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captainsupernoodle · 4 months

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Thinking about Midnight again

its really good!

Sometimes a short story is "hey how do people react to Fear in this specific instance" and when it's done right it's a very visceral experience that sticks in the mind no matter the genre

But it's also a lovely microcosm of Ten, the best and the worst of him (on an average day, as opposed to when hes being attacked by his specific traumas)

Ten is a big old nerd and a control freak (I think their relationship with Donna is notable in that they try to share with her a little more and she puts up a huge fight when she wants to instead of letting them roll over her) so his reaction to the unknown is to put himself in charge because he knows stuff and people should listen to him!!

Like. Right off the bat he goes "everybody being on their phones is Boring, wouldn't it be better if we all talked to each other?" and immediately imposes his desire on everyone else without asking or trying anything else. Control freak.

So the moment they say "I don't know" that absolute control is shattered, and they don't adjust. As the situation devolves he keeps trying to appeal to logic and better nature, pushing and pushing until he lays down an ultimatum (do you really think you can commit murder?) based on incorrect assumptions about people's fear reactions. Drawing a line in the sand puts them on the other side of it instead of shocking people out of fear into thinking or threatening them into compliance.

Ten has been pretty "my way or I kill you/depose you/otherwise take away your ability to oppose me" since the very first episode so it all tracks

on the other hand he's trying SO HARD to be compassionate and to help all of them and to keep everyone safe! That's all they want! They genuinely do know more than the people around them and they're right on almost every count in this episode. Things might have not worked out depending on the critter's intentions but the chance of everything being okay would have been much higher if people Calmed Down and didn't try to hurt something they were scared of. Whether or not the Doctor is justified in the actions he takes, it's gotta be maddening to see people make the same mistakes over and over again and people dying and getting hurt about it when you're RIGHT THERE and you can FIX EVERYTHING if they just LISTENED

Contrast with Donna's communication techniques! She fights with the Doctor, is generally sarcastic and opinionated, but doesn't walk all over people in her daily life. When a situation needs someone to be in charge, though, she takes it with a level of calmness and confidence ("I'll take a salute" in poison sky, organizing the military and evacuation in Death and the Queen). One-on-one, she finds common ground with people and pays attention to their lives and troubles (meeting Martha, "temps united" in technophobia), and with vulnerable people she softens her voice and body language and gives them space to speak (the ood, kinda, um - almost every woman she meets lol but esp the assistant in silence in the library).

Yeah I think midnight would have played out very differently if Donna was there haha. The doctor can be an expert, and Donna can both comfort people and rein in the doctor when they're being overbearing.

Donna pays more attention to social cues (and she is a human! The doctor is not!! They're doing pretty good for being a completey different species!) and draws the doctor's attention to little but important things they often miss while looking at the big picture

the doctor has always been a rogue figure and almost always In Charge or up high on the relevant social ladder, while Donna defines herself as "just a temp" - nobody important, by definition someone who supports the social ladder instead of ever getting the chance to climb out and who's always moving from place to place. I think that shows in how she can deal with not being in charge while ten Struggles with it

Anyway midnight is good and Donna makes a very skilled doctor-human ambassador and friend

#Doctor who #Noodle speaks #Noodle watches doctor who #Dw: midnight #U know I could see 9 thru 11 being showing off what happens when you make one terrible and far reaching decision and Cannot let go of being #In Charge after that. 12 with Bill still has me chewing on that shift to “give me an order”

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dutyworn · 1 year

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Wren full playthrough part 1.

General disclaimer: This is not meant to be a 1:1 to my roleplay portrayal, even if it can be used as a reference for choices and just as a general "people can watch this if they are interested/wanna know Wren/the game more" fun thing. In gameplay, I tend to exhaust dialogue options; for a lot of asking questions, Wren actually would already be aware of the answers so sometimes it's more about wanting to show the dialogue (for people not familiar with the game) and gaining XP, other times (mostly when conversing with people about their personal experiences) she asks about things she is aware of because she wants the story from the person themselves, and to show care. Also, gaming dynamics obviously have their limits. I record everything. I edit out reduntant getting lost on the map (happens a lot more you'd expect), repeat dialogue, and/or speed through leveling up, modding equipment, etc. If I am reading something while playing, I keep the text in my edits for long enough for me to be able to read (I'm a slow reader). Stuff less relevant to the story, such as planet descriptions, I keep in the video but only very briefly so that the information is there and readable if the video is paused. I mainly record for my own reference/screencapping etc. purposes. That's why there also are no subtitles, though I will record clips I specifically want to share with subtitles on. You may use my videos freely for anything you wish, such as screencapping your muse if you play someone from the games etc. I play with a galore of mods! Here's my list of mods I currently use in this playthrough for the first game. I always include timestamps if you want to watch, but want to skip some parts.

