#i think about this quote a regular amount

[lizardkingeliot]

—Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

[jellybuttons]

Crowley's "oh" moment wasn't him realizing that he's in love

Okay so we've all talked about the scene where Nina asks Crowley if Aziraphale is his "bit on the side" or whatever and Crowley has that visable fanfiction "oh" moment on his face afterwards. And I know a lot of people think it must have been Crowley realizing that he was in love with Aziraphale, but that's never sat right with me. Crowley is emotionally repressed and oblivious, sure, but he's been down bad for that angel since the beginning. I just can't believe he didn't know it the whole time. That can't have been what he was reacting to. Hell, just the nervous swallow he does at the beginning of that conversation implies that he knows exactly what Nina is about to ask him, meaning he at least already has that idea in his head.

I think what he was reacting to was Nina's last comment, "other people's love lives always seem so much more straightforward than our own" (I'm quoting from memory but I got the gist of it).

Crowley has been in love for a long time by this point. He's also, for that entire time, understood that nothing can be done about it. Up until Armageddon failed, there was no universe where Crowley and Aziraphale could safely be together, and Crowley cares too much about Aziraphale to truly risk his safety (although he does have his selfish moments--that need to know that Aziraphale cares for him too, that he's not completely alone in this partnership). Nothing could change, so there was no point in doing anything about it.

In the few years post Armageddon, though, it seems like QUITE a bit has changed for the two of them. Remember, these are two immortal beings...a few years is milliseconds to them. But in those milliseconds, it seems like Crowley has become a regular establishment in the bookshop, glasses off and all. Aziraphale felt comfortable enough with him to ask to borrow the Bentley, Crowley's prized possession and his literal home. They've gotten COMFY in a very short amount of time, objectively, and I'm sure it felt like big change to Crowley, who knows better than to ask for things he doesn't think he can have.

But Nina's comment. "Other people's love lives always seem so much more straightforward than our own". A direct parallel to exactly how Crowley has been thinking about her and Maggie this whole time--two people who just need a push (romantic awning, anyone?) and everything else would fall into place. Easy. Uncomplicated.

Crowley's "oh" moment isn't that he's in love with Aziraphale. It's that maybe being in love with Aziraphale doesn't have to be complicated.

Other people's love lives DO seem more straightforward than Crowley's own. But if Nina feels that way about him, as sure as he is about her and Maggie...could it be that easy? Could he have that with his angel? I don't think at this point that Crowley has any doubt about whether or not Aziraphale feels something for him (whatever that something may be in Crowley's mind), but after all...Aziraphale asked him to slow down. So he's been taking it slow. Hanging around more. Leaning into his space. Soaking up every second of Az's smiles like a dying man, content with whatever he's given.

But Nina. She thinks they're together already. No doubt in her mind. She thinks it's so straightforward, that of COURSE they're together, two people who look at each other with that much love in their eyes must be, right? And I think that "oh" is Crowley's realization that maybe it IS straightforward. After all, they're them, right? No more Heaven, no more Hell, no actual reason they couldn't just...be together. In that moment, Crowley isn't realizing that he's in love with Aziraphale. He's known he's in love for a very long time. No, that moment was him realizing that, maybe, he can stop pretending not to be, that maybe all they have to do is stop pretending they aren't everything to each other. Does he need to slow down if there's no danger to avoid?

When Nina and Maggie confront him at the end, encourage him to confess...objectively, I don't think Crowley as a character would agree to anything nearly that vulnerable without a LOT more convincing. But he does agree. And you could argue that it's because of Gabe and Beez, sure, but when has Crowley ever used other angels and demons as reasoning behind his choices? No, consistently, Crowley has followed humans every time. Gabe and Beez are nothing but conveniently timed examples. I think that even without G and B running off together, Nina and Maggie could've convinced him after nothing but this "oh" conversation with Nina.

When Crowley is choking out his confession in the final 15 of episode 6, so desperate to make Aziraphale understand...he says "we're a pair, a group, a group of the two of us, and we've spent our existence pretending that we aren't". That's the point he's trying to get across. They can stop pretending, they can stop pretending, please, god, stay here Aziraphale and don't make him keep pretending.

Please, Aziraphale, he's saying. Don't go back. I only just realized that it doesn't have to be complicated. He realized that, maybe, finally, he was allowed.

Oh, he thought, out there on the sidewalk with Nina, there's nothing left but me stopping me from being happy.

Oh, he thought, while Nina and Maggie urged him to communicate, the couple that so perfectly mirrored his own wants, I could tell him how I feel.

Oh, he thought, as Aziraphale looked at him with excited eyes and explained that he wanted them both to go back to Heaven, that Crowley could become an angel again, that they could go right back to working for the very thing that had been keeping them apart for thousands of years. Oh, oh god. I thought it was over. I thought we were free. I thought that, finally, maybe, it could be easy. Maybe we can stop pretending.

And he kissed him. Because fuck, just like with Nina and Maggie, he thought it could finally be easy, but then communicating didn't work and nothing was easy and all he had left was one fabulous kiss and vavoom and he was desperate and off script and so, so scared and then he was alone in the Bentley, driving away from the bookshop, completely alone.

Maybe Crowley should've kept pretending. It would've hurt less.

[the-witchhunter]

I’ve had an interesting thought swimming around my head that I swear I’ve been meaning to write

You know what would be an interesting combination of characters?

Jazz and Harvey Dent/TwoFace

Specifically a Dent just getting back on his feet, released from Arkham and trying to learn how to exist in the world with his condition

I’m thinking a reveal gone wrong, Danny has disappeared to ancients know where, so Jazz cuts ties and Stays with her Uncle Dent, or maybe her bio dad if that’s more your game. Just an soaking wet and miserable Jazz showing up at his crappy apartment saying she’s his daughter or niece and him resisting the urge to flip a coin because he has enough on his plate as is, only to let her in telling her they’ll talk about it in the morning and point her to the shower so she can clean up and dry off

Why do I think this would be an interesting combo?

Jazz’s interest in psychology. A lot of times, as a fandom we depict her as an expert, and in a future timeline where she went to school and has been practicing psychology maybe, but default Jazz? She’s not an expert

Jazz wants to be a brain surgeon, psychology is an interest of hers but her understanding is very limited. She quotes Freud and Jung and has some amount of academic knowledge of the field, but she clearly doesn’t understand that psychoanalyzing friends and family and offering unwanted psychiatric advice is actually rude and something she shouldn’t do. She lacks understanding of actual therapy and is clumsy in applying her knowledge to people she knows

And I find putting her in proximity of someone with DID and probably PTSD would really be an eye opening experience for her

Because Dent might humor her, TwoFace will call her out. They both have hung around Harley to know enough to tell her, “maybe don’t take Freud so seriously” because man does everything go back to sex with Freud, and maybe quoting a guy that says she wants to boink her dad is not as strong of a point as she thinks it is

And the thing is, Harvey would likely still be receiving therapy as an outpatient, potentially taking meds to help deal with his conditions, likely a mood stabilizer or anxiety med to manage PTSD symptoms, so she’s front seat of him learning to live as a regular person in Gotham with his condition. She’s gonna see his good days, his bad days, the side effects of his medication, and it’s going to change her idea of what psychology is. It’s not just quoting things at people, it’s not just saying “this is good for people” but she’d see what it being put into practice would look like

Maybe that’ll push her away from the subject. Maybe it’ll make her more inclined to study, to learn not just about it as an abstract but how to actually apply it to help people. Learning about actual therapy practices. Maybe living first hand with mental illness would be the push to switch from neurosurgery to clinical psychology in her future plans

Also I just think that Dent would be empathetic and do what he could to help her, meanwhile TwoFace would help her cut loose a little, get a little chaotic and have some fun

You can’t tell me there’s not something fun about her and “Uncle Two-y” having a night on the town that only results in a little property damage. Relax Harv, they didn’t do anything too illegal, because they didn’t get caught or nothing

[sleeplessdreamer14]

On My Mind

request: no

headcanons: the disaster twins lying awake at night because they can’t stop thinking of you.

characters: rise! donnie & leo (individually)

contains: crushes, pining, yearning, sleep deprived boys, donnie struggling with emotions

a/n: I really hope you guys like this one

Leonardo

now we all know Leo had already had trouble sleeping at night

but after he met you and had been your friend for a good amount of time, thoughts and memories of you began to flood his mind

I mean, of course Leo liked you, but like-liking you, he did not see that one coming

he totally had that ‘uh oh’ moment the first time it happened

only hours subsequently to telling his brothers, and I quote, “I’m not gonna lie awake at night thinking about them.”

but alas, here he was; completely and utterly whipped for you

his thoughts often trailed back to the night be first met you

after the initial surprise, there was little else but genuine kindness behind your eyes as you talked to him as though he was a regular person

gosh he sure was interested in your eyes

the way they just brought all the features of your face together made you look like you had just stepped out of a painting

to him, you really were one of a kind, and he was grateful to have you as a friend

upon realizing he could sense his heartbeat without even touching his chest, Leo groaned under his breath and rubbed his hands over his eyes

these feelings were practically eating at him from the inside but he was in no rush to get rid of them any time soon

Donnie

somehow, you were much more distracting to him when you weren’t there in his lab with him

just hours prior, you were lounging in Donnie’s lab, doing your thing while he did his, just enjoying each other’s company

by now, you had long since gone home and he had attempted to stay up to work on a couple works in progress

after the first hour of unsteady hands and lack of focus, he decided to try and sleep it off and hope he would do better in the morning

only now he was left alone with his thoughts, which were almost entirely occupied by you

deep down, Donnie knew why, he just refused to admit it to himself

his lab just felt a bit hollow when you weren’t there and he looked forward to your visits

you were kind and thoughtful, intelligent in ways he struggled to comprehend, and overall just nice to be around

the last text you sent him a couple hours ago was to wish him goodnight, and it sent a chill down his shell

looking back on the past several months since the first time he met you, his heartbeat increased as it sank in how his slightly-younger self had no idea that one evening would all lead up this

it was weirdly romantic in retrospect, giving him very mixed feelings

Donnie was a man of science, and the fact he couldn’t understand what he was feeling drove him mad

and yet, simultaneously, his bond with you just made sense in a way he lacked the vocabulary to describe

