#so i can share the unaltered version!

[invidia-envy]

[Image description: watercolor art of Bill Cipher. He's floating in front of the four-pointed rift, with his arms spread. There's a blue and purple background, with a outer space-like pattern. End ID.]

I made this painting about five-ish years ago and I finally feel confident enough to share it 💛🖤

Thank you @anistarrose for the image ID!

[fiannalover]

Fate Fic Recs

Because I read a lot of fics and am always rolling that ao3 gacha, so I felt like sharing a non exhaustive rec list under read more. Feel free to reblog and add more!

past the lingering smoke - Kadoc-senpai is best senpai! Post-ID. Hurt/Comfort.

For Want Of A Relic - Fate/Zero Servant Swap AU where Waver gets Diarmuid and everyone else swaps around too. The resulting team-ups are honestly delicious and you get very good Diarmuid out of it. The writer came back after 4 years of hiatus to finish the fic and write sequels, go give them a round of applause!

Fragments of Chaldea - stares directly at the camera

Café of the round - Reincarnation AU Coffee Shop. The Main Round Tale reincarnate within the Fate Universe and get together to own a coffee shop, meeting and remeeting other nasuvere people along the way.

AND GUINIVERE IS THEEEEEERE!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉 yaaaaaaaaaay

Multiple Case Studies of the Strange Concept of Love - a Servant is summoned to Chaldea, and spends her days looking at the romantic couples within it and analyzing the emotions she feels. Once you learn who is the main character you'll start crying. Also, RamaSita, yay!

Sunset Cocktail - BediGudao Valentine’s day fic. Bedivere saves Gudao from stalker of the day, takes him to Moriarty’s bar, on Moriarty’s suggestion. Bedivere regrets his trusting of shifty old men from the word go, more at 11.

a planet between your teeth - Drabble. The god asks if the fairy wants to eat him.

what name is there for what we have done? - Post-LB6 Fic where Mordred is, quite frankly, blowing up after Morgan and Baobhan are summoned to Chaldea, specially with how much the former looks like him. This takes him to Bedivere’s room. Hurt/Comfort, amazing Bedivere, amazing Round Table dynamic (author uses he/him for Mordred)

vignette 50 - Sieg & Guda farming at New York Event. Cute. Cute. Cute. CUTE! def a fic to read to warm up cozily at the end of the day, I get cuteness giggles everytime I read it.

Taste-testing - CharlieGudao baking fic. Pure, unaltered fluff. Charlie lays the sugar Thick.

Conversation by the bus stop - Bedivere talks to a fairy who is not there

But we stay silly - GudaCas. Guda shocks Artoria out of dissociation by barking like a dog. Adorable. I SWEAR this is cute. Trust me.

Sign here - Modern AU GudaCas stuff following on that part of the chocolate competition where Cnoc says the winner will marry Ritsuka. A lovely comedy drabble that will Not tear your heart apart at the last second, unlike fics made by other authors who followed up on that scene.

遅くの成人の日 (救った世界が必ず貴方を救ったくれる、どんな形でもそれは貴方にきっと届く） - I can only pray the title formatted well. Summer event fic of Ritsuka dealing gwith how long she has been at this, and the acceptance of her own aging.

And Thus Did The Leaves Fall - BediArthur. Bedivere as Arthur dies.

Look at me - GudakoBarth. Gudako, Bartholomew, their feelings for one another and how much one needs to fit another’s type.

She did not want to die - NitoSche fic and character exploration. Amazing Sche character exploration, accompanied by an equally amazing Nitocris POV version of the fic in Act As A Pharaoh. If you like either girl, you HAVE to read it.

Have I Made You Sad, Mom? - Post-LB6 Morgan has been summoned to Chaldea. Baobhan hasn’t arrived yet.

(Free from) Sin - Morgan!Aesc, Aesc!Morgan, and the many times she felt love, wretched, cursed love.

Atonement - Ritsuka going through therapy and readjusting to a normal life post-lostbelt, as the voices of all her Servants remain ringing in her ears.

Your heart in my mouth, bitter on the tongue - MashMorgan. Mash confesses, Morgan vaguely remembers what emotions are. I do love a good rule of three emotional discussion fic.

Bridal Ox - Asterios goes to Habetrot’s workshop to ask for a dress

Taking the bit (heh) to its natural conclusion - Modern AU GudaCas. Guda is face blind, Caster needs someone to help her run away from the cops.

the odds don’t look far - Avicebron and David bonding over being the only jewish Servants in Chaldea (and, post-Part 1, the staff as a whole).

[misscammiedawn]

To be loved is to be altered. To be perceived is to invite a new version of yourself into the world born from the other's eyes.

One of many tales spun in Slay The Princess.

Every chapter your perceptions shape the princess and add to the complex web of contradictions that make up her entirety and every chapter her perceptions of the bird boy protagonist add more voices to the menagerie of voices in his head.

I think a lot about the Leave/Slay endings and the simple line:

After everything that has been said and done can either one of them truly remember what it was to be the unaltered person they were before their relationship (don't get the wrong idea, two people interacting have a relationship).

It's impossible.

Though it's possibly an allegory for going through multiple relationships I prefer to read it as an allegory of the joys and pains of knowing a person and intimately, the game exists only within the boundaries of this entanglement. That's the story.

I long for a route which hits Eternal Sunshine territory. Like the moment of clarity in that every voice exists at once but I'd like to focus on that former allegory a moment.

