#and also knows how to balance a large cast of characters

[n0isy-gh0st]

Watching Arcane really highlights how bad Hazbin and Helluva are. They just don’t hold a candle to this masterpiece. THAT is how you do diversity. THAT is how you give depth to characters. THAT is how you tell a compelling story that actually has something to say.

[dr-spectre]

Hey all, so i wanted to discuss something a little bit different compared to my usual Splatoon ramblings because i have something that's been floating in my brain for a while now and I really wanna talk about it! But don't worry, I'll tie it back to Splatoon in this blog post!

So i have been seeing a lot of criticisms towards the new "hit game" Concord and a lot of it is very VERY well deserved. And one of the MANY criticisms is aimed towards the character designs and mostly on these characters who have become punching bags for the entire gaming community.

NOW! Let me come and say it, i am NOT going to be defending these designs at all, i am NOT a professional character designer but, these designs are flat-out dogshit and it's not for the reasons you think. I am not saying these character designs are bad because "WAHH!!!! FAT PEOPLE!!! WAHH!!! I HATE BLACK PEOPLE!! WAHH!! I CAN'T GOON TO THIS CHARACTER NOOO!!! WAHHH!!! I ONLY WANT STRAIGHT WHITE BARBIE DOLLS TO JERK OFF TO!! WAHH!!" If you're someone like... ahem.... asmondgold. And whine about how you can't goon to these characters and you're scared of fat and black people. Then you need to fuck off and genuinely go outside. And like... Idk, jump into a pit of lava.

The reasons why these designs suck is because they have terrible silhouettes, poor balancing, too many random colours that have no harmony whatsoever, lack of strong shapes and a lack of any clear cut qualities to tell us who the fuck these characters are. A good character design will tell you who a character is based on looks alone.

Let's take a look at how to properly do character design in a video game, shall we?

We will first start off with an iconic tank character, Heavy from TF2.

Heavy has a strong use of squares on his body, arms and hands, showing us that he is a strong and meaty character. Squares are used in larger characters to show that they are durable and strong. Heavy also has appropriate accessories on his body to show us what kind of character he is, like his bandolier, pouch, fingerless gloves and tactical looking vest. His legs are also small compared to the rest of his body which tells us that he probably isn't the fastest runner out there.

All of these simple design decisions the characters designers chose to include add up to create an iconic character who you can gather that he is a large and in charge weapons expert from the design alone.

Tell me something, what the FUCK do you get from this character?

He's a big person... That's it. I can barely gather any sort of character traits from this character. There's nothing. THEIR GUN IS FUCKING BORING TOO! AT LEAST HEAVY HAS A BIG ASS GUN! THAT'S JUST A BASIC BITCH ASSUALT RIFILE!

Now let's look at another iconic tank character. Reinhardt from Overwatch.

Reinhardt has a VERY strong silhouette, with his iconic helmet with the 3 spikes/horns, his giant shoulder pads, the pointy tips on his boots, his... groan... flap? thingy? idfk what that is but anyways, Reinhardt is an iconic tank character because his design is super well balanced, his concept of a futuristic knight is dope, and the lion emblem on arm showcase Rein's personality and origins.

I genuinely get nothing from this design. Like... Fuck all, i get NOTHING!!!

They are a tank character with a big gun... Okay? Is there... any cool details? Uh... there's a tiny flag.... What the fuck is that supposed to tell me about the character? The silhouette is boring, the character looks like a Fallout knock off. It's just... BORING!!

I could talk about the other tanks in Overwatch and how incredibly well designed they are compared to Concord's "anchors" and other classes but i don't wanna be here all day. Just know that D.VA slaps, Doomfist slaps, Ramattra slaps, ALL OF THEM SLAP HARD AND HAVE SUPER GOOD SILHOUETTES AND COLOURS!!

Now for our final "tanky" design, let's roll it back to Splatoon and talk about a character who is bigger compared to the rest of the cast.

BIG MAN!

His silhouette is actually so well done and is a masterpiece in character design, it is so incredibly distinctive and unique from other characters. He has a unique headpiece too, he has these droopy eyes that give him a relaxed look. He has some cool patterns, he's just a really well designed character that you can gather his personality from really well.

The reason why Concord's character designs fail is because it feels like Sony brought in a novice fashion designer to make characters in an hour and call it a day. The only designs from that game i can say with my full chest are okay are these guys, and even then they have ISSUES!

Haymar is supposed to be this fire user yet nothing tells me that they use fire. It's so easy to... oh i don't know... USE MORE RED?!?!? ADD FIERY PATTERNS?!?! WHY IS SHE COVERED IN FUCKING ANAL BEADS?!??! HELLO?!?!??

Roka is just.. fine, her colours suck but... I guess i like the helmet?

When the best looking characters out of your fucking 5V5 HERO SHOOTER are just... eh? You know got a massive problem. If we take a game like TF2 you can see just how well the designs are at showing the player what kind of personality and traits they have.

Scout has rolled up pants with tight socks on, bandages on his hands and a cap on his head, showing us that Scout is a fast and somewhat reckless character who gets into trouble but can get out due to his speed and wit. Medic has a simple pallet of white and red which are common colours used in hospitals and doctors. I could go on but you get the point.

If you're going to create a new hero shooter with a large roster, for the love of god, actually have characters with better silhouettes, colour balancing, accessories, etc.

Take a page out of their books and come back with a better fucking game. Or not. Sony... You piece of shit. You ain't beating the "PS5 has no games" allegations with these wack ass games. (This is coming from someone who has a PS5.)

[aoioozora]

Simon.

Part 1

Chapters Masterlist

Character: Simon Riley / Ghost Content: Biker! Ghost x Fem! Reader, strangers to lovers, fluff, civilian au Photo credit: quinci Note: Had 'Meddle About' by Chase Atlantic on repeat as I wrote this in one sitting. My first COD fanfiction. Enjoy!

Their hands squeezed against your arms and wrists. You tried to pull and yank away in resistance to their unwanted advances.

“Hey, c'mon, you're cute! You should come with us.” one of them said in a voice that was meant to sound silky and inviting, but came off as sleazy.

Words failed you, all of them stuck in your throat, a large lump of fear blocking them from escaping your lips, tightening within your neck like a balloon about to burst. The memory of self-defense vanished from your muscles as you pitifully tried to fight off three men who were  taller and bigger than you with your pathetic grunts and pleas to be released.

Upon the dark and empty streets, a distant hum of an engine, accompanied by a singular bright light which seemed like a firefly's glow, appeared to he approaching. You took no notice.

The hum of the distant engine grew about as loud as a cat's threatening growl, and the light as that of a strong flashlight. It still didn't catch your notice. 

The growl turned into a loud, deafening roar, seemingly at will, vibrating the still air like an earthquake. It caught all of your attention as it drew near at an alarming speed towards the four of you. 

The three men shrieked with fright, automatically letting your hands go in the process, and covered their faces with their arms. The growling, glowing thing screeched to a halt inches in front of them, sending the sharp smell of burnt rubber up their noses.

When the four of you looked, there stood a shiny, jet black sports motorcycle, upon which sat a rider. He was helmeted, also dressed in ripped black jeans that hugged his tree trunk-like thighs, a black leather jacket that tightened against his muscular arms and broad shoulders. The flickering white light of the street lamp cast a ghastly, ominous glow over him, making him look like some sort of ghost from an urban legend.

The three men recovered from their shock and opened their mouths to berate this biker for interrupting them, but before they even did, the biker flicked up the dark visor of his helmet and revealed his equally dark, glaring eyes. 

“What are you doing with my girlfriend?” asked the biker, enunciating every word, slowly, like he was holding back a dam's amount of rage. His gruff, gravelly, British accented voice was muffled slightly by the balaclava he wore under the helmet, yet every word was heard loud and clear as if they were spoken through a megaphone, and the three men immediately stepped back from you, knowing that messing with another man's girl would have dire consequences. 

You didn't know you had a boyfriend. Yet you played along. 

“Simon!” You cried as you ran to him, going behind the motorcycle and hiding behind his large body. You decided to name him whatever came to mind first.

He sat up straight on his motorcycle to keep you hidden from them as he balanced on the sleek vehicle which rumbled like a distant thunder between his legs. He glared at the three men. “Well?” he asked with a growl that very well sounded the same as the roar of his vehicle's engine. 

They simply backed off without a word, knowing they wouldn't win. The mysterious motorcyclist who you named ‘Simon’, stayed until the three men were out of sight while you still stood behind him, watching them leave. 

“You okay?” he finally asked you when the coast was clear, now turning his dark eyes over his shoulder, where you were standing. 

You let out an exhale you didn't know you were holding. “I'm fine,” You replied with some effort, massaging your aching wrists. 

He paused before replying; he could clearly see that you were rattled by the experience, considering how your eyes still looked apprehensive like that of a hunted rabbit’s. His eyes flickered to your wrists, and he looked back at you. “Did they hurt you?” he asked softly. 

“They just held me tight. I mean, my arms.” You exhaled again, the ache in your wrists easing slightly. Words still seemed to fail you, but they now flowed out a little easier. 

He seemed slightly taken aback by how nonchalantly you said this, like it was a common thing. “Bastards.” he growled in his very distinct accent, clearly not the posh British accent you knew. “This place isn't safe. What were you loitering around here for?” he asked, now holding the handles of his motorcycle as he leaned back and moved his legs, moving the motorcycle backwards so that it was now back on the street. 

You moved away to give him space, and then replied, “A friend of mine lives here. There was a party at her place.” 

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he now leaned forward to cross his arms on the tank of his vehicle. “Do you want to get out of here safely without getting hounded by blokes like those?” he asked. 

“Yes!” you answered immediately. Somehow, you felt like you could trust this man somewhat, especially after he saved you and enquired about your wellbeing after that ordeal. 

He leaned back slightly and patted the pillion behind him. “Get on. I'll be your taxi tonight.”

You blinked. “Are you sure? I don't want to bother you too much.” 

“Look here, lass,” he started, leaning forward again, “I don't know if you know, but besides those cunts, there are muggers here too. And they all wake up at night. If you want to get out of here safely and not be a news report tomorrow, then get on." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, "I'll take you wherever you need to go.”

You were surprised by his straightforwardness, yet it somehow seemed apt for a man with a gruff voice and a fearless attitude. Not another word more, you climbed up on the pillion of his motorcycle with some stumbling, but the man was patient, and leaned his motorcycle to the side to lower it slightly, so you could get on easier. As you were doing this, you couldn't help but notice the musky, earthy smell of his perfume, which reminded you of wet soil, rain, and dark chocolate; a positively divine scent.

“What's your name?” You asked as soon as you were comfortably settled on the seat. 

There was a moment's pause before he answered, “Simon,” with an almost careful tone, as if he wanted to see your reaction. 

As he expected, your eyes were wide with surprise. It melted away slightly as you thought he was just playing around with you. "Come on, that's the name I called you by earlier. What's your actual name?"

"It's Simon." he insisted.

You blinked yet again. "What a coincidence," You said laughingly, "I could've never imagined getting your name right on accident."

“I confess, you surprised me there.” His voice trailed off at the end, as if he wanted to say something cheesy, but he stopped himself, remembering that you were a stranger and not his friend. He leaned back again, yet again moving his motorcycle backwards. 

You instinctively took hold of his shoulder to keep yourself steady as he moved. You tried to ignore it, but you noted how broad and rugged his shoulders were. 

“So, where d'you wanna go?” he asked, taking hold of the handles and twisting the accelerator, making the motorcycle growl. 

You told him your destination. 

“Not too far. Two minutes if I go at 150.” he said, as if 150 kmph was slow for him. But he looked at you over his shoulder, “You okay going fast?” 

“I've never gone fast before.” 

He figured. "Wanna get a feel of it?"

"Sure, I've not nothing to lose... except my life, if you don't drive safely."

He chuckled, and it sounded oddly cute, unlike his gruff voice. "Just trust me, lass. I'm not gonna turn you into a news report."

"Well, you saved my life just there, I expect you to preserve it." You said with a chuckle. It felt strange that you already seemed comfortable enough with him to joke around.

