#they're basically the same game? just with different characters

[kumakuma-circus]

one of my favorite persona things i've learned is that like. the "present" point in the timeline for p3d and p5d is at somepoint during p5. so elizabeth has to go back in time to grab sees. which, given shinjiro not being there (outside of dlc), means she specifically chose to go to a point in time before the p3 mc's death but after shinjiro's. extremely hilarious to me honestly-

[vaguely-concerned]

as I am replaying origins -- a game which, to be clear, I love very VERY much -- I can't help but feel that people do don the rose coloured glasses on it a bit specifically when it comes to the range of dialogue options you're actually given to work with at any given time (something I've seen my fair share of silent vs. voiced protagonist discourse about over the years *smokes tired cigarette in survivor of a decade of DA tumblr*). like... there are a couple of situations where you're given a decent range of responses, but the vast majority of the time you have about three dialogue options, and often they're presented sort of like 'polite/bland/unprovoked near-cartoonish levels of assholery'. arranged like, y'know:

I am [BLANK]. It's an honor to make your acquaintance.

You can call me [BLANK].

How dare you speak to me. Fuck you and your family back five generations. I'm going to rob your mother's grave before your eyes.

(sometimes if you're real lucky you get the secret extra 'Something else/I'm bald/but I'm a dwarf!' option)

I'm not at all saying it's worse in that aspect than the other games (Dalish Inquisitor 'Who's Mythal' just entered the chat), but I do think it's worth considering that this might be a bit of a franchise original sin that has been present since the beginning, as indeed it is in most rpgs because making rpgs is real hard, and you notice it more with the dialogue wheel format than when the responses and questions you can ask are all laid out in a list together

[ex-vespidae]

i would love to make kirby charts for my headcanons and theories

[bigtiddygothhusband]

so it turns out twine is not ideal for playing a ttrpg by yourself. The multiple pathways for the different characters is good, but the custom variables thing is made to be accessed in an actual playthrough of a completed game and i'm using the game builder part as a format for a game. It's still the best method i've come up with, but i can't actually all the changing stats and stuff without popping open a preview and running through the whole thing up to where i am. which right now is not that far but yeah.

[lavnderkiwi]

Just a photo list of characters i've made throughout different games:

BG3 - Elora(High half elf), Ivy (Drow), and Vera (Tiefling) [Haven't touched this game in months so i had to remember what kind of elf Elora was lmaooo]

Cyberpunk 2077 - Vanessa, Ivan, and Avery

Dragon age Inquisition [bc i don't have any good photos of my hawke in DA2 or my warden in DAO :'( ] - Valoris (Dalish) and Herah (Qunari)

[shitpostingkats]

Zack Fair has a really fascinating relationship with killing where a lot of the rest of the cast doesn't. He fights people as well as monsters and gradually stops being able to differentiate the two. He helps clear out beasties and ghoulies but he also intros the game with a massive attack on a foreign nation just to shore up corporate interests and for a good chunk of the game places those two activities in the same spot in his mind. One of his side projects at work is quashing the last remnants of rebellion in said occupied country and rooting out the spies in their resistance, at which point he hands them over to his bosses to be interrogated and presumably tortured. But if he comes face to face with the same people in a combat scenario, he won't kill them, because he views their desire to see themselves free as an honorable trait. Then he turns around and attacks hordes of people who defected Shinra. He uses the blunt side of his sword, not to spare lives, but because he doesn't want to damage the sharp edge.

Wutai forces and Genesis clones have a different categorization to him, something he can mentally label as "other". But after Nibelhiem, your primary enemy type becomes other Shinra soldiers. Just after Zack has had his realizations that the monsters he was wiping out share a haunting amount of basic building blocks with his coworkers. And with himself.

Actually, let's pause. Zack is the only character we see have any sort of acceptance of being Jenova-ed. Every other character is unwilling and usually not even a conscious being yet, but Zack A) knows what is being done to him, and B) openly states he wants those monstrous traits for himself. "Those wings / I want them too." Up to this point, every other character has equated being Jenova-ed to being baser, to being subhuman, but Zack at the very beginning tried to convince Angeal that it meant freedom. Power to do what you want.

Zack Fair willingly and with open arms embraced being made less than human because he thought it would give him the strength to break out of captivity.

So he busts out, and the first thing he's greeted with it a horde of enemies that he knows are human, has worked and talked with, and are in fact the same shape and type of person as Cloud. Just a couple cutscenes ago, these were his coworkers.

The easiest way to get through them is to set them on fire and blow up the munitions they're carrying on their person.

(It's such a beautiful demystifying of the elemental system. I love it.)

Oh also, you're on a time limit, so you gotta kill all these guys fast, because they're trying to go for the weak spot, Cloud, who can't fight and is getting dragged away.

After that, the next thing Zack does is find a gun and start taking long ranged killshots.

There's a tangible feeling of a lesson being learned.

