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easy-there-leftovers · 1 year ago

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I See You, Darling (2)

[Astarion x reader] Due to surprisingly overwhelming demand, the previous fic, along with this one and many more to follow, will now be part of a series!! It was honestly very difficult trying to come up with what happens next, but here we are. The idea came to me during a fever!! |Word count: 2.5k.| Based off of this post I made.

Part 1 here!!

Next part here!!

The reader believes they are in a dream. It wouldn’t be the first time their fantasies conjured up such an obscure, yet somehow realistic scene. And so they’ve elected to treat the experience with as much realism as one would observe in a dream; little to none.

Alternatively;An ex-art-student-now-traveler accustoms themselves to the party.

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“Shadowheart. Shadow…heart. Hm.” His gaze bounced between you and her.

“I’m sure her parents meant well, but the name is rather ominous, isn’t it?” He leaned over to your side, not bothering to hide his blatant distrust. Lowering his voice dramatically, if anything.

“Unless she chose it herself. Which is even more worrying, honestly.” He chuckled out.

It had been no more than two bells after mornbright when you met Astarion. Since then, you’ve come to realize how…different your presence has changed the course of the story. Though more subtle than you expected.

It would seem as if you had met the elven vampire before the party was formed, which was strange as your last save point was far later than that and the forest had been quite a long way from the beach.

When you finally stumbled upon Shadowheart, he was quick to share his inner thoughts that you haven’t heard from the game before.

As they continued with their quest to find a cure for the Illithid problem, expanding their party as they did so, you had tried to make yourself useful by doing the dirty work for them. Looting and opening crates filled with camp supplies, armor, and potentially useful weapons and artifacts could always come in handy for trade or for “artifact consumption,” as per Gale’s need. Sorting them for your group’s convenience.

And while you did not have more direct and immediate practical use for your course of study in the modern world, the research you’ve created and reviewed for character creation and world building was doing wonders for your survival.

Or as much as it can for a magicless, not so athletic human.

The “runes” of the medieval ages that have been carved into stone, along with the basic history and background of the common races and deities of the fantastical world that tabletop RPG has offered puts you at quite an advantage.

Not to mention your experience with the areas of the game giving you the same effect.

But this library of information had also aroused something akin to suspicion and concern. It would be understandable if you were a simple traveler just like them, or perhaps even an artisan from the guild, but you were not as astute as either background.

So how could you have access to this much knowledge yet be unaware of more practical matters? It’s as if you had simply read about it from somewhere.

Astarion had been quick to give an explanation before you could form one of your own that could poorly convince your companions. Although, perhaps his suggestion was more outlandish than anything you could have come up with.

“They came with me. Property and all the formality that comes with it. A family pet, if you will.” A perfect excuse to justify your constant proximity to him, and a likely explanation to being well read, but not well experienced.

You thought nothing of the title, your apathy to the non-hazardous labels of this world apparent.

The same couldn’t have been said about your associates who had a few comments about this disclosure.

“I am unfamiliar with the–well, I shall not say ‘culture.’ ‘Customs’, perhaps. I did not think your kind to house such breed of cattle. Perhaps they could be useful.” Was Lae’zel’s.

“I assure you, they typically don’t. Humans aren’t naturally subservient to Elves, at least in this manner. This setup sounds more akin to slavery. Blink twice if you need help.” Was Gale’s response.

“It seems like Astarion's from the upper city, given the embroidery on his armor. I wouldn’t put it past them to have servants that follow them around.” Shadowheart’s nose crinkled at the thought.

The party already had such an interesting rapport. Not entirely comfortable with one another to divulge everything, but loose enough to have semi-pleasant conversation with.

You thought this as you sorted out the fruits of your collective labor into neat pouches and bags, keeping items similar to one another factioned into their respective holding space. The chest being closer to Withers more than you’d like, but it was nice to hear the ramblings of an…undead person? Hearing someone continuously talking allows you to be more productive.

You’ll admit, handling enchanted armor and crystals does make you a tad nervous but you’re comforted by the thought that it will not be you who wields it in battle.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Gale approaching your direction. Possibly to ask for his share of the camp supplies just a little earlier to sate himself as you had an abundance of it for now. You regard him with your back turned and he stops for a bit.

“I will say that I don’t have the lightest of feet, but I figured myself better at sneaking around.” It’s not his fault that he got caught, but the bright purple robe and the smell of the oils you’ve been crafting for them are particularly noticeable.

“You are, but I’ll assume you're not exactly in the best shape after dealing with a few goblins.” You hold up a bottle of a healing potion, swinging it a bit with your fingers to indicate that the smell had warned you of his arrival.

“You’ve got a keen nose on you. Must be from all of Astarion’s training but, speaking of which,” He nears himself to your crouched form, going in to lean against a very old and empty crate.

“Gale, wait–” Right as your warning leaves you, they seem to evade him as falls right through the wood. A comical layer of dust and lichen pluming out from the force. He tries to quickly recover from both the physical and emotional damage as he brushes himself off to make himself presentable once more.

“Ahem, as I was saying,” He again makes his way over to you, settling for just standing close as his attempts to look unbothered temporarily cost him his ego.

“I was serious about what I said before. While I don’t know what to make of our pallid friend just yet, as enigmatic as he is, what he said before is quite confusing. Best make haste away from here if you want your freedom while we’re distracted with this worm problem.” His tone suggests a genuine concern which confuses you.

You’d be lying to yourself if the label of the set up didn’t sound odd, but you’ve never expressed discomfort as there was nothing all too worrying about it on your end. It was mostly for show, and you had as much independence as Tav would have in your game.

You endeavor to quickly dispel his worries.

“You don’t have to worry, I’m very satisfied with my servitude under Astarion. He’s very lenient and reliable, and I’m better off with him than on my own." You return to your task of sifting through your materials but pause and look back up at him to continue.

"I do thank you for turning my way though. Your concern is much appreciated but unnecessary.” You lowered your head a bit to show your thanks.

“Well if someone as generous as yourself says to trust you on this, then I have no choice but to concede! I’ll keep a watchful eye and offer guidance, should you need it. Also, do we happen to have something for—” As he asks you for some sort of salve, just a few ways off, your eccentric “handler,” of sorts, watches the two of you interact.

Don’t get him wrong, such matters don’t really catch his attention, but being an elf does curse him with the ability to have extensive hearing. Something that he thinks Gale knew, and something you forgot. That would explain the lack of distance between you two.

He thinks it’s amusing how the wizard is trying to make conversation with you as if you were some foreign creature. His usual eloquence nowhere to be seen, and you seemed as unbothered as ever. Like how he usually saw you when you conversed with someone through a crystal.

It was a phone, not that he knew that though.

“They’re a real nice one, aren’t they?” Karlach says from her side of the camp which was nearer towards his tent and yours.

“Hm, yes. While that may be an admirable trait, it’s hardly going to get them anywhere if they keep this up.” Astarion huffed out, not very keen on your altruistic playstyle so far.

He doesn’t know much about what you do and don’t know, all he knows is that you do know of the events to unfold and could be the key to defeating his master.

All he needs is to keep you at his side. So he’ll allow you this much freedom.

“Oh come on, you. You can’t seriously think that after everything. Our camp’s pretty well maintained because of ‘em, not to mention the connections we’ve been able to get!” She fortifies her statement by knocking on her chest, the engine humming within feels lighter and newer since you’ve informed her of the tiefling blacksmith at the grove.

He hums in response, returning to reading his book as he thinks about his growing hunger. He’ll have to hunt soon enough. While your positive reputation occasionally reflects on him by proxy, it can also reflect negatively due to the alleged nature of your relationship. If he wants the journey to a way of understanding the tadpoles to be a more comfortable one, he has to at least prevent their trust in him from diminishing.

Night falls later than he’d have liked, having waited for everyone to be asleep so that he may prowl the forest for sustenance.

The rest were sound asleep in their bedroll as the skirmish from earlier on in the day had proven to be sufficiently tiring. The crackling fire surely brings a lulling warmth that he supposes he’ll have to miss out on for a while.

As he begins to slink off into the darkness, he looks back to gauge his surroundings and catches your form from across the settlement. It seems you were tallying away the items in the shared chest and double-checking to see that everything is checked and balanced with your records.

Your shoulders jump at his suddenly standing form, but try to understand his intentions. You mouth, “where?” with a very confused face, to which he responds with a simple shushing motion and waits for your acknowledgement.

You nod slowly, and he holds your gaze before sneaking off once again.

‘He’s coming back, right?’ You wondered. The progression of your experience now in comparison to the game was vastly different, and you didn’t know if all scenes, or only some, would present themselves in this world. You assume he planned to hunt, and while you trust his abilities, you want to make sure he’s attended to properly should he be harmed in any way.

So after retrieving a few potions, a journal, and a pencil, you stashed them in a satchel and positioned yourself at the base of the tree in the direction he left in. You weren’t particularly sleepy tonight, and planned to pass the time in wait of your companion.

There wasn’t much to do in this century to keep yourself entertained. The only things you’ve found so far were a few instruments and all manners of journals and inks.

The inkpot that you picked up appeared to be red this time. The game of, “which ink dye will I get this time?” will have to be the most of your entertainment for now. Not all too different from home, you suppose. And while writing keeps your mind at bay, illustrating all manners of wildlife have proven to be quite the fun exercise.

You’ve made a few notes on creatures that you and your company have encountered. The visual elements of a drawing allowed you and the others to keep track of materials that could be salvaged from them, and their resistances to certain attacks.

Though as much as you liked depicting such lifeforms in paper, you’ve come to be very interested in portraying your vampire friend.

Evidence of your interest present in the pages filled with his likeness as you search for an unmarked page. You’ve made a few of the others, yes, but anyone who would gain access to your journal would surely see which member of the group you favor more.

You continued to draw, and occasionally write, on the parchment as you waited for Astarion to come back. All sense of time evading you as you focus on the task at hand.

A perfect opportunity for a tired rogue to surprise an unsuspecting human.

“And what are you still doing up, little one?” He appears from behind the very tree you rested against, causing you to spill a bit of ink on your thumb.

You clicked your tongue, not at all annoyed by the character but by your absentmindedness and now stained appendage.

“Sorry, I was just waiting for you.” You sealed the inkpot, and gathered your materials. Effectively, but unknowingly, hiding your work from peering eyes that were the same deep red as your finger.

“I’m very flattered, darling. But couldn’t you wait until morning? I'm sure this couldn’t have been all too important, yes?” He gestures to your satchel, referring to your journal, but you misinterpreted it as him asking for your medical supplies.

“Oh, that depends. Are you hurt, by any chance? I stayed awake in case you might've needed help tending to yourself.” You opened the pouch to reveal its contents to him, your stained thumb in full view.

The sight makes him sigh out, but is thankful for your offered service.

“I’m alright, nothing of interest happened while I was away.” He considers telling you about the nature of his little…'escapade.' He's unaware if you are of his condition, and he doesn’t wish to out himself if not necessary to avoid possible conflict. So he settles for advising you to rest.

“We need you well rested, my dear. You sleep. I’ll keep watch.” The dialogue is familiar, and you can’t stop yourself from letting a small laugh out as you responded with an equally familiar line

“Thank you. I’ll sleep better for that.” You lower your head as you usually do in gratitude.

“The pleasure is all mine.” He mirrors your gesture, albeit in a way that is most appropriate for someone of his character. “Sweet dreams.”

You walked back to the chest. Returning the potions and ink you’ve plucked from the supply, but keeping the rest of the pouch’s materials with you as you turn in for the night. Awaiting the promise of further study that a new day typically makes.

As Astarion is left with his own thoughts, a sour taste still in his mouth from his earlier meal, he thinks about the man in the journal you kept. He did not see much, only a vague outline of the figure. He thinks about who, or what, it could have been but dismisses the thought rather quickly.

He has no time for a mysterious person with hair less perfect than his own, touching his untainted locks as he does.

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Thank you everyone for your interest in the series!! As per the request of some, I'll now be adding a taglist!

Thank you to @rey26, @shyminnie07, @lynnloveshobi, @iggee-rose, @automnepoet, and @tiannamortis for asking to be tagged!!

#astarion ancunin #astarion x reader #astarion x you #astarion ancunin x reader #astarion x mc #baldur's gate 3 x reader #bg3 x reader isekai(?)#aware!astarion #though I guess not so aware--#lol

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tapwater118 · 6 months ago

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Has anyone ever heard of “Battle for Dream Island” (1990) before? Really obscure NES game, doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page (or hell, even a mention in one).

From what little I can find about it on the internet, Battle for Dream Island was an NES game released on January 1st, 1990, apparently made entirely by a pair of independent American developers. Never made all that many sales, but eventually it garnered a rather niche following on an obscure gaming forum, though it had long since dissipated. Unfortunately, seemingly nothing from the forum threads was archived, so all I have to go on are a few vague threads titles from a navigation page.

I, rather cliched like, bought this BfDI cartridge from a sleazy old guy at a flea market (along with Puzznic and Wario’s Woods for a bargain deal). I dumped the ROM and booted it up on an emulator to take some screencaps.

Upon pressing start, you are prompted to “Choose Contestant,” and have a choice between any of 20 playable characters (who are all everyday objects, for some reason). Each contestant has their own stats, and while you can feel the difference while playing, the overall impact of character choice is pretty negligible. (Also some of these guys don’t even have arms?? Weird design choice but okay.)

Two screencaps of the character select screen. I went with Pin for my first playthrough cause idk she seemed kinda cute. I’m almost sure the stats are “Strength,” “Speed,” “Jump,” and “Skill.”

(Continued under cut)

While touting itself as a game show, BfDI is essentially a glorified minigame collection. The gameplay loop is as follows: You and the 19 other contestants play a minigame (referred to as “challenges”) to earn points based on how well you do (though I’m fairly certain the computer contestants just get a random amount of points for each challenge). Most of the challenges are various platforming segments, though some others fall more into puzzle game territory.

Two of the challenges. The green “Win Tokens” can be collected for bonus points. LEFT: A horizontal platformer level. The grey wall in the middle of the screencap moves up and down. RIGHT: A challenge about climbing ladders while avoiding “acid spitballs.” The game pauses to scroll vertically a la Super Mario Bros. 2.

After each challenge, this speaker thing shows up (pretty sure he’s supposed to be like a game show host?) and tallies up everyone’s score. The contestant with the least score gets “eliminated” and removed from the game.

The results screen. Leafy did rather poor on the last challenge, so she’s out of the game.

The game continues like this until you lose (have the least amount of points) and get booted to the game over screen, or until you are the last one left, in which case you win Dream Island! (Though of course in reality you just get booted back to the title screen. No Dream Island for you.)

The victory screen, with the gates to Dream Island in sight. Feels more like the gates to hell given how Pin’s staring at me.

It’s a fairly easy game for NES standards (I won on my first try). Took me about 80 minutes on my first playthrough, though subsequent ones could take less than an hour as I knew what I was doing. The brevity and the fact it saves your high score gives BfDI a nice sense of replayability (though this is probably best done sporadically, as the challenges tend to get a bit samey after a couple of back-to-back playthroughs).

