#it comes with the caveat of if you come to me with something that peaks my interest it bypasses my previous statement

[wolfythewitch]

Idk if this is mentioned anywhere else but do you take commissions?

ahh not at the moment sorry

[maximumzombiecreator]

I've seen a lot of posts recently where people say they can't find players to play non-5e TTRPGs with. As someone who moves countries every few years, I've had to rebuild my roster of local TTRPG players from scratch a number of times. Here's how I do it.

Caveats first: while I've done this in small cities, I have always done it in cities. If you're in, like, a rural environment, you might just not have enough interested people around. You can always do it online in that case. I'm not really going to cover finding players online, except to say you should probably look for communities for the specific system you want to play. Most of them are enthusiastically looking for new participants. Especially game masters.

Okay, first things first, you gotta find people. I generally find I get better results if the search is location first. That is, rather than using city-wide or regional Looking For Group type internet groups, I look for physical locations that host gaming groups. Local game stores, public libraries, gaming cafes/bars, etc.

Being location first helps avoid some common bad behaviours. Online LFG groups often have a few shitty people hanging around who can't find long term groups because they're shitty. They'll jump at the opportunity to join new groups where people don't know them, because everyone else knows better than to game with them. But location-based groups are better at filtering this. Someone who harasses people at an LGS can be banned from the store, but decentralized online groups struggle to handle these situations in my personal experience.

Being location first also solves the next problem, which is giving you a location to play. Eventually, when I have a long term group, I'll host games in my home. But there needs to be a level of trust before that feels safe, and we're looking for randoms, so for now we need a public gaming venue. If, for whatever reason, there aren't dedicated gaming spaces where you can do this, I've had the most success gaming in cafes or restaurants during off peak hours. I've run a bunch of games in restaurants from, like, 2pm-5pm on a Saturday, and as long as you're buying drinks and some snacks or something, and being polite and non-disruptive, it's typically not too hard to get permission.

Now, if that local group has enough interest in a non-5e system that I'm interested in running, I'll happily do that, and it's pretty free from there. Most people who are willing to play one other system will gladly try others if they find they like playing with you. But even in big cities, I feel it's pretty often the case that postings for local games of other systems don't wind up actually finding successful groups.

So, here is the bit where, unfortunately, finding people to play non-5e games with involves playing some 5e. Community groups are always looking for more GMs to run games, so I will set out to run a number of short 5e adventures, each with different groups. These are typically oneshots that I have the option of extending for another 1 or 2 sessions.

I always run adventures that I've written myself for these, because I want my particular GMing style to really come through. Looking for players is a two way street. I'm looking for people I like GMing for, but I'm also looking to make sure they know what they're getting. Especially if I'm going to ask them to play a system they've never tried, they should know that there's going to be something they enjoy. So, these short adventures are full of the types of silly but sincere NPCs I tend to run, the open-ended scenarios I prefer, the tropes I favour, etc. If someone isn't going to enjoy playing with me, I want them to know it from this adventure.

I structure the adventures to give me a lot of flexibility in terms of how long they run. They're nearly always mysteries, but with some active component to the mystery, so that if things drag or dawdle I can have the villain show up and force a final confrontation. They're also structured to have a natural "next thing." You find and defeat the villain, but there's an implied next villain you'll be going after. That way, if the group is working well and I want to continue, it's easy to present the option to the group. But if I'm not interested in continuing with the group, the next thing can just serve as an "and the adventures continue" implied epilogue, and the game still feels complete.

I don't like players just bringing their own character sheet to the table. Someone who brings a disruptive character can ruin a session without me getting much useful information out of it, other than that I don't want to play with that person. And if it ruins the experience for the other players, I'm often out the opportunity to game with those people, through neither of our faults. I've experimented with both asking players to submit their characters in advance or making them choose between a collection of premade characters. The former is a good check for whether people will put in a basic amount of effort and follow instructions, but it can dissuade people who are just looking to dip their toes into playing for the first time. The latter can turn off players who are into crunchy games and are excited about character building. As a result, I'll usually choose the approach based on what non-5e system I'm currently most excited about running. Do I want to get together a group for a rules-light game? Premade characters it is. Looking to run some PF2e? Please submit your character sheet in advance. Some locations also do more drop-in based games, in which case it's premades all day.

As I'm running the game, I'm observing the players. There's a simple vibe check, obviously. Do I like playing with this person? But I'm also looking at how they play. What are they here for, what's exciting them? Are they struggling with finding optimal turns in combat, or do they like mastering a system? Are they curious about the world, or do they glaze over when the spotlight isn't on them? Do they light up in dialogue scenes? Do they want to try crazy things outside of their on-sheet abilities? Remember, later, I'm going to try to persuade this person to try to play a game they've never played before. I need to know what specifically is going to excite them.

I have (always with permission) recorded sessions before to go over in making these choices, but honestly even just a few small reminder notes will help me unravel things later. If a session goes well, I'll ask at the end for people to give me their contact information if they'd be interested in playing again. Non-committal, at their comfort, and it doesn't single out people that I don't want to play with. I can always just not call them. Usually I find I'm interested in playing again with a little more than half of the players I meet this way. In my experience, it's fairly rare for a player to say they're not interested in playing again, TTRPGs rule and there's a DM shortage.

What I usually do is keep running these until I have enough people in mind to run something else, even if it isn't the system I'm most excited about. Probably it would be better to spend more time in this starter phase building up more connections, but after running like 4-5 5e adventures, I'm usually more than ready to run anything else, and if I have to shelve my Lancer ideas because I've mostly found crunch-averse players, I'm usually fine with that.

So, next comes the invites. Now, most players I meet this way will eventually be open to playing most games, but listen: you can put people well out of their comfort zone for their third TTRPG, but you gotta be real careful with their second. Most of the time, the game I'm inviting people to will be their first real exposure to a non-5e TTRPG. If they don't like it, they will run back to the safety of 5e and you will never get them out of it again. So I am very careful in picking the right system for the players I am inviting.

Whatever the new system I want to run is, I will set up a pilot session for it. I am very clear to players that I will teach them the system at the session, they do not need to know it in advance. Eventually, when I have a reliable group of TTRPG people to play with, I'll expect them to be able to pick up systems without a ton of help, but for players that are only used to the complexity of 5e, the idea of learning a new system is daunting. I rehearse the teaching of the game session. It's the only thing for TTRPGs I ever rehearse, but I want to know down pat how I'm going to quickly teach a new system and make it feel approachable and non-threatening. I'm also very clear that this will be a single session, with the possibility of turning into a campaign if we like it. All of this is structured to feel very safe. No initial learning required, no long term commitment, with a GM you already know you like.

But even as safe as that is, you still have to pitch the system. Why should the player be excited about playing this new game? Don't go all TTRPG nerd on them and explain all the details of the system, or use a bunch of jargon. Give them one or two things to be excited about with short, detailed anecdotes to back them up.

"We're going to be playing Blades in the Dark. It's a game where you play a gang of criminals in a haunted, steampunk dystopia. Every session you'll do heists, but instead of meticulously planning them, you start right in the action, and when you need to have planned for something, you can do a flashback scene to explain your preparation. One group I ran this for got busted by guards during an early heist, but used a flashback to create a scene where they had gotten a buddy of theirs a job as one of the guards, and he helped them out of the situation. And for some reason they fell in love with this bumbling goof I improvised to be the buddy, and then on a bunch of future jobs they kept using flashbacks to get him jobs wherever they were robbing. So this one idiot was just a de-facto crew member who worked a dozen different inside jobs despite being about as sharp as an eraser. And eventually they fucked up and got him killed, but they brought him back as a ghost, because you can do that in Blades in the Dark."

I find using a specific example of play really helps get peoples' imaginations going, which is what is going to help them say yes. And that example is tailored to what I know that player vibes with, what it is I think that makes them a good fit for this game.

The last detail about the invites is that I'm telling them, not asking them. It is not, "Hey, are you interested in playing this new game?" It's "I'm going to be running this new game. If you're interested in playing, please let me know what times work for you." If you're asking, you're going to get some "well but can it be 5e?" If you're telling, then they can choose to learn a new game in order to keep playing TTRPGs with a GM they know they like, or they can choose not to play at all.

Once you get enough yesses for a game, you run it, and then from there you're on your own. I think those are basically just friends you have at that point, and I'm not gonna tell you how to have friends.

Hopefully at least one person finds all that useful!

[queenlua]

your post about adding excitement to a story by increasing the pressure on a character was not something i’d heard before and i found it super useful. are there any other pieces of writing advice you find foundational and would be willing to share?

glad you found that tidbit helpful!

first, i’ll give my default caveat of “i’m just some guy on the internet, so take this with however many grains of salt you need”

plus my general caveat on… all writing tips/tidbits/advice? which is:

i find that, past the basics of “knowing about exposition/rising action/climax/denouement” and such, most writing advice ends up operating as a dusty old toolbox i open up now and again.  something in my story's not working; i’m not sure how to fix it; i pull out my little toolbox of tidbits i’ve accumulated over the years and see if any of the screwdrivers and wrenches in there actually fit.  the kinds of tidbits that are useful for me may be ACTIVELY DETRIMENTAL to someone else; someone who chronically overtightens their screws probably shouldn’t be told “have you tried tightening the screws more :D;;;;” or whatever.  and in particular what works for me is probably oriented towards genre-y stuff.

BUT, Y’KNOW, GIVEN ALL THAT

here’s the tidbits i find myself returning to over & over!

* three is a very powerful number.  i have a tendency to write myself into situations where you have Two Interesting Characters Doing Verbal Head-Games With Each Other, and that stuff can be tremendously fun, but it tends to run out of steam very quickly.  adding a third character to the scene combinatorially increases the dynamics available for you to play with.  so if you’re stuck, throw someone else in there.  (relatedly this is why awful dinner parties are Peak Literature™)

* if you’re writing a romance: put a sticky note on your monitor that says “WHY CAN’T THEY BE TOGETHER NOW?”  if at any point you don’t have a good answer to that, you’ve fucked up; rework the plot.

* this is a shlocky tidbit from the South Park creators that totally works: list all the scenes in your story, and then, between each scene, see if they are connected by THEREFORE or BUT versus AND THEN.

so., e.g., “the ocean levels in Tellius are rising, THEREFORE kilvas wants to migrate from their sinking islands and onto Serenes, BUT Reyson is opposed to that move, THEREFORE…”

that gives you a stronger structure than, like, idk, “the war ends AND THEN kilvas moves to Serenes AND THEN Reyson and Naesala get in a fight…”

you want it to be mostly “THEREFORE/BUT” and very few “AND THEN”s.  just a tighter overall plot structure

* each scene should accomplish at least two things.  the most common two things for a scene to do are “advance the plot” and “develop a character”; i have a hazy memory that when i first read this advice, there was a list of, like, 1-3 other things a scene’s allowed to accomplish?  but i cannot REMEMBER that list, lol.  but use your imagination; i’m sure you can think of another valid thing.

i think this is more useful as debugging/editing advice than upfront advice—often, when you’re writing something, every scene will *feel* necessary, but upon reread, you’ll notice your attention is drifting, this doesn’t quite feel tight enough… and you’ll realize, oh, ugh, i just had three scenes in a row that existed Solely To Hit A Plot Beat; why don’t i combine those three scenes into one, condense the action, and also make sure a character’s doing something actually interesting/new while i’m at it.

