#this also means that the more you relate to a varied array of characters the easier it gets

[callmepippin]

i feel like there is an important distinction between relatable and recognisable though, and people often confuse the two. maybe someone smarter than me can put this into better words, but i'll try anyway: just because i don't recognise any aspects of myself in a character, that does not necessarily mean i can't relate to them.

relating to someone i think means understanding their feelings, motivations and experiences as they compare (or relate) to your own--how their character or personality relates to your own. that doesn't necessarily mean their personality has to be similar to your own. differences can also describe a relation.

example: i am not much at all like Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. i would not make the choices he makes, do the things he does, say the things he says. however, i do understand why Holden would do all that stuff, because Holden as a character is dimensional and believable (the other two feel more subjective so i'll leave those alone). and because i understand Holden's character, i can relate to him. "ah yes, i would not do this. but if i were Holden instead of myself, i probably would".

relating to someone is not necessarily exclusively about similar personalities or lived experiences. relating to someone is also about empathy; and if you can only empathise with people or characters who are immediately recognisable as similar to you, i think that might not be the fault of whoever wrote the character...

Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

Honestly I keep seeing people say they know objectively good/bad writing and aren't swayed by their own wants/preferences/tastes like they are some kind of authority and I think it optimizers a lot of the conflict in fandom tbh.

and I'm sure I'm kind of a hypocrite about this because I also think I can identify good/bad writing in many cases, and I know there have been many times when I've failed to make the distinction between "it sucked" and "I didn't like it" (see: literally any time I start talking about Endgame, which pretty quickly turns into like a 30-minute rant, although in my defense I can also identify aspects of it that I liked or that I think worked well...and, okay, any time I start talking about the Loki episodes of What If BUT IN MY DEFENSE A LOT OF THAT IS FACTUALLY WRONG OR STRAIGHT-UP DOESN'T MAKE SENSE), and probably the only reason I'm annoyed about this now is that a lot of people in the fandom are saying a thing I liked was objectively bad--

but, I mean, there are so many ways in which a thing can be good or bad, so many different levels on which it can work or not work, and only some of those things can really be measured objectively in any reasonable way. like, I don't know, "did the settings and visual effects look real enough to avoid breaking immersion" is at least somewhat objective, but even that will vary from person to person based on how closely they're paying attention, how familiar they are with the conventions of that setting, and how much they already know about filmmaking techniques, and what looks real will vary a lot depending on the piece's setting, genre, and desired tone. and that's just one aspect on which a piece of media can be judged!

so it honestly seems very very weird to me that people tend to be so comfortable making sweeping statements that a given thing is Just Plain Bad. like--was every single bit of it poorly written in every conceivable way? did every single visual effect, practical and CG alike, look universally terrible? was all the acting bad, every character, all the time? was the characterization wrong, or do people legitimately have different opinions on that too because we all prioritized different aspects of previously established characterization? it didn't work for you, but clearly it did work for a lot of people, so is it reasonable to say it didn't work at all?

it's especially kind of interesting in the context of the Loki show (which, yes, is what I'm really talking about, because when am I not thinking about something Loki-related), given that there's such a wide array of opinions on it across different types of fans. I wish I had actual data on this, but anecdotally speaking, my sense is that newer or previously more casual fans were more likely to enjoy it, and people who hated it were more likely to be long-term/serious fans who disliked it for reasons specifically related to being long-term/serious fans, and I do think that's...unfortunate and kinda sad in general, and I wish the second part weren't the case? but it's also by no means universally true, at least in the "all REAL Loki fans hated the show" sense (like. I may have imposter syndrome about a lot of things but I think my Loki-fan cred is well established in many different ways, and I know there are plenty of other people who can say the same thing), so pretty much any generalization that uses that approach for a statement of objective quality is by nature inaccurate.

and it's also interesting in terms of aspects broadly enjoyed by everyone including those who generally didn't like the show. pretty much everybody latched onto Gator Loki, for instance, even though (because?) the whole concept is pretty silly. Classic Loki also seems to have been received pretty positively, which is fascinating to me because he's honestly kind of a sticking point for me as someone who liked the show in general! don't get me wrong, I liked the character (although...he also seemed to be the most obsessed with the "glorious purpose" concept/catchphrase, so that's...kind of another uphill battle for anybody who wants to argue that his characterization was the closest to Loki's previously established characterization), but I can't get over the fact that there was no in-world justification for his stupid costume, which is exactly the type of thing that people who generally disliked the show would otherwise point to as an example of sloppy writing/worldbuilding/characterization.

I'm not even sure what point I'm trying to get to here, aside from...you know, people like different things! texts are judged on gazillions of different standards in gazillions of different ways, to the point that it's really difficult to say that a thing is across-the-board objectively bad or good! what doesn't work for one person might be exactly what another person was looking for, and neither of their opinions are guaranteed to provide any information on the objective quality of a text! sweeping generalizations are almost never accurate, fair, or interesting! please don't make me regret posting this! thanks for coming to my TED talk!

[bisluthq]

Can you write a long post on why you think Jen law fucked her career/publicist role

Okay so after like the sitcom shit and whatnot, Jen started really strong with Winter’s Bone and X-Men First Class. Like she established herself as a STELLAR talent with the former and she had a franchise with a popular hot character. She also got The Hunger Games which was obviously MASSIVE.

But obviously it was right to keep her doing like art™️ movies because again with Winter’s Bone she had established herself a serious actress. And then her agent started putting her up for stuff she had no business being cast in. Like they were putting her up for parts clearly written for women in their mid 30s and pairing her with Bradley Cooper over and over again and it was like… unsustainable? And kinda weird? Like what’s she meant to play in her 30s when she’s been playing 30s since 21??

Like the character she plays in like Don’t Look Up is younger than what they had her playing in the O’Russells and obviously they were great performances but almost in like a student theatre way?

Also like her PR team overexposed her and let her talk too much. And like the thing is society loves to turn on its sweethearts so punting her as your everyday relatable girlie who’s fun and irreverent and whatnot was kinda true to her but limiting because people started hating her. The point at which she had two franchises and the Oscar movies going is the point she needed to be withdrawn and like reclusive and mysterious but she was fucking EVERYWHERE and people hate successful women so she started pissing them off.

Add to that like her relationship drama and the hack and like… idk man it was all mishandled.

Imo they should’ve taken the franchises and looked for more movies like Winter’s Bone where she plays her own age for the serious side of it. They also shouldn’t have hyper fixated on O’Russell and the Bradley Cooper pairing - like Serena shouldn’t have been made - and they should’ve been shopping her around to artiste directors.

They’re doing it again with McKay because she’s gonna be in two in a row. And like I get that’s easier than like building a varied resume but it’s legit less sustainable in the long run.

She had the star power and pull but they like never capitalized off it properly and now idk what they can do because if you were like… the biggest A++ list actress for a hot minute everything is gonna be compared to that era and everything else will look like a “flop”.

I think the only thing I really see as her like comeback vehicle is like a Sunset Boulevard type thing where she’s a washed up actress and plays into stuff that happened to her. I think people would LOVE that.

But that’s again not what they’re doing - they’ve hyper fixated on a new director for her to be muse to and they’re not the kinds of iconic roles that like require a muse. That’s like the other thing. It’s not like the parts she played in the O’Russells or now in the McKays NEED her.

I would say Emma Watson has a more sustainable career than Jen - like she can always do a movie and she’s always gonna get bums on seats and like her PR has been so careful and like inoffensive that like… ya. And she’s shown she can do an array of things with different people when she can. Saoirse has like the best and most like sustainable career of that like age group tbh - again, she’s worked with directors repeatedly but not as a muse and she always plays age appropriate and her PR being as reclusive as it is means like she pisses NO ONE off. She can’t land a franchise which she bitched about but like she’s never gonna be unemployed or legit struggling unless something goes very wrong.

Jen’s team did her very dirty, the media didn’t help, Nic and Darren didn’t help, and like society’s delight in the failure of successful women ultimately came through 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

[scriptstructure]

part 1 I have multiple alien planets, but the things is I want to to be similiar in earth as in 200 countries, 5000 ethnic groups, 6500 languages, varied climate/terrain/politics. Part of the story is still on earth and obviously as a whole, 99.9999% of stuff on earth isn't even getting used, but we know there is more and sometimes there are little hints. That is stuff we know from real life and generally doesn't need explanation. Example, a character says "We borrowed this from the Russians."

Part 2 Regardless of what is really important, what we know and doesn't need explanation is a lot because we figure readers generally understand--or they can google. Hell, there could even be lots of subtle culture references as well. Anyway, depending on the reader's knowledge, it can enhance the reader's understanding in various and subtle ways. But when I do things similiar in alien planets, it makes no sense and requires extra explanation to fill the details. So, basically useless.

Part 3 Thus it seems I'm unable to fully give the type of experience as when using earth as pretty much everything needs to be important to the story. Unless there's another way to do this so I can make my alien planets seem so much more than what's actually focused on without the needless exposition? It feels like at best I could try to mention a few things but it could never feel as vast as earth does. Perhaps maybe I just need numbers?

Reminder that if your question doesn’t fit in a single ask box, you should use /SUBMIT instead.

I have had a few questions in the past which are very similar to this one, [HERE] is about how to introduce invented elements of secondary worlds (stuff that doesn't exist in the real world but has been made up for the story), [HERE] is about how and why we might include extra details about the places that a character is visiting, [HERE] deals with establishing what a 'normal' day in an invented setting is like, and [HERE] is about ways of thinking about worldbuilding, and how much you need to know vs how much the characters know.

So it is a fairly common shortcut, in scifi writing, and scifi film writing in particular, to portray alien planets as kind of 'one thing' settings. Here is the desert planet, and there is the dessert planet, and over there is the Evil planet, and there's the cute jungle teddy bear planet moon. This can be useful if you're making a film or story where you just want the different worlds to work as shorthand for certain ideas 'shitty home world', 'the seat of democracy', 'the swamp where Yoda lives' etc.

But it is very simplistic, and obviously looking at Earth, as you've said, there's a vast array of different climates, cultures, people, languages etc. We do tend to simplify the way that we portray Earth in film and stories, as well--think about, say, Australia being largely signified by the Opera House/ Harbour Bridge, and the Outback™, or the UK being Big Ben and the houses of parliament, or the USA being a vast stretch of corn fields between New York and Hollywood.

So how do we effectively give the sense of a world being bigger than the particular spot that we happen to find ourselves in?

First off, you need to have background information about the world that you're building. If you know what the major cities are, what the main continents are, if your alien world has countries, or if it has a singular centralised system of government--or is it divided into city states? or is it divided into time zones? or is it divided into... etc

Think about how your characters conceptualise their world, and their place in it. Do they think about the world, with all its variety, as a single vibrant whole? Or do they think of 'us on this continent, and them over on that continent'?

How does trade work on this world? Do they have extensive trade networks among the various cities/ countries/ regions? Or do they rely on off-world suppliers for various things?

What kind of cultural exchange is common among these different areas, and what are the cultural touchstones that your characters might be familiar with, or interact with on a daily basis?

As with the examples I gave in the first linked post above, it is less about providing the readers with an exact view of how the politics and interactions of the various places function, and more about demonstrating what that means in practice for the characters.

Say there's a certain kind of fruit that is PROTAGONIST's mother's favourite, and she spends all day searching the hypermarket for one to surprise her mother with for her birthday, but turns out there's none of that fruit available because it's all from OTHER REGION, and there's a war on, or a volcano has erupted and interrupted trade, or the shuttle crews are on strike and so the fruit can no longer be transported down from the moon.

If your protag's favourite pop group is from a polar region and only produces music six months out of the year, because the other six months they have to work with their community to produce supplies for the long dark winter, that tells us something about the way that polar community is organised, and how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What else can we think about when constructing alien planets/ secondary worlds?

It can be difficult to think 'outside the box' of the culture that we're immersed in. It's very easy to slip into thinking that we're doing things the 'correct' way, and if someone else somewhere else does stuff different, that's weird, wrong, or sinister. Often it can be just a different way of doing things that gives the solution that the person is after.

I think it can be very helpful to read books about ancient history, especially stuff about societies that no longer exist, because a lot of the assumptions that we make about the way the world currently works are less useful when we look at ancient history. There are some extremely varied ways of approaching society and culture and a whole lot of stuff which isn't immediately obvious, but which we can understand by looking at the vast differences between ancient societies.

Well written history books can really help you get the sense of how societies form, and how culture develops, and some of the forces involved in cross cultural relations. Also, there are some great examples from the ancient world, of, for example, the various different Ancient Greek societies, and how each of them thought of themselves as 'doing culture the best', of their neighbouring hellenistic states of 'doing culture not quite as well' and of everyone who didn't speak greek properly as barbaric outsiders.

At the moment I'm reading Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy, and I think one of the things that has struck me as super interesting is the difference between how the Greeks vs the Persians organised their societies, and the way that they thought about and approached warfare.

So what are the basic questions we're working with?

-What is the protagonist/ focalising character's relationship to the world? Were they born on-world? Are they adult settlers? Are they traders passing through? Has the character travelled to other places on the world, or have they mostly stayed in their home city/ area?

-How do the protag/ focalising characters think of the other places in the world that they are not currently visiting? (ie, I am in Sydney, Australia, what do I think of Boston, USA, or Paris, France? Big cities with a Reputation, I probably know something about. Small towns or cities I may or may not be familiar with, depending on my life experience or interests)

-How do the material goods which are needed for daily life pass around the world? Are certain goods only available from certain areas? Are there Events happening which may disrupt supply routes? Are there cultural elements which may cause friction in trade?

-What kinds of cultural export or exchange happen on this world? Is there a particular city which is well known for its entertainment production? (Hollywood, California--movies, New York City--the print publishing industry) Does this mean that portrayals of the rest of the world are skewed by the perspectives of that place? (Remember, Australia is just a bridge, an opera house, and red dirt!)

There's always going to be a gap between what your characters know, or are aware of, and what is 'actually' happening in the world of your story, but as long as you have the information decided, and can write the world consistently and with sensory and suggestive details, the reader can and will pick up the puzzle pieces and fit them together.

It's a complex problem, but it's one that can produce interesting complex settings.

I hope this helps!

