#everyone else thinks that Vlad is an abusive asshole

[glow-in-the-dark-death]

The Night Security

Danny decides to tag along with Dani and travel around the world. With him now being in his late twenties he decided he could use a break from all the craziness back home, and he's been wanting to spend more time with Dani.

Dani despite it being years still looks the same, they had gone to Frostbite to make sure nothing was seriously wrong, Dani was completely healthy but it seems Vlad's messy attempts at cloning alongside her also being a halfa had made it so Dani would age a lot slower than a normal human would.

Danny until that point hadn't realized that he also looked very young for a man who was almost 30, but he could just get away with it by just saying he had a baby face.

To gain money for their travels Danny decided to start doing random jobs normally he would end up with being night security since those positions weren't very popular and always had a position open or where willing to have an extra pair of eyes on the job.

With that being said Dani and his sleep schedule were completely flipped over now being practically nocturnal. They would go out shopping or have fun while the moon was still high in the sky.

Now with that being said, he had no clue why there always was at least that one person at whatever job he would have that seemed to believe he was a vampire,

Yes a vampire, and he could brush it off if it had only happened once or twice but no! This has happened in the majority of his jobs.

And look he gets it, he only gets night jobs, he hangs out with Dani outside only when the sun is nowhere in sight, and yes both he and Dani were sensitive to the sun but that was normal for people with pale skin they would burn easily and considering that pale blue eyes tend to struggle seeing with too much sun clarity especially since they're not used to being around the sun as much as before.

See he gets all those can kinda be vampire things but they where also just very normal and common human things as well.

So yes he was out here fighting vampire allegations instead of ghost ones like when he was young.

~

" Mr.Kent sir you dropped this."

Clark turned around slightly spooked he hadn't heard the young man a moment ago, which should be impossible with his super hearing. Focusing on the man In front of him he realized that the heartbeat he was now hearing was... too slow, unhealthily so. If he had just been hearing the heartbeat he would have been sure it was from someone dying, but the man In front of him showed no struggle or weakness in spite of that.

"Sir?"

Clark snapped back into the present. "Oh! Right sorry about that, it's been a very long day usually I'm out of here long before the sun sets."

"No worries man I totally get that, I just saw that you dropped your glasses case near me and wanted to quickly return it."

"Well thank you Mr.?"

"Fenton, Danny Fenton I work the night shift here."

~

Danny doing his job

His coworkers spraying holy water to prove he's a vampire:

~

check my tags for some extra ideas I had on this

~

Just an Idea

[kkachis]

Plz show us the forbidden discord vlad ideas.

so you have wished it, so it shall be *desiree laugh*

edited and expanded from what i posted in discord, but here it is:

while in the real world, the answer to “why does vlad’s ghost form look like that” might be "it was an easy way to code him as a refined asshole villain", in the world of the story, you can make it much more interesting. once you try the fanon of a ghost’s appearance being influenced by their self-image on for size, things get interesting, because it begs the question - why a vampire?

on one level, it's a projection of what he wants to be: vampires are domineering, strong, powerful, terrifying. it's a far cry from his bedbound state in the medical facility, left at the mercy of prodding doctors and nurses who may or may not have had his best interests in mind (given the GIW, or a prototypical version of them, have probably been around long enough for vlad's case to be of interest). if he’s powerful and menacing in his ghost form, that’s as distanced as he can be as the poor case study in room 529.

and about power: vampires lurk in the night. they exert absolute control over their unsuspecting victims, and that’s what everyone else is to vlad: unsuspecting, unknowing. vulnerable, not knowing that any games they play with him don’t follow human rules anymore. power is important for vlad to wield, either as a means to a to fulfill his obsessions or as a goal in and of itself - depends on your take on vlad. there’s also projecting that power to other ghosts to establish himself on the pecking order.

on another level, it's accepting and leaning into the qualities in himself that he perceives as monstrous. the world wants to give him an accident that destroys his humanity? it wants to take away the love of his life and tear apart the few friendships he had? it wants to ruin his degree, to leave him bedbound and his face scarred and his hair forever marked with what had been done to him?

