#i like her original design better than arcane

[c0rps3g0bbl3r]

jinx

[cochart]

Here’s my Hogwarts Legacy OC.

And here are some impressions of the game. I like it fine by the way.

Here are HL friends in Persona style btw.

I bought this game on sale recently and so far have been enjoying it. It’s a fun enough game even though I was never obsessed with Harry Potter except when I was like seven.

Here are some of my thoughts, some good and some a bit critical I guess.

1. Good but not memorable

Maybe because I was never obsessed with Harry Potter series the way some people are, I found the game decent but not memorable (e.g. Zelda or Persona level). It’s decent; in other words, it’s a bit bland. I don’t have any particular complaint about the game mechanics, but I don’t have anything particularly nice to say either. The exploration is fun enough. The battle can be a bit repetitive but overall okay. Collecting trinkets and doing puzzles can be amusing. But none of this all comes together to leave a strong impression. I think it’s a decent RPG for weekend fun though, especially if you’re a Harry Potter fan. That it’s not too memorable also means that it’s average a.k.a. you likely won’t have to ragequit this game. The gameplay is pretty easy, so it would be perfect for casual gamers who don’t want no Dark Souls taking over their weekend.

2. Character design matters

In an RPG, having a good character design matters. This is partly due to the fact that I don’t really enjoy the “realistic” rendering that so many western games employ, but I found the overall character design less than charming. Customizing my own character feels so much less fun when it’s hard to find a charming build. I’m sorry, but why does every option for my character make her look like she’s thirty-five? I feel like a damn PhD candidate in Hogwarts already without my character looking like she’s thirty-five years old. By the way, I also considered making a male character, but the male characters look equally old and not that charming. I think it’s partly the hair. Almost every hair option makes your character look thirty-five.

The NPCs don’t fare much better either. Yeah, they’re nice and I find Natty pretty cute. But that’s about it. They all have their stories and stuff, but something is just lacking.

It’s not like I want anime character design either. A style like Arcane would have been awesome.

3. I feel like a Mary Sue

I’d say being a Mary Sue might be better than being an emotional support character for dev’s Mary Sue, but it still feels weird to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing too much Atlus games recently and in their games, everyone’s out to kill you. I’m not used to characters fawning over me. There are many moments including when you’re taking a class that you’re blatantly praised for your abilities. The Ravenclaw boy gushing about how you must be a part hippogryph during your flying lesson is one of them.

Everything about the plot makes you a Mary Sue as well. You’re this mysterious new kid with ancient magic powers who excel at everything. I know it’s somewhat necessary in an RPG, but this game makes you feel like you’re playing some “Modern Girl in Hogwarts” game. I don’t hate it that much, but it still feels weird.

4. Missed opportunities

I’ve played old EA Harry Potter games and loved them, but I don’t know if it was a good idea to make an original Hogwarts game a solo exploration game. To me, one of the charms of HP series is the focus on the friendship and the adventures of the trio. In HL, you’re alone most of the time. I know a lot of modern players don’t deal well with turn-based games, but I think an original Hogwarts game that is turn-based where you can build your party of Hogwarts students would have been quite fun.

I also feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities with the school life content. Cramming in classes and having afterschool adventures would have made it feel more like life and Hogwarts where you’re not a graduate student.

Here, so you can get stressed thinking about crammed scheduling!

For an open exploration game, I’d rather have preferred something like Fantastic Beasts where you’re an adult. The game taking place in 19th century London would have been awesome. You’d be a recently graduated wizard who’s working both in wizard and muggle world solving some crime or something. This could have also made a better opportunity for the stealth element in the game as you can try to be discreet around the muggles.

[pyro-madder]

50 for the ask game pls!! As I remember, you have Morgana and Nicholas, they were both very funny and cool in your drawings!

yeeesss morganico !! unleashed............

nico looks so damn lost without his mask it cracks me up everytime

first things first, they were both pre-existing OCs that i decided to play as, rather than come up with a new guy on the spot. this is a disclaimer of sorts -- any similarities in design and naming between nicolas and a certain canon character are coincidental, i swear ! although, as i've come to joke : "the line is thin, between the nicc, and the micc"...

So, Nicolas, my blind first run - he's an alchemist, so I picked "professional" regardless of what stats it would give me, ending up with a skill + strength build in the long run. He uses the saw spear and pistol, and wears the student robes above the hunter set.

Being my first run in my first fromsoft, he's a fairly basic, generalist build, so now that I'm acquainted with the game i would like to experiment with beasthood gameplay - because lore-wise nicolas is supposed to be the "beast" to morgana's "arcane". I'd also like to play around with fire and electricity, being an alchemist and all. That will be for when i pick up his NG+ ...

Nicolas is quiet and mild-mannered, and unfuriatingly unreadable at times. Being a scholar, he's able to push on through The Horrors for the sake of his own curiosity ; I felt so validated when Simon told him that the Byrgenwerth spirit lived on within him...

Now Morgana. She's a witch, so naturally I took the class "cruel fate" for the arcane boost, though this would end up fitting for reasons I'll discuss further down. She uses the threaded cane and the blunderbuss - I know that when it comes to arcane the moonlight greatsword is right here, but in a game that introduced trick weapons, I am not interested in swishing Basic Big Fantasy Sword around X) her gear is completed by the Eye + Augur, with the Call and the Shell if I need extra firepower. Her default outfit is the doll shawl worn over the Yharnam hunter set.

As an OC, Morgana was heavily, unsubtly inspired by Bayonetta : she's skilled and confident, doing as she pleases in extravagant fashion ; so as I've mentionned before it's extremely fitting that, as my second run, she went through the game with far less trouble than Nicolas did ! (with some exceptions...)

Both foreigners, Morgana and Nicolas hunt as an elusive pair. The latter originally came to Yharnam to enroll in Byrgenwerth, but with the college shut down shortly after, together they pursued their own research on beasthood and arcane, independently from the Healing Church, thus branding them with heresy. They don't have sworn enemies, but don't aim to join any organization either. Just a power couple that mostly keeps to each other sdfghj

If I wanted to incorporate their (loose) original storyline in the game, Morgana would get the "Honoring Wishes" ending (not out of respect for the MP, merely didn't have what it takes to resist her) then bestow the "Yharnam Sunrise" ending upon Nicolas. The latter would awaken, keeping his memories at the cost of his humanity, to seek a hunter that would find the missing piece and succeed where they didn't. And if I pushed that crossover to the end, that hunter would be their daughter Amy, aka my main OC, haha !

-

A small addentum regarding Nicolas - as an OC he was less developed than Morgana when I started playing, so I ended up building him directly from his experiences as a hunter, and in turn, based my general headcanons for the Paleblood Hunter from him ! I wanted to mention it because it gets confusing in my early fanarts, but now they are distinct characters, even if I depict them with the same face/hairstyle and a similar personality. Here's a chart for better understanding :')

and phew, hopefully i didn't forget anything ! thank you for asking about them (heart hands)

[lv-bites]

Tbh Spinbot isn't as fun to write as Tough because Spinbot is less rounded by design. He's made to be a very one note sort of character, because Eggman programmed him to be that way. He can't grow without severe detriment to his programming, and he's always very cocky but loyal to Eggman. He gets dull very quickly, but would accel in a video game or fic antagonist role.

Tough, meanwhile, is MUCH more fun to write because he's so much more complex. He hasn't been brainwashed, but he is heavily traumatized. He did what he had to to survive but became dependent on that reality, that method of survival, and so he keeps recreating it to make more people "stronger"... in reality, this is how he connects with people better. People who haven't been through what he has been through can't be considered real people to him. They're just puppets, or boring and faceless husks... at least to him.

(The rest is under the cut, as this post functions as both backstory, character discussion, comparison and some drabble elements. warnings for: abuse, death, blood, trauma)

You could have been through some pretty awful situations, and Tough wouldn't care because he believes what happened to him will always be worse. However, he's interested in people who have survived through physical and mental trauma, and wants to see if they can be moulded into something more.

Originally, a character like Shadow wouldn't have interested him. Shadow was born strong, he is capable, and he was able to put his past behind him. He's not pathetic, he's not weak. He's never been discarded... Tough would have rolled his eyes at anything Shadow would have to say about Tough's ideals and methods as pure drivel... but Maria? Now that's an interesting specimen.

In an AU where Tough has more nieces than just Carey, Tough ends up adopting @achancetobehappy into his gang. We haven't really sorted out how they meet yet, but Tough's interest in her comes from the fact that she's also an ultimate life form, but she's also sick. She has lived through the trauma of her and Shadow's past, she's just as capable as he is, and yet... he is so afraid of losing her again that Shadow may be overprotective. Tough capitalizes on that; his interest in her as a powerful weapon, someone he can use to take out the factory that had ruined his life, but also... someone who is practically screaming for recognition of her talents and abilities, at least from Tough's perspective.

Spinbot would be boring here because his characterization begins and ends with Loyalty to Eggman, Death to Freedom. He's full of taunts but not much else which is boring in a thread. I do love him, he's fun to draw, but that 1 note personality that was programmed into him on purpose gets very irritating to write.

Tough doesn't have that problem. He's able to meet different situations with different approaches. He can be the whimsical loudspeaker snake who screams about illegal wet baby fights, he can blow up a building to the tune of Flight of the Valkyries, meticulously setting each explosive to go off in rhythm to each note... He can be threatening and ominous when desired, towering over his prey like a beast about to strike... And he can be soft, holding out his scarred palms and sharp talons, so gently, as to not pinch or frighten the hand he holds in his.

His voice can lower, to one of gentle understanding. Compassion... Empathy. He understands them, he knows what they've been through... but his understanding comes from a very veiled and biased viewpoint. Tough projects onto the people he is interested in. It's how he sees that they might understand him, that they can be saved. Moulded. Reborn... as he was.

And it's fun because Tough both believes his own views, very strongly, AND he fully intends to manipulate his persons of interest to his side. It doesn't have to be either/or. It's both.

A thing with Tough is, and this was mirrored in Arcane and it's why I pogged so hard when I watched it, he becomes attached to the people he manipulates if they stay with him long enough. He starts to care about them so, so much. So much more than he thought he could ever care... he figures he lost this ability to care about others a long time ago. And yet... he's met people who make him feel alive again.

His main adopted niece, @cutpursecavalier Carey Jess, saved his life with nothing but her consistency, her presence, and her warmth. Beyond the terrible grasp of grammar and her extremely crude and crass humour, there was a young woman who got Tough. A rare occasion where Tough felt like she was like him without having to go through his trials first. Without having come from the Wasteland Zone or the Underwaste. At first he considered her someone to just mess with, to serve her uses as a spunky powerhouse, and not give a damn if she died.

Now? He'd sooner slaughter every gang in Empire City than suffer her death. When he found her in that motel, beaten within an inch of her life, he felt a terror grip his heart. A heart he assumed had died with Radiance. That terror, mixed with love and rage... He cradled her bloodied body, venom leaking from his fangs as hatred boiled in his veins. He had every intent to pay back what was done to his beloved niece.

