#It's a game about hunting monsters it's not called World Explorer what do you mean the world is unrewarding to explore what do you want

[theresattrpgforthat]

I want some games where i play as a soldier or civilian in a war y'know?, with all the trauma and war crimes that come with it

THEME: War, Combat, Trauma.

Hello friend. I haven't found any games about civilian trauma yet, but there's certainly plenty of games about soldiers, expecially in revolution. Here are three recommendations for you.

Our Final Struggle, by Loreshaper Games.

You’ve been chosen to lead the assault on the Imperial Palace. After three years of war, the Eighth Shock Legion has arrived on Minaret, to end the Empire’s rule and bring peace.

You will go on ahead. You’ve been chosen for your unique skills, honed during the revolution. Your mission: capture the Imperial family, or eliminate them if capture is impossible.

This game is a quick read: it gives you enough of the setting to tell you where the players start off, without giving you chapters of lore, which means it’s up to the table to decide what the Empire is like, and why it must be brought down. Players will have to answer questions about who they were before they joined up, and the game uses 5d6 as well as a graded level of success. 

There’s less about trauma implicitly written into this game, so consider this to be a place where you can decide how much you want to explore or not. What if the Imperials hold innocents amongst their numbers? Does your group have the right to act as jury, judge and executioner? If you are going to explore these themes, I recommend you have a Session 0 with your group before playing, set up some lines and veils, and ensure the use of safety tools throughout the course of play.

Guns Blazing, by Havocfett.

Guns Blazingis a roleplaying game about revolutionaries and freedom fighters at the dusk of the colonial age. Players enter the myriad flashpoints of the age, thrown against the machinations of colonial powers and supernatural monsters from without while navigating the contradictory, seemingly irreconcilable politics of change within. 

Guns Blazing runs on an original engine, called Ahadi, styled loosely on Genesys and Storyteller. Characters engage in brutal, tactical gunfights against monstrous foes, where goals are clear, the enemy is obvious, and you can measure success in spent bullets and dead bodies. Then they return to the home front, where their allies hate each other, you don’t know who to trust, and success is a formless dream of a better future.  

This game is still in playtest, but even the playtest puts you inside a war zone, with threats both mundane and supernatural. Don’t expect much for layout in the current document, but the Kickstarter shows a lot of promise. I’m fascinated at the potential of this game to talk about war in a context that’s much bigger than just the fights themselves.

Nasty, Brutish & Long, by NotWriting.

Nasty, Brutish, & Long is a tabletop role-playing game about class war and revolution in your own fantastical setting. Based on the Forged in the Dark system, this rules-light game puts characters divided by class and resources front and center in a world on the brink of permanent change. Will your bastard noble defend their small town from the Church's magic-hunting inquisition? Will your character successfully organize their fellow factory workers against the foremen? Or will your merchant wheel and deal to secure themselves in a world torn apart by new Gods? Play to find out how the revolution fares against the world!

Forged in the Dark games do a really good job of putting your characters into dangerous situations and forcing them to wrestle with both physical trauma and the struggle of keeping yourself emotionally intact. In this game, players must expend resources over a period of time in order to reduce the daily stress of partaking in a revolution. If they don’t have time or resources, that stress will manifest as a Vice, an element of that character’s personality that inhibits their ability to get along with other people.

One thing I really like about this game is that it employs something called a Taste Menu, something similar to Lines & Veils in that it asks players to sit down and discuss what subjects they’d like to explore before diving into play. The author also includes a description of the X Card, which is another excellent tool to use at your table. 

[mimic-from-the-lab]

Blood and Ruins: Chapter 12

Also found on Ao3.

Summary:

Uzi is stifled in a life underground, no way forward in a world that had already broken spectacularly but not allowed to explore what ruins are left. She wants to make her own way but doesn’t have a clue on what that really means. What monsters are there really out there? N knows them a little too well and they terrify him. - Set on earth. Ex futuristic-ish world, apocalyptic. Where the world was broken apart due to bio-flesh monsters, normal life fell apart and the population is scattered in far smaller towns and underground cities after a mass death. There are still scattered parts of old tech of the modern world as a way to fight back if it can be put back together. - Biohorror vampires for the disassembly drones and normal humans for workers.

— Chapter 1 —

--- All Chapters ---

<Previous

Word count: 3852

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Chapter 12

Uzi hit her head down on her table, a clang of metal came from the loose screws sitting in a mug. She grabbed at her hair, groaning out in annoyance before looking up at the gutted remains of her gun. 

It had been days, nothing she seemed to do was making it any better. Arguably she needed more parts, having to find them out in the wastes but she wasn’t likely to have the time to unless she started to cut class. That would be the next few days if she was to have something by the time she met up with N again but it should be easy to avoid him before then. 

Or, she could go hunting through the old weapon manufacturer section. As run down and deserted as it was. She sat up at this, at the temptation. She would need to keep away from the guards that briefly come through or scare them away, also avoid the chance of one of the other sections hearing her. She leaned back, thinking it over. Her dad wouldn’t be back in a while, time to get out there and mess around maybe even some testing.

She pushed herself out of her chair, catching it with her foot behind her before it fell over. She didn't need to worry about the noise but it was still smart to avoid making it. She just needed some food before she went. Headed out to the kitchen she swung open the door of the fridge. 

She was going to grab a box till she saw the message on the side. 

“For all you do for our safety” A heart decorated the message. She just rolled her eyes and grabbed a different one. 

Sitting down with it cold, she barely got some of it in before ending up playing with it. Looking around the apartment with a frown. It was well after school by then, her father was likely staying out somewhere or hanging out with his friends by the gates. 

She dropped her fork with a sigh, some sort of feeling bubbling up. Ones she didn’t want to unpack at the moment, so it was time to leave.

The hallways of her apartment block were relatively empty, a few kids played a ball game in the main hallway just before the stairs that exited out. The main hall was the closest thing to a public place there. Large bulbs of “sun” lights fell from the roof of the area as well as an open area that sat there replacing the space of a few apartments. The older and adults of the kids hung out there as someone was cooking food on the one stove. 

‘Ah Uzi,’ came out a call and Uzi seized for a moment before turning to look over. A small group of older people sat around a picnic table, a game of chess sat in the middle. One of them had turned to look at her as the others stopped talking to take note. ‘I feel like I haven’t seen you since you were just learning to walk.’ 

Came the voice of one of the men, he was smiling but Uzi didn’t really know who he was, besides being a neighbour and always seeming to be in the communal area. She didn’t have to worry about a response for long before another man next to him leaned over with a frown. 

‘Dear, leave the poor girl alone. Can’t you see that she is trying to get somewhere important,’ he said and the other looked back about to argue. ‘You’re disturbing her.’ 

‘But we should disturb her, girl has absolutely no people skills and it sure doesn’t help her place in the colony,’ came the voice of the only woman there, her husband next to her looked to Uzi in apology. 

‘Your eyes must be gone if you can’t see that the girl is still standing there,’ came the second man in a huff. ‘You spend all your time on those little things and no one will mourn you when you die. She is a rather smart kid I'll have you know.’ 

Uzi frowned at that and looked at him again. She was sure that he had been her first teacher, maybe when they started to show all the jobs. Had been rather supportive of her weapon making dreams. 

‘Go on,’ he said and that was Uzi’e que to turn and head up the steps. The afternoon into night time held little traffic on the main roads. Work and schools well over. This was the time for the small business and free time to do as you want.

If she could just get past the population of the colony without any other disturbances then it would-

‘Hey, Uzi,’ called out a voice and she froze. -be perfect.

She looked over with a snap, not wanting to be stopped anymore.

It was Thad, looking across the area showed an eat out place that had tables out front. What made her frown wasn’t Thad himself but the small crowd with him. 

Within the group sat Lizzy and Doll, many of the others hadn’t noticed but the two of them looked over right away. She watched as Lizzy grinned and leaned over to Doll.

‘Ugh why do you have to be cousins with her,’ Lizzy sneared and Doll narrowed her eyes. 

‘You already know that she isn’t actually related to me,’ she said her announce brought out her accent far more, she cursed out a few russian words. Only some that Uzi still understood. ‘So think of something new to complain about her with me.’ 

Lizzy just rolled her eyes but left it to look back to the group they were with. 

From the years of knowing the two of them, Lizzy was just someone bored with her life and can only find joy in others' misery as Doll was full of misery herself.

Doll and Uzi used to be close friends before her parents were killed and she became fully miserable. Uzi was rather sure Doll blamed her for their deaths but had no idea on why and Doll hardly regarded her anymore to explain. But she joined forces with Lizzy and spread misery onto others, that was bad enough to become a bully. 

The main reason Uzi started to hate her besides the sudden uncaring. 

Everyone called her the weird one but they all scramble to be friends with Doll, maybe it was the help of Lizzy but still. Uzi had always had an odd feeling about Doll, or maybe it had developed later she couldn’t remember anymore, but it was a feeling that she should both trust and fear her. Like looking at some creature that was far more dangerous than at first glance but she had never actually experienced anything bad from her besides the indifference. And from what she could remember of Yeva, she was nothing like that. Off but nice.

Thad had crossed the distance to get to her, bringing Uzi out of her mind. 

‘I have to always wonder, why do you bother with any of them?’ Uzi said and Thad looked back in apology. About to speak and stopped as soon as she narrowed her eyes.

‘Don’t tell me it's because of family, that doesn’t explain the others and not Doll,’ she said. 

‘I was going to say, because we are meant to be meeting up for group projects, and that's going well.’ Thad looked back at the group and slumped a bit. 

‘Told you to join me, you don’t have to help everyone else,’ Uzi said and rolled her eyes. 

‘You told me to leave you alone and to dump the others,’ he said and Uzi looked at him. ‘You said nothing about grouping up, you did mention grovelling.’ 

‘And that was an out, you should have taken it,’ she huffed and turned to leave. ‘Now I got places to be, important work you know.’ Thad perked up a bit. 

‘If you’re going to the weaponry section I heard that manufacturing is trying to salvage something from one of the original machines,’ he spoke up and Uzi turned right back around to face him. ‘I am guessing your dad didn’t mention it.’ He rubbed at his hands as she watched her face heat up.

‘How dare they, that's history,’ she snapped out. ‘I’ll need it in the future, whatever it is.’ she turned again and started to run, trying not to shove past others. 

‘Don’t get caught,’ Thad could only call out, he watched her go till she disappeared behind a group of people. He could only sigh and come back to the group. 

‘You have got to stop talking to her,’ Lizzy spoke out, playing with the straw of her drink as he came to sit back down. ‘You can’t be friends with everyone and she so doesn’t treat you right.’ 

‘She is rough, that's fine,’ Thad said, Doll just drank and didn’t add anything, not even when Thad looked to her for something. He just sat back leaving them all in silence. 

Uzi knew that the colony wanted to gut the old sections, it slowly happened as time went, to pull parts out of others to make the ones being used lasted longer. At the expense of other machines. So years ago she made it a mission to make sure others didn’t think to explore the sections she wanted, she rigged areas to help scare others away. Be it teenagers looking to explore or the maintenance section, it did risk the structural integrity but better that then a team come through and remove parts as they fixed a section. 

The rumours were that someone was living there, either some beast from the outside or an immortal being. It was perfect, as long as the series of traps and scares worked then no one was going to show up. 

Now she was worried that some of them could have stopped working or someone saw through them. She should hurry her way to the area.

Uzi knew that the sections she wanted to get to were restricted, not fully sealed away as there were doors with simple locks and while she could steal the keys it could be noticed that someone had entered. Which is why she was headed for some ventilation, it was everywhere and you needed it to keep everyone underground able to breath. They could be locked but no one would think to use them, other than her and with her map of the ventilation system that she had in her mind she could go almost anywhere she needed though them. As long as she can fit the gaps. 

She did her best to head into the storage closet, without anyone's notice, which was easy enough as the room sat between the warehouses and the woodworking sections. Not much traffic as most of the workforce is beyond that in manufacturing, woodworking is in one half of the warehouses but they have the least air pollutants. 

Inside was just the simple clean up tools for the walkways. Nothing interesting, nothing besides the vent grate door that was against the wall by the roof.

Using the shelving in the room was easy to get to sit on top and shuffle the grate open. 

Uzi had to pull out her flashlight from her side pocket of her bag. 

There was nothing but the dark in front of her. Practically a void but with a light source on she was able to see the way ahead if a bit creepy, she started to get down to her knees to start to crawl her way in.

Making sure to close the vent door behind her, the space just giving her enough room to turn around in it.

A few intersections, a turn or two and up a slope and she knew that she had entered above the area. She just wished there was an easier way then to crawl as slow as she was. 

When she got far enough, knowing where she was with a thought, stopped at the gap in front of her. The grate for it had fallen off some time ago, having been opened years ago thanks to her and collecting dust somewhere on the ground. 

Since all the power was cut off, emergency lights used to work till the power grid was reworked and the place was fully cut off. It was simply cut, she found the wire they had disconnected and if she wanted to, could just fix it. For now, she had a torch.

She shone the light down to look and found the pile of crates, they had been stacked in place when the place had been abandoned. Purely by chance a perfect ladder down and far safer than any other jump. It was also past the doorway, safe from anyone noticing or thinking someone was using it. Uzi’s knees hurt from crawling through the vents and needed to get down to stretch. 

She had to trust the drop down, landing on the old box that acted as the first step.

It was only a climb down to the ground. Checking the area with her light beam.

The abandoned sections of the city were just as abandoned as she remembered, the light of her flashlight barely stretched to the far walls. The dust below kicked up to welcome her to the area. She knew, somewhat, where she needed to go. The old map she had found once appeared in her mind to help her navigate. 

A few lefts and a straight and she should be in the storage area, where the manufactured parts had been stocked up for assembly. 

Most of it wasn’t anything she wanted or needed, the base shape and workings came out of there but the whole point as to why she needed to go out was for the stuff that the colony had used up early on or never made themselves. Like anything related to the energy power and regulators. Both normally found outside.

The warehouse was the one place, a chance for things she could have missed. If there had been a computer that had been used for stock management, it had long been taken and used elsewhere. So anything that was made or still around would need to be looked for manually. 

There was a chance for there to be some unopened boxes in the higher areas, she looked up with a quick swallow. Climbing wasn’t exactly her forte. She needed to find something to use or risk falling. 

Uzi could look for something as she checked on the traps, they needed a look over either way, maybe a change in placements were needed as well.

She left, back tracking a bit to find the first. 

Simple creation that activated by a simple pressure plate that rattled cans in a smaller vent system nearby. Making the sounds echo off into the area making it double in sound by the  network. She stepped on it and it activated with ease. Filling the room with overlapping rattles. 

She liked the placement of it, not a direct path in but if someone turned early on it should work well. She moved on.

She slowly went around the area, hitting all the different pathing before getting back to the main storage. All of that area was the last lines of defence before getting to the real machinery at the far end. Most of the rooms in the early sections were for meetings or planning and a mini kitchen with a dining area. The storage area sat after with assembly being along this area before the machinery ran the full end with some testing area. The layout had something to do with safety and fire risks.  

All her traps were sound or movement based, things to scare or unnerve people as they explored. Hopefully making them run before realising that some of them repeated or just sound and no one is seen. 

If gunpowder wasn't both a pain to make and even more so to set up often, then she would be making fireworks and explosions to make sure no one ever came back. 

Uzi was checking on one that shifted something up on a shelf, it had worked once. At her test it no longer made the correct distance and the motor seized, Uzi wasn’t sure when it could have stopped or how. Could be a piece broke inside or dust clogged it up. She could climb up the easy stack of crates, waste her night with it or just bring back a new one later and replace it. 

Uzi heard a sound, a repeating sound. Making her tilt her head to hear it better. 

