#my plan is to begin writing & releasing it in the first half of 2023!!!

[whump-me]

My Patreon is officially live!!

New whump writing is going up 2-3 times a week, with a focus on ongoing novel-length stories. Interrogation whump, spy whump, lab whump, sci-fi and fantasy elements, lots and lots of emotional whump… basically the same stuff I post here, but more of it.

There are three tiers available:

$3/month: Early access to everything that goes up here. The plan is to always have one story going, with new chapters being released 2-3x/week. Once the last chapter is released on Patreon, the first chapter will be released on Tumblr. For the average novel-length story, that means subscribers will be reading about two months ahead.

$5/month: Early access, plus side stories and bonus novels. Approximately twice as much whumpy writing as the previous tier. Stories released to this tier will be exclusive to Patreon for a minimum of one year.

$7/month: Cleanly-formatted downloadable copies of every completed story in epub and mobi format. (Epub is readable on most e-reading apps and readers, including Kindle. Mobi is a legacy Kindle format.) This is the easiest way to read if you prefer to wait until the story is complete, or if you like to reread.

And if you can't join the Patreon, or just don't want to? No worries! I'll still be posting loads of stuff here.

(Name note: for now, I'm publishing these stories on Patreon using the same name I've previously used to publish more traditional--read, less overtly whumpy--urban fantasy novels, while I decide whether to publish all my novels under the same name, or use that name exclusively for urban fantasy. These stories may be published under a different name in the future.)

Obscure, a Mind Games novel, is the first story I'm releasing to Patreon, and the first chapter is available there now. (You might remember the Mind Games setting from my Whumptober 2023 stories.) New chapters will come out 3x/week.

When Obscure is complete on Patreon (which will be in mid-March), I'll be posting it here on the same schedule: three chapters a week until it's done. (If you want to get on the taglist for when it's available here, let me know.)

The first Patreon bonus content--which will be the first half of Defect, another Mind Games story--will be posted at the beginning of February. (As with my Whumptober 2023 stories, these novels all stand entirely alone, sharing a setting but nothing else. They can be read in any order, and you don't need to read one to understand the others.)

Story descriptions under the cut:

Obscure

Forgetting is dangerous. Remembering is deadly.

Elias: the man sitting handcuffed in an interrogation room deep in a secret underground facility. On the surface, he looks harmless. But his mind is a weapon—he can erase memories with a thought.

Kirill: the man on the other side of the interrogation table. He has a weapon of his own—he can see inside other people’s memories. All he has to do is make them feel a strong enough emotion, and their minds are his. And no emotion works quite as well as fear.

Elias has worked for decades to save the Enhanced—people born with superhuman abilities—from being abducted and forced into black-ops work. Now his captors want the names of everyone who has ever helped him. If Kirill’s methods of persuasion don’t work, he’ll simply use Elias’s fear to slip into his mind and plunder his memories.

But he may get more than he bargained for.

Decades ago, Elias erased a set of memories that tie the two of them together in a way neither of them suspects. And those memories are about to come to light.

Obscure is part of the Mind Games universe, a series of standalone stories about ordinary humans with superhuman abilities and the people who want to use or destroy them. This novel is 65,000 words long, or about 200 pages.

---

Defect

Their creators designed them to be the perfect weapons.

They forgot to make sure they could control their creations.

Sparrow’s explosive powers make her a living bomb. She spends her life locked away in a fireproof cell, brought out only when something needs to burn. But the longer you contain an explosion, the stronger it becomes.

All she knows is that she wanted to see the sky. Then came fire, and screaming, and death. Now she’s lost on unfamiliar city streets, hunted by her creators and the civilian authorities alike.

Mary went from being a failed experiment to a lab assistant prized for her intelligence and her perfect obedience. But after years without useful results, her lab is slated for shutdown. That means the dissection table for Mary. Unless she captures her creators’ rogue weapon and proves her lab holds the secret to controlling her power.

Mary offers Sparrow the thing she thought she could never have: freedom. Freedom from her creators, and from her own uncontrollable power.

It’s a lie.

Mary accepted long ago that there’s no such thing as freedom for people like them. There is only survival—and she’ll do whatever it takes to survive.

Defect is part of the Mind Games universe, a series of standalone stories about ordinary humans with superhuman abilities and the people who want to use or destroy them. This novella is 42,000 words long, or about 140 pages.

[cocoawithmarshmallows]

"sanctuary" (rise!future au fic)

"And yet, Leo kept all the frayed leads and speculations. Every hint, every miniscule bit of information that was scrapped, he kept. Leo wrote them down on any paper he could find, gluing and threading the pieces together in a jargoned puzzle. He sorted them out the best he could, trying to create somewhat of a timeline of events, or a map of some sorts.

(Leo couldn’t read a map for his life, but he managed to make it work.)

Three months later, he’d come up with a half baked travel guide and a pipe dream.

He was going to find Junior’s father." -excerpt from chapter one

Set ten years from the initial Kraang invasion, sanctuary follows Leo as he embarks on a cross-country journey West to find the father of an abandoned baby boy, aptly named Junior. With him follows Mayfly, a refugee (and close friend) with a shrouded past of her own.

As these two venture out to find what they seek, the world around them begins to crumble.

aka: the vile love child of a found family fic who got knocked up by a friends to lovers trope who thought the friends to lovers trope was the baby daddy but it turns out that slow burn was the true father all along-

now then, some things to know about my fic:

> i update chapters bimonthly (usually at the beginning and end of the month)

> my fic is 16+ (gore, body horror, slight s3xual content [will be reserved for future fics mostly])

> i enjoy putting motifs in my writing! each fic in the sanctuaryverse has its own. sanctuary's motif is stars/space (my logic was that people have been using stars as a guide for centuries and they're on a journey...trying to find someone, so... :|)

> It is also part of a, wait for it...series!! yippee!! a sequel for sanctuary is my drafts that will likely be released sometime next year.

so...yea, i'm currently working on sanctuary and have been since July of 2023. It has taken me three google docs and 10+ months worth of planning to put this story together (my drive space is crying rn).

idk how to write summaries, but I think it might be a good read! or not you can keep scrolling ig-

but if you are interested, here's a cookie! :D 🍪 and this is where you can read the first chapter:

if you have any curiosities, you can always ask me abt them! the tags on ao3 might help explain the fic a bit better lol. i just didn't want to spoil too much!! :D

(i also enjoy making my ocs kiss so beware 👁️👁️)

thx for reading ily k byeeeeee <3

[usedpidemo]

Update - Happy New Year! (and some housekeeping)

*TV static intensifies*

Hey everyone! π here.

Once again, I'd like to wish all of you formally a happy new year! This will be my third year with you, and I hope you're still enjoying my works and I appreciate you for your continued support.

Now that I have your attention, I'd like to give you an overall update on things happening behind the scenes, but first:

2023 Poll

I only posted 10 fics over the previous year, rip, but they're easily some of my most popular and positively received works in the library. Vote up to three of your favorite fics released from me during 2023! I was supposed to include Plaid on the list, but I didn't finish it on time, and as a result this poll also delayed lol. You can change your votes anytime if you have a change of heart. Poll begins from today until January 7, 2024 1:00 P.M. KST/12:00 AM EST.

2024 Road map

And because I only posted 10 fics all throughout 2023, my personal goal in 2024 is to increase the amount of releases, while continuing to improve the quality and maintain consistency. Hopefully. In real life, I'll be entering my third year of college once the holidays are over, and this may be the last full year of freedom I get. I might have to do on-the-job training (OJT) and write up my thesis, which requires a lot of personal commitment so I can finally graduate. I'm basically on borrowed time at this point.

Plans change. Shit happens. Everything that I'm about to say isn't exactly a 100% guarantee, and I really don't wanna promise anything because I've broken way too many promises. But here's the initial proposed list of idols that will be getting fics in 2024:

Hanni

Chaeryeong

Ningning

Yunjin

Rei

Sejeong

Nagyung

Haewon

Yuqi

Xiaoting

Minji (Newjeans)

Sakura

Youngeun

Karina

Sullyoon

Heejin

And this doesn't include idols I've already written :)

Looks ambitious—and it is—but if I can complete even half of that list, I feel as if I've already accomplished my goal.

Commissions

To the people who've been waiting for their requests, once again I'd like to apologize for the delays. I feel terrible knowing I've got so many projects in limbo because of circumstances beyond my control, and it feels as though I've betrayed your trust. However, we're picking things up and I'll gradually be releasing them throughout the early stages of 2024. Thank you for waiting just a little bit longer.

With that said, my personal plan is to implement the following so this never happens again: I'll be scaling back on the number of commissions I can accept at a time so there's more breathing room for requests as well as personal ideas/projects. Ideally, this would mean releasing fics in a 2-to-1 format: 2 commissions then 1 personal idea, but this would vary based on personal schedule and overall demand. Balancing real life commitments with burnout is a huge challenge, and I believe this is the most comfortable situation for me. Please understand that I'm still just one guy and I can't do everything all at once. If I could clone myself, I would abuse the shit out of that ability.

Closing

Overall, I've been blessed to have such a wonderful 2023, and I pray 2024 will be just as kind, if not kinder. I've experienced some of the highest highs and the lowest lows, but I personally feel that 2023 was the best year I've had in almost a decade, and this blog is one reason for that. It wasn't as productive as it used to be, but the increasing support is simply humbling. Heck, I've been entrusted to bring some of your visions/fantasies to life, which shows how much faith you have in me to succeed and bring you quality art. There's no amount of words that can express how truly grateful I am to you, the readers, my peers in the writing community, and to our heavenly Father.

