#C:tl

[my-t4t-romance]

AGONIZING ctl idea that I had a few years ago and just remembered: a trans guy is abducted by the fae as a depressed, closeted teen. when he returns as a changeling, now an adult who's becoming happy in his transition (despite all he's been through), he finds that the fetch they left in his place is nothing like him. she is the good daughter his parents always wanted, she is upwardly mobile and bright-smiling and respectable, she is everything he failed to be because he was himself. when the gentry took him and replaced him with this facsimile, his parents noticed nothing wrong — in fact, that was the moment their child started acting right. finally, she's let go of all her silly phases, she's not so closed-off and pointlessly defiant. they're a happy family now. if his parents learned the truth, if they could possibly believe it, would they even want him back? he turns away from his old home. he doesn't want to know. and neither do they.

[navsartyplace]

Nom nom she's here to make a hound or even a falcon out of you :) The true fae are so silly like that!

[elguritch-art]

March. 2024 OC Pinup - Kazuya

Fourth in my OC pinup series! My friends were REALLY excited for this one, Kazuya is one of their favorites from my OCs :'D

(And additional note, he's backsquatting 400lbs here, I just couldn't get all the weights in frame ;D)

And apologizing for the quality of my posts going forward, with recent Tumblr events I'm gonna be taking more steps to protect my art which will result in a quality downgrade unfortunately ;w;

Vote for April down below!

Here's the link for the April Voting! And the contestants up for April:

[freefallthelost]

Missed the stream? No worries! Here’s the vod of the first session of Freefall: Chronicles from the Lost! We all hope you enjoy! ~ Madison

[endollvors]

🎉 Happy WIP Wednesday! 🎉 Character Behavior, plz!

The freehold felt more normal than it should have. She swallowed with the clicking of a defective lightswitch and waited for something to happen. A changeling caught the eye of her Darling and rushed over. They scratched at their cheek with the stump of their left hand. “Is she yours?”

“Yeah.” Her Darling said, and beamed. They both turned to look at her. She was supposed to say something. She had to open her mouth and- and…

The chain she’d tucked into a shoplifted turtleneck struggled to escape and the air around her smelled strongly of ozone. She felt her knees go out from under her as she forgot, again, that she had them. She landed too hard on the ground and grabbed at her legs. She buried her face in her knees and let her hair start to float around her, hiding her in the cumulus waves. Sparks arced through it, and she could sense the glow behind her closed eyelids. People were talking around her, their voices going loud and panicked. She couldn’t hear what they were saying past the high pitched stuttering whine in her ears, like an overtaxed motor. A hand dropped onto her shoulder, and it was probably an accident, but it pinned her tether against her skin. It tried to move again under her shirt and couldn’t. All of a sudden she was trapped. She was arcing fruitlessly against a metal cage as long fingers traced around the outside. She hated that hand. She needed it gone. Lightning sparked.

[erisacolyte]

Did a YCH of a couple of my Changeling LARP antagonists, Red Jack and Bloody Mary photobombing some hapless sap just trying to use a photo booth. Why not draw your character in there?

Or make your own speeddraw and share it with me!

Like what I do and want to support me? Why not become a Patron: patreon.com/joephilliactheblack Or buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/A2581GB3

Watch on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joephilliactheblack/video/7334714844031028513?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7181582400987645445

[theresattrpgforthat]

Mint Plays Games: Changelings, Trauma & Gaming

Over the course of October and November, I returned to one of my favourite ttrpgs of all time with @thydungeongal and my girlfriend: Changeling the Lost. About once or twice a year, I get the itch to run the 1st edition of this lovely, lore-heavy game, and every year I come away from it thinking about its potential. This is meant to be a quick break-down of my latest Changeling session, as well as a reflection on the parts of Changeling that really touch my heart.

The Game.

This game happened over three sessions, involving a character creation session, and two sessions of play. We had one character who was a Darkling Gravewright - folks who dealt with the dead in their time in Faerie (and can also see ghosts), and another who was a Fairest Flamesiren, whose entire deal is about burning bright, but also burning out quickly.

I decided to give these girls a murder mystery, with a mortal body found just outside a gate to a Goblin Market, and a missing changeling to track down. We’d talked about themes of grief and addiction prior to my planning stage, so I figured dealing with both a death and a place that offers your wildest dreams (for a price) might be a good place to start.

