really see is Pluto vs Hades, and even then, the characterization between the two of them is essentially the same, the only weight is in the importance of their godly priorities shown both through their kids (Hazel vs Nico) and described in text (wealth vs dead). But we get little to no other exposure or line of thought from other characters with the same godly parent, just different aspects. How does Frank differ from Clarisse, or Jason from Thalia? How does the chosen aspect of their godly parent affect their personality, their powers, the way they interact with the world or how others see them?

I do like that idea of random adults at camp being given a kid by various gods who are just "take care of this thing for me, thanks" and bouncing off. That's funny. But also lol, Jason being CJ's only child soldier. He's Jupiter's child, and a champion of Juno so he's special and must be treated as such, even if that's by being attacked by wolves nonstop as a toddler and then raised in barracks from ages 3 to 15. And when people go "what about Reyna" or "what about Frank", like, idk how commonplace it is in most places but I know the US has those like junior army clubs or whatever it's called, so why couldn't they just be part of CJ's equivalent to that and then run off to do their own thing with the others because they're teens with ADHD and impulsivity is a thing, especially when you care about your friends.

But, like, also the soldier aspect isn't really key. "What about Reyna?" She was gonna end up at Camp Jupiter either way. "What about Frank?" He needed to be trained because it'd been 16 years and the fact that he hadn't experienced any monsters up to 'til then can be written away as his mom and grandmother defeated them before he could be hurt, and then his mom died and his grandmother realized she won't always be here to defend him so fuck it, let's tell him the truth about his father and send him off to learn how to defend himself.

And again! It's as you said - epithets differ even between similar gods. Their priorities differ - both in ancient culture and with the god themselves. Principal gods differ. Mars was held to higher esteem than Ares - Frank's status as his son should've been exemplified. Mars was second to Jupiter in importance - Jason could've subconsciously adopted Frank as his second in command, which would've been neat because we know Frank struggles with anxiety and confidence and we know he wasn't all that thrilled with being Mars's son at the start, and him getting a bump up in status/importance could've been an interesting arc to navigate, as well as further cement the key moment in HoH when he takes over for Jason as praetor and leads the ghostly army.

[dinoartistry]

How I got these results on my finals without spending hours stu"dying" at my desk.

Now that finals season is over, we almost all recieved our grades and results.

However, sometimes you don't get the results you wanted despite studying for hours and hours on end. It's frustrating and discouraging, right?

Here are my tips on how to get better grades without having to spend all of your free time at your desk! ↓

NB: That doesn't mean that you should stop studying entirely.

Also this is a really long post but you can of course just read the tips that interest you!

1. Be attentive in class. I know it's tempting to just sit down and chat with your friends or stay on your phone, because class can be really boring. However, paying attention to what your teacher says and taking note of everything that might sound useful is a huge step in getting better grades.

Your note-taking doesn't have to be aesthetic. At the beginning of the year I wasted a lot of time making my notes pretty in class, and that made me lose a lot of precious information. You can always rewrite your notes in an aesthetic way later! Re-writing is a great study method too, so it's a win-win. To give you an example, here are the history and theatre history notes I take in class:

They're ugly. And that's okay! If I could score 35 and 50 respectively with these, so can you.

2. Be active in class. Of course, most of the time just listening isn't enough. You need to participate. Teacher asks a question? Raise your hand!

Now, you might be thinking "but what if I don't have the right answer and say something false? Everyone will make fun of me", and to that I will answer, who cares? They're not trying. You're making efforts to absorb the material, they're just sitting there and laughing because they're insecure about their own answers. I'm not making fun of them by saying this, it's just a fact.

3. Ask questions. Just, a bunch of them. If you don't understand the material, or have doubts, ask your teacher! They're not your enemy, even if they might sound dismissive. This year for example, I had a physics teacher who was a PAIN in class. He talked through the lesson super quickly and never really explained anything to anyone. However, there was one time where I didn't understand the material at all, and I went to talk to him. And he took time (like 20 minutes!) to re-explain to me what I hadn't understood.

Teachers are here to help you. Take advantage of it.

4. Research research research! By that I mean, go further! For example, in French class I had to read a book that talked about the genocide in Rwanda. But it was told through a child's eyes, so didn't really talk about what exactly was going on. So, I took it upon myself to take some time to make my own research about it. And guess what? Talking about it improved my grade on that project. In history, make sure you understand the causes and consequences of the historical events you study in class. "Why did it happen?" and "What was its impact on society?" are two questions you must be able to answer at the end of the day.

5. Understand how. This is maths-specific. Take this simple question about arithmetic sequences:

If the first term of a sequence (a1) is 2 and the common difference (d) is 5, what will be the 7th term (an) of that sequence?

It's not enough to know that the result is 32 because that's the answer you got in class. You need to understand the steps you use to get to the result.

Here for example, the formula is:

an = a1 + (n-1) . d

So, here:

a1 = 2, n = 7, d = 5.

The equation becomes :

an = 2 + (7 - 1) . 5

It's now simply a matter of method! 7-1 comes first, so you're left with:

an = 2 + 6 . 5

Then, the multiplication:

an = 2 + 30

And lastly:

an = 32

It's all a matter of taking the time to do things in the right order, one at a time. Think of it like reading a sentence! You can't just read the words in a random order, right? That wouldn't make sense. Read the words in the right order. Calculate in the right order. It's the same thing, I promise (coming from someone who used to hate maths)!

I really like the exam scene in assassination classroom for that reason. The moment the big monster to slay becomes a simple fish to cut because you know from where to start? That's the goal here.

6. Let go. You don't have to be the best of the best all the time. Putting unnecessary pressure on yourself and beating yourself up for not having full marks is doing the exact opposite of what we want here. You're smart, okay? Stressing yourself out does one thing: it turns your brain to mush, making you incapable of remembering information and will make you lose your means when you're faced with a test or an exam. That's what I did for chemistry this year, because I struggle with it, and would you look at that! I got 28. So let go. It's okay, you got this. ⚝

All in all, you're your own best friend. Take care of yourself. Don't put on yourself a pressure you wouldn't put on others. Being too hard on yourself will only end up hurting you, and we don't want that!

[nkjemisin]

Things in my ask box

Hi folks. Every so often I get questions from folks that are good, but which I worry might catch them some flak from my other readers or whoever. Sometimes I answer those people privately, but in general I prefer not to do private replies to asks; for one thing, other people might want to know the answer, and for another, I've had a few awkward situations result from doing so (basically just people going parasocial on me), and I think that sort of thing is less likely when it's clear I'm talking to everyone. So, I'm going to handle these awkward asks by just treating them as Q&A questions -- without showing that person's username and where necessary, altering the question in order to protect their identity. I've got a few of these stored up, but just gonna do two this time for length and time reasons. I'll get to the rest later.

Are you a proshipper?

Yep. Feel free to alter your decision re following me on social media now that you've read that answer. But I believe in "don't like, don't read," and that fiction doesn't indicate what an author really believes (because it's fiction), and that there's no subject matter too immoral to explore on its face (everything depends on the execution), so... yep.

2. I love the Broken Earth trilogy, but I have to say, the middle book really didn't go anywhere, literally. Essun stayed in Castrima and Nassun moved around a little more but mostly stayed in the same place too. It killed a lot of the story momentum for me. Why did you decide to do this?

[spoilers for Broken Earth books, though I'll try to minimize them and will put a "read more" before I get there]

Because I felt like it. I'm not saying that defensively, I'm just noting that the answer to pretty much any question you might ask a writer about why they do a particular thing is... because they felt like it. Period full stop. Sorry that wasn't what you wanted to read! It was, however, the story I wanted to tell.

To elaborate... different people have different expectations of trilogies. That's because there are a lot of different ways to handle them, narratively speaking. Sometimes a trilogy is really a group of shared-universe stories taking place in the same world but not necessarily featuring the same characters, and with unrelated plots. Some are telling a single story, but through different POVs and smaller plot arcs that each have their own terminuses; that's what I did with the Inheritance Trilogy, for example. And sometimes, as I did with the Broken Earth books, the author is just telling one big story broken up into three parts. (There are more ways to do a trilogy than this, but let's keep this brief, lol.)

Now, there are a lot of ways to handle this kind of story, but a pattern that most of us are used to is:

Book One: Introduction to the world and important characters and the apparent stakes;

Book Two: Deep dive into the important characters and world, thus giving the audience a reason to care more; and

Book Three: Now we really know the stakes and shit just got real! Now we care what happens to the characters when EVERYTHING! BLOWS!! UP!!!

(I am feeling very silly today, sorry.)