Regardless of what happens to me or this blog, I hope 2024 will be kind to you all. Love you.

with grace,

peter / π

[sarandipitywrites]

saran's year of writing (2023)

hey y'all! saw a couple posts like this floating around and thought i'd hop on the train, because this year has been WILD for my writing (in a really good way). let's start with the bullet points version and i'll put the details under the cut. here we go:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

shared snippets of my work with other, actual humans!

made friends?!

started (and finished!) draft 2 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

wrote 1 short story for every week in october (that's 5 stories in a month! that's great for me!)

first NaNoWriMo in 10 years (and i finished it!)

drafted and re-drafted The Art of Empty Space

started draft 3 of Dead Roots, Dark Water

details, links to projects, me getting maybe a tad too personal, and those all-important wordcounts under the cut:

I JOINED WRITEBLR

i just realized i only started participating at the beginning of october, but it feels like i've been hanging out with you all the whole year 😅 maybe that means i should cut back a bit? nah...

really though, this year was the year i started taking my writing more seriously (not in a 'gotta get published' kind of way, but in a 'writing makes me happier than anything else and that's enough reason to set aside time and energy for it without feeling hella guilty' kind of way) and seeing you all posting your work and being so positive and encouraging to each other was what helped me get up the nerve to join in. and i can say without a doubt that it's the best choice i've made all year. y'all are such a supportive community and i've never once felt like i was encroaching or didn't belong here (and for me, that's really saying something)

so i guess what i'm getting at is: THANK YOU! i've loved reading your snippets and projects this year, and i'm way more confident in my own than i've ever been 💜 y'all are good peeps

Dead Roots, Dark Water

word count (edited and written): 187,789

that's a lotta words! DRDW is both my longest work wordcount-wise, and the work i've dedicated the most time to... probably ever. and i'm SO happy with it, it's a little concerning (/positive)

DRDW is now on its THIRD draft, and (assuming i don't do a massive re-edit) should be ready to start posting in 2024! *excited screaming* i've never released anything i've written in its entirety (the snippets i've been posting are actually a lot more than i've ever shared before), so this is MASSIVE for me and i'm both excited and terrified! overall, though, it's a very, very good thing

Short Stories

this october, i decided to challenge myself to do several things i don't ever do: write short stories; write them on a timeline; and share them. and i did! i wrote one short story for each week in october, and posted them here. they're far from my best work, and due to the timeline, they never could have been my best, which oddly i think helped make it easier to post them? they were also the first pieces i shared here (or anywhere)! they're not awesome, but i'm proud of them and i'm proud of myself for sharing them

NaNoWriMo and The Art of Empty Space

i've done nano once before, ten years ago. i was in college and had a lot more time then (and a job where i could spend the entire day just writing - i didn't know how good i had it), and even so i remember struggling to reach my word goal. but by the power of writing everything in wingdings so i can't second-guess my word choices, i made it this year! and even though i decided to challenge myself by writing a romance-heavy project (something i've historically avoided because IT'S HARD FOR ME, DAMNIT), i love AES and its characters and that feels fucking awesome.

even though my brain decided to spring a surprise plot restructure on me and now i have to rewrite like half of it. it'll be better for it, though, so it's all good 🥲

What's Next?

my plan for early 2024 is, of course, going to be to work on draft 3 of DRDW with the hope of getting some chapters posted (they are LONG, so i'll probably post to tumblr in chunks and the full, unbroken chapters on Ao3 due to formatting). once that's ready, i'll be able to return my attention to AES and getting draft 1.5 all written up. i've mostly figured out where the plot's going there, so it'll just be writing it up to figure out the gaps. if i'm able to write something for november again next year (which i really hope i will; nano did some great things for AES), it'll probably be one of the other Jak & Daxter fics i have kicking around in my head, because i am Obsessed (and switching it up between working on fanfic and original fic seems to work well for my brain).

i've been not super active here for the last month or so because Real Life Work is kicking my ass, but hopefully that will calm down and i'll be able to do more of what i want: writing wild shit, reading your wild shit, and screaming about it together 💜

good vibes and best wishes to everybody in the new year 🥂

[greenerteacups]

Fic Masterpost

Oh, boy. Okay. Here we go.

I have written literally hundreds of thousands of words of fic, and this is where you can find it! Consider this a kind of annotated bibliography.

Harry Potter

Lionheart

Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger | 300,000 words and counting

How Draco Malfoy met a girl on a train, ruined his life, started a war, and ended one.

Notes: Oh, honey. This is my baby. The longest fic I've ever written, the currently running one, and the one I'm most fond of. A Gryffindor!Draco AU that retraces all 7 books. Slowburn Dramione (SLOW, slow burn, a simmer, currently more like a suntanning) with Golden Quartet vibes. I pre-write all the books and then release them in weekly updates, kinda like a serial publication, so you always know when your next hit is coming!

Volume I, "Green and Golden," composed of Years 1-3, finished early in 2023. It's currently releasing Volume II, "Son and Heir," which just finished the first act of Year 4.

/

The Climb

Harry Potter, Severus Snape & Harry Potter | 22,000 words

"...in the event that I, Lily Evans Potter, and my husband, James Potter, become deceased," read Albus, "I do hereby name Severus Snape as sole legal custodian of my son, Harry James Potter, until such a time as he comes of age." He folded his glasses on the table. "Fuck," said Severus, with feeling.

Notes: An unexpected brainworm that I had while compiling a Severus playlist for Lionheart, which rapidly spiraled out of control. It's a "Severus raises Harry" fic, which I never had a taste for until I started writing this — I realized there was so much more juice in the narrative idea than I'd realized. I like how I use voice and style here; I think I made a real leap in technique between SWHTWW and this one.

//

Other

the scenes which hold the waking world

Six of Crows, Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa, Matthias Helvar/Nina Zenik, Jesper Fahey/Wylan van Eck | 70,000 words

Thirty million dollars for a secret. That's the payout for Kaz Brekker, the most dangerous, ruthless, and talented extractor in the dream industry — if he can manage it. But to have a chance, he needs the best. That means finding a team willing to attempt the impossible: a knife-wielding cat burglar, a college dropout with perfect aim, a sullen ex-Navy SEAL, a drop-dead gorgeous former Soviet spy, and the estranged son of their rich employer. If they can avoid killing each other, they'll go down in history. If they can't, none of them may wake up again.

Notes: This was my first novel-length fic, and I'll always have a soft spot for it. It's an Inception AU with the vibes of Leverage meets Ocean's 11, with a side of psychological trouble and codependency. Read if you like spy movies, heist stories, or dangerous criminals whose Achilles heel is being unable to stop talking shit to each other.

/

someday we'll linger in the sun

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor of Talokan/Shuri | 40,000 words

As the legends have it, after she earned the blessings of Bast, the Princess Shuri took a god for a lover. The legends say less about what happened in between.

Notes: Another drabble that spiraled wildly out of control. (You may notice a theme.) I watched Black Panther over Christmas break and thought, "Wow, that's an incredible storyline that didn't actually happen, wish someone would write it." Technically unfinished, but I think the existing chapters serve as a complete story. Unfortunately, no plans to come back to this one; I might mark it as finished at some point, because it feels settled to me.

/

it's a western, henry

Dimension20: Fantasy High, Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster | 10,000 words

Nobody fantasizes about kissing goblins in the moonlight, or taking them out on ice cream dates after class. Especially not beautiful half-elves on the bloodrush team, who could have anybody they wanted (and probably do). It's the beginning of a bad joke. A goblin and a half-elf walk into a tower... And the goblin ends up slain on the floor while the half-elf walks out with the princess.

Notes: My first fic, which started as a writing exercise. A character study in fantasy race relations and a love story between a nerd and a jock in which the jock is the anxious one. Working title for a while was "it's not easy being green," before I found the fancy Siken line. I still think there's some good humor in here, and I like rereading it from time to time.

[the-aesthetician-writes]

September Writing Review

(Also a short update.)

Hey all! I've been gone for a while, I know. I've been trying to keep active in the midst of finding work and life being well... life. So the short and quick version of this is, I'm back-ish!

I have decided to really buckle down and have a try at building up my writing habits. With a couple of months filled with some horrendous experiences I won't detail here, I have realized what I want to do more than anything is writing. I have been attempting the process for the passed couple of weeks and the results have been more than I had expected.

Last month's goal is more or less having a decent amount of work done on all WIPs. And while that can seem overwhelming. I think the way I had set this up this time could hold results. So prior to my recent experiment, I've been writing with the goal of finishing one thing with no deadline (probably not the best method now that I'm thinking about it.) So what I decided to do now is to have a deadline along with tentative goals by the end of the year(NaNoWriMo) and some taking place during the first half of the new year (AroWriMo).

Some of these goals range from solid word counts to more abstract concepts in writing but for transparency (and accountability, really) I'll share them below.

Poco-A-Poco (Webcomic)

Poco-A-Poco is a web comic I set out to make at the beginning of the pandemic. Hoping to create something while in lockdown. It has been abandoned for a couple of years but I have decided to work on it to help build my discipline.

The goal for the last two weeks was to create a total of around 30 "pages" for the web comic. Thinking pages for web comics are often subjective and since I have a passion for graphic design. I felt it would at least work as a warm up when working on it.

The goal after September would be to work on a "page" daily for Poco-A-Poco. Just to build a rhythm and if I manage the time, some day update the comic with what I have worked on.

By the end of 2023, the total should amount to around 122 "pages".

By April 2024, the total should amount to around 243 "pages".

@bybyebitheway

Bi The Way is my ocean punk baby. Also started in 2020 and has had the unfortunate ratio of one chapter released per year it's been alive. With my new motivation with these goals, I decided BTW needed a concrete goal to hit. This was not only to build discipline, but also to build stamina in my writing sprints. I will be trying the Pomodo Method when writing BTW chapters along with the modified Kitchen Timer Method.

The goal of these past few weeks was to write around 4 chapters. I really attempted to give my all these passed few weeks, but haven't managed to work on Bi The Way. However, knowing I had planned beyond these two weeks made me feel better about the initial failure.

This October, I plan on playing catch up on BTW and other WIPs I fell behind on. By the end of this month, I plan on having written 5 chapters along with the four chapters that carry over last month. I feel like the carry over factor will help in building that stamina in terms of writing. After all, the only reason I had set 30 pages in two weeks for Poco-A-Poco was to build in routine. I'll talk more about that later on, but for now my goal with BTW is to have written 4/5 chapters each month. Each chapter having a minimum word count of 1,500 words. BTW will have a hiatus in November for NaNoWriMo.

By the end of the year, I would like to have around 14 chapters.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have around 30 chapters.

@tobeaspected

To Be Aspectec is another product of the pandemic and also my first dive into AroWriMo. Having failed to achieve what I originally wanted for AroWriMo multiple years in a row, I plan to finish at least one character interaction just in time for next year's AroWriMo.

