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lotusthewriter · 1 year ago

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Papercut

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: T

Relationships: Steven & Lars; MINOR - Steven & The Cool Kids, Steven & Sadie, Lars/Sadie

Characters: Steven Quartz Universe, Lars Barriga, The Cool Kids, Sadie Miller; MENTIONED - The Crystal Gems, Connie Maheswaran

Summary: Steven has been feeling anxious and he realizes it gets worse when he's alone. So, he tries not to be.

Word count: 3.965

AO3

A/N: Originally published online last week, I just didn't get to post here. This is mainly me venting my anxiety attacks as of late.

I also personally see Steven having BPD, just throwing this here if anyone finds it relevant.

TRIGGER WARNINGS - anxiety and/or panic attacks, hallucination, emotional neglect, abandonment issues, self-hatred, and brief mention of suicidal thoughts.

DO NOT SHIP LARS AND STEVEN.

P/roship DNI.

“Anxiety”.

A word Connie has mentioned. It’s a medical term that she taught Steven after what happened to them as Stevonnie. Connie, with her mother’s knowledge, took Garnet’s advice to heart and she gets to manage her anxiety whenever it hits.

Two years later, Steven still hasn’t been able to feel better.

Flexibility, love, and trust.

Flexibility,

Love,

And

TRUST.

Steven glows pink instead.

Thus, he goes to Garnet to ask for more tips, to know if she could try to help… but the gem tells Steven that he’s the only one who knows the answers. That he should seek them himself. Pearl and Amethyst, who wait for Garnet to head out to Little Homeschool for yet another fieldtrip, agreed indifferently.

Steven can’t even say anything before the three of them are gone in the light of the warp pad, so bright that he feels like it’s going to attack him.

Then, everything is empty.

He only stares at the void like he’s fourteen again.

Just that worsens the ache in his chest, his pink fists clutching his shirt.

Steven rushes back to his safe place, his room, before things get ugly and he goes ballistic, and he grabs his phone to do some research on anxiety. He finds quite a lot of resources.

Since then, he’s trying.

With the gems away to who knows where, and his father also out of town, Steven tries to get by on his own.

(As usual.)

…

But nothing works.

Steven does everything correctly. List five things you can sense. Distract yourself with things you like – watch a movie or a series or funny videos, read a book, listen to music or even podcasts. Breathe. Hug your pillow. Hang out with your friends–

Oh.

He… hasn’t done that in a while.

Steven can’t, though. Everyone is busy and it’s not like they should stop what they’re doing to be with him, right? Right.

Distract yourself.

Distract yourself…

Suddenly, a notification.

New texts… from Lars? How long has it been since they last talked? Maybe he needs help with something?

Anyway.

Lars: hey steven, it’s been a while right?

Lars: idk if your busy, but sadie and the cool kids are back in town and we thought of making a lil party

Lars: i know it’s kinda in the last hour so it’s ok if you can’t make it or if you don’t wanna go, but it’d be rlly cool if you came

Lars: but it’s your call of course

Steven looks at the above, wondering if this was predestined. It feels too perfect.

He hasn’t seen his friends in forever.

He types quickly:

Steven: omg I’d love to!!

Steven: I miss you guys sooo much

(Why does it feel like a lie, somehow?)

Lars: aw, we miss ya too buddy

Lars: i miss you coming to the BD to bug me every morning (followed by a pleading emoji)

Steven: Gee, Captain Lars, didn’t know you loved me that much (eyes emoji)

Lars: i was joking.

Steven: Were you really? :3

Lars: ok now your making me regret inviting you

Steven: Noooooo, come on!!

Lars: lmao

Lars: srsly now. 8 at my place, ok?

Steven: Perfect! I’ll see you there! ^^

Lars: (finger gun emojis)

Steven sighs, feeling so… light all of a sudden. Just this one interaction with Lars seems to have calmed him down a little.

The half-gem feels relieved. So relieved.

He can actually get out there and have fun with his friends, catch up with their lives, laugh together, share something tasty to eat…

(And he gets to distract himself from his rising dread.)

(To finally not be reminded how painfully alone he is.)

Well, it’s still 2 PM. From what Dad told him, Sadie and the Cool Kids are going to arrive at 6 PM… so Steven still needs to do something else to keep his mind busy. Maybe cook or bake something for the party. He doesn’t remember Lars mentioning a potluck, but Steven wants to do something nice for his friends nonetheless.

What is he going to cook or bake, then?

…

Or maybe…

“... don’t tell me I inspired you with my nostalgia.”

“You could say that,” Steven smirks at Lars’ statement, while holding two huge boxes of donuts with all the flavors he could remember his friends enjoying. As well as…

“You brought salad, too?” Sadie notices, almost wanting to laugh.

“Yeah, like Buck ordered once.”

“Heh, I appreciate your dedication, Steven.” Buck pats his back proudly.

“We miss our favorite roadie,” Sour Cream says, ruffling the younger boy’s curly hair.

Steven’s heart, instead of anguish, is filled with warmth.

“Awe, you guys are going to make me cry,” he jokes.

“Us too! This was so sweet of you, Steven,” Jenny compliments. “I’m glad you could make it!”

“I know every friend says this and it doesn’t always happen… but we should really hang out more,” Buck says, in his same stoic expression. “I love you guys.”

“Yeah, same,” Steven grins affectionately.

It’s a much more casual party this time, which is the best kind of party after such busy times. Lars’ backyard is lit by those small, spherical yellow lights, and everyone sits by the huge picnic table that replaces Lars’ trampoline. Besides the donuts, you can see Lars’ pastries, and apparently snacks that Sadie and the Cool Kids brought from their last tour.

They sing and play some songs together, they laugh at the stories from concerts, outer space, and Little Homeworld… Steven gets to hear more about their lives and how happy they are.

But most importantly, they’re very happy to share it with him.

Which is such an honor.

Steven is genuinely having a good time.

Perhaps the first time in so long…

He’s so happy to be a part of this.

…

The boy’s phone vibrates in his pocket.

He casually checks it, not bothered by it interrupting his immersion in the party. He’s not expecting much, when…

He sees that it’s the gems.

Steven and his family have countless groups for Little Homeschool, and then they have their own private group, just the four of them.

Pearl has sent him a rather quick and dry text informing him of their absence for the next…

Two months.

…

Two months.

Two.

Months.

And no, Steven can’t do anything to stop it.

Because he tries to text them. He sends a million desperate texts.

And his pleads are never answered. And they will never be, because the messages aren’t even sent .

He goes to all their private numbers, and nothing.

Steven calls them, to no avail. There’s not even the option for voicemail.

Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot are on their own separate fieldtrips as well, so it’s useless to try to call them.

No one is reachable.

No one.

“... Steven. Steven?”

The half-gem only gets a little startled at Lars standing next to him, and bearing the most concerned expression Steven has seen him with. He also realizes everyone else has stopped talking.

“O-Oh, sorry,” he laughs nervously, quickly putting away his phone. “It was nothing.”

“Is everything okay?” Jenny asks.

“You looked like someone died,” Sour Cream observes, also worried.

“No, no, nobody died.” Well, except Lars , Steven would’ve darkly added. “It’s– It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Sadie questions.

“Yeah.” Steven’s dread returns to his chest, his hands beginning to shake. He hides them in his pockets, which doesn’t help since he feels his cell phone and it’s the thing that ruined everything. He’s doing everything not to turn pink. “I’m sure,” he mumbles.

Everyone looks at one another, unsure. Steven wants to scream.

“Hey,” Lars whispers, putting a hand on Steven’s back. “Do you want to go inside a bit?”

The latter hates that he likes the soothing touch, yet he’s also afraid the former is going to notice Steven is shaking, so he dodges it much to his own dismay.

“It’s okay, Lars,” Steven mumbles, wanting to cry.

He avoids everyone’s eyes, his hand almost crushing his phone into pieces inside his pocket. He’d love to throw this darned thing into the depths of the ocean.

“Sorry, I ruined the moment, didn’t I?” Steven laughs darkly.

“No, Steven, it’s okay,” Sadie reassures him. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to, okay?”

“Yeah, man, no worries,” Sour Cream agrees.

Despite that, the party does grow a little quieter. It feels like the emptiness of his house.

Of course. He screwed everything up. Again.

Now they don’t want anything to do with him.

(Like the gems. Like everyone else.)

Steven at least gets to resume his laugh and his smiles, because he’s always been so good at them.

Time goes by…

And they start leaving.

Because obviously, nothing lasts forever.

Jenny is the first one who leaves, and she gives Steven the biggest hug. It doesn’t smell like pizza anymore, instead it’s a sweet scent. It’s different but nice. But too quick.

Sour Cream and Buck leave together. The former sidehugs Steven, while the latter gently tells him to take care of himself, and to always count on them whenever he needs. Steven smiles and nods, without any honesty.

Lastly, Sadie, Lars, and Steven… the original trio. It’s been so long, Sadie and Lars are a lot more comfortable around each other nowadays, holding hands under the table. Steven would’ve fanboyed at another time when he sees Sadie casually kissing Lars’ cheek, causing her boyfriend to go pinkier than what should be possible.

Sadie’s hug, though, is longer than everyone else’s goodbyes.

“It was nice seeing you, Steven,” she grins with some melancholy. “Don’t forget we love you, okay?”

Steven doesn’t believe her, but he plasters a smile on his face just to please her.

“Okay,” he replies simply.

Sadie is convinced, and walks away.

Finally, it’s just him.

The only one left.

Lars is quiet.

Steven knows what he’s going to say.

And before Lars does, the sixteen-year-old puts his distraction in action.

“Oh, do you need help cleaning?” He asks.

“Uh, there’s… not a lot to do.”

“Yeah, but like, I could help with the trash.”

“Steven, it’s fine.”

“No, really, I–”

“Why don’t you go home and rest?” Lars isn’t even being rude, he’s genuinely suggesting it because he can tell Steven isn’t fine.

But going home is not going to help.

It’s the last thing Steven needs.

“Don’t worry, Lars, I can do this!” Steven grins widely and already moves to the table to take the remains of food and plastic, as well as the donut boxes.

He can hear Lars sighing in the back.

(Steven hates himself. Obviously Lars doesn’t want him here.)

(But Steven can’t go back.)

(He can’t go back.)

Indeed, there’s not a lot of work to do. Lars washes whatever dishes he needed for the baking part, while Steven takes care of the trash. There are huge trash bins in the yard, so he easily finishes the job.

… it’s over.

He does more.

Steven seeks out any trash he can find to fill the larger bin, both in the kitchen and the restroom.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Lars asks from afar.

“I’m helping!”

“But you’re done taking out the stuff from the party, aren’t you? Why are you taking out the trash from my house?”

“Because I want to help!”

Before Steven can go back outside, Lars stops him with a frowning face.

“Steven, you’re not okay,” the latter states seriously. “You need to go home.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I think you do. I don’t know what happened that you saw earlier, but you need to rest.”

“I don’t need rest.”

“Oh, you don’t?” Lars sounds sarcastic. “Like you’re not obsessively looking for stuff to do?”