Zack is (I think?) the only SOLDIER we ever see use a gun. It's worth noting that even the most fallen of SOLDIERs stick to their flashy blades and their weird swordfights. Other characters even comment how bizarre it is, but ffvii also runs on that fantasy world logic where if you just Get Good enough, swords are just as good as guns if not better. Guns are the lower, more primitive weapon, fit for grunts and hitmen but not elite fighters.

(I could also go into detail on how some of the SOLDIERS weapon are sold as bespoke merch in world, and basically another tool in the toolbox of how to sell these flesh and blood men as mythologized products. But we don't have time to unpack all of that.)

For Zack, we know that his sword is even a symbol of honorable combat and a legacy of trying to do the right thing. Zack picking up a gun is basically debasing himself to being just another man in the field. And it's a sniper rifle. The weapon guaranteed to get him as little contact with his opponent as possible and does not even give them a chance to fight back. But it's whatever gets the job done.

Zack starts the game as someone who kills people, but it's hand-waved aside the same way it is for most everyone else, only for him to bite that awareness apple like five minutes before it becomes absolutely vital he survive at all costs. Zack becomes aware that he's on a slippery slope and due to circumstances has to start sprinting. Over the course of the game, we watch as Zack Fair goes from being someone who kills people to a killer.

[flufftober]

🍂 🍃 Hello and welcome to our fourth annual Flufftober 🍂 🍃

We’re so excited to be back and have you here once again!

As always, let’s fill the month of October with as much fluff as possible 🥰 for that to happen, you can either use our 31 regular prompts or enjoy a little challenge 😏

Below the cut, you'll find all our rules, posting info, and all the prompts in writing. If you have any more questions, please feel free to send us an ask.

And now, for the challenge...

Prompt Extras

We love to see how many of you get inspired by our prompts every year - be it by the original list or the Prompt Extras. Once again we're offering you that option and you're more than welcome to replace prompts from the original list if they don't work for you for whatever reason - no explanation needed.

As has become tradition, we offer you last year's top five fan favorites (as voted in the end survey). In addition to that, we also offer a little challenge: five angsty prompts for you to turn fluffy!

If you don't want to replace any prompt from the original list but still love the additional ones - or you simply want to challenge yourself even further - you can also mix them all together!

So in whichever way you use these Prompt Extras, have fun with them and go wild 💚

We hope you like these prompts, and now

Happy Creating 🥳

Standard Blog Rules & FAQ

Addendum: We do not allow AI creations of any kind.

(Due to previous asks, we made sure to add more points to this section - while they're not new rules, they're newer to this list, so you'll find them colored green)

No inc*st or p*dophilia - we can’t keep you from writing it or creating art for it but it won’t be reblogged. No inc*st: This rule does not apply to distant cousins and such, as you might find in the LotR fandom (or basically in all of European Monarchy). The line we draw is at direct blood relations (siblings, parents, kids) and/or legal guardianship. No p*dophilia: This rule does not rule out fandoms that feature teenagers such as Harry Potter, Heartstoppers, Hunger Games, etc. It also doesn't mean you can't write about their time together as teenagers! It's aimed at ships in which one is a minor and the other is not - but since even that has grey areas, the rule is this: if you keep it SFW, all is good and allowed, we don't care; if it turns NSFW, be mindful of the legalities of the world/society/times your characters live in.

No hate or ship bashing - we’re all different and we all love different things. As long as it doesn’t go against rule #1, it’s allowed.

Tag correctly! Trigger warnings (including cheating!), ships, ratings, (pure) smut, etc - it’s all fine as long as you tag it.

There’s absolutely no word count restriction, write as little or as much as you like.

In regards to art, anything goes: drawings, paintings, collages, mood boards, gif sets, videos, playlists… the sky’s the limit (though not really…). If you would like to create a podfic, the fic you're using does not have to be new - your creation will be new!

You can mix and mash different mediums however you like, be it within one prompt or on different days.

While we can’t force you to write fluff or create fluffy art, please try to keep in mind that this is a fluff event 😉 that, of course, doesn't mean you can't combine it with angsty/whumpy prompts - hurt/comfort is absolutely welcome!

You can start creating as soon as you see this - but please refrain from posting before the respective day.

If you post early, we will schedule your post for the correct day; if you use multiple prompts in one creation, we will post on the earliest day you used.

You can participate on as many days as you like, even if it’s just one; you can also create multiple entries for the same day.

You can replace as many original prompts as you like with our prompt extras; you can also combine them with the original prompts or create for them in addition, that's completely up to you.

It’s okay to write one story/a series for all the prompts.

You do not have to stick to one character, ship, or even one fandom - switch as often as you like to or even write for multiple ships for one day.

The ship does not have to be a romantic one! Friendship and family feels are more than welcome (but this is not a way to get around rule #1!)

Original works as well as OCs in fandoms are welcome! But please make sure to mark these clearly, either in the tags or the post itself. We're not familiar with all fandoms (though we're definitely learning a lot!), so we're not always sure what might be an OC and what might be such an unknown side character not even Google can find them...

Reader insert fics (for example "character x reader") as well as RPFs are absolutely allowed.