the world wants a freak?

fine. he’ll show them a monster.

vlad is a spiteful bitch. he also doesn’t see himself as a good person by any means. he abuses his powers for his own gain left and right, so it makes sense that if he knowingly leans into being a bad person, his form will match it. he’ll be monstrous in both how he looks and in his behaviour. he knows he’s the bad guy. he knows he's a monster. he owns it. and if he owns it, it can't hurt him.

but on yet another level that vlad doesn't want to acknowledge...

what is a vampire? a lonely thing in a lonely castle. something inhuman. something alone, alone, alone. it's a parasite that relies on other human beings to feed it. what is he, lying around in a hospital, terrifyingly dependent? what is he, flying around and stealing money to line his own pockets? a parasite. a lonely thing in a lonely castle.

lonely dracula in a castle doesn't need friends or lovers, only meals. he’s not exactly unaware of the stories that come with vampires. but it’s not like he wants to face that.

i think that it's most interesting when a character has multiple "levels" of thinking about things. we often don't want to admit everything about how we tick. i find it's especially helpful to break down the "levels" in the thinking of villains, because they usually have the deepest levels of cognitive dissonance and things they don't want to admit. a hero is usually forced to face it and overcome it. a villain tends to get mired in it until they lose themselves. the truth is, all these levels of vlad’s subconscious contribute to his ghost form’s appearance - now the next most interesting question is what do people think is the truth?

vlad is smart and self-aware enough to acknowledge his desire to radiate power. it's the smart thing, arguably - project power to the ghosts, separate his human and ghost half's appearances. amassing power? just the logical thing to do for an ambitious man like him. he will admit that he embraces monstrosity, though that he admits secondarily. he'd rather pretend that he's smart all the way through.

danny probably thinks that the monstrosity is the true place where it comes from - vlad is unrepentantly manipulative and a constant source of terror in his life. projection of power sounds more like an excuse. to danny, embracing the monster within is precisely what delineates himself from plasmius, and why danny looks so much more human.

that third level is what you drag out of vlad kicking and screaming. in those terribly vulnerable moments of introspection, where you're completely honest with yourself for an awful, shitty moment, that's when vlad might just admit why he sees himself as a vampire. there's an insane lonely thing in him, and it never stopped howling. it never stopped begging for warm human hands. it never stopped repulsing him with its weakness. he's not just a monster because he's a bad person - he's a monster because he's pathetic.

[sinceritygem]

Reasons Trevor and Alucard’s Friendship Matters to Me

Watching this series, Trevor and Alucard’s friendship hit me really hard, not in the least because I realized it’s the dynamic I have with my partner and one of my best friends (I’m Alucard, if anyone is wondering).

The reason that this dynamic resonated so deeply with me is that the series really captures the way that, despite being so different on the surface, these characters are dealing with very similar traumatic experiences. They are able to find companionship specifically because they both have outside status, and that friendship is presented as thoroughly beneficial and healthy inside a show that’s full of darkness:

1. They Get to be Their Full, Flawed Selves

Alucard is a half-vampire with the weight of stopping his dangerous father from destroying the world on his (very young) shoulders. 

Trevor is the only heir to a family of vampire hunters who were both legendary and hunted to extinction, who also feels responsible for stopping Dracula. But everyone hates him. He’s also quite young. 

Both of these men have impossible burdens, and are ostracized by other people who have no real understanding of their experiences. We literally meet Trevor in a bar with other patrons talking about how they want his whole family dead, and we know humans (and his own fucking father) want to kill Alucard.

