#planescape spoilers

[hellebore-petall]

There's nothing like joining a bocce ball party hosted by a god of death!

[yellow-yarrow]

Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium parallels

[paragonrobits]

thinking about Dak'kon in Planescape Torment (initially because Lae'zel's popularity in Baldur's Gate 3 has me thinking about how the contrast between her and Dak'kon is a pretty good description of how thier respective peoples have diverged and also why they hate each other so much) and specifically his statline in how that nicely corrosponds to his own personal conflicts

Dak'kon is a zerth, a sort of warrior monk that practices martial skill and magical ability and serve as guardians of the githzerai cities, and due to a partially manufactured crisis of faith, he no longer truly has certainty in anything; not in the teachings of his faith, and not in himself. This is reflected in him being the only multi-class character in the game in a traditional sense; he is a fighter/mage, leveling up one after the other.

Dak'kon's stat layout is, after he is fully upgraded: Strength 18, Dexterity 18, Constituion 18, Intelligence 13, Wisdom 13, and Charisma 13. On the one hand he has high stats across the board; mechanically, he's both a capable spell-slinger that can act in support or as a combat caster, and he's a frontline tank. In what is most likely intended to be the canon-ish playthrough, he is the ONLY front-line damage dealer in a traditional sense. He can hit like a truck, once you add him to your party he is likely to be your main damage dealer, and he's just very strong across the board. This is an excellent stat line... for a fighter.

But he is also a mage, and for this, his intelligence isn't AWFUL (in fact, he's significantly more intelligent than an ordinary person would be, which is also reflected in interactions) but its not as high as would be ideal for a more specialized mage. His intelligence is significantly lower than it should be for anyone that is taking any kind of levels in wizard (and Torment's mage class is very much a wizard); his spell slots are notably less numerous, and he's most likely to be a fighter with some casting capability.

This reflects his in-game story. Dak'kon's crisis of faith was exacerbated by a holy writ of sorts that takes the form of a complex puzzle, and one of the accounts is of how Zerthimon, the prophet revered by Dak'kon's people, deceived his illithid masters by pretending to submit to them. Dak'kon has his doubts because another such teaching concerns a traitor, and then what he assumes to be the final teaching is of Zerthimon's conflict with Gith, founder-queen of the githyanki, when their peoples split. Dak'kon has come to fear that Zerthimon gave in and became a slave to their illithid captors, which was why he divided their people at the eve of victory, and if you ask him about this, he gives one of the VERY FEW impassioned and furious speeches he makes in the game, when normally he is very calm and detached.

If you have a high intelligence and wisdom scores (significantly higher than Dak'kon's, in fact) you can puzzle out more combinations to the teachings and unlock further ones Dak'kon had not found; these provide him an answer to his crisis of faith and ease his soul; Zerthimon did not give in to the illithids, but he recognized that should his people follow the path of war and conquer all that might threaten them, they would lose who they are. But the mechanical bit is that Dak'kons stats are too low to do so; he has no idea these teachings exist at all.

Furthermore, to recruit Dak'kon at all, you must speak to him on philosophy; its not difficult to have a fairly high Wisdom and Intelligent stat combination to pass this without much trouble, and this further indicates how his statline is a bit sub-par for someone in his line of work. He expresses some profound philosophical attitudes and says them well, but he's hard pressed to defend them when you poke holes in them, and he just gloomily concedes. Part of this is that, again, he IS having a crisis of faith and he has difficulty reconciling these problems to other people.

[tarisbackyard]

I hate 4e/5e tieflings so much.

The whole point is that they are supossed to look human with minor changes. Most of them are supossed to be able to pass as regular humans even.

BG3 really hammers home why the changes don't work, with Wyll and Karlach.

The player being able to tell Wyll that "look at her, that's not a devil!" Meanwhile she looks exactly like a devil, minus the wings. Then Wyll gets turned into a devil proper and all that changes is that he gets a pair of goofy af looking horns and some minor ridges on his skin in a few places.