She heard steps, not quite headed for her. Seeming to walk without purpose. She flicked her torch off, making sure to hide her. She couldn’t stop her throat from seizing as the area turned pitch black. She didn't have to wait long before light slowly showed in the distance. 

Making her realise rather quickly there was nowhere to hide. She was standing in the middle of the shelving area, she looked around as the small light started to filter in. Sure there were some boxes littered about and she could hide between them but that won't stop someone from turning and looking. Hiding behind one big one was the only way it would work if you moved around it. 

Nearby was also a pipe leaned up against a bracket of the shelving, a perfect weapon if she needed. Though using it on someone would be bad. It was bad enough if she was seen and reported, but being reported and having had attacked someone was even more so. It would just be used for scaring. A quick yell and a slap into metal.

She just needed to stay still and stay hidden.

 

A trap that was meant to scrap along a metal pipe on the wall rang out, this didn’t seem to deter whoever was coming, instead had them look around and at the trap itself. She tried not to flinch away as the light was searching about again. She went back behind the crate, only able to wait. 

She held the pipe ready to defend if need be. It was more to make herself feel better. 

She waited as the figure came into the area she was in, they were looking around still. She held her breath, till she noticed the familiar hair and cap on their head.

‘Thad?’ Uzi spoke out, she held the pipe in her hands tight. He twisted around and shone the light on her in surprise. Effectively blinding her as she hissed out and raised her arms. 

‘Oh sorry,’ he said and flicked the light away. Uzi understood right away what she had done to N, it was a efficient torture method. No wonder it worked so well.

Thad looked around for a moment, looking back at the area he had come from. 

‘Hey didn’t you make something like that in the fourth grade?’ Thad asked out in amusement. Uzi looked at him in confusion, she understood that he was talking about the trap he triggered earlier but her confusion came from something else.

‘What are you going here?’ she asked instead, only then getting up with the help of the pipe. 

‘Came to help, the assignment work wasn’t really happening, so,’ he said and shrugged.

‘How did you get in here?’ 

‘Front door, I would love to know how you managed it though, it was still locked,’ he said and Uzi felt herself heat up.

‘This is why I don’t want you involved,’ she snapped out. ‘You just came without asking first and you came through the most obvious way.’ Thad watched in worry. ‘I got in through the vents, especially since no one is supposed to be in here.’ 

‘Oh,’ was all Thad could say, Uzi turned away in frustration. 

Silence held for a time, Thad looked down to the dusty ground as Uzi sighed. She couldn’t actually be angry at him.

‘Why do you want to help me so badly?’ Uzi asked and looked at him again.

He could only shrug in response. 

‘No, I want a real answer,’ she said and held up the pipe to point it at him. 

Thad looked down on it, his mouth opened a few times before sighing. She lowered the pipe end back to the ground. Its sudden metal tang got him to look at her. 

‘You know what you want to do,’ he said, Uzi looked at him with a slight eye narrow but let him continue. He took in a breath and crossed an arm over himself to grab near his shoulder.

‘Lizzy already has her apprenticeship with the clothing section, Brad will be able to get into the metal works easy, and Chad’s happy to be a hauler,’ Thad said and crossed his arms fully. ‘I can’t help the colony with dancing and playing sports and nothing else seems right and I want to do something proper.’ 

Uzi’s gaze softened. 

‘Fighting monsters and guns isn’t really your thing either,’ she could only say and saw him squeeze his eyes for a moment before shaking his head and perking up. 

‘But I can at least help to find your thing as I wait for mine.’ 

She exhaled and looked around. 

‘Fine you can help me with this part,’ she said and he started to smile wider. ‘But not everything or all the time. Understand?’ 

‘Perfectly,’ he said, relaxing into a more natural smile. Uzi couldn’t help but to mirror it for a bit. 

‘Since you are so fit, how about seeing what is in the higher levels?’ she asked and Thad looked up the shelving. 

‘I can do that,’ he said with a nod before making a face and looking back at her. ‘What are we looking for?’ 

‘I’ll explain as we look, this isn’t going to be quick or easy,’ she said and he nodded again.

-

Next>

[skelabra]

Hell hath no fury like a woman seeing a video game review written by someone who fundamentally Does Not Get It

[house-of-mirrors]

So I made meme moodboards for my Fallen London OCs. Perfect way to formally introduce them, I guess. As a little challenge, I completed these entirely with pictures I already had saved to my computer. Note: spoilers for all ambitions and SMEN.

Edit: Feel free to send calling cards, if you’d like, to Orsinio or Samuel. Miles has gone north.

First, we have Samuel Weatherbee, the Laconic Captain, or the Modest Bartender. He was an urchin when London fell and spent over a decade exploring the Unterzee, though he never quite found what he was looking for. In 1884, he decided to retire by playing a certain card game. Now, with all the time in the world, he settled down and was content to open and tend to a tavern. After seeing so many horrors of the cavern and coming too close for comfort to disaster, he adopted the strict practice of never asking questions. That is, until he adopted some young adults-- I mean, made some friends who reignited his sense of adventure. One night, on impulse, he decided to hunt a legendary monster and got far more than he bargained for. Despite asking himself repeatedly why he ever set foot in the Medusa’s Head, he doesn’t regret it. He’s seen enough of this world of horror to feel like he’s powerless to change anything, but now that he finally has a sense of family in his life, he’s inspired to try. No matter what happens or where London goes, he will be there keeping the home fires burning, his doors open to everyone from the heights of society, to the lowest criminals, to the rubbery men and any other creature that needs a cup and a warm chair. The only rule of his bar: no abstractions.

Born in: 1850

Alignment: True Neutral

Profession: Monster Hunter

Main attributes: Dangerous, Zeefaring, Monstrous Anatomy, Dreaded, Respectable

Picrew link

Next up we have Orsinio Elderwood, the Preoccupied Professor, or the Incisive Author. He grew up in Ireland and lost his parents to illness as a teenager, but he always had his older brother, Horatio, and Horatio’s friends, who encouraged him to be revolutionary despite worrying about his safety. He never knew about his brother’s involvement in the Great Game or ties to the Neath, though the work was what supported their little found family. All was well until a dark spring night when Horatio was murdered and his world fell apart. He descended to the Neath with a pseudonym to protect himself--names have great power here-- though if you glanced at an infernal contract unwisely made, it would reveal his true surname. In his pursuit of vengeance, he lost more than he found, nearly losing himself in the process. But what’s done cannot be undone, and a painful truth is better than any beautiful lie. He’s doing his best now to move on and live the fulfilling life his brother would have wanted for him, though he can’t seem to stop getting himself into trouble investigating eldritch horrors. He can typically be found performing dubious experiments in his lab or publishing seditious essays against the Crown and the Bazaar. He also learned about his brother’s work and carries on the “family business” by managing a fine spy network. Just hope you don’t find him in the Royal Bethlehem. Again.

Born in: 1871

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Profession: Correspondent

Main attributes: Watchful, Shadowy, Kataleptic Toxicology, Bizarre, Scandal

Picrew Link

Finally, we have Miles Lovelace, the Officious Heir, or the Avid Occultist. The second youngest child in an old money family, they frequently acted out to get attention. Their father finally had enough and cut them off until they could clean up their act. Instead, they came to the Neath in pursuit of whatever power they could find to prove they didn’t need their family, though they keep a soft spot for their younger sister. This pursuit of the power they felt they were owed by their high birth quickly led to interest in a certain card game. However, the longer they spent in the Neath, the more they noticed a certain voice in their dreams, promising them more power than even the Masters could give. Unable to resist the temptation, they’ve descended a dark path and are planning to Knock (Hate) very soon. In the meantime, they’re trying to share the Name with as many people as they can. Sometimes though, when they think of their few real friends, they have doubts. They look at what they’ve become and wonder if they really have carried on the family legacy, not of wealth, but of the abominable deeds necessary to get what they want. It still isn’t too late to turn back, but given the choice between a redemption arc and the promise of power, they will always choose the latter.

Born in: 1876

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Profession: Silverer

Main attributes: Persuasive, Mithridacy, A Player of Chess, Nightmares, Unaccountably Peckish

Picrew Link

[aplatonic-alpaca]

Question. How do you feel about Undertale and its themes?

Taking the game as a whole, I don't really think all that much about its themes tbh.

I think the most about how revolutionary of a game it was at the time, for being a choice-based game where the choices actually mattered.

And I especially liked how meta it was. That any other game you wouldn't think twice about going on a killing spree hunting down monsters. But here, it's a literal genocide. A fictional universe has never felt so real to me as Undertale's world does. I still to this day think about what Sans' fight means on a meta level. And I remember experiencing the game for the first time through watching a let's play, and it was horrifying to realize that, had I played it myself, I surely would have unknowingly killed Toriel.

Based on you sending this ask to my blog here, I'm guessing by "themes" you're specifically talking about themes of Friendship, Love, and/or Empathy.

So, I did a rewatch of both the Pacifist and Genocide runs, and... I actually came across a lot of loveless antagonism.

After the boss fight with Flowey in the Pacifist run, he explains that he is "unable to love" when he's Flowey. On one side I'm glad that the "love" here so clearly encompasses all forms of love, but as a person who identifies as Loveless and genuinely don't feel like I experience "love" the same way that others do, it always hurts to see this trope.

I can't tell if this is better or worse in the genocide run. It's further explained that Flowey's saving and restarting and experimenting in alternate realities where he killed people is what made him so apathetic to everything and everyone. But its also at its worst where Flowey outright says "it's not worth living in a world without love."

Personally, I feel like my emotions are "dialed down" a lot from how others experience theirs. I'm not sure if its a low empathy thing, an anxiety thing, or something else or some mix of factors, but that's a big reason why I call myself loveless. And the past few years I've realized and come to terms with this, and so it hurts now whenever I see a villainous "emotionless" character who is framed as being a terrible fate to have.

I also think that the concept is never actually done right. It's really hard to make a character actually emotionless. Flowey quite clearly expresses emotions throughout the game - surprise, anger, fear in the genocide run, etc. Whether it was the point or not for Flowey to "actually" have emotions, I don't know, but the pacifist run ends with him being the only one unable to be saved and him dreading his return to being a flower unable to feel emotions like love. I remember being sad about this years ago and wishing he could be saved. But now I want to see that even more so, while being explored that he's not beyond saving the way he is.

However! I also noticed that he specifically says "Compassion" where most other series would instead say "Empathy." It's very common for series to vilify people who can't feel empathy. So that's pretty neat. And I think its also very interesting how this solidifies Undertale's themes as not about "empathy" but instead about "compassion." The word "empathy" is never used in the entire series, actually.

Nothing about the series' views on Friendship bothered me personally. But since the Pacifist route is heavily about befriending the entire cast, I'm very curious how other aplatonics may feel about it!

[remnantoforario]

Remnant’s Top Ten Anime of 2020

2020 Was certainly a ride wasn’t it? To those that managed to make to make it through in one piece, or any piece, good job. Hopefully 2021 is better to us all. 

Despite the world mostly being on fire, I’d hazard to say that a lot of good shows came out in 2020 (despite a number of them being delayed to either later in the year or this year altogether). I meant to release this list much earlier, but I kept changing it around. 

Anyway, here are the ones I thought were the best. 

Honorable Mentions:

Dorohedoro

Synopsis: The plot centers on a man named Caiman and his search for his real identity after a transformation by a sorcerer left him with a reptile's head and no memory of his former life. 

Along with his friend Nikaido, he violently assaults sorcerers in the Hole, with the aim of taking their heads into his mouth, where a strange face will appear and confirm whether the sorcerer he has bitten onto was the one responsible for his transformation or not.

As the residents of the Hole, the En family and the Cross-Eyes gang, along with many others, collide with one another, the mystery of Caiman's identity begins to unravel, reigniting ancient grudges and threatening to forever change both the Hole and the sorcerers' world.

Thoughts: This is the only Netflix anime I watched this year (I missed out on Great Pretender before the year ended), and I can honestly say I had fun with this one. It’s animation was good, the story was engaging enough, and the characters were all unique (Noi best girl). The one problem I would say with the show is that it can come off as unfocused at times, meandering from one plaot point to another with no real connective tissue. 

Still a fun series though. 

ID: Invaded

Synopsis: The anime follows the investigations of Narihisago, a renowned detective now in prison, who is tasked with diving into the id wells of various serial killers. 

Two years prior to the current events, Narihisago's daughter Muku was brutally murdered by a serial killer, leading Narihisago's wife to commit suicide. These deaths prompted him to hunt down and murder the killer, earning him his prison sentence. He is still depressed and haunted by his wife and daughter's deaths, but also uses this as motivation to take his work seriously and help stop serial killers. 

Thoughts: One of a handful of original series that came out this year. This show gave me heavy Inception/Minority Report vibes from both its premise and presentation. It wobbles under the weight of its own concepts towards the end, but it still a fun ride nonetheless. 

Gleipnir 

Synopsis: The story centers on Shuichi Kagaya, a high school student with an unusual secret. He has the ability to transform into a monster resembling a giant dog mascot costume with a zipper down his back and a large cartoonish smile. After rescuing a strange girl, Claire Aoki, from a warehouse fire, they join each other to search for Claire's older sister, who is assumed to be responsible for the death of their parents.

Thoughts: When the initial rollout for this show began I admit I wasn’t really a fan. I thought it was just going to be a hyper violent, fanservice show. Now in some ways it is that, but if you really look Gleipnir tells a very interesting tale of identity and what it truly means to have a wish granted. The music was pretty good as well, and that’s really something from me as a person who doesn’t pay attention to soundtracks. 

Hope this show gets a season 2, but if not I’ll more than likely start the manga. 

Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina

Synopsis:  Fascinated by the stories of Niké, a witch who traveled around the world, Elaina aspires to take the same course. Her determination of studying books and magic leads to her becoming the youngest apprentice witch to pass the sorcery exam. 

However, when Elaina attempts to receive training in order to become a full-fledged witch, she is rejected due to her extraordinary talents until she finds Fran, the "Stardust Witch," whom accepts her. After earning her title, the "Ashen Witch," Elaina begins her exploration around the world, visiting and facing all kinds of people and places.

Thoughts: As a fan of the Light Novels, I was pretty excited when it was announced it was getting an anime. For the most part it didn’t disappoint. Though it skipped most of the stories in the novels, the show still told a few good stories that made for some amazingly animated tv. 

Talentless Nana

Synposis: In the near future, mysterious monsters known as the "Enemies of Humanity" begin to appear, and with it so do children with supernatural powers called the "Talented". To prepare them for the upcoming battle against these Enemies, all the Talented are sent to a school located on a deserted island, where they have all their daily needs provided for until they graduate and communication with the outside world is forbidden. 

One day, a new student named Nana Hiiragi arrives at the school. Her friendly and cheerful personality lets her quickly make friends with the class. However, with Nana comes a whole litany of mysterious occurrences on the island. 

Thoughts: I can’t say too much about Nana without spoiling it’s first episode twist, but I will say that its a pretty interesting show with a fairly compelling game of cat and mouse being played. 

Now on the the actual list:

10. The Misfit of Demon King Academy 

Synopsis: After 2,000 years of countless wars and strife, the demon king Anos Voldigoad made a deal with the human hero, Kanon, to sacrifice his own life to ensure peace could flourish. Reincarnating 2,000 years later, Anos finds that royal demons now harshly rule over lower class hybrid demons in a society that values Anos's pureblood descendants over the demons who interbred with other species, such as humans and spirits. 

Finding that magic as a whole has begun to decline and his descendants weaker as a result of the peace he created, Anos, now technically a hybrid himself, decides to reclaim his former title of Demon King, but first, he must graduate from the Demon King Academy where he is labeled a total misfit.