These two are set up to be diametrically opposed enemies: Alucard is all class and coldness where Trevor is crass fiery chaos. Alucard is an upper crust noble where Trevor is a working knight. They’re literally the Vampire and the Vampire Hunter.  But we never really go there. They are aware of their differences, but when they’re together, they get to be young men. They give each other shit for the way they talk or stupid things they do -- not actual distaste for one another. Their badgering happens because they are safe to be flawed, and safe enough to let the other see who they are. Other than Sypha, neither character lets anyone else in the show remotely this close to them.  When Trevor and Alucard meet, Alucard coldly and aloofly asks if they’re searching for a savior, the larger-than-life role he’s constantly forced into. In return, Trevor shrugs and says he fell down a hole. He doesn’t have this expectation of Alucard, and Alucard is free to meet him as a peer, which he pretty quickly does.  There’s a great follow-up exchange in Season 2: Sypha: Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.  Alucard: Oh, please. We're not children. Trevor: [Pointing at Alucard] Eat shit and die. Alucard: Yes, fuck you.[They both chuckle.] This is the bullshit of friends, not mortal enemies. It’s also the bullshit of late teens or early adults, not two men who have the entire weight of the world on them. Because of their friendship, they get to actually be people. 

2. They Can (Finally) Rely on Someone

Alucard and Trevor have both spent a lot of time alone, and have both been abandoned by family members, emotionally and/or through death. Alucard literally left home and slept for a year, and Trevor roams around getting drunk and starting fights. These are people who expect to be abandoned and disappointed.

But they trust each other. Pretty immediately.

This exchange starts partially out of need. Alucard says, “I need a hunter and a scholar. I need their help to save Wallachia, perhaps the world, and defeat my father.” But it does matter it’s Sypha and Trevor. He appreciates their honesty, and their bluntness. He very quickly appreciates their humor. And it’s mutual. Trevor respects Alucard’s wit, humor, and commitment to his goal.

3. Their Suffering is Understood, But Not Dwelled On

Part of the reason for above is because they have an understanding of shared experience, even if they’ve handled it differently. 

More importantly, they both get what trauma does, and have a respect for each other for having gone through it. Alucard has a line right at the end of Season 1, when the gang is assembling, where Trevor asks why Alucard wants to team up and kill Dracula. Alucard says, “Because it is what my mother would have wanted. And we are all, in the end, slaves to our family's wishes.” This is a huge connection for Trevor, who can see both the humanity (taking a kind action for a loved one) as well as relate to the burden of our family’s wishes, which in his case is passing on the vampire hunter manner. But it’s also more personal than that. There’s a line late in Season 2 where Alucard says, “I’m disturbed to find I had more of a childhood than you did.” Alucard is not coy about how fraught his childhood was, but that also gives him the empathy to actually understand that Trevor had it rough. He isn’t belittling Trevor; he’s actually seeing him. 

These men who have had almost no one support them suddenly have a person who values them as they are and can deeply see what they are experiencing. That’s huge. 

4. They Don’t Have to Worry About the Other One Being Afraid of Them

Alucard and Trevor could both kill each other. They establish that the first time they meet and remind each other of it constantly.

This is actually a trauma response. They’re so used to people leaving, that they’re pushing to see if the other will leave.

This is crucial to their friendship, because the other one doesn’t leave. He’s not even really phased. He just makes a joke and keeps going. This is how they build trust, and it mirrors Lisa’s relationship with Vlad -- one of the clearly healthy dynamics in the show.

We can contrast this with Trevor’s interactions with the Priest and various tavern-goers, who all hate him genuinely and immediately. His pushing away tactics “work” in these cases and get him hated.

Alucard is similarly disliked by the vampire community and we can assume general humans. Worst of all, his own father has actively rejected him. Alucard thus decides to be cold and distant, similarly pushing others away. But in their friendship, they are equals, and they are kept around, even with all their flaws and monstrous ability. They even start to exchange some traits. Trevor thinks things through a little more and isa little more genuine, and Alucard relaxes a little more and engages in some asshole tomfoolery. They begin to let down their defenses. 