(i think i see this plaguing a lot of novels that come out of nanowrimo in particular.  i mean, not me, because i don’t have the fast-twitch muscle required to do nanowrimo, but when i read other people’s nanowrimo stuff, it often feels like it was galloping through a bunch of plot beats without bothering to do anything else interesting.)

* if you're stuck on a particular scene/chapter, stuff to try:

delete the current sentence and start over

delete the current paragraph and start over

change the font and reread what you've got so far

open the document on a different screen and reread what you've got so far

print the thing out and reread what you've got so far

open a brand new document and rewrite the whole scene/chapter/etc from the start (NO PEEKING AT THE ORIGINAL VERSION)

go outside and look at a bird for a bit

take a nap

shoot a whiny discord message to a friend about it (even if it's solely rubber ducking, this can be helpful) (though if you have any friends who are good at writing AND ALSO willing to put up with your shit and offer helpful feedback AND ALSO you're not too mortified by your writing dilemma to share it with them, that's even better) (btw, any friends reading this: if you want to opt-in to messages like this from me, LET ME KNOW lmao, i'm really shy on this front!)

if you're DESPERATE: open a new document and just write out, like, "Character X wants Y. Character Z wants Q. These are the sources of pressure on character X. These are the sources of pressure on character Y. I want R to happen but I feel stuck because of M" and so on, just... really trying to dissect what the scene's trying to accomplish? most often, the outcome of this is, i'll notice in that "thinking aloud" document that i'm circling around some central question that I Don't Know The Answer To, and i need to answer that question to usefully proceed. sometimes this will be painfully obvious in hindsight. (e.g., sometimes you'll go back to your outline and you'll realize you've literally just hit the bullet point that says UGH OKAY THEY GET TOGETHER SOMEHOW I'LL FIGURE THIS OUT LATER, and you're like, ugh, fuck, it's now later, why is past-me such a bitch!) but them's the breaks. (in particular, i remember getting catastrophically stuck on a "meet the parents" story until i realized i was... avoiding actually writing out the "meet the parents" scene... which feels "well duh" in hindsight! but, like, hey, in order to write that scene, i needed to commit to some specific decisions on What The Story Was About, the same way artists gotta eventually erase a bunch of sketchy lines to commit to the Lines They Will Actually Be Inking, and that decision point feels hard and scary and no wonder i waffled lol)

okay so that's all the super-specific-concrete advice. here's some stuff that's more big-picture but i've still found personally useful:

* i once went to a talk where a novelist said she doesn't start writing a novel until she knows exactly what she wants it to look like on the bookshelf. as in: is it a schlocky trade paperback or is it a beautiful hardcover thing with fancy paper? does it have IMPACT FONT for the title or something handwriting-y? how many pages is it? and so on.

in service of this aim, she never writes any of the novel (no notes, no outlines, no snippets of dialogue, nothing) until she has that image vividly in her mind + she can't physically STAND not writing it any longer. for her, this process allows her to be sure that she knows what her novel is about—not necessarily in every single detail or plot beat (though, often she has a lot of that in mind before starting), but in terms of "what am i trying to say," "how do i want the world to look at it," etc, and she's found through hard experience that, while it's easy for her to start novels, it's often hard for her to finish them unless she has that crystal-clear image in her mind.

i can’t quite do her purity-of-method (my brain is scrambled eggs; i HAVE to write down snatches of dialogue and such before i get started on something or it all leaks out of my ears), but i see a lot of wisdom in it.  i do a lot of prewriting & thinking & scribbling out little snatches of dialogue and such before i really begin writing. i think everyone develops their own little heuristic for when they can be reasonably confident they know what their story is about, so you should try and figure out what that heuristic is for you & learn to trust it if you can? (a common one you hear a lot is "i have to know how the story ends / what the ending feels like," which makes sense; endings usually have a lot to do with what a story is About. i know NK Jemisin mentioned once she can't really start until she's nailed down the voice, and that also makes sense to me—you read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and it's very clear that her choice of voice is a large part of what drives the story, it has a propulsive force of its own; it's The Thing that blasts the whole thing open for her. for me, i'm not sure i have a tidy heuristic, but there's a point where i've written enough snatches of dialogue plus bits of scenes that i've unlocked some core thing that i'm really excited about—i keep spinning out bits of dialogue and setting and such that are related to that thing, i'm so excited to see how that thing plays out across the story, i look at my outline and see only possibilities and wonder instead of connective tissue that needs to be filled in... and then, yeah, i'll know i'm cooking, but not one second before!)

note that the story is allowed to surprise me & change on me once i get properly started—my longfic changed substantially when i realized Reyson’s perspective needed a LOT more room to breathe than i had accounted for in the outline, and then changed substantially again when i realized the butterfly-effect-style implications that keeping Leanne around had for my entire storyline—the ending wound up being TOTALLY different than what i'd originally planned!—but like, in that case, i don't think my sense of what the story was about ever fundamentally changed; i just added two more huge elements that orbited that about-ness. if that makes sense.

* i think about this passage from Bayles & Orland's Art and Fear a lot. i'm actually not sure that advice is helpful for literally everyone—i do see people who somehow manage to write the same fucking thing over and over, for years and years, and never seem to develop their craft or make any movement toward saying something interesting.

but i do think most people are developing something even when it feels like "the same thing over and over," and as someone who probably tends toward too little output, i found it a useful reminder that returning to familiar forms, themes, and characters across pieces is intensely useful if it gets you in front of the keyboard again, so don't stress over novelty too much. (i find, if i'm still returning to a particular form/theme/character, it's because i feel like i still have some interesting new perspective on it that's genuinely worth exploring. if i have actually exhausted a topic, i'll know it because i myself will get bored, but anyone else's opinion is irrelevant!)

* ursula k le guin's steering the craft is more focused on craft & nuts n bolts than plot-debugging-type-things but i thought i'd give it a shout-out here because i've just found it so perpetually useful over the years. in particular we could all stand to read our stuff aloud more often; that fixes a lot of problems and she goes on about that in detail in chapter 1 haha

* oh, also, re: my "put more pressure on the characters" advice—you've probably already intuited this, but i think i found that framing more useful than the kinds of "raise the stakes / make sure every character has Stakes / Wants Something" advice you're likely to find in screenwriting workshops, because this framing feels like a more... abstract... way of talking about the same thing?

like, often those two types of advice are addressing the same problem, but when i start off thinking about "where is the pressure on these characters," i don't just have to think "time to heap more pressure on them," i can also, like. observe. where the pressure points in my work are. i'm not presupposing a solution. maybe there's a ton of pressure but it's the wrong kind of pressure. maybe there's a ton of pressure but there's nowhere satisfying for that pressure to go. it's very woo/fuzzy but yeah i use the general principle of "pressure" to frame a LOT of how i think about story construction; maybe that'll be useful to you!

* FINALLY, i don't have a nice packaged heuristic/tidbit/tool-shaped thing for this one yet, but i've been thinking a lot about how much perspective really Changes Everything about a work. your choice of PoV should be exceedingly deliberate; you should be taking maximum advantage of your choice of PoV at all times (what do they know? what don't they know? how do they think about the world? etc); also if you're editing something and you're noticing a lot of unconscious perspective breaks, that's a warning sign something's going badly wrong in how you're approaching the story overall—perspective should just be unconsciously correct if you're hitting stuff right imo

OK WOW SORRY THAT GOT SO LONG but hope at least one of these lil bullets are useful for ya! happy writing~

[onemustalwaysbecarefulofbooks]

HOFAS/MAASVERSE THEORY: This is not the story SJM planned to tell us

Listen, if you are feeling let down by the overall lack of an ACOTAR crossover in HOFAS, your feelings are entirely valid and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And I'm saying this as someone who largely finds the Inner Circle insufferable and has the opinion of the less we see Rhysand, the better. But for real. . .point blank, this book was absolutely 100% marketed and hyped as a "crossover" which, in reality, ended up being sort of a stretch. And I believe, that at one point, it truly WAS all it was hyped up to be.

Raise your hand if you felt like HOFAS felt weird, disjointed, and unsatisfying at a lot of points.

Everyone, right? I don't think I've encountered a single person who can say they never experienced this at any point, even if they loved the book overall.

I'm sure some of you have probably heard by this point that there is a whole first draft of HOFAS out there that was apparently scrapped and rewritten entirely by SJM: SOURCE.

This draft teases a LOT of things that had people salivating, none of which actually showed up in the book we read. Examples:

HOFAS being "split between Bryce in the world of ACOTAR and the characters in Midgard".

Bryce being worried and freaked out over whether Prythian had toilet paper and receiving an answer

Nyx being featured in the story and the IC being extremely protective over him

Receiving an explanation on Rhys seeing Aelin during Starfall

SJM positively gushes over this stuff as she talks about it in interviews. You can literally see the light in her eyes and how excited she is as she discusses it. She compares it to Avengers Endgame and talks about how excited she and others were to see all the good guys come together for something epic and says this reminds her of that. However, there's a caveat. She consistently repeats things like "as of right now" or "in this first draft" or "we'll see what my editor says". Check out this live chat here.

And the next thing we know, she is claiming she turned in her first draft and felt "meh" about it, didn't like where the story went, and re-wrote the entire thing. Ladies and gentlemen, I call bullshit.

Bottom line: I truly believe, and would honestly bet a significant amount of money on, that this first draft was truly the story of SJM's heart and was brought to a screeching halt by her publishing company, who felt they could milk this hype and get more books out of it.

Essentially, if you were expecting ACOTAR 6, sorry can't help you, that was NEVER happening, BUT if you were expecting MORE than what we got, you are entirely within your rights to feel disappointed! That's why things felt weird and disjointed. . .because it was not the story she intended to tell organically and she had to make some pretty significant changes on a short notice.

The silver lining, I suppose, is the fact that I don't think her publishers talked her out of this happening in general. I think they just convinced her to drag it out longer. . .to delay it, essentially. Like I said, get more books in before finally making it happen. Because once that happens, how do you reach a higher peak? What could she make happen after that point that is more exciting than a huge epic crossover? I think that unfortunately, the Asteri were kind of wasted villains, as I don't know what other force of evil could bring all of these characters together realistically. But I do believe it's going to happen.

So yeah, you'll never be able to convince me there's not some version of HOFAS out there that only exists in Sarah's mind at this point, where the ACOTAR characters (and honestly, Aelin and the ToG characters) are much more central characters to the overall story. I'm convinced she wrote this epic story, went to her editors, and was told "Hey, the hype around this is so insane, we COULD do it now, OR we could develop the characters even further and do it LATER" (meaning more $$$$$$ for them). SJM is the QUEEN of changing her mind mid-series but to me, this really reeks of corporate greed and milking the hype. I'm trying to trust the process and tell myself that it's all coming eventually.

So stop shitting on people who complain about the lack of a crossover. We were teased with one and you know damn well SJM wrote one! I'm convinced it was teased and hyped this way because that's the way she originally wrote it and then when publishing convinced things to change the way they wanted them to. . .why tell us? If the already existing hype gets us to buy their book, it's a win for them.

I guess only time will tell!