So yeah, just wanted to share this in case anybody else has heard of it. I’ll probably rip the sprites and upload them sometime later cause it doesn’t look like anybody’s done that yet.

#bfdi #bfdia #bfb #tpot #bfdi firey #bfdi pin #bfdi leafy #bfdi needle #bfdi teardrop #bfdi eraser #bfdi flower #bfdi pencil #bfdi rocky #bfdi announcer #BfDI1990 #unreality #unfiction

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anim-ttrpgs · 12 days ago

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Fairytale Witch Player Character Rules in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Eureka has six playable "monster" types, and about ten total supernatural character options all together. Each supernatural trait is taken basically as if it is a normal trait like the ones you have been seeing us post. You cannot give a character more than one supernatural trait--and from what you are about to read, you probably wouldn't want to. Playing monsters is recommended for "advanced" players only, people who like a lot of "crunch" in their games, as require you to keep track of a lot more mechanics than playing a normal human.

Here is the Fairytale Witch Trait. This is going under a Read More because it's long as hell but we really hope that you will check it out and comment. This is, like, the whole entire ruleset for playing a witch in Eureka.

Fairytale Witch (Monster Trait)

A “witch” has been many things throughout history, so many things in fact that it is quite difficult to form a cohesive thesis statement about them, and, like vampires, and the Hollywood werewolf, are something whose origins are obscured and severely misunderstood by more recent pop culture and pop history.[1][2][3] The “fairytale witch” in Eureka draws inspiration from a vast range of folkloric sources, ancient, medieval, and early-modern. Literary and folkloric figures, typically women, who wield the power to heal and to harm, and whose aid or ire are nearly always earned.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] And like those things, many things which were said to be witches were not and are not.

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] Certain more recent folkloric elements of the idea of “witchcraft,” including sacrifice and drinking of specifically children’s blood, have been deliberately omitted from mechanization, as these elements stand as direct and recent foundations of present-day antisemitic conspiracy theories. Both in real life and in Eureka, grand conspiracy theories are a comforting fantasy for those who turn a blind eye to actual problems which stand right in front of their face.

[3. Off to the side in the final formatting] Most witch trials happened in America during the Enlightenment.

Fairytale witches in Eureka may draw on ancient knowledge of these arts passed down generationally, may have learned these abilities from their peers, or may have simply stumbled upon this knowledge some other way and discovered that, while it is simply a silly fantasy to most others, they have an exceptional talent for it.[1] Now what will they do with this power?[2][3] This particular Trait tackles some different themes compared to the other monsters.

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] Regardless, this is not something which can be taught to others over the course of an investigation. Plus, it’s said most people simply lack the talent for it in the first place.

[2 off to the side in the final formatting] Witches are not satanic, at least not literally. The idea that “the Devil” can grant anyone any arcane power is found nowhere in the Bible.

[3 off to the side in the final formatting] You couldn't imagine the hazing.

A lot of a witch’s powers hinge on them knowing someone’s “full true name.” What exactly is meant by a person’s “full true name” is a matter of discussion between player and Narrator, but as a general guideline, if a person is named Jeremy Matthew Jones IV, then “Jeremy Matthew Jones IV” is needed, and just “Jeremy Jones” or “Jeremy M. Jones” won’t be enough. Nicknames also do not generally count.

A fairy cannot make their magic work by just guessing a person’s true name, but a witch can.

Curses

Assuming they have the right materials, a witch can place a terrible curse on an unsuspecting victim from anywhere in the world. More powerful curses have two stages, while simpler curses peter out or fall off after about a week.[1]

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] For all the many terrible things that the medieval Church was, stagnifying and technologically regressive do not make the list. The institution of the medieval Church was one of philosophy, education, and what we would now call “science,” and medieval clergymen were by and large literate, and relatively well-educated men for the time. The medieval Church’s suppression of “witchcraft” had less in common with the “satanic panic” of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and more to do with the idea that even believing that “the devil” or pagan gods could grant anyone wicked powers was a dangerous superstition, enabling of swindlers and charlatans, and this was likely to result in the wrongful persecution of people who behave oddly, as well as, and especially, Jews. This was true of the “satanic panic” and is still true today.

[1.1. Off to the side in the final formatting] This is not to posit that the medieval Church was a champion of religious freedom and equality. One might say they wanted uncontested control of who got to persecute Jews and exactly to what degree.

Casting a Curse Directly

In order to place a curse directly on a target, the witch must be in possession of the target’s full true name[1] clearly written on some material, or a large sample of their DNA (such as a large lock of their hair), or both. These items are destroyed as a part of the casting process.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] What exactly is meant by a person’s “full true name” is a matter of discussion between player and Narrator.

Casting a curse requires a supernatural ability Composure roll.

Casting a curse takes 1 Tick or 5 Actions, during which all components are destroyed.[1] The curse will last for 7 days by default before either wearing off completely, or advancing to the next stage. As the curse is cast, roll 1D6+1+[Relevant Skill]. Which Skill is used will vary depending on the curse. The result is the number of days by which the witch may extend or reduce the curse's duration. If the curse is an advanced two-stage curse, the result is the number of days by which the witch may extend or reduce the first stage’s duration. If the result is a negative number, reduce the witch’s Composure by the same amount. A witch may use the Focus Eureka! Point ability to add an additional 1D6 to this roll (and this also adds 1D6 to the advanced curse roll, below).[2]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] What the act of placing a curse actually looks like varies from witch to witch.

[2 off to the side in the final formatting] This works exactly like using the Focus ability when Incapacitated - add 1D6 per Eureka! Point spent to the roll, and then drop all but the highest two.

If a simple curse is reduced to a duration of “0 days,” it will only take effect for the duration of a single Scene. If the first stage of an advanced curse is set to “0 days,” the curse will advance to the second stage immediately.

When an advanced curse is cast, after the witch decides the effect of the second stage (see below), roll an additional separate 1D6+1+[Relevant Skill]. The result is the number of days by which the witch may extend or reduce the second stage’s duration. Like with a simple curse, the default duration is 7 days, after which the effects will wear off completely.

If the witch only has one of these components, then only a simple curse can be cast. If the witch has both the full true name and the DNA sample, an advanced curse can be cast. If the witch mistakenly has the true name and the DNA of two separate people, then, unbeknownst to the witch, both of those people will be struck with a simple curse.

Witches may place curses upon themselves if they so desire, without needing to use their own full true name or DNA.[1]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] They’ve already got it.

A second curse placed upon the same target will extend its duration, but only the effect of one type of curse can apply at once. If a simple curse is placed on a target already suffering the effects of an advanced curse, the simple curse will fail to take effect. If a different kind of advanced curse is placed on a target already suffering the effects of an advanced curse, the new curse will replace the previous curse if the caster can make a Full Success on a skill check with the new curse’s relevant Skill.

Effects of Simple Curses

A simple curse makes the target suddenly feel extremely feeble and ill.[1] The target will have a -2 modifier applied to all Skill rolls for the duration of the curse’s effect. Simple curses that have no advanced stage always use the Medicine Skill.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] Symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea, fatigue, muscle weakness, loss of appetite, excessive sweating, dizziness, and a sense of impending doom. However, no medical doctor will be able to diagnose exactly what is causing the problem.

Effects of Advanced Curses

Advanced curses typically have two stages, with the first stage appearing nearly identical to a simple curse, with all the same effects. When the second stage takes effect, the effects of the first stage cease. The effect of the second stage is decided as the curse is being cast, before the 1D6 is rolled.

Each advanced curse has a different Skill associated with it. This Skill is used for both the first and second stage of the curse.

Curse of Transformation

This curse uses the Nature Skill. The target will be spontaneously transformed into an animal of the witch’s preference.[1]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] Their clothes don’t transform with them.

The witch must make a Full Success on a Nature roll to choose an animal that is not on the following list.

Cat

Frog

Mouse

Newt

Pig

Rat

Toad

Wolf[1]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] For the stats of a wolf, see p.xx “Werewolf”. The rest of these do not have official stats, but we expect you to be able to figure out what they would be good and bad at.

The target will maintain a functional degree of human intelligence while in this form, at least for some time. Once their human mind is lost, the curse cannot be removed, and will never revert after any amount of time. The curse will also never revert if the target dies while transformed.

For an NPC, the Narrator rolls a hidden 1D6+3. This is how many days the target will retain their humanity.

For an investigator, the Narrator rolls a hidden 1D6. After this number of days, if the transformed investigator ever reaches 0 Composure, their humanity will be lost.

Curse of Reduction

This curse uses the Visual Calculus Skill. The target will be spontaneously reduced to between 5% and 10% of their original size.[1][2][3][4]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] Their clothes and items may or may not shrink with them, at the caster’s preference.

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] For a 72” person, that would be between 3.6” and 7.2”.

[3. Off to the side in the final formatting.] In most cases, a person reduced in size like this will be at the mercy of the witch, and can be captured without any rolls needed. However, they still have opposable thumbs, and the means to explain the circumstances to others. Witches may wish to weigh the pros and cons of this compared to transformation into a rat, which can make victims quite hard to catch if they start running right away.

[4 off to the side in the final formatting] A person reduced in size counts as one meal.

If the target dies while shrunken, the curse will never revert.

Curse of Petrification

This curse uses the Chemistry Skill. The target, including their clothes, will be spontaneously turned to stone. At the preference of the caster, they may or may not retain awareness of their surroundings. If kept aware, they will lose 2 Composure per day, and if unaware, 1 Composure per day, until they are effectively dead, at which point the curse cannot be reverted.[1] If the curse is reverted, either by it wearing off before the point of no return, or being broken, any damage the target sustained as a statue will immediately take effect. For example, chips in their stone body become lacerations in their living body. If an arm was broken off of the statue, their arm is now severed. If the statue suffers fatal damage, the curse will not be able to be reverted. If unaware, then reverting the curse will feel like waking up from a long and restless sleep. The target does not need to eat or sleep so long as they are petrified.

[1 off to the ads in the final formatting] For NPCs, consider them to have 1D6+1 Composure to lose before it starts to eat into their Superficial HP.

Curse of Slumber

This curse uses the Medicine Skill. The next time they fall asleep, the victim will fall into a coma-like state for the duration of the curse. The target will lose 1 Composure per day until the curse either reverts or they die.[1] Unlike with petrification, the body must breathe and be fed during this time.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] For NPCs, consider them to have 1D6+1 Composure to lose before it starts to eat into their Superficial HP.

Curse of Death

This curse uses the Blacked Out Skill. The target begins to take 2 Superficial Damage each day for the duration of the curse or until they die, and will be unable to regain HP or Composure through sleep. In addition, apply a -3 modifier to all their rolls.

Defense Against Curses

Upon being struck with a curse, a witch can recognize the intended effect, and may immediately make a Skill check of the curse’s relevant Skill in order to cast it off. This will take one Movement if time is measured in Turns.

Full Success: The curse is fully cast off.

Partial Success: The curse is partially cast off. The witch will suffer only the simple effects, at half the intended duration, and no advanced effects.

Failure: The witch will suffer the full effects of the curse as usual.

Placing a Curse on an Object

Cursing an object works similarly to placing a curse on a person, except no names or DNA are needed, the witch need only be holding the object with bare hands. The default duration of the first stage is 7 days and so is the second stage. Roll 1D6+1+[Relevant Skill] for each to determine by how much the witch can adjust them. After the witch has removed their hands from the object, it will be actively cursed, and anyone who touches it with bare skin, including the witch themselves, will be cursed. The Narrator rolls a hidden 1D12. The result is how many times the curse will transfer to people who touch the object.

Breaking a Curse

There are a number of ways a witch may know to break a curse. If the ailment is not immediately identifiable as a curse, a Full Success on a Blacked Out check by a witch will positively identify whether it is or not.

The death of the curse’s caster will not remove the curse.

Manual Removal of the Curse

A curse can be removed in the same way it was cast. If the curse was cast using a true name, the witch can remove the curse using the victim’s true name. If the curse was cast using DNA, the witch can remove the curse using the victim’s DNA.[1] If both, it requires both. Regardless, this takes 1 Tick or 5 Actions. If neither, the curse cannot be broken in this way.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] This has to be the victim’s human DNA. If they have been transformed into an animal, their new form’s DNA will not suffice, it will have to be something removed from their body before the transformation.

True Love’s Kiss

A kiss can sometimes be all it takes to lift a curse. The Narrator rolls a hidden D6 once the victim has been kissed. On a 7+, the curse will be broken by the kiss. If it fails, another kiss from the same person will not work either.[1] If time is measured in Turns, this will take an Action from the kisser.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting.] Morgie’s kisses always lift curses.

Add +1 to the roll if the kisser truly loves the victim.

Add +1 to the roll if the kisser is female.

Add +1 to the roll if the kisser is of noble or royal lineage, or is a fairy.

Curse Removal and Cure by Potion

If all else fails, a potion can be brewed to lift the curse. A potion to lift a specific type of curse will require the same recipe as a potion that would have caused that type of curse, plus one additional Table 3 ingredient. However, the victim must be able to drink the potion for it to take effect, meaning a curse of petrification cannot be lifted in this way. See p.xx “Brewing Potions”. Using the same method, a Non-Lethal or Lethal Poison Potion can have an extra Table 3 ingredient added to make them antidotes for their respective poisons, and a Love Potion can have an extra Table 3 ingredient added to make it a cure for Love Potions, etc.

Brewing Potions

If there’s one thing witches are known for, it’s potions.[1] Potions represent the most reliable and effective vehicle of a witch’s magic, and are often something of a magic spell in and of themselves.[2][3]

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] A large metal cauldron is classic, but takes up a lot of space in an apartment, so a stovetop is usually fine.

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] The “magic words” may or may not have any true power in and of themselves. Sometimes, the time it takes to recite the entire “spell” three times is just about how long the potion needs to be left on the heat.

[3. Off to the side in the final formatting] In the Middle Ages, until about the mid-1400s, the conception of a “witch” was often cautiously positive, and may conjure up the image of an unmarried woman living outside of town who has vast generational knowledge to draw upon in the way of midwifery techniques, herbalism, medicine, and poison.

When a witch brews a potion, it is often going to be something of an ordeal to gather all the right ingredients, but the payoff will be an effect that the witch can set the exact delay and duration of, and which can be applied to anyone who consumes it, bypassing both the element of uncertainty, and the prickly details, of casting a curse by hand. A successfully brewed potion can be made to have any length of delay between consumption and effect, and the effect can be made to last for any length of time, including permanency.

