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happymeishappylife · 4 months

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Comics/Graphic Novels I Read in 2023

1. Doctor Who: Weapons of Past Destruction by Calvin Scott, Blair Shedd, Rachel Sottt, and Anang Setyawan

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack get caught up in a galaxy where two aliens are using timelord technology to prevent others from using time travel in order to prevent another time war. However, good their intentions are, the Doctor proves to them its wrong while also saving Rose multiple times.

2. Doctor Who: A Matter of Life and Death by George Mann, Emma Vieceli, and Hi Fi

The Doctor meets a young woman named Josie who has very strong animae powers that bring her drawings to life. Once he saves that situation, he finds a note from himself with coordinates and him and Josie go on some life changing and crazy adventures. I love Josie, she’s cool. And the fact that it’s Twelve and Clara who hook her up with the Eighth Doctor is quite lovely a nice surprise.

3. Neil Gaiman’s Tecknophage Vol 2. by Bryan Talbot, Paul Jenkins, and James Vance

Returning to the world of Tecknophage, we see the pitfalls and the ruin of the man who runs the universe, kind of. I appreciate and also hated that so much of this book resonated with what’s going on in my country right now regarding politics. How Tecknophage very clearly is the example of one side. But watching as others find ways to subvert, rise up, and save themselves was encouraging until the end where Henry Phage returns to his world that is still running off of human suffering and slave labor. I am looking forward to reading more of the other characters in this series if I can find them.

4. I Want to Be a Wall Volume 2 by Honami Shirono

I really love this series. Now that we’ve gotten to know Yuriko and Gakurouta it was interesting to see them explain how they met through the arranged marriage application but become friends first before deciding to eventually get married. I also loved the way they explored both of them learning more about each other and also wanting to be good partners while both accepting that sometime in the future if the other ever felt differently they would leave. It’s such a wholesome exploration of QPRs and also I love that we got to meet Momo-kun, Yuriko’s bisexual friend who introduced her to the term asexuality. I think he and Gakurouta’s talk was really great and beautiful to explain asexuality.

5. Is Love the Answer? By Uta Isaki

In this graphic novel we meet Chika who feels like an alien because she doesn’t experience romantic or sexual attraction. And honestly I was worried the first couple pages because she was almost traumatized by the ‘typical’ relationship standards that her boyfriends wanted and she didn’t, but it ended up being a great exploration of learning about your sexuality, your interpretations of your sexuality, boundaries, and feeling good in your own skin. I loved the instant friendship she had with Enomoto and Ito but I really loved her interactions with Ume even if his story was a little sad.

6. Saga Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the saga universe but I always wanted to go back to it and I’m glad I did. It’s such a unique and fascinating world and learning about Marko and Alana and how they met and fell in love over a book that was secretly coded to stop the war between their peoples is fascinating. Especially since the whole story is narrated by their daughter Hazel who is just a baby in the scenes we see. I’m also still very intrigued by the slave girl that is rescued and Prince Robot the IV.

7. Saga Volume 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

In this volume we learn why Alana, Marko, and crew are in the writer’s house after the last cliffhanger we had and that they have been there for a while. Alana and Marko were hoping for answers on what to do next now that they followed the story, but the writer only helps push them along with help from Marko’s mother. Though what will happen next is unknown since they are about to fight their way out. Seeing the story of The Will and Slave Girl was interesting and a good twist to give more humanity to the Will, though the need for romance between him and Gwen seems to be a push. We’ll see where it goes now that The Will has been taken out of the picture for now.

8. March Book 1 by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

I learned about this amazing graphic novel because Andrew Aydin was in the Comic Censorship Panel I went to at Heroes Con in 2022. He spoke about March which is now required reading for many schools, but I had never heard of it and since it came out after I was in school maybe that’s why. Still, it’s the graphic narrative and biography of John Lewis’ life and its fantastic as well as hard. This book, which is the first of three, tackled John’s early years growing up on his family’s farm and his rise through his college years where he learned and practiced nonviolent protest as a student to start becoming the Civil Rights leader we know him best for. I’m sure the more we go, the harder some stories will go, but I’m eager to read them and I also love that it is also shown as John looking back before he attends Obama’s inauguration.

9. Sandman Volume 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Malcom Jones III, Charles Vess, and Colleen Doran

So this is where Calliope and A Dream of A Thousand Cats came from! I’m a little sad that I didn’t read these before the episodes dropped, but while Dream of a Thousand Cats was done shot for shot, I’m actually really glad for the way they updated Calliope because I would have been filled with dread to watch it. I mean the basic story elements are the same but Richard Madoc in the comic is way more of a deplorable than the way he's portrayed in the show, because he automatically just starts raping Calliope with no care. Not that he doesn’t begin to in the show, but I think the character change to make him more likeable at first because he doesn’t want to force her, he just wants help to write his novel, but he ignores her wishes to be free with her promise to help and that desperation to not give away the power I think is a better retelling of how greed can actually influence people is so much stronger. I can’t wait to watch it again. A Midsummers Night Dream was fun to see the twist on how Shakespeare performed for the actual fairies that inspired the play and I would love to see Façade adapted because I can totally picture Kirby Baptiste as Death in it and she would knock it out of the park. Can’t wait for more.

10. March Book 2 by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Another powerful book in the retelling of John Lewis’ life and his leading actions in the civil rights movement. There were times in this book that were powerful and times absolutely unimaginable because of the horror and the violence committed against black Americans. Especially because while the Kennedys tried to help they didn’t know how to navigate past the racism that this country was founded on and still exists today. And that was probably the most chilling part. That we are still dealing with this all these years later. But as quoted in the final pages of this book, this is important to tell for the next generation of leaders and we must continue the fight until it is won.

#2023 rewind #comics I read

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thenightling · 3 years

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The Dreaming: Waking Hours Issue 12

Okay, let’s dive into this. Today I just finished reading the final issue of The Dreaming: Waking Hours. I’m still not particularly happy with how the comic handled “true names.” I feel it would have been more respectful and empowering toward trans people to have Heather BE her true name instead of having her stop the Unseelie from saying her dead name (implying it would still count as a true name). I know she said there’s no such thing as a true name but I think for a lot of people (trans, or just those that never liked their birth names and picked a different one later in life) it would be better to know that the name you most heavily associate with yourself IS your true name.

Batman Beyond actually handled this a little better in having Bruce Wayne reveal that Bruce is NOT the name he calls himself in his own mind, making it clear that for him, Batman IS is true name, even after he retired and passed the mantle to Terry.

The 1985 Fright Night also handled this with the has-been horror actor Peter Vincent. He went from saying “That isn’t even my real name.” To “I AM Peter Vincent, the great vampire killer!” We never learn what his supposed “real name” (Read: Birth name) was because it doesn’t matter. He became the character- the hero he had always pretended (and wanted) to be. Peter Vincent became his true name.

But anyway, that was all in issue 11. The True name part could have been handled a lot better and that was my biggest disappointment for this comic.

Ultimately the story had a happy ending for Ruin and Heather realized that Faerie probably wouldn’t embrace democracy (Thank God!). Though the anti-monarchy rantings were a bit annoying. Who were they toward? What reader of The Dreaming is going “Hmm. You know, America could really use an absolute monarchy right now.”?

Nevertheless Heather remains my favorite trans character... No, correct that. She remains my favorite original character in ANY Sandman spin-off, period. She’s well-developed, flawed, yet likable. And she’s not a flat, or boring, self-insert. She’s actually a good character.

I wasn’t too surprised that Daniel was portrayed as a bit of an ass here but I was still disappointed. It seems the only writer who doesn’t make Daniel a complete ass is Neil Gaiman, himself. I said it before and I’ll say it again . I think some authors must resent him because they’d rather be writing Morpheus but they don’t dare ask if they can out-right bring him back in the contemporary setting.

Also Daniel’s reasoning doesn’t make sense. Faerie and the Heavenly hosts weren’t angry because Ruin wanted to be with the man he loved. That was happenstantial. And Heather told him that Jophiel helping Ruin find his love is what enabled him to ascend back to Heaven. Jophiel had ot understand and learn the importance of love. That was good. That was sweet.

The only explanation I can give for Daniel’s behavior here is jealousy. Daniel came off as jealous and resentful that his own romance in Simon Spurrier’s (Hiss) version of The Dreaming (which is sadly still canon...) didn’t work out. And he did not expect Ruin to succeed so when he did find his true love Daniel got jealous and spiteful. That might not be what G. Willow Wilson intended but that’s how it came off. “If I can’t have love with a mortal, no one can!”

(Aw, look! Daniel’s first “You dare!”)

I do kind of like Heather threatening Daniel with the spell that was used to summon and trap Morpheus though. There is the flaw that Neil Gaiman did repeatedly say that the spell would not if Morpheus had been at full strength. First, the spell was never really intended for him (or Unseelie for that matter but she used it on the Unseelie too). Second, it only worked on Morpheus the first time because he was so weakened after the events of The Sandman: Overture.

For the sake of Daniel’s decently I’ll pretend he faked fear of the spell because he WANTED to be stopped. He knew he was wrong to try to separate Ruin and his love but he felt obligated to try. That sits better for me than Daniel legitimately just being an asshole and promising his family would go to war against Heather’s... again. Umm... Daniel, your family never went to war with the Burgess family. Morpheus cursed Alexander and you forgave him and that was that. What war?!

Ah, well. At least Ruin got his happy ending. But I don’t quite get why he needs to be mortal to have that ending. That feels unnecessary to me.

Nevertheless, it was still a satisfying ending. I just wish Daniel hadn’t been made a last minute antagonist just so if Heather turns up again later Dream can’t be an ally... And I sense that was the intention. I like Heather but this part feels contrived.

In general it was a satisfying ending though and there were parts I loved. I love Heather. I liked the use of the spell even if it shouldn’t really work on Daniel. I was happy Ruin got the one he loved. I was very satisfied and happy with how Jophiel’s story ending, that he needed to learn the importance and value of love.

I’m glad it wasn’t cynical bitterness there but actually a show of Heaven’s sense of value on love. I was a little worried this was yet-another story where Heaven and its Angels were ultimately going to be treated as heartless jerks and I was getting quite tired of that in adult comics. This was a nice change. I liked it more than I didn’t.

And this is still the best version of The Dreaming to date. It could have stood fine on its own without Simon Spurrier’s The Dreaming. I would have probably liked it better if it wasn’t attached to that. But I am still happy with the outcome. Still the best Sandman spin-off to date. And with the most likable protagonist (Heather) and Casper the Friendly Nightmare (Ruin).

#The Sandman #Sandman #Neil Gaiman #G. Willow Wilson #The Dreaming #The Dreaming: Waking Hours #Daniel Hall #Dream of The Endless #The Dreaming Waking Hours #The Sandman Universe #Sandman Universe

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moonlightserenadeeznutz · 3 years

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(New) Doctor Who hasn’t been good since S4.

(Please note: This post is really only for people who already agree with me, rather than people who disagree with me, because I don’t want to change anyone’s opinions, nor do I want to ruin DW for anyone. So if you disagree with me, you have no obligation to read any further, and I hope you have a nice day). ~ Okay, look...

First of all: I love Matt Smith. I think he was a fantastic Doctor. He was an absolute sweetheart, and a wonderful actor.

I also loved Clara Oswald as a companion. And all in all, I enjoyed post-s4 of NewWho, with a number of episodes that stood out to me (mainly written by Neil Gaiman... please can we make him a permanent author) and genuinely didn’t dislike it.

