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autisticsupervillain · 2 years ago

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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Stats Equalized!

The show where we equalize strength, speed, and durability to decide who would win a battle of hax, skill, and versatility.

This Week's Fighters...

Alucard vs Belos!

Conditions:

Pre-Shrodinger Alucard at Level 1 vs Season 1-2 Belos.

Scenario:

After successfully discovering a way back to the Human Realm, Belos is disgusted by the way human society has changed over the years and vows to find a way to rid humanity of all this "heathen filth". To start, he first targets the Protestant vampire hunter organization of Hellsing, viewing their practice of using the monsterous Alucard as a weapon as a personal insult as he thinks fellow Protestants should "know better" than to rely on such an unholy monster. Alucard views Belos with disgust as he watches the witch hunter try to slaughter his Master's guards.

"I've killed a lot of monsters in my day, but they were all at least aware of what they were. There is no creature more loathsome than a man who sacrifices his humanity for power and doesn't even realize what he's lost."

"For power? I am a witch hunter. Every sacrifice I've made was made was done to protect humanity from monsters like you."

"You want to see a monster like me? Look in the mirror. You're not the only beast to try gorging itself on souls."

"Whatever it takes to protect humanity from evil."

"Then perhaps I should educate you on what pure evil is capable of!"

Analysis: Alucard

Vampires. Some of the oldest monsters dreamed up by mankind. Ever since Bram Stroker's classical novel, we've seen numerous iterations of his iconic vampire king. None, however, can claim to be as deadly or as terrifying as Alucard, the undying enforcer of Hellsing.

Vlad Dracula was born as a tormented slave, spending most of his life being horrifically abused by his masters. When God refused to answer his prayers for mercy, Dracula decided to take life into his own hands. Becoming a vicious warlord, Vlad would impale countless thousands in his campaign to conquer all of his enemies, earning the moniker Vlad the Impaler. As he was to be executed, Vlad drank some blood off the grounds of the battlefield, forsaking his humanity and becoming an undead monster of the night.

Count Dracula's reign seemed unending, but eventually his bloody crusade was brought to heel by vampire hunter Abraham Van Hellsing. Respecting the level of strength and resolve that brought him to heel, Dracula swore loyalty to the Hellsing family name, becoming Alucard, the undying enforcer of the Hellsing Organization. A monster who hunts other monsters.

Alucard is quite easily the strongest vampire in the world. Alucard has killed thousands of monsters and millions of people over the course of his hundreds of years of undeath, not helped by Hellsing running experiments on him to make him even stronger. Even by the standards of his series, Alucard is less a vampire or moreso a vampire shaped Lovecraftian nightmare, and the most damning evidence of that is in his shapeshifting.

While Alucard does possess organs like a human does, he's in actuality made of a shadow-like substance that he can morph into any shape he desires. He can freely change his clothes, age, gender, and even sprout extra limbs. And if he encouters a particularly tough or tasty looking foe, he can shapeshift a giant dog monster out of his body, lovingly named Baskerville, to devour his prey whole and alive, keeping their mind, body, and soul trapped inside him forever.

What's more, while regular vampires can regenerate from getting shot to pieces, Alucard's is on a whole nother level. Decapitation, dismemberment, getting shredded with lead, or getting cut clean in half, Alucard comes back from it all. This is because Alucard has something his fellow vampires don't.... the souls of millions of his victims wriggling around inside him. Alucard has personally drank the blood of over 2 million people over the course of his life, absorbing their souls and memories in the process. Whenever Alucard takes a blow that would otherwise kill him, he uses up one of these souls to heal him from whatever did him harm. As such, Alucard in most fights just stands there with a shit eating grin while his opponents helplessly tear into him. He'll grow back whatever you do to him and your souls will replenish his stock just fine when you're done.

Don't think that this means he can't rip into you straight back. Alucard carries two massive handcanons longer than the average man's forearm, the .454 Casull and the Jackel, powerful enough to blast any vampire to pieces, while the silver bullets helpfully keep them from regenerating. He's a crack shot with them too, as with his Third Eye ability, he can enhance his senses to the point where he can hit bullseyes a kilometer away and see through any illusions you might cast to distract him. And if you're too far away for even that, Alucard can drag you back into range with telekinesis, which is powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier out of the ocean and bring him the blood of everyone in London for him to drink. That's right, he drank London.

Obviously, this awe inspiring power needs to be controlled. As such, Alucard operates under 6 restriction levels. Levels 6 through 4 are for decimating your average, everyday vampires. 3 through 1 are when he starts getting serious, breaking out Baskerville, growing wings, and tearing you to shreds with multiple limbs. He even breaks out the powers he doesn't use that often, casting illusions to deceive his enemies.

Level 0 is for when he wants to end the world.

Upon activating Level 0, Alucard unleashes all of the souls in his arsenal as a sea of blood soaked zombie warriors to destroy everything in their path. If any of those souls happen to have powers, such as the aforementioned Rip Van Winkle, than the get to use them in his name, a true member of the Count's army.

However, while Alucard is at his strongest in this form, it's also his most vulnerable state. Namely, he can't regenerate from fatal wounds anymore. If one were to destroy his heart in this form, Alucard will die permanently. The man has admitted it himself.

Moreover, Alucard is supremely overconfident, to the point where he often just sits there laughing his ass of as he's torn to shreds. This overconfidence was once exploited by Schrodinger, a, um, Nazi German catboy who exists everywhere simultaneously. That was a sentence.

See, Schrodinger cannot die so long as he can recognize his own existence, as he is simultaneously alive and dead at all times. But, when Alucard inadvertently ate Schrodinger's soul, Schrodinger wasn't able to recognize himself anymore in the sea of souls within Alucard's body, causing Schrodinger, and Alucard by extension, to cease to exist.

Alucard, however, still lived. Even when reduced to absolutely nothing, Alucard was still aware. So, he simply spent the next 30 years killing all the millions of souls inside of him so he could return home to his master's side, undoing his own non-existence and gaining Schrodinger's powers in the process.

The fact that Alucard could survive and kill his other souls even while not existing, implies that even erasing Alucard's entire body entirely might not be enough to bypass his regeneration. If Schrodinger's powers weren't actively keeping him nonexistent, Alucard may be able to come back under his own power from being erased entirely.

Alucard's one true weakness is his longing for death. His biggest dream is that one day, a worthy human warrior will come to end his undeath for good. But, until then, he'll keep slaughtering monsters in his master's name. So, be weary all you who stalk the night, for when Alucard hears your screams, all Hell shall Sing.

Analysis: Emperor Belos

The Boiling Isles are not a kind or welcoming place. The seas and rain boil hot enough to melt a man's skin. Rainbows can turn you inside out. Monsterous beasts roam the land and the closest civilization floats on the corpse of a long dead Titan. Yet, the most dangerous threat any human can face is the mysterious masked witch who calls himself Belos... and the monsterous man he is underneath.

Philip Wittebane was your average 1600s American colonist when he and his older brother Caleb moved into the small town of Gravesfield. They both found themselves quickly adjusting to the town's local culture and practices, developing a taste for witch hunting at an early age as a result. This passion, however, was derailed in adulthood when the brother's happened upon an actual witch. The beautiful sorceress Evelyn who hailed from the mystical Demon Realm captivated Caleb with her beauty and magic, convincing the older Wittebane to follow her to home realm.

Believing his brother to be under a dastardly spell, Philip followed suite to save his brother, only to find the two happily married and expecting a baby. Caleb and Evelyn had genuinely fallen in love. Unable to reconcile his puritanical beliefs with the reality before him, Philip murdered his brother Caleb in a fit of rage and swore to annihilate all witches everywhere. No matter how many years it would take and how many brothers he would have to bury.

As a human, Philip could not use magic naturally by himself. Witches have bile sacks next to their heart that stores magic within them, but humans have no such thing, so Philip had to find alternatives. As such, he taught himself how to use glyphs, using the language of the Titan in written form to harness the magic emitted by his corpse. Other humans use glyphs written on pages or the environment to cast spells, but Philip took a bit of a shortcut. By carving glyphs directly into his own body, Philip could cast magic with nothing but a thought. Similarly, Philip found an exploit in the laws of magic that would allow him to cheat death itself. By feasting on the souls of a witches Palismen, or staff, Philip could live for hundreds of years, feeding off the magic of the thousands of souls trapped within his body.

However, these practices had disastrous side effects on his body, causing him to literally melt alive if he didn't regularly consume more and more Palismen, to the point of eating them to extinction. As such, Philip had a time limit on his goal, so he'd need a little help. Upon discovering the god-like being known as The Collector, Philip used their guidance to master all forms of magic and launch his master plan.

Philip took on the name Belos and set his thousand year plan into motion. Firstly, he would revive his brother as a "Grimwalker", seeking to mold this new version into a perfectly loyal witch hunter to fit Belos' own personal ideals. The corpses of thousands of failed attempts litter his layer, showing how little cares for a brother who doesn't obey his every whim. Then, Belos would create the coven system, convincing every witch in the realm to let him brand them with a coven sigil that seals away their ability to use any magic outside of their covens. Then, finally, he would enact the Day of Unity ritual, using the sigils to suck the life out of every witch on the Isles, killing all of witch kind.

To this end, Belos ironically became the most powerful witch of all time. He is known to have access to fire, ice, and light glyphs, allowing him to blast you with massive flames, create huge mounds of ice, and create floating orbs of light. He can create shields to protect himself from harm, manipulate plant life to his will, and telekinetically ragdoll you with just a thought. His telepathy can reach across his entire palace and his teleportation lets him cross the battlefield in seconds.

However, all of this power has come at a grievous cost. If Belos were to go too long without eating a Palismen and runs out of magic to sustain himselfwith, he'll melt into a rotting green slime monster. While this constant rot has given him the ability to stretch his limbs and shapeshift to a degree, the fact that he has such abilities at all shows how bad his condition has gotten. If reduced to his full on slime monster state, Belos will be forced to possess other beings to sustain himself, rotting away and consuming his hosts into lifeless skeletons for months until he's forced to find a new one. But, even then, he's remarkably difficult to put down, as he could still pull himself back together even after being smashed into a puddle by the Collector. Yet, in this state, his death is essentially garranteed. He'll run out of life to consume eventually and he'll eventually melt away into nothing. A perfect metaphor for the soulless parasite Philip Wittebane is under his benevolent fascade.

Throwdown Theme:

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Throwdown Breakdown:

This matchup is very interesting. Because while both of these fighters have healing factors that make it impossible for them to kill each other, both of them are fighting on time limits, so to speak. Both of them can come back from things like complete liquification, but they require the souls inside of them in order to do so. Once Belos runs out of Palismen or Alucard runs out of souls, both of them will be left vulnerable, allowing the other to kill them.

So, do they have any options to bypass each other's regeneration before that happens? Well, Alucard's silver bullets won't work as Belos isn't a vampire, nor is he vulnerable to silver at all, but neither would Belos's petrification. Alucard could likely just go transparent and step out of it, or sever the limbs that have turned to stone and regrow them. Alucard will likely be taking more hits here than Belos will be, both because he doesn't dodge attacks in character unless he absolutely has to and because Belos's teleportation and telekinesis will make him a pain to get close to and land clean hits on. That's a problem, as I'm not sure who has more lives to burn here. I'm leaning Alucard, as he's roughly two hundred years older and canonically has two million souls inside him, but the body count of Belos's diet is implied to be huge. In that he's nearly driven all Palismen on the continent to extinction through his appetite and even when he has to go without in Season 2, several months pass before he starts showing long term side effects. As such, it would likely take months before these two came anywhere near killing each other. And hypnosis on Alucard's end also wouldn't likely cut it. Not only has Belos shown to have an immaculate control over his own mindscape, but the Palismen have been trying to escape and control it for hundreds of years and he's always been able to keep them suppressed before.

So, that leaves us with the big question. Slime Monster Belos vs Level 0 Alucard.

Here's how I see this fight going down. Both characters start out fighting in their usual way. Belos keeps his distance to attack with spells while Alucard regens through it and tries to shoot him up. Both characters switch tracks after seeing their normal methods fail, with Alucard throwing out Baskerville, only for Belos to teleport out of the way, while Belos uses petrification, only for Alucard to sever his freezing limbs and keep going.

At this point, both would take not of each other's shapeshifting abilities and regeneration and come to the same conclusion. "This guy has made himself immortal by eating souls just as I have". This changes Alucard's approach to the fight drastically.

Assuming now that Belos's immortality works like his does, Alucard goes level 0, knowing that the fight would take forever otherwise and assuming Belos will do the same to counter it, completely delighted at the opportunity fight a full on war. While the range and versatility of Belos's magic is impressive, he's going to struggle to reach Alucard through the wave of two million zombies and will begin getting overwhelmed. The rapid expenditure of his Palismen magic will force him into his slime monster state, especially as this fight takes place outside the Demon Realm and thus he'd only have Palismen to draw on to use magic at all.

At this point, Belos begins assimilating Alucard's army. Given that he was on the verge of assimilating the entire continent of the Boiling Isles as the Titan, I'd argue he could potentially do it and may absorb Alucard upon reaching him. But, that's when Alucard plays his trump card. Calling all of his souls back into himself while Belos is still attached, Alucard reabsorbs his army and Belos along with them, adding Philip's soul to the sea of souls within him to claim victory.

Unfortunately for the Witch Hunter, this fight was always going to come down to who was the hungrier monster.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Alucard!

#fictional throwdown fridays #stats equalized #hellsing #alucard #the owl house #emperor belos #philip wittebane

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pathfinderunlocked · 10 months ago

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Lady of Ash - CR12 Mesmerist

I can save them. And I intend to do so. I intend to make them mine, in exchange for returning their memories and sanity to them. And this will be my city, filled with the accursed walking dead whose sunken eyes still remember life, whose hearts still remember what it was like to be loved by the living. But now I love them. My Ashfallen.

Artwork by Oukawa Yuu on Seiga. Badly edited by me.

The Lady of Ash is a faction leader in my dark fantasy setting of Vorseah, and her stat block reflects a character who is mostly involved in preventing fights, not winning them. If the artwork looks familiar, you probably remember it from the Vampire's Daughter monster that I posted; this is the same character, 600 years later.

The unusual combination of ancient youth dhampir vampire is what happens when someone is born into a vampire family and gets killed by vampire hunters as a child, and then gets raised into undeath as a full vampire by her surviving family members.

Her unique vampire power grants her the ability to awaken undead, in place of dominating humanoids. She uses this power to form a small civilization of intelligent undead. She has little concern for whether the undead she awakens are, or were, good people - she only wishes to provide them the same freedom over their destiny that living creatures possess. She wishes for both herself and her people, the Ashfallen, to get along peacefully with others, whether they be crusading paladins or evil necromancers. Despite that seemingly benevolent goal, her powers and her upbringing have warped her view of the value of life, and she isn't a good person. She has no empathy for the living, only a desire to avoid conflict with them.

However, she lacks the ability to create vampire spawn, and doesn't desire to create new undead regardless. She relies on her allies to subdue undead and allow her to use her powers on them.

When faced with violent undead, she uses her Command Undead ability to stop combat, and then uses Awaken Undead later at her leisure when the target has been secured and restrained. Against living targets, she charms or dominates them instead of fighting. She virtually never uses her energy drain or blood drain attacks; even if forced into combat against something like an aberration or outsider that she can't dominate, she'll either flee or rely on others to fight for her.

She always has her Umbral Shield trick implanted in herself, and begins battle with her other two mesmerist tricks already implanted in her allies. Typically she implants Compel Alacrity in melee allies and Mesmeric Mirror in spellcasting allies.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate making NPCs that use character classes? This stat block has too many special abilities. Some of it is the vampire template's fault.

Lady of Ash - CR 12

Avoiding the light from the window is what appears to be a young girl in a dress with long black hair and a white hat. She has unusually pale skin, and the hanging oil lamp casts no shadow on the opposite wall.

