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nickgerlich · 10 months ago

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On The Telly

I did a thing yesterday.

As much as I fancy myself being future-forward, tech-savvy, and all the things that would ever keep me from being labeled a Luddite, I had one legacy artifact in my household: satellite television. The only reason it wasn’t cable TV is that out in the country, they don’t run those kinds of lines. But I also have nine or ten streaming services, making me a case of Modern Man meets Cave Man.

So I did what more than 20 million other households have done since 2014: I canceled my subscription to DirecTV. It was a tough, 30-minute call as they tried every trick in the book to keep me, but in the end, I prevailed. And to be honest, I felt like I needed to shower when I was done, a symbolic cleansing of the old self. It felt great.

Of course, I still need me some regular TV. Not much, mind you, but I want my news stations, The Weather Channel, and local stations. I subbed to YouTube TV instead, which is much cheaper as well as completely portable. Compared to what I was paying, I am saving $125 a month. You could say I gave myself a $1500 a year raise.

All of which got me to thinking about how we consume media so differently these days. Increasingly, we are good with less, as well as having it when and where we want it. Everything I can watch at home, I can also watch in my van, in a hotel room, or wherever life may find me. And yeah, don’t worry. I won’t be watching TV while driving, although I can certainly pump it through my audio system and listen.

As I was tallying all of my savings, I also noticed how the programming has also changed to fit our very different lifestyles. Not only are we mobile, but we have a shrinking attention span. We are increasingly less likely to buy into the format that broadcast television has been feeding us for years, which is usually 20-24 episodes. Believe it or not, a few decades ago, it was as much as 36 episodes in a season. And since it was all linear TV by default, it meant we had to wait a week between episodes. Who has time for that now?

Thanks to streaming as well as cultural changes, we now favor far more condensed episodic series. Last year, broadcast TV series averaged only 10.2 episodes, while streaming series averaged 9.6 episodes. You can binge that in a weekend. And, there are benefits to the studios as well, because fewer episodes means they are cheaper to produce. Win-win.

This all came home to roost on my afternoon walk when I pondered my own viewing. About 10 days ago I completed Drops of God on Apple TV+, a delightful as well as cerebral eight-part series that is delivered in French, Japanese, and English, along with a little Italian toward the end. This was the Rosetta Stone of TV series.

I then dove into Bad Monkey on the same network, thanks to Oldest Daughter and her husband recommending it, but I quickly discovered the show is on a weekly release schedule, so I have to wait until tomorrow night for Episode 4. Given the heat wave still burning us up this last weekend, I needed something else, and Netflix—God bless them—recommended Prison Break. I took the bait, and after a few episodes, I was sucked in.

Prison Break originally started airing in 2005 for four seasons. Netflix then picked it up in 2017 for a final season. But what I did not know until after I returned from my walk and a quick Google search, is that there are 90 episodes in total. Holy crap, this sounds like a commitment now.

As much as I like the show��and never mind the fact it was filmed not far from my childhood home in northern Illinois—I just don’t know if I can keep going. How long can you string out a prison break? I mean, the prisoners could all be dead by the time you get through 90 episodes.

My conflict increased when I remembered that Youngest Daughter is coming over for dinner tonight, and we will continue watching Season 2 of The Bear, a series I have already completed S1 and S2 before, but am enjoying rewatching with her. After this we’ll dive into S3, which came out back in June. And then there’s Only Murders In The Building Season 4 which debuts today, and later in October, Shrinking Season 2.

Looks like I have some hard choices to make, because those 90 episodes, while not as bad as trying to watch the entirety of Law and Order’s 502 episodes, are bound to just become filler between all the cool condensed series.

There is a downside, too, with so many condensed series, as Oldest Daughter mentioned last night on the phone. “Dad, it has gotten so I can’t remember what I just watched last weekend,” she said. It’s the result of bingeing a few too many series in rapid order, and they fall off our memory too quickly. Heck, I had to do some thinking to recall the name of the show—Drops of God—I had just finished less than two weeks ago.

Part of me wishes I had not started Prison Break, even though it is riveting. I remember all too well laboring through far too many episodes of Criminal Minds and The Blacklist in recent years. Brand loyalty is good when we’re talking about consumer packaged goods, but I am pushing back when it comes to dramas. Just get the damn thing over with so I can move on.

Meanwhile, I’m sure my students have similar such conundrums and viewing patterns. It is part and parcel an artifact of the new culture, one that finds us chatting at the water cooler about which series we are watching at the moment.

What are you watching? And how do you consume it, all at once, or whenever and wherever you want? Be glad you are young enough not to have endured 36 episodes, or even much of the more recent 20-24 episodes. Be glad you either cut the cord, or never had one in the first place. And be glad you don’t have to box up four DirecTV receivers and their associated cables to ship back to them. Thankfully, it will be the first—and last—time I have to do it.

Anyone want to watch an episode of Prison Break with me?

Dr “Eight Or Ten Episodes Is Just Fine” Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #streaming #teleivision

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fans4wga · 2 years ago

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That's partially true, but let's take a look at the reason streaming does shorter seasons. It's not that writers for streaming shows ever start with a 22-episode outlines in the writers room and then it's chopped up (though seasons are occasionally shortened in editing, it's not the norm, because it's so expensive to produce/film anything in the first place.)

What's actually happening is that the move from networks (think ABC, the CW, and so on) to streamers means that you're going from a year-round schedule of weekly episodes, needing 20+ episodes to fill up your calendar, to a binge watch—all episodes being dropped at once. The binge model, introduced by Netflix with House of Cards, totally upended TV release structure and changed how TV is made.

So just like that, streamers have decided to save money by producing fewer episodes, since they get no benefit from having more episodes dropped at once. That's why the 13 episode season was more common for a while, then the 10, now the 8 and 6. It's a cost-saving measure. It's bad for TV audiences and bad for the WGA but it's just about squeezing out max profits for studios.

Some of the central issues, which you can read here from Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything)'s Twitter, are shortened seasons leading to a gig form of employment for writers instead of a steady job; mini-rooms that give insufficient time to develop and polish scripts; that AI shouldn't replace human writers; and minimum staffing requirements on shows so studios can't just reduce the total number of writers in a room to cut costs.

All in all, yes, it's true that the WGA (and audiences) aren't served by shorter seasons, but it's not correct to say that writers are making up 22-episode seasons and then the streamers are shortening them at that stage. TV itself has changed due to the streaming binge model and might never recover; the WGA needs to get a fair contract with the AMPTP so that television and film writing is a feasible career in the future what with all the changes.

can someone explain the WAG and SAG-AFTRA strike to me like I'm a child. who does it affect, what can I as a consumer do to help, what does it mean for both current and future productions, etc. etc.

#sag-aftra strike #wga solidarity #fans4wga #wga strike #writers strike

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bumbleklee · 4 years ago

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Hi! I love your work and I’ve been binging it for a while! <3 I was wondering if I could have some angst and a broken heart since it seems I like to suffer. ;’) Can I have headcannon with an insecure adventurer reader who’s in a relationship with one of the Mondstadt boys (or just the dark night because I’m down bad since he didn’t come home). They are insecure because while they are a great adventurer, ever since the traveler came, they’ve been living in the traveler’s shadow with everyone, even possibly the readers lover, praising the traveler. The reader takes on increasingly difficult missions, even putting their life on the line since they feel as though they have to prove themselves. In an attempt to stop the reader, the Mondstadt boys tell the reader that they aren’t the traveler, but instead of the good intent behind it, the reader takes it as if their lover prefers the traveler and decides to try and give up adventuring since they realized that not once did their lover go on an adventure with them, but they did with the Traveler. This was long, I’m sorry, but feel free to reject it! Stay safe and healthy!

hey!!! a few little notes: i ended up going with just diluc and instead of hcs, i wrote a little one-shot. i hope you enjoy it and i hope i nailed your idea lol <3 enjoy! (requests are open) also: u will pull diluc!!! and thank u for ur support :3

before reading: 1.8k words, little mentions of blood but nothing graphic, kinda angsty w feelings of despair (tw?? idk), under cut for length

The first time you realized you had fallen into Lumine’s shadow is when your weekly commissions are given to her. Jean didn’t give you much explanation when she sent you home for the day but you could only assume it’s because Lumine could do them better

The second time is when you were absent for a weekend to clear out Hiluchurls from Wolvendome and when you returned back to Mondstadt to share the news, everyone was preoccupied helping Lumine find her brother.

The third time is when, despite your tireless efforts to protect your hometown this year, Lumine was chosen as the Windblume Star.

You had gone from the Knights of Favonius' greatest knight to a mere shadow. Your accomplishments and achievements felt like nothing when compared to Lumine’s and you became desperate to be known again. You watched your teammates pick Lumine over you, choosing to accompany her on adventures, and your friends constantly chatting about how amazing she was.

And, well, she was.

Lumine was beautiful. She was delicate and soft and fought gracefully, while you often came home covered in dirt or blood. And she was kind - so, so kind. She offered her hand to you on multiple occasions, never once seeing you as the threat you saw her as. And beyond her looks, Lumine was passionate and strong and everything you were not. She had everything you had and more except for one thing.

Diluc.

But when you saw Lumine sitting at the bar in the tavern, sharing a daring story with your boyfriend, you became doubtful.

From your seat on the second level of the tavern, you had a perfect view of the pair. Diluc looked happy - perhaps even happier than with you - and your heart broke. Would Lumine be the end of an era between you and Diluc? You loved Diluc to death and all you wanted was for him to be happy.