Thoughts: Originally I was going to put Nana in this spot, but its lack of a real ending pushed it out of the list. If only slightly. Misft at Demon Academy is just a fun ride from start to finish. There’s always something about shows with ridiculous OP protagonists (Overlord, One Punch Man, etc.) that gets the blood pumping. 

It’s like junk food. Great for the right moment, but not needed all the time. 

9. Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Synopsis:  A charismatic troubleshooter tries to keep the peace between warring factions while protecting his loved ones in Ikebukuro West Gate Park.

Thoughts: I honestly had no idea what to make of this show when I first saw the synopsis, but I gave it a try on a whim. I’m glad I did because this was easily the dark horse of the Fall season. I really liked the mostly self contained story format the series had, and there were a few very good episodes here. Check it out. 

8.  My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

Synopsis: Catarina Claes, the young daughter of a noble family, one day bumps her head and regains memories of her past life as an otaku. It is then that she realizes she has been reborn into the world of the otome game Fortune Lover, reincarnated as the game's villainess who, regardless of what route the player took in the original game, is doomed to be either killed or exiled. 

In order to avoid these routes that lead to doom, Catarina begins taking countermeasures to try and avoid things going the same way as the game. This, however, ends up having unexpected consequences on her relations with the other characters of the game's world.

Thoughts: Normally I’m not a fan of Reverse/Otome harem series, but somehow Bakarina managed to pull me in, to a good result. This show was easily one of the best comedies I watched this year with a good cast and a likable protagonist. 

7.  Deca-Dence 

Synopsis: In the fortress city of Deca-dence, the lowly Tanker girl, Natsume, dreams of becoming a Gear warrior following her father's death during a Gadoll attack. She is assigned to a maintenance team led by Kaburagi whom she discovers is more than he appears. Kaburagi has a secret role in eliminating "bugs", humans who threaten Solid Quake's operations. 

When Kaburagi discovers that Natsume is listed as dead in the company database, he decides to keep her under observation and offers to train her to fight.

Thoughts: Giant monsters and giant robots. What more do you need? Watch it. 

6. A Certain Scientific Railgun T

Synposis: The Daihasei Festival has begun, and that of course means that Tokiwadai Middle School—a prestigious all-girls' middle school—is competing too. Despite the participation of the "Ace of Tokiwadai," Mikoto Misaka, the other students who are participating are still putting their utmost effort into winning, no matter how impossible the feat may seem against her might. However, not all is fun and games. Due to the the festival, Academy City opens to the outside world, and various factions have begun plotting ways to infiltrate the city. Misaka appears to be on their radar, and as the festival proceeds, people lurking from the shadows begin to emerge...

Thoughts: Not really much to say here. It’s the third season of Railgun, but good thing here is that each season of Railgun is better than the last. Truly the best of the To Aru universe. 

5. BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.

Synposis: Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjō begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. 

As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game. Thoughts: Bofuri is another OP power fantasy like Demon King Academy, but with the twist of being fused with CGDCT. The cast is extremely likable (especially Maple) and when Silver Link wants to they can make the battles REALLY dynamic. A nice comfortable watch, which was sorely needed in 2020. 

4. Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle

Synposis: The story follows Princess Syalis, a young princess who was kidnapped by the demon king, and her quest to sleep well while imprisoned.

Thoughts: A simple premise for a not so simple story. Sleepy Princess for me was easily the best comedy of the year, with plenty of heart and action thrown in as well. I was wary of the series at first, thinking that the premise wouldnt be entertaining for more than a few episodes, but boy was I wrong. Each episode was funnier than the last and Doga Kobo pulled out all the stops to make it look as gorgeous as possible.  

3. Jujutsu Kaisen

Synopsis: Idly indulging in baseless paranormal activities with the Occult Club, high schooler Yuuji Itadori spends his days at either the clubroom or the hospital, where he visits his bedridden grandfather. However, this leisurely lifestyle soon takes a turn for the strange when he unknowingly encounters a cursed item. Triggering a chain of supernatural occurrences, Yuuji finds himself suddenly thrust into the world of Curses—dreadful beings formed from human malice and negativity—after swallowing the said item, revealed to be a finger belonging to the demon Sukuna Ryoumen, the "King of Curses." Yuuji experiences first-hand the threat these Curses pose to society as he discovers his own newfound powers. Introduced to the Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School, he begins to walk down a path from which he cannot return—the path of a Jujutsu sorcerer.

Thoughts: Originally I wasn’t going to put this on the list, because the season doesnt conclude this year, but I decided to make an exception since the show started so strong. Many people were hyping this up as the next big shonen, and they were right. Mappa really went balls to the wall with this show and I’m pretty hype for what happens this cour. 

2. Akudama Drive

Synopsis: The bustling metropolis of Kansai, where cybernetic screens litter the neon landscape, may seem like a technological utopia at first glance. But in the dark alleys around the brightly-lit buildings, an unforgiving criminal underbelly still exists in the form of fugitives known as "Akudama." No stranger to these individuals, Kansai police begin the countdown to the public execution of an infamous Akudama "Cutthroat," guilty of killing 999 people. However, a mysterious message is sent to several elite Akudama, enlisting them to free Cutthroat for a substantial amount of money. An invisible hand seeks to gather these dangerous personas in one place, ensuring that the execution is well underway to becoming a full-blown bloodbath.  

Thoughts: Want to know what it would be like if Quentin Tarantino made an anime? Well here you go. An adrenaline filled rollercoaster ride from start to finish with a crazy cast of characters and even crazier visuals. There’s even a bit of social commentary in there if you squint. 

1. Oregairu Climax

Synopsis: Resolved to become a more independent person, Yukino Yukinoshita decides to smoothen things out with her parents, and the first step toward achieving that goal is to prove herself. As graduation draws closer for the third-year students, Iroha Isshiki—the president of the student council—requests a graduation prom in collaboration with the Volunteer Service Club. Yukino accepts this request of her own volition, hoping to use it as a chance to demonstrate her self-reliance, but what lies ahead of her may prove to be a hard hurdle to cross.

At the same time, a chance for the Volunteer Service Club members to better understand each other presents itself. And thus, Hachiman Hikigaya's hectic and bittersweet high school life begins to draw to a close.

Thoughts: The gif says it all really. I could just leave that there and end this list on a somewhat high note, but I’ll explain it. 

Now objectively, there were better shows than this one (off the top of my head JJK comes to mind) but when you combine all three seasons there is no contest in my mind that Oregairu had one of the most perfect endings to a series I have ever seen. 

It was an ending 7 years in the making. The first season in 2013 was good, the second season two years later was even better, but Climax was Oregairu at is absolute best and that goes beyond the story and characters. A lot of praise also has to go to Studio feel., who took over animation duties from Brain’s Base in season 2. While BB’s animation was much more accurate to the LN, feel’s more realistic designs fit the more mature direction the story was starting to go, giving the anime some of its best moments. 

Watching Hachiman, Yukino, and Yui grow and change from naive teenagers to somewhat understood young adults was amazing and sometimes heartbreaking to watch. Hachiman’s search to find something “genuine”, Yukino’s desire to be independent, and Yui struggling with her feelings of love and friendship all clash and compliment in very interesting ways that makes these three characters even more relatable than they were before. 

Lots of long running series don’t stick to landing, but in my eyes Oregairu stuck it perfectly. That’s why its my favorite anime of 2020.

Here’s to 2021. 

[rpgsandbox]

Part homage, all farce, the AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE! is an irreverent, affectionate parody of pop-culture tropes and a love-letter to 80s roleplaying games in a new, modern comic-book sized format! It’s a wacky roleplaying game of action comedy!

       Hardcover collector's omnibus, softcover rules and adventures, blank ID cards, monster cards, hero role cards, VTT tokens

Are you a fan of the Ghostbusters RPG from the 1980s? Danger Mouse or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Bill & Ted or Rick & Morty? Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Dracula, or sci-fi adventures on the final frontier? Do you enjoy chortling at TV tropes or chuckling at pop-culture parodies? Then the Awfully Cheerful Engine! is here for you!

ACE! is brought to you by Russ 'Morrus' Morrissey (EN World, WOIN, Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD), Dave Chapman (Doctor Who, Star Trek Adventures), and Marc Langworthy (Hellboy, Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD). With a foreword by Sandy Petersen, co-author of the Ghostbusters RPG!

ACE! is designed for everybody! From talking animals to pulp heroes to eldritch horrors, kids and adults alike will find adventures to love with the Awfully Cheerful Engine!

This tabletop roleplaying game, which we’re calling ACE! with an exclamation point, is one of fast, cinematic, action comedy. To play you need a handful of six-sided dice, a pen, and some paper. Each player plays one Hero, except for one player who takes the role of the Director.

Think of ACE! as an irreverent, fun-packed movie. You might play as ghost hunters in New York City, a band of plucky galactic guardians, vampire slayers, or soldiers of fortune in the Los Angeles underground. Heck, you might even be cartoon animals. Good grief!

This is a multi-dimensional, time-hopping, genre-mashing, pan-galactic portal into any type of adventure you can imagine! Want to play in a fantasy world full of elves and orcs? Crew a starship as it explores the galaxy? Hunt vampires in Victorian London? Play as animal detectives, robot cowboys, wizards, ninjas, or time traveling bounty hunters?

The only limit is your imagination, and the requirement that you have fun.

This Kickstarter is for the full five-book set.

What? Five books, you say? Fear not -- they're pretty small books! They include the core rules, and four hilarious genre-hopping adventures. Each book is about 30 pages long. Except for one which is longer, but we wrote 'BUMPER SIZE ISSUE' on the front of that, so it's OK. If you’ve ever held a comic-book in your hand, the Awfully Cheerful Engine! will feel very familiar!

The core rulebook is just 30 pages in a bright, colorful comic-book sized format. We even gave it an issue number, like a comic-book! After that, each 'issue' is a standalone adventure, designed for one-shots or short campaigns with new characters each time. One week you might be fighting ghosts on the streets of Manhattan, and the next you might be exploring the frontiers of space in your trusty starship!

You don't have to play them all, or in order. The standalone format means you can fit them in whenever and however you feel like it. GM can't make your regular game? Go bust some ghosts instead! Pickup game at a convention? Investigate the strange goings-on in a small American town in the 1980s. Running a livestream? Board a starship and fight the Kulkan Empire! Play one of them, some of them, or all of them! It's up to you!

                Are they comics? Or are they RPGs? (They're RPGs)

ACE #1: Introducing the Awfully Cheerful Engine! With a foreword by Ghostbusters RPG author Sandy Petersen, this book tells you the rules, how to create your Heroes, and gives you a bunch of Extras (NPCs & monsters) to use. By Russ Morrissey.

ACE #2: Spirits of Manhattan. Strap on your Anti-Plasm Particle Thrower, grab your Electromagnetic Field Detector, and jump into your Ghostmobile. New York City needs your help! By Dave Chapman and Russ Morrissey.

ACE #3: Montana Drones & The Raiders of the Cutty Sark. At the request of Army Intelligence, Montana Drones and her team travel the globe in search of lost or hidden artefacts, often exploring dangerous sites and racing against hostile enemy agents to keep the objects of their quests from falling into the wrong hands. Striking locations, exciting chases, dangerous enemies and monotonous classroom lectures await! By Marc Langworthy.

ACE #4: Strange Science. Welcome to Wilden Falls, your average American town in the heart of the country. Surrounded by trees, nature, and there’s a wonderful waterfall that brings the tourists. It’s a quaint little town. Until weird things start happening at the local research facility, people go missing, and there’s a sudden influx of fitness nuts in the town. That’s before we get to the time travel, bodysnatching, and portals to other dimensions. Maybe ‘strange’ isn’t strong enough a word for it! By Dave Chapman.

ACE #5: Beam Me Up! These are the voyages of the starship FSS Brazen. Its continuing mission: to recklessly go where plenty of people have probably been before… and hope a major interstellar incident isn’t sparked in the process. In this highly illogical adventure for the ACE! roleplaying game, you’ll explore frontiers you never thought you had. By Marc Langworthy.

We give you four adventures to start with, and we have plans for more, but there's also a free compatibility license so anybody can write and publish material powered by the Awfully Cheerful Engine!

Hardy Hobbit. Teenage Samurai. Cheerful Stuntman. Clumsy Vampire. Squeamish Ghost. Who knew you could say so much in just two words? The possibilities are endless.

It’s not just Awfully Cheerful! It’s fast and fun, too!

You won’t get bogged down in endless rules and character sheets that look like tax forms. Your ACE! ID Card contains everything you need to know, and it’s only about the size of a credit card! But don’t try to spend it. It’s not a real credit card. Honestly, we tried, and it didn't end well.

You can download blank ID cards from our website. Don’t worry, there’s a printer-friendly black-and-white version too!

Making your Hero takes about five minutes. And that includes a coffee break.

You can choose from an array of talking animals, alien and fantasy species, and occupations from a bunch of genres. Play a cat, a crow, or a turtle. An alien, an elf, a robot, or a vampire. A knight, a pirate, or a wizard. An astronaut, a burglar, a reporter, or a spy. The core book has dozens of Roles to get you started with, and each adventure book introduces more!

Even better, you can already use our online character builder and make a character in about 30 seconds! It's so quick! Give it a try! And if you felt like sharing your Hero on Twitter with the hashtag #awfullycheerful and a link to this page, well, we'd be most awfully grateful!

                                       Build your Hero online!

Alternatively, each adventure comes with its own selection of pre-generated characters. If you don't want to make your own characters, you can simply use those - perfect for one-shots or new players!

Download the pre-gens for all four adventures from the official website!

In A.C.E! each Hero (that's you!) has a Role. Your Role gives you a special ability only you can use. Here's a quick look at some of the Roles you can play!

Talking animals like Ape, Cat, Crow, Dog, Kangaroo, and Turtle.

Species like Alien, Dwarf, Elf, Ghost, Goblin, Golem, Hobbit, Monster, Ogre, Robot, Vampire, and Werewolf.

Fantasy roles like Alchemist, Assassin, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Knight, Ninja, Outlaw, Pirate, Ranger, Samurai, Slayer, and Wizard.

Occupations like Actor, Archeologist, Astronaut, Athlete, Bounty Hunter, Boxer, Burglar, Chef, Con Artist, Cowboy, Detective, Doctor, Engineer, Gambler, Gangster, Hacker, Hermit, Inventor, Musician, Pilot, Priest, Professor, Reporter, Scientist, Smuggler, Soldier, Spy, Student, and Stuntman.

Even a couple of superheroes like Speedster and Vigilante!

Yep, you can play a Ghost. You don’t take damage unless its from a holy source or some special sci-fi ecto-gadget. But you also can’t pick things up. So there’s that.

Each of the adventures adds some more Roles (or recommends some old ones)!

Spirits of Manhattan adds Ghost, Demonologist, Doctor, Engineer, Exorcist, Inventor, Priest, Professor, Scientist, and Student.

Raiders of the Cutty Sark adds Botanist, Double-Agent, Socialite, and Witch.

Strange Science adds Brain, Cheerleader, Outsider, Protector, Radio Presenter, and Tycoon.

Beam Me Up adds Captain, Chief Engineer, Comms, Hologram, Gunner, Counsellor, and Pilot.

ACE! is a pretty fast, light game. If you played 1986's Ghostbusters RPG, you'll see the influence immediately.

Stats! The AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE! is a d6 dice pool system*. You have four Stats -- Smarts, Moves, Style, and Brawn. If you have a Moves score of 3, you roll three six-sided dice when you try to jump a motorcycle over a ravine. If you roll high enough, you succeed. It's pretty simple!

Focuses! For each Stat you also have a Focus. For Smarts it might be a science, or chess, or history. For Style it might be bluffing, singing, or fashion, and for Brawn it might be brawling or swimming. You can choose from plenty of focuses. Foci. Focuses. Whatever.  Anyway, if the thing you're trying to do relates to a Focus, you get to roll an extra two dice.

