#I'm actually a very urban person I love cities

[robindaydream]

Listening to the Greenridge theme tonight and thinking about the fact that a big part of the fantasy appeal of SLARPG is the idea of a quaint small town in the middle of nowhere that’s super accepting of gay and trans people and is full of them. Like one of those everyone knows each other kinds of places, surrounded by beautiful nature and fresh air, but one that could include you, too. Where you wouldn’t be the only one.

And then your gay trans neighbors are cute furries on top of everything else.

[littleeyesofpallas]

So, with the new legends there's a neat way we can take a guess at some of the time frame. Although it's largely aesthetic and hard to gauge the intended historical parallels of, the not-Eiffel Tower at the center of the city could presumably have been completed in the late 1880s like the real thing. Interestingly that places it pretty concurrent to the construction of the Hokkaido Government building in the 1870s that served as the basis of the Galaxy Team HQ in the first Legends game.

But with the keywords being "urban redevelopment" the setting could only possibly be Haussman's renovation of Paris that took place from the 1850s-1920s. So given that the tower is already standing, that places Legends Z-A between 1889 and 1927.

And I doubt it would play into the setting of a Pokemon game but I think it's neat that it would mean taking place firmly in the 3rd French Republic, as that's not typically the most romanticized period of French history. (Kind of shocking given just how much Japanese pop culture loves to fixate on the Ancien Regime and Rococco architecture.) It's right at the height of the French Colonial empire and their rivalry with the British... Even if they don't address the history directly, certainly not the darker bits, I wonder if we'll see an ancestor of Rose* and some mention of Kalos and Galar's relation as a hint at the Pokemon world's equivalent of India. (Elephant, what elephant...)

*put a pin in that... Well come back to Rose later...

Also I know a lot of the stupid "leaks" that were just running with any/every rumor they could find had been talking about Celebi, despite there being no signs of it in the direct, but it's possible that the Z-A title and the fadethru of the sort of sci-fi looking city diagram into a pencil and parchment one is indicating going back in time --backwards, from Z to A, end to start.

and just so long as I'm just picking at edges of things...

The unknown are an anagram of, "POKEMON PRESENTS"(oh and the SOEYUE one at the end is just "SEE YOU") and the ""confidential"" stamp on the documents likely reads "Gokuhi" as in gokuhi[極秘]: "Top Secret," but the rest of the text doesn't seem to match either Japanese, French, or English,

Hito to POKEMON no kyouzon o yumemite[人と ポケモンの共存を夢見て]: "Dreaming of people and Pokemon's coexistence" Toshisaikaibatsu hassou MIARE CITY[都市再開発発想ミアレシティ]: "Urban Redevelopment Concept Miare City"

The obvious exception being that redacted text is clearly the romanized MIARE from the Japanese MIARE[ミアレ] and the English CITY, which is the Japanese name for what was localized as "Lumiose."

Curiously the word "Pokemon" is very clearly missing from the passage, and also in both cases there are too few "Galarian" characters for how long the phrases are in any actual language.

and finally, given some of the existing examples of handwritten Galarian in SwSh, I'm guessing the text on the big logo is as i've transcribed into the more standard Galar font, although I'm really uncertain about that second one, and a bit iffy about the big "X"s, but the little cyclone O, the V with the underbar, and the E seem certain enough.

Also there's a logo I know I remember seeing that looks like this one but I can't remember where it is or what it's associated with.... It's the logo on the Macro Cosmos power plant. Not Rose's personal logo with the stylized rose, and not the Cosmos business logo with the big star system orbital ring Cs, but the power plant in Hammerlock where you go to fight Eternatus specifically.

It would be really neat if whatever this organization is was tied back to an ancestor of Rose and Peony and the origins of Macro Cosmos somehow.

[nkjemisin]

Hello! I’ve been seeing a lot about your work on social media lately and would love to read your books. What series do you recommend I start with?

Thanks ☺️

That depends on your taste/interest. I don't really write the same kind of thing from series to series, because I get bored easily and often want to try new subgenres/styles/etc. So I'll just briefly list my series and you can pick the one that appeals the most.

There's the Inheritance Trilogy, (link goes to the first book) my first published novels. A secondary world that has enslaved its own gods deals with the repercussions of that, from the POVs of three mortals. There's an overarching plot arc for all three books -- and there are some side-stories for this trilogy, too -- but each has a different narrator and takes place at different times. First person past tense, if you care about that sort of thing. (I don't, but some people seem weirdly attached to/repulsed by particular persons/tenses, so I'm including that info here.)

Then there's the Dreamblood Duology, which were actually written before the Inheritance books but I couldn't get them published at first because publishing in the 2000s was hella racist, basically. (I know, it hasn't changed much... but that little bit of change was enough for me to break in.) These books are as close to traditional fantasy as I'm probably ever going to get, except that they take place in faux ancient Egypt instead of faux medieval Europe. The story follows priests of the dream goddess as they're forced to deal with a conspiracy that threatens to inflict horrors on their society. Third person past tense for both books.

Next up is the Broken Earth trilogy. That's my experimental one, with first, second, and third-person POVs, present tense, a completely non-Earth world, and some heavy themes. All three books form a single story spanning, oh, forty thousand years or so, but mostly they're centered on one incredibly angry middle-aged mother who is on a roaring rampage of revenge/revolution. Features earthbenders, anti-magic groomers, magic statue people, and the apocalypse (again). Lots of "dark" themes and horror moments (harm to children, systemic bigotry, people-eating bugs, more).

My most recent books are the Great Cities duology. Urban fantasy set in modern-day New York, third person multiple POV ensemble cast. Turns out cities come to life once they hit a certain point, and then they claim a human avatar to represent and protect them. New York turns out to have six. It's also got some very unwanted tourists in the form of Lovecraftian entities that are trying to destroy it, along with reality as we know it. I meant for these to be lighthearted and silly and I think they kind of are, but there are still some notable political elements in them. (I mean, it's set in modern-day New York, and I started them the year Trump got elected, so...) It's lighthearted for me, anyway.

So, pick your poison!

[what-even-is-thiss]

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

[callmearcturus]

Paradise Killer is 6 dollars on Steam until May 16 and I am here to hard sell you all on it because it's one of the best games I've ever played.

I'm gonna go beyond giving you a bunch of punchy keywords and telling you it's queer as hell and making meme-y jokes, and I'm going to actually tell you what this game is.

So top-level, WHAT IS PARADISE KILLER?

Mechanically, Paradise Killer is an open-world murder mystery. There is zero combat but a lot of exploration of a very unique location. The majority of your time is going to be walking about Paradise 24, looking for people to discuss the case with and for clues that are scattered around the world.

One of the most interesting concepts in Paradise Killer that is both mechanical and narrative is deciding What Is Your Truth? What Is A Truth And What Is A Fact? From the moment you start the game proper, you can turn 180 degrees and begin the trial and decide who the killer is, before talking to anyone about the case.

For example, getting into the actual crime scene takes a lot of puzzle solving to unlock the sealed room where the victims were killed. But maybe instead of examining the crime scene, you talk to everyone on the island and think you have a good idea of what happened.

Meaning: It is perfectly valid to decide you have the answer to the mystery and just go complete the trial whenever you personally are ready. YOU decide when this ends.

Which frankly I think is a cool-as-fuck concept. Also, I fully believe if three different people find EVERY CLUE and talk to EVERY SUSPECT and hear EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE.... they might decide on three different truths entirely. And THAT to me is ingenious mechanical design I have not seen anywhere else in a video game.

Okay let's stop burying the lede and talk about the world of Paradise Killer.