[dreamsmp-au-ideas]

Oops, I made a plot…

Anyways. Epithet Erased

I love the idea that the Egg was created by someone with the Epithet of Consume. Now an interesting idea I had is that the owner of Consume originally had possession of the Arsene Amulet after Copycat died. The owner of Consume created the Egg and then started using the Amulet to feed Epithets to the Egg. In return, the Egg was able to use these Epithets and temporarily bestow their powers onto those who followed it, hence the whole bloodline wanting to protect it kinda thing. When the original owner of Consume started to reach the end of their lifespan they fed themselves to the Egg in hopes that it would eventually be fed something like Immortal or Rebirth and it could bring back its former master. This is why it’s an Egg, eventually it’s going to hatch into the original owner of Consume if it’s fed the right Epithet

The reason those following the Egg want the amulet is because they want to get back to work again. Everyone else is varying degrees of aware in terms of the Egg group’s plan. The Egg Group also has a process that new members of the Egg Cult go through where they offer up their Epithet to the Egg by being “Consumed” by it and held inside the Egg for a couple days. At which point the Egg leeches out their Epithet as an extra way to force its followers to be loyal. Sure you can still use your powers, and a ton of other Epithets as well, as long as you’re linked up with the Egg. But the moment you become disloyal and break off your Epithet is gone. It belongs to the Egg, you were only renting it.

Of course this takes a lot of time so it hasn’t happened to anyone in the DSMP by the time the actual plot starts except for Skeppy who’s the bartering chip that the Egg uses to make Bad be loyal to it. Bad doesn’t belong to the bloodline that’s been taking care of the Egg, he’s just a victim of circumstance. Techno is part of the family, but he’s a member of an offshoot branch that distanced itself from the Egg. He’s Billiam’s great (however many greats) nephew, but that isn’t a strong enough link, he’s the actual great (however many greats) grandson of the Sheriff which is why the Egg has less of a hold over him than it would a typical member of the bloodline.

Mundies are actually the best people for the job when it comes to fighting the Egg since its mind control powers only work on those who have an Epithet or offered up their Epithet to the Egg. Those who lost their Epithet specifically to the amulet against their wills are also immune. The Egg has the same powers seen in canon because one of the first Epithets it ever ate was Control.

There is a trade off to the Egg taking powers however, since the Epithets can’t “mature” while inside the Egg. Meaning they stay at the same proficiency level their former owner possessed making it advantageous for the Egg to allow Epithets to “mature”. The Egg might even offer an Epithet to a Mundie to let them mature it before harvesting it at a later date. It’s worth noting also there is a difference between getting trapped on top of the Egg and getting trapped inside the Egg like Skeppy, only the latter will get your Epithet snatched while Tubbo and Ranboo who are victims of the former just get their heads scrambled.

Team Pro Omelet eventually learns of the Egg’s abilities and plans and at that point it’s a race against the clock to ensure they 1. Don’t get the Amulet and 2. Aren’t able to shove anyone powerful inside the egg (cough cough Tubbo/Ranboo cough cough). While we could have Tubbo angst with his powers getting yoinked, I don’t think it would mean as much as the angst that would come from him just being normally controlled by the Egg and having his Epithet taken against his will would partially break him out of its control. He might not actually care as much about his Epithet, but him hurting Tommy by accident while being controlled? That would break him, mentally and emotionally.

While I was thinking about the plot, I mentioned with my last post I think that Tommy’s Epithet should have been taken or lost. We’ve had a connection made between Tommy loosing his power to Ranboo causing him to forget which I really like, but what if, and hear me out, he loses it to the Amulet? The last caretaker yoinks it with the intention of giving it to the get, probably at some point a good ways before the plot starts. However, because the former caretaker loses the Amulet before depositing it, Tommy’s Epithet stays pretty much trapped inside the Amulet. Partially because I really like the idea of Antihero Dream having to 180 why he wants to Amulet when Tommy eventually admits what happened. It adds a nice dynamic of character wants.

Originally I purposed Hero as Tommy’s Epithet which is good, but I think I can outdo myself. Meaning I have two other options.

Earlier I mentioned the Egg really really wanting someone with Immortal/Rebirth. Well, it’s a running gag that I keep making Tommy a phoenix in every AU I touch because he never damn well dies. So you could give one of those two words, or heck, even the word Phoenix itself to Tommy and it’d not only be a really good Epithet but it’d be an Epithet currently inside the Amulet, giving even more of a dire air to the story as a whole. If the Egg Squad is able to get that Epithet inside of the Egg, you bet it’s gonna hatch and the results will not be pretty. It also plays well with the fact that Tommy just never seems to die. Even when he doesn’t have his Epithet it’s such an engrained character detail that people comment on it whenever he joins an SMP.

I think it could be an interesting dynamic and it gives Tommy an array of interesting powers from wings to fire to being able to bring himself back to life. Additionally, we can give Immortal or Rebirth to Foolish since he’s a sentient Totem of Undying in canon and it would work well.

Alternatively, and this is admittedly the idea I personally favor, we pull a parallel between Tommy and Tubbo by giving him a seemingly stupid Epithet that’s deceptively strong. And trust me, I spent a lot of time thinking about what this Epithet might be and how it could be misinterpreted. The idea I ultimately settled on was Archetype. Now, this idea is near and dear to my heart because it fits Tommy as much as everything I’ve posted prior and arguably even more so than Hero. Tommy throughout the entire canon DSMP has had role after role forced on him. Being called the Hero or the Villain when really he just wants to be Tommy. I like the poetic irony of his Epithet literally being Archetype when everyone around him seems so desperate to assign him one. Plus, it’s one of those things that requires not just creativity but a certain level of classical or psychological background information to use properly, leading most people to being unable to use it (Egg included if it actually managed to get the Amulet.) So people just kind of brush it off and it lends itself well to the whole do you wanna be a hero thing since Hero is an Archetype.

For this power we’d basically be able to pull some really strong parallels between Tommy and Tubbo. Both have Epithets that are strongest when they temporarily become a different Epithet. Maybe Tommy can not only use Archetype, but he can temporarily transform it into literally any societally recognized Archetype and use that as if it was his Epithet. So he could still technically use the same powers one could come up with for Hero, it would just be while he’s using an Archetype Swap ability. Not only that but he’d be able to change other people’s personalities or Archetypes. He could even imbue others with traits of a new Archetype (i.e. giving a Mundie the powers associated with a Hero Archetype, aka literal actual honest to god plot armor) to act as support, but you wouldn’t think to do that typically. You’d just assume that Archetype is a one trick kind of pony at best. But maybe if we wanna go Tommy and Tubbo childhood friends route as kids they specifically spent hours practicing alone when they figured out their Epithets. Specifically coming up with overpower combo moves, thinking up powers that interacted well with one another to make themselves an actually terrifying menace to society.

Tommy and Tubbo childhood friends also is near and dear to my heart because everyone remembers the scene where Tommy told Tubbo that he’d been the hero and Tommy was the one who was the side kick. Having Tommy’s Epithet be Archetype and the majority of his childhood used to find ways to support Tubbo’s Epithet using his own adds another layer to this. Tommy literally made Tubbo the hero, gave him the powers and assigned him the Archetype. It’s just that they’re the only ones who know that. Plus plus we get a really good queen and knight dynamic between the two when they’re going all out which I just die for.

Also if SBI is canon, it makes sense why Tommy would have learned the word Archetype as a child, he’s related to Techno, what else would you expect? Part of Tommy being stupidly good at his power is probably from Techno reading him mythology as a child and linking up characters to their Archetypes, giving Tommy even more stupidly overpowered ideas for how to use his Epithet. Unfortunately it got yoinked at some point, either because someone saw how powerful it was or maybe Tommy just got unlucky. I think out of the ideas I’ve listed Archetype is my favorite if we go the yoinked route. It also works well with Techno and Dream since, again, Tommy could play a support role to make these already terrifying Mundies even more terrifying. Plus it would be like Tommy to keep having an Epithet secret because Techno is a Mundie and then later accidentally getting it stolen or we can go double angst and have Tommy both forget he has an Epithet and get it stolen.

Obviously Archetype being the Epithet and the plot would still work with Tommy just forgetting what his Epithet was, but also I really personally just like the aching pain of Tommy being forced to describe what it’s like having your Epithet stolen. How much the gap doesn’t hurt physically but emotionally and mentally almost daily, a phantom pain that never goes away. Sweet angst my beloved.

----------------------------

Tubbo🤝Tommy

Having stupidly overpowered Epithets

Anyways. Holy shit. This is brilliant. The plot is brilliant and oh god. This could open up so much now. The Arsene Amulet is still relevant in a way.

Oh man, the Egg just consuming Epithets as well? Man. That’s great.

[dailycharacteroption]

Base Class Review: Witch part 4

 Unique Patrons

 Witch patrons as a whole can represent any manner of otherworldly, power-granting entity, everything from powerful outsiders, fey, bodiless spirits, and even psychic entities formed by or attracted to the subconscious desires of the would-be witch.

Their morality and goals can also vary a lot. Some are goodly, most are high-minded and desire to spread knowledge, while wicked ones may be petty tyrants that threaten to remove their influence or torment the witch in other ways if they are not obeyed. Regardless of alignment, however, most patrons likely have an agenda of some kind, which likely is related to the theme they are associated with.

Beyond that, however, the witch patrons… don’t really have that much going for them mechanics-wise, just a list of bonus spells. According to former Paizo employee and editor in chief F. Wesley Schneider (In his brief stint of doing youtube videos, I believe), the witch patrons were originally going to be more in depth with greater mechanics tied to the true nature of the patron, but those were scrapped.

Today, however, we’ll take a look at a subsystem from Blood of the Coven which promises to provide a way for witch characters to be influenced by the exact nature of their patron (and also throwing a bone to GMs who wish they had more to work with when trying to tie the patron into the plot or subplot of a campaign.)

 These so-called “unique patrons” are a bit stronger and more influential than the standard patron. Picking one of them means you must pick a certain hex at first level, you have a list of only four themes to pick from, and some of your theme spells are swapped out by those associated with that type of unique patron. What’s more, taking a unique patron means abiding by their rules, which can include a restriction, or a penalty of some kind.

In this way, unique patrons offer access to certain spells that are harder for most witches to get in return for some restrictions or difficulties in terms of build and roleplay. This makes sense from a fluff level as well, as these patrons would naturally not possess themes that run counter to their goals (no celestial patrons of rot and death, naturally)

The unique patron types are as follows:

First is the Celestial Agenda, meaning the patron is some manner of good outsider that seeks to guide the witch to some goodly act or destiny. As such, such witches must be good and find it difficult to deceive others, but they gain the ward hex, are associated with themes of endurance, healing, light, and portents, and grant access to spells that punish the wicked and call upon celestial allies.

Next is the Empath, suggesting your patron is a collective unconscious or other entity associated with emotion and social connection. Such witches are sensitive to strong emotions, making them very vulnerable to magic that imposes them on others. Still, they learn the tongues hex to speak all languages, are associated with ancestors, mind, spirits, and wisdom, and are granted spells that bolster their awareness of events and energies both present and past.

Fey Gifts suggests that your patron is a powerful fey, perhaps even one of the Eldest. Such patrons have few restrictions, but they also view the witch as a source of entertainment, and might remotely jinx them at random for their amusement. Still, the fey does grant the witch the charm hex, access to the agility, enchantment, trickery, or winter themes, and access to magic to deceive and enchant their foes with fairy madness.

Green Whispers is what you want if you want you patron to be a nature spirit of some description, or perhaps a powerful natural being such as a treant. Such beings forbid the touch of iron or steel, which are associated with civilization, and actually cause harm and inhibit the magic of the witch. In exchange, they can speak to animals with the feral speech hex, access animals, endurance, moon, or transformation as patron themes, and access various plant-related spells.

When a hag gets involved, usually with their changeling child, they sometimes act as a patron, providing the Hag’s Calling, perhaps to tempt them, or reward them. Regardless of their relationship, the hag seeks to isolate the witch, preventing them from helping others or accepting the help of others. In return, these witches gain the coven hex, can choose from moon, plague, shadow, and vengeance for themes, and spells to disguise themselves or contact the hag from afar.

The classic witch patron, at least when viewed through the perspective of fearful religious folk, the Infernal Contract suggests a patron that is fiendish in nature, though not necessarily diabolic. Regardless of what fiend is holding the leash, such witches can only rarely be resurrected, their souls bound to their master, and they must provide regular sacrifices of blood to maintain their power. Those that dare this bond are promised the misfortune hex, access to enchantment, strength, trickery, and vengeance as options, and spells to call on fiendish allies for aid.

Calling upon a patron from the plane of shadow, Shadowbound refers to those patrons that dwell in darkness, such as kytons, owbs, shae, nightshades, and more. Such a patron makes the light inimical to the witch, though, making their eyes sensitive to light. In exchange, they gain the disguise hex, the death, deception, ethereal, and shadow patron themes, and spells that bend shadow to the will of the witch for attacking and transport.

The Condition of All is an interesting unique patron, as such witches are guided by the mysterious and contradictory aeons. As servants of the balance, each witch has a role to play, and so their morality cannot waver from the role they are meant to fulfil, lest they lose their powers until their part in the balance is restored. In exchange, they gain the scar hex, access to the elements, time, transformation, and wisdom themes, and magic for compelling actions and banishing unwanted outsiders.

Finally, those who are Touched by the Outer Gods are exactly what you’d expect, witches whose patrons are none other than an Outer God or Great Old One, leaving their minds scarred, making them vulnerable to various mental effects. Those who follow such beings, if that word can even be used, gain the unnerve beasts hex, a theme from the list of insanity, occult, stars, or transformation, and spells that spread fear and madness.

 With such an array of unique patrons, you certainly have plenty of interesting choices for making a witch character where the exact nature of their patron matters. However, you may have noticed that the list of various themes that go with these unique patrons is a bit… limited, with many themes not having any representation at all, so if you really want a particular theme and a unique patron, you may be forced to turn to homebrew or GM fiat in order to make it work.

The Pathfinder 2nd edition version of the witch features much more involved patrons from the get-go, which we’ll cover sometime in the future, but it’s interesting to see how this optional subsystem might have inspired it.

In any case, that does it for today! We’ll wrap up the witch class tomorrow with some final thoughts!

[justalonelywriter]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL HUMAN!!!! 😘😘

How about #13 and #18?

You're always so sweet!!! 😭😘 Thank you so much!

13. Talk about a lyric that has affected your life in some way.

Like with a lot of other people, music is a very big part of my life. I like an array of genres ranging from classical Debussy pieces to nostalgic My Chemical Romance and mainstream Pop. I like K-pop, broadway show tunes, old French love songs and I think Bollywood counts as a genre of it's own.

