#like sure you are one of the main writers and have been for ten years

[dragynkeep]

Theres goes Miles Luna stirring up the whiterose shippers 😒. Doesn't he have a wife now? Why is he still milking for attention from teen girls?

These creators need to stop getting so involved in fandom matters, is2g

[brandileigh2003]

Older wolfstar fic recs: (older in age that is)

let me know what I missed and self recs are welcome (also as always check tags for each one to protect yourself)

~~~please give these authors love, fandom engagement with writers is down and it means more than you know. ~~~

**And I know older is relative term bc most of these wolfstar are in their 30s I do believe. But. They have more life experience than in Hogwarts or uni.

--orange juice (i've been ready for you to come home for so long) by raggedypond: divorced parents of teddy with one bed at his graduation

-Honey If I'm Not by @brigid-faye divergent post war where remus left, jily lived, and wolfstar only reconnects years later by chance. (Also has a Sirius pov)

---used my best colours for your portrait by @littleoldrachel lie low at Lupin's with flashbacks exploring remus' life

-Looking for Moony by Writer_INFJ_2w1: meet and fall in love birthday party

-Flight of Destiny by @lucigoo lesbian wolfstar meet on plane (Luci also has several others where they're older and lots of beautiful fics

--Aging Gracelessly by orphan_account: texting fic

--the mayors of simpleton by fruity_individual divorced wolfstar get back together, raising teddy

-Second Generation by MsAlexWP single parents, getting back together. The sequel is so perfect too! It's a Nice Day for a Wolfstar Wedding

-the sea is a good place to think of the future by peachyybabe (second in series is mcd but this one is open ending)

-Of Memories and Milk Thievery by moonymoment raising teddy, get back together

--Birthday Blues by YouBlitheringIdiot @blitheringmcgonagall :Sirius is turning sixty and he is appalled...

--Give Quarter to Old Men - @krethes series

--dear your holiness by mollymarymarie

--The Postwar Chronicles by @sliebman10 post canon series

-Vigil Strange I Kept by whitmans_kiss explores effects of lycanthropy

--ten reasons (to go to michigan) by @greyeyedmonster-18 remus headed home, trying to move on from divorce

--Prettiest Star Verse by Raging_queer

-I didn’t sign up for this by Moonystoastandmarsbar divorced wolfstar

-Of Protein Powders and PTAs by @squintclover and @tracingpatternswrites rivals to lovers

-An Infinte Ocean by orphan_account raising teddy strangers to lovers

--The Road Not Taken by @mollymarymarie

-extra credit by MsAlexWP rivals to lovers

-Baby On Board by aqua_myosotis

-Of Memories, Bitter and Sweet by MsAlexWP memory loss

**luci's recs

-my love, take care of yourself by littleoldrachel

-How to romance a guy with (terrible) poetry by BayleyWinchester

-Teddy Plays Matchmaker by grow_as_we_go

-The Front Step Surprise by R33sesPieces

**Recs from others** (I haven't read all these yet but wanted to include)

--Just what the doctor ordered by WrappedUp (be aware there is age gap)

--The Lab by de_sire again an age gap

-Till We Have Arrived Home Again by prouvairing divergent post canon raising harry

-The Patchwork of Us by TracingPatterns

-The Things I Did by Lolo_row

-The Phoenix Agency by LupinsChocolatePraline

-The Fall by EuripidesTrousers

-Pages of You by wolfpants this is drarry main but apparently background wolfstar is really good

-Just Like Heaven by the_prettiest_w0lf_star: mechanic Sirius and librarian Remus

-soloorganaas

-impishtubist

***Self rec***

--Memories of You: mcd exploring memory loss

--Through the Years: Sirius thinks about the past and how handsome his husband is while holding their granddaughter.

--DN(R): Lie low at Lupin's era where they discuss decisions Remus made in the lost years.

**also- the wolfstar librarian is always a great resource make sure to give some likes on posts: 30yo and Up part 2 Bring Black Back Back from the Veil Lie Low at Lupin’s Post Azkaban Grimmauld Place

--Feel free to check my other rec lists, as well as the rest of my fics

--also ... This is list of canon divergent fic recs: post-azkaban, bring back black, lie low at lupins. Lots of same fics but I might not have all in both places.

[onyourowndaisymae]

the obey me franchise as we know it is ending.

i'm sure if you're following this blog that you have seen the announcement from the devs on the official obey me account. they announced that december of 2024 will bring the last batch of game content for the og obey me and obey me nightbringer apps. they're very clear that the lore of obey me will continue into other projects, and that the characters will return. please read the official statement if you have not already.

i don't anticipate anyone has been waiting to hear my opinion on the matter. but the announcement has had me thinking. i want to update you all both on my feelings about the in-game story ending and my future plans for obey me works on this blog. there's one particular takeaway that keeps coming to mind with all of this.

there is nothing wrong with enjoying romance, or with loving otome games.

i think i noticed my interest dwindling in obey me nightbringer going into season 2. there was this storyline about the brothers being summoned to return to heaven or face the threat of a war between the celestial realm and the devildom, and the drama around the plot felt very tangible and heavy with emotions. i was so sure season 2 was going to reflect these stakes. and then it just... didn't. season 2 didn't seem to care much about the previous season at all. i fell behind in playing, but i kept up with summaries made by my peers. i had every intention to catch up once the game drew me back in.

but it just... didn't.

i think nightbringer's storyline is pretty lackluster. i'm not going to claim that og was some stroke of brilliance, but the writing was pretty interesting. actions had consequences. the stakes felt important. and that's not nostalgia talking, either-- i got into this game way later than some of my peers. this blog just celebrated its two year anniversary earlier this month, and at that time i hadn't even heard of the game. i just... there was something special about og. and there was something special about the first ten lessons of nightbringer, too. it felt like there was real care put into the story, into establishing a semi-coherent line of lore between plot threads. i don't believe that care is here anymore. it hasn't been for awhile. the events are bad. the main story is bad. character complexities have been flattened down into quippy one-liners and boring texts. asmo is shallow. satan likes cats. beel is hungry. these characters i once raced to consume content for in order to analyze each dimension of their personality have all been made boring and repetitive to fit into a boring and repetitive plot.

there's also a point to be made about the age rating and clear shift in audience changing from og to nightbringer. jesus. that shit was so painful and probably contributed to why nightbringer felt so juvenile at times. i am not a child. i am not particularly interested in my romance games being targeted towards kids. i'm also not all that interested in my romance games being ashamed of romance games, aka the clear conclusion nightbringer has led me to believe. the severe lack of romance in the later seasons of the franchise was utterly painful, like the game was pulling a switcheroo on the fans as to what the game would be about. where raunchy jokes and suggestive scenes would be now feels hollow-- each kiss from the characters feels like a chaste way to placate the audience into not protesting the complete and utter lack of intimate connection with the characters. not every game has to be smut, obviously, and i'm not saying i'm mad at obey me for not being straight-up pornographic. but for fucks sake-- season 2 of og opened with an aphrodesiac plotline. clearly, the writers have had no problem with coy, fade-to-black suggestiveness before. the exclusion of romance is such a detriment to nightbringer, and shows a clear lack of interest from the devs in continuing to write the romance game they promised.

basically, i'm not a fan of nightbringer. i think the story of obey me is cooked so far. it's hard not to feel a bit betrayed, either. i understand companies have to make money, and obviously choosing more profitable forms of media or audiences is a choice companies will make, but... i don't know. it feels like solmare wants to transition away from romance when most of us are explicitly here for it. what audience is left when you abandon both your genre and original format? i don't want to the story to continue in a manga or anime. that defeats the purpose of the gn!mc they created, as well as the whole damn plot revolving around the player character. if that's where the franchise's future lies, well, then... i guess i'm not going to be keeping up with it in the future.

