#time loop concept kin

[citizenoftmrrwlnd]

stimboard for : my time loop conceptkin! self indulgence is healthy sometimes!

x | x | x x | x | x x | x | x

[curly4830]

Finished ISAT last night, this game was an emotional rollercoaster from start to end, tbh. I've got a lot of thoughts about the game and they're all pretty short, but I'd like to list some of them here.

The coin is interesting! I think mechanically it's a good way to check Siffrin's internal monologue of the same thing, regardless of area/party status. But story wise, it's a whole other thing to me. Loop and Siffrin have their own kind of Heads/Tails duality, and Odile's coin flip makes me think that it could have/might have been Loop in our Siffrin's place instead, if things had gone just a little differently. Siffrin's forgetfulness being both a foreshadow to his home country AND the potential years worth of time stuck in the loops. and the player's forgetfulness, that too. Another angle I'd like to explore in the future is Siffrin's sprites, and the (possibly intended) idea of taking the growing space covered in shadow on his face as a loss of humanity/the concept of self. It helps take the idea of Siffrin seeing himself as an actor to the next level for me. You could extend this to the Mal Du Pays/Bigfrin sequences being the total loss of self, Siffrin being sent over the edge(and subsequently grounded by his party members). But he made it back! and that's really what matters, isn't it. It's very in line with the literal context of the scenes but I appreciate that the lines are there to be read between, even if not everybody cares to. i definitely think about faces/the self a normal amount, you can trust me i swear. Siffrin clearly did not have enough problems on his own so I had to push my whole faces/sense of self thing on him too. Loop. oh god Loop. I have a lot of thoughts about Loop and their Identity, and it's going to take a while to figure out! but i'm totally fine with that. is it morally wrong to feel a deep kinship to loop?? i don't know!!! i'm gonna find out though. i was actually just recently thinking about how i don't like using the term kinning for characters because it feels very intimate and I can't say i've felt the same thing other people who kin characters feel. BUT. i think loop gave me some kind of disease i think i'm not well I just couldn't do most of the Dagger dialogue. It was too much for me personally. I did it once and it made me feel bad enough to return it and swear off the idea. until i go back to finish achievements, that is. Fucked up, though!! The loops and their infinite catharsis started to mean nothing at all until they make the even more fucked up mega catharsis. I thought Signalis and it's ending hit me hard but this game reduced me to a crying mess by the end. And lastly I'm very appreciative of @usefulnt0409 for being there to help me through the entire game. I like sharing my first playthroughs of things with people that enjoy them. Having them around to help with mechanical stuff I'd never pick up on(Loop dialogues and the conditions associated with most of them) and when I'd accidentally skip a dialogue just made the experience very special. I don't think I'll soon forget this game, it was an incredible experience even through the gas leak 5am vcs. I think they made it better.

[talon-dragonbeast]

ive been reading about archetropes lately, mainly because its an interesting identity and also because im questioning being one myself. so, i have some questions for the community if thats okay!

does archetropy fall under the otherkin umbrella? or is it just alterhumanity?

what is the difference between archetropes and conceptkin? why is, for example, being the concept of death conceptkin, but being the character trope "Death" archetrope?

is there a difference between being an archetrope and being OCkin (or even being fictionkin)? if you are, for example, an archetrope of "the Knight" does that mean youre a specific knight? (i only ask this because ive seen one being in the archetrope tags making a moodboard of their life as a knight)

are archetropes only for character tropes? like can you just be the trope of "Time Loop" or do you have to be a character that is trapped in a time loop? and if you can, what would be the difference to just being time loop kin?

is being an archetrope connected to past lives? can you have memories of being your archetrope type? can you have shifts (mental or otherwise)?

how does being an archetrope affect you on your daily life? do you do things that make you euphoric as your type? can you have dysphoria for not acting like your type?

you dont have to answer to all these to respond! if you dont know or dont want to answer a question feel free to skip it /gen. thank you!

[inkdemonapologist]

What are your thoughts on joeys character in batdr and his redemption? If you ask me I like what they did with him. They gave him redemption without excusing some of the bad stuff he did. And I think memory joey could grow to be somewhat of his own character. But the redemption isn’t perfect though. Even though I said the it didn’t excuse some of the stuff he did it felt like they swept the bad stuff under the rug. But who knows. Maybe they’ll fix this in future.

But enough about what I think, what don you think?

I’ve talked about this before – the TL;DR of that post is that I think this is, conceptually, a promising way to portray Joey moving forward to be better for someone new, but in actual execution it fails to do that.

TBH I’d love to stop categorising this as “redemption”… I've grown to dislike this framing, debating whether it’s a Good Redemption or a Bad Redemption or whether Joey is Really Redeemed or Not, because it assumes that Redemption™ is even what’s happening in this story. BatDR is a story where we’re given reason to believe that Joey may have had a change of heart. That’s it! We can question and analyse his supposed change of heart, but it doesn’t have to REDEEM HIM to be real, and I think measuring things on the scale of REDEEMED VS NOT REDEEMED is not only gliding over some pretty complex ideas of What Does Redeemed Mean In The Context Of Fiction (it is the sort of concept that it is so, so easy for people to have vastly different unspoken definitions for, making discussions of “he was redeemed” “no he wasn’t” especially futile), but also not really useful here.

For one thing, this isn’t a story about Joey's change of heart. Tbh, he barely features – Memory Joey can have a change of heart and work to be better if you believe/headcanon that he has OG Joey’s attitude, worldview, and personality flaws (which I do), but he has no crimes to acknowledge or repent for other than MAYBE reluctance to get involved. You might as well ask a person to repent for the crimes of their kins!! We hear about the choices original Joey made, and we can judge those choices postmortem, but he’s not here to redeem himself through this story; he’s dead.

As to the actual spirit of your question: The big thing. The really really big thing. Is that the CYCLE IS STILL GOING. It’s still going and it’s still bad and everyone in it is still miserable!! He didn’t fix that!!! The only evidence we have of ANY attempt to make it nicer in there is that he added Allison Angel, which like, “i’ve created a new life to keep you company in the torture dimension, so it’s less bad” is NOT ACTUALLY BETTER.

It’s important because it’s the only thing Joey could still try to do. He clearly doesn’t have any money to give restitution to his victims or their families, and I’m not gonna be a cop about demanding that he return the ink machine to the corporation that’s even more evil than he was. There’s not a lot of tangible steps he could take to perform penance for what he’s done, beyond fessing up publicly to his crimes and turning himself in and definitely going to jail, and like, maybe that would be a good thing for him to do, but if we’re going to hold Joey to that standard we really should be making the same demands of, say, Thomas Connor, or Sammy Lawrence in every Escape AU.

He can’t go back and un-ruin the lives he ruined years ago. But he didn’t do anything about the cycle, and that’s something that’s still happening NOW.