I don’t like planning out specific plot beats in my games, so instead I tried designing the Market like an adventure location, with various vendors to tempt the players with their wares, while dotting the landscape with NPCs in various states of distress. I figured the Changelings would pick something that resonated with them, and we could go from there. This process also generated a few different villainous characters who could be responsible for the murder, which I’m glad I did, because as usual, what the players decide to do always falls outside the bounds of what the GM plans for.

The story ended up being about saving a kidnapped changeling from a hungry Fae, and bluffing through a group of Privateers (read: mercenaries) and bringing the victim to safety. However, they didn't escape completely unscathed - coming face to face with a True Fae caused a cascade of terrible memories coming back to visit one of our characters right after she thought she'd made it to safety.

Our session was an introduction to the world and lore of Changeling, and I feel like I did a pretty good job on that front. On the other hand, I felt like it was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the things I think Changeling can be about.

The Potential

When it comes to the World of Darkness in general, I think Changeling: the Lost has a relatively sleek amount of lore regarding the various Courts, Seemings, and faerie characters. Each Changeling’s durance can be typified, but ultimately what they went through can be up to the player who designs them, and the Hedge is limitless in its weird and strange creatures, which gives the GM license to create all kinds of goblins and monsters to fit what they want their game to be about - and the players aren’t really expected to know what’s going on in there anyways. Most Freehold history exists in rumour, because talking too openly about it feels like you’re inviting the Fae to your front doorstep, and in the same way, the true nature of the Fae is left up to rumour and superstition, allowing your group to decide what they really are, or leave their nature forever a mystery.

That being said, the toys that you can play with are still more numerous than anything that you can fit into any one campaign, even if you’re playing that campaign for 4+ years. You can very easily play Changeling as a magical urban fantasy game (and I’ve done this fairly regularly with my group), but C:tL also has a lot of poignant themes that can delve into themes about trauma, addiction, and mental health.

Disclaimer: CtL is not always graceful in the way it represents mental health. There are antagonists presented in the books that come across as “madmen”, some pretty gross Merits you can take that can feel bad to play at most tables, and characters that have lost what makes them human, becoming threats to the players. However, I think that the Clarity system does have some interesting ideas in it that, if treated with care, can still provide some interesting depth to the game.

Clarity

Clarity is meant to be a measure of how well your character can tell truth from Fiction - a high enough Clarity score, and you can sniff out a Fae even if they’re trying to hide themselves; a low enough Clarity Score, and you have a hard time differentiating colour and smell, and might even start seeing an overlay of your Durance infiltrating your weekly grocery trip.

Your Changeling moves up in Clarity if they’re able to keep a stable life with elements that help you ground yourself and give you a sense of identity - and mechanically, once you spend Experience points. Your Changeling moves down in Clarity when they suffer “sins” - moments that disrupt that hard-won stability. This sins could be something we’d consider morally fraught, such as stealing, assaulting someone, or murder - but they could also be significant life changes, like losing your job, buying a house, losing a friend or getting married. You also always suffer a Clarity sin when you come in contact with a reminder of your durance - particularly a True Fae.

The higher your Clarity score is, the harder it is to keep yourself there. Smaller and smaller things can trigger a Breaking point, like going a day without human contact, starting a new college course, or using a Faerie token. Furthermore, the lower your Clarity score, the more difficult it is for you to tell truth from fiction - think of the scenes in Mockingjay where Peeta has to ask Katniss “real or not real” and try to trust her answers.

It doesn’t help that so many pieces of the Changeling experience after getting out of the Hedge seems designed to Fuck You Up - like the doppelgänger that’s been living your life ever since you left, or the fact that mortals can’t seem to notice the ways that Faerie has changed you: you can feel the horns on your head, but all they touch is a well-coiffed hairstyle. In many ways it feels like your whole experience with Faerie is invisible - and you’re fairly certain that even if you told a mortal the truth, they’d never believe you. If they did believe you, they would never treat you the same again.