We're familiar with this pattern because we see it all the time, especially in American media. It's a variation on the three-act structure seen in plays and other narratives. It's the basis of our most popular longform stories! The original Star Wars trilogy did it. The Mass Effect trilogy did it. (Andromeda was a separate story, probably meant to be the start of a new trilogy.) The Lord of the Rings did it, prequeled by the Hobbit and mirrored by the Silmarillion. I mentioned those examples because the middle stories of each all exhibit the same traits: a drastic change of pace or location for the protagonists, putting the protagonists through personal character growth arcs, and poking at minutia or seemingly unimportant aspects of the world (which usually end up pretty important before all is said and done).

Now let's answer your question. Spoiler warning again:

In the Broken Earth, we got introduced to the Stillness and Essun in Book One. There was a lot of physical movement in that book as Essun was on the road for most of it (as were other characters), but the plot itself was relatively simple: A bad thing happened to this person and she needs to go somewhere and find someone, to fix it! And then pretty much the entirety of that book's narrative was "Who is this person, why does the bad thing matter, and how close does she get to finding her missing person?" Then in Book Two, we learned a little more about this person, a lot more about her impact on other characters including the one she's been trying to find, and we spent a while learning about orogeny, the Obelisk Gate, and what the stone eaters have been up to. I cheated a little on this; there wasn't room to do a deep dive into the backstory of one pivotal character, but I did finally reveal that this character is the "secret" narrator of the whole trilogy, and made his agenda clearer. I ended up putting his "deep dive" into Book Three instead, where it was particularly relevant to the STUFF! BLOWING!! UP!!!

The reason a lot of readers complain about "Middle Book Syndrome," I suspect, is because of this pattern -- and because of their expectations. A lot of people come at a middle book expecting Book One Redux. That's what you often get in shared-universe trilogies -- Book One over and over again, roughly the same balance of characters vs events each time, in a familiar setting. We're conditioned to want that, I think, from other episodic works. Comic books, for example: When I was working on FAR SECTOR, my editor at the time explained that I needed to try and have a fight or action scene in most of the issues. I hate fight scenes -- sorry! -- so that was hard for me. TV shows -- the ones that aren't themselves telling a single big story over time -- do this, too. I think of it as the "If You Liked X, Then Try... X!" structure. Absolutely nothing wrong with this structure, by the way. I'm just describing it, not throwing shade. I'm a big fan of stories like this myself.

But even for audience members who were expecting the Three-Act Trilogy structure instead, that middle book is going to be jarring. It's supposed to be jarring. The refugees have survived the first book but stopped to dress their wounds and regroup; the adventurers on a quest have reached an impasse and need to find allies and grind to build up their strength; the stalwart hero has just suffered a massive setback and needs to overcome their own doubt or character flaws. A good way to handle this is to take the characters out of their familiar space, and put them somewhere new, or give them a very different kind of challenge. [Mass Effect and LOTR spoilers] Oh, no, Shepard died and their team broke up! What now? Oh, no, Frodo and Sam are on their own trying to get to Mordor! They're just these little guys! How are they gonna make it? If you got overly attached to Shepard team from ME1, or the Fellowship, you're in for a rough ride in these followups. But the jarring nature of this kind of followup is absolutely necessary. An author who does this knows they're going to lose some readers, when they do it. Clearly I almost lost you! But I stand by that choice, because I think it made the whole trilogy better.

Sidebar: I'm old enough to remember the controversy back when "The Empire Strikes Back" came out. Critics haaaaaated that movie! It was too dark, they said; wasted too much time on unimportant stuff. Too much character work, not enough space battles. Then it became clear that audiences loved the second movie even more than the first, precisely because it was darker and because Luke spent so much time futzing around with Yoda and because there were all these girl cooties romantic moments between Leia and Han. A lot of the critics backpedaled at that point, with some of them even acknowledged that they'd been hoping for Star Wars All Over Again and not What Happens Next That Is Not Star Wars. They'd simply brought the wrong expectations to the story.

This is not to say that you have the wrong expectations, Ask-er. Maybe you were expecting exactly that structure, and you just don't like the way I handled it, or you think I did a poor job. Every reader's experience of a story is different, and not everybody's gonna want to pick up everything I throw down. But you asked why did everyone stay in one place, and this is why: to do a deep dive into the character of the Stillness itself. In a story where the setting was as much a "character" as the people in it, I felt it necessary to show enough of that setting for readers to care about it. Would you care, for example, if the town of Brevard (Damaya and Schaffa spend one night there in Book One) got blown off the map in Book Three? Probably not, because I spent no time on any of its citizens or issues. A lot of people cared about Castrima, though, by the end of Book Two.

Whoo, this got long! Hope it answers your question, Ask-er.

[xxbrightshadowxx]

How the hell did I learn about the 9th Amulet book through two brothers arguing in the backseat behind on a two hour plane trip from Arizona? I thought they were joking at first till I searched it up and it’s real and it’s coming out very soon. So after I learned that I decided to re-read the Amulet series up till 8 and decided to tell whoever is willing to read this my thoughts!

Clarification beforehand though, I do enjoy Amulet. It was one of my favorite pieces of media for a few years and even inspired me to create my own story similar to it. While I may come off a bit hatful and aggressive, I do like this series but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my fair share of problems with it

Books 1

So I’m going off the same rating scale that I use for movies so go check out my Trolls Band Together review to know what each rating means and just replace movie/film to with book. Anyways I give this book, 6/10. I enjoyed this book. This was the first graphic novels series I read and I was excited to know what happened next. I also loved how the robots and the robot house looked. I don’t have any problems with the first book. Primarily because it’s way too early to have any problems.

The reason why I rate it low though, is because while I enjoy it, it’s not my favorite. It didn’t do much to really impress me nor draw my attention. It did just enough to make me wanna see what happens next.

Book 2

With the second book I give it a 6.8/10 right between 6.5 and 7. Why? Well for starters I enjoyed the Elf plot line. To me, when I first read the series was much more interesting then the main one for some reason. This is the book where we meet Leon. Leon, for the most part was an interesting character. Not to mention we get some world building through him about the elf king and being a stone keeper.

Navin’s plotline, while useful to some degree, wasn’t my favorite. Of course it’s important but I was less invested than I should’ve. That might just have been a personal problem I have with Navin later in the series but we’ll get to that later.

My only problem with this is Luger. Now, Luger is a good villain and I found him intimidating when I first read the second book. I think my problem really stems from the fact that this is the only book where Luger gets to be a villain. This should be a book 3 problem but book 2 is where he is defeated.

Book 3

Book 3 was my favorite when I was younger and it still holds the place as one of my favorite amulet books in the series to this day. I give it a good 7.5/10. This book does a lot of things right in my opinion. I like the action sequences and the new information about Trellis backstory proving again that he is the most interesting character. I also found Rico and Enzo funny believe it or not. They are a fun addition to the party.

However, my problem was the robots. Miskit and Cogsly were just there most of the time. They didn’t really guide Emily like they were set up to be. I didn’t feel anything when they got captured. Which is not something you want your readers to feel when something bad happens. I also found Luger’s personality change strange. I expected him to be a bit more hostile and condescending after being defeated. Granted, you could argue it was the stone but still, it was odd.

Book 4

I have mixed feelings about this book. This is where certain problems that I have with Kazu start to show. First of all, I give this one a 7.5/10 as well. I was never sure if I should trust Max until the very end. I never understood Max. He was suspicious and I thought he had bad intentions some times and other times I thought for a moment maybe he did have good intentions for Emily.

I also like Alyson mostly because she felt much more real. She was fun and I liked her character. Leon, Rico, and Enzo have their moment, the prison break which I enjoyed reading. I also like the Elf racism while Trellis and Luger are at the prison. Granted, it’s brief but it’s to be expected and it does give some insight on what other people think about Elves. I also liked Vigo. I was glad to see another stone keeper on the good and he also came with more world building which I’m always glad to see.

However, Miskit and Cloglsy were both weak parts and I was confused about how everyone was dead and stone and Max’s agenda for a while. I had to re-read certain parts to fully grasp what was happening.

Book 5

Book 5 was a 7/10. I don’t have many thoughts. For one I am mad they split up the original party. Karen, Miskit, Cloglsy, and Leon felt like they were meant for more before they got shoved in the brook closet. Sure, Cloglsy is here with Navin but it isn’t much. I do enjoy seeing Navin and Alyson hanging out, that’s fun. Max’s backstory is sad..he tried helping his friend and her family from prison. Only for it to backfire horribly in his face and be thrown into prison for trying to be a good person. His hatred and need to revenge for his dead friend is such an interesting concept for a villain and he poses such a genuine threat and I love it.