Other languages are also welcome - just make sure to clearly mark the day and fandom so that we can still easily reblog.

This event can be combined with other events as long as the other event allows it.

Late entries are always welcome, even if it is months or years later.

All fandoms and ships are welcome - fanon and canon - as long as they’re of age (in case you want to add smut) and not related.

Posting

Posting to tumblr

Please use the tag #flufftober2024 Please make sure there is NO SPACE between flufftober and 2024! We will NOT be checking the other tag this year!

Since tags are sometimes wonky, make sure to also mention us with @flufftober in your post

We will try to catch them all, but please don't be mad if we miss a post or if it gets reblogged a bit late

If you're absolutely certain a post has slipped past us, feel free to send an ask with the link to your post

To make reblogging easier for us, make sure to add the following tags: #flufftober2024 #day [xy] #[fandom] #[ship and/or main character(s)]

If you're using a prompt extra tag it as #alt [number]

Posting to ao3

You can add your creation to the collection Flufftober 2024 (either as flufftober2024 or as flufftober_2024)

Late entries are always welcome, on tumblr as well as the ao3 collection! Neither will close - but like always, reblogs will become less regular the more months have passed...

Prompts

1. Lost Pet Meet Cute

2. “Left. Other left!”

3. Favorite Scent

4. Market Day

5. Acorn, Chestnut, Pine Cone

6. Mistaken Identity

7. Hoodie Weather

8. Chopping & Piling Wood

9. “Don’t do that!” - “But…”

10. Bet, Game, Contest

11. Ingredients & Spells

12. “This is spooky.” - “Really?”

13. Attic, Cellar, Hidden Room

14. Fantasy AU/Mundane AU

15. “What are you wearing?” - “It’s laundry day!”

16. Yes, No, Maybe

17. Only One Bed

18. Bewitched

19. Yarn

20. Paw

21. Bonfire

22. Heirloom

23. Stormy Night

24. Comfort Food

25. Haunted House

26. “I can’t find it.”

27. Afternoon Stroll

28. Lucky Charm

29. Time Capsule

30. “Forever?”

31. Make a Wish

Prompt Extras

Last Year's Favorites

Alt 1: “I’ve got you”

Alt 2: Rainy Day

Alt 3: “Wait you love me?” - “I always have”

Alt 4: “I hate it” - “No, you don’t”

Alt 5: Porch Swing

Challenge "Make it Fluffy!"

Alt 6: Gravestone

Alt 7: Getting Revenge

Alt 8: Written but never sent

Alt 9: Suddenly Severed Communication

Alt 10: Rejected, Betrayed, Exiled, Left Behind

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[roguerambles]

I understand the disappointment, I really do, but I think people might be blowing the whole world state thing a bit out of proportion. "This is SPITTING IN THE FACE of long-time fans" no it's not Steve, calm down.

The series has always had to compromise when it comes to the state of the world because so many of the choices (especially from the end of Origins) were so wildly different that trying to build a sequel from so many conflicting factors would be more or less impossible. It's why we've never seen the Architect again, because him being alive or dead has HUGE ripple effects that are damn near impossible to write around.

Heck, it was entirely possible for Anders to die at the end of Awakening, but the writers wrote around it by saying "oh no he actually faked his death" even though logically that made very little sense because at that point he'd have absolutely no reason to do that? But Anders was in the sequel so that had to come up with something.

Basically nothing from Dragon Age 2 was important in Inquisition - Hawke siding with Mages or Templars made no difference, Anders being alive or dead made no difference, whether Carver or Bethany were dead or Wardens or whatever made no difference. We got some flavour text and that was literally it, everything else played out exactly the same.

Hell, the Temple of Sacred Ashes gets blown to bits at the beginning of Inquisition, rendering everything to do with that quest from Origins basically moot. And we've never gone back to Orzammar, and everything we have heard from it has been kept super vague, because depending on who the King is and if Branka is still alive things would look WILDLY different. Crafting a new story there would be borderline impossible because the dozen different possible world states make the foundation shaky at best.

It's why I highly doubt we'll be able to side with Solas and help him tear down the Veil because that would result in basically a whole new world being created. Imagine them trying to make Dragon Age 5 and being like "okay 50% sided with Solas and tore the Veil down and 50% kept the Veil intact....wtf now what do we do--?"

Again, I understand the disappointment, but I just hope once the dust has settled and people calm down a bit they'll see that, realistically, very little has changed. Your saves are still there, your experiences and enjoyment of the games and the characters and the story are still there, but they were always gonna have to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

And that's not to say none of our previous choices will come back - if we get another game, or a spin off or something they'll probably do what they're doing with the Inquisitor now. They're just taking what's relevant to the story they are trying to tell, and leaving what they aren’t going to use presently ambiguous.

[1322daysofdoey]

Spreading my orange Kevin agenda... Read my ramblings... This is going to be stupidly long as I try to explain everything here so I apologize in advance.

