#Also it solved the problem of plot (tm)

[octahedral-chaos]

Listening to the GRIS soundtrack while worldbuilding and plotting for Deerwolf Dreams is probably a mistake because I ended up making [REDACTED] a somewhat tragic character and now I am attached to that idea hELP-

[thelivingautomaton]

alright, since the Remedy brainworms got me I've been replaying Control, got to the AWE expansion last night and picking up on all the echoes/foreshadowing for Alan Wake 2 is making me go utterly bonkers, but like. has anyone picked up on or talked about how in all of Alan's Hotline messages to Jesse, when he's writing about her POV, he exclusively calls her 'Faden'

like, maybe it didn't poke my brain the first time I played it since he does the same thing when talking about Hartman, but coming from AW2 it's pretty jarring as a stylistic oddity...almost like there's a reason (in-universe and/or out-of-universe) that he doesn't call her 'Jesse'...almost like there's only one Faden in his story...

and given how in AW2 we also get some (quasi-) clarification regarding the limits of Alan's ability to "make stuff up" vs alter and rewrite "real-world" events that he sees in clairvoyant flashes...given the Night Springs screenplay pages you can find in AWE that parallels the FBC and the events of Control (i.e. a Director and a Scientist opening a portal to another dimension, finding an eldritch Entity, the Director trying to take its power for himself and then getting taken over before shooting himself)...given how literally all of the "dreams" Dylan tells Jesse about are descriptions/viewings of stuff that takes place on one level of reality or another ("I was the director and you were an intern"; "we were in a game, and it was a fucking boring game but you couldn't stop playing it"; Mister Door, and "a world with a writer writing about a cop, and another world where the writer was real"; a "musical" about Jesse), except, seemingly, the dream about "Jesse Dylan Faden"...

guys. are you picking up what I'm putting down here. guys. GUYS

[recent-rose]

heres the thing abt kairi. i don't think she's poorly written, i think she's poorly executed. like there's a conflict/lack of cohesive vision for her and they're trying to shoehorn her into a role she does not fit.

nomura, from kh1, has clearly always wanted kairi to remain a link to the past/manifestation of fond memories of childhood/like a bittersweet hometown that isn't quite the same when you come back as an adult. that's the role he has consistently, persistently assigned to her. and there's nothing wrong with that. not every character ever has to take an active role and be a hero and do Things. sometimes characters exist to embody an allegory, or symbolism, or an idea. that was kairi, initially. embodiment of home, safety, comfort, childhood. for that matter, riku was the future, the unknown, growing up and letting childhood go. sora, of course, a boy coming of age and being torn between the two.

so consequently i've never understand the choice to make her a keyblade wielder when she's already a princess of heart twice over. like it or not the princesses of heart have an established role in the story and it's not fighting on the front lines. she could have been a leader and taken an active role in her own way if they really wanted, without ever needing to hold a keyblade and be a Chosen One, Also!(tm). in this way she also would have maintained a cohesive narrative role in the story. her path would still be diverging from sora's, and it would be as bittersweet and nostalgic as it was in kh1 without the clownery than her involvement in endgame kh2 onward has been mired in.

what clownery, you ask? kairi literally cannot grow as a person while in sora's orbit. we've seen it happen again and again, any growth she gets is away from sora and any time she's near him she regresses as a character. this is because, again, she is absolutely cemented in the minds of the writers as The Nostalgic Past that sora is holding onto. in the context of the kh narrative, she can literally be nothing else to him. there's no more growth to be had between them. hence, every time their relationship ends up the focus in a scene you can't help but feel the rapidly growing distance between where they once were vs where they now are as individuals. this relationship can, imo, ONLY be regressive to both of them in the context of kh's overarching narrative where kairi is constantly (and overtly) being framed as Sora's Idealized Childhood. or, as a prize he 'wins' when the story ends. the two are fairly connected in kh.

back on track, having kairi remain a princess of heart and not a keyblade wielder also would've solved the problem of the writing team having to shelve/fridge her every time they want riku+sora to go on another romantic getawa - uhhh adventure together. like she was asleep for a year post kh3? and now she's going to train with aqua while riku goes to rescue the love of his l - i mean bestest best boy friend again? you're joking.

it just stinks of trying to girlbossify a character so she can 'keep up' with her male counterparts in the eyes of media illiterate consumers who associate a lack of a weapon with a lack of power. dawg we're past that. female characters can be relevant, important, interesting and powerful without following in the exact footsteps of their male counterparts. and this is to say nothing of kairi's keyblade bequeathing being a relative accident and how it creates a pretty glaring plot hole because somehow xion and roxas, sora's nobodies, can wield keyblades at will but namine can't? okay. yes, perhaps we just haven't been 'shown' her wielding a keyblade. maybe. but i think it seriously indicates that they had no intention of making kairi a keyblade wielder in the first place.

and don't get me wrong, if they intended on changing/overhauling her role going forward i would understand making her not just a wielder but a guardian of light. problem is, they have already established she's not going to be fighting/active in the next game. she is, yet again, the home they are returning to and not the future they're moving towards. this, consequently, will continue causing some major tonal dissonance among those who either consciously or unconsciously recognize that kairi is not meant to be where she is currently placed in the narrative. she's SHOWN to be just a regular girl who still to this day does not particularly want to go adventuring, and yet we're TOLD again and again that she's a warrior now, riding on sora and riku's coattails regrettably. it's just so tonally off.

[utilitycaster]

Here’s my C3 hot take: I think Matt just messed up. I think att just didn’t do a good job DMing this one, and I’m sad but I don’t think the players could have solved the problems entirely on their own. The lack of a session zero makes no sense, but more to the point I think Matt just has to much Catholic Trauma tm to have told this story. His blind spot to religion v. Personal worship in his world building is to big to stick this one. His excitement about the culmination of these narratives after 9 years made him play story beats to close to his chest looking to surprise and shock his players, and also, because he was so tied to it, he didn’t pivot, or change the story to guide the players through. The pacing, especially at the beginning feels like he was entirely to excited to get to the clever plot.

