#well of lost plots

[the-forest-library]

New Thursday Next Book Dropping June 3, 2025!

After over twelve years, fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series are getting a new book in the series…and it’s the last one. Dark Reading Matter is to be the eighth and final book in the delightful sci-fi series about Thursday Next, a literary detective. Not much is known about the book right now, except the publisher description mentions that the plot was teased in the last book.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 43 of 70

Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

375 pages, 10 hours, 27 minutes, published 2004

Medium paced

Fantasy/ mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

Thursday Next is in hiding her hiding place an obscure unpublished novel, where she can build her strength to fight For Aornis for the memories of her irradiated husband Landon.

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[sharksliveontrains]

aftg is wild because kevin says "give your game to me." and "close your eyes and tell me what you see" and neil just says "you." and andrew has to watch the whole thing. and then andrew is the one he falls for.

[dead-girl-tells-stories]

A little while ago while hanging out at the manor for game night, Stephanie introduced the family to another one of her current favorite artist.

This was nothing unusual, Steph had a new favorite artist almost every other week. But this one was different. It wasn't just a single person but a group that called themselves ‘Team Phantom’.

Every song was different as every song was sang by a different person. So there was a song for everyone, including Jason.

He feel in love with the soft smooth voice of ‘The Sister’. Her songs were so dreamy and melancholic, and told stories that he often couldn't understand but made him feel like if he were there doing whatever she was doing. Feeling whatever she was feeling.

It was amazing. Her voice was just so beautiful. So calming. So additive, the way it calmed the pits. He didn't know why but every time her songs played it was like the pits disappeared. And so did ever constant green haze that haunted him.

The sense of clarity he was left with when one of her songs ended was like a fuckin high and he couldn't get enough.

Long after the game night he sought after her music. Her songs. Her voice. It was his medicine and his drug. His addiction. Which sucked because just like every other addiction, withdrawal was a BITCH.

It's been six months since ‘The Sister’ has released a new song. Since ANY of Team Phantom had released any new songs. And it was really suspicious considering how consistent their schedules were. But that was okay, kinda. Life was life and maybe something happened. He'll just listen to her old songs on repeat like he's been doing for the last six months.

Is what he said until they posted a new video to their channel.

It wasn't the 3 to 4 minute animated or stagnant image music video he was uses to. Instead, it was a dark shaking video, as if someone was running. Then bright teal eyes appeared on the screen. Everything stopped for a moment. Then came the still soft and smooth but now trembling voice of ‘The Sister’.

She uttered a single word.

“Help.”

Before it ended and turned black.

It could honestly just be a prank. But something told him other wise.

Before he even decided what course of action he was going to take. A message came in through the family group chat. And from the Demon child no less.

‘We need to help Team Phantom. NOW!!!!!’

Everyone agreed.

And Jason felt very validated that he wasn't the only one secretly addicted to their music.

Now it's time to save Team Phantom.

[amazingspider-z]

Voltron art in 2024? More likely than you'd think.

I very much stopped watching after it kind of. Started to fall off (cough burying your gays cough). But, alas. Potential for side effects due to psychically bonding to mystical space robots and letting Keith look a little bit more physically Galra, as a treat. Lured me in.

Re thought 1: Bleedthrough of the bond results in physical effects thanks to quintessence-namely facial markings, vaguely glowy eyes, and slightly pointed ears (yes that last one is solely because, even though lion markings aren't the same as Altean marks, they're close enough that people figure it tracks. Also side effect of the fact that it was Altean alchemy that created the lions)

Re thought 2: Listen. If Keith is fully 50/50 i think there should be at least some signifier of that. So I went with a concept that he was born looking only mostly human, but the Galra traits he had were stunted due to growing up on Earth-mostly cause of a lack of certain nutrients and also maybe subconscious involuntary mimicry, and ending up in space resulted in his Galra features maturing

[powermove102]

if I had a nickel for every time Sawyer had intense beef with a wild animal in the jungle that just does what the animal does but it shakes Sawyer to the very core of his being that it consumes his life and he can't do anything else but wildly trudge into the jungle to look for it