Meanwhile Mizora and Raphael are just half-devils, and yet Wyll, who looks more human than either of them, is meant to be a full devil?

What even is the point.

[appendingfic]

The absolute hubris of thinking you could manipulate mind flayers to help YOU take over the known universe when it took generations of counter-insurgency to defeat the mind-flayer empire the FIRST time around

[decepti-thots]

here is an ask that is a free excuse to talk about any disco elysium prowldome thoughts you have because i am FASCINATED by it in the abstract but having a hard time nailing it down

so your original tags on the post this relates to specified that CD is Kim (and therefore, Prowl is Harry) and that is what actually made me really interested. because not making the self-destructive amnesiac character CD (who in canon is... that in a different way) was SO interesting to me. i will cut this both for potential DE spoilers and also so people can choose whether or not to read my overlong ramblings. lmao.

so the thing about DE as a text is that it's doing a really specific thing gameplay wise, derived from the biggest inspiration it has mechanically, which is the game Planescape Torment. specifically it is doing this thing where the idea of the amnesiac protagonist as a 'clean slate' is troubled by constant catastrophic interaction with NPCs that knew your player character before they lost their memory, so while you as the player are roleplaying as them as vessels to project yourself onto because of their diagetic memory loss, you are constantly having that fantasy of 'starting over fresh' and total control over them as an agent undermined by the reality that other people remember them, and their influence on this fictional world pre-dates your own.

i think that's SUCH a fascinating lens through which to look at what Prowl does as a character; his constant attempts at- and more to the point failure at- reinvention, because the thing that constantly gets in his way is always... himself. his own past actions catching up to him and his inability to handle that. right? so he's an incredibly interesting kind of archetype to put into this story just because the thing that always undermines him is his inability to get away from his impact on other people. he can change how he feels or who he is, but he can't change what he's done. this is a really great character to put into a narrative role like Harry in DE.

the thing is that Chromedome is not Kim, because the entire point of Kim is to give you someone to make that new first impression on. right? Kim is the character from out of town who knows of you by reputation but has no pre-existing relationship to you as an actual person. who you decide to play Harry as in the moment becomes who Kim knows you to be.

if Chromedome is anyone, surely he's. you know. Harry's ex he keeps alienating by calling her and freaking her out begging her to come back because he thinks they're inevitable and he refuses to tolerate life without her. he's Dora, at least very loosely. (well. he could be Jean, i guess. but like. I do not give a fuck about Jean. sorry.)

so i was thinking this over and like... a DE version of these two where the twist is that you think Chromedome is Kim and this is how these two meet on a case and become (professional) partners, and in reality he's been lying since realising that Prowl has no memory and he is, in fact, the ex that Prowl's limbic system keeps dropping hints he's really fucked up over (and who he has lingering repressed guilt over the knowledge he did in some way fuck over)... i think that's how i see this working tbh. it's fascinating to imagine how Chromedome would like. respond to that. and what his motivations are- both what they start off as and where they end up depending on how things go, and what an amnesiac Prowl decides to do and how he chooses to conduct himself.

there are a lot of things that i think are completely inextricable from DE even in the context of vague wonderings about silly hypothetical fandom AUs. first off, DE is about politics, and the kind of person Harry becomes in the face of his amnesia is tied extremely closely to that. fandom tends to gloss over the fact that a ton of Prowl's negative development in exRiD specifically is also linked to that comic making some points about politics, i feel; it's not that they're subtle or anything lmao, fandom just tends to focus on characters in a very individualist sense that doesn't always line up with what that comic is using them for. Prowl is someone who refuses to relinquish wartime power (and the abuses thereof) in the aftermath of a (from his perspective, still ongoing) conflict. and he is the guy, in DE, who would have been intellectually sympathetic towards the revolution, but he'd also have been working to put it down. (also, this is clearly different from Harry, who grew up in the aftermath of its failure, the generation dealing with an after that was traumatic.) and so much of Prowl's moves towards that tight grip on authoritarian power in exRiD comes from a contextually developed fear- both for himself (if he relinquishes his sunk cost fallacy there are a lot of things he did that were not justified) and for the society he imagines is under constant risk of falling into chaos if he does not. but what does he believe when he doesn't remember all the things that brought him to that point? i mean, the prowl we saw in Shadowplay thinks very differently than the one we see in the present. and specifically Roberts writes Prowl as someone whose initial drive was to try and escape the war and its conflicts altogether. so your angle there is very in line with what DE does with Harry and his amnesia, I think.

