#IT CAN BECOME THE THEME OF THE CONNECTION FOUND BY THESE WAYWARD SOULS AND THE UNIQUE BOND THEY'VE COME TO FORM | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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13x08 watching notes

You guys, I literally can't cope with Sam dressing like this much longer. I am being personally attacked. WHo EVEN SELLS ORANGE PLAID.

expectations: best case scenario, some literally unholy lovechild of 7x20 and 12x12.

Heists mean side characters and good heists mean fun side characters. From the promo stuff it looks like we have a couple of quirky side characters, who aesthetically vaguely reminded me of the Doctor Who bank heist episode from the Clara period of the show, just because quirky side characters to bolster a heist episode. It's probably quite easy to beat the mood and justification of ridiculousness from Doctor Who, especially peak Moffatt era nonsense, out of the water, but this is Glynn so I'm expecting good characters, good characterisation, but pooossibly some random plot hole or some sort of back and forth of characters/scenes that's hard to follow that doesn't necessarily hurt the episode but does make it a headache later :P

[note with hindsight: *just hands Glynn a trophy for it and walks off*]

It's essentially the same thing you forgive under Dabb vs cars (aka not a problem unless you make it one), but it doesn't really lend itself to writing a heist either so this is in no way the same level of "Uhoh" as a Buckleming episode but it is a hmmm I hope people aren't arguing in circles about some way the plot worked and ignoring the good stuff when I get online comment :P

I wasn't sure how this fit into the overall picture of wtf the demons were up to before yesterday, but with the promo scene with Bart, selling him as essentially the new (I mean... potentially since season 6) king of the crossroads but maybe not styling himself that way, we may or may not get another overt canon dive like 12x12 showed us how Crowley got his upgrade, to tell us how long this guy has been around behind the scenes (and SENSIBLY staying off the Winchesters' radar), but this character very literally is Crowley2.0 as people have been calling him in the sense that he is what Crowley was when we met him both with the actual job title AND narratively, and in this case probably very content with his job as it is especially with the danger at the very top, and I hope for his sake he doesn't get ambitious, because it would be great to have a character like this survive just for story stability - yeah even though he's another white dude might as well just lump it unless this episode immediately replaces him with someone better but intent on doing the *exact same* job properly - just to have some stability and a second player in the Hell storyline. Especially if they maintain an uneasy relationship with him that he really is the last resort for help Crowley really wasn't since like season 10.

It establishes another position of power in Hell's hierarchy and it's a fairly safe job where a smart demon can accrue a lot of power - Crowley was shown to have a whole bunch of resources and a lot of it predating becoming King of Hell, specifically because it was stuff gathered as a crossroads demon/through controlling that flow of trade. TBH it's better placed than whoever is trying to lead the demons because they have all the resources. I think in 11x23 Crowley said his minions took everything and ran? This dude would be one of the key placed people to do that because he has all the stuff and connections to all the souls collected in deals. Whether that comes up or not I'm just going to assume he did :P

Anyway in the story it creates another character where we basically already know everything about how they function, because Crowley, both on a random world building and originally how Crowley was in the narrative sort of level. It sucks he's getting replaced on a "I did actually quite like him most days" level, and it's definitely a "get 2 people to do the same job 1 man was doing" thing but then the writing had been so bad to Crowley for a couple of years since they ran out of things for him to do that maybe stripping back to basics to get the narrative role he used to offer without all the baggage is sensible >.> If a character takes on so much of a life of their own they can't do the stuff they used to offer without it being an issue like removing any tension about giving them magic things they couldn't obtain themselves, or offering sincere opposition and attempts to kill them from the throne of Hell, then unfortunately for Crowley, this is a great choice. Asmodeus represents all the shit I didn't like that they kept making Crowley do, Bart represents the side of Crowley introduced by Edlund and maintained at least until Edlund left the show (Crowley was his baby even more than Cas was - he just dipped in to write the best Cas episodes but he introduced and pushed Crowley as a character... funnily enough at the end of season 8 both their natures were changed dramatically and permanently). Based on 1 promo scene, I have to admit, Bart is all the bits of Crowley I liked best, while coming across as a bit of a cheap knock off in the way he tries to butter up to the Winchesters, a bit too knowing, a bit too under-informed, while Crowley ran loops around them just in their opening conversation.

OMG it's sleeting so I am going to roll the dice and get a lift to yoga from the same person who plain forgot to pick my mum up and take her wherever they were going for about 2 hours last week when I wisely decided to get the bus. See now I have extra time, the episode is downloaded, but... I don't have enough time. Nooo way :P

Other generic pre-ep thoughts: this concept is goofy but I seriously don't trust it to stay that way because you never trust this show to stay that way. We haven't seen Asmodeus in a non-BL episode and while he is essentially their pet character he's still plot relevant. I'm not exactly on the side of "we HAVE to get Casmodeus before this is all said and done" as in I'd really love it but it seems so easy to bungle in a BL episode. On the other hand, just because Cas is locked up doesn't mean we can't see Misha in an episode while this state of affairs continues (and just because there's no spoilers doesn't mean it's not happening) and Glynn having a crack at Casmodeus sounds like a perfect set up for the kind of stuff we'd want to see out of it, and be a curveball to throw in here.

I'm just going to assume we're not seeing Mary again for a while and this is all set in the main universe.

I assume Jack isn't in the episode but we may or may not get a lead on him at the end, or else be left on "well we have a lead/half a lead on him" because I sort of feel like if he literally breaks the universe next episode after this he'll be pretty easy to find again :P

This may all be some way to force some conversations about how Dean and Sam feel about Jack on the other side of the turning point, especially if it's our last chance for them to be in the limelight until the other side of Wayward Sisters midseason fun. And if Jack has broken the universe next episode, we need to have their current stances laid out before they go rushing in to deal with that. So this could be a fairly light episode for character discussion.

HI back from yoga

the recap immediately gets into Jack stuff so hey maybe he is in the episode, maybe it's just explaining better why he is not in this episode because the reason why NOT is just as important.

Then just way too much having to recap last episode to get us up to date on what Sam and Dean have been through with all that. I like that they included that Ketch said he was his own twin considering Dean says "twinsies" in the promo scene, as, of course, this may be a really important theme. Twins that aren't actually twins. Cas and the Empty, Ketch and "Alexander", Dean and Crowley2.0, Dean being fed up of things that look like other things and the shapeshifter & ghoul...

Anyway. "NOW" - Cambridge, England. Okay then. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. *rubs a Union Jack on it to make it more British*

This is your weekly reminder to read these notes in a shrill British accent.

Whoever this is outside looks like she's up to something.

