#After years what helped me was getting into podcasts in general. It's a lot harder to stay caught up when i only open the app to listen to

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

You're forgetting the most important fact about the Welcome to Night Vale fandom: Our oldest proverb is "I need to catch up with welcome to night vale"

Truuuuuue.

[alectoperdita]

do you still find posting your fics on social media stressful/anxious? ive been feeling this way for quite some time as an artist so i was wondering about your input as someone who wrote fics for a long time.

Yep. I still 1000% do. Whether it's posting the fic itself or on social media, I still feel anxious afterward. It's difficult to share something you may have spent a lot of time and love on, and wanting some validation of your effort is only human. So it can feel crushing if one of our fears is that people won't like it.

It can feel like rejection, even if only temporarily when your posting sits at 0 notes for the first hours. But once it's posted, it's out of our control. People will either see it or they won't. They'll either like it or they won't. They'll either comment on it or they won't. It can still be a tough pill to swallow.

Honestly, it's been getting harder the last year or so. Sometimes I think I should just not bother posting the link to tumblr. It's not like fics in general get all that much "engagement" on this platform.

As a result, I've had to strictly curate my social media experience. I've turned off all tumblr notifications. Because when that was turned on, I definitely knew that there was no activity on a given post because the app wasn't notifying me. Now it's just an unknown until the next time I check tumblr. Maybe there's some nice notes or tags when I do, but probably not.

It'll be what it'll be. My personal feelings not withstanding.

Another coping method of mine is to post during the work day. For me, the stressful feelings are most pronounced during the first day of sharing anything. That's the prime time for the self-doubt to creep in ("this is clunky, I should've edited more" or "this is not as interesting as I conceived"). Posting during the work day keeps me from ruminating and checking social media/my email. I distract myself with work. Then after work, I choose to do things that take me away from my computer or email for the rest of the night. I cook and play video games while listening to podcasts, or take that time to catch up on my dramas.

It gets easier the next day. Usually. Usually I ruminate less than I did the day before.

So in summary, I make a conscious effort to disconnect from social media and its mechanics of instant feedback/gratification. It works better sometimes than others. I still get in loops where I will jump into tumblr and refresh my activity tab.

Those are what work for me personally, though. I don't presume they would help you or even most people. Like I can imagine my methods sound like hell to someone with ADHD or extreme executive dysfunction.

Sorry this was rambly and personal. I don't want to offer advice without knowing your exact struggles. Making stuff isn't easy, and sharing the stuff can be just as hard or harder than the making. So I want to offer you all my sympathies and hugs.

If anyone else has figured out the secret of being chill about this shit, please share. But I suspect that'd require a major personality shift on my part. 😂

[ginger-canary]

Wrong Place, Right Time

Chapters: 1/1

2649 words

Fandom: Dimension 20 (Web Series), The Unsleeping City, The Adventure Zone (Podcast), Ethersea - Fandom

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Sofia Lee/Amber Gris

Characters: Sofia Lee, Amber Gris

Additional Tags: milf4milf monk4monk, Oneshot, Rarepair, happy valentines day here's a strange combo

AO3 Link

Summary:

Every monk knows the general instructions when you end up in a place you don't know. Find a monastery and explain yourself. So that's what Amber did- but she got kind of distracted.

Listen this idea started more than a year ago just consider the combo it's fun and interesting. This goes out to @lovevalley45 and our thoughts last year

Fic under the cut

In New York, no one could really stand out. Sure you may look strange but have you seen fish lifter Steve, the one who carries around a giant fake fish with a speaker inside? He rides the subway between the Bronx and Manhattan at all hours, playing a variety of ocean related songs that seem never-ending.

Sofia considered this feature a blessing at most times. However, trying to leave a lasting (positive) impression on someone in this city? Yeah, that only gets harder when fish lifter Steve is around. 

Everything was normal (in her definition of normal) when someone showed up at the monastery claiming to be far from home and in need of help. The monastery had always been a safe place for the lost- after all that’s how she got there.

However, Sof hadn’t expected to lay eyes on a woman like Amber Gris. All 5’2 of her was- well, for the first part she was soaking wet dripping rainwater all over the rug. The woman moved her weight from one squeaky sneaker to another, adjusting her sunglasses as if Sofia was the one looking crazy. 

Sofia scratched the back of her neck and sighed. First things first. “Hi, I’m Sofia. Do you speak English?” She held out her hand.

“Yeah. I’m Amber,” she spoke with a gruff voice, taking Sof’s hand and shaking it. If she noticed the matching calluses, she didn’t let it show. “Ye wanna remind me where I am again, guppy?” 

Registering Amber’s monk calluses in the back of her mind, Sofia moved to the back of the room for a towel. “Guppy? You’re in New York.” Over her shoulder she tossed a towel, followed by a dry shirt that came from the lost and found. It’d be a bit big but it’s better than nothing. Turning back, she watched Amber stare at the towel for a few seconds in confusion.

“New York, huh… Interesting.” With some form of reprehension, Amber started drying herself off. “This may be a strange question, but does New York have sharks?”

Sof raised an eyebrow but quickly coughed and turned around when Amber peeled off her shirt without a warning. Adding the scars covering Amber’s arms and upper body to her list of strange things, Sof wondered if this was what she looked like to other people. Strong yet damaged. Oh, and slightly insane. “Sharks.” 

“You repeat what I say a lot.”

“Well you say a lot of weird shit, Amber.” Sof turned back around, ignoring the fact that Amber hadn’t put on a shirt yet. God, she was going to have that rug dry-cleaned. 

Amber cocked her head and crossed her arms, using the way Sof looked at her. “You trying to tell me this place is normal? I don’t want to say too much but I definitely saw someone vanish and reappear in a different location.” 

“You know what twins are, right?”

“Twins don’t disappear.”

Ah, it was worth a shot. “Fine. It ain’t normal here. But we don’t have sharks. Nothing worth shit can survive in these rivers, they’re polluted as fuck.” Sof took another look at Amber. “And take off your shoes, they’re absolute swamps. It’s not even raining, where’d you come from?” 

Amber kicked off her shoes. “One of your rivers, I think.” 

“You’re absolutely fucking with me now.”

Taking off her sunglasses, Amber briefly exposed her fishlike eyes. “Is that an offer, guppy?”

Sof choked and not just because of the line. “Jesus fucking christ fine. You come from one of the rivers- which are all disgusting so you need a shower with a high pressure hose. Just come with me, we can continue this chat when you’re not infected by diseases we don’t even know about.” She grabbed Amber’s arm and led her through the monastery, ignoring the gazes of her coworkers. 

“So nothing lives in the river, huh?” Amber laughed.

“Nothing you find out about on purpose.” Sof tightened her grip on Amber’s arm and quietly added, “and still no sharks.”

One long, slightly awkward shower and about 20 body washes later, Amber stood in Sof’s private office in a bathrobe and sunglasses. Sofia had closed the blinds and was rifling through her collection of clothes as she fired off questions. “So, what, you’re like a fucking amphibian? You breathe underwater?” She handed Amber some underwear and a sports bra.

“Maybe and no. I don’t have gills but I do live underwater. It’s like an underwater city. I think… I think I’m from a different plane of existence for you. Or like a different world.” 

“From a different world, huh. My mamma was right, English really is the most international language.” Sof turned around so Amber could put the underwear on and inspected her collection of spares. Her 5’7 wasn’t exactly tall but Amber would swim in her regular shirts. “So why were you asking about sharks? Got a big shark problem, where you’re from?” 

“I’m not afraid of much. But, yeah we got a shark problem.”

Sof turned at the tone change. Amber sounded a lot less cocky now. 

“We got blink sharks. Blink sharks are 12 feet, and dark grey but they can-”

“Blink to different planes.” Sof ignored the shiver that ran down her spine. “Yea I know the Blink spell.” Then she realised she was staring at Amber’s biceps again and turned back to her clothes. “We’re just going to have to try some things and see what fits,” she muttered, grabbing a leopard print crop top and some calf length sports leggings. “Try this on.”

“So blinksharks don’t like me because I’ve killed a lot of ‘em. They’ve been targeting me, and I think that’s how I ended up here- though I’m not a big thinker.” She looked down at her outfit, realising it fit. “Huh. Impressive guess, guppy. Hey, can you cast Blink?”

Sof raised her eyebrows. “How do you kill a blinkshark?”

“You punch them in the fucking mouth.” Amber couldn’t resist flexing her arms.

“Of course,” she snorted, moving to lean against her desk. “Well, I can’t cast Blink. I’m assumin’ you want me to do that so you can get home, but I have a better idea for you. I do have to ask, though. Do you already want to leave if you’re spending your life underwater? You don’t want to see what life’s like not constantly swimming around?” 

Amber ran a hand through her tangled hair. “I didn’t start my life underwater, guppy. My world just drowned so we had to move.” She took a moment, weighing her options and eyeing Sofia.  “Sticking around here… I wouldn’t mind it for a short while.”

Grinning, Sofia said, “we got dry food. And literally anything else you could dream of. Welcome to New York, the city that never sleeps.” She spread her arms. “However first things first, why the fuck do you keep callin’ me guppy?” 

“Consider it an endearing word for younger people.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is it actually endearing?”

“For you, yes.” 

“Uhuh.” Sof grabbed Amber some socks and shoes. “No more saying guppy, we can’t be fightin’ every stranger who realises that might be offensive. Put these on.” 

“Ugh, fine. You got a nickname then, Sofia?” 

“Sof.” She paused. “And before we go, just show me what you got.”

Amber laughed. “Haven’t you seen enough of what I got, Sof?”

“Your powers, you fuckin’ flirt. I gotta know what I’m dealing with.” Sofia flushed and crossed her arms. 

“Ah. Makes more sense. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” 

Sof bit back a few curse words but called for La Gran Gata. “Meet my patron.” She flexed her hands as blue and green energy appeared around them, a semivisible cat curling around her shoulders. “Mija… this one smells like fish. I like it.”

“I see your spectral cat and I raise you-” Amber rolled her shoulders, popping out two extra arms. “-spectral arms.”

“Not bad.” Sof moved forward so Amber could pet La Gran Gata with her spectral hands. “Now, this city has everything. What would you like to do with your limited time on dry land?” 

“Take me to your favourite non-seafood restaurant.”

As they sat on the ferry to Staten Island, Sofia and Amber compared their world’s rules. 

“There’s only a few main rules back home. First one’s “everybody’s got a knife”.”

Sof laughed. “That’s true here too. Maybe not in the entire country, but it’s true in New York.” 

“So where’s yours?” Amber winked. 

Sofia pulled a clean black pocket knife from inside her coat. “Right here.”

“Okay that’s pretty rad. How abou-” Amber trailed off as she realised the sheer amount of people on the ferry holding flowers. “What’s all the flowers about? Is that normal?”

“Oh that. Uh..” She bit the inside of her cheek. “It’s Valentine’s day. Y’all got that?”

Amber looked over the crowd again. “We used to but it disappeared when we went under. I used to like it though.” She turned her gaze back to Sofia. “So, you got a Valentine?”

Looking into the distance, she shook her head. “No.” She didn’t feel like explaining. Could’ve said “not anymore” or that he’d died but she didn’t want pity. 

“Ah.” After a moment of silence, Sof felt Amber move away from her. She turned her head to watch Amber go up to several strangers and have short conversations with them. From each of these strangers she received a flower from their bouquet. After she’d collected about 10, she returned to Sof. 

“So, I don’t know to what extent your world’s traditions align with mine, but I’m basing my actions on those of the people around me.” She pulled a hair tie from her wrist and tied the makeshift bouquet of flowers together, then held them out. “Sofia Bicicleta, will you be my Valentine?”

Sof glanced from the people who’d given up a flower (who were totally watching) to the bouquet to Amber’s small smile. “Where’d you learn my last name?” She asked, taking the bouquet. 

“It’s on your office door. So, what do you say?”

Amber wouldn’t be here for long. There would be no time to really get attached, or make things awkward. It’d probably just be a day. A day of being happy and having fun.

Sof grinned. “Yeah, I’ll be your fuckin’ Valentine.”

“Good.” Amber extended her hand and waited for Sof to take it. “A girl like you deserves to have fun on a day like this.”

Sof led the two of them to a little restaurant named Tony’s, right beside Spaghetti’s bakery. “Hope you like Italian food.”

“Aren’t you Italian American?” 

“Yeah?”

“So, yes.”

Sofia shoved Amber through the door.

Two plates of pasta and some mocktails with extremely silly straws later, Amber reached across the table for Sof’s hand again. “Hey, so… I don’t want to pry. Earlier when I asked you whether you had a valentine-”

“Yeah, something’s happened.” Sofia placed her hand in Amber’s. “My husband’s dead. Due to, well, the weird fuckin’ shit we deal with. I’m accepting it, I don’t particularly feel like talking about it. It’s been an experience, since I only found out about the weird shit a little while ago.” Her voice didn’t crack, and she didn’t feel like she was walking through fire. Progress.

Amber squeezed Sofia’s hand. “I know condolences aren’t worth shit, but you have mine. And, naturally you have my time for as long as I’m here.” 

“Yeah, so, uh. As much as I think you’re pretty fuckin’ cool and shit, my yes to your Valentine was definitely with just friendship strings attached. Our lives are complicated enough as is, and…” She eyed Amber. “For today I just want to have fun.” 

“I think you’ll find I’m great at having fun.” 

“For the amount of shameless flirting you do, I sure fucking hope so!”

Sofia showed Amber around Staten Island for a bit as they both ate their gelato from Spaghetti’s. Granted, she didn’t actually spend much time there anymore so most of what they saw was the pier and the bridge. With the clear skies, thousands of stars dotted the sky in accompaniment to the New York skyline. 

“So how do you feel now that you’ve been out of the water for a while?”

“How I think Amphibian creatures feel.” Amber sat down on the edge of the water, her feet dangling over the dark waves. “Like, I’m fully capable of living where I do. But I’d also be capable of living on the land.” 

Sof sat down beside her, setting her empty gelato cup down. “So it ain’t super weird that you’re without water pressure right now?”

“No. It’s weirder to spend so much time walking though. Gravity feels a lot stronger.” 

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Sof said, “sorry I should’ve thought of that.”

Putting down her empty gelato cup, Amber grabbed the collar of Sofia’s coat. “Absolutely not,” she said when Sofia’s eyes widened. “There was no way you could’ve known that. Relax, I’m having a great time.” 

Sofia looked at Amber’s lips for a second, then met her gaze. “For a very impromptu date, I think we’re doing pretty good.” She turned her body toward Amber, moving one hand to cup her face, the other to her waist. 

Amber waited for Sofia to lean in, tangling her free hand in Sofia’s hair. “Sofia, you are so beautiful,” she whispered. Just when Sofia smiled, Amber kissed her.