"Nothing to worry about," he assured as he turned forward and revved the engines again. “You'll fly off, so hold on to me tight.” He said with emphasis. 

“Gotcha.”

He got the wheels running, and started slow. The breeze kissed your face and your hair, and in the cool night, it felt freeing. He twisted the accelerator, going a notch faster. The breeze blew against you like a blow dryer, and you squinted your eyes slightly in order to see the quickly passing landscape of buildings, 24 hour convenience stores, and lighted street lamps. 

He gradually increased the speed so you would not freak out, an oddly considerate thing he did for a complete stranger, something he would not usually ever do. 

As the dial of the speedometer passed the 80s and crossed to the 100s, the breeze, now a gust, started to mercilessly slap your face, not allowing you to open your watering eyes. By this time, you had your arms around his waist and your face stuffed in and hidden behind his large back, holding on to him for dear life, while the smell of his perfume consoled your fears. 

He rode on, completely unfazed by this speed, but a little stiff at the fact that a person, a woman, particularly, was holding on to him. It was out of necessity, of course, yet he couldn't help but feel a little strange about it.

As predicted, in two minutes, he reached your destination, which was thankfully a busy area with people still bustling around the open shops like it was daytime. He halted to a stop where you asked, and you took hold of his shoulder again as you mounted off the high pillion seat.

“Thanks a lot, Simon,” You smiled at him. You took notice of the logo on his helmet that carried the Italian flag in a semi-circle; it seemed to stand out over the glossy black shell of the headgear.

He pushed up his dark visor, and the flag was obscured. He nodded in response as his eyes studied your face, taking in the contours of your features all in a brief moment. "How did the speed feel?" he asked.

"Exhilarating," You replied, feeling your heart thumping wildly.

"In a good way?"

"I guess. It was kind of scary, but I liked it."

He nodded, and in his eyes, you could see that he looked a little pleased by your answer.

“I know it's not much but…” You paused, putting your hand in the pocket of your jacket, causing the contents to ruffle against each other. You pulled out a small, hard red candy wrapped in clear plastic and handed it to him. “... This is a little something for you for helping me out.” 

He stared at the little candy on the palm of your hand, almost ready to refuse it out of modesty. But it was just a little candy. Who could it hurt? His fair hand reached out and took the candy, and both of you noted how tiny the sweet treat looked on his palm. He could crush it with his bare hands if he wanted to. Yet, he held it gently and stashed it in the pocket of his leather jacket, murmuring a word of gratitude that was barely audible under the two layers of his balaclava and his helmet. 

“Well, you take care. And don't hang around in sketchy places like that next time,” he said, as if you were his friend of many years. 

You were warmed by his concern for you, and you smiled, nodding. “After that, I don't think I'll hang around there at this time anymore. I'm sure as hell gonna stay over at my friend's place if I'm there till late.” 

“Excellent choice,” he remarked. “I'll be off now.” 

“Take care.” You smiled at him again, and his eye lingered on you a moment longer before he turned his head away. 

He silently revved the engine of his vehicle again and sped off. You stood by the side of the road, watching his figure recede as the distance grew. 

A sense of longing washed over you for this stranger named Simon, and you wondered if you would ever see him again. It was a strange coincidence that you unknowingly guessed his name so correctly, like unknowingly marking the right choice in a multiple choice exam. 

It all came back to you now. The feeling of his rugged shoulder and back under the smooth leather of his jacket; the coarse, gravelly growl of his British accented voice that felt like rubbing coffee powder between your fingers, rough yet pleasing; the scent of his perfume like that of a dark, wet, rainforest; and his eyes… oh, his dark eyes were brooding and mysterious. Under the shade of his helmet, they seemed like swirling little black holes, the gravity around them dense enough to draw you in like a helpless star. 

A shiver passed down your spine as you thought of him, making your cheeks flush with warmth as a distant look reflected in your pining eyes. 

You started your walk back home, thoughts filled to the brim, flooding like a tidal wave with this biker. You were left knowing nothing about him, except for his name:

Simon.

End.

Part 2

Comment if you want to be added to my taglist :)

[chewytoothmeats]

That’s Director Wadsworth to you.

Another doodle that got away from me a little, this time featuring Annabelle Wadsworth of @thebrightsessions ! I got to and finished the AM Archives after taking a break when I finished the original series, and it's bazonkers seeing the jump in quality with all that excellent Foley and music supporting the already-stellar vocal performances of the cast.

I always adored Wadsworth as a villain (Alex Marshall-Brown, you are so good at making this woman ooze into a scene) but the AM Archives surprised me by striking the difficult balance of making her truly three-dimensional without revising anything about her, or retroactively positioning her as correct.

Notes on why I made some choices after the cut, if that kind of thing interests you!

I'm a big fan of makeup and costuming informing character and compositions in art, and in this case I wanted to make something that is, I think, fun and reflective of Wadsworth's character while not actually resembling how I believe she'd actually dress and present herself in canon. (This is not a woman who I think would actually wear purple eyeliner and a berry lip to work.)

That said, I did choose the costuming for a reason! The makeup is an obvious nod to purple-as-royalty, and the choice of a dark lip specifically is there to make her look severe, precise, and in-control. Her outfit is of course largely a black void of negative space, but it's also largely inspired by the cuts and iconography of Chanel; black and white, "conservative" (by modern standards) cuts, tweed, and camellias. It's the kind of look that signifies outrageous wealth and power without being ostentatious; Wadsworth really cultivates a kind of soft-spoken, smug affect of self-assured superiority that I think is a good fit for Chanel, lol.

In the background we've got the specter of Helen, her waves attempting to intersect again with the frequencies of Wadsworth's heart and failing; they are lost to each other now, forever. During initial sketches Helen was presented in a much more overtly sinister light, but I nixed it in favor of keeping her more as an indistinct figure on the periphery of Ellie's perception. I think the central compelling tragedy of these two shitty (affectionate) women is the degree to which they were twisted and made cruel by the immensity of institutional violence, and so framing Helen more creepily would sort of... defeat that?

I don't know, I didn't actually spend very much time on this - as you can probably tell - but I quite liked making it! Composition is currently my weakest point as an artist imo, and I think this one's composition is actually pretty solid.

(Those in the know clocked this right away, I'm sure, but I tried to work in a way inspired by Dragon Age Inquisition's tarot cards since they're famously VERY tightly, beautifully composed.)

(sidebar, on top of a sidebar, rest assured that I did see the very kind tags left by Lauren on the last piece of bright sessions fanart I did and it made my day)

[ilikekidsshows]

Miraculous WAS a good cartoon, right? There were the seeds and setups for something pretty special there, before it went off the rails (and claimed that those were the real rails all along, metaphor falling apart, whatever). Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir was compelling enough that we still put our minds to talking about it long after new episodes cease to hold any appeal for us.

Are there other stories you used to like that turned out super disappointing, but some blorbo or plot line still won’t let go? Would you say there’s a factor that determines whether or not you stay motivated to make fanworks for a disappointing story?

---

Miraculous was never a flawless show, but its flaws used to be a lot more understated, like, a whole lot. The thing about Miraculous is that the Miraculouses give us a really good story engine, there’s a good balance between school drama and superhero action, and we have a large cast of colorful characters. There’s something for everyone’s tastes. Miraculous was designed with a wide range of appeal on purpose and it worked. The early seasons also leaned into these strengths.

A big factor in this are the Akumas. We used to get a different Akuma in almost every single episode, with the entire episode plot revolving around the Akuma victim’s troubles and life. This format is very similar to the original Sailor Moon anime, where Usagi would meet an acquaintance or stranger who’d be targeted by the villains to absorb their energy or turn them into a monster. The Akuma victims getting such high billing also meant that having the classmates get targeted was a really easy way to showcase them.

The focus on resolving personal problems and misunderstandings also meant that the show had something to say about relationships. So many of the show’s problems are caused by miscommunication, especially for Marinette herself, that it functioned as a central theme for the series. With the inclusion of the Marigami arc, where Marinette learns to look past her personal wants to see Kagami as more than an obstacle for her happiness, and episodes like ‘Party Crasher’, where Nino and Marinette both realize they went overboard for Adrien, Marinette was clearly learning to be more considerate and aware of others. This was a very relatable, consistent and solid theme that made the show easy to get into.

But, like, these weaknesses in the writing team didn't come out of nowhere, hence why a lot of the problems were there from the beginning, like inconsistency. The difficulty the writers have seems to be in concluding stories and arcs. It often seems that the team knows how stories usually end, but they don't know why they end like that, so they just try to “subvert” the common conclusions because they might think, like many TV writers these days, that being clever is more important than being consistent.

‘Reflekdoll’ is such a good microcosm of how the writers have a hard time with completing stories, since everything alway comes down to ‘Reflekdoll'. Usually the power swap episode starts with the heroes not appreciating each other or their powers enough and ends with them learning to appreciate each other more, but, in ‘Reflekdoll’, the episode starts with Cat Noir saying he has the easy job and Ladybug calling him a jokester, and then the episode ends with Cat Noir “admitting” that he didn’t realize how much work being Ladybug is and Marinette "learning" that Cat Noir really is nothing but a clown that she never has to worry about, meaning they actually learned nothing, because the episode snaps its internal consistency in half in order to finish off with dialogue that reaffirms their female protagonist. In addition, Adrien actually learns that he isn't fit for important roles. Season five has concluded and they both still believe these things, despite us getting a redo with a more “proper” take on a power swap, so it wasn't that ‘Reflekdoll’ was a one-off parody of “what did we learn today?” episodes like The Owl House’s ‘Once Upon a Swap’ where the lesson is meant to be bad. It's just messy writing.

Part of the problem, I feel, is that all that potential and setup and successful episodes like Heroes Day made Miraculous so popular that the writers got too cocky and started including more stuff that they couldn’t actually write consistently or well. They thought the audience would consider anything they wrote good or they thought they had to reach higher levels of “hype” by including shiny new ideas to keep things from getting “repetitive”, like they phrased it in the London Special. All previous character arcs get dropped. Instead it’s all about creating moments that will trend on social media, either in terms of “twists” or romance scenes. So that was where they put their focus, on romance scenes and creating “surprising” twists and “subverting expectations”.

Another aspect of this cockiness is that seasons 4 and 5 are too ambitious for the writing crew’s skill level or writing style. The Miraculous crew, as I said, is good at writing isolated scenes and sometimes whole isolated episodes, when the episode is so simple that they don’t end up accidentally contradicting themselves by forgetting what they wrote for the beginning. This means that seasons 1-3 being mostly episodic with some recurring plot threads played to their strengths, but part of the hype for the retool was changing Miraculous to be more serialized, where the episodes have a proper viewing order, which is why Astruc was asking people not to watch episodes out of order when they kept being dropped whenever.

Yet, once again, most of the actual development in seasons 4-5 happens in the premiere and finale, just like in the more episodic seasons. The thing about a continuous plot is that you need to actually have a continuous plot that moves along every few episodes at least instead of the characters spending fifteen episodes faffing about before anything important happens again, basically just having a different status quo for one season, or having a single other plot-important episode in the middle of the season to fake having continuous plot progression, but that actually is just two status quos (like S5 being split into “Marinette tries to move on from Adrien” and “Adrinette are dating” status quos). In addition, several details get changed as the episodes progress, making what little continuity there is contradictory. The Miraculous crew can’t write a continuous plot because they can’t keep their details consistent.

The London Special gives us a lot of evidence that this is what’s going on. It’s almost as meta as ‘Simpleman’, with Alix making comments about getting a working formula but then needing to change things up to keep things interesting. She is literally describing how to write an episodic, formulaic cartoon, which Miraculous isn’t supposed to be anymore. Miraculous is being hyped up as a continuous story, but it’s being written like an episodic one, where character development takes forever to stick, if it ever does, and plot threads get dropped as soon as a newer, shinier idea comes along.

