beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I read about Doctor Who being out until they find new people to make it.

I suggest they use the Piper reveal to be the Bad Wolf turning up to rewrite time a bit and take a new angle on the same TARDIS team.

Annoy everyone.

Today I got the Tasks done, watched an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, and played Wrath of the Righteous on Last Azlanti mode.

Did You Know that on Last Azlanti mode it deletes your save if your entire party dies?
I did not know! It does not say this when you are selecting difficulty levels, it just says there is only one save and the computer is the boss of when it is saving.
And Did You Know that your entire party can die from a failed mobility skill check? I did not know! It has never happened to me before, after years of playing Owlcat Pathfinder games. Not even once.
So it was Not A Nice Surprise when I thought hmmm, I may as well go across this log, we can usually make those numbers, and then WHOOSH, all dead, would you like to load your last save except oh oops it is Another Character Entirely.

I did not like that.

Multiple days it takes to play these things even that far, and boom, TPK and out.

I suppose on one level the game did warn us, since the most famous thing about the Last Azlanti is his unexpected permadeath.

Flipping annoying.

I haven't even had the entire party die at once before! But today, whoosh, start again.

So of course I made as far as I can remember the same character with ii after her name and started over again.

I picked a different build for everyone else because if this is the range of possibilities even on Core then I am looking up Unfair builds and hoping somebody knew how to do the maths right.

Sure I could just not play on Last Azlanti. I won't even know if the achievements are working until so late in the game it'll be almost won. But it is the principle of the thing.

... the difficulty level that makes the most sense won't get me any achievements but would I believe be a lot more fun. I should make a character falled Morfun and go back to that...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0p0rz4n0mo
Buffy and Ted Lasso star Anthony Head dies at 72



awful news

Today is Cleaner Day and I am doing so good at making things Cleaner.
I have got things ready for the cleaner and she made it cleaner as per my list.
... also I ran the dishwasher once and the laundry twice, and currently it is drying.

Some of it is drying hanging on the door because I forgot that particular layer was in the bottom of the laundry basket for reasons of awkward, but in the recent weather that'll work out okays.

I was washing things I won't need for a while because I am trying out new laundry capsules. The ones I have been using are New and Improved into making so much stinky I had to ask mum to get them out of my house for me, because you can't leave laundry capsules lying around and they aren't meant to go in the bin anyway. She took them and donated them. But now I have to try new makes until I find one that doesn't make me ill or annoyed. Ecover may be okays, but I have tried it on winter clothes first because I'll have a long time to fix them if it don't work out.

There are shapes you only try to be when you are changing the fitted sheets on a bed up against a wall, and my back is reminding me of this in Several places. I had to take a break in the middle of remaking the bed to just lie on my front for a bit. It was fine.

My days are not especially fascinating lately so I keep not telling the internet about them.



I did rewatch an episode of Legends of Tomorrow just now, and I have listened to 3/4 of the Big Finish Charley and 8 'Further Adventuress'
... I keep stopping and getting distracted. I think I have had enough of Charley by the end of her story arc and effectively popping back to the beginning to fill in some more adventure isn't working for me.
I also played some more Wrath of the Righteous but it is getting harder instead of easier because I have used up more resources and time than I am used to. I am getting Daeran next and hopefully he can keep us alive a bit longer.

I guess if I actually finish a thing or talk about individual episodes as I go along I get more interesting things to say.

My Legends rewatch just saw Nora and Ray trying to get cold fusion. It's interesting how they make Damien Dark get that one tiny glimmer of a second thought and he's suddenly much more fun to watch. A guy who wants to end the world is boring, a guy who wants to giftwrap a perfect world for his daughter and is just absolutely terrible at figuring out how badly that is going is interesting.

Think I shall watch a second episode while I wait for the laundry.

... I have so much laundry needs done but I saw in passing an old journal entry that said the difference between drowning in laundry argh argh and huh this is achievable laundry is like four loads. I can do four loads. I did weird bits and a blue wash, that leaves black and grey and white and the fiddly rainbows stuff I never know what to do with. That's finite laundry. Onwards...

