#the designs... the scenario... so good...

[iamthedukeofurl]

Okay, here me out Disco Elysium presents the ideal mechanical framework for a Star Trek game. Now, I want to be clear. The resulting game would NOT feel like Disco Elysium, this is a game about controlling a crew of highly competent professionals, not a single amnesiac with poor impulse control. The skill system is straightforwards, representing the various specialties of your crewmembers. The "Skills Talk to you" mechanic is just literal conversations you are having with the relevant specialists about the situation you have encountered.

The Disco Elysium RPG mechanics apply themselves quite nicely to a largely dialogue based game where you want to apply a broad set of skills to a variety of situations. So a dialogue might look like this KLINGON EXILE: Starfleet Scum! You face not an ordinary Bird of Prey. Ever since I was cast out by those honorless dogs on Qu'onos for daring to walk the path of a Klingon Warrior, I have scoured the galaxy for the weapons that will lead the Empire to it's glorious destiny! The destruction of a Federation starship will prove to all Klingons the fruits of my efforts and the Superiority of my designs! Prepare yourselvs for death! You [Empathy, Hard Failure]: This Klingon seems determined to prove his worth in battle. You don't see a good way to convince him this isn't a good idea. Lt Gearhead [Xenotech. Moderate Success]: Captain, scans show that bird of prey is outfitted with highly advanced weapons derived from multiple different technologies. His shields appear unaltered however.

You [Galactic Awareness. Hard Success]: You recall reports of attacks on experimental facilities, quarantine zones, and storage sites across the quadrant. If this klingon was the culprit, he has attacked everyone from the Romulans to the Orion syndicates in order to build his "Perfect Warship". Cmdr Fightsman: [Stellar Combat, Moderate Success]: "Those weapons will blow right through our shields I can't recommend a straight fight". Lt. Gearhead: [Starfleet Systems, hard failure] I could try to reinforce our shields, but I don't know if we could get them back up before the first attack. OPTIONS: 1: Convince the Klingon to seek more worthy prey [Diplomacy: Hard] 2: Attack head on [Stellar Combat, Legendary] 3: Boost Shields to weather the first volley [Starfleet Systems, difficulty unknown] 4: Attempt a fighting retreat until you can reach federation space [Stellar Combat, Hard] 5: Attempt to strike first and catch him off guard [Going Boldy, Hard] 6: Attempt a fighting retreat to lure him into Romulan space [Stellar Combat, Moderate] Now I presented a combat scenario here, but the key to Disco Elysium is that everything is resolved through dialogue. The same mechanics could apply to an ethical dilemma, a science mystery, or a holodeck game. A Star Trek game, especially one that positions you as a captain, should be mainly about talking to people and making decisions, not mechanical execution.

An inherent problem with the Star Trek concept is that any time people want to make movies or videogames about it, they always move away from what Star Trek is about.

Because Star Trek isn't very action focused or cinematic or tactile. They don't even really have guns, they basically fight by aiming laser pointers and just standing there. You're not gonna get sick action shooter gameplay from Star Trek. The best Star Trek episodes are the ones where no combat happens at all.

Because Star Trek wasn't made to be an action movie, or a videogame. Star Trek is a TV show, and everything about it was made for a long-form TV format, and a long-form TV budget. It's about character drama, and politics, and diplomacy, and encountering weird alien shit. It was built for characters making tough decisions, and going on Shakespearean soliloquies.

The only kind of game that would REALLY stay true to the spirit of Star Trek.... Would unfortunately be a Telltale style choose your own adventure game.

[carat24svt]

💎Boyfriend!DK x Fem!reader💎

•

Scenario?: You wear his shirt

•

“Hey baby? Can you tell me if this shirt looks good on me or not?”

The question you asked was simple, and Dokyeom figured it was so as he was looking on his phone.

“Hmm? Let me see, hon..” he looked up from his device to the closet door that was just now opened and his heart began to stop.

There you were, standing in the doorway, wearing his favorite black shirt that had white designs. It fit perfect around your body and this was something he least expected you to ever do.

“Fuck..” he whispered softly.

“Well? What do you think? Does it fit well?” It went to your mid thigh, and he honestly could barely breathe right now.

“Yeah,” he began to smile that bright sunshine grin. “It fits perfect, y/n. It fits perfect.”