And this had never happened before... at least... not since he lost Specter. Specter was a teenager who had been a survivor of the Underwaste, who Tough had rescued from some shitty madmen who intended to sell him as a slave. Specter had been given a chance at life again, Tough being his purpose... and he broke free, killing his old masters and joining Tough's first interation of the Surprisingly Severe. Specter was only a little younger than Tough at the time... 14 to Tough's 18. Tough saw him as a little brother, in a way. Specter was named that by Tough, telling him that when he bathed in the blood of his Masters, he drowned his former self. Specter could blend in with his surroundings, changing the colour of his scales to match and effectively become a ghost... Tough felt a connection. His gang would slowly grow, until one day he'd return from foraging for mushrooms in deeper parts of the cavern, to find the camp had been attacked. The invaders had all been slaughtered, with few casualties on The Severe's side... except one of those casualties was Specter. He lay in a pool of his green blood, which seemed to glow in the darkness. He was struggling to breathe, despite the massive stab wounds his smaller body had sustained. Tough immediately gathered Specter into his arms, no no no no, not you. Not you. You were the first. You can't... He'd cradle Specter's small body in his arms, nuzzling against him, pleading for him to hold on...

But Specter wouldn't answer. He was dead, held in his big brother's arms.

This was Tough's first real loss in the Severe. There were members that were no more than thugs or henchmen, really... and then there were members Tough held such high regard for, personally overseeing their growth... Specter would be one of them... and Specter died.

Tough would feel this same pain burn him inside as he held Carey's body, though this was years later... Tough was 42 now. So long since Specter... Not this time. He wouldn't lose another one. He'd aid in a raid to rescue Carey's old friend... not for him, but for her. His gang was surprised to be doing something so... altruistic? But the novelty made it exciting all the same.

Tough doesn't like to get attached, and yet, he's so lovable. So charismatic...So strange. His unique way of doing things mixed with his sense of "helping" others while being a Raider makes him a peculiar character for sure. A real Catcher in the Rye or Peter Pan type. Though rather than focusing on protecting the innocence of children, Tough seeks out those who have been cast aside, discarded, left to die and he asks them if they would rather survive.

It's easy to say that Tough is a terrible person. He's done so many horrible things, many I won't list in this post... feeling sympathy for him may feel like you're doing something wrong. But I think the labeling of "good person" and "bad person" is not only an oversimplification, but it's also incorrect.

Tough is a person who has done terrible things, rather than a terrible person. There is a distinction.

Spinbot is a terrible person, because he was born that way. He was made to be that way. He didn't get there from surviving the most horrific situations, he was literally programmed to be like this. Sonic may be his brain scan, but everything that made him Sonic was inhibited so Spinbot could serve Eggman. There's no backstory, there's no growth. Spinbot was made from Sonic's brain, but holds no connection or endearment to that history, those bonds. They're more like something he inherited than things he crafted himself, and again, that's because Eggman made him that way. You can still feel sorry for Spinbot, but writing him is much less interesting in comparison because he's so one note.

Tough wasn't born terrible. He was born Theodore "Teddy" Bare, child of [REDACTED] the Rattlesnake and [REDACTED] the Cobra. He was born into an underground nation, comprised by multiple mining colonies. Enough people to take up a few major cities! When he would turn 13, his father promised not only to take him with him to the surface to sell gemstones, but also to take him to his first above ground carnival... And! He'd teach him how to operate the heavy mining machinery. Teddy was so excited, so eager.

And then, on his birthday, as he prepared to make a wish over his pastry packs... a loud rumbling, cracking, quaking... an enormous waste pipe burst through the ceiling of the underground nation, on its exterior bore a grinning mustachiod logo ... and neon pink toxic waste began to pour into the underground, flooding the streets, the tunnels, the caverns, killing, drowning, suffocating, mutating and driving its citizens to madness.

...

...

...

    "Happy 13th Birthday, Teddy. You're a man today! Well... maybe you're sstill a little kid?"

    "I'm NOT a LITTLE kid!! I can HANDLE SSO much more THAN I COULD yesssterday!!! My MUSCLESS are BULGING OUT!!!"

    "Hahaha! WOAH, WOAH, don't punch your old man, I'm frail, nothing compared to you! You ready to help me today, Theodore?"

    "OF COURSSSE! I'll become SSO good at thissss THAT I'LL be able to teach OTHERSSS!"

    "Oh yeah? You have the patiensssce to be a teacher, Teddy? Threaten your ssstudentsss with your punchy tough love?"

    "NYA HA HA! Only if THEY DON'T lissssten!!! Can I have my passstry PACK BEFORE dinner, dad??? IT'Ssss my birthday, tradition dictatessss my wish WILL COME TRUE if I make it over sssomething SSSWEET!"

    "Tradition dictatess, eh? Sure. I'll get your mother, let'ss get you that wish."

[briarpatch-dragon]

next up in fun little guy simulator: reina, my “cosmic accountant”

the gimmick for the character is pretty simple aesthetically: I wanted a character focused around a life/death balance! so ideally, we’ll be a switch hitter between healing and damage. as an accountant, getting a book as a class feature is a really nice aesthetic bonus. so we’re going to look to get that too!

mechanically, this is a fucking nightmare.

reina is built for a long-term D&D 5e campaign, so her build needs to work well from 3rd level (game start) through high level. honestly it would have been easier on me if we started at 5th level, but them’s the breaks!

the origin of the concept was the never-published strixhaven UA warlock/druid Witherbloom archetype. this archetype RULES. I love that it does a nice mix of necrotic damage and healing, some at the same time! not all of the features really work for us, though—the potion one in particular is kinda bad.

if I was a normal person, I would simply build a warlock mage of witherbloom and call it good. however I am a crazy person and there is two-part key problem:

warlocks don’t really get healing spells and are pure damage and

they specifically don’t get the wither and bloom spell, which is exactly the bit we want

going straight witherbloom druid gives us the opposite problem—too much healing, not enough necrotic, with the extra annoyance that wild shape does nothing for the build, and there’s no pact of the tome to get us our book.

to combat these problems we’re going to multiclass.

now, multiclassing is always a bad idea in 5e. ASI/feats being tied to class levels means you’re always taking a substantial penalty for anything less than a 4-level drop. but we’re gonna work through it.

my split: druid 3 / cleric 1 / warlock n

warlock is obviously going to be our main class as mage of witherbloom. we’re going pact of the tome, so we’re going to go 2 levels of warlock before we do anything else and then go from there. this lets us start with the book, though no essence tap. my real preference would have been a level 5 start purely for that :(

for druid, we’re going to be going circle of dreams. circle of stars also would have been okay, but I liked the grab of an extra healing class feature. we will need 3 levels in druid to grab wither and bloom, which is the real reason we’re in this class at all.

i went this route because it nets the best of both worlds for aesthetics and mechanics between warlock and druid. unfortunately, it has one major downside, and that's how pact spells interact with regular spell progression. we're going to be stuck with a small pool of low-level spells, and while pact slots will eventually catch up, it's going to take a long time to get there.

what we're not short on is cantrips, so we're really going to lean into that. and that's why we're going to do a 1-level drop into arcane domain cleric.

adding a third class is almost never a good idea in 5e, but i'm arguing for it here. arcane domain gets us two things: more cantrips (way more cantrips!), and access to the cleric spell list. if we can't have power, we can have versatility, so we're going to have a cantrip for all situations. this route nets us more cantrips than a feat would and adds the same spell progression that druid 4 would, making it the better alternative to an otherwise dead level.

so how are we stacking up against our design goals?

✅ necrotic damage: we're doing okay. we've got some necrotic damage via cantrips and warlock/cleric spells

✅ healing: solid. druid/cleric are pulling the weight here and we've got some good healing via spells and class features. however, reduced spell levels hit the hardest here.

✅ utility: we've got a lot of utility casting options here. we're not doing high damage with anything that isn't necrotic, but we can fill in a lot of gaps.

✅ book: we got one via pact of the tome!

there is one crippling over-specialization in this build, and it's that it is extremely reactive. it doesn’t want to go first; it wants to go later in the round and support what other characters are doing.

I found this out the hard way from a combat that gave me nothing to react to. it doesn’t do a good job of being independently aggressive (though I do have eldritch blast, so there’s an okay fallback).

still, I’ll give this build a solid 6.5/10. it does what I want it to, even if it’s only doing an okay job of it. it would really work better if I could run a single class, but 🤷‍♀️ I’m sacrificing build quality for aesthetics.

[salicarus]

so this is gonna be a different kind of post but it's a bit personal and i kinda just wanna get it off my chest, but i just realized i have basically forgotten about all my ocs (other than my self-sona). i've been hit with a pang of sadness realizing this because i genuinely love my ocs so much and i have no idea how i forgot about them for over a year. i think part of the reason is because i had to switch to drawing with a mouse on aseprite as opposed to drawing with a stylus on clip studio paint (for personal reasons, i don't wanna get into this), and because i'm drawing with a mouse, i feel less comfortable to draw generally. i really miss my ocs so i want to dedicate this post to talk about them a bit.

my comfort ocs: serena, sally, denise and saria are some of the first ocs i've created that i still think about and love so much, the reason they're my comfort ocs is because they're so personal to me and i love them so much i can't bear to put them in any type of story where i could see them get hurt (lol). they're just like this group of gals who love each other so much. serena and sally are dating, and so are denise and saria. they've gone through so many changes over the years and honeslty i'm happy with where serena is, but i need to redesign the rest. it's been like a year since i last drew serena, and gosh i miss her so much. i really would love to take the time to make some redesigns adjustments to them, but idk i don't feel comfortable drawing with a mouse agshdkjhegwbfh </3.

tabby: taby and feli are like anthropomorphized-ish ocs that are inspired from sonic the hedgehog. originally, tabby was inspired by a shape that i saw in a chair and i thought to myself i could make that a character. so i did agshdkjhwebifk. i always want to draw tabby lookin cool and stuff just like how i always see sonic. feli is supposed to be tabby's guardian, and is just like ten years-ish older than tabby. i wanted to make the world of tabby into a bigger thing, but i decided to work on something smaller for the time being (i won't mention it later in this post because that's also a personal thing sorry </3).

pop: originally deigned to be pop stars, these set of characters are kinda super hero-ish. bora won, mania and romeo valentine are all themed after the colors purple, orange and pink respectivley. bora won is supposed to be like a modern witch who fights kinda bayonetta style with superhuman abilities, and also does summoning and brewery. mania is crazy and all about explosives. she loves to blow things up and can pull out any kind of explosives out of thin air. her deal was supposed to be like an anti-hero, but i kinda decided she should be a hero just really unhinged. romeo valentine is probs what you expect him to be lol. he fights with his charm by flexing his muscles and releasing energy beams that way. he's also a hopeless romantic on purpose.

terra belle: my most unhinged oc who loves to murder men <3. originally she was just a cool oc that i had that loved knives, but after watching arcane, i got a surge of inspiration and fleshed her out a bit more, giving her a backstory and some ideas on how she likes to act and fight. terra is def superhuman and can bend the law of physics to her will to play with her victim. she loves getting gory and torturous with her methods.

squiggle and poof: a simple scribble designs that turned into ocs!!! they're very easy to draw and that's what i really like about them. i don't really have anything else fleshed out about them, other than they're both besties and love to hang out and think about butts.

talking about my ocs made me feel a bit better (so thank you if you read all this agshdkjlhwbeif), but also i noticed while typing all this down that i forgot so much about my ocs. it's been a really long time since i thought about them so i guess that's natural. i really hope that i get the motivation and confidence to draw them once again <3

[bookwyrmshoard]

Sleep No More, by Jayne Ann Krentz

Sleep No More kicks off the Lost Night Files, a trilogy of books about three women whose psychic talents were apparently enhanced after a mysterious night none of them can remember.

Ambrose Drake is convinced he witnessed a murder while a patient at a sleep clinic. Or at least, he witnessed the cleanup. But without evidence, he can’t be sure. When a member of the clinic’s staff goes missing after contacting Ambrose, he contacts the Lost Night Files podcasters to investigate. The one who shows up is Pallas Llewellyn, an interior designer whose career has been derailed by her need to find out what happened on her “lost night.”