do not misunderstand me-- i have lots of love for the obey me games. i structured this damn blog around them. i wrote fanfiction and made community and supported these games financially. but i have a right to my own interests. i started playing obey me because it was an otome game. the main drawing points were the accessibility of the format (mobile game) and the romance. lots of people are disappointed, as am i. the devs (and other fans) can scream and shout from the rooftops that "obey me isn't over", and technically, they're right, but what is obey me anymore? is it the characters they've flattened for marketability? the lore they've retconned and destroyed? the games they're no longer continuing?

to be clear, all of this is speculation. i may eat my words next year when they come out with "obey me 3: mc's return" or whatever the hell they have in store. but i'm not really interested if it's not a well-written, interesting game centered around a solid plot, familiar characters, and romance. solmare has a lot to prove should they want to capture my interest again for future projects.

as for the future of obey me on this blog? for starters, i will not be mass deleting any of my works. i personally detest when people do this, and i will not be contributing to this phenomena.

going forward, i will, predictably, branch out into other games. i've been really into love & deepspace and ikemen villians recently. both of those games have very interesting plotlines. i feel revitalized playing them-- they feel like a lover letter to the genre, giving the same level of interest and care that fans do into keeping the game running. so expect those sorts of games to end up here. i also have a separate twisted wonderland blog, as that game, even though it's not romance, is still full of wonderful characters and a very interesting storyline that i adore. but obey me has a spot in my heart forever, and i will continue to write about it. i still have many ideas, ocs to introduce, series to make, aus to explore... despite the games' story ending, the stories here will live on.

i am warning you now, though, that i will be taking many creative liberties with the lore. and if new content comes out that i'm not keeping up with, and it somehow contradicts my works... well, tough shit. solmare can kiss my ass. you will have to pry these characters out of my cold, dead, rotting hands before you can have them back.

to summarize: the obey me games are finishing the story by the end of this year. i will probably not keep up with the lore should it continue in a serious capacity in forms like manga, anime, live shows, etc. i am interested in writing more within the universe, but i will be tweaking lore as i see fit to undo the damage solmare has done recently. this blog is going to expand more into other games as well. none of my fics will be deleted en masse due to this announcement. the voice actors and people who poured all their love into these games have my affection, but solmare is on my shitlist forever probably.

[thankskenpenders]

And now for something new

So, here's something I was never planning on doing, but I just couldn't shake the idea... Thanks Ken Penders is gaining a sister blog featuring an entirely different comic franchise!

Introducing... Thanks Steve Ditko, a blog where I read the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics, starting all the way back in the '60s! It's gonna be much more casual and less thorough than how I run things here on TKP, though, which I'll explain in a sec.

If seeing me post weird bits from old Spider-Man comics sounds fun and you need no further info, then just head right on over to Thanks Steve Ditko. But for longtime TKP readers, I know you probably have questions...

Number one: Why?

Spider-Man's always been my favorite superhero, and with the Spider-Verse movies kicking ass and my excitement building for the new Insomniac game, I've been in a Spidey mood. Inevitably, a thought occurred to me: Maybe I should actually read the comics that everything else is built off of and see the wildly varying contributions of all the original creators, rather than filtering them through big budget adaptations. If I can power through One Piece and all these other manga with hundreds of chapters, it can't be that hard... right?

And, well, after a few issues I quickly realized that my options were to either clog up my other accounts with random Spider-Man panels for years, or to just make a side blog. And so the side blog was born.

Two: Will this blog replace Thanks Ken Penders?

NO!!!!!!!!!

Okay but prove it

To allow the two to exist side-by-side, Thanks Steve Ditko will have a different format than what Thanks Ken Penders developed. Rather than an in-depth guided tour that critically analyzes every story beat of every issue, TSD will just be a place for amusing panels and brief thoughts as I casually read the comics at my own pace.

If you've seen me make a few tweets about reading Spider-Man recently, I'm basically just moving that to a dedicated Tumblr. It's a place for me to dump these things so that it doesn't fill up my media tab on Twitter for the next decade. (You know, assuming Twitter is still around in a decade.) There will be many issues where I only post two panels that I thought were funny. There will be issues where I don't have anything to say at all. Maybe I'll reach a run that I just cannot get into, and I start skipping around more. Who knows!

This may sound similar to what I thought this blog would be before it blew up. Aside from the simple fact that there's already mountains of Spider-Man commentary out there and therefore less of a void for me to fill, one of the main steps I'll be taking to avoid repeating the past is not enabling an ask box on TSD. I do not need people to ask me to go into ten times more detail on everything. I do not need to write seven essay-length responses to questions about Spider-Man minutiae every day. I do not need a place for people to chide me for not covering certain scenes, issues, or ancillary series.

It also won't have any kind of update schedule. I'm trying to keep it very casual. I'm reading these comics at my own pace, and if I feel like sharing a moment or commenting on something while doing so? It goes there. That's it.

(On the subject of format changes, I'm also listing the issue, writer, and penciller in the body of every post. This is a thing I wish I'd done on TKP so that people didn't misattribute every weird Archie Sonic panel I post to Penders.)

Three: So when will TKP come back from hiatus? You said it'd come back after you finished SLARPG!

I don't know! Sorry. I have a couple things on the backburner right now for TKP, but I'm not sure when I'll get back to proper updates where I read more comics.

I wanted to bring TKP back this year, and that's still possible. The main hurdle is that I want to reread my own archive (again) as a refresher, which is, uh. A lot of posts. I've developed a high standard for myself on here, and I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job right if I forgot half the ongoing subplots and character arcs and didn't bring them up in my analysis. Especially when I'm discussing the work of an author as obsessed with continuity as Ian Flynn. Unfortunately, the nature of this blog means that every time I go on another long hiatus for Life Reasons I have even more comic continuity to catch up on than last time.

(This is a big part of why I'm making Thanks Steve Ditko an extremely casual blog instead of promising to become a Lore Expert on 60+ years of Marvel.)

Mostly I've just been very burnt out this year after having finally finished a video game that took almost eight years to make. I haven't really had the energy for any creative projects, including TKP. But I feel a little bit of a spark here with Spider-Man, so I'm chasing that feeling to try to get back into the swing of blogging about comics - no pun intended.

So, basically, bear with me on this as I start this low-energy side project. But hopefully folks will enjoy Thanks Steve Ditko as its own thing, too.

Look forward to goofy shit like this

[lookingfts]

As we approach S3...

First of all, I want to say thank you for the (truly overwhelming) number of asks and comments I've gotten so far! It's been really exciting and this is certainly not intended to discourage anyone from reaching out - it's just my own feelings on the subject.

I've been thinking about a lot of the comments I've gotten over the past few weeks that hint at the show writers not "liking" Kanthony, or them not getting enough screen time in S3. My thoughts on this are and have always been - a) It's a waste of energy to assume things about media we haven't consumed yet, and b) I'm not interested in dwelling on the negatives. Were there things I didn't like about S2? Sure. Are there things I won't like about S3? Almost certainly. But Bridgerton, and Kanthony in particular, has given me a beautiful community that got me back into fanfiction after more than a year of writer's block. And for any legitimate grievances about it, which I know there are some, I am very grateful for that. I'm only here, talking to you all, because of it.

I'm going to sit on my couch on Thursday and eat snacks and watch S3 and enjoy myself, whether we get ten minutes of Kanthony or thirty. (My first fanfic fandom was Scorpion - anyone who has watched that show knows that it got canceled after a finale where the main ship breaks up and all the characters hate each other. So, honestly, I'm pretty content just to get A happy ending, and catch a few glimpses of that happy ending.)