However, I really believe that the Steven Moffat era (s5 and onwards) and especially the Chris Chibnall era (s11 and onwards), couldn’t live up to the Russel T Davis era (s1-4).

For starters, I found the episodes post s4 really difficult to get invested into. I feel like the writers tried too hard to make it dramatic, and in turn simply made it complicated to follow along and frankly, a little boring. Too many characters had an unnecessary amount of importance placed on them, and too many episodes contained more than one plot point (again, as an attempt to make it dramatic, and therefore making it too complicated).

I also disliked the complete disregard for anything that happened pre-s5. I understand the timeline to an extent, for example, by the time the Doctor met Amy it had technically been about a hundred years since he’d last seen Rose give or take (though it had literally only been a few days since he’d last seen Donna and she wasn’t mentioned at all). This may just be my inability to really cope with major change, but then, a lot of people are like me, so disregarding everything just makes the show inaccessible to a number of people. I was screaming at the TV screen half the time wanting the Doctor to mention Rose, or Martha, or Donna, or Jack, but they hardly got a look in. Even in The Day of the Doctor, the appearance of “Rose” was frankly disappointing.

And this is just talking about s5 and onwards. I haven’t yet mentioned how good pre-s4 was. I’m not saying every episode was a masterpiece, but there were an incredible amount of well-thought out and interesting storylines. The entire Bad Wolf storyline and how it threaded through all four seasons even after Rose had gone was, and still is, my favourite thing ever. The Daleks and the Cybemen were actually threatening (as opposed to just nuisances like they were post-s5, which I suppose by that time they were, but it’s funny how some characters were described as the most dangerous and evil characters when tbh they really weren’t, but the Daleks and the Cybermen hardly ever were. I’d also like to point out that the Cybermen hadn’t actually been seen again by the Doctor since the battle at Canary Wharf (although I may be wrong on this, someone please correct me), and when Eleven did see them again, he acted more as if they were just an inconvenience, rather than the reason he lost one of his companions).

And don’t even get me started on the companions of pre-s5. Yes I love Clara, but that’s really about it. I never got invested in Amy, despite the show making her out to be god incarnated and the most important person in the Doctor’s life. I actually got more invested in Rory tbh. I’m not saying I didn’t like Amy, I just didn’t really see the big deal. Adding this to the fact that my favourite companions (all of which are in pre-s5) were never mentioned made me genuinely angry at Amy. It wasn’t her fault, but she had an air of smugness around her, as if she knew everything there is to know about the Doctor, but out of all of the companions she actually doesn’t know that much at all. She barely even knows that the Doctor can regenerate.

The companions in s1-4 were on a different level. Rose Tyler is my beloved, who absorbed the time vortex and became Bad Wolf. Martha Jones was the most badass motherf*cker who literally became a walking legend throughout the entire world as she travelled for a year on her own to defeat the Master- which she did, single f*cking handedly. Donna Noble was Catherine Tate. (And also she was the most hilarious, wonderful won’t-take-shit-from-a-spaceman icon who literally became a Time Lord. AND JACK MOTHERFUCKING HARKNESS THE GUY I LITERALLY NAMED MYSELF AFTER THE IMMORTAL OMNISEXUAL ALIEN JOHN FUCKING BARROWMAN LGBTQ+ ICON ALL THE WAY FROM 2005 CANNOT BE COMPARED IN LOVE WITH THE DOCTOR FLIRTS WITH EVERYONE SMOOTH SON OF A BITCH WITH A SMILE THAT CAN KILL EVEN MY LESBIAN ARSE.

Amy was just... sort of nothing? I don’t want to criticise too much because I know she’s the favourite companion of a lot of people, and I don’t want to ruin her for them. I don’t think she’s a bad companion. A lot of my anger towards her is more to do with me rather than to do with her. I just feel that she was placed on a pedestal and treated way more than her predecessors for no real reason.

She was “The girl who waited”. She was an eight year old who sat outiside for a night waiting for the Doctor. It’s sweet and all, but why is that literally her only personality trait?

There’s probably more I can add, but I’ve gone on long enough. And I must reiterate this is only personal opinion. I understand the title is a bit too blunt, one of those “if you don’t agree with me you’re an idiot” sort of posts, but it isn’t. This is just how I feel, and I encourage you to disagree with me, because I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone. Believe me, lots of things have been ruined for me by someone giving a negative opinion about it (though I’m not calling those people out or anything) because I’ve felt obliged to agree, or I’ve felt that my opinion is wrong. So I’m not trying to do that, I’m really just writing this for the people who already agree, rather than the people who disagree, because I’m not here to change anyone’s opinion.

Amy’s great. Matt Smith is fantastic. S5 and onwards has some enjoyable storylines. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer, so is Russel T Davis. Chris Chibnall isn’t but I think we can all agree with that. Martha is underrated as shit. Catherine Tate is queen of my life (I met her once, she gave up her seat for me on the Tube when I was a kid. Didn’t know who she was back then but my mother was very excited). Rose Tyler can marry me. Jack Harkness is the only reason I’m happy. And Clara is a sweetheart who needs constant protection.

Thank you for coming to be TEDTalk.

#long post #doctor who #not hp #newwho #david tennant #russel t davis #rose tyler #rant #doctor who rant #neil gaiman

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aiyassalt · 4 years

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Claudia’s Character Assassination

This post is a follow up on my recent Claudia hot take in which I state that Claudia was another character intentionally ruined and demonized by the writers (not unlike Viren) for the sake of shipping.

I know what ya’ll are thinking: I’m just being a butthurt Claudia stan, but based on recent discoveries (such as a certain article from Polyon), I’m (mostly) making a case based on facts.

“Whoawhoawhoawhoa, aiya?” you cry. “Don’t you think you’re being ridiculous and going a bit too far with your Rayllum hate?!”

Au contraire, my friend, I’m not. An article published by Polygon in the last year (yes, I know. I’m late but whatever) came out and confirmed a few facts:

Callum/Claudia were supposed to be endgame or at least canon.

Rayllum was never in the cards, but the writers, supposedly claim that they decided to switch things up during the storyboarding phase for S2.

“The Callum-Rayla romance sparked in a moment during the storyboarding phases of season 2, when the pair sat down for a heart-to-heart. A lingering glance on Rayla’s part prompted the writing team to consider the potential of the duo, and they continued developing it through the rest of season 2.”

However, further along in the article, the writer talks about how the staff are completely aware of fandom happenings and have developed a…”strategy” concerning fandom.

“The Dragon Prince writing staff are aware of the possible relationships their fans are hoping for, say the creators, and “good ships and trash ships” are a source of constant chatter and scrutiny in the writers’ room. After a season 2 creative retreat, a gallon of corn oil inspired writer Neil Mukhopadhyay to put a name to those moments that leave a bit too much room for romantic possibilities. “Shipping oil” became the go-to slang for when scenes felt slathered with dialogue or character blocking that could send the wrong message.”

So, it starts to become clear that Rayllum didn’t happen because the writers had a lightning bulb moment and realized it “made sense.” It has everything to do with trying to appeal to the fanbase’ wants and ideas of “appropriate” ships.

“Okay,” you say. “So the writers decided to make the juggernaut canon to make fans happy. So what! What’s the big deal? What does this have to do with Claudia?”

It has a lot to do with Claudia (and to a lesser extent, Soren) and it explains why the writing for her character in S3 felt incredibly off and dismissive for her. The writers talked about “shipping oil” for certain pairings and being concerned about “sending the wrong message.” What if the writers decided to possibly tone down certain shippy scenes? Or even go further and decided to cut out scenes or even rewrite certain character arcs to:

Accommodate the sudden pro-Rayllum direction they pushed the story towards and not threaten their endgame ship?

Make the Rayllum fans feel better and more confident about their OTP rather than feel insecure and threatened by “trash” ships getting an upper hand?

LBR, as much as Rayllum like to deny it, they’re not that secure about their ship. It’s why we see a portion of Rayllum fans continually bashing Claudia. Why, throughout S2, we started seeing an uptick of Rayllum fans calling Callum/Claudia problematic and/or abusive (no, I’m not joking or hyperbolizing; this actually happened) and trying to frame Soren/Rayla as “p*dophilic”.

Think about it. S3 seems like it was written by a Rayllum fan with a (“hidden”) hate for Claudia. We never get to hear exactly her own thoughts about her father and her moral choices in S3. We don’t see her worrying and reeling with guilt over Callum and Ezran falling out with her. The girl we see clearly crying after telling Callum the truth about his dead father is suddenly not concerned about her childhood friends being in Xadia while she’s hearing rumors about Xadians possibly prepping for warfare. We witness Callum showing a baffling lack of concern for Claudia, a character who is supposed to be not only his childhood crush, but his childhood friend staying with her father who Callum acknowledged as someone who has changed for the worse (according to the books). We get Nyx, a Skywing elf who possibly has never been in contact with humans, acting like a straight-up in-canon Rayluum shipper and being fine with a Human and Elf being in love rather than being disgusted. I would continue, but I don’t want to make an incredibly long post.

And LBR: if Claudia (and Soren maybe) went with Callum and Rayla in S3 or S4, there would be trouble in paradise for the Rayllum ship and present more nuanced writing. Besides Callum x Claudia and Soren x Rayla having more chemistry than Rayllum, Claudia and Callum have more in common than Callum and Rayla do. And Soren and Rayla serve as better foils for one another and share more parallels together. Both Callum and Claudia are interested in magic, books, art, and history, had to serve as parental figures for their siblings, and are crafty and adaptive wildcards. Meanwhile Soren and Rayla are the youngest members of their individual organizations, good warriors who balance out each other’s weaknesses, and possess a lot of determination and ambition to prove themselves to their parental figures.

Imagine Soren and Rayla bonding over parents disappointing them and putting a lot on their shoulders. Imagine them confessing they have no idea what they want to do in life, and were put on their current career paths due to societal expectations. Imagine Claudia and Callum having a couple of tense moments due to her lying and trying to capture Zym, but eventually reconciling (basically, a gender reversed Zutara arc). Imagine Callum showing Claudia his Sky Magic moves and revealing it is possible for humans to do Primal Magic without needing a Primal Stone. Imagine Claudia then deciding to embark on training and dedicating herself to learn specific type of Primal Magic (such as Water or Moon, or even Earth) with Callum’s help. Imagine Callum and Claudia deciding to go on dates that also function as research trips to explore ruins and to discover the truth as to why and how the myth that humans can’t do Primal Magic was perpetuated. Imagine Rayla and Claudia’s initial interactions being full of hostility due to their past experiences and Claudia being a Dark Mage and Rayla going on a self-righteous anti-Dark Magic rant only for Claudia to break out of her typical goofy and upbeat persona and bring up the history of humans in Xadia and point out the birth of Dark Magic has nothing to do with humans wanting to kill creatures for the shits and giggles, but for survival and fighting against oppression. And as a result, Rayla actually undergoes actual character growth.

The scenarios I’ve described here sound 100x more interesting than the Rayllum Drama Desert mess. I’m also absolutely positive that they would absolutely make certain characters as more sympathetic (such as Viren, especially if Claudia defends Dark Mages), put a dent in Rayllum’s popularity and Rayla’s Perfect Waifu status and drive the Rayllum fandom bonkers. And the TDP writers knew it, which is why Claudia and Soren were given the arcs they have in S3.