Chromedome meanwhile... i think the idea of a post-war Chromedome who has survived his own attempts at self-destruction and come to loathe Prowl playing this role of silent, judgemental observer of Prowl with this ostensible opportunity to change, who lies about not knowing Prowl as a kind of mirror to the way Chromedome has erased other relationships in his life to avoid confronting the pain of them... is really interesting, honestly. (there are versions of this where he is married to Rewind and there are versions of this where Rewind is at least temporarily still dead, and i like both tbh.) does Chromedome want Prowl to be able to genuinely change through this? perhaps the cracks in his story start showing when unlike Kim, he responds with increasing frustration at Prowl actually doing so, a thing it doesn't make sense for him to be bitter about if he's really a stranger. meanwhile Prowl is clearly and immediately latching onto Chromedome as someone he has decided he admires, and declares trust in. (harry idealizes kim a lot; the vision he has of dora, too, calls him out on literally deifying her; and we see in idw canon that for all his irritation with Chromedome now he casually asserts ludicrous stuff like 'you're literally too fantastic at your job for it to kill you' and so on.) had Chromedome comfortably convinced himself that was all bullshit and Prowl has no actual remaining feelings towards him, that it was all just to get Chromedome to do useful shit for him when he snapped his fingers? does seeing evidence to the contrary- that Prowl's feelings continue to be, annoyingly, real and genuine- destabilize him?

god there's a TON more i want to think about here. obviously there are a lot of things DE explores that bringing into this complicates as well. DE talks about suicidality and addiction extensively, obviously, for starters. (which are probably themes most people would automatically project onto Chromedome, which makes this specific configuration really interesting, i think.) the inevitable futility of trying to be an individual who is 'one of the good ones' in a system where that doesn't matter and will never allow you to be. you could probably tie that in with functionism if you wanted, and Prowl's seeming baseline agreement with at least some parts of that system on some level despite it clearly not benefiting him overmuch. right? there's a lot of potential room to engage directly with not just the basic plot setup of DE but its actual themes i think, which sort of surprised me to realise. (and is why it kept bopping around in my head, because that's really the only way i would be interested in a fusion AU kind of thing modelling itself on Elysium; i'm not here for the trope-y setup, i'm here for what DE actually does thematically and the crunchier topics it commits to exploring.)

anyway. please consider. you know that skill check you can get in the last dream with Dora? the one you can 'succeed' and it's really, really bad to do so, actually? yeah. please consider that skill check in this context. ahahaha. I SURE AM

[ourstochoose9]

Just read through my psychotic ramblings notes from yesterday and here's a list of C1 finale fanart I need on my desk by Monday (under the break because Spoilers):

Dani (in character) calling DX-TR "an evil hot topic son of a bitch"

"There's no gods here, just me"

"I'm the ghost of your fucking past, present, and future, and I'm here to god damn haunt you"

Mystra promoting VR-LA to Magister (in front of the whole Planescape)

Miscellaneous party shenanigans (Cressida stealing Roy, Dani talking to Davion, Vhas talking to a coat rack he thinks is VR-LA, the real VR-LA chatting with Maxim and his old crew, the current Per Aspera crew at the very end, etc)

Also thinking about writing something brief about the floor time moment myself tbh, maybe stay tuned for that?