The truth was, you were running out of patience, running out of fake enthusiasm and fake laughs and fake smiles when Diluc bragged to you about what Lumine did that day. The constant praises and compliments towards a woman who wasn’t even in the room tore you apart bit-by-bit. You were finding it harder to get through each day as Diluc slipped through your fingers.

When you finally broke your silence, you talked to Kaeya.

It was an accidental breakdown - Kaeya had made a cheeky comment about how his brother was spending an awfully lot of time with the traveler and you just broke down. Realizing the severity of the situation, Kaeya pulled you into his office and closed the door. He let you sit at his desk until you calmed down.

“What’s going on?”

So, you told him. You finally let out the bottled up despair and, frankly, jealousy you had been holding in for the past few weeks. You told Kaeya about how you went from ‘hero to zero’ and how you didn’t even deserve to be a knight anymore.

“If I’m not a knight, I don’t have a purpose,” You said solemnly. “I haven’t picked up my sword in a month, Kaeya.”

Kaeya makes a noise of acknowledgement and urges you to continue.

“And I can’t stand how she’s better than me! I’m the Revolutionary Knight - not her!” Despite your angered words, you’re suppressing panic deep in your chest. “She’s already taken so much from me and she’s going to take Diluc.”

“Diluc loves you,” Kaeya reassures you. You’ve never heard his voice this soft and serious before. “Nothing Lumine can do is going to make Diluc ever stop loving you.”

Deep down, you knew that. You knew that Diluc loved you and planned to marry you one day, you knew that. It was just hard to convince your heart of that. As you stared down at the floor, you heard Kaeya sigh.

“Maybe you just need to show him you’re just as good at Lumine.”

That night, you packed a bag before Diluc got home from the tavern and left for Liyue. You would fight the Cryo Regisvine and bring back Diluc a hoarfrost core. He would see your heroic nature and forget all about Lumine - they all would.

***

When Diluc came home that night to find your absence, he began to worry. You were never one to leave without saying anything so Diluc rushed to the Knight’s Headquarters quickly. He was fortunate that Jean and Kaeya were still there finalizing some paperwork.

“Master Diluc?” Jean asked, rising from her desk as Diluc rushed inside her office. “Is everything alright?”

“Y/N is missing,” He said quickly.

“Missing? Are you sure?”

“Yes! They never go anywhere without telling me,” Diluc continued. He noticed Kaeya avert his gaze and snapped his eyes over to his brother, “Kaeya, what do you know?”

“I may have told them to do something heroic to win you back,” Kaeya said, realizing his idea may not have been the best.

Diluc’s eyes widened, “Win me back?”

Kaeya sighed and explained what was going on with you. Diluc’s heart dropped into his stomach and he couldn’t believe how stupid he had been. He should have been praising you, not Lumine. “They mentioned something about the Cryo Regisvine-”

Diluc didn’t let Kaeya speak another word before he took off. You couldn’t have gotten that far and when Diluc noticed the darkening weather, his feet picked up their pace.

***

A fierce gust of wind made you cover your face with your arms. Out of nowhere, it started pouring rain but you wouldn’t let that stop you. You pushed through the impending storm and made your way down into the cave where the ice monster lived. You gripped your sword tightly as the monster sensed your presence and unraveled, turning the downcoming rain into shards of ice that landed on your skin like needles.

Without much delay, you charged the Cryo Regisvine and landed three hits on its corolla before one of its leafy arms wacked into you, sending you hurdling backwards. Your sword was knocked out of your hand and you struggled to catch your breath.

More sharp icicles pierced your skin and a spray of freezing air coated your skin. Yet, you still managed to grab your sword and stand. Your hobbled toward the monster again and when the same leafy arm came towards you, you slashed at it.

The monster let out a screech and retracted itself before slamming it’s head down towards your body. You dodged the first hit but were caught off guard when the second hit knocked you off your feet. You barely had time to roll away when it slammed it’s head down a third time.

“Y/N!”

Diluc surged forwards, grabbing your arm and forcefully pulling you to your feet. Your sword became lost from your hold and the sudden movement caused the blade to scrape down your leg before clambering to the ground again. A nasty gash was left and you seethed.

He couldn’t even think as he pulled you away from the monster. You had never seen Diluc move so fast. He didn’t let you go until you were both far enough from the cave to feel secure. Diluc’s arms wrapped around your shoulders tightly and you were too stunned to say anything.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Your mind felt foggy. You tried to open your mouth and speak but no words came out.

“Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

“I just...Lumine…”

Diluc pulled back at this and stared in your eyes. You couldn’t quite match the emotion on his face. “You’re not Lumine!”

His words cut deep and you felt tears soak your eyes. Maybe if your head was clearer and you could actually hear your thoughts, you would have realized Diluc didn’t mean it that way. But the only thing consuming your mind was that he was right. You weren’t Lumine and you would never be Lumine. “I know!” You cried out suddenly, “That’s why I have to go and kill that thing! So I can give you a hoarfrost core and you’ll love me again!”

Diluc only looked at you. His hands ran down from your shoulders to your hands and he brought your left hand to his lips. You heard him sigh before kissing your knuckle gently.

Your wet hair was dripping water down your face in freezing cold droplets. At that moment you felt useless. You weren’t able to fight the Cryo Regisvine and bring Diluc a hoarfrost core. He would leave you for Lumine and there was nothing you could do about it.

“You’re hurt,” Diluc said, motioning to your leg. In your desolate state, you had forgotten about the gaping wound on your leg that was pouring blood. “Come on - we’re going home.”

You were too upset to protest and let Diluc maneuver your body onto his back. You loosely wrapped your arms around his neck and relished in the warmth his vision released. You held onto Diluc like it was the last time you ever would.

The walk back to Mondstadt was silent and when you two arrived at your shared house, Diluc let you down on the couch. You could only stare at your lap.

“I’m sorry,” You finally mumbled, “Next time I’ll finish what I started.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Diluc said sternly, “No way you’re ever going there alone again.”

Your face stiffened into annoyance. “I’m the Revolutionary Knight - I can do it.”

“No, you can’t.” His words seemed cold and unusual but they were coated in concern. Diluc reached up and cupped your face with his large hands. You tried to pull away but his grip was firm, “It’s okay.”

The situation was suddenly overwhelming and far too much to deal with. The tears you had been holding back tumbled down your cheeks and your words were choked between sobs, “Lumine is so perfect and I’m not...I don’t want you to leave me...I know I’m not good enough but-”

He stopped your rambling with a kiss. “Don’t ever think you’re not good enough,” He whispered, taking you into his arms. You hid your sobs in Diluc’s chest as he whispered sweet nothings into your ear. Eventually, your cries settled.

Diluc spent the rest of the night dressing your wound and laying with you in your bed. He didn’t stop comforting you until every horrible thought about yourself was gone from your mind. In the morning he would talk to you more but for now, his job was to make you feel strong again.

And it would take a while but one day you would come to realize that you were just as good as Lumine and no one could truly compare to you. Like the storm on that horrifying night, this too would pass.

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin x reader #diluc x reader #diluc #diluc ragnvindr #diluc ragnivindr x reader #genshin one shot #genshin impact oneshot #genshin self insert #genshin x you #diluc x you

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mskatesharma · 3 years ago

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FA. I don’t think Simone will be the April BV cover seeing as it is on stands after the show debuts. Stars don’t really cover magazines after the premiere date (for either a binge show or a film), unless they’re awards campaigning…however, if it’s a weekly drop then actors promote throughout the run (like the euphoria cover for the cut yesterday). The bridgerton cast will probably do print interview and such after the show premieres when they’re free to discuss spoilers, but not big magazine covers.

The makeup artist may have been referring to a magazine feature. They’re done around 3 months in advance usually so the timeline fits.

Netflix’s promo of Simone and JB has been really discouraging and disappointing so far. It’s almost disrespectful considering how significant both of their casting is, and even more so them as a couple. To instead center Penelope/LW is yikes optics wise, but also imo bad marketing because I think the leads are the most appealing cast members left. Especially if they sell them as the groundbreaking pair they are, which could revitalize interest if viewers are disillusioned with the loss of RJP and think it’s just basic white people left. Simone is stunning, JB is charming and well-spoken - they are huge assets!?

I do think they’ll still get a BV feature. The difference between how they promoted the S1 leading couple and this one is quite stark, but I think even that would be a bridge too far.

I’m scrubbing BV from my options lol.

So hopefully Babsky was referring to a magazine feature 🤞🏽

Do we think Tatler is still an option for the April cover? I was also going to suggest Harper’s Bazaar, but seeing as Phoebe only recently covered the magazine I don’t think it’s likely that they’d have a another Bridgerton star on the cover so soon after (I think you’ve also said this FA). And you’ve mentioned Porter as well, which would be cool.

Do we think the BV feature (of JB and Simone) is going to be in the March issue? Because if it is, is it not weird that such a feature isn’t even mentioned on the cover? Plus if the April issue isn’t on stands until after season two is released, they’re not likely to be in that issue, from what you’ve said. RJP and Phoebe were in the December 2020 issue of BV, so you would expect Simone and JB to be in the March 2022 issue, and considering what a big show Bridgerton is now, I would expect to see it mentioned on the cover if they had an interview/feature with the two leads inside the issue? I think this is why I’m leaning towards thinking that Jonny and Simone are just not going to get a BV feature.

Especially if they sell them as the groundbreaking pair they are, which could revitalize interest if viewers are disillusioned with the loss of RJP and think it’s just basic white people left. Simone is stunning, JB is charming and well-spoken - they are huge assets!?

