#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!

[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.

[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.)

[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! 😊

[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.

[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.

[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.

[aysekira]

reading all the points above and wholly agreeing with it, really made me think that one of the most the gut-wrenching part of it all is: he truly doesn't realise or atleast doesn't fully understand the extent of the effect and repercussions his current actions (and by extent future ones) would have on XY and ultimately their relationship. much as i think we'd all agree that cx is frozen in that happiest, childhood time on zhaoyun peak and trying his darnest to preserve all that he could from said time; be it literally (the poinciana flower tree, forest, swing, and mulberry wine) or figuratively (his bond with XY&grampy), said 'preservation' in turn affect his perspectives, beliefs, and ultimately his understanding of XY, at least the current her.

i mentioned his bond with grampy because that is one instance where his frozen view actually works. but there's a caveat; it works because grampy, like him, was forged in the environment that he's always in, trapped in continuous scheming, do-or-die struggles, and the belief that power is needed, else one will lose everything and that's why it's held supreme. so CX's preserved view of grampy in all his might and dilemmas starting to make sense now with the current him because he's now gained a level of understanding, appreciation even, from having the same experience of clawing his way up and trying to maintain his seat of power-- something that CX mentioned to XY right after they went back to zhaoyun hall after their separation and long time away, when he rebuilt the swing for XY and pushing her on it. (a nod and, i believe, an early sign on how XY and cx have started to diverge in terms of perspective because when XY was wistfully mentioning that the swing is no longer here i think she was talking about the people and the... feelings that come with being around said people rather than the actual swing itself).

his bond with XY on the other hand, is one where such frozenly preserved view, a one-sided one at that, doesn't/wouldn't work to put it mildly lol. i'm not gonna go into details here about the previously mentioned discussion about how xy's and his path diverging because of the experience that each went through, how XY's in a lot of ways is given the chance and is starting to heal while he's essentially stuck in a quagmire, nor would i delve into how the other two guys (xl&jing) seemed to have better inklings of and are actually providing what the current XY wants and/or needs even though the two met him way later that he did-- i'm stating timeline here because much like how it did with the narrative that biological fam isn't all that, the drama also shows that rather than complying to the narrative of i've known him longer, thus i've known him better, it went the other way around that much like relationships, understanding someone requires.... constant effort, a person is dynamically fluid; everchanging, and you can't just take everything for granted in that they will always stay the same, and not from fickleness but from what partly shapes them as a person, which are their experiences.

instead, i'm gonna talk about one comparison point of his seemingly (&increasingly) apt counterpart that is GMP's LCY; specifically, about how his frozen views and its subsequent result of incomplete understanding of the current xy is in a lot of ways similar to LCY's preservation of XF's.... purity and innocence (i'm not talking in sexual terms here, but rather of image, i swear).

aside from not letting others know that XF is his 'weakness'; one of the reasons why LCY, during their doomed 'second chance', was hell-bent on not communicating his... shenanigans (incl but not limited to outward preference for his 'beloved' concubine, scolding and yelling at XF in public, etc) was his belief that XF should remain carefree& protected from all the scheming partly so that she won't get hurt in process and also partly to preserve the innocence and purity in XF, that was essentially a catnip of the highest grade to a feline that was LCY. but also because, and here's the crucial part, LCY firmly believes at the time that: THAT innocent&pure ver. of XF would understand his hardships, and you know what, she'll forgive him for his... transgressions because she'd appreciate the fact that he's been trying to protect her and they'll live happily after ever. except well, no. (and this is not even counting the fact that the man literally used her as an entryway to murder her whole maternal fam).