Potion brewing is as much an art as a science, and no two brews will be the same, even if they aim to achieve the same effect across the same duration. The process of brewing a magic potion is influenced by factors barely understood by the witch and certainly not under their control, it won’t be until the the process is underway that it becomes clear exactly what is needed to finish the concoction.[1][2] Not counting the time required to gather the ingredients, a witch must spend at least 1 Tick a day attending to the potion in between the time the base is added and the final two ingredients are added, as well as 1D6 Ticks finishing the potion once all of the ingredients have been added.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] When it became clear that prayer alone would not suffice, ordained priests may be the village’s most avid practitioner of “folk magic.” Folk “magic” of course just being another word for an observable effect to which the cause is not fully scientifically understood.

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] Sometimes, the ingredients required for a potion will be realistically impossible to obtain in certain scenarios.

Every potion has three ingredients: A base, which is always going to be the same for the kind of effect the witch is trying to achieve, and two additional main ingredients which will become clear only after the brewing process has begun.[1] See below for the list of possible potion effects, the required bases, and the two other ingredients, which will be rolled on the relevant ingredient tables.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] This is not literally all the ingredients, just the ones that matter most mechanically and which will not be understood until the process has begun. The witch will be throwing all sorts of things in there in the meantime.

The base for a potion must be acquired and added, and after the other two required ingredients become known, those too must be acquired and added. For ingredients that would be reasonable to have on-hand, a Wealth roll using the witch’s home (or whatever home they’re doing this in) may suffice, but many ingredients will require the witch and any other investigators willing to help them to divert their plans to seek them out. If the investigators decide that a particular potion is necessary for their progress towards solving the mystery, then consider rolls that seek to gather information on where to find the necessary ingredients to count as Investigative Rolls.

Potions do not work on any subject unable to ingest or digest them.

Any potion which applies an advanced curse’s effect does so without applying the effect of the first stage.

If a potion is intended to be mixed with food, a witch may take steps to make the potion more difficult to detect by taste or smell with a Blacked Out or Chemistry roll, hidden by the Narrator.

Full Success: The potion is impossible to detect once it has been applied to or mixed with food.

Partial Success: The potion may be detected by a Full or Partial Success on a Senses roll.

Failure: The taste or smell of the potion is immediately obvious to just about anyone.

To make a potion undetectable in an autopsy or other examination of the victim, a witch can make a Chemistry or Blacked Out roll.

Full Success: The remnants and evidence of the potion in the victim’s system will dissipate completely before any examination can be conducted.

Partial Success: Evidence of the potion within the victim’s system will be undetectable by normal means, but a witch may still be able to identify it.

Failure: Any medical examiner will be able to detect the traces of the potion, but only someone versed in witchcraft will be able to properly identify it.

Potions which apply the same effects as curses count as those curses for all intents and purposes, including their removal. Thus a curse caused by a potion could be removed by use of the victim’s hair and true name, by use of a curse-removing potion, or by a kiss.

Starting the Adventure with Potions

A witch can start the adventure with potions already in their inventory in exchange for WP, either because they recently brewed them, or bought or traded from another witch (who is unavailable for a refund of takeback during the adventure). The witch will not be able to buy potions during the adventure. Any potion bought by WP in character creation can be made curative by spending 1 extra WP. (See p.xx “Curse Removal and Cure by Potion”.)

2WP: Random potion.[1] Roll 1D6+1D12 on the list of potions.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] It’s only random to the player, not the witch. They know what they got it for.

4WP: Specific potion. Choose any one potion from the list.

List of Potions

2. Potion of Invisibility

Cat (boiled live), Table 3, Table 3. Renders one invisible to the naked eye for a single Scene, including clothing and small held items.

3. Potion of Transformation

Blood of the animal that this potion is intended to turn someone into, Table 3, Table 3. Applies the second stage of a transformation curse. See p.xx “Curse of Transformation”.

4. Potion of Petrification

Powdered marble, Table 2, Table 3. Applies the second stage of a petrification curse. See p.xx “Curse of Petrification”.

5. Potion of Waking Sleep

Apple, Table 2, Table 3. Allows one to remain awake for one full night without suffering any Composure loss.

6. Love Potion

hair of the subject of affection, Table 2, Table 3. All rolls made by the subject of affection towards the drinker of the potion have a +2 Contextual modifier.[1][2][3]

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] This works like any other curse - though it can only be applied by a potion, the love potion’s effect may be undone by other means (e.g. with a sample of DNA and the person’s full true name).

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] The world is a little fuzzier when the subject of the affection is in view, but their voice is always loud and clear.

[3. Off to the side in the final formatting] Easily slipped into a drink - one more reason to be vigilant at bars.

7. Potion of Slumber

Sand, Table 1, Table 3. Applies the second stage of a slumber curse. See p.xx “Curse of Slumber”.

8. Potion of Nourishment

Bread crumbs, Table 1, Table 3. Consuming this counts as 3 daily meals at once.

9. Potion of Death

Rat (boiled live), Table 1, Table 2. Applies the second stage of a death curse. See p.xx “Curse of Death”.

10. Sleep Aid

Wolfsbane, Table 1, Table 1. Grants one 1 additional point of Composure restored after a single full night’s rest.

11. Pain Relief

oak bark, Table 1, Table 2. Grants one 1 additional point of Superficial HP restored after a single full night’s rest.

12. Potion of Glamour

Lavender, Table 1, Table 3. Apply a +2 Base bonus to this character’s Charm and Seduce Skills for a single Scene.

13. Non-lethal Poison

Thorns of a thorny plant, Table 1, Table 3. Applies Poison (Non-lethal, OT: Witch’s choice, DF: Witch’s choice). See p.xx “Non-lethal Poison”.

14. Potion of Healing

Copper shavings, Table 1, Table 3. When applied with a Medicine roll, add +2 to the amount of HP restored, even with a Failure. This can also rid the body of non-chronic diseases, such as a short-term virus or bacterial infection.

15. Juice that Makes You Explode

Gunpowder, Table 2, Table 3. When the potion takes effect, the Narrator rolls a hidden D6. On a 6, This causes the consumer to violently explode as a Shrapnel Explosion. On a 1-5, the option has no effect. See p.xx “Shrapnel Explosion”.

16. Lethal Poison

Hemlock, Table 2, Table 3. Applies Poison (Lethal, OT: Witch’s choice, DF: Witch’s choice). See p.xx “Lethal Poison”.

17. Potion of Soothing

Simmered liquor, Table 2, Table 3. Restores 3 points of Composure.

18. Potion of Reduction

Salt, Table 3, Table 3. Applies the second stage of a reduction curse. See p.xx “Curse of Reduction”.

Potion Ingredients Table 1

A witch with a +2 or higher in Nature can roll a second time on this table and use either result in the potion.

1,1. Beetroot

1,2. Beetroot

1,3. Adder’s fork (trout lily)

1,4. Beetroot

1,5. Wolfsbane

1,6. Yew leaves

2,1. Tiger’s blood

2,2. Oak leaves

2,3. Blind-worm’s sting (wormwood)

2,4. Eye of Newt (mustard seed)[1]

2,5. Eye of newt (actual)

2,6. Gecko’s blood

3,1. Tongue of dog (houndstongue, the plant)

3,2. Tongue of dog (actual)

3,3. Lizard leg (ivy)

3,4. Lizard leg (actual)

3,5. Owlet’s wing (garlic)

3,6. Owlet’s wing (actual)

4,1. Scale of dragon (the plant)

4,2. Tooth of wolf (club moss)

4,3. Tooth of wolf (actual)

4,4. Gall of goat (st. John’s wart)

4,5. Bloody fingers (foxgloves)

4,6. Bloody fingers (actual)

5,1. Tiger’s chaudron (lady’s mantle)

5,2. Baboon’s blood

5,3. Toe of frog (buttercup)

5,4. Toe of frog (actual)

5,5. Fillet of fenny snake (arums)

5,6. Wool of bat (holly leaves)

6,1. Wool of bat (actual)

6,2. Snakes

6,3. Snails

6,4. Puppy dog tails

6,5. Rose petals

6,6. Snips (eels)

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] There is little evidence that “eye of newt” and “lizard’s leg” and stuff like that was actually code for regular household ingredients, but there’s also little evidence that every witch would know that.

Potion Ingredients Table 2

A witch with a +2 or higher in Chemistry can roll a second time on this table and use either result in the potion.

1,1. Human hair

1,2. Cobwebs

1,3. Sugar

1,4. Human urine

1,5. Human bone

1,6. Human wart

2,1. Cat’s whiskers

2,2. Dog hair

2,3. Snake egg

2,4. Feather of crow

2,5. Chicken egg

2,6. Shark’s tooth

3,1. Booger

3,2. Salt

3,3. Silver shavings

3,4. Copper shavings

3,5. Tobacco

3,6. Gold shavings

4,1. Iron shavings

4,2. Magnet

4,3. Human liver

4,4. Human nose

4,5. Human lips

4,6. Sand from an hourglass

5,1. Bronze shavings

5,2. Aluminium shavings

5,3. Honey

5,4. Gunpowder

5,5. Rabbit’s foot

5,6. Eye of spider

6,1. Ocean water

6,2. Expired milk

6,3. A piece of burned meat

6,4. Tail of rat

6,5. Nightshade

6,6. Neon

Potion Ingredients Table 3

A witch with a +2 or higher in [Blacked Out] can roll a second time on this table and use either result in the potion.

1,1. Cat (boiled live)

1,2. Human hair (red)

1,3. Something sold based on a lie

1,4. Candy stolen from a baby

1,5. Witch’s blood

1,6. Washwater from the sheets of a deathbed

2,1. A picture taken moments before disaster

2,2. Something thrown away in anger

2,3. Blood drawn from a toe

2,4. A murder weapon

2,5. A family photo.

2,6. A divorcee’s wedding ring

3,1. Powdered skull from two-headed cow.

3,2. Cremated human remains

3,3. Picture of a sniper rifle from a video game released in 2009.

3,4. Ash obtained by burning wood from a shipwreck

3,5. a silk mourning veil (used)

3,6. Something stolen from a neighbor

4,1. Coffin nails

4,2. grave dirt

4,3. Blood of a virgin

4,4. Pants of Matt

4,5. A pet’s favorite toy

4,6. wine which has not seen the sun for at least ten years

5,1. Hair of a murderer

5,2. Orphan’s tears

5,3. Sock of Matt (oven baked)

5,4. Engagement ring (used)

5,5. A flower picked as it blooms under a full moon.

5,6. An adorable sneeze

6,1. Love

6,2. Water from the lungs of a drowned man

6,3. Menstrual blood

6,4. Gamer girl bath water

6,5. Something stolen from a friend

6,6. Human semen

Casting Spells

Without taking up a Trait slot, a witch can be considered to have any Power from the Mage Power List, but only one at a time. Swapping between these Powers requires a non-skill supernatural ability Composure roll, as well as taking an Action if done in combat.

Enchanted Vehicle and Flying

As a non-skill supernatural ability, the witch may enchant a vehicle, broom, or other object of similar category (or theming), allowing it to fly under their control so long as they are piloting it.[1] The enchanted object will not fly for anyone but the witch, and will become inert soon after the witch stops piloting it. If done in combat, this takes 1 Action.[2][3]

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] Old-fashioned brooms are traditional, but there are a number of other objects, modern or otherwise, that would logically be suitable as a substitute. Figure it out.

[2 off to the side in the final formatting] As a warning, virtually any flying vehicle will be extremely obvious and visible during the daytime.

[3 off to the side in the final formatting] Watch out for birds.

Witches have a “Flying” Write-in Skill, used in place of the Athletics skill when piloting either a flying Manually Powered Vehicle, or a flying household object. It does not allow the witch to fly without an enchanted object. Unlike other Write-in Skills, the Flying Skill starts at 0 and can be set to any value between -3 and +3, so long as all of the witch’s Skill modifiers still add up to 0.[should this be able to go below 0?]

A roll is not required to control this device under normal circumstances, but intense maneuvers will require a Flying or Driving roll.

Flying objects have an Acceleration of +12, unless the object already has a higher Acceleration.

If I Can’t Have You, No One Can (Fairytale Witch True Nature)

Flat Composure Damage from Skipping Meals = Yes

Composure restoration from Three Meals a Day = Yes

Flat Composure Damage from Skipping Sleep = Yes

Composure restoration from Full Night’s Sleep = Yes

Eating people, or using one’s powers against others for petty and/or entirely selfish reasons will restore a witch’s Composure, though the witch has no connatural need to do these things.[1]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] A witch can’t stop being a witch any more than a soldier can stop being a soldier.

For use of powers, an act that temporarily affects the victim will restore 1 point of Composure, and an act that permanently affects the victim will restore 2 points of Composure. These acts do not necessarily have to involve the use of magic. If the witch has a non-magical opportunity to exert power over another individual for petty and/or entirely selfish reasons, this could work as well.

For eating people, making a meal of a person will restore 2 points of Composure. Making a meal of a person who was alive until moments before preparation and consumption, or is still alive when consumed, will restore 3 points of Composure. If the victim happens to be a former friend or lover of the witch, restore 1 additional point of Composure.[1][2][3][4]

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] This only restores Composure one time per victim. Eating multiple meals made from the same person will not restore Composure for each meal.

[2. Off to the side in the final formatting] Clever witches are said to make use of magic to consume their enemies more efficiently.

[3 off to the side in the final formatting] Eating the flesh of a human that has been transformed into an animal by a curse does count, at least for Composure restoration. This is also, probably, a lot healthier.

[4 off to the side in the final formatting] If the witch makes multiple meals of a single person, only the first meal will restore the extra Composure. Any leftovers will count as “normal” food.

Dangerous Games (Fairytale Witch Weakness)

As relatively normal people (at least by monster standards), fairytale witches don’t have much in the way of supernatural weaknesses, except for the fact that their bodies simply can not handle excessive prolonged use of so many arcane powers.

Whenever a fairytale witch uses a non-Skill supernatural ability, the Composure roll is made at -3 instead of +3. There are, however, ways to reduce the strain these acts of sorcery put on the body.

Casting Implements

There are certain tools of the trade which can relieve some of the strain by drawing the energy out of the witch’s body before manifesting it in reality or facilitating it by other means. [this sentence kinda sucks but I’m on 5 hours of sleep. Fix it in copy-editing]

Each casting implement in use provides a bonus to the non-skill supernatural ability Composure roll a witch makes to use her powers. A casting implement must be being touched (or held telekinetically) by the witch in order to provide this bonus.[1] The cumulative bonus given by all of a witch’s casting implements cannot bring the Composure roll higher than a cumulative +3. The process by which an object is prepared to be used as such a device is arcane and cannot be accomplished mid-adventure, nor can one of these be bought with a Wealth roll mid-adventure. They can only be acquired through Wealth Points.

[1. Off to the side in the final formatting] The implement does not *necessarily* have to be pointed in the direction of the target of the power, but many witches find that this helps them focus.

Jewelry

+1 [2WP] A piece of jewelry. Multiple can be worn to further defer strain and increase the Composure roll bonus.

Wand

+1. [1WP] Could be a gnarled old stick or a black rod with a white tip, or anything in between, as long as it is elongated and about 10 to 24 inches. Only one wand or staff may be in use by the witch at a time.

