#bc another player is going to be playing a different character for a bit so their current is heading out on a holy mission

[afriendofmara]

Have we as a society figured out a way to tell your friend that you cried over something their dnd character is doing without making the friend feel guilty. Have we sourced that anywhere.

[gryffintheparrotcat]

Things in Veilguard that have annoyed me so far, in no particular order:

(I'm about to recruit Emmerich and Taash, if you're not there yet consider yourself formally spoiler warned)

1. Solas hates bloodmages now, this makes no sense.

2. Bioware still doesn't know people darker than #8D5840 exist. This is the fourth game, you'd think the devs learned this by now.

Player characters pass the paperbag test, that is not a good thing. I swear I've seen npcs with darker skintones but Rook can't have a slice?

3. Dalishs are just chill with their gods being evil and real and instead of addressing all that we just go and watch another elven community get massmurdered.

4. We're in The Elvenenslaver And Qunarihater City™ and there are 0 slaves and everyone is friendly to my elven and my qunari Rooks.

4. My Rook having an Elgar'nan vallaslin has not been acknowledged even once.

5. The qunari are going against Qun orders and are just cartoonishly evil now. Neither of these things align with previously established lore.

6. The Crows are all a big happy family. Sorry Zevran.

7. The Grey Wardens are incompetent. Again.

8. My Rook being called kid by Varric and others, that is a grown adult man.

9. Being called Rook. I didn't like that title much to begin with but the fact that it's not even earned this time makes it even more annoying. He has a last name!

10. The companions doing jackshit in combat. I'm a mage not a tank, can someone else kite the enemy?? I miss the pause button

11. The controls being different again. Why is spacebar a whole different button in each dragonage game? Were these ever made while considering people who may play one after the other?

12. Harding not being a romance option for the inquisitor. I never played Viviennes semiromance (i'm always siding with the rebelmages so we haven't exactly been getting along) so I can't say how deep that is and if she should be an option, but i will note that she is also not an option.

13. Harding saying she wasn't in the inner circle of the inquisitor. Harding darling I promise you inquistior adaar loved you dearly. I'm pretty sure I talked to Harding far more than I talked to Varric in Inquisiton.

14. "The previous games aren't relevant because they play in the South" WHAT ABOUT KIRKWALL? What about Navarran Princess Cassandra?? Dorian is here why not the others?? Not even mentioned once?? Cmon.

15. No proper wrinkle slider in character creator... again.

16. Not being able to resize eyes in character creator. Why??

17. No slider for the stomach to stick out. A for effort on even adding bodysliders to begin with but I was hoping for proper tummys for once.

18. The dialogue wheel. And more specifically how little origin/class specific options there are as a mage elf with a vallaslin specifically. And not being able to be mean, just a bit blunt. Meeting Davrin and him being a bit prickly at first was a breath of fresh air ngl. I don't need evil alright, I get it I'm playing a hero now. But let my Rook be a bit spicy sometimes. Neve complains about a Crow prioritising Treviso over Minrathos? Let Rook be an ass about it.

19. I brought Neve & Mage Rook to recruit "The Mage Killer" and neither have voiced any discomfort about that? Or acknowledged that at all? Neve has some party banner with Lucanis but even there it's more of a L "Are you scared bc of the title?" N "lol nope".

Hopefully I won't have to make a pt2 any time soon.

[amethystsoda]

What is time princess about? I've been seeing it on the Play store but I have no idea if to download it

hello anon! I'd be glad to give you an overview and some tips for starting out! :D

Time Princess is what happens when all your childhood dreams of getting transported into a book come true.

At heart, the game is a set of continual isekai stories, transporting you to different "books" with the help of a magic desk and giving you "create your own adventure" options to see how the story plays out.

Your fairy companion Isabelle helps you learn the ropes, and you have to go through one mandatory book (a Marie Antoinette themed story) to get access to your room and the larger bookstore

(I'll put the rest under a read more bc it'll get long)

For each chapter you complete, you earn 1-3 tickets. With these tickets, you can unlock new books! The more you play, the more you earn towards new stories.

The game currency works on a coins and diamonds system--you don't NEED to purchase anything to play (though it may make the game a bit easier in some areas)

You get free stamina to access books and crafting materials every 11 hours and the Time Princess discord server has codes pretty frequently for diamonds, tickets, etc.

I personally splurge for the Fashion Booster every 2 months because I know it helps support the game and the artists! I try not to use real money on the random outfits unless I REALLY want one bc it can get addictive.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that, as you play, you unlock "album" art (full color illustrations that tie into the story!!)

One other thing I love is that the game is very targeted towards Bisexuals, as there are TONS of queer wlw story lines (though because of the games' popularity overseas and censorship, often gets called "best friends" etc)

Another fun part is the variety of stories!!!! There's art history!! There's stuff based on old fairy tales like Swan Lake. There's fantasy stories like The Apothecary. There's a Pirate story!!! There's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stories. There's a western cowboy story! There's futuristic scifi!!! There's a victorian flavored horror story!!!

Most, if not all, of the stories are with adult characters and have adult storylines!! (the books will also give you a content warning before downloading)

On top of the stories, there's plenty of other fun aspects--mini games, fashion challenges, checking in with your companions every day to earn crafting materials, joining a society, playing events, and just playing dress up with your outfits and taking pics for fun.

The discord community is great too, and there's often interview nights with some of the book authors and giveaways of materials and prizes (I actually ended up winning a plushie Lafayette one time!)

The discord server also has game guides and walkthroughs for everything!

Everyone who plays the game gets really into the stories and characters, so even though the tumblr presence of fans may be smaller, you have an immediate bond with the other players!!!

They've also done some really cool collabs with museums like The Louvre and the Flamenco museum. You get to earn clothes from famous paintings or historical ones during that event period!

Finally, don't forget to save your big clothing crafting for Saturdays! You get double the materials!!

[singularsoldier]

Why Scout and Miss Pauling are a terrible ship

Alrighty, if you’ve been into tf2 for awhile, you’ve definitely seen this pairing pop up. This whole thing is probably gonna sound like I’m beating a dead horse, but I wanna give my full two cents on these two using canon material (comics, game, and Expiration Date). Before I dive in, my stance on these two is 100% never gonna change. Save the counterarguments and keep scrolling

VOICE LINES

In the game, Miss Pauling has a lot of voice lines both towards the individual mercs and to the player themselves. However, how she speaks to Scout vs everyone else is drastically different. Let’s look at Scout’s when given a contract:

Starting off, Miss Pauling is…pretty rude towards him. “Wrap up whatever you’re bragging about” “I’m assuming you’re talking right now. Please stop” and others. It’s evident that she doesn’t want to hear a word out of his mouth. As we all know, Scout talk A LOT, but if she liked him to any degree, she wouldn’t be this mean towards him. If anyone even tries to say “well maybe she’s mean bc she likes him” no. Sorry, not how healthy relationships work. If anything, that further proves my point on why they’re terrible together.

Now, lets look at other lines (I’m too lazy to add everyone):

See the major difference? Miss Pauling isn’t mean, rude, or dismissive. She’s friendly! She’s joking! Lines like these show that Miss Pauling considers Engie (and everyone else) her friends. Scout gets nothing like that.

By the way, Miss Pauling canonically hangs out with the mercs (and Saxton’s assistant Bidwell). When you look at her contract lines with everyone else (including Bidwell), she’s cheerful and having fun. Scout on the other hand? She’s a frustrated dungeon master because Scout wants to make a muscle wizard and won’t stop flexing.

My experience with dungeon masters has been “fuck it, be whoever you want”. I had the dumbest, weirdest characters, and the DMs didn’t care! That’s the fun of d&d (g&g for tf2). Miss Pauling not letting Scout have a buff wizard, and Scout not even trying to follow the rules, shows how incompatible they are. Neither of them are willing to make a compromise especially because of the fact that Scout’s a pretty narcissistic guy. He’s a pathological liar in the comics (which are coming up) to impress people. Who wants to date that?

Onto the congratulations:

Pretty standard, right? Nothing extraordinary or, honestly, anything outside of standard professionalism. Scout gets a quick thanks and the line goes dead.

For anyone else:

The other classes get something Scout doesn’t: enthusiasm. Miss Pauling is beaming in her lines for the other classes. Also, Scout has the least amount of congratulations (only 5) out of everyone. Miss Pauling also says to a few other classes “i owe you one” and “i knew you could do it”. Again, ten times friendlier than how she speaks to Scout. If she liked Scout, she would have similar lines or ones that are even a bit flirtatious. Nope. Nada.