What if you were to choose to make no choices whatsoever.

The game starts.

You're in a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't it will be the end of the world.

[Close your eyes and do nothing]

And yes The Narrator would protest. Perhaps even cold hands may eventually reach out. But you do nothing. Some people just aren't ready to break another heart or feel their own heart broken. Some people would rather avoid being changed by the eyes of another or invite a new version of themselves to be born into the world through being perceived.

It's safer that way. Right?

and like Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine you refuse to go forward and so you go backwards. You cannot change the past but you can bring your baggage from the past into the present. It's human nature after all. We can't help but reflect, compare and construct from that we already understand.

Why don't you think back to the last "princess" you shared your heart with? The one from before. Think about them for a few moments. Think about all the transformations you inflicted upon one another over time. Did it end beautifully? Tragically? Horrifically?

It doesn't matter.

The game never lets you avoid your fate. The basement awaits.

I wonder, though, what would be in the basement when you approach The Princess for the first time with your baggage projected upon her?

[lulu2992]

I suddenly remembered this post and realized that I now had the means to investigate and try to solve this mystery.

Spoilers: I haven’t solved it… but I do have an evidence-based hypothesis!

(This post is based on my own observations and deductions. I know a few things about the game’s files because I’ve explored them, but I’m still 100% self-taught and learned “on the job”. I don’t know everything, so feel free to correct me or provide more information!)

So this is what @danaduchy found (and thank you for originally sharing this); I added colors and line breaks for more clarity:

This can be found in a document filled with lines of code regarding the game’s audio files, such as music, voice lines, and sound effects. It seems that its purpose is basically to “tell” each file how, when, and in what context it’s supposed to play in the game. So “John_Seed_Sex_Room” refers to one or several sound files.

Again, I still don’t know what everything you see in the screenshot means, but what I do know is that “MIS” means “mission”, that “KEY01” refers to a character, Nick Rye, and that “010” is basically the mission number. Here, I know that “MIS_KEY01_010” is the mission Wingman.

I assume “LP_Filter” means “low-pass filter”. In short, it’s an audio filter that removes high frequencies. You can use it, for example, if you want your audio to sound muffled like it’s coming from behind a closed door (and I’ve chosen this particular example for a good reason).

I assume the MaxRadius is the maximum distance (from its source in the game) at which a sound can be heard, and the Duration is simply the duration of the sound in seconds. Because they’re both equal to 0 and we have the words “Start” and “Stop”, I’d say the purpose of these two lines of code is simply to “tell” the audio “John_Seed_Sex_Room” to start and stop playing, or possibly to activate and deactivate the low-pass filter.

Those lines didn’t give me the actual sound file(s), so I continued to investigate and found this:

I suppose “Play_SFX” simply means “play sound effect”, and this time, these lines can actually help me find the corresponding audio files!

I was able to find and listen to “Door_Key_Pickup”, “LockedDoor_Rnd”, and “UnlockDoor_01”. They unsurprisingly and respectively are the sound of keys being picked up, someone trying to open a locked door (five different versions), and the door being unlocked. Unfortunately, “Door_Push” and “JohnSeed_SexRoom_Rnd” don’t seem to exist anymore...

As you can see, the Duration of “JohnSeed_SexRoom_Rnd” isn’t specified, but not all the files listed in the document have one, so this isn’t that strange. The MaxRadius is higher than the other sounds’ featured here, so I assume it was supposed to be heard from a longer distance. I’m not sure what Rnd means, but I think it could be the abbreviation of “round” or “rounded”. Maybe it’s the normal, unaltered version of the sound “JohnSeed_SexRoom”, unlike “JohnSeed_Sex_Room_LP_Filter” which has a low-pass filter.

The code also says this sound is from a “Scripted_Sequence” in a “Specific” context: one of the “Missions” in Holland Valley (this is what “John_Seed” means here) in relation to Nick Rye (KEY01). We already know this mission is Wingman (MIS_KEY01_010), but what we learn here is that, whatever the “sex room” thing is, it was apparently specific to this mission.

The last mention of it in the document was this:

“Stop_SFX” suggests that these lines probably exist to make the two sound effects stop playing.

So, what is “John_Seed_Sex_Room”? It seems it was an audio file (one or several sound effects) and supposed to be part of one specific mission: Wingman. There were two versions and at least one of them had a low-pass filter. In the same sequence, a locked door was apparently going to be unlocked and opened.

The objective of the mission Wingman is to go to Seed Ranch and retrieve Nick’s plane. So what if, in this mission, players were originally going to explore more rooms in the ranch… and find whatever the “sex room” was? To me, it looks like we were going to hear muffled sounds coming from a room, unlock the door, and see what and/or who was inside.

Now, I don’t think it was necessarily going to be a literal “sex room”. According to (probably deleted) NPC dialog, in an early version of the game, people were taken to John’s ranch instead of his bunker to be tortured. It’s possible that the term “sex room” was a joke name given by the devs to refer to a torture room.

In conclusion, according to my (limited) knowledge and after my investigation, I believe the “sex room” was a special room in Seed Ranch, either literally used for sex (the cult’s rules could have been different at the time) or for torture. Evidence suggests it could be found during the mission Wingman only and that there were sounds coming from behind its locked door. It seems players could unlock it with a key and, I assume, see whatever was going on inside.

