#there are so many other video game characters alone that fit this archetype better than him too like. c'mon

[skrunksthatwunk]

was thinking about the byronic hero as an archetype i love and remembered for the first time in months that article i found that called kiryu one. it was like getting flashbanged with a cautionary tale

[arcane-aspirations]

The Frustration of the Experienced or, When Nothing is New* Anymore

I’ve recently picked back up attempting an active practice of daemianism. This form of daemianism is inspired by the animal-formed, corporeal representation of human souls in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (best known book is The Golden Compass). I first read the series in 2005 or 2006 or so, and I am very sure I imagined what it would be like to have my soul beside me as an animal then. That’s the sort of person I was then - to imagine and bring forth what I experienced in stories that inspired me to my daily life - and indeed, hope to regain a powerful sense of being again.

I first encountered others who were daemians on the internet a few years later. I didn’t remain an active member, but I found The Daemon Page Forum and was fascinated with this community that developed detailed profiles for what sort of person would have what species as their daemons. It was like personality typing, with varying levels of commitment to an imaginary friend or what I would now recognize as a thoughtform.

Let me come back to that. “What I would now recognize.”

Over the years, although I didn’t post on TDF, I would check back every few months as I remembered daemianism and read over various species’ profiles that interested me. I have always been fairly obsessed with representing myself; I never felt like I had to explore or understand myself though - that felt intrinsic and obvious.

Though I always found it deeply frustrating that often the most common “default” characters and teams were the ones I related to the most, genuinely. I considered myself for a wolf-formed daemian for a very long time. That was also an issue for me being Gryffindor, an Autobot, Thunderclan... My archetype gravitated towards that that was popular, which often was annoying in that many who claimed the popular affiliation with something were frequently the ones just claiming an affiliation with the fandom or the popularity, rather than the soul behind it.

I digress. Mostly. That context of something being popular affecting my relationship with the thing itself isn’t completely irrelevant.

I would say the most important and active time in my beinng a daemian was a rough patch in my life around 2015 into 2016. I was lonely and had became my own worst enemy too, given that a precious friend turned enemy makes for the worst sort. The comfort of my daemon, this entity which was supposed to represent the real, true self, was incredibly valuable. Setting aside the slight reprieve it gave from ‘being alone’ - although of course, it was still unforgettable to me that, my daemon being me and all interactions coming from and only being perceptible by me, I was still alone - the sense that I valued, saw, and still was myself at a time where I had very much lost all of that elsewhere was invaluable for getting through that.

My daemon had a name, mostly, and a gender, mostly, and a few forms that were right, mostly. He didn’t do much but provide imagined cuddles from an animal companion friend - I really remember something  I did regularly where I’d imagine leaning our foreheads together - but I remember feeling at least sometimes happy and content as a result of the whole thing. But he wasn’t quite what people on TDF would’ve called a daemon.

Firstly, as much as I liked the idea of having an animal to identify my persona, my self, by, I didn’t like the idea of “settling” in one form. “Settling” indicated being an adult in Phillip Pullman’s series, which I have always reviled becoming and now being. That is, perhaps, a story for another time. Beyond that, it felt limiting - let’s put a pin in that one, too, though only for later in this post.

Secondly, my daemon occasionally wasn’t an animalic shape. In one vivid memory, I danced in my aunt’s kitchen when I was home alone one evening with my daemon in the form of N Harmonia from Pokemon. Is N Harmonia even someone I think is close in personality to myself, and thereby a fitting depiction of myself? Not at all, although I do think we’d be excellent friends.

Thirdly - here’s the woo warning for folks who’ve missed that my blog is witchy - I started having the sense that my daemon wasn’t “just” this thoughtform expression of my soul. I remember feeling like having this thoughtform that was me projected was sort of this... shell of my own self, that then this entity from very far away - in space, in time, from another life, who knows, it’s complicated, I never even felt comfortable saying whether it was real or not - I felt very connected to because we were of similar soul energy could inhabit. That was very much not related to daemianism. A pin here for later in post, too.

I don’t totally remember why my focus on daemianism waned for a bit after that. Things didn’t really get better for me, but my fixations do tend to move around. It may well just be that I got better enough to start playing video games again, and was checked out from my surroundings where a daemon would be projected to remind me where he was. Or it might have just started bothering me too much that he wasn’t “real” in so far as he couldn’t/didn’t exist outside what I projected.

It bothers me that I have to create and maintain so much of the things that bring value to my life myself. It’s exhausting. And those things don’t feel as real as things that exist independent of me and my influence. There’s power in “I invented that” and there’s a kind of resignation about one’s world in “I had to invent that, because it wasn’t there but I wanted so very much for it to be”.

And while there’s others out there, obviously, doing this whole daemianism thing, was that what I was doing anyway? Clearly I was taking it my own direction... or at least, combining it with other non-daemianism things that made it distinctly not quite exactly daemianism.

So while I’ve off and on projected my daemon back into the space around me - that’s the term for imagining and “seeing in your mind’s eye” your daemon existing in and interacting with your environment around you - since then, I haven’t done nearly as much.

I’m picking it back up recently and finding it rather difficult.

Some of the things I established as fitting and suitable back then, while still suitable and true in some lights, are hidden under a complicated tangle of things that don’t make them untrue but certainly obscure or make the way to the situations and perspectives where that truth is apparent difficult. There are roads I don’t walk anymore, even though those roads and how I’d walk them are still important to me. There are many roads I walk now that ...could? should? be acknowledged now that mean nothing to me but resentment that they’re where I walk. I still feel I am the same person I was; I just feel like I never get the same sorts of opportunities to be myself. 

So the forms’ fittingness to my personality feel a bit tangled in the context of my life I can’t control, where embracing that tangle feels like a near final step of losing myself. The name is roughly the same; I want a name that feels right and conveys something, and anyone who’s ever named anything to convey a meaning probably has experienced that problem.

And I can’t focus on forms suiting myself entirely, because I’m still bothered by knowledge of how a form is perceived popularly - or because of an animal’s popularity. That in and of itself feels like misrepresentation or miscommunication; I’m not able to communicate why I really feel that is right because there’s an assumption it’s what I chose consciously or unconsciously because it was popular; I’m not able to communicate through that sense of the popular thing that I feel incredibly different and disconnected from others; I’m not able to communicate what I’m saying because the most accurate denotative and personal connotative vocabulary I can find to communicate is full of connotations I don’t mean to others.

Let’s not even start with pronouns, alright?

But I think something in particular that’s frustrating is that daemianism is not the only thing on my mind when I think:

1. representation of the self

2. a form to indicate the self on an entity with malleable form

3. thoughtforms

4. animal representations of the self

I neither want to compartmentalize nor combine daemianism & daemons with witchcraft/paganism familiars/fetches, my polymorphic shapeshifter Otherkinity, souls, thoughtforms, and entities I may or may not share some kind of special soul-energy-woo bond with.

I don’t want to separate what has a resonance - except that resonance, frustratingly, sometimes shifts.

I don’t want to combine what could be varied and interesting, because now any community or representation of that thing is no longer what I am doing or can speak about and find any sense of connection through - or worse, what I am now taken to be misrepresenting or ill-informed about.

