The Mighty Nein
Oct. 9th, 2025 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settiaiOh, they've finally released the trailer for the first season of The Mighty Nein! And it looks amazingly good!
I've gotta admit, I'm very curious to see what they end up doing for this series. While I love CR2, the fact that the pandemic happened in the middle of it and they had to unexpectedly take a multiple month hiatus really caused some disconnect in the campaign itself. They've already said they're reworking some plot-related things for the animated series, and I'm really hoping that will fix some of the campaign's weaknesses because the story itself is amazing.
I really wonder what they're going to do with the release schedule. For The Legend of Vox Machina, it's had twelve episodes per season and they've released it in four batches of three episodes each over the course of a month. This series is going to have hour long episodes instead of half hour ones, so I really wonder A. how many episodes the season will be and B. if they'll release it one episode a week.
My suspicion is that it will be eight episodes released weekly, since that's what Amazon does for other hour-long shows like The Rings of Power. We'll have to wait for them to officially confirm it, though.
The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 4
Oct. 9th, 2025 10:49 ammarycatelli in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
booksThe Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, Vol. 4 by Grrr
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Dragon Age Poly Exchange
Oct. 8th, 2025 02:12 pmsettiaiAssignments just went out for the Dragon Age Poly Exchange, and I've got to admit that I'm very excited about my assignment(s) for this one.
As is the case for most single fandom exchanges, I offered Any and offered to take multiple initial assignments if needed for matching purposes, so I had no idea whatsoever what I would get. That said? My muse is definitely interested after reading the prompts that I was given, although some of them are very much not relationships that I ever would have considered myself.
I'm very curious to see just what I end up writing.
As is the case for most single fandom exchanges, I offered Any and offered to take multiple initial assignments if needed for matching purposes, so I had no idea whatsoever what I would get. That said? My muse is definitely interested after reading the prompts that I was given, although some of them are very much not relationships that I ever would have considered myself.
I'm very curious to see just what I end up writing.
(no subject)
Oct. 8th, 2025 04:30 ambeccaelizabethPlayed Wrath pf the Righteous an unreasonable number of hours yesterday, due to it being Microwave Delivery In My Kitchen People day and I took a while to unwind.
Act 4 is proving pretty smooth to play with the half dozen characters I have been playing most of so far. I did the achievement with the Pathetic Quasit, though it took me a couple of goes because I had dispelled all its spells and then they all came back in one round and WTF there is no game mechanical way to put that many spells on at once ugh. Well, it took me three goes, but the first time one of my characters hadn't dimension doored up with the rest of us so that one doesn't count. But again I find it's not that I am getting better it's that it's actively difficult to lose once Daeran Arendae can spam Mass Heal and throw about Ressurection spells. Going anywhere without him is... bad.
( Read more... )
The more time I have been awake and playing the more I just try stuff to see what happens, and I was just thinking what a weird experience that must be for the characters. Like sometimes your Knight Commander is a careful defense first kind of a leader who gets you through Act 3 without losing soldiers, and sometimes they're like, you know what? Let's just firestorm the heck out of the abyss. First team needs sleep, second team you're up. Come on chop chop demons to kill. And then they have to resurrect you but they can now so they start treating it as Big Shrug with a teensy apology?
And then I get some sleep and the KC gets their original personality back.
What would that even be like in universe? So random.
ANYway
My accomplishments are few but the xbox gives me little trophies for them so I keep going.
Act 4 is proving pretty smooth to play with the half dozen characters I have been playing most of so far. I did the achievement with the Pathetic Quasit, though it took me a couple of goes because I had dispelled all its spells and then they all came back in one round and WTF there is no game mechanical way to put that many spells on at once ugh. Well, it took me three goes, but the first time one of my characters hadn't dimension doored up with the rest of us so that one doesn't count. But again I find it's not that I am getting better it's that it's actively difficult to lose once Daeran Arendae can spam Mass Heal and throw about Ressurection spells. Going anywhere without him is... bad.
( Read more... )
The more time I have been awake and playing the more I just try stuff to see what happens, and I was just thinking what a weird experience that must be for the characters. Like sometimes your Knight Commander is a careful defense first kind of a leader who gets you through Act 3 without losing soldiers, and sometimes they're like, you know what? Let's just firestorm the heck out of the abyss. First team needs sleep, second team you're up. Come on chop chop demons to kill. And then they have to resurrect you but they can now so they start treating it as Big Shrug with a teensy apology?
And then I get some sleep and the KC gets their original personality back.
What would that even be like in universe? So random.
ANYway
My accomplishments are few but the xbox gives me little trophies for them so I keep going.