That was his responsibility, sapient life that he created to suffer and should have felt a huge obligation to – yet, we have no evidence that Joey was like, trying to fix it (in fact, he seemed PRETTY FOCUSED on spending his limited time creating and then raising Audrey), so every assertion that he was a changed man falls a bit flat, because being a sweet, loving person to your family and friends while running an endlessly looping torture dimension in your basement is actually quite sinister! Even Memory Joey asserts that the only reason he can’t fix the cycle now is because he’s not really the OG Joey who made it – does that mean the OG Joey could? Audrey says she wants to make the cycle kinder; could Joey have done that? Why didn’t he? We know from Allison's appearance in the original BatIM that the hellish experience of the first game IS the version that came from Joey’s change of heart, and it’s not great for literally anyone!!

Joey was a better person to Audrey, his daughter, and I do believe he genuinely loved her. If it were just that, it would be pretty good – Joey disappears from public life and stops obsessing over Bendy and instead of barging into his past victims’ lives to demand forgiveness, he just wants to be a better man and a good father to this daughter he created. That’s a compelling story, and I think it’s probably the best direction that “Joey wants to be better” could go. But once we realise he was actively ignoring suffering that he both caused and was responsible for fixing, it’s hard to take that love in good faith anymore. Joey being good exclusively to people that he likes who are doing what he wants isn’t anything new; Joey’s delight in The One Who Came Out Right feels less like a change of heart when we see Memory Joey echo his complete lack of sympathy for The One Who Came Out Wrong.

The reason it feels like Joey’s wrongdoing was glossed over isn’t because Joey needed to record an audiolog saying “I acknowledge that my actions were without excuse, and I’m deeply sorry for the harm I’ve caused” or whatever… it’s because there was something he could’ve changed, or could’ve at least TRIED to change, and he didn’t do it -- and it feels like we, the audience, were not supposed to notice that, because the story didn’t notice, either. It'd be possible to address it; like, what if Joey's change of heart instead involved him trying to fix things for the people in the cycle, and Audrey was created accidentally in that process -- then his love for Audrey would also be a picture of how far he'd come, taking responsibility for this person he'd brought into being and seeing her as a beloved daughter instead of a mistake. Or even just an audiolog where Joey says some kind of “oh god I can’t end it, it’s just going to repeat forever, what have i done, what can i do,” and it might actually feel possible to believe in his change of heart, to believe that he really tried as hard as he could and just never succeeded. But this huge thing is barely acknowledged. It's fine. He put Allison in there, so now it's fine! Don't dwell on the past!!

Anyway, like I said in my first post, if all this were intentional, I would LOVE it, conceptually. The idea of Joey Drew being a good father to Audrey who really genuinely loved her, but also was not actually a better person in a lot of ways, was still the same guy who was uncomfortable with guilt and glossed over his wrongdoing in order to prematurely Move On from the things that made him feel like a failure and focus on the relationship with his daughter that made him feel like a success, is a compelling, difficult character! The way so many people fell in love with Memory Joey just seems like, how everyone in original Joey’s life must’ve felt about him, the way they all kept believing in him despite everything, the way they wanted so badly to believe him. Impose this lens upon the whole game, and it all fits in. But since there’s no sign it’s intentional – and, with the archive, actually some signs that it wasn’t – it sort of sits weirdly. Memory Joey isn’t framed as an unreliable narrator. The tone of his final scene clearly isn’t MEANT to be dissonant.

---

So, uh, that’s what I think. I think the concept of Joey having a genuine change of heart and being better for his daughter could be good; I think the concept of Joey presenting himself as a changed man when really he is Just The Same, He Just Likes You This Time, could also be good. But he was handled clumsily enough that I think we didn’t quite get either thing, and, as usual, you have to fill in the blanks with headcanons and inferences to get one of these stories -- so which story you get kinda depends on which way you decide to interpret everything. Nothing tells us for sure that Joey didn't try his hardest to fix everything, so if you want that story, you can simply headcanon that he tried his hardest. But my personal preference is definitely for the reading where Joey believes himself a changed man because he really does love his daughter, and that's genuinely sweet!! but he remained the same man he always was, dodging guilt and responsibility in favour of a narrative that made him feel good about himself. I'm still quite proud of the frustrated little indictment Memory Joey gives him in that one creationship comic I made:

[that-dreaming-dragon]

Origin Theory

Asking someone's origin feels like asking someone what's their assigned gender at birth. That's like, undermining who they are as a person, correct gender and all. Maybe there's value in knowing where one came from, but that's pretty personal.

At the least, the alterhuman community at large don't really hound on people for their origin from what I'd seen. It's a lot of people offering up their origin story. Is this a need to be validated due to all the past discourse surrounding spiritual vs psychological origin?

On the same vein, voluntariness. It's another form of origin theory that gets a little, I'm not sure redundant is the right word, but it takes away a lot of personal agency when dealing with something that's your own, one's identity.

With how vastly diverse and just generally limitlessness of alterhuman identities, having something so finite and restrained is so strange. Maybe for presentation towards the newcomer and orthohuman outside the community it's important to keep things simple--box labeled and everything organized like a file cabinet. But within the community? Conversation flows easier, as I observed, when people put not as much stock with the origin theory. Although it is still fun to talk about, speculating one's own "how I came about", it really shouldn't be the "oh no, I'm psychological/spiritual" then proceeds to panic. I donno, I fortunately haven't seen this. Though, I can't remember how it was when I first found the community roughly 5 or 6 years ago, I vaguely recall the emphasis on spirituality with implicitness of how much more important it is than psychological. I guess there is still that lingering around. Although I'd heard how in some circle, it's the reverse. This whole thing is just so dumb and really not cool. I don't have the right word here, but please hear my frustration.

A lot of things with alterhumanity by itself is fascinating. I like hearing about people contemplating whether they are spiritual, psychological, I love hearing the one alien that has a philosophical relationship with their alterhumanity, I know of a couple dragons who start their draconity as artistic expression of the self. These are really cool! And knowing for some the cause of their alterhumanity is from their neurodivergence made me think about myself. Knowing about people that have other lives, whether it's living in parallel with other universes, inside time loops, or having a identity because they will become that one day? That's all really neat.

We don't need to proof who we are within the community. Isn't that one of the point of having a community? We shouldn't need to validate ourselves to the folks who are suppose to be just like us, or at least understand what we are going through in some way.

I mentioned just now how some have identity that they become due to artistic expression, there is a implictness of the voluntariness in there. They are still who they are in the end. (do the end justified the mean? That's when on making decision to do something. not dealing with identity stuff) Personal journey such as alterhuman self discovery are, the whole thing would matter differently to people, some would care for the path they'd took, some only look at where they are, some care for every single moment, some just goes with the flow, and it is all perfectly okay! Because we are all unique individual experiencing our own thing.

