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So into my audiobook, I couldn't stop listening last night. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Join in the fun with a free Audible trial: https://www.audible.com/t1/badges_at?source_code=AFAORWS04241590G8

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so remember that worldbuilding website, notebook.ai, that was goin around and everyone was so excited, but it turned out you had to pay a (frankly outrageous) subscription to access any of the best tools? 

well i have exciting news: World Anvil. 

here’s what you get for free: 

yeah. all of them. double what notebook.ai offers for pay. yeah baby.

i’ve only been using this site for like half an hour, but i am in LOVE. please check it out and consider supporting the creators if you can! 

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Alex fistbumping Ruby is everything. My Reignvers feels are alive.

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Tough Love for Supergirl

Its exhausting - getting involved in a television show.  You have such high hopes.  Its not what you expect, but you give it time.  And then, it just starts going down in flames and you either enjoy the wreckage or walk away.  I am at that point now with Supergirl.

When it first aired on CBS, I was cautiously optimistic.  It started out a little rocky, but it had enough there to keep me interested.  I really liked Supergirl’s brighter, more optimistic tone.  I liked is unapologetic feminism.  And I loved Alex Danvers as our human gateway into Supergirl’s world. 

Since I liked what was going on in the Arrowverse, I wasn’t overly concerned with the move to the CW.  But season 2 was not an overall improvement. I don’t know if that was because of the move to the CW, or there were other factors.  But something changed and feels broken. Let’s make a list.

1.  James Olsen.  Its clear no one knows what to do with him as a character.  The Guardian thing doesn’t really fit.  Kara is already an over-powered character.  Such over-powered characters are a challenge to write.  But a show with an over-powered character doesn’t get better by introducing a superfluous vigilante into the mix.  All the Guardian story line achieved was to prove outright that the writers/runners were lost with this character.  James also illustrates a problem with the show in general.  Its full of half-baked ideas that feel like they sound good on paper, but no one i really sure where they want to go with them.

2.  Mon El.  Young girls seems to love this guy and his relationship to Kara.  Mon El was full of potential.  He’s also a character too full of many other things that to me make him problematic within the context of a show for which he is not the titular character.  All of which is to say, flawed characters do make for good story lines.  They make excellent main characters.  But I’m not tuning in for Mon El’s redemption arc.  I am tuning in for Kara’s story.  There was way too much Mon El.  Mon El was the new kid on the block, but instead of organically growing his part and bringing him into the fold, he was shoe-horned in because someone decided Kara needed a boy friend.  And don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge Kara romantic happiness.  But the writers had him as trying too hard part of the time and an outright jerk at other times.  It felt like Kara was settling because she found someone who she could be with and not worry about literally breaking them in two.  The writers also became infatuated with him.  That is clear.  How else does one explain his suspicions of Jeremiah and the rest of the team going brain dead in that episode.  I mean, really?  The whole deal with the cybernetic arm makes any defense the writers might have invalid.

3.  Sanvers.  I love, Love, LOVE Alex.  So I am particularly invested in and protective of this character.  The writers did a decent job with the coming out story and Chyler Leigh did an excellent job - hitting all the right notes and really adding nuance.  I was less enthusiastic about the actual relationship with Maggie.  I am also a big fan of Maggie from the comics and was initially excited for her appearance on the show.  Unfortunately, she was not really integrated into the overall goings-on and existed solely as a prop for Alex.  Floriana Lima did what she could with the character, but there just wasn’t much there (on-screen) to work with.  This is a disappointment given what we know of Maggie from the comics.  I think its great Alex figured herself out.  There was good chemistry between the actors.  But overall, the pacing seemed a bit rushed and the lack of integration for Maggie, especially when contrasted with how hell-bent the writer’s were on integrating Mon-El, made the overall dynamic off balanced.  I get the Kara is the lead and therefore her love interest will get more prominence that Alex’s.  However, Alex has never fit conveniently as a second tier character - at least in the first season.  While a very powerful story-line, in some ways it felt like Alex was benched for a detour through her personal life.  Overall, I think the effect was positive but there were also some miscues here that should not be over looked.

4.  Characters were ‘benched’.  Its easy to blame this on the forced incorporation of Mon El.  That’s part of it.  But there was too much going on, too much shuffling of people and characters and that threw things way off.  Mon El wasn’t the only addition.  They introduced Lena, M’gann, and Maggie.  They brought in Snapper, got rid of Cat and shifted Winn.   Team Kara was in a rebuilding mode this season and it felt like it.  Everyone and then some was there...just nobody was exactly sure why.  It felt like J’onn had nothing to do.  Alex got a lot of time ‘feeling’ and not a lot of time doing (with a few caveats).  As discussed, James was sort of there as an addendum.  The dynamic was off.  Way off.  That didn’t get resolved and remains a challenge into the next season.

5.  Too many story lines.  There was no clear overarching story line for the season.  Cadmus should have been the ‘big bad’.  That got muddled and confused by more Mon El/Daxamite non-sense.  If the writers had not wanted it to be non-sense, they should have stayed with the Cadmus story line this season, integrated their newly introduced characters throughout - having Mon El earn his spot on the team - and then went for the Daxamite business in the 3rd season.  Instead they went with a jumbled mess which fractured the audience and left a significant number of that audience put off by the character the writer’s love.  The writer’s need to earn that love for the character from the audience.  They didn’t do that. 