I just keep coming back to how much of a big deal was made when Simone’s casting as Kate, and as the season two lead, was announced. The promo, so far, hasn’t lived up to that hype. And for a show that likes to talk about how diverse it is, it’s weird that they aren’t putting Simone, who is a dark skinned WOC, even a little more front and centre? And yes! Jonny is extremely charming, so actually seeing him alongside Simone (properly, side by side zoom windows don’t count) in a promo setting, feels like it would be such a win? I need to stop trying to understand what Netflix/Shondaland are doing because I don’t think much of what they’re doing is making sense to anyone, not that I’ve seen at least.

#ask #anon #fashion anon #simone #jonny #bridgerton

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grimelords · 5 years ago

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So since the last time I posted one of these the entire world has changed dramatically and hopefully 4 hours of music will tide you over in quarantine for a bit longer. Strangely I’ve been busier than ever, and what started as a personal challenge to listen to a new album every day in February turned into me listening to 116 new albums in March and 124 in April. I’ve got a stacked google doc full of star ratings and dates now and it’s really been a lot of fun, I highly recommend trying it yourself. This is my March playlist, because I accidentally took a month off, and I’m thinking of either switching these playlists to weekly to make them a little more digestible or just dropping them whenever. Who knows. Let me know what you think and drop album recommendations in the comments please.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0k1JjT8fXcUFO6VpM3kaez?si=gWSv88vdShKSnHhLJ_80pQ

If you’d like to receive these playlists in a more digestible email format, please subscribe to my tinyletter here: http://tinyletter.com/grimelords

On A Slow Boat To China - Bing Crosby & Peggy Lee: Ok first off it’s amazing this song isn’t more racist. I don't remember now how or why I came across this. I think I was just thinking about crooners and how as a genre it's now existed in common popularity as a nostalgic idyll of a mytholigised past far longer than it was ever actually popular which is interesting. The origin of this song, according to wikipedia, is also one of the most 40s ideas I've ever read: "I'd like to get you on a slow boat to China" was a well-known phrase among poker players, referring to a person who lost steadily and handsomely. The idea being that a "slow boat to China" was the longest trip one could imagine. Loesser moved the phrase to a more romantic setting, yet it eventually entered general parlance to mean anything that takes an extremely long time".

Fight Night - Migos: I saw that Offset had some new show on Quibi the extremely fake sounding streaming service and I thought "how did Migos get so world conqueringly large that they get to make 10 minute shows nobody will watch for a $2 billion venture capital funded app that will never make any money?" They seem to have this massive reputation without having much to back it up. The last thing I remember everyone talking about was how Culure II was two hours long in order to game streaming numbers and was simply not good. They seemed to have sort of settled into making background music for scrolling instagram. But then I remembered Fight Night and I thought: "oh wait, that's right, Migos are fucking great". Where their other big hits like Bad And Boujee and Walk It Talk It have this sort of laid back vibe where they've comfortably nailed the formula and relax onto it, Fight Night commands your attention. StackboyTwan killed the beat - it has this propulsive momentum where it feels like it's constantly ramping up, moving up from the sidesick and bassline in the verse, up to the claps on the beat, and the big gang chants on the offbeat once the full instrumentation kicks in - then it just goes around and around and around with the constant bassline the whole tim. It's a perfect all-rise production because it never actually explodes, it's all building tension held down by an unchanging bassline.

Do It Puritan! - El Hombre Trajeado & Sue Tompkins: I am extremely delighted to announce that Sue Tompkins of one of my all time favourite single album bands Life Without Buildings has broken a nearly 20 year musical hiatus to appear on this song by El Hombre Trajeado. It is so nice to hear how her voice has changed and her approach has stayed the same. Her style is so unique and so good and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

5 8 6 - New Order: Before 'the incident' I had tickets to see New Order at the end of March and so I embarked on a big listen through of their discography, which has now unfortunately made it feel even worse that live music is cancelled indefinitely.

Oom Sha La La - Haley Heynderickx: First of all I love songs where they talking about how they're writing a song halfway through. And I love songs that seem like a pretty normal singer songwriter indie thing where someone just starts screaming near the end. I love this song. A great staring at the wall and absolutely losing your mind because you haven't done anything with your whole life anthem.

Elektrobank - The Chemical Brothers: Can you believe I've never listening to a full Chemical Brothers album before this month? Can you believe big beat ever went our of style? It feels insane that we ever swapped this sort of energy for the beige algorithm of EDM. I think there's a real triumph in this album, and in this track especially of replicating the live feeling in studio. Giving it this much space to grow and change and get very hairy near the end is amazing, it feels like it was just recorded live.

My Mind's A Ship (That's Going Down) - Katie Pruitt: It feels very rare to me that this sort of extremely smooth Nashville prduction actually makes a song better. It has a habit of strangling the life out of a song and making it blend into a boring paste of soundalikes, but with Katie Pruitt it works amazingly. Her songwriting is so distinct and clear and her voice, especially near the end where it punches hole in the sky, is so strong and so her own that it doesn't need anything else.

Water - Ohmme: "What if Tegan And Sara were a noise band instead?" is a question I didn't know I needed an answer to. I love any band that has the guts to write songs like this that sound like pop from an alternate history, so off kilter and odd and noisy but with this undeniable pop heart that the duo vocals make sound like schoolyard clapping chants remixed by Lightning Bolt.

Lions, Tigers and Bears - SLIFT: A friend put me on to Slift and described them as French King Gizz and really, I'm inclined to agree. This is the traditional long last song at the end of their new album, and as usual I am advocating that every song should be the long last song at the end of the album. I love this style of jam where everyone else goes to space but the rhythm section just digs in and works hard as fuck for ten minutes. Then the whole last 3 minutes of the song are just fat drone riffs. This song's got everything.

The Pines - 070 Shake: This 070 Shake album is unbeleivably good and it warms my heart to see the dark energy of The Pines live on through another century in yet another permutation. I have more to say about it later in the Jackson C Frank version coming up but it feels like this 070 Shake album kind of came and went but I implore you to listen, it’s an aoty contender for sure.

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On - Funkadelic: If you can stop thinking about the intro, which I certainly can’t (Hey lady won’t you be my dog and I’ll be your tree and you can pee on me.) there is so much goodness in this song. For a while now I’ve been thinking about how, for lack of a better word, ‘positive’ music is consistently underrated in the critical canon. Dance music, disco and funk especially are derided as empty sugar music, while every cookie cutter metal band absolutely demands to be taken seriously. In dance music this manifests as genres like tech house sucking all the fun and individuality out of music until it’s just an endless parade of producers working to a schematic of the barest essentials. It feels like you can’t have fun and be taken seriously at the same time, which feels like an obvious contradiction but shouldn’t be!

Spoils - Dry Cleaning: Dry Cleaning are my Lock Of The Month Band To Watch In The Future Because They’re Gonna Go Off. They have such a great sound and I’m desperate for an album because I just need more. This song absolutely knocked me down when I first heard it. I love any band where it sounds like the singer has just wandered in while the rest of them were rehearsing. There’s a very good talking-songs movement happening in the UK right now between these guys, Do Nothing and Fontaines D.C and i’m excited to see where it progresses. I might put together a playlist a little later to show you what I mean.

As - Stevie Wonder: I finally listened to Songs In The Key Of Life this month, which is an experience I would recommend to everyone. This shit goes for 21 songs over 105 minutes and absolute bangs the whole way. The original release of this album was a double LP plus a 7", which is yet another reason I am grateful for streaming that I don't have to buy a damn box set to hear this thing.

Sleep Now In The Fire - Rage Against The Machine: I am working on a very niche playlist called Songs Where The Guitar Amp Accidentally Picks Up A Nearby Radio Station For A Couple Of Seconds and it's only 3 songs so far. A Man A Plan A Canal Panama by The Fall Of Troy, Melody 4 by Tera Melos and Sleep Now In The Fire by Rage Against The Machine. In every single one of those songs it feels like a critical component even though it's just an accident that's been left in because it sounds good. Here it's the perfect ending as the rage dies down and the commercial world fades back in. Anyway, my other question about this song is about the great Michael Moore directed video where they famously shut down Wall Street for an afternoon. There's a shot of a guy for a second holding a sign that says Donald Trump For President in 1999. Which is odd but not out of the question, he's been famous for a long time and there's always been freaks. My question is why the fuck did he have that sign that day? Was he amongst the Rage Against The Machine Fans that showed up? A counter protestor? Was he, perhaps most chillingly of all, just walking idly around Wall Street with his Donald Trump For President sign like usual and stumbled upon this whole hoo-haa accidentally?

Applause (Purity Ring Remix) - Lady Gaga: Did you fucking know that Purity Ring did a remix of Applause? If there’s something I’d love to know more about and it’s Purity Ring’s forays into pop production. After their first album they did some production for rappers like Danny Brown in the great track 25 Bucks, which is a good fit really - their sound is witch house with the tempo pushed back up, witch house of course just being chopped and screwed reinvented by tumblr users. So it’s a natural fit to take that new perspective back into the world of hip hop. They also did this fantastic remix of Applause after their first album. Then, after their second album they produced 3 songs for Katy Perry’s Witness album, and one Katy Perry song for a Final Fantasy mobile game soundtrack (?) and feel like the long silence and delay between their second and third albums is because of more behind the scenes pop production work - but if that’s true, where is it? Is it, as I suspect, part of my own personal Pepe Silvia, Katy Perry’s scrapped 2019 album that has vanished into thin air? Or is it part of Chromatica? I think Purity Ring have solidified an interesting place in pop, paving the way for Billie Eilish and Kim Petras�� dark anti-pop and so i’m excited to see where they go after this new album now that they’re the architects of the new wave.