It's hard to pick out one lyric in particular, because more often than not, I'll relate songs to fictional characters and universes in my head; associating things with fiction, rather than myself.

However, there is this old Taylor Swift song (are you surprised? 😆) called "Sweeter than Fiction" and this bit has just stuck with me over the years.

"Proved me right, proved me right when you proved them wrong And in this perfect weather, it's like we don't remember The rain we thought would last forever and ever."

I've been described as ambitious my whole life, perhaps even to a fault. It's a bit difficult having dreams that are often bigger than myself and I'm no stranger to self-doubt. I come back to this song, every so often ever since I've heard it.

It's not the first song that comes to mind when someone asks me my favourite, but I think it certainly has had an impact on me.

18. How do you come up with your fic titles? Which one are you most proud of?

Fic titles are often a shot in the dark. I'll be sitting peacefully one moment and then it'll be a eureka sort of moment. The aforementioned varied taste in music helps, stealing pretty lyrics is the easiest way to find a title. I also like pouring over dictionaries and finding pretty words with relevant meanings to use. Sometimes I ask a friend for help, (In fact, @eggspeliarmus can be credited for my most recent title!)

I think I'm most proud of a title of a fic I wrote ages ago. I think it might have even been under a different pen name and account. I called it Limerence. It didn't do very well, obviously and it was for a very niche and unestablished fandom. But it was one of the first things I published and I spent so much time with my friends talking and pouring over the details. I think my fondness for the title may have more to do with the memories associated with it.

More recently, I titled a piece 'for want (in need) of affection' and I thought that was quite pretty too.

send me an ask for my birthday!

[gayregis]

vampire headcanons 2020, pt. 1

part one: (non)physical form

the purpose of and reasoning behind writing all of this out: mainly to ward off against human-centric ideas of biology, and the preoccupation with gore that i have seen floating around when it comes to the vampires of the witcher

the nature of this: structured around the descriptions of vampires in the books. of course a lot of this is conjecture but it is intended to be based upon what is canon.

references: i am using the UK translations (2nd edition). (usually i think citing which translation you are using is a little unnecessary, but these headcanons are based upon the most minute details of how the vampires are described, where a change in the translation of words can make all the difference, in addition i have influced page numbers for ease of reference). i have transcribed these quotes from the paperback editions by typing, so hopefully there are no spelling errors.

disclaimer: i understand that there are meta reasons for certain parts of the lore (such as in the tower of the swallow, vampires not being able to be detected by long-distance magic was likely only written into canon because it was a necessity for there to be an error in the report of information for geralt to accuse cahir of betrayal). in addition, topics like magic in the witcher are not defined by extremely specific lore, the amount of specificity varies according to the necessity of it in relation to the narrative. this post is for fun and i only write things in a serious tone because i like treating things i care about with formality.

the theory as it stands:

> vampires do not have a physical form

technically, vampires do not physically exist. their physical forms are variations on something similar to illusion magic. 

within their range of powers alloted to vampired in canon are a large amount of mastery relating to controlling others’ minds, influencing their thoughts. they can put others to sleep, send them nightmares, and control their movements.

instead of having a physical form born of biological means of development, my theory is that their physical forms literally exist only as something similar to illusion magic, a trick on the minds of those around them to percieve someone as being there. of course, it is much stronger than an illusion, as they can physically interact with the rest of the world in their physical forms.

this would explain much, including how they do not have reflections or shadows because they do not technically exist within this dimension of existence. in addition, this would explain how they are not able to be detected using long-distance magic:

“Geralt may be right,” Regis said slowly. “Like every vampire, I’m invisible to magical visual probing and scanning; that is, to a detecting spell. A vampire may be tracked using an analytical spell, from close up, but it is not possible to detect a vampire with a remote, scanning spell. The detection will report that there’s no one there.”

The Tower of the Swallow, pg. 190.

from close up, they are able to identify that someone is there, because that is the extent of the vampire’s power to maintain their physical form. but their physical form is not able to be detected from far away, because they are not projecting their form into the minds of everyone on the continent - that would take an incredible amount of power. instead, they create this physical form only so that they can interact with their immediate surroundings and be visible to everyone who can see them physically. for all intents and purposes, their forms exist physically, as in one can interact with them: see them, hear them, touch them, but they can activate and deactivate this form at will when they have enough power to do so.

why do i think they exist metaphysically and not physically?

vampires demonstrate a number of abilities which would be difficult to explain if they existed with the type of “real” forms that humans and other alike creatures do. they are able to fly, shifting form into bats and disappear completely, not only turning invisible, but purely dematerializing. they are able to continue being alive following decapitation and other fates which would absolutely kill any other type of creature.

their physical being is the result of a variation of polymorphism. multiple characters in the series utilize this magic; the main ones being borch three jackdaws (aka villentretenmerth) and philippa eilhart. (dopplers are excused from this because their process of shifting form is not illusion, but perfect manipulation of their physical forms into the replication of others’). polymorphism is a magic that combines the physical and the illusory.

we see vampires dematerializing/rematerializing and changing from/into bats multiple times during the series.

Emiel Regis (...) shook his cape, wrapped himself up in it with a flourish and vanished. He simply vanished.

Baptism of Fire, pg. 220.

“Geralt,” the barber-surgeon said, his vague, wavering shadow materializing at the Witcher’s side, and immediately began to cut his bonds.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 205

“Witcher,” said Regis. “This running is senseless. I’ll go off... I’ll fly off and do some reconnaissance.”

“Fly.”

The vampire took off as though blown by the wind. Geralt had no time to be surprised.

Lady of the Lake, pg. 352

“The bat beat its wings, soared up and glided towards the fountain. As the crooked claws scraped against the stone casing the monstrous, slobbering snout was already blurring, morphing, disappearing, although the pale little lips which were taking its place couldn’t quite hide the murderous fangs.”

The Last Wish, pg. 64.

“He (...) shot a blinding white flame at the attacking vampire (...). Regis nimbly avoided the flame and materialized in his normal shape alongside Geralt.”

Lady of the Lake, pg. 378

but unlike the others in the series who utilize polymorphism, such as villentretenmerth and philippa eilhart, vampires are able to undo their entire physical being and recreate it at will (during a full moon, when they are at their most powerful). i do not doubt that philippa eilhart and other sorcerer/esses could turn themselves invisible or undetectable, but to absolutely remove their bodily form from existence is another practice altogether.

they are able to create these physical forms and dematerialize and rematerialize them at will, during the time when they have the power to. 

> vampires conciously mimic humans, mimicing humans is not something that comes naturally to them

their “true forms” in physical terms, as in what their default form is when they initially create one, are likely the giant bats that we see them transform into, and not the human-like form that we see vereena take and the form closer to a human one that we see regis take.

“He’s already surprised me a few times, so he might still have something up his sleeve. I suspect he’s quite remarkable even among vampires. He imitates humans perfectly, and has done so for years. (...) Though my medallion doesn’t react to him either, and it ought to.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 291.

from this statement, we can glean that vampires usually do not imitate humans perfectly, and this is congruent with the characters we have been presented with. regis, unlike vereena, is able to speak aloud without telepathy and interact with a broad array of humans and non-humans, living in a human city and convincingly posing as one.

even though vereena’s normal form is more similar to a human than a bat, we receive this other statement from geralt:

“You’re so like a rusalka,” the witcher continued calmly, “that you could deceive anyone. All the more as you’re a rare bird, black-haired one. But horses are never mistaken. They recognize creatures like you instinctively and perfectly. What are you? I think you’re a moola, or an alpor. An ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun.”

The Last Wish, pg. 62.

this quote focuses on the part about deception. she is posing as something she is not, she is hiding her nature as a vampire. i call this mimicry, because it’s also what regis calls it:

“One could call it that,” Regis agreed. “Although I would argue that when mutation is spread over a sufficiently long period it ceases to be mutation and becomes evolution. But what you said about physical structure is apt. Adapting to sunlight was an unpleasant necessity for us. In order to survive, we had to become like humans in that respect. Mimicry, I’d call it.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 300.

vampires mimic humans by adopting human-like forms, but the vast majority of them are not quite that good at it. they usually can only speak in telepathy and not aloud like humans do, and so usually, they are not able to interact with humans on a large scale.

(next post)

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - Jeremiah 17:9

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: No vintage pornography was mistreated in the making of this chapter.

(A scene was partly based on and amazing comic by @hyunlou, because I loved it so much I could no longer picture the scene going any other way,and also @lunaescribe on my birthday with art - check the fic tag to see both!)

***

“... Is that what they asked you? If you had carnal desires? Were those their exact words?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, and shifted a little when Łukasz let out a groan, rubbing his temples.

“Why do they speak like they came out of some shitty BBC period drama?” Fabrizio asked, only for Łukasz to entirely ignore him and look back at Gabriel.

“And you said no.”

“I said I don’t think I do-- I am not sure-- and then they left before I could suggest we go out for the evening, and I have no idea why. But they did take the mugs, so--”

“Jesus Christ, mate, they were making a pass at you!”

Gabriel blinked. “... They were making a what?”

Fabrizio cleared his throat before speaking in the fakest, poshest British accent imaginable. “I think what my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that this… what’s their name again?”

“Beel-- Bill.”

“Right. This Bill was trying to politely gauge whether or not you may, perchance, be entertaining the thought of shagging.”

“Shagging?” Gabriel repeated. He was familiar with the term, of course - working in warehouse near the docks had taught him a vast array of terms all generally referring to the same things - but he had no idea why Beelzebub would be asking if he entertained the thought of-- 

“Shagging them, specifically.”

Gabriel stared. He opened his mouth, gaped a little more, then blinked. “They-- were?” he asked, sounding every inch as bewildered as he felt. The notion was so alien to him, it was hard to wrap his mind around it… and yet, now that it had been clearly spelled out for him, Gabriel felt a sudden desire to reach back into the space-time continuum and smack himself in the back of the head. Unable to do that due to his current limitations as a mortal, he just blinked again. “But... why?”

Forehead firmly pressed on the table, Łukasz snickered. “That’s an excellent question,” he said. “I’m starting to suspect your friend is a rabid moronsexual.”

“A what?”

That caused Fabrizio to burst laughing so suddenly and violently that Gabriel was left with little doubt that he was supposed to feel insulted by the remark. However, he was too baffled to.

“That was never-- it never came up,” he protested.

“Hah! Well, it did now. They brought it up. So, are you?”

Gabriel opened his mouth. 

“... Before you go ‘am I what’, allow me to make myself clear. Are you interested in the offer?”

Ah. “I’m… not certain it was an offer, I ought not assume--”

“Let’s say it was. Are you?”

Gabriel hesitated, and this time they didn’t press him for an answer. Which was good, because he honestly did not have one yet; there had been something when he’d held the Prince of Hell in his arms, something that had made him wish he didn’t have to put them down… but the notion of carnal desires was so foreign to him, he had no idea what that would even feel like. 

In the end, he sighed. “... I’ll need to do research,” he finally said. 

If Łukasz and Fabrizio found it an odd response, which they probably did, they said nothing of it. 

“All right. But, my friend, let me tell you something. Whether you want to shag them or not, you’re so smitten it’s not even funny,” Fabrizio said. Gabriel didn’t even try to argue he was not.

Lying is, after all, a sin.

***

Indulging in carnal  pleasures was, quite obviously, not the immediate ticket to the lowest circles of Hell that many mortals seemed to believe it was.

It was in some cases, of course, whenever someone forced their own lust on somebody who was anything but a willing participant; those souls had a circle of their own, which was rather cramped as well as boasting a frankly astounding amount of Catholic priests. 

A good number of them may have been tempted by demons, though Beelzebub suspected it was a minority, but even in those cases all the forces of Hell had really done was put some rather non-specific lust in their heart; how they let it grow and then acted upon it was entirely their choice.

It was not a circle of Hell Beelzebub had ever had much to do with, as lust did not precisely fall under their expertise, and therefore they did not know the minute details of what was the exact line between simple carnal pleasure and sinful lust. However, they felt reasonably certain in the assumption that carnal relations with a Prince of Hell would, at the very least, be a prominent enough sin to tilt the balance of the scale towards Hell.

And I may be more successful in doing that than I was trying to convince him to push an old lady under the bus. 

Just maybe. There were demons who made seduction their weapon of choice when it came to gaining influence over mortals, but Beelzebub was not among them. Plus, when asked if he did have carnal desires, Gabriel had said he didn’t think he did.

But he hadn’t said no, either, which had been his immediate reply whenever they had tried to talk him into any kind of serious sin, and therefore Beelzebub concluded it would be foolish not to make at least an attempt. So they would - but first, they needed to do some research over what carnal relations precisely entailed other than just choosing one out of two models of genitalia and make them fit with the other’s. 

They would come across as rather stupid, after all, if Gabriel accepted and they had to reveal they didn’t know the first thing about what they’d just proposed.

*** 

The dancers should stand facing each other, keep their feet loose and relaxed, standing so that they are facing each other with about an arm's length of space in between them...

By the time he got to the second paragraph, Gabriel had begun to suspect that guide - Learn How To Shag In One Minute - was not precisely what he was looking for. With a frown, he went back to the search results and looked around a bit further. 

Ah, so apparently shag dancing was a thing. It looked rather awkward and had no relevance to his research, doubly so as angels did not dance and he certainly had not picked up the habit since becoming mortal, so in the end Gabriel sighed and just put his phone down.

All right, it seemed that the Internet was not a reliable source, regardless of the large amounts of porn that, he had been informed, could be found in it. He had absolutely no intention to come across as a fool if - when? - Beelzebub brought up the matter again, and therefore he needed better sources than dubious websites with excessive amounts of Xs in their name.

A book. Books are more reliable.

Of course Gabriel was not so gullible to think all books could be trusted - he had seen too many outlandish editions of the Bible not to know better - so he would need to be certain the book he got his hands on would be a reputable one.

And he just so happened to know an expert in the field.

***

“Lord Beelzeb--”

“Nothing!”

Dagon blinked, taken aback, when Lord Beelzebub let out a noise that was only slightly more dignified than a shriek and slammed their laptop shut. They had been sitting on their throne, staring at the screen with such keen interest they hadn’t heard her coming in - and now, for some reason, they were sitting on the laptop. 

… All right. Dagon would assume that whatever they were looking at was a private matter and not ask, then. She cleared her throat and somehow managed to keep a straight face despite the utter surprise; she had never seen the Lord of the Flies caught so off-guard. 