The non-batshit version:

Paradise Killer takes place on a big, beautiful island, the 24th Paradise. The architecture is a delightful mix of black obsidian obelisks, brutalist monuments, opal crystals to slumbering alien gods, garden paths, luxury yachts, and a whole lot of gold and neon.

Neo-occultist urban residential vaporwave-core. If you are like me, you will be taking a lot of screenshots. My wallpaper on my computer is Paradise Killer.

Your interactions with the cast are done in visual novel-style, though I feel I have to shout out this isn't your stock Ren'py UI experience. Every single aspect of the way the game looks compounds the vibes even further.

And the characters are infuckingcredible.

(Notice the different font? This game has A FUCKTON OF ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS, including dyslexic font options.)

Sammy Day Break, born under the sign of Shadow Zero, is the local distillery and bartender for the Syndicate. Talk to him about what's unique about the whiskey he's made on Paradise 24, or about the good old days of the Syndicate.

Is Doctor Doom Jazz, born under the sign of Cosmic Deceit, really that carefree about what happened? Is his willingness to rekindle his fling with Lady Love Dies just a diversion to hide something? Well, he's one of the most cooperative witnesses on the Island.

Crimson Acid has been through a helluva lot since the last time she saw Love Dies. Blessed by the gods with her stunning rack (of horns! OF HORNS!), she's become quite the idol now. So why is she also an information broker? And can you figure out what her true feelings for Love Dies are?

Between all of these conversations, you can explore the island and collect RELICS and BLOOD CRYSTALS (the local currency) and CITY POP SONGS.

Okay so the Slightly Batshit Version:

Shinji: The Syndicate worships alien gods who want to drown the world in war and blood. Lady Love Dies: I don't see how that makes us the bad guys.

You are LADY LOVE DIES, born under the sign KISS ME TO THE MOON, the INVESTIGATION FREAK. She was exiled to the Idle Lands several cycles ago for falling prey to the seduction of the god Damned Harmony and endangering the entire Syndicate. Only now, with the death of the Council on the eve of Paradise 25, is Love Dies summoned back to solve the murder.

The Syndicate are a group of functionally immortal humans from all across history who are trying to create the perfect bubble of reality, their utopic Paradise where they can safely revive their dead gods. They were granted many powers and boons by their first god, Silent Goat, and hope through rescuing more gods they will grow in power.

How do you create a bubble of reality to do all this totally ethical shit? Easy! You abduct a bunch of normie humans to live on your island to use as a mass sacrifice to generate energy to fuel the creation of each Paradise. If only the outsiders would stop getting in the way!

Paradise Killer's world is delightfully out of its goddamn mind and half of the fun of the game is just picking up little nuggets of information about each member of the Syndicate, the gods, why each Paradise failed (there was an outbreak of vampirism that took out like three of the Paradises???), and just the way this universe works.

Okay this post is already too long but I'm begging you all to give Paradise Killer a chance. It's gorgeous, it's funny, it's mechanically really interesting, it's chill as hell, it has an incredible soundtrack,

and you should try it.

I'LL SEE YOU IN A PERFECT 25 . . .

[utilitycaster]

…so I decided to check out Polygon’s D20 coverage, and frankly I think you were entirely too kind to them. Good. GOD, some of that stuff read like they’ve never watched AP that *wasn’t* CR, D20 or the first season of TAZ. And have somehow made it thru the 2010s without encountering urban fantasy…

Anyway, to further nudge you towards your destiny of AP journalism (and with the understanding that you have a Real Job and a life outside TTRPGs and the internet); can you please expand on what you think D20 brings to the table?(pun unintended, but I stand by it) Because speaking as someone who has watched a handful of eps and enjoys the concepts, the praise PG were offering was damningly faint.

Hi! Thank you, and for what it's worth I don't think most of them have listened to the first season of TAZ either, given the way they talk about WBN as inventing the actual play longform podcast. I do want to note: I like writing longform stuff about actual play but I am adamantly not a journalist. I am not investigating or interviewing or reporting; I'm doing analysis and editorial. Amateur critic is the most I can claim to and that's a stretch (and even there I have a particular privilege in that I'm writing all this for free, anonymously, by choice, and don't need be be nice or maintain relationships with actual play performers within the space because I could burn every bridge and still make rent.)

Anyway. I think a major flaw of Polygon is that it's so focused on novelty and subversion that it forgets a well-worn concept, executed with skill, is actually great and for many people, preferable. Brennan, from everything I have heard him say and from how he actually runs games, has a deep respect for fantasy as a genre, and the stories he tells in D20 are ones he is clearly familiar with and loves. I also think to subvert things you must be a fan, and when D20 does successfully subvert or twist a genre, it's coming from a place of respect and understanding.

Anyway, just covering a few Intrepid Heroes seasons: I think Fantasy High (and I haven't gotten to the latest episode of Junior Year) is actually increasingly a brilliant deconstruction of D&D as a game by making the world aware that it's in a D&D game. What does it mean to be in a D&D party and be an adventurer and have that be a significant part of who you are? What does it mean to be a commoner in this world? What do you do when you're sort of a broke teen in generic suburbia but also you need the loot that an adventurer would theoretically get from dragon hoards? Why do you have to know what your life's calling will be when you're 14? One of my personal favorite things, as a lover of mechanics and TTRPGs as a system of storytelling and more generally as someone who believes that your medium of choice should be informing the story you tell, is when people engage with character roles and classes instead of treating them as just a set of cool things you can do, and Fantasy High very much pushes the players to do this. I also mentioned elsewhere that the downtime stress mechanics are a brilliant addition to one of the genuine gaps in D&D, namely, while downtime is a time for open RP, there's not a good way to handle things like stress or crafting or prioritizing well.

The Unsleeping City is one I like, honestly, just because I lived in New York for a few years and Brennan lived there far longer (as did much of the cast, though not all) and his love for it is apparent. I don't think it's groundbreaking; I just think it's really good. The characters are excellent and the story is fun. It's true that, for example, it allows you the satisfaction of making Amazon's and its attempted move into Long Island City the BBEG and smiting its ass instead of having to harangue your senators and councilpeople (as I did, and I wasn't even living in Queens) but really it's just a good story. It doesn't need to be more than that. It did not invent urban fantasy or the idea of a secret magical version of a real city or "most myths are real"; it's just a good story!

I think A Crown of Candy is also just a fun setting and, by making everyone food, emphasizes how petty and arbitrary the alliances in a Game of Thrones-esque milieu can be. It casts a scathing eye on religious interpretation as a tool for conquest without clumsily proclaiming the mere concept of religion is the problem. It has one of the best explorations of character death I've seen and Brennan's acting as Caramelinda remains a tour de force for him. Bringing the entire story of succession and war down to a final choice between two half-sisters remains a brilliant decision, the setting is supported by the mechanical limits Brennan imposed upon character creation, and it's overall beautifully done.

Even Neverafter, which I think have openly said didn't live up to its initial promise, had that promise with the fantastic handling of the TPK; I have a love for metanarrative and honestly my issue is that it was the wrong place to do metanarrative, but it was a bold choice to do in the unpredictable medium of actual play.

That's really only covering a fraction - I think some other standouts are Mentopolis, A Court of Fey and Flowers, Coffin Run, and Escape from the Bloodkeep, and while Shriek Week is just not a genre I'm personally super drawn to, I think the Mythic system is a great system for the story being told and Hicks does a great job running it.

