#oh! maybe some rqg stuff?

[utilitycaster]

What are some of your favourite podcasts / podcast recs?

It's hard to pick a favorite though I will say at the moment Midst is the one I think I look forward to the most, so I'm just going to go through basically all podcasts I currently or relatively recently previously listened to and sort them by rough genre. Note that as with all recommendation requests it helps to know the vibe of what you're going for and what's important to you (I know I just was like hey I'll take most music recs but the commitment for music is like the length of a song, whereas podcasts/books/movies/tv are a bit more time put in)

Actual Play:

Longtime listener of NADDPod and TAZ which I'm guessing if you follow me you are broadly aware of but if not feel free to ask more; I also post about Worlds Beyond Number enough that you might know what it is. I checked out Burnt Cookbook party a while ago both because I liked Jenna Stoeber's work with Polygon and because someone asked me for Actual Play podcast-only recs with more than one woman or nb player that weren't RQG and I was like oh I should find some. Anyway it's quite good! it's definitely lower production values than bigger podcasts but the plot is highly original and really good, the vibes are fantastic, the characters are a lot of fun, and all in all worth checking out. I also do listen to the Re-Slayer's Take which I've really enjoyed! Everyone's good but while I was familiar with (and a fan of) Jasmine Bhullar and Jasper William Cartwright's work, Jasmine Chiong as Farah speaks to the Grouchy Old Hunter Woman fan in me and has been a personal standout. It is very heavily edited, which does take some getting used to. Also, I mentioned RQG (Rusty Quill Gaming). It comes with the caveat of "very good but slow to start and then doesn't really stick the landing, imo, though the epilogues help" but I can recommend with that warning.

Scripted Fiction

Camlann. Modern post-apocalyptic Arthuriana/Folklore of the British Isles, with some hints of other folklore as well. 1 season; hoping they get funding for a second because it was very well done and also I want Gwen and Morgan to kiss.

Midst. Hard to describe but if you follow me you've seen a lot of posts that might help. Extremely good! About to finish in a bit over a week's time! Check it out and I advice you check out the first 3 episodes at once to get a feel for it; the three-narrator thing is also "get used to it and it will be fine".

The Penumbra Podcast. Originally envisioned as an anthology podcast but then two specific settings (noir-y space opera and medieval court monster hunters) were very popular. Also nearing its end.

The Silt Verses. Quite literally everything on this list would be described as "New Weird" and "has queer characters" and this is maybe the New Weirdest. Anyway, set in a world where gods are real, require human sacrifice to live, and society is both very complicit and also uses the gods to sell shit. I think people who are mad about D20 or CR not being explicitly political enough should listen to it. Extremely good. Also in its endgame, but they've had a very drawn out schedule as of late.

Welcome to Night Vale. You are on Tumblr; presumably you know the drill. I can't say I'm like...super following what happens but it's one of those things that's been a constant in my life for over a decade and takes up a very pleasant hour-ish per month. This feels like damning with faint praise but the earlier stuff was great and it's still strong, it's just, you know, the inevitable slowness of an indefinitely long slice-of-life-ish show vs. the more plot-driven ones above.

Within the Wires. By one of the Night Vale Creators. I have a post about it but it's set on an alternate history Earth where a cataclysmic war/plague/various other bad things absolutely destroyed the population in the early 1900s, leading to a very different global society. Some people say the seasons are very uneven in quality. They are incorrect. The seasons follow different people and all are in the form of found audio, so they are all quite different, but it's entirely a matter of personal preference if you like a season or not; it's not that some are Objectively Better.

Wolf 359 finished a long time back and I haven't relistened since my original listen in like...2018, but of "podcasts that have finished" it's worth it. Weird space stuff.

Informative(?)

Home Cooking by Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat; was a pandemic project that now only airs yearly, really, but worth checking out if you like cooking.

I found out about Home Cooking via Song Exploder, which is just Hrishikesh Hirway talking about songs. Great podcast; the editing is fascinating and I have found a lot of good music from it!

I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats. Has only two seasons but they are both very good if you like The Mountain Goats as a band.

No Such Thing as a Fish: the QI (British quiz show) (if you're British you know this better than I do) researches talk about weird facts and riff on them.

Sawbones: Justin McElroy and his wife Dr. Sydnee Smirl McElroy talk about weird medical history and dumb wellness trends on tiktok. This is one of the earliest podcasts I subscribed to back when I did not drive nearly as much.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. Has also completed and there's a book that's basically covering the same ground. It's not like, purely informative; it's very anecdotal (as is I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats) but I learned a lot from it.

Honorable mention: I just didn't have the time or energy to keep up with Ologies by Alie Ward but what I listened to was fun and interesting and my sibling is a big fan.

Comedy and Miscellany:

Beef and Dairy Network: also British, on the Max Fun network with the McElroys. Fucking weird. I debated putting this in the scripted fiction because it's basically "what if Welcome to Night Vale was a little less story focused but still had throughlines and was specifically about the cattle industry in some absurdist alternate version of our world" but stuck with comedy bc the absurdity outstrips the plot. It's weird!

My Brother, My Brother, and Me: you probably know this one; either you love it or you don't.

My Dad Wrote a Porno: also British and from what I understand a bigger deal over there. Has uh. reached completion, in that they decided they were done, but the books apparently go on (sorry Rocky I'm not buying them). A guy and his two good friends read and roast his father's self-published erotica e-books about Belinda Blumenthal, Pots and Pans saleswoman, ft. bad accents, corporate espionage, and, of course, The Duchess.

The Empty Bowl: Justin McElroy and Dan Goubert of Cerealously's ASMR podcast about cereal. legitimately has helped me calm down when anxious at night. I am not even a big cereal eater it's just entertaining and chill.

Anyway any other podcasts I have listened to I've either forgotten, weren't good enough to recommend, just disappeared without any conclusion [*cough* king falls am] or involve way more reservations than I am willing to go into without knowing more about what you are looking for.

[allthatdivides]

i wanna write but im not sure what to write about

[esperanzagalaxy]

turns out i'm obviously very salty about the rqg feed going dark so suddenly, so i wanna take some prompts/requests to channel that energy into something!!! hit me up with any cute rqg ideas or requests you may have, i want to have nice things to sketch sometime in between shifts these coming weeks... please, be my guest!

*also yeah i may obviously not do them all but feel free to send more than one! <33

[shofics]

For the rqg ask game part 3: Number 3 with Wilde and Ed

Okay, first of all, YOUR MIND.

LOLOMG are going to go into the broken gate spell. Ed is there too. They’re counting up, because Eldarion says she can only bring back nine people, including herself. It’s enough for each member and the hostages, but not enough for Einstein and Ed.

“Perhaps if this will, erm, have some… temporal effects,” Hamid says, looking nervous, “Professor, you could take Ed back with you and he could find Wilde, and let him know? You know Oscar Wilde?”

They agree it might be a good idea, and Ed has a Quest, so he’s raring to go.

Einstein teleports him back into Curie’s office, drops him in a chair, gives her a cheery salute, and pops away again. Curie rolls well on her Knowledge Nobility. Curie is suddenly babysitting an Ed With A Quest, and is having a great time.

“You mean the Meritocratic agent, Mr. Keystone? Why on earth would I know where he is? No, don’t run off, you- no- sit there, Ed, please-”

Meanwhile, Wilde has just successfully (he hopes, oh, gods, does he hope) escaped the Meritocracy. Hoping to get more information, he tracks down the Damascan Harlequin cell that arranged Grizzop’s transportation to Rome and I’m sorry, the high-level caster you got to transport him was Eldarion, that Eldarion? Yes I know who she is, every person who’s studied magic at any point within the past thirty years knows who Eldarion and Marie Curie are-

He’s going to have to go to the top if he wants to find out why his team didn’t come back.

He knows Zolf went back to Earhart’s ship after leaving the group in Prague- what kind of a spy would he be if he hadn’t done a little spying? He’s working with the Harlequins now, and if the man doesn’t drown him the moment he shows up, maybe Wilde will be able to convince him to take him to the Harlequins too.

Curie and Ed are not in Prague. Curie and Ed are in Budapest. Ed fills Curie in on where her wife has gone, what Eldarion is doing; she’d gone to Damascus first. Curie contacts the Harlequin cell there, and yes, Wilde was here, he was asking about you. He said he was trying to defect. If the man is smart then he’ll go to Prague first and track her trail from there, and he is, so Curie sends Ed to Prague to meet him.

Wilde and Zolf arrive in Prague. Wilde and Zolf meet Ed. Wilde rolls well on his Knowledge Nobility, and he’d be caught off guard that Edward Keystone is here to greet him, but honestly, much weirder stuff has been happening to him recently. It’s a drop in the bucket, by this point.