And this is the frustration of the experienced, visible here but far from exclusive to daemianism, spirit work, et al in my life: what I know I cannot but help connect to what else I know.

Connecting what  I know to what I know alters forever what I do and feel about what I know and what I learn next. I have opinions and feelings about so many things, and everything I encounter is layered upon my opinions and feelings about it all.

And I feel like that connection isolates me from ever being able to appreciate and participate in something new and fresh.

It isolates me from being able to connect to the experiences of someone else who doesn’t have the connections and syncretic perceptions that I do.

I never wish to be someone I’m not, but I frequently wish to be less experienced than I am.

*I don’t think ��new’ is the word I wanted here, but I couldn’t find it. After the post, I feel fine recording that what I wanted to reflect was not just that something was new and exciting, but also that something was able to be fresh and untainted; able to be its own thing viewed on its own terms without being conflated, connected, or tied to anything else.

[nikcosterwaldaus]

DON’T GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY

you’re sure for a quick demise

the town of exile has always been full of strange goings on, a safe haven for all that is unexplained and unnerving, but no one quite believed that there were bodies buried beneath the earth until the summer of 1993. seven teens went on a camping trip to the woods and all hell broke loose.

what started as a simple prank between a couple of them, setting traps around the trees, bushes and stumps to scare the rest of their friends, led them straight to ezekiel sutton - a leader of a very unsavoury cult, called the church of the all seeing eye, from the next town over - burying a mangled body in the damp earth. the air seemed to still, the wind blow ice cold, and the two pranksters ran back to their hideout to tell their friends exactly what they’d seen.

the problem was, ezekiel followed them back too.

in the dark of the night, the seven teens were stalked through the woods, tripped up by idiotic pranks and traps set by their friends. ezekiel got to them, one by one, taking them down and trying to make it so none of them would see the light of day. but, through the power of team work, they managed to outwit the killer; string him up, tie him down, wait until dawn to get help and escape from this forest of madness.

it’s been 27 years since the incident and it affected each of the group deeply. still living with the trauma of not knowing if they’d see another morning, they went their separate ways, trying to forget about that night and get on with what life they could salvage. now, however, things are about to change; ezekiel sutton has been released from prison and the teens - now adults - are all brought back to exile on a lie: their friend, mike, is dead.

but, when they all turned up at the church in their mourning clothes to pay their respects, who came out to greet them but mike themself. it was all a rouse to get them back, here, to exile. they needed help. ezekiel sutton was put away for one murder, but mike is convinced they’ve committed countless more. the only way they can prove it is by finding the bodies, and they can’t do that alone.

the characters listed below are based on archetypes from the it movies (and book), as well as the until dawn video game. please bear in mind you don’t need to have watched, read or played any of these to be involved in the plot. while they’re based on the characters from these franchises, they’re not identical and do not have any of the same relationship plots; we don’t expect anyone to adhere to gender or ethnicity when creating them apart from mike who we will want to keep bipoc; however, it would be fantastic if the rest of the group was diverse (characters of colour, disabilities, gender and sexuality), though it’s not mandatory - just something to think about!

all of the characters will be between the ages of forty-four and forty-five, so please make sure you follow the site’s play-by rules when choosing someone for the group! the request will include themes of murder, horror, death and stalking (serial killer > the kids). we’ll be trigger warning everything within the plot, but if you’re sensitive to any of these themes, please let us know and we’ll do our best to help you feel safe.

please note: we are more than happy to discuss any of these blurbs and they are completely open, we just wanted to give you something to go off if you’re creating a character from scratch. if you have anyone else that you might want to bring to this plot, let myself or pomona know and we’d be happy to chat with you!!!

main characters

bev / mike → prickly, confident, aggressive, independent

with a bad home life and bullied at school, bev struggled to fit in; that was until they found the rest of the group. being an outcast didn’t seem so bad when they were friends with a bunch of other outcasts and they became somewhat protective over the others - not that they let any of the group know that. they stayed in exile for a while after the events, slowly watching their friends leave until they realised there was no point; there was nothing to fight anymore. everyone had gone. now they’re back, bev is wary. they don’t want things to go back to the way they were because, last time, everyone left. they’re keeping the others at arm’s length until they can really work out where everyone’s priorities lie.

reserved for: lana

ben / ashley → shy, sweet, lonely, intelligent

the softest and kindest member of the group, ben took the incident in the woods the hardest and has suffered greatly since. barely able to keep their life on track, they’ve hopped from one thing to the next, never quite able to settle down. it’s a shame, for someone with so much heart, that they’ve had it broken and damaged in so many ways; yet they never let themselves become jaded. needless to say, they’re trying to keep the group in exile to help mike find more bodies, not only feeling some semblance of loyalty to them (and the others), but finally feeling whole again after so many years of turmoil and strife. 

reserved for: mc

bill / sam → haunted, honest, reckless , brave

they always thought they were the leader of the group, but at the end of the day they were the first to leave town after the incident. their seat at the police station barely cold, they disappeared from exile almost a week after the group came out of the woods and no one ever saw them again. that is, until now. bill’s surprisingly straight and quiet about what’s happened in the intervening years - something about finding out who they really are and learning to forgive themself - but one thing’s for sure, they’re fitting back into that leadership role like no time’s passed at all. it’s just whether the rest of the group really wants them “in charge” after bailing out the first time around.

reserved for: pandora

eddie / emily → neurotic, loyal, obsessive, genuine

having lived a half shut-in, medically induced hell of a life as a kid along with their sibling, eddie was both ecstatic and terrified at the thought of moving away from exile. their mother made them believe (truly believe) they had a plethora of illnesses and it was only at the age of twenty-three, when their mother finally passed away, that they could go and leave the horrors of their childhood behind. they moved to another small town, settled down into a quiet little life and they were happy and dandy until mike’s letter came through. now, more than anything, even more than before, they want out of exile. but something is keeping them there, and they can’t quite pinpoint what. whatever it is, it’s fucking annoying.

played by: anais (miriam chomsky - rachel weisz)

mike / josh → intense, caring, introverted, observant

after the tragic, violent deaths of their parents, mike was raised under the stern but firm eye of their aunt and uncle. mike was something of an outcast at their school but in the summer of 1993, after a run in with the infamous bully henry, mike’s bond with the rest of the group was forged in the fires of joint misfithood. a grounding presence and the self appointed guardian of the group, mike was the one who remained in exile - literally and figuratively - to ensure that the influence of ezekiel sutton would be forever stamped out. yet, life rarely goes the way we want it to, and since the release of sutton, mike has been desperate to get the old crew back together to see sutton punished for the monster he truly is - desperate enough to even fake their own death.

reserved for: yenna

richie / chris → joker, insensitive, determined, brash

the nerdy clever clogs that forged themself a suit of armour out of terrible jokes and snide remarks, richie was desperate to cut loose of their past in exile and forge a new path in the bright lights of tinsel town. best buddies with stanley since their kindergarten days, but cementing themself in the ranks of the group with his corny humour, richie has always been happy to play the clown. yet, as with all clowns, the smile is little more than a mask, and beneath the mask and the armour is a soul wracked with guilt and self loathing. no amount of gallows humour will keep these old demons at bay, and richie is a hair’s breadth away from high tailing it back to beverly hills as fast as their porsche convertible can carry them.