React/Revolt - Drahla: The smartest thing you can do is add a saxophone to your band. The whole first half of this song could go for 20 minutes of growling screaming saxophone post-punk and I wouldn't mind. Then when the second half of the song kicks in it's fantastic in the way this whole Drahla album is: it's tight and sprawling post-punk at the same time with a complicated structure that seems to just pile onto itself instead of ever circling back.

And I Was Like - Porridge Radio: I'm seemingly having a real thing this month for songs that open with a bizzare acapella chant. Between this and the Funkadelic one it's a genre I'm very interested in hearing more of. Isaac Newton was a virgin and it's important to recognise that. The thing I love about this song is how it's in 3 distinc sections: Isaac Newton was a virgin, she's a birthday girl in a birthday world, and mum no please it's grunge, and they all feel like the concentrated energy of a 14 year old's thoughts. She sounds like she's almost crying when she sings 'she's a birthday girl in a birthday world'. The concentrated confusing teenaged energy of this song is just overwhelming.

Dirty Mattresses - Mama's Broke: So much of contemporary 'traditional folk' either exists as pure nostalgia music or as music that's trying too hard to be 'authentic' and evoke a mythology of a bygone time, but Mama's Broke manage to make it feel new and modern but honest and authentic at the same time. The super close harmonies and modern approach remind me of House And Land who I also love, but the songwriting is in another class entirely.

Building A House - CHOPCHOP: I don't know if you've ever seen Bad Boy Bubby but CHOPCHOP feels a little like the band that he ends up joining at the end. A musical ensemble built to enable the will of a very strange man. I think the band is from the UK and I'm not sure where the singer is from, but he has this incredible deeply accented voice that brings such a gravity to everything he sings in the way that anyone speaking english as a second language accidentally brings new weight to common turns of phrase.

Universal Soldier - Jay Electronica: It feels fitting, looking back, that Jay Electronica finally released his album right before the world ended. It was literally now or never. Some how Jay-Z is the breakout star of this album for me. He's got some of his best verses in years on here and he's a great opposition to Electronica's flow when they trade verses. I would also, as an aside, like to know the origin of the kids cheering sample throughout this, because it's the same one from AM//Radio by Earl Sweatshirt and Wish You Were Gay by Billie Eilish. So what's that about.

Sticky Hulks - Thee Oh Sees: I've been very slowly getting into Oh Sees and I love them a lot so far. Their unweildy, huge discography spread across a lot of variations of the same name makes digging into them very rewarding as well. There's a great line on their wiki detailing all the times they've changed their name that goes: Orinoka Crash Suite (1997–2003), OCS (2003–2005, 2017), Orange County Sound (2005), The Ohsees (2006), The Oh Sees (2006–2008), Thee Oh Sees (2008–2017), Oh Sees (2017–2019) Osees (2019) to give you some idea of what we're working with here. Basically it's just everything you could want from a pychedelic band like this: a history and discography as shaggy as the songs themselves.

Knife On The Platter - BODEGA: In reading about Bodega I learned that they don't have a drummer in the traditional sense. They have someone credited as a 'stand up percussionist', and in listening back I realised that's they key to the groove in their music. He's not playing a kit he's just slamming at a tom and a snare on a rack, while one of the singers plays hi-hat here and there. So all the drumming has this barebones caveman feel to it and I absolutely love it. The band feels a lot like The Fashion, and that whole mid-2000s dance-punk movement that I've been desparate to come back so naturally I love it a lot.

Against Gravity - Horse Lords: Horse Lords are one of the most incredible bands I've heard in a long time. Somewhere between a more analogue Battles and Laddio Bolocko, they make a kind of churning math-jazz that sounds like huge intersecting squares of rhythm slowly overlapping. It feels like there's an infinite depth in these songs, you can listen and focus on a single instrument and see it shifting in and out of place with everyone else, before you lose it again and it retreats back into the swirling mass.

Plain To See Plainsman - Colter Wall: I've been listening to this Colter Wall album a lot, and it's really beginning to rank among my all time favourites. I grew up around the flattest place in the southern hemisphere, so I love the plains and it's very nice to have a cowboy song I can relate to like that.

The Nail - Sarah Shook & The Disarmers: Sarah Shook has so much character in her voice I completely love it. She is also a fantastic songwriter that manages to make outlaw country punk that sounds authentic and doesn't have the rockabilly posturing that a lot of the genre suffers from.

Inner Reaches 慾望的暗角二 - Gong Gong Gong 工工工: The best thing about Gong Gong Gong is you can listen to this whole song before you realise they don't have a drummer. They're a guitar and bass duo that play and sing with such a layered rhythmic intensity between the two of them that they really don't need one. A drummer would just clutter the space already taken up by their ferocious rhythm.

Country Pie - Bob Dylan: I'm a big fan of Bob Dylan's dumb songs. He has a lot where if it's the first song you ever heard from him you would be mad at whoever told you he was the greatest songwriter to ever live for trying to trick you like this. What I especially love about this song is how abruptly it ends, like dad just came home and everyone panicked cause they're know they're not supposed to be staying up that late.

You Did It Yourself - Arthur Russell: It seems hard to believe that I've only just found out about Arthur Russel. He seems to be a mainstay of Music Guy lists and somehow I've only heard of him this month. I've been obsessing over the Iowa Dream album, which is a compilation of a lot of different (mostly extremely high quality) demos from the late 70s to mid 80s and what really shines through other than the singular strength of his songwriting is how readily and easily he bends from country style folk to romantic piano ballads, to groovy post-punk like this. What I love so much about this song is it's a great lesson in songwriting: sometimes a song can just be a vague review of a middling movie and still have emotional resonance. Incredible. There's a great NPR article about Arthur Russel and the process of assembling half-takes and demos into complete recordings that you should read if you're interested. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/20/779721417/which-arthur-russell-are-we-getting-on-iowa-dream

The Dogs Outside Are Barking - Arthur Russell: I love this song because it's such a perfect distillation of a teenaged moment: trying to find a moment alone with someone when you have no freedom at all to create one. The song cycles through potential situations but leaves the problem unresolved, existing in the moment of nervous romantic tension preceding an unasked question and it's just beautiful.

Men For Miles - Ought: I love the vocal melody in the verse here so much. Spiking up unnaturally at the end of the lines like a nervous and strange version of The Strokes. Even the way he cramps his words in in the chorus is so good, switching registers randomly like he's impersonating someone else.

Mister Soweto - Lizzy Mercier Descloux: https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9828-lizzy-mercier-descloux-behind-the-muse/ Pitchfork has a great article about Lizzy Mercier Descloux detailing how she is continually undervalued and underappreciated. I found her though my Discover Weekly and became immediately obsessed with this album - a perfect mix of off-kilter 80s bass and brass that is so colourful and seems to move in a million directions at once like the songs can't even catch up with themselves sometimes. I'm excited to dig into her discography more and try to understand her more because she has a truly unique approach that I can't get enough of.

Sweden - Marilyn Crispell: I've been looking for a while for other pianists of Cecil Taylor's calibre, rare type that it is and I am so glad to have finally found out about Marilyn Crispell. She plays free jazz like Taylor, but in much less percussive and disonnant style. There's a New York Times quote that seems to follow her that says "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." and it's really very apt. She will move with seemingly no warning at all from mediative, colourful stokes to a mad descent unto uncertainty and beyond, then back again without a moments hesitation. Her music moves like a dream, linking a stream of unlinked images with an ease that only seems incongruous on reflection.

Twins - Gem Club: I have loved this song for a very long time and I come back to it over and over and appreciate it anew. What I appreciate about on listening to it this time is the strangeness of it's structure, following up the verse with an instrumental break, and then a long instrumental intro to the chorus gives it so much space to spread out and breathe, giving the beautiful gravity of the song even more weight. Then after the chorus it moves straight to a bridge and then the intro and first verse again. It's a fantastic song that makes it's small parts so large, where another songwriter or another producer would pare them down.

Grand Central - Paul Cauthen: Something I've learned in listening to a lot of cowboy music is that the number one thing that cowboys hate and fear is getting hanged. They hate it worse than cats hate getting sprayed with water. I found out about Paul Cauthen combing through Colter Wall's similar artists looking for more of this brand of new old fashioned country and I really found it here. Paul Cauthen comes from four generations of preachers and left the church to pursue country music instead, which feels like an extremely old fashioned position to be in here in 2020 but I guess lots of people in Texas still live like that, and thank god they do or we wouldn't have Paul Cauthen's big mournful Elvis voice to sing us songs about the railway.

Serafina - BAMBARA: I love this sort of spoken word leather jacket rock and roll. It's so extremely Cool in an old fashioned way. Like a more rock and roll version of Enablers.

So 4 Real - The Hecks: I love love love this song that sounds like a sped up Prince demo. The strange thinness of the mix and the way the vocals are buried just makes it sound so strange and great, like it was put together on some ancient 4 track recorder that can't handle the pure energy of the song.

In The Pines (Version 2) - Jackson C. Frank: There's a very good 3 hour compilation of Jackson C. Frank recordings that came out a few years called Remastered And Unreleased that I listened through the other day. It's just magnificent. This version of In The Pines is one of my favourite I've ever heard, the mournful vocals coupled with his churning rhythm guitar really brings out the darkness of it in a way I've never heard.