COMICS

If you’ve only played the game, you’re missing out! The comics are great (and unfinished), and they also reveal more of how Miss Pauling engages with Scout. For example:

Immediately stopping him from talking again, and straight up letting him get hanged. If that was my crush, I would, you know, not let go so they don’t die. She has very little regard for Scout outside of “annoying guy I work with”. Hell, she canonically spends more time with virtually every other class (aside from Engie obviously and maybe Medic) than with Scout. Another thing in the comics:

This right here. Scout has been working for Mann Co. for six years (meaning he joined at 21). In six years, Miss Pauling has made zero indication of liking him. What person goes six years without even trying to flirt or even hit on with their crush? Especially when Scout is VERY LOUD about his infatuation. Even the biggest introvert would jump on that free chance.

Oh, another thing! When Scout tries to get some alone time with her (while fighting for their lives) she turns him down. Pauling would rather watch Soldier and Zhanna fight naked while cover in honey than go with Scout (who wouldn’t?) which, when you think about it, caused Scout’s death because he faced the Spy bots alone. Sorry Scout, ass and tiddies are more important than you!

EXPIRATION DATE

The long adored sfm video. While the video pretty much cements Scout’s feelings for Miss Pauling, it also cements her lack thereof. Lets dig in:

First off, we know that Scout only had the bravery to ask her out because he thought he was dying. How does he invite her? By setting off the briefcase alarm!

As Miss Pauling says, it’s “the one button he’s never supposed to touch”. Not only that, but it wasted her only day off of the year. A fact she is visibly pissed about and refers to a couple times. Scout was pretty selfish to do that. Another thing, Pauling repeatedly refers to the “date” as a prom. (“Are you guys having a prom?”) She literally had no idea Scout was asking her out. Why? Lets face it, she would say no or dismiss him yet again. Even Scout knew that, so he faked a literal emergency that forces her to visit. Once again, lying to try and impress her with a date.

So, Scout comes up with an elaborately self centered plan to get Miss Pauling to come to the base, and when she wants to storm out, he desperately tries to save face with dinner. Cue our bread monster fight where Scout confesses that he likes her. And her response? Nothing. Throughout the whole sequence, Miss Pauling doesn’t answer or even respond to a word he says. You’d think if you were in mortal danger, you’d tell your crush “i love you! Now help me kill this bread monster”

At the end, Scout says “so its a date?” To which our beloved Miss Pauling says, “well, no. You did waste my one day off”. Not only that, but Pauling even offers for him to join her on missions, which he instantly says no to. Idk about you, but I’d bury bodies with my crush any day of the week. The fact that Scout was offered multiple chances to even be near Miss Pauling willingly, yet turned them down, is pretty telling of his character.

Scout wants a date, yes, but how he envisions it. Typical candles and pretty lights with a pretty girl. Meaning, what he enjoys and what he sees their romantic life being like. Not shaving off fingerprints or hiding bodies. Things Miss Pauling does literally 24/7. You know, things she likes doing. Its evident in her vacation lines that she wants to go back to work and that she isn’t a fan of vacations. Once again, Scout’s selfishness stops him from getting anywhere near the girl he’s obsessed with.

So, we have: Pauling doesn’t want to hear Scout’s voice, she’s barely cordial with him, she sees Scout as at best a coworker, and she was, indirectly, responsible for his death. (Note: not making this into A Point, its just fucking hilarious).

All in all, these two have no chemistry. Scout has a six year long obsession, and Miss Pauling has a six year long distain for our quirked up white boy. Their whole dynamic is the age old “dumb jackass loser wants pretty girl” and lets face it, we’re sick of that. Scout couldn’t even come up with a reasonable, honest way to see Miss Pauling in person. He selfishly wanted a date (that fits his myopic view of what dating Miss Pauling looks like) and didn’t care how he got it.

I’m not trying to attack anyone with this post. Its a ship analysis, and I hope it at least points out the major flaws between them. Unless Scout changes his entire personality (he won’t), Miss Pauling is never gonna like him.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if i incorporate an old friend’s oc into my oc’s backstory?

hi!! this is a more lighthearted AITA- i’m basically just gauging proper oc etiquette bc i have no clue if this would be rude.

i (18X) am a d&d player. have been for a long time! i started at 13, with a huge group of my friends. we didn’t get to play much bc there were so many of us, but it was a blast and i ended up loving my character, natphi (a classic tiefling bard) so much that she eventually became a standalone oc for me.

in-game, natphi entered the party alongside her friend, luca (a half-elf ranger), who was played by another one of my friends (18 or 19 X now, 13 at the time). we were baby gays, and natphi and luca had a really fun sort of will-they-or-won’t-they wlw best-friendship. it was a great dynamic, and we both loved drawing them together and discussing them and even rping how they first met over discord. it was a blast, and eventually natphi’s friendship with and pining over luca became an important part of her story and character to me.

however, by this point luca’s player and i were going to different schools and had dropped several friends in that group due to standard teen drama, so it was hard to keep in touch. we stopped talking a couple of years ago with no hard feelings- just a classic drifting apart over time.

natphi is still one of my most beloved ocs (we’ve been through a lot together) and i still daydream about her friendship and such with luca. it gets difficult when i want to draw her in any meaningful way, though. luca isn’t my character, and if i drew her and posted it i would absolutely link back to her creator’s instagram, but it feels really odd to make and post art of the oc of someone you don’t talk to anymore. i can’t go and ask them if they mind, because once again, we haven’t spoken in years.

i’ve been chewing on this dilemma for a bit, but an idea came to me as i started preparing to make natphi a character sheet for a oneshot i’m doing soon: i could make natphi’s relationship with luca a part of her backstory and come up with some tragic separation of them. it would work great with natphi’s current backstory and deepen her character motivations, so there’s no problems there. however, i still feel really iffy using a now-stranger’s character with mine, even if i were to only refer to luca as more of a vague ghost than a full character. part of me feels like i’m “copying” her and just changing bits and pieces so she doesn’t look exactly the same. technically, nobody would actually be able to tell unless i told them, but i’d still feel like an ass for doing it if it’s “cheating,” for lack of a better word. however, i also know i’m a chronic overthinker, so i’m asking all of you instead: would i be TA for this??? i genuinely have no idea. thanks in advance for the input! ^^

What are these acronyms?

[brightest-stars-if]

if may i ask for one favor (that i ask with no sense of entitlement and that you may feel completely free to refuse), should you ever want to edit the demo:

i really love picking the culturally significant names you provided (Calista and Basil are my favorite, respectively). would it be possible to come up with one more cultural name but have it be unisex, and then have that one name be put in both the m!MC and f!MC name options?

overall, i think it could just be interesting to see whay a unisex name looks like from this world that is so heavily gendered. and i also think it could be of comfort to any players outside of the binary who, while willing to play a character within one of those said binaries, may feel a unisex name option of in-game cultural significance as a salve (i say that as a they/them who leans moreso towards one gender end of the spectrum than anything else)

but if you want to hear why i specifically ask for this indulgance, it is a bit convoluted. usually only come up with one MC per i.f. game, and i think it'd be really fun to have this "one MC" have an alternate universe as a male and as a female. and normally, if i felt that inkling, i would just fucking do it lmao BUT i usually also feel no connection or drive to pick one of the pre-suggested names. so then i just pick a unisex name that fits within the game in question and manually type it in per replay. BUT i so love when fantasy games (especially i.f. as i so rarely see it done) gift the player names that have a cultural significance to the world they are in. so i wanted to ask if that could be coded in for selfish reasons too (tho i do genuinely believe in the former reasonings as valid; i just also dont project my they/them gender identity into my MC within this game, so im personally not upset this world doesn't have a Genderless Child MC option. and a huge part of this is thanks to your well-polished craftsmanship in how one of its main focuses of this story seems to very well be, in fact, the arbitrary futility of the binary with characters assigned in these two (semi-)strict gender roles. so like. i am being selfish in this favor request being for indulging my interest in "play one MC but switch the genders and see how the story impacts this specific personality as things go on + haa a culturally significant in-universe unisex name", but yeah, also, i do think it could be a comfort to other fellow nonbinary people and i do think seeing how this heavily gendered fantasy world would construct/react to a unisex name would be fascinating from a world-building/character-reactive perspective. bc it doesnt seem unusex names are too common, apart from Lux themself's name. and as an example of a character-reactive perspective, i bet m!Lux was worried about [unisex named m!MC] being a possible girl until informed otherwise that [unisex named m!MC] was another boy. ans, in a world-building sense, i also wonder if Lux and [a unisex named MC] would be treated differently bc of the seeming unpopularity of unisex names; but Lux has the protection of their father as king, whereas [a unisex named MC] has, though many protections, less than Lux and may be more often given the proverbial "a boy named Sue"/"a girl named Freddie"/"the initial elusivity of a child named Sam" treatment of others' distaste/mocking of their name, especially if it is or is not a true 50♀️/50♂️ unisex name. tho, again, i am only asking for one unisex name and to have that one unisex name be in both m!MC and f!MC's name options, im just saying not all unisex names are regarded with the same reputations of "unisex". but if youd like to add multiple unisex names of varying "it's unisex but tends to more often be a girls's name/it's unisex but tends to more often by a boy's name/it's unisex and perfectly divided between both genders in popularity" i would never step in to stop you lol)

but yeah, again, no expectations of entitlement towards this and you have every right to refuse, as it is your game 🤷 i just thought "eh. worse that'll happen is a 'no' lmao so whats the harm in asking??"

regardless: thank you for reading this far, i know i rambled a bit towards the end there. im a name-nerd, and so i LOVE it when authors say "this pre-suggested name has meaning in-game 👀", and the differing reputations of unisex names being dependent got me excited lol but i digress. thanks for the excellently fun game!! have a great day! 💗💕

So I read through this, and then I thought about it. And I figured yeah, I absolutely don't mind including a gender-neutral name option for the MC!If it makes people feel more comfortable, I don't see why not. And it's just a good option to include regardless. It will appear in the naming options after chapter 2 is uploaded.

