#to zero in on what it is they're actually fighting -- a concept is nothing without the people who enforce it

[variousqueerthings]

frank burns is such a great character: he epitomizes rich mediocrity, except he’s possibly not even that rich, his wife is (which is interesting in 1950-something), he became a surgeon because of expectations, he presumably got married because of expectations, he believes in the sanctity of marriage no matter how disgusting it gets, he firmly has to believe in US philosophies of hierarchies and imperialism, because otherwise what is he even doing all of this for, he has two cars and a 35.000 dollar house (or is that two houses and a 35.000 dollar car haha), he’d never make this kind of analysis himself because he is so firmly entrenched in this belief system that he’ll never escape it, he’ll continue to victimize himself and believe that he’s actually being victimized by [insert whoever the news says is the current bad guy that the American good guy is heroically battling, hey that’s him, he’s the American good guy!] and every once in awhile it’s like he’s thiiiiis close to opening up a teensy bit to learn something about himself or culture or tolerance before it’s almost immediately slammed shut, sometimes by the very people who are in a position to offer him change but who are too disgusted by him to see it, he is this close to committing a homicide, I believe he really genuinely deeply loves margaret and because she changes and he doesn’t and her changing creates the ability to know she deserves better than a man who won’t, he inevitably loses her and you know that he will learn absolutely nothing from the experience, you know he’ll go home and paint himself as a hero of war, and then maybe have a terrible relationship with everyone around him until he dies of old age with plenty of money and nobody who cares

he is the stagnancy of a culture of fear, imperialism, “fitting in to society,” capitalism, (shallow) fanaticism, cowardice of belief, military supremacy, and patriarchy, he’s giving us everything (derogatory)

[lacrimosathedark]

The Radioapple Haters™️ are at it again.

This time they're attacking shippers with the newly released Playbill.

There's so many issues with that. Beyond harassing people for ships is dumb.

This is what people are pointing at.

This is on the cast info page. It says Lucifer misses his wife.

So, three things about that.

Firstly, We Been Knew, babe.

His very first appearance, after his daughter says her parents split up, he's in a room covered in pictures of not just said daughter, but her mother too, and he's still wearing a presumed wedding band. If that's not "showing not telling" with a goddamn airhorn, idk how more clear it could get without Lucifer flat out saying he misses Lilith. So like...this is not new info. So there's nothing to really rub in. We knew this.

Secondly, this is in-character Lucifer saying this.

I'm not a professional, but when I was in high school performances, we wrote our own little Playbill bio info things. That seems to carry into professional ones too. If you can read the actual cast, some of the the actors less entrenched in the fandom culture have basically an IMDB of their relevant previous roles, while the ones you see at cons are more personable. Those were written by the actors. So, logically, the character bios are written as if by the characters. This could not be made more obvious.

So, logically, you can read that little above as Lucifer himself actually saying he misses his wife. Which leads me to--

Third, break-ups are messy and painful and Lucifer not moving on, unwilling to remove his ring or call Lilith his ex, doesn't mean they are still together. Hell, they could still even be technically married, doesn't mean they're still romantically entangled.

Look, I know the only seeming one-sided relationships in the show is Vox/Alastor and Adam/Lilith and every other "pair" are together or at least friendly (Chaggie, Huskerdust, Cherrisnake, Staticmoth, Guitarspear) but not every separation has to be a violent resentful split. Lucifer is explicitly Depressed™️ which can be hard for any partner to deal with, especially someone as ambitious as Lilith. It wouldn't be surprising if she, not even cruelly, thought she'd be more successful away from him even if he still loves her.

And all this is on top of the fact that most Radioapple shippers don't expect their ship to happen (some hope it does, some hope it doesn't, I'm personally neutral on the concept), and that a lot of writers and artists explicitly acknowledge and use Lucifer's love for Lilith in Radioapple because people love the drama.

I have several posts listing why one might ship Radioapple so I won't go off about it here, but suffice to say the entanglement between Lilith and Alastor and how the two are similar and different makes interacting with Lucifer interesting from any angle.

This also hurts me personally a bit because a lot of these people are Lucilith shippers and, yall, I'm one of you. I don't want them to get back together for many reasons, but I would love to see endless flashbacks of them obnoxiously in love. Most of my favorite works of fanart aren't even Radioapple, my primary ship, but Lucilith, in large part because of how adorable they are. How indulgent or smitten Lilith can look. How adorably excited or flustered or just happy Lucifer can be.

I love Lucilith. I adore Lucifer. I just also think his interactions with Alastor are funny and intriguing.

We don't need to hate each other. We can try to keep our little sandboxes separate, but we can play nice when we spill into each other, can't we?

I am really just so sick of the silly in-fighting. It costs zero dollars and zero energy to not be a dick. Need to type out a rant to get it out and off your chest? cool. But you can post it privately or delete it instead of going into peoples' ask boxes and and posts to be nasty. Not having the self control and wherewithal to not go out of your way to be a dick to people is honestly pretty pathetic. If you think you're so much better, prove it by being better, or being smug in your space. Making people feel like shit for a nonexistent fictional relationship does literally nothing for anyone and makes YOU look worse.

Dislike the ship all you want. No one cares either way. Just don't waste your limited time in this life making your distaste everyone else's problem.

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Prime: "Season 2"

Eight more episodes of Sonic Prime are out! They're labeled as "season 2" despite just being the next eight episodes of the first (and presumably only) season, allowing Netflix to market it as multiple seasons without having to give the cast and crew raises. They love doing that shit to their original cartoons. Ugh.

Anyway! Last time, I gave the show some leeway because it was still finding its legs. This time, though? We're now two thirds of the way through the series, and sadly, I think it's time to accept the truth:

While there are parts I like, a lot of this show... kinda sucks?

This multiverse sucks and Rouge was robbed

Previously, I noted the pattern of each universe spotlighting a different friend of Sonic's (Tails in New Yolk City, Amy in the jungle world, Knuckles in the pirate world) and predicted that, hopefully, Rouge would get her time to shine next. And with 16 episodes left, surely there's time to explore new worlds that are more interesting than the jungle and pirate worlds. Those were just the warm up act. Right?

...Right?

Nope! That's it! There are no more worlds.

This multiverse show where anything is possible really is just about another Eggman-controlled dystopia world, a jungle world, and a pirate world. That's all they came up with! Just those three, and two dead worlds that don't really count - one a featureless wasteland, the other a ghostly echo of the original Green Hill dubbed "Ghost Hill." (Sonic's friends appear here as holograms stuck repeating a single line each. It gets old immediately.)

The jungle and pirate worlds and their inhabitants being so overwhelmingly generic becomes unforgivable the moment you realize this is all we're gonna get. It just leaves me wishing they'd thrown this whole concept out and finally made a normal Sonic cartoon with no twist in its premise. A few of the new takes here are good, particularly Nine as a darker riff on Tails, but so many of them don't feel anything like the fun characters they're supposed to be. They're stock cartoon characters wearing the Sonic casts' skins.

