beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I have been listening to the Big Finish parts of the big multimedia Doctor Who thingy from back in 2020.
... the chatty bits afterwards are all people saying how weird it is recording at home in their little improvised studios and I may have wound myself up a bit about that era. It's so weird everyone being upbeat about the technology and cheerful about needing to call people who could work from home and then just talking about the acting of it all.

https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-short-trips-master-thief-lesser-evils-2260
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-he-kills-me-he-kills-me-not-2257
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-the-enemy-of-my-enemy-2258
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-mutually-assured-destruction-2259
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-echoes-of-extinction-2262

are the ones I listened to. they did a skip between enemy of my enemy and mutually assured destruction which the chatty bits insisted works quite well because one ends with setting out to work together and the next begins with everything on fire and you can in fact accurately guess all the context you need from there.

I'm going to listen to this one next https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-time-lord-victorious-genetics-of-the-daleks-2354 but I am not doing great at finding all the parts and listening in order so I think that was meant to be listened already.


I like the ambition of a big interlinked story but I mislike the experience of not knowing what is going on so you see the problem. I liked the parts of the story but I do not quite get how to get all the parts. The Big Finish bits work well together and I feel I understand the shape of the set up but. Well. Puzzlement ensues as soon as I zoom out a bit. Big picture is... not.

Which is fine, it's like reading comics crossovers when they never arrive in order and the shop doesn't get all the parts.
... which was never my favourite thing either.

So! I have no complaints about the stories I have got, they were fun to quite good, but the stories I don't got are... trickier.

Enjoyed these, liked hearing the Torchwood audio actors be in different parts, but on the whole prefer to collect All The Things.




(also the power tools in the hall thing was still ongoing today but I listened to the audios mostly successfully anyway, so that was progress. though I look forwards to them being done.)

I saw someone asserting that x vampire killer can't really be considered a *killer* because in any verse with vampires vampires aren't considered to be people

and a, way to be confidently wrong

but b, if you think really, really hard about it, you might be able to see an angle where that is indeed
the problem.

( Read more... )

Today I dreamed I went in the kitchen and found eggs frying
and John Constantine had turned up in actual person
not solely to make breakfast.

So I dreamed acute embarrassment
as if I had sent a fan letter that somehow convinced him there was an emergency.

I mean he is known for turning up to be seen by his writers, but breakfast would be new.



I also dreamed that Ianto Jones was interviewing new applicants for Torchwood
by booking them all in the same hotel, including him, so he could see what they were like outside the formal interview context
and then there would be test/games.

Only then the Hulk turned up and there was a lot of machine gun fire for real, which was rather out of scope for a first interview, though admittedly a fair view of the actual job.

Jonathan from Buffy tried to resolve the situation by using a love spell on Hulk, because he is known for protecting the one he loves.
Unfortunately it turned out magic users had tried it before, so now Hulk was not only not in love, but *deeply pissed off* with Jonathan in specific and particular, which was not going well.

Honestly the applicant who never emerged from their room and seemed to be playing computer games with the sound turned right up was probably having the most surviveable life.

... until Hulk turned the whole whole hotel into something with a flip lid anyway.



Waking up feeling like you accidentally pulled the fire alarm and now everyone you most respect is outside in their sleepwear seeing you in your lack of sleepwear and they all know why
cannot be recommended actually.

Neither can the knowledge that if actual adventure called I'd have to be just that apologetic about it, given relative abilities etc.



If I was writing it though this would be the beginning and the point of the story would be like those Doctor Who episodes where he meets a bunch of random people on a bus or something and it turns out if they work together even random ordinary people can do great things.

... or it would be Midnight. But John Constantine is actually who you want around for Midnight. So that works out.

Have to say, did not quite see that last sentence coming. Knew something was up but did not see what. And it makes the whole series make different sense, and fits together, so fair play to them.