It took all of Sofia’s common sense to not spend hours just sitting there, at the edge of the waterfront making out like teenagers. Everything else became muted as Amber’s lips touched hers, Amber pulling her closer, shifting to press her entire body against her, warmth blooming between them. Given where Amber came from, Sof was absolutely sure she’d be kissed breathless, not willing to end the kiss. So instead, she pulled back a little, gently biting Amber’s bottom lip. 

“As much as I’d sit here forever, this is February in New York,” she said breathlessly. “Let’s go back home before we get hypothermia.” She begrudgingly got up and tossed the empty gelato cups in the nearby trash can, before holding out a hand for Amber.  

Amber briefly touched her bottom lip and grinned. “Fine. Please, take me home, Sof.”

The moment Sof had shut the door and turned on the lights, Amber pushed her against the wall. When she was met with a, granted, nice view of Sofia’s chest instead of her lips, Amber looked down. “Are you wearing heels?” She pulled her borrowed coat off and hung it up, taking Sofia’s with her.

“You didn’t notice this before?” She laughed, tugging her sweater over her head and tossing it on the nearest chair, then started on the button down she was wearing underneath.

“Well when I kissed you, we were sitting.” Amber kicked off her shoes then returned to aid Sofia. “Not that I mind now.” She pressed her lips to her bare sternum, her hands on Sofia’s hips, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her jeans.

Sof bit her lip, tangling a hand in Amber’s hair and gently pulling. “You know, you make it hard to take clothes off for someone who definitely wants to see me naked.” She leaned down and kissed her. 

“I can appreciate what I have right now.” But she helped Sofia slide out of her button up, speeding the process along by removing her own shirt. 

“Are you always this much of a flirt?” Sof asked, removing her shoes then grabbing Amber by the waist. She gently pushed Amber backwards into her bedroom and onto the bed. 

Amber flipped them, straddling her waist and leaned down. “Only with beautiful women.” 

Sofia smiled. If the steady way Amber’s fingers worked downwards meant anything, it was going to be a fun night.

[youmeyaxleyfc]

A mini history lesson...

How did a blog and podcast on Yaxley FC end so suddenly before a bit of a comeback?

Also, why wasn't this writer still the Editor of the official club website rather than creating his own content? ...

Well... grab a drink and settle down !

I think its fair to say that in order to move forward there needs to be a big of navel gazing historically.

I (never tire of telling people that I) won an award for Yaxleyfc.com back in 2015/2016 with so much content, all self created and edited, really working hard to push the narrative to people of the village that there 100% was (and is) a team worth backing.

However I started missing matches at this time due to the tiny children I had at home. It was harder to generate the content needed to keep the level of success going and I grew more frustrated.

By 2018 we had moved across town to Deeping and I was relying on others to do match reports for me.

When one was published with some unintentionally incorrect information there was no need for a member of the committee to take great glee on social media in pointing it out.I just stopped updating the offical site it there and then.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of any football club and should be beyond criticism in my eyes.

My Dad, my Mums Cousin, a great Uncle were all still going to matches at Leading Drove but were not happy with the official website as it was missing fixtures, results and news as it was unmanned.

I created this site primarily to help them get the information on when the Cuckoos were playing and against whom.

The link got shared round quite a bit and for a while I was enjoying reporting on the matches I was at and not feeling pressure to create a word count on those I wasn't.

The club was really successful on the park at this time and I will always fondly remember the days in the Southern League. I had dreamt of watching Yaxley in that competition for decades.

The podcast came off the back of that and in Dan Cotton, Aaron Butcher, Dan Tortoise etc. we had guests who were all able to share their passion about the club.

Again though my content on the Cuckoos stopped overnight with the sacking of Seb Hayes last January.

So much has been said about this but its worth repeating that my loyalty is and was with Seb as a long term friend of the family.

Nothing will 100% put that right but water has passed under the bridge and I don't want to be boycotting the team I have watched since the late 1970s over this. I think after chatting to all involved in the whole matter I have moved on, but its certainly not forgotten.

It's most certainly not the fault of Simon Roberts or the current crop of players who are wearing the badge with a real sense of pride and passion. And I love that. I am backing to spending time lost in my thoughts wondering what it will take to unlock the potential of the club and get people down to watch.

Are there still lots of issues at Yaxley FC that need resolving for that to happen on a consistent basis?

For sure. But certainly where I can I am helping. And if you are in Yaxley and love football you should conside helping as well.

The ownership and management of Leading Drove remains something that needs a long term and clear resolution for YFC to grow and develop.

I think we can all agree that is a lengthy, bottom up process that will take time.

Trust can take a lifetime to build and a second to shatter, especially in the non-league football.

The club needs support now as much as ever as it approaches that 125th anniversary in just over a years time.

[twelvedaysinaugust]

I listened to the podcast today that was recommended by that one anon the other day! It changed my whole perspective, completely. After hearing all the shit that was said in this episode (and in the others, there are 3 or 4 with this girl) I have no hopes at all they will ever come out individually let alone together. At least not as long as they are working. The girl in the podcast did break down everything she has experienced as someone who is and was completely unknown while in a queer closeted relationship with a famous singer. Nobody knew about them and only one of these two were a celebrity and they still were forced apart, they were literally dragged into a break up. They broke up even tho they didn’t want to. Their team kept them apart on purpose so much that they even made sure to change their phone numbers so they couldn’t keep in touch with each other anymore after the break up.

They experienced everything that we always assume about h and L situation and about closeting in general, it’s all real and it happens the way we think. Queer celebrities can’t come out in Hollywood and if so only under certain conditions set up by their team. That’s what happens to Harry. He can be out but only in a very vague undefined way. Queer artists can’t be specific about their sexuality, lyrics get changed by their team, they have to use gender neutral pronouns and only can change them on stage bc on stage they are more free, it’s harder to “confirm” or proof anything so that’s the place where they can express themselves more the way they want to even tho their team wont be happy about it, but they can get away with that.

They talked about Taylor and Diana and Kaylor for the most part, I’m not into these ships. But she confirmed that management teams make sure that they are not even in the same country officially when there’s rumors or suspicious fans, at least for like 6 months or more. She confirmed that queer artists do a lot of queer coding and signalling to let their fans know and they hope that fans will notice and talk about it, they want to be seen. If it happens regularly it’s not a coincidence, that’s what she said and repeated a few times. And it’s telling if stars have a large queer fanbase bc queer people kinda find and see each other. She told about her meeting with a very famous actress in her 60s who already has had their hight of their carrier, a literal icon that apparently is in a very obvious glass closet today but even she in her situation isn’t able to come out and probably never will. This woman was in closeted relationships herself and it didn’t work out bc of the circumstances.

There was so much more they talked about and I’m just so done. I know nothing of this is news to any of us but it was terrifying for me as someone who is queer to get this confirmed by someone from the other side who has experienced it all. She said it’s not so much about the people themselves, it’s about the industry and the environment they are in.

After listening to all that I just think it’s not surprising at all we haven’t seen Louis and Harry together for 7 years. Actually, that makes it even more real to me tbh. If it’s already so fucked up when there’s only one celebrity involved in a queer relationship, I don’t wanna imagine how it’s like for two super famous and popular stars to be with each other. Especially when there’s millions of fans who try everything to find out about them and keep track of every step they do. Honestly, I don’t know how they would make it work.

Typing all of this in was probably a bit unnecessary but maybe it’s helps to navigate the current situation without all these negative feelings towards Louis. I don’t know what life is like for neither him nor Harry but if they are queer and together it’s probably just as hard for them as for this girl in the Podcast. 🙁

Thanks for sharing, nonnie. Lots of interesting thoughts here.

In reference to this.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

i have so many things to post about, and many photos to share--including cat stories! and my new rapid-bruising superpower--but i’ve been trying to spend almost no time doing ‘fun’ things while i’m struggling so hard to focus on ‘work’ things. 

about a week ago, i finally gave up on that strategy, since it hasn’t been working, and i switched to aiming for acceptance about my limitations (rather than hoping i can overcome them with caffeine, or not sleeping, or self-shaming). @actuallylukedanes was a huge part of that, just by being my best friend and loving me as much as they do. it’s harder to believe you’re a terrible person when the person who knows you best disagrees. anyway, i’ve been feeling better this last week after letting go of that self-inflicted stress.

so tonight i’m going to a local ‘yarning’ group at the library for the first time, where they plan to make a knitted/crocheted vegetable garden to display there. little yarn vegetables! it sounds so fun. i’m nervous because New People, but it helps that i went to a group like once when i lived in utah, and i suspect the people i’ll find here are likely to be similar to the ones i met then--mostly older women who are genuinely friendly.

i enjoy my online social life and i don’t actually want to stay in our current city, so i don’t feel a driving need to make local friends. but my general leaving-the-house skills AND in-person stranger skills atrophied during the pandemic, and i’ve always been someone who actually enjoys those brief stranger interactions that come from shopping or appointments or public transit, so it is important to me to get those skills back (and go back to getting fresh air). 

thus tonight’s meeting, and my movie pass, which will be taking me to see m3gan on wednesday. last month i read two op-eds that felt as though they were trying to send me a message: one was about how movie trailers don’t represent things accurately, so people should just see movies for their own reasons and not bother with trailers. when i read that, i sort of agreed, because i once saw a movie with a comedic trailer that turned out to be a thriller. and THEN right after reading the op-ed, i saw a man called otto and agreed even more.because  while the trailer did show vaguely what the movie is about, it also left out a central storyline that i wish i had been prepared for going in. (maybe i’m just really dense and it was implied in the trailer? but i didn’t catch it.)

and the other op-ed was encouraging people to watch more movies outside their comfort zones. i no longer remember what the argument for that was, but it did remind me that my viewing habits have narrowed a lot over the years. i used to watch just about anything when i was younger, in terms of giving movies and tv a chance--i followed actors i liked more than caring about genre. and starting to watch more theater movies has reminded me of that as well, because i see more trailers and that can mean i become aware of movies that otherwise i would probably not even hear about. 

there was a trailer for a new creed film, for example, and i’ve never seen any movies in that series, so if i hadn’t seen the trailer i doubt i would have known or cared. but it stars michael b. jordan, who i adore thanks to his work in the black panther movies (i will always melt for truly good antagonists) and jonathan majors! (who had such heartbreaking range and power in lovecraft country i will follow him anywhere) and tessa thompson, which just makes it, like, a cast too good to be true. and my immediate thought as the trailer played was, ‘well, but it’s a boxing movie.’ and then i remembered, i watched a boxing movie! i saw the one with meg ryan, because at one point i tried to watch every meg ryan movie. so why wouldn’t i do the same for another boxing movie with a cast i love? i didn’t used to reject movies categorically the way i do now.

and then on top of all that, my favorite movie podcast (you are good) discusses all kinds of movies. but both the hosts are huge fans of horror movies, classic and current, and that means they discuss them a ton even when they’re not covering them officially on the episodes. i have never been a huge horror fan, so i’ve had fun listening to their episodes about old ones that i haven’t actually seen and don’t want to. (friday the 13th, halloween, texas chainsaw massacre.) and the frequent exposure to horror movies in a nice vicarious way...has made me kind of want to become the sort of person who does watch horror movies. at least sometimes, to see what i think. 

i saw the whitney houston biopic with kayla at the theater, and one of the trailers they played with it was for m3gan, and kayla was so horrified--she just started shouting ‘no’ at the screen at increasing volume, lol. but i think it looks kind of awful in a fun way, (the trailer gave me such pretty little liars vibes somehow) and once i realized that the lead actress was also from get out, i decided to make it my first ‘who knows if i’ll hate this’ movie day. (i want to see missing next, i feel similarly about that one.)

anyway, i’m actually letting myself have fun plans this week, and i’ll just have to balance work and appts and fun going forward. i bought a really pretty planner that will make figuring all that out more fun...and on top of the rest of it, i now have a therapist whose first focus is on how important sleep is to her with every client, so now i’m struggling to live on a sleep schedule--which isn’t something i even had as a kid! so it’s a work in progress. but aren’t we all? hopefully soon i’ll start catching up more here. i miss you guys. <3

[meichenxi]

Hey, could I ask you how you do shadowing? Like the different ways you do it? You mentioned in your tag that shadowing is good and I'd love to hear how you do it! I do not attempt shadowing much so I don't really know what helps, etc. ToT (my studyblr is rigelmejo)

Hellooo! Thank you for the interesting question!

Tbh I think I do it fairly basically - I don’t use any particularly fancy software, but software like Language Learning with Netflix has certainly made it easier. There’s a whole video on how to get the most of it here: [on mobile, link didn't work - How to study Chinese with Netflix! by Chinese Zero To Hero] (I’d recommend checking out all of their videos actually, they’ve done a bunch of livestreams recently and they place a lot of emphasis on shadowing + the course they are trying to sell you is…actually phenomenally good)

(Also, I have to preface this by saying that I have been very lucky in terms of pronunciation: I learnt about 80% of my current vocabulary by ear without characters or pinyin. I have been in China for eight months in total, and while I didn’t speak Chinese for all of that, I was constantly soaking in info on natural sentence intonation. I still often don’t know officially what the tone of a vocabulary item is, especially if it changes tone like 教, 为 or 相, but I don’t get yelled at so I have definitely internalised a lot of those changes. I definitely would have more trouble with this if I hadn’t had that experience - my other areas are waaaay weaker because of this though- my reading SUCKS lmao and I can literally handwrite about ten characters)

Anyway. How I shadow:

1) Quite simply by playing the line, and repeating it with all the emotion it has!! I usually use Netflix or Viki for this. I try to do it as fast as possible, and if I can’t do the whole thing, I ‘chunk’ it: if I were doing the sentence 我们还不知道他会不会来, I would start from the end with 他会不会来, then 不知道他会不会来, and then the whole sentence. Notice that this isn’t breaking it down into words or even grammatical phrases, but intonational phrases: it would be perfectly sensible to just do 会不会来 without the 他 but realistically, since this is a question, it’s likely that a strong stress will be placed on the first 会, and you wouldn’t be able to replicate that without also included the more weakly stressed syllable before.

2) I locate (intentionally or subconsciously) the main locus of stress within the sentence, and I focus on that accordingly. Tones may become less extreme if they are not stressed, and may become more exaggerated if stressed. This is always a good exercise. I accompany this with physical actions - I throw my hands down, I sigh, I groan!

3) I put away the text, and don’t look at the tones or even my computer screen - more on this below.

4) Finally, when I think I’ve got it reasonably accurate, I’ll record them speaking the line into my phone with an appropriate pause for copying and play it back to myself at various points throughout the day.

5) I then go and find other words with the same tone contour to slot in, and copy it again. After that, I find words that are slightly different tonally and pop them in too.

6) I finally do fun things like hold a conversation with myself. This can be really simple phrases imbued with some kind of emotion - 这个女子到底是谁呀？为什么不认识我？应该是新手吧。You can do this either really informally, or very formally, or both - trying to speak in the latter way is very fun! So then it’d be idk something more like: 那位姑娘是何人，来自何处？This is fun because you can really slow down your speech and sound as elegant as you like!! (this will sound stilted if you do it for modern speech, but it’s a very fun exercise)

Choosing your media!!

