#what a dreadful visual

[spaciebabie]

you know how much easier my life would be if people just told you exactly what they wanted from a friendship out of the gate. you know how easy it would be if direct communication wasn't painted as a social failing.

[longmaxsilvarg]

something about the main menu for life is strange genuinely makes me wanna collapse and sob

[devilsskettle]

Lake Mungo / Skinamarink 

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Omg idk if you talk Spanish or if it’s just XXC, but with that little and wonderful doodle you gave me the amazing headcanon of XXC being bilingual and just randomly speaking Spanish out of nowhere and nobody understanding him

[TL: XXC says "don't do coke in the bathroom"]

Shout out to the Spanish speaking MXTX fans. I don't think this is remotely what you wanted. (bonus below cut, TW: Drugs)

[kirbyddd]

between Dread continuing from a game on GBA (and really every game prior to that too) and Prime 4 continuing from 2 games on GameCube and Original DS, Metroid has the longest narrative endurance of any multi-creator series I've ever seen. Threads left in stasis decades ago when the series was shelved picked right back up once development resumes—an entire generation of developers later—like nothing ever happened

[zeebreezin]

The more I’m thinking about it the more I want the Black Rook to have an ominous ass mask on the Chessboard. Let Shaw have some gender while on the clock.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[cure-stars]

you can't taste the bitter, the sweet, or anything at all?

i hope happiness comes to that kind of you. 🪽

[legendoffreakshit]

They're boyfriends, your honor

[ayyponine]

not to be a milennial but harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban really is that bitch....

[shouts-into-the-void]

Wake up guys, Superhorrorbro Dread Weight playthrough just dropped!

[waywardsalt]

yeah totk probably just fucking. burnt me out on new zelda stuff

[soysaucevictim]

Yeah... just needed to make vent art.

[jackals-ships]

also starts running around in a circle I love art where Solas sees his darling again and falls to his knees bc it's about the Vibes it's about The Energy but

listen. ik jackals the ones falling. 10 years ! of chasing his ass! they're so tired. all of the energy and anger drains out of them and they just. Down The Fuck They Go

[shanedoesdoodles]

Its times like these that I wish I could get a hug

or a therapist

[emilys-axford]

[id: a digital drawing of harley and lancaster from find us alive. they are lying in bed and lancaster is spooning harley with his chin on his shoulder. harley is a black man with dreads and body code tattoos on his upper chest. lancaster is paler with short hair and glasses.]

"Orion?"

"Mm."

"If we get out..."

"I won't marry you."

"Oh c'mon, I'd make a good husband."