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quibblesandscribbles · 3 years

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Centaurworld Rewrite: A Serious Adventure AU - S1E1 Outline

I’m doing rewrite outlines, prepare for some AU. That being said, I still like several parts of Centaurworld a lot, namely Rider, Horse, Wammawink, and whatever the hell is going on with the Nowhere King, and hope there’s a second season to watch (which I will if Netflix doesn’t ruin our hopes and dreams).

Anyways, here’s like, a rewrite or whatever. I will probably post the outlines as I go, episode by episode. Will I get to them all? ADHD-willing, we’ll see. Also feel free to use these ideas/outlines? I don’t mind.

Also assume there are songs in this even if I don’t specifically mention all of them. Also I guess this rewrite kinda chains the 1st and 2nd episodes together as a two parter? Maybe, idk.

Also I’ll preface this with this too: I ship Wammahorse, yes I SHIPSHIP it. Moving on.

Some headcanons before we start:

Warworld (*the world Rider and Horse are from) is a Low Fantasy Setting, there IS magic, but it comes in two variations, either very subtle low-powered but relatively uncommon, or Terrifyingly Powerful and so extremely rare to the point that it’s not very well known and “just myths” (usually for Big Baddies)

Ideas for Horse’s Degree of Sapience Prior to Worldhopping:

A: Horse was just a regular, non-magical horse, and their exposure to the Artifact and Centaurworld has essentially made them a Fully Uplifted Animal. - This is interesting, but ultimately a difficult idea to convey because it would require a lot more setup and wouldn’t exactly fit Horse’s characterization without some rework. This is an amazing idea, but I won’t be using it because it would slow things down too much.

B: Horse is a low-fantasy magic steed raised as warhorse/war asset, who is much smarter than your average animal steed/companion similar to a DND Ranger’s pets, or Mabari from Dragon Age, or a Ranger Horse from John Flanagan’s ‘Ranger’s Apprentice.’ The combined exposure to the Artifact and Centaurworld could account for her gaining speech and her body expressing limited physical adaptation to Centaurworld’s different physics (her body’s new extended range of motion for example) but of course I’ll be limiting this because having stakes make it more fun imho. This is my favorite, I’m using this.

Horse would’ve been considered a very valuable war asset (trained warhorses are like, historical ferraris, expensive as hell, i can only imagine what low-magical smart warhorses would be valued at), though still ultimately expendable for the war effort like anything else

Let Horse have horse behaviors (*can you tell I haven’t really left my horse phase behind lol)! Nipping and grooming behaviors as affection or warnings, ear positions to indicate mood, grazing to eat, laying down only when truly relaxed, sleeping standing up. COME ON.

Centaurworld is a High Fantasy world with an Absurdist bent but with darker undertones, similar to how Adventure Time is, with an extremely high saturation of magic, maybe you could even theorize that due to the Splitting of the Two Worlds that all the magic is being Dammed up in Centaurworld like a river or reservoir, this could be a future plot thread that could be picked up in a later season.

Basic Changes:

Durpleton, Glendale, Ched and Zulius are supporting cast, not main

Durpleton is less stupid and more of a Kronk-expy: a little dim but ultimately kind/means well, has at least 1 life skill he’s good at buried in there though for the life of me I can’t think of one right now.

Glendale’s Narrative Framing: Glendale is amazing, but the kleptomania will be allotted ONE (or two) joke mentions but narratively isn’t treated like one after, somehow establish that her kleptomania is directly intertwined with her anxiety levels. Are there other denizens of the Valley that know the Herd? Are they mad at Glendale for stealing things? Does Wammawink have to constantly run interference to cover for Glendale? Probably.

Make Ched look like less of a pointless asshole: Have him show concern for his friends’ safety and his suspicion of outsiders, AKA Horse. If he’s going to be a jerk, at least let it serve a purpose.

Zulius can stay roughly the same - Zulius is great okay, just don’t tell me there’s backstory and then NOT TELL OR SHOW US ANY CLUES about what said backstory/history IS! (other than forcing us infer/project the headcanon[?] that him and Splendib might’ve been exes, from how they act around each other without any other context/visual/or confirming exposition we literally know nothing other than Splendib and him split/had a nasty falling out and Splendib took the glittercats and the career in the divorce.)

S1E1: Hello Rainbow Road

Opening scene in Warworld

If these episodes were allowed to be longer (shuddup it’s my AU), have the scene open with Horse sees Rider comes running out of some underground castle ruin catacombs and ominous roaring and clanging behind her as she deliberately sets off a dungeon booby trap (arrows or fire) she must’ve avoided while dungeon crawling earlier, and Horse runs towards her and circles at a canter and then Rider does a Running Mount (mounting a horse while the horse is in motion) and shoots an arrow at that flies offscreen

Smash cut to the DRAWBRIDGE door falling and Rider and Horse come galloping out while dodging some javelins and arrows and 1.5 seconds later 1-4 armored minotaurs (the lizardmen?) riding some coursers (swift horses or horselike creatures idk have fun) gallop behind in hot pursuit.

WARWORLD CHASE/FIGHT SCENE

Rider and Horse take out 2 of the pursuers on the run have Rider stay on horseback, dodge and make 1 pursuer shoot/javelin another 1 into a nasty-looking fall, and then Rider nails another 1 right through the helmet visor with an arrow. Have Rider throw a smoke bomb or something at the 2 remaining ones trying to catch up.

2 Enemies left but Horse is forced to skid to a stop as the suspension bridge approaches, then a tense moment forced to walk in order to escape safely across the suspension bridge which Rider cuts once they’re across. Maybe have 1 of the minotaur pursuers having been on the bridge somewhat behind them before Rider had to cut the line, sending the enemy hurtling down below. The remaining minotaur scout stares at them ominously from the other side before leaving.

Have Rider breath a sigh of relief

Smash cut to Horse and Rider traveling across a wartorn landscape, start Horse’s internal monologue narrative until they finally get to the hill and see the ruins of their village

Everything from this point to Horse getting transported to Centaurworld is the same as canon

Not Actually a DREAMVISION SEQUENCE:

Shot/Animated from Horse’s 1st Person POV: Darkness, the sound of whooshing Horse falls, shimmering flash colors [if this were an actual show pls put a Epilepsy warning at the beginning of the ep], then a loud Splash as Horse falls into Dark Water. POV looks down and we see Horse’s front legs and a bottomless abyss below and a then flash of green and off-white from deep below, then look up to see blue light, see the swimming motions of Horse’s front legs and getting closer to the Blue Light

Horse wakes up, blinking, alone (no Durpleton)

Horse gets up looks around, doesn’t see Rider anywhere and starts makes Whinnying sounds (specifically, Whinnying is a social horse call, like specifically going, “Rider where are you!?” in IRL horse)

“And what are you supposed to be?” the “camera” wheels around to see Ched who has landed on Horse just within reach of her tail so Horse lets out a startled squeal (the Horse noise, not the human one) and does that thing where horses use their tails to swat away insects which sends Ched FLYING as Horse’s squealing morphs into her Talking/Yelling “what the heck is going on?!”

Horse does what panicked horses do, she runs

Horse stumbles into meeting Durpleton, who freaks her out more

Meeting kinda the same as canon but with less constant emphasis on reminding the audience that the writer’s can’t write comedy

Wammawink and Horse meet, Ched flies in and goes “hey that asshole kicked my a-I mean attacked me, but I totally beat ‘em.”

Horse tries to leave, discovers the Barrier, tries to get through, fails multiple times, but only 3-4 attempts shown with time passage show by the time of day changing, have Horse’ talking to herself a bit about how utterly weird the talking words thing is, that this is a “human” thing why is this HAPPENING she needs to get back

Waste less time on the visual gags of the Barrier repelling Horse, also get rid of the Tree Catapult scene because it doesn’t jive with Horse being a horse, why do they know how to make a catapult? Also because I hate how it basically shows us that Horse has no physical danger or chance of injury from being FLUNG around like Pokemon’s Team Rocket.

Have the rest of the centaur Herd come up to and talk to Horse while Horse is trying to get through the Barrier, and Horse talks about the outside and her world and doing things, squeeze in some convo about how there’s no (current) war in Centaurworld and how Horse thinks that that “freedom must be nice.” Anyways these conversations are what has Glendale, Zulius and Durpleton at least considering the ups of leaving.

Durpleton: Durpleton approaches Horse alone and asks about where she’s from, what’s home like, expositiony bits for Warworld and how much Horse needs to get herself and the Artifact back to Rider; Horse should say something offhand, like how she dreamed about exploring the world with Rider after the War seeing new things together, to which we’d cut to a shot of Durpleton looking thoughtful, before asking a completely unrelated question before Horse asks to be left alone. He doesn’t go originally, but gets distracted by something (butterfly?) and trots off.

Wammawink, Ched & Glendale: Atop a hill, Wammawink looks up to see stormclouds gathering off in the distance and comments that they’re going to be in for some rough weather, then goes over to offer Horse food, but gets distracted by some other Valley Denizens who are mad suspicious that Glendale is responsible for something of theirs that’s missing. Leaving Wammawink to go off and have to run interference leaving Glendale to approach Horse alone. Horse will learn that there’s no (current) war in Centaurworld but there was one historically, and Glendale will offhandedly mention that they’ve stolen everything from everyone in the Valley at least 4 times and with the unspoken implication of boredom. Ched will butt in and heckle Horse like, “could you leave any quieter?” and Horse sniping back, ears pinned back and animated horse stress behaviors. And Horse’s last failed attempt at passing the Barrier has them drop the Artifact, and we get a shot of Glendale spotting and eyes widening at seeing the Artifact unattended on the ground, then we get a smash cut of Glendale getting herded away by Ched.

Zulius: Goes over to ask about Horse’s avante garde accessories (her bridle, saddle & armor[barding]), makes comments on her style/aesthetic and asks where he could find some. Horse loses her patience, and says that she Needs to concentrate on getting back to someone they care a lot about and could you please just go away?

Horse: (voiced as a rhetorical question) “Haven’t you ever wanted to go back to someone you loved before?”

Zulius gets a Look on his face, then he’d puff up, cover up the Armor Piercing Question’s effect on him with more bluster and then turn away as it gets later

Around sunset, Horse finally gives in to go ask Wammawink what’s up, and how can they leave.

Wammawink tries to feed them and convince them to stay, but Horse waves her off and moves away while muttering something about coming up with a plan

Speaking of plans, the Herd excluding Wammawink (& Ched) start talking about being bored, and mention Horse saying stuff about exploring the world (taken out of context, deliberately)

Wammawink, smelling the ugly head of discontent, sighs in defeat at not being able to recruit this new outcast in the Herd and approaches a grazing Horse and says she’ll help her through it with her magic(not admitting that the Barrier is her magic working in the first place because it’s not relevant right now okay) but then we get the “What’s magic?” bit from Horse and the rest of the Herd butts in with the Song. They wander off to go to bed afterwards, and Horse wants to go Now but Wammawink says that she’ll help Horse leave the Barrier but only in the morning because “you look tired”

Horse: “That doesn’t matter.” *awkward silence*

Wammawink, sadly: “Of course it does.” *Horse has already walked away*

The sun finishes setting as the wind blows the plants and through Wammawink’s fur (ominously) and she shivers, going back to the campfire

DREAM SEQUENCE: It’s dark, then we get a flashback dream of a younger Rider and Horse, idk a memory of something to showcase them either while in training or really show their Bond okay? End with them sitting around a campfire with other young soldiers and horses, someone is humming something (the first few bars of the Nowhere King’s Lullaby, no actual words yet). Then Dream!Rider turns to face Horse and asks, “how could you?”

Horse: “How could I what?”

Dream!Rider: “How could you leave me behind?” (The humming grows louder, there’s a lute being played, growing discordant)

Then Horse starts calling into the darkness/void, “I’m coming back for you, Rider! Just hang on, alright?!”

Rider: “Oh Horse, it’s already too late for me.”

“Rider!” Horse yells as they jolt awake, standing, because horses typically sleep standing up.

It’s dawn but the wind and stormy weather signs are picking up but not here yet, Wammawink walks Horse to the edge of the Valley barrier and tries to convince Horse to stay here where it’s safe, but Horse refuses to be deterred

Brief shot of Glendale hiding a bunch of things from her Tummy Hammerspace in order to simulate the feeling of stealing things again later, including the Artifact which falls on the ground

A shot of Durpleton seeing and picking up the Artifact and spotting Wammawink and Horse some distance away going toward the barrier’s edge

Wammawink hangs back on a hill, glowy hands and the magic wall flickers and disappears, and Horse immediately breaks into a gallop and disappears into the forest, Wammawink sighs and turns away

Indeterminate amount of time later, Wammawink recasts the Barrier, and Durpleton misses breakfast so Wammawink enlists Ched to help her look for him because Ched can fly

Cut to a shot of Horse dropping from a canter to a trot on the Rainbow Road, it’s grown darker and the stormclouds are in the sky. Distant thunder booms overhead, and a few scattered raindrops start to fall

“Heyyyy! You forgot your necklaceeee!” a shout from behind

Horse looks back and sees a running Durpleton holding the Artifact, and stops, he catches up to Horse and is gasping, “Wow, you run fast, hoooo, *deep breaths* you’re really *another gasp* athletic! Anyways you forgot your Necklace.”