5. This Dynamic is Healing Oriented 

The reason this dynamic gets my heart strings going is that IT MATTERS SO DEEPLY. These are two damaged souls fighting an impossible fight, and THEY FOUND SOMEONE WHO RESPECTS THEM AND SEES THEM. Alucard and Trevor don’t ask each other to be different than they are; they use their skills and approaches to try to solve an impossible task, while validating that they want the other one around. They also accept and support that the other person has experienced trauma. 

These are the friendships we deeply need when we’re carrying the weight of things like PTSD, abandonment, neglect, abuse, and other mental health worries. I love Alucard and Trevor because they are such GOOD, HEALTH FRIENDS, even when their own shit is still messy. I absolutely relate to Alucard Tepes, and this show gave me a renewed appreciation for the Trevors in my life. I’m here and as healthy and strong as I am because they saw me and they loved me.

A follow up to “Reasons Alucard Tepes Matters to Me” Here [X]

[moviegroovies]

okay so one of my points in the original incoherent longpost ramble i wrote while fending off the the post-lost boys haze that overtook me after watching it for, i believe, the fifth time, was that i thought the reason it was such a good movie was how quickly it checked the “oh, i like these characters and want to think about them now that the movie is over” box. in that post, i then proceeded to not talk about the thoughts i’ve actually been having about these characters at all, so let’s get down to work and try to fix that, shall we?

okay i was going to just write another impossible to read multiple paragraph long post, but y’know, how about i make things easier on all of us and do this in bullet points. so, in no particular order..... headcanons!

despite her later desire to get out of the gang, star wasn’t tricked or pressured into becoming a vampire like michael was. rather, she had been hanging around them for long enough that she pieced together what they were and asked to join, only coming to realize that it would mean killing other people for her own continued survival and wanting out later on.

in the 6-issue lost boys comic, it’s implied that star has cystic fibrosis, informing her decision to become a vampire. i’m definitely not taking all of that comic into my own personal canon, but i stand by that part--esp. bc it fits with vampirism being her decision, even if it was one she later regretted. 

marko is the smallest of the lost boys, but also the most dangerous, even exceeding david. have you seen that part where he’s peeling a man’s head like a fruit? that bitch is BLOODTHIRSTY.

not that he’s exactly an upstanding citizen on his own, but a good deal of the reason that david abuses exercises his control over the other boys is that he knows that they (but marko in particular) are always just about ten minutes and one show of weakness on his end away from staging a coup, and he knows that with anyone else in charge (save maybe dwayne, but dwayne isn’t interested in the leadership role) the group would become too violent and draw too much attention, getting them all killed.

okay now i feel like i’m vilifying marko which. i definitely stand by what i’ve said, but i also don’t think he’s like, pure evil or anything by any means. i like marko! 

i feel like i owe marko some nice headcanons now so like: i agree with the general consensus that marko cares for the pigeons in the vampire hotel, to the point where he feeds them and maybe talks to them. he DEFINITELY has named them all, although honestly he can’t tell them apart that well so usually when he sees one and calls it a specific name, he’s fucking with everyone else. loves to make fun of the other guys for not knowing which one is which, though.

one day he looks at a bird flying into the cave and casually announces “hey, vlad’s back,” and after hardly a glance, michael deadpans “vlad? that’s lestat.” 

marko goes into existential crisis mode for a week. this is the first time he starts to respect david’s decision to make michael one of them. 

he never figures out if michael was just fucking with him the way everyone else or if he could really tell the difference between the pigeons and it haunts him to this day.

ok wow that was a LOT of marko

back to star: she’s trans. you know that part on the boardwalk where she and michael are introducing themselves to one another for the first time, and michael goes “oh, your parents too, huh,” when she says her name is star? i always felt like she didn’t really get what he was saying, even after michael elaborated and told her he meant that her parents were ex-hippies. now i’m totally choosing to read that as her being like, a little offended that he thought someone would only be named star because they were burdened with it by uncool ex-hippie parents, because honestly when she picked it she thought she had the coolest name of all time. 

i will not take constructive criticism on that last part because it is already perfect.