Donnie’s eyebrows creased as he nuzzled his face into the pillow, hugging it closer and dreading his inevitable visit with Dr Feelings

[bluekittyyoyo]

ALTERNIAN CULTURE ANALYSIS: APATHY AS ANTITHESIS. AN ESSAY ON TROLL SOCIETY'S UNDERSTANDING OF EMOTIONS

listen to me. it only makes logical sense that trolls would have a strong understanding of the idea that the opposite of "love" is actually antipathy; having no strong feelings whatsoever. I know what you're saying, "but the quadrants have love and hate as a dichotomy, they clearly think of hate as love's antithesis-" no. wrong. the quadrants are obviously not representative of every emotion a troll can have, the quadrants are a concept of ROMANCE. see there's the keyword here. love and hate are both integral parts of this romance, they do not exist in opposition to each other as in one cancels out the other, they are two sides of the same coin. having quadrant feelings for someone regardless of alignment is indicative of caring about them, of being passionate about them. I know those words typically have purely positive connotations when used about human romantic understandings but disconnect that for a second. basically it comes down to a slightly warped version of "horseshoe theory" (where supposed opposites, in this case love and hate, are actually closer together than the middleground). I think this concept is firmly supported by canon, examples off the top of my head:

from the quadrants explanation;

"The relationships each quadrant describes tend to be malleable, if not volatile,"

as stated with the pitched/flushed vacillation and the canon examples of pale/flushed, but also I think it is implied (though less so) that it applies to every quadrant and there are many ways unexplored in canon that every quadrant can bleed into another.

this famous line:

"It should be noted that in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy."

this quote being on the page where equius pesters gamzee, citing that he does so with regularity and thus considers him a "friend" (but that's not the whole picture). this adds to the notion of these relationships not being considered opposite but stemming from the same root idea of investment in a person.

I think it's very interesting because I believe the authorial intentions of incorporating hate as an integral part of troll society and culture is meant to contribute to the idea of them as a cruel and violent society, and while that may have some truth for the ways in which individuals treat each other peer-to-peer in average situations I actually think the real overarching effect it has is trolls coming off as a more emotionally honest society at the cost of simplicity and peace.

the implications of hate being considered on equal terms with love to me paint an image of a society that encourages embracing all emotions to the fullest extent, a society that might even consider the worst thing you can be not as someone who is filled with hate but in fact someone who does not care at all. I'm reminded of the conversation between vriska and aradia in hivebent:

vriska calling her a "miserable soulless witch" followed by repeating she hates her and "only regrets killing her cause it made her so BORING!!!!!!!!"

of course we also see plenty of times that "not giving a shit" is a thing that trolls are naturally inclined to do because you only have so much emotional resource to devote to a finite amount of things. moreover that alternia is a society that encourages emotional "balance", to embrace the love and the hate both with the same passion.

again as karkat rants to vriska also in hivebent:

"A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS."

you may also recognize this conversation as the same one where karkat claims this (rather infamously imo):

"PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE."

(adding more to the "trolls believe hate and love come from the same emotional source" pile even if the manner of it is slightly off-center here)

and vriska's response to karkat's ranting:

"Did you learn this crap from your awful romance movies?" "THEY'RE REALLY INTRIGUING SOCIOLOGICALLY."

I hope this presentation makes it clear but for the audience in the back: karkat's interpretation of emotional composition of trolls is most likely complete bullshit and not at all factual nor, in my opinion, should be taken as biological information about trolls. for that reason I believe the reference to humoral medicine is completely intentional, invoking the imagerey of bullshit pseudoscience. just in the same way as I don't think it would be reasonable to make any similar claim about the nature of human emotions (and anyone who does is trying to sell you something). in A6A615 dave even states that "both humans and trolls are emotionally versatile sentient beings that can feel many hells of different things".

what I'm mainly getting at here using these quotes is that there is a cultural precedent for the claims he is making. karkat did not spawn these ideas about emotions out of thin air or scientific research, he got them from watching romance films. which particularly, as presumably low-culture media in much the same fashion as our own, would in fact make them excellent case studies on the general cultural attitudes of the society that consumes them. and that society, as karkat observes, makes indications that a) emotions of hate and love stem from the same source and b) trolls ought to have a balance of negative and positive emotions, where apathy is considered more undesirable.

so what I mean to say from all these observations, my formal opinion: to trolls there can exist this nebulous feeling of being emotionally attachment to someone, to desire any kind of relationship with them. and with that the average troll has a far better understanding that the most devastating response possible is actually none at all; to be completely unaffected by them.

so what am I saying with all this? it is my idea that in troll culture, trolls have a concept of relationships and emotions that can exist as a nebulous idea of just being *passionate*, of caring about something or someone and the distinction between negative or positive is merely a nuance rather than an opposition, and the actual socially reviled opposition to this feeling is being apathetic.

for example a troll rejecting another for a particular desired quadrant is heartbreaking (or diamondbreaking, spadesbreaking etc), but as there exists a desire for connection generally by virtue of the desire at all, it would be less devastating and possibly could become just as fulfilling for the connection to exist as a different quadrant, even on the other side of red/black. the most devastating possible outcome of a rejection would be that of total apathy, of the idea that one inspires no passions, no emotions of any kind in a person.

and with that established now we can get into my ideas about how alternian media rating systems work, such as a troll equivalent to rotten tomatoes where movies/books/films etc are rated on 5 different scales (also possibly two different modified 3 scale versions) in addition to a simplified two-scale version where the measure of "good" is based on "how much did this work inspire emotional reactions in you vs how much did you not give any shit at all"- the cane hooks me by the neck and pulls me off stage

[wander-wren]

every once in a while i like to poke my head into "anti [x]" tags just to see what the other side thinks. recently i was looking through "anti ao3" and found a really funny post claiming that ao3 is not anticapitalist, but actually the Definition Of Capitalism, bc it relies on volunteer labor while supposedly having the money to pay a staff.

oh, honey.

but i am not going to make unsubstantiated claims on the internet, no, and this gives me an excuse to look at ao3's whole budget myself, which i've been meaning to do for a while. these numbers are taken from the 2022 budget post and budget spreadsheet.

ao3's total income for 2022, from the two donation drives, regular donations, donation matching programs, interest, and royalties was $1,012,543.42. less than $300 of that was from interest and royalties, so it's almost all donations. and that's a lot, right? surely an organization making a million dollars a year can afford to pay some staff, right?

well, let's look at expenses. first of all, they lose almost $37,000 to transaction fees right away. ao3 and fanlore (~$341k and ~$18k, respectively) take up the biggest chunks of the budget by far. that money pays for, to quote the 2022 budget post, "server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses."

in some years, otw also pays external contractors to perform audits for security issues, and for more servers to handle the growing userbase. servers are expensive as hell, guys. in 2022, new server costs alone were $203k.

each of their other programs only cost around $3,000 or less, and otw paid around $78k for fundraising and development. wait, how do you lose so much money on your fundraising?? from the 2022 budget post: "Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors."

then the otw paid an additional $74k in administration expenses, which covers "hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as communication, management, and accounting tools."

in case you weren't following all of that math, the total expenses for 2022 come out to $518,978.48. woah! that's a lot! but it's still only a little over half of their net revenue. weird. i wonder what they do with that extra $494k?

well, $400k of it goes to the reserves, which i'll get to in a second. the last $93k, near as i can tell, gets rolled over to the next year. i'll admit this part i'm a little unsure about, as it's not clear on the spreadsheet, but that's the only thing that makes sense.

the reserves, though are clear. the most recent post i could find on the otw site about it were in the board meeting minutes from april 2, 2022: "We’re holding about $1million in operating cash that is about twice the amount of our annual operating costs. There is another $1million in reserves due to highly successful fundraisers in the past. The current plan for the reserves is to hold the money for paid staff in the future. It’s been talked about before in the past and we’re still working out the details, but it’s a rather expensive undertaking that will result in large annual expenses in addition to the initial cost of implementation."

woah....they're PLANNING to have paid staff eventually! wild!

so let's assume, for easy numbers, that the otw currently has $1.5 million in reserves. before we even get to how to use that money, let's look at the issues with implementing paid staff:

deciding which positions are going to be paid, because it can't be all of them

deciding how much to pay them, bc minimum wage sure as hell isn't enough, and cost of living is different everywhere, and volunteers come from all over the world

hiring staff and implementing new systems/tools to handle things like payroll and accounting

making sure you continue to earn enough money both to pay all of the staff and have some in reserves for emergencies or leaner donation drives

probably even more stuff than that! i don't run a nonprofit, that's just what i can think of off the top of my head.

okay, okay, okay. for the sake of argument, let's assume there is a best-case scenario where the otw starts paying some staff tomorrow. how much should they be paid? i'm picking $15 an hour, since that's what we fought for the minimum wage to be. by now, it should be closer to $20 or $25, but i'm trying to give "ao3 is capitalism" the fairest shot it can get here, okay?

ideally, if someone is being paid to help run ao3, they shouldn't need a second job. every job should pay enough to live off of. and running a nonprofit is hard work that leads to a lot of burnout--two board members JUST resigned before their terms were up. what i'm saying is, i'm going to assume a paid otw staff is getting paid for 40 hours of work a week, minimum. that's $31,200.