Regarding Lux's name, honestly them having the ONLY gender neutral name was not intentional. It's just that if I'd named then Lucius/Lucia, for example, then I would have had to just call them L, and the thought of that didn't appeal to me. And besides, the meaning of their name is an important connection to the game. So that was my reasoning for Lux's name.

Every other character I named was off of meanings I'd found, pure vibes, and/or both. So the lack of gender neutral names was not intended to create a social bias against them, it was just a coincidence.

For the gender-neutral name I'm adding, however, I'll probably add some flavor text. If you choose it, then the MC's namesake is a woman. And so reactions to the MC being named after her will, occasionally, vary due to that. So it's sort of "a boy named Sue" situation, but not exactly.

TL;DR: yes, I'll add at least one gender-neutral option.

[humorisstoredinthetits]

The Heathers+Veronica play D&D

What a surprise, another random AU that I came up with

So one day the gang is hanging out and JD mentions that he wants to play D&D with them and he thinks it would be fun

Everyone but Chandler is all for it while she, like usual, is being a bitch about it

'Its a nerd game and I'm not a nerd' and 'It sounds boring'

Eventually Mac uses her puppy-dog eyes which makes Chandler relent and agree to play the stupid nerd game

JD DMs while The Heathers, Veronica, Betty and Martha play

He's the kind of DM that goes all out, spending untold amounts of money on minis and other kinds of shit

Eventually the day arrives where they start playing

They enter the room and holy shit JD decked the place out

He put blackout curtains on all the windows and turned the lights off so the room is pitch black besides the candlelight of a chandelier he hung on the ceiling

He put a fancy looking blood red tablecloth over the table

At each seat there is a set of dice in each person's assigned color (The obvious for the Heathers and Veronica, Pink for Martha and Purple for Betty)

They aren't the cheap plastic ones no, they are the metal ones that are as sharp as a knife

JD himself is wearing a gray cloak that covers his face

They sit down and JD begins the campaign

The premise is simple, they are students at a magical academy where a series of murders has happened recently, and they have decided to take it upon themselves to investigate it

However, there is a twist

One of them is the murderer, and it is their job to make it to the end of the school year and graduate, thereby being able to flee the investigation and live freely

Of course, they don't know that the killer is one of them, except for the one who was assigned the role

He starts by going over each of the player's characters

Betty drew a picture of everyone's characters to get an idea of what they all look like and she shows off the picture when they introduce themselves

The Heathers are all named Hecate bc of course they had to have the same name in D&D too

There's Hecate Carnation, Hecate Dahlia, and Hecate Magnolia

(Their last names are all different kinds of flowers bc their actual name, Heather, is a type of flower so they thought it would fit)

HC is a Sorcerer who comes from a long line of powerful magic users and came to the academy like her parents and grandparents before her to hone her skills

She looks pretty much like what she looks like IRL and she acts like how she did in High School, acting superior to everyone bc she thinks she is

She thinks that solving this simple Murder Mystery case won't be a problem for someone as talented as her

So basically she's Claire from I'm In Love with the Villainess

HD is a Wizard (Or Witch ig, the class name is Wizard but she's a girl sooo) who came to the academy to learn the Wizarding arts from the talented professors the academy employs

HD also looks like IRL Duke, but much taller and with longer sleek hair compared to Duke's short curly hair

HD acts as the check to HC's id, being the ego and the one who can rationally look at a situation and make the best course of action from there

She's not very good with emotions, however, and can struggle to act appropriately in emotional situations

HM is a Druid who hopes to get some hands-on experience with the Druidic Work while studying

She is the superego to the other two's id and ego, the one who can look at a situation with both emotion and logic and determine the best course of action from there

She also looks generally like IRL Mac, but she has light brown hair compared to blonde and is a bit less muscular and more well endowed in certain areas

The Hecates joined the investigation as they are obviously the most capable of doing so, and as such they have a responsibility to be apart of it

Veronica is Vadina Siannodel, a High Elf Cleric

She picked Cleric bc she just knew that the Heathers were gonna do some dumbass shit and she was gonna need to bail them out with her healing

She is also the only one of them to pick a non human race

She joked Duke should pick a dwarf bc she's so short and Duke elbowed her in the stomach

She looks kinda like Frieren from that anime (She watched it with Duke around the time JD said he wanted to play so it influenced a lot of her character choices)

Vadina is a model student, the one who always aces her exams and does everything she can to help those at the academy to prove those who didn't want her there wrong

The academy is generally only open to humans and other races, especially half-elves and other mixed races, are looked down upon and by and large not accepted to it

But, because of Vadina's overwhelming academic talent she was admitted despite the prejudice at the academy

But with the murders occurring, many suspect the non-human students of being the murderer, especially Vadina, who many assume to be behind the attacks as an attempt to off her academic competition, and so she joined the investigation to prove her innocence

Martha is Megara Deepcrest, the Warlock, who made a deal with the demon Jami for power in exchange for the occasional sacrifice (animal, not human)

While everyone assumes that she is the one who did it, she knows that it wasn't her bc her patron desires the blood of fauna, not humanoids, and this school ain't big enough for two Warlocks

Everyone is just kinda stunned bc they assumed she would be a Druid or something but they did not expect Martha the Warlock who sacrifices animals in elaborate rituals every full moon to maintain her power

She looks nothing like Martha, she is a tall, lanky figure who wears a cloak which covers all but her hands, which reveal an elaborate tattoo on each palm and her fingers are covered with rings with unknown gemstones in the center

She is not in the uniform of the academy but all the professors are too scared of her to say anything

Finally Betty is Barnabas the Bard

Out of everyone Betty is taking this the least seriously, she heard the stereotype of bards seducing everyone and thought that was hilarious and decided to make her whole character around it

She put all of her stats into making sure that her seduction rolls would have the highest chance of being succesful

It kinda ruins the whole vibe JD had going on but whatever as long as she's happy

Her plan is to figure out who the murderer is then seduce them into not killing anymore

Once JD got all of their character descriptions he had to decide which of them is the murderer

He ruled out Martha immediately because it would be too obvious, he couldn't think of a motivation that would fit Betty's, and Veronica, while giving him a reason to pick her as the murderer, would probably have more fun trying to find them instead of being them

That left him with the Heathers, which works as they had created their characters together as a well-oiled machine, so by throwing a wrench into it he could make it more difficult

He settled on Mac bc he thought it would be unexpected, but then he realized that she is a terrible liar so he switched to Duke who agreed to be the murderer

Duke is smart enough to know how to cover her tracks and has that element of chaos that would make it more fun

HD's motivation is that the wizard track was overcrowded with students who weren't born with magical abilities and were forced to study, and it made it hard to stand out, so she eliminates other students, knowing that the school would turn their attention to the wizarding track, where she would be able to show them how talented she really is and hopefully be placed into higher-level classes

She also knows that even if the other three get suspicious, the other two Heathers would never suspect her and that infighting may allow her to get away with things

**Line break bc tumblr is dumblr**

So from there the campaign starts

They meet once a week, Wednesdays at 5:30 to 8:30 at JD's, Betty's and Martha's house in what became referred to as the D&D room

It starts with the group forming after the 3rd murder this month and an overview of all the evidence found so far

So far there had been 9 total murders over the school year

JD put a dossier on all of the students on the table and had all the players look over it

They quickly discovered that all 9 students had been in the Wizarding Track, but besides that they had little in common

They had a range of academic scores, came from a variety of different backgrounds and had varying social standings

The group came to the consensus that their culprit was probably in the Wizarding Track

They decide to then get a list of everyone currently enrolled in the Wizarding Track from the School Dean, to which Duke suggests that they also find anyone who used to be in the Wizarding Track as well

By doing that Duke hoped to increase the suspect pool and introduce the idea that it might not be someone directly in the Wizarding Track

They get the list from the Dean and in total there are 30 students in the Wizarding Track and 9 Former Students who transferred out

The group goes back to HC's dorm and they discuss the game plan

Vadina says that they need to eliminate suspects one by one and narrow down their options, which everyone agrees too

HC tries immediately eliminating HD form the list, arguing that if she was the killer she wouldn't be part of the investigation, but Vadina counters back that this could be a cover up and a chance for her to mislead them

Duke is sweating bullets and trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible but thankfully both Chandler and Mac stick up for her and even Betty and Martha think it would be unlikely that someone would join the investigation if they were the killer

That discussion stops when Chandler threatens to make Veronica sleep on the couch if she keeps accusing Duke so she backs off

From there, they spend each session looking into one or more of the suspects, interrogating them and comparing their testimonies against the evidence, and eliminating those from the list who could not possibly be the killer

Chandler rolls so many Nat 1s and she swears up and down that the dice are rigged (They totally are, JD and Duke both thought it would be funny to see her get mad over it when she didn't even wanna play in the first place)

Much to JD's horror, Betty's seduction strategy works more often than not and despite his attempts to put a stop to it, she always finds a way around them

JD (speaking as the NPC): "I appreciate the gesture, but I'm not attracted to women"

Betty: "Ya wanna bet?" Out of character "JD, If I roll a Nat 20 and add that with my +5 bonus can I still seduce him?"