Scarlet Street
Oct. 7th, 2025 02:25 pmgwynnegaBack in 2021, when I was writing my poem "the ending" about my late father and his film I Bury the Living, I had a lot of questions I wished I could ask him (including how he got the idea for the movie and whether it bothered him that he had to rewrite the ending). I did some research online, but many questions remained.
The following year, my mother died, and in the midst of packing up her house with the people from the bank in charge of this undertaking, I discovered an issue of Scarlet Street: The Magazine of Mystery and Horror in the office. Someone had left it out in plain sight, maybe thinking it would be of interest. The issue was from 1993. I saw Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland on the cover and grabbed it, though I had no idea what it was doing there. I didn't give it much thought, though, overwhelmed by grief and the million tasks before me.
Over three years went by, and although I kept the magazine where it wouldn't get lost, I didn't have the heart to peruse it. I may have briefly paged through it at some point; I think I had some idea that it contained something about one of my dad's movies. Finally on Sunday, I was ready to look through it. It features a lot of interesting articles (Carroll Borland! Curtis Harrington! Elizabeth Russell!). And it contains a lengthy appreciation of I Bury the Living, featuring lengthy quotes from my dad and a lovely photo of my parents on their honeymoon(!).
Reading through the story felt almost like a dream, there was so much information about my dad's life and career I didn't know, told in his own voice. He tells how he came up with the idea for I Bury the Living, and indeed, how much it bothered him to have to rewrite the ending. In 1993, my dad was already pretty incapacitated from Parkinson's, but his mind was still sharp enough that it was possible for him to recount all this information in a coherent, engaging fashion. A year later, even, this probably wouldn't have been possible, so it feels like even more of a gift that the writer of the piece got to him in time, so I could, eventually, read it.
The issue is available online, along with the other issues of Scarlet Street.
The following year, my mother died, and in the midst of packing up her house with the people from the bank in charge of this undertaking, I discovered an issue of Scarlet Street: The Magazine of Mystery and Horror in the office. Someone had left it out in plain sight, maybe thinking it would be of interest. The issue was from 1993. I saw Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland on the cover and grabbed it, though I had no idea what it was doing there. I didn't give it much thought, though, overwhelmed by grief and the million tasks before me.
Over three years went by, and although I kept the magazine where it wouldn't get lost, I didn't have the heart to peruse it. I may have briefly paged through it at some point; I think I had some idea that it contained something about one of my dad's movies. Finally on Sunday, I was ready to look through it. It features a lot of interesting articles (Carroll Borland! Curtis Harrington! Elizabeth Russell!). And it contains a lengthy appreciation of I Bury the Living, featuring lengthy quotes from my dad and a lovely photo of my parents on their honeymoon(!).
Reading through the story felt almost like a dream, there was so much information about my dad's life and career I didn't know, told in his own voice. He tells how he came up with the idea for I Bury the Living, and indeed, how much it bothered him to have to rewrite the ending. In 1993, my dad was already pretty incapacitated from Parkinson's, but his mind was still sharp enough that it was possible for him to recount all this information in a coherent, engaging fashion. A year later, even, this probably wouldn't have been possible, so it feels like even more of a gift that the writer of the piece got to him in time, so I could, eventually, read it.
The issue is available online, along with the other issues of Scarlet Street.
Sanders' Union Speaker
Oct. 7th, 2025 02:06 pmmarycatelli in booksSanders' Union Speaker: Containing a Great Variety of Exercises for Declamation, Both in Prose and Verse by Charles Walton Sanders
Another collection of extracts for the scholar. This differs from his Union Readers and New Readers in that it is, overtly, aimed at performance before crowds. Some have directions on how they are to be staged, down to the observation that the poem about being a man is more comic when told by a young boy than an older one.
Many more comic pieces. Also, the time of publication is clear, since many pieces directly address the war. More speeches and poems and fewer essays. But its selection does cast quite a light on the times.
Another collection of extracts for the scholar. This differs from his Union Readers and New Readers in that it is, overtly, aimed at performance before crowds. Some have directions on how they are to be staged, down to the observation that the poem about being a man is more comic when told by a young boy than an older one.
Many more comic pieces. Also, the time of publication is clear, since many pieces directly address the war. More speeches and poems and fewer essays. But its selection does cast quite a light on the times.
Recent Reading: One Dark Window
Oct. 7th, 2025 08:54 amrocky41_7 in booksMinor spoilers below for One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
I didn't pick this book up so much as had it breathlessly thrust into my arms (along with the sequel) by a dear friend who I couldn't disappoint by refusing. I swore to give it a real chance, despite the fact that she and I frequently disagree about what is quality writing, and initially I was able to sink into the conceits of the story. I enjoyed the Nightmare and his relationship with Elspeth (although I suspected I would be disappointed that he did not end up being the love interest, and I was right about that), the general mystery of Blunder, and the way even the characters themselves seem to know little about how the magic of their world works.