I mean, if we are talking about explicitly intensionally created bond towards something, aka linking, that's something explicitly voluntary. Yet quoiluntary exists as a term for people's use, and there is a need for it! There's this focus on a linktype as something you can drop, but there's the concept Anteatype--a identify-as (kin/theriotype) that has been dropped, which makes the whole "something that can be pick up voluntarily and then drop as easily" as the definition people point to kind of null. It's the one post Poppy on tumblr had said

'Paratype' only tells you about the origin of the connection/identity, not its substance.

To me, “otherlinking” only tells me that it was from without, external, applied with a will, to actively create or strengthen a connection, preexisting or not. And then later on if someone feel the need to shift their terminology to better fit their experience, it's a option. Though it can be scary, the community is there to support.

I know at one point I myself also put emphasis on how much my origin is. I mean I did mention me finding that my hearttype is far more spiritual inclined than my kintype. I ascribe to the metaphoric in origin for my kintype these days though. It's not important a conversation, though I do like to ruminate on it myself for my own curiosity.

Course I wish we can completely move away from the need to define these boxes, but I suppose we can treat them like alterhuman identity training wheel. You can use them when you first found the whole concept, it might help to keep things simple and more concrete. Later on, when you are ready to fly, you can gently let them go, or pin them up on your pin board hoard, say "okay, I'd done that, now let's see what else there are". Be a little explorer, except the vast beyond is the little universe within your very self.

[fictionkinfessions]

(please tag for derealization cw, mpc)

honestly i feel kind of bad for still being so affected by everything that happened to me in my kin lives for some odd reason

like, those experiences will live with me and follow me everywhere i go. every aspect of the people i loved clings to me, and no matter how hard i try to ignore that longing, it doesnt go away.

i cant get the memories out of my head, the bad ones and the good one. i hate the feeling of getting a stomach ache. any time i feel sick to my stomach or even just getting butterflies, it reminds me of the timeloops. it makes me sick, because i dont want to loop back.

every time i crack open an egg to make breakfast in the morning, i remember the talk with mira about how eggs are representative of change. i remember bonbon laughing at me for cracking an egg open wrong.

every time i read a book i remember mira teasing me for reading slowly because i didnt read as much as she did. i remember odile always carrying around a bunch of ancient vaugardian books because she wanted to learn about all of vaugarde, not just present time vaugarde.

every time i sew i remember how i used to carve little figurines out of wood. every time i crochet i remember how the very clothes i wore on my back were woven with the evidence that at once point, i was loved.

every time i just look across the lake outside my house, seeing the mass of land on the other side, full of people ive never met and places ive never been, i remember the longing of my home that id forgotten.

every time someone holds my hand, or laughs at my puns, or comments on the hats that i wear, or says that they love me, or gently teases me for some dumb embarrassing thing i did... it all just comes flooding back to me.

but i cant even talk about this with most people, because theyll never understand. because to them, none of this was real. but that doesnt change how real it is to me

clocks, and the concept of time in general, scares me. its an ever-moving force, and for each moment that you spend in it, youll never get that moment back. this fear mainly developed in the time loops. and while most people have a fear of time moving too quickly, my fear literally stems from how i had to relive the same day give or take 100 seperate times. but i obviously cant just say that

im afraid of clocks and time, im afraid of being touched suddenly, im afraid of being abandoned, im afraid of really bright shades of red in the sky like blood moons, im afraid of the daytime

it doesnt even make sense for me to still be so affected by this, i feel

whatever, at least i can still ramble about the stars without people thinking im weird <3 stars are cool in every universe!

-siffrin ⭐, in stars and time (#✿)

✉

[aquadestinyswriting]

Your mystery question is here!

🌻What is a crucial moment in your characters growth?

I know the answers to these are really, really late. I forgot I had an inbox for a while :P.

Answering this one for my two best girls. Putting under a readmore because this might get a bit long

Selene

The most crucial moment in Selene's character growth is a major spoiler for 'To Heal a Broken Soul'. Needless to say it was a bit of growth that was a long time coming.

The next most crucial moment, aside from that, is probably her talk with Elowyn; after the latter allows herself to be "kidnapped" as part of a plan to find out the location of, and take out a bunch of filthy, rotten cultists and their demon allies. The plan works out beautifully and Elowyn returns home more or less unharmed. Selene is less than happy about it, mostly because she was kept entirely out of the loop of said plan because she has a rather infamous temper and Elowyn didn't trust that Selene would let her go through with it. After their little talk, Selene realises that she really needs to work on her temper at this point, and also that Elowyn currently sees her more as one of her many bosses than her extremely concerned Aunt. This does lead to a more concerted effort to back off while Elowyn takes care of saving the world, and ultimately leads to Selene retiring from the office of Grand Magus once the threat to the world has been dealt with, so the two of them can work on repairing their relationship.

Meredith

The most crucial moment in Merri's character development was probably when our GM kicked off the whole 'dwarven apartheid' plotline. This is when Meredith was first forced to make a choice between her duty to her people and her friendship with those she'd been travelling with up to this point in the campaign. Since that moment, every time it came up, Merri chose Duty over almost everything else. It wasn't like it was a conscious decision; Meredith was born and brought up in Fangthane - the capital city of the dwarven people - and was also a Cleric of Moradin - the patron deity of (almost) all dwarves on Allansia - so Duty to her kin and God as a concept was just so ingrained into her being that it seemed like the most logical thing to choose. This ultimately led to her leaving the friends she loved with all her heart in the middle of the night to deal with a major threat back in Fangthane alone after the fight with the BBEG of the first arc of the campaign. I think it's a nice example of how not all character growth is positive, because the Duty thing really screwed over Merri's relationship with Elowyn in particular for quite a while, despite the fact that Merri loved Elowyn so damn much that she would rather have died than have anything happen to the other woman.

Needless to say, after the adventure ended and the world was saved, Merri started to be a bit more sensible about the Duty thing and started to choose the 'selfish' option a little more often. At least for a few centuries.

[outeremissary]

Actually good gameplay/bad story vs. bad gameplay/good story poll has me thinking a lot about "bad gameplay." I feel like that's often treated as a really binary thing, but like. How many games out there is this subject often hotly contested on? How many older games, how many cult classics? I feel like for every game with "bad gameplay" there's at least one person defending the impact it has on the experience and atmosphere of the game. I've seen someone get heated about the idea of making inventory limits in older RPGs more lax when porting the games to modern systems because it removes stakes from the game to be able to carry More Items. You lose an edge of puzzle and of wilderness survival. The inventory management question is one that often pops up in discussions around horror games as well- what's a badly designed inventory and what's one that's frustrating intentionally? Or one that's excusable by the limits of its age? Is clunky combat bad in a combat heavy action game, or can it push the game's genre to suggest something else atmospherically? I really enjoy defenses of gameplay that's "bad" or "obsolete." I haven't been playing Dragon's Dogma 2 and have no way to judge one way or another, but I have heard it called unfriendly, backwards, and bad by detractors and unfriendly, backwards, and good by defenders. It's so fascinating where people draw the line and what criteria they use to determine what's passing and failing. And then when there are whole mechanics people love or hate too! I was looking at escort mission discourse just today. Conversation where on the one hand some people believe there's no way at all to attain a theoretically possible good implementation of an escort mission, while other people see even the most player unfriendly implementations as a challenge of player skill rather than a failure of design.