To try to break this down, basically the main reason I think Kevin is orange and not red is because of the arrangement of the heads in his monster form, which are arranged in a similar "triangle" fashion to the colors on Doey himself (one on his top-right, one on his top-left, one on the bottom-center). Not only that, but this color arrangement is ALSO present in his logo (two "tall" yellow and orange letters - d and h, and one "low-hanging" red letter between them - g), so I get the impression that this was done on purpose rather than a coincidence. So, looking at his monster form, Kevin is easily identifiable by his angry expression, and with this arrangement in mind he corresponds to the orange color placement.

So, then, between the last two heads, how did I determine which one is Matthew and which one is Jack? The answer is going back to the logo and looking at the hands. Each one is posed differently, and I feel that this is reflective of each boy's personality. The orange hand is a fist, which further supports that color representing Kevin due to his aggression. The red hand is pointing, which I feel is a good representation of Matthew's leadership and charisma. So then Jack is yellow, the open hand, by process of elimination. You could counterargue that a pointing finger could be accusatory, and that a fist in the air could represent leadership. But because of the previous point about the consistent arrangement of the colors/faces, I'm pretty confident about Kevin being orange, so that really just leaves me with the other interpretation.

I also think that these colors make more sense when thinking about the actual body parts that the colors are applied to. Orange is one of Doey's arms, which I think fits much better for Kevin than the legs would. Meanwhile, I think the legs work well for Matthew because he's the "support" and stability of the trio. It also makes the "three boys in a trench coat" jokes work better this way lol, you make Matthew the "legs" of the disguise because he's the oldest and tallest to carry the other two but then don't even make him the color of the legs? smh

Then my last two points are a bit more minor, but I wanted to mention anyway:

Firstly, the emotional association of the colors. I feel like the red Kevin fanon is specifically because red is seen as "the angry color" or "the bad color" (Kevin is NOT bad or evil FYI but you know how some people are about this sort of thing...), but then they're forgetting that red is also the color of love. (I mean hello, we're talking about the same game where Bobby BearHug exists?) Matthew has so much love for friends and family, I think it suits him well. And then orange is still a "fiery" color that can fit for Kevin's intense emotions, yeah?

Then secondly, the official "order" of the boys. Their experiment numbers are given a letter at the end to differentiate the three, with Jack being 1322A, Kevin being 1322B, and Matthew being 1322C. Youngest to oldest. And, if Kevin is orange instead of red, it would also make them ordered by color hue. A, B, C. Yellow, orange, red. It just makes sense, it feels right. It feels like something that would be done on purpose. Especially when combined with everything else I've already pointed out in this post.

Gonna finish this off with addressing another potential counterargument, though:

"But Doey's own character designer drew art where they color-coded the boys as yellow Jack, orange Matthew, and red Kevin! So doesn't that make those colors official?" Bro they literally say in their post that it "isn't canon" and is just fan art. You can already tell that it's not canon just based on Jack being a literal infant baby that looks nothing like the canon kid we see in the video lol. Furthermore, while Max is Doey's character designer, that doesn't mean they were responsible for any of the symbolism, foreshadowing, etc. regarding his backstory. They designed the character, but that doesn't mean they designed the logo for example. And, interestingly, in their concept art for monster Doey, you know what's noticeably different from the final version? The three heads inside Doey's mouth. They all share the same expression, so we can't tell which one is Kevin in this version. We don't know who was responsible for minor adjustments between this concept art and the final in-game design, so it's possible that someone on the team other than Max wanted that detail to be included. So in other words, I think that if each boy is indeed meant to correspond to a specific color on Doey, I don't think it was Max who chose which kid is which color, nor would they necessarily even know the "correct" color-coding since the possible hints about it that I talk about in this post are easy to miss if you're not hopelessly brainrotted like I am, and aren't important to understanding the lore. So they may have just fallen into the same "red = angry" logic that most of the fandom did.

But yeah whatever, man. I just wanted to get this out there.

[autistichalsin]

Okay I know I've made like three posts about this one specific thing but I gotta say, anyone who calls Halsin a typical boring Druid either doesn't understand Halsin or doesn't understand Druids, because Halsin is very much an atypical Druid.

Just a few ways Halsin is different than other Druids:

He can't control his wildshape. He transforms involuntarily when under stress, which is not a thing other Druids experience, and he can't control himself fully in wildshape either. He retains traits, such as an enhanced sense of smell, out of his wildshape form, and has the ability to remain as a bear borderline indefinitely, instead of Druids usually only being able to maintain the same form for a couple hours at most.

He doesn't hate undead; he views them the same as living creatures, worthy of life. He cares for Astarion deeply, and is furious if the player allows the 7,000 spawn to die. (He's a little nicer if they do it for a mercy kill instead of the ritual, but is clearly only happy when they are released into the Underdark, the exact thing a Druid is supposed to want to avoid.)

He dislikes the city because it displaces nature, yes, but he VERY rarely says that. Instead, almost every time he laments the conditions of Baldur's Gate, what distresses him is how capitalistic systems harm sentient beings- especially children. He is more upset at the human(oid) suffering he encounters in the city than he is at how it displaces nature.