It turns out that Ambrose, like Pallas and her friends, also experienced an increase in his talent (in his case, reading auras) after a similar lost night… which has been affecting his sleep, as well as his writing career. The pair set out to solve the mystery of the missing man and uncover a lot more than they anticipated.

I really debated how to rate Sleep No More. It’s a fun, quick read, and I enjoyed it on the whole. However, the typically convoluted plot doesn’t hang together quite as well as in most of Krentz’s books, the banter is not as witty or sharp, and much of the novel felt like a rehash of various plot and character elements from previous books. For instance, if you are familiar with Krentz’s books, particularly the Arcane Society and Fogg Lake series, you’ll immediately see parallels with the Nightshade organization and their talent-enhancing formula. I suspect the series may tie in with the Arcane novels eventually, if only tangentially. (There’s even a Jones in the book, albeit briefly and in flashback.)

Another problem I had is that while the prologue does a good job of setting up Ambrose’s backstory and motivation, the same isn’t true of Pallas. In her case, Krentz keeps dropping hints about a similar experience in Pallas’s past, but for too long, I felt I was in the dark regarding the traumautic experience Pallas shared with her fellow podcasters — her main motivation throughout the book. (Note that the publisher’s synopsis leads with that incident, but the reader shouldn’t have to rely on a blurb to figure out what’s going on.)Structurally, I think the book might work better with two prologues, one from each main character’s POV. I do understand why Krentz didn’t lead with Pallas’s lost night; it may be her motivation, but it’s not the central plot of Sleep No More, although it will probably turn out to be the main focus of the overall series arc. But it would have helped to have the information sooner.

So all in all, a fun entry in the Krentz canon, but not one of her best. Still, I’m looking forward to the next installment!

Review originally published on The Bookwyrm’s Hoard blog.

[wanderers--of--light]

Under the read more above has Liliana's original D&D design but I'll do one even better:

This is Liliana during my deviantArt roleplaying days back when I was 14--literally more than a decade ago ooof. This is THE OG design that I managed to find on my dA account. She looks super different now, and I tried my best to stick to both her og design and D&D design when I created her in FFXIV

In terms of Jobs, here she's an illusions, but whencI translated her into D&D I had her be an Arcane Trickster rogue. There's not really anything like that in FFXIV, so it's partly why I'm sticking with Ninja for now (alao why i chose Arcanist as starting class bc faster access to Rogue lol). Once Dawntrail is out and I've progressed more with her, I'll pick up Viper.

a re-design of my D&D character, Liliana Delacri, a Tiefling Arcane Trickster!

original design under the cut:

Keep reading

[thewickedmerman]

Winx Club Headmasters

I finally got around to doing some of the teachers from the three magic schools.

Faragonda

Lets address the elephant in the room here. YES, I racebent Faragonda. Why? Mostly because of how my fan-cast to voice Faragonda in an ultimate dub of the series is Toks Olagundoye, who you will recognize as the voice of Mrs. Beakley from the 2017 reboot of Ducktales and the voice of Mel Medarda from Arcane. I basically just took the rich old lady from The Aristocats, Madame Adelaide and racebent her. Plus, nothing wrong with a black fairy-godmother figure, as Whitney Houston has proven in Cinderella lol. I REALLY love how she turned out. Her hair was a MAJOR pain to do but I love it. I especially love her fairy form. In my version, once a fairy gets to a certain age, they leave behind their Enchantix and get a form called Ethearix. Besides, we ALL want some older fairies. I did take inspiration from Morgana's fairy form (Since Morgana and all the characters introduced in season 4 onward don't exist in my version). What's Faragonda the fairy of? Quintessence! She basically has power over life-force, lightning, and being able to give life to inanimate objects. Pretty much what it is in W.I.T.C.H. I actually got the idea of her being the fairy of quintessence from my pal @tiredcloudd (Whose stuff you should check out because it's amazing and they are really talented) when we were discussing our own Winx canon on the private Union of War Discord server. So I have them to thank for this. Also, her and Griffin are a couple in my version.

Griffin

I had A LOT of fun with editing for Griffin because I feel like darker characters a lot more fun design-wise. YES, I did use Maleficent for her face but I also gave her the eyes of The Evil Queen from Snow White. I made her the witch of oracle magic. She doesn't really see the figure but can summon vectors of magic and do some powerful magic. I thought of that because of The Owl House and how Griffin was able to play mind games with the Winx Club back in season 1. I took inspiration for her witch form from @taiyoooh.

Griselda

Out of all three of the professors I've redesigned so far, Griselda was definitely the biggest pain in the ass to design, at least for her fairy form. I mean, Griselda seems like someone who wouldn't actually be a fairy. She seems more like she'd be a witch or a sorceress. I made her a mind fairy, because that's one of the few interesting things that Fate: The Winx Saga did. However, she can do offensive attacks as well. I also love the idea of that being her way of knowing whenever someone is up to something. She's the queen of detention for a reason. For her fairy form, I got rid of her glasses and replaces them with glowing eyes. Her hair is full of barrette thingies that look like brains because she is a mind fairy. For her outfit, I took inspiration from Nebula from season 4 but made it more conservative looking. I had to make sure the colors were more subdued compared to other fairy forms because it's Griselda and that also meant NO SPARKLES. Hell, the only makeup I gave her was purple lipstick because she's not the type to wear makeup at all. I love the way she turned out. Also, pants suit her better than a dress. Her fairy form was an absolute NIGHTMARE to work on. You have absolutely NO IDEA! Also, just imagine the voice of Mindy Sterling (Who played Ms. Briggs from iCarly and was the voice of Lin Beifong from The Legend of Korra) coming out of this character. PERFECTION!

Saladin

Well, I finally got around to posting my redesign of the last head of the three major magic school, Headmaster Saladin. He is also the grandfather of Helia (Even though the original show NEVER actually does anything with that) and in my version, I would actually do something with that. Considering in my version of season 2, part of Helia's story arc was gaining his Believix by learning to stop holding back his true potential anymore. Helia was sent to Red Fountain instead of a fairy school like Alfea so that his grandfather could help him. This also means that Saladin is also East Asian, which I wanted to show with his attire, which includes his Sorcerer form. While his regular form is in more Earth-tone colors, his sorcerer outfit does have more color too it with the white, gold, and purple.

Credit for the character base for Griffin goes to SelenaEde of DeviantArt

Credit for the character base for Griselda goes to Lady-Angelia-13 of DeviantArt

Credit for the wings goes to Feeleam and WinxClubRus both from DeviantArt

[retronamic]

Arcane Women (Oddly Specific) Hobbies

Г Vi |

- If I said boxing or any vigorous activity would be tooo damn obvious. Sooooo I slept on it, and vi definitely collected and trained bugs (yes i said trained)

- I mean look at her and tell me she wasn't the type of kid to have some random bug on them

- Ik it sounds gross asf but hear me out.

-In Zaun there isn't much to do to pass the time that won't result in you running for your lives. Soooo the kids of the Undercity held underground ✨bug fights✨ (kinda like dog fights but for bugs)

- Here you brought your best bug didn't matter the species and you made them battle till someone was eaten or turned over

- Vi was the undefeated champion since she snagged herself a stag beatle, who she named Caesar.

- Caesar was a big boi soo was no surprise he became the undefeated champion of the bug fights

- She loved tf outta that bug. So much so that when Caesar sadly passed away, Vi was devastated. They held a funeral procession at the back of the Last drop. Everyone gave a eulogy and paid their respects (No one really cared bout the damn bug they just wanted to make Vi happy)

- It took Vi 3 months to recover. During those 3 months Vander had to help her do the basic tasks of life like eating and showering

- She thinks of him every now and then when she goes collecting. She collects for fun. She finds them, admires them, tries to guess the bug and takes a pic or two. No more bug fights for her, plus it wouldn't feel the sameeeee

Г Sevika |

- Miss Sevika can sewwwww (I prolly saw this from some other creators blog posts yet sadly I can’t remember who they were s but yea she definitely sews)

- Embroider, patch up or make a whole as dress, she can do it allll

- I see her developing this skill as a means of survival. In Zaun, clothes ain't cheap. Sooo it's best to keep the ones you have now for as longggg as you can

- Later on in life, when she began working for Silco, she suddenly could afford more clothes than she needed

- Being one to be stuck in her ways, she still prefers to repair or make her own clothes cuz, one it helps her relax and 2. her body portions like her arms and thighs makes it hard to find clothes that fit her well and still her enough mobility to fight 

- If yall have been together for a while then she would make you a scarf or two and that's onlyyyy if yall have been together for long. She’s not going to wasting her yarn on a one night stand. 

- Those stitches are made with loveeeee ok and you better wear them even if the designs are ugly asf (since sev is more the dress maker rather that the stylists) 

Г Grayson |

- Lovesssssssssssss wood work

- I can see her as the type to make bird houses or build her kids a whole ass tree house from scratch

- All her cupboards, dressers and even the bed frame are hand made by yours truly

- She doesn't do it much as she is the sheriff and duty calls. But sometimes, you catch her wilding a piece of wood to make a cute little animal sculpture

- When she proposed to you, she presented the ring in a hand crafted wooden box (you only noticed that after cuz the diamond on that ring was blinding) 

- THAT SHIT WAS SOOOO CUTEEEE THOOOO 

Г Mel |

- Ik she's the residential arts and crafts bish of the show (she had them 64 Crayola crayons on stand by) but have you seen her family, cause I have (Hiiii miss mel’s mom~)

- Girlie can fighttttttttt. She’s definitely trained in hand to hand and long distance combat. Perks of having a warlording family yk?

- But Mel being the girl boss she is, I feel she would take it a step further and do something like capoeira

- Capoeira is a martial art-infused dance thought to have originated in 16th-century Brazil, which draws attention for having an acrobatic, athletic style. 

- To me that screams Mel, it’s elegant yet deadly (and smth her mother probably hates soooo all the better fit for her)

- You would sometimes watch from a distance and admire how she delivered powerful blows yet graceful blows to the sand bag, all without breaking a sweat

Г Caitlyn |

- Runs a tumblr blog. That’s it. 

- Most specifically a Lana Del Rey tumblr blog (pppfffffttttttt ahhahahhahaa)

- Daily Lana quotes, gifs, and she even used Lana song lyrics as words of daily affirmations (the projection is really shining through with her)

- She mainly did it in her past time as a way to interact and talk with people who shared her love of the goddess Lana herself

- On a date, she accidently slipped up and mentioned it to you and you beggggeeeddd her to show you. Ofc she said “Absolutely not.” She was not bout to relive her tween cringe years, she rather get run over by a freight train than show anyone her blog

- After an hour of begging, she caved and you saw it

- Make fun of her alllll you want, but she had a color palette. The pics were on point, man every post correlated with the main page’s theme

- DON'T PLAY WITH HER INTERIOR DESIGN SKILLS

[sage-nebula]

Thank you!

To be fair, we can't discard Ekko saying, "Had a crush, until you started talking to the gun" line without also discarding his cutting lines to Vi and Caitlyn which show his hostility toward Piltover which also come from League, which you referenced later in your response. If we say that Arcane!Ekko is separate from League!Ekko, and therefore his line referencing his crush on Jinx in their childhood is no longer valid, then his lines calling Vi a sellout and grousing about someone calling the cops when Caitlyn shows up aren't valid either. In my opinion, though, Riot deciding that Arcane is a prequel to League does the opposite: it instead ties the two together, and what they're instead going to do is modify things in League to better mesh with Arcane in terms of character bios, character designs, etc. I have heard that they're already in the process of updating character bios to better reflect what has been shown in the show (and will be shown in season two).