“What do you want!” Beelzebub barked, looking one step away from trying to turn her to ashes. Not that Hellfire could destroy a demon, of course, but it would hurt quite badly and Dagon liked it better when she was not hurt quite badly. 

“I, uh, am here concerning the meeting to review the performance of our demons this month,” she said. “If it suits you, we can move the time--”

“You can chair that stupid meeting,” the Prince of Hell snapped. “Now leave. I’m busy.”

“Oh. Is it anything I can help wi--”

“You can help by chairing the meeting in my stead.”

“Ah. Does that mean I am authorized to choose who to punish and what bonuses to award--”

“You’re authorized to do whatever the Heaven you want, as long as you leave me now!”

The flies around Lord Beelzebub’s head buzzed furiously as though to underline the unspoken threat, and Dagon was clever enough not to argue further: a quick bow, and she was out of the throne room as fast as her legs could carry her while still maintaining some composure. 

Once alone, Beelzebub let out a groan and rubbed their eyes. They stood, picked up the laptop from their throne, and opened it again. The screen was cracked, but then again the entire thing was so busted it was plainly not supposed to work in any capacity, and Beelzebub had yet to meet a piece of technology that would defy their order to work when they were supposed to. 

It sure worked now, as Beelzebub turned it back on and to look at their most recent searches. 

how to do courtship how to court human how to court idiot how to kiss human genitalia how penis work how vagina work how to have sex tutorial

The last one led to a rather educational video depicting a man and a woman on a large, round bed. If they squinted, the man even looked a little like Gabriel. 

Beelzebub supposed it would do for now, in case they decided to acquire female genitalia for the occasion, but they were still on the fence about that and would probably need to seek more varied videos. Just to make sure they had grasped the main idea, of course. 

“Unnecessarily complicated, is what all this is,” Beelzebub, Prince of Hell and Lord of the Flies, declared loudly. Then they leaned back on their throne, reached for one of the mugs Gabriel had bought them, and hit play again.

For research.

***

“Gabriel! It’s good to see you.”

“He doesn’t mean that,” Crowley muttered. 

“Come, sit. I’ll make some tea.”

“Feel free to decline, we won’t mind.”

“Tea would be much appreciated, thank you,” Gabriel said, to Crowley’s annoyance, and sat, to his further annoyance, while entirely ignoring his remarks, to his utter annoyance. He looked around the cottage, and if he dared say anything about the decor Crowley would chew his head off, especially after seeing what kind of minimalistic nightmare Heaven was.

“This is… cozy,” Gabriel finally said after a slight hesitation, leaving Crowley just a little miffed that he didn’t, after all, get a good excuse to chew off his head. Yet. 

“Oh, we’re still in the process of moving everything,” Aziraphale was saying, picking up the teapot he’d put on the stove only minutes before Gabriel had showed up at the bookstore. With the portal-door between the store and the cottage wide open, the sound of him knocking had carried over and Aziraphale had let him in before Crowley could stop it. 

“We will keep the door open between here and my bookstore, it is such a convenient place to store all my books and I am not ready to give it up just yet. Crowley still needs to move some paintings out of his flat, that garish throne and the decoration he stole from a church--”

“I didn’t steal it, the church was bombed.”

“I remember. It was an eventful evening,” Aziraphale said lightly, putting the teapot on the table. “I almost got discorporated, but Crowley came to help me out. He saved us all upstairs so much paperwork.”

“Ah,” Gabriel said, clearly not sure what to say to that. “I mean-- thank you.” 

Crowley gave him a long, unimpressed look, and he cleared his throat. “Anyway… where’s here, exactly?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know,” Crowley said, crossing his arms. They both had agreed that neither Heaven nor Hell would ever know where their cottage was, and while Gabriel was technically part of neither, he still counted as a stuck-up archangel as far as Crowley was concerned. Now that he knew about the cottage, something would have to be done about the door connecting it to the bookstore. Maybe a seal, the kind that would keep out anyone who was not the two of them…

“It’s good to know you’re doing well,” Aziraphale was saying, clearly speaking for himself only, and poured tea in all three cups on the table despite the fact Crowley had elected not to sit yet, instead glaring at Gabriel in hopes he would feel uncomfortable enough to leave. “Now, what was that you mentioned about needing research books?” he asked, and brought the cup to his mouth. 

“I need pornography books,” Gabriel declared, and the excellent tea Aziraphale had just sipped was sprayed right back out on the table in a fine mist. From his corner, Crowley raised both eyebrows up to almost his hairline. 

Well. That was not what he’d expected to hear.

Aziraphale looked down at the mess on the table and on his own clothes before he gave Gabriel a very, very weary look. “You know, don’t you, that there really is no need for codes now?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, no, it’s not a code. I do need some pornography books.”

Aziraphale stared.

“... For research. As I sa-- Aziraphale?”

No answer: Aziraphale stood, without a further word, and was out of the room within moments, hands up in the air. Whether to find someplace to scream in peace, stare at the wall for a few minutes while scrubbing the mental image out of his brain, or try to clean the tea off his clothes, Crowley was not sure. 

He would check on him in a minute. First, he had questions.

“Research, huh?” he said, leaning on the table across a rather bewildered Gabriel, who had somehow expected a different reaction to him asking to borrow pornography books. He grinned, wide enough to almost make his cheeks hurt. There was some amazing mocking material there, he could feel it. “And who is this about? A new friend? A coworker?”

Still stunned by Aziraphale’s reaction, Gabriel answered without pausing a moment to ponder whether he should answer that question. “Beelzebub,” he said, like he was answering a question on what kind of tea he preferred.

Ah.

For a few moments Crowley could only stare, the grin frozen on his lips. He was startled out of it by a sound like breaking glass that, he realized rather belatedly, came from inside his own brain. 

No. No no no no. Nope. Nope. Abort, abort. 

“Angel!” he called out, his voice a little strangled, and went to search for Aziraphale to make him share with him whatever bleach he was now using on his brain. Behind him, Gabriel spoke up.

“Uh, so can I borrow a book--” he tried to ask, but a slamming door was the only reply he got for a good while.

*** 

“Oh, this is never going to come out…” 

Aziraphale sighed, looking down at his waistcoat, whose front was currently drenched with tea. Of course he could miracle it away, with Gabriel no longer in the position of writing him strongly worded letters about frivolous miracles... but he could feel a headache build up just thinking about Gabriel and looking around for a clean napkin was a rather welcomed distraction.

Until Crowley stepped in, eyes wide. 

“Beelzebub,” he blurted out, causing Aziraphale to nearly jump out of his skin and frantically look around. God knew, the last thing he needed to deal with was the Lord of the Flies in his bookstore.

“What-- where??”

“No, I mean--” Crowley let out a pained noise, rubbing his eyes like he hoped to get an awful image off his retinas. “It’s about Beelzebub. Gabriel’s research. On pornography.”

Ah.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. He needed a few moments for what he’d just heard to entirely sink into his brain. When it did, he barely repressed a shudder. “That is… not… what I was expecting.”

“The Archangel Fucking Gabriel and Beelzebub. It’s in my brain now. Can you miracle it away?”

“I’m afraid that goes beyond my abilities,” Aziraphale said, reaching up to put a hand on his own head to calm the building headache. “If your head also hurts something awful, though, I can help with that. If you can get the tea out of my waistco-- oh. Thank you.” He smiled as Crowley took care of that with a snap of his fingers, the other hand still firmly on his eyes. 

“You’re welcome. Now, can we throw him whatever book he wants and then throw him out?”

Aziraphale was very much opposed to throwing books, of course, but shoving a pornography book in Gabriel’s hands and firmly showing him the door seemed the best course of action.

***

“... I can explain.”

“No offence, but we’d really rather you do not.”

Gabriel shifted a little, a heavy leather-bound book in his arms. “Right. Well, er… thank you for the book. I’ll return it once I’ve--”

“Feel free to return it whenever. You’re very much welcome,” Aziraphale spoke quickly, and while he didn’t physically shove Gabriel through the door, he very much did get the message that he really wanted him to leave sooner rather than later. “Best of, er, luck. With your research,” he added quickly, and closed the door behind him.

Gabriel stood on the spot a few moments, blinking in slight confusion, but in the end he shrugged it off - maybe he had caught him in a busy moment - and opened the book to have a quick look.

… Huh. Could a mortal’s spine actually do that?

There was laughter, a couple of children running past him, and Gabriel immediately closed the book. Right, right - looking at pornography in public was frowned upon, so he ought to wait until he was back home. On the way back, he’d purchase a pen and notebook. 

In case he needed to write something down. 

*** 

Once their research was completed, Beelzebub was still not certain what it was about the act that so many humans found irresistible - but, they had to admit, their curiosity was piqued. Perhaps a carnal act with Gabriel would pave the way for his descent into Hell, perhaps it would not, but either way they would get to know what it precisely was about, so they would be getting something out of it. 

The only thing for them to find out was whether Gabriel would be a willing participant, which was a rather important point because they may be the Prince of Hell but they also had standards. And, all things considered, they got the answer to that rather quickly: they couldn’t be many other reasons for Gabriel to be sitting at his desk with an open book full of pornographic images and a notebook half-filled with notes.

At least, they hoped they were not. Beelzebub found that the idea Gabriel might harbor carnal desire for someone else left them distinctly annoyed. 

“I can explain,” Gabriel blurted out as soon as he recovered from the mini heart attack Beelzebub’s sudden appearance in flames and smoke had given in. Quick recovery, they had to give him that. “This is, uh-- this is-- research, for--”

“You’ve given my question some thought, I see.”

“Well--” he finally regained composure, and cleared his throat. “I have.”

“And…?”

“I’m not certain I do have those, uh, inclinations, but I’d be open to give it a try. If you’re so inclined,” he added quickly.

“I see,” Beelzebub said, their voice perfectly collected. Inwardly, however, they felt very much like a Jehovah's Witness who’d just been invited inside to talk after knocking: hadn’t really thought they would get that far and had already forgotten just about everything they had planned to do in the event. So they said nothing else, and stared. 

Gabriel said nothing else. And stared. 

Needless to say, that was not a promising start. 

“... Which one?” Beelzebub finally asked.

“Huh?”

“Which set of genitalia.”

“Oh. I have--”

“I know what you have, I have seen you showering. I’m asking which one I should get now.”

“Ah.” Gabriel glanced at the book as though hoping to find an answer there. “Er… either? We can throw a coin,” he muttered, and dug a coin out of his pocket and handed it to them. “Head for penis and--”

Beelzebub threw the coin, caught it, and looked down at it. “Tails.”

“Right. Well--”

“Do not presume for even a moment I will allow you to be above me.”

“I’m not presuming, I just-- what are those?”

“Notes,” Beelzebub muttered, more than slightly irritated at having forgotten their own script. They shuffled through the clue cards they had pulled out of their back pockets, rather wishing their handwriting did not look like a dying fly had dragged itself across the paper after being dunked in ink.

 “... Right. So we have come to the agreement we both consent. At this point, we’re supposed to--” they began, and trailed off when Gabriel did the unthinkable. 

He laughed.

“What are you-- hey! Stop laughing!” Beelzebub buzzed furiously, their face suddenly really, really hot. They crumpled notes in their fist and glaring up at Gabriel. “Cease this instant!” they ordered, and were a moment away from kicking him in the shin - how dare he laugh at the Lord of the Flies? - when Gabriel spoke, his laugh dying down to a snicker. 

“I-- heh. My apologies. I just--” he gestured to the papers crumpled in Beelzebub’s fist, and then at his own notebook on the desk. “One way or another, we end up with paperwork. I suspect humans are more spontaneous about it.”

Beelzebub huffed. “Well, I am not human,” they muttered, but the anger died down, and they crossed their arms. “If you don’t plan by the book, how do you know if you’re getting things right?”

“Well-- sometimes you don’t know. Humans take chances all the time.”

A scoff. “What a disgustingly human thing to say. Is that how your mind operates now?”

“... I do still find it somewhat frightening,” Gabriel said, quietly, and whatever mockery Beelzebub was about to utter next died in their throat. The look he was giving them was surprisingly open, and he looked painfully vulnerable.

In the end, when they spoke, their voice was just as quiet. 

“You have no reason to be frightened,” they said, and burned the note in their fist, letting the ashes fall on the floor. “I usually do punish failure, but I’m willing to make you an exception, I suppose.”

A chuckle, and Gabriel lifted a hand, holding it up almost close enough to Beelzebub’s face to touch the skin. “May I?”

“... You may,” they replied. The touch was warm, foreign and familiar at the same time - did he touch their face like that a long time ago, when they were still Ba’al? - and leaning into it, finding out where it all led, was so very tempting. Ironic, considering that they were supposed to be the one doing the tempting and… and…

No.

“Wait.” Beelzebub reached up to brace a hand against Gabriel’s chest, keeping him at a distance. He immediately stopped, and looked down at them in confusion, their faces only inches apart. “There is a chance this may count as a serious sin.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Shouldn’t have told him. He’ll call it off. 

Gabriel blinked, and the confused expression turned into a smile. “I figured,” he said, and tilted up their chin. “I think I’ll take the chance.”

… Well, they had given him a fair warning, so their conscience was clear. Would have been clear, if they had one. “You’re a fool,” the Prince of Hell informed him.

“I figured that too,” the fool replied.

What followed was a bit messier and significantly more complicated than expected, but given enough time and attempts, they did figure that out as well.

*** 

A good while after they had both caught their breath and Gabriel’s heart no longer felt like it was trying to burst out of his chest, Beelzebub had yet to say a word.

But they were still there, even if silent, accepting Gabriel’s arms around them and his quiet breathing against the nape of their neck, and he supposed that was a sure sign they had no complaints. In the end, he dared break the peaceful silence. 

“Can you stay for the night?” he asked, his voice low. 

“I am Prince of Hell. I can do as I wish.”

“... Do you wish to stay for the night?”

“I can’t see why not,” they conceded, causing Gabriel’s lips to curl into a smile. He said nothing, kissing the back of Beelzebub’s shoulder instead. Of course, they could tell he was smiling right away. “What are you smirking about?”

“Well, it was-- pleasant, was it not?”

Gabriel felt their light snort more than he heard it. “Bragging already, are you?” they muttered, and turned in his arms to face him. Their skin was pleasantly warm. “Do I have to remind you who was leading?”

Of course, there was no need. It wasn’t often that Gabriel found himself in the position of having to look up at the Lord of the Flies, and he hadn’t minded the change. He hadn’t minded at all. 