This mueseum:

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130991708770/justanotheridijiton-jerry-wanek-on-supernatural

I'm not gonna read into that immediately because its been completely dressed up for the vampire!Dean episode and it's been polished up for this episode. But we get a long look at the stained glass roof and that was a centrepiece for the vamp episode.

*she continues to be up to something*

Wow, great security. Bust open a door and no alarms go off? It's the 2nd door that doesn't work, after Dean failed to get the automatic door to open for him in 13x05.

Mmmm drawers of old scrolls and spooooky writing.

Just... shove it in your handbag.

Oh yep she's a demon, that's surprising.

This is a great way to do a robbery, tbh. Ethics about possession aside, you can burn a vessel and let them take whatever physical damage or legal ramifications of being found in the room where something was stolen, but if you run into problems, just possess the next person. Especially someone with clearance, if you couldn't find them earlier...

I suppose her not being able to open the door earlier was an omen for her not having all the information - not knowing that Bart was going to stab her as soon as he had what he wanted from her, and that she wasn't working for Asmodeus's whim at all, but Bart was going rogue with it. This is another suggestion of the dramatic irony at work - Dean couldn't open the door, he had no faith, and it seemed like to HIM that no one was helping him. But of course Cas had already come back, the automatic door had opened in that sense, but he didn't know so he's encountering this block. This demon powers through it as well without setting off any alarm bells and she should have had some about the whole double cross coming. Likewise, Dean's surprised by Cas's return.

Bart establishes himself as a Crowley-alike instantly, by having a random demon minion to double cross, and to go to the Winchesters. He already has Dean on speed dial which means his number must get circulated among the demons, or Bart has sought it out already from their sources. Whether he's had it a while and just decided to pounce...

I guess it's also like the opposite of Cas phoning him and we don't hear that side of the conversation - I mean we hear Dean on the phone here, but we're staying on Bart's side of the camera, and he's enticing him in with what he needs to find Jack. Again, more dark mirrors of stuff that's already happened... Dean getting a lot of phonecalls he needs to follow his faith on.

Dean immediately on screen in his bi plaid doing that thing with the gun that's... suggestive. Sitting there obessesively cleaning his gun.

Sam emerges, in a shirt that is going to be a Problem.

*mutes Sam*

Sam was the one who talked to Cas. I wonder if Asmodeus phoned Sam up rather than the other way around. Like, don't be suspicious, just check in every day and see how they're doing... Just phone one of the brothers at random.

Anyway we already know, of course, that it's not Cas, and here we are with more dramatic irony, the same problem as Casifer before they knew, and it's underlined by Sam being the one to talk to Casmodeus instead of Dean. Fewer opportunities based on what we see on screen for Dean to work it out.

And now we see the other side of the phonecall, tracking back in time to show us the same thing over again, but now we have Dean's POV on it too and he's not at this disadvantage, at least, with the way it's all been set up. He gets to snark back etc although Bart has the right word to stop Dean hanging up on him.

I do like the snark about Hell street locations :P

Sam's like "a demon!" whispered even though it's obvious and I think Dean clued into it which means once again Sam's being the GA, or a filter for them, and even though he says it silently, he's still spelling out what he thinks it is when it's blatantly obvious to us what it is as we watched the cold open and his side of the start of the phone call already.

"if I had a way to find *your boy*" - that parenting theme again, and he's addressing it to Dean since that's who he thinks he's solely on the phone to.

We get a look at a ton of shop fronts and I suppose they're all made up?

The Smile Diner is already incongruously happy - more irony, just that it's all smiles for what would be an understandably tense meeting.

Anyway: "BANGTOWN beauty & barber" "Fine art bartending LEARN TO BARTEND", a restaurant...

A Chinese-owned phone shop "Ketaiya" which I suppose is selling phones, as it says "iphone8.8" in the window but also would fit an idea of calling home, as shops like this exist for most immigrant populations, as a place where they can make cheap phonecalls home. In this part of the country I'm most used to seeing Arabic, Slavic or Eastern European versions of this but I assume it's the same deal. We get cage imagery over the front of this shop, obviously as protection for it as it has a bunch of iphones in it, but the idea that Cas can't call them because he's in prison is right there, and it makes him the lil green mascot in the window.

And then the smile cafe is the next thing along. :)

"He could work for Asmodeus" smart, but wrong *as far as we know*, and Sam is like "what if he's telling the truth", so this scepticism seems to be flipping their roles from last episode, buuut on the other hand Dean is being defensive and practical and Sam is again entertaining things villains tell them.

"After Crowley I told myself no more demons" it STILL sounds like bitter but civil exes. And you'd bet that "after Crowley" is not "in the last month since he died" but "since that time we had a wild elopement"

but hanging a lampshade on exactly what Bart is doing for them in the narrative, and of course that Dean is going to be predisposed to see him as a Crowley2.0 exactly as we do, so that adds even more depth to the promo scene.

Sam like "you said we need a miracle, maybe this is it" and then Dean calling out that demons don't give miracles - they give deals they can SELL as miracles. Who of the two of you has been jerked around more by demon deals? Oh yeah the one of you who sold your soul because your father's demon deal spiritually broke you already. (I mean yeah Sam has had it PLENTY hard in other ways but Dean and crossroads demons is a very different story to Sam)

"Let's hear the guy out." "And after that we kill him."

I continue to be enraged that Dean is wearing sensible black and at least MUTED purples and Sam's wearing the orange jacket and a plaid with like, hazard day glo orange strips sewn into it.

:) Smile Diner :)

it's horrifying, but it has homemade burgers. I have no clue if this is something they scouted out or repainted but the brickwork having yellow lines is like WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING in film language, like DO NOT ENTER police tape coding. IRL it would be whimsical, especially with all the smilies. On screen, it it horrifying. There's red signage and green neon boxing the window I think they're gonna sit in, and red and green are the poison codependency colours I think? According to Zerbe? I don't know if that's the dynamic here but it's certainly not GOOD, especially boxed in by yellow and black hazard warnings.

There's a pretty bridge and a sunset/rise in the sign. It's incongruous to the smile theme at least because it doesn't directly relate to smiling, and is just a random image. I would assume it's symbolic in some way... Cas is of course the sun, this does mimic the Gas n Sip logo (especially as it has a maroon version), and the road seems to lead away from the sun across the bridge. They're not helping Cas going in here, that's for sure :P

Lots of potted plants in here, and one behind Bart.

"The famous Winchesters!" "Some random demon." Dean is in a power play with him and now they're face to face rather than at a disadvantage over the phone, he's gonna win this one. Watch.