Plus, it isn't only League itself, either. I think I mistakenly attributed that line to Legends of Runeterra in my original post, but there are two lines from Ekko in Legends of Runeterra that could be read as him having at the very least strong platonic feelings for her from their childhood (and definitely softer feelings for her than her own sister did in the same card game). The lines are, "Man, I miss you so much" and "Powder, I -- ! Never mind." Legends of Runeterra came out in 2020, a year before Arcane, but Arcane was clearly already in development at that time and so I feel it's safe to say that Ekko's lines were likely developed with Arcane in mind. (Vi's, on the other hand . . . well, they probably just didn't want to spoil the Vi and Jinx relationship in Arcane at all. Spoiling Ekko and Jinx was probably not see as as much of a big deal because they aren't the central relationship of the show like the sisters are. But when I tell you that the Vi and Jinx dialogue in Runeterra is rough . . . yeesh. Vi's is worse than Caitlyn's is, even!)

So I do think it is probably meant to be canon that, when they were kids, Ekko had a little puppy love crush on Powder, and I think it would even be fair to say that she could have one in return! I mean, they were childhood besties. These things happen all the time. Likely the only reason she doesn't have any voice lines about it is because she has so much else going on. That girl's head is a nightmare cage. Abandon all hope ye who enter there.

That said, I do think you bring up something really important here:

I also kinda don't like that line because people use it to devalue his character more so now his whole character revolves around his one sided crush

Lowkey, that is why I wanted to make this post. As I said in my original post, I do love the tragedy of timebomb. I love the fact that they were so close as children, and then a traumatic event happened, and their relationship was destroyed as a result of it. They were both children, and they both suffered so much, and they both have so much history and there will always be a part of them deep down inside that are those two kids that played that game with the pocket watch, but they can't return to who they once were. But you can think about the what if? What if they had grown up, without the tragic event? Might things have been different? Could they have had a different future, one where their bond didn't break?

I love the tragedy of their relationship, and I love each of their characters individually. I am so excited for potential flashbacks in season two, and to see where their character arcs take them. But as you said, I don't love the way Ekko's character is often diminished to just being Jinx's Boyfriend™, especially in ways that completely ignore all the very real hurt she has done to him. Again, I'm not saying this to bash Jinx (look at my icon, I clearly love her), but I am saying that ignoring what he's been through both directly and indirectly because of her, and therefore how that would influence how he sees, feels about, and thus would interact with her, does a disservice to him as a character. I don't think it's impossible to write post-Arcane fic where the two of them get together, but I think it would take a lot of care and consideration, and definitely more than a lot of the, "yeah Jinx is 'crazy' but hot so I forgive her lol" takes on Ekko I've seen recently.

But that said, I didn't want to make anyone feel called out, hence I didn't really bring it up in my original post. But since you brought it up, I did want to say that I agree. I don't like how his character gets reduced to that one-sided crush either, especially since he doesn't even have the crush anymore; the line is pretty solidly in the past-tense, and the sorrow that I think he feels over her is over their friendship and what could have been, not over a puppy love schoolyard crush. (Not that they went to school, but you know what I mean.)

As for how things play out in the season, we'll have to see! Amanda Overton did mention a theme of forgiveness, but Ella Purnell also said that she went back into the studio to record ADR for the finale episode and she cried while doing it, and that, "It's devastating, and nobody will feel good after watching it." So, you know. We have that to look forward to. :') lmao.

There has been a lot of speculation about how Jinx and Ekko will interact in the upcoming season, and as someone who both loves the tragedy of timebomb, but also loves both Jinx and Ekko individually as characters and wants to see them both respected, I want to speculate on how they might interact in the upcoming season with particular focus on Ekko, and how their interactions in season two can be handled while treating his character with the dignity and respect that he deserves.

So, with that said: Let's start with what he know about Ekko and how he feels about Jinx, and how that might inform how he interacts with her in season two.

Ekko did have a crush on Powder when they were kids, as one of his quotes from the card game says: "I used to have a crush on you, before you started talking to the gun." We know from the "Enemy" music video that they were childhood besties; they jumped on beds together, rode around on that circle bike mocking enforcers together, et cetera. And we know from their fight on the bridge that they played a game together involving Ekko's pocket watch and Powder's toy guns, that they then recreated in their actual fight. (And that while Powder always won as kids, Ekko won in their rematch as teens, because his growth and development wasn't arrested like hers.)

But we also learned something else on that bridge, from Jinx herself.

"Well, look who it is. The boy savior!"

Jinx says this in a mocking tone. In a Reddit AMA, we learned that there was originally going to be a flashback showing Ekko trying to save Powder from Silco, believing her to have been taken hostage / kidnapped. Powder, however, refused to go with him, telling him, "Powder is dead." This is why she mocked him on the bridge with the title "boy savior": Jinx was mocking Ekko for trying to "save" her from Silco. She was twisting the knife that she wanted to be with Silco, that he couldn't save her like he intended.

And how do we think that made him feel?

There's a reason that Ekko was so insistent to Vi that Jinx wanted to be with Silco, that she worked for him voluntarily and didn't want to leave. It's because he knew that from firsthand experience. He tried to get her out of there, and she not only didn't go, but she still mocks him for trying years later. She was his best friend in childhood, the only one he had left after Benzo, Vander, Mylo, and Claggor died (and Vi was arrested, but he thought she was dead too), and she essentially spat in his face, rejected him in the harshest way possible, and continues to mock him for even trying to rescue her, for even trying to still be there for her after they had lost everyone else.

And then, on top of that, in working for Silco, she also ended up killing a number of his friends in the Firelights. (Well, we know that she at least for sure killed the pink-haired girl; I don't think we know for certain that she killed others, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.)

Suffice to say, Ekko has more than enough reason to raise his hand if someone asked, "Who here feels personally victimized by Jinx?" It's easy to see how Jinx has been traumatized and hurt, because we saw everything that happened to her; but Ekko also suffered traumatic losses, had no idea what happened to Powder the night everyone died, but he cared about her so much (even setting aside his crush, he just loved her as a best friend) and put himself in danger to try to save her, only to be rejected for no reason he could understand, then continued to be mocked for it years later while also losing his friends to, if not Jinx directly, than to the man she works for and decided to see as a surrogate father. Ekko lost everyone in that same night, too, for reasons completely beyond his control, for reasons he probably still doesn't understand or have closure on. And I'm not saying that Jinx needs to open up to him about her trauma, but I am saying that I don't think that this would make her very attractive to him as a romantic partner or even a friend at this point.

(As a side bar: I don't think that Jinx ever felt true malice toward Ekko. She did him dirty by mocking his attempt to save her on the bridge absolutely, and cutting ties with him after Silco took her in is a lot more complicated and messy than we have time to get into right now, but to try to tl;dr it . . . I think that Powder saw Silco as her only lifeline. He was an adult who took her in, gave her a home, and was promising to be her family. He also, crucially, didn't know her as the person she was before. Ekko, on the other hand, was a child who did know who she was before. So Powder felt she had to cling to Silco and push Ekko away for her own sake. But -- and this is headcanon on my part -- I do still think she cared about Ekko as her childhood bestie, and I think this because Ekko is still alive. I think that Silco would have killed anyone who would cause Jinx distress, even at that early stage, and Ekko definitely would have triggered Jinx's psychosis (albeit by accident) by asking about Vi and the others. And I think that Jinx/Powder, caring for Ekko, would have told Silco not to kill him, saying something like, "He's not worth it, he's just some guy, let him go," or something of the sort, to make Silco back off. Something that would make both Ekko and Silco think she didn't care, when she did. So I don't think Jinx ever hated Ekko, or held true malice toward him. She was absolutely out of pocket and mean with that taunt on the bridge, but I don't think she was ever actually malevolent toward him.)

So, what do I see possibly happening between them in season two?

Well, if we remember how their fight on the bridge concluded: Ekko was winning the fight, and was essentially beating Jinx to death when he got a really good look in her eyes for the first time in years and realized that Jinx = Older Powder. That made him hesitate long enough for Jinx to pull a pin from a grenade, intending to die and take him down with her. (I think it might have been Amanda Overton who stated that Jinx "does not have a healthy fear of death," and that she wanted to take Ekko down with her because he was the only one who never left her? Which is truly funny considering how he tried his goddamn hardest to stay with her and she actively shoved him away and then mocked him for trying to stay with her literally right before that fight lmao. But that's our mentally ill girly at her finest.) Ekko, of course, saw what she did and escaped enough to not die, but to still be wounded. And Jinx would have died had Silco not taken her to Singed, and, well . . . we all know how that turned out.

So, season two.

From the trailer, we can see that there are at least some people in Zaun who see Jinx as a revolutionary figure. Some have pointed out that the mural looks like it was made in the style of Firelight art, with some speculating that perhaps it was even Ekko himself who painted it. Given all of the above, I really, really, really doubt that it was Ekko himself who painted it. In fact, I would actually be pretty upset with the writers of the show if they did make Ekko the one to have painted it, because I feel it would be a disservice to his character. Again, quick recap:

Jinx rejected him soundly when he tried to save her from Silco / reconnected her after everyone else in their lives was killed.

Jinx continues to mock him for this to his face years later.

In working for Silco, Jinx helped pump Zaun full of shimmer, which actively harms the very people whose lives Ekko wants to make better.

In working for Silco, Jinx has killed at least one, though probably more, of Ekko's friends in the Firelights. (Silco's other employees have also undoubtedly killed them as well and, again, Jinx still aligns herself with them.)

The big revolutionary act that others in Zaun are hailing Jinx as a heroine for is blowing up the council tower, which is bringing the military might of Piltover down on Zaun, guaranteeing bloodshed that I highly doubt Ekko wants. He wants change, but not like this.

It simply doesn't make sense for his character for him to have painted the mural. More likely, there are some Firelights who see what Jinx did as "the base violence necessary for change," believing in her "cause" over Ekko's -- not realizing that Jinx didn't do what she did because of a grand, overarching cause, but because she was lashing out as a result of the sustained agony the system had been putting her through for her entire life. She isn't going to be leading a revolution in season two; she didn't ask for that mural to be painted and she isn't going to be raising a flag. She'll be raising hell, no doubt, but not a flag. That's not who she is. The person painted in that mural isn't Jinx, not really, and Ekko knows that better than the actual artists.

Instead, I see Ekko as being in a sort of 90 / 10 situation regarding Jinx. 85% of him still feels all of the negative feelings he had about her regarding everything in the past six or seven years, plus her recent murder of the pink-haired Firelight, attempt on his life, and blowing up of the council tower that brought the Enforcers down on him. (Because don't misunderstand, he doesn't care about the Pilties in the tower, but he does care about the innocent Zaunites that are about to get murdered by the Enforcers who are going to blow apart the undercity's streets looking for Jinx.)

But then 10% of him is going to keep thinking back to that moment on the bridge, where he looked into her eyes close-up for the first time in six or seven years, and realized that Jinx is Powder, just older, and be just wracked with sorrow. No, he doesn't want to date her. No, they can't be friends when she's doing all this shit. She's literally killed people that he cares about. Her actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent people and she doesn't seem to give two fucks. (Again, not the Pilties, but the innocent citizens of Zaun that the Enforcers are now killing, and yes Piltover and the Enforcers are choosing to do that, but the reason why they are choosing to do that does matter, and if other Zaunities can hail Jinx as a hero for it, then he can call her out as a fucking dumbass for it, too.) But Janna, he wishes she wasn't doing this shit. He wishes she wasn't like this. He wishes things could have turned out different. Why didn't they turn out different? Jinx is Powder. Powder is Jinx. So what went wrong? When she left that night, why did she come back under Silco's wing? Why did everyone die, with Vi in jail? What happened? Was it his fault? Could he have stopped it somehow?