OKK LOL, I will normally place all that under a readmore for future uploads but I needed to word it.

General notes for this video: I keep opening the journal (mission/quest menu) every time I see it update to read/let viewers read. I stopped doing this at some point in the future because I feel it breaks immersion and is reduntant. I also am not speeding through squad screen and equipment stuff here, yet - I started editing those to be mostly 8x speed later on or even omitting some equipment micromanaging altogether (I got really annoyed at myself when editing the Rogue VI mission for my jumping to micromanage every fucking equipment but that's still several videos away). If you open the video on Youtube it has clickable timestamps.

Highlights and timestamps for this video:

00:00 Character creation menu. No actual character creation included, I basically copy and paste a code I create off-screen.

01:56 Prologue. See vanilla version of Wren! Because this was recorded before the community patch mod updated to where you can now edit a save from before the start of the prologue, wow. I had no way of going to save editor and do the correct headmorph until the first save point. Will likely re-shoot this scene later with proper headmorph and subtitles. But enjoy vanilla Wren :D

06:04 Vanilla Wren magically transforms into modded Wren with my head morph edits.

06:15 Chat with Pressly.

08:52 Chat with Chakwas and Jenkins.

12:35 First look at squad screen.

13:05 Chat with Nihlus and Anderson.

18:32 Transmission from Eden Prime.

20:12 Arriving on Eden Prime.

21:15 Squad screen adventures, talent points for Kaidan and, yes, Jenkins lol.

21:55 Roaming around Eden Prime. Jenkins death, etc.

27:22 Recruiting Ashley. Havu's gameplay reflects the least professional combat skills ever. Idek if it was there but both drawing out the Big GunsTM when all the geth are already beaten and motherfucking why is it so hard in the first game to get Shep to take cover?! XD

31:13 Talent points for Ash, equipment upgrades. Editing Havu at gameplay Havu: WHY ARE YOU MODDING ASHLEY'S SHOTGUN AND NOT HER ASSAULT RIFLE?????

33:25 Back to gameplay.

35:10 Leveling up Wren, Kaidan and Ash.

36:18 The dig site.

38:06 The camp. Annoying husks being annoyingly slow to kill, chat with the people in the shed, etc.

#; havu gaming #did not mean for this to be so LONG POST IS LONG #these are unlisted at least for now so idek if i can link a youtube playlist but #i will also make a master post etc.#also hmmm i will put the masterpost under about/codex tags but not all the updates i think?#mute ; havu gaming if you don't want to see these or any of my gameplay clips/rambles/shitposts in general

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hragon · 5 years

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Alright, you've peaked my interest. What's the story behind the young Rudolph van Richten you keep drawing? I'm DM'ing Curse of Strahd (and hopefully other Ravenloft stuff) in the future, so I want to know all I can about how I can improve on the module

Wow haha there’s a lot to unpack there. If you search for Rudolph van Richten you can find some previous posts that go into more detail, but so much has happened and so much continues to happen that I really…can’t explain it at this point haha. So, I’m trying to draw the full story out in comics.

Basically, young van Richten came about for three reasons: my rogue boy Zero made a terrible decision that got the older Rudolph van Richten killed shortly after he became my favorite character, my DM somehow turned it around with a plot twist that has become one of the most epic and interesting parts of the game, and I have no self control. After van Richten died thanks to Zero and a series of unfortunate dice rolls, my DM saw an opportunity to tie him back into the story as Zero’s father - making Zero the missing son of van Richten, rather than Erasmus. I loved this twist and wanted to draw the parents as a young couple, which meant I had to come up with a design for a young van Richten, and that’s how that first came about.