Really what it comes down to is that D20 falls in between what a lot of shows are. It doesn't have the freedom but also the burden of a very long-running campaign (indeed, WBN exists because its performers, all of whom have featured in D20, wanted to be able to do longform actual play), nor is it quite as rushed as an all-miniseries or one-shot show. It has space to explore one or two things really well without having to carry a thousand different threads (and believe me, Brennan tries to put in as many as he can in that space - I actually wonder if the reason Fantasy High Junior Year feels a little more streamlined to me is that WBN was by that time in full swing). But it's not the first edited actual play, it mostly uses very widespread systems, the production values are high but not unheard of elsewhere (and I think that production values in AP beyond the basic 'can you hear and, if relevant, see things clearly and does the set look nice' are overrated though that's a personal preference), the cast is strong but not the first group of professionals or even comedians, and they didn't invent the concept of filming remotely or scrims or having an anticapitalist message.

My issue with the journalists, to reiterate that, is that they're not really doing much journalism, actually; and that their bias is horribly apparent. There's little analysis - just shallow reviews that show little understanding of actual play as a medium, fantasy as a genre, or TTRPGs as a system. And while being entirely free of bias is unavoidable - we are people, and we will bring our own interpretations and experiences in, and there are people who will love D20 and dislike Critical Role without doing so in bad faith - the fact that several of the journalists have openly crowed and preened about their special access to the D20 cast really makes it apparent that they like D20 because Dropout gives them early access and says nice things about them. And it's a feedback loop; Critical Role is going to keep saying "well, you constantly shit on us, so no, you don't get early access" and they'll keep writing bad reviews because they don't get early access.

But to return to the point, D20 is legitimately great and yeah the bias in my mind is only hurting them because, speaking only for myself, if there's two things I like and people heap fawning and inaccurate praise on one and nitpick the other? I'm going to start looking into that praise and find more flaws, and I'm going to start defending the nitpicked one. I really love Fantasy High Junior Year but the Polygon article is so bad I have to remind myself that it's just because the person who wrote it is an idiot. I probably would have gone into Kollok much more neutrally if people didn't act like it was the fucking invention of television. Do give D20 a try if you can! Don't read the articles.

[hellenhighwater]

i'm sure you've probably been asked this before but i'm new here and very curious: how did you come into ownership of your house and how are you paying for it? i recently moved in with my boyfriend and the housing situation is... dismal. and we're eventually moving into another house with a friend but we barely make enough money combined to support ourselves. i'm just curious as to what it takes to be content because you are living in such a dream house to me and i would love to achieve that one day. ty and have a great day!

I'm not going to pretend that my homeownership is some kind of one-man bootstraps success story; it's not. I got lucky in a lot of ways. It's a combination of stuff.

I haven't owned my house for long--it'll be two years this August. When I started saving for a house, I was lucky enough to be able to live with family and basically eliminate the majority of my living expenses, which allowed me to save a much higher percentage of my salary than I would otherwise have been able to save. I was driving an hour and a half for my daily commute, but it was worth it to not be paying rent. Having a bunch of roommates prior to that also helped. I have almost no debt--I did law school on 100% scholarship, and picked a cheap undergrad university. (This actually backfired--my credit score simply did not exist until waaaay later in my life than is recommended if you want a mortgage. I struggled to find a lender that would work with me even though I was stably employed and had a cash down payment ready.)

I also bought a home in a non-urban area; I live in a fairly small town. My house is also not very expensive; it was between $150-$200K when I bought it. That's due, in part, to the location (small town), the tiny lot (less than a quarter acre), the age (120+ years), and the need for a lot of superficial updates and repairs. It's structurally sound for the most part, but it's dated.

I'm a lawyer. It's easy to miss, since I post like an idiot, but I am regularly reminded that sometimes even morons pass the Bar. I don't make the kind of crazy money most people assume lawyers make, but for a single-person household I'm okay. I was able to make a fairly sizeable down payment--more than was strictly necessary, actually--so my monthly mortgage is actually less than $1k, which is still mindboggling to me. It's good, because this house DOES need work.

But with all that said, it still wasn't easy. I got my first job when I was a freshman in high school and I have been continuously employed since then. Between the ages of 18-28 there was never a time that I held less than two jobs; most of the time I had three, and it...sucked. It was fun, a lot of the time, but mostly that kind of unpredictable schedule is just exhausting at a subconscious level. I remember the week before the Bar, still working two jobs, being in the library at 3 am, my brain melting out my ears, and cruising Zillow listings for bombed-out houses in Detroit being sold for pennies on the dollar, thinking that if nothing else, I could buy one of those and make it work one repair at a time. I went to law school because I wanted to be able to buy my own house. I moved out of the city so I could buy my own house. I shaped a lot of my life around the need and want to have my own space. I have spent years sitting up late at night and looking at real estate listings I couldn't dream of affording.

I don't know if that helps. I guess the only advice I could give is that if homeownership is a big priority for you, maybe look for areas where real estate is affordable(ish; I know what it's like these days) and see what it would take for you to be able to live there. A lot of the time, if there's good bones to work with, the rest is just what you make of it.

[comicaurora]

Hey I'm getting into DnD, do you have any podcast or series of a DnD campaign to recommend? I know there is critical role, but wich one of those should i start with? Is there a better beginning than critical role? I am lost here, please help

This is gonna very much depend on your personal preferences and attention span! I recommend sampling a range of DnD podcasts to find your personal tolerances and what parts appeal to you. I'm not the most widely-read person in this space because frankly most DnD podcasts are on too slow a boil for my attention span, but I've got a few you could check out-

Critical Role is the biggest and most well-known one for sure, but pacing wise I personally can't get through it. I love it in concept, but it's slow enough and huge enough that my brain zones out in the downtime and I lose track of important details when things speed up again. I think my first successful exposure to it was a brisk two-hour video that's just a Best Moments Of Grog compilation. That's also why I've been really liking The Legend Of Vox Machina, which keeps all the biggest and best moments but paces them like an actual story instead of a game. It's not representative of the experience of playing a TTRPG, but it is a lot of fun.

I personally enjoy limited-run miniseries a lot more, because they work better for my limited attention span, and on the critical role front that means I recommend EXU Calamity, a Doomed Heroes far-distant prequel to the modern setting of CR. Only four four-hour episodes and it's on a bit of a slow boil for the first three, but because everybody involved knows how the story's going to end, there's an endless drip of dramatic tension along the way. The DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is going to show up a lot more on this list.

On the subject of short miniseries DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Escape From The Bloodkeep is my personal favorite and the one I revisit the most. Six two-hour episodes, deeply unhinged and intrinsically comedic as it's a full-series parody of Lord of the Rings. I recommend it for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that Matt Mercer, who is an excellent DM, gets to play, and his playstyle is a great example of how to roll with the punches and the dice, since his extremely menacing nazghul captain is afflicted by a string of hilarious failures and he kind of just owns it, to the point where his character arc becomes accepting his worth as an individual with the power of friendship. It's a great example of not taking yourself or your character too seriously, which is a vital skill for players to learn in order to handle the whims of the dice sometimes (or often) not cooperating with your narrative wishes. If CR isn't working for you but you're interested in what you can pick up from this extremely talented DM, this is a good way to get that!

Dimension 20 (Collegehumor's DnD branch) has several series I really like, most of them DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan again. His DMing style really works for me, and he takes an approach to pacing that I quite like, so they're generally a safe bet for me. One I categorically recommend is The Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy DnD game set in New York City. This one is 19 two-hour episodes, so longer than the other miniseries but still much shorter than CR, and it can give you a bit of a sampler for (a) the genrebending you can do with DnD and (b) a longer-form story with a less rigidly determined finale than the previous examples. Brennan's DM style is very cool, and he puts an unusual amount of focus on characters getting solo vignettes, which is sometimes considered a bit gauche in DM circles because it means the other players don't have a whole lot to do during those solo conversations, but it works for him and his players and the effect is very cinematic!