CX currently is falling to the same lane as LCY. i keep saying the current XY, because in trying so hard to preserve 'what's left' it slipped out of CX's mind (or that he doesn't bother/won't allow himself to think that way) that this XY is no longer that ver. of XY. now this doesn't mean that this XY doesn't/won't prioritise CX-- for all intents and purposes, she still does: look at her go cutting the meat during the dinner and placed it on CX's plate first, how she asked jing to never hurt CX, proclaiming to CX that if one is your enemy then he/she's my enemy too. but here's the catch, much as a person could have multiple layers&traits, they too could have multiple wants and needs and subsequently develops different values& appreciation to things that might not be all that to a different person. for example w/ the current XY: she values found family/friends, because she holds (sincere) companionship and their weight in gold and that unlike CX, blood relationship/'family' is not the end be all with her (as with the case with her attachment to QS town, her love for haoling papa& a-nian, etc).

most importantly, her current biggest want is one that was the result of life away from CX and one, that a person like him with his identity& standing, essentially cannot give-- a desire to be placed above else, to always be the number one priority in one's life. CX, in his frozen self, might still enable him to capture his importance to XY, and rightly so. but, said frozen self also resulted in CX having incomplete understanding of current XY which subsequently made him.. (mistakenly, i’m being generous here) underestimate the degree/full extent of jing's importance to XY. I’m not saying that he doesn’t know that jing’s important to XY, but let’s just say: it says something that he’ll… pull the trigger on the uh upcoming transgressions. because he, like how LCY was with XF, believed that XY, even if she doesn't or won't understand, would eventually forgive him, and the crucial part: would move on from it and to some extent, if not completely, move on from jing.

In some ways, there’s poignancy in his inability to comprehend that just because XY loves jing-- it doesn't necessarily mean that CX would be less important to her. it's a rushed& probably bad analogue, but think of CX and jing meaning to XY like what food and water meant to a person, preferring one at times doesn't negate the importance of the other but rather they serve concurrently as complimentary pieces and this is what, i think, CX frozen self doesn't get, because how he views XY's importance/placement of him (in some ways) is becoming increasingly similar to how he views power, if it's not the top then all might as well be lost. hence why him finally..... snapping and embracing the full extent of his 'greed' would result in us getting this baby later (as previewed in the trailer):

which i found to be such a parallel to this scene from GMP in its context:

it's tragedy and angst in all of their gloriousness; like LCY's arc, CX's slowly going and taking actions in the direction of which he won't realise the full brunts and repercussions of until it's all too late. and much like LCY himself, CX is everything i want from a character. he's well-crafted, dynamic, complex, multifaceted, compelling; i root for and against him; he's lovely, hateful, and everything in between; i cannot get off this ride of seeing how his story will unfold, no matter how bad/heartbreaking the end will be.

(forgive me for rambling for so long, but this char. this char. and ofc, ZWY's portrayal of him are just so….. :’)

Out of the last two eps, this is what sticks with me the most because he 100% believes it and yet he's also 100% wrong and he's repeating his mother's path which is realistic and horrifying and just...

His mother 100% believed she loved him and cared about his happiness - and yet nobody traumatized him the way she did because she put what she wanted above what he wanted refusing to process what horrors it would inflict on him.

And here we are repeating the cycle - he is trapped in it.

He cares about her feelings yet he blew up the rumors about her parentage, ending her loving parental relationship. He cares about her feelings yet he invaded Haoling. He cares about her feelings yet he tries to sabotage her marriage with Jing and worse. He cares about her feelings but he's gonna do his best to kill Xiang Liu. Any novel reader knows exactly what all of this is devolving to and any non-novel reader can guess.

Ultimately, he cares about her feelings only insofar as they don't conflict with his.

In early s1, he would I think have picked for her to be happy even if her happiness was stuff that would devastate him. The way we are progressing we are long done with that and it's not even that he'd pick for her to be unhappy if it meant he'd be happy. The tragedy is he knows he can't be truly happy but he will pick for her to be unhappy if it would mean he will be less unhappy as a result.

He has torpedoed her paternal relationship, he's doing his best to torpedo a love marriage. He wants her to have nothing but him and it's both a reaction to being abandoned by his mother the way he was (if she has nobody but him, she can't leave him for others) and something that is guaranteed to drive her completely away.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I’ve listened to a few episodes of this Comedian’s Comedian podcast now, and it’s really interesting. The host is good at interviewing, and I like the premise of starting from the assumption that listeners know who this person is and what they do and generally how comedy works, and then discussing things from there. It’s a lot better than just hearing someone explain the basics on every different interview for their entire careers.