(Gonna tag some people I know make art to worm these ideas into yalls heads: @caliburn-not-calculator @billiamdoor @kathbunny )

[sqelton]

My latest DnD character, Anodyne. he is a very trust worthy doctor from the gate town of pandemonium. he will definitely not suggest blood letting so he can drink it later.

He is part of a Planescape campaign which (light spoilers???) Includes a multiverse thing where your character can be replaced by an alternate universe version of themselves. You get two alt characters before cycling back to the original, and I made the silly decision to base the 3 forms on a Vampire, Frankenstein's Monster, and a Werewolf respectively. why??? I don't know. I'll post the art of the two alts whenever I finish em.

[ddarker-dreams]

yooo lock from one gamer to another, any recs for the steam summer sale? i've got most horror jrpgs down like misao, ib, and witch's house

ANON FORGIVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE i was thinking about this ask for a few days and. ahem. in that time, the steam summer sale ended. 😦 just keep this in mind for the next sale perhaps?? alas. here are some of my favorite games on steam .

disco elysium

one of my favorite games of all time. i replayed it recently and have a newfound appreciation for every element of it. the extensive worldbuilding can be overwhelming at first, but i personally enjoyed how fleshed out the world is. the writing is sublime and i've never experienced anything like it across any medium. also it's the only game to have kim kitsuragi so that automatically makes it a 10/10

divinity original sin 2

this game is another favorite of mine. there were multiple times when i was playing it where i went 'huh, i wonder if i can do so and so' and i could. i killed a giant ogre with like 10k HP by sneaking an invisible character into its vicinity and teleporting it into lava. before leaving an area i killed a character who i bought tons of equipment from and got all my money back. it's just a really entertaining game. you can also play it with friends so that's fun. the game can be as dynamic as you want it to be. i like spending hours researching the most optimal builds but you don't have to be a nerd to make it through the content. or you can be like me and spend thirty minutes setting up explosives and perfectly placing each party member before every combat encounter because i've never felt the touch of a woman

hades

fast paced, fluid combat, greek mythology, killer soundtrack, pretty graphics, and bisexuality. what more can i say. i got such an adrenaline rush after beating the final boss that i almost collapsed onto the ground and rolled around like a pill bug. very very fun and addicting

hyper light drifter

HNGNNGN PRTTY and the soundtrack also slaps here too. the color palette is so gorgeous. once you get into the rhythm of the combat you feel like a god among men. zooming all over the place. nyooooooom.

omori

this game took my heart, ripped it out of my chest, stomped on it, slapped it back into place, then closed my open ribcage with a hello kitty bandaid. i cannot praise it enough. it's charming, the psychological horror is one of a kind; it's a game that seeps under your skin and stays there. if you haven't played it yet and you're comfortable with the dark themes it explores i'd recommend it 100%. go on without any spoilers.

pillars of eternity

i uh. i like CRPGs. pillars of eternity has a special place in my heart because it went onto influence how i do worldbuilding. the game has one of my favorite stories from a CRPG, it's overflowing with creativity that's explored to the fullest. it's also made by the folks who created fallout new vegas so that's a bonus. the combat isn't my absolute favorite when compared to something like divinity original sin 2, but i still found it enjoyable overall. interacting with the characters and the fleshed out world was what i had the most fun with.

planescape torment

this game's combat is scuffed but the story is one of the best across any medium. play on easy i'm not joking the combat does not matter. but the world, the characters, the factions, how it dabbles into philosophy, the story that leaves you with more questions than answers as you progress,, it's just so good. when it's on sale it's ridiculously cheap and so worth the price of admission. there's lots of reading but if you're into the type of stuff you'll love this game. also there's a floating talking skull

va-11 hall-a: cyberpunk bartender action

ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVS THE VIBES ARE IMMACULATE THE WRITING IS IMMACULATE THE ART IS IMMACULATE THE SOUNDTRACK WOULD MAKE BEEHTOVEN JEALOUS and there's also bisexuality here too. this game is an example of the writing i wanted to aspire towards after i played it for the first time. it influenced me heavily.