1) Don’t use donghuas. Seriously. The voice actors usually speak at a ridiculous pace and not with the same range of ‘normal’ intonation

2) Your Chinese is definitely good enough to recognise when anyone is quoting poetry or speaking in a paricularly sexy literary way so, uh…don’t do that. That rules dramas like Nirvana in Fire OUT.

3) Modern dramas and reality TV shows CAN be great, but they can also be quite intimidatingly quick and almost too mushy at times. I’d recommend informal speech in guzhuang dramas more, because they have professional voice actors and extensive sound editing, meaning that although it might be fast and the vocabulary harder, it’s actually much more accessible and easier to copy. You don’t want to be stuck with the awfulness of 50% failed foreigner and 50% 12 year old boy who can’t enunciate properly!!

4) CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON WISELY. I try to find characters that speak in a dramatic, whiny or childish way. This is so important! There’s literally no use copying Lan Wangji unless you want to be able to have that particular cadence and tone of voice you get reciting poetry. Childish/whiny/dramatic characters on the other hand stress some words very strongly, and rush others together - this is great for hearing what actual real speech sounds like. Whininess wins. In The Untamed, characters like Wei Wuxian (not yllz!wwx but just…regular wwx), 一问三不知 Nie Huaisang, Jin Ling, and Jingyi are all great. Also Jiggy, who is just very extra constantly and speaks much slower as well, which really helps. In SHL characters like Gu Xiang are good.

5) CHOOSE YOUR VOICE WISELY! If you are really aiming to copy them 100% (which you should try at least sometimes), you want somebody with your pitch range to sound normal. I have a sort of party trick in Chinese that because I’ve spent so much time listening to women in guzhuang dramas I can change my voice and sound like a) a scheming concubine with honeyed words, or b) the voice of the Beijing metro. My teacher found it hysterically funny. But it’s not my natural voice, and if I speak like that for too long it hurts. The women usually are too high for me, and the big burly manly men too low - so I’d recommend finding a man with a higher voice, or an older woman (like some of the female characters in Nirvana in Fire). Again, sorry that this is mostly the Untamed (I’m just most familiar with it) but the voice actors for Wei Wuxian and some of the juniors (+jiggy) has a higher voice. Likewise Chengling in Word of Honour.

On intonation in general:

- The thing is that whilst shadowing is useful it requires prior ability in a whole bunch of other skills that you can train - it relies on your ability to accurately mimic pitch, emotion and other contrasts. Training this in ANY language, including your native one, will help your ability to do this in Chinese - so I’d recommend spending a fair amount of time practicing shadowing (or speaking just after somebody whilst listening to a string of text, like monolingual simultaneous interpreting) in your native language too. Any training copying accents or mimicking other people is going to similarly help, regardless of the language.

So, with that in mind, further tips:

1) Hum / try to copy the intonation without any words. What this does is force you to pay attention to what the intonation actually is, versus what you may think it should be.

2) Don’t look at the text! Do! Not! Look! At! The! Text! If you look at the characters or pinyin you’re telling yourself ‘ok this is a third tone here’ etc, but you want to override the part of your brain that has gotten into bad habits and is supremely self-confident in how you’re pronouncing the third tone, and actually just go straight back to mimicking.

3) Don’t be afraid to do it with vocabulary that is way beyond your level. Actually, I find this can sometimes be helpful, because you don’t have a prior idea about how a particular tone pair should be useful - and you don’t know which tone you should be producing.

4) Learn vocabulary by ear - listen to a vocab podcast or even make one yourself (I often do this; I record my daily Anki and listen back to it through headphones copying throughout the day - if you’re not confident in your pronunciation you can get Google Translate to do it). Similarly, pick unknown vocabulary out of a longer segment and remember it, trying to internalise the tones instead of figuring out which tone it is.

5) Find emotional sentences, and copy them with emotion. This is SO CRUCIAL!!! We remember things when we relate to them, and when we imbue them with emotion - and it also helps in hearing exactly how an angry second tone sounds, for instance.

6) When you’re copying, look up, and imagine you are having an actual conversation. Carry yourself with conviction and poise!! Really try to whine like wwx or slime like jgy. After a couple of turns copying them, try to turn off the audio and keep delivering it in the same manner.

7) Swap individual words out. Once you have a line properly figured out, swap a word or two that has a different tone pair, and focus on delivering it with the same pattern of stress.

8) Finally, practice doing this in your native language too!! It’s a skill that we don’t use often, and it can be trained. Some people are terrible at it at first go even in their native language, but you can work on it!

About intonation in general:

1) I think a lot of pronunciation problems with people sounding unnatural or stiff ultimately come down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what intonation looks like across different languages. In English we mark it by pitch: and we are so used to the rhetoric that Chinese has ‘tone’ and not ‘intonation’ that we try and focus on blindly copying every single word textbook perfect without listening to how it actually sounds.

2) Chinese does have intonation!!! Except that, unlike English, when you stress a word, the pitch doesn’t change, but the tone contour is exaggerated - basically the only time you will ever hear a full third tone is in isolated or very exaggerated speech. If you have a Chinese friend, get them to record a sentence like the English ‘I didn’t ask her to steal his rucksack’, and put stress on the different elements of it - I didn’t ask, I didn’t ask, I didn’t ask, and so on. Notice and copy how the tones change. When shadowing, you should always be paying attention to where the stress is in the sentence: when you speak by yourself, practicing saying a sentence neutrally, and then with stress on one component, the next, and so on. If it feels unnatural, it’s because you might not have practicised like this before - it’ll get better!

Hope that’s somewhat helpful / interesting!

- 梅晨曦

[felassan]

Zero To Play podcast episode: John Epler, Narrative Director at BioWare

In the most recent episode of Zero To Play podcast the guest was John Epler, Narrative Director on DA4. He talked about narrative games, how they fit inside an industry leaning towards games as a service, his experience being at BioWare for almost 14 years, and advice that he has for aspiring devs who want to create memorable, impactful and transformative moments in games.

The episode summary read as follows:

In this episode John brings his 13+ year experience being at BioWare and working on titles like Mass Effect & Dragon Age: Inquisition to explain how he believes storytelling will evolve and develop through the medium of games.

He shares some of his favorite moments and why he thinks games are the most powerful and interesting medium to be exploring in this generation.

It’s a good and interesting interview, so worth checking out if you can! You can listen to it here or on Spotify.

This post contains some notes on what was talked about in the episode, in case a text format is better for anyone (for example folks that can’t listen to it due to accessibility reasons). It’s under a cut due to length.

A bit of paraphrasing.

The average dev stays with a game company/studio for about 5 years. John joined BioWare right after the EA acquisition happened.

[on going into Trespasser] “Myself and the Lead Writer Patrick Weekes both knew that we needed to wrap up at least this part of the Inquisitor’s story, and set up where we want to go next with the franchise, with the IP. We learned a lot of lessons from DAI itself. DAI was a game with a lot of exploration and open-world content, and while we stand by that (I still think it was the right call for the game), one of the pieces of feedback we got from the fans was that they really wanted some more directed storytelling. Jaws of Hakkon was more of a continuation of open-world, more free-from exploration and free-form design. Trespasser was our opportunity to tell a story in a much more linear and focused way. [this way of telling stories] really does help to be able to create that sense of pacing and emotional escalation. It’s a lot harder to do that when you’re mixing up storybeats with big, wide open-worlds. Trespasser was a project where everyone was kind of in sync, we were all building [towards] the same thing.” 

-

“There were [story]beats [in Trespasser] that I don't think we would have been able to get away with in basegame DAI, one of those being the - quite frankly - incredibly lengthy conversation you have with Solas at the end. Because by this point we knew that if someone is playing this DLC then they are in it - they’ve been in it for the last two DLCs, they’ve played through the entire game, they want something incredibly story-focused. And we were able to really dive deep into that, some of the deep lore, some of the narrative. This was one of the only conversations that I’d worked on which, due to limitations of the engine, we actually had to break into two different conversation styles because it was so massive. We also got opportunities to do some fun callbacks. One of my favorite ones was one Patrick suggested which was, ‘What if I [didn’t like Solas much and] spent the entire basegame telling Solas I didn't want to hear anything he had to say?’ So we had the option that if you never chose ‘Investigate’ or a dialogue option that implied that you wanted to hear him blather on, there was one dialogue option that you could pick which was basically ‘Solas, when have I ever wanted to hear any of the shit you have to say?’ And it just kind of wrapped up the conversation super quickly, and Solas looked exasperated. It was fun because it’s not the kind of thing you can necessarily do in the main game, but in a DLC which is entirely for those core fans, you have a lot more options as to what you can do.”

John has an understanding of games as an interactive medium.

“Choice of combat, choice of mechanics, all of that does have an impact on the storytelling and on the narrative that you’re trying to put through. A lot of storytelling in games is trying to make sure that the - there’s a phrase, ludonarrative dissonance - [for example, say] I’m making a game where I’m trying to make the player feel powerful. How do you [do that?] [...] In games, this is kind of the challenge. Interactivity is so key to it. [...] It’s a lot harder [compared to characters in film] to put the player in a situation that they are going to lose, because as soon as you take away that autonomy, you’re taking away some of that interactivity. [...] If as a player I'm making you feel strong and powerful, and then I pull you into a cutscene and suddenly you’re losing the fight, you’re losing what’s going. That is a much different sensation, that is something movies can get away with that games can’t.”

-

“What are [players/our audience] actually meaning when they say that they ‘want choice’? I think that in a lot of cases we conflate that with ‘Oh, they want to make a big decision that changes the world’. But in a lot of cases what players want is the game to react to what they’re doing and the choices that they’re making in a way that feels organic and natural. I think this is something CD Projekt Red and the Telltale games did really well - of making it clear when the game is actually going to pay attention to what you said or did, so that when you see it later you’re like ‘Oh right yeah, I made that choice, the game said it was going to remember it, and it remembered, this is cool’.

And it doesn't always mean completely changing the course of events. The Telltale writers, as they got on through the games, they realized that the better way to address choice - and something we’ve done too - is, if we make the game have three endings, four or five - like DAO had an absolute massive amount of ways that it could turn out. How do you pay that off if you want to do a sequel? There's basically two choices. One is that you make an incredibly short game because you have to account for these very different branches, OR you collapse them and say ‘Sorry, this is what we’re going with’. And I don't think either of those are necessarily satisfying. For me it’s about making the players feel like their time and the choices they made have been respected. More than anything else that's the key, it comes down to understanding your fanbase, what it is they’re looking for, what it is they’re asking for, because there is that desire for choice, reactivity, consequences. And it’s something that BioWare, that we’re especially sensitive to because it’s always been a big pillar of the games we make. It’s just about understanding what this actually means from a practical standpoint and how you execute on that in a way that makes your fans feel satisfied, while still not writing yourself an impossible check to cash, because, you know, you can react to anything, but if you have a game that ends in three separate ways, you have to go with one of those two options and neither of them is going to be intensely satisfying to the player.”

-

“A phrase I’ve been using is, what I'm describing as - the half life of quantum. ‘Quantum’ is what we say when it could be like, one of six different things. The half life of this is how long before you actually resolve that down to a single point. Like, provide the player with that reactivity, but collapse those into a way that you can proceed forward. This is 100% a lesson learned from Dragon Age, for all the games. ‘Ok, what do we do with this? Holy shit, that is huge, how are we actually going to pay that off?’ Reactivity, but without putting yourself in an impossible-to-win situation [from a story/writing standpoint].”

-

“More than anything else, the advice I would give [to aspiring devs] is, come up with some fundamental pillars of your story and of your design. There's a misunderstanding that we plan out the exact story for years in advance. We know what we want to get to, we kinda know how we’re going to get there, and a lot of it is just making sure that you have those pillars and those razors. So as you go through development and find, ‘Oh this piece is not working, this piece is clunking’, you’ll always have principles that you can go back to. What is important about this story? Does the piece that isn't working satisfy any of those things? If no, then we have to change it or get rid of it.”

-

[more advice] “Don’t be afraid to fail (I say fail here as a good thing). Don't be afraid to put something out there and have it absolutely torn to shreds. Feedback is your best friend, having people that you trust to provide that feedback. If I were building a big epic narrative, a big epic franchise, [I’d advise that you] start with your principles and the core of what you want to do, and then just start putting out ideas. ‘Here’s my idea for this story’. It’s easier for me, I'm inheriting a lot of work that's already been done, a lot of ground that's already laid - I have a Lead Writer that has been doing this longer than I have, PW is fantastic. But for myself, it’s just been a lot of like, okay, taking this stuff that's already been built, and making sure that I know what we want to do with whatever the next project is. It sounds overly reductive and overly simplistic, but it really is about just having a really strong sense of what is important to your franchise, what’s important to your brand. If you’re coming up with a new IP, it’s a little trickier. You need to spend some time thinking: what’s the tone, what’s the setting, what kind of story do we want to tell.”

-

[more advice] Don’t be afraid to heavily reference existing media [as actual razors, internally]. But that's not something you ever want to have go out to the public, because people go like ‘Oh, you’re just being derivative’. It’s like no, we’re just leaning on cultural touchstones that people know, so that when you’re communicating with people outside your discipline, or with people above you like executives, they can at least get a sense like, ‘Oh I kinda get what you’re doing, okay that makes sense’, versus ‘Let me first of all explain the entire history of the world’. My experience with executives is that they don't have time for that and justifiably so. But if I tell them we’re doing X but with Y and Z it’s like, ‘Ok cool, we get that’. [...] It’s a tiered approach. You have levels of detail that you provide to different people based on what they need to know. You yourself may need to know the history of these characters and how they relate to each other and the thousands of years of history for that, but the person building combat probably doesn't need all that detail and just needs to know ‘What am I working with, how do these characters fight.”

-

“A razor is a statement that you use to slice away what doesn't fit. The narrative razor for Trespasser was, I can’t remember exactly, we were basically trying to go for the Avengers meets Indiana Jones, Winter Soldier. Avengers meets Winter Soldier. [a razor is] a statement that you take all the content [by], ‘Okay, does this actually fit this statement? No? Okay, get rid of it’. It’s about focusing your game. Cutting away the ideas that don't really fit is how you avoid scope-loading and people crunching, and how you keep your project focused.

Trespasser was an intensely-focused DLC, in that it focused on basically two main core things, Solas and the fate of the Inquisition. Everything kind of wrapped into those two razors. As we were going through content, we had stuff like - I said this at a GDC presentation in 2016 - the Qunari are farming lyrium to make Qunari templars. And then we looked at it like, how does that apply to either razor? It doesn't, it doesn't fit either one of them. So we simplified it to, ‘Okay, what actually makes this work in the context of what we’re building?’. [a razor is] a statement that you use to slice off what doesn't fit into the game that you’re building. It can be painful, but having strong razors means that it never comes across as a personal thing.”

Narrative does not mean story.

Two of his least favorite mechanics in games [not including Stalker and DayZ] are weight limits and weapon degradation.