I don't really have anywhere I'm going with this, I just felt that the more I thought about it the more interesting it was because of the ways that gameplay could be interpreted through age, technical implementation, genre, and player tolerance in ways very distinct from how story and writing are judged. I think "good gameplay" as a concept is often positioned as gameplay which is snappy, clean, and accessible (accessibility exception carved out for games that sell themselves as Hard Games) with precise and technically well crafted controls, but I've seen so many cases for good gameplay being the absolute fucking opposite if it produces an interesting play experience. And you could say "oh, that's determined by the intent of the creators," but do you always have a way to know their intent? And how many games come together actually according to plan, with no schedule slippage and everything implemented exactly according to vision?

To use an example near and dear to me- yeah, I'm not leaving the Kingmaker in the tags after all- a part of Kingmaker's gameplay loop is kingdom management. You're exploring, fighting, and interacting with the world, but you're also coming to rule it through the kingdom, and this has to be balanced as a part of this loop just like all the other pieces. Kingdom management feeds back into the other pieces of the game- it gives mechanical benefits, it opens up new interactions, and when you explore it backfills the empty space you leave behind with something new, the kingdom, which can be further transformed. It also fills a different kind of empty space, the temporal space between chapters, and gives you meaningful choices to make when the plot isn't at a fever pitch by making it so that how you use your time has stakes beyond what exploration and quests provide. Kingdom management is also timer dependent and RNG heavy as fuck, and at points can feel very unfair even if I'd argue it seldom ever traps you and never traps you without an actual reason. It's also situated in a genre, the RPG, where RNG is seen as an acceptable and even expected part of gameplay systems. For me, kingdom management enhances the experience of the game and is an extremely worthwhile addition to the gameplay which plays in enjoyable ways off of other aspects of the gameplay. It's a part of a memorable and fun play experience. But so many people fucking hate kingdom management and see it as not just something they dislike, but something which is Bad in design and implementation. It's positioned as disruptive, unwieldy, player unfriendly, overwhelming, and arbitrary. And I see the case for all of those points. And I don't think there's any final way to objectively settle whether it's Good or Bad, and that ultimately what it gives to the game very much comes down to player preferences and playstyle. How you interact with a game gives these systems their meanings and impacts.

I don't really have a conclusion to this. It's just kind of word vomit getting the thoughts out of my head. ^^;; But I don't know. I think it's something really interesting, the fact that there's not necessarily an objective way of seeing gameplay as good or bad the same way that there's not an objective way to see a story. I answered that poll "bad gameplay and good story," but when I think about the games that make me choose that, it's not like they're unplayable even if sometimes I truly hate the experience of playing them. I think that their gameplay gives them meaning, specificity, and staying power in my mind for how I experienced the game because of this gameplay in a way that games with "good" gameplay can't always provide.

[roadandruingame]

RaR Musings #17: Simulation in Games

I got into it lately on the merits of game design, and definitions of mechanical tropes like roguelike and roguelite, and whether rpg, jrpg, RP game, and roleplaying game all had different feels, and if a game like Alan Wake counts as an rpg or not. (To be clear: If a game has you play as a character, who makes decisions as a cross reference between that character's identity and the environment and challenges at hand, in a way that defines the character or changes them in some way, it's a roleplaying game. This means that just about every product people recognize as a 'game' released in the last 30 years is, likely, a roleplaying game, in some way, because it turns out, people like when you attach narratives to things.)

Roguelikes have existed for years, but really came into their own in the last decade, because the promise of an enjoyable, if difficult, gameplay loop that rewards player skill and requires significantly less brute-force design work by the developer. It means you can have a lot MORE game, with a lot more playtime, for less, relative to a game where every dungeon is hand-crafted and every enemy and item intentionally placed. But, because the game throws the entire catalogue at you from the get-go, there's an enormous learning curve, and without a sense of progression, many get bored or frustrated. Rogue-lites took the idea of the roguelike, and made it more consumer friendly, enabling progression over time, but still with major losses from death in randomly-generated environments.

Tabletop games follow these concepts as well. In a ttrpg, a host player meticulously crafts a dungeon, placing enemies and items; an enormous amount of work, and without a library of pre-built campaigns, one that leads to DM burnout sooner or later. Some games provide randomly generated tables, but having to reference tables and subtables doesn't feel very fun; that's computer work. Other games try for a mix of the two, with a host that helps ensure content is distributed smoothly, but the game is mostly running by itself, and so there's less work on the host's shoulders.

In each of these cases, there's different degrees of Simulation: a natural follow-through, where Action A, produces Result B, but that in turn, leads to Result C, and so on, but sometimes, a host is responsible for deciding what the Result is, forcing Action themselves or by presenting a scenario to another player, or stopping the Result chain for narrative or balance reasons. Often, a computer is designated the host, and it's ability to make these determinations are a simulation in itself, based on random number generation, weighted by the designers of the game. It's the main reason why a game like Baldur's Gate 3 can have up to four players, and none of them are actively causing the game to function, or even just one player, who controls multiple characters, but still doesn't cause the game to exist.

But tabletop roleplaying game enthusiasts are shy of this. They want to feel immersed, that their game and world and characters are real; they don't want to know that it's random, or that the DM just decided something arbitrarily, or made it up. They don't want to see how the sausage is made, because somehow it's less impressive if it's the result of hard work, and not effortlessly conjured to your dinner plate. It's also this distinction that spooks most players out of ever evolving into a dungeon master themselves: they worry that they need to have somehow ascended to become brain-kin with the fantasy world and master all it's mechanics and intricacies, to memorize statblocks and enemy and item locations, maps and lore and and And and. The revelation that a lot of the time it was made up on the spot disgusts them, because it threatens the immersion.

I muse about this because I'd set out to make Road and Ruin explicitly playable with no dungeon master. Host responsibility is shared around the table, either together, or passed to the next. A certain amount of simulation is required, then, to make sure the game actually functions, but the notion that each player would be responsible for taking turns coming up with what happens next disgusts and horrifies people. They want to feel immersed, not be taken out of it, and they want to guess what happens next and be proven right, not make up what happens next and then it just does. But in all the "the DM is a player too! :)" arguments I've ever seen, never have I ever heard anyone acknowledge that these benefits of immersion and not knowing what happens next extend exclusively to the adventurers, and never to the DM themselves. Sure, players can do things that the DM didn't anticipate, but that means work rather than discovery, as the DM scrambles to make up what happens next, not merely just guessing and being proven right.