Unfortunately ( Read more... )

John Constantine as a character has a lot of precedent to work with so they've got a lot that is already compelling and they can just give him a showcase and watch him go. So you get a man who they keep calling arrogant, which he is, but he keeps solving things by finding the other people who can do what he cannot and encouraging them to believe in themselves, which isn't arrogant at all. Only turn that around and look at it the other way and you've got a con artist who talks other people into sticking their necks out for him over and over again. He'll risk his life over and over, especially for children, but you can never actually trust him, because he'll do what *he* thinks is right and damn the consequences. He believes he is damned with no hope of a way out, he keeps saying he'll pay when it's his time, but he'll do... so many things to put that time off. And he is *angry*. So angry. He thinks evil needs to be punished. Including his.

Fascinating and compelling character, who got more room to breathe on the other show.



Every wiki I read says that folding John into the Arrowverse retcons this series into the Arrowverse too, but I remain unconvinced. It could be a step sideways of all that.
Plus with the Crisis in the middle we see at least two versions of everyone anyway.

There were a lot of loose threads but they needed to do a Lot better at a great many things before I'd want this particular iteration of the story to be the one to tie them off.

Flawed stories with fascinating character in them.

Watched another Constantine.
Had to do a bit of staring and thinking when the episode ended.
Which is a win for a horror show, and this was a good subtle one.

( Read more... )


Good episode that made me sit and think for a while.



Also made me think about John's domain on Legends, the mansion and what he did with it. It was such a convenient trick of the budget I didn't think about it much, but when it was after this... a house in the dark vs a house in the fire. But so many more people to visit it.


My only other note is the subtitlers need to learn how to spell
barmy
not with an l.


I do not want to run out of this series but I am going to soon.

I watched both parts of Saint of Last Resort today.
Constantine is a compelling character and all the character stuff for him is fascinating, but this show is doing Not Great at the racism of, like where the evil comes from. ( Read more... )

John Constantine is the story's favourite chew toy.

I will be watching these again later to watch him get chewed on.



I am not however as impressed by the plot or how the story treats other characters.

Makes me want to write about what the Hellblazer in my head was about and how I feel like these evils are missing the mark, but I haven't read the comic for decades so the version in my head is likely to be somewhat tenuously extrapolated by now.

Still. Making me think plot bunnies.
Even if it is in reaction to.

I bought the Book of Many Things and as with many rpg books I haven't so much read it as flicked through and got distracted by specific sections repeatedly.

Harrowhall, the castle setting you get if you draw the Throne card, actually really annoys me.

For one, they say Keep to mean a whole castle with an outer wall and a courtyard. The Keep is the bit in the middle, not the whole thing. That's what the word means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep

For another, the art work, the map, and the description, are not a good match for each other. ( Read more... )

It's sloppy, is all, just a lack of joined up thinking, and I don't know if it is keywording correctly for a DnD 5e product but in Pathfinder it is implying game mechanical features the map does not provide.

The map annoys me too. The shape of the castle is not one that you would design for a defensive structure.
( Read more... )


I do like the size of the library. Even using Stronghold Builder Guide units there's room for 12 stronghold spaces in there, at least. That's room for 24 to 36 book lots, which is at least 8 comprehensive book lots for +4s in those rules, maybe 12. Which is all the knowledges covered. Only six master lots at 6 book lots space for +6 each in SBG terms. But the description says it covers all sorts, so a +4 may be implied by space constraints. Though you can also argue 15 stronghold spaces for even more Knowledges covered.
1, 3, 6 book lots for +2 +4 +6.
The description does mention speculative fiction though. Personal experience says you can fill a lot of shelves with spec fic.

In Pathfinder terms though a Book Repository is 4 to 12 squares, and there are... four times as many four square sections as there are stronghold spaces. Even 12 squares is smaller than the 16 squares in a Space. +3 to all Knowledges and a Magical Repository made of the previous owner's specialist collection is therefore supported by the text. With shelves a plenty to spare. Four squares does only mean shelves down the outside of a 10 foot corridor, the drawings only make it look like the shelves are five foot deep. All these ten foot gaps are so Large beings can browse without squeezing. Which is polite and accessible.
A +3 bonus is between the +2 one lot and +4 3 lots so I guess it has to be 2 book lots. Meaning you'd need 3 of it to be +6 sized. Meaning it would fit in the 12 squares not the 4.
... I am getting deja vu and probably wrote this down earlier.