Ed takes them back to Budapest, back to Curie, where they make an exchange of information that turns the tide of a war that hasn't even begun yet. Wilde and Zolf learn about the broken gate spell, about the temporal effects, about everything that’s happened to the LOLOMG since Wilde first clipped the anti-magic shackle to his ankle.

It’s more information than either Zolf or Wilde could have hoped for. They know where the others are, they know what’s happened to them, they know what they have to do. Unfortunately, what they have to do is wait, and neither can bear to do that for long.

So they will continue to chase leads on the Simulacrum, and Zolf will continue to track the weather patterns, and Ed-

Will also come along, why not? Wilde doesn’t have his magic, and they can always use another caster. So Ed joins the team.

Zolf and he butt heads at first, due to Ed’s blind optimism and boundless, unwavering faith- but he learns to like the kid. There’s something about him that speaks to Zolf’s own Not-Too-Happy Childhood senses. He couldn’t not watch out for him if he tried.

Wilde finds Ed fascinating, as a character study. Every single pun he levies goes directly over his head. It’s not even annoying, it’s just intriguing. Zolf has to tell him to back off, stop treating the poor kid like a linguistics experiment.

Ed doesn’t deal with quarantine well. He says he can still feel Apollo with him, but it’s fainter when he can’t reach back.

It reminds him of being locked in his room at home, when he was younger, when he’d be punished and asked to shut up and be good when no one would explain to him what it was he’d done wrong.

“He reminds you of her, doesn’t he?” Wilde asks one night, when Ed isn’t in the room. Zolf glares at him and stomps out, which he knows by now means yes.

Ed calls down Smite Evil as Zolf hauls a stunned and bleeding Wilde to safety. Neither cleric nor paladin can heal him magically, not with the cuffs on. Ed is desperately upset about this, and becomes more upset as Wilde completely stonewalls him for the first time. Has he done something wrong? Why won’t anyone tell him when he’s done something wrong?

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Zolf tells him. “Just… let him deal. ‘S not worth it.”

Okinoshima is grey and wet. Apollo is still with him, even if the sun isn’t.

[radiantmists]

9, 22, 24? 🐙

Send me RQG-themed asks!

9 - Do you like the Harlequins or the Meritocrats better?

Wow, right out with the hard ones! Like many of us I love a rebel, and secret societies are really cool, so from that standpoint I enjoy the Harlequins. But the Meritocrats are literally immortal dragons. 

...Actually I think as a modern (to the narrative) organization I’m more interested in the Harlequins, but in terms of the people I’m more interested in the Meritocrats-- not the Meritocracy.

22 - Favorite Quote

As far as serious ones go, I’m a big fan of both hopepunk and of Sasha, so the bit of the letter where she says something along the lines of “Sometimes you can’t save the world, but you can save someone” is one of my favorites.

At some point around the end of s2 I briefly wrote down a few phrases that had started just. popping into my head at random times of day and making me snicker:

villainous sex hand

an invisible mime with a chainsaw

adventure colleagues!

maybe the hit points were the friends  we made along the way

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, go off and join the celestial hunt-y (and its more profane sibling that I couldn’t transcribe accurately)

Which is obviously representative of the time I was making the list but yeah I enjoyed those!

24 - Favorite Character Introduction

Hm. Well, of the players I’d have to say probably Azu, just because of her immediately being the most loving and like. straightforwardly earnest person and also the bit where she picks up Hamid and Grizzop and you get to see their wildly differing reactions.

I’m going to pick two that are sort of cheating but in different ways for NPCs; Ed in Rome is technically a reintroduction, but it was so much fun. He tastes the invisible goo monster! He’s been running around Rome for god knows how long, living off the most inhospitable land there is! He’s just so... Ed!

In a... weirdly dark note to round off on, I’m also a big fan of the moment that Skraak wakes up, the drugs having worn off, and you get to see the justifiably angry but ruthlessly pragmatic person that he really is. Their subsequent interactions with Hamid sometimes frustrate me because I feel like they-- like everyone-- fall into the trap of letting him off too light, but that first bit where it’s made clear that all the stuff that Alex used to make us go ‘oh he’s so cute’ was a product of literal mind-altering chemicals that we knew were there was a really good moment.

...And as I typed this I realized I forgot my two real favorite character intros: Amelia Earhart letting the kiddos on her ship, nearly killing Wilde, teaching bertie and sasha to drive and then giving us a lore dump, and then Guivres, because that’s the first time we saw a meritocrat and it was awesome.

[commander-diomika]

I am Very Tipsy (okay I'm drunk so sorry about spelling but also ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) but I just wanted to say that since I started reading your rqg series I have not been able to stop thinking about it! I mean the fucking development of it all just really gets to me it's incredible, don't get me wrong i like most interpretations of their relationship but there's just a soft spot for me when it comes to 'if I wasn't stuck with you we never would have gotten past how incredibly annoying you are' like every interaction they have pre-timeskip is deliberately pissing the other off and I feel like a lot of writers kinda side step it (again not a criticism) and I just love that you can feel the frustration when you write them. I mean in 'always forgive your enemies' you've got Zolf trying desperately to be like "no I've grown as a person it's been a long time he's clearly been through Some Stuff and maybe we'll be able to work together" and then Wilde says 1 sentence and zolfs immediately like "actually no fuck you I was right to not give a shot when you got tossed off a ship you're a tool" and the development of that to I don't like you but we've gotta work to whether to I don't dislike you but your friend sucks and no I'm not jealous what the fuck are you talking about to the terrified guilty rage if not being listened to but oh gods is he gonna be okay in 'experience' (along with just the utter heartbreak of Wilde almost reaching out to Zolf because yeah he does trust him now but then remembering that this is contagious and what if hes infected and what if it's HIS fault that Zolf gets sick and immediately shutting down and putting himself through a week in solitary IN THE ROOM HE SHARED WITH BOSIE SURROUNDED BY THOSE MEMORIES TOTALLY TRAPPED WITH THAT KNOWLEDGE BY THE PERSON HE TRUSTS BY HIS OWN ORDERS I MEAN FUCK DUDE and the kind of flirting except no I'm not but I mean if *you* were I wouldn't not be????? In 'the country' and 'talked about' and even then there's so many guards up and there's so much in the way - the blame the self loathing the guilt and the anger of it all AND the whole theres 2 people who had never met before we introduced them who shouldn't work are doing WHAT in quarantine (and also 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀) AND FUCK DUDE THE LATEST INSTALLMENT!? IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT SINCE YOU RELEASED IT HOLY FUCK! THE UNFAIRNESS OF THE SITUATION THE BETRAYAL OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT HUT THE ONLY THING YOU CAN BLAME IS THE CIRCUMSTANCE THE ONLY ONES YOU CAN CURSE ARE THE GODS BECAUSE THIS ISNT HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO GO! THIS ISNT FAIR! WILDE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO MAKE THAT DECISION FOR HIMSELF ZOLF SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FEEL TRUSTED THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO FEEL SAFE AND TRUSTED AND WHOLE AND TOGETHER AND THIS FUCKING INFECTION TOOK THAT! IT FORCED WILDE TO TALK ABOUT IT IN CIRCUMSTANCES HE COULDN'T CHOOSE! IT MADE ZOLF KNOW ABOUT BEFORE HED ACTUALLY BEEN TRUSTED WITH IT! AND IT WAS SO FUCKING UNFAIR AND DUDE IT WAS INCREDIBLE I JUST CANT ARTICULATE HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT AND THE WHOLE DISCUSSION JUST GOD IM YELLING IN MY OWN HEAD BUT NONE OF THE WORDS EXIST! I know a while ago you said you'd read something and you weren't sure about your own writing but Hank oh my fucking god please know that I've been thinking about what you wrote for the last month, I've been talking about it to my friends I'm so hyped for anything you have to write and I have no idea where you want to go with this or what points you plan to hit and everytime I get a notification I'm both excited and terrified and I just love it so fucking much your writing is incredible

Ooh my friend I have been waiting for your comment since I posted "Punish", I have come to enjoy your tipsy insights because yeah!! You get it! These fkn onion boys and their LAYERS of barriers they've both got up around intimacy (and yes I absolutely LOVED contrasting that with Barnes and Carter who in my head canon met like... 6 weeks ago? And just blew straight past any agonising over what it meant and got on with it. There's more of them in the next scene too BTW).

As soon as I decided I wanted to tackle the time gap with a trans Wilde, the strip inspections were the first thing I knew I'd have to wrestle with, and I KNEW it would be brutal and unfair and un-fun but also?? Absolutely one of the draws to ZolfWilde is that they've been through some absolute shit together, and exploring how instead of turning into unhealthy trauma bonding, it grows into something unlikely yet beautiful, and the fucked-up trans reveal was just another thing on the pile that they overcome or work through.

And Zolf has the thought of "this isn't how its supposed to go" but he wouldn't even be as close Wilde if not for the fucked up circumstances. There's no "supposed to". If this hadn't happened, Zolf and Wilde would have never worked together and continued to distantly think the other one was a git if they crossed paths. So it's a parodox of a thought.