But if you want to see a different DM's style in the same space, A Court Of Fey And Flowers is run by Aabria Iyengar, one of the EXU Calamity players, and she has a very different but also cinematic DMing style! The game is also a hybridization of DnD and a different system for facilitating Jane Austen romances, which is dope. Only the first episode is up on Youtube, but that should probably be enough to let you determine if you want to check out more.

I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the two DnD Actual-Plays I'm in, Rolling With Difficulty and Heart of Elynthi. Rolling with Difficulty is subdivided into three seasons of 8-10 four-hour episodes each, with each season having one overarching plot or threat but mostly being composed of episodic adventures - it's a Planescape series, meaning most episodes take us to a completely new plane of existence to deal with its unique geometry, fun denizens and wacky threats. It's also a lot more edited than some actual-play podcasts, with an effort to avoid the slow parts and the dice-rolling, mental math, "what am I gonna do this round," etc. Heart of Elynthi is an ongoing series that's only about five or six episodes in, with an overarching mystery in the background and a "collect the things to save the world" plotline in the foreground. It also streams new episodes on Twitch on (some) Wednesday afternoons, so if you'd benefit from a live chat to hang out and talk with during games, that might be worth checking out to see if you like it! Elynthi also has had some pretty cool behind-the-curtain stuff about how the players can handle in-character disagreements without them turning into IRL fights, which is something I don't think I've ever seen another DnD actual-play explicitly unpack but is also extremely important for players to consider, so that's fun.

[whispangleblogger]

I am not somebody that hops onto the "comic discourse" a lot. I usually prefer to talk things through with my friends and share opinions in private.

But since Tangle more or less got ignored so far i take the chance and talk a bit about her appearance in 64

She jumps in as a supportive character towards Whisper and helps her to prevent another breakdown. While yes, there was a scene in Urban Warfare that did the exact same thing, i feel like with issue 64 we finally see how strong of an impact this support actually has on the page. (I talk a bit more about Urban Warfare further down this post.) I don't even dare and call this bait (Edit: Not my words btw. i saw this used in another heated post. I personally never felt baited in any form. If anything, the girls relationship is one big highlight in these comics.) because it simply isn't. Here is a character that cares for her partner and also is uncomfortable with the whole situation to begin with. She has to decide where her priorities lie. Her reaction is to be expected to be focused on a trembling Whisper and all i can say is i'm glad we finally have a good depiction of that.

Tangle has the right to approach Whisper in ways i think no other character is able to, she earned it and it pretty much shows on this page. Softly taking down Whisper's mask and checking on her, the body language in these panels is chefs kiss. She's truly a bouncy girl, but it's good to see her being serious every now and then, i feel like it's a side of her that people usually tend to ignore. (And i really don't know why that is.) Evan Stanley does always an amazing job if it comes to showing Tangle in a different light or how she cares about her friends and loved ones. In regards about the current arc and even the last one, i feel like this post is a good chance to add my personal take to it as well, since it's been on my mind for a good while now. I feel like 64 finally makes a step into the right direction again.

To elaborate a little on that, i wasn't really a big fan of Urban Warfare, simply for the fact that it's pacing is all over the place. There were a lot of things that needed to be covered, to name a few: - new team building - Whisper's trauma - Lanolin introduced as a new character - a LOT of other teams jumping into the scene - the city itself all squeezed into a 5 book arc. One more book compared to a mini series that usually gives full focus to a set of chosen characters.

To make this clear, there are also good things in Urban Warfare as well but thanks to the fact how rushed the whole story felt in it's core it's a bit hard to enjoy the good bits as well...

Misadventures still deals with the same pacing problem and i believe that is where the real issue lies. As a reader/collector of the books and longtime fan of them, all i can say is:

I wish the comics would get their old, well cared, time for details back. Yes, a story like the Metal Virus was a long run but in the end it was a fantastic read. Mini arcs like Trial by Fire (Still one of my favorites), that focus on other things instead of the usual action, are also very important for character development and add a lot of depth to them. Endless Summer is a great example for such addition as well. These books provide insight into character interaction we usually don't see otherwise. Of course i have no idea how much SEGA is involved into everything if it comes to general decisions like how long one arc is supposed to last and when the next one should start.

(The next part is based on my personal taste, this has nothing to do with the general narrative of the books. I just want to share my thoughts about this since i really don't write them down a lot.)

As a little side note, i feel like Lanolin is a great character so far. Her stubborn and rule book like demeanor as a leader is refreshing to say the least. She also seems to be really close to how her creator ABT imagines her to be and i really appreciate that. But i can't help it and feel like her team dynamic with Tangle and Whisper comes of as rather… rocky ? On a combat level of things it works really good but on a friendship level it's somehow lacking atm. There is this boss and coworker relationship going on that feels more like real work. Obviously though she's new and needs more time to get better established. I guess we will see how this plays out in the future. I'm all in for a good or funny team dynamic but i also can't help it and feel like she works better as an addition to Jewel, running the restoration, the navigator typ that sends intel via com instead of a field combatant. Even if she proved she's good at close combat as well during her encounter with Whisper in 64. That being said, i am all open for surprises and more character development on her part. This is really just a "now" opinion and can easily change over time. I like the sheep, i really do.

[elbiotipo]

isnt op's post also criticizing the idea that we must adhere to colonialism's real life history in fantasy settings? why did you respond with the assumption they didn't (asking genuinely because i read the original post as a condemnation of the very attitude you are condemning op for)

I don't quite understand what you mean by that part in parentheses

But I don't think OP meant anything else than "you don't need elaborate worldbuilding in your story", which, understandably, I oppose. But at the end of it, that's just writing conventions. I'm a worldbuilding fanatic and love to read entire fictional encyclopedias without plot, other people don't care about that. They are completely and utterly wrong, but that's fine, I can live with that.

However, this part (which as far as I know you asked yourself) "the idea that we must adhere to colonialism's real life history in fantasy settings"

Here's the thing: if you're writing fantasy aimed at adults, I don't think you should shy away from depicting colonialism and its consequences.

Because when you write a *typical* popular fantasy work with those lavish feasts with goods from tropical climates or shining metal armors or silk dresses or big urbanized cities with libraries full of books (all more features of the early modern era than medieval Europe) it implies all that wealth comes from somewhere. Those goods come from somewhere. Someone makes all those things. That society is built on pillars; social pillars, economic pillars, ideological pillars. And it's worth question who, and how, and why. Even if some answers might seem distateful, ESPECIALLY if some answers might seem distateful. I simply do not care for works that refuse to engage or think about them, or at least hint about them. Because otherwise it becomes a story of "there's a Bad king and we need to replace it with a Good king" Don't we have 85489 of those already? Why not question something else about your society? The nature of the god(s), the power of the church, how should we organize society, colonialism and imperialism, cultural interactions of the "age of discovery", the scientific method, those were all issues in the early modern Europe where most fantasy draws the generic Pseudo-Medieval European Fantasy setting from, that I think are worth exploring, and authors who do show it well.

The question I'm asking, is basically: okay, your world is made up. Why is it made up exactly like Medieval Early Modern Europe, but without any of the dynamics that made that Europe?

(and since everybody forgets about the stupid space captain: "why, in your sci-fi world far away from modern Earth, all your space captains act like they are Usamerican?")

