#the concept is great but i wasn't as invested as i thought i'd be

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

My memory is terrible so I wanted to do a breakdown of my stuff every once in a while. Might be monthly, might be whenever I feel like it.

QL - Currently Watching

🇯🇵25 Ji, Akasaka de [7/10] - I do love when Japan does a pov change and this was no exception. Hayama is so far gone. Like we already knew what, but he's been a goner ever since he read his name. He's being worshipped by all these people around him because apparently he's too good looking for anyone to be normal around him, and all he sees is Shirasaki. He said one sentence to him in school that he kept as a reminder. Man is obsessed. I'm so curious about next week. The lines are getting more and more blurred and eventually someone's gotta give. Also Hayama should give lessons on self-control. I have never seen anyone so completely out of his mind in love and jealous and at the same time, so put together. I'm in awe.

🇹🇭 Knock Knock, Boys! [2/12] - Strong start. It's fun, I really liked the flat sharing concept, it reminds me of my London days and kinda like Thanwa, being the mom of the house. I'm wondering if they will settle into their own in-house pairs soon or if there will be cross over, cause that would be fun. Give me mess.

🇹🇭 My Stand-In [1/12] - For a number of reasons I'm waiting to binge this one. I do love watching the gifs on my dash though, pretty is pretty.

🇹🇭 Only Boo! [8/12] - So we're done with highschool and that last episode felt a bit rushed trying to finish all those loose threads but I like that we're getting to a new chapter of their relationship. They continue to be too adorable for words. Side couple - dream kisses my beloathed. From the preview and also the number of thai bl's I've watched I'm thinking this will be a pretty straightforward 'it turns out you like him but now he moved on (not really) and you have to grovel'. I'd love to be surprised though.

🇹🇭 Wandee Goodday [4/12] - I am loving it. Pretty much everything about it. Before I say anything else. Thor is gorgeous and he should do all the shows. Forever. He and Cher are delightful and I love that they are an established couple that seem to have their own roles in the gym and their own relationship with Yak. I said this in tags before I think, but I'm finding it interesting how we collectively talk about this show ending, more often than not, with the caveat 'let's see if it holds up'. We have been burned before and not that long ago so we are all holding our breaths. Contrary to my usual state, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this. I think the bones are there for a good show all the way to the end. No one is perfect - except Kao, he is perfection and the ace rep I only dreamed of - and that's great. They are both smitten and complete idiots. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the backstory, and in Yak's case how much of what drives him is a consequence of loss.

🇹🇭 We Are [9/16] - Still enjoying the friendships and still bummed we have no development with Chain/Pun. We had one second of development and it was a look. So much in that look. Not really but at least it seems that Pun is aware of his feelings, so that's something. The last episode kept reminding me of Love Sick because of all the camp stuff. It's an entertaining show but the Q/Toey plot is annoying me a bit now.

QL - Finished

🇹🇭 23.5 - This show lost me about halfway through and I never really connected after that. Even if it really wasn't for me, I'm happy it exists and I hope gmmtv invests in more gl's in the future. I wanted more of the teachers but I'm not greedy and was happy to see that they are together by the end.

🇰🇷Blossom Campus - What a mess. I still cannot believe this came out of Strongberry. I posted my reactions while watching. Final thoughts here.

🇰🇷Boys Be Brave - I really liked this one. Just to get it out of the way, the side couple felt a bit unfinished and could've had a bit more screen time. All the characters had their own stuff going on and 8 episodes just isn't enough to explore that depth in a satisfactory way. With that said. I adore the mains. JinWoo built a wall, put a list on it and we got to see Kiseob slowly tearing it down in its own unhinged unique way. I did a rewatch and something I didn't notice the first time is that when Kiseob is 'caught' with Inho and is explaining what happened while JinWoo hides under the bed, he enumerates what happened just like JinWoo always does. I thought it was so endearing. I found Kiseob's presence on screen always so bright and JinWoo's actor was really compelling to watch. Overall this was a really nice surprise.

🇯🇵 Living with him - Writing this when I literally finished and it's strange. Cause they are so cute by the end. That whole festival date was so adorable, and I think they played the awkwardness of the dynamic change really well. I do think the show dragged in parts and Natsukawa became a tiny bit annoying to me at a certain point. Because he found out so early that Kazuhito liked him that I thought the indecision was too much at times. I kept comparing it in my head to I Cannot Reach You, and the way both Kakeru and Natsukawa's lack of confidence plays a part in how they deal with the friend liking them, but I think in this case the back and forth in his head was irritating to me. It was always one step forward, two steps back. When he found the magazine in that last episode I wanted to punch a wall. Like, oh crap here he goes again. It's great that the friend was passing by so he could do all the work and get these two finally together. For the most part I really enjoyed it.

🇰🇷Love Is Like a Cat - That was a show that I watched. Final thoughts

Rose Watches OJBL

The Novelist (2018) - I put off this one for so long because of reasons and I was so wrong. It's not necessarily an easy watch but it's so good. It's beautifully shot and acted. I went through a whole journey with Kijima, from 'who is this guy?' to 'I fucking hate this guy' to ''I need him to be happy, please'. I will have to rewatch it after I watch all of them because the series is full of details and I'm sure I missed a bunch. Definitely happy I started this journey if for no other reason cause I finally managed to watch this.

Takumi-kun Series 2: Rainbow Colored Glass (2009) - The sad just came out of nowhere. It's got some of the same problems as the first one, choppy editing and even though the cast is new the acting is still not that good. I was less confused throughout which is good, Takumi annoyed me a lot though and the tragic plot was messy and rushed. I'm not sure if I'll watch all of these but probably at least one more and then decide.

Other - Watched

🇨🇳Running Like a Shooting Star (2024)🇯🇵Barakamon (2023)🇯🇵Ghost Yankee (2024) 🇰🇷Wonderful World (2024)

4 Thai BL's coming in June June 7 | My Love Mix-Up (so many mixed feelings) June 9 | Love Sea June 15 | Sunset x Vibes June 26 | The Rebound

As usual my ask box is open for questions or requests. Have a wonderful day/night💜

[spockandawe]

Binderary! I already spoiled how this went last night, but now let's review how it went with slightly nicer words and slightly nicer pictures. And, as a special treat at the end, I even have a spreadsheet.

Last winter, I expressed a vague desire to do a speed test, and see if I could sustain a pace of a book per day for an entire month. Text harvesting, typesetting, everything. This was at the stage where backing books was a terrifying leap of faith rather than a mildly tedious chore, and I'd never tried leather. I had a cricut, but had been too nervous to use it yet. And I did it! In fact, in pursuit of nice round numbers, I hit 30! I didn't realize, but the month wrapped right around my one year anniversary of starting bookbinding, and those projects landed me somewhere in the 130s of total books bound (my tracking spreadsheet has gaps and also needs a revamp).

This year, I had progressed a lot. I had gotten much more ambitious with my projects and was a MUCH better typesetter. I was confident I could hit exceed thirty, so instead I thought I would see how quickly I could do it. This was a fantastic plan, because work had me so exhausted and strung out that I accidentally started february a day early. Doing great. I pushed on so I wouldn't get an artificial rest and set my deadline at the 27th. Then.... in 13 days I hit 28, and all it took was one joking poke, asking if I thought I could average two books per day. It sank in. My brain ADORES ridiculous artificial conditions. I just Had to do it. I was emotionally invested. Anyways! I'm flirting with genuine burnout, but I DID IT, BABY. Last night I hit sixty!

SIXTY BOOKS! Five in leather! One in denim! One in velvet! Two edge marbled! One over a thousand pages! Three cnovels! All but one book cover done with my existing stash of paper, fabric, and leather! That one exception was tian ya ke where I knew which fabric I wanted, and I had precut pieces in my stash, but I wanted to fussy cut alignment on the fabric so I went out to buy more, hahaha

I did ease up my initial self-imposed rules a little, just because like forty books in, the concept of STORIES stopped meaning anything. I went hilariousuly numb. It's like semantic satiation, but for a concept. Stories? Never heard of em in my life. So when fics has multiple authors I wanted to gift them to, I made multiples and each counted as a separate book. Other books here were anthologies of a couple dozen stories, counted as one book. So I didn't stress it. I am legit more burned out than I wanted to be, I wasn't going to find EXTRA unnecessary reasons to push and make it worse. This was a fantastic achievement, and I'm really so proud of myself right now. My last svsss was book 201, and these are 202-261. This is just under a quarter of the books I've ever bound. I am EXTREMELY proud of this.

Now for dessert. SPREADSHEET. I'm redacting all the books and authors, because some of these are gifts and if i do decide to fully spoil the surprise, I'm at least going to do it with individual glamour shots. For now, this is what we've got. Please note the right three columns, where I tracked the total numbers of stories, words, and pages in here. Mistakenly saving the villain (part two) is the one that counts as 0 stories because it's split across two volumes, but everything else should make sense, I think. I did PRETTY DARN GOOD

[wardenofthecoast]

Skyrim and Civil War

You know, there are ways to make good morally grey conflicts, but Skyrim's Civil War is not one of them. However instead of talking about how undercooked it was (it was), I want to talk about the underlying concept of it. Sometimes just saying "add more content" isn't a reasonable critique when it comes to a product that needs to come out (there are graveyards of games that never stopped developing).