All that is to say - I hope everyone enjoys S3, and I still have a very long list of fics to tackle after it airs, and I just ask that everyone respects my wish, as much as possible, to avoid negativity when reaching out to me after S3. It's not the headspace I want to be in, it won't encourage me to write, and I think fandom in general has lost so much of its enjoyment. I don't care about the show's flaws! It's a show, and not a particularly deep one at that. I love Kanthony, and I love this fandom, and that's ultimately all that matters to me.

[victusinveritas]

Writing advice from Nick Mamatas.

Some science fiction/fantasy creative writing students I have encountered, a field guide

1. World-Savers: these are generally older students, have no real interest in SF/F, are writing a book to express political or metaphysical ideas they consider to be radical and necessary for the future of life on Earth. In reality, they're writing long Platonic dialogues about their ideas, and authority from various culture and pop culture tropes (aliens, noble savages, fairies, resurrected presidents)–to the extent that their work has a plot at all, it involves a Christ figure transforming the world via a sacrifice. The ideas aren't very radical either: "pollute less" and "love your neighbor, unless they're a dick" are common. Occasionally the message for the world has to do with something more prosaic: reverse budgeting, the evils of Affirmative Action, the importance of installing solar panels, how dare Eileen divorce me and fuck like three guys in the six months after she moved out, etc. These students are utterly confused by actually existing SF/F stories they read, and often interpret them in bizarrely sexual ways. They don't believe in numbering the pages of their manuscripts, and often attempt to submit work in PDF so it won't be stolen.

2. Children with Money: recent college grads, or drop-outs, these people have read Harry Potter, Twilight, and perhaps three or four other best-selling young adult series and nothing else. They are easily upset, especially when someone suggests reading more. Their main interests are YouTube personalities, video games, and a sort of Puritanical pansexuality that actually makes smut boring. They often "forget" to read the work of other students, and have no idea how to use a printer. They warn the other students that their story might be "too intense" because it contains, for example, a depiction of a car accident. Their stories are routinely awful, and always contain a character named "Aidan." Sometimes their parents come to class to make sure I am "not a serial killer", as though they could possibly tell from looking at me. (Oh, "Mamatas" IS a white person name...I guess?)

3. Anointed Ones: They contact me, or the people running the workshop, beforehand, to make sure that "the class is right" for them. They have file cabinets full of their stuff, and after many decades of toil, they are ready to reveal their work to the world. They just need a mentor, and an ally—could I be the one they've been searching for lo these many years? Prior workshops were full of callow teachers and jealous students. Why they were only allowed to submit ten pages a week! Some of them have actually read fairly widely, but you wouldn't know it from their work: three adjectives per noun, a fetish for speech tags other than the word "said" or no tags at all. Often these stories include as characters philosophical prostitutes with very sensitive nipples. They never miss a class and often show up more than thirty minutes early. One time, I had to hide in a closet to avoid an extensive pre-class conversation with one.

4. Frightened Proles: These have read Stephen King and Dean Koontz and sometimes even horror writers from this century. They generally have working-class jobs and write about working people who encounter the supernatural on the late shift. They really hope they can sell their novel soon, but they know it'll take a lot of work. (Ten more drafts oughta do it!) They wear baseball hats to class and look like enormous eight-year-olds. They get very excited when I mention professional wrestling or do a taiji move in class. Their significant others are often nameless—"my girlfriend" "my wife." They buy my books and bring them to class for autographs. Some of them get published after, especially flash fiction.

5. Repairables: decent writers, often involved in the SFF "scene", who need to be fixed after a bad experience with Clarion or another workshop or an overeager editor at a semipro magazine who told them some idiot nonsense they decided to believe because they were told it was "unprofessional" not to consider editorial feedback. These either get published...or lost to MFA programs, video game jobs, fandom, podcasts, or other writing-shaped pursuits. Most of them are ferocious name-droppers; the ones who heard of me beforehand know to keep quiet though.

[mulderscully]

so here we are again, i'm breaking up with doctor who again? and i have a lot of asks about why and i have some asks from people ranting at me because they know me well enough to know why these specials would upset me.

i wanna go over why i'm upset a bit, and i'm gonna do it on main because at the end of the day my tumblr career started here.

as a lot of you may be aware, i have been a huge fan of journey's end and of tentoo for over ten years. my god, i have been in the absolute trenches defending that ending for rose and defending the metacrisis doctor for so long that it's honestly part of who i am.

when rtd was announced to be returning as showrunner i was really excited because i thought he was such a brilliant writer who understood the show and his characters. rtd has always been imperfect, but his original run was about life, death, happiness, pain and how you cannot have one without the other. it was about the human experience and the tragedy of the doctor always being on the outside of that. so close but never having it fully.

that's what made it compelling.

now, i was pretty convinced that the fourteenth doctor was going to be tentoo or that something tentoo related was why that face came back. not just because i wanted it but because it made sense. tentoo is half of the metacrisis, he is why donna lost her memories and the toymaker is a villian who messes with universes for fun! all these pieces fit.

it wasn't primarily about rose because i knew billie wouldn't be in the specials, it was about this making the most sense for donna and for the doctor and their relationship.

my biggest issue now is that... fourteen is not ten. the audience seems to be accepting him as such because that's how he was written, but doing so really undercut a lot of what made the tenth doctor my doctor.

fourteen is not ten, he and donna have not seen each other in years - millions for him, fifteen for her - they are different people. or they SHOULD be. and of course he still loves her, of course of course but it doesn't ring true to me for them to barely address how long they've been apart and act like it's s4 again so rtd can give ten a "happy ending."

i don't even know where to start cause it's all so upsetting. listen, i don't like donna getting her memories back and i know that is unpopular but i feel like that tragedy was so well done that reversing it with a wave of the hand is a travesty. but even if donna had kept her memories, fine! show me her family, show me how she has grown and changed in the life without him and show me how she has grown to love herself and is ready to let ten go so he can let go of the guilt of what he had to do to her. why does donna need to have her own doctor?

in russell's book "the writer's tale" he was ADAMANT about donna NEVER getting her memories back. he was proud, as he should have been, of how painfully he ended s4 because tragedy has value.

the key difference between this and journeys end and giving rose her own doctor is that while rose gets a happy ending, it's tinged with pain and with sacrifice for them all. it comes with a price and that makes it all the more precious. ten and tentoo have always been the same guy with different opportunities and how that affects who we become to me. you remove the tragedy from it and the core falls out and it feels soulless.

sure, rose would be happy that the doctor is happy but i'm sorry this is rose's storyline repackaged and handed to donna and done in a way the audience accepts as "real." which is so fucking mindnumbingly unfair and lazy. to take the doomsday, "one adventure i can never have," which is about rose and giving it to donna is so god damn insulting. it's like donna's popularity as a platonic soulmate to ten has completely overpowered the power of nine and ten's relationship with rose, her family and what they represented for him and that doesn't sit right with me and i'm not ashamed to say it.

and it doesn't even work overall because the doctor settled down with river for 24 years already. like... he already had that adventure in various ways! it's like rtd thought he could pick up in 2008.

this is what he originally wanted to do with journeys end and instead of using what he already had and expanding on it, instead of using how tentoo has been thinking of donna for fifteen years too bc he cost her everything, instead of using their metacrisis to have him absorb his mind, instead of using how they are biologically related he makes a THIRD david tennant doctor? it's perplexing. he could have easily brought tentoo over to the main universe and if he REALLY wanted to had donna and her fam move to pete's world and seal them all away for his soft reboot that way.

now we have two timelord doctors in the main dw verse. why? what's gonna happen to him! what about when donna die? does he become the valeyard? what was the point? HOW does this celebrate 60 years?