Some others have also told me "but in my fantasy world there's no colonialism, plants grow through magic/they're traded in fair exchanges" that's great too! I loved some of the explanations, but the point in my opinion also isn't to sanitize fantasy and get rid of all the bad stuff or inaccurate crops, the point is to think about those things and create a story about it. And yes, plants can tell an interesting story. Coffee, sugar, potatoes, tomatoes, and such also got spread by trade, nobody has a "copyright" on plants. But later, the dynamics of the production of those foods took a turn and it often involved the dynamics of trade, colonization and imperialism. Like I said in another post, tea becoming the preferred drink of the English but having to import it from Asia, coffee with all its traditions from its original point in the Middle East as it spread across the continents, potatoes becoming so integral crop to cold Europe that people actually forget their origin in the Andes...

All those things are worth exploring in my opinion, and personally for me, they can even make a better story that just a hero against the evil dark lord.

It's not just about potatoes, but it's always a good first question to ask.

[omegalomania]

OMGGG I'm such an urban fantasy fan pls pls continue like I'm loving it

WHY I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED. also i learned recently that my inbox is uhhhhh broken in the sense that its Just Not There on my dashboard so if you sent me asks in the past couple months i literally did not see them because the last tumblr dashboard update like, removed the little letter icon. from my dash. and idk how to bring it back lol

ANYWAY this whole au was born from me thinking a very lot about the whole aspect of so much (for) stardust and tourdust's staging where it relied on a) tangibility and b) magic imagery. like the album cover and the staging are all focused on real, actual things that one could conceivably touch (the album cover is an oil painting with glittery clay letters, the stage's props are all actual, interactable props, etc). and whats more, there's the additional "magical" element at work here: the magic 8 ball, pete's magic trick midway thru the show, the whole love from the other side mv, and so on. and because my brain is Like This, pretty soon id spun up a whole storyline out of wholecloth and now im going to make it everyone's problem i guess

ive elected to call it the magic stardust au for perhaps obvious reasons.

the magic stardust au takes place in a world that's a little bit like our own in some ways, and drastically different in others. its our world but shuffled a few degrees to the left, so to speak. for example, the state of iowa still exists - but there's a literal city in it called heaven. there's an alligator prince in this world, and he happens to be literal, as in literally an alligator who also happens to be a prince. magic is a thing here, and its so thoroughly common that no one bats an eye. it's all deeply ingrained into the fabric of reality. magic is twined through each and every soul. it's in the air, in the molecules, in the architecture, in the landscape. ancient, enchanted forests stand shoulder to shoulder with floating cities and underwater palaces and dense metropolises. magic is really just stardust in a sense, and that's just what everything else is too, so is it any wonder that stardust can act upon itself in strange and unique ways? that's all that magic is: stardust.

it always comes back to stardust.

so what happens when magic starts disappearing?

well, people don't notice at first. people don't notice because this thing, this force that's seeping in through little fissures in reality and leaching away all the strangeness in the world - it's clever about its work. it's cunning. it gets people alone and then it drowns them in itself, mercury-slick and flowing, and when it recedes...that's the scary part. not only are people losing their magic, they're also losing the memory of ever having magic in the first place. it's siphoning away the collective memory of magic. it's draining the world of all its charm and vigor and since no one can remember what it's taken once it's gone, it seems like no one can possibly stop it. no one even realizes that it's happening.

i've opted to call this force the annihilation.

(as you can probably tell, i like grabbing onto things from the #lore of the band's mythos rather than the personal stories of any of the members when it comes to devising aus. i love adapting lyrics, concepts, music video elements, and so on into stories, and grounding things into the concept surrounding the particular album or era i'm focusing on on as much as possible.)

anyhow, that's where our guys come in. or rather, that's where their stories all intersect. at the start, none of them have a whole lot of reason to interact with each other a bunch. all four of them live in the city of heaven, iowa, which as mentioned, happens to be ruled by our friend the alligator prince. stardust as an album is very preoccupied with the state of the world, voices a lot of general uncertainty and discomfort with the way things are run, and me being the way i am and having a baseline distrust of monarchy, i think the alligator prince is perhaps pretty honestly not the best at his job. his enforcers - well i'm not sure they'd strictly count as cops in this universe. but for simplicity's sake lets just call them cops and be content that they're probably not the best. corrupt, prone to favoritism, bad at their jobs. etc. this is important because it plays into how all of our guys end up getting to know one another.

hence, i introduce our four main players (featuring concept sketches i started throwing down once i realized this storytelling worm had burrowed into my head):

andy, as i've gotten into a little bit, is a rogue vigilante. he doesn't like the alligator prince. he's not keen on authority in general. he does what he does precisely because he's intent on giving people an alternative to the princes people. he's highly principled and completely unafraid to intervene with the prince's business if it means he's helping the people out. he lives alone on the outskirts of heaven, operates independently, and keeps his identity completely secret. he has a fearsome reputation in heaven but he's very well known. he's a little bit batman in that way - like, the guy's intimidating by default, but if you're in a pinch and you see him, you know he's going to help you out. and he's a hell of a lot better than a cop.

andy's magic, like everyone's in this universe, comes in two flavors: active and passive. his active magic takes the form of white lightning bolts, crackling bright energy that can shock, stun, and incapacitate in all sorts of ways. his passive magic comes from shadow, which is where his trademark hammer and massive, owl-like wings come from; they're actually solidifed shadow, and he can summon and dispel them at a thought.

(i can get into the specifics of how magic types differ if anyone wants to know details, but all you really need to know here is that everyone's got passive magic, which is their baseline, almost unconscious kind of magic, and active magic, which is the kind of magic that you have to work at. the annihilation steals both.)

joe is a freelancer. what this means is that he kind of ends up doing a lot of odd jobs based on whats being asked of him. this comes from a similar place from andy's motives - joe wants to give people an alternative to working with the prince's people. it's a job that requires wearing a lot of different hats, so to speak, so joe is a bit of a jack of all trades in that sense. joe of all trades? he's most frequently hired as a private investigator (again, an alternative to this universe's law enforcement), but he's also been called in as a bodyguard, a, uh "diplomat," and so on. he has a baseline familiarity with andy by virtue of having grown up in heaven and everyone knows about heaven's scary urban legend superhero.

joe's active magic takes the form of glowing blue knives, which he can use for aaaaall sorts of things. you can bet he uses them for every possible mundane use imaginable most of all though lmao. his passive magic is a procynoid form which, in plain language, means he can turn into a raccoon whenever he wants. because that idea from the love from the other side mv is too good to not use. said raccoon form can vary between a very ordinary-sized raccoon fella and a hulking, human-sized one. all comes down to how he feels.

pete is the sole proprietor and operator of pink seashell press, an independent news outlet. once again, this is in the interests of allowing people access to news that doesn't get filtered through the prince's people. it's a lot of hard and thankless work - pete is the only guy working this thing, so he's basically the whole staff. he's doing all the investigative reporting, writing, publishing, and distributing - but he believes in getting news out to people because it's important to get news from someone who isn't in the prince's pocket. he and joe are probably most familiar with each other since their work has a fair degree of overlap and comes from a very similar place. he's probably a big fan of andy lmao

pete's active magic takes the form of glowing green roses, which twine in thorny barbs and soft blooms alike. he can utilize them as both defensive/offensive and aesthetic/mundane purposes, which is nice! his passive magic isn't pictured in the below sketch because i hadn't yet nailed that down as an aspect of his character at the time of drawing, but it entails some partial skeletal physiology. he's got a skeletal arm and mostly skeletal abdomen. doesn't affect how he uses magic, but it grants him some invulnerability to stuff that might target internal organs that he, in part, doesn't strictly speaking have.