Last week I listened to Andy Zaltzman’s episode, and wrote a whole post about how a lot of it was genuinely hard to listen to. He was just being honest, and it was fine, he didn’t talk about anything that bad, but he’s never honest and it was so jarring to hear out of him. It made me realize I tend to make the most charitable assumptions about these people and how they ended up where they are. Basically, I think my favourite comedians are the best fucking things in the world, so if they wanted to do something else, then surely they could just do that. Hearing Zaltzman admit that he wanted to do other things and wasn’t able to make them happen was weird and upsetting. Why would anyone not give Andy Zaltzman the room to make everything he wants?

Listening to that episode very much me think, “Jesus, someone give this man a hug and also commission The Department as a BBC television sitcom; the market for political satire TV shows in Britan (fictional satire, not just panel shows) is hardly saturated right now.” But after I finished it I did remember how silly it is to feel bad for the comedians as they’re all doing a whole lot better than most people are. Most of them, or at least the good ones, are self-aware about that. If they do talk publicly about how they wish their careers were going better, they often caveat it with, “I know just getting to make a living off this job makes me very lucky.” Andy Zaltzman repeatedly said during his episode that he doesn’t have much to complain about, he’s had lots of great opportunities.

Well, just a few days later, I’ve come across another episode that has me feeling pity for a rich and famous person. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it; Mark Watson just provokes that reaction so strongly. I’m only about halfway through his episode, and of course every time he’s talked at all about worry that he hasn’t done well enough, he’s fallen over himself to clarify that he knows how lucky he is compared to most people. But people can know that while still feeling insecure about their own level and wishing they were doing better.

He hit the peak of his ability to make me feel bad for rich and famous people when he was asked whether he thought any younger comedians had been influenced by him. At that point, he combined the general pathos-inducing act of being Mark Watson and discussing his own vulnerabilities, with the explanation that he doesn’t think anyone could be influenced by him because they’d be better off with the many people who do what he does but better.

Stuart Goldsmith: Do you feel that you were part of a vanguard, almost, of people who were changing comedy from…

Mark Watson: I’ve got a badge, yeah.

Stuart Goldsmith: [laughs] But do you see what I mean? I feel that you really popularized the kind of reportage, story, finding funny things in a thing that happened… basically what I’m saying is I see a lot of older comics bitching on Facebook, or I used to, in the last five years…

Mark Watson: Yes I thought that’s what you meant. So do I.

Stuart Goldsmith: Bitching on Facebook about the fact that apparently you don’t need to do jokes anymore. You just need to talk about a thing you did.

Mark Watson: I think the time that… I came through in the period that the newcomers were me, Rhod, Manford, Russell Howard, and it definitely was about that time that people started saying, “Oh, you don’t need jokes anymore.” So I think I sort of accidentally was part of that sort of – I mean, no one ever consciously tried to create a movement of jokes not being valid anymore. It’s just, for me obviously it was the only way I could approach it. Actually Manford is a slightly different case, but people like me and Russell were just… I don’t think that I was actually part of that, though, I’d say it was already happening. Because there was a bunch of comedians like Dara, Chris Addison, who came along maybe five years before me, when I first went to Edinburgh and was watching stand-up, and thinking, “Right, this is how you do stand-up,” those people were already doing that. So I’d say the swing towards anecdotal comedy happened in sort of the late ‘90s, and I as a punter was influenced by it, so I reckon I’m sort of second-generation, not vanguard. I reckon I’m sort of, um, standing on the shoulders of… sorry, I briefly thought of standing on the shoulders of Dara, that would be wonderful.

Stuart Goldsmith: You’d feel so powerful if you were on his shoulders. He’s such a mighty…

Mark Watson: Yeah, I just wish one time I could get on Dara. But, uh, yeah…

Stuart Goldsmith: And do you ever recognize, I suppose this is the same question maybe in a different way, is do you ever…

Mark Watson: A great big beast of a man… sorry, carry on.

Stuart Goldsmith: Do you ever recognize any of your style in people that came after you? Do you think there were elements of things that you did that were influential?