I'll admit my bias is showing, but god, Rouge is REALLY done dirty by this setup. The normal Rouge we see in the first episode is so fun for how briefly she appears, but then in all the other worlds she's reduced to a generic action girl with zero personality. What's her purpose, exactly, when every AU version of Amy is ALSO a straightforward action girl? It drives me absolutely insane that they gave us a PIRATE ROUGE and she doesn't care about treasure. They do nothing with this! How!!!!!!!! She's just never gonna get her turn. It's so obvious that Rouge is only in this show so that they can have another girl, but you could swap her out with another character like Blaze and it'd make no difference.

Speaking of the pirates, though...

The way things play out in the pirate world is so stupid

Previously, with the Paradox Prism shard within reach, Captain Dread Knux was regressing into his old obsessive personality. I'm fine with this. Sonic and Dread both want the shard, they're gonna fight over it. Obvious stuff. But the actual impact it has on the story is maybe the stupidest bit of writing in this entire show so far.

Basically, while fighting a couple of the Eggmen and their robots at sea, Sonic has to briefly run over to the enemy ship to fight them and grab the Paradox Prism shard while Dread and his crew remain back on their ship. Dread goes "Oh my god, look! Sonic's abandoning us! Traitor!" While Sonic is... like 200 feet away. Still in clear view. Fighting the guys who are trying to kill them. Retrieving Dread's beloved treasure for him.

And yet, Dread's crew buys this! And when Sonic runs right back over with the shard in hand, they're all like "HOW DARE YOU BETRAY US" and turn on him.

It's just. What?!

This isn't a huge part of the "season," but I highlight it as maybe the worst moment of the show's character writing. I'm reminded of Thorn Rose's backstory from last time, where she was depicted as suddenly snapping one day when she saw her friends pick one too many berries in the jungle. Sometimes a character just needs to pivot for the story to work, and they aren't really interested in getting there smoothly.

The Chaos Council fucking sucks

I tried so hard to like these guys, but they drag the show down so much.

The choice to have a team of five different Eggmen really just means that Eggman has been split into five one-note characters. Four of them revolve entirely around the most trite, predictable, boomer-ass jokes based on their ages. The teenage one is whiny and just wants to play video games. The young adult one is a vegan hipster who does yoga. The old one is cranky about all the whippersnappers and has a bad back. The baby is a baby. These are jokes that would've been tired if this show aired 20 years ago.

The odd man out is Mister Doctor Eggman, the middle-aged one with a toupee who's the stand-in for regular Eggman. But even he kinda sucks. The other four all being one-note joke characters means that he has to be the straight man of the group, so he's just very dry and serious and plot-focused without any of Eggman's fun eccentricities. He's neither particularly funny nor particularly sinister, which is just about the worst place for an Eggman to be.

He doesn't even have any incompetent robot lackeys to bounce off of, because the unfunny alternate age Eggmen fill the quota for bumbling secondary villains. But also, like... Orbot and Cubot are in this show! They were in the first episode! Where are they? God, I never thought I'd miss them so much...

But, okay. It's not ALL bad.

The highlights

There's a recurring theme here, which is that the best episodes are the ones where Sonic is pitted against a foe who can match his speed and they just let the animation carry it.

The first of the new episodes is mostly about Sonic fighting Shadow, and BOY is their fight fun to watch. Said fight happens because Shadow blames Sonic for shattering the universe and doesn't trust him to fix things. Shadow wants to restore their world, but he refuses to see the various AU counterparts as the same people Sonic once knew, and he doesn't really care what happens to them. Ultimately, though, he begrudgingly accepts that Sonic really is the only one who can hop between dimensions for Plot Reasons, and therefore lets him go try to do things the nice way. He sadly spends most of his time waiting around in the void between worlds, but in the last episode of the batch he and Sonic get to team up against the Chaos Council's forces and it's very cool.

As far as recent interpretations of Shadow go, this is a good one. He's a great foil for Sonic, which just makes me wish he could travel with Sonic to the different worlds. He's cynical and overly pragmatic in his approach, but his points aren't entirely wrong. His anger feels justified. They even let him have some snark! And Ian Hanlin is really great in the role - definitely a contender for Shadow's best voice ever. He just sounds so natural.

The other speedster Sonic fights is Chaos Sonic, the Chaos Council's take on Metal.

He can talk! Deven is basically doing a Jaleel impersonation for him? People are very mixed on this.

The idea behind Chaos Sonic is to turn Sonic's obnoxious smack talk and zingers back around on him, and I don't hate this idea, even if a lot of fans find him annoying compared to Metal Sonic. (Some comparisons have been made to Archie's Shard, but I assume this is a coincidence.) Like the rest of the script, his dialogue certainly isn't anything to write home about, but the fights he gets into with Sonic and co. are so damn fun and dynamic that I have to like him. I also like how expressive his eyes are on his dome screen face, and the animators have a ton of fun with the fact that his torso and head can rotate 360 degrees.

Unfortunately, he's destroyed at the end of his debut episode. I'm praying he gets rebuilt, because this show desperately needs better villains than the Chaos Council.

Again, the animation in Prime is maybe the best animation in any official Sonic media, period. I just wished I liked the characters and worlds enough to be invested in more of the fights. It's hard to care about the dozenth group battle against the generic Eggforcer bots and the baby in his Fisher-Price mech.

The note we end on

After fighting a giant glowing replica of the normal Eggman for... some reason? Episode 16 ends with Sonic and Nine getting into an argument over what to do with the Paradox Prism shards. Sonic wants to restore his original world, but Nine still wants to create a new, better world out of the one that's just an empty wasteland, believing he doesn't belong anywhere else. Nine angrily runs off with the shards, and Sonic is distraught as he realizes that Shadow was seemingly right about how he shouldn't trust Nine.

I kind of like this conflict, mostly because Nine is the standout character of this show. But my main problem is that we don't know what will happen when everything is fixed.

The logical assumption is that the alternate worlds will just... stop existing, right? That must be the idea if Sonic and Nine are treating restoring the original world and creating a new one in the Shatterverse as mutually exclusive options, right? If the Shatterverse disappears, will Nine and the rest all stop existing, too? The show seems unwilling to discuss this possibility, so I'm left not really knowing what the stakes are in this conflict. Nine becomes a whole lot more sympathetic and Sonic becomes a whole lot more monstrous if restoring the world will erase most of this show's cast from existence, but the thought that this could even happen doesn't seem to have crossed Sonic's mind. Sonic seems to want to take his AU friends back to the regular Green Hill - he at least wants to introduce Nine to his normal friends - but like... he can't really do that, can he? They're not gonna have four Tailses running around.

I don't really know what direction this is all headed in. I guess we just have to keep watching, even if I'm past the point of accepting that this show is mostly very mid.

It's just frustrating that everyone else working on this show is clearly giving it their all while the writers at Man of Action phone it in for so much of its runtime. The scripts drag this show down so, so hard. There are moments and episodes I like, but you have to slog through so much mediocrity to get there.

[gaywatch]

So I started watching the first episode of The Sign, right? I'd had it on my computer for a couple/few days and couldn't immediately remember what it was actually about, but I knew it was a new Thai BL genre mashup thing I'd seen on my dash and that's good enough for me.