All these bonuses are for one hour of study though. The number of books has to be pretty limited to get exactly the relevant stuff in one hour. And/Or theres an excellent card catalogue.

... or there's not much to know so it's easy to be brilliant...

Also Harrowhall states the whole group and bonus help together can find a specific book in 10 minutes.
I think maybe this is incompatible with the one hour knowledge, or maybe the book was mis shelved or deliberately concealed.


The Harrowhall also has an Observatory ( Read more... )

Also, there are big windows in the chapel and the throne room.
Or, bonus doors with bonus expensive vandalism.

Wait the Throne Room is on the ground floor and states its ceilings are 20 feet tall.
How? There's no gap above it, and the intro says rooms in Harrowhall have ten foot ceilings.
There's no steps down into the Throne Room, there's no steps up in the area above it.
This is a geometrically impossible feature that redesigns the whole ground floor of Harrowhall in contradiction to the written description.

I mean it helps for the illustration but it's explicitly said two contradictory things here.



I've been writing this for over an hour now and it's just me grouching about things no one else is reading.

But it is Sloppy. Three components of one physical description and the writing can't agree with the writing let alone the map and illustrations.

In a hardback fully illustrated in color Book I would hope for better.

Today I relistened to
Torchwood The Conspiracy and
Torchwood Forgotten Lives

The Conspiracy starts the Comittee of Erebus, which is honestly a bit boring even if you throw in the possible crossover opportunities with Pathfinder's name for a layer of Hell. I don't think we really need aliens in our conspiracy theories, people trying to get rich seems like sufficient motivation of itself. The misinformation bit where they tell patchwork truth in amongst the mess so nobody will believe it later? *sigh* little bit depressing.

Forgotten Lives I relistened to because I'd started wondering if Jack in this one was actually Jack. I think he's meant to be but it's also possible Gwen got tricksed, the story Jack started as such a simplified version and then Gwen and Rhys kept adding details. So there's one spin where it wasn't actually him but snogging everyone was a good enough impression he could get Gwen to unlock classified Torchwood stashes. And there's the other one, more interesting I think, where a Jack who says he lost track of his age after the first couple of thousand is stuck in the body of an ill old man and suffering his mental decline. Nightmare time. And then at the end it is implied he's going to get swapped around between bodies being all sorts of people for an unknown length of time. But still trying to act like Jack. And the new bodies are not immortal but he got reloaded into one after the old body died, so does he reset to his own body when he gets killed and then get sent out again? He says it'll be torture but it's a story mine and a half.

I'm not sure how they think it'll work though, the redistributing society thing. I mean sure that body was in charge yesterday but why would hierarchy depend on body? I can see it being incentive to make every body live in reasonable conditions, like environmental laws and free healthcare stuff, but I don't see how it would be much different from remote working in the end.

... which is another weird comment now I think about it and a Story again.




I miss when Jack could be in the stories and I would be Deeply Displeased if they cast another actor, but they have left themselves a story loophole with this and other body swap stories.


I want the Torchwood range to keep going for as close to forever as possible, but we are not getting that kind of luck. Last few coming out. I liked how it could be stories from any time Torchwood existed, a hundred years and change of the past and thousands of years of future so far. And without the Doctor there the range of endings got really broad. It's interesting.

But to be fair it does not give the range a strong through line or specific characters to get emotionally attached to, and the characters going away was the fandom's basic problem with Miracle Day, so, I can see why it doesn't have the same draw as the Doctor Who ranges.

... if I win the lottery i shall clearly have to do something about that...


But relistening now is good.


... especially as I am avoiding listening to the last few ones on account of then they are over. Boo...

Have watched first disc of Constantine.
Want to watch them all in a row but unfortunately then I will have watched them.

The theology of the horror story is still deeply screwed
but
I can entirely believe the character John Constantine believes the things that lead him to choose as he does.

Also if anyone turned up preaching happy shiny forgiveness better way to him he would be *angry* angry.
Where were the alternatives when he was looking?
... in Legends of Tomorrow, sometimes, maybe, but not here on his own show.