Road and Ruin has been described as (read: accused of) being a game that only dungeon masters can play, because only dungeon masters are versed in the techniques being employed here. Which is a really interesting argument, because, like... why do games like DND build their entire functionality around the existence of these supposedly rare people? While it's true that not everyone is an artist or designer, or versed in fantasy or storytelling tropes, why is it the only concrete way for players like this to get to PLAY a game is to rely on a computer to take the reins from them? That a DM can be a player, but that a player can't be a DM?

If nothing else, I'd want Road and Ruin to have enough simulation elements that I, myself, could be a player in the game, WHILE being the host. That I could generate the story as I go, and be proven WRONG, make mistakes, and die, not just spend tens of hours lovingly crafting a narrative and building a world, only for everyone to trample it and litter, climbing aboard the magical mystery tour, expecting to be trucked from one narrative moment to the next. That I could show, by example, how exciting it is to come up with plans, and the twist of being proven wrong, and that other players might be emboldened by it to the point of wanting to try it for themselves. And finding, it's not actually so different from how they were playing before.

I still struggle with reducing the amount of math baked into the simulation, and make it more about player choice, but I also have to have systems where Something Happens, regardless of where the players are and if they're doing anything to provoke it. Realizing you've dropped your wallet somewhere after you've been travelling for hours, making the choice to look for it, meeting someone who found it, and getting to learn about who they are and what they're doing there, or finding a hidden cache of treasure, but it's too much for you to carry by yourself, certainly without notice, are both things I made up on the spot based on the same [GOLD] card, out of a deck of 52 cards, but with a diceroll determining the event was "Bad, but resolved", and "Good, but at a cost". If the game needs someone like me to be able to come up with those conclusions as the game master, then by all means, I'll do it, but as a player, I had no idea those events were going to occur, and I'll be just as capable of making decisions about what to do about them as everyone else at the table.

[liliallowed]

go to exp. don't do school kids.

honestly though? I feel like splitting their soul would inevitability be the climax of this story.

like, do they choose being soulless or just... filled with this bloodlust?

maybe the concept is wrong...

reader feels like they're in between the state of accepting this violence as their identity and rejecting the soul... so like I think dream knows that?

it's not too late.

but I feel like the stronger the soul gets it's harder to not want to give into it.

but I feel like even nightmare isn't really aware of what he's dealing with...

the soul will probably turn on nightmare. it may be just an exp hungry urge right now... but maybe if it kills enough it'll begin to seek it's OWN control over the situation...

it's an anamoly. the same kin as au CREATORS. I feel like nightmare is underestimating this unknown lil heartless soul.

like... wouldn't it be funny that at some point the soul is like: nah man I'm bored of your bs, I'm taking control of the operation.

idk I keep thinking through the biased lense of the anamoly being DUSTS anomaly.

so by that logic working UNDER nightmare isn't gonna sit well with someone formerly playing ring around the Rosie with time and space in a loop.

a megalomaniac. and nothing will ever be enough to satisfy their thirst for more power.

I FEEL like given the chance... the anomaly will betray nightmare and help dream... and then betray dream too.

they're a trickster and extremely mischievous.

[romellodyisdreaming]

✦ Pyrax. ▲

Age: 958 | Height: 9,4” | Gender: Male

Pronouns: He / They

Personality: Serene and Inscrutable

Element: Celestial / Time

Alignment: True Neutral

✧ Quote ▲ “Time is not our enemy. It is our witness.”

✧ Theme Songs ▲ • Equinox - STAR SEED • Titan - Mr. Bill & eliderp

✧ Lore ▲ A lone echo of the Triaxians—an ancient race of shapeling beings born of geometry, starlight, and the celestial weave—Pyrax walks where time folds and silence lingers. When his kin departed beyond the veil to find eternal balance in the void, Pyrax chose to remain, not to fight… but to remember.

Pyrax is not a warrior, nor a prophet. They are a keeper of tempo and tapestry—one who listens to the whispers of fate, then moves gently between the beats. Time, to them, is neither line nor loop—it is a breath. One they have learned to hold, release, and reshape.

During the Great Calamity, Pyrax made the quietest yet most devastating sacrifice: they rewound a single moment—saving Sora from death at the cost of a century’s worth of their own life. Their body aged, their spirit did not. Golden markings now trace their skin like orbiting constellations, symbols of the time they surrendered.

Now, Pyrax works in tandem with Sora to restore the broken ley-lines and cosmic harmonies torn by war. They speak rarely, but when they do, their words ripple like echoes across the ages. In Pyrax, Dreamcadia has not a hero—but a compass.

✧ Relationships ▲ • Sora – A mirrored soul of stardust and seeking. Pyrax speaks through pauses; Sora listens with wonder. Together, they mend what cannot be reforged.

• The Guardians – To them, Pyrax is history made flesh—a tether to truths lost in the rush of war. They are not commander, but compass.

• The World – Pyrax does not protect the world as it is. They nurture the possibility of what it may still become.

✧ Abilities & Weaponry ▲ • Staff of a Thousand Dreams – Forged from cosmic crystal and layered with rings that orbit in fractal rhythm. Within it lies the echo of endless timelines—each one a whisper Pyrax can tune into.

• Chronolace – Passive aura that slows or accelerates time in a localized area. In battle, they can create zones of suspended motion—where allies recover faster and foes move in half-pace stutter.

• Moment Weave – Pyrax can temporarily anchor a “thread” in time, returning themselves or another to that exact state a few seconds later. Often used for healing, evasions, or to undo a fatal blow.

• Signature Move: Eventide Spiral – Pyrax conjures a golden helix of light that extends outward, pausing all movement in a circular zone. In this suspended moment, choices must be made. Allies can move freely within—but must act wisely, as once time resumes, the universe will catch up.

✧ Enemies ▲ • Prizm – A paradox made flesh, Prizm embodies the kind of fractured, nonlinear chaos that Pyrax exists to contain. They represent the misuse of temporal distortion and fractured potential. A brother at arms, consumed to the darkness.

• Sidious – The general’s brute force and war-hardened worldview stand in direct opposition to Pyrax’s principle of harmony. Where Sidious demands control, Pyrax offers patience.

• Shade – Once merely a fallen mentor, now a corrupted distortion of memory. Shade's shadow magic consumes the same temporal ley-lines Pyrax seeks to mend, forcing an inevitable clash.

• The Collapse – Not a person, but a concept: the slow unraveling of reality itself. Pyrax recognizes the symptoms in Dreamcadia’s growing instability and works tirelessly to prevent it.

✧ Notable Facts ▲ • Pyrax is the final known remnant of a race that once acted as cosmic architects of reality. His existence preserves the knowledge and metaphysical balance they once upheld.

• Though aged physically due to a massive time-reversal sacrifice, Pyrax’s core remains untouched—eternal, serene, and deeply attuned to cosmic rhythms.

• He is capable of repairing torn ley-lines, re-threading magic through damaged realms, and perceiving celestial “wounds” invisible to most.

• Pyrax rarely strikes first. Their power lies in restoration, defense, and delaying consequences to provide others the chance to choose wisely.

