#we love when the dice tell a narrative yes we do

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Actual footage of Tony trying to talk to Kelsey this episode:

Now what I personally need is for her to despise him for a while then for them to have some big heart to heart and them to become best friends OKAY I'm very invested in what's become of their dynamic and I'm all here for "Punished" Tony the wet cat that he is I yield the rest of my time thank you.

[ieatpastriesforfun]

r/daggerheart is toxic AF...and I love it

Note: This is just a rant about the subbreddit and their inability process any critique of the game that goes against their narrative of the game. The game itself has a lot of good parts, which I really like. But this post isn't about the game, but the subbreddit.

So you know, I am a nerd that like to nerd about games and probabilities. I've been interested in Daggerheart for a while because I am a fan of Critical Role, and the beta playtest rules recently came out. I was super excited, so I read through the PDF as soon as I got the chance, also started a game with my partner.

And honestly, there are some great parts to the game. But there are also some design decisions that made me scratch my head. So I shared some of my thoughts on r/daggerheart.

Oh boy did I poke a beehive. That subbreddit is pretty hostile toward anyone who dares to criticize the game. My first post critiquing the complexity of the damage system got down voted to oblivion. They told me I shouldn't have opinion on the very things I can read because I haven't played the game. So when I played the game and posted my feedback, these folks dismissed my criticisms because I was suffering from "new system syndrome."

Oh, and the comments. They were something else. The sub is dominated by a group of people who are pushing the narrative that Daggerheart is "rules-light" and "very easy" and "less math than DND."

Yes, Daggerheart is a rules-light game with a 377 page rulesbook. Because this is still beta, it is missing a ton of rules, not to mention artwork. But sure, it's a rules-light game. Because what is page count if not just a number?

Yes, Daggerheart is "very easy" if you ignore the fact that every character has HP, minor damage threshold, major damage threshold, severe damage threshold, stress, hope, and armor on top of your abilities and backstory and everything else you are trying to juggle.

Yes, Daggerheart has less math than DND because instead of just subtracting the damage from the HP, you compare the damage to each of the thresholds to decide whether or not you want to reduce the damage by armor, then determine how much you lower the HP by, unless it is below the minor threshold, in which case you take stress, but if you are filled up on stress, you take 1 HP. Oh, and you know, if you also ignore the fact that you roll two dice, add the numbers, and check to see which one is bigger to decide which one is bigger every single time you want to do something.

So yeah, if you ignore all of those very obvious things that I can see with my very own eyes, my own experience of running the game, my experience having played a rules-light RPG like Candela, they are right: Daggerheart is a rules-light game that is very easy to play with less math than DND /s.

Seriously, these folks will fight you tooth-and-nail to tell you that what you can see is wrong. They will gaslight you, tell you about how 11-years can play Daggerheart, their 73 year old mother can play Daggerheart, tell you that you are playing the game wrong, DND has taught you bad habits, and that your critique doesn't matter because all you want is the game to be more like DND.

And I love it. I love seeing the cognitive dissonance. I love going at it with these die-hard fans. And it's pretty easy on my part. I don't need to get mean—all I need to do is point out very obvious things. And you know, no foul no harm—we keep going until one or both of us get sick of arguing about whatever specific thing we are arguing about.

Anyway, enough of my rant.

I want Daggerheart to succeed. I really do. I think Matt Mercer and friends are pretty good folks, and I find their story inspiring, and I would love to see them succeed. I hope that Daggerheart developers listen to the critical feedbacks, make the game better, and not try to push any weird narratives (like they did with Candela vs FitD).

[monsterkissed]

Interview with a Bureaucrat Knight

i haven't written anything in ages on account of, mental breakdown etc., but i did play a solo round of For The Queen, which is basically an incredibly stripped-down rp storytelling game with no character creation, no dice, frankly no Anything except drawing random questions that prompt you to build a narrative out of thin air until you get to the inevitable, final dilemma. it's a pretty fun game if you are chill with something rules-light every now and then, and a pretty neat writing tool.

anyway here's 2500 words of deeply unhealthy royal relations and becoming the monster you always hated/feared/loved

The land has been in turmoil for as long as you have been alive.

The Queen has decided to undertake a long and perilous journey to broker an alliance with a distant power.

The Queen has chosen you to be in her retinue and accompany her on this journey.

She chose you because she knows that you love her. 

What makes you want to abandon the retinue, and who, besides the Queen, makes you stay?

Fear. Ever since the Queen proposed this journey I have had a certainty that we’re walking to our deaths. It’s not the old fear of the war, we’ve all been living with that so long that it feels like an old, heavy coat. This is new. I can hear doom in every step and dread in every voice. The others won’t talk about it, but I know- they must feel it, too. Nobody dares to quake under the Queen’s gaze, of course, but there are little tells. I think. Glances. Sighs. 

I have to stay for them, naturally. There aren’t any other councillors; if I leave it’ll frighten them ten times worse. And the royal guard will never keep the knights in line once they’re spooked, and if they get ideas… Yes, I have to stay. When the nights start leaving- or maybe it will be the nobles first? Someone is going to leave first, or even raise the issue, and then I’ll try to make her see we should turn back. Once someone else… raises it. 

…it’s fear to both, then, isn’t it?

When was the last time the Queen embarrassed you?

Ha. As if everyone here doesn’t already know. The very last council she gathered before we left on this accursed journey, when she told us what she was going to do… What she was going to do, I should have seen that, she wasn’t asking for permission or advice, but I… Perhaps I’d seen her look at me and known she’d want me to come with her, I don’t remember. I remember my mouth moving (oh gods, did I interrupt her?) and I wasn’t mumbling, I didn’t stutter, all my well-trained diction was at hand as I asked if surely, we shouldn’t wait until at least winter has passed, or better yet, for the ambassador to return…

All my diplomacy, like blowing bubbles at a manticore. She gave me that look I’ve seen so many times. That look used to make empires cower, and evidently from our recent troubles it can’t manage that anymore, but it damn near dissolved me. In front of all of those over-bred sycophants, shaking their heads and smirking at me as she reminded us all that we are out of time, that inaction is not a blameless road to ruin. Oh, she had no intention to embarrass, that would be beneath her. She simply reiterated the facts. But they’ll remember. 

How can people tell, just by looking at you, that you serve the Queen? Do you mind it being so obvious?

Looking at me? On a clear day you can hear a councilman coming from two villages away, wrapped up in all this plate and mail. It’s not ceremonial, you know. I wish it was, they can make wonderfully light faux-armour these days. But she won’t have it. She took this throne with no one but a hundred armed and armoured fighters at her side, and she won’t hold it with anything less. A desk job isn’t an excuse for velvet, or worse, silk. 

I never used to mind it, in truth. It makes the wispy little nobles sweat, which is nice, but I did appreciate the… message of it. You really can tell a member of her government, her court, her closest confidants by the clinking of their armour, and for a while, when she was… winning, I suppose, there was this air about her. You knew why a hundred soldiers stood with her against a nation, why they won. And every moment sweating in this armour made me feel like a part of that, even if it was just barely before my time. 

But, well. We’re not winning anymore. 

The Queen has a pet name for you. Do you appreciate it?

No. And no. I mean, not- Next question, please. 

…

Look, it’s not even my pet name, for a start. My father was the “Wolf” of the original hundred, and I wasn’t even a twinkle in his eye at the time. I don’t know why she started calling me that; I barely pass my annual basic combat exams, and that’s with bribes. I’ve never run through a battlefield scattering legions by howling like a madman, or torn out an assassin’s throat with my teeth. I write her letters and speeches and try to explain economics to her, I’m barely a lapdog, frankly. Yes, I have heard the joke.

It’s better than “Little Wolf,” which was what I was before I actually started working on the council, but not much. I don’t know why she does it. Even with the armour on, I can’t possibly remind her of him. We both know that I’m never going to be her mighty, steadfast knight. If I was… I wouldn’t be thinking these things, would I?

When was the last time the Queen hurt you?

I did fail one of those exams, once. They gave me a month to shape up or be demoted. For, oh, two hours I decided I didn’t care, that a court that ran itself like a barracks was a waste of my education, that I would pack my things and head for the border of one of our allies (I miss when we had allies) and perhaps stop in a pub on the way. And then I was knocking on the door to her chambers. 

It’s a good thing father was dead by then. The shock would have killed him. I… explained to her that being part of her council had been my lifelong dream and greatest honour and I would throw myself on my sword if I were forced to leave it, and she said something very generous, I think it was “Oh, don’t lie to me, Wolf, it’s too early in the morning,” and I thought ah, so this is how I am to die, then. 

She told me to come in and sit down and have a drink (which did not improve matters) and over the course of writing my last will and testament in my head I explained… everything, really. Things I had not told anyone, certainly not my father or my poor mother. Some things I hadn’t realised were true until I said them. Many, many things that I had no business saying to a queen. I assume that at some point I must have passed out (from the alcohol or perhaps a sudden attack of common sense) and she, presumably in one of her peculiar moments of kindness, hauled me up and laid my sleeping body on her bed. I assume this because any other possibility is unthinkable. 

Well, regardless, when I awoke she was in her full plate mail, the one she lost during that incursion from the South, telling me to get into my regalia and earn the right to keep it. She spent every blasted day of that month running me through drills. I begged her to kill me more than once. At one point I fumbled a parry and her sword caught me in the hip, a “glancing” wound, I was told, though it felt like more of a furious stare to me. She didn’t apologise, but she stitched me up well enough. 

That was a long time ago. The scar has mostly faded. I find myself missing it, sometimes.

The Queen once expressed a desire you knew you couldn’t fulfil. What have you done about it?

Well. Back when we were organising the logistics of this… glorified death march (and if truth be told I was doing much of the logistics, she’s never been one for numbers) she suggested… implied, really… 

Skip this one too, please. It’s really not anything of much… Well, it’s a desire I can’t fulfil, isn’t it? What could be more irrelevant? Either this little diplomacy mission goes well, or… that will be the end of it. That’s what I keep trying to make her understand, that if we die here- if she dies here, in some desolate swamp or on the end of some assassin’s knife, that is the end. Nobody else is going to gather up a gaggle of knights and seize a throne overnight, least of all some… little bureaucrat in armour that barely fits. The time of fairytales has gone, these are the days of trade embargoes and blockades. No wolves, only lapdogs. 

When was the last time you had the Queen’s undivided attention? Do you hope to have it again?

I’m not sure I can even remember. When was the last time any of us could give anything our full attention? I don’t think I can remember a day when a part of my mind hasn’t been consumed with news from the borders, or the treasury. Praying every season that the crops don’t fail. Spending every ball or coronation wondering which of our neighbours will be next to crumble, or attack. I walk down the city streets and see people muttering to each other, glowering at me, are they planning to rebel? I see people laughing, drinking with their friends or playing with their children, if we fail to stay above water how many of them will die for our incompetence? 

I used to think she was above those kinds of anxieties. Now I wonder if she hears them louder than any of us. Loud enough to drive her to take any risk if it’ll make them stop. More than loud enough to drown out my voice. 

The Queen thinks more highly of you than you do of yourself. How do you know this?

The Queen… thinks more highly of a lot of us than we deserve, I think. She thinks that the world still bows to strong wills, and times of strife only sharpen those wills, instead of crushing them. She has never believed that this journey is doomed, I know that, because she refuses to live in a world where we would allow this mission to fail. When things go awry, and even she must know that they will… she will expect me at her side, baring teeth. 

You sometimes think you might be the Queen’s favourite. Why? And why does this worry you?

I… am not entirely lacking in common sense. I can complain, but how many others, even here, have been taught to fight by her, personally? How many would have survived questioning her choice to make this journey, sniggering or no? The nickname grates, but half of the court are nothing but family names or job titles to her, or simply “You.” I have colleagues more experienced with foreign affairs, none of them are here. She has a niece who used to win every tournament in her prime, she isn’t here. Her most decorated general isn’t here, though after that appalling siege debacle it’s a wonder anyone lets him out of the house anymore. By blood, rank and conquest, there are many better than me that I would gladly trade places with in an instant. But she wanted me here. 

She’s no fool. She watches the edges of the woods as much as any of us. I’ve seen her counting each cloud of breath in the frosty air, making sure we’re no more or less than we should be. Paying more attention to my inventory reports than she ever did the harvests. But always the same orders, no matter how dire the news: keep marching. Is it favouritism to be doomed to death? Is it favouritism to be asked to face the inevitable, and do the impossible? 

The Queen made you feel something you’d never felt before. Do you want it to happen again?

Two generations of my family died for this woman. Not that my grandfather had much choice, or any of the others who were found themselves on the wrong end of a revolution, and I doubt my father envisioned his own end would be as… ignoble as it was. For as long as I can remember, she was there. My first memory is of seeing her, being brought up towards her throne and looking up into that proud, fierce, beautiful face… Her eyes meeting mine. 

I was terrified of her. Ten years later studying our history in school I would understand why nobles and generals with armies that dwarfed hers would cower and surrender when she met them on the battlefield. They call it her grandeur or her righteousness or even her divinity. At the time the only word I knew for it was “monster,” and I screamed it. I owe a lot to my father’s war wounds; if they hadn’t slowed him down I think he would have proven he could still chew out a traitor’s throat that day. I think I would have let him, if it meant getting away from her. God’s, but even now I have never felt a terror like it since. 

…where is that terror when I need it now? When she looks at me with those eyes now, why don’t I run? I tell myself that this is madness, I want to scream it out, but the sound dies in my throat. She is leading me to my death, so why don’t I flinch when she takes my hand to readjust the grip on my sword, or lays hers on my shoulder so heavy I can feel it through layers of cold steel? If I beg her, will she cut me open again and this time let it bleed until my senses return to me and I can flee like the prey animal I am? 

Or will I only wake up again in a bed that is not mine? A fate I am not permitted to escape, only earn?

The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?

Didn’t I say it? From the very start, didn’t I say that this journey would get us all killed? 

I don’t recognise their banner. We’re still too far out for it to be our would-be hosts, I think? But any number of the other kingdoms could have been informed. Perhaps these are even fellow countrymen, writing their own chapter in the story of a band of soldiers deposing a monarch at swordpoint. It’s too dark to tell anything, except that they must outnumber us almost ten to one. We had enough warning to throw together a barricade. Not even she can believe it’ll hold. 

