#and does it RIGHT at the perfect moment

[ghostatas]

Been rewatching some Fit vods and DAYUM he has some banger music choices

Anyways on another note I've been daydreaming random scenarios whilst listening to music and...

If there comes a day where Fit starts playing Skyfall by Adele at like a very serious lore moment (which I will actually BEG for) safe to day I think that's the day we all die.

[apotelesmaa]

I don’t think ppl give enough credit to rui for his dedication to fucking with people (outside of tsukasa of course) like. Knowing & acknowledging that nene wants nothing to do with him and Tsukasa on her first day of second year and deliberately following tsukasa to loudly ask if she’s getting along with people (just to be a jackass)? Implying his gift to akito will explode even though it won’t bc he wants to bug akito? Like I think rui at his core is full of love and a desire to make ppl smile but I also think he’s 200% committed to the bit first and foremost. If something will be funny he’s going to do it regardless of the consequences. Guy filled with zero social anxiety & a never ending desire to embarrass his friends.

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[evocatiio]

if chibnall was the one writing this season you lot would be talking VERY differently

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

”we need more morally ambiguous characters!”

you guys can’t even handle gon freeccs

[bacchuschucklefuck]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

Okay so I am back to reading Star Wars books, and I have JUST started Shatterpoint and I already know this books is gonna be great because..

No more than a couple pages in (it’s an e-book idk how many pages in the physical copy it is..it might be the first page idk 🤷🏻‍♀️) Mace Windu expresses regret over not killing Dooku on Geonosis

He’s overthinking and stressing over that decision and why he made it

And what is one of the reasons he couldn’t bring himself to kill Dooku?

Because they were friends

Because he LOVED HIM

Yeah. You read that correctly. Mace Windu loved Count Dooku. His words. Not mine. He used the word love. They were friends before Dooku left the order and Windu admits it to himself that he could not let him go, could not separate the jedi he knew with the man in front of him.

That’s right. Mace Windu. The man whom so many fans believe is a cold and unfeeling asshole.

That man, believes that he potentially allowed his love for the Dooku that was his friend stop him from killing him.

He thinks he might’ve

allowed his emotions to cloud his judgement

and cannot get over that feeling of regret.

And that is so goddamn important to me.

[whenthegoldrays]

it’s also like. sometimes you watch something and get obsessed with it and have this idea of its themes and implications and the truths you can see in it and then you find that other people don’t love it so much or at least don’t love it for the more detailed reasons you do and you stop and ask yourself whether it was actually that good or whether all that good stuff is just what YOU saw in it and then the conclusions you drew and headcanons you added onto it afterwards

[constantlyquestioningg]

i finished. catching up. ha. haha.

[blood-choke]

Hello! I just wanted to say that I really appreciate this game and how it portrays butchness. I'm a huge fan of lesbian lit and there are so few butches in media that to see a game have not one, but three, makes me feel a certain kind of way.

Aside from that, I was really drawn to how you portrayed the differing relationships between all the characters. Everything feels so visceral and real, it just feels so crunchy that I find myself wanting for more. I really look forward to seeing how it will turn out for everyone involved.

Additionally, (if this is too spoilery, has been answered, or insensitive pls feel free to ignore) is it ok if I ask how you decide the dialogue and event flow of the choices? I was mildly and pleasantly surprised that flirting with Clear and staying with her in ch 3 would lead to "that" scene, and I'm curious on your writing process on how it lead to that.