This is the thing with Astruc constantly defending people being confused over his writing with: “You’re thinking too complicated” or “Keep it simple”: he’s a simple writing guy. Give him a premise and a status quo and he’ll keep it going for several seasons. But he can’t deliver a more complex story or concept in a way that the audience can just instantly pick up on, which makes his favorite defense so silly, because the one making things needlessly complicated and shitting the bed because he can’t handle what he tried to tackle is Astruc himself. “The love interest is actually a human-shaped remote control robot made with a magical artifact and the remote control is his parents’ wedding bands, meaning Adrien was only not going to be controlled by them after they were dead or they decided to give the rings up, but this human and children’s rights violation isn’t supposed to make Gabriel and Emilie the villains but sympathetic characters instead while Adrien’s suffering isn’t supposed to be a concern” is not simple in my opinion, but maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that. Maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that the main villain of 5 seasons and 131 episodes getting to destroy the world is a villain victory, too. I should just “keep it simple” and consider it Marinette’s victory instead because the characters were smiling in the end (sarcasm).

Usually, when a show ends up flopping for me, there's a clear change in the show that just lets me go: “none of that happened, the show ended here”, like TMNT 2003 with Fast Forward and Back to the Sewers seasons. After the jump to the future, the plots became uninspired and the characterization became flatter. The show had already wrapped up its storylines before the retool, so I can just pretend the retool never happened and easily enjoy the original TMNT as the best Turtles cartoon that it is.

I think the problem with Miraculous in comparison to other shows that ended up flopping for me, is that Miraculous' problems make the good parts of the show retroactively unenjoyable to me. Adrien is a remote control robot that will never be truly freed, so his struggle for self-expression and freedom in the previous seasons becomes a Shaggy Dog story that could never have had a happy ending. Similarly, the love square scenes are hard to enjoy because Marinette’s flaws are vindicated instead of learned from. Nothing the pre-retool show sets up is delivered on, and when it is delivered on, it’s the worst possible way things could go because the writers wanted to “subvert expectations” or “keep things simple”. The post-retool show dooms the pre-retool characters, because the starting signs of that doom are already there, in all the character arcs they end up dropping. Miraculous doesn’t bother with concluding anything it sets up, it just moves on to the next shiny idea. You aren’t given anything satisfying to be content with before the show drops the ball.

I think a similar experience for me that didn’t ruin my love of fanworks was My Hero Academia. It was another new take on superheroes, but it also ends up delivering on basically nothing it sets up. Horikoshi is just throwing ideas around and dropping them just as quickly and neither the characters nor the world end up changing that much, despite the narrative screaming at us that change is needed. But those dropped ideas are really interesting, there’s a bunch of pretty neat story arcs at the start of the series, I am absolutely obsessed with Toshinori, and none of my other favorite characters are treated too poorly by the narrative in any egregious way other than a lack of screen time (singular scenes for the girls are crimes, though) so, like, I can still very much enjoy fanfics and comics and art that gives the spotlight to those ignored characters and fixes my other grievances.

Basically, it’s a question of whether or not the things that made you stop loving the show made it harder to still love the things you used to love about the show. If you can just say: “the story stops before that happens/the character starts acting like that”, then it’s easier to enjoy the fandom. Also, like, if the bad thing that happens is directed at your top favorite character or relationship, the one thing you tune in to see, then it’s going to make you too mad to just ignore or forget about.

Adrien was the number one thing about Miraculous that I loved above all else. So when most of these awful creative decisions made it harder to enjoy him, I had to ask myself: “What am I willing to put up with?” and the answer was: “Not this sentinonsense!”

[owlhousetarot]

How do you keep it all running? You've inspired me to make my own deck based on a show I love, but how do you find these moments? Do you go in and analyze scenes from the show? Do they come to you in random thought? I just don't feel as organized or like it's coming together, so what's your process cause I get the feeling it would help me greatly.

OHHHHHH IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ABOUT MY PROCESS ASSIGNING CARDS!!

First of all, that's so cool I've inspired you to make your own fandom deck! It's a really fun way to develop your artistic abilities and to analyze a piece of media, and I was definitely inspired by fandom decks that I've seen made by other people. Now for my ramble:

My process for assigning designs to all the cards took quite some time, and a great deal of thought. The first real "step" was to watch the show through like five times beforehand, which was easy because I had already done that by the time I decided to start this deck! It's important to have a good understanding of the characters, overall plot, and themes of the show to make sure your choices fit. It's also really helpful to take in analysis of these things from the fandom and not just yourself, because a lot of the time people will have identified themes or analyzed characters to a deeper extent or in ways you never would have thought to!

The next part of the process was learning the meanings of all the cards in a tarot deck. I was actually almost completely unfamiliar with tarot before starting this project, so this was a real from-the-ground-up scenario. The two websites I mainly refer to are Labyrinthos and Biddy Tarot, which both are based on the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot tradition--I didn't even know there were other types of decks before! Going through both of those websites, my first round of card assignments was based purely on my memory of the show, seeing what came to mind, if anything. There were a LOT of blank spots in my list at this point, especially in the minor arcana sections, and also a lot of initial choices that I would later change my mind about. Lots of ideas with question marks after them, and lots of cards that I listed multiple options for.

From there, it was a largely iterative process. I went back and forth watching the show and looking at the card definitions, building up my list over time, revising choices and adding ones where before I couldn't think of anything. Another resource that was really helpful at this stage was watching deck reviews/walkthroughs/deep dives on youtube. I'd especially like to shoutout Lisa Papez for her really thorough deep dives and for her Tarot for Beginners series--they gave me a much better understanding of the tarot, and a better sense of how and why to properly assign a character or scene to certain cards.

After a while, I had my list more or less complete, with at least one idea for each card. At this point I had already begun illustrating the major arcana, as those were the easiest to assign. Luckily for me, The Owl House really lends itself well to the tarot--The Fool, for example, was a no-brainer (as you might be able to tell from other TOH decks that exist out there). Now that I had a general game plan, I wanted to fine-tune my choices by taking into mind character balance and episode balance.

For character balance, I wanted to make sure that the amount of times a given character would be either the main focus or part of the focus of a given card would correlate to the size of their role in the show. Luz, of course, is the main character and features in every episode, so she is in nearly half the deck. Eda, King, Hunter, and the Hexsquad are also up there, with the rest of the cast trailing off from there. If I thought a certain character was either over- or under-represented, I would switch up certain cards or choose one option over another if I was considering multiple designs for a card. I was especially mindful that all the major characters would feature at least once in the major arcana, which led me to assigning the Chariot to Amity and Willow as a duo, and the Hanged Man to King. (The Chariot, if I may note, was one of the more difficult ones to assign in the majors. Not sure why, just not too many obvious choices came to me!)

Episode balance was a little trickier to nail down, as some episodes just have more significant moments than others do. Premiers and finales ended up with more cards than usual, as did the three season 3 specials. I tried to find at least one significant scene or character from each episode, but in the end there are four episodes that don't feature at all in this deck: Once Upon a Swap, Something Ventured Someone Framed, Really Small Problems, and Follies at the Coven Day Parade. Those are the decisions that come with the territory, though--I would rather have my card designs fit the definitions than potentially sacrificing a better choice for the sake of a less significant episode! In the end, I'm happy with the choices I've made, and I can't wait to get to all of them!

TLDR This is my general advice for designing your own fandom deck:

Familiarize yourself with the text. Analyze characters, plot points, and themes. Take inspiration from fandom analysis.

Familiarize yourself with the tarot. Consult multiple sources, and feel free to stretch the card definitions a bit if it makes sense to you (lookin' at you, two and three of wands).

Do a first pass-through from memory of the show, assigning designs as you go through the card definitions. Include multiple possibilities for those you're unsure about, or leave them blank for now.

Do a close-reading style watchthrough of the show, going through your unsure/blank cards after each episode to see if anything fits. If something better comes up for a card you were pretty sure about, add it as a possibility, or see if it could fit another card if you spin it a different way. Repeat this process until you've got a pretty full list.

Continue revising your list, keeping in mind character and episode balance. Are you under-representing your major characters? Over-representing more minor characters? Are you hitting most of the important scenes from the show/book/etc? Keeping these in mind will result in a well-rounded deck!

My final bit of advice: have fun with it! You can do whatever you want forever! There's a side character you're really fond of who appears more often than they should? Who cares! That one cool scene doesn't really fit any of the card definitions? Leave it out or make shit up! Maybe the design you choose really only fits the card's reversed definition and not the upright--that's perfectly fine! Assign that female character to one of the "male" court cards or vice versa! The tarot is not rigid; definitions are malleable and people's general understanding of the decks have shifted greatly over time. Every deck will have slightly different takes on what each of the cards mean, and yours will too. So go with what feels right!

[couch-house]

I figure now that we r in round 3, it would be a good time to expand on dog's deal specifically by explaining his context--bc he's very much defined by that + his story purpose, rather than his concept on its own! Welcome To My Beepo House.

tl;dr i made dog to be a friend-haver and a friend-maker and specifically be a friend for super :) a vote 4 dog in @sonic-oc-showdown is a vote for FRIENDS!

For beginner's context: for just under half the run of Fleetway Sonic the Comic, twisted evil killer Super Sonic is separated from Sonic physically, loses his chaos powers that compel him to violence, and ends up destitute in Metropolis Zone until a couple of minor characters take him in to live + work with them at the jazz cafe the Groovy Train. everyone say hi ebony and pyjamas :) I love the tension between this trio in how they approach the conflict of super sonic Being There, but ebony and pyjamas are also both adults and I see them as having more parental/grandparental relationships with him rather than real equal friends. so that's where dog and bebe come in :)

this is part of a canon divergence au that keeps the groovy train dynamic largely in place, rather than ending it with the comic. in the canon ending, ebony casts a spell that merges super and sonic back into the same body. sonic conquers super and things are alright for the end of the story. okay well i dont like that so </3 instead in this au, ebony hides super by merging him into *herself.* they struggle to live together for a bit until a minor villain (lord sidewinder) comes in and separates them, once again trying to harness super's power for himself. well he fails and they kick his ass and such. after this, the conflict between super and ebony expands from some of the canon conflict + the new merger conflict annnd now he can go make new friends at the skate park :) by doing what he does best: being sad and wet and pathetic until someone with a big heart tries to help him out.

i've been developing dog and bebe with the intent to make a nice balanced group between them: bebe is the Instigator, the Active member of the group, the hero-like, the leader. she's competitive, she's right, and she knows it! super's the rookie with crazy power, he's a fish-out-of-water most times but when it comes to a real fight he can be a heavy-hitter. he's cautious and deferential (canon low self-esteem behaviors), but he's coming into his own with the help of those around him. and doggy my special guy doggy is the mediator: she's the wingman and cheerleader, she's the helping hand that keeps everyone's heads cool. she's the first to trust and the first to forgive. she's a capybara: everyone's friend :)

ofc i hope dog's deal on his own is interesting enough to people! what if there was a capybara and he was nice and also silly :) but it feels so wrong to separate her from super... that's her buddy that's the reason i made her. my au characterizaiton of super doesn't get to happen from only knowing an older woman who believes he can do no wrong ever and an even older woman who doesn't quite trust him not to do wrong. he's gotta have a friend who doesn't care about all that super sonic stuff--in fact thinks super is just lying about most of it (that's okay, sometimes people need to lie about their lives and it doesn't make them bad or anything). someone who is willing to meet him without any of that baggage and openly invite him into friendship and a safer life :)

[tohwitchesduels]

FIRST ROUND OF WITCHES DUELS - Battle 4: Boscha vs Gavin Deamonne

Disclaimer: This is not a popularity contest or which character do you prefer, in this tournament you decide who is stronger/better/smarter/etc. opponent.

Information for both opponents under the cut to those who don't know what they can do in their battle:

Gavin Deamonne:

Gavin Deamonne specializes mainly in abomination magic and it is not known whether or not he knows or practices spells of another kind.

Gavin is overall a pretty skilled witch from Glandus High and his debut episode proves he's not afraid to seek adventures and is capable of fighting off beasts or capturing his opponents.

Gavin does in fact possess a palisman as confirmed in Eda's Requiem, and is proven to be a skilled and fast flyer by winning Gland Prix. Now, it's hard to tell whether or not he and Luz were going head to head (granted she had a very huge headstart before King puked at her making Luz crash) however he still managed to win the race by his own skill even if Luz could potentially out fast him. It goes without saying that Gavin still has skills in being an aerial ace that can rival most of the competitors here. It's not however known whether or not can he use staff in combat.