The goal for the last two weeks was to have two "scenes" written for TBA. With the goal being more subjective and similar to my goal with Poco-A-Poco pages, I opted to have a definition set for what counted as a scene (for my overthinking sanity's sake). A scene would mean any amount of writing needed before the player makes a choice. (Oh I forgot to mention TBA is an interactive fiction piece, didn't I?) Besides the quantity, anything else was up to me.

By the end of the year, I would like to have 6 "scenes" written for TBA.

By the end of February 2024, I would like to finish one "volume" of TBA. A volume would be a total of two characters and all their interactions, including endings.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have 10 "scenes" written.

@thehuntersacethetic

The Hunter's Ace-Thetic is another interactive fiction project that started during the pandemic. It has been through many different mediums as a way to experiment and learn about different media, but I will focus on ChoiceScript for now.

My goal during the past two weeks was to write out one "episode". Again, with the goal being to build stamina, I added THAT work load into the two weeks as well. More so, the focus these past two weeks was to organize the "episode" structure, with the real priority being on an outline for it.

By the end of the year, I would like to have 4 episodes of THAT.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have 8 Episodes of THAT.

NaNoWriMo 2023 Project (OMS)

For the month of November, I plan to take on NaNoWriMo and work on one of my abandoned attempts. I hope to write to full 60,000 words by the end of Novemember. If anything, I hope I learn how to be a better writer. The name of the book will be: "Oh My, Starsigns!"

"Oh My Starsigns!" is planned to be a sci-fi/ crime drama(?) taking place in the future where the space police have technology that can take over a suspect's body. Along with the police themselves, suspects also posses different abilities. The story will begin when a prison ship crash lands on a distant planet. Really trying hard to not give anything away just yet.

By the end of 2023, I would like to have Oh My, Starsigns! finished.

By the end of April 2024, I have no further plans for OMS other than maybe self publishing on Amazon or somewhere else if I'm able to find a better alternative.

What I've Written So Far (End of September, 2023):

Poco-A-Poco: 20/30 Pages

Bi The Way: 0/4 Chapters, 0/6k Words

To Be Aspected: 0/2 Scenes

The Hunter's Ace-thetic: 0/1 Episodes

What I Plan to Write (October 2023):

Poco-A-Poco: 40/30 Pages

Bi The Way: 8/4 Chapters, 12k/6k Words

To Be Aspected: 4/2 Scenes

The Hunter's Ace-thetic: 2/1 Episodes

Reflection:

I think these past two months have been a great experiment in knowing what to do different for the next couple of weeks. Hope to update you a month from now with good results.

[moontale-official]

Progress Update: February 2023

Didn’t think I’d be doing one of these bad boys again after the comic was first released-- but life’s full of surprises ain’t it? If it wasn’t obvious already, the comic has been on pause (again) for the past few months. That is due to a combination of health/personal issues that took higher priority as well as the transition to the Fanfic medium.  If I had to guess, there most likely will be 2-3 more updates of the comic before the scene (and by extension the story in it’s comic form) will end. I want to be able to mix in links to the Ao3 chapters with these final releases to give the fic as wide of a reach with the comic audience as possible, so the releases of the comic updates will be determined on the development of the fic. 

The first two chapters of the Ao3 fic are deep into development, but I want to make sure I build up a handful of finished (along with half-finished) chapters before I even consider releasing Chapter 1. This is mostly for quality/consistency purposes, as well as allowing for a frequent release schedule at the beginning. 

Given that the story is a Mystery novel, the writing process (even with a full script to work with) isn’t nearly as free flowing as other genres. Therefore I need to be extremely careful with the details I include and be precise in it’s planning to ensure the highest quality foreshadowing, clue placing and verisimilitude that I can provide.  With all that said, I want to also take time to build up the characters (especially Ivis I want to shove info on her down everyone’s throats) and give some more concept art in the meantime. My goal until the release of the Fic is to generally share as much as I can about my characters and AU to build up more hype for the Fic’s release.  And to be fair, I do need to post more in general haha, so two birds with one stone I guess

[mylittlemenandme]

A QUICK BACK AND FORTH

What better time to have a brief look at what I got up to in the past year? And see how that matched up to my plans from the end of last year, and to make some (hopefully achievable) plans for the year ahead.

Firstly though, this guy:

My fantastic Secret Santa gift, a converted Primaris version of the original Iron Priest model. I love it so much, I've shared it everywhere else so why not here as well?

And now, the round-up...

2023

The year was basically spent seeing out the end of the ninth edition of 40k. A good meet-up at the beginning of the year which included some Boarding Actions action, and then on to the local Crusade league again, although one that was ultimately cut short with the release of tenth edition. At this point ninth was starting to feel a little stale, and very bloated rules-wise - I think I already made the point about the sheer number of stratagems I was juggling by the end.

And with tenth edition coming out, I ended up organising a weekend for people to play some games of it in the first week of its release. I was pretty proud that I managed to pull the event together, definitely a highlight of the year. I even managed to enjoy it over the persistent level of stress I felt! Turns out it's a good set of rules - I certainly enjoyed playing it in the second half of the year in the new Crusade league, as well as writing the short stories to go with my league results submissions.

RESULTS?

So how did I do with my plans for 2023? I got a few models built and primed (around 2000 points worth), including the Impulsor I wanted, plus a bonus Repulsor. I got a chunk of Phobos models painted up too, including one of my Invictors, but sadly the Storm Speeder and Hammerfall Bunker I mentioned last year are still waiting.

Transfers are still pending too, but I have got a row of spare shoulder pads ready to be tested on before I move on to actual models.

I also got all the Death Guard I built over the previous Christmas break all primed up, but no further. Like the Death Guard themselves, there's no rush, it's purely inevitable. No other projects got a look in really, but I did manage to build six Thunderwolves so there is a chance to do something a bit different (albeit more Space Wolves!).

No other projects sadly also includes the Sylvaneth. No games, nothing new painted, I will definitely change that this year.

2024

So what do I want to achieve this year? It's possible the Space Wolves codex could arrive in the second half of the year, so I can't see there being any new models I'll want to buy before then (bold words). From what I do already own it'd be nice to get the things I have nearly fully built to a primed state (the aforementioned Storm Speeder and Bunker, plus a Drop Pod), and some of the primed bits moved to the painting desk and hopefully to the gaming table as well.

On top of that I have a Brutalis Dreadnought I want to get built (at the very least), and then I'd like to work on my Erik Morkai conversion a bit more, maybe some terrain too. It'd also be nice to get the Thunderwolves and Wulfen ready for the table since it's impossible to tell what the new codex will bring in terms of units and models coming or going, so it'd be good to get some game time out of them before then.

Sylvaneth, simple - play (at least) one game, and it'd be nice to get one of the primed units I have painted up (Tree-Revenants, I'm looking at you).

Other than that, it's very much wait and see. Legions Imperialis I could be very tempted by but I'll wait to see how it shakes out in terms of rules and models, as well as uptake in the community. Epic is where it all started for me, so I can't imagine I'll hold out for long however.

Oh, and maybe more than 3 posts on here this year? I guess I'm already 33% of the way there at least! Happy New Year!

[amonsteronmaplestreet]

2023: A Year in Review

Ko-Fi Version | Substack Version | Patreon Version

The other day I had a minor depressive episode, which is something I haven't experienced for a few months. I spent much of the day feeling like a failure, a burden, like I was incapable of doing anything right.

Today, I sit down and I look back at everything I've done and everything that's happened this year, and I'm stunned at how productive and momentous 2023 has been for me, in both my personal and professional lives.

To start off, I released three books this year: my short story collection, In Our Hearts We're Dreaming, came first, in February. Then in May I released the sixth ScaleGuard novel on Kindle Unlimited, officially beginning the second half of that series. Finally, October saw the release of my horror novella, The Last Day​.

I entered my novel The Ghosts in the Flames into two competitions this year: the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off and the Book Blogger's Novel of the Year Award. It received a review through SPFBO, but didn't make it past the first round. However, it made it to the Semi-Finals of BBNYA, and while it didn't move on to the finals, the panelists did have some kind things to say about it.

​I also started my Substack this year, and saw growth in my Patreon and the first recurring subscriber to my Ko-Fi. I made good on something I had mused about doing last year (writing about my inspirations) with my Morrowind essay, the Substack version of which was the most popular post I made in 2023.

​Outside the realm of self-publishing, I successfully sold a short story this year for the first time as well: "Zombie" was performed by Jesse Cornett in the paid version of The NoSleep Podcast, Season 19 Episode 14.

Most recently, The Last Day has been nominated for the Indie Ink Awards, and as of this writing, voting is currently open. The book has been nominated for the categories of Best Morally Gray Character, Best Setting, and Best Use of Tropes, and I would appreciate it if you sent some votes my way.

In terms of my personal life, 2023 has been quite the adventure. I got two raises, moved to a new apartment with my girlfriend, and lost my car! Those last two actually happened at the same time--the morning of the move, I went out to my car and discovered that it wouldn't start. After months of using public transport and waiting on the mechanics to get the necessary part to fix it, it was eventually confirmed that the repair would cost more than the car was worth, so I sold it for scrap.

My girlfriend as well had an adventurous year, though hers is not my story to tell. Suffice to say she was hospitalized twice this year in the span of a single month, first due to a horse, then due to a car accident. I can't express how relieved I am that she made a full recovery in both cases.

I have two more posts planned to hopefully go up before the end of the year: a review of the first Conan​ story, and a spotlight of some books I read this year. So look forward to those.

Overall, 2023 has been a wild ride. Here's to 2024. May it bring even more triumphs and successes.

[knottyroseswrites]

What I Don’t Have (is what you are made of) - Notes on Chapter 1

~ This note contains spoilers for chapter 1 ~

As I mentioned in the fic notes, chapter 1 was initially written as 4 chapters, or I guess an intro and 3 chapters. They obviously eventually got bundled together and put out as one chapter, and I just wanted to take some time to talk about why this happened and how I feel about it (spoilers, not great!). 

I guess first I have to explain that this fic has existed in my head for a really long time, and I have been playing around in this universe since sometime around July or August 2022. But I never planned on actually writing it. I just had this world where Y/N is a manager to Stray Kids bouncing around in my head, which honestly was a lot of fun. And then one night in like fucking March of 2023, I was working late and the opening line hit me. “I need you to come over and help me burn all my Stray Kids Merch.” just popped into my head fully formed and demanding to be written down. And then suddenly Lily was born and Y/N was talking about going to interviews. 