Then there is the about the voice. I am not gonna lie, not a big fan of it. The reveal that the voice is the elf king felt odd and sort of out of place. I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about it.

Book 6

Max. Max, max, max. All I got to say is f-ck you, Kazu Kibuishi for screwing over such an interesting character. This book gets a 5.1/10. The utter and total whiplash I got when Max wanted to work with Trellis, Emily, and Vigo gave me migraines. There was no build up and it was so random. And his death, are the FUCKING kidding me. This just felt like a lazy way to write out a character. Max knew that Layra wouldn’t approve of his actions and that’s why he asked for forgiveness. Then he tried to justify with her and it’s such horse crap! No to mention, it was so fricking anticlimactic and just lazy!

I also wasn’t a big fan of Navin’s side plot. Also something reoccurring is that Emily is just there. She doesn’t push the narrative because she has no goals. She just does heroic stuff because she feels she has to. Not because she wants to. It makes her feel flat. Which is disappointing since she had potential to be great.

The reason why I don’t put this as a three is because the scene where they save the elves and Trellis announces himself to be the real king, is cool. Not to mention I liked Riva. She’s a character that had great potential. However this is not enough to save this book.

Book 7

Oh, firelight. You are the embarrassing sibling in the Amulet series. I give you 3/10. First off, one good thing I’ll say is I am glad we are continuing the theme of lost. Even if it feels weird, pacing wise. That’s it. That’s the only thing I really enjoy about this book.

First off I didn’t like Pil, Alyson, and Navin’s storyline. It was just there and it took up too much page time. Second, Gabilan. Oh, Gabilan. He was also just there. We get his backstory, he does some stuff and then he dies. He’s a plot device and while if you really think about it, everyone is a plot device, Kazu didn’t try to hide the fact that he is a plot device. Also the ending. TRELLIS. YOU ARE TELLING YOU DID EVERYTHING TO TRY AND STOP HER FROM BECOMING A BIRD! WHAT THE F—

Book 8

Where do I begin. First off, this book was a 0/10.

And now my problems. First off the si fi outer space plot like win Navin was so boring. Oh my god. I felt nothing. But that. That part was least of my concerns. My concerns was everything else. First of all, Trellis and Vigo got nerfed so easily that it annoys me. They stop the army and that’s fine, though they did it without trying. And that’s it for them. In the entire book. I have several issues with them shoving Riva, Trellis, and Vigo in the closet.

But my biggest issue is Emily and the void. First of all how the hell did she get out so easily. Was this even an issue if she just left without any problems any help. WHY DID SHE NEED NO HELP! If it was that easy to leave the void, why did it take people years to get out. What the fuck. Also what the fuck is with the future Emily bullshit?! TIME PARADOX ARE A THING KAZU. THERE IS A REASON NOT MANY PEOPLE DESL WITH TIME TRAVEL. Also who the hell is Moze’s dad?! Why does he have to her son?! Kazu, why?! You missed the mark by a landslide.

Also the elf king. WHAT. THE. FUCK. IT WAS SO FRICKING EASY TO DEFEAT HIM. JUST HAD TO TAKE OFF HIS DAMN MASK. TELL ME THIS. IF THE ELF KING WAS THAT EASY TO DEFEAT, WAS HE EVER A REAL THREAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?! NO! WE HAVE BEEN BUILDING UP TO THE ELF KING AS THR BIG BOSS SINCE BOOK 2 AND WE DEFEAT HIM IN THE MOST ANTICLIMACTIC WAS POSSIBLE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! NOW THE MAIN THREAT IS A BUNCH OF SHADOWS?! WHY?! WHY! AND IF YOU TELL ME THAT THAT ISNT WHAT BOOK 9 IS ABOUT IT STATES IN THE AMZON DESCRIPTION: “Emily finally understands the stone's power and what she must do to defend Alledia from the shadows.”

ALSO THE FACT THAT EMILY IS ALIVE SEEMS LIKE A NO BIG DEAL TO VIGO AND TRELLIS ALSO THEY JUDT LER HER LEAVE TO GO KILL A BUNCH OF SHADOWS ALONE?! ALSO OLD EMILY WAS THERE TO GIVE EMILY HER STAFF AT THE END. AGAIN, TIME PARADOXS ARE A THING KAZU.

Overall thoughts:

It’s obvious that Kazu Kibuishi wrote this story without a proper outline. What does that mean? It means Kazu didn’t know how he was going to end the story or the middle. He knew the beginning and instead of trying to figure out and plan the entire story, he wrote what he thought of right on the spot. When waverider comes out I will buy it and read it. I will also most likely rate it and write down my thoughts. Till next time though, if you actually took the time read this post and indulge in my thought process and ideas.

[totally-italy]

Honestly, I'm hyped to find another Just Add Magic fan on here, it's one of my face obscure shows, and if you don't really mind, I'd like to rant about the parallels between the original protectors and the main three.

At first glance, the parallels seem obvious. Kelly parallels her grandmother, Hannah Miss Silvers and , although it doesn't match up with the other two, Mama P with Darbie.

However, looking at the shows events more deeply showcases a more subversive take.

First off, I think that Miss Silvers parallels Darbie.

Despite how different the two seem, they are both very passionate about an art, Darbie with theatre and Miss Silvers with piano. They both share the magic with a non protector friend, although in Miss Silvers case, it backfired. They both have a high amount of empathy, and both of them scream neurodivergent to me Darbie with ADHD and Miss Silvers with autism. They also seem more likely to use the magic for 'frivolous' things, it's a novelty to them.

Next up, Hannah and Becky, Kelly's grandmother. They both care strongly about their friendships, and are cautious with the magic as opposed to the others, who use it as a means to an end, or as a fun way to make life simpler. They both are used by Chuck to bring back his sister Rose, even though he was successful with Becky and not Hannah. They both care deeply about thier friends and family, to the point where they sacrifice their own well being.

And my personal favourite: Mama P and Kelly.

At first, Kelly seems like the typical leader character stereotype, but it's later shown that she is the most morally grey of the group. She will do anything, literally anything, to achieve her goals. She's marginally obsessed with magic, and although she cares about only a few people, she would kill for them. Sound familiar? Mama P matches that description, although her and Kelly have different goals, they show ambition throughout the show. Also, when chuck arrived first, during the OCs protectership, he targeted Mama Ps father. When he returned, he targets Kelly's father.

They have one track minds, and can't quite seem to grasp the consequences of their actions entirely.

Okay lol sorry about how long this was, I've been rotating it in my head for a while

Hank you for reading if you did!

Oh my gods, I actually had to start writing this comment before reading the entire ask, but I absolutely agree with your point about neurodivergence, particularly with Darbie, because she gives me such ADHD vibes and, as I was re-watching it this time, I honestly really felt that she mirrors some of my own experiences as a self-diagnosed ADHDer. Also, though I don't know if I actually thought about it as deeply, I really do think that Miss Silvers is autistic and I thank you for bringing it to my attention!

Also, I really agree with what you were saying about Kelly and Mama P because, though I think Kelly she be cut some slack due to her youth and her being literally poisoned by the magic, she is very similar to Mama P and I don't think it is a coincidence that Mama P particularly wanted to teach Kelly. Also, considering how close Kelly is with her grandmother, I think it also makes sense that Mama P would try to manipulate her (and actually succeeded) with regards to the Pluot Festival.

I feel like the connection between Hannah and Becky is a little bit more obscure, but it is definitely accurate, particularly if you consider the fact that, in Season 1, Hannah covered for Kelly but then snitched on her, and Becky did the same thing in the last season, after finding Kelly's earrings. Also, though I don't agree with Becky trying to get rid of the book and I don't feel like Hannah would have done the same, she clearly does demonstrates the same unwillingness for her own friendships to deteriorate and tries to serve as the mediator a lot.

On the other hand, if you remember the first episode in which they created the bitter truth truffles, wherein Darbie and Hannah admitted that they probably wouldn't be friends if it weren't for Kelly, I think that in itself does create a link between Kelly and her own grandmother, since both originally serve as links between their friends.

I honestly really agree with pretty much everything that you said, though I don't think I had actually ever thought about it that deeply, so thank you for allowing me to analyse it further and for sharing your own perspective on it!

For the record, you absolutely do not have to apologise and I have actually made way longer posts than that before (namely my 1347 word rant about Greek Mythology).

If I might ask, have you seen Mystery City and, if so, what do you think about it? Also, have you ever seen Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra?

[cannonball-37]

Something to yap about?

How about your fav ships?

Or the best headcanons ya have?

Your opinion on the labyrinth?

You can choose any

-♠️

Ohh I like these questions so I’m gonna answer all of them.