Gavin does not know who Boscha is but is certainly determined to defeat anyone from Hexside, especially if he wants to bring Glandus and his dad any pride.

Gavin may or may not have galder stones with him to enhance his magic.

Abomination Slip - Gavin can create abominations beneath the feet of his opponents making them lose their balance. It can be especially effective if his opponents are directly charging at him.

Abomination Gripe - Gavin is capable of making abomination goo capture his opponents no matter where they are and restrain them or even move them across different locations.

Abomination Minion - Gavin is capable of creating quite a large abomination golem that can be used to attack Gavin's opponents for him and serve his commands. The golem was smart enough to not be captured by the vines that assisted in the capture of Gus and also the very one to catch Gus first.

Abomination Bomb - not a canon one to Gavin, it was used by another witch, but I thought it was a nice ability so I gave it to Gavin for him to have more firepower. Gavin can send a bullet of abomination that can explode releasing large amounts of goo that can restrain his opponents.

Link to more of Gavin's capabilities here

Boscha:

Boscha specializes in Potions magic, but she did showcase the capacity to cast the spells of beast-keeping and illusion tracks (granted very briefly)

Boscha is an absolutely ruthless warrior who will stop at nothing to win this competition. She does not show mercy towards her opponents. Boscha is also considered by Hexside to be the strongest as proven by her ending up being the leader of the survivors in For The Future. She's also the most popular girl in the school as the captain of the grudgby team, proving she has enough skill both physically and magic-wise, only to be rivaled by the Hexsquad. She did succeed in breaking Amity's leg though.

Now Boscha doesn't even know who Gavin is, but I assume she looks down on Glandus High by virtue of it being Hexside's main rival school.

Boscha does possess a Palisman. It's not however specified how good of a flyer she is, but she's capable of using Maya in combat as proven when she knocked disguised Amity with her staff capabilities.

One of the tools Boscha can use independently of whether or not the other character also possesses are flying boots. She can use them for transportation and aerial attacks even when she doesn't possess a palisman during the battle and she can use them to save herself from fall damage if she ever is knocked out midair.

Telekinesis - Boscha can move objects with ease using it, granted the objects usually were small and not the size and weight of the person so she can use them directly on her opponent, but she can pick up random stuff from the arena to use them as projectiles high speed. Boscha proved in WILW that she can throw multiple objects at once or just one object.

Fire Ball - her trademark ability. She will usually pull out a Grudgby ball and set it on fire only to throw it at her opponents. She can use telekinesis to direct the ball at her opponents and the force the ball can hit is strong enough to create holes in the trees. It's a very strong offensive move. She can also spread the fire further.

Fire Blast - an improved version of Fire Ball which does not require a grudgby ball to use. It was demonstrated briefly in Follies at the Coven Day Parade when she attacked Luz with it. The fire blast appears to be also bigger than the average fireball.

Multiple Fire Balls - Boscha can throw multiple fireballs at her opponents with this ability and control the trajectory of her throws using magic. Also improved the version of her trademark fireball.

Fire Claw - as demonstrated in UW, Boscha can transform her nails into fire claws. I'm weaponizing this ability so Boscha can scratch and claw her opponents while also burning them.

Rabid Claw - as demonstrated in UW, Boscha can transform her nails into rabid claws she could use to attack her opponents.

Tentacle Claw - as demonstrated in UW, Boscha is capable of transforming her nails into tentacles. I adapt this ability to let Boscha use those tentacles to grab objects and perhaps even people from long distances with them. Granted the tentacles are not particularly strong so there are limits to how much weight they can pull and how durable they are.

Acid Throw - in FTF Boscha demonstrated she's capable of brewing an acid potion that can melt through abomination goo and possibly not only that. She will usually throw one at a time though instead of rapid firing them.

Sleeping Potion - in FTF Boscha demonstrated knowledge in brewing sleeping potion with sleeping nettles. Boscha can pull out this potion during the battle, letting the smell spread all across the area, knocking down her opponents. Boscha is also immune to the defects of sleeping gas by having a facemask with her at all times.

Ratworm Companion - in Once Upon A Swap, Boscha demonstrated racing capabilities with ratworms. I'll allow her for the purposes of this tournament to be able to summon one to aid her in transport and possibly offenses. Boscha showed to be quite quick and skilled in riding her ratworm covered in scars.

Link to more of Boscha's capabilities here

Link to return to the Masterpost

[shsl-analyzer-guy]

31 days of dangan- day 7 & 8: fav deuterag & protag

Considering how interconnected these two are, and how horrible work has made my sleep schedule in these days and made it difficult to type these out(don't work at the on-campus coffee shop during finals season. Don't do it), I elected to lump these two into a single post.

Fav deuterag- Genocider Syo

Genocider Syo is, by a long while, my absolute favorite deuteragonist. Even when it comes to deuteragonists I may like more as characters, when looking at them as a deuteragonist, they fall completely flat in comparison to the SHSL Murderer by a wide fucking margin, to the point I'm honestly surprised I talk about her as little as I do, now that I think about it.

First of all, having the serial killer be a playable character, literally physically indestructible, and slaughter Monokumas with multiple special attacks? Objectively correct choice; Genocider was by far the best survivor you could possibly pull for a fighting game, and only barely tied with Peko, Sakura, and Mukuro on an overall for dr1 & 2, because not only is she an insanely capable murderer, she's a passionate murderer, and as such, makes for a much more enjoyable 3rd-person experience in combat than I think any of the others could be in a secondary role.

She also experiences fantastic character growth in her own right over the course of the game while remaining one of the most consistent and enjoyable characters. Her relationship with 'dekomaru' is genuinely heartwarming, with their heart-to-heart in chapter 4 being considered one of the most impactful moments of the series if that one funishment-time post is anything to go by, and really demonstrates all the strongest parts of her character beautifully. I adore seeing her get to have the rush of passion from her talent in combat, seeing her get attached to Komaru, and her being the one to accept Komaru's help and look back at her? Immaculate. 10/10. They should've kissed in the epilogue.

I think what really makes her stand out as a deuteragonist, though, is the fact that she fills exactly the right amount of space in the game, remaining a constant and becoming a reliable fallback for the player in a way that just isn't possible in the other games because they're all first-person. Kyoko, Chiaki, and Kaito are all good characters, but because they don't have their own mechanics and are separate characters in a large cast, you end up with them either disappearing and blending into the rest of the cast too much or being harped on and pointed out even when it's not necessary to remind you, the player, how important they are. It makes an overall balance, but can be frustrating in the moment. But with Syo, there is no such problem, because she's right there with you at any time, with the moments in which she does take unswappable control from Komaru being brief and impactful enough to feel like a joy to see and not a copout. Switching to her to break into the bus in chapter 3 is genuinely one of my favorite parts in that game, and not just because it signals the end of that godforsaken "motivation minigame". She's reliable and fun, and the deuteragonist also being playable is a really good and strong choice that they didn't have to make.

Overall, she's just a really great and fun character that was perfectly cast in her role. I really really like her, and she's awesome, and it's hard to put into words besides just "omg murder girl is doing murder!!! Love when murder girl murders"

Fav protag- Komaru Naegi

Good Lord, WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT KOMARU??? I mean, I know she was in a "side game" but she's leagues better than the other protagonists imo, having the best character arc, strongest emotional core, and best drama and interactions with the other cast members. It feels the most like she's a person in the cast with her own dynamics and struggles and not just 'the reliable one everyone looks to'. I love Komaru Naegi so, so fucking much.

Komaru is the 3rd protagonist in the series, and it's incredibly apparent how the writers learned from creating Makoto and Hajime, as the strongest parts of both characters were pretty clearly put into a blender together to make Komaru and her story and evolve the world and lore. Like Makoto, Komaru is a more simplistic character who feels relatively normal but has distinctive oddness that she's unaware of. Unlike Makoto, that simplemindedness goes into the territory of full-on airheadedness, but has a much stronger emotional intelligence and intuition as a result. Where Makoto became hope embodied to save his people, Komaru recognizes nuance and chooses to save everyone, to understand everyone. Like Hajime, Komaru has no talent, and greatly admires those around her who are 'chosen', even having that insistence that she's not like everyone else and just wants to leave that Hajime insisted on halfwa through his final trial. Unlike Hajime, Komaru has a deep passion- just not one she's 'shsl' at. She loves manga, and wants to make her own manga, and her normalcy being a literal weakness instead of a metaphorical one gives her the opportunity to actually build her skill instead of being coerced into erasing herself for one, distinctly showing what Hajime could've had if he'd had support the way Komaru had Toko and Syo.

Komaru's character arc is also the best because it's non-linear, with her struggling to understand how much more capable she's becoming and struggling to understand her connections with Syo and Toko. The more gradual progression from fighting to survive, to fighting to save, is much more visible with her than it is with the other protagonists, as she has to learn to fight for herself first, whereas every other protagonist hits the ground prioritizing the people around them- Sayaka, Nagito, Kaede. And this becomes all the more elevated when Komaru actually receives the choice to leave of her own free will. A choice no other protagonist is given, and her rejecting it and choosing to stay for Syo, so that she doesn't have to go back on her vow to no longer kill, because caring for herself means caring for her loved ones, too.

Komaru also holds a ton of symbolism as a cycle-breaker when it comes to the Hope's Peak era. Like Junko and Monaca, Komaru is a younger sister put through torment and pushed by the game she's in to turn into a new symbol- a Hope like her brother, a Despair Sister. But she rejects this ending, because she valued the people around her without condition, doing what Monaca and Junko didn't and chooses to save both. She isn't Hope or Despair. She's both, distinctly both. It's also why she's matched up with Toko and Syo, who were designed to convey how the world is full of nuance and reverse imagery, and it makes for a fantastic match-up that Komaru ends up as the character to not only accept Toko and Syo as separate, but loves and protects both of them.

I also just adore the way Komaru isn't given princess treatment by the cast. Whenever a character argued with the other protagonists, it meant they were pissy and mean and the majority of the cast Did Not Like them. It was always very clear that the protagonist's social problems weren't going to affect their standing within the group overall, and had themselves established as the hero to everyone else by the end of their first trials. Komaru, on the other hand, has to fight and struggle for people to listen to her, experiencing a ton of pushback from the adult resistance and constantly being toyed with by the Monokuma Kids. She was the hero character for the player, but whereas the other protagonists spent time between the chapter finales getting gifts out of a slot machine and braiding your favorite character's hair, Komaru is fighting for her fucking life and pissing herself at every save point. Haiji doesn't like her, and hates Toko. She has to save them from an invasion twice before they'll so much as give her the time of day. And the Kids spend most of the game actively trying to murder her! Komaru is in constant conflict, and yet, she has the most compassion in the end, as a survivor of actual genocide.

[halsaph]

alright whats this artdrone killbot thing

hi. You will regret asking this

The Murderbot Diaries is a series of books about a human-bot construct that was designed to essentially exist as an enslaved security guard / piece of sentient spyware. It's like if Alexa had half a human brain and a gun. We're introduced to Murderbot (the murder alexa) roughly 3 years after it's hacked the piece of hardware in it's brain that forces it to obey commands. In those 3 years it hasn't changed much about it's life except now while working as a subhuman slave it watches tv when no one is paying attention. As a series TMBD largely is about themes of personhood and discovering yourself when you have largely spent your life being denied the right to a sense of self. They also don't shy away from addressing the trauma that Murderbot has experienced from having it's autonomy stripped of it for most of it's life, with the second novella and most recent novel most heavily featuring that as an element. (Although that is a core aspect of Murderbot's character that informs its decisions throughout the entire series).

