Wait, I'm supposed to have a title here?

read old plays. I'm not kidding. Read a play written pre-2000. Old Irish plays are my personal favourite because the dialogue is usually high context and hilarious

don't let the characters EVER say the plot out loud to each other. Allow the characters to say as little as possible to convey the plot to the reader/viewer; let visual language and context inform the rest. Readers are SUPPOSED to interpret, they are supposed to use their brains, for the love of god, LET THEM

"varying character voice" is not just about their accent or their social class, which are the two aspects I most often see varied in modern work. It more importantly means "how much would this character say, and what words would they choose to say it." Motive should always inform what a character reveals and how they reveal it. The most important part of a character's voice is the subtext within that voice - that's where their true characterisation is really hiding.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes I actually used to dislike this ship but now I love it so much, it's a bit of a crack ship but something about minthara realising that she's attracted to the.. to the.. wiz.. to the wizard (derogatory) is just so funny to me.

This is clearly not a romance combination that the devs put a lot of time into catering for, and fair enough, I can’t imagine it’s overly popular. There are a bunch of bugs and  inconsistencies, and sometimes they’re just glitches, but sometimes they actually kind of work: after Elminster tells you to go to Mystra’s shrine, Minthara gets all ‘Hear me, wizard’ about it because she’s afraid you’ll destroy the Absolute instead of controlling it, in a conversation that’s clearly written with companion Minthara and not romanced Minthara in mind. While it was jarring after getting used to her addressing me with a soft ‘my love’ to go back to being ‘wizard’, it also seemed quite accidentally fitting that a freaked-out Minthara would fall back on her old imperious terms of address out of fear – and that she’d mask anxiety for Gale’s safety and what Elminster and Mystra might convince him to do to himself behind her more straightforward concern over his potentially disrupting her plot to take control of the brain.

I went in expecting that I was going to have to do a lot of roleplaying in my head to make the story plausible, and that was true, but I was also surprised at how much Minthara’s plot resonated with me as a romance for Gale. Her talk about how we could reshape the world together, and be equal to the gods, and get our revenge on the gods who had used and betrayed us ­– the Absolute, Lolth, Mystra – and her talk of our shared purpose and bond based on those ambitions were really compelling. It seemed like it would be at least a little tempting to any version of Gale, and definitely to the version I was trying to roleplay, one largely motivated by his resentment and grief over what happened with Mystra. I also found it interesting to compare the Gale/Minthara romance arc of going after power/making each other worse to the Gale/Astarion version – I might go into that in more detail in another post.

The ending and epilogue were also bittersweet in a resonant sort of way. I wasn’t aware that origin God Gale can’t ascend his romance partner, so I spent the whole playthrough thinking to myself, well, she wants to control the brain rather than destroy it, but once I ascend and show her how much better and more powerful we’ll be as gods instead of puppeting an elder brain around, she’ll realise this is what we were destined for all along and she’ll be happy. And then I arrive at the epilogue party and she’s obviously decided to dump me the minute I ascended, and greets me with scorn. I was a bit crestfallen, but also I felt like I had unwittingly had a very Gale-like experience: to just assume I knew what was best and my plan was the right one and that as long as I pushed through and didn’t think too hard about it everything would work out great, and then get my sudden comeuppance when it turned out my partner had very different ideas about the pursuit of godhood than I did.

And then even though there’s no chance of rekindling the relationship, they have such a lovely rapport together in the epilogue party conversation. She starts out by telling him not to expect her to bow and scrape, and that the only thing more insufferable than a wizard is a god. If you ask her why she’s greeting her lover like that, she sniffs, ‘Were I to take a lover from the Faerûnian pantheon, I can assure you it would not be the runt of the litter. Bah,’ and then rather than saying anything he just immediately wraps his arms round her, and she lets him hug her and looks wistful about it over his shoulder, and then draws back and retorts, ‘Do not tell the others, or I’ll burn down the first Galerian temple I see.’

my cat passed away this year.

my cat passed away this year.

knew about this story but been a while since i read it. i'm enjoying all the allusions to Superior Spider-Man, i like that storyline. Peter gets bodyswapped a lot, kinda makes sense he wouldn't panic anymore.

anyway here's peter acting like a big fucking egg

hmm. the period part is actually oddly relatable. i had my first period as an adult too. felt like having the flu and passing a kidney stone at the same time. don't know how teens survive it. it's lighter these days. should track it better. never do.

more sun 🌞🌻☀️

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

Then you meet her ex. Ahem, ex best friend. Definitely.

And if Adora wasn't enough of a sapphic wet dream, here's the nightmare counterpart: the angriest, most vicious enemy you've faced and a smirking little shit who shows you up at almost every turn. You hate her. Right. Definitely. That's definitely anger you're feeling. And if you picture her in a sexy outfit every now and then, who does that really hurt? Surely you're not the only one who can't stop thinking about her being evil.

She crashes out, your mom gets stuck in an alternate dimension, you become queen, there's a bunch of normal drama and war drama and you nearly blow up the planet trying to beat her and you WIN but it doesn't feel satisfying because right at the end you see she's been broken and flailing from the start. You should have known, in hindsight, after what Adora was like. But it was easier not to think about it. You bond on an alien flagship and then she saves your life. You reconnect with your friends and go back for Catra. She's still Catra, but you know she can figure this out. And she does! There's a hiccup but she clearly loves Adora (and Adora saved her from death itself) and together their love saves the universe.

You're with Bow and Catra's with Adora and your dad is alive now? So that's amazing! But there's just. One small problem.

You live basically next door to the hottest lesbian couple...maybe of all time. They do not have a sense of propriety, (they grew up in BARRACKS after all) they are desperately in love, and they are NOT. QUIET.

So you get to die a little inside every day, because you KNOW Bow would be supportive and healthy about this because he's the most chill person you've ever known! The calming goat to your anxious horse.