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23rd, even.

Also, just to check: this means I'm younger than the PPC, right? :D

I have brought cake of varying types (including cupcake, vegan and gluten-free) for everyone!

Uhhh... yeah, I’ll be happy to call them spheres. Also, that movies sounds so weird that I might watch this the next time I have enough free time...

If you'd be hearing about the zntvpny onyyf bs gur Rvtug Terng Yvggyr Oblf (I swear this is in the movie), you'd be begging to call them 'spheres' too.

I adore Double Trouble. They're such a chaos numpty and my favourite character in the show; I just wish they got more screentime.

Does Dax like to shapeshift into them for a laugh? Ab. So. Lute. Ly.

This is, apparently, "Doctorin' the TARDIS" by KLF. It's more or less a remix of the Doctor Who theme and a stadium chant, and in the video, an old black-and-white runs over a square, cardboard Dalek. I have no explanation, but it's amusing!

For entertainment, I'm currently watching the final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix, which is AMAZING, and if you haven't seen She-Ra yet, you should put it on your list. Every single main character is well developed and sympathetic and makes you care about what happens to them. Every. Single. One. Plus, hella strong female leads, normalizing non-hetero relationships, a variety of skin tones and body shapes, and there's a character who uses "they/them" pronouns who shows up in season... three? ... and it's just good, you guys.

I've also been catching up on Arrow, which is fine for brain candy. Season four is rough, but I'm past it now, and season five is okay. Will probably move on to the rest of the Arrowverse eventually, because I want to have all the context for the musical crossover whenever I get to that. >.>

I'm reading a book called The Genocidal Healer by James White. Came across it in a used book store, and with a title like that I couldn't not pick it up to see what it was about. So far, I'm enjoying it a lot! The alleged genocide is not the main plot, as you might expect; it's basically a pre-credits cold open. Our non-human protagonist, Lioren, is an amazing medic who was sent to help cure a plague that was killing a newly discovered race. Unfortunately, in Lioren's zeal to solve the problem, he rushed into administering the cure too quickly, and this indirectly resulted in a whole lot of the race killing each other. (It's complicated.) Lioren, absolutely destroyed with guilt, wants to be executed for his crime, but everyone else is like "Sorry, but we're a civilized intergalactic federation and we don't actually have the death penalty. How about you go intern for Sector General's Psychology Department under the supervision of the best possible doctor instead? Hopefully you will learn to live with yourself and we won't waste your brilliant mind. Win-win!"

I've since come to find out it's part of a whole series of medical sci-fi books set in Sector General, an enormous multispecies hospital out on the galactic rim. The author's philosophy is nonviolent and non-xenophobic. There's really alien aliens everywhere. Apparently Earth-humans are one of the only races that consider nudity and sexuality taboo (more on how this is handled as I come across it). Do I even have to tell you how much this appeals to my interests?

Seconding the rec for If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device! The latest episode was... pretty much as manic and entertaining as they all are? I don't even know how to explain. {X D

Oh, BTW, Thoth! Phobos tells me there is an actual character in one of the 40k books by the name of Thoth! ... He's a servitor scribe who works for Iskandar Khayon, and was given that name by Khayon. I'd say Agent Thoth wears it better. ^_^ The book in question is The Talon of Horus, if you're interested. Haven't yet read it myself, but I'll get there! More Thousand Sons stuff is always good.

~Neshomeh

That is really, really odd. All I can say is “that really doesn’t make sense. I might like it” and “no, I won’t call them spheres because they’re magical balls”

I've been really into two things during this period of... lots of free time: painting and Japanese movies. I've been planning to make a Dreamwidth post about my favorite underrated gems of Japanese cinema, but there's one that just begs to be introduced to y'all.