I will never be over how Claudia was sacrificed at the altar of fandom pandering, and most of the fandom waving it off because, whatever, she’s no longer in the way and she’s an icky teenaged girl. Never. A refreshing character like her didn’t deserve the treatment she’s gotten thus far and will continue to get if the writers insist on pandering to vocal fan factions. Shame on the TDP writers for making such an ignorant, amateur, and disastrous move.

#tdp critical #anti rayllum

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inspector-montoya-fox · 4 years

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here’s why Thieves in Time is a bad game

before y’all try it, i just want to say that i’ll be as unapologetically petty and sarcastic as i want and fucking rip this game to shreds. yes, this is how i’ve spent my days since Thieves in Time came out. sitting alone in my room, staring at the wall, crying and complaining. because it has since been my life’s aim and dream to think about it every day, state the negative things about it, and become an evil essay witch on this half-dead website. *evil laugh*

Story:

References: i want to start with the smallest problem, but one that annoys me to this day. in the original trilogy, there weren’t a lot of references but the ones that were included were meticulously researched and well thought-out (i’m specifically referring to that Neil Diamond Carmelita vinyl gag, but can’t find the original post). the references in Thieves in Time however, were obviously just the creators’ interests. Turning Japanese, Clan of the Cave Bear and Bentley’s “hacksona” presented as Rambo just scream 1980s (which i’m assuming is the decade the creators grew up in), and Of Mice and Men is classic literature about the Great Depression, which subsequently started being taught in school in the US during the 1980s. it feels like the creators just went ‘let’s discuss what our lives had in common during our teen years and put that in’ instead of researching it first. and, here’s the thing: when you’re adding references, in order to make them funny or interesting, they have to fit in with the property or the character that’s connected to them in some way. Don Octavio was an opera aficionado so his episode’s title card pays homage to the Phantom of the Opera, young Muggshot was influenced by the movie “The Dogfather” because he’s a gangster, etc. these were funny because they were so spot-on with these characters. if every character in the Sly Cooper universe references the same type of stuff (from the 1980s) and shares the same interests, it’s just claustrophobic and uninteresting. i’m pretty sure i’m not the only one who had to look up these ultra-hetero, scrotum references when the game came out. that’s because they were specifically tailored to be funny to them, and not their target demographic which were kids in 2013.

Narrative: now that we got that out of the way, let’s look at the narrative. at the end of Sly 3, Bentley says he’s building a time machine. Sanzaru took that joke and decided to run with it as the premise for their game. ok, not the best idea, but i get it - you’re literally picking up where the last game left off. since all the storylines were wrapped up, they could’ve done something different like Sly’s kids or Bentley and Murray’s families, but this isn’t an essay about suggestions so...... time travel (i want to say that it’s, again, an 80s reference but whatever) was pretty ‘out there’ in 2013. i mean, even Plants vs Zombies 2, which was released that year, had to do with time travel (yes, i’m referencing an app). but Sanzaru had the advantage of applying this premise onto already established mythos and lore. the story had definite potential: someone is threatening Sly’s lineage so he has to travel back in time to save the day. the player would get to explore new locations and iconic eras in history, and, of course, the main selling point: playable ancestors. how could you screw that up? welp.... let’s think about the plot holes here for a sec. Bentley’s device would take the gang back in time when given an item from the specific era. stop. this right here is called ‘over-complicating’. how did they know the items would take them directly to the point where the specific ancestor was in danger? the Feudal Japan period lasted for 700 years: how did the machine know when and where to drop them off? and if the gang could return to the present at any time, why didn’t they do so when they were in trouble? oh right, the machine was broken. so how did they return the baddies to the present after they defeated them? i mean, why did they use the Grizz’s crown to travel to Medieval England if they went back to the present to drop him off to Interpol first? and on that note, how did they drop the baddies off to jail without getting caught and without Carmelita being around? i can already hear you thinking but these are total details that aren’t important, you jerk! well, yea, they truly are details and i truly am overthinking it. and yes, i truly am a jerk. but let me tell you something: when Sanzaru chose to make a new Sly game, did they not think ‘oh we’ll have to follow up Sly 2 and Sly 3′s stories’ which were well thought-out narratives with depth and various themes and didn’t have huge plot holes (as seen by my analysis through the episode project) ???? and did they also not think that their game would come out eight years after the last one, having expectations at an all-time high???? yea, that’s what i thought.

Characters: i’ll make a different section for Sucker Punch’s characters, so this is for Sanzaru’s original ones. name one iconic original character from Thieves in Time. i’ll wait... nope. not one. that’s because all of them were absolute shit. and here’s where i want to touch upon Sanzaru’s over-reliance on the trilogy. Ms Decibel (perhaps the most obvious copy) is a mix between Don Octavio, Miz Ruby, and the Contessa. El Jefe is Rajan if he went to the gym. Toothpick has Sir Raleigh’s temper and tendency to grow in size. and the Grizz is... whatever the fuck he is. (don’t worry i didn’t forget Le Paradox and Bob). there’s a difference between studying & creating similar characters and blatantly plagiarizing older characters because you lack the creativity. oh, boo-hoo this evil jerk’s telling it how it is. this set of villains is so lacklustre, i don’t even know where to begin. El Jefe is a tiger, even though we’ve already had two major tiger villains and one tiger flashlight guard. ok. Rajan could summon lightning because of the Clockwerk heart but El Jefe can do the same, how exactly? Toothpick is an armadillo (good) from Russia (better) with an obsession with the West (excellent) who can also grow huge (very bad). it’s never explained how or why. why?????? just tell me why. i want to know. i really want to know. Ms Decibel is an elephant who got into a tragic accident which left her with the power of hypnosis. music and hypnosis have already been done, but ok, i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. so how do we use this character? spend the entirety of her screen time making jokes about... wait for it... her weight !!! this is top-notch comedy... really? like... really? the creators’ humor is a crime, at best. fart jokes and fat jokes all around. oh, and then there’s the Grizz. what the fuck where they thinking? just, what the fuck. i guess the guys at Sanzaru thought black people speak in rap? is that it? apart from it being extremely offensive, it’s also a blatant copy of Dimitri’s backstory. like, his introductory cutscene even has his paintings thrown at him and into the trash, like the intro cutscene for The Black Chateau. honestly, all of these villains caused me several types of pain, but not as much as...

Bob & Le Paradox: the absolute worst. i can just imagine the meeting going something like this: Sly’s ancestors are awesome! i wish we could fit them all in the game... here’s an amazing idea! what if we use one of the game’s few levels to introduce a brand new ancestor! yea! let’s make him dumb as fuck, strip him of any athletic prowess, and retcon the entire lineage by having him be the first Cooper ever! the kids will love a prehistoric level! ..... could you kindly point out where and when did ANYONE ask for this? i remember @ironicsnap saying something like the game is good until Bob. no, it was already bad - Bob just lowered the standard. like, a lot. people love Murray and his gameplay is neat, but no one ever thought ‘oh i wish we had a Cooper character with Murray’s game style’. why would they waste the opportunity to bring in Henriette, Thaddeus, Otto, literally any ancestor? why??? but they went ahead and created their own Cooper, and that wasn’t even the end of it. they had to make him dumb. they had to make him unbearable. they had to ruin the Cooper ancestry by adding this mess to the lineage. Sucker Punch made sure that all the ancestors were unique, but at the same time made all of them suave and funny and slick and you wish you could be them! well, fuck that. also, his name is Bob. Bob Cooper. it’s been 7 fucking years and i still can’t wrap my head around it.... so now, let’s talk about Le Paradox. i don’t have to mention the previous main villains, but i will. Clockwerk killed Sly’s ancestors and father, and was seemingly an eternal threat. Neyla was a psychopath who fooled everyone on her journey to becoming immortal by resurrecting Clockwerk. Dr M opened up the possibility for Sly’s dad to be a jerk instead of a hero, and died trying to unlock the Coopers’ legacy. how does Le Paradox compare? well, he’s a sleazebag skunk who was mad because of his dad’s downfall to the Coopers. that’s it. no twist, no depth, no clever dialogue. nothing. there’s nothing there. this is a new character, unfamiliar to everyone, who was hyped up for 5 levels and defeated in the conclusion. why was he a match for Sly? i don’t know. how did he fight for his life and ultimately tricked Sly into helping him? i don’t know. how the hell did he kidnap Carmelita? i don’t know. was it the power of persuasion? no, he’s revolting. so i literally don’t know. there’s no backstory, no fleshing-out the character, nothing. all we’re given to work with is a brief info-dump about his dad and how he escaped prison. i don’t know what else to say apart from how big a humiliation this was for Sanzaru and their team of writers. you had 8 years to work on something and this is what you came up with? anything would be better. anything would best this utter cliché of a villain, a distasteful misogynist, crybaby, idiot with an accent. literally anything.

Arcs & Themes: let’s take a look at the formulaic subplots for the gang’s members. apart from dealing with Le Paradox, everyone had a small arc. Sly had to deal with his break-up with Carmelita. Bentley had to deal with his break-up with Penelope. Murray had to deal with playing second fiddle to Bob. Carmelita was a damsel in distress and sex bait for the ancestors. the ancestors had their own mini storylines along with reacting to Sly’s presence. there you have it. i summarised it all for you, nice and neatly. are there any themes like in the previous games? nope. i promise you i’m not lying when i say that i tried hard to come up with something, even some speck of a detail i could use to over-analyse the story and come up with some ideas on themes. nothing. there are no themes. the subplots are character-driven and the player gives it 0 emotional investment. there is nothing to analyse, nothing to talk about. maybe even a theme for each level, like a spooky level or something? nope. the levels are dependent on eras and historical periods. the variation here is ok. Feudal Japan, Wild West, Prehistoric Australia, Medieval England and Ancient Arabia - pretty good selection. i’ll give them credit for it. but that’s it. due to the absence of themes, the hubs feel empty. there’s no replayability factor. after you collect the bottles and masks and treasures, there’s nothing. i would spend hours revisiting the trilogy’s hubs, just roaming around. the hubs here are huge and empty. there’s nothing to reminisce about. nothing to recall. oh that’s where this mission went down. no, nothing like that. the aforementioned subplots are resolved during mission cutscenes and then they’re gone. you don’t have to explore spooky Prague alone as Bentley to have him overcome his fears, you don’t have to find out miners abducted Murray’s beloved Guru and search the Australian outback for him, you don’t have to hold back your tears when you’ve reached the end of the Cooper Vault and Sly asks his dad for help. nothing.

Gameplay:

Controls: as soon as i laid my hands on the controller the first time i played the game, that fateful afternoon, i knew something was up. Sly would respond 1 second late after you pushed something on the controller. it felt clunky, is what i’m trying to say or, as my sister put it, it felt heavy. and she was right. the controls were clunky and heavy and didn’t feel light, like playing as a thief should feel. i don’t know shit about game mechanics but this definitely didn’t feel right. the hubs are also chunky in design, the cliffs are huge and so cyclical or hexagonal, that when you parachute your way to them and are just an inch close, Sly will automatically just drop because he can’t grab onto them. running as Sly doesn’t feel fast, silently obliterating guards from behind feels slow, and swinging, grabbing, pickpocketting, and hanging aren’t fun anymore. presentation-wise, @designraccoon goes into detail here, in an absolute gem of a post. in short, the gameplay animations make Sly look less sneaky. Sanzaru didn’t even consider a thief’s movements.

