#my life is a sci-fi drama

[crazycherub]

₊✩‧₊˚౨ my edit ৎ˚₊✩‧₊

[lord-squiggletits]

Starting to realize that the reason I beef with Transformers canon and fanon is because it feels as if a lot of people involved either haven't read war stories as a genre or they haven't paid attention to real-life wars so their takes on "necessary evils" or "hypocrisy" or "pacifism" come off as overly simplistic

[obstinaterixatrix]

should I start scheduling the recs for midnight? well no I like the satisfaction of hitting post and also I’m always awake anyway. everybody, read women

[mamangasick]

Biorg Trinity

Maijou Outarou Oh! Great

[phagodyke]

every time I open the blinds of my bedroom window these last few days I've had this really weird feeling that something is wrong with the view and I've just realised now that the scaffolding which was up outside since we moved in (15 months ago) has FINALLY been taken down. put it backk the buildings naked 😭

[itsamepatches]

Chipspeech: DELTREE spoilers

I don't know if I read this from someone jokingly saying it on the Chipspeech Discord or if I imagined this, but Dee has killed a person before but in a comical "...oh no 3: " kinda way because this is the type of humour to expect with my fics - promise I'll get back to it soon ;;

[trans-leek-cookie]

How does anyone write fiction

If I get one thing wrong I'm going to rip us all apart

[barrenclan]

do you have any webcomic suggestions?

Oh, do I! :D I'll keep the descriptions short, otherwise I'll talk about each of these for a million years.

Warrior Cats:

The Average Adventures of Genericpaw - parody comic. But watch out.

The Exiled - Fishpaw. Murder mystery.

Follow Your Heart - Sootpaw. Personal drama.

Meandering - River. Slowburn romance.

Saltburn's Clan - Saltburn. Pinepaw's cool butch lesbian aunt.

Convocations - Elkmask. Political drama. Biggest inspiration to The Dog Star.

Other:

Wilde Life - supernatural dramedy.

Wychwood - magical post-apocalypse.

The Glass Scientists - Jekyll & Hyde retelling.

Tiger, Tiger - swashbuckling magic adventure.

Little Tiny Things - French slice of life.

Paranatural - ghost fighting teens. Also, the inspiration for PATFW's "journal style". Also, Hijack.

Phantomarine - magical ghost adventures.

Awkward Zombie - gamer comic strips.

Sakana - fish market dramedy. Yuudai.

Skin Deep - cryptids comedy.

Dumbing of Age - daily college dramedy. Gave me the worst hyperfixation of my life.

The Order of the Stick - D&D adventure. My favorite comic ever created.

How To Be a Werewolf - werewolf drama.

Fairmeadow - fantasy hippie drama.

Lackadaisy - bootlegger cats. You've seen the animated pilot.

The Property of Hate - TV head guy.

Too Familiar - magical animal companions.

I'm With You - goat people romance.

The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya - sweet vampire romance.

XKCD - it's XKCD.

Vainglorious - dragon adventures.

Bybloemen - demons committing financial fraud. Gorgeous artwork.

Bicycle Boy - amnesiac in a post-apocalypse.

Novae - supernatural historical romance.

Never Satisfied - magical teen drama. It's on hiatus right now.

Monster Pulse - teens with magic organs.

Children of the Light - magic squirrel drama.

To Catch A Star - sparklewolves.

Cursed Lights - magical animal people drama.

What Lurks Beneath - cat cult.

Rabbit Hole - bunny cult.

Villtur & Sarx - sci fi manga.

Best of Bad Decisions, The Doe of Deadwood, Repeat, I Didn't Know - Songdog comics. Probably the most influential creator on my comics.

Crushed Olive Branch - Shadowhunters gayboys.

Broken Crown - magic kingdom adventure.

Sleight of Hand - Fallout gayboys.

What Happens Next - internet teen thriller.

Golden Shrike - deer adventure.

The Pale - Twin Peaks adjacent.

Un/Bound - magical road trip.

Apocalyptic Horseplay - modern horseman of the apocalypse.

There are many more, of course, but these are some of my favorites, and the ones I could remember at the moment.

[galactic-mermaid]

Movies are a great way to immerse ourselves into situations and stories that may or may not be able to happen in real life.

Unfortunately, there are some of us truly living in a horror story that's very real and seemingly impossible to escape.

You can change this though and be the hero of their story!

Meet Ahmed! A 6 year old boy currently trapped in the middle of the horrific genocide that has been occurring in Gaza for over a year now.