Bart offers a nickname to them, which could be a power play to say hey I'm so powerful we get on nickname terms because I allow you and you should be grateful or whatever, but his name sounds like an old powerful demon name (he and Asmodeus both have old school "us" endings to their names) and so he's actually neutering the part that makes his name sound powerful and impressive. He may be preempting Dean's infamous nicknaming habit, but Dean does it to be dismissive or to humanise. And he's not gonna get the latter treatment :P

Again, offering them to sit and then trying to get Dean on his side with pie - gesture after gesture of power, being the one in control, and knowing them, and the pie is the first sign he's done his Winchester Homework, which bad guys notoriously get wrong or misread. In this case, he's got Dean down as the stupid dumb muscle who can be bribed with pie, and I assume missing aaall the complexity of why demons fear him so much.

He labels Dean a "disrupter" when Dean has been tasked with maintaining the natural order. Dean has only ever tried to STOP bad stuff happening, and though he's ACCIDENTALLY helped unleash a bunch of stuff, it's never been because he WANTS to. He's helped cause a lot of the disruption in Hell with his actions, but that's because Hell is bad and he wants to stop it doing bad things. In general Dean's big victories have been to try and secure the natural order staying as it is, with his two biggest victories being Swan Song and settling things with God and Amara.

I love how the framing here has all that green light behind the Winchesters, but aside from a line of green behind Bart's head, he's got this innocent white flowery wall and some roses behind him.

Again, Sam snatches up the spell, Dean doubts immediately, I guess if not that the spell is real that why a demon would just GIVE it to him without ulterior motives. Just be upfront about the ulterior motives :P

He re-introduces himself as first a cross-roads demon and then THE cross-roads demon, a clarification again. He doesn't say king of the crossroads, but he does smirk at Dean, and says helping people is what he does... Yeah, to a degree. They have to PAY for it. But it's that smarmy salesman charm, this time mixed with someone who looks like a thug boss, the sort who dresses nice but has goons.

I mean we KNOW he does, but his look is very typical of nice suit, close-cropped hair, and just generally heavy set like he's used to being intimidating more than relying on his words, when you go to cast this guy.

Dean says they don't listen to/help demons, just kill them, and for one thing Bart's got to know about Crowley, but he says "How Dean of you" like he knows Dean is the one who just threatens to/will kill demons and not think about it. I mean Dean could be showing he's learned from experience. But of course then, the great meta about him negging Dean, by switching focus to Sam, who's already been established even before they get in the diner that he's going to be more willing to listen, that he's the "smart one" aka the one more likely to make a bad decision by listening to people he shouldn't while trying to help.

And, of course, Dean eats his pie, and we already made the parallels to other scenes like this in diners, but Ishim stands out the most, throwing money at Dean to shut up and buy himself some pie. In this case the pie is already here, and Dean's allowed to be suspicious but also eat the pie because hey, it's here.

Bart treated Dean like he was the stupid pie guy so Dean, who doesn't trust him an inch, acts like the stupid pie guy, while not giving any ground. He is not bribed by the pie, but Sam can't believe Dean's eating it.

There's a world of metaphor there about Dean and seduction. Because of course Bart came on strong to Dean, but Dean wasn't buying that either, the coded second layer of the conversation about him being Crowley2.0 and thinking maybe he can find a way to unlock Dean's interest in dudes... by offering pie of course. Doesn't work like that, you have to earn it. And the coming on too strong is the first weakness he has in not measuring up to Crowley, despite how it all seems like he has the ~perfect plan~ in place.

They're STIIIILL in these shirts

Wow, that's some old Biblical stuff. Guess that explains why Dabb tweeted that, pretty quickly. I don't know much about the Queen of Shiba but the idea she's a nephilim is kind of amusing.

I'll have to leave that to the experts but anyway, more douchey guys, although this time King Solomon is keeping tabs on someone like a dick, so um. Welcome to the club of symbolism this part of the season? I assume this is the same guy from the Song of Solomon that we saw Jack glance at in 13x02, and it's more romantic stuff as well.

Sam's like "Jack is out there in the world, and he's alone and he's scared and he's dangerous", which is exactly Dean's stance from 13x01 saying better to keep Jack in the Bunker with them so the only people he'd hurt are them. Yes Sam still seems to care about Jack, but he is also now valuing him practically, and seeing he's dangerous, and it's caused this flip in his attitude to one mirroring Dean's but obviously with much less hate and upset about what happened to Cas etc

Heist HQ!

Quirky random demons! Hat and headphone demons.

Hahahah they're called Smash and Grab. Smash has flowery DMs so I love her. Grab is wearing that hat voluntarily so I am not so sure about him at all.

PS: in America has flipping the bird with 2 fingers become a thing or was that a peace sign? When I was a young'un I was told that you always had to do peace signs palm out because showing the back of your hand with the exact same gesture was as bad/worse than giving someone the finger.

Is Smash human? Since he said Grab is a demon that leaves an empty space over what she is.

Lol, Dean realising it's a heist. "What is this, a heist? Hold on, is this a heist?"

Hahahahahha his favourite My Little Pony... Come on Dean, you kept the little pony you cut off that car in 7x06. You literally can not throw stones in this house.

Luther Shrike looks like if he was on UK TV he'd be played by the guy who played Walder Frey (David Bradley).

There's some stuff on the board that looks like the Sumerian(?) that Kevin translated the angel tablet into. Since we already had Kevin back on screen, it seems superfluous to mention, but it gives me a 4 in a row for mentioning Kevin in an episode this season so BINGO and more dramatic irony that Sam and Dean don't know he's responsible for Lucifer coming back, or, indeed, that Lucifer is back.

(With a bonus grumble from me that it's a reminder, in this season about a nephilim, that we still don't know what the angel fall spell's specific wording was)

Oh boy the "hell and back" thing. Ouch. So we're apparently delving THIS now? Is this penance for 11x10 and Dean not seeming too bothered to go back down there aside from token nervousness about the whole thing in the acting? Anyway getting flashbacks to that out of the blue... Look I am a smol sensitive Dean girl you can't just throw that at me. D:

It's interesting the perhaps king of the crossroads can't swing this with a random soul. I would assume it's specifically blood of someone CONDEMNED to Hell and saved/brought back. And woah I have it paused right after the flashback to collect myself, but either this has to get a Cas mention or it's one heck of an empty space in the story that Cas saved Dean and is the reason he's viable for this.

And lol lol lol lol see above like THREE PARAGRAPHS AGO I am never ever going to be over the angel fall spell and the fact it required grace in such... suspicious... circumstances of nephilim and cupids, and the whole theme of clarification, and how we have these such specific spells - virgin blood in 12x22, archangel grace last episode, and human who has been to hell and back now...