played by: pomona (seth spector - joaquin phoenix)

stan / matt → weak, trusting, wise, sceptical

though stan has always been a key part of the group, they’ve never exactly felt like an integral part. they’re kind, generous and trustworthy, but always seem to be in the background. always seem to be the weakest link. not much has changed over the years. the initial pranks were stan’s idea and they’ve never let themself forget it, believing that if they hadn’t decided to trick everyone with stupid games, then they wouldn’t have all almost died. their bravery and strength haven’t improved and they still can’t quite find a foothole to grab onto. their life has been an undulating mess since they left exile and it doesn’t look like coming back’s going to make that any better.

reserved for: michelle

additional characters

henry / beth

a lost and twisted soul, henry was never destined for a life of bucolic bliss or carefree contentment. raised under the iron thumb of a domineering parent, henry vented their frustrations and rage upon their school peers with infernal ferocity. the infamous bully of their school, henry perhaps would have burnt themselves out with their own banal forms of sadism if it weren’t for ezekiel sutton. meeting sutton was like henry’s eureka moment, and while his connection to sutton’s foul deeds was never revealed back in the 1990s, it is henry who has been keeping the church of the all seeing eye alive and well. now with the return of their idol and mentor, henry is keen to prove themself as sutton’s most devoted follower.

pennywise / hannah

ezekiel sutton is a man of great importance. no one in exile knew who he was up until the events of summer, 1993; now everyone wishes they didn’t know his name. dubbed the executioner of exile, he’s been in prison for the past 27 years on one charge of murder. the police could never pinpoint the location of any of the other bodies he so clearly buried in the woods, and ezekiel never let on to having done anything but put the man he did bury out of his misery. the kids? well, he never meant to scare them. and you know how teenagers can be; so dramatic!

now he’s out on good behaviour and has no clue (yet) that the kids he never meant to scare at working to find his very real skeletons in his metaphorical closet and expose him for the serial killing ass he is. still, his old cult are welcoming him back with open arms, delighted he’s managed to maintain his innocence throughout his arduous trials.

ezekiel is a npc thus unplayable.

[aion-rsa]

How Psych Evolved Through the Character of Carlton Lassiter

https://ift.tt/2ZONt8A

Early on in the Psych pilot, Shawn Spencer’s (James Roday Rodriguez) ludicrous plot to impersonate a psychic in order to solve crime suddenly takes on grave stakes: Chief Vick (Kirsten Nelson) informs him that if he’s lying, he’ll be prosecuted for hindering a police investigation. Just like that, he’s locked into his lie, and has no choice but to let it snowball—into a private eye business with his best friend Burton Guster (Dulé Hill), but also into a lucrative consultancy gig for the Santa Barbara Police Department that, psychic antics be damned, legitimately saves lives.

But while it’s the Chief who put the fear of God into Shawn, the true threat to his secret was always one Carlton Jebediah Lassiter (Timothy Omundson). In the early seasons, Lassiter was the perfect foil: a by-the-book detective obsessed with proper procedure and with hypermasculinity, who had patience for neither Gus’ high-pitched squeals nor Shawn’s supernatural “hunches.” The fake psychic’s obnoxious theatrics were nothing without an exasperated reaction from Carlton… especially as those hunches kept paying off and making this old dog all the more self-conscious about his own inability to learn new tricks.

Even moreso than their eventual tango duet in Psych: The Musical, Shawn and Lassie’s song has always been the Psych theme:

I know, you know, that I’m not telling the truth

I know, you know, they just don’t have any proof

Embrace the deception, learn how to bend

Your worst inhibitions tend to psych you out in the end

Yet even as Lassiter delighted in watching Shawn get shown up by other fake psychics and even threatened to be the one to someday catch him in the act, over the course of the series this seeming antagonist shifted into a comic relief role and eventually a truly sympathetic figure. As Carlton became Lassie, so too did Psych grow beyond its cheeky premise, from a potentially one-note episodic show to a serialized dramedy about a found family solving crimes in all manner of unconventional ways—a connection that was cemented in Psych: The Movie and now in Psych 2: Lassie Come Home.

It started with Shawn noticing that Lassie needed help, even if he would never say so outright—when he encountered the detective, drunk and loose-lipped and off his game, in “From the Earth to Starbucks.” Not only was he confounded by Shawn’s skills, Lassiter confessed, but it made him feel worse about the fact that he couldn’t solve what he believed was the murder of a local astronomer who seemingly died of natural causes. Shawn, Gus, and Juliet (Maggie Lawson) spent the rest of that episode surreptitiously helping Lassiter solve what was indeed a murder, all while throwing him clues without him realizing. There was a noticeable absence of Shawn’s psychic shtick in that season 1 episode, since the point was to give Lassiter all the credit, which meant making it look like Lassiter’s way of working. Shawn didn’t have to perform, aside from moments of conspiring with Jules, because it was very much a case of What Would Lassie Do?

Read more

Movies

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Egg and Reference Guide

By Natalie Zutter

Movies

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Review

By Natalie Zutter

By the time “Lassie Did a Bad, Bad Thing” in season 3 and was the prime suspect in a criminal’s death, he knew he had no choice but to bring Psych in where the SBPD wouldn’t investigate. And in the case of “Last Night Gus” in season 6—well, it was in everyone’s best interests to solve the mystery of that Hangover-esque night. Over the years, viewers discovered along with Shawn, Gus, and Jules various Lassie quirks: He works out his daddy issues by dressing up as his Civil War ancestor and an archetypal cowboy. He enjoys tap dancing with Gus because it helps him sort through his thoughts. He falls in love with Marlowe (Kristy Swanson) despite her criminal record. He shares more and more of himself with these colleagues who become friends and then family. In turn, he comes to, if not actually believe in, then at least accept the idiosyncrasies of Psych—because like it or not, it makes his professional and personal lives better. At the same time, Shawn’s lie quietly explodes his relationship with Juliet, as it makes her doubt that he was telling her the truth about anything. Even after they reconcile, the ramifications of almost losing her cause Shawn to pull back from automatically playing the psychic card.

And then Lassiter winds up shot and recovering in a hospital bed, helpless in the most Hitchcockian fashion at the start of Psych 2, and there’s no question about who he’ll call.

Clearly creator Steve Franks and the other writers made the decision that if they were to have Lassiter as a presence in Psych’s present, they had no choice but to draw from Omundson’s personal experience recovering from a debilitating stroke. Yet it’s eerie how well this dramatic arc fits Lassiter’s character—Lassie, who may have become a big teddy bear by the end of the series, but who is still obsessed with (heterosexual, able-bodied) notions of supposed manliness. Carlton “Danger” Lassiter, who once said he would go out “in a hailstorm of bullets” if it meant catching a criminal. Now he has to face the knowledge that he may never walk again.

Interestingly, Juliet is not the one whose help Lassiter specifically requests, despite their history as partners. In fact, it’s likely their shared experience that makes him reluctant to put her in that position; if there’s someone that Carlton would be afraid to be exposed in front of, it’s his former mentee. How can he reconcile asking the one-time junior detective whom he showed the ropes to adapt to a situation where he’s still getting his bearings? To wit, he puts her off with a to-do list of errands—a throwback to their early days together, when he frequently invited her to “shut it” or otherwise stay in her lane.