Durpleton ties the broken string into a necklace around Horse’s neck and Horse thanks them and wishes them a safe journey back to the Valley, but as this happens the rain gradually falls harder. Then the sounds of the Rest of the Herd finally catching up happen, and Wammawink mother hens Durpleton and wants take everyone back home but then a loud BOOM of thunder and lightning overhead, and then it starts to Pour down rain, forcing Horse and co to find shelter until it lets up. Maybe have someone mention something about landslides being a possibility? Durpleton asks how they found them so fast, dim remember, then brief flashback.

FLASHBACK: Wammawink and co searching and calling out for Durpleton everywhere in the Valley, and realize that he must’ve followed Horse for some reason when Zulius FINALLY shows up and mentions that he remembers Durpleton saying he was gonna give Horse back her necklace. The recast Barrier is brought down and they leave the Valley to bring back their friend.

Back to the present where the group has taken shelter as the storm picks up more, and thunder booms overhead, Horse has some nervous horse body language going on, then we get to hear her mutter-singing or humming the “I never fear the drums of war” to calm herself down, but with more stanzas please, when asked she says it’s a battle hymn that Rider sang.

If Horse was humming, Wammawink could ask why she doesn’t sing, she’s sure that Horse has a lovely voice

Horse goes “I’m a horse, I don’t sing.”

Wammawink tries to be encouraging, Horse is resistant

Wammawink invites her to eat (AGAIN) but Horse still turns her (love and affection) down (AGAIN!) and says she’s fine with grazing and Glendale pipes in excitedly that they have decided that they want to travel with Horse (Ched pipes up that he didn’t agree to this) but pls help us convince Wammawink and Horse protests but someone points out to ask “do you even know where you’re going” and they have a point

Horse acknowledges this and relents, states some stuff about how she’s not going to slow down much however. Then Glendale, Zulius and Durpleton rejoice, Ched acts tsundere, but Wammawink looks nervous and wrings her hands together and relents that “they’ll go with Horse as far as the nearest Shaman” and Ched will go, “hey don’t you know he-” and Wammawink shushes him quickly with a gigglecake

Wammawink doubles down on the mother henning behavior

Horse doesn’t eat Wammawink’s gigglecakes but grazes by herself nearby, occasionally answering a question or two when engaged by the others (not Wammawink) and Wammawink mentions how the weather probably won’t let up for very long and they should take it slow and that Horse should bundle up

Horse disagrees but its bedtime and a bedtime song occurs in the backdrop as a restless Horse struggles to stay alert and awake but eventually falls asleep

VISION SEQUENCE: A shimmer of soft blue light, then shots of Rider ducking and weaving, her sword flashing as she tries to weave her way through a horde of enemy soldiers, blood spatters, then an enemy archer takes aim at a fleeing Rider, and Horse calls out a warning.

Rider turns her head with a surprised look on her face suddenly just enough that the arrow buries itself into her shoulder instead the middle of her back and then she stumbles, one of her arms going limp, but everything goes dark before we can see if she fell

Everything goes dark and the din of war fades away, we get a shot of Horse’s hooves splashing and making ripples into dark water but the camera doesn’t follow her, we hear Horse’s cries for Rider fade, growing further and further away

Still dark, but in the silence we hear distant sound, drip, drip, drip, drip.

Then the episode ends and the credits roll.

#centaurworld #centaurworld spoilers #centaurworld wammawink #centaurworld rider #centaurworld horse #centaurworld headcanons #centaurworld au #centaurworld rewrite #centaurworld a serious adventure au #wow I suck at naming things #centaurworld season 1 #fixed the ending scene order #your welcome

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wolf-and-bard · 3 years

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The Geraskier Dungeons and Dragons AU of my dreams (inspired by the TAD AMA and Joey apparently being an amazing dm):

-"Why do you hate fun," Eskel complains - for the fifth time that day - after Geralt refused his invitation to a new DnD campaign - for the fifth time that day. Geralt doesn't hate fun. He hates play-acting and games, especially if they rely on luck and are overly complicated, he hates big groups of people, and he hates being told stories. Dungeons and Dragons encompasses all of those aspects and that is why Geralt avoids it like the plague. "It's not for me," he mutters and hands Eskel the sandwiches he made for him to take to work. - "But this Jaskier guy is legendary, like I heard he's the best Dungeonmaster in the state." - "Likely an exaggeration...." - "Pleeaaaase. I had to bribe the hell out of Aiden to have him give up the two spots he had." That piques Geralt's interest. "What'd you bribe him with?" Eskel scratches his head sheepishly. "I may have sold our brother's hand in marriage." - "That's ballsy for you... does Lambert know of his luck yet?" Eskel shakes his head and Geralt huffs a laugh. His brothers are unbelievable, one so nerdy it makes up for Geralt's complete lack of interest in pop culture, the other an oblivious prick that tends to get arrested for being offensive. Ciri is their only hope. "So are you coming?" - "Absolutely no way."

-Geralt doesn't want to go and until half an hour before the game is supposed to start, he keeps his resolve. But then Eskel bursts into their shared living room - their flat is still attached to their father's house, but separate enough that it feels like their own; Lambert has a type penthouse suite to himself and Ciri still lives with Vesemir in the main house - with an excited blush and wearing a WoW shirt and the biggest, brightest puppy eyes, and begs Geralt on hands and knees to come with him. "Why though?" Geralt asks. "Would be more fun if I stayed away..." - "But I'm awkward and your pretty face may distract from that." - "Esk, we have the same face." Which is true, save for... oh. The scars. Of course, Geralt wants to smack himself. Eskel always tends to be more self-conscious in groups of new people because of his marred face, an accident in the zoo when they were young. He believes having Geralt with him shows other people how he is supposed to look like. Geralt doesn't believe it's a great coping mechanism, but he can never deny his twin anything. "Fuck," he grumbles and a triumphant grin blooms over Eskel's features.

-That first session is to go over the basics for anyone who needs a refresher and to talk about what each player expects from the campaign bla bla bla; Geralt doesn't contribute more than the odd grunt and is soon distracted by Jaskier's bright eyes, his pretty mouth, his whole energetic demeanor... he develops a little fixation over the course of the evening and gives up on trying to understand the game

-Jaskier approaches him after, while everyone else is exchanging notes on their characters, excited and electric and Geralt hasn't the first clue on what to do. A light hand on his shoulder, a welcoming smile. "Geralt, right?" Geralt nods curtly and Jaskier pulls up a chair and sits. Way too close for Geralt's comfort. He doesn't... mind? Fuck are those butterflies? Already? "If you have trouble figuring out your character, we could always do a private session to get you going. What do you say?" - "Saturday," Geralt grunts in reply. Jaskier claps delightedly, then is distracted by one of the women, Calanthe Geralt recalls, asking if she can play a lioness shapeshifter. He lets Eskel collect him, endures his brother's constant prattle on the ride back. He dares to give the whole thing a shot.

-Their private session starts out with Jaskier explaining different classes of characters, a few bottles of Geralt's favourite Redanian Lager on the side. He tries to listen, at least at first. But then Jaskier keeps licking froth from his lips and some of the perspiration from the cold bottles runs down his exposed neck and fuck, Geralt just can't stop himself. Eskel said over and over that Jaskier was basically a magician, but Geralt thought that would be restricted to the game. Nope. His dick definitely twitches when Jaskier leans over him to grab the dice Geralt brought upon Eskel's recommendation. Geralt catches a whiff of his shampoo - vanilla? - and Jaskier's arm brushes Geralt and well. He lets out a low whine. Jaskier hums a question mark, but when he sees the look on Geralt face his encouraging smile turns devilish, knowing. "Good," he breathes, drops the dice and climbs onto Geralt's lap. "I thought it was only me." Geralt catches Jaskier's hips and they kiss. No classes are studied that day, no alignments picked, no attributes determined. Instead, Geralt learns all the beautiful noises Jaskier can make, learns some of his own anew. They will need another private session to make up for lost time

-"Perhaps I should just design a character for you," Jaskier pants into Geralt's neck as he slow-fucks him on their couch, Eskel being out with Lambert to clear up the whole Aiden thing. It's the third time they're meeting to figure out Geralt's character. Geralt grunts and accelerates just enough to keep them both on the edge. His skin is burning and Jaskier writhes, his shoulders littered with bite marks. "Oh, fuck, Geralt, please." Later, Geralt agrees to Jaskier's suggestion. He makes him pancakes for breakfast.

-When the first session is well underway, everyone quickly realizes that this game really isn't for Geralt. He tries, he does. Jaskier was kind, gave him a stoic half-orc warrior that communicates mostly with grunts, but he still doesn't get all the rules and Calanthe is getting impatient with him, her boyfriend Eist amused by this, and Eskel keeps throwing the dice for Geralt, and these girls, Téa and Véa, stare daggers at him. Jaskier's watches it all with amusement, gently steering the group back towards their adventure - not that Geralt has the first clue what their objective is. But Geralt wants to keep playing if only because Jaskier is so fucking beautiful in his element, imitating voices, using the most ridiculous vocabulary, glowing with pure joy. It's a privilege to see, Geralt understands that now. And he has to thank Eskel for taking him despite his reservations

-"Won't you go on a normal date with me?" Geralt asks one night when they are wrapped up in Jaskier's bed, contented and tired from their earlier activities. "I could take you hunting or whatever." - "That's what you call a normal date?" Jaskier laughs and kisses him lightly. They haven't defined whatever it is they're doing, but Geralt is in no rush. Especially because he hasn't yet dared to breach the topic with Eskel who quickly befriended Jaskier (and everyone else of course, at the end of the day Eskel is a social butterfly, no matter what scars he bears). "Just... go out with me." - "You know, usually I have a strict policy for dating players, but... well that's already way out the window so, yeah, okay. I'll go out with you. But we're absolutely not going hunting, I'm a vegetarian." Alas, there had to be some catch.

-Geralt keeps playing and his permanent confusion becomes part of his character as well. It isn't ideal, but the others - and Jaskier's forgiving storytelling - drag him through to the end of it. By then, Geralt almost gets it. "Well," Jaskier concludes. "That was a bit of a different campaign. Hope you all liked it." The bastard acts abashed. Hah. Geralt and Eskel are the last ones to leave after they all toasted and talked about playing again some time. "You coming?" Eskel asks, hovering near the door. He's long past his initial anxiety, his fangirling, his self-consciousness. That too has been a glorious part of this, seeing Eskel unfold, gain confidence, be at ease. He likes that he could give his brother the safety he needed. "I, uhm," Geralt starts, but Jaskier interrupts by threading his arm through Geralt's. "We are! What's for dinner?" And he drags Geralt past Eskel who raises a brow. Geralt tries to communicate with his eyes all he neglected to tell Eskel. It's only because they're so close that Eskel at least understands that they are something like boyfriends now. He laughs.

-"My baby brother," Eskel lulls later when Jaskier is already passed out from too much wine and Geralt and him stand outside, sharing a rare cigarette. He ruffles Geralt head. "I'd wondered why you stuck around so long." - "Fuck off," Geralt says.

-The next time Eskel invites him to a campaign, Geralt tags along. Not because he particularly wants to, but because now there are two pairs of puppy eyes, begging him, and he can't say no to either of them, let alone both (maybe someday he will actually enjoy the game for its own merits)

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thewebcomicsreview · 4 years

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Seeing as I don’t have a job right now (one week furlough), I managed to get a lot of writing for Saffron and Sage done today. Now I feel good! Time to ruin that with a Homestuck 2 Liveblog! Last time: Jade kidnapped “Yiffy”, much to Jane’s distress! No time for that, though, as we’re back with the Candyland Kids.

HARRY: vrissy, i know this is a stressful predicament but i think that's going too far. HARRY: my dad believes in us. HARRY: and if he thinks there's something we can do, then there has to be a way!

Kind of interesting that Harry holds his dad’s opinion in such high esteem, considering that his dad has been AWOL pretty much his whole life.

TAVROS: Uncle john isn't to blame for this,,, HARRY: yeah, no shit tav. HARRY: this whole situation is because of YOUR insane hitlermom.

How the hell does Harry Anderson know who Hitler is? When did that conversation come up? This is a completely different universe!

TAVROS: Is less sincere,,, than it is,,, an attempt to weaponize something difficult for me, TAVROS: In order that you can win an argument,,, with harry anderson,,,,, VRISKA: GRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! VRISKA: WILL YOU ALL JUST VRISKA: SHUT!!!!!!!! VRISKA: UP!!!!!!!!

A good example of why characters like John, Jade, Vriska, and sometimes Karkat are important in Homestuck or in stories generally. They actually do shit.

VRISKA: Neither you nor your friends have anything really important going on. VRISKA: Your lives and your planet are a total 8ore! VRISKA: 8ut somehow John loves you anyway. VRISKA: Try and be fucking gr8ful for that every once in a while. VRISKA: Not everyone is so lucky.

Vriska please do not be pining for middle-aged John Egbert. You have literally half a dozen semi-official love interests (John, Terezi, Eridan, Tavros, Meenah and Kanaya), please don’t pick the one old enough to be your dad. It was already weird enough when Adult John got hot and bothered by teen Roxy in the epilogues, to say nothing of you fucking a middle-aged homeless clown in a bush.

thespiansGlamor [TG] began pestering adamantGriftress [AG]

Oh, fuck you, Homestuck. It’s bad enough that Harry and Dave are both going to be referred to as “TG” in chatlogs, but now Vrissy and Vriska are both AG and have the same font color!

