#evelyn damaris

[eternalremorse]

I. AM. SCREAMING!!!

LOOK AT THEM!! SO BLOODY CUTE!!

[made using vidu.studio]

[just-another-star-47]

Another day of practice, another MC. 😊

Today we have Evelyn Damaris from @eternalremorse

I hope you like her. 🥰

I honestly lost the overview of all the MCs there are, so if you want, just comment your babies and I'll slowly work through them. 😅

[eternalremorse]

AHHHHH OMG I LOVE IT!! YOU DREW EVELYN SO WELL!! ❤️👏🥰

Thank you so so so much to everyone who sent in their character!😇🙏 these were scribbled up between art demonstrations and constant “profe la nariz la hice mal me ayudas” etc questions😅

I had so much fun drawing these, I hope I did your characters justice!!🥰🙏💓

@masqueradereveler21

@serpensortiamaxima

@eternalremorse

@superconductivebean

@slytherin-paramour

@limonnitsa

[flower-grown-ids]

🌼dazecore?

DAZECORE ID PACK

requested by anon

(🌘) Titles; X who wanders through meadows, The lonely child, Keeper of the Quiet Forest, Shadow’s Muse, Warden of the Hollow Fields, The Faded Wanderer, Specter of the Wind, Echo of the Vale, The Twilight Strider, Herald of the Dusk, Solitary Dreamer, Keeper of the Forgotten Path, Spirit of the Misty Moor, The Silent Pilgrim, Wanderer of the Void, X who blows with the wind, Forest walker

(🌊) Names; Morrigan, Morgan, Elara, Nyx, Celine, Ophelia, Raven, Selene, Lenore, Astrid, Isolde, Eira, Nocturne, Vesper, Aveline, Thalia, Sable, Lyric, Briar, Wren, Sylvia, Arden, Hesper, Lira, Vega, Maren, Soren, Lune, Calista, Seraphine, Aradia, Corvina, Faye, Evelyne, Draven, Amara, Rowan, Odette, Circe, Aisling, Belladonna, Tempest, Amaris, Rhea, Solenne, Damaris, Vanya, Lucine, Evadne, Illyria, Elowen, Melisandre, Whisper

(🌘) Pronouns; She/Her, Shi/Hir Shy/Hyr They/Them, Thiy/Thim Thy/Thym He/Him Hy/Hym Hx/Hxm It/Its Ix/Ixs Xe/Xir, Ze/Zir, Fae/Faer, Ve/Vir, Ey/Em, Ae/Aer, Per/Per, E/Eir, It/Its, Star/Starself, Void/Voidself, Moon/Moonself, Shadow/Shadows, Mist/Mists, Dark/Darkself, Night/Nightself, Song/Songself, Echo/Echoself, Glow/Glows, Ghost/Ghostself, Rain/Rainself, Cloud/Cloudself, Ash/Ashes, Frost/Frostself, Bloom/Bloomself, Dust/Dustself, Thorn/Thorns, Smoke/Smokes, Wisp/Wisps, Tide/Tides, Sky/Skyself, Ink/Inks, Gloom/Gloomself, Drift/Drifts, Pale/Paleself

(🌊) Genders; Mistgender, Nocturnalgender, Ravenic, Gloamgender, Wispic, Mourngender, Aetherflux, Duskgender, Umbraflux, Frostic, Lunaric, Voidgender, Shadowflux, Cryptogender, Gloamingender, Driftgender, Echoic, Fogflux, Hauntgender, Sablegender, Obscuric, Ashenflux, Etherialgender, Hallowedgender, Phantomic, Stygianic, Glimmerflux, Murkgender, Serenegender, Sepulchric, Ghostflux, Chimeric, Veilgflux, Wintric, Eclipsic, Starhollow, Nebulic, Fadeward, Gravegender

(🌘) Faceclaim ideas;

Sorry if this isn’t what you wanted, This is what showed up on pinterest when i typed “dazecore” :3

REBLOG IF YOU USE

[star boarders]

[eternalremorse]

After 19 months of playing this game, I finally had the moment where Sebastian was facing my character at the beginning of the Restricted Section quest! I had to take a picture to immortalise this moment!