Halsin is on an obviously morally good alignment. While Druids are no longer required to be neutral, most still are anyway, especially those from the Emerald Enclave, which the Emerald Grove is part of.

Emerald Enclave Druids are encouraged to sabotage society; they breed aggressive animals and place them near settlements to deter development, secretly sponsor brigands to attack new settlements, and simultaneously interact with local populations by providing sweet drinks and teas to boost their public image, so that new developments are curtailed while nearby people think the Druids are kind and harmless. Halsin very notably never even thinks about doing such things, even though it would be trivial for him to do so.

While Halsin's explanation for wanting to stop the Absolute is initially far more in line with Druidic thinking (they're unnatural, obviously), he later grows to want it finished because he wants you, the player, and your friends to be safe.

Halsin has zero desire to ladder-climb in the ranks of the Druids, nor to grow more powerful; he was perfectly happy as he was before the Shadow Curse, and is quite upset he had to waste 100 years of his life "dealing with others' problems and personalities." BUT the fact that he was happy to just that as alderman of his commune suggests the problem was with being forced into the position and being relied on as the sole authority, instead of one trusted elder of many.

Halsin wants children desperately, but was kept from having them by his leadership role. This is yet another example of how, despite his deeply held beliefs, being a Druid ultimately made him less happy.

Halsin isn't very good at leading the Druids, to the point that many of his Druids resent him, many are swayed to a cult the instant he leaves, and he himself decides the best thing he could possibly do for the Grove is leave it and have a better leader come in and take over.

Nearly every struggle Halsin has in the game arises from a conflict with his Druidic beliefs- whether it's his need to cleanse the Shadow Curse causing him to be an ineffective leader of the Grove, his desire for a family being held back by his leadership role, or his love of humanity battling against his hatred for cities as unnatural blots on nature.

Basically, nearly every character beat Halsin has comes from him not being a typical Druid at all, and in some cases, from him being rather bad at being the things Druids are supposed to be.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Okay, here’s an interesting one.

Before seeing your content, I’d basically only ever heard the term “power fantasy” used as a derogatory term to describe over-the-top protagonists who are strong and cool, but also boringly devoid of personality so the audience can project onto them. But then some of your League videos talked about skins letting characters like Gragas “inhabit more interesting power fantasies.”

So… when are power fantasies a good thing? The best I’ve got is that it only works in interactive media like video games so that the audience can more directly engage with the fantasy (essentially: Dante from DMC works, Kirito from SAO does not)

I mean, power fantasies are just endemic to storytelling as a whole. There isn't really a hard "this is when they're good, this is when they're bad," they are core to several genres of media and can't be extracted from them. Most video games are power fantasies, just by nature of their mechanics.

Power fantasy isn't a genre (usually), it is just a tool, same as any other trope or convention. It is a means to engage the audience with a story.

An RPG where you level up and become stronger to defeat more difficult enemies? That's a power fantasy. Undertale where you get the best ending by finding some way to spare absolutely every monster and end every fight mercifully? Power fantasy. The Tomb Raider reboot games that take an almost sadistic glee in putting Lara Croft through absolute hell both physically and emotionally? Those are power fantasies about overcoming and surviving those impossible challenges.

They're not just power fantasies, they have lots of other stuff going on, but power fantasy is an inherent part of them. Romance stories also often include power fantasies, specifically about the power of love. "He's broody, dark and broken, but my love can fix him" is a power fantasy, for example, as is "an unjust society keeps us apart, but we will defy everything to be together!"

Even being The Final Girl who beats the horror monster and walks away at the end of the movie can be a power fantasy, if a rather grim one.

If there is a general case where power fantasies become "bad," I think it is when the power fantasy is all there is, and it subsumes all other parts of the story. Shonen manga often runs into this as they get longer, and the power system and escalating battles against ever more powerful foes become the overriding driving force of the story, to the exclusion of everything else. Shaman King comes to mind for me as a particularly egregious example, or Bleach.

Isekai is also riven with this. You can't walk two steps these days without tripping on a "TRANSPORTED TO ANOTHER WORLD WITH MY SUPER OP CHEAT SKILL" premise, where the entire purpose of the story is simply to act out unchallenged wish fulfilment with no friction or tension or character development. Those stories get boring very very fast... unless of course the power fantasy being played out is your specific power fantasy. Yes, OP protagonists winning everything with no challenge is boring, but this OP protagonist is building a sapphic cottagecore witch polycule with an ever-expanding harem of emotionally damaged lesbians, so... y'know. Maybe I'll give it a pass.

It's generally less interesting and useful to observe THAT something is a power fantasy, than it is to observe WHAT KIND of power is being fantasized about. Zombie apocalypse stories are often power fantasies, for example, but there's a pretty noticeable difference between stories where the power fantasy is banding together and building a life with a found family in horrible circumstances, stealing joy from the end of the world in spite of everything... and stories where the zombie apocalypse is an excuse to enact paranoid right-wing prepper fantasies where the hero protects their property (home, land and women) against the verminous hordes of the monstrous Other, and is reified and uplifted by the employment of brutal violence.