but my biggest pain of all has been how this neuters ten and the audience perception of him. i love how rude he was. i love how repressed he was. i love his pain and his sillness. i love how he went mad. i love i don't want to go. i LOVE how hard it was for him because it fucking Meant something. like julie gardner said, the doctor is his most compelling when he has to sacrifice something. i love a happy ending, but i worry we are forgetting the value or something ending painfully and just... ending.

tldr; i have more to say but at the moment i feel like my favorite doctor got erased, like they took all the depth from him and made him happier and easier to digest for comforts sake and it sacrificed his arc and that makes me unhappy.

[cleolinda]

Here's another song I had wanted to write about: Hozier's "Movement." It is a fact of my existence that I get into a musical artist/band about 10 years after everyone else does, and then they become 30% of my personality (see also: Florence and the Machine). So I didn't really get with the program until Wasteland, Baby, and even then, it was for an unusual reason.

When did this album come out, spring of 2019? I had spinal surgery in early 2018. A discectomy, L4/L5; the disc had gradually become herniated due to a fall I'd had at a convention. My surgeon was required to warn me that surgery would come with a (low) chance of paralysis; it was my choice to make. After two weeks of seizing up in pain every hour or so, confined to my bed—hydrocodone did nothing—I chose the scalpel. Even then, it was another four weeks before he could work me into the operating schedule. Trust me when I say, no matter how I'm doing now, I do not regret having that surgery.

But he also told me, "You will always be a person who has had spinal surgery." Since anything was better than screaming every time I moved, I didn't fully understand what he meant until a year or so later, when I was still in pain—a chronic but lower-grade pain that came and went depending on how much activity I dared try that particular day. It was infinitely better than before. And, but, yet, I still deal with that chronic pain today. I will always be that person.

"Walk," he told me. I had a packet of therapy exercises to do, sure, but he was firm on this point. "That's the main exercise you need. Just walking." Which I couldn't do at first—I didn't have to learn to walk again or anything, but I was in a wheelchair early on, then on a wheeled walker for a couple of months. I also have inherited neuropathy in my feet, which was exacerbated by electrically painful sciatic nerve damage down my right leg while I waited for my slot in the surgery calendar. (I swear to God I will start talking about music soon.) I only walk across the longest side of my backyard. I don't leave it and walk around the neighborhood, because I generally have about two minutes upright to get back to the house once my feet start hurting.

So I had been struggling with my walking assignment for about a year when "Movement" came out. Of course it's literally about physically moving (and emotionally being moved), but that wasn't what captured me. The song starts out slow and reflective; it was a gentle tempo for a time when I couldn't walk very fast, and I still use it as a warm-up today. But there are two other things I love about it. One, the willow tree in the chorus, as I was walking my little runway back and forth under a canopy of wild water oak draped with wisteria, looking up into the sun through the leaves and snowflake flowers of an overgrown cherry laurel. Sound met landscape.

But the other thing is how—generous? accepting?—the words are of the "you" of the song. This person, the lyrics say, does not have to be a virtuoso dancer like Fred Astaire or Sergei Polunin (who's in the video up there). Instead, "you're Atlas in his sleeping, and when you move, I'm moved." My absolute favorite part is,

Move like grey skies Move like a bird of paradise Move like an odd sight come out at night

What the fuck even are these lyrics. I can't. That's so good. You ever sit there as a writer and think, I'm so mad I didn't come up with that? Just the pure unexpectedness, "I'm telling you how earthshakingly amazing this person is. Like a beautiful willow, like a rare bird, like some weird-ass cryptid in the night, I don't even know what that was about but I love it." What even. So good.

And I was for sure an odd sight shambling back and forth across the back of my yard: five minutes at first. Then ten the next week, working my way up to thirty, still in a dull roar of constant pain a year into my recovery. But this is a song that says, your efforts to move are moving, whatever movement is natural for you; you may be sleeping just now, you may be moving without moving, but you are wonderful not in spite of being strange in your movements, but because of it. The song always feels like a friend walking along with me, no matter how many setbacks I have, or how slow I have to go.

Anyway, Unreal Unearth comes out next Friday. The five songs Hozier's put out so far are ridiculously good, and I've scheduled a couple of months to be completely feral about it. When the weather is less dangerously hot, we'll find out which songs are good to move to.

[thecedarchronicle]

not to be posting again about the story quest but im posting about it again

i think (besides the abrupt ending, which didn't really faze me. if there's anything that HASN'T changed about star stable it's the story quests ending abruptly. it's only missing brutus' little pop up that goes "the story will be continued" or whatever it said exactly) the main thing that irks me about this is like

what is Anyone doing?

like yeah, it's an issue with most of the story right now because the writers seemingly have no idea what most of their characters want. but and even on a small scale? action to action, story beat by story beat?

like, if you stop and put it together, here's what happened:

the soul riders destroy the oil rig, and the dark riders summon erissa

erissa immediately runs off after being freed and insulted (presumably): understandable. it seems her whole thing is chaos and impulsivity, so that's completely believable. and that's where the believability like. comes to a screeching halt

katja's comment about it being "five minutes" seems to imply today's quest takes place directly after the last one. this doesn't make any sense at all since alex mentions at the start the other three soul riders are off doing "real life stuff". so did we all look out over the ocean as friends and then the other three immediately dip? or is katja exaggerating? has erissa been causing random issues for much longer? (random side quests or even secret quests over the last few months where we have to deal with erissa's chaos without our character knowing it's the fourth rider in-universe would have been an awesome way to hype up her debut, btw, but i digress) the issue here is that we as players have no idea where this takes place on the timeline. for us it's been months, for any players going through the story after this it's been minutes. and the game itself doesn't know which version is correct.

the keepers of aideen and fripp both agree it's important to dip IMMEDIATELY, without even holding a meeting, without leaving any way for the soul riders to contact them? sure, you want to capitalize on the oil rig going down, but you didn't have even a second to check in? according to alex, the soul riders didn't even know the keepers of aideen were aware that the rig had gone down. listen, i was actually really on board for this part. taking away the "safety net" of the keepers is a great idea to raise the stakes, and narratively to open up the story for the soul riders without the influence of the keepers. but you're telling me they've just decided to dip on a whim? the story has spent it's entire run beating into the player how cautious the keepers are. at every turn they try to hold the player back for plot convenience out of the fear that the player isn't "ready". this is so wildly out of character for them to throw the soul riders on their own with nothing but a "good luck" and "stick together and believe in yourself!" that for the first half of the story I assumed it was some kind of trick. I love this, I love taking away the heroes' safety net right when things get really bad. but this felt kind of like a last minute decision. as most things do in the story right now (because i would bet they are)

like are you really telling me Avalon is going to up and leave Valedale/central (southern?) Jorvik on a whim without leaving behind a ten page list of things for the soul riders to look out for?? a seven hour briefing? Avalon is like a mom leaving her 12 year old at the house by themselves for a night for the first time

then: WHY oh WHY did Erissa think to target Maya

Again, i love it (as long as we aren't burying our gays okay star stable im watching your ass) I love putting real consequences into these encounters.

Does she know about Maya and Alex? How did she just somehow know that Maya knew Alex and MC?? Supposedly she's been freed for all of five minutes; or has she been watching the group this whole time? again, the game itself doesn't even know.

and most of all

WHY WOULD MC GO THROUGH THAT PORTAL ??

there was NO GOOD REASON.

you're telling me that any good-aligned MC would go through the portal that almost certainly contains the other dark riders, outnumbering them, and literally who knows what or where on the other side

instead of trekking their ass back to Alex and Maya and using their star circle abilities to at least TRY and save Maya?

Hello?