patrick is the odd one out here because unlike the others, he didn't grow up in or around heaven. he tends to be a bit of a wanderer, and heaven is just the place he happens to be passing through at the time. he keeps himself going with busking and gigs in small venues like cafés and bookshops as a local musician, and is incredibly cagey about his past. he's also very keen to avoid being noticed by the prince's people or authority in general. he's got the least familiarity with andy, joe, or pete, and is mostly interested in keeping his head down and making a self-sustaining little existence for himself.

this in huge part because of patrick's passive magic, which is a compelling voice. (inspired in part by the field of dreams quote that pete used to tease the upcoming stardust era, not long after the initial chicago tribune fob8 ad dropped: "but until i heard the voice, i'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life.") patrick doesn't actually have to sing for this to take effect. it can come from speaking too forcefully, making an idle suggestion, and a lot of different things. hence why patrick tends to get on people's bad side - he tries incredibly hard to keep this aspect from affecting his life, but once people pick up on this aspect of his voice, things fall apart fast. patrick's spent most of his life moving from place to place because of this. and yeah, he has no idea how much or how little he's influencing anyone at any given time. it's a complete nightmare.

his active magic is a tad more benign. it takes the shape of orange flames, which are fairly malleable and that patrick can reshape into instruments and such with a little effort.

eventually, of course, patrick does indeed get on the wrong side of heaven's authorities because of the same thing that always gets him in his trouble: that darn voice of his. this happens the same time that one of andy's jobs goes horribly wrong and he gets injured and caught. pete crosses the line one too many times, and joe just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. the bottom line is that at this point, all four of the guys end up in heaven's jail at the same time, and that's where their stories all properly intersect.

that's when the annihilation comes for them.

it leaks in through the cracks in the walls and around the grout in the windows and it starts gathering itself up - this horrible, awful force that they can all feel and just looking at it feels wrong. it's an inky swell of star-freckled black void, like a slice of the cosmos staring at them through the bars of their shared cell. it seethes hungrily for them.

the cops run, of course. they leave their charges stuck behind bars, at the mercy of this terrifying thing that - though they don't know it - wants nothing more than to sap their magic away.

the annihilation manages to get its claws into each of them, but only briefly because fortunately, the four of them work together to take matters into their own hands. they manage to bust themselves out of the cell and get the hell out of dodge, but not before the annihilation stains each one of them with its grasping, hungry force, forever altering their appearance. the annihilation leaves a silvery, ashy blotch where it bled onto each of them:

andy gets a massive splash of it on his chest that leaks up onto his throat. joe got splashed on the right side of his body, mostly on his right ear, neck, and adjacent shoulder. pete also got hit on the left, but it mostly consumed his left eye and left leg. patrick got stained on his left hand from the wrist down.

here's a quick and dirty doodle i did to kind of depict this. it didn't come out the way i wanted to and it's not set in stone yet, but it's the general notion.

the fact that these four guys got attacked by the annihilation but crucially managed to escape it before it completely consumed them has permitted each of them an incredibly unique trait: they can understand what it wants. it didn't succeed in draining their magic, so it didn't take their memories of magic either. the annihilation made a tremendous misstep in not isolating these guys when it targeted them, because in working together, they were able to escape it.

so they are in the unique position to realize what's happening, where no one else can.

whatever this thing is, it's old. and it's powerful.

and it's very, very hungry.

and that's the cliffnotes of how these four guys have to band together to save the world before all the magic is drained away for good.

[myloveismineallmine]

Just watched It's a Wonderful Life and I have so many thoughts... it's so interesting to compare it to the modern christmas movies we see. Many are those lifetime romances about a business woman who visits her hometown for christmas and gives up her job in new york/seattle/chicago/LA/ insert some other metropolitan city here so she can marry a more "traditional" hometown man and stay in that community. I've seen some people point out how it feels very traditionalist and almost anti-feminist and I'm inclined to agree.

I think they tried to elicit the themes from IWL but got completely lost in the sauce. The protagonist is a man who had always dreamed of traveling the world and getting out of his shitty small town. But multiple times he is given the opportunity to escape to bigger cities, and each time he choses to stay behind. Not because he personally wants to, he craves a life bigger than he has. And not for anything like romance, either. He stays because the community needs him to stand up to corporate greed and be a leader for them. After his brother comes back from school, he is once again offered an opportunity to escape via putting his brother in his position to run the family business. But he lets his brother move away because he sees that his brother has already started a life elsewhere and is very happy. This selfless action is rewarded for the protagonist when his brother later saves hundreds of lives during WW2 and becomes a national hero. The protagonist sacrifices his own honeymoon money so that the community will have enough money to get by when the bank goes under. He is rewarded by getting a brief ego boost when the villain of the film fails to shut down his company. Even when the villain offers the main protagonist a job with high pay to support his struggling family, the protagonist stands his ground and continues to live a poor life while also being able to help people in his community build houses and businesses. The main protagonist is offered many "outs" to live a better life, and yet he chooses to not take them because he is selfless and knows his community needs him.

This is one of the main differences, I think. Hallmark/Lifetime movies think romance is a justifiable means of sacrificing a "better" life. And maybe it is, though I think the actors should have chemistry if they want that to be true. But despite having romance, IWL is not about sacrificing your dreams to get married in a small town. It's about sacrificing your dreams to help build a community and fight against corporate greed. Which is why IWL feels less like a Christian traditionalist propaganda, despite having religious themes. The protagonist does throw away his lofty aspirations, but it's not just for one person, it's to bring a whole community together and to stand up against an actual evil (monopolistic capitalism.) They even show you how shitty things are when there's no one there to do that!

In short. Modern christmas movies usually miss the mark because they want to sell us a very white traditionalist heterosexual romance celebrating America's most consumerist holiday. Any actual critique on the problems within our society= too much of a risk. Too hard to thinky about. Brain hurty from actual deep topics and not just "love good, small towns good, urbanism BAD!!!"

[linka-from-captain-planet]

that minthara and florrick update was NUTS. Minthara using her sources to see if Florrick ever slept with Ulder is EXACTLY the kind of unhinged, territorial behavior I love her for tbh. If you need an excuse to ramble about them, I would love to know how you picture this whole thing between them starting!

YES because the thing about Minthara is that she's operating on nuclear Menzoberranzan levels of intensity 24/7. Writing her subjective narration is very fun because she's so intelligent and cunning, but her perception of things is just slightly skewed from the reality of Baldurian life. That's the realization she starts to have toward the end, that she's playing this hardcore game of 4D chess basically just against herself, while Florrick is only like... having a nice evening banging her work frenemy (which is unhinged, just not nearly on the same level).

I only briefly mentioned in the fic what context I think this thing could have started in, but I'm obviously insane about this ship, so I'll take any excuse to expand! Wall of text incoming though...

Since the story is told from Minthara's POV, I wanted to go over what she sees in Florrick that would attract her, since Minthara's not easy to impress and doesn't waste her time with just anyone. And what she sees is... a lot of herself actually. She sees a powerful woman on a noble quest, driven by her unshakeable values, who falls into the clutches of the Absolute (albeit in a very different way) and almost loses herself, only to be saved and find herself again. I think that would earn Florrick just enough of Minthara's respect to earn her attention... and maybe a bit of a connection, too.

(This is also a saved but unromanced Minthara, passed over by the person who gave her back her life... still yearning for the affection and connection that is her deepest desire and her biggest weakness...)

Fast forward a bit and the Netherbrain is defeated, the Cult of Absolute is no more, people are cheering in the streets... All I'm saying is that *I* would be a little frisky. If I'm Minthara, I'm reaching for someone perhaps not in the tight-knit group of heroes I don't really feel a part of, but perhaps someone who's also on the edge of them, someone who's earned a bit of respect. If I'm Florrick... maybe she doesn't know that Minthara was the one who ordered the raid on Waukeen's Rest yet, or maybe she's temporarily willing to forgive it because Minthara, at the end of the day, did help save her beloved city and her beloved duke.