Our line is ragged. Any moment now someone is going to bolt. I keep glancing at their faces, whatever I can make out through their helmets and hoods, trying to guess who it’ll be first. We’re so outnumbered that it won’t take many fleeing to leave our line in tatters. That’ll be all that it takes for the rest to scatter, while we still have time. I can see the fear on their faces. They all know that this is no story, no glorious miracle victory will save us. 

Hers is the only gaze I don’t meet. I know what I’ll see. But I see a few of them glance past me. Come on, all of you, any of you, one of you must want to live! That’s all it will take, just one to start running. I’ll be right behind you! 

Some of them are looking at me now. What do they want? They must know it can’t be me. They must see how she’s looking at me; I can see the way the fear deepens when they turn this way. The more often I scan the line, the fewer of them will meet my gaze. Cowards, every one. 

I can feel her hand on my shoulder, sliding down to check my grip. I wonder, when a man goes mad, running across the battlefield, howling and tearing apart anything in his way, does anyone stop to ask whether he was running to, or from? 

Any moment now. One of them will run. But they’re running out of time, I’m willing them to hurry, hilt digging into my hand as I glare at each timid face. Hurry, you fools, run! Don’t you know there’s a wolf at your heels?

[temporalhiccup]

Rae pls indulge and go into AK breakdowns I would SO love to read it!!!

Ok! Here we go! Breakdown Time!

The Betrayed is a playbook I'm working on that's inspired by Ghost Rider, the Spectre, and Doctor Fate. Specifically you wrestle with an entity within you that demands vengeance, as it wears down what remains of your humanity.

For this breakdown I'm going over two Moves. These Moves may change by the time the final version of the Betrayed rolls around (all the playbooks are currently in the final refinement stage). But anyway today we're looking at I Am Vengeance. In the next part I'll go over The Weakness Of My Heart.

Let's get into it!

The following is my personal and general approach to writing a Move for the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. This refers to the Moves were you need to roll dice or make an important decision.

Moves should be relatively easy to trigger. If a set up is required, it shouldn't be too much work to justify the narrative circumstances or fictional requirements. I like seeing moves used!

A Move is a moment for the character to step into the spotlight. Normally in the conversation of a game (player describes what their character says or does, other players and GM responds, back and forth, back and forth) a Move doesn't have to be triggered most of the time. When it's time for a Move (the circumstances warrant it, things seem uncertain or dire, the player has set things up to trigger a specific move, etc) then time stops at the table, right? Everyone slows down and goes through the mechanics and structure of the Move. To me, I want to justify this slowdown as a way to spotlight the character, to make this moment meaningful. I write Moves so that everyone at the table gets used to the idea and thinks, "Oh heck yes, let's slow down and enjoy this. What are they going to do? What awesomeness are we going to bear witness to?"

The end of a Move should significantly shift the fiction, circumstances, narrative positioning, or emotional state. I write Moves so there's a distinct before and after state. Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly bold, there's a quick inciting thing that happens when the move is triggered, to give this burst that better sets up the after. If the narrative positioning or fiction trajectory remain roughly the same after a Move is done, what was the point of slowing down the game for it? I also want players to feel like they have significant narrative pull in the story being told at the table. My favorite moments as a GM is when my players shock and surprise me, it inspires me and revs me up!!!

There are some specific things I keep in mind when designing a Move for Apocalypse Keys (compared to my other Powered by the Apocalypse games), but mostly it's along the lines of: CAN I MAKE THIS AS BIG AND EXCITING AND EMOTIONAL AND SUPERNATURAL AS POSSIBLE LET'S GO WHOOOOOO YEAAAAAAAH or something similar.

Okay, the Starting Move for the Betrayed is:

I Am Vengeance

The entity within you can always sense those nearby who bear the scars of trespass and the burden of regret. When you merge with the entity and deepen your senses to see the full weight of a soul, describe what you find there. Spend Darkness Tokens and roll.

On an 8-10 the entity within you tempers justice with mercy, choose two:

Their greatest trespass is revealed by the darkness, create a Power of Darkness that you have access to, for now.

Declare how they must make amends to appease justice, gain one Bond with them.

Your souls burn and resonate together, inflict two Conditions on them, but take one in return.

The soul you peer into cannot hide the truth from you. Ask the Keeper any question, they will answer it honestly and with great detail.

On an 11+ the entity within you demands retribution and horror, choose one:

The vengeance you deliver eclipses the trespass. Describe how you go too far and the suffering you cause. The Keeper will tell you what supernatural beings of power take notice and their response.

The entity within you would claim a new soul to strengthen itself. Gain a new Power of Darkness that reflects the screaming soul within you, trapped for eternity.

On a 7- the entity reshapes another part of your soul and replaces it with what may better serve horrific vengeance. The Keeper will tell you what happens next.

So for I Am Vengeance, I needed a Starting Move that embodied who the Betrayed is. I knew I had to make a version of Ghost Rider's penance stare ability, since it's such an iconic aspect of the character. In the instances when I have a specific character and/or their super power in mind when I make a Move, I try to deconstruct it along the following questions:

What narrative permissions are granted to this character or through this ability?

How can I break this down in a way that it's open to different creative interpretations and character concepts?

How can I connect the thematic concept to the mechanical, narrative, and emotional components of this moment and the game in general?

This Move comes with a built in ability that is constant, and doesn't need to be triggered. The Betrayed will always be able to sense those nearby who bear the scars of trespass and the burden of regret. This is part of that deconstruction, this is not a ability that's present in the inspiring characters. But from a TTRPG approach, I wanted to give the player a unique and interesting perspective. It also communicates an important thematic element of the playbook: this is a character who can see the worst in others, their regrets, how does his affect the character? How do they treat their own trespasses and regrets in response?

The trigger here is: When you merge with the entity and deepen your senses to see the full weight of a soul, describe what you find there.

Okay, so! A huge amount of TTRPG design is just...obsessing over word choice, hah. Here I wanted to ensure a few things: this Starting Move starts off with the idea that you merge with the entity. In other Moves for the Betrayed I experiment with other ideas (like in another move it's "when you become vengeance incarnate," which communicates a different action entirely!) I wanted a soft set up here: what does it mean when a character merges with the entity within them? I also wanted to give players an opportunity to change what that merging could look like each time they triggered this move.

in addition, it's easy to trigger this Move. The character just needs to decide to merge with the entity. As for narrative set up, the player decides when they want to risk looking deep into someone's soul, because...we'll, shit could definitely go down and get out of hand.

I also used "deepen your senses" to further support the idea that the player can just always sense the trespass and regret around them. This move is then a moment when things come into sharp focus. Having a player decide what that means for their character is cool and fun!

So remember earlier when I said there's a before and after state? The before state here is "the Betrayed can always sense something others cannot". The after is "the Betrayed and the entity of vengeance within them will act on a specific character's trespass". Ah, but I also mentioned that sometimes I have a quick inciting thing. This Move has it, in the "describe what you find there".

This is an exciting moment for the player. They get to narrate and decide what they see, when they take the full measure of someone's soul. What kind of trespass or regret are we talking about here? How deplorable or evil a person is the NPC? Or were they once a good person who made a terrible mistake? The player gets to decide!

This felt great in playtesting, I really enjoyed the pressure, the freedom and responsibility that came with declaring such a thing. As a Starting Move it also primes the player to be creative, spontaneous, and intuitive. Many mechanics and the general flow of the game really flourish when a player hones these aspects of their play.

So, now we roll the dice and see what happens. In case you're not aware, Apocalypse Keys doesn't use stats. Instead, as inspired by Libreté, you roleplay to gather tokens. Each token adds +1 to the roll. So you're aiming to roll to hit that perfect hit: 8-10, you're still in control. On an 11+, it's a disastrous success, you've gone too far and the monster within you is unleashed.

I experimented with what a perfect hit and a disastrous success looks like across the Moves and playbooks. In I Am Vengeance there's a distinct difference between the 8-10 result and the 11+, there is no overlap. For this Move, I wanted it the perfect hit and disastrous success to feel distinct from each other, to show the extremes available to the character.

In the 8-10 result I'm still finalizing whether or not the player gets to choose two options or just the one. Two choices feels great in play and meta-wise it supports the ides that the character is more "in control". But it can also slow down the moment further. I'm still weighing this, I have to roughly feel out how often a player can use this move (the less often, the more likely I'll stick to two options). If I do switch to the one choice, I'll probably shift things slightly and beef up the options a bit.

In Apocalypse Keys, a Move always pushes the narrative forward in significant ways. In many Moves, there's a blending of the narrative and the mechanical. I could have just stuck in the mechanical options (or just the narrative!), but you can feel how distinct it feels that I merged the two here, right?

So for example, one of the options is: Your souls burn and resonate together, inflict two Conditions on them, but take one in return. This is easily the combat-focused RAR I'M HERE TO BEAT UP PEOPLE option. This can easily force an antagonist to stand down, or soften him up significantly for someone else to take the final blow. If I had just stuck with the mechanical option, it would communicate "wow the entity of vengeance is violent and strong". Which is cool!

But! I wanted to add the narrative implication, where does this violence and strength come from? I decided it comes from the fact that the souls resonate with each other. A player or Keeper can decide to express specifically what that means, but even if they don't, it leaves this implication hanging in the air. How are the Betrayed and the target of their wrath similar to each other? What does it mean when souls resonate? Every option in the 8-10 result offers an implication in the blending of the mechanical and the narrative. It makes the choice feel that much more significant!

Any combination of the 8-10 result can easily map to what it looks like when Ghost Rider performs a Penance Stare, but it's still open enough to interpretation that any type of character can express themselves well.

Now let's look at the 11+ result. In this one I decided to go with one of the regular treatments of a disastrous success: limiting the options, but feeling more powerful. This reflects how the character has less control over the situation. They go too far, and they can only reign it in so much! But also, the options are more powerful than a perfect hit! What a double edged blade this is.

In this Move I really wanted the disastrous success to feel like "You know, my dude, there is like...an entity of vengeance inside of you, and it is absolutely not human."

The first option, has the player "Describe how you go too far and the suffering you cause" I wanted this to reflect those moments where Ghost Rider, The Spectre, and Doctor Fate would go all out, and punish the wicked without mercy. This is an excuse for the character to go all out, to not hold back! Then the Keeper gets to describe the "supernatural beings" and their response. This is reminiscent of the forces that push and pull at these iconic characters that inspired this playbook.

The second option has to be my favorite though. It's also the one I chose the first time I playtested the move! "Gain a new Power of Darkness that reflects the screaming soul within you, trapped for eternity."

It was honestly a really hilarious moment, I had just declared that the oil conglomerate Executive had helped the fae perform a wretched and murderous ritual to ensure the smooth purchase of mines. I didn't want to have supernatural beings notice what I was up to, but it also meant I had to have this slimey soul of a human next to my soul for all eternity. "Oh my god, why did I write this?!" I asked out loud while the other players laughed. (That, to me, is a good sign that I wrote the disastrous success options well, hah!)

"What does it look like when you take his soul?" Lowell asked me, as the GM. So a second before I was lamenting what I was forced to do, and now here I was, throwing myself into it. "You see me pull out his soul through his mouth, my skull wreathed in flames. His soul looks like a gargantuan slug, wailing and writhing, and I swallow it whole as his screams echo through the mines."

It was also fun coming up with a Power of Darkness that reflected this horrible human and what he is now. (I went with Emotional Manipulation, to reflect the greasy corpo scum he was)

Finally, we have the miss, what happens on a roll of 7 or lower. Not every PbtA game has moves with specific misses, it's usually just an open invitation for the GM to do something. (Which is actually my personal preference, I often find the misses are too uninteresting for my tastes, even in some of my favorite games!)

With Apocalypse Keys, it was a long conversation with Sean Nittner (project manager and development editor) over why it felt necessary for Apocalypse Keys to always have a specific miss. The long and short of it is: Apocalypse Keys is a game that happens on a huge scale, and the monstrous PCs don't fail in as much as things go horribly wrong because they are monsters. So I try to write a miss that supports that truth.

In this case, I wanted to highlight how the Betrayed is at the mercy of the entity within them. Their soul will be reshaped to better serve vengeance. This can be a harrowing and quiet moment, or it can create explosive consequences, or something in between. What does it mean to reshape a soul? I can't wait to hear the stories about this!

Phew, that's our first Apocalypse Keys breakdown! I hope this was useful to you!

Powered by the Apocalypse is a system I love, and I feel like we're still exploring what the system is capable of and where it can go next. The structure of PbtA is an opportunity for designers to structure a game to reflect their design goals and play philosophy in very big and bold ways.

I worked on Apocalypse Keys for years, and with the help of a lot of people, made a game that reflects what I love about TTRPGs 😤❤️🔥✨

We'll be looking at The Weakness Of My Heart next time, which offers an intimate (and potentially tragic!) narrative opportunity for the Betrayed 👀

[svyat0s]

family_walking_out

We went to a meeting (you remember that we are funny people?), where we were invited to an evening of literary games. Well, I thought it was literary, but it was actually an evening of tabletop and uh… what is it called? Well, like the game broken phone (one of my favorite childhood games), what kind of game is this? A team, intellectual game? Anyway, I'll tell you.

I don't like tabletop games. Well, or rather, I don't like the ones that people usually love. If there are a lot of rules, if you have to count points, play against each other, don't say yes and no, don't wear black and white - I really don't like that. I love all kinds of simple things: Uno, Dos, Mysterium, I adore Twister. I love lotto, the Miracle Tree - you roll the dice and walk.

But I liked all the games we played. Somehow, our cool presenters were selected, but our presenters are not ordinary, they are the editors of all these programs One Hundred to One, Own Game (popular games on Russian TV) and things like that - Olga Orlova and Vladimir Belkin. We played Codenames, where we had two teams, I, of course, would have preferred to play against the leader or the game, but the very principle of the game is the way I like. This is a mixture of sea battle and mysterium.

Contact, well, in general, it's a beautiful, cool game, I really liked it. But I would set a framework for the topic of the word. Letters are not enough. I can't help but choke. Also, I don't like this one from folk tales, the riddles of the king's daughters: guess what I wished for.