6.  Kara.  It’s her show.  She should be central to everything.  It didn’t feel that way.  She felt tacked on a lot.  Also, as previously mentioned, its hard to write characters that are over powered and ‘morally straight’.  Kara is good.  We already know she’s going to do the right thing.  The challenge for the writers is to make that dramatic and unpredictable yet logical and coherent.  The best ways to do that are to draw contrasts/conflicts between ‘the good’ and ‘the right’.  Or ‘the right’ vs.  ‘the necessary’.  Instead of mining the possibilities of these types of complexities, they turned a significant portion of the drama on relationships and only loosely connected the drama to the deeper conflicts/themes.  Yes, there were some attempts at parables.  But neither the social commentary or the action was consistently executed well.  It was all half measures and inconsistency.  Perhaps worst of all was seeing the Girl of Steel routinely beaten in fights by D-listers because it looked like the writers didn’t really know what to do otherwise.  I am sympathetic to the difficulties of writing such ‘perfect’ people.  There are narrow opportunities for drama.  But its limited sympathy as these are professionals and not fan-fiction authors.  They should have better ideas that teeny-bopper romance angst.  Along with that goes the lack of the Danvers Sisters.  This was an important relationship in S1.  But with too much to do, too much plot, too many side tracks, this relationship suffered.  And I think the show suffered as a result.

There were good things about the season.  As an idea, Mon El is good.  As a character, he was poorly executed.  I like the Winn/Alex and Winn/ Mon El interactions.  Winn is a good utility player and I will let slide his improbable integration into the DEO.  We got a very good story line for Alex.  We can’t overlook that it came at a cost in other areas, but the trade-off was probably worth it in the end.  There were other good moments and beats that kept me watching.  But without improvements, I don’t know that I can say I will stay watching.  I have seen trailers and read spoilers that do not make me optimistic going in to season three.  There is clearly enough talent available to this cast and crew.  Let’s hope they make better use of it in season 3.

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I just earned cash back for the first time on Ibotta. Join me! Download the app to get your $10 welcome bonus.

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She got no standing ovation.  She got no mainstream media lauds for her heroism.  She got no kudos for leaving home, a much longer journey than that other senator, the one from Arizona, to get to DC, and there are no mainstream media stories on it that I can find… I only found out from a friend who spotted it on Twitter.   She didn’t do it for publicity.   Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was just doing her job as a good politician, voting not to repeal the ACA so as to protect her constituents.  She has Stage Four kidney cancer — that means scarce chances of survival — is recovering from a second surgery to remove part of a rib, and made sure she got to her seat in the Senate Chamber to vote “no” to whatever Republican wealth-care crap was thrown at her.   But you’ll only find out about it on social media.  Because she’s not a pale male, maybe?

The heroic Senator with severe cancer who interrupted treatment to vote… NO (via wilwheaton)

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Sinclair Broadcast Group is about to buy Tribune Media – and Donald Trump’s re-election campaign will get a whole lot easier.

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things are getting real

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no woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.

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“Elections are about picking the lesser of two evils.”

But what if there’s a third guy that isn’t evil at all?

Why is it that voting for the only sane candidate is throwing your vote away?

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I'm hoping it's a scheme the Danvers sisters cooked up to get some intel on that jerk

Supergirl s01e06

Please, tell me that thing between Alex and Maxwell Lord is just so that the audience will be more surprised (or actually not surprised, but happy, and that’d be my case) when she says she’s a lesbian. Please, that’s all I’m asking for. He’s … urgh :s

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How To Tell If You Are In A High Fantasy Novel

[via The Toast]

The Elders would like a word with you.

The Ritual is about to begin.

Something that has not happened in a thousand years is happening.

You are going to the City. There is only one City. It is only said with a capital C. No one needs to bother saying the name of the City. It is the City.

Certain members of the Council are displeased with your family’s recent actions.

A bard is providing occasional comic relief; no one hired or invited him and his method of earning a living is unclear.

The High Priest is not to be trusted.

Someone is eating an apple mockingly.

There is one body of water. It is called the Sea. The Great Sea, if you are feeling fancy.

You live in a region with no major exports, no centralized government, no banking system, a mysteriously maintained network of roads, and little to no job training for anyone who is not a farmer.

You have red hair. You wear it in a braid. Your father was a simple man, and you don’t remember much about him – he died when you were so young – but you remember his strong hands, as he fished or carpentered or whatever it was that he used to do with them.

You’re going to have to hurry, or you’re going to miss the Fair – and you never miss the Fair.

There is trouble at the Citadel.

Your full name has at least one apostrophe in it.

It is the first page, and you are already late for something. Your mother affectionately chides you as you gulp down a few spoonfuls of porridge; she will be dead by page forty-two.

There are two religions in your entire universe. One is a thinly veiled version of Islam. It is only practiced by villains. The other is “being a Viking.” You are a Viking.

There are new ways in the land that threaten the Old Way. Your grandmother secretly practices the Old Way, as do all of the people of the hills.

The real trouble began the day you arrived at court. Every last nobleman hides a viper in his smile. How you long for the purity of life in your village, which is currently on fire or something.

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OREO Cookie Balls

Ingredients

1 pkg. (8 oz.) brick cream cheese, softened

36 OREO Cookies, finely crushed (about 3 cups)

4 pkg. (4 oz. each) semi-sweet baking chocolate, melted

Instructions

MIX  cream cheese and cookie crumbs until well blended.

SHAPE  into 48 (1-inch) balls. Freeze 10 min. Dip balls in melted chocolate; place in single layer in shallow waxed paper-lined pan.

REFRIGERATE  1 hour or until firm.