I'm just saying, I'm gonna be on my deathbed when I'm 150 like "the angel fall spell needed the grace of an angel in love with a human, come fight me, Carver" and then I give up the ghost just so I can go beat him up in the afterlife.

Bart beams at Dean, wanting his blood. Dean offers it up just to get this over and done with, but he says, no, straight from the tap and anyway you two are extremely competent in a weird crisis, why the heck would I not exploit that I need your manpower for this?

Shrike is human who has been to hell and back - obviously a dark Dean mirror because apparently he's a sadist and murderer, and Dean's entire thing is whether he's a killer or not for doing this job he does and I have gifsets and meta blahing on and on about that but yeah basically 2x03 set up that for Dean about how you do the job because you like/need killing or you do it to save people, and his torturer arc, and his Mark of Cain/demon descent... Nuff said for now.

UGH so Sam pulls Dean aside and says, "we want that spell - we NEED that spell" which is a huge clarification, and literally the want/need theme you are probably aware I bang on about a weeeeeeeeeeeee little bit. In general it's the "use your words" theme which does not harm Sam for the reminder but also is a huge Destiel theme because the need/want thing is from the crypt scene/10x19 with the call out on the crypt scene from Dean's subconscious and the ongoing issue of whether Cas feels needed or wanted, with the fact he feels "needed" called out in OH WAIT 13x04, aka last time out for Glynn... the fact the clarification is coming now in the other direction is because this is a Sam thing anyways, and - UGH I have it paused with him on screen and he seems to have an even worse shirt on? - it's not about Destiel subtext for him it's just using your words and in general bolstering the presence of the theme. Of course they don't just want the spell for kicks, they have a serious reason for needing it. In fact Sam's concern about Jack going from emotional concern for Jack himself to seeing Jack as a dangerous crisis is encapsulated in turning a desire into an obligation.

"He'll never see us coming"

"they're coming"

More dramatic irony, immediately showing us that on the other side of the story the bad guy has more information than they think he does, and that they aren't going to have it as easy as they think. That Bart has already been made as a traitor and that Asmodeus knows his next move will be exactly this.

Asmodeus may not even be *on screen* in this episode and he's being written as more intelligent than he has been in both Buckleming episodes, which is super unfortunate that he's supposed to be an intelligent character and we have to judge the characterisation of these unfortunates who are main BL property off their depiction in OTHER episodes...

And yeah Shrike may chat with demons but he has demon traps, exorcisms memorised and he toes the line of a horrible human being but not demonic himself, but such a hair's breadth away that demons and demon interactions and generally knowing wtf is going on with demons is just his life.

He has a really pretty grate which I think is specifically in the hall so that he can exorcise demons out through it. It probably goes straight to Hell

His windows also have bars on them which look like random jumble to an unfamiliar eye but are of course iron warding

I think he also has grapevines. He lives on a vineyard with barbed wire and demon traps on the gates.

The metalwork is the coolest thing in this episode and this episode is not half bad so far

Oh my god Dean called out poor Smash for her amazing boots and called her "Winona" - she DOES bear a passing resemblance, but hey leave the boots alone.

Anyway that moment just to show they're top and tail under a blanket in the back of the Impala which is pretty funny to me - I'm never sure you can actually fit anyone in there like that but they want to prove me wrong.

I'm like 1000% sure Sam's ruse doesn't work, because Shrike knows they're coming but he's let in anyway because why not. Let's have some fun. Interesting that Sam's the one made to do this. Having to lie and we already KNOW he's been caught out.

Anyway more focus on the boots... 3 times and I'm super worried we're gonna have to identify some remains by the flowery boots >.>

Or more positively it could be used to fuck with us in some way

"Dean? Don't get dead." "you too." Aw.

Is Grab in the trunk of the car?

Iron warded door. Yeah, that's normal.

For these guests, the rug is pulled back, the demon trap is plain to see on the floor. We see Sam from above, like he's being watched.

Shrike's front room/office is like Metatron's desk? I swear he had that lamp. Cuthbert's house... I swear that's Bobby's wallpaper or one in a similar hue with appropriately similar patterns to at least make a sort of sense of familiarity.

Awww Dean and Smash. He calls her weird but then spots she's drinking the delightful sounding does what it says on the tin NERVE DAMAGE, and then he says he used to live on it as a kid, despite its illegal amounts of caffeine.

Ew and she's getting it expired on ebay.

Dean, she may be bonding with you, but don't drink it. It's literally called Nerve Damage.

Welp

he's gonna be bouncing off the walls after 1 sip

OH they have to summon Grab I guess?

"Cool."

Hahahaha

Dean's babysitting the weirdoes.

Heh, calls Dean "chief"

HAHAHAHA Smash told Grab off screen that Dean was just a pretty face :P

WHOOPS looks like Dean just got puppeted by his own blood. Like a couple of weeks ago or something I was writing about a worst case scenario for Jack's powers being that they completely overwhelm him and he's like, inside waiting to be busted out, perhaps as a conclusion of the crypt scene/swan song repetitions from an external evil possessing and controlling to an internal force making it happen - a slow process but it really has switched, and it has been a fairly smooth slope down :D

Also that was hilarious. Poor Dean.

Dean's being poisoned with NERVE DAMAGE and Sam's being poisoned with homemade gin. If that's what it really is.

Hahahahahah Sam picking up a basilisk fang. We've all seen Harry Potter

LOL Sam knows random knowledge about basilisks and gorgons. Of course it's a test, and Shrike would know what it was, but good on Sam for recognising it. I watched Tall Tales so recently I'm still giggling about him recognising a crocodile belly scale, but now I just think Sam has an affinity for identifying the weirder monsters. He must have read a load of junk about them in the MoL bunker.

His persona as the collector guy wanting to sell to Shrike is basically Sam but with a bit more nervous bluster, which might be explained by knowing how dangerous this guy is and that Sam is having to pretend. He's not even wearing clothes as a get up here.

OH BOY Sam's big gambit is Ruby's knife... I remember in my 8x02 watching notes (hi Dabb) I was amused that they kind of forget that that knife is one of the most valuable things they own and they just dropped it in the weapon bin with a warning, rather than considering even trading it for the tablet or whatever even as a ruse... Just the idea they go around laden with magical artefacts that help them all the time like this which would actually be priceless to collectors - like in 12x06 Asa having an angel blade on blue felt in a glass case.