It was even more perfect because I was playing as Evelyn! (They get together in my headcanon)

[batllethinker]

The national team submissions masterboard

Overview: A look into the dynamics of our national teams

Spain:

Doms: Jenni, Ona, Aitana, Irene P, Sandra

Subs: Alexia, Mapi, Misa, Laia C, Leila O, Laia A, Salma, Athenea, Mariona, Patri, Cata, Eva N, Lucia, Pina

England:

Doms: Millie B, Mary E, Alex G, Millie T, Coombsy, Lucy S, Rachel

Subs: Lucy B, Keira, Esme, Leah, Georgia, Ellie, Hannah, Beth E, Beth M, Fran, Lauren, Ella, Lessi, Missy Bo

Sweden:

Doms: Magda, Olivia, Frido, Amanda, JRK, Linda S, Amanda N, Sofia J, Caroline, Elin, Rebecka

Subs: Hanna B, Asllani, Lina H, Stina, Nathalie, Filippa, Jonna, Anna S, Matilda V, Stina B, Julia Z, Emma

Australia:

Doms: Mini, Lani, Emily VE, Tameka, Kyah, Emily G

Subs: Macca, Sam, Ellie, Steph, Charli, Clare, Mary, Kyra, Chloe, Teagan, Caitlin, Hayley, Courtney N

Oranje:

Doms: Sherida, Dominique, Shanice, Merel

Subs: Danielle (Switch), Lynn, Viv, Lieke, Jackie, Jill, Damaris, Esmee, Daphne, Kerstin

Germany:

Doms: Melanie, Popp, Svenja, Lina, Sara, Linda, AKB

Subs: Obi, Jule, Giulia, Merle, Klara, Laura, Sydney, Lea, Feliciats, Sjoeke, Sara D

Ireland

Doms: Denise O’Sullivan, Louise Q, Courtney Brosnan, Caitlin H, Diane C, Niamh F, Heather P

Subs: Katie M, Megan Connolly, Amber, Claire O’R, Abbie Larkin, Izzy Atkinson, Lucy Q, Ruesha L, Grace M, Jamie F, Megan Campbell, Kyra Carusa, Anna P

Canada

Doms: Cloé L, Adriana L, Janine B (switch), Kadeisha B, Allysha C, Melissa Dagenais, Ashley L, Bianca SG, Nichelle P, Kailen S, Desiree S, Shelina Z

Subs: Jordyn H, Quinn, Jessie F, Sab, Julia G, Marie-Yasmine, Amanda A, Simi, Tanya, Gabrielle C, Sydney C, Rylee F, Vanessa G, Anna K, Devon K, Clarissa L, Marie L, Jordyn L, Lysianne P, Emma R, Deanne R, Jade Rose, Jayde R, Zoe B, Victoria Pickett, Olivia S, Sarah S, Evelyn S, Sura Y

Norway

Doms: Ada (switch), Ingrid, Maren M, Guro P, Guro B, Maria T, Tuva H (switch)

Subs: Guro R, Frida, Caroline, Aurora, Vilde, Thea, Celin, Julie B, Lisa N, Elisabeth T, Sophie H

Scotland

Doms: Lisa E, Kirsty S, Rachel C, Jenna F, Lee G, Jenna C, Hayley L, Jane R

Subs: Sam K, Erin C, Kirsty H, Nicola D, Sandy M, Sophie H, Leah E, Christy G, Jamie-Lee, Brogan H, Jennifer S, Amy R, Chelsea C, Fiona B, Martha T, Claire E, Lauren D

USA

Alyssa Naeher (switch), Jane Campbell (Dom), Aubrey Kingsbury (Sub, Jane), Casey Murphy (sub, Alyssa)

Tierna Davidson (sub, Andi), Emily Fox (sub, Alex), Naomi Girma (sub, Alex), Casey Krueger (Dom), Jenna Nighswonger (sub, Crystal), Emily Sonnett (sub, Lindsey), Sam Staab (switch)

Sam Coffey (sub), Hal Hershfelt (sub, Andi), Lindsey Horan (Dom), Rose Lavelle (sub, Lindsey)

Crystal Dunn (Dom), Catarina Macario (Sub, Lynn), Alex Morgan (switch), Trinity Rodman (sub, Hatch/Sofia), Jaedyn Shaw (sub, Abby D), Sophia Smith (sub, Becky), Mallory Swanson (sub, Christen)

Ashley Sanchez (sub, Hatch/Sofia), Ashley Hatch (switch, Sofia), Becky Sauerbrunn (Dom), Abby D (Dom), Lynn W (Dom), Olivia Moultrie (sub, Becky), Alyssa Thompson (sub, Christen), Midge Purce (sub, Alex), Kristie Mewis (sub, Lynn), Sav DeMelo (switch, Jane), Andi Sullivan (Dom), Alana Cook (sub, Sofia), Sofia Huerta (Dom), Tobin Heath (Sub, Christen), Christen Press (Dom)

[eternalremorse]

Massive thank you to @zyuyea for fanart of my MC, Evelyn!! You did fantastic work! ❤️👏😍

The sixfanart ninefanart is complete! Here's the results.