Missions: why the fuck would you remove the player’s option to choose between which mission to do first? why would you do that? the game lays out what goes first, sometimes having only one mission available in the hub. and the missions aren’t even enjoyable. firstly, the loading screens take up to 5 minutes, maybe even 7-8. secondly, there’s hacking every 2 missions. the missions don’t have any dialogue to make them fun, lack in interesting puzzles, what more can i say? they’re overly easy and lack any challenge whatsoever. at least there’s variation in gameplay (hacking, RC car, fishing, costumes, ancestors, turret etc.) but because of the controls, even these get tiresome. the missions are solely there to progress the story and that’s why the operations are merely ‘storm the main baddie’. the trilogy had some pretty interesting missions which made sure to complete jobs required to take down the big bad. e.g. kidnap General Clawfoot to take down the security, hack Contessa’s computer to make sure Carmelita will be freed, steal voices to tempt Neyla, and then take down the Contessa. the missions in Thieves in Time lack substance and variety. and the hacking (all three styles) sucks.

Collectibles: here’s another fantastic idea: have players collect costumes in order to collect bottles in order to collect treasures in order to collect masks in order to unlock funky Sanzaru logo-themed merch! what was the reason for the collectibles? in previous games, collecting all bottles would unlock special abilities. that was it. it’s the same thing here too, but there’s less incentive? i mean when you have to collect 1000 things, what’s the point? the treasures are random and very few are references to the trilogy, so whatever. and the masks unlock... superhero costumes for what reason exactly? oh, and then there’s also the achievements for your Playstation account, like ‘open the map in every single location you visit’. what fun! if the reason for collecting the treasures is to play godawful hacking minigames in order to get masks, what’s the point? decorate your paraglider with the Sanzaru logo? or have Bentley dress up as discount Robocop? i mean including masks in the interior locations was cool, but the bottles were always supposed to be something you could do whenever your soul desired. sometimes i left them last before the operation, sometimes i collected them before the first mission. so i was pissed when i found out that, in some cases, you had to unlock the episode’s costume in order to get the all the bottles. so, fuck off.

Animation: i’ll keep this short. the animation was terrible. do you remember that tumblr blog from a while back, where she dedicated the posts to pointing out the mistakes in the animated cutscenes? yeah. point is, there were lots of them. the animation style was bad, the character design was ugly, the characters’ movements were unnatural. everything about it was shit. looking past the bad decision to drop the trilogy’s comicbook-style animated cutscenes, couldn’t they have hired someone better? someone with more experience? their concept art was awesome. couldn’t they hire that guy and have it be comicbook style if he wasn’t trained in animation?

Legacy:

The Players: let me ask a genuine question: who was this game made for? kids growing up in 2013? maybe so. because it feels like Sanzaru didn’t even consider the fans of the trilogy. actually, it felt like a huge fuck you. Sucker Punch made their trilogy for whoever. there were great stuff for kids, but adults would pick up and appreciate the references, the real-life setting (e.g. tobacco use, existence of nightclubs, spice instead of drugs, etc.). that’s why all three games are timeless classics. judging by Thieves in Time’s humor, the game wasn’t targeted for adults. so, it doesn’t make sense to use an already established property, beloved by its fans, to attract a new audience consisting of nine year-olds who’d laugh at Murray dressing up as a woman. if they really wanted to appeal to the fans of the original, why retcon everything? why change who the first Cooper was? when the gang’s stranded in Saudi Arabia, why have Sly say ‘i couldn't remember a time since we've teamed up that we felt so defeated’? the gang’s been in way deeper shit before. why the ‘Sly’s dad vs Le Paradox’s dad’ deus ex machina? Sly’s dad wasn’t famous because of stealing the world’s largest diamond, what the fuck are you even talking about? do the guys at Sanzaru have such big egos and bravado that they needed to change the original games’ lore? were they so preoccupied with leaving their signature on a property which was never their own? i don’t know who needs to read this, but i’m stating FACTS.

Characters: now let’s talk about Sanzaru’s treatment of the Cooper gang and the ancestors (female characters will get their own section). why would you change the characters like that? if it wasn’t for the voice acting, i’d say this is a completely different Cooper gang. there’s no wise-cracking band of best friends, going on heists and being proud of their brotherhood and bond. all that is replaced with the formulaic story arcs for each member. the trilogy’s cutscenes and dialogues made sure to establish how Sly, Bentley and Murray have lived together since they met at the orphanage, play videogames all day and order chinese food and pizza and whatever. through missions and their adventures, they face obstacles they have to overcome as a gang, and when Sly 3 came around, their friendship was put to the ultimate test when they almost disbanded. Thieves in Time was too lazy to add to this. Sanzaru thought ‘oh the trilogy showed how they’re best friends so we might as well have them focus on their own stories separately’ and if this is truly the case then i ask again: who was this game made for? because new fans would never know how tight the gang was just by playing Thieves in Time. there’s a lack of genuine friendship moments. like, what happened when Sly came back after faking his amnesia? that’s completely ignored. where’s the witty banter? the ‘wizard & sitting duck’ type of jokes? nothing of the sort. what we get is fart jokes and Murray wanting to dress up as a woman. on that note, what was that all about? ok, have him dress up as a geisha to get in. fine. have El Jefe slap his ass, have him perform in a painfully lengthy dance sequence, have him dress like that during the rest of the episode, and then have him be persistent about getting the belly-dancing gig? the hell? Murray was always kinda goofy but this just feels kinda homophobic? it feels dragged out and unfunny. and then there’s the ancestors. i said it once before and i’ll say it again, Sanzaru deprived me of a buff Arab daddy Salim Al Kupar and gave us that elderly shit instead. all jokes aside, the redesigns were uninteresting. why take away Tennessee Kid’s facial hair and give it to Galleth? i legitimately think all the ancestors were boring. i mean, their gameplay was cool, especially Tennessee Kid’s guns, but in terms of character, they were just some dudes. did they believe that Sly was their descendant from the future? maybe. did they care? nope. they all had the same storyline of dealing with Sly’s arrival, flirting with Carmelita and getting their canes stolen. that was it. the fans waited for so long to get even a glimpse of the ancestors in action, and Sanzaru downplayed all of them. they reduced them to useless idiots too occupied with women and food, incapable of getting their canes back from stupid Le Paradox. and they didn’t even stick to the lore. no ma’am. let’s make Rioichi the inventor of sushi !! because that makes total sense and would defo fit in with the character and the property! why. just, why. you were handed the lore !!! you were given all this rich backstory and you threw it all away to replace it with trash !!! complete trash.

Changes & Inconsistency: i want to briefly mention some changes that pissed me off. where’s the laser glide move? it was an important turning point at the end of Sly 3, so why did they get rid of it? Sly is a master thief who’s traveling back in time, so you’d think they’d actually make him a master thief. also, the changes in the binocucom and Bentley’s slideshows in order to modernise them. if Sucker Punch managed to place the mission starting points at locations where the binocucom would show the objective clearly, so could Sanzaru. instead, they chose to have it be a moving camera, floating around the hub. and Bentley’s slideshows were absolute classics, opportunities to include gags and have Bentley show off in his own way. you just had to change it into a tablet, didn’t you. omg you’re still looking at small details like these? yes sweetie, i consider the details because i think they shape the game more than anything. if i didn’t consider the details, then my opinion on the game would be incomplete. when i praise the trilogy i don’t only look at story and gameplay. because i’m unbiased like that. here, i’d also like the mention Dimitri. what a fucking waste. you either include him in the game or you don’t. but don’t give me some half-baked shit on how he’s working for the gang back in present day. Dimitri staying home, waiting on the gang to call him in order for him to give them details on the villains. how does that even slightly resemble anything about Dimitri’s character? they didn’t even include his voice, some greasy sweet Raccoonus Doodus dialogue.

Female Characters: you know it’s all been leading up to this. this is the crux of the Thieves in Time hate. i don’t want to say the game is misogynistic so i’ll call it anti-feminist. why? just answer me. why? why did you have to disrespect Carmelita like that? right off the bat, they swapped the pants for the skirt. in what world does an active inspector who’s always on the scene wear a skirt? Carmelita now wears a skirt because her only role in the game is to be the love interest. Carmelita now wears bright red lipstick and has a new hairstyle, which would be ok if only it wasn’t Carmelita. Carmelita now plays up her inner sassy Latina because she’s pigeonholed into the ‘angry ex girlfriend’ role. they compartmentalised her, tried to sexualise her because she couldn’t possibly be one of the boys. nope. let’s take a respected woman, high in rank and as physically able as Sly, and turn her into a cliché, an angry ex girlfriend for comedic relief, strip her of her abilities and have her be kidnapped twice, have every exchange with her be about how attractive she is, have almost every male character in the game flirt with her, have her boyfriend be jealous of his own ancestors because they’re flirting with her in order to create purposeless love triangles, and then, after all that, dress her up as a belly dancer and distract some guards while the rest of the gang do the heavy lifting. that last one was really the nail on the coffin. did Bentley have other ways to enter that door? absolutely. so, what the fuck? why did i come back for a good Sly game 8 years later and receive a game where you have to shake your controller to have Carmelita shake her ass? why did they have the guards’ eyes pop like that? why did no one stop them? and it isn’t just Carmelita. it’s Penelope too. god forbid we have a female character who doesn’t have a waist smaller than my finger, and a voluptuous physique. why was the redesign so drastic? the story stuff is also nonsensical. why did she leave? wasn’t she happy with Bentley? i watched her speech about turning on the gang about a thousand times and it still doesn’t make any sense. like, i literally don’t understand. what was her motive? and why reverse her story of overcoming the Black Baron persona and the connotations of a meek woman hiding behind a man’s disguise? why repeat it, shamelessly? do the guys at Sanzaru only know women who have recently broken up? why does Carmelita, Penelope and Ms Decibel all go through break-ups during the game? why does Penelope go against Bentley before they even break up? why waste the opportunity to introduce a new, well-written villain and use it to repeat something already done? why???? no woman is safe from Sanzaru because Ms Decibel... boy, did i feel bad for her. apart from continuously reminding us that she’s haha fat!! she’s also presented as a blind lovefool. love? what a silly concept only women believe in! Ms Decibel had a crush on Le Paradox (for some reason i can’t even fathom) and for that she must pay by being utterly humiliated. and what do ALL women do when a guy breaks up with them? they get so angry! yikes, stay clear guys! ....why does Sanzaru hate female characters? i’m genuinely curious. i mean, what forced them to depict women like this? i’m sorry, i can’t take much more of this.

Ending: and how do you end a disappointment that came 8 years late and didn’t even have a sequel guaranteed? yeap, you guessed it! a cliffhanger. but not just any cliffhanger - a total fuck you to anyone and everyone. with a single move Sanzaru instantly screwed over the franchise. the fans, the creators, the characters, anyone looking to continue the series. everyone. WHY would you trap the protagonist in the past? WHY? did you feel defensive about something that wasn’t even yours and went ‘well you can continue the series but the sequel will have to do with time travel’. why did you think it was a good idea? how does it even slightly resemble a good ending? someone fill me in please. because i don’t think i’m being unreasonable, i’m just telling it how it is.

Conclusion:

i did it. i fucking wrote it in all its motherfucking glory. the idiots at Sanzaru could’ve given us an amazing game but instead of working on how to make it better or including extra levels, they wasted their time on deciding what killable baby animal to include in each hub or what the backstory for each treasure should be. how fucking distasteful. and to think i’m an idiot myself for trying to force myself to like it because i was so in denial about how bad it was. i’ve just outlined everything wrong with that cursed game. i’m exhausted.

