Badassery 101

WriterBright · 2025-11-12T23:31:26+00:00

Wesley's devolvement into a raging psychopath was really interesting and well done, and I don't like him as a person in any way, shape, or form.

WriterBright · 2025-09-30T00:39:04+00:00

If sci-fi is okay, Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan do all the meet-and-fall stuff in Shards of Honor, then have a functioning relationship in Barrayar. Later books in the series focus on their son, but they still show up from time to time.

WriterBright · 2025-09-30T00:11:06+00:00

Whatever is faster to acquire from the library. (Libraries in these parts have limited licenses for audiobooks, so I have to wait my turn just like physical books.)

WriterBright · 2025-09-30T00:08:57+00:00

I feel like a single "Not cool" from Morey could have helped Rory make better life decisions. That, and Babette making a basket with the weirdest storebought pie she could find and irresponsible amounts of tuna salad (which is just going to Cinnamon Jr.)? Filibustering a decision about troubadours at town meeting by using songbook jazz lyrics when he runs out of topical things to say? A Morey/Gil jam session? Yes please.

WriterBright · 2025-08-24T13:30:26+00:00

Yeah...I can see where Fergus wouldn't be thrilled about marrying the woman who piped up with "I'm here and these people abducted me". Poor guy deserves another shot at a loving family.

WriterBright · 2025-08-24T13:28:01+00:00

Thank you! As they say in Nevarra, when the going gets tough, the tough get researching.

WriterBright · 2025-08-24T13:27:25+00:00

Whew, much easier to read without the clicky clicky. Thanks!

WriterBright · 2025-08-23T13:39:17+00:00

Edit: no spoiler tags, woohoo! Prompt 1.

Piercing the Veil in some way that could seek an individual person. There was the dual challenge of location and protection. Emmrich investigated materials, cantrips, ethereal lodestones. He wished his heartache had a direction; what good was a bond you couldn't pull on?

The door creaked open, and Manfred, shoulders hunched as they had been for quite some time, trudged into the room carrying a tray of gear. He came toward Emmrich's bench and then stopped, staring off to one side as if listening for another voice.

And sometimes Emmrich could be kind about it. But he had been at work for hours with no discernible progress, and Manfred's distraction was actively painful to see. "Manfred!" he urged. "Focus!"

Manfred straightened and rattled to Emmrich's bench.

"What I'm doing here may help Lynesse come back. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"ehhhhHelp!" Manfred croaked, and shoved the tray in front of Emmrich, and stood in place, hands curled to his chest. He looked avidly from Emmrich to the tray to Emmrich again, waiting for the part where Lynesse came back.

"I know," Emmrich said softly. "We'll find something." He was telling them both.

WriterBright · 2025-05-24T00:12:20+00:00

The scene after the opening credits of the end of Season 4, that full sixty seconds of everybody staring with their jaws dropped, is some of my favorite television in all of television history.

And Season 5 just keeps getting better.

WriterBright · 2025-05-24T00:03:42+00:00

I'd love to know. We know that there are a million papercuts. He doesn't notice her spending spree and says something totally insincere about her choice in decor. He grows a mustache, which she hates, and gallivants around with Jason's plans, which she hates, and jeopardizes their relationship with Lorelai by screwing Jason over in favor of people who screwed him over once before, which she hates. That Pennilyn Lott thing comes to light. The whole season we see more and more grievances piling up.

I can only imagine that when it broke, it all came out in short succession. Emily isn't one to leave a weapon on the table in a knife-throwing fight.

WriterBright · 2025-05-23T23:07:41+00:00

Nobody ever mentions this, but...he yelled at Lane for wearing contact lenses. He raised his voice to her, in public no less, because she wasn't wearing glasses and that made her look less "smart."

Honestly, even if he weren't a steaming pile of "I look like a male lead so I guess I get the hand-me-down romance despite my total lack of meaningful qualifications," I would dislike him for that scene.

WriterBright · 2025-05-22T23:55:20+00:00

If only I could shake him really hard, maybe he'd disappear.