Ultimately, I just really want to thank you for sharing your game with us. Im just really glad to be able to experience this game and I hope that you stay safe!

thank you!

overall when it comes to structuring dialogue & choices i tend to write a linear path first & then double back to add more branches.

i had a basic outline of the chapter & knew what i wanted to touch on with each route & what scenes needed to happen, and then i just kinda started writing from there. Clear's was actually the one i wrote first, her sex scene was what i wrote first, and then i went back and built a lot of the route around it.

i wrote Clear's and Hana's routes simultaneously since they were so intertwined, but i ended up rewriting Hana's three times, whereas with Clear i just had to edit it a bit. i knew i wanted them to have that conversation at the table about Clear not having any friends, and then i wrote the scene where mc finds the vampire erotica book. it took some trial and error until i was happy with the dialogue & choices at the table, as well as how i wanted to split the following variations. i tend to do the romantic variations first, and then work my way down, and sometimes i have to go backwards and edit as i write because i'll add something on a whim to one variation and decide that actually i want this to be in all of them.

i am definitely someone that's a bit of a "planster" meaning i do minimal planning and write a lot by the seat of my pants. sometimes it works, other times it puts me in a bit of a bind. like i said i tend to set out with specific information/dialogue/scene/etc in mind that i know has to happen, and build up around it.

with Hana the main focus in her route was that conversation with mc; i wanted mc to get overwhelmed at the store, and for her and Hana to talk about it afterwards, and for Hana to be frustrated at her situation as this person who suddenly has to comfort and take care of mc after being replaced by her. again, minimal planning, i wrote almost her whole route before i started working on Valentina's & i mentioned Standard and his proclivities towards Chinese antiques. this made me realize i needed to rewrite a lot of Hana's dialogue to be more inclusive of her race. i went back to Clear's route, and ended up writing a lot of the conversation with Hana there after she gets back from the store, and then i adapted it to the other routes.

Valentina's route was all about the painting. again, i wrote that initial scene of walking into her room, the description of the painting, and then her first sex scene, and built up from there. there was also the brief meeting with Joan, which was mostly just for fun and to introduce those characters early for anyone that went on V's route, so the next chapter those players will have a little jump on who they are. but the main point was that painting & i think it's pretty obvious with how the whole route plays out, and the fact that the painting is always seen by all players.

this is still a game, so it is gamified quite a bit, with all 3 characters having a potential sex scene in the same chapter at the same time. i planned it that way to make it easy for myself and because that's just how i wanted it to go. i put some stat checks in place to add variations, like if you went with Hana or Valentina in ch2, if you flirted with Clear or not, and again, it was a lot of jumping around and trial and error. i wrote a significant part of Valentina's route out of order, and i finished hers last before i finalized the council meeting (which i had written very early on but like Hana's route i had to rewrite a few times)

i like to describe my process as building a tree. i write the core of it all first, one linear path, the trunk, and then i double back and add in all of the possible branches. it doesn't mean anything that i wrote the friendly, romantic variation of Clear's route first, it just allowed me to use that single variation as an anchor and build up around it without straying too far and losing the plot, hahahaha. i still sometimes stray a little too far... but it's fun that way. it was fun trying to figure out a way to make the rival route different, how to change it while still telegraphing the same overall ideas about Clear & her situation. it's also very frustrating, but it's all part of the process....

[quietwingsinthesky]

what if. Amy “fix-it” because hallucifer makes sam so paranoid about dean leaving for no reason that sam gives in and follows him and is witness to the whole thing

[lesbianlotties]

so even though i pick favorites, i pretty much ship any and all the yellowjackets girls, but you guys also get in a mood where you can only think about one ship and can't deal with any other ships getting in the way of that one???

[longagoitwastuesday]

Gushing about Gojo and Megumi and how they are or could have been everything to me I forgot to mention that I really really really love Yuuji. Like, a lot

[7-oh-ta1]

When I see ppl hating on king rhoam i start blacking out and seeing visions

[daybreakrising]

okay i said i might write a meta on vautrin's attack on those responsible for carole's death but i might actually make it a drabble instead

bc the image i have in my head of him quietly sitting over a butchered body, cleaning the blood from his sword whilst he waits for his colleagues to arrive and arrest him is just

god.

[bruqh]

right after the fight on the airship when sam tries to be snarky about penny not saying “i’m in” yet and antiope is immediately like “with peace and love, shut the fuck up” eeeeeeeeeee i love u aabria ty ty ty