[hauntedsavefile]

my take on the strangetown premades!

base temp by @/mageofpanic

this took a lot longer than expected + some of these guys look a little more rough than desired but I'm pretty happy anyways!

keep in mind that these are *my* interpretations of the characters that i've curated over the many years ive been fixated on this game :,-)

some design notes below the cut since i put an ungodly amount of effort into the thought procress (its a lot of text, warning you now) ⬇️

- following the ts3 + ts2 genetics, my curious-smith family are darker skinned with less racially ambiguous features, fuller lips, larger noses, etc. (although not every person of that ethnicity is the same of course! these were purely observational looking at their family line). they are afro mestizo in my headcanon, with glarn being afro latino & kitty being mestizo.

- vidcund still has his mullet thing going on but it is a loc mullet!

- my curiouses are generally chubby. i don't have any exact reason for this. i know a lot of people headcanon pascal as being chubby but i think it could be cool if they all were. it also adds visual interest with different body types.

- erin & loki are scandinavian (like me!) so they're already very pale but i wanted to excaberbate that even further by making them albino. this isn't an accurate depiction of albinism as in real life, people with that condition often have health issues alongside that. (if i were to give that any thought, i like to think that loki initially became interested in inventing to benefit his own health issues but then his ambition took him down a darker, more mad sciencetist path). for erin as well, i just think it's cute considering her whole psychic thing, lookin a bit fairy-like + contrasts nicely with her pink colour scheme.

- nervous is darker skinned, exactly the same as his ma since grim doesn't have dna really. (some people have their own school of thought regarding why nerv being super pale, but this is my own). he has burn scars as electrocution causes scarring on skin + organ tissue, which he has gone through, a lot. he has various stitches, scars, and vitiligo marks across his face and body. the vitiligo on his face looks like a skull. this was originally going to be on the left side of his face, where theres no burns, but i figured it made symbolic sense + was a lot less cluttered if the burns covered up the skull vitiligo markings on his face.

- johnny, ripp, tank all have acne / acne scars - typical of teenagers.

- chloe + lola are of different skintones for storytelling purposes. in my little world, chloe and lola are very deeply close but also very affected by the abscence of their dad (him abandoning them), and being the only aliens they really knew of - basically being raised in isolation for most of their life. This is your typical cain & abel tale. Lola always felt inferior compared to Chloe, who had personality and charisma. She was always jealous of that, feeling like she’s always the awkward one + always will be in her sister’s shadow because of this. She tries her best to compensate for this through pouring herself into her work, in hopes that when she gets money, she’ll finally be accepted. This extends into their assimilation to humanness as well. Chloe is able to assimilate better whereas Lola feels like she cannot.

- Ripp is very different to canon.. I don't have a lot of an explanation for this but I just wanted to give him scene hair (also longer hair because I headcanon her as being a trans girl, but a very closeted one so she's in that awkward phase of growing out her hair but pretending like it's just shaggy + pulls it back into a low ponytail). The cleft lip is a bit of projection on my part, as I had a cleft palate when I was younger. Characters that I like will recieve some kind of disability that I have, for Nervous it's deafness + debilitating leg pain, for Ripp its this. I think it's also interesting narrative wise to compare how Buzz & the Beakers both handle disability. Buzz is a very 'tough it out' & 'you're just being sensitive' type whereas the Beakers uhh caused it, with their experimentation.

- I'm gonna be real, I hate Jill's design. It tells me nothing about her personality wise + I'm bummed out how human she looks. We need more weird little girl designs! Tried to find a middle ground.

- Buck has brown eyes like the corrupted version of Lyla. I chose to make him look like a carbon copy of Lyla (relatively speaking) for irony purposes. He has the least memories of her and yet looks exactly like her.

- Kristen is intended to look more like a typical masc lesbian because I am soo indulgent towards making the singles household just like a crazy lesbian situationship household (minus the curious sisters with eachother - of course).

[felassan]

All companions are pansexual!!!

Game is rated M, will contain nudity. [source]

Full article:

"In a new interview with The Veilguard game director Corinne Busche, we've confirmed that yes, you will be able to romance any companion you want, regardless of your character's gender or race. It's a bit of a surprise for fans, considering that in previous Dragon Age games, the romanceable characters had different sexual orientations. Some were pansexual, sure, but others were heterosexual, others were only attracted to the same sex, and some could only be romanced if you were a certain race (Dragon Age: Inquisition's Solas, for example, could only be romanced by female elves). But Busche pushes back on the idea that The Veilguard's companions are "playersexual," a term used to describe games where NPCs are specifically only attracted to the player character. She says she's seen playersexual "done in a number of games," and "it can be really off-putting where these characters are adapting to who you, the player, are." Rather, Busche insists that they're all specifically pansexual, and that might come through in what you learn about their backstories. "Their past experiences or partners, they'll reference them and indeed who they'll become romantic with," Busche tells IGN. "For instance, we saw Harding. I might be playing a straight male character flirting with her, but I choose not to pursue a romance. She might get together with Taash. So my perception, my identity has no bearing on their identities and that comes through really strongly." When asked if that means it won't take long for romance to become an option in The Veilguard, Busche confirms that you'll be able to start flirting with everyone pretty early, as you recruit all seven companions throughout the first act. But, she clarifies, "it's not until the later parts of the game where you really commit to romance and it gets pretty spicy.""

