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theveryworstthing · 3 years

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So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class. I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace. I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway. This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

#long post #the addams family #Character Design #au #design challenge #i am incapable of doing a design challenge like a normal person #oh god i forgot the cut lol

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m6bjo4fu0 · 2 years

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Safety

!SPOILERS FROM TOMMYINNIT’S 11/28/2021 STREAM!

C!Tommyinnit x (platonic) gn!reader

Warnings: SPOILERS!!, slight change of lore, swearing, sort of angst, cliffhanger ending

❀ Masterlist ❀

“Y/n we can’t trust anyone! Dream is hunting me down! Plus, he might kill YOU too! You know I can’t let that happen! We need to farm netherite armor, build walls, oh and protect Shroud-“

“Tommy, look at me!”

He stopped, turning towards you, shaking.

“Tommy, I want you to know that things aren’t necessarily the best right now, it’s been a lot. Yes, I have never went through any canon deaths before. Yes, I have not faced Dream. Yes, I did not lose a country. However, I need you to know that I am here and I always will be.”

“Y/n…I just don’t want you to go through them too. As your friend, I shouldn’t be putting you in danger because of my own problems.”

His eyes looked deep into yours, pupils afraid of what could happen to you because of him. He has lost too much and cannot afford to lose you too.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be safe. Now, you can build your wall while I go get some Netherite to get you geared up, alright?”

Tommy nodded, giving you a wave before leaving to build his “obby” wall. You turned to go back to your base to get the enchantments and materials for your armor and weapons.

You arrived at your base, suddenly getting an oddly uncomfortable feeling. You shrugged it off, continue going to your double chests. As you looked through your items, you heard footsteps behind you and turned towards the source.

“Tommy, I thought you were gonna go build your wall-“

You gasped when you saw who was in front of you.

“Well hello, my good friend Y/n.”

You know what he did to everyone and you’re not taking his crap.

“Cut it off, Dream.”

“Aww is it because Tommy told you his little story?”

He walked towards you slowly, making you shiver.

“Yes and you’re a prisoner, Dream. You’re supposed to be in prison!”

“I can’t believe he fooled you too. Tommy is insane! He convinced Sam to lock me up and kept spreading rumors about me. Hell, remember when he took two of my lives? He’s evil! Don’t trust a liar like him!”

“You deserved it! All you do is cause tragedy in this world! Just let people do what they love in peace! You always ruin things for everyone!”

“Have you forgotten what I can do?”

Then you realized.

“Oh, Y/n, I can make your life miserable. Don’t you still have all your canon lives? I can make it continuously shift from 0 to 1 and vice versa. Aren’t you just stoked to live in an eternal pain?”

You backed away, slightly tripping until you hit your back wall.

“Now let’s start with your first life. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that it’s slow and painful and of course, I’ll let Tommy know-“

“GET THE FUCK OFF THEM YOU DIPSHIT!”

Tommy bursted through the entrance with Phil and Bad behind him.

“Dream, it’s over! You’re coming back to prison with me!”

Bad yelled, shield up.

“Aww Y/n, they’re all here to witness your first death! How lovely!”

However, you weren’t there when he turned around. Instead, you were behind Phil, putting on your armor.

“Come over here you dipshit! We’ll end you! Take off your armor!”

Tommy yelled, fear of Dream long gone.

“Never! Do you want Ghostbur to forever be dead? Or even Ranboo? Or shall I say, Ghostboo?”

Dream provoked, holding up his shield as well.

“Hand me the Axe of Peace.”

“I don’t have it.”

Tommy’s eyes widened.

“Bullshit. I know you have it! You showed me it!”

“I gave it away, Tommy.”

“To whom then! I’ll go fucking hunt them down!”

Dream chuckled.

“To Technoblade.”

Author’s notes: THIS IS MY FIRST MCYT WORK IM SO EXCITED

❀ leave me a tip on kofi - ask box ❀

©m6bjo4fu0 2021 Work belongs to Shyn on Tumblr, please do NOT plagiarize or repost anywhere without permission.

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adarlingmess · 3 years

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Ugnayan

Summary:

Filipino word, noun: connection between persons, groups, countries, etc.

A collection of works detailing a manananggal clan’s relations with the Treses, and their allies.

II: Bad Habits

Summary: After disrupting one of House of Arko’s operations, one of the Kambal meets up with their informant.

Words: 4540

Characters: Basilio, Crispin, Sabina (OC), Alexandra Trese (mentioned only), Ammie (mentioned only), Reyna Manananggal (mentioned only), Dominic Villaceran (mentioned only), Mama Grande (mentioned only)

Relationships: Basilio/Original Female Character

Language: English, with a few Filipino words and phrases sprinkled in.