Murderbot as a character is bitingly sarcastic and witty, deeply paranoid and ultimately filled with the constant low level anxiety it doesn't know what it's doing (not necessarily moment by moment but overall, with it's freedom, with it's life). It's an excellent unreliable narrator because it only tells you exactly what it thinks is important in a scenario, relationships between other characters, physical features of itself and the people around it, it's own emotions and reactions often being completely brushed over with only occasional clues, and often outright misinterpreting people's actions, most often it's own. It has this ever present self loathing in the first several books where it constantly explains it's actions away in the least charitable interpretation possible even though we see time and time again that at it's core it deeply wants to help and protect the people around it. And we see over the course of the books as it starts learning how to make choices for itself and interacting with people who treat it with respect and develops a support system as it starts to move away from that mindset (with the exception of the most recent book but to be fair to MB System Collapse is about it being forced to confront it's PTSD and it's backsliding alot from recently being thrown back into a situation from its worst nightmares). I said before its a human-bot construct to explain that it isn't purely an inorganic being but Murderbot is a deeply inhuman character and openly has no desire to be human, and it's perspective as something that is made to be a security system and enmesh into both digital and hardwired surveillance is fascinating to read. As you know I deeply deeply love robots, they're my favorite kind of 'inhuman but still a Person' kind of character and Murderbot perfectly strikes the balance between a starkly in human way of thinking and deeply relatable emotions that draws me to robots as a whole, especially as an autistic person (and Murderbot was intentionally written with autistic traits but in a subversion of the typical ableist depiction of autistic robots so that EXTRA rings true lmao)

seeing as you mentioned it I will also explain ART as a character, ART is one of the reoccurring characters in the series (the first 3 novellas all have completely different casts outside of Murderbot itself as it hops from place to place trying to decide what it wants and who it is before in the fourth novella and beyond bringing back in previous characters and having them start to overlap throughout the rest of the series). It was introduced in the second book and is arguably the character that has the greatest impact on Murderbot as a person although I say arguably bc I would personally still say that's Mensah. Unarguably tho it is one of the most important people in Murderbot's life and has been described multiple times now by the author as the love of its life (although not necessarily in a romantic sense as Murderbot is both within text and confirmed via word of god acearo). ART (Asshole Research Transport) also known as the Perihelion (although not until the 5th book/first novel bc Murderbot doesn't bother to tell tell the readers its name until then, instead deciding its a dick so its gonna exclusively call it by an insult) is a spaceship's pilot AI, made to be sentient instead of the usual smart GPS as an experiment by the university is was made by. It was raised like a child by a pair of scientists who are now part of its crew (along with its sibling Iris) and now is a teaching vessel for students learning about deep space and also anticorporate espionage worker (don't worry about it). It's a giant pushy asshole unless you're a child (the only character we've ever seen it meet on screen it didn't in some way immediately threaten was a 16 yo). It can't watch tv without having to pause at the suspenseful bits to calm down. We're introduced to it by it threatening to melt Murderbot's mind and then pouting when it's scared shitless. It then a month later asks to do surgery on it. It fully intends to blow up a planet to get Murderbot back from a group of colonists that captured it until someone talks it out of it because that isn't effective hostage negotiation.

[synergysilhouette]

5 Things I DESPERATELY want for the Winx Club reboot

A balanced, inclusive story. Seasons 1-3 of the original series were amazing, but Tecna and Flora felt super neglected in terms of their world and backgrounds (I remember it's said in the RAI dub that Tecna is an android, and I'd love for that to be canon). It'd also be fun to see more of Andros and the merpeople without having to wait 5 seasons for it.

Male fairies. They've been shown in the background of the original show, but their designs are very basic and without any transformations.

The specialists are developed, fleshed-out love interests and we nix all of the toxic moments. We don't know a large amount of them outside of Sky, and the Sky/Diaspro/Bloom love triangle is just messy and unnecessary. Riven deserves an arc where he overcomes his toxic masculinity and sexism due to how his mom abandoned him and see the Winx and specialists help him with that. Plus I kinda want them to be magical rather than guys with magical weapons; they don't really stand a chance against magical villains, and their skills don't seem as cool next to sorcerers, fairies, witches, and wizards. I'd also like for Nabu to be a part of the group from the get-go, and Nex and Roy can be supporting characters. And let them have more clothes!

Meaningful transformations. In the original, Charmix is about overcoming insecurities, Enchantix is earned via sacrifice, and everything afterwards is a group project (even if some of them have nice designs). More meaningful requirements that contribute to their mental and emotional growth should be incorporated into the transformations--if they end up going beyond Enchantix.

Clarify what Daphne's situation is and let Bloom ENJOY Domino. At first Daphne was cursed by the witches to become a disembodied spirit, and then it was clarified that it was her Sirenix transformation that was cursed. I liked the idea that Sirenix could turn you evil like Politea, though Daphne being a disembodied spirit as a result of the transformation felt like an odd retcon. If they want to use Sirenix later, perhaps have it exist as an evil transformation, resulting in why Bloom has to fight Daphne while Aisha fights Tritanus. And I just want Bloom to be able to enjoy her time in Domino when it's restored rather than immediately going back to business.

And I'll just be that guy: is there ANY way to get the 4kids cast to do the English dub? If not, I made a post with my own fancast for the girls and the specialists. Haven't made one for the villains yet, though.

[mastersoftheair]

ok, so my own final (and very, very fresh) thoughts, bc i wanted to wait until i'd watched everything to make a sweeping opinion of the whole series, and it's quite opinionated. and long. probably too long. i write essays for fun (everyone point and laugh):

my personal (and very, very fresh) ranking of the hbo war shows (not including gen kill bc that's a different war, sorry) goes- band of brothers > masters of the air > the pacific (it's the same for my title score rankings. that hasn't changed yet)

my main points of contention with MotA are 1) the nine episodes, 2) the length of the episodes, and 3) certain editing choices. nine episodes, compared to the classic ten, isn't Nearly enough time to showcase all that they wanna showcase (especially when the episodes are as short as they are, once you get past the recap and "next on" parts). and they wanna showcase A Lot! there so much going on! i'd ask them to pace themselves, but they literally Can't!

i mean, the editing choices are a Whole Thing! practically gives me whiplash sometimes lol. i feel like the weaker episodes still have parts that are Really good, but like. Individually. they don't work together as a stronger whole, which is to the episode's detriment. rather than jumping around (as the show often did), they could've benefited a lot from focusing on the One Story instead of squeezing three more stories into there (i say that, but i think the 4-5-6 episode run (all with multiple stories per episode) did this very well while Still being very good episodes, so it's not like it Can't be done, it just didn't work for 7, 8 and (partly) 9). granted, i suspect a chunk of the weird editing can be blamed on, well, there being only nine (and not all that long) episodes and no one wanting to cough up enough money for a tenth. ugh! i'm blaming both hbo And appletv for this (and covid19 ig). it's just One More Episode, how much could it cost?? and on the subject of episodes, why no episode titles? you used to love episode titles! i could've brainstormed episode titles for them For Free!!

when it comes to the characters, the rankings remain the same: BoB > MotA > TP. it's not totally fair tho, since BoB followed the exact same (and large-ish) group of guys from beginning to end, so you're Gonna know who they all are and get attached. this wasn't the case (for me!) when watching TP, since, unlike BoB, they jump around from group to group. i never felt like i got to know them all that well, outside of the main characters. i think MotA almost hits that sweet spot, especially knowing they had those two main things going against it: large cast And jumping from group to group. there's a case to be made for bias here (i Was the blog blogging about everything MotA for like. years.), but i still think they found a good enough balance of fleshing out the main characters while Also helping the audience get to know about a bunch of minor characters, of which there are a shitton (and their personalities, motivations, backgrounds, quirks).

there's also the representation of women. actual angel renée lemaire is and will always be a cut above the rest (bastogne is just That Good, argue with the wall). she's written so well that it almost makes me forget about how a bunch of women are portrayed in carentan. i have...issues with how women are portrayed in TP (even tho i love lena), so there's that. MotA falls in the middle (again) bc there's Way more women on-screen, but the writing can be questionable. balanced (as all things should be?) captain l'sandra wing-westgate is a character of all time, but episode 7 birthed the craziest discourse known to man (the hbo war fandom), but it wasn't all that unwarranted. manon and michou were sooo cool, but we didn't see nearly enough of them (another victim of the 'editing too many stories into one episode' problem. why not a whole resistance episode? or at least as the only b-plot?). paulina was interesting, but fulfilled one of those 'attractive foreign woman gives sage advice during/after sex' tropes (there's probably a tvtropes page for that idk). so many red cross girls, but none of the in-depth payoff :/ epic highs (multiple women!!) + epic lows (writing women??) = pretty tolerable. not great, not terrible. it was aight. i trust the fandom to build on this tho.

narrative is the big one tho. it's the whole "doing so much with so little" thing they've got going on (i'm ignoring their big budget here lol, could've been bigger). rather than having one main story with many connecting side stories (like BoB), it does the TP thing where there's many semi-connecting side stories set in the same general area. it helps that there's crosby's narration (i enjoy narration, sue me!), and he helps everything connect, sorta. but there's still other side stories that have Nothing to do with him (sandra's side gigs (revealing what she did takes away the mystery of what she Might be doing), the tuskegee airmen, quinn and bailey's eurotrip). would it have helped if there were two narrators (say, someone like rosie)? idk. gonna sit with that one. if there's a through-line, it's not super obvious like in the other two shows. which is insanely funny to me bc i literally like TP less, but that show's got an Extremely tight through-line all the way down. i can't lie and say it doesn't!

back to budget- i've seen people criticize this show for being called "masters of the air" when there's not much of "the air". ig that's fair, but there's the money issue, again. also, it'd get very repetitive if they were always in "the air". there was enough confusion about identifying who was who with the masks on, so imagine if that was Every Episode. out of All the issues the show has, this is the least issue-y. again, that's just my opinion, and it could change.

another budget thing (i think??)- idk enough about costuming and hair for period pieces so i can't comment on that with my 0 background in it, all i Can say is that i knoooooow people were clowning on marjorie cleven's hair in episode 1 (and i could see why, no such thing as 1940s beach waves). but from what i could understand- that actress' addition was a last-minute thing (bc i had No idea who the hell she was and i already found someone cast for marjorie all the way back in 2021). maybe there's something to say about the quality of rush jobs, but i really do think it was the most last-minute thing bc it came out of Nowhere, and timeline-wise, it looks like that bit was done long after everything else had been filmed. outside looking in, it seems something probably went wrong/didn't work out with who or what they already had and there wasn't enough wiggle room (time and money) to fix it. this isn't me being an apologist (lol), but i feel like a theorist at a big board bc nothing adds up! and i wanna know what happened! i'm just speculating! speculating on this blog is All i did for like Years lmaooo.

this is more of a side thing, but some of the lines in MotA feel really on-the-nose, almost corny. and that was Gonna be a knock against it, but there's some equally Extremely on-the-nose lines in both BoB and TP (Especially in BoB), so if i give MotA shit for it, i'd have to give all three shows shit for it lol. none of them are free of cheese.

another silly aside- no peaches, no main gingers, no main eugenes! we can't have 'em all, but c'mon!

there Is some good tho lol. one thing that MotA really has going for it, that i think the other shows have less of, is- and GOD it feels so weird to call this "world-building" when it's actual goddamn history, but- it's got world-building. maybe that isn't the best word for it. but i like how much Bigger ww2 feels in this show. BoB is one stop, then the next stop, then the next stop, which is, admittedly, good from a narrative-perspective (easy to follow), but not as good when you want a scale of how devastating the war is (in fairness, it was filmed in 2000). even TP feels pretty "enclosed" in a way. there's island-hopping, yeah, but all the damn islands look the same (not including australia lol). it's a theatre of the war we otherwise don't really get to see, but there still isn't all that much to see. it's water and sand and rock and dirt. which is the point, but Whatever! would've been cool if we saw sledge and co. in china, but moving on. MotA's able to really show the scale of it, both in the air and on the ground (that scene in germany during episode 6 was both harrowing and fantastic, also the inclusion of the actual children forced to fight nearer to the war's end in the finale). idk i just liked how it was able to zoom in and zoom out (and in and out again) in a way that the other shows weren't.

another thing it's got that the other shows don't is Really driving home how young everyone is (not "child soldier" young, but damn young). the cast is full of baby faces (rip babyface). a lot of ww2 shows/movies don't bother casting to reflect this, but i think overlooking that takes away from the overall impact. you browse through some old newspaper articles or photos of soldiers during ww2 enough and you're gonna Regularly get hit with the face of someone who looks like they could've sat in the desk next to you during a high school lit class. a lot of those b&w grinning faces look like kids bc they pretty much were (more so if they lied about their age). you don't really get that in BoB or TP (it's Crazy when the real life pics of the soldiers portrayed in those shows look younger than the actors).