That’s all I know… But if you have another hypothesis or more information about that mysterious room, don’t hesitate to share it! :)

[solariumrph]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐑 🎭

a vintage playbill inspired doc!

it’s been a hot second since i’ve done anything docs-related but i wanted to share my latest adventure!  i made this doc to house a version of my muse that’s a 1920s era actor, complete with sepia-toned faceclaim photos & an alt title page that’s been run through photoshop w some free textures & things.  i tried putting the textures on the whole doc, but it made it extremely difficult to read, so i ended up leaving the textured title page as a header on the actual blog, and kept the doc itself unaltered.  though, if you found the right texture pack, you could probably run it through photosh.op and set it as a pdf for your mutuals to get into. (make sure you have all the fonts installed on your computer, i Did Not)

this doc can be found here and in the source link if you want to take a stab at customizing it, though i recommend it only for people who have moderate to maybe advanced?? skill in docs.  placing some of the object pngs inside the table was out of my skill range to begin with and the fact that it figured itself out in the end is a miracle.  but anyway.  all images are replaceable if you can get under the other images to them.  i did my own coloring but docs does have a built-in sepia filter if you’re not about doing all that yourself

there is a title page, a rules page, a character page w images, and another sort of empty unformatted page at the end you could delete out or customize with extra information.  i personally think the last page is the best place to put the backstory and the little squares can be all your info spots / connections / verses, but that’s not even what i did lmao so you do you!!

ngl i’m not sure if i will be much help about it but do let me know if you have any questions on formatting the doc.  start by going to file > make a copy and renaming your new doc.  docs are for personal, individual use only & credit must remain intact.  i worked hard on my baby.  also sterling is my oc plz don steal etc etc.  specifically 'the cutting room floor' is my tagline on sterling's blog so that title belongs to him as well.  but yeah if you make anything using my docs pls pls pls tag me or dm me and show me??  i wanna seeeeeee.  ok ty ily have a good timezone 💕💃

[breakbeatbun]

i did a lot of "boy things" as a kid and I've always felt less "girl" because of it, i never played with stuff that was considered feminine, partly because i was afraid of judgment, but also i found "boy stuff" more appealing. it's tough not relating to one's peers in a binary way. i would love to play cars

tags on this post for context

i was raised by a mechanic and carpenter so a lot of my early free time was spent in a barn full of tools, machines, welding masks, piles of cut-up BMX bikes we'd find in the garbage, stripped-bare sandrails and their engines, couple rifles or compound bows here or there, probably listening to whatever crusty old rock music my dad put on. hell, i was rowing through the gears of my mom's old square body S10 while she drove us to the store before i was barely tall enough to see over the dash. "hanging out with friends" was playing Guitar Hero or Racing & Skateboarding Video Games, or riding our bikes and skinning our knees. "hanging out with dad" was often target shooting in the backyard or building something; I rarely ever held the flashlight, i had the tools in my hands and grease under my fingernails.

that's a lot of exposition but i'm trying to paint the most specific picture i can! TL;DR, a lot of arguably "boy things" in my upbringing, and i fit right into it, lot of fondness in my heart for it still!

around the time i had my big Gender Awakening at the tail-end of high school i had already been Online for a bit - hell i learned what it meant to feel non-binary from this very website circa 2013 - but it wouldn't be until maybe 2019 or so when i moved out that i really started making other queer and trans friends, and it was pretty immediately obvious that i was extremely different from the rest of my community, both online and offline. of course, nobody was rude about it, everybody was VERY respectful of my name and my pronouns and my identity, but it was still really easy for me to feel "othered" because our shared experiences didn't line up at all; At most maybe i got made fun of for having long hair. it made it really easy to feel like i wasn't doing enough work to justify my queerness.

at the other end of that spectrum, i recently tried on she/her pronouns at the front of my bio, just to see if i was missing something, and i was quickly met with an IMMEDIATE outpour of support from friends and community alike. SO many people were loud about being So Proud of me, Knew i Had It In Me, i had multiple friends message me privately to offer information and easy routes to HRT "just in case ;)" i was thinking about it! and, yeah, it's nice to have that kinda support, i'll admit! but it was hard not to feel a little invalidated in not wanting to change. it really felt like a lot of people, close friends even, just kinda saw me as a trans woman waiting to have a bigger realization, as though being non-binary was just a meaningless stepping-stone to something greater. and i mean, i can't blame them, they just wanted to help!!

today i'm pretty firmly Queer/non-binary (with a little bit of Girl on the side when it's either Appropriate or Funny), and my body and voice are very much unaltered from the ones i was born with. virtually indistinguishable from a cishet version of myself, just with the he/him lopped off and they/she sloppily appended in its place; simply because i don't have the energy or don't care to put much effort into change, and that's very much fine for me. I know damn well i don't owe it to anybody but myself anyway, granted none of it tends to matter much when you present as a rabbit girl on the internet LOL. I'm thankful to have built myself a little space where i can engage with others like me, or where other queers feel welcome to express interest in the things that I'M all about! even if it's a little few and far between. still struggle with feeling like i fit in with The Girls tho LMAO.