TG: i've allocated the strife specibus with the scissorkind abstratus? TG: hm. TG: using this weird vocab and stuff feels... well, weird. TG: i'm not sure why, but it seems as though everything that's about to happen is that much more important now. TG: or maybe it already was, but i just didn't understand just how important until this moment.

One issue with wearing your metaphor on your sleeve as much as Homestuck 2 does is that thematically important lines become really obvious.

I like how the triangle-shaped panel around Vriska escaping the crowd by simply walking into it is reminiscent of a magic 8-ball. That’s clever!

VRISKA: Your society... no, your whole planet... it deserves to 8urn str8 to MEGAhell, and I'm gonna 8e the one to fly it there! VRISKA: I'm gonna shatter your paradise into pieces with my 8are hands and SHIT IN ITS GRAVE!!!!!!!! VRISKA: HOW'S THAT FOR A FUCKING ST8MENT! VRISKA: YOU GOT ALL THAT, JANE CROCKER? VRISKA: DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT'S COMING FOR YOU???????? VRISKA: YOU'VE MESSED WITH VRISKA: ********VRISKA******** VRISKA: ****FUUUUUUUUCKING**** VRISKA: ********SERK8T********

There’s some extreme Dungeons and Dragons energy here, where Vriska’s plan to escape a mob of reporters working for a totalitarian dictatorship run by literal gods is to simply walk outside and publicly declare her intent to destroy the world as punishment for its sins.

And yeah, this is how that plan usually works in DnD, too.

Man, the next page is a wall of text, whereas in old Homestuck this’d be an animation. I get “fair wages” and “small budget”, but is still feels weird to see a big Strife scene merely get described with boring-ass words.

Fearing gunfire, the few paparazzi who aren't currently getting their asses handed to them by the world's angriest traffic cone start to trip over each other, diving for cover.

The world’s angriest traffic cone.

Far away, in her lair, Jane Crocker grabs the two sides of her computer monitor with enough strength to snap it in two. She can't believe what she's watching. Behind her, from a shadowy corner of the room, there is an agitated growling noise and the rattle of chains.

Is that Yiffy? Is Yiffy an animal? Please tell me Yiffy is not a person that Jade named Yiffy.

....Actually, please tell me that Yiffy isn’t an animal Jade named Yiffy that is Jade’s child via sex with another animal that might be my breaking point.

Vriska alights on the ground, rakes her throat, quietly spits out a little wad of blue, and wipes her mouth unceremoniously. Tavros pats Harry Anderson tentatively on the arm. Vrissy tries to be badass and cough up something too but she doesn't really make it work.

Vrissy::Vriska Vriska::Mindfang

It’s weird that John’s sprite is the same even though he’s middle aged now, but I like that his God Tier outfit doesn’t fit any more. Isn’t it magical? Ahh, who cares.

JOHN: this old thing is pretty uncomfortable in a lot of ways. JOHN: hm... JOHN: when we get a moment, maybe the two of us could brainstorm a redesign? JOHN: no pressure though. HARRY: !!!

Oh, that’s why! That’s cute.

JADE: theres something i need to tell you

don’thavefuckedadogdon’thavefuckedadogdon’thavefuckedadog

JADE: john... i have a daughter JADE: shes almost harry andersons age JOHN: ... JOHN: ... JOHN: you have a daughter.

Named Yiffy?

ROSE: It was at this point that Jade came to me. ROSE: I could understand her pain quite acutely, and so... ROSE: I agreed to carry a child on her behalf. KANAYA: . ROSE: ... Without telling Kanaya.

Without-

Kanaya is your WIFE. You LIVE WITH HER. Even ignoring the question of why you’d keep 9 months of pregnancy from your wife, how? Kanaya would have been living with humans for years at that point and she’s literally in charge of reproduction don’t tell me she thought Rose just got fat for a while and then lost the weight really fast.

ROSE: I'm... not sure why I made that decision. ROSE: I regret not telling Kanaya, of course. ROSE: But I can't say that I regret going through with it. ROSE: At the time, it didn't feel as though the deception was even all that prolonged. The whole affair was... short. ROSE: Purely physical, and nothing more.

ROSE: John, there isn't a father. ROSE: Jade and I are the sole parents of this child. JOHN: oh. JOHN: ... JOHN: OH. JOHN: oh i'm so sorry, i didn't th- ROSE: That's quite alright John, although you might like to direct that apology more towards your sister. ROSE: All I will say is that if you would like to take up the particulars with us, ROSE: Some *other* time,

Actually, if John doesn’t know that Jade has a male dog’s genitals due to a fusion accident, I’d love to know what that all-caps OH means. What does he think happened, that Jade and Rose managed to have a baby?

JOHN: so... how did you hide the pregnancy? ROSE: Oh, that was simple. ROSE: Jade's genes being, as they are, part canine, the gestation period was substantially reduced.

OH NO

Yiffy is literally a furry, isn’t she? Moreso that Jade, she’s a full-on “Can be naked onscreen and it’s okay because she’s covered in fur” dog girl.

JOHN: i think i understand everything so f VRISSY: WAIT!!!!!!!! VRISSY: YOU MEAN TO TELL ME VRISSY: NOT ONLY DO I H8VE A SISTER VRISSY: 8UT YOU NAMED VRISSY: YOUR ****SECRET CHILD**** VRISSY: ********YIFFY********????????

Vrissy makes an excellent point.

ROSE: We didn't call her Yiffy. ROSE: That would be a quite ridiculous thing with which to burden a child. ROSE: Her full name is Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley.

Vrissy looks as though she is about to shit the belltower they are standing in, brick by brick.

ROSE: It was, in hindsight, a monumentally terrible decision acting as the final chapter in a long series of novels, each one full of progressively more terrible decisions than the last. ROSE: But that is the name that we decided upon.

Oh, wait a second. Vriska changed Vriska Maryam-Lalonde to Vrissy, and changed Harry Anderson to just Harry. So obviously she’s going to rename Yiffy to literally anything else, then rename Tavros, and then we’ve got a new set of four kids as Vriska leaves to do something else. That’s what going to happen, right? Right? Please?

ROSE: You have to understand... this whole situation ended up playing out a bit like an ironic game of chicken between the two of us. ROSE: Something that far outstripped anything that the Strider fraternity could have produced in their wildest, most jpegged creative wet dreams. ROSE: But in the end that triumph of irony came back to bite us in the fucking ass, as irony is wont to do. ROSE: There was absolutely no possibility of us casually letting you all know that, by the way, we had had a secret daughter named Yiffany Longstocking. ROSE: At least, not right away. ROSE: But carapacian change-of-name paperwork is so complex and circuitous that, eventually, keeping quiet forever just seemed like the more reasonable option.

This is, even for Homestuck, monumentally stupid. You named your daughter Yiffany Longstocking as a joke and then kept the child secret because you were embarrassed. You two are awful fucking parents. You are the worst parents in the entire series, and that includes Bro Strider and the spider that made Vriska feed it children.

And we’re literally at the point where the writing is bad and the joke is how bad the writing is. This isn’t enjoyable to read; you can’t make a bad B-movie My Immortal fanfic on purpose.

Even now, Yiffy is likely being held at spoonpoint

I feel like “Jade and Rose have a secret daughter named Yiffany Longstocking” can be a joke or it can be drama but maybe not both at the same time.

#Homestuck 2 #Homestuck #Homestuck 2 Liveblog

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charmandhex · 4 years

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A TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL AND VERY MUCH NOT SANCTIONED BY NBC OPENING SCENE FOR AN AS OF YET NONEXISTENT PILOT OF THE ADVENTURE ZONE: BALANCE ANIMATED SHOW THAT I AM 100% NOT GETTING PAID FOR

Credit to: the McElboys

No credit to: me, Charm H. Adventurezone, sleep deprived [job title redacted] and overly ambitious fic writer

[Our opening shot is of the world of Abeir-Toril (or whatever the fuck we’re going to call it to avoid copyright issues idk that redacted job title up there sure isn’t lawyer) as it drifts through the Prime Material Plane. From here, we can see little but clouds, water, and land masses. One regular-sized moon orbiting the world drifts into view. If you look closely, but you’re only looking closely because you’re a nerd who knows what to look for, you can see a much, much smaller moon -THAT’S NO MOON got there first Clint what now- drifts over a massive, still lake and a brightly colored spot that we might know to be Neverwinter, wait- Eversummer, hm, that was graphic novel, but can we use that there?- KINDASPRING there we go. The initial shot is quiet, for a moment, before seven notes -yes those ones folks- ring out.]

GRIFFIN [audio only]: I can guess what you’re probably all expecting. Some big, dramatic speech to match the big, dramatic intro we’ve got going on here. [As Griffin talks, we start to zoom in on a continent conveniently labeled NOT-FAERUN. We fly by our much smaller moon, but not close enough to see anything of interest – yet. We see Kindaspring, all busy and fantasy and so on. We catch a glimpse of a city buried in the shadow of a mountain range, with a bunch of dudes who all look the same. A city on a cliff, a shining gold monument in the center and trails of dust on a track around the city. Canyons, and a dash of pearlescent color just for a moment. Blink and you miss it, and a flash of a black and white tent in the woods near Kindaspring. You get the picture.] But, fact of the matter is, folks, we kinda blew all the budget on this one shot! Completely boned it in the first two seconds! So, let’s get right into it and roll some fuckin’ initiative- oh, can I say fuck? Are we allowed to do that, here on NBC Peacock? Shit, I’m going to completely bone our cussing budget too- anyway! Let’s roll some initiative and meet our heroes.

[Zoom in on wagon on road outside Kindaspring. It’s not a very impressive wagon. There are patches on the canvas. The wheels are all creaky and bouncy over the dirt road. The horses look like they could use a nap. There are stink lines, y’all. The road, meanwhile, is pretty well-used. There are ruts, and the sides of the road run clean and even. It’s surrounded by woods, and we’re far enough out of Kindaspring to not get any noise from the city, nor close enough to our destination to even get a hint of whatever the fuck I’m going to have to call Phandalin that isn’t Phandalin.

But back to our characters. Right now, only one is visible, a buff human man, like super buff, no you don’t understand animators, he must be a brick shithouse of a man, he’s very sensitive about this. He has massive muscles and massive sideburns, and he looks way too happy to be driving this wagon. You just know the vehicle proficiency jokes are coming. Cartoon GRIFFIN pops up in the corner of the screen, looking unimpressed.]

GRIFFIN: …Well, maybe not heroes. Three… boys. Three very messy, very murder hobo, very horny boys. [A beat.] Tres horny boys, if you will. So, uh, first up is-

MAGNUS [aware of Griffin and waving at everyone- listen, fourth wall breaks are kinda a thing for me, folks]: I’m Magnus Burnsides, human fighter! [Stat card for Magnus pops up on the side. There’s a not very flattering picture with it.] Also… [with the wagon reigns in hand, he starts counting off on his fingers, concentrating] Uh, master carpenter, man of action, rush into battle- oh, and I’m from Raven’s Roost, and-

[The canvas flaps blow open behind MAGNUS, and MAGNUS’S stat card disappears with a pop and a tiny bit of white smoke. TAAKO steps out, already exasperated and swinging a hand, colliding with MAGNUS’S head and pushing it to the side.]

TAAKO: Yeah, save the backstory for like… 40 more episodes, my dude. We don’t have time for that shit right now.

GRIFFIN: O-kay, guess we’re just gonna assume we can swear whenever we want.

[As GRIFFIN is talking, TAAKO stops pushing on MAGNUS’S head.]

TAAKO [triumphant, shouting]: FUCK!

[Flock of birds flies out of the trees.]

GRIFFIN: So this is Taako, the elf wizard [TAAKO’S stat card pops up. Much more flattering picture.] and-

TAAKO: That’s Taako, you know, from… podcast, elf wizard and baller chef, yes, thank you, very much. AND very, very beautiful. [TAAKO does a hair flip. There are sparkles and magical sounds.] And very, very bored. [TAAKO’S stat card disappears.] How far away is this fuckin’ town? What’s it called again?

MAGNUS [shrugging]: Beats me. [To GRIFFIN] Did we come up with a name that doesn’t violate copyright?

GRIFFIN [evading the question, because I still am]: Aaaaaaaaaaaaand last but not least, Merle Highchurch. [A beat. GRIFFIN sighs.] Merle, that’s your cue.

MERLE [inside the tent]: Wha? Somebody say my name? [Canvas flaps rustle rustle rustle. MERLE’S face pops out, looking around owlishly. He also steps out to the front of the wagon.]

MAGNUS [now very crowded and still trying to drive]: You missed your cue, old man.

MERLE [indignant]: I was busy studying my cantrips!

TAAKO and MAGNUS [in unison]: Gross!

MERLE: No, not like-

GRIFFIN [interrupting]: And Merle is a cleric! [MERLE’S stat card pops up. The picture was taken too high, so we can only see MERLE’S hair and forehead.]

MERLE: I’m a what now?

GRIFFIN [overly enthusiastic, it’s a bit now, folks]: Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar, clerics are kind of a support class magic user. They can cast things like buffs-

MERLE: Huh?

GRIFFIN [still overly enthusiastic]: and heal their party members-

MERLE: I can do that?

GRIFFIN: Clerics also serve gods, and Merle’s god is Mort-

MERLE [indignant again]: Hang on! That doesn’t sound right!

GRIFFIN [pushing out of his little bubble and leaning into the scene]: Then who is your god?

MERLE: Uh… Pan! [MERLE pulls out the Extreme Teen Bible.] See? Pan!