on the subject of star, the general consensus i’ve seen in fic and stuff is that she had been a vampire for a few months or maybe a year before the events of the movie, but honestly i’d disagree.

personally, i feel like she’s been there for a lot longer than that--like, have you seen how she dresses? that immediately pinged “free spirit hippie girl” to me, which was kind of out of place, especially considering that everyone else dressed so 80′s. imo, star might have been turned as early as the start of the 70′s--making her the ex-hippie, and not her parents, like michael assumed. this fic here (which is SO good, by the way) explains the way that she was able to last a year with the hunger while michael was already struggling after about a week by having star steal sips from david’s bottle to tide her hunger when she could. that’s basically the way i see it, too, tbh, except over a longer time scale--rather than one year, something around 15. 

which means star is nearly as old as michael’s mother. oops.

alright, it’s weird, but i don’t actually think it’s that weird. the way i’m choosing to see vampirism in this universe is that it permanently halts the emotional maturity of the vampire at whatever age they get turned; david and the guys are nearly grown, at ages like, 18-22 or so, but not quite, and they’re never going to grow up and out of their immature mindset. the worst is for laddie, who’s permanently stunted around 8 years old. the others respond to this with a certain degree of pity, but since he doesn’t actually know what he’s missing, it mostly translates to a really rabid older brother/sister instinct. heaven help anyone who tries to pick on that kid--they’re immediately going to face 5 angry vampire dudes and one absolutely enraged vampire chick. 

(not to mention that his emotional immaturity means he’s got no real self control over the hunger he feels... if he ever snaps and becomes a full vampire, he’ll be the most dangerous of the group for a plethora of reasons)

on that note, if i were to list the lost boys by most control over their urges to least (or, y’know, least to most actively bloodthirsty), i think it’d be something like this: michael -> david -> star -> dwayne -> marko -> paul -> laddie, with the caveat that while marko is technically better at controlling himself than paul, paul has more moral reservations about the actual act of violent murder, while marko is more inclined to kill for fun. 

david being so high on that list may be a point of contention for some but tbh i feel pretty strongly about it

a majority of that call for me comes from the unmade screenplay for the lost boys: the beginning, a prequel to the film set in 1906. before reading that, i honestly had different headcanons entirely, and a lot less sympathy for david, but if you take the script as canon, i think a lot of things change about his characterization.

in the script, the four main lost boys are together (plus one other member named jasper, which is the only crossover name between the lost boys and twilight) as a petty gang before they became vampires. the start of the movie sees them pickpocketing to try and pay for a place to sleep that night, and david seems to luck out early, lifting a wallet with a $100 bill inside. 

however, when he realizes the guy has a family, including two babies, and he just took everything the guy has, he gives the wallet back, to marko’s intense dismay. 

basically, david starts out a criminal, and he definitely does care about self preservation above most other things, but he still has morals. later, when the movie’s big bad is pressuring him and the others to drink blood and live eternally, he’s the only one who refuses, spitting out the wine when he’s forced to drink it and showing the others that it’s blood. notably, even before that he’s warning his friends that they don’t have to drink it if they didn’t want to (mirroring the way that star told michael he didn’t have to drink of the bottle), protecting not just himself, but also them. he resists becoming a vampire the longest, too; david refuses to join the movie’s villain, even after the other lost boys have been turned, right up until he’s shot by some military men in a scuffle and it’s a matter of life and death. then, his self preservation wins out, but even once he’s been turned, david doesn’t lose who he used to be. 

tl; dr: i feel like david is a better person than the events of the movie alone would have you think.

in my opinion, he’s been looking out for his friends from the very beginning, and he’s never stopped doing that. yeah, even before he turned, he was a crook and kind of a burnout, but he had morals. i’m not going to deny that david enjoys being a vampire--enjoys drinking blood, the physical rush, the power over people who pushed him around--not by any means. i just think that comes from an understandable place, given that he was a streetrat who got pushed around a lot in the events of that script; he likes that he’ll never be a victim to assholes with knives who are bigger than he is again. 