I don't think there's been a strong bias about which one of them has an angel blade and which one still uses this knife in fights since Carver era, but Dean took it to Purgatory, while Sam seemed to have more consistent possession of it for a while, Dean was the one who wrangled it from Ruby in 3x16 and sort of formally took ownership of it on behalf of the Winchesters.

Given the emotional background to this season of Sam's powers being explored through Jack, though, it is interesting (since they have enough angel blades they could just swap to using them all the time instead of this knife, which is a relic of Sam's darkest times) to just give it up, but quite aside from its worth to the right market, it has an enormous emotional weight of the season 3-4-5 drama for the Winchesters, and remembering it as Ruby's knife ties it to Sam. He still uses her knife and keeps her memory close, perhaps just as a reminder. But that weight is there and bringing it up is a reminder of all that, because so often we just see it as a tool, but this is asking us to stop and CONSIDER what that knife actually means, how much it's worth, and how even though they could stop using it these days, they don't, but what it would mean to Sam to give it up.

Dean reeeally not getting along with Grab. Who, of course, is the demon in this mix. The fact Smash is not a demon is only brought up in that scene where Dean is talking about her working with demons - it's taken for granted that she's human and perhaps that is the default, but not when you're expecting a room full of demons as we might be when meeting them. So. More empty space fill in the blanks, use context and people using or not using definitions to not be surprised that she's human.

Anyway Grab calls Sam stupid and Dean gets so angry he stops and turns around even though the spell's been dragging him along so there's a ridic Swan Song mirror for the collection - while "puppeted" by the spell, "defensiveness" of his brother halts Dean's progress...

Aaaand he's off again. Not enough? :P

Hey creepy underground cellars. That's never bad.

LOL Dean gets called HANDPUPPET

Mr Fizzles can tell when you're being a liaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

"I will kill you." "I bet you say that to all the girls." Awww and here was I thinking Dean wouldn't get flirted with any more this episode.

That was literally from the Crowley handbook - 9x10/9x11 made a huge point out of it.

This murder cellar connects to 12x01, 12x12, and 12x20, with the cellars being where Sam was kept and the twig people were made, and 12x12 for the basement Ramiel kept his shit in. Crossing them all over into this is super fun.

I guess this is where Smash does her thing?

GREAT door.

I hope that thing doesn't bite

It almost certainly bites

Oooh Shrike thinks Sam is a demon.

He didn't see him not get stuck in the demon trap out in the hall.

He has some of the info but not ALL of the info - in this way, while Bart sent them to deal with curveballs, Sam has turned out to be the curveball instead.

Ow that's a big hole to blow in the books, that were nearly Sam.

He conveniently slides back to his knife.

On the other hand re: curveballs, if Shrike thinks he's a demon, that shotgun blast wouldn't have killed a demon but it will kill a Sam.

Sam just goes and stabs the dude.

"As long as I'm on my property I can't die."

Well that's annoyingly cheaty

I wonder if it's symbolic of something but I can't instantly link it to anything so I have to move on.

There's something very like the Cain stuff with Dean in 9x11 between Sam and this guy, especially as they matched up as equals in knowledge about gorgons or whatever earlier.

MAW

DEAN LOOKS INTO THE MAW

Dean does not like spiders.

Hard same.

Why is he always so relatable

I'm cackling so much at his reluctance to put his hand in there. It's like the not wanting to go in the hole in 13x06 but so much funnier because... spiders.

There was an eel tank at the local aquarium when I was a kid which had a game EMBEDDED in the side of the eel tank to put your hand in and feel what an eel feels like.

I'm having, like. PTSD flashbacks to this and the Tiger Head in the museum which terrified the living daylights out of us as children and we wouldn't even go past it because it looked so fierce with its big open mouth

this is literally combining two of The Most Horrifying Things about my childhood into one

Plus biting for blood = needles to draw blood which is a rather more recent thing what with recently coming down with a mystery chronic illness and spending 2 years fishing around for a diagnosis via endless blood drawing, so put that one on the list

I believe in you, Dean. You're stronger than me.

He's stronger than me

I love him more than I have ever loved him in this exact moment

He had to account for the fact that Shrike might regularly go in here so of course it won't take YOUR HAND or something.

Of course it's a massive suspense thing for a teeny weeny pinprick. Of course.

This is like the dead opposite of the Werther Box - it's just a key for the lock, not like... the entire murderous thing Cuthbert designed

NINJA reflexes to save Smash there

Bye Grab. You were a dick.

OH NOES Shrike is here, with the demon knife, covered in blood. That's not worrying for Dean to see AT ALL.

Smash just legs it.

Awww she seemed to care about Grab at least a little... They had matchy matchy names.

Dean wants to go watch Game of Thrones.

Walder Frey knock off prefers to read the books

how did Sam get here.

I'm gonna assume like... not!Sam for now, since he saved the day so fortuitously.

Bart lurkin' outside.

Not surprising at all that Smash has a deal with him. I doubt he's letting her off easy, either, she's going to be sent right back.

Does Shrike just walk through this thing and ignore all the darts because they can't kill him?

"Shrek"

Sam sure has some quick and easy insights into the keypad.

"Like in Entrapment"

"Did you just say Entrapment?"

... Did Sam just get busted over his pop culture knowledge, by Dean, slower on the uptake than what I thought was weird for Sam?

Omg they're sending Shrike through because the darts can't kill him. This is ridiculous

That *was* ridiculous, but funny

Winchester problem solving.

Awwwww Smash is back, if it's really her.

Sam figures out she has a deal.

He also has a real side-eye of Dean. If he's actually Sam I got to re-evaluate him through this section :P

If not, I have another case of something impersonating Sam while doing The Eyebrows

More horrifying: this is Sam actually doing The Eyebrows

Oh god it's full daylight all of a sudden and Sam's plaid

is orange

under the orange jacket

I hate Sam Winchester

undying feud levels

Guess this is the edge of the property where he can't be killed? Be hilarious if they get him over the line somehow to kill him

STUNT DRIVING

Suddenly backstory and emotional music plays.

Starting to think nothing’s up with Sam though, like, if he actually was replaced or not, because it was really funny imagining it and not letting them get the drop on me if it happened, and Sam being called out on his references etc, but we're getting pretty far into it all like leaving the property, having this moment, etc, so maybe it was just a fake out and Sam BAMF'd himself free off-screen or was never even tied up

Seems to just be a story of life, though that Shrike's kid died so soon after he was saved, and it was a "waste" of a demon deal. He seems like he must have already been a certain sort of person to know how to MAKE the deal...

What's in the trunk...

Ooh I wondered if it would be as soon as Bart wasn’t forthcoming. So a 6x04 parallel as well (or 6x10, which dealt a lot more with them having to work for Crowley).