I like this system because it doesn't really measure how "good" or "bad" your character is - instead it's a representation of how your lived experiences can often trigger symptoms even if others get lucky enough to survive those events with their mental health intact. I'm not a bit fan of derangements - but I think dropping in Clarity is an excellent time to ask characters about pieces of their time in Faerie that haunt them, and perhaps saddle them with Frailties instead - what personal rules do you have to follow in order to navigate the world when you have a hard time telling friend from foe?

Other Themes & Metaphors

The Fae themselves are also exquisite boogeymen, mercurial abusers without the familiar human emotions that we might feel more equipped to understand. They act on their whims and follow their appetites - and while real-life abusers often have very human reasons for being that way, we need not feel such compunctions from the Fae.

We might have to feel some compunctions about their right-hand Loyalists however, changelings who have agreed to work for their Fae Masters in exchange for some semblance of freedom. These are enablers: giving the Fae a step into the mortal realm and throwing mortals and other Lost under the bus, just so the True Fae won't turn their abuses back onto them.

Much of the ethos of the seasonal courts in the first edition has to do with different strategies for preventing a day where you find yourself back under your abuser’s control. Do you pretend that everything is fine, because they won’t recognize their victims if they’re happy? Make yourself physically stronger so you can tell yourself that you’ll win next time? Amass magic rituals in the hopes that learning just the right order of steps will keep you safe? Or do you make yourself as un-interesting as possible in the hopes that they give up on you for other prey? (Yes, I think the Winter Court could totally be all about grey-rocking).

On top of that, the Changelings that your characters embody (and interact with) are far from perfect. They have vices, fears and trauma responses that pull and push them into a dance of backstabbing, power-grabbing politics, full of seeking the upper hand and possibly even selling out their fellows in a gambit meant to keep the Fae focused on someone other than them. (A political game or LARP with these themes in mind feels so juicy to me.)

Next is the metaphors of power and/or addiction. The higher your Wyrd is, the more Glamour you can hold, and the more powerful your magic is. At the same time, the more Glamour you can hold, the more you need to hold it: what starts as a fun magical resource can grow into an addiction, if you lean into it hard enough. Sure, your Contracts become easier to activate and you can Incite Bedlam if you get powerful enough, but are you willing to chance withdrawal if you can’t get your daily fix of goblin fruit? How much are you willing to play with human emotions in order to get that sweet sweet taste of anger or grief?

Then there’s the seeming-specific traumas. Beasts struggle with wondering whether they can be human after giving in to animal instinct; Darklings fell into Faerie because they crossed an invisible or moral line and have had to make morally questionable decisions in order to survive. Elementals are used to being treated as part of the scenery, moulded to fit the whims of their captors; Fairest are constantly pressured to be the prettiest or the best with the threat of terrible terrible things should they fail. Ogres have undergone terrible physical hardships, including physical mistreatment and deprivation, while Wizened have been told time and time again that they are only worth something if they are useful. Stepping out of Faerie doesn’t magically “fix” any of these complexes, and as a result each Seeming has to wrestle with stereotypes even amongst their own: if you need someone murdered, go to a Darkling, If you need something made, go to a Wizened. If you need a hot piece of ass, a Fairest is sure to oblige - right?

Lastly, there's the Fetch: a copy of yourself that was made to replace you when the Fae took you away. This other-you is often so much better or so much worse than the person they used to be - they can act as a foil to your character, haunting you or making your life difficult, reminding you of who you used to be, or never letting others forget how badly you may have screwed up. In Changeling society, killing your Fetch is at the very least a regrettably convenient way of tying up loose ends, and at the most, a rite of passage. But it's also a surefire way to risk losing Clarity. Kind of a catch-22 situation, isn't it?

My Experience So Far

Past Changeling sessions I’ve run have included NPCs getting kidnapped by misguided friends, stumbling across characters who were at an all-time Clarity low, trying to save other Changelings from their Faerie kidnappers, cannibals, Fetches, and antagonists who are set out to betray one or more factions of the Freehold that is supposed to protect them. It’s always bits and pieces of what feels like a bigger picture.

On the one hand, I think that's to be expected. There's so much in this game, and I doubt that any campaign can really dig in to all of its systems and complexities. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’ve been able to really dig into the themes of Changeling: the Lost in the way that I’d really love to be able to do.