(Or maybe she's just a wood elf* and, opposite of Minthara, her attitude toward sexuality is pretty relaxed and she doesn't feel the need to justify her desire or make partners 'earn' it. It's just sex, not a big deal....

*not confirmed in canon and possibly refuted by her stats, but always real to ME bc of the fun flavors it adds to her characterization overall as a stern, urbane bureaucrat)

So anyway they bang once, expecting that to be the end of it.

But Minthara can't go home. There are no gods left for her. She's a traitor unto Lolth, and she knows exactly what her greatest adversary (her mom) is capable of. She could skulk in the shadows of the shadows, find fellow outcasts, build a rebel force... but maybe she bides her time, first, in Baldur's Gate. Maybe she sees an apple ripe for picking in the chaos and the rebuilding. No matter what she does, she needs resources, and she's just been given a key to the market.

You know Ulder and Florrick give what remains of Gortash's yes-men the boot on day 1 plus a lot of patriars and whatever are already dead, so there are plenty of openings among the ranks of the leadership, and who better to fill it than a renowned hero? Not in any official capacity at first (I imagine her just being a menace in a town hall for a while), but once she proves her mettle as a shrewd leader, she quickly earns her way into the council.

Obviously, this flings her back into Florrick's orbit.

Florrick wasn't born yesterday, and she also probably has a 1000-page dossier on Minthara's various war crimes drafted on day 1. She knows what Minthara is up to. Her faith in the city and Ulder's leadership is unshakeable; she does not really find Minthara to be a threat... but perhaps she takes it upon herself to monitor the situation anyway.

And that's where things get a little messy, because they're simultaneously allies and adversaries day-to-day, and they once went through something pretty extraordinary together, and they've already had sex. These are both women who aren't happy unless they're in at least a bit over their head, unless they're being challenged, and having a bit of excitement in their day that is otherwise just endless squabbling, Florrick trying to keep the city on the righteous path so it doesn't fall into corruption yet again, Minthara trying to snatch power bit by bit...

Well I just think they'd have a lot to fuck about, basically.

And considering that Minthara is a known feelings-catcher... while Florrick's love is reserved for Baldur's Gate and Ulder** even though she shares her body with Minthara... there's a lot to feels about, as well.

**I'm on the fence headcanon-wise if I want Florrick to actually be somewhat in love with Ulder and simply at peace with it not being mutual/sexual, or if she's simply a very devoted friend and Minthara's jealousy is irrational.

Anyway this is possibly more than you bargained for but thanks for the opportunity to ramble :)

[no-where-new-hero]

Time for another Lantern Hill Book club catchup post! I wish I didn't have time to read and gather my thoughts only once a week at this point, but oh well ;(

CH. 9: (I'm pretty sure this is where I left off?)

LMM gets so much mileage out of personifying 60 Gay Street in this chapter, fully appraising us of its unfriendliness and hostility. Absolutely the most vicious house of her canon, I think--a pure extension of Grandmother's personality.

Jane felt that it might help the ache a little if she could only have a talk with mother, but when she tried mother's door it was locked. Jane felt that mother didn't want to talk to her about this and that hurt worse than anything else.

I've already bitched about this paragraph, but I'm going to bitch again. Robin's inability to put herself in her daughter's shoes for 10 seconds and at least TRY not to make this sudden summons seem so scary or overwhelming is so frustrating. If Jane has told her mother how much she likes their frivolous little chats and things and it causes Robin enough pain for Jane to stop confessing this kind of thing to her, Robin SHOULD have the awareness to realize what Jane needs most is an emotional connection with her. Earlier on, Jane is prevented from talking to Robin by Grandmother, but this paragraph kind of explicitly lays out how it isn't just Grandmother's heavy-handedness preventing Robin from being a good mother but Robin's own short-sightedness. Even comforting lies would have been better for Jane at this point.

CH. 10:

Love how LMM has so many jokes about PEI being too small to live on so that people must live in perpetual danger of falling into the sea.

CH. 11:

I don't think we'll actually lose Jody to the orphanage before the end of the book but goodness LMM knows how to pile on the tragedies.

...they drove along over the elfish underground city that comes into view under the black street on a rainy night.

A rare case of LMM being an urban writer. Of course she makes it as magical as she makes her natural landscapes.

She thought Jane quite the dumbest child she had ever encountered.

This constant harping on Jane's purported idiocy feels like such an implicit Maud judgment to me. Like. I feel like the average adult wouldn't be so immediately blunt about an 11-year-old's intellect or lack thereof? Unless it's just different mores since I feel like nowadays an adult would take silence as shyness. But Maud's own ferocious intelligence gives me the impression that she would be very capable of cataloguing people as dumb. (Okay I also just realized that during this time, "dumb" might have been used for people without speech but both Phyllis and Grandmother freely mock Jane for not being very bright which still reinforces my point a bit).

CH. 12:

Getting a lot of echoes of other LMM books in here:

She drew herself away and took in the lady with one of her straight, deliberate glances. (such an Emily Starr gesture) …but that dreadful old car of his broke down half-way." (Andrew appears to have bought his car from the same place as Barney Snaith) Perhaps the "Janie" was the last straw. Jane was not going to be "Janied." (Aunt Irene is giving a weird combination of Aunt Laura and Aunt Ruth.)

Aunt Irene is intensely creepy in a way I can't quite put a finger on. Well, I can--she's as possessive and judgmental as Grandmother, just more sugary. But their appraising and judging qualities are the same. Also the obsession with love meaning jealousy is really coming through as a motif here: Grandmother's jealous posessiveness of Robin, Robin thinking Andrew was jealous of Jane, Irene thinking Robin was jealous of her and Andrew's closeness, Irene's unnecessary attachment to Andrew. She seems to be twisting everyone's emotions around and then blaming them for things that don't seem to be there.

And I was always so fond of your mother…but…well, I don't quite think she ever really liked me.

This is the first sign of sense in Robin that I've seen so far.

CH. 13:

...in which Jane continues to have traumatic mealtimes with gaslighting adults.

More parallels to other LMM media! First we have Andrew "Kenneth Howard" Stuart to rival Barney "John Foster" Snaith, because beloved writers being your very close kin abound in the LMMverse as much as forgotten heirs to wealthy corporations being your neighbors abound in kdramas, apparently. Second, we have familial phrenology to catalogue the features inherited a la Emily Starr, as well as a lot of bald-faced commentary on appearances, and the Douglas Starr energy in Andrew is intensifying. I have to say Jane's acceptance and love of him feels a bit sudden--and I'm not entirely sure how much I approve of this bit:

Would he be disappointed because she was not pretty? Would he think her mouth too big?

immediately after her resolution not to be "bright and fresh for anybody." Will need to keep mulling over this.

CH. 14:

Aunt Irene made a fuss over dad. She purred over him...actually purred. And dad liked her purring and her honey-sweet phrases just as well as he had liked her cake. Jane saw that clearly.

For all that LMM adores and elevates cats, she manages to infuse untold amounts of disgust into describing people as purring in a way I find fascinating. I will never move on from how she describes Teddy "purring and scintillating" for Ilse, and here she's using it to illustrate Irene's corrosive sucking-up to Andrew. Jane again knows her onions about human psychology.

"She's got a secretive strain in her, Andrew, that I confess I don't like." "Knows how to keep her own counsel, eh?" said dad. "It's more than that, Andrew. She's deep...take my word for it, she's deep. Old Lady Kennedy will never be dead while she is alive.