JD (Done with her bs): "Sure why not"

Betty: rolls a nat 20

JD (Doing just fine he lied he's dying inside): "You all watch as Barnabas somehow seduces a gay guy, and as JD regrets all of his life choices"

It becomes Mac's mission to make as many animal friends as possible and to stop Martha from sacrificing animals to her demon overlord

Whenever they have to fight an enemy that is even remotely animalistic, Mac tries to roll for Animal Friendship and to make it her friend

Like one time they were fighting this Tabaxi (Cat person) and Mac tried to use Animal Friendship, arguing that even tho its humanoid its still a cat and therefore an animal

She ends up somehow becoming friends with an Owl Bear and she plans to use it to smell some cloth left by the killer and track the killer

Duke acts quickly by sending a quick text to JD while hiding her phone under the table so no one sees saying that she does something to agitate the Owl Bear, sending it into a frenzy which allows Duke to kill it, saving herself

When the party questions JD on that he says that somebody did something to anger the bear

Mac got pretty upset after this so after that session they all went out for ice cream

Over the course of the sessions Veronica becomes more and more suspicious of Duke but no one believes her despite the mounting evidence that points to her involvement

Sometimes at the start of sessions JD will add that another student died, sometimes just a random that they hadn't gotten too or one they had decided wasn't the killer, but sometimes it would be someone they heavily suspected, forcing them to question themselves further

Eventually they get who they think is the culprit and they are arrested and the group thinks they won, only for JD to start the epilogue where he says that because of all of the deaths that she caused, Hecate Dahlia was able to stand out more among her class, allowing for her to be placed in the upper classes and get a better job once leaving university, and that she lived the rest of her life guilt-free for both the murderers and the innocent person she condemned to death by framing them for the murders she committed

Veronica jumps out of her chair screaming that she knew it the whole time but the rest of them didn't believe it and that she was right and they were wrong

Mac, Betty and Martha look betrayed

Chandler storms out of the room and tells Duke that she's sleeping on the couch for a while

Meanwhile Duke and JD are just cackling about how they actually got away with it

Duke ends up sleeping on the couch for a month before Chandler lets her back in

Whenever someone brought it up Chandler would get pissy and they would say "But I thought you didn't wanna play the stupid nerd game Chan-Chan?" and she would only get more pissed off

[leggerefiore]

Hello, Hello! I saw that your requests are open, so I wanted to make one, after being way shy, aha-

I had this idea, about Archie or Maxie in self aware au, helping you escape the real world by teaming up, because you had, er, not-that-good things happening in life, and I though maybe I can request that?

You can decide who to write about! I am okay with any variant. And feel free to decine, I don't want to make you uncomfortable!

Bye, have a good day!

cw: self-aware au/ddlc au, fluff mostly

characters: Archie, Maxie

looove writing these two together bc their pieces get to be parallels of one another haha. didn't really go into detail about the "irl situation" since it's from the characters pov.

🌧Archie🌊

💧 He was not exactly sure when he gained his consciousness. Maybe he had always had it? Archie did not really care all too much for the philosophical enough to debate it. All he knew for certain was that you were always there. Not the player character that stood before him, but you. He had seen you a few times, he knew. Originally, somewhere in the first run and then a few times after throughout the following… years? He could only run off the internal 3DS clock, which wasn't reliable when you could change it at will. Yet, he knew. You changed. Got older.

💧 The salty winds around him may have been virtual, alongside everything else he knew, and he may have been aware that everything he was doing was for naught and the same end point. That all did not matter. He saw how much you deeply enjoyed the game and was happy to play out his role for you. Though, he was more than eager to see how much he could get away with altering things before you would get suspicious. Something to keep you coming back to him. At some point, he knew that he had become enamoured with you.

💧 Many times, he pondered if there was a way for him to leave this place. It seemed like there had to be a way, but he felt himself unable to do anything significant. A feeling of incapability was haunting. Only worsened by you returning for yet another play through. This time… You seemed different. And not in a good way. It was obvious something was bothering you out there in that unknown world to him. His stomach dropped. Even this fantasy world did not seem to bring you any comfort. Archie thought on it for a long time. Long enough for you to nearly have beaten the game.

💧 It was at the final scene where he was about to awaken Kyogre and send the world into chaos that he finally broke his carefully crafted role. His small character model looked up at the screen with a bright smile. You seemed a bit frightened by the sudden change, but he did not really care at this point. The Aqua Leader knew he could win you over. He had realised something. He could not go out to you, but what about the reverse? “Hey, scamp!” he called out with a new text box, “I get this is startling an' all, but I wanted to ask something to ya.”

💧 He could see the tears that glistened in your eyes more than often enough to make him concerned. “You want to come in here?” he asked. You froze. Staring at the console and rereading the line of text that he had created. It obviously was unbelievable. What were you trying to convince yourself? He could only wonder. “C'mon, I'm not a glitch or whatever yer thinking. It's a genuine offer,” he continued. You blinked this time. Then, you brought your hand to the screen. He reached his own up towards yours.

💧 You could only gasp when your hand actually went through the screen. His own found yours and pulled you in, bringing you entirely into the world lingering behind the screens. You fell onto him as you both landed on to the rocky terrain beneath you. Gasps left you as you gazed around to see the other characters in the scene standing there. Arms came around your waist as the pirate man held you to himself. “Don't worry, they won't react to you,” Archie reassured you with a hardy laugh. You could smell the scent of the sea all about and fell the stagnant air of the cave now.

💧 You both departed from the story beats as he took you to stand on the beach of Lilycove with him. The salty air stung your eyes and nose, but it felt so real. Especially with the unexpected ally in the form of the game's villain. Archie stood beside you with a dreamy look in his eyes. He had an arm around your waist, seeming to prefer keeping some touch on you. All the troubles that plagued you felt so foreign when standing in a distant world with no ties pulling you back. You could see real pokemon, too. It felt impossible. “Well, yer definitely more perked up now,” Archie spoke to you again, “Feel free to stay as long as you like. Nothing really changes here without my or your input.” You gazed at him. He gave a big, playful grin as the ties of his bandana blew in the wind. Here, you felt more at peace.

☀️Maxie🌋

🪨 He could recall the exact moment he became aware of his sentience. It was terrifying, after all. A moment where you realise everything around you is fake and doomed to an eternal loop depending on how often, if ever, your player decides to reset the game. Your second play through was an existential crisis for him, that is to say. The great Maxie was nothing but lines of code, doomed to repeat the same idiotic plan that nearly killed everyone. He would originally only look at you in annoyance and upset. This was your fault somehow. But, he felt connected to you, even still. He could only watch as time passed and you changed.

🪨 Everything around him was fake. Archie was fake. Courtney and Tabitha were fake. Yet, you were real. You were someone he could always find changing with time. He began to understand why you replayed so often. Escapism. His hell of a reality was a fun break away from the hold of the world around you. It might have annoyed him to be stuck how things were, but he was also a perfectionist. The role he was assigned was followed dutifully with little to no swaying from was to be done. Maybe you would get bored and leave him to an eternity of darkness. You never did, however. (Maxie was silently grateful. Your company was the only thing he had going for him.)

🪨 It was all in vain, the many times had attempted to escape thus digital prison. There simply was no escaping the slowly ageing device that he had been trapped within. It held him tightly in his place, never allowing him the freedom even peer into the world that you inhabited. His brain rushed deeply with curiosity about what lied outside. It was strengthened by you returning for yet another play through of this game. But, he felt stricken. You seemed upset – distraught. So much so, that not even rushing to this fantasy world provided any comfort. Maxie's stomach twisted painfully. (Why did he want to help you badly?)

🪨 It was in the Seafloor Cavern that it finally stuck him. Just right before he was to awaken Groudon and bring about a hellish drought that would exterminate all life on earth. He looked up at you. Maxie could not leave, of that he was certain, but could you not enter? He had never broken his character before you, so he felt nervous as he broke the scene's progression. “Hello,” the text box read simply enough at first, “I know this must be unsettling and a bit terrifying, but may I ask you a question?” He let a “yes” or “no” prompt pop up.