A team of special agents infiltrate a big warehouse/facility place at night. Okay. Cool. There are bombs and a hostage? Sure. One guy tells other guys what to do, so he must be the leader, and he tells a few guys to focus on the bombs and the others to find the hostage. They encounter bad guys when they get inside, and some of the fight choreo is cool and some of it is absurd, but I'm just happy to be seeing an action-oriented BL series and I've seen worse crimes committed by a low budget, no big deal.

But it's been a few minutes into the first episode now, and I'm starting to wonder a few things. We have stakes, technically: there are bombs and a hostage--it would be bad if the bombs went off while the team was inside because they would get hurt or killed, and by default we don't want to see a hostage harmed.

But we have no context. At all. I'm five minutes in and I know nothing. Who's the hostage? Who are the bad guys? What do the bad guys want? Why do I care? I'm assuming this is like some quick action-y beginning and we'll cut to a main character at some point to see the "real" first scene of the show, but now it's been like seven minutes and we're still here in this warehouse place. If the special ops team are supposed to be the cast, I haven't heard a single scrap of dialogue that wasn't about the task at hand. I haven't even seen anyone's face yet.

Tagging @bengiyo, @lurkingshan 'cause they were interested in a side comment I made about this in some tags.

Even when they finally start to pull up their masks and talk, it's all immediate business (which is somewhat understandable given they're in danger but we're still lacking important context). Who am I rooting for? Who are these dudes? Why is this one sequence taking over ten minutes without giving me anything or anyone to latch onto? Are they assuming I read a blurb on the premise of the show and then immediately hit play? Because that's a cardinal sin--you never assume that everyone who watches your show or reads your book will know the premise, even in this day and age. You always lay in the necessary exposition/context to immediately anchor the audience into the premise and main character (or cast). (The only time you can assume everyone already knows at least the broad strokes of a concept is in fanfiction, but even then there could still be changes you made that you need to clue people in on from the get go. )

Then Tharn got his first premonition about Phaya, and I was like 'ohhhh, this is a story about a guy with some form of precognition who's in some sort of special forces. I wish they could have brought this up ten minutes ago, but okay.'

And finally, the big reveal: it's all a test! They're trainees, not officers! Well, that certainly explains why we got zero context all this time, because they didn't want to give away The Trick. Except it didn't feel like a clever rug pull at all. Worrying that the audience will clue in to what's going on doesn't mean you get to just Not Tell Them. You mislead them instead. The team could have easily rattled off the necessary details and context about the mission--after the training reveal, we would have chalked it up to practice mission prep. And with no context or reason to care about anything, I sat there for fifteen minutes only to be told that I didn't have to care anyway because it was all staged.

I would have taken any context, even something super cliche and ham fisted. "Okay boys, remember: our old mission commander is being held hostage in there and they'll kill him unless we hand over their psychotic leader. It took us weeks to track them down to this warehouse, and if they escape again it's game over. Don't let me down!" or something, anything for me to latch onto besides Dudes Doing Things. It's okay to mislead the audience, in fact you pretty much have to in order to pull the well worn "it was all an exercise" trick in the first place.

And fifteen minutes to pull all that off was a rather astonishing waste of screen time. The opening scene in the 2009 reboot of Star Trek establishes a handful of characters, makes you care about them, takes them through an amazing high stakes action sequence, and has you in tears at the end as we watch a guy we've only known for a few minutes sacrifice himself to save what's left of the crew as the film's protagonist--his son--is literally born, and it does all of that in almost half the time.

Compare that to The Sign, where in fifteen minutes we know: dudes in black fight things, one guy has premonitions, and actually they're trainees. No complexity, emotional stakes, or context beyond that. I was floored.

But what really made my jaw drop came after that.

A first episode has a lot of heavy lifting to do. You're introducing a world, a cast, promising the type of fun that's to be had, kickstarting the central relationships, etc etc. One of the most fundamental aspects to all this set up is to let us know why the main character/cast is here, what they're trying to do, and why it matters if they fail. And the entire first episode of the sign doesn't have that. At all. Period.

Oh, we're introduced to characters, the harsh training, Tharn's gift, Tharn and Phaya's initial dynamic, but once again we're given no context or emotionally relevant exposition. Who are these dudes? Why are they training? Why do they care about becoming special ops? What's their motivation? Goals? Obstacles in the way of that goal? Motive/Goal/Obstacle is the engine of story, and we're not given a single one until--and this is what blew my mind--almost halfway through the second episode.

In episode two we finally get a line from Tharn's bff about how if Tharn doesn't get onto the special ops team he won't be able to investigate his dad's (parents? can't remember) mysterious death.

A goal! A reason to care about Tharn's training! Emotional investment! Except it's coming way, way, wayyyyyyyyyyy too late. We should have known about this in the first five minutes of episode one. They should've found another fake hostage, Tharn should've lifted his mask and said "shit, if we fail this I'll never have what I need to find out how dad died." THANK YOU, now I have a reason to care.

I was shocked at such a massive oversight, like I'm gonna remember it as a cautionary example for a long time 'cause that's just wild to me.

[ultraflavour]

Adventures in Shared World-Building

I just got finished my first adventure of Fabula Ultima, using the shared world-building method they describe in the book.

For the most part, it was a very cool experience to conjure a whole-ass universe out of nothing, that anyone in the group could pick up and run with. But I made a few crucial mistakes that led to me very quickly falling out of love with the setting that the group had created. I want to talk about them here, so that people know what they're getting into before they jump in feet-first.

Mistake #1: Not Specifying the Genre Before Session Zero

This was by far the biggest blunder that I made.

Fabula Ultima has three major genres that it supports: Natural Fantasy, High Fantasy, and Techno Fantasy. This is a decision that you have to make before any other world-building can happen, because it significantly changes what's possible and what's thematically appropriate for the setting you've selected.

The Fabula Ultima rulebook doesn't really specify when you need to make the decision between these genres. My assumption was that, like most of the other world-building decisions, it would be made as a group during Session Zero. Whether or not that was the intention of the authors, it was a bad idea for my table.

What ended up happening was almost too predictable. Because I hadn't made any hard decisions about what genre the game should be set in before getting to the table, the setting elements ended up being all over the place.

Two players showed up with what amounted to Cyberpunk capitalist dystopias, while the rest showed up with much more High Fantasy concepts that would have been much more at home in something like Song of Ice and Fire or the Kingkiller Chronicle. It ended up being a genre mismatch that I was not equipped to deal with.

Looking back on it, there were things that I could have done to make things work. The problem was that I was already fighting an uphill battle to desperately try to include the things that the players had created in the game, and didn't have any energy left over to try to create some sort of deeper thematic meaning out of the very disparate setting elements that had been introduced.

Action item: The thing I should have done was decide on an overall setting before the game started, rather than leaving it to chance that everything my players brought to the table would just magically coalesce into a setting. When you're building a house, you build the foundation and the frame first, then put the walls up.

So don't be afraid to make some big decisions about the world before the players get to Session Zero. Also, make sure the players are aware of the decisions you've made so that they don't show up with ideas that clash with your vision.

Mistake #2: Not having enough of a Stake in the World

Another thing that I somewhat misinterpreted from the guidelines in the Fabula Ultima book was that I, the Game Master, was supposed to act solely as a referee and to help shape the players' ideas, without introducing any of my own to the party.