MAGNUS [whispering to TAAKO]: Okay, I guess this is how we’re resolving that whole thing. [TAAKO shrugs. MERLE is smiling. It’s adorable, like those little smiles Carey Pietsch does I love them so much, y’all.]

GRIFFIN: So, Magnus, Taako, Merle. Off on an adventure of epic proportions. [GRIFFIN is getting excited.] Full of action and danger and goofs and found family and-

MAGNUS: Now hold on! Epic proportions? Epic? [MAGNUS waves a hand around at the generally pretty chill woods, the boring road, and the stink lines wagon.]

TAAKO: Yeah, so far this is snoozeville, population, uh, me and these two chucklefucks.

MERLE [peering at GRIFFIN]: you sure you got the right dnd party, bud?

GRIFFIN [looking at audience]: We’re still negotiating contracts, so I’m filling in for, uh… someone. So for now, hey, I’m Griffin McElroy, your Dungeon Master, your best friend, and your announcer for this pilot episode. Ahem. [GRIFFIN clears his throat.] Grab your shields and ready your spell slots. Strap in your asses and… really, just strap in your asses. And, for the very first time, welcome to the animated version of… THE ADVENTURE ZONE!

[Title card and Mort Garson’s “Déjà Vu” plays. All my ideas went into dialogue, folks. Fan artists, this one’s all yours.]

[We pop back into the same scene as before.]

MAGNUS: Yeah, so, uh, like we were saying, before, uh, whatever that was, what we’re doing now is-

TAAKO [interrupting]: Hold on! We are not, I repeat, not doing some dumb recap where we explain this boring job... unless…

MAGNUS, MERLE, and GRIFFIN [all have gone laser eye meme]: UNLESS?

TAAKO [singing]: Flashback sequence!

[There’s a loud POP! as the scene shifts, and we’re now in your standard fantasy tavern. There’s a table with four chairs right in front of us, all of which are empty. The tavern acts as a backdrop behind that, illustrating just how fantasy this world is. We see humans and elves and dwarves yes, because we’ve already seen them, but also Gnomes and tieflings and haflings and orcs and Genasi and aarakocra (try spelling that one, folks ;) I’m sure that won’t come up later) and so on and so forth.

There’s another POP! as GRIFFIN’S window reappears in the upper right corner. He looks slightly ruffled.]

GRIFFIN [straightening his hair and glasses]: Wow, that is going to take some getting used to. Anyway, the boys should be here in a second, and-

[Three more pops as MAGNUS, TAAKO, and MERLE appear in three of the four seats at the table. MERLE lands upside down. He immediately starts struggling to right himself]

MAGNUS [looking at the empty chair and frowning]: Wait, what was the name of the guy we were meeting again? Gumdrop?

TAAKO: Hm… Gurgle? Guava? Gumbo?

MERLE [having finally righted himself]: No! My cousin, uh… um… oh, that’s right, Gundren!

[As MERLE says GUNDREN, another pop as GUNDREN pops into existence in the chair. He looks like if you put MERLE through a grinder, not like we’re gonna run into one of those in an episode or two, right, fellas?

Nasty boy that he is, GUNDREN lets out a grunt and then spits on the floor. People have to clean that, GUNDREN! This is why you- (SPOILERS REDACTED)- anyway.]

GUNDREN: So, like I was saying, boys. You take my wagon from here in Kindaspring down the road to Mandolin-

TAAKO: Oh, that’s what we’re calling it?

MERLE: I thought that was another TV show?

[Up in the corner, GRIFFIN shrugs.]

GUNDREN: Uh… yes? That’s… what it’s called? [GUNDREN looks suspiciously at them. It seems like he’d give the job to someone else in an instant, if literally anyone else would take the job. But magically, he’s stuck with these boys.] But, uh, you get my wagon and my goods to Mandolin, and I’ll let you in on the next job. And that job, boys… [GUNDREN laughs. It sounds like if you threw rocks in a blender.] That’s the kinda job that will be the last job you ever need to take.

MAGNUS [cheerfully]: Well, that sounds murdery!

[There’s a loud POP! and we’re back on the wagon again, all of our boys already in place.]

GRIFFIN [shrugging, smiling]: Guess you’re going to find out! Oh, and boys… let’s roll initiative.

#taz #taz balance #the adventure zone #mcelroy family #mcelboys #charm works #this is basically a glorified overly long shitpost and the level of editing that went into this reflects that #PLEASE HIRE ME MCELROYS

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

Text

Tangled Salt Marathon - One Angry Princess

There’s two halves to this episode. The first is a well constructed, if over simple, mystery for the kiddos to solve. The other is a failed attempt at being ‘deep’ and ‘mature’.

Summary: Attila is finally opening up his own bakery, but people generally don't want to stop by because of his scary helmet. The next day, Monty's Sweet Shoppe is destroyed, and Attila is arrested. He is about to be banished from the kingdom, but Rapunzel makes an appeal to investigate the matter further.

The Episode is Meant to be a Homage to 12 Angry Men, but Misses the Point of the Original Film

So for those who haven’t seen the movie, (though really you should) 12 Angry Men is about a jury trying to decide if an accused person is guilty of a violent crime. At first the evidence seems clear, but one lone juror refuses to vote guilty until the evidence has been gone over again. One by one he convinces the other men to vote not guilty as they each have to face they’re own personal biases.

Sound familiar?

In the show Rapunzel is the sole believer in Attila’s innocence despite evidence to the contrary. She insists on investigating herself while challenging everyone else’s personal biases.

The difference?

12 Angry Men is a hard hitting look at how privilege, prejudice, and cognitive bias can interfere with the American judicial system. None of the jurors are named, but they are all middle class, presumably Christian, white guys. And that is the point. They are all different from the accused; a young, poor, arguably non-white teen (the play is intentionally vague about the kid’s race so that you can slot any minority in there) who has a history of getting into trouble. If you were to change the ethnicity, race, gender, class, or age of any of the 12 characters then you would suddenly have a very different story. It’s their backgrounds and pre-formed opinions that inform their decisions. Even the main protagonist is not exempt from re-examining his own personal biases.

Meanwhile the writers of Tangled: the Series are too busy showing off how clever Rapunzel is to actually deal with the themes of injustice and bigotry that they added in themselves in the first place.

Rapunzel Knowing Attila Before Hand Weakens the Message

In 12 Angry Men none of the jurors know the accuse. In fact, they can’t know him. It’s against the law. In order to have an impartial jury, no one can have any ties to either the defendant or the prosecution, and they must not have knowledge of the case or have had specific experiences that might cause them to be biased or unfair.

Rapunzel being Attila’s friend means that she already has her own bias and an invested interest in making sure Attila goes free. She’s not acting out of the simple goodness of her heart here. She’s doing something that directly benefits herself.

I don’t expect a children’s fantasy show to recreate the US judicial system with all of the complexities there in, but I do expect it to uphold it’s heroine as the selfless person it claims her to be. Yet the show constantly undermines this supposed character trait by only having her help the people she befriends, and only if that help doesn’t require anything emotionally challenging or mentally taxing from her.

How much more powerful would this episode be if Rapunzel was defending a stranger or someone she actively disliked? Imagine if it was Monty who was being accuse and Raps had to swallow her pride in order to do what is right. But that would require the show having Rapunzel actually learn something instead of placing her on a pedestal. It would also mean giving Monty a reason to exist rather than keeping him around to be a convenient red herring.

Rapunzel Shouldn’t Have to Prove Attila’s Innocence

Rather than have a courtroom drama the show opts to have a ‘whodunit’ story instead. This unfortunately gives the implication that Corona’s judicial system runs on a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mantra, which is backwards to any humane legal system. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’, ‘reasonable doubt’, ‘due process’, are the cornerstones of our modern social ethics.

In 12 Angry Men, we never find out if the accused actually committed the crime or not. That is because his actual innocence isn’t the point of the story. It’s about whether or not the system is working like it should or if it’s being compromised by human error.

Once again, I don’t expect a recreation of the US judicial system, but if you’re writing a story for a modern audience then you need to reinforce modern morals. Simply crouching Corona’s legal system as ‘of the times’ or ‘fantasy’ while ignoring why we no longer have such systems in place reduces the story to puerile fare.

It also means that show’s writers didn’t put enough thought into their world building.

No One Calls Out the Obviously Corrupt System

The show has interwoven throughout its ongoing narrative themes of classism, injustice, abuse, and authoritarianism, but then fails to follow through on those themes by not having any of the protagonists actually examine any of these issues. They just sit there in the background, even as the show tries it darndest to present Rapunzel as an arbiter of reform. However a person can’t bring about change if they can’t even admit that there is a problem to begin with.

In this episode alone we have

Banishment is considered a reasonable punishment for an act of vandalism. A crime that is usually considered only a misdemeanor unless the damage goes over a certain amount. Keep in mind that not even most felonies would be given such a punishment in the real world

Introduces the prison barge that regularly carries away convicts. In the past ‘undesirables’ would be shipped off to prison colonies as a form of persecution. Attila and every other person we see subjected to Corona’s legal system are of a lower class.

Many prejudge Attila based off his appearance, lower class, and past upbringing. However, it is either Attila who is expected to change or Rapunzel who is expected to win people over. At no point is anyone told that they shouldn’t be prejudiced to begin with.

There is no judge, jury, or lawyers. The king alone decides the fate of criminals, the Captain is expected to be the both the prosecutor and the ‘executioner’, which is a conflict of interest, and the defendant has no one to represent them unless they so happen to know a kind statesperson. Meaning you have to be either rich or well connected in order to even have a chance to defend yourself.

Oh and there’s this...

Uh, yeah you do. You’re the flipping king. You make the law. You’re the one to bring charges against Attila, and nearly every other criminal in the show, in the first place.

The show constantly wants us to view Frederic as simply an everyman who is only doing his job, but he’s not. He’s a ruler and as such he has powers and responsibilities that no one else has or ever will have. The series gives both him and Rapunzel all of the privileges of being in charge without holding them to account for the consequences of their actions.

By not pointing out how wrong these actions are, the show winds up avocating them instead. When I call Tangled the Series authoritarian, this is why. Because authority is never questioned even when clearly wrong and nepotism is presented as the solution to conflicts as oppose to being the problem itself.

The Show Introduces Complex Issues but Then Oversimplifies the Conflicts Surrounding Those Issues

The creators of the show have constantly declared that the series is ‘not for kids’. That they were shooting for an older audience than the pre-school time slot they were given. Now ignoring the fact that Tangled was always going to have a built in audince of pre-teen girls and ignoring that children’s media can be mature, TTS lacks the nuance needed to viewed as anything other than a pantomime.

As stated before, this episode alone ignores the very real issues interlaced within the conflict in order to give us an overly simple mystery that anyone over the age of five could figure out.

It’s frustrating to watch the show constantly skirt towards the edge of complexity only to see it chicken out and go for the low hanging fruit instead. As a consequence the series winds up being for no one. Too shallow for adults and older teens, but too confused in its morals to be shown to small children and younger adolescents.

I wouldn’t recommend this show to a parent, not without encouraging them to view the series either before or alongside their child in order to counteract it’s ‘lessons’ and I know parents within the fandom itself who’ve stopped showing newer episodes to their kids; stating that they want their child to be old enough to point out the harmful messages to before doing so.

Once Again No One Learns Anything

Rapunzel doesn’t learn that the system is flawed. Attila doesn’t learn to open up to people. Nobody learns to treat people with respect and to not judge others based on appearances alone.

The whole point of the episode is to just show off how much ‘better’ Rapunzel is than everyone else. The show constantly feels the need to tear down other characters in an effort to make its favs look good as opposed to just letting the mains grow as people.

Conclusion

Tangled the tv series is no 12 Angry Men. It’s no Steven Universe/Gravity Falls/Avatar:TLA/She-Ra/Gargoyles/Batman:TAS either. It barely reaches the same level as the likes of DnD, Sonic SATAM, or Voltron. Interesting ideas but poor pacing, build up, and lack of follow through, with some naff decisions thrown into the mix bring things down in quality. And unlike the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from the early 80s, TTS lacks the benefit of being a pioneer in the field of animation, where such flaws are more forgivable.

#tangled #anti-tangled #Rapunzel #rapunzel's tangled adventure #king frederic #critique #salt

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once-upon-a-scenario · 4 years

Text

Karasuno as DnD players

Hear me out, I know a group this big would never work out, but just imagine the chaos that would be a session with all of them, even if it would take half an hour to get through one turn. Just a little idea I had, as a commemoration of the fact that I had my final dnd session for the summer tonight. I’m most definitely not super proficient with the game, so sorry if I got anything wrong. Hope you enjoy it!

__________

Daichi Plays a human warlock. He wasn’t into the whole spellcasting deal at first, but then again, eldritch blasting something ten times over is a viable strategy if you think about it. Always strategizes before a battle and goes in as prepared as possible. Reasonable luck with rolls, but nothing special. Keeps meticulous lists of his spells and cantrips. He DMs sometimes and is always the type who tries dropping heavy hints because he knows his players all collectively share 1 braincell. They miss all the hints, predictably, so he ends up having to railroad them. Always does his best to keep them alive and allows like 248273 chances of extra saving throws if someone’s HP dips below 1.

Suga Half-elf bard. The embodiment of chaos theory. He tries to be helpful to the party, but it usually ends up backfiring spectacularly. Gets embarrassed when he has to play out an action, even more so if it’s something his character is doing alone, without the rest of the party. But when he gets into it, he gets into it. Always the person to accidentally stumble onto the solution to the puzzle without realising it.