#yOu'Re rEaLLy pEttY ! sOrRy hAd tO UnFoLLoW #i think i covered everything #THIS IS AN AMAZING ESSAY #this is the crown jewel of my time on tumblr #i love myself so much #sly cooper #anyone who even remotely comes for me because of this WILL get blocked #the birds really think i care about my rep on this fucking hellsite #HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

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tellywoodtrash · 4 years

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What is HAPPENING on Sanjeevani, girl?! I saw some clips on my Insta and it had a wild!Gaurav Chopra?! A nervous wreck masquerading as Dr Ishani?? And she's MARRIED to GChops?! Ded!Dr Shashank?? Mysterious son and Dr Anjali in Germany??? What.

Hiiiiiiiiii friend! 😘😘😘

Loooooooong time! How have you beeeeeeeen?! 🤗🤗🤗

Lmao I can’t even beginnnnnnn to describe the clusterfuck that has been Sanjivani since like…. October, but lemme try and break it down in bullet points (if you know all of this already, just skip down to the “three years later” bit!):

Sid who was flirting it up and sexy dancing at a wedding with Ishani till 8 pm, suddenly at 8:01 pm remembers that he has a dead fiancee in his past (plus najaayaz issues) and suddenly starts calling himself a panauti, properly balls-to-the-wall believing in the phenomenon (y’know, as educated, scientifically-minded surgical residents/general medical wunderkinds tend to do! blaming things like their mother’s premarital pregnancy and an older family members’ developmental disorder on themselves!) and being passive-aggressive in trying to ward off Ishani to “protect her” from him.

Passive-aggressive has to be notched up to AGGRESSIVE-AGGRESSIVE coz Ishani’s a dheent who won’t take no for an answer; so he GOES AND MARRIES ISHANI’S BEST FRIEND ASHA, who has gotten knocked up by Aman (who tata-bye-byed outta the whole sitch. Props to him for being the smartest person in this show. He’s probably living an unfulfilled life somewhere, but seemed to come from wealth, so how sad can you really be when you have so much money????)

This whole SidAsha marriage was engineered behind the scenes by Vardhan - who found out that Asha was pregnant and threatened to set her Khap Panchayat from Haryana on her or some shit. He coerced Asha to take advantage of Sid’s “achchaai” by playing on his najaayaz kid feels and take responsibility for her.

Lots of angst and drama as Ishani and Sid struggle with their feels about each other while he’s married to a pregnant Asha, whom he’s pledged his support and name to.

Asha’s pregnancy hormones seem to make her batshit crazy and unable to make any reasonable decisions, and she keeps messing with Sid’s career; drugging him and making him fuck up important surgeries and what not.

All this, again, coz Vardhan. Vardhan wants revenge from Sid. Why? Because dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn, Sid is Shashank’s son! Vardhan wants to ruin Shashank’s life and thinks the best way to do it is by torturing his kids, and thus is fucking with Sid’s career, and is fucking with Anjali (like, literally. 👉🏽👌🏽👉🏽👌🏽👉🏽👌🏽 Coz sis has daddy issues and reallllllll bad judgement when it comes to men.)

But why does Vardhan want revenge from Shashank???? Damned if we (including the writers) know. Something to do with Vardhan’s Dearly Departed Didi, whose photo he keeps staring at while gritting his teeth. I’m guessing Shashank’s stuck his pen in that inkwell too?

Oh btw, Shashank also confessed his feelings for Juhi, who seemed HORRIFIED at the prospect, but like 5 minutes later is cool with it and reciprocates with her own crushy-wushy feelings? Idk man, idk. It’s all very unclear what that whole plot point was exactly, beyond some vague conversations and ambiguous coy smiles.

Daddy Shashank is disappointed in his known/unknown kid(s) for their various missteps in personal/professional lives. Saare milke inhe paagal banaa rahein hai, yeh chutiya bachchein.

Lots of other miscellaneous fuckery is going on between Sid/Ishani which……. honestly, is exhausting and not worth getting into. Anyway, it’s finally found out that Asha is the culprit behind this dhai mahine ka dukh-dard-chutiyaapa.

Ishani takes a bullet for pregnant Asha, and goes into a coma. Guilt-ridden Asha tells Vardhan to fuck off, signs annulment papers, and finally gtfo, but not before giving Sid a clue about who’s really behind all this kaand.

Vardhan is like lmao, I didn’t need her anyway and goes about paying randomass people to frame Sid for medical malpractice. Ishani literally comes out of the coma and hightails it straight to the police station to save her man. (For the record: I wouldn’t even let a man interrupt an afternoon nap of mine.)

Oh btw, by this point Anjali was like bohut ho gaya and fucked off to go play a Naagin on Colors. Good for her. 🐍🐍🐍

Sid and Ishani start working on exposing Vardhan. Coz appropriate R&R after getting up from a goddamn coma, what’s that!?!??!? JUST SHAKE IT OFF!!!!!!!!! PFFFFFFFT, TAKE A CROCIN OR TWO!!!!

Lo and behold, Dr. Shashank is killed in an accident. (We haven’t really seen him for the last………………………………… like 20 episodes or so? So…. do we really care at this point? Not really. Mohnish didn’t even show up to shoot the dead body waale shots. For the longest time I was like PAKKA SHASHANK NAHI HOGA, FACE NAHI DIKHA RAHEIN, KOI AUR HAI YAAR!!!!!!!!!!! But nope, all the characters identify him by face……… So yeah, egg on MY face.)

Sid’s mummy drops the bomb at the cremation that Sid is Shashank’s son and should light the funeral pyre. A very cool fun appropriate time for Anjali AND SID to find that out!!!!!

Sid and Ishani channel their sads into exposing Vardhan. Hallelujah, finally a win for the unluckiest people in this show. FFS even the little child who got impaled on a rod and Nurse Philo’s daughter with terminal brain cancer have had better lives.

Sid proposes to Ishani. He says he’s been accepted into some program in America and wants her to come with to start a new life there. Ishani is like nope, YEH MERA INDIA SANJIVANI, I LOVE MY INDIA SANJIVANI.

Ishani’s Mama/Mami come for rishta talks and catch the two almost making out in an on-call room and are all hawwwwwwwwww cheeeeeeee sanskaaaaaaar, etc. They turn out to dislike Sid coz najaayaz. And are rudeass snobby assholes to him and his family. Sid is understandably quite mad.

INSTEAD OF TALKING THAT SHIT THROUGH WITH HER, HE DITCHES ISHANI AT THE FUCKING MANDAP VIA TEXT AND FLIES OFF TO AMERICA. VIA TEXT. VIA TEXTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. We are all reminded once again, that Tellywood Men Ain’t Shit.

Except for Drs. Rahil and Neil who have categorically maintained their Very Good Boy crowns 👑👑👑👑 throughout the run of this show. Gold stars to them for achieving the impossible. 🌟🌟🌟

Sanjivani is on fire. Like, metaphorically it was always on fire, but this time literally. Unhinged Ishani runs riiiiiiight into the burning building.

3 years later………..

Sanjivani has been rebuilt. By Gaurav Chopra whose name is Navratna Singh, lololololol. An appropriate name because he does seem to be quite thanda thanda cool cool. He reopens and invites all the old staff back to pitch in and restore the place back to its old glory.

Anjali is a guest lecturer in Germany and may or may not come back to Sanjivani soon, depending on her Naagin transformation schedule.

Rishabh now seems to be a semi-decent human being????? Still a bit of a self-obsessed idiot, but definitely seems to be not as much of an asshole.

Rahil is super-serious and also bitter that his best friend just fucked off to America and hasn’t bothered keeping in touch. No one knows where Ishani is.

Ishani is now some kinda nervous wreck who spends her time doing pottery, but not the sexy Ghost kind. Just very sad and jittery and constantly popping anxiety pills (which looked like green Cadbury Gems to me???????) She can’t seem to help a person who sustains a semi-serious injury near her, completely freezing up in the moment.

Mr. Thanda Thanda Cool Cool finds her at the pottery studio, seems quite familiar with her, and tries to gently persuade her to come back to her first love: medicine.

But ofc heterosexuality rears its ugly head and sis can only think of the trash boy that ditched her.

Mr. TTCC brings her to Sanjivani but she behaves exactly like a toddler on the first day of school. There’s having to be coaxed out of the vehicle, reluctant dragging of feet, weeping, the works.

Precap shows her yelling at TTCC and saying he’s the boss of Sanjivani, not her, and kis haq se pakda hai, chodo mera haath!!!!!!!!!! And he gently reminds her of the wedding vows he took, to never let go of her.

Looks like the poor dude may have invested and rebuilt all this just for her and……………… in the end he’s gonna have to let her go to Dr. FuckBoi, mirroring the end of DMG, which……………… *prolonged, defeated sigh*

AND THAT’S WHAT YOU MISSED ON GLEE SANJIVANI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#sanjivani #bullet point recaps #tt answers #theincorrigiblemagpie

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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 4 years

Text

Space Movie, Space Cement & PokeCoin

Nanoo Nanoo.

Ryan Gosling is going back to space for Andy Weir's next book, which isn't even out yet but is already casting actors. This one has a working title of Project Hail Mary and features a lone scientist on a spaceship trying to save the world. Slightly higher stakes than The Martian, but Andy's books are always great.

Astronauts are also going to use pee to build houses on the moon. Let's hope NASA has a large surplus of air fresheners to send up with them, because this cement is probably the most useful way to use human waste on the moon, but it's going to smell.

Back on Earth, Niantic are trying to deflate the Pokecoin economy by severely lowering the minimum wage. Nobody seems to be happy with this, but Australia is just the test site, so it's coming to a phone near you soon.

This week Professor took a trip to a far away planet to care for slimes, and DJ found out what happens when you swim with the cardsharks.

Check in next week for probably less pee jokes. Probably.

Andy Weir’s Space Film starring Ryan Gosling

-https://variety.com/2020/film/news/phil-lord-chris-miller-ryan-gosling-astronaut-movie-1234607851/

Introducing….Piss-ent: the new space cement

-https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronauts-lunar-exploration-cement-urine-urea-3d-printing

-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619340478?via%3Dihub

PokeCoin: Gotta cash them all

-https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/glcywi/tales_from_the_front_one_players_experience_with/

Games Played

Professor

–Slime Rancher – https://store.steampowered.com/app/433340/Slime_Rancher/

Rating: 2/5

–Legends of Runeterra – https://playruneterra.com/en-us/

Rating: 4.5/5

Other topics discussed

The Martian (The Martian is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. The Martian, a 2011 novel by Andy Weir, served as the screenplay adapted by Drew Goddard. The film depicts an astronaut's lone struggle to survive on Mars after being left behind, and efforts to rescue him and bring him home to Earth.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a 2018 American computer-animated superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Miles Morales / Spider-Man, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Marvel, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Verse

Andy Weir (American novelist whose debut novel in 2011, The Martian, was later adapted into a film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott in 2015.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Weir

Sean Bean Death Scene Compilation 1986-2016

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnzk5qAaNLk

First Man (First Man is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Damien Chazelle and written by Josh Singer. Based on the book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, the film stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and follows the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969. Steven Spielberg serves as an executive producer.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Man_(film)

Interstellar (2014 epic science fiction film directed, co-written and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Matthew McConaughey. Set in a dystopian future where humanity is struggling to survive, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humanity.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film)

Raid: Shadow Legends (freemium mobile and PC game developed and published by Israeli game developer Plarium Games.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid:_Shadow_Legends

-https://raidshadowlegends.com/

Girl being hit by a truck while playing Pokémon Go

-https://time.com/4405221/pokemon-go-teen-hit-by-car/

Pokémon Go disrupt a funeral

-https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-08/pokemon-go-blamed-for-brisbane-funeral-disturbance/7700332

List of highest-grossing mobile games

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery forces you to pay - or wait - to save a kid from being strangled.