His large family of 8 is trying to escape the horrors and make there way to safety in Egypt, where they can receive medical treatment, food, shelter and clean water.

His older brother Mohammed, is running the GoFundMe campaign, while also dealing with an injured leg due to shrapnel from rockets.

They currently have €9,922 / €50,000 raised as of 10/28/24.

Please help little Ahmed and his family escape. Be their hero by donating and sharing this post anywhere and anyway that you can.

They are vetted here (line 77) on the Gaza Vetters doc sheet

(You can visit @ahmed0khalil for more information about his campaign)

Thank you for your time, it's greatly appreciated.

Tagging for reach, please dm if you wish to be removed!

@arty-cakes @heydreamchild @lesbonoi @heartilly @just-radicles  @shiskabubble @oursapphirestars @fitzfunnymoments  @skunkes @asharestupid  @jonpertwee @fliptop @bell-bones @ragingbullmode @envytheroost  @rodent178 @tangledinourstrings @kraigeslist @2kreebs @br-eddrolls  @block-swing-perry @divineclouds @error-core-animations @apocalyptic-dancehall @kingofthebookcase @king-dail  @caseys-soup-corner @shoogachi @whoopsiedaisy20 @squidie-tittie  @dreamingamongthestars @foulharbor  @3amsnow @ehjane @dogesterone @specialmouse  @thehollyraven @amorosebeing @murenaaaaa @thesblu @batricity  @zeia-reblog-blog @hojoslutoru @skiddlecat @gremlinandacrow  @distinguishedbananalord @2bu @saviorified @dappledwrites @fardf150  @cakeicecreamandicecreamcake

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'm looking for TTRPGs that have... for lack of a better way of putting it, mechanics where like, your character is under a profound amount of stress, and if they don't manage it and additional stress that comes in, they'll break or snap and do something horrible and then have to deal with the consequences. So something that mechanically 'forces' your character to do something they'd normally never do due to external stressors.

THEME: Stress Clocks.

Oh this is my shit. Get ready for a Hall of Fame style of recommendations from me this week (as well as a bit of self-advertising)!

Also a note: this was (mostly) a chance for me to get very excited about a number of games that have specifically inspired me, and I am aware that it means that I’ve kind of neglected certain houses of design as a result. For this post especially, I encourage anyone who can think of a game that fits this request that isn’t listed here to give it a shout out in the reblog and the replies!

Mothership, by Tuesday Knight Games.

Mothership is a sci-fi horror roleplaying game where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space! You'll excavate dangerous derelict spacecraft, explore strange unknown worlds, exterminate hostile alien life, and examine the horrors that encroach upon your every move.

Mothership inflicts Stress upon you with every failure, and hitting your Stress cap reduces your most relevant Stat or Save, thereby consistency reducing your chances of success with every roll. That’s not all though - your Stress cap also makes it harder and harder to stop your character from panicking, by representing the threshold you must beat every time you make a Panic Check. If you roll less than or equal to your current Stress rating, you must take on a new Panic condition.

You make Panic checks whenever you roll a critical failure, but also whenever you witness something traumatic. These conditions don’t necessarily force your character to do anything, but they represent the toll that being in a constantly hostile environment takes on your mind and body. You have to work harder and harder to prevent your character from attacking allies, giving in to the demands of whatever is haunting their psyche, or going straight-up catatonic.

You can also try to mitigate this stress and panic by resting and doing something that helps relieve the pressure - having sex, taking drugs, praying, etc. There’s even a Shore Leave mechanic for long-term games that allow your character to turn their stress into a character improvement.

In some respect, these conditions remind me of the Morality and Clarity tracks of Chronicles of Darkness and Changeling: the Lost, but with less of the errant language around mental health. The dice rolls also make the consequences much less predictable, so if you want to be surprised by what exactly causes your character to snap, I recommend Mothership.

Urban Shadows, by Magpie Games.

The streets bleed shadows as the supernatural politics of the city threaten to swallow you whole. Will you die a hero—a savior for those who have never had enough—or live long enough to become the villain? Will you fight the darkness…or give in for power?

The choice is yours. 

Urban Shadows is an urban fantasy tabletop roleplaying game in which mortals and monsters vie for control of a modern-day city, a political battleground layered just under the reality we think we know. Vampires, faeries, hunters, and wizards fight to carve out a piece of the streets and skyscrapers, ready to make deals with all those who have something to offer. 