But there's not enough time to think about that, and it doesn't matter when here, in the present, she is like this and she is doing this shit and it's not his fault that she, here and now, is like this and doing this shit. He's not responsible for her. And she made it clear she didn't even WANT him to be in her life, so -- !

It's messy. It's messy and tragic and painful, but since when are the relationships in Arcane anything but?

The point I'm getting at here is: I don't think that Ekko will be supportive of Jinx. And if they work together at all, I think it will be with gritted teeth on his part, out of forced necessity. Or more like . . . it seems, from the trailer, that Jinx and Sevika may be teaming up to take down the chembarons. (I say "may," because the idea of Jinx and Sevika teaming up is still very hard for me to believe. But like, Sevika has Jinx's gun, and her new arm looks like it was made by Jinx, and we also see Jinx standing at the other end of the alleyway when Sevika is fighting one of the others so like . . .) We also know that the distribution of shimmer hurting Zaunities is something that Ekko doesn't like. So it is possible that Jinx and the Firelights could potentially work together in order to take down the other chembarons, with Ekko seeing it as a "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" situation, and Jinx agreeing to those terms while also, in her way, still viewing Ekko as "the one who never left" and thinking, hey, maybe we could start over.

As with everything else in Arcane, I fear it can only end badly for her.

It's also possible that, because of that moment they had on the bridge (and because of Vi's insistence to Ekko that she could talk Jinx down), Ekko could use this temporary truce to try himself to talk Jinx down again, to talk reason into her to some degree, especially now that Silco is dead. He might see it as an opportunity, a sort of, "Now that he's dead you don't have to work for him anymore, you can start over." Which, again, would end badly because Jinx herself is the one who killed him (by accident), and he was the one who gave her the affirmation of unconditional love that she'd always wanted, and as such his death is something she deeply regrets and would not appreciate hearing lauded as a good thing. So again, yet another thing in Arcane that would go horribly wrong. Still, I could see him potentially trying that avenue if in fact they did work together. Not as a romantic or "let's be buds again" angle, but in a "it would be better for everyone if Jinx stopped killing people" angle. (And then, you know, maybe after years of no murders and less hostile behavior, maybe then they can be friends again.)

Of course, that would never happen, but I think that would be Ekko's thought process nonetheless.

Bottom line here is, if Jinx and Ekko do end up teaming up, my hope is that Ekko's feelings and character are respected. So far, the Arcane writers haven't given me a reason to think they won't respect him, thankfully, but I still wanted to put it out there regardless. Ekko's trauma and how the tragedy of arc 1 impacted him is often overlooked, particularly since he is one of the more well-adjusted members of the cast (especially on the Zaun side, good god), but he still was traumatized and hurt horribly by what happened and he deserves to be treated with as much respect and dignity as anyone else. He certainly doesn't deserve to have his character or motivations pushed aside or forgotten just to prop up Jinx.

But those are just my thoughts. Everyone else is free to have their own. :)

[autolenaphilia]

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Gabriel Knight: Sins of The Fathers is a classic point-and-click adventure game, written and designed by Jane Jensen. It was first released in 1993 by Sierra as both studio and publisher. In 2014 it got a remake led by Jensen and her development studio Pinkerton Road.

It’s a mystery-horror story, featuring a failed writer and used bookstore owner named Gabriel Knight in New Orleans. He gets interested in “The Voodoo murders”, a series of killings with a Voodoo aspect and decides to solve them. And soon he gets entangled in a complex plot involving cults, a conspiracy and his own family heritage as a “Schattenjäger”.

The gameplay is fairly typical of early 90s point-and-clicks, complete with having to choose between verb commands and all. There is even a score of points you get, including for optional actions. There is as you might expect a fair bit of pixel-hunting, there is no indication when your cursor is over a hotspot. Although the puzzles are mostly sensible. There are some unwinnable states, but way less than is typical of earlier Sierra titles. From reading online, I think it’s only in the final chapter where you really can easily screw yourself. Which again is much better than most earlier Sierra titles, which often seemed to be striving for arcane ways to fuck over the player.

So it’s fairly reasonable by Sierra standards, but the original game is still frustrating at times. I actually started playing the original, but after a few chapters/days I decided to switch over to the remake. And that was solely because of the pixel-hunting. The remake fixes it by having a “highlight all interactable hotspots by pressing the spacebar” feature which is common in modern adventure games, and it is common for a reason. It makes the experience of playing the game so much more less frustrating by removing the pixel-hunting. The remake also has other improvements. The remakes simplified the verb commands, so clicking on a thing brings up a menu with what you can do with the thing. And there is even a built-in hint system, so you don’t even have to go to UHS if you get stuck.

So if you have less patience for the faults of early 90s adventure game design, the remake is definitely the way to go.

It’s a bit of a pity, because I do prefer the presentation of the original. The pixel art is excellently made and at this point look charmingly retro rather than aged. This kind of pixel artstyle is so often used in modern adventure games like the Blackwell games that the original Gabriel Knight don’t even look old at this point.

The remake’s graphics in comparison has lost some of the charm and atmosphere of the original. Not to be too harsh on the remake, which actually looks good overall. The 2d backgrounds are gorgeously detailed. And I appreciate the overall aesthetic which feels inspired by mid to late 00s adventure games that I have a soft spot for, like Lost Horizon. But like Lost Horizon, the 3d character models are the weakest point of the game’s aesthetic. They look kinda rough yet don’t have the charm of the original’s sprites.

The remake also by necessity replaced the voice actors, which is a shame, because the original had great voice casting. It had an unusually starry cast for a video game in 1993. Tim Curry as Gabriel (doing a charming but dubious Louisana accent), Mark Hamill as Gabriel’s cop friend detective Mosely, a pre-fame Leah Remini as Gabriel’s shop assistant Grace and Michael Dorn as Dr. John. And the stars actually deliver, especially as Curry and Hamill are not just live-action movie actors but have extensive voice acting experience. Also I must single out Virginia Capers as the narrator for praise. She does most of the game’s descriptions and she is great at it and makes this game stand out.

The voice cast of the remake lack all these starry names. They are fine, but its obviously a step-down. After playing both the original and the remake, it’s obvious that most of the remake’s actors just imitate the original voice performances. They are good at doing it, but it naturally makes their performances seem like just shadows of the original.

The music is still great though. Robert Holmes did the music for both the original and the remake, and both soundtracks are great. Holmes did some great music for the original, and those tunes are still great in the remake.

So the remake is a mixed bag compared to the original. The gameplay is better than the original, while the presentation is inferior. I have played this game twice for that reason, first finishing the remake and then finishing my playthrough of the original.

The story is basically the same in both games, right down to the majority of the dialogue. And I think it is pretty great. It’s well-written, unfolding a complex mystery plot in a way that keeps up the suspense. The story just plain appeals to my aesthetic preferences, I love occult detectives investigating gory murders with a supernatural connection.

While there is humour, it’s primarily a dark and serious story. And that probably made it stand out in the adventure game genre of the time. Like the majority of previous titles from both Sierra and Lucasarts were primarily humorous. There were exceptions like Loom and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis but King’s Quest and Monkey Island did set the tone in 1993. Gabriel Knight however was a serious thriller, and had voice acting from major names. I can see why this game made such an impact, there was almost nothing like it. And you can see its influence in later adventure games like Broken Sword.

I have mixed feelings about Gabriel as a character. He walks a very fine line with how he is written, as this womanizer who is ultimately a loveable rogue, hiding a heart of gold beneath a bastard exterior. There is a character development arc to Gabriel, as he genuinely falls in love with Malia Gedde and strives to uphold his family legacy of being a heroic “schattenjäger” who battles supernatural evil. And he is called out on his womanizing and sexist ways during that process. Gabriel’s arc is ultimately this fantasy of the handsome bad boy womanizer falling in love and becoming a better person.

But there is a fine line between writing a bad boy and a creep, and the writing does step over it with his dialogue with Grace. He makes repeated flirty comments to her, despite she being his employee and her voicing her disgust repeatedly. It’s basically verbal sexual harassment. And it’s something the game expects us to be okay with, because it writes Gabriel as never crossing the line of (physical) sexual consent and because Grace is a strong woman who throws Gabriel’s shit back at him and is mostly annoyed at it.

I didn’t hate Gabriel and even enjoyed most of his writing. I get the intent with him and most of the writing for him works to fulfil that. But his banter with Grace is a major misjudgement, redeemed by Grace being such a great and likeable character.

On the subject of problematic things, I’m also a bit dubious about what the game is trying to say regarding race and colonialism. I think it tries to be more progressive than earlier stories dealing with these tropes, but ends up affirming the racism of such stories in a serious way. But it’s difficult to talk about without spoilers, and I think this game does such a good job of slowly revealing its mystery plot that you should experience it for yourself. I’m going to put some spoilery story thoughts beneath a read-more.

Ultimately I enjoyed the game a lot. You should play it, especially if you love a good occult horror murder mystery and point-and-click adventure games. If you have a high enough tolerance for old adventure game nonsense like pixel-hunting to see the game’s good side, you should play the original. The great pixel art and voice acting of the original are probably the best way to enjoy the story. The remake’s presentation is not bad however, just inferior to the original, and there are some massive gameplay improvements that makes it the far more user-friendly version.

Spoilery thoughts beneath the cut

Again, I have to reiterate how much I loved GK1’s story. An occult detective, bookshops and libraries, evil cults, supernatural evil, conspiracies, gory murders. There is even a German castle with hidden rooms and an adventure to an African temple with living mummy/zombies that rip your heart out. I love this shit, especially as part of a well-written mystery plot as GK1 is.

The racial themes are uncomfortable at best though. The villains is a voodoo cult basically, who practices human sacrifice and organized crime. It’s a portrayal of black religious practices of African origin like Vodun and voodoo as evil and “savage”. Like there is no other word for it, the cult practices human and animal sacrifice and has wild half-naked dances wearing animal skins and masks around bonfires. The leaders of the cult, Malia Gedde and Dr John are black, and they are the only black characters of any importance. The association of them also doing organized crime is icing on the cake. The cult is also portrayed as a conspiracy that controls New Orleans, including the police. So there are elements of the “reverse colonialization” fantasy going on, where those subjugated by European colonialism have used supernatural means to in turn control Europeans.

And the cult is literally fuelled by revenge for the African slave trade, at least partially. Not just because voodoo has partial African origins, but because the leading force is the loa Tetelo. She is the vengeful evil spirit of an enslaved black woman who died three hundred years ago. She once led the voodoo cult and murdered the slavers on the slave ship that brought her to America. Tetelo has regularly possessed her female descendants ever since and now possesses Malia during the cult’s rituals.

Tetelo descendants the Gedde family have immense magical power due to Tetelo taking a magical talisman from Günter that was the source of the Ritter family’s magical power. They have used this magical power to become rich and influential. So the story is very much a case of reverse colonialism. Grace even suggests in the original game’s ending that the Geddes caused the slave revolt in Haiti, which is so tasteless that it reminds me of the animated Anastasia and its portrayal of the Russian revolution.