Thank you for your nice words abt my writing, as always. I'm gonna go work on the next part u legend.

[scrambled-eggsed]

hi bestie 9, 13, 32, 33, 34, 40, 42 so many bc I am Nosy

Heeeeeeeeello bestie<3

9. What’s your dream job?

Until recently i thought I'd have to do some bullshit in academia bc what else am i going to do in literature (aka the One Thing that interests me) BUT a few months ago i thought about becoming a literary editor:D (or, in internet talk, a professional beta reader i guess) so. That

13. Height?

1.66 i think (around 5'5, for you non metric system speaking fools [Azie<(￣︶￣)>])

32. Favorite show?

I've no fucken idea by this point. Probably toh? Also rqg if podcasts count

33. Best day of your life?

Bold of you to assume i remember a single day of my life when asked about it. I'd say,,,,,,,, maybe a day from the school trip two years ago? I don't remember a lot, i just remember i was happy and surrounded by friends

34. Any talents?

I like to think I'm p good at writingヾ( ͝° ͜ʖ͡°)ノon occasion i can sing well, too,,,,,,,,,, other than that I'm not amazingly good at anything. Oh and this might not count as a talent exactly but im very flexible so i can do weird stuff w my hands

40. Do you believe in love?

YES love is everything and everything will always be about love (any love. Not just romantic)

42. Are you okay?

Boy is that a complicated question. At this specific moment, I'd say yeah? However my mom is in Anger Mode so that might change in a bit. Also usually I'm an emotional wreck but im p good at keeping it together so usually i guess the answer would be "yeah" but with a dead-on-the-inside smile

[icebluecyanide]

14 for the RQG asks?

14. Choose a special/side quest. It is now a main campaign. What’s the new narrative?

(I started answering this and it turned into a ramble, so, yeah, oops.)

I think that when it comes to the specials the one I would most like to see expanded to a main campaign (or that would work best?) would be Helen's Apocalypse World special because I really enjoyed the world building of that one, and you could probably drag out the attack by the Caterpillars for a few more episodes as they deal with the new party arriving? And slowly build up the tension, maybe they start detecting signs of something outside? And then the attack happens and maybe they need to abandon the base and you could follow the story from there?

Or the 4thought one, because honestly that one might be fun and I liked the world-buildin. And oh gosh can you imagine Sexy Battle Wizards as a long running campaign.

I forgot about Bitemarks!!! I want to see a longer campaign with the pack and seeing how they all deal with the change in leadership. Though I really enjoyed how it came together in the end so I'm hesitant to touch it in that sense, but I think a longer campaign could delve a bit more into the relationships between the different pack members and what happened with Stone leaving that one time. I would really enjoy a longer version of that story.

For the side quests:

I am very tempted to pitch Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham's adventures where Bertie either doesn't return to Paris or leaves before stuff goes wrong in Prague and goes off on his own adventures and the rest of the cast plays new characters every arc because no one wants to travel with Bertie for long. He goes on heroic quests and tries to get good publicity. I kind of want him to run into Brutor at some point post-Pugmire too, but timeline wise that would be difficult. He gets pulled into the Cult of Hades at some point and doesn't realise at first/doesn't care because they promise to get him great publicity.

But anyway, leaving that aside, I want more of the Roman Rogues!! I would be happy enough with a monster of the week kind of main campaign where we just see them going on one quest after the other, bickering all the while.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 156

live blog under the cut

Heads up about half way through I realized I go a bit further into analysis on where Zolf & the Kobolds are mentally than some people might be comfortable with. Just as they trust us to back off if the episode gets to real, I am trusting you to close the tab if my little live blog is hitting you wrong. If it makes a difference I have years between me and the reason I relate to this stuff.

"In Memorium" they are trying to kill us Ah they lampshaded the speed intros Yes Alex it is rather Paris Right to Azu & Zolf. Oh he's jumping right in. And there's my first pause of the episode. No “better” isn't a magic finish line you pass then never find yourself in that place again. No, knowing that doesn't mean you don't wonder if your back at square one every time you realize You Are In A Bad Place and Not Handling it Well. Gosh Azu is good at this. Yeah learning to walk away is hard. Learning to ignore the part of yourself that says "and never come back for their sake" is harder. Symbolic much Alex (Zolf is too small for the room, Azu is too large) Yeah it would be easier to not blame Zolf for last episode if I related to him a bit less. Okay they are talking about Hamid and their concerns for him directly. Yeah Hamid's relationship with power & privilege is an arc; and without the Doylist level of trusting Bryn & Alex, I can see where even if you trust/like him you'd be worried about it. With the best of intentions people misuse power. Azu quoted Grizzop at Zolf. Didn't name him, wonder if Zolf is ever going ask directly about his replacement in canon or if its best left to fic. Its easy to dismiss one's own successes. Okay fair and OW, Zolf isn't up to talking about Sasha; which is the part of this I was most prepared for. Hell yeah! He is coming down but not going to be attempting to lead so as to relieve pressure on himself. Maybe if he can let Hamid step up without making a Kew Garden thing he'll see how much he's grown. Hopefully without that setting off a "Hamid does better without me" thing. Yeah intellectual knowledge and it feeling real on an emotional level are very different things. Alex, why does it matter what order they are in? ALEX? The necklace? The Heart of Aphrodite shaped necklace? Azu got a Sign from Aphrodite approving of her reaching out to Zolf as an act of love. Yes! Blue Black no take backs! Yeah those two (players) know exactly what they are doing: breaking my heart in the best ways and not skipping over the actual work those two (characters) need to put into their relationship with OOC "its all fine now"s. Ok that settles the timeline, Azu went up same night, the device isn't made yet. Yeah Zolf wouldn't, probably best to back off while things are tender while being present enough to assure he isn't planning on leaving. Seriously bless Azu, this has to be at least as hard on her as Helen but she is letting the boys have room to work it out for themselves instead of "trying to help". The last thing either of them need right now is pressure especially on this point. Aw the Kobolds teach Cel draconic. Oh smart kid, not only is it just logical for the Kobolds to work with Cel directly, it might help them get over the "looking to see if the boss approves of how you breathe" stage. Especially if he is clear about not being threatened by them having advantage over him in this area. Heck of a relief this isn't hitting my rank issues. Ooh all the Kobolds are amazing engineers, wonder if its a Kobold thing or if Skraak recruited people with similar interests. Nice rework of the "Kobolds build traps" thing from pathfinder. I genuinely love how instead of pitching the original description of Kobolds out the window, Alex has backwards engineered it. Reputation for traps isn't a dishonorable approach to fighting, its a sign of their skill. They aren't minions, their trauma is interacting with a cultural attitude about rank in weird ways. Oh Cel! Cel is amazing. Under Shoin's orders they: made Magic Steroids, did maintenance (more towards the end as Shoin wasn't taking care of things), built the place initially, sourced ingredients, other Kobolds built the Mechkraken. Damn Shoin, they can't even be proud of all they were able to do in adverse circumstances because he tainted it. If they weren't forced to do it and have it used for ill ends, building the kraken would be impressive. A lot of that sounds like difficult work. Hamid stuff: yeah it is from a place of fear; and they would be hypersensitive and need to try to "defend him" so he doesn't react. Terrified of his anger? Handle anything that even annoys him to cut it off at the pass. And being a good person who doesn't like scaring them, Hamid is going to over do the very "Mary Sunshine" routine that makes Zolf think he doesn't appreciate the gravity of the situation. You'd think Mr "do a grief later" would get that Hamid doesn't have to walk the halls wailing to be aware of the end of the world. Not that the kid can win, if he cried and threw up it would be proof he hasn't grown from season one. Hopefully by taking a back seat Zolf will have a chance to see Hamid's actions and realize being chipper & wholesome doesn't mean stupid. Oh Alex has thought this through, one of these days I'll quit being surprised he actually gets this stuff. Not being able to read the person whose emotions feel like life & death is a Bad Thing. Thank Alex for Skraak. Weird seeing this stuff from this side, of course learning to focus on my end instead of being preoccupied with what was going on in the heads of people who were on Hamid's end of it was rather the point. Perfect balance, Hamid gives them enough space to realize he isn’t going to explode, Skraak "translates" into something clear enough not to stress them out. Like when Zolf snapped at Skraak when he pledged to Hamid; might not be pretty but not knowing what The Powers That Be want? Very bad place. Rank and clear orders are very important when appeasing those who outrank you is everything. Cel has dealt with a lot of young and unsure apprentices!?! Yeah well Cel isn't in their chain of command and gears don't get offended if you have an opinion on the right way to configure them. Cel is great Azu & Hamid talking about Zolf! Helen is wonderful! I thought this was going to be drawn out and indirect, instead they are actually facing things head on and dealing with them. Aw these two are so good for each other. Azu would set aside her own emotions. Hot damn Azu, getting right to it! Hamid can be amazingly open about his self awareness and it surprises me every time. It fits him and is a very good thing, but going from answering "how are you?" with "the Kobolds are doing well" to "I never knew how to help him" without it being jarring made me do quite the double take. Guess I was expecting more deflection. Yeah well you two are redefining your boundaries, entire relationship, and rank in specific, while being the perhaps the only people with enough of the picture to figure out how to save the world. Working out the balance between conflicting views on that, when neither of you knows what the end will look like was never going to be smooth. Oh yes and none of you have directly addressed that half of Zolf's rank & dick measuring stuff is because he doesn't know if he even has a role if he isn't The Boss or The Healer.* Oh the grin in Alex's voice as he tells them there is something else before the brorb interview. Whisky tumblers for each? Quite a sigh there Ben News? Big news? While they were in the institute? They ought to sit down. Wilde get to it. Ah Azu & Hamid are holding hands. Poor kid with his prop. Letter? Ancient Rome? Sasha? Are all the fics coming true? Their founder "Askingus"!?! Oh Sasha, oh Zolf! Lydia! Oh the kids! She named the kids after the party. She even found her faith. A break? How the hell are we only half way through the episode. Also hell yeah Lydia deserves all the awards, that was an amazing letter. XD Ben! Oh Hamid, we reacted that way to the epilogue that way too. It really is okay, it was a good end. Yeah he could use a drink. Poor Zolf. Hamid gives Wilde a hug. "technically I think that makes Sasha my boss". XP be cryptic Alex, The RSB will have it figured out by Friday. Ok Zolf got to read the letter on his own. Azu lit 3 candles, because Helen wants me to cry. Hamid is at Zolf's door with a bottle and two glasses. Lydia this is a compliment to your skill. More direct than I expected from Hamid. Oh these two! Okay he is drunk enough to go there (angry at Zolf for leaving but he gets it). About time someone told Zolf directly he's grown. Aw Zolf puts him to bed. Thank you Alex! Ben! (okay fair, if any of Hamid was left he'd cuddle). Sorry Cel! Lydia wanted to break/heal our hearts more than she wanted the plot to move forward ;) Good plan: take the orb to the anti magic field, only those who have already talked to it can talk directly. Info control. Hive mind/telepathy directly addressed. Finally what Shoin eats is addressed. Ok Cel has some teeth on them. Hasn't fed it, is using the vibration to threaten to explode his brain, (no English doesn't have enough pronouns we are working on it)... Oh good point better feed it. Aw Zolf is possessive of the kitchen. Shoin is still Shoin. Cel is not happy about not being recognized. Nice to hear the boys working together. The Infection might block him from being directly aware of  being infected. Bullsh$% he backed himself up. Good point Zolf even if he does, they are separate lives, this instance can still fear death. Oh all the party have teeth, nice they don't have the "good guys have to be sweet & gentle with the baddies" thing Yeah Cel isn't stupid, the brorbs arm isn't a threat. Oh auto painting that will make the people theorizing on the bio side of how the Brorb works happy. A circulatory diagram, and am ocean of faces. Paints like a printer. A creepy charcoal sketch of London staring at the artist. *I swear on Rusty Tower if they let him hurt himself any worse because he thinks his new role is "a brick wall on wheels" I am joining the line to fight Ben in a Whetherspoons parking lot. Yes it would be in character but so would healing. There are other hills. Although seriously its been great having a character that shows so many of the aspects of depression that usually get left out. That Zolf is also a three dimensional character with a full personality beyond just "the one with mental health issues" while not making it look like those issues are tacked on or easy to handle? Stunning work.  