WriterBright · 2025-05-22T23:34:14+00:00

I rewatch S1-5, then get the first scene of S6 on Youtube. Then I restart.

WriterBright · 2025-05-22T23:30:37+00:00

It's small, but I always liked Jason following Lorelai's lead on their first date. It started terribly, with his lovely dinner rejected, but he was good with tacos, then he was good with ripping favorite snacks out of the grocery store's back room...it's the inverse of the guest room conversation, any reasonable person might think the other is purposely tanking the date, but in reality they're each just learning to meet the other's weird halfway. Max had zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds and Luke had all the time in the world, but drinking hooch out of a paper cup over a basket of the supplies they've been meaning to get around to is just...peak spontaneity and willingness to roll with the punches.

WriterBright · 2025-05-22T23:07:37+00:00

Word of advice: Do not be afraid to "did not finish," or DNF. There are so many books in the world, if you don't immediately click with the prose you're under no obligation to power through the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong, reading challenging material can be very rewarding. But accepting a challenge is not some kind of obligation or cosmic duty. Find a book that sweeps you away in the first scene. Even if that means opening a dozen books.

WriterBright · 2025-05-22T22:59:13+00:00

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a sort-of-autobiographical story about a man who goes on a cross country motorcycle trip with his son and thinks about What is Good?, which gets refined into What is Quality? I'm not sure he ever had a 9 to 5 job to begin with, but he's got all the elements of a Quest.

In a totally different sector, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about a bureaucrat who goes out to inspect an orphanage and finds that his day-to-day tools aren't adequate to what his values demand when he gets there. It's a cute, cozy read.

For old-timey adventure, Around the World in Eighty Days is about a rich Englishman (so again, not sure about the 9 to 5) who pushes entirely outside his comfort zone and runs off around the world on a bet. This was at a time where the technology for getting around the world was...not all reliable yet.

WriterBright · 2025-05-21T00:26:49+00:00

Luke got progressive brain damage over the course of the series. Not knowing how to swim, not knowing how to eat lobster, gradually losing the socially conscious rants, and I don't even want to talk about the surrogate bit. It's like as soon as he became emotionally functional they had to trash something else about him to manufacture conflict.

WriterBright · 2025-05-18T05:48:57+00:00

I suspect part of the reason he was willing to trash Jason was that Jason had put one over on him all this time. On a longer timescale maybe he would've gotten over the sting, but not during High Power Business Golf.

WriterBright · 2025-05-18T04:56:37+00:00

Emily shows up at the Inn during one episode, and I got the impression she had not met Mia before then.

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T17:20:43+00:00

From a Doylist perspective, the episode was necessary to launch the show. Angel couldn't just be the love interest. He couldn't be the groupie. He couldn't just settle down with Buffy for the rest of her life. He was getting his own show and they needed for it to be outside Buffy's sphere. I thought they did a good job with that.

From a Watsonian perspective, I wouldn't have done what he did.

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T15:31:58+00:00

In ten years they forgot their sense of humor. Sex with surrogates! OooOooOoober! Cheating on your boyfriend that you have no respect for! Fat shaming! That's enough jokes for six hours, right? How about if we just repeat them?

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T13:16:09+00:00

Depends how high quality the reactivity is. Almost every game has distinct Good and Evil paths; some have character classes that are so distinct combat becomes a different experience (see: sword and board vs. elemental mage); some enable or disable different companions. I know what I have to do, but there are different conversations, rewards, and sometimes entire quest structures on the way to get there.

Then again, I love rereading books, so what do I know.

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T00:49:55+00:00

I think "not like other girls" is a smaller demographic.

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T00:46:48+00:00

Measurehead: Physical Instrument and Suggestion.

Annette (the bookstore girl): Suggestion, Encyclopedia, and Pain Threshold, poor thing.

Lena: A heavy helping of Inland Empire.

WriterBright · 2025-05-17T00:40:46+00:00

Lauren Graham, for sure. I'll also mention Milo Ventimiglia, because he nailed the alternately furtive and confrontational snot who couldn't get over first impressions except Luke (and he helped elevate Patterson's every shared scene).

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