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Jan. 16th, 2026 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIt's Friday and I haven't posted for a week so 👋
The news is not something I am having useful thoughts about so I keep ending up using the time travel button on my tumblr likes and sharing stuff from Winter Soldier era MCU fandom. Trouble is everyone seems convinced they're Cap no matter what. Exhausting and frustrating.
So I am spending most time in stories but not getting much read anyway.
Not great.
I listened a Big Finish Doctor Who box set, The Quin Dilemma.
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-sixth-doctor-adventures-the-quin-dilemma-2873
I liked it. The 6th Doctor and companions from all over his time.
There's a bit in one episode where people are trying to figure out which Doctor is first and last in his own timeline, since they all look the same, and they're trying to put companions in order, so 6 goes 'it's quite simple' and lists off everyone he has travelled with so far and it is The Most Not Simple. People leave and come back and leave and come back and mix together in new sets and Peri ... I am not going to try and untangle whatever happened to Peri, it happened extensively and a lot.
Big Finish out there telling us not to worry about little things like linear time or the thing where logically people would on occasion be aging.
Which is fun.
I remember I liked the stories well enough but I could not at this point tell you the individual plots.
But with so many companion shenanigans to fit in I thought they did grand landing it.
Yesterday I finished reading Tanya Huff's Into the Broken Lands
and then went and got The Silvered by the same author off the book shelf, because that was a good read and in the absence of more of it I'll go around the shelf again.
I liked the way the different eras were woven together to show us an unfolding story for two sets of characters and then raise questions about knowledge and the keepers of it and the purpose of it, just by the contrast even before you got to the specifics of the ending.
There was one character who I started the book thinking was insufferable and ended the book thinking that at least the book agreed with me. Not subtle, but, consistently and clearly done.
Good thoughtful stuff, I reckon.
If I had magic I don't know what I would use it for.
I mean there's the whole Enchantment stack that fails on grounds of free will and democracy, but so many of the other spells only exist to do the same thing, change people's minds so they agree with you, but this time possibly because fireball.
Healing is an obvious good but I personally would have to make myself miserable to do any such thing.
Plus the spells for a Pathfinder style healer are adequate for half a dozen people in Pathfinder conditions, so real stuff like epidemics overwhelms the city's magic users every which way you do the maths, which is miserable. You'd have to save it for last resort stuff or something. People would have to choose how to ration it. Unless you could train at least one in six people to do it. Which even Pathfinder does not.
Magic items are good. Clean water. Food supplies.
... but again the numbers matter. Enough for the party is... small.
The RPGs I've bought so many of somehow do not cover the sort of solutions I would find appropriate in as much detail as they cover new and interesting polearms. Makes it tricky.
But like, so many fictional magic users only tackle fictional problems, possibly with a metaphor layer on. Real problems scale up beyond most magical solutions.
I reread The Girl Thing That Went Out For Sushi the other day. Reminded me that one thing people would definitely do with magic is use Polymorph to live the dream.
Also I understand the game mechanical reasons for spells that wear off, but for shape shifting spells that is actually two spells in a row, equally difficult. Wearing off just does not convince me.
People would pick RPG races to turn into but that would only be the beginning.
Sufficiently advanced science or sufficiently advanced magic converge on this one.
But the social acceptance of the fundamental fact that things change when you make them change?
May lag more than a little.
Think I'll go back to reading the books.
The news is not something I am having useful thoughts about so I keep ending up using the time travel button on my tumblr likes and sharing stuff from Winter Soldier era MCU fandom. Trouble is everyone seems convinced they're Cap no matter what. Exhausting and frustrating.
So I am spending most time in stories but not getting much read anyway.
Not great.
I listened a Big Finish Doctor Who box set, The Quin Dilemma.
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-sixth-doctor-adventures-the-quin-dilemma-2873
I liked it. The 6th Doctor and companions from all over his time.
There's a bit in one episode where people are trying to figure out which Doctor is first and last in his own timeline, since they all look the same, and they're trying to put companions in order, so 6 goes 'it's quite simple' and lists off everyone he has travelled with so far and it is The Most Not Simple. People leave and come back and leave and come back and mix together in new sets and Peri ... I am not going to try and untangle whatever happened to Peri, it happened extensively and a lot.
Big Finish out there telling us not to worry about little things like linear time or the thing where logically people would on occasion be aging.
Which is fun.
I remember I liked the stories well enough but I could not at this point tell you the individual plots.
But with so many companion shenanigans to fit in I thought they did grand landing it.
Yesterday I finished reading Tanya Huff's Into the Broken Lands
and then went and got The Silvered by the same author off the book shelf, because that was a good read and in the absence of more of it I'll go around the shelf again.
I liked the way the different eras were woven together to show us an unfolding story for two sets of characters and then raise questions about knowledge and the keepers of it and the purpose of it, just by the contrast even before you got to the specifics of the ending.
There was one character who I started the book thinking was insufferable and ended the book thinking that at least the book agreed with me. Not subtle, but, consistently and clearly done.
Good thoughtful stuff, I reckon.
If I had magic I don't know what I would use it for.
I mean there's the whole Enchantment stack that fails on grounds of free will and democracy, but so many of the other spells only exist to do the same thing, change people's minds so they agree with you, but this time possibly because fireball.
Healing is an obvious good but I personally would have to make myself miserable to do any such thing.
Plus the spells for a Pathfinder style healer are adequate for half a dozen people in Pathfinder conditions, so real stuff like epidemics overwhelms the city's magic users every which way you do the maths, which is miserable. You'd have to save it for last resort stuff or something. People would have to choose how to ration it. Unless you could train at least one in six people to do it. Which even Pathfinder does not.
Magic items are good. Clean water. Food supplies.
... but again the numbers matter. Enough for the party is... small.
The RPGs I've bought so many of somehow do not cover the sort of solutions I would find appropriate in as much detail as they cover new and interesting polearms. Makes it tricky.
But like, so many fictional magic users only tackle fictional problems, possibly with a metaphor layer on. Real problems scale up beyond most magical solutions.
I reread The Girl Thing That Went Out For Sushi the other day. Reminded me that one thing people would definitely do with magic is use Polymorph to live the dream.
Also I understand the game mechanical reasons for spells that wear off, but for shape shifting spells that is actually two spells in a row, equally difficult. Wearing off just does not convince me.
People would pick RPG races to turn into but that would only be the beginning.
Sufficiently advanced science or sufficiently advanced magic converge on this one.
But the social acceptance of the fundamental fact that things change when you make them change?
May lag more than a little.
Think I'll go back to reading the books.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-17 12:27 am (UTC)