“I’m not doing that!” Steven defends.

“Yeah, and I bet you’re not going to clean all the restrooms next. Or the windows. Or my entire bedroom–”

“Oh, haha , you are SO hilarious,” Steven rolls his eyes and tries to go outside again, only for Lars to step forward to make him go back. “Lars, let me go,” Steven warns.

“Will you at least tell me what’s going on?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Alright, then go home.”

“No.”

“Don’t make me throw you inside my head myself.”

Steven boils. “Just let me do this for you, Lars!”

“I’m telling you you don’t have to!” Lars raises his voice.

“But I want to!”

“And I want you to be okay!”

“But I AM OKAY!”

“You wouldn’t be YELLING at me if you were!”

Steven growls in frustration, “Just let me go outside!”

“NO!”

He has had it.

The half-gem pushes Lars aside harshly, to the point of knocking the latter over, and Steven is too distraught to apologize for it. He rushes outside in the peaceful night.

“STEVEN!” Lars yells from inside the kitchen.

He just needs to do this.

He needs to distract himself, distract, distract, distract–

Steven opens the bin–

Noise.

Light.

Too much.

A swarm of white butterflies comes out of the trash bin, flying so loudly and so close that Steven falls backwards.

No.

Not them.

Not them again.

No. No. NO. NO. NO.

He thought he had it under control. He thought he would be okay. He thought…

Steven hides.

That’s all he can do.

He’s alone, alone, alone, alone.

(And he deserves it.)

…

“... can you hear me? Steven! Steven !”

He’s panting furiously, violently.

“Make it go away!” Steven cries.

“Make what go away?”

“EVERYTHING!”

He half regrets yelling, but Steven knows the butterflies are there, and no one else does.

“Steven…”

“Too much,” Steven speaks in between gasps, “too much, it’s too much, I-I can’t take this anymore!”

At this point, he’s aware that he’s pink and he can’t repress it any longer. It’s consuming his every thought, every part of his body.

“I can’t… I can’t…” Steven heaves.

Whoever is there must have left, right?

Steven is helpless. Hopeless.

…

“Steven, can I touch you?”

Oh… they’re still there.

“Is that okay?” They ask.

Steven doesn’t want to look back. He doesn’t want to see it all.

But…

“... y-yeah,” he hiccups, “okay.”

“Okay. I’m just- gonna help you sit, alright? Are you hurt?”

Steven shakes his head, unsure if it was meant to answer the question.

Either way, he feels hands on him, at first trying to remind Steven that they’re real. The hands are gentle. Scarred, rough, but gentle and slow. Their long fingers are a history of cooking cuts. Steven doesn’t know how he can tell all these details, but he does.

“Easy…” the sixteen-year-old is gradually being moved to sit.

But he knows that he’ll be closer to the butterflies.

“WAIT!” Steven yells in panic.

“What?” The other person stops immediately, but still gets a hold on him.

“I-I don’t want… I don’t…” Steven can’t even say the right words, so they come out as, “I don’t wanna die…”

Well, they’re still kind of true.

“Hey, you’re not going to die.”

“I don’t want to…”

“You’re not. I’m here,” Lars – Lars Barriga, perhaps the best person to deal with someone in this situation – promises. “I’m here, Steven.”

You’ve got nothing to fear

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

…

Whimpering.

“I don’t wanna go home.”

He gets silence.

“I d-don’t wanna go h-home,” Steven cries like a little kid after a nightmare. “I-It’s so… empty… so…”

“Lonely?”

Steven nods painfully.

“You’re not going to be alone, okay? I won’t let that happen.”

Lars sounds so sure, and the way he’s rubbing Steven’s shoulders… it brings the latter shivers. The good kind of shivers.

And tears. So many of them. All the tears that he has swallowed and never released them.

Steven clings to his friend, who squeezes him in return, the hug as rough and tender as his mere touch.

“I’ve got you, buddy,” Lars reassures him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It only makes Steven sob harder, purely out of relief. It’s so ironic, but so true.

He cries for a good couple of minutes or hours, smelling vanilla and butter in Lars’ clothes, not minding the dirty apron the baker is wearing at all. Steven wants to absorb that smell and make it his home, because it feels so safe that he doesn’t want it to go away. He doesn’t want the hands to let him go ever again.

And it feels like Lars wants to protect him from the world, from whatever horrible thing that made Steven like this. Even if he can’t see the butterflies, Lars still seems to shield Steven from them.

Just that has the half-gem finally face reality, finding the butterflies roaming there, endlessly coming out of the trash bin. As Steven expected.

However, with Lars holding him right now, Steven doesn’t feel so overwhelmed anymore.

So… this is what he needed.

He gets now.

Thus, the butterflies finally end and they fly to the sky above, replacing the stars. They will never disappear, as he already knew.

Steven relaxes significantly, like he’s going to pass out in the hug. He lets out a shaky breath while Lars hugs him tightly in response, knowing that it’s the perfect kind of tightness for Steven.

Lars also breathes in and out deeply, squeezing the boy some more.

“Come on,” he whispers, “let’s go inside.”

This time, Steven accepts it, glowing pink and everything.

“... I’m sorry,” he sniffs. “I’m sorry I snapped at you like that.”

Lars sighs, but in regret. “I’m sorry, too. For being a jerk to you.”

Neither of them give excuses.

Steven contemplates the night sky from the skyscrapers, aware he can see the butterflies from there. In the meantime, Lars holds him as Steven has no energy left to cling.

“I hate feeling like this,” the younger teen vents, “it just keeps getting worse with time.”

“So you’ve had this before?”

Steven nods. “I-I’ve tried everything to make it better. Garnet taught me and Connie how to deal with our problems, and it worked for Connie… but not for me. And I asked Garnet for help, but instead she just gave me a life lesson and Pearl and Amethyst didn’t even care, and they LEFT ME without ANYTHING!” Steven snaps, only for him to cover his mouth and freeze, scared he might have startled Lars.

Lars, however, doesn’t look scared of him at all.

Instead, sad. Maybe angry, but not at Steven.

“So yeah, I’m expected to do everything on my own, I’m used to it!” Steven continues, more furious. “I looked it up online, since Connie told me about ‘anxiety’, and I did everything they taught me to manage it, but nothing soothes my chest, nothing calms me down… I think I only felt good when you invited me, and I got to see you guys again. I haven’t felt this happy in so long, a-and then OBVIOUSLY, something always has to RUIN it for me.”

He tears up again, his eyes burning pink and red.

“I-I… I got a text from the gems that they’re going to be gone for two months , a-and I couldn’t reach them. Because they’d already left. EVERYONE left. T-They all left me .”

Lars doesn’t say anything, choosing to hug Steven closer, nuzzling his black curls, doing everything to make sure Steven feels loved and cared for.

“Why does everyone leave me?” The half-gem asks.

Except Steven knows why.

He’s selfish. Useless. Clingy.

He doesn’t say any of these things, yet Lars pulls away just slightly with a stern look.

“Steven,” the older teen begins seriously, “listen to me, you don’t deserve to be abandoned, okay? No kid in the world deserves to be abandoned or neglected; they deserve to be reminded every single day that they’re loved in all the ways possible. You didn’t fail anyone by existing. I know everyone out there”– Lars gestures at the above –“made you believe that, but they’re WRONG.”

There’s some kind of ferocity in Lars’ words, the same one Steven heard back when the boys were abducted to Homeworld – firstly when Lars refused to leave the ship without Steven, and then when he convinced Steven to return home instead of sticking with Lars and the Off Colors.

A sense of protection, perhaps.

Steven feels warm inside, which he feels ashamed of for some reason, and at the same time it hurts. Which makes no sense, because it’s the good kind of hurt. What kind of hurt is good?

Still, the glowing boy’s eyes are only filled with more water.

Noticing that, Lars gently wipes some of it for him.

“You don’t have to be useful, Steve,” he says tenderly. “You don’t have to be self-sufficient, you don’t have to be strong all the time. You deserve to have someone, and you deserve to have someone when you feel the whole weight of the galaxy crushing you.”

Steven sniffs, contemplative.

Lars’ words are believable. Steven has always trusted him, and has always thought the world of him. Steven loved Lars from the beginning, embracing every little part of him, the weight that he also carried.

Still… one question keeps haunting Steven every single day, every single night.

“... do you think they would treat my mom like this if I weren’t here?”

Lars immediately tenses, immobile like a doll. Not a corpse, but a doll.

Steven, admittedly, asked that to himself. He knows Lars won’t have the answers. He can’t speak for the gems. It feels cruel to Lars, who’s just trying his best to help a friend in need.

The silence this time is not comforting. Steven fears he ruined everything again.

“Steven?” Lars suddenly sounds… fragile.

When the younger boy looks up, he sees a teary Lars already staring back.

“I love you,” the latter tells him.

The broken way he says it…

“Whenever you feel unloved, whenever you feel alone or whenever the gems fuck off to wherever they go without a trace,”– Steven’s eyes widen at the word choice –“I want you to remember that I love you, and that you’re always welcome here. There’s always food and life here, no emptiness at all. And you can always go see me at Spacetries and we can have a coffee and chat like the old days, or if we can’t see each other in person for any reason, you can call me. I can always teleport, too. I can do literally anything to help you, Steven, and I want to help you, because I love you , okay?”

Lars is cupping his cheeks like they’re precious, wiping Steven’s tears and crying his own. Like Lars is the one crying for him now, feeling his pain for him.

“I’m here for you. I’ll always be here, no matter how, no matter what,” he insists.

Steven is too speechless to react.

He realizes, though…

He stops glowing pink.

And he forgets everything else, with how genuine Lars’ love is.

Steven merely lies down against his friend, who covers him properly with his blanket. Lars caresses the boy’s black hair, in the same way that Steven has always craved for, even if it reminded him of bad memories.

It’s perfect just the way it is. Perfect in every way, just like you.

He doesn’t want Lars to ever stop.

He doesn’t want this to ever be gone.

But Lars won’t leave him. He will make sure Steven never feels anxious or useless on his own again.

And Steven…

“... I love you, too,” he whispers.

Lars tightens his arms around him, this time sniffing. If he cries on Steven’s head, neither of them talk about it.

It stays between them.