Honestly… and this makes me sad, a lot of the issues feel like he sort of started believing his own mythology. I am so happy for him to be self confident but this all feels like a story guided by someone who thinks their terribly clever and so don’t have to rely on the same level of hard work, collaboration, prep, planning etc. of previous works (and also wanted to be novel, I just think of their original campaign announcement where they said “anything might happen” and sigh a little).

My bit of hope? That’s a really easy thing to come back from! I hope they reflect and improve going forward!

p.s. this isn’t to say the others couldn’t have made things BETTER, they could have, for sure.

Hi anon,

I disagree with most of this. Most crucially, this is not the form of campaign I think would come of Catholic religious trauma. Matt's mentioned he was raised nominally Catholic but he's also mentioned his parents were artists, hippies, and D&D players, and he seems to be on pretty good terms with them. I think this is a vast overstep on your part that came from basically nowhere, especially since the logical outcome of a Catholic Trauma campaign would in fact be one that actually did portray Vasselheim as a vast controlling force within the world regulating the worship of the gods across it. A pretty massive hole in the worldbuilding, at least as this campaign demands we see it, is that we really haven't seen religion as an oppressive force except in one highly specific case, and even that was spearheaded by mortals and not the gods and is indistinguishable from a purely political land grab. Like, the blind spot you mention is actually a sign that he was not raised particularly religious; someone who was raised strictly Catholic would be extremely aware of religion as a highly organized hierarchy with clear rules and a vast worldwide network and not "a few missionaries who didn't kill anyone or even forcibly convert anyone, Vasselheim seen as a good meeting spot for a worldwide conference, and Ludinus's grievances are all highly personal." Like, the Catholic Trauma version of Exandria has Vasselheim at war with the Empire for their banning of half of the prime deities, or going full Inquisition/Crusade on Hearthdell.

I want to be clear: when I accuse fans of projecting religious trauma it's because they outright have said shit like "I always like when a narrative kills the gods bc I'm a white southerner who was raised Christian". I do not say it just because they are affiliated with a specific religious denomination.

I also don't think the issue is so much believing his own mythology as much as the one major correct thing you said, which is the lack of not just a session zero but a heavy hand in character development, coupled with a very specific plot he wanted for this campaign. Campaign 1 worked because he tailored a campaign heavily to the interests and stories of the characters, and built a world around them. Campaign 2 similarly allowed for that same give-and-take; characters like Trent and Uk'otoa and Marion and the Gentleman came from the backstories the players came up with. Some of the players' ideas were changed as part of that heavier hand in character creation. The guidance for that campaign (morally gray and complex) was actually accurate, and when the characters took a sharp turn away from the planned story, Matt was able to pivot quite gracefully.

The problem really is that it's clear Matt had a very developed vision of this campaign and didn't realize that the characters of Bells Hells largely failed to fit within it. I don't think hard work wasn't done (I think there was in fact a TON of prep that we haven't seen, eg, I 100% believe Matt has an extensive amount of work done on Otohan, Ozo Cruth, Marquet, the Apex War, etc that Bells Hells simply did not see); I think, in fact, that like three hours of work that probably would have resulted in scrapping or drastically changing the characters to fit the intended story would have fixed the vast majority of problems here. It is only, frankly, because the characters are such a bad fit that the issues we're talking about (little establishment of organized religion vs. personal practice) even became issues! But it's literally that - it's not realizing that even a longform campaign can live or die on character creation. It might even be that too much prep was done ahead of time and he was too unwilling to abandon it.

[fanthirtheen]

Took a bunch of screen shots guys I'm so excited I have so many fucking feelings right now I am SO sorry for what I am right now.

First of all, I have a story that starts off with this problem:

Also, welcome back kids, I'm excited to see you two working together. Obviously these cherubs are tied up currently, but obviously they team up with DHORKS or whatever they were called. So excited. Probably, Stolas is NOT going to save them this time, something else happens.

A fun guy I.M.P. is probably in that human hotel to hunt down. The cherubs talked like they were hunting down someone from hell. I assumed it was I.MP. for getting them kicked out of heaven, but maybe it's actually this guy? And the "life on the run" line was a diversion.

More Goetia! The parrot! We were told not all Goetia are birds, there's a lynx guy that's cool. And a snake. Imma rewatch this trailer a bunch to get a better idea on who the parrot is and what he wants, I can't tell if riend or foe after one watch.

Here he is talking to Stellas brother, which doesn't exactly solve the issue of who or why.

Stolas, there are so many shots of you being upset! I'm sorry darling I love you but your pain is so important for current plot reasons. Also, the book he's reading I'm pretty sure says "Proud and Beautiful" and looks like a Goetia romance.

More Stolas having a Bad Time (tm). The second is obviously from a new song.

I have more screens hots to add check reblogs for more, or if you see this too soon, give me a minute.

EDIT: this has three parts because I'm on mobile and could only upload 10 pics per reblog.

[lunar1an]

while i tend to be uncharitable towards pale (seeing a story you really like go directions you don't want that you think actively hurt it while watching people uncritically praise every new development and meme character for three years tends to make you jaded!) i do think some people get a little silly about dissing a web serial they haven't read so like. to just put it down here.

i do think early pale is objectively one of wildbow's best works. like. the rotating three perspectives are used extremely well. the characters read as convincing and likable children, the cast is excellent, especially the starting Others. it's an alternate, lighter look at a dark setting and it works. the fact that the mystery isn't the premise so much as figuring out the problem of "how do we handle that some of these Others want to get rid of us". or later "how do we properly confront these people without being too cruel because society's already done that to them".

that's like. arcs 1-3. arcs 4-7 are also, i think, good, even if it's ultimately a diversion and some of the simplified messaging around Other treatment is a bit eh. alexander and bristow have a lot of character and while they're more straightforward pure antagonists it's fun to watch them be petty. the trio interacting with traditional practitioners is fun.

