twincityhacker

I'm feeling all slow and January, which is not an ideal state, but pressing fast forwards on the calendar does not tend to work. So I am actively planning to do A Thing per day and putting it on my magnet board with the little stars for achievements. Listen A Story is currently a star worthy achievement.

So it took me multiple days to get through this 6th Doctor and Peri box set but they were quite good stories
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-sixth-doctor-and-peri-volume-01-2128

... just calling it sixth doctor and peri makes it teensy bit difficult to search on, huh...

The Headless Ones I listened to longest ago and I don't remember specific Good Bits but it was a Doctor Who shaped story.

'Like' has a very social media mediated story and I rather liked it. ( Read more... )

The Vanity Trap did some interesting things with time technology and the end of an era feel of studios shutting down. Also the behind the scenes stuff feels like they drew a lot from Doctor Who and put a spin on it, as Big Finish should. Good scary ideas and plausible characters.

"Conflict Theory" was doing a lot of Being Funny about psychiatry that I didn't really vibe with.
It also mentioned that at this point in Big Finish, post warrior queen, Peri has been travelling with the Doctor for twelve years.
But then it rug pulled the truth status of everything we'd heard so we don't know, by the end.

... just after I noted that Torchwood does that a lot and Doctor Who doesn't tend to.

I don't think I like Nev Fountain's stories. Don't quite click for me.



All the stories could have been appreciated more by someone with a bit more awake focus to spare so I might have a different opinion of them later.


But I have a Nice Walk scheduled for this week, if the weather cooperates, so I'll see whatever sun there is, and the year do turn onwards.

⭐🖖🌞

Yesterday I played Wrath of the Righteous for... probably over twelve hours, before deciding that on those difficulty settings it doesn't even feel like a game. It happens in front of my eyes is all. I can let it play itself on the not-turn-based version, and fights will generally be over in one hit, so why bother? But that sums up my feelings for the automagic fighting in general. Turn based is playing, the other way is getting it over with to get to the next interesting bit.

Exceptions for when the characters decide spinning in place is the optimal strategy or simply don't move at all for several turns. That's just frustrating. It's a fail that only happens because it is a game, so it is boring and like the computer is cheating.

I tried it on a really low difficulty so I could see how Last Azlanti Mode plays. It makes me anxious, because half the load screens tell you If In Doubt Save, and now you have to rely on the machine actually saving and not very often. But it seems achieveable so far.

I am going to have to start it again on a higher difficulty if I want to feel like I am playing the game though.



Also I might be wearing this one game a bit thin. I would happily play other adventure paths, if available. But they aren't, so I am doing and redoing the same one.



But I played it on super easy because playing on Hard is in fact Hard. I can go back to that one and feel like every fight is an accomplishment.


I think my ideal difficulty is sort of Daring plus bonus behaviours. A very custom difficulty. But playing that way doesn't get you any achievements and the difficulty achievements are very nearly the only ones left to do.

Or the DLC midnight isles ones. But again, that doesn't feel like a game, just endless fights.

eh, shall think of something else to do.

I noticed how many days I did not post so *waves*
I got all tired out doing xmas even though that was like two movies with a meal in the middle
so the next day I slept like twelve hours

the tired sleepy is mostly winning this week

but it's cool, I already read one of my xmas present books, just in several installments due to the sleeping.

Yuletide isn't grabbing me. Don't know what I would have looked for but it isn't there.


I haven't been doing much fic reading this year until right at the end when I started to read All The Constantine fic and got sidetracked by apparently Justice League Dark canon.


I have thoughts now about how characters can change so much by staying exactly the same that they become unrecogniseable. And how becoming iconic absolutely trashed the fundamentals of the trenchcoat brigade. You shouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd, that's what the coat is *for*, what do you mean Legends' coat is designer enough you can tell from the collar, the original comics coat might be a demon in itself from being worn to hell and back, and Dark has the coat be inherited??? I mean, utterly changing the meaning of the symbol every time, much? Also! Being a punk when punk was the new thing signifies something entirely different than being a punk when you grew up a generation later. Every generation's music should generate its own trenchcoat Constantine and I feel strongly about that even when I am not enough of a music person to have a clue how to do it. And! There are trends and developments in occultism too! Like seriously, I haven't paid attention since the 90s but there's several waves of 20th century New Hot Thing I vaguely read about. Vertigo!John had a very specific relationship with them when I was reading. If you keep him standing still in some kind of post modern mashup that mostly references previous issues of *itself* now then you smush the meanings into a new kind of Tradition instead of the original Transformation, in music and magic both.

I have opinions and they're not very educated on this one, but still.


I have only the vaguest of ideas what a guy you couldn't pick out from the crowd who is still the explosive New Thing would look like even if he was my age exactly, it would change rapidly. I have no idea what a 21 year old rebel looks like right now.


So. Feelings about Iconic and iconoclasm. I has them but they're all vague and get off my lawn.

Oh, and I'm not complaining about how other people write, that's not the way up I mean. It's just the guy who acts the exact same way at 20 and 60 becomes a very different guy, even if a sliding timeline gets involved, and so do his cultural referents. And it's interesting even when annoying and makes me want to reinvent again.

And there's a character who when I google him the articles rather improbably say he's a way of bringing a multiverse John back into JLDark? Only then they are dating. And then he's evil. Which is a lot, and apparently in very few issues, which I haven't read. But. At this point a trenchcoat using the exact punk magic of the Vertigo sort could have a generation or two of *mentors*, and relationships within a community doing the same things. Not just lateral ones (like you get in BtVS xovers because Ripper and Conjob were interestingly similar). Long term community that existed before you got there. And that is a different guy! And it's fascinating even if they aren't magic married, but if they *are*... well none of the fic is doing the same as the other fic so I can only assume source is really skinny on this one but, concept.


I keep thinking I could do something fiction shaped with several concept, but the characters in my head don't even match the fic, let alone the sources, so I'd have to file serial numbers off or something.

Like I keep coming back to the question of who wants to be John Constantine when they already know about John Constantine, because you kind of need to to explain John, and it's a tricky one. He built the icon and now what?

Now a lot of canon I haven't read that sounds very dark.

And some TV show I have waiting for me to watch any time I want to get up and do that.



Mostly though I am probably going back to sleep.

Just like in general this week.