Staff

+2 [1WP] Like a larger, more heavy-duty wand. Must be at least as tall as the witch themselves. Only one wand or staff may be in use by the witch at a time.

Spell Book

+1 [1WP] Could be an old leather-bound tome, or a spiral notebook containing the witch’s scribbled research notes. Must be opened and read from to confer a bonus, but does not necessarily need to be touched. Only one spell book can confer a bonus at a time.

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genz420 · 7 months ago

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First Date Headcanons 🍿 ❤️

Masterlist | Rules

Part two

Content: First Date Headcanons

Warning: None

Pairing(s): Character x Gn!reader

Character(s): Percy, Jason, Frank, Piper, Hazel

Percy Jackson

Would definitely take you to the movies for the first date

He would definitely be the type of person to sneak in snacks

He might be the hero of Olympus, but gods be damned, he would not pay over $5 for candy he can get for $2

Would choose the seats at the back of the theatre

Not for why you are thinking

It was the easiest way Percy would be able to see someone or something entering the theatre

Allows him to be able to focus on the movie, you, and the one exit

It would be pretty noticeable he would be focused on leaving rather than the movie

He would try his best though

Do the classic yawn to put his arm over your shoulder

Would offer you candy just to feel the slightest brush of your hand

And after the movie, he would do his best to make the date last longer

Oh you’re walking home, well he just so happens to be heading the same way

Is it because he wants to spend more time with you?

Yes

Does he also want to make sure you are safe?

Also yes

You will definitely be getting a sweet cheek kiss before you two part ways

Jason Grace

Jason would plan a mini golf date

Not the outdoors type of mini golf

But the indoor one where it’s neon colours and black lights

The date would be all fun

No keeping score, but mainly the two of you talking and seeing who took the most amount of shots to get the ball in

Compliments left and right

Even if you two are in a dark room

He is going to make sure you blush

Frank Zhang

Bowling date

It’s a chill way for the two of you to talk but still be engaged in a second activity

Frank is the type of guy to use a five-pound ball as well

He might have the blessing of Mars, but he swears his aim is better with the smaller one

Frank would also be the type of guy to tie the laces of the bowling shoes for you

The type to put nicknames into the computer that everyone else can see

The type to ask the attendants to put up the gutters as well

He would put your name first so that he could sniff out your skills

The game would be in all fun

He will win though

It doesn’t matter how good you are

Frank will be leaving the winner

Afterwards, the two of you would go for ice cream

It doesn’t matter that he is lactose intolerant

He loves ice cream

Piper Mclean

Let's be clear: a date with Piper is going to be a wild time

Whatever you had planned for the date goes out the window halfway through the date

But also she would bring you flowers or some type of other gift

Doesn’t matter what you identify as

She is bringing your favourite flowers

You better take care of them

Back to the date

In the end, I think the date would end up turning into a walk

Arm in arm

Or hand in hand

The two of you are not going to be at more of an arm's length from one another

There would be stories told, and jokes made

You will be leaving with an inside joke for sure

She would also compliment you to no end

Did something slightly different with your hair

She notices and makes sure you know she notices

Hazel Levesque

Hazel is the type to plan a picnic

Like she goes all out

Picks the best place in New Rome where you are able to see the city and the nature

Takes you there at dusk so you guys can watch the sunset

She might be from the past but she knows how to charm someone

But seriously, she would go all out on the food

Make sure to use past conversations to bring your favourite foods and drinks

You like an obscure sweet from where you are from

Arion and her just so happened to come across it while out

And the setup

The red checkered blanket is already laid out for the two of you

The two of you would definitely spend the time talking

About yourself

About your time in New Rome

About her time with the seven

There is never a dull moment

Also, I think she could bring fun activities for the two of you

Will def be swapping paintings every five minute

#percy jackson x reader #jason grace x reader #frank zhang x reader #piper mclean x reader #hazel levesque #hazel lavesque x reader #percy jackson #jason grace #frank zhang #piper mclean #pjo x reader #pjo #pjo fandom #pjo series #pjo tv show #percy pjo

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jade-gemstone · 9 months ago

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Danganronpa Ultimate Categorization

Welcome back to another episode of: Jade is a nerd about something absolutely useless! Today's topic: Talent classification in Danganronpa/Fangans.

In the process of making my own fangan/s, I've created a classification system for the types of talents you can give characters. These classifications are...

Arts: Talents that are involved in the visual arts, performing arts, or fashion. Encompasses performers of all types, any type of visual artist, or anyone involved in fashion. (Ex. Actor, Abstract Artist, Model)

Practical: Talents that focus on a specialized skill or work with your hands. Also includes any talents that are religious or spiritual in nature. (Ex. Mechanical Engineer, Detective, Shrine Maiden)

Academic: Talents that are recognized by how much knowledge or experience a character has in an academic field. Covers most science, literature, math, and research based talents. (Ex. Chemist, Theologian, Archaeologist)

Sports: Talents relating to athletic skill. (Ex. Footballer, Kickboxer, Bowler)

Novelty: Talents given to a person who is special simply by existing. Can also be given to characters who win a contest for their talent. Includes Lucky/Unlucky Students, royalty, and non-human characters. (Ex. Lucky Student, Student, Princess)

This system of classification was based on my experience in the community over about three or four years, seeing many other people's original characters as well as creating my own. I found many fell into these categories. My "perfect" ratio, which my friends and I used as a guideline for making our fangan casts, is 4 arts : 4 practical : 4 academic : 2 sports: 2 novelty. I felt this ratio kept things even and grounded.

A few months ago, I began to wonder if my "perfect" ratio was more of my own creation than an actual pattern I saw. I thought, in the event it was, that I would come up with a mathematically accurate ratio that better represented the talent distribution of Danganronpa and its fan projects. This was my attempt at doing just that.

Data Collection

For this, I tried to collect as varied of a sample as possible. I included the three mainline Danganronpa games and sixteen fangans, ranging from very popular ones to very obscure ones. The fangans sampled for this analysis were...

Danganronpa Another

Super Danganronpa Another 2

Danganronpa Despair Time

Brave Danganronpa Coward's Paradise

Project Eden's Garden

Danganronpa He(art)less Deceit

Danganronpa Hushed Whispers

Danganronpa Muave

Danganronpa Despair's Revival

Danganronpa Re:Birth

Danganronpa Twisted Truths

Danganronpa Survivor's Guilt

Danganronpa Despair's Flame (my fangan! also the one where the talent ratio originated)

Danganronpa Cyberspace

Danganronpa Akeda Amusements

Danganronpa Lost Paradise (my other fangan that isn't released anywhere but I'm counting anyway)

I figured out the talent ratio for each individual game by looking through their casts and sorting them with my classification system. Ultimate ???'s were thrown out if possible (such as in the case of Akeda Amusements, where Hanari was thrown out due to the fangan having seventeen participants) and if not, they were counted as novelty.

Also, shout out to Yuki Maeda and Teruya Ōtori for managing to count for two different data sets despite my best efforts at finagling a way to keep them confined to one.

Observations

The first thing I noticed in looking at the ratios for canon Danganronpa was that Academic ultimates are underrepresented compared to what I initially remembered. It had been a while since I revisited the mainline games, and it was a shock to be reminded of that. I was also reminded, but not quite as shocked by the greater emphasis on practical ultimates.

In fangans, the focus on practical ultimates continues to be heavy, with none having less than two. There was also less focus on sports ultimates, with the majority having only one or two compared to the three that the mainline games had a majority of the time. They also tend to have more academic ultimates.

I think that this could be explained by looking at the types of people who make fangans. The majority of people I know who make fangans have very particular knowledge about certain fields due to experience or heavy research, and more often than not these fields do not include sports. They are more likely to make characters based on their experiences and knowledge that they can then insert into the story to make it seem more authentic.

I also, unsurprisingly, found that my "perfect" ratio was not reflected in many of the fangans I looked at. There was only one besides my own that followed that ratio.

Now, if my "perfect" ratio is not the mathematically perfect ratio, then what is?

According to the data collected for the canon games, this is.

This just so happens to also be the ratio for Trigger Happy Havoc.

According to the data collected from the fangans, this is the perfect ratio.

The only fangan that followed this ratio exactly was Akeda Amusements. V3 also had this distribution.

When considering both mainline and fan made games, the perfect ratio was this.

Ironically, not a single mainline game or fan game followed this ratio.

Out of curiosity, I also calculated the standard deviation for each data set.

Canon Danganronpa has little to no variation, conveying that talent ratios are quite consistent between games. The biggest variation would be in the novelty category, making sense as V3 scaled down the amount of novelty ultimates compared to the other two games.

The fangans are shown to have a much larger variation. Though I can't be surprised by this, as perhaps it is an unfair comparison. The mainline Danganronpa games were written by mostly the same team and had less to sample from, while the fangans have not only a larger sample size in which to deviate, but many different writers that think differently about talent distribution.

Final Thoughts

In putting this all together, I found that my classification system, while not perfect in any sense of the word, has some validity to it. If I wanted to, I could definitely make some improvements to it (especially in distinguishing between certain academic and practical fields from novelty), but as of now it works perfectly fine as an aide in cast creation for me.

My ratio is also not perfect, which was an expected outcome. Really none of the ratios I found are perfect, with none of them representing more than one or two of any mainline or fan made game. While ratios like the ones I found can be good for making sure you have a balanced distribution of talents, they aren't required to make a good cast. Personally, I'll continue using my personal "perfect" ratio as a baseline for any cast I make in the future.

I also had a lot of fun making this, and hope I can find a way to make more posts like this in the future. Thank you for reading this.

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eddiemunsonsmum · 1 month ago

Text

This is Babysitting Club, not Hellfire Club

Eddie Munson x Original Female Character

Summary: Eddie volunteers the services of Babysitting Cl- Uh, Hellfire Club when a friend needs someone to watch their child for an hour. Eddie tries to run a campaign while taking care of a 4 year old and is relentlessly bullied by said child as a result.

Tags: Fluff, Joking, Banter, Eddie gets bullied by a 4yo, Comedy (I hope), pregnancy, friendship, Hellfire Club, References to spice, Unhinged DM!Eddie loses the plot.

Words: 6.7k

A/N: This story sits somewhere between Anticipation and Fuck You Maureen but should be able to be read as a standalone!

“You’re sadistic.” Mike Wheeler said flatly. A pinched expression on his face as he glared at his Dungeon Master from under thick brows.

“I’m fun.” Eddie corrected, not looking up from tracing his finger down the columns of numbers on his side of the DM screen blocking him from the other players.

“He’s self-indulgent.” Jeff corrected again, sharing a knowing look with Grant and Gareth as the two of them nodded in agreement.

“Hey!” Eddie shouted suddenly, eyes stern as he looked up at them over the top of the screen. Their outlines were illuminated by the afternoon light that filtered through the dining room window behind them. Their faces obscured by the shadows cast on them. “I’ve been through a lot this year.” He defended weakly, eyes softening as he turned them back to his notes and the boys around the table muttered about ‘letting him have this one.’

Silence descended on the room once more as Eddie honed in on his notes. Not noticing as a lone figure crept up beside him and began staring at them as well.

“What’s that?” A voice asked suddenly from right beside his head.

Eddie jumped involuntarily. Easily startled these days.

He was grateful for once that his natural fright reflex was flight and not fight so he had not lashed out as he looked down into the wide, innocent eyes of his 4 year old neighbor, Jack.

“Jesus Christ!” He let slip, breathing hard as the kid giggled at the fact that he had apparently frightened the adult in front of him.

“That!” He repeated when Eddie didn’t answer, little finger pointing to the numbers Eddie had been studying.

“Sorry!” Jack’s Father John called as he entered through the open front door and closed it quickly behind him. “He got away from me.” He explained sheepishly as he tugged on the kid’s arm. “Come on, leave Eddie alone.” John chided gently, giving a wave to the table before heading off.

Eddie watched them walk towards the back of the house where his girlfriend Karmen was trying to work in her office. Turning back to his friends and noticing all eyes in his direction, waiting for an explanation.

“Karmen babysits.” He said with a shrug. “A lot.” He added under his breath as he picked up his pen and tried to figure out where they’d left off.

“The door is locked.” Eddie smiled smugly as a collective groan rolled around the table at his words. A satisfied chuckle falling from his grinning lips as he watched his club come to terms with the plot twist.

“Why are they always locked?” Gareth growled, placing his head in his hands.

“Because it would be a pretty boring game if you could just go wherever you wanted.” Eddie said with a shrug. “So the way I see it, you have two choices.” He began. “You can–”

“No!” Karmen shouted angrily, interrupting his words and making his head snap around in time to see her rounding the corner into the kitchen. Frustrated hands grasping at the air as bare feet stomped on the hollow flooring.

“It’s just for an hour, please!” John begged, practically on his knees as he followed at her heels. “Forty-five minutes, tops.” He lied, making Karmen bark out a laugh as she turned on him.

“I’ve lived your forty-five minutes Marston and I’m not keen to live it again!” She countered, turning away from him.

“It’ll be different this time, I promise.” He assured her, slumping heavily on the counter as she opened the fridge and fished around inside it.

Eddie watched on silently, eyes raking over her back as she grasped at nothing in the cold shelves. Trying to look busy so she could put distance between herself and whatever John was requesting.

She settled on a bottle of cold water. Taking it out even though she hadn’t really wanted it and setting her eyes on her friend again.

Eddie rolled his entire head with his eyes, turning back to the guys and shaking it as he held up a finger. Letting them know he would be waiting for the argument behind them to resolve before he continued. He held up his calculator, letting them know that he was going to figure out his equations for the next part of the campaign now and if they had anything to work out themselves, now was the time.

“Look John, even if I wanted to, I have too much work to do. I haven’t finished settling the accounts.” Karmen argued from behind his back, slamming the fridge shut and twisting at the cap of her bottle.

“But you work for me…” John argued meekly. “I don’t care if it’s not done.” He lied again through gritted teeth.

“You told me you needed it done by tomorrow.” She snipped, pressing the bottle to her lips and pausing before taking a drink. “Unless that was a lie?” She added, watching the color drain from his face as she took a sip of the beverage.

“No…” He answered bashfully, looking away from her. “It wasn’t.”

“Right.” She nodded, smiling sarcastically as she wiped at her wet lips with the back of her hand. “So it’s gonna’ look bad on you when it’s not done.”

“This is more important than–”

“Don’t lie to me again. It’s not worth it for you.” Karmen warned, cutting him off with a scowl as John shut his mouth tight and took a calming breath. A grimace-like smile on his face as he pressed his hands together and pointed them at her as if he was in prayer.

“One hour.” He promised, tilting his head towards his son who had followed them back into the kitchen and was sitting just shy of the counter. His little hands moved a ceramic duck around in the air. Making little quacking noises for it as he played with the breakable object he’d taken from the shelf in Karmen’s office.

She huffed at the sight. Wanting nothing more than to take it back and remind him for the thousandth time that not everything was a toy.

She looked to John with a frown, waiting for him to say something and shaking her head when he didn’t.