The way horror tragedy constructs the story to lock the ever so sympathetic main character into
Hard Choices
is a great big Thing.

Of course there should be a better way, but then we wouldn't be in this genre, so you get a story that believes in the Fall but is at best equivocal about redemption.

Interesting enough stories, compelling as ever character.

Torchwood is back on the radio and therefore on Sounds again.
Lost Souls and Asylum now, Golden Age and Dead Line in a bit.
And searching for them I found the scripts page

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lskw2
https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/scripts/whoniverse/torchwood/radio-plays

The episodes that went out as Drama on 4 are harder to search up and do not appear to be scheduled again yet:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fbw8
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fcym
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012fqsz

I always recommend listening to House of the Dead in broadcast date order and without spoilers, but at the moment that do seem to mean buying it. Worth it though.

I finished the season of Legends of Tomorrow.
The theological incoherence has annoyed me yet again.
The ethics depends on the physics and the physics is never consistently defined.
I purely do not understand why what the Legends did is supposed to be the right thing to do.
Even more, I don't see why it is right this time and the opposite is right when Ollie does it.
Except the thing where the writers are very plural and can just do that.

So.


Annoyed me.

I keep on trying to come up with a good way to start a story with a relatable protagonist (ie kinda me)
and it is difficult.

To start with I do not go out much, so the story either starts at the duck pond or it comes to me.
... very little comes to me.
... mail order Adventure isn't the main chance, I feel.

I think I have a Terry Brooks book about it on the shelf below the edge of the bed but crucially once the protag bought the adventure he went to it. Which I personally would not be great at.

A protagonist who has to bring a support worker with them would be keenly relatable to many, but, I do not think support workers typically sign up for Adventure. I mean, there's supposed to be paperwork about making a safe working environment. They want to know before they go in that there are smoke alarms and an ongoing lack of fires. It seems like their number one priority would be to get away from Adventure as swiftly as possible and bring their person with them.

... at that point it is the support worker's Adventure, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind.

... got distracted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Kingdom_for_Sale%E2%80%94Sold! which I haven't read in a reeeeeaaally long time. I should reread that.
... also vacuum under the bed.


I keep circling back to the Deck of Many Things because it is a way to have unexpected random Adventure happen. Like, pull the Throne card, and now you have a Castle of your very own. In D&D you probably have to fight something for it, but it's still yours already.
... imagine having to pay the taxes on a castle you can't even clear on your own.
... imagine one of them castles like in Book of Many Things, the sort with ghosts and all that, and it's yours now, and probably not far past the duck pond if it's somewhere you can actually get to.
... a lot of people would be quite put out about that.

Oh, imagine instead one of the existing castles suddenly being magically transferred into your ownership. Tourist trap... becomes a bit too literal if it's suddenly a challenge for adventurers.

There aren't many castles intact enough to make good defensive fortifications. I have looked around several of them. Not as big as you think, tea rooms are nice, not originally designed for accessibility. Rather the reverse. Also, extra flippin slippery in winter. Vivid memories of finding an icy patch in school uniform, do not recommend.

But if you suddenly got one of those via Throne card, you'd have a grade one listed building to look after, a sudden tax situation, a lot of tourists to look after, and not necessarily anywhere resembling a place to sleep. Or possibly somewhere resembling but full of waxworks.

... that is another way to have Adventure come to you. Imagine being one fo the tourists, and their support worker. Imagine how annoyed you'd be if you had to adventure your way out of a haunted castle and then realise you weren't even the main character, because the MC is taking the Throne back in the big stone thing.



In some rpg sule sets there are ways to turn downtime into magic items. In some sets you might not need anthing but time. Thirteen to thirty years of Epic Doing Nothing should make for some impressive magic items.

GURPS rules about religious magic item creation are what I'm thinking of but it has been Long since I looked up a GURPS rule so I can't cite it right now. ... several minutes poking the internet just tell me I have forgotten a lot about GURPS so I can't bet on this brain cell being correct.

ANYway, I'm not sure it's at all helpful to base an adventure on a Reward For Doing Nothing.