At that point in the writing process I had absolutely no idea where this story was going, who my characters were, or what exactly was going to happen. Because despite having played in this word for a long time I just had vibes, not a real story planned. But one of the scenes I remembered playing out in my head was Y/N doing an interview (in this version they are much more in the public eye) and being asked by some jerk of an interviewer if she got the job cus she’s pretty or some shit like that. Y/N of course went on a rant about how she earned this position, and one of the things she talked about was this multi-stage interview with the Kids after having already been selected by the company. 

And while I think this is rather unrealistic as an interview practice by JYP, I loved the concept. I loved the concept because I love Y/N having this job because he earned it. One of my gripes with stories is when jobs just fall into a character's lap. Like I get it, it's fun, and if it’s what you need to do to get your character in fun settings then all the power to you. But I wanted y/n to be in this position because they are qualified and capable and the best for the job. You know, wish fulfilment for a 26yr old trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. 

Anyway, all of this to say that this idea of the multiple interviews was pretty much all I had when I started, and I thought it was a fun concept. So after the intro I decided I’d write the interviews with the Kids and each could be their own chapter and then we’d see what happens. 

What happened was an absolute struggle to write the interviews. Writing that first 15k took me almost as long as writing the entire second half of the fic, which is insane. Part of that was because I was trying to make sure each interview was long enough that it deserved to be its own chapter. In hindsight, that was a mistake. The interviews should have been more of a montage, just the best bits of each instead of multi scene chapters, but I didn't know that then.

Now hopefully as a reader you disagree, or if you agree you don’t mind that it turned out the way it turned out. But it genuinely was a stressor for me. After I spent 2 months pulling those interviews out of me I immediately started to feel it was the wrong way to start this fic. I debated deleting them, releasing them as a prequel, or condensing them down to one chapter and releasing them together. Ultimately I couldn't delete them, I don’t think they are Bad and I spent so much time on them. And truthfully, deleting them would hurt too much.

Releasing them as a prequel seemed an okay idea. Except you need to read the intro and Chan’s interview for anything after that to make sense. Unless I wrote an entire new beginning for this fic, but then that would probably overwrite the prequel and so were back to probably just having to delete it all. I will say I did delete and rewrite may scenes in this fic, but these first chapters just were too special to do that to for some reason.

So I decided they needed to stay, and that I’d power forward. They continued to exist as their own chapters for a long time. But I think somewhere around chapter 5 or 6 (which at that point were being called chapter 8 and 9?!?) I realised it truly didn’t feel right. I knew I wanted to do weekly updates, and I knew that meant we didn’t meet Chan till 3-4 weeks in depending on how I released it. That felt bonkers. So I talked to some friends and made the call to condense the intro and interviews into one chapter, but leave Chan’s interview as its own chapter. The minute I changed the chapter headings I felt better.

I do still worry that that long clunky no Chan first chapter is going to scare off readers, I guess that’s a little why I’m writing this, but who cares. At the end of the day I wrote this for me, and that’s what I needed and wanted. So here we are. With a fic that has only original characters in the intro and takes 15k to introduce the main love interest. Sometimes that’s just how it goes I guess! 

Best,

Lover Boi

P.S. If you have thought's I'm okay with you sharing them as long as you're nice about it. I'm not going to change the fic, and I'm not going to accept people being mean about my choices, but if you have some genuine thoughts I'd love to hear them!

[sportsballs-the]

Footnotes: TGAA Case 2 Twitch Highlight

(Or: Why you should NOT meta Game Studios)

Hey everyone!

I want to begin using this site more regularly, though the way that the site formats its posts means that I need to get a bit more creative with what I post here. And while you will see things more regular such as scheduling posts, I think a great idea would be to post long form deep dives into many of the things I do for content as a sort of bonus. And so, here’s Footnotes: a series about me explaining things.

For this first article, I want to discuss the most recent video I have released to this date: my highlights video for Case 2 of The Great Ace Attorney. This post will be discussing elements of that video in order, so if you would like you can watch along with the video pausing at the timestamps listed to read up.

Two final notes before starting: first, this post will contain my own opinions on Case 2, as well as a brief overview of my opinions on Case 1, but will not cover anything beyond that. This is not meant to be a discussion board for the game as a whole. As of the time of writing, I have not finished the entire game, and as such this is not a place for spoilers or any of that nonsense.

Secondly, on the note of having not finished the game yet, I am currently going through the rest of the game on my twitch stream! If you’re interested in following along with the rest of my progress, you can find me over there!

Ok, let’s actually get to the footnotes now.

(Pre-video)

The first thing I wish to discuss is the production of the video. The video began production in mid-to-late May and ended production in early August, with a final release date of August 11th, 2023. This is a turn around of just over 2 and a half months, which is definitely higher than I would like, but is a bit more understandable when looking at the circumstances.

Over the summer I was maintaining both a full time job and a part time job while also trying to spend time with family I hadn’t seen in months. I had very little time to work on the video once all of this is considered, and even less time once you consider that I was still attempting to consistently stream on Twitch during this time. Combine that with this video being the longest video I’ve ever posted, with 7.5 hours of raw footage being boiled into 42 minutes, and this turnaround time suddenly looks a bit better. I wasn’t happy with it at the time, and I definitely want to make sure I have better turn around for my videos, but with hindsight this all is a bit better than I would’ve admitted at the time.

This long run time bit is going to be dwarfed in the near future btw: I have two videos already in the planning pipeline that I know will exceed it: one with 12 hours of raw footage at the end of it all, and one that currently has 16 hours of raw footage, and is estimated to have around 30 hours at the end of it all. Pray for future me I suppose.

(00:17 - 00:22)

I decided to carry over the prediction counter over from the last highlight video because it was one of the best ways to add comedy in post for this video. I have an annoying track record of predicting what will happen in a case hours in advance for no reason other than “Chekhov’s Gun lmao”. In this case I actually had a bit of comeuppance because of this, but we’ll discuss this in detail a bit later.

Of more important note is the goose. I did a pretty good job of explaining my general thoughts of Case 1 of this game in that videos highlight, and I want to save my fill in depth opinions for when I eventually cover that video in Footnotes, but a general recap is worth discussing. In short, it is one of the weakest Case 1s in the entire franchise for the sole reason that it is waaaaaaaaaay too long. Playtime for Case 1 for me came out to about 6 hours, and the case itself could’ve very easily been 2 hours and I wouldn’t have complained nearly as much.

Because of Case 1 being such a drag, I actually came into this stream with much more tempered expectations. I was still hopeful that it would perform well, but we were off to a rough start.

(00:22 - 00:31)

Ah, Herr Lock Sholmes. A character defined by being transformed into a knock-off version of a popular character due to copyright. I have my own opinions on the character that I will discuss a bit later, but I want to use this timeslot to talk about localization and the weird release this game had for western audiences.

Because this game is by definition a spin-off of the main franchise, I was originally not going to touch the game myself and rather watch a let’s play of a fan translation for the game. This is what I did for Investigations 2 (and also for the Layton crossover game lol), and I was planning to dive into it once I had a significant amount of free time to pay attention to it with. It just so happened though though that it was at around the same time that an official translation and release would be coming for western audiences, and even a port to Steam. This was enough for me to wait to play it myself and even enough for me to work through it on my Twitch stream, but it was a seemingly odd time to do drop this. Great Ac Attorney released in Japan in July of 2015, but not in the west until July of 2021, a difference of a full 6 years. That’s a lot of time for what’s just basically a translation…

I haven’t seen anything from the fan translation, though this is entirely because I am avoiding looking into this game on a deep level until I have fully finished it. However, I do know that there is one very major difference between the fan work and the official release: Sherlock Holmes became Herlock Sholmes.

As far as I’m aware, (a) Sherlock was named properly in the Japanese version of the game without the weird name change, and (b) Herlock is an already pre-existing knock-off that notably ended its run before the official Sherlock run ended. This leads me and many others to speculate that the delay for the western release was due largely to copyright issues with the Sherlock Holmes brand. I don’t know this for certain, and again I’m refraining from looking into anything until I’ve fully finished the game, but if this is true it would suck royally. Copyright law is always a sore point when it comes to fan works, but delaying a wide release of a game by more than half a decade because of copyright really grinds my gears. I understand that the English detective character being specifically Sherlock is actually important to the game, but I do also think you could’ve effectively got the point across while using a knock-off because Sherlock is such a popular figure. Delaying the wide release for that long when another solution does exist just feels really bad to me. That might just be me complaining though.

In future Footnotes for the other videos on this game, I want to reference changes made between this 2021 western release and the original 2015 Japanese release, but I will have to refrain from doing that here since I will not be researching anything about the game until I am fully 100% done with the game and it’s sequel. I accidentally did this to myself for the Zero Escape franchise and said to myself that I wouldn’t be letting that happen again, though that story is one for another time.

(01:02 - 01:08)

Nicknames are funny, what can I say. I started a running joke in the first case that ended up snowballing into me giving nearly every single names character in this game a really stupid nickname. Why? It’s funny. For some reason deep within the recesses of my mind remains a clip from an old episode of Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja where the comic relief sidekick wins a large scale chess tournament all while calling the pieces by egregiously stupid nicknames (The Pointy One for Bishop, as an example). I think ever since I saw that “stupid nicknames = funny” has been burned into my brain.

I am aware that the nicknames can be pretty annoying to some, and a few may even say I’m being disrespectful by using them, but I don’t mean to come across that way. Even with this being a game about solving murders, the Ace Attorney games are built upon having a lighter tone and being overall a bit goofier. Larry Butz would not exist in a world where Ace Attorney was meant to be played tonally straight. I’m doing the nicknames to exaggerate the goofiness inherit in the series and adding even more comedy to everything.

Anyways important nicknames from the previous case are Ryunosuke becoming Bruno, Kazuma becoming Dramatic Effect, and Susato becoming Deep Bow. There’s another character with a preexisting nickname, though we’ll get to them when we first meet them in this case.