at $400,000 per year, the otw can afford to pay 12 people. that's WITHOUT taking into account the new systems, tools, software, etc they would have to pay for, any kind of fees, etc, etc.

oh, and btw, if you're an american you're still making barely enough to survive in most places, AND you don't have universal healthcare, vision, or dental. want otw to give people insurance, too? the number of people they can pay goes down.

it's. not. possible.

a million dollars is a lot of money on the face of it, but once you realize how MUCH goes into running something like the otw, it goes away fast.

just for reference, wikipedia also has donation drives every year. wikipedia, as of 2021, has $86.8 million in cash reserves and $137.4 million in investments. sure, wikipedia and ao3 are very different entities, but that disparity is massive. and i should note that if you give $10 to wikipedia they don't give you voting rights, i'm just saying.

by the way, you may have noticed that i didn't mention legal costs at all here. isn't one of otw's big Things about how they do legal advocacy?

yes, it is. they have a whole page about that work. and i can't for the life of me find a source on otw's website (and i'm running out of time to write this post, i'll look harder later), but i am 90% sure i learned before that most, if not all, of otw's legal work/advice/etc is done pro bono. i've also seen an anti-ao3 person claim their legal budget is only $5k or so, but they didn't have a source. but keep in mind that if they don't have a legal budget, all the numbers above stay the same, and if they do, there is even less money available for paid staff.

you can criticize ao3 and the otw all you want! there are many valid reasons to criticize them, and i do not think they're perfect either. but if you're going to do so, you should at least make sure you can back up your claims, bc otherwise you just look silly.

[xviiper-rents-houses]

Yandere Clone Commandos!!

General analysis and headcanons. Inspiration from: Republic Commandos, Star Wars film franchise and comics.

Is this requested? No, no it's not. :') I'm taking a short break from writing for yandere Sonic fics to write some self-indulgence, which is why the whole thing here is so long 😭

Also! I wanted an excuse to introduce my yandere Republic Commando squad, consisting of: Trickshot, Shaft, ZZ and Heyday. Headcanons, suggestions, ideas, (anything really) is welcome for these obsessive boys!

Thank you so much to @yanknowalready for the book suggestion, I started reading the first one and I absolutely love it! I'm so interested to see what happens to Etain and Darman next, (they have such good chemistry!!) and I can't wait to read more of the series as I go on. Never thought I'd get so invested but my lack of activity is a testament to how invested I am into this book 😂

Anyhoo, I suppose I should share my thoughts about the commandos being yandere, based on what I've read in the book, what I've watched and what I know so far about the commandos.

Romantic/platonic. More romantic leaning.

TW: Frank talk of death, killing and typical yandere shenanigans. Shenanigans include: stalking, possessiveness, obsessiveness, murder, forced affection (have to squint a lil) and delusions. This writing also has some suggestiveness at the bottom, for my yandere Republic Commando OC, you might have to squint at two of his quotes for that.

Analysis:

Republic Commandos from the book are treated like cattle for the most part. Well, cattle that act like dogs. Give them an order and they usually obey. Usually. They are also meant to be independent thinkers, working in squads of four. Republic Commandos are mainly used for infiltration, performing covert operations, as well as sabotage, demolition and assassination being the standard expectation.

They are kept in isolation, separate from their regular brothers and designated captains. This is so they can remain on task and focus on their rigorous training. As said before, they work in squads of four, so they do not get much time to socialize. While reading the first few interactions the commando characters had in the book with their Jedi superiors, I have noticed the amount of genuine intrigue and interest in picking apart who these lightsaber users of the Force are.

It's no surprise that a Republic Commando would feel a strong pull to learn more about who he works for. A life of loneliness, apart from your squad, tempts the human mind to want to seek more. He doesn't need to know why his Jedi General is, as they are mainly given missions to complete and an explanation is usually added to the equation, he wants to know whom. Identity. Republic Commandos do want to have some sort of connection with their Jedi, leaning more towards professionals. They are told stories of just how powerful Jedi are and look up to them.

In some cases, like the Republic Commando series, (I've delved into some spoilers because I really like Darman and Etain) this pressure can turn romantic.

The Republic Commandos trained so hard on Kamino just to get to this point, surviving multiple exercises off world—most commandos don't make it back—just so they can see a Jedi for one chance. Commandos are usually trained by hired mercenaries, just like their brothers but, often under more deadly circumstances. Commandos who don't have a firing and killshot above 95% are marked for dead by the Kaminoins, including their whole original squad batch, executed in favor of a better batch. The Republic Commandos don't all get the luck in the world, often dying before meeting the Jedi. Which is why I'd think they'd be real desperate sons of a gun. So, it's an honor to serve with one, to protect a Jedi.

Republic Commandos are well-disciplined to a fault. With their lives in constant threat, they want to make sure they survive long enough until they slow down and die on the battlefield, rather than die to their rapid aging, because they want to see as much as they can before it's their time to pass. Republic Commandos become observant, skilled, patient and most importantly, intelligent in their training and exercises. Combining all of these skills together with their strength, Commandos are a four team force to be reckoned with. Even when on their own, a Republic Commando is a dangerous foe to enemies.

Republic Commandos are rugged from their training, as said before, regularly facing death. Other clones look up to these individuals, just as they do their Jedi. The Republic Commandos are a symbol of pure, unadulterated power. No average clone nor Arc trooper picks a fight with a Commando because of this. In addition to being strict and tacticionary killing machines, Republic Commandos are known to have a bit of a temper when their patience is tested. Taunt them and you walk away with an ugly assortment of bruises, deece pointed at your head moments before, (threatening to fry your brain with a lazer) and perhaps a cut or two. You're lucky to walk away unscathed.

The reason why I believe that Commandos have a bit of a temper is because, when reading Hard Contact, in the first few pages of the book: one man questions why the commando waits so long, only to be threatened with concealed viroblade hidden within the commando's wrist guard, right under his chin and dangerously close to his throat and general lifeline. And even further down the line, one commando named Niner, is physically and mentally fighting with himself to not insult the Jedi padawan, Etain out loud. She tested his patience plenty of times and he has gotten mad at her, even though he never verbally expressed it as much.

Republic Commandos are also fiercely protective. If they can help it, they do not leave their brothers and general people in charge, behind. They are loyal and most thoughtful men, not cattle, men. Even if they don't believe they are men, they are constantly reminded by their gentle natured Jedi who now have to direct a war by using violence, the opposite of what an actual peace keeper would do. If push came to shove, just like any clone, a Republic Commando would gladly lay down his life as a final sacrifice. They care for their loved ones. And try as they might to not form personal connections, they still do and it heavily affects them.

So, bringing yandere into the forefront, I'd say that once a Republic Commando gets hooked on their Jedi/person, there's no going back. Their connection would be hard to break, even in death. Their obsession could even kill them and they wouldn't be too upset because, in the end, they were meant to be expendable, only living up to 20 years or so. With such little time that they have, if they can help it, Republic Commandos try to spend as much time as they can with their loved ones. I can see a common theme being that they work together to get to their connection.

Headcanons:

As said before in my "brief" analysis, regular clones don't pick fights with commandos. Which leads me to believe that if a squad of commandos or just a singular one was obsessed with you, you would have a powerful guarding force of smothering clones, scaring off most competition. Not all. The Republic Commandos face many a challenging foe, in the form of daunting tasks and assigned missions. Oftentimes, their enemy is much more powerful than they are. However, that won't stop them from trying to "protect" you. Regardless if it's just one commando obsessed, I like to imagine that the whole squad would work and support their brother.

A drawback, (to them and probably not to you, depending on your situation) is that they are in a constant threat of being killed on deployment, as well as training sessions on Kamino so often that they cannot spend as much time as they want with you. If given the chance, the Republic Commandos would stop at nothing just to be with you, securely watch over your hobbies and interests and memorize everything that you do. Unfortunately for these lovesick boys, they don't get in contact with their darling because the commandos are separated from the regs and the real world to fortify their integrity. So, the time they spend with you is precious.

Republic Commandos are meticulous with keeping their gear clean, compact, safe and functional. They pay very close attention and if there are any outliers, the commandos do what they can to perfect or improve the situation. I believe that the commandos would be obsessive, possessive, definitely stalkers and very desperate for attention and love once you give it to them. It's unwise to form a connection. They do NOT let go. Especially if you are Jedi. Maybe you met your forever squad as a padawan in training, leading the squad as commander. Or maybe a civvi who helped out one too many times to be forgotten. If you were a Jedi, the commandos would look up to you, supporting your decisions and challenging your wit all for the effort of making a smart plan.

They are loyal to the end, ready to lay down their lives. The Jedi are like a deity to these troubled men, cursed with accelerated growth, giving them so little time to live. However, not all seek that life of religion as a Jedi or are gifted with the ability. Let's say you're what they call a "civvi," a civilian for clarification. It's gonna be damn near impossible to see you again then. A commando, (or a group of commandos) would have to do a grand old break the rules policy just so they can get to you. The commandos would stand as close as they physically can, without directly violating your personal space but, still staying in close contact. They will likely ask to hold your hand, or to be kissed by you because, well, they don't know if they're going to die the next day. Just give it to them once, please? Very repetitive in asking you because they're that touch starved.

In addition to their want for physical touch, (or some commandos who don't like physical touch OR the ones who sorta listen to you when you say you don't want to hold their hand or any of that) when in close proximity to the commandos, rarely do their eyes ever leave you. You're just too important to them and so, you have to stay in their eyesight to ensure your safety. For the commandos that are denied physical affection and the privilege of watching you up close, they resort to watching from afar, hiding where you cannot see them, staring at you through their DC-17's scope. If you don't want to be watched all the time...why don't you try asking to wear their helmets? I believe the commandos would be absolutely ecstatic that you asked to wear their calling card. It would be very difficult to get them to shut up after that.