Mark Watson: Well, not I don’t think that I’ve been sort of enough of a figure to influence anyone really, because I think… I would say that… because basically, Kitson’s career runs, not quite parallel to mine, he was around three or four years before me, but Daniel Kitson is the kind of defining person doing that sort of stuff in my – not quite my generation, but it’s the same crop of comedians. So if I see people now doing the sort of stuff I do, like deconstructing the joke, deconstructing the business of comedy – not in a Stewart Lee way, but the sort of stuff that I do is… I suppose what I’m saying is, no, I don’t think I’ve influenced anyone. Because if you were going to be influenced by me, you might as well just be influenced by Kitson. I think you can only really regard someone as being influential over the next generation of comics if they are one of a crop of people that are the sort of leaders in that field, and that’s never really been me.

The last few sentences of that were all I really need to quote to make my point, but I wrote out the whole exchange because 1) I found it interesting to hear Mark Watson’s explanation of how the predominant style of stand-up comedy has changed in the last couple of decades, and 2) the stuff about Dara was funny. I’m going to see Dara O’Briain live in a few hours, and I’m sure standing on his shoulders would be very exciting.

But yeah, it’s the last little bit of that that made me realize I was again feeling the desire to give a celebrity a hug and tell him it’s going to be okay. Mark Watson expressing insecurity is a pretty common occurrence, but this seems like a special level of it, and an instance of him doing it while not “in character” in any way.

Mark, buddy, it’s okay. We can’t all be Daniel Kitson. I know we all wish we could be, but unfortunately only one person gets to be Daniel Kitson, and he’s not even enjoying it. I get the impression that Daniel Kitson hasn’t had a good time since about 2006. Anyway, I’ve heard a few different comedians say that sometimes they hear Daniel Kitson and it makes them wonder what the fuck is the point of them or anyone else trying to do comedy when they’ll never be that good. I see where they’ve coming from, because I’ve spent the last little while listening and re-listening to a bunch of Daniel Kitson’s stuff, and it makes me wonder what the point is, and I’m not even a comedian. I’m just a person who puts words together on an amateur basis, and it’s sometimes part of what I do for a living as well, and when I listen to Daniel Kitson use language I have found myself thinking the rest of us may as well stop bothering.

But Mark, this isn’t true, at least not for you. Because you are also a very talented person who puts words together in all kinds of worthwhile ways! I’ve never seen Daniel Kitson write a song as good as “Always Seeing You Do Cool Stuff” in only twenty minutes. I bet he wouldn’t be able to come close. He wouldn’t even get in the ballpark, because he’d decline the offer due to thinking he’s too good for Taskmaster, which I guess he actually sort of is, but that’s not the point. The point is I bet he doesn’t have the out-of-the-box creative thinking required to turn a hat into machine by altering reality itself, via manipulation of the authority on reality (Wikipedia).

Also, I have heard two of Mark Watson’s full stand-up shows, and they are wonderful thoughtful intelligent pieces of art that have clearly been crafted with care and skill. I’m only halfway through this podcast episode, but it’s already reminded me of how much I love Mark Watson, and it’s inspired a renewed effort for me to find his comedy online. I managed to find and download a copy of his 2015 stand-up show “Flaws” that was released as a DVD, so I’m going to watch that as soon as I get a chance. I’m looking forward to it.

[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

[engekihaikyuu]

View from the Top 2 - Review

Check out the Read More if you’d like to hear about this show!  Askbox is open as well if you’d like me to elaborate on anything out of this.

Before I begin my review of the final show, I do want to start with some caveats:

So as I mentioned previously, the production once again went with PIA for their live streaming platform, which means that live streaming this show is very inaccessible for anyone living outside of Japan.

PIA is a ticketing platform that requires a working Japanese phone number in order to finish activating/registering a new account because you must call the number provided to finish account verification. So without a Japanese contact or a Japanese phone number, this platform is basically impossible.

I have a generous friend in Japan who was willing to share her account information with me, which is how I was able to pay for a show and use her log-in to watch the stream. I did not see this show in-person; I do not live in Japan and obviously travel is off-limits. Even if I did live in Japan, I would have qualms about going to the theater.