[multitrackdrifting]

In my mind G-Witch ends at Episode 15 and they just forgor to release the rest, there's certain things that are super hard to ignore when you re-watch it (which I have):

Why is Nika a focal point of the 1st season finale but she is in a prison room for the entire 2nd season?

Why do we only see Earth like three times in the story

Why is Guel Jeturk given two potential mentors from Dominicus but doesn't remain on Earth despite everything in the narrative pointing toward it (Kenanji, who was the ace pilot that helped kill everyone in the prologue, and Olcott who is a defector that is part of the Fold's militant arm).

Why do characters that seemingly need to have a conversation simply not do that? None of the children talk to their parents at the end of the story even for the ones that are alive. The easy response is that overcoming trauma and conflicts may not require the other party who had a role in creating it, but I don't think that's an apt way to actually answer this question. I think they just had to hand in their homework and top brass refused more seasons.

Why do the Dawn of Fold mostly get shown in a negative light (yes, I realize that they're a front for something else) and the story does nothing to convince the viewer that the Earthian plight is a sympathetic or human one besides the children dying? There's a genuine lack of time spent on Earth as a subject and it leaves this obscure veil over the entire subject

The lack of observed "conflict" throughout the story is a fine concession compared to the average Gundam series, but it also carries the caveat that it doesn't really work if 3/4 of the show is non-lethal combat scenarios because for that narrative choice to be more effective, they need to show how violent the conflicts on Earth are besides showing it briefly a couple of times.

Why is Earth House not even a thing in the 2nd season, like they are there and they talk, but they have no material role in the story besides Martin and Nika making amends. I think this part wouldn't annoy me half as much if every Earthian besides them wasn't literally a terrorist within the narrative and not even in like a Zeta Gundam kind of way.

Overall Earth got completely shafted which is the central gripe most people will have with the political side of the story, everything got hand-waved, and the plight of those struggling with the proxy wars on Earth is barely shown. Everyone waxes on about the state of Earth and how things are going but nothing substantive is explored with it in a way that matters in the grand scheme of things.

Why does Prospera not even give a shit that Kenanji is there like, I know you can spin this a certain way but it's genuinely hilarious...?

I can think of more, but I like G-Witch but the political side of the story is genuinely less interesting than IBO and folks that know me know I don't even like IBO. When it comes to character writing and emotional storytelling it's some peak, but it's very bad as military sci-fi specifically because its commentary on Warfare isn't bad b/c of space magic, it's bad because nothing actually happens, and the central political tension is literally handwaved in the finale. Having the warfare sit in abstraction for the entire duration of the story with the exception of the final arc of the first season and jumping in and out of our periphery in the 2nd ultimately makes the commentary it has on the warfare of the story feel like an ivory tower take on conflict because the characters for the most part can put aside the fact that war on earth exists despite the dialogue. I still think it's good, but it carries the weight of expectations it can't reasonably meet due to its duration, honestly Earth would have to just be cut out for this story not to disappoint half as much wrt it.

I think the thing that frustratse me the most, is that they give Prospera Full Frontal's scene from Gundam Unicorn but it's actually different because of how it unfolds in the ending. The thing is like ,it's actually good to give her that, but it still lacks the substance required for it to be an effective and cathartic resolution for her character since they do it during a period of time where the viewer that actually cares about the backdrop of the world w/ a lot of unanswered questions.

I'd still give the experience of watching it like a 9 in all fairness, but once you reealise the space politics are actually undercooked severely, it's more like a 7.5 at best for me, I think the emotional character writing and happy endings for the characters were enjoyable to see I just think the space-politics side of the story was very undercooked. While it's tempting to theorize as to why they weren't given more episodes during its run, according to the production announcement around October '22 they knew that it was 25 episodes about the entire time the show had begun airing, so the gaps in our knowledge aren't the product of sabotage, but necessary sacrifices to even get a legible story out the door. It's more accurate to say that the decision to continue the AU was not given despite the immense success during its airing - I believed it would get more episodes as IBO did, but one of those shows 1st halves ended on a cliffhanger and the other did not :/

The easiest way to phrase this is that it's a good show if you can put aside that it should have a stronger political side (within the context of its own world) and it's not even unreasonable to expect given the moving parts of the show starting from the prologue - but yeah, too little to say everything it needs to, so it just remains a good romance story but a pretty undercooked Gundam, which is nothing new for the series.

I'd liken it to FFXV is good if it's your first FF game it's good as hell if this is where you start, but a holistic look at it would make it feel bad if you've watched other Gundam series. And trust me, there are a LOT of undercooked and bad Gundam endings, it's not unique to this series. GSD and IBO are some ones I will never even bother defending, but I appreciate the genuine effort into the construction of this show it's just a shame it's not 50 episodes.

tl;dr - the first mainline gundam besides g-reco having less than 50 episodes results in a good story and world that has borderline nothing to say about some of its more glaring conflicts, the social side of things is interesting, the political side is completely uncooked.

[tuiliel]

I’d like Banshee, Gothic, and Zombie please!

Whoops sorry, forgot about this! Was writing it elsewhere (so tumblr wouldn't eat it) and it got Long, so the rest is under the cut:

Banshee - Have you ever had a paranormal encounter? If so, do tell!

Hmmm... I spent a while debating if like, general witchy nonsense and pagan rituals that include possession "count" but I think I'll tell you about one "on purpose" thing and two that just happened to me?

On purpose: the deepest I've ever been possessed in ritual was the first time I sat my seidr guild's ritual to the Norns and I'd drawn the rune for Verdandi. For those unfamiliar, she's often considered the Norn of the constantly unfolding present (the others being the tapestry of the past and the future-in-flux; they are analogues to the Greek Fates). It was December 2019, and we asked about the illness just then being talked about in China, and the state of world affairs, and to those Big questions they had cutting advice, but that's not really the point here. It started as intentional trance, journeying to find and connect with an entity in a group ritual, but as it progressed, she began using my mouth to speak (instead of me relaying her words to the audience, which is more my usual) and using my arms to gesture (which had never happened to me before). At times she even spoke in unison with her sisters through the seers seated with me (who were both more experienced with possessory work than I was). But my experience of it was very much watching from some inside place, where I was seated by the Well of Wyrd, and Verdandi was reshaping my energetic body while she puppeted my physical one to speak to the room. I came out of that changed; it was something of an initiatory experience.

Accidental Thing The First requires the caveat that I had a new camera and I've always liked taking pictures of graveyards, but to set the scene: Be on your honeymoon! Notice a cute little graveyard with big oak trees. Decide there's definitely enough light left for good pictures. Make a little offering at the entrance and then go wild!

As I was taking photos, I came across a bunch of damaged headstones just sort of laid out in a line, and that was odd, and some of them were civil war era, which was not terribly surprising given the location (Shenandoah). Kind of a weird vibe, but I wasn't worried.

Until the sun abruptly went over the closest Appalachian peak and we were plunged into sudden darkness and the vibe changed, fast.

I'm a witch and sometimes that means I make good decisions and sometimes it means I'm foolhardy, and honestly this was the second one. I was ignoring all the pushes to leave and the rising angry vibe, still wanting to finish looking around, until I was standing near the edge of a drop off on one side of the graveyard, and felt something hit my back, hard enough that I stumbled. I felt it hit my personal shields too, and I do honestly think that without those it might've been strong enough to pitch me over the edge. While I probably wouldn't have died I definitely would have gotten very hurt, because it was like ten or twelve feet down, and there was some mangled chain link fencing and blacktop at the bottom. I regained my footing, though, and moved away quickly to find my newly-wedded spouse, who was easily more than 25 meters away (which I'm using as a measurement because I used to be a competitive swimmer and I'm very familiar with the distance across a pool), and very clearly could not have hit me. I was concerned about the angry spirit following us back to our cabin, so instead of leaving just then, I had my spouse reach out to the deep land spirits, the bedrock, to ask for calm (since that is his Schtick), and I sang two or three verses of Amazing Grace and promised to come back with more offerings in the daylight.

We made it out and back with no problems, purified ourselves with salt as best we could, set wards on the cabin, and slept fine with no interruptions. And then, as promised, in the morning we came back with coffee and tobacco and did a little trash pickup.

I'd like to go back and see if it has changed at all, and honestly I'd love to bring some kind of paranormal investigator with, because that is the first and only time I've been physically HIT like that.

Accidental Thing The Second is really more just a type of experience I've had basically my entire life - cats that Aren't Really There. I called them shadow cats when I was younger because a lot of them looked like living shadow (and they're not all housecats, I've seen things like panthers and lynxes too, but always felines for some reason), but as I've done more work with the Dead I'm seeing more and more what are pretty obviously just Dead Cats. I'm not sure why they congregate around me, but the one time I was actually living with a cat (my roommate had a grey long haired cat), I kept nearly tripping in my house, trying not to step on a cat that, in retrospect, I could have stepped right through. There was one grey cat in the house - no tabby, no calico, no white 🤣 They're usually friendly, even the wild ones and the shadow ones, so I don't mind them even if I'm not really sure why they're around.

Gothic - Who’s your favorite macabre figure from history?

Ooooh that's tricky. I think I'll give you three again 😂 (why are you making a nonbinary pansexual polyamorous person make that kind of choice, anyway, O List of Questions? Maybe I'll make my own where it's like "Favorite figure(s)" about everything, lol)

Francisco Goya - because holy fuck, his paintings. Literally if you're not familiar, go look them up.

Jack the Ripper - because it's just such a compelling mystery, isn't it? And the cops had no experience so it was handled poorly... Honestly it is so painful that we'll never really know and yet if I could go back in time with like, a kid's forensic kit, we'd probably be able to crack the case in a couple of weeks.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - I mean, she's the original gothic dream girl, is she not?

Zombie - How long do you think you’d survive if a zombie apocalypse happened?

Oh damn so that depends what kind of zombies and how fast they spread and from where, LOL.

If I have time to get to some kind of safe stronghold and there's enough people to be a reasonable unit to defend ourselves, my friends say they'd let my disabled ass just stay inside and tend plants and crap because my knowledge of plant medicine and first aid would be useful. If they're some kind of supernatural thing, the witchy skills would be useful too.

But actually running? Having to kill them myself and relocate and just being constantly on the run with a small ragtag group and very few supplies? I'm probably dead the first time I faint, which is probably within the first two weeks.

Thanks for the ask! 😊

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 8th February

Two very different songs, with very different levels of dignity, this week - both perfectly fine, but one just a lot sillier than the other (and a lot more of a meme, at least for me and my family).

Sailor - Petula Clark (peaked at Number 1)

So I took a quick look back through this blog's archives, and amazingly, Petula's already come up four times in four completely different years, but her hits have been spaced far enough apart that every single time I seem to have assumed it was her first chart entry? I guess that's a sign of where she is, in the pecking order at this point - perpetually hanging round, a familiar face, but not really making anything all that memorable. Well, all that is about to change, with her first Number 1 hit - and a very credible one, too, albeit a little old-fashioned.