Rating: 16+

Warnings: Strong language, violence, mentions of abortion, references to human trafficking + sexual trafficking, sexual themes

Author’s Notes:

I am: back on my bullshit again

People were looking for a part 2 so have more Basilio x OC stuff. Spoiler warning for Verdugo: Takutan because this story heavily references its lore and events! The comics are known to be darker in tone, and so is this fic, so heed the warnings above. No Taglish version this time, Darling niyo pagod na 😩

This was supposed to be a simple job.

Get in, rough up House of Arko’s operation while Bossing is paying them a visit in their mansion, get out, and watch as Bossing confronts them about it at the next social gathering they’ll host.

But nothing was ever simple about the aswang, right?

Now there’s a huge one trying to eat Basilio alive.

“Damn it, Basilio. Your recklessness is a bad habit that’ll bite us in the ass later!” his older brother berates him.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever! Now might be the right time to call for backup kuya,” he strains, attempting to pull the magubat’s jaw apart with his superhuman strength. His fingers slip from the drool and it almost bites his hands off.

Crispin’s busy with a horde of mailap, taking turns in taking pot shots from him in the shadows. “We should’ve taken a page from Carlos’ book and brought palm fronds. Who should we call?”

“What about Maliksi?” Basilio suggests.

“What’s one tikbalang to all these aswangs? We need something bigger, maybe a higante to take on that magubat!”

“Gago, a higante can’t get here as fast as a tikbalang!” Basilio snaps.

“Mas gago ka! What about that playmate of ours from when we were kids, y’know, the one that tipped Bossing off about this whole trafficking operation anyway? Think she can fly her way here?” Crispin growls, shooting down a mailap who was foolish enough to ambush the more cautious twin from above.

Ah, yes. Sabina.

Boyish, intimidating, hard to figure out- but still hot enough to flirt with, despite being aswang; that’s how Basilio would describe her. This Sab was a far cry from the Sabina Marie he once knew years ago, the one who used to wear an all-girl Catholic school uniform, shyly shared her snacks and books with him, and kissed him farewell when her mama told her she’ll not be coming with her to meetings with the lakan anymore.

A few days after they caught up with each other, she turned up at the Diabolical not too long ago with a flash drive for Alex’s eyes only. She didn’t even breathe a word to him, much less look at his direction, but Basilio could only surmise that it’s his fault.

“Sabina? Well, manananggals who follow the queen can shoot. It’s- ungh- worth the shot!” Basilio answers back, straining as he gets swatted to the side with one gigantic claw. “You make the call, my hands are full!”

“Give me your phone, I don’t have her Facespace.”

Basilio looks down from several feet, and gives his brother a sheepish smile. “Uhhh, okay, but she’s been seenzoning me.”

From behind his mask, Crispin frowns. “What did you do?”

“She might’ve seen me tagged in Ammie’s story when I was supposed to watch her gig. I got there when her set was ending, and she was pissed.”

Grumbling, Crispin takes his frustrations off on a mabangis charging towards him, a flurry of bullets raining upon its body. “What did Bossing say about getting personal with informants?”

“What? It’s Sab. She’s-”

“An aswang who might have an ulterior motive in helping us. Tangina Basilio, think with your head sometimes! The one between your shoulders!”

Distracted, Basilio failed to stop the jaws of the magubat from closing in on him. As quickly as his reflexes allow, he tosses his brother his phone.

“Just call already! Tell her it’s an emergency.”

The older Kambal flies up and extends his free hand to catch it. Crispin launches Basilio’s Facespace app and begins to search for their informant. He found her under the name Sab Evasco. Crispin pretended not to see the string of messages Basilio left for her, all left on read.

Her phone rings. One time. Two times. Three times. Crispin dials again. Twice. Thrice.

Someone picks up. He puts the call on the loudspeaker.

There’s someone strumming a guitar in the background, accompanied by a drumset’s cymbals. They come to a halt and Crispin hears a frustrated woman’s voice from the other end of the line.

“Ulol gago, fuck you Basilio, you can tell me if you’d rather go on Starbreaks coffee dates with a wind girl than watch me play. I’m a grown woman, I can handle a simple ‘no’. I’m not in the mood for your games! Now fuck off, I don’t want to hear from you. I have a gig to practice for.”

Basilio cringes as he listens to Sabina’s tirade. Crispin guns a charging mabangis down, and his mask dematerializes for a brief moment, just enough for him to mouth to his brother “Gago ka talaga.”

“Sabina, it’s Crispin. We could use some backup here. We’re being swarmed by aswang.”