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

Slight Spoilers for Planescape Torment.

But I just had a deliciously awful idea!

I really like the idea that the one writing the "Journal" entries for The Dark Urge is actually who the "were" before their memory loss.

Sort of like The Nameless One, before his latest death and resurrection, left a Message for himself tattooed on his back (since he always comes back to life without his memories) "I know you feel like you've been drinking a few kegs of Styx wash, but you need to CENTER yourself. Among your possessions is a JOURNAL that'll she some light on the dark of the matter. PHAROD can fill you on the rest of the chant, if he's not in the dead-book already. Don't lose the journal or we;ll be up the Styx again. And whatever you do, DO NOT tell anyone WHO you are or WHAT happens to you, or they'll put you on a quick pilgrimage to the crematorium. Do what I tell you: READ the journal, then FIND Pharod."

It's Durge's only psyche trying to guide them back into who they where before. LIKE I know a some people like to think it's Bhaal (which would be funny, tbh, but some of the lines make me think its not).

To me it seems like the quest log is Old Durge trying to convince memoriless Durge into becoming "theirself" again.

There is just something about the quest log that reads very much like the tattoo message on the Nameless One's back.

(I personally do not consider pre-memory loss Durge and post-memory Durge to be different people, I think that's weird. But I like the idea of the quest log being how brain and body still remember things even if you don't. trying to guide Durge back into their familiar habits, even if they don't know why.)

[sqbr]

Dreamwidth Crosspost: Initial Basic Thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3

I only just started but thus far I am having a great time, the non binary inclusion is reasonably good for this sort of AAA roleplaying game and I'm enjoying the weird, darkly humourous dark-fantasy-horror and old school D&D inspired RPG vibe, it reminds me of playing Dragon: Age Origins, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights mods back in the day, but as a modern game (albeit with all the graphics settings at lowest quality so my computer doesn't fall over). I continue to not be very good at this sort of combat, but that's what story mode is for! (It's presumably even more like other Larian games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Divinity Original Sin but I never really played those) ( No spoilers. Brief genital mention )

[self-loving-vampire]

2, 8, 18, 23, 25?

2. Do you like playing with mods?

Generally I do, but I don't usually install them immediately. I usually prefer to play a game without mods first, at least for long enough to know which parts of it I'd rather change.

Depending on the game, the modding may be pretty mild (just quality of life changes) or more major, such as new spells, major balance changes, new weapons, new mechanics, and so on.

Skyrim is an example of a game I always play with a ton of mods. In my opinion the base game is kind of mediocre. It's not super unpleasant to play, but it's kind of shallow and tedious. A lot of the things I'm interested in, like the vampirism, are also super inconvenient in the base game (you can't even loot corpses in vampire lord form!)

But with enough mods it can actually be a fun time. I make it into a sort of vampire simulator since there's actually not that many vampire RPGs (especially ones set in medieval fantasy settings as opposed to something more modern, like VTM:B).

8. A game you played completely blind with no prior knowledge of and enjoyed/loved?

I think this is pretty much the default? I personally don't really mind spoilers in most contexts, though.

18. A game you’d like to replay that you haven’t

I want to replay every Touhou game sometime.

23. A game ending that’s really stuck with you

Surprisingly enough, the ending of Wizardry 8. You spend the game gathering artifacts that will grant you access to the Cosmic Forge. There's multiple possible endings, but in the one I got you actually do use it.

It's a magical pen that can be used to re-write the universe, which your party does to make it a much kinder place. Your characters all ascend and become the benevolent deities of this universe.

In addition to the meta implications of the final Wizardry game handing the player the pen and telling them to create a new world themselves next, I just really like that there's a game where your objective is to become god and fix the universe and it actually lets you do it and nothing goes wrong as a result of your "hubris".