Due to the nature of the Clone Wars, even if the commandos wanted to, they cannot take you back to their barracks or anywhere locked up. The best that a commando or group of commandos can do is take a photo of you to display on their holocron each time before they go on a covert mission. They might be dead the next time they try to come home, leaving you to be stuck in an uncomfortable situation where another squad might try to take you in as their darling or the worse, being stuck in a building deep on an unknown planet, with no means of escape. For some commandos, you dying isolated rather than in their living arms is a better option of seeing you again in the after life.

Speaking of death, not all commandos die on deployment. Many are left behind. In that case, if the commando is desperate enough and willing, he will desert the Grand Army of the Republic, (commonly referred to as the GAR) and devise a plan to take you with him. If his brothers are alive, you bet that the commando would find a way to convince his brothers to join him, leave behind that awful life they had known before in favor of a bright new future with you in it. They wouldn't have to wear such heavy gear anymore, be in constant threat of a battlefield death, (though the rapid aging would steal their chance of a full life) and best of all, you are there to enjoy every single day. Maybe the commandos might go and search Kamino for a cure to try and reverse their rapid aging before they get to you? Sure sounds like an interesting fic!

OCS!

But wait, there's more! I wanted to share with you guys some of my yandere Republic Commando OCS that I came up with in the process of writing this self-indulgence blurb. Still figuring out who will be what but, I can give you their squad name and personal names. Only one guy has actual stuff written about him in the image below.

May I introduce you folks to the Champ Squad, led by RC-1237, known as Trickshot. He works with his brothers Shaft, ZZ and Heyday, being a very successful yet, controversial squad. Wherever they go, there are rarely any survivors. They might like killing a little too much. I still need to draw the other three, as well as give them their RC numbers.

Trickshot

Meet Trickshot, my lovelies! Everything on that paper is gonna be written down from top to bottom so you can make sense of my goofy writing. I said I was only going to write a little bit about a yandere oc. A little.... WELP

Trickshot, RC-1237— The “Boss” of Champ Squad.

• He has a grim sense of humor, being the squad's designated demolitions man. Trickshot's name is deceiving because many expect him to be the sniper, (which he is a very good shot at that) but he is a phenomenal explosion's master.

• Trickshot's serious, keen, cunning and silent for the most part. He has the highest kill count out of his squad, taking genuine pleasure in killing Separatist scum. He especially takes joy in killing anyone he deems getting too close/hurting/potentially hurting his cyar'ika (sweetheart).

• The “Boss” is brutal, straightforward and overall, a hard man to be around. The Champ Squad has its high success rate thanks to Trickshot's harsh methods.

(author's note: next bullet point might change but I wanna know y'all's opinion!!)

• Trickshot's DNA was mixed with another diner, (alongside his bros) giving him sharper features. Unfortunately, he's aggressive.

ARMOUR:

• Bears distinctive purple painted armor. Symbolizes the dark feelings and bad dreams he has, though others assume it must be ego talking.

• You compliment him on it? He wants you to add something to it. Can't paint or any of that? Here, let him take your hand and help you.

• Promise you'd hold his hand? Just once? He might die on his next mission, please. Trickshot loves you.

FUN FACTS:

• Trickshot “accidently” killed a Jedi padawan, (shame the kid got on his nerves). His brothers covered for him, saying the child died to battle droids. Yeah, they (meaning Shaft, ZZ and Heyday) were also fed up with the padawan.

• Claimed the lightsaber fell down the heavy waterfall rapids, (Trickshot lied) keeping the sacred weapon for personal use.

QUOTES:

• “ Look, cyar'ika, (or sweetheart) I ain't itchin' to make you blaze up just yet. ” (He laughs).

• “ Relaaax, I'm not gon' hurt ya. I'm gon' hurt 'em. ” (Guns and bombs ready).

• “ Just 'lax up, will ya? I don't bite! Unless you want or I really wanna. ” (You're sitting on his lap).

And that's everything! Lemme know whatcha guys think! Yes, Trickshot's quotes were suggestive but, I feel like that would blend in with his personality? Idk, maybe it's just my opinion.

Fanart, ideas, suggestions, (anything really lol!?) is appreciated for Trickshot and his brothers in the Champ Squad! Thanks for reading!

[ellaenchanting]

Hypnovember 2023 Master Post.

This year was my 5th Hypnovember! To be honest, it felt particularly hard-fought since I had a lot of life stuff happening in the background this month. (Nothing traumatic, don't worry.) Still, I managed to write about 10,803 words, record almost 50 minutes of audio, and pay tribute to a lovely friend. I'm likely not doing daily prompts next year but I'm glad I ran this marathon one more time. 5 years is a respectable amount of time to do anything so- I'm proud of myself.

Everything I wrote/created is below! Use these icons to find what looks interesting to you:

Icons- 📰- story 🔊- audio ✅-recommendation list ⭐-Ella's favorites 😍- romantic 🌈- queer 😴- regular ole’ hypnosis 🛀- brainwashing and/or hypnotist in a tub 👻- spooky ❓- bad or reeeally questionable consent  👨‍🔬 -science! 🤪 -crackfic #-#sceneideas 😭-feeeels  🦄 -mythological creatures   🔥 -explicitly sexy  🔁 switchy switches 😵‍ -intelligence play  🫥-amnesia 🏴‍☠️- Our Flag Means Death fanfic ☕- comfort 🤏-tiny fic 💌-poem 🚫- denial or teasing 🪞-autobiographical or contains autobiographical elements 🧲 old timey mesmerism

Day 1: Dazed 🔊⭐😴

File description: One Take Wonder induction designed to remind you that going into trance isn't difficult at all.

It's OK.

Just drift.

Day 2: Brain Drain M/m(/m) 📰 😴 🌈😍 🔁🏴‍☠️☕

Choice quote: "Izzy grinned too, feeling oddly proud to be trusted with this quiet moment. He and Ed had never been conventional. Maybe it was OK that Ed and Stede weren't either."

Day 3: Coils (Author/you) 📰 😴 🤏☕

Choice quote: "When I say 'my words coil around you', it IMPLIES control but what it really gives is permission. "

Day 4: Denial 🔊😴🔥🚫

File description: "Denial. That's it. That's all the description you get."

Fun fact: Unless you want spoilers- then head over here

Day 5: Maid (The author/you) 📰 🤏🛀

Choice Quote: "What if you could clean your home and clean your mind at the same time? "

Day 6: Soul Contract (Being/supplicant) 📰 🤏🦄🤪

Choice quote: "So- you say you'll give me your free will?"

Fun fact: This is secretly Good Omens fanfic about Aziraphale (with the serial numbers filed off).

Day 7: Repetition is Hypnotic 🔊👨‍🔬

File description: "Repetition is Hypnotic- what it says on the tin"

Day 8: Addicted (M/f) 📰 ⭐❓😭🛀🪞

Choice quote: "It felt like being owned. It felt like love. Then just as surely as the flood started- it stopped."

Fun fact: This was NOT a fun story to write, partially because it dug up some of my and my friends' worst experiences. I'm glad it's been helpful for some people who have been in some really bad situations, though- I'm hope I did you all justice. You (and we all) deserve so much more than this.

Day 9: Erased (?/f) 💌🛀

Choice quote: "That had all been/Erased"

Day 10: Confidence (F/f) 📰😴🌈🫥❓😍🤪🧲

Choice quote: "'No,' interrupted the young mesmerist. 'I mean- I know this is quite unusual but- I find myself quite fond of you, Harriet.'

Day 11: Attitude Adjustment/IQ Reduced (M/f) 📰⭐😴😍😵‍#🔥

Choice quote: "'That's good, honey,' he encouraged. 'You don't need to think right now. I've got all your bigger thoughts for safekeeping.'"

Day 12: Hyperfocus (The author/you) 📰😴🤏👨‍🔬

Choice quote: "I know you can focus, but can you HYPERfocus?"

Day 13: Smile (Being/f) 📰🤏👻🦄

Choice quote: "It made her smile."

Day 14: Impossibly Deep (Person/person) 📰🤏❓🛀🫥#

Choice quote: "'Not possible to be this deep, isn't that right?'

'Mmmm not possible. Too deep.'"

Day 15: Shatter 🔊👨‍🔬🛀

File description: Just a quick loopable file with a nice "shatter" mantra

Day 16: Sex Obsessed ✅🌈

Fun fact: Recommendation list of my favorite content from my friend @sex-obsessed-lesbian

Day 17: Corrupted (M/f) 📰⭐🤏❓🔥#

Choice quote: "'I can give you what you want," he said, silkily. "All the submission. All the pleasure. Everything you've been dreaming of...All you need to give me in return,' he continued, 'is your 'no'".

Day 18: Pet 🔊☕😴

File description: I'm a bit sick so- did some nice self hypnosis around the idea of being pet.

Day 19: Elevator (F/f) 📰😴🔁#

Choice quote: "Have you ever ridden the Tower of Terror at Disney World?" Ivy asked.

Day 20: Transformation 🪞⭐

Choice quote: "She didn't know that something could be both campy playacting and extremely real at the same time-the feelings, the bonding, the lingering effects-all of it."

Day 21: Forget 🔊🤪🫥👨‍🔬

File description: "Similar to the style of Samsung's website that helps you forget TV series you've watched, this file is designed to help you forget all of my Hypnovember content for this year- so you can experience it again for the first time!"

Day 22: Hypnotic Hands (F/f) 📰😴#🌈

Choice quote: "But mistress could make anything hypnotic. And today she had made HER hands hypnotic too."