Where are we, SSE

What is going on

and lastly, the second MC saw Sands and literally all four dark riders there was no reason for them to trot up to the circle like this is a show and tell session

genuinely, i did love this story quest, it ticked my brain in a way the others haven't in a while. but like. sometimes playing these quests really does feel like when I was 12 and learning how to write and i would just come up with whatever i could think of for the next scene because i had no idea what an outline was. the jorvik story bible is a wattpad story and they just keep hitting "new part" and seeing what comes out before they have to go to soccer practice

[rarespawnwrites]

WIP Wednesday

Early Access Afterlife (dpxdc)

Okay. What had been said about his situation so far? The most common term used for what was happening to him was “transmigration”. Which just meant… moved? Somewhere else?

The somewhere else could mean his new (used?) body. Or it could mean this unfamiliar city. But the goat and the girl had made it sound like he was going to be living in a story.

Huh. It kind of sounded like Ghost Writer was running this whole thing.

Okay, so he was moved to a story. He was supposed to start in an action scene. He’d woken up in a coffin.

Danny mentally shuddered, the memory of seeping mud and things that wriggled overwhelming. His body, unconcerned, rescued an uneaten, still wrapped-in-foil hot dog someone had just dumped in a trash can.

Gross. Well, at least it was covered. It was even still warm.

What else? He had a quest. This whole thing was trying to be some kind of video game. Ghost Writer collab with Technus? Anyway, what was the quest…

The screen obligingly displayed his current quests for him. Well, quest. He only had the one right now.

Active Quests Tutorial Quest (Main): What Resurrects You Makes You Stronger Achieve the “Peak Human” ranking in 10 skills by the end of the tutorial period. Reward: Unknown Failure: Nonstandard Ending

Ten skills in four years, huh? Danny wasn’t sure what “Peak Human” meant to the system. He had no idea how long getting a skill to that level would take, but it had to be plausibly doable in the allotted time frame, right?

What did it mean by a nonstandard ending, was another question. Would it boot him back out of this body? Was it just another path this life could take that didn’t result in the original story?

Well, he needed to make some assumptions if he was going to get anywhere with this. So… Jazz had once read a book she’d gone on about that claimed it took 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill. For right now, that was as good a guess as any.

One of his benefits allowed him to learn skills five times faster than normal. Say it takes him 2,000 hours to get to the required level for each skill. He needed to practice enough for ten skills. That’s 20,000 hours.

Uh… that sounded like a lot?

How many hours were in a year? In four years?

Danny thought really pointedly at his screen about a calculator app. After a pause, one actually opened on its display. Finally, a convenience. He plugged in a few numbers to find out how many hours were in four years.

He frowned.

Then he checked how many hours would be left when accounting for 8 hours of sleep at night. If his mental state could be reflected in his body, his eye would have twitched at the result.

If Danny did… 16 straight hours of training a day, he’d have enough time for sleep and roughly one day off per week.

What.

Wait, so the two days he was spending zombified… those were the ENTIRETY of the free time he was allotted for the next two weeks?!

There’s no way. Bring on the nonstandard ending. Danny had been a half-ghost and a ghost-ghost, what could this world even scare him with?

【System Message】 A new entry has been generated and added to your codex: Nonstandard Endings.

Did he really want to look?

The answer was no.

He looked.

【Codex】 Entry – Nonstandard Endings All Joker routes Amanda Waller route Black Mask route Cadmus route Court of Owls route Despair route Dollmaker route Gnomon route ...see more

Selecting a route displayed a blank, rectangular area with a title caption. The blank area seemed like it was obscuring an image he hadn't unlocked, but the title caption was visible. Below that was a section labeled “Summary” that was, like the images and unavailable sections of the System Store, locked.

Daniel looked through a few routes, then picked up speed as he scanned through more and more.

Even after the “see more” it seemed the title captions didn’t change in flavor: Brainwashed ending; Zealot ending; Mind-Controlled ending; Specimen ending…

【System Store】 Looking for the perfect ending? Want a little variety in your new life? Give yourself another chance! And another, and another! Buy the Regressor Package to do it all over again. Collect CGs from every route! Buy for 100 credits

Who would want that?! Every single ending implied mindless slavery!

Also, why does the system have pop-up ads? ...It was probably time to check out that options menu.

[bills-pokedex]

To whom it may concern (Bebe and Cassius):

I'm sure we'll all well aware of the current event surrounding a certain Unovan(?) entrepreneur who stylizes himself as a genius. It is therefore unnecessary to show me news about his latest "innovative endeavors" for the express purpose of "watching [me], an inventor, age about ten years every time."

So to get it out of the way for the thirteenth and hopefully final time:

Yes, I'm aware.

No, I don't know how he got a stainless steel tank, a rocket cobbled together from spare parts, a self-driving car that occasionally ignites into a ball of flames while trapping its driver in thanks to multiple design flaws, or the brain chip past an ethics committee.

Yes, I am "salty" that I made one mistake with one of my inventions, and now I'm constantly scrutinized by the Pokémon Cutting-Edge Technology Research Institute's ethics committee.

No, I do not want the brain chip.

Yes, I want to study the brain chip.

The fifth point is out of morbid curiosity as to how it got past an ethics committee, not respect.

Hopefully, this clears things up.

Best, Bill

-

{From the Mun:

I found this in the drafts, and I thought it would be hilarious to bring this out and tack on an update post while I'm at it.

But the biggest thing is, I'm . . . actually leaving Tumblr. Now, the main reason for that is my main got super borked up. I've been told by my followers over there it's not shadowbanning, but I'm pretty sure it's random-ass shadowbanning. I cannot receive asks, I can't tag people, I don't have DMs, and I don't show up in notes. As for why, I can't fathom. For the most part, I've kept my nose pretty clean on that account, other than that one time somebody in the writeblr community kinda lost it and tried to use a bunch of random people as a scapegoat for drama reasons. Yeah, idk.

Anyway, the point is, I've submitted a ticket a few months ago and then . . . never heard back. And honestly, for personal reasons, I'm not really inclined on remaking.

Personal reasons being I'm gunning for writing an actual book, as you might know from my last-ish post? Like, non-Pokémon book. Though I'll admit some bits might be familiar to those of you who've hung around the blog for a while. Here's a hint: take powerverse, gender swap it, role swap it, and then stick it into FFXIV and add more steampunk. It's been cooking for the past year you haven't seen me, and I'm aiming to start pitching it to agents by the end of the year. If you'd like to follow along, if you're also a writer who would like to make more writing friends, or if you just like my writing for some reason and want to keep up with me, you can find me at jaxwolffwrites on both Bluesky and Twitter. Bsky moreso, but you'll get progress on this project on either of those other platforms.

Now, I will say this: just to be fair, I'm doing three things:

Closing the askbox. Admittedly, if you've been sending me asks for the past three months, I haven't seen them anyway. Sooooo I probably should've done that ages ago. Sorry about that.

Answering any ask I've saved to the drafts. Any ask. Please note that I don't know if the borking I've described above extends to this blog as well, so Bill won't be replying to replies or reblogs/tags. Apologies for that in advance. There are 49 posts in the drafts, and these will come out fairly slowly as I continue to keep up with my writing schedule on the other project.

Leaving this blog up as an archive. Assuming Tumblr doesn't nuke the main and the backup account that was created in an effort to avoid total nuking, and assuming Tumblr doesn't nuke this blog itself, I really want to leave this up so you can enjoy this pretty much forever onward. You all are the reason why this blog has gone on for so long, and I want to preserve this blog as a thank you for following me for so long.