The ‘consequences’ track for Urban Shadows is called Corruption. Each character playbook in this game has a couple of special moves called Corruption Moves, and when you start playing, you start with two Drama Moves the tie into this. The Drama Moves describe specific situations in which your character must mark Corruption. If you fill your Corruption track, you take a Corruption Move. Corruption moves give you special powers that are super-effective, but fill up your Corruption track faster. You can only fill your Corruption track so many times - fill it one too many and your character must be retired, because they’ve just become an antagonist.

I really like how this feels like a slow descent that speeds up the more you lean into it. Your character is consistently tempted to give into their darker sides in order to keep themselves afloat in this unforgiving city - but lean too far and they become exactly the kind of person they were hoping to stop.

Antiquarian Adventures, by acegiak.

Antiquarian Adventures is a pulpy tomb raiding and treasure hunting Blades In The Dark hack in the style of Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones, National Treasure, and The Mummy.

So Antiquarian Adventures is a pulp game. It’s not grim dark in any sense of the word, but I think it introduces a unique use of the Blades’ Stress mechanic in a special “ability” that happens when your character uses up all of their Composure (this is the “Stress” of this gam). Once you’ve used up all of your Composure, you cannot resist anything that comes your way and your dice pools are reduce to 0 until you do something (specific to your playbook) that usually invites a new consequence.

For example, The Veteran’s version of this is called “Not As Quick As I Used To Be,” which hamstrings the character until the player allows themself to be left behind or separated from their comrades. This kind of mechanic has directly inspired one of the projects that I’m working on, and I think that if you tweak the amount of Composure your character has, or makes the reaction harsher, you could absolutely make it work for a game that’s a bit grittier than Antiquarian Adventures.

Last Fleet, by Black Armada Games

The last of humanity are fleeing across space, pursued by the implacable inhuman adversary that destroyed their civilisation. They're outnumbered and outgunned. Supplies are running low. The actions of a brave few could be all that stands between humanity and extinction.

Welcome to the Last Fleet.

Last Fleet is a PBTA tabletop roleplaying game where you play brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists struggling to hold the human race - and themselves - together under unbelievable pressure. The game focuses on action, intrigue and drama in this high-stakes situation. You'll fight space battles, search for enemy infiltrators, tackle supply shortages and navigate faction politics. You'll strive against your own self-doubt and sometimes crack under the stress.

Last Fleet has something called a Pressure Mechanic, which can be used as a player resource, but also activates when you take weather harm or get called out on your shit. Hit your cap? Clear your Pressure and take a Breaking Point action, which often puts you at odds with the other characters, making the situation worse. The whole situation is a designed to act as a pressure cooker, making the situation harder and harder to bear until you finally pop. I love it, and it’s also a direct influence on one of my games.

Apocalypse Keys, by Rae Nedjadi (@temporalhiccup)

Unmask your feelings, uncage your ruination… The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

Taking cues from Urban Shadows, Apocalypse Keys gives you a Ruin track to follow as your monsters try to stop the world from ending. The Ruin track gives you a Ruin advance every time you fill it, unlocking Ruin Moves, permanently marking character conditions, and eventually forcing your character to turn into a Harbinger if you let it. Your Ruin moves are powerful and dark, generating even more Ruin when you use them, and in some cases (like with the Hungry’s "Only Hunger Remains" move), your character can actually halt the current mystery as they get close enough to becoming a Harbinger that the entire party will have to work together to stop you from ripping the world apart.

Protect the Child, by Mint-Rabbit (that’s me!).

Humans have always been protective of their young, sometimes overly so. Humans have also always feared that which might make their young strange or different, and so insist that only humans can raise their own young. Monsters cannot raise human young. This is known.

You have a human baby. You cannot find its parents. What is even worse, is that this child has powers, powers that others covet, and so everyone wants it. If you want to prove that you’re not the heartless monster that everyone says you are, that means you’ll have to raise it, at least until you find someone who is better suited to it than you. 

You are creatures of fur, scales and fangs. You have claws that can rend flesh, faces that can crack mirrors, howls that can cause ears to bleed. 

And your charge wants a blankie.

Protect the Child is a Forged in the Dark game about monsters caring for a young human, a human who contains strange and mystical powers that make them a valuable asset in any monster crew. The setting and factions present in this game are flexible: you might be aliens in a far-flung future galaxy, fantasy monsters from rival kingdoms, or even everyday wild animals that fear human society. 