Sailor, I would say, is a classic "my man's gone off with the military" song, the sort of thing you could just as easily imagine being a hit in 1941 as 1961, as Petula entreats her man, sailor, stop your roaming / Sailor, leave the sea, / Sailor, when the tide turns / Come home safe to me. Yes, she just wants her man to come home - and until then, she wants him to remember her love, wherever he may be. The most dated part, in all this, is probably the list of exotic destinations where Petula's sailor boy might find himself, whether in Capri or Amsterdam / Honolulu or Siam - a real A to Z of places where you might get sent on National Service, it seems. There's strong echoes, in all this, of Jo Stafford's You Belong to Me, all the way back in 1952, and endless songs since, from Bobby Darin's Over the Sea to less notable songs like Anne Shelton's Lay Down Your Arms.

Actually, that last one probably isn't a coincidence, since in English-speaking markets, the song was also known as an Anne Shelton hit, with both versions competing with each other. Anne had the right background for it, as a legit forces' sweetheart from back in the day, but Petula's version apparently had the edge, since she was just a bit more hip and cool. In English-speaking markets, is my caveat here, because the song was a translated German hit. Called Seemann, and performed originally by an artist called Lolita, it seems to have been translated pretty faithfully - it's still a song about wanting your sailor love to come home. And there were other versions, off the back of Seemann - notably, local language versions made it big in almost all of the Scandinavian charts, while Petula also released a French version, Marin. I guess the concept of being in love with a sailor is a pretty universal concept - still, the idea of there just being multiple versions in multiple European languages feels wild to me. I know that crossover K-pop and Latin hits still sometimes get that treatment today (looking at you, Justin Bieber Despacito remix) but it feels weird to see it with European hits - I certainly can't think of anything comparable from the last, what, decade or two?

The more I listen to this, the more old-fashioned it sounds. There's a touch of schlager to it, as you might expect, and there's also that harmonica, plus the ooooooh backing singer, who sounds like she's been put in a completely different room to Petula, her voice drifitng in eerily and kind of operatically from afar. Add a guitar and some piano that just kind of plods along in the background, and you've got yourself something that's very schmaltzy and sentimental. It's not bad - Petula's voice is fine, and the harmonica, while plaintive, gives quite a nice almost country-ish touch - but it's definitely not the most 1961 of sounds.

Rubber Ball - Bobby Vee (4)

Okay, I will come clean. I know this song. It's been a running joke in my family for years - we had it on a rock and roll compilation CD, for some reason, and my dad in particular found the bouncy bouncy backing singers hilarious, for reasons I cant quite pin down. Whatever it was, his amusement was infectious, and the song made its way into family playlists for years, just so we could have a laugh at bouncy bouncy. Which I stand by, because it is a really dumb set of words to have to repeat, and they sing them so inanely.

The whole song's pretty inane, honestly. It starts with a good metaphor, I guess - Bobby's love is treating him badly, tossing his heart around like a rubber ball. And of course, like any good rubber ball, I come bouncin' back to you. Fair enough, I see what you're doing there. The issue is that halfway through, the metaphor changes, so that Bobby's suddenly one of those stretchy men, I just stretch my arms to reach you anywhere. And then it changes yet again, turning him into an elastic band, because my heartstrings, they just snap. At this point, you begin to suspect that the rubber metaphor is mostly just a (rather flimsy) excuse to do some Buddy Holly-style vocal hiccups.

In all this, I'm wondering who exactly Bobby Vee was. He's got just about the most 1960s teen idol-sounding name out there, and so I'm not hugely surprised to learn that he was, indeed, a teenager, all of 18 years old. The Buddy Holly connection I made above is apparently not a coincidence, either - Bobby got his start immediately after (and as a consequence of) the plane crash the killed Buddy, as venues the killed artists were supposed to play scrambled to fill slots. Bobby and a group of schoolmates rose to the occasion, forming a band, and crossing from North Dakota to Minnesota to fill in for Buddy and his fellow headliners. Skimming a description of Bobby's early career, Buddy seems to have continued to be influential, too, with an album of cover songs, appearances at Clear Lake memorial concerts, and a debut single, Suzie Baby, written in a style directly inspired by Peggy Sue. So yeah, not shocked to hear a slight echo of Buddy's here - even if the song's mostly just silliness, there's a solid core of strummy guitar, strings and chords that could have been lifted straight from a song like Peggy Sue or Oh Boy. Plus a whole lot of dumb lyrics, but you can't win them all, eh?

These songs couldn't have been more different, in vibe. And yet, I didn't mind either. Both made me think of my family, weirdly - Sailor reminds me of my granddad, who was in the navy at this point in 1961, while Rubber Ball, as I've mentioned, has become a bit of a running joke in my family. Because you know, bouncy bouncy, bouncy bouncy. Very dumb.

Favourite song of the bunch: Rubber Ball

[penny-the-pissed-poltergeist]

Rwby Volume 3 episode 8 rewatch thoughts, RWDE/Critical thoughts ahead

.Weiss jumping in immediately to defend Yang

.Interesting how Ironwood saw Yang seemingly break someone leg and still gave them the benefit of the doubt and was willing to help with her disability later

.I know they resolve it in a few words, but Blake bringing up are abuser in relation to her crying teammate who she winds up dating later make me feel weird (For you people who think Adam wasn't always that, this is where I think the switch was flipped if there was one)

.The bees will never beat the "dating the person that reminds you of your abuser/trauma" allegations

.Ruby telling Pyrrha to "Make sure to win one for beacon!" is well... from a certain point of view she does....

.Noticed Pyrrha forcing a smile here :(

.I think Nora did too, surprised that she can't lift that dumbbell considering how strong she is

."Please do nothing to the cook" Ace king

.Was that actually good Arkos moment without any caveats? Took them long enough

.You can tell kinda tell how they are paving over whatever Raven was pre-volume 3 here, I doubt there was much malice involved (at least on the creative end) but it still sucks

.Very funny that Raven has the same morals as family guy universe spider-man

."Sometimes bad things just happen" Is this foreshadowing his semblance? I hope it is because Qrow saying he has info to help in tracking down Raven goes nowhere

.Pyrrha :(

.Okay fine, Arkos interactions were well done here

.If I had a nickle for every green eyed character who died in volume 3 and had an odd connection to ascension I'd have three nickles, which isn't a lot but you already know the meme

.And Jaune bungled it... He wasn't being an ass like he was before sometimes but still

.One of the background characters in the line Ruby goes to fucking sent me for some reason, I'll post the image later

.Velvet didn't even get the full weapon in frame, I'm sure Sun would've given her something more photogenic if she just asked

.Velvet defending Yang felt kinda jarring just because we've never seen them talk, I forgot that team CFVY and RWBY were even supposed to be friends

."Glad someone thinks so" Like Weiss? Or Blake after one conversation? Or Ironwood even? If people are worrying about one of the main characters being a bad person, I want to see it

.Ruby's a smart cookie and suspects things immediately

.Velvet, Ruby's weapon isn't with her and wouldn't have even been in shot if it was how are you getting schematics for it?

.Mercury showing up, Ruby realizing what's happening and this backing track are kinda kino, peak even

.One last jab, everyone calling Polarity... Polarity when they shouldn't even know it's name has never come of as natural to me

.Something tells me Pyrrha knows this isn't going to end well

[rei-ismyname]

I missed something

After @nadelige pointed out that Kurt seemed mind controlled/brainwashed, I missed the point at first. After doing some thinking, I have some additional commentary on the C plot - Nightcrawler and Psylocke's adventure.

In Uncanny #7, Kurt was acting weird. He stated his bizarre concern that Psylocke might murder someone, especially him, and then he teleported the two into the tunnels. With the caveat that Kurt hasn't spoken much this era, I don't believe that's something Kurt Wagner would say or do. It is something Charles Xavier might say though.

Why would he take them both to the Morlock tunnels? It's possible Kurt is the only one to pick up on Scurvy's influence, but I'd think the telepath would be a more likely candidate. An even more likely candidate is someone who's spent the last X months telepathically sparring with Scurvy. We find out later that Charles is kept 'underground' so if he did mind control Kurt to free him, this is where he'd bring them.

After the pair spend some time exploring, they come across Omega Red's cell off panel and don't free him. As many people pointed out, this feels out of character for Kurt. At this point Psylocke has an odd pause in her speech and says 'utt--!' for no obvious reason. I think Xavier took control of her at this point, possibly releasing Kurt.

'No, Kurt my old friend' is not something Kwannon would say. They barely know each other. 'A monster of a different sort is what's required' isn't something she'd never say, but it this context it's bizarre. Xavier would absolutely call Kurt 'my old friend' and referring to himself as a necessary monster is peak Xavier. Kurt picks up on the over- familiarity and the strange speech patterns. Psylocke saying 'I am needed' is weird, but Xavier as Psylocke makes perfect sense, especially if he's referring to Kwannon herself as the 'key... you bought me.'

Next time we see the pair, they're hunched over with their hair covering their faces - being led by Charles Xavier. He confirms that he was underground, suggesting that the cell in the Morlock tunnels contained him. He arrives as the X-Men are in a psychic cage they're unable to get out of. Only Juggernaut, with his Cyttorak-empowered helmet, has been able to move and even then he seemed to be struggling.

Here's what I think happened chronologically.

- Charles Xavier follows what's happening from his cell, taking advantage of Scurvy's focus on the X-Men and Trustees (Scurvy states he can't do two things at once) meaning he's not 'keeping Xavier locked down' or not doing it as effectively.

- Either noticing or deducing the X-Men are under telepathic attack, and possibly that Quentin is MIA, he reasons they'll need him to get out of it.

- Xavier takes over Kurt's mind, grabs Psylocke, and teleports them close to his cell.

- He tries to talk to Psylocke through Kurt, but ends up taking her over instead.

- He stops them potentially freeing Omega Red, instead steering them to his cell while monologuing about shit Kurt has no context for and calling her 'old friend' etc.

- He uses Psylocke to unlock his cell, whether through telekinesis, a psychic lock, or some ninja shit.

- Freed from his cell, he probably takes over Kurt and Kwannon. He arrives at the scene of the action and delivers a dramatic monologue.

It's possible this is all Scurvy's doing, but the focus on the three people explicitly free from his psychic meddling tells me it's the real deal. Is it ironic that he controls people like puppets just after Scott explains his reasoning for not wanting him around? Yeah, a little. Sure, he's probably going to save the day, but I've done enough speculating here. I think it's supported by the text and fits Chuck's MO, but we'll see what comes next in Uncanny #8. What do you think?

X-MEN #9 Review - Raid on Graymalkin 3/4

Crossover events always have a lot of moving parts, keeping track of them while driving the story forward in a coherent fashion has to be a mark of success. X-Men #8 started the event off elegantly, keeping the momentum up until the very last page when the two X-Men squads came face to face. Uncanny #7 muddled that up and didn't get a lot done by slowing down, but X-Men #9 is a worthy successor to the previous issue - it's kinetic and always moving forward, with enough variation in tension to make the big moments hit. Mackay seems to be hitting his stride, which makes me happy.

'They're not just mutants. They're X-Men.' Damn right.

Uncanny #7 put the brakes on by recapping and introducing petty conflict, though it did recontextualise the planning phase of the raid. Rogue came out of it looking petulant and irresponsible - something that I think it's healthy to just accept - I'll discuss that in her book. Here and now it's a problem that our Alaskan team have to navigate, the recklessness of allies blown up in everyone's faces. At least they've stopped fighting. As I said at the start of the event, one of the metrics I'm judging on is how well this event fulfills its promises - primarily a much hyped ideological divide between Rogue and Cyclops.