✧ Closing Line ▲

Pyrax is not a warrior of flame nor a voice of thunder.

He is the hush before the storm, the stillness between stars.

Where others seek to win, he seeks to preserve.

To guide the world not to what it once was—

but to what it still could become.

[mexicanchoco-lit]

🎰 ✨Ent. It’s Show- Ties

We cut the songs, multi-track precision,

Take 45, fabulous whirlwinds in motion,

Saxophone echoes, guitar strums collide,

Organ keys hum, drums keep the stride.

Emails buzz with creative pursuits,

Crafting visions in rhythmic loops.

Jackie says I’m unserious—misunderstood,

I won’t meet her mom out of respect for her roots.

“Don’t pass the pancit,��� I say, polite but firm,

Jackie loves me like her dad—there’s a twist to discern.

A rocket engineer who golfs in his leisure,

Throws Milpitas parties, lavish and measured.

How do I help this bunny take flight?

Domestic DJs spin him loud through the night.

Vegas, Chicago, L.A. zones hum,

Metro beats thump, the show’s begun.

My cousin, the oracle, whispers of streams,

“No MMA, cousin—it’s showtime scenes.

Learn music notes, follow the flow,

This industry shifts faster than we know.”

Once on Twitter, I saw you swing,

Punch to the arm—laughter it brings.

Not the money maker—“Oops, I did it again,”

A knockout line for an old-school refrain.

I’m catching flights, no Mary Jane highs,

Only clear skies, no limits, no lies.

The concepts are calling, the flow won’t cease,

Nonstop grind—ideas in fierce release.

QVC mind, helicopter views,

Overseeing the ops, chasing the cues.

Like Emma on Chapo, no charges here,

Only deals signed, profits clear.

Lunch with kin who share my stride,

Mission and vision, no time for sides.

Vegas politics, cousin lays bare,

The ring’s a stage—lock the deal, who dares?

Bad Bunny takes flight, Netflix might call,

But cousin says, “Come to the desert, see it all.

Route 91, 2017—history’s weight,

Hillbilly sounds tried to dim the state.”

I know too much, too many, too soon,

Not long before time rewrites its tune.

In Vegas, the lights still shine bright,

But shadows linger beneath the night.

The deals are made with a knowing grin,

Where everyone takes their rightful spin.

I woke this morning, thoughts unclear,

Sat by your family, drawn near.

Not for comfort, but for the thread,

Of stories whispered, unsaid, unshed.

It’s all about interest, the silent share,

The way the cards fall, the secrets laid bare.

I love the stage, the glint, the gleam,

Shopping for talent, chasing the dream.

Rows of faces, a hidden scene,

Where nothing’s as simple as it may seem.

Vegas lives by its timeless creed—

A cut for all, and a stage to feed.

[decepti-thots]

okay. okay ACTUALLY. i have thought about this and realised that i have an idea i like: houses are the version of landed gentry that exists in a culture where inheritance isn't a driving force of the social order. instead they revolve around ownership of hotspots.

concept: houses came about because at some point, some rich mechs came into possession of land that at one point or another revealed itself to be a somewhat regularly-spawning hotspot. whoever owned the land was therefore able to argue that the mechs that came out of the hotspot came under their jurisdiction in some capacity, allowing them to create formalized networks that are not in our terms families per se, but still created increasingly large and powerful structured organizations of interconnected mechs who would derive a certain amount of prestige from their association with the "heads" of those houses. i.e. the landowners. not quite family or kin, not quite employees, but able to both feed back into that house's collective wealth and land ownership through whatever work they did. and association with the preexisting members of the social elite who originally owned the places those hotspots popped up on ensured that mechs who came from those hotspots would in turn be given superior options for whatever job they were doing, creating a kind of self-fulfilling cycle of privilege. it essentially creates a version of "born into good circumstance" in the absence of heriditary wealth. you don't inherit, but the feedback loop means you get an inherent leg up and that leg up then feeds back into making your house more powerful, ensuring that the next set of mechs who come from that hotspot are similarly treated advantageously, because everyone wants to be on the good side of whoever is in charge of it. noone is ever going to quite inherit, unless there's an unexpected, "unnatural" death. which also opens up the possibility that the larger the house gets, the more the entire ecosystem becomes paranoid of sabotage from within even as everyone on the lower rungs has a strong incentive to suck up in the short term.

one interesting potential effect of this idea is that as time goes on, the size of the houses will expand, meaning that a potential dilution of the social prestige could come into play even as the house arguably accrues more power as an institution... but the gradual reduction and eventual stoppage of the hotspots becomes an existential threat to the continual growth in a way that means they exist in tension with the growing unease that causes for the planet.

SPEAKING of tension between the real world and MTMTE specifically trying to do inhuman social dynamics. lily has reminded me that everything about what MTMTE does with the minimus-dominus sibling/house relationship drives me nuts. it's very very clearly in a real sense a literal sibling dynamic; the idea of having a socially-enforced connection to someone you had no initial agency in and cannot easily drop voluntarily is integral to understanding why minimus has a relationship like he does to his (dead) brother, like without that "invisible thread that even disowning only highlights the existence of" element the role dominus plays in his story makes no sense. they are Literally Siblings, period. however. the narrative also acknowledges that this is not normal for literally anyone who does not have siblings and indicates that those without siblings- a rarity worth commenting on- it is in no way intuitive. (see: rewind not really understanding their dynamic in that DotL prologue scene.) it is something that i guess you understand if you have one and don't understand if you don't. this is propped up a bit by the fact that spark twins literally have a metaphysical "bond" that minimus references in mtmte and which is clearly established in its predecessor, last stand of the wreckers, as a physically real thing that other unrelated mechs don't have. however. the fact of the matter is that the idea you are Intrinsically Tied By Birth to your siblings relates to real-world considerations of "being brought up as dependents within family structures means you are in involuntary proximity in your formative years, usually" and "cultural narratives of blood relationships as inherently important are impressed upon people at a young age" that Cybertronians, in the specific fiction of mtmte, DEFINITELY do not have. so like. what the fuck does being a sibling even mean. siblings with inherent feelings about each other that have no parents they share. is it a thing where there's external cultural ideas about sparks that a "sparkbond" forces on them despite their cultural non-normalness overall. is it something to do with WHATEVER a HOUSE is. what is a house. literally WHAT ARE HOUSES. i am shaking this comic like "i understand these concepts are here to be emotionally evocative not Lore TM and i respect it and the sibling narrative is truthful and really underappreciated by fandom, but consider: I WANT YOUR WORLDBUILDING ABOUT THIS"

[sunkingwrites]

lil Denki brainrot for you rq <3

a lot of your Denki thoughts showed up on my dashboard, and as a certified head enthusiast, I can proudly say that I think Denki absolutely gives the best head <3

his tongue can do things- and he may make a show out of himself everywhere at anytime (all cute and in the most eye-catching outfits if you know what i mean✨), but the he will put on such a big performance when giving head— heck, anything oral he justhhdw

