Today I watched The Husbands of River Song
which is funny but at least a bit mean and then sad and then back to complicated happy
and very much full of feels.
( Read more... )



So I finished watching and decided the next Bug Finish listen had to be the River Song set I haven't listened to yet.
But so far it is River and Ace and Tegan and not actually remembering everything and working at cross purposes and being bad at lying (Ace and Tegan) and doing terrible accents (the actors realised the characters can't act as well as they can) and it is an interesting setup but not particularly feelings yet so I managed to displease me with a perfectly reasonable story.

Also the temperature continues Blergh.



So I am going to check the internet for a bit before I listen the second episode.

I have rewatched Clara's last season up to the Zygon pair.

The episode where immortal Me stops caring and starts again was only sort of interesting for what the Doctor is saying about himself. ( Read more... )
Good enough story but didn't make me chew over it in ways distinct from my general thinking about Jack and Immortals.



The Zygon stories though... they made me very angry this time. ( Read more... )

That said, very strong writing, many good aspects.

But it was strongest about the Doctor and his feelings, not about the many complicated parts of the situation.

Today I did another load of laundry and played WotR on Core some more.

I am 100% certain I did the achievements again but they did not ping. Again.

Somewhere around midnight I decided to just have a go at the achievement boss fight in the secret bit.
... it is now 4am and I have a much better idea of what doesn't work.
*sigh*

I am going to have to try it again with different characters. And buy a lot of holy water in case I don't get any better ideas. The only ones doing damage are casting Pillar of Life or running right up to the jerk and slapping Heal on him. Funnily enough, not optimal. Someone should be able to lay a sword, club, arrow, bite or talon on it but noooooo.

I shall bring someone better at hitting things and hope it works better.

It is ridiculously difficult. Literally nothing else has been a challenge, and then suddenly this thing is impossible. Rubbish scaling there.

If this second try doesn't work I'm going to have to design a mercenary specifically just to hit this thing. Which would be very mathy and annoying.

Up until then I was having fun though.

Pretty okay day, just want the game to do what it says it will.

Started another go of WotR Lord of Nothing on Core difficulty
playing a Nature Oracle with a mercenary Cleric of Erastil who took Community and Nature domains.

I now get why every character builder guide tries to wedge an animal companion in there.

I am playing on Core and I think my Oracle is being rather useless and yet
it hasn't been particularly difficult so far.

Indeed the only time so far we got much injured was when a Protection from (element) wore off and I hadn't noticed and was on... not turn based.

Guarded Hearth is just a Win The Boss Fight button.

And with two wolves along and Sendri casting selective grease the enemy just isn't spending much time on their feet.

The spells bar is being annoying because it keeps forgetting spells when I quick load or something, I go to throw a snowball and someone and there's a gap where my snow spells should be, and Selective metamagic is falling off the bar sometimes too, which is doubly annoying because I don't think it adds itself properly in the first place. But that's just fiddly.

I appear to be having fun again because it stopped dying so much.

Now I just have to get all the way back to the Shadow before I can try for those achievements I'm sure should have worked last time.

I have just listened to
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-death-and-life-of-river-song-series-01-last-words-3027
The Death and Life of River Song series 01
which is set after River dies at the library.

So the first question is, why wouldn't the Doctor redownload her if it is at all possible?
And the answer is, getting her out nearly crashed the library, and everyone else in it.
An answer that preserves the status quo.

I just deleted a lot of me poking the wiki and quibbling the timeline. But this is Doctor Who, so time works on vibes and the general feeling it probably fits in somewhere. So that's okay...

River is woken up just before a scheduled apocalypse and the story ends with Nerva Beacon and the solar flares. And I really liked the ending. River brings her life experience and her belief in What Would The Doctor Do, and does amazing things.

The interesting bit with this set of stories is: her diary is full. She died, and he knows that. And she has been living on in the afterlife he found for her, but without him.

Basically we've seen how the Doctor copes when he finally loses River, but this is River when she has logically lost the Doctor.

And she keeps on telling her diary that this is how it works, someone lives on, and that's okay.

... she's really working on it being okay.

And you get some compare and contrast in ways that would be Spoilers.

There's a lot of running around and spending four discs in one set of weeks at the end of this particular version of Earth, so we get an interesting slice of viewpoints there.

It's just very very good.


I want to stop reviewing it and tell you to go listen to it.

Many big feelings and excellent angles.




Also this week I listened to two of the Main Range for the first time:

Muse of Fire with 7 Ace Hex, which was an Iris Wildthyme adventure and... she's always a lot and not quite my thing.

and

The Quantum Possibility Engine, 7 Ace Mel when Big Finish had Mel rejoin them after Hex left.
... the plot doesn't suck or anything and it does use the uploaded into alternate versions of their lives to say something about them, but I'm not quite keen on what it did there.
Also the way Mel behaves I cannot make sense of in my head, it was just lead up to the Doctor telling her not to make secret plans and be manipulative.
7, saying that.
And Ace calling him out on the absolute whopper of a hypocrisy.
So it leads up to a done as you did, sure, but to get there it puts Mel in trouble an earlier story got her out of and then has her try to fix it by getting people out of danger by putting them in danger.
So I didn't really follow it around that corner and the story felt a bit wrong because of that.

I did like the bit where one set of aliens are always on camera so they do three different takes of every reaction so they can control their image later. That was funny. Can use that for mirrors.

So, good bits but didn't grab me.



I still listen to audios more than I do most things, so I like them plenty well enough.


Also, I have realised I'm not reading much fanfic at all lately.
Because all I am read listen watching is Whoniverse, and I am not running out of that any time soon.

Which is ace.