The sound of a guitar being unceremoniously dropped and the mad shuffle to catch it can be heard from Sabina’s line, followed by quick footsteps. Sabina talks again, calmer this time. “What? Couldn’t Basilio get his own ass on the phone and tell me himself?”

With an exasperated expression, Crispin turns on the camera, and points the phone at Basilio, who’s caught between the magubat’s jaws. “He said you were ignoring him, and he can’t get on the phone right now, as you can see.”

The Kambal heard her fumbling with more equipment, which sounded like a guitar case being zipped up and carried. A brief argument with her bandmates follows, then Sabina talks again.

“I’ll be there. Stay on the line.”

Now they wait.

As much as Crispin wanted to help his little brother, his hands were full with the wave after wave of aswang coming after them. They’re relentless. This is their food supply the Kambal are cutting off, after all.

“Any luck with Sab?” Basilio asks, attempting to shoot the roof of the mabangis’ mouth.

The bullets barely penetrate the thick membrane. He’ll need to transform the Armas Infinitum into a more powerful weapon to lobotomize the gigantic aswang, but seeing how he’s separated from his twin, it’s impossible at the moment.

“She said she’s on the way. She’s still on the phone. Here!”

Crispin throws the phone back to Basilio, who catches it with one hand, while his other arm continues to struggle with the magubat trying to swallow him whole. He tucks it in his breast pocket, and he jumps near the row of the magubat’s front teeth, prying it open with both arms.

Through the aswangs’ growls, Basilio could faintly hear a woman cursing and the jingling of keys from the other side of the line.

“Hey Sab! It’s Basilio. Sorry again about missing your gig.”

“Shut up and hang tight. If I didn’t care for you at all...” Sabina snaps. Basilio could barely make out the words Sabina was saying due to the wind and sound of traffic. “I’m on my way.”

“Ngh, can’t you come any sooner? I heard that aswang intestines are nasty.” Basilio pauses, realizing his mistake. “No offense.”

“I said zip it. Isn’t it enough that I went out of hiding and agreed to be Trese’s informant? Now I have to be your backup too?”

“Working with Bossing has its risks. We made that clear, princess.”

“Don’t call me that.”

There’s more turbulence and wind from Sabina’s line. If Basilio guessed, she’s now flying to the scene. The Kambal’s struggle with the aswang continued until they heard their informant’s voice through the speakers again.

“Big bad war demigods can’t handle a single fucking magubat?” Sabina deadpans, the turbulence and noise no longer accompanying her voice. “Open the fucker’s mouth wide. Make sure he’s facing east.”

“Kuya! She’s in the area, help me pry the jaws open!” the younger Kambal shouts to his older brother, who dodges a leaping mailap and quickly flies up to his aid.

“What’s the plan?” Crispin asks, and Basilio shrugs.

“I don’t know, she just asked me to do it!”

Before Crispin could question Basilio, a shot rings throughout the building, and the magubat collapses. The Kambal let go of the heavy jaws and flew away, watching the near-twenty foot aswang crush a few of its regular-sized kind. Upon closer inspection, a bullet has torn its way through the roof of its mouth. It’s a clean shot. The magubat isn’t regenerating, much to the Kambal’s surprise.

It’s a pleasant surprise, nonetheless.

“That’s for trying to eat my brother,” Crispin spits, kicking the dead aswang’s head.

Soon, more of the aswang started dropping like flies, too. Razed by bullets from an unknown assailant, the House of Arko aswangs started to panic.

“Wait a minute, I know manananggals who follow the queen can shoot, but Sabina is a sniper? Do you know about this, Bas?” Crispin exclaims, tearing his eyes away from the dead magubat to face yet another wave of mabangis.

“No! Damn, she’s using special bullets too. Where’d she get those?” Basilio mutters. A mailap attempts an ambush attack, and before he could react, Basilio watches it get shot mid-air as it attempts to jump him.

“You’re mine,” Sabina hisses, her voice crackling through Basilio’s phone speaker, smooth through the static.

Her emphasis on the word “mine” made goosebumps ripple through Basilio’s arm.

“Hot. Could you say that again?”

What he got instead was a groan. “Fuck, don’t distract me Basilio. I’m not here for fun.”

“You seem to be having fun shooting House of Arko’s minions though.”

“Fair. You two better look for the hostages. I have a bone to pick with this lot.”

The Kambal looks at each other, and nods. Glass shatters as they fly out the building’s windows, to the upper floors. After taking care of the guards, they saw them. Men and women in cages, all naked, and herded like livestock.