[currycurrie]

Next RQG fic prompt fill! AO3 link. Based on the prompt asking for Zolf & Azu talking about Sasha. Mild spoilers for episode 155!

---

"I think you have killed it."

Azu had walked into the inn's kitchen to find Zolf beating a section of dough into such submission that it would likely not come out as anything but flatbread at this point.

At hearing Azu's words Zolf stopped his merciless bludgeoning of the dough and turned around to face her, arms crossed, breathing heavily, and covered head to toe in a light dusting of flour. He did not say anything, but tilted his head to signal he was waiting for her to continue speaking.

"I am… Hmm…" Azu paused to consider her words, "You are a hypocrite."

"Oh. Right. Excellent." Zolf threw his arms in the air in frustration releasing a cloud of flour with them. "That's exactly what I needed to hear in this exact moment. Thought you Aphrodite lot were all about compassion and empathy, yeah? You are bad at your job."

Zolf huffed, and made a move to exit the kitchen. Azu for her part anticipated this and used her large frame to block the entirety of the doorway. She looked down at Zolf who had stopped directly in front of her and he raised his head to meet her gaze.

"I will not take that personally, Zolf. I just wanted to return the favor for the conversation we had on the way back from Shoin's. You told me not to hide my emotions, that it would destroy me, and here you are hiding from all of us. I want to talk about this. Maybe you have not destroyed yourself yet, but I do not think that the bread you are making deserves this."

"Now is not a good time, Azu." Zolf replied not breaking eye contact and demeanor dripping with malice, "Please move."

Azu widened her stance like she was readying for a fight, and squinted down at Zolf, "It will never be a good time. Did you put yeast in that dough?"

Zolf just blinked at her, dumbfounded by the oddness of the question. "...No?"

"Good. You may not be ready to talk, but I will not let you sacrifice our dinner for the sake of your anger." Azu relaxed her stance and walked past Zolf over to the counter and the abandoned, sad lump of dough. "I am going to teach you how to make chapati. It is a bread we made in my village and very good with stews."

Azu began to busy herself with gathering ingredients as Zolf stared. She did not say anything or so much as glance over at him, just busied herself with the task of cooking.

Despite himself, Zolf was hungry, and maybe if he went through the motions of whatever this was he could get it over with as quickly as possible. So they began to work together in silence, Azu fussing over the bread and Zolf largely forgoing that task in favor of getting a stew going. While it was incredibly awkward at first, they did eventually settle into a rhythm.

Some time into their tasks, Zolf found that there was nothing else to do with the stew except let it sit and cook, and he became frustratingly idle. He looked at Azu who was still kneading and folding a much more cohesive looking lump of dough than what he had originally made.

"So…" Zolf spoke, but Azu still did not look up at him, seemingly engrossed in her task. "What is chapati?"

"It is a many layered bread with no yeast that is usually used for dipping. Sometimes you can put honey on it to have it with breakfast instead. You fry it instead of baking it. It was very common in my village and I miss it. The bread...and my village."

Zolf watched Azu attempt this very intricate spiraling coil with the dough. It looked very messy, but seemed to be working regardless. He took a few steps forward to get a better view.

Azu began to flatten out the spiral into a thin layer, and began speaking again. "My brother, Emeka, used to say the spirals looked like snails. I never liked that because you have to flatten out the spirals so much, and I did not like thinking about doing that to an actual snail."

Azu finished her current spiral, and began rolling it out flat. Zolf took a few more steps forward, finding himself standing next to Azu at the counter. He gingerly reached for a lump of dough and tried to copy what he had watched Azu do. It was clumsy and even messier looking than hers. Azu made no comment as she picked up a new lump of dough to begin the process again.

"I will be honest, I was never very good at making these." Azu wiped a hand across her forehead leaving behind a large streak of flour. "It will not be as good as what I had at home. I also do not think we are using the right flour."

"I'm sure it'll be fine." Zolf responded quietly.

There was another long stretch of silence as they worked together. Azu demonstrated her technique wordlessly as Zolf followed along. There was, blessedly, no awkwardness to this silence, just two people working in tandem.

"This seems like a lot of effort for some bread." Zolf muttered this to himself as he worked, not really aware he had said it out loud.

Azu looked at him this time as she responded, "Sometimes the things that are worth doing are harder to do. Sometimes they are worth doing simply because they are harder to do. Also the texture would be all wrong unless you fold it like this."

"Right." Another few moments of silence passed as they returned to their work. "Hey, Azu?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think there's a chance? That we win? The last time I tried to save the world it ended with blood in the streets of Paris. Among other not so great things."

"Well you are the one that has dedicated yourself to believing in a better world. You tell me."

"If I had an answer I wouldn't be asking."

"That is fair." Azu stopped her current work and turned to fully face Zolf, and seemed to be looking for something in his expression.

"I just, I've already lost so much and things are so bad and I don't even know what winning would look like anymore." Zolf also stopped his work, and leaned against the counter. "Times like this I really miss Sasha."

"I miss her too. She had a certain way of being very practical. Her insight would be very useful right now, I think."

"Yeah, you get it." Zolf suddenly became aware of himself to an uncomfortable degree,  and quickly got back to busying himself. "No messy god stuff, no magic, just a girl and no problem a good knife can't solve."