I do think that's largely correct, but it creates a huge problem: I, the GM, ended up having very little buy-in into the world. The players ended up coming up with a lot of stuff, which left me with very little space to fill in with my own stuff later on.

This dovetails into Mistake #3 but I want to point out why this was a problem before moving on. I actually do think that the GM should not introduce their own setting elements during the world-building process, because the game is ultimately about the players and their characters.

If I introduced my own setting elements, then they would be the only ones I'd be focusing on, because obviously I'm going to be more interested in my own ideas than the ideas of the players. So my solution was to not introduce any of my own setting elements, and instead leave everything up to the players, simply acting as the moderator for their ideas.

But the problem this creates is that when you show up to the table, you're not excited about what you're doing in the game because none of it is yours. The players are having a bunch of fun because they built the sand castles and now they get to be the ones to knock them over, while you only built the box.

I know that a lot of GMs balk at the idea of shared world-building because a big part of the fun of being the GM for them is being the one who gets to decide on everything related to the world. The players bring characters, you bring the universe. That's how it's worked for a long time.

But I also think that "The GM decides on everything related to the story" leads to the dreaded Railroad. This is a big part of the reason why I wanted to do a game with shared world-building in the first place. The problem was that I went way too far in the other direction, and ended up with a setting that I felt like I had no real stake in.

Action item: Being more selective about what genre I wanted to run a game in early would have helped here (see Mistake #1). But also, taking some time to introduce setting elements after the world-building session wrapped up would have helped a lot here. I was too worried about trying to incorporate the players' ideas as much as possible that I left no room for myself to create things that I was excited about, and this ended up hurting my enjoyment tremendously.

Mistake #3: Going too Big too Early

The task of shared world-building is big. You're sitting down to create a whole fictional world out of nothing except the fecund imaginations of the players present.

When I first saw that the Fabula Ultima "Press Start" guide expected the players to have everything done in one session and still have time left over for gameplay, I balked. Hard. HA! You expect me and my table to make all of these decisions about the world AND characters in a couple of hours? No way.

Well... There's two sides to that story. Because yes, I do actually think it's a bit outrageous to expect the players to do everything and get to gameplay in one session, but it's not unreasonable to expect the task of world-building to be done in an hour to 90 minutes.

Here's the thing: It's very easy for the players to get carried away. After all, they're filling a world with their cool ideas, and they don't even have to worry about executing on them. That's your job.

You, the GM, are the one who needs to take the ingredients you've been handed and make soup with it. When the players keep excitedly piling ideas onto you, you start to lose focus on the story at hand.

A concrete example of this mistake in action was that the world we created ended up with two maps, one for one hemisphere, one for another. On one map we had 3 continents, on the other, a single large continent.

Well, the problem was that in the time we allotted to play the game, we only really had time to explore (partially) one continent. To incorporate all the other world-building elements into the game, I had to get very creative, and it ended up being mostly unsatisfying. Rather than focus in on a smaller set of concepts that the players were the most interested in, I ended up trying to shoehorn in a ton of setting elements that weren't directly pertinent to the adventure the players were on.

This also ties into Mistake #2. Every setting element the players introduce is something that you, the GM, are going to feel compelled to execute on, and that's not going to leave a lot of room for the things that you are interested in.

Action item: Keep the setting development focused on a smaller area that the players actually have some chance of exploring. Don't be afraid to be vague about setting elements that are far away from where the action takes place. You will end up wasting a lot of time and energy making big decisions about places that the players have no chance of actually exploring, rather than focusing more closely on the area that you know for sure they are going to be interacting with.

Remember, you can always fill in stuff later, if it ends up that the players get really excited about some faraway place and want to travel there. If that happens, you can do a second world-building session to flesh those places out.

Another really good reason to keep things small is that going too big can lead to Mistake #4...

Mistake #4: Over-Committing to Exploring the Whole World

"Holy crap, a FOURTH mistake, did you do anything right?" Well, I've only done this three times, and arguably each time has been unsuccessful, so yeah, I think there's room for a bit of introspection here.

After all, the task of world-building is fun, but it is also complicated. And as we've seen above, there are a lot of ways to screw it up.

For mostly the reasons I've listed above (plus some external factors that were a major drain on my mental resources) I ended up burning out on the game way sooner than I thought I would. The problem was that I had told the group that I would try to run the game for at least 4 months, then start paying off storylines to bring things to a close over the next 2 months after that.

This was way too ambitious, though I couldn't have really known that at the time. I thought that I really needed to commit to the game in order to make the rest of the players feel rewarded for the effort they put in. I didn't want to disappoint anyone by cutting the game short after all the effort it took to create the world.

When you create a shared world between a bunch of different people, there is a tendency to want to reward that investment. After all, everyone put a little piece of themselves into the world. It's like your baby after that.

But at the end of the day, you are building this setting to run a game in. You want players to feel rewarded for their investment, sure, but at the same time, you don't want the game to feel like work. As soon as you start running the game out of a sense of obligation instead of out of genuine excitement, you end up burning out and ending the game in a rushed fashion.

It's often tempting to make big promises, so that players invest their own energy into making the game as big and exciting it can be. You don't want to break those promises, because the next time you want to get the players on board with your idea, the less likely they're going to buy in.

You, the GM, should always be realistic about how much you're able to commit to. Nobody is entitled to your time and energy. It's better to make a promise you know you can keep, and then figure out how you (and the rest of the table) are feeling after that first adventure arc wraps up.

Action item: The obvious solution here is to just not make big promises about how "big" or "epic" the game is going to be. If you can only run the game for a month or two, that's fine. One of the big advantages of the shared world-building method is that everyone at the table has a (mostly) equal stake in the world. That means any one of your players should be able to pick up the task of GMing from you if you find that you're unable to do it.

And hey, here's the thing: If nobody else wants to do the job of GMing, then that's a tacit admission that they recognize that it's a wholly different beast to be a player than it is to be the GM. This is a truth that I think every player of TTRPGs needs to understand, because it has a huge effect on whether or not you actually end up with a full game at the end of the day.

Shared World-Building is still Fun

I don't want to make it seem like the task of shared world-building is fraught with pitfalls. It's actually a very rewarding experience, even if you do it incorrectly.

And it's not like other worldbuilding styles don't have their own pitfalls. Homebrewing a setting by yourself is a ton of work, and you don't always know if the players are going to be excited about your ideas if you never bring them into the creative process. Packaged settings can be good, but you also have no stake in them because they're by definition not yours.

I would very strongly encourage everyone to at least try this style of world-building, especially if you've always just done your own homebrew. It's a very enriching experience, and can be very eye-opening about the creative ideas of other players.

You can gain a lot of insight into the other people at the table by what types of things they get excited about. That can help you to better tailor your own homebrew to your players in the future. It can even give you ideas for how you can incorporate the ideas of Fabula Ultima into your own TTRPG campaigns.

While you might not necessarily be able to totally hand the keys to the kingdom over to the players in the case of something like D&D or Pathfinder, you can still get some input into your setting from them to help you flesh out the things that they're actually interested in exploring. If you show up to the game having already made all of the most interesting story decisions, you will find that your players have no room to move within your framework, and end up feeling railroaded.