Day 23: ...And Back Down 💌😴😭

Choice quote: "...And back down"

Day 24: Ready to Play (F/m) 📰😴#🪞🛀🚫

Choice quote: "The slight curve of her lip indicated she had something in mind but- had it started?"

Day 25: At Peace (Being/f) 📰🤏👻🦄

Choice quote: "It was useless to fight against it- although in the beginning she had tried."

Day 26: Shadows (F/f) 📰🌈🚫🛀

Choice quote: "Those shadows of her former self were still there- they helped make her who she was now. Who she was now, though, was happy."

Day 27: Shiny (F/m)📰🤏#😴🛀

Choice quote: "The leather boots weren't 'shiny, shiny' like in the song, but it didn't matter. "

Day 28: Workout (F/f) 📰⭐🛀🚫🔥🌈#

Choice quote: "'I'm going to challenge you a bit today, ok?' she says. 'Are you ready for that?'"

Day 29: Wholesome (The author/you) 📰⭐😂😴☕🪞

Choice quote: "It means something to us, and thus it has meaning"

Day 30: You Win (F/nb)📰😂😍😴☕

Choice quote: "'Hmph,' they responded, grumpily. 'I know what you're doing.'"

I'm entirely a hobbyist content creator and work primarily for feedback and belly rubs. :) (I do take tips on Ko-fi though if you're feeling generous!) If you liked anything I made this month, I'd be really really delighted to hear about it. Hell, I'm delighted to hear constructive criticism as well- anything to know this isn't all going to into a void somewhere. Reblogs are also very much appreciated.

That being said- here are a few people in particular I want to thank for your encouragement, your inspiration, your cheerleading, or just generally for helping get me through the month- @thekinkycocktailclub @mentat101posts @jam-and-stuff @linnybeenaughty @sex-obsessed-lesbian @theleeallure @tennfan2 @spiralturquoise @daja-the-hypnokitten @misscammiedawn @royb8772 @hypno-potion @hypno-sandwich @wellgnawed @redriotwest @egur19 @mozart32 @mys-oleander @sleepwithgiggli @telephonetrance @dommestic @subbypuppy (I know I'm leaving a bunch of people off so- I apologize if I am and know I still appreciate you a lot.)

Extra special shoutout to @emptyofbrains2 who has not only given me lots of great feedback but has also written a lot of her own great stuff this past month. Check out her Tumblr if you haven't already!

Stay tuned to this space for- whatever it is the future holds. :) I'm excited- I hope you are too.

Thanks y'all :)

[wofdesignhub]

I’m gonna draw a dragon again soon so quick rant

You know one thing I REALLY hate in wings of fire? There’s a tiny, little inconsistency throughout the books. And that’s the sizes of scavengers to the dragons. Because I’m just gonna say it here: the “canonical” size comparison such as the picture below makes NO SENSE considering how everything else is just conveniently a decent size for a dragon. And trust me, we WILL get to it being “canonical”

A mango can fit a dragons palm when it should clearly be tiny as the actual love I have for this book series. What about cows? How come they’re described to be massive enough to feed a whole dragon? They should be like a candy bar to those things! And don’t get me started on how completely unrealistic it is for a sloth to be big enough to wrap itself around a rainwing’s neck. Like that must be some pretty massive sloths around that should ABSOLUTELY be massive compared to a scavenger.

Also the funny part about that pic I showed you? Yeah well scrap that cuz that’s also pretty inaccurate. We were to believe in the VERY EARLY books that scavengers are like hamsters to dragons. Literally the size of their right toe. Also also the fact that Smolder is like 50 years old AND also also also the fact that dragons keep growing as they age, then that just tells us that these scavenger are way, WAY bigger to these dragons. Especially if Flower here is the size of his FOREARM!

“Oh, but the islands are more suited for dragons! Of course everything will be big!” You cry out! Yet it is implied that scavengers were the dominant race BEFORE The Scorching, and even if that was a whole lotta years ago, then that must’ve been the FASTEST evolution process in the south coast yet.

And it STILL gets worse! Scavengers, even after being concluded to be the size of hamsters to dragons, Tui is constantly and very much maliciously switching the sizes of these scavengers to fit the plot because she has never figured out what she ever wants. Winter keeps Bandit in what’s implied to be some.. hamster cage? Okay, so he must be pretty damn tiny, which makes some amount of sense considering he’s probably a… teenager… I mean, okay, sure, whatever, I’ll let it slide- wait! But so is Winter! Winter is bigger than Qibli, sure, but neither of them are any bigger than other fully grown dragons! Winter is a teenage dragonet! So how small is Bandit?? How small is he compared to a- and let me emphasize- a FULL GROWN DRAGON!!!?? What!!!

And by the way, have you SEEN the actual cover of Dragonslayer??? Look at that and TELL me how completely unrealistic it is if we are to believe scavengers are the size of a dragon’s forearm

Also also also ALSO in book 14 Daffodil is shown tossing and catching Bumblebee who had just hatched and this is just unnatural and biologically confusing to think about. HOW is Daffodil bigger than a newborn dragonet? And this makes even LESS SENSE when you realize that it’s been implied that a newborn dragonet is the same size as a regular sized scavenger ACCORDING to the fact that it’s really easy to pick up a baby dragonet by the hand COMPARED to the size of Flower to Smolder’s hand in the picture??? HOW? Tell me how, Tui!! How is this possible!! And don’t you dare tell me that “oh! Pantalan dragons are smaller than Pyrian!” Because that is just ludicrous to me. I will LAUGH at you if you tell me otherwise because that is just a cheap way to excuse any of this. There has NEVER been any quote of Luna or any other Silkwing, Hivewing, or Leafwing being significantly shorter than a Pyrian dragon. 

I should really cut to the chase but I’ve… never liked Tui’s writing. I don’t like that she avoids criticism of her writing. She has great ideas and is so creative in the world of WOF but for most works she’s either rushing it or coming up with something on the spot. And neither are good if they’re not thought out well enough! All of the endings to the arcs are bad and poorly thought out. The logic in how specific stuff works is just terrible. Arc 3 is just a NOTHING arc full of NOTHING characters (except maybe Snowfall and some of the Leafwings they’re… fine). I’m sorry but as much as I “pretend” to like WOF, and I REALLY mean it when I say “pretend”, but this book makes me get an aneurysm the more I really look deep into it. I am beyond terrified of looking into the guidebook because I KNOW there will be inaccuracies, confusion, and Tui slamming down whatever ideas she has without a second thought. I already know she put the weird and unnecessary mudwing mating rituals!!

Anyways, drawing that stupid blue and yellow rainwing later, I don’t want to go and look for her name now, goodnight everyone, don’t talk to me

[niamhcinnoir]

I wonder how long it took them to find Celebrían.

So either she went by herself, which is implied, or Elrond sent a few guards with her, or she travelled with some of Galadriel's people that came over specifically to escort her to Lothlórien. Was the trip planned in advance? Was it a regular thing, that she went to Lothlórien once every few years to see her parents? Did she take Arwen or the twins with her occasionally? Obviously not this time, otherwise they would have been "waylaid" too. If anyone else was with her they would have been killed, no doubt, and the only reason Celebrían herself survived her "poisoned wound" and whatever else the orcs did to her was because of whatever high-elf ancestry light-of-the-two-trees Daughter of Galadriel inner powers she had going on.

So it took the Fellowship approximately two months to get to Lothlórien from Rivendell, but that's accounting for their massive detour through Moria. Celebrían took the Redhorn Pass (side headcanon: the Redhorn Pass became impassable only after this incident), and because she was an elf and (presumably) by herself we can knock off about a month, if she was on a horse.

So in the Appendices Celebrían is referred to as Daughter of Celeborn, not Daughter of Galadriel, which seems more likely given Galadriel's importance in the Lord of the Rings and the history of Middle-Earth in general. That leads me to assume that Celebrían took after her father way more than her mother - it's likely she couldn't mind speak to the same extent, perhaps she didn't even have the same level of Foresight.

Assuming she would have sent Elrond a letter the moment she was in Lothlórien, and Elrond was expecting this, it would have taken maybe a week or two or maybe another month more for Elrond to think something was wrong - maybe she was delayed somehow, by weather etc, maybe the letter was lost on the way, whatever. If her parents were expecting her, it would have taken them equally long to suspect something was wrong.

So then I'm guessing Elrond mind-spoke with Galadriel if he hadn't done so before to ask if Celebrían had arrived, maybe Galadriel saw something in her mirror and alerted Elrond the same way, whatever. Then finally, after about two months to my reckoning - the 24 hours you wait to file a missing persons report converted to Elf conceptions of time - Elrond sent out the search parties.

(By the way, if her horse somehow survived and found its way back to Rivendell, it would have taken a similar time).

Anyway, if it took her approx. 3 weeks (3/4 of the way from Rivendell to Lothlórien) to get to the Redhorn Pass, it took the rescuers the same amount of time - less if they were in a hurry, but they also had to physically look for her. Then they had to bring her back to Rivendell, and I read somewhere (maybe a fanfic, don't quote me on this) that it was the twins that found her - traumatic enough, but imagine travelling home for a few weeks with your half-dead mother beside you on your horse.

Maybe the eagles helped. Idk.

In conclusion, I believe Celebrían was lying poisoned and half-dead from torture in a cave (presumably without food or water) for at least two or three months before she was found and taken back to Rivendell.

This whole scenario is based on the assumption that nobody saw the attack coming, which, unlikely as it seems, must have been the case as there is no way either Elrond or her parents would have let her travel (alone or otherwise) if this outcome was an option.

This is my Roman Empire.

[samueldays]

As promised to @brazenautomaton, extended feedback on Princess: The Hopeful - Crystal Edition (PTHCE). This is going to be quite long and probably have more replies, so readmore break early.