8-10 is like. pretty good. but some of the cracks start to show with arcs 9-10 dragging on a bit (it has melissa though so thats good). the new cast members are fun and interesting and tie into the conspirator plot. 9.9 is excellent if a hard read.

11-13 is like. where the dragging on elements intensify. a lot of Diversions happen that kind of get in the way of the trio Solving The Mystery(tm) and while a lot of those diversions are chocked down to one conspirator's work it feels more like it takes screentime away from the main plot and core cast which you're Really invested in. 12.z and about half of arc 13's chapters including the Break interludes are really good though, bringing a kind of like. pact-y vibe and atmosphere to the story which was sorely missed.

after arc 13 though its like. at this point it's less three rotating perspectives that each lay their eyes on the main plot at specific points with an intent to highlight certain aspects of the story (avery focused on connections, lucy focused directly on the mystery, verona focused on the Others). and more three separate web serial protagonists with their own plotlines loosely connected. and things get bloated. and start escalating beyond reason (70+ practitioners attacking kennet???). and the Practitioner = evil colonialist oppressor stuff gets silly. but i think like. at least the story still cohered. musser still continued the trend of jerk practitioners who abuse the system even if he's just a TwitchPlaysPractitioner stream that does things arbitrarily like a ghost or a dog. the founding sequence towards the end of arc 17 was cool even if i was a bit disappointed with how kennet found turned out.

i think if you were really invested in the trio and their story you could probably stop sometime around there and be satisfied. not a good or a clean ending, and you probably were better off stopping at arc 13, but it works.

but then pale keeps going and does a complete paradigm shift to make the literal Red Menace Revolutionary the antagonist. and has to justify the also purportedly revolutionary kennet opposing that antagonist and shit just goes sideways. and by now you start running into the more ridiculous stuff like "avery compares goblins to human minorities" (yes. i know the intent of her statement. it was still silly).

like. it just stopped cohering or being consistent or anything. plots and characters get introduced and discarded just as quickly and have little to no impact despite how hyped up they are initially. it's not good, and it actively hurts the material that came before it (retroactively making charles worse, for example).

even the setting stuff is like. early pale had some silly things like a technomancer being able to set up a worldwide magic jstor or this one glamour-drowned dude being wayyy too powerful with glamour for someone who wasn't even a fae or practitioner. but it was like. you could excuse or justify or ignore it if it didn't agree with you because at least the rest of pale was good. but then every Path turned into a whimsical video game level (among many other less ignorable things) and pale stopped being good.

and like. man. even despite that i still think about the carmine alcazar chapters and the story of a Beast who lived in a world that had long left her behind. and the trio in the back of a truck practicing runes with their magic hat. pale was good. it was good! but then it had to keep going.

[marshvlovestv]

There was a moment from Ghosts that I saw last night that really impressed me from a writing standpoint and kind of encapsulates what I find so very special about this show.

For full context, there was an episode all the way back in season 1 where Thor Learns a Lesson(tm) about apologizing. There's then a punchline where what he takes away from the situation is kind of a bad, twisted version of the lesson, that apologies are an instant conflict resolver that fix everything with no consequences. I saw this and didn't think much of it. I've watched sitcoms before, I've seen characters take away the wrong lesson at the end of the episode as a joke plenty of times. It's not like this change is going to stick with him throughout the series or anything.

But then it did stick with him. Thor reiterates this new "apology=instant total forgiveness" belief multiple times throughout the next seasons, and I'd dare to say it becomes a core part of his problem-solving strategy. And then, halfway through season 3, when Flower comes back and learns how Thor hurt Nancy while she was gone, he tries it again. He apologizes, says that means he's forgiven with no consequences. And Flower just says, "No."

And yes, that made my heart hurt because Flower and Thor are the cutest and I love them but at the same time I was just kind of in awe of what I was seeing. I love sitcoms, I always have, but you have to admit that they have a problem with characters changing from episode to episode to be whatever they need to be for the funny plot the writers came up with to work. Character consistency and continuity is not usually a priority when it comes to sitcom writing, but on Ghosts it really, really is. The main cast on Ghosts are complex and layered but also internally consistent, and the plots are built around them rather than the other way around. And I mean, sometimes that consistency goes too far, because nearly every character has at least one running gag associated with them that is repeated a little too often to the point where it's not that funny anymore (cod, pizza, Hamilton, bank robbing, Pete's wife cheated on him can we please give the poor man a break). But at the same time none of these characters are just that one thing. And I just watched a character get bitten on the ass by a bad lesson he learned two seasons ago.

Ghosts is good, you should watch Ghosts :) (The American version at least, idk much about the UK version but my brother says it's much darker and I like a silly little time)

[valleygirlmukuroikusaba]

byakuya being the one to push leon out of ignorance into participating for the cause and then immediately getting exploited by FMJ in my au is like. frustrating but funny

bc like byakuya doesn’t know hes stubborn af but he likes to take action but doesn’t nearly have the awareness that FMJ’s knowledge of him goes right down to where he falls short.