plus, if you look at the people the lost boys kill over the course of the movie, they’re not exactly innocent victims. there’s the asshole cop who restrained david with a baton to his throat for pretty much just the act of putting his hand on a dude’s face, a jerkass who starts fights on boardwalks, steals comic books, and ignores his girlfriend’s protestations in the car when he’s trying to make out with her, the girlfriend, who stuck by him while all that shit was going down (and was reading one of the stolen comics, if i interpreted that scene correctly--not that this means she necessarily deserved to die, but she wasn’t innocent), and a bunch of assholes calling themselves surf nazis. david and his gang only go after people who have started the fight themselves in some way or another, and i think that david is a big part in keeping it that way--he’s the one who deescalates the tension on the carousel to keep things from an all out bloodbath, after all, and was the one keeping the gang in check since the turn of the century from doing anything too unforgivable for their own gain. that to me says he’s got a pretty good grasp of self control, and he keeps the gang to a level of violence that sustains their bloodlust without being totally gratuitous as much as possible.

re: his placement on the sliding scale of vampiric self control, you might be wondering why i put michael at the absolute top. honestly, it’s not that i think he’s a saint or anything. i just think he was the one member of the gang (jury’s out on laddie, but he’s automatically at the bottom because of his age and inability to control himself) who didn’t make a conscious choice, one way or another, to become a vampire. marko, dwayne, and paul gave into the temptation of the prequel’s big bad. david and star were given the choice between vampirism and death, and chose to live. michael, though--michael gave into peer pressure, but the worst crime he committed was drinking some wine. watching the others kill absolutely fucked him up, but he was able to resist any kind of bloodlust that might have had him joining in the slaughter on the beach that night. when pushed to the absolute wall by david in the ending of the movie (an ending you might have noticed i’m completely ignoring in favor of a full gang inc. laddie, star, and michael for my headcanons lol), his strength was tested against david’s and he won. michael isn’t perfect or superhuman, but he’s making the choices an essentially good, normal human being would make, and when everyone around him for one reason or another chose what they have, he’s got that tiny bit of a head’s up on them that makes all the difference. 

tbh tho, i think david was right when he said there was something of a killer in michael. i think on some gruesome level he’s kind of fascinated with the vampirism he’s fallen in with, which makes him more susceptible than, say, sam, or really any of the other emersons, who would rank above him on that scale, were they vampires too.

paul to me is just a fun happy dude. i was endeared to him when he clapped michael on the back after he drank and announced, totally earnestly, “you’re one of us!” i just, you know, liked his eagerness to welcome in a new friend. tbh i think he’s a bit of a ditzy airhead (or, dare i say it, a himbo), but he’s ultimately got his heart in the right place.

i really like dwayne. i like that he’s the quietest of the group (i saw a headcanon that said he didn’t speak that much because he’s got a stutter he’s embarrassed of, which i have absorbed into my canon), but i especially like that he does speak--to laddie, telling him what’s going on when he’s riding on the back of his bike. other than star, i think dwayne’s the most protective of him, and probably the most “maternal” of the guys. he’s under star in the sliding scale thing because to me he doesn’t really have qualms with killing assholes to survive, but at the same time, he’s never really tempted to take more than he needs, like marko is. 

i like the idea that dwayne’s really into music, like, ‘can name the artist, album, and song title of any song made since 1890 from the first line’ into music. immortality is a hell of a thing for music buffery. 

ok i have sooooooooo much more i want to say, i didn’t even realize i’d put together this many thoughts about this movie but Apparently I Have, holy god, but i need to cut off this post at some point sgfdshgh

one more fun marko one: totally love the hc that he paints, especially that he paints murals on the cave wall. artist boy.....

<3

[secretsofthemasquerade]

What this all means? WoD prelude issues

Abuse will be mentioned

Disclaimer: I don’t want VtM to become a nest for gamer-gaters asshats, so let it be clear that I stand for feminism, positive representation and progressiveness. And further than that, I stand for meaningful, well written media. This is both beyond offensive, and badly written (and badly coded!).