In Pathfinder ageing rules there's days you get an improvement to your mental stats - specifcally on tour actual birthday, you lose out on some physical and gain some mental. And in Pathfinder both Sorcerers and Oracles can have magic without any deliberate effort on their part, usually statted off Charisma. But you'd need a 10 in Charisma to even cast cantrips. So, in theory, you could wake up on the birthday you become Middle Ages, or officially Old, and just suddenly be able to do cantrips or orisons when you couldn't before. And it would probably be embarrassing once someone figured out why, because now they know how charisma you are not. But someone who was at a minus modifier on charisma was probably a bit clumsy with people and potentially not doing grand at friends. Might be a bit isolated. So, in a totally not a reward way, you could go from being isolated to having magic. It just wouldn't be the direction of causal in the other idea.

Also, if your prime casting stat is that low, you are not doing grand at Adventure without quite a bit of help.



I suspect I am not doing grand at Adventure. Unless visiting the ducks counts.
... the ducks would probably prefer a lack of pond based Adventure.



The Asking for Help phase is a bit trickier about Adventure when you don't have the social mechanisms implied by the existence of the Pathfinder Society. I mean if Pathfinders are real then you call the Guild and explain you need to found an adventure party, or hire one but that is very spendy. You'd have standardised Charters as suggested by effectively the Adventurer's Guild, and you could probably find a handful of people to agree to help you clear a castle for a split of the treasure.

You could not however get rid of them afterwards or get to be the one who decides who keeps what treasure, on account of all being the same level (enforced by Pathfinder Gulld in the computer version of Pathfinder, as is standardised pricing for hiring). Once you are out umbered by Adventurers they can pretty much do as they will.

It's a puzzler.

Of course if you call one of the real world emergency services about the potentially trap filled castle you are not going to be leading the response. They will treat you rather differently than a Fellow Adventurer. And if you decide you want to be them when you grow up it would have minimum Adventure content.



Even with Story people, if you call the Watchers or Slayers about a problem, this does not usually result in a new best friend Slayer, it is likely to resilt in a Slayer who does their job and tells you to wait outside while they do it.

Trying to work with Torchwood gets you treated like Ianto as best case, and more likely as fanboy from Random Shoes Eugene.

... haunting the usual protagonists is a rather extreme way to be In The Story and on the whole I would prefer not.


Call the Waverider for help and you could get all sorts. They're more likely to treat you as an equal but that might not go so great for you. Also they lie a lot a lot if they think they need to work around you, so your new friends might not be.


... okay it is one in the morning and the plot bunnies have gone down the well trod rabbit hole of And Then They Leave, instead of the useful one of And Then Adventure.



Today my best idea for how to get invited to storm my own castle involves a castle that is only Probably there, and they have to bring me to make the castle decide to Actually exist. It do make it sound like the least fuss version is to make it Not Actually Exist, but the tourist trap aspect would certainly solve that. ... being useful once in there would be a mixed bag though, even with the accompanying Diplomacy boost.


In the Book of Many Things their Throne castle is specified as having statues of Istus. I looked up Istus and she's the spinner of fate? Legends of Tomorrow has an equivalent. Tricky to recognise a shapeshifter goddess. Especially tricky to figure out which one fo the statues, if any, actually is a result of Flesh to Stone.

... I decided the shapeshifter friend needs a fancy freindship bracelet so she's recogniseable.
... that exact reason would be why she wouldn't wear it but worth a try.



Okay, silly oclock in the morning, time to go attempt rest.

Today I learned:
There is a unit of weight, grains, that goes into troy and imperial weights as a nice neat whole number
so you don't have to fiddle around with grams with approximations after a decimal
to try and
honestly
figure out what one Pathfinder gold piece is worth in today's gold market
(it is A Lot)(probably passed £1000)(that is so much more than it was five ten twenty years ago)

there will of course be a lot of fiddly decimals in the middle of your calculation
but
whole numbers of grains.

I feel like I learned a Key for old units
because my mum said there was a nice whole numbers one
we just didn't use it any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(unit)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems#Weight_and_mass