FMJ also knows how to manipulate leon but didn’t really pay mind towards him to consider controlling him

bc FMJ only cares about the important people like kyoko and makoto who are just well equipped with the expectation of challenging those two

theyre capable of doing things that are considered greater threats or distractions to whatever the hell FMJ has got going on

kyoko being the threat that gets to solve random problems that r meant to cause issues that are supposed to amp up the severity of struggle tm

bc like idk FMJ is too comfortable and never struggles so she’s like ok well why don’t we have everyone else struggle on her behalf and kyoko just like. presents the facts wow ok then kyoko loves solving shit anyways shes having fun kinda

like FMJ doing her own thing. said thing is make her problems everyone else’s problem. bc FMJ could solve her own problem but doesn’t want to because uhhh FMJ doesn’t find it interesting to solve stuff probably bc its too easy for her and idk having it easy makes life dull. unfortunate

makoto being the distraction because he provides welfare and accommodations that fills in gaps that are meant for FMJ to exploit or other people to exploit that make shit hit the fan but unfortunately people love accommodations and that shit spreads like a parasite

FMJ is a bit pissed that people who have no business getting involved are starting to get the plot bc why the fuck is VGM living in confusion now and getting mad at FMJ. also leon is here. ok..? who invited him

how come VGM gets it easy living a confusing life that breeds accomplishment and FMJ doesn’t. FMJ is mad she’s missing out on peak but anyways shes aware that makoto provided VGM that kind of life and FMJ is just there like. wow this shit mid as hell!

FMJ at least has a . confident byakuya until leon shows up and is like thankful for byakuya for letting leon in on the fun and now byakuya on FMJ’s side and is like

?

leon was there when byakuya was ranting how much FMJ SUCKS. why is byakuya STILL mad at leon WHAT DID LEON DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

leon didn’t do jack shit leave him alone byakuya </3 but leon knows something doesn’t add up so uh can we confuse byakuya again that would be funny byakuya can you make a really bad joke

[clouds-of-wings]

There's kind of a disconnect between story and tone in this game. Every NPC who gives you orders that you need to obey in order to progress the plot comes across to me as untrustworthy, rude and supremely unconcerned with what you think - even though they need you. For example, I don't think it's unreasonable to not want to do the Meistr's ritual when I have little information about it and she laughs about how her previous assistant died attempting it. But when I express this, she basically tells me that if I don't do this, then the game won't progress, and she's right. And that's the only justification. You have to do this, even though it seems dangerous and the person who oversees it is more than blasé about your survival, because the writers want you to do it. And that's all there is to it.

Similarly, this lizard goddess who picked me to be her champion (also something I not only have to accept - which I would get - but that the game forces me to like) lulled my character into a trance the first time they met with some kind of song, then slapped her for falling for it (she became my mortal enemy through this, but I don't get to express that either), and she basically... keeps assuming that I'm invested in her plan, also because the game won't even let me disagree with that assumption.

Alright, fine. The world is ending if I don't ascend and idk plug The Void(TM). I know this because a bunch of untrustworthy, unlikable characters with no regard for my opinions, agency and safety told me and then became annoyed when I questioned it. They act like scam artists. This goddess who picked me apparently has no bigger problems than fighting the other gods even though they all share a common, much bigger enemy, and I'm forced to be her proxy and fight the other gods' champions, because the gods never graduated 10th grade and amuse themselves with petty rivalries even though the world is (apparently) in danger of ending. The game forces me to stfu and play along with this, and if I protest, stand up for myself or even ask questions, the characters in charge basically call me a snowflake. Yeah, show that you're strong and confident! By doing exactly what I say without question! But in the context of the world they're right because the game doesn't offer me any alternative. There's no other way to play this game.

I don't even mind a game whose concept is "You're at the mercy of greater powers who are utterly selfish and childish but against whom you can't fight back", but if that's the concept you should be able to express that and play your character in such a way that it becomes clear that you're doing everything you do under duress. Whereas this game kind of makes you act like the totally ridiculous things that happen and are expected of you are somehow legitimate and understandable, and if you don't agree, well, the only alternative is just to not play the game.

Which is a choice I could make, sure, but I think a better game would allow you to play it in more than one style. It's an RPG after all, and plenty of other RPGs accomplish this. Baldur's Gate gave you a bunch of different reasons why you should care about hunting down Sarevok and solving the Iron Crisis, from "Loyalty to your foster father" to "Revenge" to "Glory and money" or "Replacing Sarevok". NWN made you work for Aribeth, but at least her honour and sincerity was beyond doubt and she patiently answered your questions and helped you however she could. You know - because she needed something from you. Plus the Wailing Death was an objective fact that you could observe, not something a hallucination who was already using you with no concern for your well-being told you about, so it was definitely in your self-interest to work on this. (Also, you got paid.) In Divinity 2 (Ego Draconis that is) you were at the mercy of ridiculous circumstances and extremely questionable characters too, but at least you got to bitch and complain the entire time and roast the other characters - it was clear that you didn't actually want to be there but were being forced, and you could act accordingly. I found that entertaining, and it made a lot more sense.

If you're going to be forced to go along with the questionable plans of gods and mortals who treat you with constant derision and not even complain about it, maybe the premise should be that you're a paladin of your deity and slavishly devoted to making them happy. I didn't mind it so much when Geralt in the Witcher games spontaneously became the little puppy dog of every sorceress he met, ideally but not only if there was a promise of sex involved, because that's what Geralt is like. But if I create a custom character there should be more than one personality that character can have.

In Divinity 2 it came out in the end that you were in fact being manipulated the entire time, and maybe this will be the case here too, but even then, it's just too blindingly obvious that the characters who direct you are sketchy, so you should be able to point it out. Plus the less important characters do ridiculous things too and I generally feel like everyone is constantly lying to me because nothing makes sense, so I don't know if I trust the writers enough to assume they have some secret plan. This actually reminds me a lot of Siege of Dragonspear, and the conclusion there was definitely that the writing was simply bad, so... we'll see.

My main character is an assassin with super high Finesse and Wits and yet randos frequently manage to put a knife to her throat because the game needs them to be in charge of the encounter. My character regularly gets insulted and dismissed by people who need something from HER, but you don't even get dialogue options where you can have a normal reaction to that. Other character regularly lie, betray you in battle, cheat in a variety of ways, and it just never gets discussed or has any consequences for them. Then if I get pissed and decide to kill them, either I can't or the game (and the other NPCs) punishes me for it. All feels a little like being a kid again?