1. Favourite ships

I am a multishipper so I have many but I’ll try and narrow it down a bit

Alibends

Runestraw

BendyRuneStraw

BendyStraw

Osix

Alibends: I love these two! But I swear if they don’t figure stuff out I’m gonna lose my stardust- Alice trying to find books on demon and angel love stories is adorable and her mother is supportive of it which gives me hope for them! I worry about Bendy trying to keep his distance as he thinks Alice and Jake are together but I hope that gets cleared up the second they actually talk again. (Bendy if you don’t answer Alice’s calls-)

Runestraw: The development of this ship is going great so far in the story. The gala broke me a bit but we’re going strong! Cup needs to sort out his issues for sure before they can truly be together and I hope it happens soon! Holly loving to learn about his race and where he comes from is so cute and I need them to get together at some point.

BendyRuneStraw: I LOVE THIS!!!! I’ve been a fan of BendyStraw for ages and the combo of that and RuneStraw GIVES ME LIFE! Holly loving learning about the dish race and Bendy’s time in Hell while she talks about her own experimentations with magic and suggesting things for the both of them to try out some day is a really cute idea and I fell like they mesh together so well.

BendyStraw: A classic. People were shipping these two before QFTIM was even a thing. Plus IMs development of their characters and the addition of their soul tie where they can feel each other’s emotions adds another layer to this which could be great for fluff and hurt/comfort scenarios as demonstrated by the authors already.

Osix: What can I say? Gay middle aged men is an amazing trope and these two are so good for each other. Obviously Ozzy needs to heal from losing his wife and slowly he has been! Felix is understanding of his reluctance to start a relationship and they’re honestly the most healthy ship apart from the already established ones like Mugs and Cala.

2. My opinion on the labyrinth(yea I’m doing this out of order)

I’ll be honest, while reading I was really cussing confused and it look 3 re-reads for me to understand what was happening but I think that actually proves how difficult the labyrinth has been for the Questers.

It opened up a lot of info about the characters such as Felix, Cup and Bendy and it shows just how dangerous the machine parts can get. It even caused lasting damage like Bendy and Boris’ estranged relationship, Cups heart, Felix mistrust of the Cupbros, Boris’ connection to the instrument etc.

I hate Sarah with a burning passion and I think the night terror is a really cool creature design (even if it did tear cups heart out). The way that stupid bird tried to get out into the real world was actually really clever but I am mad at what it had done emotionally to Bendy and causing him to go beastly.

The instrument needing to be played and choosing Boris as its guardian was genius storytelling and again I love the lasting effect of “Boris could go off the deep end and use the instrument at any moment”.

I love the instruments current use of finding information on the machine and why it’s so hidden. The information on the creators of it, the ancient Mugman, how the machine cured the sick etc are really useful for theorist like myself and put even more mystery to this already mysterious story.

3. My best headcanons

Honestly this is hard for me cause I don’t really do headcanons that often. If I have ideas they usually spiral out of control and become their own AUs. However I will try and pick up some I’ve picked up along the way from others or made up myself.

Cup and Bendy snitch on eachother whenever they’re feeling bad and argue about it even though they both do it.

The CupBros eyes glow in the dark and so does Cup’s hair cause it’s made of magic. So does the liquid magic in their heads.

Cup and Bendy shut themselves in their rooms to cry sometimes when they’re feeling down because they don’t want anyone to see.

Cup is an insomniac

Cup has vague memories of what his parents were like before they left while Mugs has none

Cup can and will kill Brute the second Fanny says he can

Demi has wanted to go back home to her kids but can’t for some reason

When they were younger Cup would sing Mugs to sleep if he ever had a nightmare

The Cupbros once has a magic flu scare while under hats care because he took their straws as punishment and forgot about it for a while until the Cupbros started getting sick

If Cups more demonic powers develop he could be considered a middle class or high class demon

The cupbros take the others out at night to go stargazing sometimes

If Cup is that pissed at someone he’ll start cursing at them in every language he know

I realise a lot of these are Cuphead centric. 🤦‍♀️That’s what I could come up with rn. I hope I answered your questions well!

[ba-mi-soro-orisha]

Here's the non-spoiler review I just wrote for retail sites:

This is the series that got me back into reading, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. But the five year gap between book 2 and book 3…I felt it.

Bottom line: I did enjoy reading the book. However, it doesn't get full stars because the trilogy finale just doesn't hold up to the first two, and I think there's a lot of things that could have been done for a better read. The book reads a bit like Tomi lost enthusiasm during COVID and like she was just kinda finishing from an outline without the heart of the other books.

The deep emotions of the first two books just aren't there. There's a whole lot of telling rather than showing. You can tell by the smaller size of book 3 that we just don't get as much detail or exploration or action as we did in the previous books. I sobbed through entire portions of book 1 and book 2. In book 3, I had some perfunctory tears at the end of the story. But it absolutely wasn't the same emotional ride as before.

Characters from the last books are just shoved aside in favor of introducing the new characters and new worlds. The worldbuilding and new magic systems are amazing…but I would gladly lose them to be able to complete the story that it felt like the Orisha trilogy was originally telling. I would gladly lose them to be able to get answers to questions I had after book 2 that did not get addressed at all in book 3. Some characters were also just straight up lost and ignored and their fate's left open as plot bunnies.

I think we all knew that the cliffhanger in book 2 was going to drastically change the direction of the story, but I didn't expect that it would mean the story we spent getting built up in two books would just be completely abandoned and wrapped up in what was, quite frankly, an extremely unrealistic and unbelievable answer. The ending of book 3 and the entire series was just so abrupt. For as much work as Tomi does teaching writing, I really would have expected a fully played out climax with a suspenseful build and some sort of closure/ending. But it felt rushed. The ending was quick and then all of a sudden we're at the epilogue. It was not a well paced climax. After all the build up, the ending just fell flat. The final action was basically 0 compared to the buildup, and there absolutely was no taking us down from the climax. AND, I was left with a pretty big question at the end, plot-wise, which just doesn't get addressed whatsoever.

I've spent a lot of time on the things that I wish had been done differently, but since I did overall enjoy the read, I want to also point out what I enjoyed.

The writing was good, even if the storytelling wasn't the best. I finished the book in two days, and I did so because I did want to know what happened.

The worldbuilding and new magic systems we see are very interesting, though they might have been better explored in their own books and their own stories.

I don't know if it was always Tomi's plan or if she was responding to the fanbase, but I heavily appreciate how she handled Amari's character in particular.

I honestly thought the pacing in book 3 was much better than book 2. Book 2 was so heavy and hard to get through emotionally. I felt book 3 found its footing a lot better in giving me a lot of action but also not overwhelming me.

That said, I think the book definitely just suffered a mismatch of my expectations developed from the first two books and the final product, especially after so much time in between releases. It's been five years. A pandemic happened. A lot was going on in general, and I know Tomi must have grown so much in this time. Perhaps Tomi just outgrew the story she was telling for the age group she was writing for in the time it took for this series to get fully published and will blossom even further in her future projects.

I would like to go back and re-read all three books together and see how I feel about the finale after that. I did not re-read the series before book 3 (so the tons of flashback and reminder scenes were helpful for me, but might feel like too much on a re-read), and I would like to do that for a better overall picture of book 3.

[diazfox]

I have a lot of thoughts about Red, White & Royal Blue (both the book and the movie). If you manage to read through the whole thing, I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings! Please feel free to interact. If you don't feel like reading through the brain dump of a random girl from nowhere, here's a summary: movie was great, but the book remains undefeated, plus a pathetic attempt at rallying for a petition to make this into a series.

I first read the book in january 2023 (I was very late to booktok I'm sorry) and have been obsessed since then. I have re-read it multiple times and have pages of annotations in my pdf copy. as a huge literature nerd, thematic expressions, plot and character development mean so much to me. While it's not a crime to interpret this book as an idealistic and purely romantic piece of fiction, I think there is plenty to value in the way family, politics and self-discovery is illustrated in the novel.