Immediately we follow up on where Kurt and Psylocke teleported to, after some posturing Kurt theorises that they're being manipulated. They start working together. Nice! This will pay off later without taking up too much space. Call it the C plot. The B plot is the POV of the Graymalkin command centre, with Ellis being the worst and downplaying the X-Men's effectiveness. Captain Ezra disagrees, while Scurvy confirms he's tampering with the X-Men's emotions. Importantly he can't do that and control the Trustees, implying that he was speaking through the Blob and Siryn last issue.

The fight between the two teams of X-Men and Graymalkin's forces takes up quite a lot of the issue. It's well executed with cross-team bonding moments and shows how well they can work together.

Ransom redeems himself a bit after starting this fight by stepping in after Temper is knocked down. There seems to be some chemistry there, which is cute, and also shows that Rogue's team isn't following her lead unthinkingly. It's a good character beat and a reasonable side effect of her poor leadership. The joint X-teams take out the trustees and Wolfpack easily, allowing conversation to resume.

I will say that Marvel has a habit of pairing dark skinned characters romantically, enough to give a slight creepy miscegenation vibe to me. That's probably its own post though, after my white ass does a lot of research.

The argument continues in the command centre, with nobody having changed their mind. Scurvy especially has a defeatist attitude, so Ellis slaps the shit out of him and lets him off the leash. It's revealed he claims to be the equal of Xavier telepathically, with Chuck conceding that he's a concern in the Infinity Comics, but what we've seen in this event has been pretty weak (except for controlling multiple people.) His offensive utility has been underwhelming.

Kurt and Psylocke agree that they shouldn't free Omega Red. Presumably they didn't read X-Force where he'd made a lot of progress reforming and responded well to not being manipulated or controlled. Kinda like Wolverine. I hope that's not undone.

The two X-Men teams are bonding even further, calling back to the old days. They reach a tentative agreement to collaborate, but then the sticking point from Uncanny #7 resurfaces. Ignoring Scott's valid question of whether freeing Charles is a good idea, Rogue insists they free him with no explanation.

Scott doesn't just disagree, he meets Rogue's absolute stance and refuses to allow it. They've both flipped to the opposite of their original positions. Scott wanted to break the prison and Rogue just wanted her people back. This is explicitly the leaders butting heads and Rogue escalates into accusation and chest poking.

Scott keeps his cool and explains his position, removing Rogue's finger from his chest. He makes an excellent point though it could be explained better. The guts of the argument is present, but he doesn't mention the many examples of Charles' oversized influence. He shouldn't really need to, though, and the closeups we get of Logan, Gambit, Magik, Temper and Juggernaut implies they at least think he has a point if not outright agree.

This is an ideological difference between the two, as promised, but it doesn't look like Rogue is coming from a place of reason. She doesn't respond to his argument or show any empathy for his uniquely informed position. Scott knows better than anyone what Xavier is like, having been his child soldier since he was 15. Rogue should absolutely know he has a point, too, but she's not interested in hearing it. Rogue delivers a violent ultimatum and Scott pushes back, standing his ground by putting his body in between her and Charles. It's disappointing in the sense that it's a bad outcome, but it's consistent with Rogue's cowboy characterisation so far. She knows best and isn't interested in talking about it. We don't actually know if Scurvy is still affecting them, as he's not controlling the trustees anymore.

Then this clown shows up, interrupting the argument. Scurvy makes a badass boast, though it's not quite clear what he's actually doing beyond 'psychic attack.' Nobody attempts to use Red Triangle protocol but maybe it doesn't work that way. It's implied he's a telekinetic as well, though his reason for believing in this 'dream' isn't fleshed out just yet. Working with Ellis I'd assume would be against his interests, and a new psychic rivalling Chuck should be significant. Maybe he's a product of 3K. My question is - if he can do this, why bother with weak emotional tweaks? He seemed reluctant to enact White Light Protocol but we don't know why.

Famously, The Juggernaut has impeccable psychic defences while wearing the helmet, so he tries to get the door open thinking they need Charles to take this guy down. I wonder if Quentin would be able to thrash him? Probably, though he was taken out last issue.

Surprisingly, Charles Xavier casually strolls up flanked by Kurt and Psylocke. Interestingly their faces are pointedly covered by hair, so I'm not sure this can be taken at face value. Chuck reveals he's not Inmate X and does a heavy handed title drop for the reboot line.

The issue ends there on another cliffhanger with Raid on Graymalkin to be concluded in Uncanny X-Men issue #8. X-Men #9 was solid, a slight step down from #8 but with the inherited responsibility to follow Uncanny #7's chaotic plotting and sluggish momentum. I give it a pass for that, though it would have been nice to continue the Rogue/Cyclops discourse in a linear fashion. That wasn't possible without leaving out crucial information and development so I give it a pass on that. Importantly, the promised ideological divide was actually developed. It felt like a genuine disagreement the two might have, and I loved the atypical layout that gave us the team members' reactions to Scott's reasoning. That's important as these people all have extensive experience with Charles Xavier and a stake in the outcome. Rogue came across as unreasonable and impetuous as she's been characterised this era. While I don't think it's a good look for her, I can appreciate the consistency. If this is where Rogue is at right now there's plenty of conflict and drama to be had there.

Part of the problem with this event's tension is rampant editorialising. We more or less know how this ends so the execution needs to be excellent. Mackay and Stegman have done their part really well, though I'll be reserving my judgement on the promise that needs paying off - the Rogue Cyclops Schism - for when Uncanny finishes the event. If that is actually Xavier I'd expect him to dominate the narrative but I expect he'll choose to stay as @mkpersephone theorised. That will be a problem for selling the ideological divide believably, but it's on Simone to land that plane. My one complaint about missing story beats is Scott's team being acutely aware of the consequences for the Raid. I think a reminder would have been helpful, preferably said to Rogue's face.

Looky look, a blanked out data page! How very Krakoan of them :). Who's your guess for Inmate X? Shaw? Legion? Colossus? Omega Red? xZibit? Exodus? Angus MacWhirter? Briar Raleigh? I've got no idea. Exceptional X-Men #4 review coming soon! ❤️

[tfemby]

Neovim - A journey in the wacky world of text editing

Lately I've been sick of my old Vim config. I set it up close to decade ago and have been putting off updating the config since before a certain virus found it's way to all of our doorsteps. So many of the plugins I've been using are ancient and flat out don't work with Vim8 or just kind of suck.

For years, it worked fine for the perl, bash and odd rakudo scripts I wrote. I remember spending hours looking around for plugins that helped me solved issues but sadly, many aren't cutting it anymore. Thinking seriously about spending a dozen or more hours doing that again, I said,

"Screw it, I keep seeing people talk about Neovim online, what's all the buzz about? It sucked the last time I used it. What's changed?"

The last time I tried out Neovim was around 2015/2016 and it was pretty much the exact same as Vim with one caveat - many of the plugins I wanted didn't work with it well and the darn thing constantly crashed. It's been enough time, right? Probably everything is fixed?

I opened up my Vim one last time, wrote a quick note in my config file which simply read the date, and I finally said goodbye to Vim. I had a whole world of possibilities to explore!

Neovim: Endless possibilities

So where to start... Vim is known for having a configuration file which uses Vim's own language; aptly named Vimscript. Vimscript works fine but you'll only ever use it for Vim and nothing else. Some of the issues I've had with Vimscript were that it just feels as old as it looks. Want to make your own custom additions to a plugin? You're going to mentally have to go back to the days where everybody was on IRC and Neocities was the default for personal webpages. It's a language that definitely feels it's age.

Neovim in comparison has come up with a solution to this and allows you to use Vimscript but there's an interesting twist. Lua. The infamous programming language that everybody has heard about from their favourite games but never looked into. I have some fond memories of opening gmod and joining a server then waiting a solid 40 minutes for everything to load in. In that progress screen, I saw many mysterious .lua filenames as I cursed about Aussie internet being so garbage. There were so many mysteries behind what those scripts could have been but peak gamer laziness got the better of most of me, and likely many of you reading (for non-millenials, it's Roblox that's likely associated with lua).

Gaming tangent aside, Neovim allows you to configure your text editor with a fully fledged programming language. I've seen old vim scripts do some incredible things but boy, was I in for a world of overwhelming complexity, confusion, dopamine and just pure euphoria.

Looking through the world through the lua looking glass

I know, I know, there's plenty more stuff to Neovim besides it using Lua so I'm quickly mentioning that the Neovim API has been wonderful. It's insanely well documented and mix that together with Lua, you can probably write doom in the thing... including making it work as multiplayer since the editor has the capability of tcp/ip. This exists to allow you to remotely control you editor from elsewhere, perhaps from your phone?

So what did I do when I first installed Neovim? Well I obviously went to the website page and immediately didn't understand a single thing. Everything was foreign and I had 0 idea about Lua. I went to my old and trusted vimscript instincts to get some basics up and running such as indenting, line numbers, column highlighting and so on.

Once I had something that felt vaguely familiar, I went and took a look at how to implement these things in lua. It was surprisingly... easy. Take the following couple of lines of Vimscript (from my vimrc) and compare it to my nvim/init.lua.

.vimrc set smartindent set cursorcolumn set cursorline

.config/nvim/init.lua local options = { smartindent = true, cursorcolumn = true, cursorline = true } for j, k in pairs(options) do vim.opt[j] = k end

As you can see, the lua version is a bit longer but effectively everything you're used to in vim is easily accessible via vim.opt.. I am lazy and put all of the options into a loop to prepend all of them.

You also have the option of vim.cmd('command') if you want to just want to copy and paste your old configurations in. The looping trick also works for vim.cmd.

Lastly, on this post, I will say that there is vim.g for things you're previously use let g:<action> on in old vim.

I may post more as I have interesting things setup with LSP, linters/formatters/code actions and more.

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e49

5+ hour episode! (I am fear)

Ghostly, technicolor, dreamlike lightning crosses the sky, at the very edge of the horizon, barely visible. They see it in every direction, but not above them. Xandis also sees it, so it's not a remnant of the fey realm in their perception; Chetney also picks up "the faintest bit of a buzz to the air, like the faintest touch of the tongue to a nine-volt battery... an ever-present vibration, the taste of energy."

When Chetney was in the northern part of Wildemount, there was a time period when he saw a similar phenomenon that built up over a number of days, peaked in a brilliant display, then dissipated over a few weeks. So, like, the northern lights, but caused by magic instead of electricity.

Chetney talking about weird tea in the northern section of Wildemount, when we know he's been in the Savalirwood? Is Chetney going to be the closest link these people have to the Mighty Nein because he's met the Clays?

Also, burrowing underneath the thing with a sand worm is a great fucking plan (no sarcasm whatsoever).

When Imogen opens her mind, there is a very faint, light, ever-present static or rumble that exists on the periphery of her consciousness.

....oh. Crashing the airship into the sinkhole to hit the key is also a pretty good plan, since they can set it on a course and then jump off (Imogen can fly, Laudna can feather fall, Fearne can wildshape, Ashton can teleport), and they can rig it with explosives. The caveat being that it would cause a significant number of casualties, likely including Liliana and Ryn if they can't get out first.