“Please, help us,” one of them whimpers, crawling to the front of the cage and grabbing Crispin by the arm. She’s dirty, and her belly is swollen. Basilio turned on the lights and they saw it clear as day: most of these women are pregnant. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.

House of Arko farms their food, breeding humans like livestock, and harvesting fetuses from them.

Sirens are blaring outside, both from police cars and ambulances, waiting for the hostages to be rescued.

All is well, or so they thought.

“Fuck!”

The cry came from their informant’s line.

“Everything alright?” Basilio asks her after fishing his phone out of his breast pocket.

“There are a few of them who found my vantage point. They’re heading towards my position.”

“Get out of there already, the hostages are secure.”

“They saw me. I can’t let them report back to Mama Grande and her sons that a manananggal is helping you. Suspicion would fall on my clan.”

Crispin nudges his younger brother. “I’ll handle the hostages and wait for Bossing. You make sure our informant’s alright.”

“Way ahead of you kuya,” Basilio replies, taking his guns out and flying out the window.

Under the pale moonlight and the city’s lights, Basilio spots a group of aswang scaling a dilapidated building east of him. On the rooftop, he sees it. Wings black as night, flattened against the concrete. Sabina lies prone and is aiming her scoped hunting rifle downwards, picking off the advancing horde one by one.

“Time to play.” The demigod rushes in and makes bullets rain on the hostiles.

He takes out a mabangis approaching their sniper from her blind spot. Those who didn’t die from being shot fell to their death, regeneration halted either by his or Sabina’s doing.

Basilio descends on the rooftop, and he walks his way towards the manananggal. His mask dematerialized, and the wind tousled his long hair. Just to be safe, he kept a pistol in one hand.

Across him, Sabina takes out her wireless earbuds and puts them away. Then, she slings her rifle on her shoulder, safety on. With her wings, she crawled towards his direction, like how a bat would move. Then, uses her wings’ sharp claws to plant herself on the concrete, a feat regular bats couldn’t do.

“Thanks for the help, Sab. About that gig…”

Before any more words could come out of his mouth, Sabina holds up her forefinger and presses it against his lips. “Shh. No more apologizing about the missed gig. Just make up for it. You owe me.”

Basilio nods, smiling at her. He watches as Sabina fishes out a box of cigarettes and a lighter from her vest. She’s wearing a black, long-sleeved polo shirt underneath it, and its sleeves are rolled up. Her shirt was unbuttoned just enough for him to catch a glimpse of lace peeking through. For all her boyish, edgy posturing, her choice of underclothes is girlier than what Basilio expected.

It almost makes him want to unwrap her like a Christmas present, but he’ll keep that thought to himself.

“Nice outfit. You were rehearsing in that?”

“We had a presentation for a class. No time to get changed. Now there’s a hole in the back, so I might as well wear this more often on future operations,” Sabina replies, placing a stick of Marlborough Reds between her lips.

“I’m in the mood for a smoke and maybe a chat,” she continues. “Join me?”

Basilio nods.

“How did you know about House of Arko’s human trafficking thing, anway?”

“Believe it or not, it was a hunch,” Sabina explains, black fingernails scratching the sparkwheel several times. “Ugh, fucking lighter dying on me again. I just had it refilled… must be the wind,” she growls.

Basilio couldn’t help but chuckle at her frustration. “A hunch?”

“Hmm… maybe hunch isn’t the right word. It’s an educated guess. Mama Grande loved serving boiled fetuses to her house guests, correct?”

Basilio nods, waiting for Sabina to continue her explanation.

“I suppose that it’s my place to judge if their mothers didn’t want to raise them… I’m a manananggal, for fuck’s sake. But there’s one red flag House of Arko failed to hide. From what I can tell, those fetuses are around five to eight months old.”

Sabina’s lighter finally lit up, and with a triumphant laugh, she lit her cigarette. Then, she carries on with her explanation.

“Most abortions happen during the first three months of pregnancy. It’s rare to see expecting parents get rid of them that late.”

“So? What does that have to do with the whole thing?”

“House of Arko serving older fetuses could mean one of two things: either all, and I mean all of the abortions they performed are from those who are truly in need of one that late, or they’re getting them from another source, possibly an illicit one. They don’t have the most benevolent reputation, so my intuition tells me it was the latter. So, I paid the place a visit and recorded what I could. I guess I should be thankful that your bossing found that blurry video trustworthy enough,” Sabina concluded, watching as the victims were clothed and herded into ambulances.

Dumbfounded, Basilio scratches his head. “Wow. Glad you’re on our side. How did you know that three month thing anyway?”

“Research and personal accounts.” Sabina’s response is clipped. Cold. Abrupt. It only raised more questions than answers.