Oooh they were off the property. WHOOPS. It *was* the gates. I thought so but I didn't figure he'd be so stupid to face them head on.

Although it was over Bart's bones so it was a risk he had to take to leave?

And now we have a new problem :P

Awww poor Smash

And there's the rest of the spell. Do they take it?

Oookay I was thinking Sam would have to be Sam for this part and he and Dean are making emotional decisions together and Sam's picking the correct path so... I guess I have to assume 100% this is Sam again? Mittens isn't talking to me about stuff from this episode like there's too many spoilers for her to humour me about stuff. Even what I thought were silly things.

And now Smash/Alice is in peril after they made the decision that they do not want to get involved in Bart's shit because he's a shitty person.

Bye bye Bart :3 Nice move, Dean.

So basically, yep, Bart tried so hard to be what Crowley was to Dean in their opening interaction and all his set up to come across as like... something Dean had been missing? That Dean might WANT a demon ally to be on the hook with/have on his hook, even just have on his SPEED DIAL, because to him that probably meant being able to manipulate the Winchesters and so on...

But as I figured from the opening, he just completely underestimates them, including that Dean is way way way waaaay smarter than he gives him credit for, so OF COURSE Dean wins by outsmarting him, by doing what soulless!Sam STOPPED Dean from doing in 6x04 and just torching Crowley on the spot because what did they REALLY owe him and how much loyalty could you really have from a demon as uneasy business partners... So Dean outwits him, and in a move almost exactly like 13x06 he sets up the tools and someone else gets the kill but it's Dean who outsmarted the monster.

And whooops half of half a spell? Not even half... it's all gone.

Whoooops. Well at least they saved Alice. And they're putting her on a bus, as they usually do with characters they won't see again.

There's like 2 minutes left, which is always an ominous sign.

Anyway *waves goodbye to Alice*

*Dean pats Sam on the shoulder and we get the last look at Sam smiling*

Aaand to the Bunker, where Dean is getting them some beers while wearing his black Henley.

Like the whole thing resolved with that dude and Bart is dead and all (... they better find someone to replace him although constantly subbing in random "I'm the new king of the crossroads" characters might get a bit ridiculous, we know there's going to be an opening someone will take... I really hope that was a cue to get us to whoever takes over... If not they just make it even more frustrating that I’ve been waiting 7 years to know if someone replaced Crowley or he was doing both jobs, and now it’s made even more clear there’s a job for a secondary powerful demon in hell to show up in this role and the head crossroads demon is a serious position with power and such... It’s such a frustrating hole in the world building to overlook and I've been over-thinking it for longer than I’ve been on tumblr by a good few years.)

anyway Sam n Dean are talking

Is Sam going to explain how he escaped from being knocked out and showed up with perfect timing, or was that the plot hole?

Nah, they just have a nice talk about the job and how saving people is fun, and all. And Dean being optimistic. Yay! It's a similar call out to 13x06 and why Dean was so obscenely happy in the cowboy room, but Sam is now seeing that Dean is permanently feeling better even in ridiculous situations, and his mood really has permanently resettled to optimism and cheerfulness again and it is NOT just the cowboys.

Okay so I probably need to watch the last part of the episode again but I am now weirdly curious about what happened to Sam - though we know he's great at escaping things, but Shrike put his life into doubt to Dean, and we had no reason to assume he'd leave Sam in a place where he could easily get out, I'm guessing now that the way he showed up looking like he COULD have just killed and/or maimed Sam with that bloody knife, and I even pointed out that to DEAN'S eyes it would look sooo much worse than if it was as simple as Shrike knocked Sam out, and immediately legged it to the safe to check on it while just hoping unconsciousness would be enough to keep Sam down. (He has an iron skull after being knocked out so many times - like that thing where you kung fu your hands to have tons of micro fractures in order for the bones to heal stronger? That's Sam's head.)

He seemed to be put into question after he showed up again and I began to doubt it again as soon as they left the property because it would make no sense to leave Sam behind and just take a fake with them for the emotional resolution of the episode. Especially once they got into it and it was blatantly a straightforward emotional resolution to the episode that Sam had too much of a stake in for it NOT to be him at that point.

BUT Dean questioned Sam's reference to a thing right after he showed back up, while Sam was coming up with some hilarious ideas for solving things in a way written which you COULD think he was not!Sam and someone with more info/their own stake in this (e.g. the worry Asmodeus was coming) just because it was Sam at his most mercenary to come up with the "just send the guy who can't die over the traps to spring them all" plan... We KNOW Sam can be like that but at the same time... Sam being like that can also be some other person who would think like that as the LEAST WORST thing they thought that day instead of the actual worst.

Anyway it was all set up in such a way that Dean calling out something he didn't expect about Sam means he's questioning the people around him when they behave uncharacteristically - because he KNOWS his loved ones. He understands when they aren't behaving like themselves. He gets a secret out of Sam that he watched something he'd never normally watch just for Catherine Zeta-Jones, which Dean has to concede, while struggling with how much to mock Sam. It's interesting they use the empty space of Sam arriving without explanation to cast him into doubt, then have him doubted, verbally putting something out there that Dean stopped to question what Sam was saying. They brush it off, and it ends up being nothing, but considering the looming possibility of Casmodeus - and the fact that Sam started the episode saying he'd talked to Cas so they have literally been decieved THIS episode without knowing it (and Dean didn't get to verify if it was Cas or not - another reason to phone Sam instead of Dean)...

I wonder if it is leading up to Dean calling out Casmodeus about not being Cas? That this fake out might have been a time it really was Sam, but we and Dean were given a set up to doubt Sam was there in one piece, us with dramatic irony and Dean with just plain not knowing, and so they could play with this concept and it just tapers off - maybe we take the reaction about C Z-J as proof, maybe we eventually decide Sam has to be Sam after all and there's nothing going on here because he's involved earnestly in the emotional decisions at the end of the episode.

But it was interesting. Unlike with Ketch and his twin, it was the sort of set up where I wasn't certain we wouldn't finish the scene and then cut to Sam tied to a chair and bouncing it over to a nearby sharp object to saw himself free and run and stop the drama, at least until the end of that part of the episode. Once we were back out in the clear light of day it was like Sam's disgusting plaid was all the proof we needed it was really him :P

#13x08 #season 13 spoilers #*quietly sets Sam's wardrobe on fire*#my stuff

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irregularwebcomic · 7 years

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[Irregular Webcomic! #3740](http://ift.tt/2xOfMa6)

I looked up the phrase "sonny Jim" to make sure it would be understood widely enough... and I discovered that some people seem to think the phrase is "sunny Jim". And "Sunny Jim" is a mascot for Force brand wheat flakes breakfast cereal, first marketed in the USA in 1901, and currently still available only in the UK. There was also a Sunny Jim brand of peanut butter sold in the Seattle area of the USA. I don't know what, if anything, either of these have to do with the idiomatic phrase though. For some reason when I think of the phrase being used in conversation - like the mystery wizard is using it here in this comic - I always hear it in the voice of Billy Connolly. Great. Now I'm imagining that new wizard character in the comic as Billy Connolly. ... Which is not a bad thing, now I think about it.