#steven universe #steven universe future #steven quartz universe #lars barriga #the cool kids #sadie miller #anxiety attack tw #panic attack tw #hallucination tw #suicide mention tw #suicidal thoughts tw #neglect tw #vent fic #long post #fanfiction #hurt/comfort

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crudetautology · 2 years ago

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Some thoughts apart from just everyone should listen to this episode of the podcast because it's just that good (And if you haven't got the time just read this quote posted by wreathedwith from it or listen to this compilation by eccentricthornback.):

- As someone who really, really liked both the book and the film (and reading about both, ie adaptation choices, interviews etc) listening to this finally inspired me to try watching the tv show again. - Ben's analysis of the way the school system in England works for a certain class of people was both incredibly fascinating (just his inside view of it, the perspective he brought to it) and also genuinely heartbreaking. The feeling of abandonment that's by design to breed a certain sensibility in boys is really horrific and I'm glad both him and Joel Morris (the host) really drove this point home. - And the idea that the games that these spies are playing is really just an extension of the games and group divisions in school (both at public school, but also apparently at university) was so interesting. - Once they mentioned the way the other characters ask "How's Ann?" to Smiley I couldn't stop noticing it and the way the actors lean into that line. So good. - What did make me laugh though was the bit where they (well pretty much just Justin) discuss the characters that unlike Smiley and the sterile spy-world do have some sensuality or that have sex or are sexual (Ricki, Connie & Ann mostly) and I just sat there going. Is- are they not going to mention Haydon and Prideaux and their whole deal or what? Especially given the Captain. But I imagine they didn't have the time. Still, Haydon, at least, definitely fits into the same category as Ricki, Connie and Ann when it comes to characters who are presented in a certain way in the episodes I've watched of the show so far. Can't really remember if anyone ever registered as a sexual being to me in the book though, to be honest. - Also the show has so far convinced me that there is no version of this movie, book or show where I don't find Jim Prideaux to be the most interesting of the lot. - Prideaux's relationship with Bill Roach, which on it's own is really interesting and a bit sad (he's just so lonely), is added with an other dimension of sadness after this, for me, I think. Ben reads a bit from Roach's perspective in the book and again it's- yeah, heartbreaking is the only word for it really. - That quote from a non-fiction book about the teacher who in the sixties couldn't even phantom the idea that the Beatles could have written their own songs and thought they simply must have hired someone from Cambridge or whatever to do it, says it all really about the prevailing mindset of those type of people. Everything said about class and class distinctions and the idea that there is a certain type of people in Britain that inherently are entitled and best suited to rule and how that utterly idiotic idea is exposed in this story (and in the real life case) and the mindset of "if we can't trust the correct type of people to behave in a certain way then the whole system falls down" (which it should!) is also great and interesting and makes me a bit sad that the movie doesn't hit that quite as hard as maybe the book and show does. - The show's Karla flashback (with surprise Patrick Stewart!) was so close to the same scene in the book that even I, who haven't read the book in some time, still thought "Wow, this is so like the book!" - The way that they kept weaving into the conversation the real double agent Kim Philby (which made me want to read up on the Cambridge Five even more than I did the first time I read the book) was really interesting as well. Again I refer to that quote that wreathedwith posted that is stellar. In conclusion a great, insightful, heartbreaking and fascinating podcast episode that has unfortunately gotten me back on my Tinker, Tailor, Bullshit-train again. Damn you Willbond! And also, also that quote that Ben is quoting from Connie Sachs sums up the view of the episode in such a neat way.

#Ben Willbond #Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy #Comfort Blanket Podcast #this podcast episode really could have gone on for an additional 3 hours for me #I just wanted more and more and more #Le Carré #text.

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s-ccaam-era-crepe · 2 years ago

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fell asleep last night but the public has spoken @multiple-eyes36 @mysecrethideoutthatalsohasabat this is probably going to get long

This is a darker podcast so like TW death/murder and also religion and cults (If there is anything else I need to tag lmk please!)

okay so i'll start with the basic plot of the podcast, brickwood's amusement park. 5 kids get invited to this amusement park for an early access viewing, one of which being sophia who is a popular youtuber/vlogger and is doing a review video on the park for views and publicity (she is where most of the audio clips come from in the beginning) some of the other kids are sunni, rebecca and (not shown in previous post) david and blair.

And basically they get a tour of the park and its Not Normal TM, everything seems a bit off and just like weird, rides start without operators being there, the music is significantly more creepy than a usual park, etc, and eventually when its time to leave oops! they can't find the exit :) all of the employee's seem to be missing as well so they get trapped in the park and are trying to escape while everything gets more and more creepy and while really knowing nothing about the people they are stuck with, or maybe some of them do??

also there is this weird guy who keeps talking to them on the speakers and being really creepy (keeps talking about 'should have made better decisions' and knows way to much about their lives and is talking with sophia a lot and she seems to trust him a lot??) who knows if he's important or not though (he is and he's totally NOT an evil god el oh el)

so...characters!! lets start with Sunni (He/him) because he's my fav fr. so sunni is basically the mom friend, is protective and wants everyone to be okay, like he's caring right? and is basically the most calm person out of the kids. But he does actually know one of the other characters, David (Ae/aer). Sunni and david were best friends when they were younger until their mutual best friend died. So after their friend died David and Sunni stopped being friends because sunni was the last person to be with their friend and despite it looking like their friend got hit by a car, David believes (For good reason) that Sunni actually killed/murdered their friend for some reason but doesn't have any evidence for this and just decided to drop him as a friend as david belives ae can't trust Sunni anymore. And of course Sunni's secret of this gets revealed at the park bc of course it does and then david has like 6 internal crises for several reasons.

Moving onto Sophia !! Sophia (She/they + neos (echo/ver/eye)is a vlogger but is also the head of a religious cult that worships the god that definitely didn't trap them in the park just to torture mortals, what?? noooo. Sophia was basically born into the cult since their parents where a part of it before she was born and they use ver channel to subtly support the cult and gain more followers and stuff. Sophia has a bigger connection to the god and because of this they are basically the speaker for the group, she speaks to the god and he speaks to the group through eye. So while they are trapped the god basically convinces her to kill for the god and to do other things to like prove ver loyalty and stuff. But she ends up dying bc of the god in the end anyways.

Oh yeah, they all die but rebecca btw sorry :'(

Speaking of rebecca! Their story will have to wait until tomorrow bc im leaving for another holiday celebration :((( ANYWAYS!! HI please ask questions and like literally anything i love talking about them thank you!! <33

also here are blair and david :D

#making a seperate post so it doesn't get to long oops #anyways ask away please. i would love questions about them #camera talks #brickwoods #asks or replies or rbs or literally anything please #ask to tag #tw religion #tw cult #tw death #tw murder #my dms are also open for people to ask or just chat. I had a lovely convo w/ a mutual earlier <33 #mutuals can ask for my discord as well !!#this probably has spelling mistakes but anyways

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jamespoeartistry · 1 year ago

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PoeArtistry What’s Happening?

Today is in October 2023

Perceptive Readers, I am preparing an interesting presentation for the weekend. I believe many of you will enjoy it. Thank you for Caring and Sharing!

It is also my hope that whether you are studying for an exam or working to accomplish some task that you will be successful! Be sure to place the little engine that could in your thoughts; chuckle. Maybe I should do another Perceptive Podcast Readers episode on it again; what do you think? - James

Perceptive Readers, if knowledge is power; then Truth is linked with Ultimate Quantum (Spiritual) Power. Thank you Grand Creator; The Sage (Pen Name of James Lynch)

I) Marie Digby - Kings and Queens

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II) Some people will not listen, but at least you told or warned them to stop being presumptuous. - The Sage

III) NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS WORLD TOUR EP 1 (Latam/Aus)

Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so you won't miss any of the exciting content I have in store!

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IV) chrissycostanza55 Instagram

#ATC #Against #againstthecurrent

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chrissy Costanza 🔵 (@chrissycostanza55)

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V) Superman

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*We May Ask Why is Superman Popular?

"In his book Saunders devotes a chapter to Superman, in which he suggests that the character's immense popularity is a result of his embodiment of goodness. "In terms of 20th-century popular culture, he captures the notion of a Platonic ideal of the good. When Superman is done well, I am not embarrassed to call him a beautiful idea," Saunders said." - Betsy Reed Editor, Guardian US

Best regards, James; (Pen Name) The Sage

Author, commentator, and podcaster of James PoeArtistry

The Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching.

#PoeArtistry #Music #Commentary #Chrissy Costanza #Marie Digby #Superman #Youtube #Instagram

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thistlecrimes · 2 years ago

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OKAY, I THOUGHT OF A WAY TO ACKNOWLEDGE CONTRIBUTIONS INDIVIDUALLY!!! I want to say thank you so much to everyone out there who’s ever made fanart, written fanfic, or created any fan content for the show, I love all of it and it means so much to me. I’ve been creating fanart myself since I was like 8 and it brings me so much joy to see other folks engage with the thing we’re making that way. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. So, in order to acknowledge each piece, I’ve decided to break it up into multiple posts (hopefully 4?) and acknowledge 1/4 of the pieces in each post, so I can talk about all of them individually! If anyone who contributed doesn’t have tumblr maybe folks can help me find a way to pass along my praise? SO, HERE’S THE FIRST 1/4th - More to come in coming days!

Moderators - Telemartus & Fungh0u1

What an incredibly impressive project! The layout and everything is formatted so well, this turned out so sparkly and so professional looking! Skipping ahead, I love the back cover as well, once again I am obliterated by a Kingdom Hearts quote. the story of my life. But I digress, what a lovely, wonderful thing you’ve organized, thank you for putting together this project, it is an absolute delight from start to finish. 💚 💚 💚

Pg 1/Cover - Grace Oh my god, I love the linework in this. I can’t stop looking at the hilt of the sword, it’s so fucking cool. I love the composition, the character portraits and the balance of colors. It looks like a real ass YA novel cover and I’m losing my mind about it. Also loving Maeri at the center of everything looking like a total badass, as she should be. Pg 4. - Seth Reyes OH MY GOD SETH!!!! This piece is so awesome, I love everyone’s expressions and the sense of camaraderie at the table, I want to be there. The lighting and atmosphere look so good, and I’m loving the costuming details. ALSO DON’T THINK I DON’T SEE FALEN FEEDING A LIL’ CRUMB TO DARIUS I DO AND I’M INSANE ABOUT IT!!!

Pg. 5 - Mochi KICK ASS!!! The vibe is immaculate. I wish I knew the names of the actual members of Fall Out Boy better so I could make a bunch of dumb jokes, but regardless, these friendos look fucking cool as hell and I would definitely add their songs to my mix cd’s if I was a teen in Estra. Look at that lighting. This rips ass. Pg. 6 - Rosedragon OKAY, OH MY GOD. So first of all, excellent writing, I think the characterization is spot on. And man, this did twist up my lil’ guts a lil’ bit, I got sad, hahahaha, GOOD JOB!! AND THEN?????? I’m all choked up, and YOU GOT ME WITH THE KINGDOM HEARTS REFERENCE?!?!?!?! AKHLFAJSHFAJ. IT IS, ISN’T IT???? I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU BLINDSIDED ME WITH A DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE HIT FILM FRANCHISE SAW!!!!! Incredible. Good work OP.