Alright, now that you may (or may not) have read my spoiler free review of the WoD: Prelude vampire game (we eat blood all our friends are dead), this is the second part of this review. The one that really stirs shit, tackles what this all means, and talks about the problems surrounding the two authors. Good brew incoming!

There are a few issues that need mentioning; Zak’s reputation of being a dick (to say the least), white wolf saying they don’t give a shit, and one trans character in the game.

First, I must say I said what I needed to about Sarah (the second author of the Vampire gale) in a few reblogged discussions I had with her about it; you can read that here. She claims the “problematic trans character” is a reference to someone else, but as the anon in that ask pointed out, the name given to the character totally references someone else (and it’s not like Avery is a common first name, so the “coincidence” excuse is weak, to say the least). It’s probably a little bit of both tbh. White wolf stands behind their choice btw.

This is my random, worthless opinion on the trans character’s subject: I don’t think the trans community deserves to be treated like this, and I’m not going to police whether trans people can talk about their dicks (or lack thereof) or not. Sarah likes her characters bold and unapologetic, which is perfectly “none of my fucking business”, I just find that it gives too much of an excuse for people to actually ask trans people about their dicks (or not) which is a definite no-no when it comes to, you know, basic manners. Why encourage that? Most trans people do not want to talk about it to random strangers they’ve just met, so why have that be the main representation of trans people in the media? Sex workers who brag about their dicks and who are serial killers? I find it tasteless at best, dangerous (again, “hey, if this is what trans people are, i totally can ask about their dicks!” kind of shits) at worst. Not that sex workers who talk about their dicks are wrong in anyway, of course. Note that I have no problem with a character being trans, being a serial killer, or being a loud unapologetic bitch. I have a problem with what it may lead to, and how respectful of/to the community the character is. And it’s simply not written with the respect and the love the trans community deserves. The fact that Sarah herself is trans doesn’t make her a good candidate to write well-made (trans or not) characters. I’m all for more diversity in authors (cuz it’s still a bunch of white old dudes out there), but they still need to be good writers (or at least more decent than the shit that’s being published nowadays). Writer is a job. And this is were Zak and Sarah failed; they just didn’t work with basic decency, respect and research of the characters, and what they are, what they represent and what they mean to the community. The fact that White Wolf Publishing used the “but we have a X friend!” excuse only makes it more profoundly wrong. And you guys can’t even blame that on Europeanism (racism takes very different forms here than in the US, certain things are more blurred, and ethnicity is overall understood differently), even in France we consider the use of a token minority person to excuse controversial stuff to be just plain wrong (and god knows France can be very weird about the treatment of minorities). 

If you’re trans and knowledgeable of trans representation, please tell me off about this. It’s just my thoughts on the matter as someone who cares deeply about characters.

The other trans character, Morgan, exchanges like, four texts with you. So, this character’s existence gave nothing to my run. I need to replay the thing and see if other choices give us more interaction with this one, and I really have no problem with this one so far.

Now, the “unique aesthetic” that was brought to the game, I could find interesting modern artists on tumblr to draw for this game, and actually have their modern art be readable, as in, “really in accord with the game’s content (a quick sketch needs to be a quick sketch)”. I can also guess that it would come out far cheaper than whatever this guy took (I hear he sells his art pieces in the thousands? people, you’ve got too much money on your hands, give it to me instead).

The writing, however, I’m pretty sure (read absolutely certain) there are very knowledgeable wod fans out there who can decently hold a pen (half of the RPers I exchange with can come up both with a decent story and can write it out in a very.. literary and interesting way, and so without having to sort through the bs ramble that brings nothing, and without the “options” branches that lead to just a game over screen...).