The issue with Skyrim's civil war -

It puts a lot of emphasis on Talos, a god that tbh I don't think needed it and wasn't referenced until the third game. IDK this is more personal but I'd prefer Talos just be a hero-god of Cyrodiil/Skyrim you know? (Oh that guy who conquered you all and forced you into his empire, which some of you are old enough to remember? worship him pls)

It's morally grey, but in the "I hate both of these options way". There historical precedents for a nationalist movement opposing imperialism, and there are precedents for rebellions occurring from princes or nobles who want take power. However the conflict feels more like neoliberal democrat versus libertarian republican, aka I hate em both and the difference is minimal. It's like if someone wanted to do the US civil war but they really thought it was about states' rights. It's like Braveheart but worst.

It's both the impetus for the plot (the dragonborn prophecy) and shows up in the main quest, but ONLY if you don't interact with it (too much). And there's incentive not to, as it provides a cool quest that is optional and you can remove a jarl or two you don't like depending on how it goes. Otherwise you can really ignore it, and you're standing with any guild or city isn't really referenced except when the new Jarl takes over.

It's an excuse for chuds to make stormcloak memes after they're done making Morrowind slavery memes.

OK i know what I said about content but yeah the gameplay aspect isn't great with one or two exceptions (the siege of Whiterun and Solitude/Windhelm). The lack of say and options as a nation's folk hero truly shines here. It's like if during the US civil war Jesus showed up, killed the devil and then everyone said "thank you but we need you to blackmail a secretary".

You could make it work. There's a phrase the comes up in the game, Season Unending, which the nords used to mean war. You could put an anti-war theme or something regarding the cyclical nature of violence, even if people didn't agree it would be saying something. Personally, I'd use the 30 years war as inspiration - a religious and political conflict about an empire with multiple actors, all of which causing mayhem to the countryside.

Here are my solutions which don't involve any additional content, but instead changes/removal.

The Civil War ended at the beginning of the game. You see Ulfric die, his forces are scattered and the jarls with him are left picking up the pieces, but the Empire doesn't have the funds to restore control nor pay its soldiers. This helps explains why forts are ruined and the high number of bandits - they are soldiers/deserters looking for a payday. It also creates a narrative of trying to see who Ulfric Stormcloak was using unreliable narrators and maybe a bit of tragedy for a guy who thought he was The Guy (but in fact You're The Guy).

The Civil War ended years ago. Same as above, but make it more tamed. This would be the closest to just removing it entirely.

Make it a rebellion and have the player be a part of it. It would be so interesting a contrast to be against the empire after four games directly or indirectly aiding it. Now you could either try to do something thoughtful about revolutions and violence and the character of that rebel army, or you could just do Braveheart, but either way people would probably be more invested in it.

Don't let us join either side. The Empire's rulers claim the title dragonborn, and having some shmuck say he is would not be in their interest. Ulfric claims tradition and his power of the voice, not saying but implying a connection to Talos, and so he would not want you as a threat to his power. Have both groups be awful, and hammer home how these nobles might all claim to be different, but they slaughter the peasants all the same.

These aren't perfect solutions, and tbh the quality and quantity of the writers on board a project are going to impact any idea. But still, I think I'd prefer these options than what we got in game.

[theheightofdishonor]

I have a couple more shows on my watchlist and once that's done i think i'll be taking a (probably brief) break from asian dramas to focus on some of the other dozen watchlists i have (anime maybe? i might skip jojo and try daiya no ace again- we'll see though)

I'm hitting the 300 dramas mark soon (that's 300 completed mind you, not counting movies, and not counting things i've dropped) so i'll probably write something later in the year too reflecting on both the shows that've come out this year and the ones i've watched

For now i thought i'd jot down a couple notes about the currently airing shows i'm keeping up with since i haven't had time to do that in a while. I'll be doing this in the order I watch them in.

Middleman's Love- ngl I'm solely watching this for King and Uea. I know some of you like this show but the main couple just don't work for me and the side couple are only mildly more interesting. I'll keep watching it to the end but it's a skim watch.

Twins- A great example of how silly is fine when it's enjoyable. I fucking adore this show right now. This has volleyball in it and I'm a haikyuu!! fan before i'm a person so of course i was going to watch this show no matter how dumb it is but it's great. I'm having a blast. I like the family dynamics, I like Sprite, I like how they're committing to the 'slow' part of 'slow burn', I like all the stupid hijinks, I like that I can watch this show and be like "oh he's a Setter, like Kageyama!", I just like it. Poor First though, doing all this work of unlearning his hatred for Zee for no damn good reason.

My Dear Gangster Oppa- This one used to be first on my list but after the dumb breakup last week, it's dropped down. I hate the noble idiocy trope as @lurkingshan calls it. It's stupid, it's annoying and I don't think this week's episode made up for it. Shame really, I was quite enjoying this show at first. The chemistry's good and cliches are fine when they're enjoyable. If it wasn't ending next week, I would drop it.

Last Twilight- Saving the best for last because a) it's a heavier show with more to think about than any of the above and b) youtube's interface annoys me.Tbh I only started watching this in the hopes that it might rewrite my current reflex of wincing everytime I see Jimmy's face in a gifset but it's such an excellent show. Aof's directing and storytelling is excellent as usual and he really does deserve credit for how handles his actors. Watching JimmySea in this and then vv is like whiplash.

ps. Pit Babe- i'm not invested in keeping up with this show and my desire to do so depends on factors such as the amount of free time I have and how reluctant I am to use youtube to watch Last Twilight. It seems to have inklings of an interesting plot + obviously it's fandom history cuz of the a/b/o but the way they only half lean into the omegaverse aspects of it without explaining anything makes me wonder what people who aren't familiar with the concept of omegaverse think about this show and how they understand it. Like it has to be confusing without context, right? Mostly, i'm just watching for Nut Supanut and Nut Supanut only though it remains to be seen whether my affection for him will eventually be worn down by how annoying his character is. I swear, if it were played by anyone else or if I cared about the main characters to any extent, I'd find Way insufferable. But so far, i'm supporting all his wrongs. Especially when he looks so damn pretty doing it.

[joju-but-trek]

Doctor Who Season 14 Episode 3: Boom

So, Steven Moffat saw the Hbomberguy video.

I'm not sure how I feel about this episode yet. It's a cool concept, and it's done well, but something about the way the characters interact with each other feels wrong in a way I can't identify.

I think I ultimately liked it and can recommend it, but there's something bugging me about it.

The whole episode felt like they brought Steven Moffat to be Steven Moffat. There was some personal stuff, the Doctor being clever about things, and semicoherent political commentary.

I thought the idea of an arms company going this far to sell product was a cool concept, and I'm not really sure how to better execute it in a single 45-minute episode, but I didn't like the other stuff that Moffat layered on. Why is the army Anglican? Why is the thing now about religion also? Why is there a tangent about AI in there? There's too much trying to go into a pretty basic and cool metaphor.

The Doctor reacting to religion is another weird thing. The episode's trying to be about how religion is bad but also at the end it's good that Splice thinks her dad is still alive even though her dad's body is in a tube in her hand and her dad being dead was the solution to everything? I'm not sure where this was trying to go.

Also, Moffat made it Villengard. Like that thing HBomberguy referenced in his video as a cool background detail Moffat dropped. And then had the extended bit in Twice Upon A Time about that HBomberguy joked about. I started this theory as a joke but I am actually starting to believe that Steven Moffat has seen that video and it really bugged him. I hope to one day make a writer care about me that much.

There's something in how Ruby's unconscious for half the episode and the Doctor treats her as equally useful before and after that I don't like, but I admit I could be overreading it.

I do like the continuing building arcs going on in this episode. The snow's still here, the Doctor keeps referencing his family, whatever's happening with Susan Twist is still happening, I'm invested. I wasn't really focused on the Susan Twist thing until this episode but now it's right in our faces and I'm excited.

Overall, I'd give it a 6/10. It's still a good core concept and well-acted and fun, even if it is weighed down by the specific writing quirks Steven Moffat brought.

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to mention how much I love the realization that this is the first alien planet Ruby's been on. It's a great moment and I love it so much.

[temnurus]

Drarry As Parents Fic Recs

I answered a request for fics in which Draco and/or Harry were parents ages ago, & I figured I'd throw 'em up here for people to reference & share as they liked. There are even two non-explicit recs this time, y'all! Does this mean I'm slightly less of a degenerate yet? (Probably not, oh well, lol.) Anyway, onto the recs!

All I Want For Christmas (Is For You To Stop Talking) by Femme & Noe (E, 162.9k)

Thoughts: This fic manages to feel like a slow burn to me despite taking place over the course of a month, & not only that, it's one of my favorites. I loved Draco & Harry as dads, & the whole concept of them sniping at each other over a children's holiday pageant made me laugh heartily. This was so well-written, & I enjoyed every bit of it.