Thankfully, one of the many lessons Juliet took from their time together in the field was to not obey orders when she knows she’s on to something. And so she returns to the scene of the crime where Lassiter was shot, follows up on ballistics, and locates the missing puzzle piece of the second bullet. Shawn and Gus get the ghosts, but Jules gets the shooter. Between being confined to his hospital room, and in the face of Jules’ own stubborn tenacity, Lassiter couldn’t have stopped her if he tried. In many ways, accepting help not asked for demands even more vulnerability from him.

What’s most fascinating about Shawn and Gus’ investigation in Lassie Come Home is that not for a moment do they bullshit Lassiter. This isn’t a case for Psych, it’s an act of love from two close friends—absolutely no psychic spectacle necessary. Now, one could argue that Shawn wouldn’t have even thought to make up a vision because, as far as he knows, Lassiter watched his goodbye video (in the series finale) all the way to the end, where he confessed the truth behind how he manages to solve so many crimes.

Instead, right before Shawn could give Lassiter the answer he’d dreamed of hearing for eight seasons, the detective popped out the DVD and broke it in half. At the time, this moment in the Psych canon, arguably more than his relationship with Marlowe or his identity as a father, was when Lassiter experienced his greatest character growth: He would rather pause time, to focus on all the good that Shawn had accomplished through his lie, than be right.

But time can’t stay paused forever; and if Lassiter is being clear-eyed about how Shawn solves his baffling hospital sightings in Lassie Come Home, then he also has no illusions about his inability to solve his own mystery alone. He can contribute his observations—credible and not—and draw his own conclusions, but he has to trust Shawn, Gus, and Juliet to be his eyes, ears, and legs outside of the prison of his room. He also has to accept that he’s not always present in the crime-solving; there’s a recurring theme in which Lassiter, drifting on his meds, opens his eyes to Shawn and Gus, or Juliet, waiting expectantly for him to wake up and catch up. In one scene where Shawn goes to ask his advice about fatherhood, Lassie is completely asleep, an incredible display of vulnerability from both Lassiter and Omundson.

Yet as we learn in his final showdown with the murderous nurse Dolores (Sarah Chalke), just because Lassiter closes his eyes doesn’t mean he’s out for the count. The way he outwits her is Lassiter to a tee: Even while slipping away from the fatal morphine drip, he has enough wherewithal to grab one of three (three!) guns he had stashed in his hospital room—just like in “Lassie Did a Bad, Bad Thing.”

But this time, instead of being all cool and flipping the bullet into his hand, this Lassiter is babbling to the morphine-induced hallucination of his dead father (Joel McHale) about how much it hurt to lose him, about how he’s afraid he’ll leave his daughter to grow up without a father just like he did.

The moment is played for laughs, with Dolores’ face screwing up into incredulity—this guy has a gun pulled on her, and he’s still mumbling closure to his ghost dad? But for fans, it’s tantamount to the DVD moment: Lassiter has finally found the way to be unguarded, to embrace the ridiculousness of the present moment without self-consciousness, without losing sight of the perp. Even though he has the upper hand, he’s still scared about what he’s going to do when he gets out of this room. He can put away a killer, but he can’t predict his own future beyond the hospital.

Which makes his reunion with Marlowe—witnessed only by Jules and Henry (Corbin Bernsen)—all the more moving. Another character in another narrative wouldn’t have cared if he returned to his wife in a wheelchair, wouldn’t have agonized over mustering enough strength to stand face-to-face with her. But it’s Lassiter, with specific ideas about what it means to be a man, and for him that means looking Marlowe in the eye so they can press their hands together—this time not glass between them, nor either of their pasts, but this new challenge—in solidarity.

Lassiter’s not perfect: He has a lot of toxic masculinity left to unlearn, and he owns an appalling number of guns. He’s still more conservative than not. Because he’s a cop who becomes more sympathetic, his narrative contributes to the larger cultural trend of “copaganda” on television. It’s the same problematic issue that faces the characters on Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Even if he’s lovable, and especially because of this fact, his identity as a police officer complicates the conversation around his character growth.

But within the world of Psych, he’s a character with a worthwhile arc. Like Lassiter, the series started out following a strict formula, and only after it had relaxed into something stronger than its premise—its talented ensemble, ‘80s riffs, and library of delightful in-jokes and callbacks—could it grow beyond its initial form.

Speaking of in-jokes… For the 100-plus teases, hints, and outright cameos the series gave us of its signature symbol, we all failed to spot Psych’s most important pineapple appearance. Lassiter is the pineapple! Prickly on the outside, sweet (but still tart) on the inside. Often difficult to spot, but so rewarding to find. Case closed.

The post How Psych Evolved Through the Character of Carlton Lassiter appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/30EtLMm

[witwerlove]

What do you think about Deacon and Sarah's relashionship in days gone? I personally think that it's the cutest love story ever, like, imagine live your live thinking the love of your life is dead and then you find out she's not.

First off, I am really sorry that I am answering this over 2 months late. I actually started writing my response awhile back and it turned into a long rambling mess because I was in my feelings. But then I forgot about it and life just got so busy and stressful.

But here it is, if you or anyone is interesting in reading it. I may have gotten a little too caught up in it it, but it is what it is :)

_______________________________________

I LOVE DEACON AND SARAH!!!!!!! Their relationship is one of my favorite things in Days Gone, but I do have my gripes about them. I think there should’ve definitely been more development between them. I mean we got their “meet cute” and glimpses of their relationship, but since it was mostly via flashbacks and in pieces, it felt very….underdeveloped to me. I understand it’s not the main focus of the story, but it’s definitely a driving point of the narrative for Deacon. I just enjoy my ships having complete sequential narratives, rather than broken pieces that jump around and only give me brief glimpses of the relationship. 

But I get it, the structure of video game story telling is completely different than tv shows and movies that get the luxury of telling a developing story over the span of many hours (or over the span of years). I’m not really a gamer so I feel like that’s the wrong mindset to have by…not necessarily penalizing the writing of a video game, but being aware that there’s going to be an obvious difference in story framing for different types of media.

However….outside of the narrative structure (or lack of), I really did enjoy Deacon and Sarah’s relationship for what it is. It definitely exceeded my expectations in the fact that Sarah played a much more significant role than I ever thought she would. She wasn’t heavily featured in the marketing for the game, so I just assumed she was just going to be a device for Deacon’s broody man pain. I expected her to be killed by or because of whatever caused people to turn to freakers. But that wasn’t the case at all. I will admit that Deacon’s optimism of Sarah still being alive after everything that happened was one of the best things about the character. His resolve and determination is very admirable.