Useless.

She thought to herself. Ready to open her mouth and rant about how she had to do everything for everyone when Eddie piped up, surprising her.

“I could do it.” He said from his place at the table. Not looking up from his notebook as he continued to punch equations into his calculator and pen down the answers.

The couple in the kitchen stopped bickering at his offer. Both turned to him with incredulous looks on their faces as they waited for the other shoe to drop.

The punchline.

Eddie placed down his pen, swiveling so he was sitting sideways. One arm leaning on the table and the other on the back of his chair. He looked at them both, frowning at their skeptical expressions.

“What?” He asked after a long moment. John’s eyes flicked to Karmen’s before he shrugged lightly and turned back to Eddie.

“You wanna’ watch my kid?” He asked. “You know that’s what we’re arguing about.” He added with a scoff. Convinced that Eddie had misread the situation.

“Sure.” Eddie answered with a shrug. “If you need someone.” He added nonchalantly, turning back to the table and realizing the whole club had raised their heads like gophers in the dirt. He narrowed his eyes at them all, watching as they went back to their character sheets one by one.

“What do you think?” John asked Karmen. Mocking the way she scrunched up her face at his question by imitating her. “What?” He asked with a laugh. “You have an opinion on everythin’ but not this?” He asked, gesturing towards the dining table.

“Offer’s expiring.” Eddie sing-songed. Wanting to snatch it back immediately with the way John had sniped at Karmen.

But he wasn’t offering to help him. He was offering for her.

“I think you don’t have a choice.” Karmen replied finally, placing down her bottle of water and leaning her hip against the bench. “Unless you don’t want to go.” She said scandalously. A mocking pout on her lips.

“Ugh.” John grumbled as he turned back to Eddie who was busy ignoring them for his own sanity. “Fine!” He said loudly, catching the younger man’s attention. “But if Karmen goes out, Jack goes with her.”

“Cute you think you have control over that.” Eddie murmured, placing his pen down for the second time and turning back to them. “Whatever. Bring him over here.” He said flatly, gesturing to the space beside him and looking up to see Karmen smiling at him from the kitchen.

He knew she’d cave into the begging and pleading soon enough and he wanted to offer an alternative. Knowing that once she had agreed, there was no chance in hell that John would choose Eddie instead. He’d had to offer before she did.

“He’s a child.” John said frankly as he scooped up Jack and ripped the duck from his hands. The kid protested loudly at the absence of his 'toy'.

“You can’t just put him down and expect him not to move. He’s not gonna just sit there while you do your thing.” He said, holding up the ceramic as an example of Jack not doing what he’d been told.

“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” Eddie asked, irritated.

The other man didn’t answer. Instead plopping Jack down in the space between Eddie at the head of the table and Dustin on the other corner.

“Be good for Eddie please?” He asked Jack quietly as he placed the duck on the table in front of Eddie’s DM screen.

The toddler ignored him completely as wide eyes looked over all the small exciting things on the table in front of him.

John stood back, crossing his arms as he watched for a minute as if waiting for Eddie to launch himself at Jack and tackle him to the ground or pull some drugs out of his pocket and give them to the toddler to play with.

When that obviously didn’t happen he took another few steps back. Eddie watched with an annoyed expression the entire time before finally, John waved goodbye to them all and left out the front door.

“Alright.” Karmen said loudly, walking up behind the boys and petting Jack on the head as he looked up at her with a little grin. “Come on Jack.” She coaxed, jerking her head back towards her office.

Eddie watched them, confused before realising suddenly that she didn’t think he was serious. That he knew she’d cave and he was just fucking with John for his own amusement.

“Kam…” he said hastily, placing a hand on her arm to stop her from walking away and catching her attention. “I was serious.” He assured her, stifling a laugh at the look she gave him.

“What?” She asked candidly, making the guys around the table chuckle.

“Yeah, what?” Mike repeated, leaning around Dustin to look Eddie in the eye as he raised his brows in question. “You’re in the middle of a session.” He said, waving his hands over the table as if Eddie had forgotten what they were doing.

“So?” Eddie asked, feeling defensive of their questions.

“So….” Dustin began slowly, trying to be as gentle as possible. “I think maybe Mike’s concern is that you won’t be able to run the campaign as efficiently as you’d like while taking care of a kid…” He said, rolling his hands as he spoke.

“Yeah and what do you know about taking care of kids anyway?” Garreth piped up, a nod of agreement murmured around the table.

“Oh my God you guys.” Eddie griped, once again rolling his entire head with his eyes dramatically. “Will you stop?” He asked with a smile as he shook his head sarcastically in their direction. “You have bigger problems right now than my concentration. If you don’t figure out what you’re gonna do about this door and that Undead Goldhoarder chasing you then none of this is gonna’ matter.” He said frankly, pushing himself up from the table and swooping Jack up with arms around his middle.

Jack didn’t protest, instead swinging his legs excitedly at being picked up as Eddie turned to Karmen.

“Go.” He said softly, flicking his head back towards the hallway as he turned around. “Please.” He added, softer. Sitting himself down and placing Jack on his lap. One arm slung around the toddler’s stomach to keep him in place as he picked up his pen. He knew she wouldn’t walk away until she saw them all sitting harmoniously.

“Okay…” She agreed, reluctant. “But come and get me if he gets too much.” She said, sighing as Eddie waved his pen at her without looking up.

“Alright.” He announced as he heard the door to her office close. “What’s the plan?” He asked, looking around the table with a wicked smile.

“No! No Jack!” Eddie chastised gently. “Choking hazard.” He explained firmly as he pulled one of his dice from sticky fingers. “Nothing on this table is for eating, kid.”

“But this is where we eat food?” Jack replied incredulously.

“Well, it’s also where we play games sometimes.” The Dungeon Master said as he dragged the kid back, closer to his torso. His right hand scribbled on the page of his notebook. His body tilted sideways to try and keep Jack’s stubby arms from being able to grab anything else on the table.

“Why do you play games?” The toddler asked, sounding bored as he gave up trying to reach for the table and slumped bonelessly against Eddie’s arm. Somehow making him even harder to hold.

“Because it’s fun.” Eddie sighed, rubbing at his eyes as he restarted the equation he was trying to do for the sixth time.

“You’re a dad-ult.” Jack said pointedly as Eddie stifled a laugh.

“Ad-ult.” He corrected. “And adults like to play games too.”

“Adult.” Jack repeated. “Did you know I’m bored?” He asked immediately afterwards, one of the guys chuckling at this candidness. Eddie couldn’t see who it was from the angle he had to sit to keep the kid on his lap and write at the same time.

“Oh yeah?” He asked, not surprised. “Well I’m getting bored of holding you so– Stop licking me!” He exclaimed suddenly, pulling his arm away from the kid’s mouth and gagging as Jack’s wet lips cackled at the reaction.

“Alright.” Eddie groaned, slipping his hands under the kid’s armpits and holding him up above his head with surprising strength. “Does anyone else wanna’ hold this thing?” He asked, jiggling the kid around and watching as five pairs of eyes looked away quicker than he could finish his sentence.

“He can sit with me for a bit.” Dustin offered from the next chair over, catching Eddie’s eyes and realizing he was the only one still watching.

“Right Jackie, go sit with Dustin please.” Eddie instructed, placing the child on the floor next to him and shooting out an arm to grab the back of his shirt and stop him from sprinting off.

Jack lurched back as Eddie’s hand fisted in the fabric. Catching himself on unsteady little feet and turning back to Eddie with large glaring eyes as he grumbled about wanting Aunty Karmen because Eddie was boring.

“With Dustin please.” Eddie said flatly, ignoring the insult and steering the kid towards Dustin’s waiting arms.

“Hey there little guy.” He said cheerily as Jack let himself be lifted onto someone else’s boney knees.

“You talk funny.” He said bluntly.

“Jack!” Eddie hissed angrily as the little one looked up at him with a confused expression.

“What?” He asked obliviously. Not sure what he did to deserve the dad-ult’s ire.

“Kid you can’t just… Just point stuff like that out, it’s rude.” Eddie explained, teeth ground together as a flush rose on his cheeks. Angry eyes daring the toddler to try it again as Dustin chuckled, jostling Jack on his lap.

“It’s fine dude, honestly.” He waved it off but Eddie still felt compelled to apologize on the kid’s behalf and reiterate to Jack that it was rude to point out things that people couldn’t change about themselves.

“Is ‘annoying’ something that people can’t change?�� Jack asked in response as Eddie blinked at him in stunned silence.

“Yes.” He answered simply, tone quiet and dangerous as the kid seemed to heed his unspoken warning. Either that or he had decided that Eddie was right and it would have been rude to point out how annoying he was. “Alright.” Eddie said after a moment of silence. Finally finished his equation and ready to move on. “Are you guys opening the door or not?” He asked tiredly, giving them a moment to make a decision.

“I think we all agree we want to open it.” Jeff answered for them, a murmur of agreement moving around the table as Eddie nodded, taking a breath and readying himself to speak.

“Okay.” He began holding up his hands to articulate his words. “The weary travelers are given a choice. When faced with such a bold decision, it would be wise to take a little longer to make up one's mind as you never know what kind of dangers are lur–”

“Eddie, now you sound funny.” Jack exclaimed, his pudgy finger an inch from Eddie’s nose as he giggled at the man’s expression. The group around the table bursting into fits of laughter.

The Dungeon Master looked up at them all exasperatedly before turning back to Jack.

“I… Yes I’m..” He started to explain, giving up as Jack turned his attention on something else mid sentence and the laughter from the club began to die down. Eddie sighed to himself, holding up his hands once more and trying again. “-dangers are lurking behind the–“ He stopped, dropping his arms to his sides and huffing indignantly as the cackling reared up again.

“Really? That’s all it took?” He deadpanned. “I DM for you guys for a fucking year but a toddler points out I’m using a ‘funny voice’ and it’s hysterical?”

“Sorry dude it’s just… Like he’s right. I don’t know, his comedic timing was on point.” Gareth laughed out, the others agreeing with the sentiment as Jack looked around excitedly at the group he had made laugh. Slapping his palm eagerly against Jeff’s as the man held it up for him to high five across the table.

“I like Aunty Kam’s friends!” Jack said with a grin as Eddie turned to him in exasperation.

“They’re my friends.” He argued, tone a little more wounded than he’d intended.

“Oh?” Jack balked, looking up at Eddie sceptically as the guys around the table broke into roaring laughter once more at the statement. “Are you sure?” He asked frankly, bending forward as Dustin’s chest pressed against his back. The teen, not able to help physically doubling over, he was laughing so hard.

“No.” Eddie answered tersely, narrowed eyes stopping on each of them pointedly as he waited for them to stop having a good time at his expense.

Eddie had been bullied quite a bit in his young life but he was quickly learning the hard way that no scornful words from someone that disliked him could ever feel quite as brutal as the honesty of a small child that didn’t realize they were hurting feelings.

“How long has it been?” He asked suddenly, pulling up his arm to check his watch and realizing he hadn’t looked at the time when John left. He only had a guess to go by based on what time his friends arrived and how far into the session they had been.

“About ten minutes.” Karmen answered from behind him, a sly smile on her face as Eddie turned to look at her with guilty eyes. “Are you done yet?” She asked with a laugh. “He’s a handful when you’re trying to concentrate isn’t he?”

Eddie turned back to Jack, watching as the kid bounced up and down on Dustin’s knee, picking up everything he could find within his grasp and asking questions about each item before discarding them anywhere but where he’d picked it up from. Seemingly oblivious to the battle Eddie was fighting between his brain and his heart.

Doing what he wanted to versus what he knew was right.

He sighed aloud, plastering a fake smile on his lips before turning back to Karmen.

“Nope, not done.” He answered cheerily. “We’re fine here, thank you.”

She raised a brow at him skeptically, watching with folded arms as Jack lunged for Eddie’s calculator. Misjudging the distance and launching not only the ceramic duck off the table but the calculator too, sending it hurdling with lighting speed.

Karmen winced as the duck hit the ground, smashing into three pieces at Eddie’s feet. While the electronic device continued to sail in the air for about a foot before being stopped by the object in its path.

The person… In its path.

Silence descended on the room as Eddie doubled over. Hands fisted together in front of his crotch where the calculator had just connected. The device fell from his pelvis to the floor beside the broken duck with a large clunk. The sound of broken plastic as the back of the battery pack popped off, didn’t do much to stifle the long wheezing groan of pain Eddie let forth.

Both of the batteries flew out of the compartment in different directions. One of them hitting against the leg of the table and rolling under Dustin’s chair while the other landed in front of Karmen’s feet. Rolling slowly to a stop as it hit against the side of her bare foot.

She stared down at it for a second, eyes flicking up to watch as Eddie decided his pride wasn’t worth saving and he took a knee, gasping in pain as he shuffled over, pulling a piece of duck from the denim and resting a forearm heavily on the edge of the table.

He pressed his face into it and huffed out a long shaky breath.

His shoulders were shaking and Karmen couldn’t tell if he was actually crying or just pantomiming as he recovered from the blows to his dick, his knee and his ego.

“Oops.” Jack said loudly after a moment of collective silence. All eyes in the room bar Eddie’s turning to the boy as he shrugged in an exaggerated manner. “Sowwy.”

A sniffing sound from behind them had the boy turning. Locking eyes with Karmen along with everyone else in the room as she pressed her lips together harshly, eyes watering as her shoulders shook, breath erratic as she tried her darndest not to laugh.

Losing the battle abruptly and barking out a strangled sound that snowballed quickly into hearty laughter at Eddie’s expense.

The rest of the table followed suit and doubled over against the wooden top in hysterics. Rambunctious laughter that shook the game board and threatened to topple all the little characters in the middle as they hollered heartily in response to Eddie’s pain.

The shaking table rattled the Dungeon Master’s teeth. He pulled his face away. Bracing his forearm on it and pushing himself back up onto his feet now that the pain in his crotch had begun to subside.

He slid backward into his chair. Resting his elbows on his knees and placing his face into his palms as he waited for everyone to calm down. He stared down at the broken duck under his feet. Feeling about the same as even Kam laughed at his expense.

He jumped at the feel of a hand on his back. Looking up and expecting to see her standing there but the space beside him was empty. He looked down instead, locking eyes with Jack who had slipped off Dustin’s lap in the chaos and was staring into Eddie’s dejected brown orbs with his bright blue ones, wide and full of wonder.

“Sowwy Eddie.” He said again, sure this time that the man could hear him. “Can I still play?” He asked softly, large eyes suddenly bashful as the laughter around the table died down and Eddie levelled him with a tired stare.

Eddie held a sigh deep inside his lungs as he forced himself to fix his face. A grin splitting across it from ear to ear as he winked at the kid and nodded with feigned excitement.

“Don’t worry about it Jackie.” He said softly, sitting back and motioning for the kid to jump up on his lap again. “Of course you can.” He added, turning to Karmen as she walked up beside him. An apologetic smile on her face as she handed him one of the batteries and bent down to pick up the calculator and the pieces of duck from the floor.

