#tell me what y'all think ok!!!

[acearohippo]

I love fandoms, especially witnessing what fans take away from source material and how fans interpret it based on their experiences. Not to mention the stark difference of interaction between new fans, casual fans, experienced fans, and long-term fans.

I say this because the SVSSS fandom has continuously fascinated me in insisting in discussions that there are parallels between Shen Jiu and Luo Binghe (tell don't show), but in their fanworks, I just see parallels between Luo Binghe and Yue Qingyuan (show don't tell).

And it's not even (fully) a case where they're blending character personalities because they want what the other dynamic has, it's just how the characters are based on canon in two different timelines.

All of this to say, perhaps original draft PIDW (NOT original!PIDW nor pre!SY PIDW which are completely different) was supposed to revolve around the dynamic between SJ and YQY vs SJ and LBH. Perhaps YQY was to be the last hour mastermind, the true foil to LBH.

And fandom is just circling this idea without realising it because, once again, the unreliable narrator that is SY has already convinced this fandom that any version of SJ has to be a/the villain, regardless if it's through his own actions or baseless rumours.

Warning, run-on sentence ahead.

I don't know, mans, but it's gotta mean something that LBH and YQY have such similar life beats of being orphaned and having a tough life but remaining kind/compassionate because they had someone to live for until they didn't which left them empty until they found (or refound in YQY's case) one (1) man to obsess over in an uncomfortably intrusive way with no regards for his feelings and rejections, eventually reaching a position as the most powerful being in existence with a huge caveat that their sword is 83% of that power and is slowly killing them which did nothing to soften said man of their obsession's into showing them kindness leading to the ultimate confrontation between the two in which only one could survive and keep their obsession, not that it mattered because neither of them got to experience his feelings reciprocated, except in another timeline where the same things are happening until their obsession suddenly stops rejecting their (still intrusive) advances even if he is acting a bit silly, but hey take advantage while you can and take advantage they did because now they have that reciprocated feeling (except one still "won" as he gets to keep him for himself) and be thankful that all it took was, in their perspective, a near death fever that drastically changed his personality and most likely left him crippled in some other way, preventing their obsession from not NOT needing them anymore, all-in-all fulfilling their desire to be relied upon again, hooray! 😋😁✌🏽

In all seriousness, at the end of the day people are going to draw connections between characters that fit whatever narrative they understood from the story. SVSSS fandom just seems to be trying to convince others of one narrative while believing on a deeper level of another narrative. It's amusing and makes following the fandom fun.

[picturemecountingcards]

i thought to myself, what could be more fun than making edits for a niche fandom? and the answer is making non-english edits for said niche fandom, enjoy

[lowkeyslytherin]

[c-is-for-circinate]

Background AD&D info for Stranger Things Fans

I'm doing it, I'm writing an overly-long post A WHOLE SERIES of overly-long posts about how the Stranger Things kids play D&D, and what exactly first edition and AD&D were for.

Source: I've been playing since 3rd ed/3.5 era, NOT AD&D, but I've had a lot of friends who've been in the game for much longer and I'm kind of a nerd for rulesets so I watch D&D bros go off on youtube sometimes for fun. Also, I've actually read the AD&D player's handbook, which is an experience let me tell you. If anyone who's played older editions wants to chip in, go for it!

I think I'm going to have to write a separate post (or posts...god hopefully not posts) about the kids' individual classes. So stay tuned for that. I'll link it from this one when it's done.

First, some history: The earliest editions of D&D are a little confused, numbering-wise, because they didn't know there were going to be numbered editions yet. Dungeons and Dragons debuted in 1974 as an offshoot of mini-based tabletop wargames that already existed at the time. These were mostly big games, where players controlled whole armies rather than creating individual characters, and set their forces against one another. (Not unlike very complicated games of chess, if you really think about it.) D&D was not, to my knowledge, the first individual-character-based ttrpg, but it became the biggest pretty readily.

Advanced Dungeons and dragons, or AD&D, came out in '77 or '78 (Wiki says '77, the publication date on the copy I've been using says '78), although they were still publishing Basic D&D as an alternate option, more or less until the mid-nineties. AD&D was a lot more rules-heavy and had a lot more intricacy going on (relatively speaking), and it's the game the ST kids play.

Compared to modern D&D, AD&D's basic rules feel both more and less. The mechanics themselves are often way more complex, and navigating your way through all of those percentage tables as a DM implies a pretty high level of math skill, worth noting for both an 11-year-old or a guy who failed senior year twice. The character options, on the other hand, feel slim. On first glance.