Asahi Human life cleric. Was slightly torn between paladin and cleric, but ultimately decided he does better as a healer, rather than a DPS. Hates combat, had to reroll his character 4 times already cause they keep dying. It’s like he attracts high rolls from enemies. Scores uber high on any intimidation rolls, though. Slightly traumatized by any PC who tries to seduce an NPC, or NPC who goes for a PC.

Nishinoya Halfling rogue. He likes acting all sneaky, even though he’s never like that irl. Definitely a chaotic neutral at best, skirts the line of chaotic evil sometimes. The type to kill an important NPC on pure accident, or because he pissed them off without meaning to. Gets super attached to his PCs or nice NPCs. Tried DMing once and everyone who played that session described it as a strangely fun train wreck.

Tanaka Dragonborn monk, don’t @ me. At first, he chose dragonborn as the race because he thought they were cool, but as he played on, he ended up getting genuinely invested in the lore of them and can now write a whole essay on why they’re the coolest. As for monk, he simply liked the idea of being able to punch the living daylights out of someone. Probably chose Way Of The Open Hand as his monastic tradition. He did consider Way Of Shadow too, but since he’s in the group with Noya, he decided they have enough sneakies.

Ennoshita Main DM. Save him from the hell that is eternally being the dungeon master and never the player. Despite how fed up he is sometimes, he always prepares intricate worlds, taking into accounts which players are in the party, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Makes wonderful homebrews occasionally, but sticks to pre-existing storylines most of the time, as it’s less work. Either rolls super high on enemy turns or super low, no inbetween. He has killed many a PC and always feels bad about it. Still hasn’t forgiven himself for the fact that Asahi’s on his 4th character

Kageyama Human paladin. Paladins are cool, right? One might even call them a pillar of the team. The “one” refers to Kageyama exclusively, and he will die on the hill of paladins being the best class, as they’re a combination of melee and spells, as well as support. I’m not sure if he struggles with memorizing spells or if he knows all the existing paladin spells by heart, but it’s one of the extremes in any case. Solid true neutral, took the Oath Of Devotion. Follows Kord, the god of athletics and sport, because what else did you expect?

Hinata Elf barbarian. He likes being tall, and don’t try to get him to cast spells, please. Always forgets Rage is an option and comes a hair’s breadth away from dying because he doesn’t use all of his abilities. Doesn’t care how weird the combination of race and class is. Bonking people with a great axe is a wonderful strategy and Hinata Does Not Care, especially cause he’s the party’s main tank and a great DPS.

Tsukishima Elf artificer for sure. Coincidentally, his character is still taller than Hinata’s, even though he swears up and down it’s a coincidence. Which it actually is, but he feels a silver of smugness at that fact, which he would never admit to anyone. Makes the most wonderfully, uselessly useful inventions. Originally wanted to take a pure spellcasting class, like wizard or sorcerer, but decided to have fun with the game. Chose Alchemist as his specialization. Probably tries the charge other players for the potions if they need it in the middle of combat. Doesn’t go through with it, of course, but it was worth a try.

Yamaguchi Half-Elf Druid. He loves the idea of a character so connected with nature, + it feels good to be relied on as the tank. Likes exploring the world and asking for extensive history of everything, which gives Ennoshita unrivalled anxiety. Nothing is scarier than a nat 20 on a history check for a homebrew and Yamaguchi is here to remind Ennoshita of that. Definitely chooses the Circle Of The Moon as his druid circle because he’s cheesy like that.

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zippdementia · 5 years

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Part 72 Alignment May Vary: The Vortexian Spires

The best laid plans...

Before tonight’s session, I had made some notes on what I intended to lead the group through. They were to go to the Vortexian Spires where the Aether Craws roosted. The spires I described in my notes as huge floating pillars, the broken remnants of a Cloud Giant’s domain, a Cloud Giant who challenged the god-like Genies and was rewarded for his avarice with the destruction of his kingdom. My notes read “He is still imprisoned underneath the Citadel of Ice and Steel and sometimes the city shakes as he rages against the walls of his prison.” Down from the spires dangle impossibly large chains that wind their way up past humungous waterfalls to the underside of the spires themselves, which are littered with the nests of the Aether Craw. A quick trek through some caves leads to the “overside” of the spires and the players’ goal.

Here’s what I believed would happen tonite... this is taken from my notes. As you read through it, note how linear it is and how everything is fairly pre-determined. I’ll talk about that in a moment...

The players, accompanied by Star, Puck, and Alyss, would start out the session already at the spires, climbing the chains. Star shows them these grapple hooks, kind of like the hookshots in Zelda games, which can fire off with pneumatic hisses and pull players across great distances if aimed right. Using these to climb the chains, the players would be attacked on the way up by a giant serpent swimming effortlessly through the sky waterfalls. It was meant to be a beatable fight, though made tricky by their precarious positioning.

They make it to the top, and see the nests, the birds swarming over the peaks like colorful adornments. Star finds the biggest bird. She is going to go for that one. She grapples off towards it and has the players follow, telling them that it will take a show of character and strength to win over their prize. A series of challenges follow to help Star tame the beast.

Once astride, the creature takes off through the mists. At this point, there is a cry below them and Star looks down to see another large bird with a strange wing. Her eyes widen. “It’s Feserania’s bird!” (see previous post for the significance of this) She says she has to catch that bird and gives the reigns over to the players, telling them they are going to have to demonstrate their strength to the Aether Craw in order to ride it. “Meet me on the tallest spire!” She then leaps off, grappling into the mists.

The players are left to handle the Aether Craw and must win contests of strength against it as it dives and spins through the air. After succeeding three times, they control the mount and tame it and make it to the highest spire to await the coming of Star.

But she never shows and as the day wears on (between three suns, there is never night on the plane of air), the weather begins to shift. A massive storm hits and the Craw becomes agitated and demanding to flee, only controllable by a combination of three successful charm checks or strength checks.

If the Craw doesn’t flee, they are hit with a screaming gale. Puck calls out that it is an elder elemental, they must flee. Regardless, the players are attacked by three air elemental. They may be able to use the Craw creatively to escape as they are chased through the floating spires. If they succeed on all of this, they have their mount. They must name him and prepare for the race.

... are not as good as the machinations of the moment

When I first started DMing three years ago, I meticulously planned everything out. Encounters, NPC scripts, item lists, treasure lists... I rehearsed fights and memorized spell effects and ran scenarios to figure out what would happen if Tyler did this, or Morgaknight choose this attack, or Kavan targeted this guy with this move. I would spend two hours designing and stating out a fight that the players may never face.

All of this taught me things. I learned how CRs on the page translated to CRs in actual combat. I learned many spells and treasure effects. I got deep into the mechanics behind DnD 5e and feel genuinely more nerdy because of it. The best lesson I learned, however, was how NOT to prepare for Dungeons and Dragons and how that makes a game better.

Recently, I’ve been embracing this notion more and more. So when I looked over my two page of notes for the upcoming session and found them to be fairly detailed and descriptive of everything that I suspected would happen that session, I realized something needed to change. I tossed aside the notes and destroyed everything I’d written with two sentences spoken to the players at the beginning of the session:

The Vortexian spires await you. How do you want to get there?

I just handed the keys to the bus to the players. And of course what followed was a dozen times better than my original notes.

So the players decide to ask Immerstal for his help. And because I legitimately don’t know how well connected he is out here, I have the players roll for him. And they roll low. An 8, to be precise. And because of this, I have to make up some sketchy NPCs on the spot, with ulterior motives. Oh, and an airship that will actually take the players to the Spires despite the poor roll (because failed rolls are so much more interesting when they complicate instead of just blocking). I start describing the airship and Stalker (Carrick’s player) says the ship reminds him of the koopa kids from Super Mario Brothers 3.

This is how the players end up riding to the Vortexian Spires with the Koopa Kids. Only here they are a cursed Genasi family, the Minja family, cursed by a Genie for trying to trick it into giving them wishes, forced to wear this bizarre half-human, half-turtle hybrid form. It’s a little creepy, really, as some parts of them are recognizably human and the whole image just doesn’t fit together. Their leader, Otto, explains how they have fallen and how the once proud family is now a bunch of (get ready for it) “Remade Mutant Minja Turtles.”

And this is how what was planned to be a simple and quick opening to a session turns into an entire memorable session with a single roll and an offhand comment. Let’s go down the list and see what changes:

The players, accompanied by Star, Puck, and Alyss, would start out the session already at the spires, climbing the chains.

Instead the players start on board the Minja ship, where they learn that the Minja family is trying to pay off their debt to their Genie tormentor and that they believe they can kill and harvest a bunch of body parts from the Aether Craws for a ton of gold. The players realize this and quickly make (successful) rolls and speeches to convince the Minjas to instead try and tame the Aether Craws, accept their broken nature, and find peace by bonding with the birds. In an unusually impassioned speech, Imoaza asks them “aren’t you really just looking for someone to accept you?” The Minjas are moved to tears and plan to help the players.

Star shows them these grapple hooks, kind of like the hookshots in Zelda games, which can fire off with pneumatic hisses and pull players across great distances if aimed right.

The Minjas give the players the grapple hooks and they all grapple off to the chains, pulling the airship alongside and leaving Alyss to man it. This grappling plan... it doesn’t go great. Imoaza and Aldric make it to the floating island fairly easily, but Carrick botches his chain roll and plummets down into the open abyss that is the air planet, only saved at the last minute by grabbing one of the Minjas (a silent bloke named Plato) who barley manages to hookshot the chains and pull them to safety.

Using these to climb the chains, the players would be attacked on the way up by a giant serpent swimming effortlessly through the sky waterfalls. It was meant to be a beatable fight, though made tricky by their precarious positioning.

Because Carrick is the only one climbing the chains, he and poor Plato are attacked instead by the serpent. It’s far too strong for Carrick to take on solo (and Plato isn’t much of a help, his attempt to cast powerful time stopping magic failing to do anything). The snake chases them around the chains, breathing lightning, snapping down with its mighty jaws, and trying to shove them off with its powerful coils into open air. Carrick finally chases it off when he dives inside its mouth and channels divinity from inside it, backfiring its own electrical energy down into it. It doesn’t kill it, but it flees from him, terrified by this display of power. And also by something else, growing beneath them.

It is the elder storm, brought into the scenario a lot sooner because it felt better to put it here and drive the action forward (hilariously, I tried to bring it in earlier, but all the players failed their perception rolls so badly, they failed to sense the storm building up). It begins to form a vortex around the chains beneath Carrick and he begins to climb madly, as Plato finally begins to speak to him in a long winded and almost non-sensical manner about the philosophical nature of storms:

“The question that we face here while staring into the abyss of the storm is not so much whether we believe that the storm exists beneath us, but whether we believe the nature of the storm is to do us harm. In fact, if the storm is simply a part of nature itself and is acting according to the nature of being a storm, then if we fall into it any effect it has on us is also part of our nature, the nature of being in a storm. Therefore, we do not have to consider what happens to be harm, but rather simply us living out the expected act of being and the storm acting out its purpose in being. Of course, this all assumes that nature itself has a purpose and is not a simple random connection of events and forces.”

They see the nests, the birds swarming over the peaks like colorful adornments. Star finds the biggest bird. She is going to go for that one.

While Carrick climbs, Imoaza and Aldric climb up through the underside of the mountain to come out on its surface. Here they, the Minjas, and Star and Puck begin to try and plan a route to the birds that won’t disturb the nesting. The Minjas say they are super stealthy and good at this kind of thing and, well, earlier Imoaza failed an insight check into these guys, and so now that comes into play. She believes them, and convinces Aldric they are “the real deal.” This is followed by a hilarious botch, a literal roll of 1 on the stealth die for the Minjas as they launch into horrible, horrible action. Battle cries are made, swords are slammed loudly together, and one of the Minjas hookshots a piece of the cliffside only to realize too late he’s hookshotting one of the Aether Craws... who promptly takes off, pulling him off the island and disappearing with him helplessly dangling from his grappling tool. Bye bye, Bill.

Mass hysteria breaks out on the island. The Aether Craw are definitely disturbed by the sudden eruption of movement and noise coming from these mishapen misfortunates charging them with drawn blades and weapons. Star desperately tries to regain control of the situation while Aldric goes running for one of the smaller Aether Craw, determined to bond with it and make it his mount. Imoaza freezes herself in the Tomb of Leviticus (a very cool Warlock effect that encases her in protective damage soaking ice for a round or two) just as one of the bigger birds drops down and rends the crap out of two Minja (in a maul using all four of its taloned legs). If not for Imoaza’s spell, she would be killed too. Instead, she breaks free of the ice in time to take cover behind a large boulder and debate what to do next. Star ends up scrambling towards her and suggesting they need to calm one of the beasts and bond with it quickly, before the whole herd coordinates an attack.

She grapples off towards it and has the players follow, telling them that it will take a show of character and strength to win over their prize. A series of challenges follow to help Star tame the beast.

So a lot of this ends up happening. The challenges, Star noticing Feserania’s bird... but Star doesn’t go leaping off any spires. In fact, the players end up leading all the action, which is better. Three birds get targeted: Aldric leaps astride one and plummets with it off the edge of the mountain, wrestling to bend it to his will with his prodigious strength. Imoaza and Star try to calm Fesserania’s Craw, and the Minjas band together to try and bond with a third, led in the effort by Otto and his daughter, Virgo (who is saving up for an art college fund).