FCG brings Fearne and Orym along into Imogen's dream as she focuses on her mother.

"Make a d20 roll and add your spellcraft modifier." Could've been a slip of the tongue, but that's certainly interesting in the context of CR potentially moving away from D&D 5e.

On a 24, Imogen gets pulled extremely quickly into the storm, and she stands in the midst of the familiar clouds. No ground, no field, no farm, just her and her companions.

A shadowed form emerges from the cloud, mostly made of dark immaterial, a spiritual being. The eyes, red and glowing, open. The hair becomes light purple, the shaded semblance of material half-there.

"Imogen?" "Mama." "Where are we?" "We're coming. We're coming, and I need your help." As she realizes who Imogen is and where they are, she becomes more material and tangible. An expression of surprise, concern, and a coldness.

"Imogen, you shouldn't be here." "You keep saying that. Tell me there's still part of you that cares. Tell me there's part of you that knows what you're doing is wrong." "Why is it wrong?" "You wanna destroy half the world." "I think you misunderstand what's going on here. The world will be saved at the end of this, and we'll be free." "The world will be eaten, and we'll be gone." "I wish you could see the things that I can see." "Show me."

Images cross her mind. "A massive glowing lattice in the sky, pulling apart as red fills the air above. Thousands and thousands of voices in unison, and a sense of freedom. The cries of history, snuffed in a moment. And the beginning of something new and beautiful. Like endless... possibility. Without guidance, without fate. Without this gift. And in a brief instant, you remember what it was like to not be like this. To just be... you. You return to this dream, and see in her face, this empathetic concern. I'm doing this for the both of us, and he's doing it for everyone. I know change is hard, but we've been toys since the beginning. I wish you could understand. I wish you all could understand." And the dream ends in a flash of white light as she raises her hand.

"What if we're standing in the way of change?" "Well, Imogen, I wish my family didn't have to die for her greater tomorrow."

The way Matt said "endless possibility" is living rent free in my head. It felt so obviously meant to parallel the way he said it to Caleb the first time, the way he looked at the players he knew would pick up on that echo... it felt so intentional.

"If they had such a great idea of what the world should be and what that thing was, they would fucking tell people, and instead they're making everybody miserable." Ashton absolutely has the right idea. Everybody's selfish, everybody's acting in their own self-interest, and the gods are no different but neither are mortals.

At night, they can see that the flashes of energy are outlining a net of rivers of energy. "The leylines of Exandria are beginning to glow in anticipation of the coming solstice." And Chetney swears that they're ever-so-slowly moving -- like the leylines themselves are shifting like clouds at a nearly-imperceptible speed. Both moons look normal, though.

"Ashton... who the fuck are you and where the fuck did you come from?" fucking finally, thank you Laudna

"I am... a blank slate." "I don't believe that." "Well, you wouldn't. All of you have a place that you came from, people who made you who you are -- all except for one -- and... I hate you all a little, you know that, right? I am jealous of you because I know things you don't, I know loneliness you don't, I know the truth of people that none of you do. You know things too, don't think I don't know that..."

"What... what was it like? Waking up and having them there? What was it like to come back and everyone was still there?" "It was one of the greatest feelings, because it wasn't like that the first time." These fuckers are just trading off devastating one-liners and I am living for it

"You can't trust somebody who just wants to die all the time. I've spent time trying to prevent that little robot from murdering themselves and everyone. They're dangerous, but not for the reasons they think they are." someone is finally calling FCG on their martyr complex, thank the gods

Ashton is so thoroughly convinced that they are enlightened by their pain and suffering, that they have it so much worse than everyone else and know better because of it... I can't wait for that worldview to break once and for all.

Back from break and the Hells are talking about finding an agent of the gods to talk to about this whole thing. Excellent, thank fuck

"We should contact a holy person." "Why? Do you need convincing?" laudna.

Sending to Pike from FCG: "Robot holy person here. Big god stuff going down. God eater about to be released from Ruidus on the solstice. We need your deific help. Research. Reach out to us. Ludinus involved." "Oh. Wow. Um. Okay! Robo buddy, let me see what I can find. Okay."

Ashton and Fearne learn to fly the airship!

They also learn more about brumestone: when it is excavated, it just kind of... lifts. It's easily pushed and seems to float on its own. Through arcane charge, its buoyancy is adjusted, allowing an airship to raise and lower.

Sending to "D" from FCG: "Smiley day there. Yellow automaton you sold in Bassuras, to Dancer. Do you know where you picked me up? And are there more of me?" "A wonderful surprise. That is my gift to you: a return to your own path. I pulled you from the wreckage, and your future is yours to make. There are more of you. And more to come." D has a deep, masculine voice with a nonregional accent (I think). The voice is very similar to the voice Matt used for Devexian.

Dust storm! They lose a day of travel.

The next day, the "auroras" and leylines are becoming much brighter and more prominent. There are curtains of magical energy that twist and shift, and the leylines themselves are moving so slowly, like the most miniscule shift of a rainstorm. At night, the leylines themselves are breathtakingly beautiful, and deeply ominous.

We arrive at the Calloway Hideaway, where Birdie, Ollie, Hondir, and Ira are hiding out. Here, they've made a series of what are essentially arcane battery power banks, and Ira is continuing his work on the machine.

Ira wants to destroy the Malleus Key because he's holding a grudge against Ludinus, who kicked Ira off the initial project after he got too curious. Ira wants to destroy the key to prove that he's the superior designer.

As best he knows, Ludinus wanted something that could gather a directly-focused amount of energy. The initial design was just to be an anchor, an accelerant, a bolstering device -- that was the first design, the one in the fey realm. The next was to be different, but Ira was kicked off before Ludinus told him the plan for it, so he helped the Calloways take the crown.

Ira has been using his own machine more like a telescope than anything, keeping tabs on the dig site. Through the eyepiece, it appears to "bank" imagery -- though it's pointing up, FCG gets a top-down view of the sinkhole. After a minute, the vision is interrupted, and Ira notes that the machine seems to emit a dispelling pulse every minute or so.

Apparently, the Ruby Vanguard has made a lot of talk about "breaking, reaching, locking, destroying" Ruidus. "I didn't ask too many questions... until I asked too many questions." They've also moved all of the power sources away from the eye of Ira's machine.

"Who are you praying to?" "Those who came before me." This episode is just full of amazing one-liners, isn't it?

ooooooo whispers on an insight check to see if Ira knows anything about Predathos! Looks like he doesn't though.

Half the group goes to Bassuras to find Hexum's contact. He offers them a handful of healing potions, an amulet of health (sets CON to 19), a circlet of the hidden eye (circlet of mind shielding that deals psychic damage to creatures that try to scry on you), and a belt of momentum (gives the wearer a charge attack with a 25-foot run-up).

Meanwhile, the rest of the group are having a... family therapy session with the Calloways?

Hondir notes that what work the Verity can't finish, they have passed on to "allies more capable in these final stages."

I am so afraid of whatever narrative beat Matt is trying to hit by not ending this episode at 4 hours

Every time Matt describes Ira's limbs, I can't imagine anything except a tailless whip scorpion

As for the magical items, Imogen gets the circlet, Ashton gets the belt, and Laudna gets the amulet. In the shuffle, Chetney puts on the Butcher's Bib, Imogen gives Laudna the feywild shard, and Laudna gives FCG the pearl of power.

Liam rolls an arcane wind storm! Triggered by the rising ley energies of the solstice, colorful lightning streaks across the sky and the air hums with arcana. a failed skill challenge brings the ship down and loses them a day of travel.

....the feywild shard relies on sorcery points to function, but suude gives the user sorcery points, so in theory....

"The beauty slowly becomes terrifying as the face of magic on Exandria, like it does every two centuries or so, is changing."

Another dust storm, but with this one, they're being chased by a massive phoenix-like bird that's purple and black with wings made of flame.

Ashton rage build update: when their possibility rage build is active, there is a "probability matrix" that surrounds them in an aura.

oh my god I fucking love control parties. Fearne turns the bird into a goldfish, which is promptly carried away in the gale-force wind

also, another instance of Matt saying "spellcraft modifier" instead of "spellcasting ability modifier."

....Orym has a seed in his pouch that's glowing and pulsing? he got it from a druid in Nirdal-Poc. FCG identifies it as a message bloom; upon being planted and watered, it conveys a message from Keyleth. "Orym. The Cult of the Dark Heart beneath Terrah was a challenging maze of dangers for the Ashari, but the Darkheart Behemoth was subdued and the rift returned to our control. I message you because I attempted to apprehend Vureo, the leader of this cult, but he vanished, shouting, 'the Vanguard will prevail, and the world will finally be free.' But given all that you have told me, it would seem our paths are converging. Please, let us know where this Vanguard makes its work; perhaps I can gather the Ashari to stand against Ludinus and his Vanguard."

A message back from Imogen: "Message received. They're converging at the nexus northeast of Bassuras, the Tishtan excavation point. We should be arriving in two days' time, if all goes well. Thank you." "I appreciate the heads up. We'll gather who's available and able-bodied, see that our wounded are taken care of, and attempt to meet you there as soon as possible. Be safe."

I gotta admit, I was getting pretty worried there, but I think this significantly ups the chance of the Mighty Nein or the Crown Keepers showing up, and rather than detracting from any victories the Hells achieve it really drives home the gravity of the situation.

Talking to Orym and then to Laudna.... Imogen is seriously giving off the vibes of someone who's already made a huge decision and is trying to find justification or support for it after the fact but is only getting more evidence that what she chose was wrong.

god, the character convos in this episode have been on point.

"Ashton will spend the night with a bottle of something at the back of the ship, arguing with people who aren't there." ????

(for the record, yes, you can counterspell antimagic field.)

[esther-dot]

You’ve peaked my interest… and I agree, I think there is a bit of a disconnect between how we might view Jon (his character, choices, relationships etc) and how Kit does. And I guess that’s a fault of the show, because being so involved in that as an actor would have had an impact, but are there any other glaring differences in perception for you? Things that make you apprehensive for his continued version? Thanks :)

(about this ask)

Oh, I studiously avoided all interviews and news related to GoT until right before s8, so I'm not filled in on Kit's perspective the way other fans are, and obviously, s8 was such a mess I was gonna hate everything he said after the fact because he had to be unprofessional or defend crappy writing. Also, I don't think interviews are necessarily a writer/actor/director's honest opinion. They have to sell their product, that’s the priority, and if they’re totally honest, as amusing as that can be, it can just confuse the issue. I know EC said a lot of things post finale that were expressing her feelings about what happened, but they didn’t make sense with what we watched happen on screen. So, sometimes the interviews just muddy the water, and in that way, it may be best to stick to the party line. And another issue is that what we hear them talk about is not only guided by what the interviewer is interested in but sometimes further curated so I don’t know what is a sincere thought on Kit’s part, I didn’t listen to his thoughts over the years so I’m unaware of how they evolved, and I don’t want to claim I know things I don’t. I mean, I’m still gonna chat about this but caveat caveat caveat.