If anyone of the owners of the MC feels like I need to change anything, please reach out as soon as possible, I'm due for a hiatus very soon. Also, if any of you wish, I can be tipped here (It's my ko-fi)

Down below are the images in full scale for the owners to download. Please enjoy!

@simpy-slytherin

@lil-grem-draws @lil-grem-reblogs

@eternalremorse

@enbyvvitch

@radicalbillie

@wrenegade-accio

@localravenclaw

@wrenegade-accio and @localravenclaw

@faustinio27

[eternalremorse]

They're not meant to be anything special, but it's my very first time using the Otis UUE4 mod to take photos. I decided to use a purple light on Evelyn just because I like the colour. Hopefully with some more use of this mod I'll be able to take better pictures in the future.

Big shoutout goes to @miss--soapy for her "how-to" instructions from this post. As a beginner they are clear and easy to understand!

Next on my agenda is to tackle poses and add multiple characters to use them on. I want to give special thanks to @ominouscorridors and @thatssallowsgirl for their tutorials on these subjects which I will watch next!

Thank you to everyone else who reached out when I asked for pointers and instructions for this mod. I know the fandom can have it's ups and downs, but there are plenty of good eggs out there who will help should you need anything!

I'm excited to expand on my content this year, as I have many ideas!

[eternalremorse]

Thanks for the tag @pikadrawsthings ❤️

Here's what my main 4 MC's would sing along to:

Evelyn 🦡💛

Oscar 🦁❤️

Constance 🦅💙

Vincent 🐍💚

Np tags: @blueraineshadows @slytherin-paramour @accio-bagel @pheexblack @evaslytherpuff @mspegasus17 and anyone else who wants to join!

HL Modern AU Music Tag Game

What is your MC / OC singing at the top of their lungs in the car regardless of day or time?

I mean, this song never gets skipped, the volume always gets blasted, and their throat probably hurts when it's over.

(The lyrics don't have to match their personality, it can just be a banger in their books.)

You personally don't even have to like the song.

Thank you so much for the tag @leaswhum 🫶✨

Elijah

Raymond

Lilith

Weiss

No Pressure Tags: @savingsallow @rypnami @weebiecreep @ps-cactus @acslytherpuff @eternalremorse @theladyofshalott1989 & anyone who wants to!

[tragedicna]

thinks about boudoir photography and i....oof

yumei and jieun would 10/10 do boudoir shoots...yumei for her partners and jieun for her fans (y'know, income).

evelyn, marlene, reiko, and damarys would as well...and maybe alessandra with some coaxing but only for her lover's eyes only uwu

[bluemooncoming]

 Another 🏀night with the team 🤗

[eternalremorse]

I love this!! I had to try it out, so I made Sebastian Sallow and my OC, Evelyn Damaris, on their wedding day. Excuse me whilst I go and cry happy tears...

I keep seeing this picrew and I made Garreth and Adanna

And me and Astarion 🤣

[changqwi]

women that can kick your ass :  

evelyn  ,  marlene  ,  hyunae  ,  lumine  ,  arwen  ,  rohesia  ,  hyesung  ,  lucienne  ,  asami  ,  junko  ,  kazuha  ,  rosalyne  ,  caelia

women that can kick your ass  ,  but prefers to protect  :  

renata  ,  tsaritsa  ,  guizhong  ,  yushi huang  ,  leonia  ,  meixiu  ,  alejandra  ,  mulan  ,  lucie  ,  yura  ,  shizuka  ,  yuriko  ,  liiqiu

doesn’t fight  ,  but will rise to the occasion if she has to  :  

damarys  ,  kozue  ,  reiko  ,  althea  ,  theodora  ,  isidora  ,  esme  ,  marise  ,  velora  ,  youran  ,  suyin  ,  aeri  ,  catalina  ,  arlette  ,  eudora  ,  jieun

soft  :  

rosalea  ,  nerissa  ,  cordelia  ,  lucinda  ,  raelyn  ,  oriana  ,  damiana  ,  celyn  ,  meiyin

[eternalremorse]

OMG EVELYN LOOKS SO GORGEOUS IN YOUR STYLE!! THANK YOU SO MUCH ONCE AGAIN!