(Tumble) In The Wind (Version 1) - Jackson C. Frank: Another favourite from this compilation that is slightly hard to listen to. I don't know if there's a date on it but I'd guess this was recorded near the end of his life. It is so beautiful, but you can hear in his voice and breathing that he's unwell. In Horseshoe Crabs by Hopalong she sings a story from his perspective this song really seems to fit in the second half of that. "Woke from the dream and I was old / Staring at the ass crack of dawn / Walked these streets up and down / Looking for Paul Simon / All I found was myself, lost in time / I tried singing my songs / But I lost my mind"

Sludge - Squid: I'm thinking of putting together a playlist of all the great Black Midi-adjacent bands I've found out about recently and Squid is at the top of the list. This new breed of art-punk is so fantastic and goes in a million different directions. I'm just so excited it exists.

Straight Shot - Quelle Chris: I love this song and Guns is a phenomenal album but there’s one thing bothering me. The ‘who are you, what are you’ part at the end sounds so incredibly familiar to me and I can’t figure out why. As far as I can tell it’s not a sample, but googling reveals that the english voice on it is fucking James Acaster the standup comedian. So what’s going on? Quelle Chris himself is less than helpful: “Straight Shot is one of those ideas that reached out to me, we got along and I simply showed it around town. The chorus, poem at the end and basic piano progression literally came to me in two separate dreams”. Who knows. Great song though.

Levitation - Dua Lipa: What I really like about this song is that she says sugarboo. This whole album bangs and Dua is really reaping the benefits of being the only pop star with the guts to release an album while everyone’s in lockdown I also have a half-baked theory about the way this song is almost interpolating Blame It On The Boogie in the ‘moonlight, starlight’ part as a sort of aggressive takeover of Michael Jackson’s cancelled legacy. Which is smart really. The same way Taylor Swift is re-recording her albums, let’s just get The Weeknd in the studio for a couple of days and give the world back it’s bangers.

Another Crashed Car - Nine Inch Nails: I am so glad Trent Reznor put out another two volumes of Ghosts. Ghosts I-IV from 2008 seems to have been the bridge from his Nine Inch Nails work to his film score work, and now that he’s had such success with that it’s nice to hear him writing in this style without telling anyone else’s story again. It’s also interesting for him to go back to this project now that Ghosts I-IV has paid dividends in the form of the sample at the centre of Old Town Road but that’s neither here nor there. It’s hard to pick and individual track from these, because they work so effectively as long form albums and not individual tracks, but I chose this one because I put the album on as background ambient while I was doing some boring data entry at work and this track is the point at which I realised I was going out of my mind with stress from doing the simplest tasks because of Trent’s Damned Chords.

Lilacs - Waxahatchee: This is a perfect song. It makes me want to like, draw charts about it and go through it bar by bar to figure out how she did it. It’s perfectly put together. It feels like she uses every trick in the book and it just comes together flawlessly in 3 minutes. Amazing.

Cool Water - Hank Williams: I decided to properly listen to Hank Williams because his shadow stretches over so much of country music, and while a lot of his music really alienated or bored me, and a lot of his songs feel like they would read as novelty songs today (like Hey Good Looking), this is the song that made me understand why he’s so revered.

In My Bones (feat. Kimbra and Tank And The Bangas) - Jacob Collier: Jacob Collier generally irks me. He makes brain music for redditors that lose their mind when someone shows them chord inversions or odd time signatures. Youtubers whose whole personality is ‘y’all heard Giant Steps?’ But he killed it on this song. It’s great despite him. There’s still a lot of corniness to work through, mostly in the big yuck funky lyrics, but structurally it’s a kaleidoscope and a big chunk of its success I’m putting down to Kimbra and Tank who understand that performance is a bigger part of a song than composition in a way Collier maybe doesn’t yet. He can overload the bassline and stop-start the rhythms as much as he likes but without actual personalities driving it it’ll just sound like a Peter Gabriel midi played at 200%.

Earthquake - Graham Central Station: I learned something wonderful in researching this band. The leader, Larry Graham, who was in Sly And The Family Stone is credited with inventing slap bass. He himself refers to the technique as "thumpin' and pluckin' ".

Quand Les Larmes D’un Ange Font Danser La Neige - Melody’s Echo Chamber: Once again furious that I’ve known of Melody’s Echo Chamber for years but never listened to them until now. I have been missing out. This is a perfect sprawling psychedelic jam punctuated with a bizzare cut-up recording about shitting yourself when you die and being declared brain dead in the vatican. It’s got everything. I had to look up who the drummer was on this song because he’s just nailing it, and it turns out it’s Johan Holmegaard from Dungen which is really a perfect fit.

Murder Most Foul - Bob Dylan: I was thinking the other day about how Bob Dylan is doing in quarantine. The man who hasn’t stopped moving his whole life and who’s been on a never ending tour since the 70s is now, I assume, just pacing a hole in a hotel carpet somewhere and jabbering to himself. The strangest part of Bob dropping this 17 minute song about JFK out of nowhere is that he hasn’t put out any original music since 2012. So a gigantic song like this is an even bigger surprise. I, already a huge fan of gigantic songs and Bob Dylan, unsurprisingly love it. I love the slow stirring of the instrumentation, like he hired Dirty Three as a backing band and I love that nearly the entire second half is just listing good songs that he knows. It’s a remarkable song and unlike anything i’ve heard before from Dylan or anyone else. It’s interesting to hear Bob Dylan step into being the great chronicler of the 60s like he’s been told he already was his entire life almost 50 years later, finally accepting the fate foisted on him. The other thing I love about this song is the line when he for some reason praises Lee Harvey Oswald’s shooting “Greatest magic trick ever under the sun / Perfectly executed, skillfully done”

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0k1JjT8fXcUFO6VpM3kaez?si=gWSv88vdShKSnHhLJ_80pQ

#playlists

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takaraphoenix · 5 years ago

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Now that DuckTales came back from its corona-enforced hiatus and now that I am currently enjoying Phineas and Ferb for the first time, I noticed a crucial reason that goes into why DuckTales 2017 is, unquestionably, my absolute favorite cartoon from the 2010s, no competition. And I felt like making a post about that crucial reason - now, brace yourself, I’m not actually going to talk a whole lot about DuckTales itself, I want to talk about its cartoon format and why this (old) format works infinitely better for me than the (new) streaming format.

Let me also preface this by saying that I’m a 90s kid. I grew up setting my alarm at 6 o’clock on a Saturday/Sunday so I wouldn’t miss the newest episodes of my favorite cartoons. And I’m fully aware that the way I grew up shaped the way I approach these cartoons.

Before I can break down why this old cartoon format, that is still being used by DuckTales now, works better for me than modern cartoons, I have to explain what exactly I mean by “format” here, so here are the criterias I’m looking at:

length (episode-count)

structure

release

The format I am more partial to that was used during my childhood and that DuckTales, and some others, still use is simple:

A lot of episodes (DuckTales is currently on 63 episodes in 3 seasons over 3 years, with an seasonal episode average of 24), as well as a weekly release of one episode.

For a contrast, have three (finished) cartoons with the more streamlined, modern format:

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has a total of 52 episodes, 13 episodes per season, and released a whole season on a day.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has a total of 30 episodes, 10 episodes per season, and was also released a whole season on a day.

Carmen Sandiego is on 25 episodes (counting the special as an episode), with about 10 episodes per season, likewise releasing a whole season on a day.

Now let’s break that down one by one!

The weekly release builds up anticipation. I know, I know, the argument binge vs weekly release is one to be had with any show nowadays - and I do think that there is a downside to the binge-watch. I consume the whole thing in a day (which is more than easy with a cartoon that only drops 10 episodes each 20 minutes long), I will be excited about it for roughly two more days, if it was really good another week, and then I’ll have moved on to the next thing I mass-consume. The weekly release has the benefit of keeping you on your toes - the resolution of the story is something you have to wait for. And it builds up excitement. It also... makes me grow more attached, because I am given more time with these characters. While, run-time wise, whether I consume the entire season in a day or it is spread out over episode-count numbers of weeks, it comes down to the same time spent with those characters, I will spend more time thinking on them. In the week that passes between two episodes, thinking about what may happen next, what x character is currently going through, how it will affect them. In a binge, I have the answer like an hour later and will no longer be thinking about this, speculating or anticipating.

The length of a season - and, ultimately, the total end-count - is the most crucial factor, because it also affects the structure of the show.

More episodes loosen the plot. A 24 episode season has more room than a 10 episode season, obviously. And instead of having to trim off all the fat and streamline it to only focus on the seasonal plot, it offers filler episodes that allow focus on side characters and development of character dynamics more thoroughly.

That kind of storytelling structure, where the seasonal main plot steps more into the shadow, also allows the “casual watch” (meaning, you don’t necessarily have to watch it in order. In theory, you could just jump in into a random episode and will be mostly caught up).

My biggest complaint about most of the modern cartoons I watch that are released in binge form - and thus, only with about 10 to 13 episodes a season - is that they don’t really get me attached to the more side or minor characters, because there is simply no time to focus on them properly, we have to spend what little time we have on the actual main plot.

24 episodes allow shenanigans, adventures that deepen bonds and explore secondary and minor characters, explore facettes of the main characters.

10 to 13 episodes have the benefit, and reason, that this allows you to actually sit down and binge-watch the whole season in one day. That’s its intend.

And I absolutely think that stories suffer from that.