It's also kind of strange because you have a HUGE variety of playing styles in terms of combat and character design and I actually really love that! So it's weird that at the same time the story puts you into this straight-jacket and forces you to act like a doormat and a prime quality scam victim because the plot just simply doesn't progress if you don't do this.

[synthient]

So sometime around the premiere event 2 days ago, they appear to have plopped Ncuti and Varada down in front of this blue curtain and had them do a string of zoom interviews.

Interestingly, they seem to have gone to smaller outlets for this particular promo push - we're talking random youtube channels with names like "Mama's Geeky" (you can see both actors fighting not to laugh when that one's spoken aloud), and a 14-year-old interviewer from something called "Kids First." They also seem to have provided each interviewer with a screener of Robot Revolution. Several of the interviewers casually quote or spoil minor plot beats from the episode.

And because these interviews were edited and posted by these small outlets instead of by the bbc, disney plus, or someone like the hollywood reporter, they also appear to have kept in some of the actors' more spolier-y answers.

I've been able to dig up at least a handful of these interviews on youtube [link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4 (RTD in this one instead of the actors)]. I think this breakdown video also has clips from one or two more that I haven't found in full yet.

So here's my quick overview of some of the info across these videos:

One of the interviewers greets the actors as "Doctor and Queen." I'm guessing this means that the robots think Belinda is their queen (probably because she bought the star certificate to their sun)

According to the actors, Belinda "calls the Doctor the f out" and "sets boundaries" with him. Ncuti describes the Doctor in this season as "fighting against his own intentions" and dealing with the consequences of his actions

Really fascinating moment where Varada is talking about how it's cool that her double-casting was integrated into the plot, and says that Belinda and the Doctor have "a connection that spans thousands of years." Ncuti has a bit of a 🤐 expression as she says that

Ncuti theys Belinda again: "they just challenge the Doctor so well"

Ncuti implies multiple times that one or more classic enemies are returning. He's "checked off his bucket list" something or someone he wanted the Doctor to face. He throws in some kind of "but I don't know how much I can say yet" after each of these comments

Belinda is an emergency room nurse who "knows who she is in this world," is the protagonist of her own story, and is frustrated to get dragged into someone else's. She's less starry-eyed than Ruby, and her job has taught her to have an empathetic but firm reaction to people in crisis

The 14-year-old interviewer asks what messages this season is trying to have for kids, and gets what actually seems like a really thematically interesting response: keep a sense of "compassion, open-mindedness, and understanding" about other people, even when facing adversaries. "There's a level of understanding of reasonings of why people do the things they do." "It's also [about] being authentic to yourself, and it being a constant journey to discover what that means." Learn from "the consequences of your actions," connect with others, "make sure you have the right people around you"

We're going to learn more about the Docto's past and time lord history

Shifting to the interview with RTD now: the Tardis is apparently "bouncing off" the specific date that Belinda left Earth, May 24 2025 (this does probably de-confirm period Belinda :/). The episode where they finally break the seal on that date will air on May 24 irl

He mentions giving notes to the new writers to try things like making the Doctor "angrier than we've ever seen him," or "have more of a laugh than we've ever seen," or "let's change his character here so he's more off-kilter, slightly out of it"

One of the biggest challenges of writing for the show is figuring out how to have "the cleverest person in the world traveling around in the most brilliant spaceship in the universe" and still come up with problems that are a struggle for the Doctor to solve

If you're Online TM and you want to avoid spoilers, the most important episodes to watch right away are 3 and 6, or The Well and Interstellar Song Contest

[yellowocaballero]

ok so im not very far into trigun (which. you convinced me to read/watch) but ive seen you talk about vash as a christ/messiah figure which. means im kinda obsessed with how you described his impact on the world in no name on the bullet (christ healing the lame, christ feeding the thousand... christ delivering his people from evil.) did you have any specific biblical references you kept in mind while writing?

i also think its super interesting how the fic seems to focus more heavily on healing as opposed to how (what ive seen of) trigun is a lot more gunman focused - is part of that influenced by how knives is a pacifist in a "cold turkey" way, or a choice on your part? i think it makes an interesting dichotomy, christ the gunman and satan the physician

I've gone my entire life without recommending Trigun to anybody, because I always felt it was too weird and ultra-violent and love-it-or-hate-it to actually ask people to watch it. Look at me now. Getting at least 3+ people into it. Boo boo the fool. Also I'm sorry that this response is so long skull emoji.

I'm ex-Catholic so you have asked the right question lol. Vash is very inspired by the Old Testament God. I have a strong mental image of him obsessing over the Noah's Arc story in his cute children's Bible. Sodom and Gomorrah is brought up again much later, in an extremely important way. Garden of Eden and Paradise, as the show does. The Plagues where every firstborn son dies. These is all imagery that Vash specifically evokes on purpose. Vash...uses the Bible to understand his own experiences and feelings and desires (that's the most neutral way to phrase it), but like a lot of people he uses the Bible/God partly as justification for his actions. God destroys cities for being sinful, and Vash is the closest thing to God this planet has, so he's entitled lol. God Complex McGee up in here.

And Vash's cult has no Jesus, because there is no forgiveness for humanity, and no way for them to be saved. Which is how you know that Vash's Jesus-ey actions as described in the story are very deceitful on a lot of different levels. Kind of like regular Vash lmfao - as I said earlier, he's VERY much also a messiah deconstruction. Vash is a pacifist partly because he needs it - he needs to be believed that people can be saved, that the world can be good, that nobody has to die, because otherwise the world is nothing but an endless parade of misery and death and his own suffering. It's about saving his own soul, and the memory of Rem.