More Aunt Ruth and Aunt Elizabeth type lines: "sly and deep" and "your grandfather Archibald won't be dead as long as you're live" make a comeback here.

And the rest of the chapter feels so much like Barney and Valancy heading to Mistawis: the way Andrew talks about his life (their tones are very similar), Jane's feeling of peace and freedom at Brookview. A small spotted dog in place of Good Luck and Banjo.

I also now have a strong craving to try wild-strawberry jam.

CH. 15:

This happens to be one of the days when I like myself reasonably well.

What a mood? This line suddenly made me like Andrew way more.

Once I took you down and dipped you in it, to the horror of…of several people. You were properly baptized before that in the Anglican church in Charlottetown…but that was your real baptism. You are the sea's child and you have come home."

Okay, I REALLY like Andrew in this chapter. I think in a paragraph like this I can kind of catch the glimpse of why he seems similar to Dean Priest. This is such a Dean thing to do and a Dean thing to talk about. Ditto with finding a magic house. Andrew lacks the cynicism of the Barney/Dean type, but he has their whimsy--possibly closer to Dean with it than Barney.

It's also very peculiar because Barney/Valancy, Emily/Dean, and Jane/Andrew all feel like they work around similar conversations and emotional connections despite being different relationships. One is romantic, one is romantic/platonic but also slightly familial, one is entirely familial, and yet they all cling to similar themes. Emily and Jane talk about who they resemble to Dean and Andrew. Setting up a domestic space becomes a plot point. Valancy and Jane are entirely happy with their author beloveds, yet feel a little insecure about how much that happiness and love is reciprocated. They travel by car to escape the peering judgments of society.

I will do my best to keep up with the book club from here, since things have gotten very interesting very quickly.

[deepdrownlamentt]

hello! i saw ur requests r open, so may i request elysium and tequila (separate) date ideas? thank u in advance!

↬ elysium & tequila's date plans

content warnings: none

note: my first request !! ♡ hello anon, yes of course you may !! how does it feel to have the Best taste in men... impeccable... i actually missed the first run of dossoles holiday so i'm Just going off of tequila's archives and voicelines, but hopefully he isn't (too) ooc!! i hope you enjoy ♡

↬ ELYSIUM claims that his skills would go to waste if he didn't use them to map out elaborate date locations he happens to encounter during missions — whether it's something like a remote field filled with your favourite flowers, or just an out-of-the way cafe that makes their drinks in exactly the way you like.

↬ he enjoys taking you to different places each time, too! there's something he always loves about uncovering your eyes as you arrive at each new location — no peeking, it's a surprise! — and watching how you'll react. each little smile, or gasp, or widening of your eyes sends a little surge of pride through him, like a job well done.

↬ and yes, he is very much prepared for any teasing about how meticulous all of this is: it's just one of the perks to dating someone as cool and charismatic as him! or so he claims, at least. all jokes aside, he has no complaints in pulling out all the stops for you, and seeing you in all of these places that reminded him of you — the sun shining on your face just as he imagined, your laugh being carried along on the wind... well, it's the very least he can do for his love, isn't it?

↬ even then, elysium doesn't mind simpler dates, too. maybe you just want to check out the shopping district of a nearby town, or go out somewhere for lunch? he'll carry your bags for you in one arm and hold your hand with the other. or maybe you'd want to stay inside the landship, instead? maybe you'd be so kind as to indulge him in some chess — whoever loses has to give the winner a kiss! huuuh, what do you mean that's not a fair bet?!

↬ there's little TEQUILA enjoys more than the evening city breeze and you. he's probably a romantic at heart, he muses — an arm around your waist, or your head leaning against his shoulder, or your little finger entwined with his as you tell him about your day... perhaps he's a man of simpler pleasures than he thought.

↬ his dates are no less meticulously planned out than elysium's; he very much prefers the security of a well thought out plan, you see. tequila seems much more the type for more urban dates, though. even if it's somewhere completely new, don't worry your pretty little head about it, he's got all the preparations covered! he explored the area a bit on his own, you see, and there's a few places he thinks you'll like. he'll pick you up at seven, and then take you here to have dinner, and then...

↬ of course, maybe he does want to show off in front of you sometimes, too. he'll win you any prize you like — it doesn't matter whether it's a test of skill or luck, he told you he would personally deliver it right into your hands, so of course he has to stay true to his word! and of course, that little smile of yours is always payment enough, regardless of how much trouble he went through.

↬ for tequila himself, though, he thinks being able to walk you back to your room on the landship is enough of a prize for him. he knows it's a little bit overkill — of course it is, with how secure rhodes island seems to be — but he feels just a little more at ease making this another little part of your date-time routine. he'll give you one last goodnight kiss before you turn to close the door, and every time, without fail, he hopes to show you around dossoles someday, too.

[beevean]

I never understood why people praise Satam as the end-all be-all of Sonic media and gush about how dark it is. First off, the games (especially Sonic CD) handled the "Robotnik takes over and turns world into polluted hellhole with his machines" concept much better. Second it wasn't even all that dark. The games had darker moments like having an unarmed terminally ill child get gunned down like a damn dog on-screen, baby Chao being stomped to death and having Sonic's friends experience a "I have no mouth and I must scream" sensation of floating in a black limbo without a body, after being turned into fully conscious immobile statues. The robians were just mindless zombies. They got it easy.

Even Satams Robotnik was pretty lackluster. All he did was sit on his rotund rear end at hq and bark orders like a Screaming Dumbass. He even begged for his worthless life before a Canon foreigner villain . He literally kissed the ground while beggingm

Also he was a freaking dumbass for not using the robians as meat shields against sonic or using them as attack dogs since the freedom fighters wouldn't want to harm a former mobian that could very well be a loved one.

Also Satam Sonic was weak AF! Satam tails was weaker than a kitten!

Sorry, no point in coming to me to complain about SatAM because I never watched a single episode of it lmao.

To be fair, all the dark stuff you mentioned came after SatAM, and to this day Shadow's backstory and Gerald's diary are considered the darkest point of the games. (no such respect for my girl Tikal or the Time Eater's effects, sadly :( ). I can see how, superficially, people back then would be appealed by SatAM's grimdark nature contrasted with how bright the Classic games were. It's true however that CD was much more creative in its depiction of a world conquered by Eggman: we actually see how much he damaged the zones, from turning the lake in Palmtree Panic into a grey sludge, to mining down all the crystals in Quartz Quadrant, to defacing ancient ruins in Tidal Tempest. It's not just an endless sea of super scary buildings: the zones are corrupted, ruined, and it's all your fault for not stopping it. And, of course, the Good Futures show technology aiding nature instead, making Sonic CD possibly the earliest example of Solar Punk <3

I also personally really love Scrap Brain Act 1's aesthetic. Sonic 1 has a nature-urban progression, so you go from unspoiled Green Hill, to ruins overcome by nature (Marble Zone and Labyrinth), to a city with greenery (Spring Yard), to a city without any greenery but still pretty to look at (Star Light)... to an utter industral monstrosity, the ground completely made of metal and a sky turned orange from the sheer amount of pollution being emitted.

I also find brilliance in how Act 3 is a palette swap of Labyrinth Zone! Eggman has built his base over ancient ruins! He's dumping pollution in the water!

And a personal appreciated detail of mine is how the "good" ending of Sonic 1 8-bit is the power of the Chaos Emeralds cleansing the smoke surrounding South Island. Even in that little game, they made sure to include how much of an ecoterrorist Eggman is <3

Yeah sorry, I have nothing to say about SatAM. Maybe (maybe) one day I'll try to watch some episodes, but I'm not interested. I prefer to talk about the games :>