There are some logistical issues with this show because of the current pandemic, with the most visually obvious one being the small face shields the actors wear on-stage. They basically serve as protection against direct spittle, but obviously they do nothing to guard against aerosol spread; putting on the play is still an incredible risk to the performers and staff. Another difficulty they face is the fact that Tokyo is still continuing to maintain a nightly curfew. Every evening Tokyo performance needed to be bumped earlier so that spectators can leave the theater in time to make it home for that curfew. Keeping that in mind, the show is a surprisingly condensed 2.5 hours long, where I would have expected 3 hours given the amount of content it covered. This does affect the pacing in Act 2 noticeably, and I get the feeling that were it not for covid and the current curfew restrictions, it would feel a little less rushed at the end.

So, with all that said, here are my thoughts on Engeki Haikyuu’s final play, The View from the Top 2!!!  This is absolutely not spoiler-free, for both the play’s content and everything that happened in the manga finale, so if you have not finished the series, this is your last chance to turn back.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t written a full review on a show since Fly High, so I’m a bit rusty at this, and I’ll probably leave out a lot so as always, my askbox is open for people’s additional questions!

The absolute main theme of this play (and really of the entire Haikyuu story) is the friendship and rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama, and the theme: I’m not alone. Engeki really did right by our dual protagonists by framing the final show as showing both of their journeys from beginning to end. Act 1 begins with that familiar sequence from the very first show: Hinata seeing the little giant on TV, being inspired to start playing volleyball, his struggle to find a team in middle school, losing to Kageyama in his one and only middle school tournament, and finding him again at Karasuno. They repeated the scene almost exactly as it was in the first show, and I think it was very smart of them to show us Daigo’s version of it, so to speak. That way we have a more cohesive vision of Hinata from the beginning of his journey to the end. Then they absolutely FLOOD the stage with a montage of projections with footage from all of the shows from the past five-and-a-half years. So already it’s pretty emotional for me, seeing how far the play had come as well as how far Hinata had come in the story.

To parallel this, the beginning of Act 2 actually begins with baby Kageyama. Yes, the baby Kageyama flashback with his sister and grandfather and how he started volleyball. We see Kageyama’s volleyball journey from childhood (for this they used a small doll similar to the dolls they used for young Kuroo and Kenma from Revival) to playing at Kitagawa Daiichi, to losing his grandfather, to being labeled the King of the Court, to defeating Hinata, and then having Hinata find him at Karasuno. And then they once again, they flood the stage with projections with past show footage, but this time they are more Kageyama-centric in the way that the previous ones were often Hinata-centric. And it just really highlights how much these two are meant to share the stage as the two main characters.

To see this framework and to know what’s going to come at the end, with the two of them reuniting in the pro-volleyball arena… just the beginning of Act 2 alone had me in tears. Another way they paralleled their respective journeys was to show us who have influenced them. In Act 1, there’s a dance with Hinata, Hoshiumi, and Udai (all little giants… well, Tsukishima’s in there too because he’s feeling a particular competitiveness with Hinata in this part of the match). In Act 2, there’s a dance with Kageyama, Atsumu, and Oikawa, because Atsumu and Oikawa are the setters who have had the most influence on Kageyama, and he’s drawing on what he’s learned from them for this match. They are not alone in their journeys, they have had people inspire them and be inspired by them in addition to having the support of their teammates.

The Karasuno vs Kamomedai match is interspersed with bits of action from the Fukurodani vs Mujinazaka match, so the stage was pretty busy for basically the entire time. The wires are back for some sequences so that both Hinata and Hoshiumi have a chance to fly, and there are plenty of acrobatics and lifts, and the same incredible soundtrack we love. Ryuu’s Hoshiumi is the obvious standout on Kamomedai for how many lifts he had, and they definitely tried to have him running around on the stage about as much as Hinata. It was notable how much they drew on past techniques and music for various parts of this match, since this is meant to be Karasuno at their peak. When Asahi was feeling particularly stuck/trapped against Kamomedai’s defense, they incorporated the tying-up visual they had previously used in Winners and Losers, with Kamomedai basically tying up and holding Asahi in place with ribbon. There was Summer of Evolution music when Karasuno does a great synchro attack, and the extras-wearing-Hinata-masks reappeared to show us Hinata’s “afterimage” as he flashes around the stage. If you’ve seen all the plays, you can’t miss these call-backs.