i'm mixed about the tuskegee airmen. what we have, i love (thank you, dee rees). unfortunately, my biggest irk is that it leaves me wanting more of them, which i won't ever get. speaking as a black person (not speaking for All black people, just how i personally feel about it), having them included feels like a catch-22. if they weren't included in any capacity (all while knowing there were whole tuskegee airmen in stalag iii with the white main characters), there'd be a problem. however, including them (all while having these time constraints and not enough focus on them) leads to the feeling of having them "tokenized" (which i can see). there's no world where there'd be 50/50 split (even a 70/30 split) bc, at that point, just give them a show of their own. but there'd still be a general annoyance that big budget ww2 shows are only ever white. on the other hand, hanks and spielberg and orloff and miller and all the directors (except dee rees) are white, and how good of a story about black people are you really gonna get from the perspective of nonblack people? that in mind, i personally don't feel put-off by having the three tuskegee airmen in the posters/trailers/promos, bc i just Know there'd be a whole nother problem if they weren't included in them at all despite being in the show for however long (it'd be even worse if they made their pictures smaller). like i don't work in advertising, but i don't know if a "sweet spot" even exists for something like this. people would be pissed off no matter what imo (i'm also speaking with a bias here bc i had to browse through sooooo many comments written by white guys whining and crying and pissing and shitting themselves once they learned that the tuskegee airmen were gonna be in the show in Any capacity, so i'm just cool knowing they're in shambles rn (and josiah cross- he played richard macon- always goes Wild seeing his face in the promos, and his joy is pretty contagious).

i give it somewhere like a 7.5-8/10. 3.75 stars out of 5. not perfect, subject to change, gotta marinate, but i'm overall happy with it! MotA's best episodes are better than many other individual hbo war episodes. should i be grading it using the overall sum of its parts, not just the different parts? idk, i'm not being paid to grade lol.

[princess-of-the-corner]

I reread Hero Chat again, and one of the things I'm loving is how many characters get to be spotlighted and how many fun characters get to have individual interactions. Like, just in this new chapter we get Mylene and Tomoe, and that's something that canon would never even consider. And of course ALL the Zoe and Lila together is like my FAVORITE thing happening right now. I am canoeing them so hard (platonic shipping). Like, you've done a good enough job with it that I'm canoeing them outside of HC.

Basically: ML frequently seems to forget that people other than the MCs exist, but you do a really good job handling the frankly huge ensemble cast, and it's getting added to the pile of "things in ML fanfic that heal my soul after it turned into a dry withered husk from continuing to watch the show."

Canoeing is the perfect word oh my god.

But also yeah ML has just. This large cast of characters and they rarely get the time and attention dedicated to them.

They occasionally get the spotlight when they're the Akuma of the Day, because we need to know why they're upset enough to get Akumatized.

Sometimes their Hero Debut Episode focuses on them, but that's a tossup as they're balancing the other plots of the Akuma and whatever Mari and Adrien have going on.

Most often they get sidelined in favor of Mari and Adrien.

This is why I think the idea of having a larger Hero Team would be better to allow for shifted focus like. While the Main 5 would all be friends, they'd have episodes with individual groups where not all of them are present.

Like to compare, we can look at MLP. Something that has a similarly large cast. But you get different groups of characters depending on the episodes.

You have the Mane 6 all together. You have episodes focusing on just 2-3 of the group instead of the full 6 to get ideas of their own dynamics. You have episodes that focus on one member and the supporting cast is made up of characters around them ie: Applejack episode with her family, Pinkie episode with the Cakes, Rainbow and the Wonderbolts, Rarity and her clients, etc. You also have episodes where the focus isn't on the Mane 6 aren't in focus at all and instead we have the CMC or Spike or later we get Starlight and the Young Six.

With ML we could've had this in different spots. Like. We have our Main 5 Heroes.

But maybe one episode foucses on Marinette and the Art Club/Kitty Section. The next is Alya hanging with Max to do tech coding stuff. Adrien falls in with Alix and Kim for the athletic nonsense. Nino's hanging out with Mylene because he's into directing and she's in theatre so drama club overlap. Chloé would have Sabrina and maybe later Kagami and/or Lila then Zoé.

And then yeah have episodes without them. Let the others have the spotlight!

[ciaossu-imagines]

send me a fandom: k project

Send me a fandom and I’ll tell you:

The first character I first fell in love with:

I’m pretty sure I was automatically in love with Mikoto the very first time I watched the show. It was a long time, and several rewatches ago, so I’m not entirely sure, but I remember being really, really into Mikoto in my first watch of the show. I also remember being really into Munakata during one of my earliest watches too.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:

It really wasn’t until I read the spin-off manga and stories that I got as into the side characters as I am now. Memory of Red really endeared all of HOMRA’s ABC boys to me and they’re now my favourite characters. I didn’t expect, during that first watch of the show, that those characters would continue to fuel my love for the fandom all the time, but here we are.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t:

Okay, I’m making this plain and very, very, VERY clear to avoid the hate – I still really like this character. This character is fun, they have fantastic moments in the show, they have interesting dynamics with the other characters. They are a great character and I like them. But I never was in love with them like almost everyone else I know of who is into K was or still is. I never fell for them, they were never one of my absolute favourites that I got obsessed with. I like them, but Yata just didn’t capture me like some of the other characters did.

The character I love that everyone else hates:

I don’t think any of the characters are really hated in the fandom. The K Project fandom is pretty small and from what I’ve seen of the fandom, most people are pretty cool and respectful of everyone’s favourites. But I will say that I do really love Kamamoto. He’s a fantastic character that I think a lot of the fandom are sleeping on and I wish he was included in a lot more in bigger ways.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer:

Guys, this is actually going to surprise a lot of people who know me. I used to absolutely adore Fushimi. Reading Small World made me feel for him and I felt it gave him a lot of depth. I used to really enjoy the character, thought a lot about him, developed a lot of headcanons, would enjoy trying to talk to other fans about him. However, the K Project fandom really is so very oversaturated with Fushimi, especially in pairings, and I just kind of burned out on him. I still find it a little hard to really get excited over him to this day.

The character I would totally smooch:

Fujishima, Eric, Bandou, Dewa, Munakata (though I don’t care as much about him, the man is still pretty hot), and Enomoto are the ones I can think of right off the top of my head!

The character I’d want to be like:

Though I hate how much the show oversexualized her, I’m such a huge fan of Seri. She’s such a strong, confident woman who really has climbed the ladder in an obviously male-dominated field. She balances that strong professional side with a more girly, feminine side on her downside, chases her goals, focuses on making herself happy and there’s just a whole lot about her that I find very admirable. She’s my favourite female among the whole cast and I really wish, in some ways, that I was more like her.

The character I’d slap:

Let’s be real here – with my bad temper and Chitose’s less than savoury qualities, I’d end up not just slapping but full force punching him at some point. I’m also pretty sure that, despite how much I liked Fushimi at some point, I would hit him real quick if I ever met him.

A pairing that I love:

I actually don’t mind the Kusanagi x Seri pairing. I don’t write it or think about it that often, it’s not something I seek out, but there have been cute fanart and fanfic for them that I’ve enjoyed and certain moments in the show and manga with them are really enjoyable and adorable.

A pairing that I despise:

It’s largely just because of the complete and utter oversaturation of it. This pairing is completely impossible to avoid in this fandom and it sometimes seems like it is all that some fans care about…of course, it’s the Yata/Fushimi pairing. I can theoretically get the appeal, but at the same time, I just can’t ship it. I love their friendship and the interactions between them in canon, but tend to view it more as a friendship.

[greyplainsttrpg]

5e Villain Arc 4

I'm not going to make some grandiose claim that the ability scores in Dungeons and Dragons, as a franchise, were perfectly balanced until 5e. Like 5e single-handedly disrupted the franchise's perfectly thought-through balance.

However,

this is about the balance of Ability Scores in D&D 5e.

I'd like to point out, first of all, that Ability Scores, in general, are more important in 5e than they have ever been due to bounded accuracy. For most of a Player's time interacting with the game (between Levels 1-12), their highest ability score will be the single most significant contribution to any of their actions. So if you are going to have a +4/+5 to any one Ability Score, it is actually really important to make sure it is a good one. While the Ability Scores were not especially balanced in past editions, the lack of balance was weighed against a variety of means to counteract or eventually overcome a poor ability score.

I know many players who read through the game for the first time and immediately intuit that Dexterity is the best Ability Score in the game. It is painfully obvious. Proving this makes me a feel a bit insane. It feels like doing a geometric proof. "Prove this is a triangle" kind of shit. Content warning on link for language, but I could not find the censored version. Also, it is the original tweet, I think.

I have come up with a methodology to determine how potent each ability score is, considering the entirety of the Core Guidebook. It works as such:

List Element: The elements that I am considering are those which directly influence the direct roll of a die. This is almost always a d20 roll, but not always (in the case of weapon damage).

Score it as a fraction over 5 (thus X/5): Elements are weighted on a scale between 0 and 5 (some elements will exceed 5 because how just how important they are). These numbers are, I admit, largely "vibes based" in the sense that there is no perfect way to divine these values. They are based on my experience of playing and running 5e. Generally, features that every Character can theoretically access have a greater chance of reaching a 5, while class or archetype-locked elements will be weighted generally lower. Thus "Wizard Casting" is weighted 3/5 because, while this element is extremely good for Wizards and a party, it is useless for everyone that is not a Wizard. However, Dexterity Saves are a 5/5 Element because every character will need use Dexterity Saves relatively often.

Total Rating: We add together only the numerators into a final score. The result of this being that Ability Score with numerous and potent Elements will have greater totals than Abilities with fewer and weaker elements. The denominator does not matter for the total. It strictly serves to define the expected number range for each element. In addition to its total, its spot, from 1 to 6 (one being the lowest, 6 being the highest) each Ability ranks relative to each other.

Okay, so now we understand the criteria, here is the write-up:

Strength

Attack & Damage Melee Attacks: 5/5

Attack and Damage Thrown Weapons: 2/5

Strength Saves: 1/5

Skills: Athletics 1/5

Lifting, Pushing, & Encumbrance 1/5

Defense (certain armors require more strength) 2/5

Battle Master Maneuvers Saves: 1/5

Total: 13 (1/6)

Dexterity

Attacks & Damage Projectile Attacks 5/5

Attack & Damage Finesse Melee Weapons 4/5

Defense 4/5

Dexterity Saves 5/5

Skills: Acrobatics 2/5, Sleight of Hand 1/5, Stealth 4/5

Initiative 4/5

Parry (Battle Master Maneuver) 1/5

Battle Master Maneuvers Saves: 1/5

Total: 31 (6/6)

Constitution

Hit Points 6/5

Constitution Saves 5/5

Unarmored Defense, Barbarian 3/5

Total: 14 (2/6)

Intelligence

Intelligence Saves: 2/5

Skills: Arcana 3/5, History 2/5, Investigation 2/5, Nature 1/5, Religion 1/5

Spellcasting: Wizard 3/5, Arcane Trickster 1/5

Total: 15 (3/6)

Wisdom

Wisdom Saves: 5/5

Spellcasting: Cleric 3/5, Druid 2/5, Monk 1/5, Ranger 2/5

Wisdom Skills: Animal Handling 0/5 (lmao, as per my last post), Insight 4/5, Medicine 0/5,

Perception 5/5, Survival 0/5

Passive Perception 3/5

Unarmored Defense, Monk 3/5

Total: 28 (5/6)

Charisma

Charisma Saves: 1/5

Spellcasting: Bard 3/5, Warlock 3/5, Sorcerer 3/5, and Paladin 2/5

Skills: Deception 3/5, Intimidation 0/5, Performance 0/5, Persuasion 5/5

Warlock: Eldritch Blast Charisma Damage Buff 2/5

Devotion Channel Divinity, Charisma to Damage 1/5

Rally (Battle Master Maneuver) .5/5

Total: 23.5 (4/6)

I'm going to defend my rating on a couple of these:

Dexterity Saves (5/5): I know that Dexterity Saves are generally considered to be the weakest kind of saving throw. However, they are undeniably the most common. A Character with bad Dexterity is simply more likely to go down over the course of an adventuring day due to the numerous AoE effects that require a Saving Throw.