I roll for the Minjas and... it doesn’t go well. After they lock eyes with one of the big birds, they fail to impress it and the Craw charges them, tearing them apart into bloody hunks and finally impressing upon Imoaza that, no, they weren’t stealth ninjas and, no, they weren’t prepared for this mission at all.

I also roll for Star and roll incredibly poorly for her attempts to bond with Fesserania’s bird. Instead, it is left to Imoaza to try and make Charisma rolls to empathize with the Craw, and she succeeds incredibly (all the more impressive because of her dismally low charisma score). Star joins her on the bird, wiping away a tear. “I’m being stupid,” she explains to Imoaza. “I thought I would be the one to finally tame Fesserania’s Craw and for a moment I thought maybe by bonding with her Craw I could maybe feel her again. Be close to her. But she’s chosen you, instead. Maybe she isn’t ready to forgive me. Or maybe she’s gone, and this has nothing to do with anything. Maybe I’m too close... I’m rambling, damn.”

Imoaza doesn’t know how to react to this. Emotion isn’t her strong suit, yet in bonding with the Aether Craw she gains a flash of feeling that makes her almost heady. Bonding with an Aether Craw is hard to describe. It may be magical in nature, it’s hard to know. It takes all the elements of bonding with a horse and cranks the dial to 11. A good horse rider can feel the horse’s emotions through every movement of the horse’s body and vice versa. With an Aether Craw, the rider has this sensation, yes, and on top of that feels like they ARE the Aether Craw. Experienced riders learn to differentiate between what is the Craw’s emotions and desires and what is their own, but as this is Imoaza’s first time, she has to focus hard to maintain her usual monotone reticence.

Someone else ends up being disappointed as well, and it is also a surprise: Aldric! He fails to bond with his Aether Craw with a series of bad rolls and ends up getting thrown off it, plummeting into the open air. This is pretty angering for Aldric, who has been trying to replace a mount ever since letting his go back at the Fane of Tiamet. And it also poses a significant problem, because it’s at this moment that the players notice the storm building up beneath the mountain. And then Aldric plummets into it.

Carrick at this point asks if Plato can cast haste on him and the Minja Turtle tries, but messes it up and instead blasts him with color spray in the face, causing Carrick to drop him into the storm along with Aldric. Carrick shakes off the spell and manages to clamber up at last onto the mountain, in time to see the remaining Minjas getting torn apart by the Aether Craw. He gets targeted himself and after unsuccessfully trying to calm the Craw goes into full rage mode.

I don’t recall how much we’ve talked of Carrick’s past. At some point, he turned from the path of good and decided that dominion over others was the best way to achieve order in the world and honor his gods. During this time, Carrick wielded a quarterstaff of his own making, imbued with necrotic energy. He still carries it as a reminder of the evil he once did, and he uses it now against the Craw.

Sometimes dice rolls just seem to go along with the story. Tonite is one of those nights. The Minjas have been terrible at everything, the Craw took to Imoaza instead of Star, and now Carrick rolls two critical hits on the Aether Craw he is fighting, and in a show of violence and speed that he has never displayed to the group before, Carrick terrifies the Aether Craw he faces, tearing into it with such ferocity that it is forced to back away in fear for its life.

At this moment, Imoaza and Star land on the mountain and Imoaza calls out to Carrick, bringing him back to himself long enough to get him to join them on the bird before he retreats into himself, horrified by his loss of control. Meanwhile, the storm is approaching. The general consensus is they have to get the heck out of Dodge.

A massive storm hits and the Craw becomes agitated and demanding to flee, only controllable by a combination of three successful charm checks or strength checks.

Inside the storm, Aldric is being battered from all sides. Lightning and thunder, tempest and surging power, lift and spin and rip at Aldric. And then, suddenly, it stops and he realizes he is gripping the Rod of Storms and commanding obedience of the forces that move around him. The storm addresses him then, demanding to know of the power he wields, calling him wizard, and asking how he came to create such an item. Aldric is honest, saying that the Rod of Storms is something he inherited from an ally and he is not sure how he uses it. At this, the storm addresses him again, asking him what it is he desires with such power. Aldric’s mind is filled with the thoughts of rebuilding the Green Company, of returning to Faerun, of being a strong leader for the Company. And the storm seems to understand.

“I will join the company,” it announces in a voice made of the elements. “And together, we shall build it into something worthy of such power.”

And with that, Aldric is ejected from the tempest, the Rod of Storms suddenly seeming to make more sense to him. A piece of the Elder Tempest is in the Rod now, though that does not mean that danger has passed. A storm is a storm after all, and nature is fickle. Aldric finds he can fly for a short moment, and he directs himself towards his companions escaping from the scene of chaos on their Aether Craw (placeholder name is Cookie, because Imoaza loves cookies, as comically established in our prior session). Aldric is none too pleased to see that the snake woman has charmed an Aether Craw while he failed to do so (he fails to acknowledge the fact that he just charmed an elder tempest). Still, there are bigger matters at hand.

The final part of the session is spent escaping the storm while Aldric struggles to direct it with the Rod of Storms. It makes for a narrow escape and a fantastic end to the session, setting us up for next time’s crazy crazy race.

And the point is? The hundred post lesson...

What this session (and this post) illustrates is how a good game of Dungeons and Dragons grows organically with the story telling. It leads me to share one major piece of advice for aspiring DMs, a piece of advice that I believe in so strongly that I would say that if you take nothing else away from the hundred or so posts I’ve made, take this.

Listen to your players.

This is the number one rule. As a DM you have the burden of being the personal screenwriter for a television series for your players. But you also have the benefit of being able to have their immediate feedback and change direction on a whim if needed.

If your players express an interest in something, in anything, go with that. If they are enjoying a scene, keep playing with it. If they seem to be disinterested in something, mix it up and take a hard left to bring them back.

Don’t confuse this with giving the players everything they want to happen. If a die roll or a bad decision kills them or loses them the big treasure, so be it. But when running your session, don’t be afraid to let them steer the action. Again, if they steer it directly into a cliff, that’s okay. As long as they were the ones who brought it there, they won’t mind. Probably. Not too much.

If you build a dungeon room and threw in some meaningless tapestries just to fill it out (”there’s some decaying tapestries on the walls”) and suddenly one of your players is fascinated with these tapestries, convinced they hold some deeper meaning, then give the tapestries some deeper meaning. It is clues like this that tell you what experience your players want to be having. Pay attention to that, and I promise you your games will always be memorable and enjoyable.

That’s why, when my players decided to go with Immerstal, I changed the scenario to suit it. Because they were laughing and getting a kick out of the Minja Turtles, I made them an integral part of the night’s session. When Imoaza took it upon herself to try to calm Fessoriana’s bird and managed to do it, I didn’t have Star butt in and do it better. Instead she bowed to the player’s expertise and the story changed. For the better, honestly.

Listen to your players. They will tell you what they want. This goes two ways, of course. You are also trying to tell a story and have your own style and aesthetic. A good player will understand this and will be looking to plug into that more than they will be trying to fight it. That’s a bigger issue for another day, but for now, my biggest advice to you as a DM is to listen. It’s advice that took me a while to get used to, and for my first couple of years of DMing I took hours to prepare before each session. I think it’s natural to believe that as DM you need to over prepare in order to create a good experience. But trust me: let go a little bit and just see what happens when you let things be steered by your players. Even if just a bit. You’ll be surprised the places your group will go.

#DND #DND 5e #Dungeons and Dragons

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dapper-nahrwhale · 5 years

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Guys I’m gonna do it

I’m gonna write a fanfic for s o m e t h i n g but first I have to figure out what cuz I’m super motivated to write but idk which fandom

Current contenders are:

Mha- hawks character study- i really love him and I’ve already written so many snippets with him so I could just organize it all into vaguely connected oneshots

Mha- modern music au without quirks- mostly about hawks and fame and the league of villains as a weird disfunctional band

Mha- high school pro hero swap au- this ones a bit complicated so the pro hero’s and students switch places like miydoria would be the no 1 hero and all might would be a student and stuff but the most confusin thing about it is the ages of the hero’s cuz most of them are pretty spread out so idk and the villains, would they be the same age as the pro hero’s or students? Idk but I have some planned out for it, again mostly about hawks but still includes other student and pro heros

Mha- hawks goes undercover at UA to discover the traitor there- this one would be when hawks is a kid cuz it wouldn’t make sense otherwise, the timeline would be weird but basically hawks would be sent to UA on the mission of finding out the traitor there telling the leauge stuff and it’s todoroki touya whose Dabi and then his fake attempts to befriend him goes a bit too far and now he wants to help save him

Mha- dnd league of villains- a party of rouges- all for one tells Kurogiri to work on team building so he tries out dnd to help the team to get along well and it goes about a horrible as you’d expect- honestly this ones kinda ridiculous but it’s really funny especially since literally everyone in the party are rouges so it’s a disaster

Cowboy bebop- five times Faye got kicked out of fancy parties and the one time she didn’t- idk honestly I thought of this one in a dream???

Cowboy bebop- five times spike screwed everything up and the one time he didn’t- also from the same dream?????

Cowboy bebop- spike survives the end of the series and somehow has a long talk with VT about everything- eh I know that the whole ‘spike survives’ trope is beaten to a pulp but this is kinda different and I already have most of the dialogue written out

Camp camp- Gwen being the mom to all the campers- I’ve seen a lot of dadvid fics and only a couple Gwen mom ones so this would be adorable, basically a chapter per camper and maybe one with David

Camp camp- coffee shop au- mostly focusing on Harrison, Nerris, and Preston because the performance trio is the best and I’ve got a lot for this one so they’re all in 20s and camp never happened so they know each other thru other things and Harrison works at the coffee shop and wants to be a street performer and Nerris doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life other than dnd and larping and Preston just wants his inane musical to be on broadway already, Harrison and Preston are roommates and Nerris absolutely hates that one barista who always gets her order wrong and never spells her name right, and Preston wants to set two of his friends up but doesn’t know that they already know and despise each other

Haikyuu!!- road trip sorta based on this one ep of we bare bears- the Karasuno first years are now third years and go on a road trip before the end of the year and it’s about life and change and growing up not too much to do with volleyball tho

Haikyuu!!- yamaguchi and the team- just yams being friends with the team one chapters per character with yams cuz he’s my favorite and needs more love

Haikyuu!!- yachi centric college fic that doesn’t have to do with volleyball- yachi didn’t get into the college of her dreams but that’s ok she’s got a back up plan and then that falls through when her holiday retail job really sucks and her moms on her case about everything and her best friend bailed on her halfway through the semester but at least her yoga instructor is really pretty

Critical role- modern magic mighty nein criminal au- it’s the heist of the century or at least it would be if this messed up team could get its act together- basically they’re all criminals called in for a job for Matt Mercer aka the dungeon master and it’ll either be their big break or their downfall- don’t have anything planned but the summery sounds neat tho

I have even more ideas but those are the main ones right now, if you have any suggestions on which ones I should start on, I would be eternally grateful!

#fanfic stuff #my hero academia #mha #cowboy bebop #camp camp #haikyuu #critical role #bnha

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lobsters-on-their-heads · 6 years

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OB Rewatch: Gag or Throttle

The episode from whence my thumbnail image came.

My first watch review can be found here: https://lobsters-on-their-heads.tumblr.com/post/163333202396/gag-or-throttle

I loved

Exploring Rachel's character, background, and motivations. She'll never be my favorite character, but she is one of the most interesting characters.

Two minutes later after seeing young Rachel talking with the Neos, adult Rachel introduces Kira Manning to the board, wearing the same outfit, at the same age, but rather less curated than Rachel was.

Fucking adorable Charlotte sitting wrapped in a blanket with her mug of cocoa or whatever, so proud that they “escaped on a boat with only a map and compass”

I love that Rachel had a real reason to side with the sisters, in her discovery of PT's eye-cam tablet. Although maybe it wasn’t so much siding with them as siding against PT.

The steady drum/ bass beat that starts once Rachel sits in her video room drinking herself numb. Season 5 doesn’t have quite the same spot-on soundtrack as previous seasons, but this was great.

“Fell from a punt and drowned” – “probably also alcohol poisoning”

The climax of this episode takes us back to earlier seasons. There’s horror and genuine suspense, and Ledas working together.

And Kira, who can feel Rachel’s emotions, asking “Who hurt you?” and Rachel’s response - “All of them.”

Tat plays drunk so well. Finding little details fascinating, dragging the glass across her lap.

I love that Rachel ripped out her own fake eyeball, which was connected by actual tissue to her head. She will do ANYTHING to have control over her own body. I’m reminded of Leekie in Season 2 saying something like, “Rachel takes insult very personally.”

I liked

The opening flashback to young Rachel, with her almost robotic recitations of clones' tag numbers paired with picking her fingernails bloody. Although they seem to have CGI’d something onto Matt Frewer’s head.

There’s a great contrast of Rachel in this ep – vulnerable, undignified (two pelvic exams and a shot of her wiping the lube from between her legs while wearing a paper gown), talked down to – with the Rachel we met in Seasons 1 and 2 – meticulous, formal, controlling.

“Liver deep” indeed. We've seen Alison put down some booze before.

I did like Mark's “oh for fuck's sake come 'ere” man hug of his mom.

They're giving Skyler Wexler much meatier material, which is great. They're not keeping her in “cute little kid who rests her chin on her hand” land, as other shows do with their token child. She’s not the greatest actress, but they hired her at the age of, like, 6, and she’s acting opposite Tatiana Maslany, so any less-than-perfections are totally forgivable in my book.