“Oh, I never tried to take credit.” Gabriel dropped a kiss on the bridge of Beelzebub’s nose, gaining himself a frown and a buzzing noise - but no attempt at all to shove him off them. He was dimly aware of the fact that there was a folder in Hell bearing his name which perhaps had just gained a sin in red ink, but he found he couldn’t even begin to feel concern. 

“Next time,” Beelzebub was saying, “I’ll try the other set of genitalia.”

“Heh. So there will be a next time?”

The Lord of the Flies did shove him at that, flat onto his back, before they rolled on top of him. They propped themselves up on their elbows, which rested on his chest. It wasn’t the most comfortable predicament, but Gabriel’s muscles still felt like cooked asparagus and he wouldn’t have bothered to protest for anything short of being raked over hot coals. 

“We both have researched a great deal more than what we have put in practice, and I don’t see why the time spent on it should go to waste,” they said, tilting their head. “Don’t you agree?”

A smile, and Gabriel dared tilt up his head to try and catch their lips again. He missed, and his mouth rested briefly on their throat instead before he pulled them down against his chest. 

“I do,” he murmured. “Wholeheartedly.”

***

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”  --Jeremiah 17:9

***

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[argonianprince]

I see you talk all the time about the Nancy Drew games, and I’ve heard great things about them but have no clue what the actual gameplay is like. Could you describe what the games are like? And would you recommend them for someone who’s into narrative and puzzle games?

AAAAAH my very first ask!!! Thank you!!! :DDD

I'm happy to chatter about these games!! Is definitely recommend them to someone who likes narrative and puzzle games. They are very character heavy, as in you learn more about each suspect and their motives during the game by talking to people directly and also asking them about each other. You untangle the story as you go. The puzzles are very varied in type (from sudoku to chess to reflex/motor skill games), and have two levels of difficulty, which you pick at the start of the games. There are game-ending events, but afterwards you are just deposited right back to before you made the error, so it's not too stressful when you fall to your death/drown/offend someone so hard they kick you off the property, etc. Except for some cutscenes (which are used very effectively-- rare enough to be impactful), you control where Nancy goes and when. In some mystery and hidden object games I've played, you get one view of each place you go (like having one visual of a living room from which you do everything in that room, but it's okay because Sherlock Holmes has x-ray vision apparently), whereas in ND games there's typically multiple angles at which to pick through every scene, getting to look behind furniture, hallways look different depending on which end you enter from, which I think is really cool. So the basic structure is you have 4 suspects to talk to, plus you can phone friends as an in-game hint system, and you solve mysteries in this universe where everyone keeps essential items you need in sliding-puzzle lockboxes.

One thing that really sets them apart though is the educational component. Every game has at least one topic related to the setting that you can read up on in-game, and it's genuinely good information presented in a fun way. Since like age 15 I've known that port means the left side of the boat, and the basics of how fire insurance works, and what stenography looks like, because of these games. As well as like.. how to spot some of the signs that a guy might be a creeper. Role models of successful women in positions of power. All while having funny and touching and interesting dialogue and things to read.

But yeah I'd VERY recommend these games. Just not the very first one or the very last one. Secrets Can Kill was before they had really perfected the formula, and Midnight in Salem is from after the company was under new management and the whole thing was outsourced to people in Russia or something. But they go on discount during steam sales so if you end up liking them, I'd suggest waiting for those to get the bulk of them when they're all half off. Let me know if you'd like a rec for a starting point?? And if you try any let me know how you like them plz? :D

Honestly since I grew up with these it's hard to find games that measure up. There's really good walking simulators, but they don't have puzzles really, and there's decent mystery games, but except for a few like Scratches and And Then There Were None they tend to be ariel view, less intuitive controls, less engaging. Artifex Mundi games are fun, they are hidden object mysteries, but the plots tend to be thin and they have a limited array of puzzle types. I dunno, after a game series makes you practice typing at a certain words per minute speed and teaches you Chinese checkers and Roman numerals, for everything else it's like, okay but what are these other games doing to expand my world and exercise my brain cells? xp And the writing is very good and very funny, my partner is catching subtle jokes I never saw in all this time and it's great

[hellyeahheroes]

Building Rikki Barnes in D&D 5e

I will confess something. lately D&D has been a kind of comfort hobby for me, in wake of all this fucking madness around us that is this year. This includes these builds but also my campaign that I just wrapped up and before I kick off with a sequel I felt like doing some celebration with blog-related content. So I decided - let’s build a character I planned to build on Pride Month but didn’t manage to. One funky, gun-toting, shield-wielding, dimension-hopping immortal lesbian.

As always, credit to Tulok the Barbarian from whom I lifted the teamplate for those builds and like him we will start with Goals for the build. First of all, we need to fight like someone who studied under not one, not two but dozens of Captain Americas across the worlds. Second, we need to have knowledge and skills like someone who lived all kinds of lives, picking up all she learned along the way. Finally, we need to be able to use both shield and a gun in accord.

For Ability Scores we will stick to Standard Points Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 - but if you want to roll, use points buy or other form of generating abilitty scores, go ahead and treat these as guidelines. Keep your Charisma and either Strength or Desterity at at least 13 for multiclassing purposes.

Strength: 15, say it after me RIKKI. IS. BUFF!

Dexterity: 14, your armor varied from short-shorts to what would pass for a leather armor and you have no problem jumping from one rooftop to another to catch-up with your Spider-Girlfriend.

Constitution: 12, you’re not as tough as Toro, but you can still take a hit.

Intelligence: 10, wish it was higher but we cannot have everything

Wisdom: 8,remember that time you didn’t recognize main universe counterpart of your brother is into you and didn’t recognize guy replacing Steve as Cap is your own grandfather?

Charisma: 13, say what you want but Rikki knows how to pick up girls.

Race: Rikki is a human, we will stick with Varian Human because we need a feat but Revenant Human could work as well if you want to go into technicalities about her ressurections. Variant Humans get +1 to two Abilitty Scores, boost up Strength and Dexterity, a bonus Skill, pick History and a feat. Pick a Soldier for a background since this is closest we get to “trained by most American American to ever American and reborn across the multiverse to do it again”. It gives you proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation, land vehicles if you want to borrow grandpa’s bike and a gaming set. Military Rank feature let’s you be recognzied as a fellow veteran by other soldiers who may be more letient to your requests. You lead two superhero teams so that adds up.

Shield Master will be our feat of chocie and we need to talk about it because it gives you not one but three fun features: 

It let’s you add a bonus from your Shield to your Armor Class to any saving throws against spells and other harmful effects as long as they target only you. The way it is written means you could technically cover your eyes with shield when someone tries to hypnotize you, which is very much how I imagine members of Captain America Family (Cap Family?) dealing with mind-control.

If you take an attack action on your turn, you can use your bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet from you with your shield. Shoving is normally an action that forces the target, say Bob Agent of Hydra, to make Athletics or Acrobatics check against your Athletics. If Bob fails (and he will because it’s Bob), he is either pushed 5 feet away from you or knocked prone. Maybe that will make him realize he needs a better job than fucking nazis.

It also let’s you use your reaction to cover with your shield if you are subjected to an effect that demands you make a saving throw to take half damage or full damage if you don’t, like for example FUCKING FIREBALL. With your shield up if you do make that saving throw you’ll take no damage. This is a bit weaker version of Evasion, a feature Rogues and Monks get at 7th level. Meaning that you will spend that many levels making them horribly jealous.

Speaking of Rogues, guess what we’re NOT picking for out Class. Instead we go with...

1st Level: Fighter! You gain proficiency with all Armors, shields, simple and martial weapons, Strength and Constitution saving throws, and two skills, I’d go with Acrobathics and Perception. You gain Second Wind, letting you recover as a bonus action 1d10+your fighter level of HP. Rikki is determined enough to chase the Maker across worlds and hit points can reflect will to fight. 

You also get fighting style - unarmed Fighting lets you deal 1d6+your Strength modifier on your Unarmed Attacks, 1d8 if you use both hands (or do a dropkick I pressume) and if you grapple a creature, you can deal 1d4 damage when you innitiate it succesfull and then on future hits while grappling.

2nd Level: Fighter gets Action Surge, letting you once per short or long rest take an extra action during your turn.

3rd Level: Fighter gets to chosoe a Martial Archetype: Battle Master gainst a proficiency with Artisan’s tool of your choice but moe importantly, gains Combat Superiority. You Gain 3 Maneuvers that are fueled by your Superiority Dice - which at this level are 4 d8s. When you use a Maneuver you spend Superiority Dice, you get them back after a short or long rest. If those effects ask for a saving throw, it must beat 8 Your Proficiency Bonus + either your Strength or Dexterity modifier.

Bait and Switch let’s you switch places with an ally within 5 feets of you without provoking Opportunitty Attacks and until the start of your next turn that ally adds result of your Superiority Dice roll to their Armor Class. Julie power can overextend herself easily, this will keep her safe.

Sweeping Attack let’s spend one Superiorirty die when you hit an opponnent in meele to try to also hit another one within 5 feet of it - if the original attack roll was high enough to beat its AC you deal it damage equal your roll on Superiority Dice. So when ypu kick Red Skull you can also carry your kick toreach Crossbones as well, breaking two jaws with your heel in one strike.

Brace let’s you spend your reaction to attack a target that moves within 5 feet of you and  add result to the damage if you hit. So if Sif tries to rush to help her father, you will deck her in the face without even having to look.

4th Level: Firghter gets an Abilitty Score Improvement or a Feat. We will pick Gunner from newest Unearthed Arcana for Feats. it let’s you add +1 to your Dexterity, gives you profficiency with firearms and let’s you ignore their loading quality, letting you shoot a gun for each of your attacks for a single turn and you don’t have disadvantage on an attack if you shoot a target within 5 feet of you..

Alternatives: Not every DM allows firearms in their setting. If that is the case the Crossbow Expert will do roughly the same for you. If you don’t like idea of Rikki with guns at all, then Crusher from the same Unearthed Arcana will let you push any target you hit with your fist and make attacks against them have an advantage for a turn whenever you crit on an attack. Martial Adept meanwhile can let you learn two more maneuvers and gain an extra Superiority Dice.

5th Level: Fighter can now attack twice on each turn attack action. Meaning You can in one turn roundhouse kicks Red Skull, use sweeping attack to carry that kick over to Crossbones, shoot Anirm Zola, knock Bob to the ground and use another Superiority Dice to deck Sin in the face if she comes to help her daddy on her turn. And that’s without using Action Surge and last Superiority Dice.

6th Level: Fighter gains another Abilitty Score Improvement. And you know what? Boost up your Strength.

7th Level: We have combat skills but what about other Skills? We can grab an extra one, like Stealth, by picking up a level of Bard. 1st Level Bards gain Bardic Inspiration, a set of 3 d6 dices you can give to your allies as a bonus action, letting them add it to an attack roll or a saving throw.

You also learn Bardic spells. You know a small number of those and spend spell slots to cast them. If your spell makes an attack roll, it does so with a bonus equal your Profficiency Bonus + Your Charisma modifier. Add to that bonus 8 and you get a number that has to be beaten if your spell reqires a saving throw.

You start knowing 2 Cantrips that you can always cast and 4 1st level Spells and have 2 1st level Spell Slots

Light is a flashlight you can use to make an object shine bright light in 30 feet and dim light in next 30 feet. Useful since you cannot see in the dark 

Message is a communicator, letting you send a short message to another creature and be able to receive equally short reply

Comprehend Languages let’s you understand any language you hear for 1 hour. Rikki lived many lives, she likely picked a few.

Heroism you can cast on yourself to show how brave you are or on an ally, cherring them up. until the spell ends the target has an advantage on saving throwsagainst being frightened and gains an extra temporary hit point at the start of each of your turns.

Identify let’s you use your vast knowledge of other worlds to recognize legendary or jsut enchanted effects or what spells are affecting a creature or an object. After all, you have seen it all.

Cure Wounds is a first aid kit, healing 1d8+1 hit points on you or another target

8th Level: 2nd Level Bards gain Jack of All Trades, letting you add half of your Proficiency modifier to all skills you are not profficient with. You also get Song of Rest, letting you let your commrades roll an extra 1d6 whenever tehy roll to regain hit points - as a soldier of many Battlefields makes sense you will be tending the wounds of your allies and rising their spirits between battles. You also get another spell known but we will exchange it for something else on next level.

9th Level: Bards of 3rd Level can pick bardic College. College of lore lets you gain 3 more Skills. Survival, Investigation and Insight feel msot in character. You also get Expertise, doubling your Proficiency Bonus, in two skills of your choice that you are profficient with, I’d go with Athletics to make sure you knock down all opponnents, and Stealth. Finally you learn cutting words - you can use your reaction and spend one of your Bardic Inspiration dices to say some bit of multiversal knowledge that distracts an enemy - you roll that dice and subtract the result from one attack roll or saving throw an enemy makes.

You also learn more spells, letting us to pick two 2nd level spells:

See Invisibility let’s you see invisible creatures and those on Etherial Plane like Ghosts or Phase Spiders. Play it as you being so experienced you learned to see such creatures coming.

Enchance Abilitty let’s you gain or grant someone else an advantage on all rolls related to choosen Abilitty. When you need an extra show of skill.

10th Level: 4th Level bards gain an Abilitty Score Improvement. Boost your Dexterity for more accurate guns and better AC. You also learn one more Spell and a new Cantrip:

Vicious Mockery forces a target to make a Wisdom saving throw or be dealt 2d4 psychic damage from your quip and have disadvantage on its next attack roll Knock let’s you open a single lock, be it on doors or containers.

11th Level: back to Fighter. 7th Level Battlemaster gains an addition Superiority Dice, Two more Maneuvers and can Know Your Enemy - if you study a creature for at least a minute you will learn if it is your superior, inferior or equal in any of the two:  Strength, Dexterity or Constitution score, Armor Class, Current hit points,Total class levels, if any or Fighter class levels, if any. Use it if you run into a black-clad silent Bat0themed girl from another dimension and btw Marvel, Dc I would pay gold for this fight to happen.

Our new Maneuvers will be:

Disarming Attack let’s you add a superiority dice roll to damage roll of your attack and force target to make a Strength saving throw or drop whatever they’re holding at the moment. Works with ranged attacks meaning you can shoot Cosmic Cube out of Red Skull’s hands.

Ambush let’s you spend a Superiority Dice to add the roll of it to a Stealth or Initiative roll

12th Level: 8th Level Fighter gains an Abilitty Score Improvement, get your Strength to 20 for better hits and better showing down the enemies.