For me, on a writing level: Cain and Abel, obviously. 'My brother's keeper'-ass mofo lmfao. It's more themes for me, though - redemption, salvation, forgiveness, original sin, sin in general, guilt, fate. Knives is pretty obsessed with all of these topics. I make fun of him for it. None of it's healthy. But Knives embodies a few other Christian ideals that I don't make fun of him for, such as the importance of good works and good actions, and dedicating his life towards helping others without the desire for a reward. There's also some subtle 'shepherd and his sheep' stuff going on later.

Re: the gunfights: can you IMAGINE Knives carrying a gun. He is WAY too proud of his own #biologicalsuperiority and #ultimatelifeform and #impenetrabledefense (literally Shadow AND Gaara-ass mofo) to rely on cheap human trinkets like guns lol.

The plot has more action than my usual (yay! - that was what I was working for lol), but it's based off the skeleton of the Stampede plot, which is genuinely a lot more space opera than Western and as such its action looks different. Turns out that when you remove the Gung Ho Guns from a story, there are a LOT LESS gunfights, lmfao (I don't know what kind of errands Vash sends the GHG out on, I am afraid to find out). So partly there's less gunfights because a) Stamp plots don't require too many gunfights, and b) without a Gunman (TM) there's no reason for the group to use guns to solve their problems if at all possible.

It's also just that, basically, Vash's plots are partly man vs self and partly man vs other. When a character is level 99, the tension of the fight scene isn't if they'll win the fight - it's if they'll win the fight under their self-imposed conditions. In Vash's case, the Q in every gunfight is 'can Vash win the fight and save people without compromising his principles?'. For Knives, he is so ridiculously OP that it's impossible to write a fight scene with genuine tension, and he doesn't care nearly as deeply about casualties. So the most engaging plotlines for Knives are entirely man vs self, which tends to shake out into a lot of trolley problems lol. That's the answer to your Q from a writing perspective.

So it's mostly a choice for plot/writing reasons. But YUP the dichotomy is SUPER JUICY, and the fun part of the story is reading the Ultimate Killing Machine be forced to do literally anything else than Ultimate Kill - to do the only thing he wasn't meant to do. Because doing what he was meant to do reduces him to a biblical figure instead of a person - it makes him just a devil, who's never exercised the free will God gave him, and as such can't be called sentient. It's not what Rem would want. And it's a very juicy juxtaposition to somebody who interprets his own meaning in life as a Christ figure as a divine compulsion to brutally murder orphan.

[winterandwords]

I was thinking about my characters recently and I got worried for a bit that one of my stoic characters wouldn't get mad at anything! Then I realized, "Nah, there are SOME select situations.." It was really fun!

SO! Pick a character of your choice (probably a more put-together character but it doesn't have to be!) and think about their Anger TM.

What would make them mad but would also be really funny and amusing to them?

What would send them into a wild rage? A tirade? Violence, if they're so inclined?

What would make them the kind of cold anger that would lead to months of plotting revenge?

What would make them "not mad, just disappointed"?

No pressure on any of this, but consider me curious!

Thanks for the ask 💜

This is something I thought about a lot when I was writing Bridge From Ashes. Gillen is COLD. He's a very angry person in general, but it's aggressively repressed and he flatly refuses to deal with anything in an emotionally healthy way.

He doesn't differentiate between anger and disappointment. He's perpetually disappointing and everything ends up being distilled into anger eventually. He's a god-tier holder of grudges and thrives on letting rage fester internally until he goes into assassin mode and 'solves' the problem.

Everything about him is highly controlled. He's unsettlingly quiet, vicious and cruel. Even when he does things for emotional reasons (he's very into murder as a form of revenge) it's calculated, calm and smooth. He doesn't raise his voice because he doesn't need to and he sees it as weakness when other people can't keep themselves in check.

But there's one part in the book where he properly loses his temper for a very brief moment. Betrayal is his kryptonite and that's how he perceives the situation. He isn't entirely wrong, but he isn't entirely right either. It's complicated.

Losing his temper takes the form of a brief explosion of uncontrolled violence and the loss of control is the significant part. He pulls himself together quickly and returns to his usual manipulative frostiness, but that one moment represents the purest anger he's ever felt because it came from the purest hurt.

[wrathbite]

About soft and hard magic systems- by applying limitations on magic you are actually making the system harder overall! Magic might be able to do pretty much anything in a setting, but its more interesting if the character who can use magic is limited and has to think about how to use what they have to solve their problems. A mage with only fire magic has to think laterally if they want to solve a ghost dilemma with magic, and that tension is itself tasty.

Magic can be as soft as it needs for your vibes, but when a character is gonna use magic to solve a problem, it's handy to have rules or limitations in place to fuel creative solutions. A magic system as a tool for the characters to use is made more interesting by its limitations, rather than its stengths. If you can only fly when music is playing, that's objectively weaker than just flight but it provides more interesting storytelling opportunities

I actually don't like how dnd treats magic- its basically a bunch of bullets that the spellcasters shoot and there's no focus on stuff like "how does it feel to use magic?". It's a hard system so rigid that it ignores storytelling, and encourages dms to use the spell list as the end-all-be-all of what magic is capable of. So specializations and customizations is a great way to get around that storytelling conceit for players. The list is just spells that your player can learn, but it is by no means all the spells anyone in the world can learn- and that's a sentiment that's easy to convey in a novel but easy to forget when playing a ttrpg.

Anyway soft magic and hard magic systems don't have to be opposed they can work together. Harry Potter magic overall can do whatever it needs to but Harry himself needs his wand and the incantation to do a specific spell, and he usually has a repertoire of like 3-6 spells per book. Overall it's a soft system but the character interacts with it as if it were a harder system.

Stories are great and I hope you have a good day byee

Hi! Thank you for the message :)

I understand the idea that putting limitations on magic does make it harder overall. I didn't mean to imply that I thought my take was a pure Soft Magic System (tm). On a sliding scale between Soft Magic (1) and Hard Magic (10), I think I like it best around the 3-4 range.