Queer Eye for the Drarry Guys by Blowfish_Diaries (T, 18.2k)

Thoughts: I mean, what can I say other than that this was perfection? The Fab Five giving Harry & Draco makeovers at the behest of their adoring (& meddling) son Teddy was too precious for words. This was so fluffy & domestic & sweet that it nearly rotted my teeth out my head. It was lovely how much they cared for Teddy & what great dads they obviously were. I was floating on a cloud for hours after reading this. It was that cute.

Let It Fall by Buildyourwalls (E, 116.3k)

Thoughts: This is one of the most staggering portrayals of grief in fic I've ever read. My heart went out to Draco & Scorpius, & I cried a grand total of seven times reading this. It was gorgeously written, & every single character was fleshed out & engaging to read. Harry & Draco's slowly growing relationship had me spellbound, & I was so wrung out by the time I finished reading this I couldn't pick up another fic for a full day, if not longer. This is a must read. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Pocket Full of Starlight (Never Let It Fade Away) by Femme & Noe (E, 46.3k)

Thoughts: Okay, okay. I usually try not to double up on authors in the same rec list, but this fic really is just that good. This is a Parent Trap AU, & how frigging cute is that?! Jamie & Scorpius' rivalry at Quidditch camp had me in stitches, & the tension between Harry & Draco was electrifying. I particularly loved their characterizations. I highly recommend this. It was fantastic!

'Twas Brillig by Queenie_Mab (E, 73.9k)

Thoughts: I loved Harry's kids & his relationship with them in this. The trans characters were incredibly relatable, & my heart went out to the younger in particular with her struggle in coming out. I won't go into more details so as not to spoil that part, but it was very nicely done. Harry's own struggle with his sexuality made my heart hurt for him, & the split with Ginny was messy & painful. His & Draco's coming together was a fascinating read, & the smut was hot as hell. The case fic aspect took a backseat for me here. I was much more invested in the character's personal journeys, but both aspects of the fic were very well done.

Burn the Witch by lettersbyelise (E, 95.8k)

Thoughts: The author wrote Draco beautifully as someone who really grew out of the prejudices his parents instilled in him & found his own mind & voice & purpose in a really meaningful way. I thought his relationship with Scorpius was beautiful, & their take on a child on the autism spectrum was handled with care & aplomb. Ernestina was one of my favorite OCs ever in a story. She's really fantastic.

Harry seemed to slip right into their lives so comfortably, & I liked how natural that felt. Like it was bound to happen (because of course it was, haha). I loved how fiercely protective he was of both Draco & Scorpius, & they caught his endless capacity for love just perfectly in this story. The action scenes were wrenching, though minor in the scheme of things. This was an absolutely gorgeous story.

A Big Black Sky by AlexMeg (E, 90.5k)

Thoughts: At first I almost stopped reading this because a noncon tag wasn't included by the author, but to be fair they did put trigger warnings at the beginning of the chapters. That in mind, I skimmed what I couldn't handle & carried on. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this fic. The depth of emotion was beautiful, & I was so touched by Draco's love for his son. Harry's protectiveness made me warm inside, & watching them make their slow, fumbling way toward being a family with Draco, Scorpius, Harry & Teddy all together was so satisfying. I think the author handled the subjects of domestic violence & sexual assault with as much grace & tact as one can while writing a difficult narrative. I honestly don't think a good parent Drarry rec list would be complete without it. Just mind the tags because it definitely pulls no punches with the content it covers.

Where the treetops glisten (and children listen) by manixzen (T, 16.2k)

Thoughts: This was so heartwarming & lovely that I couldn't stop smiling through nearly the entire thing. I loved the idea of Harry & Draco being forced to spend time together due to babysitting Teddy for a week, & the opportunities for adorable hi-jinks were abundant indeed! Teddy pitting Harry & Draco against each other by playing to their need to be seen as his favorite was hilarious. I won't give anymore away, but this was so fluffy & cute it made my mood instantly brighten just from reading it.

Turn by Saras_Girl (E, 306.7k)

Thoughts: A must-read for many Drarry fans, I couldn't help but include Turn in this list because Harry's relationships with his kids & Maura are prominent (& very touching) features. The fic itself is a glimpse into what could have been if Harry made a different choice one night in sixth year & how that chance takes him in a direction he never quite saw coming. The whole story is spellbinding & gripped me until the very end. I've read it five or six times at this point if that tells you anything, so if you haven't yet, you bloody well should!

Harry Potter and the Great Cat Caper by Kbrick (E, 78.6k)

Thoughts: I enjoyed this fic overall, & I laughed a lot in the first half. It takes a turn a bit further in, & I'm including a couple more specific warnings the author did not because I felt they warranted mention. They do warn at the beginning of the chapter in which it happens for the death of a pet, but there is a mistaken identity via Polyjuice plot point involving secondary characters that definitely needs a dubious consent tag due to them engaging in sex acts without disclosing the deception. That said, it does come through with a happy ending, & the Harry & Pansy friendship is definitely a standout in this.

[thegeminisage]

IT ISSSS tng update time. sunday we caught "captain's holiday" and "tin man" and last night we did "hollow pursuits" and "the most toys."

captain's holiday: so, i'd heard ahead of time that this was one of the worst star trek episodes Ever, and admittedly it wasn't great, but it wasn't THAT bad. i could name you 10 worse episodes in tng alone and that's without even getting into tos and the other bad episodes that are surely in my future. actually catherine liked it more than i did which is only the second time this has happened in tng

funniest part of this episode to me was riker setting picard up with the little fuck trinket and then picard coming back and giving riker woodshed vibes. don't text. hilarious to send picard to the fuck planet when he wanted to read a book or whatever but at least he got some in the end. i'll never forget patrick stewart telling that one writer that tng's captain didn't do enough shooting or screwing

second funniest part was that the little device they were all fighting over could have saved romulus. "stop the nuclear reaction in a sun" THEY COULD HAVE SAVED ROMULUS AND PICARD DESTROYED IT. THE KELVIN MOVIES ARE ALL HIS FAULT. i guess romulus wouldn't have been that much better off with NO sun but at least its people could have been evacuated. there would have been a little more time.

that said most of this ep was very boring because i'm not actually invested in picard's sex life or his slutty little outfits and definitely not enough to have a whole episode be about him and none of the extended cast

tin man: i liked the concept of this much better than the execution. most of my problems came from the fact that the guest character (hello mister mayor) is annoying. so i was unable to be invested in whatever happened to him

also, i know it;'s her job, but i am soooo tired of deanna getting stuck with all the weird broken men and having to fix them. she's like star trek's manic pixie dream girl sometimes

that said i LOVED their concept of the new biomechanical life because it's JUST like moya from farscape and i like to think the farscape writers were inspired by it <3

also i like data being a boon to overwhelmed telepath because androids dont broadcast thoughts...i like when people are nice to data

i did like riker being kind of righteously mad in this episode too. i was JUST saying we never got to see that from him...it wasn't enough here and it also wasn't Great but i still enjoyed what we got

hollow pursuits: this was the worst episode this entire seaosn easily. i felt like i was watching s1 tng again

IT IS. MASSIVELY UNETHICAL. TO RECREATE REAL PEOPLE IN THE HOLODECK

first of all i hate despise LOATHE any and all holodeck activities. secondly i know they hadn't had to grapple with AI yet in 1990 but surely SOMEONE in that writer's room had to see that it's a huge infringement on deanna's personal rights safety, and dignity to make a fake version of her to fuck in the holodeck

I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS GUY COMES BACK LIKE 4 MORE TIMES.

i feel like what tng was TRYING to do here was "very special episode about anxiety" but what it actually managed to do was make that guy look autistic but like in a bad way. like charlie from tos. and then everyone bullied him and you have to be like. well making and fucking a fake deanna is bad but bullying is also bad

wait actually you know what this is like. this is like that time when i was in public with my family and a man touched me inappropriately. and so after he was gone my mother, jumping to my defense, made some disparaging remarks about this man's race (he was not white). and then i was put in the position of defending this guy who had just been a huge creep to me because you can attack him for being a creep but not because of his race. and my family was baffled that i would defend someone who'd just done that to me. that's what watching this episode felt like.

like, absolutely nobody had a problem with the actual creepy part (holodeck deanna) and everybody had a problem with him stammering in public and being socially awkward. and bullied him accordingly. DOWN TO THE MEAN NICKNAMES.

anyway, 0/10, one of the worst episodes Ever, it literally made me wish i was back in captain's holiday watching picard slut it up. if this episode had been on "am i the asshole" the judgment would have been "everyone sucks here" except deanna, who literally did nothing wrong and suffered the most anyway

hollow pursuit: THIS ONE POPPED THE FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFF

10 out of fucking 10. one ZILLION stars. i would have loved it even if i wasn't a data fan but i am a data fan and i had a WONDERFUL time

you spend this whole episode wanting so so so bad for data to kill this guy. data is kidnapped and debased and coerced into playing his captor's games and you want data to kill him SO BAD. and in your mind you're like, yeah but they won't let him KILL the guy kill the guy, it's gonna be like some disney villain stumbling or having an accident and he winds up dead due to Circumstances. there's no way data is gonna fucking kill a guy

and then there's like 30 perfect seconds where you're like: oh fuck. data is GONNA FUCKING KILL A GUY

let me find the exact moment that sent me over the edge. mister captor: "Go ahead. Fire. If only you could feel rage over Varria's death. If only you could feel the need for revenge, then maybe you could fire. But you're just an android. You can't feel anything, can you?"