IDK! this post is my half-baked love letter to my fellow AMAB NB folks who get treated like Cis Men, Trans Women who don't "put the effort in," or Anyone who can Otherwise Relate in the same, or even an opposite sort of way. we are playing cars together

[vodika-vibes]

Lore anon (always horny btw). Here's a couple of random thoughts: Do Kaminoans do preventive vasectomies on clones? (I say that in the long run it is better than changing implants because it would be at least two or three per clone depending on life expectancy asumming 10 years each) And circumcision? This is sad, but does this influence clones breeding kink ? (I say that the Kaminoans would want to have the patent on the perfect specimen and it may or may not have something to do with Jango asking for a son *conspiracy theories off*)

Another, if Mace Windu was a holostar (I had to read this trice I swear I believed I write pornstar) and is a Jedi, that means that he grew up in the temple, he was a knight (because we already saw how everyone treated Anakin for being "old." Did Mace leave him or did he enter incognito as star because how know reasons? And then he returned to the fold? Nobody questions that? The man could have spent two years of wild debauchery, having a wife and secret children!!! Did the other Jedi, his master and students have the holos that talked about him?

I believe that prostitution is legal in SW, that being said. How do they educate Padawans in that sense, because there is no way for them all to be asexual saints. In addition, the Force has to make things fun, share and enhance feelings... Are there specialized discrete companies?

This is not lore, but if people believed that Plo Koon wore a mask, his horny fandom would be x 3k. I have no proof but no doubt either. DILF MATERIAL

Woo! Lots of lore~

So, personally, I like to think that the kaminoans would just use implants rather than a preventative vasectomy, but that's because I like the clones having little clone babies. However, I can see the Kaminoans being possessive over what they consider as their merchandise.

(Although, this leads to a fun follow-up on whether or not they consider Boba as their property as he's a clone just like all of the others, just unaltered. Would they have insisted on a vasectomy for him too, to keep the genes as their intellectual property?)

Mace, as I understand it, was the Star Wars equivalent of a Broadway star. So he was either doing the Star Wars version of...I dunno...Hamilton while a Jedi Knight, or he left the order to become a Broadway star.

It's not as though the Order is a prison, people can leave if they want. Obi-Wan did it when he was 13-14. And he came back after the fact. I really do feel like the biggest problem the Jedi had with Anakin wasn't his age, so much as he wasn't willing to admit what he was feeling.

I bet there are companies. Not every force sensitive becomes a Jedi, and not every Jedi wants to stay as a jedi. But the temple is a school, so they must have a sex education class. Multiple ones even, since different species reproduce in different ways.

People adore Plo already, he's already DILF material to a lot of people, lol. I just wanna sit with him and have him tell me stories, tho.

[commandtower-solring-go]

Often when i share stories about how horrible American culture is, people will reply by expressing their own sense of shame. They know its bad, but are powerless to stop it. But I don't do it to shame you. I do it to show your worth. And that worthlessness is a construct of the society you live in.

My job has spent the better part of the last year fucking over its employees. We voted on our first union agreement, and the business took every dirty step they could to get their unaltered version of the agreement go through. And even then, have spent 9 months stalling its implementation after bribing everyone and withholding that year's raise. Neither payout will go into effect until after the agreement goes through.

Despite this, they're already implementing the parts of the new agreement they see fit.

So I've been struggling. And amidst that struggle was the fear of worthlessness. I wanted to quit my job. I hated that I needed to take this job in the first place. I was motivated only by a sense of obligation and a fear of laziness. And what I got for my trouble was abuse and burn out.

So I sat down and spoke to my mum. Spoke about my frustrations and fears and that sense of obligation. And in doing so I confronted my fear of it because it was in her voice I heard those anxieties. And her reply wasn't belittlement, indifference of a push to keep going, but the question "Can you pay your rent on welfare?"

In that moment I realised that that voice, that feeling of worthlessness, wasn't real. Its words were fake. As long as I could find ways to support myself, as long as I had a roof and food to eat, how I get there was no one's business. That my worth isn't tied to my work.

I know that kind of existence isn't possible for everyone. I know I can't actually quit my job. At least not right now. But there is relief and freedom in knowing that much of what shackled me to the job was in my head.

[pi-creates]

Hey there! Do you have any tutorials on how to model swap in season 1 specifically? I'm trying to swap Travis and Doug and am completely at a loss due to the way the files are so funky with season 1 - any help is much appreciated!

The tutorial I have >>here<< is specifically walking through a swap to put Vince from the 400 Days DLC into the role of Lee in Season 1. It isn't really specifically about Season 1, but it focuses and shows a swap happening in that season.

It covers the basics of file types and how to get them working for a swap. It also goes over the method to load a swap without remaking your archives, which I would highly recommend as it is both much easier and quicker that way.

But if you're having issues finding files for Season 1 in particular, a big differences between that season and any of the others is that it has a lot of files in these archives instead of the individual episodes:

WDC_pc_ProjectSeason1_anichore.ttarch2 WDC_pc_ProjectSeason1_data.ttarch2 WDC_pc_ProjectSeason1_txmesh.ttarch2

This doesn't mean that all of the files you need will be in those, but if you're looking for something specific in the episode archives and can't find it, it's probably in those Project archives instead.

And at the most basic level, the meshes and textures you will be looking for are probably going to look like this:

Even though there are separated meshes for Travis (body, hair, head), he also has a singular combined mesh with everything - that's the "sk54_travis.d3dmesh". This will be the easiest one to work with since a lot of Season 1's characters only have one mesh.

And Doug has three meshes depending on the episode he appears in "sk54_doug.d3dmesh" is the appearance he has in episode 1, "sk54_doug103.d3dmesh" is his appearance in episode 3, and "sk54_dougJacket.d3dmesh" is his appearance in episode 2.