My favourite part of English lessons back in school was the creative writing. While I now better appreciate all the other things my English teachers tried to teach me (grammar, literature and poetry analysis, literary themes and devices), writing my own stuff has evolved into a significant part of what I do. Obviously, I'm writing these words you're reading right now, as well as the comics they are attached to. A few of the main things I've written have interesting connections:

Comics: Irregular Webcomic! obviously. But I also write one-off gag comics for Lightning Made of Owls (which could use more contributors, hint hint) and The Dinosaur Whiteboard. And there's the now completed Star Trek parody comics in Planet of Hats.

Roleplaying game adventures: I've previously covered a bit about my history with roleplaying games and the various philosophies of roleplaying games. Over my years of involvement in the hobby, I've written many adventures, mostly for my gaming group, but also for professional publication. Two adventures I've written are available, Dino Park, a GURPS adventure on my own website, and Singapore Sling, a Transhuman Space adventure published by Steve Jackson Games (which has received some pretty good reviews).[1]

Comics about roleplaying game adventures: Most obviously this is Darths & Droids, which is entirely predicated on this concept. But it also includes some parts of Irregular Webcomic! Specifically, the Fantasy and Space themes are very much based on actual roleplaying game campaigns I ran with groups of friends, adapted as comics.

Despite the connections, writing comics (both gag and story-based) is very different from writing roleplaying game adventures. In fact any sort of traditional linear story writing is very different from writing RPG adventures. Firstly, there's the audience. The audience for a comic or piece of fiction writing is largely a group of people who you will never know or hear from (assuming you have managed to cultivate some sort of audience for your work). For every reader who writes me an email or posts on my forums about one of my comics, there are perhaps a hundred or a thousand who are completely anonymous and unknown to me. If you're a big-time author of truly popular works, this is even more the case - there are millions of readers you can never know anything about. So feedback, although it can exist, is limited and from only a very small portion of your readership. What this means, effectively, is that you can write whatever pleases you the most. If you want huge commercial success, you might think about what large populations of people tend to enjoy and deliberately pander to that, but for small-time writers, it's basically a labour of love, and so you have to write what pleases you or you'd give it up. The audience for an RPG adventure that you write is much more immediate and intimate. Most adventures that ever get written will only ever be experienced by your own circle of gaming friends. The interactions with your adventure will generate a good time for everyone... or not. In this case, you know your audience. You should provide something for the player who loves combat, something for the trickster to do, something to tickle the fancy of the one who likes solving puzzles, and some interesting characters for the roleplayer to interact with. If your entire group leans one way or another in playing style, you should bend with the breeze. Offering up a killer dungeon full of traps will delight one playing group, but annoy and bore another to tears. And the feedback is immediate, and from everyone experiencing your adventure. Trust me, you'll know if they're enjoying themselves, or if they're not. Writing an RPG adventure is more of a responsibility than writing a comic or work of linear fiction is. Even if you are unusual and your adventure is published widely, the people who buy/download it aren't just going to read it and decide for themselves what they think. They will run it as a game with their friends, recreating that intimate experience of a small group of people interacting with the components of the adventure. So your responsibility becomes one of making sure that the Game Master (GM) who runs your adventure isn't left flat-footed by lack of details or gaping plot holes in your adventure. A second difference between fiction/comics and RPG adventures is perhaps the most obvious one at first: plot linearity. Traditional stories are linear; they begin, they draw the reader through a sequence of events, and they end. Even if the sequence of events is presented as flashbacks or otherwise out of in-story chronological order, they are designed to be read in a real world chronological order that unfolds the story in the way that the writer decides. A writer can guarantee that the reader will experience the story in the sequence intended. So you can reveal things, and then later on you can count on the fact that the reader has already been exposed to those things. This is how you develop the plot. In an PRG adventure, things can get a lot less predictable. RPG player characters (PCs), played by players, often decide to do things that might not progress the adventure in the way that the GM or the adventure writer intended. An ideal RPG world is one in which the characters may choose to do anything, and nobody knows what they will do until they do it. Adventure writers use a variety of tools to deal with this unpredictability. One tool is known pejoratively as railroading. This is when as the adventure designer you enforce a linear plot on the characters, using various tricks to ensure that in many cases they actually have no choice in what to do or where to go. Examples include literal blocks to wayward travel, such as roads being impassable or having uncrossable rivers, oceans, or mountains funnel the characters to a particular location. There are also circumstantial blocks, such as law enforcement or capturing the characters and simply taking them to the next adventure location. And then there are situations where the PCs' decisions actually make no difference; for example after recovering the lost Soul Gem, they can either hand it over to their patron wizard, or he'll steal it from them (with no chance for them to stop him). Railroading is an unsatisfactory and frustrating method for most players, so a good adventure will use more subtle tools to control the plot and keep things limited to the scenario at hand. This often involves not so much writing a plot as such, but rather writing locations and characters and events, without necessarily linking them into a strict narrative sequence. Providing a variety of accessible locations gives the PCs the choice to explore whichever ones they find interesting, in whatever order they wish. They can interact with whatever non-player characters (NPCs) are found along the way, learning information from them or possibly having hostile encounters. These can then provide clues to what locations or people might be interesting to explore next - in this way leading the PCs in the general direction of the adventure climax, but without pulling them directly there. Events provide a chronological backdrop that supplies additional atmosphere, and in some cases a limited timeline for the players to achieve their goals. NPCs who the PCs don't interact with should have their own goals and tasks, that they complete on their way to whatever it is they are doing. For example, in a murder mystery adventure, the killer will be running around in the background, perhaps killing a new victim every 24 hours unless the PCs track him down and interfere. Or the volcano looming over the village may start smoking, signalling an imminent eruption, and the PCs have to decide how long they can spare to explore the ancient ruins before getting the heck out of there. So a well-designed adventure is (usually) not linear at some level. There may be a progression from clues, to a map, to a dungeon, to a final boss encounter in the deepest level, but at each stage there should be plenty of options. Even the classic dungeon adventure is wide open in the sense that there is a map (i.e. a series of connected locations) to explore, and the PCs decide what door or corridor to take next - no two parties will explore in exactly the same sequence. And characters are interesting too. In a linear story, you only ever reveal exactly as much about a character as you require for the plot. In an RPG adventure, characters need enough background defined for the GM to be able to roleplay them convincingly - but how much of that background is revealed depends on the actions of the PCs and their level of interest in conversing and digging deeper. All these notes about locations, characters, and events come down to the level of author control. Writing a story, you have complete control over these things and how they develop. Writing an adventure, you merely set the stage, and what happens on that stage depends on your players. Given this difference, there are some things which work fine in a story, but are problematic in an adventure. In a story, you can make a fight as dangerous as you like, or a trap as devious and deadly as you like, because you control the outcome and can always write a way for the hero to prevail. In an adventure design, you simply can't throw a full-grown dragon at a group of low level characters (or a 14-year-old wizard), because they will almost certainly be wiped out. You can't design a trap so deadly that only someone as sharp as Batman can escape alive, because I guarantee you that any given group of PCs is not as sharp as Batman.