On games as a service:

Interviewer/host: “Talking about games as a service, it’s definitely something that is talked about a lot in gaming in terms of the most successful games. With Dragon Age, putting DLCs out is kind of maybe that same influence, but games that are launched and then iterated on and updated and pushed with content every month, like Fortnite, Riot Games, League of Legends, Valorant etc, that's kind of I feel where the trend of games are trying to go and make the most of those interactions between other people, to make replayability possible and easier. How do you see narrative, do you see it being forgotten with this increase of games as a service? [...] Do you see that as a positive part of narrative in games or do you think there’s still work to be done in that space?”

John: “[...] The place we start to see some confusion, a lot of people think it’s one or the other, but to me, it’s another way, another option for telling stories that by their nature have to be different. I think that's where you need to be, again, very cognizant of what you’re building and of the genre you’re working in, because a story that works for a more traditional box product is not necessarily the kind of story that would work for a games as a service product. [...] Games as a service, understanding what the cadence is that you’re planning to deliver to and what kinds of stories best fit that cadence - some games are better at it than others.

One game that did a pretty decent job of it is Destiny 2, through patches. Final Fantasy 14 is another example, they do a lot of their storytelling between the big expansion releases as part of their free patches. They always know that they have - I think, five big patches? - between each expansion, and they’ve structured their stories to fit into that very specific five-act structure. If they tried to do it weekly or bi-weekly it would be a very different experience. I think there’s always room for narrative. It’s about knowing that there are different lessons to learn and not being afraid to learn those lessons, as opposed to trying to fit the traditional box product square-peg narrative into a live service round hole. And that’s why you need to have a strong vision and why you need to have somebody at the Director level who understands and plays the kinds of games that you’re building, so they kind of understand what works and what doesn't - ‘This type of story worked really well for this game, and I'm not saying you should copy it, but you should at least be willing to learn those lessons and not reinvent the wheel every time.’

We’ve been making games for a long time now, there’s lots of lessons to learn, we should be trying to learn from them and not trying to like, change everything every single time.”

-

[on length of narrative] “In a lot of cases you know how long your game should be and the hardest part is sticking to that. [...] There is always a worry that fans are going to see a number and be like ‘That’s not big enough or that’s not long enough.’ I do think that there is sometimes a lack of confidence in what you're building, and a desire to make it shorter or longer, but I think at the core, the people building [a] game know how long it’s going to take to tell this story that they want to tell. I say this specifically for narrative, but even stuff like progression, you know how long you want it to take. For myself, I will always take a short but well-executed game over a long game that feels that it has a lot of [useless/boring] padding. It’s about identifying the kind of game you’re building. Open-world games are always going to be bigger and longer than more linear games. Being confident in that number and recognizing when you’re adding time and space for no other purpose than just to make that number on the back of the box longer [is important]. Fans don’t love that, they can see right through that.”

-

“It was nice to see the amount of hard work that went into DAI rewarded by the press [with the Game of the Year award]. There are definitely parts of it that didn't land that we wish we could have done differently, but it was a project that felt like we were all pulling in the same direction and when we started getting that positive feedback, it was definitely a sense of relief. Especially because a lot of us had been on DA2, and while we were proud of that project, it obviously didn't get the reception that we wanted at that time.

[when they were watching DAI’s release and tracking its reception] We’re keeping a running tally, like ‘Okay, this is really looking like we did something special here’. I’m proud of every project that I’ve worked on but DAI is definitely one that I’m especially proud of.” 

-

“Part of the advantage to being at a company for as long as I have, I've worked with a lot of the other people [responsible for things in other departments like art, writing, audio etc], so while there is that anxiety like ‘I reeeally hope that this works out’, I know it’s going to, because I know that everyone who is doing these roles, like our Animation Director, our Audio Director, Levels, all those other people on the project know what they’re doing and they know their shit better than I could ever hope to. So I’m just kind of standing here like ‘Hey y’all this is what we need’, and it’s coming in. And when it does come in, when you see the pieces together - I think for myself, on DAI, the moment that I first finally started feeling like it was really all coming together was, one of our music designers, going into one of the moments at the end of Redcliffe, doing the music/audio pass, and me finally seeing this scene that I’d been staring at and banging my head against for months - turn into something that actually conveyed emotion, that actually was something that I was excited for our fans to get to see and get to experience. That’s always a special feeling.”

Cinematics is one of the last things to come in, which means that audio is always waiting for them to come in: “They always did an amazing job with very little time, I will never not praise our audio and music designers.”

“Patrick Weekes is the Lead Writer, which means ultimately PW is responsible for the writing side of the game. As Narrative Director, I’m there to offer, to basically take the vision of the project and interpret the part that focuses on narrative and then provide that to my team - because I work with writing, cinematics, level designers and everyone - I’m there to be like ‘Hey this is the narrative we want to achieve’, which sometimes involves getting involved in the story side of things. But a lot of that is PW’s job as Lead Writer, they’ve been doing it for a long time, they’ve been in the industry longer than I have. It’s a really good working relationship. We worked together when I was in cinematics and they were in writing, we worked together on the Iron Bull, then we were both leads on Trespasser, so we have a trust.

I think what’s been really helpful is that they know that if I tell them something’s not working, it’s not coming from ‘I wanna do it my way, you better just do it my way because I’m the boss’, it’s coming from ‘This is something I think we need to do for the project’. And vice versa, if they push back on me about something, I know it’s not coming from ‘Screw you I'm the Lead Writer, I make the decisions’, they’re saying it because this is an actual concern. I do writing, I’m a writer on the project too but I will fully admit PW is a way better writer than I am, so I'm comfortable leaning on them for that stuff, and then I’m the person who can provide that ‘Okay, we know that gameplay is providing this, we know levels is providing this, let’s shift the priorities'.

It’s also about knowing, being able to take that back from any one discipline and say ‘Okay, what is the right decision for the project as a whole’, and sometimes that means telling PW something that they may not think is their favorite thing to do, but they will listen because they trust me and I trust them. I don't know how it works at other studios, there are places where Narrative Director is also the Lead Writer, or where there is Narrative Director and Lead Writer is the highest authority on narrative that exists, but it’s worked for us again because we have that lengthy experience. It would be interesting to see how it would work if we didn’t know each other for a while before this. It’s largely a relationship of trusting each other to know our areas of expertise and also just understanding what’s important to the narrative vision of the project.”

When they did Tevinter Nights it was ‘extracurricular’ work: “It was fun, I got to do some writing, I got published, which was really fun”.

[source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[star-going-supernova]

So. Madison Russell. Godzilla vs Kong. Welcome to my ted talk.

From a writing perspective, they totally wasted her character. She, Josh, and Bernie were almost exclusively used just as a method of showing the audience what was happening "behind the scenes" at Apex. Pouring the whiskey on the computer was about the only thing of note they did, and even that didn't do much. Mechagodzilla was only slightly hindered by it, and if they'd just written Kong and Godzilla differently in the fight scene, they could have skipped the whiskey part entirely. They could have done so much with having people "on the inside" but Monarch as a greater organization barely had any presence at all, which negated the need to have people on the inside. 

Maddie's steadfast insistence that Godzilla wasn't a bad guy at the beginning had so much potential, but it became the conspiracy thing instead. It felt less like she wanted to prove Godzilla wasn't turning against humans, and more like she and her new conspiracy friend wanted to crack open a shady organization, which was frustrating. If they wanted to depict her as someone who was forced to become competent at a young age, which was part of the serious, intense vibe I got from her, instead of the inexplicable personality shift, they should have showed her doing something to help. Getting in contact with her dad/Monarch, giving them evidence to begin a city wide evacuation outside the Apex Hong Kong HQ, messing something up or making it harder for the Apex people to get Mechagodzilla up and running—just, anything. 

The fact is, we had Maddie being very proactive in KotM. Stealing the ORCA was the game changer. Instead of taking that to the next level in GvK and giving her an opportunity to continue that aspect of her character—that is, being someone who refuses to sit by when she can do something to help, even if it’s dangerous—they rendered her obsolete. 

The movie wouldn't have significantly changed if you took her character out. If Bernie went by himself and ended up in Hong Kong, nothing would have changed, because Maddie didn't do anything of personal importance. She went from being an active character in KotM to being a passive one here, which are a pet peeve of mine. If you saw my post about what I liked and didn’t like about Godzilla (2014), that might sound very familiar.

It would also have made so much more sense if she developed a love for studying Titans instead of focusing on conspiracy theories. Plot-wise, it would have given her claim to her dad that Godzilla was being provoked more credence, and could’ve opened an interesting dialogue between them to reinforce that she knows what she’s talking about. Monarch was obviously still a big part of their lives, given that Mark had rejoined, so it would’ve been the perfect opportunity for Maddie to pursue a Titan-related future. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved Jia, and wouldn’t want to take her out of the movie or even diminish her presence in it. In fact, I think they should have focused on Jia, and only on Jia. 

Hear me out: Godzilla vs Kong should’ve been split in two. A Part 1 and Part 2 situation. 

For Part 1, we keep a lot of the GvK canon, especially the Kong-centric stuff. Include even more scenes showing us that he’s protective of Jia, don’t just have Dr. Andrews say that he is. Have him defend her from something dangerous, maybe even from some humans. Include their backstory, how he saved her during the storm. And start it even earlier, before Godzilla attacks Apex the first time. Keep the whole Hollow Earth plot, keep the fight scene in the ocean, keep the discovery of the temple and the axe.

And on the Godzilla side of things, start earlier on that as well. Keep the other Titans in, have humanity tentatively believing that a time of great peace is upon them. Their mere presence is restoring the planet. There was an emphasis of nature, particularly in relation to the Titans, in KotM that I really think they should have included more of in GvK to better tie the two movies together, if only they hadn’t swept all the other Titans under the rug. They wanted a movie about a fight, not about the Titans. So, undo that. Show us a little of what Mark does, do a sweep of the other KotM cast (cameos at the very least) to show how they and Monarch are working to uphold that peace post-Boston. I’d also have loved to see Boston itself, too, five years later. 

Instead of giving us a Generic High School scene, show Maddie learning about the Titans alongside the experts. Bring back the wonder and amazement she had when she saw Mothra for the first time, when she reached out and touched her. She’s second generation Monarch, make that mean something. When Maddie took the ORCA to Boston, she had a conviction. She couldn’t not have. She was there in part to lure Ghidorah in, but I can’t even pretend to believe her plan ended with that. She knew Godzilla would come. 

That sort of belief is hard to kill, and if death via Ghidorah wasn’t enough to scare her off, no way anything else in those five years afterwards did. Her belief that Godzilla is good survived to GvK, and should’ve been a main focal point of her character. Godzilla attacks Apex—she and every other Monarch person who has spent years studying the Titans knows something is up. 

Keep Mark’s character development regarding his opinions on Godzilla. He believes Maddie when she says something has to be wrong, not just because he trusts his daughter, but because he looked into Godzilla’s eyes and saw more than just an animal. 

They’re in Part 1 only minimally, just to establish their presence and how they feel about Godzilla destroying Apex. The focus is clearly on Jia and Kong’s side of events. 

Sorry, but I’m leaving Josh out and seriously dialing back Bernie’s role. Instead, the character we follow inside Apex is Ren Serizawa. We see his motivations, his ambitions, and he becomes a character with more than just a few lines. Does he resent Godzilla? Or does he resent his father, too? Serizawa’s sacrifice was willing, after all. He was no accidental casualty. 

Part 1 ends in the Hollow Earth, with Ghidorah taking control of Mechagodzilla on the surface. Alter the timeline just enough so that Godzilla has only just arrived to Hong Kong, and Kong’s still in the Hollow Earth. The final scene is Mechagodzilla emerging into the city as the sun rises. The post-credits scene is our KotM cast in the Argo, location unknown, watching a screen with Mechagodzilla on it. 

Part 2 begins with a reveal: Ren Serizawa isn’t dead. 

Backtrack. This part focuses more on the Godzilla side, and Monarch. It’ll have flashback scenes from the five years between KotM and now, showing exactly why Monarch as a whole firmly believes Godzilla is reacting to something instead of being anti-human all of a sudden. The Titans are not inherently malicious; destruction is a side effect of their size, no more, no less. He earned his title of King in KotM—make it mean more than just trying to make Kong “bow.” Make him a protector, a guardian. He’s nature’s balance. By definition, he must protect humans as well. 

What Monarch needs to figure out is this: what is he trying to protect them from? 

They investigate Apex in search of the answer, but knowing from past experience the sort of things Godzilla gets proactive about—the MUTOs, Ghidorah—Monarch mobilizes. They prepare for another fight, at Mark’s instructions. He witnessed both San Francisco and Boston firsthand, even if the former was from a civilian standpoint. 

Godzilla has more hunt scenes. He targets a second Apex lab after his ocean fight with Kong, telling Monarch that they’re on the right track. 

Maddie, being a minor and not dragged into the thick of things (yet), has to stay home. Remembering the podcast she sometimes listened to, when the topic was focused on the Titans, she tracks Bernie down, and he tells her about what he saw: the eye. 

The two of them go to the ruined Apex building and discover the eye is gone before getting caught. With Monarch currently breathing down their necks, they recognize Maddie to be Mark’s daughter and take her to Hong Kong. Sorry, Bernie, but that’s mostly as far as you’re involved. Timeline-wise, this is roughly when Kong puts the axe in the temple floor and Godzilla blasts a hole to the center of the earth. Monarch is following Godzilla, but they’re behind a bit thanks to the tunnel shortcuts. They’re still unaware that Maddie has been kidnapped and is en route to Hong Kong.

This is also when Mechagodzilla gains a life of its own. Walter Simmons is killed and Ren Serizawa becomes trapped in the link to Mechagodzilla, serving as the bridge between the robot and Ghidorah’s mind. Ghidorah is essentially controlling MG by controlling Ren, who is controlling MG. Make sense? He’s the puppeteer’s puppeteer. 

We reverse some things. Godzilla fights MG first, gets beat around but not as much as in GvK because he isn’t fresh out of a different fight. Kong returns to the surface through the tunnel Godzilla created, having carried the one remaining HEAV out himself, because Nathan Lind has never flown one before and doesn’t know how they work. Kong wants to protect Jia, and Ilene Andrews and Nathan Lind are very lucky that Jia likes them. 

Mechagodzilla sees Kong and takes off, and Kong decides now would be a great time to fight Godzilla, who’s having a pretty bad day. Monarch arrives, and half of them split off to follow MG while the rest stay to try and deescalate the situation. Other than Godzilla faring slightly less well, the fight goes mostly the same as in the movie, except for one big difference: one of the Monarch crafts pick up Jia and Co, and she’s able to get Kong’s attention from the back of an Osprey well enough to tell him to stop fighting. There’s a bigger threat out there, and Godzilla definitely needs to be okay enough to fight it. Either they work together, or they reschedule. 