SET 2

A big thank you to all you giving me a chance to draw your wonderful MCs 🥰

@libellule-ao3 , @roses-fromtears1, @bassicallymaestra , @kaidynsarell , @harrietlancaster , and @eternalremorse

Onto the next set! 💚

[unexploredcast]

BEHIND THE SCREEN: GM Prep for Deliverance, OH (Mystery 1)

Thank you so much to everyone who left a review of our show in February! I’m so excited to be able to share my GM notes and a little bit about how I prep for our sessions with all of you, which are contained in quite a long post beow, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions that come up, so send them my way and I’ll get to them as soon as I can!

Fair warning: this post contains spoilers for... the entire first eight episodes of Deliverance, OH, quite literally, so if you haven’t finished listening to the first arc, it’d serve you best to listen to episodes 00-08 before reading my notes. I don’t think there will be any other spoilers for future episodes, but if there are I’ll be sure to mark them with plenty of space for you to stop or skip reading them.

Thanks again for your support, and enjoy this little walk through my brain on Monster of the Week! 

-Christine

ORGANIZATION

I do the majority of my GM prep for this game in one big google doc I call “Session Outlines” which I store in a folder that has all of my worldbuilding notes, monster ideas, intro scripts, alternate playbooks, etc. I like having everything in one place so I can cross-reference with old arc while I work and on the fly, and this is as close to organized as I get.

The “Session Outlines” document’s got a handy table of contents with links that I can follow to quickly get where I need -- the breakdown is based on the Mystery prep system that Monster of the Week gives, so each arc has it’s concept, hook, monster, minions, bystanders, locations, and countdown. I’m going to go through each of those, but this is what the outline/table of contents looks like on the first page of my doc:

As you can see, I give each arc a catchy, stupid name that no one else ever sees, just to entertain myself. 

Also in this doc, right at the end, I have the countdowns for various long-term arcs so that I can reference them when those intersect with things happening in smaller mysteries:

I’ll get a little deeper into countdowns further on in the post for anyone who hasn’t run Monster of the Week before, because they’re my absolute favorite part of prepping for this game. 

PRE-MYSTERY PREP

Now, the first mystery in Deliverance was the first time I’d ever run Monster of the Week, so there are some aspects of prep that I’ve altered a little as I’ve learned more, but let’s just go through each page of my original notes from that arc.

The first page of my notes is always where I put the high-level thematic stuff that I want going on. The Concept for the arc -- in this case, a complicated question of morality, responsibility, and control that comes up when you find out that the monster that’s killing people is just a kid that doesn’t really know any better. I knew that with this arc I wanted to immediately set up the season with the question of: can we say that a monster is intrinsically evil, and if they are not, how does that effect our moral responsibility in re: trying to stop/hunt them? 

Some of that came from my own agenda coming into the game, and some of that came from our episode 0, with Andrew flagging an interest in this strict anti-monster sect with rigid morals and absolute obedience, and also with Roman flagging an interesting in the nature and morality of monstrosity by choosing the Monstrous playbook. I figured a question like this would instantly give them both a strong agenda, and build an interesting tension between two of the four main characters if I could get them to butt heads about it.

The hook is pretty straightforward: what direct action or effect of the monster’s presence are they going to notice first, what’s our “opening shot” so to speak. I’ve been reading the essay collection Dead Girls by Alice Bolin lately and feeling guilty about having killed Delaney off before she was ever even on screen, but at the time I chose what felt like a trope-y establishing shot for the season so that it would become very quickly apparent where I was attempting to turn certain other tropes on their head. Anyway, someday we’ll be returning to Deliverance again and all I can say is that we may or may not have seen the last of Delaney Chapman... but that’s all stuff for later. 

I also always put Chase’s start of mystery move on the first page of each mystery’s notes for a few reasons -- mostly so I don’t forget to ask him to roll it, but also because his result will, in part, develop the tone that mystery’s going to have. If he rolls a 10, this is going to be a mystery where the Kindred is working closely to solve the same problem, but if he rolls a 9 or below, the group is going to be more splintered, he’ll have fewer resources on hand, and on a 6 or below, they’re going to be actively obstructing him in some way. In play, I bold the result he rolls on this page so that I don’t forget, weeks and weeks later when we’re recording the third session in the mystery, what it was that he rolled, and so I can look back later and remember the progression of his relationship with the sect. 