-https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-27-harry-potter-hogwarts-mystery-is-ruined-by-its-in-game-payments

Harry Potter mobile game maker defends child-choking scene which asks you to wait or pay money

-https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-31-harry-potter-mobile-game-maker-defends-child-choking-scene-which-asks-you-to-wait-or-pay-money

Pokémon Go Hits $3B in Lifetime Revenue

-https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pokemon-go-hits-3-billion-lifetime-revenue-1250983

Wall-E: Do not Return to Earth Scene played by Fred Wllard

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNXNkdZVqs4

Groucho Marx’s look

-https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Groucho_Marx_-_portrait.jpg

RC2014 is a simple 8 bit Z80 based modular computer originally built to run Microsoft BASIC. It is inspired by the home built computers of the late 70s and computer revolution of the early 80s.

-https://rc2014.co.uk/

Sgt. Slaughter On The Time Andre The Giant Fell Asleep Mid-Match

-https://www.mandatory.com/wrestlezone/news/1060153-andre-the-giant-sgt-slaughter-zzzz

Andre The Giant (2018 TV documentary film based on the life of French professional wrestler and actor André René Roussimoff (better known as André the Giant).)

-https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6543420/

Star Wars Day (Star Wars Day, May 4, celebrates George Lucas's Star Wars media franchise. Even though the holiday was not created or declared by Lucasfilm, many Star Wars fans across the world have chosen to celebrate the holiday. It has since been embraced by Lucasfilm and parent company Disney as an annual celebration of Star Wars.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day

An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents (TNC podcast)

-https://thatsnotcanon.com/grandiloquentspodcast

Heavenly Shows and Unnecessary Letters (TNC Podcast)

-https://thatsnotcanon.com/heavenlyshowspodcast

Shout Outs

15 May 2020 – Fred Wilard passes away at 86 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcberman1/2020/05/16/comic-fred-willard-dies-at-86/#5461bf6d7f10

Frederick Charles Willard, was an American actor, comedian and writer. He was best known for his roles in the Rob Reiner mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap; the Christopher Guest mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration and Mascots; and the Anchorman films. Willard’s other recurring sitcom roles included Family Matters,Sister, Sister, Mad About You, and Everybody Loves Raymond (the latter which resulted in Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy for three consecutive years). He even appeared as the only human character in the animated film "WALL-E," a first for a Pixar film. Willard was one of Hollywood's busiest comedic actors with a career that lasted more than 50 years, playing clueless characters such as sidekick Jerry Hubbard on the satire "Fernwood 2 Night" in the 1970s. He recently finished filming the Netflix series “Space Force,” where he played actor Steve Carell’s father. He died from natural causes in Los Angeles, California.

18 May 2020 – Ken Osmond passes away at 87 - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/arts/television/ken-osmond-eddie-haskell-dead.html

Ken Osmond, who played the duplicitous teenager Eddie Haskell on the long-running sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” one moment a smarmy young man when talking to parents, the next moment a devilish troublemaker when the adults were out of sight. Mr. Osmond appeared in all six seasons of “Leave It to Beaver,” 1957 to 1963, one of the most-watched television sitcoms of the era, then reprised the role as an adult version of Eddie in the Disney Channel revival series “The New Leave It to Beaver” in the 1980s. After Leave It to Beaver ended in 1963, Osmond continued to make occasional appearances on such television series as CBS's Petticoat Junction, The Munsters, and a final return appearance on Lassie in the episode "A Matter of Seconds" as a motorcycle delivery man who offers the hitchhiking collie a lift in his sidecar. However, he found himself typecast as Eddie Haskell and had difficulty finding steady work. In 2008, Osmond told radio host Stu Shostak in a radio interview, "I was very much typecast. It's a death sentence. In Hollywood you get typecast. I'm not complaining because Eddie's been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by. In 1968, I bought my first house, in '69 I got married, and we were going to start a family and I needed a job, so I went out and signed up for the LAPD. As an officer on motorcycle patrol, he grew a mustache to disguise himself. In 1980, he was shot three times in a chase with a suspected car thief but escaped serious injury: One bullet was stopped by his belt buckle, the others by his bulletproof vest. He was put on disability and retired from the force in 1988. He died from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and peripheral artery disease in Los Angeles, California.

19 May 2020 – Red Dead Redemption Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/red-dead-redemption-turns-10-years-old/1100-6477391/

On May 18, 2010, Rockstar Games released Red Dead Redemption, an open-world Western video game, on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Universally acclaimed for its artistry, dramatic storytelling, and freedom of choice, the game sold 17 million copies. But despite the game's reputation today, it's important to remember a time when its success wasn't certain, and Rockstar's developers sought to distinguish it from the studio's prior accomplishments. It subsequently attained a 95 on Metacritic and received over 170 Game of the Year Rewards. It led to a revitalized interest in the Western genre, especially the "Spaghetti Western"revisionist works by Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. And after eight years, players got a sprawling prequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, which built upon and deepened the themes of its predecessor. Taken together, the two games are an American epic about modernization, betrayal, and the demons of the past. The West may be dead, but that won't stop us from reminiscing and keeping its memory alive.

Remembrances

19 May 1825 – Henri de Saint-Simon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Saint-Simon

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon. He created a political and economic ideology known as Saint-Simonianism that claimed that the needs of anindustrial class, which he also referred to as the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy. He said the primary threat to the needs of the industrial class was another class he referred to as the idling class, that included able people who preferred to be parasitic and benefit from the work of others while seeking to avoid doing work. Saint-Simon stressed the need for recognition of the merit of the individual and the need for hierarchy of merit in society and in the economy, such as society having hierarchical merit-based organizations of managers and scientists to be the decision-makers in government. Saint Simon's conceptual recognition of broad socio-economic contribution, and his Enlightenment valorization of scientific knowledge, soon inspired and influenced utopian socialism, liberal political theorist John Stuart Mill, anarchism through its founder Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who was inspired by Saint-Simon's thought and Marxism with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels identifying Saint-Simon as an inspiration to their ideas and classifying him among the utopian socialists. He died from suicide at the age of 64 in Paris.

19 May 1935 - T. E. Lawrence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence

Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities. In 1916, he was sent to Arabia on an intelligence mission and quickly became involved with the Arab Revolt as a liaison to the Arab forces, along with other British officers. He worked closely with Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt, and he participated, sometimes as leader, in military actions against the Ottoman armed forces, culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918. After the war, Lawrence joined the Foreign Office, working with the British government and with Faisal. In 1922, he retreated from public life and spent the years until 1935 serving mostly in the Royal Air Force, with a brief period in the Army. For the RAF, he participated in the development of rescue motorboats. In the inter-war period, the RAF's Marine Craft Section began to commission air-sea rescue launches capable of higher speeds and greater capacity. The arrival of high-speed craft into the MCS was driven in part by Lawrence. He had previously witnessed a seaplane crew drowning when the seaplane tender sent to their rescue was too slow in arriving. He worked with Hubert Scott-Paine, the founder of the British Power Boat Company (BPBC), to introduce the 37.5 ft (11.4 m) long ST 200 Seaplane Tender Mk1 into service. These boats had a range of 140 miles when cruising at 24 knots and could achieve a top speed of 29 knots. He died from a traffic collision at the age of 46 in Bovington Camp, Dorset.

19 May 2009 - Robert F. Furchgott – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Furchgott

Robert Francis Furchgott, Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist who contributed to the discovery of nitric oxide as a transient cellular signal in mammalian systems. In 1978, Furchgott discovered a substance in endothelial cells that relaxes blood vessels, calling it endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF). By 1986, he had worked out EDRF's nature and mechanism of action, and determined that EDRF was in fact nitric oxide (NO), an important compound in many aspects of cardiovascular physiology. This research is important in explaining a wide variety of neuronal, cardiovascular, and general physiologic processes of central importance in human health and disease. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nitric oxide as a new cellular signal—shared in 1998 with Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott's discovery, that NO gas causes blood vessels to dilate, provided a long sought-after explanation for the therapeutic effects of Nitroglycerin used to treat Angina pectoris and was later instrumental in the development of the erectile dysfunction treatment drug Viagra. He died at the age of 92 in Seattle, Washington.

Famous Birthdays

19 May 1942 - Gary Kildall - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers, rather than equipment controllers, and to organize a company around this concept. Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with IBM's unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM Personal Computer. Kildall and his wife Dorothy established a company, originally called "Intergalactic Digital Research" (later renamed as Digital Research, Inc.), to market CP/M through advertisements in hobbyist magazines. Digital Research licensed CP/M for the IMSAI 8080, a popular clone of the Altair 8800. As more manufacturers licensed CP/M, it became a de facto standard and had to support an increasing number of hardware variations. In response, Kildall pioneered the concept of a BIOS, a set of simple programs stored in the computer hardware (ROM or EPROM chip) that enabled CP/M to run on different systems without modification. CP/M's quick success took Kildall by surprise, and he was slow to update it for high density floppy disks and hard disk drives.After hardware manufacturers talked about creating a rival operating system, Kildall started a rush project to develop CP/M 2. By 1981, at the peak of its popularity, CP/M ran on 3000 different computer models and DRI had US$5.4 million in yearly revenues. He was born in Seattle, Washington.

19 May 1944 – Peter Mayhew - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mayhew

Peter William Mayhew, was an English-American actor, best known for portraying Chewbacca in the Star Wars film series. He played the character in all of his live-action appearances from the 1977 original to 2015's The Force Awakens before his retirement from the role. When casting the original Star Wars (1977), director George Lucas needed a tall actor who could fit the role of the hairy alien Chewbacca. He originally had in mind 6-foot-6-inch (1.98m) bodybuilder David Prowse, but Prowse chose to play Darth Vader. This led Lucas to cast Mayhew, who was working as an orderly in the radiology department of King's College Hospital, London. He became aware of a casting call for Star Wars which was filming at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. The 7-foot-3-inch (2.21m) tall actor was immediately cast as Chewbacca after he stood up to greet Lucas. Mayhew continued working as an orderly—at Mayday Hospital (now Croydon University Hospital)—in between filming the original Star Wars trilogy. Mayhew modelled his performance of Chewbacca after researching the behaviour of bears, monkeys and gorillas he saw at London Zoo. Lucas said Mayhew was "the closest any human being could be to a Wookiee: big heart, gentle nature and I learnt to always let him win". The character did not have any lines, the sounds he made being derived from sound recordings of animal noises. While Mayhew portrayed Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he was not in Star Wars: The Last Jedi but was listed in the credits as "Chewbacca Consultant". He was born in Barnes, Surrey.

19 May 1946 – André the Giant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_the_Giant

André René Roussimoff, best known as André the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor. Roussimoff stood at over seven feet tall, which was a result of gigantism caused by excess growth hormone, and later resulted in acromegaly. It also led to his being called "The Eighth Wonder of the World". He found success as a fan favorite throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, appearing as an attraction for various professional wrestling promotions. During the 1980s wrestling boom he was paired with the villainous manager Bobby Heenan and feuded with Hulk Hogan in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). The two famously headlined WrestleMania III in 1987. Outside of wrestling, he was best known for appearing as Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. After his death in 1993, he became the inaugural inductee into the newly created WWF Hall of Fame. He was later a charter member of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame and the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame; the latter describes him as being "one of the most recognizable figures in the world both as a professional wrestler and as a pop culture icon." Towards the end of his career, Roussimoff starred in several films. He appeared most notably as Fezzik, his own favorite role, in the 1987 film The Princess Bride. Both the film and his performance retain a devoted following. In shoot interviews, wrestlers have stated that he was so proud of being in "Princess Bride", he carried a copy of the movie everywhere he went, to watch whenever he could. Roussimoff has been unofficially crowned "the greatest drunk on Earth"for once consuming 119 12-US-fluid-ounce (350ml) beers (in total, over 41 litres (72imp pt)) in six hours. He was born in Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne.