She’s very stern about it, and though no one’s really sure what the two Titans decide on, they stop fighting. They leave together to go after Mechagodzilla, who is currently being slowed down by Mothra, because she deserves to be in this movie. The other Titans basically hinder Mechagodzilla as much as possible as it rampages, telling Godzilla where it is. Monarch finally figures out that it’s heading for the nearest entrance to the Hollow Earth, right around when they also figure out that Ghidorah is involved. With Dr. Andrews and Nathan Lind’s input, they theorize it intends to take more of the power source down there to further strengthen it. 

They do their best to clear the cities in its path, evacuating as many people as possible. It’s all they can do. As in the past, they must trust Godzilla to do the heavy lifting. Around the same time, an assistant tells Mark that some guy named Bernie called and is asking for him. This is how he finds out Maddie was taken to Apex’s Hong Kong location.

Meanwhile, the Apex guards and Maddie finally arrive to find the facility abandoned and damaged, MG gone, and Simmons dead. The guards more or less split, leaving her there alone. Maddie, being Maddie, goes deeper until she finally discovers Ghidorah’s skull and Ren Serizawa inside, trapped in his own head with Ghidorah. It’s killing him. 

He’s aware enough to have a conversation with her. They argue about the Titans. He wants Godzilla destroyed out of anger over his father’s preference for Titans, rather than his own son. 

(“You’re not the only one with ghosts!” she yells at him. “You’re not the only one who resents a parent for putting Titans ahead of you when you needed them!” He chokes out, “I do not resent my father—” “Coulda fooled me. Why else would you be spitting on his sacrifice like this? Who are you trying to help, huh? All the other kids out there who are losing their moms and dads because you let Ghidorah out? Sorry, mister, but the last time someone did that, your dad paid the price.”) 

Ren is getting worse. He’s going to die if he stays in the link much longer, but he can’t disconnect. Maddie, looking around, gets to work on something. The camera slowly pans around to show that there’s a second pilot seat, back-to-back with Ren’s. It would allow for seamless switching between pilots without MG ever not having someone at the controls. 

Even with the other Titans’ help, Godzilla and Kong are unable to stop MG from going through the tunnel and into the Hollow Earth. Monarch is unable to follow, because of the gravity issue. They’re both tired from the journey and their fight, especially Godzilla. This is their last chance. If Mechagodzilla reaches the power source, it’s all over. 

The fight doesn’t go in their favor. They’re both bad at working together, so their attacks are uncoordinated at best, actively hindering each other at worst. Kong gets flung off a mountain and MG pins Godzilla. Even thought he caught himself, Kong isn’t going to make it up in time to help him. 

Maddie puts on an identical pilot setup, and with Ren’s instructions, switches the link over to herself, freeing Ren. He collapses forward, immediately falling unconscious from the release of the strain. Fighting past the pain and overwhelming presence suddenly in her head, Maddie does what she does best: she causes Ghidorah problems. 

She screams, and it echoes like a roar through his skull. 

In the Hollow Earth, Mechagodzilla stumbles. 

It’s the beginning of the end. She can’t control it or even really stop Ghidorah, but she gets in his way as much as possible, giving Godzilla and Kong the edge they need to finally get their act together and use some teamwork to take Mechagodzilla down. They destroy it and return to the surface before parting on amicable terms. 

After too long, Mark arrives at Apex with a whole team of people. Ren Serizawa is found comatose but alive, and he’s quickly removed for medical attention. Though Maddie’s also alive, there’s something else clearly wrong. She’s still wired into the piloting gear, stiff and unseeing, as if she’s frozen. Her eyes are open but distant, pupils virtually gone from how constricted they are, and her jaw hangs open slightly. Despite how tense her body is, she’s limp. Nothing they do wakes her up, even after getting her out of the skull. 

They wheel her out on a gurney to where a handful of Ospreys landed, but as they leave the building and step out onto the roof, they find Godzilla has returned. He watches them, and he’s exactly as aware as Mark remembers. 

(“She tried to help you,” Mark calls out to him. No one knows exactly what happened in the Hollow Earth, during the fight, but the scene in Ghidorah’s skull was telling. “No, she—she did help you!” For the second time in her life, Maddie put herself in Ghidorah’s path and, ultimately, won. Only this time, her victory came with a price.) 

Godzilla snorts before leaning over the roof’s railing, moving toward the gurney. The humans all back away, even Mark, though he doesn’t go far. Spines humming, eyes flaring blue, Godzilla rumbles deeply. 

On the gurney, Maddie stirs. 

Later, much later, after Maddie and Jia have met—heaven help everyone else, honestly—they sit together on the edge of a pier over the ocean, Jia leaning comfortably against Maddie. It’s quiet. They’re alone, watching the sunset. A heavy footfall behind them, the feel of the vibration trembling through the wood, makes them turn around. Half concealed in the brush at the edge of the island’s foliage, Kong stands, facing them. 

They both wave before standing. They sign goodbye to each other, then part ways. As Maddie walks away to a waiting Osprey, we see behind her as Kong crouches to allow Jia to climb into his palm before vanishing into the forest. 

The Osprey takes off over the calm ocean. It has a different design than most, with a large door set in the side instead of at the back, more like an ordinary helicopter. It’s open as they go, Maddie secure inside as she stares out. A smile spreads across her face as jagged spines slowly breach the ocean’s surface, easily keeping pace with the Osprey, which lowers to be closer to the water.

For just a moment, in the fading light, Maddie’s eyes almost shine blue. The screen goes black to the sound of Godzilla’s roar.

[jessbakescakes]

J/D: things you said with too many miles between us

15) Things you said with too many miles between us from this post!

A present-day Josh/Donna fic for you!

July 2021

Josh stirs when his phone vibrates, and he orients himself to his surroundings. He’d fallen asleep on the couch at some point during the post-debate coverage after ensuring that the girls went to bed, and he was waiting on Donna’s phone call to debrief. Josh attempts to reach into his pack pocket to retrieve the vibrating phone. He manages to do so without stirring the dog, whose head is resting on Josh’s chest as she sleeps, letting out barely audible barks and huffs as an ndication that she’s dreaming.

“Hi,” Josh answers, his free hand moving to gently stroke the fur on top of Sadie’s head.

“Hi,” Donna parrots back.

The sound of her voice still makes him feel butterflies, even after twenty-three years of knowing her and almost fourteen years of marriage. He smiles to himself at the thought, taking another moment to realize exactly how lucky he is. “It’s quiet,” Josh notes. “Thought you’d all be celebrating.”

“We are. I just wanted to call you first so you could get to bed.”

“All the post-debate coverage is calling it a standout performance from Senator Sam Seaborn,” Josh notes. “I’m not surprised, but they sounded a little stunned, although I’m not sure why.”

Donna lets out a quiet laugh, and he has a clear vision in his mind of her leaning against a wall, smiling and looking down at the floor as she grins. “Sam did an incredible job. He was probably the most prepared out of all of them when it came to healthcare and social security. Foreign policy needed a little bit of work, but…”

“But he ran away with it,” Josh finishes. “Donna, you don’t have to be modest. I know what a big part you played in this.”

“Sam worked hard,” Donna insists.

“Of course he did,” Josh agrees, “but you worked just as hard, if not harder.”

“You’re right. I did. I think this is a turning point. It's still early, and we're narrowing down the Democratic playing field but... you know.”

Josh does know. He doesn't say anything further, so as not to tempt fate, as Toby would put it, but he absolutely understands what Donna's hinting at. Josh stretches and yawns, trying not to let on that he’s as tired as he is. “I let the girls stay up for the debate, but they’ve been in bed for the last hour or so.”

“I was going to ask you how they were, considering the only updates I’ve received in the last twenty-four hours were dog photos. I was beginning to wonder if you remembered we had daughters,” Donna teases.

“Well, our eldest is going through a Taylor Swift phase,” Josh starts.

“She knew the words to what was likely Taylor Swift’s entire discography before kindergarten, and you’re just now realizing this?”

“Songwriting,” Josh clarifies.

Donna lets out a half-laugh, half-groan. “Is it the kid from marching band again? Or… still? I don’t know which is the most accurate way to finish that sentence.”

“I think it would be 'again', but nope. Apparently, this is just your run-of-the-mill preteen self-expression stuff.” Josh shifts slightly as Sadie lets out a low growl in her sleep, kicking her front and back paws as though she’s dreaming of chasing something. “I think I heard the same chord progression on the guitar for about six hours straight today.”

“Excellent, looking forward to it,” Donna says.

“Nora spent her morning drafting a plan to convince me to get another dog,” Josh starts.

“Absolutely not,” Donna interjects before Josh can finish the sentence.

“I told her no!” Josh laughs in disbelief. “I do have some willpower, you know. Then she decided she wanted to start a dog walking business, because if she earned the money for the dog maybe it would sway me.”

“I’ve only been gone twenty-four hours, please tell me Leah hasn’t asked for a piercing or declared a college major,” Donna jokes.

Josh scratches Sadie behind the ear. “She asked me to take her to that little used bookstore so she could spend her birthday money.”

“How’d she fare?”

“She currently has two stacks of books in the corner of her room as she debates whether she wants to spend the rest of her money on another shelf or trade in some other books to make room,” Josh explains. “She also considered using the money for a custom Mets jersey with her name on it, but decided against it.”

“Too expensive?”

“No special characters,” Josh says. “She didn’t like the way Moss-Lyman looked without the hyphen.”

“I’d ask how Sadie is, but I think I know exactly how her day went thanks to your efforts,” Donna says.

“I’m but a humble servant of man’s best friend,” Josh jokes. He’s noticed something in Donna’s tone as the conversation has unfolded, the hesitant ‘we need to talk’ undercurrent of everything she says, so he decides to be the first to dive in. “What’s on your mind, Donna?”

Donna sighs. “So I was approached by Bryce Palmer from the DNC today. Apparently, there’s something brewing with Congressman Hanover and some allegations of impropriety.”

“Hanover? Like the Wisconsin fifth, Hanover?”

“The very same,” Donna confirms. “Problem is, they don’t have a viable Democrat for a special election should he resign. So they came to me to take my temperature on the whole thing.”

Josh can’t help but let the wheels in his brain start turning. The idea of Donna flipping a typically Republican district in Wisconsin sounds incredible. If anyone’s capable of it, it’s Donna. But he’s learned over the years to let Donna process before giving an opinion, so instead of rattling off all the possibilities, he simply listens.

“I told them I’m running Sam’s campaign right now,” Donna explains. “But they really want me to consider a run in the fifth next go-around. Or… you know, should there be a special election sometime between the general and the midterms.”

“You thinking about it?” Josh asks.

He hears Donna take a deep breath, then let out a long exhale. “A little? I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. Don’t start your ‘Donna, I’ve been setting this up for you for years’ speech,” she warns.

“Wasn’t gonna. Just listening.”

“I know you’d be at your laptop searching for properties in the Wisconsin fifth right now if Sadie weren’t asleep on you,” Donna says. “I can tell if you put me on speakerphone, you know.”

Josh sheepishly taps the speakerphone button, putting a temporary pause on his search that he had already started, just as Donna had predicted. “You’re not on speakerphone.”

There’s a pause for a moment, and Josh can sense her hesitation. “Flipping a district is a lot of work.”

“It is,” Josh agrees.

“I also don’t know if I’m ready to jump right into another campaign after this,” Donna continues. “It’s been a lot of time away from all of you. If I stay away too much longer, Caroline’s going to become a YouTube sensation whose material is almost entirely inspired by the absence of her mother. Nora’s going to be running an animal shelter out of the garage, and Leah will have either a Beauty and the Beast sized library or a podcast with her Grandpa Jed, it’s a toss-up.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Josh asks, holding back laughter.

“I’ve been away a lot,” Donna insists. “Things change while I'm away. I miss all of you.”

Josh smiles. “We miss you, too.” He has the instinct to tell her not to dismiss the idea out of hand, to give it some thought before she gives her answer. But despite her hesitation, Josh knows there’s a small part of Donna that’s considering it, and that’s enough for him. “Get back to the party. We’ll talk about it when you get home.”

They say their goodbyes and I love yous after confirming Donna’s flight details. Josh wakes the dog and heads up the stairs toward the bedroom, already plotting out the strategy for winning in the Wisconsin fifth.

Hypothetically, of course.

[utilitycaster]

Sure! Why is Taz Ethersea validating why a pre-calamity campaign would be a bad idea?

Okay first off I do want to thank you all! I think I probably would have eventually made a post, because opinions are stored in the Tumblr blog but I don't think I would have thought through it beyond the simplest answer of "actual play D&D is uniquely unsuited for a narrative with a foregone conclusion" but I think it goes beyond that and getting these questions led me to think about it much more.

Also: this post will be full of spoilers for prior TAZ and Critical Role campaigns.

That simple answer is still the right one. I'll admit I have many biases - I don't like stories where the ending is total failure, vs. something bittersweet and mixed; I am very picky about my cataclysm/apocalypse narratives; and I like to avoid spoilers and be surprised by endings. But in particular, one of the greatest elements of D&D actual play is that the long shot is possible. You can roll that 5% chance of becoming conscious instead of dying, or 15% chance of divine intervention, or what have you in a desperate situation. You still might fail, but there's a chance.

Which is one of the other great elements of D&D actual play is that the long shot failure is also possible; the 5% chance of dying sooner than expected or fumbling what should be an easy hit (or an enemy succeeding when they shouldn't).

A big part of why I'm struggling with TAZ Ethersea right now isn't actually the forgone conclusion. A big part is the mechanics, which just don't come off as terribly suited for an audio-only medium (even with the shared map, we don't get the images drawn in sync with the podcast which is what you'd need to really follow along properly). But it doesn't help that I know that when the Storm comes, they at least in some capacity make it. A lot of what appeals to me in the Quiet Year is the map-making and description of a small community and the idea of worldbuilding as the end-goal rather than a starting point, but a significant part of the premise is that the community has a year, but does not realize it. They know they have to prepare for winter, but they don't know that winter will be marked by the Frost Giants. And I don't begrudge the McElroys for using this for worldbuilding, for a number of in-game and out-of-game reasons, but the fact that they do know they have a year and that we as listeners know that obviously some kind of undersea society is able to be built after that year due to the premise of the main portion of the campaign has taken out most of the tension.*

We know how the Age of Arcanum ends. We don't know details, but we know what happens. We also know the Calamity is generations long (Halas being both a few generations after Aeor's destruction and also pre-divergence), and ends in the Divergence, and afterwards the world slowly rebuilds.

Any campaign therefore has a couple of options. Either it would have to be long before the Calamity to allow for some degree of freedom of choice in what the players are doing (which is generally not the vibe I'm getting from people interested in a pre-Calamity campaign), and also...I don't really get what that accomplishes that a new relatively unexplored location wouldn't. The other would be that it's either a campaign that never gets to any kind of significant catastrophe aversion goal (which...while I do not believe actual play casts are in any way obligated to cater to the fandom other than general sensitivity towards other people, stopping some kind of large-scale terrible event and/or big bad is a pretty central concept of the genre even when other elements of it are played with), or one that we know fails in that goal (or at least...only succeeds in saving about a third of all people) before it starts.