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/early-bird-savings-on-2027-s-classic-doctor-who-adventures

all the Doctor Who adventures listed and bundled for 2027 😊

... that is such a spendy hobby...

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/fare-well-from-torchwood

Torchwood Farewell is really good
the appropriate amount of scary
and weirdly hopeful for something we know the canon ending of.

But now I have listened to All The Torchwood
all 100 audios
the end.



I shall have to hope the Legacy thing they already announced is something nice.


... I do not like reaching the end of the story. But it was a good one...

The weather is Not Pleasing.

... that's about all I have to say today but I am very sure of it.

33C is too many, esprcially with how fast the weather went from 3C to 33C this May.

I have relistened to Charley Pollard up through Brotherhood of the Daleks.
I haven't relistened that one for ages because it was on the big computer not the app in my pocket.
My cunning plan to improve my computer with a little card and put More Doctor Who on it has more or less worked. ... it stopped working twice and started working again when I restarted the computer, but the third adventure went off without a hitch. Current theory: do not move files around while playing things off that drive, it only almost works. Shall see if that holds or if it will get stuck again later.

Brotherhood of the Daleks is nuts. Like, What If ( Read more... ). I read a few reviews and they seem balanced between being impressed at the audacity and pointing out that to understand what is going on properly you need to have watched TV episodes and listened a large handful of Big Finish, and even then it's going to try and trick you many. Getting lost in the twists seems to be the desired outcome. Also it does the thing where it goes to the credits and then continues the story, which is likely to lose you when you're trying to listen on a tiny pocket mp3 player on the bus and can't see the track length. Today I had the whole screen to see the extra minutes so that worked okay.

Charley is getting more annoying to me, as she continues to be the very attached romantic she always has been, but with ever so much more knowledge of how bad she could break the web of time. She should know better, but for all the same reasons, she's not the person who can let go.

... not a deliberate Scherzo reference but...

I did like the scene where she explained her emotions to the Doctor but the ways the story jumps out of the way of him having to react are getting annoying too.

As originally told there were years in between these episodes. Such a weird pacing issue to deal with. It's more or less working listened all in a row.

But this is not my favourite companion.



I also started to listen to a new to me story, 'The Further Adventuress', but I felt like the first episodes were just call backs and references to remind us who Charley even was, and since I just relistened I do recall. Also the bit with the gorilla was just odd, as well as being part of a stack of literary references set in Paris. The story just felt like it was Being Clever so I wandered off back to the monthly range.

... I will finish listening the monthly range eventually, but that day is not yet this one...



Long day of listening, more listening available, pretty cool.

It is funny listening to the Big Finish chatty bits where an actor says they're surprised the stories have gone on so long already
and it is a recording from about twenty years ago
and their next episode is out next month.

Today I had a nice walk to the library and back
where the tiny child rhyme group were singing
zoom zoom zoom we're going to the moon.

... my brain is still singing it many hours and a sleep later...

👋
This week I have finally got sorted out a computer task I was not managing to do for literal years. There's a few fiddly details to fix but basically I have the new computers set up and running, which was getting a bit urgent with the odd behaviour of the older computer.
Unfortunately that means I'm now on windows 11 instead of 10. All the emojis look Bad, including the one I sign my name with sometimes, which is annoying. The keyboards are slightly different including the on screen keyboard. I can't figure out how to stop it suggesting things. It keeps popping up a menu when I'm trying to type and I haven't figured out why yet. It is more than usually pants.
And it keeps trying to search things that are not my computer, thus making it less useful than any previous computer.

But it works, so, yaay ish?

... I can't fit all my files in this littler computer even though they all fit on the older version that said it was the same size. The audio shall have to go on another device. I guess Windows is just eating all the space.

So, typos will be more, typing is more annoying, I keep finding new settings to turn off, and I have nothing interesting to say Anyway.