Legend of the Eight Samurai is an 80's Japanese fantasy movie/hot mess that's an absolute nonsensical, hysterical delight from beginning to end. It's the movie adaptation of an epic serial I haven't heard much of, but I love this thing with my entire heart. Nothing in this movie makes any damn sense. The story is about a princess trying to defeat an evil clan with the aid of magical dog warriors (not a single samurai in this, by the way, although I blame the English title for that one) - and that's just the way it starts. Events that have absolutely nothing to do with each other happen all the time, people react to things in the weirdest ways (what to do if you find out you're the villain's son? Start playing a magic flute!) the villains' henchmen teleport all over the place because they always appear literally out of nowhere; there are flying snakes, giant centipede monsters, magical balls (please... for the love of... just call them spheres), bubbling lakes of blood, people turning into stone for no reason whatsoever, a Gustave Klimt painting in the background of a fight scene (don't ask, because I don't know), an intensely awkward love scene, Hiroyuki Sanada in black leather and fishnet (jusy try to take him seriously after this one), and the whole thing is scored with the most ungodly cheesy American synthrock ballads. I swear I'm not making up that last part. It's amazing. I beg y'all to watch it, just make sure you get the subbed version and not the English dub.

...Is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix. I binged the first four seasons back in February and the fifth and final season came out on May 15. It's got all sorts of great representation and manages to realistically address some heavy topics while remaining safe for kids (it's a Y-7 show), even though there are some scenes that make you wonder if the censors were paying attention.

The series finale is utterly amazing and satisfying and has actually launched a minor fanfic explosion as the fans explore aspects of Season 5 and what comes next for the characters.

The only negative is that some corners of the fandom can be pretty toxic if you don't share their opinion of certain characters.

I'm right, you're wrong, shut up.

(( With props to Eugene of the Try Guys for that quip, which I've been wanting to use since this started. ))

...that I'm absolutely obsessed with Castlevania now. To the point I've written 80k words of fanfic for it in less than three weeks and am absolutely not letting up.

If you don't mind animated gore and sex and lots of angst, absolutely do go check it out—it's a very dark show but has a ton of amazing snark and I cannot express how much I love this dumb thing. It's only three (very short :( ) seasons so far, but a fourth has since been renewed and there's a rough estimate of release by summer/fall of next year.

It's all hand animated and gorgeously so. If you like anime with the rougher feel of frame by frame animation, at least, it's worth checking out if you don't mind the gore. XD

This is my 30th day in the PPC, and there’s just so much stuff that reading PPC stories is the only thing I’ve really been doing (Other than eating, sleeping, etc). I just finished reading the Blackout story and man, it was good. There are so many stories I still have to read...

Yes, if you’re wondering, I’m plugging PPC stories in the PPC board.

So it seems like a lot of us might suddenly have quite a bit of free time on our hands for... No Reason In Particular because Nothing At All Is Happening In The World (why yes I am deliberately antagonizing future board browsers, why do you ask?). So I'm just gonna talk about a bunch of things that have kept me entertained lately. I invite others to do the same.

This is gonna be super disorganized and just... go everywhere. Sorry.

Warhammer 40k is an inexhaustible supply of content, and while a few of our more active 40k players have been organizing games through Tabletop Simulator on the Discord (after the recent announcement of ninth edition), I've been digging into other things. Like finally picking up the much loved Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) series. Again. Look, I'm easily distracted, but the books are good and funny and as lighthearted as 40k novels can be. And I read all the Ahriman books already.

But as good as 40k's official content can be it's no match for fan creations. Astartes is a 13-minute fan film that is... uh... about Astartes. There's not really much story here, just an excuse for some truly jaw-dropping animation. Like, really good. Five Stars.

Our Lord And Savior If The Emperor Had A Text-To-Speech-Device has also returned. Everyone's Favorite Bisexual Space Dad (aka the Captain General, aka Kitten) sadly hasn't gotten any screentime since the last official real episode (three months ago), but just a few days ago we got a new episode of Bro Trip, which means more Vulkan. And more Vulkan is always a good thing. Additionally, Alfa's been giving us a stream of low-animation "vox-logs" at a rate of about one a month (so, by TTS standards, a blistering pace), which are quite amusing.

Netflix is turning out plenty of good anime, which I've also been watching. Devilman Crybaby is apparently really good and Iximaz has been obsessed with Castlevania, but I've been watching Carole and Tuesday mostly, which is the latest show from the director of Cowboy Bebop. So it's pretty good. Beastars is dark, slick, stylish, and surprisingly fun, so if Zootopia didn't give you your fill on anthropomorphic animal society... well, now here's another one. High Score Girl combines dumb cheesy romance with 90s arcade nostalgia, which I guess means that Japan is now targeting anime specifically at me. Oh, and if you haven't seen the Netflix episodes of MST3k those are pretty good too.

