#for the player character

[goonlalagoon]

Somewhere different, something new || SpiritTea

I know I wanted somewhere that would be different to the city, thought Sen through a daze, but I wasn't quite expecting this.

This was the charming if remote village of Yokae, which she had rolled into two days before in the dead of night - that unfortunate pre-dawn stage where it wasn't even just late or middle of the night but edging towards being simply very early the next morning, and she'd spent most of the walk through town half listening to Miko's patter and mostly thinking oh spirits how little sleep am I going to have to meet all my new neighbours on??

It was a small, sleepy village; a little run down in places but overall very...quaint. Picturesque. Just what she'd been looking for: somewhere without the distractions of the city, and without the price tag of a city apartment to go with it. She could deal with living in an old fashioned house for the amount she was paying for it, even if it was going to take some getting used to, and the walk from one end of the village to the other if she wanted a cup of coffee was probably good for her all things considered. The silence was probably the hardest thing to adjust to, as she tossed and turned and tried to get used to sleeping on a futon. In the city there was always noise - the roar of traffic outside, even at night, the blare of sirens in the distance or too-loud chatter of people meandering home in varying levels of inebriation. In Yokae, the only sound was the creak of the roof in the wind and the rustle of leaves, the occasional chirping of an insect. When a fox barked in the distance Sen found herself sitting up, heart racing, as she tried to place where she was.

It had turned out to be a good thing she'd braced herself for handling introductions while bleary eyed, because there was a strong implication that if she didn't meet them all on the first day there was going to be Some Kind Of Problem. And in a place with apparently only twenty-five residents - twenty-seven if you included the dogs, which she did - she really, really didn't want to be known as “the rude one”. She knew what reputation city-folk often had in places like this, and was determined not to fall into it. With a population this small, making a bad impression on anyone would surely get spread around, and before she knew it everyone would be side-eying her and muttering about how she was anti-social and didn't fit in.

That would come anyway, she was sure, once she was out of her writing rut and head down in a project and forgetting that things like eating and shopping and sleeping and going outside were needed. Sen would need all the good feeling she could get when the inevitable flow of inspiration caught her, so that no one would take it personally and might even knock on her door occasionally to check she was in fact alive.

So: Yokae, initially, seemed about what she was expecting.

Then came the floating cat, which she was definitely blaming on the local tea. But the idea that it was a hallucination was - well. It was appealing, but she honestly wasn't sure how this would be what her brain came up with. And she had, absolutely, seen a rice ball float up into the air and vanish in chunks as though something was eating it just the day before. 

Working theory seemed to be that the floating cat was, in fact, real, and that she was, in fact, somehow becoming responsible for running a bathouse. Another point in favour of the cat being real was the pile of towels it had floated into and sent crashing to the ground, because that seemed like the kind of thing a floating cat would definitely do and it wasn't like she'd imagined the towels for it to be a hallucination. She could pick them up and feel the rough texture, and she was pretty sure she couldn't imagine that so convincingly.

So: Yokae, on examination, a little different to original expectations.

Sen scurried to and fro as ordered, carving chunks out of a regrowing root to fuel the boiler and alternating between washing and drying towels, leading spirits over to the steaming tub and trying desperately to work out which ones would be offended by sitting next to each other. Because apparently this was her life now.

So much for free of distractions.

[callonpeevesie]

I'm onto something I'm telling you

[angsty-art-ist]

certified coolkid moment: finding the rotting corpse of your classmate in the woods

[lelianasbong]

every time the wardens do something fucked up i like them even more. this isn't about any game specifically but all of them. i fucking love the knockoff night's watch, i love that they guzzle nasty ichorous darkspawn blood that you'll die from 1) now or 2) in thirty years and how they don't tell their recruits until it's too late and the damage is done. i love their secrets and corruption and their heroism in the face of primordial darkness. i love warden leaders and warden recruits trying their best and the infighting that inevitably happens when they disagree.

[bonesmarinated]

Lacazette casual clothes and stage gear, wanted to do his buhurt and LARP kit too but my hands are so god damn tired and this has been dragging for too long so maybe next time. This has been really fun but babe i need to move on 🎸⚡🗡️🖤

[agentravensong]

thinking about how the extra area added on to a pacifist run of undertale, the true lab, is about alphys's past mistakes. how it ends with the story reaffirming that, despite the pain she's caused, the thing that matters is that she has now made the choice to do the right thing. she's still worthy of her friends' love.

thinking about how undertale doesn't expect the player to get a pacifist ending for the first time. how it's more likely than not that the player will kill toriel the first time they battle her, how lots of players don't initially figure out how to end undyne's fight without killing her, etc. what it expects — not even expects, really, but hopes — is that the player, if they care enough, will use their canonically acknowledged power over time to make up for those mistakes.

no matter how many neutral runs a player has done before committing to the pacifist run, the thing that matters to the characters, to the story, is that you've chosen, now, to do the right thing.

compared to alphys, the player honestly gets off lightly, in that you're the only one (other than flowey) who really remembers any harm you might have caused. and any direct guilting the game could have done about it is long past at this point. instead, as undertale often does, it makes its point via parallels: alphys caused harm, and she knows it. she has committed to being better. in doing so, she has unlocked for herself a better ending to her story. and she deserves it. she's forgiven.

those structural narrative parallels are all over undertale, if you know where to look. and that's one of the things that makes it so fuckin' good.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

listen I expected literally Nothing from the D&D movie okay, like I can't make it clear enough that I expected the most soulless money grab with a good cgi budget imaginable, I went in having already gone through every stage of grief and landed on acceptance and LISTEN

I fucking CRIED during this dumb RPG movie. it wasn't just "not terrible" it was objectively good with a clever plot and compelling characters and sincere emotional beats. this movie loves D&D so fucking much and it NAILS the "a bunch of goobers try to be cool and accidentally discover The Power Of Friendship And Also Great Violence" classic D&D party vibe. their barbarian's last name is fucking Kilgore and my entire family cried in the theater.

