#Best Writing

[kindredsoulsoftimesofold]

Was on Episode when it first started, writing for it, it went to crap and I turned to Choices when it launched.

Played that, it went to crap, now I'm waiting for the new thing to be launched by its best ex writers.

The cycle repeats itself.

Except my beautiful child Lovestruck, I am still mourning actually.🤎

[gamesline]

Well, it's finally over. The end of Game Of The Year 2023. Don't cry because it ended, smile because you read and listened to a whole bunch of opinions on video games. Our final day is all about the writing: Best Narrative and Best Character. Au revoir...

[dgct2]

The Last Of Us 1.03 "Long Long Time" aka Bill and Frank's story has been nominated for Best Writing in A Drama Series for this years Emmys. Congratulations to EP and writer Craig Mazin on his nomination. You can read the full script on the link above.

The Last of Us is a love story, and that’s not always good news.

Love can blind us, move us to violence, harden our hearts to strangers, or paralyze us with grief.

But in the world Neil Druckmann and I built for this show, it was just as important to show how love could still flourish in a positive way. I wanted to explore how two very different kinds of love— the nurturing, generous and beautifying, as well as the protective and possessive— could exist in balance.

Bill and Frank embodied these two kinds of love. And for me, as someone who has been married for over 25 years, it was just as important to portray that kind of love… the lasting, well-worn love that is a product not merely of attraction or chemistry, but of commitment.

My hope was that people would see in Bill and Frank’s relationship the victory of honest, achievable, realistic love… even in Bill and Frank’s ending. After all, each of us will end. That’s not failure for any life well-lived, or for any love we share. It’s simply the final act of what was hopefully a beautiful play. And if we’re lucky, as Bill is, we leave behind a lesson that inspires others to live as we did. Frank changes Bill for the better. Bill changes Joel for the better. Joel changes Ellie for the better.

This is what love can do.

I was lucky enough to have a brilliant director in Peter Hoar and the perfect cast in Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett. They all had the greatest respect for the text I wrote, and in turn, I have the greatest respect for the way they brought it to life. And as I said to Nick when I sent him the script, “I don’t know how to write better than this, so I sure hope you like it.”

I say the same to you, and I thank you so much for reading and watching our show.

[beetplease]

“Santa Claus as a hit man

hanging around like the threat of nuclear war”

Succession 4.02 “Rehearsal”

[theoldaeroplane]

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

[suguruverse]

your personal space has never really truly been yours since you’ve started dating him. his muscled arm around your waist when you wake up in the morning, has become as familiar as the sunrise itself. it used to be cute, his warmth a cozy start to the day. but now, it's suffocating, like he can't bear to let you go, even in his sleep.

you shift carefully under his weight, not wanting to disturb his sleep. his breath keeping its steady rhythm against your neck, and you wonder if he dreams of you as you lean in to kiss his forehead gently. he smiles in his sleep, a small, contented expression that almost makes you want to slip right back into his arms.

the sheets rustle softly as you slip out from his grip. you slowly tiptoe across your shared bedroom, craving the simple pleasure of being able to enjoy making coffee alone. the smell of freshly ground beans fills the kitchen, and you lean against the counter, enjoying the quiet morning.

but as your coffee brews, a twinge of guilt creeps in and you can almost imagine when he'll wake up and wonder where you've gone. despite enjoying the well needed alone time, you knew the longing to be close to him will pull you back into his embrace sooner than you'd planned. almost as if in complete sync with your thoughts, you hear a mumble approaching the kitchen, and then his voice, thick with sleep, calling out softly,

"angel cmon back to bed with me, you know i don’t like sleeping without you"

ੈ✩‧₊˚ gojo, nanami, bakugou, iwaizumi hajime (27) althetic trainer, oikawa, kuroo, geto, choso, yuji, midoriya

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

You know, it's kinda funny how much of high fantasy centers around kings and nobility and courtly intrigue considering that the archetypal high fantasy, Lord of the Rings, had the rather explicit moral of "saving the world is up to this backwater hick and his gardener because no politician, least of all inherited nobility, would have the ability to see past their own ambition and throw away a weapon". Oh sure, Aragorn is a great king and all, but there's a reason he's over there running a distraction ring while the hobbits do the real work. Sauron loses because he gets distracted by kings and armies and great battles (i.e. typical high fantasy stuff) letting Frodo and Sam sneak through his back door and blow it all to hell.