It's true that usually, we as viewers go into a D&D story expecting some measure of success (I could write a whole separate essay on why TPKs aren't great viewing for a long-running campaign) but CR in particular has made it clear that there is still a capacity for some amount of failure, or mixed success; there is still perma-death, or victory at great cost, or initial failure that has consequences that cannot be avoided even by later success. Something all actual play DM/GMs (and in many cases, regular old home game DM/GMs) have to do is walk that nearly invisible line where truly, success and failure are both options but total all-consuming failure is extremely difficult to achieve while still not making things seem too easy or unearned. A pre-calamity story puts that already monumental balancing act on Extremely Hard Mode because a large amount of failure as well as a small amount of success is inherently built in.

It also makes it much harder for stories like the one we had in C2 about Aeor, or for that matter, C1 about Vecna, to resonate in the same way, since both used the mystery of the pre-Calamity/Calamity eras to tell those stories. I love dramatic irony but there's a limit; there should be some mystery for the audience and players, not just the characters. If a creator puts a huge mysterious cataclysm in the past, there's a reason for that! Ethersea could have just been "it's an underwater society because it's fantasy" and that would have been perfectly fine, but it's not! That's a creative choice! The mystery of the Calamity is almost certainly by design!

In the end the thing that gets me about TAZ Ethersea is that I usually love the worldbuilding/character concept episodes of D&D shows that have them, and the Q&A/talkback episodes...but I'm learning that I want people to talk about those finished products in a big-picture way. I may be guessing here but I think people want pre-Calamity lore, but they would not actually enjoy a full, 100+ episode campaign of pre-Calamity happenings that is both hamstrung by forgone conclusions and may hamstring other stories that are to take place in the future. I think some comics, or a novel, or a small scope EXU mini-series, or like...a really long tweet thread from Matt about some pre-Calamity lore would actual satisfy that curiosity more effectively while also allowing them to preserve the important mysteries. Or, building from previous campaigns, having C3 exist a few decades after C2, where the consequences of the many archaeological expeditions and the return of the Aeormatons are becoming widespread, would similarly give us the ancient lore while still providing the open, unpredictable world actual play is uniquely suited for.

*just to make it clear: I'm complaining about the Ethersea setup epidosdes because I love complaining about things but if I actually found it wholly unenjoyable I would stop listening and skip ahead, completionism be damned. There are plenty of bright spots, mostly when they stop following the rules of the game and introduce specific character beats, and I am excited by the consequences, it's just...almost 5 hours long and still going.

[boredout305]

Kid Congo Powers Interview

Kid Congo Powers was a founding member of the Gun Club. He also played with The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers currently fronts Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds and recently completed a memoir, Some New Kind of Kick.

           The following interview focuses on Some New Kind of Kick. In the book Powers recounts growing up in La Puente—a working-class, largely Latino city in Los Angeles County—in the 1960s, as well as his familial, professional and personal relationships. He describes the LA glam-rock scene (Powers was a frequenter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco), the interim period between glam and punk embodied by the Capitol Records swap meet, as well as LA’s first-wave, late-1970s punk scene.

           Well written, edited and awash with amazing photos, Some New Kind of Kick will appeal to fans of underground music as well as those interested in 1960-1980s Los Angeles (think Claude Bessy and Mike Davis). The book will be available from In the Red Records, their first venture into book publishing, soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach   

Kid Congo with the Pink Monkey Birds.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick reminded me of the New York Night Train oral histories you had compiled about 15 years ago. Was that the genesis of your book?

Kid: That was the genesis. You pinpointed it. Those pieces were done with Jonathan Toubin. It was a very early podcast. Jonathan wanted to do an audio version of my story for his website, New York Night Train. We did that back in the early 2000s. After we had completed those I left New York and moved to Washington D.C. I thought, “I have the outline for a book here.” Jonathan had created a discography and a timeline. I figured, “It’ll be great and really easy. We’ll just fill in some of the blanks and it’ll be done.” Here we are 15 years later.

Ryan: It was well worth it. It reads well. And I love the photographs. The photo of you as a kid with Frankenstein is amazing.

Kid: I’m glad you liked it. You’re the first person not involved in it that I’ve spoken with.  

Ryan: As someone from Los Angeles I enjoyed reading about your father’s life and work as a union welder in the 1960s. My grandfather was a union truck driver and my father is a cabinetmaker. My dad’s cousins worked at the General Motors Van Nuys Assembly plant. In a way you captured an old industrial blue-collar working class that’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in Los Angeles. It reminded of Mike Davis’ writings on the subject.

Kid: I haven’t lived in LA for so long that I didn’t realize it doesn’t exist anymore. I felt the times. It was a reflection on my experiences and my family’s experiences. It was very working class. My dad was proud to be a union member. It served him very well. He and my mother were set up for the rest of their lives. I grew up with a sense that he earned an honest living. My parents always told me not to be embarrassed by what you did for work. People would ask me, “What’s your book about? What’s the thrust of it?” As I was writing it, I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll find out when it’s done.” What you mentioned was an aspect of that.

           When I started the book and all throughout the writing I had gone to different writers’ workshops. We’d review each other’s work. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know me, didn’t know about music—at least the music I make. I just wanted to see if there was a story there. People were relating to what I was writing, which gave me the confidence to keep going.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick is different from Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s autobiography, Go Tell the Mountain. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of Pierce’s work as I read yours. Was Go Tell the Mountain on your mind as you were writing?

Kid: When I was writing about Jeffrey—it was my version of the story. It was about my relationship with him. I wasn’t thinking about his autobiography much at all. His autobiography is very different than mine. Nevertheless, there are some similarities. But his book flew off into flights of prose and fantasy. I tried to stay away from the stories that were already out there. The thing that’s interesting about Jeffrey is that everyone has a completely different story to tell about him. Everyone’s relationship with him was different.

Ryan: It’s a spectrum that’s completely filled in.

Kid: Exactly. One of the most significant relationships I’ve had in my life was with Jeffrey. Meeting him changed my life. It was an enduring relationship. It was important for me to tell my story of Jeffrey.

Ryan: The early part of your book covers growing up in La Puente and having older sisters who caught the El Monte Legion Stadium scene—groups like Thee Midniters. You told me years ago that you and Jeffrey were thinking about those days during the writing and recording of Mother Juno (1987).

Kid: That’s definitely true. Growing up in that area is another thing Jeffrey and I bonded over. We were music hounds at a young age. We talked a lot about La Puente, El Monte and San Gabriel Valley’s culture. We were able to pinpoint sounds we heard growing up there—music playing out of cars and oldies mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and Santana. That was the sound of San Gabriel Valley. It wasn’t all lowrider music. We were drawn to that mix of things. I remember “Yellow Eyes” off Mother Juno was our tribute to the San Gabriel Valley sound.

Ryan: You describe the Capitol Records Swap Meet in Some New Kind of Kick. In the pre-punk/Back Door Man days that was an important meet-up spot whose significance remains underappreciated.

Kid: The Capitol Records Swap Meet was a once-a-month event and hangout. It was a congregation of record collectors and music fans. You’d see the same people there over and over again. It was a community. Somehow everyone who was a diehard music fan knew about it. You could find bootlegs there. It went from glam to more of a Back Door Man-influenced vibe which was the harder-edged Detroit stuff—The Stooges and the MC5. You went there looking for oddities and rare records. I was barely a record collector back then. It’s where I discovered a lot of music. You had to be a pretty dedicated music fan to get up at 6 AM to go there, especially if you were a teenager.

Ryan: I enjoyed reading about your experiences as a young gay man in the 1970s. You’d frequent Rodney’s English Disco; I didn’t know you were so close to The Screamers. While not downplaying the prejudices gay men faced in the 1970s, it seemed fortuitous that these places and people existed for you in that post-Stonewall period.

Kid: Yeah. I was obviously drawn to The Screamers for a variety of reasons. It was a funny time. People didn’t really discuss being gay. People knew we were gay. I knew you were gay; you knew I was gay. But the fact that we never openly discussed it was very strange. Part of that was protection. It also had to do with the punk ethos of labels being taboo. I don’t think that The Screamers were very politicized back then and neither was I. We were just going wild. I was super young and still discovering things. I had that glam-rock door to go through. It was much more of a fantasy world than anything based in reality. But it allowed queerness. It struck a chord with me and it was a tribe. However, I did discover later on that glam rock was more of a pose than a sexual revolution.

           With some people in the punk scene like The Screamers and Gorilla Rose—they came from a background in drag and cabaret. I didn’t even know that when I met them. I found it out later on. They were already very experienced. They had an amazing camp aesthetic. I learned a lot about films and music through them. They were so advanced. It was all very serendipitous. I think my whole life has been serendipitous, floating from one thing to another.  

Ryan: You were in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. “Here’s another historical event. I’m sure Kid Congo is on the scene.”

Kid: I know! The FBI must have a dossier on me. I was in New York on 9/11 too.

Ryan: A person who appears frequently in your book is your cousin Theresa who was tragically murdered. I take it her death remains a cold case.

Kid: Cold case. Her death changed my entire life. It was all very innocent before she died. That stopped everything. It was a real source of trauma. All progress up until that point went on hold until I got jolted out of it. I eventually decided to experience everything I could because life is short. That trauma fueled a lot of bad things, a lot of self-destructive impulses. It was my main demon that chased me throughout my early adult life. It was good to write about it. It’s still there and that’s probably because her murder remains unsolved. I have no resolution with it. I was hoping the book would give me some closure. We’ll see if it does.

Ryan: Theresa was an important person in your life that you wanted people to know about. You champion her.

Kid: I wanted to pay tribute to her. She changed my life. I had her confidence. I was at a crossroads at that point in my life, dealing with my sexuality. I wanted people to know about Theresa beyond my family. My editor Chris Campion really pulled that one out of me. It was a story that I told, but he said, “There’s so much more to this.” I replied, “No! Don’t make me do it.” I had a lot of stories, but it was great having Chris there to pull them together to create one big story. My original concept for the book was a coming-of-age story. Although it still is, I was originally going to stop before I even joined the Gun Club (in 1979). It was probably because I didn’t want to look at some of the things that happened afterwards. It was very good for my music. Every time I got uncomfortable, I’d go, “Oh, I’ve got to make a record and go on tour for a year and not think about this.” A lot of it was too scary to even think about. But the more I did it, the less scary it became and the more a story emerged. I had a very different book in mind than the one I completed. I’m glad I was pushed in that direction and that I was willing to be pushed. I wanted to tell these stories, but it was difficult.

Ryan: Of course, there are lighter parts in your book. There are wonderful, infamous characters like Bradly Field who make appearances.

Kid: Bradly Field was also a queer punker. He was the partner of Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps. I met Kristian in Los Angeles. We all knew Lance Loud of The Mumps because he had starred in An American Life (1973) which was the first reality TV show. It aired on PBS. I was a fan of The Mumps. Bradly came out to LA with Kristian for an elongated stay during a Mumps recording session. Of course, Bradly and I hit it off when we met. Bradly was a drummer—he played a single drum and a cracked symbol—in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Bradly was a real character. He was kind of a Peter Lorre, misanthropic miscreant. Bradly was charming while abrasively horrible at the same time. We were friends and I always remained on Bradly’s good side so there was never a problem.

           Bradly had invited me and some punkers to New York. He said that if we ever made it out there that we could stay with him. He probably had no idea we’d show up a month later. Bradly Field was an important person for me to know—an unashamedly gay, crazy person. He was a madman. I had very little interest in living a typical life. That includes a typical gay life. Bradly was just a great gay artist I met in New York when I was super young. He was also the tour manager of The Cramps at one point. You can imagine what that was like. Out of Lux and Ivy’s perverse nature they unleashed him on people.

Ryan: He was the right guy to have in your corner if the club didn’t pay you.  

Kid: Exactly. Who was going to say “no” to Bradly?

Ryan: You mention an early Gun Club track called “Body and Soul” that I’m unfamiliar with. I know you have a rehearsal tape of the original Creeping Ritual/Gun Club lineup (Kid Congo Powers, Don Snowden, Brad Dunning and Jeffrey Lee Pierce). Are any of these unreleased tracks on that tape?

Kid: No. Although I do have tapes, there’s no Creeping Ritual material on them. I spoke with Brad (Dunning) and he has tapes too. We both agreed that they’re unlistenable. They’re so terrible. Nevertheless, I’m going to have them digitized and I’ll take another listen to them. “Body and Soul” is an early Creeping Ritual song. At the time we thought, “Oh, this sounds like a Mink DeVille song.” At least in our minds it did. To the best of my ability I did record an approximation of “Body and Soul” on the Congo Norvell record Abnormals Anonymous (1997). I sort of reimagined it. That song was the beginning of things for me with Jeffrey. It wasn’t a clear path when we started The Gun Club. We didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to be a blues-mixed-with-punk band.” It was a lot of toying around. It had to do with finding a style. Jeffrey had a lot of ideas. We also had musical limitations to consider. We were trying to turn it into something cohesive. There was a lot of reggae influence at the beginning. Jeffrey was a visionary who wanted to make the Gun Club work. Of course, to us he was a really advanced musician. We thought (bassist) Don Snowden was the greatest too. What’s funny is that I saw Don in Valencia, Spain, where he lives now. He came to one of our (Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds) shows a few years ago. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know how to play!”

Ryan: “I knew scales.”

Kid: Exactly. It was all perception. But we were ambitious and tenacious. We were certain we could make something really good out of what we had. That was it. We knew we had good taste in music. That was enough for us to continue on.

Ryan: I knew about The Cramps’ struggles with IRS Records and Miles Copeland. However, it took on a new meaning reading your book. Joining The Cramps started with a real high for you, recording Psychedelic Jungle (1981), and then stagnation occurred due to contractual conflicts.

Kid: There was excitement, success and activity for about a year or two. And then absolutely nothing. As I discuss in my book—and you can ask anyone who was in The Cramps—communication was not a big priority for Lux and Ivy. I was left to my own devices for a while. We were building, building, building and then it stopped. I wasn’t privy to what was going on. I knew they were depressed about it. The mood shifted. It was great recording Psychedelic Jungle and touring the world. The crowds were great everywhere we went. It was at that point that I started getting heavy into drugs. The time off left me with a lot of time to get into trouble. It was my first taste of any kind of success or notoriety. I’m not embarrassed to say that I fell into that trip: “Oh, you know who I am and I have all these musician friends now.” It was the gilded ‘80s. Things were quite decadent then. There was a lot of hard drug use. It wasn’t highly frowned upon to abuse those types of drugs in our circle. What was the reputation of The Gun Club? The drunkest, drug-addled band around. So there was a lot of support to go in that direction. Who knew it was going to go so downhill? We weren’t paying attention to consequences. Consequences be damned. So the drugs sapped a lot of energy out of it too.