XP 19,200 Dhampir, ancient youth vampire, spirit walker mesmerist 11 LE Small undead (augmented humanoid) Init +7 Senses darkvision, low-light vision; Perception +23

DEFENSE

AC 27, touch 17, flat-footed 23 (+3 Dex, +2 deflection, +1 dodge, +7 natural, +3 shield, +1 size) hp 141 (11d8+88); fast healing 5 Fort +10, Ref +12, Will +16; +2 vs. disease and mind-affecting, channel resistance +4 DR 10/magic and silver Resist cold 10, electricity 10, fire 5 Weaknesses vampire weaknesses (except sunlight weakness) Immune undead traits

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., spider climb Melee slam +10 (1d3+1 plus energy drain) Special Attacks awaken undead (11 HD/day, DC 22), blood drain, children of the night, command undead (8/day, DC 22), energy drain (2 HD, DC 22), hypnotic stare (-3 Will/Perception/Sense Motive/initiative/concentration/DC vs. Diplomacy/DC vs. Intimidate, 5 or 3d6 damage, 50 ft.), mesmerist tricks (3 at a time, 11/day)

Racial Spell-Like Abilities (CL 11th; concentration +18) 1/day—charm person (DC 20), command (DC 20)

Mesmerist Spells Known (CL 11th; concentration +18) 4th (3/day)—dominate person (DC 23), serenity (DC 23), speak with haunt 3rd (6/day)—appearance of life, charm monster (DC 22), dispel magic, nondetection 2nd (6/day)—aversion (DC 19), command undead (DC 21), detect thoughts (DC 19), knock, suggestion (DC 21) 1st (7/day)—adoration, hide from undead (DC 18), innocence, mindlink, sow thought (DC 20), undetectable alignment 0 (at will)—daze (DC 18), detect magic, message, open/close, touch of fatigue (touch +10, DC 17), unwitting ally (DC 18)

STATISTICS

Str 12, Dex 16, Con —, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 24 Base Atk +8; CMB +8; CMD 23 Feats Bouncing Spell, Command Undead (see text), Extended Stare, Extended Stare, Demoralizing Stare, Greater Spell Focus (enchantment), Spell Focus (enchantment), Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Toughness Skills Bluff +37, Diplomacy +23, Intimidate +9, Knowledge (arcana, local, history, nobility, religion) +6, Linguistics +5, Perception +23, Perform (oratory) +9, Sense Motive +26, Spellcraft +9, Stealth +15, Use Magic Device +14; Racial Bonuses +10 Bluff, +10 Perception, +8 Sense Motive, +8 Stealth Languages Common, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Halfling, Infernal, Necril, Orc Gear potion of inflict serious wounds x2, Lily Sunhat, +2 reflecting mithral buckler, ring of eloquence (dwarven, elven, gnome, halfling), amulet of natural armor +1, ring of protection +2 SQ bold stare (allure, distraction, susceptibility), change shape (dire bat or wolf, beast shape II), gaseous form, glib lie, undead inception, shadowless, spider climb

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Awaken Undead (Su) In place of a vampire's Dominate ability, the Lady of Ash has the supernatural ability to soothe and awaken undead creatures and break a necromancer's control over them. She can use this on up to 11 HD (a number equal to her own hit dice) of undead creatures per day. This does not cause the undead to become under her control, but it breaks effects such as Command Undead, grants the undead creature an intelligence score if it doesn't have one (typically the same score they had in life), and changes its alignment back to what it was in life.

To use this ability, the Lady of Ash must touch the target as a full-round action. An undead creature makes a Will saving throw against this effect, DC 22. If the creature is under the control of a necromancer or other undead, the Lady of Ash must also succeed on a caster level check with a DC of 10 + the hit dice of the creature exerting control over her target. On a successful saving throw, or if the Lady of Ash fails the caster level check, this ability has no effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

A creature affected by Awaken Undead rolls a d100. On a roll less than or equal to the Lady of Ash's hit dice, it becomes friendly toward her. On an 80-89 it becomes hostile to her, and on a 90-100 it becomes confused and self-destructive. Otherwise, the soothed creature becomes indifferent toward the Lady of Ash.

Blood Drain (Su) A vampire can suck blood from a grappled opponent; if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage. The vampire heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

Command Undead (Su) As a standard action, 8 times per day, the Lady of Ash can enslave undead within 30 feet. Undead receive a DC 22 Will save to negate the effect. The save DC is Charisma-based. Undead that fail their saves fall under her control, obeying her commands to the best of their ability, as if under the effects of control undead. Intelligent undead receive a new saving throw each day to resist her command. The Lady of Ash can control any number of undead, so long as their total Hit Dice do not exceed her mesmerist level. If an undead creature is under the control of another creature, the Lady of Ash must make an opposed Charisma check whenever her orders conflict.

Continued Animation (Su) Three times per day, when the Lady of Ash is using hypnotic stare on a humanoid target and the target dies, as an immediate action the Lady of Ash can force the target’s soul to remain in the body. The Lady of Ash can then control the target as if using dominate person for 5 rounds. The creature gains 22 temporary hit points and continues acting as though it were alive and conscious until it loses those temporary hit points or the duration expires.

During this time, the creature counts as undead, but it can’t be healed by negative energy. The target receives a DC 22 Will saving throw to avoid this effect and die normally. The save DC is Charisma-based.

This ability ends immediately if at any point the target’s body is completely destroyed (such as by disintegrate) or restored to life.

Change Shape (Su) A vampire can use change shape to assume the form of a dire bat or wolf, as beast shape II.

Children of the Night (Su) Once per day, a vampire can call forth 1d6+1 rat swarms, 1d4+1 bat swarms, or 2d6 wolves as a standard action. These creatures arrive in 2d6 rounds and serve the vampire for up to 1 hour.

Gaseous Form (Su) As a standard action, a vampire can assume gaseous form at will, as the spell (caster level 5th), but it can remain gaseous indefinitely and has a fly speed of 20 feet with perfect maneuverability.

Hypnotic Stare (Su) The Lady of Ash can focus her stare on one creature within 50 feet as a swift action. That creature takes a –3 penalty on Will saving throws, concentration checks, initiative checks, Perception checks, Sense Motive checks to oppose Bluff, and to the DC of Diplomacy and Intimidate checks made against it. The Lady of Ash can maintain her stare against only one opponent at a time; it remains in effect until she stares at a new target, the opponent dies, the opponent moves farther than 50 feet away, or the Lady of Ash is reduced to 0 hit points. The Lady of Ash can remove the memory of her stare from the target’s mind; The creature doesn’t remember that it was affected (nor does it realize that it is currently being affected) unless the Lady of Ash allows it.

The hypnotic stare is a psychic effect, and relies more on the focus of the Lady of Ash than the target's perception of her stare. It can’t be avoided in the same ways a gaze attack can. She can use this ability even while blinded, but must succeed at a DC 20 concentration check to do so. The penalties from multiple mesmerists’ stares don’t stack, nor do they stack with penalties from witches‘ evil eye hexes. This is a mind-affecting effect, but can affect undead, ignoring their immunity to mind-affecting abilities.

Once per round, when a creature affected by the Lady of Ash's hypnotic stare takes damage, she can increase the damage by 5, or by 3d6 if she dealt the damage herself, and the target must succeed on a DC 22 Will save or become shaken for 1 round. This is precision damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit. The save DC is Charisma-based.

An undead target affected by the Lady of Ash's hypnotic stare loses its immunity to her mind-affecting spells and abilities.

Shadowless (Ex) A vampire casts no shadows and shows no reflection in a mirror.

Mesmerist Tricks (Su) As a standard action, the Lady of Ash can implant a mesmerist trick in herself or a willing ally she touches. She can do this up to 13 times per day, and can have up to 3 tricks implanted at a time. The trick remains dormant until either it is triggered or the next time the Lady of Ash regains her spells.

As a free action usable even when it’s not her turn, the Lady of Ash can trigger this trick under the conditions listed for that trick. The subject must be within 210 feet of the Lady of Ash for her to trigger the implanted trick. She doesn’t need line of sight, but anything that blocks telepathic contact prevents her from triggering tricks.

The mesmerist tricks the Lady of Ash knows are as follows:

Compel Alacrity The mesmerist can trigger this trick whenever the subject begins its turn within an enemy’s reach. The subject can move 20 feet as a free action without provoking attacks of opportunity. The subject can’t move farther than her speed in this way. The movement from this trick doesn’t count against the subject’s movement speed for that round. Mesmeric Mirror The mesmerist can trigger this trick when the subject is attacked or becomes the target of a spell that requires an attack roll. Three duplicates of the subject appear, and the attacker must determine randomly which it hits (as mirror image). Each image lasts for 11 minutes or until destroyed. This is an illusion (figment) effect. See in Darkness The mesmerist can trigger this trick when the subject moves into an area of darkness. The subject gains darkvision with a range of 60 feet for 1 minute. Telepathic Link The mesmerist can trigger this trick when the subject and her allies are outnumbered in combat. For 1 minute per mesmerist level, the subject and the mesmerist can communicate telepathically. If the subject and the mesmerist are more than 210 feet apart, the telepathic connection is severed and cannot be regained unless the trick is implanted again. The mesmerist and the subject must share a language to be able to communicate. Umbral Shield The mesmerist can trigger this trick whenever the subject would be exposed to harmful bright light (such as sunlight is to a vampire). Once triggered, the subject ignores any harmful effects of bright light or sunlight for 1 minute. The subject is immune to the dazzled condition while this trick is in effect. Unwitting Messenger The mesmerist describes a recipient to the subject while implanting this trick, then recites a verbal message no longer than 55 words. The subject of unwitting messenger has no memory of the message or the target recipient. When the subject encounters the specified recipient, the subject repeats the message verbatim, but does not recall speaking the message or its contents. This trick ends if not triggered within 24 hours. The subject of unwitting messenger can be fooled by mundane disguises or illusions, causing her to deliver the message to the wrong recipient.

Reflecting Buckler Once per day, the Lady of Ash can use her buckler to reflect a targeted or ranged attack spell targeting her back at its caster. Area spells, touch range spells, and other spells not directly targeting her are not affected.

Vampire Weaknesses Vampires cannot tolerate the strong odor of garlic and will not enter an area laced with it. Similarly, they recoil from mirrors or strongly presented holy symbols. These things don’t harm the vampire—they merely keep it at bay. A recoiling vampire must stay at least 5 feet away from the mirror or holy symbol and cannot touch or make melee attacks against that creature. Holding a vampire at bay takes a standard action. After 1 round, a vampire can overcome its revulsion of the object and function normally each round it makes a DC 25 Will save.

Vampires cannot enter a private home or dwelling unless invited in by someone with the authority to do so.

Reducing a vampire’s hit points to 0 or lower incapacitates it but doesn’t always destroy it (see vampiric fast healing). However, certain attacks can slay vampires. Each round of immersion in running water inflicts damage on a vampire equal to one-third of its maximum hit points—a vampire reduced to 0 hit points in this manner is destroyed. Driving a wooden stake through a helpless vampire’s heart instantly slays it (this is a full-round action). However, it returns to life if the stake is removed, unless the head is also severed and anointed with holy water.

Normally, exposing any vampire to direct sunlight staggers it on the first round of exposure and destroys it utterly on the second consecutive round of exposure if it does not escape. However, the Lady of Ash's lily sunhat prevents her from being harmed by sunlight.

Vampiric Fast Healing (Su) A vampire gains fast healing 5. If reduced to 0 hit points in combat, a vampire assumes gaseous form and attempts to escape. It must reach its coffin home within 2 hours or be utterly destroyed. (It can normally travel up to 9 miles in 2 hours.) Additional damage dealt to a vampire forced into gaseous form has no effect. Once at rest, the vampire is helpless. It regains 1 hit point after 1 hour, then is no longer helpless and resumes healing at the rate of 5 hit points per round.

#d&d #pathfinder 1e #undead #npc #dhampir #mesmerist #augmented humanoid

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spore-loser · 6 months ago

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my masterlist

book analysis

r h y s a n d :

The way Rhysand is written is the reason for my criticism.

Rhys’ treatment of Feyre UTM did not "protect" her. It had no logical reasoning except trapping her in a bargain and getting to Tamlin.

Rhys holding grudges against Lucien and Nesta despite Feyre forgiving them is disrespectful of her wishes and hypocritical of him in general.

Rhysand, Consent, and the “Perfect Victim” Myth

fanfiction

a c o u r t o f f l a m e a n d f o g

acosf fixit • neris (nesta x eris) • m nesta makes a different decision, saying goodbye to the night court and forging a path of her own. read here : ao3

moodboards

n e s t a

n e r i s ( n e s t a x e r i s )

g w y n

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#acotar #nesta archeron #neris #eris x nesta #gwyneth berdara #gwynriel #gwyn x azriel #elucien #elain x lucien #eris vanserra #the lady of autumn #edits #fanfiction #moodboards #elain archeron #emerie of illyria #lucien vanserra #rhysta #rhysand x nesta

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rallamajoop · 4 years ago

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The Witcher: The Games vs The Books

Coming to the fandom this late, I can only assume the relationship between the Witcher games and the original novels has been long since talked to death by others. But I'm far too fascinated by the whole glorious mess that is this canon not to want to get down some of my own thoughts about how it all fits together.

See, on the one hand, the games (Witcher 3 especially) are arguably only too dependent on the novels to stand alone. They do a wonderful job of picking up a number of unresolved plot points the books left hanging, and a woeful job of explaining so much a player coming in cold would really like to know – Ciri's history with Geralt, Yennefer, her powers and the Wild Hunt itself just to begin with. This is an issue that only increases as the games go along: cliche as Geralt's amnesia may be, it's used to good effect to introduce the world to the player in the first game. By the third, Geralt has all his old memories back and two extra games worth of new experience, and good lord is it all alienating to the newcomer.

On the other hand, so much about the games (again, the third especially) contradicts the novels in painfully irreconcilable ways. That wouldn't necessarily bother me – adaptations are allowed to rework and reinvent, stories can and should evolve in the retelling – except, well, see point one above. So you're bound to come out of the games with a lot of unanswered questions if you haven't read the books, and just as many if you have.

Spoilers to follow, of course, for both the books and the games.

Here's one of the big ones: just how did the world – Ciri included – discover that one of her long-presumed-dead parents was actually alive and well and now ruling the entire empire of Nilfgaard? Fucked if I know. Neither the games or the novels have any explanation. In the novels, in fact, the world at large believes Ciri is married to the emperor of Nilfgaard. Naturally, this 'Cirilla' is a fake, but the scandal were the full truth ever revealed would redefine Emhyr's reign. Yet somehow, in the games, everyone seems to know he's Ciri's father, and that whole awkward incest angle is never mentioned. Continuity has been tweaked pretty significantly, and it's left to the player to guess how. If that wasn’t bad enough, the games apparently still included a Gwent card of the fake!Cirilla (artwork above) just to ensure maximum confusion.

Before I get too sidetracked with all that stuff that doesn’t add up though, there really is a lot to be said for what does work about how the games expand on the plot of the novels. The Wild Hunt itself is the big one. The spectral cavalcade appears several times through the novels and hunts Ciri across multiple worlds in the final book before apparently losing her trail and vanishing to make way for the 'real' big bad, never to be mentioned again. While TW3 left me pretty underwhelmed by the revelation that the spectral Wild Hunt were just a bunch of dark elves in skull armor, the books had introduced the Hunt and let us spend some time on the dark elves' world before we get the reveal that the two may be one and the same. So for all the ranting I could do about missed opportunities regarding the Wild Hunt, they're the natural candidate for the games to pick up on as their new big-bads.

To my surprise, Geralt and Yennefer's "deaths" and subsequent recovery in pseudo-Avalon also comes straight from the novels. That everyone thinks Geralt dead at the start of the first game isn't, as I'd first assumed, a convenient excuse to have him reappear with amnesia, but simply how the novels end. Why Ciri leaves them and goes world-hopping isn't clear, but "because the Wild Hunt was after her again" is as good a theory as any. So, another point to the games there.

And there's so much more. The Catriona plague has only just appeared at the end of the novels, but we know it's posed for a major outbreak – one that’s in progress by the time of the games. The second game in particular does a terrific job of taking the ambitions of the expansionist Nilfgaardian Empire and the still-relatively-new Lodge of Sorceresses and building an entirely new conflict around them – even taking two of the least developed members of the Lodge (Sabrina Glevissig and Síle de Tansarville) and expanding them into major players. Dijkstra similarly ends the novels on the run from those in power, and having already taken the same assumed name 'Sigi Reuven' he's using in the games – while the books assure us that prince Radovid will grow up to pay back his father's assassins (ie. Phillipa) and become Radovid the Stern.