(01:14 - 01:27)

I still stand by this assessment. Up to this point in franchise history, the main player character being the defendant was super rare and only really arguably happened. For it to happen twice in a row right at the start of the game really diminishes the impact it has, and also gets the player less invested in the character. Because both Case 1 and Case 2 have Ryunosuke’s motivation be basically just trying to save himself, it’s hard to feel like we actually learn anything about him. This ties into my opinions on his character arc as a whole, but that is a conversation that happens a long while from now when we get to discussing the game as a whole in the discussion of Case 5.

(01:39 - 01:56)

Locked room mysteries in theory are incredibly interesting because they play on your expectations. When a mystery looks like it’s super narrow and obvious, it gets the audience thinking outside the box and wondering how could the obvious solution not be the true solution. The problem is that you then get a situation where the audience pretty much knows that the locked room is fake from the start, meaning the investment in this trope falls hard from the outset. I have not personally read or seen a single situation where the locked room actually stays locked the whole time, there’s always some sort of clever trick. Somebody in chat during the stream said that Ghost Trick actually has a proper locked room, but I haven’t actually played that at all, so I wouldn’t know myself.

(Don’t spoil this btw. Ghost Trick is on the list for games I want to play, so don’t you dare spoil it for me. I’ll know it when I see it.)

(01:56 - 02:32)

Another brief aside on a mystery trope I don’t really care for: the dying message.

Look. When it’s stupid obvious that the message is fake, why bother with it? Writing a “last message” in Russian when we know the character is Japanese means it really obvious from the beginning that it’s fake, so when the game points it out later like it’s a big reveal it has no weight to it. I’m pretty sure I cut everything to do with this final reveal about the last message out of the video because it didn’t carry any weight. I understand this is more of a gripe with bad lazy writing than with the trope itself, but the trope is a very common victim of bad lazy writing, so I think pointing this out is warranted.

(02:59 - 03:05) and (04:14 - 04:49)

This is probably the single prediction I am the most proud of so far. Calling the knockout powder solution so early into this case really helped make everything fall into place while solving alongside it, and the game does a pretty decent job at letting you figure it out yourself. For what it’s worth, the reason I got it almost instantly is because just before this bit in the game is a scene of me talking about how weird it is for Ryunosuke to have slept through everything and because Chekhov’s Gun means him randomly saying his head hurts isn’t random.

As far as what I think about this twist, it’s good, but not really great. It gets developed on throughout the case and starts to spell out some pretty major ramifications, but it doesn’t actually define this case all that much. That’s probably a good thing considering there’s a much larger aspect of this case that really needs to take center stage rather than this smaller twist.

The rest of the scenario I laid out in the second clip is wrong, but I think understandably wrong given the info we had. The air vent was the only way in that we had seen so assuming that it came from there makes sense. The room being a mess done specifically to make it look like a fight had broken out makes sense when the potential killer wants to hide that Kazuma ingested sleeping powder of some kind. Motive is… uhh racism or something I guess. It’s not great, but for literally 20 minutes into the stream it’s a great line of reasoning.

(05:34 - 05:42)

Florent L’Belle. Redd White. Swan Hat Lady from the first case. Enough said.

(06:14 - 06:25)

While for the most part I want to dissect my personal opinions on characters after we have gotten all of the relevant case specific stuff for them out of the way, I think it’s safe for me to go ahead and talk about my opinions on Herlock Sholmes now because a lot of my biggest issues are visible right from the start.

Herlock is largely in the game to fill two roles: to guide the player with large information dumps when the plot needs it, or to guide Ryunosuke when he needs to grow as a character a bit. While in theory both of these are good things, the delivery of Herlock’s character really messes a lot of things up for me. Herlock in this game is depicted as eccentric and egotistical, leading to a character that often likes to proclaim how smart he is while blatantly getting a basic fact of life wrong. When you point this out to him, he often laughs at your face and calls you an idiot. Herlock also is quite often shown getting crucial details about the case completely wrong, even having an entire gameplay segment dedicated to you having to correct “The Great Detective” (I will explain my thoughts on said gameplay segment in a bit). When you point these mistakes out to him, he attempts to steal credit from you and will often say that he was mere moments away from saying that himself.

I think the game is trying to do it for comedy, but I personally don’t think that his statements carry enough charisma to make it feel funny or charming. As such, he just comes across as a rude prick most of the time, which is not something you want to be doing with an incredibly important main character of the game.

Overall though, my biggest issue for now is that Herlock has next to no arc in this case. He starts of randomly making accusations, and ends off continuing the same handcuff bit and making more random claims. Perhaps we have yet to see all that this character can offer, but in my opinion it’s a poor start. I understand this complaining is quite rambly and heavily opinionated, but at this point I’m starting to realize that I have more interesting things to say about my opinions on the game rather than on cool production facts, sorry lol.

(06:52 - 07:59)

Ok, actual production fun facts now. If you noticed that for a lot of these clips, the background music seemed to suddenly start and stop, that’s because I actually put many of the clips in this section out of order. This investigation segment right here throws a lot at you very quickly, some of which is expounding upon information you had already started to work on. As such I fudged with the order of the clips to make the overall narrative flow of the video come together better, though the background music slightly suffered as a result.

(08:00 - 08:12)

When it comes to my editing style, I’ve really come to appreciate and enjoy the hard cut. I think transitions between scenes with accompanying swoosh noises is distracting and takes away from what the video is trying to convey. That being said, I have been playing around with many of the movement sliders in more recent videos to get things to slide around more where I think it feels appropriate.

In this section, the final message Kazuma wrote in his diary is very important to the story, but I didn’t have much interesting dialogue of me reading the whole thing out. Even if I did though, it’s quite a bit of reading, and I felt having 20 seconds or so of me reading these would halt the flow of the story. As such I needed a solution that would grab the viewers attention and get them to read the text of their own volition without slowing down the pace, and having them “fall” onto the screen and then slide off was a fun way to do so that also looks pretty slick I would say.

I think I like adding more to the edit in this manner. Telling a narrative with the video is still the first priority, but one of the things I want to accomplish with each video is to continue to grow and show the progress I’ve made in editing and production. Editing videos has become a true hobby of mine, and I really enjoy getting to express myself in this way. Who knows, maybe even continuing to show my growth as a creative editor will interest some of you all reading this to consider helping me continue to grow as a content creator so I can continue to fund this hobby of mine *wink, wink*.

(08:33 - 09:01)

Ah, Detective Hosonaga. I get pretty notably frustrated with seeing this character return, but he’s a minor character in this case so it’s not a huge deal in all honesty. Plus we see him get beat up later, so that’s fun. If/when I make a Footnotes post for the video on the first case for this game, I’ll talk about my opinion on the character there. For now though, this post is honestly going to be long with or without the inclusion of minor character dissections, so let’s try and aim for brevity.

Of slightly more notable note is the use of the Akira meme. It was floating around on Twitter around the time of production, and I felt it accurately portrayed my opinions on seeing The Butler of all people turn out to be a reoccurring character. While I originally wanted to use more clips of him to more accurately match how the meme is done, I realized during production that the only easily identifiable thing that he does in one frame poses is the “anime glasses push”, so I decided to just play that animation in full rather than rapid cutting even though it lessened the impact.

One drawback I realized a bit too late about including this meme was that it actively flashbangs the viewer when you watch it as there are multiple instances of nothing but a white screen. Oops.

(09:14 - 09:29)

Yep, me using a dolphin sound effect to cover swearing is me directly lifting a joke from SpongeBob lol. Swearing is something I’m trying to do less of largely because I’m starting to grow and realize that it’s not really necessary the vast majority of the time, though since I’m trying to turn content creation into a part time career of sorts this applies doubly so. I will admit, however, that even though I’m trying to limit it, using the dolphin sound effect is really funny every single time.

(10:11 - 10:20)

I often “blah blah blah” through many of the more unnecessary textboxes that serve to pad out the game, though I’ve noticed that often I try and pitch my blahs into whatever song I’ve got on my mind. These blahs here are actually the Smash Bros Ultimate main theme if you listen closely. Why? I don’t know. I thought it was funny.

(10:20 - 10:59)

Honestly, Bif Strogenov is one of my favorite minor characters in the game. Lots of funny quirks, actually semi-important role to the story, easily let’s me do a funny voice whenever I say his lines, all around a great addition. No notes.

Also another instance of me adding in more motion to my edits when I think it works better than a simple hard cut and doesn’t distract from the overall point I’m making. This time it actually exaggerated the point since I wanted to draw attention to the unnamed third sailor here anyways.

(11:00 - 11:14)

Ok, I’m going to be completely 100% honest: I don’t remember why I put the voice line in the video. I did it even remember it being in the video until I rewatched it. My best guess was that I thought I needed to include this clip because it’s important to explaining what’s happening narratively for the video, but I though it was boring and dragging the pace, I guess?????? I mean it’s really funny when it catches you off guard I guess.

(12:02 - 12:29)

I have to admit, while I don’t like Herlock as a character in this case, he does get the best non-court gameplay segment in the game. Going around and examining fine details about the witness and the scene around them is creative and helps add depth to the world, and the condensed nature of the segment really helps to make it feel like you the player are the ones making the deductions. The gameplay feels natural and easy to understand, and best of all, it has a musical theme in 7/4 so it immediately gets a million bonus points for that.

What can I say other than I like to have gameplay in my game. I don’t like that I often have to mash through a lot of textboxes that feel unnecessary just to unpack the actually cool mystery elements, so when those mystery elements are given a form of gameplay to help break up the monotonous textboxes it does wonders. 10/10, fantastic gameplay element.

(13:43 - 13:58)

Ms Pavlova’s introduction does a lot of work at setting up her character in such a way that the last third of this case hits hard, so it’s important that she is introduced as a meek and shy character here. That being said though, it really does make one particular aspect of the ending to this case a bit… strange. We’ll get to that at the end though.

The earrings being something I pointed out this early though was a delightful find for editing me to use to narratively set up the flow of the video. In my opinion it works really well with how it played out: the earrings are introduced early in what at first seems to be yet another dry humor style comment about the game, only for them to have greater relevance later in the video. Things working out in this manner is the sort of thing I would do if I was scripting my own playthrough, so finding an opportunity like this was a great surprise.