AD&D only has five classes -- ten if you count subclasses, which you probably should for AD&D. There's fighters, with special fighter subclasses ranger (Lucas's class) or paladin (Mike's class); clerics (Will's class, supposedly), with special cleric subclass druid; magic-users (or mages, theoretically El's class), with special mage subclass illusionist; thieves (NOT rogues! but this is definitely Lady Applejack's actual class, with some caveats), with special thief subclass assassin; and monks. You will note I did not mention bards. We will get to bards. (Probably in the character post, when I talk about Dustin. Bards are...special.)

AD&D had no barbarians, no warlocks, no sorcerers. No special, prescribed forked paths for a character to venture down. Subclasses functioned mostly like classes do nowadays -- you'd roll up a character and be a paladin from day one, simply lumped under fighter because many of the core mechanics were the same. And a significant percentage of text given to describing these classes seems full of really restrictive orders and conditions. Clerics are never allowed to use a bladed weapon? Druids refuse to touch metal? Assassins must engage the local guildmaster in a duel to the death in order to progress to level 14? Where's the creativity, asks the modern 5e D&D player? Where's the freedom?

And this highlights a really core, central thing about how AD&D works and what it was for, that I think modern audiences can very easily miss:

1st edition AD&D is a game about archetypes.

Modern D&D is a game played in a sandbox that's been dug up and worked over for the past fifty years, in a cultural landscape that values individuality and originality and sometimes pretends that daring to share a trope with anything that came before is somewhere between boring and a straight-up crime. Original D&D came with very different baggage, and while it was still very much a game about storytelling, the KINDS of stories being told were a little different.

Characters weren't intended to be highly specialized, granular creations with intricate backstories and complex individualized skill sets. This wasn't even because those kinds of character-driven games or narratives were seen as bad, necessarily -- it's simply not what the game was written for!

First edition D&D was designed for big, epic adventures, where players could embody their own personal instance of a specific stock character trope. It was written for "I want to be a knight!" and "I want to be the magician!". It was about getting to be YOUR VERSION of a very particular, already-existing idea that would have been familiar from fantasy fiction at the time.

So, when the AD&D rules say that druids hold oak and ash trees sacred, that they will never destroy woodland or crops under any circumstances, that they cannot and will not use metal weapons or armor, that there only exist nine Level 12 druids in the world and they form a council with students below them -- this isn't an attempt to micromanage players, to be arbitrarily pedantic or controlling. This is Gary Gygax attempting to present the archetype that 'druid' is meant to encompass. This is what a druid is, according to this ruleset: a priest of nature, part of an order with rules and loyalties, with these priorities and these ideals. Mechanics and personality are not divorced in AD&D as they are in 5e; they are written together, to outline a specific character concept, and that is what's presented for the players to get to play.

If this sounds like it leads to boring, formulaic stories -- well, it could. But archetype-based stories, particularly adventure stories, are by no means necessarily bad. A story about a mysterious and knowledgeable old wizard; a naive-but-determined farmboy full of destiny and potential; a reckless rogue, slick but sometimes bumbling, selfish but secretly loyal; a beautiful princess, charming and clever and sharp-tongued when she wishes to be -- it's a pulp novel full of stock characters and tropes. It's Star Wars. What makes Star Wars special is NOT that its characters are specific, convoluted, or entirely original. What makes it special is that the specific instantiation of these characters, the little things that make Luke Skywalker be Luke Skywalker and not any other callow farmboy. Star Wars uses these archetypes well, and that makes them deeply satisfying. THAT'S the kind of story ethic behind AD&D.

First edition D&D has a reputation of being all about combat, and not about story at all. And on the surface, it's somewhat true: AD&D's rules are also highly combat-based. This isn't because players were expected to only do combat and dungeon crawls, and never roleplay -- but it WAS expected that, by signing on to play D&D, players were most interested in a campaign of exploration and fighting towards some fanciful goal. There was an element of buy-in from the start. The game was (and still very much is), at its core, about going on a quest.

The thing to remember, though, is that a quest IS a story. It's not the psychological trauma-unburdening character-driven narrative that pop culture might tell you to expect in modern D&D, but AD&D was every inch as story-based as the game's ever been. The stories being told were a little different, but with a very similar root.

The 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide is actually full of information about how to set up a world and stock it with people, political factions, and socioeconomic logistics. There are extensive rules about how high-level adventurers become part of the political fabric of the realm, building forts and amassing followers and making names for themselves. (Here, again, we see echoes of AD&D's forebearers in war games, and certain elements of the game that are all but gone from modern D&D.)