Just saying, maybe old Jirt knew what he was saying when he said that the small folk doing their best and holding to each other was more powerful than a dozen alliances and superweapons and we should respect him for it.

[youwouldneverbreakthechain]

[mischievous-thunder]

Bonus:

Thank you for your precious service, beautiful Peanut variants!

[silver104]

yeah sex is cool I guess

but have you ever had someone leave a comment with a paragraph-long review of your fanfic containing genuine praise, thorough criticism, and an in-depth analysis of all the lore hints you dropped that you spent ages intricately crafting

[artist-rat]

fine dining at the blushing mermaid. with the boogieboys

[octarineblues]

supporting communities & people impacted by the Southport attack and the far-right riots in the UK

here is a list of community fundraisers I found, starting with those aiming to support the Southport community after the appalling attack at a children dance party, to the fundraisers helping those affected by the subsequent racist and Islamophobic far-right/nazi riots

Edited on 5 August to include Middlesbrough fundraisers. Edited on 6 August to correct the link on the Books for Spellow Lane fundraiser, to adjust the name change for the Belfast fundraiser, and to adjust the wording in the second last paragraph.

Southport:

Southport Strong Together Appeal - organised by the community foundation for Merseyside, for those affected by the Southport knife attack

United for Southport families - the funds will be distributed among the nine families of the children who were at the party

Swifties for Southport - a fundraiser for the Alder Hey Children's charity, which supports the victims and the affected families, as well as first responders and clinicians. Extra funds will also support the wider Southport community

Fundraiser for the Southport Mosque - a fundraiser to aid rebuilding or possibly re-locating the Southport Mosque after the damages it suffered during the riots

Rebuilding Windsor Mini Mart - fundraiser to rebuild the locally-owned grocery store that was targeted during the attacks, broken into, and looted

Liverpool:

Fundraiser for the Spellow Hub - the Spellow Hub was broken into, looted and set on fire at night during the riots. The Spellow Hub is a newly created one-of-a-kind (in the UK) institution, which consists of a library as well as a community centre with a mission to help people get education and pathways to work

Books for Spellow Lane - another fundraiser for the library in the Spellow Hub, to replace the books and rebuild the library there edit: included the correct link

Hartlepool:

Fundraiser for the Nasir Mosque - the Nasir Mosque was attacked following Southport riots; this fundraiser is organised by Hartlepool citizens to help the mosque deal with the damages as well as to show appreciation for the role of the mosque in the community. edit: the funds will be also distributed to the local community!

Rebuilding the Farm Shop - the shop was targeted during the riots, and when the owner and his son tried to protect it, they were also violently attacked. The fundraiser is to help fix the damages to the store.

Sunderland:

help rebuild Citizens Advice Sunderland offices after arson - two of the Citizens Advice Sunderland offices were set on fire during the riots, and one of them is completely destroyed.

Hull:

Hull Help for Refugees - a local fundraiser to support the Hull Help for Refugees charity, the donated money will be re-distributed to community members affected by the riots

Fundraiser for Hull Help for Refugees and Welcome House in Hull - collected money will be donated to the two charities

Belfast:

help fix racially motivated damages - originally the fundraiser for the Sahara Shisha Cafe which was targeted by the far right in Belfast during the riots, now a fundraiser for all affected businesses in the area. edited to reflect the change of the name of the fundraiser to avoid any confusion

Middlesbrough:

Supporting residents after the riots - Middlesbrough has suffered so much during the riots, lots of businesses as well as just regular family homes were vandalised, had their windows smashed or even were broken into. This fundraiser wants to distribute the funds between affected people to help them fix the damages, and to generally support the local community. the newest fundraiser, imo potentially the most urgent one

Fundraiser for a Care worker's car which was set on fire - a car belonging to an employee of a care agency was set on fire during the riots while he was on shift at a care home.

If you want to donate locally but there is no fundraiser to support where you live, consider donating to your local charities oriented towards Muslim or PoC communities, or towards anti-racist and refugee organizations! And go support your local Muslim/Arab/Black/Asian/Refugee owned businesses!

If you have any information about other local fundraisers, feel free to add to the post or don't hesitate to let me know and I will add them here! We have seen so much hate in the past few days, we have to stay strong and keep supporting each other!

Stay safe everyone 💛

[bishy437]

he won

bonus:

[fairydrowning]

"Days will pass, and you'll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality."

– Nizar Qabbani