Final season aside, I thoroughly enjoyed She-Ra, but the side-princesses were entirely sidelined. We never explored their realms, their family or situation, Scorpia’s mothers were teased in one picture, but with a larger episode order, we could have actually gone to her kingdom or explored this in flashbacks.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts was an amazing show and I loved it, but Benson and Troy’s relationship was incredibly sidelined, the other two girls that had joined the team with Troy (and Troy himself) were never really fleshed out with their own personalities and past - because there are only 10 episodes a season and you just had to focus on the main plot. In a larger format, we could have had whole episodes focusing on those three bonding with the main team in casual shenanigans, the mutes could have been explored more thoroughly.

DuckTales gives me that. It explores the triplets as individually drawn personalities, with their own motivations and their own adventures at times. We get whole episodes focused on Webbie’s friends, exploring them and their motivations. I have a far better grip on those characters, because the show has the time to focus on them, explore them.

Binge-watching can be fun, I do it a lot, but the shortened episode count of seasons is a real loss for many TV shows. And while, yes, many of the old shows with weekly releases and 24 episodes had a lot of fat that could have actually been trimmed and there are the occasional actual filler episodes that are skip-worthy, I do think that there should be a middle-ground. Give a show the amount of episodes it needs to tell its story, which includes character-focus and exploring character-dynamics. Too many TV shows nowadays, not just cartoons, paint only the most basic picture of who the characters are and how they stand to each other, but due to the show’s length, doesn’t really give focus to explore them in more detail. Don’t trim too much.

#TV Shows #I don't know this is a pretty random rant tbh #it's just...#it BOTHERS ME #not just with cartoons #with all TV shows

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stanning-seb-stan · 6 years ago

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Red - Bucky Barnes soulmate fic

Authors Note: This is the first time I’ve written anything in quite a long time. It came to me as I was washing dye out of my hair and also due to binge reading soulmate fics recently. Sorry for any typos or such as it’s unedited!!

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I let out a sigh that sounded more like a groan as I re-situated my backpack on my shoulders. My retail shift had been worse than normal at the grocery store and I was ready to be home. Not only had the weekly shipment been several hours late, two coworkers never showed up and I got yelled at by an elderly woman for my pastel rainbow hair being “too strange” and “unprofessional”. Too bad she couldn’t see my multiple tattoos beneath my uniform, but then again that may have shocked her to her grave. To top the day off, I still had to drop by Peter’s to help him with some research for his college classes.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Peter. Peter was actually one of my best friends, along with MJ and Ned. But today I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything else in person. I needed a nap. Well, pizza and then a nap. I pulled my phone out and tapped the text thread nicknamed “Trio of Trouble” and quickly typed out a text to both of my best friends.

“Order pizza or im going home to zzzzz” I sent.

“Geez was it really that bad?” Came Peter’s response.

“A grandma almost went to an early grave at the sight of Y/N/N’s apparently wild hair. Pizzas already ordered, your faves” came MJ’s almost instant reply.

“Wait how does MJ know deets I don’t?” Peter’s text included a crying emoji.

“She works with me, dumbass,” I texted back, unable to help the small smile Peter’s dramatics brought on. Trust them to always make me smile even on my worst days. “Be there soon, just a block away,” I sent a second text, locking my phone screen and slipping it in my back pocket as I crossed an intersection, shoving my hands into the front pocket of my oversized tie dye hoodie.

A few minutes later I reached Peter’s apartment building and let myself in before starting to sprint up the stairs. By the second flight, I was out of breath and groaned at my own foolishness, slowing down and climbing the rest of the way to the fifth floor at a slower and slower pace. I was still out of breath when the door was jerked open as I lifted my hand to knock.

“Let me guess, you tried running up the stairs again like the dummy you are?” I was greeted by Peter’s wide grin.

MJ was rolling her eyes from behind him. “Ignore him, he may be my soulmate, but god he can be such a child,” she spoke up, turning and heading down the short hall to the couch in the living room.

My smile fell slightly as she mentioned soul mates. I tried to hide it before Peter noticed, but he was too quick. “You’ll find yourself one day,” he spoke softly to me, moving to follow his girlfriend.

I tried to give them a hopeful smile as I flopped onto the couch, reaching for the pizza box as I shrugged. “I mean, sure I’m the oldest of our group and y’all found each other years ago, but I still have my tattoo, so he’s at least alive?” I picked the slice of pizza that had an air bubble in the crust and shoved a bite in my mouth.

Every person was born with a tattoo on their right ribs with the first words your soulmate would ever speak to you. MJ and I had shown each other ours when we first became friends in middle school. Hers happened to say, “Hi, I’m Peter Parker.” So she at least had a name to go off of and had actually known she’d very likely meet her soulmate the day we started high school and roll was called. Peter’s mark read, “Yeah, dumbass, I gathered that from roll call.” They hit it off after that, and I stayed the loyal third wheel. Now, just about a decade later at age 24, I still had my tattoo but hadn’t yet met whoever my soulmate was. The words were still there, clear as the day I was born, so my soulmate had to be alive as the ink faded if your soulmate died.

My internal monologue was interrupted when Peter nudged my leg with the toe of his shoe. “Earth to Y/N,” he teased, making me realized he must have already called my name once. When I turned towards him, he tilted his head to the side. “What’s yours say exactly again?”

“I’ve always loved the color red,” I mumbled, sighing a bit and pulling my legs into the couch after kicking my tennis shoes off to reveal my socks that had llamas on them.

It was quiet for a moment as we continued to eat out pizza before MJ broke the silence. “You should dye your hair red next,” she spoke, her gaze lifting to me suddenly.

“I’m sorry, what? I’m not following here,” Peter’s voice broke in before I could respond. “Why would she do that? Rainbow is the Y/N/N classic.”

“I love you, but for an Avenger, you sure are dumb sometimes,” MJ teases. “She’d do it to catch her soulmate’s eye. If they like red enough to comment on it first thing to a stranger, then it’s probably their favorite color. So if she dyes her hair bright red, she’s sure to attract their attention if they’re nearby at all.”

I started to protest, but Peter didn’t give me a chance, “Oh my god that’s perfect. Forget studying, let’s dye your hair. May won’t be home for several hours so she’ll never know we did it here.”

“You usually get your dye from the shop down on the corner, I can pay if you don’t get your check until next week,” MJ glanced towards me, talking excitedly.

“Don’t I get a say in this at all?” I piped up, watching as they both got off the couch and started to grab their phones and wallets to head down to the shop.

“Nope, not today,” came Peter’s quick response as he grabbed my hand and hauled my ass off the couch. “Now get your shoes back on. MJ and I have to give you a makeover.”

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The subway slowed to a halt as I felt my phone vibrate in my back pocket. I reached for it, releasing my grip on the pole I stood beside. I unlocked it, tapping the thread with MJ to respond and let her know I was on my way to meet her for lunch. As I hit send, the train started forward again, causing me to lose my balance and fall backwards. I closed my eyes, waiting for the hard impact of the floor, but it never came. Instead, my back hit someone’s hard chest, causing them to let out a grunt of surprise. I scrambled to find my own footing again as the stranger’s hand caught my elbow and helped me stand. I could feel my face flushing in embarrassment, shifting to turn towards them and thank them when they spoke first.

“I’ve always loved the color red,” the man’s deep yet gentle voice spoke, his lips pulling into a cute lopsided smirk.

“Thanks, it’s my soulmate’s favorite color,” I responded before his words actually registered. It was awkwardly quiet for a moment then as we both stared, wide eyed and realizing what the other had said. “I’m sorry did you just say I’ve always loved the color red?” I repeated after a moment.

“Did you just say it’s your soulmate’s favorite color?” He quipped in response. When I nodded a bit sheepishly, he shook his head in amusement. “Damn. It could have been any damn color, but I guess fate decided it for us when I said I’ve always liked red, huh?”

I shyly grinned in response, nearly losing my balance again as the train slowed to another stop. His hand reached out to grab my elbow again, and my cheeks flushed red. “Hi, I’m Y/N. Sorry for falling for you,” I teased.

“Bucky,” came my soulmate’s response, small wrinkles of amusement forming at the corner of his blue eyes as he grinned again.

“Bucky as in Bucky fucking Barnes?” I gasped slightly.

“Technically my name is James Buchanan, not Bucky Fucking, hope I don’t disappoint,” he responded, a laugh etching his words.

“Damn, Peter always told me he thought you and I would get along. He’s going to think he played matchmaker or some shit now,” my laugh echoed his as confusion crossed his face for a moment.

“Wait, are you Y/F/N, the one the Parker kid always goes on about always ending up in the ER?” His eyebrows pushed together as he realized the connection between his teammate and I, and I grinned.

“Hey now, I’m not always causing trouble! I’m just clumsy and that doesn’t always pair well with some of our fun!” I attempted to defend myself, but fell towards him again as the subway lurched to a start.

“I’ll take your clumsiness anytime if it means you’ll be falling in my arms every day,” Bucky laughed, his blue eyes shining as he caught me again.

#bucky barnes red #bucky #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x reader soulmate #marvel #fanfic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky x reader #soulmate au #bucky barnes soulmate #soulmate fic

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seyaryminamoto · 5 years ago

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So, I have been binge-reading Gladiator for the past couple weeks for the first time and wanted to let you know how much I’m enjoying it. That being said, I was just curious to know how your outline works? Do you already have the whole story planned? Are chapters released as they’re completed? I ask mainly cause I’m nearing the end of what’s already been written and I’m nervous for the inevitable pause that is coming my way. How much do I need to brace myself?