I agree and disagree with your take that magic systems are made more interesting by their limitations. I think that's entirely dependent on the vessel that the person using said magic is. In a book or story, where a characters actual purpose to us is to be a plot conduit, I think that harder magic systems get in the way of that character's purpose. It can be interesting in the sense that you the reader get to guess at how they'll use their magic to solve their issues, but I think that sometimes it gets in the way of the story itself. In a game like dnd, where the characters need a harder framework bc it is a game with rules (and lets be honest, dnd is basically a combat simulator, and if it weren't there wouldn't be a need for such a stringent rule system). Of the two of these, my tags were referring more to the former. I brought up dnd bc I play it a lot and I wanted to share how my preference in literature flavors how I run my games.

I agree that dnd magic system isn't good for telling stories. I think you and I are on the same page with that. Dnd is a game and to be commercially sold its important that it has some semblance of balance, and to keep min-maxxers from just steamrolling anything.

Soft and hard magic work best in conjunction. Going to either side makes the story feel either a bit too sci-fi/physics-y for my tastes or a bit too fairy-tale-ish.

Also, in the nicest way possible, please don't bring up Harry Potter to me. I IDed as a trans woman and am still trans/nb. JK Rowling can choke.

[audiovisualrecall]

It was abt how warrior cats series in- storyline did several times address the cats' prejudices, and the way the series did that is actually realistic abd believable. Primarily speaking of the og and second arcs at least bc I'm most familiar with them.

Characters seeing fireheart/star as an exception to the rule (and later cloudtail as well) is a thing that is realistic to the real world, it happens, it's something that in canon disappoints fireheart bc he thought the clan had learned something, but they only decided to make things make sense in their minds be deciding he was an outlier / his bloodline is Special. This is not actually seen as a Good Thing tm, it's just a fact that fire has to face and his goal is to prove that it's not just a him thing, as far as I remember. He also repeatedly welcomes half clan cats and kittypets or other non clan cats to thunderclan and stands up against anyone naysaying. And he is also not the only one.

Also the narrative very much punished several of the worst offenders so to speak, like Tigerstar. Specifically for his hatred of half clan cats and kittypets and so on, his murderous plans for those minorities in the clans, etc, he is punished by the narrative. Yes, leopardstar and blackstar are Not punished by the narrative per se for their part in that mess. Leopard gets to slink back and retain her prejudices but also does kind of grow? A bit?? Iirc.

Blackstar isn't punished at all for his cold-blooded murder of stonefur. That's the only thing I have an issue with, but I also don't know if I could solve that situation any better. But overall the narrative says this belief is wrong and this whole thing is wrong and it ends in death.

And also the post was abt how shoehorning in a message, or like taking away the conflict over the prejudices the cats have and making all of the cats apart from definitive villains be accepting and wonderful and perfect would just...

There would be no plot, for one thing, but also it would be super boring and awkward. Like. Idk I read the series as a kid and understood perfectly that these were prejudices thar characters held. I don't think we need the series to hold our hands and explain to us that only bad people tm act like that. (We all have prejudices of some kind that we either have or haven't examined, 100%, if you think you don't you're wrong).

And just...yeah. like not spelling that out for you doesn't make the series ProblematicTM. Not for that reason at least. For the sexism, the ablism, and so on, yeah those are real issues to have with the books, the writing itself is frequently sexist and ableist, by which I mean things like plots and conflicts, and also character behavior and dialogue.

The topic of racism as in the concept of medicine cat title, the tribe portrayal and the treatment of the tribe of rushing water by the text *outside of character dialog*/ in terms of the plot (for example the whole, someone not from the tribe, from the 'civilized' group, has to arrive and save the tribe!) and other aspects of the text's racism are absolutely separate from 'characters in he story have prejudices and i think they shouldn't without the narrative always punishing them for it!!!' Bc the latter is literally not a problem but the former definitely is something worth discussing and being aware of.

Bc those are the things that someone reading the series could/would absorb without examining it or realizing, just like the ableism and sexism.

Anyway. I have opinions but not always all the literary/analyzing terminology to explain the distinction between like, character beliefs that are part of the conflict and plot in a way that makes sense, vs things that are issues in a real way like how every female character is treated worse than an equivalent male character, or the replication of racist tropes in the portrayal of the tribe and their big plotline in the journey arc, or the replication of ableism in how disabled characters are repeatedly either pushed aside or treated as incapable of being warriors, etc.

There is a difference, and partly it does lay in he fact that canon, early at least, does confront the clans' prejudices and have characters disagree with each other and argue against the beliefs, the narrative does examine the cats' prejudices, including the fact that in real life things happen like this and it sucks and other times the shitheads do in canon get their punishment for their actions (tiger).

Vs the other isms, where narrative, plot, *and* dialogue reinforce both, repeatedly! There's rhe difference.

[thmagicalblog]

The Fauna Dilemma (TM)

The animals in a fantasy world can easily be one of the most difficult areas of worldbuilding.

Some fiction, like Wings of Fire, simply leave things as they are with 1:1 versions of the animals on earth (though they may be bigger to match the scale of the dragons?).

Some, like James Cameron's Avatar, have an entire ecosystem built from the bottom up (seriously, it's incredible).

I'll be discussing different approaches to how exactly I'll be filling my own fantasy world with it's own animal kingdom. Thoughts and ideas under the cut! This is a pretty long one folks

Let’s find a starting point first, at the moment I’ve been working with a system that simultaneously has earth animals + a few made up ones that I drafted while trying to flesh out the world. I kept the real, preexisting fauna in mostly for dragon names; I had a few characters called Fox, Coyote, etc that I didn’t want to rename, and their namesakes actually have to exist in the world for it to make sense.

Now I know that I have to stick to animals that are at least based off of ours on earth.

And here are the creatures that I’ve designed:

(these are old drawings, bear with me)

Blazen Elk.