Trait! You choose a trait, like Angry or Cheerful or Rebellious or Despondent. This, combined with your Role, makes you a Gullible Vampire, a Brave Turtle, or a Squeamish Scientist.

Karma! Finally, you have a bunch of Karma points. These can be spent for extra dice or to absorb damage from attacks, and they're recovered by using your trait.

*Fun fact -- did you know that 1986's Ghostbusters RPG, by Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford, was the first ever dice pool RPG? Also Sandy Petersen has written an awesome foreword for the AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE!

What, I hear you ask, is a CALAMITY DIE?

The Calamity Die is how you find out that your friends really aren't your friends. You see, when you make a roll, one of those dice is a different color, and is called the Calamity Die. And if your roll fails, and also the Calamity Die rolls a 1, your so-called 'friends' decide what happens to you. It won't kill you or anything, but...

Well, we'll leave that thought with you.

                             Nooooo! And it was all going so well!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, June 18 2021 10:00 PM BST

Website: [Awfully Cheerful Engine] [EN Publishing] [facebook] [twitter]

[literaphobe]

okay i’ll bite. what is mcyt and dream smp. like i know what they stand for but what exactly... is it.... is it actually good or just your latest hyperfixation AGSHJSJSKS

oh god beware this is long and also i technically wrote it as part of a tangent to another ask but i realized this response suited this question much better but it also makes references to that ask which i will answer right after this one

“what is minecraft youtube?” well any YouTube video that features minecraft is technically minecraft youtube. i specifically only care about like. dream + friends. i follow the ‘feral boys’ (dream george quackity sapnap karl) mostly? but if ur question is: what is dream known for? the answer is minecraft manhunt and dream smp

so what’s minecraft manhunt? to understand that, u need to understand that minecraft isn’t “just blocks” because it is a beatable game haha. u beat the game by killing the ender dragon and obviously there’s a lot of stuff u need to do to do that. but i won’t bore u w the details. “speedrunning minecraft” means u beat minecraft very fast. dream used to be the record holder for beating minecraft a few months ago. he no longer is but i won’t get into that. it’s an annoying discussion n literally no one cares. all i’ll say is if u really believe he cheated and that he wasn’t being targeted by people who have since been exposed for trying to frame him for saying slurs that he never said (amongst other stuff), then u literally hate neurodivergent people so much. that’s all!

so what is MANHUNT, specifically? basically, dream does a series where x number of people are HUNTING him down and trying to KILL him before he beats the game. if he dies even ONCE, he loses. he’s done this with one hunter (george), two (+sapnap), three (+badboyhalo), four (+antfrost), and now five hunters (+awesamdude)

the hunters have infinite lives, and a compass that leads them to where dream is at any given point in the game. dream is allowed to kill them as many times as he wants, as a form of self preservation

so what’s the allure to manhunt? essentially, it’s how dream plays the game. he’s incredibly skilled at pvp (fighting) and parkour (moving fast and agile that i can’t even begin to explain. u need to see this for urself. it’s even more impressive if u play the game) and “clutching” (how he saves himself from risky moves and all the absolutely CREATIVE ways he does it)

also all the traps he sets to kill the hunters since it’s hard to go up against multiple people no matter how good you are. and how QUICKLY he thinks. it’s amazing. people with adhd are amazing and dream is a PRIME example of that. it makes me less hateful of my adhd :) and more appreciative of my traits :)

how did he do this? lots of research, lots of practice, lots of training. dream used to be a really average minecraft player who had to beg GEORGE to go easy on him. now? george loses to dream even on 40/50 hearts (the usual is 10). dream poured his heart into making his videos, putting a creative spin and skillful spin to his content that had never really been seen/executed as well before. and so 1.5 years after he started actively making YouTube videos he has over 20 million subscribers. and I’m not kidding, that number could be 30 million in a few months from now. that’s how fast he’s growing

ok i got off topic. another great thing about manhunt is dream’s relationship w the HUNTERS. the hunters are friends who dream has known for many years, and also they come up with great plans to defeat him as well. in many ways, they can also be seen as the “underdogs” in manhunt, especially since dream won the 4 hunters series 3-2. anyway in manhunt, all of the players are in an open channel discord voice chat, so they can all hear each other talk, and also talk to each other. sometimes the hunters discuss strategies before the face off, or they dm ideas secretly in the game chat, or attempt to talk in code. but mostly dream can hear the things they say, and they can hear the things he says. it makes it so that they can attempt to trick each other, but they can also hear things that give them a leg up in the game. etc etc. the banter that goes on is like. BIG part of what makes manhunt fun to watch

and the editing...... it is very good and engaging n he chooses fun music :) the speedrun music is a meme by now but it still slaps unironically. he makes excellent choices n i am very entertained

OKAY. so what is dream smp?

(smp stands for Survival Multiplayer. aka: a lot of people play together in a world where u can die and monsters spawn. the dream part is because dream owns the server)

once upon a time, there were two best friends. their names were dream and george. they decided to play minecraft survival together, but they didn’t want to beat the game super fast this time. THIS was about having fun. they wanted to casually explore the world, build a house together, raise some animals, start a farm, etc! after a bit they started to add some of their other friends so more people could have fun with them. and then more people got added. and the dream smp started to include a roleplay aspect because they invited people who did roleplay on other servers

i won’t summarize the events for u. if u wanna know what HAPPENED plot wise, this dude evanmcgaming makes like. summaries that are low key documentaries. very well made, he includes clips from the actual lore streams when necessary! his channel is here and i’ll list the documentaries in order: first | second | third | fourth | fifth

and then this really cool 18 year old Filipino girl started animating events on the dream smp to look REALLY cool n it got so many views and her first animation was done on her PHONE w her FINGER and it made the people on dream smp go damn we need to step the FUCK up so that this girl can get better material for her animations. they are all huge fans of her. everyone is a huge fan of her. she’s called sad-ist, and so far there are 4 main animations: first | second | third | fourth

anyway now! dream smp is essentially what i would call gay planned theatre improv but the medium through which they perform is not a stage but on minecraft. there actually is WRITING involved in this, they script the series of events etc, but for the most part they don’t actively script dialogue afaik?

some truly AMAZING bits of dialogue has come out of the dream smp. the dream smp is basically. gamers transform into theatre kids before ur very eyes + some of these bitches WERE theatre kids and they’re showing it now!

it’s amazing watching the growth because a lot of them have improved leaps and bounds. one of the most notable improved actors is dream ❤️  yea im bringing him up ok because im RIGHT his acting used to just be him screaming but now he can give me chills. he’s very good n is the “main villain” on dream smp :)

and like. not only do we have people like sad-ist animating the smp we have members like quackity who include pre recorded elements in his lore streams to make it just. a truly incredible experience. quackity my beloved. i love him so much

[deangirl-interrupted]

You Wake up a Stranger to Yourself (then you learn to live with her)

For @spnwomenweek Day 2: Family Claire POV Claire/Kaia Wayward Sisters Fluff Background Destiel & Saileen Rated: T (just some swearing) Note:  Niamh is pronounced “Neeve”

______________________________________________

You're not a Winchester.

Until, one day, you are.

Claire watched the ceremony with a certain smug satisfaction, from her place beside Castiel as his "best man."

She knows that Castiel's used the name Novak when he's needed Jimmy's old I.D. (and face) to do useful things like rent cabins in which to raise the child of Lucifer. But it's never truly been his. It's a name he stole.

But when he and Dean got married, with the legal papers and everything (thanks to Charlie) Castiel was given the gift of the name Winchester.

That gift was sealed with a kiss.

Claire watched as Sam clapped Cas on the back and said, "You've always been one of us."

***

When Sam finally popped the question to Eileen, it had been three years since they'd defeated Chuck and saved the world again. Dean kept hassling him, telling him to man up and just do it. Sam kindly reminded him that he'd spent an infuriating twelve years pining for his husband, so kindly shut the fuck up about it.

Eileen had no intention of dropping her ancestral last name, and Sam had absolutely no problem with that. They decided to hyphenate to Leahy-Winchester, with both of them taking that name.

Claire was 25 when she found herself on a hunt with Eileen. They'd known each other for years, of course, but had never hunted together. Claire had been practicing her ASL since before Sam and Eileen got hitched, and Eileen was impressed with the ease and fluidity that Claire had mastered.

It was a simple salt and burn, nothing too strenuous, so they had some down time.

Leaning up against the side of Claire's car, Eileen suddenly said, "This is my last case."

Claire blinked at her a few times before saying and signing, "What, why?"

Eileen gave her a shit-eating grin and slowly rubbed a hand over her abdomen. "I'm brewing a new Leahy-Winchester."

Claire cackled. After hugging Eileen and wiping happy tears from her eyes, she said, "The monsters won't know what hit them."

***

Claire let Kaia drive them to go meet baby Niamh Leahy-Winchester.

Claire had been jumpy and nervous for some reason. She hadn't actually been back to Jody's in an age, and she hadn't seen the Winchester clan in even longer.

It's not that she didn't want to, she'd just been busy traveling with Kaia, looking at the world as an explorer and not just a hunter. Actually stopping to see some sights and stuff. And it's not like she hadn't been texting everyone! They had a group chat! It was a perfectly legit way to stay in touch!

She felt a bit guilty about it, anyway.

Kaia looked over at her and smiled, as if she could tell what Claire was thinking. Hell, maybe she could.

"It'll be fine," Kaia said as they pulled to a stop in front of a one story rancher with yellow siding, a white dogwood tree in the front yard, and a devil's trap painted underneath the welcome mat.

They held hands as they approached the house, and didn't bother knocking since the door was cracked anyway.

Everyone was gathered in a fairly small living room, huddled around Eileen and a tiny bundle in a yellow blanket with bees embroidered on it.

(Claire knew, without a doubt, that Cas had picked that out. He may have even knitted it himself, the weird ass.)

Claire knew that Kaia was still a bit uncomfortable around large groups like this, even though she knew and loved them just the same, so she let go of her girlfriend's hand and sauntered over to the group, throwing an arm around Dean's shoulders from behind.

"What's new up in here?" Claire said, throwing a wink at Eileen.

Claire soon found herself caught up in a group hug consisting of her surrogate mother and her two (kinda) gay dads.

"Geez," Claire said, trying to wiggle free, "You guys act like you haven't seen me in a year. I can't breathe."

Jody pulled away and said, "It has been nearly a year, Claire! And before you say anything, texting doesn't count!"

(Damn.)

Cas pulled away but left his hands on her shoulders, keeping her at arm's length and giving her a good once-over.

Seemingly satisfied by whatever he saw, he finally let her go.

"We've missed you, Claire," he said, so softly that it broke her heart a little.

Dean smiled and said, "Yeah, you leave for months at a time and you don't call, you don't write..."

Claire knew that she was letting Dean get her riled up, but that was just part of the comfortable little game they played. "I texted all of you! Like, literally everyone in this room! Some of you I even texted this morning!"

Alex and Patience laughed at her from their spot by a large bay window with sheer white curtains, and when she looked over at them, they both gave her a little wave.

Claire knew they wouldn't be coming to her defense.

It made her smile.

Donna walked over and pulled Claire to her, giving her just as big of a hug as the others. "Okie doke, let's leave the poor girl alone, and let her meet Niamh."

Claire was then unceremoniously dragged over to Eileen, who was watching with amusement. But it also got her closer to Sam, who stood up to give her a hug, and then leaned down to take the infant from Eileen's arms.

"Niamh," Sam said to the baby, with the most besotted look on his face, "This is your big sister, Claire."

And with that, Claire's brain made the sound of a record scratch. Claire.exe stopped working. Big sister? Is that really how Sam and Eileen saw her? As a daughter? Dean and Cas acted like that with her, and so did Jody and Donna, but those were more obvious. She and Sam had never been as close, though he was often the more reasonable Winchester brother. But this whole time, she was just everyone's adopted kid?

Claire was self-aware enough to know that she had softened a bit as she got older, but as Sam gently placed Niamh into her arms, and she looked around the room at everyone she loved, she felt her eyes go all misty.

This whole time, after losing both of her biological parents as an only child, it turned out that she had more parents and siblings than she knew what to do with.

Kaia appeared next to her, to look down at the baby in her arms.

"She's so small," Kaia said, whisper soft.

Claire looked at Kaia with a watery smile and then back down at the baby.

Gently rocking the infant, Claire quietly said, "Hi, Niamh. I'm Claire, and this is Kaia. You are so loved, and I know that someday you're gonna blow us all away."

Niamh gurgled happily.

***

"Are you sure about this?" Charlie asked Claire over the phone.

"Yeah, why, is it weird?"

"No, no!" Charlie said, quickly. "It's just that...I know I'm not from here, and I'll never be 'their Charlie,' but I've learned that this name comes with an awful lot of baggage."

"Nah," Claire said, easily. "To me, it's a name that sets me free."

Charlie laughed a bit and said, "As long as you're sure, I'll send the new documents to you tomorrow."

"Thanks, Charlie," Claire said with genuine relief in her voice. "This really means a lot to me."

After a "peace out, bitch!" Claire ended the call and let her phone drop to the sofa.

Kaia walked over and sat down next to her, taking one of Claire's hands in both of hers.

"When are you going to tell them?" she asked.

Claire grinned and squeezed Kaia's hands, "I'll probably wait for a while. I don't want to give them the satisfaction."

Kaia laughed.

***

When Claire and Kaia met with the landlord, to see what would hopefully become their first official apartment together, Claire shook the little old lady's hand and said with a dazzling smile, "Nice to meet you, I'm Claire Winchester."

[mangora]

Wait here’s my TMA/TD fear-assignment master post (gen 1-3 only sorry I couldn’t think of any strong ones for gen 4):

Gen 1:

Gwen: Buried (her fear of being buried alive, yes, but also I think it’d be fun bc you know she looks like a corpse)

Courtney: Eye (I love archivist Courtney. Also the fact she needs knowledge and access to knowledge through things like the cheating incident and her PDA, but it destroys her...mwah, Jon shit)

Duncan: Desolation (he destroys everything he touches for his own satisfaction. His relationships, private property, exc.)

Cody: Lonely (no matter how many people he talks to or matches together he’s always single and alone, and his social awkwardness wards people off)

Owen: Vast, maybe Web (his fear of flying and also being voted out quickly and his vying for attention are Vast 100% but also the fact Chris used him as a spy in TDA speaks to web)

Noah: Web (his unwillingness to be manipulated by Alejandro or forced to participate by other players is very webby)

Heather: Web or Hunt (she’s manipulative and almost always gets what she wants, but also her preying on others and being adamant about her goals is Hunt shit so idk)

Lindsay: Flesh (her fear of being not beautiful? Flesh 100%)

Beth: Lonely (she’s always trying to be nice or be like others but never gets the attention she wants from it)

Trent: Stranger (his fear of mines, the way everyone finds his number nine compulsion so uncanny, the way he’s put off when Gwen starts acting different in TDA? Yea that’s the stranger. I could definitely see a statement where he talks about always seeing mimes mimicking him and he begins to mimic others and can’t stop)

Katie and Sadie: Stranger (the parallels with Breekon and Hope kill me. They act and look so uncannily alike. Could be interesting if one of them started mimicking the other too and the other is disturbed)

Izzy: Spiral (shes fucking wild)

Eva: Slaughter (full of rage)

Bridgette: Hunt (her fear of being in the woods and her connection with animals is all Huntcore)

Geoff: Web or Lonely (seeing as he’s such a party dude, I could see him being terrified of what it’s like to not be surrounded with people, but also the way he becomes more manipulative in TDA is kinda web-ish)

Leshawna: I honestly dunno. I wanna say Slaughter because of her attitude towards Heather, but also her realist view reminds me of a Spiral victim like Helen, and her actions in TDA are reminiscent of a Web avatar. I’m gonna say Slaughter is the strongest.