The initial set-up chapters were the most enjoyable; once the real plot reared its head, the book started falling apart for me.
A significant part of that is the romance, which had me rolling my eyes at various points. You could make a drinking game out of how often Raven--sorry, Ravyn--is referred to as "the captain of the destriers" instead of his name. I don't mind that Elspeth and Ravyn's romance is telegraphed early and clear--sometimes you're into someone from the get-go--but as a love interest, Ravyn is a surly, controlling killjoy who believes he has the right to demand other people behave the way he wants them to. He intentionally keeps information from Elspeth and then gets angry with her for acting without that knowledge. Then again, maybe they fit, since they both seem to immediately dislike most other people around them.
The book wants Ravyn to be sexy with his competency and knowledge, but he often comes off as infuriatingly patronizing and Elspeth embarrassingly infantile. The hissy fit she throws when he doesn't want to pretend to be courting her was cringe-inducing. Girl maybe it's just not about you, a woman this guy has known for less than 48 hours.
The writing itself quickly becomes repetitive, and the author lives in terror we might forget a single character's eye color. The rhymes which begin each chapter get old, as they themselves are internally repetitive, and not very clever.
None of the characters are ever allowed to do anything embarrassing, because that might render them marginally less sexy. Elspeth is, as are so many female main characters in romance novels, a klutz, which gives her plenty of opportunity to be cutely embarrassed over absolutely nothing without doing anything that might actually be embarrassing.
Blunder is a mishmash of European cultures and time periods without taking clear inspiration from any of them, which I could almost let pass, except that at any of the times which lend inspiration to Blunder, Elspeth would have scandalized by repeatedly and openly spending time alone with single adult men and no chaperone. The book clearly takes vibes inspiration only.
At the halfway mark where I ended my journey through Blunder, our little gaggle of card thieves does not seem particularly competent, and I can't say I have any interest in how their adventures resolve. I'll have to tell my friend they're just not for me.
I didn't pick this book up so much as had it breathlessly thrust into my arms (along with the sequel) by a dear friend who I couldn't disappoint by refusing. I swore to give it a real chance, despite the fact that she and I frequently disagree about what is quality writing, and initially I was able to sink into the conceits of the story. I enjoyed the Nightmare and his relationship with Elspeth (although I suspected I would be disappointed that he did not end up being the love interest, and I was right about that), the general mystery of Blunder, and the way even the characters themselves seem to know little about how the magic of their world works.
The initial set-up chapters were the most enjoyable; once the real plot reared its head, the book started falling apart for me.
A significant part of that is the romance, which had me rolling my eyes at various points. You could make a drinking game out of how often Raven--sorry, Ravyn--is referred to as "the captain of the destriers" instead of his name. I don't mind that Elspeth and Ravyn's romance is telegraphed early and clear--sometimes you're into someone from the get-go--but as a love interest, Ravyn is a surly, controlling killjoy who believes he has the right to demand other people behave the way he wants them to. He intentionally keeps information from Elspeth and then gets angry with her for acting without that knowledge. Then again, maybe they fit, since they both seem to immediately dislike most other people around them.
The book wants Ravyn to be sexy with his competency and knowledge, but he often comes off as infuriatingly patronizing and Elspeth embarrassingly infantile. The hissy fit she throws when he doesn't want to pretend to be courting her was cringe-inducing. Girl maybe it's just not about you, a woman this guy has known for less than 48 hours.
The writing itself quickly becomes repetitive, and the author lives in terror we might forget a single character's eye color. The rhymes which begin each chapter get old, as they themselves are internally repetitive, and not very clever.
None of the characters are ever allowed to do anything embarrassing, because that might render them marginally less sexy. Elspeth is, as are so many female main characters in romance novels, a klutz, which gives her plenty of opportunity to be cutely embarrassed over absolutely nothing without doing anything that might actually be embarrassing.
Blunder is a mishmash of European cultures and time periods without taking clear inspiration from any of them, which I could almost let pass, except that at any of the times which lend inspiration to Blunder, Elspeth would have scandalized by repeatedly and openly spending time alone with single adult men and no chaperone. The book clearly takes vibes inspiration only.
At the halfway mark where I ended my journey through Blunder, our little gaggle of card thieves does not seem particularly competent, and I can't say I have any interest in how their adventures resolve. I'll have to tell my friend they're just not for me.