Rachel keeps the bracelet Kira gives her and wears it for the rest of the episode!

I didn't like

S immediately busting out her handgun bundle when Sarah said they were making her wait until tomorrow to talk to Kira. Siobhan's been the calm one, as Sarah points out. It’s not the first time Dyad has taken Kira, not the first time things have seemed hopeless.

Cosima's reunion with Scott made me uncomfortable. Sure, I’m glad they had a reunion, and yes, they would be happy to see each other, but the zooming in on faces, the lingering embrace.... eh. [funny, I enjoyed this scene in my first watch]

The whole tired “married man rushes to clean the house moments before his wife gets back” schtick. I mean, okay, it fits here, since Donnie's been living totally alone and I would make a mess, too, and plus, maybe he didn’t have much notice that Alison was returning, but it’s a cliché I’d like to not see for a bit.

Alison's return. I like Alison a lot, but this isn't Alison, and this plot line doesn't work here at all. Nothing about her absence or sudden life change makes any damn sense at the end of Season 5. And she threw away her craft supplies! I mean, listen, I teach essay writing for a living, and one major point we stress is that you don’t bring in extra information in the conclusion unless it directly connects to something you wrote before. We’re in Episode 7 of 10, the final stretch, and Alison’s changes don’t connect.

I don't give a shit about Mark and Gracie. I do think the subplot of no one trying to cure the Castor men is an interesting one, but Mark and Gracie don't do it for me.

There's a lot of bouncing around / sudden scene changes / “gasp!” reveals that aren't gasp worthy.

Other notes

Interesting word choice - “our most curated subject... Rachel Duncan.”

I don't know enough about Dungeons and Dragons to know if Hell Wizard's comment about “DnD in real life” makes any damn sense.

Very telling that Rachel signs a document promising her freedom from the experiment, much like she pressure the sisters into doing in Season 1, but she thinks that this one is for real.

Canon confirmation that Leekie has seen Rachel's vagina. Or very close to it.

Imagine jerking off into a cup and knowing that you're going to be giving that cup to the woman you call your mother. The Castor men really are just as “curated” as Rachel’s been.

It took me a second to realize the implication of this shot the first time I watched it. I am not always smart.

Leekie shows real fascination and care for the clones when he discovers Rachel's autopsy of Miriam. He sees Miriam as a human being, not simply a lab rat. However, I think half of his anger towards Rachel is due to her going behind his back, not due to her “encouraging” Miriam to die.

I forgot, again, that Rachel and Cosima are played by the same person.

I am super impressed that Rachel managed to text while looking with one eye. Anyone who's received text messages from me can attest to the numbers of typos I make while looking at my phone with both eyes.

Speaking of eyes, I couldn't watch. Eyeball horror skeeves me out more than anything.

I have questions

Did Rachel believe PT’s story about his age and background? She’s pretty blasé when Sarah emails her that obit.

What is keeping Rachel's top up? I have so many questions about shirts/ dresses like this. As always, women’s fashion confuses me.

Rachel Duncan went to summer camp?!?! And had a friend!?! I need more information about this!

Were the friendship bracelet and questions about Rachel really all Kira's idea / natural personality? Did she intuit that Rachel was a good person inside? Or was it part of the hustle?

What is the issue, exactly, with Charlotte's leg? We see her on the bed with seem to be crossed legs, her brace on the bed beside her.

What the fuck happened with the revolt on the island last episode?

Why do the Castor boys all have distinct last names?

Do the Neolution symbles have meaning?

Did Coady leave Rachel's chart up on the computer on purpose? Did she want Rachel to see it?

In what room did Rachel perform that autopsy of Miriam?

So PT can hear everything too? Does the eye have a receiver, or has he just tapped her phone?

I would've liked to have seen

An entire episode devoted to Cosima and Charlotte escaping on a boat, with just a map and compass, and then sending the boat back out onto the water and making their way from the shore to the Rabbit Hole. I like to think that maybe they stopped somewhere for donuts on way back.

#gag or throttle #OB rewatch #OB season 5 #Tatiana Maslany

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merryfortune · 6 years

Note

Thanks for your Spectre HC you just posted, I love reading people's thoughts on him! Do you have any other thoughts about his character?

I have a lot of thoughts, actually. here are my other Spectre metas that you might be interested in (earth ignis!Spectre) and (water ignis!Spectre)

And I’ve also got a lot of unpublished fics involving him. Some of these are unpublished because its not the right time (stupid rare pair week being in December and not now) and others are unpublished because they’re unfinished (more earth ignis!Spectre and some naughty stuff)

my main philosophy with characterising Spectre, and I admittedly have a lot to perfect, comes from reading Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro and that is, Spectre is the inverse of the titular character. He is Neuro, if Neuro was a masochist.

also, i’m a huge revspec shipper so revspec is implied below frequently, I am also intrigued by polyamorous shipping with him and all the lost kids because i feel like its inevitable (like in a5 with the yu-boys and b-girls, its a similar sort of thing. lost kids squad need to bond ok).

but i do dislike some ships involving him (him and pl.aymaker as well as him and sou.lburner but the former is slightly bettered by a threesome solution involving revolver) and then I loathe some ships involving him (him and bl.ue an.gel)

So here is like the comprehensive list of things I think about him either in general or in tandem with other characters

fluffy/general

The best art tropes are when he’s portrayed with long hair (like waist length) or with earrings (specifically Ryoken’s)

he is a huge green thumb; his room is just overflowing with plants. that being said, it is rather messy because he absolutely can’t prune to the level that is needed

he likes classical musical and instrumental covers of heavy metal music best

of the lost children, i think he was the eldest. looking at how yusaku and takeru are portrayed as children, spectre looks closer to how ryoken was portrayed. so i think he was 8 at the time of the incident; not to mention, when he first appeared, I thought he was 20+

loves androgynous fashion and is open to dressing femininely but chooses not to because he’s worried it looks unprofessional

he makes the best teas and cakes. he also cooks a lot and is very good at it. he’s very, very domestic in general.

i love… precocious kid Spectre and dumb childhood friends to lovers tropes like “I’m going to be the one who marries you when we grow up” and pinkie promises type thing (though, if spectre broke a pinkie promise, i’m certain he’d break his pinkie finger too)

he’s also quite affectionate due to being touch starved which is really at odds with the fact that he hates people and he wants to maintain a level of professionalism with the one person he does (or had a history of) want to be affectionate with

spectre has a photographic memory and remembers every single detail of every single day, however, he is (more or less) lying about remembering those things from infancy; those’re coping daydreams. they did happen/similar things happened but he’s dreamt up most the details

angsty

He needs a therapist really, really badly and I’m of the hopeful belief that he will eventually get the opportunity to work through his issues in a professional environment

he often wonders how different his life may have been had he been born either a) a girl or b) a more ‘attractive’ child.

Dr Kogami would not approve of Spectre having romantic feelings for his son

Spectre had so many mixed feelings about the death of Dr Kogami

the Kogami family situation is so fucked from this perspective because Ryoken is so loyal and his father is Like That

I think there was at least one couple who attempted to get to know Spectre; maybe he was the most physically similar child to them or they were intrigued by how intelligent he was and he probably scarred them for life.

other

Spectre doesn’t wear a mask. All the other members of Hanoi wear masks but Spectre doesn’t. I still don’t quite know what to make of this but it does, I think, speak to how low he might perceive himself since he is so subservient to The Cause

I really hope he gets a re-design. I think, other than Ryoken, he is probably the most pressing character who needs a redemption arc. after all, he is a Lost Child. but also because he has a kinda boring design?? like, it isn’t as eye catching as the others, you know?

related to the one above, I think that if any character gets a more permanent death, especially of the lost kids, it’s Spectre with his head closest to the chopping block unless he gets redeemed - unless death is redeeming but fingers crossed he’s still alive by the final episode otherwise I might go into some hardcore denial

also ya girl is a dumbass because she incorrectly thought that Spectre and Go’s orphanage was the same one but no, they’re different places altogether lol

his English VA is spot the fuck on. I really, really enjoy his dubbed voice

I am certain that Spectre will recruit his Ignis and he won’t kill it. I think his Ignis is Earth but I kind of really want it to be Aqua too purely because mixed gender Ignis/Origin pairs intrigue me and the fact that the silhouette of the girl from the lost incident is shown having twin tails ending up with Earth is hilarious

I hope we get more Spectre backstory because its one of my favourites in all of yugioh tbh because it’s just so balls to the walls with W H A T

i’d love to write more gen fic of him but he just pushes the right effing buttons for me so nsfw under the cut jsyk

smutty

bondage, collars & leashes, tentacles, dendrophilia, body worship (if he’s doing it to someone else), sadism/masochism play: all things he absolutely enjoys.

he’s probably down to try anything so long as it’s like hygienic or whatever

has accidentally (or not so accidentally) called his s/o mummy during sex

he is a VERSE. stop erasing his identity people. this man is a switch and proud

he’s one of those people who doesn’t talk about sex but you can absolutely tell from a mile or a million away what he is high key into and that is rather far from ‘vanilla’

his biggest kink is being loved and appreciated and making his s/o feel the same though, lbr

revspec smut fics i wanna write

bonus category because i wanna talk about the kinky things i wanna write involving him

dungeons and dragons inspired au where he’s a dryad and instead of having conventional genitalia, he has a flower Ryoken can penetrate but there are also tentacles and a lot of nectar which kinda acts like nice tasting cum and aphrodisiacs are a Thing too

post-canon or mundane au fic where he and rev more or less get married, Spectre brings the wedding bouquet into the bedroom and either a) puts on a ‘show’ for Ryoken involving it or b) Spectre takes it up the ass from Ryoken whilst masturbating/humping it

another dnd/fantasy world au with dragon!Revolver and human sacrifice!Spectre. you can probably tell where that’s going. Spectre gets devoured in ways he hadn’t expected :eyes:

ok this fic won’t ever happen but it still came to me in a dark, dark time: post canon fic where he and rev have outdoor sex in the presence of Spectre’s tree mother;

either a fic where ryoken threesomes with irl!spectre and vrains!spectre or spectre foursomes with irl!ryoken, s1!revolver, and s2!revolver because I’m a slut for surreal sex like that

i feel like i’m forgetting something bUT YEAH

#yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #spectre (vrains)#dendrophile husband #random asks #he's such a freudian character #i love him #and the interpretation i have of him #is good projection fodder; i won't lie #i hope you wanted everything because that's what you got #the only thing you didn't get were the plots of fics i wanna write involving spectre #nightspacek

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smartlions · 6 years

Text

ghostttrain replied to your post: I think it's such bs that the cr cast is grieving...

Ok cool you’re totally allowed to have an opinion but mechanically, it totally doesn’t work! By the time they’d be at a high enough level to raise after such a long time Molly would be fucking useless. A dead Molly is not going to level with them, so a lvl15+ M9 reviving a lvl5 Molly means he would just die again. And then you’d all be sad again! And yelling about how “unfair” the cast is for playing a game according to the rules is ridiculous.

so. I’m going to have to disagree with you on a few points here, though in the tone of your reply i doubt you’re actually open to discussion. you just want to be right and have the final say.

first of all, i am not yelling. the anon who sent the ask to me obviously came to my inbox to vent and while the base sentiment I agree with, I don’t think that the cast is acting unreasonably. considering the place that the story is at right now, they definitely cannot do anything about the Molly situation, at all. That’s fine, I’ve accepted that--they don’t have enough money to pay for a resurrection, they don’t know the spells themselves, so you’re right, they’re shit out of luck. But that’s not really relevant to the point you’re making that really irks me.

Honestly, this is the thing that bothers me the most about the entirety of people watching critical role: this argument of “playing according to the rules.” Because here’s the thing--Dungeons and Dragons has a rule book, yeah, but those rules that it lists? Those are not hard and fast. They are not set in stone. That’s why there have been FIVE editions of the rules. Because of how the game has evolved over time itself. but that’s beside the point!! Those rules are a guideline! They’re there to suggest ways for things to work!

I’ve been playing DnD myself for years. There is absolutely not a single DM I know who actually plays exactly to the rules. Every DM plays differently, as well. Situations call for the rules to be broken. Story calls for them to be bent. Homebrew rules exist as spinoffs of the original rules and are Frankenstein mash-ups of different editions, systems, personal experiences--the rules in DnD aren’t really real, and I’m sorry to say it so plainly. You can do whatever you want.

There are a number of times in critical role in particular that Matt cites that he’s using his own Homebrewed world. in an incredibly simple example of this, if the critrole game were to follow the rules to a T, Jester’s mum wouldn’t be a tiefling. And that seems silly, and trivial. But we’re talking about following the rules exactly here, aren’t we? And how often have we seen Matt criticized for not following the rules exactly as he tells his story? Pretty damn near every episode, I reckon someone takes up the mantel of thumbing through the player’s handbook to tell him how he’s wrong.

the long and short of what I’m getting at here is that the rules really really don’t fucking matter in Dungeons and Dragons. A lot of folks getting into it now are looking at the game through the lens of a video game: there are things you absolutely cannot do. But DnD was literally invented to allow freedom of storytelling, empower the DM and the players to make their own decisions for their game.