In our game (note that we started off with Curse of Strahd but we quickly went very far off module lol, and have been playing a homebrew game with CoS elements for over a year now): Zero’s mother was a Vistani woman who fled her caravan in Barovia and ended up in Rivalis, where she fell in love with a medical doctor named Rudolph van Richten. The two married and had a son, but, the Vistani came for them and kidnapped van Richten’s wife and son back to Barovia. He went after them, becoming a famous vampire hunter in the process, but was told some misinformation that resulted in the death of his wife at his hands (much in the way Zero’s actions based on misinformation from the same person resulted in the death of van Richten himself). Van Richten blamed Strahd for his wife’s death, though I don’t know why yet. After his death and the reveal that he was Zero’s father, van Richten has continued to be an important figure (which was a relief to me as a player, because I’d been afraid this super cool character would lose relevance to the plot after death). Now we might have some Haus Richten stuff to deal with too, but that remains to be seen.

Zero also has two important items van Richten carried, that my DM has worked into the story with greater significance than an average item. The first item is van Richten’s cane sword - my DM came up with a story behind how Zero’s parents met and tied the cane into it, and he also gave it special properties and the soul of a dwarf bound to it (yes, it talks lol). The other item is van Richten’s journal - which my DM has come up with ideas for in our story, and has written pages for himself. Zero has only been able to read two pages of it, the rest is locked until the “right time” for it to open so I don’t know what’s inside either, just that it’s going to be an important item. Which is hilarious, because upon meeting the older van Richten the legendary vampire hunter Zero’s comment was, “He’s got a sword and a book, how good can he be.” Now they’re his most important items, super cool twist my DM did there.

Then the young van Richten actually joined us for an arc, he was from another timeline between his family being kidnapped and Zero’s mom being killed, so she was still alive. He helped us fight Fate and it was pretty epic. (That’s very specific to our game though, and very far off the CoS module xD )

I think the original plan was for Zero to be an Ezmerelda-ish sort of character, whose parents were responsible for kidnapping van Richten’s son and then van Richten took vengeance on them. But I love how things turned out lol.

I’d suggest looking through the module and coming up with ideas based on “what if” questions for plot ideas you think might be interesting. “What if Rudolph van Richten’s son was actually alive?” “What if one of the player characters was a Vistana from the caravan van Richten took revenge upon?” A combination of those two ended up happening for us. My DM has taken things from the module and 2e Ravenloft, but he’s also come up with a ton of stuff on van Richten for our particular game. Come up with some ideas you can have at the ready, and if you see an opening in your game you can add it in and build on it, it could add layers of depth to the story. What works and what doesn’t depends on you, the players, and a bunch of circumstances you might not be able to predict haha! So come up with some ideas you like and if one ends up fitting in go buckwild with it. Good luck!!

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sophygurl · 7 years

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Rebel Scum: Finding Hope in Resistance - WisCon 41 panel write-up

These tend to be long and only of interest to specific segments of folk so click the clicky to read.

Disclaimers:

I hand write these notes and am prone to missing things, skipping things, writing things down wrong, misreading my own handwriting, and making other mistakes. So this is by no means a full transcript.

Corrections, additions, and clarifications are most welcome. I’ve done my best to get people’s pronouns and other identifiers correct, but please do let me know if I’ve messed any up. Corrections and such can be made publicly or privately on any of the sites I’m sharing these write-ups on(tumblr and dreamwidth for full writings, facebook and twitter for links), and I will correct ASAP.

My policy is to identify panelists by the names written in the programming book since that’s what they’ve chosen to be publicly known as. If you’re one of the panelists and would prefer something else - let me know and I’ll change it right away.

For audience comments, I will only say general “audience member” kind of identifier unless the individual requests to be named.

Any personal notes or comments I make will be added in like this [I disagree because blah] - showing this was not part of the panel vs. something like “and then I spoke up and said blah” to show I actually added to the panel at the time.

Rebel Scum: Finding Hope in Resistance

Moderator: Anika Dane. Panelists: Becky Allen, Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, William Paimon

#RebelScumResist - for the livetweets and other thoughts on the panel

Anika introduced herself and talks about how she fell in love with Vader early on and said that Star Wars saved her sanity. She has the tumblr politicalpadme.

Sandra introduced herself and talked about doing Star Wars costuming for charity and said she is “a part time Jawa”. She shows off her Leia T-shirt which reads “A woman’s place is in the resistance”.

Becky introduced herself as a YA author who is heavily influenced by Star Wars. Rey is her favorite, but she aspires to be Leia.