“Personal accounts? You’ve met people who got them?”

There’s a flash of regret in Sabina’s eyes; regret that she opened her mouth and let him know more than needed. She cuts him off. “I can’t put my informants’ identities in jeopardy either now, can I?”

Per his older twin’s advice, Basilio’s finally using the head between his shoulders. “No offense, but you’re a manananggal. Y’know, known for eating babies? Hearing that from you is suspicious.”

“Yes, I am,” Sabina says through gritted teeth, glaring at him. “I can assure you, I’m following the accords and I’m not exploiting loopholes like what House of Arko is doing. I’ll reveal everything in due time.”

“Alright, keep your secrets. For now.”

A tense silence has befallen them.

“So- '' the manananggal blows a cloud of smoke away from Basilio, “-is this going to be a regular thing? Because if it is, I might finally quit smoking. Nicotine makes my hands shaky. Can’t risk accidentally shooting your ass.” She pauses, looking at him in jest. “ I’d rather do that intentionally.”

“You’re breaking my heart, Sabina Marie,” Basilio retorts, clutching his chest in mock pain.

They share a laugh over it, the mood lightening up.

Basilio looks in the distance, taking in the view of the cityscape. “Maybe you should quit. Singers shouldn’t be smoking in the first place.”

“The tar helps me belt out raspy screams, but yeah, you’re right,” Sabina chuckles.

“So, when is this next gig?”

“Next week. In Ilocos Norte. All the way up in House of Arko’s ancestral home.”

“Should I take that info to Bossing?”

“Yep. It’s open to the supernatural public anyway, so it's not like I’m giving you top secret info. Even the wind tribe is invited, despite their bad blood with my clan. Hopefully things won’t get physical. Most of my sisters are still bitter over how they blew us away when my mom- I mean, Inang Reyna decided to side against the Treses.”

So that explains some things.

“I dunno, maybe I should bring Ammie so I can watch the two of you in a catfight.”

Sabina elbows him in the chest, hard.

“Not funny at all, Basilio. I don’t even know her personally! It’s you I was pissed at.”

Now he grabs his chest in genuine pain as he croaks out an apology. “Sorry.”

“Whatever. Bring whoever the hell you want, just keep your distance from me when you decide to go. Even my father’s going to be there. I need to be on my best behavior.”

The demigod turns to their aswang informant, interest piqued. She’s divulging a lot of information. Perhaps he can sway her to spill more secrets.

“Didn’t know that the Reyna Manananggal had a king.”

“Oh, no. She’s not the type to share her power with a man.” Sabina pauses to take another hit of her cigarette. “I meant my biological father. Villaceran.”

Now that was unexpected.

“You drop bombshell after bombshell whenever we meet. Tomas Dominic Villaceran’s your old man?”

“Look at me. I’m almost the splitting image of the guy. If there’s one thing I’m grateful for, it’s inheriting his good looks.”

Basilio grins. “Can’t deny that. Most of the manananggal kuya Crispin and I encountered look...”

“Hideous, I know,” Sabina says outright. “You still haven’t seen that side of me, so don’t be too quick to judge my sisters.”

Basilio treads carefully, knowing that he might be prying on a sensitive subject. “So, about Villaceran…”

“I’d rather not talk about him. Our relationship is… strained.”

Giving her a sympathetic, understanding look, Basilio nods. “Right. Never mind.”

Another interval of silence passes between them. This time, it’s a little somber.

“So, does this party have a dress code?”

“Yeah. Filipiniana. Wear a barong. It’s one of those pretentious events that attempts to make House of Arko more appealing to the masses or whatever. Manipulative assholes.”

“You can just refuse to go, Sab.”

“I could, but being Trese’s mole among the aswang means I have to attend clan activities to supply more information. That also means attending every single party those Arko fucks throw.”

“You really hate House of Arko, huh?”

Looking towards his direction to meet his gaze, Sabina’s eyes are filled with a sea of emotions. Hatred, indignation, and something Basilio couldn’t quite place.

“Why wouldn’t I? Mama Grande raised boys who can’t take no for an answer. The Arko brothers have no respect for us manananggal. As if we weren’t fetishized enough in Manong Karma’s stupid aswang dating book...”

Sabina clears her throat and calms herself down. Bad blood between aswang clans could mean war. Basilio knows he should take that to the boss. His gears are turning tonight. He asks Sabina questions that could risk her support.

“Is that why you agreed to be an informant? You wanna bring House of Arko down? Then what, your clan will fill the space they’ll leave?”

“What? No, I have no desire for power, not like how Mama Grande or my own mother does anyway. My personal gripes with them aside, the House of Arko wants to ‘unite the aswang under one banner’ with no respect to the other clans’ autonomy and customs.”