I have been relistening to 8 and Charley and C'rizz audios. I have little memory of these, it has been a long time since I first listened, and I suspect I mostly listened on the bus on the way to or from college which is a less detailed focused listening experience. They are quite good and Charley is less annoying than I remember. The arc stories keep ending just when I am about done with them. I'd probably like them even better if I didn't listen while I had a headache but headache days are boring.

The last Torchwood monthly adventure is due out soon. I am appropriately apprehensive after the publicity they've been doing. As is everyone on the tag on tumblr. I think I shall have to listen close to when it comes out or read all about it anyway. I hope they do the good horror and not the annoying wreckage. Tricky balance.

... this keyboard is most annoying. It keeps telling me what to type and I cannot figure out why it keeps going back down or giving me the menu from the little window button in the corner underneath it. blah.

🖖🌞
see that doesn't look like llap sunshine on this version of windows at all it is all blobby.

... gifs? I have a keyboard that offers me gifs???
well that is just wrong.


okay, I shall go do something else. probably involving more Doctor Who.

I have been relistening through 8 and Charley starting from the beginning, though I don't have Stones of Venice or Invaders from Mars loaded on the device I'm using so I skipped those for now. ... getting out of bed to grab a CD or use my other computer seemed like Effort. And I'd listened to Minuet in Hell a while ago and did not feel the need to do so again.
Storm Warning is good, Sword of Orion is pretty good, Chimes of Midnight is tedious and annoying and I don't get why it's so popular.
Seasons of Fear did a good ending from a redemption point of view but the paradox of it all is a lot.
Embrace the Darkness was proper creepy and doing audio correctly, and I like the resolution.
Time of the Daleks likes Shakespeare more than I do, and yet does nothing with him. Also just saying that none of the time travel should work doesn't make it less irritating. Even if time travel through mirrors is perfectly acceptable in other episodes so I suppose I also might not have minded if they didn't keep saying it doesn't work.
Neverland is in the right place because I was getting *really* fed up with Charley being inexplicable magic.
Zagreus did at least make a sufficiency of sense on this relisten, but I still can't actually like it.
Scherzo is a level of messed up about dying for each other that makes me vaguely worried about the author, even before you get to the cannibalism, and while it uses audio correctly in many respects, with the terror of not having any sense but hearing, it makes itself full of bad noises deliberately uncomfortable to listen to, so I would on the whole rather not. I understand many people like it and find it the right kind of messed up shippy. I just make wrinkly forehead when I think about it and consider it horror all the way down.

So today I relistened to Creed of the Kromon.
... I see a lot of posts on tumblr pass by referencing
the author's very specific ...interests
and the level of body horror applied to Charley as a means of getting her to breed
after mind control talking her into eating until she can't move
is just
uncomfortable
on more than one level.

It is a bit more dark than I expect from Doctor Who.

I can see why this story had several of its story elements but it also only had two women and the other existed to get fridged by her husband. So I think probably someone should have poked it with a stick a bit more. And maybe done something different instead.



I don't know if I'll keep listening these tonight but they're definitely solid audios even if they are over twenty years old now.

I woke up still pondering Hellblazer but not in a nightmare way, more cultural studies theory stuff.

I still feel that Legends of Tomorrow visits other time zones to play in them, tell the audience how much every other year sucks, and then go home. There's a tension where 'sometimes we screw things up for the better' so in a local way an individual might have their life on a better track, but systemically they remain trapped in all the usual. Hellblazer is specifically rooted in the usual, and the escapes people indulge in are to different mindsets, not different conditions. And that's usually the source of their next problem.

The adaptations keep changing the meanings both by keeping things the same and by stripping the specificity of the context. Timeline drift changes things. Because it is difficult to retell the same story when the world moves on.
( Read more... )


I am going to go get lunch and then read more Hellblazer.

Going back to Legends in between issues would be a mood lifter but it's an i creasingly weird contrast.