13th Level: 9th Level Fighter gains Indomintable, letting you once per long rest reroll a failed saving throw. Including Death Saving Throws.

14th Level: 10th Levle Battlemaster improves their superiority dice to 1d10 and gains two more Maneuvers.

Riposte let’s you make an attack when a creature misses you with a meele attack you can use your reaction to make one attack against them and add roll of Superiority Dice to the damage.

Meanicing Attack let’s you spend a superiority dice to add it’s roll to damage dealt to a target and force them to make a Wisdom saving throw or be Frightened of you until end of your next turn.

15th Level; 11th Level Fighter can now make two extra attacks on each of attack actions. Meaning you can with Action Surge and your maneuvers shoot cosmic cube out of Red Skull’s hands, shoot Anirm Zola and Baron Zemo so hard the latter will not approach you out of fear, deliver roundhouse kick to Skull so hard you hit Crossbones too, knock down Bob and deck Sin in the jaw when she rushes to help her father.

16th Level: 12th Level Fighter gains an Ability Score Improvement, round up your Dexterity to 20 for better AC and more acurrate guns.

17th Level: 13th Level Fighter can use Indomintable twice per long rest. Meaning you are that much harder to kill and that more likely to survive fireballs from Onslaught.

18th Level: 14th Level Fighter gets another Abilitty Score Improvement. Boost up your Constitution for Better Concentration and mroe hit points (remember they add retroactively, giving you extra 18 HP at this level)

19th Level: 15th Level Battlemaster means two mroe maneuvers, one mroe Superiority Dice and now if you roll initiative on combat without any you regain one.

Rally lets you roll a Superiority Dice whenever you hit on an attack to give it’s result + your Charisma modifier as temporary hit points to another creature until end of your next turn.

Goading Attack also adds roll from Superiority Dice to damage dealt on attack and if Target fails a Wisdom saving throw, it has disadvantage on attacks against any other creature than you until end of your next turn. You know, i ncase Maker plans to blow you all up, make him punch you instead.

20th Level; We will finish with 16th Level of Fighter for one last Ability Score Improvement, investing either in Constitution for better hit points, or Charisma for better healing. Or picking a Tough feat to gain extra 40 hit points, which would be my preferred option.

Overview: My take on Rikki barnes is Battlemaster Fighter 16, College of Lore Bard 4. Let’s see how good this build is:

Pros: You can make a lot of attacks, making you excellent agaisnt crowds of mooks like Goblins or Hydra Agents. You have an answer for a lot of things an opponnent may do and several ways to control the battlefield to your advantage. You can also double as a skill-monkey, being skilled in enough things to make Rogue jealous. In fact, you basically are a discount Rogue, able to fill in for a lot of things Rogue would normally do. And you can heal too.If you have focused on your Constintution at the end you will also have pretty strong HP, maybe even up to 160-180 and with Shield Master or Indomintable it will be hard to hurt you as well.

Cons: Sadly, a lot of your abilitties compete for Bonus Action or Reaction, meaning you need to carefully consider what you will use each turn. You do nbot deal magic damage so a lot of late game enemeis will be resistant or immune to your hits un;ess DM gives you a magic gun. Finally, there is a big possibility you will burn out of your Superiority Dice early on, leaving you without many options later.

But you are still a valuable part of any team. Protect your allies, give them opennings to strike. Knock Bob down. Break Red Skull’s jaw. Just remember you need to rely on your teammates to survive - unless you want to be reborn in a different campaign.

-Admin

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

What do you think of this thing going around about fans projecting onto their favourite characters as a criticism of their meta or things like that? Because I don't know, it seems like we all do it at least a little, and sometimes we find certain things or characters relatable. I don't think we should necessarily feel bad about that. Working through things using fiction seems commonplace in fandom. There is a difference between fanon and canon, but people can interpret canon differently anyway.

there does seem to be an idea that people mostly have certain interpretations of characters because they're projecting their own issues, with the corollary that this projection and emotional attachment makes the interpretation automatically less valid, and I'm...not really a fan? I mean--it's probably an important thing to consider, for people who get really upset about new canon that contradicts their interpretations, whether your interpretation had textual basis in the first place or if it was just a matter of "I relate to this character and therefore they are like me in every significant way and therefore these new actions are wrong and bad representation of people like me".

but at the same time--okay, the discussion of characters being "coded" in certain ways is probably overdone on Tumblr, but we're really talking about long-term tropes and patterns when we talk about coding, and that's...a thing. there's history to that discussion. and we all have access to the same text, and there are almost always genuine text-based reasons that people relate to certain characters. (for one thing, when something is designed to appeal to a broad audience, that also typically means the characters are literally designed to be relatable to as big a portion of that audience as possible.) I think it's totally possible for different people to come to the same text in good faith and leave with very different interpretations, and it's possible for people to develop completely buckwild interpretations that require actively reading against the text, but like--an interpretation isn't automatically the latter just because you relate to it personally, right? hell, it isn't even automatically the latter when new canon contradicts, or seems to contradict, your existing interpretation, especially when we're talking about a canon like the MCU that involves so many different creators with their own massive array of interpretations based on wildly varying types and degrees of experience, emotional investment, research, personal preference, etc. that seems to go without saying for comics in general, and the MCU is theoretically a lot more cohesive than the comics on which they're based, but like...the damn thing's been around for over a decade now. nearly every individual project has involved different different directors, writers, actors. Kevin Feige is maaaaaybe not as serious about his job as continuity caretaker as he's supposed to be.

so, sure, sometimes fanon interpretations end up diverging pretty significantly from what's presented in the text, but I still don't think that means the canon interpretations are necessarily better in some objective way when the whole thing's being made by multiple committees, especially considering the only thing really separating canon from fanon in most cases is...money. I mean hell, sometimes fans end up getting actual Disney jobs and then their fan interpretations can become canon, and that's not some kind of meritocracy, that's...well, a lot of factors, but the vast majority of them don't rely on objective differences in quality. the longer the MCU is around, too, the more that's likely to happen. plus there's a difference between reading against the text of a complete canon to develop a fanon interpretation that has almost nothing to do with canon, and making a completely reasonable interpretation based on the text you have that is later somewhat contradicted by new text from a totally different person. like--in a universe where Ken Branagh kept directing the Thor movies, we'd probably be having a different conversation about canon vs. fanon because the canon itself would have to be different.

and, you know, there's "this writer's interpretation doesn't match mine" and there's "this writer didn't understand the assignment," right? like, I know I keep harping on this but the What If? writers in particular have been factually wrong in very weird ways despite getting money for it, which doesn't even get into explicit retcons like Gamora being the last surviving member of her species in GotG and then surprise, Infinity War and its All New All Different Thanos reveal that he only killed half the inhabitants of her planet and thereby supposedly turned it into a "paradise". and Feige either didn't notice or didn't care, so at this point I'm kinda like, hmm, if existing canon isn't sacred to the people shaping it because that apparently doesn't affect their bottom line, why are we yelling at each other about whose interpretation ended up being better or more accurate?

...I've probably wandered off my point, if I even had a coherent point to make in the first place, but yeah, that's...basically what I think about this. fanon can be very dumb. canon can also be very dumb. (comics canon in particular can be extremely dumb, so it stands to reason that adaptations of comics canon can also, at times, be pretty dumb.) in most cases, neither is inherently superior to the other because what separates the two is mostly luck and money, and it would be cool if people tried to chill out a little bit about hating fanon or canon. in a lot of cases, things can coexist pretty well as long as people are willing to try.

(ON THE OTHER HAND, academics can get famously vicious over conflicting interpretations of the same text, so maybe that part really is inevitable. or maybe everybody everywhere should make a serious effort to, you know, touch some grass and try to chill out a little.)

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 10: Endings

The posts that have been going around about all these bad, nonsensical, random tv endings we’ve been seeing recently (GOT, T100, SPN), have made me think about what makes a good television ending in my opinion.

I admit that concluding a series is probably quite tricky because most shows, if they’re not miniseries, are conceived without a known end point in mind. A show runner can build an idea around a 5-season arc, but he might not actually get 5 seasons. He might only get 1. Or he might get 10, if the show is popular. So unlike a movie or a novel, the first episodes need to set up a general premise, a universe, a theme, but not necessarily a specific plot with X number of specific plot points leading to a pre-ordained conclusion. There has to be a flexibility to the narrative. But when the whole thing is completed, it should feel, ideally, as if it WAS pre-ordained, as if the show was always meant to have as many seasons as it got and was working toward its conclusion the whole time.

So, roughly, I think shows that stick the landing do so because the showrunner knows what the show is, at its core, about, and crafts a finale that relates to the central theme(s) and brings the main narrative to a logical and emotionally resonant conclusion. 

This is very rough and very general, and it’s a formula that applies more to some shows than others. TV is incredibly varied after all. I mean, first off, not all shows know their last season is their last season going in. You can’t judge the final episodes of, to use two examples of shows I liked that were unceremoniously axed recently, The Society or Altered Carbon as “finale episodes” because they were never meant to be finales. Then you have a show like My So-Called Life, which does have a Classic ending, despite ending all too soon--mostly because every episode of that show was classic, and it only had one season, so its season finale being a fitting ending to the season automatically means its series finale was a fitting ending to the series.

(It’s such an outlier that I can’t really compare it to anything but honestly--this is how to do an open-ended cliffhanger and still make it feel like a conclusion. But that’s a whole different post.)

My formula above also doesn’t apply well to sitcoms, because they aren’t really about anything, in terms of plot. Like the name says, they set up situations: a group of people who are family, co-workers, friends, and then lets those situations play out in a funny manner for as long as there are jokes to tell. Sitcoms to me end well if they don’t overstay their welcome, if they remain true to the characters (because it’s the characters, not the minimal narrative, that defines the show), and if they hit an appropriate ‘ending’ tone. But the biggest thing for me is if the sitcom went on for too many seasons. Even if the final episode isn’t the greatest, it’s fine. But if the last 2-4 seasons were lackluster, it tarnishes the whole legacy.

‘Procedural’ type shows are yet another category, and I’m not entirely sure how to characterize those, or what makes a strong ending for that sub-genre. I’m using ‘procedural’ broadly to include, like, Bad Guy of the Week type shows--for example, Charmed, which I thought should have ended after S7. Again, I think it’s about not letting the whole thing go on too long, and then staying true to characters and tone in the finale itself.

So looking just at dramas that have a season’s warning before their finale--which, really, are the type of shows that are most likely to make people ANGRY with shitty endings, because they lure the viewer in with the idea that a singular, coherent story is being told. Maybe it’s convoluted. Maybe it’s winding. Maybe it’s hard to tell where they’re going with this. But if it all comes together in the end, none of that matters--and if it doesn’t come together, what was the point of all the seasons that came before? It becomes, retroactively, a betrayal.

The more plot-driven the show (if it has a mystery, a conspiracy theory, a quest), the greater the betrayal if all fizzles out. But I think the same feeling can arise from shoddy conclusions in dramas more generally. The L Word is one of my comfort shows but that last season is a MESS all the way down, the finale especially. There definitely wasn’t a point to anything, and it wasn’t even entertaining as, like, a dramatic soap.

But then I think about shows whose endings I really liked. For example, Six Feet Under had a great final season and one of the best finale episodes/ending sequences ever. The show up to that point had been about death, and that theme had always been centered most particularly on Nate: his fears of the family business, his previous brushes with death because of his AVM, etc. So of course the show had to end by killing one of its mains, coming full circle with the pilot, showing real grief hitting home--and of course Nate’s personal journey as the main character had to end with his death. Everything about the conclusion was fitting, not even counting the final montage.

I also really liked the conclusion of Big Love, for similar reasons: it was thoughtful, and it successfully teased out the main strands, both of plot and theme, that had run through the show up to that point. The most important thing had always been depicting this family, their problems but also their strength and their love for each other--so, as the showrunners said, it had to conclude by showing you that the family survives. They are strong, and their bonds endure. But the ending was, and had to be, bittersweet too, because anything less would seem to sweep under the rug the real tragedies of the last seasons. Not everyone gets happy endings. And the unhappy endings relate specifically to the toxic patriarchy that’s haunted all of the characters from the pilot. Alby has a chance to turn away from his father and the compound life--but the forces arrayed against him were too strong, so there was no deus ex machina for him, and he ultimately just became fully the evil villain. And Bill is taken out not by the state or by the compound but by an aggrieved man who feels he’s been emasculated, forgotten, who is raging against being so Unseen. What a way to make clear what the common denominator in all of the threats of the past 5 seasons has been.

I also give major points to shows whose finales feel like they’re trying, even if they’re imperfect, especially if the imperfections are because of factors outside the showrunner’s control. For example, I saw someone list Dollhouse as one of their ‘worst endings’ but I have to disagree. I like the ending of Dollhouse. It wasn’t supposed to be 2 seasons. That’s well known. But that’s how many seasons it got, and I think honestly they turned that into a plus rather than a minus. Dollhouse was its best when it was rushing to a conclusion, when it was fast-paced and exciting. Did it always make complete sense? No. Were there some pretty big holes in the plot? Yeah--S2′s Big Bad was absolutely and transparently a retcon instituted between S1 and S2 and I get that, and I forgive the show for that. I thought bifurcating the epilogue as two extra episodes after each of the two seasons was genius, and I liked that it allowed the show to have its cake and eat it too: a happy ending, with the main, immediate, singular Big Bad eliminated, at the end of S2, and a more bittersweet, more complicated, post-apoc ending in the bonus episode. Yeah, I can see the seams; I know there were a lot of constructed work arounds in there because the show was intended to be longer. I think the ending was presented in good faith.

I also, perhaps controversially, liked the ending of Veronica Mars (the original 3-season show; I didn’t see the reboot). The way the season aired was weird and didn’t do it any favors: having a long break before the last couple of episodes, which existed outside of the two Big Case arcs of S3, makes those final stories feel tacked on and random. Basically impossible to have a strong finish with that kind of structure. But the very end of the last ep had the bitter, dark feel of a noir, which is what the show was, a mash up of a noir and a high school drama. I liked that they leaned on the noir rather than the high school aspect, because it was the more creative way to go imo. Also, I appreciated that S3, in general, learned from S2′s mistakes. Yes, the college years are always going to be lackluster compared to high school, in any series that starts with its characters in high school. But VM recognized that no overarching mystery was going to compare to the Lilly Kane murder, so it split the Big Mystery into two Medium Sized mysteries, and I thought that was smart. All of which makes me inclined to think fondly of the conclusion. As with Dollhouse, its weakest points seem to be compromises it had to make, not really its fault but just an inevitable imperfection of the form.