So yes, after I clear the drafts, you'll likely see one last farewell from Bill and Lanette, and then that will be that. To everyone who's followed, thank you so much for following and supporting this blog over the years. As many ups and downs as running this had, I still look back on every moment as one fun adventure.

So thank you, and take care.}

[bellysoupset]

Hi Soup! For a shorter fic, I'd love to see Leo sick at work or because of something stressful at work! We've seen him sick from something that happens at work (damn cake!), but not actually not feeling well at the office - maybe because he ate too much at lunch and it's just not sitting well. Does he hide it because he's got something that needs to get finished? Does he need to go puke quickly so he can keep working? Do people realize and make him leave? Your choice. Only request is that there isn't actually any publicly embarassing throwing up - no puking in court or in the middle of a meeting. Thank you so much!

Leo was over the moon about being a Real Lawyer, as he childishly called himself. It was no secret to his loved ones just how excited he was to be able to defend cases himself, instead of running after another lawyer with all their research and watching them recite a defense thesis that Leo was pretty sure had been partially written by him.

His boss put a lot of trust in him. Sure, Mrs. Mitchell only gave him small cases so far, but she was slowly handing him more and not only were they more frequent, but the difficulty was increasing.

Thus, Leo had easily blamed the uncomfortable churning in his stomach on nerves when it started. Today he had a big court day and no matter how many times he had gone over his notes - and ranted about the case enough that Jonah was probably a liability - he still felt jittery all over.

He was the defense today, to a woman who was being accused of plagiarism by a relatively well established script writer. Normally the Hollywood cases would stay in California and Mitchell's claws, but this one was small and unimportant enough to make it to Maine. The script writer was from the state and probably thought he could play on the local's sympathies, after all he had gone out and made it.

Leo wasn't feeling very sympathetic.

He was feeling almost queasy as he looked at the smug face of the script writer, who was accusing an ex-girlfriend of almost ten years ago of "stealing" his intellectual property.

Had no one learned a thing for Fitzgerald? Or Tolstoy?

Apparently not.

"You know," Dean leaned his way, "we're in court, you might wanna brighten up a little and stop glaring bloody murder to the opposition."

"Sorry," Leo shook his head, trying to physically shake off his frown, "I wasn't glaring at him, I was just frowning, he happened to be in the way."

"Brilliant save," Dean grinned, "they're gonna call break in five."

Leo was aware of that, he was the main defense lawyer and he was actually listening to the prosecutor's flimsy claims that Gwen was a plagiarist only because she happened to use the same first name in one of her published short stories.

Leo almost wished the opposition had a decent defense of their points, so he didn't have so much time to focus on the burbling going inside his belly. The lunch he had forced down wasn't sitting well at all and little sickly belches kept bubbling up his chest and fizzling out in his throat.

He felt like his whole body smelt like the greasy burger he had eaten and like everyone could tell... His mouth was watering.

Forty minutes recess.

"They're fumbling by the seam of their pants," Dean started to tell their client, in a low, collected voice, "they have nothing, you don't need to worry."

Right, Leo thought bitterly. She was a librarian, who published exactly one book with short stories just for fun, being prosecuted by a Hollywood script writer. Sure, the man was far from being a big shot of anything, but compared to the woman's position...

"Ms. Peters, you have a solid defense, please trust us," Leo promised her calmly, "take the recess, get some coffee, it'll be a long day."

His own words were mockery to him. Normally he existed on coffee and today just the thought of drinking a drop of anything made his stomach flip on itself and he hastily got up, muffling a little burp on his fist and excusing himself. No one had heard, although Sandra did throw him a puzzled look.

"Ms. Peters," Sandy stepped in, "let's take a small walk."

Sandra, like Leo, normally was one of the lawyers with the softest touch. Usually Leo didn't have all his coworkers with him, but he had his boss sitting right behind their desk, judging his every move. It was a huge tell of respect and trust that Mrs. Mitchell had only sent his peers today, instead of coming herself. Almost as if saying go and show them how its done.

He couldn't mess this up.

"The man is a misogynistic bully," Dean continued to speak, following Leo into the public bathroom. His coworker could talk with a tree if left to his own devices, "I'm excited for your part, the evid-"

"Shut it," Leo glared at him, handing Dean his suitcase and removing his suit jacket, "hold this, please."

"No one's listening to us."

"Dean," Leo scoffed, "no. Last thing I want is for you to blow the case by lack of decorum or by giving the prosecution a ti-URP-Fuck," the larger belch that slipped into his last word caused Dean to raise his eyebrows. The other man opened his mouth, about to ask about Leo's wellbeing when the blonde turned around and entered a stall, quickly pushing the lid up and planting a hand on his chest to keep his tie in place as a chunky stream of vomit hit the water.

"WhOA! Wagner, what the fuck-"

Leo hung his head in shame, bracing his free arm against the tiled wall in front of him and panting, trying to get his stomach in check. The queasiness had been on the backburner all day, but the face-prickling, hand sweaty, mouth watery nausea had hit him like a brick and out of nowhere.

"Fuck..." He breathed out through his mouth and swallowed some air, forcing up another burp and then coughing when that brought up some more chunks- He gagged and a much more watery, acidic mouthful of vomit fell in the toilet.

"Wagner, oh my-" Dean was fretting behind him, frozen in place and stunned, "shit, are you sick? We can call for a recess-"

"No," Leo's voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat, spitting a mouthful of thick saliva and flushing, as his sudden nausea went back to the mild queasiness, "No, I'm fine."

"Fine?!" Dean was still holding his suitcase and jacket, seemingly unaware Leo had passed the items to him, "You don't seem fine, you look white as a corpse-"

"I'm fine," Leo stumbled to the sink to wash his face and gargle with water, "lunch just wasn't sitting well-"

"Oh... Are you sure...?" Dean was older than Leo by at least five years and yet he sounded like a scared teenager. Leo nodded, meeting his coworker's eyes on the mirror and patting his own pale cheeks until they were a little rosy instead of spoiled milk white.

"Yeah," he cleared his throat, then fixed his tie and reached for his jacket, "I can't go home, I have a case to win."

[illarian-rambling]

@davycoquette with the fun question games again!

Get to Know the Writblr

Gonna put this under a cut because it got long, but feel free to treat this as an open tag if you want to hop on!

On the Tumblr Writing Community:

How long have you had your writing Tumblr/Writeblr?

Since the beginning of the year, maybe? Sometime in February, I think.

What led you to create it?

I was feeling pretty lonely having no one to talk to about my writing. None of my real-life friends are writers and I'm really terrible at expressing my interests verbally, so I figured online might be the place to go. So far, I've been right!

What’s your favorite thing about the Writeblr community?

Oh, the people, for sure. It's incredibly rare that I come across anyone being less than supportive on here. No matter our skill level, I really feel like every writer on here has a sense of being in this shit together.

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

Hmmm.... I'm pretty open about sharing things about myself, so idk if there's anything major I haven't touched on yet. I wake up at 4am every morning for work, so if you see me posting at an egregious time, that's why. Also, if you ever want martial arts tips for your fight scenes, I'm your gal!

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

I love it when people make memes of their ocs. Makes me giggle every time.

What tips/advice do you have for someone who made a Writeblr today?

You gotta interact with people. I know it can be scary, but even a reblog with no tags can make another writer smile. Chances also are, if you leave a nice comment on someone's work, they might check you out and leave a nice comment on yours! A community isn't a community unless you go out and commune :)

WIP it Good:

Which Works-in-Progress (WIPs) or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

Lately, I've been juggling writing my first draft of Mortal God book 3 (tentatively title being The Machinations of Machine and Man) and going over @kaylinalexanderbooks lovely comments on MG1. My ghost ship project is also on a low simmer in the back of my brain, but I'm trying to leave that until I'm done with MG3.