She handed him the device. A legitimate warm smile on her features. He took it from her, noting the way her eyes sparkled as she raked them up and down his figure before swiping his bangs out of the way and placing a wet kiss on his forehead.

She didn’t care about the duck and she was thankful.

Jack held up grabby hands at her as she pulled away, making her chuckle as she did the same for him. The kid giggled and squirmed as she held him in place for longer than she had Eddie. Making a show of the kiss being extra sloppy just so he would exclaim disgust and wipe it away after she pulled back.

Jack did just that. Looking up at her annoyed as she ruffled his hair and retreated to the back of the house. Leaving the group sitting in silence as they all eyed Eddie warily and waited to see what would happen next.

“Alright.” Eddie sighed, one arm wrapped around Jack’s middle as the other grabbed hold of the bottom of his chair and scooched it forward. The grating sound of wood scraping on wood reverberated around the room as he looked up at them with the same fake smile he’d given Jack. Although this one was somehow a little more unnerving. “Roll.” He said simply. Picking up his pen and going back to his equations. This time manually as he was still missing a battery somewhere.

The guys looked around the table, catching gazes, shaking heads and shrugging until Dustin cleared his throat, piping up for all of them and asking:

“Who?”

“Whoever is opening the door.” Eddie answered, not looking up from his notepad.

“I’ll do it.” Mike volunteered, pushing himself up from his chair and reaching for the dice he needed. He looked around at the others hesitantly, pausing for a moment before jiggling the piece of plastic in between his palms and letting it go over top of the board. All eyes around the table watching as it halted on a number and Eddie looked up from his math. A small huff through his nose as he flicked his eyes to Mike and smiled widely.

“Dead.”

“What?” Mike yelped, making Jack laugh against Eddie’s forearm as the man smiled up at the teen. Nodding once before looking away and addressing the rest of the table.

“Who’s up?” He asked as Mike began to protest.

“What do you mean dea–”

“Oh sorry.” Eddie interjected quickly. “You’re dead.” He clarified. “Your character is dead. Who’s next?” He asked again, the collective silent horror of the club around the table making Jack’s giggling at Eddie’s candidness seem a lot louder than he actually was.

“But… But we don’t…” Jeff began.

“Know what dangers lurk behind the door?” Eddie asked, staring at him pointedly. “No, I wouldn’t imagine you do because you didn’t let me finish.”

“That’s not fair!” The young Wheeler shouted, thrusting a hand towards Jack. “He cut you off, not us!”

Eddie hummed softly in agreement, tilting his head and leaning over slightly to look down at Jack who turned to look up at him at the same time. Eddie frowned at the kid for a second, his lips quirking into a smile as he winked at him once more.

“You did interrupt.” Eddie agreed with a sigh. “So what do you think, my little assistant DM?” He asked, bouncing his thigh to drive home that he meant Jack.. “Do you think Mike should get another turn at opening the door?” He asked, raising his brows and waiting for him to reply.

Jack stared at him with awe-filled eyes, mouth falling open as he gasped in excitement. Twisting abruptly away from Eddie and making strong eye contact with Mike as he threw his hands up and shouted:

“Dead!”

“Atta’ boy.” Eddie laughed, nodding to himself as he grinned for real this time. Pushing himself up onto his feet and holding Jack around the middle. The toddler screamed in glee as Eddie held him parallel to the table. Describing Mike’s character piece and instructing the kid to remove it from the table however he saw fit.

A little hand swiped against the plastic, the character flying across the room as the calculator had and pinging off the glass of the dining room window as Eddie laughed maniacally and Mike screeched about following the rules.

“There are no rules here anymore Wheeler.” Eddie laughed, voice boarding on unhinged as he flopped back down into his chair and replaced Jack on his knee. “The first rule of my campaigns is to respect the DM.” He said snarkily, sitting back against the chair like an entitled King and smirking as the group rolled their eyes in his direction. “Which all of you, break consistently.” He added, tone commanding. “So let’s try it your way then.” He added. “Rules are out the window. Like Mike’s Paladin.” He smiled sarcastically, a chuckle rounding the table at the joke as Eddie set dark eyes on Dustin next. The kid snapped his mouth shut in an instant and tried to pretend as though he hadn’t been snickering.

“Roll.”

John pulled the squeaking handbrake on in his work truck and removed the keys from the ignition. Opening the door he jumped from the step and slammed it behind him in one swift motion. Sighing to himself as he turned towards the road that divided his and Karmen’s houses.

His errand had taken a little more than two hours. Which wasn’t too bad. But he had promised Karmen an hour. So he knew she would have something to say about being right.

He twirled his keys around his finger, looking up at the feel of moisture falling from the sky and frowning at the clouds as he realized it was spitting. He sighed again, placing his keys in his back jeans pocket and pulling his jacket closer to himself. He rested his gaze in front of him again, checking for traffic as he reached the sidewalk.

He crossed the road, starting to walk across the grass towards the front steps when movement caught his eyes from the driveway. He turned to look for the source, tilting his head in confusion as he spied Karmen sitting in the driver's seat of her car with her head in her hands.

He stopped walking, watching her for a second before his gaze was pulled towards the house. A chorus of frenzied yelling and maniacal laughter made him raise his brows as he watched what he could see of The Hellfire Club around the table through the dining room window.

Eddie was on his feet, pointing at one of them with a deranged expression only egged on by Jack on his shoulders. Fistfuls of wild curls holding him in place as he moved his own little mouth in tune with Eddie’s. Both of them yelled at the table as the guys seemed to shout back, protesting something and quickly losing a battle they weren’t prepared for.

John blinked at the scene in front of him. Taking a step towards the house and changing his mind as he turned back to Karmen. Veering off the grass and onto the path towards the car.

He knocked against the glass, startling her and making her jump as she looked up at him with anger in her eyes and jerked her head towards the passenger seat.

He nodded, rounding the car and opening the door, intending to slip into the seat out of the rain and grumbling as he instead used moist hands to gently remove her paperwork from his path, placing it on the dash as he sat inside before closing the door with a thud and turning to her with pursed lips and expectant eyes.

“Sounds like everyone is having fun.” He said carefully after a moment of silence. Her own worn out eyes eating him alive as she stared at him with a wry expression.

“Mm.” She hummed, turning back to the paper in her lap. “They’re loud.” She explained simply, knowing he didn’t actually ask but also that the next question out of his mouth would be why.

She ignored the way she could feel his eyes boring into her cheek as he waited for her to say more.

“I’ll pay you back, you know?” John said softly when he realized she really wasn’t going to say anything else.

“I do the payroll, you will definitely be paying me for this.” She said with a laugh, leaning towards the pile of papers he had stacked on the dash and flicking fingers through them as she searched for something.

“Yes.” He chuckled, watching as she began to lose her grip on the paper and pushing them closer to her. “But I meant all the babysitting.” He clarified, sitting back in the chair and studying the hands in his lap as he saw her head whip around in his peripherals.

He could feel her staring as he had been at her. Not daring to look up until he saw her look away and knew she was sitting back in her own seat, staring out of the windscreen as the small droplets of water raced one another down the glass to the bonnet.

“Eddie will be a good Dad.” He said as he lifted his head, turning to look at her and watching as she scrunched her nose at his words, eyes watering as they flicked towards him and they finally caught each.

“I told you not to lie to me again.” She whispered, shaking her head as he scoffed at her.

“You don’t think he will be a good Dad?” He asked incredulously as she leaned closer and slapped her hand against his arm.

“Of course I do!” She snapped playfully. “He will be a wonderful Dad.” She added angrily. “Don’t lie to me that you think he will be a good one.” She explained, making him balk.

“I’m not!” He justified, shrugging at her with an open mouth as she shook her head disappointedly. “He will be a good Dad!” He said again, damn near shouting it.

“Okay John.” She said sarcastically, making a face as she imitated his accent. “Father of the Year.” She said with a dragged out Southern drawl. Swinging her forearm wildly as if she was a caricature of a redneck in a cartoon.

“Fuck you.” John laughed, pointing a finger at her face before lowering it to point at her belly. “Not you.” He clarified. “Just you.” He nodded, raising it back up to point at Karmen again as she tried to slap it away with a handful of papers and they both laughed at the absurdity of her fanning him with them in an effort to get him to move.

“Seriously though.” She said as she lowered the papers to her lap. “I appreciate it.” She said softly as John smiled at her earnestly. “But I will never let you watch my child.” She added, grimacing as the words came out and opening her door before he could react. Slipping from the car and stopping outside the window to point down at the papers she’d left on her seat on the way out.

“They need to be done by the morning.” She said, raising her voice through the glass as John stared up at her in horror. The click of the doors locking made him swivel in his seat as he pulled at the handle and nothing happened.

He turned back, mouth falling open as he watched Karmen already ascending the front steps hastily to get herself out of the rain. Her keys jingling in her hand as she went.

Click

John’s eyes snapped open at the sound, sitting up abruptly and knocking the makeshift blanket of paperwork from his body as he turned to look out the window, ready to yell at Karmen for locking him in but instead making strong eye contact with Eddie who smiled at him amusedly.

“She forgot about me, didn’t she?” John asked flatly as Eddie took a step back so he could open the door and let himself out.

“No comment.” Eddie replied, as the other man shook his head. Leaning back into the car and gathering his work before stepping out of the way of the door and watching as Eddie closed it and relocked it with a set of keys that were definitely not his. A fluffy blue heart dangled from them as he jiggled them in lock and clicked it over.

“I could have suffocated in there.” John griped.

“Pfft.” Eddie scoffed as he stepped back again, leaning against his own car as he made room for John to move past him. “You would have been fine until morning.”

“Speaking of morning.” John grumbled. “What time is it?” He asked, taking in the fact that it was dark along with Eddie’s half dressed state.

No shirt, boxer shorts and an open robe that showed off the scars down his chest and neck. A pair of pink slippers that were several sizes too small just barely protecting his feet from the wet ground.

“Like… Ten?” Eddie guessed, bringing his hand up to look at his watch and sighing as he remembered he had taken it off to shower after Jack fell asleep and never actually made it to the shower before Karmen had ambushed him with thanks for being such a good babysitter.

He smiled to himself at the memory as John gaped in response.

“What?” He exclaimed. “Ten?” He asked. “Where’s Jack?”

“Asleep in our bed.” Eddie answered quickly. “Which is why I was asleep on the couch.” He explained, as if John had that information already. “Until Kam scared the shit out of me by shaking me awake and telling me you were stuck in there and I had to let you out because you’d kill her.”

“I hate you both.” John replied with a nod. Eddie nodded back in understanding as the other man huffed in exasperation “But thanks for the nap.” He added, holding up the stack of papers and handing them to Eddie with a smile. “Tell Kam these need to be done by the morning.”

“Will do.” Eddie replied, oblivious to what he had just agreed to. John sniggered to himself and started on the short journey back to his own home. “Tell her to bring Jack over when she drops off the paperwork.” He added over his shoulder, watching as Eddie gave him a sarcastic salute before heading back towards the steps and inside the house.

He stared at the paperwork for a long minute. Shaking his head as he realized it had been written on quite a bit and he flicked through it briefly to see that John had actually completed it for her.

He sniffed out a laugh. Sitting it on the counter as he walked into the kitchen. Hanging up her keys on the fridge next to a small black and white picture dated one week earlier.

Eddie smiled at it. Pressing a kiss to the tips of his fingers before placing them gingerly on top of the sonogram.

“I hope you have as much fun playing DnD with me as Jack did.” He whispered to the baby in the picture. “But I don’t think the guys are gonna’ like that the Assistant DM slot is going to be permanently filled.” He chuckled, taking his hand back. “Eh, they still have six months to get used to the idea.” He said with a shrug.

He turned away, heading down the hall towards the bedroom to let Karmen know he had completed her side quest and was ready to go back to the main storyline now.

More Notes: Karmen did not intend to leave John in there for more than 10 minutes. Just FYI. But pregnancy brain is a bitch. 😂

I started writing this one 2 years ago just so I could use the title because I thought that was fun. It took a long ass time but it's finally here and I really hope you liked it.

Read the rest of the series here :)

This series is so personal to me, so it means the world to me when someone let’s me know they enjoy a work from this series. If you guys liked this please pleaseee consider letting me know via comment, reblog, message, anon ask etc.

Tags: @3ddi3-daydreamer @micheledawn1975 @munson-blurbs @wheels-of-despair @browneyes528 @stevemunsons

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sugar-grigri · 10 months ago

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I think I remember you making references to Fire Punch in a few analysis post so I assume you've read that one, but have you read Goodbye Eri, and if so do you have any particular thoughts you want to share on it? It might be my favorite, although it's hard to rank Fujimoto's works because there's something different I like about all of them.

Hi Yuta! or is it Fujimoto?

2022, Goodbye Eri is released and I'm in for a huge slap in the face! I've finally got the chance to talk about it, so thank you!

It's hard to come after the war after this one-shot has been the subject of so much analysis, interpretation and criticism. But I think it's a work that's deliberately designed to be a trap, and the first mistake would be to try absolutely hard to determine whether Goodbye Eri is true or false.

Trying to detect the true and the false is futile, not that it's really impossible, but arguments could be several pages long and the theories put forward would remain mere hypotheses because no explicit confirmation is given. Quite simply because this is not the aim of the work, nor a satisfactory way of reading it.

For example, when Yuta's father seems to be getting angry with Eri, we understand from Eri's "And Cut!!!" that it was all a set-up. So, as a good reader, we can only assume that what follows is pure reality. However, the father, now an actor, if he should play his line differently.

As another illustration, when Eri is close to death and Yuta are talking, there are a few hints that they might have a relationship, but this is denied by Yuta himself, in a discussion with Eri's friend.

The film plays with this to such an extent that all sorts of theories are possible. It could just as easily be interpreted as there being only two films (on Yuta's mother and then on Eri's death), two films but in different ways: one about Yuta's mother and a second film about Eri, as a vampire, with the end scene played by Yuta's father and by Eri before her death.

This explains why, even after Eri's death, Yuta continues to film because the film isn't actually finished yet, the editing being there to reverse the scenes played chronologically, to make it look as if Eri was still alive, and so on. ..

As you can see, it all makes sense, and our preference is purely personal because they all work. But I'm not going to play that game, because it only shows me one thing, and that's that the plot surrounding Eri is deliberately obscure.

I've seen a lot of people describe Goodbye Eri as a work about dealing with death - the way we want to remember those we've lost, etc... It's about mourning, symbolically saying goodbye, hence the title. Which is true! But it goes further than that.

Eri's plot is deliberately obscure because the right way to appropriate the work is not through her. She's the character we know least about. Physically alone, we learn that she wore glasses and braces. Mentally, she was more annoying than she seemed in the movie. Eri is a mirage in which we won't find answers, so we have to learn to say goodbye.

The only reliable information given in this OS is that everything is filmed by Yuta's phone. And in reality, you know Yuta better than Eri, so it's him you should turn to...