🪨 Your eyes went big, glossy with tears and puffy from whatever had been happening before you returned to the game. Maxie swallowed. What was happening to you out there? It hurt for him to consider you. Nervously, you pressed A on yes. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I am not a glitch, nor is this some form of hacking,” he clarified to make it abundantly clear that he was his own free-thinking man, “Do you wish to join me in here?” You froze, obviously unsure about what he said. A moment of contemplation followed. Then, you brought your hand to the screen half-heartedly. He brought his own up.

🪨 Your hand passed through the screen, startling you, but Maxie's hand had already taken hold of yours. Carefully, you were pulled through the screen. It felt like you were falling for a moment, but a sturdy grip helped you regain your balance. You opened your eyes to the heat of the room and stagnant air around you. The other characters in the room stood frozen. You looked around before seeing him. The red-headed man readjusted his glasses in a nervous manner. “Welcome, I suppose,” he nodded toward you, “Don't worry about them, they don't react without input.” He explained. You stared at the magma nearby in fascination. It was real.

🪨 Maxie led you out from the cavern and back to the surface, choosing Mt. Chimney as a place of comfort and getaway from everything that was currently happening in the story. You stood on the mountain curiously, smelling the sulphur in the air as the wind carried the heat of late summer. The Magma Leader stood by you dutifully, fully aware he was going to have to teach you a lot about this world. He stiffened when you leaned against him suddenly, watching distant Illumise and Volbeat float around in the darkness of the night. “You are free to remain here however long you like,” Maxie told you, “... You seem happier now. That's good.” His hand came to hold yours. He gave a small smile to you, watching your reactions carefully. His red strands escaped his careful styling as a stringer breeze blew by you both. Finally, you felt some sense of peace.

[anns-works]

League Of Jay Tings (bc that right there? wasted potential)

The customizable character was a cool-ass feature and one of the best ideas Unagami had for the game. Even before Jay got sucked in, there were players running around with the ninjas as their skin.

(Scott got bored at one point and spent his time antagonizing the Red Visors in a Gold Ninja skin that was ridiculously expensive. Hw also lost a life. Totally worth it.)

On that note, I would like to point out that Jay and Scott's skins appear to be similar, so I'm guessing its one of the defaults that they ended up customizing (I imagine its like putting on a mustache or hat on minecraft Steve and calling it a day.

So, Jay's early days mainly included trailing around Scott cuz he was the only interaction he had with another person that wasn't just an NPC.

They finally encounter another another player but this one has a (surprise!) Blue Ninja skin. wat resulted was a ten minute long standoff between Jay and the other player which involved a lot of pointing and unintelligible noises.

The player bolted. Jay followed them screaming the entire time. Scott also followed cuz this was the most entertainment he's had in a long time. It's a miracle they haven't been discovered by any of the Visors yet.

The played leads them to a hideaway that had a LOT of people, all equipped with Blue Ninja skin.

Scott's previous amusement quickly turns into horror as he quietly goes what the fuck over and over again. Jay gets an idea like you know what, lets use this.

and basically thats how the League of Jay born in Scott's garage through Jay's ''diabolical" plan (he's making a safe hangout space for these kids and also letting them cause chaos)

(For convenience sake, lets just refer to og Jay as SRJ (after his gamer tag) ft. some of the other Jays from the league! w/ their nicknames. DeeJay777 is Dee. Jay22Walkin is Walker. BlueJay6669 is Blue. JayBird9000 is Birdy.)

Most of the things these gremlins do is mainly going around to vandalize stuff. Scott is apparently the "Master of Color" or whatever that may entail. It just basically means he can go around graffitiing "UNAGAM I UR MOMAS A HOE" or other stuff like that.

And back to the whole customizable skin bit, it was an instant hit cuz of the opportunities it presented. You could be a guy. You could be a girl. You could be as sexy as a kpop idol (is that in thing in ninjago?). You could be an eldritch creature beyond mortal comprehension if you're willing to spend up a few units.

Dee enjoys not having tits for a while. Birdy also loves the whole transmasc feeling. SRJ just updated his skin to be Like That™ to give everyone gender envy.

Unagami once released a feature in the game that would let you access different levels and mini-games based on your selected binary gender (back when that was still a thing). The League hated it and let him know dearly. So Unagami changed it into something else and threw in a couple units in the mix (a goddamn dance competition). This was an instant hit. They planed their next updates based on the League's reactions.

Unagami: I didn't realize it was you at first. But some of your actions proved to be quite educational.

SRJ, flashback to that one time he wrote "UNAGAMI I FUCKD U MAMA HERE" on a wall cuz he was feeling pissy: Sure man, don't mention it.

Also on that note, SRJ DEFINITELY founded the ninjago LGBTQA+ community. I meant ninjago in itself is a pretty non-heteronormative society and you can kiss whoever you want with no issue. But everyjay was trapped in the lair w/o Scott out nothing to do and he's bored out of his goddamn mind and just suddenly suggests coming up w/ names for different sexual orientations cuz why not? taxonomy is fucked but they're bored.

Walker has an anthropology degree and Birdy is studying gender so might as well begin.

After getting out they get awarded by the NU for their fantastic discovery.

SRJ gave up the mansion he inherited from Cliff Gordon to Scott and it sort of turned into a hangout spot for the League.

One League member said on Chirp (jokingly) that the League of Jay should have their own social media platform cuz they're too weird and are apparently freaking out people on Chirp. They get a reply from Blue who tells them she'll look into it, and two months later there's a new social media in town.

Lentils and beans of all sizes, I give to you TRip, ninjago tumblr. The buckwild experience ever. A huge hit among the serpentine immedietly.

Those iconic posts but ninjago style. Red floor at Darkley's. the three weed smoking ninjas. Don't you love the color of the gi. I like your shoelaces, thanks I stole them from samurai x. Garage ballpit.

[slanax]

re lrb but in a new post bc it kinda derails from the original point of the post but

FE3H really dealt a blow to the concept of unique characters that Engage didn't manage to fully recover from

like as units, most characters start in the exact same class at the exact same level. Great start. Their class progression gives them all the same options for the same requirements outside of a handful of genderlocked classes which is the stupidest possible point to put your single distinguishing feature. The Tier 0 classes Noble and Commoner are different classes but are identical in gameplay. Why not make that your distinguishing feature that locks class access to characters? Would fit better with the story themes anyways.

Nominally some characters are better at some weapons and worse at others. This does not matter except maybe your Tier 3 promotion on Maddening gets delayed by a chapter or you need to rig the exams a bit more (luck based promotions by the way. Also terrible. Costs resources to even try. I digress.) The high end S+ ranks are functionally unreachable anyways.

Also doesn't help that outside of exactly two exceptions (magic, and gauntlets on mounts) every Tier 1 class can use every weapon type exactly as well as each other. There's no reason for a brawling character to go Brawler. Just go Brigand, they have more Str ("Just go Brigand" applies to every unmounted melee class by the way)

Then there's the mastery skills. Brigands get Death Blow. Everyone wants Death Blow. Archers get Hit +20. Everyone wants Hit +20. So you already have characters that all play the same, in classes that all play the same, but now every one of them cycles through Brigand and Archer to truly be. the same.

And then even if you want to sandbox and go "I'm gonna make a cavalier that uses swords instead of lances" Tier 2 shows up and tells you "what are you, stupid? Paladin is a lance class. See, they get Lancefaire. Put a lance on that guy you fucking moron. Who told you sandboxing was okay."

You'd think Tier 2/3 getting -faires would solve the issue of every class being the same weapons wise. Course it doesn't. Falcon Knight has Lancefaire, Wyvern Lord has like 2 less lance damage through raw Str. It does not matter and only serves to make you feel bad for not using the "correct" weapon type and losing out on the +5 boost.

The thing that actually distinguishes characters is their personal skills. Except most of those fall off and stop mattering after the earlygame bc they're like +2 or +4 boosts to stats that'll be in the 20s soon enough.

No, the thing that actually actually distinguishes characters is what skills and arts they learn. Shockingly, half the cast learns no skills that outclass the generic ones. So those don't matter. And of course, the game doesn't tell you about any of these, doesn't tell you if there will be a payoff for training a character in a certain skill over another or god forbid if that payoff will be worth it.