To me, it's really the intricacies that give so much to life to many scenes and characters. June standing up for Alex even when he never outright asked for it, staying in the white house for him instead of pursuing her own dreams. June feeling trapped and chained down being born into a life of politics, while Alex, entirely optimistic and determined, revels in it. Nora being introduced as a tech junkie who gives it to him straight while June is the more soft-spoken one, but Nora being the one to deliver the most important cold hard truths that wake Alex up multiple times throughout the book. How Alex is who is because he has these 2 girls who provide him with 2 different support systems - June who understands the struggles of the public eye, the divorce of his parents, being biracial, and Nora who understands the realm of queerness and shares his passion in politics. Rafael Luna's story arc and the triple-crossing. How Alex looked up to him so fervently, how Luna has his own dark past that made him who is today.

and Henry... (cue BIG DREAMY SIGH) The harrowing reality that someone so special not only to him but both Bea and his mom as well left all of them so bereaved that his mom completely shut off and Bea turned to a life of drugs. His father who symbolised everything that the crown frowned upon, and stole his mother's royal-blooded heart anyways. How Henry was probably brought up to be fearless and strong just like his parents but his entire family was snatched from him at such a young age that it left him stranded and lost, leaving him no choice but to follow the path of royal traditions, being pushed and shoved around however they deemed fit. and when he did get older and privy to his sexuality, it was too late to turn back and stand his ground to say "No, I don't want this life." The pills, the insomnia, the piece of himself that's been lost forever, that nothing and nobody will ever be able to replace. Percy being his only escape from the royal lifestyle, how he was willing to share a part of his life's works for Henry to experience outside his mundane royal duties, something Henry chooses to do instead of being forced to. Bea stepping up after realising how she needs to do better not only for herself but for her brother as well, that all they have is each other and she needs to fight for them. Bea being the protective sister who explains to Alex how Henry misses his dad, and that he needs to be comfortable with the fact that there will always be a part of Henry that Alex might never be able to reach. Henry's mom stepping up in the end, not willing to lose her son the way she lost her husband, how Henry is the closest living reminder to the love of her life, born with his heart on his sleeve.

Their emails. Henry and his beautiful monologues depicting grief and love. How he has never bared his heart out like that to anyone, yet when he finally found the right person, everything was leaked to the entire world. The multiple references to historical figureheads and literature that actually give "History, huh? Bet we could make some" all it's meaning.

The tension in the confrontation with the queen. The nervous wreck that election night put me in. The political journey of this book further helped to solidify the idealistic, fairytale-like nature of the novel and its ending. It left me with such an overwhelming sense of comfort, like coming back to my childhood home (quite literally in Alex's case).

Ellen and Zahra's relationship, Oscar and Luna's relationship, Oscar saying Ellen will always be the love of his life... the list is literally endless. I could go on forever. I laughed, I cried, I screamed into my pillow, I stared out my window wistfully, wondering how people can feel so much so deeply.

All these details that bring so much colour and dimension to the plot convinced me that it would be a crime not to make a live action of this book. But that is not to say that the movie was bad. I had already prepared myself beforehand to handle the disappointment of not getting all 500 pages verbatim, and I understand the directional choices made to focus solely on Alex and Henry's relationship, not having the luxury of time. Viewing the movie as something separate from the book, it was beautifully executed and I have already watched it 3 times now.

But... just to put it out there...

Imagine a live action with everything I mentioned above, though. Wouldn't it be lovely to go on all these journeys with all these people together with Alex and Henry? And it's not something completely impossible is it? I think even an animated series would be sublime but is it really too much to ask for the novel to be made into a proper series? I feel like Casey has given us such a wholesome and never-seen-before story that deserves every nook and cranny to be explored and made into film. We have had so many versions of Little Women and Pride & Prejudice, so I'm holding out hope that a rwrb series is not an impossible feat. Taylor and Nick will always be Alex and Henry in my head, but that's something I'm personally willing to trade for a longer series made with even more people and further explorations that the movie couldn't afford to make.

My sister asked me last month why I kept losing my marbles everytime a new photo or clip dropped. Said that "it's just a random book, get over it". I think this book means a lot to many different people from different walks of life. Minority race, being biracial, coming to terms with bisexuality, dealing with divorce, dealing with the public eye, being born into a family that you don't entirely identify with, losing a loved one, dealing with mental illnesses, dealing with grief, standing up to authority, being outed, letting yourself love and be loved. This book encapsulates such a vast array of experiences and emotions that I'm confident that I'm not the only one who feels this strongly about "just a random book".

Casey really did make history, didn't they?

[deadboydoodling]

What's your headcanon for Katniss and Peeta's children?

How old was Katniss when give birth to their daughter?

How many years apart between them in age?

Your headcanon for their name?

Who gets the singing and art skill from their parent?

Bonus question : please give recs of your fav everlark post-Mockingjay fanfic.

Thank you :)

@curiousthg

THANKS FOR SENDING ME THIS ASK!!! Sorry I took such of an ungodly long amount of time to answer this! Mockingjay makes me SO SAD that I admittedly haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it and the events following. So I tried to brainstorm on this for a bit (to no real avail oops)? Full disclaimer, my answers probably won't be the most well-written or articulated. BUTT this did give me mad inspiration to draw the babiessss. Anyways I love being given a platform to yap about my brainrot so thanks for sending the questions this way! My dms are always open! @curiousthg Answers below! vv

1.) What's your headcanon for Katniss and Peeta's children? I think Katniss was likely scared shitless that she was going to be a terrible mother. We know in the books, she didn't want to have children because she didn't want to bring them into such of an unsafe and cruel world. By the time she has children, we're led to assume it's because she finally believes the world is safe enough for them. Despite the world being objectively safe enough, I'm sure there is an underlying fear that she won't be a good enough mother and will become absent like her own. However, when Katniss held her daughter for the first time, and her saw her little, scrunched up face, Katniss couldn't even begin to imagine not being there for her. It's not to say she didn't have moments where she struggled, though. I think her pregnancy with her son was a lot less nerve-wracking. Even though I'm sure Peeta was stressed all the same about Katniss's health & well-being. Maybe a little too much, but who could blame him?

2.) How old was Katniss when give birth to their daughter? Math is NOT my specialty here but I'm pretty sure given the book's information, she was likely in her early 30s.

3.) How many years apart between them in age? I'm guessing around 2-3 years. No thoughts. Just a little toddler curled up around her mama's bulging stomach, not really grasping the concept she's going to have a little brother soon, but being excited all the same because her parents are.

4.) Your headcanon for their name? Ok so full admission, I was really into THG circa 2014/15 but then I fell out and just got back into this year (last month oops). One of the things I remember from the fandom was their names being Rye and Willow. I actually thought this was canon until my most recent re-read of Mockingjay where I realized I just had fanon brainrot.

5.) Who gets the singing and art skill from their parent? This is a GREAT question I haven't even began to think about. I imagine that Rye and Willow when they are young enjoy both hobbies. They sing with their mama, they finger paint with their papa. I really like the idea of Peeta and Katniss's daughter having a wild, outspoken streak and being an unapologetically loud singer.

Bonus question : please give recs of your fav everlark post-Mockingjay fanfic. uno reverse! give me yours I literally just finished reading my first hunger games fanfic a week ago and I need recs!!!

[timeagainreviews]

The Eve-ish of Season One-ish

During the early ‘90s, the comic book industry went through a bit of a boom. Speculators were buying up stacks of comics that might one day put their kids through college. Eager to meet the frothing demand of buyers, the comics industry responded with bagged, foiled, embossed, holographic, and even glow-in-the-dark covers guaranteed to be collector’s items. Many long-running titles were reset to issue one, giving new readers a less intimidating jumping-on point. While the comic book bubble eventually popped, the practice of rebranding runs back to issue one continues to this day. With Doctor Who rebranding this new series as “season one,” it’s safe to say that, once again, the show is taking another page from the Marvel playbook.

If you wanted to be cynical, you could say the re-branding comes more from necessity than accessibility. HBO Max had the streaming rights to Doctor Who (2005). But this is Doctor Who (2023) of which Disney+ has exclusive rights. This goes hand in hand with Russell T Davies’ courting of the House of Mouse, along with the very controversial new release schedule which many have complained seems to favour an American audience. While Americans will be able to watch “tonight’s” premiere in a primetime time slot, British audiences will be forced to either stay up well past midnight or wait until tomorrow. Usually, when I write these articles ahead of premieres, it is the evening before but this new scheduling throws that all out of wack.

Longtime readers will remember me saying at one point that Doctor Who should go to Disney. While I plan to write a follow-up article rectifying and even arguing against some of my own points, the fact is, it still came true. I even suggested a musical episode, which has already come true and possibly again with “The Devil’s Chord.” I even called the plot of the Timeless Children as far back as my review of “The Ghost Monument.” It’s almost like I’ve got a TARDIS of my own, or my finger is so on the pulse of Doctor Who that I can feel the four beats of its rhythm as I type these prophetic words. Or maybe I just pay attention. Either way, you should definitely stick around to read my thoughts ahead of Doctor Who season one as they're bound to come true. (Joking, of course.)