Harold: Dark (fear of being sneaked up on by ninjas first off, but also considering how much he knows about everything, I think being in the dark would terrify him)

DJ: Hunt (his animal curse in WT but it manifests to be like way worse)

Ezekiel: Corruption or Hunt (him going feral and becoming a monster is classic corruption but his determination to win through any means necessary is very Hunt)

Tyler: Lonely (his need to impress everyone with his sports stunts and his constant attempts to get Lindsay to remember him? Yea lonely)

Justin: Flesh (his fear of being ugly and the importance he puts in his looks are classic Flesh behavior)

Alejandro: Flesh (he’s manipulative like a Web avatar, but also a lot of his charm comes from his looks, and his fear of putting gross food in his body is very Fleshy)

Sierra: Eye (she knows everything about everyone dude)

Gen 2:

Zoey: Lonely (she grew up ostracized in a small town and has a hard time making the friends she longs for, she’s definitely tied to the Lonely)

Cameron: Eye (once again, knows everything, and wants to experience everything. I could see him as Courtney’s runner-up or assistant, and marked by the buried because I can imagine his bubble would make him scared of being trapped again)

Mike: Web (he’s afraid of doing bad things against his will)

Mal: Slaughter (he just wants to fuck shit up and hurt people)

Vito: Flesh (also puts a lot of importance in his looks)

Manitoba: Hunt (explorer man)

Svetlana: Flesh (since she puts so much time and love into gymnastics, I think an incident involving injury would freak her tf out)

Chester: End (he’s old and wants to make the most of that)

Brick: Dark (he’s afraid of being lost without direction, as well as the literal dark)

Jo: Hunt (shes focused on winning almost exclusively)

Dawn: Extinction (she’s afraid of the earth and creatures on it withering away)

Anne Maria: Lonely (she puts so much emphasis on being seen and loved and gets volatile when people challenge that)

Scott: Web (he’s a master of scheming, what more should I say)

B: Eye (he’s afraid of others knowing about him and can’t give things up easily, but will use his knowledge to help when needed)

Staci: Stranger (she makes up so many lies for no gain besides attention and upsetting people. She’s like a car wreck you can’t look away from)

Dakota: Corruption (marked by the lonely because she needs attention to function, but I think her becoming dakotazoid and the terror she had getting there points to corruption. Also allegory of Hollywood destroying her blah blah blah)

Sam: Desolation (his self worth is put into material objects like video games and the destruction of them is shown to ruin him)

Lightning: Hunt (I know his body image leans into Flesh but his determination to win and arrogance are like that of a natural predator)

Gen 3:

Shawn: Extinction (I think he’s marked by corruption too because of his fear of zombies corrupting him, but the mass tragedy angle and doomsday prepping is very extinction-like)

Jasmine: Buried (claustrophobia, yea, but also her fear of being trapped by her feelings for Shawn point to buried. This ones kinda loose though, I could see her connected to the web or hunt too)

Sky: Flesh (similar to Svetlana, I think an injury as a gymnast would destroy her, also a big part of flesh is pride, and losing her pride and winning streak freaks Sky out)

Dave: Corruption (his germaphobia as well as his insistence on being with or ‘infecting’ Sky...yea that’s the corruption)

Scarlett: Eye (she knows a lot and uses it to watch and manipulate others)

Max: Web (he’s very methodical, if not smart, in his scheming, and him being outwitted by Scarlett freaked him tf out)

Ella: Lonely (I mainly say this for her fear of being hated by Sugar. I could also see Buried bc shes upset about Chris trapping her by revoking her ability to sing)

Leonard: Spiral (could also lean into Stranger, but his ability to convince so many people to believe in something that doesn’t exist purely with his own belief in magic is very Spirally, plus his frustration with Dave is much like Micheal’s with Jon when he could see through his bullshit, and him losing his ability to cast physical magic is very much like a Spiral victim’s descent back into humanity)

Beardo: Dark (put simply, we don’t know much about him, and he disguises any recognizable trait with sounds. Could also be Stranger)

Sugar: Hunt (fear of losing, exc. also the way she preys on others weaknesses for her own game, pun intended? Yea)

Sammy (I will not call her Samey in this house): Lonely (Amy traps her in a world where no one will talk to her or validate her ideas, it’s pretty sad. Could also see her touched by the Eye during her time impersonating Amy)

Amy: Web (she’s great at manipulating others into liking her)

Topher: Stranger (him trying to replace Chris and disillusion others to it is a pretty not-them move)

Rodney: Lonely (the fact that he’s constantly misunderstood and can’t connect with others because of it. Sad)

Feel free to add your own input! I’m not 100% sure on quite a few of these and some of the traits of the fears overlap (Stranger and Web, Hunt and Slaughter, exc.) so uh beans

[red-hood-vigilante]

more hbo spn rambles, thoughts, drabbles etc. long long post.

part 1 here

there’s some things i’ve omitted here bc others have already posted about those things, certain headcanons and characterizations and stuff. those posts are in my likes somewhere (and i’ll reblog them someday), and there’s some posts i’ve read but not liked, which i now can only vaguely remember, which is why some ideas/thoughts are similar

ALSO most of these follow the model i talked about in part one: how s1-5 will stay more or less how they are but s6-10 is changed (some things are cut out entirely, some things are tweaked and some characters + arcs are more fleshed out. more focus on sam’s trauma and post-cage adaptation to the real world as well as dean letting his rage and control issues consume him and how he’d recover and redeem himself)

as i typed these paragraphs, i realized i really have 10 seasons mapped out and ready to go. hbo hire me!!

alright go:

sam and dean get wearier as the show progresses (second half), and eventually they stop putting so much care and thought in the people they save. like...hm how do i say this, like as long as a victim/victims are saved, they don’t care about how that happens or how those people suffer potential consequences, like if the victims lose a limb or have their homes burned down because of the monster, then sam and dean don’t really care. they saved your life, now they’ll leave you with your life in potential shambles and not care because all that matters is that they saved your life, not how it is afterwards. they still care about saving that one person, but eventually it pales a little in comparison to a war between heaven and hell, being the vessels etc. ---> saving people becomes less about making sure they’re actually alright and healing from horrific events and more about just making sure they have a pulse before they move on

when angels lose their wings they are either burned off in the actual fall or ripped off of them in their vessels, which leaves pretty nasty scars on the vessel

ed and harry are so young and bright eyed about the whole hunting thing; sam and dean as kids, idolizing it, finding it exciting and intriguing when they shouldn’t. sam and dean try to get them out of the business before they too are too traumatized and desensitized to do anything but hunt. neither sam or dean will say it but they are jealous of ed and harry and their freedom to leave, and hate them for choosing this voluntarily instead of being dragged into it by tragedy

hbo spn is a slow burn. there’s a lot more shots of sam and dean in silence just sitting together after a hunt, exhausted and too tired to move yet. they’re covered in blood and guts on the side of the road after killing or covered with dirt in a graveyard after burning bones, sitting next to the fire, just watching it. the times they park the car and watch the stars? we get to see it. 

dean wears rings and the amulet all the time in the beginning, for the first five seasons. the rings vary; first they’re some of john’s old ones and stuff he finds in thrift stores. then later on he begins wearing rings from people they’ve saved/haven’t saved as a keepsakes etc. when he begins his descent to the holy murderer in s6-10 he wears less and less rings. they don’t matter anymore -> symbolically shedding who he was and what mattered to him

the only accessories sam has is a rosary/cross around his neck. he has jess’ engagement ring in his pocket/wallet. after the cage he vaguely remembers why the ring was there and who jessica was (more on this further down)

the four horsemen are manifestations of different aspects of human nature at its most grotesque and strongest, can’t be killed as long as humans live. war is conflict, famine is desire, pestilence is physical and mental illnesses.

(the seven sins are like the horsemen, tulpas of human nature instead of demons)

death isn’t a concentration of an existing aspect of humans as much as it is the end of life, the antithesis of life. death the oldest of the horsemen and has existed since the beginning of any life, organism, cell and atom. the opposite of life and light, the other half of god (as i’m typing this i’m confused as to why  amara was the opposite of god instead of death). death isn’t evil or good, remains 100% objective. doesn’t care for sam or dean at all, but has a begrudging respect for their stubbornness and entertainment they provide due to their flat out refusal to do as they’re told by celestial bodies when anyone else would crumble

by including death i feel like it very naturally begs questions of who decides when someone dies, when someone lives, why would death follow these guides instead of reaping whomever whenever, what happens if a life isn’t reaped at the right time etc. the reader in me adore the idea of death having a library with books and records of everyone who has ever lived and died and how they died - but then, who writes these books and why? do they decide, and if in that case, how? these questions are above my paygrade but you know what i mean? like there has to be some sort of system right, god created everything, death executes to maintain order, some third party deity writes the laws and the books. the three branches of government. ok but it’s hbo so again, i think we shouldn’t dive this deep into things, like as much as these topics intrigue me i don’t want to stray too much from the dirt road trip aesthetic

shapeshifters are extremely rare because they don’t require any kind of human blood or organs/sacrifice to live

i want more exploration of how magic is like science, like it just needs the right ingredients and right conditions. sam thinks of magic as an obscure branch of science; it just requires research and knowledge and clear intentions because science can be controlled and do a lot of good when used responsibly. dean doesn’t like it. he doesn’t trust the unpredictable elements and he’s seen enough to know it never goes well. magic is a force that can’t be controlled by anyone.

sam and dean have full on fist fights regularly. to practice and keeping each other sharp, but also because they’re siblings. they’re feral, insane and unhinged with each other and they get on each other’s nerves A LOT. it’s petty and childish and sometimes it can get a lil ugly but it becomes their way of family therapy. after a fight the next scene cuts to sam and dean with ruffled clothes, nosebleeds and swollen lips at a diner eating silently after beating each other up. either they sit in silence because they’re tired or both are harping on the other’s openings and weaknesses

sometimes they’ll fight a little dirty but they do so in different ways; dean will pull the old ‘look!’ and point to something and then tackle sam when he turns to look while sam will just cry out in fake pain which makes dean stop dead in his tracks before sam headbutts him or kicks him in the groin

we, the audience get used to these fights, they’re sometimes funny and for comic relief, sometimes for narrative purposes (like tricking a monster they’re fighting each other when they’re really not) BUT. then comes the times when sam and dean are actually fighting without holding back and we see how much they are capable of hurting each other or how heartbreaking and difficult it can be to watch when of them are incapable of fighting back/doesn’t defend himself -> swan song when dean doesn’t fight back against possessed sam, or when dean beats soulless sam unconscious

sam and dean also just verbally bully each other constantly but they do have their odd ways of expressing affection and care. they get the other person their fave snack whenever they go grocery shopping without being asked to and are the only other one they truly trust to have their back in hunts. have a cup of coffee ready before the other asks for one. brothers and each other’s best friend. nightmare duo but in a sweet way. the cooperation of ‘the usual suspects’ when they’re in different interrogation rooms but still has the cover story down to a t. code words and code names and cover stories, they know it all

when sam and dean fight together against a common enemy they’re a damn nightmare - because they know each others weaknesses and habits, they cover each other perfectly and in complete silence. they’ve been at it together since they were kids and read each other’s nonverbal cues like a picture book

to build off of what i said in part 1; the winchesters are pretty hated in the hunter’s community. even the people sam and dean frequently work with (bobby, ellen, jo, ash, rufus, bela, kevin, charlie, castiel etc) roasts them all the time and don’t hesitate with calling them out on their self-pitying crap when it get’s too much (spn was just objectively better when characters weren’t afraid of dragging sam and dean through the mud for being selfish and stupid) and this WILL persist in hbo spn. the only reason people continue working with sam and dean is because they know deep down a lot of the things that happens aren’t sam and dean’s fault - but they still blame them for it. doesn’t make it easier how sam or dean sometimes start crap on purpose to save the other

the winchesters are terrifying and people for sure tell stories about them, but not like ‘they’re heroes’, more like ‘they’re insane and dangerous. stay the fuck away from them’. some stories are true, like how they’ve worked with demons, but some are just game of telephone. (dean has apparently a ghost he is frequently possessed by while sam is actually a mutant vampire). hunters hate and are scared of the winchesters. sam and dean are never invited to hunter stuff (burials, memorials etc) but crash them nonetheless even though the hunters do NOT want them there.

you know what drives me insane when i think about it? how some characters in spn already are their hbo spn counterparts; john. mary. adam. maybe kevin?

other things that already are their hbo spn counterparts: dean throwing away the amulet right in front of sam. eyes burning when angels are seen. how ghosts are just tragedies, stuck in a loop they can’t leave. how a lot of the monsters they meet are just victims or their circumstances or the first victim of a curse. the impala being sam and dean’s home. dean not knowing how to comfort sam when he’s upset other than trying to do things for sam that usually brings dean comfort (driving the impala, listening to rock music etc). the roadhouse. heaven being an eternal version of the memories that made you the happiest even though it’s not real. sam wanting independence and freedom but never fully having it. dean fearing being alone more than anything else and that’s where he always ends up. sam has an eating disorder after the demon blood and dean has an alcohol problem he refuses to see as a problem. dean saying “i’d do it again” without an ounce of regret and pouring himself a drink when sam tells him it was fucked up to lie to him about gadreel

the demon/angel hybrid: THIS could be sooo interesting to explore. an angel and demon hybrid are you kidding me?? not to toot my own horn too much but i’m so clever. i should write this story myself. SO. does this creature have parents who fucked in their vessels or was this an experiment by god (yes i love the ‘mad scientist’ idea, that really should’ve been played up way more) or did a pre-existing creature (human or otherwise) drink demon blood and angel grace at the same time so that it created itself? so much potential for some really intriguing storytelling and character exploration - not only the creature itself and what they would be like, but also for the people around; sam, dean, castiel, jack etc. how would they react to this thing that is the very definition of defying heaven and hell and all the natural laws? does it exist before the show starts or will we see its birth?

the powers of the demon/angel hybrid would be tricky; a mix of holy and defiant, grotesque and beautiful. unconsciously forces people to tell the truth when talking to them. poisons whatever they touch. eyes of a demon, wings of an angel. can smite but skin will burn when touching iron. can do deals but will require a sacrifice in return, not a soul, usually a body part taken then and there (the hybrid eats it. it favours eyeballs and the liver - angels like raw meat). lights always flicker. makes things explode when angry (esp people and cars). can manipulate feelings, thoughts and memories. can travel to both heaven and hell, not welcome in either places. + standard stuff like telekinesis, teleportation, mind reading, super strength etc. 

sam and dean’s wardrobe are pretty much the same; whatever’s cheap and not covered in blood. however, they do have stylistic differences. sam thinks graphic tees are funny, dean uses whatever’s black combined with john’s leather jacket. their wardrobe melds as they stop thinking of themselves as individuals and more of “me and my brother,”. their clothes are tattered and torn to shreds all the time. hand me downs, hand me ups. when they stray off their “path” and do things that are the crux of a storyline/character arc, this would reflect in their clothes. when sam is with ruby and becomes more and more “evil” he wears more and more red, a colour he has stated in the past he doesn’t really like. when dean is dead, sam starts to wear his rings and john’s and dean’s leather jacket. when dean decides he’s going to say yes to michael he dresses in white, when sam is dead dean takes off every piece of jewelry except the amulet. he holds it clenched in his fists when he’s whispering what comes close to a prayer

logically the amulet should have a backstory but you know what? i love that it’s hinted to be just a piece of cheap jewelry sam found in a thrift store he decided to give to dean. but narratively it should be explained so... idk. what could be logical solution as to why it would react to GOD himself? maybe god wore it once cuz he thought it was neat but he sold it for three dollars because he wanted coffee and then sam found it a week later

i would prefer it if god didn’t show up at all (absent father number one) but if he DID he’s not all powerful just a true neutral (like death, 100% objective) who created a thing that just took a life of its own, much like a parent and a child - the parent helps the child but can’t control it. the times he did intervene or tried to do something it didn’t really have any real long lasting effect so he gave up on trying a while ago. 