The cult does try to sacrifice a damsel in distress in the game’s finale of course. She is not white at least, but the Japanese-American Grace Nakimura. But still, the game’s story is a full-on dive into pop cultural tropes about evil non-white cults.

Still, I don’t think Jane Jensen intended to write a racist text. Like the game does discuss racism. Malia mentions she is ostracized because of her skin color and the story acknowledges the evil of slavery. The game sympathizes with both Tetelo and Malia, who are not portrayed as entirely evil. Tetelo’s anger at being enslaved is portrayed as understandable and as a human being, she is said to have been a sympathetic woman who truly loved Gabriel’s ancestor Günter. It’s only when she became a vengeful loa that she became irredeemably evil.

Malia is portrayed as an ultimately reluctant villain, who only becomes evil when she is possessed by Tetelo and who when she is herself, truly loves Gabriel (the relationship between Gabriel/Malia and Günter/Tetelo deliberately mirror each other). The voodoo cult in the present also chooses serious criminals as victims for their sacrifices, possibly implied to be because of Malia’s benign influence. Grace suggest in the game’s ending that the true horror were those many generations of young women in the Gedde family who were forced to live under Tetelo’s overbearing influence.

The white hero fighting against the evil “pagan” cult is an old story in popular horror and adventure fiction. And I think Jensen wanted to tell that kind of story, have fun with pop fiction tropes about human sacrifice and voodoo. But she wanted to tell it with more nuance about race and more sympathy for the black characters than that genre is known for.

But I don’t think it really works. Like the intent is clearly there, but the black characters are still antagonists at best. Malia is sympathetic, but she must still commit suicide in the end to stop the evil of the Gedde line from going on. Her second in command Dr John becomes just a big scary black man. And Tetelo might have been human once, but becomes just a purely evil spirit that must be destroyed. There is not enough subversion of the evil non-white cult story for it to truly matter.

There is a theme of ancestry and heritage, the game’s subtitle is literally Sins of the Fathers. Both Gabriel and Malia have heritages that decide their fate. AndGabriel’s white german heritage enables him to become a hero, Malia’s black African heritage makes her into a villain and destroys her. So no, this game is still racist, even if it tries not to be.

[goddessofroyalty]

Omg I saw that you haven't had a clue for how Claggor came to be in your Wet Nurse AU and if you don't mind me sharing, I've always thought that Claggor somehow exudes Piltover vibes for some reason.

Like he wears more layer of clothes (plus a make shift vest + hoodie + long sleeves shirts), brighter colours (eg: yellow,egg shell and shades of blue which in my opinion are somewhat Piltover's colour pallets) where as Powder's clothes are colourful but their faded/muted and he has a creamy complexion (healthy instead of pale).

Maybe Claggor was something like a baby born out of wed-locked and dumped at Zaun or something along those lines?

(Please ignore my rant, I just really like Claggor and your fics)

I just want to start this ask by saying I wish the Arcane designers were a little better at colour-storytelling when it came to character design. Like they're good but I wish they were just a bit more prescriptive (also known as: it bugs me that Jayce's tie is dark-red).

Actually looking at Claggor's character design lined up with the other kids his shirt/s seem to be originally one piece.

All the other's clothes have lots of stitch-lines indicating panels of fabric they were made out of (probably off-cuts if Zaun has a textile trade or salvaged bits of larger clothes that got damaged) you can see what I mean by his pants. But his shirt's only has a couple of stitches that look more like patches of tears than it being pieced together. Certainly the blue vest of his was made as one thing, the sleeves themselves are clearly one thing and if they're connected to the shirt they only have the one stitch line on the right, and I'd say the yellow hood was one thing as well.

Which is kind of odd considering he's clearly a kid that's growing fast but that lack of panelling implies that it was purchased as one piece and hasn't had additional panels added to extend it. But again the show is a bit inconsistent when it comes to clothing details like that (another example: everyone in Zaun has the patchwork clothing except for Chembarons (makes sense) and that random couple Vi stole her and Caitlyn's outfits from (less sense)). And we need to stop me before I write a 1000 word deep analysis on someone's clothing.

I will say rounder faces tend to be a bit more common in Piltover (especially Piltover's children) so I can definitively see where you're coming from in terms of him maybe being from Piltover and dumped in Zaun. Although it does raise the question of when for me - because the best time to dump a kid and not have it traced back to you is when they are a baby but if Claggor was taken in by Vander after Vi and Powder than he would be a kid when Vander finds him and does he remember his parents? Or was there someone else who took him in between baby and Vander?

[sheriff-caitlyn]

I started this blog in 2014, as the first Caitlyn on tumblr, and obviously I’ve been through a lot of retcons and changes myself, not only adapting to Riot’s own public retcons (from the minor, like her aesthetics, to the major, like the removal of the Institute of War as an integral part of their lore) but also to my own. That’s the thing about playing a character as complex as this, is that you learn more as you go. In your interactions with others and the creation of backstory, history, and other bits of worldbuilding to better understand the world you’re in, a character goes from a handful of images and some in-game voicelines to a fully-fledged person with a complex narrative. Sometimes things change, and that’s fine. But there are some changes which... aren’t. 

For all the fingerprints I’ve put on her, she is still not my character. But I care. Sunk-cost fallacy, maybe, but I care about this character I have been involved in and I care about the direction she has been taken. So, without further ado, I’d like to delve into:

The Recent Caitlyn Update In Piltover’s New Context or, We Gotta Fetishise Police Violence, I Mean, Look At Her, She’s So Hot

Back in August 2015, I went, ‘Oh No, they’re going to try to turn Piltover into Gotham City, aren’t they?’, and lo and behold, suddenly we have Poison Ivy now. But I will get back to that, later. In this particular thread, I noted that many of the characters in Piltover seemed destined for a revamp that would rob them of what originally drew us to them in the first place, and that Piltover seemed destined for a rework that would wash out much of their character. Piltover and Zaun were always meant to be polar opposites, but suddenly we were seeing glimpses of Piltover being ‘not as good as everyone thinks’, which hinted that Piltover and Zaun were destined not to be polar opposites in the future, but indistinguishable from each other. It worried me that the only thing telling these two fascinating cities apart would be the sunlight.

So, when we have so much potential for a clash between Zaun and Piltover, between ‘Science No Matter The Cost’ and ‘We Must Advance The World With Care’, why change Piltover to some murky middleground, turning peace and security into wartime capitalism? A world where the people are shitty, where weapons and profit come first, and the only ones making a stand are the ones who are so embittered they have nothing better to do?

Because it has to be ‘interesting’. We’re going to lose bits that we like, that we’re familiar with. And that’s why I’m concerned.

This was before Piltover and Zaun were squished together in an ugly - and utterly ham-fisted - method of showing How Complex The Future Is. There’s layers, guys! Literal layers to this one single city! That means it’s deep! But when I say ‘bits that we like, that we’re familiar with’, I’m not clinging to a fanon interpretation. I’m saying the things that drew us to the world and to the characters to begin with. I could adapt from Caitlyn turning from brown-haired and brown-eyed to black-haired and blue-eyed, because even through I had been doing art, at that point, the change gave me an opportunity to express and discover more about her character (her eye colour being influenced by her mother’s magic, for one). But some of the more stark changes - to family, to job, to personality, to the city of Piltover itself - these result in a character changing completely. I was worried that the cool detective who literally made the world a better place would be chopped and changed into something unrecognisable. I even expounded on my concerns in November 2016, where I could see some of the ways the writers at Rito might make adjustments in the direction of their lore updates.

All this to say, I’ve been working on her for a while, and I was bracing for some bad news. This? This is kind of the worst.

Caitlyn has always been the Sheriff of Piltover, an authority figure, a representative of the law and order that Piltover is famous for. Piltover’s peace and financial prosperity has been directly linked to Caitlyn’s concerted effort to eradicate crime (not criminals, crime! Which, as I have mentioned particularly in this post from 2014, means she upended and reformed the justice system, from the legal process to the prisons to how people are treated as citizens). The city is safe, people have greater access to personal wealth and development, classism is erased, society is flourishing. Zaun, as Piltover’s polar opposite, is a corporate nightmare, with ‘do as thou wilt’, private bodyguards for the rich and powerful while the poor scramble to survive in a system that barely treats them as human. Vi, as a Zaunite, brings a lot of her ‘violence as a problem-solver’ methodology to Piltover’s law-enforcement, though she seems to have no intention of returning to Zaun and seems to have bonded with Caitlyn (‘teamwork!’) to Get Shit Done. And, apparently, there is still shit that needs to be done, though nowhere near as much as there had been in the Bad Old Days.

Vi was, at the time, the awkward-grit-teeth-grin-ha-ha-um-yeah representation of police violence. ‘Resist arrest’, she cries gleefully, as she beats people and breaks down buildings, and we are supposed to go ‘ha, isn’t that funny’ with varying degrees of sincerity. Of course Piltover is going to have problems: anywhere that has wealth and stability is going to be targeted by the envious and the needy. Peace needs to be protected. The problem lies in how that protection is enacted.

So now we have the recent Legends of Runeterra update to Caitlyn, an update which looked at the context of Piltover needing protection, as well as the modern context of Riot’s California location in the Years of Our Lord 2020-2021, and then decided ‘you know what we need? Police violence, everyone loves police violence’.

MAN I thought the stripper-cop skins were bad but here we go!

Her Yordle Snap-Traps (which I envisioned as from the Yordle Military, rather than a racially-profiling weapon as, y’know, they work on human-and-larger-sized people as well) have now been replaced by electroshock grenades, the intent gone from incapacitation and observation to outright paralysis and destruction. Her net-short is now apparently electro-conductive (admittedly, I have had one (1) single RP where that happened, but it came at both a cost to Caitlyn and to her weapon’s efficiency as a result, a last-resort against a dangerous opponent). Caitlyn’s cards in LoR take her from being a detective coordinating ideas and people and putting together a case to a SWAT team leader. This might be the biggest problem in working for a non-combat-oriented character in a MOBA, or in any fighting game: the game needs to find rationalisations for all of their characters being there, being combatants, being able to kill (even if, as Riot says, the lore is separate from the game). We have monsters and soldiers and ancient powers who of course they know how to spill blood and relish in doing so. But pacifists, like Karma or Bard? Explorers like Ezreal? And a sheriff, a peacekeeper, a law-keeper, someone mindful of responsibility and the importance of saving every life possible, like Caitlyn? They’re stripped of that depth and complexity in-game, but there was always the lore that backed them up. But they’ve done away with that completely. Caitlyn was never special operations. She was never military. But now she is, because she had to be changed to fit better into a fighting game. They had to make her violent, and as a result, they have undermined not only everything about the character that made her interesting to begin with - turning her now into a representative of police brutality, but with long hair, pouty lips, and a thigh gap - but they’re also re-writing the context of Piltover. It was bad enough to squish Piltover and Zaun together. But now, Caitlyn’s update is proof that Piltover has gone from a steampunk utopia to a violent, oppressive and cynical post-industrial world. The depiction of Caitlyn as a SWAT team leader (complete with special-forces beret, because hat! Caitlyn wears a hat! Nevermind the fact that she’s no longer wearing a distinctive tophat but instead a symbol of extreme state-sponsored force!) shows us that Piltover’s ‘army’ is not designed as a defence against outsiders, but as an offensive force against their own people. Caitlyn is supposed to be the representation of how peace and order is maintained in one of the largest factions in League of Legends, and if her method of maintaining order is straight-up police violence against their own citizens, then it’s not really peace and order. It’s authoritarianism at best, and facism at worst.