AND THE ENTIRE TIME. DATA'S FACE IS TWITCHING. AND I SAID ALOUD TRULY GENUINELY BELIEVING HE HAD FINALLY UNLOCKED EMOTIONS I THINK HE CAN FEEL IT ACTUALLY??? LIKE HE LOOKS LIKE HE IS FEELING IT

anyway it counts. data DID fire, and just because they couldnt have him do that on tv and had to transport him away first, he fired (in spite of his program! it was in defense of other life), he meant to kill that man horribly, it counts it counts it COUNTS

furthermore, his mic drop at the end - why would i come see you just to gloat, after all i'm just an android - made me YELL out loud. data is hard as FUCK

i can't take credit to this thought because it was catherine's thought first but it's so fun that both androids we've seen unlock emotion so far - raina unlocked love and lal unlocked fear - were immediately destroyed by it. and what a fun contrast it would be if raina unlocked her emotions with love and data unlocked his with HATE. and i agree because it contrasts so strongly with data's normal loving nature. it's very "anger of a gentle man" of him if that makes any sense. like he is always so unfailingly polite and considerate and forgiving even to people like maddox but enough is Enough.

also, everyone mourning data was really very good. i simply love when people love him...

anyway, that episode fucked. i'm thinking about making it a must see on my spreadsheet <3

TONIGHT, FINALLY: "sarek." i cannot WWWWAIT to see him

[kurenaicrush]

Kurenai Nikki Entry 15

Talking about my future as an artist.

My love for creating art has died. I forced myself to work on a manga that I lost interest in for over a year. After finally finishing that manga, I've escaped my toxic mindset and am allowed to draw whatever I want. So then I thought why not make some fanart?! I could draw all my favorite characters and it would also help me build an audience on social media! I started doing a lot of sketches of random characters, but I just couldn't be bothered to finish any of them. I just wasn't emotionally invested into the drawings of those characters. Fanart just isn't fun for me anymore. And I think I had an ulterior motive for wanting to make fanart. I wanted to use it as a way to build an audience. I always thought to myself “Can't put on a good show without an audience!” The truth is I didn't actually care about what I was drawing. I just wanted to get attention so I could have eyes on my next big project. 

Another thing that ruined art for me is perfectionism. I always tried to draw every single thing to the best of my ability every time. I'd always hate every drawing I'd make because it would never match the great vision I had in my head. Sadly my art skills are not on par with my imagination. I've desperately tried to reach a level of skill I can be satisfied with. I always train in my sketchbook, trying to perfect the skills I've learned. But no matter how good I get I can never seem to make art satisfying to me. I honestly hate perfectionism, it really holds you back. Something could be beautiful, but I wouldn't be able to see it because I'd be too focused on what's “wrong” with it. I showed a wip sketch to a friend and they made a recommendation on something that I should fix. It was a really minor thing and it was helpful, but after seeing that comment I didn't even want to finish the drawing anymore. I was just so done. Why should we care so much? (Also sorry friend if you happen to be reading this, please don't feel bad!) 

I think I may have a solution to fall back in love with art again, so not all hope is lost! That solution is self indulgence! Complete selfishness in art. I want to go back to my roots and do what made me start loving my art to begin with. I've got a future project I'm working on that I'll refer to as “Project Crimson” for now, can't reveal it yet. Before working on my manga Blight and Hollow, I was doing character concept art for Project Crimson. During that time I was having the most fun with art in my entire life! The reason why that is? I was making the art completely for myself. I wasn't even posting them online and I didn't care if even a single person saw the drawings. I wasn't thinking about building an audience or future career to make money with art, none of that mattered to me at the time. I need to go back to that! Also it's time to throw away perfection! Forget anatomy, forget perspective, forget all these so called right and wrongs! It's MY art, so for now on I'm doing it MY way. These rules don't apply to me anymore. The only thing that matters now is if something is visually appealing to me. I don't care if something is “fundamentally correct” or not. There are no art fundamentals in my world, I'm throwing it all away. There will be no more right or wrong way to make art. Relieving myself of these restrictions is how I'll be able to enjoy creating again! In these dark times I'm living in, I still have my love and passion for my project, so I think it's time I go back to my self indulgent creation of my own little world!

[hangmanbradshaw]

I'm reading 'the more that you say..." on ao3 while sick in bed. I downloaded it onto my kobo so I can read it like a book because GIRL (gender neutral). I'm only one chapter in, and this feels like a mystery I would pick up at the book shop. I am intrigued, I am invested. You've done an incredible job at creating a concept, constructing a story, getting the readers' attention, and keeping it (which is what makes or breaks a good story imo). Plus, the characters are interesting and relatable.

I know people have different motivations for writing fanfiction, but if yours is to practice before you start mainstream publishing, then girl (g/n), do it. I know I'm just a random internet commenter, but I've read a lot of books in my time and seen more movies than you could believe possible. I know a good story when I see it, and YOU are telling a great one. You are good at this.

ummmmm hi???? I need you to know this made my day yesterday so thank you <3 (also I hope you get to feeling better quickly!) This story was one that I came up with a concept and then really had so much fun layering it into the idea I ended up writing. Eerie mystery has always been one of my favorite vibes, but I wasn't sure how good I'd be at writing it because it is such a delicate line to walk, but I absolutely ended up loving it. This concept of grief cycles and love breaking the cycles, the way it clouds vision, the different characters displaying aspects of it- anger, bargaining, depression, etc. It was highly personal, and being able to build this world and these dynamics was so fun. I just love storytelling? So I'm so glad if it resonates and ugh <3 thank you. But! Yeah, I started writing fanfic a year ago because I've always loved stories (books, movies) and thought up these worlds in my head, but wasn't sure if I was capable of putting them to paper in an interesting way. Had some things happen and dove into it, gave it a shot, and it turned out I love it? I've used all these stories to grow my skills this past year and it's culminated in a few like this one I'm really proud of. I keep going back and forth on if I'm actually any good so thank you hahaha (don't you love imposter syndrome?) It's been encouragement like this that made me decide to believe in myself and try to publish :) So that's my major focus at the moment. I know it's a really hard business, but I love it too much not to give it a shot. So! Editing at the moment for beta reading and then it's on to querying. Who knows what'll happen, but messages like this mean the world to me so thank you!!! (I'm around if you ever want to talk story! I could go on and on all day as some people know hahaha especially with this one)

[canmom]

having just read an enormous metafiction about tabletop roleplaying games, i ended up reflecting a bunch on how I play them - what my characters are to me. a discussion which ended up as a segue into a discussion of what an rpg 'system' actually means in practice.

...happy new year!

as a GM, I tend to be far more improvisational than Joon of Worth the Candle, but I have an affinity for how he does things - one of my most successful games had the players ultimately ascend to usurp me as MC of my Apocalypse World game, which is essentially the structure of WtC.

as a player... my characters are usually ways of experimenting with ideas or conflicts, reflecting some aspect of me, attached to some kind of cool image. my characterisation has been a bit weak for a long time, but I'm growing out of it.

sometimes I've played with groups who found it very easy to see what my character is 'about'. sometimes not. in one sad story - nothing Fel Seed level, don't worry - I struggled fruitlessly to find a way to mesh with the type of story desired by the group and create a story I found compelling. every time I thought I'd hit a groove, I'd press other people's buttons in a bad way. eventually I was asked to leave, and after doing a session where I retired my character, which felt at the time like reading out a false confession before my execution, except I had to improvise within bounds, I left the group and server and basically never spoke with them again.

looking back on it... I was going through some shit. not on the level that Joon was, and I didn't deliberately try to hurt people or lash out in frustration, but I wasn't able to see beyond what I was struggling with (at that time, the surface presentation was my discomfort with the need to make violence in fiction out to be justified, like 'evil races'). I didn't realise that the concepts I found compelling kept hitting another player's no-go list, which sucked for both of us - her to have a frighteningly opaque person who seemed determined to press boundaries, me because it seemed like every time I finally came up with a good idea and thought I had a handle on my character, the DM would quietly ask me to shut it down. nowadays I hope I would have understood all this and recognised the group and game was not right for me and quit sooner, but at the time it seemed like a deep personal failing. it's still a little sore.

nowadays I'm blessed to have a really good group of players with a great DM and everyone invested in the game, and I'm playing a Baru Cormorant knockoff who's the best realised character I've ever come up with I think. and like those previous characters, "Silene" is someone who exists to help me explore some shit. I can invest her with beliefs and attitudes I find repellent but could imagine another me believing, use her to examine arrogance and disregard for others. she's kind of an evil Bryn, and I can slip into playing her like a glove to get a different angle on these kinds of feelings, and then take the glove off later. and for everyone else, she hopefully comes off as an entertaining, strongly defined character that gives good handles to play off.

it's an interesting double consciousness because I absolutely get invested in what she wants and try to make her cool, but also ultimately I think she's wrong and I want to show it. and yet... I put stuff I do like into her, or follow ideas that come to me in the moment. her playful enthusiasm for 'natural philosophy', her loyalty to her friends - she's got an endearing side, she could grow out of it. i ended up 'discovering' that she has a lot of discomfort with rejection, which isn't a character choice I made consciously, but something I felt when other characters responded appropriately to the offputting character I had deliberately created. and it works, it's a good trait for her.

sometimes I get afraid that Silene is more of a true portrayal of me than I want to admit, or that I've been playing her too hard in a way that's unpleasant out of character too. I'm lucky that my friends are understanding and willing to reassure me in this situation. it can be a fraught thing to play this kind of character, but that's why it's interesting!

at university a long time ago, I played an industrialist character, "Sarus Tarr", in a game of Burning Wheel. that was another great game with a GM who was honestly much more astute than I was, probably than I am.