How long have you been working on them?

Good lord, I started MG1 about... almost two years ago now? Damn, it feels like it's been so much longer. But hey, three book drafts in two years ain't bad! Honor's Outcasts, which is largely written by now, I started about three years ago.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

The two main characters of MG started as a vague daydream, which then became two important dnd npcs along with MG's main villain. I ended up liking them all so much that I wrote a short story which became *drumroll* three entire books! A lot of my inspiration came from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and the Foundryside Trilogy of books. I can't think of anyone specifically who inspired the characters, except that Astra was originally based on the archetype of the silent wandering cowboy/samurai as seen in a lot of Kurosawa films and old westerns. For anyone familiar with her, uh, things changed quite a lot.

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

At least ten percent of my brain's storage is dedicated to my wips at all times. As for how often I'm actively thinking about them... it's also quite a lot.

When someone asks the dreaded, “What do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

"Uh, fantasy stuff?" is my go-to.

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

I really wish I had the ability to explain my wips as succinctly with speech as I do with writing, but alas. I would want to give a nice, book jacket blurb that doesn't give away too much of the crazy shit.

Let’s Rotate Blorbos:

Name any characters you created.

I think I'm really good at names, so we're gonna go down the list!

Izjik Meautammera

Sepo Kaiacynthus

Twenari Undetasib/Devaris

Djek Kagura

Astra DuClaire

Mashal Darezsho

Ivander Montane

Elsind Cavernsight

Duchon Avymere Kalaphon Spearsong III

Faalgun Falani

Nyda Burningrock

Kaulakri Ondohuroata

Pashananath

Anarac Fifth-Blood

Who’s the most unhinged?

Unhinged in terms of violence? Sepo for sure. Unhindered in terms of sheer chaos? I'm gonna go with Izjik and Djek as a duo. Between both of their high charismas and low intelligences, along with their combined expertise in fighting and creative uses of magic, they're unbeatable.

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

Probably Izjik. I've been writing in her POV for the longest.

Do you ever cringe at them?

Sometimes yeah, when they do something real stupid. But, then again, I did make them that way.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters?

I think I know my characters really well and base my plot around their motives, so there really isn't a huge need for control.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters?

PLEASE!!! FEED ME ASKS! I'LL TAKE ANYTHING!

On Writeblr Engagement:

What makes you want to follow another Writeblr account?

Probably creativity. I've read a looooot of fantasy/sci-fi, so if you're doing something I've never seen before, I'll probably give you a follow.

What makes you decide against following?

Any kind of hateful rhetoric or someone who doesn't want 18+ interaction. Other than that, I think it's important to follow people who write different genres or have different methods than me.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I wouldn't say so. I get a little shy doing that.

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

The characters of @kaylinalexanderbooks @mk-writes-stuff and @somethingclevermahogony all have a little place in my brain. Favorites from each include Robbie and Akash (not to be separated), Narul and Bop (love me a good living weapon/teddybear of a dude team-up), and Nellie and Stellaris (their earnest kindness makes my heart happy). If you haven't yet, you should go check out their stuff and see for yourself!

And with that, thanks for reading! Go out and have yourself a bitchin day <3

[alicepao13]

Hudson and Rex S06E15

So, as I’m sure a lot of people have already figured out, we just watched the intended season finale. CityTV, you better hope I never get to cross that ocean. I mean, every season finale aside from the two where Peter Mitchell was in charge (coincidence?) were run of the mill episodes which could have fit anywhere in the season. Maybe it will be fitting for this season to start and end with viewers wondering what they watched. But I’m getting ahead of myself here and I might be wrong. Let’s focus on 15 which may very well be the best episode of the season for me, probably tied with S06E04.

The spoiled scene with Charlie and Sarah’s mentioned anniversary. Rex totally wants to stay with Jesse after their “celebration”. I’m trying to figure whether Jesse is pretending to be naive or is actually being naive about it. Or if the whole response is the writers being unable to outright say that Charlie and Sarah really spent their anniversary having sex all night.

Speaking of, two years, Charlie Hudson? What are you waiting for, an epiphany to hit you in the head? Oh, wait.

What do you mean, we didn’t save the day? There’s a dead woman? Huh? 

Nice bomb explosion by the way.

“My bosses are gonna hate this but tell me more”. lol Jesse

How did we end up as security detail for the woman who might become prime minister?

Look, I like when there’s a case where they’re toying with supernatural elements. That’s why I loved Castle so much. And Jesse is always eager to believe. Charlie on the other hand looks like he’s got tons to say on the subject. Rex too. Apparently he doesn’t believe in time travel either.

Any so called time traveler should come back to the present with the numbers for the lottery. That would be ample proof for me :P

Can I say how much I like the camera work on this one? Good directing by John Vatcher.

Rex is getting so many pats in this episode. Deserved.

This campaign manager is on par with the Veep campaign managers. And by that I mean he’s ruthless and self-centered and I want to punch him.

That food now possibly has dog hair in it.

I come from a country where it’s pretty normal to put a musical montage right in the middle of an episode (even a dance number), so I’m not going to say anything about the needless song.

Thunk! There goes Charlie. Again. I’ll spare y’all the concussion speech. Besides, time moves in mysterious ways in this show, maybe it’s already been six months since episode 11.

Seriously, why do you tell Rex to chase a lead if you can’t survive being ten feet away from him?

I can’t remember the last time any of my shows put a bomb vest on one of the main characters. The latest that I remember was FBI but it was on a minor character. That had been a great episode too.

I haven’t yet decided whether that bomb vest looks too amateurish. To be fair, given who the culprit was, it shouldn’t look professional.

Sarah finding Charlie as he has a bomb vest on is like, the best thing that has happened lately on this show. Her look. His look as he realizes that he’s got his entire family now in this (and the mantra of no, no, no that must be playing in his head, I’m filling the blanks, don’t mind me). The slight zooming in of the camera in both of their shots, denoting the direness of the situation.

I was almost waiting for Charlie to say “this isn’t as enjoyable as it was last night” as Sarah was touching him while she’s checking the bomb vest. It writes itself, come on.

In my last review post I wrote that I was hoping the earphones would serve for Charlie to call Sarah and tell her goodbye or something like that. This certainly exceeded my expectations.

We’re a bit late for love confessions under duress but when Charlie was asked about whether Sarah was his wife and he replied “Not yet”, that was a nice moment. At least we know where his head is at.

Their silent communication. They’re so in sync.

Elsewhere, Joe and Jesse are quietly trying to figure out a way to save innocent people and somehow not get their friend blown up.

Superintendent Joe Donovan making airplane noises. I laughed so much.

They are holding hands as they’re walking to their doom! Oh, by the way, interesting music choice. I wonder if it’s score created for the show or non-original music. I’ve certainly not heard it before on the show.

Goodbye kiss! I love it here. And look at the shot of Charlie and Rex leaving as Sarah is staying behind.

Me: no way it’s the convict. Five minutes later: it’s the fucking convict!!! Ten minutes later: it’s not the convict???

Ha, Charlie using the mute button which is pretty convenient but almost no one uses on calls. 

Okay, they fooled me with the bomber. But the takedown went pretty much as I expected. Nice communication with Rex through hand signals, again. Although the detonator flying off the lady’s hand… anything could have happened.

Rex’s influence to the system will be more K9s lol. They may also have ensured unlimited funding for the SJPD.

Can the time traveling guy tell us if Charlie is going to propose anytime soon? Or is the “not yet” considered a non-proposal proposal?

This is the first time I’m hearing about the so called Alice in wonderland syndrome.