(and I know this is an old concept but imagine the little electrifying shocks that absolutely call for overstim I-)

"a lot of your Denki thoughts showed up on my dashboard," you say,, AS IF YOU AREN'T FOLLOWING ME xD ily mwah mwah

Well,, as a certified indulger in thirsts, I would like to agree that Denki gives the best head~ cuz i kin him and want to boost my ego? pffttt, couldn't be

uGHH, he is sUCH a pretty little drama king thooo- I am conVINCed this man has an oral fixation- with the tongue piercing that he has trained to channel currents into,, that metal ball could do some ungodly things to me and I would say "ahah thank you very much, have a great day! :D" sdgfhbjnsdk I'm getting off point-

Oversttiiimmmm, you already know I love him and overstimming- I feel like he gets so overexcited with sexy stuff that he just dives in headfirst (with consent of course, mwah <3) because he wants to make you feel so so good,, he needs to hear his name on your lips- you are his and he is yours and he is just so enamored that you like him. Even with his weird habits and even though he thinks that he's annoying you more than half of the time.

The fact that you actually like him,, gods- it just gets him going. So yeah, he's there to do whatever you need. With all that talking and goofing around he does, he can do a lot with his tongue.

-I just tied my hair up and rolled up my sleeves. This is getting serious- :D

no gendered terms are used for the reader,, Denki calls the reader "babes" once ☆

Denki is the type to tease. No matter how good he wants to make you feel or how much he wants you to cum on his tongue- above all, he wants you to need him. This comes out in him wanting to hear you beg; he wants to know what you're thinking, how you're feeling, specifically how he's making you feel.

He'll look up at you with big shiny eyes, while his tongue runs up your folds at a painstaking pace. He lives for the way you pull his head closer by his hair, desperately signaling you want more of him. He'll raise an eyebrow at your desperation, leaning in closer to taste how wet he's already made you. You need him, and he knows it. But he needs to hear it from you.

"What's up, babes? This not enough for you, oh- do you want more of me? Is that it, I'm just tooooo irresistible~"

His eyes will widen when you smile down at him, such a fond expression from someone he loves so dearly is bound to set him off. He'll practically start drooling when you tell him how much you need him.

You'll have a front-row seat. The best spot in the house to watch your mischievous fox turn into a drooling puppy.

The sounds he makes while eating you out are downright filthy.

With his nose bumping your sensitive clit, his tongue dances between your folds like a professional ice skater, performing figure eights and loops that could wow even the toughest critics.

His ears are pink at the way your cunt is gushing into his mouth, brain working overtime as it tries to commit every single sound and twitch and whimper to memory. He starts to lose his mind in between your legs, forgoing oxygen in favor of your scent to sustain him.

The way his tongue moves between your erogenous zones, your oversensitive clit and your puffy folds. He intuitively knows how to keep the pressure steadily building until your legs are squishing the sides of his head.

Your climax comes faster than expected, more quickly than it ever has, and even when your head jerks back and your fingers tangle in his soft blond hair, he keeps going.

He channels small bouts of electrical current from his body into the ball of his tongue piercing.

Then he flattens his tongue against your dripping entrance, toying at your clit with the charged piercing in his tongue.

Cracks of electricity soar through your skin, tingling your spine and making you physically shiver as your mind goes blank. Your hands slacken and fall limp at your sides as you rake in jagged breaths.

In a panic, Denki wrenches himself from his spot between your legs and clutches your head in his hands.

Your eyes are rolled back to the heavens, and just as he's about to ask if you're alive, you mumble out something unintelligible.

"What-- what was that? Come on, say something!" Tears threaten to fall in the corners of his wide eyes.

Taking in as deep a breath as you can manage, your eyes slowly focus in on him, a fucked out smile adorning your face as you gaze up at such a sweet boy. Your voice comes out hoarse, as if you'd been screaming for the last hour.

"I just came so hard I think I saw the afterlife," your eyes trail lazily down to his open mouth, "Can you do that thing with your tongue again?"

"OH GODS, YOU'RE ALIVE!!" He looks about ready to rip out his ponytail.

[walkingcorpse03]

top 10 favorite anime ☆

1. Angels of Death

A darker anime overall, but it has cute and humorous undertones. All of the characters have really cool designs and there are lots of lovable characters if you like stranger personalities. The two main characters have a heavy found family trope and the concept is really interesting and kept me focused the entire time. It’s my all time favorite anime. (Genre: Psychological Horror) 

2. Snow White with the Red Hair

My all time favorite romance anime. It’s very beautiful and the animation is fun to watch and just drop dead gorgeous. It’s one of the only romance anime’s I've seen where 0 characters are sexualized, which is very important to me. This anime has the CUTEST FOUND FAMILY TROPE I’VE EVER SEEN JESUS I LOVE THEM ALL- Also all of the characters are really well written and the story flows really well. It it definitely my comfort anime. (Genre: Fantasy, Romance) 

3. Toilet-bound Hanako-kun

This anime gets the 3rd spot because the story honestly never gets old and is juts so interesting. The art style is also very pleasing to the eye. There are so many lovable characters and it’s just a feel good anime. The design, art style, characters, animation, and voice acting on the sub and dub are just amazing and it’s another one of my comfort anime’s. (Genre: Comedy, Supernatural)

4. Bungou Stray Dogs

I am in love with this anime. It has some of my hands down favorite characters and all of the designs are so cool. All of the characters are so well written and interesting to watch. The story is complex, but has so many meaningful undertones and the animation is beautiful. There are almost too many lovable characters to choose from and they each have their own story which is just as complex as interesting as the main plot. 10/10 I love. (Genre: Action, Comedy, Supernatural)

5. Assassination Classroom

Another anime that can be perceived as either really light-hearted or kinda dark. There is a full cast of really lovable characters like most of the anime’s on list, but Nagisa has a special place in my heart which is why this one is so high up on the list. The anime is really good and has a pretty interesting story and I ended up really attached to some of the characters and the family vibes they all have together. (Genre: Action, Science Fiction, Comedy)

6. Devils Line

Devil’s Line is an acquired taste for some people, which is understandable because the story and concept is pretty dark overall, but the relationships between the characters are just so sweet and they're super interesting to find our more about. I mean a vampire romance??? I think yes. It does have a lot of blood in it so if that is something that makes you uncomfortable this might not be the one for you. This anime is one of my all time favorites and it will be forever. WE NEED A SEASON 2 ISTG- (Genre: Dark Fantasy, Romance) 

7. My Little Monster

This is probably my second favorite romance anime of all time. I love the characters and the art style. It’s just so pretty!! The characters all have their own problems and quirks and it’s one of the only anime’s that has a character that I guess I “kin”. Shizuku is one of my favorite anime characters in general so that also makes this anime have a special place in my heart. No but anyways this anime is honestly one I could watch again and again I love the characters and the story so much. (Genre: Romance, Slice of Life) 