@spneveryseason talked about this, how the storyline of sam being possessed by gadreel would be horrifying if we saw everything from sam’s perspective instead of dean’s (her fic is wonderful). in the ‘dean slowly descends into a righteous murderer to become holy’ idea i have this tracks so damn well because again, if dean believes something is right, it is right, no questions about it. everyone around him is like “that’s really fucked up and you should make amends” but dean doesn’t see any reasons for why - sam is alive isn’t he? and seeing it from sam’s pov would really underline how horrifying, dehumanizing and belittling that experience was

john and mary are adam and eve. sam and dean are cain and abel are michael and lucifer. time is a flat circle. history never stops repeating itself. 

sam is the villain of s4. he is manipulated and key information is withheld from him but in the end... would it made a difference? it crossed his mind, that he could be tricked because ruby is a demon after all, but maybe he likes the power, the feeling of freedom, that he wasn’t just the baby, the one who always needs permission to do things. if he has to drain possessed people to get that power... so be it. and it’s for a good purpose, until it isn’t. he’s hungry for more, to be feared and respected. he’s enticed by lucifer’s sweet words, the potential of all that power and the idea of ruling two out of three realms. dean manages to pull him back from the brink because sam decides he doesn’t want to be what john thought he was and fail dean and himself like that.

dean is the villain in s9. he is controlling, the mark of cain without the mark. what he says goes - it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. he doesn’t see how much pain, doubt and fear he causes the people around him. if some victims or civilians die on his watch that doesn’t matter - just some collateral damage. sam can’t make dean listen to him because dean is the older one, the one who’s always called the shots. dean is the angelic one, heaven’s chosen warrior, he is untouchable and unkillable. he’s is an excellent killer, filling the void with blood and rage which is better than the crippling fear of loneliness carved into his bones. 'i butcher for love, to protect,’ he tells himself. ‘why shouldn’t i exterminate, regardless of the cost? i’ve followed the rules, i’ve always sacrificed. now i call the shots. it’s my right.’

sam’s hell trauma is never magically removed. he’s stuck with the memories and the nightmares and the occasional hallucinations. castiel can’t do anything but offers to wipe his memory completely, but sam says no, he is still doing penance. 

after dean comes back from hell he starts calling himself old man and jokes a lot about he’s 40 years older now (after he’s more comfortable about speaking about hell) 

when sam comes back he feels ancient (he’s over 900 years old at least but he lost count), weary, tired and so so so out of place in this world. he’s forgotten how to put gas in a car, how to drive, how to use a credit card, all the song lyrics he and dean used to yell together, the faces of people he knew before he fell, the softness of a bed, the schools he went to, most of the hunts he and dean, how john died, who mary is, the initials carved into the impala, the taste of food that isn’t raw meat. it’s so much he’s forgotten that he has to relearn. he prefers figuring things out with castiel instead of dean because castiel doesn’t silently resent him for everything he’s forgotten

sam doesn’t laugh anymore. despite dean’s many and castiel’s few awkward attempts, it’s more like quick smile and a quiet “hmm”. on some days he recoils when he sees blood and guts, on other days he’s so apathetic it’s unnerving

sam sympathizes with the brought back mary and castiel more than ever. dean tries to get sam to remember things he’s forgotten from his childhood but sam can’t connect with it anymore. he stopped being that sam a long time ago. dean doesn’t know what else to do than try to force this connection to be revitalized and he fails. sam isn’t that person anymore and this wedge in their relationship becomes a central factor in dean’s s6-10 desperation and isolation. sam is here and safe but it’s not really sam, not the sam dean grew up with

while sam has forgotten how to make coffee, he now knows everything about angels, effective torture tricks, a bunch of lore + biblical history, how to navigate hell, the most powerful and influential demons, rare and powerful spells as well as perfect enochian (he will speak enochian without realizing and it feels more natural than english). lucifer and michael were surprisingly talkative (raging about the unfairness) when taking their anger and hatred out on sam and adam and each other. sam had access to all of lucifer’s memories and knowledge for the time he was the one in control. walking library and encyclopedia of biblical lore.

he still has some muscle memory from hunting and sparring, but sam is ghostly thin and very rusty. even though he’s an expert on lore, he’s not fit to go on hunts anymore and he knows it. 

sam remembers adam and swears he’ll try to get him out, but he can’t. just thinking about the cage makes him vomit. he can’t talk about it, much less go near it. after a while sam thinks it might be better to let adam stay down there than let him come back up and feel this crushing emptiness and loss of direction

sam’s trials take place in s9 instead of 8; coinciding with dean’s villain arc. for sam the trials are a chance to redeem himself again, this time for good by closing hellgates forever. they’re scrubbing him clean of the demon blood and his sins and they give him a sense of purpose again now that he can’t join hunts anymore. it doesn’t matter if he dies because of it. it would be nice with a permanent and peaceful death that did something good. dean is taken aback by sam’s devotion to repent for something that happened years ago and for something sam has already paid for a thousand times over. dean realizes how messed up he himself has become and how he’s helped put sam here, on the cusp of self sacrifice again because of sickening guilt and self hatred. dean begs sam to not complete the trials at the cost of his own life and swears he’ll better himself, be a friend and a brother, not a jailer, dictator or a murderer. ‘if you won’t give yourself or life another chance, please give me one.’ ---> s10 pacifist dean learning to let go of the control, the violent tendencies and the rage

oh wait what if gadreel still possessed sam after the trials to heal him but sam is the one who invites the angel in? he’ll keep his promise to dean about staying alive, as well as heal from the inside and have breaks from the world when he doesn’t want to be present, like he and gadreel will alternate being the one in control. he keeps it a secret from dean and helps gadreel imitate him so dean won’t notice. it’s not so bad, being possessed by this angel - sam can say no anytime and gadreel is a nice guy. since they alternate on who’s present they can access each other’s memories, which is terrifying and embarrassing at first, but since gadreel and sam have been tricked and used by lucifer and been punished for it for far too long, they understand each other. now another creature knows their trauma and terrors without the need for verbal explanation. also having an angel residing in his body makes sam feel like he can hunt properly again because gadreel can heal him and take over in situations sam’s overpowered. this could show how messed up sam has come to view himself and his body. 

dean is conflicted when he finds out; sam lied but gadreel does help sam heal, sam’s traumatized and his self-worth is fucked up and dean has contributed to that. dean convinces sam to push gadreel out, that sam is still valuable, loved and a good person who shouldn’t be in a place where he views his body and mind like a property to be occupied. sam’s faith begins to come back bit by bit, not in god, but in himself, his brother, in the good things in life. they build their little family; sam, dean, castiel, the hybrids, whomever of their allies that are alive at this point.

castiel can heal sam and dean’s wounds but they are never completely gone; they leave scars and phantom pains. the brothers have SO many scars over the years. dean flaunts them to impress people because he likes the questions and the fearful admiration, the attention and the nods of approval. sam hides them.

when dean is in a bad mood or needs to get his mind off of things, sam just drops something like ‘i don’t get the deal with led zeppelin. one of the most overrated bands of all time’ and dean will go OFF every single time about the entire led zeppelin history, their discography and how they’ve shaped rock music. this will go on for hours and sam will zone out after 1 minute. but dean rants nonsensically the entire drive and it does get him to think about something else for a little bit. they stop at a motel and dean is STILL ranting while brushing his teeth. stops when going to sleep but without fail picks up where he left off the morning after and is so into it he doesn’t notice sam not paying attention at all. we could see this once in s1 when they’re searching for john, another in s3 when dean is anxious about his deal coming to an end and then again in a later season, when sam doesn’t remember to ask/doesn’t have the patience or mental capability, so they’ll sit there in tense silence, showing how much they’ve changed.

---> i can see this SO clearly in my head, how they’ll get in the car and we, the audience, will recognize the camera angle, the same lines and dean’s grumpy mood, and we’ll anticipate what comes next. but sam isn’t that kid anymore and he’s not peeking at dean to gauge what his mood is and how much of a shit eating grin he should wear when being an annoying little brother to cheer dean up. now he’s looking out the window, leaned back, they’re not looking at each other. this shot is a minute or two long, uninterrupted. dean turns on music but neither are singing along or doing anything to lighten the mood. 

s1-5: sam gets hooked on demon blood, dean has an alcohol problem. when sam goes through withdrawals, dean decides to quit drinking and joins him because he wants to be supportive, and he realizes that when he drinks two beers for breakfast there’s a problem

s6-10: sam takes painkillers, anti depressants and anti psyhosis meds to numb himself from the phantom pains and reduce post-cage effects. dean started drinking again after sam jumped and still does, but started smoking in addition because he still drives a lot and doesn’t want to die in something as pathetic as a car crash. 

there a scene in an episode in the first half of s8, when sam has decided to stay with dean instead of amelia, and dean has rejected benny in favor of sam, and then the brothers sit in a couch watching tv while drinking beer and neither of them look particularly happy about it - that’s how their relationship is a lot of the time. they know they’re fucked up and neither of them will ever be truly happy when the other’s around, but they owe each other so much and they don’t have to explain themselves to each other the way they do to others. they know each other so well, each other’s traumas and the things they’ve done, it feels fake and exhausting to try to be something other than the veteran hunters they are. misery loves company; they are miserable together but would be far more miserable apart and living a normal life. they do love each other, but neither of them are particularly happy as the show progresses. family is hell and so is the lack of it. 

OK OK i mentioned it in part one, how i had my own very specific idea about how jack should come to be and here it is. long winded but (might just write a damn fic): 

after lucifer was cast back into the cage, he is stronger than he has been in a long time (being in his true vessel helped him stretched muscles he forgot he had. and fresh air.) sam is pulled out of the cage and it leaves a rift in the magic and chains - the binding is weaker and lucifer must act fast to get out before it heals. the cage is still strong enough to hold two archangels, so lucifer has to become weaker somehow to slip out through the cracks. he can’t get out of the cage, but souls can come in. demons bring themselves and human souls as tools for lucifer to use. there’s not much he can do here - consuming them, eating them, touching them, dissecting them doesn’t give him what he wants

eventually lucifer realizes he must do like azazel and create something new of two halves, like when he created demons. he begins melding his archangel grace with a human soul. he tries with demons, but his archangel grace automatically purifies them and leaves them too weak. he must try with a human soul who is good. he finds the soul of kelly kline, who sold her soul to save a loved one. with her, the merging, works. 

he has another self, a twin, a son, who’s half human and half archangel. half lucifer. the old lucifer will die but that’s ok, his desires, presence and self will live on in his new creation. the new lucifer barely makes it out of the cage, only able to due to its human side. on earth it creates a body for itself and takes shape, no longer a form of pure power and energy akin to the sun itself but now a person, reminiscent of kelly kline on earth and lucifer in heaven. they name themselves jack. jack searches for familiarity and finds it in sam, their old self’s perfect tool and another hybrid. jack finds a mentor in castiel, a younger brother and fellow angel with human elements. they do not find anything in dean, the key to his former self’s doom.

jack’s powers: their powers are like and unlike the angels because he is half archangel. jack has wings but sometimes they don’t work, or they’ll end up somewhere else entirely. their body is their own, not a vessel, so jack can’t possess people. doesn’t talk but people “know” what they’re saying or want because jack emits their emotions and thoughts to people they’re talking to like a radio tower. jack can also have this empathic connection and communication with animals. his mood affects the weather. immortal. reads minds. can remove a soul from a body and send it to heaven/hell by touching it, with practice they don’t need to touch a body. 

other stuff about jack: the human/archangel nature means jack only need sleep and food once a week or so. eats only nougat and raw meat. because jack is a kid they nap a lot. levitates when sleeping. never blinks, stares intensely at everything. their eye colour changes based on their mood. eyes glow in the dark. normal humans who look at jack for too long experience memory loss, fainting spells or migraines and eye contact for more than 10 seconds give vivid hallucinations of their worst nightmares. always barefoot, often floats like 10 cm off the ground because they find it more enjoyable than walking. wears the wildest clothes they can find, nothing matches and nothing is weather appropriate

i have a very specific image of jack in my mind; they look like delirium from the sandman comics with the hair that looks like it’s underwater and the fishes floating around their head, here and here are examples. in live action this would look not good or maybe even ridiculous for sure but in animation... endless potential for angels and monsters to have super interesting designs sigh

castiel’s arc should end with him going from blind soldier, to the unwilling ruler of heaven, finding a place on earth with sam and dean, becoming closer with humanity and eventually a father of three (the hybrids). 

[shirtlesssammy]

15x16 Bullet Point Rambles

This hotel doesn’t allow check-ins after 10? Man, that rules out me for like 90% of my road trips

Travis - a hunter??? - checks into Room 214. Oooooh no it’s a creepy echo-voiced kid! Those always mean REDRUM, man

Well, I see we’ve skipped right over that Dean/Cas conversation! It’s not like I wanted to watch it or anything

Boris: Who cares about these monster of the week cases right now? GAH! (Natasha: I am choosing to believe that this narrative exploration will serve the final point - like some middle paragraph in a 5 paragraph essay)

Dean ignores a text from Cas (or “Cass”) and as soon as they arrive at the hotel the Winchesters transform into bebes. Picture my hands as hand puppets now! Sam puppet: I’m going to college! Dean puppet: Duty and hunting the family business!

Baby Dean meets Travis (unghostified) and his sister Caitlin in the past. Flash forward again and we talk to her as she mourns her brother’s death. “She came back,” she tells them. The monster...

Travis encounters the candy bar monster (or the shapeless old woman who lives in their hotel?) Young Dean believes in the candy monster, but older Dean thinks it just went after kids, so it couldn’t have killed Travis

Boris: Witness! Sam eating candy

“This ain’t the freakin’ Goonies” Bby Dean and Caitlin head off on their very first hunt.

This Travis kid just has that generic kid actor face. Haven’t we seen him in something like 10 years ago? Is he actually ageless?

Meanwhile Sam and Travis are having a very dark game of Boggle during which they get attacked by a witchy lady. Bby Dean kills her, and her ring falls to the floor - the same ring Travis was wearing around his neck in the cold open! Listen, kids. WHY do I have to keep explaining that you NEVER keep the cursed ring of the monster who tried to kill you?

Me RN: What a waste of an Africa quote. Who’s up for a chaser of an Africa Destiel vid after this? 

“I should have told you” “You were just a kid” “We used to keep a lot of secrets from one another” DOES ANYONE SMELL ANY THEMES???

Billie pops up and asks Dean why he’s WORKING A CASE…NOW???!! Lol, Billie, same. She reveals that all the worlds - INCLUDING SQUIRREL WORLD - are gone

Billie’s driving home the hard truths about Jack and Dean’s inability to forgive (Natasha: Glad we get to see Billie in this episode!)

Caitlin realizes that her brother was SUPER DUMB and fixed the broken ring of Baba Yaga and that’s why he died (Boris: Sam is going to rush out and save Caitlin and then it’s going to be a comedic love quadrangle between Eileen and Rowena and Sam and Caitlin AND THEN Dean and Cas just kick back and smirk about their solid, drama-free romance.)

Sam and Dean head off to find Baba Yaga. (Boris: Is this episode 16? SIXTEEN OF TWENTY? argh)

We appreciate all the chicken paintings in this hotel

Dean gets trapped in room 214 and starts hallucinating. (Boris: TWIST! Dean dies in episode 16!)

In a fairly quick fight, Dean manages to pull off her ring and smashes it. She explodes in flames. METAL, BABY

HEY at least we got to see Misha on the Votesmart commercial!