Giving your players a feeling of buy-in into your setting increases their investment in your game, even if you are ultimately the one who's going to determine the story. It also increases the potential for emergent storytelling, when your players' ideas interact nicely with the ideas you came up with for your game.

Well, Anyways

I think that shared world-building can be a really cool method to enhance the tried-and-true homebrew methodology that most GMs are used to. But I also don't think that it's a magic bullet solution, and like a lot of tools, it can be used incorrectly.

I hope that I've helped, and maybe you think these tips don't apply, but I assure you that these tips are all borne out of a lot of time spent screwing these things up. Making mistakes is how we learn, and you should forgive yourself for screwing up. At least you tried, and that's more than a lot of people can say.

[desultory-novice]

How do you feel about the Crowned Doomer? Or, more accurately, how do you feel about the idea of the Master Crown riding a Doomer around to try to survive long enough to find Magolor again, or some other way to keep its form (which ended up being the apple); is it possible the crown depends on a host to survive? Is it possible that, although a State of Dark Matter, it can't quite exist without someone or something to play host to its energy, even if they resist it like Landia?

Anon, you bring up such interesting questions! The Crowned Doomer is indeed a very fascinating creature. Looking back over it's pause text...

The boss of all Doomers has become a black-winged subjugator powered by the shards of the crown...and he's after Magolor's red fruit! Is this payback for making Kirby gather those ship parts?!

...the last part in particular seems to hint that this is the same Grand Doomer Kirby and the gang fought: that Magolor should have to face the same Doomer, since that fight always seems to represent the part of the game where the quest takes a turn for the dangerous. (Interestingly, it takes a turn for the "impossible" for the Grand Doomer is impossible to beat without Super Abilities. If Kirby didn't have those, that would be a total party wipe...)

But since this one doesn't need that, we can assume that it's weakened, maybe? (Or a parallel version of the Grand Doomer.)

As for the Master Crown choosing to possess it, it is interesting to think that the Crown might NEED a host. This theory gains a lot of weight with DX coming out and (by virtue of all the mistletoe references) making it pretty clear the Crown is a living creature and a parasite. And parasites require hosts....

And I think you may be right that it seems to have possessed the Doomer in order to find/take possession of Magolor again.

I've seen some takes (that are heavy on HC but interesting nonetheless) that True Arena Magolor Soul may be what happens when Epilogue Magolor LOSES to the Master Crown. That the subtle differences in the fight are because Ragolor doesn't have the power/energy/lifeforce to continue resisting, like Main and EX Magolor does. Or that the Master Crown has a better grip on him the second time and that's why it refuses to shatter.

(And maybe that's why Magolor gives you the apple. He was trying to regain his own power in the form of a large Gem Apple and this is all that's left of it... and he gives it to you in his last moments... bawww...!)

But that one works with the concept that it WANTS to get back to him again, if it re-possesses him after a fictionalized "defeat."

-

I am interested in the idea that Dark Matter maybe can't JUST form out of nothing. Obviously, I toy with that concept in my Apologies AU - that Dark Matter Swordsman was born from the shell of another person. The fact that 02 seems to inhabit Zero's shell has very interesting implications this way too.

Because you know how HAL has never come out and said they're the same thing? ...Maybe they really aren't? Maybe a different form of Dark Matter really did possess Zero's empty "shell." But what is possessing that shell isn't Zero. It's a different Dark Matter.

-

Although the Master Crown leaves us yet another puzzle, when you start to ask "Can it even exist without a host?"

Because the Master Crown comes back, even after Ragolor destroys it. It comes back because Landia is wearing it in Merry Magoland!!

(One has to assume Magolor eventually got over his fears or any traumas related to the Crown or he would not have let that THING back in his presence. Of course, Magoland is X number of years later so that's not too much of a stretch.)

So...how does the Crown do that? How does it survive? The Gem Apple tree in Kirby Clash has enough elements of the Master Crown (golden leaves) to suggest it lives on in that form but we run into another issue which is... how/when/where does the "play forever" FtP game that is (Super) Kirby Clash... end?

It kind of doesn't.

I've actually heard a theory that I both like and hate which is that Main Mode Magolor comes back to life after some another dimension wanderings and reappears on Popstar. Friends reunited, la la la. But that EX Mode Magolor goes on to become Epilogue Magolor who goes on to become Clash Magolor who... never leaves the Clash dimension to see Popstar again...

I think it's interesting but the person in me who doesn't like eternal separation stories HATES THIS THEORY OMG ; _ ;

-

...A-Anyway, I'm not here to disprove that idea because I can't since everything is purposefully vague and we support all kinds of theories, good and painful, on this blog, but it does leave you with the question of how'd the Master Crown get back into Crown form if it, like EX Magolor, is stuck in Kirby Clash?

Maybe the Lor came and found Magolor in the Clash verse or maybe, with Dimensional Vanish, he's able to come and go as he pleases and when Team Kirby is out fighting monsters, he's building Merry Magoland.

You'd certainly think that, thematically, it makes the most sense if the Magolor who went through the Epilogue got to be the same Magolor who makes Merry Magoland. Especially since it's EX Magolor who tells you this dream of his in the first place. So, if Mago can get back, then I guess the Master Crown can get back too? (Maybe Mago only hangs around long enough until the Master Crown, err, blooms, from the Gem Apple Tree?)

Maybe that too is part of Magolor's repentance. For all that the Crown did nightmarish things to him, part of "Paying for his sins" is not just to destroy it, but to try and set things right. I always feel like there's some REASON we see the fall of Halcandra in the background. It could be that Magolor and the Crown have a more complex relationship that just abusive cursed artifact and victim.

-

OH BUT SPEAKING OF!!

-

Back to the Crowned Doomer, yeah? And those gear horns its got on its head?? (And that most of the other bosses have?)

It's kind of weird for all these Crown-related things to have this gear motif, right? Wouldn't the gears be the motif for like... the techy Ancients? No reason for them to be in Epilogue Space...

And why would the Crowned Doomer sport gears when it didn't have anything like that when it (or another version of it...) was the Grand Doomer?

So...what IF the gears - you know, the ones Magolor is wearing - are some kind of symbol of the Master Crown? It's out there, I know, but Magolor was already under its sway by the time we first meet him! Yet he's NOT wearing them in the Clash verse. (Although he puts them back on after upgrading his shop, so, uh...)

Or maybe the crown's energy and Magolor's own energy got mixed together during that incident and the Crown is actually giving its new hosts "Magolorian" traits now, similar to how it absorbed anger et all from the previous crowned kings.

The Master Crown has taken something from Magolor, something that it carries to all future hosts. (Wonder what Landia thinks about the Crown having a bit of Magolor in it now, haha...!)

