#this is my personal pipe dream

[svtskneecaps]

personally i think the best way to get everyone out of the way during the squad vacation to brazil is for forever to announce the completion of his prison, ""randomly"" draw the names of the members who are leaving (or they volunteer), and then say "okay cool test it out for me and let me know how it goes!!" and they get tp'd into prison and summarily kicked from the server.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[tinyetoile]

Decided to toss my hat into the Wapeach Redesign Ring LMAO

I do think her normal design is cute I just think she looks too much like Rosalina (though to be fair, she was likely designed first and elements of her design might've been incorporated into Rosalina's...)

Actually in retrospect I probably should've switched the direction of her bangs to differentiate them more... dangit

also yknow how Mario & Luigi are contrasting colours? Well, I noticed this about the "Princess" gang if you add Wapeach to the mix

[phantom-curve]

the inherent cruelty of a world in which I am sososososososo sleepy and at the same time not allowed to sleep

[puppyeared]

crumbs of a story im writing

clumsy rookie news photographer chasing after a gentleman thief to start an advice column ^_^

the thiefs legit job as a librarian doesnt pay enough to cover his rent (not enough public funding?), so he steals from rich politicians.

he kind of sees it as "hitting two birds with one stone," since the politicans are more interested in infrastructure than public funding anyway, and they have more than enough money so he doesn't feel bad doing it

since its done out of necessity, the thief is extremely meticulous and plans out his thefts. but hes also a theatre kid, so he makes a costume and more or less garners the attention of the community

the rookie is a newspaper photographer who has been following the thief for some time and has grown to admire him

the newspaper he works for is community oriented (organizing events and programs, advocating for the public) and believes the thief shares similar values

basically he proposes to start an advice column with the thief to build a rapport with the community, with the goal of winning over the public

the thief is hesitant because he's really only doing it for himself and doesnt want to get anyone else involved, but the rookie tells him to think of it as a way of helping everyone

the rest is kinda fuzzy.. i wanted to touch on community effort and public interests. I don't know if this will be the kind of story that encourages people to take action, I don't see myself as being any kind of model citizen. for now I'm just focused on pouring all my thoughts and faith in humanity into a story setting

[radioisntdead]

listening to ASMR again, WHY DO THEY KEEP KILLING OFF MY FAMILY??? WHAT DID THEY DO?? THEY COULD BE ALIVE? THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PLOT YOU JUST KILLED THEM OFF FOR FUN???

[jaratedeguadalupe]

redraw of something then i gave up

[she]

ray needing so desperately to be loved and needed and sand so promptly ready to care for this stranger throwing up in his toilet and make exceptions for him yeah im going to need a minute

[deus-ex-mona]

wdym christmas is next week?????

[skunkes]

idk if this is strange to say but i wish there were more opportunities for like casual Acting bc that's like. a form of Play to me (pun not intended wee hee). Idk what happened to me that my shame and embarrassment gland got too huge but i Was in school plays as a kid and i enjoyed it. Nothing sounds more fun than having a contained space where u can be dramatic and say things in specific voices without it being Weird.

Dont say "get into ttrpgs" because its not the same i suck at improv and I'd be too embarrassed to really act bc i only have like 1 person in the whole world i wldnt be embarrassed to Act like that around. Too close. Need to fully move around a space.

i want to just be able to memorize lines/a script and deliver them in an appropriate setting without not making it bc i wasnt good enough for the role and cant sing well enough ykwim (as could be the case for trying to get into local theater). Does this make sense in any way❓❓ I was born to be a cartoon character everyone loves my weird funny exaggerated faces i need to be on a stage but i also need the escapism of pretending to be someone else and quite literally performing Feelings. Do u see my vision. I never outgrew imagining myself in music videos and its hindering my life. Does anyone wanna play dolls with me but we're the dolls.

[thequibblingking13]

The modern gaming industry pisses me off so bad.

[travelingtwentysomething]

🌚Dream Journal🌝

I just woke up from a dream of my upcoming family Thanksgiving where my most despised uncle got the cops called on him for slapping me.

I laughingly rehashed the story for the police officer.

My uncle had insulted me by saying I was a "piece of shit waste of space just like my mother".

And so I chuckled and said, "hmm, yes, my mother and I do have a thing or two in common. Most notably that we independently came to the same conclusion- you are a selfish, childish, waste of a man, with a suspiciously unnatural hairline."

And that is when you could hear a pin drop, and he turned purple with rage, and slapped the shit out of me.

Then I called the police, and my family started to try and convince me not to call them, I said, "I'm not going to be abused at the hands of my own family and be silenced, you are all witnesses, if you do not speak up and tell the truth when the time comes, I will know who my abusers are, and who stands by and allows it."

Then my Uncle tries to verbally abuse me some more and tells me he demands respect and will not be disrespected by a child and no one will stand up for me because I brought it on myself.

And so I tell him, "I am a grown woman now, you will demand nothing of me, least of all respect. I responded to verbal abuse with truth, and you responded with physical abuse. You don't deserve respect, but the consequences you are about to receive are well deserved and of your own making."

Woke up very satisfied after seeing that asshole cuffed and spitting mad in the back of a police car.

[music-for-them-asses]

My therapist asked me to make a list of goals to go over tomorrow. I think I've done up with a good list so far:

They seem so impossible altogether, though :') Hopefully she can help me break them down to more manageable chunks!

[vigilantejustice]

finally got over myself enough to put through the library services traineeship application and will now be a little bit begging the universe for it to work out :-)

[mekatrio]

iris is sooooo awesome she really traumatized phoenix into being an emotionally unavailable mess 🥰

[skidar]

Trying to look for housing near me and having a Very Depressing Time.

For every single one of these low-grade STUDIOS it would cost over half my paycheck every month just for rent. Excluding utilities and outside bills.

I work 40/hours a week, a have a freelance side gig. I make over minimum wage, I have a degree, I have excellent credit. I cannot afford to live anywhere near my work. ~Unless I find randos online and pool resources to live with strangers~

Well, guess what, I’m in my 30s and I want to live Alone. Which, apparently, is not financially allowed anymore in this country.

I’m just so tired and frustrated and its late at night which means this feels so much more hopeless and horrible then it probably needs to but I have no one to talk to so here I am sinking into the pit of despair