Outside of Netflix, Vinland Saga (one of my favorite manga ever) got an anime, and it's really really good. And also I got into JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. If you want a really smart dumb action series full of variety, cleverness, surreality, and general coolness... well, you're probably watching JoJo's already. If not, Netflix has the first three parts and the rest can be found on any anime service you might have around. I really can't undersell how entertaining these are.

And videogames. Because oh boy I've been playing a lot of them.

But first, if you have an iPhone and/or a Nintendo DS of any sort, you should go buy and play Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I'm not even kidding, it's one of the best adventure/puzzle games I've ever played. And it has an amazing story.

Enough of that. I've been playing Halo for the first time. And despite by intrinsic bias against it (long story)... yeah, it's pretty good if you're into that sort of thing. The story is also fairly well-written, especially by videogame standards. It's a decent piece of classic pulp sci-fi/horror. Halo's spiritual predecessors, the Marathon games (which you can download and play for free because Bungie is super cool like that) are also similarly enjoyable, but I can't really recommend them to any but the hardcore madmen like me. The gameplay is all kinds of wonky.

ScummVM, the all-consuming adventure game platform, recently added support for the Ultima Games. This has brought me towards playing some classic RPGs. Unfortunately, classic RPGs are hard to get into. Like, even Baldur's Gate, which is honestly one of the easier to get into. If you're in the mood for dense philosophy though, check out Planescape: Torment. It's got a lot of great writing and general coolness. Or if that has too much combat and insufficient future detective, check out Disco Elysium, a game about being a detective who got so drunk you lost all your memories and now you have to rebuild your identity by talking to yourself. There's no combat at all, but there's a lot of cool characters and smart dialogue and wide-open branching decisions that let you build the detective you want to build. And I mean wide-open: Do you want to be a horrible racist monster? Go for it.

I mean, probably don't. But you can totally do that if you like.

System Shock isn't an RPG. But it does have a lot of atmosphere. It's an early product of Looking Glass Studios, so it's smart, immersive, and full of environmental storytelling. However, it's also clunky, awkward, and unintuitive (although time has healed those wounds a bit: there's mouselook now). Proceed with caution, but if you're a big fan of the later shock games (like Bioshock) you might want to try it.

And finally, Earthbound. Man, this game just... oooozes charm. It's the most charming game I've played in forever. It can be creepy and messed up at times but it's also very innocent. Playing it feels like cuddling into a warm cozy blanket that was masterfully crafted by blanket artisans. And if you liked Undertale at all, like, even a little bit... you owe it to yourself to play this game.

Well, that's about it for now.

((By the way, it's Damian Thorne. It's just that I've done several embarrassing things under this name, and thus it befits my mirror self more than just "Mirror Damian."))

This has been my first foray into bad slash! It is indeed bad. Aside from the fact that the fic itself is NC-17 (though I've made sure nothing graphic is on-screen), the mission contains these lovely things I felt people would appreciate a warning for: incest, inferred dubcon, a-spec erasure, and foul language.

The continuum is Lord of the Rings.

RC #808: Mission 3

A friend was kind enough to send me the link to this video, and I am so in. The teaser is brilliant all by itself. Who knew the Fellowship have been on constant Zoom chat with each other since before it was even invented(?) just in case the world needs saving again? ^_^

~Neshomeh

I was fangirling squeeing when Orlando Bloom came on, but Sir Ian McKellen?? SIGN. ME. UP.

I AM SO HERE FOR THIS.

The trailer

I don't remember who Josh Gad played, though?

Tomorrow at 5pm UK/12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific, some portion of the Lord of the Rings cast will be reuniting through the medium of T'Internet (specifically T'Youtubes). I don't know exactly who, but:

It's been eighteen and a half years since we first saw this lot together, and I still grinned all the way through the trailer. I mean, just... just watch it. Seriously.

So yeah, Kaitlyn and I will be sitting down to this, live if at all possible. And I encourage everybody in the world to do the same.

hS

((Mirror Neshomesh is not going to like that. The drama is nice though))

I've been working on this for a while. In order to make sure that my permission request shows off as much of my writing skill as possible. I would like a beta who can, in particular, point out any problems with flow, plot consistency, and characterization. Those are definitely my weaker areas.

The Google Document is about 5¼ pages long and there are 1689 words. You don't need any knowledge of any continua (because none appear or are mentioned).

That should be everything you need to know. If it's not, just ask me a question.