So yeah, if the cast decides not to rez Molly, i’ll be dissapointed. But I already am, so there’s not much to be lost in that. But. There’s no reason that in the very near future they wouldn’t be able to rez him by some means. He could come back as an antagonist! Or be wandering around. But who knows!! I have no idea, because I’m not Matt, or any of the other cast members!! There’s only one way to find out what happens, which I will reiterate, WAS THE POINT I GOT AT IN THE END OF MY ORIGINAL RESPONSE. I’m willing to wait and see.

as a sidebar: there is noting inherently wrong with playing a game exactly to the rules as they are printed in the book. but a good DM knows when its time to follow the rules (as Matt did when Molly died originally) and when it isn’t (like, there are too many examples with the mighty nein alone to list in this already super long post). the most important thing is that you tell a story that your friends are having fun with--and that’s my two cents and DMing advice of the day

#source ive been playing dnd since i was 12 years old #wahtever #kat babbles

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beowulfs-booty-call · 6 years

Text

Honestly not gonna lie

But with S7 along the way with Voltron I'm going to need some things cleared up:

First up Krolia is there a Galran courting mannerisms because girl I need to know how Texas Kogane / Keith's dad power bottomed the most powerful top in the galra empire

Second, Shiro and Keith have some... Tension they're gonna have to talk about. Did Shiro hear everything? Did he know???

"We're going home" Excuse me Keith is the shack still an option? I need to know if Shiro is getting back dad's jacket lol

PLEASE TAKE ROMELLE WITH YOU OR LET HER ESTABLISH RAPPORT WITH ALLURA AS HER SECOND IN COMMAND (Or... Girlfriends. She's not her cousin here and they have apparently no relations whatsoever? But eh, that's nothing to be major anyway, she just deserves so much!)

Where is my girl Shay where is she I know we are heading to earth but I have not seen balmera friend

Hunk finally proved his Galran philosophy, now we must have him as thE NEW TRAINER RIGHT? I need those new recruits absolutely fawning over him! At least..! C'mon he's a wonderful guy!

Please let us see Pidge's mom and see her get some closure now that the family is finally okay!

Space wolf needs a nAME

I NEED TO KNOW

How is Honerva? She seems to have blended with Haggar but is "aware" of how they are separate entities, but her maternal instincts lead me to believe she's going to reach out looking for Lotor even though she knows and respects that he doesn't really WANT her relationship with him to be anything more than... Nothing.

Okay so Shiro, Keith, again... Lots of stuff to go over here. I ship sheith and all but like... Don't forget the aftermath, Keith got a scar, Shiro lost his arm. I'm waiting for the moment when they get down time to just, let themselves get up to speed

Rest for paladins??? Beach episode??? Shiro in speedo episode???

Space DND with Lance as dungeon master

EVERYONE'S FAMILIES I WANNA SEE EM

Krolia attempting human cuisine and acting like those gagging cats?

Is Space wolf named Yorik

That's a good name

Will romelle finally be Usagi like I keep thinking she is. Will she finally get Tuxedo Lion?

This is an insignificant detail but the way Shiro said "Teludav" in that one episode they were trying to fix it was way deeper and more accented than I thought and boy oh boy I would love Shiro pretending to have an accent.

Did the Garrison have a military montage with Shiro as the perfect soldier? AKA: Were I and the rest of the fans the muses singing Shiro to Hero? Josh Keaton was Herc's singing voice so...

I keep saying this but more Keith and Shiro stuff honestly. Like... They're obviously so close to each other I kinda just want them to just, you know, open up, and then have this season let the other paladins open up which each other. I.E, no more "Hunk, Lance, Pidge you guys split up and go to the basement of Zarkon's mansion, me and Keith will go upstairs!" Like mix it up and let's see more interactions with differing characters like they did with Lance and Shiro in the other season.

Basically: More paladin bonding and more bonding with Corran pleaseeee?

Can we get Shiro an Altean arm? Can we please?

Will Krolia be afraid of human contact? Will humans attempt to call her a distrustful alien and try to harm her? Better not and I hope they won't.

Krolia having to go through many... Many human and earthly traditions and trying to wrap her head around it: But she knows it's for Keith and so she does it anyway despite how hard it is? I would like that but I mean? Keith and Krolia interacting is all I need??? Mom and son??? Son and mom???

Love Kogane and son????

Takashi Shirogane, master of dad comedy?

Alurra getting to show off her kick-ass martial arts moves because the Lotor suplex made me want more.

God if this season is about earth does that mean humans will likely be the villains here? Or will enemies attack the earth first? Excited to see!

THE SHIP, LEST WE FORGET, WOE IS UNTO ME

Corran our Man, true leader we Stan

Shiro in a paladin outfit again please I loved it in the DnD episode where he was so... Bishoujo it was AMAZING

Can Matt show up more? We barely saw him much in the season finales...

Also, how did Keith show up at the Garrison anyway? It's implied as the reason was Shiro, but, how? What happened after his dad passed away? Did he just... Stay in his shack until Shiro came along and showed him the Garrison might be a better way to spend / place his time?

Hot tutor Takashi Shirogane, licensed to stutter while he teaches you about Aerodynamics because hes so patient and focused™ (We all know everyone was fawning over him. Just please say it was so. Say he was a giant nerd and gets flustered easily before Kerberos.)

THE SOUNDS OF A LASER BEAM, DISCUSS.

Can the green lion make solar energy systems a thing? Can that even be a thing? Basically: What really are the Lions anyway? Will we question that more?

SUMMER VACATION EPISODES WE NEED EVERYONE AT THE BEACH STAT PLZ

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #takashi shirogane #Keith Kogane #Krolia #Romelle #allura #pidge gunderson #hunk garrett #lance mcclain #corran #honerva #VLD

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agentaw · 6 years

Text

Detroit: Become Human - Funny story...

Okay... so Story Time because my friends pointed this out and it’s been fucking with me ever since.

This is the story of how I kinda...sorta wrote/ predicted parts of DBH about...2 years ago. Just hear me out...okay?

So this all started similarly to how DBH started, with that dope-ass demo back in 2012. My 15 year old self became enthralled in it, much like I am now enthralled in the full game. I’ve always loved story telling and had a sort of soft spot for digital modelling. So that demo was a masterpiece to me, it had a great concept and beautiful design. It was a short obsession but it had an impact.

And that was the last piece of news I’d ever hear about it until a month after they released the full game. I remember hearing some rumour that they weren’t gonna make it a full game or something and left it at that. I didn’t hear anything about it’s coverage at E3 because while I like video games, I become absorbed in different obsessions from time to time.

And two years ago I was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, the thought of creating a whole world and having others enter it was fascinating. And while I tried to create worlds from scratch, I had a problem.

I had never been too interested in Fantasy things, I liked fantasy characters but tended to focus on too much of the political aspect of fantasy worlds and not the fun stuff like slaying dragons and stuff.

The return of an old obsession began to try and take my focus off of DnD but I wasn’t ready to let it go yet.

So I merged them, DnD didn’t have to be fantasy, I didn’t have to invent a world from scratch and luckily my old obsession had a world pre-designed. Marvel, specifically MCU had a treasure trove of lore and I could take a number of rules from DnD 5e and tweak them to suit the change in genre.

So I started off with a one shot campaign, set in a HYDRA base. My three player characters would be playing themselves and making decision based on how they’d react. They ‘woke up’ in a white plastic robot body. Singular, all three were in the same body, looking through the same eyes and rolling for control over said robot body. It was entertaining to watch them figure out what they hell was going on organically. They quickly met the first NPC an old doctor/sciencist who was a very nervous person. He explained that they’d all been loaded into the same body by accident and that he was just testing out that his creation (the body itself) was working correctly. So my players decided to answer the jumpy doctors questions and let one of them take control as the doctor got them to walk around while still connected to the computer around them by a bunch of wires connected to the back of their neck. The doctor left the room briefly (to report to his superiors) before returning and calmly explaining that he’d need to shut them down before making the rest of the bodies. Yes, this was heavily inspired by the demo but the players didn’t notice or didn’t comment on it at the time. And they genuinely really like the one-shot. So, I started writing more, growing the campaign and expanding my list of NPCs.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “wow...you ripped off the demo and think that counts as writing a whole game” but I never said I wrote the whole story, that would be mental. But as both me and my players have pointed out, there is a large number of similarities which is spooky because as i already stated I didn’t know anything about DBH until almost a month after it’s full release.

The first and most profound is Amanda. Or my Amanda, who’s called Ruth LaRue. Dr. Ruth LaRue, the trio’s psychologist/co-creator who acts pleasant (too pleasant) towards them...unless they disobey or resist their training to become Hydra Assets. One of my players is rebellious and LaRue has tried to manipulate and coldly threatened him as a result. While another obeys and gets praise and rewards as a result. Also she looks like Amanda (a character i didn’t even know existed), I originally described her as the same race, hairstyle, though slightly younger. And then I drew her (poorly) for my players to get a better idea of how she looked and Jesus Christ they look the same.

Another is the fact that I have three player characters. There was a possible fourth player but work and life made it difficult for her to be a part of the game. Also my players are two boys and one girl. And while that’s all freaky, their characters appearances/designs are extra weird. Originally, after all getting their own bodies, they all had white plastic robot bodies, all male design (which female player wasn’t happy about because she missed her boobs). The only way to tell them apart was voice and the nervous doctor had given them different coloured eyes. Creating robots came with the challenge of figuring out how their bodies worked (one player was particularly interested in this). Once again inspiration partly came from the Kara demo, the robots are a water (blue liquid) based system, a pump (heart) transports water, which is collect in bags (lungs) through the robots absorbing moisture in the air (through breathing), around the machine frame (body). The water has two purposes, to thinly coat the white plastic casing (skin), which allowed the robot to feel pressure but not texture and also to keep the pump valves going, which creates the energy the machines (players) are run on. After learning that the white plastic version could be easily broken during training, the nervous doctor created a second batch of models, this time made out of metal (female asked for a female body and therefore the doctor gave her a large dent in her chest plate, she was pleased). They then get a new model, ones that are designed to blend in with humans. And this is where this section gets super freaky. The player got no say in how they looked because in game they wouldn’t.

The female is the shortest model as well as they palest model with loads of freckles, the similarities with Kara stop there but the female player has been gifted a female kitten (thankfully named Cookie, not Alice) as the reward and is quite paranoid about it being taken off her or harmed (calm down, I haven’t hurt the cat...yet).

One of the males is only slightly more tanned than the female with considerably less freckles and markings. He’s the tallest and the player has been surprisingly obedient, only "failing” when he doesn’t understand what’s happen or doesn’t think something will benefit HYDRA. Because of this he’s been promoted to team leader by the powers that be. He’s logical and is usually thinking about training and what’s going on in the NPCs’ heads.

Lastly we have the second male who looks southern European (Spain, Italy, Greece and could probably pass as Mexican but the story is set in central Europe) so a different ethnicity/race to the other two. This is the rebellious player who generally plays pranks, cracks jokes and says “fuck you” to authority. Like I said before as a result, he tends to be the one looked down on and oppressed by the powers that be. He generally has a very clear line which he won’t cross no matter what and is willing to stand up if he views something as drastically wrong (refused to hurt his friends or pick up a gun).

Also when asked what they wanted to be called (I.e What’s your name?) The players decided to to sick to what the nice nervous doctor had designated them, i.e the colours of their eyes. Rebellious is Red. Logical is Blue and Female is Purple (name later changed to Violet).

Next is three more NPCs, who have enough in common with the DBH characters to mess with me.

The nervous doctor, Dr. Thomas Thornley, while having a completely different personality, has formed relationships like Hank. A number of the players refer to him as “Daddy Thornley”, not to his face but when talking to each other in game. And most disturbingly the rebellious player has implied on several occasions that he “ships” the logical male player with father-figure Thornley, jokingly of course. And while in the beginning Thornley may have viewed the robots as a project or experiment, he now appears quite protective and fond of them. Even displaying discomfort when one is broken or completely destroyed.

Their combat and gun trainer, Agent Woodrow who is ex-military and treats the robots exactly like you’d expect he would, like machines. He could either be Gavin or Captain Allen but either way he’s a genuine aggressor and dislikes/hates the robots.

The Head of Hydra, Director Malachi Storm who has an air of mystery around him and commands any room he enters. He’s considerable less creepy than Kamski but is an “all-knowing, all-powerful” character. Also I guess I’m technically also Elijah Kamski (a.k.a GOD) and my players pointed out that i have his sadistic, power hungry play style (thanks, guys).

Lastly is a few game mechanics and events i put in the game. The players have always been able to telepathically talk to one another, they can also transfer images to each other. If broken beyond repair (i.e Killed) they now get automatically rebuilt, similar to Connor. I made LaRue give them a morality test which was mostly the “Track dilemma” which is similar to both the driver-less car AIs and the Kamski test. I actually did the motherfucking Kamski test with one or two of my players (but with humans instead of androids lol). Also the players believe they’re alive (which technically they are). They’ve literally been give zero context as to how they are in robot bodies in the MCU, specifically they’re last memories before the start of the game are of going to sleep in their beds in the real world. They are literally three robots walking around stating that they’re alive.

And yes, I realise that Cage took shit from other movies but it have seen any of those movies so...:P

If I looked hard I could probably find more scary comparisons but a) I don’t particularly want to show all my cards, in case my players read this post, and b) I appear to have written a fucking TED talk out of what was supposed to be a short funny story.

#dbh #dbh connor #dbh kara #dbh markus #dbh hank #dbh amanda #dbh kamski #dbh everyone #custom dnd #dnd shenanigans #story time #freaky #what is life #thanks for coming to my ted talk

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