The twisted fairy tale origins of the novels are something the games actually seem to have gotten better at as they went on: the 'trail of treats' to the Crones is the great example, the monster-frog-prince and the land-of-a-thousand-fables of the expansions are two more, and many more are hidden in sidequests. And I'd be remiss not to mention that in again asking Geralt to pick a side in the conflict with the Scoia'tael, the first two games not only recreate a scenario Geralt repeatedly deals with in the books, but a major theme. It's interesting too how much the broad structure of the third game feels like an homage to the books, with Geralt searching for Ciri, interspersed with sections from her POV. You can nitpick the detail of any of these examples, but the intent is unmistakable, and a lot of credit is due for it in the execution too.

Some of the detail that's gone into translating the world of the Witcher books into the games is just insane – not just in the geography and history of the place, but right down to the names of the wine you can pick up. There's the fact the Cat potion makes Geralt see in black-and-white, or the fact the basilisk and cockatrice monsters are clearly based on the same model, but the basilisk is reptilian where as the cockatrice is more avian – which is exactly how Geralt describes the difference between them in The Lady of the Lake. There's a point where Book!Regis recounts a detailed list of all the lesser vampiric species, ending with the only two violent enough to tear apart their victims: almost all can be encountered in the games, and the last two (Fleders and Ekimma) are indeed the most animalistic. This kind of thing is everywhere.

My favourite examples tend to be those that blend into the background if you haven't read the books, but will get a grin from those who have, such as a peasant in Velen who will call out to Geralt (paraphrased from memory, alas) "Sir, sir! We be up to our ears in mamunes, imps, kobolds, hags, flying drakes... oh, and bats!" – which is a lovely little reference to a couple of conversations from Edge of the World wherein Geralt explains that most of the monsters the locals want him to take care of don't actually exist. Or all those soldiers chanting "Long live King Radovid!" – natural enough, but it takes on a whole new life if you've read the passage in Lady of the Lake where the young prince Radovid grumbles internally about having to sit and listen to the city chanting 'long live...' to every other notable figure present except him.

Really, it would be faster to list the things the games introduced that don't come from the original source material in any obvious form, because it's a struggle to come up with very many. The villainous Crones of Crookback Bog and Master Mirror of the Hearts of Stone expansion are the biggest ones that come to mind, along with a great deal of the vampire mythology from Blood and Wine. To the witchers themselves, they’ve added mostly game mechanics: the use of bombs and blade oils, the names of most of the potions, and three new witcher schools (all with their own specialised gear). There are a number of new creatures and monsters – Godlings, noon-and-night-wraiths, botchlings, shaelmaars and so on – and though trolls are mentioned in the books, the games take credit for giving them so much character. Obviously, there are new characters, like Thaller and Roche – but not technically Iorveth, because a Scoia'tael commander of that name is mentioned in the books, if only in passing. And already, short of just listing off every new character the games introduced, I’m running out of ideas. Credit where credit’s due on that front: most of the new characters and locations they’ve created feel authentic enough that Kalkstein or Thaller would be right at home in the novels’ world.

But for all their dedication to the detail, it's hard to feel like the games have really managed to capture the spirit of the books in their storytelling: the mundanely corrupt bureaucracy that does so much to bring the world to life, or their cheerfully cynical sense of humour, or the flamboyant wonder that is book!Dandelion, or their enthusiasm for putting women in positions of power, or the bigger themes about the differences between the story that gets sung by the bards and what really happened – or so much else from the novels that came as such a surprise to me when I started getting really sucked in.

And if we’re going to talk about all the little things they got right, it’s only fair to point out there are just as many little things they got wrong, and sometimes pretty glaringly at that. "I thought you bowed to no-one" says Emhyr to Geralt – almost as if book!Geralt doesn’t happily bow in most every situation where it would be polite or diplomatic to do so. "This would never have happened if the council was still around!" says Geralt upon finding a sorcerer's lab full of human experiments – as if none of his experiences with Vilgefortz or the wizards of Rissberg ever happened, back when the council was very much still around. In TW2, he mocks the idea of a woman like Saskia leading a rebellion – almost as if women like Falka and Aelirenn haven't led some of the most storied rebellions in history (and we can't even blame the amnesia, because Geralt himself mentions Aelirenn later – oh yeah, this one annoyed me particularly).

Book!verse 'Lady of the Lake' is basically just Ciri being surprised while bathing

Yennefer's studious aethiesm and willingness to desecrate Freya's temple is entirely in character – but only if we forget that she had her own personal religious experience with the goddess Freya herself in Tower of the Swallow. And then there’s the fact the Lady of the Lake is now a literal lake nymph who distributes swords to the worthy, as if no-one writing for the games ever got past the title of that particular Witcher novel (let alone got the joke). And the list goes on. It's easy to get overly caught up in contradictions like this – it's hardly as if Sapkowski's novels don't contradict themselves in places, as almost any long-running series eventually will – but it's going to stick out to those who’ve read the novels nonetheless.

While we're talking about how the games pick up where the books left off though, the big contradiction that has to be touched on comes in bringing Geralt back at all, at least in any public capacity. There's plenty to suggest that Geralt survives the novels' end and even goes on to have further adventures, but it's also pretty explicit that the history books record his death in the Pogrom of Rivia as final. The last two novels by order of publication (Season of Storms and Lady of the Lake) go so far as to feature characters far in the future with an interest in Geralt's legacy, and they discuss the matter in some depth. As far as the world knows, Geralt is dead.

Book!Geralt fanart by Diana Novich

But it's hard to blame the games for ignoring this – true, thanks to Geralt's longevity, they could have set their conflict many more years after those future scenes – maybe even used Ciri's established time-travel powers to let you pop quietly in and out of the past (and, okay, now I've thought through all that, I'm kind of sad they didn't). But there comes a point where that kind of slavish devotion to preserving the source material really doesn't do a story any favours, and I'm not sure I could name any other successful adaptation that's bothered.

Besides bringing Geralt back at all, most of the bigger changes pertain to Ciri. In fact, as much as I'm about to get deep into the nitpicks below, you can make a surprisingly good case that the games have made only one really big change, and that's in simplifying the prophesies surrounding her. See, in the novels, all those world-saving prophesies aren't technically about Ciri, they're about her as-yet-unborn child. Who gets to impregnate her is the big driving force behind most of the villains of the books – one that all the main contenders seem to see as more of an awkward necessity rather than the inspiration for violent lust, but even so. To Emhyr, having to marry his own daughter is a bug, not a feature – but he's willing to do it to become the father of the savior of the world. But if Ciri is capable of fulfilling those prophesies herself, then Emhyr is already the father of the savoir of the world, and the revisions to his relationship with Ciri start to make a lot more sense.

Ciri's history with the Aen Elle elves seems to have been similarly revised – if not quite so cleanly. Avallac’h and Eredin are, naturally, both book characters – in fact, a lot of personality has been left behind in the books, since Avallac’h originally had a rather camp flair, and Eredin is less the power-hungry kingslayer you might imagine. When Geralt meets Avallac’h in the books – which happens briefly in Toussaint, for one of those "everything you're doing is going to make everything worse because prophesy" conversations – he's busy decorating a cave with fake prehistoric paintings in the hope of confusing future explorers. (Surprisingly, there does seem to be official art of this moment on one of the gwent cards – see above – though the Avallac’h who jokes about adding erect phalluses to the picture and admits his vanity won’t allow him to resist signing it hasn’t entirely survived the transition to the new medium).

We also meet the former Alder King, Auberon, whose death we see in flashback in the game. (Fun fact: Auberon is actually blowing bubbles through a straw in a bowl of soapy water when we first meet him in the books, hence the straw in the illustration below. The books just have more whimsy than any of the games would know what to do with.)

Ciri spends some time in the final book as a prisoner on the world of the elves, who are as keen as everyone else for their king to father her unborn child. Avallac’h eventually convinces her that this is all for the greater good: her child will be able to open gates to allow the people of her world to escape when the apocalyptic White Frost arrives. But their king, like most older elves, is impotent, leading to multiple nights where Ciri allows him to take her to bed (in some of the frankly more disturbing scenes of the series) to no result. Eredin, moreover, doesn't appear to have intended to poison the king: the vial that kills him was supposed to contain some sort of fantasy viagra, and even Eredin seems genuinely shocked to learn its actual effects.

Regardless, Ciri eventually discovers that Avallac’h and the Aen Elle have deceived her, and intend to user her child's powers to invade her world, not save it. Neither world is threatened by the White Frost for at least several millennia, it's just a pretext to make her cooperate. And so she flees, and Eredin (already leading his Red Riders aka The Wild Hunt long before he was crowned king) pursues her.

With the books as context, why Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h is very hard to understand. It's a little easier if that whole awful episode with her and the former king is subtracted out – Ciri's child is no longer necessary for Eredin's goals. So it's odd that the game still references the deadly vial Eredin gave to the king. Are we to suppose the vial genuinely contained poison in this version of continuity? I'd rather it didn't – Avallach's ruse is far more interesting if he underwhelms Eredin's support by revealing a half-truth – but the games aren't telling us.

And then we have to factor in that one last detail I'd forgotten when I originally started playing with this theory: TW3 does contain one last, dangling reference to the time the old king spent trying to impregnate Ciri, when Ge'els very reasonably asks why on earth Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h now. It's a damn good question, and the game offers no real answers. So in Avallac’h, we're left with a character who is vital to the final chapters of the games, who comes out of nowhere without the books as context, but whose role makes no sense with that backstory in mind. Frankly, the writers would have been much better off avoiding the whole mess altogether and inventing some new character to take Avallac’h's place.

The treatment of the White Frost is even more confusing. The books are ultimately fairly explicit about just what the White Frost is: a ice age, most likely caused by the same mundane climactic factors that produced the real ice ages of our history. The only escape is intergalactic emigration, as Ciri (or her children) might some day enable.

In the games, the White Frost has instead become some sort of nebulous, free-floating apocalypse which will eventually reach all worlds, which is basically fine – up to a point. We briefly visit a dead world that the Frost has decimated, and even the Aen Elle are now supposedly planning to invade Ciri's world because it threatens theirs as well (I mean, apparently – their motivations are so underdeveloped you could miss them by accidently skipping just one or two lines of dialogue). When the Wild Hunt appears, it's always in a haze of cold. Their mages can invoke its power still more dramatically through portals which can freeze you in your tracks. So obviously, the Frost has already reached their world, and time is running out, right?

Well, no – you visit their world too (again, briefly – to meet a character who has never been mentioned before and won't be again, for reasons which have also never been mentioned before if you haven't read the books) – and there's no Frost in sight, apocalyptic or otherwise.

So why does the White Frost follow the Hunt around? No idea. It's never explained.

At the very end of the game, a second "Conjunction of the Spheres" occurs (possibly because of the Wild Hunt's appearance?), and the Frost begins to invade (or possibly Avallac’h summons it, so Ciri can go into it and destroy it?) It's all painfully unclear. The game is too busy pulling a bait-and-switch over whether Avallac’h's betrayed you to tell you what's actually going on instead.

But if Ciri could destroy the Frost completely (at great personal risk, but still) why is this not more clearly set up? Why did the Aen Elle think that escaping to another world (which will ALSO eventually be destroyed by the Frost) was a better solution than sending Ciri to face the Frost directly? For which matter, why do the Aen Elle need Ciri at all if sending enough ships to carry an army is no problem? Why does Ciri spend so much of the game questioning Avallac’h's true intentions, if they were ultimately so noble? When did he tell her the truth? If Avallac’h did summon the Frost, why did he pick that particular moment? And if he didn't, and it all just happened spontaneously, we're back to questioning why invading that world ever seemed like a good solution to Eredin – it all collapses in on itself.

None of these questions couldn't have been answered with a little creativity, but then the game would've had to dedicate some real time to explaining its backstory and developing its core conflict – something it's bizarrely reluctant to do. And if you think I may be drifting from the point a bit in the name of getting all my gripes about the ending down in one place, you're not wrong, but I feel Avallac’h and everything surrounding him is pretty much the ur-example of what doesn't work about the way The Witcher 3 depends on the novels: the backstory the writers are building on doesn't actually exist in any format available to the rest of us.

There are plenty of ways TW3 could have incorporated its backstory into its own narrative (yes, even excluding the method "by expecting people to read many many more pages of text from in-game documents", because that's bullshit and always will be). There are times it does this brilliantly, such as in the quest ‘The Last Wish’: everything you really need to know is covered in Yennefer and Geralt's conversation in the boat, and without ever making the dialogue sound unnatural. In fact, TW3 has even more options here than many works with the same problem, because Geralt is famous and people already think they know his story. You could have bards singing Dandelion's ballads, you could have characters confronting him with misunderstandings about his past to force him to correct them. You could also have Geralt visiting people and places he knows Ciri remembers fondly because of the time they spent there together, or include playable flashbacks similar to the time you spend playing as Ciri. You could stick chunks of backstory in optional sidequests or scenes old-school fans can skip through quickly. So many of my questions (how did Ciri get so close to Yennefer if they were never at Kaer Morhen together? Why has no-one tried training Ciri in her powers before? What does the Wild Hunt even do while it's not hunting Ciri? Why is Ciri princess of Cintra if her father is Emperor of another country altogether?) could have been answered so easily.

Seriously, summarising the Witcher books is not that hard. Lots of things happen, but only a fraction of it is really relevant in retrospect, and you could hit all the major plot beats in a handful of paragraphs. (Heck, I’d do it here if this post wasn’t already ridiculously over long.)

But then, TW3 has a bizarre problem with leaving so much of its best material off screen, even from its own story. It's criminal that we never get to see any of Geralt's time (or Yennefer's) with the Wild Hunt, even in flashback or dream sequence. This is material that directly sets up the relationship between the main hero and the main villain, and the most we ever hear about it is a few vague allusions to it being like a strange nightmare. Really? That's it? What was it like? Was Geralt in a trance, unable to control his own actions – was he brainwashed into believing he belonged there, or was he merely unable to escape? What atrocities might Eredin have forced him to commit? Did he visit other worlds? Was he paraded among the Aen Elle as a captive? There is no way this isn’t a part of the story worth talking about!

We never see the moment Ciri rescues Geralt from the Wild Hunt. We never see how Avallac’h convinces her to trust him, we never see the moment he was cursed, or any of her efforts to save him – all these big, story-defining moments are left off-screen, to be vaguely recounted to you later in dialogue. Then there's the entire political situation in Nilfgaard – you hear about it second-hand, and it's all resolved off screen. And the list goes on. Yet you and Ciri still have time to run around Novigrad so she can thank a bunch of throwaway characters you've never even heard of before, nor will again. The priorities on display here are baffling.

The Witcher 3 was such a wildly successful game that it’s obvious these sorts of issues didn’t seriously hold it back, and it’s such a big game that I could have sat down and written just as many words focusing only on the parts that do work without much difficulty. It boasts stunning visuals, addictive gameplay and some truly wonderful characters, and so many parts of the story work brilliantly in isolation that it’s strange to come out of it feeling that it ultimately adds up to so much less than the sum of its parts.

I’m glad TW3 exists – if it hadn’t been such a runaway success I doubt I’d ever have discovered Sapkowski’s universe at all, but for myself, TW3 will probably always be remembered as a somewhat-overlong introduction to the really good stuff, in the expansions and the original novels it came from. I looked up the novels after finishing TW3 in large part because I’d been left with so many unanswered questions – and I’m glad I did, but I’m honestly surprised more people weren’t turned off by TW3′s scattershot approach to its own narrative. You’re allowed to change and rework in moving to a new medium, but I can’t imagine it would’ve hurt games’ success to tell a complete story in the process.

#The Witcher #Witcher Novels #The Wild Hunt #Geralt #Ciri #Emyhr #Avallac'h #Eredin #meta #long post is long

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gimme-a-hand-scaevola · 4 years ago

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A review of the book The Rook by Daniel O’Malley that nobody ever asked for...