           I recorded the one studio album (Psychedelic Jungle) with The Cramps and a live album (Smell of Female). The live record was good and fun, but it was a means to an end. It was recorded to get out of a contract. The Cramps were always going to do it their way. Lux and Ivy weren’t going to follow anyone’s rules. I don’t know why people expected them to. To this day, I wonder why people want more. I mean, they gave you everything. People ask me, “When is Ivy going to play again?” I tell them, “She’s done enough. She paid her dues. The music was great.”

Ryan: I think after 30-something years of touring, she’s earned her union card.

Kid: Exactly. She’s done her union work.

Ryan: In your book you discuss West Berlin in the late 1980s. That was a strange period of extreme highs and lows. During that time you were playing with the Bad Seeds, working with people like Wim Wenders (in Wings of Desire) and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the GDR. Nevertheless, it was a very dark period marred by substance abuse. Luckily, you came out of it unscathed. As you recount, some people didn’t.

Kid: It was a period of extremes. In my mind, for years, I rewrote that scene. I would say, “Berlin was great”—and it was, that part was true—and then I’d read interviews with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and they’d say, “Oh, the Tender Prey (1988) period was just the worst. It’s hard to even talk about it.” And I was like, “It was great! What are you talking about?” Then when I started writing about it, I was like, “Oh, fuck! It really wasn’t the best time.” I had been so focused on the good things and not the bad things. Prior to writing my book, I really hadn’t thought about how incredibly dark it was. That was a good thing for me to work out. Some very bad things happened to people around me. But while that was happening, it was a real peak for me as a musician. Some of the greatest work I was involved with was being done then. And yet I still chose to self-destruct. It was a case of right place, right time. But it was not necessarily what I thought it was.  

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, when we would chat years back I would ask you where you were at with this project. You seemed to be warming up to it as time went on. And I finally found a copy of the group’s album in Sydney, Australia, a year ago. I’m talking about Fur Bible (1985).

Kid: Oh, you got it?

Ryan: I did.

Kid: In Australia?

Ryan: Yes. It was part of my carry-on luggage.

Kid: I’m sure I can pinpoint the person who sold it to you.

Ryan: Are you coming around to that material now? I like the record.

Kid: Oh, yeah. I hated it for so long. People would say to me, “Oh, the Fur Bible record is great.” I’d respond, “No. It can’t possibly be great. I’m not going to listen to it again, so don’t even try me.” Eventually, I did listen to it and I thought, “Oh, this is pretty good.” I came around to it. I like it.

Ryan: You’ve made the transition!

Kid: I feel warmly about it. I like all of the people involved with it. That was kind of a bad time too. It was that post-Gun Club period. I felt like I had tried something unsuccessful with Fur Bible. I had a little bit of shame about that. Everything else I had been involved with had been successful, in my eyes. People liked everything else and people didn’t really like Fur Bible. It was a sleeper.

Ryan: It is.  

Kid: There’s nothing wrong with it. It was the first time I had put my voice on a record and it just irritated the hell out of me. It was a first step for me.

Ryan: You close your book with a heartfelt tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. You wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you not met Jeffrey outside of that Pere Ubu show in 1979. Excluding family, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s had that sort of impact on my life.

Kid: As I was getting near the end of the book I was trying to figure out what it was about. A lot of it was about Jeffrey. Everything that moved me into becoming a musician and the life I lived after that was because of him. It was all because he said, “Here’s a guitar. You’re going to learn how to play it.” He had that confidence that I could do it. It was a mentorship. He would say, “You’re going to do this and you’re going to be great at it.” I was like, “Okay.” Jeffrey was the closest thing I had to a brother. We could have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was our bond. Writing it down made it all clearer to me. His death sent me into a tailspin. I was entering the unknown. Jeffrey was like a cord that I had been hanging onto for so long and it was gone. I was more interested in writing about my relationship with him than about the music of the Gun Club. A lot of people loved Jeffrey. But there were others who said they loved him with disclaimers. I wanted to write something about Jeffrey without the disclaimers. That seemed like an important task—to honor him in a truthful manner.

Ryan: I’m glad that you did that. Jeffrey has his detractors, but they all seem to say something along the lines of “the guy still had the most indefatigable spirit and drive of any person I’ve ever known.”

Kid: That’s what drove everyone crazy!

Ryan: This book took you 15 years to finish. Completing it has to feel cathartic.  

Kid: I don’t know. Maybe it will when I see the printed book. When I was living in New York there was no time for reflection. I started it after I left New York, but it was at such a slow pace. It was done piecemeal. I wanted to give up at times. I had a lot of self-doubt. And like I said, I’d just go on tour for a year and take a long break. The pandemic made me finally put it to bed. I couldn’t jump up and go away on tour anymore. It feels great to have it done. When I read it through after the final edit I was actually shocked. I was moved by it. It was a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a different feeling than what you get with music. Looking at it as one story has been an eye-opener for me. I thought to myself, “How did I do all of that?”

           I see the book as the story of a music fan. I think most musicians start out as fans. Why would you do it otherwise? I never stopped being a fan. All of the opportunities that came my way were because I was a fan.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Michelle Kiefer

Michelle has 55 stories at Gossamer. If you haven’t read them, what are you waiting for?! She has great takes on Mulder and Scully. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including Christmas in California, Making Other Plans, and Six Inch Valley. Big thanks to Michelle for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I’m not sure anyone is still reading my stories.  I haven’t migrated my X-Files ones to AO3. I don’t think Gossamer provides any viewing statistics. I’d be very happy to hear that people still like my work.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

My X-Files fandom experience was amazing.  I remember that sense of excitement and immediacy.  It was thrilling to write stories (and read those of other authors, of course) in an active fandom for a show that was on the air.  It was truly my first experience in an online world--a parallel world to my real life existence.  I learned how to keep a foot in each world.  As I recall, it was very hard to keep my focus in my “meat” world, when the online one was so fast moving and thrilling.  But I did get some balance in my life as time went on.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Message boards and mailing lists were my experience.  They were primitive compared to the pretty screens now.  I forged some amazing friendships, some of them with people I discovered lived relatively near me.  All I wanted to do was discuss episodes and fic.  The flame wars were a little intimidating, but also amusing if you didn’t get swept up.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I was very passionate about the fandom--as I said, there were times when my online life seemed to overpower my real life experiences.  I learned to manage that, and think I’m all the better for that.  And I found some amazing friendships that are active and thriving today.  I learned a lot about writing with XF fanfic.  The level of quality was stunning.  A decent percentage of fic were as good or better than traditional published fiction.  But there were so many writers!  I wanted to make an impact on the fanfiction world, but that meant taking my writing very seriously and learning to develop a story, pace that story, make it compelling and believable.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had a couple of coworkers that talked about the show all the time.  I was curious, so I watched an episode.  I believe it was the cannibal town one.  I thought David Duchovny was odd looking and wasn’t terribly impressed.  But I tried another episode - Wetwired, which blew me away with the morgue scene when Mulder thinks he’s going to identify Scully’s body.  Ah...I thought, now, I see what everyone is talking about!  And from then I was hooked.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As I watched, I wanted more.  I was fairly new to the internet (frankly, the internet was new to almost everyone)  I found episode reviews, and some of them were fantastic.  Some mentioned fanfiction.  I was unaware of such a thing, though to be honest, since childhood, I’d been spinning stories in my head about characters on TV shows.  I found some fanfic. The first couple of stories were not great (at least one was horrible) but then I found some that were very good.  Probably a bit soap-operaish, but still readable.  And then I became voracious as I plowed through the mass of stories looking for the good stuff.  And boy was there good stuff.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I’m not estranged from it, but I don’t spend much time with it after all these years.  I’ve found fanfic in some other shows that I like and only occasionally read old XF stories.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I’ve not been as involved with any other fandoms, i.e. following commentary on the show.  I tend to dive into TV shows well after their heyday, so I’m always late to the party. I do read fanfic from other shows, and have actually written fanfic for other shows, but I need a really good idea to write.  None of the other fandoms for my other shows are as busy and active as XF, even ones currently in production.  And none of them have as much fanfic and certainly not the level of brilliance that we had in XF.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to go for interesting partnerships, very much in the XF fashion.  And a flawed hero is always a plus!  The partnerships don’t necessarily have to be romantic---in fact I find I prefer those that are not.  Really, Mulder and Scully were the only ones I felt deeply as a pairing, probably due to the chemistry between the actors. But the partnerships have to be well-balanced and realistic.  I loved the characters on Sleepy Hollow.  The two main characters were very much in the mold of Mulder/Scully.

My newest passion is British detective shows and I’ve completely fallen for the “Morse-verse” shows, Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis and Endeavour.  Less of an XF feel, but compelling characters with interesting backstories.  Other favorite partnerships in the British detective genre are on Inspector Lynley and Broadchurch.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

A bit less now, though I’m still involved with a wonderful group of ladies who love the X-Files.  When we get together for a yearly weekend, we binge episodes and eat impressive amounts of junk food.  XF isn’t on network TV these days, but if it was, I’d probably watch it.

A couple of years ago, I listened to Kumail Nanjiani’s XF podcast on my long commute.  I loved the commentary and interviews so much that I did watch some old episodes.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don’t read much XF fic.  I’m currently reading in some other fandoms, but it’s harder to find good stories--the ones I follow aren’t very active these days and the quality just isn’t what XF was.  We were so lucky.  We had maybe 20 incredible top authors at any one time, then maybe another tier of 50 to 100  good to maybe great writers.  And with new episodes, there was so much inspiration. We were so spoiled.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Everything from Syntax6, MaybeAmanda, Kel.  A special story for me was “Strangers and the Strange Dead” by Kipler because I remember reading that very early in the morning in my unheated basement in the winter because that was the only time I could use our single computer without others in the family complaining.  I remember actually gasping at the big reveal in the story.  I can even remember the story’s opening line!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I was just learning how to write fiction when I was involved in XF, so I’m not sure my best work is there, though the bulk of my stories are there.  I liked some of the work I did with others.  I wrote Bone of Contention and Out of the Everywhere with Kel and I think that those stories got the best aspects of both of our styles.  For stories I wrote myself, I think they’re not bad, but they are rather short and it’s always easier to maintain a theme and style for a short story.  I liked Black Cherry Velvet.  I’m writing some Inspector Lewis stories that I think are pretty good--they benefit from the years of experience that I was gaining through XF.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Never say never, but I probably won’t write more XF.  I used to burn with it, but I think that got burned out a bit.  Still, I have such wonderful memories of the whole period.  It might be worth looking at again.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

As I mentioned, I am currently playing in the Inspector Lewis world.  It’s sad--it’s a very small and not terribly active fandom.  Sad that my best work is in an inactive fandom where I’m lucky if 20 or 30 people are reading them.  It doesn’t help that I don’t write the most popular pairing.  

But I’m really enjoying it.  I occasionally write for Man From Uncle, which really shows my age, as that was a childhood obsession.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

With XF, it was always a take on an episode--did I get a tiny idea that I wanted to develop, or was I not thrilled with the way something went on the show.  Now,  it’s usually a “what if” kind of thing where I get inspired by a possible event and explore how that would play out, i.e.  “What if this character had a one night stand resulting in an unplanned pregnancy?”  What would happen?  How would he handle the consequences of this?  How would it change his life?

What's the story behind your pen name?

It’s literally my own name.  I SOOOO wish I’d used a pen name.  But I was naive and fandom was so new to me that it never occurred to me that a pen name would be better.  I always told myself that my real name sounded like something made up, like a TV newscaster name, and I hoped people assumed it was a pen name.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My husband and my kids were the only ones who knew about it for many years. Then I went to a fandom/fic gathering for three days and had to explain to a few other family members and my work mates why I was going to Chicago on my own. It’s still mostly a need to know thing and they don’t really need to know.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’m on AO3 as msk.  And everything I wrote for XF is on Gossamer.

(Posted by Lilydale on February 2, 2021)

[firstagent]

Recap! Digimon Adventure: (2020): Ending

In this episode, we wrap up a reboot with so much style and so little substance, then talk about the future because, unlike the Adventure: children, we are mortal beings. As doing so during a currently running series defeated the intention of allowing us a breather, we’ve been slacking off on the catch-up posts that used to happen around every ending change. There wasn’t much to say anyway. By the time the second ending theme ran its course, we’d sniffed out the fatal flaws of the Adventure reboot. A lack of quality wasn’t the issue. Digimon has had plenty of subpar material over the course of twenty-plus years. You can even argue there’s plenty of quality in Adventure:, just invested in places we’re not used to in Digimon, ones that don’t add much besides another shiny, empty thing to gaze at for a few seconds. But as we gaze one more time, we realize the real killer was the lack of anything compelling to think about. Which is a real problem since that’s primarily what we do here. Back in episode four, even as we were enjoying the hell out of Action Girl Sora’s rebirth, her instant rapport with Piyomon stood in such stark contrast with original Sora’s early reticence that we wondered where the angst was going to come from. It was the first clue that the mother issues that defined her character twenty years ago would be scrubbed and abandoned, leaving… well, Action Girl Sora and nothing else of consequence. Other signs, like the way too early debut of Omegamon and the minimal development involved with the first couple rounds of evolution foretold a show that was going to be light on the one thing Digimon Adventure excelled at: endearing characters working through genuine problems making them seem like real people. The longer the series went, the more that concept felt abandoned, and the harder it was to root for these cardboard cutouts of the Adventure kids. The result is a series chock full of exciting action sequences, a serviceable enough plot, and not a lot of thought behind it. It spends most of the first half as an intense, relentless, exhausting escalation of battles… then takes its foot off the gas in the second half to meander its way through two arcs where nothing of consequence happens outside the climactic fights. You’re likely to get smoother pacing watching every episode on shuffle. Worse, within these two extremes is a shocking dearth of meaningful message to discuss. Digimon isn’t worth all this blog space because it stands above other shows like it, but rather because its depths give us so much to talk about regarding childhood, technology, relationships, evil, loss… nothing of the sort gets any thought here. A few interesting concepts sneak in through Patamon, Tailmon, and even Negamon towards the end, but nothing explored to its full potential. We’re left with precious little to sift through except pondering how empty the series feels compared to everything else Digimon has offered us. The next series, Digimon Ghost Game, already shows signs of promise. In just their introductory bios, the three leads offer up more character, family background, and flaws than the entire Adventure: octet gave us in sixty-seven episodes. Given the ratings the reboot pulled, it was easy to fear that the future of Digimon would be the same hollow action fests. So far Ghost Game appears to be resisting the temptation, and deserves discussion. Unfortunately, for several reasons, it won’t be here. The window between Saturday night episodes and Monday morning posts is becoming too much of a burden, especially with a five year old that actually likes to do things on weekends. I’ll still post my thoughts on Twitter and maybe even quick reactions on Tumblr the way I did for Appmon’s initial run. Like Appmon, I may even come back for full retrospective Ghost Game posts. The blog was always meant to be retrospective after all. So for now, we close up shop after a hell of a ten years. Our mission of writing something for the six seasons of Digimon kept getting extended as the franchise reinvigorated itself and kept on going, a testament to the endearing nature of the show that made us write about it in the first place. Thanks to everyone who helped out through Patreon, Ko-Fi, or Amazon, or even for leaving a comment, especially in the early days when Digimon was still on the verge of regaining its momentum. You can still catch me on Twitter and Tumblr, along with the With the Will podcast (I’ll also be discussing the final episode on Podigious in a few days!). And Nexusworld is all finished now so you have two novel-length adventures of multi-season madness! Twitter will be the best place to catch news of any future endeavors, whether Digimon or not. Until then, enjoy Ghost Game! Digimon Adventure: Ending 5: Dreamers Figure I slack off on talking about the ending themes in the season with the best ones (that third one is so cute!). This one’s a little generic, but it’s boppy and fits Digimon so well. The endings are nice in that they’re a little less Taichi-centric than the opening or the show itself, and only the first one tries to elevate a character the series doesn’t justify elevating. Dreamers is one those songs that makes me realize I should listen to K-Pop more.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore!