Azu chuckled at this. "I think she would be very pleased with what we've done."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. We have made things better. The storms have stopped. We are alive and safe for now. We are moving forward. That counts for something."

"Moving forward. Right. Think Sasha would probably kill me if she saw me moping around again. This is a pattern, if you don't know."

"Oh shush." Azu flicked her hand over Zolf's head making flour fall into his hair. "We are moving forward. Change is hard. People are difficult. You do not just decide to completely change who you are overnight and have it stick. You have to work at it."

"Yeah I'm living proof of that."

More work. More comfortable silence.

"Hey Azu, have you finished reading that one Campbell novel I was talking about the other day?"

[brinnanza]

tw mental health nonsense + pandemic, no one’s sick I’m just whining

I’m well aware of the effect that a global pandemic has on one’s ability to produce creative works, and I’m aware that being stuck inside my house all day every day without ever being alone or around other people is not exactly conducive to good mental health, especially with my particular configuration of issues BUT I’m really, really annoyed that I can’t actually do any writing. Before the pandemic really set in, when I was laid off from my job, I thought, oh, I’ll have loads of time to write really crushing fic. but that was three months ago and I just barely struggled to write one 500 word thing that I only wrote basically on a dare. and it was *hard*, it was like pulling teeth, and writing is always hard but it’s not *that* hard.

and I thought for a little bit, well, maybe the fact that I’m home all the time and not throwing ten hours a day into the capitalism void means I don’t *need* to retreat into fiction entirely to deal with my life, but I don’t think that’s it, exactly. because I barely have the attention span to read anything, and I’m still full on special interest spiral with rq but the only thing I can make myself do anymore is draw. which is fine, lots of people just draw, but I’m *good* at writing. or at least I *was*, and that’s how I *want* to engage in fandom. I had so many lofty plans, and it’s like... I can barely stay in my own head long enough to listen to the latest rqg or mag episodes, and even then I’m only barely comprehending it. I *want* to be engaged and theorize and write and I just... can’t.

and like, I know the reason I can’t write anything is because I’m wildly dissociating like 95% of the time as a coping mechanism to avoid Everything. it sucks, but I *know* I have a tendency to yeet myself out of my own head at the slightest sign of distress because the only thing I know how to do it avoid thinking about stuff that makes me upset. It just feels like I’m floating somewhere above my body like a balloon on a string, and all I want to do is winch myself back in there.

I’m tentatively planning to do some traveling at the end of july if I can firm up the plans - driving round to visit some friends who live scattered across the states, and I don’t know if that will help or not, but I gotta do something *else*. And I know if I did stuff like going outside and taking a walk every day that would help but I just. It’s hard. I have a hard time wearing a face mask because it sometimes triggers panic attacks and I do understand the necessity but it’s easier and safer just to stay inside.

I just. I’m not sure what to do to get back into myself. I don’t know how things will change in the next two weeks or months or longer, and the inability to have even basic expectations is not helping. I’m fortunate enough to be in a good financial position so it’ll be a bit before I have to go back to work, but I will eventually, and I can’t even muster up any real emotions about that besides vague displeasure. It doesn’t quite seem real.

anyway. I don’t really expect anything from this post especially since I’m rarely on tumblr these days, but verbalizing things usually makes me feel a little better at least. I just... I just want things to feel real again.

[hgb94]

RQG Found Family on Day 3 - Part 2

Episode 16 Having found Sasha, unconscious and bleeding out, Zolf tries to heal her. Zolf praying to Poseidon: Look, I know I haven’t gotten you anything recently, but help me out here, and I will get you loads of really good sacrifices, okay? Just do it!

He’s so desperate to save her. He can’t lose another person like this. He can’t have this be his fault...not again. … Zolf: Ohhh, thank goodness. Okay! Sasha: Owwwwwww. Zolf: Yeah. Uh, don’t try and move so much. Sasha: Ooooowwww… Zolf: Screaming will make it feel worse. Sasha: It can’t feel worse! Zolf: Trust me. I found you. You were definitely feeling worse.

He’s so so relieved when she finally wakes up. He cares so much, and I’m emotional about it.  ... Zolf: Uh look. Might’ve been, uh, look. Might’ve been some...superficial damage? Let’s just say, not as bad as what I got, so that’s a plus. All right? But you might be slightly...lighter than you used to be. Sasha: What, I’ve lost a foot! Zolf: No… Sasha: What? What is...oh! Oh my god! Have I lost my feet? I think I can see my feet. I’ve lost my feet! Zolf: You’ve lost a finger, okay? It’s nothing… Sasha: Oh! Oh. Um, yeah. No. No, that, that’s...that’s not new. That’s why. Zolf: Oh! Right. Fair enough. Um, okay! Can you walk? Sasha: I don’t want to. Zolf: All right. Have you got any other healing potions to get you back on your feet? Sasha: Maybe. Alex: That’s such an Other London thing. “I—I—I’m dying.” “Do you have any way of healing yourself?” “Who’s asking.” Zolf: Well, I suggest you make use of it.

Poor Zolf, he just doesn’t have the best bedside manner, but he tries so hard. And Sasha, oh, I love her, but Alex is right, that is such an Other London thing. She’s got at least two more potions on her, but starts dodging questions again. … Episode 17 As Sasha interrogates “Guy”: Zolf shuffles over to Hamid: You doing all right with this? Bryn: I...shrug. I’ve been just lounging at the back, smiling and chuckling. I’m finding her really amusing. Zolf: Just making sure you ain’t gonna have...another wobble.

Hey, Zolf checking in on Hamid, good stuff.  ... Dealing with the press Bryn: I’m going to make sure they don’t hear Sasha’s name.In fact, I’m gonna make it seem like there was a team of three of us. You know, if that comes up later, I’ll be able to say to Sasha “I thought you would want it that way.”

I love this. Hamid has clearly seen how much Sasha wants to avoid being noticed and knowing what he does now about Barrett, he takes steps to make sure she’s protected. That’s how you show love to rogue.  ... Putting their gold into bank accounts. Sasha: I’m gonna...I can’t give them my name. Zolf: Why don’t you keep it in my account, then? I’ll open one. Lydia: I look at him like he’s the maddest person that I have ever seen. Hamid: You can open an anonymous account. It’s, it’s a bit irregular, but it does happen. Bertie: You could make up a name! You could be... Lady McLady. Sasha: Right. It’s nice to know I’ve got so many defining features to...Lady Mc...I’ll have an anonymous one, thanks. Bertie: Small Lady McLady. Sasha: Thank you for the offer, Zolf. Zolf: That’s all right.

Zolf and Hamid, both trying to make sure Sasha gets what she needs and doesn’t have to share any information she doesn’t want to. She’s definitely not at a point where she can trust someone enough to put her money into one of their accounts, but offer was so sweet.  --- Lydia: I am taking the fire flask apart and putting it back together again, and looking at it. I’m having a bit of a tinker, just quietly in a corner, ‘cause I like that more than people. Ben: Glance over at you at one point and say: Zolf: Are you sure you wanna be doing that in, uh… Sasha: It’s perfectly safe! It’s fine. You can make water, right?

I care deeply about Safety Conscious Zolf, trying to make sure everyone is his party is looked after and not getting into anything dangerous. Wouldn’t want Sasha to get blown up TWICE in one day. 

[shy-magpie]

RQG 159

Live blog under the cut

Pre Episode Nonsense:

Crossing my fingers we get Earhart today. Either way we broke the "no name" rule on the Kobolds last week and got Alex to assign a personality trait himself, so hoping we see them grow more individual as they relax their guard. Also Zolf traveling: sucks Poseidon got the sea in the divorce, but maybe he'll fly better? Also I need Cel on an airship. As to Azu: please have someone talk to her about her concerns instead of it always being a one way street, I know Zolf offered.