---

"Speaking of spicy... Of course, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a BioWare game, and games from the studio — specifically those in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series — are known to have some fairly explicit sex scenes. Busche confirms that The Veilguard will be no different, particularly towards the end of the game: "Of course, we are an M-rated game," she says. "We do have nudity." There's also some obvious parallels to be made between The Veilguard and last year's critical darling Baldur's Gate 3. The latter became known not only for its deep romances (like The Veilguard, Baldur's Gate 3 player characters can romance any companion regardless of gender or race), but also for its sex scenes, including one involving a Wild-Shaping Druid that went pretty viral. Busche isn't afraid to admit that she has played Baldur's Gate 3, and loved it, as she's an "an RPG fan through and through": "The more character-driven party-based RPGs with deep emotional connection, the better." "What I love about the two games is I think they live side by side in a really interesting way," she continues. "They're very different games, but those emotional connections and how the narratives hook you, I think there's space for both." Specifically in regards to the sex scenes and how The Veilguard will handle theirs differently, Busche says some of Baldur's Gate 3's scenes were "shocking and comical in some ways, and I would say I loved that." "Our companions, we want them to be relatable and fully realized. So they can get spicy, but in a way that I think people will actually relate to," she says. Basically: no bear sex. Busche goes on to say that how sexually explicit the scenes are, too, will vary between characters. "Some of them are more spicy than others," she reveals. "Just like real life, our companions have such diverse personalities. Some of them are more physical, more aggressive, and some of them are more... we have a gentleman necromancer, for instance, that is more intimate and sensual." Our interview with Busche comes as BioWare continues to roll out information about the highly anticipated Dragon Age sequel, with a cinematic trailer having dropped at the Xbox Showcase over the weekend. Dragon Age: The Veilguard will debut sometime this fall."

[source]

[deareverlasting]

BEAR WITH ME.

warning: spoilers for ep 75

i was just scrolling through tiktok and then the thought occurred to me that everyone grew up together (minus ben and aiden) and basically never interacted until the group project. yeah, duh, that's the whole premise of their strange group at first, but it just strikes a cord to think that these kids who have become so inseparable were so close to each other this whole time without even knowing it, without even knowing that they needed each other.

because why now, after all these years, would they? after all, they were just strangers who occasionally saw each other in the hall or during class, strangers that they could never understand, right? they were just too different.

i mean, just think about how taylor says she's always noticed ashlyn since they were kids and how she was always on her own. she didnt understand how ash could be content with that, isn't it lonely?

tyler is most likely, lets face it, pretty popular. when we're introduced to him and taylor they're in this huge group of typical jocks due to tyler being on the baseball team. ashlyn and logan must've known him before due to that, seen them parading through the halls. and seeing as how neither logan nor ash like loud noises or crowds very much they probably wrote him off as a loud jock and went about their day. maybe saw how cold and angry he was with everyone but his sister and thought he must be unpleasant to be around.

as for logan, he, like ash, is pretty obviously very much a background character in everyone else's lives. most likely a loner just like ashlyn, very shy. if the rest of the gang ever noticed him it was probably nothing more than a glance. because logan at the time was nothing more than barrons stereotypical nerd that does his homework because he's scared of what will happen if he doesn't.

it just makes me ILL that these people who would grow to care so much about each other were all so close without knowing it, hell, they probably passed each other in their towns grocery store multiple times before. maybe seen tyler play in one of his games with taylor yelling above everyone else because that's her brother, saw ashlyn perform and dance, saw logan reading in the astronomy section in the library.

and yet they didn't know they'd ever learn to trust these strangers with their lives every night. that they would learn that tyler is more than just a loud, angry jock. he loves and cares about his sister, took up being basically a parent from a very young age, and doesn't truly have any friends because they are just a distraction.

that taylor is every bit as friendly as she let's others believe, but if you mess with her brother or her friends that sun can cloud over so quick.

that ashlyn likes to be alone but given the time and patience, she would love to be alone with you. that she doesn't want to, but if she's needed, she will step up and be the leader you need. sure, she isn't good at "friends" and she'll make mistakes, but she owns up to them because she tries and she cares.

and finally, logan, who at first is so shy and unsure, yet is quick-witted and brave enough to make hard choices and learn where he fits in with a group. to stand up against someone who bullied him and threatened him daily and help someone else from going down the same path he did.