8. Stars Align

The only sports anime on this list because it’s just amazing like that and SEVERELY UNDERRATED. There is not only LGBT+ support and representation, it’s GOOD- The story is amazing and the characters are just so lovable and unique from each other. All of them are amazing and I love them. The ending threw me through a loop like c’mon we need a season 2!! It’s just so emotional and impactful, I just love it Anyways, this one needed to be on list and is hands down my favorite sports anime and one of my favorite anime’s overall. (Genre: Drama, Sports)

9. Yona of the Dawn

FOUND FAMILY! FOUND FAMILY!!! ALL and I mean ALL of the main cast is so lovable and the chemistry between the characters is so cute and it makes this a comfort anime for sure. The story is so interesting and you can see just good character development throughout the entire plot. In addition to the amazing characters and story the animation is beautiful! I just recently watched it and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I actually liked it. (Genre: Adventure, High Fantasy, Romance) 

10. Erased

One of the most emotional and beautiful anime's I’ve ever seen. The story is SO interesting and I think it’s one of the most amazing anime’s ever created. I love all of the characters and the concept is just beyond me. I would recommend this anime to everyone in existence. 100/10 please watch this. (Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Science Fiction) 

__________________________________________________

Honorable Mentions ☆

- Given

GORGEOUS, BEAUTIFUL, AMAZING- I love this damned anime so much. The representation is not only amazing, but the story is really interesting and I because of that I became attached to all of the characters very quickly. (Genre: Drama, Romance) 

- Sk8 the Infinity

I love this anime so much!! All of the characters are so cute and I honestly was really involved in the fandom as well which is rare for me. The story is so cute and I am PRAYING for a second season. (Genre: Comedy, Sports) 

[dgcatanisiri]

Honestly, it wasn't even necessary to have that gap time explained by Shepard's death. Oh, sure, the game later offered some use of the cybernetic implants in some points, from Overlord to the ME3 endgame, but... All they really would have needed to do would be to say that Shepard got sidelined by the Council after ME1. That the Council had decided that the first human Spectre served them better as a symbol than as a field agent, and had them rotated to desk duty for the better part of two years.

To build on that, from there, you could have Miranda and Jacob making an offer to Shepard to get them back in the field, to bypass the Council and do the real work of preparing for the Reapers, and build up to a reveal that they're working for Cerberus, once Shepard is too deep in the Reaper connection to be able to just walk away from this threat.

Because Shepard's death and resurrection honestly has struck me less as a 'solve the time gap' solution and more a 'isn't this cool?' addition. Maybe a justification for the change in class system and abilities from the first to the second game, but it definitely doesn't seem like it was done with more thought than 'this is cool!' and no real consideration of the consequences.

Shepard's death and resurrection are little more than a plot device for the sake of a memorable opening to ME2, and none of the consideration the concept was due. Look no further than the dismissive way that the game handles Liara's involvement - she does this very questionable thing, a thing that people in our world will consider something important enough for them to make a legal document that specifies their wishes for their handling after death. And the game NEVER acknowledges this as morally ambiguous at best.

I mean, this is a bodily autonomy issue - Shepard DIES and Liara decides on her own (and by her own admission, FOR herself, because she "couldn't let [Shepard] go") that she will recover their corpse, hand it off to Cerberus for them to work science that Frankenstein raises a few ethical objections to, and is never anything but celebrated for it, narratively speaking. Her choice is never framed as anything but correct, both on the big picture side and the interpersonal side - she didn't "save" Shepard's life, Shepard was DEAD. And she decided on her own, potentially even locking Shepard's ACTUAL love interest out of the loop, to let Cerberus have them and make to resurrect them.

Miranda regrets wanting to put a control chip in Shepard after her struggles with her father treating her as an object, yet the game NEVER acknowledges that Liara did that to Shepard. Liara did not act in the name of Shepard's bodily autonomy - when someone has a Do Not Resuscitate order, then that is given priority over what next of kin want. She did what SHE wanted with their body. You can argue it was more altruistic than Henry Lawson wanting to use Miranda and Oriana to secure a dynasty, but Liara says outright that she was motivated by selfishness, that she did it because she "couldn't let [Shepard] go."

And the thing really is, I genuinely do believe, wholeheartedly, just on the basis of the opening cutscene of ME2, Cerberus going to any length to bring Shepard back all on their own, no Liara involved. Hell, it particularly fits with the depiction of Cerberus because it would contribute to the narrative of how only Cerberus was willing to try this, that the rest of the galaxy had given Shepard up for dead, so they're the only choice they have to try and stop the Reapers.

This whole plot development really is frustrating because there IS an entire game's worth of development to explore the consequences of coming back from the dead, and, while I will grant that it's a subject that also calls for a level of nuance that the trilogy never really gets to explore anyway, an attempt could have been made. Instead, it's just brushed off, turned into a running gag more than anything else. It's a plot device that has no particular effort put in to even trying to explore it as a narrative and character development and is brushed off afterwards.

Hell, they actually CUT a conversation about it with Ashley in ME3, about what Shepard had experienced after death, and it's genuinely to the detriment of the game as a whole.

If you're going to include a plot point like this, it honestly really does call for a lot exploration and development than BioWare even attempted, and it truly does frustrate me, as a player and as an aspiring writer, because it only amounts to a handful of narrative allusions in terms of what we actually get in game.

And sure, it's easy to backseat game after the fact, but I find it difficult to believe that in the process of the actual game writing no one took the time to think "hey, maybe this is a bigger deal than we're presenting it as, and we should do more with it?" Because the whole game is about Shepard going around and dealing with the psychological traumas of their companions, so MAYBE Shepard dealing with this one trauma you're mandating all Shepards experience should have played a part?

CONFESSION:

I've always disliked the idea of Shepard being dead - and then a hate group bringing them back. Whats worse, Liara, who Shep can be romatically involved with, cooperated with the group to get their remains to the Lazarus Research Station. It just seems such a strange solution for 'we need time to pass between the titles and need a good reason for Shep to be away from all their friends and not know what happened to any of them or what is going on'

And its not like the project is really explored either. Like there are so few implications drawn from it. Shep is asked about some things from the last game (To confirm some game choices) and then thats that. Sure I know the whole thing comes back in the DLC - but then its treated as a one off as well. I mean imagine if Shep was plagued by the doubts of them being a clone as well - or not knowing if they came back right.

You are told Shep is full of implants now - but you literally have the choice to erase the scars forever and never worry about it again! I just wish this was explored more. Like, it kind of reminds me of the body horror of Aliens: Resurrection where Ripley (the galaxy's savior) comes back wrong. How about reaper tec being used in bringing Shep back? Or discovering a cloning facility at the Colleactors ship? There's just so much that could have been done aside of just 'They died and came back like jesus'...

It's such a shame BioWare didnt really choose to explore this further.