He’s making sure to keep this memory etched in his mind for a long, long time.

•

•

[knightforflowers]

revisited an old concept from March I entertained for a while about the Abyssal Auction being more like a fancy masquerade ball (purely bc I love drawing these types of outfits <3)

(maskless alts under cut)

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[gogogoat495]

[Image ID: A Homestuck comic about Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider, done with a dark red as the ink colour. It is a normal day in Can Town, a small imaginary city constructed entirely from cans. A book is opened upside-down to form a pediment, which Serenity the firefly is resting in. Suddenly, the shadow of a dragon with pointy oval eyes falls over the horizon. The carapacians in the plaza, two Dersites and a Prospitian, tremble in fear. The dragon roars, her wingspan spreading the length of the city, and a jagged Libra symbol can be seen on her chest. She goes on a rampage, knocking over cans left and right, but then spots a caped figure on the horizon. His cape billows in the wind, covering his body, with a short front piece that drapes down from his collar, cut to resemble castle crenelations, and its gaiter rises to obscure the lower half of his face, which is featureless except for a pair of circular shades that look like bug eyes. He raises his arm and points at the dragon in challenge, and she likewise roars at the knight. They collide and he throws her to the ground, demolishing several cans in the process. She stares at him in confusion for a second before laughing and falling over dead. He stands there, but starts laughing too, and soon she is sitting back up and they laugh together. In the real world, Dave sticks out a hand to help Terezi off the floor, while WV looks on in dismay at the ruins of Can Town. /End ID]

well it’s comic-day activity at @homestuckartists and so I tried do a thing! It does have a lot of errors and stuff but hey, for first tey after YEARS it’s ok, I guess… Ill definately work on it again following some advice I recived.

anyway, enjoy! :D

[bacchuschucklefuck]

the never stop blowing up vhs is where cute twinks go to get harmed

[starrysharks]

chapter 1 of reassassination's nearly done script-wise! hopefully the next chapters won't take like 6 months of on-and-off work to complete lol

[icewindandboringhorror]

I was just thinking what a cool job this might be.. what if you were just the person who makes little still images of cute animal figurines doing various activities to post on social media...? like.. show up to work and just spend the whole day like "hmm... this table should be placed to the left a little.. let me set this miniature bagel down in this way... this tiny rabbit should be wearing a scarf", setting the backgrounds, the lighting, etc. ... dream job perhaps lol...

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

HEY! If you haven't seen the new area yet and don't want (appearance, not gonna talk about lore) spoilers, then ignore this ask!!!

I'm screaming over the fact that there are multiple, smaller & purply All-Devouring Narwhals. Like, they're not the ADV (as far as I'm aware), but aaaaaaaaaa I love themmmm <3

~ The anon who wanted Kaveh but didn't want Baizhu or Ganyu I managed to get the update on my phone! With 300MB to spare lmao. Unfortunately lost my 50/50 to Keqing, but grinding to snatch a confirmed Arlecchino hehe

NO ME TOO OH MY GOODNESS. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE SCYLLA he's such a good sparkly whale dragon lad,,,

i think he and Foul Legacy would be such good friends too, once Scylla reassured Legacy that he was not, in fact, the All-Devouring Narwhal. you meet the Prince of the Dragonborn during an expedition to Remuria, long after the golden-haired traveler passed through and repaired the endless symphonies, and your Abyssal moth monster is immediately fascinated. you and Legacy swim together, weaving between the ichor strings of the aqueduct as Scylla floats alongside you. he becomes a good friend, able to understand both you and Legacy and happily welcomes your company, telling you stories about the sunken city and helping you navigate the depths- Childe is the wariest of him, when you bring him to visit, but quickly becomes enthralled by the tales of battle and how Remuria was destroyed

Foul Legacy occasionally goes for a swim while you're working, learning how to play Remuria's instruments by himself with helpful advice from Scylla- he wants to be able to play a song for you, one day, something from one of your favorite records at home. he also somehow helps Scylla swim INTO Fontaine, and quite near the city, too! you'll be running errands and doing chores and take a casual glance towards the ocean, only to see Legacy enthusiastically waving at you, the tip of Scylla's head poking out behind him... to say you've gotten in trouble a few times with the Iudex would be an understatement, but at least that allowed Scylla to have the friendly chat he's been waiting for!