“So you wanna protect your clan?”

“That’s one of the reasons, yes. Mama Grande’s been trying to play kumare with mom- I mean Inang Reyna-” This is the second time Sabina slipped and called her mom. She clears her throat and composes herself. “And I need to stop that. Inang Reyna already made the mistake of going against the Accords once. Allying with the House of Arko will ruin us further.”

Basilio leans in closer. “And what are your other reasons?”

Sabina looks at him for a few, quiet seconds, and looks away. “I’ll reveal them-”

“In due time. Yeah, yeah, I can take that as an answer. So, making you sing in that event is a result of them being magkumare?”

A defeated laugh bubbles from Sabina’s chest. “You got it.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t invite sirena to sing.”

Sabina rolls her eyes and tosses the butt of her expended cigarette on the concrete. Basilio took it upon himself to crush the embers under his heel, seeing how her lower half is hidden someplace else.

“Oh please, this is House of Arko we’re talking about, Bas. They believe aswang are superior. Letting them shine would take away the spotlight from the aswang. Mama Grande asked for me from Inang Reyna so they can gloat that even aswang can make better singers than the famed sirena. Ugh, I doubt my singing style even matches the performance they want from me.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of performance are they going for?” he asks her.

“Now that’s another secret. You have to show up to find out,” she hums in response.

Turning away from him, Sabina checks how many sticks are left in the box. Two. She takes one and lights it up.

“Screw it, I’m going cold turkey. I guess this will be my final box. Maybe for tonight. Maybe forever.”

“Then maybe you should stop with the stick you’re smoking and throw the last one away,” Basilio suggests.

“Are you mad? That’s a waste of money!”

“Still counting your blessings even with your mama’s wealth huh?”

“Old habits die hard.”

Sabina blows smoke away from Basilio’s direction. The wind made it waft to his face anyway, and she mumbles a quick apology. He shrugs it off. Not like the adverse effects of secondhand smoke affected him anyway. Hank smoked and was polite enough to turn away too, but Basilio can still smell it. He didn’t mind it. Still, Hank had told him and Crispin that it was a tough habit to break, so he never touched a cigarette.

Not until now.

Basilio takes the box from Sabina and picks up the last stick with his lips. Then, he inches closer to her.

Ironically, in an attempt to help an old friend quit her smoking habit, Basilio engages in it himself.

Little did he know, a new bad habit was forming between him and the little lady before him.

“I’ll make sure it won’t go to waste then. Light me.”

Sabina raises an eyebrow. “Just don’t start at all. Give it back.”

“One smoke isn’t going to get me hooked, princess.”

Brows knitted together, Sabina chastises him. “Take it from me, bad habits start with just one little taste, Bas.”

“One little taste never hurts anyone...”

“One little taste could leave you wanting for more.”

Basilio can feel himself getting hot under the collar. He’d never thought an aswang of all creatures could make him feel all bothered, yet there he was, getting turned on by her choice of words.

“Princess, are we still talking about cigarettes, or something else?”

Hearing his question, Sabina exhales sharply through her nose, cheeks dusted pink. “Maybe both. Whatever. Come here.”

Black fingernails scratched at the sparkwheel. Sparks were flying, but there was no flame. The cigarette remained unlit.

“Well, it looks like fate isn’t letting you smoke, so better just give me the damn cigarette back, Basilio.”

With a sly look, Basilio closes in on her, and presses the end of his cigarette to the embers at the end of hers, linking them together.

To his surprise, Sabina is neither backing away nor babbling defensively like she usually does whenever he gets close. Instead, she presses her chest to his, a challenging look in her half-lidded eyes. She wasn’t wearing her glasses like usual, giving Basilio an unobstructed view of her heated gaze. Was it bloodlust or desire? Either way, it got his blood pumping.

“You’re chattier than usual tonight,” Basilio comments. “Bolder too. I like that.”

In the form she’s in now, Sabina’s eyes glowed an eerie white, and aside from the wings sprouting from her back, little horns sprouted from her scalp, the root concealed by her crown of short, wavy hair. Basilio didn’t pay mind to her dangling guts, instead, his eyes were transfixed on that cute little lace bra again.

Through the layers of cloth between them, he can feel her heart beating. Basilio faintly remembers the taste of human and sigbin hearts.

Now, what does aswang heart taste like?

A dark part of his psyche- perhaps from being Datu Talagbusao’s son- wanted to tear it out of her chest and eat it to find out.

Basilio felt the urge to taste all the battles she fought through her blood, and possess her heart in a way no other person can.