Because even though the world had fallen to shit, that hope was what had driven him to survive for as long as he did. But in a way, it could also be seen as as a weakness because in a way it felt like a crutch. I think back to the scene when Deacon and Boozer get into a physical fight and Boozer says “Where’s your old lady, Deek?” and Deacon replies “She’s dead, Boozer.” And Boozer says “She’s been dead a long time. So don’t you think that you’ve mourned her long enough?” That exchange really struck me because it showcases the difference between the characters of Deacon and Boozer. Which is kinda irrelevant to this subject, but it shines light on how strong Deacon’s love for Sarah was….versus how insensitive Boozer was (or came off to be) to his friend’s emotional attachment of his wife. And it was also sad to see Deacon admit defeat. Because he’d been going on all these quests seeking any bit of information on finding Sarah alive, only for it to lead to nothing (until it doesn’t). Because that optimism kept her alive in his heart and he didn’t want to admit to failure by having to face the tragic truth of his loss. That’s no way meant to be an insult to Boozer by the way. I love him and the Deacon/Boozer relationship is actually my favorite in the game.

But I do have to say, at first I honestly wanted Sarah to actually be dead. I thought that would’ve had a much greater emotional impact on Deacon and it just seemed to fit the story better in my eyes. When it reveals that she’s alive, I was so disappointed when I first saw it. But now that I’ve had time to digest the story and sit on it for awhile, I’ve had a change of mind. I think the reason it disappointed me so much at first is because the reveal and their reactions to seeing each other again after so long felt so underwhelming to me. Sarah is a key element of what was driving the story. 

And while the fact that she was alive was not what I expected (or initially wanted), the reveal of it was extremely underwhelming the first time I saw that scene. But I think that’s due to buildup of my own expectation. That if Sarah was alive and Deacon found her, I wanted it to be a more “fairytale-esque” reunion where boy and girl fall into each other’s arms and kiss and cry because I’m such a hopeless romantic in that way. But I‘ve since rewatched their reunion scene and I changed my mind because that element just doesn’t work in this setting at all. In fact, it was beautiful the way it is. Because it’s more realistic. Obviously their story isn’t going to pick up right where it left off. Yes, they’re still in love with each other, but there’s been a lot of time and trauma between them that it would’ve been more satisfying to me if there had been more awkwardness and tension between them. And they’d have to sort of relearn everything about each other because they’ve probably undergone personality changes from having to adapt to the way they world is when they reunite versus how they were when they left each other. 

In the grand scheme of things, what happened in game much more enjoyable than if it had been all sunshine and rainbows between them like I’d wanted to in my own personal fantasy.

But because we are seeing the game through Deacon’s eyes (and because there’s a time skip between flashbacks and present time), we don’t get to see how Sarah coped being separated from her husband and how she came to terms with Deacon’s “death”. When they were alone and she let her guard down, she kept repeating that Deacon is dead and he’s supposed to be dead because she’d obviously moved on with her life, as opposed to him still holding out hope and actively searching for her. Their kiss in that scene was perfect because she’s the one that initiates it. Sarah being alive feels more satisfying to me now because with Deacon being the point of view character for the story, it’s like a…..reward? Like how at long last, the consistency and longevity of his hope that she wasn’t dead and will to find her was worth something. How even though everything was against him and everyone, including his best friend and perhaps even Sarah herself because she herself had given up on him, wanted him to give up on her still being alive. 

Going back to what I said about it not being all “sunshine and rainbows”, I greatly appreciate the fact that they don’t jump right back in to the romance like nothing happened in those 2 years they were apart. Deacon tried to do just that when he takes Sarah’s hand and attempts to whisk her away from the camp being the “romantic hero” (maybe he wasn’t thinking that highly of himself, but the archetype weirdly fits that perspective), but she refuses. Deacon obviously had a “hopeless romantic” outlook on the situation’s outcome. It’s nice to see when that side of him comes out. But it just makes me wonder if he ever daydreamed about finding Sarah, being the hero rescuing her from danger, and they’d ride off in the sunset together picking up where their story left off. And in the end we eventually do get that “fairytale ending” for them, but not without bumps in the road. Mainly their difference in ideology is what creates tension and distance between them. But in the end, it’s almost as if they fell in love with each other all over again. And it was beautiful.

I also have to point out that the chemistry between Sam and Courtnee Draper is beyond beautiful and everything that makes Deacon and Sarah’s relationship worth being invested in. It’s not a bland and boring run of the mill seen it all before heterosexual romance that I initially thought it was going to be. I thought Sarah more or less was just going to be a footnote in Deacon’s story. A tragedy in his life that shaped him into the cynical person hardened by harsh life experiences. A part of his backstory. And yes, all that *IS* true, but Sarah was so much more. She is a very important piece to the narrative. You put the pieces together and she is in fact the true catalyst to the main story of how the freaker virus was created and spread. Deacon takes the audience to Sarah, but she is probably the most important character because she and her occupation is what establishes the conflict and is the driving point of the narrative (and Deacon’s motivation) up until the point that he finds her.

All in all, Deacon and Sarah’s relationship is so much more complex than I initially thought. And now that I’ve processed some thoughts and put things into perspective, I love and appreciate it more than I did before now.

I did not expect this to turn into some kind of essay analyzing their relationship, but once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. Mostly because I’ve kept my deep thoughts about Days Gone to myself and haven’t really expressed anything in lengthy detail. So it just came spewing out of me. 

But it really helped me put my thoughts into perspective and I enjoyed writing this. I hope it all makes sense. Thank you for the thought provoking question that I’ve completely spiraled. And I’m sorry it took me so long to reply. My love for Deacon and Sarah has grown so much more now. I hope there will be a sequel that’ll hopefully deliver more on my shipper’s pipe dream of romance between them. Or there can be more angst. I’m down for that too. :)

[neriad13]

Neurodiversity and D&D

I’d like to talk to you a bit about fantasy gaming archetypes.

Namely, how I find them to be the absolute perfect metaphor for the concept of Neurodiversity.

A vital question before we dive into it: what is Neurodiversity?

It’s the belief that all neurotypes have something valuable to contribute to the welfare of the world. It means that the voice of an Autistic is no less important than the voice of a Neurotypical. It means that the opinions and bodily autonomy of a child with Down Syndrome are exactly as vital as those without. It means that whether someone has Depression, Bipolar Disorder, BPD, Scizophrenia, OCD - any of the vast host of neurological disorders and diseases - that they can not, and should not ever be shut out from important conversations that will have an impact on the way they live their lives.

The function of Neurodiversity in the world, in my estimation, is very similar to the function of the differing members of an adventuring party in a video game.

Some background on your typical Western Fantasy Roleplaying Game first:

(“Western RPG” is in contrast to the “JRPG,” or “Japanese RPG,” a genre of gaming that is similar, but also has many notable differences to its predominantly American and European counterparts)

Across almost every single RPG - starting with the invention of D&D - that has ever been made, the player has three archetypes to choose from in order to build a successful party. These are the Rogue, the Warrior and the Mage. Each of them has different strengths and weaknesses. Every player has their favorite way to play and their favorite characters. But the key to playing it well is finding the balance between these disparate characters.

There are, of course, many ways to play with the formula. Archetypes get combined, stretched and redefined all the time. Names change (there are about fifty different things to call a “Rogue”). Mages are replaced with Technomancers or people with the ability to use “sciency magic” in more science fiction-inclined games.

But when it comes down to it, everything of this genre that has come after D&D still draws from these original sources, this core cast of characters. It’s a compelling method of gameplay, one that has stood the test of time and has considerable real-world implications for diverse groups who need to work together to reach a common goal.