Sarus Tarr was not a good person. he was "about" the costs of technology, the industrial revolution - at the time I was much more straightforwardly a transhumanist true believer, so I made his conflict honestly a bit too simple, about the people chewed up by his factories as they changed the world with cheap iron goods. (the transition to modernity has been an obsession for that long I guess!).

I listened to the Clockwork Quartet a lot in that period. I was fascinated by the doctor who builds increasingly elaborate contraptions to save his comatose wife, replacing more and more of her - "what nature has neglected, the fruit of modern science will provide". I didn't really know much about the industrial revolutions, but I knew a little about the Luddites.

I remember one scene from that game the GM arranged a conversation battle scene in which Tarr was forced to defend his factories, using Burning Wheel's elaborate system. I wasn't sure I was up to it, but with some encouragement, I went for it, and surprised myself, getting into a good flow arguing - one of the most intense sessions I've played, but that was what made it so great. I defended Sarus Tarr's factories as thoroughly as I could. I can't remember what I had him say, but there was a choice about whether he was lying about some point he made about the safety of the factories, and I had him tell the truth. on the rules layer, I did my best with an unfamiliar system, weighing up options and FORKing in skills where I could.

in the end, Sarus won, and the protestor was forced to change his beliefs, the stake of the battle. if I'd lost, Sarus would change instead.

I realised that this didn't feel right. Sarus shouldn't have won. I didn't change my beliefs on the spot and instantly become an anarchist or a Marxist or something, that came later, but I think I learned something important, whether about the sorts of characters I like to play, or about what I really thought about factories.

nowadays I love the spotlight and I have to be conscious to make sure other players get their moment and I don't hog it. a lot of good RP is just improv comedy principle when you get down to it - making and taking offers, 'yes and'. your first idea is rarely as good as the idea you can make by bouncing off another player. why is that hard? there's something addictive about RP, a mindset I can access every week, where creativity just flows. ideas come, you respond to the prompts, you kind of inhabit another mind for a bit - it's not for nothing that hardcore LARPers talk seriously of 'bleed'. being in the hotseat with no time to think too hard, and just going for the idea that comes to mind from whatever is simmering in the subconscious, is fantastic. it cuts through all the barriers and blocks, and you get to see the response immediately, from people who each have an entirely different perspective on what this story is about and a different palette of ideas.

that flow state, the positive feedback, is hard to build and a little fragile. you need people with the same sort of wavelength, it's hard to find with strangers. you need to feel safe - it's a very vulnerable act. you need to be attentive to the other players. there's so much unspoken.

the 'Forge' and 'story games' movements did their best to translate those best practices for creating that kind of intense game into rules and procedures. I don't think it made bad games at all, it's hit and miss like any paradigm, it's more... most of the stuff that makes a TTRPG work is stuff you can't make into formal protocol.

but one of the good ideas to come out of those movements was the need to view a 'game system' (which 'Does Matter', ron would like you to know) as not just what's printed in the book, or the formal system of rules, but the actual way which people interact at the game table. accordingly, they made experimental games which played with ideas like sharing the right to have a final say on what's true, game mechanics which adjust the fiction based on drama rather than internal logic, or formally structuring conversations around scenes and phases and times for picking from lists of prompts.

for me, this was great. I struggled a lot with doing prep, since it's been hard to concentrate and hard to come up with a new image when one is filling my head. writing and drawing is a way of releasing them so more can grow. having a structure to facilitate an improvisational style has been an incredible boon.

but as it turns out, a book - which is not some perfect formal system but a prompt that players lean on while creating the 'actual game' - can only do so much. you can only playtest and wordsmith so far.

that's great. every Apocalypse World or D&D game I've played (to focus on the systems I've gotten to use more than once) has been completely different, arising from the dynamic of the group I'm playing with and the skills brought by the players. and yeah, cultures will develop - the Actual Play podcast is a powerful machine for aligning expectations, the D&D forum egregore acts as a weird sort of dialogue partner for many groups, there are many floating expectations of what a game is supposed to look like - but ultimately it's a weird inscrutable alchemy created by the ritualistic social space where you make up a story with another person and each let out some of the stuff you're carrying under the surface.

that's why people care so much about their characters. and it's why telling a good story about an RPG session is hard in most of the same ways telling a good story about a dream is, though you usually have a bit more shared context to lean on with an RPG.

my very first in-person RPG group was when I was what, 15 or so? maybe younger. we played D&D 3.5. I was by far the most invested, and I'd built up an idea of what D&D is like from the Giant in the Playground forums. we played through Sunless Citadel and then various brief games under rotating DMs while I tried to cook up an Eberron game, which... never really got off the ground and now I think about it, one of the players tried to have their character do a rape, and that probably had something to do with it. (i tried to negate it IC bc I was young and stupid). this was in the heyday of 4chan and my friendship group were all big channers so the humour we shared was very "15 year old teenage boys in Somerset who know about encyclopedia dramatica". I was Quite Autistic and often oblivious or hyperfixated and kind of the butt of a lot of jokes, but my friends found me endearing I guess, and were willing to indulge me in playing D&D and get into Warhammer. I would sometimes pretend to run out of the room and commit suicide as a joke. one time I misunderstood the word 'elope' and implied a relationship with another player character, and while it would be nice to say I played it cool and was like yeah we eloped that good with you~, I actually ran upstairs and printed out a replacement version and tried to pretend it didn't happen. teenagers!

anyway, we played "D&D". the rules were functionally pretty much what I said they were because nobody else cared that much and digging into one of those tomes is like... instant screeching halt to the session. I would print off maps and try optimised builds from the stack of splatbooks that absorbed all disposable income. mostly it was a pretext to just hang out. the players were trying to wind me up as much as anything. I played the role of exasperated DM who wanted tob keep the game on track. nobody cast magic missile at the darkness but that's the vibe.

I would also run games of "D&D" online over the Giant in the Playground forums. this was a strange ritual. the first step was that someone would write a forum thread with a pitch. then, players would bring complicated builds and pages of backstory. if I was the DM... ostensibly I'd be selective but I hated rejecting people so I'd start a second group of necessary. we'd start the IC thread. I would set a scene, then everyone would describe the appearance of their characters for several paragraphs. Some light character interaction would happen - slowly since you had to deal with different schedules and time zones, hence the paragraphs. Hopefully nobody would lose interest already, and we'd get going.

eventually we might reach a point where a dice roll is called for. this would take a couple of days to resolve if there was a timezone difference. at worst, the player would state their intended action with a paragraph of flavour, the DM would ask for a specific dice roll, the player would roll it and report the number, the DM would resolve the action.

if that sounds slow as shit, imagine how much it would bog down when you actually started combat. you'd have to establish initiative, everyone would need to take their turns, and if someone was away for some reason? you just gotta wait, or maybe bump the thread with a nagging message.

for this reason, games would very rarely get past their first combat. the fate of just about every single one of these games would be to fade away after some player stopped responding and the rest gradually lost interest. the game was more about... suggesting the idea of a game, and agreeing that idea seemed cool, and a token gesture at playing it.