Engage gets a little better about this, at least the characters have a base class again, but it falls flat around midgame when reclassing is fully available. There's a lot of neat and unique class/emblem combos you can make, so at least the class samey-ness of 3H is fixed, but the characters become little more than warm bodies that carry that class/emblem combo into battle and some of them might have more optimal numbers for one of them.

anyways the way I think this can be fixed (outside of just getting rid of universal reclassing or going back to the Fates system of passing around class sets through supports) is to place more emphasis on personal skills. Class skills are generally just better in SwitchFE, and I don't get why. If personal skills give you a big boost that stays relevant throughout the game, even only in specific classes or circumstances, that encourages players to make use of that, use this specific unit for their personal skill, and create a tailored class build that specifically brings the best in that unit out. Or give them a specific gimmick. This hack I'm playing has a Cav that gets Brave but can't double when he moves his full Mov while mounted. That's a cool payoff. That makes him stand out. Do shit like that, intsys. In 3H this would just be the Cavalier mastery skill, and in Engage it'd be an Emblem skill, so everyone could do it. Just make it unique.

also make growths more distinct I'm tired of everyone having the same 35-45% slop in every stat god I wonder why every character feels the same when their statlines are fucking identical

[contritecactite]

As ever, it takes the tiniest hint of encouragement (thanks @grimboigio ) to goad me into generating a wall of text. Well, actually, the wall was already there. Big big Hades II spoilers below in the form of messy half-baked notes I've been jotting down as I play. Some are just things that I got excited about, but there's a tiny sliver or two of theories and expectations.

I think we're headed for no happy ending, just acceptance—the battle is against Chronos, but it's really about *time* as a concept; for these gods, time really did take its toll and change the way mortals relate to them. Supergiant will never make another sequel for the same reason: things belong in their own time.

The lycaons *could* just be heralding Cerberus, but they somehow give me a sense of the trappings of Roman the Empire creeping in (in an intentional, storytelling way). Same with the emptiness of Ephyra and the hints of war in the mortal aspect. It feels like this is the fall of the cultures we now call "ancient Greece" as told through the eyes of the gods who get left behind or changed.

Apollo is giving me traitor vibes. He had a line about how we "have all the time in the world," and there's just something too carefree about him.

This feels like a lovely little patchwork quilt of Supergiant games. Homer is more reactive like the Bastion narrator. The music, the social bonding opportunities, and the inventory and lore screens feel a bit like Pyre. Some upgrade systems remind me of Transistor, and the mood reminds me very much of it as well. The writing and combat are still very Hades, and there are new aspects that speak of a team that has taken the time to understand what works, what doesn't, and what improvement and innovation should look like within their existing framework.

Echo's whole thing is fucking clever. Those gifts: Either repeats or diminishing returns—just like an echo. Holy fucking shit the way I vibrated when I met Echo the first time.

I love my randomly assigned college roommate who never goes to her classes and moves all my shit for no reason (Dora). If she were my actual roommate, I would feel a very different way about this.

Eris is perfect. I love her being mean-spirited mischief rather than brute force or accidental mischief; it feels like a unique character composition. She's awful. I can't stand her. She's perfect. She also reminds me of Spoiler from Pixie Tricks, a series I read as a kid (both in personality and, vaguely, design).

Nemesis and Artemis sound like they have a no-strings on-again off-again kind of thing going on and I love that for them. Also hope Charon and Hermes get to see each other again soon bc I'm rooting for them so hard.

I literally shrieked when taking out one of the sirens *actually impacted their contribution to the song*. I shouldn't have been surprised, but it was so much fun to hear it happen anyway. Very immersive! I'm also in love with Scylla. She reminds me very specifically of Ryan Stiles' Carol Channing impression and a little of Dolly Parton. Also. Her fucking hood. Jesus.

One of my favorite things about Hades is that there was nothing that an enemy or boss could do that you couldn't do through some combination of boons, weapons, and upgrades. The same seems to hold true here so far, and I just can't say enough how *cool* that is. The worst part of any combat-heavy game to me is the realization that the boss or even the cutscene of your character can do things that you, the player, can't initiate or control during a regular battle. Hades says "yeah, fuck that. It'll look different when you do it vs. when that sea serpent does it, but you can accomplish the same action/effect." Likewise, there's practically nothing your character can do that isn't also usable by at least one enemy. That keeps things balanced and combats the sense of "ah yes, you are the Most Special Chosen One" that's often inherent to RPGs. It gives the sense that skill matters a lot and makes me as a player feel skilled—I'm not visually doing anything that my enemies can't do, so... maybe I'm actually kinda good at this? (I am mediocre at best, but the game lets me *feel* skilled).

Additionally, just as in Hades, the enemies in an area are very informative about how upcoming bosses will behave. It rewards a player for paying attention and makes each enemy populating an area make *sense*.

After beating the sirens, ALL I wanted was for Melinoë to be able to have one single fan among the shades like Zagreus in the Theseus map. What I got was even *better*; the same type of interaction, but in a way that takes into account *her* task-focused, serious personality while still giving a little bit of levity. She is *done* with being here and ready for everyone to clear out, and that grumpy shade is not having it. He even makes a new little face! Love you, purple shade in the corner.

Oh, hey, charybdis, there you are

THE 2 IS IN *ROMAN* NUMERALS I'm having a moment

yeah that's it that's what I got. For now. My gaming buddy keeps falling asleep when I try to gush and talk through things, so Tumblr gets it instead.

[creamiceandsugar]

i talked previously on how i just love thinking about the paths characters are and what it means about their character or story and nothing makes it more obvious than going "of course, what else but erudition" at jade, realizing I forgot to even register what path firefly is but going "uuuh, destruction. what else could she be" and just checking for confirmation.

so i guess i'll loosely define what personality traits i personally think each path represents (very very loosely bc it really does depend on the character and there's a wide spectrum for interpretation. i'll put some examples). and right away i'll tell you i do not have harmony figured out. it's the hardest path. like, i'll try, but i am not confident.

also i'll say this, none of these "personality traits" are inherently good or bad. like for erudition i used the word "manipulator" bc i have no other word i can put down but i dont meant it in a bad way. jing yuan manipulates people all the time but it's generally for the greater good.

destruction: pretty literal. linked to destructive behavior (hook) or destruction of others and/or the self (blade/firefly). dan heng IL is so neat because technically he is so non-confrontational and doesn't Want to be destructive but it's his past self that carries it over. like, he can't escape it, it still haunts him and that is why his true path is destruction. delicious, right? also destruction of bonds (unwillingness to reconnect with jing yuan etc.) clara is the hardest to interpret but if you got a big robot with you that fires lasers then idk what to tell you

erudition: chess players, manipulators, "genius/smart". do i need examples? it's so self explanatory. easiest path to interpret for real. i think argenti is the weirdest one to be erudition, but we also dont know much about him yet and i think he's plenty smart and manipulative just. in a very eccentric way?

hunt: "has a goal to follow" in the simplest terms. very narrowed in on that goal. stubborn. (yanqing wants to get stronger, dan heng wants to be free/escape his past etc. etc.)

nihility: disconnected from people or the world around them. (in different ways. welt is from a different dimension and guinaifen works mainly online but both disconnects them from the people around them. which doesnt mean they cant form bonds or care about people)

preservation: very simple and obvious but a protector type. "by the book" (doesn't cheat). upfront. (you'd think aventurine would be the outlier but i maintain that he's more honest than people expect him to be and he hates cheating. so he plays by the rules even if he bends them and he HAS a protective instinct. i personally actually think march is the outlier here who's a bit hard to pin down but what can you expect from a girl who doesnt even really know herself)

abundance: researcher type. fascinated with humanity in one way or another. (so so hard to pin them down but i think this fits broadly, at least for now, even for gallagher. may change the more abundance characters we get. dont mention huo huo, Please, she's like a harmony/abundance hybrid anyways. and she IS fascinated with humanity ok, fascinated how confident her coworkers are anyways)

harmony: bro please, idk. look at the characters we have and tell me what they have in common. i'm dying i'm in the desert and i have no water. i WOULD have said administrators/bureaucrats who are willing to take on responsibility but then sparkle happened so i don't know anymore. also she's playing a character so what do we REALLY know about her. how about "puts their all into things". "commits"(to the bit). that feels vaguely right.

so anyways this is what i have so far. i've thought more about some than others, obviously, i have my favorite characters, but i think this can at least for now broadly apply.

[cloverofhope]

I’m asking, tell us abt ur au pls

Ohohohoh gladly

putting a keep reading thing here bc this is gonna be a longish post lol

Quick backstory

Okay, so a little backstory of the au itself. It was originally a roleplay plot that I made to cheer a friend up bc he was upset about something in another roleplay chat, but the plot then was very different to what it is now. Haive didn't exist at the time, nor did most of the characters that are going to be from Haive (aka Berks equivalent.) It was originally called "The Flipped Universe" or at least that was the second version of the plot was. I genuinely cannot remember what the original version was called anymore.

An argument happend and the second version was effectively dropped before we went onto the third version which was effectively the same plot except we switched who played hiccup and boy oh boy are they a good runaway!hiccup player. Most of the times we started the roleplay it, it took place after httyd2 so I'm writing what would've happened from httyd on.