Rally (.5/5): Strictly upside if you are a Battlemaster Fighter with a Good Charisma anyway, but it is not so good that I would recommend having a high Charisma Score otherwise. Unlike Parry (the only other Maneuver that adds any of your Ability Score Modifiers, surprisingly), which I would genuinely be interested in having a good Dexterity JUST to use this. I feel Parry is a pretty common Maneuver that Players pick, but maybe I'm wrong. It is not the best maneuver, but it is definitely one that I doubt most people would regret picking up as an option. Moreover, literally why isn't this Strength? Dexterity already factors into AC, why does it also get to factor into the only player-accessible direct Soak mechanic in the system? I would still rather have Rally on a Character with 12-13 Charisma than Wisdom (Animal Handling) on a Character with 300 Wisdom, though. I'll take 1dX+1 damage over "being able to calm down a DOMESTICATED ANIMAL ONLY" jfc.

Battle Master Maneuver Saves: I kinda forgot about these until recently. Why the hell can you add Dexterity to these save DCs? Why is WotC so cruel to Strength. Were you bullied in high school, Chris? Do you need to go to therapy so I can finally play a big-strong guy without being a burden to my party? This is a joke, for clarification. I'm just arbitrarily framing Chris Perkins as some sort of maniacal mastermind "trying to destroy the hobby." I'm not LITERALLY psychoanalyzing him lol (nor do I think that he is singularly responsible for anything in particular in 5e. Moving on.

Archetype Casting: These are rated pretty low solely because of how specific they are. First of all, the Ability Score only directly applies to Spells that require a Save, which is maybe 2/3 of them considering there are 3 kinds of spells: Attack, Save, and Other.

Monk Spellcasting (Ki Save): Monks suck lmao. Glorified battle master lookin-ass. I consider the Monk's Ki Saves to be literally equivalent in utility to the Arcane Trickster. Why use your Ki-Points on something that MIGHT work, when you can instead use them on something that definitely will. I suppose an argument can be made about Spellcasting in the same way, except most/all spells are better than things the monk can do with their Ki. The Monk Class, as a whole, is about as good as a strong archetype in a better Class. Genuinely, if I had to be either a Diviner (like just a Diviner with Wizard HP, normal Proficiency progression, and no spellcasting) OR A Monk without an Archetype--it would be a tough call. Diviner is really good. Arcane Trickster is better than the Monk Class for sure. New 5e Challenge: no Classes, only Archetypes. I would run that. Sounds a whole lot better, actually. Some research on implementation required.

The Ability Scores from best to worst:

Dexterity (31)

Wisdom (28)

Charisma (23.5)

Intelligence (15)

Constitution (14)

Strength (13)

Thus I have made my proof that Dexterity is the best Ability Score in Dungeons and Dragons (legally speaking, no edition name, btw). Something we all already knew.

Takeaways:

Dexterity and Wisdom are meta. Most Characters will benefit from good numbers in these scores.

Charisma is a pretty good score that a shocking number of Character rely upon for their primary features. I think Charisma is slightly underrated by this metric because of how potent Bards are in this game. I will talk about this more in whatever Villain Arc covers the classes, but in summary: Bards are the best at the things they are best at, and they are the 2nd best at EVERYTHING else.

Intelligence is good for Characters that plan on making the most out of it, but otherwise it is a dump stat.

Constitution might be a bit underrated using this methodology. HP is such a strong contribution over the course of a Character's career. However, besides HP and Constitution Saves, Constitution just stands there on your Character Sheet... menacingly. For my Characters, I really wish I didn't have to put an okay number in Constitution. I would rather put that number somewhere else. The only Class that benefits from Constitution (outside of HP and Saves) is the Barbarian, and I think that that is a shame.

LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO MY BEAUTIFUL BOY! Strength is tragic. There is next to no reason to ever have a good Strength Score when Dexterity is standing right there.

Photo of WotC 5e Playtesing.

If 5e is the only D&D game you have played, it might be hard to comprehend exactly what the hell happened to Dexterity to make it so absolutely pushed. The problem here is that 5e is "big-dumb-dumby" 3.5. You see, 5e is not a sequel to 4th Ed. Due to outrage from Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, WotC decided to peddle backwards on most/all of their design choices from that edition. 4th Edition, in all fairness, was pretty bad at being an all-purpose fantasy cooperative story-telling/combat hybrid game. One problem it didn't have? Ability score unfairness. Now, this was largely accomplished by just making all of a Class' feature operate on a single ability score, which is practical but pretty boring.

We are entering conspiracy territory here.

Anyway, WotC clearly wanted to release a game that would earn back fans who had fled 4th Ed to Piazo's Pathfinder (which is just 3.5.5, and that's totally fine). So they wanted a 3.5-like game, but they could not just release 3.5 again because Paizo already did that. This leads to an interesting design puzzle. To clarify what is going on:

WotC wants to re-release 3.5

They cannot re-release 3.5 because they do not want to directly compete with Paizo.

They are responding to 4e criticisms: the game is too complicated and it does not provide enough opportunity for roleplay or storytelling.

Their solution was to make a game that functions VERY MUCH like 3.5, but one that is streamlined in its granularity. The main thing I want to focus on here, for now, is Feats.

You see, Feats, which exist in 5e, were similar but different to their role in 3.5. In 5e, Feats are optional, and they usually provide some sort of feature that majorly shifts how your Character is played. The Feats that are bad don't do this.

Feats in 3.5 were not so grand, at least not immediately. The really good Feats (not you Natural Spell) required investing into previous Feats to access them. These Feat chains were the 3.5 alternative to 5e Archetypes. Not considering Prestige Classes which were also the alternative to Archetypes. Anyway.

Much of the things that Dexterity does for free in 5e were locked behind Feats in 3.5. This means that a high-dexterity Character would need to invest pretty heavily to make the most out of their score. This does not mean Dexterity was bad in 3.5. Dexterity was good, but you did not start off the game with extra Feats by JUST having a good Dexterity Score. The two primary offenders of this are having Dexterity automatically add to the attack and damage of both finesse weapons and projectiles. Automatically. Right out of the box. In 5e, adding Dex to Damage on melee weapons exceeds any feat in 3.5, so high-dex characters get a bonus-bonus feat right out of the box. This is a great Reddit thread during the D&D Next Playtest which discusses the possibility of adding Dex to melee damage in 3.5, and everyone is like, "bro wtf--no." SHAME IF THAT BECAME STANDARD, HUH FELLAS/FELLASSES/FELLFOLK. "Are there any min-max reasons why I shouldn't allow that?" Yeah, because it is obviously a terrible idea.

Look at how many hoops you have to jump through JUST to add Dexterity to Attack and Damage lmao. It is actually pretty funny.

Dead-Eye is the feat to add Dexterity to Projectile Damage, and that is a Feat in an expansion, so it is not expected for most tables to use it (SRD search notwithstanding).

Strength was still probably the worst ability score in 3.5. I don't really want to talk about my game too much, but in Greyplains I decided to combine parts of Strength and Constitution into a single Ability (Power) and split Dexterity into two separate Abilities (Agility and Coordination). This is largely because of 5e, but I had played plenty of 3.5/d20 Star Wars and AD&D (which has the least of these problems, btw) to learn from the past.

Speaking of which, you know which of these D&D games has the least ability-score balance problems? AD&D. You want to know why? Exceptional/Warrior Strength and Constitution. This intersects with 5e Villain Arc 3. AD&D never had the issues that come from later games, neither in barring martials from performing super-human feats nor in limiting people's abilities to do normal things.

For example, consider the AD&D 2nd Strength Ability Score Table:

You see those percentile numbers besides those 18s. Those are warrior-exclusive strength scores? This allows character to do some genuinely wacky shit. Damage modifiers are hard to come by outside of magic weapons, so these smaller numbers are actually pretty great relative to a game where you do NOT roll for additional Hit Points or add your HP Adjustment from Constitution after 9th or 10th Level. Also, HP is lower across the board for all/most Characters at all levels. To-Hit is less important in this game due to THAC0 being a giga-chad of a system and AC capping at -8 (just don't worry about, read that as 28 for you non-good-game enjoyers lmao jk but 4 real). A thing to note here is how shit most characters are at carrying things, so being able to carry everyone's stuff is actually extremely valuable. One of the biggest nerfs to strength is how ubiquitous naturally high carry-capacity is and everyone's cry-baby reliance on a party-owned Bag of Holding. Carry Capacity Strength Nerf is actually a shadow-buff to Dexterity because guess what being overencumbered effects the most? That's you right you beautiful little botanique: Dex-fucking-terity.

Want to open that door but you don't have a Thief or your Thief failed to open it because "WOWEE SIR, THAT'S A WEALLY HAIRD LOCK UWU?" Just kick it down. Magically locked door and you don't have a Wizard or the Wizard was an idiot and didn't prepare Knock like a god-damn incel? Kick it down! Want to lift a boulder off your friend that exceeds your max-press? BEND BARS/LIFT GATES! Okay, this is admittedly not intuitive and is generally overlooked by most players of AD&D. However, the wording on what you can use this for is intentionally flexible.

It even lets you brute force attempts if you can think of a clever way to muscle through the problem in a different way. So cool. Imagine being clever with your muscle. What a magical game.

The obvious use-case of BB/LG outside of the stated function is grabbing weapons out of people's hand (there's rules for that, btw) and bending/breaking them on the spot. It is EXTEMELY funny to do this as a GM to Characters who lack magic weapons with like ogres and what-not. A slam-dunk of a fight becomes a lot harder if your fighter gets their sword broken and a goblin sneaks behind the wizard and steals their book (and lunch money).

Constitution has a similar history of just being more important in AD&D. Three reasons why: more limited HP (and Warrior, exceptional HP), System Shock, and Resurrection Survival.

Saves were VERY different in AD&D in that they were solely influenced by your Class-Group and modified occasionally by your Class in certain instances (or all, in the case of the Paladin). However, most mechanics in the game can be called upon to act as a save. The most common non-Saving Throw-save is System Shock. You have to roll it whenever a Character loses 1/2 or more of their total health in a single attack. If they fail, they die. Like, they die from shock. System Shock is called upon for other things as well, but pretty sparingly. It is partly what becomes the Fortitude Save in 3.5 (in addition to the Petrification, Polymorph, and Death Magic Saving Throw). Finally, if your Character dies and they are called back to life... they could just... not. Like, they just fail to be revived. Is this a good mechanic? Unclear. It is, however, extremely funny.

A lot of the things that are Skills now were locked behind various Thief Skills. Dexterity influences these, but not massively. Stealth is one of the best Dexterity Skills in 5e, but Stealth is divided into two different Thief Skills in AD&D and only available to certain characters. However, they were also supernaturally powerful. Like, if you passed Hide In Shadows, you were not just hiding--you were functionally invisible. Better than invisible because you are not literally invisible, meaning you cannot be detected as per the spells Detect Magic, Detect Invisibility, Detect Illusion, etc. Move Silently? That's right, not quietly. Literally silently, but not as per the Spell Silence which, again, can be detected or dispelled through magic.

Solving the "doing normal things" problem that was never a problem until 4th edition (maaaaaaaybe 3.5 as well). AD&D had Skills, but they are not the kind of Skills you are familiar with (generally).

Obviously, Intelligence and Wisdom are going to be over-represented with these kinds of very grounded skills. However, Strength has several really good NWPs to its name. All the construction skills are Strength-Based, as is the athletics-related Skills. Those are actually quite good in a game where fortress management is an intended mechanic of the game.