These are pretty much giant elk with colourful keratin. Since their creation this animal specifically has gained a very important role in the plot of my story, their time for redesigning will come.

Fieldhoppers!

These guys are fun, just a slightly magical critter that fills a rodent niche. I like the biological differences between populations that live in different climates.

And finally Brightrock Lizards

Not a big fan of these but the Fire Swamps certainly need a ‘token creature’, perhaps I’ll ditch them altogether (or at least give the name a rethink)

From what I’ve already designed, you can see I was going down a path of “create amalgamations of animals that already/used to exist and add a little something special”. And while I like that idea, replacing everything in a similar way would be WORK. I have a slightly different idea.

I was thinking about the animals that you see in Avatar the Last Airbender. Hybrids of animals like the turtle-duck or otter-penguins.

While I don't want to just smush two animals together, I do like that they took away the identifying part of the animals name, if that makes sense. They aren't Emperor penguins or Adélie penguins, they're just penguins.

That solves a problem of adding, for example, Thompsons gazelle or a Bullet ant. No dragons named Thompson exist and I'll be damned if the dragons have invented artillery without me, they can just be gazelle and ant

Avatar also has a few special creatures like the Sky bison and the Unagi that don't fit into the regular rules and I like that too. It's good for if i want a creature a little more abstracted from what the audience is used to.

However, it seemed a little boring for my animals to stay so simple, so I kept thinking- and so far my idea is that each animal may have slight alterations to its name or even appearance so that they better fit into the world. As if the dragons themselves had named them. This gives the opportunity for multiple subspecies of the same animal to exist and also the opportunity to have what each creature is called by the dragons colloquially change and vary between regions or clans.

^^ Writing this out is confusing me lmao so I'll do a visual rep too.

As an example, I'll take an animal and slightly alter it now. I'm thinking the European fallow deer. Europe doesn't exist, obviously. And fallow is derived from fealu, meaning brownish-yellow in Old English so (for the betterment of my braincells i'm not going into how i'm tackling language in this project) i'm going to change it.

Here are the sketches. I imagine a deer like this would be suited best for the Halcyon Forest region, which is mostly deciduous forest.

For the name, their spots got me thinking. Since they're supposed to mimic dappled sunlight through the leaves, I thought 'sun deer' could be suitable. I took the sun theme and ran with it.

And my digital version with colour.

With the solar theme, I was inspired to alter the pattern and colouring a little. Spots mimicking sunspots and antlers that meet in a circle (referencing a solar disk). In my drawing I forgot that antlers change/regrow with the seasons oops- just consider it a colour and pattern reference.

Does changing the colours remove the original purpose of the spots? Yes. Does it still work as camouflage anyway? I think it could. Anatomically I didn't make any changes sans the antlers, I couldn't see any way to adapt them to better suit their environment (or help them run from dragons) that wouldn't be going overboard. I did debate adding a resistance to fire, which would make sense for the prey of a firebreather, but decided to reserve that trait for only a few select animals.

Using this method of creating animals for Asteria means I can easily make them up on the fly. Need a bear or a goat or something? Just zest it up a little and boom. The only exceptions for this I think would be butterflies and possibly birds. And that's only because I have two dragon species that directly reference these animals for their designs sometimes. I'll reevaluate when I get there I guess.

And that's how I'll tackle the fauna dilemma, if you made it to the end- thank you!

[desdemonakaylose]

Yuletide Letter

Hello assignee! I've never done a letter before so I hope this reads well. I've made a list of my requests here.

Cable & Deadpool:

I'm a longtime fan of this comic and once-upon-a-time lurker on the kink meme. Thrilled to see it in the pile this year. I always enjoyed the complicated and at times toxic relationship Cable and Wade had. They're definitely my OTP, and I would really enjoy that if you're up for it. You can get as horny with it as you're willing to. More about my general taste below.

Some things in C&DP that I like: Deadpool being insecure about his looks/mental health/general likability. Cable having character flaws as well as charisma. The extended cast of C-listers. Domino.

In the context of shipping: Cable bottoming & using sex as a reward. weird science fiction sex. I've been in the transformers fandom, okay, I'm used to weird sex.

HINABN:

if you're filling this one you probably recognize me. Look. Let's not play around. I love conworth. I miss conworth. If you're able to give me conworth, I will be about it. There was always a lot of Worth chasing after Conrad back in the day, but I wouldn't mind seeing the reverse of that either. Unresolved sexual tension is as good as actually hooking up, if you go that route. I mean feel FREE to get nasty with it, but don't feel like you have to.

I'm also genuinely happy to see team shenanigans, anything with a plot, Conrad and Worth teaming up to give Hanna a hard time, interesting supernatural creatures, Worth's clinic collapsing into timber-rot, Conrad being badass, etc

Hey Arnold!

Now, Helga/Arnold is THE otp, so if you're into that, please go for it. However, my favorite part of their relationship is the tension between how Helga wants to be perceived and how she really feels. So I'm interested lingering issues that come up even after they're together where Helga may not like being seen to be romantic with Arnold. Also, outsider-pov on their Whole Deal.

I also love LOVE the supernatural spooky episodes of the tv show, so if you maybe wanted to just craft a middle school creepy pasta for some combo of characters, I'm very here for it.

If you want to just throw some Growing Up TM issues at Helga, be my guest. Beauty standards, maybe.

In general:

I love shipping and I have my OTPS, but I also am aromantic myself, and I'm also interested in meaningful bonds that don't rely on romantic norms. What does it mean to want to be friends with someone? Isn't that powerful too? etc etc

Some of my favorite tropes include: dramatic irony. otp stories where one person believes it's impossible for them to be truly wanted or loved. problem solving. sadomasochism. time travel. big dramatic confessions. me learning about unfamiliar jobs and skills via the narrative.

horny content limits: blood is fine, but no piss please. I'm fine with any level of dubious consent, but just try to avoid people being genuinely miserable about what's happening.