After s8 Kit said something about Jon belonging with the FF, and I simply don’t see how someone who has read the books thinks that Jon belongs with them. I know people do, but I don’t understand it at all. I don’t even buy that for show Jon although it isn’t quite as weird to me that show watchers think that. Thinking that he may end up in exile is one thing, but to assert that he’s happy/happier there? It’s implying he’s at peace with their lifestyle when in the books he is clearly disapproving, so I just don’t buy the idea he’d ever embrace it, nor should we want him to? Jon’s view needed to be challenged and developed, but we aren’t mean to think killing kids or kidnapping women is ok.

One quote from Jon’s time with the FF that I always found jarring is when he thinks of himself as a dog when having sex with Ygritte. The fact that he feels dehumanized was disturbing to me, and made the revelation of what he truly wanted, to be a lord with a lady wife, all the more heartbreaking. Jon doesn’t want to just find a rando to fuck, he wants the life he’s been denied through no fault of his own. So even if to the reader his time with Ygritte sounds like fun, Jon’s internalization of it isn’t positive because of his upbrigning. Jon fans should respect that. Now, of course, the show diminished the cultural differences and barriers that prevent Jon from assimilating post canon, but if we’re thinking of book Jon, sympathy and caring for some of the FF doesn’t eliminate them.

I defended (a lil bit) Kit’s thoughts about show Jongritte (link) because D&D changed it from the books, and I don’t want to assume that’s his answer if asked about book Jongritte. But, if we conflate it all, or just combined that with his comment about show Jon belonging with the FF, I worry. How sincerely did he mean that? Book Jon wasn’t truly happy with Ygritte, he didn’t choose her. He resisted her, was coerced into having sex with her, and she was continually forceful and demanding with him. The entire time that Jon is with her, he’s tortured because he always intended to betray her. He feels bad because he’s a good person and comes to care for her and others, but to me the point wasn’t that he ever wavered, it was simply to highlight how difficult it was for him to remain steadfast. I think Martin’s a writer who never wants it to be too easy for his characters, and I admire that. But to take that, to take Jon seeing these people as people, and miss the fact that he has much greater loyalty and love for his family, for the North as a whole, for his brothers of the Watch (and this is big considering what later happens to him), and to himself….uh, well, I think that means misunderstanding him in a major way.

Again, I don’t know that Kit missed that. He was speaking in the context of the show, but I think D&D missed the purpose the J/Y relationship served in the book, and I worry that Kit followed their lead there and applied that to Jon and the FF too. Jon is very much a product of his culture and his upbringing by Ned. He wants to have honor, he wants to adhere to his vows, he wants to be worthy, he has certain values, none of which the FF or Ygritte understand or respect. It bothers me that even in the show Ygritte says it’s time to break his vow and that’s presented as romantic because these two gorgeous people have chemistry, rather than yet another burden poor Jon will have to carry that he must do something that will add to his shame. And yeah, Kit later talked about Dany being Jon’s love and we all saw how he acted that, so everything he says in interviews is suspect, especially when he had to at times outright lie to us (regarding Jon being dead, for instance), so this stuff doesn’t bother me too much, it just makes me hhhhmmm.

 I understand why Kit would want to believe that Jon’s ending is good, that Jon will be ok, but what if he truly believes that Jon belongs with the FF? What does that say about how he read Jon’s struggle with honor/duty/love? What does that say about how he read Jon’s relationship with the Starks? What does that say about how he took the line Jon gives a dying Ygritte? Does he think Jon should have been a turn cloak? Should have stayed in the cave? Does he think Jon should have fucked Ygritte, rethought all his convictions and giving a shit about his family and the North and sided with the FF? I mean, I doubt it, but I’m not sure what he thinks. Even if he meant Jon belongs with the FF now, when they’re seemingly at peace, he belongs with them because he’s done with politics and just wants to live without those games impacting him, that’s still ignoring the child killing and the rape culture that book Jon specifically objects to. Life South of the Wall has been cruel to Jon, there are all sorts of machinations, women and children suffer even a society that considers itself so much more cultured, but he finds those two aspects of FF life wrong, and considering his habit of wanting to protect the helpless, he’d never be able to ignore it. He would never be at peace with it. SO, how can we think Jon is happy to live in that world?

Also, I was concerned by the fact that Kit spoke about how annoying Sansa was and how he didn’t understand her etc. Now, I always thought the way he talked about it (blushing, laughing) was very cute and that he was speaking more in the context of his friendship with Sophie than anything too serious about Jon’s feelings regarding Sansa because of how he played Jon in their scenes, but I was concerned because even though he said that, there seemed to be a weird absence of equal judgment of Jon and Dany. If Sansa is annoying for begging Jon to consider another perspective, what does that say about Dany who says if you don’t kneel I’ll let everyone die? On any moral scale that Sansa registers, Dany is off the charts and that’s in s7, way before she starts randomly threatening the lives of her bf’s family or burning kids for funsies.

Again, I tried to avoid interviews so I’m not trying to say I know what Kit thinks, I’ve definitely heard contradictory soundbites, and at one point he said he would never understand Jon, but while there were some (joking imo) complaints about Sansa, I never heard him acknowledge that in the story they ended up giving us, Sansa was far too trusting of Jon because Jon betrayed her by bending the knee, giving away her freedom, unnecessarily. I never heard him defend Sansa and point out how loyal she was to Jon. I never heard him talk about how accepting of Jon she was. That may have happened, and I think there were some interviews around s6 in which he said Jon should listen to Sansa, but I didn’t think, putting all shipping aside, he acknowledged what Sansa’s actions (giving Jon a cloak like Ned’s, telling him he’s a Stark to her, wanting him to take the Lord’s chamber, supporting him as KitN...) meant to Jon, and I think that meant the world to show Jon and would mean even more to book Jon.

Even Sophie was guided into some Sansa critical comments at times, so I don’t get offended by that stuff, but it makes me squint because Kit continued to talk about Jon’s honor and honesty in s7-8, even then it looks like he lied to his lords and the Starks about that. So it appears Jon felt like he needed to be honest with Cersei in s7 and Dany in s8 but he didn’t owe that to his family or the people who made him king? Now, obviously, that’s shit writing, Kit isn’t responsible, but why isn’t there recognition of what that means about Jon? And what that means about Sansa’s behavior? The context of Sansa’s behavior is Jon’s, and Jon’s is so so much worse then hers. So, what gives? I don’t like Jon bashing but between Jon and Sansa, Jon is the one who sided with a mass murderer. Why wasn’t that brought into focus?

This is probably what gives me the most concern about a sequel. If he doesn’t look at Jon s7-8 and think “boy, you fucked up.” (and I haven’t heard anything that makes me think that’s how he views things), I can’t see how this show will have anything to say that I want to hear. I remember him saying when they go into KL and the massacre starts that Jon realizes there’s no honor in that fight and that did annoy me because Jon hadn’t had honor all season, not after he lied to his family and forced Sansa to keep a secret she shouldn’t have and refused to listen to any warnings about Dany even though he knew even better than Sansa that all her concerns about Dany were justified, and he then refused to even entertain the idea that Dany needed to be stopped, stood by as Dany burned a man alive, went ahead and dragged his men into KL even thought he knew Dany wouldn’t stop after the bells rang...like, caveat caveat caveat but also wtf wtf wtf.

He spoke about how it broke Jon’s heart to kill Dany, and that’s fine, he has to say what he has to say as part of his job, but what about Jon’s feelings of complicity in the massacre? What about the fact that his choices meant bringing a woman into Sansa’s home (where she had been raped and tortured) who immediately started threatening Sansa’s life? What about his feelings that Ned Stark abandoned his sacred honor and lied to his best friend/committed treason against the king he fought for to protect Jon, only for Jon to side against Ned’s daughters and with a Targaryen conqueror, until the last possible minute? Where is his shame? Where is his guilt?

For book Jon, no matter how fucked up he is post assassination, being embroiled in any of this mess, all I can think of is the self-recrimination he would have and how the kid would never have peace unless the entire time he had remained faithful to the Starks and the North and been serving their interests. Even for show Jon, I found this all untenable. But I never saw anything that made me think Kit felt that way. Hence my misgivings.

[more-than-a-princess]

@cantillat asked: 4 do you prefer to plot a ship, or would you rather “wing it”?

15 what’s your OTP when it comes to your muse?

16 what’s your NOTP when it comes to your muse?

17 what’s your BROTP when it comes to your muse?

20 is there a ship you wanted to play, but couldn’t yet?

Shipping Questions for the Mun - Accepting!

4 do you prefer to plot a ship, or would you rather “wing it”?

My preferred method of writing a romantic ship is having muses interact (whether meeting for the first time or already knowing one another) and just see what happens. But I do tell my writing partner if I'm feeling like a romantic ship could happen, or if it's something I'd be interested in writing, after writing our muses in thread for a little while. From there, I then like plotting how a ship could unfold, even if it's just us throwing out theoretical situations when how it actually happens in thread is something very different in the end.

So...both, I guess? I like winging it when writing with someone for the first time but not really looking to write a ship, but plotting it out when there's good muse chemistry and I get along well with the mun.

I'm not a person who enjoys the 'do you want to ship? Tell me straight up/right away!' meme, because it tends to get me into insta-ship situations that I don't enjoy writing.

15 what’s your OTP when it comes to your muse?

I guess for this I'll stick to canon Danganronpa muses, and so it's got to be Sonia/Gundham aka. Sondam. I'm unapologetically a Sondam fan, though I have a lot of ideas on how Sonia and Gundham's relationship could play out, both in the context of Sonia in other ships and if I'm writing with someone who writes Gundham and wants to write a romantic ship (this is pretty rare these days! So I tend to make him an important part of her life, often in the past tense).

16 what’s your NOTP when it comes to your muse?

A few! And again, I'll keep it to canon Danganronpa characters:

Sonia/Chiaki. I don't ship it romantically and likely never will. Please don't ask me to write it.

Sonia/Junko. Barring Sonia's time as a Remnant of Despair (which was more about sex and control anyway), I just don't see these two ever having anything resembling a romantic relationship.

Sonia/Kazuichi...with a caveat. Going off what the canon gives us, absolutely not. Really, the only way I could see them happening would be a post-SDR2 verse or a non-despair verse with a lot of character development. What would be the most likely would be the two of them meeting in the future, well after high school after not speaking for years and putting some time and distance between who they were as teenagers.

But in general: I just don't see Sonia staying long-term with muses that are particularly needy, lacking self-confidence, idolizing her, or depending on her for the entirety of their happiness. Kazuichi pretty much embodies this, but any muse with similar tendencies? Yeah, Sonia can't handle that in a romantic relationship. She might think she wants someone to look after and take care of, especially as a teenager, but it's not healthy for her and she ends up realizing that as an adult.

Sonia/anyone from Class 79/v3...as high school students. This is purely because in a Non-Despair school scenario, she'd see them as sweet underclassmen and too young for her to try to start a relationship with. When they start Hope's Peak High School, Sonia would be in her final year at Hope's Peak and attending university right after. So there wouldn't be much time for a relationship to begin with, and she'd see them as people who are at a very different stage in their lives than she is.

As adults go? I'd have to think about it. Though I could never see her with someone like Kokichi, Miu, Tenko, or Himiko.

17 what’s your BROTP when it comes to your muse?

Sonia and Chiaki Sonia and Chiaki Sonia and Chiaki!