What there AREN'T a lot of rules about, on the other hand, are things like skill checks. There's no "persuasion" or "investigation" in AD&D, no list of specific things players can do and how good they are at them. Aside from combat and a small handful of specific non-combat activities, discretion over the success or failure of just about anything was left up to the DM. A DM was always free to call for a dice roll, and could set an arbitrary target number for success at any activity, but the rules also don't say they have to. To see if the characters persuade the barmaid to give them a hand, the players would have to be persuasive. To find the hidden clue in the cluttered chamber, the players might have to describe themselves looking in the right place.

In other words, there are relatively few rules for activities outside of combat, not because those activities were expected to be absent, but because they were expected to be unpredictable. How much exploration, and what players had to explore; what NPCs to interact with, and how they might react to being spoken to; what factions might exist, what moral quandaries could unfold, even the goal and big bad guy of the whole campaign -- the original sourcebooks for AD&D offer at best some very general advice, and NO hard and fast rules. That was for players and DMs to decide.

Many players and DMs, I know, fell on the side of engaging in relatively little worldbuilding complexity outside of the very mechanically-crunchy dungeon crawl. What little we see from the campaigns in ST is certainly mostly combat-oriented. And yet there are also hints of storylines happening off camera. Season 1's one-day eight-hour adventure was probably mostly dungeon crawl. Season 4's campaign takes most of a school year, until the players recognize the members of the cult they've been chasing for months, and know Vecna lore that would only have been published in one or two places anywhere by then, which means they probably learned it in-game. We don't see a lot of evidence of specific character plotlines -- in fact, repeatedly we're shown that the Party's characters share names with their players, making the whole thing even more clearly a big kids' game of let's-pretend. But that doesn't mean there's not a story.

So in short, the original game of D&D is built for epic quests, founded in very specific archetypes, but with the space for just about infinite in variation within that framework. That's what the Stranger Things kids are playing.

(And with this posted, I can start writing about the individual classes these kids are playing and what that says about each of them.)

[bumblingbabooshka]

Live Fast & Prosper

[spnintheyearofourlord]

Okay Dean “You know I am not much for prayin’ ‘cause in my book it’s the same as beggin’” and “I prayed to you, Cas, every night” Winchester, I see you.

[dirhwangdaseul-archived]

idk if i have stated in so many words before but kinda weird for people not to care about the brown men of the story on account of them being men

like most people did to javi irl what the yellowjackets did in the show lol, dismissed always, no more than the little kid, he was already dead

[dynmghts]

i did NOT linger on ch402-405 long enough because as far as i can tell katsuki brought himself back right before all might was brought over by all for one, right? but with the distance, he wouldn't have seen them, nor did he have any sufficient means of closing such a distance THAT fast. so how did he know to go to the ledge and observe below?

either those on the field told him where izuku was, or he heard izuku scream for all might. or BOTH - which is more plausible, because yes, he can trust izuku will win, but with all might in danger and dragged toward ua by all for one, it put everything in jeopardy.

and so what do you mean katsuki bakugou, dynamight, symbol of victory, likely heard izuku's cry for help from below, and charged straight to him - trusted that he would be pointed in the right direction? what do you MEAN he probably heard the desperation in izuku's voice the moment he breathed life again, and his first thoughts were; izuku is in trouble. all might is in trouble.

katsuki didn't even give himself time to live again before he went into another life-or-death fight, because what follows is that he doesn't just save all might from all for one's clutches. he goes to end all for one so he'll never achieve his goal.

because those two people are the largest testament to the man he's become, and he'll defend them with his life - like he did before.

i am unwell.

[basically-fabulous]

u "don't vote" motherfuckers r stupid as shit

[reinabeestudio]

thinks about the heartshipping band au again aoughg

[feral-radfem]

I'm not going to be tone policed on how I talk about any subject whether it personally affects any of you or not. I am certainly not going to be persuaded to speak more kindly to my oppressors and/or direct political opponents because they are personally affected by the issue I'm talking about.

Some of y'all are letting the female socialization that demands we be kind and considerate at the expense of ourselves (& our social movements) push you right into sugar coating important topics and out of being an effective communicator.

[notasapleasure]

Jo are you trying to make sense of the Tekke scene again even though you know it hurts your heart and makes you crazy?

Put Pawn in Frankincense DOWN and go back to work.

[altrxisme]

I love it when lovely intrusive rp thoughts come in

like what if Jo lost part of her arm in her ffxv verse

like full chop

[void-skoom]

Ok so here's my thinking. Ripley's a sentient right? A mimic no less. Or at least half of her is. But that other half? No one except her creator knows for sure.

But I'm thinking, like, so stick with me on this, what if being a void child was a bit more literal for her?