Our third game was Character. Cool one too. Something like Akinator. A person think up what character they are from the narrative, they may not necessarily be alive, it could be something from a line of a song. And you need to ask leading questions - are you alive, are you human. But it's impossible to clarify whether they are from a book, a song, or a movie, the character doesn't know. But they know what's around them. Well, it's really cool, I love this. But I would also, of course, set limits. Well, because the scatter is strong when it is that large, there is a factor not of intelligence, but of chance. But still the drawing of the game is how I like it. ^__^

It turned out to be fun and great. The guys were all pleasantly intelligent. Well, one, for example, wished for a Thinking Demon in the Character, another - a slogan on the coat of arms. What cool guys!

We met at the awesome cafe-hotel Art Green Hotel, where we also meet at the Quiet Whirlpool Book Club. I keep hoping that we have found a place for regular meetings, in other places it was either cramped, or noisy, or something else. But here is really cozy.

The next meeting is on March 18, at 18:00, in the same place.

[rigginsstreet]

If Billy were to go the pure evil route, do you think there’s a better way you’d go about it or like to see it play out? Like how do you feel about fics where Billy is really the tragic type

i feel most of the fics i read where billys like full dick, no redemptive qualities, are smut.... lmfao so. probably not the best scale to judge by 😂

are we talking about billy, as a human, being evil? because thats severely different from him having a better villain/possession arc. 

honestly, at this point, i think the best route to take wouldve been billy lighting everyones ass up for not helping him. and yes, i get that like, max is a kid. what is she supposed to do? or how literally nobody else knows about his abuse, so what are they supposed to do? i get that part of it

but if we’re talking billy going full villain, then fuck logic. just have him be pissed at everyone for not intervening. AND let him kill his actual abusers (neil AND karen). actually from there, have him kill karen first. and then mike and nancy will be like “you killed our mom you bitch!” and billys like “your moms a predator, hate to break it to you, but if you still wanna defend her you an die too i guess. no sweat off my back”. so like we can go that way. i think hes more than earned that. to just slaughter everyone

if youre asking me about him getting a proper villain arc fro the get go and not the lame ass shit the duffers wanted to pull...

you gotta go bigger. and you also cant have him focus on kids way younger than him like thats lame. i mean... dont get me wrong. fuck them kids. im not concerned about them. its just like... a boring narrative. keep the max shit because thats actually grounded in something. of course hes gonna take his anger out on her when hes forced to be her caretaker. thats gonna breed resentment. 

but they shoulda upped the shit with steve by a gazillion. show me REAL bullying. go further than bullying. go full psychopathy lmao. i want this man UNHINGED and INSANE.

i wanna see billy with a knife so bad why wasnt he ever given a knife oh my god. 

and play up how charming he can be. that facade he puts up to get by, to get something out of people. make him SCARY. really show how easily he can slip that mask on and off so that when he does go apeshit and starts cutting up steve in a backalley the audience FEELS something

and like... im not an abuse victim. so i cant say what is and isnt right to show in a tv show depicting one, but for me as a viewer, i wouldnt mind keeping in the neil aspect, really showing how bad it can get, so long as he still gets his comeuppance and when he does no one feels bad about it. 

like i very much understand not wanting to make the abused kid the villain. i will not argue with anyone who doesnt ever want to see that in any capacity. but for me? i very much operate under the idea of anyone is capable of being good or bad. its a roll of the dice how a person is gonna turn out. so i do think there was a way to incorporate billys history and still make him the villain the duffers clearly wanted him to be. its just... you gotta go bigger. this is not a story meant for a minor character. you gotta really commit to it. and they didnt. which was the problem. it just... fell totally and completely flat

i love how i went straight to murder lmfao like this show was ever gonna give us a serial killer kfjbgjksbg

i was thinking bout billy loomis my bad.

for me, a successful villain is one you wanna root for. which in itself will be a controversial take lmao but thats just my personal opinion okay. when theres a villain who im just watching like “i want you dead i want you dead please die”.... i dont know that thats as fun for me. and its not that i necessarily agree with what theyre doing or whatever. its more that like... you can tell a bitch is having a good time lmao whether it be the actor in the role or the character themselves or both. villains gotta be a party. like when billy was whooping and hollering and laughing during the fight? EXACTLY that energy. we needed more of that. the unhinged clapping in the sauna scene? mr dacre kayd understood the ENTIRE assignment 

i want to end this by saying i think billy shouldve held a knife to steves throat and made him bleed. i would like to see. i would also like to see steve holding a knife to billys throat and billys dick getting hard. ive said this before. i will say it again!

oh my god billy straddling steve and carving into his chest ???? imma stop imma stop we get my point by now

[khadij-al-kubra]

Storytelling, Fate & Happy Endings

I’m still processing last nights episode (CR C2 Ep140), and much like every critter I’m SUPER emotional about it. But something about last night’s events and how they played out really got to me, not just as a fan but also as a storyteller. And even the day after, i was actually crying (still am crying in fact) more than i did last night watching it happen. At first i thought it was because i’m a fairly new critter and this is my first time watching a campaign come to an end. But the more i think about it and process, the more i realize that’s not just it. This effected me as someone who deeply believes in the power of storytelling and how it can not only effect but reflect the world around us. And because I have to get them out of my head, here are my thoughts on why last nights episode was so important, not just for CR fans but also as a an important narrative for right now.

...Yeah that’s a bit vague, isn’t it? Okay, let me explain. If you’re willing to take the time to read fellow Critters, I greatly appreciate it in advance. ^__^

WARNING: Major spoilers for CR Campaign 2 Episode 140 ahead. Also it’s gonna get kind of meta. And long. Because i have a lot of thoughts & feels.

So I think it’s fair to say that, as much as we would’ve been devastated by any of the M9 perma-dying in the last battle, part of us wasn’t expecting them all to make it out of there alive. Not even the players, I think, despite how much they likely didn’t want that to happen. Just look at the half-resigned way Liam talks about Caleb in the last few Talks Machina episodes. Or how, in game, Jester was fully prepare to die trying to stop the city from coming back. And for a while there, it seemed like some of them might not survive.

But then they did. Despite so many crappy rolls throughout the night they stopped Lucien, set free all the souls trapped in Aeor, saved Exandria, and brought each other back from the dead. Not only that, but they also did the impossible: They saved Mollymauk. Their lost friend who had such a deep impact on all of them even after his death. The delightfully charming asshole who was so full of joy and life and who, despite how the world treated him, was happily determined to leave every place better than he found it. Moreover, they almost didn’t succeed! But then they did, all because of teamwork, love and one last minute ditch effort ‘what-the-hell-have-i-got-to-lose’ dice role that none of them saw coming. And now they get to go home together, truly as The Mighty NINE.

Just this once, everybody lived! We got a happy ending!

And that’s HUGE in game...but also think for a second how that reflects outside of game too. Do you realize what a story like that means to people, especially given the year from Hell we’ve all had?

Think about it. This past year the world has suffered. We’ve all been impacted by the pandemic in some way shape or form, either on small levels or large. Our world has been at war with a virus that effected everyone and everything: Our sense of safety. Our health. Our economy. Our families & friends. Our freedom. (in the sense of our ability to travel & just be in close proximity to people without fear, but i digress) Deeply imbedded social and systematic diseases have been brought further to light in the past year and a half largely because of this virus. Some of us have lost people we love. Hell, the pandemic even effected the way that the latter half of Campaign 2 played out because of social distancing protocols. If you further compare this to Campaign 2, the world of Exandria was caught in the middle of a war that started because of social & systematic corruptions that had been rooted in two opposing kingdoms for years. And so many suffered and died because of it.

Then the Mighty Nein comes in. This ragtag group of delightful assholes with nothing to lose; these flawed but inherently good at heart and deeply human adventurers, broken and lost in their own ways, trying to make a home and family for themselves in a world that took advantage of them or left them alone or said they weren’t good enough...and they changed things. 

They grew. They fought back. They found moments of silliness and peace and joy and fun amidst all the strife and sometimes grief. Most of all, they tried. Sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of spite, sometimes even out of compassion, but mostly just out of love. And in the end, not only did they help people and stop a war for the sake of their loved ones, but they also saved their world from being destroyed by a rotted perversion of life from the past that threatened to consume everything they cared about. AND they STILL managed to bring everyone in their found family back to life. Does it erase the bad and sad things that happened to them? Hell no! But those things don’t negate the fact that in that moment, they made it out okay. That this was a victory and they won!

Think of what a story like that means to people right now.

I’m personally a pretty spiritual person, and much like our favorite clerics, I also believe in a higher power. But whether or not you also believe in a Divine being, the Universe or whatever, every D&D player believes in one thing: Fate. Luck. Call it what you will. But it was fate that made those dice rolls that saved everyone happen. It was fate that not only stopped Cognoza from returning, but also brought Jester and Caleb and Molly back to life, even when it seemed like it wouldn’t work. (and holy shit that gave me emotional whiplash!) 

After everything they went through, both individually and together, the Mighty Nein defied the odd and demanded that Fate let them save their loved ones. They demanded that the world give them back their friend; That they deserved to have their happy ending & get to go home alive together. Just. This. Once.

As a writer, I know firsthand that there are some stories we find and create ourselves, but then there are stories that have a way of finding us. Sometimes a story or world or character from somewhere in the Aether will pop into our minds one day and say, ‘I need your voice to tell my story.’ Maybe this is just me getting carried away with the meta brain again. And like i said, i’m a spiritually inclined person, so I believe in things like Fate and a Divine Higher power writing out the stories of the Multiverse. If you’re reading this (and thank you for taking the time to do so) maybe you do too. Or maybe you don’t. Either way, if you’re a fellow critter, then you’re clearly a fan of good stories and/or playing Dungeons & Dragons. So you know how fate/dice roles have a big impact on the outcome of a story, regardless of how tightly written a setup the dungeon master makes. Given all that and how organically stories tend to play out in D&D, I genuinely believe that Matt Mercer and the whole CR Team were meant to be conduits for a story where the flawed heroes save the world AND all make it home alive.

And I think Fate knew that we needed last nights battle to end like this. After all the crap we’ve been through this past year, we needed this happy ending, deserved it even! Not just us critters, the CR team too. As much as we all like to joke that Campaign 2 was secretly scripted, we all know that’s not true. Yes, the setup storyline and world were brilliantly crafted by Matt, and the character roleplaying is beautifully acted out by the team. But the twists and turns, the direction it goes, and how the game plays out is all up to fated dice rolls just like any other game. And something, some kind of force of luck, some force of fate, some Universal Divine DM out there made the roles happen the way they did last night.

It gave us a happy ending.

I believe that this was meant to happen; now of all times with everything else going on in the world. Amidst all this darkness and rot, both in game and in the real world, in the end of it all there was light and life. A reminder that sometimes people do live. They do get second chances. They do find a new family or reunite with old ones. That sometimes the world can be saved for a time, and happy ending do still exist. Even if it’s not broadcasted on the daily news amidst tragedy reports, or even tragedies that don’t get reported (which sadly are a lot, but again i digress).

Because the thing is, like Beau said, no one else will probably know they were heroes. No one will know what the Mighty Nein sacrificed to save all of Exandria. But they don’t need to know that for it to still be true, for life to happen again, and for a found family of nine broken people who love each other to go home together safe. It doesn’t invalidate that the good things happened. That at least for today everyone was saved. That flawed people were still able to do good because they tried. That they left the world better than they found it and got their own small but satisfying happy ending. Even if only for now, because we don’t know what’s gonna happen next Thursday. We don’t know what the future will hold for the Nein or Exandria when the Campaign ends or even when (hopefully) some loose ends will be tied up in later oneshots. But neither that nor the bad and sad stuff that happened beforehand in the game and in the character’s lives invalidates the fact that tonight they won. They lived.

So why can’t that be true for us in the real world?

I said earlier that, as a writer, I believe in the power stories have to not only reflect but also shape our world. This story is an example of why, but especially this episode, and that’s why i was so euphoric about the outcome. It wasn’t just a game for me, and i’m sure for others too. It was a much needed reminder that happy endings can still happen in real life, just as much as they can in stories. Even when everything seems dark and corrupt and rotten and hopeless, we can still keep fighting. We can keep trying. We can make new families and start over and be heroes in our on little lives in small ways. 

We can leave the world better than we found it. 

And maybe, with hard work, imagination, luck and a little Divine intervention...we can also get the happy endings we deserve.

[catboycafe]

I Will Now Express Every Thought I Have About Pacific Rim: The Black 

⚠️ spoilers for the whole thing baby

I actually forgot Pacific Rim: The Black was premiering today until I saw it in an article this morning! When I first heard about it months ago, I was decidedly not sold on a Pacific Rim anime. Uprising burnt me the fuck out and I don’t have a lot of trust left in me for new entries to the franchise. But I had heard rumblings of Raleigh and Herc being referenced after going into #pacificrim and I decided I may as well check out to see what was up! I binged it in 4 hours and it sure was a whirlwind, I’ll tell ya

The Plot

I really enjoy the setting and initial concept! We’re so use to seeing Kaiju/Jaegar shenanigans play out within these major cities with helpless civilians everywhere that spending so much time in a lonesome desert and these destroyed civilizations was really cool and indicative of the changes Pacific Rim has undergone in the last few years. I also looooved the Desert Settlement from the beginning!! It seemed really homey and picturesque; I wish we’d spent more time with the other survivors and got to see more of their day to day aside from farming and sitting. 

I also found the first episode set up to be really tight and well written! I was hooked during the initial flashback, Hayley and Taylor’s fight was really poignant and well acted, and the reveal of Atlas Destroyer felt really huge and epic!!

But once we left the Desert Settlement and the plot started actually moving along, the pacing becomes suuuper rough. We spent way too long in Bogan with Shane and Mei; there’s only 7 episodes and we spent, like, 3? 4? within the confines of that camp and I felt it weighed the plot down. Boy is introduced in the 2nd episode and, because the narrative spends so much time on Shane’s evil machinations and Mei’s back story, we still don’t know anything concrete about his origins or purpose 3 episodes later! That felt frustrating to me

The story beats overall were very predictable. I was able to pick up on Mei’s backstory via her dynamic with Shane in their introductions, so her memories felt too built up and too hollow once they were revealed. The same with the reveal of Boy’s Kaiju form; he was in a big green test tube in a PPDC base - I assumed immediately he was a part-kaiju experiment and again his reveal felt hollow, especially after the glacial pace of it’s development. 

Even when events weren’t predictable, they lacked weight. The appearance of several Kaiju Breaches in “Boneyard” felt very cheap for some reason; I wasn’t scared and I didn’t feel tense about these odds mounting against the protagonists. This was just happening and I was just watching. 