This is partly feedback to Brazen and partly review for other people wondering what's going on with it and partly me doing stream of consciousness recapping as I read through it, so it's a little disjointed. Still, better to have it out than not.

Chapter 0: Introduction

When reading the opening of PTHCE about Sincerity and Fear and Darkness, first in the prologue chapter and then in chapter 2 (setting), I was thinking about how much D&D and its descendants 'polluted' the fantasy genre with numbers, game mechanics and LitRPG tropes. Even in works that aren't LitRPG outright, I feel like recent fiction has a lot more level X power, needs Y amount to resist, has Z type element.

Lord of the Rings does not feature the One Ring casting Level 4 Soul-Hook, Will Save DC 18, 2d6 Corruption Damage, or anything even vaguely like that. It simply offers power to the bearer, and eventually Frodo makes the decision that taking power is preferable to getting stung by spiders and beaten by orcs while slogging through the industrial district. (LOTR is of course not alone about this, but it's well known.)

PTHCE is like that too.

People spread fear to others in an attempt to ward it away from themselves, to prevent what causes it or prevent themselves from feeling it. People are afraid of being preyed on, so they must prey on others first. People are afraid of being known, so they can’t let themselves be loved.

So I quite like this opening of PTHCE for not needing another special antagonist or evil force with unique setting adjustments and secret history retcon, especially in the Crossovers of Darkness that arguably has too many of them at odds already.

The Darkness is not invading our world. The foul black ichor of its presence does not surge from outside of reality. It congeals from the world around us like morning dew collects water from the atmosphere. The difference between the power to harvest energy from human beings and the power to abuse humans into compliance is only in degree, not kind.

There are monsters and there is a Darkness antagonist to the RPG, but it's one with less spotlight time and less identity of its own, and more exaggeration of regular forces. From the Glossary:

Ultimatum, The: The extortionate “bargain” offered by the Darkness to all living things who feel its fear: “I will make you suffer, and the only way to make me stop is to inflict me on others.”

(Could use separate scare quotes and speech quotes.)

This also made it feel easier for me to start planning a first test adventure. One of my approaches to a new RPG is to outline a plot for a test adventure early on, mostly from the setting and themes and fluff description, and then see how well the mechanics support it. When the 'antagonist' is a cycle of fear and suffering, I came up with a plot fast.

My outline went like this: The conflict centers on a museum. A pack of Werewolves are subtly fucking with the museum in an attempt to acquire/destroy an artifact there, because they're afraid of trying to approach humans about this openly. This leaves the museum guides afraid too: afraid that they're seeing things, that they're getting old and nutty, that they're going to lose their jobs, so they do foolish things in response. The museum director is influenced by the Ultimatum: afraid that someone is trying to sabotage the museum, he responds by trying to militarize it for security, adding a police presence, locking up exhibits, restricting opening hours, and slightly worsening life for everyone who would like to go to the museum.

I will/did refine this plot while reading through the book and understanding the system, but I think this is a good start for something Magical Girls can resolve with the power of love and hope and friendship. Let's see how it holds up later.

White Wolf fucked around with the term "soul" a lot, this glossary's redefinition tries to band-aid over it, still sucks IMO.

Champion: One of the five Callings.

Currents, Queen of: One of the five Radiant Queens.

Embassy: An optional third type of grouping a Princess can choose to join in addition to Calling and Queen.

Yeah this is White Wolf's Not-A-Class-System of Darkness all right, with the good and bad that comes with it. Those entries are summaries in the glossary in the prologue. The book's numbered chapters start after that with Chapter 1: Calling and Queen, (roughly: character classes and archetypes) and it immediately runs into one of the bad things about the Not-A-Class-System and the White Wolf foundation, the back-and-forth dependencies. From the first Calling, "Champion":

They have a natural affinity for the Kiai Charm to master the chaos of combat, and the Force Charm to exert their will on the world. Like all Princesses, they have an affinity for the Buster Charm, and one additional Charm of their choice.

From the glossary I know a Charm is a superpower. What are these specific Charms? What is an Affinity? There's no page reference. Then it's "Sample Oaths" for a Champion. What's an Oath and why am I swearing one?

It is very much faithful to White Wolf book layout that the book can't be read in order, you have to flip to several later chapters to explain things in the first chapter, with Glossary in the front, Appendix in the back, and several explanatory sidebars through the book, which are not listed in the Appendices.

This is a bad thing, but it's hard to avoid. I have no clever ideas for fixing it. Page references or sidebars might improve it a little.

The not-a-classes are callings of Champion, Grace, Seeker, Mender and Troubadour // Queens of Currents, Flowers, Jewels, Spades, Swords, for 25 combinations.

Chapter 2: Setting.

Once there was a golden age, then the Darkness and its evil minions showed up and ruined things, blah blah.

From there, the history of this world began, the Chronicles of Darkness. If you want the official story you can look at a history book. If you want the true story there’s at least eight types of supernatural creature claiming to offer it and none of them can see all of it.

In spite of what I said above about ordinary darkness, a magical girl supplement can't stick entirely to the regular world or history, so we get the Fearless Kingdoms lost in the Dreamlands, and three other Queens of Capitalized Letters who are different from the Chapter 1 Queens. These 3 are the Twilight Queens who have been fighting the Darkness for ages and gotten fucked up by it.

The 5 reasonable PC-class Queens to follow are the Radiant Queens who were imprisoned until the Moon Landing in 1969, which was such an amazing inspiring feat of hope, it cracked the Darkness's hold on the world and let the Radiant Queens out to start raising protagonists again.

The Radiant Queens still live in the Dreamlands, and they suffer the dream-logic problem of sending unreal people on unreal quests to come back with unreal information. If you, the player character, want your Mentor Queen to give you advice, you need to tell her about your personal real situation. This is both a plot device for keeping the big powers off the board so the PCs can shine, and a clever setup for MLP-style "Dear Princess Celestia, this week I..." letters. I like it!

Also some stuff about how the Darkness spawns monsters and hazards. The secret setting history is decently solid.

Pages 59-60 are blank in the saved PDF version. Reee.

Chapter 3: Character Creation.

Starts with game creation, getting the players on the same page, discussing how the campaign should be designed, this is supposed to be an adaptive character-centric game, unlike D&D mostly-static adventure modules and pick-up games.

Two important elements of character creation are the Calling and Queen that Chapter 1 focused on. White Wolf Editing! *shakes fist*

There's the usual WW 5-dot attribute/skill system, and then the usual new set of special supplement stats, which I'm going to analogize to Vampire as a starting reference.

Humanity stat: "Belief" in magical girl idea(l)s Power stat: "Inner Light" Blood points stat: "Wisps" Disciplines: "Charms"

But instead of the Charms being 5-dot, each has a basic function and several independent upgrades.

Then there's the Magical Girl Transformation, which takes a whopping 30 seconds of shiny transformation sequence, and it comes with super identity protection to allow players to mess around with it safely. Good stuff.

Unless players have been extremely careless, the Storyteller shouldn’t have a supernatural antagonist follow them back to their mundane lives [...] the mundane relationships a Princess has are incredibly important thematically and mechanically and the best course of action should never be “cut off everyone so I don’t put them in danger.” There are things a character could do to make that relationship safer, but they’re tedious and get in the way of playing the actual game, so you don’t want to do those either.

We're still in Chapter Character Creation giving OOC reasons for the IC strength of dual identity protection and the failure of scrying spells, organizing interconnected material in a linear fashion is hard. I don't blame the author, but it annoys me.

In the grand tradition of RPGs borrowing magic words and redefining them, a Princess's transformation catalyst object is "Phylactery". :D

There's an XP cost chart. It is one of the few outright bad things in this version, IMO. Starting with the ambiguity. Cost of Attribute: "4XP/dot". Okay, if I'm raising an attribute from 2 to 3, does that mean a 1-dot raise costing 4XP, or a raise to 3 dots costing 12XP? (Shadowrun got this one right by saying "New Rating x5" as the cost.)

There's a XP cost for "Lost Willpower dot" but not for regular Willpower raises that I can see.

Then we've got explanations of the Belief stat (Integrity, Humanity) and then, at last, explanations of the Oaths that came up two chapters ago, which are not next to explanations of the Callings despite having come up together.

Then, still in Chapter Character Creation of PTHCE, because editing is very hard, we've got a special new mechanic: Flaring Belief. When you fail something or come up against a big threat, you can choose to raise the stakes, giving you a reroll and a power boost, by swearing to achieve some goal that's more difficult or more thorough. If you succeed, the power was free, you rose to the occasion. If you fail at the goal, lose Belief stat! It's great Magical Girl content.

Also appearing in this chapter: Merits.

With that chapter of miscellanea finally done...

Chapter 4: Magic.

Best part of the book, IMO. There's basic effects like super movement, summon object, or magical girl hyper beam, each of which has several upgrades that can be combined to enhance or modify effects. For example, the water-walk movement can be combined with the affects-vehicle movement to drive on water.

It's also the part of the book that looks like the most work, reminding me of the Mutants&Masterminds build-your-own-power pointbuy system. Players will have to figure out how to build the effects they wanted, GM will have to adjudicate, it's quite a loose system.

I'm going to reserve judgment on this until I get a chance to see it in play, but my superficial impression is good.

Then there's options for giving those effects elemental upgrades or elemental restrictions for more themed attacks and character identity and stuff.

Chapter 5: The Forces of Darkness.

While trying to Ctrl-F for this chapter I noticed that funny font symbols have happened, and trying to copy-paste the headline elsewhere yields "Cha???r 5: The For??? Of Dar???s?", possibly ligature bullshit or the result of me saving GDocs file to PDF.

