Susan Sto-helit. Because in this world, after everyone panics,

Today I tried some builds for Wrath but remain baffled by how they're supposed to work and pretty sure some of them don't work any more. I mean the last one I tried shouldn't have worked but apparently enough patches ago it let you stack CHA bonuses on your AC, which is silly.

I have honestly been playing mostly spellcaster main characters for so long that AC is an mystery I know not of
which probably explains why they keep dying a lot
but works fine all the way up to Core.

Unfair builds seem to involve choosing a myth and building backwards, and if you're just not willing to play any of the evil myths then there's veeeeeery few builds on the internet that I have found. Azata that wins seems tp be right out. Lich is highly recommended. Blech.



I also relistened Doctor Who Seasons of Fear.
I liked the plot with Grayle well enough, but I'm less enthusiastic about the arc plot with Charley.
The Doctor saves lives all the time, focusing on this one specific time it breaks the universe seems... like Charley gets special rules just for her, but the no fun way.

It's still Doctor Who though so it's more interesting than most of the things I am failing to stay focused on.


Not a very focused day.

https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/torchwood-everyone-s-dead-on-floor-3-3214

This was a solid 5 stars out of 5. The content warnings are well earned for something that never leaves the office. It starts out so ordinary and petty and then drops the year on you hard. It's like opening a box to find it full of jeweled beetles eating through everything, including a layer of bones. Everyone is so vividly and specifically detailed, even the dead ones. And even when I was sure something awful was going to happen it had me gripped on exactly which awful when.

This is really really good work.

And the only regular Torchwood character in it is an audio exclusive, Norton Folgate again. Who is someone you can plausibly show doing nearly anything as long as it's twisty so he's very useful to have around. But the Torchwood range covers the whole Torchwood historical era and dips in to so many lives we don't have a canon framework for so they can do anything. I've seen people complain about that because they want to revisit the characters from the first two seasons on TV but I think it's one of the great strengths of the range.

Though I can see how it is difficult to market something on the strength that you never know what you're going to get.

If you want to listen an audio where you start off thinking the corpses are going to be the horror and then learn, this audio is absolutely recommended.

... if you want a nice adventure where something gets won and it all packs neatly in a blue box in the end you want one of the other ranges...

I have been reading horror comics all day. I need to remember to stop and do something else more often or it all just gets grimy to think on. Very strong stuff in these stories, skillfully done.

A lot of this first omnibus is Swamp Thing, covering stories I'd seen summarised elsewhere, and now I have read it, it is all so much darker and nastier than the summaries had conveyed to me. ( Read more... )

As far as I can tell from skimming the contents page the Swamp Thing stuff is over now, so, onwards to Hellblazer, and Newcastle.

I finished watching Crisis on Earth X, which has all 4 parts in this box set, probably because the rest of the season makes little sense without them. I hate hate hate what they did to Martin, that was unnecessary and part of a bad pattern.

Leo is great, and it was probably fun to be flirty like that.

Legends tonal range is as ever pretty broad. The episode they're most grieving Martin is the episode we meet Beebo and have to deal with Beebo Day miracles. And then they turn around and do a Constantine in an asylum episode with bonus near lobotomy, but try to end it funny? And it basically works.

I did like Sara asking "Are we really this damaged"
because it is John and the answer is more yes than Legends is yet prepared to imagine.

I still don't like the way mental health care in these stories is depicted as a threat or a joke. Actually helpful is never one of the options. And yet people do need the help.

It's really dark watching Nora choose like that.

Strong story though.


I shall watch more later but I don't want to whoosh through them all at once.

I started reading the Hellblazer omnibus, Delano 1, so starting at the beginning.
(I used to have a very tatty Hellblazer 2 I acquired when it was wrapped in the cover for Hellblazer 1. Gave it to my brother to sell many years ago. Wouldn't bet on it being readable by now anyways.)

I can tell already this is going to be a different reading experience to Justice League Dark. I've read the equivalent of two issues and I am going to pause and ponder.

Also it isn't just comics as an artform I'm fed up of, the art and layout in these serrve the story in enriching ways I can spend time thinking about. None of that endless empty motion I got annoyed with, new horrors crammed in every panel. As they should be given the genre.

The story is Hunger & A Feast of Friends, and the TV show covered these in one episode. ( Read more... )

The compare contrast with the TV is interesting but the comics are already good.


Going to think on them more.

The thing with Nick Necro is most of the issues have him be a bit boring about John stealing Zatanna
but then that one issue
has him torturing John by putting cigarettes out on his chest ( Read more... )

He is so messed up and that one issue changes the meaning on ALL of it.


Lovely stuff
that might make me buy more comics
if I just ignore how little I liked, oh, about 3/4 of the other stuff I read.



I want to keep this particular messed up dynamic and run into another canon with it.

Justice League Dark omnibus improved:
By page 1229ish we get an issue of Constantine where Nick and John kiss and Nick refers to John as 'Blood brother or lover' in the context of ( Read more... ) This after spending a while putting cigarettes out on John as part of a cunning plan to power up his magic.