The Art Direction and Animation

I’m very obsessed with all the new Kaiju we got from this; I love how Copperhead is rendered, they’re a joy to see on screen!! The Rippers are also very cute and deserve little plushies...i love these neat little dogs. Boy’s Kaiju Form is very intimidating with an interesting color palette and I loved seeing him next to Copperhead’s highly saturated design!

That’s unfortunately all that I liked however; All the human character design is unmemorable to me. Every character looks exactly like another easily identifiable anime character from a different property (Hayley looks exactly like Zero Suit Samus to me, for example. And Mei kept reminding me of both Bernadetta Fire Emblem and Motoko Kusanagi from GitS. The list goes on). 

I can sort of understand why they’re so bland? A franchise going from Live Action to something as heavily stylized as anime is probably a really difficult transition and these designs are probably meant to be more lowkey than more unique anime designs in order to help that transition. But realistically stylized designs can still be recognizable and unique! These feel uninspired and bare bones.

 I have no problem with the switch to CGI animation that modern anime is doing because I know it’s a lot cheaper to produce and it can still be really unique and striking! But The Black’s model animation felt very stilted and inconsistent. I don’t have a lot of knowledge about animating so I don’t think I can accurately describe what I disliked? Wooden is probably the best term. Character movements felt wooden and things like hair and clothes felt plastic. 

Impacts also had very little weight. The fight between Tayler/Mei and Copperhead reminded me of when you’re in a dream and trying to punch something, but you can’t punch hard. It was simply too floaty and too soft. The final showdown in “Showdown” was better, but not by much. It was very immersion breaking seeing these Giant Robots and Giant Monsters unable to throw a real solid hit!

Characters

My favorite character was unequivocally Joel Wyrick. We love Joel Wyrick in this house! Joel’s character has real charisma and charm. I love his flirtations with Loa, how his cocky disposition is juxtaposed with his drinking problem and later insecurities over his lost memories, and his genuine kindness shown to Mei, Taylor, and Boy. No one ever plays with Boy, they just run after him and drag him around...but Joel has this moment in “Escape from Bogan” where he kneels down to Boy and helps him collect rocks. It was sweet!

So of course, when Joel dies for absolutely no reason 5 minutes later - pissed! I was pissed! I yelled “COME ON” aloud in my studio apartment! I was genuinely so excited to see him interact more with the rest of cast then, poof. No More Joel.

His death felt like it was for shock value to me rather than actual narrative development. Why kill him when we still don’t fully understand his and Mei’s relationship? Why were they so close? Were they childhood friends, or just coworkers that happen to become friends? Why did he specifically know all the details of Shane’s abuse towards Mei before she did? 

What did his death accomplish? It made Mei sad...ok? She was already...very sad. Her running away from Shane already had consequences - the consequences of Shane coming after them for revenge in the future. Why did Joel have to become a causality? 

His death is ultimately tied to Mei’s character arc which is, unfortunately, my least favorite :c I find Mei to be a really one dimensional character with a personality, backstory, outlook, and motivation that I’ve seen done a million times before with a million other characters. She feels very out of place in the franchise as a whole - Pacific Rim is, at it’s core, a story about connecting with others. Her self-centric arc and lack of desire to connect outside of drifting really alienates her from the story at large and it frustrates me how long The Black’s narrative spends on her. 

Hayley and Taylor were otherwise very interesting in the pilot episode, but become similarly one dimensional at the story chugs on. Taylor’s unflinching (bordering on unhealthy) faith in their parents was really interesting next to Hayley’s complete acceptance of their parents’ death. But once the two of them make up their differences, they lack an interesting dynamic and become very passive protagonists.

 Taylor especially has no personality - how would you describe Taylor? He’s...brave. He’s the older brother. He’s a leader? He’s nice? There is nothing noteworthy about him at all, which is sad considering I think he has the potential to be a really interesting way to explore the original movie’s influence on The Black’s story.

Hayley’s grief and self-blame are more interesting than Taylor’s...nothingness, but she still falls into this one-note trope of being the naive, excitable little sister. I guess I feel abnormally frustrated about this flat character writing because Pacific Rim’s incredibly unique cast has always been an inspiration to me! It feels sad that this new iteration into the series is full of what feel like stock characters. 

Then we get to Boy. How come Boy can’t have a person name? It’s specifically written in a dialogue between Taylor and Hayley: “I’m not going to call him Chad or Barnaby or one of those names for a baby brother you wanted as a kid,”

Why?

He’s by all accounts a human child when they find him. Yes, he was found in a big green test tube - but he walks and acts just like a human child. The only difference, seemingly, is that he is non-verbal and engages in strange/annoying behavior (running off, eating bugs, etc). So he isn’t deserving of a name?? I don’t know why that makes me so mad, it just does. it’s like they refuse to treat him as a human even before they find out he’s a Kaiju  - it’s super weird! How can the story sell me on the three of them becoming found family (like they’re seemingly trying to do) if the protagonists won’t even treat this kid like a kid??

Misc. Thoughts

The callbacks to Stacker, Herc, and Raleigh were cool! I also like that Herc is a major plot point! We love Herc Hanson and it’s what he deserves. I also find Loa’s connection to Horizon Bravo very interesting...and the fact we’re getting Kaiju cultist lore! Love that! Love that!

Fucked up that the only two dark skinned characters were: 1) removed from the story 10 minutes in with no call back yet, 2) Killed after having 1 line of dialogue and fridged for the character development of the blonde white girl. I really need to know what the deal with those 4 characters leaving in the beginning was about - I absolutely thought we’d see them again by now, but no dice

I don’t know how to feel about Ajax and have no clue what their purpose in the story is. They’re cool, but whats the point? 

If Mei and Taylor are paired up together romantically, I’m putting Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson in the time out box. Very tired of seeing random hetero romance B plots in stories that can’t even get their A plots together

Overall, it’s kind of subpar! It has the foundations of a really interesting story, but the pacing and characters really took me out of it. I’m interested in Season 2! I know season 2 is already ordered and I’d love to see how things continue to develop, see if the character writing gets any better - but I’m not too hopeful unfortunately. I really really love Pacific Rim after all these years and I’m happy to still be getting content and world building! There’s just sooo much I would change about this however. At least fanfiction’s free! 

Thanks for reading all this, I have ADHD and just go on and on if u let me. hmu if You Too have thoughts about Pacific Rim: The Black and have no one to talk abt them with

[basically-i-write-shit]

PLEASE tell me about the hq dnd au. I’m intrigued

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE

ok but like genuinely I wrote a little oneshot of how I think it would go for tskym week like...three years ago and I'm disappointed it didn't get as much interest as i thought it would. I got really into D&D when I started listening to The Adventure Zone in 2018 (which, I think it's absolutely crazy that was 4 years ago btw) and I've been obsessed with the idea of the hq gang playing dnd for a while.

The premise of the fic is that the reader is experiencing the campaign, not the process of making it, but through a unique lens: we're watching the PCs instead of the characters playing at the table. Each character's PC is of course created with a class, race, and backstory that is different than their own with unique names- but, because it's still a Haikyuu fic, we're still watching the characters go through these situations.

So like, in my example fic, we read and comprehend that "Tsukishima" and "Yamaguchi" are the ones controlling the narrative, but their characters are the ones experiencing the sensations.

Ex:

The way I would work this is by essentially writing a fantasy Haikyuu fic that loosely follows D&D 5e rules/my small knowledge of how D&D works, and include cut scenes like provided in the example to show the "playing" D&D aspect of the fic. This would also be able to excuse any acts that the "Characters" (PCs with their names changed to reflect the person playing them) do that may seem OOC or weird choices for them to make by blaming it on a "bad roll" or "failed check." Essentially bailing the author out if people complain about a character's actions being "totally OOC for him" lol.

"But 12 people is a lot of people for a D&D party, isn't it?" The answer to that is yes. Having all of one team or multiple teams in one campaign together would be near impossible for an IRL game. Like, not gonna lie there. I would probably have the team split into two separate campaigns that occasionally overlap, with other characters from other teams simply being NPCs that the audience, looking at the story from an outsider's perspective, could potentially identify as another character. Great example would be, if the campaign follows Karasuno, seeing a childhood friend duo could imply either Kuroo and Kenma or Oikawa and Iwaizumi or one of the Miya twins and Aran, depending on the relationship of the duo.

I have a lot of feelings about potentially writing this one day, and the ideas are probably confusing if you haven't read the oneshot I did with the concept, but year. D&D AU.

Additionally:

In a Karasuno-centric version of this, Ennoshita is of course the DM.

They host at Tanaka or Daichi or Yamaguchi's houses the most, because they have a lot of space and their parents aren't home often enough for such a large group meet in.

Another way to shrink the group is to just have Narita and Kinoshita have their own separate campaign that Enno DMs on the side, but I like the idea of an even split for players.

Tanaka has played a dragonborn in every campaign he's ever played and has a custom dice set that looks like a dragon's hoard.

Akiteru DMed a mini campaign for Yamaguchi and Tsukki when they were in middle school, and Enno discovering their minis while studying at Yamaguchi's house is how they get their team campaign going.

Hinata, like everything else, is a complete newbie but somehow manages to rock everyone's shit still. Like, everyone's convinced his dice are loaded even after doing multiple float tests, but he just had great rolls. That is, until he needs to have a good roll in the middle of some important combat and he gets a 3 with a -2 add on and nearly beefs it.

Tsukki has healing spells, which he absolutely should not be allowed to have bc he refuses to use them on anyone anyway.

Tsukki and Daichi are very anti-roleplay. Meanwhile, Suga, Tanaka, and Hinata absolutely love it. Everyone else is neutral with a positive lean.

Yamaguchi is surprisingly the one that romances everyone he sees- surprising because of his general demeanor, but also because I genuinely think he either plays paladin, cleric, or monk. Very non-flirtatious beings, usually.

Yachi and Kiyoko are definitely in this somewhere. I can't decide if I want them actually playing or as NPCs somewhere in the story, but they're definitely there.

I like to think that the other teams also have their own campaigns going on, and sometimes they run into one another at a post-session dinner or something.

This could honestly fit into the highschool canon or in like a college AU.

[staggeringsmite]

4, 8, 14, and 31 for the dm asks? (Also I hope you’re having a great day!)

thank you sola!!! i hope you're having a great day too <333 putting these under a cut bc it got a bit long

4. do you have any noticeable dm mannerisms? anything you’ve picked up from ttrpg shows or other dungeon masters in your life? or common tropes, themes, or encounters that reappear across your games?

aslkjlgkfjlgk i don't know actually? i have chronic "heard someone say this once and now it's a part of personality" so i think Most of my mannerisms are borrowed and i have no idea where from. i know i've kept "okayokayokayokay" from when ashley johnson was on in the cr1 days which tends to be my combat noise when it's my turn with npc's and the phrase hell yeah/hell yes gets repeated pretty frequently as my affirmative "cool hell yeah do that thing" phrase. as far as encounters or tropes i think dream sequences are soooo convenient and good and spicy for introducing some nice meta flavor naturally and narratively to analyze a character/characters. i love having them in my games because i think it's a great way to facilitate scenes (getting players to think about their character's state or jump-starting thoughts from the party members about a certain pc) or simply to get people thinking about what their character is going through more in depth. i also LOVE a good minigame session, festivals and parties with a competitive element and people running around to find their niche and do fun skill checks is a great way to get some dice rolling in a not traditional combat way and just to have a good time.

8. what types of stories do you like to tell? what is a game of yours incomplete without?

fuck capitalism and found family are givens i think <3 i just love and find comfort in focusing on love and community and chosen family and am not terribly interested if those themes in whatever form they are presented are entirely absent. but i particularly adore the bittersweet notes in a game. looking at wandering isles, which overall has a fantastically happy ending given the odds the pc's were facing, there are so many little notes that don't get that overwhelming, vastly fulfilling joy with them, they're messy and tinged with sadness and they make my brain go brrr extremely. i can't take credit for all of them because most had pc interaction at their core but to name a few: temish still being tethered to the mountain, his story being about sacrifice and him never being able to repair that bond with his sister over his decision to become this vessel, rosa's betrayal and being just an irredeemably flawed person that xarus has to cut off that hope of closure, eva admitting that she does not know who she is or who she would've been as the twin's mom that her first feelings towards them were not love when she got her memory's back and that she has a mountain of trauma and learning to love herself again to get through before they can hope to try and recover something (and that something never really being maternal because it just can't be + on this line therrin's death not being reversed at the end of the campaign) just to name a few. i live for this shit and think it makes the bright spots brighter <333

14. place you wish the pc’s had spent more time in or a plot hook they didn’t follow?

i just love all of the places in the wandering isles but as far as pacing goes and it being an airship pirate-based campaign it never made sense for you all to stay in one spot for a long time, i wish in general we could've seen a bit more of the big three organically (linde, geline, and malstova) because linde was such a vibrant atmosphere, and geline and malstova being the capitalist hellscape islands would've put a lot into perspective and maybe helped the revolution aspect that was big be more on screen for the party (though, once again, you were hunting down the singular world-ending entity and didn't have a lot of time either place to stop and check things out, and the plot didn't provide a good way to do so beyond these points)

31. best game snack/drink?

ooooh!!! pringles gang with jack because such a good quick chip to have for stress eating. snacking is very important with my blood sugar stuff bc we play for a loooong time some nights, so pringles and granola bars are #1. i usually eat a quick dinner before, so i'm not hungry until later in the session. as far as drinks go!! i love having tea with me (especially if it's in my little guy mug <3) and a big ass glass of water i have to refill a lot from talking all the time.

[retvenkos]

i just read your tags are you anti-snape?