Ok so @chemcat92 recommended me this book and I listened to it on audiobook and I just... have a lot of thoughts. I haven’t read the sequel and I’m torn if I will. Having watched some AMVs of the show, it’s a hard pass. My review is going to be in three parts:

1. The plot

2. Wasted Potential - In General

3. Wasted Potential - Gestalt the Most Wasted Character Potential I’ve Read since Drizzt Do’Urden

Obviously spoilers under the cut.

Part 1: The Plot - i.e. I think Daniel discovered books four days before he started writing

Ok so... The plot of this book. It starts off STRONG I will give it that. Myfanwy Thomas wakes up in a rainy part surrounded by bodies wearing latex gloves and no memories. She soon discovers her previous self lost her memories but because she was organized and knew it was coming, she has eased new Myfanwy’s transition. She gets to choose to stay in her life through letters and then we get an easy way to give flashbacks. Anyway this part RULES.

Honestly, the book starts strong as hell. Myfanwy discovers she has supernatural powers over people’s nervous systems and is a trained bureaucrat for a supernatural wing of the government. This all runs sort of like a combination of Heroes and Harry Potter in the best way possible. And here is where we find the strongest part of the book: the superpowers.

We don’t have to look that far to find Heroes type shows or books where everyone has a special ability, so if you’re going to go that route, you’ve gotta bring it. And honestly, Daniel brings it. They powers are cool as hell, they’re inventive, they’re well bounded. I felt like I understood what people’s powers and limitations were. We were in a land with magic, but it never felt cheap. This is going to dovetail into my absolute RANT about Gestalt but give me a sec to get there.

Ok. So honestly I don’t even have any complaints until the third act. Act one gives us the set up, act two introduced the big bad the Grafters and so far so good. We’ve got good but elitist supernatural guys vs. bad but more egalitarian supernatural guys. We also know that it was someone in the supernatural org (it has a name but the name is so stupid I can’t spell it) that betrayed our protag and stole her memories and they’re still around and teamed up with the evil Grafters. Intrigue?? Don’t know who to trust???? Love it.

For some reason everyone is either old, or hot, or so inhuman it’s viscerally horrifying. Love this touch. Eleanor from the Good Place taught us that it’s totally free to imagine everyone in a story as super hot. And it is. So they’re all super hot. Love it. Good commitment, Daniel.

But then we get to Act three. So, this was a big swing on ol Danny’s part because a lot of the effect of this had to do with carrying out mystery. We’d built a lot of tension on the suspense Who Betrayed Myfanwy. So obviously it’s really important for me to be surprised or at least satisfied with who this is. (As an aside, I would have been ok with guessing correctly, I definitely don’t subscribe to surprise trumping cohesive plot). Ok. With that on paper... like... holy shit. What a stupid “reveal.”

So in part 1, like the first scene we get of old Myfanwy’s letters giving us context, she says that her apartment at work was inherited from a dude Conrad something that got promoted. And then she says it’s super badly decorated, and later we see it and this shit is straight out of Austin Powers, mirror over a round bed, The Whole Shebang. But she also says that this guy who otherwise is supposed to be very smooth and charismatic like... asks her about the decor.... every time they interact. Every Time They Interact. The second this was mentioned (WHICH IS AFTER WE KNOW SHE WAS BETRAYED) I'm like “oh ok so this guy bugged her room he’s the villain” and I only wasn’t sure because it was WAY too obvious.

But no. He’s the villain. He has a big reveal where he’s like “AND I BUGGED YOUR ROOM” and I'm like... well... yeah. Of course you did. But here’s the thing tho... Myfanwy’s like... WHOLE ASS JOB is planning covert ops. So... is she good at her job??? IS SHE????

But we also don’t actually show how characters are based on their actions, we are just told how they are. But we will circle back to that in the Gestalt part. That’s honestly the sum of my rant about the plot. It was nothing. It put all its eggs in the basket of the worst most boring reveal of all time. Daniel, I think you might just be boring.

Part 2: Wasted Potential - Everything but Gestalt who gets a special part to themselves.

The big sin of this book might just be too many good ideas. There’s a lot of characters, they all do cool stuff, but we have like 200 pages, so there wasn’t enough time to do anything with all these guys. I got lost about who was who like 80 times because they’re basically all sneaky hot magic guys. One of them smokes and is a soldier and he seems chill.

There’s a vampire and he gets a scene and a long intro that reads more like a wiki page. Like it was interesting but you would have lost NOTHING cutting him as a character except that he was cool. You never ever believe that he was the bad guy because it’s super well established in the Certified Back Story that he could give two shits about the politics of the humans. He’s there bc he’s an adorably young vampire who is very curious so his dad set him up as a powerful government agent as though it was enrolling him in a prep school. Love it, but again, we don’t.... need him around.

There’s a lady who can walk through dreams and I thought she was going to be important based on the fanfare of her introduction but then we forget about her basically entirely.

There’s a whole American wing that we also only see anything interesting about in side story. Basically the world building is really good. Like pretty superb to be honest. But it’s bracketing a story that is nothing so it makes even good characters seems really random. And that bring us to:

Part 3: My Darling, Gestalt. My Type. My Weakness. What a Sad Little Thing You Are (Also misogyny)

Alright... if the rest of this review wasn’t salty enough for you... let the salt begin. Gestalt. So named because of the word meaning larger than the sum of its parts. And so they were destined to be. And so they were most definitely not. So Gestalt’s whole thing is that they are one consciousness with four bodies. They can either control one body at a time and sort of shut the others down or they can control them all at once but that becomes harder if one of them requires more attention than another, like if one is in a fight.

Two twins (men), one fraternal brother, and a sister. If anyone is thinking “uhoh, only one girl, hmm can Daniel handle that? Seems like maybe some Smurfette style misogyny-lite is coming,” you would be wrong. Super wrong. Because it is not misogyny-lite. It’s aggressive Fight-Me-In-A-Perkins-Parking-Lot misogyny. So go fuck yourself, Dan.

Alright, so to number Gestalt’s sins.

1. Scrape off some of that intro mustard.

They’re introduced in the LONGEST fucking passage I’ve ever read telling me that this dude is hard to talk to and weird. Like, I’m in an urban fantasy book already, I'm all set. Also... bitch SHOW ME they’re weird. Like can I see some interactions that give me second hand embarrassment??? No. It is actually never uncomfortable to talk to Gestalt. I only know that because people are super fucking rude about them. But it is never earned. So I don’t feel sympathy when people are like “Oh noooo you have to spend a car ride with Gestalt? Ewwwww sorry.” I’m just like, “What’s your fucking problem? They seem fine.”

2. They’re supposed to be Bad At Planning but when??

Alright so there ARE times they’re bad at planning and we will GET TO THAT. But it’s only post-reveal like... what we are told during a monologue that they were dumb as shit. And that wasn’t even like not being good w/ details like it’s implied they are, it’s literally like doing dumb ass stuff. And it felt more like my bud Dan didn’t have a good handle on why stuff was dumb as rain than Gestalt being silly.

Also.... this is a stupid use of this sort of character. They’re dumb and bad at planning??? THEY’RE A JOINT CONSCIOUSNESS why would you waste that making them “Good at kicking ass.” ugh. Fine.

3. They get sidelined IMMEDIATELY

So a guy named Pumice Stone or Kettle or Lil boy Bad At This or something outs that Gestalt is working with the Grafters because he like.... wasn’t paying attention. It was boring. But anyway so they capture two of the bodies and then stop addressing Gestalt until the end. They have one weird scene where the protagonist like.... freaks them out but ok. Fine. Why is Gestalt so Yelly. Why are so many villains in this book yelly. Ew.

4. The REVEAL MONOLOGUE.

I know this is a long ass review already. But my Feelings Must be Heard. So in the end when Conrad surprises no one but “smart” Myfanwy that he was the bad guy, we also get a reveal from the surviving Gestalt bodies that:

a. There’s an incest baby

b. They’re afraid of death

c. They’re so phenomenally stupid I have lost all interest in them

So... this is where the misogyny comes in. I’ll note here that the only time we interact w/ Eliza, the special girl body, is when she takes a carried to Hogwarts the super secret magic school with Myfanwy and she doesn’t do anything except we get the internal note that she’s like... gained weight. This is the misogyny-lite we expect. (And no, Dan, you don't get any points bc a female character is the only pleased she got pudgy bc YOU wrote the female character so we’re all set there.)

And then we discover that the weird blonde (lol oh yeah they’re all hot blondes) baby that Conrad “Evil Austin Powers” British-Last-Name has with his weird wife is actually a Gestalt body that Eliza had after she boned down with her other body who is genetically a brother and consciously herself.

K. Ok. I have. Ok. Alright. Daniel. Ok.

SUBPART A: My Feelings about Gestalt: Oh Eliza, my darling, my dear, would that I could bring you Justice

So after Eliza is shot dead one of the interchangeable boy bodies of Gestalt yells at Myfanwy about how terrible that is bc it was the only body who could bear children so now THE HORROR they’ll die.

For god’s fucking sake Daniel O’Malley. What the fuck is your goddamn problem. You LITERALLY wrote a Smurfette Syndrome character who is only important because she can have babies. She is literally just there to be a baby-box. What the fuck. Get fucking wrecked. Thank GOD Starz cut your program and fuck the Aurealis Awards for giving you an award for this fucking book. But they’re a sci-fi award so this is probably super progressive for them. I was pleasantly annoyed by the basic nature of this book until this part. Now I am just done with your content. This was more overtly sexist that Supernatural. So... real swing and a miss.

ANYWAY FORTUNATELY this opens a whole new can of worms that I get to ruthlessly mock certified Basic Bitch Daniel O’Malley for.

SubPart 2: Gestalt Raises Interesting Philosophical Questions Daniel Isn’t Smart Enough to Address

So, remember, I would have cut this dude more slack if he didn’t do that to Eliza. Gestalt, to be honest, this whole review is dedicated to what you Could Have Been.

Interesting Questions or Comments We Could Have Asked:

Does having a baby being one of five of your bodies affect your consciousness? That thing doesn’t have object permanence? Is there like an intellectual cost to having another baby body? No, we don’t care. I think we just had there be a baby bc “Weird sister-sex” was as interesting as Daniel could get. Side Note: The obvious question of “lol haha lol is it incest or mAsTurBation is not going to be addressed here bc it is literally too boring to consider)

Does having a body who textually is said to have post-partum depression affect your joint consciousness? If not, why bring it up?? Bc she has “weird lady disease” is that why???

Are they....afraid of death????? Why didn’t you ever bring this up? Why have they showed only excitement at the prospect of very dangerous fights up to this point? Why are all four bodies in the field.

WHY ARE ALL FOUR BODIES IN THE FIELD. Ok so here is one of those points that is definitely stupid but stupid in a dumb as dirt way. If you were afraid to lose your baby-box body, why would you send her into battle?

Why didn’t they freeze a bunch of her eggs? In fact, why did she bear it at all? Why put your one female body that you only want for babies through that sort of danger? Canonically they all get paid an absurd amount and Gestalt is paid for each body, they can afford a surrogate.

Why let a weird dude who is at best contemptuous of you raise your baby body? Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Doesn’t that give him a huge amount of leverage over you?

Is the quality fo Gestalt’s form destined to decline if genetically they can only make more bodies by full genetic sibling offspring? Does that scare them? Again... does their physical brain affect their consciousness?

If so... maybe that would be a good reason for them to want to join up with the Grafters who are way ahead in genetic research and engineering.

ANYWAY Gestalt is sexist as shit and boring as hell and had SO MUCH WEIRD POTENTIAL.

In summary: It was definitely fun but Fuck you, Daniel O’Malley

#the rook #Daniel O'Malley #Myfanwy Thomas #Gestalt #Book review #the rook starz

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keyofjetwolf · 4 years ago

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Pitch Me your thing!

HELLO HELLO MY SUNBEAMS. For most every category, there was an impressive turn-out for pitches, so I thought we’d utilize the weirdness of this year’s GIFTENING to give something new a try. The popular vote winner for each category will happen on the first day, but on the second, the winner will be chosen from YOUR PITCHES. Mostly those pitches will be to me. The exception is in Miscellaneous, where you’ll be pitching to my family, because what I want to do and what is most entertaining isn’t necessarily the same thing.

So! How will we do this thing? GLAD YOU ASKED. I’ll link you to a form in a minute with space for one pitch. Once you fill it out, you’ll be asked if you want to do another. There’s no limit to the number of pitches you can send in! But remember that if you submit multiple entries for the same category, you’ll basically be competing against yourself.

NOW WE’VE GOT SOME RULES FOR DOING THIS (which I mostly stole from Holligay, because I have no creativity this year). Please read them carefully! I’ll toss pitches that break any of these, and I’d rather your hard work not go to waste.

Pitch Me is open for your submissions from RIGHT NOW (22 December) through the very last day of this hellyear (31 December) at 11:59pm MT.

The thing you pitch must have come from what was nominated for THE GIFTENING 2020. (Full list of those nominations in every category below the cut on this post.)

Entries must be unsigned! I’m looking to chose based on the pitch alone, regardless of who submitted it.

The pitch itself must be 100 words or less. HAVE PITY ON ME I CAN ONLY CONSUME SO MUCH.

If you’d like to get some help, ideas, feedback, all that good stuff, the Discord is a FANTASTIC resource I encourage you to use.

HERE IS YOUR PITCH SUBMISSION LINK

And, as promised, below the cut you’ll find the list of all the nominees in every category you guys sent in this year. IT’S A LONG LIST HAVE FUN WITH THAT

Anime

A Place Further Than The Universe/Sora Yori mo Toi Basho Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Aggretsuko Aho Girl Air Master Akuma No Riddle Alien Nine Angel Beats! Angelic Layer Appare-Ranman Aria Aria the Animation Arrietty/ The Secret World of Arrietty (Ghibli film) Ascendance of a Bookworm Azumamga Daioh Baccano! Beastars Black Cat Blood + (the series) Bloom Into You Blue Drop/Tenshitachino Gikyoku Bodacious Space Pirates (starting right where you left off) BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense Boku no hero academia Bubblegum Crisis Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card Cardcaptor Sakura Castlevania the Animated Series Cells at Work Chaos; Head Chihayafuru Code Geass cowboy Bebop Cyborg 009 Death Note Death Parade Deca-Dence Demon Girl Next Door Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) Diebuster: Aim For the Top 2 Dog Days dorohedoro Dot Hack//SIGN Dr. Stone Elfen Lied Erased (Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi) Escaflowne Excel Saga Fantastic Children Fate/Zero Flip Flappers Fresh Precure Fruits Basket 2019 Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Ga rei Zero GaoGaiGar gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex Ghost Stories (dubbed) Girls' Last Tour Great Pretender Hoseki no Kuni/ Land of the Lustrous House of Five Leaves/ Saraiya Goyou Inari konkon koi iroha Interviews with Monster Girls Inuyasha Isekai Izakaya "Nobu" Jellyfish Princess/ Kuragehime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable Kaguya-sama Love Is War Kaleido Star Kannazuki no Miko Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Kemono Friends Kiki's Delivery Service Kimi ni Todoke: From Me To You Kino's Journey/Kino no Tabi (2003) Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni) Little Witch Academia Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files EP0 {"A Grave Keeper") Love is Hard for an Otaku Love Live! Sunshine!! lupin the 3rd part 4 Madoka: The Rebellion Movie Magic knight rayearth Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha March Comes in Like a Lion Mardock Scramble Master of Martial Hearts Mawaru Penguindrum Megalobox Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Mob Psycho 100 Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) Monster Mushishi My Bride is a Mermaid (Seto No Hanayome) My Love Story!!! My Neighbor Totoro My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom My Roommate is a Cat NANA Naruto Natsume’s Book of Friends Neon Genesis Evangelion (hateblog) New Cutey Honey Nichijou Ōban Star-Racers One Piece Ouran High school Host club Outlaw Star Paranoia Agent Perfect Blue Please Save My Earth Pop Team Epic Pretty Cure Fresh Princess Jellyfish/ Kuragehime Princess Mononoke Princess Principal Princess Tutu Project A-Ko promised neverland (/yakusoku no neverland) Psycho-Pass Ranma 1/2 Re: Cutie Honey Re:Creators Read or Die (OAV) Red Garden relife Revolutionalry Girl Utena Rose of Versailles Ruroni Kenshin Sailor Moon Sailor Moon (viz dub) Samurai Champloo (english dub) Sarazanmai School Days School-Live! Scum's Wish Senki Zesshou Symphogear (listed as just "Symphogear" on Crunchyroll.) Serei no Moribito (Guardian of the Spirit) Shin Sekai Yori (From The New World) Shirobako Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle Smile Pretty Cure (Japanese original)/ Glitter Force (english adaptation) Snow White with the Red Hair Sound Euphonium Strawberry Panic (yuri) Sweetness and Lightning The Devil is a Part-timer The Devil Lady The disasterous life of saiki k (saiki kusuo no Sai Nan) The End of Evangelion (movie) the Promised Neverland The Twelve Kingdoms Tiger & Bunny Tokimeki Tonight ToraDora Tsubasa Chronicle Umineko When They Cry Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid Vinland Saga Violet Evergarden Whispered Words (Sasameki Koto) With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun Yona of the Dawn Yu Yu Hakusho Yugioh Duel Monster Yuki Yuna is a Hero Yuri Kuma Arashi Yuri On Ice!!! Zoids: Chaotic Century Zombie Land Saga