Sort of related: I have been thinking about the ending of Mary Skelter 2 lately, months after I finished it. For reasons that... well... spoilers.

The ending of Planescape: Torment is also worth mentioning but that's a whole essay in itself. I think the ending of Fallout: New Vegas is also really cool aside from how buggy the final sequence tends to be (the game as a whole, really).

25. A game with a cool art style

There's really a lot that I like, in different ways. I like a whole lot of the environments and monster designs in games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, for instance, and I'm also a fan of anime art styles in general for other reasons (they're cuter and make characters look more appealing to me).

But I think if I'm going to mention anything specifically it should probably be the first Fallout. While some of the animations were kinda crude, I think the general way the game looks and sounds is still fantastic and extremely fitting for the feel it's going for.

[yellow-yarrow]

(after playing planescape torment:) well it was obviously the night hag of the grey wastes, duh

[paragonrobits]

here's a headcanon that materialzied after realizing that Fall-From-Grace's official alignment doesn't make much sense in light of her characterization; FFG isn't actually Lawful Neutral at all and she's actually Lawful Good, but due to her nature as a demon and fighting uphill against literally being MADE of pure evilness and chaos, despite having spent a while as a genuinely good person it hasn't sunk in deeply enough to ding the appropriate buttons

lets consider alignment as a literal term; a collective weight of your beliefs and actions which determines which aspects of the multiverse you're on the same side as. FFG, as a succubus, is literally made of evil and chaos, and she explicitly struggles with her nature, being described as the most tormented of the party. Given that the party's other members are continually struggling with unspeakable horrors or agonizing emotional horror on a day-to-day basis, that says a lot.

Now, I honestly can't read her as Lawful Neutral despite that being her official alignment because of her stirring support of mercy and forgiveness as essential to true law and order, to the point of her having an argument with Vhailor over it. They ostensibly have the same alignment in Lawful Neutral, and yet their viewpoints couldn't be more different.

A Lawful Neutral person believing in mercy as essential to true perfection and proper law is highly unusual; lawful neutrals may range from robots enslaved to programming fulfilling thier directives, or people who do as the law bids because its the law, while a lawful good person cares about the morality. Lawful Neutral people, in general, do not generally seem to do that; the letter and/or spirit of the law IS morality, or at least stability in society, or acting upon code and/or law, and without active altruism, kindness being involved; if you do, that's where Lawful Good comes in.

That's the big dividing point between being Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral; both may abide by a code or an understanding of law, but being Good means you care about people and get forgiveness. Neutrality doesn't do that.

So FFG's emphasis on mercy feels VERY odd, so it makes sense that she's actually Lawful Good in terms of her actions and mindset, but because she's a succubus she hasn't been able to completely become the polar opposite of what her nature demands she be. (And there is a tragedy in that. She has worked, and labored and done nothing but good, but deep down being a good person HURTS her; she can't escape the monster she was born to be, and that torment holds her back.)

[terris-mayweather]

Echo VN update #5;

(I’m in tears and crying because I wrote this entire thing and was getting ready to post it, just looking over and seeing if I had any additional thoughts, but my cat jumped on my desktop, turning off the computer, and I lost everything I said and now it seems like wayyyy too much work to repost it. I want to die. I had written so much! T_T OTL)

Wow... it has been a while... Honestly thought I did another of these, but I guess I got swept away in the story. ANYWAY (this one is going to be all spoilers, and a close approximation of what I said previously that was lost to the cyber planescape of the internet, so apologies if it isn’t as deep as I usually wanted it);

I finished Carl’s route! And wow, what a journey THAT was. First, the nightmare dimension was so interesting and strange! It was like a weird, older reflection of Echo! But not like that much older? I suspect it was an echo (hah!) of the town in the 1900s somewhere. Probably post John hanging... Oof. I’m curious why Echo has this dimension/mirrored reality though. I keep getting more and more questions.