Like, originally she was supposed to just be a sentient mimic, made to replace the Dax before Ballas made Warframes an actual thing. But what if for some reason the Archimedean who made her couldn't quite get her to act/preform the way she was supposed to (since originally sentients were meant for terraforming and not for combat and said Archimedean wasn't the original creator) so they started dabbling in Void technology and integration. Then after years of study and planning and secrecy they finally, finally create this thing made of Void energy, bound to a core that fashions that energy into its own metallic skeleton, then a nervous system, and finally wrapping itself in a protective shell.

It'd still take time but eventually the shell would bend and soften and form something closer to a human everytime before finally, a baby is born.

A baby with wide glowing eyes that practically stare into your soul and a sharp mind waiting for directions and commands but trapped in a body to young and uncoordinated. At this point, her creator has dabbled much to far into the abyss and has paid the price. At this point the Archimedean has lost her own mind obsessing over her creation and now that it's finally here... She vanishes.

No one can remember her. No one remembers that she ever even existed. No one knows who that strange babe is or where is came from. A Dax squadron had found it in an abandoned lab, but they couldn't remember why they had been sent there. Either way, they're ordered to raise it and the child is brought up as Dax. It never speaks, so it never questions, it only obeys. It is never given a name, as they do not see it as a person. No one has seen it eat, and no one has seen it sleep, it only trains and fights as it is ordered. Both the Dax and the Orokin find it unsettling, and so they want it gone.

The experimental Void-jump was the perfect opportunity. If the jump succeeded, then they would never have to see it again, and if it didn't, if it just so happened to fail and something were to happen to those on board.... Well, what are the chances of that, right?

So anyways, how does this lead into Ripley and Xaku being the same person? Well for that I'll have to skip a bit. So let's say your Ripley, still only semi-sentient and not really getting to explore that whole deal since, ya'know, ya been at war for the past who knows how long. But now that war has finally ended, maybe you can finally start exploring that, right? Well ya don't really have a choice now, since all your ex-Orokin masters are either dead or on the run and it's not like you really liked those guys anyway. Also, unlike all the other tenno, you weren't allowed the safety of the Reservoir. There had been an incident you see, you had been a jailer once, during the war. You had been a warden posted on Venus where you had met a strange man... But that was a story for another time, now was the time for something much more important to you. Something you've been wanting to do for a very long time now: find Rell.

So find him you shall! If only you knew where to begin. You have no people skills, and your not even sure you can talk to begin with anyway so instead, you wander. Any rogue Orokin you come across are executed without mercy as you listen to the whispers of serpents. Eventually you find signs of him; members of a cult who spoke of dangers of the Void. Intrigued, you follow them, listening to their teachings, and finally you find him. Or rather, what's become of him. Bound to his Warframe in order to protect against the Voids madness, and once again you find yourself wondering what it was all for.

For what is the point of sentience if you find yourself alone and abandoned again and again. Your serpents whisper platitudes and yet still you can feel yourself falling into a deep dark depression. You recount Rells supposed teachings to yourself as you rest in your orbiter and think back. Back to the incident. The the Zariman. You hadn't been afraid back then, like the rest of the children had. You didn't understand them and their fear. Nor did you understand the adults madness. Instead, you observed, as you always had since the day you were born. The twisted looks on the faces of the adults reminded you of your creator's. Familiar glee and anguish then suddenly, gone. The endless dark outside the reinforced windows stared back at you with equally familiar eyes. And finally, when that being appeared in your reflection, you did not waiver. Instead, when it held out it's hand, for some reason you took it. You hadn't thought, hadn't been ordered. You just... Acted. On your own.

You're confused now, why had you accepted? No words were exchanged, it was as though they weren't needed. As though it was an agreement long ago embraced. Your mind races. Why? Why was it all so familiar? You had to know, you had to find out. Just as Rell did.

And so you do. For the first time in years you abandon your Warframe, your serpents plead for you to come back. Back to safety and normality. But you won't. You can't. You can hear something else's whispers now. Someone else. You step forward and take the plunge.

...

...

And now we're here. At the present. The tenno are back once more, awakened from their long dream. And so are you. Your form broken and forgotten, you claw your way back to the physical world once more. You remake yourself from what you can find. And arboriform skeleton to serve as your base and keep you together. Piece's of armor taken from equally as broken and mangled bodies. You emerge once more ready to fight.

[4thbrighteststar]

I wish I could listen to in between gracie abrams but it makes me genuinely actually sick to my stomach nauseous

[greppelheks]

Women will voluntarily move in with, marry and have children with the guy who doesn't do anything with the boundary you've set four times, doesn't respect you and doesn't do shit around the house, and are somehow surprised this doesn't change.