William introduced himself as a psychologist. Han is his favorite rebel - not as a good person but as a piece of shit who stumbles into being a better person.

Anika said starting with the middle stories - the first 3 - as being most about rebellion. How do these movies inspire you as ways to rebel?

Becky talked about Rogue One - specifically Bodhi Rook and how he became a rebel from having been a mercenary for the other side. Also Finn from The Force Awakens.

Sandra talked about the animated Star Wars Rebels series - small groups of rebels who became part of the larger movement.

William also noted Rogue One - Baze and Chirrut specifically. There were so many relevant characters in RO who were mostly side or background characters. Their moments of sacrifice in RO were intense and beautiful.

Anika asked about cautionary tales, for example - a character who goes too much to one extreme. (At this point, someone in audience’s phone goes off and it’s the Star Wars theme lol)

Becky talked about RO and how it took place in a larger world that we didn’t get to see much of. We’re not sure, as the audience, what the extremists did that the other rebels didn’t like so much. Another example is in Luke’s training - finding out he could go dark and deciding not to, even though doing so could help him win and save more people.

William said RO shows the toll resistance can take - the costs and damage. Again, with Luke, he killed millions of people on the Death Star. “There’s no way there’s not a day care center there.” [IDK about that but ok...]

Sandra brought up an earlier panel at the con - These Are Not the Stories We’re Looking For. In RO, there were all these discussions within the rebellion about what actions to take.

Anika mentioned the line in RO that is said twice - “Rebellions are built on hope.” This idea was passed from one character to another and then finally to all of them. Jyn and Cassian are both fairly jaded - so why is hope such a big part of their rebellion.

Sandra answered that if there is no hope of change - what is the point of resisting at all?

Becky talked about the election in November being followed by RO in December. It was so resonant because she had been feeling so scared and hopeless. The characters in RO don’t know that their sacrifices went anywhere. It helped with the idea that she can do things and not know the affect she’s having - but those things can be doing something; the idea that if we know we’re all together in this - we have a hope of winning.

William talked about the characters in RO being very different people with different values and not always liking one another - but they were held together with their hope and with their need to fight.

Sandra emphasized that the final word in the film was the word “hope.”

Anika brought up how hope is passed on with the Death Star plans and passed on through Leia. How is hope passed on through the generations? No major character in the series is raised by their birth parents, so how is hope passed on through family, friends, and loved ones?

Sandra answered that the mentor-trainee relationship is one big way it’s passed on. Also mentioned how C-3PO and R2-D2 are in all the films - how do they pass it on?

Becky said that in TFA, the new generation doesn’t have any clear living memory of what had happened before. Is Luke real, is the force real, etc.? The search for Luke is the search for hope.

Anika brought up Bail Organa who raised Leia. While there is a lot of Vader in Leia, we can see how Bail raised her to be a shinning hope for the entire universe.

Becky talked about the different ways those familial relationships affected things. Jyn was raised by extremists and ends up pretty jaded. Poe is raised in victory and has a very positive and plucky attitude.

Anika mentioned the end of Empire, the celebrations, and the statue of Palpatine being taken down. It’s unrealistic - we’re still fighting about confederacy statues here!

Becky talked about how the stories told affect us. Luke was raised believing his father was an important rebel - the clash of discovering the truth and how that affected his decisions going forward.

Sandra brought up the problems of people being so surprised about what’s happening in these stories. Why is there so much disagreement about it? Well, some of them (Rey and Luke for example) were raised on backwater planets. The questions about if the resistance is even needed are because messages aren’t being spread far and wide.

William compares this to us today - people voting against obamacare but loved their ACA. An audience member asks if the SW universe has no internet. William suggests that perhaps literacy is not even widespread in this universe. People don’t know their own history - they only have oral storytelling. A member of the audience says that disinformation can be very hard to fight psychologically.

Becky said she is studying her own family history and it’s difficult to go back further than a generation or two.

Anika brought up the prequels. Padme’s line about this war represents a failure to listen. This represents the entire series, really. No one is communicating with one another or listening much when they do - even when on the same side. Only one talking to everyone ... is Palpatine. How do we combat this? There doesn’t seem to be an answer in Star Wars.

Sandra mentions C-3PO and R2 - they’re in it from the beginning and have a lot of knowledge. R2 is the smartest but very few can understand him. C-3PO is a translator but no one wants to listen to him!