If you want Travis to appear in Doug's place in your game, you will have to use the "sk54_travis.d3dmesh" and rename it to overwrite the Doug mesh you want to replace. If you want him to appear in all of the episodes instead of Doug, then you'll have to duplicate the Travis mesh (just copy + paste) and make sure you rename each copy to cover all three of Doug's meshes.

If you want the inverse and to have Doug appear in Travis' place in episode 2, you do the same process but in reverse. You'll have to pick which version of Doug you want to appear, then use that mesh to rename into "sk54_travis.d3dmesh".

The rest of those .d3dtx files need to be in your archives too in order for the mesh to load it's associated textures. And you DO NOT want to rename your textures if you're just trying to do a standard swap. They just need to exist in their unaltered state in a way the game can load.

You also will want to find both Travis' and Doug's .skl files in the data, and there should thankfully only be these ones:

And it's the same principle as the meshes before. Whichever mesh type you used to overwrite the others, use the matching .skl to overwrite the remaining .skl files that your swap is going to cover.

The most difficult part is going to be getting your swapped character to emote properly in the role you put them in. You might be lucky and the characters you've swapped share base animations and therefore their faces move appropriately... if not, you're going to have to go through the other character's files and experiment with .ptables in the data, and the .anm files in the anichore archives.

If it helps at all, I do know that Doug's character shares files with the cop at the start of the game (sk54_copWD), and Travis shares at least some files with David, the teacher who is with him and Ben in the woods. There are likely even more characters with compatible files that intermix, but I can't personally tell you what they all are, I'm afraid.

Hopefully something in either the tutorial or my rambling helps you, mate. Good luck!

[intravertt]

I reinstalled reshade recently (v 3.0.8) and Idk if you've had this issue, but currently I'm dealing with an annoying thing using it- basically when I go into tab mode while using reshade, there are certain parts which sometimes turn incredibly dark? Idk if that makes sense but it's like almost everything goes black not sure if it's the mxao or what but it's just weird.. Is there any way I could have a ss of the dof and mxao settings to see if they're all correct? Many thanks in advanced!

The DOF does not impact the intensity of the MXAO so I don't think the settings are going to be of much help. I am not sure what preset you're using to be able to show you the intended MXAO settings, but if you open the preset with the Notes application it will load a text version of all the preset settings. You could try that with an unaltered version of the preset.

For whatever reason, my MXAO settings do not translate the same in everyone's game. I like my MXAO strong, and it is configured that way in most of the presets I've shared publicly, but how that looks when it's loaded in a game other people's games is different. I've seen in screenshots I've tagged that it'll look really dark and sharp, and not diffused in the way I configured it in my own game. When MXAO is maxed out or the settings are overclocked (by this I just mean set higher than 3), it can cause glitching where it flashes in and out.

My recommendation would be to turn down the MXAO settings, specifically the intensity setting. I would bring it to a value below 2. I may also recommend you adjust the diffused settings. I would also make sure your drivers are up to date, and you do not have an in-game overlay like NVIDIA or Origin because those have been known to cause problems for ReShade.

Also, remember that MXAO configurations look different in tab mode and if you're too zoomed in it will get dark and muddy. With some screenshots, you have to find that sweet spot.

[an-asuryampasya]

feeling some sort of way about discovering that a song, which has often been stuck in my head over the years, was probably first heard by me in 2009.

(2009!)

The two lines currently playing in my head as a 20-something year old were the same two lines that kid-me heard in a theatre back in 2009. the same tune, really, since I never did catch the lyrics of the second line, and so I've instead been humming it intermittently all these years. I've never looked up the lyrics or sought out the rest of song in my entire life because humming that bit, vaguely remembering the film that it's from exists, and then moving on with my life was how kid-me decided to deal with the earworm, and future-me has deferred to that policy unquestioningly ever since.

(Just, so much of me and my life has changed over these years, but this snippet of a song that I remember little else of has been a regular mild annoyance shared by all the different versions of me I've been since then.)

I don't want to look up the lyrics now, though I can. Because I've felt nostalgia, regret, fondness, and so many different emotions about my younger self, but this is the first time I can remember feeling kinship for every version of me that grumbled about this song getting stuck in my head again, ugh.

(There are, of course, a lot of things past-me and today-me share. But usually when I think about them, it's because I'm celebrating my growth and progress in handling the big things in healthier ways, or bemoaning set backs in dealing with my anxiety or something. Never have I felt this amusement at my unaltered and consistent reaction to something.)

So yeah, I think I know what to call that feeling now. Kinship. With every version of myself so far that has gotten mildly annoyed with this particular earworm, the exact same way I do today.

