Tuesday Update 17/12/2024

Hey folks!

I am sooo close to being finished a new chapter of QTNW, but I ran out of creative steam today and had to take a break to make dinner and such. Maybe it will release tonight, but more likely it'll be tomorrow.

Otherwise, Sunday was my birthday and I went out for dinner and saw Gladiator 2 with my fam. (Solid 7/10 for me, worth the ticket but didn't manage to pull an Emperor Strikes Back).

List Progress

This month so far: AMA Model Behaviour Books 3+4 (Alpha readers), 5x OFG Chapter, 5k into Red Flags Go Faster (Alpha readers), FoF Chapters 1-5 rewrites are all released. QTNW will release within 24 hours. After that will be:

• Sponsored Chapters

  • 5x OFG

  • 5x DM and the Dirty 20s [The Project Previously Known as Untitled D&D Group Story]

  • Le Francais

  • 5x Unexpected Affections (specifically requested to release on the 28th)

  • 5k into Red Flags Go Faster

  • One More TBD

• AMA Arc 2 Begins

• I need to wrap up a non-Patreon commission

• FoF Archive (Chapter 6-10)

Other Stuff

My birthday present to myself this year was a new TV during Cyber Week (old one turned 10...), which I mounted on the wall this weekend right before I went out to dinner/movie for my birthday. I thought of it as 'Schrodinger's Television' because I didn't know if it was on the wall or the floor until I got home. Turns out I don't suck at hanging things on the wall and it survived!

Also, two big TV shows just wrapped up and I have feelings/thoughts.

SPOILERS FOR : BLUE BLOODS SEASON FINALE : SPOILERS BELOW

OK. Blue Bloods. It got 14 Seasons, though they did one of those dumb 'half a season, then half a season a year later' things for no discernible reason. Blue Bloods was a classic, feel good police procedural that (almost) always wrapped up with a bow for each story. I liked it. There were a few years there where I didn't keep up with it and had to catch back up, and that was because Formulaic works, but to keep it going the story needs to shift.

Blue Bloods stopped shifting. All the main characters kind of reached their peak and stuck there. No more changes happened. The characters who could have provided fresh content (the kids as they aged into college/beyond) got written off instead of going into the family business. For some reason they didn't want Frank to have to retire/move on from being the Commissioner, which sort of stagnated a lot of storylines because there was never any top-down pressure on the family.

So what are the lessons I learn from this?

1) Even when being formulaic, shake things up
2) Characters need to face new challenges, not just the same challenges over and over, or else you stop caring about them
3) Plan your finale better - don't try to make it epic in 40min.

SPOILERS FOR : YELLOWSTONE SEASON FINALE, COMMENTARY ON OTHER TAYLOR SHERIDAN SHOWS : SPOILERS BELOW

Jesus Christ. If I was mellow and sort of 'whatever' about Blue Bloods ending, this season finale just makes me sad and mad at the same time.

I really liked Yellowstone. I know it's not for everyone, but it moved and it knew what it was doing even if it wasn't always entirely realistic. At the end of the previous 'half season' (oh look, another time they did a stupid Half Season and then wait a year for the Other Half) I was actually excited for what would come next - Jamie vs Beth, Kasey finally settling on a corner of the ranch, John as Governor v Impeachment (and the political commentary to go with it), Beth reinventing the Ranch.

And then they had to blow the whole damn thing up.

There were a bunch of rumours that it was Costner's fault, and clashing with Creator/Executive Producer Taylor Sheridan, but things are starting to come out that Costner was all-in but Sheridan and the creative team kept dropping the ball, which was why 'Season 5A and Season 5B' happened in the first place.

And I'm starting to believe it.

Taylor Sheridan's TV shows are amazing for Vibes, but they don't know how to pace themselves or come to a touchdown ending for seasons or series.

• 1883, really interesting period travel drama, kind of stutters into an ending. And then meant almost nothing to the next show...

• 1923, really interesting (and it's Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren!), but the season 1 ending was meh in terms of cranking up the tension. Season 2 has taken over 2 years to come out.

• Special Ops: Lioness, I really liked Season 1 of this show. Super well done. Season 2 was also developing really well and then it just stopped. It ended and I didn't even realise I was watching the season finale, or had watched it. The pacing of the season was so weird, and it lacked an antagonist so badly, that even the 'big climactic battle' didn't feel like the set piece it should have even though it was cool.

• Landman, a new show this year, is another one I'm really liking 'for the vibes.' But it's a rollercoaster of plot points where stuff is happening but it doesn't feel cohesive or that there's a core storyline. It's got great scenes, great actors, hot ladies and some super great one-liners, but the plot is starting to lose me.

• Tulsa King, Ok... so Season 1 was pretty good, but I couldn't watch Season 2 because either Stallone got even more work done on himself, or it just got worse. I couldn't watch him on screen any more, it gave me a visceraly painful reaction. Not Sheridan's fault.

• Mayor of Kingstown, started off really great. Super interesting stuff, great character actors involved... but stuff kept happening without it feeling natural. People snapped when it didn't make sense, or didn't snap when it did. It's sort of lost it's plot throughline and is just a mess of stuff now.

Now, I'm not one to talk about having too many projects on the go, but Sheridan's shows have budgets so I wish he could get some writer's rooms together with enough time and freedom to actually build great stories to go with the cinematography he's putting on the TV screen.

Yellowstone deserved better than Season 5B.

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Spoilery Stuff is over.

That's all I've got for now, and I've ranted for more than enough time.

Happy December, Folks. Reminder that this time next week is Christmas Eve so if you haven't gotten your Holiday shit figured out by then... well, you're fucked. More QTNW coming ASAP, and new AMA on the horizon!

Cheers,

~Break.