I'd have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice

[fourswords]

i love that one trope that goes like "character wakes up back in time before Big Story Event happens and thus gets a chance to change what happened" and i think that applying it to the fsa manga would be really funny. link doesn't even stop anything from happening he just lets everything play out until he draws the four sword and becomes four again and they all spend the whole time working together to very aggressively make friends with shadow. who has no fucking idea what to make of everything that's happening. he finally turns up to where he stashed zelda in the tower absolutely perplexed like "hey i think your heroes are fucking broken. they keep trying to give me gifts. every time i take a swipe at them with my sword the red one tries to hug me." he doesn't even have it in him to act evil he's just so fucking confused by all of it. and so is zelda for that matter

[tapestryundone]

constantly thinking abt the long quiet and the shifting mound and their relationship w humanity. because the two are very much not mortal and even in the what happens next ending its very ambiguous if they ever WILL be or Can be. but even still they have both felt what its like to be mortal

i feel like its vague if the entity the two used to be even percieved its own existence. the way the narrator talks about it makes it seem like the two only existed conceptually and as a result lacked a complete sense of identity, and didnt need to, and wouldnt want to. but in the same way a thought cannot be unthought, the narrator gave them a glimpse into what it felt like to be mortal and the two can never un-know it, even if it wasnt exactly the same

the long quiet in particular seems especially tied to humanity and in some aspects seems to want to BE human (which feels so potent given how decidedly Not human he is). the game tends to imply that every option you get is a thought he DOES have, and in the spaces between, the choices dont seem as influenced by a given voice, which highlights even more how much he feels conflicted on his own nature that he gets Multiple options to express discomfort with himself being a god

it just gets to me how one of the options during the fight is literally "appeal to your shared humanity". because even if the two are gods, their separation and reshaping has given them humanity that they can never un-feel. for how much the shifting mound grieves what she once was, she cannot will her humanity away. shes mourning what the two of them once was and is desperate to have it back at any cost, even though they can never be together how they once were.

even if the long quiet goes with her, theyre still apart and lack balance, because the two once just Were and werent two parts. they werent both halves, they werent two concepts, they were just one concept that happened to, by human eyes, consist of two halves. and the narrators insertion of humanity into the mix in order to separate them, separating them into concepts that humans understood, manually put into existence a struggle for equilibrium where that balance had simply Existed

but theyve already perceived what felt like reality and can never un-see it. they were separated and Need the other to feel whole and for reality to BE whole but the moment that either of them realized their own free will, the moment the two fully came to feel like people, they could never be together the same way once again

im struggling to come up with a metaphor that isnt silly but its like if you took a piece of fabric and cut it in two and made them both into shirts. youve added a piece of humanity into them and doing so cost its original form. to take them apart and try to put them back together would never get you the original, whole piece of fabric back, because theyve been completely changed by their own unique destruction and reconstruction

they were separated in a way that gave them humanity that they have such conflicting feelings on. both seem to have a deep love of humanity but vastly different ideas on what humanity needs to thrive, because its in their natures

in order to get one to kill the other the narrator let the long quiet interpret the both of them as mortal. and for a being of perception and an god thats being lied to, this became part of their limited view of the world, on top of all the other reasons that the two gained humanity. the long quiet couldnt be told what to do if he didnt have the ability to potentially act on the narrators desires, and the shifting mound could never die if the long quiet didnt believe her to be capable of death

the narrator gave the two humanity and the shifting mound is very reasonably distressed by this. because the two of them never asked for this but they cant undo it. it is her OWN subtle desire for things to be the same as they used to be, her own piece of that stagnation that also led to her experiencing humanity, that makes her so adamant during the fight. she misses the long quiet and wants to undo a change that cannot be undone in search of a constant state of being that was taken from her

and the long quiet felt so closely tied to mortality, both its existence and absence, that no matter what, he wants to aid humanity. but hes been lied to and denied autonomy to the point where he doesnt know what that entails. but he wants to be a part of it. he was given fake mortality and cant seem to figure out how he feels

the shifting mound is set in how she feels it best to aid in the existence of life. she is stagnant in her feelings because its all that feels right to her. the long quiet is ever-shifting in how he feels it best to aid in the existence of life. he is changing in his feelings because its all that feels right to him

getting to the heart of the shifting mound allows them a moment to discuss it as the closest they can get to mortals. the two care about their impact on life and what it means to be alive and what better way for the two of them to truly decide what they want to do about it, outside of the conflict thats been forced between them, than as the mortals they never were?