EDIT!!! I forgot to mention the art! It fits in so seamlessly with the story! But I love it too, I particularly like your Slake depiction, I think you captured them perfectly. <3 Pg. 10 Baking Swords HELL YEAH!!! I love how dense this is, there’s so much happening here and I LOVE it!!! The lil’ sculpted Darius, especially! The chaotic energy is fantastic, I think it suits the podcast perfectly. If the podcast were a cupcake this is exactly what it would look like, love the use of glitter, 10/10 Pg. 11 Miranda M THIS IS SO CUTE!!!! I love the Scandinavian folk art influence, this looks like it was plucked right out of some (hopefully alive and thriving) Ilfran’s living room, big ‘fantasy Minnesota’ energy. Is this knitted? Or crocheted? However you made it, the precision is impressive, it turned out absolutely lovely. <3 Pg. 12 The Z Oh my god, I started smiling at “daycare=the docks” and I didn’t stop until I got to pg. 2 where I was immediately under psychic attack and continued to be through the rest of the list. Bravo. Now we’re going to have to kill Torva even harder. ALSO YOU MADE ME REALIZE I FORGOT ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE ARTIE THE ARTIFICER!!! I will invite you to the wedding. Hopefully you can create the agenda. ;) Pg. 14-15 Bri THIS IS SO SWEET!!! I have thought about this kind of scenario too, wondered what kind of conversations Slake and Laika might have. The art is super cute and expressive, but also the conversation got me, I found it very relatable. I hadn’t quite thought about that element of Slake in awhile, I forgot that it’s something I struggle with myself. SO GOOD JOB WITH YOUR LOVELY AND INCISIVE WRITING! I’ll look forward to talking with my therapist! Thumbs up sparkle! 👍✨ OKAY, AND THAT IS PART ONE! I’m hoping by reblogging it to the Dames tumblr folks will see my comments, I just want y’all to know how much I appreciate the work you put in, it turned out amazing! 💦 💯💯💯

At long last, the Roll to Fall in Love!!! zine is available for download! Everything turned out absolutely amazing and we are so excited for you all to see it.

The zine is pay-what-you-want, and all proceeds will be donated to the Wildlife Conservation Society!

Thank you so so much to all of our contributors for their beautiful work and to the Dames/Legendlark team for making such a lovely podcast!!

#fanart #fanfiction #zine #fanzine

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federal-sundrop · 2 years ago

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Obey me headcanons <3

Lucifer is probably the most stubborn when it comes to tickling, as its shown in the game it doesn’t really make him laugh but he can definitely feel it!!

He’d just simply go

‘We’re you trying to tickle me? it’s gonna be a lot more harder than that.’

I feel like a squeeze or two to the sides or hips could do it, I also feel like he’d have a somewhat ticklish spine along w his horns

He’d probably chuckle a bit but then grab your wrists and give you the death glare before starting to absolutely WRECK you. (Mans def a ler-leaning switch)

As a ler, Lucifer would definitely pin your arms over your head, and start teasing you even before he’s tickling you, He’d most likely remove his gloves too so he can get your spots with his manicured nails.

He’d say some shit like- ‘Is this not what you wanted MC? I mean in all fairness you attacked me first so I assume you’d want me to return the tickly favor!~’

If the word tickle made you more red than you probably already were he’d 100% say it more. OH and MC and mammon are the #1 targets loll

Satan is also most likely a ler-leaning switch, he’d also be stubborn but not as much as Lucifer. a couple giggles and maybe some squeaks would come out before he hits you either on purpose or on accident. If you have Satan pinned he’s definitely gonna squirm or thrash.

‘MClistenwecantalkaboutthis??’ is what he’d say before his demise.

Satan as a ler is the kind to play smth like hide and seek, simply if you’re found its endless tickles until you’re either wheezing or crying from laughter. He doesn’t want to admit it but he loves to hear MC smile and laugh, it even makes him smile a bit. (I dont know satans character very well so this is dry and i apologize)

Asmodeous is def a switch

Asmo is the kind of lee that would run away, as if he’d want to be chased by the ler. Asmos worst spots are most likely his neck, stomach, and underarms. those spots would probably make him squeal and snort.

‘HEhehey! ThAhat TIhickles!-‘ is what you’d get out of him by poking at his underarms, tumtum or neck.

Asmo def finds being tickled comforting, and everyone probably knows that. Hell I feel like asmo would tickle others to 1. be an ass, 2. get the person to tickle him, or 3. make someone laugh bc he obv loves to hear people (esp mc) laugh!

He’s ONE hell of a teasing ler.

He’d pin you down and have his fingers hover over a spot

‘D’aww,you cutie! I haven’t even touched you yet and you’re already blushing! maybe I should do this more often!’

He’d point out if you’d squeal, snort, squeak, blush, basically anything and call you absolutely adorable. Just like Lucifer, if you get flustered over the word tickle then he WILL use it more (but secretly gets all blushy when he hears it from someone like MC)

OH! and he’d AIM for bare skin and just DRAG his fingers up and down your sides, or just lightly scratch that area. He’d also probs kiss your sides, tum, and neck.

oooh heres mammmmooonnn (Lee-leaning switch)

Y’know smth I think about his that since you made a pact with mammon, you can make him do anything riiight? you could tell him to raise his arms and he cant put them down, which gives you a BIG advantage.

Mammons worst spots are most likely his hips, sides, and armpits. (but he’s ticklish everywhere-)

This man SQUIRMS, well unless you order him not to. He’d also beg for you to stop immediately (even though he doesn’t want that-) the word ‘tickle’ absolutely DEMOLISHES this man, along with teases like ‘Iiiim gonna getcha!~’ and stuff like that. pointing out how he’s red will just make him even redder. If he laughs too hard he’ll 100% snort or squeal. (Probs has the loudest laugh out of all of them)

‘WAHAHAHAITIHIHIMSAHAHAHARRRYY!’ would come pouring out or

‘STAHAHAP!! IHIHILL GEHET YOHOHOU!!’ and then he’d regret saying that. (there isn’t a yellow-)

BUT! as shown in the podcast, Mammon can be a VERY teasing ler, He was tickling Levi, basically interrogating him. He uses a very teasing tone, and will just continue tickling you in the worst spot. Mammon will MAYBE stop, not wanting you to pass out or cry from laughter, but he definitely enjoys seeing that smile on your face, but will never admit it. (tsundere)

Mammon would try to tease you, but fluster HIMSELF in the process. (L)

Leviathan!! (lee-leaning switch)

When tickled Levi gets suuuuper blushy, he doesn’t really squirm he just kinda sits there and takes it- He’d all be like

‘nOhoHo!! ToOHoo tIHICKly!!’

and stuff- orrrr be like ‘WAHhaIT!! TiHIHICKLES!! ToOHoo MuHUCH!!’ teasing in a teasy tone of voice would obliterate him. He’d try to cover his blushy face and stuffs. OH! his worst spots are definitely his sides, ribs, neck, and shoulder blades. light tickles in those spots would make him CRUMBLE.

His tickles would be really light, but comforting. He’d usually really tickle someone if they’re sad or in need of comfort buut SOMETIMES for revenge- (this mans also loves to hear u squeak) HE ALSO LOVES TICKLE FIGHTS!!!!!

OHOHOH BEEEEZLEBUB!!! Beel is def a ler-leaning if not switch.

This hungry hungry man is a big, playful teddybear

Beel would probs pin you down and go on and on about hungry he is, before raising your shirt a bit and nibbling on your tum, ribs and sides. Also kissing and blowing raspberries on those areas.

‘I cant help it Mc!! im just soooo hungry!~’

yeah he’d tease ya- super sweet and playful guy though, he’d never intend to hurt you, he loves ya too much!

He can be awfully merciless though, depends on his appetite HAH- im funny arent i?

anyways he’s an adorable lee, he’d try to muffle his giggles- it would be hard to pin down the guy but you dont gotta, he’ll just let you tickle him-

‘pFFt! Hehey- thahat kinda tihickles!’

ofc it does beel-

on another note Beel won’t stop you, but that doesn’t mean he wont turn the tables on ya-

Beel might snort once in a blue moon, but it doesn’t usually happen. His worst spots are his stomach, collarbone, and ribs. its hard to get the guy cackling usually-

Last but not least, Belphegor!

Belphie seems to be a lee, I dont really see him as too much of a ler but he’d definitely attack you if hes in the mood.

BIG cuddler, he’d love neck kisses and forehead kisses, along w side tickles- or any tickles in that matter. he’d be all giggly and squeaky. The worst spots for belphie are probs his underarms, sides and neck. Belphie also appears to be feather sensitive, so feather tickles get him all giggly and happy! i feel like the result in tickling him would be-

‘TiHiHickles!! IhIt TIHicklessss!’

Digging your thumbs into his sides or underarms would get him to squeal, esp if you swirled them around

as a ler he’d kiss and nuzzle your neck, sometimes even blowing raspberries. he’d tease you going

‘aw i love hearing your laugh and seeing you happy, its cute!’

in a little teasy, but soft tone.

Belphies fav activity is making you happy, or cuddling with you.

He’s a calm, and soft person but will attack with light tickle, to make you happy! if you ask him kindly to stop he would, and boop your nose before laying on you, and falling asleep lmao-

Thats all the TKL obey me headcanons for the brothers i have rn! :0

#tickleheadcanons #tickleblog #tickletrash #obeymetickles #obey me tickle

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thepariahcontinuum · 2 years ago

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Parahuman power ideas:

1: A tinker whose specialty is to build a crappy, gas-powered device they solves the last problem they heard a person mention. Gets headaches if they hear something the shards can't/won't solve or if he hears another problem before finishing the current project.

2: A blaster/stranger whose blasts become harmless to anybody that sees them. They glow and travel at maybe 20-30 mph so spotting them isn't hard.

3: A breaker who turns into/from lunar sediment. Has no control over their "body" while transformed.

I originally wrote up these three as a cluster trigger but I think I'll leave it up to you if they are or not.

Okay I did a cluster as one of the recent submissions to this so I'm gonna say that this isn't a cluster.

Also, in going to make it a rule now that unless you're specifically asking for a cluster or capes that have a reason to be part of the same submission that you send ideas one at a time....These bulk asks are getting a bit much.

The first one: Oh there's potential for this one....This is a villain/mercenary rogue by necessity. This is a guy who would have loved to stay out of all of the cape nonsense and use his powers to run a legitimate business, the problem is that there are laws which effectively stop Tinkers from running a business that competes with non-Capes. Eventually he decided that if he's going to be forced out of legal work that he should commit to the bit.... He's something of a one-stop shop for quick and dirty, cheap but largely effective solutions that a lot of the small to mid tier villains without the means and resources to have their own in-house people. He is on the other hand someone who will be at every Endbringer fight he can reach, usually with a big gas-powered mech or tank.

His entire aesthetic is steampunk, a mix of gentleman and inventor; hides his face behind heavy goggles, wears a top hat and has a very twirly moustache.

Cape name: "Captain of Industry"

The second one: so you didn't specify but I'm imagining these blasts as similar to Legend's lasers but heavily nerfed because of the limit you specified.

I feel like this guy is ex-military like Narwhal, possibly a sniper which would make the limits of the power fitting in that twisted way Worn does....He was honourably discharged after Triggering and managed to make a living as one of those background capes the PRT just has guarding things and out of the limelight.

Until he found a marketable niche.