[blaiddraws]

Is there a summary of the fulcrum au?

undoubtedly but i don't feel like looking for it so. quick recap!

twin dragons au -- ingo is Zekrom and emmet is Reshiram. the way it works in this is that they can be Either human Or dragon but not physically both at the same time. zero dragon traits in human form, etc.

which is why it's Really Freaking Weird And Alarming when emmet finds himself half-reshiram'd one day. (especially once he later realizes ingo is missing--)

anyway. ingo gets eeby deebied and something about the trip to hisui smushes his human and pokemon form together. and since he and emmet/reshiram are so closely connected it kinda. pushed back to him as well.

various side notes under the cut;

- ingo arrives in hisui with no memories, but does have a somewhat easier time regaining them, especially once akari shows up and helps him

- dad ingo. adopts akari. we love to see it

- he also isn't technically a warden but the pearl clan lets him do what he wants. they treat him like a person, for the most part, but not really like a Human, if that makes sense. he's treated normally but there's always a strange tone to most of his interactions with the residents of hisui.

- pearl clan also decided he must be a gift from sinnoh. adaman saw this, decided ingo is a gift from HIS sinnoh and actually belongs with his own clan. ingo ignores this and hangs out in the highlands the majority of the time. but does spend a lot more time with the pearl clan because they're the ones that found him and took him in

- meanwhile. emmet stays out of public eye for a hot minute. and by that i mean a month or so. which isn't that surprising considering his brother disappeared. people figure he's just trying to cope.

- but. he's driving himself insane he can't stay away from the subway that long he has GOT to get back. or he will die. (he says this, dramatically, to elesa). and there's no leads on getting him back to normal.

- (technically, he could take a trip to sinnoh and call up arceus. but with ingo missing he feels that leaving the region would be a bad idea and totally irresponsible.)

- so he just. Shows Up At Work One Day. all half-reshiram'd. as if there is nothing wrong. depot agents, after a moment of baffled staring, have to just roll with it.

- the Public, however. dhkshsksbsksjd

- all he can say is that he has No Idea why he is Like This (true) and it happened when ingo disappeared (true). "But why do you look so much like Reshiram?" "you expect me to know the answer to that?? i'm a train conductor." (blatantly skirting around the truth without directly lying).

- eventually unova accepts that. yeah okay their subway boss is fluffy now. weirder things have happened tbh.

- surprisingly enough, the whole thing stays pretty well contained within unova, ESPECIALLY nimbasa. emmet is THEIR subway boss and he's Going Through It. he deserves to be treated well. etc.

- ANYEEWAYE. cut back to hisui. ingo adopts akari etc etc etc. she starts helping him regain his memory. and the more things he remembers, the easier it IS to remember.

- once akari finishes the pokedex, he remembers a significant amount of his human life. not quite enough to be Normal, but a fair amount. (he also remembers some stuff from being a legendary dragon, but a legendary dragon is a LOT more long-lived than a human. there's a Lot there to remember. and is a lot more... nebulous of a mind than a human's.)

- akari takes him with her when she goes to fight arceus. ingo has a little chat <3. arceus puts ingo and emmet back how they were before, because they cannot exist in the long-term with their forms smushed together like that.

- (Emmet wakes up one day human again, doom-brains himself into thinking ingo died despite how that would be impossible (considering zekrom is literal deity, the embodiment of the concept of ideals.). spends like two hours like that before elesa and drayden and iris have to knock some sense into him.)

- arceus. like. because Ingo asked nicely, arceus retcons (not Really retcons because it knew ingo would ask this when it did it. time is weird) kyurem into having a human form. caveats of this includes. kyurem doesn't Know or Remember that they're kyurem. they can't shift into kyurem. etc. because kyurem shouldn't be able to have a human form in the first place because of their. them-ness. their existence. makes it impossible. but arceus makes it possible because ~hadwavey seals their power away and uses its own to keep the human form intact idk~ Arceus-ness.

- ingo and akari spend the next few weeks tying things up and saying goodbyes before they go home. (ingo goes around saying his goodbyes and expressing his gratitude to people. COMPLETELY forgetting to mention the very important fact that he was that one dragon guy. he goes around to the same people a second time, significantly more mortified, and explains.) (akari was there most of the time and let it happen. it was hilarious.)

- ANYWAY eventually ingo and akari go home. happy reunions time!!!

- (and then, of course. we get into what is almost like the postgame plot equivalent of the au dkshksdhksjsjd. Who Is Kyurem?)

[captainkurosolaire]

Prompt #11 ~ Reclaimed Living

♫Overpowered♫

Another cleansing of the soul came with reinvigorated steps loudly revisiting a place of his bearings. His latest and most formidable enemy awakened him from a ghostly remnant he served. He wasn't the same. The last Crew finding them behind his follow weren't the same that collapsed, or buried with his old ship. The rover returned to a rancid pub front-steps. In a dead and remote location, where used to be celebration, came to cease. Now it was just nesting drunken sailors who held no direction. Majority of the Crew that served a Captain were family members, other associates, all drowned and dead brought by his endeavors, curses, afflictions. It was never easy to confront a past, but proper healing cannot begin without it, that's where his wisdom had found of recent date. It was the most despicable and deplorable thing a feeling could present in a leader. The people under your helm perished but the Captain didn't go with his ship and men. Although all held belief he remained deceased, this would be soon uncovered in a twist. He unstrapped his holstered revolver. Swallowed nerves. Then proceeded. Inside were grievers those at the bottom of bottles, they felt too. Sapped of motivation. Chained, jailed, life had no meaning. The peers that died, killed them too. Outsiders didn't come to this enclosed location. So as creaking old planks of wood were heard they drew alert. Until a stoppage. A shadow between the doors. Even in their rancid and intoxicated states they drew arms. The two loose doors flung open as the perished ghost became alive. In a series of insurmountable clicks and aim's hundreds of trained gun's re-positioned. Dirks, brass knuckles, a plethora of last resistance shown. If they were to be raided, they'd go with bangs.