Piltover was different from every other nation in Runeterra because it didn’t have a military. It had defenders, and it had a powerful economy, and it had a democratic political system. But the Piltover update retconned Caitlyn’s hard work. The gangs were back - though now they’re big powerful families like Clan Ferros - and Caitlyn has been de-aged so that she’s still new to the force, that she hasn’t even had her chance to change anything. Her importance to Piltover is minimised... and why is Vi even there? (Oh boy I guess you’re going to have to watch Arcane to find out! Coming to a Netflix near you soon!) With a younger Caitlyn in a violent society, she has no choice but to be violent herself... even if that undermines everything previously established about Piltover and about Caitlyn. This update has made Piltover just as ugly and oppressive as Demacia, Noxus, and Zaun. It’s just another army equipped to do violence, but now that violence is turned inwards. This isn’t protection, it’s control. It’s fear. It’s oppression. Caitlyn is no longer a peacekeeper. She’s a monster. Chopped and changed, as I feared, into something completely unrecognisable from how she began in a world that no longer looks like what it had been... or should be.

It’s hard to tell what came first, the change to Piltover or the change to Caitlyn. Either way, the changes are inextricably linked. Caitlyn was integral to Piltover’s modern state, and Piltover is integral to Caitlyn as a character. Her (original) drive was to make the city and all its people better; Piltover was a utopia because of the effort of Caitlyn, and of people like her, people who wanted a better world. This new iteration of Piltover - full of fear and violence and hypocricy, layered over Zaun in such a way that makes ham-fisted commentary about the wealth/class divide - undermines the value of the individual. It removes agency. It removes hope, which had been integral to Piltover. Piltover is no longer the CIty of Progress... it’s the City of ‘you better be rich and pretty if you want to progress’. And Caitlyn is no longer a force for good or a representative of responsibility, because those things don’t exist in Piltover anymore. Legends of Runeterra has turned Caitlyn into a bitch, someone to hate. She has a marked lack of respect for people, as demonstrated in her new character traits of ‘casually-racist’ (her lines to Veigar), ‘condescending’ (her lines to Viktor), with some added pride in her violence (’here’s my calling card *shoots gun*’ and ‘I aim to win and my aim is excellent’). She is a representative of her city, and she is a terrible person now. Piltover is terrible. Piltover is ugly. 

But Caitlyn avoids that last part. And she’ll get away with it, because she’s a hot twenty-something.

In 2015, I drew Caitlyn-as-Swain, as an AU for what might have been. The overwhelming response at the time was ‘aaa she’s so hot I’d follow that leader of Noxus’, prompting a good friend Swain RPer to comment that Swain - who was, at the time, the withered man in green and gold who needed a cane - was just as smart as Caitlyn if not more so, a proven capable leader, but when it comes down to it, sex-appeal will always trump characterisation and storytelling, and that’s disheartening for someone who puts so much work into stories, to context, to something deeper than ‘Just another MOBA’. And here I am, in 2021, looking at how Caitlyn has been stripped of her fascinating and complex characterisation while maintaining her long legs, long hair, and corsetted figure. Now, I do appreciate the fact they’ve given her a better costume than miniskirt and boobtube. She deserves so much better. I even commissioned back in 2015 for a Better Look for Caitlyn; Tom aka FaerieFountain went on to make her new look canon. But she’s supposed to be a detective. She’s supposed to be careful and methodical and mindful of her status and power. Instead, she’s been made gleefully violent, leaving a lot of depth behind in order to become just Hot Cop With Gun. (As an aside, was anyone else uncomfortable with Caitlyn’s high-school skin? Especially when the writer actually tweeted ‘step on me’? Hello? Ma’am? That is a high school student, that is a CHILD you are talking about? But Caitlyn is hot so it’s fine! Sexualise a child! it’s fine, she’s hot, it’s fine!) Almost everyone who has contacted me about Caitlyn’s LoR cards has been excited to see her. Good! She’s a great character! Or, she was. But the enthusiasm about her is tied to how she’s so violent, how she uses her power to abuse those who don’t conform. But she looks great, smoking hot, you know? And when she’s smoking hot, her dangerous and abusive behaviour and attitude are completely excused. An update to a character needs to take into account characterisation as well as the visuals. Her update, sadly, has focused on the all-too-prevalent problem of the viciousness of state-sponsored violence, rather than the complexity of detective work, of puzzle solving and intellectualism, but because she looks hot and speaks in that British accent, no-one’s going to care. Hot ladies can get away with so much, because legs and pouty lips, but I guess she’s also a cop or whatever.

And, as a momentary aside, why is an eco-terrorist suddenly Caitlyn’s longtime foe? It makes zero sense for Piltover and for Caitlyn that someone who plant-based powers is her biggest rival and the city’s biggest threat. Zero sense, until you take into account that Piltover has been stripped of its character and made into something more aligned with modern authoritarianism than the hopeful vibes of steampunk. Environmentalism? Not on my watch! Deploy the police (the good guys!) to silence the protesters (who are obviously the bad guys becase they’re protesting)! Because Piltover and Zaun are one city now, and therefore indistinguishable, we have a fucking Poison Ivy character causing enough trouble in Piltover to warrant entire fucking SWAT teams opening fire within the city limits and around peoples’ homes! Not Zaun, which is the environmental nightmare, but Piltover! With its fresh air and open skies! Yes, that’s a great place for an eco-terrorist to blame and/or try to fix! The whole thing is honestly so backwards! Like they’ve decided to make a cool character in the form of Corina and just shove her into the story, rather than finding a place in the narrative that suits her. The idea that Corina is C makes no sense. Caitlyn vs C is supposed to be Sherlock versus Moriarty, Ganimard versus Lupin, ACME versus Carmen Sandiego, world’s greatest detective against the world’s greatest thief. It focused on the intellectual battle, the need for self-improvement, and - most importantly! - that this was a fight that didn’t result in gunfire or people being put in bodybags. But we can’t have that in our fighting game! We can’t have people thinking, because that’s not the kind of game we have, it’s left-click-shoot out here on the Rift or in the cards. So now we have a woman with plant powers bombing Piltover, and a policewoman kicking down doors and opening fire. And she’s right there, in Caitlyn’s new splash art, within reaching distance of the sheriff!

She’s right there! In hot pink with a flower in her fucking hair! And Caitlyn doesn’t even notice? Looks like one of my major gripes about Caitlyn being updated - Incompetence - is rearing its ugly head. She cannot even see someone not five feet from her. Oooh, look out, Piltover, no-one can figure out why this single eco-terrorist is causing problems for years, but Caitlyn will figure it out! With her gun! Because she’s a cop with a gun, and cops with guns never cause more problems than they solve, right?

Look... I know. I know she’s not my character. I know that everything I’ve done is fan-interpretation. But I’ve worked for so long and hard and done so much research, and things I’ve done have even been seen by - and used by! - the company itself (not just in the ‘oh what a coincidence’ sense, either, I know my link on Hextech as a form of magic made it to several of the writers, some of whom later contacted me). I might be too jaded by all the disappointment to take it personally anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. We know Riot Games could be and should be better. So many people in this community - and people who have since moved on - put so much love and effort into the characters and the world, building up from scraps and guesswork and extrapolation. It wasn’t our world, but we enjoyed playing in it. We enjoyed struggling in it, because it pushed us to be thoughtful, creative, to be engaged and interested. Critical Theory doesn’t have to be negative... but this recent update to Caitlyn’s character and to Piltover as a whole is... it’s a step backwards. They’ve gone for the ‘ooh isn’t this gritty and dark’ approach, and swept away so much of what made the original so interesting, creative, engaging to begin with. They’d rather have controversy than people genuinely enjoying the thing that they’re opening their wallet for. 

Caitlyn was a detective who focused on responsibility, intellectualism, and care. What she is now is not the same Caitlyn they started with, and expresses a set of values that I do not support. This blog will continue to be focusing on the old lore, on what Piltover has been and what it should be: a hopeful utopia, a place for people to grow and be responsible and thoughtful and mindful of their place on the world stage. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s hope, and there’s people here who want the world, and everyone in it, to be better than it is. I hope you join me, no matter who you are.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #136: Illyasviel von Einzbern

Today on Fate and Phantasms we tap into our inner magical girl to build Illyasviel von Einzbern! So weird how they made a servant with absolutely no media depicting her other than FGO. Maybe they were going to do something else with the design and never got around to it, like with Proto Cu?

Anyway, it’s time to suit up and punish evildoers in the name of the moon cell!

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Oh hey another Emiya.

Race and Background

Like Mash and many other Homunculi, Illya’s race gives us a bit of trouble. Unlike Mash, however, Illya is being made after Tasha’s Cauldron came out, so we can always make her a Custom Origin. This gives her +2 Charisma for extra magical abilities, the Tough Feat for an extra 2 HP per level so she doesn’t die on impact with existence, and Persuasion proficiency to convince Emiya to let you have cookies before dinner, even if this one is from another universe.

You’re part holy grail, which is one hell of an inheritance, so the Inheritor background should be perfect for you. This gets you Survival and History proficiencies.

Ability Scores

First, make your Intelligence your highest score. Most innate magic comes from charisma, but a lot of yours got siphoned into your sister, so you’ll have to be clever with what’s left over. Second highest is Charisma, of course- even with a lot of your magic missing you’re still a force to be reckoned with. Also you’re a kid, and kids are cute. After that is Dexterity, because fighting Bazett is more “avoiding Bazett” than anything else. Your Strength isn’t great, you are still a child after all. Your Wisdom is even worse though- you go with the flow, and that includes making a deal with Ruby, so... not great decision making on your part. Lastly, dump Constitution. Some people would argue that surviving Quintett Feuer’s effects on your body makes you pretty tough, but that also means your own magic is already weakening you from the inside out.

Class Levels

1. Wizard 1: I promise we’ll get Ruby in a second, but first we have to make sure we don’t die on the way. As a first level Wizard you get proficiency in Intelligence and Wisdom saves, as well as the Arcana and Medicine skills for more magical girls and magical medicines. You also learn how to cast Spells prepared from your spellbook by using your Intelligence. For the sake of brevity here we won’t go into all of them, just expect all the big blasty ones to make the list. 

Aside from that, you should definitely pick up Mage Armor to make your AC 13 plus your dexterity modifier. 14 is definitely better than 11.

2. Wizard 2: Second level wizards pick their specialty, and I’ll be honest I was super close to going with Evocation for their overcharge ability at later levels. That being said you’d probably like immediate results more, and nothing more immediately changes our options than Bladesinging! As a bladesinger you could wear light armor if you really want to, but your magical girl armor will be protection enough. Similarly, you get another weapon proficiency, but you’re already proficient in quarterstaffs, which is the closest thing to magic wands we have. You also get Performance proficiency to really sell the magical girl bit.

You also learn a Bladesong that you can start as a bonus action. It lasts for a minute, or until you’re incapacitated, put in heavy armor, or use two hands for an attack. While active, you also get a bonus to your AC equal to your intelligence modifier, get an extra 10 feet of movement speed, have advantage on dexterity checks, and add your intelligence modifier to concentration saves as well. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus.

You should also learn the spell Healing Elixir either this level or the last for some experimental medicine!

3. Wizard 3: Third level wizards get second level spells. I’d go for the destructive ones.

4. Wizard 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to round out your Dexterity and Intelligence. Remember: odd numbers make PCs cry! You can also get Levitate for some early flight, and Alter Self to take care of your magical girl transformations.