[hypershadicman]

yknow what, before i forget about doing this, i might as well go through and make a longer post going over the spreadsheet, like i said, it is interesting to look back on

it is, of course, gonna be riddled with spoilers, so lemme just leave a cut right here if you haven't played Persona 3 and are hoping to go into Reload unspoiled

First off, a little background about the spreadsheet itself; back before Reload was announced but there was still potential hype bubbling under the surface for a remake being in the works (before the official announcement trailer, but after we got a look at that rough Yukari animation that turned out to be real), me and a friend decided to go through all of our complete checklist for what a definitive Persona 3 release would look like. Obviously that wishlist included stuff like actually being able to pick romance options rather than that just being part of the social link past a certain point, as well as including FeMC and a full The Answer revamp to make this remake a full, unquestionably definitive version of the game, but i wanted to take it a step further and also take a stab at what it would look like if the Social Links were completely overhauled as well, so i decided to make a spreadsheet about it.

to actually make any of this understandable going forwards, i also decided to color code this spreadsheet, with a fun little color key as shown here

this sheet was laid out to have the social links from the original games (P3 FES/P3P Male MC stuff colored in blue, P3P FeMC stuff colored in pink, shared stuff colored in purple, and story based social links in yellow), alongside the "new" stuff that would have been changed in my hypothetical revamp (green for changed, pale green for unchanged), with three major goals in mind

Give all party members their own dedicated Social Link, for both male and female MCs

Give both male and female MCs access to all features added in P3P (cooking, making gifts, etc etc)

Change/remove as little as possible while achieving those two goals

and what immediately jumped out at me when i started making this was how easy that actually was to do

like, there were obviously some changes i made in the color commentary, notably

Hidetoshi is actually not considered a romanceable Social Link, but only because he confesses after the social link's completion, which is both funny and stupid

the way Maiko's Social Link ends is, admittedly, kinda weird for Male MC, and you can tell that the writers thought so too because they made FeMC's conclusion for that arc much better and less weird

the Nyx Annihilation Team Link is just... not a Social Link in the original game, it's just a progress bar, and we all agree that's weird right?

I legitimately couldn't tell if the game actually acknowledges the Aegis Social Link as a romance anywhere, so i decided to just mark it as a romance option for both

but other than those incredibly minor tweaks, 14 of the 22 original Social Links remained entirely unaltered, despite me going into this project essentially intending to tear the whole thing into pieces and build it back on first principles. That does leave 8 Social Links which were actually changed, for the most part, everything important was left basically intact (which i'll go over in another post because this is getting pretty long as is it)

y'know, back when we first started getting teases and leaks about a potential Persona 3 remake, me and a friend of mine broke out a spreadsheet to go over our pipe dream what-if best case scenarios for a revamped list of social links (which honestly might be worth going over in some detail now that we have the actual remake coming out so soon), but of all of the stuff on there, i'm still so happy that this actually turned out to be real

[eachuisge-cc]

Digitigrade Werewolves (Override)

An override for werewolves that turns the humanlike legs EA gave them into digitigrade legs with paws, fully paintable with a custom fur/detail overlay. The lower joint is immobile as I can't alter the rig, but I've done my best to shape and weight paint them in a way that gives the illusion of natural movement. The skin override is only needed if you use vanilla skins; if you use my Natural Werewolf Skins, just make sure you have the version for digitigrade paws.

There are still some minor issues, there's what appears to be a uv-1 weight slider problem that creates some artifacts on the legs in CAS, but it doesn't affect the sliders themselves in any significant way and the artifacts aren't visible during gameplay so I'm uploading them as-is. The legs are also a little chunky and off-looking on female wolves, but this isn't something I can change as it has to do with the way the werewolf morphs work. I previously compensated for this by making the mesh super skinny, but they still didn't look great and I'm now working on a digitigrade clothing project that will expand beyond werewolves, so I decided to go with a more neutral shape that looks good when not distorted by the werewolf morph. If it's too distracting this can be compensated for by lowering the leg width slider on females to minimum.

The legs are not compatible with vanilla lower body clothing, it will break them. Check the Digitigrade Clothing Directory for compatible clothes.

Everyone has full permission to use the meshes for any lower body clothing they want to make compatible with these legs, just don't alter them or use them to make your own legs/body parts, and don't re-upload them unaltered anywhere. You're also welcome to use the skins as a template if you want to make your own skins compatible

Download:

Sim File Share | Patreon

NSFW version can be found here

[throwaway-yandere]

Spoilers!!!

my random rambling about to explain why ["No" (Yandere!Albedo/Reader)] is a mess lmao (and no i didn't proofread this, enjoy reading my unaltered agony):

Edit: actually nevermind i edited just one word cause I couldn't take the misspelling lol. There rest of these texts are still unedited except for that one specific word ( which is troupe to trope lol )

Writing albedo's pretty much a challenge because i pegged that he's the type of yandere that you wouldn't figure out he's one unless he confesses everything. He's popular, but a recluse. He's eccentric, but he can be trusted. Those are some characteristics that can make create such a disastrous slowburn yandere. And he likely confess after a long time just to have a record of your reaction (with a scholarly purpose in mind.)

Idk if I managed to make him subtle at all ;;-;; My goal was to make the reader think albedo is a green flag for most of it all while dropping hints that he aint idk if that worked out but oh well no beta we die like __ right?