He's a blaster, but he likes to function as a striker.... Basically he wears a really subtle costume with a regular coat over it and is the person to take point on engaging villains, primarily getting close enough to fire a blast from point blank..... Doesn't matter how slow the blast moves if it hits you in the back of the head from half an inch away. He's still not massively popular but he's got a use and enough of a cult following to justify them making merch and giving him a few public appearances and interviews.... Although a lot of them are with podcasts run my utter dicks.

Cape name: "Astonish" (Partly because of comic names like "Astonishing Spider-Man" and partly because of the Pokemon move Astonish which makes the opponent flinch)

The third one: Okay I'm gonna need some clarification on this power...Do they actually became a lump of lunar sediment and just exist as a lump of crumbly dirt with no power to affect anything? Because that would be entirely useless beyond being a screaming red flag about this characters self image.

Or is it what I imagined.....A Hulk like scenario where they become a rage monster made of disconnected moon rock and dust, with the breaker category coming from the fact that each of the disconnected parts can function somewhat independently? Because that has some potential.

I don't have much of a background in mind for this character, only that she's a patient at the asylum who checked herself in upon realising that she had absolutely no control over her actions in her alternate state and that changing back was difficult.....Also, she's gotta be involved in the half built moon city, if only tangentially.

Cape name: "Lunacy"....A pun I am not ashamed of.

#worm web serial #wildbow #parahumans #Worm OC #735598445a

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acepalindrome · 3 years ago

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Friends, if you enjoy D&D/tabletop actual plays or fantasy or just great stories and great characters that are equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, I am begging you on bended knee to give NADDPOD (Not Another D&D Podcast) a try. It is truly so good and never gets enough love. To compare to other well know actual plays, it’s closest in vibe to TAZ Balance, so I would especially recommend it if you love TAZ Balance.

The episodes are about 90 minutes long on average and are very listenable. I tend to get bored with combat in actual plays sometimes, but the fights in NADDPOD are so fun and fast paced while not cutting any of the zaniness of a bunch of goobers playing D&D.

And what do you like? World building? DM Murph’s worlds are so fun and fresh and play around with existing D&D concepts of alignments and gods in ways that are so very satisfying.

How about some fantastic characters? The PCs are so entertaining and can be extremely goofy but they will make you cry, that is a threat and a promise. And Murph’s NPCs range from being complex and fascinating and lovable to the biggest shithead losers that are so fun to hate.

Want some queer characters? We got you covered, both the main campaigns and Trinyvale have canon queer PCs who end up in canon relationships.

Okay, but where do you start? There are two main campaigns and a ton of side stuff! I would recommend starting either Campaign 1 (Bahumia) or Campaign 2 (Eldermourne.) I love Trinyvale but I don’t think it’s the best introduction to NADDPOD, and Hot Boy Summer is best saved for after finishing Campaign 1. If you listen to the Donkey Kong oneshots first you might die in real life. You gotta build up to that shit.

I think Campaign 1 is overall the stronger story, but it does take a bit to get really really good, about 12 episodes in. It’s fun enough before that, and you should listen to the first chunk to get to know the characters, but once you hit the Galaderon arc the show goes from about 7/10 to 12/10. The basic plot is that it’s the ‘campaign after the campaign.’ The world has already been saved by a team of legendary heroes, but it turns out maybe the world isn’t as saved as we thought and maybe those heroes actually fucked some things up in a pretty big way. ‘Kill your idols’ is a big theme and it’s fantastic.

Campaign 2 jumps right in and is good from the start, but it’s a much shorter campaign and it has some pacing issues. That said, it’s still an excellent campaign and I’ve been crying about the finale all day. This campaign takes place in a dark fairytale inspired world torn apart by a conflict between two gods, the Reaper and the Trickster. Deals a lot with religion and faith and how they can be used to manipulate (like me, Murph is an ex-Catholic and his portrayals of this stuff hit me so hard.)

One of my favorite things is how well NADDPOD balances humor and drama. It’s easily the funniest actual play I’ve ever listened to, and someday I will learn to stop listening to it on earphones when I’m out on public because I always end up laughing out loud like a weirdo. But when the drama hits? It’s so good and poignant and both campaigns have god-tier found families that constantly destroy my heart with how much they love each other and make each other better and stronger in their darkest times.

I really can’t say enough good about NADDPOD. Please give it a try if you haven’t. And then tell me all about it because I love seeing people enjoy my favorite things.

And also be warned that if you start with campaign 1, there is a long bit about dragon genitalia in the first episode. People either love it or hate it. You’ve gotta just get through it.

#naddpod #eldermourne #d&d

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dmsden · 3 years ago

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How About a +1 Sword Instead? - Not giving PCs too much magic too fast

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week's Question from a Denizen is from fireshock3000. They ask, "So in my campaign, there is a high turnover for magical items. As such my players have asked for a lot of specific ones (whether from books, other games they were in, or from podcast/live plays the have listened to or watched) which are sometimes more powerful then I think they should have. My question is, how can I give them what they want but not make them too over powered for what I have planned?"

I totally get this. Of course every paladin wants a Holy Avenger, and of course every wizard wants a Staff of the Magi. But, man, those are powerful, end of the campaign type items. So how do you give them to the players without giving them the item whole cloth? Well, good news, friend. I have a way of doing so that also gives you tons of story potential.

There's a flipside to this as well. Let's say your paladin wants part of their character to be an ancestral sword. Before the campaign started, his noble house was almost completely wiped out by vampires, and he fled, but not before taking his heirloom with him. This is a conundrum, right? You want to be able to give the PC cool magic weapons as time goes on in your campaign, but, for story reasons, they'd never stop using that sword. So what do you do?

Well, many, many campaigns ago, I had a character who desperately wanted to have an heirloom magic sword as part of his story and inheritance. It was really important to him, and I didn't want to say no. I came up with an idea that later I saw the game itself suggesting as well, and then, even later, I saw Matt Mercer use to excellent effect via his "Vestiges of Divergence". At the core, the idea is an item that levels up along with the PC.

This idea is actually baked in the concepts of my current campaign. There's the concept of Pneuma, the Breath of Heroes, an ephemeral trait that sets PCs aside from most people in the world. In the hands of someone without pneuma, that heirloom sword will never be anything more than a normal sword. As someone's pneuma manifests and increases, however, the attributes in the sword could "wake up" and become increasingly powerful.

Let's take our paladin and his family's heirloom. Maybe at first level, it's just an ordinary sword, with only its history to set it apart. When the PC hits level 3 and takes their paladin's Oath, however, the sword begins to manifest its true nature. It becomes +1, and it glows whenever fiends and/or undead are within 120 feet of it. As time goes on, you could have it manifest as a +2 weapon, a +3 weapon, and, finally, maybe around level 17, as a full Holy Avenger, with all the perks thereof. You could even parse things out further, such as initially not being +1 unless you're fighting Fiends or Undead. You might even make a chart such as:

Level 1: Ordinary weapon, or counts as Magic only when fighting Fiends or Undead

Level 3: Magic Weapon; glows whenever Fiends or Undead are within 120 feet.

Level 5: +1 Weapon

Level 7: +1 Weapon, Extra 1d10 damage vs Fiends and Undead

Level 9: Gains the Aura effect of a Holy Avenger

Level 11: +1 Weapon, +2 to Hit vs Fiends and Undead

Level 13: +2 Weapon

Level 15: +2 Weapon, Extra 2d10 damage vs Fiends and Undead

Level 17: Full Holy Avenger

Another alternative, especially with items that're kind of hard to level up like this (such as the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O noted above) is to develop plot around either finding or making the item. Maybe first they have to find the inert Mighty Servant, then they need to find a replacement crystal to serve as its heart, then they need to find the tome that includes the chant to awaken it. This way, the PCs feel like they have a path towards gaining the item they want, but you're not just giving it to them right upfront.

Likewise, if they want a Staff of the Magi, you don't need to hand it to them at early levels. Have them craft their own staff, and have finding the ritual and components to do so part of the campaign's plot. They hear of a wizard who made such a staff, then they have to track down his spellbook/journal. Once they do, then they need to collect the components of it - wood from a singular tree that grows in the Feywild and is guarded by a hydra; a crystal found in the belly of a legendary purple worm; iron bands from the forges of Avernus; and so on. Once they have the components, they must seek the legendary lost world forge of the dwarven gods and make the staff in a ritual that's likely to draw powerful enemies who will want the staff for themselves. Making the staff could be a side campaign all its own!

Ultimately, of course, it's your campaign. If you don't want an item to show up, just be honest with the player. Tell them you think the item is too powerful, and get a feel if there's something a bit less game-breaking that you can help them achieve. They'll definitely appreciate the extra time you took to speak with them about it, and most will be reasonable and understand. There will always be outliers, of course, but you can essentially tell them it's your decision, and that's all there is to it.

Thanks for asking this, fireshock! You are entered in our contest, and I hope this was helpful to you. Until next week, may all your 20s be Natural.

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meimae · 3 years ago

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1/12/21

Time for my November Immersion Overview!

Admittedly, I'm four reviews behind, but I was so much in the immersion zone this month that I kept putting off writing them all. No regrets, since that's four completed reads and a million monthly streak still going strong! I'll try my best to put them out for you guys before the year ends.

As usual, I'm excited for a brand new month of immersion, especially because a bunch of stuff I've been waiting to finish releasing are now ready for me to binge over the holidays.

Books

I was self assessing a lot recently, and I figured out that I've been quickly gaining speed reading in 横書き but going slowly for 縦書き, which makes sense because I've spent a lot of my time reading visual novels. Can't beat reading horizontally for most of my life I guess.

To combat the problem, I tried reading books again with some success, since I actually finished one that I stalled for months on end. Tried to use pomodoro, but because every chapter is a different length, I find it very easy to break concentration as compared to visual novels that, despite having to make choices, I can just continue reading 'til the point of almost exhaustion before quitting for the day.

Not giving up though, because I discover new interesting reads everyday, and do have the desire to read all of them one fine day. Just have to keep pushing forward.

My reads for the month totalling 103.32k characters: 本好きの下剋上司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません第ニ部兵士の娘II, かがみの孤城, 君の名は, くまクマ熊ベアー 2, and 三日間の幸福 (completed finally! Review soon.)

Drama

Only one drama?! Pathetic, I know. An absolute shame that all of the things I wanted to watch were either hard to find or still airing. I have come prepared for December though!

着飾る恋には理由があって

So happy that what I did watch was pretty good though! 横浜流星 keeps playing chef characters in the shows I have seen with him as lead, and its so attractive it should be illegal. (.////.)

Really enjoyed this show; it hits my standard for 女性向け dramas - relatable and cool female lead, interesting side characters, and to top it off, the goodest dog you ever did see! Just a bunch of young adults figuring out their lives like normal people without all the unrealistic drama and scandal that's usually in romance shows.

Podcasts & Youtube

I've also come to realize that all the reading I have been doing have actually started to put my listening behind a bit, and because I've been learning to bake a lot of different things recently, I needed something to listen to while waiting for things to rise in the oven. Figured podcasts were the way to go, because I haven't touched them in a while, and they're relatively much harder than watching content, since they have no context aside from maybe a short description per episode.