The subject matter can be so close to real struggles, that I’m nervous about making those struggles too bare-faced at my local table. Gas-lighting, torture, hallucinations, drug abuse and cannibalism are so very easy to drop into a Changeling game, but are also so very easy to hit uncomfortable moments for someone who's unprepared.

At the same time, I think that playing a game like Changeling with a high-trust table that uses robust safety features has so many interesting stories that can give power to players, even if the setting is technically a horror one. I’ve been having conversations with @psychhound about a lot of the themes that folks try to explore in ttrpgs, especially in response to this post he commented on back in April. To summarize that conversation: TTRPGs are a great way for folks to tackle personal struggles and traumas from a safe place, in ways that can give them a cathartic experience or that can give them a fresh sense of identity. Changeling has been a significant part of those discussions.

I came to Changeling: the Lost as a fairly new GM the first time I picked it up, and the more I learn about Safety Tools and a culture of care, the closer I feel to getting to that game that lives in my head that lured me into TTRPGS in the first place. Every time I come back to It, I think I'm closer to pulling together a Changeling game that sinks its teeth into the themes I’m interested in and hit some of the grime beneath all that glitter. So every time I come back to it, I’m going to create funky little goblins and design weird Fae bars and take the characters’ memories and ask them why they hurt - figuring out how I can twist the knife just enough to peel back the glamour, without opening any wounds that we’re trying to keep closed.

[zal-cryptid]

I recognize C:TL and the DND book but what’re the other TTRPGs you’ve got there?

12 More Christmas Slays

Advanced Lovers & Lesbians

Anime 5e

Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game

Call of Cthulhu (7e)

Coyote & Crow

Discworld Roleplaying Game

Doctor Who Roleplaying Game

Faerie Fire

Flabbergasted!

Girl By Moonlight

MASKS: A New Generation

SCP: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game (1e)

Shore of Dreams

SUPERS

Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Threadbare Stitchpunk RPG

[hedgespinning]

Goblin Fruit Part 1: Amaranthine

I'm attempting to draw the list of Goblin Fruits from the C:TL core book starting with amaranthine

"A small eggplant in the soft red of compassion, amaranthine grows where despair colors the Hedge the most deeply, and smells like hope and cinnamon."

[companionwolf]

Brain is making me think about a C:tL/ Fuga AU/crossover/whatever so I'm trying to assign each of the original twelve kids a seeming + kith.

So far I have:

Malt - beast truefriend

Mei - fairest playmate

Hanna - 'healer, thoughtful and compassionate, willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good'

Socks - wizened inventor

Boron - 'farmer, calm, dislikes fighting, kinda a crybaby'

Kyle - 'bad attitude, foul mouth, actually gentle and lonely, like art and high culture'

Chick - 'caring, also likes pranks'

Hack - 'fearless, naughty, likes pranks'

Sheena - fairest bright one

Wappa - 'happy go lucky, carefree, positive, hates to lose, likes to be in charge'

Jin - wizened artist

Britz - wizened soldier

(The kids with short little notes on their personality instead of a seeming + kith assignment are ones I haven't decided for yet...)

[hamelin-born]

@ardentmystacina said:  Karma has narrative weight so it’s probably one of the things most likely to have an effect

Good point! I've been thinking about this on and off, and - well, originally I was picturing a standard 'Terrible Inhuman Entities Are Suddenly Rendered Powerless and Are At The Mercy of Their Victims' scenario. (A bit of a trope, but still a classic!) But that - that just doesn't feel narratively satisfying (and by the laws of the True Fae probably wouldn't have any purchase on them.)

Being rendered Nameless might do it. And I - I had an incomplete thought about the True Fae and Arcadia, aka Faerie.

I've always liked the varying permutations of Faerie that authors and tale-tellers come up with - the idea of Arcadia, as it were. One of my favorites is - is a land that's wild and free, cruel and kind in equal measure. A place where there are 'beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron'.

And that's - that's not Arcadia, as presented in C:tL. It's - a backdrop, a setting for the Gentry to make of it what they will in pursuit of their whims and desires. It's not - it's not a place. Does that make sense?

So let the Gentry become Faerie. They are godlike entities, more forces of nature then people, to a certain extent - so let it be so. Let them be rendered nameless. Let them become, be the wind and the rain and the fire and the cold, the city and the forges, the dark and the desire - stripped of personality, of everything that makes them more.