I hope they make twelve of these motherfuckers.

[roobiedo]

obsessed with him 100% platonically

[united-under-skyfall]

leverage is so fucking funny. man manages to find the most mentally ill and neurodivergent group of thieves on the market + an even more mentally ill guy whose literal job description was trying to chase all of them, and forces them into a found family speed-run by trying to blow them all up. they lowkey stage a full fucking country wide coup and are like eh 🤷 just another wednesday. this might be a fun place to vacation tho i guess. sophie shows up to her own funeral twice. they're so good at convincing people of their shit that they make a guy's body start reacting to an illness he doesn't have because it isn't real. go completely out on a limb and basically hand this one guy a new password for his computer so they can get into it and he goes with it. parker and hardison have straight up just "fake it 'till you make it"d into the fbi without even attempting to cover their tracks beyond just These Two Guys. half their clients never asked to be their clients and don't know they're their clients, and the other half are random people who find them who fuckin knows how, meanwhile no government agency can track them down without selling their soul to sterling. they make a point to have a dramatic scene w a Big Bad Shadowy Government Guy who doesn't actually get caught or brought to justice or anything telling them he's going to hunt them all down, and in any other show this would probably earn at least a minor arc later on but he literally never shows up again. an entire season finale hinged on a cake and a bunch of clams. they accidentally made eliot a celebrity not once, not twice, but three times. parker blew up her foster parents' house when she was like. nine. and it's hardly a footnote. hardison is just casually an artistic prodigy but it's only ever brought up for the most background of background gags. eliot's biggest beef with parker and hardison for like two and a half seasons is that they won't stop making weird food with lasers and refuse to realize they can't make a decent beer to save their lives. sophie's immediate response to being shot is to call her shooter a wanker. there's a character who has literally killed a man with a mop and they had the audacity to only put her in one episode.

[namarikonda]

🌑✨ Theeana A'daravar — a drow twilight cleric & Tearcatcher of the Evergleaming Moon.

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digital illustration of Lieve'tel Toluse and Cerkonos from Critical Role. Cerkonos is holding Lieve'tel's left arm and she's resting her right hand on top of his. He's looking at her with a flustered expression and holding up a handful of berries. She's looking back at him with a smile. End description.]

Luckily for Cerkonos Lieve'tel LOVES pathetic men

[artharakka]

Sneak peeks of some horses I've been posting on Patreon 🐴

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

it's good to switch things up every now n then. are you holding your blorbo? or are they holding you??? u have th ability to choose and no one can fucking stop you. go forth

[theveryworstthing]

"Welcome! I'm glad to see that we still have people interested in volunteering. We have 6 positions open this Riverseason, 3 at each of the base camps. After you fill out your paperwork I'll take you to meet the new Companions and we'll see who you connect with!"

every few years after a heavy rainy season the river swells and a lush, high, patch of forest grows around its fattened middle in a matter of days. during this time strange Creatures emerge to nest in the surrounding area, which is seemingly a safer place to rear young than the forest, and then migrate back when the river begins to lower in a few months. neither the creatures nor the Townsfolk know why the forest appears or what exactly is going on with the river but they learned long ago to (mostly) live in peace. 

while the forest makes most people uneasy, some are very eager (maybe too eager) to explore it. this includes some young Creatures who seem equally compelled to Enter. experience says that mixed teams have a better chance or survival (little guy with Powers + person with thumbs and camping supplies is a pretty good combo even if communication can be rough sometimes) and so that is how the scouting trips operate. scouts start at either upriver or downriver base camps just outside the forest and try to follow the river the entire way to avoid getting lost.

it is so easy to get lost.

most people lose sight of the other scouting teams about half a mile in even though they're all following the same river and going in the same direction. best case scenario is that you make new discoveries, map out a few things, and make it out the other side in way more time than it should really take to walk to the other side. worst case is you can't find your way out before the river starts to dry up and you hope the rain is heavy next year. 

pictured above are the little Companions ready to hike in with someone this season. you will only learn their names if you connect with one, but in loose power typing terms we've got:

a prophesy type (omens good and bad. tea leaves, smoke, tiny bones)

a wander type (never settled and never has to be. a shifter of sorts)

a fungal type (more than it seems. eager for friendship)

a celestial type (looking into the void. navigating by starlight)

a dirt type (grounded and persistent. a terror to terrors)

and a sylph type (the air in your lungs. the invisible belief)

which Companion will you choose? what name comes to you when they choose you back? 

[i-like-media]

<- So basically, I've got a boyfriend and an ex now, right?