Anyway, after all of that’s set in place, I move on to firming up the details of the monster -- powers, attacks, weaknesses, all of that good stuff. Most important is the MONSTER TYPE, which is one of my favorite things about Monster of the Week.

For anyone who hasn’t taken a look at the Keeper preparation sheets for Monster of the Week ( HERE! ) I’ll put in a screenshot of what I’m talking about so that it makes sense.

The first thing I do in creating each monster is pick its type/motivation. Some of them are really obvious, but sometimes having the opportunity to pick an unexpected or non-traditional motivation for a traditional monsters is even better. I’ll elaborate more on that some day when I do one of these posts for a later mystery, because Clara is pretty straightforward in terms of monster type. Here are her full stats:

Now-- I’ll admit, at the end of the day Clara maybe wasn’t the monster in this arc. I went back and forth a lot on how to frame this arc in terms of monsters and minions, because the crew was never actually meant to fight or kill this kid. But, again, I was so interested in setting them up immediately against someone that made them question their internal concept of “monster” that I went with it. She was for me, ultimately, the central focus of the arc: the cause of the conflict, the motivation for the other involved characters, etc., even if she didn’t end up being the climactic conflict of the whole arc. 

Clara didn’t appear on screen nearly as much as I expected her to: I’m not sure I ever got as far as her physical description as written here. I picked her type as BEAST because, in her uncontrollable werewolf form, that was what she would do -- so if they hurt her, and she transformed in response to that injury, that was what she’d do.

I also write this neat custom move for werewolf bites, but then none of the PCs got bitten by anyone. Still, I stand by the possibility of time-pressure and tension inherent in that 7-9 option.

As for weaknesses, my understanding of the werewolf healing process changed a little bit in play as I started to describe it happening to Evelyn, so between sessions I crossed out the original idea. I honestly have no idea, in retrospect, where I was going with the second bullet point, but thus is the fun of digital ephemera, it still lives in this google doc even though I have clearly ignored it for the rest of forever.

That link about mercury, for the record, goes to an instructables page I found for “how to kill a werewolf” -- Andrew still gets mad at me that “quick silver” not being literal is the reason he has to clarify whether anything I say is a metaphor or literal, but I thought it was way more interesting than Chase’s already having the perfect weapon (his silver knife) on hand. 

Minions are up next:

As you can see, most of the heavy lifting here was in picking their Bystander Types since all three of them were werewolves with basically the same ability. I even copy and pasted from Clara to the point where I forgot to change the pronouns in Henry’s “supernatural powers” section. You can also see the little copy-and-paste checkboxes I use to represent harm on Henry’s stats -- there was so much happening at the end of that battle that I never fully caught up with filling those checkboxes in, and I think I also had them in my paper notes (which we’ll talk about later in this post). 

The big motivation here was to differentiate Evelyn and Henry as two sides of the coin: both doing “bad” things to protect their sister, but going about them in different ways, with Evelyn -- who has an investment in this town, a life here she needs to protect in addition to protecting her sister -- being subtle, less destructive, really focused on protecting more than on doing whatever it takes, where Henry -- who has just moved back, and has no attachment to Deliverance itself except his family -- was going to do anything it took to get people off Clara’s scent, killing anyone who got suspicious.

You can see that I’ve face-cast Evelyn, here -- I do this for maybe 25-30% of the NPCs I make for this show, either ones I think are going to be particularly important or ones where an image of them just immediately comes to mind. In addition to Evelyn, I think I have actors in mind for Damaris, Van, Larkin, Blanche... Maybe that’s it? I also originally had one for Remedy (blonde Zoe Kravitz) but some incredible fanart has swayed me to having at least 3 different mental images of Remedy. 

I should note that my actual writing process for these notes is not in the order they appear in the doc: at this point, I usually try to at least sketch out the countdown because I’m in the mindset of thinking about the monster and what they’re going to do -- and then I fill in the bystander and location details to suit the countdown, making any adjustments to the countdown that I need to to accommodate new ideas. 