AND PLEASE don't even get me started on ben and aiden.

those two have been practically alone their whole lives until they met each other. all aiden had was the dark room that reeked of molding food and people he hung around just to pass the time because he knew they weren't permanent, nothing ever was with his parents.

and ben's only friend before aiden being the music he could create before it was taken away from him, and all he had left was the broken melodies that he tried to find in every punch he threw.

they were both so, so alone and seeking something that would stay, something that would last because everything else that made them happy seemed to fall just out of reach now.

but just one move away, one final move to a small town in georgia held everything that could hurt and heal them all in one. they were all what everyone needed, even if they didn't know it and it drives me insane that if these kids hadn't been put through hell, they never would have found each other.

and they're more than willing to claw their way out together, not because they have to to survive, but because they want to so that they can live.

red what have you dooone 😭/pos

[thydungeongal]

Having thought about it some more, the dissonance between people who are okay with talking in an out-of-fiction register over the table and people who insist on an in-fiction register for even mechanical discussion isn't as simple as the latter group being irrationally demanding of some kind of immersion, but it is definitely an issue of the group not having properly established a tone. Now, this is also not particularly helped by the fact that many games are. Really bad at communicating what kind of tone is to be expected of players over the table. But I feel it's further compounded by the fact that many modern RPGs basically expect players to be able to make mechanically informed decisions, with their characters acting as a group to overcome obstacles together, and with no agreed upon in-fiction definitions for many game mechanics the language of the mechanics remains the best cipher for players to communicate these things about their characters.

Some games do a better job of this than others and are thus more amenable to playing in a way where there is almost zero communication in a meta register. Some games, including most mainstream trad RPGs (your D&Ds 5e and Pathfinders 2e) make it all but impossible because they are so mechanically dense and require players to make mechanically informed cooperative decisions. Trying to play one of these games with zero discussion through the best cypher the players have for making sense of the fiction (the language of the rules) would be an exercise. Imagine a group of aliens, all speaking slightly different dialects of the same language, all trying to explain gleeblor (and all of them have a slightly different definition of gleeblor).

Some crunchy TTRPGs do a better job of bridging this gap between mechanics and fiction which means there is less need for code-switching. World of Darkness games have always had descriptive text indicating what each Dot of an attribute or ability roughly corresponds to in real life. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy also does this, grounding character skill ratings with actual examples of what kind of person could be expected to have that skill rating (Eureka also has explicit guidance for what kind of discussion should and should not go through the meta channel, which is sort of the thing I was grasping at in the first paragraph: many games do a very poor job of transmitting the desired tone to their players, which means that players are left with an oral tradition of never talking in terms of mechanics even while playing mechanically dense games that make such a playstyle all but impossible).

Anyway so Pathfinder and modern D&D are not exactly amenable to this type of play, which doesn't mean they're bad games, but it should be acknowledged that these games do very little to actually communicate how their numbers would translate into terms in the fiction, meaning that the rules text is often the best cipher players have available to them for communicating changes in the fiction. Because the games themselves don't do a lot to define their mechanics in terms of the fiction, any discussion of "what goes in the meta channel and what doesn't" should ultimately rely on consensus, not a single player trying to enforce their (arbitrary, personal) interpretations of the mechanics on the rest of the group.

Anyway this ties a lot into something that @vixensdungeon is always posting about and what her recent 0D&D posts also touch on: the shape and presentation of modern D&D rules is so that it's really easy for players to just look at them and decide that their character can just "Do an Arcana." She's also talked about how back in 3e days even the skill names had much more of a Verby quality to them. There's less of a need for this code-switching when the Thing in the Fiction matches with the Thing in the Mechanics. Gonad the Barbarian would like to Climb a wall, so in D&D 3e he Climb checks that wall. In D&D 5e to Climb a wall Gonad the Barbarian must Athletics on that thang.

And this relates also to our silly 0D&D posting. A Warrior (level 2 Fighter) fights with the strength of two men. Halflings may never be able to rise above the ranks of Heroes, but Halfling Heroes have Superheroic wherewithal (saving throws of a character four levels higher). Naiviv the Medium may yet one day rise to the rank of Wizard. 0D&D is also, in general, less mechanically dense than modern D&D, so a game of 0D&D where the meta channel is almost never used is entirely possible.

Anyway also shout-out to Apocalypse World as well, because it has a completely different approach to bridging the gap between mechanics and the fiction; a way which might turn off people expecting more crunchy play with less room for language games, but a way nonetheless. These are all examples of effects that can happen when a character does a thing:

Force your hand and suck it up.

Back off calmly, hands where you can see.

You lose your footingm

It's not openly for sale, but you find someone who can lead you to some selling it.

It reaches deep into the world's psychic maelstrom.

You provide covering fire, allowing another character to move or act freely.

Your prey doesn't suspect you. Otherwise, they're wary and alert.

See what I mean? When a lot of the mechanical text is like this there is less need for code-switching. The meta register and the in-fiction register are all but the same. It's not an approach that works for every type of game (a mechanically dense game of tactical combat written in this register wouldn't necessarily be unplayable, but it would leave a lot of things ambiguous that people generally drawn to mechanically dense tactical combat games would rather the game resolve for them), but for the type of game Apocalypse World is it works remarkably well.