Alright, so this is my baby and I can tell you exactly how to push your character towards some really unhealthy coping mechanisms. In Protect the Child, your character is constantly battling the stress of being a parent. Stress, like in other Forged in the Dark games, is a player resource, but it’s also inflicted on you when you resist consequences, and when the kid has an emotional breakdown.

Should your stress clock fill up, you’ll have to take a reaction from the list attached to your playbook before you can take more Stress, and these reactions range from doing something for selfish gains to lashing out to your fellow monsters to being fully monstrous at exactly the worst time. Your tools to manage this stress are also limited - you have to be willing to confront your fellow monsters and be honest about your relationships with each-other if you want to stop your emotional kettle from whistling all of the time. If you want a game where building relationships is the only way to deal with the pressures of monster-parenting, then check out Protect the Child!

[motziedapul]

If you don't mind my sharing my own, probably less spicy POC rep in audio drama take: the AD community's tendency toward celebration of "representation" within the medium as if this rep applies to anything substancially besides queer characters is exausting. Sure, queer rep is important but so often reading "there's rep for everything!" and the cast is like, 95% white? Or, bafflingly, people claiming diversity for something that is entirely fanon? Mmh.

Hi anon!

My take is just about as spicy, honestly.

There's a tendency to value "racially ambiguous" characters played entirely by White actors over actual BIPOC characters

(usually with BIPOC actors, though I'm not as strict about this since I don't mind White actors playing BIPOC characters so long as BIPOC voice actors can play White characters and no BIPOC actors lose voice acting opportunities. And as long as more attention is given to BIPOC creators than we're getting currently).

It sometimes feels as though BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Colour) characters and creators are overlooked in favour of characters who are ostensibly White but drawn by fandom as BIPOC.

I've seen a lot of support in the community from fellow audio drama people; I've felt uplifted by my fellow creators who are White, and I always appreciate and value that. And obviously some shows are just well made and part of their success is based on other factors.

But as someone who's also aware of audio drama fandom, it's easy to see how much favour is given to White Characters drawn as BIPOC in comparison to characters who are BIPOC in text, and I'm not sure why.

That's my spicy opinion. I follow a few BIPOC creators but I can only name two that have an amount of success comparable to White audio drama creators (Gabriel Urbina of W359 fame and Octavia Bray of Atypical Artists), but my knowledge is limited.

And that's not even getting into female led audio drama, but I do love the success of creators such as Lauren Shippen in the space.

I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum or blame anyone for this phenomenon, but I do think it's worth thinking about. Why I see 50 brown Jonny Simses for every canonically brown Samama Khalid. Maybe it's all a coincidence based on other factors. Maybe White characters invite more imagination in their depiction or something.

I don't mind BIPOC depictions of ostensibly White or "racially ambiguous" characters, but I'm not a big fan of if they outnumber depictions of canon BIPOC characters. I just think the latter deserve more love.

I'm no expert. Also I'm mostly in the horror space, apart from my love of Life With Leoh (a sci fi romcom). My knowledge is very limited so if anyone would like to contradict me, I welcome it (especially if it means discovering more BIPOC led shows).

I don't want this to just be about complaining, so please feel free to shout out some fantastic BIPOC led audio drama (either created by or with a majority BIPOC cast) or even share some art you've done of characters from them and I'll happily share them.

My favorites are Wolf 359 (by Gabriel Urbina) and Life with Leoh (by Octavia Bray)!

[mercyll]

Is Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury the first anime series to depict a married same-sex couple?

Given the rings and comments from the staff (excluding Bandai) it's pretty clear that both Suletta and Miorine are married. And looking at older anime couples I can't find another one where the characters are actually married to one another.

There are series that depict engagements and proposals (implied or otherwise with queer characters).

Some examples would be:

Yuri & Viktor from Yuri on Ice, where it's implied that they want to be engaged.

Ranma & Akane from Ranma 1/2, both find themselves in an arranged engagement but end up falling for each other anyway. Ranma is canonically genderfluid in both the anime and manga and Akane is attracted to Ranma as both a man and a woman. And this is ignoring all of Ranma's other fiances who know about their curse and want to be in a relationship with them anyway.

Utena & Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, while the circumstances of their engagement are out of their control, the two of them fall deeply in love with one another despite that. And in the movie they kiss.

Other LGBT anime couples are together or in love but next explicitly depicted as engaged or married would be:

Michiru Tenou & Haruka Kaiou from Sailor Moon, they are very much together and in the Crystal series end up living together and adopting a baby.

Yukito Tsukishiro & Touya Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura, who are in love with one another.

Eiji Okumura & Ash Lynx from Banana Fish, who are in love with one another. And it hurts.