Non-Anime Animated

Adventure Time Amphibia Animainiacs (Original) Animaniacs (Reboot) Archie's Weird Mysteries As Told By Ginger Barbie Life in The Dreamhouse Batman the Animated Series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot Big Mouth Bob's Burgers Bojack Horseman Bravest Warriors Captain N: the Game Master Carmen Sandiego (1994) Carmen Sandiego (2019) Castlevania (Netflix) Cats Don't Dance Coco Courage the Cowardly Dog Craig of the Creek Cyber Six Daria Darkwing Duck Dragon Booster Dragons: Riders of Berk DuckTales (2017) Exo-Squad Fern Gully Fillmore! Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Futurama Gargoyles Glitch Techs Godzilla: The Animated Series Green Lantern the Animated Series Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане) Hey Arnold Hilda Infinity Train Iron Giant JEM Kim Possible Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts Legend of Zelda animated series (1989) Legion of Super-Heroes Liberty Kids Magical Girl Friendship Squad Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart The Legend of Korra Moominvalley Motorcity My Little Pony (Classic, NOT FiM) My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks Onyx Equinox Over the Garden Wall Over the Moon (2020 film) Owl House Primal Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure Redwall Rise of the TMNT Roco's Modern Life Rugrats RWBY Samurai Jack Seis Manos She-Ra (1985) She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Sonic Boom Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse Star vs. the Forces of Evil Strange Magic Super Mario Brothers Super Show Superman: The Animated Series Teen Titans The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo The Animals of Farthing Wood The Dragon Prince The Hollow The Legend of Tarzan (TV series) The Magic School Bus (1994) The Mysterious Cities of Gold The Pirate Fairy (Disney Fairies) The Powerpuff Girls (1998) The Real Ghostbusters Thundercats (1985) Thundercats (2011) Transformers: Prime Tuca and Bertie Twelve Forever Undone Venture Bros Wakko's Wish Wakfu Wander Over Yonder We Bare Bears (TV) Winx Club Wreck-It Ralph (2012) X-Men Evolution X-Men: The Animated Series Xiaolin Showdown

Live Action

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 28 Days Later 3rd Rock from the Sun A Series of Unfortunate Events American Horror Story: Asylum Babysitter's Club (2020) Batman (the old Adam West version) Better Call Saul Black Mirror Blackbeard's Ghost (Peter Ustinov) Boston Legal Boy Meets World Boys Over Flowers Bromance (Taiwanese tv series) Brooklyn 99 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cadfael Cagney and Lacey Charmed (2018) Chopped Cleopatra 2525 Cloak and Dagger Clue (1985) Community Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Dead Like Me Dead To Me Deadwood Death Note (Netflix) Derry Girls Dimension 20 - The Unsleeping City Doctor Who (New) Doom Patrol Dracula's Daughter (1936) Escape to the Chateau Farscape Fingersmith Galavant Godzilla (2014) Gokushufudo (2020 Japanese TV drama) Golden Girls Good Omens H20: Just Add Water (somewhere in seasons 1-2) Happy New Year Harley Quinn movie Hateblog a REALLY STRAIGHT soap opera. Haunting of Bly Manor His Dark Materials (HBO series) Holes Hot Fuzz House Inception Inside No. 9 Iron Chef America Joan of Arcadia Julie and the Phantoms Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Kamen Rider Build Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Kamen Rider Fourze Killing Eve Knives Out Letterkenny Leverage Little Women (2019) Lucifer Matlock Majisuka Gakuen MASH Merlin Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol Money Talks (1997 film) Motherland: Fort Salem Murder She Wrote Mythbusters Nailed It! Never Have I Ever Once Upon a Time Orphan Black Pen 15 PGSM Pi (1998) Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical Puppy Bowl Pushing Daisies Rome (hateblog) Russian Doll Sabrina Sense8 Sera Myu: Un Nouveau Voyage Shameless Sierra Burgess Smallville So Weird Star Trek: TOS (or their films) Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager Stargate Atlantis Suckerpunch Supernatural (out of context speedrun the last three episodes) Sweetheart Switched at Birth Tall Girl Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles The Addams Family (1964) The Big Flower Fight The Booth at the End The Bride With White Hair The Crown The Fresh Prince of Bel Air The Good Place The Kissing Booth The L Word The Librarians The Magicians The Muppet Show The Pregnancy Pact The Room The Steve Harvey Show The Stranded The Untamed The Witcher The Wolfman (1941) Torchwood Twilight Zone (original) Twin Peaks Ultraman Nexus Umbrella Academy Van Helsing Warehouse 13 Warrior Nun What We Do In The Shadows (tv show) Will & Grace Wynonna Earp X-Men 2: X-Men United Xena: Warrior Princess

Miscellaneous

Alpha Flight #41-62 Anime music dance party, the logistics of which are to be determined! Ask Hot Pocket and/or Mina-pup AskSharknado: Giftening Edition Attempt to make French macaroons Commentary on old Goggles Critical Role Crowdsourced: A Black Mirror-style day where Jetty has to ask what her choices are of the audience for everything! I give you a menu, you decide what she has for dinner? What does she wear? Does she walk on the track or do the eliptical? Does she go to a movie with Doc or play a video game with Mike? Can be done alongside other stuff. Doodle Day Dramatic readings of fan fiction! Drunk History (or whatever your favorite subject would be) with Jet Wolf! Drunk Sailor Moon Exorcising Closet Ghost Fic Prompts Day Figuarts Day! (Not specifically freeing anyone, just various fun poses and such) Guess the plot of a show based on its opening Her Shim-Cheong (manhwa) House of X/Powers of X Hubby's Choice IDW Jem comics liveblog Intros Only (watch show openings, give commentary, guess what show is about, etc.) Jackbox Games Jet Wolf paints along with Bob Ross Jet and Doc go to Heaven/Hell, respectively: Jet gets to write reams of words about the awesomeness of Rei Hino and Doc has to read all of them and say ONLY NICE THINGS. Jet does Tiktok dances Jet Liveblogs Holligay: A Nature Documentary Jet Ranks Sailor Moon Image Songs Jet Reads Goosebumps Jet Reads Legion of Super-Heroes Jet redesigns the Wolf and Gay offices! Jet shows off her knitting Jet Wolf attempts to recreate scenes from Sailor Moon with Mina and Hot Pocket and/or whatever is in the house Jet Wolf reacts to Sailor Moon tiktoks (in blog form) Jet Wolf reads Love and Rockets. Jet Wolf reads the Jem comics by IDW Jet Wolf reviews her old top 100 Sailor Moon moments list Jet Wolf talks about Archie Comics Jet Wolf talks about each cel she owns and why they are so awesome. Jet Wolf writes Poetry Jet Wolf's Top 5's Jet, Hubby and/or family play board games Jetty Rants and Raves Jet Wolf tries to crack the Gravity Falls Codes Kiwi Blitz on Hiveworks Let's Play on Webtoon Liveblog: Favorite X-Men comic book arcs Livestream Pathfinder one-shot LOONA (Collection of music videos with an ongoing story/universe about GIRLS who are FRIENDS and SAVE THE UNIVERSE) Lore Olympus on Webtoon Mike regales us with "the story of your love" while you get increasingly embarrassed Mina and Hot Pocket day - liveblog like a nature documentary Mister Tsukino Does His Taxes and the Household Budget (Sailor Moon fan comic by Shadowjack) Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake Not So Shoujo Love Story on Webtoon Pitch Mishaps for Untitled Senshi Game (it is a lovely day in Juuban, and you are a Horrible Minako.) Pitching hubby's favorite media at (readers/holligay/jill/momigay) Playing with dolls (because how could 3 women not have any dolls between them) Re-Take By Studio Kimigabuchi (All Ages Version) Real or Fake Anime (people submit descriptions of anime you guess if it is an anime that actually exists or not) Reviewing succulents Scavenger hunt! Not entirely sure how it would work, maybe folks could send in asks for you to show things like your favorite Rei Hino object, or the thing that's been with you the longest, etc. sewing/knitting/baking tutorial Share or rant about a Roman history topic Sleepless Domain on Hiveworks Talking to Docholligay 2: Doc Harder (basically you talking to Doc's future womb evictee while still in there and telling them stuff like say the greatness of Rei Hino) The Monster Duchess and Contract Princess (manhwa) The Polar Bear Plunge--I take Jetty to our finest Lake Elmo in January, and she jumps in! Note: THIS IS NOT DANGEROUS, WORRYWARTS. I'll bring a life preserver, I've done it before, and I would do it with her if I weren't pregnant. The Senshi Helpline--The Senshi, taking your advice questions, here and now! The World of Moral Reversal Virtual knitting/crafting circle! Let us craft and chat with you! What-If #24 Gwen Stacy Lived Worm the web serial Write an explanation for a drawing we send you! Yuri Hell's Kitchen

#THE GIFTENING 2020 #THE GIFTENING 2020 admin stuff

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unfortunately-lovestruck · 5 years ago

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So concerning Antonio’s update, this is a long-ass analysis/ramble. If you don’t want copious amounts of literary analysis, ignore this. If you want my review or thoughts, it’s all under the cut.

So to start off, I think we all knew this was inevitable. And by “this” I’m of course referring to the MC’s deterioration into cruelty and hunger for power. In terms of plot, this update mainly consisted of MC’s emotional and mental instability after seeing Frankenstein, who unsurprisingly reactivates trauma within her. So this is mainly build-up and the finale next week will be the climax. But, in terms of symbolism, allusions, and character insight, this update was surprisingly deep.

1) We got a large amount of mental insight from both Antonio and the MC, but especially a lot from the former compared the usual. We learn how lonely Antonio felt after breaking out of the castle and splitting up from her. We learn the urgent and borderline hysterical fear he felt when he learned Eva was alive through the MC feeling the exact same thing in regards to Frankenstein. He explains just how and why the MC changed him, that she made him look at himself and actually confront his problems instead of running away. In one of the options when the MC asks “What scares you?” he answers with “Too many things to list”. MC feels down the bond that he’s experiencing loss, like he’s losing her. He admits he’s not sure stopping her in her fit of rage against Victor was the correct choice. They’re little glances, but when you add them up like this, it becomes a lot. Because the focal point of this update is the MC’s mental stability (or decline of it) we have to see his mental state as well because they’re linked. This leads me to the next point.

The bond literally just snapped. The way it’s described in the second screenshot almost makes it sound like a piece of wood, but what I envisioned was a rubber band. MC experiences so much emotional strain after seeing Frankenstein, which transfers over to Antonio. The copious insight we get from him mirrors how much we see of MC’s emotions, and it all builds and grows. The stress is like pulling on the elastic of the band, until eventually the tension rises so much, it just breaks.

3) We get another reminder from MC just how similar she and Antonio are. Albeit brief, it’s definitely relevant to one of the entire route’s themes. Is man so different from monster if that monster was once a man? (I.E. moral grayness.) MC and Antonio both grew up poor, both lost important immediate family, and both have a little sister they would do anything for. They both crave power as well, and in the end, they both get it. After being born into poverty, Antonio builds status in both the human and vampire world. He’s the billionaire CEO to mortals, and an elder vampire with high ranking to immortals. After having a similar background, MC becomes the prophesied Lady of Blood, and is able to make even Dracula bend to her will and fear her, a feat not even Antonio could accomplish in 5 centuries. They are both so similar it’s astounding. How does this connect to moral grayness? Well, MC eventually ends up calling Frankenstein a “pathetic human”, and is surprised at her apathy considering how recently she was turned. Vanessa asks her what she’ll become when it’s only her and bloodlust with no bloodbags in sight. Though a good portion of this struggle is tied to her being losing control of her power and just being a vampire in general, MC ends up pondering her morals before this slip of her mental state even begins. In the beginning of Antonio’s route, she sees him as a monster. His whole role in the series is the “dark” vampire. Yet after 6 seasons, MC is powerful like him. She drinks blood like him. No matter how morally questionable she initially found him, she is like him. And the transformation, apart from the Lady of Blood bit, only amplified that.

4) Returning to the theme of power, it arises yet again, and is another reminder of the early stages of the route. From the start, there’s a power imbalance between Antonio and MC. Rich vs poor, old vs. young, vampire vs. human. So they both figure turning her into a vampire will even the playing field. But now there’s still an imbalance. MC has control over every vampire in the world except for him. And though Antonio doesn’t want to use it, he has control over her after turning her. Both harbor too much power, and it didn’t cancel anything out as intended, but instead seems more like it squared itself.

5) I mentioned the symbolism and character insight, but I’ve yet to address allusions. In Antonio’s route, we get a combination of Dracula, Frankenstein/Igor, and Elizabeth Bathory/the Blood Cult. Dracula, so far, hasn’t been too imposing. He nearly bit the MC in the masquerade, and Necahual did try to bite her too, but other than that, they ended up being more minor inconveniences. Frankenstein, however, manages to cause so much damage with so little effort. It takes only a single sight of him to tip MC over the edge of stability. His true motives remain unknown, since just reviving Eva clearly wasn’t the end of it. Now, I haven’t read the novel by Mary Shelley, but after a quick Google search about his motivations in the book, it’s obvious that Frankenstein has a God complex and wants to create a being so powerful it defies nature and science. And the master of the Blood Cult just so happens to have wanted to turn MC himself so he could have control over her, and therefore control of every other vampire. I don’t know how this would take form exactly, but from what I’m seeing, it looks like MC is Frankenstein’s next monster, whether metaphorically or literally. And after this quote,

I just feel like her heart has to play some role in all this. Igor almost cut it out with a knife at an alter. Antonio considered giving her heart to Eva so it would continue to pump the blood she needed to survive. MC calls Victor’s heart cold and dark to do what he did. This scene might look like a cheesy, romantic exchange between two lovers, but I’m 95% sure this is foreshadowing somehow.

So what’s going to happen now? Well, the way it looks is that MC is going to push Antonio away and shut him out completely, and unless he stops her, she’ll force the cult to go find Frankenstein and murder him. My bet is the season finale will be him finally using his control over her and stopping her, and the MC will feel betrayed. We might seriously even just lose a coherent point of view from her because she’ll straight up have a different mentality, and even personality all together. In other words, she’ll become the Lady of Blood, fully and maybe even irreversibly.

But hey, that’s just my theory. Feel free to discuss!

#havenfall is for lovers #hifl #lovestruck #antonio vasquez #hifl antonio

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thenightling · 6 years ago

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My few grievances about The Batman vs. Dracula:

The animated film The Batman vs. Dracula is both a guilty pleasure and a disappointment for what might have been. I sort of like it but at the same time acknowledge it’s a very flawed movie. Here are a few of the problems I have with The Batman vs. Dracula the animated movie. Note: I do like this movie. It’s a guilty pleasure because I know it’s flawed. Anyway, here we go.

1. I would have preferred to see Dracula up against Kevin Conroy’s Batman, Batman of the 1990s Batman animated series. To me this version is the perfect Batman and in my mind (when I was ten-years-old) he was the version of Batman I wanted to meet my other favorite characters like Disney’s Gargoyles, or The Real Ghostbusters. So of course he’s the version I would have preferred meet Dracula.

2. I acknowledge The Batman vs. Dracula doesn’t really follow The Batman vs. Dracula (Red Rain) graphic novel trilogy. This doesn’t bother me too much. Truth be told I wish they would make a new Batman vs. Dracula in the main DC comics continuity. DC almost never uses Dracula. And honestly, I kind of felt the trilogy was mildly disappointing.