It’s pretty easy to list aspects of a bad ending: a sense that events are arbitrary, a disrespect of characters, a rushed construction, a jarring tone, and most importantly a disconnect between the finale and what came before. If the show appeared to be a narrative (as opposed to a situation), but it doesn’t feel like a complete and coherent whole at the end, then the conclusion was bad.

I didn’t watch GOT or SPN and I stopped watching T100 at the end of S4 (though I do feel confident from tumblr that the ending was Bad), so I have somewhat of a hard time thinking of shows that I thought had really bad endings. I can think of dissatisfying endings that came from shows being cancelled without warning. I can think of shows that lasted too long in general or otherwise had fallen from their greatest heights by the time they limped to a conclusion (unpopular opinion: Friends fits in this category--that show should have been 4 seasons, maybe 5 tops; Boy Meets World and Dawson’s Creek are comfort show favorites of mine but they both should have ended with high school, like, pretty objectively speaking; iZombie started a slow downturn after S2 and by the end of S4 was kinda unwatchable. I literally stopped halfway through the finale.). I can even think of shows that lost me by the end even though objectively they probably had good endings (for example, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend--I couldn’t get through S4 and the finale sounded... technically well-constructed but like it would have driven me nuts).

But then I guess most shows with shitty finales technically had shitty last seasons in general. Truly notorious crash-and-burns don’t come out of nowhere. I mean I’m sure there are counter-examples to this (what’s that one with the kid and the snow globe lol?) but unless you try for a weird last-minute twist, or unless you’ve got your audience hoping against hope that an impossibly twisty story is actually very smart instead of very ill-planned, it’s generally clear before the last episode if a narrative has lost its way. I don’t tend to watch a lot of ‘twisty-turny conspiracy’ shows, and when I do I am supremely skeptical all the way through, so it’s hard for me to think of examples I’ve personally watched of a last minute “what the fuck was that” conclusion.

[toxicdogars]

((Hilbert +D&D because I'm curious about how this would turn out-))

Tumblr Meets D&D - Your Muse as a D&D Character

Hilbert Dean Bailey

So, Hilbert here is the male protagonist of Pokemon Black and White, though @luckynatured here decided to take the character in her own direction, basing the muse in its entirety on a Nuzlocke Challenge of Pokemon Black. One of the aspects of this particular challenge drew my attention- the fact that Rowan chose to implement a rule involving dice rolls or coin flips any time there was a choice to be made. Leaving things to the whim of fate, almost seems perfect for a D&D character. Let’s make that a goal, we need a little randomness. Reading through some of Hilbert’s interactions also points to evidence that he’s extremely determined and exceptionally lucky to get so far without losing core team members. Speaking of team members, let’s make sure we have varied damage types to account for any threats, paying special attention to Hilbert’s main, league-winning team. Once again, we’ll be using Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition and all books and articles related to it.

Ability Scores

These ventures will use standard array, a set of numbers given as a sort of average stat pool. Feel free to roll for stats if you wanted to use this character, just treat this arrangement as a general order for what stats are most important. No need to worry about multiclassing with this build.

Strength: 8 (Not needed) Dexterity: 13 (Useful) Constitution: 14 (Will be useful later) Intelligence: 10 (Hilly’s decently smart) Wisdom: 12 (Hilbert’s determined, and that tends to equate to decent Wisdom related saving throws and the like) Charisma: 15 (Our most useful stat here)

Race

Hilbert will be, surprise surprise, a Human. I could have gone a type of Halfling, which would have given him some extra luck, but Hilbert is shockingly tall, so that seemed a little out of place. Even so, we can make some choices early to get some handy bits of luck. Variant Humans also get some snazzy bonuses. Put the two free points Variant Humans get into Dexterity and Charisma to round those odd numbers up to evens. Then you’ve got your typical 30 feet of movement speed, a skill proficiency, and a free Feat. For Hilbert, also gets a base speed of 30 ft, a skill proficiency, and a free Feat. It might seem like a silly choice but let’s give him Perception. It will help with noticing things going on around him, and hopefully keep him aware of any dangers and it’s not a skill he’ll be able to grab from his class. As for his Feat, well I did say our boy needed to be lucky:

Lucky: You have inexplicable luck that seems to kick in at just the right moment.You have 3 luck points. Whenever you make an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can spend one luck point to roll an additional d20. You can choose to spend one of your luck points after you roll the die, but before the outcome is determined. You choose which of the d20s is used for the attack roll, ability check, or saving throw.You can also spend one luck point when an attack roll is made against you. Roll a d20, and then choose whether the attack uses the attacker's roll or yours.If more than one creature spends a luck point to influence the outcome of a roll, the points cancel each other out; no additional dice are rolled.You regain your expended luck points when you finish a long rest.

Class and Background

Alright, but hear me out on this. Hilbert... is a Sorcerer. Not only do magical effects line up well with Pokemon attacks, but there’s a certain subclass of the Sorcerer that is the definition of random, and is the best way, in my opinion, to reflect his combination of luck and skill that got him to where he is today.

Sorcerers start with a d6 hit die (which is... not the best out there), proficiency in Constitution and Charisma saving throws, daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows, and two skills from a short list. Of the options listed, Insight and Persuasion make the most sense. 

As for his background, let’s focus on his rise as a Champion and give him the Folk Hero background, giving him proficiency in Animal Handling and Survival, as well as with two tools, two languages, or a language and a tool. Gaming sets are tools, so let’s giving our boy proficiency with a dice set, and might as well toss on a language like Elvish or something. Humans in the D&D world tend to pepper their native tongue with Elvish and Dwarvish words anyway, so it tracks.

This build is taking Sorcerer all the way from one to twenty, so let’s hit up what Hilbert gets at these levels one by one. At level one, he gains the ability to cast spells. Charisma is his casting stat, and it is added to his spell attack rolls and the DC of any spells of his that require saving throws to resist. He is notably able to use a spellcasting focus to ignore material components- let’s make that coin he always has in his wallet a casting focus. He can also pick a Sorcerous Origin, and the one that best fits our chance-manipulating mage boy is the Wild Magic Sorcerer. Wild Mages get two abilities:

Wild Magic Surge: Immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, the DM can have you roll a d20. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a random magical effect. A surge can happen once per turn. If a surge effect is a spell, it's too wild to be affected by Metamagic. If it normally requires concentration, it doesn't require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration. Tides of Chaos: You can gain advantage on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. Once you do so, you must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again. Any time before you regain the use of this feature, the DM can have you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. You then regain the use of this feature.

These two abilities work well in the randomness aspect of things, and give Hilbert some utility to manipulate what fate gives him. As for the spells he gains at this level, he starts with four cantrips and two first level spells from those in with sorcerer list. In case someone doesn’t know the difference, cantrips are simple magical tricks you can pull off at will, while leveled spells require expending one of your spell slots of a level equal to or higher than the spell’s level. First, the cantrips:

Shape Water: A transmutation cantrip that basically lets you manipulate water. A simple utility cantrip that you could make use of for a few clever things. A good reference to his starter being an Oshawott. Light: An evocation cantrip that gives you a flashlight so your weak little human eyes can see in the dark. Just kinda useful to have. Chill Touch: A necromancy cantrip that deals necrotic damage and restricts the affected foe’s ability to heal themselves. A neat little ghostly trick to represent Chandelure, perhaps?  Ray of Frost: An evocation cantrip that deals cold damage by firing a beam of icy energy- sounds like an Ice Beam if you ask me, something fitting for his Beartic or any Pokemon that knows Ice Beam.

And the spells:

Mage Armor: A first level abjuration spell that buffs up your armor class, setting it to 13 + your Dexterity modifier, which at this moment brings your AC from 12 (10 + Dexterity modifier) to 15. Pretty okay for a caster. It also lasts eight hours, meaning you can cast it at the start of a day and basically be armored for all your encounters moving forward. Chaos Bolt: Now this is the good shit. It’s just a first level evocation spell, sure, but the damage is pretty good, 2d8 + 1d6. And it can be decided what damage type it deals practically at random by selecting one of the d8s and using the element that corresponds to the number, starting with acid at 1, cold, fire, force, lightning, poison, psychic, and thunder at 8. Even more wild, if the d8s roll the same number, you can select a second target for the spell and make another round of rolls. This spell has some seriously wild propagation and represents so many types that it’s insane. 

Onto second level, which gives Hilbert a Font of Magic, which gives him Sorcery Points equal to his level, which he can spend to make more spell slots (or vice versa, converting spell slots to sorcery points) and, thanks to a class feature variant Unearthed Arcana article, cool protagonisty shit. Won’t go into too much depth on the making more spell slots thing or the converting spell slots to sorcery points, that can be found in the Player’s Handbook easily enough. The fun stuff are in the protagonist powers, like Empowered Reserve, which lets you spend two sorcery points in order to gain advantage on an ability check; Imbuing Touch, which lets you spend two sorcery points to make a nonmagical weapon magical for one minute; and Sorcerous Fortitude, which lets you spend a number of sorcery points and roll that many d4s, the result of which you gain as temporary hit points. Really handy options. He also learns another first level spell, so why not try out:

Sleep: A first level enchantment spell that has you roll some dice to determine how many hit points worth of individuals you can put to sleep. Great example of the Hypnosis move Munna and Musharna are famous for.

Sorcerer 3 gives ya access to Metamagic, also known as the stuff you spent your sorcery points on before that class feature variant UA. You get two metamagic choices at this level and can only apply one of them to a given spell at a time unless it’s stated otherwise. The ones I feel that reflect Hilbert most are the following two:

Unerring Spell: A metamagic option from the aforementioned UA, it lets you spend two sorcery points to reroll a missed spell attack roll, and you can use it even if you’ve used a metamagic option on the spell. You do have to stick with whatever the second roll is though, but if you’re using this then I would expect that first roll to be terrible. Pairs well with Tides of Chaos.  Careful Spell: Spend one sorcery point to make a number of targeted allies about to be hit by one of your area spells instantly succeed on the saving throw. A big way to prevent damage to your allies, though it won’t be to him right now since he doesn’t have any spells that could cause more trouble. Wonder when we’re going to fix that.

Sorcerer 4 nets you an Ability Score Improvement, let’s put that +2 in Charisma to make your spells- ahem, your Pokemon- even more badass. You also get a new cantrip and new spell, but you also get another spell at Sorcerer 5 and not much else, so let’s cover that too. That spell at Sorcerer 5 can be a third level spell so, I think you know what this means:

Shocking Grasp: An evocation cantrip that deals lightning damage and restricts the use of the target’s reaction. Pretty handy.  Mind Spike: A second level divination spell that deals psychic damage and magically tracks a foe, pretty handy representation of Musharna’s Psychic attack and his general ability to perceive things.   Fireball: A third level evocation spell that does big fire damage over an area, perfect for blasting shit with Chandelure. This is the one you wanna use your Careful Spell on so you don’t get any... accidents.

Sorcerer 6 will give Hilbert another fun way to manipulate dice rolls with the Bend Luck feature:

Bend Luck: When another creature you can see makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction and spend 2 sorcery points to roll 1d4 and apply the number rolled as a bonus or penalty (your choice) to the creature's roll. You can do so after the creature rolls but before any effects of the roll occur.

And one more spell, still of third level or less:

Tidal Wave: A third level conjuration spell that calls up a giant wave of crushing water. You know. Like Surf. Which I’m sure Michelle knows. 

Sorcerer 7 unlocks fourth level spells, but let’s not take any of those, instead dipping back to the third level:

Fly: A third level transmutation spell that gives ya a flying speed. Requires your concentration, but your Con saves are pretty good. Keep out of range on the back of your Altaria and you’ll be fine. 

Sorcerer 8 gives you an Ability Score Improvement, cap your Charisma at 20. Let’s also give him another spell, and let’s dip back to first level for:

Expeditious Retreat: A first level transmutation spell that lets you dash as a bonus action for ten minutes. Also a concentration spell, but if you need to make a run for it, this is the best way to go about it.

Sorcerer 9 gives our boy fifth level spells, so let’s take one:

Synaptic Static: A fifth level enchantment spell that is basically FIreball but for psychic damage. Wreck face with the power of your team leader, Hilbert!

Sorcerer 10 is also pretty simple, another metamagic option and a spell:

Quickened Spell:  When you cast a spell that has a casting time of 1 action, you can spend 2 sorcery points to change the casting time to 1 bonus action for this casting. Erupting Earth: A third level transmutation spell that rips up the ground, damaging foes and making int into difficult terrain. Perfect for an Excadrill’s Bulldoze if you ask me.

Sorcerer 11 unlocks sixth level spells, and let’s take one:

Investiture of Ice: A sixth level transmutation spell that transforms you into an awesome iceman, blasting cones of freezing energy, gaining immunity to cold and resistance to fire respectively. Something tells me Hilbert doesn’t like dragons. Put them on ice. Just don’t try using this tactic on a cold-focused chromatic dragon. A White Dragon... Like Kyurem. In D&D terms anyway.

Sorcerer 12 no new spell, but he does get an ASI. Let’s use that to bump up either his Dexterity or his Constitution, depending on preference. Dex will help him not get hit by attacks and Con will help him maintain his concentration spells.  

Sorcerer 13 unlocks seventh level spells, let’s take one:

Teleport: A seventh level conjuration spell that, well... let’s you teleport. Weird, right? Anyway, there’s some minute rules about how it works, but it basically boils down to making sure you have an object with a connection to where you’re going and you’ll be fine. Maybe Hilbert can use it to go home and talk to his mother for once. 

Sorcerer 14 helps streamline the randomness a bit with the Controlled Chaos feature:

Controlled Chaos: Whenever you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table, you can roll twice and use either number.

Sorcerer 15 unlocks eighth level spells, and we’re taking one.

Earthquake: This one’s for you, Garfield and Jude! An eighth level evocation spell that does just what it says on the tin, smashing up the ground and structures to damage foes directly and crush them under toppling buildings. A really fun spell that may very well be able to crumple a sparky sparky boom dargon held by a dude with a letter for a name. Specific, I know. 

Sorcerer 16 just gives you an ASI, so how bout we bump up either of Hilbert’s secondary stats? If you put this +2 in the same one, then you could max that stat in a couple levels, which could be really nice.

Sorcerer 17 gives our boy his final metamagic as well as unlocks ninth level spells, the strongest spells out there. 