As one last note about the earrings though, I needed to draw attention to them here to make them stick out just a bit more in the mind of the audience, so I decided to once again use a sliding motion to grab focus. While this seems no different from the other times I mentioned this type of edit so far, this is actually the single “shot” that I spent the longest amount of time on for the entire edit. For some reason the speed and duration of the zoom into the earrings just felt off every time, so I spent a good 45 minutes fudging with the sliders in Premiere Pro trying to tweak the zoom until it looked right. Even now when watching the video back it still looks ever so slightly off to me. Some may even say that if I hadn’t stopped myself, I would still be editing that one shot to this very day…

(14:19 - 14:32)

I actually really like this joke, one of the few from Herlock that really sticks the landing for me. So much so, this shot is actually my computer desktop right now, which always gets me strange looks when I’m in class at university lmao.

Also yes, I cackle like a witch. Sue me.

(16:20 - 16:53)

I stand by this, bruising should’ve occurred on the body, but it isn’t really worth fighting this point too much. The game kinda said from the outset “no, this isn’t important, please just ignore this and continue on”, so I rolled with it.

Oh, and that text dump was literally a copy paste of the first paragraph on the Wikipedia article for blunt force trauma. Also of note, apparently a Wikipedia article for blunt force trauma exists.

(20:50 - 21:46)

The discovery of the door bolt being poorly made has to be something that happened in order for the plot to work. Like I said earlier, this case just flat out doesn’t work if it’s a locked room. That being said though, is this really something that would be a surprise to anyone other than the passengers?

This boat and this crew have been sailing for years as established later in the case, and presumably the emergency alarm had to have been used in some instances during that time. You’re telling me that every time the alarm goes off all of the door bolts in this section of the ship slide locked, and that the crew hadn’t done anything about this clear design flaw in years? And the only way to get into these rooms once they’re locked from the outside is to bust them down? I feel like that should’ve been addressed a long time ago.

Is this a nitpick? Yes absolutely. It doesn’t really ruin the case in any way, but it is really funny when you think about it. The implication that they have to replace the door bolt every single time the ship makes an emergency stop is hilarious.

(22:06 - 22:09)

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to the largest reason I wanted to make this article in the first place.

It’s pretty obvious that there’s a time skip of some fashion at this point, and I wanted to call out this in the video because it is quite noticeable. What’s less noticeable however is the fact that this time skip is actually one that spans over a year and a half.

No, seriously.

At the start of Season 4 of my content, I had just moved into a new, much more academically challenging university, and it was affecting me mentally really badly. From August to December of 2021, I streamed a grand total of 3 times. Once for the first case of this game, once for the first half of this case, and then a third time for Inscryption, which is a game that came out around that time that I was pretty excited for. I fully intended to stream the second half of this case and the rest of this game around then, but didn’t because I didn’t really have the spoons to stream anything around then. It was rough, but my mental state did eventually improve. This did ultimately lead to a change in mentality for streaming as well, but I’ve discussed that in length before in my discord server.

Once I had gotten back into streaming, returning to this case was something that didn’t seem like a good idea for stream. It had been months since I last streamed the game, and there’s a good chance nobody would have any idea what was actually going on, leading to a boring stream. My idea to combat this was simply to wait: I would wait until the video highlight for the first case came out to return to the second case, and then I would simply catch everyone up on what had happened at the start of this case. When it had only been a few months since the stream it seemed fine, but the plan quickly fell out of favor when it took yet another 6 months for the video highlight for case 1 to come out.

At that point, I realized it would be quicker and easier to simply record the rest of this case off stream and stitch it into the video as if it had been live streamed. I intended to fully hide the fact that time had passed, but that became quickly impossible when I had realized that since it had been nearly a year and a half since the original recording date of that first stream, not only had I changed nearly all of the settings for my microphone, but my voice itself had actually changed a little bit. I just had to accept my losses and through in a quick (intentionally terrible) transition to try and jokingly point out what had happened without disrupting the flow of the video to heavily.

It gets weirder though. A bit later in the video you’ll hear my voice change in quality again. This one is actually because I cut a full 30 minute period of silence out of the video when I took a break to go get lunch, and on my way out I must’ve bumped the microphone, dislodging it from the cord just enough for the quality to drop again. Professional content creator energy right there.

But there’s still more to say about this segment! You see, for the backing music for this small transition I used the “You nearly failed” music from Sonic Unleashed, which works fine especially when you have the context like I have just laid out for you, but wasn’t my first choice. I originally wanted to use a song I had stuck in my head from a bunch of older YouTube videos I had watched growing up, but when I tried to go and look for it, I found that none of the music in those older videos every got properly credited. Instead, you just got linked to a website with about a million different free-to-use music samples. I went digging for a few hours trying to find the specific piece I was looking for, but I wasn’t able to find anything. I considered trying to find a video where the specific song was used to link in this post and see if you all could help me find it, but with how much time it took me to find it used in a video before, and with how much time I’ve spent writing this post across multiple days, it just didn’t seem reasonable. Maybe I’ll make an addendum and point it out later.

So yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said this small segment of the overall video was the largest factor behind me wanting to make this post. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes of each of these videos, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the weird and interesting things that have come up. Hopefully people will actually be interested in reading all of this and I’m not just wasting a bunch of my time.

(22:57 - 23:11)

The chicken image here because this laugh really does sound a bit like a chicken, but I ended up using it because I had just recently before this used the image in the previous TTT video on my channel and I thought it would be funny. Considering I often delete assets immediately after I use them, the fact that this chicken image of all things has stuck around for multiple videos is quite funny to me.

(25:57 - 26:03)

The case loses points for the snake juke by the way. Red herring that exists for no reason other than just for the game to go “haha gotcha!” later and the snake quite literally has no relevance itself beyond being yet another gag. It’s a filler lead that takes up a lot of time and ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. Boo.

(26:22 - 26:35)

I honestly wish I had some good juicy behind the scenes bit for this gag since I think it came out really well, but there’s not too much for me to add other than I like it and the voice is funny. Funny voices just work too well sometimes.

(26:57 - 27:11)

Alright, the blunt sword theory is one that I really wish had been the case, especially looking back on it now and realizing the sword plays next to no role in the game as a whole other than being a literal prop. The running theory was going like this: early on we spend a bit of time going through the ships rules of passage. While this was to set up the “no animals aboard the ship” rule, the game also mentions a rule about “no dangerous or lethal weapons” which Kazuma’s sword absolutely would full under. Knowing Kazuma and his whole honor thing, we figured it was likely that they gave him a blunt prop sword to use for training while the voyage took place, with the real sword being locked up somewhere. Once it was discovered that Kazuma’s cause of death was due to blunt force trauma to the back of the neck, the theory was that while Kazuma was distracted by the “speckled band” in the vent, the killer snuck in to the door thinking that Kazuma would be asleep. Kazuma wasn’t, however, since he didn’t eat any of the contaminated food, yet the killer still had a chance since Kazuma was turned around and distracted. The killer picked up the sword hoping to use it to cut him only to find it blunt, then proceeding to hit Kazuma on the back of the neck with the blunt sword since it was about the only option left. The killer used the emergency stop to cause a commotion in the room and hide the fact that the sword had been used as the murder weapon, and Pavlova discovered the body, but didn’t want to since they were also a fugitive aboard the ship.

Is this a perfect theory? No, absolutely not, but it’s a pretty fun one in all honestly, and I genuinely do like it more than the actual outcome of the case (especially when it comes to the murder weapon). I cut a lot of this theory being formed from the video since it ended up being largely off the mark, but I still wanted to include it here since it is a fun theory. We’ll get to my opinions on the actual ending of the case very soon, don’t you worry.

(31:22 - 31:46)

Ok, I’m picking this clip here to actually talk about something I don’t like about how this video ended up. There’s always something for me that when I look back on a past video of mine I wish I had changed, and for this video, it’s that the last 12 minutes or so basically just become me reacting to the story of the game progressing.

I think it was necessary for me to include all of these clips since it’s the conclusion of the case occurring, and I think part of this has to do with the odd structure of this case (again, we’ll get to that very soon), but it’s such a large portion of the video where I barely provide any commentary. I think at this point in the editing process I was ready to just call it done and ship it out since I was already well behind where I wanted to be with it, but that’s not a great excuse. I don’t add anything to the end of this video aside from a few moments which just isn’t good for making the content my own and actually justifying why you the audience should watch my video over someone else’s.

At this point I can’t exactly change anything about it, and I suppose less to talk about for the video means less to talk about here in this post lol.

(35:47 - 35:55)

Alright, let’s talk about how this case is structured.

The fact that we never go to court, or even leave the ship at all in this case is a pretty big curveball, and one that I certainly was not expecting. It makes the game feel less like a traditional Ace Attorney game and more like one from the Ace Attorney: Investigations side games. A lot of the reason I didn’t see this ending coming is because I didn’t think the game would pull a formula break like this, and it paid off well… in the short term.

Looking back on the case though, everything rides on this twist. It’s obvious from the beginning that the culprit is whoever is staying in the next door cabin, and the only reason we don’t follow through is because once we meet the shy and meek Pavlova, we assume that there simply must be someone else who we just haven’t met yet. And while keeping us confined to the ship is a twist, it’s one that causes the entire game to revolve around 3 rooms, two of which are nearly identical looking, and the third being just a hallway.

The biggest issue for me though is that this twist means that the player never gets a chance to truly show that they’ve learned something important about the case. We’re never truly tested to show that we’ve discovered something, meaning that the fact that I, for instance, saw the sleeping powder and earring twists coming early made no difference. The case is almost entirely on rails, and the player never gets to actually solve much of anything outside of the one gameplay segment with Herlock.

Is this case interesting in the moment? I’m not going to deny it, and you all heard my opinions from the video, but now that I’ve taken a step back and thought about it, the case is just missing what truly makes it an Ace Attorney case, and instead feels like a big narrative sidetrack just to have Kazuma get mentor cursed.

(37:13 - 37:53)

Now onto the opinions on how the mystery played out narratively and about Pavlova being the killer.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first: the motive for this case boils down to a heat of the moment kill spurned from a complete misunderstanding. This sucks. This sucks. This really sucks. This makes Kazuma’s death into what is essentially a fridging, as all of the narrative weight he carried died because of no real reason in particular. There isn’t some connection to the previous case and Brett holding some sort of grudge, there isn’t any connection between Kazuma and the killer, and there’s no connection between Kazuma dying and Ryunosuke’s goals or motivations. Kazuma basically just died because of a convoluted accident, and that really sucks. It’s painfully clear that the writers just needed Kazuma dead, and spun a story around that death rather than spinning a story around the murder and why it occurred.