I completely forgot that you ever made an attempt at it. I guess it just wasn't that memorable, you know?

But don't worry - Agent Me will most certainly be making up for your failings. Watch This Space.

((I am so sorry, he's awful. I'm actually almost tempted to write Evil Agent hS and Evil Dafydd taking on Don't Panic now - quite possibly with cameos from your Subjugationned agents.))

The critics are wrong that:

-Tolkien just wrote about Absolute Good vs Absolute Evil. The Noldor in the First Age were kind of awful [Gestures at all three Kinslayings, plus the whole colonialism thing], the Numenoreans literally went from good to evil, and the Gondorians were hecka racist (they literally assigned people moral status based on how closely they were related to Numenoreans). Then you've got all Gondor's Imperialist Adventures, and things like the way most of the Shire is quite happy to accept Saruman's fascist state (it's only the misfits in Buckland who really stood up to him before Frodo arrived). Meanwhile, the Evil Peoples are mostly being forced into it by Sauron, whose methods of dealing with rebellion include a) feeding people to werewolves, b) human sacrifice, c) burning entire countries so hard they don't recover for three thousand years, and of course d) the ever-popular slavery. They're not exactly enthusiastic converts, is what I'm saying.

-Tolkien's Good Guys were all white. There's a series of posts (and a download) on this at the Ask Middle-earth blog, but the upshot is that the Rohirrim were white, as were the House of Hador in the First Age, the Vanyar over in Valinor, and the Fallohide branch of Hobbits (the Took-Brandybuck lineage; note that 'Fallow-hide' means 'pale-skin'!). Pretty much everyone else in Middle-earth is either up for grabs, or confirmed darker-skinned.*

*'Brown' and 'swarthy' are the usual terms; I think the only time Tolkien intensifies more than this is one instance of 'black'.

The critics are right that:

-Tolkien's Bad Guy Races are all non-white. They are. There are evil members of the good races, and occasional sympathy for members of the evil ones, but that doesn't change this fact.

-Much of this isn't exactly obvious. Gondorian racism is there in Lord of the Rings if you already know to look for it, as is the fact that two thirds of Hobbits are non-white, but it's in no way highlighted. The fact that the most prominent characters in various races come from the paler parts of those races - Legolas has a blond dad, Galadriel is half Vanyar, Frodo, Merry and Pippin are all Fallohides - is a huge contributing factor here.

Ultimately, Tolkien on race is a very similar question to Tolkien on women. When he addressed it at all, he generally did so decently - but he mostly just ignored it entirely.

hS

Edith and Ruxanda, my DAVD agents, are back to tackle a nice and terribly-written Fatal Frame badfic. My beta, GeniusGamer, had told me that I might need more than one person to look at this, but after we were done with the beta work and editing, the consensus was that the mission was ready to be posted. So, here it is. For those not familiar with Fatal Frame: the fic doesn't follow the games beyond having some characters from them appear (in name, anyway), so you're not missing much.

https://rc746.dreamwidth.org/3864.html

About the mission: normally I'd do my best to rescue a Stu like this, but I really hate the "weep upon my tortured soul" routine, especially when it's this tasteless. I put specific trigger warnings on the top of the post, but... it's a DAVD mission. It's not pretty. I am, however, happy to report that once my other current squickfic WIP is done and posted, I'll be done with squicky missions (and possibly missions altogether, since I'm focusing on interludes now) for a long time.

Also, I wonder how many people will get that actor reference. ^_^

https://rc746.dreamwidth.org/4340.html

Here is the latest interlude - normally I'd be publishing these in separate posts, but this time the interlude is both a direct continuation of the mission and an introduction to my latest agent character, so I'd suggest reading the two together. Enjoy. (The interlude is SFW, as far as I can tell.)

Also, many thanks to GeniusGamer for betaing these. ^_^

The principle there is that before a major change, the badfic isn't all that strongly entangled with the canon. If you kill the badfic before it's entangled, there's a belief that the entangled portion won't be affected - it'll 'break loose' of the section you killed, and actually affect the canon all the more for not having the dead weight of the part you killed.

Or something.

Anyway, 'length' is just one way of describing the process of entanglement. The EPC love it, because it makes their mission reports torture to read (plus the agents get to spend more time out of their HQ). The PPC would rather you find another way. :)

hS