Russell T Davies

What can be said about RTD that hasn’t been said already? The man has left his mark on the history of the show, what more could he possibly do? Well if you’re Chibnall stan, that’s exactly the question on which a lot of their arguments have hinged. Many people seem to think of his reinstatement as showrunner as a step back for the show. Some believe he was appointed as a filler after the contentious Chibnall era. Some say he’s too woke now. Others say he’s problematic. While I do agree that his handling of trans issues was clumsy, I also believe his heart is in the right place. However, I have a couple of concerns with RTD in his present form.

Firstly, I have to ask, was there no one else for the job? After Moffat left, the BBC have had difficulty finding someone willing and able to take over the show. Chris Chibnall always felt like he took the job almost as a favour to the BBC. I find it hard to believe that Russell T Davies was the only showrunner they could find. He feels like a safe bet, and in more ways than Chibnall ever did, a stopgap. It feels like the BBC doesn’t really understand what Doctor Who needs, and therefore has a hard time finding the people capable of delivering those things, outside of proven entities like RTD and Steven Moffat, both of whom are returning this year in some capacity. The BBC is pushing for diversity, but couldn’t think of a single woman or person of colour to showrun Doctor Who? 

Secondly, I wish he would chill the fuck out. I mentioned diversity, and while I do appreciate Doctor Who’s first official trans companion and what is looking like the queerest TARDIS crew yet, I wish the show would get back to basics- good writing. They keep going on about how controversial the new season is going to be, and I’m so damn tired. I’m tired of defending the show to conservative chuds who think a woman Doctor is going to make their dick fall off. I’m tired of watching showrunners pull a muscle from patting themselves on the backs for their progressive stance. I don’t want you to scare away those conservative chuds, I want you to prove them wrong. I want them to see these things can work when they’re written well. We just went through five years of people thinking bad writing was confirmation that a woman can’t be the Doctor. I’m glad you want to represent people like me on screen, now please do something with it.

Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor

It’s hard not to be excited for Ncuti Gatwa. He’s got a magnetism that draws your attention the moment he’s onscreen. It’s still far too early in his run to have a definite impression as to what kind of Doctor he’ll be. So far, his portrayal of the Doctor has a warmth and cheekiness about him. He’s mirthful if not a bit mercurial. Gatwa has even referred to his Doctor as “slutty,” which I definitely see and appreciate. I also love that he sees this as a trait he shares with the Third Doctor, which is both a strange and astute observation. Furthermore, he and Pertwee’s Doctors share a commonality by wearing less of a costume and more of a wardrobe. My only qualm in Gatwa’s case is that his wardrobe could use a little more consistency. However, you could argue that the Doctors only ever need to dress like themselves, as opposed to in a certain style. 

We’re in a good place with Nctui Gatwa moving forward. He’s had a stellar introduction and received quite a positive response from fans. Judging from his performance in Sex Education, we know he’s capable of a wide range of emotions. What little we’ve seen of his Doctor has shown us that he’s capable of being a bizarre yet dashing alien hero. He’s also managed to find a fresh approach to a character played by over a dozen people before him, which is impressive, to say the least. Whether he’ll become my new fave or not is yet to be seen, but that hardly matters. What matters most is that he’s the Doctor here and now. 

Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday

This is a weird one to write about. Had you caught me right after “The Church on Ruby Road,” I’d have told you how excited I was for Ruby’s character. Millie Gibson plays her with an adorable charm and she’s clearly a great partner for Gatwa’s brand of crazy sexy cool. But now we’ve seen rumours that she’ll be replaced by Varada Sethu halfway through season two. The BBC and RTD both responded (a bit late) to rumours that she’s being replaced and that they’ll both be companions at the same time, but it feels as though Ruby Sunday is coming to an end just as we’re getting to know her.

I would also like to circle back to how poorly the BBC handled the rumours surrounding Gibson’s departure. She’s a very young actress who may or may not have been fired from a high-profile role early in her career. Even if this is not true, the rumour mill was running amok and the BBC was mum on the subject for weeks. That kind of stigma could follow an up-and-coming actor’s career for years, labelling them as difficult. It’s like they learned nothing from their experiences with Christopher Eccleston.

While the Andor fan in me is very excited by the prospect of Varada Sethu’s tenure in the TARDIS, I’m still trying to remain enthusiastic for Ruby Sunday. Already they’ve shown her character to be compassionate and a bit adorkable. I’m not incredibly interested in the mystery surrounding her character’s birth mother as it feels very Moffaty. I’ve always felt like Davies’ strongest work with companions was his ability to ground them emotionally, and not in making their past a mystery to be solved by some man. I’m more interested in her relationship with her family than some hooded woman doing her best impression of the Jodie Whittaker reveal trailer. Like I said, a return to basics would be greatly appreciated.

Magic Maestros and Monsters

The introduction of mysticism and mystery has been a welcome addition to Doctor Who. When you watch classic stories such as “The Daemons,”  “Image of the Fendhal,” or “Pyramids of Mars,” it’s hard not to imagine there’s not some sort of mystical force at work. Even the stygian witches of “The Shakespeare Code,” seemed to tap into words with a degree of magic. Magic feels oddly at home for Doctor Who. However, you could also argue that the introduction of mysticism to Doctor Who oddly demystifies some of its greater mysteries. When the Doctor couldn’t explain something with science or alien interference, we were left to speculate. But now- a wizard did it.

As I said in my review of “The Church on Ruby Road,” the introduction of magic and superstition places the Doctor in a unique position where he’s a bit out of his depth. One qualm I’ve had with the Whittaker era was how her Doctor was rarely confused. It’s nice then that we’re entering a new era where the Doctor must learn to adapt. It’s now possible for an evil drag queen to force people into an all-singing, all-dancing, chorus line of death. Awesome. Maybe we’ll also see some monsters from the past revealed to be actual magic beings. Perhaps the Fendahl are more than creepy worms, but something far more mystical. Maybe Sutekh the Destroyer really is a god. The introduction of magic doesn’t just have to affect the future of the show, but the past as well. Just wait until the Daleks start pulling rabbits out of hats.

Dinsey+ Supremacy

I regret ever saying Doctor Who should go to Disney. At the time, I was making an argument that Disney is a good fit for Doctor Who because they would give it the budget and attention that it deserves. But Disney also introduces a troubling element into Doctor Who’s future- ownership rights. Historically, Doctor Who writers have maintained copyright over the characters they create. Because of this, any time someone at the BBC wants to use Sontarans, they have write a cheque to the Holmes estate. People like Lawrence Miles are free to develop the Faction Paradox outside of the Doctor Who novels where it began. And occasionally, we get a movie about Sil or a crappy K9 tv show nobody watched. The point is, Disney doesn’t do this. Should the mouse get his greedy mitts on the show, do you really see writers maintaining ownership over their creations? Say goodbye to fanmade charity books from Obverse Books or Mad Norwegian Press. Say hello to an even higher bar of restriction for new writers and artists to join the ranks of books and audios.

Is this the secret reason why they are pivoting toward a more magical rogues gallery of monsters? Are we being fed a new line of villains while Disney works on snatching up the rights to Sontarans and Daleks? Will they begin phasing out the characters that are holdouts from their original copyright owners? They say the BBC still owns the rights to Doctor Who. They say Disney only has streaming rights in exchange for budget funding. But RTD also said the BBC is in shambles. He also said the future of Doctor Who is in good hands. I fear that those hands are the gloved hands of Mickey Mouse. The show looks and feels better than it has in years, but its future feels dangerously close to becoming content. I want Doctor Who as written by this year’s winner of the Paul Spragg Memorial Contest, not Doctor Who as written by committee. 

[linear9]

In my second year doing a masters, once, I was attending a symposium, and the following took place:

I get there exactly on time for the first speaker to start talking about the paper he was in the process of writing. I sit to the left of the (dissertations defense) room, where I coincidentally end up finding an empty chair next to a group of students who happen to be working on the same theory as me, and whom I was on friendly terms with because we attend the same workshops, colloquia..

A few things: the first speaker is a professor at the university I went to. However, he only taught "travaux dirigés" and not "cours", meaning he didn't give lectures because he lacked the qualifications. And throughout the years, I've heard plenty of students complain about him. In fact, he had a reputation of being straight up one of the worst professors: a lot of time, he was absent, and when he showed up, it was to give his students 0 substance, and to waste their time talking about his personal matters.