[genderbinaryisforlosers]

everyone on the carte blanche for the ask meme

everyone? oh boy this is gonna get long ajfhdsf

JUNO

First impression: i, like a lot of people who get into the podcast without knowing a great deal about it, was expecting at most an ambiguously bisexual angst machine with a closely-guarded heart of gold. juno being an explicitly bisexual genderqueer angst machine is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of my life. the angst machine heart of gold characters were kind of my type at the time, so i loved him right away

Impression now: every time i think about juno’s arc from depressed mess held together by bad coping mechanisms, safety pins, and a few good strong puns into someone who can talk about his feelings, feel comfortable about being happy, and recognise when he needs to change, i want to cry about it a little bit. the depth of my love for juno steel has only grown along with him

Favourite moment: juno has a lot of great one-liners and i’m still a big fan of the “on the other hand i wasn’t wearing a watch” bit and who can forget such classics as juno finally deciding to stop moping over nureyev and move on only for him to open the door to his apartment and find nureyev sitting in the dark dramatically, but honestly nothing will ever hit me harder than his sudden, pissed-off declaration of “i can’t die yet, i still have shit to do!” in promised land. god.

Idea for a story: oh i have so many and i want to write most of them so no spoilers, but juno accidentally kidnaps a baby during a carte blanche heist and shenanigans ensue

Unpopular opinion: obviously we all know he’s dummy thicc but i feel like a lot of people forget he’s an actual genius, like the stuff he notices and how he strings it together is sometimes so obscure and he’s almost always right. oh, also juno is not skinny and i will not be taking criticism on that

Favourite relationship: this is so tough because every dynamic is so good, but i think it has to be juno and rita. those two are so good! the best best friends in the world!! i’m really a sucker for any dynamic that’s ridiculously in-sync so i loved these two as soon as juno saw rita’s notes in prince of mars and went “makes perfect sense to me” (which it probably didn’t, because rita, but he trusted that she knew what she was doing which is the important part)

Favourite headcanon: this isn’t really a headcanon but i still think about how juno is (was?) deathly afraid of heights but when he heard rex glass coming he still attempted to climb out of the window. either his aversion to working with dark matters/other people in general was so strong is overrided his fear, or his office was actually on the ground floor. not sure which of these is funnier.

NUREYEV

First impression: we’ve all seen the memes about nureyev knowing juno steel for one (1) day and deciding to Risk It All by leaving him with his name, look at this Hopeless Romantic, this utter DISASTER of a homosexual. the fact the very next time we hear from nureyev (at least directly) he’s patiently waiting in juno’s dark apartment to surprise him with a heist definitely supports this image.

Impression now: even after literally being inside peter’s head, i feel like we didn’t get a real sense of who he is until man in glass, where we find out he aggressively compartmentalises everything that causes him stress. he’s also distinctly someone who’s had his heart broken before, i think, which makes those first appearances of his very strange. but it does remind me of what juno says about diamond, and how he decided to provide the trust first and wait for the trustworthiness to grow in (only to get severely hurt), and i think that’s exactly what nureyev did. i am also... very uneasy with how suspicious he’s behaving this season because obviously i want to believe he’ll sort it all out and not betray the crew but... oof

Favourite moment: the beginning of what lies beyond pt1 where he’s affectionately bullying juno into taking care of himself? cleared my crops watered my skin etc etc etc

Idea for a story: i’d love to hear more about his past as a young thief idolising buddy and vespa (i can’t actually remember if that’s canon or fanon but anyway i wanna read it!)

Unpopular opinion: i think people often cling to an image of him that more resembles his first impressions in season 1 instead of seeing the depth that we’ve been given about his character in season 3

Favourite relationship: him and juno but honestly it’s a close call between them and his budding friendship with rita. even though she learned it by accident, his name is still a point of intimacy and it’s one less secret to keep around her which has to be a weight off his shoulders, at least a little? they seem like they could be really good friends once ultrabots is out of the way. juno steel love (and also bullying) zone activates whenever they’re together

Favourite headcanon: i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again - nureyev has never done a household chore in his goddamn life. he doesn’t know the water needs to be hot when you wash dishes.

RITA

First impression: honestly i’m not sure? i don’t remember having a big awareness of her in murderous mask but i remember loving her “note-taking” in prince of mars, i thought she sounded really fun and cute

Impression now: rita is really fun and cute, she’s also an extremely hardworking and dedicated woman who had the guts to throw in with a detective fired from the force and then invest all of her time and money into helping him help people.

Favourite moment: Rita Gets A Knife. enough said

Idea for a story: i don’t know honestly! i really struggle to write rita because her thought processes are so wild and i don’t think any story i could come up with would match mega ultrabots of cyberjustice.

Unpopular opinion: this shouldn’t be unpopular because juno steel himself shares this opinion but all future-jupeter headcanons are incomplete without rita also being a huge part of their lives

Favourite relationship: rita + franny 4ever obviously.. jk it’s juno & rita have you heard rita minute 3 they’re too adorable for this world. im still Soft over their conversation at the end of soul of the people when he said he couldn’t stay in hyperion anymore but he wouldn’t leave with the carte blanche if rita wasn’t coming because he was done leaving her behind, and she threw out all her hesitations on the spot and said call the big guy. speaking of, rita & jet are a close second. instant best friends i love them.

Favourite headcanon: i think this is basically canon now but rita being literally half the height of jet is so good

JET

First impression: “haha lorge funny man puts juno in the trash”

Impression now: jet sikuliaq is one of the dearest characters to me out of anything ever. he is a huge, menacing, polite, kind, sincere man who i would very much like to give me a hug. he’s the best aro ace in outer space and while being generally very levelheaded and straightforward, also takes every opportunity to fuck with juno because it’s very easy and very hilarious to him personally. he is everything my autistic acearo ass needed and i’m so glad to have him

Favourite moment: all of them every single one. him putting juno in the trash is of course a classic and every moment jet chooses to be funny makes my heart happy, but also every piece of genuine advice he gives. i’m a particular fan though of buddy recounting her years in the lighthouse and him saying he became concerned when she didn’t come downstairs at the usual time. “you took the door off its hinges.” “i was deeply concerned.” king of understatement

Idea for a story: again no spoilers for you but..... tools of rust time loop au

Unpopular opinion: this isn’t “unpopular” as much as it is unknown but jet is buddy’s queerplatonic partner and i will keep saying it until everyone believes it

Favourite relationship: jet and buddy,,, just everything about them. the way he suspects when she’s lying, the way she makes tea for him when she expects him to drop by. the fact he comes to check on her when she is 41 seconds late to the family meeting because it’s unlike her to be late and the last time she was late for something her brain was turning to radiation soup. but most especially the way she snaps at him to stay out of her business and he said he could not because he made her promise eight years ago to never stay out of the business of her health, no matter how many times she asked. they r literally in a qpr

Favourite headcanon: i don’t think this is true but i still think it would be funny if the ruby-7 used to be painted red but when jet got it he had it painted green because he Just Really Likes Green (as evidenced by his hovercycle). it’s very funny to me.

BUDDY

First impression: it’s been a minute since i relistened to time gone by but i’m pretty sure the first thing she ever says in the podcast is sliding up to depressed accidental whiskey thief juno and say “that’ll be ten million creds,” scaring the shit out of him, so needless to say i was in love instantly.

Impression now: my love for buddy aurinko has only grown and if it sounds like i already said that in this post it’s because i did about juno and it’s appropriate because the parallels are astounding. the heart of it all gave us such depth to buddy’s internal monologue and why she always sounds like she knows exactly what to say and what that’s like and honestly will i ever be over the heart of it all as an episode? unlikely. i think i’m gonna have a little piece of it in MY heart forever.

Favourite moment: everything she’s ever said is iconic as hell i especially like “in an impressive fit of hubris i’ve decided not to prepare my words for this vow” which made me laugh out loud but once again i must give it up for her iconic “I WANT TO LIVE” moment. honourable mentions to her taking rita out for ice cream and giving juno shooting lessons while she’s in her actual wedding gown. i love her

Idea for a story: buddy and vespa as sun/moon dieties.... that’s all

Unpopular opinion: stop drawing her with a fancy high-tech eye like the theia!! it canonically looks like garbage and it’s described in detail, please, i’m dying, also don’t minimise her scars you bastards

Favourite relationship: buddy and vespa invented romantic love and the entire carte blanche crew’s relationship to her is great but you know by now i’m a slut for buddy & jet out-of-this-world queerplatonic partners. the way she checks in on him during tools of rust to make sure he’s not relapsing and he comes to find her when she is 41 seconds late in the heart of it all to make sure she’s not having a heart problem!! it’s the trust,, the devotion,, the mortifying ordeal of being known

Favourite headcanon: she can sing. absolutely tears it up at karaoke. i’m right

VESPA

First impression: knife lesbian goes STAB. she will heal your wounds but she will be threatening to give you more the whole time

Impression now: she is extremely strong, heart-rendingly tender, and despite being in the older half of the carte blanche crew somehow has unmistakable little sister energy which makes her downright hilarious. i’m so glad she got to marry buddy and they’re official space wives now they’re so good for each other

Favourite moment: both from shadows in the ship, either “GUN!!” “KNIFE?!” (iconic) or when she clocks the dark matters drone pretending to be juno because it called her crazy and juno wouldn’t call her crazy. i’m always a sucker for “shapeshifter fails to fool mark because they Know Each Other Too Well” and it was just *chefs kiss* so good

Idea for a story: i really want to write something about when she was first staying at the lighthouse with buddy post-reunion, and getting to know jet and stuff. i think it would be cute

Unpopular opinion: i know vespa doesn’t canonically have lots of scarring but people who don’t draw her with scarring? cowards.

Favourite relationship: once again, although buddy and vespa invented romantic love, i just love the dynamic between vespa and juno so much. they’ve come so far with each other and their weird sibling dynamic gives me life. at the end of what lies beyond when juno says “we’re not gonna kill her, vespa” and instead of sounding full of Rage and Suspicion she’s like “whyyy notttt?” and he’s like “because i said so!” and that’s just good enough for her even if she’s a bit grumpy about it. i love it.

this took.. a hot minute to do! jshkfjsdgsa thank you dyl ily <3

[adultingautistic]

9/6 i have a friend that likes to send me podcasts about history of their country but before and after sending them to me they tell me about that part of history very detailed over text but expect me to listen to the podcast and when i play it i cant understand the words, like i can hear the people talk and they are talking in my native language (just different accent) but i can’t get my brain to connect everything and so i get frustrated and start looking st different things and it makes me (1)

(podcast ask) (2) pay less attention so i get to understand less words but i can’t help it, and i don’t know how to tell my friend that even if i try i cant get to listen to them, i have been interested in so many podcasts but i never listen to any because my brain doesnt process the information/words. But I can watch tv shows with almost no problem.

This sounds very much like Auditory Processing Disorder.  APD is when your ears work just fine, but your brain struggles to interpret what the sounds mean.  This affects all aspects of hearing, but it affects listening to speech the most, as speech is the most complex sound that we need to listen to.

I have APD very badly, and the more obstacles that are in the way, the less likely I am able to understand speech.

Since it’s taken me my whole life to learn what “hearing” obstacles even are, I’ll list them for you.  First, let’s discuss a “baseline”, speech that has no obstacles.

This is if you and one other person are together in a very quiet room.  There are no background noises, and you are very familiar with this person, a family member or friend who you’ve known for years and years.  They speak very clearly, and you are able to understand them fairly well, in this “perfect” hearing environment.

Now let’s look at hearing obstacles that occur in real life:

an unfamiliar person speaking (a new person)

an unfamiliar accent

background noise

hearing the voice over a speaker (TV, computer, telephone)

the person speaking quickly

the person speaking softly

unfamiliar topic of conversation (lots of words you haven’t heard before, like science or medical terms)

There are many more obstacles to hearing speech, such as your mental and emotional state or other sensory inputs that can distract you, but for now I’m just talking about hearing in general.

So now if you’re in that quiet room, talking to one person, but it’s a new person that you just met, your hearing ability goes down, because their voice is unfamiliar.  If they have an accent you’re unused to, your hearing ability goes down further.

If that person is now talking to you across a speaker, and not in real life, that is another obstacle that distorts the sounds so that your brain cannot interpret them.

So with these THREE obstacles to your hearing, your brain is unable to distinguish the sounds of the podcast.  Of course the quality of the recording also matters.  You’re able to understand TV voices because 1) TV is usually very high quality sound and podcasts aren’t and 2) It sounds like the podcast speaker has an accent you’re unused to.

There is nothing wrong with you that you cannot understand these podcasts.  This is a disability.  It’s not your fault, but also, you can’t “try harder” to make it go away.  It sounds to me like listening to these podcasts is very stressful for you, which it would be for anyone who was struggling to hear.  

So you need to explain to your friend that you have a hearing disability.  Which you do.  And that you can’t understand the podcasts.  Tell them that you care very much about the history of their country and you really are interested in it because they matter to you, and you enjoy reading the text explanations they send you!  But you have a hearing disability, and you’ve tried, but you cannot understand these podcasts.

A good friend will care that you can’t understand, and will stop trying to make you listen to things.  It may take awhile for them to “get” it.  When I get a new friend, it usually takes a few months for them to really understand what I mean when I say “I can’t watch videos”.  They always send me links at first, wanting to show me things- becuase that’s what friends do!  They like you and want to show you the thing!  But eventually, after I am consistent and always reply “I’m sorry, but I can’t watch videos, can you tell me what it is about instead?” they learn.

Then after time, some really good friends have done some amazing things for me, such as typing up captions for the video for me, or even typing up a text description of the whole thing.  It’s been sort of amazing.

But it is not your fault that you can’t hear these podcasts, and you are not making it up.  You really, really can’t hear the podcast, and there are other people who also have this issue (I am one of them, my APD is really bad).  You are able to hear the TV because it is only ONE hearing obstacle (a high-quality speaker), but the podcast is THREE (new person, across a low-quality speaker, different accent), and that’s just too many hearing obstacles for your brain.