The flow of the match was fast. They hit the highlight plays and the highlight emotional moments, but we are clearly past the point where they need to narrate the actual volleyball to us. There was more dancing/acrobatics than attempting to place the two teams on either sides of a physical net with more overt volleyball moves. Everything was more intertwined and fluid than that. And actually now that I think about it, they have been sparse with their usage of a physical net in the past few shows, because everything has been a little more fast-paced overall.

They definitely wanted to highlight Karasuno’s rise throughout the game, to show that they were absolutely a formidable team, that they deserved to be at Nationals, and to show us all the ways that Hinata and Kageyama had grown. For most of Act 2 leading up to Hinata’s collapse, it really feels like they could win this. And I think it makes it that much harder for Hinata to accept being benched, because the team is riding this high and doing so well, and even Kageyama’s more visibly having fun. I think Takeda-sensei easily has a third of the best lines in the series. His speech to Hinata during the Kamomedai match is one that was really gut-wrenching to read when those chapters came out, and it was great to hear it said aloud.

And here is something I’ve never been able to point out because I didn’t do reviews for the past two tours, but I think Daigo’s voice is one of the strongest aspects of his Hinata. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the work he’s done as a voice actor, but when he cries or whimpers, it is genuinely the most pitiful noise. A lot of Kenta’s portrayal of Hinata’s frustrations throughout the story had an undercurrent of anger and frustration. He’s upset, but there’s always something behind it that says, “well next time, it’ll be different.” And I think Daigo replaces most of that with pure sadness, especially for this scene. After Takeda-sensei lectures him good and proper, and he accepts that he needs to leave, he just sounds so broken. It doesn’t have that anger and drive underneath, he’s just in despair. And why wouldn’t he be? A part of him understands this is the last match he’ll ever play with this team, his first real team.

We then see Hinata bundled up in a coat and scarf, watching the rest of the match from the tablet that Kenma gives him. Snow begins to fall on the stage as he slowly wanders through it, with Karasuno and Kamomedai finishing out the rest of the match around him. Engeki Haikyuu has always allowed for the losing team in a match to line up at the edge of the stage, say thank you to the audience, bow, and take their leave. It’s so symbolic, and it’s so emotional for the actors and for the audience who are in the theater. It’s a moment that just barely breaks the fourth wall, when they turn to us, the spectators, to say, “Thank you for your support.” And they mean it both in and out of character. And I was so so so sad when I realized that Karasuno would take their final bow as a team without Hinata in the lineup. He’s in the back of the stage, separated from his team, and he does take a bow, but it’s very lonely.

Now, I’m sure people are very curious about the timeskip material, and mostly I just have to preface with: it’s fast. It does not take up as much of Act 2 as you might think. It’s boom, boom, boom, cameo here, pre-recorded projections there, patissier Tendou interview, Kuroo in a suit doing a promotional commercial for the V-League, Kageyama’s curry commercial, a projected Osamu selling his rice balls, get the old team together, fateful encounters in front of the bathroom, GO! The only thing we see of the Brazil arc is Hinata having a brief flashback to tell Kageyama that he met Oikawa while he was in Brazil. It’s very short, and that’s all we get for his time in Brazil. Basically, the play is not the place to see Hinata’s journey and growth from those chapters because he goes through so much of it alone, and there’s just no time. The Brazil arc also brings back a lot of technical details about volleyball itself, especially as Hinata is learning the beach version, and that’s an area where the manga is the best medium to examine the finer details of the sport. I can see why a play version would gloss over the technical details to focus on the emotional arc, which is in this case, Hinata and Kageyama.