3. Dracula is one of the few public domain characters that I can’t help but say Marvel got better (except the stupid “Dark Elf” look where he had that high white pony tail and red armor from 2010 until 2018. That was annoying.) But no one can deny that Tomb of Dracula (which gave us Blade: The Vampire Hunter) is now a classic.

Come to think of it, I prefer Marvel’s Adam (The Frankenstein Monster) to DC’s Frankenstein monster too. At least when Marvel remembers Adam (The Frankenstein Monster) is intelligent and articulate. Sometimes he gets writers who are stuck on “Fiiire Baaaaad!” and clearly aren’t familiar with the Mary Shelley novel... (Someone hire Steve Niles, quick!)

4. On to the story itself. This scene. This scene right here! Bruce Wayne / Batman The Great Detective... He should not have had to write “Alucard” on a silver platter in lipstick and hold it up to a mirror to realize it’s Dracula spelt backward. I get that The Batman is the more kid friendly incarnation of the animated Batman but why not a scene of him telling someone like Alfred or someone else that Alucard is Dracula backward. Spare “The Great Detective” his dignity.

Also let’s be honest. Dr. Alucard is just a terrible alias and Dracula is just asking to be caught. And not just because he was overly excited by a platter of steak tartare. This Dracula is so obvious I think he wants to be captured. ...I think it’s a cry for help.

5. Dracula’s death scene. Batman in the main DC comics continuity and especially in the more kid friendly animated universe does. not. kill. Yet here in this animated movie (Tied to the “Kid friendly” The Batman animated series) has a scene of Dracula defeated and on his knees. And what does Batman do?:

Weak and on his knees Dracula looks up at him and goes “You’re Bruce Wayne.” (Someone clearly forgot one of Dracula’s powers is supposed to be mind reading! In fact I’m adding that next. The de-powering of Dracula.) Batman melodramatically has his cape spread in front of a giant sunlamp’s light. (No, really...) It briefly looks like Batman is going to show him mercy. Batman corrects Dracula by saying “I’m Batman.” And it’s a fairly cool delivery but then he lowers his spread cape so that the light kills Dracula. Who is cowering ON HIS KNEES! Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!

Questions and problems related to this:

A. Does killing Dracula not count as taking a life because he’s undead? Isn’t that some sort of racism, Batman? And if Dracula doesn’t count as alive where’s the line? Does that mean Solomon Grundy and Swamp Thing don’t technically count as alive? Grundy is literally a zombie. Swamp Thing is the consciousness of a dead man absorbed into “The Green” and in a plant-avatar body. Run, Swampy! Batman’s goin’ gardening!

B. Does this not count as murder because it’s technically the lamp that killed Dracula and not Batman? This is a dubious technicality. Again, where’s the line?

C. Honestly, based on how it played out, it looked like he WAS going to show Dracula mercy but once he realized Dracula knew his secret identity he decided to go “Nope.”

D. Even The Avengers don’t try to kill Dracula anymore. Marvel heroes have elaborate restraints and special cells for holding Dracula. If Tony Stark can do it, so can Batman. Wouldn’t Dracula’s blood addiction and predatory instincts and animal-like inclinations from an arcane blood mutation that grants superhuman powers earn him his own special cell at Arkham?

E. We saw at the start of The Batman vs. Dracula that Dracula had easily been held in chains in a coffin away from his homeland. So obviously he can be contained. Was Batman just being lazy? In Batman The Brave and the Bold we learn he has Nth metal handcuffs that can hold a ghost. He should be able to contain Dracula.

F. Come on! Dracula is easy to contain compared to The Joker yet The Joker is spared!

G. This was a missed opportunity. Think how interesting a recurring Dracula could have been. He could have escaped or been captured. And if he was captured a semi-reformed Dracula would make for a fun reluctant hero or anti-hero (So long as he keeps all of his powers, of course.) Imagine the banter if Bruce held him in The Bat cave.

6. Dracula is too depowered. Marvel and DC are both guilty of making Dracula burn in the sun (like in the movies) but in the original Stoker novel Dracula could walk in the daylight just fine. He was just weaker by day because it was not his natural time. And he could not take animal form by day.

Marvel once published a graphic novel of the original Dracula story by Bram Stoker and in that they remember that Dracula could walk by day. And they claim the graphic novel is the backstory for the version of Dracula in Tomb of Dracula but by the time you get to Tomb of Dracula he burns in the sun. So go figure...

Anyway, Marvel’s Dracula has the power to conjure storms, turn into a wolf, bat, and mist. He has been raised from the dead many times. He can read minds. And he can hypnotize. Of course he has all the traditional weaknesses too but still this version seems far more powerful than DC’s Dracula...

Marvel’s dracula is just superior.

And what makes it more frustrating is Dracula is in the public domain. That means anyone can use him. And they could have and still could do so much more with him.

7. It’s a little odd that Dracula’s wife in The Batman vs. Dracula is Carmilla. Carmilla is a lesbian in her original novel. She’s bisexual in Castlevania. I don’t mind her being bisexual. And I don’t really mind this twist. It’s just a little odd.

8. I keep wishing they would remake the animated movie but with a more serious / adult feel to it, like Justice League: Dark. And I wish DC was as good about finding clever uses for their Dracula as Marvel does. DC’s version goes to waste.

Just look how cool he looks! Why aren’t they using him?!

#Dracula #DC Comics #The Batman vs. Dracula

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thecreaturecodex · 6 years ago

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Oculus Fiend

“Augerric, Oculus Demon” by Eva Widermann, © Paizo Publishing. Accessed from the Dungeon 129 Map and Handout Supplement here

[Originally the “oculus demon”, as in 3.5 “demon” was used for any CE outsider, with the tanar’ri being a subset. With the demons in PFRPG being equivalent to tanar’ri, and the flavor text of these guys being separate and older, I decided to keep them a distinct entity. These were rare among Dungeon monsters in the 3.x era to have appeared in a WoTC-published book, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. I’m using the Paizo art in part because it doesn’t have a sexualized lady-demon in it, unlike the Wizards of the Coast version.]

Oculus Fiend A bestial horned humanoid stands before you, its wings spread wide. A crown of horns grows from its brow, and its hands are clawed. Most distinctive are the hundreds of eyes that stud its body, gazing in every direction.

The oculus fiend is a primordial horror from the Abyss. They claim to be older than the demons, but do not necessarily ally themselves with qlippoths, demodands or other Abyssal factions. Rather, they are free agents, working for whoever or whatever is willing to pay for their services and appeal to their lust for combat. Although oculus fiends can travel in flocks, they have no particular loyalty to others of their own kind and will turn on each other if they feel they have something to gain.

Oculus fiends are mobile and versatile combatants, switching between melee and ranged combat to exploit the weaknesses of their enemies. Their gaze staggers opponents, and their eyebolts can inflict a variety of other status effects. Oculus fiends are proud that the eyebite spell is based on their eyebolts, and smug to the extreme that their bolts are more effective than the spell they inspired. They can see magical auras on creatures and items alike, and they are fond of stealing powerful enemy weapons and using them against their owners.

The skin of an oculus fiend is rubbery, with chitin plates along the joints and backbone. They consider the number and shape of their horns to be very important—these details seem to be the oculus equivalent of gender identities. The number of eyes an oculus demon has can be as low as 20 and as high as 200—eyestalks are rare and are seen as deformities, as opposed to eyes set into the flesh. Oculus fiends vary in height as humans do but are broader across the shoulders, and they have a wingspan of ten to twelve feet.

Oculus Fiend CR 13 XP 25,600 CE Medium outsider (chaos, evil, extraplanar) Init +13; Senses all-around vision, arcane sight, darkvision 120 ft., Perception +28, true seeing Defense AC 28, touch 19, flat-footed 19 (+9 Dex, +9 natural) hp 187 (15d10+75) Fort +16, Ref +14, Will +11 DR 10/cold iron and lawful; Immune electricity, fire, poison; Resist acid 10, cold 10; SR 24 Defensive Abilities negative energy affinity Offense Speed 30 ft., fly 70 ft. (good) Melee +1 longsword +22/+17/+12 (1d8+7/17-20), claw +16 (1d6+3), gore +16 (2d8+3) or 2 claws +21 (1d6+6), gore +21 (2d8+6) Ranged 3 eyebolts +24 touch (2d8+5) Special Attacks staggering gaze Spell-like Abilities CL 15th, concentration +20 Constant—arcane sight, tongues, true seeing At will—blindness/deafness (DC 17), dimension door, dispel magic 3/day—chaos hammer (DC 19), dispel law (DC 20), mirror image, empowered vampiric touch Statistics Str 23, Dex 28, Con 24, Int 21, Wis 15, Cha 20 Base Atk +15; CMB +21 (+25 disarm); CMD 40 (42 vs. disarm) Feats Combat Expertise, Empower SLA (vampiric touch), Flyby Attack, Greater Disarm, Improved Critical (longsword), Improved Disarm, Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot Skills Acrobatics +27, Bluff +23, Fly +31, Intimidate +23, Knowledge (arcana) +20, Knowledge (planes) +23, Knowledge (religion) +23, Perception +28, Sense Motive +20, Spellcraft +20, Stealth +27; Racial Modifiers +8 Perception Languages Abyssal, Draconic, Protean, telepathy 100 ft., tongues SQ pervasive gaze Ecology Environment any land or underground (the Abyss) Organization solitary, pair or flock (3-8) Treasure double standard (+1 longsword, other treasure) Special Attacks Eyebolts (Su) As a standard action, an oculus fiend can fire three rays of energy from its eyes. Treat this as a ranged touch attack with a range of 120 feet and no range increment. These rays each deal 2d8 points of negative energy damage, modified by the oculus fiend’s Charisma modifier. A living creature struck by one of these rays must succeed a DC 22 Fortitude save or be sickened for 10 minutes. A creature that fails a second save is panicked for 1d4 rounds, and shaken for 10 minutes. A creature that fails a third save is knocked unconscious for 10 minutes, and cannot be revived without a remove curse or similar effect. The secondary effects are mind-influencing fear effects. The save DC is Charisma based. Pervasive Gaze (Ex) An oculus fiend’s many eyes make it so a creature attempting to avert its gaze from an oculus fiend only has a 20% chance to not need to save against its gaze attack. Staggering Gaze (Su) Staggered 1d4 rounds, 30 ft., Will DC 22 negates. The save DC is Charisma based.

#oculus fiend #pathfinder rpg #age of worms #demon #D&D

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themuppetmasterencyclopedia · 6 years ago

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Count von Count

PERFORMERS

Jerry Nelson 1972-2012

Matt Vogel 2013-present

DEBUT 1972

PATTERN Large Lavender Live Hand

Count von Count is a mysterious but friendly vampire-like Muppet on Sesame Street who is meant to parody Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Count Dracula. He first appeared on the show in the Season 4 premiere in 1972, counting blocks in a sketch with Bert and Ernie.

The Count has a compulsive love of counting (arithmomania, an affliction of legendary vampires); he will count anything and everything, regardless of size, amount, or how much annoyance he causes others around him. In one song he stated that he sometimes even counts himself. When he finishes counting, The Count laughs and announces his total (which sometimes appears on screen). This finale is usually accompanied by a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning, even on sunny days. (According to The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook, the Count has a personal cloud that hovers over his head and provides the thunder and lightning.)

Many of the Count's songs, including "Counting Is Wonderful" and "The Batty Bat," are in the style of Roma music.

The Count lives in an old, cobweb-infested castle that he shares with many bats. Sometimes he counts them. Some of the pet bats are named, including Grisha, Misha, Sasha, and Tattiana. He also has a cat, Fatatita, and an octopus named Octavia. He also plays a large pipe organ, and in some illustrations he is seen playing the violin. In recent years, the Count has appeared on each episode to announce the Number of the Day, playing notes on his organ to count up to the featured number.

The Count's most recent girlfriend, Countess von Backwards, is known for counting backwards. He had previously been linked to Countess Dahling von Dahling and shared a brief romantic tryst with Lady Two. His brother and mother have appeared on the show, and he also has an Uncle Uno.

The Count's profile on Sesame Workshop's website does not use the word vampire but does suggest that he may be a distant relative of Count Dracula. However, the book Sesame Street Unpaved describes the Count as a "Numerical Vampire." In contrast, the 2001 Sesame Street Muppets Drawing Guide insists "The Count is not a vampire."

Nevertheless, the Count resembles Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula in voice (speaking in an Eastern European accent and pronouncing his Vs as Ws), appearance, and sometimes mannerisms. For example, in early sketches, the Count waves his hands to exercise hypnotic power over other Muppets and holds his cape over the lower part of his face while moving. In addition, an early skit revealed that the Count shows no reflection in a mirror. Unlike vampires as traditionally depicted in legend and motion pictures, however, the Count often relaxes in the sunlight (as seen in "Counting Vacation" and "Coconut Counting Man," among others).

EARLY DAYS

The character was created by Sesame Street writer Norman Stiles. Performer Jerry Nelson recalled his immediate enthusiasm for the character in a 1999 interview:

“ Norman told me he was writing this piece with this new character who's called the Count... He's a vampire, but not a real vampire... He just has a jones for numbers. He's obsessed with counting things. So I went, "Oh, cool," and I went to Jim [Henson] and said, "You know, Norman's writing this new character called the Count." Jim said, "Let me hear it." So I went (in my Count voice), "Yes, I vould love to do it!" and Jim said, "Yes, you can do it." ”

The Count is now a friendly, non-threatening figure on the Street, but his early appearances in 1972 had a more sinister edge. He had hypnotic powers, and was able to stun other Muppets by waving his hands. After counting, he uttered a villainous laugh as lightning flashed in moody colors. He was often accompanied by creepy organ music. As the character matured, the sinister aspect of his personality was toned down, and his laugh became a throaty, Lugosi-style chuckle.

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APPEARANCES

He made cameo appearances in The Muppet Movie (in the finale) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (in the wedding), and has also been featured in the Sesame Street movies Follow That Bird and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. He also appeared in The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years and A Muppet Family Christmas.

The Count made a special appearance on episode 518 of The Muppet Show, emerging with his Sesame co-stars from the Three Bears' cave when Ali Baba shouts, "Open Sesame!"

On November 14, 1988, Count co-hosted The Today Show with Meryl Sheep.

On December 11, 2008, the Count was interviewed on More or Less, a BBC radio show about numbers.

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NOTES

The Count's New York license plate number is "12345678910" in the movie Follow That Bird. However, in Count All the Way to Sesame Street, a book based on Follow that Bird, the Count's license plate number is simply "123."

The Count was a DJ for his own radio station on the album The Count's Countdown, and hosted a music video show in Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street.

In a Number of the Day segment for 0, The Count stated: "Oh hello, it is I, The Count. I'm called the Count because I love to count. Err, that, and I inherited my father's royal title." Despite this claim, the title of Count is one of nobility rather than royalty. (sesamestreet.org) Thus, The Count's claim to royalty might rest on his having inherited a lesser title of a royal ancestor.

According to the book Sesame Street Unpaved, after Jon Stone read the first script of a Count skit, he sent it back to the writer, Norman Stiles, with a note scribbled atop: "Good character, bad bit". That skit was never produced.

In Count it Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street, The Count says that his favorite song is "Count it Higher". However, the book Sesame Street Unpaved states that his favorite songs are "Born to Add" and "Count on Me." Sesame Workshop's "Muppetbook" page also includes the song "99 Red Balloons."

The Muppetbook page also states the Count's favorite TV shows are 24 and 60 Minutes.

The Count's car is the Countmobile.

According to the 1998 book Sesame Street Unpaved, the Count is "written to represent an adult with the psychological age of someone who is 1,832,652 years old -- and still counting".

According to Sesame Street Stays Up Late!, the Count knows the exact time, and therefore knows when the new year arrives.

In Episode 4109, the Count states that he used to be a professor of counting from one to ten at the Institute of Technology at Moldavia.

In a few appearances (including The Street We Live On, episode 4109 and "Five By"), the Count sports a purple cape instead of his usual green one.