4989 Shiku Hakku American Life Podcast

Easy to follow and relatable since she talks a lot about her English language learning journey in America.

ひいきびいき

Probably still my favorite podcast despite only listening to a few episodes since it requires me to concentrate on it a lot more than American Life, but I really love that this is basically two people having a conversation, and their banter and verbal expressions are a really good reference to imitate for future output attempts.

自分に換えるゼロ空間

Stumbled upon this on Spotify, and listened to a few episodes. Can't tell if I like it or not yet, but there are so many episodes that she could easily be potential shadowing material for me, so I'm hoping I get into her content more.

フェルミー漫画大学

Technically, this is not at all a podcast but I like listening to it in the background as if it is, and honestly I've been kind of surprised at the range of non-fiction topics this has.

Visual Novels

Read 1.02 million characters.

At this point, I've come to accept that I've truly fallen deep into the 乙女ゲーム hole, and that there are no signs of me stopping or finding a way out.

Finished both あやかしごはんおかわり, 紫影のソナーニル　-What a beautiful memories-, and I will try my best to write my reviews for them as well. (´v｀;)

The tricky one here is エンジェルビーツ!, something I stalled way back in July. For the most part, I agree with the sentiment that if you're not enjoying something drop it and move on (and I technically did for 4 months), but I'm also stubborn, and it upsets me that everyone raves about how good Key VNs are and I have yet to finish even one.

I said earlier that choices in VNs do not break my concentration, but if it is as many, as pointless, and as close to each other like it is for Angel Beats (and for the couple of other Key VNs I did start and stall as well) then it becomes a problem.

Starting this again, I realized that despite following a guide, it just goes all over the place, sometimes choices bringing me to the middle of a different route - I was not ready for that kind of chaos at all. Still, I have goal before the year ends, and I'm going to do my best to beat this game despite it being a skip hell fest and unfortunately only mildly funny for my taste (the jokes in this got old so fast I...٩(๑`^´๑)۶).

-☆-

Thanks for stopping by and reading! I'll catch you all again next time.

Now to actually go write those four reviews....ヾ(｡>﹏<｡)ﾉﾞ

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sharkselfies · 3 years ago

Text

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 2

Here is a transcript for episode 2 of The Minds Behind The Terror! In this episode, showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh are joined by author Dan Simmons and actor Adam Nagaitis, who plays Cornelius Hickey. They cover episodes 4-6 of the show, getting into Hickey’s psychology and Adam’s incredible acting, Dan’s feelings about never revealing the monster too soon, Adam getting locked in a conference room with the Tuunbaq prop for twenty minutes, and the spectacle that is Carnivale.

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 2

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Soo Hugh: Welcome to The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast. I’m Soo Hugh, executive producer and showrunner of this labor of love, here with my partner in crime Dave Kajganich, executive producer and showrunner.

Dave Kajganich: Hello.

SH: Today we welcome The Terror author Dan Simmons, and actor Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey in the TV series. Dan is calling in from Colorado, and Adam you’re here from London.

Adam Nagaitis: I am! Hi!

DK: Adam and Dan, I don’t know that you have been introduced to one another, so welcome both we’re happy to have you!

AN: Thank you! It’s lovely to be here.

Dan Simmons: Thank you. I have to start with just a fanboy meltdown here, I don’t do this, I don’t praise actors that much even when I’ve met them, but I need to use a word that as a novelist and as a mature, American human being I don’t use because the younger generations have appropriated it, it’s the only adjective that they use in their whole vocabulary, but Adam, your performance as Cornelius Hickey was brilliant. It was awesome.

AN: Thank you so much, Dan, and obviously the feeling is beyond mutual. There is no Cornelius Hickey without you, so, um, really overwhelming to hear someone like you say that, so thank you so much.

SH: This is so touching.

DS: And I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

DS: It was on my second viewing I thought, “Wait, he stole the boy’s ring! Bastard!”

SH: So this is the second podcast of this series, if you haven’t heard the first one, episode 1, we recommend highly that you go back and listen to those, that first episode will cover episodes 1.01-1.03. Today we’ll talk about episodes 1.04-1.06, and if you have not seen those episodes please, please don’t break our hearts and listen to this podcast! Watch the show first! We’ll have many spoilers that we’ll be discussing.

SH: So now since you guys have finally met one another, Dan and Hickey--Dan and Adam.

[laughter]

SH: Should we talk about, Dan, just how you first originally structured Hickey in the novel, and we know that you loved Hickey, but your experience watching the show in terms of seeing the changes that we have made and what we’ve kept from the book, how that affected you.

DS: Mostly the changes that you guys and Adam did for the character of Hickey I think, uh, I don’t wanna praise too much, but they’re marvelous. They showed me a succession of, um, not villains but a complex, sometimes wicked character in a way that I don’t think I got to in the book. My character was like--a bit too much like Iago in Othello, you know, he tended to be motiveless malevolence, or malignancy, which is the way you describe Iago. And there are many Iagos in the world, but the way that Adam created Hickey out of the soft clay of my introduction was marvelous to me. I could just see all the wheels turning in Hickey’s head, all the ways he’s looking for an edge, so I took it to maybe point C or D, you guys took it through Y.

DK: The last thing that we’ve seen Hickey do is that he has gone through the lower decks of Terror and has shat on a bed...

[laughter]

DK: ...and has found a resignation letter from Crozier that no one is meant to see, because Crozier is now in command of the expedition. We have laid out a different kind of ascension, if you will, or architecture for Hickey’s arc in the show from the book, and I wonder, Adam, if you could speak a little bit to having read, I think, part of the novel and been told to stop reading by me and Soo because we didn’t want you to be confused. How did you receive these episodes, and how did you plan to sort of make the--cover the distance between those two points in Hickey’s arc, which it’s a lot of distance to cover.

AN: There are pieces of the novel that stayed with me and unfortunately I could not get out of my head as much as I would try, ‘cause they were very potent aspects of Hickey, were always useful, but it’s as you said, Dan, it was just that the switch, I’m just backtracking ‘cause there’ll be a reason, but the switch from, the clarification for me, or the justification of his motivations was all really I had to find. A new soul, a new motor. And that motor sort of begins--perhaps changes gear, in episode 4, when Hickey is--I don’t wanna say betrayed? But you know, for the first time he’s proactive about a decision he makes when he goes and grabs Lady Silence.

[show audio]

Crozier: There’ll be no violence towards this woman without charges brought and well proved. Who is responsible for this?

Hickey: I am, sir.

AN: He’s pushing the boundaries of what his courage is allowing him to do at that point, and he knows that this is dangerous. But it’s also completely necessary and he can’t help himself. And I think he’s fairly sure of a reward. But what ends up happening, he considers himself constantly self-aware, like an incredibly high introspective IQ, that if he’s achieved anything in his life, it’s that he is completely honest with himself at all times. He has these conversations in the mirror all day, every day, just to make sure that he’s sharp, that nobody will call him out on any sort of fracture that they can see within him. He sees his weaknesses, he accepts--that’s a soulful narcissist, I suppose, as a way of describing him, but one thing that has escaped him he realizes is that his desperate need to be accepted, to be loved, to be seen, and be patted, and to be, um, to have that authority figure, whatever you wanna call it, allowing you the rite of passage.

[show audio]

Hickey: Captain Crozier, there’s something I wanna say, but I hardly dare speak the words.

Fitzjames: Oh, speak the words, Mr. Hickey.

Hickey: Well, of all I know in this world--and of this world… I tell you. That… I do not believe it is an animal we battle.

AN: And he realizes when he gets lashed, this day of sort of revelation, where he understands every time he gets hit, you know, he--I took a lot of the lashing I took through the way that Hickey’s described in the book, that his life has been this low level horror story, and pain is something that is incredibly interesting to him. It’s not something to be avoided, it’s something to be embraced.

[show audio]

[sound of the lashing, Hickey gasping in pain]

SH: Adam, if we had to break down the whipping scene, ‘cause I mean your performance in that moment, I mean, it’s so extraordinary, the amount of what you were able to pull out physically as well as just emotionally in your face in that scene. Will you walk us through, what did you internally--‘cause in all you were saying about Hickey being with one foot planted in practice but also at the same time being the self-aware philosopher, but in that moment of the lashing, some different, higher kind of understanding must have been in place, ‘cause pain is at work there. Was your process different in that scene?

AN: You must forgive me as well for goin’ on, ‘cause when I talk about Hickey I get lost

[Crosstalk, Soo reassuringly saying “No!”]

AN: and I go forever, but I remember it sort of breaking it down, preparing it was breaking it down into how you are perceived when you enter that realm of torture or judgement or whatever it is, and he always is gonna make sure that he didn’t lose the experience in stupid, human things like shame, or, you know, consideration of embarrassment, he never walks in--it’s almost as if there’s never anybody else in the room, he doesn’t care to cloud it. And that was the very first point, was to get in and go, “What does it mean to be punished as a boy?” I was thinking, “You know, that’s it, what does that mean? I wonder what they’re gonna do to me?” When he realizes that and these people around him, that--I don’t know, it’s kind of--I suppose it was such a strange collaboration of sensations, because at the one point, you know, I’m in this, as an actor I’m naked in this scene with all these people, and being punished as a boy should have taken Hickey down, you know, the shame should have overwhelmed him, and it should have been this sort of embarrassing situation, and instead it became empowering. He wasn’t afraid of crying and screaming, and again, it’s not--if it’s practical, and it helps, it’s no big deal. It’s just pain. And everybody else would be in pain, and it doesn’t matter. Even if, you know, if people perceive him as weak, he’ll find a way to get ‘em. It doesn’t matter.

[show audio]

Crozier: Again.

[whip cracking, ship creaking, muffled groan from Hickey]

SH: And something we haven’t talked about much yet in these podcasts is this theme of hubris and the hierarchy and the patriarchy, and Dan you explore it fully in your book. In terms of figuring out, you know, where our characters come from, and their foundations and backbones, they come from a very distinct historical period that really thought that their empire was the crowning achievement of human civilization, right? And that the royal navy is this prime embodiment of that conquest. They were gonna go out into the world, find that sea route to China, and the world will be theirs. In both the book and our show, that kind of thinking is what drives them into the heart of peril, right? And what was always interesting about the Hickey character, in some ways, was he questioned--in some ways he’s very--too modern for his times, in some way, in that he questioned that hierarchy, that patriarchy.

And that’s something that I think Dave and I can both sympathize with as well. The character was so interesting to write for because Hickey was in some ways an easy embodiment of our voice today. And then when you--when we watch your performance, what was great about your performance was it was never slippery, ‘cause it’s really easy to play Hickey as slippery. I always felt that your performance was always located in something very very direct. People can play characters like Hickey where you don’t--they never wanna commit to anything because he’s supposed to be nebulous, or too ambiguous. That was never the situation. When you had that smile on your face, when Irving is saying, you know, “climbing exercises!” we know you’re not playing Irving, which is great, and I think that’s such a success of your portrayal of Hickey, is it never feels slippery.