This is where Sonia and Chiaki's dynamic lives, rent-free, in my head. Whenever I want to incorporate Sonia's close friendships in a thread, especially in her high school years, I think of her friendship with Chiaki.

I also like to believe Sonia and Sayaka would be good friends as well: two girls with similar life experiences.

Other important BROTPs for Sonia include but aren't limited to @dcviated's Eira, @ahogedetective's Shuichi, @unladielike, and @cantillat's Hilda. And Sonia seems to be the bad influence on all of them!

Sonia needs a BROTP where she's the good influence, for once. Not that Sonia's a malicious person, she just likes to push the rules to fit her own curiosity and interests.

In short: BROTPs are love. Please give me more of them.

20 is there a ship you wanted to play, but couldn’t yet?

There's a few ways to take this, but again I'll reference Danganronpa muses I'd be interesting writing a romantic ship with if I found a mun interested and we had good muse chemistry:

Sonia/Byakuya - Because this would definitely be a 'hate it at first but accept for superficial reasons' that could grow into 'oh no I've caught feels for precisely what I thought I didn't like.' And I'm here for it. Though to be honest, this is a lot of what Sonia is dealing with during threads with @causalitylinked's Ryuto, so I'm a little less into this ship now I guess? But if I had the opportunity to write it with a mun with a compatible writing style who was easy to talk to and plot with? Yeah, I'd take it.

Sonia/Akane - Haven't had the opportunity to write this yet.

Sonia/Peko - This either.

Sonia/Celestia - My f/f canon DR ships for Sonia are suffering because they aren't popular/rarepairs.

Other ships that interest me that I haven't had a chance to write yet: Sonia/Raul and Sonia/Allan from Cupid Parasite. In short: one is basically the male version of Sonia. The other is, without spoilers, someone she would be fascinated by.

Neither of these would be smooth-sailing ships but they'd be hilarious and heartbreaking, possibly in equal amounts.

Otherwise, there's more dynamics that I want to write as a romantic ship that are less contingent on a specific muse:

Rekindling a past relationship and/or meeting former high school classmates as an adult - Whether they have a past relationship or not, but the sort of 'oh, this is familiar but very strange and different' situation of Sonia thinking she knows someone and could not have anticipated how much they'd changed.

Soulmates - Heavily plotted with someone else, especially with how the soulmates aspect would play out, but something with Soulmates. Yes, I still have SJM-esque mating bonds on the brain.

Arranged marriage - A super slow-burn where Sonia and the other muse believe they're very incompatible and hate the whole idea of an arranged marriage, but slowly begin to fall for each other and have to reconcile their principles with the fact that what they have may, indeed, be real and worth pursuing.

[kyndaris]

Let’s Talk About Books, Baby!

From the ashes of obscurity, books have seen a resurgence. My mother always wondered why I would ever want to be employed at a bookstore when the printed word seemed to be going the way of the dodo. But what was once considered a dying medium has seen new life bestowed upon it through the valiant efforts of BookTubers and even Booktok. 

Yes, you read that right. Booktok! Forget about all the dancing teenagers trying to create the next new floss dance move. There are people on TikTok that actually provide book recommendations. Or riff on certain tropes. Heck, there’s even relatable WriterToks!

Yet, this all comes with a caveat. Most of the books that are seeing a huge boost from influencers are Young Adult fiction. There’s also some very questionable romance stories that are also seeing an endless amount of attention being showered on them. Not once, in all the time that I’ve watched compilations of BookTok videos, have there been any videos on series that are lesser-known. 

Instead, Sarah J Maas dominates with her wing kink Fae universe. Leigh Bardugo has also reached peak prominence with many on the site, but some of that may be due to the Shadow and Bone adaption on Netflix (and after reading the books, I definitely prefer the Six of Crows duology). Then, of course, there are a litany of romance stories with half-naked men on the covers. 

Unfortunately, Fifty Shades of Grey was not an anomaly.

Rather, smut is in. Scratch that. Smut has never left. Whether that be fanfiction on Wattpad (apparently people just love Mafia alternate universes or being kidnapped by boybands. Where have I seen this trope before? Ah yes, the manga Haou Airen by Mayu Shinjo. Actually, just any work from Mayu Shinjo in general. It’s as if the collective gutter mind has picked up on her works and started to remodel it somehow into what now populates sites such as Archive of Our Own and other places where fanfiction exists.

And when it comes to Sarah J Maas and the disaster that was A Court of Silver Flames (I really agree with many BookTubers that have negatively reviewed this work such as withcindy), it seems authors can also get away with having about nearly three fourths of an 800-page book just be about having angry sex in every corner of a fantasy realm.

But that is NOT why I decided to write this post.

While I believe I could pump out decent videos and become a regular of the Booktok community, I just want to shine some light on a burgeoning series in the fantasy section that deserves more love than it’s been getting. And that is the Rook and the Rose trilogy. From its gorgeous cover to the excellent world-building to the lovable characters! 

Somehow, it’s still so niche that my local Dymocks didn’t even stock it! I had to go online just to get it in hand. Honestly, that’s on me and I probably should have just gone to Kinokuniya or Abbey’s with its hefty science fiction and fantasy section.

Written by Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms under the name M.A. Carrick, the Rook and the Rose series tells the story of Ren, a con artist, who has come to the city of Nadezra to trick her way into a noble house and secure a fortune for both herself and her fellow ex-street urchin: Tess. The way the authors craft the world and the lore behind it is immaculate, the focus on the characters and the slow plotting also make it a delicious read that had me become incredibly invested into its world.

Nadezra, though the setting for the story that is being meticulously plotted out, feels like a character in its own right. The history of the city is rich with promise and the Venetian-esque vibe that emanates from it (along with the masquerade masks that adorn the covers) makes the place feel alive even though it’s only something crafted from words and I’ve merely just pictured the actual buildings in my mind. 

But although Ren is front and centre, there’s also Vargo, everyone’s favourite criminal mastermind with a heart of gold, and Grey Serrado, a stiff Captain of the Guard that has a huge chip on his shoulder. While there are plenty of other characters to wrap one’s head around, these three are the heart, soul and mind of the series as it currently is and I cannot wait to see what happens in the third and final book of the series that should be releasing sometime in early 2023.

Honestly, it’s a shame that this series hasn’t received the attention it deserves. For anyone that has fallen in love with the Locke Lamora series or who likes tropes of found family and dashing rogues trying to fight against a corrupt aristocracy, the Rook and the Rose series has it all.

Heck, even if you want to have a creature mascot, there is one in Alsius! Someone, draw a spider with socks on each of its legs! Please! If Doomslug from the Cytonic series can have merch, then so can an aristocrat trapped in the body of a spider! 

And the way he bemoaned his lack of gloves had to be one of the funniest sentences I’d read in a long time.

Then of course there’s the things that BookTok could be capitalising on. Like the tarot card readings and the drawing of numinatria (which is basically geometric shapes)!

Oh, can’t forget the FASHION!

Alyc Helms might not be Tess in real life but she’s definitely an eye for describing clothing and I wish I had that talent when it comes to describing what my characters are wearing. Given my current ineptitude (I can’t even tell the difference between a cross stitch and other forms of embroidery), it’s a wonder how I manage to clothe my various fictional characters at all. One of these days I ought to sit down and just research the different types of doublets, jerkins, cuirass and other such attire. 

The world is also ripe for an adaption, as was requested in an interview with the authors with Kia Carrington-Russel, an Australian author.

It is a shame that many influencers have yet to read or signal boost this criminally underrated series. How is it that books such as House of Sky and Breath have become so popular that they now feature in the local Big W and not a fantastic fantasy series that tells such a bewitching tale in a fully realised world?

I can’t say for sure if I have any reach when it comes to my blog posts, but I hope that someone out there will draw a spider with gloves/ socks and it suddenly becomes viral. Because that is what the Rook and the Rose deserves! 

That or a streaming deal. Just think of how beautiful the world would look with just the right vision behind it? Certainly, we’ve seen Bridgerton bring back Regency and Shadow and Bone dabble with an actually intriguing young adult fantasy series. Now let’s see that Netflix budget (or Amazon/ Binge/ Stan/ whatever other big streaming services there are) try to put it on a burgeoning IP that has so much promise! And don’t cancel it until the second season! 

[harrypotterfuryroad]

Since peaking and realizing that jkr isn't this evil boogie man, I've been able to enjoy Harry Potter in a way that I haven't since I was little. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, but it's nice to be able to look at something I have great nostalgia for without a bunch of 'oh jk is an evil bigot' caveats

yeah same, i reread the series for the first time in like a decade after the essay dropped and if anything that added to the experience. like the whole dumbledore arc in order of the phoenix (where a respected figure goes through an obviously bad faith character assassination) feels borderline prescient. not that jk rowling is the only person who's ever gone through something like that but reading the book while watching it play out in real time by people who claimed that they once loved the series was mind boggling

rereading it also really emphasized for me that most people's perception of the series is more based on a mixture of the movies and some fanfic stuff than the actual books but that's a whole thing that's kinda getting away from what you were saying so i'll just use this as an excuse to post the objectively best work to come out of harry potter fandom

[almightyrozenidiot]

Takuto for the character asks! ^^

Thank you, I was secretly hoping someone would ask me this klsfaglsdg

favorite thing about them: He is one of my favourite sad clowns in fiction (in the sense that he is a tragicomedic character) and he has the range. He is smart. He is an idiot. He is a ray of sunshine. He is a nuclear meltdown. He is extremely well dressed. He has one of the funniest Metaverse outfits. He knows so much academically. He has yet to live his full life and is hindering himself constantly. ATLUS has fucking peaked when it comes to unlikely antagonists and I think they're going to have to change things up in Persona 6.

least favorite thing about them: I think if I had to list something, the way he gets so adamant that he's in the right during the third semester and how he thinks he can do no wrong under Azathoth's influence. Like dude, I love you and your goals but you need to fucking take a step back and look at what you're doing. (Can you tell I'm very pressed to find something I don't like about him lmao)

favorite line: ...Honestly I'm gonna go with "and then my back made a sound it shouldn't" because at first I was like "omfg you are a disaster sir, I am taking you to a chiropractor" and laughing at him. ... And then one day I was at work I realised it was also a subtle line of foreshadowing that he doesn't like going to the hospital because (presumably) the last time he was at a hospital, that was when he lost Rumi.

brOTP: Him and Shibusawa. The bro was there for him even though he never fully let him in on what was going on.

OTP: I say him and Rumi with the caveat that Rumi is a full-fledged character in my imagination and not a sexy lamp like she's depicted in P5R. (I also like imagining that in one of my original universes with no ties to Persona 5, they are happily married but at the cost of the world being an absolute hellhole around them)

nOTP: There's so much art of him and Joker or him and Sumi as a pairing and I just 🤢🤢🤢🤢

random headcanon: He is an autistic and ADHD king

unpopular opinion: I agree with his ideal reality but not necessarily the execution. It shouldn't be one person with all that power.

song i associate with them: I have a bunch but currently I urge every Maruki fan to listen to Diapause by Manic Street Preachers and tell me the chorus doesn't scream him. (Also for bonus points the album it comes from is called The Ultra Vivid Lament)

favorite picture of them: There are so many good pictures of him but let's be real, none of them hold a candle to this one