(the much more robust form of forum RPG was the 'god game'. these would revolve around a pantheon of gods creating a world together. they would usually start on farflung parts of the map and build civilisations that would eventually interact, if the game got that far. the need for back and forth was minimal. posts would be enormous, each one looking more like a short story. the players had a lot more leeway to make decisions but direct interaction was rare. in short it was a form of parallel play.)

both of these 'games' as rituals have little resemblance to what D&D is supposed to be, as declared in the books and suggested by people who had real, dedicated in-person groups of the kind I have now. they were almost a kind of meta-roleplaying? everyone agreed that the activity we were doing in each case was 'playing D&D' though, and we really were responding to the D&D rulebooks.

every time I've played Apocalypse World, even in friend groups where talking about sex is pretty normal and comfortable, the 'special moves' on each playbook that trigger upon sex were implicitly or explicitly off the table. it would be weird. it's definitely part of the design that Vincent and Meguey seem to have intended, though. maybe in their group that is chill. moreover, i tend to neglect the inter-session planning methods, threat clocks etc., and refer to the list of MC moves much less than I'm supposed to. I would still say the games we've played are Apocalypse World, even if it's not exactly the Bakers' well polished machine.

in one game of D&D I played, I started creating an elaborate 3D map of the zone we were exploring in Blender as we played, which I streamed live on Twitch. (the creative energy of an RPG seems to feed into visual art somehow - or maybe just the sense of confidence it engenders). that became a core part of the game procedures for us: @barnacleheretic would describe a scene and I would take a minute to add a model of it to the map. you could never write that as an explicit game mechanic in a published book, but it did a ton to anchor the group and make the setting feel substantial. likewise, I always draw every group I'm in, and if the game goes on long enough, scenes that feel particularly vivid. drawing forces me to pay attention to detail.

the actual process of creating a character and inhabiting them is... very hard to teach except by giving people examples of other players and space to figure it out for themselves, I guess. playbooks and classes help with the blank page problem, but to get to the point where you launch away from the list of numbers and start to get a feeling for how your character thinks and what they mean to you? that's art, and thus as hard to teach as any art. all you can set up is the scaffolding, a gamut from combat stats through beliefs and tags and flag systems to whatever the hell chuubo's is doing, and rely on the social skills of the players to engage each other and get the engine turning, juices flowing.

I hope I continue to play RPGs for the rest of my life.

[perexcri]

As a fic writer, how do you stay positive and not stress yourself out with constantly comparing?

I've been really struggling with that. I start spiraling when a certain chapter doesn't get as many comments as usual, comparing my hit counts and kudo counts to other fics, and it's really not healthy but I'm struggling with knowing how to stop, how to just be happy and proud of the response I've gotten. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

ahhh hello anon!! apologies as this will probably be long alsjdlkasj, so i'm gonna put my answer under the cut~ 💜💜💜

first of all, i'm sorry that's something you're struggling with right now, and i'm here to tell you that i struggle with it all the time too, as i'm sure almost all fic writers do. which isn't to say your pain isn't any less - just know that you're not alone :]

it's something i struggle with, but tbh, i think it's just gotten less painful because of lots (and i mean LOTS) of exposure to it lol. half of the time i'm posting on ao3, it's me stumbling up to the posting portal's doorstep with a bloody nose and two black eyes, barely able to stand on my own, waving my fists around going "yEAH i can go another round!!"

here, let me tell you a story:

ok, so i started writing this fic called to hell and back again in like August of last year, right? and it was a silly little byler fic for me - just picture me typing away at my keyboard and going "hahahah but what if they got trapped in the UD but it was like a ROMCOM??" anyway, flashforward three weeks later, and suddenly it starts getting a lot of attention, and i start seeing it shared around. and then, for the rest of my time posting that fic, it had a lot of attention. i got very used to each of my updates getting like 20 comments, bare minimum. it was exciting, but also scary, because i was starting to go through a Not Great time in my own mental health, and i could see the cliff coming the closer that fic drew to a close.

so that fic ended with a bang, it had a lot of attention, etc. but before i'd finished writing it, i had come up with another fic idea and started working on it. i thought the concept was super interesting, and i was really excited about the emotional themes i was gonna get to explore in it, which, coming off of to hell and back again, where i had been so scared for it to end, i was excited about because i had something to look forward to again! plus, a bunch of people had commented on to hell and back again and said they'd gladly read anything else byler-related i would write. so, i was excited, wrote 70k of a fantasy au, and when i posted the first few chapters, i didn't hear a whole lot back. some, but definitely not as much as i had been used to (even though that other fic was more an anomaly than the norm tbh). every update just made me feel awful because i felt like people were looking at this thing that i'd put a lot of my heart and soul into and going "eh i think i'll pass." which is fine, of course, because i shouldn't expect people to automatically read something i write simply because i wrote it, right? it didn't change the amount of pain and embarrassment i felt posting it and maybe getting one or two comments, though

but i kept posting!! at that point, i'd worked too hard on it to give up on posting it just yet, so i kept it up, and i was grateful for the people who did leave kind words, even if i truly did feel embarrassed crawling onto ao3 once a week and posting chapters in a fantasy au it felt like very few people actually cared about. eventually, i hit a point where i was stuck on the writing, and i figured that a lot of people weren't reading it anyway, so what if i just let it fade out, yeah?

well, then my own mental health woes kinda leveled out (medication is a beautiful thing✨), and even though that fic still wasn't getting a whole lot of engagement, i kept working on it, and a few people did eventually find it that became super invested in it. this fic is a flower that resembles you, btw, and there's a reason why it's been gifted to 4 people: i legitimately wouldn't have finished it without just having those few regularly there to encourage me and offer their predictions for what they thought the next chapter would hold. they're the only reason i was able to get myself to finish it. even better, i've made a lovely friend because of this fic that i now talk with every day, and i wouldn't have had them come into my life without that fic. and now that it's been finished for about a couple of months, i've received several lovely and thoughtful comments from other readers about how it's made them feel. people have made art for it - hell, somebody just wrote a song for it!

this is still one of my least kudosed fics btw. it's not my most popular, but for the people who have read it, it's really resonated with them.

idk if this anecdote is helpful at all, so i'll just condense it to this: as long as it's not completely destroying any joy you receive from creating, don't stop posting. that's honestly my best advice, to just keep posting and writing, and know that your story will find the right people that it's meant to find. if it hits a point where it's seriously affecting you, then take a step back from it so you're not causing yourself pain, but if you can go on posting, i think, in the end, you come out the winner, no matter how many people interact (and at least that pesky little voice in your head telling you you're not good enough doesn't get to win, right?)

and i know that's really contrite and the thing everybody says: just keep at it! even if it's hard! unfortunately, the lesson i've learned the past year is that that thing everybody says is, for better or worse, pretty truthful. if you stop, it won't get any better; if you keep going, though, you never know what will come from it

and that's just it: ultimately, you never know how a story will hit with people or what will come from posting! i know it helps me to remember that i can't predict the future, nor can i in any way make people react to what i write in a certain way. once it's out there, it's out there, and it's up to The People to decide how they feel about it

and i've found that there's a certain flavor of joy i have with my least-kudosed/commented/bookmarked/what-have-you fics that i don't necessarily have with my others. i appreciate and love when people interact with any of my works, but i've found that the responses on my least popular fics tend to be a lot stronger or lead to interesting conversations with others. so i guess that's another thing that's helped me, too: realizing that it's not necessarily about how many people find your work so much as who, because when somebody finds your work who really needs it, or, conversely, somebody finds your fic that you really need to meet (as was the case with my aforementioned fantasy au), i think that's more fulfilling than worrying about how many people are seeing my fics

...which isn't to say that i don't worry about those things. believe me, i very much do, because when you create something and share it somewhere, obviously you want people to interact with it, right? and it's been especially difficult since i had a fic get kinda big so early on in my posting, but i'd like to think i'm getting better. hell, if you like at my ao3 profile, all the fics listed on my page right now don't even break 100 kudos 😆 it's almost kinda freeing at this point, and even though these worries still trouble me, i'm trying to slowly beat them out of me through lots of practice (i.e., posting) and patience (reminding myself that the right people will find my work when they need it!)

i hope this was helpful!! and sorry for rambling about myself - when i'm upset, one of the most comforting things i can be told is that somebody understands what i'm going through, so that's what i tried to do for you!! you're not alone, and i hope things can get better for you.

i know you're on anon, so no pressure, but if you'd like, i'd love it if you sent me your work so i can read it 🥺 you could send me another ask or a just dm me, if you're comfortable!! i'd just love to give your work some love since i know what you're going through right now, and i know it can suck a lot~

anyway, i am sending you much love anon!! i look forward to reading your work, if you're so inclined to share :] 💜💜💜

[rhetoricandlogic]

Unsouled - Will Wight

READER'S EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

My emotional reaction was pretty 'meh.' I liked the first half of the book better than the second half. The first half was a slow exploration of an interesting setting. The second half was a fast paced adventure which didn't really interest me because I wasn't invested in the characters.

Did I have fun reading this? Yes, I had some fun. This book is a popcorn book (a book you read more for fun than intellectual engagement). But honestly I didn't find it to be that fun.

I read books for characters, and this book's characters weren't engaging.

Overall, I give the story's Emotional Resonance: (C-)

CONCEPT AND EXECUTION

I just finished this book, and I have trouble putting words to it's concept.

The first half of the book is a meanderingly plotted adventure of a boy doing random things for the self-motivated goal of increasing a 'power level.' That early adventure culminates with him fighting a space wizard god angel, a twist which came out of nowhere. The second half was the boy going on another random adventure, but this one had more of a linear thread to it, making it easier to follow.

But concept doesn't really matter; execution does. This book's execution was... not great. I'll talk more on this in later sections.

Overall, I give the story's Concept and Execution a rating of: (C-)

CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERIZATION:

I didn't connect to the protagonist Lindon. In the past I would have thought that my failure to connect was a fault in the book, but after reading this twitter thread I've come to realize that perhaps the reason why I didn't like the protagonist is my fault, and not the book's. Here's the problems I had; you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm justified or not:

Lindon felt like a complete blank slate.

