#all protags should do this

[livefinn]

as he should

[bacchuschucklefuck]

pygmalion and galatea for aroace people

you should tell your friends what I look like, riz gukgak.

[thesadisticsiren]

So Shen Qingqiu's weird take on masculinity and homosexuality and his internalized homophobia means that he went "binghe's the stallion protagonist, of course he's the husband, so I must be the wife" and conversely Luo Binghe's been dreaming of being Shizun's beloved housewife since he was 14 and he's now living the dream.

I firmly believe that, consciously or not, they more or less take turns. Being called 'Wife' is a baton they pass back and forth as suits them.

When in Cang Qiong, Binghe takes the position of a Peaklord's spouse so seriously, he's going full Shimu and is so smug about getting to making people refer to him as such. Shen Qingqiu ofc would make sure Binghe gets the full rights and respect owed to him as Shen Qingqiu's spouse, but is still too thin faced to refer to Binghe as wife anywhere other than in private.

Luo Binghe does not share this problem when they're in the Demon realm. Visiting demonic dignitaries learn about Shen Qingqiu being Luo Binghe's wife before they learn his name, before they learn that he's a cultivator of a level that fucking with him is dangerous aside from the fact that Binghe would kill you for looking at him wrong. Before they learn that that human cultivator might kill you for looking at the Emperor wrong. In private, though, Binghe's acting about the name as he does on Qing Jing, but the ways he gets to show his shizun off are different between the roles.

Externally, to everyone else, it almost looks like code switching. But to them its just them doing what they want. Which is mostly Shen Qingqiu letting Binghe do as he pleases, which is often Binghe doing his best to make it clear that he belongs to Shen Qingqiu, and vice versa.

[waymond-wang]

THE CREATOR (2023) dir. Gareth Edwards ↳ Wanna play a game? It's called, "Save your friend Joshua from being killed by the fuckin' police".

[atalana]

supergiant you can't keep toying with my heart like this re: aro mel

[feldsparred-mo-reblogs]

No nuance november: If your main headcanon for Gabbro is that they are "a stoner" because "they are so chill" I actually don't want to hear anything else you are saying because I am already bored

[randomminty]

Yeahlow

[ofmermaidstories]

ON MY HANDS AND KNEES. GRUNKLE STAN FIC. OLD PEOPLE ROMANCE. SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE??

i am in ur face anon. i am breathing in ur stale air. listen to me. we are gripping hands tightly with our fingers intwined and i am whispering this to you. i am pleading this against ur lips. do not do this to me.

[killjoy-prince]

A kiss from Death

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Just finished Return of Ultraman!! (i got really attached...)

[hazelnootnut]

This was the first thing I did during my hiatus as a treat for myself because you know what? Protag is so MISERABLE at all times even after getting his new job. You know where he should be? Out in the fields, living his best life in Stardew Valley.

I actually wanted to do a little more on this, but uh. You know. Got distracted with Elehitch RP stuff and drew a lot of art for that. But I do want to explore this little AU a bit more. For now, you can have him without his silly little straw hat!

[afterthelambs]

"Silco didn't create Jinx, you did" lives in my mind rent free because throughout season 1, Vi has been convincing herself that Silco is the obstacle preventing her from getting Powder back. She's traumatized and guilt-ridden. When Vi is traumatized, she simplifies things as a response. She has to believe that getting her sister back is that simple. But when Silco is finally dead, Powder doesn't come back to her. In fact Silco's death is what solidifies Jinx's decision to be Jinx (the complete Jinx aka Jinx + Powder, not the broken version of her that she tried to erase Powder from).

And that's likely why Vi switches on her so quickly. By the time season 2 starts she's fully on board with Piltover wanting to kill Jinx and when she confronts her in ep.3 she says Powder is dead and they're not sisters anymore. Which is wild considering just a few days ago she was reassuring her that they'll always be sisters.

I think Vi meant all of it. At the time she really did want Caitlyn and the enforcers to kill Jinx. But that's because she's still just as traumatized and guilt-ridden as she was before. She can't deal with the fact that Jinx herself is the real reason she can never get Powder back. And as I said, Vi simplifies things as a trauma response. However if they had actually succeeded in killing Jinx, I think Vi would live in regret and self-hatred forever. What someone wants when they're traumatized and hurt is not what they want forever, and Vi does love her sister.

[galedekarios]

I’m not surprised honestly, but I don’t need an award to validate how much I love it. Veilguard is my personal goty, that being said if it can’t be that. Go Metaphor!

that is very true.

i'm just feeling some kind of ways about the positive aspects being completely dismissed in favour of endless criticisms, some deserved and some not.

the same thing happened with inquisition back when it released.

it's funny when i see large parts of the fandom - and even outside of that - now getting misty-eyed over it.

i do remember all the thinkpieces back then on how the inquisitor is actually the worst protagonist, the companions the weakest, the tone too goofy, the plot and chars too railroaded, the lore and stories retcon'd and/or ignored, and so on and so.

i talked about this before and i suppose it's the cycle of bioware games and the bioware fandom at this point. in additions to that, we sadly live in a time now where grifters picked up on it and i do genuinely think that influenced the decision process to some degree.

[mirainotes]

you don't want to know the end of this dream, because it's not the world you wish for; yet still, i wish you'd love even this conclusion.

(redraw of the dreamless dreams PV!)

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)