Thank you for letting me know you’re enjoying the story! :D it’s always great to have new readers on board!

Gladiator’s outline hasn’t been immutable, I admit that much. When I started out I wasn’t entirely sure of how it was going to end, I only knew what the first and second biggest highlights of the story would be... it took me over a year to finally figure out the ultimate direction of the story, and I’ve been building up the story towards that goal since then. It’s always been a matter of figuring out what needs to happen until we can get there xD But yes, Gladiator has an endgame in mind, it’s not being written on a whim. We’re heading places, slowly but surely.

Anyways, I’ve always referred to Gladiator as a three-parter story (despite it’s all published in a single entry). Part 1 takes place between chapters 1 and 101, Part 2 started in 102 and will continue well into the 220+ chapters... and Part 3 will start at some point within the mid-200s, from the looks of it. Each part begins after an important highlight, where the stakes change massively because of groundbreaking events :’D as you say you’re close to the end, I take it you’ve read the 97th chapter so you’ll know what the groundbreaking event between parts 1 and 2 was xD there’s going to be another huge event in Part 2, and that will be the starting point for Part 3.

Each part is, of course, comprised by many small arcs. You can see the arcs in the Gladiator Navigator, or you can simply guide yourself through the chapter titles, since I recently decided to add the Arc names to the chapter titles (at risk of spoiling a lot of things to newcomers, I guess...? :’D). The arcs usually are interconnected, there are a few leisurely ones where not a lot of plot-heavy things happen, mostly centered on the characters and their inner lives instead, meant to lighten up the story’s heaviest moments. Still, I try to interconnect everything, for new arcs to feel like natural follow-ups to the ones that preceded them, whether they’re plot-heavy or not.

As for whether the chapters are published upon completion... that’s how it used to be, ages ago, but I’ve been writing chapters in advance for several years and my system is completely different now. Currently, chapters are published every two weeks, and in the week between updates I always post a preview of the upcoming chapter, as well as a snippet (a scene, or a part of a scene of the upcoming chapter) in my Patreon account. The 2-week schedule has been going strong for the past 3 months, I think? And it will continue this way until I’ve written soooo much in advance that I might dare speed up the update rate into weekly updates instead. So you won’t have to wait too long for new updates, just two weeks... and you can rest assured that the story won’t stop anytime soon, because I’ve already written well past chapter 200 by now :) there’s very few odds of me slowing down or dropping this behemoth of a fic at this point in my life xD I mean to see it through to the end, and I hope you’ll stick around to see it too :D

#thoughts-ideas-statements #gladiator #thanks for the ask and the interest :D #I know it's a big change going from binging to waiting for two weeks for updates #... but ngl the best stuff in Part 2 is coming now #I know I keep saying that #but the last arcs of Part 2 are just... *screams into the void because she doesn't want to spoil anyone*

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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30 Minute Experiment: Work #30ME

So I’ve already gone through a couple Pink Floyd titles and one from The Cult, so I might as well start working my way through The Godfathers’ Birth School Work Death in terms of topics for this 30 Minute Experiment. (For anyone just joining, the idea is that I pick a topic and write about it for 30 minutes straight, without interruptions. When the time is up, I post. No edits, no re-reads, probably many regrets.) Okay, let’s do this...

It will surprise absolutely no one that I’m a bit of a workaholic and I’ve been one for most of my life. I think my first job must have been when I was 14 or 15 or so when I got a bicycle and started delivering newspaper, a job that I quite liked because it was a quiet suburban neighborhood in Westport where not a lot happened. (I do remember one day being flashed by an older woman who came to the door wearing absolutely nothing not realizing I was on the other side leaving her newspaper.)

One of the weird things going on in this pandemic is that after losing a writing gig I had just started, it gets harder and harder to push myself to do the much-needed work I have to do, whether it’s doing these #30Mes or writing my weekly Weekend Warrior column or cleaning or working on some of my long dormant screenplays or even writing to my imprisoned penpal (who I just got a letter from so I need to get back to him fairly soon.)

At a certain point, everything seems like work, even if it’s just scheduling time to hang out on Zoom with friends or family, which is something I did far less of in the days pre-pandemic (Can we maybe start a new numbering system so that 2020 is Year One and every year that follows would be 1 Post-Pandemic for 2021, etc? It feels suitable.)

But this whole time and even over the past four years I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to find some form of steady work, and sadly, things were so unstable pre-pandemic that it’s only gotten harder as more of my movie-writing colleagues are losing jobs and there are far more opportunities. I mean, anyone who reads my Weekend Warrior every week (or EVER!) will know that there are still movies being released, even if not all of them are getting any kind of theatrical release. Some of them are even quite good.

I was talking to one of my colleagues last night about the work situation and how everything just came to a stop in March when most of us had things planned or in the works, which unfortunately revolved mostly around movies.

But the current situation has become a great equalizer in terms of people needing to cover a lot more smaller indie movies, TV series and streaming stuff if they want to keep their jobs. I’m pretty sure that the job market is going to look very different in a few months as the country starts slowly reopening, and I think the people who don’t want to do the actual work like going to see movies and having varied tastes, won’t survive. They’ll just give up and go take one of those regular 9 to 5 desk jobs that are out there.

Believe me, I’ve been ready to make that transition for a couple years as I lost a lot of freelance outlets, some being closed, others just going in a different direction. It’s tough out there, and it’s really hard for me to take any sort of dog-eat-dog mentality when it comes to work, because I don’t like seeing my friends struggling. That hurts me almost as much as my own struggle (which I’m happy to say has taken an interesting and slightly positive turn this week).

Sure, I’m definitely ready to be done with this and to get back to work, even though it’s been some time since I’ve had any steady work hours -- probably the Tracking Board where I was doing a 9 to 5 shift five days a week -- and I’m going to have to get back into some of the good working habits. I already try to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and don’t stay up past midnight playing video games (or Android games) or doing some of the other distractions that would keep anyone else from getting work done.

I mean, if you read today’s Weekend Warrior, you’ll see that I spent a lot of time watching and writing about a bunch of movies just so that people will have some idea that there is good movie entertainment still coming their way which hopefully they’ll look into it. I don’t want to too far down the tangential wormhole of the movie biz right -- I’ll have plenty of time to talk about that over the next few months -- but the pandemic equalizer that I mentioned hasn’t really helped the smaller indie movies as I’d hoped since people still would rather throw on Netflix or Hulu or HBO and binge watch some show or another.

I have a LOT of stuff that I’ve been meaning to watch but my desire to keep my brain in gear and stay motivated in terms of my writing has led to things like this experiment, which I’ve done a pretty good job keeping up with. If I really look at this to see how it helps me in terms of earning a living, I think I can say fairly that it’s a daily job that forces me to think and write quickly, which is something that’s important for most of the better writing jobs out there. And it only takes 30 minutes a day, so it’s not like it’s taking me away from any of the time-wasting activities I’d love to do instead.

Sure, I’m definitely trying to use this time productively even if the “work” I’m doing doesn’t do much to help me financially, although I will say that doing this stuff helps me both mentally and emotionally, which is half the battle when you’re dealing with a job and people you have to work with. I learned that the hard way at a few of my recent jobs post-CS, but I’m not going to get into all of that. I believe very strongly that sometimes you just have to do something to maintain your own mental health even when it’s not the best decision on the grand scheme of things.

I do miss having some of the structure of a job in my life even though I feel my calendar is just filling up with other things, even if it’s just doing things to help support my friend’s own mental and emotional health by taking part in their activities. Believe me, as much as the monotony of the day-to-day may have been getting to me a few weeks back, I feel like I’ve moved past that, and now I’m so focused and disciplined about getting things done, who knows? Maybe I’ll even have a few screenplays done by the time I’m allowed to go to a movie theater or press screening again.

I can only imagine how much harder this is for my friends and family who have gotten used to going to an office five days a week and have built their entire lives around that structure. Of my immediate family, only my sister and her husband and kids were doing anything in that vein, since both my brother and I have always been homebodies for the most part.

Right now, I’m not sure if I could even deal with going on the subway every day to go to a job, but thankfully, more businesses are figuring out how to stay running while allowing employees to work from home. At least as a writer, I don’t necessarily have to be anywhere, although as I’ve said before, I still prefer to see movies on the big screen... preferably without my own name watermarked across it. (This is done to avoid piracy, obviously, since it can be traced right back to me.)

Although I’m slowly inching towards a point in life where most people are ready to retire, I think I’ll be good to keep working in some capacity or other for at least the next ten years. The down time in between jobs these past few years has made it far easier for me to be thrifty so it’s no like I’m trying to support a ridiculous comic book habit anymore and have less need for consumerism.

I can’t remember if I discussed during the “money” topic but I do feel better when i know i have money just in case I want to do something fun when that’s allowed again. There have been too many times in recent years where I’ve had to decline an invite to go somewhere just because I was worried about how even spending $20 might affect my ability to eat for that week. (Yes, things got that bad!)

I guess we’ll see where things go in the next few months, but I don’t think you’ll meet another person who is more than ready to go to work for 40 to 60 hours a week once again, since I’ve also gotten better at scheduling my time. I mean, it’s still not great but when it comes to working, especially as a writer, I feel that I’m always getting better at facing new challenges, and I do hope some will still come my way.

I have about five minutes left to go in today’s #30ME, and I’m not sure if I have that much more to say about “work” right at this moment, but I do want to say that if you got far into today’s ramble, I hope you’ll drop me a line with some suggestions and opinions. It doesn’t mean I will change what I’m doing since as I’ve said, these are more for me than anyone else, but it would be nice if someone is reading them and maybe it changes their opinion of me (hopefully in a favorable way).