I thought for the first thousand pages that fanfic was making way more of that up.

This is delightful and messy and I want to read all of it and then start again with a better idea of what to skip.

I am above page 750 in the Justice League Dark omnibus I am reading
and very few of them in this quarter were worth my time.

I don't think it's just me being out of practice reading comics, it really is meaning mash.
They spend about two frames on any given strand of story and then try to make of it a tapestry.

There's no emotion here, just endless motion.
Hollowed out parts that could be characters if you took them to doll repair shops.

I don't even know if it would make more sense with a different selection of issues.
I don't think making sense is something it is particularly devoted to.

And the general feeling of intro outro being all it will ever do continues.
I know they were rewriting their world but it keeps reframing everything and then not giving us anything to put in the new picture.

There isn't a lot of John Constantine or Zatanna in this even if you pick relevant bits out
and I am starting to understand why the fanfic I read only seems to refer to like a half dozen issues
because those ones had a bit of story and some feeling attached.



I am a grumpy person today.


Also, trying to read this ridiculously heavy thing keeps squashing me to the point of feeling sick.

I do not however think that is the primary reason I'm getting bored and annoyed here.




It was however potentially funny earlier on in this reading, when John went somewhere he can neither lie nor shut up. They said the most shallow and obvious things that way, but it's a fun idea.

Also they used John's nightmares to make him obviously extremely informed and scheming, which is interesting.

And it gave him a little explainer box when he went to steal someone else's magic, which actually undermines the amount of writing they've put in to making him seem dodgy, but his motivation for the day was, magic nearly ate him so he doesn't want to leave other people to be messed around by it. Kind of works but every time they flatten him out they leave bits behind. Magic nearly ate him yet he keeps reaching for more magic, can't leave that out.

Zatanna demonstrated she was a hero who would save the innocent rather than attack the guilty, then became miss not appearing in this book.

So, bit boring.


Maybe it'll get over the stupid crossover stuff soon and have a story again?



ETA at 8pm: It did indeed get back to actual story. Turns out the bit I got entirely bored of was three hundred pages of 'Trinity War'. Now it's back to being actually Justice League Dark and Constantine issues it has a finite number of characters. Still mostly John though. Or this universe of John anyway. I kind of like the bit where he held an artefact that makes people evil and he was mostly just depressed since he's seen it all before. I like this bit with the Nightmare Nurse curing him. I pretty much dislike how what is named as a team book is so emphatic about him being the main character. And I keep on having to stop and be annoyed that the evil he's confronting is all this DCU multiverse stuff with the magic macguffins and big costumed whatsits instead of actual grounded at least a smidge political stuff. But then there was one issue where it kind of attempted to link it back to that? Domestic violence and homelessness actually got into the story, instead of just Darkseid and a house made of nightmares.

Basically there's bits that make the animated stories make a lot more sense, and bits where it is telling solid story, and bits that I want to harvest for useable parts.

But they're playing a very different game than the other media or versions of John and it's reminding me of all the reasons I don't read many comics.

I bought a Justice League Dark omnibus because I found a lot of fanfic very interested in Nick Necro
and I have read up to page 435
which has included a lot of Nick Necro.

I was puzzled reading the bits on the internet at how Nick thinks Z and John betrayed him
but reading it all in a row I realised
despite John *saying* threesome
the book thinks Nick is straight.

Well that's a lot more boring as a story.

Like yes betraying a friend and mentor is a story, but, *waves at John Constantine's everything*
they absolutely were shagging.

I'm not convinced this comic is well acquainted with John's everything though.
I mean they're actively remaking it, but I am frequently not impressed with what they're attaching to the name here.

And Zatanna is pretty much reduced to Daddy Issues in a bustier.

Also I am not getting along with superhero comics pacing anymore again. Everything happens so much, on any given page, and yet by page 435 it sure doesn't take many paragraphs to sum it up. People come and go so often it's not always worth memorising the names, yet the book seems to exist to intro them and tell us how the world works in the then new configuration. Crossovers dance across the pages in a splash and then go away to books not covered here. There's no through line, it's too choppy. And the summaries provided by the characters already contradict what I actually read.

Which is occasionally interesting because you learn for sure you can't trust a word out of Nick Necro's mouth and he may well be fooling himself as well, but that is not the only impression it gives.

It's doing a lot with Constantine and Zatanna so I'm glad I'm reading it, but it's mostly making me want to mine it for parts, which is my usual comics reading experience.
( Read more... )


I think this comics team that wanders in and out of crossovers is a reading experience pretty much opposite to the focused one to a handful of characters stories I've been liking most lately.
Like these people are interesting, but only enough to make me want a story about them. Not thus far to feel like I've read one.

Comics require different reading muscles.

... as does this 1622 page book...


ETA several days later: I was either mistaken in my impression or the story realised what bits were interesting. Excellent improvement follows. Several hundred pages later.