The Actual Liveblog:

Nice to be in a properly diverse city. Wilde gives Hamid the funds. Zolf asks if Wilde needs them to pick up anything, gets a shopping list Earhart is still not a fan of Wilde? Hey nice allusion from Zolf Character growth as Hamid prioritizes location over poshness. Azu gets a room that is actually a bit big for her. Scaled as if she was 12-13 human equivalent Ben don't remind us Azu and Grizzop are that young, its a crime. "I delight in showing the Kobolds the finer side of life" Maître d comes to talk to Skraak about security needs. Skraak has this. Hamid finally hawks all that adamantine he's been carrying. Hamid goes to the family bank with Cel as a local guide (well local to Japan) Tahan and Zalia's? Zalia was a competitor. Also how does Zalia from discord feel about this? 32, Hamid is so diplomatic Oh the bank will handle the Adamantine. 60k? For something he grabbed on a whim? Good going kiddo. Cel is asked to leave after fiddling with an ATM and the red panda plush is sparking. Azu gets to see an Aphrodite temple. Eren Fairhands is leading efforts at the front. The temple is "awash with light" from all the candles lit. Party talk? Break Oh Hamid is such a leader sometimes. Oh bless he wants to split the earnings from the Adamantine. Zolf refuses because he wasn't part of the group when Hamid got the stuff. Hamid spins a bit, Cel & Azu also push for even split. I'd have left his boots out of it, but otherwise a good point. Even split 4 ways its a silly high amount Turns out the dragon destroying the factory drove up adamantine prices War profiteer? Bryn! Zolf only agrees to accept what is left after the others have bought what they need. Azu argues with Zolf on it. The others agree not to spend beyond their share Airport time Wilde jumps up & down waving because its so busy. Azu jumps up & down waving back, while glowing pink. Zolf has Wilde's stuff in a bag The Flying Noodle Monster! "what's left of Earhart's ship? " how bad is it? Cel and the Kobolds are to fix it. Earhart might "need fixing"? Zolf doesn't appreciate the round about phrasing Earhart lost the majority of her crew and is having a mental crisis. Hamid and Azu are to talk to Earhart. Zolf is ordered to help Cel "ship shaped" Hamid! Wilde thinks "a ships a ship" Hamid explains he will be starting with the Kobolds and switch after Azu has made contact. Seems to think Earhart won't like seeing them (him?) again. Zolf volunteers to go with Azu to make initial contact. (ow Zolf) Earhart did like him or rather his father. Cel talks with Hamid about Zolf. Hamid speaks well of him. "one of the greatest men I've ever known" also "frustrating to be his friend". Cel is willing to take this as Hamid vouching for him. Unlike some people, Hamid is naturally good at words and says some lovely things about Cel & Cel working with them. The front of the ship is okay. The back is in a bad way. Hamid describes what it used to look like. <Insert ship description here.> They will need more parts but core is fixable. They will need to buy elementals. How sentient are those again Alex? Zolf might be able to summon the elementals if someone else can capture them. Thanks to Hamid's adamantine stunt they can. mainly need source the elemental housing. Azu & Zolf time. Earhart is staying in "a glorified squat". Azu asks Zolf about Earhart. Yeah "Bertie is the one we don't like" doesn't get old. Oh Zolf! Actually hard for me to picture a place without a housing shortage. Sign on door hurts Zolf thinks Earhart might shoot him and tells Azu not to worry about it. Alex! Meta!Zolf discussion ends the episode before we find out if he is right. Still like hearing him read the patrons. He does read phrases as handles differently than names but bless him for always erring on the side of words as names. Also the voice for "Cookie of Doom" was delightful.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 157

these things get long and are by definition one spoiler after another, so live blog under the cut

pre episode nonsense:

My hopes for this episode are mostly just the obvious: For Zolf to pull out of his spiral; for Azu to talk to someone about how she's doing; for Hamid to find his footing with the Kobolds (loving that they are devoting a proper arc to using unearned privilege/power rather than pretending it doesn't exist); more Cel lore; a Wug; and for someone to shake answers out of the Brorb. Not sure Alex is going to let us get to know the kids individually which makes sense as juggling 7 new NPCs would seriously cut into everyone else's screen time. I think we will get more of Skraak & Hamid working through their issues, and Skraak's helping the kids through recovery. If we are very lucky maybe Zolf & Skraak will talk rather than just have Zolf resent the Kobolds for putting Hamid in a place to fall into old habits. Okay lets hit play!

Episode live blogging:

Intros are quick: Zolf sounds low, Ben sounds higher energy than he was.

Oh the Brorb drawings come better when the other half is distracted but not thinking about the real topic.

Krakens are through out the globe, unknown numbers, not true instances of Shoin, network is down.

Cel and I both react to having Shoin be the one to come closest to a truly non physical form.*

Krakens are cloned brains in robot bodies. Specifically said Daleks not Jurassic Park.

Shoin thinks he sent a ransom note using the Kraken as a threat against the world.

Does not handle it well when Zolf hones in on that no one knows who he is, much less trembles at his name.**

Hamid follows Zolf's lead and twists it towards boasting about beating the Infection. The talking half doesn't seem to know how he did it as clearly as the drawing bit. Unfortunately its strictly surgical which would be hard to reproduce at scale even before you consider the side effects.

Quick huddle with the rest of the team:

Cel always wanted to go to London?

Zolf wants to ask more about how the infection works so they could prevent infection. Wilde thinks he is suggesting using Shoin's solution, I get Alex has to catch people up but I don't like Wilde being a paragraph behind me or underestimating Zolf.

Bryn wants to review the diary. Alex confirms the diary says he had a possible  way to "end it" as a whole.

They go back and Cel feigns being extremely impressed that Shoin might have a way to stop the infection. I think having time to regroup cut him off from his memory of the infection again. Alex spells out Shoin loses coherence whenever they bring up the infection/the time period around when he was infected.

Heal check time. Zolf crit fails. Azu got a 29 and can see where his theory was better than his surgery. It may be an aphasia (issues to with communication. can't get to certain words, some can't be spoken even if he understands the concept; others he can't understand if he hears them even if he uses the word/concept himself. Brain trauma, memory problems more severe the more recent you get, sounds like unable to store short term memory properly so anything longer ago than a week but after surgery likely lost.)

Cel switches to the simulacrum. He verbally dismisses it as a waste of time. His hand keeps drawing based on the previous question re:stopping the infection.

Alex calls for a sense motive. Zolf & Azu see the latest drawing is a landscape using technical notation. Its a barren mine. Yes! it's the entrance to Svalbard. Cel can see its a circuit. Alex makes us/Lydia wait until after he's done with the simulacrum stuff.

Shoin thinks using humans as your base design to improve from is the wrong approach, gives some credit to Francois Henri for taking a different approach.

The circuit maybe to transmit something, it needs an organic component. Cel couldn't roll much better then that so they probably need to kick it towards the Harlequins to set a team on.

Shoin is moaning about paying the bills. Took on the contract to provide Simulacrum fluidics to Damascus for the money.

Drawings change shape get less technical and focus on the cavern entrance. Ben catches it sounds yonic, Alex was trying to not go there but did he really think you could go from cave imagery to seed imagry without stopping there?

Hamid tries to get more on how he caught the infection.

Bryn and Alex spell out that to get answers you ask a real question he won't answer verbally but will answer with his hand, with a decoy to keep the talking him distracted while the hand answers.

Decoy question is about Harrison Campell.

Concept drawing of a person, overwhelmed by an image of a huge figure with lines going from the small to the large? Is he suggesting they plant someone they prepare to be infected, and have them infect it back?

Proofs? Minor changes between the proofs and published version of early Campbell books.

Another review session upstairs. Hamid's red string wall got cited as being useful! Cult of Hades/Wellington may have been the one to hire Shoin to make parts for Damascus. Zolf and Hamid talk briefly, about work and as dry "stick to the subject" as possible but they are talking productively.

Oh Ben finally gets in that the interrogation is hard on Zolf's knees because he has to keep his legs out of the cell. He snaps a little at Cel when they comment on cell vs Cel. Carter suggests "naughty box" which nicely derails that point of tension. Cel refers to Shoin as being more pleasant to talk to than Carter. Not sure if that undermines the tiny Cel/Carter ship or fuels it with tension.

Cel asks who hired Shoin to make Sim parts. He can answer directly. Well directly for him, it seems to be mostly justifying stealing Tesla's work on the basis that Tesla wasn't going to implement his theory. Hamid snipes him with a shot praising Edison to get him back on topic. Shoin says Edison was being backed by a big investor. Is it to much to hope this is Alex finally consolidating the factions? If Hades is Edison's investor (leaving Edison & co as effectively their minions, rather than a faction of their own) and the factory owners we can cut down on sides considerably.

He goes on about how he spied on Henri, religion as money maker. Shoin was directly approached by Hades lot. Shoin made sure his bits won't work since he didn't want competition. Wellington was his contact with Hades. Wellington always had a pair of cloaked figures.  Vinegar + squizard = funny? Could be useful.

Do not follow what is going on with the hand.

Shoin is still unstuck in time and thinks he is going to connect them. Cel unplugs the speaker on his villain speech. Cel induces a dream state by powering him down

~break~

Cel suggests  painlessly killing him. Zolf seconds the idea because its immoral to keep him like that.   Hamid points out the longer the keep him around the more likely it is for someone to be infected. Wilde rules they should kill and seal it off.

Cel & Zolf have an argument about having the Kobolds handle the remains. Cel calls Zolf out on his inconstant stance on whether the Kobolds can be infected because if he doesn't believe that then he is risking them.

Wilde is moving on? Cel suggests letting the Brorb die, putting it in a bag of holding, keeping the bag in the anti magic field.

They can't just call Einstein because using unofficial channels is bad when irregular behavior is a sign of infection(?)