So here we have the monsters, and the monster-associated things like evil places that buff monsters, the ecology of monsters, monster abilities, and a bunch of fiddly little stat modifiers for monsters. Monsters are supposed to embody aspects of the Darkness, which is evil and parasitic and cannot create, monsters have to form around a source of Light and consume Light where it leaks into the Darkness.

First up are the Darkspawn, generic monster-of-the-week gribblies with too many teeth.

Then come the Nightscapes, living location puzzle bosses built around someone's fears that, must be resolved with social and clues while beating up gribblies, which the GM is expected to customize heavily. I like the idea, but as with Magic in the previous chapter, it means this isn't a pick-up-and-play game, this is something where the GM needs to prep.

Nightmares are the minions of Nightspaces, doing specific tasks and inflicting relevant fears for the puzzle bosses. I had a hard time telling the functional difference between Nightmares and Darkspawn at first.

Defilers are where it gets interesting: humans empowered by the Darkness and knowingly choosing to keep doing that, though not necessarily with knowledge of what the Darkness is.

Cataphracts are former humans whose heart and soul has been replaced with Dark Power, sometimes evolving from Defilers.

Enthroned are the campaign bosses: corrupted magical girls, who come with a personalised and controlled Nightscape around them. They are obvious in person for that reason, but harder to spot when posting on the Internet, which is why magical girls should stay off the Internet. :D

--

Now lemme go back to that werewolves-at-the-museum plot from the start and see how I'm going to work it with this game's bestiary and ecology. First question seems to be: Am I going to have a Nightscape or not? Is this adventure important enough, or is someone fucked up enough, to have one?

I learn towards "no". This is a starter adventure I'm planning.

Let's have some Darkspawn. For example, the Ravenous Darkspawn statblock could be used for a book that came to life, grew teeth and started biting people. (The Ravenous entry appears to be missing a Size stat?) "Books don't bite people", say the boring people, nudged along by Insidious Darkspawn telling them "You saw nothing" and looking important with badges. Traitorous Darkspawn might be nudging the museum director into reacting even worse.

The director is militarizing the place even more, which makes life harder for the werewolves trying to get the plot device in the museum, so this situation is not going to fix itself, only escalate with the likely outcome that the museum closes. This I think is stakes of the sort the Storytelling chapter calls for.

[...] it’s important to keep the stakes lower than you might think. The impulse in both anime and roleplaying is a threat of a world-ending, apocalyptic scale, but ironically making the stakes too high means the stakes are nothing. You can’t go through with a consequence of failure that basically makes the setting cease to exist, therefore, it’s not going to happen. The focus of the Chronicles of Darkness is at the local level. Failure on the part of the players should result in terrible things happening, and the world around them being a tangibly worse place to live, but still recognizable enough as the world that they can actually live with the consequences of the failure.

Possibly there's the risk of a Nightscape being created if the party fails, the museum closes, and the museum guides who have worked there all their lives suffer a breaking point.

I think I'd like some more kinds of Darkspawn in my adventure, and at the book level, I think providing some more would be useful to GMs.

Then I need an agentic antagonist to interact with. The werewolf pack might serve this role, but they can be talked to and aren't outright enemies. Since I noped on the Nightscape, the more hostile antagonist should probably be a Defiler somewhere. I'm thinking either the museum director (empowered to call in unreasonable amounts of security, cops, and city budget with OP social influence) or some other dude who also wants the plot device artifact, can't contest for it directly, plots to steal it in the museum shutdown when lots of items will be transferred and it's easy for some to go missing.

To be continued.

[toxictoad]

I just got a phone call from my doctor and I'm sad so I'm gonna go to incorrect quotes generator and put in Billford

Enjoy.

Ford: Look, last night was a mistake.

Bill: A sexy mistake.

Ford: No, just a regular mistake.

-

Bill: Hey, I’m getting in the shower. Wanna help me out?

Ford: ...Have you never taken a shower before?

-

Ford: Listen, we’re done, we’re over! Okay?

Bill: Whatever bitch, you ain’t never gonna find no one like me.

Ford: Yeah, that's the point shithead!

-

Bill: Ford is playing hard to get.

Bill: Little does he know, I'm a master at playing hard to get rid of.

-

Ford: I fell—

Bill: From heaven?

Ford: No, I literally fell—

Bill: In love with me the moment you saw me?

Ford: MY ARM IS BROKEN!

Bill: Okay, but do you think I'm pretty? Be honest.

-

Ford: You have to apologize to them Bill.

Bill: Fine! But I must warn you that this might make me a better, nicer person and that is NOT the person you fell in love with!

-

Ford: I was going to suggest we do Marilyn Monroe and JFK roleplay, but I’d get way too into it.

Bill: What- how?

Ford: You’d be like “come to bed … Mr. President” and I’d be like, “I need to increase the amount of American military advisors in South Vietnam by a factor of 18.”

-

Ford: *seductively takes off glasses*

Ford: Wow...

Bill: *blushes* Haha... what?

Ford: You're really fucking blurry.

-

Ford: The first time I saw you, you stole my heart.

Bill: But I'm a kleptomaniac, so that doesn't mean anything.

-

Bill, throwing their head into Ford's lap: Tell me I'm pretty!

Ford, lovingly stroking their hair: You're pretty fucking annoying, that's what you are.

-

Bill: I think we should kiss.

Ford: And I think you should die but we don’t always get what we want.

-

Ford: Hey, about that love letter you sent me-

Bill: *blushes* What are your thoughts?

Ford: The fourth sentence-

Bill: Yeah, that’s where I got really emotional and I-

Ford: It’s “you’re” not “your”.

-

Bill: I love you.

Ford, not paying attention: What was that?

Bill: I said I’m selling you to the zOo-

-

Bill, trying to flirt: So, you come around here often?

Ford, confused: I mean, this is my house, so yeah.

[sophisticatedgia]

Change is coming. I can handle it.

I've reached my goal weight of 139-140 lbs. I am 5'7. That is the lowest I'm going to go. Ideally I would love to be 129 but I'm not 25 anymore. In the past, anti psychotics made me gain a lot of weight. I got up to 181 pounds on risperidone. Abilify has helped me lose some of the weight gained on anti psychotics. My beginning weight, before anti psychotics, was 134. That's ok. I don't need to go that low. I am happy. Now, I must maintain this weight. I am ok and positive with being anything under 144. This is my sensation of myself and comfort within my own body. I am not saying one cannot be comfortable or happy with themselves at higher weights.

Lately I've been eating broccoli, copious amounts of protein bars and bananas, once regular Mac and cheese, occasionally sweets but in small portion, and "Amy's" vegan tv dinners.

The foods I've dropped are oatmeal, taco bell, and chips w cheese and sour cream. I used to eat tons of chips cheese n sour cream. And tons of bean and cheesy rice burritos extra jalapeno sauce. My unsafe foods are noodles and chips, burritos and French fries. And Im wondering if oatmeal provides me with too much fiber tho it's incredibly wholesome and comforting.

Lately I've been highly caffeinated. Tomorrow is day one, one caffeinated beverage per day. Tomorrow is going to be day two of me not picking and peeling my hands and fingers. I am looking to God to help me with all this and more, and to maintain my goal weight. Our Heavenly Father can feed my appetite with his loving solace when I want to binge and purge. I am recovering from bulimia and binge eating disorder. Was anorexic in my younger years.

I luckily haven't had an oculogyric crisis in about a month or so. Thank you God for this peace you've bestowed upon me. I know there may be battles yet to come, that I will endure and overcome.

I am wearing my white touch screen gloves in picture. It is polite to do so and soothing for my hands. An anon message told me that I was disgusting for not taking precautions with my hand issues. I am now taking anons advice and doing the best I can.

I walk with my backpack everywhere I go because I'm prescribed Benadryl and hydroxyzine for when I have oculogyric crisis, and never know when one may happen. I keep my sparkly gold wallet in there and a few rose quartz. My sleep schedule is so good, and oculogyric crisis is something I can handle, so I don't believe I will be switching to vraylar(a more expensive new anti psychotic) I don't like change, especially if it includes insomnia.

My boyfriends been very sweet and manning up. What I mean by that is he is doing what he said he would do, giving me a deep tissue massage every other night. He has begun to cease his irritations and behaves more enduring and patient with me. We love each other very much.

I thought to myself , oh October first, it's my chance to escape him! Every beginning of the month is a possible plan to leave him. But I don't want to. The tenderness between us is holy.

I may keep reblogging some quote on here about hands gentle as snow. Because I'm trying to have compassion towards myself and heal my hands. I'm trying to see myself as somebody worth taking care of properly, in a mature and healthy-not scary-manner. Gentle , tender , sacred .

I know it's rude of me to say I may leave him, but if push comes to shove i shall. I don't want to though. I want to be with him forever.

Ok so I saw my parents the other day and brother and dog. It was a good visit. I got the 🦇 bat 🦇 leggings as previously pictured from mom. They are super soft. I helped wash my dad's bedding, did the dishes, took out recycling, threw away trash around the house, swept the kitchen. And spent quality time with my dog, buddy. It was a nice visit tho short.

I wish I could be a good daughter so badly. They think good of me. But if I were truly good I would move back in with them and help them everyday. I chose my mate. Like I said he recently got a Mohawk and that's my fave haircut on men. He looks so sultry. Can sultry be used to describe a man? I mean he's smokin hot!

Ok. I am fearing the change ahead of me, but with faith in my own goodness and Gods love for me, I shall do what Im able.

I want to say if my relationship gets worse, I will try therapy again. If I keep picking my hands, I will try therapy again.

I am going to be a healthy , humble , sophisticated , imperfect woman. I believe I am ADHD autistic. My psychiatrist says that I very well may be autistic. But they don't do tests for that there. Tests are overstimulating or nerve-wracking for me anyway.

Sorry for writing so much but two mutuals seemed to miss my writing.