As one other negative, the murder weapon is basically just the bed post. Really? You put all of this focus in the middle of the case about the cause of death and it turns out it’s a literal background element that killed him? You can do better than that.

All this being said though, I think making Pavlova the killer worked out pretty well. While her motive may as well not exist, the game conveys it in a tragic way that really makes you feel like it wasn’t done out of malice. At the end of the case, we still want to see the best for Pavlova despite the fact that she just admitted to murder, and it takes some clever writing to get us to feel that way. The murder feels like a tragedy in universe, and that’s a great way to end the case.

(41:06 - 41:25)

One final production note before I get to closing thoughts, apparently the YouTube recommended videos at the end are 100000% not centered properly, which sucks because I set up the end card specifically to try and have the text on the left not get covered, but I couldn’t because the videos wouldn’t center. It drove me a little nuts, but I guess I know for the future now.

Oh, and this is also the first time that I’ve included supporters at the end of the video! It a new perk that I want to start including, and if you’re still reading this article up to this point then maybe you would be interested in supporting the channel and having your name in the credits of one of my videos forever.

(Post-video)

My overall thoughts on the case is that while the case has many cool and interesting elements, a lot of those cool and interesting elements come with some downsides and baggage, meaning the case comes out pretty mixed for me. A 6/10 overall. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. It’s kind of just ok.

I made the thumbnail for this video in Photoshop, and it came out really well. I was making it and occasionally sent WIPs to my good friend LlamaIsFuzzy, and I could tell that each iteration made him laugh more and more. That image of Strogenov staring like a shocked pikachu has even become an emote in the discord server.

My overall thoughts on the video as a whole are that it came out alright, but I’ve definitely showed that I need more work when it comes to longer videos and keeping the audience fully engaged the entire way though. I even started skipping segments to wards the end of the video on this rewatch, which isn’t exactly a great sign.

The overall reception of the video matches this take from me. The video has been out for about a month and a half now and is firmly sitting towards the bottom half of my videos in terms of both views and likes. I think I’ve learned some pretty important lessons when it comes to much longer videos, and I should hopefully be able to translate those well into the future entries in this series.

Speaking of future entries, the rest of this game will be getting a video highlights edit as well, though it may end up being a while. This series falls into what I consider “medium effort videos”, which means between university and a my part time job practically working me 8 days in a 7 day week I don’t have a ton of time to invest into them. This usually means that these videos only get worked on during long breaks from university, normally summer break, thanksgiving break, and winter break. Even then, however, I have a lot of videos above case 3 of this game in the queue. My Stanley Parable stream and TTT videos are long overdue, and I want to get back around into doing Hitman vs Twitch Chat more regularly on the channel. That said, the medium effort videos queue has shuffled around already a few times in the past, maybe we’ll see the next video in the series sooner if there’s enough interest in it.

And that’s about all I have to say for this edition of Footnotes! I’ve put well more time into this than I really expected, so I really appreciate those of you who decided to take time to read all of this. I’m sure there are plenty of grammatical errors both from me and from autocorrect trying to make me look like a fool, so please loudly point those out to me so I can know how much of a fool I am.

If you all have any further questions for me, let me know! I’ll make sure to answer any interesting questions you all post here to elaborate on elements I may have explained poorly.

Similarly, if you all would be interested in seeing more posts like this, I would love to indulge! Writing this and looking back on the production cycle of a video is honestly really nice and it forces me to reflect on how I can improve as a content creator more. If there’s enough interest I’ll start writing posts on many of the older videos on my channel, because there are certainly some fun stories to tell about them.

Thank you all for your time, and I do hope your day is going well.

[newseldrick]

ChatGPT goes pro, layoffs at Alphabet, and Dungeons & Dragons flirts with restrictive new licensing

by Kyle Wiggers@kyle_l_wiggers  5:15 AM GMT+8•January 15, 2023

Welcome, welcome, folks, to Week in Review, TechCrunch’s regular column that recaps the last week in news. If you’d like it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. Hope you’re sitting comfortably with a warm beverage on this wintery Saturday afternoon. Expecting Greg’s byline? Not to worry — he’s still enjoying parental leave, as I mentioned in the January 7 edition. All’s well.

Before we get into it, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note, once again, that TC Early Stage in Boston is on the horizon. With tickets starting at $99, it’ll be a worthwhile stop along the Eastern conference circuit, packed with expert-led workshops, case studies and deep dives with technical founders. Some members of the TechCrunch editorial staff will be in attendance — don’t be a stranger if you spot us on the show floor.

most read

ChatGPT goes pro: OpenAI this week signaled it’ll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. A “pro” version of the tool called ChatGPT Professional will throw in no unavailability windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT — “at least 2x the regular daily limit.” Pricing remains up in the air.

Microsoft 365 goes Basic: Microsoft will introduce a lower-cost tier of Microsoft 365, its family of productivity software and cloud-based document editing services, starting on January 30, the company announced Wednesday. Called Microsoft 365 Basic and priced at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, the plan will initially include 100 GB of storage, Outlook email and access to support experts for help with Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.

Layoffs hit a news aggregator: SmartNews, the Tokyo-based news aggregation website and app, let go of 40% of its U.S. and China workforce, or around 120 people, my colleagues Sarah and Kirsten report. The company was impacted by the same macroeconomic factors that have led to a number of tech industry layoffs in recent months, in addition to complications that arose from Apple’s implementation of App Tracking Transparency, or ATT.

Robotics, too: Brian reports that this week, Alphabet joined the growing list of tech giants making staff cuts amid ongoing economic struggles. The company’s robot software firm, Intrinsic, laid off 40 employees, a move that comes less than a year after Intrinsic acquired both Vicarious and Open Robotics — the latter having been announced less than a month ago.

Licensed fun: Dungeons & Dragons content creators are fighting to protect their livelihoods, Amanda writes in a sobering deep dive. Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the Hasbro-owned publisher of the game, plans to update the game’s license for the first time in over 22 years, releasing a new licensing system that would require any D&D content creator who makes over $750,000 in revenue to pay a 25% royalty to the company on every dollar above that threshold. In a sliver of good news, WotC has delayed the rollout of the licensing scheme, following a widespread backlash.

Colors, but E Ink: One of the cooler gizmos to emerge from the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show is E Ink’s color displays, Harri writes. They can spit out 50,000 colors at 300 DPI — way, way up from the last-gen model’s max of 4,000 colors. E Ink says it aims to use them to build a magazine reading experience that’s good enough to win over even the most demanding publishers.

Keys for days: My colleague (and boss!) Frederic reviewed the Keychron Q10 this week, a keyboard akin to Keychron’s other — but smaller — Alice-style board. He approved of the gasket mount and silicon gaskets, which provide a bit of flex while reducing ping and other noise. As for the Alice layout (the keys aren’t in a straight line, but the left and right half are slightly angled), it was easy to get used to, he said — and he appreciated that the five macro buttons under the knob could be mapped to anything you’d like. Read the full review for more.

Welcome home, Welcome Homes: In a profile, Mary Ann peels back the curtains on Welcome Homes, a proptech startup launched by the co-founders of cloud service provider DigitalOcean. The New York City–based firm — which recently raised $29 million — offers people a way to design and build new homes online, similar to other venture-backed companies (e.g., Atmos, Homebound) attempting to address the housing shortage.

I hear deepfaked voices: Microsoft’s new VALL-E AI model can replicate a voice using just three seconds of audio from the target speaker. But as my colleague Devin writes, it’s not necessarily cause for alarm — or rather, cause for more alarm than was already warranted by voice-duplicating tech. Voice replication has been a subject of intense research for years, and the results have been good enough to power plenty of startups, like WellSaid, Papercup and Respeecher. VALL-E is simply the latest illustration of its potential — and dangers.

Medium joins Mastodon: Online publishing startup Medium, originally created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, is embracing the open source social platform Mastodon. Sarah reports that Medium has created its own instance — me.dm — to support authors and their publications with reliable infrastructure, moderation and a short domain name to make it easier for authors to share their usernames, among other things.

audio roundup

As always, TechCrunch had a winning lineup of audio content this week for your listening pleasure — although I might be a little biased. On startup-focused Found, TechCrunch startup battlefield editor Neesha Tambe spoke with Sheeba Dawood, the co-founder of clean energy tech provider Minerva Lithium, about the struggles she’s faced as a woman of color trying to innovate in the mineral manufacturing industry and what’s next for the company. TC’s dedicated crypto show, Chain Reaction, featured an interview with Polygon Labs, one of the biggest market shakers and layer-2 blockchains in the crypto space that’s building on top of the Ethereum ecosystem. Meanwhile, over at Equity, Natasha, Mary Ann, and Becca chatted about incoming deals from Inflow, Deel and Fidelity; layoffs and lawsuits at Carta; Microsoft’s much-rumored investment in ChatGPT and OpenAI; and SBF’s Substack debut.

TechCrunch+

Here’s your regular reminder to subscribe to TC+ if you haven’t yet. It’s where TC takes exhaustive, exclusive looks at trends, industries and emerging technologies. Here’s some of the most popular content on TC+ this week:

Crypto rollercoaster: While some crypto-focused venture capitalists are bullish for 2023, others see it as a hazardous time, Jacquelyn reports. Internal sentiment among VCs is a “wait and see” game, according to one source quoted in the piece; competition in the market is likely to heat up as investors write fewer checks and become more selective.

ChatGPT, meet VC: Some investors are (cautiously) incorporating ChatGPT into their workflows, as it turns out. ChatGPT being a specifically text-based support tool, automation could be making its way to rejection letters, market maps or even bits of due diligence, TC found — all in order to stay afloat in a changing venture landscape. Natasha M, Christine, and I have more.

Pivot when ready: Pivots aren’t necessarily bad news. Brian Casey writes about how he pivoted his deep tech startup to become a software-as-a-service company — albeit not without major challenges. In his words: “Pivoting from hardware to SaaS was the right move for our electric motor design startup, but the process wasn’t precisely linear.”