For the first 50% of the book, I didn't understand why he wanted to increase in power. I think this is bad, because increasing in power was his character arc.

Here are some examples: In ‘Name of the Wind,’ Kvothe seeks to master the magic systems in order to get some sweet revenge on the people who killed his parents. In ‘Rage of Dragons,’ Tau seeks to master swordsplay to get some sweet revenge on the people who killed his father. In ‘Harry Potter,’ Harry seeks to master the magic system because you need a high school degree to hold down a job, and also to get some sweet revenge the people who killed his parents.

Do you see a pattern in the above? 1, the protagonists have a motivation to grow in power-> 2, they seek out ways to grow in power-> 3, they grow in power.

It's The Hero's Journey. It's the ol' puberty metaphor.

This book doesn't do that. Lindon is seeking to increase his power before the inciting incident of the story (which happens at the 50% mark). The first scene of the book is him trying to steal a magic fruit which will increase his power. This book is 2, 1, 3.

Which brings me back to the twitter thread I mentioned above. I'm approaching this book from a Western perspective, where The Hero's Journey is a standard storytelling style. I'm told this book is inspired by Eastern storytelling tropes. I don't know what I don't know, so maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this story, being Eastern Inspired, is well told in that tradition.

Lindon didn't seem to have much of a history from the time before the book began.

The reader is told that before the beginning of the book, Lindon's Tested his Madra 17 times He breaks into a library to read books

And that's all of it. We don't hear much/anything about friends lost and made; old crushes; schoolyard foibles; childhood mishaps.

The story begins, and it more-or-less feels like Lindon is called into existence at that moment.

On a similar note, Lindon seems to lack a lot of the negative emotionality that I'd expect from someone who's been excluded for all his life.

Let's compare him to... Lirael, of ‘Lirael.’ She’s a character who is superficially similar to Lindon. Lirael lacks the magic her sisters possess (in her case future sight). She’s depressed because all her friends have surpassed her in school, and now she has to sit with the younger girls. Consequently she gets depressed, and in the opening chapters of the book she nearly jumps off a glacier to end her misery.

Lindon, by contrast, seems emotionally stable. He's not happy with his lot in life, but he's not given up hope. He has a 'go get 'em' attitude, despite the fact that he's been the bottom of the barrel his entire life.

Do you think my criticisms are valid? Or do you think that I like angsty protagonists, and am trying to make Lindon into an angsty protagonist? You decide.

Overall, I give the story's Characterization a rating of: (D)

PACING AND STRUCTURE

This book suffered from the most severe case of 'Starting in the wrong place' I've ever read. As a general rule, when you write a story, you want to start just before the plot begins. There's a piece of writing advice I've heard before (I think from Brandon Sanderson on his podcast 'Writing Excuses') that is as follows.

When you write your first draft, write anything you want.

When you edit your first draft, delete everything which happens in your story before your main plot begins.

I'm not joking when I say that this book's plot begins at about the 50% mark. Some books can get away with this; I don't think this gets away with it. From a structural perspective, I think it's safe to say that this book is really two books stapled together- a listless and slightly meandering first 50%, and a fast paced-but-still-meandering second 50%.

When I write these reviews I like to do a Structure write up, studying whether the book is the 3 Act Format, 5 Act Format, 7 Act Format or whatever. This book is so weirdly structured that I really can't do that. This book doesn't follow any of the normal standard structures.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Structures are optional. Structures make it easier to compare a story to other stories, and serve as a diagnostic tool for an author mid-edits to solve problems with the plot/characterization. However... I do think this book needed more structure to it. As I said, this book felt extremely meandering.

Overall, I give the story's Pacing and Structure: (C-)

PLOT, STAKES AND TENSION

The book's stakes felt low for the first half, and sky high for the second half. Basically, for the first half he was a self-motivated to become a better wizard/martial artist, purely for the sake of self-improvement. For the second half, he's motivated to survive and to save the world. I found the stakes in the second half to be more compelling than those in the first half.

The book's tension was similarly lopsided. I found the second half more compelling than the first.

The plot just didn't work for me. I'm not a huge fan of episodic novels, where a protagonist goes from one unrelated event to another without much foreshadowing in between, and this book felt like that.

Overall, I give the story's Plot: (C)

AUTHORIAL VOICE (TONE, PROSE AND THEME)

The book's tone was video-gamey. The protagonist has to level up. He has to go on fetch quests to receive potions and artifacts which will empower him. He has to fight powerful enemies using named skills. Characters fight pretty much only for fighting's sake, not for an ideal or cause. (This is particularly true for Yerin. At one point she states her motto, which is something along the lines of: 'Sacred Artists must shed blood.') If you don't mind a video-gamey tone, read this.

I found the prose to be workmanly and competent. If occasionally found it to be beautiful when the author was speaking about some of the stranger worldbuilding elements- clearly the author loves the worldbuilding and he spent his time on it. I respect that.

The book's theme of 'must get stronger at all costs, and bedamned the consequences to everyone else' really didn't jive with me. I like reading about characters who work to help other people and their community, and are willing to make personal sacrifices for them- think Kaladin and Dalinar from Stormlight Archives. This setting's theme was pretty much the antithesis of that attitude. (In comparison, the protagonists in this book are quite unlikable.)

Was the theme well implemented? Yes.

All of the major characters are selfish to some extent. Some characters are willing to help other people on occasion (like Lindon's goal to save the Sacred Valley), but when they are helpful it's usually for selfish reasons (I'm pretty sure Lindon wants to save the Sacred Valley out of spite, to prove they were wrong about him being weak).

Everyone acts out of honor, (where honor is defined as projecting strength). No one acts out of kindness or generosity. The protagonist manipulates people because they are hidebound due to their need to save face.

There was one 'mistake' with the theme. (I hesitate to even call it a mistake, because there's no such thing as a mistake in art.)

When the pheonix lady defeated the angel guy at the midpoint climax, she did so out of a sense of law and order, not because defeating him would make her stronger or would stoke her own ego.

In the text of the book, it is dishonorable for a more powerful warrior to challenge and curbstomp a weaker opponent.

Example: in the beginning of the book, Lindon angers a rival family. The family could have the family patriarch challenge and defeat him decisively. They could flat out murder him. Instead, they have a little girl fight him. Why? Honor.

At the midpoint climax, the pheonix lady has a curbstomp battle against the angel guy. According to the text of the book, her actions are dishonorable.

As I stated, she defeated the Li interloper out of a sense of duty. Duty as a theme was not referenced anywhere else in the story. Consequently her actions in this instance seemed out-of-place. Why did she fight Li? Her saving the Sacred Valley did not increase her power. She did not have to do it. It was done out of generosity.

For the record, I understand why she did it. She saved the Sacred Valley out of kindness, and to trigger the plot. But her 'kindness' ran counter to the nice theme this story had going on.

Putting these two facts together, you get a slightly muddled theme. How so?

The source of the paradox is here: At the midpoint climax, Lindon's life is saved by an act of generosity by a higher power. He then behaves selfishly.

In Western Literature, a protagonist being saved by an act of generosity would cause him to re-think his life choices, and act generous to other people.

Instead of rethinking his life choices, Lindon proceeds to become a murder hobo and go on a quest of pillaging sacred artifacts ('murder hobo' is a colloquialism for an adventurer who wanders around killing things, usually used in the context of video games or book protagonists).

As I mentioned just now, this is the standard for Western Literature. I haven't the foggiest idea how Eastern Lit would handle this trope.

I give the Authorial Voice: (B)

SETTING, WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINALITY

In some ways I loved this book's worldbuilding.

The author did a great job of going into the minute details of small plants and animals, describing their secret powers and life cycles. This made the setting feel fleshed out and vibrant.

I liked the whole 'Space Magic Wizard Gods meddling in mortal affairs' thing. I'd gladly read another series which uses this trope.

But in some ways I did not like the worldbuilding.

I've read very few books like this one; the closest would probably be the 'Arcane Ascension' books. So I'm a novice to this sub-genre, I guess. With those cards on the table, I don't get this whole 'increase your power level' business as a cultural fascination for his civilization. Is 'power level increasing' the full time job for everyone? Where are the farmers, the bankers, the priests, the bakers, the brewers, the carpenters? Is literally everyone doing this spiritual practice as their full-time job? Why couldn't Lindon (being unsoulled) get a job which doesn't require magic? Did I miss something?

This entire universe seems to be warped around the magic system to such an extent that the 'normal world' part of the worldbuilding seems to have fallen away. I have trouble connecting to 'Cradle's' worldbuilding because it's nothing like the world I'm familiar with.

One related thing about the setting I didn't really like was how 'survival of the fittest' this book was. Basically the setting functions on the principle of 'you should do everything in your power to increase your magical potency, even if it means stepping on the weak.' This foundational principle was so strong that at certain points parents considered taking from their own children. After a certain point I was left wondering how their society hasn't collapsed. Why don't a lot of weak people form a government/guild/union and refuse to be ruled by the few strong?