But, in my notes Bystanders and Locations are next, so: 

First thing of note: somehow, Sheriff Commander-Jones’ wife, the medical examiner, never made an appearance. She is just chilling in the background of this show, waiting for someone to need to talk to a coroner at the morgue, happily married to a very overwhelmed Sheriff. There are a ton of details here that never came up, and one of the things I learned from this first mystery is that I’d over-prepped the hell out of it. My bystander notes these days are a lot simpler: name, pronouns, age, brief physical description, type/motivation, and a one-word trait usually is about it. 

(Melissa was going to be so good, I’m still so sad I’ve not found another way to bring her into things. Maybe someday...)

You can also see here the common symptom where I leave something (Yasumoto’s trait) blank to come back to and then instantly forget about it and it just stays blank forever. Also, I don’t know why the hell I wrote “charming” in Jason’s description. He was never truly meant to be charming. 

I keep the little Keeper list of bystander types/motivations in the doc below all of my pre-made Bystanders in case I need to come up with some on the fly, but more often or not I forget to write them into the notes. Evidence: Remedy is missing from this document after I made her up on the fly when Chase needed healing. 

Locations are notoriously my least favorite part of prepping. I’m not good at coming up with interesting locations so I struggle through outlining the important places. I spent a lot more time on it with this arc than I do later on in the show, but my go-to is a few keywords describing the feeling/appearance of the place, and what information they might come across there. 

After that, we get to my favorite part of designing a mystery: the Countdown. 

For those who haven’t read or run Monster of the Week, the Countdown basically represents the steps of what the monster would do if the hunters didn’t interfere, and it gives a sense of direction as to how things will progress. It’s broken up into 6 steps, and the story can move from step to step when the heroes take too long or fail rolls, etc. Here’s my countdown for the first mystery: 

This one was super concrete compared to some of the ones I’ve written. A recent countdown ended “And then the world ends” or something like that, so this one was a nice, concentrated countdown for a first foray into the game. 

I italicize countdown lines in my notes as they happen in play: when people stall for too long early on, or when they fail and I get to make an off-screen hard move. I think the shadows line here was activated when they took the time to take Chase back to the farmhouse to get healed, which meant they wouldn’t be able to find the information I had for them in the morgue. The rest of the countdown was altered by their decision to go after Evelyn -- because Evelyn couldn’t go after Damaris, Henry did, and thus didn’t go after the police.

I hang out on the Countdown page while we play, until I need to reference something else: it gives me a broad overview of where things are going to go, so switching back and forth between that and the list of Keeper moves on the Keeper reference sheet helps me improvise my responses to failed rolls and decide what’s going to happen as the characters go to specific place. I like keeping this focused outline of what the monster is trying to accomplish in the front of my brain at all times, because it makes it easier to decide what conflicts might arise and what threats are out and about. 

The last section I prepare before we start the first session for the mystery is a broad mystery information section, which isn’t necessarily in the outline of Keeper prep that Monster of the Week provides. For some mysteries I use this a lot, for others it’s just a line or to, but it’s my catch-all space for any information I can’t fit anywhere else but think I might need. 

In this case, it was both notes about werewolf transformations and also a sort of CSI-esque explanation of what had actually happened with Delaney and Jason the night before:

Again, most of this information didn’t get used -- and I’ve sense balanced out my over-prepping problem, but I almost always have something I want to remember that doesn’t fit in any of the other prep, so that’s what this section is for. 

I think the biggest thing to note here is that a lot of this information is in flux: I’m always playing with what things will work, what things won’t, what will make for interesting decisions based on what the PCs are doing, and adjusting my information and planning from there. Less kill your darlings and more let go of cool ideas when better ones come up, but it’s all about being able to adapt on my feet when things aren’t going to plan. I try really hard not to imagine the full arc of the story and how I think it might go, because when I do they inevitably go in the opposite direction. My focus is more cementing the ideas and themes and questions I’m interested in so that I can find ways for those to come up no matter what the players decide to do. 

Now, that’s all the prep that I do before the first session. But most of our mysteries for Deliverance take 3-4 recording sessions, so what do I do during and between?

DURING AND BETWEEN SESSIONS

During sessions, I tend to make notes on paper because it makes less noise while other people are talking than typing does (I am, as anyone will tell you, a notoriously loud typist), so write some brief notes from the session on a page for that session, and then another page of notes of whatever I’ve scrawled down immediately after we finish recording where I make note of where I want the next recording to begin -- what hooks there are for each character/group of characters, what needs to be addressed, what they’ve been in the middle of, etc. 