In Jerry Nelson's later years, Matt Vogel took over the puppetry of the Count while Nelson continued to provide the voice. This lasted until Nelson's death in 2012; Vogel debuted with his first vocal performance of the character in the 2013 video "Counting the "You"s in YouTube."

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FILMOGRAPHY

See Count von Count Filmography

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VIDEO GAME APPEARANCES

Sesame Street Countdown

Numbers

Get Set to Learn!

Search and Learn Adventures

Elmo's Number Journey

Count TV iPhone app

Elmo's Musical Monsterpiece

Kinect Sesame Street TV

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BOOK APPEARANCES

Books starring Count von Count

The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook (1973)

The Sesame Street ABC Storybook (1974)

The Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales (1975)

Big Bird's Busy Book (1975)

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Smell No Evil (1975)

Bert's Big Band Paint-with-Water Book (1976)

The Sesame Street Postcard Book (1976)

Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree (1977)

The Sesame Street Block Party Coloring Book (1977)

Sesame Street Goes West (1977)

The Sesame Street Mystery Coloring Book (1977)

Who's Who on Sesame Street (1977)

The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook (1978)

The Exciting Adventures of Super Grover (1978)

A Day on Sesame Street (1979)

Down on the Farm with Grover (1980)

Early Bird on Sesame Street (1980)

Look What I Found! (1980)

Molly Moves to Sesame Street (1980)

The Sesame Street Dictionary (1980)

The Sesame Street Pet Show (1980)

Special Delivery (1980)

The Tool Box Book (1980)

What Did You Bring? (1980)

Oscar's Rotten Birthday (1981)

Prairie Dawn's Upside-Down Poem (1981)

The Sesame Street Circus of Opposites (1981)

The Sesame Street Sun (1981)

What Do You Do? (1981)

City (1982)

A Day at School (1982)

#jim henson #the muppets #count von count #information

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allspark · 6 years ago

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It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, My Little Pony, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and more! All coming your way for June 12th!

TRANSFORMERS #7

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman (CVR A) Christian Ward (CVR B) Livio Ramondelli

When another body shows up, Chromia and Prowl feel the pressure to get answers. Bumblebee, meanwhile, applies for a new job-as a bodyguard. But first, he has to impress Elita-1.

• New story begins here! • A brand-new era of Transformers!

TRANSFORMERS #1 (2ND PTG)

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Gabriel Rodriguez

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #263

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) Dan Fraga

As Cobra continues its relentless onslaught on a global scale, G.I. Joe is there to meet them in kind. It’s tyranny versus freedom-heroes and villains will rise and fall, bullets will fly, blood will spill, and who and what remains when the smoke clears is anyone’s guess! Join Living Legend Larry Hama and superstar artist Netho Diaz for another explosive adventure into the action-packed world if G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero!

AMBER BLAKE #1 (2ND PTG)

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

AMBER BLAKE #4

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

Amber Blake has finally found the person responsible for all of the pain in her life-and there’s no way she’s letting him get away again. But nothing is as it seems, and when the people closest to her betray her, she’ll have to use all of her skills to get out alive-and to get the vengeance she’s longed for.

BERKELEY BREATHED’S BLOOM COUNTY ARTIST EDITION HC

Berkeley Breathed (A/CVR) Berkeley Breathed

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of one of the most cherished and fondly remembered comic strips of all time showcases his art in this deluxe oversized edition. You’ve read all the strips, now see the art! This Artist’s Edition features an incredible selection of daily and Sunday comic strips, as well as a selection of sketchbook pages and drawings, published here for the very first time, each and every one scanned from the original art. The dailies are presented at the ACTUAL size drawn, and the Sundays have been slightly reduced but are still bigger and more beautiful than they have ever been presented before! This is the ULTIMATE Bloom County collection by the inimitable Berkeley Breathead!

• Advance solicited for November release! • Bloom County returned as a successful webcomic in 2015, with collections published annually by IDW to critical acclaim.

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #5

Andrea Castellan, Marco Gervasio, Tito Faraci (A) Andrea Ferraris, Marco Gervasio, Alessio Coppola (CVR) Paolo Campinoti

Three stories never-before-seen in the U.S. await you in another fun-filled issue! In “Mickey Mouse and the Hydrophilic Monsters,” Mickey and Goofy encounter plant life like they-or you-have never seen before! Then, in “Pluto and the ‘Super’ Day,” what happens when Goofy dog-sits Mickey’s beloved pup? Why, nothing less than the unexpected! Finally, in “Shhh,” Peg-Leg Pete and his accomplice encounter more than they bargained for in a robbery gone very wrong!

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GOOSEBUMPS HORRORS OF THE WITCH HOUSE #2

Denton J. Tipton, Matthew Dow Smith (A/CVR A) Chris Fenoglio

Rosie thought it was bad enough having a witch as a neighbor, but now the witch is trying to take over the whole town! As their parents fall under the witch’s dark spell, it’s up to Rosie and her friends to try and save the day. And they thought algebra was hard…

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

GRAVE TP

Dan Fraga (A/CVR) Dan Fraga

ADVANCE SOLICITED FOR APRIL RELEASE! For fans of coming-of-age stories similar to Stephen King’s The Body; the movie based on it, Stand By Me; IT; Stranger Things; and E.T. Drawn one panel per day over a year, follow the story of three boys who discover a shallow grave while on a weekend camping trip. But that’s just where the mystery begins. The unexpected find reveals a cigar box containing seven mysterious items: a knife, a coin, a pocket watch, a rare baseball card, a gold ring, a silver spoon, and a strange manga comic. How are these items connected? Whose body lies buried? Find out in this once in a lifetime tale of friendship, mystery, suspense, and growing up.

MARVEL ACTION SPIDER-MAN #5

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Christopher Jones

Now that Peter, Miles, and Gwen have joined forces, nothing can stop them! Except maybe for homework and an internship at the Daily Bugle. Not to mention being stalked by a most dangerous foe… Kraven the Hunter! All-new web-slinging action in the Mighty Marvel Manner! This exciting new story arc features the Marvel Action debut of Kraven the Hunter! Variant cover by Marvel Action: Black Panther artist Juan Samu!

MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #78

Katie Cook, Andy Price (A/CVR A) Andy Price

The thrilling conclusion to the “Cosmos” story arc is here! With the most powerful ponies in Equestria under Cosmos’ control, do the remaining ponies stand a chance? And whose side will Discord take? Don’t miss the end of what might be Katie Cook and Andy Price’s finest MLP story yet!

MY LITTLE PONY TO WHERE AND BACK AGAIN GN

Justin Eisinger (A/CVR) Various

Adapting the most beloved My Little Pony animated cartoon episodes to graphic novels! My Little Pony comes to bookshelves! Revisit the inhabitants of Equestria and learn about the magic that friendship brings in this adaptation of the television series’ sixth season finale! This volume adapts the two-part “To Where and Back Again” in an original graphic novel.

ROAD OF THE DEAD HIGHWAY TO HELL TP

Jonathan Maberry (A) Drew Moss (CVR) Santiperez

Advance solicited for June release! The five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author introduces the world to the latest chapter of the zombie epic in this over-the-top wild-ride prequel to ROAD OF THE DEAD! The dead rose and are feasting on the living and a young scientist may hold the secret to a cure. Meanwhile, zombies and biker gangs want her dead, so it’s up to a bunch of losers in muscle cars and a hijacked tank to risk everything to save her.

STAR TREK Q CONFLICT #5

Scott Tipton, David Tipton (A/CVR A&B) David Messina

The contest for the ages continues as the Captains race to capture the one exotic creature that Trelane is missing from his intergalactic menagerie-a Borg Queen! But as the Godlike beings revel in the games, the crews are hatching a plan of their own. Don’t miss the penultimate issue of the biggest Star Trek crossover of all time! The crews of The Next Generation, The Original Series, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine come together to face their biggest challenge yet! Written by Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken scribes Scott & David Tipton!

STAR TREK VS TRANSFORMERS TP

John Barber, Mike Johnson (A) Jack Lawrence (A/CVR) Philip Murphy

When Kirk, Spock, and the entire crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise investigate problems at a remote mine, they’re met with a explosive battle between powerful warriors who change into vehicles from the 20th century! As the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons rages, it’s up to Kirk to decide-does he violate the Prime Directive and interfere in a war that’s raged for millenia? And how will the Klingons complicate the issue? It’s cartoony fun between two of the most popular science fiction franchises in the world!

• Advance solicited for May release! • Four decades in the making, it’s the crossover that fans have demanded! Kirk, Spock, and Autobots! • Decepticons and Klingons! Optimus Prime and the Prime Directive!

SWAMP MONSTERS

(CVR) Iger Shop

Something’s out there in the mad, murky depths of the fear-filled, sinister swamp… some… swamp… THING is coming for you! And it’s out for mud! The terror team that brought you Zombies, Return of the Zombies, and the petrifyingly popular hit series, Haunted Horror, takes you on an excursion of evil into the dankest, lagooniest corners of your nightmares, and dredge up over 240 pages of icky, drippy, slimy, grimy beasts from the grungy bottom of the Pre-Code comics’ bog. Swamp Monsters includes a fascinating introduction by comics legend, acclaimed artist of Swamp Thing, “Swampy” Stephen Bissette!

V-WARS GOD OF DEATH ONE-SHOT

Jonathan Maberry (A) Alex Milne (CVR A) Ryan Brown

Michael Fayne was patient zero of the plague that exploded into the Vampire Wars. A cult of militant vampires wants to resurrect him. Luther Swann leads a strike team to prevent the rise of a vampire god. New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry returns with an all-new V-Wars tale.

Five-time Bram Stoker award-winning author Jonathan Maberry returns to his signature comic book creation in time for the new TV series starring Ian Somerhalder!

Cover and interior art features the return of Transformers: Unicron superstar artist Alex Milne! Watch for V-Wars on Netflix starring Ian Somerhalder in 2019!

Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 12th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

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autisticsupervillain · 2 years ago

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Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to Stats Equalized!

The show where we equalize strength, speed, and durability to decide who would win a battle of hax, skill, and versatility.

This Week's Fighters....

Alucard vs Belos!

Conditions:

Pre-Schrodinger Alucard at Level 1 vs Season 1-2 Belos.

Scenario:

"For power? I am a witch hunter. Every sacrifice I've made was made was done to protect humanity from monsters like you."

"You want to see a monster like me? Look in the mirror. You're not the only beast to try gorging itself on souls."

"Whatever it takes to protect humanity from evil."

"Then perhaps I should educate you on what pure evil is capable of!"

#fictional throwdown fridays #stats equalized #hellsing #alucard #emperor belos #philip wittebane #the owl house

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problemsofabooknerd · 7 years ago

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My Favorite Movies/Shows/Webseries with LGBTQIA+ Main Characters

Pride Day 13!

Check out the intro to my Pride project here.

I thought today we would take a break from books - and from personal stories - to talk a bit more about other queer media I enjoy. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to read, but I still want to get the chance to see stories about wonderful LGBTQIA+ humans. So, here we go, a personal recommendations list of movies/tv shows/webseries that I adore that feature LGBTQIA+ main characters.

Movies

♡ Love, Simon

I mean, this is an obvious one. I adore the book, Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, but I have a little more love for the movie itself. I’m also currently on a high because I just rewatched it on my plane and I will never NOT be emotional. In case you don’t know, Love, Simon is a rom com about a high schooler named Simon who ends up being pen pals with another closeted gay kid at his school. It’s overwhelming, and Jennifer Garner never fails to bring me to sobs.

♡ The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love

It’s super sad to me that this movie doesn’t get passed around as often on recommendations lists, but I think that is possibly due to the fact that it can be a little harder to find. However! If you are desperately searching for a f/f movie comparable to Love, Simon, this is about as close as I can get you. It’s full of antics (sometimes SUPER over the top), romance (between a super butch white girl and a super femme black girl), and a whole heap of other fabulousness.

♡ Life Partners

A recently discovered one for me that I think deserves a bit more hype! This is a comedy about two best friends - one lesbian, one straight - as they fall in and out of love, struggle to figure out their careers, and generally navigate adulthood as BFFs. This is one of those movies where I’m honestly super pissed we don’t have more like it - it’s a movie about complex relationships between women that also features a shit ton of lesbian culture. Pride events! Gay bars! How many lesbians can you fit inside a Subaru! It’s all fabulous.

♡ But I’m a Cheerleader

A true classic. I remember my girlfriend showing me this back when I still insisted I was straight, but lord oh lord did it make an impact. It’s always hard to recommend queer stories set in conversion camps (take one of my favorite books, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, for example), but I think this is one of the few that still manages to be engaging and really fun. Plus, Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall are honestly staples of queer media for me.

♡ Battle of the Sexes

‘Sup, super gay Emma Stone - you truly make my dreams come true. To be honest, the fact that this is a based-on-a-true-story, gay, sports movie is just so perfectly me in terms of movie taste I will never be over it. Everyone does a remarkable job, but this is especially phenomenal in terms of how deeply gay it is and I love it to bits.

♡ The Runaways

Yet again, my deep and abiding love for movies based on true events appears. This is the movie that made me realize that a) Kristen Stewart is seriously a good actress and b) I’m super in love with her. This one is about The Runaways, the all-girl rock band Cherie Currie and Joan Jett were both a part of. It features scenes of KStew and Dakota Fanning making out so prepare your gay heart, lest ye be overwhelmed.

♡ Brokeback Mountain

Of course we end the list of movies here. I spent so much of my life believing the hype surrounding this movie - that it was just that sad cowboy movie and nothing more. And then I watched it and finally had to recognize just how poorly people had been talking about what an incredible film this is. I mean, yes. Sad cowboys! They are there! But the emotional depth and honest passion that is portrayed in this movie breaks my heart every single time. It’s just utterly beautiful.

Obviously this list isn’t comprehensive and there are so many more on my to-watch list. For example, I somehow haven’t seen Moonlight yet, and that feels like a travesty. I also really need to get to Pariah and Tangerine.

TV Shows

♡ Black Mirror - San Junipero

In case you don’t already know, Black Mirror is an science fiction anthology show, and every episode can be watched without the context of any of the other episodes. Which makes “San Junipero” just about perfect. It’s one of the only happy episodes of the whole show, and it gives me the most pure, joyful sapphic 80s vibes. I would kill for a full movie based on this episode. I would watch a million hours of sapphic ladies jamming to 80s music. Give it all to me.

♡ Sense8

I recently talked a bit about Sense8 in my post about what Pride means to me, because I think I always tie this show into my feelings on this month. In premise, it’s about 8 strangers around the world who form a psychic connection with one another. More than that, though, it’s about the things that make us different, and how those differences also emphasize our similarity and the power in solidarity. It’s a beautiful story about found family, and it just barely got its finale episode on Netflix that I’m dying to watch but haven’t yet because I’m honestly not feeling emotionally ready enough to handle it.

♡ Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Wow, this show. Wowww, this show. This is a pretty standard sitcom, about a group of lovable misfits who all work together. It’s set in a police precinct in Brooklyn, and initially feels like it centers on detective Jake Peralta, but the show quickly figured out that it had stars in every member of the cast. Two of my faves are Captain Raymond Holt and Detective Rosa Diaz, both queer POC that blow me away constantly. Holt is a black, gay detective who spent years fighting prejudice to make it through the ranks and be the stern-yet-lovable Captain of the squad. Rosa is a badass, bike riding, keep-your-nose-out-of-my-business bisexual Latina who owns my whole heart. It’s a show that does queer rep right, and a show that constantly reminds me to be happy even when it seems a little impossible for me to do that.

♡ American Horror Story

It’s bizarre to me how a horror anthology show still has some of the most consistent queer rep of any television show I watch. Now, this show absolutely has its problems still. Because it is a horror show, many queer characters get killed off. And my favorite season, Hotel, features a trans woman character who is played by a cis male actor. So, my warning is always to go in knowing the faults in the show. BUT this is still a show that consistently represents a variety of sexualities played by a variety of characters and actors, and I just appreciate it so deeply for normalizing that kind of rep over and over again. And I think I also want to give Ryan Murphy some credit in growing, considering the incredible work he is doing with Pose, hiring so many trans actors, writers, and directors to accurately shape that show.