Alex's unhealthy attitudes about productivity are called out when he refers to the time Wilde spends thinking/planning before getting their transport arranged as "working" (with the inverted commas) rather than considering it part of the work.

They work out possible paths if teleporting is off the table.

And the boys are snapping at each other again. Zolf, you can't flip out every time you are reminded that Hamid doesn't have the experience or expertise of a seasoned sailor. Yeah you did leave the team without your skills and maybe the kid was a bit green for a field promotion; but you know what? He did a fine job, and the other choices were Sasha, who wouldn't lead, and Bertie, who shouldn't. Just because stepping down was the right thing to do, doesn't mean you get to lose it when you are confronted with the mere allusion to the idea it had consequences.

Barnes tells Hamid why going over the pole is a really bad idea. That Azu's suggestion is carrying Hamid has troubling symbolism.

Zolf actually comes more or less to Hamid's defense by pointing out that all their options are bad options, so having a go at Hamid's idea in particular is unwarranted.

I'm not going to bother listing out options. They will pick one or won't need to pick one. If we have been a very good fandom Alex may reward us with Earhart coming back as their preferred transport.

There we go, Hamid suggests her, Zolf seizes on the idea compliments Hamid on it, and immediately takes it to Wilde. Thank God he isn't so far down he can't do that. If he isn't compulsively shooting down any hope (especially from Hamid) then he really is on the upswing from the low brought on by quarantine stress.

Lydia isn't happy that there isn't going to be an American chapter. Then again we wrote off Svalbard, so don't give up!

Its the Northwest Passage and its so weird realizing that not everyone has it as a cultural reference. Wonder if it's an Oregon thing or a US thing.

Yes it would have been cool, but I think Alex is not going to let us have cool new story arcs when we haven't played with the ones we have at home.

Einstein and Earhart are our two best transport options. I am a happy fan. Especially if Zolf has to use his family and Earhart’s reaching out to him near the end of the journey to appeal to her. I mean we did get more on Zolf's relationship with his family than I expected after Paris, so I'm not going to sulk if they don't pursue this, but it would be nice.

Conflicted as a fan, its hard to remember that this taking months extra is a bad thing when the end of the series is feeling too close for comfort.

Zolf, look at you leveraging your experience with moving even when things feel hopeless!

Cel I love you, kraken as submarine is brilliant. Air kraken is suggested by Carter.

Hamid plays with the ideas while Alex goes "why?". Because you are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than that if you want Hamid to see it as a no win situation rather than proof he needs to redouble on cheerful creativity. Feeling like he had no options led to the worst parts of Hamid's life, the things he is truly ashamed of; having few losses outside of those, he is going to make Kirk's Kobayashi Maru hang ups look amateur.

Zolf is heading to the beach.

Cel is checking on their village.

Hamid wants to contact Einstein himself, Zolf says he should talk to Wilde about that. Hamid wants Zolf with him for that meeting. Zolf either doesn't want to be a safety blanket, wants Hamid to get used to dealing with Wilde directly, or completely missed Hamid offering a chance to work together because he is incapable of seeing Wilde as an opponent. He does say some nice things about being a team.

Hamid tells Cel to say hi to Jasper for them. He is good at the people side of leadership. Remembering names and relationships, knowing how to show he cares because it's important to Cel without overstepping. If Zolf can learn to let go of the rank stuff, they could be an unbeatable team of co leaders.

Zolf nods at Azu. Azu smiles proudly back. Alex jokes about not liking giving them time to heal because they coordinate.

Hamid offers hugs to both Cel and Zolf. Because this entire character is a "fuck you" to toxic masculinity and he is not afraid to openly show affection to his friends.

Cel gives him a great hug.

Zolf hesitates but gives him a pat on the shoulder. Hamid's has high enough charisma to make that not awkward. Good kid, accepting that Zolf is reaching out as far as he can.

Hamid talks to Skraak. Hamid is worried about taking the kids. Maybe Skraak can convince them to stay & help Jasper with science. Because RQG loves us and wants us to be happy, they are considering a fantasy some of us harbored since "science" as a serious possibility. Could solve the issue with Alex not wanting the kids to take up too much screen time too. Skraak is the perfect character for Hamid to have as his second. He believes in Hamid, and can be confided in, but isn't going to take an ounce of self pity or bullshit.

Alex that village better be okay. Smoke? Controlled burn. Ben lightens the mood. The tank is still guarding the village. The barricade is up but they are guarding about as well as a village of level 0(1?) characters can be expected to.

They are having a party and there is a bon fire. Because Alex knows we wouldn't have trusted him if there wasn't a little scare with the smoke. !puns

The village is visibly healing since the weather is fixed. They thank Cel but know better than to ask.

Jasper! Jasper is looking good. He stepped in as a leader of the village. Cel and I could burst with pride. Jasper thinks Cel is coming to stay, Cel tries to explain they are going to help save the other villages around the world and mentions that Jasper would like the Kobolds.

!puns

* One day I need to hunt down the right corner of SF because there has got to be a decent amount of trans humanist fiction for trans humans out there somewhere.

**Not sure if I should feel bad for hoping this gives him a safe target for his destructive tendencies. Ideally Zolf would get past that point without indulging his dark side lest he reinforce bad coping mechanisms. Ideally Zolf would have weekly therapy without the fate of the world on his shoulders too. Its the more personal version of looking forward to a fight after Hamid's been stressed because he seems to find cooking baddies cathartic.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 116

Being in Rome doesn't change the fact that I am not ready for Rome,  you understand right? Also don't worry about it if I sound stressed about the show, I have some IRL stuff going on and it is nice to have something cathartic. If Alex recycles parts of the "thank yous" never tell me. The team does not appreciate having a leisurely intro while they are waiting to start the fight Ben threatens to shoot Wilde if Alex hurts Einstein Ghost dog, not werewolf thing like I thought last time Sasha don't die in his place Hamid has a spell, I think he said "hold person"? It is super effective Azu kill it fast, I don't want either Sasha or Einstein to be hurt Or heal Einstein that works Oh my heart, she has to beg since her god isn't answering Confirmed that its Rome and not Aphrodite acting up Back to Grizzop Poor stressed out little guy is exhausted and managed to sleep Oh dear the river didn't go back to normal, not sure where it did go To the fight Oh dear the wolf thing is getting loose Sasha stabs with her favorite daggers, that is a lot of numbers there, I assume she is kicking butt? Oh nice, its like the opposite of the zombies in Prague, her daggers are doing great "Rome is the Worst" you designed it Alex,  you don't get to commiserate Azu is not allowed to die either Yeah well, Hamid doesn't have self preservation instincts; so Bryn's priorities make sense Azu is doing well Yeah if I noticed it then there is no way Alex didn't know that he needs to get the first shot in "Topaz!" Helen sounds distraught. Aw, Ben reassures her that he is safe on the celestial plane. Here's hoping potions avoid Roman nonsense Heroes, sigh of course they all tell Einstein to teleport to safety, even though he is their best chance of getting out safe. I love how Azu's go to is just picking people up Break, the archives are hungry OOoo spooky. Love the show but its hard to take the ads seriously when Jon hasn't sounded that lively in ages. Grizzop time Okay where is it draining to? Ok that makes sense. Lawful evil guys, Alex is cruel but fair Grizzop is going to break the funnel so the river behaves. All by himself. Back to Rome I like none of this Possible defensible spot? Yes he still has mage armor! Ah not flat footed :( Alex: this is a very complex creature, sorry Lydia: that's your fault Hamid please be careful with that magic Sasha! Helen/Azu: how dare you do this when I can't heal! Thanks Ben, that's...helpful No, Sasha, no diving after it Grizzop time Simple plan sounds effective, no obvious holes for Alex to exploit. Sasha stares down Hamid and chugs a cure light wounds Yeah Sasha is allowed to be salty about that Check it for traps, check it for loot, gotta love a rogue Einstein is useful? Oh no Well that could be worse Back to a paladin who is going to fix the world, all by himself! Well that's an image Ha Lydia is with me 100 orcs vs 1 goblin in his underwear Thank goodness they aren't fighty But Grizzop is. Do yourself a favor and just relisten to that last conversation ok? The tones of voice etc You going to help me or are we going to fight? because either way I would like to be on with it. I don't care what his age works out to, Grizzop is officially on the list with Hamid as kids I want to hug and protect. Sasha would be but maybe offered a cool knife instead of a hug? Azu can handle both protecting herself and getting hugs so she can get a soothing hot drink with Zolf while I wrap the kids in bubble wrap.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 150