"Minfilia's oversized tits, blimey o' bastard... I don't believe it. Ye chose a poor choice t' ruse us n' appearance." They didn't follow a leader. Each of their voices left were who seized first in their mass. The interloper had them cautiously on standby. "Nay. It b' me." The Seeker discarded his only means of defense and slid a kick over. They had the right to take their shots. Tension was stacked in disbelieving soaring heights. Each still felt a beguile footman who stood at their gate. "Ye inconceivable fool. T'is a reason why, Dead men tell no tales..." Cocking mechanisms of flintlocks surged. Another chimed in when Captain went to peace. "Best ye tell a helluva' tale. Of what ye live..." This served a code, a message in a bottle, but parchment became waterlogged, useless. If there was ever a moment etched within his time, to become unspoken, now was it. He would be a preaching to a choir. Chewing and clacking his gums, he'd lower the tricorne to his heart. A ferocity lit in his hues, rebellious. "From conception we're met with opposition. There ain't a single-choice upon what we calls origins being dealt, whether by some invisible puppeteer, deemed an author, or some putrid sack ov' excuse-spinner." Revving up, "Educated, groomed, taught t' be the same way, that results t' a history never ending but repeats, wondering why we live under th' same shadows ov' all our dated descendants who fell. Constantly wishing or reflecting back, things were simpler, better, desiring do-overs. No-one looks forward t' a clock, only backwards when bloomed." The fulfillment of dreaming in youth, gets devoured, in due age, later when matured. What could've been, spawns. He took brash steps even while being trained on with blunderbusses. "Thrust into environments where eating metal, doing whatever it takes to survive! --- They call us problems." Speaking out to the rebellious that still swelled, "Sentence t' unexplained diseases, festering rot n' us. We start giving into instability, alongside insecurities, it racks us into a trail of bottomless failures, believing we've nothing of importance... Told by our closest endearing whispers, who mutter the same air of our doubting thoughts... It encourages demons, t' vices, to a point, a visit only ov' ferryman can accept us." He registered and conveyed a lot of personal emotion. "Bein' pirate everyone thinks our take ov' freedom means pure unadulterated chaos, anarchy, destruction. To be feared... Truth it means we're standing against what governs us all, growing bone's where they've gone missing." Showing teeth and taking a stand on top of a tavern table between, the disheartened. "Authority, Order! These things are presented as principal things that are required to function, n' keep peace... But it's artificially made-up. Think to yourselves! How many label's have been created to categorize yourself? To try separating you from being an individual, just so someone can stand-out against on a perch! you don't even know how t' stand anymore! ...Thinking by being on your two-legs that's all? You b' so far drowned, you cannot impose those who wear their crowns, cause you accept it as all-purpose... O' if a mass-herd flocks, it's natural to' fall in that line and try to be included at all costs, thinking it'll grant you an audience, notice, give you validation." His speech began boiling up, resonating something in a few, they became domesticated too. "Words, like 'martyr', 'rebel', thrown around. Placed to maintain control, they subjugate, they'll bend rules, whatever it takes! They'll use their fancy speeches t' rile you into a false-sense to stay kneeled over, stating it's a 'we' or 'us', ignoring really they're out their own business." He presented as their so called pirate king was faceless, removed, abandoned all the free-spirited left. That continued with the powers in place. "Same almighty forces that are throwing us into forgotten. Trying to remove us, are the some who were us, once..." The red-coats weren't someone to be all idolized. Innocent's rain rampant on

those, it was not-self sacrificial, they were govern. "Free. Isn't exclusive. It's within us all, a lifestyle, something that any are capable of taking with zero discrimination, no hierarchy, or diversities preventing you at some barrier for entry! Reach down! Battle against your illnesses, wounds, oppressors! Wobble on your soles and fight to stand against what you disagree with, crawl even, gnarl at that hilt! Die fer passion, what makes you feel who, who gives you it! That's what actual breathing looks like! This IS yer rightful treasure, yer CLAIM. Get it back into your hands and you'll know this is a world you own!" Climatically blew through in his renegade passion. The very air he exhaled into these words weren't laced, they came from personal, raw emotion! Casting away not only to his own liberation but his former folks. "This is living's meaning!" Reaching down grabbing a bottle and smashing it against his arm into a tearing cut, bloodied arms formed outwardly, like wings he threw his arms. Drops of resolve and armed weapons fell in unity. 'The Captain ov' the Five Seas' approached them, and said, I am alive, but so are all those who died, they're in me! I haven't lost this War, It's only getting started. Waves, winds, change, so I've adapted. Here, I am.'

The lawless bellowed out an uproar outcry and jolly, shooting their guns into the ceilings. Smashing and slugging each other with haymakers, drinking and thrusting into debauchery, they were free, once again! Label's no more! Defined, never again! Each saw their passion, the moment was seen! What went obscured. Captain leapt into the brawl, of celebration, he was home, alive! The storms were still remaining but he found many places to call shelter when they came.

[kitkatopinions]

[1] I don't what point they're trying to get too, but CRWBY is going too fast. I mean I know the overall point they want to get for the series; stop Salem (and hopefully no further than thag). But the pacing is so off and that really shows in V7 & 8 particularly with Ironwood. They wanted Ironwood to be an evil dictator that would willingly bomb a city, but the thing is they did it in such a quick flip that is jarring.

When you're right, you're right. RWBY has always had a pretty bad pacing problem, whether it's 'fixing' Weiss's problems with Ruby in one episode in V1 or rushing Yang's V4 recovery arc, the show has always struggled to figure out how to prioritize and take its time. But, this problem has gotten a little more obvious in the last two seasons.

Hazel's redemption and Emerald's redemption were absolutely horribly done, partly because they rushed through them at the speed of light, while they contrast the 'fall' of James Ironwood into a villain role that went from zero to a hundred within the span of two to three in-universe days without the show taking the time to put much proper focus on it or give it the emotional depth it deserved. The Hound was in and out too quick, despite being one of the better concepts to come out of the eighth season. And that's the same with the Cinder/Neo/Watts team up of the century that a lot of people were really interested in and were calling it actual character development and a good change, and then had to put on clown paint when it ended an episode later with everything returning to the status quo. I'd say Ozpin's 'make up' with the team was rushed, too, but honestly that's the least of my concerns with him returning to the team. Qrow and Clover was so rushed that I was seriously weirded out and confused when Qrow's reaction to Clover's death was so big, because to me they seemed like they barely knew each other. I've never understood why both the show and a lot of the FNDM decided that Clover was so important to Qrow, and Qrow jumping to 'kill Ironwood' was also really weird, since we'd been given plenty of reason to believe that Ironwood was Qrow's trusted friend, and very little reason to believe that Qrow hated him, until the guy he'd known for like two months and one season died and suddenly Qrow didn't care about Ironwood at all.

On top of this, Blake and Yang's relationship was rushed in V6 and then stagnated, and the writer's attempt to make them 'fight' in volume eight was so stupid and ridiculous that it was comical (and very frustrating.) Them making everyone drop concerns they have with Ruby within a short while is - like you said - another example of everything going too fast. Weiss 'reconciling' with Whitley and Willow was done too fast and with very little depth, leaving it feeling lackluster and leaving Willow's affection for either of her children feeling fake as hell. Robyn Hill's entire character is a product of rushed and badly done 'growth,' and despite her and Qrow spending episodes together in prison with nothing to do, they still charged ahead with "now these two are friends" too fast and it fell totally flat. I liked May Marigold, but the HH were in the same boat as Robyn, not given enough development and feeling forced into important roles they didn't earn, and the same can be said for the Ace Ops. Salem herself, the main villain, came and went in less than a volume and the terrible way they thrust her into the story only to hastily try to find a way to make her not a threat made her seem so unscary that I can't take her seriously at all anymore.

I was literally shocked when I realized that they weren't spending another season in Atlas, and I even theorized that maybe RWBY was getting cancelled soon, and that's why they were rushing everything so fast in V8. But tbh, with the lack of faith I have in these writers, it's very possible that they just failed, that they just suck.

They didn't take the time to develop almost anything in Volumes seven and eight, and what development they did give us in volume seven seemed to fly out the window in volume eight anyway, or didn't matter anymore.

RWBY is a show that has always struggled to develop story beats and character arcs and dynamics and I and a lot of fans have 'filled in the blanks' on a lot of what they left empty or hastily glossed over, but that gets harder and harder to do the more they get sloppy and overconfident. The fanbase shouldn't have to do this. The fanbase shouldn't have to look at characters who are meant to matter to each other and sighingly try to headcanon up most of their relationship and/or dynamic. They shouldn't have to look at a Very Important arc that the writers are so proud of and then go "okay, time to figure out how to force this to make sense."