There are of course other shows doing a good job with LGBTQIA+ rep, even if they don’t feature characters in leading roles. Shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Schitt’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Magicians are all ones I adore that feature queer peeps who own my whole heart. And there are tons more out there I would love to watch like The Bold Type, Black Lightning, One Day at a Time, Wynonna Earp, and Killing Eve!

Webseries

♡ Carmilla

Lesbian vampire! Spooky school! Soft journalist lesbian! Nonbinary side character! Queer kids everywhere dealing with the end of the world and the absurdly bizarre reality of their university! If you haven’t watched Carmilla yet, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a shame, and you must come and join us all in the better timeline where you’ve seen the show and can also gush with us.

♡ Her Story

This is a super short webseries, but one I would love to have more of. It is an honest, sweet depiction of the lives of two trans women living in Los Angeles, California. They deal with relationship issues, friendship, gatekeeping, loving women, loving men, and more. It’s an excellently done series, and Jen Richards is a remarkable actress and creative force, and I cannot wait to see what else she plans to do.

♡ Chosen Family

A webseries that is not fictional! Tyler Okaley is a name you probably know by now, if you’re part of the queer internet scene. He has been doing work for years in uplifting the LGBTQIA+ community, raising awareness, raising money, and a whole lot more. Chosen Family started last year, and I loved keeping up with it all through Pride, and this year we get even more episodes. Whether he is talking about queer people through history, queer immigrants, the beginnings of Pride, or even just talking to other queer creators, it is a series that celebrates this community in so many different ways and I love the work it does and how uplifted it makes me feel.

Alright, that’s where I’m going to wrap up this list for now. I thought about also adding queer music videos to this list but it would double in size if I did that soooo perhaps another day. What are some of your favorite movies/shows/webseries that feature LGBTQIA+ main characters? Send me a message and let me know!

#pride #lgbtqia+#movies #recommendations #if you feel like there's an incredibly popular gay movie missing from my list it is probably not there for a reasonnnnnn #i swear to god if people try to tell me to watch call me by your name i'm gonna lose it #just putting that out there

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eotheria · 7 years ago

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The World of Eotheria according to Lady Valentine

Part 9: Celestials, Fiends, Aasimar, and Tieflings

Angels and demons are known in Eotheria, though few have actually seen any, and it’s far too easy to make assumptions about what they are. To the layman, angels are divine beings of pure goodness that protect the weak and fight against evil and impurity. Demons are hideous and blasphemous creatures that seek to corrupt everything they touch and dominate the world and its people. A struggle between good and evil, heaven and hell, black and white, as old as time itself.

Let’s get this out of the way right now. Neither the celestials of Empyrea nor the fiends of Sheol have the best interests of the mortals of Eotheria in mind. The angels are truthful when they say they want to protect us. Unfortunately, their idea of protection is to protect us from ourselves by stripping away what free will and individuality we have, leaving us all as nothing more than cogs in a great machine, until our world resembles a graveyard where the corpses happen to be mobile. The demons aren’t in all honesty much better; things like murder, rape, and theft are considered personal matters to demons, who abhor the very concept of law and order. Such a way of life would turn Eotheria into a bloodbath where only the strongest would survive. The struggle between Empyrea and Sheol is not one of good and evil on Eotheria. After all, if there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that you don’t have to be evil to commit evil acts; you only have to believe you’re good.

Empyrea and Celestials

Empyrea is an echo world created by the Primordials when they banished the celestials from Eotheria. I sadly have very little first hand knowledge of it. I visited only once, for about six seconds, before my skin caught ablaze and I was forced to return to the material world. Vampires as old as I are harmed by very few things, but Empyrea carries with it a vast light as pure and bright as a hundred suns. My acquaintances who have visited the echo world tell me it is a beautiful mirror of the angels themselves; serene, regal, and holy. Not so much as a shadow or even a sunset to be found. Because it is an echo world, things that appear in the material world have equivalents in Empyrea. For instance, the great lake that borders my city of Roselake appears in Empyrea, where I am told it is a wondrous spring of pure water where beautiful flowers and warm light are abundant.

Actually getting information about how Empyrea is run is difficult. The celestials seem to know of outsiders coming in almost immediately. Attempts at deception or persuasion fail under the critical eyes of the angels, who punish such transgression with extreme prejudice. Even if you do come to Empyrea with noble intentions, your safety likely depends on what sort of angel finds you first. Some angels are kinder than others, and will give you the option to leave Empyrea of your own volition. Others take no chances, and slay (or purify as they like to call it) intruders on the spot. The best i can tell is that the angels are run by a council of seraphs, but how many there are, what roles they play, and what other ranks are in the hierarchy are anyone’s guess. If I had a contact in Empyrea it would be easier, but getting an angel to act as a spy is like pulling bulette teeth.

Angels do not often appear in Eotheria, but when they do, it is always through a summoning spell. The more powerful the celestial being, the greater the scope of the spell required. The most powerful celestial to appear in Eotheria, the arch-celestial Malakhi, was one of the aforementioned seraphs, and reportedly his summoning took four years to complete and required components of such rarity that I doubt anyone would dare to try it again. Like all extraplanar beings, celestials that die on Eotheria are not completely destroyed. Rather, their spirits are returned to Empyrea where a new body slowly reforms for them. And yes, this means that Malakhi is indeed still alive, though I’ve not heard any mention that he’s attempting to pull a stunt like he did forty-five years ago.

In the past, celestials have had a better reputation than fiends, as most tend to associate them with goodness and purity, as opposed to the evil and chaos of fiends. Of course, the reality is much, much different, but it is primarily the reason why the celestials have had relations with mortals good enough for their mortal progeny, the aasimar, to have a nation of their own, whereas the mortal progeny of the fiends, the tieflings, are very rare and widely scattered throughout Eotheria.

Sheol and Fiends

Unlike Empyrea, I do have some knowledge of Sheol, having visited the plane many times in the past. It is the polar opposite of what others have told me Empyrea is. A world of darkness and chaos, rather than light and serenity. Like Empyrea, it is an echo world. Going back to the example I used before, the great lake that borders my city of Roselake is a lake of blood, over which floats a crimson sky with a bright moon, with decayed and dead trees around the lake shore.

Despite the rather horrid picture I paint of this world, it’s really not that bad. Not compared to Empyrea, at least. Unlike the angels, fiends generally don’t care much about outsiders coming to Sheol as long as they don’t try to mess things up for everyone. I still don’t recommend a vacation there, however, unless you’re particularly strong. Fiends can smell weakness over a thousand miles and will be more than happy to make you their playthings if you’re not able to stand up to them. Still, if you can prove yourself, you could do a lot worse than having demons for acquaintances.

The law in Sheol is quite simple: there is none. Just as angels are sticklers for order and structure, demons just tear that all down and do whatever the hell they want. If there are any leaders in Sheol, they will invariably be the most powerful of demons, those who can hold their power through strength and might. Other demons, such as the yugoloths, make their living by selling their skills to the highest bidder, acting as mercenaries. All demons absolutely despise rules and restrictions, and for that they hate the celestials most of all. Unfortunately the only way to Empyrea from Sheol is through Eotheria, and vice versa. Perhaps you can see now why we have the Primordial Ban, ere the angels and demons use our world as a war zone.

Like angels, demons must be summoned in order to come into Eotheria while the Primordial Ban is active, and the stronger the demon, the greater the ritual needed to summon it. Perhaps the most common demons found in Eotheria, though most don’t realize it, are the succubi and incubi. These demons are able to assume humanoid form at will, and tend to blend in disturbingly easily in the urban areas of Eotheria. Most are just shameless hedonists looking to get their rocks off, but some are actually employed as spies by some of the more important people in this world. And yes, I employ a few in the Blood Pact as well. I've actually taken a succubus as a lover before, and while they are very good at what they do, I ultimately would not recommend it. At best they sleep with your entire house staff behind your back. At worst they become faithful and plot to violently murder anyone who so much as looks at you, but I digress.

Aasimar and Tieflings

Aasimar are native to the small nation of Avaniel, which split off from Laguna roughly a hundred years before the coming of the goddesses. The humans of central Suvitha of the time were notable in making pacts with angels, ultimately resulting in the birth of the aasimar race. Aasimar are easily identified by their ashen white skin and platinum blond hair, making them look similar to albinos, though with bright yellow eyes rather than red. They have a rather rigid form of government that is quite similar to what I imagine the celestials of Empyrea would use, being ruled by a council of nobles, with several different castes below.

Avaniel has had a rocky relationship with the human kingdoms since its founding, having a number of on-again, off-again wars, with Laguna and Pecra both often trying to reclaim Avaniel, but to no success. The fact that the aasimar allied themselves with the Kordran did nothing to help their relationship with humanity, though many would argue that they only did so as a means of self-preservation. After the Cataclysm, everything changed. The Kordran violently turned against the aasimar, who turned to the Kresnik empire for aid. Avaniel now exists as a vassal state of the growing Kresnik empire as a result. While many aasimar are not happy about this new state of affairs, few are willing to outright betray their new allies of the Kresnik empire, as their honor will not permit it. However, not all aasimar follow the strict code of law that their angelic ancestors do. Call it a trait of their human ancestry, but some aasimar choose to live more individualistic lifestyles away from Avaniel. These so-called “fallen” aasimar can take many roles: that of bandits, rogues, or even freedom fighters looking to bring down Kresnik and liberate Avaniel.

Tieflings are comparatively rarer. It’s not that the populations are much lower, so much as that they’re far more widespread and disorganized than aasimar. Then again, that seems to be a recurring theme: chaos vs. order. Their demonic heritage is easily noted, often manifesting in horns, red or light blue skin, cloven hooves, and tails. Some of the more exotic tieflings have even more drastic mutations such as intense body heat or scaly skin, but these are very rare. While tieflings have no nation of their own, they are most common in what was once Laguna, having small villages peppered throughout the region. Laguna had always been the most magically inclined of the Seven Kingdoms, and many of its archmages made pacts with demons, resulting in the tieflings.

Though treated with suspicion everywhere else, tieflings had good relations with humans in Laguna until the Cataclysm, when the leaders of Laguna summoned fiends to counter the celestials summoned by the Kordran. After the Cataclysm and the subsequent destruction of the kingdom of Laguna by the Church of Galan the remaining Lagunese humans blamed the tieflings for the Cataclysm, even though they had almost nothing to do with it. It got so bad that Kresnik and the Church itself stepped in to absolve the tieflings of any wrong doing. While the tieflings are generally grateful to the Kresnik empire for this, the recent acquisition of Avaniel, and the subsequent alliance with the aasimar, has worried the tieflings considerably. Needless to say, the two races do not get along at all, though I have succeeded in getting an aasimar and a tiefling to work together in the Blood Pact without killing one another, so I suppose they can get along.

The Baatezu

There is one last thing about Sheol that I am hesitant to talk about, though I suppose it’s best if you know rather than not. Most beings in Sheol are highly chaotic with little regard for rules, social structure, or order. Most beings, but not all. There exists, in the deepest corners of the echo world, a group of fiends that stands in defiance of the chaos that has manifested itself in Sheol. The demons fear and despise these creatures, who are alternately called “devils” or “baatezu”. According to a number of arch-demons, they were caught in Sheol when the demons were. The two races immediately turned on one another, with the demons emerging victorious, but the baatezu remain in Sheol still, plotting and planning for the day when they will bring their dominion over not only Sheol, but Eotheria as well.

I personally have not seen a devil, but I know they exist. They are the demons’ opposite: orderly and efficient rather than chaotic and savage. They seek to dominate rather than cause destruction, bending weaker creatures to their will. Some particularly unfortunate warlocks may find themselves unknowingly entering a pact with one. It is often through these warlocks that the baatezu plan their moves, playing a long game of chess and subtly manipulating events throughout Eotheria to suit their needs. And the truly frightening thing about them is that most do not realize the work of a devil until it is far, far too late.

In the next chapter I will talk about two of the less common races: gnomes and kobolds.

#eotheria #angels #demons #dungeons and dragons #homebrew

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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A Discovery of Witches Season 2 Episode 10 Review

https://ift.tt/3l9W6UB

This A Discovery of Witches review contains spoilers.

Say it’s not so. We’re going to have to wait until season three to see Bishop vs Knox, the fight of the century?

Usually when a character spends a series on a skills-training arc, the payoff is a big, satisfying, exploding-fireworks demonstration of those skills. Think Daniel’s crane kick in The Karate Kid or Baby’s lift in Dirty Dancing. (I have no examples from this century. I am an old lady.) They train, they improve, they do something cool in silhouette, and then at the very end, they put on a big show and everybody goes home happy.

The issue here is that this isn’t a movie, it’s not the very end and nobody’s going home just yet. We’re two thirds of the way through this story, so instead of a showdown, we were given an ellipsis. A ‘to-be-continued’ in place of the ending one might imagine would round out ten episodes of book-searching, soul-searching and magic learning.

An ending such as… Diana finally reads the book. Diana shoots golden tree branches from her arms and a fiery dragon out of her belly. Diana joins hands with her aunts, and – why not – her reformed witch enemy Satu, and they call down all manner of sister magic on Peter Knox’s be-suited ass. Then, enemy vanquished, she grabs Matthew, spins him around and dips him for a kiss like that sailor and that nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. Everybody bows. Ysabeau opens a very expensive bottle of Cognac and pours them all a shot. The end.

Not to be. Not least because through Peter Knox, A Discovery of Witches has kept alive the disappointingly long on-screen tradition of breaking lesbian hearts. RIP Aunt Em, who went down fighting. Right before she was killed, she hid the witch page of the Book of Life from Knox, and promised that Diana would unite all creatures against bigots like him, and avenge her.

The bigots vs unity conflict raised in Marcus and Phoebe’s previous episode has developed into this story’s major theme. Blood rage aside, almost every one of the season’s plots can be traced back to the divisions between the three species: Kit and Louisa, Father Hubbard, Philippe, baby Margaret… suspicion between witch, vampire and daemon runs through them all. All season long, we’ve been watching these divisions slowly erode (or in Philippe’s case, erode faster than a block of ice on a burnt Looney Tunes behind) as characters unlearn their prejudices thanks to the union of Matthew and Diana. When those two broke the covenant in season one, it knocked a few bricks out of the edifice of tradition; now Marcus and the rebel alliance want to demolish the whole thing. More power to them.

A Discovery of Witches: Explaining Peter Knox’s Magic Balls

By Louisa Mellor

A Discovery of Witches: Explaining the De Clermont Family Tree

By Louisa Mellor

The creatures gathering under the banner of unity in Sept-Tours might have been inspiring, but it didn’t help to give this finale the momentum it needed. The 1591 scenes were mostly a stop-start series of teary goodbyes. Diana’s reunion with Stephen fell flat, and lacked the emotional intensity of Matthew’s parallel scenes with his own dead father, which conveyed a good deal more. And after the intimacy Diana and Matthew reached over their last year, culminating in that heady moment at the close of the previous episode, her secretly forming a pact with Father Hubbard felt as though we’d gone right back to the start.

As indeed, we kind of had. The long sought after book was left behind, having refused to give up its secrets. Jack was palmed off on a noble household. The loose ends were tied up in ways that made Diana and Matthew’s time walk seem almost unimportant, which isn’t where you want to be after a lengthy narrative journey. Had we seen a bit of that 10-knot power in action, maybe it all wouldn’t have felt so arbitrary.

Though we learned that Rabbi Loew was the likely source for the page of the book sent to Diana at the end of season one, that the mysterious Benjamin Fuchs is Father Hubbard’s sire, and how Sophie’s family comes to be in possession of the white queen chess piece, this finale solved few other mysteries. The identity of the Blood Rage killer is still unknown, but were were shown a glimpse of his face.

Satu’s return was perhaps the biggest disappointment, and barely even a story beat. The Finnish witch whose journey into her powers mirrors Diana’s own, showed up just long enough to exchange a few hammy words with Knox and tell him that his confidence would be his downfall. Fingers crossed that she’s right. His confidence and, with any luck, a full quiver of those fire arrows Diana’s able to manifest. Maybe a snake or two.

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A mixed ending then, anti-climactic and frustrating in parts, but with a good deal of promise for the future, not least in Diana and Matthew’s pregnancy. Perhaps it’s best to keep Matthew’s words in mind when it comes to the bittersweet, and concentrate on the sweet.

The post A Discovery of Witches Season 2 Episode 10 Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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