Zak’s reputation of being a harasser and abuser doesn’t seem too far fetched from where I stand, especially since people who complained have said that White Wolf never contacted them back, even if they said they did. I can’t say deffo what he did or didn’t, but I can certainly assure you that the choice of White Wolf knowingly hiring the guy, then defending him, all while knowing all of this shit, and having one of their writers be one of the victims of the abuse, is not an innocent move from WW/Paradox.

We wanted fresh blood, fresh views, fresh takes, and they willingly hire a veteran known for beyond “problematic” behavior. And excusing all this shit because “but he’s an artist!” doesn’t cut it. Not from White Wolf. Not from a Scandinavian company. Not in the world we live in today. Not with the very talented people who are fans of the WoD and who can come up with something so much better, so much smoother, so much more respectful, and without all this negative publicity. This isn’t just some loud mouth rough corners guy (like I can admit I am!! let’s be honest I’m a harsh bitch lol), this is seriously.. wrong. It leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth, and tbh, Werewolf already has a reputation of being a game played by fascists, and LARPs are known hunting grounds for less-than-polite predators, why fucking continue this fucking shit? This isn’t what we want our hobby to be. This isn’t the kind of people I or anyone around me want to be associated with. Art is political in nature, but that doesn’t mean I am willing to accept the company owning the IP I love most hiring fucking extremist assholes. Everyone has a “problematic opinion” on something, honestly, that’s fine, I mean I get my share of anon hate for many of those, but can you guys straightforward tell me I’m a bad person doing evil and spreading evil into the gaming industry? (If I am tell me now so I can quit!)

TBH, I believe they hired Zak because he was a known “controversial figure”. To have free publicity. To pander to the GG community (EDIT: I failed here, I wanted to say “attract extremes”, Zak is not a gamergater at all). To get everyone angry about “the gay agenda”, “modern art” and more. They’ve succeeded. But it’ll blow up in their faces, and I really want us all to show them this is not acceptable.

What to do now? Be heard. Show your displeasing of such choices. Don’t let them have it their way with an IP you care about. They may own the rights, but ultimately, as Brucato (Mage RPG author), the games belong to us, the fans. Write to white wolf, boycott. Do not harass and insult, but tell them exactly what you think.

There are free visual novels out there, and cheaper princess makers who have more interesting outcomes, badges, achievements, easter eggs, all sorts of different endings if you fail/die, and all sorts of different failure paths that still let you play, and replay, and replay, without feeling frustrated, fucked over, and just plain trying to follow some incoherent druggie’s trail of thoughts.

Here’s a few things I recommend playing, to read how good characterization, art and horror can come around, as well as player agency and choices that mean you continue playing despite failures (linking steam, but gog works too for most of them). So here’s a few games you deffo wanna try out instead of these.

Long live the Queen

Actual “Princess Maker” games :)

Cupid (I can’t recommend @cupidvn enough, it’s  great free game, it has a few flaws considering it’s purely fanmade but overall, it’s very interesting and treats the subject with a good amount of respect)

This war of mine

Choice of vampire (free on web, available as a mobile app)

Vlad the Impaler A very awesome replayable story, you pick one of three characters who has one of two specializations mid game depending on your choices. Just. Get Vlad. It’s great.

I’d also mention an Actual Lone Wolf (by Dever!) video game/visual novel/cyoa. 

Heavy Rain (PS3) So many choices, and the game goes on regardless of what happens. The illusion of choice is so well made. Beyond Two Souls also does this fairly well, but the story is more linear 

The Last of Us (the MC is still a 40 something rough guy, but there’s more to it I promise! there’s no “choice” to be had, but the characterization is great)

And finally, I highly recommend watching like, all of Extra Credits videos about game making, characterization, illusion of choice and so on. They did a playlist. And other one about genres that might come in handy.

I’m very close to angrily make the text/choice/agency/multiple paths adventure we all need and deserve, and publish it for free... But I really don’t have the time, nor the funds, nor the skills, nor the legal knowledge to make it. So if someone wants to, know that I have a hot story that’s worth telling to initiate new players to the WoD :)))