This guy decides to get one step higher up the academic echelon, in short, to get promoted to get a better salary. And how do you do that? One way among others is to publish articles. So this guy decides to do just that. Except, instead of landing on something in *his* major, he decides to venture into the major I was studying, and in particular the theory I was specializing in. Do I think people shouldn't get to research other majors? No, but this comes with a caveat: the person needs to realize that they're making a huge leap, and that they can't fancy themselves able to master this unfamiliar subject in a few weeks or months. But that's not all: the theory I was specializing in was not liked in our department. I myself didn't like it. To give you a glimpse of how complex it is: in its latest 2014 version, the book delineating this theory was 800+ pages. And that is not taking into consideration the other books and articles the author had published throughout the years, elucidating the theoretical underpinings of the theory. But complexity wasn't the reason I didn't like it, it was rather because of what I thought was *unwarranted* complexity; academia perpetuating itself through overly-abstract mumbo-jumbo that tries to distract you from the fact that it doesn't mean anything and that it's only there so that some people have jobs. But I was pushed to pick it (along with my supervisor) for reasons that I will not detail, because it will make this long wall of text even longer.

I listen to him present the gist of his work on the article so far, I try to not to make what I had heard about him from other students, or the fact that he decided to write an article about a major and a theory he knew zilch about for a promotion (and this is by his own admission)... sway my judgement. And what do you know? Everything about that presentation was ridiculous. For starters, almost everything he said is either completely wrong or partially wrong. The guy didn't understand what he was talking about. But did that faze him? Make him re-think his decision? That maybe if he wanted to pursue a promotion (and his types always think themselves deserving of one) there was still no reason for him to write a paper about something he understood close to nil about?

But this guy's work had one major flaw that simply could not be rectified: the theory doesn't prove what he wants it or purports it to. That was the bottom-line, and the thing that would make all other conversations around his work useless, if not absurd.

He finishes speaking and the chair asks: do you have any questions? So my supervisor, who was the head of the department says: the students working on this theory are sitting in that part of the room, why don't we ask them? One of the girls sitting in front of me fetches the mic, but no one says anything, and an awkward silence ensues. Finally, I raise my hand and speak without a microphone: "how does x prove y?" When I asked that question, I had a solid answer in my head "You can't." But I still maintained a slim chance that I was wrong. To tell the truth I had multiple reasons to ask: 1. I was angry that this work would be even entertained, and I knew that the only reason it hadn't been torn to shreds through insults and mockery was because of who the speaker was: a professor at the university. 2. his demeanor made me angry: he kept cracking "jokes" about the fact that he didn't understand what he was talking about, trying to excuse things that might be wrong about his paper, and to anticipate the fact that he won't be able to answer questions at the end of his presentation, and finally, 3. I think one form of kindness is to not indulge something, let it fester for longer... when it's a cul-de-sac.

He stutters, gives a long-winded answer that answers nothing. By the end, the chair who is a professor of another major, says:" let's ask the expert what she thinks" and yields the floor to my supervisor. She says "I think Mr. ... has been courageous for working on a theory that is very distant from his own major. Please give him one round of applause" And the room claps (Yes, like the meme). The chair then asks "so I take it Mr. ...'s work is correct?" She says yes.

Then, during a break, she (my supervisor) comes to where I had been sitting, speaks to a few other students. I wait for a turn, then I ask her: "I don't want to insist, and if I'm wrong I have no problem accepting that, but I want to know: how does x prove y?" I ask that, after having spent the entire time feeling embarrassed and going through everything I had spent countless nights, from night to sunrise, hunched over a desk, racking my brain, making slow advances..on. She says "It doesn't. But Mr. ... is our colleague, and he's an established name here, and he is owed the utmost respect."

Once, I went to talk to my supervisor about something. She had finished teaching, I trailed slowly behind her as she went to her office in the administration, closed the doors to her office, teachers' lounge... And while she did that, she told me the following about one of the students she had been supervising: "she told me "you didn't understand what I was trying to say, Madam"! Can you believe that? Can you believe the insolence?"

.آه يا قلبي

!ومن بعد نبداو نوحوحو من هجرة الكفاءات! لا ما حقهمش. حقهم يقعدو يعانيو معانا هوني

[oliviabutsmart]

[Bonus Physics Friday?] Plagiarism and Originality

So you (the reader) may have watched the recent HBomberGuy video. I have too! And it's honestly a great (yet long watch). I highly recommend you read it.

After reading the video, it inspired me to add my own comments onto what I think is important to keep in mind about plagiarism and it's relevancy to this blog.

Unintentional Plagiarism

You yourself may eventually have to write something in the future. Whether it be code, a school/university project, text/literature, or even an academic paper.

I'm certain you've had some anxiety in the past (usually in school) of "what if I wrote something that was plagiarised?" when submitting documents to your teachers.

This anxiety often arises because when you are doing an academic assignment, the subject matter has already been covered many times over, so many times you may end up stumbling your way into writing something that already exists.

It is, in fact, possible to unintentionally plagiarise. But it often comes in a different form.

As seen in his video, often times, creators end up sharing video techniques and ideas when creating new work. More broadly, a lot of our art or 'content' in-general is in some-form derivative.

Here's an example from my own posts, expressing a very common cycle in how we develop our opinions or knowledge on things:

You hear from someone, or in a video, or by reading in a book a particular opinion/fact/idea/expression

You keep the idea in your head but forget the source you found it from

Eventually, months to years later, you recall the idea you had and write it down in a public place

You don't credit the source of the idea because it's lost to your mind, you think you yourself came up with the idea

This gives the idea that your ideas are completely original, but are instead pulled from another source. This is what I mean by "unintentional plagiarism" - often you yourself don't even know it's happening.

After writing 16 Physics Friday posts, I can now at least recall a few times where this has happened to me. Usually by way of me re-watching a video or seeing a video on youtube after the fact, where I'm like:

"Hey, I remember watching this video ... Hey, this is where I got that idea from!"

There are two examples that I can list right now, in fact:

In post #8, the definition of "Energy is the capacity to do work" came from a video by 'Professor Dave Explains'' on youtube. I cannot recall which video I got it from, but I do know it was a debunk

The idea for post #9 came from a video by 'Answer in Progress' titled "how fahrenheit fails you"

In both examples, either small sentence-level statements or whole topic ideas effectively get "copied" by my mind. However there is a core distinction between what I have labelled as unintentional plagiarism, and real "you did a word crime" plagarism.

Our Textual Fingerprint

It is a fact that almost all of our ideas are copied from somewhere else. Teachers in high school, internet pundits, other posts on social media. These, combined with our cycle of forgetting the source, create an effect of "plagarism"

What's important is that all of these ideas amalgamate, and get filtered through our own brain. I might have gotten the "energy is the capacity to do work" definition from one guy, but it combines itself in my head with every other association and factoid about energy I know.

Not just that, but it filters through my own head and my own words into different explanations, different expressions, different language.

The way you yourself construct ideas in your head is why we can consider it okay to express an idea that is still somewhat derivative. Because our own words, our own expressions garble that idea into something that is distinctly our own.

And that's the core point about avoiding plagiarism, both unintentional and intentional.

The best way to avoid plagiarism is to write it in your own words Source: every teacher in high school

Every person possesses a sort-of fingerprint. It exists in the way we write, the way we talk, even the way we communicate in other mediums like auditory (music, speech) or visual (performance, artistic, video) formats.

This fingerprint is detectable to most people. It's how you can tell when someone uses AI to write an article. Because ChatGPT has it's own literary footprint.

If my next Physics Friday post was written by someone else, you would be able to tell. Because the way I write is distinct. The errors, the mannerisms, the explanations are all constructed in a way that make the way I write unique to others.

Why does plagiarism happen?

I've seen plenty of examples of plagiarism in the past. In fact, I remember in Year 9, someone copied my entire essay on Australia's role in WWI, and I got off with a slap on the wrist for being so naive to share it with another student.

And with this experience, I've found that there are two main reasons why someone plagiarises, at least in the academic realm:

They have a lack of respect for the subject matter or their victim

Laziness or apathy

This is something the above video makes a point of as well, adding on a drive for success. Something which I wouldn't say is as common in academic media.

Really, the best way to stop yourself from stooping to the level of intentionally plagiarising is one of two things:

Force yourself to write something original, to write in your own words

Don't write it. Take a break or reconsider why you feel the need to do it

This is often why I end up writing opinion posts. I'd rather do that than be a piece of shit and copy a Veritasium video. Seriously, it's so tempting to just do a topic that Veritasium has already covered - he's a great creator and always picks all the good topics.

How it's relevant to Physics Friday (And how Wikipedia is actually a decent source)

All of my Physics Friday posts are written in my own words, usually all at once or in two seperate sessions on Friday. There is occasionally the odd quote from Wikipedia or other online sources. But the text is usually my own.

I mostly use other internet sources, like Wikipedia, or others, to effectively re-jog my memory. It helps remind me of what a particular mechanism is.

I don't cite them because usually I only read small sentences and then go "ah, now I recall the textbook's worth of information stored in my head". My external research never ends up becoming a real source in a proper sense.