Second, I thought it was a very cool aspect that due to being descendants of James Hendricks and John Begay, Carl and Jenna actually got possessed (kinda’)! However the fact it actually happened is horrible and I hate it entirely. John was particularly stabby though. In fact I actually “lost” my first playthrough and chose to grab Jenna instead of pushing her (I was TERRIFIED pushing her would cause her to stab herself). I get so freaking sad when my authentic choices lead to my demise, because then I’m like: ‘Welp! Guess I’m doomed to fail or die in a situation like this!’ *sigh* anyway!

Third, this hysteria/entity thing itself. I don’t think it’s a hysteria at all and is absolutely supernatural in some way, but I am very curious about the expansion of this, and I want to know what happened in the mines, and why this place has a mirrored reality that you can just snap out of! How does this work?! I also wonder if it worsens the negative traits of all the residents here!

Fourth, I actually started Leo’s route now! I’m like 5 hours into it, Thursday, I think. And WOW. This wolf, while wonderful, is absolutely concerning. I’m worried what we’re going to discover about him as the days go by and worsen! =( To quote a fantastic creator: “His fur is red because of all the red flags!” My man’s got some serious issues hinted at, and I’m anxious since he does seem like a good person at the end of things... But things only get worse as we saw from Carl’s route and I’m morbidly curious how this will translate with Leo. But also, WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH CARL NOW THAT WE’RE NOT WITH HIM?!  Like the birthday party didn’t even happen this time! At least, not in the same way AT ALL!!! Like Carl got freaking lost! But at least we found out he was okay... enough... We know what else happens and I’m curious of the results when we’re not there!! Also oh my god, FLYNN warning us about Leo? And not being a complete asshole about it for all of three seconds as if he was serious? Like my dude... what is up with Leo? I’m fearing the worst at this point, which sucks because it feels like he and Chase could have a caring and legitimate relationship! I gotta’ say, the character writing in this is fucking legendary. But besides that it is super fun. I’ve also enjoyed meeting Mr. Raccoon man himself, Kudzu! He seems like one those dudes that keep themselves locked in a steel cage to keep other people from getting in, and I’m curious what his story is all about. I’m liking him though, since he seems like one of the only other positive influences around Leo besides Chase and maybe Leo’s family? We haven’t gotten much on that end... Either way, I like mystery raccoon!

Fifth, and also all other assorted thoughts! So one thing I noticed quite substantially is that it feels like the other characters are around a lot more with Leo’s route! I really am enjoying that and the little character moments we’re getting. Like the soccer game with Chase, Kudzu, Tj, and Leo, was so fun and genuinely enjoyable to read through! Those moments of happiness really give me much needed life since it offers insights into what COULD be, if all of these people weren’t so fucked up. OH and then also Clint and Duke. These guys are pretty interesting to the story itself! Meeting Duke was a trip since apparently there’s an otter apparition haunting Leo, which wouldn’t be too surprising except then we find out Duke is also seeing this probable Chase ghost thing! Now THAT is super interesting. Shows there’s some intention behind all of this shit. It’s especially interesting considering this is the same Duke that was sober and pointing at us back in Carl’s route! And that ended with his fucking face being blown off! And Clint is absolutely the worst, but it seems like Leo might be actively trying to hurt and make him feel worse, which makes me wonder a lot more about Leo! But I think that concludes the majority of my thoughts for now! There is so many things falling into places, but yet more questions coming up too!!! Echo truly is a delight and I can’t wait to get into the nitty gritty of everyone! 

[appendingfic]

Like I KNOW they're different games with different themes, but Dak'kon's (a Githzerai) struggles with doubt and faith, with the meaning of his people's liberation and the meditations to ensure his people never forget their enslavement and war of extermination was so much more engaging than Lae'zel's unquestioning faith and obedience.

Also, you know, having heard the story from the Githzerai side, I have a REAL hard time believing anything the Githyanki tell me