The memory of seeing his father tasting his mother’s blood inserts itself in the present, and the fear of turning into the monster he was is enough for him to shake that thought away.

Basilio tries to focus on something else.

His eyes wander to Sabina’s mouth. He might’ve imagined something else between her dark lips, in place of the cigarette. Something bigger.

Something of his.

Sabina’s been pliable tonight. Perhaps he’ll push his luck with her one last time.

“So, any plans tonight, dear princess?”

“Unless you intend to treat me like one, don’t call me that.”

“I’m done with work, so if you want me to make good on that and make up for my mistake…”

Giggling, Sabina flies a few feet away from him. The black wings on her back are translucent against the pale moonlight. They almost looked like a dark shade of red.

“Go tell your brother about the information I gave you for now, then meet up with me afterwards. I hid my lower half in an alleyway behind that motel,” she tells him, pointing to the building’s direction.

“If you’re lucky, you’ll get to rearrange my guts. Literally and figuratively.” Sabina continues, a naughty smirk blooming on her lips.

Taken aback by the pun, Basilio laughs. “I didn’t think you were capable of dirty jokes.”

“You should know by now that I’m full of secrets and surprises.”

Grinning darkly, Basilio finishes the rest of his cigarette as he watches her fly away.

“And I’ll uncover them all, dear princess.”

Translations:

ulol - crazy; Filipino profanity

gago/gaga - foolish or stupid; Filipino profanity

tangina - contraction of putang ina, lit. whore mother. Used as an expression to express irritation, anger, or astonishment

Inang Reyna - lit. Queen Mother.

mare/kumare - derived from the Spanish word madre/comadre; kumare a reciprocal appellation for the godmother or for the child's mother. In a more modern and colloquial context, it’s used to refer to a female friend. Magkumare means women who are friends with each other.

Filipiniana - Philippine related book and non-book material

barong - also known as Barong Tagalog. An embroidered long-sleeved formal shirt for men and a national dress of the Philippines.

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gingermintpepper · 3 years

Text

After thinking it over for a bit, I've decided that I might as well do a proper underrated 3DS game rec list. I'm a bit of an ATLUS junkie and that's gonna be pretty disgustingly apparent in this list, but it's not my fault that they released hit after hit and all of them were duly ignored.

Due to tumblr's 10 image limit (and my struggle to keep motivated to do one thing for more than three hours) I'm definitely gonna have to break this up into parts and I'm fairly certain one of these lists is just gonna be MegaTen games lmao but I'd like to let people know about these excellent titles and see if I can't at least get people interested in them so they can get more traction.

So, without further ado:

Some 3DS Games that were criminally slept on (part 1)

Monster Hunter Stories

God, where do I begin with this game. Well, the basics: It's a JRPG spinoff title of the now widely successful and popular Monster Hunter series featuring a different take on interacting with the varied and intricate monsters populating the world: Riders.

Yep, instead of hunting the beasties, you play as a young rider who's completed their intiation ritual and can now bond with 'Monsties' as they've cutely labelled the usually ferocious monsters of the wilds. The great thing is that you still fight Monsters--tons of them in fact but this isn't a paid review and in my humble opinion, the most impressive thing about this game is the visual style. The landscapes, the armour, the way they redesigned and 3DS-ified the classically hyper realistic and monstrous beasts to not only be absolutely adorable but still capable of being intimidating when the time calls for it, the stellar animation of special moves and combination attacks--it's delicious, nutritious, stupendous, I can and will consume it like it's part of my recommended caloric intake.

It's very akin to Pokemon in the way its basic gameplay premise is set up, however, instead of catching--or even indeed befriending--the Monsties in the game, you rummage through their nests and steal their eggs, later hatching them and getting yourself a brand new lightly kidnapped monster pal!

Other general things about the game:

Pros:

The armour and weapon sets for both male and female characters slap along with the general character customisation options. They're incredibly diverse (though limited in body type) and you can switch around traits and features whenever you want from your house.

The POGS--these porkers are everywhere and they serve as tiny little achievements for exploring every odd and end of the world. Also they have little outfits. They're so cute. 🥺🥺

You can actually ride the Monsties. All of em. Or, at least the ones that you have available to be your buddies. They all have exploration skills and traits that not only make exploring much more interesting but encourage you to swap out your active Monstie and play around with your options a bit.

Y'all breeding Monsties is complicated and I live for just how intense and ridiculous you can get with optimal builds for these things.

The story is really competently put together! The characters, character designs and even the internal conflict with your starting trio of characters is really compelling along with the mystery of the blight that's infecting Monsters across the world. It's not anything worth awards but it's compelling and it makes you care about the characters if that's what you're in the market for.