The only exception is Wikipedia and my own lecture notes.

While my posts are not copy-paste descriptions from Wikipedia, the website does help guide me on particularly difficult-to-understand subjects. It helps me decide what exactly to talk about. Or check which ideas are often more common.

One example is the dark matter post (#4). I used it as my primary source for deciding on what was the most notable dark matter candidates to talk about. And the section headers are derived in some way from their article.

You can generally assume that for all of my physics posts, I have used Wikipedia in some way as a knowledge-check, to ensure I'm not spitting nonsense.

In fact, I recommend Wikipedia as further reading after looking at my post if interested. And to donate to their organisation, which I have done on several seperate occasions.

Definitions and Single-Sentence Quotes

Outside of images, the most common place where I directly quote from other sources are in the definitions I've used. I cannot actually remember if I've ever done it before on tumblr, but I've done it in the past for several academic writings.

Definitions are tricky. Because, especially with precise scientific definitions, there are only so many ways to construct a definition that:

Removes all ambiguity from the phenomenon

Perfectly describes all or most instances of the thing, and excludes any non-instance of the thing

If I'm not coming up with the definition myself, I generally aim to find the source of the definition. Something that already fails in some ways, as explained above.

The Easy Part: Citing a Source

When writing academic papers, sources are probably the most annoying part of it. Bibliography management is a pain.

When writing these Physics Friday posts, citing is the easiest thing I can do. There's no requirement to follow a strict standard like the APA.

Often giving the author's name or a link to the original content is enough information to credit the author.

This is why you see an image credit or video credit under each of my Physics Friday posts. Sometimes also on meme posts too!

Should we cite our memes?

This is an interesting question. No seriously. Take a second to think about this question properly.

A lot of our memes (and porn) come from artists on youtube, twitter, tumblr, etc. And I have found countless times where I'm like "huh, I like this guys' work ... where can I find more of it?" and just turn up nothing.

We appear to think that memes are not just public domain, but un-creditable public domain. Someone on youtube can copy a guy's voice-over of a meme, turn on ads for that video, and rake in cash. The original artist ends up getting none of the credit, or money.

For a lot of memes, it makes sense to copy it without credit. But the above paragraph applies to a certain subsection of memes, particularly the higher-effort ones.

Personally for me, when I have the capacity to share a meme I try to credit the original artist. Because I believe that person deserves the credit for making the funny.

At least for us, credit means we ourselves gain from it, we can look up the original and find more of the same.

My posts aren't trademarked

It's obvious to say, but "Physics Friday" is not limited to me. My goal with these posts are to get other people into following on and making their own style of posts in physics. To generally bolster the community.

If you want to do the Physics Friday thing, you do not need to ask for permission. That's all I need to say.

Conclusion: Why did I write this?

I've just spent the last hour writing a tumblr post after watching a HBomberGuy video. And now I am just wondering why I did that.

I guess I had a lot of things to say about plagiarism and writing your own work.

Oh well.

Look out for next Friday where I'll probably do an opinion piece on tau vs pi!

[the-welsh-witch]

Ok serious question, have your deities ever said anything that made you go 'bitch, I did NOT need to be called out by that. The fact that you had to say it irrelevant, how you know this shit?!'

That is my first encounter with Pluto in a nutshell. Had just done my english oracy exam and was in a state of constant anxiety of 'what do I do now?'. Pluto called my ass out hard first time he spoke to me. literally, first advice from him, 'rest, relax, you don't need to be productive all the time and the things you are worrying about can't be changed'. Like, damn.

You had a deity do that before?

Oh, an then first meeting with Loki consisted of him using my mother's words in the exact opposite way she meant them. Same words, opposite meaning. Mind blown, not gonna lie-

So, the only dieties I have really interacted with have been Rhiannon, Manawydan, Hekate, and POSSIBLY Poseidon and Demeter but only when I was little.

Now, Rhiannon has been around for years, and I honestly have no clue why, but she is very motherly. She'll tell me I'm an idiot, but will also allow me to make my own decisions, as long as I make sure to stay safe. She's very 'Fuck around and find out, but if you fuck around I'm not helping you' vibes. On the flip side, she has also helped me A LOT even before I knew of her, and makes her presence known VERY strongly.

Hekate however, is a bit more stern. She does understand that I learn through doing, however since my working with her is new, is a bit more demanding that I do things By The Book. She'll help me, but I'll dedicate a candle or research, or something to her.

Now, Manawydan is a different story. I sort of half work with him, through Rhiannon, respecting that both he and Poseidon are deities of the sea (Manawydan Fab Llyr LITERALLY means 'Manawydan, Son of The Sea', and Poseidon was gifted hold over the seas by his brother Zeus after killing The Titans), and as I have a history with the sea, I like to give back through working with him and Poseidon (I have found many items in the sea, and lived by the sea for a while, etc).

However, I believe myself and my deities have a very respectful is sassy relationship. Deities are different, and some require different things, it depends on how much you research, and how well you know them. I think the best example is that my friend works with Odin. He is both an eons-old deity with immeasurable power that I will never be able to understand, that I had to re-cleanse, ward, and black salt my house INTENSELY after he and Rhiannon got into a disagreement, however, he is ALSO a sassy bitch that likes Sour Cream Pringles.

[softguarnere]

hello! :) i'm working on a bob fanfiction right now, and i wanted to know if you had any tips for aspiring bob fanfic writers (or if you had talked about this before?) i'm especially curious what you have to say about balancing the historical accuracy of the story vs deviations from history, as well as how to weave an oc into the original plot of the show while still keeping the content fresh and (somewhat) original

oh! and also how you go about doing your research (if you do any)

your writing is a huge inspiration to me, so thanks so much!! i hope you have a good day :D

Hi Anon! I answered something similar here if you want to check that out

Aside from just going for it and having fun with it, I do have some thoughts (everybody act shocked), but I'll try to keep it concise 🤗

Balancing historical accuracy with fiction

First and foremost, I feel like it's helpful to point out that Stephen Ambrose made some mistakes in BOB. Not trying to disparage his name or anything, just to be clear! Several of the men (Speirs, Shifty) pointed out mistakes he made about them in the book.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I'm a historian and I'm annoying about it lol Because the historical narrative we're drawing our inspiration for fics from isn't a narrative that everyone agrees on -- then again, good luck finding one that people do, but I digress -- I think it gives some wiggle room for bending the story a bit to make it work for the narrative that we as writers are trying to create

Similarly, I feel like it's important to invoke the disclaimer that many of us put on our fics: these stories about fictional representations from a show (though it is based on real people and events)

In the end, we're all taking liberties with the narrative for the sake of our writing. Most people in the fandom probably won't bite your head off if you use plotlines that are alternate histories because most of us are doing them, too -- and a lot of writers here have some very cool ideas and plots with alternate histories that are really good reads!

At the end of the day, don't feel pressured to stick directly to the historical narrative. After all, we're writers -- having imagination is what we do

Weaving an OC into a well-known narrative

Oh boy. I'm not sure if there's a great way to answer this. Personally, I knew who my OC was, what her background, wants desires, etc. were, and then I just sort of . . . set her free into the story? There are moments directly from the show where I wove her in and made her a part of that scene, and then there are interactions and plotlines that I came up with myself.

Honestly, it probably depends on your plot and your character. No one really wants to read a re-write of BOB -- after all, that's why we're all out here writing fics with our own ideas and stories. However, if you feel that a certain scene would further your plot/advance your character, and that you can weave them into it, then go for it! It's all about how you write and what feels right to you for your story.

Research

Have I abused some of my historian privileges during my time in this fandom? Perhaps 👀 But if you don't have university archival access, never fear! There are still lots of good ways to research

In terms of background, I found that reading the memoirs and biographies of the Easy Company men was really helpful when figuring out how to write them. It was also good for learning stories and experiences that did not make it into BOB. Watching interviews with them on YouTube and watching interviews with the actors was also extremely helpful for things like speech cadence, mannerisms, etc.

Definitely branch out, though! I was lucky in that I had to do some projects about WW2 around the time that I joined the fandom, so researching different aspects of the period was helpful for me when I started writing. Don't feel like you have to rush out and read every WW2 book or watch every documentary, but it can definitely help with learning different perspectives and experiences, as well as providing context.

If you ever want book recommendations, feel free to reach out! Especially if you need book recs about paratroopers in general, because I have a whole shelf space dedicated to those haha

Lastly, thank you so much for the lovely compliment, Anon -- and thank you for trusting me enough to reach out! 🥹 Feel free to reach out if you ever want to chat, and I look forward to reading what you write in the future 💕

(Other BOB writers feel free to add on!)