Yuu Koito & Touko Nanami from Bloom Into You, who are two girls who fall in love with one another. And in the story you watch them grow and get closer.

Nezumi & Shion from No. 6, a sci-fi drama where two boys fall in love. This one also hurts.

And countless other examples, none of which I could find have the characters taking their relationship further than dating or engagement.

So, is Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury the first married same-sex couple in anime?

On a minor note, there have been several gay weddings depicted in manga.

Some examples would be:

Our Dreams At Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani, which was written by an asexual, X-gender author.

Until I Meet My Husband by Ryousuke Nanasaki and illustrated by Yoshi Tsukizuki. This manga was written by a gay man and based on his own essays about his life. The manga is auto-biographical.

I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up by Kodama Naoko, who has written several other LGBT manga, most of which are Yuri.

And there are several more!

Bonus:

Shoutout to Episode 7 of the 80s anime Dirty Pair for having a wedding between a cis man and a trans woman in one episode.

[unpickled-olive]

Realizing that, while I like Destiny lore, what I love is Seth Dickinson's writing.

The Final Shape was a lovely story and the characters' archs were all emotional and satisfying. Maybe a nostalgic tear was shed for Cayde bonding with his reformed, resurrected killer.

But the things that have kept me coming back for 9 years were missing. I thought there'd be concrete answers about the Traveler, or some more thorough insights into the Witness, or even good lore on the Dread. I was hoping for another great lore book to join the ranks of Books of Sorrow, Unveiling, Mysterious Logbook, Marasenna, Last Days of Kraken Mare, etc. Some philosophy and horror, a genesis or exegesis or thorough backstory on a yet unexamined character/species.

Sadly, I didn't find those. The Dread's origin is that the Witness made them. Do they think and feel? TBD. The Traveler's conclusion was something like "you just have to have faith <3." Fine for the characters, but not for the readers/players of a 10-year-old mystery.

There's some nice things. The Micah-10 Traveler interpretations are cool, as is her origin story. And the foreshadowing still has me excited for the Dreadnaught, a yet unseen Disciple, etc. But I think key parts of what made Destiny lore so alluring for me are diminished.

Maybe it's the layoffs at Bungie. Maybe it's new writers going in a different direction. Either way, the aspects of sci-fi/space fantasy—ancient mysteries, metaphysical warfare, _____—have taken the back seat to personal drama that frankly isn't that interesting or fleshed out.

Maya could be an interesting antagonist, but she needed more backstory than "this simulation was evil or something" and more nuance than "the Vanguard are coercive, so I will coerce all of humanity." Why not explore what her presence means for the Vex, or the other simulations helping Praedyth escape the Vault?

The Witness trying to sway various characters was fine, but that has been covered so many times, especially in Beyond Light.

All that said, back to Seth: their absence in TFS made me realize how huge their presence in the lore was for my love of Destiny. I finally went and read their original works. What an incredible writer.

First, I read Exordia, the first/only entry into a dark mindfuck of a space opera. Its horrific in abstract ways: mysterious alien monoliths that poison reality around them. It's horrific in grounded ways, too: the alien invasion plays off of parallels with the Anfal campaign and the US involvement in Iraq. It's campy at times (with a villain who shouts "I love genocide!") but also profound. There's souls and date, but also math. There's also my favorite trope: mysterious, ancient architects.

After that, I read Baru Cormorant—all three books in a month. It's tragic and inspiring and genius. Originally I couldn't get through the first chapter because of the "fantasy" label. I've already read Earthsea and wasn't in the mood for wizards on boats. But I had the wrong impression. Understandable, because there is just no succinct way to label it.

Is it even fantasy? Honestly, I still don't know.

What it is is its own world. One that the inhabitants haven't fully mapped. One whose past is a must and whose future is uncertain. It's about hegemony. It's about purpose, obsession, and revenge. It's about revolution and community.

The colonizer culture is a kaleidoscope of different influences. Seafaring. Peri-industrial. Eugenic. It strikes me as something like 17th century Britain with a 20th century grasp of science. They don't have guns, but they do have both Greek fire and lobotomies. The story plays with different cultural views on indigenous rights, race, sexuality, and gender in ways that commentary real life while serving as interesting world building.

This story also weaves an insane amount of intellectual concepts into it. But rather than bog it down, they lift it up. The fate of the republic hinges on a myriad of different questions: is evolution Lamarckian or Darwinian? Can mathematical proofs usurp cultural hegemony? How do economics influence history? Most importantly, can you destroy the enemy from within before it destroys you?