So, these archetypes…what are they exactly? How do they fit together to make a successful party?

- Warriors are built to tackle problems head-on and with brute force. Their primary tasks are to defend the weaker characters and solve any problem which requires a show of strength. But if you give them a problem that requires finesse, they are much more likely to glare at it in frustration than solve it.

- Rogues have the finesse that Warriors lack. They are skilled at picking locks, slipping by enemies unnoticed and tackling problems with delicate subterfuge. However, if that problem is an angry horde barreling down a passage through which escape is impossible, the rogue is not going to survive the encounter. They need assistance from other characters for that.

- Mages have the most raw offensive power out of anyone in the party. They are the ones capable of destroying the horde that the Rogue would run from with a single, explosive spell. But with great power comes a price. Mages are not at all physically strong and by necessity, must rely on characters who are better suited to prolonged combat for protection.

The difference between these characters is that they were given unique tools with which to interact with the world at the moment of their creation. Because  of this, they necessarily have different ways of playing the game and are liable to come up with wildly differing solutions to any problem they encounter.

To illustrate this, imagine an adventuring party finding a locked door at the end of the a hallway they must pass through if they are to complete the game.

Because raw physical strength is where a Warrior’s abilities lie, the most obvious solution to him would be to break the door. Because a Rogue’s fingers are quick and she enjoys a tricky challenge, her solution would be to pick the door’s lock. Because a Mage is in tune with energies that his friends are not, his solution would be casting a spell that would open the door.

But which is correct?

All of them. Or maybe only one of them, depending on the context of the situation. Suppose there is a trap on the other side of the door that will kill the Warrior the second he smashes through it. Or perhaps the lock is broken and there is no way for the Rogue to pick it. Or maybe there’s already a powerful spell of warding on the door that the Mage cannot find a way to work around through his own magic.

The success of the party entirely depends on the uniqueness of its members’ viewpoints, their willingness to work together and their wisdom in choosing a path that will ensure the safety of everyone within it as they pass through the confines of that door and into the next stage of their adventure.

Think of it this way: Autistics and Allistics (a word for “Not Autistic”) both come into the world with a different set of stats and abilities. Because their methods of moving through the world will necessarily be different by default, they will view problems they encounter in a different light and come up with different solutions for them.

When faced with a door-to-door salesman, a solution that an Autistic might come up with is to ignore them entirely. Because their stats incline them to solitude and stability, the most obvious solution to them would be to not allow this intrusive presence into their lives at all. The salesman might try a few more times, but will eventually give it up, giving the Autistic exactly what they want. An Allistic, on the other hand, because their stats incline them to sociability and politeness, might very well open that door, hear what the salesman has to say and then carefully get the salesman to go on his way through subtle verbal cues. The salesman leaves, the need for sociability is fulfilled and the Allistic gets exactly what they want.

Neither of them is wrong. Both methods serve their purpose in the given situation and play to the strengths of the people with whom the decision rests.

But - thinking back to the locked door - sometimes the one solution that a particular character has come up with is not the right one for getting everyone what they want. Suppose the Autistic is interested in what the salesman has to sell, but because her stats are not in her favor for that task, she relies on the Allistic’s heightened Sociability and Politeness stats to do the haggling for her. Or, what if the Allistic is in a bad mood and wishes to be left alone when the salesman comes calling? It is the Autistic who can give her encouragement that ignoring the intrusive presence is the right thing to do in this moment.

In order to build a successful world - to play a winning game - uniqueness between neurotypes must be considered to be something of value, rather than a detriment.

This is why the rhetoric of “Finding a Cure for Autism” is so hurtful to those it purports to help and so harmful to the health of the entire world.

Imagine an adventuring party without Warriors.

That’s a party that lives in constant fear of dismemberment and has no one to hold back the monsters while the others prepare their cunning traps.

Without Rogues.

That’s a party that has no access to secrets, no other recourse but brute force and wanton killing when faced with a problem that might have had a more subtle back route.

Without Mages.

This is a party that has no magic - no creative force, no knowledge of things beyond ordinary human understanding. This is a party that stumbles in the dark, blind to the invisible underpinnings of the world around them.

Every archetype balances one another and serves a vital purpose as a piece of the greater whole.

Autistics notice the details that Allistics do not.

Allistics have the Executive Function that Autistics do not.

Autistics have the focus that Allistics do not.

Allistics have the social skills that Autistics do not.

Every neurotype has a method and a viewpoint that the others lack. By existing in tandem, one provides what the other cannot and vice versa.

How many doors in how many dungeons have remained closed because a certain neurotype was not admitted into the party? How many solutions have gone unsaid because those with the solutions that would ensure the safety of all its members were not considered worthy of speaking?

A world without Autistics, without Neurodiversity, is not a world that is whole. It’s a world that has lost something fundamental to its continued functioning.

[palliddata]