It's not my proudest work that's for sure, but it's an interesting ride writing it so I thought I'd share lol (꒪ヮ꒪)

The fic was supposed to be inspired by Love Hypothesis. A friend made me read it in a sleepover and I jokingly suggested doing a yandere albedo version and I guess I'm a man of my word(?). I unfortunately had to change a lot since I can't see Albedo having a very intense strict "I don't want to produce mediocre scientists" mindset, and the reader is gn! here so they shouldn't have women-specific STEM struggles. Albedo's loved by a lot of people and he's rather lax when teaching Timaeus so I really can't picture him playing the "grump" character troupe. I have a habit of constantly checking character voice lines in the wiki to get a gist of who I'm writing and I just can't see him as an Adam Carlsen. Send help. (´；ω；｀)

And also a big "unlike LoveHypo" here is that this is a yandere story. It's bond to be toxic. It doesn't read like the source material anymore since it's not a grumpy/sunshine troupe, it's a reluctant stalker/suspicious individual dynamic, if that's a thing. Ironically, I think this is a first fic of mine where the reader lowkey wins in the end? Lmao. What. ರ_ರ

Also: I REVISED THIS FIC SO MANY TIMES YOU HAVE NO IDEA 😭😭😭 For unrelated reasons I got sick with quite the high fever in the middle writing the latter half as well LOL (≧▽≦). The fic was supposed to be more faithful to Love Hypothesis but of course that's scrapped due to reasons mentioned above but then I added that small ex-itto tidbit for fun and temporarily made the reader into a pure chaotic, reckless (and lowkey asshole) person so it'll be believable that the two were exes. Also SCRAPPED that partially because when I tried writing their dialogues with Albedo they're both going nowhere fast and it's turning into a real clownship ;;;;-;;;; wtf. Nearly had the reader call Albedo a dweeb in a dialogue.

Got writer's block with this story and tried writing something else and at that point I was writing 3 fics at once for no valid reason (and now an itto-focused side story for "careful, he bites" is nearly done lololol, I finished a short alhaitham fic before this as well, will prolly upload it tomorrow. The sagau au take I have might take a while). I'm very sorry for my absence! Life is absolutely hectic rn sigh

Also, here's the story header/banner i scrapped as well lololol:

Ain't this a mess lol.

ya know what makes this more hilarous?

i enrolled in an educ course in a state uni before i finished this fic lmfao--

so yeah, "why did they not fake date like in love hypo--" cause im a coward and it felt weird for me to write something about that considering my future possible profession hAHAHAH--

Edit:

[michaelevans27]

I've got to leak somewhere at this point regardless of the vulnerability of the dodgy 1 way mirror that can exist. When you're in a position of trust with another person and depth of entanglement and deliberate growth around and with someone and yet consistently have the vines of life leave the sunlight and spread sidewards and pull the sweet fruits/berries into the shade or start to find this vine you are building with help question where you can flourish and blossom it leaves you with so much uncertainty with what you have left when the growth works to pull apart. Sometimes plants have to be seperated for the benefit of their respective health. Sometimes they take too much of each other's sun or they struggle to work synchronously. Sometimes plants will grow and find themselves tangled again. Vines and gardens and plants all beautiful but all unable to know their own needs. It takes a skilled gardener to know what's best and sometimes even then it's not an absolute.

Humans are not plants, we are far more complicated, we are filled with emotion, judgement, issues and conscious thought. Who are we to know what in the fuck we want? How are we supposed to trust in others when we can't even trust our own opinion or struggle to form one? Whether through my own twisted lense of perception, gaslighting or struggles and moments of first experiences and dealings with the many complications to any moment with many people and feelings and topics all that came to my mind was feeling like a robot like maybe my emotions aren't with as much depth or good enough or come out wrong. Yet without the comparison of the past and the need to be clear and therefore properly understood, with the simple and only requirement being to myself... well it doesn't get easier to know your own thoughts but at least it's clearer the depth and strength of feelings one has. The kind of feelings that make you question what feelings are and how you might interpret them.

The ones that are so fiercely strong that you can't tell if you're angry because you're upset or upset because you're angry, whether you're upset because you're thinking about a happiness or upset because you're thinking about the pain, the kind of feelings that tell you you're an idiot for not protecting yourself sooner while also telling you that you ought to not need to protect and all emotions and thoughts between. They say pain makes you stronger but they fail to ever say how it makes you stronger. How one converts or ignites strength from or through the pain, whether pain is to be replaced or forgotten or constant. At what point do you stick true to who you are or maybe were, possibly either foolishly trusting and quick to do so whimsically or refreshing and positively quick in trusting or maybe even both at once since it comes with benefits and goodness but through enough exposure and unfortunate chance you'll be able to have it taken advantage of.

Are there any right answers in the end? Any correct paths to take? In such a perfectionist world high on emotions low in patience and so particular and picky in tastes will there be any humanity able to step back and be hopeful but not condemnful? Any chance of understanding and fair expectations while not sacrificing oneself and not settling for less than ideal but the composure and treatment one would hope in return in this world? I want to be myself, my ideal self in this world, the young man with dreams to do it all and be around for all, to be interactive and caring and trusting with all as I can be, to do as much as I can with my time and to build a pure family with no distances with energy to spread something further with cosiness and trust and openness I was so ready for all of that, I was so ready I took on more than I could, I rushed about the place, I grew tired and pulled in my sphere expanding from a quiet furnishing floater to much more too quickly. I saw my vision in even the worst of times even with each moment of collapse where it would feel like there was a poisonous atmosphere out to get me, with little mind of my mind but there was always enough to keep me going. Didn't matter whether it was external or internal when it mattered most it was internal, when my mind and opinion wavered on whether my feelings were in need internally if needed I'd smooth over and repair as best I could whether I was reckless and blind excusing the damage or smoothing over without the proper external material or against external or internal counterparts is a matter somewhat. What matters to me the most though is having a hold on understanding, ironic how often it can be to feel misunderstood and to not quite understand the new or unknown around you and yet worst of all not have enough perspective and capacity or perhaps too much of the capacity to think so much and not understand yourself.