19 May 1955 – James Gosling - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling

James Arthur Gosling, often referred to as "Dr. Java", Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. He wrote a version of Emacs called Gosling Emacs (Gosmacs) while working toward his doctorate. He built a multi-processor version of Unix for a 16-way computer system while at Carnegie Mellon University, before joining Sun Microsystems. He also developed several compilers and mail systems there. He is known as the father of the Java programming language. He got the idea for the Java VM while writing a program to port software from a PERQ by translating Perq Q-Code to VAX assembler and emulating the hardware. He created the original design of Java and implemented the language's original compiler and virtual machine. He also invented an early Unix windowing system called NeWS, which became a lesser-used alternative to the still used X Window, because Sun did not give it an open source license. He is known for his love of proving "the unknown" and has noted that his favorite irrational number is √2. He has a framed picture of the first 1,000 digits of √2 in his office. He was born near Calgary, Alberta.

Events of Interest

18 May 1980 – Eruption of Mount St. Helens - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens

On March 27, 1980, a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows began at Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington, United States. It initiated as a series of phreatic blasts from the summit then escalated on May 18, 1980, as a major explosive eruption. The eruption, which had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 5, was the most significant to occur in the contiguous 48 U.S. states. It has often been declared the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history. The eruption was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes, caused by an injection of magma at shallow depth below the volcano that created a large bulge and a fracture system on the mountain's north slope. An eruption column rose 80,000 feet (24km; 15mi) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states and significant ash in two Canadian provinces. At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles (80km) to the southwest. hermal energy released during the eruption was equal to 26 megatons of TNT. Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland, causing over $1 billion in damage (equivalent to $3.4 billion in 2019), thousands of animals were killed, and Mount St. Helens was left with a crater on its north side. More than 4,000,000,000 board feet (9,400,000m3) of timber was damaged or destroyed, mainly by the lateral blast. At least 25% of the destroyed timber was salvaged after September 1980. In areas of thick ash accumulation, many agricultural crops, such as wheat, apples, potatoes and alfalfa, were destroyed. As many as 1,500 elk and 5,000 deer were killed, and an estimated 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon fingerlings died when their hatcheries were destroyed.

19 May 1999 – Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released - https://www.scifihistory.net/may-19.html

On this day in 1999, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was released theatrically ... and most of us came crashing understandably back to Earth. Employment consultant firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that 2.2 million full-time employees missed work to attend the film, resulting in a US$293 million loss of productivity. According to The Wall Street Journal, so many workers announced plans to view the premiere that many companies closed on the opening day. The release on May 19, 1999 of the first new Star Wars film in 16 years was accompanied by a considerable amount of attention. The Phantom Menace was released almost 16 years after the premiere of the previous Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi. The film's premiere was extensively covered by media and was greatly anticipated because of the large cultural following the Star Wars saga had cultivated. It grossed more than $924.3 million (equivalent to $1.42 billion in 2019) worldwide during its initial theatrical run, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1999, the second-highest-grossing film worldwide and in North America (behind Titanic), and the highest-grossing Star Wars film at the time.

19 May 2005 – Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith was released - https://www.scifihistory.net/may-19.html

George Lucas brought his Prequel Trilogy to its tragic close when Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith finally showed audiences what exactly went down when Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker embraced his inner demons and took the path to the Dark Side of the Force. Luke and Leia were born, delivering the film's only true hint of what things would inevitably lead to their father's redemption, but an Empire was forged in darkness once and for all on this day. Its theatrical release in most other countries took place on May 19 to coincide with the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace (the 1977 release of A New Hope and the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi were also released on the same day and month, six years apart).

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

Facebook

- Page - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/

- Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/440485136816406/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

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General Enquiries

Email - [email protected]

Rate & Review us on Podchaser - https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/nerds-amalgamated-623195

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silmarillionwritersguild · 5 years

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Silmarillion Writers’ Guild October Challenge: Start to Finish

Spend even five minutes reading advice on how to write powerful fiction, and you will likely encounter the concept of the hook: a first line or lines crafted to snare your reader into reading your story. Whether you believe in this advice or not, there are definitely books with first lines that leave the reader intrigued, puzzled, or awestruck, fitting overtures to some of the most powerful, profound novels written in English.

For this month's challenge, choose one of the famous first lines from the list below and use it to start your story. If you are creating a fanwork other than writing, you may use one of the first lines to inspire your fanwork. Challenge entries are due by November 10 in order to receive a stamp. As always, late entries are welcome but do not receive stamps.

Since you are using another author's first line, please credit the source in your story notes. Full challenge guidelines can be found on our website.

Prompts are below the jump.

"We slept in what had once been the gymnasium." ~ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

"She was the first to arrive where it seemed the wind no longer exhaled." ~ Ishmael Beah, Radiance of Tomorrow

"It was a pleasure to burn." ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"In my time, I have been called many things: sister, lover, priestess, wise-woman, queen." ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"I lost an arm on my last trip home." ~ Octavia Butler, Kindred

"Mother died today." ~ Albert Camus, The Stranger

"A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: 'Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!'" ~ Kate Chopin, The Awakening

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold." ~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting." ~ Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

"All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths." ~ Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"I am an invisible man." ~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting." ~ William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire." ~ Neil Gaiman, Stardust

"It was love at first sight." ~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." ~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

"They were able to guess his age, but had more trouble determining which part of the world he came from." ~ Arnaldur Indriðason, Arctic Chill

"Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened." ~ Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught on my homeworld that truth is a matter of the imagination." ~ Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." ~ Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

"My suffering left me sad and gloomy." ~ Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

"124 was spiteful." ~ Toni Morrison, Beloved

"When I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me." ~ Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

"Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy." ~ Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

"It was night again." ~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"All this happened, more or less." ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

"You better not never tell nobody but God." ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple

"I'm pretty much fucked." ~ Andy Weir, The Martian

"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." ~ Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

#swg challenge #silmarillion #tolkien

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prolestariwrites · 4 years

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F, K, R, S

F: Here is a bit of The Dark Heart. I really loved writing this scene in Chapter 4:

"I desire the sun," she answers. "I desire the fresh air, the wind on my face, the grass beneath my feet. I desire the moon and the stars."

"The moon and the stars? Is that all?" He is mocking her, laughing under his breath, and Elizabeth blushes at the sound. "You goddesses are an interesting bunch certainly."

K: The angstiest idea I ever came up with was probably my fic The Story of Us. It takes place in modern day, and Meliodas is still meeting and losing Elizabeth. I cried writing it anyway lol.

R: The writers I think I’ve been most influenced by are classical ones, probably most of all Shakespeare. I know it seems cliche but he just gave the people what they wanted in a clever and wonderful way. My favorite contemporary writer is probably Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere and American Gods are goals. As far as fanfic writers go, I was heavily influenced by a writer who was active over a decade ago named Andi Horton (look them up on FFNet, they are great!!), and still think about their stories from time to time.

S: My fave fandom tropes are definitely “rivals/enemies to lovers” (and back and forth again) and “huge powerful guy (bonus points if he is scary but has a heart of gold) gets life ruined by person half their size and doesn’t take any crap”.

#nnt #fanfiction asks

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so-shiny-so-chrome · 5 years

Text

Witness: Tyellas

Creator name (AO3): Tyellas

Creator name (Tumblr): thebyrchentwigges

Link to creator works *https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/works?fandom_id=51060

Q: Why the Mad Max Fandom?

A: I’ve been a fan of postapocalyptic scifi since my teens. But it took me until Fury Road to really fall in love with the world of Mad Max. Living Down Under probably helped.

Q: What do you think are some defining aspects of your work? Do you have a style? Recurrent themes?

A: For Mad Max, my style varies very much based on the character point of view. Max's terseness is very different from a History Person's verbal rambling. Recurrent themes for me...Some of them tie back to canon, like the fragility of Wasteland technology and the quirkiness of human nature. There's a lot of geology and a consistent thread of land-based spirituality - an Antipodean influence, there.

Q: Which of your works was the most fun to create? The most difficult? Which is your most popular? Most successful? Your favourite overall?

A: Most popular overall – Definitely “Gastown Nights.” Max, Furiosa, sexual tension, adventure in a setting with the Wasteland wildness turned up to 11 – what’s not to like? Most fun – Writing fluff is always fun, even if the world’s falling apart around it. “Very Max, Much Wasteland, Such Dog,” my take on Max Gets A Dog, and “If You Give a Pup a Flamethrower” stand out to me. Most difficult – Several of my Miss Giddy stories were harrowing, “Weave a Circle,” “One Way Ride.” At one point writing “Weave a Circle” I glanced in a mirror and was shocked – shocked! – to not be looking at the face of a tattooed 76-year-old.

Q: How do you like your wasteland? Gritty? Hopeful? Campy? Soft? Why?

A: Gritty as, mate, but always with that glimmer of hope. Because that's how it would be.

Q: Walk us through your creative process from idea to finished product. What's your prefered environment for creating? How do you get through rough patches?

A: I may jot down a story’s core idea, then let it ferment a few months. I might think I’m writing something just for myself, then it will take on a life of its own. When the time is right, I’ll think and plan around it, then do an outline. I like Kurt Vonnegut’s advice that a character in a story should want something, “even if it’s just a glass of water.” A glass of water is a big thing in Mad Max! For a writing environment, I’m very lucky – I have a home office, a desk chair, a desk specially set up for writing. If part of a story is giving me trouble, I’ll treat it like the eye of the storm. I’ll write around it, write down to it – I’ll write everything but that part! Once the frame is in place around the difficult part, that helps.

Q: What (if any) music do you listen to for help getting those creative juices flowing?

A: For Mad Max, Ocker rocker classics from the 70s and 80s. Songs by Goanna, Cold Chisel, Dragon, AC/DC. New Zealander Neil Finn's song "Sinner" always makes me think of Max.

Q: What is your biggest challenge as a creator?

A: Finding time when I have inspiration, and finding inspiration when I find time.

Q: How have you grown as a creator through your participation in the Mad Max Fandom? How has your work changed? Have you learned anything about yourself?

A: I've grown so, so much as a writer. Descriptions, plot, research. Getting over myself and putting that crazy idea out there - and learning that it was worthwhile if it found one reader. Personally, I decided I would probably survive an apocalypse, which is always good to know.

Q: Which character do you relate to the most, and how does that affect your approach to that character? Is someone else your favourite to portray? How has your understanding of these characters grown through portraying them?

A: I took the long road around to this one, because it took getting into the Mad Max fandom for it. I'd say I relate the most to...Aunty Entity. She's determined, she's creative, she's femme, and she has excellent taste in henchpeople. Oddly, I've never written about her, for all that I have screeds about Furiosa, the Vuvalini, and the History People. Aunty Entity has aspects of those three. My Furiosa is calculating, fierce, stony, and, after the Fury Road, willing to make terrible decisions for a long-term goal or a greater good. After a mostly Citadel life, she’s used to better living, and both disgusted and horrified/saddened by how others are getting by.

Q: Do you ever self-insert, even accidentally?