I dug through the pile of papers I brought back with me when I moved back to the US this summer to find my scratch page notes for the first mystery (recorded August-October 2017), which are below -- a few handwritten, and one pre-game section that I decided to type because, if I remember correctly, I was making these notes during a lecture because I had procrastinated until the last minute. Major apologies for my oft-indecipherable handwriting; I’d translate, but most of the time I, too, have no idea what it says. 

This one below was my post-session 1 notes, along with my general on-hand notes during the recording of the first mystery -- I’ve got harm checkboxes, Andrew’s description of the farmhouse for reference (which, admittedly, I have not looked at again until just now), and then some notes about where people are headed and what they’ve encountered and/or promised.

Looking back at those harm checkboxes, I think I nerfed Henry’s harm-count because I was pretty sure I was going to kill Chase if I didn’t. I was very much still getting the hang of how much harm monsters can do vs. how much harm hunters can do.

No, I don’t know what those numbers on the top are. I want to say that was Jason’s iPhone password?

This one above is pretty typical for what my pre-session notes look like in the middle of a mystery -- each character or character group and then a quick note about where they are/what they’re going to be doing. This looks the most like the notes I take these days, now that I’ve been playing the game for a lot longer. They’re fairly sparse! Basically enough to give me an opening introduction as we start recording and then ask “what do you do?” and go off of whatever their answer to that is. 

Another important note: much of this NEVER HAPPENS. “storm begins, takes them back to the station” who????? The quickest lesson I learned with this game is to not hold on to anything too tight because better things come up so quickly that you can’t afford to hesitate before abandoning ship and jumping to them.

As you can see, sometimes these notes are a “here’s what happened” or “here’s a thing you need to remember” note, sometimes they’re a “this is an interesting place to start” note, and sometimes they’re a “how the fuck am I going to get them back on track” note. Usually, I’d say, it’s that last one, with this particular group of characters. QUESTIONS are huge, in these notes -- “Where are you going now that Zeke’s kicked you out of the farmhouse?” is, I would say, the ideal kind of note for me to start off a session with. 

Anyway, all that to say: for me, the real work of Monster of the Week is asking the right questions. Having a monster is important and having some idea of setting and bystanders is important, but if I had ten minutes to prep a Monster of the Week mystery, I would have: monster, countdown, and a strong hook, and I could probably improvise it all from there. 

[victorianbelovedanimals]

Extended Bibliography

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Ehnenn, Jill R., ‘“Drag(ging) at memory’s fetter”: Michael Field’s personal elegies, Victorian mourning, and the problem of Whym Chow’, The Michaelian, n.s., 1 (2009)

Feuerstein, A, The political lives of Victorian animals: Liberal creatures in literature and culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Field, Michael, Whym Chow: Flame of Love (London: Eragny Press, 1914).

Finch-Hatton, Harold, Advance Australia! An account of Eight Years’ Work, Wandering, and Amusement in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria (London: W.H. Allen, 1885).

Kean H. ‘Human and animal space in historic ‘pet’ cemeteries in London, New York and Paris.’, in Animal death, ed. by J Johnston & F Probyn-Rapsey (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2013).

Knobe, Bertha Damaris ‘A Cemetery for Dogs’ The Puritan volume IX Scollard, Clinton. “Grimalkin: An Elegy on Peter, Aged 12.” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Vol. XLVI. May. 1893.

Mazzeno, L. W., & Morrison, R. D. Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017).

Moine, Fabienne, Women Poets in the Victorian Era: Cultural Practices and Nature Poetry (n.p: Routledge, 2016).

Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters with a Memoir (Volume One) (n.p.: Ellis, 1895).

----------, Rossetti Papers 1862-1870 (London: Sands, 1903).

Simons, John, Rossetti’s Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian Animals in Victorian London (n.p.: Middlesex University Press, 2008).

Tague, Ingrid H. “Dead Pets: Satire and Sentiment in British Elegies and Epitaphs for Animals.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 41, no. 3, 2008, pp. 289–306.

Turner, J, Reckoning with the beast: Animals, pain, and humanity in the Victorian mind. Baltimore, Md (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).

Van Vechten, Carl, ‘The Cat and the Poet’, in The Tiger in the House (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1922).

Waugh, Evelyn, Rossetti: His Life and Works (London: Penguin Classics, 2022).

Winslow, Helen M., Concerning Cats : My Own and Some Others (Lothrop publishing Company, 1900).