[digihindnews]

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Will There Be Another Season?

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Fans are beyond ecstatic to witness the greatest release of all time as a result of Netflix's official announcement that production will begin soon on the third season of Sweet Magnolias. One of the most well-liked series currently available on Netflix is titled "Sweet Magnolias." Thankfully, Netflix has continued to care about the quality of its most popular programs, which is why the company's officials decided to make the renewal announcement public. If you are interested in finding out more about Sweet Magnolias Season 3, then the information that you require can be found here. Since the first episode of Sweet Magnolias Season 2 was broadcast on February 4, 2022, fans have been anticipating the second season of the show ever since it was announced. It's been half a year since the last episode of the show aired, and already fans are looking for details about what's going to happen next. The story of Maddie, Dana Sue, and Helen was left on a cliffhanger at the end of the second season. In the upcoming third season of Sweet Magnolias, viewers will get a better idea of how these three characters are going to contribute to the show. The results of their actions are going to have a significant impact on the plot of the third season. Fans are at risk of gaining new information about the show's upcoming seasons because the plot of the show is not yet particularly complex, and there has been an official announcement made regarding the third season. Everything you need to know about the second season is included in this article.

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Will There Be Another Season?

Producer Dan Paulson has made the third season of Sweet Magnolias public. As he put it, "we're thrilled to be embarking on our third season for Netflix, and we're looking forward to returning to Serenity." The show's second season has been officially confirmed. JoAnna Garcia, Swisher Brooke Elliott, and Heather Headley all took to social media to express their delight at being renewed for a third season. Thankfully, Netflix will not end the series on a cliffhanger, so viewers will know what happens next. Production on the third season has begun and is progressing as planned. When the May 2022 issue of Sweet Magnolia was released, the band's author announced, "We're going back to Serenity, y'all!" We're overjoyed to announce that the third season of Sweet Magnolias is in production. I'm excited to have you all back in my home. The film's writers announced their intention to start production with the line, "Shall we begin?" "I'm overjoyed to have the cast and crew of Sweet Magnolias back home in Serenity for the first day of production on Season 3!"

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Release Date

The official has announced on Twitter that writing has begun. Thankfully, production on the series has officially begun, and fans can't get enough updates. Releases for both seasons of Sweet Magnolias occurred in 2020 and 2022. So, let's get back to the third season; who hasn't been made available yet? There has been no update from Netflix regarding the show's fate. Production on the show has started, and viewers are anticipating an early premiere. The series has begun production, but there has been no announcement of a premiere date. If you liked this, you should check out our coverage of whether or not to renew The God of High School for a second season. Due to the global pandemic, production on the show was put on hold for the standard two years. Everything is in good hands now, and the show may premiere sooner than expected. Plus, we know it typically takes 9 months for a series to be released, so we're anticipating the show's premiere in the near future. Season 3 of Sweet Magnolias will premiere in 2023, as far as we can tell based on the show's previous release schedules. https://twitter.com/SweetMagnolias/status/1549005142845956097 You might also like: - Mario Kart 9 Release Date: Character, Trailer, And You Need To Know About Mario Kart 9 - The Bear Season 2: Release Date, Cast, Plot, And Everything You Need To Know.

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Cast

Casting the lead role is crucial to the success of Sweet Magnolias. Every major player from the show will make an appearance. All the original cast members will return for the third season. JoAnna Garcia Swisher will reprise her role as Maddie Townsend, along with Brooke Elliot as Dana Sue Sullivan, Heather Headley as Helen Decatur, Chris Klein as Bill Townsend, Justin Breuning as Cal Maddox, Carson Rowland as Tyler Townsend, Logan Allen as Kyle Townsend, Anneliese Judge as Annie Sullivan, and Chris Medlin as Isaac Downey. Related: Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker Will Return in Rush Hour 4! Also, Jamie Lynn Spears as Noreen Fitzgerald, Brandon Quinn as Ronnie O'Sullivan, Michael Shenefelt as Ryan Wingate, and Dion Johnstone as Erik Whitley.

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Plot

Much is in store for viewers in Sweet Magnolias Season 3. After the second season concluded, many loose ends remained untied. JoAnna Gracia Swisher has revealed that the third season will pick up directly after the events of the second. The third and final act will begin after the conclusion of the second season. The place where we last left off, she said. It was also added, "I don't think you can come back months later and say, 'Whatever happened with Helen?' and "Has Justin been arrested?" Why not try for the moon? Maddy, Dana Sue, and Helen will return for a third season with even more trouble in store for them. According to an interview Headley gave to TVLine, she noted, "I could see her going either way and of course, they don't tell me." Netflix is afraid I'll spill the beans in exchange for mac and cheese, and I can see why. It's no secret that Maddie's status is a major source of curiosity for the audience. The audience is anticipating Maddie's reaction to the secret they've been keeping about Cal. To paraphrase Sheryl: "In a potential third season, it's certainly something Cal needs to unpack and examine whether he has handled past events properly, why he lost it when not losing it is so important to him, and what choices he can make going forward." She then clarified, "Not just for himself, but also for the people he loves."

Sweet Magnolias Season 3: Trailer

Unfortunately, the official trailer for the third season has not been released as of yet by the relevant authorities. We are still awaiting Netflix to release some teasers for their upcoming shows. Having said that, the filming has already reached the halfway point, and it's possible that the show will be broadcast very soon. Please share this post with the people you care about, and encourage them to check out Digi Hind News so that they can stay up to date on everything that’s been happening recently. Read the full article

[inkykeiji]

I dont know what you have planned for the plot of DA au but the image of touya covered in blood, trickling down the side of his face and his lips, lips he crushes against the reader's, kissing her fervently with tongue and teeth, someone else's blood in both their mouths😳😱

hahaha i have the entire thing plotted, from start to finish, split into three distinct parts. this is v sexy hehe but she will not be there when the murder takes place—firstly, she isn’t strong enough for that especially considering that she’s involved with all three men and secondly, not one of those three men would allow her to be present <3 and touya is such a pristine pretty boy that there’s no way he’s marching back into his minimalist, upscale, monochrome apartment tracking blood all over the place! talk about leaving a trail of evidence ehehehe

[joelockescoffee]

Repost from a hs fb group, thoughts ??

‘Ok I have a few friends who work for Netflix UK and I’ve gotten all the information I can.

First of all if this is reposted which I’m sure it will be PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME thank you.

So far everyone from season 1 has had their options for season 2 picked up. The only two holding up and renegotiating their option is Kit and Joe. I’ve heard from 2 people that they have banned together in negotiations to get top dollar per episode especially since season 2-3 go into much deeper territory and the show exploded in viewership (something about them doing this together makes me so happy). Apparently they both signed on for season one at ALMOST sag minimum pay which means this was a passion project but it’s MUCH more then that now.

They have signed Connor Jessup for season 2 with a an option for season 3, no one WILL TELL ME for which character but I’m guessing Nicks older brother.

I’ve been told principle photography for season 2 begins September/October 2022 tentatively and filming will last 2 and a half months. Their goal is to release season 2 by June 2023. This is all tentively based on Alice writing the scripts for season 2-3 and Netflix and See Saw approving them by then, but seeing how hard Alice works for us fans I’m sure it’ll be ready in time.

ALSO they are planning two HUGEEEE premieres for season 2! One in the UK and one is Los Angeles! My closest friend works in marketing and says they are putting lots of $$$$ behind season 2-3 including production and the premieres so be ready for bigger larger sets and concepts. And a MASSIVEEEEE UK premiere that’s being planned for Heartstopper fans to meet the cast during red carpet interviews and what not!

So proud of how far this show has come and that Netflix is going full blast with future seasons. Also fuck YES for Kit and Joe getting more $$$.

I’ll continue to push for information but I’ve basically begged for the max info I could’.

Here you go anons. :-)

[beyondthedustjacket]

Mid-Year Reading Survey

ORIGINAL BOOK TAG CHAMI AND EARLY GREY BOOKS 

BEST BOOK YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021

As of right now, my favorite book I’ve read so far this year is The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. I can’t wait for the third season of the television adaptation to finally be released.

BEST SEQUEL YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021

Even though it’s the third book in the series, I’m going to count this one. Rise of the Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz was such a fun book. I absolutely love the Disney Descendants series and highly recommend it if you like middle grade. 

NEW RELEASE YOU HAVEN’T READ YET, BUT WANT TO

I really, really, really want to read Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé. It seems like something I would really enjoy.

MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASE FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR

I can’t wait for Heartstopper (Volume 4) by Alice Oseman to be released in the USA. I absolutely love this series and she is one of my favorite authors of all time!

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Definitely Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. While I love the character, I just found the original book incredibly boring. It’s my lowest rated book so far this year at only two stars. 

BIGGEST SURPRISE

I did not expect to like The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. I never read these books as a kid, so I didn’t really think I would like them as an adult. However, I’m happy I gave the first book a chance! I can’t wait to read the rest of this series. 

FAVORITE NEW AUTHOR (DEBUT OR NEW TO YOU)

I really enjoyed reading Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron. She displayed amazing writing abilities, as well as being able to craft an interesting universe surrounding the original fairytale her book is based on. I recently bought another one of her books and plan to (hopefully) read it soon. I’m hoping that book will solidify her as one of my new favorites!

NEWEST FAVORITE CHARACTER  

Once again referring to The Subtle Knife, I really enjoyed the character of Will Parry. He is definitely one of my new all-time favorites!

A BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY

I’ve said this before, but books don’t really make me cry, so there’s no drama for me to share with you on this one. Sorry!

A BOOK THAT MADE YOU HAPPY

I recently read The Dining Table by Ori Mita and oh my goodness! This book is so sweet and fluffy! I definitely recommend it if you like manga that centers around slice-of-life and romance stories.   

MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK YOU’VE BOUGHT SO FAR THIS YEAR (OR RECEIVED)

Amina’s Song by Hena Khan has an absolutely beautiful cover. It fits well with the first book, along with the themes of the story.

WHAT BOOKS DO YOU NEED TO READ BY THE END OF THE YEAR?

I could say quite a few books for this one, so I think we can skip this question for right now, lol! 

The formatting of this post was edited on July 22, 2023.