It is not just cerebral, but tragic and heartbreaking. I saw the end of the first book coming, and yet I was devastated by the last chapter. Crushed like no ending has ever really crushed me. I didn't want it to happen.

There will likely be some time before the final book comes out, which is understandable. So much research goes into these. So many plot threads need to be woven together. So many mysteries not yet confronted.

This is all to say: if you like what I like about Destiny–thorough examinations of ancient mysteries, sci-fi takes on souls and magic, fantasy takes on science and technology, obsessive characters and vividly fucked up monsters, cancer and math as motifs, metaphors manifesting, and genius characters written by genius authors–give Seth Dickinson a chance.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 致命游戏 / The Spirealm.

The Spirealm is a 2024 drama about two young men who fall in love while basically playing a whole bunch of horror-themed escape rooms that can for-real kill you.

This show/book combo has gripped my entire ass. The second I knew I wanted to watch this, almost immediately after it started airing, I muted the tag. I was so right to do this, because this is worth not spoiling yourself about. If you are a Guardian fan in particular, you owe it to yourself to watch this for reasons I think will become clear as you go about watching it.

So! If all you need to know is that I think you need this show in your life, great! You don't even need to scroll down to the end of the post for the links; go to Viki and press play. In case you need more convincing than that, though, I'm going to give you here five reasons to watch it that are as spoilerless as I can make them.

Before we start, though, I'm going to take a moment to note that I had to torrent the video files so I could make screenshots of my own, and if I hadn't, this would have been a much uglier rec post than the others I've done. Not only were there not many promotional materials or official stills released, the show itself barely stayed up two hours on iQiyi, and that's because this drama is a...

1. (Barely) Censored Adaptation Of Same-sex Original Work

Ah, you know that MyDramaList tag well, don't you? Yeah, the original novel, Kaleidoscope of Death (which has a rec post of its own!), is supernatural story about grief and loss built on the love story between the two male leads. Now of course you know already that a mainstream Chinese television adaptation of something like that is going to straighten up everything and turn the horror romance into the sci-fi platonic love of besties.

...But damn, folks, it's still real gay.

Ling Jiushi, the sweet-faced newbie, is a canonical virgin and loving cat dad who plays the mysterious video game once, then finds himself suddenly able to enter the game worlds bodily -- and of course, if you die in the game, you die in real life. He's pretty much doomed, until he meets...

Ruan Lanzhu, the cool-as-a-cucumber veteran of the door worlds, who falls pretty much immediately for the completely oblivious Ling Jiushi, then has to spend the rest of the series consumed with lust while trying to keep him and a couple other dipshits alive.

The show preserves so many overtly gay beats and declarations of affection from the novel, to the point where it's just this side of suggesting that the romance is actually, textually happening just offscreen, every time the camera cuts away. I am forever grateful that working with Zhu Yilong on Reunion seems to have perfected sweet baby Junjie's ability to look at a man with nothing but love in his eyes.

I adore so much the dynamic they have, one where a man who has never told the truth a day in his life encounters a man so sincere and naive that you cannot seduce him with anything but absolute honesty or he's never going to get it.

There are three (3) separate door worlds where they share a bed, and in every one of them, they both sleep with their shoes on. Like the absolute freaks they both are.

2. It's puzzle solvin' time!

So if you've read some of my rec posts before, you know that I am critical of stories that center around cases that are unfollowable, uninteresting, or both (e.g., Mysterious Lotus Casebook and White Cat Legend). I am therefore thrilled to tell you that the door worlds are actually (largely) thoughtful mysteries with reasonable solutions, where you care about what's happening and why.

The way each door world is set up is that you have to solve the puzzle to find a key and unlock the door that will let you leave. One of the challenges is each world's door ghost, who has the key and does not want to give it up. The other challenge is the world-specific set of taboo conditions, where violating them means the door ghost can kill you -- and you are not always told what those taboo conditions are. That means that solving a door involves 1) figuring out what will insta-kill you, 2) not doing that, 3) finding where the hell the exit door is, 4) placating and/or scamming the door ghost long enough to snatch the key from them, and 5) running like hell to the exit door with that key before the door ghost fucks you up about it.

As the show goes on, you get introduced to the concept of door-passing shepherds, which are experienced door-finishers who take through lower-level players, building them up in the process. A lot of these shepherds work for organizations, such as the one Ruan Lanzhu runs. And a lot of them are ready to reach the exit by climbing over everyone else's corpses.