There's a certain amount of that in every piece of media, fleshing out characters and their pasts or their relationship is a fandom past-time no matter what fandom you're talking about (heck, I've seen it in the LOTR fandom,) but after a certain point, it starts to feel like we're putting way more work into it than the actual show writers, and that's weird and it's also tiring.

I've seen this argument from RWBY simps that RWDE posters are mad we "have to think about things" and that things aren't just handed to us on a silver platter, but I don't think that's true. We're willing to play a little catch up and flesh out dynamics here and there. I've been doing that in fandoms for forever. There's a difference between doing that, and needing to do a lot of work and a lot of re-writing and world building to make most of the show actually make sense or feel emotionally significant.

RWBY wasn't always like this. I was more than happy to fill in the blanks for seasons of it and get by on vibes and concepts to match what meat and substance we did get. But now I feel like almost everything is so rushed, underdeveloped, forced, or badly handled that trying to 'fill in the gaps' has turned into essentially writing a fix-it fic in your head. So I'd rather just put my mental energy into actually writing a fix-it fic instead of trying to force myself to put in the work that the writers don't for the show proper itself.

[queerlymasculine]

hot take: there's no such thing as "topping from the bottom"

another hot take: submission and dominance are frames of mind, they're ways of approaching an interaction. they are not sets of prescribed behaviors.

another hot take: there is a difference between engaging in d/s dynamics and engaging in strict hierarchies. you can do d/s without a strict heirarchy.

I'm a great example of this. my dom and I don't play with rules or orders. my dom doesn't Tell Me What To Do, in the classic d/s sense, and I don't Do As I'm Told. there is no system of government that I can use as a metaphor because we play differently than people, like OP, do. it's not Better™️ or Worse™️; it's just different.

this might blow some people's minds lol

concepts like power, respect, care, obedience, authority -- these mean different things to different people, and the way people manifest these concepts through behavior vary widely.

overall, I just completely reject the idea in relationships, INCLUDING (or maybe especially) D/S DYNAMICS, that someone has to have the final say, that someone has the right to override someone else's say, where someone has to be right and the other person or people are wrong. I reject the idea that submission is fundamentally about compliance. I reject the idea that dominance is fundamentally expressed through enforcing compliance.

listen, if a situation comes up where a sub is trying to control X when an agreement was made that their partner would control X, the problem isn't that sub's behavior. the problem is the agreement that was made. the problem is the fact power was exchanged over X.

the problem isn't the sub's ability to trust the dom to control X, either. the problem isn't inherently either person's behavior or attitude. the problem is that power over X was exchanged. if the sub was truly comfortable with the exchange -- and assuming the parties haven't negotiated a brat dynamic or some other scenario where the sub wants to play out chafing against the control for the purpose of letting the dom can put their foot down -- the sub wouldn't feel the need to fight it.

there is nothing wrong with not exchanging power over something, and anyone who acts like the ideal dynamic is where the sub exercises zero discretion over every aspect of their life and the dom has literally all power is extremely fucked up.

so if there is an instance of actually "topping from the bottom," the people in the relationship need to reevaluate. the sub doesn't need to """respect""" their dom more. the sub doesn't need to make their peace with not controlling X.

they need to have a conversation about X as equals and figure out, did anyone overstep? was it under circumstances they hadn't contemplated when they originally decided to implement this? do they need to take a step back from X? was the problem how the dom approached dealing with X? did the sub not realize beforehand they only wanted X at certain times or in certain ways? should they have been playing at all right then? should they have stopped playing before X happened/was done? is X only something they can successfully do under certain circumstances?

if doing X is really important to you and for you it feels very central to your idea of submission or dominance, you should only be playing with people who either value it to the same degree or who want to do X too. you shouldn't play with people who aren't inclined to play the same way.

sometimes, when things aren't working, it's just incompatibility or poor negotiation. it's not "topping from the bottom," and it's certainly not that the s-type person is doing anything wrong.

sometimes no one is wrong, for fuck's sake lol. we seriously need to stop shaming people, and the phrase "topping from the bottom" is a tool I have only ever seen used to shame people for their preferences or needs.

we need to stop taking kink so seriously lol. it's play. it's for fun, and fun can take different forms for different people, but it's still supposed to be fun. it's supposed to make you happy. getting so worked up and mandating that X is proper d/s and Y is bad and it's "topping from the bottom" and disrespectful sounds so exhausting, and the overall message is that submission and dominance are about what you do and not what you feel.

and that message feels wrong to me because believe me, I can do a lot of shit that someone tells me I need to do without complaint and without respecting that person whatsoever lol. we can't act like strict compliance is synonymous with "good" submission.

we shouldn't even talk about "good" and "bad" except in the context of "a good submissive articulates their needs and vets their partners appropriately" and "a good dominant makes sure to be prepared, mentally and tangibly, for aftercare" etc

Prompt 32 - Correcting Your Dom?

“When driving, would you as a sub point it out if your D started to drive the wrong way on a one way street? Common sense, or topping from the bottom?”

I think this is an interesting question that can get to the core of multiple important aspects of D/s…like what IS being submissive and dominant? Is it about the dom always being ‘right’ - or at least being treated as if they’re right eve if they’re objectively wrong? And what is topping from the bottom? What is the difference between a sub using their voice, advocating for their needs/wants, negotiation, etc vs topping from the bottom? 

Anyway. I’d absolutely point out that he was going the wrong way. Neither of us have any interest in a relationship dynamic where I pretend he’s right even if he’s wrong. More importantly, I don’t think Dominance is about being ‘right’, or submission is about being ‘wrong’.

We’re also not interested in a relationship dynamic where the overall feel is one of a dictatorship, or one that puts me in a place of feeling low, helpless or less-than. It’s more like a democracy where he has 51% of the vote. I am allowed (ad encouraged) to express my views and beliefs. If this sways the way that he votes, we don’t see that as topping from the bottom - we see that as him leading still because if he changes his vote based on something I say, that’s his choice. To be honest, the idea that a dominant would need their sub to not express their views to avoid ‘topping from the bottom’ feels rather weak to me. 

While it may be just 2% of the vote than I have, that 2% comes with a lot of responsibility because it means he has power over me. To be moral/ethical, it means he has to care deeply about how his “vote” (the way he leads) impacts me. So using the car analogy���if he’s driving, he has to care deeply about my safety and that means he has to care if he’s driving incorrectly/dangerously. He would want me to speak up to keep us both safe. 

I’d be afraid of anyone who thinks they are a dominant who wouldn’t want the same, as that would be prioritizing maintaining an ego over safety - and that’s dangerous within power exchange. I think having a good sized ego is common within dominants, and that isn’t an inherently bad thing…but it’s extremely important to be conscious of a big ego and to make sure it’s managed/kept in check. In my view, any dynamic where a sub would be encouraged to avoid speaking up for the sake of keeping the dom’s ego bigger is an unhealthy dynamic. You shouldn’t have to take away a subs voice to make he dom feel ‘in charge’. 

CD and I both kind of hate the phrase ‘topping from the bottom’. We think it can happen and that it’s a real thing, don’t get me wrong. But we think it’s a phase used to manipulate subs way more often than it’s used appropriately. Telling your Dom that they’re going the wrong way on a one way street isn’t in the same universe as ‘topping from the bottom’.