DK: Well an awful lot of people came in to audition for this part, and what we found was a lot of people, most people--in fact, everyone but you, Adam--played Hickey as a kind of pre-built villain, and when we saw your first tape come in and you were open-handed, and you were smiling your way through the same monologue that everyone else had put fangs on, we knew that you were our Hickey, because that kind of charisma, and that kind of confidence, and that kind of hubris, in a way, is what were going to be the magic ingredients, I think, it’s what we sort of loved about the opportunity for the show to take the Hickey from Dan’s book and sort of turn it in a different unexpected way so that readers who hadn’t read the book wouldn’t know right off the bat whether they were meant to sympathize with Hickey or be wary of him or both, and I think that’s a great achievement of the performance is you sort of feel you’re on both rails the whole time, and I think that’s kind of an amazing achievement.

AN: That’s how you wrote it! I mean that was exactly--I think that you saw what you wrote, the real strength of that character was in his understanding of himself and his understanding of the hierarchy and how this world functions, you know? He’s studied it, gave him an intelligence, that’s the way I saw it when I read it.

DS: But it’s pretty amazing to think that by this point in the show, you have stolen a dead boy’s ring, you have shit on your ex-boyfriend’s bed, you have murdered our favorite doctor--

[laughter]

I mean there’s a lot, you’ve done a lot of things to turn the audience against you, but I don’t think that’s how an audience will feel!

AN: All completely justified.

[laughter]

SH: You’re acquitted.

[laughter]

SH: Can I steer the conversation just slightly in a different direction, ‘cause Dan, you made our lives very difficult in one way, so you have these two incredible set pieces in your book

[Crosstalk, Dave saying “yes.”]

SH: and they happen to fall chronologically so close to each other that production wise we had to film them one episode apart.

[Dave laughing, and he laughs a few more times in the background throughout the following]

SH: So in 1.05 we have the huge Blanky mast Tuunbaq fight sequence, and then in 1.06 we have Carnivale. They are along with something that comes at the end of our show, they are--those two scenes--those two sequences are, you know, some of our biggest biggest, just, action set pieces. They’re just extraordinary spectacles. But Dave and I, you know, we grew many grey hairs in this process because they’re so fantastic in the book, they’re fan favorites in the book, we knew that we had to--we knew we were gonna be pillaged based on whether or not we succeeded in those scenes. So seeing the mast sequence and seeing Carnivale, what did you think? DS: I know the difficulty in putting two set pieces like that close to each other, I mean, the chase with Blanky was pretty dynamic, and even more so from the book to your show, it was very dynamic.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq fight scene! tense music, Blanky yelling, Tuunbaq roaring]

Hodgson: Fire!

[cannon fires, the shot hits the Tuunbaq and it growls, Blanky falls and screams, the mast creaks]

DS: And I love the character of Blanky, all the way through to, you know, his ending. He’s wonderful.

SH: Speaking of the mast sequence, what we were discussing prior, this is the first time we actually get to see the Tuunbaq. We’re curious how both of you--you know, ‘cause Dave and I, we’ve been very careful about how we utilize and deploy the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure also that narratively in the story-wise it didn’t feel like, “Oh, we need to ramp up this episode, we’ll throw the Tuunbaq in,” that we were very more deliberate about when we put the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure that it didn’t, like Dave was saying, didn’t fit the monster of the week. But I mean Adam, you have a very particular relationship with the Tuunbaq that starts to become revealed in episode 4, could you just walk through how you were thinking about it?

AN: The way that I started to think about the Tuunbaq was as a character, that was the best way for me to think about it, as another, you know, another member of the narrative in general, and it’s a person--it, of all the people, there are only, including the Tuunbaq, there are two that I respect: Crozier, who I see as something of maybe a soul mate, would be a way of describing it; and the Tuunbaq, who I see as a person who is, he or she is, true to themselves and unafraid, and undeterred, and pure in their resolve, you know, and their execution, and so it’s almost admiration and mutual respect, and that when that Tuunbaq looks at me, and I look back, that I see myself. And I see what I might become, you know, and I have--and Hickey sees himself as having elements that the Tuunbaq doesn’t have, you know, the idea of, Hickey so rarely sees people that he acknowledges, that, in his mind, deserve or warrant his acknowledgement, and when he first meets eyes with the Tuunbaq, that’s what he goes through.

[show audio]

[wind whirling, footsteps, Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Dan I was always curious to ask you about the Tuunbaq in terms of your creation of that creature. I mean in our research we found elements of different sort of spirits from Inuit mythology that seem like the Tuunbaq is kind of an amalgam of, can you walk us through sort of how you hit on that idea and what parts of it are from Inuit mythology that you can remember and what parts of it are your own invention, or just how that creature came to be, it’s such an interesting, fascinating creation?

DS: That’s a good question, I’ll answer it, but first I wanted to add an unharmonious, non-praising comment, which is when I was watching the series on my little computer screen and I got to the Tuunbaq chasing Blanky up the rigging and so forth, I paused the show, walked out in my front yard, aimed west, and shouted, “Don’t show the fuckin’ Tuunbaq!”

[laughter]

DS: “Not yet!” I’m sure you heard that.

SH: Did you think we showed it too much in that sequence?

DS: I did when I saw the sequence. When I’d seen the show front to back, one and a half times now, I think it’s fine. Dave, you remember, when we first talked about things, that was--I was stressing that left, right, and center, which is--I was basing it on a favorite movie of mine, which nobody else has as a favorite movie, but it’s the 1951 version of The Thing. Howard Hawks directed it even though he gave the credit to his DP, but he directed it, and it got so every time a door opened, every head, every person turned to look. And the monster turned out to be James Arness in a silly suit. But the tension was tremendous, and I think you guys build up very nicely, you know, everybody’s ready, looking over his shoulder, there’s that scene where somebody does, and the wiser man says “It’s only the ice, Georgie, it’s only the ice,” but of course it’s not.

[show audio]

[Neptune the dog barking]

Strong: He’s been goin’ on like that since the wind died.

Hartnell: Take your wigs off.

[rustling, wind whistling, Neptune continues barking]

Hartnell: Don’t you hear that?

DK: It was a fine line to walk, because on the one hand, you know, I don’t know if anyone would have made the show if it didn’t have, you know, quote unquote “a monster” in it. So we were trying to be very intelligent on how we deployed the Tuunbaq in the show, and wanted to make sure that when we did it didn’t feel like it was meant to spice something up, that it felt sort of earned, in some way, and you were confident that the less we showed of the Tuunbaq the better. But that isn’t--it’s not the easiest sell if you don’t happen to agree with this point of view, and you know, luckily we were sort of able to have our cake and eat it too, in a way, but still, even when episodes one, two, and three aired, we were reading reviews and people’s comments online saying, “Is there a creature in this show or isn’t there?”

DS: Or what, yeah.

DK: Some people really want that settled, and so we tried to do it both ways, we tried to show just enough to make sure that it felt like we weren’t being coy about it, but not so much that we exhausted what’s interesting about it.

SH: And also the fear--there is a danger, if you put it off, ‘cause, Dan, Dave and I agree with you that you wanna hold off the reveal of the monster as long as possible because it’s just gonna be more satisfying that way, but there’s a tipping point to that as well, of course, you know, right? ‘Cause if you delay it too long then the expectations are almost too great. And when you delay the monster for so long the level of perfection that the audience is gonna expect is never--we were never gonna please them. So at some point, by finding that right balance point of “we show them enough that they know we’re not playing coy with them.”

DK: We also had a storytelling reason, a really good one, to make sure we did show it up front in the first third of the season, which is, you know, by the time you reach episode six you realize there’s something wrong with the Tuunbaq, that it is getting sick, or it is going off somehow, I mean, when Lady Silence finally decides that she’s going to offer her tongue to it in hopes that it will accept her as a Shaman and that she can contain this sort of mythological disaster that’s happening, and it rejects her, and it shows up to that scene looking a little woozy, and you know, there’s obviously a cause to be concerned about it.

[show audio]

[eerie music, Tuunbaq growling and snuffling]

DK: That wouldn’t have landed if we hadn’t seen, in some form, the Tuunbaq in all of its majestic glory. You know, we think of the Tuunbaq as quite presidential, in terms of its comportment, you know, that it is a pure expression of this mythology, it is the keeper of equilibrium, it is neither a hero nor a villain. But by the time we get to episode six, we should be feeling a little bit panicked about what this creature is becoming. It seems to be falling apart in front of us in the same way that the men are.

SH: Our Tuunbaq exists. We don’t play that game of “it’s a figment of our characters’ imagination.” That is one route we could have gone, we did not wanna do that.

DK: Adam, I don’t know if you remember, when we finally got the scale model head of the Tuunbaq to Hungary, and we had it in a conference room, I think, and I grabbed you from set and I didn’t tell you where you were going, and I took you to a door and I pushed you through it and closed it behind you, and in that room was the Tuunbaq, and you were the first person in the cast to see it. Do you remember what that experience was like?

[laughter]

AN: That was terrifying!

[laughter]

AN: I do remember, I remember that day very very well. It was just a head on a stick, wasn’t it?

DK: A big head, but yeah.

SH: Enormous.

DK: It was just the head--

AN: A great big head on a stick! And I knew the importance of it, so I sort of closed my eyes and opened them. I remember thinking, it was the eyes, the human eyes, that convinced me that it was a unique, thinking machine. It was a unique creature that had--that was worthy of respect, that was kind of the thing that I remember thinking about it. And of course it was terrifying. But yeah, I remember the teeth, the human teeth. It was so brilliant, it was so brilliantly conceived. I remember it was head height, and I just stood in front of it for a while.

DK: I remember it was twenty minutes before I opened the door!

AN: You opened it for a long time! I was like, uh, is it gonna move? It was great. It was really scary.

DK: So Dan, walk us through where it came from. I mean, this is a creation from, almost from scratch, I think, from you.

DS: Well first I built the Tuunbaq out of what I think is a good monster and would be a good monster in the Arctic. And after constructing it, I went just tearing through Inuit mythology and stories and oral tales for quite a while before I found the right creature. He was called Tuunbaq in the mythology, but it could’ve been Sedna, Sedna was a great sea monster. They have so many wonderful beings. But you guys summed it up in dialogue…

[show audio]

[man speaking Inuktitut, another man translating]

Translator: From the Shamans… the thing that eats on two legs and four… a thing made of muscles… and spells.

James Clark Ross: I don’t understand. Is he describing a man?

Translator: Sorry, Sir James. I don’t know what the hell he’s describing.

DS: That was the best summary of the Tuunbaq that I’ve heard. I’m gonna steal it from you if I ever do readings on this book again.

DK: Oh good.

[show audio]

[men cheering]

Fitzjames: There it is. We’ve not heard that sound in far too long.

DS: I especially enjoyed Carnivale. I like it that you didn’t follow my lead and turn the Carnivale on the ice into the scene from The Masque of the Red Death. I had a sailor who’d actually read that story in Boston in my novel, so he’s the one who set up the Carnivale with all the rooms from the Edgar Allan Poe story, and yours, the idea of celebrating, going home essentially, when the sun rose, that made a lot more sense to me.