(so i just saw that my tags were cut off halfway through my rant, so if you want me to finish that, just send in an ask and i will write out my whole thoughts)

okay, so anti-snape is a strong word, with a lot of different connotations to it, and while i wouldn’t brand myself as anti-snape because of all of the strong feelings attached, i would say that i don’t think that snape deserves all of the recognition that he deserves.

why?

what i firstly want to say is that snape is emotional abuser. my case in point here is neville, who had parents that were literally tortured to insanity, proving that his worst fear is snape - his teacher. how many times was snape unusually cruel to neville and harry? how many times did he humiliate hermione - an already bullied, muggle-born student (and possible poc)? snape is established to be cruel, and when you look at his actions, it is clear he is emotionally abusive to his students.

why did i start with this? because i relate with neville - i know what it is like to have your worst fear be an abuser that you face every day. so, therefore, i am biased against snape, and a lot of my dislike for him comes from the fact that no matter how you dice it, this man was in a position of power, abusing those students that looked up to him. 

he especially hated harry, who was an abused kid himself (and there is some kind of narrative in there, an abused kid growing up to hate and alienate an abused kid. i’m not going to get into that. but just think about that for a second and tell me you don’t want to at least dislike snape.). 

and perhaps you want to argue that snape couldn’t know that harry was abused over at privet drive. fair, okay. not everything about a kid can be seen on their face, right? but, one could argue that if snape took the time to look at harry and see him as a kid for a second, he could see hints of it. i have family members who are teachers, and they say that they can never be 100% sure, but they can at least have a good idea of who is abused at home, just based off of the way they interact with other people - especially adults. OR, if you don’t like that idea, you can think of it like this: the teachers at hogwarts are probably close to each other, right? mcgonagall knew (at least to some degree) what the dursleys were like - furthermore, she is close with harry and perceptive. she would have known that harry was abused, and if you don’t think that she wouldn’t have at least mentioned it to snape, i would disagree and say you don’t know mcgonagall. also! dumbledore! there is literally so many opportunities for snape to figure out that harry was abused at home. he just didn’t care.

so, snape is an emotionally abusive man in a position of power, picking on literal children as an outlet for his misplaced anger. this is the set-up for snape, and had he never had an in-depth redemption arc, we would literally all dislike snape.

and i feel like, then, the only reason that we have this snape/anti-snape discourse is dependent on whether or not you think his redemption arc is reason enough to excuse his actions.

and so here we talk about his childhood. which is definitely important and gives good insight, but should not be the only reason as to why he is seen as a good character. childhoods are formative and important, but they are not all encompassing. let’s not forget that snape is a grown man when the story starts. he is 31 years old when we are introduced to his character.

snape had a terrible childhood. he was neglected. he was abused (or so it was implied). he was friendless. he was lonely. he was poorly socialized. he was in a hogwarts house that seemed against him, almost, so he had to work to carve his place out and prove his worth. he wanted to stay at hogwarts all year, if he could.

(sound familiar? harry? neville? you two are here?)

but, school is not always great. at school, there are bullies that are terrible to him - it goes beyond teasing sometimes, snape getting hexed and jinxed and publically humiliated. he has one friend - lily, but sometimes he wonders if she really understands or if she really cares. no one has ever cared for him before, so why should she? he falls in love with her, but she does not reciprocate his feelings. instead, she falls for his tormentor - the person who has made his one safe place terrible, the person who treats him like he’s nothing.

now that is a compelling background. when he falls in with the wrong crowd, we can see why. he is desperate for some kind of belonging, some kind of importance. 

(is that... draco?)

he gets more violent as time goes on. those spells he created? levicorpus? sectumsempra? he’s going down a dark path and he wants to cause pain. he becomes a death eater, and while we don’t get a lot of detail what happens here, he rises in the ranks, which means he had to have done terrible things. at this point, he is clearly a bad person. and maybe he feels remorse during this time, but it’s clearly not enough to push his conscience out of where it is. he is still on voldemort's side.

what changes him? the power of love, of course. because even in this terrible time, he still loves lily - right? but is it love? or is it more like obsession? jk would tell us it’s love, but i would disagree. 

at the beginning, yes. snape loved lily. but after so much has transpired? things changed. snape is no longer as pure as he once was. he changed. any maybe he didn’t notice it, sure. but wasn’t he different, after everything?

if he loved lily, he would have cared about (even minorly) the things she cared for. yes, he could still hate james with a burning passion, yes he could let that ruin his and lily’s relationship,,, but could he become the very thing she feared and abhorred? could he become a death eater, literally killing people she loved? people just like her? could he have gone to her house, stepped over her dead husband, ignored her crying child to mourn her dead body?

this feels more like obsession. if you love someone, you care about them - their wellbeing, their peace of mind. love means you need to have an awareness for who your loved one loves, and you can accept them for the fact that they love someone else. snape shows he doesn’t. he only cares for her.

here we are, now, at this point is snape's story, and the natural progression in his redemption arc is for him to actively try to amend his terrible actions.

and... he does? kind of?

he becomes a double agent which is perfect. he vows to protect harry, which he does, physically... but he has a clear disregard for protecting harry emotionally, which one could argue is most important in harry’s story.

to defeat voldemort, harry has to come to terms with the idea that love is his strongest weapon against the dark lord, right? so snape being horrible to harry is not only bad because emotional abuse is real, but it’s also part of why harry is so angry and bitter in the sixth book, the exact opposite of what he needs to be if he wants to defeat voldemort.

also, snape preaches “control your emotions” but snape... is emotionally unstable and takes out all of his anger on children half his age? idk. that just bothers me.

so i feel like snape kind of half-asses his way through his redemption arc. he has chosen a different side, yes, but he doesn’t make a lot of intrinsic changes. he’s still angry. he’s still bitter. he’s still emotionally manipulative and abusive. 

so really, the question is: is a redemption arc dependent on a change of heart? or is a change of action good enough?

if you haven’t already picked up on how i feel about this issue, i don’t think a change of action is enough.

redemption is the act of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil (thanks, google). it’s absolution for your crimes. i feel like redemption is an intrinsic transformation, and jk preaches that love can do such an act. i’ve already covered that i don’t think snape loved lily, at the point of his big character changing moment. he was obsessed. it was more a change of action, than of heart.

BUT, that doesn’t mean that i don’t think he couldn’t have been redeemed. toward the close of his story, i kind of saw him as going through another arc as a character - i saw him start to care for harry more as harry rather than the child of the woman i’m obsessed with. i think, here,  he’s starting to show that love that jk insists he has. 

i think that if he had more time, he could have had a more full, more satisfying redemption arc. and that’s the tragedy of his character, right? we could always sort of trust him, but we could never fully trust him until the end. he was never really quite redeemed, it was cut short.

so, basically, i grapple with the fact that jk is adamant that snape is the good guy, he’s the redeemable character, when... he’s kind of only halfway there. AND, this is coupled with the fact that i believe draco was halfway there to a complete redemption arc, and jk is equally as adamant against draco getting a redemption arc.

jk has said that she thinks that the people who want draco to be redeemed are just girls obsessed with the bad boy having a heart of gold (which is fair, to some extent), but... isn’t she the exact same with snape? isn’t she equally obsessed that her readers know snape as being the emotionally scarred, bad boy with a heart of gold? food for thought.

also, where i draw a clear distinction between the crimes of draco and the crimes of snape is that draco is a teenager alongside the teenagers he bullies and emotionally abuses (draco, too, is an abuser! if you want an analysis on him, hmu.) draco is a 15 year old abusing other 15 year olds. this is terrible, and it can’t be excused. i agree. BUT, snape is a 31 year old man abusing 11 year olds. he is also their teacher. there is a clear power imbalance coupled with the fact that snape is an adult, who is supposed to be wiser and smarter.

so... long post, forgive me. i could go off about the crimes of jk rowling's depiction of slytherins forever and never be fully satisfied. i’m sure that in a weeks time i will have more i want to add onto this post. but for now, these are my thoughts on snape’s redemption arc, and my answer to whether or not i am anti-snape.

i am sure that after reading this, there are some of you who will think that i am anti-snape. that’s fine. you can have your own opinion, but if you are going to say that, know why.

no opinion is good if you can’t explain why.

[asotin]

what're your thoughts on castlevania (the netflix show, not the game, ive never played the game) what do you like, what don't you like? make it as long as you want. i don't care if i have to scroll for 5 minutes. go feral (personally trevor is extremely hot and i would like to date sypha. i'm not really into alucard's whole sickly victorian child aesthetic, yknow?)

oh god this is way too long, but you did say to make it as long as i want, and i have a lot of thoughts that i need to inflict on the world

i played two castlevania games, both from the nintendo gameboy era, so please don’t get mad at me, gamers

details below the cut, but since i’ll be talking about season three, i need to preface this with content warnings for mentions of: graphic violence, rape and sexual violence, racism, and the holocaust

before i get into it, i usually don’t go for alucard-type characters either, but knowing that he was redesigned to be bishounen sexy specifically because the boring, middle aged man look he originally had in the games wasn’t appealing makes me enjoy him. and he’s fun with trevor and sypha

do like:

the voice acting

it’s all good. i can’t think of any characters whose voices were awkward or fit poorly. they don't make sypha’s va use the standard flat affect or false high voice women tend to be assigned, trevor sounds suitably worn out but not monotone, and alucard sounds exhausted but in a sexy way

and the spanish dub is killer, arguably superior

the animation & design

it isn’t full-on artsy, but it’s definitely got a distinctive style that’s easy to look at. the color use and effects are gorgeous. it’s a story set in the medieval era, and the mixture of desaturated and oversaturated elements works so well with that

dracula’s castle and the belmont bunker aren't revolutionary in design, but they didn't need to be. they're suitably creepy and empty, and i enjoyed them

the monsters were unique enough to have obvious different types, and the scene where a monster commits blasphemy in a church by accusing a priest of committing blasphemy was good writing

lisa

she shows up to a stranger’s spooky home and scolds him for being rude. she really looked an ancient vampire in the face, told him he had no manners, then had a kid with him. what a phenomenal woman. 11/10, no notes

“start with me, and i’ll start with you.” you know what? i’d fall in love, too

dracula

this ancient, unfriendly vampire let a human woman walk into his home and tell him he’s got no manners. and that made him fall in love with her. just like that. lisa walked in and handed him his ass, and dracula thought “oh i love her”. and when she was killed (more on this in the bad section), he raised literal hell to destroy the world for doing it

speaking of lisa being killed, it fucks me up that it happened because she convinced him to leave the castle and experience the world. he left her alone to see what she loved so much, only to come back and find that the people he’d come to like- the people lisa had loved so much it drove her to help in a way that got her killed- had burned her at the stake. i love a good tragedy, and that’s good tragedy

the way he weeps when he has to fight alucard?? during a showdown in their home?? the “i must already be dead” moment in alucard’s childhood bedroom??? when he speaks to lisa about killing their boy, her greatest gift to him??? poetic cinema.

the trio’s dynamic

three bisexuals with two total brain cells and only alucard bothers using them. incredible

i went so hard for this ot3. it's right there and so good

sypha

she initially seems to be assigned the role of the adult™️ ie she's the only woman and gets stuck being responsible, but surprise! she’s just as annoying and dumb as alucard and trevor. she dropped a castle she didn’t understand on the ground and didn’t think too hard about it. then she argued about breaking it. i love her

if we don’t get an ot3, then she needs to have a dumb gf

alucard

he's got a stupidly low neckline and lower pants. they really leaned into ayami kojima’s redesign, as they should have. his little curl annoys me, though. why the fuck does he have a random section of hair that’s like three inches long when the rest is shoulder length or longer? love that he really looks like lisa

if you say he's canonically bisexual and polyamorous, no he isn't. yes he is. no he isn't :)

trevor

disgusting. a nasty man whose appearance mirrors his state of mind. he's 50 mental illnesses in a dirty jacket and his coping mechanism is… alcohol? maybe? he’s a mess, and i dig it

him trying his trick of kneeing alucard in the balls during their fight? and finding out it doesn't work? (which…… why doesn't it……?) juvenile but suitable

hector

his love of animals makes him my favorite. normally, i won’t touch anything with this much animal death, but i’m willing to set that aside because hector loves them so much. he’s so sweet and kind, and he loves his monster pets

yes he sided with dracula and has some really fucked up ideas about what constitutes humane treatment of people, and yet i love him. 11/10, but i have a lot of notes

isaac

i support him, including his murdering and his decision to support dracula. dracula throwing him out of the castle to save him was so cruel in that it was an attempt at kindness from a man who hated the whole world, but it was against isaac’s wishes

his time with the captain was great

idk enough about islam to know if he's portrayed correctly and haven’t seen any complaints, but given the show’s track record……… i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not great

the forging

very cool. fresh and interesting! hector creating pet friends is cute and heartbreaking. love isaac for his dedication to reducing, reusing, and recycling

season 2’s big battle with all those vampires

the new version of “bloody tears” is phenomenal

this goes back to the animation, but listen……. it's so good. i loved the smoke vampire, and alucard’s fluid wolf transformations. his flying sword looked really good, and incorporating them together? super good to watch. and trevor’s whip?

the type and level of violence are suitable for what it is. it would be weird for a gritty show like this to be bloodless, but i don't think it would work if it were bloody to the extent of a slasher. it's also more clean violence, if that makes sense. you don’t linger just to look at gore; you see it because stabbing someone spills blood. the games weren't about extended, gritty scenes of realistic murder, so the show sticking with quick, slice and dice type fights fit with what i remembered of them

please watch this fight if you don’t remember it or haven’t seen it (part 1, part 2)

trevor’s whips

trevor’s weapons don’t follow the physics of normal whips, and they shouldn't. they’re heavily stylized and clearly a fantasy weapon, but they still have rules that they (mostly) have to obey. his morning star-whip hybrid in particular is so good 

it’s easy to follow, too. a lot of times, speedy weapons disappear, which is an understandable effect but one i find boring because there’s nothing for me to do. i’m just sitting on my ass with nothing to do

trevor’s whips don’t disappear. they’re fast, but you can always see them. and they have weight! you can see them slow down and gain speed. i don’t need physics to be real; i want movement to be pleasing, and that’s exactly what i get with the whips

don’t like:

fridging lisa

she could have been kidnapped (possibly make dracula think she was dead bc people want to lure out her scary demon husband, idk), then s2 could have ended with her and dracula reuniting as he died. she and alucard go on a trip together to attempt to make amends for the pain dracula wrought in lisa’s name. orrrr she dies a tragic death with him and we’re left to hope that they find each other in the afterlife. do vampires get to go to the afterlife? can alucard reintegrate? can he be happy with his new friends? or will he go back to his crypt and sleep again? will he ever be rediscovered? if so, what will he do? deep questions. i would prefer to cogitate on these instead of experiencing the shitshow that is s3

season 3

they should have ended it with dracula’s death. the quality of storytelling goes down immediately. just plummets. i’m sure there were problems in the first two seasons, but this one is so bad, i genuinely can’t remember

but i may as well get specific, so here we go:

abandoning alucard

trevor and sypha leave their friend alone in his childhood home where he just killed his father. where they helped him kill his father who, as i’ve said too many times, raised literal hell to get revenge for people burning alucard’s mother to death

yt they don’t talk about alucard. they don’t make any plans to touch base ever again. trevor’s entire family got killed. sypha’s culture, from which she’s now estranged, is family-centric. if ever two people should give a shit about alucard and know why alucard shouldn’t be left on his own, it's them

so what the hell is going on?