Because of how fast the ending is, it definitely feels made for the people who already read the manga; Previous Engeki Haikyuu shows have always presented the story in a way that was very friendly to those who may not have read the manga or watched the anime. You could watch just Engeki Haikyuu and not feel like you were missing out on references/jokes for the most part, but this ending would be way harder to follow for those not familiar with what’s already happened.  

It’s difficult because I do feel like Act 2 was overly condensed to wrap up this story, but I also don’t think the timeskip material is enough for a whole play on its own. If we had stopped at the end of the Kamomedai match, and had a whole separate play to cover Brazil and the Jackals vs Adlers match… the pacing would’ve been slow and low energy especially in the first half, and it would be an odd choice for the final show of a series like this. My preference would have been for this play to have been three acts, three hours, so that we could linger on some of those timeskip moments a little more, slow it down, and let them land emotionally. But clearly the covid situation prevents that in this case. That being said, I don’t think any of those timeskip moments could really hit as hard as when I first read them in the manga. Narratively, that Haikyuu timeskip was so unexpected and so outside the normal sports anime formula, that the initial shock is extremely hard to top. It was fun to see how they presented everyone in the future (seeing Noya on that boat catching a giant swordfish, or seeing Ennoshita almost break a patient’s back) in stage form, but it’s unreasonable to expect them to give us the same feeling of ?!?!?!? when we first read that Noya was in Italy of all places after waiting weeks and weeks for him to show up.

I still cried in several places, it’s still a great ending to one of the best 2.5D franchises in existence, and it still feels like the culmination of their legacy. I don’t know how it would be possible for anyone to watch that ending sequence with all of the team flags and the chanting of their names, and NOT cry.

There are no more live streams until they complete the rest of their tour and then there will be a live-stream of the very last show, which I will be watching with a towel in hand for my tears. Feel free to send in any questions if you’d like, and if you would like some Strongest Challengers or Trash Heap merch, I have a sales post that I recently made.

[veronicasanders]

Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millennium, a century? What ridiculously time consuming hobbies would you master with all the leisure time that kind of lifespan would allow? How did you become immortal? Do you try to hide it?

Hello my love!! Thank you so much for the questions! Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer—I’ve had a mildly traumatic couple of days. Anyway, here we go!!

“Forever” seems like a terrifying proposition, seeing as how the human race almost certainly will have a limited run. But long enough to see a huge swath of history seems cool—I would say that longer than a millennium is probably too long, lol. I also think that the whole eternal life/extra-long life thing probably needs some caveats. Like, your body stays in its peak form in terms of strength, endurance, flexibility, etc. Also that you have some kind of fast-healing that diminishes physical pain or illness. Third, I think I probably wouldn't want to be the only one with the extra-long lifespan, because the idea of everyone you love dying seems really lonely, even if you can gain new friends and loved ones along the way. Also enough money so that I can have a decent life, because the idea of like…1000 years of poverty sounds incredibly horrifying. 

Hobbies…that’s a really good question! The first thing that comes to mind is something really slow and meditative like Tibetan sand painting. I also think I’d want to cultivate an amazing vegetable garden even though naturally I have a hard time even keeping a cactus alive. Learning languages, which is something I have no patience for now but with a lot more time, I would probably (hopefully) give myself a break and just learn slowly. Traveling would be a must, too. It feels like it would be cyclical, like 10-20 years of travel followed by 10-20 years of settling somewhere beautiful.  

How did I become immortal? This is also interesting because I’m not a huge supernatural fan—there’s always too much violence and destruction that comes with things like vampires. So I would say that like, there’s a universal cheat code where if you bring joy to enough people, you get the immortality. That way also solves the potential loneliness issue because I know that some of my favorite people will get there first, haha. 

Hiding it seems fun for the first like, 100 years or so. Every 10-20 years or so, you adopt a new persona. But then eventually I’d probably just want to be out in the open, as long as it doesn’t result in people trying to do experiments on me or shit like that. I have too much fun revealing my every thought to think that I could hide it forever, haha. 

Thanks again for the questions, darling! If we go by the joy-bringing rules above, then you’ve achieved immortality ages ago. 😘💖✨