(Boris, checking Twitter: Everyone’s wallowing merrily in Dean angst. Natasha: The ONE constant of Supernatural!)

Getting older…”You tell the truth more…” (Boris: why YES Dean DOES need to be truthful to himself!)

Sam tries to call Cas in the Impala of Feelings but Dean tells him to hang up the phone. He tells Sam that Jack’s ready to die and it’s time to move forward with the god-killing plan! Good talk

Sam: “I thought we were past something like this!” (Natasha: So did weeeeeeee)

Dean complains that Sam raises ethical questions and I high five Sam for his tendency towards inquiry. We leave the brothers working together - LOL JK they’re fighting again. See you next week, bbys!

[nonconstories]

Oh my oh my can you tell us more about the grimdark Buffy fanfic?? I’ve been a Buffy fan since forever and grimdark is a big yes. Also, side note, thanks for everything you put on this blog. It’s nice to know I’m not alone out here with the things that turn me on 💛

Oh you are def not alone. There are plenty of people in the world who enjoy some darker games in their sex life. I'm so happy you're enjoying everything!!!

Click under the cut for my info dumping about the Slayer-side of Moondrunk.

So, basically, most of the Moondrunk verse is me writing a (very creepy) love letter to BTVS. There are slayers in MD; called "monster slayers", "hunters", or occasionally "Grims", slayers are humans with super strength, preternatural reflexes, and very fast healing. They also have some limited psychic abilities; they sense supernatural presences and can usually determine WHAT something is even in a "human" face. Instead of one at a time, there are a few thousand in the world at any given time.

Like in BTVS, Slayers are "called" as they get older. Usually, after a near-death encounter with something otherworldly, their powers appear.

You know how the Council sucks??? No Council of Watchers here. Instead, we have the Institute, and its Lore-Masters. The Institute brands itself as a cabal of scientists, explorers, and occultists who "guide", "train", and "advise" monster slayers. In actuality, the Institute sees Slayers as even more disposable than the Council did. Most Lore-Masters go through 5 or 6 slayers in their careers and do not deign to get attached to them. Additionally, as most Slayers are called in their early teens and most Lore-Masters are entitled adults, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse is very common. This happened to Alice, who you can see in action at that link. She was repeatedly molested by her Lore-Master while at an Institute run boarding school.

Like the Council, the Institute has no qualms about separating families. Alice was called very young, shortly after her and EJ's parents died. The Institute used some very shady legal maneuvering to acquire custody of both children. They were sent to separate boarding schools, and the Institute actively worked to keep them apart. Like, Alice was supposed to be allowed to see him during the Summer, during school breaks, on weekends. But about half the time, something would "come up" and that wouldn't happen. Meanwhile, EJ was more or less forced into becoming warlock; the intention was that he'd grow up to serve the Institute as a disposable will-worker.

Additionally, the Institute does not distinguish between "dangerous monsters" and "harmless monsters". Any monstrous creature that is discovered is fair game and should be slaughtered as soon as possible. The only good monster is a dead one. Never mind if it was there before humans showed up. Never mind if it only attacked because it was injured and afraid. Never mind if its clearly sentient and didn't really mean any harm.

Alice didn't like that, and eventually, she started refusing. If they couldn't tell her WHY she was killing something, she wouldn't kill it. This all came to a head when she straight up attacked two other Slayers to prevent them from slaughtering a nest of baby cryptids. The Institute attempted to execute her. As in, they literally trapped her in the wilderness and tried to have her hunted down and murdered for doing this. (Note: the founding members of Pack Noctifer, Caelum, Jasper, and Ronan, were the sole survivors of an Institute ordered massacre that wiped out their entire pack/extended family. The Slayer who spared the three of them being Actual Children between the ages of 15 and 19 was risking this same fate.)

Which is why EJ and Alice live their parents' old house and also both say "Fuck the Institute" at every opportunity. They only work with other Slayers who have disavowed them as well.

[masked-disciple]

Have some made up fic titles that in typical me fashion are unnecessarily long and go wild:

Keep on Talking, We Don't Play by Your Rules

Just My Piano, The Moon And You

The Endless Breath of Heaven and Earth Will Remember for Me

Keep on Talking, We Don't Play by Your Rules

This could be a lot of fics! But we'll go with AQW, because one of the things I do with AQW fics when I write them is that I just straight up lie. Which isn't to say I'm saying anything that's false, I just present things differently than they were.

The one Chaotic fic actually up on my AO3 is one that shows chaorruption as the terrifying thing it is if you haven't accepted it. So this one is going to be what happens when someone tries to infiltrate Sanctuary. (Sidenote for context- Chaos had two main settlements that weren't overseen by the Chaos Lords. Sanctuary was the bigger of the two, and housed industry and warriors. Avalon was a smaller one, and for retired warriors, children, and those who weren't on the fighting force. Avalon was never actually attacked during the war, but Sanctuary went under fire several times.)

This isn't about an onslaught, because big battle scenes hard. This is about someone unchaorrupted trying to get inside Sanctuary without raising any alarms. So they put on a costume of a drow to make themselves look like one (since most chaorrupted look like drow if you can't see through the chaos) and hope it works.

So this fic probably descends immediately into a torture fic with the chaorrupted working together to do some pretty gory things, chattering and talking and laughing and hivemind on full. It would be terrifying.

And then the second chapter would be the same story, but told from the POV of one of the chaorrupted. They can see through everyone's chaos-illusions and see them for what they are, where everyone else just sees a group of drow. They can see an obvious infiltrator dressed up badly as a drow and doesn't feel the song of Chaos in their core, and deal with the threat before the Champion needs to be concerned. They probably go let him know what happened, though, and there's a bit of a dialogue about how it feels to kneel before a demigod that holds the hivement that is you utterly within his control.

Chaos is fun. I recommend it wholly.

Just My Piano, The Moon And You

Legit, the title makes me think of this gif, and armed with both, I can do this.

Now obvious you'd have to imagine this one at night and not during the day, but this is clearly a fic about someone pining for their lover, playing for them by day and playing songs the protagonist wrote for them by night. Which means we can do a crossover nobody but me and a person I no longer speak to would be able to guess: Madoka and Mogeko!

This is a fic centering on Madoka herself as a Devil, playing the piano for Homura, her Goddess counterpart, inducing her magic into her songs and calling forth demons and monsters for her lover to lead the hunt against. As a Devil Madoka makes the curses and wraiths and witches that Homura and her angels fight, and does so not to stop the heat death of the universe (a nonissue with Vicers and Justim there) but to maintain the balance and the energy of the world. It's a power struggle between two wives who value their game of chess and the experiences that are found in lives well-lived.

It's probably got a lot of purple prose, some projection, and a shit ton of memory.

The Endless Breath of Heaven and Earth Will Remember for Me

I really was saving the TLC fic title for last, I hope you know. :p This is a fic centred in the plotline of In the Morning Light, which follows the aftermath of TLC when Alone, Sasha, and Tenma disappear. This one's an Alone fic as he slowly builds up a settlement in the woods, trying to figure out where he is and what he should do about it.

It'll feel, in a throwback nobody will expect, very Minecrafty, of the first few days of exploration and gathering resources and slowly coming to understand the world. (Minecraft is a postapocalyptic game. It always was. It'll always hold that spot of love in my heart.)

It's mostly to set the scene and introduce foreshadowing that will later lead to plot: how he stays away from gunfire, how his shadow magic is virtually useless, how only at random times for split seconds can he still feel godhood. It'll also go through his grief at leaving behind his family again, and being forced to move against the only person he calls parent, and all those he lost.

He probably also constructs a graveyard for the Spectres he saw die.

[honourablejester]

Worldbuilding with Deities

AKA some thoughts on how to make pantheons for your fantasy worlds.

Okay. So this is fairly heavily inspired by D&D specifically, because some of the published settings feel very lacklustre to me in the deity department (*cough*Eberron*cough*), but it also feels like a general problem in fantasy when your setting is not ‘medieval or heroic western fantasy’ where you can just file the serial numbers off the Greek, Norse or Christian mythologies and call it good. I also feel there’s a bit of an issue with either darker or more technological settings, where there’s a push to either have no gods, evil gods, or relatively powerless gods, to show that this is a more enlightened and/or cynical setting that doesn’t rely on silly things like faith. Which is perfectly fine if that’s what you’re actually going for! But. You can have a very wide variety of settings and still have cool and interesting deities in them.

With D&D specifically, I feel like part of the issue is that clerics, paladins and warlocks are playable classes, so there’s mechanical considerations to keep track of. So when you’re worldbuilding a setting, you feel some pressure to ‘tick all the boxes’ with things like cleric domains, and it feels less like building out your setting and more like making random stuff up to fill jobs, which sucks some of the joy out of it. If clerics and deities and mythologies are your jam, excitement will carry you through, but otherwise it might feel like a bit of a slog. Ticking boxes on your worldbuilding forms.

Of course, clerics and deities and mythologies are my jam. So I possibly don’t have much of a leg to stand on here. But. I’m also a pantser when it comes to worldbuilding, and nothing turns me off faster than lists of things to shoehorn in. So. I do have some thoughts here.

When I’m building a mythology, and not just making up a couple of gods for a quick story, I do have a bit of process. It’s mostly subconscious, granted, but there is a method there. Things I consider in a particular order to get where I need to go.

So. Thoughts for rough-and-ready mythology worldbuilding for pantsers who don’t like to overplan. A quick summary:

Mood/Genre

Important Concepts/Themes

Overarching Goals

Reverse-Engineered Cosmology

Further Details

Mood/Genre:

This is the one I think about first and foremost. For worldbuilding in general, really, not just building pantheons. Everything starts from the mood for me. The tone of what I want. What my world is going to feel like to people. Do I want something bleak and pale? Wild and whimsical? Meaty and heroic? Urbane and subtle? Is the world wild and empty and only partially discovered, or completely full to the brim? Is it starting out, fresh and wild and new, or fading away, weary and dangerous and despairing? What does it feel like?

Genre usually follows from tone. Am I looking for dark fantasy? Something post-apocalyptic? Urban low fantasy? Old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery? Celtic fantasy? A rough-and-rowdy beat-em-up?

You don’t have to be overly specific on the genre. I mean, you don’t have to plan that in advance. The tone is the overriding thing, genre will settle itself. But sometimes it’s easier to conceptualise or pitch a thing by its genre.

Once you have the tone nailed down. The mood of what you want. You move on to …

Important Concepts/Themes:

When you’ve gotten a tone, then you can start to think about the concepts that might be important in it. What concepts that would be culturally valued in a setting of this tone, and concepts that would be regarded with suspicion. The themes that divide it up. This is where your domains start to come in, and also where you start to line up what the ‘good’ gods vs the ‘evil’ gods look like.

A question that I find helps here is what do the stereotypical ‘heroes’ look like in this kind of world? Are they rogues up against the man (urban fantasy)? The faithful against the profane (heroic fantasy)? The simple warriors against the sorcerous villains (sword and sorcery)? The fragile monster hunters against the unrelenting darkness (gothic horror)? Etc. This’ll tell you where domains like knowledge, trickery, arcana, war and order will broadly line up on the morality scale.

This is how you get your darker/bleaker settings in as well. You just rearrange your value-sets somewhat. Think about what is still valued in this world. What might usually be valued in a less strained setting, but might be more questionable here. In a post-apocalyptic world, where survival is the name of the game, perhaps gods touting ‘peace’ and ‘acceptance’ are viewed as corrupters, trying to get people to resign themselves and lay down and die. Or they’re saviours, offering a peaceful afterlife away from the horrors of what the setting has become. Dealers choice.

The point here is to get a broad, overarching theme or set of themes to arrange your pantheons around. In a dark fantasy world, it might be light vs dark, faith vs corruption. In a strongly urban fantasy, a very built-up setting, it might be anarchy vs fascism, rich vs poor, honesty vs corruption. In a post-apocalyptic world, it might be hope vs despair, survival vs surrender, life vs death. In a bawdy heroic fantasy, it might be exploration vs safety, civilisation vs freedom, natural vs unnatural. You’re thinking about the driving forces in your setting, the big conflicts that shape it. What things have value, what things are frightening.

And remember, this comes back to the feel of the world. You’re not writing a moral screed here (or, well, you can, but it’s not my primary point), you’re picking the themes and conflicts that will most highlight the mood you want.

And then, once you know the conflict points your gods will be divided along, you can move on to:

Overarching Goals:

What are the deities in your setting working towards? What are their main goals, what are they trying to preserve or destroy or make or accomplish? This lets you divide them up into groups that are working with or against each other. It’s an easy mechanism to build pantheons around, and is based on your themes/values from the previous point.

So. In your urban fantasy setting, built around themes of anarchy vs fascism, honesty vs corruption, rich vs poor. You have your gods of civilisation and tradition, of honesty and respect, of building and preserving. And you have your gods of change and chaos, of trickery and freedom. You have your gods of greed and corruption. Your gods of ascetism and simplicity. You could have them all the one pantheon, forever gaming between themselves. Or divide them out, make two primary pantheons around that first divide, civilisation vs anarchy, with each of them viewing the other as evil, and then several other deities on the outskirts, trying to gain for themselves, or poke at the larger pantheons.

In your post-apocalyptic setting, dark and bleak, built around hope vs despair, survival vs surrender, life vs death. You’ll have your gods of life and protection, of bastions and defenses, of nurturing and rebuilding. Gods who want to protect what’s left and help it rebuild. Then maybe you’ll have gods of death and annihilation, gods of despair and madness, gods of acceptance and fading. Gods who want to help the world limp along to a final darkness. And possibly you’ll have gods of light and defiance, gods of hunting and exploring, gods of lost knowledge and future innovation. Gods who want to reignite the world, kick it back into high gear, and maybe destroy it in the process, but better that than a long slow slide into a hungry nothing!

In your heroic fantasy, big and bawdy and brave, built around exploration vs safety, risk vs reward, civilisation vs freedom, might vs might. You might have people-specific pantheons, in a big empty world where every race or culture is out for themselves. Gods who pick (or come from) specific peoples, and act to make space for them in this brave new world. Other gods, with bigger or smaller goals. Gods of chaos, thriving on the general anarchy of the world. Gods of civilisation, striving to unify it more. Gods of annihilation, who want to wipe the slate clean, and who are great for everyone else to rally against.

There’s a lot of archetypes to work with here. When you’ve got your mood and your theme, it’s easier to get a picture of the type of god that’s going to live there, to embody that. Then what types might stand a good counterpart or complication to it.

Divide your pantheons up broadly along your themes. Feel out which domains and concepts and ideologies belong with which camps, which might be shared between them. What the pantheons as a whole culturally value, what individual gods value, what that means for their allegiances and goals. What deities would be outliers, independent, what ones would work together, what ones hate everyone but are broadly aligned in goals with others.

From there, we’ve got two further considerations, which I tend to do in whichever order makes sense at the time. One of them:

Reverse-Engineer Your Cosmology:

By which I mean, the origins of your deities and the mechanisms by which gods and/or universes are created in your setting. Can gods be made or created later, or did they have to exist from the start of the world? If they can be created later, how can they be created? How willing are the gods to personally interact with the world and to what extent? Did the gods create the things they’re in charge of, or are they avatars of them, or did they just divvy up jobs the old fashioned way? Etc.

Now. I know a lot of people prefer to do this step first. Cosmology first and work down from there. That’s perfectly fine if that works for you! For me, though, it really doesn’t. It’s far, far easier for me to reverse-engineer it later, after I’ve sketched out what my setting feels like and what sort of gods I’d like to exist in it. It’s easier to have realisations like ‘this setting is way too bleak for ascension to be an option’ or ‘this setting values freedom and chaos too much for everything to have been set in stone from before the beginning’ or ‘this setting is too subtle and low-key for vast holy gestures to be feasible until endgame’ if I’ve already run through the rest first.