Today my walk to the vape shop was so nice. The clouds swirling white and blue in tender waves of slow motion. I think my fave colors are truly white and blue. And grey, black, brown. I'm getting a pink neck scarf though. Cus princesses wear pink. 🩷

Thanks for reading or jus looking at da pix. Love yall. You are precious. You are sacred. Never give up on yourself.

[dropintomanga]

Don't See Yourself As a Cuckoo

I started reading Chica Umino's March Comes In Like a Lion after years of hearing about its great outlook on characters dealing with a variety of emotional issues. In particular, its main character, Rei Kiriyama and his struggles to come to terms with his past involving a surrogate parental figure who raised him after his family died, but ignored their own kids for the sake of Rei's future.

I see this first hand near the end of the 1st volume when Rei reminisces about the past and how he got into shogi.

It's scary that I felt the same as Rei about 13 years ago. I remember one time where I felt like I was dragging my family down a hell hole when we moved into a new living situation. I was dealing with so much uncertainty and didn't know how to handle it. I think at the time, we had limited resources. I felt that I was selfish because I wanted to move to a better place badly over everyone else's preferences, but my sister reminded me that I wasn't the only one who wanted out. She even said my thinking was warped. I think I was just so afraid of hurting my family and felt they had to do so much for my depression. I wanted them to stop helping me. I felt like a cuckoo despite not actually being a cuckoo.

When I look back at that time now, I realized that I was facing a new situation that I was overreacting to. It's fine to react in ways that make you fearful, but there's a point where it affects your relationships in not-so-healthy ways. You have to be realistic and trust in the people around you despite what your inner critic says.

Rei's quote about being a bird and free of emotional pain reminded me of my experiences with birds. I used to have a pet African finch and felt that he had it much easier than me. He got to eat, sing, fly around, sleep, poop, etc. And then I remember my finch lived in a cage and was taken care of by creatures (i.e. human beings) that he can't exactly communicate with. There's no freedom for him here. And even if my finch was free and roaming, he would have to deal with how vicious wild birds are due to being domesticated. My finch died in 2019 after 11 years of raising him and while I do think he lived a long life for his kind, I have to be careful in saying he lived a good life.

After my finch died, I later discovered an avian center that housed birds of all kinds that were on display while walking on a lunch break from work. There were a variety of them living in a special housing display for everyone to see. All of them were either injured, old, and/or couldn't be raised by regular folks. I had a lot of joy looking at those birds and would walk by to see them almost all the time. Some of them did die over time, but the birds reminded me how important it is to recognize that we deserve people to care for us when life deals us a terrible hand. I still stop by the avian center bird display because all the birds there are precious to me.

I sometimes wished I was a bird because it sucks being sad a good amount. It sucks to cry when you least expect it. And then I think about what that actually will entail. I don't want to anthropomorphize animals because it's hard to compare.

The grand truth is that everyone and everything (humans/animals/plants) goes through pain in some fashion. We decay and wither from time to time. That's how life works. Obviously, some pain isn't worth it. But I feel that we have to appreciate to a certain degree how we learn who we really are through our rough experiences. They make us value what's important in our lives. Despite whatever gaslighting we may get, we can get through the pain and/or live with it in healthy ways.

I will say that one thing I notice about birds is that they're usually together a lot. During the 1st year of COVID, I saw a family of mourning doves living in the back of my place for a short time. It was one of the cutest things I ever saw. The parents would fly away to look for food, while the kids parked themselves at their temporary home. I don't know how they're doing now, but I like to think that they're doing okay out there. Whenever I see families of mourning doves, I think of that one family.

Maybe a part of me still wants to be a bird - soaring into the air and being out in nature, free of modern life constraints. The real cuckoo isn't me; it's those who want us to ignore the interdependence of all things that truly makes human beings feel that they matter.

If you ever feel like you're a cuckoo, it's not your fault. You're a person who deserves the unconditional foundation to live a life full of love to process the pain you unfortunately had to deal with.

Much like what the manga seems to entail, springtime is a time to renew yourself with others around, whether human or animal, after the harshness of winter.

[queersatanic]

I've been smashing that follow button on whichever platform I see you after reading your takedown of TST. Because of that being my first impression of you, I thought something like "huh, that's pretty cool, an actual Satanist calling out the bullshit of the guys that just use the label to be assholes", assuming you (with "satanic" in your handle) derive your own values from a Satanist ethos, surely Laveyan. Then I just read your post on LaVey himself (brilliant as well) and I basically was left with the question of how exactly does satanism look like to you? Clearly it's not a larp, but it's also not the "actual" (or shall I say "Main-Stream") brand of it, the goal of which as I've come to understand it being basically to become a Bad Motherfucker.

I haven't looked if you've actually written something about that, do let me know if you have. Went for an Ask so I can let you know I am a big fan 😁

Spite and self-worship are probably always going to be some of the root animating forces of anyone's conception of satanism, and that's true for ours too. In our case, that's not just spite against White Christian Morality, but also spite against TST for being Scientology for mall goths, and spite against COS for both its historical chumminess and outright endorsement of reactionary tendencies, and also for its intellectually bankrupt charade that the adulation of power for its own sake should somehow be considered "apolitical." TST and COS are both just competing for hegemony on a smaller scale, both of them are perfectly sincere and legitimate expressions of satanism (and we mean that as an insult to satanism) - and we spite them both for being deliberately, institutionally unable to address any of the myriad crises facing the world today, and particularly the crises faced by the people most immediately and constantly threatened by the Christian nationalists for whom satanism ostensibly exists to confront and depower.

As to the self-worship part? For us, this isn't actually terribly difficult to reconcile with our unabashedly leftist positions on the world. No one is an island. My ability to become my best self is contingent, at least in part, on the society in which I live, and the material conditions that exist therein. Your mileage may vary of course, but I don't think it's contradictory at all to say that in the pursuit of my self-interest and my own apotheosis, my satanism obliges me from time to time to also pursue the ascendance and wellbeing of the people around me. There is just no good reason that my wellbeing and that of others inherently have to be in competition with each other, and I think it's great to be self-indulgent enough to reject that as a false dichotomy, and to pursue both as its own form of self-worship.

I think a big part of what it means to be a satanist in this light is to be critical, often to the point of hostility, to the arrangement of the world as it is today. The powers that be put incredible amounts of energy not just into committing atrocities, but also in conditioning the rest of us that these atrocities are justified in the pursuit of profit, efficiency, the so-called right of states to exist, whatever. We are conditioned to never be so audacious as to expect these atrocities not to occur in the first place, and that we should accept atrocities as the background noise of regular life lest we be doing "purity politics" by demanding better. But this is just a modernized divine right of kings - at the end of the day, it is a deliberate project to stunt the political imaginations of billions of people into thinking that There Is No Alternative even as the oceans boil. And that is a project that we should not only reject as satanists, but whose mechanisms and reproduction we should actively sabotage, at the very least, as an expression of self-defense.

To quote the late Michael Brooks - "Be kind to people, and ruthless to systems." That's a better summation of what our satanism means than anything LaVey ever said.

[cosmerelists]

Five Things I Learned Playing Shardle (And One Thing I Didn't)

"Shardle" is like Wordle, only for terms that exist as the title of a Coppermind article. I've been playing Shardle for like a week now, so I am ready to share my experiences.

1. There are too many stormin' characters!

So far, I've played 10 days in a row, and I've only once had a character whose name I even vaguely recognized (Klade, who's at least been in several scenes I can, like, picture). Otherwise, the description post-answer will be like, "You know, that one skaa who works at the sawmill in Luthadel who appeared in like one scene in one book" and I'll be like "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, SHARDLE?!"

2. Main characters tend to have longer names

The thing is, I feel like I know quite a few character names. I write this blog, and it uses a lot of characters. But they all have such long names! Like, at least six letters (looking at you, Jasnah and Navani). Or, if they're short, they're like short (looking at you, Vin and Hoid). So my excellent knowledge of main characters is doing me absolutely no good at all, and playing this makes me feel as though I know nothing.

3. Which is probably why they let you use some regular English words too.

While playing by my usual strategy (typing in phonemes that could potentially make up a fantasy name while crying), I was delighted to find that there was apparently somebody named "Mouse" because "mouse" worked as a guess! This was huge because it let me test out three whole vowels, and at LEAST you know there are vowels in Sanderson character names.

...Only later did I actually read the directions to find that they actually let you use some regular English words to, like, show some small amount of mercy, and there is no Sanderson character named Mouse. It's just the English word "mouse" but I'm gonna use it anyway, damn it.

4. Sanderson LOVES the letter "L"

My starting word is "Rlain," and this has worked out pretty well because there is almost always an "L" in whatever the answer is. Now, I was worried that this might be mere confirmation bias (and also I've only played 10 times at the point of writing this list), so I want to Coppermind for help (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Category:Characters). A very scientific test (using "ctl f" with each letter of the alphabet) revealed that "L" actually is the most common consonant used on this page! Take that, confirmation bias!

5. My starting word is actually genius (accidentally)

By the way, according to my "ctl f on every letter in the alphabet while on the Coppermind list of characters page" test, my starting word of "Rlain" is accidentally brilliant. The three most common consonants are "R," "N," and "L" in that order! And "A" is the most common vowel! Thank you, Rlain, for this help even though I actually chose your name because you were literally the only character I could think of whose name was five letters without repeating letters.

And the one thing I don't know...

6. What quote is used for getting it in 1 guess. Or 2. Or 3 dammit.

Shardle displays a quote once you get the answer, based on how quickly you got it. I know the quote used for, well, not getting the answer. Or for getting it in 6. In 5. Or in 4. But what it says if you guess in 3 or fewer remains a mystery...perhaps forever.

...Do I even like playing?