Empowered Spell: When you roll damage for a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to reroll a number of the damage dice up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). You must use the new rolls. You can use Empowered Spell even if you have already used a different Metamagic option during the casting of the spell. Wish: A ninth level conjuration spell and one of the strongest spells in the game, capable of duplicating the effects of any other eighth level or lower spell, or alternatively any number of possible things that could be phrased in the form of a wish. This spell is a little finicky though and it really up to the DM how easily it’ll work out. Regardless, it’s the ultimate way to manipulate fate, which is why I chose it for this build. 

Sorcerer 18 if a nifty little level for Hilbert, since it gives him a nasty little ability I like to call Judgement. Same he ain’t from Sinnoh, it would reflect Arceus well. For now it will just represent the badassery of Reshiram:

Spell Bombardment: When you roll damage for a spell and roll the highest number possible on any of the dice, choose one of those dice, roll it again and add that roll to the damage. You can use the feature only once per turn.

Sorcerer 19 gives our boy his last ability score. Cap that secondary stat, or spread it around a bit. Focus on what’s mattering most based on how his battles go. Dexterity if he keeps getting hit, Constitution if he keeps dropping his concentration spells at the wrong moment.  

And last we have Sorcerer 20, which only gives you one kinda eh ability. I suppose it’s nice if you use them pretty often, which a lot of the Wild Magic features do make use of them pretty consistently. So maybe it actually will benefit Hilbert xD.

Sorcerous Restoration: You regain 4 expended sorcery points whenever you finish a short rest.

Final Thoughts

Okay, so the biggest pro we got with this build is the sheer amount of damage types available by all those spells. Even Chaos Bolt alone can deal a bunch of different damage types. Wish is also a fantastic spell that can easily save yer ass. Hilbert is a really good blaster with his spells, but he also has some utility with flight and the like, not to mention ways to protect himself and his allies by manipulating dice rolls. Don’t hesitate to make use of those Wild Magic abilities. Depending on the surge table the DM uses, there’s some darn good options on there that will greatly benefit you. 

Unfortunately, there’s just as many bad things that could happen. Or you could turn into a potted plant and be unable to do anything for several turns. Not to mention you’d have just... terrible hit points. Taking the average puts you well under even Homika’s 88 hitpoints. d6 hit dies are not your friend if you wanna soak damage. But that’s not what you’re good at. You’re good at taking down the big monster before you go boom. 

I tried to get something on there for Stoutland, but there aren’t many ways to get a Normal Type in there. ‘Cept maybe some thunder damage, equating it to Hyper Voice. I always wanted to get Awaken on this build so Hilbert could get his awakened shrub Carmen, but apparently Sorcerers don’t get the spell. I’d have to take him through bard or wizard or something like that too far to justify it. 

I hope you enjoyed this. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am with my choices

[elliegratrick-blog]

(Don't you, forget) About me

I’d introduce myself as Ellie Gratrick, although that would be a lie. My Sunday name, as my mother says, is Eleanor but I’ve honestly hated it since becoming conscious around 3 or 4.  Don't get me started about some of the misspellings of Gratrick! (Gay-trick is my personal favourite).

I am a worrier. I think it’s something that comes with this ability to create, an anxiety that nothing is good enough. My brain is like the underground at rush hour, so many thoughts are packed in there and keep piling in and overfilling creating so much noise, sometimes I wish it would just be an empty carriage. (especially when I’m trying to sleep). It’s a blessing and a curse, I love some of the ideas I come up with but other-times I feel like the shittest person ever. (This isn’t a cry for help!)

What calms me as well is visiting galleries. At home, in Wakefield (nr Leeds, people are never sure) we are lucky to have a lot of galleries nearby. The Hepworth is one I always enjoy. A exhibition I saw recently was of David Hockey and Alan Davie’s early works. https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/we-two-boys-early-works-by-alan-davie-david-hockney/ . You can feel the energy and vibrancy of the strokes splashing across the canvases. Being from Leeds there are a large number of illustrators working there which I often come across at art fairs and bars and try resist the temptation to buy all their work. I think this is something I could see myself doing to try support myself with my art before becoming fully freelance. Molly Pukes (https://www.instagram.com/mollypukes/?hl=en) does a lot of comics, that often become a visual diary. Working in this way also helps me process my feelings and get them out into the world. Seeing her work in these fairs gives me the motivation that people out there do want it! I’ve found Bobbie Rae (https://www.instagram.com/bearcubs/?hl=en  ) work in an art shop in Leeds, Colour May Vary https://coloursmayvary.com which stocks a lot of independent publications. She  uses her illustrations to spread positivity and affirmations often about self love and accepting yourself using bright colours and squishy non conventional bodies. She applies these to all sorts of media such as clothing, bags, stickers, publications in order to create a plethora of merchandise to sell. I would like to go into something similar putting my work into lots of avenues but still retaining my own personal voice. Another thing I’ve found interesting in the Colours May Vary shop is the array of magazines. I’m often drawn to the Anorak and Dot kids magazine that features bold and bright colours and characters. https://anorakmagazine.com/collections/all . I would be interested in my illustrations being used in an editorial sense like this as it doesn’t seem too restrictive and work I’ve seen is full of energy and life, no holds barred. 

This love of narrative means a lot of the time while drawing I’ll be watching cartoon series or an animated film found. One series I’m watching now is on Cartoon Network called Summer Camp Island. I absolutely love Julia Pott’s character design- http://www.juliapott.com .  Characters, like the monsters, remain mystical but you still empathise as a viewer. I try to bring elements of these animation styles to my own work, creating characters that aren’t bound my reality or form. Her illustrations also retain this same empathy and joy often featuring characters and using humour. 

 I’m also drawn to Studio Ghibli characters for these same qualities. Characters like the Radish spirit in Spirited Away don’t talk but are animated with subtle body language and use of facial expression, which as a viewer mean you still follow the narrative. https://www.studioghibli.com.au/spiritedaway/ . In a lot of my narrative work I try to utilise this lack of text and communicate through the character instead.

As well as animation, 2d illustrations such as graphic novels are fun to read. A few of my favourites right now are Coyote Dog girl http://www.lisahanawalt.com/coyote-doggirl, Pantheon https://nobrow.net/shop/pantheon/? and Retrograde orbit. https://www.waterstones.com/author/kristyna-baczynski/1676440 . Two out of three of these contain quite raw and personal themes of not belonging, loneliness and sexual assault using characters to put these ideas across. I think more personal stories appeal to people as it becomes somewhat relatable even if it is a half dog half coyote girl, there is a sense of empathy created. What I want for my work is this relatability and become more vulnerable with my work, show my feelings since it’s not so easy to express these with words.  I also want to create my own full graphic novel in the future possibly published by Nobrow. I find myself looking at a lot of their books as they seem to represent fresh and unique talent. Hopefully I will have the stability as well to work as a freelancer, maybe in a collective with some of my friends I have made on this course. We’ve talked about making our own clothing collection in the future, I think screenprinting on t-shirts or bags could be really fun!

In light of the economy and how the arts are being treated:

 I hate tories.

The end. 

[calvarycommunitychurch-blog]

7 things to look for when reading through the Bible - Focus on the Family

This is a great article from Focus on the Family Canada. Credit for the content goes to  Written by Subby Szterszky and the original article can be found here.

This is it – the year you finally read through the entire Bible. Sure, you’ve tried before and gotten bogged down by the spring thaw or the law codes in Leviticus. But this time, you’ve found the ideal Bible reading plan: well-balanced, realistic and tailored to your reading habits. You’ve prayed about it and enlisted an accountability partner to keep you on track.

All of which is fantastic. But in order to see it through to the end – and more important, to benefit from the experience – you need to read with anticipation, with your eyes, your heart and your mind attuned to what the Spirit of God is saying through his Word.

To aid in that process, here are seven things to look for as you embark (or continue) on your scriptural odyssey. There are more than seven, of course, but seven is a nice biblical number and these are a good place to start. They’ll help keep your reading plan from becoming a drudgery and ensure it remains a joyful path of discovery throughout the year.

God

It may appear self-evident that readers of God’s Word should first seek him within its pages. And yet, people typically approach the Bible by asking, “What does this passage say about me, and how does it apply to my life?” Those are valid questions, up to a point, but they’re not the most important ones. In fact, they can be used to distort the meaning of a passage by reading one’s own experiences into it.

That’s because from start to finish, the Bible isn’t primarily about us, but about God. To be sure, Scripture has much to say about human nature and culture and history. But it addresses all those subjects solely with respect to God.

Through human language and the written word, the Creator of the universe has chosen to reveal himself – his character, power and purposes – to his human creatures. He has told us who we are, why we’re here, and how we can be what he created us to be, in a loving relationship with him.

And so, the first questions to ask when reading anything in the Bible are: “What does this say about God? What does it reveal about who he is, what he’s done and continues to do? How does it help me know him and trust him and love him more?”

Grace

There’s a common misconception, even among professing Bible believers, that the Old Testament is all about law, whereas the New Testament is all about grace. In fact, an early heretic named Marcion went so far as to claim that the two Testaments portrayed two different gods: an inferior god of judgment in the Old and a superior god of love in the New.

The Scriptures themselves will have none of that, of course. The Old Testament echoes with a repeated description of God as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Jesus himself, although full of grace and truth, also spoke at length about judgment and raised the bar of righteousness to include motives of the heart as well as outward actions.

Both Testaments portray God as eternal and unchanging, his law and grace forever intertwined, his love and judgment meeting at the Cross of Christ. To read the Bible is to discover and trace that braid of divine justice and kindness through all its turns, finally displayed perfectly in the person of Jesus.

Challenge

The essence of idolatry is the desire to domesticate God, to make the Creator more like his creation, easier to comprehend and to control. But the God of the universe will not fit into our boxes, whether personal, cultural or theological. In fact, he declares that his ways and his thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth.

It’s not surprising, then, that his Word should contain things not only difficult but at times downright disturbing. Such things will vary depending on the assumptions of each culture, but they’ll always be present. For people in the 21st century, the Bible’s sexual ethos, its tolerance of slavery in the ancient world, and its portrayal of genocidal warfare are especially difficult to square with the idea of a just and loving God.

In the eyes of the wider culture, such passages may be deal breakers, but for followers of Jesus, they’re challenges. Strange customs, lengthy genealogies, and even the conquest of Canaan invite readers to think deeply, pray earnestly, embrace mystery and recognize that God is bigger than us. As Tim Keller observes, “If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an idealized version of yourself.”

Beauty

God is beautiful, and he has designed his cosmos to reflect his beauty. It only follows that his written Word should do likewise. Its accounts brim with grandeur and glory along with moments of quiet intimacy to melt the heart and comfort the soul. It paints word pictures of a world that’s fallen and yet enjoying the kindness and care of its Sovereign Lord.

But beyond their divinely inspired content, the Scriptures are beautiful in themselves as literature, their varied styles equally inspired by God. Contrary to common belief, the Bible isn’t a textbook on science or history or even theology. Nor is it an instruction manual on morals and ethics and successful living. To be sure, it touches on all those subjects and many more besides. But it does so in the form of artful writing.

It’s no accident that God chose to record a significant chunk of his Word as historical narrative and poetry, rather than as didactic instruction. He designed it to appeal to the whole person, the heart and the imagination as well as the mind. To read it any other way is to miss at least part of its message.

Diversity

In the natural world, beauty expresses itself through diversity, and once again it’s the same with Scripture. The Bible is a library of 66 documents, written on three continents over some 1,500 years. Its human authors represent a wide range of temperaments and social classes, each writing to address the issues of their day.

Inspired by the Holy Spirit, these authors wrote in an eclectic variety of genres: war stories, pastoral romances, songs of love, songs of lament, prayers, letters, biographies, travelogues, memoirs and apocalyptic visions, among others.

Such a diverse array of genres cannot be read with a one-size-fits-all approach, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to do so. Like the many flavours at a fine feast, they’re meant to be savoured, both for their own qualities and for how they blend with one another. Each one speaks with its own voice, and yet contributes its own unique facet to the overall message of Scripture. Discovering that unity, expressed through diversity, is one of the genuine pleasures of reading through the Bible.

Unity

Every great story worth following has a central plot line, a unifying narrative that frames it and gives it structure. There may be subplots and asides, but that main storyline winds throughout, by turns hidden and exposed, and it pulls the reader toward its conclusion.

The central narrative of the Bible can be summarized as a drama in four acts: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. From a human perspective, it began in the Garden, reached its climax at the Cross, and will conclude in the New Jerusalem, in the New Heaven and New Earth. From a divine perspective, it was written in the mind of God before he made the cosmos, and will resonate into eternity, to his glory.

Because of the wonderful diversity in Scripture, it’s tempting to think of its many parts as vignettes in an anthology, at best only loosely related to each other. But in truth, they combine to form a unified mosaic from their various literary shades and colours. The main storyline winds through them all, at times clear and at other times subtle, but always there. And thus, when reading the Bible, it’s always crucial to ask, “What does this passage bring to the central narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration?”

Gospel

It’s fitting to conclude this list where it began, by looking for God in the Scriptures. And that means looking for Christ and the Gospel. Such a search is by no means limited to the New Testament, nor is it an exercise in speculative interpretation.

There are, of course, the overt Messianic prophecies that are quoted as such in the New Testament. But it goes deeper than that. After Jesus rose from the dead, he began to teach his disciples everything that was written about him in the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. For 1st-century Jews, this threefold description was shorthand for the entire scope of the Old Testament. In other words, Jesus was claiming that all of Scripture was about him, in one sense or another.

We need to be careful here. Jesus was not inviting his followers to dig for Gospel metaphors behind every horse and sword and city wall and loaf of bread in the Old Testament. But he was directing them to recognize that all the Scriptures – every narrative account, genealogy and poetic image – in some way points to him and anticipates his coming.

It could hardly be otherwise, given that Jesus is the protagonist as well as the fulfillment of the grand narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration.

Depending on our tastes, temperament and cultural background, different parts of the Bible will strike us in different ways. Some passages will captivate and inspire, while others will perplex and challenge. But viewed through the lens of the Gospel, all of it will open new vistas on the goodness, wisdom and beauty of God. And therein lies the point – as well as the pleasure – of reading through the Bible.

Sources and further reading

Haven’t yet found that perfect Bible reading plan? Here are links to a few reading plans, devotionals and other resources to help you on your journey through the Scriptures.

Bible Gateway

Bible Project

Biblica: The International Bible Society

English Standard Version (ESV)

Focus on the Family Canada

Read Scripture App

She Reads Truth

YouVersion Bible App