Hi Yuta!

Yuta is almost never shown in this OS, as he is always filming. And when he is shown accurately, it's when he's inspired by other films by watching them with Eri, in other words, he's continuing to work on his own film by watching others.

Yuta's first film began as a result of his mother's narcissistic desire, as he was celebrating his birthday, discovering his gift, a smartphone, all of which was directly taken over by his mother, who asked him to film her until she died.

By keeping only the good sides of his mother, ignoring all the abusive parts of her, Yuta does not follow his parent's wishes, he does it for himself, showing what he himself wants to retain from his childhood, his story, in order to move forward properly.

But as everything is filmed, it gives the impression that the videos have been passively lined up without any sorting, without any choice. Yuta takes his revenge because he refuses to film his mother until the day she dies, stopping before then, preferring an explosion to conclude his film. It's brutal because it's as if Yuta's tastes, his little touch of fantasy, are suddenly surfacing, while the rest of the film is just as personal, just as him. So when his film is mocked, it's a work so personal that Yuta wants to die.

It's not insignificant that it's Eri who intervenes, whose only certainty was that she loved not only the films but also Yuta's, simply because she saw not only Yuta's mother in this film but also him, whom she considered to be the best character. She wasn't revolted by the ending, because she was aware of Yuta's touch throughout the film. The same ambiguity then resurfaces, we don't know if Eri is in love with Yuta, she corrects him to say that it's these films, the two are so linked, that liking Yuta's films is tantamount to liking the teenager.

Yuta follows Eri's desire to produce a film that is above all personal to him, to the point that when Eri sees her last moments narrated by him, she sees Yuta more than herself, because she is seen through someone else's eyes.

For me, there aren't two or three films, but just one from start to finish. Because you see, we've said goodbye to Eri, we've got out of her tricky story to reflect on Yuta, but we still haven't stepped back enough. Because you know who made the film, and it's not Yuta, it's Fujimoto. So, third stage :

let's salute Fujimoto.

The film we've just seen in this OS deals with a number of overlapping themes, the way in which a loved one is portrayed, the relationship with others, death, creation, but above all, the extent to which a work is personal. Goodbye Eri is a pretext for Fujimoto to show us the extent to which even the cutting is the fruit of reflection, is already a message.

In this OS, all the boxes are in the video format of a smartphone, each moving, static shot depends on Yuta, just as each shot is in the third row, drawn by someone.

People make the mistake, like the first audience of Yuta's film about his mother, of relating to works as linear stories to be trusted, even if they film his mother every day, Yuta's editing is his way of counting a story, it is certainly not the truth in all its neutrality. It's only at the moment of the explosion, which expresses the most of Yuta's personality, that people get upset.

This offbeat, absurd explosion is something that Fujimoto punctuates in his works, yet they are both thought out and personal to him. But they are often mocked as a way of poking fun at his work. What Fujimoto is saying is that the work doesn't become brutally personal for the controversial, offbeat moments, just the way he depicts a scene from life is personal.

People believed this version of the author's mother, otherwise they wouldn't be outraged by this disgraceful way of portraying this nice woman at the end, so in itself, Yuta's film worked. But all this is just a pretext for Fujimoto to point out that he is the author of all his other works, CSM, Fire Punch, Look Back, Just Listen to the Song... They are just like another film made in response to the positive or negative reactions of the others.

Fujimoto likes to trace the common ground between these works, which respond to each other. Each one, placed side by side, is an attempt by Fujimoto to upset his audience a little more, a second or third try.

The mistake is to separate the author's touch from his work, just as we are tempted to focus more on Eri than Yuta. Just as Fujimoto reminds us through this OS, who writes, draws Goodbye Eri. The first part of CSM was turned upside down by the fact that Makima was a demon from the start, abusive to the point of being the antagonist.

A violent and abusive maternal relationship. The design of the mother is also a bit similar. Mentions of the breasts, something that also went down quite a bit and left its mark on a lot of readers because it was so out of sync. The emphasis on cats... A rejected boy. A work focused on female characters.

Goodbye Eri is a work in which Fujimoto makes fun of himself, his works and the things that bring them together. Yes, there will be an explosion if the author so decides. Yes, Eri can live again, be a vampire, if the author so decides, but what's to stop him making his characters die, and then bringing them back to life a few pages later?

The characters' plots are the authors' playgrounds, whether you like it or not. You can't detach works from their authors, or read works as unrelated things because they were written by the same person. Talking about death, life, mourning, love, with a touch of fantasy is what Fujimoto does in each of them.

So if you're lost, remember that what you're reading isn't in the title but in the author.

#goodbye eri #sayonara eri #fujimoto tatsuki #eri #yuta #makima #csm #chainsaw man #fire punch #look back #one shot #analysis #my thoughts #credit to Reddit for the last image @/blackfish171

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iridescentmirrorsgenshin · 7 months ago

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Alhaitham and Kaveh - not 'friends' but 'roommates'

(This is a reworked excerpt taken from my Haikaveh essay! If you're interested you can check it out here or as a pdf <3)

Due to Chinese game restrictions, explicit mentions of homosexuality or overt queer references have resulted in less implicit ways of conveying queer relationships or characters. Therefore, same-sex characters in romantic relationships are assigned the platonic status of “best friend” or “friends”.

As such, these restrictions can be used as guidelines in establishing queercoding within Genshin Impact. It is of note, however, that this rule does not mean that all characters who are canonically “friends” are in a romantic same-sex relationship. Differentiating between same-sex couples and platonic friends (who have all been assigned the label ‘friends’) can be done by identifying particular care undertaken to ‘style’ characters. This is done so by queercoding, as in, using taboos linked to queerness; references which point to romantic connotation; or omitting certain details which casts obscurity on the nature of their ‘friendship’.

Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship has been styled in this way, as although various titles have been given to their relationship status, there has been no definitive term supplied overall. Alhaitham tells the Traveller that the two are “roommates”, with Kaveh confirming this, although stating that they “used to be friend(s), but not anymore”.

Within Kaveh’s Character Stories, their history as “best friends” is a painful one of separation, which can be seen as akin to a break-up, and despite their lack of status as ‘friends’, the two share an intimate knowledge of the other that no other character is privy too.

Condensing their relationship down to ‘roommates’ is an oversimplification that the narrative challenges the player to question.

This is achieved through their rapport with each other, seen within Alhaitham purposefully goading Kaveh, something which he cannot be seen to do persistently with any other character, as well as Kaveh’s unique reactions to Alhaitham, which present a side to him unlike which can be observed in his interactions with others. Additionally, the two mention the other without them present, as Alhaitham mentions Kaveh unprompted twice within the Archon Quest and once within his Story Quest, and Kaveh is prone to discussing Alhaitham with those who are aware of them living together, as Collei observes: “Seems like you always include him in the conversation, even when he isn’t here…”

When the two confirm themselves to be roommates, this is immediately followed by Paimon asking Kaveh if they are friends, to which Kaveh does not give a definitive answer too. When Paimon asks Alhaitham the same question in the Archon Quest, Alhaitham evades the question, and turns it back on Paimon, who notes that “[she] doesn’t know. That’s why [she’s] asking,” to which Alhaitham then describes Kaveh as his roommate. Although, this still is an evasion of Paimon’s initial question, Alhaitham neither denies nor confirms their friendship status. The status of their relationship is constantly called into question, for the characters they interact with, and for the player.

This casts an ambiguity over their relationship which aligns with Chinese gaming regulations in regard to same-sex couples, which in turn, points to a certain ‘styling’ of relationship which differs from general platonic friendships within the game. Where both platonic friendships and same-sex relationships can only be openly dubbed as ‘friendship’, signifiers must be present in order to differentiate these platonic friendships from the non-platonic.

Obscurity of relationship status can be used to do so – where characters are not explicitly “friends”, but are evidently tied to each other in some way, more than their assigned platonic status. Here, Kaveh and Alhaitham are irrevocably connected beyond their “roommate” status, and although they are not currently described as “friends”, they used to be, “best friends” according to Kaveh’s Character Stories, which creates a gap for interpretation.

The player is encouraged to interpret the reason for the two’s parting of ways, along with the reason for their current rapport. Although Kaveh asserts that there is a mutual “disdain” between the two, Kaveh observably talks about Alhaitham enough for Tighnari to assert: “No dinner with Kaveh is complete without a few words about Alhaitham." Rather than out of disdain, it can be surmised that Kaveh talks about Alhaitham due to the fact that he cares, as he states that the reason he has so many troubles regarding his work is because he cares so much about it.

When paralleled with his troubles with Alhaitham, being that Alhaitham finds a way to “infuriate” him every time they talk, it can be inferred that Kaveh’s approach to dealing with his work is the same as to how he deals with Alhaitham.

If Kaveh’s assertation that the “disdain” between the two of them was true, then there is no basis for him to talk about Alhaitham as much as he does. This is due to his attitude in caring about something results in him verbally expounding the problem, the same behaviour he exhibits when dealing with Alhaitham. By his own reasoning, if Kaveh did not care about Alhaitham, he would not be so “infuriate[d]” by his words.

In turn, the player can see Alhaitham’s care of Kaveh manifest in his concern for Kaveh’s wellbeing within A Parade of Providence. In this sense, the rapport the two have currently which the narrative prompts the player to question can be explained. The two hold a mutual concern and care for the other, but due to elements in their past, they cannot address this, and thus it goes unspoken. The same can be said about the explicit status of their relationship, as no canon label applied to the two can truly explain their relationship, with ‘roommates’ being a clear oversimplification of their bond, and always followed up with the question of their friendship.

Alhaitham and Kaveh’s status as ‘friends’ is disrupted, not only due to the canon ending of their friendship in the past, but also in the current narrative of the game due to this refused label. Alhaitham and Kaveh do not adhere to the status of ‘friends’, either evading it (Alhaitham) or outright denying it (Kaveh), however, their bond remains central to each of their respective narratives, so much so that their differing viewpoints are integral to the other.

Alhaitham and Kaveh have been designed so that they are integral to each other, and the obscurity of their relationship acts as a signifier that their bond is not of a typical platonic friendship.

In Chinese gaming restrictions regulating platonic bonds and romantic bonds between same-sex characters as strictly ‘friendship’, Genshin Impact can be seen to subvert this in order to queercode. By creating an obscure bond between a same-sex relationship, a bond which the game constantly calls into question, a silence has been generated as to what the status of the relationship really is. The depth to Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship and the unspoken nature of it alludes to the queer taboo, in that its inability to be definitively labelled generates an otherness than that of an easily understood platonic bond.

#haikaveh #kavetham #alhaitham #kaveh #haikaveh meta #genshin meta #how have i just properly clocked that the library scene and kaveh saying the thing about caring are in the SAME hangout ending #i feel like im chewing on sawdust #i am wringing out every instance of heavy traces of homosexuality in the writing of these two #they make me crazy insane #they are deliberately avoiding labels #theyre not friends or roommates theyre a secret third thing #homosexual - but you didnt hear this from me!!#also im gonna be posting about a parade of providence at some point #because it owns my being #its one of my fav parts from the essay hehehe

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tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons · 7 months ago

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Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

#queued post #the scrambled timeline #I tinkered around with the ordering of these entries so much that I guess this is a scrambled post for the scrambled timeline #credit to hieronymous-botch for the Alex Hirsch's Sunnydale idea #credit to Lorelei for the Orson Scott Card's Steel Gear idea

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wraithdance · 2 months ago

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The TF 141 Compatibility Love Report

For: @buttdumplin

Disclaimer:

This is based on my personal opinion and interpretation of you and the character. the user makes no claims to be a real doctor or any medical professional. Unfortunately for you I am but a figment of your imagination so you can't sue me. *scary ghost noises* whoooooo

The Doc says your TF 141 Perfect Match is…

Captain John Price!

Don't act surprised my friend, it's time to face the music!

Romance: You like em big. You like em tall. You like em loyal. You damn sure like em a lil bossy with a firm grip and a propensity to calling you some combination of sweet boy and love :)

You and John are the most compatible to me by a landslide. You're cut from the same cloth, both self assured about the things that matter to you and loyal to a fault. The difference is one of you has a raging size kink and I'm not looking at Price. The mountain also known as Captain would be the partner who stands firm at your side with a guiding hand. There would be no greater- or worthwhile -challenge for him than staying in your good graces. He's naturally a giver and would make your comfort a priority for him. He's also not afraid to do the heavy lifting and will not hesitate to bust a jaw for you as long as you're there to kiss his knuckles after.

John and you would not be without your ups and downs. You're both naturally headstrong and when you do find yourself on opposite sides of an argument it's one for the books. He'd be frustrated by your logic and sense of justice and you by his bull in the china shop technique to getting the job done. But it's okay, because like a tether the string of fate would lead you right back where you started. Reading books under a nice tree, domestic tasks made intimate by cracking teasing jokes about his bad back, drinks on the patio pointing out the stars. A once in a lifetime love affair.

Sex: Let's circle back to that size kink shall we. Price would love, that you love his height and the broadness of his shoulders. He'd also love that you love when he can't wait to bully you into that position where he can slide righttttttt there. If there's one thing that you both would be consistently on the same page about it's fucking. You two would be like teammates on the same field, quickly going over the game plan and executing with perfection. I think he'd like it if you bossed him around a lil bit in bed. he'd certainly take it until you've gotten your fill before he says 'my turn' and flips your world on it's axis. His favorite though would be the really lazy days where you're both just looking for connection, half fucking and laughing about your day and kissing each other tenderly :')

Possible points of Contention:

He doesn't understand the fun in DnD

Hides his hurt behind gruff one liners

Beard shed like a goddamn poodle

Your Poly Pairing (haha) is….

PriceRudy or (Pricegaz)- What? A weird obscure poly pairing?? Hear me out, I think you'd work for the awkward but efficient Sergeant Major of Los Vaqueros! He's a boy scout who needs a lil bit of teasing and in return you get to see him flustered and heart eyed over you. I can also see Gaz in a poly pairing with you and Price for similar reasons that we've already extensively yapped about lol. Either Gaz or Rudy's attentive and self assured nature would please you and they would flow well with Price's seasoned methodology to keep the love going. I think having the shared cultural connection with Rudy would be a safe space for you in this poly pairing (and being able to gang up on Price would be an added plus.)

#you can come fight me when you wake up and read this lmao #the doc is in

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drunkenskunk · 7 months ago

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Did you name your mech after an old Texas soda that you can only find in Texas and like two other states near it????

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Red_(soft_drink)

As it happens: no! There are two reasons for the name.

Reason 1: Watsonian

The "official" name (or at least as much as anyone remembers) is R4GE MACHINE, because the serial number starts with R4, and it is a GMS Everest. However, "Big Red" is what everyone calls the mech, because it is big and chunky for a size 1, and it is covered in a billion different shades of red paint. The reason it's so big and chunky is because it used to be a Sagarmatha when it was built midway through the Hercynian Crisis, and, due to necessity, had to be downgraded to a smaller chassis after the Union Civil War.