trevor and sypha’s relationship

look. it could be good. it would be better with alucard but they could be together and it could work fine

but this……….

trevor hates what they're doing. he hates traveling around and fighting. he's clearly tired and deeply depressed

sypha not only doesn't care enough to address it (did they forget the first two seasons?? sypha is annoying partly because she doesn't stop poking people) she might not even notice? yes, she's having fun, but trevor is basically dead on his feet in front of her

racism

hector, sumi, and taka all got done dirty 

sumi and taka

i hate the way they died. i hate that i’m certain that the plot won’t bring japan back into the narrative (or if it does, i don’t trust it not to be shitty). i hate the fact that by killing them off, i’m not going to get any more of them. they were interesting!!

speaking of the japanese vampire: the biphobia, arguably, given what happens with alucard

the addition of sexual violence

i don’t need or want lenore. if all she’d done was manipulate hector, i could have lived with that. she’s a villain, so she does bad things. that’s the point. but what she did was a massive escalation. we hadn’t had any sexual violence, and then the last few episodes gave us 

tumblr feminists who love her for how she treated hector need to be quarantined until their brain worms have been cured

everything that happens to hector

what was this shit? why did i open my netflix app and tap castlevania and find them making this man walk around naked in the cold to torture him? and starving him? he got manipulated, degraded, chained up, collared like an animal, and raped. and why? to show us how bad lenore is? that the other vampires are bad because they let her do it? i didn’t sign up for this

the holocaust reference

the imagery at the end of s3 when it’s revealed that the judge has been killing people he’s decided are undeserving to live and collecting their shoes in that barn was chillingly close to images of shoes taken from victims of the holocaust. there's no reason to invoke the holocaust here. it’s unnecessary and in bad taste

[fimflamfilosophy]

“Is DnD Still Popular?”

To some of you giant nerds, the question, “Is DnD still popular,” is probably one of the stranger things you’ll read today, but within a specific context it makes a lot of sense. Speaking of, the show “Stranger Things” presented a popular, physical look at what DnD beasties might feel like, even if it didn’t present an honest view of what DnD games really play like. Along with more online media referencing the game and sites like Roll20 making it easier to join a group, it makes sense. Is this a temporary boom or has the roleplaying community seen a lot of permanent additions to its nerdy hobby?

I wouldn’t have numbers to say, myself, but for what it’s worth, roleplaying is always a very personal experience. And for a few of us, the question isn’t, “Are people still playing DnD?” Of course they are - it’s all anyone plays! The question is, “Can you get anyone to play anything else?”

What Is DnD?

For some people, Dungeons & Dragons has become so intertwined with the concept of roleplaying that people think DnD and roleplaying are synonymous. If you roleplay, you play DnD. Originally, this had a kernel of truth. There are articles about the history of the system, and during its inception the game had a hard time taking off. Fundamentally it was asking people to play make-believe, but with a system of mathematical rules and designs. We know now that this type of thing is like catnip to massive dork-faced neckbeards, but at the time it wasn’t expected to have much appeal.

Eventually it did get off the ground, and it became the standard for the entire concept of a roleplaying game. And as with all “firsts to the market”, there have been many competitors and copycats, but it’s difficult to pry the audience away when you need everyone to use the same system. In economics they call this “network utility value” - that is, a fax machine is useless if only one person owns one. You can only send faxes to other people with fax machines, so if another company tries to invent their own offshoot of the fax machine, they’ll never get anyone to adopt it because everyone is already using the existing fax machine network. Everybody knows DnD, which means that if you go to a convention or look for games online, you know you’re going to find more players for that system than any other.

Why Does DnD Continue to Work?

In early editions of DnD, there were a lot more rules, and as a result more freedom to design your characters. When I first started roleplaying, it was during the 3rd edition of the system, where you could still allocate skill points to become better or worse at specific skills like lying, climbing, forgery, or crafting. This meant that with good planning, you could play a sub-optimal wizard and make up for it somewhat by investing a lot in your “persuasion” skills to rely on talk more than magic.

But being the system that everyone has to learn isn’t enough to stay on top forever. Other systems like GURPS have taken hold by now, and some types of popular nerd media have introduced their own completely unique systems designed to simulate their specific media universes. The owners of DnD had two choices: either make the game more open and try to eat the lunch of other companies, or make all of DnD easier to play in general to capture a broader audience.

So they released 4th edition! We don’t talk about 4th edition. And then they quickly released 5th edition (and a few mumbled apologies), which streamlined a lot of things about the game to the extent I’m not sure why they even let you control your character stats at all now. Skills became baked in with your level, and most of the game is about choosing abilities when you level up. It’s become very similar to playing an MMO, and I believe that’s the point.

One of the big things you always see in a complicated roleplaying system is players spending hours putting together a character. For your experienced player, this is a labor of love. You really care about the small details and want to make sure you get it right, or you’re a Win-At-All-Costs type who wants to make sure you’re rolling the biggest numbers. Either way you’re familiar and know what you’re doing, but it presents a hurdle to new players, and that hurdle has been largely done away with in 5th edition.

No matter how old you are, how experienced you are, how creative you are (or aren’t), or how much you know about any aspect of the game, you can play 5e DnD. I think you could play as young as seven years old and have minimal problems, because all you have to do is choose a job and virtually everything else is filled in for you, as if by a program, as if a video game. An experienced player can help a new one whip up a character within fifteen minutes, and that new guy will be rolling dice at the dragon about as well as everyone else.

DnD is the Worst System

But DnD’s accessibility is also its greatest downfall. Because everything is sort of programmed out, you find a lot of players eventually growing bored with the same-old, and they try to find ways to inject new life into the system. They invent new races, new classes, new abilities, and so on - they call this “homebrew”. yet many people are bad at creating balance and fairness for something they personally intend to play, and DnD recognizes this problem. It has a lot of supplemental books telling you all you need to know about other races and classes you might want to play, and in theory they are as fair and powerful as anything in the base system.

Yet no amount of homebrew or supplementary material will solve DnD’s core problem: it’s rigid. If you want to play, you need a battle mat, because every spell, every action, can travel or act within a certain number of squares and you always need to know exactly where you’re standing. Players are expected to be able to take a certain number of actions per turn based on their level, and do an expected amount of damage. Monster encounters are built loosely around the concept of “Challenge Rating”, which is meant to imply a group of four players will find a CR of 5 suitably challenging if they are all level five. Basically it plays like “X-Com”.

And as you lock people in these mechanical, video game-styled designs, you find people champing at the bit. Not everyone wants to choose their abilities at level up or have their skill proficiencies dictated by what level they are. Some people want to express truly outlandish concepts, or play something that isn’t specifically designed around the idea of walking room to room blasting monsters. You’ll see people in roleplaying communities often asking, “Does anyone have any good ideas to homebrew [this idea] and make it work?”

Fans of DnD argue the homebrew approach works. Yes, it’s complicated and frustrating to invent entirely new classes and races for a single game where you don’t know how long you’ll play or what level you’ll reach, but DnD’s strict rules and design philosophy is a perk to those people, not a drawback.

Yet a fact of note is that a quote from a game I run got into a popular “Out of Context DnD” blog. The quote was, “ Mecha-Jesus unleashes a barrage of flames from his palms, but the train-snake martially dodges out of the way!”

It received 337 notes, and I was a little surprised by that. The game is a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior setting where the team boss decided to kill God as revenge for one of the gang members dying. Also featured in that day’s session was a battle between two men operating bucket cranes in a duel to the death above a giant grain silo, among eight other equally implausible events based loosely on Dante’s Inferno. For me, Mecha-Jesus is not a 300 notes event - it’s literally every other Friday.

What Do You Want to Play?

In my view, DnD often poses the question, “Are you even roleplaying?” I mean really. A lot of players feel like they are because they do an accent and come up with a backstory, but if you set yourself next to another player who has the same character stats and you’re playing together in the same game, has the system really given you the tools to solve problems all that differently? And the answer is is broadly, no.

I understand the counter-argument. Every player is unique. But in their way each Paladin in “World of Warcraft” is unique too. They have different gear, different competencies of player, and may take different abilities, but fundamentally they’re expected to crash dungeons and use what they’re given to kill monsters. The only advantage DnD has is that the GM can allow his players to interact with scenery items or talk to things, and you’ll see debate on exactly how much leniency a GM should give his players to act outside DnD’s base mechanics.

That’s a mentality. Some people like the safety of the system. They like to know what all the monsters are, what the risks are, what the rewards are, and have it all neatly lined up where you can see it. They want to join an Adventuring Guild that will bureaucratically assign a dungeon for them to attack so they always have something to do and a sure reward for doing it. The GM went through the trouble of drawing that dungeon out, after all. DnD is extremely safe.

And then there’s the alternative. I actually learned to roleplay among theater nerds who were already big into the concept of improv and narrative. One of them used to joke, “If you think DnD is the best system for the game, you know it’s not character-driven,” because any time you’re fine with trying to build an actual human around a set of level-up choices, you’re probably not designing the strongest possible personality.

Going back to media making DnD more popular, the first televised introduction to DnD I can personally recall is an episode of “Dexter’s Lab” where they address exactly this conflict. In it, Dexter runs a game where he forces his friends to play by his rules, where he wins. When Dexter rolls poorly, he turns the dice over to a better number and declares his evil wizard “fried” the team of adventurers. Then his sister, Dee Dee, takes over, and with no knowledge of the game’s rules at all, embarks on an improvised session of pure roleplaying where the guys tell her what they do and she tells them what happens. The sheets are just guidelines for them, and if they say they can do something Dee Dee accepts it.

Dee Dee’s roleplaying is open. It’s a void, and for some people, when you look into the void it looks back. How do you control everyone when they can do anything? It requires a certain level of trust that some players have a difficult time not abusing, yet weirdly everyone I’ve ever known who would lie and cheat during a roleplaying game actually preferred DnD, and I think I know why.

Rules Can Be Broken, but the Suspension of Disbelief is Immutable

The grognards that break the rules in DnD do so because the rules are so strict that they ironically can be easily broken. If the system says people take a certain amount of damage when they fall, and you find a way to throw to them that elevation consistently, by gum they’ll damn well take that damage. It’s in the rules! A friend I know combats this by saying if his players exploit the rules, then the monsters will start exploiting them too, to discourage arms races of bullshit.

What I’m describing is often called “rules lawyering”. So named because it involves finding a rules passage, interpreting the rule so the wording sounds like it favors an exploit, and then leveraging that into a powerful ability players were not meant to have. Because DnD requires you to know absolutely everything about your relative locations and words like “Attack” can have important diverging meanings depending on context, it’s a system extremely vulnerable to lawyering.

But with a more open system based on narrative and characters, it becomes harder to lawyer something you shouldn’t. In an open system, you build what the game calls for without consulting a bunch of charts and level guides. If you’re super heroes, you build super heroes. Cyborgs are cyborgs, Orcs are orcs - it’s whatever, and if you try to do anything outside the believability of the game, the GM tells you no. He has more authority in a more narrative game because the GM leads the narrative.

I’m personally fond of the Hero System, which ascribes massive ranges to all forms of weapons (a gun or eye laser can reach you down a long hallway) so the only general questions that need to be asked are, “Are you close enough to punch a guy?” and “Are you bunched up close enough to all be hit by this grenade?” You don’t need battle mats and the games play a lot more intuitively. There are two books of rules in Hero and they can be specific, but most of the rules revolve around character design rather than how to play, and fiddly things like physics or bursting through walls are meant to be decided depending on the type of game, at the GM’s discretion. There are guidelines, but they’re only that.

So if someone tells you they can punch through a wall in your noir investigator game, you tell them no, because the rules are just guidelines and in this game you can’t just drive your fist through a concrete brick even if you can find figures in the book that say maybe you can, because the book also says maybe you can’t - you’re expected to play the narrative, not the game. You can punch through walls in the super hero game where that’s typical, but not in this one.

From DnD to Anything Else

Of course, the open systems also present an opportunity for players to be very different in skill sets and abilities. You could imagine DnD is like “Power Rangers”, where everyone’s a different color and has different weapons but they’re basically all pretty much on the same level. An open system will wind up more like “Avatar the Last Airbender”, where one player is going to be Toph and someone else is going to be playing Sokka. 

It’s important in DnD that everyone be the same, because a lot of the game is spent in a 20ft x 20ft room full of skeletons (or Putties) - Toph would single-handedly dominate every challenge. Whereas in a narrative-driven game the ability to crush everything with a rock doesn’t actually solve half your problems and whoever’s playing Sokka probably winds up more active than the person playing Toph.

At the end of it all, that’s why the question for me is whether you can take the players out of DnD and take DnD out of the players. Everyone plays DnD, but can you get people to play Sokka and have a good time if Toph is in the party? Personally I think it helps to start people on systems other than DnD, and then they can go into DnD if they like being in small rooms full of skeletons.

Of course, trying to start people on anything but DnD is usually defeated by the network utility! Everyone knows DnD! It’s THE system synonymous with the hobby! A few too many times I’ve seen people play a DnD game and say roleplaying just isn’t for them because it’s boring. All you do is wait for your turn and then roll dice at goblins.

But all I can say to that is, you never roleplayed, man. You joined a pen-and-paper video game. I agree, throwing dice at goblins sucks. I used to have a friend who would compulsively roll dice when he got bored waiting for turns in games like that, and when asked what he was rolling for, he’d joke, “I’m killing the dragon! I’m killing the dragon!” Him, enjoying the experience of DnD combat in between other people’s turns.

In many groups that’s all DnD is, silly accents and go-nowhere backstories aside. Acting is hard. But if you’re very lucky, and you know just the right people, it’s possible to land in a game that is pure story and character, and those things are a rare treasure and a real blast.

[siliquasquama]

Step back from the beach a moment

I don't celebrate on Memorial Day.