DK: Well do you know the reason we went in that direction, I think in the writer’s room when we were discovering all the different sort of signs and symptoms of things like scurvy, nostalgia was considered a primary symptom of scurvy, and one way you could diagnose it. And we thought, well, if these men were going to throw a party and all bets were off in terms of what the theme of that party would be, we wanted to embrace the likelihood that a lot of those men who were in early stages of scurvy at that point might have leaned too heavily on nostalgia. And that gave us a kind of a surprising new sort of code to sort of explore in Carnivale.

[show audio]

Fitzjames: Come on, boys!

[cheering]

Fitzjames: Now, let’s get our hair good and powdered before that damn sun finds us again.

[more cheering]

DK: The idea that Dr. Stanley, who has a child back in England, and, you know, has a clear sense of what the kind of illness that’s on the table being discussed could do to the men, and he hears the news of the beginning of episode six that they’re probably running out of food and, you know, the episode, that episode six is called “A Mercy” for a reason, that really Stanley thinks he’s doing a great favor to all of the men by killing them. And it just was--I’m curious, when you watched that reveal in particular, that the Carnivale disaster was not going to come from the Tuunbaq but was going to come from somebody who was a kind of Cassandra in a way, like understood what was coming, in a way that lot of the men didn’t understand, whether that rang true emotionally to you in terms of how you would position these characters at that point in the novel.

DS: In the novel, you don’t have to compress time like that. The things can almost coexist and still work. So I had a little more freedom to do the Carnivale. But when you showed the malignant motives of the various people behind it, the doctor and so forth, the burgeoning insanity made sense.

[show audio]

[distorted music, liquid pouring, yelling]

Crozier: Hold him, hold him!!

[flames crackling, more yelling]

DK: Hickey’s arc between episode four and episode six, you sense someone who’s coming into a power, but doesn’t exactly know yet how he wants to use it, and is scanning other people and other relationships to try to find out where will the advantage come from. And I think what’s great about the final shot we have of Hickey in six, that is Hickey just before someone tells him, probably, that they’re going to be walking out.

AN: By the time we reach episode six, he’s well on the way to formulating in the material world, in our physical world, to formulating his sort of group. What’s going on inside him, what’s going on in his--maybe even subconsciously, or even very very very quietly consciously, is a furthering of his understanding that this universe is for him. These happenings are for him. They have his name all over them, his real--and since the beginning of his life he’s been checking the dials, trying to tune into the right radio station where there’s a clear voice of the numinous, or the supernatural, or the universe, or God, or whatever you wanna call it. He’s hoping for the clear voice that says his name.

DS: I have a question for Dave and Soo, which you looked at the muster of the crew as I did, you know, I had to decide who was what in a fictional term, you have about 127 interesting stories if you want to pursue them, but were you aware early on that there was gonna be one messiah developing in the story?

SH: I don’t know if we looked at it in terms of a messiah figure.

DS: Ah, but Hickey does.

DK: In these episodes, I think he doesn’t quite yet know what he’s going to become, except he knows he doesn’t have to be subservient anymore to other people’s versions of what he could become. I think he’s not quite sure where he is. He knows he’s just moved from one ladder to another ladder, he’s no longer on sort of the hierarchical ladder of the ships, he’s on a bigger ladder and he’s climbing, and he doesn’t quite yet know what heights that will reach, but it’s fascinating to see Hickey unleashed in these episodes, but not yet know what he’s going to put his power toward.

[audio from the show]

[the music from the end of episode six during the brief moment of sunrise plays]

SH: 1.04-1.06 takes place from the last sunrise of the year, and then the end of 1.06 is the sunrise of the year, so in terms of just that lovely visual metaphor, it’s also our dark nights, where we have polar nights. Did you guys, watching the episodes, did you guys feel that darkness? You know, Dave and I were so curious whether or not people understood what it feels like to live in perpetual darkness for months, and whether or not our audience was gonna get that. How did that come through for you? DS: The darkness, it was a hard thing, I think, to do in a series like this, it’s pressures, like the men in the ship not only have the pressure of the ice groaning and moaning and growling and pushing at the ship, they have the pressure of the months of darkness. And I think you did it well, I don’t know if it was a reviewer or a friend who said the show is all about--in the ship it’s all about claustrophobia, outside the ship it’s all agoraphobia, fear of open spaces.

SH: Oh that’s wonderful!

DK: Absolutely. We talked a lot about that in the writers’ room, about how there was--we didn’t know which was worse, you know, and characters would have different opinions about that. Is it better to be sort of sealed up in almost a coffin-like environment, or is it better to be exposed with no way to protect yourself? I don’t know what I would choose.

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

SH: So that is episodes 1.04-1.06, Dave and I are here with Dan and Adam, and it’s been such a pleasure you guys, thank you for joining us, and next time we’ll be covering episodes 1.07 and 1.08. Dan and Adam, both of you will be back as well.

DK: Wonderful.

DS: Great.

SH: Thank you!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

AN: In complete honesty, it never occurred to me that any of those things were cruel or despicable!

[laughter]

#the terror #the terror amc #the minds behind the terror #dave kajganich #soo hugh #dan simmons #adam nagaitis #personal #as with last time google doc link will be in the reblogs #and please lmk if you see any typos or other mistakes!

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kiingocreative · 3 years ago

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The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

The More You Learn, The Less You Know

"I know nothing." That's what I say to myself when I'm stuck. It's my go-to Socratic writer's block motivational quote. Most writers usually have that critic inside trying to bait them into procrastinating or, worse, giving up when they hit a crossroads in their writing. It happens to me when I start overthinking and ask myself, "what happens next?" What a scary thought. If my character chooses door A, they might not complete the journey I started them on. If I choose door B, they might lose some of their uniqueness that makes them relatable. If I decide on door C, oh, screw it, I should just give up because I'm lost! And despite all the screenplays I've read, books I've obsessed over, and podcasts I've listened too I still don't know what to do next. If you're a writer, I know what you're thinking "Sounds like my Tuesday night breakdowns."

We all agonize over the choices our characters make. We all start to feel like we know nothing. We're just a bunch of aimless Jon Snows with our mighty ink swords roaming the backwoods of creativity in our minds looking for the perfect scene to write. But it doesn't have to be that hard. First, admit to yourself that you know nothing: "zero, zip, zilch, nada." If you know that you know nothing, then you're teachable. If you know nothing, there's an answer, and there's a tool out there somewhere that someone has created for you to learn and use ad nauseam until you get sick of it or learn to use it appropriately. Sounds too good to be true, right? That's just your inner critic at the wheel. Slap that judgmental procrastinator and get back in the driver's seat.

I know nothing, but I do know this...dun dun dunnnn! The more I learn about writing, the less I feel I know. Not because I forget tools or rules, even though sometimes I do, but because I understand that the world of writing and the ways to do it are endless. I can keep learning! It's ok to pick a writing book like "Save the Cat" and attempt to write a "paint by numbers" type of screenplay. I've done it, and I made a pretty funny, some would say, a decent little indie flick by just trying it out and learning from it. I find most screenwriting books to be equals because you can learn a new tool from any of them.

"Give us a tool already!" I feel you murmuring, reader, so here's some practical wisdom.

Marry Your Scenes

One of the biggest reasons we get stifled as writers is because we don't remember one fundamental guiding principle of storytelling: causality.

Causality? Yes, causality, the relationship between cause and effect. The principle that everything has a cause.

Every choice we force our characters to make should have a consequence, and therefore the consequence can help you set up your next scene. I don't want to over-simplify this, but let's see what happens if I do. If two people get married, what happens next? What comes to mind? Do they celebrate with their loved ones? Good? What else? What happens next? Do they go on their honeymoon? Great! What happens on their honeymoon? They make love? Excellent, or one of them gets too drunk, leaving the other to order room service and watch an overpriced movie. It's very much like a domino effect. Each one of those events happened because of the one preceding it. Marry your scenes to each other and understand why the choices are being made–and what consequences can occur because of them.

Where do you go from here? Well, if we use our newlyweds, maybe our sober character leaves the room to get some ice or puff a "J". This could lead to their getting arrested by island police without identification in her wedding dress. Or if it's the man, he runs into his high school girlfriend who's on a business trip on the same island and wants to go for a drink to catch up. All of this is just because one of our characters couldn't monitor their alcohol. Consequences to actions, to choices, are everywhere in your writing. Write a few and pick the most interesting ones. Which ones are those? The ones that make you smile, laugh, cry, or squirm. All of which will lead you to the next scene.

Background on These Thoughts

During the pandemic last year, I was fortunate to get a reduced price "writing scholarship" at the Jacob Kruger writing studio. On top of that, I started learning how to speed read so that I could consume as much written writing advice as possible, never to have an issue breaking a story or creating a helpful scene.

Consequently, I started writing more and more every day without fear of messing up or writing a bad scene. Could it be because I was reading and writing every day? Was I applying all the little things I was learning? Was it slowly becoming second nature? The answer's; yes. I read everything! My wife, an exceptional RN, was in the ER fighting off the plague. My industry was shut down, so as I stayed home with our kids trying to keep from going stir crazy, I read books and articles to them out loud until they started booing me or to myself, until my eyes needed a break. I read many things on Dan Harmon's story circle, the: "But & Therefore Rule" by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, listened to John August and Craig Mazin, and went on Kiingo's Instagram live discussion to participate, and see what else I could learn, watched old movies, new movies, read scripts I was a machine.

I have since written and co-written three feature-length screenplays, a handful of pilots, live-action and animation, and a couple of short films. Writing is HARD, but finding rules and tools to apply to your writing isn't.

Rule-Tools

Here are a few things I picked that were reinforced and to keep in mind when writing a scene. In every scene, you must know what your characters want and what they need; if you know their wants creating an obstacle that fuels causality is pretty straightforward.

So try the following:

1. If you know what they want, GIVE IT to them, and therefore what is the consequence? (There are many)

2. If you know what they want, but you DON'T GIVE IT to them, what is the consequence? (There are many)

3. If you know what they want, but GIVE THEM SOMETHING NEW instead and see if this stops them from wanting their original want. (How strong is their want? Strong enough to continue to pursue it? It better be if your movie is any good.) What is the consequence? (There are many)

4. If you know what they want, GIVE THEM a part of it but make them sacrifice something for it, and therefore what happens? (Maybe it's too expensive, maybe it's too embarrassing, perhaps it could hurt someone they love.) Consequences just start falling out of the sky once they MAKE A CHOICE!

Try applying one of these four rule-tools to your scenes and watch as your characters create their story and structure for you. I promise it works. Next time I'll show you how to combine these rule-tools to something like Dan Harmon's Story Circle.

Then again, I know nothing.

#writingtips #creative writing #screenwriting #writers on tumblr #writers #writing #writerblr #writing advice #writing community #writing resources

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carriagelamp · 3 years ago

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Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I… just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

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