And let there Be a Faerie, an Arcadia, on the other side of the Hedge - a land perilous and untamed, but beautiful and free - for whomever, whatever, dares to seek it.

I made a mistake and read Changeling: The Lost fanfic.

Now I am visualizing karma being visited upon the True Fae of the setting.

[navsartyplace]

Buzz Buzz! Just another day of caring for your fellow changelings in this bitch of a world we call Arcadia.

[zmijowka]

Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy

some objects inspired by the vibe of the goblin market, 02.2022

[freefallthelost]

after last week’s gripping cliff hanger that only nbc hannibal fans would find to be romantic, join our gang of soon-to-be murderer’s for a small session at 9:35 EST on twitch

[endollvors]

file names:

V:tM Mary & Augustus (Vampire: The Masquerade OCs, Content warning for, would you believe it? Blood and Murder. She used to live in a Castle, He used to do fiber work on commission, they are now in Florida. Thinblood members of the Vampire Mafia)

Celia Fic (Disney Descendants, D3 rewrite. The spiritual successor to Long Held Resentment. It's in its larval stage right now. The goal is to make the bit where Celia throws the Ember in the birdbath hit like a freight train)

Health Check! (Captain America MCU, The US government makes a 5’1” Super Soldier and, failing to realize this, send him home, “Reeve Dodgers” joins the Army anyway. Crack treated exactly seriously enough to make more jokes)

C:tL Character Behavior (Changeling: The Lost OCs, two different guys, actually. Faerie Insectiod Hivemind Purgatory and the Electric Guilt Lesbian)

Snippet: Health Check!

“There’s something wrong with Carter.” Agent Derek Grant says, looking a little wild eyed and desperate. The unspoken ‘right?’ Hangs obviously off the end of the sentence. He is right. And also, Phil knows, part of the reason he’s so upset is because he’s the only person in the department that’s noticed. Phil feels a distant sense of pride for him, like when he sees an op someone else is running pull off without a hitch. His don’t do that, because at this point in his career they only give him ops that start off FUBAR. Pulling those off is a more immediate kind of pride. He quirks his lips at Grant in a way he knows is entirely unverifiable. It’s a shame he doesn’t have the security clearance for Phil to answer the question. “It’s widely believed that there’s something wrong with everyone that spends a significant amount of time around Agent Barton.” Grant does an impressive mix of a flinch and a shudder that Phil is personally familiar with in relation to Clint Barton, and nods. “I can’t quite agree, because it is my job to spend a significant amount of time around Agent Barton.” Phil finishes and watches the hope leave Grant’s eyes. He feels a little bad about it.

WIP Wednesday Game

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

Requested/Friend event mentions under the cut! If you'd like to be pinged next week, let me know!

@fiore-della-valle @redbirdblogs @greenbergsays @idkfandomwhatever @luckyspike

@obaewankenope @mad-madam-m @anonymousdandelion @geometricfractal @prettybirdy979

@eriquin @aparticularbandit @madnessfromthemountains @makeroftherunes @1attheedge

@whimsicalmeerkat @kidsomeday @lizhly-writes @skyderman @adhdavinci

@owlbearwrites @anachronismstellar @anyctibius @rilannon @lazinesswrites

@zyrafowe-sny @dreaminghour @blue-eyedbeta @candyskiez @dreamerking27

@kalira @virgulesmith @i-want-delfeur @selkies-world @exceedinglygayotter

@oitreewrites @post-and-out @1attheedge @qqaba @ykthefancyclamwiththepearlinside

[endollvors]

Requesting some C:tL Character Behavior for WIP Wednesday because that sounds delightful.

She was harmless and insubstantial, just curious, and the wards easily convinced, weak enough that they barely tingled more than the glass as she slid through them and into a cluttered living room. Once she was standing in the center of the apartment, the whole of it visible from her spot next to the kitchen counter. She nodded and hummed cheerfully at the refrigerator. Its indicator lights flickered back at her and she closed her eyes to spread her senses to the rest of the room, thinking through the well trod paths of playful sparks through their insulated wires, their outlets. The overhead light pulsed warmly as it tried to turn itself on when her attention passed over it and she soothed it while she looked for the odd pooling of power that indicated electronic locks.