[shitpostingkats]

(for the record. i love the aj trilogy. i'm not trying to dunk on anyone here. just calling it as i see it) one very funny thing about aa4 and aa5 and their active conversation with one another is aa4 is a game about defending criminals. all of whom are at least a little sympathetic but still. committed crimes (but it's still your job to defend them because they still deserve a fair trial and a shot at a better life). and its also a game that's like "hey evidence is cool and all. but like sometimes :) its not enough :) sometimes the law is wrong and sometimes you lie and you win and no one finds out you lied that's just for you to think about at night" (it wasn't even your choice. you didn't even know what you were doing). with that in mind. it's then really funny to play aa5 a game which is begging you PLEASE DO NOT DO BAD THINGS FOR THE SAKE OF A GREATER GOOD. PLEASE FOLLOW THE LAW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. YOU CAN FLIP COPS BUT THAT IS IT. and with that in mind it's absolutely hilarious to me that one of these games was sponsored by the japanese government and it WASN'T aa5.

Oh definitely. I personally wasn't very grabbed by aa4 as much as I would have expected, partly because I was spoiled by playing the great ace attorney games first, and apollo justice brings a lot of things to the table that get further refined in that duology. (Everyone should go play tgaa if they haven't already- *I am dragged forcibly off the soapbox*)

But I find it interesting that in aa4, you are defending criminals, and that's a very good thing. You are Apollo Justice. All your clients are criminals, yes, and through investigation get found out and are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (Aside from Phoenix, cough cough). The Kitaki's leave the mafia and become honest buisnessfolk. Vera's forgeries are discovered, preventing further pieces from being sold on the black market. Machi actually hands himself over to the Japanifornia courts because it is viewed as more benevolent and trustworthy than returning to his home country. They're all sympathetic criminals, and the court is sympathetic to them in turn. The judicial system is painted as something that reforms people and finds answers.

Meanwhile in aa5, the courts are a mess. There's a whole case dedicated to blatantly showing how legal professionals are being trained to disregard actual facts and the one person trying to root out corruption is murdered. Your client goes behind your back to indict themselves because they don't trust the system to not blame an unrelated innocent party. Multiple times. Aura kidnaps and threatens half a dozen people as a direct response to knowing her brother is going to be executed for a murder he didn't commit. There's multiple discussions of not just copaganda, but actual propaganda for the courts as well. It makes everything about the judical system come of as shady, dishonorable, and in desperate need of reform.

Aa4, the game sponsored by the japanese government, is the story of how guilty people come into contact with the court system and stop doing crime, while aa5 is the story of innocent people coming into contact with the court system and immediately doing so much more crime.

[jessi--ac]

Not seen the epi yet, but I find funny (fucked up) that if not for a bunch of self-serving interviews, we would be eating this shit up, because on screen the story is progressing in a way that clearly directs us to a path they want us to go, for multitudes of reasons.

[painfully-unoriginal]

Let's have a party

There's a full moon in the sky

It's the hour of the wolf

And I don't want to die

I'm so happy

Dancin' while the grim reaper

Cuts, cuts, cuts

But he can't get me!

I'm as clever as can be

And I'm very quick, but don't forget:

We've only got so many tricks!

NO ONE LIVES FOREVER!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle

books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series

paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic

follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister

in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys

and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit

Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)

[sixxxer]

just saw venom 3 and im so angry. it was such a disappointing experience, im honestly shocked. the writing and ending were abysmal, not at all the campy and ridiculously fun movies that came before. what happened??

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

COSTUUUUMES

fellas,

we were robbed of the chance to have Tyrone Power play Superman

[quirinah]

eclipse