A: All the characters we write about are our shards and our reflections. I do have a draft of a piece for a Self-Insert week that never took off, where I hitch a ride in the Nullarbor desert with some Buzzards.

Q: Do you have any favourite relationships to portray? What interests you about them?

A: I've written smut, and in my fics both canon characters and OCs get laid and find love. "Citadel Nights" is a novel-length fic about love and sex in the Mad Max apocalypse. But the most enduring relationship in my fics, one that all characters deal with, is...their own one with the Wasteland. That post-apocalyptic world around them. For some it's chaos and ruined dreams. For some it's horror yet opportunity. And for some of them, it's simply how it is. My story quartet "Wasteland, Seize My Bones" delves into this in all kinds of ways.

Q: How does your work for the fandom change how you look at the source material?

A: For Mad Max, I seek it out and look at it in more detail. Some of it takes some finding. It took me a while to track down the novelization of "Beyond Thunderdome". There were some jaw-dropping interviews with George Miller back in the 80s!

Q: Do you prefer to create in one defined chronology or do your works stand alone? Why or why not?

A: I can't help creating in one defined chronology. That's just how my imagination works. Every Mad Max story of mine fits into a timeline. I've sketched out that timeline over two notebook pages, like the nerd that I am.

Q: To break or not to break canon? Why?

A: For Mad Max, I'm usually in line with canon. Mad Max canon itself is so rich, flexible, and berserk that most of the plots and actions I wanted to write fit right in. Like most fan creators, I did make it gayer.

Q: Share some headcanons.

A: Oh, so many! Have three: - Furiosa wears her keys on the left: Max wears his on the right. - There are two popular headcanons around Miss Giddy: long-term Citadel denizen or Wasteland Survivor Having Adventures. I like the second one better. - Immortan Joe and the Bullet Farmer had a thing going on for a while there.

Q: If you work with OCs walk us through your process for creating them. Who are some of your favourites?

A: There are OCs and there are "characters who had three frames in the movie/outtake." Very often I'll create an OC to fulfil a plot moment and then...they're not done...they tap my shoulder with more stories. I have a list of my Mad Max original characters for reference. I need it because I have *forty-nine* of them. Wretches, War Boys, Milking Mothers, Wastelanders, antagonists. My favorite OCs are the ones I've spent the most time writing about - if an OC of mine has a POV story, you know I liked them. Or somebody else did and made a request!

Q: If you create original works, how do those compare to your fan works?

A: My original works seem positively sybaritic compared to my Mad Max fan works!

Q: Who are some works by other creators inside and outside of the fandom that have influenced your work?

A: There were all these different creative factions – Maxiosa shippers, War Boy lovers, the Gigadumpster focusing on the villains – having fun. That in itself was inspiring. For a while I was unable to read @sacrificethemtothesquid ’s Length and Breadth of Fury Road. Its gravitational field of influence was that strong for me. And I adored the story “The Bullet Farmer’s Daughter” for its ruthless postapocalyptic extremes. For Max and Furiosa and their particular dynamics and madness, I’m influenced by J.G. Ballard – his compelled postapocalyptic wanderers, his cool, in-charge women. For my History People writing, influences include Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, and Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem”.

Q: What advice can you give someone who is struggling to make their own works more interesting, compelling, cohesive, etc.?

A: The time you spend planning your project helps bring it to life. Thinking, plotting, outlining, deciding your ending and working up to it. If something seems crazy or self-indulgent, but *feels* real or right, there’s emotional truth and weight behind it. Readers will sense that and respond to it. Write it and see what happens. Thanks to our protagonist of few words, Mad Max writers suffer less from verbosity than other fandoms. Still, keep a sentence 20 words or fewer: keep a paragraph 6 – 8 sentences or fewer. Your reader will stay more engaged with your writing.

Q: Have you visited or do you plan to visit Australia, Wasteland Weekend, or other Mad Max place?

A: I'd love to go to Wasteland Weekend sometime, but I live in New Zealand. It's been great to meet up with some fellow Mad Max fans in Australia, and to have Mad Max-like moments when I'm visiting there. Walking down an industrial street, lost, when a gang of masked bikers roar by, disrupting the crows into their own corvid cries...

Q: Tell us about a current WIP or planned project.

A: I've got two Mad Max WIPs that will be done, come hell or high water. I'll share their titles: "In the Heart of the Wasteland Sun" and "A Favourite Has No Friend".

Thank you @thebyrchentwigges

#Mad Max Fandom Creator Spotlight #Mad Max Fandom Spotlight #mad max fanfic author spotlight #mad max fanfic #fury road fanfic #Mad max fandom #fury road fandom #tyellas

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trulycertain · 5 years

Text

All right, so I’ve had a couple of people come to me asking if I can beta for them, which is one part terrifying to one part flattering, and I’ve had several conversations this week with followers about writing stuff. And about writing improvement.

I think I have some Thoughts.

Look, in my opinion, I'm quite often a terrible writer. I’m self-taught, I’ve picked up some bad habits, and my grammar is... um. Let’s just ignore my grammar. I need to refresh several things. (Where the hell does a semi-colon go in a list? Please. Help. Also, I need someone to surgically extract about half my adverbs.)

But I see so many people ripping into new ficwriters with that old-school LJ "sporking" mindset and crying "MARY SUE!!!" and... honestly?

That's not criticism, that's... shiticism. Excuse my French.

Yes, sometimes someone has a bit of an ego on them, especially if they’re new to a skill. That might grate on you. Fair enough. But if they’re not hurting anyone or forcing you to read, ripping into a new writer teaches them nothing except to shut up and be afraid. If someone's actually willing to learn and put the effort in and this matters to them, why crap on something they've put their heart into? Especially if one doesn't have to read it or pay for it.

I see so many self-conscious ficwriters who either don't dare write anything or define themselves entirely by "Look! I'm so much better than those self-insert/Sue/[whatever's out of vogue now] writers!" and... that doesn't always teach you to get out of negative patterns. Often it just inculcates you into different negative patterns, and a crab-bucket mentality where you and your feedbackers are so busy panicking and dragging each other down you don't get anything written.

I'll be honest, overpowered OCs are usually not my cup of tea as a reader. But I'm not going to wander in and tear someone's fic apart, and if someone comes to me for help, I am certainly not going to take that trust and hurt them with it. I see a lot of nicely done OCs because of being in RPG fandoms. I love watching people build protags with distinct voices and backstories they've put a lot of heart into. And statistically, yeah, sometimes you get stuff old-school fandom would call Sue-ish, but I don't think a beginner story where someone feels out the ropes and is proud of themselves for writing is going to ruin my day or destroy the world. Why bother being a jerk about it? And how does that ever teach someone to write?

Five times now, from different followers, I’ve heard things like, "A commenter tore my story apart, and I still remember it, and I cried but it was such good constructive criticism." And it might just have been a bad day, but if someone made you cry? That’s... probably not constructive criticism.

If people had treated me when I started drawing the way a lot of people treat new writers in fandom -

Actually, no, scratch that. Some people in real life did treat me like that when I picked up a pencil. That meant I put it down again pretty fast as a kid and didn't even try to draw until adulthood, when I was scared stiff and fought the impulse to hide everything I was working on. And I didn’t start again because of tough love, I started because people encouraged me.

Everyone goes, "Those poor kids!" but I don't really care if a writer's six or sixty, the principle of "be a decent teacher" applies.

Silencing is not teaching. If someone’s left scared and despairing and stops writing, you have taught them nothing. You’ve failed.

Random anecdote:

When I was looking at going semi-pro (long time ago, and bluntly put, I wasn’t brave enough at that point), I used to be on a writing forum. They prided themselves on their merciless criticism and their “I’m just being honest!”

And you know what happened? Crab bucket.

No-one ever tried to get anything published or optioned, no-one ever went to go and try and find an agent, because they were all too busy tearing each other's stuff down to feel better. They might have had some good points, once, but it got buried in the echo chamber and the self-importance.

I went in expecting pros to be brutal, to have to gird myself all the time. And they... weren't. Because I'd learned to write partly in crab buckets. And the pros, the real pros, know well enough not to do that. Because they’ve got less to prove, and a lot of them are readers themselves, or were fans themselves once. They want new stuff in the field, not to scare someone off writing forever, because then they'll have no new colleagues and nothing to read.

The worst that'll happen is the slush pile, and that just means hearing nothing or a form letter. (Very few pub houses do bit-by-bit critique rejection letters these days, and if they do, the good side of it is you've caught an editor or an intern's attention and they cared enough to go through it. And they may remember your name next time.) I got rejected by Clarkesworld. And I had the shakes sending my stuff in, but when I got the rejection? It actually... didn't hurt. Because I was so proud of myself for even trying and being brave enough to do it, and hell, getting seen by a slush pile intern in the same magazine that published Alastair Reynolds and Neil Gaiman. Because it was proof I'd tried and once I'd done the big scary thing, I could do all the smaller magazines and the anon stuff.

"Tearing someone's fic apart" is not criticism, it's fuckwittedness, and if someone knows how to be a decent beta, they don’t do it. A good reader recognises their own bias and realises that they’re coming in with subjective thoughts and skewed views of their own, and doesn’t represent themself as the only authority.

If you’re here for actual writing advice and not just a rant (I am so sorry), here’s some advice I’ve given a couple of mutuals. This is what works for me, and it might not work for everyone else. I tried?

I had to stop associating feedback/concrit with personal validation, because that made writing an emotionally fraught activity rather than something safe. So I never have friends beta read or edit my work, because I want a professional boundary or a common goal there. I let myself make mistakes and grin at "This is awesome!" comments with fic, because it's a practice ground where I'm just doing my best, rather than trying to ask for money with it or make a career out of it. It lets me relax. I definitely don't mind concrit and rather like it; it's not the thing itself, it's having a pseudonymous boundary. For that reason, I still don't have friends beta read me. Strangers, fine, friends, no.

A lot of people tell me "bloody hell you're prolific." Well, that one's partly unemployment, can't lie. But before that, when I was working and studying... Learning to write aimlessly changed everything. Doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to be your next novel or a completed short story. I drabbled, focused on 4/500-word snippets and just capturing a mood/place/concept or building the start of a character, whatever took my fancy. Hell, for six months I took phrases I'd read on billboards as daily prompts. Basically, the aim is to start associating writing with fun and relaxation rather than pressure, and to get into the habit of sitting and doing it.

I tend to write longhand (for original, not for fic; it's how I keep the mental lines drawn). That sounds like a helluva lot of work, I know, but it also lets you see your progress so it's not just some... theoretical thing in cyberspace that you can’t quantify. (God, now I sound like I'm from 1995.)

I still am absolute shite at outlining when it's for fic. I'm too relaxed, but I try my best. What got me learning to do it for original and completely changed my process was Scrivener. (Also very good for essays!)

Relatedly, the final thing that made me get into a consistent writing habit was NaNoWriMo. It forced me into it because bluntly, I really wanted half-price Scrivener. And it never wore off. Three years later, I'm here. You might be too busy, too ill or too tired for it, and just not be into it, and that's OK, but a challenge like that can be fun.

If concrit and idea exchange are important to you, it may seriously be worth looking into writing groups, in real life and online. Absolutewrite, for instance, is very publishing-focused and a really good group.

And, most importantly of all:

Don’t give up. It gets easier.

#tru talks #writing #trulycertain talks bollocks #fanfiction #a little kindness can go a long way #i blame watching a lot of sam johnson on youtube #and thinking 'there needs to be more of that sort of thing for writing rather than singing'

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