Remember, yes -- that is the point.

Commemorate, if you prefer, though that implies some manner of ritual, or some form of public ceremony, held at a slight remove from emotion, as the crowd along a parade route is both at a remove from the parade and part of it.

But to celebrate, to call it a day of relaxation or take it as a day of revelry --

I stopped doing that after I heard a particular song, in a particular movie. The movie itself is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Wherein the effort to find a Union soldier's grave, supposedly full of gold, is shown to be rather petty in comparison to the war itself -- which is presented primarily as a tragedy. A useless battle over a little bridge in a bleak corner of the West; a field of shallow graves marked by crude crosses; a stockade for prisoners of war, where weeping men are made to kneel in the dirt and sing a pretty song to drown out the cries from men being tortured --

You would think that the officer who chose the song would pick something less critical of the war, but who knows what he was thinking? As for the director, one might say he chose the song to distill the movie's message. As the final verse goes:

Count all the crosses, and count all the tears -- These are the losses, and sad souvenirs. This devestation once was a nation -- So fall the dice. How high is the price we pay?

After I heard that song my Memorial Days became rather grim.

I am always a little conflicted about the song. I know the political tendency of Americans -- especially white Americans -- is to elide the cause of our civil war, and elude the full implications. The decades after the war would not be the last time that reconciling white Americans meant leaving black Americans out in the cold, open and vulnerable to the people who would never stop trying to subjugate them.

Tempting to say both sides were right, and both sides were wrong, so as to bury the hatchet --

And yet: those who would subjugate black Americans dig the hatchet up whenever they think any government is trying to stop them. Be it in the decades after our civil war, or the decades after the second World War, or the decades after the country chose a black man to lead us towards a gentler peace and greater justice -- they do not forgive any movement towards the true power and freedom of black Americans, except by the acquiscence of the country to their predation, for any move towards freedom is a move away from what they have built, and threatens their coffers. As their coffers were filled by slavery, so they seek to maintain it, in one form or another.

Thus the old song from slaves long ago remains relevant, and its hope is ever present:

Oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn, Oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn. Pharaoh's army got drownded. Oh, Mary, don't you weep.

Did they?


I do not know.

So, when I hear the soldier's lament, I wonder if it was made to elude that question. Perhaps it is that the director, being Italian, at a far remove from this continent and its ways, only saw the war as it was described to him, and thus saw it as the hatchet-burying narrative would have it, and so in his movie made no judgment nor mention of why the war began, nor what cause stood at its center by the end.

Or it could be that the lyricist, being not Ennio Morricone but a white American man, may have written the lyrics to paper over that question, and the compoaser and director alike looked at it without considering it too thoroughly.

Which would assume signores Leone and Morricone would ever dare do sloppy work.

Most likely it is that, if the movie is presented as tragedy, Leone couldn't introduce any of the concepts that have led Americans to call the American Civil War a glorious struggle of freedom. No John Brown's Body nor grapes of wrath for him. In the battle for the bridge, Captain Clinton sees his job as pointless, and that's the story the movie tells. No sense muddling the message by talking about glory. Even if the southwest did have its own battles for freedom, separate from the question of slavery, which could have been shown in the background.

For, if I speak of freedom only in terms of black Americans, I forget the peoples who were also targeted for predation by white Americans, whose resistance to them began long before slavery was planted here, whose story always complicates the simple narrative of White versus Black  --

And as I speak of many peoples to think of them as a whole is complicated, if not impossible, for one tribe does not speak for another nor decide the same as the other. Over the centuries of struggle each tribe had interests separate from and sometimes against their neighbors, such as the people of pale faces could exploit to divide and conquer them.

In the case of the Civil War there were more such tribes who allied with the Confederate forces than with the Union. As it was in the rebellion that established the United States, as it was in the War of 1812, which was, in North America, sought by paleface warhawks as a battle against Indians -- in each such war that threatens the existence of the Federal Government of the United States, the victory and continued survival of that government has been the loss of many tribes and the deaths of their people.

I wish they had not sided with the British Empire, nor with the Confederate slave-holders, yet I understand why they did, for so many of the people we call American heroes were also villainous towards native tribes -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln alike. The hope of those tribes was the scattering of the forces set against them and in the Revolutionary War, at least, it was not a hopeless effort, nor would it have looked hopeless to them in 1812 nor 1860. For the sake of those people I will not sing patriotic songs, nor wave the flag, nor call the American Revolution nor the American Civil War an untarnished good.

Nor any war. Hard to see blood spilled out on the ground, be it for the best of causes. Blood spilled and bone scattered. Young rascals and old coots alike left as shells, empty as the casings spilled about them, and these days we send mostly the bright young ones to that end. Lao Tzu said a general must mourn their victories.

And there are many of us come from overseas who have seen their loved ones die before them, seen bodies scattered amid the rubble of what they thought would stand, as so many wars these days are civil wars fought in and over civil settings, thereby to flatten those settings -- how could I celebrate any war, in the face of such people? How could I say any war was for a good cause?

And yet -- Pharaoh's army got drownded. Hard to ignore that point.

And for the folks who fought for the life of their people against the federal government, and lost, I wonder if I would dare tell them that war could have no noble cause.

So if I consider Memorial Day as anything, it is a day to mourn victory. Never to forget its price nor what it purchased. Never to speak of that purchase as if it were for the petty game of nations. It is not for for them. It is for the living and the dead. One life given for another, or for many. Perhaps given freely. Perhaps a trade made by someone else far away. Therein lies the tragedy.

For his part, Sergio Leone did not let his movie side with the Union's political cause. If he sided with anyone, it was with the soldiers. The song is called "Story of a Soldier" and it shows the battles through a soldier's eyes. Smoke, cannons, flags in the distance too ruined to read, crosses and tears counted one by one.

The movie's main battle is, as I said, useless. Not from the perspective of whoever gave the orders, but certainly from the perspective of Captain Clinton. His men have to take the Branstone Bridge. If the Confederate forces also want it, then might as well blow the damn thing and leave, and he's desperate to try. But orders are to take the bridge. Maybe as a political favor, maybe to achieve a larger strategic goal. Either way thousands of people will die. That's why Captain Clinton reeks of alcohol. He couldn't handle the job any other way. So when two scruffy and disobedient recruits go and destroy the bridge after all, though it be for a selfish and petty goal, Captain Clinton's dying words are in gratitude. Thousands of people will live. That's what he cares about.

You would think the larger scale of taking that bridge would be more important! Politically, strategically, maybe. But for the life of each man involved -- not so much. They can't see that far. To them the small scale is what they know. And maybe it's more important anyway. The song is called "The Story of a Soldier." Maybe that's what the movie is actually about. And the two bandits are just a way of bringing us to the place where we see what became of him. Which one he is among thousands, that's harder to say. There's an Arch Stanton on one grave marker and 'unknown' on the other. We don't know anything about either man. The lives of both men were on the small scale, not big enough for anyone outside their little worlds to care.

But someone living on the big scale got a lot of people into a big mess, and war means spending a lot of the small scale for the sake of the big scale. Basically shovelling your world into the furnace bit by bit to keep the engine running. Sometimes it means you lose your peach orchard; sometimes it means the army needs your 500-year-old church bell for scrap metal. Hard to tell if it's worth it at the time. Or when you're laying flowers on a grave later.

But when you lay flowers on a grave, are you saying the war was worth it? Or is it an apology for letting a bad situation get out of hand? If you're going to lay your flower on the grave and say the war was worth it you had better include an apology because that's a hell of a lot smaller price to pay than what you're looking at.

Now as for why I post this today and not the 25th -- as I said, I don't celebrate on Memorial Day, and I don't much like the fact that it was moved from the 30th of May to the last monday in May to give people a 3-day weekend. That all feels a bit crass. Seems like it made it easy to forget why this holiday exists. Everyone takes a trip to funtown for the day.

Well, fine. I can't blame people for doing that if they don't remember why the holiday exists. We don't much emphasize the Civil War part of it anyway. Easy enough to forget when you turn a day of memory into a day for parades.

I'm not trying to spoil the day for you when you were looking for a rare chance to relax. Go and have fun.

Just let me stay here with the graves.

[procancelled]

It’s Hard To Be A Diamond In A Rhine Stone World 2008

Something I’ve noticed is that the majority of BOTDF songs address the listener instead of a specific person in the song. This is concerning given how sexual the songs are and how young the fanbase is. 

Slash Gash Terror Crew Anthem!

-          Fandom name.

-          Violent

-          Anthem for the fanbase is very sexual despite fanbase is young.

Bend over

Shake those titties

-          Gross and demeaning

Pull over

Hello Kitty

-          This is a FUCKING CHILDREN’S CARTOON CHARACTER!

Back it up like a U-Haul truck

Sock it to me

Rub my junk

-          Anthem for fanbase asks them to do sexual things to Dahvie

You’re a freak… like me!

-          Trying to connect to the audience and make them relate to him

 Save the Rave

You can talk

You stupid tricks

-          Demeaning to people who criticise him or come out with allegations against him

I’ve taken the pills

Giving into cheap thrills

-          Normalising drug use

I fell in love with a girl

At the dance club

She said what! As I’m kicking

Up the party drugs

-          Connecting relationships, ‘love’ and drug use

Shoot up this place

-          Violent

 S My D

-          A whole song dedicated to Dahvie’s oral sex fixation

I’m probably gonna lick

Feel you up until you drip

-          Oral sex fixation and overly sexual

Do you like my sexy hair?

-          Wig, shitty, mouldy, stinky wig.

I’m not wearing any underwear

-          So it’s easier to get your dick out?

-          Also, this is said in a very childish tone instead of trying to sound sexual

S my D

Pop it out like lipstick

-          Childish sounding when referring to his oral sex fixation

Take the bottles, pop ‘em out

-          Connecting alcohol with sex

Gimme gimme more on the dance floor

-          Sex in public, exhibitionism

Turn around, what the hell

Go real fast, break it down

Do it ‘til you touch the ground

Want it slick, want it sure?

-          Fast semi-violent sex

Bitch I know you want some more

-          Disrespectful and also sounds very rapey

So open me up like Christmas

-          Childish sounding which is very gross

S my D motherfuckin’ bitches

-          Disrespectful and demeaning

Suck it good

Suck it hard

Suck it right

-          Demanding

-          Oral sex fixation

-          If you want good oral sex then maybe you shouldn’t try to get oral sex from underage virgins, most of which don’t know or understand oral sex

 Ima Monster (Heart On My Sleeve)

-          Yes you are

I’m banging with the b-o—t-o-dizzle

With wiffles

-          What the fuck does this mean?

‘Cause I dribble like I’m rubbing on nipples

-          Obsession with breasts

-          Why would rubbing nipples make him dribble so much? He’s not seen boobs for the first time, he’s an adult

Gotta get out the pickle

-          Childish sounding and gross

Make it rain with the ripples

Let my candy rum trickle

-          Linking alcohol and sex

Get you buzzed with double triples

Getting head, in rentals

-          Oral sex fixation

-          Car sex again

Avoiding the parentals

-          Why would adults need to avoid parents? Because an adult should be having sex/a relationship with an adult so parents aren’t an issue right? Unless this is actually because he is avoiding parents because he intents to pursue a minor

They be hatin’ us

Cause we glamourous

They be hatin’ us

Cause I’m fabulous

-          Uses things like jealousy as the only reason he/the band are hated

 Can’t stop me once I’ve started

-          Sounds rapey as fuck

Baby got me retarded

-          Slur

Chop, chop, chop you up

-          Violent

Eat you like a cannibal

Spit you like an animal

-          Violent

-          Dismissive, uncaring and disrespectful

Slice, slice, slice you up

Cut you up, I’ll slice and dice

-          Violent

Serve you up as cold as ice

-          Gloating

Go ‘head girl, shake that butt

Make me freaking bust a nut

-          Overly sexual

-          Objectifying

Let’s get wasted, super UHW

Guess what honey, I’m a freak

I’m a freak, inside the sheets

-          Links alcohol and sex

-          Saying he’s a ‘freak’ is reminiscent of how he uses BDSM as an excuse

Rough, tough, naughty nurse

Rip it up, make it hurt

-          Normalising rough sex to a young audience that doesn’t know much about sex

-          Telling fans what he likes and what he’s like (supposedly) sexually

Don’t stop, get it, get it

Last for hours, not for minutes

-          Demanding

-          Yeah as if you could Dahvie

Open wide for my surprise

-          Oral sex fixation

Scratch and blow for your grand prize

Smear it on your plastic face

-          Rude

-          Marking who he’s with sexually

Leave you with a sweeter taste

-          He has told girls that his cum tastes like ice cream, young girls.

Super soaker on your chest

Let it drip down on your breasts

-          Breast obsession

-          At shows he would pour drinks on girls chests. He would also spit on them, mainly whichever girl he decided he wanted to have sex with

Haters make me famous

-          He indoctrinates his fans to think this way so whenever they see people criticise him or talk about what he did to them they will just replay that their ‘hate’ is just making Dahvie more famous

-          They aren’t haters and Dahvie is famous for all the wrong reasons

 It’s Hard To Be A Diamond In A Rhine Stone World

Slash Gash Terror what?

Slash Gash Terror who?

Slash Gash Party Crew

-          Violent name for fanbase

You know how we fucking do

-          Telling fanbase how to act

Pull over, that ass is so phat

You makin’ me clap

-          Overly sexual and demeaning

I don’t know how to act

-          He really doesn’t

I do it in the front

I do it in the back

Shake it down like that

Make that booty go clap

-          Overly sexual while sounding childish and not sexy in any way

Can’t knock it, I’m profit

-          Money obsession

-          Uses money and parents connect to the cops in his area to get out of any repercussions

I got paper to chase

I got money to make

-          By scamming fans

Squish, squish on your chest

-          Childish sounding

Rub those titties, super breast

-          Ah yes, one single super breast, the other one is mediocre

-          Breast obsession

Ah, ah lost my breath

Ultra sex you’re the best

-          Overly sexual

I’m packing

-          Doubt

I’m stacking

Some rated x action

Strawberry whip cream

We can be a sweet team

Bang bang choo choo train

Show me how you work that thing

-          Childish sounding while being overly sexual

This is how we fucking do

In the Slash Gash Terror Crew

-          Addressing fans

-          Telling fans how to act

 Keys To The Bakery

Haters block

-          ‘Haters’ = valid critics

-          Ironic since he blocks anyone who comments on his posts with the allegations against him

And snitches rock

-          Does he mean rock in some kind of bad way?