So much blabber that might not make sense but ultimately it comes to this, I've felt deeply, and strongly regardless of how many times I've felt empty from depression and of the opinions of others. How do I know I've felt that strongly about something? Well for starters I already knew it in each moment where there was effortlessness and yet knowing the moments that had and would take all the effort which meant so little amounting to effortless when achieved. It was clear in the way I'd feel when things would seem to co-incide literally with moments that would match and I'd tell myself that it's a tie at a level deeper with fate, souls, voodoo whatever shit you can think of that becomes your own metaphor keeping minds and states and moments as one or close to one. It's so much more that told me so much about myself and my insides that it'd be a disservice and silly to bother for many reasons to go on.

The biggest thing that told me about the strength of my feelings and opened the Pandora box and decided to make me feel like I finally understood my robot belief and build the knowledge of not knowing what I know or feel or what to trust even within my feelings as to which is central rather than which is in control, the biggest thing that ripped it all open was playing to my biggest weakness, my desire to help anyone that needs it, especially those important to me. My eagerness to drop everything for now and focus on what matters to me most, being there for someone that I trust and I see as positive as a person who simply feeds that fuel of what's good and feeds into a future I know I can keep working for because those people can show me or make me feel there's a positive world and that I am not fighting against an ocean but a stream wide as you want but never endless. I trusted and eagerly took into place the most important and sacred and meaningful things to me in being there and I always will trust in even people that in now way or form have had a chance to earn it, but yet that trust was broken, it isn't often I let my upset take control of me, I keep my emotions in check as much as I can so I'm not hurting others because you can be upset and share upset without doing harm. The most important thing and pure thing I can ever feel like doing, something I struggled to do in moments that I was never prepared for, something I'd do without even noticing in smaller moments, something I do no matter the distance or the positional issues and yet my trust was taken freely advantageously whether maliciously or not, my feelings plain and simply feeling shit on all the while sharing the best of them freely.

Knowing what you truly are feeling and thinking, wanting or needing is hard enough on a basic unaltered state, figuring it out while having no real trust on your own understanding or trust in your ability to trust alongside the deservedness or maybe the potential usage of that trust is an entire different level. People will do all sorts of things in life and may change who they decide they'll be whether it follows their best version of themself, their best vision for themself or just what they feel they ought to be or can only be. There's no way of ever knowing whether someone is reaching out to you and asking how you are to simply do their part in the world, to spy on you and judge or wonder and simply update their info on you, potentially care about you, keep you at arms length as a controlled growth that's simply a body to have contact upon just due to having been part of their life or hell anything under the sun. There's no knowing if it's in your interest to respond and be accomadating to become the next generic and used person in their life that is simply kept up on tabs to know for the sake of knowing or if you'd be accomadating the a simple position where you'd be simply supplying gratification or comparison to their journey, maybe it's in your best interest to share with them regardless since it's progressive in some way? No idea what way or maybe through accomadating the asking of how you are and asking back it would do some good to them and you or even just good for them and it'd be better to do the non-selfish thing and likely what you'd want being good for them by helping them out by doing so but leaving yourself with no betterment from the exchange maybe even worse off. You're supposed to wish people well if you care about them but if you care about them that much don't you also know that it'll hurt ever knowing that would be a case.

Maybe I'm more emotional than I ever realised or maybe people would call me emotionally immature or say that I'm toxic or selfish to not immediately stray towards the most beneficial befitting accomadation of another but last time I did that it made me feel like an object a used object. When it's constantly on loop and stuck on your mind is their a reason? Is there a purpose or direction the universe is pushing you deliberately with all this stuff all these strong deep entrenched thoughts and feelings never giving any long pause of rest? Is it supposed to be a reason to go against in spite of it and trust and respond and engage or is it to follow and close up to, is it stupid to trust someone without constant proof and effort from them showing trust? Is it supposed to stick around and be the way it is for any connections made? Or is it a shitty curse among a strong memory that keeps so much in long term storage that never let's you forget anything. Am I supposed to avoid or forget about or hate or enjoy or be indifferent of little details that I couldn't forget even if I tried, should I be able to forget details. Thinking about it a robot was never a good representation of myself because it focused on a lack of or a disconnection with emotion, feeling miles away from emotion capable and shared by so many more normal people who fit into society or whatever dodgy society may be around, it didn't focus on the confusion of and difficulty with emotion, it didn't focus on the overly believing attitude the childlike expectancy to things working out no matter what and to everything being possible without any sacrifice, the sensitivity to even some violence and small issues among bigger moments thinking everything can be perfect with some ease the rarer of the idealistic over the top optimism moments. At least a robot can know or think and decide in a certain way. It will always make a decision based off of something and wouldn't be unsure of itself. At the end of the day I don't care about it's label because it's the outside world or the stagger into the dark that'll eventually tell me something about my thoughts even if it never comes or my mind is changed more than once. I do really hope it being the first birthday I'll be so seperate from that it'll somehow be as personal and enjoyable as any before, I wish I could somehow have any factor on it but I also wish I'd stop wishing because there's plenty of reason or stories I'm sure to explain that there's nothing good from such stuff being wished since it's at my own detriment maybe. I think that's enough to look back at and know roughly my own thoughts and hopefully give me some peace on it all for a while. Maybe I'll not have to use this ever again.

P.S Michael you might not even understand half the crap you're writing but at least it's been written also there's a wasp and who cares about readability or thinking more about this until it has a reason to be thought about more with a wasp

[adifferenttime]

Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.