“Everybody needs a Rex”. Ah, yes. Our catchphrase.

Charlie, put the phone down. When is that man clocking out? Who’s going to make sure Rex is getting adequate rest? I need to talk to his superior. Joe!

Well, I kept saying that I wanted Charlie and Sarah to be in danger again together since they hadn’t after they had become a couple, and I got my wish, thank you, show. We could have had an aftermath scene with them but I’m not going to complain about it in an otherwise good episode.

Promo: I’m beyond frustrated that they keep shuffling the episodes and they wouldn’t even give it a rest when they got the season finale or the 100th episode on their hands. Today’s (yesterday’s) episode would have been a better 100th episode than The Rookie’s for sure (which is embarrassing for The Rookie). But instead we get to watch it as episode 99 and have a run of the mill case for the 100th, which, unless it ends up in a huge celebration scene, is going to fall flat. We basically end off exactly as we started, expect I now know this is 100% CityTV’s fault.

Speaking of, is CityTV even going to acknowledge that it’s the 100th episode? Is anyone? I’m obviously not expecting the magnitude of promotion ABC gave The Rookie or 911 this season (and that was a lot) but something that shows they’re not completely neglecting Hudson and Rex. It doesn’t seem like we’re getting renewal news anytime soon, so I’d settle for them celebrating the episodes they already filmed. There are quite a few production companies involved too, this does not only fall on CityTV. If Shaftesbury wants to celebrate this milestone, I won’t say no.

[dorianwolfforest]

Hey, i just had a revelation that some of the quests read like a weird DND campaign. Do you think the writers are just playing DND hence why some of the quests are muddled because they haven’t written down any of the lore and they’re just kind of making shit up on the fly?

I like the idea, but I don't think that's an apt comparison because DND Gamemasters, while coming up with things on the fly, often know their established characters, the lore of their world, and the general beats they want to get their players through. SSE lacks even this. They do however, fittingly, very often take their characters into DND-esque one-shots and alternative stories, although they do it all in the same world with the same characters as their main "campaign", so it just adds a lot of confusion.

What you need to know about SSE writers is that they aren't actually writers. Anyone who feels up for it and has a relative interest in the story could logistically write a quest because there isn't an established writing team, and while they have a lore bible, often times they'll add information that maybe doesn't directly contradicts the established lore but is so out of left field it becomes more convoluted than it needs to be.

Because there is no consistency with the writers, I do firmly believe that they do not value consistency in their writing either. There is also the fact that a lot of the lore is almost a decade old, and written by people who may not work for the company any longer. The game has also been updated weekly for several years, so any new information will always contradict the established timeline (think of how Elizabeth got her name from the new Wynna Sunbeam character. That makes no sense with what we already know, because Elizabeth and Wynna never interact, Wynna isn't at Elizabeth's funeral, they never even talk to each other, and yet they really wanted Wynna to be an important part of Elizabeth's character so they forced it into the game anyway.) This is one of those moments where the writer of a quest wants something, and they do not care enough to go back and make sure that, through over ten years of lore, it all makes sense.

What you are playing is an unfinished product, and if the writers want to change every single detail about the lore and rewrite it all tomorrow, that is something that they can do. Until the game is finished, nothing is canon, which gives the writers a lot of freedom to completely ignore anything that has been previously established. This is incredibly frustrating and confusing for players, but is unfortunately just something we have to "put up with". It sucks, it's wildly confusing, and SSE does not deal with it in any kind of good way.

[invinciblerodent]

Re: people’s needlessly pessimistic whining about Veilguard and the lack of focus on decisions from the other games. Idk I just… I’m kind of glad that they didn’t focus on that? Inquisition came out ten years ago, origins 15 years ago. I’d argue it’s good for the story that they chose to put the focus on the story of the game they’re publishing *now*, and not endless, gimmicky throwbacks. Especially since no one was really happy with how they handled it in inquisition.

Exactly! Yes, that's just what I mean!

Sorry for the rambling that I'm about to do, but I said this earlier today to my friend: I think the choices here from a writing- and development standpoint are either:

a series of small cameos that are vague and fundamentally unimportant enough to be taken- or switched out quickly without upsetting the entire plotline (as to not make the game both incomprehensible to new players, and/or so big and bloated that it's just borderline unmanageable),

or references that are relatively few and specific, but they affect the story in meaningful and interesting ways.

And I wholeheartedly believe that the second option of these two is far preferable to the first.

As nice as it would be to see beloved characters returning for a spell... like you said, it's been 15 years since Origins, and we've had three games with wildly branching possibilities for most characters- I honestly believe that it would have been an unnecessarily large added workload (that 99% of players potentially wouldn't even see) to account for all the possible deaths, romances, friendships, and fates that each companion could have in that time.

Plus, my main point in my grumpy tags on that post- from its infancy, Dragon Age has, in large part, relied on a series of unreliable narrators to tell its story.

The very moment you choose an origin in Origins, you choose a very specific lens through which to view the plot of the game that emphasizes different stakes in each big quest. They purposefully made a known liar the narrator of DA2, and Solas (another main player known to be a liar and a trickster) even spells this out in Haven, that (though I'm paraphrasing) reality can be fundamentally different depending on who it is that's telling its story, and what's their agenda in telling it.

Almost all of the events of these three games are told to us by imperfect people remembering things the way they saw them, through journal entries, letters, and word of mouth. We never even got (and were told that we would never get) a confirmation on whether the fucking MAKER is even REAL or not.

With that in mind, I honestly think it makes perfect sense for the majority of what the Warden, Hawke, and the Inquisitor have done to become distorted, misunderstood, and eventually lost to legend in a remarkably short time, especially considering that we're presumably in entirely different parts of the continent, with only Solas and Varric there to present likely diametrically opposing accounts of the events of 9:41. (Like yeah, sure, by that time whether there are werewolves in the Brecilian forest, or whether this or that person who was near to the action twenty in-game years ago in some Fereldan backwacter is dead or alive today, is probably meaningless pap to anyone who wasn't there at the time.)

Plus, yeah, one needs not to look further than Hawke and blood magic to see why Bioware might be reluctant to get really specific with including choices and characters who can be fundamentally affected by player choice. (I personally liked Hawke being very firmly against blood magic, but yeah, with them potentially having been a blood mage at one point, it was kind of a doozy.)

I just.... god, I know I sound bitter, but I so dearly wish people would just use their imaginations instead of complaining about stories not being exactly what they want them to be, and demanding for writers and actors to confirm everything.

---

Honestly all day today, it's been making me laugh to just imagine my Inquisitor Trevelyan being not just glad to be forgotten, but actively participating in the spreading of unfounded rumors about himself.

Like fuck it, he's retired. Nobody bother him, the Herald of Andraste is now an elven mage woman. Who was also sleeping with the Dread Wolf (definitely not the Big Scary Imperial Magister), what of it. Yeah, them being a non-mage human man is a common misconception, that was clever misdirection at the time, you're likely confusing the Inquisitor and the Inquisition's general. Ignore the missing arm, that's just an unfortunate accident and a total coincidence.

If they don't get mentioned after all (which I find unlikely tbh, knowing that Dorian is basically primed to be a returning character, what with him invariably being a Magister regardless of player choices) I can just headcanon that as soon as they caught wind of Varric's whole entourage approaching Minrathous, they just started packing frantically. No story is going to catch them with their pants around their ankles again!

(No, babe, leave that, there's no time, we have to go, quickly, the plot is fast approaching! We've already survived one ending of the world, this time? This time, we're going to my aunt's in Llomerynn. I hear it's nice this time of year. If the world is ending, I'd rather watch it happen with a fantasy!mai tai in my hand, and my feet in the fucking Amaranthine.)