-          He calls anyone who confesses what he did to them as a snitch to make it sound bad so his fans go after them

Yo pass me the cup

I’ll drink till

I throw up

-          Unhealthy behaviour being normalised to a fanbase where the majority can’t legally buy alcohol

I get you wetter than Hurricane Katrina

-          Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005, three years before this album came out. People were still suffering.

-          Hurricane Katrina caused 1,200 deaths and $125 billion in damages

-          This line is said eight times in this song

Cuddle leads to trouble

When you’re up in my bubble

-          Sounds incredibly rapey

I don’t chase em

I replace em

-          It has been reported that over 100 people have reached out with stories about how they have been hurt by Dahvie

-          If Dahvie couldn’t get what he wanted from someone he would stop contacting them

-          He would also stop contact if he felt at risk of being exposed

Stackin’ hoes

Like dominoes

-          Disrespectful

Make a rumour

-          Constantly calls the allegations ‘rumours’ so they seem less valid, especially to people who don’t look into them further

Sense of humour

-          Nothing about rape or paedophilia is funny

Entertain with my life

Make me popular over night

To be famous is so nice

-          Acts as if the allegations just gain him fame. He is the literal embodiment of ‘HaTeRZ MaKE mE FaMOUs’

Reeses pieces butter cup

-          Random and childish sounding

Mess with me

I’ll fuck you up

-          Threatening violence

-          Many victims have said he is a violent person

This is how we party up

-          Saying the way he acts is normal

She licked it like a lolli pop

-          Childish sounding

-          Oral sex fixation

Don’t stop till you hit the spot

-          Demanding

You got me crazy or maybe

Get smashed

-          Linking sex and alcohol

I can’t stop

Till I pop

-          Sounds rapey

-          Only cares if he gets off, doesn’t care about the other person

There’s danger on the spot

-          Dahvie is the danger

Got money in my hands

Mad dough! Cash flow

Got the diamonds that glow

We be popin’ Champaign

Like we won the damn game

-          Obsession with being rich and flaunting that

-          He hasn’t got anything now. He’s poor and lives with his parents

Mosh and Roll!

When I step in the club

Everybody shows me love

-          No they don’t

-          And now some places, not just clubs, won’t let him in

I’m in the business of terror

-          Being honest there

More metal than Slayer

-          HA! HA! HA!

-          THE FUCK!?!?!?!?

I got money and hoes

-          Demeaning

In different area codes

-          Has victimised women in many states and even different countries

Cause haters make me famous

-          This stupid narrative again

But love will make you shameless

-          Dahvie doesn’t understand love and he also should feel shame

I’ll slash, gash this party bash

-          Violent

Gotta get that money cash

-          By scamming?

Up and down with no breaks

We as in, I’ll make you shake

-          Gross and overly sexual

We’re gonna burn this town

To the ground

-          Violent

I’m not a trend sweater

I’m a trend setter

-          This is an actual line that is spoken

Girl you better pop an umbrella cause

You’re making me wet drip, drip

I gotta get that lick

-          Oral sex fixation

For the centre of the tootsie pop

-          Childish sounding

You know I can’t stop

-          Sounds rapey

Shank you with my bling brass

-          Violent

Stacking up on my money cash

-          Obsession about money

 Do You Want To Be A Superstar?

Ummm… Mic check…

One… Two… Um… Fucking twelve

-          Again this is an actual line that is spoken

My fashion is so siq

-          He dresses the way he does so he looks younger

My fashion will make you lick

-          Oral sex fixation

Watch those panties fucking drip

-          Gross and overly sexual

Scene hair weave

-          Scene hair wig you mean

Scene attitude so fucking mean

-          Acts like being mean is okay and normal because of being part of a certain ‘culture’

Get on the floor

Get on the whore

-          Demanding and demeaning

Pull down your pants and drop your drows

-          Demanding

(Like Oh My God Dahvie you’re so obscene)

-          Acts like everything he does is just because he’s ‘obscene’ which is like him saying that how he treats women while he forces himself on them is BDSM

Bitch I’m the motherfucking war machine

-          Violent

Don’t give a fuck just bust your grill

-          Doesn’t care about being violent

Throw them hoes

-          Demeaning and dismissive

Throw these motherfuckers who get too close

-          Violent

Porn star bash

Porn star splash

-          Porn obsession

My porn star cash

-          Dahvie isn’t a porn star

Pretty damn stoned

-          Linking drugs and sex

Pretty fucked up? Yeah I know

-          Acts like everything he does is a big deal

Do you wanna be a super star?

Get fucked up and go real far?

-          Acts like if you’re famous you are going to get ‘fucked up’

Or do you want to be a porn star?

Fuck for money and go real far

-          Demeaning sex work

Wet from dreams

Wet from screams

Wet from sex and dripping with cream

-          Overly sexual

HOT HOT SEX!

HOT HOT BREASTS!

HOT WHITE TIGHT SHIRTS

BUSTING OUT YOU’RE CHEST

Double D titties

Double D pretties

-          Obsession with breasts

-          Objectifying women

Girl got them thighs

You’re pretty damn fine

-          Objectifying

I don’t give a fuck what I say

I don’t give a fuck I do it everyday

-          He literally doesn’t care as long as he gets away with what he does

Yes I’m different

Yet I’m unique

-          ‘Uwu I’m not like other predators’

Mess with me

I’ll grind you like meat

-          Threatening violence

Let’s get wasted, super fucked

Go head girl shake that butt

-          Childish sounding

-          Linking sex with alcohol

(Let’s get wasted)

Make me fucking bust a nut

-          Demanding

 Wet Dream War Machine

Operation get crunk, I'm in love with your trunk

-          Combines sex, alcohol and ‘love’

Get me fucking love drunk, baby girl I want

Drugged up like party monster, sexed up so grab the condoms

-          Links drugs and sex

Boom, Boom, Boom

In my hotel room

-          Raped underage girls in his hotel rooms while touring or would book a hotel room to take underage girls to

I'm the teenage bloody dream

-          ‘Bloody’ is he trying to be British or violent

-          He isn’t a teen and also shouldn’t be encouraging teens to want to be with him

Everybody fuck me

-          No

Getcha drink on

Take your clothes off

Let’s get down and dirty

-          Normalising drunk sex

-          Demeaning

 Mad Rad Hair

-          You mean wig

I'm fenny not a faggot!

-          Slur

With extensions so thick

-          It’s a wig not just extensions

You can suck my dick

-          Oral sex fixation

So get in my chair

Let me pimp your hair

-          Used cutting hair as a way to spend time with underage girls. Arrived at a time when the parents would have to go to work so he could be alone with the underage girl

-          He couldn’t cut hair. He called himself Dahvie The Elite Hair God on MySpace but he had not talent. I would think it’s the same with makeup. During this time his makeup wasn’t very heavy. It was only when Jayy joined the band and the band was more successful that his makeup got more extreme since he could afford a makeup artist, and Jayy actually can do makeup.

Let’s get wasted super fucked

-          Alcohol reference

My hair is better than yours

-          IT’S A WIG!

So just fuck me on the dance floor

-          Demanding

-          Exhibitionist

Everybody gettin' tense

Feeling up my body

-          Overly sexual

I love this filthy

Life to get CRUNK ALL NIGHT!

-          Linking alcohol and sex

My hair’s looking so tight

-          WIG!

In case you didn't know

I'm a really big deal

-          He wasn’t overly famous outside of MySpace at this point

So shut the fuck up

-          Demanding and disrespectful

And take your clothes off

-          Using fame to get people to have sex with him

Come' a MySpace whore

-          Demeaning

-          Telling his fans the kind of person he’s interested in

-          Being scene was a way for him to look younger and prey on young girls

Change your name to

XXGORE

-          He gave some of his victims their MySpace name

[dingoat]

HEY. I wanna know more about this alternative universe plot! Can you summarize what it is, what's going on it, and specifically who these ~tortured love birds~ are?? Only if that's fun for you. I'm curious!!

HEY MY DAWG

So the whole thing is really the brainchild of @askshivanulegacy who as far as I can tell has a PhD in Angst Narratives majoring in Sci Fi and Magic, and had concocted an alternate Star Wars universe where the Empire’s Ministry of Intelligence (aka the bad guy spy club) developed a procedure that effectively turns their top agents into werebeasts, all the better to serve the Empire and go about their evil spying business. In this universe, their main OC - one Cipher Agent Omega Blakk - is thus a werefox, specialising in stealth operations, loyal to his cause to a painful degree.

NOW, we’d chatted OOC back and forth for a while because hey, I guess at some point it became obvious that I like werewolves and star wars too (who knew, weird right?), and through a bit of silly back-and-forth we let our main characters get to know one another in the ‘canon’ universe. Eventually I sent a single fateful writing prompt one fine October day, from which a little drabble was born. And we loved it, and decided to keep going with it, and it… kept going, and going, and backstory kept getting filled in and possible futures kept getting screamed about, and now we’re in so deep and loving every minute of it hahaha.

So that’s where it came from OOC! Narrative wise, holy heck, I could go on forever, but I’ll try to be brief for everyone’s sake. Actually I’m gonna stick the rest behind a READ MORE because I get the feeling my attempt at brief isn’t going to be very brief at all!

So Blakk is a loyal Imperial werefox spy, and my girl Ahuska is a werewolf. SHE was afflicted with her condition some time earlier, being stolen away as part of a secret Imperial military project that basically turned civilians into sleeper soldiers/Jedi killers. They have their memory messed with so that they don’t remember a thing about their time as animals, and the full moon is their trigger. So every now and again she’d be ‘placed somewhere by work’, not realising that at night she’d go off on a murderous rampage after being strategically positioned to take down a target, and then return to life as usual none the wiser. But the project messed up baaad and was shut down, with all subjects terminated; except Ahuska, who was rescued by ex-Agent Nines (one of @humanrevolt‘s characters, written by me in this au with blessings!) in the nick of time. She lived and traveled with Nines, who revealed her condition to her but not all the details; Ahuska felt obligated to stay with her, with the promise that Nines would help resolve her memory issues and let her gain control, meanwhile Nines had the security of a monster wolf who could help her with her own agenda. (At one point Ahuska met one of Nines’ old comrades and started crushing hard, oh no.)

Fast forward to the drabble written above that started this whole mess; one night, transformed, the werewolf meets the werefox. Blakk has had a malfunction with his cybernetic implant that controls his shapeshifts and winds up stuck as a fox with an injured leg; Ahuska protects him as a wolf and then wakes the next morning as a Bothan. He knows exactly what she is, she thinks she has a cute wounded fox to tend to. Things are adorable and awkward and innocent, then bit by bit things are revealed and shared and miscommunicated. Blakk accidentally leads Imperial soldiers to Ahuska and her crew; there’s a showdown after which he’s re-captured, now known to them as an Imperial Agent, and she feels horribly betrayed and confused. Nines tries to torture him for information and at first Ahuska is ordered to help but then her werewolf half takes over (knowing instinctively that what they’re doing is wrong), and she turns on her crew. She’s eventually subdued (gassed!), Nines tortures Blakk further (with Ahuska shut away this time) and he manages to antagonise her enough that she slips up, he makes a run for it, and takes Ahuska hostage into an escape pod to make his getaway.

THEN THERE’S A LOT MORE ANGST and mistrust and hating one another while they stumble through a swamp with one set of clothes between them. But every time one storms off, the other eventually comes to find them, and bit by bit they work through their differences and misgivings and realise neither ever actually wanted to hurt the other. Shaky trust starts to build again, but Blakk’s injured arm (between being caught in a trap, having shapeshifting malfunctions, and being flat out tortured) develops a hideous infection and he becomes deathly ill. Still miles from any settlement, Ahuska finds herself hopelessly worried and desperate to help him and without having a clue what she’s doing, manages to connect to him and heal him through the Force, and without realising it they develop a Force-bond. By the time they make their way out of the swamp, they trust one another, and matter to one another, and their eventual parting to resume their totally incompatible lives is heartbreaking.

When Nines wants to continue her persuit of the fox-Agent who is clearly her new nemesis, but Ahuska tries to stop her and insist that he won’t hurt them, Nines is livid and kinda loses it, thinking she’s being controlled somehow. Ahuska realises she can’t stay with Nines any more if she wants to maintain any sort of personal freedom, and makes her escape.

Blakk, meanwhile, has been reassigned to a new handler, (as his previous Watcher had been killed in the original altercation courtesy of the Dice Gods). I had the dubious honour of creating the New Watcher who rapidly evolved from a generic Imperial Bad Guy into a truly terrible, absolutely nasty piece of work, a manipulative control freak with depraved appetites and horribly unconventional training methods.

At this point, Ahuska and Blakk can only see one another when they dream, through their Force Bond, and those sequences are beautiful and magical and full of love (which they’ve finally admitted to one another) and hope (mostly, maybe some nightmares and seeping in of waking-world problems), where they’re exploring their feelings and one another and even what it means to trust and know their animal selves. Problem is, while Ahuska, very in tune with the Force (if unknowing), can remember everything that happens in their dreams, using them as fuel to push on through a world that is suddenly otherwise huge and lonely and dangerous, Blakk’s Force connection is broken and stunted and he doesn’t remember a thing once he wakes. He’s developing a relationship that he spends more than half his life unaware of, and in his waking life he’s being slowly but surely molded into Watcher Five’s perfect, obedient, unquestioningly loyal little fox-Agent-pet.

SO AS YOU CAN IMAGINE there is an AWFUL LOT of terrible times and amazing times in store, and honestly all that up there doesn’t even come close to touching on everything that’s been going on and fleshing out the world around them. I did my best to just whittle it down to enough basics to given an idea of just what exactly our poor characters have been through, and I hope it’s not too rambling ahaha. I’m sure it’s more than you needed to know but I will ALWAYS WELCOME MORE QUESTIONS as I’m sure will @askshivanulegacy (yo feel free to elaborate on any points here, I mean I haven’t even given Thirteen a look in 8) ) so ahhhhh yes. Ahh. I’m also NOT GONNA PROOF READ THIS so sorry if it’s awkward as hell to read I’M TIRED XD XD

It is specatcular fun and I’m so glad we decided to just run with it!