Characters that are important right noW

Clover- she's the main character in this story. She's effectively the Hiccup of Haive. She's a little bit shorter than Hiccup and doesn't grow much past her height in this part of the story. Clover has red hair that goes to about her upper back when she lets it down, and emerald green eyes that could pierce into your soul if she's pissed off. She's pretty artistic, spending any free time she can find drawing something if she's not already focused on something else. She's got a heart of gold and stubbornness to go with it. She's fairly inventive, and she has a lot of spontaneous ideas that do work a fair amount of time

Iris- She's the light fury in the cove. She lost her right tailfin. She's mostly white with spots along her back and head that are grayish purple, but they look more gray than purple. Her ears have pastel blue spots along the top. She doesn't trust easily but once you've earned her trust, there's almost nothing she won't do. She's not the most playful or chatty at first but after she meets Clover and some of the other dragons she really opens up her shell

Rollo- She's the dragon rider that Clover convinced to help. After being raised by dragons, she DOES understand Dragonese and will eventually teach most of the others in the group, one of them being too stubborn to learn. She's the most ruthless of the group in this and sometimes has to be physically held back so she doesn't hurt someone who doesn't need to be hurt. Rollo doesn't understand some traditions at first, and Clover isn't the best at explaining why things are done the way that they are. She's got black hair that's been dyed with flowers that primarily grow on Haive and on islands near it, especially at the nest Rollo grew up on. She's a little bit taller than Clover

Rou- He's the most playful and silly woolly howl anyone could meet. He loves to sing songs for those he loves and is fiercely protective of his family. He's got blue scales and his 'fluff' is a milk chocolately brown. (I'm pretty sure- Its been so long since I've seen his ref sheet lol). Him and Rollo are effectively siblings after being raised together.

Wilder- Clover's younger brother. He's about five years younger. He's a clever little guy who wants to be just like his sister when he grows up. (Or at least he will eventually lol). He's got red hair and freckles galore. He cares a lot, sometimes too much.

mm i think thats all the characters imma do for now- at least in this post- I don't need it being 5000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 characters long lol

The 'What Ifs' that this AU is based off of that don't really spoil anything

What if Toothless was a light fury instead?

What if Dragonese existed in the movie universe?

What if Hiccup and Toothless ran away before Astrid ever found out?

What if httyd was more gay?

What if hiccup had help while training toothless?

As I'm thinking- I'm realizing that most of the other 'what ifs' spoil a lot- so that's all ya get for now

Headcanons! These won't spoil much- right?

Furies bond with other species by mimicking behaviors

Light furies are great swimmers

Dragons have a whole ass culture, some things can vary from nest to nest, but most things are pretty similar

not exactly sure how to explain this one, but an alpha's command isn't like spoken words- its more a sense only a dragon can feel, and isn't something humans can possibly learn

fury eggs don't explode- nor do woolly howl eggs-

hmmm not sure what else i can add that doesn't spoil a whole lot- so enjoy this!

[vangbelsing]

Feeling a bit frustrated so I'm gonna vent a bit below the cut. I'm not trying to be negative or rain on any parades, so I'll preface this by saying I'm gonna vent about my grievances regarding companion romance in DATV and if you don't want to see that I'll add a cut so you don't have to read anything that'll be a party pooper for you.

I don't anticipate anyone to read through what is essentially me bellyaching, but in case you do, just please be aware that it's really just a vent about something most people seem excited for and I don't want to spoil the fun for anybody.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've had this thought for awhile, and if I can be honest? I don't mean any negativity when I say this, and I hope the people that are enjoying this can have fun with it, but tbh I feel almost like I'm the only person in the fandom who just... does not care about all the shipping and companions getting together.

Like I'm aware it has been a thing since DA2 (I know Oghren gets with Felsi and a lot of companions flirt, especially in DA:A but idk if I'd count that as the same thing) and it's never bothered me overmuch, but it's just... Not what I care about. I think it can be cute in certain instances, like Sera and Dagna, (I don't see it much bc I'm usually the one romancing Sera but I think it's SOOOOO cute when it happens) and I think that the banter with Cole and Blackwall about his little crush on Josie is super fun, but those have never really made a big difference on character development imo.

And to be very honest, I hope it's like the last games where it's certain characters under certain circumstances. I know they said they've never had this many pairings, but I just... I'm not sure if I want it to be EVERY companion being able to get with every OTHER companion and that your game is always going to be chalk full of romance no matter what you do. Like I want it to be like with Dorian and Bull, where it can happen, but it's situational and depends on their exposure to each other out in the world.

I truly do not want to sound negative, because I don't hate romance. I understand that characters are a HUGE part of games and these games especially, and having some romance in there that's independent of the player has never bothered me. It can give another level of making characters feel more believable. But when it's every character getting with every character, and romance is implemented into every aspect, it sort of feels... Forced? It feels disingenuous, to me personally. I think it's just as unbelievable that every character is romantically compatible with absolutely everyone else as it is for the companions to only be attracted to the protagonist.

And while I wouldn't necessarily call myself aromantic, it is something that generally either disinterests me or can even make me feel uncomfortable when it's overtly pushed. Obviously, games are welcome to have content that is not intended for me, and I don't even dislike the fact that romance plays a part. In fact, when I romance characters, it's usually because I want to see how their story can develop and the way it can impact them as a character, or because I genuinely just enjoy them as a character. But I don't want that to be all that there is.

And I know that could read as hypocritical since I'm something of a selfshipper, but I think what bugs me isn't the romance being there, but the idea that it's going to be so??? Idk. It feels like it's almost a defining quality that they assume you're going to be actively engaging with, whether it's you romancing your Rook with a companion or you shipping the other characters together. And I do want to reiterate that I think the shipping and characters getting together is fine, it doesn't inherently bother me. But I don't like that it seems pretty deeply woven into most aspects of the game.

Like? What I specifically don't want is for the characters to be relatively bland if you strip away the romance, and that goes for their romance with Rook as well. I think that's my biggest fear, really. I just want the characters to be able to exist without those relationships, because I want to be able to exist without those relationships without feeling like I'm a black sheep for not engaging with them.

I just think games in general have gotten to the point where they basically don't think of aro or ace people at all. And while romance and aro and ace people can exist simultaneously, I just wish more spaces actively attempted to keep in mind that they will be there and that not everyone wants to be surrounded by those sorts of relationships.

It's easy enough to say "if you don't like romance, don't romance the characters", but when it's literally everywhere, it can feel a little alienating. I do wish there was some aro or ace rep in these games, because it gets to a point where it feels like that's the focal point of the game and you just have to deal with it.

Anyway, that's it. Sorry for the rant, and I mean it when I say I hope that people who are excited for this aspect of the game enjoy it. I just wish that, as someone who is exploring aromanticism, I wish that there were spaces that felt more accommodating for people like me that don't always want to interact too heavily with this kind of thing.

[3416]

The nylander convo pre covid years was def reaching the pervasiveness, but never quite got as personal the way it has with mitch. like I distinctly remember don cherry (just threw up in my mouth a little bit) continuously going off about nylander which then made everyone else talk about him and it was just an endless cycle. they painted him as aloof and felt that he didn't care about toronto, but they never really got as mean as people have with mitch now. everyone wanted him out of toronto, but they weren't saying he should never play in the nhl again

but honestly the biggest difference was that the things they were saying about willy weren't exactly wrong either. like they would get mad at his lack of production or sloppy defense or careless plays, which like, yeah. that's exactly what was happening. they didn't have to go on and on about it but he wasn't producing like they thought he would and that was that.

And the thing I can't really pinpoint is when and why the nylander hate train stopped. again, I don't think anyone's faults deserve to be pointed out and dissected on a nightly basis, but he hasn't exactly improved exponentially in any of those categories? maybe the caring about toronto bit? but he still makes careless plays and his career point totals are still less than marner/matthews so? what gives?