Becky emphasizes that people with privilege have to listen and lift up the voices of more marginalized people. We have to get on the same page, but that page has got to include all of these other things even if - especially if - those things don’t affect me personally.

William talked about how people become focused on their own lives and don’t look at what’s happening on a broader scale.

An audience member brought up that the basis of SW is anglo-centric individualist hero’s journey. RO shifts that a bit into being about a community of heroes.

William adds that even in RO the extremist is a black man.

Anika asks how do we form our own rebel alliance and use SW to bring a message of hope?

Sandra said it’s about ordinary people coming together and how that can draw power [okay there was a whole lot of stuff here about the laws of power that I just blocked out because I can’t with that].

Becky talked about the themes of hope and also of warnings in the movies - if we don’t do the work (beyond just blowing up the Death Star), the Empire will come back. Fandom is community/communities - we need more communication and active listening among these communities. Fandom can give a foundation for community action.

William added that we need to build access - the world kids live in today, they have a lot of access to information and conversations that took us older folks a lot longer to get to.

Becky stated that adults who interact with kids need to help them think critically about what they’re reading and talking about online. Help them apply stuff like conversations about privilege to their real lives.

An audience member talked about a 20-something nephew who is both a SW fan and a tea partier. They think of themselves as the rebels.

Anika brought up an article online - someone saying they grew up wanting to be Luke Skywalker, but joined the army and found themselves part of the Empire instead. We love underdogs and we all like to think of ourselves as the underdog. Using fandom to reach people can be problematic because we all personalize the stories we read and watch.

An audience member added that with The Hunger Games, the right sees themselves as the rural downtrodden folk and the capitol as the liberal elite.

Becky also added that Captain America resonates with all sides politically in this country. She asks “why are we fighting different Empires?”

William talked about the narrative appetite for violent rebellion. It’s strong with the right with narratives about confederacy, for example.

Becky said that we can all see ourselves as Luke, but certain segments freaked out about Rey, Finn, and all of Rogue One’s cast. It felt like the franchise was being taken away from them, when really it was being given to more people.

Sandra stated that everyone is the hero of their own story [not always true ime, but yea].

An audience member brought up Galen as a character working within the system. This idea of collaboration vs. rebellion.

William said that Galen made him really uncomfortable, and compared it to stories of people working within the Nazi’s in order to help Jewish people escape.

Becky stated that very few people are all good or all bad. We all do what we can, but at the same time - maybe don’t build the Death Star?

Sandra said that Galen knew they could make it without him, so he felt his only option was to build it but put in the flaw.

Anika brought up how Jyn was raised by Galen and Saw - extremes on either side of the rebellion with different ideas of how to fight. How does that affect her?

After a whole discussion about media, the spread of info, storytelling vs. entertainment in the SW universe (sorry did not catch it all down in my notes), Anika stated that Trump is not Palpatine. Trump is Jabba the Hutt.

An audience member brought up Uncle Owen as showing how invested you can be in the status quo - even if that status quo is terrible. Becky added that Owen told Luke - your dad was a rebel fighter and he died, so don’t do that. But Luke was like - omg my dad was a hero and died for his cause, I wanna be just like him! (somewhere in there she also stated “if you don’t like the Ewoks, you can fight me!” lol)

William said Owen was right - Luke got into the fight and everyone died. This idea of survival vs. resistance.

Becky talked about how Owen was all about surviving another day while ignoring the terrible things happening. We have to have hope that we can fight this. But the Empire was going to come for Luke anyway...

Anika mentioned Jyn’s line about being able to ignore the Imperial flag as long as you don’t look up...

Anika then asked the panelists what they’re doing for the resistance.

Sandra talked about joining groups to fight gerrymandering and calling representatives on issues.

Becky said she’s become more aware of politics on the local level. There was recently a specific election in just her district that she might not have known about a year ago. She stressed the importance of knowing all of your reps. She also continues to write about these themes in her own writing.

William talked about using his job working with kids to support where they’re coming from. An example was adjusting the bathroom policy in school system. Him coming in as a white male doctor and using that power to get the issue taken more seriously has helped.

Becky concluded - “I fight straight white men more now. My discomfort is worth getting through to people.”

#rebelscumresist #wiscon #wiscon 41 #wiscon41 #wc41 #rebel scum resist #star wars #hope #resistance

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