That’s it for me today but I’ll be back tomorrow..maybe talking about the “Birth” or “Death” part of that Godfathers song.

#30ME #30MinuteExperiment #Work

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userparamore · 2 years ago

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feel free to rant more!

what baffles me is that people don't interact with gifsets here but they do on other platforms. a gifset that hasn't reached 1k notes will have a gif with 10k likes on twt. like they have to seek out content here but cannot interact with it here?

i'm just baffled about tv shows and movies. if you aren't part of a big sourceblog, and don't post within the hour, you are doomed... like 10 years ago, with weekly releases, it could sustain a fandom for the whole 7 of days, not just one hour.

bahahah i will 😌 you've enabled me now

tbh i use twitter very rarely so i have no idea if people steal my gifs and repost them there. but i'm 100% sure it's happened bc i know it happens to me here regularly. i hate when it happens. it's super frustrating and it's not okay.

i guess my answer to why they get so much interaction on twitter instead of here might have something to do with twitter just being a much bigger platform paired with it having an algorithm. and also how do you measure/what do you consider engagement on twitter? is it just the likes or is it also the retweets? to me here on tumblr i disregard the likes most of the time. what i consider engagement is if someone reblogged the gifset. so if we use that same logic to twitter and count the retweets/quote tweets (or whatever the fuck they're called), i don't think the engagement is better on twitter than it is here (i might be wrong tho since i don't really use twitter that much).

the normalization of lurker accounts on twitter (like i mentioned in the other ask), might also have something to do with the engagement being low. i get so many blank blogs following me/liking my posts and i can't tell if they're real people or bots. like i mentioned before, this is becoming more normal on other platforms, and i think tumblr has a job to do in this regard. they need to understand how the internet's changed, and then develop with the internet, while at the same time not loose what makes tumblr special/different from other platforms/social media.

as to why people seek out content here, but not interact with it might have something to do with tumblr's image? i think a lot of people look at tumblr a little like pinterest. that content just suddenly appears here and no one owns it (tbh pinterest is problematic in it's own way when it comes to stolen content but that's a topic for another day). tumblr gets looked down upon i feel like. people look at it like the 2012-2014 ~tumblr aesthetic~ or superwholock. so why would you admit that you have a tumblr account in 2023? maybe that's why they don't interact?

the sourceblogs and posting within the hour of something dropping is a whole nother beast tbh. like you mentioned "10 years ago, with weekly releases, it could sustain a fandom for the whole 7 of days, not just one hour". i think this has to do with our attention span being shorter. maybe we also can give netflix some of the fault in this with dropping whole seasons at once and the rise of binging. you have to see it the moment it drops or you're already too late. if you missed your shot of this small window, no one cares anymore bc we've moved on to the next thing <- lol super cynical of me maybe?

i think the idea of sourceblogs are a good one (and tracking tags). it's us gifmakers way of supporting each other and spreading our gifs to a wider audience (while tumblr continues to make it harder and harder for us to actually post gifs and have them be seen).

but as someone who's not in a lot of sourceblogs, but are still a gifmaker (maybe not predominantly tv/film but i do gif it!), i do feel left out or at an disadvantage a lot of the time. my gifs are not a priority, they go in the queue. and when posting gifs as soon as something drops is the only way for you to get notes/interaction- it sucks for me that my gifs will be reblogged when it's too "late" and people have lost interest. maybe they also will be reblogged at a time of the day when the dash is slower, or not reblogged at all sometimes.

moral of the story: pls interact with gifs and reblog them. it's more appreciated than you think. and don't steal gifs to repost them!

#ok rant over lmao #now it's bed time 😴#ask #userzil

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walkingslowlytofastmusic · 2 years ago

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So I understand why Disney+ and Hulu have opted to release new episodes of shows weekly instead of all at once. Stretching it out prevents people from just subscribing for a month, binging a show and immediately canceling while a series is still socially relevant. This is kind of all these services have unless you really like the backlogged content. I don't like it but I get it.

Why does Amazon Prime video do this? I don't think I know anyone personally who pays for Prime Video, we all pay for Prime and it happened to come with video. Whether I like it or not, I've been paying for this for years and will probably continue for years to come.

So what do they gain by making us wait to see new episodes of the new thing? My attention span and memory are shot from years of internet brain damage, I'm likely to forget I was watching a series and drop it by accident if I need to remember to check back every week. Why am I setting calendar reminders to watch Vox Machina on a service that I didn't subscribe to on purpose?

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firstpuffin · 7 years ago

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Eighth (point two) in a series: Review of Redwall episode Thirteen

Episode 13: The Final Conflict

Is it any surprise that I’m disappointed? Still, I am relieved about finishing this first series so let’s unpack the last episode.

You might remember that in a previous review I mentioned how they almost seemed to be foreshadowing future events, that or straight-up stealing them, and this is how the episode opens: we see a family of dormice get captured by Cluny’s horde and the father, Plumpen, has to sneak into the abbey and open the gates. Something that he has done before, even the fact that it was a dormouse whose family is being threatened is the same. Meanwhile, Matthias leads a group of volunteers to find shrew reinforcements, because the writers needed a way to get him out of the abbey so that he could return with a shrew army. Which they could have done by simply not having him return to the abbey in the previous episode. Like the book. And I’ll return to this in a bit.

We are shown Cornflower and Basil discussing how their supplies won’t last much longer, as Cluny’s subordinates doubt their leader’s sanity. This is shown by him laughing a lot, because the only reason people ever laugh is because they are insane. Naturally. Still, by night they have set up decoys to look like they are still at the camp as they instead sneak into the abbey, helped by Plumpen and they capture the sleeping abbey.

Dunwing informs Matthias of the attack and the sparrows help him and the shrews to sneak in. Cluny is lording over his captives, dressed in their nightgowns or apparently whatever the animators decided they sleep in, and orders them to be slaughtered rather than kept as slaves when Matthias, in Martin’s armour, approaches with tacky levels of melodrama. Cluny panics (because the infamous Cluny whose reputation was so terrible that people assumed it couldn’t be real and assumed he was a bogeyman, is apparently also a coward) and flees as shrews attack. The rat I assume is Redtooth (the names are never really very clear) gets his face eaten by Constance, not in the fun way mind, which wraps up their feud which should have ended with Sela the fox.

Best part of the episode happens when we see the nightshirt-clad Abbot smacking vermin with a stick. This is the best we’ve seen him for the entire series.

Cluny grabs Cornflower (because what’s the point of a love interest if she doesn’t get captured, ammirite?) and runs to the bell tower. Matthias starts stripping his armour off, (presumably he was feeling hot?) and they fight. Cornflower is released, doesn’t run away and Cluny captured her again. So at this point, Cluny is at ground level and Matthias is at the top of the tower. Matthias persuades Cluny to let her go and the rat is bragging about his victory when Matthias cuts the bell’s rope, and the bell drops on Cluny and crashed through the wooded floor. All in all that was pretty cool.

WHERE DID SQUIRE JULIEN AND CAPTAIN SNOW COME FROM?! They are just chilling under a tree, apparently watching the carnage and murder with interest.

Aaaand- the Abbot is dying. And fully dressed? When did he get fatally injured? When did he get dressed? And which did he do first?

There is a dialogue between him and Matthias which could have been touching were it not for the weird clothes-change and the fact that he apparently didn’t know that Matthias had found Martin’s sword, despite the young mouse making a big fuss about it in the episode just prior. Again, they shouldn’t have brought Matthias back to the abbey in the episode before, or simply have kept things consistent here.

And then the Abbot dies. I couldn’t really care less.

Finally there is an undefined time-skip where we see an older mouse writing in a diary. He explains how things have been since the events of the story and we see both Matthias and Cornflower looking exactly the same. It is important that we understand that they both look very young still, as we find out they have a child. And what age? *shudders*

And that’s that. We don’t see any of the other useful characters from the series, like Matthias’s good friend Warbeak (who I believe should be sparrow queen), or Jess Squirrel and her son, and I could go on but I know you don’t want me to. Nope, we just get a brief cameo of two unimportant characters during the chaos of battle and that’s it for closure.

As for the episode, it felt rushed. Ideally, one of the made-for-tv episodes should have been cut out and the events of this episode should have been spread into two; highly refined and carefully thought out. Instead it started off with a contrivance to make up for a stupid choice in the previous episode; it was the same, honestly not that great, quality as all of the previous episodes and had a number of mistakes that I have already pointed out. It wasn’t exciting and they completely ruined a really good villain.

I’m not sure that I would have finished the series had I not been reviewing it, and I personally hate it when someone starts something but doesn’t finish it so I did. That same part of me wants to review the next two series for the same reason, but I don’t really want to go through it episode-by-episode.

My current train of thought is that when I have time I may binge the next two series and review them each as a whole. If the quality happens to have shot up then maybe I’ll return to the episode-by-episode format, but I am also thinking of making the reviews somewhat sparser. I’ve struggled to keep up with two uploads a week on top of university, and I have a few more projects that I’d like to start so I am considering only reviewing fortnightly or even monthly. If I were to review the next two series as a whole I would need some extra time to watch them all anyway.

I’ll give it some more thought and put my answer up on the blog. I will be continuing to upload weekly articles on whatever I manage to complete, so the blog will be staying active.

#first puffin #redwall #review #cartoon #books #children's books #children's literature

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