the rambling fanatic

saturdaymorningex, the exchange for animated fandoms, has released its stories! They have 15 works in 14 fandoms. Check out the collection.

I wanted to participate in saturdaymorningex, but no one requested any of the fandoms I offered. It looks like many of last year's participants decided to do the new event earlybirdgetstheword, a small fandoms exchange, instead. The dates overlapped closely; I must not have been the only one who felt she could sign up for only one of the two. earlybirdgetstheword is currently waiting on pinch hitters before releasing its stories.

It looks increasingly like everywoman, the exchange for female characters, won't happen this year. I've enjoyed this event -- and its respected line of predecessors! -- for many years now. I'll be sorry to lose it. For me, this means no known fic exchanges to look forward to participating in until hlh_shortcuts at the end of the year. If you happen to know of an event that might suit me, please bring it to my attention. Thank you!

I finished The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom over the holiday weekend. I enjoyed it! I lost patience and didn't stick with the Sleep Dojo through the last two "sleep trainings" that I was struggling with to earn the outfit it rewards, and I never got the second available bonus outfit from my one amiibo, so I didn't 100% the game, but I think that I experienced all the possible story bits, which is of course what I want, so that's fine. Throughout the game, I enjoyed that there were so many different ways to solve challenges; there are almost zero obstacles with only one right solution, which was fantastic for me.

There's not a lot to say about the ending that isn't very well known by now... Spoilers... Link slashing an opening into the very hide of the Cthulu-like beast that is Null is cool. Null's heartbeat is cool. I loved Zelda and Link working together at the end to defeat Null, her bind plus his sword, and would genuinely have enjoyed a few more puzzles along those lines! I appreciated Tri's departure. The lore is intriguing and amorphous, and of course the official timeline placement was nailed down months ago.

Finally seeing the end credits straight through, I happily learned that all the characters visibly affected by the rifts are shown as recovered after the destruction of the rifts. The comatose Hylian boy, the listless Gerudo woman... yay! I also saw that all the might crystals are gone and Link's weapons have reverted to their pre-enhanced forms, there with Link and Lueburry fussing over them near Lueburry's machine. (Though the Tri Rod is still there in Zelda's room.) And electroapples are the new Deku Scrub hot trend, plunging the Business Scrubs into commerce chaos. Yet, as far as I can tell, the Deku Scrub in the southeast corner is still lonely... I didn't find any side-quest or credits moment to bring that Scrub a visitor (other than Zelda). Hmmm.

What are your thoughts and feelings about Echoes of Wisdom...?

sunshine_revival '25 Challenge #2: "Write about anything you feel sentimental about..."

One thing I'm perpetually sentimental about is the cartoon Dungeons & Dragons (1983-1985; three seasons, the last one shorter). It was on the air before and after a significant event in my life, making a kind of continuous bridge through that, though of course I didn't know at the time that this was part of it imprinting itself on my imagination, as much as its superior writing (once you get past the first episodes that go out of their way to explain themselves to TPTB), voice acting (Diana's actress won an Emmy for her role, and of course Eric's actor is renowned), storytelling invitation to imagine yourself right into the scenario, and its sneaky continuity and deep lore in the days before continuity was permitted or lore wanted. And these were the days of bargaining with one's siblings over which Saturday morning cartoon would be viewed when on the one TV in the house, negotiating away blocks of the day to ensure you got the one half-hour that mattered.

Of course while the show was a huge success in the ratings, TPTB never stopped being nervous about it, in that age of moral panic about supposed cults and such supposedly using D&D to recruit/hurt kids, which looks like a pretty quaint worry now, but was indeed quite real (that is, not a real threat, just a real moral panic). That affected the show in many ways, most sad, but one incredibly good. TPTB lived in such fear of the Parents Television Council about this specific show that they mandated that our heroes must never use violence or offensive weapons. What a beautiful challenge to put in front of the writers! Surrounded by shows firing assorted colored lasers from guns, our heroes had to use their brains and empathy to solve puzzles and reconcile misunderstandings! And their very personally symbolic totemic enchanted weapons were highly defensive and evasive -- no swords in our heroes' hands! -- with even Hank's energy bow and Bobby's club aimed always at inanimate obstacles, never at people. (That was one of the mistakes the recent revival comics unfortunately made. They ditched that key constraint and gave Hank and Eric swords, showing they did not really understand.)

The recent D&D Honor Among Thieves movie (which was a good movie and deserved more audience attention) made use of widespread nostalgia for this show with a few background cameo tributes, which led some toys to finally come into existence for the show as cross-marketing with the movie, so many decades after we original viewers would have played with them. Though I'm not a collector, I snapped up the action figures and they bring me delight; the Diana figure is standing at the corner of my monitor right now, and the others are on a shelf I cleared for just them, even buying clear acrylic risers to display them better.

You can find the show on DVD (I have the "red box" version from the 25th anniversary). It ran around the clock on Twitch for an event leading up to the movie's premiere. I believe that it's not officially anywhere streaming now [Correction: It's on Amazon's "live" Freevee "Dungeons & Dragons Adventures" channel in the US! See comments!], probably because of complex rights issues (Marvel and Sunbow made the '80s cartoon; Hasbro now owns D&D; Paramount made the D&D movie; Disney now owns Marvel; etc.). Unofficially, it's on YouTube in both English and Portuguese, and many of the scripts are available online, most of them personally posted by the show's most prolific and daring writer, Michael Reaves, who died in '23, and loved the show as much as we do.