5. Warlock 1: With base defenses secured, it’s high time to get a stick we can shoot magic out of. Your magic comes mostly from the Holy Grail, so Genie sounds like a pretty good translation. You get Pact Magic that you can cast using your Charisma, plus some extra spell slots that recharge on short rests. They don’t mix with your wizard slots, but you can use any available slot for a spell, so don’t worry too much.

You also get a Genie’s Vessel, a tiny object that you can jump into for a Bottled Respite. That’s not in character though, so we won’t go over the exact details here, but you can do that once per long rest.. While touching it, you can also invoke the Genie’s Wrath, adding your proficiency bonus in thunder damage to one attack roll-based piece of damage per turn.

For your warlock spells, Eldritch Blast is a must for any caster on the go, and Prestidigitation will help with minor magical effects. You can also Detect Evil and Good to seek out cards wherever they may hide, and Charm Person. That last one’s not really magic, you’re just cute.

6. Warlock 2: Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations to customize their magical girl journey. We’re taking Agonizing Blast now for extra damage on eldritch blast attacks, and a little something something at level three. 

To keep up the damage even when it’s not your turn, grab Hellish Rebuke to blast enemies as a reaction.

7. Warlock 3: Third level warlocks gain the Pact of the Blade, allowing you to summon Ruby as an action, creating a magical weapon. You should also pick up the invocation Improved Pact Weapon to turn her into a spellcasting focus (and get +1 to attack rolls and damage) now you have your own magic wand!

You can also cast Phantasmal Force to create any kind of magical effect you might need to blast a single person. They have to make an intelligence save (dc 8+proficiency+charisma modifier) or they fall for the illusion completely, to the point that they can even take damage from it.

8. Warlock 4: Use this ASI to bump up your Strength so we can actually use Ruby, and you also learn the cantrip Sword Burst for some cutting magical attacks, as well as the UA spell Mental Barrier, which gives you advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves as a reaction. You also get resistance to psychic damage! You may not be that wise, but you do have magical defenses.

9. Wizard 5: Fifth level wizards get third level spells! Fireball is a typical blaster choice, and Fly will give you your first bout of liftoff that you can actually control! Every good magical girl can fly, after all.

10. Wizard 6: Sixth level bladesingers can make an Extra Attack each attack action, and you can also replace one of those attacks with a cantrip for proper magic wand attacks.

11. Wizard 7: For your fourth level spells make sure to pick up Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere so you can turtle up using your magic barriers. It creates a magical hamster ball for a large or smaller creature for up to a minute, and nothing can pass though it, and nothing inside can damage anything outside or vice versa. If the creature you’re enclosing is unwilling, it can avoid entrapment with a dexterity save.

12. Wizard 8: Use this ASI for more Intelligence to gain extra AC and stronger spells.

13. Warlock 5: Fifth level warlocks get third level spells like Wind Wall for another kind of magical defense, and you can also use your Mask of Many Faces to Disguise Self at will for unlimited card use.

14. Warlock 6: As a sixth level genlock, your Elemental Gift gives you resistance to thunder damage, and your ultimate magical girl transformation gives you a flying speed for 10 minutes as a bonus action. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus.

Since your concentration is no longer needed for flying, you can use it for spells like Spirit Shroud instead to make your attacks with Ruby a little bit stronger, adding cold, radiant, or necrotic damage to your strikes.

15. Wizard 9: Fifth level spell time! Just grab the big blasty ones, that’ll be fun.

16. Wizard 10: Tenth level bladesingers learn a Song of Defense, letting you burn spell slots to reduce incoming damage by five times the slot level while transformed. Blocking Bazett entirely would probably cost a ninth level slot at least, but it’ll hurt a bit less when she slugs you! yay....

Also, Legend Lore lets you ask Ruby about whatever magical nonsense you run into, and Wall of Force gives you yet another magical blockade to keep your friends safe.

17. Wizard 11: Another spell level obtained, another new tier of blasting spells for you to play with!

18. Wizard 12: Use your last ASI to bring your Strength up one last time. Now you and Ruby are a force to be reckoned with!

(Also, Create Homunculus will let you, that’s right, create a homunculus. I’m sure Irisviel would love to see her daughter get into the family business.)

19. Wizard 13: Your seventh level spells are as high as we can get this build, but that’s still another set of blasting spells you can use!

20. Wizard 14: Your capstone level grants you a Song of Victory, adding your intelligence modifier to melee attack damage while using your bladesong.

Pros:

Thanks to your warlock slots and arcane recovery, you recover spell slots at a prodigious rate, meaning you’ll rarely be completely out of magical power.

Concentration free flight is fantastic, especially on a build that can abuse the range like you can. Fling fireballs all you want, with no fear of reprisal!

On the rare occasion where you run out of mana, you can still be a respectable melee fighter, with 19 AC and a very painful Ruby Wallop with Bladesong active.

Cons:

You’re mostly wizard, and we dumped constitution. Even with tough helping out, your HP is still really low. If you take a paper cut you’ll be in Power Word Kill range.

You have limited time transformations. Generally speaking I’d think six minutes of Bladesinging and sixty minutes of flight would be enough, but if your DM likes to space out encounters you might be in trouble.

Multiclassing bites us in the ass again, locking you out of ninth level spells and splitting our casting modifiers. Trying to be good at hitting people also doesn’t help much.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

2021 Year in Review

I was tagged by the lovely @iamnotawomanimagod and @dylanobrienisbatman :) Love ya both! We all made it through 2021 hallelujah!

Top 5 Movies You Watched This Year

I watch movies all the time but I have such a hard time remembering what movies I saw this year lol. Let me wrack my brain real quick.

1. Inside (dir. Bo Burnham)

I really, really loved Inside. As always, Bo gave us something that was funny, unique, out-of-the-box, and also, kind of painful in a too-real kind of way. I’ve been meaning to rewatch this one ever since I saw it to digest it better, but I haven’t quite been ready ready for the emotional journey yet.

2. The Green Knight (dir. David Lowery)

Visually stunning. The art director and cinematography in this movie is amazing and every single shot was beautiful to look at. And while it maybe wasn’t my favorite film ever, it was definitely a unique journey to go on. Glad I saw it. 

3. @Zola (dir. Janicza Bravo)

A wild ride. Definitely entertaining. Really creatively filmed and directed. 

4. Roshomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

A classic I FINALLY sat down to actually watch. I’ve finally seen a Kurosawa film.

5. Dawn of the Dead (dir. George Romero)

Loved it lol. I love zombie movies. Definitely enjoyed this one more than his original Night of the Living Dead.

Top 5 TV Shows You Watched This Year

Once again....I know I watched things lol but I’m struggling to remember what I watched so this is an incomplete list lol

1. Arcane

BEAUTIFUL!!! Absolutely obsessed with this series. The animation is beautiful. The writing is great. The characters are all very interesting. The character DESIGN is fantastic. The pacing is amazing. Just really, really loved this one.

2. Ted Lasso

I really love this one also. It’s both funny and sweet and earnest and I love that it can be both things without sacrificing one for the other.

Top 5 Songs of 2021

Shrugs.

I don’t really pay a lot of attention to what songs/albums I listen to tbh.

I listened to a TON of The Crane Wives though. Definitely my favorite artists of 2021. Also listened to the Hadestown album on repeat.

Top 5 Albums You Heard In 2021 Top 5 Youtube Channels in 2021

I’m stealing @iamnotawomanimagod’s :)

1. The Try Guys

My go-to relaxing, fun channel. They always make me laugh. I especially love their Without a Recipe series because as someone who bakes a lot and has a decent grasp of what should go in what I always get so stressed for them lol.

2. Sideways

I love this channel!!! Hugely recommend!! If you find music, especially musical scores in film/tv/theater interesting, you should definitely check this one out. Not only is his content fascinating, he’s also really funny.

3. Jacob Geller

Possibly my favorite channel ever - or at least in the top 5. Jacob Geller talks about video games, but not the way you would expect a youtuber to talk about video games. He’s not talking about walkthroughs or theories or how to beat the bosses or news - no he’s regularly getting existential and talking about life and philosophy through the lens of video games, and it’s fascinating.

Strongly, STRONGLY recommend this channel.

4. Mina Le

I’m not a super knowledge about clothes or fashion, but watching Mina talk about it is so interesting. She mostly talks about fashion through the lens of film/tv costuming and she tackles a lot of topics that deal with classism and other big issues as they relate to fashion and fashion history.

5. Micarah Tewers

Love her!!! I feel like she’s kind of replaced my Jenna Marbles needs of someone super positive and silly who’s not afraid to be herself and just does fun things that make me smile. She’s a super talented seamstress who also owns about a million animals and just lives life in such a fun and admirable way. 

Top 5 Books You Read in 2021

1. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski 

Technically this was a reread of a book I’ve already read before, but whatever. I love this book. I love this book so much. It’s my favorite book ever and it’s a dense brick of postmodern horror that might sometimes be too pretentious for it’s own good but is interesting and unique and worth it anyways. It’s my favorite book that I never recommend to anyone lol because I know it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I love it.

It was so worth rereading. I feel like I get something new out of this book every time I dive into it. And sometimes that something new is a headache, sure, but it’s worth it.

2. who i was supposed to be (a collection of short stories) by Susan Perabo

I picked this up randomly from a used bookstore I love because I liked the title, and I was really pleasantly suprised by this one. Every single short story is so well written and captivating. Really loved this one.

3. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher

I love linguistics!!! Language is so fascinating!! And this was a fascinating book.

4. Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood

Really interesting! A little slow to get through, not necessarily a page-turner, but all really interesting cases and information.

5. I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Ian Reid

I read this because I loved the movie, and while it was interesting and unique and Ian Reid is a great writer, I ultimately like what the film did with the story more than the original novel. Still a good read though. Incredibly depressing, but good.

5 Positive Things That Happened In 2021

1. This was my first year going fully freelance and working in the film industry full time and it went better than I ever expected!!! I’m so happy to have left my old job I didn’t really like and start pursuing something I really, really love.

2. Going along with the first point, I worked on my first feature!!! Which was kind of a disaster, admittedly, but still a huge accomplishment. :)

3. Working in a new industry means I met a lot of new people this year and made a lot of new friends, which is always great! Especially because my closest friends both moved out of town last year and it’s just not the same with them so far away.

4. My emotional/mental state was just way, way better this year than last year. 2020 was ROUGH. I’m sure it was for most people, but along with the shutdown and the pandemic fears, I was also dealing with a friendship going bad and feeling like a friend I really cared about suddenly had nothing but negative things to say to me, wasn’t in the right place job-wise and feeling miserable about it but terrified to leave the security behind to go freelance, hormone/auto-immune issues combining with likely undiagnosed ADHD and depression due to the everyting in the world basically meant I was super forgetful, foggy, unfocused, and lethargic like ALL the time which I just got mad at myself for.

So yeah. 2020 sucked so hard and 2021 felt so much better. 

5. I read 8 whole books in 2021!! I used to read all the time and haven’t read much since I left school, so I’m really, really proud to have reached that number. I think being in a better emotional/mental state let me pursue stuff like that more.

***

I know there was still a lot of bad in 2021 and the world still isn’t perfect, but overall, 2021 was a good year for me. A far better year than the one before. It had a lot of change, but it was all good change, and I feel like I’m finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do and it feels right in a way the past couple years just haven’t. I feel fulfilled!! And I’m excited for whatever 2022 has to offer. 

Also lots of love to all my mutuals!!

Tagging @laufire, @boomheda, @nicoleanell, @doortotomorrow, @saiyanqueenreads, @sarcasticdebate, @nomattertheoceans, @rosealie, @padawanyugi

Happy holidays!! <3