#intoni

@firesign23 and I watched it together. It was good to have someone to scream at as we somehow made our way through it.

I have to say: NOTHING could have prepared me for how bad it is. It is WAY worse than the trailer. And it's not just a dreadful, dreadful DREADFUL adaptation that understands NOTHING about the novel it's allegedly based on. It's not just that it neither knows nor cares about the social rules, styles and fashions of the Regency period.

It's quite simply one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. Just so, SO bad. The makers of it clearly have utter contempt for their audience. The way it veers wildly between slapstick comedy and angst, the complete lack of chemistry between (allegedly) Anne and the block of wood playing Wentworth, the random decisions that the characters make which make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. (Eg. After a conversation with Wentworth on a beach, Anne walks into the water, fully-clothed, and then swims around for a bit. Presumably she then walks back to where she's staying in a soaking wet dress. And yeah, that's a spoiler, but honestly it should serve as a warning, if anyone needs one.)

Henry Golding, who plays Mr Elliot, is the one member of the cast who seems to have realised just what sort of movie he's in, and his performance is COMPLETELY over the top. Perhaps the scene where he explains his Sekrit Plan to Anne with no prompting (because clearly the audience would not have picked up on it without it being spelled out to them) gave him a clue. The bit right near the end where he's kissing Mrs Clay in the street was so extreme that @firesign23 and I both completely lost it. I guess it's better to laugh derisively than to scream in horror?

Me: Sorcerer works but they dont really use pronouns or any of that. Theyre an elf so its not uncommon for them to use they/them pronouns

DM: What?

Me: Theyre nonbinary

DM, whos never encountered this before:

The genasi who uses it/its pronouns, the warforged who uses he/they pronouns, and the warlock who also uses they/them pronouns:

Exciting: An unplanned adventure, hmmm. It would have to be a road trip without a significant destination in mind. Even just walking around an unfamiliar city, taking in the sights!

I did that once on a solo trip to NYC. I woke at like 530am on my own and decided to roam. Found a tiny park between buildings that was super peaceful and ended up in Central Park before 7am - no one was around!

Recognize this? I always remember it from Enchanted where Amy Adam’s singing her heart out while dancing with a huge crowd and that morning I had that very place all. To. Myself.

This was from my wandering around Washington D.C. sometime later. I remember sitting and listening to music and feeling so, so content - I think Bon Iver was a feature here and, now that I think on it, also on a really lovely evening in Hawaii.

So, I’m sensing a theme here 😆 I’m happiest to be left to my own devices and wandering about with no set plan or demands. That way I can find beautiful places and things and sit quietly with them.

i have TWO separate ExecBrienne follow-on ideas in that file. I’ve posted a couple of snippets already from one of them (the Take Your (Naked) Jaime to Work Day), but nothing about the other so I’ll talk about that. 

In that one, it’s Jaime’s 25th birthday and Brienne decides to get a special toy to celebrate with. It’s not a pegging implement. I have exactly this much written (VERY drafty):

“I want to try something with you,” Brienne says one night when he comes over.

“Okay,” Jaime says.

“Don't you want to know what it is before you agree to it?”

Woah ten years on in the Executive Brienne verse kind of broke my brain. I’m going to answer the other one, because I’m working on exec Brienne follow-on now so I don’t want to trip myself up mentally, but I have thought AT LENGTH about Brienne WTF and their Very Special Vacation and it goes something like this:

After running Margaery through the paces of overseeing the fish store - five times, the last of which Margaery made noises about regretting ever pushing for Brienne to take a vacation - Brienne and Jaime flew to their destination. It was a lovely vacation. Plenty of sun, plenty of diving, plenty of wandering cobbled city streets eating ice cream and then tasting each other’s on their tongues. Two afternoons spent entirely in the hotel suite and naked for 99% of it, and lots of nights watching the stars from their balcony and holding hands and talking. There was also the one night they went for a night dive, which freaked Jaime out because the water was very dark, but Brienne’s eyes glowing with excitement behind her mask were twin stars that made it all better.

Then of course their dive on the day before they left, which Jaime had arranged specially. To the spot in the book that he’d bought her from the aquarium, on a perfectly sunny day (he hadn’t arranged that, but he appreciated the assist from nature or the gods or whoever). Just the two of them and the fish in the water, and the ring he had secured with fishing line to his belt. He unrolled the line while Brienne was taking photos of the fish and when she turned around to wave excitedly to him at a sea turtle swimming by, he held out the ring and made the ‘okay’ signal with his free hand as a question.

A huge bubble exploded from her mask as she stared in wide-eyed shock. He was just starting to feel a little anxious when she nodded, then gave him the returned ‘okay’ signal so forcefully she accidentally hit the ring out of his hand. Fortunately, he’d left it tied to the fishing line, and she gestured for them to surface.

When they did, she ripped off her mask as they bobbed next to the boat.

“Did you just-?”

“Yes. Will you-?”

“Yes!”

They tried to embrace but it was awkward and they sank back into the sea before they recovered, beaming dopily at each other as they tread water.

“We can dive more if you want,” he said, and she shook her head so forcefully water drops went flying.

“I want to get back to land,” she said. “Right now. Please.”

8. The play you’ve never seen performed that you most want to (alternately: the play you’ve never seen performed well that you most want to)

Ex DM who sits in and watches: Just kill it! What are you doing? The point of dnd is to kill things!

I will be digging my head out of the sand and reading your LOK fics (and the exchange fics in general) eventually. It's not like I don't have things to read. I guess what I'm saying is: forget I said anything. 😂

There's no obligation to read anything of mine! You read if you want to, and only if you want to. ❤️

This year was meant to be the year of finishing fics, but instead I had nearly six months of bad health, which slowed everything down to almost nothing - and now I've somehow written six fics since the beginning of August. So who knows what the rest of the year will bring? There could yet be more coffee verse before Christmas.