I don't know why the blame was shifted to mitch, and again, another guy has to take ALL the blame for this teams shortcomings and have his character be questioned every single day. Nothing about it makes sense.

oh yeah and i'm not making light of the types of xenophobia that can be seen when talking about nhlers. there's plenty of it and i'm not even saying willy wasn't a negative talking point bc i'm sure he was. don cherry is an old ass hag whose opinion shouldn't matter at all 50 years after he stopped playing like jfc. but i do think one man's vendetta and constant bitching is different from like.. proper media outlets going out of their way to misinterpret something (or EVERYTHING) a player says time and time again to drum up talk. i just think things on the internet have somehow gotten worse in terms of clickbait so everything feels even more terrible too. someone does always have to be the scapegoat with toronto but i have a hard time buying that a rookie was taking up as much air time as the public punching bag than a now star player who has an obligation and routine to be in the media more often and all of it follows constant playoff failure from the TEAM. even elliott friedman covering the entire LEAGUE having to stop talking about anything to do with mitch hypothetically unless it was actual insider info bc his mentions went nuts is so........ trash.

and lol about the stuff they were saying about willy. it certainly isn't a nice way to say it... calling him lazy and insinuating shit about his work ethic is attacking his character when i don't think that's the way to put it, but i do think those are still problems in his game, you're right! the thing is... willy was not always productive as he has been right now, lol. his game has grown but mostly in just offensive production and that's it. he hasn't put in the work on the less flashy side of things (while mitch has. mitch's offense has always been top tier but he's dedicated time to growing defensively clearly) and i think it's a valid criticism of him and also a lot of hockey fans don't fully know how to evaluate or value skills away from the puck (myself included to some extent too, it's harder). he's great at creating offense solo... he's a great puck carrier and in transition... he's great when he's out there with a loaded up line like the power play (hence why some of his 'clutch' moments come in those situations too). but i also think everyone talking about his ability to pay attention for a full 82 game span being unproven is right, lol. i saw a tweet abt how he does 'just enough' the other day and was a 'load management king' and like. maybe so but imagine if a forward you've agreed to pay 11.5 would do a little more than that and work on consistency, lol. i get why people are a fan of his game, don't get me wrong. it's fun to watch graceful bursts of offense... i just think there's still irresponsibility there. if he were more willing to buy in, we have a better shot at racking up more points during the regular season and putting us in a better position for the playoffs too... wouldn't need some of those moments of saving lol. it's not just about only 'showing up' in the playoffs moments considered big, which i still think is a stupid argument when every game is important and the best playoff run by a current leaf was 22-23 mitch but. idk. i'm kind of glad berube is trying him at center to give the leafs and willy's game some versatility. i hope it comes with growth, the team will be better for it.

the shift in blame is hard to pinpoint for me too, lol. i don't get why beyond like.. willy bulking up... putting up 40 goals? idk what the threshold is for why things changed this time when mitch was our mvp 2 yrs ago with auston hurt. willy going on a run in a contract year was part of it probably, but it's silly of leaf fans to just decide Now is the year it all just doesn't work just bc only 2/4 core guys are signed on and then declare those are the best 2 we've had the the loss of the others is marginal. bc lol and it's pure coincidence that the major contracts line up in tandem like that. we still only saw them all play under 2 coaches that whole time... anyway. i have no clue what's next, lol. i'm excited to see them play in a different system for real, but i think the dumbest people among us need someone to solely blame for why everything up to this point hasn't worked and why getting rid of that 1 person will result in immediate success while refusing to acknowledge luck plays any sort of role year after year. it's not a fun truth but it's a truth... having 3/4 of ur best players dealing with something in some capacity is crazy work by the universe.

[arcann]

if you don't mind me asking what FFXIV classes do you like in terms of gameplay/fun to actually play versus ones that are fun for the story/characters; taigat related or not

Taigat is canonically a conjurer (... just a conjurer), dragoon, dark knight, red mage and reaper. He won't ever be a ranged dps because he's missing an eye.

My top favorite classes by just their gameplay are reaper, red mage, dancer and sage. I like playing all roles of the triad! They can all be fun but tbh I don't like all classes.

For gameplay, I enjoy warrior very much because it's a no brainer and you can just rush through dungeons without the help of a competent healer esp by level 90. Dark knight and gunbreaker are also very fun but they do requiere more attention. I never adapted to paladin because it feels like a hot mess. It got a rework like a year ago and it's still pretty annoying.

I agree that dark knight is the best job storyline as it is the accepted general opinion. Gunbreaker is nice but too short. Things they tried to explore are explained way better in a different raid mission (Bozja). It also had a random dark knight garlean duskwight villain that came out of nowhere and they said he was as poweful as gaius which was super random and ooc for garleans to recruit a guy like that. Warrior is mid but it takes a turn for the worst when the mentor gets introduced to The Girl tm and they fall in love (heterosexual af despite the girl being a better warrior than him). Paladin is the worst, I know you didn't like the gladiator part and tbh it just introduces more and more annoying characters and very little of it's lore is worth it. They completely leave out ishgardian knights in favor of uldans 💀

I love healing too except maybe astro. It's enjoyable and very pretty but some parts of the rng are annoying and it's always getting reworks. It will probably get another one in dawntrail. Sorry to the people who main it if that happens. Sage is my favorite and I find white mage and scholar very fun too.

I love the white mage's npcs they're very cute to me especially Sylvie and Gatty. E-Sumi-Yan is one of my favorite mentors as well. I've mentioned it before but Taigat ran the whole whm story but only to help Sylvie and the Senna twins. The rest are fine. Just fine. Scholar and Astro give some neat lore tidbits but tbh I'm not that interested in them. Sage has you running around with a sharlayan cop catgirl so several points will be taken off bc of that.

The only caster I like for its gameplay is red mage. I know black mage players enjoy how much freedom they get to make their own rotations but I just don't see it, also it changes a lot depending on the level you're in. Summoner got reworked in ew and now it's a no brainer (Sasha has a lot more to say about these changes, I just didn't experience it when it wasn't like this) and like I get no braining tanking with warrior bc I'm pulling all the heat and still living but. just clicking 5 buttons without worries? While nothing is chasing me? Not for me. Red mage is super fun and sexy. This is a good mix of melee attacks and ranged magic. I wish paladin would approach it a bit but tbh I don't imagine how. Blue mage doesn't really count and I haven't played through it but it feels like a hassle.

Thaumaturge's plot is pretty funny because you see how fucking pathetic those lalafell siblings are. I made it so that Taigat goes through it post ew but just so he can go "you're all freaks i'm stealing something from your house". Dyulgor did the black mage storyline decades before ARR happened. It's interesting and it has a moon keeper conjurer who doesn't trust you and it was cool to think there was still enmity between black and white mages but they kinda ruined him a bit by making him have a crush on our lalafell mentor. Some beast tribe members are also important here but tbh they act to much like caricatures and it's sometimes annoying. Summoner introduces a lot of interesting lore about your relationship with the primals and allag + you hang around with y'shtola's half sister and she's very neat + the ascians are one of the main villains which is unique outside of the msq. The red mage storyline has voidsent and weird implications about getting close to vampirism with this class which gets an automatic 10 from me. The mentor is a really nice catdilf from ala mhigo who fought long ago, before and during the garlean conquest. He's also Alisaie's mentor and he will mention her a couple of times. Blue mage sounds fucking awful and that's all I'm saying.

Dancer has a very unique rotation and even if parts of it are rng based I can't complain because you're mainly support and you're there to buff other teammates. Machinist is fine even if I don't like certain attacks where you have to stand still or else you'll interrupt your attack. Bard's rng is a mess right now and in lower levels your rotation feels very incomplete which is pretty unsatisfying.

Dancer's story is really bad and like gunbreaker, too short to explain anything introduced there well enough. It would have been better to give them something to do in Thavnair. Machinist makes you spend a lot of time in Ishgard and I think that's great but I didn't care much about what happened. I'm glad the mentor kicked nobles' butts though. Archer is kinda rancid bc it's about a racist elezen learning that maybe moonkeepers are people and still being super rude around them. Bard has this two mid looking white guys so ofc there's a section of the fandom that is obsessed with them but I don't care for them. Moogles give you your job stone and they're involved so that is a plus.

Tbh I like all of the melee classes' gameplay. It traumatized me a bit that I wasn't playing dragoon right for a long time but I recovered. I probably don't remember all the rotations that well on account of not practicing lol.

I like Foulques way too much to let him die so like you I make him older and changed his background quite a bit. He does have a competitive relationship with Taigat but after they save him from falling down that cliff they start bonding. If anything Taigat visits him more than anyone at the lancer's guild but I imagine Foulques travels a lot around the Black Shroud so sometimes it's a bit difficult to find him. Dragoon is neat. Just neat. It was fun to see Estinien lose his marbles and swear revenge then several days later going "no no, I'm fine, we're fine. Let's forget that happened." in the msq. Puglist and Monk suck so bad especially that racist historian I hope he drops dead and his wife cucks him. Samurai started really strong but after you reach Kugane it becomes a story of "maybe the oligarchy is there for a reason and everyone who defied them is being too violent ergo worse than it" which. why. why. Rogue is an interesting idea to insert in limsa, which is very much filled with plot holes but having a secret police to keep the pirates in check is neat. Hated that the mentor is just a nod to jack sparrow. I imagine Dyulgor has a huge problem with these guys since he's very friendly with the sahagin and he has killed several of the people sent to investigate him but they can't track the murders back to him, lol, lmao. I don't remember ninja quite well but the main rival was a clown who annoyed me real bad. I'm glad the mentor and his main ally came back for Bozja and got away from that guy.

Y'all know I'm insane about reaper but it did a good job at having a neatly closed story imo. Tbh sage did so too, when compared with gunbreaker and dancer. Maybe they realized by then they would have much less screen time and organized the story beats better.

For dawntrail, viper and pictomancer look extremely unappealing to me right now. Viper seems like samurai but with nothing cool about it and pictomancer looks like something adapted from neopets. Not excited about this at all.