Where in the party finally sleeps; talks to a mook; and Kobolds free themselves

High anxiety day for unrelated reasons, might have to tap out and listen after I get some sleep, but hoping it will help to get out of my head for a bit. Still Lydia's birthday. Cel is working up to a proposal. Oh thank God they're going to sleep. Zolf is being reasonable about this. Oh good point Cel, sleep could help the Kobolds a lot. Hamid casts Endure Elements on himself and Skraak. New spells and feats won't  come until after the dungeon Zolf takes first watch. Oh Skraak and the new kids sleep in a pile. Skraak gets proper sleep. Azu takes second watch with a nat 20 on perception. The new kids took a while to go from "ordered to rest" to actual sleep. Azu can hear movement in the cells and at the end of her watch hears boots approach. Azu's Lay on Hands can now  cure poison. Azu wakes the party Skraak is taller? The new kids are starting to come out of it. Skraak vouches for the party and suggests they take out everything but the party. I love General Skraak. Skraak is speaking properly and the new kids are still at single syllable stage. Surprise round. Initiative. Lad and/or Bloke with a wind up torch. Toss up on this being an actual mook vs cavalry. Its a mook and Zolf charged him with the glaive. Alex is in a generous mood. Mook is down with Zolf's hand over his mouth. Cel reads him for filth. Azu glares at him. Hamid saunters over and casts Detect thoughts (spell doesn't translate :( ). Surface thoughts are mostly pain screaming from Zolf's glaive to his leg. "Skraak is going to murder this man". Huh saying "good for him" out loud was a bit blood thirsty for me wasn't it? Oh well, I stand by it, no sign yet the humans were drugged. Party might want him alive for interrogation etc so I won't pout if they stop Skraak. The new kids are going to help. Hamid shouts at the Kobolds to stop. Pesky morality probably objects to killing a wounded prisoner. The new kids do, Skraak doesn't; ironically I think it's a sign Skraak trusts Hamid not to punish him for disobeying. Azu hesitates but "puts a gentle hand on his chest" and tries to say with her face "slow down". Hamid is waiting to see if Azu is successful before acting. Zolf gets Cel's attention and uses them as translator to begin interrogation. Skraak hearing that Zolf will kill this guy if he doesn't answer should get them on the same page. Skraak is doing good and tells Azu to "move" in English. Hamid explains they will make the mook pay but they need info. Zolf volunteers they will let Skraak kill him after they're done with questioning. "fine" Once again left with the feeling a better person would be making noise about trials and "cold blood" but Skraak is this guys direct victim and the party isn't killing him just not saving him. His victim wanting to kill him is a foreseeable consequence of participating in a genocide of these Kobolds and not something I feel the party has any obligation one way or the other. Especially since I'd be amazed if the local justice system was functioning much less able to handle this. Skraak's color is coming back in bright red. Break Hamid cast Comprehend Languages which combines nicely with the already cast Detect Thoughts. Mook is still focused on his leg. Hamid shares with the group. Zolf heals his leg enough to get him able to answer questions and directs Cel to start asking questions. Maybe a little more guidance on wording would be advisable, I know he trusts Cel but they are new at this and not concise at the best of times. Cel has a potion for this? Zolf casts Calming Touch Cel asks "how many are you?" Alex explains he will answer everything twice, once for Detect Thoughts, once out loud. He claims there are "loads of us", is in fact the only one on shift. Hamid will be relaying the thoughts to the party. Alex explains the Kobolds won't understand what is going on in English, between the language barrier and being pissed off. Cel asks "what this hideous prison for?"; "you know, the Kobolds" was not a calming answer. Good news is he was thinking about where the other humans were. Cel asks where the tunnel to the mainland is, prompted by him thinking about the other guards being "in the tunnel". He gives the directions. Cel asks how to let the Kobolds out. He asks why you would, "they're Kobolds". Right remember that moral conflict I was concerned about not feeling? Moved on to whether Cel and Azu are obligated to let the Kobolds kill this guy on their own or if they can join in. The boys seem less disturbed and may hang back so they have energy to deal with the rest. Mook is thinking about an ambush being set up in the tunnels. Hamid tells the party. Cel asks about it and "what happened to my village?". So mook may catch on to either that they can hear his thoughts or to Cel's identity soon. Cel shakes him as he asks "who are you?" and "what's going on?",  Zolf objects only because his glaive is at the mooks throat and shaking him results in cuts. "they go out to get supplies and stuff". Shoin found people as awful as him, same disregard he has for others: getting supplies as if terrorizing a poor village and stopping at a store are the same. Cel is the absolute best. They go calm and explain they will be freeing the Kobolds then checking on Jasper. Lydia, we need that backstory! How long has Jasper been their apprentice? Does he have other people looking out for him? "oh crap these are the the people we were supposed to be ambushing". Oh nice, by going by boat they avoided the ambush  leaving the guards tied up waiting for them all this time. Hamid assures Cel they will get to Jasper soon. He is such leader; I am so proud of him smoothly going from translating the mook's thoughts for the team, working out the implications, to making sure Cel is calmed and validated in their concerns. And right back on the ball with a question about the green eyes. Cel asks just all the questions re: Kobold drugging and freeing. Fk this guy. "big boss used the juice on them and they obey orders like they should". Confirm timeline for drug wearing off. Zolf points out that they can let the Kobolds free themselves rather than open the doors one at a time. Oh Cel took Draconic at level up. "they're feral, they'll go after everyone". Right why did I spend a second thinking I should feel bad for being happy Skraak is going to kill this guy? Also reminded of AR and the dragons being treated as weapons, Alex has a point about treating people as tools that I can't articulate but is very good. The whole party is on the side of the Kobolds as this guy tries to frighten them with the idea the Kobolds will bring the place down on them all. Cel is seriously the best, they address Skraak and the new kids directly, to tell them the Kobolds will be okay. Skraak directs the new kids to start letting the others out, all three start doing so. Cel asks again about a button to open all the doors at once, mook keeps on his "you can't, they'll kill just everything" bit. Zolf tells Skraak "have at him" and keeps his glaive at the mook’s throat. Azu gets out of Skraak's way. Skraak approaches the mook with their spear as the camera turns away because we don't need details. The green is almost gone from their eyes but still drugged calm so only not fidgeting suddenly sober panicking. 10s of thousands Alex? Oh my. The Kobolds they free are freeing others, so it gets exponentially faster as it goes on. "freedom pyramid scheme" I like that. The boys stayed, Cel & Azu walked away, while Skraak dealt with the guard. Alex is being tasteful with the details but no one was expecting gracious restraint from Skraak. Hope it was cathartic, Little Buddy. Zolf addresses Skraak. Tells them the Kobolds can do what they want with this place, the party will handle the guards on their way out. God I love this party, not presuming to tell the Kobolds whether they should destroy the place or keep it as compensation is exactly the recognition of their autonomy I wanted to see after all that "feral" talk. Cel asks practical questions. Come on, I've been envisioning the Kobolds joining Cel's village since the onion room. Let's heal together! Cel invites Skraak to their village, but you know not in a chatty mood. Cel asks after after the squid. Skraak says they were erratic but lacks details. Cel speculates re:blue veins effecting Shoin's control. Zolf points out they will need to get on board the kraken. Skraak: don't let them live. Zolf: we're not going to. Skraak: if there are any left we'll finish them. Azu: good to know. Hamid "do you want my help?" break my heart kid Skraak picks up a guards pack and heads down the corridor. Waves back at the party and says "look after yourselves, Little Guys". Oh Alex, I don't want to say good bye but that was perfect. Hamid runs up to Skraak and gives him the Stalking Dagger they found in dungeon. Skraak knows how to handle it well. The inevitable Sasha joke is sweet rather than painful. Hamid: Seems like you have things under control. I hope I'll see you again. I owe you and the rest of the Kobolds a debt and I want to repay it some time. Skraak: yeah you do. Holy Hannah, they even managed to handle Hamid's fireball guilt perfectly. Not waving it off but not going to let it chew at him for the rest of the series either. He will come back and work off his debt. Ambush time. Signs, I love Alex's set design. Hamid suggests they check Administration before they hit the barracks etc. Paperwork is way out of date. Went from "tax" to shake down about the time they quit doing paperwork. Barracks are a mess, in the why you expect from the sort of people who think like that ass we interrogated. Cel suggests they check out processing, in case what they do to the Kobolds resembles Blue Veins. CWs Alex is being good but I was not expecting the mere existence of exactly what we were expecting to find to effect me like this. Somehow being less personal than Paris is worse. Not informative. Everyone is looking forward to a nice cathartic fight. Oh it would have been so much worse if Alex tried to pull the blow and lessen how badly they regarded/treated the Kobolds. By instead keeping true to the story and using detail control to keep it tasteful it feels like its actually over. I am sick of stories that have "sub human" slave or animal races but gloss over how inherently evil that is. The Kobolds are free now. They know they have help on offer both from Cel being local & decent and from Hamid's guilt over the ones he & the party killed. We aren't going to be expected to have any sympathy for the humans, this isn't an Other London situation where people take sketchy jobs to get by; the guards knew the Kobolds were drugged slaves. They will be dealt with by the party or by the Kobolds per the agreement with Skraak.