That's part of the fun of the setup: You're not just thrown in alone. You show up with a random number of other players, some with very different levels of experience. At least one of you will make it out; not everyone will. So you can add a step 6) to the list above, which is: surviving all the other players who will gleefully stab you in the back in order to be the first player out the door.

The door worlds are also lovely. They all feel like sets -- and I know that's a weird thing to say about places that are literal sets, but they manage it feel it even on film. In fact, even the show's uses of clunky-ass greenscreen feel appropriate, because of how unreal everything is supposed to be. Everything looks like a dream, which is only amplified by how beautifully everything's shot.

(What's that you say? You say the guy who directed this was the editor on Infernal Affairs? No kidding.)

From a fandom perspective, what's great here is that even though there are technically just twelve doors, there are canonically way more than twelve door worlds out there. That means that whatever worlds you want to create are valid. The best pieces of fanfic I've read are the ones that dream up their own door worlds, complete with taboo conditions, key puzzles, and world-specific perks that lead to gay sex, because come on.

3. A good middle ground of horror

So at this point you are perhaps wondering: How scary is it?

And the answer is, kind of as scary as you're willing to let your mind go with it. Everything has been science-fictioned real hard, including the video game premise that "explains" what's happening with these doors. It relies on dread way more than jumpscares. The blood/gore/gross content is extremely low, again on account of Chinese content censorship. Most icky things are done with offscreen sounds and shadows. I'm pretty squeamish about pain and injury, and I can't recall a time I had to look too long away from the screen.

However, that means the show works some real conceptual horror. That picture up there is of a man forcing three young girls to hold raw eggs unbroken in their mouths. There's nothing about that image that's not technically G-rated, and it's awful in context.

The best bits are when the monsters don't need a lick of CG to become horrors. They cast a contortionist in the Waverly Hills door world, and she absolutely earned her keep.

I have a lot of critiques about how the show handles things, especially in terms of defanging the horror elements (which it does), but one thing I think it absolutely gets right is that it understands that ghost stories are first and foremost tragedies. That's a thing I've always liked about Asian horror in particular, how often you wind up siding with the ghost. Yes, sure, she tried to strangle you with her hair, but have you ever considered she's the real victim here? There's always a bit of a calculus: Can you negotiate with the door ghost, or do you just need to stab them and run? The Spirealm prefers negotiation, and frankly, so do I.

So yeah, it's about as scary as you let it be. If your horror tolerance is low, watch it in a well-lit room and focus on the unreality of it, and you'll be okay. If you're looking for something genuinely spooky, spend some time thinking about the existential dread of the entire situation, and that'll be good for a couple good spine tingles.

4. The Obsidian Family (& Friends!)

In a show where death is always an option, you have to have characters where you actually care if they live or die. Fortunately, all your allies are charming and loveable enough that you are going to be real upset every time they get put in danger!

Obsidian is one of the organizations I mentioned earlier. It's run by Ruan Lanzhu, and it includes a cool and collected doctor, a mom friend who cooks for everybody, a guy who's maybe not having the best mental health day of his life, and two identical twins who could not be more different if they tried. They all live in the same amazing big fancy house, which is where Ling Jiushi too goes to live when he joins the group. They have big family meals, they look after one another, they hang out together -- I mean, if this is the kind of setup you love, then you will love this setup.

There are also plenty of allies who aren't technically part of Obsidian, but who are our friends nonetheless, and who come over to hang out in the Obsidian house from time to time. Some of them are rivals turned friends, some of them are clients turned friends, and some of them were just friends all along! Surely nothing bad will happen to any of them, and they'll all live happily ever after, right? ...Right?

5. Toast and Chestnut!

Of course, the true heroes of the show are Toast the Corgi and Chestnut the Kitty.

Animals are so good.

Truly, I love that one of Ling Jiushi's defining characteristics is that he is a Cat Dad. He is a simple man with simple needs, and one of those needs is to pet his kitty or he'll explode.

caveat: Some thoroughly bad adaptation choices

Yeah, so I keep talking about the novel (and talk even more about the novel in its own rec post), but I assure you, you don't need to have read the novel to feel the degree to which this is an adaptation -- and one that's had its rough, nasty, spooky, gay edges all sanded off in the desperate hope of ever seeing daylight.

Now, sometimes I consider batshit nonsense janky creative decisions to be a selling point for a show (see: Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Legend of Fei, Sand Sea)! In this case, however, I'm going to have to take points off for how incoherently bad they are here. We're talking Psych-Hunter levels of Why Would You Do That-- and the answer, as always, comes down to how you write around what censorship won't allow on television.