[kirkwallguy]

I'm upset about the lack of choices and the likelihood that the solas romance is going to be pushed more but bringing up the new characters as something that could have been replaced by old ones is a pretty bad faith arguement imo. It's a new game, of course there's going to be new characters? The cameos were never the forefront or the cornerstone of my enjoyment. I mean if you hate the game and only play it in the hopes of getting scraps of your favorite characters from the previous games then ok but why torture yourself like this lol

i mean as long as they don't repeat the mistakes of inquisition and expect us to have read extra material to understand what's going on, i don't care about the new characters THAT much, i just think it's funny to act like they're actual cameos when most people don't know who they are. a charitable read would be that they're rewarding hardcore fans but likeeeee... they're trying to sell books lol

tbh cameos wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me normally, i can take them or leave them in da2 and obviously there are none in origins. but combined with everything else we know about the game i AM still on the fence about getting it... no worldstates means it's unlikely they'll bring up any of the plots i was interested in having resolved or explored further 😑 so it all comes down to the quality of the writing and plots they introduce, which is very hard to judge from the promo esp since apparently everything they're showing is from act 1

[whatudottu]

Oof ouchie tumblr really volumetrically compressed the shit out of this one so click for quality maybe-

Anyway here's some more of my frankensteinian freak supersoldier human Predaking now starring my human Knock Out design (or at least one where he's on the shift and thus is obligated to stay in uniform because having blood on your good clothes is no good).

Don't mind Predaking he was just banging on the door until they opened and is now waiting patiently to be let in :)

[obstinaterixatrix]

I have a friend whose favorite series is a•t, which, Yknow, I am trying so hard to be polite about having extremely different tastes. but I cherish & support her and when it comes to bday presents I’m either waiting for someone to express a need/want for smth during any time of the year & just buying it & going ‘happy early/late birthday’ OR I’m planning months in advance (& sometimes collaborating w/ folks) for The Perfect Present but I can never bring myself to get something I’m halfhearted on… I’ve been on & off scrolling thru mercari/ebay/amazon/aliexpress and feeling very Eh abt the quality/size/price and was almost close to just getting two small cheap but cute plushies (13 cm & 10 cm :/), then on ebay I saw smth that was 20cm (good size) and actually very cute, but it was like $50 for the plush & $20 for shipping and while I cherish my pal I am not dropping $70 on a plushie (AND ESPECIALLY NOT ON A•T MERCH). so I do a exact match search of the specific brand and find one (1) online store selling it for $20 (incl shipping) (they’re having a 20% off sale). which is suspiciously low so I made sure to look up reviews outside the site & it looks legit, so I’m gonna buy it & hope that even if it’s not legit it’ll be an acceptable quality bootleg, and if it isn’t even that then I still have a month and a half to get one of my backup plans. in a week we’ll see if I get a Perfectionism Win.

[antianakin]

No disrespect to all the artists who draw this scenario, but every time I see an art of a clearly mostly canonical Anakin (in same Jedi robes as in canon, got the same hair/scar/etc) just spending positive time with children, usually Luke, Leia, or Ahsoka, I cannot help but deeply desire that child to be saved, like they are NOT SAFE WITH HIM AND I KNOW IT, it stops being adorable when I know that that is a child murdering monster playing around with those poor innocent kids, ya know?

[welcometogrouchland]

We talk a lot about there being zero content for a niche thing you're into but ohhhh my god. Oh my GODDD WHY IS IT SO TORTUOUS. OH MY GOD WHY. KILL ME. PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY LIKE OLD YELLER. OH MY GOD WHY

[jacarandaaaas]

once again pushing my self imposed art limits and I’m gonna try draw some cartoony madrigals

[blujayonthewing]

so in juniper's campaign we've just found ourselves in a high-stakes situation that I as a player do frankly find stressful and am anxious about, but hey hi also the DM was like 'okay here are the exact mechanics of how this is going to work because I don't want to surprise you with serious repercussions, also here are all the options you will have to try to do something about the situation-- [affected player] what do you think? honest feedback, I don't want it to feel unfair, I want to be clear that I am not just trying to kill your character, and if it ends up being badly balanced we can revisit it down the road' and oh my god I could COLLAPSE and WEEP with gratitude