The Capric Carnival by Elizabeth Lavenza

1. In Ancient Greece, during the time of Homer, there was a traveling bard who was known for wanton debauchery, dishonesty, and hedonism. This ne’er-do-well was even said to have affronted almost every member of the pantheon. So it came to be that when the bard swindled a dreaded warrior at a dice game, the only god left to pray to was Dionysus, god of revelry, madness, and theatre. Dionysus obliged and saved the bard, but only under one condition: the bard’s antics had amused the god of pleasure, and so the bard would be forevermore obligated to continue dazzling audiences and swindling rubes, even long after death. 2. During the heyday of the Elizabethan stage, there was a playwright who sought the patronage of a nobleman. However, the nobleman was naughty and vain, and demanded that the playwright devote every work and performance to glorifying him. The playwright’s work suffered greatly as a result, for the nobleman could not abide anything that did not exist solely to gratify his ego. Eventually, the playwright became so fed up with catering to the noble’s ego that he chose to finally go for revenge. When his newest play opened, it was not what he had promised the noble, but was instead a scathing satire, and the audience roared with laughter at the mockery of the nobleman. This enraged the noble so much that during the show’s intermission, he stormed the stage grabbed the playwright, brutally beating him to death. The noble, in his vain egotism, assumed that he could easily get away with killing a lowlife playwright. But the playwright’s troupe of actors hunted him down, and perform a profane ritual, sacrificing him among the remains of the writer, turning his body into a vessel for what remained of the dead man’s spirit to enter. The newly risen amalgamation of noble and playwright was granted a sort of immortality by the ritual, but a strange hunger burned within it. As its last and proudest work had been cut short, it would be forever compelled to continue putting on shows to fill this void. 3. In the late nineteenth century, in a rural town in midwestern America, there was a young woman who was desperate to escape the monotony of rural life. She was a notorious liar, thief, and shirker even at a young age, but she had a soft spot for the other outcasts of the town. Both of these things almost got her in a lot of trouble, but things would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for the Devil. Whether or not the being was the capital-D Devil is debatable, but whatever it was, it was there for her when she finally pulled one scheme too many and ended up with nearly the whole town on her heels. Surprisingly, the demon apparently offered her the chance to escape for free, uncharacteristic for crossroads tricksters. But the woman did not accept. She would not leave unless she could guarantee safety for the community of weirdos and exiles she had formed. This did cost her, however. The demon decreed that her entourage would only remain protected if they continually moved with her, and that she would have to be ever ready to take on new freaks and outcasts. The carnival aspect was more or less an inevitability- what better way was there for a traveling band of uncanny exiles to make a living? Character Creation: Being a carny isn’t exactly the easiest life. Always on the move, distrusted even by the townies you’re entertaining, a constant struggle to steal enough money to keep up with your operating expenses. But some have no other choice than the circus life, and others still prefer it to the drudgery of regular employment. There’s a sometimes-bitter pride in being a freak or a carny. You’re not like those dumb rubes, you live behind the curtain. But pride alone won’t get you far. These alternate character creation rules, however, will provide your characters with some extra rules to handle the entertainment business. These are of course optional, and depend on the general tone and challenge level of your chronicle. Characters with these bonuses will be slightly stronger than the average mortal, but below even most minor templates. If you want an even harder challenge, then jettison these bonuses entirely. And if you’re willing to let any of your players take minor or even major templates, be sure to recalculate the challenge level accordingly (alas, this article lacks the time to go over the knotty mess that is working out how to properly do a ChroD crossover). Creating a Capric Carnival character is as simple as following the regular character creation rules, then adding a carnival archetype. Each archetype grants one free point to an Attribute, two free points to Skills (each must be put in a different skill), and a pool of four merit dots, that can be used toward any of the merits listed for each archetype. All carnies can use their four merit dots towards the merits Allies (Carnies), Anonymity, Cohesive Unit, Fame, and Mentor. Agent: In carnival parlance, an “agent” is a skilled con artist and manipulator, who runs a “joint” or “store” (both refer to a carnival game booth) and makes their living by extracting the money of marks using their game of choice. The Agent’s Attributes are  Manipulation and Wits, their Skills are Larceny, Persuasion, and Streetwise, and their Merits are Common Sense, Fast Reflexes, Trained Observer, Sleight of Hand, Pusher, and Style: Fast-Talking. Talker: The Talker (note: real carnies never use the term “barker) is a carnival employee who introduces and narrates attractions such as freak shows, acrobatic performances, and so on. The Talker’s job is to “make the tip” (get the attention of a group of carnival visitors) and then “freeze” it (make sure that their attention is retained). Usually, the Talker will also provide narration for the show, introducing and describing the performers, and usually ending by offering the audience the chance to see an even more shocking show for extra money. The Talker’s Attributes are Presence, Manipulation, their Skills are Expression, Persuasion, and Socialize, and their Merits are Spin Doctor, Fast-Talking, Fixer, Pusher, Aura Reading, Trained Observer, Encyclopedic Knowledge. Huckster: This category covers those carnival performers who attempt to present an air of wisdom, usually for the purpose of showing off exhibits of dubious veracity and medicines of dubious efficacy. Often takes on the title of “doctor” or “professor”, despite rarely holding either of these titles. Hucksters are typically found selling curios and patent medicines, or presenting “museum shows”, such as pickled punk shows (exhibits of deformed fetuses), displays of mechanical curiosities, or strange biological specimens. The Huckster’s Attributes are Intelligence and Wits, their Skills are Medicine, Crafts, and Science, and their Merits are Tolerance for Biology, Encyclopedic Knowledge, Library, Eye For The Strange, and Style: Unintended Applications. Mystic: Carnies of this type are the magicians, psychics, and fortune-tellers of the carnival. While in our world, their abilities are entirely sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors, it’s quite possible that those in the world of darkness are closer to being what they claim to be. A Mystic character can be a clever faker or the genuine article, or perhaps a genuine talent who believes themself to be yet another scammer. The Mystic’s Attributes are Intelligence and Presence, their Skills are Occult, Empathy, and Expression, and their Merits are Unseen Sense, Trained Observer, Psychometry, Automatic Writing, Aura Reading, Clairvoyance, and Medium. Mender: While this category of carnival employee does not typically perform, they nevertheless perform a vital service. Even the best and most aboveboard carnival inevitably generates “heat” (hostility) among certain townies, and sometimes this heat comes from local government, police officers, sheriffs, and others who can make life hell for the carnival. That’s where the Mender comes in. In addition to performing legitimate tasks setting up the legal documents and financial tasks the carnival requires, the Mender is also in charge of sweet-talking police, delivering bribes, and other general skullduggery. The Mender’s Attributes are Wits and Manipulation, their Skills are Politics, Subterfuge, and Persuasion, and their Merits are Resources, Common Sense, Fixer, Alternate Identity, and Style: Fast-Talking. Performer: Performers are those who dazzle crowds without various demonstrations of skill, as opposed to mentalism or freakish appearance. However, some Performers are considered freaks: “working freaks”, such as sword swallowers, human blockheads, and fire-eaters are counted under this category, as are acrobats, jugglers, and so on. Their Attributes are Presence and Dexterity, their skills are Athletics, Weaponry, and Expression, and their Merits are Fighting Finesse, Double Jointed, Fast Reflexes, Sleight of Hand, Ambidextrous, and Style: Parkour. Muscle: The Muscle lifts things and carries them, both in a practical and an entertainment capacity. This archetype represents wrestlers and strongmen who show off their skills for carnival audiences, as well as those whose responsibilities are restricted to merely carrying around heavy things to help the carnival set up. The Muscle’s Attributes are Strength and Stamina, their Skills are Brawl, Athletics, and Intimidation, and their Merits are Hardy, Giant, Iron Stamina, Demolisher, Style: Grappling, and Style: Clinch Strike. Freak: What is a Freak, really? The definite answer to that question, of course, is that it’s an issue beyond the scope of this article. This archetype describes those carnival performers found in freak shows. While some carnivals, especially of the supernaturally evil kind, have been known to practice kidnapping, slavery, and abusive practices towards their freaks, the Capric Carnival is assumed to be fairly “aboveboard”: freak occupations are strictly voluntary, and fully paid with benefits. The Freak’s Attributes are Stamina and Presence, their Skills are Intimidation, Expression, and Stealth, and their Merits are Iron Stomach, Giant, Air Of Menace, Iron Skin, Iron Stamina, Small-Framed, are Double-Jointed. Plot hooks: 1. The Fireball Show: Your carnival arrives at its destination, only to find out that the townies are pissed. Seems this lot was “burned” by a carnival not too long ago…one that the locals claim looked identical to yours. Who’s trying to put the frame on you? 2. It’s a Clem!: Carnies are used to some hostility from the towns they stop in, but this one is…different. At first, they just seemed uptight, but it turns out that the town is under the control of murderous fundamentalist cultists following some obscure religion…and they want to make you their next human sacrifices! 3. Geek Flu: Your carnival arrives at Gibtown (Gibsontown, Florida: a town in Florida with a large populations of carnies and freaks) to wait out the offseason, only to find the whole town quarantined. Seems a mysterious “Geek Flu” popped up there that makes its victims crave human flesh…but, curiously, they can only eat it if at least one other person is watching them. Not only is it a health risk, but the kind of exposure this would give the carnival business isn’t exactly desirable. 4. If We Shadows Have Offended…: The carnival is abducted by strange otherworldly creatures (possibly the True Fae) and required to perform for them to win their freedom.   5. Punk Robber: The carnival picks up a shipment of new “pickled punks” (deformed fetuses preserved in formaldehyde) that start exerting malevolent psychic influence and luring people in to pour their blood into their jars so they can use it grow themselves into more complete forms. 6. Punk Heat: The “mother” of the punks finds out that her stolen children are in your circus, and she’s not exactly pleased. The quotation marks are there because no one’s quite sure if “mother” is the right term for a psychic ball of interwoven worms with human heads. 7. Hunting Ground: A visitor to the circus is preying on patrons in any number of ways (murder, cannibalism, vampirism, kidnapping…) and when the players confront him, he’ll be ready with bribes and threats to try to keep them from reporting him. And if they do…who’s gonna believe a bunch of carnies anyway? 8. Gaffed: Their memories are blurry, but a surprising number of freaks in Your carnival and in the others you’ve seen all have similar memories of an abduction, a laboratory, a scientist…it seems someone’s out there deliberately creating freaks, but for what purpose? To sell them? A twisted artistic statement? Attempting to create a perfect being? 9. Checkered Past: “Run away and join the circus” isn’t just a saying. It’s also what one of the carnival’s performers did, though in their case they were running from something rather more threatening than usual. Turns out that in their pre-carnival days, they pissed off the wrong people, and they joined the carnival as a way to keep on the run from them. But eventually, their pursuers are going to catch up to them…and the rest of the carnies. 10. Amusement Business: There’s a massive incorporated circus that wants to absorb your carnival, and if they can’t do that, they’re fine running you out of business. That would be bad enough, but if you take their offer or snoop around, it turns out their business is a front for something horrifying: slave trading, harvesting human emotions, trying to resurrect an ancient monster-god of dreams and revelry… 11. Cutting In: The carnival is approached by a mysterious inventor who offers to provide dirt cheap electricity to the carnival using an experimental generator. But his generator has a secret, though whether it generates radiation that induces homicidal rage or a canal of electric companies is desperate to destroy it (or something else!) is up to the storyteller. 12. The Long Jump: During a trip the carnival caravan gets drawn into a seemingly endless stretch of desolate road surrounded by lightless forest. As supplies grow low, someone’s going to have to venture into the forest to try to find a way out… 13. The Rube’s Guardian: You rip off a mark who turns out to have a supernatural guardian that wreaks havoc on anything toward which he feels anger. A Note On Time Periods: The traveling carnival, particularly the type that brazenly displays human oddities and exists primarily as a cover for nomadic con artists, is one of those things that isn’t seen very often in the modern era. The traveling carnival declined in the second half of the twentieth century, as the shocking and thrilling became not only cheaper and more abundant than ever, but also increasingly controlled by a centralized and regimented media-industrial complex that preferred more efficient methods of scamming rubes. That doesn’t mean that the modern world is entirely carnival-deprived, especially since the nature of roleplaying makes time flexible. There could very well be grimy, shifty carnivals still roaming rural America, especially in the darker, haunted, dangerous world of Chronicles of Darkness. That said, if you’re planning on using the Capric Carnival in the modern era, you might need to tone down the carny slang and change the attractions a bit, unless you deliberately want to play the carnival as something ardently anachronistic and out of time. The carnival makes a good contrast to the sterilized, micromanaged modern world of Disneyworlds and pseudo-events, and the players could end up fighting the ever-advancing steamroller of uniform corporate modernity. And in an age where people can’t just run off to join the circus and escape their lives any more, a circus that you really can run off to join is just that much more magical and unusual. Of course, if you want to bypass all of that, the Carnival is well-suited to historical games. Nomadic entertainers have roamed the roads since time immemorial, but the Capric Carnival is of a breed born near the end of the nineteenth century, when the 1983 Chicago  World’s Fair kickstarted the traveling carnival boom. The fad booked through the first half of the twentieth century, and by the thirties there were some two hundred traveling carnival companies operating across the United States. Carnivals flourished because they offered a taste of the foreign, the bizarre, the grotesque, even to the most remote towns that otherwise knew little else except agrarian Protestant piety. Any time period in the twentieth century can potentially work, but the major considerations are what level of technology you want around and what cultural milieu you’re most interested in exploring. An Abridged Glossary of Carny Slang:

86ed: Banned from the “lot” (the carnival’s location). Advance Man: Employee who travels ahead of the carnival to set up preparations for it (can include paying bribes to local officials) Agent: A skilled carnie who runs a game (referred to as a “store” or “joint”). Typically connotes someone who is good at extracting large amounts of money from the mark without the mark noticing. B.C.: “Be Cool”. Another carny telling you to “B.C.” means “stop what you’re doing immediately, it’s a dangerous course of action”. Bally: The pitch made by the “talker” to entice carnival visitors to see a sideshow. The “outside talker” is the one who gets the attention of people passing by the show (known as “building the tip”), and refers them to the “inside talker” who introduces and narrates the show. Beef: When a mark gets angry at the carnies, usually because he’s figured out they’re conning him. Blank: A stop with poor attendance, or a mark who turns out to have little money to spend. Blowoff: One of the most lucrative rackets in the carnival. After the audience has seen the free bally show (see above), the inside talker offers them the chance to pay extra to see an additional act, almost always something lascivious or grotesque. Burn The Lot: To conduct carnival business in a shamelessly larcenous way, enough to make a lasting bad impression on the townies that’ll keep them hostile towards carnivals for quite some time. Chill: To get someone to leave, or to use tricks or secret assistants to isolate them. Clem: A fight between carnies and townspeople. Ding: The various expenses involved in setting up and working a carnival attraction: space, electricity, etc. Fireball Show: An extremely disreputable carnival prime to burning the lot. Flat Store: A game that is impossible to win. Carnies who operate them are known as “flatties”, and are sometimes looked down on for the relative lack of skill involved in running one. “Flattening” a game refers to altering it to make it impossible to win. Geek: The most famous sort of carnival geek is the kind who bites the heads off live chickens, but in carnival parlance the term can refer to any unskilled performer whose act consists primarily of degrading themself to shock the crowd. Heat: Ire directed towards the carnival by townsfolk. A “heat merchant” is a carnie with a tendency to piss people off, often by scamming them in a particularly brazen manner. Hey Rube!: A shouted exclamation that signifies that a fight between carnies and townies has begun. “It’s a clem!” and “Wrang!” have the same meaning. Hole: An open space on the carnival lot where an attraction can be set up. Loc: Pronounced “loke”. The location of your booth on the midway. Lot Man: The carnival employee who decides where the various attractions are placed. Wields quite a bit of power this way and is often bribed for a better spot. Mitt Camp: A fortuneteller’s booth. The name comes from “mitt” being a slang term for a hand, something which fortunetellers often examine for clues about the future. Nut: The carnival’s operating expenses. Turning a profit is known as “making the nut” or “carrying the nut”. Pickled Punks: Preserved deformed fetuses. A fake, or “gaffed”, punk is known as a “bouncer”, as these are often made of rubber. Wrangy: Angry or irritable, usually used to describe a mark. Rhymes with “tangy”. Strong: Can be used to describe someone or something successful, but also often used to describe something explicit or grotesque. A “strong freak” is a particularly shocking act.