I give the Setting: (C+)

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC REVIEW:

3.5/5. Releases 10/8/2024 (in audio).

The Vibes: The Nightmare Before Christmas (you know this), rivals to lovers, fighting for the same girl but we really wanna kiss each other

Heat Index: 5/10

The Basics:

Nicholas Claus (otherwise known as Coal) is the Prince of Christmas. His father, the reigning Santa, has commercialized Christmas to the point that Coal is rebellious and and chafes at the prospect of duty... which doesn't mean he isn't obligated to marry his friend Iris, the Easter Princess (who Coal's brother is currently pining for). Problem: Hex, the Prince of Halloween, is here to vie for Iris's hand... except he really doesn't. Because Hex actually wants Coal. And also, they made out a couple of years ago.

The Review:

Well.... I really loved this in theory. In reality? It's solid, but it's another one of those "'twill be better for others than it is for me" books that I seem to be running into a good bit lately.

"But Caroline," you say. "Surely you didn't have high expectations for a silly, fun Nightmare Before Christmas but it's rivals to lovers book, right?"

I mean, I didn't expect it to be some sweeping epic romance, no. But I do expect to have a fun and sexy time, and while this is a fun and sexy time for many, I'm sure, it's not MY type of fun and sexy time. Because I do enjoy a silly book! I was so down for silly here.

It is fun and cute and all that, but it's actually way more in touch with reality (our reality) than I expected. With Christmas romances especially, I often want to be swept up into this Christmas world. The Christmas Notch series, for example, is a Christmas romance series set in our world that is still somehow SO. INTO. CHRISTMAS. It feels "Christmas realm but making out". This had some of that, but I really thought I'd get more.

This leans a lot into the daddy issues of Bad Cynical Santa, versus the potential cackling fun of Bad Cynical Santa. And there wasn't as much magic as I expected? Like, I expected the *creepy organ riff* Addams Family type intro for Hex, but alas. He's most notably wearing a corset. Which I love, but MORE. HALLOWEEN.

When you reference The Nightmare Before Christmas, I just expect... more camp holiday joy and less "let's reference Frozen". There is a Frozen joke, and that was JARRINGLY close to our real world. When you combine that with the capitalism commentary, which is a surprisingly big part of the novel, I'm like... But wait. I want like. Peppermint-flavored dicks, or something. Not OUR world.

That said. I love the holiday royals. I loved Iris. There is a lot of cute here. The concept of two guys trying to win a princess who doesn't want to marry either of them, really (but she will because Holiday Royal Duty) making out with each other on the low? Great.

I think I was just looking more for... more.

I also will say, this falls victim to another "this reads like a well-written book but does it read as romance-y as it could because there is one POV and we need both" situation. Being in Coal's head all the time honestly left me feeling like I'd spent more time getting to know Coal's friends and family than Coal and Hex as a couple. Which, again... doesn't mean it's a bad book. But it did keep me from investing in the romance.

I also do have something of a golden rule with romance novels, which is that... if you don't have everyone involved in the romance show up by 20% in, that's a deduction. Hex does show up early. Technically. But then we have a time jump, during which he and Coal never see each other, and then... it's a good bit before he shows up. Not a lot happens in that good bit, admittedly, because we're mostly getting to know Coal's platonic relationships. But I don't know, man. We needed more.

The Sex:

This is lightly steamy, I'd say. There's chemistry, there's Stuff, but it's not super descriptive or super frequent.

I do actually totally get the Red White & Royal Blue comparisons. If you enjoyed that book (I'm more about the movie version) then yeah, I totally see this working for you. For me... it was more of an "alright" experience. Solid voice performance from the narrator, no complaints there.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[farminglesbian]

Adas Raum - Sharon Dodua Otoo

[petricakegames]

Play This: Vespertines

Play This is a place for me to tell you about games or game demos that I love and want everyone to play! Right. Now.

Vespertines is an urban fantasy/romance interactive fiction about demons and found family. You play as a human working at a bar for demons, getting to know your customers and collecting their stories. Play the demo!

What first attracted me to this game as I browsed through the interactive fiction tag on itch was the banner art. It's dynamic--the color palette is sumptuous, excellent composition, killer style and a person engaging in the oft-taboo act of smoking. (I adore cigarettes, aesthetically and actually. If they didn't destroy my meatsack I'd engage them like a hobby. Fictional characters aren't burdened meatsacks. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em!)

"But Laurie," the fictional audience in my head says. "Isn't this a text-based IF game? What does great art have to do with anything?" And to that I tip my sunglasses down my nose, light a fictional cigarette and say, "Vibes."

This game has a great start, setting the player in a clear time and place that guides, but does not stifle, the imagination. You play as a fully customizable PC on the run from a nebulous past. Details unfold in this story gently and enticingly, inviting you to invest more of your imagination in exchange for a rich story. A fair trade.

"Skyscrapers loom like cold cliffs around you, riddled with fluorescence, hemming you in and stealing real-estate from the stars." *chef kiss*

This was the first IF game I played that allowed for gender-selectable ROs. I wasn't sure how I felt about the concept at first--I worried that it would affect the authenticity of the characters if they weren't written with a specific gender lens in mind. Then, the more I thought about my thoughts, it seemed like they were generated by some old, baked-in terfy nonsense from my conservative upbringing. The customization empowers the player to have more control over their experience of the narrative and further invest themselves in the story. That's a positive for everyone.

Vespertines allows for what I think of as "personality tone" for the playable character. There's a couple of binary gauges to help give you a sense of the mechanics being checked in-game. I'm really enjoying these games that let me play as a softer, more vulnerable character. When I was younger, all I wanted were characters that were bad-ass, take on the world, chew their problems and spit them at their enemies type of heroes. I wanted to play as someone confident and disgustingly capable because I wanted to believe I could be those things. Lately, I find myself drawn to characters that have space to feel, that are frightened because the world is frightening, that can cry and still face the challenge ahead of them because I want to believe I can be those things. And I love Vespertines because in my heart there's a frightened girl waiting for the monsters to save her from humanity.

(Edit: I forgot to talk about another thing I loved. I got to be a vegetarian in the game. <3 Little ties to my real life add such specialness to a game)

Chapter One is available now and the game is actively being developed. Play the demo and tell me how much you love it! There are some content warnings for the game--please treat yourself with care if you choose to engage. Thank you for letting me ramble about a thing I love 🥰

[ask-the-rpg-3]

WE HAVE REACHED 200 FOLLOWERS.

I DON'T HAVE ART. I DON'T HAVE A MILESTONE SURPRISE. I WASN'T READY FOR THIS.

THE AMOUNT OF FOLLOWERS I WAS GAINING HAS BEEN STEADILY INCREASING OVER TIME AND IT GOT FAST.

I.

Oh my lord I gotta be sentimental again like last time- 100 followers was like 2 months ago!! We're to 200 in that time!! You guys are amazing!!

I- Ok, I always hoped for attention on RPG3, but I never thought I'd get here. 200 followers.. Notes on posts getting higher (mostly on non-comic posts smh /lh)

RPG3 is something I've wanted to for so long. For those who were there for the story pre-boot, it. Well it sucked. It was just me really wanting to put these three in a story together where they were friends- But with the pre-boot, I skipped this story completely and had it take place AFTER the underground adventure. Honestly? Big mistake, big loss on things I could have done-

Rebooting the idea and starting this blog was a great thing for me. I am having an INCREDIBLE time putting so much lore and effort into something of such a silly concept.

I'll always be thankful for the goofy ask box nonsense and the people really invested in this story.

I'm so incredibly thankful for all of you and for enjoying this dumb story and I promise you it's going to get pretty epic as it goes on.

My art isn't perfect and I'm trying my best as a teenager who's still going through school and dealing with god-awful anxiety. I'm going to have moments where I fall in and out of motivation to work on this. But this story WILL finish. I have so many plans and I need to show them to you all.

I've always wanted to be an author/storyteller in one way or another. Despite this not being an original project and instead a crossover story, this is still a fun start for me. While not a regular kind of comic, this is has been incredible fun.

Everyone who follows me and enjoys this content that I didn't think would get me far means the world to me and I'm so thankful for all of you.

I just don't know how to express who HAPPY and grateful I am to have gotten this far!! I know it's just a number but it's a number of how many people are following my project. I know 200 isn't that big a crowd compared to everything else ever but it's SOMETHING. And the steadily increasing pace of new followers is crazy.

SO QUICK THAT I DON'T EVEN HAVE SOMETHING READY TO CELEBRATE!!

I'll figure something out but wow.

I know this is just a post full of text but I hope at least some of you read it and know how grateful I am.

I'm not a person with high self esteem, I'm very down about myself and am just. insecure as hell. But it's a lot to take in to know that there's an audience of people online who are excited to see what you make and excited to see the story you're carving.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Join the Discord server pinned at the top of the page if you want to come say hi, I love meeting all of you. <3

I appreciate each and every reblog, so happy at the possibility of spreading RPG3 for everyone to see. Cuz I think it's cool.

Let's see what happens from here on out.