The novel says the doors are supernatural. The show says they're a virtual-reality computer game. Now, on the surface, this move sort of makes sense -- you can't have ghosts, but you can have computer games that make digital ghosts, which, sure, okay. But then the problem quickly becomes that the plot of the novel is not remotely built to support a sci-fi premise, so a lot of things have to be grafted awkwardly on. Like, say, a bad guy who stole his corporate logo from Even Worse Twitter. Or a game-designing bestie whose face is never seen. Or [late-stage spoilers about a major character].

The eventual explanation is that this whole setup is a righteous and good game that has somehow been corrupted by evil game-designing capitalists from the West, and that's why it can abduct you in broad daylight and kill you if you fail it. There are good people who want to purify (???) the game, and evil people who want to make money off the game. And I don't mind spoiling you for that part, because it's garbage nonsense. You will be deeply unsatisfied with the show's half-assed attempt at resolving it all. (You may, however, have that disappointment tempered with the amazing concurrent display of heterosexuality that is apologizing to your best bro by coding his perfect man for him. The Spirealm is a land of contrasts.)

Look, I consider myself a mild to moderate socialist, and even I was yawning and making jerk-off motions every time someone started to wax halfheartedly poetic about how evil American capitalism is. Like, yeah, but not because some college student made a vile and wretched video game that eats people! This show is a critique of capitalism like a five-year-old crying because he doesn't get ice cream before bed is a critique of authoritarianism.

And even this, I can't be too mad at it about, you know? I just assume that this was some absolute Hail Mary attempt at getting past censorship -- you know, maybe if we make all the right "grr, USA bad!" noises, they'll let our gay ghost story slip by? And it worked! I mean, just barely, but it did.

So yeah, fair warning that the Spirealm is a show that, if you love it (and I do), you will have to love despite some glaring flaws that haunt it all the way through and hit especially hard during what should otherwise have been an amazing endgame. But hey, we're c-drama fans! We're good at loving janky things, right?

Want to enter the World of Doors?

As I said at the start of the post, Viki's got it -- and only Viki. I'm not sure what circumstances got it up on Viki after iQiyi pulled it, but I'm glad. Watch it quick, before Viki changes its mind!

Hug him! Hug that boy!

[feychannel]

So you want to play an indie otome or dating sim but don't know where to start...

Like the title says, I wanted to make a rec list for those who are more interested in indie otomes but don’t necessarily know where to start! So for those who saw the latest Nintendo Direct or maybe those who’ve just always wanted to try something new, this list is for y’all. I’ve immensely enjoyed every single title (and hope y’all do too). Without further ado... here's the short list!

Changeling by @steamberrystudio (and their sci-fi spiritual successor, Gilded Shadows): Liked "Buffy," but thought it needed more Faes? Changeling is exactly the type of contemporary otome you want and needed in your life yesterday. With several wonderful young men to romance, and an intriguing plotline that references fae mythology, you'll be set!

The Rose of Segunda: Liked Bridgerton? Thought it needed an even longer gala than canon? Then RoS (and its amazing sequel, "Thorns of War") by @blackcross-taylor is the game to play! I've been impressed with how this studio weaves political intrigue into the very plot, and how it commits to the stories it creates.

Band Camp Boyfriend: Somehow, this game is both a 00's sitcom and a thriller all in one (with all the drama of a gripping telenovela in some routes). If you missed summer camp, marching band, and/or just want to know what that's like, check out this delightful title by @lovebirdgames

3 Seasons: We love a woman with melanin!! But in all seriousness, the concept of a young woman applying for a job, only to find out she's the next Spring Spirit is delightful. Note: this is a free title (but the developer @hamiltonhour accepts payment on their itch).

Magical Warrior Diamond Heart: Precure meets Sailor Moon meets the sweetest otome!! In this house we love Valerie and her zany crew. @magicalwarriordiamondheart has truly outdone themselves with each update; the common route is free, but the developer has a Patreon you can support!

Herotome: I would be amiss if I didn't mention my current favorite superhero-themed otome, where your lovely protagonist will face pivotal choices in their quest to become a hero! While only the demo is out so far (just so y'all aren't expecting the full product), developer @herotome is a delight to follow with all their updates!!

Honorable mentions: Twisted Carnival, Titan Arum (warning: both titles contain more horror than the average otome), and Arcardia Fallen