(I need to update these sprites. I never got around to coloring them properly, except for the one red pixel for the optics, and I still need to add the Hunchback boombox on the right shoulder that houses the Leviathan heavy assault cannon.)

There is also a COMP/CON unit within the mech that calls itself RED. It's been online for the entire length of the mechs existence, and has embedded itself so thoroughly in the system hardware that it is impossible to get rid of it, no matter how many parts are replaced. The "personality" of this COMP/CON can be summarized "What if BT-7274, but he just kept losing pilots after Lastimosa?"

<<PROTOCOL 3: PROTECT THE PILOT>>

It is currently unknown - both in universe and otherwise - if there is any genuine paracausal tech hidden somewhere in the guts of Big Red, and that's why the COMP/CON is Like That... or maybe this is just what happens to what should be a non-sapient computer program when you keep it online for close to 500 years.

Reason 2: Doylist

Red is an old character of mine that I adapted into a mech for this Lancer game. Sort of. The mech has become something significantly different than the original character, because the reason for the COMP/CON's aggression is a version of robot PTSD: he has lost so many pilots over the years, and is determined not to lose another.

The original Red, however, is... well, take a look.

Red - at least, the original iteration of the character - was something I made when I was a very angry teenager. And I think it shows.

Red is like if the chaos god Khorne and the eldar's Kaela Mensha Kaine from Warhammer hatefucked and had an equally hateful baby. Red is a creature of unfiltered aggression. It is destructive rage manifest. It hates everything and everyone, and will not be satisfied until everything it hates is gone. Which is everything. The is no reason or justification or meaning for this hatred, and nothing to explain why it butchers and kills and destroys and murders its way across the stars; it simply IS.

And it cannot be contained.

That wedge-shaped hunk of metal on its head is not armor: it is all that remains of the last prison built in a desperate effort to stop its rampage. Red could get rid of the hunk of metal obscuring its vision at any time, but deliberately chooses to keep it in place as a cruel mockery of any and all who stand against it.

Two different starting points, two radically different stories, two different "individuals," but still technically the same character. At least, as far as I'm concerned.

I do this kind of thing all the time. Or... y'know, I did, back when my hands worked regularly. I make a character, turn them into a base template "starting point," and then slowly rework them into a new iteration, to fit whatever purpose I need to suit whatever setting I put them in.

So no, Big Red is not named after a soda lol

#drunk skunk answers #Lancer #Lancer RPG #In Golden Flame #vex wasn't lying that one sure is plumed in golden flame #GMS Everest #watsonian vs doylist

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buddiesmutslut · 3 months ago

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Okay, so I want Buddie to get together before Chris comes home, right? So, they get Chris, spend a few days getting everyone settled back into the swing of things, and then either 1) they don't get a chance to tell him, or 2) they do, and it doesn't go great (which I feel like is something that's going to happen regardless, I need Christopher to be an angsty teen with abandonment issues in 4k)

BUT

Before they can sit down again and figure everything out, they get a call for another wildfire or a crossover or whatever that requires them to leave town for a little bit.

Obviously, Eddie can't go, because he just got Christopher back home and he really doesn't want to leave him again, even temporarily, but Buck has to go because people need help.

Cue Buck & Eddie spending time apart for the first time since they got together, sleeping in different beds hundreds of miles away from the other, and both spiraling a little bit. Eddie because he's worried that Buck is finally getting some time away from him and the mess that he was in Chris' absence and is worried that he doesn't want to keep wading through Eddie's problems,

And Buck because Chris is back now, and what if Eddie doesn't need him anymore? What if he was just a stand-in or a placeholder for Chris, but now his son is back and Eddie is on his own two feet again and what if he doesn't need Buck anymore, and if he doesn't need him, then why would he keep him around?

Extra points if telling Chris doesn't go well so they're trying to figure that out and cell service is spotty and they don't know what the other is thinking because they're so far away and if they were closer, they would just be together and solve the problem, but they're not so they're relying on delayed messages and downed phone lines and a game of phone tag.

And then, obviously, Buck gets home, and they realize they were spiraling over nothing because they've been building a life together for far longer than the few months they've been kissing, and Buck sits and talks with Christopher, and everything is fine.

AND THEN I NEED TIM TO LEAVE THEIR RELATIONSHIP ALONE. No breakups like in a lot of other main couples (Chenford, Booth & Brennan, I'm looking at you guys.) no! None of that! They've suffered enough, give them plot lines without breaking them up.

Give them better arcs with their parents, BRING US EDDIE'S GODDAMN SISTERS and the drama I K N O W is hiding there. Give us Buck focusing on his career (and also maybe slip in an official ADHD diagnosis, what, who said that?) Give us them talking about raising another kid, kill off an obscure family member and a stroll down memory lane (I absolutely do not mean Isabel Diaz, you keep your filthy paws OFF Eddie's abuela, bitches. I love her so so so so much lol).

Give them character arcs that have nothing to do with them possibly breaking up. They deserve storyline's that are more than just about their love interest. Literally, Buck's coming out wasn't even about him, it was all about Tommy and I'm so sick of it. Buck and Eddie are interesting characters! They are M A I N characters, give them better storylines. (Esp Eddie bc genuinely, wtf have you all done to my boy??)

#911 abc #eddie diaz #buddie #evan buckley #buck x eddie #I want all the “what if they breakup?” drama at the very beginning of the relationship and then I N E V E R want to hear a whisper of it #ever ever ever again #stop making their arcs about other people and let it be about THEM #Don't mind me just yapping #will i ever be normal about two fictional characters? Probably not #I've been thinking about this all morning

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caliosi · 3 months ago

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I have- a lot of feelings about color symbolism in character design, especially how it interacts with other characters in that media.

So anyway, here are my thoughts in relation to two pieces of obscure media that I can’t stop thinking about, The Glass Scientists and Ghost Trick. Major spoilers for Ghost Trick! This game has a fantastic story with a really good twist so I recommend if you have any interest in it at all, go check it out before you read this!

So, in TGS Jekyll has a very obvious red motif and Hyde a green one

These are two complimentary colors, which in and of themselves have some fun ideas to discuss. Complementary colors are two complete opposites on the color wheel. But as the name suggests, these two colors also go really well together. To make something beautiful a good choice would be to have both these colors. But you also can’t have equal amounts of both with the same vibrancy or shade throughout the whole thing or there will be no harmony. These two will always go together like this, opposites but work together to make the full depth and beauty that a person has to be a person. To avoid making things messy, you choose moments when green gets to be the main color and red gets to shine through to make each other pop and the other way around.

There is also something to be said about the fact that Jekyll is red and Hyde is green. Red most commonly is associated with things like anger, hatred or just evil and green is usually considered good. Now this isn’t always the case though, there are times green is associated with things like poison and red is associated with passion. The only thing that I am stuck on is the descriptor of passionate more suites Hyde’s public persona. If anyone has any ideas as to why Jekyll is represented by red I would love to hear it.

Now in Ghost Trick (spoilers) the two characters I am going to talk about is Cabanela and Yomiel. These two have the same color palette for their clothing, red white and black, the only difference is with Yomiel his main color is red with a white accent and Cabenela’s main color is white with an accent of red.

It is already pointed out in the game that Cabanela’s white coat represents his ‘spotless record’ or the fact that he does good, but he always has that scarf weighting down on his neck, the time he was responsible for Yomiel’s death. With Yomiel he is covered in the red, all the bad things he has done, but there is a sliver of white, he wants to be a good person that is his humanity. They are opposites but at the same time, they are the exact same. Now, this may be a real stretch but... at the very end of the game, when we see Yomiel in prison he has on a pink frock. The red and white combined. He is still going to forever have that red on him, he always did what he did, but he lightened it, he will be better and he, unlike Cabanela who separates the bad thing he did from his good, has excepted that part of himself into who he is and he won’t run away from it.

Anyway, go read The Glass Scientists and play Ghost Trick (or at least watch a play through) if you haven’t! They are both wonderful pieces of media about humanity and identity and highly recommend them especially if you like to over analyze things!

#tgs jekyll #tgs hyde #tgs #the glass scientists #ghost trick yomiel #ghost trick spoilers #ghost trick #ghost trick cabanela #overanalyzing #literature #thoughts #ramblings #i have an obsession #lots of feelings

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batrogers · 9 months ago

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Civilized Or Not

So there’s some common Zelda fanon I wanna talk about, relating to civilization tropes I think some of y’all haven’t really thought about in detail before, and that’s Hyrule (Zelda 1 &2 Link), Wild (BOTW mostly), and Ravio (LbW).

I’m using the Linked Universe names, because that’s where most of it comes up, because these things happen most often where you can contrast the boys with each other. This is often done, quick and dirty, by people assigning “roles” to each without much thought. Ravio’s unfortunately tends to be extremely pervasive outside LU spaces, too.

But, in brief, there is a trend for people to craft these characters in a framework of innocent vs savagery vs trickery that can have some really unfortunate implications I’m not sure many are even aware of. Hopefully I can explain better where these ideas come from, why they’re so easy and appealing, and why we should try to avoid repeating them for more than just the sake of “easy” but also to stop repeating some really nasty historical tropes.

I would start from what’s probably the simplest one to address: the tendency towards a “feral” personification of Wild. This tends to come from two places: Wild’s amnesia, and the collapse of society around him and his lost place in it.

Now, brain damage is complicated. You can lose a range of things to any given injury because of the way information is encoded differently and in different places. You can lose memory and/or skills and/or coordination and/or balance, etc, because it all depends on what got damaged. But in-game a lot of stuff suggests that Link retains things like speech, reading/writing, coordination, and martial skills. None of the people who knew Link prior to his injury suggest he seems changed in any way not attributed to stress and anxiety...

And, more importantly, real people suffer memory loss just like that in the real world. Treating him like he’s become “feral” due to memory loss is cruel to actual people living with brain damage today, and if you go there you should have a good reason for it.

Social collapse is a wide-spread theme in basically every Zelda game. The threat that the Big Bad poses is almost always the destruction of society as it exists: Malladus literally vanishes the infrastructure of New Hyrule in Spirit Tracks; the Twilight turns people into spirits living lives they don’t realize are questionably real in Twilight Princess; Veran freezes the passage of time to force people to work forever in Oracle of Ages. King Daphnes and Ganondorf under the sea vie over the fate of the world above in Wind Waker: keep what’s been made, or start all over again?

In modern culture, people tell a lot of stories about the fragility of civilization and what happens in its absence. You get the range from Lord of the Flies, in which children wrecked on an island attempt (and fail) to recreate civilization on their own, Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” in which Mowgli is treated as reckless and innocent, and a much more obscure piece from the 18th century “Paul et Virginie” (and likely many more I don’t know offhand.) Essentially all of them play with the question of how do people become civilized, and what happens when they do? In Lord of the Flies, the children were civilized and failed to maintain it; in the Jungle Book, the boy wasn’t civilized and innocently interacts with it. In Paul et Virginie, the children were (relatively) uncivilized on the (French colonized) Mauritius, raised by their mothers but when the girl was sent away, she becomes civilized and dies tragically to preserve it.

The two Links most removed from civilization are Hyrule and Wild. Wild “lost” civilization, losing both his memories of it and the structure of it. Making him feral, without manners, and without a place to belong is that kind of Lord of the Flies savagery mixed with Mowgli’s innocent playfulness: there isn’t a structure to adhere to, so he’s a savage. Whereas Hyrule is more like the Paul eg Virginie side: innocent of civilization, he remains pure and sweet and kind, unable to conceive of big concepts like evil or money or so on. Neither position permits them to interact with the civilization that is right there in front of them! Wild can buy a house; he has people who know and care for him. He has social connections and social rights. The world exists, but the fandom does not seem to want him to interact with it in favour of remaining “wild.” In Zelda 2 – a game explicitly set within a decade of Zelda 1 – there are whole towns with trade and a castle and massive structures with on-going life in them... but very few fans seem to ever reach into that story or relate it back to the first. Hyrule, the character, does not exist within Hyrule, the country.

Strangely, Wind Waker does not fall prey to this, I think because the structures are presented as fait accompli: Link wakes up with his grandmother and his sister, he has a defined home, and a society in which you spend the entire game forced to engage with. Zelda 1 & 2 were not sophisticated enough to waste resources on going as in depth in social terms (although such interactions absolutely exist in Zelda 2!) and BOTW leaves such interactions as optional: you can survive the game with minimal social contact... but it’s a choice to play with it that way, not the default. The ways in which this edges onto the noble savage trope, in which “uncivilized” tribes are either innocent or brutish (rather than complex social systems in their own right) is fairly obvious.

There is one other character in Zelda who gets treated to the question of whether he is an innocent, free of civilization and all its rigour... or something else. Ravio, coming from the devastated world of Lorule, can often wind up slotted into the scared, innocent child trope and unfortunately that’s the better position people frequently take. The worse one evokes the Merchant of Venice: the deceitful, Jewish merchant who values money over people’s lives.

Lorule (and Nintedo’s approach towards their humanoid Zelda villains in general) is near-eastern-coded in many ways, down to the fact that Yuga’s outfit is the spitting image of Ottoman dress. Yuga being a depraved bisexual (a common historical trope about Muslim men towards Christian men and boys), and Hilda being deceitful and conspiring against everyone she was once allied to are a backdrop to the ways in which Ravio is a greedy coward. He’s not an evil character in the game; the mechanic of penalizing death without being too severe is interesting and works well! But that doesn’t take away the stereotype, just like it’s not okay Nabooru is pretty explicitly predatory towards child Link in Ocarina of Time, too.

Arab and Jewish stereotypes often converge, because both people's originate from the same region, and both are hostile "Others" to Christian Europe and Nintendo doesn’t have a great track record of their near-Eastern coding in Zelda. It crosses the whole gamut from harem and amazon tropes with the Gerudo to breath-takingly anti-semitic or anti-black (Ganondorf being green, eg. non-human, in various incarnations), all packaged neatly in the ideal of medieval fantasy Europe. The scale would be impressive if it wasn’t so damn awful, but we can at least stop repeating it in our fanworks.

Wild doesn’t have to be feral to be a playful little shit; Hyrule doesn’t have to be pure and innocent to be kind. Ravio doesn’t need to be innocent or scheming, and he shouldn’t place money over Link’s well-being (If you chose to respawn at home, he is consistently only ever concerned for Link! Once you buy the items outright, he promises he'll still be there to take care of you.)

Do better. It’s more interesting that way, and I want to see that variety grow!

[If any of y'all would like me to dig up better sources on any point, I can do so but I didn't want to bog this post down further. I have largely left the anti-arab stuff alone because it's not the biggest issue with Ravio's fanon presence, which is the focus here.]

#Zelda Meta #Linked Universe #Ravio #LU Wild #LU Hyrule #antisemitism in media #noble savage tropes #bad tropes #Unfortunate implications #LOZ meta #LU meta #Long post #like 1200 words #I'm having a week okay #brain damage #mental illness

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