Other ways Dexterity is nerfed in favor of strength is projectiles. Not only does Dexterity not contribute to damage of projectiles, you literally cannot fire into a melee without making it a called shot (a -4 to attack) (using Combat and Tactics Rules, where Called Shots are a thing). Dedicated Fighters or Rangers with high-Dexterities can do this, but Bards, Thieves, and non-specialized warriors can not rely on this as a consistent means of contributing to a fight. This is why the infamous "+1 Dart Throwing Fighter" is not as good as it seems. Yes, it is funny that you can throw like 9 darts at level 17 or whatever. However, it is a called shot, and everything you are fighting probably has immunities to all but AT LEAST +3 magic weapons. Also, do you know what is better than 9 darts that deal 1d3+1 damage against enemies without magic resistance? 50 of your fellows with bows from 100 yards away firing two arrows each per round. Which you have, probably, because you are a level 17 fighter. Shit, do you know what is better than 50 guys with bows? The Cleric's 20d10 guys manning trebuchets. DARTS ARE NOT THAT GOOD. GET A LONGSWORD YOU GOOBER AND HELP ME KILL THIS DRAGON! IT'S BURNINATING ALL MY THATCH-ROOFED COTTAGES! If you miss this shot, there is a good chance it will hit whoever is closest (probably your ally).

RaW in the Core Guidebook, firing into a melee is just a lottery of who you will actually hit. Like, you add up some values based on the size of all the creatures near the thing you are aiming at and roll dice to see who the missile actually targets. This missed attack also always hits, for some reason? Their formula is a bit scuffed, which is why I prefer to use the Called Shot rule.

Additional note of firing into a melee; Called Shots become very powerful in late-game AD&D because you can basically just choose to give yourself a critical hit against semi-competent opponents. And, depending on the rules you are using for Critical Hits, that will very likely just kill the opponent. Sacrificing your Called Shot to only do 1d8 damage is pretty shit.

Taking a penalty to ignore part of the Character's AC is a shadow-buff to Strength. Strength-based Characters in AD&D are so versatile, but they are not fundamentally unfair. They just have tools that they can access to make fighting fun and puzzle-solving.

All Casters used either Wisdom or Intelligence in AD&D. None of them use Charisma. High Wisdom and Intelligence scores do not make you better at casting, per se. Instead, they simply allow you to do Casting without the limits of having low Wisdom or Intelligence.

Charisma is better than you might expect in AD&D. First of all, roleplay is a very powerful element. Second of all, AD&D switches to a game about minion management at around Level 9, and Charisma is super important for that. Charisma also serves as a bonus-life feature, where the higher your Charisma is, the more back-up Characters you have access to in case your primary Character is recovering from an injury, somewhere else, or dies. This is done via Henchmen.

Are the ability scores perfectly balance in AD&D and 2nd Edition? No. But they are much closer to balanced than any other D&D that came later that is not named Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition.

Remember that we are talking about 5e? The point of this historical diversion is to show people that the Ability Scores being the way that they are is not inevitable. With the same Ability Scores, a much more interesting, balanced, and unironically simpler game* (to play) is possible. If you are tired of 5e and want to play a similar game, you should try AD&D 2nd instead (or Greyplains, please buy my book lmao). It is SO much better.

#trans rights

#free Palestine

#buy my book

#WotC sucks

next Villain Arc:

Previous Villain Arc:

[fractalcloning]

As I scream into the void seeking a Narek RPer to play against, I have finally caved and must explain why I want this Romulan loungelizard to be more popular. (It won't happen, but I can dream.)

Reasons I like Narek as a character that nobody but me gives a shit about:

Let me preface this with a fact about me: I know Romulans.

I've RPed as Nero for almost two straight years in a large game. I've basically learned Rihannsu back to front for the endeavor. The person who played my Ayel and I both dumped countless hours into developing grammar and extrapolating cultural rules. We were dedicated to making them as believeable and accurate to canon as possible.

I have the whole timeline of the destruction of Hobus/Romulus down to memory. I know about all the neat little tidbits and trivia from comics and adjacent materials etc, etc.

This is to say: I have read and written quite a lot about Romulans in my time. I am very familiar with how they work and what data is available to draw from when writing them.

We do meet a few rank and file military Romulans from time to time, however. So we know how the general military operates in direct contrast to the Tal'Shiar. Caution and secrecy is sort of baked into their culture, which makes a lot of sense given that they're constantly at war with basically everyone, but they aren't (generally) unreasonable people.

In canon Trek, Romulans are often a little over the top with the sneaky-backstabbing-untrustworthy-nonsense. They're almost comical with how much scheming they do, but most of the Romulans we meet in canon are Tal'Shiar. The Tal'Shiar are known, pretty explicitly for the depth and breadth of their sneaky-backstabbing-untrustworthy-nonsense. It's kind of their whole deal, apart from mnhei'sahe (literally the ruling passion honor).

Narek, however, was a child when Hobus went supernova. He is from the very last generation that had any living memory of Romulus. (Elnor is also from this generation and they are great foils for each other, but that's another essay.) Narek is from a (presumably) respected family of--if not Tal'Shiar then Military--operatives. His aunt held high rank, his sister did as well, and both were inducted into the Zhat Vash, an organization that worked so quietly and efficiently that even the famously paranoid Tal'Shiar thought they were a myth. They orchestrated catastrophes and manipulated Galactic law to their ends, one of their members was the head of Starfleet Security and Narissa was on a personal basis with her.

Their underlying culture is present, but it isn't explored very deeply in any one canon source. Taken collectively, however, it is just as substantial as Klingon Battle-lust or Ferengi Capitalism.

Nero was a break from the norm, not because he was vengeful, but because he was the first non-military Romulan we'd ever really seen. His designs, the tattoos, the crew of his ship with their very un-Romulan loyalty, the way he talked and sought equivalent exchange of lives (mnhei'sahe), was a wealth of Romulan culture that we hadn't ever seen. He was a regular Joe, had a regular non-Military job, trusted and worked with aliens to try and save lives. His failure (not his fault) was something he absorbed and sought to rectify in the Romulan way.

Nero was super interesting both for how much detail he cast on Romulan culture, and in how he slotted into the Prime Timeline. Nero was a guy desperately clinging to hope, to the last vestiges of his civilian life, but he was cut free by the destruction of Romulus and set adrift. The only anchor he had in the AOS timeline was his honor and the driving need to balance the scales and restore it.

Narek, however privledge his family was, was a washout. He was a failure. We know he wasn't Zhat Vash, and whether he was even Tal'Shiar is up for some serious speculation. He doesn't act like military officers, and only seems to be play-acting as a Tal'Shiar, miming his sister when it suits him.

Narek may have had authority on the Artifact, but it was probably by dint of Oh granting it. We never get any clarification whatsoever about his rank or dayjob, just that he is fully devoted to helping the Zhat Vash. He is analytical, prepared, but he is not good at thinking on his feet and clearly does his planning off screen. He's meticulous but not especially skilled at hiding or regulating his emotional state. He is far less aggressive and stalwart than just about every other Romulan we've seen...except for Nero.

He was literally a placeholder sent to keep tabs on Soji. He didn't even arrive until Narissa had failed to capture Dahj. That Narek managed to get close to Soji, that he discovered her dreams and correctly surmised what they are, was more luck than skill. Before his assessments the Zhat Vash knew that Dahj (and Soji) could be activated out of their cover, but they assumed that they could capture them. They probably assumed they could torture the data out of them, if not dissect them and rip out a harddrive.

Narek found an easy way to get right to the information they needed. His attachment to Romulan culture is his puzzlebox--Before Nero we had never met a Romulan civilian and before Narek we have never met a cultural Romulan who plays with a toy, we had never seen a child's toy like that. Of course, the puzzlebox (Tan Zhekran) was a mechanism to illustrate his thought process, to make the differences between Narissa and him very apparent, but it was also something from his childhood (presumably). It's a weirdly personal affect for a Romulan and he fidgets with it almost constantly. It's a tell, something he shouldn't have, and it makes him accessible on an emotional level.

Narek is a civilian.

He's a civilian in a family of spies and operatives, raised alongside his sister on the same stories, with the same care. There's no way a Zhat Vash didn't have a family home on Romulus. While Elnor is a nice example of the new generation of Romulans, Narek is one of the last examples of what is used to mean to be a Romulan. He saw Romulus and escaped with all his surviving family when it as it was destroyed. Narek was raised on Romulan tradition (private names for family), Romulan stories about the end of the world, and he is haunted by them because he knows they're true, they're real. His sister and aunt have seen it, seen the message that drives people mad, about Ganmadan. His living relatives have dedicated their lives to preventing it and, even if he isn't actually Zhat Vash, he does the same.

Narek is a failure, by his culture's standards, by his family's standards, but he is also the only one of them who lives in the end.

He's a civilian who is trying, desperately, to avert another Romulan apocalypse. He has already lived through one and somehow this next one is even worse. Like Nero he sees the writing on the wall--but instead of doubling down on the traditional sneaky spy shit, he tries something new--unlike Nero, it works! He makes headway where nobody else could.

Unfortunately, it's kinda fucked up, but he then gives up everything in the pursuit of this goal. (Which to him, seems like a noble one.) Narek gives up who he is (by playing at being Tal Shiar), his safety (he has no idea what Soji is capable of or what might set her off, they only have records of Dahj killing a dozen agents before being blown up), and eventually resigns himself to killing the woman he's fallen in love with (the baseline requirement for giving out his real name). He does it all for the greater good, to save people and he doesn't seem to make much of a distinction between Romulan and other organic lives. He has his little plans, tracking La Sirena in a single cloaked ship, hiding his presence to tail them, firing on them despite being wholly outmatched, allying with Sutra however temporarily, trying to sway Soji again, turning to Rios, Raffi, and Elnor for help--he's willing to do anything because he's terrified that everything is about to end and it will be him who failed to prevent it.

The very last shot we see of him, after his plan to detonate the transmitter fails completely, is him on the ground being dragged away by the Coppelius androids. He doesn't posture or threaten, doesn't say ominous shit like the other Romulans we're used to--He begs. He claws at the ground, trying to stay, and he begs. He pleads with Soji, calls her his love, tries that last ditch hail mary because it's all he can do. He fails his task and she's the last person he can reach out to and, in the end, despite the very real threat to her life, Planet, and Picard, Soji smashes the transmitter. The apocalypse is averted.

Narek failed but he also succeeded. His aunt is dead, Oh has been outed as a traitor, and his sister is killed by Seven of Nine. In a cut scene, apparently, Narek was supposed to be arrested by Starfleet. So he's facing (at the very least) retribution from the androids and the ExBorg. Starfleet is very likely to arrest and interrogate him, if not imprison him indefinitely since he has ties to the Zhat Vash and, subsequently, will be on the hook to explain the Utopia Planetia disaster. Soji hates him, for good reason, and his homeworld is long gone. Narek has nothing...but the world was saved.

Narek is singular because he's all about needing and interacting with other people, he has no real authority, nobody he commands. He's a civilian (insofar as any Romulan can be) and is a soft, emotional boy who hangs on to his childhood toys. He's driven in equal parts by fear and a deep sense of failure, like everyone else in the show, and he takes the steps that seem right and necessary to him (also like everyone else on the show).

Narek was a great contrast against Elnor in every possible way--from his evasiveness to his fear of death--and he was a great foil for Soji. On Coppelius, Soji's terror clouds her judgment and she very nearly does terrible things to protect herself. Her actions, her opinions, her hesitation were all driven by fear. The ends seemed to justify the means. She reflects Narek's state for the whole show. Season 1 is about finding safety and meaning.

Narek is afraid for the whole duration of the show and his choices all reflect that same desperate need to find permanent safety, to live. Soji exists on the peripheral of that with the Ex-Borg, and as a synthetic, and then she falls headlong into it after his betrayal. Narek regrets trying to kill her and the symbolism of his losing that box, of him trying to kill her in a room that is so very culturally Romulan, right after telling her his name, makes it very clear that killing her is killing some piece of himself. But the ends justify the means. He can and will give up everything to save the world.

And his last line in the show is desperately pleading with the woman he loves as he's dragged away.

Then we never see him again or get anything resembling closure for Soji or Narek.

Which I will be big mad about forever, because they didn't even get the bare minimum acknowledgement and closure of "moving on and living life is paramount because it is finite and beautiful ". Nope. Nothing. I'm furious forever.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I hope if Star Trek Legacy happens we get Narek as a sort of...side character creeper informant ala Garak. I also hope we get Soji on Seven's Enterprise because I love her.