[2] You have to tailor the challenges to the expected levels of skill of the PCs. On the other hand, you can do things in a game adventure that don't make sense in a story. A classic example is wandering monsters, or unplanned encounters. Sometimes you just want to liven the game up a bit, or impress on the players that loitering in some area and making a lot of noise while doing so isn't a great idea. So you set up a random encounter table, let the GM roll the dice, and hey presto, a pack of wolves attacks the camp during the night, or a group of goblins leaps out of the dungeon shadows. This provides a change of pace in an adventure, from exploration mode to combat mode, and makes the game more interesting. In a tightly plotted story, encounters like this need to mean something. They establish something about the heroes, or they provide clues to the background plot, or they are directly related to the story. If you throw in lots of seemingly random encounters with no linking structure in a story, the reader will get lost and wonder what it all means. This applies even in a comic strip: The Fantasy gang encountering the wizard bandit didn't happen because of a random die roll. It happened because I had a series of jokes I wanted to tell about meeting a wizard bandit. Which brings me to the Fantasy and Space theme comics, which were originally based heavily on two RPG campaigns that I ran. The main characters (except for Dwalin) are all direct ports of PCs with the same names, originally created by friends of mine. This defined their personalities for me, and made it easy to write the initial series of comics. Despite the characters being based on the games, none of their comic adventures are directly based off the RPG adventures I ran. Both themes began as one-shot character-based gags, and only developed into story arcs later. When I decided to take them in this direction, I invented situations and plot elements that would lead to humour, without referring back to actual events in the original games. I suppose I could have based the story arcs in the comics on the original game adventures... I think the main reason I never did is because that would be too constraining. It was easier to go off on a completely separate story arc that I could invent as needed, without trying to copy a pre-existing story. But the characters are very similar to their gaming counterparts. I find this helps me to write the strips, because I have a strong gut feel for what motivates each character and how they would behave in different situations, based on my experiences playing the games with my friends. So the characters have ported very easily to the comics. Given that depth of characterisation innate to their existence, I believe they perform better and more consistently as comic characters than some of the examples of wholly original characters that I developed within the comic alone. They entered the comic much more fully developed and have probably undergone less character evolution than some others. (One example I can think of is Professor Jones in the Cliffhangers theme, who only acquired his distinctive love of food well into the story.) To write a character, it pays to know the character. When portraying a character, some actors use the technique of method acting, getting into the mindset and mannerisms of the character, almost becoming the character. When writing the Fantasy and Space themes, I often use a similar approach, getting into the mindset of the characters, to figure out what they would do. This is even more the case in Darths & Droids, which I write with a group of my friends. During writing sessions, we are constantly asking each other, "What would Pete say?" or "What would Sally do?" to inspire dialogue, and also checking that dialogue we've written matches our expectations of the characters. Bringing this all together, Darths & Droids is a story about a roleplaying game. So the writing techniques discussed above have to be merged to create a blend that both reads coherently as a story, while also being plausible as the product of people playing a game. This creates an interesting tension, and one we are always striving to balance. We have two types of characters in our story: the players who interact with one another at a "real world" level, and the NPCs in the game who they interact with at the "game level". We have written detailed backgrounds and motivations and plans for the in-game NPCs, which then become the foils against which the players act. Determining what an NPC character in the game does is based on the plotting of the Star Wars films which we follow, but also on their scripted plans. So they are developed essentially like game NPCs, to be reactive scenery or obstacles, ready for the players to interact with. On the other hand, we have detailed notes on the personalities of the players, what's going on in their real lives, and how they relate to one another. Determining what they do is much more a case of getting inside their heads in the method acting sense and asking ourselves what "would this person do in this situation?", as described above. We wanted some interesting dynamics, so there are conflicts and personality clashes in the group, but we didn't want to make it a bad game experience with people not having fun, so the conflicts are not all-consuming, and at the highest level they all actually enjoy getting together to play the game. The major conflicts in a story-telling sense actually arise at the in-game level, with various NPCs as antagonists and villains. In summary, writing comics or other linear stories shares some things in common with writing RPG adventures, while differing in other aspects. The greatest similarity in my experience is that characters need to be fleshed out. You need to know what their personalities are and what drives them, so that readers or RPG players can relate to them. The greatest difference is that a story has to be carefully plotted, and then presented in a sequence that reveals things to the reader to build drama (or humour); whereas an RPG adventure benefits from less plotting. Instead, the RPG adventure writer needs to concentrate on locations and events, setting the scenery for the players to interact with. There can be a plot in the background - whatever it is that the adversaries are up to - but it's up to the players to discover it and interfere with it. I guess if there's a piece of advice here for all writers, it's this: Make your characters detailed and believable!

Note: This annotation was inspired by reader Tommi H., who requested an essay on the differences and similarities between writing comics and RPG adventures as part of his Patreon supporter reward. If you'd like me to write an extended annotation on any topic you care to name, or if you just want to show some support for the comics and other creative work I share, please consider becoming a patron.

[1] Another three adventures I wrote were published in Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid magazine in its second incarnation as a weekly online web-zine, but I'm not sure if or how they can be accessed for reading. Getting a current subscription to the magazine used to include full archive access, but I'm not sure if that's still the case now that it's moved to its third incarnation as a monthly PDF magazine. The adventures are (links are to previews of the first few paragraphs):

The Last Stone Age Adventure: The Hidden Valley of the Kulku

Campaign in a Box: Situation Conspiracy

Iron Ref: Cliffhangers: The Musical Clue

[2] More like as sharp as a bowling ball.

#Irregular Webcomic!

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