Also, it’s easier to come up with backstories if the setting is already sketched. If I decide gods can be made, I can look at things like the cataclysm that defined my post-apocalyptic world and go ‘that made or killed a whollle bunch of gods’. If it’s a gothic/dark fantasy story that relies very much on faith and hope vs monstrosity and darkness, then mortal-origin deities who were so hopeful or monstrous in life that they became avatars after death becomes an obvious option. Things like that. Cosmology is easier sketched in retrospect, I find. You’re not paralysed by fitting stuff into a pre-existing grand order of the universe. You can come up with stuff as it pleases you, and work back to justify it later. (I mentioned I’m a pantser, right?)

And the other consideration:

Further Details:

Once you have your broad-strokes themes and pantheons sketched in, you can flesh them out and start building stuff above, below, within and around them.

Above would be the reverse-engineered cosmology above.

Below would be: servants, celestials, lesser deities, demigods, mortal champions, mortal organisations, priesthoods, cults. What the gods have put into the world. Artefacts. Locations. Ideals. Religions. Powers and magics.

Around them would be other beings, devils, demons, eldritch abominations, etc, and where they fit in this setting. Anomalies to the grand order. Etc.

And within them would be: individual gods, backstories, personal histories, what gods are most powerful depending on theme, what gods are most independent, what gods have changed allegiances in their history, what gods does nobody know their allegiances. What do the gods themselves feel about their jobs and their goals and their means to enact them. Once you’re down off the broad strokes and into the details, remember that your deities are individual, thinking beings as well. Perhaps they can learn, change. Perhaps they have personal hangups from their histories that preclude their doing or joining a certain thing, despite the thematic sense it would make. Perhaps they identify more strongly with a particular aspect of their nature/domain that could put them over into an unexpected camp. There’s a lot of room to muck things around and complicate them once you’re into the nitty gritty.

If stuff crops up here that makes you reconsider any of the previous points above, follow it. Play with it. Maybe adjust some stuff because of it. It often happens to me that a small specific detail will catch my imagination so much that I’ll edit huge chunks of the world around it. Possibly this works out better for writing personal worlds than for live game worlds that have other people in them, but still. It’s a point to consider. Stuff likely will come up later. Mood or tone might shift a bit, entirely naturally. Don’t go too far down into fixed details. Leave enough things vague or sketched that you’ve wiggle room later for adjustments.

In Summary:

Voila! My bootleg process for worldbuilding in general and worldbuilding deities in specific: start with what you want out of it, the mood and tone, the feeling of the setting. The themes and conflicts you want people to explore in it. Then jury-rig the rest out of that. Move to your goals, your factions, your big forces. Then your smaller details, individual characters and personal details. Your origins and your processions, going back and going forward. Reverse-engineer what you’d need to have done to get the setting you want, set the stage for where you might want it to go later. And always remember to keep things loose enough that you’ve got room to play and adjust and be surprised later, often by your own flighty brain.

Also. Deities are just characters, when we’re talking about fantasy settings. You don’t have to make any specific real world points with them. You just have to make them fit with the mood you want within your setting. You build your universe to fit your story, because fantasy allows us to do that, unlike the real world where we’re stuck with whatever was premade earlier. Heh. So don’t get too bogged down with what you need to add in or leave out to make things ‘dark’ or ‘realistic’ or whatever. Anything can be made to be anything, if you build stuff around it the right way. So add in whatever you want, and jury-rig the rest until it fits. Get a strong enough, loose enough base, and you can add in a surprising amount without upsetting it too much. In my case, that’s the feel. Get the tone nailed down, get some good strong archetypes to build the show on, and you can play merry hell with it from there.

It’s a good general rule. At least for rough-and-ready, adjusted-as-required stuff. Start with what you want, set up a loose framework for it to fit in, then jury-rig the rest from there.

(Or make stuff up out of whole cloth in a blind panic and spend the entire rest of your time straining to keep one chapter ahead so no one figures it out, until you hit a surprise endgame that absolutely no one, least of all you, was prepared for. You know. One or the other. Heh)

So. Good luck inventing gods? Hope this works for more than just me? Eh. Hopefully there’s something worthwhile in it, and good luck!

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)

Summary

Ultima 5 is what you could call Ultima 4′s edgier but “cooler” sibling. The gameplay has gained in complexity, dialogue has been greatly expanded, and the ground-breaking system of virtues and morality from the previous game has been twisted by the tyrannical Lord Blackthorn following the disappearance of Lord British.

Ultima 5 also introduces more of a day/night cycle to the proceedings with the introduction of NPC schedules, enabling a level of world simulation that was very new at the time of release. It goes on to make good use of this system by casting the player in the role of an outlaw fighting against the new government, meeting with members of the resistance in the shadows, and going around the martial law that has been imposed.

Freedom

Just like in Ultima 4, you are dropped into an open world right from the beginning, and your tools to explore the world have been expanded. 

The inclusion of more complex systems also enhance the feeling of being able to interact with the world with less barriers, as there is now furniture you can use, barrels you can search, etc.

Like with Ultima 4, there is only one way to win and a list of absolutely required steps that must be taken to reach that victory, but the order in which these steps can be taken is rather flexible, allowing players to create more of a personal narrative as they follow clues they picked up on wherever their instincts or whims took them first.

It is worth noting that there are actually some optional quests dungeons this time around, which is always nice.

Character Creation/Customization

While it is very nice that you can import your character from Ultima 4 into this game, I would say that this aspect of the game has taken a step back in a sense even as it has made progress in other ways.

The eight classes of the previous games have been reduced to four: The standard Fighter/Mage/Rogue Bard trio plus the Avatar class the main character belongs to, which is an all-rounder. As before, there is not really any customization beyond equipment either.

However, the positive of this is that equipment has been greatly expanded from the previous game. While in Ultima 4 you were limited to merely choosing your character’s weapon and armor set from a very short list, Ultima 5 not only enlarges the list but also allows for equipping multiple armor parts (such as a helm or amulet) while also providing a secondary hand slot.

What this means is that two-handed weapons now also give you a trade-off between their big damage and the option to use a shield in your other hand, or even dual-wield.

This greater variety of equipment allows a greater degree of specialization for your party members, though by modern standards this still isn’t much. The supremacy of ranged weapons also continues here, as magic axes are undoubtedly what you should be equipping everyone with later in the game, and now that class does not restrict equipment every single one of your party members will end up in plate with a magic axe.

Story/Setting

This is, in my opinions, one of the most interesting things about the game. Ultima 5 takes all of the virtues from the former game and turns a corrupted form of them into the law.

The game is pretty explicit about this too. Early in the game, in the town closest to the shack you start in, you can find a man in the stocks together with his son. The man is being punished for failing to donate enough of his income to charity as the Law of Sacrifice demands, while his son (who is barely breathing at this point) is being tortured for not reporting his father to the authorities.

Throughout your travels, you meet many kinds of people. From victims, to resistance fighters, to supporters of the regime and everything in between. Throughout your interactions with these groups you will have to discern who can be trusted (generally easier than it should be since the bad guys tend to be meaner or even cartoonishly evil at times) and learn how to fight Lord Blackthorn and the Shadowlords who corrupted him.

The Shadowlords are, incidentally, the part of the story that I don’t quite enjoy. Fantasy is full of one-dimensional ancient evils and dark overlords. By making the events of the game the result of an unambiguously malevolent supernatural force rather than human failings of the type that are not uncommon in real life, the game makes those events feel more distant and less complex.

This very series already has had plenty of “Defeat this one evil force and everything will be fine” plots. They are generally devoid of the moral complexity that the series is now aiming to explore and I want to know what this game would have looked like without the Shadowlords.

Fortunately, however, this effect is not too pronounced. Blackthorn remains a misguided man with good intentions. He admires you a lot, actually, and seeks avatarhood himself. He has such a positive view of the virtues that he sought to enforce them by law.

(Then again, his actual plans for the shrines make this apparent idolization feel dishonest, or at least inconsistent.)

And there is a real type of authoritarianism that functions a lot like this. Even on this site there are many who would be in favor of things like surveillance, police brutality, and harsher punishments. Even on this site there’s a whole lot of people who seek to punish others over stupid things like shipping the wrong fictional characters.

The people I grew up with even went as far as yearning for a dictator who would unleash death squads to execute all the “bad” people. This is a wish that I still see in many people, even those who grew up outside of the circumstances of my country of birth.

This is not an error that humans need supernatural corruption to fall into.

Other than that, I find the dark twist on the existing setting from the previous game to make for a spicier world to explore. 

This is also the section where I should point out that Ultima 5 introduces a rather large and dangerous “Underworld” map that is easy to get lost in. While it is mostly barren, you do have to visit various parts of it as part of the main quest, and I just find the concept of a massive dark world beneath the earth to be a super interesting one (I mean, I have even run D&D campaigns based primarily in the Underdark).

I kinda wish there was more to it other than some items and a companion to collect. Something like a town would have been interesting.

Immersion

This is one area where the jump from Ultima 4 to Ultima 5 was massive thanks to the day/night cycles, NPC schedules, expanded dialogue, and even the addition of words of power to the magic system.

But the best thing I can say about it is really that it calls on you to actually roleplay and engage in the world as if you were actually there, at least to a degree, and it does so through a combination of atmosphere and gameplay.

You will not only want to be careful with your words when talking to certain people to avoid being reported to the regime, but you can also learn the resistance password and use it to get help and information from other members.

While these systems are all still pretty rough here, they still come together well enough to make this a lot more immersive than the average JRPG.

One thing that does feel really off is that the guards are not only superhumanly tough but you also lose karma for attacking them. They also behave strangely in that even though you are a wanted outlaw they don’t actually hunt you on sight, only trying to arrest or kill you if you refuse to pay tribute (as if they didn’t recognize you or your companions at all). This despite wanted posters.

So there’s definitely some rough aspects to the crime system in this game.

Gameplay

Massive improvements have been made in this area, and I don’t just mean the above-mentioned expansion of items and the addition of NPC schedules.

For one, enemies now drop things other than gold, such as food and armor pieces. The magic system has also been improved so that you can now mix multiples of a spell at once instead of having to do it manually every single time.

Additionally, spells are now cast using a consistent language of magic composed of several words of power, which you can chain together to produce effects.

But I would say that the single most significant improvement in the gameplay is the simple fact that most NPCs now have significantly more keywords that they react to in dialogue, including many that do not come up through normal conversation with them. The system is still not perfect, but you can have more of a conversation with characters now and switch from topic to topic relatively easily.

In terms of combat, you can attack diagonally now (only monsters could do that in Ultima 4) and random overworld encounters are much easier to avoid now, cutting down on what eventually starts to feel kind of like padding in the previous game (but see below).

Despite the fact that the material rewards from combat have been increased and items are much cheaper now, Ultima 5 is actually significantly more difficult than Ultima 4. Not only do you have less health, enemies also seem to do more damage.

Dragons and daemons in particular are a nightmare, as they can summon more daemons (who can posses party members) and are extremely durable. A single dragon is a very tough challenge for an unprepared mid-level party, and even after giving most characters magic axes they still prove tough to take down while also being extremely damaging. Trying to fight multiple ones at once without blowing powerful spells or glass swords is costly at best and foolish at worst. Dragons are best thought of as boss-level enemies probably.

I am pleased to report that the dungeon crawling is better in many significant ways. Not only are the graphics more pleasant and immersive but also fully cleared rooms no longer respawn endlessly the moment you step out of them (in fact, they may not respawn at all).

It is not all positive however. The descend and ascend spells seem to be nearly useless this time around and the spell to instantly exit a dungeon is gone entirely. This can make getting out of the underworld such a pain at times that you might even prefer to literally kill yourself in-game and lose some XP instead of doing that. Fortunately you can now dig up and bury moon stones, so you can create moongates down there to quickly escape that way.

There is one problem in terms of balance though. While obtaining gear is significantly less of a problem now due to many enemies dropping tons of torches, gems, and keys, your experience will lag far behind your itemization and your quest progress. This means that to actually reach the 8th level and unlock all of the ultimate spells you will need to either explore all the dungeons thoroughly while focusing XP on one character, or otherwise just grind a lot.

Enemies just don’t give enough XP for a smooth progression otherwise. This would have been solved entirely by making significant main quest events (such as finding the artifacts of Lord British or destroying the Shadowlords) grant experience, but no such luck.

This makes for a strange endgame where you’ll have so much money that you run out of worthwhile things to spend it on while at the same time still feeling forced to grind out enemies, even if you imported your Ultima 4 character for an XP boost.

You do want to have access to these 8th-level spells too, as the final dungeon can be brutal without them or items that replicate their effects.

Adding to the experience issue is the fact that you can’t level up at will in this game. You have to camp and hope that an apparition of Lord British will appear and level you up (if you have enough experience). He does not always show up, and as far as I can tell he does not appear at all if you sleep on a bed or camp inside a dungeon. It has to be out in the wild in the overworld (and possibly also in the underworld).

I wish leveling up was just not tied to him at all.

Aesthetics

As is often the case for this series, the game looks and sounds really good for its age. The jump from Ultima 4 is particularly notable, as the level of detail is on a whole other level, particularly within the dungeons.

As with the previous game, the aesthetic core of the Ultima series (after the first trilogy) lies in the virtues. While there is still a karma system involved, it is much simpler than having to maximize eight different virtues. The karma system determines how much XP you lose on death and how much shops charge you, encouraging players to behave (or at least atone for their misbehavior).

But the biggest impact on the feel of the game is the above-mentioned corruption and tyranny affecting the land. Some of my favorite moments were early on, when I was just starting to get involved with the resistance and investigating what was happening around the overworld.

That said, I think that if the guards did actually recognize you on sight and hounded you more aggressively after spotting you the atmosphere could be even better (assuming they were balanced a bit better).

I think some of the music some versions of the game have is quite good too.

Accessibility

This game manages to up the complexity from Ultima 4 while not being any harder to play. Chances are that if you’re importing your Ultima 4 character you will need only a little bit of adaptation to do fine in Ultima 5.

As before, you will need to take many notes throughout the game. More so than in Ultima 4 due to the greater size and density of content. However, if you played Ultima 4 and took notes for it, this is somewhat alleviated. The mantras for the shrines remain the same, and the world’s geography should be mostly familiar (though there have been changes there as well).

You will also still need to consult the manuals and map frequently, at least early on.

The difficulty has also increased dramatically. You will likely end the game with about 200-ish HP rather than 800 and every enemy is much more deadly. Both the early game and the final dungeon will challenge the improvident.

For these reasons, the game is not that easy for newcomers to pick up but I would not call it obscure or complex.

Conclusion

I would say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives on this one. The story and setting are interesting even if I don’t agree with all of the decisions made in crafting it, and the rest of the game is usually tolerable at worst. Nothing nearly as annoying as Ultima 4′s Reaper and Balron sleep spam (in fact, a plot-relevant item you can find renders Reapers pretty much helpless).

My primary complaint about the game is that the balance is poor. You will end the game loaded with all the items you could ever want while struggling to reach level 8 with even a single character even after doing nearly everything you need to do before the final dungeon.

I know there is a remake of this game made using Dungeon Siege, which I have not played. I think this is a good thing and I’d hope that it fixes some of these issues, but even apart from that I wish there were games that set out to achieve the core concept of this game.

What I am talking about is an open world RPG in which you play an outlaw who must hide from the state and meet other rebels in the darkness, but with complex and mechanically-competent systems to enable all the interesting possibilities this should enable.

I do not assign numerical ratings to games with these reviews, but I can definitely say that I liked Ultima 5 better than Ultima 4. I think it is worth trying even today despite the late game grind.