Amazing sound design, expansive world, everything about the presentation of this game oozes that Monster Hunter charm even if the art is cutesier than usual. You'll never get bored of its stellar visual presentation!

Available for around twenty quid on the Google Play store, so if you want, you could actually get the full game on your smartphone or tablet. Note though that it would be a battery nuker.

Cons:

If you're on a regular 3DS, frame rate drops are a given. This game kinda pushes the visual capabilities of the 3DS to its absolute limit--a lot like Okamiden did back on the DS.

One save file :( It's pretty much for the same reason as above but still.

If you're playing as the girl, you can't get male armour and vice versa. Since there's only one save file, you'll never be able to have all of the armour sets in a single playthrough and that's criminal because both of the sets for the genders are absolutely breath-taking, thank you.

I 👏can't 👏make👏my👏 own 👏Palico👏

Multi-player for this game is pretty dead seeing as it's almost five years old by now and never got much press or traction. Usually this wouldn't be an issue - this game is 99% singleplayer and you don't really need to fuss about with multi-player to have fun, but if you want to collect all the Monsties, you'll need it since the only way to get Glavenus is through pvp achievements. :/

Final thoughts: Play it if you find yourself getting tired or disappointed with 3DS Pokemon games but still want something that feels as fantastical as Pokemon. It outshines the 3DS Pokemon games at every turn and I will never be over just how thoughtfully put together and fully realised these games are. Of course, if you've ever played Monster Hunter, then you know just how intensive these games are with the lore, biology, cultures and world of their Monsters but seeing that translated into JRPG format was just very sobering and it's a game that, to this day, continues to awe me with just how much love and attention went into it.

Last note: If you're still unsure about it, there's a demo available on the e-shop of the 3DS that allows you to play through the entire initial area of the game. Your data does carry through to the full release and to give you an idea of how much I've been able to squeeze out of it - my playtime for that demo is currently sitting at 22 hours. Make sure to get a hold of that Cyan-Kut-Ku!

7th Dragon III Code: VFD

The title may sound intimidating but the premise is not! A mysterious disease called Dragon Sickness spread by the Dragonsbane flowers that have cropped up all around the world. You and your team are recruited by the Nodens game company after you display extraordinary prowess in their hit virtual reality game 7th Encount. As you go through the adventure, you are tasked with finding out the truth behind the Dragon Sickness and asked to stop both it and the Dragons that are destroying the world.

This game is fun. It's another turn-based JRPG however, in this game you create all of your characters yourself from the myriad of classes available to you from the jump. Different classes of course have very different specialisations - Samurai focus on high powered cutting damage with their swords, Duelists are summoners who can influence the element of the battlefield as well as summon monsters from each element, Agents can hack into your enemies and inflict a barrage of nasty ailments, just to name a few - and you are given three teams of three characters each to experiment with different team comps and find the balance that works for you. There's also a wide variety of Dragons to hunt and kill in the game, which directly affects how infected your world is with the Dragon Sickness causing Dragonsbane. Along the way you will also come into contact with many interesting characters, concepts and confrontations that will make the task of saving the world all the more imperative.

Pros

1. The character creator and differing classes give way for tons of experimenting and playing around with your own unique approach to combat and carrying out your missions. Granted, 'character creation' is generous, it's little more than palatte swaps but the classes are really where VFD shines. Eight main classes may not sound like a lot, but the expaniveness of the character skills, their synergy with their fellow classes and the uniqueness of some of the classes in and of itself allows for so much flexibility and creativity in approaches to even tougher bosses. It also encourages the switching about of your party members to really finagle with the options available to you.

2. God this game is pretty. The locations, the character art, the creature design - all of it is gorgeous and this game capitalises on every bit of the 3DS's presentation limitations as it can.

3. You can romance anything and everyone - yes, you can even be gay/lesbian/poly in this game. In fact, one of the main characters - Julietta - is gnc and he's a constant source of joy as well one of my personal favourite characters, right behind Yuma.

4. Exploration is very very forgiving as the game has healing spots and teleport nodes all over the world to allow for quick, seamless travel between quest points without feeling like anything is too much of a hassle. There are also special enemies that allow for quick grinding as well as quick farming of money. In general, the game does a really good job of making sure that the grind is never unbearable or inconsiderate of your time.

Cons:

1. This is the fourth game in a series the West has never seen any other title for, and from the looks of it, will probably never see any other titles for. Because of that, there are some elements that may seem confusing or revelations in the plot that may seem to come out of nowhere.

2. While the visuals are great, the OST of this one is pretty short making for a lot of reused soundtracks that can get really annoying if you're like me and need your audio to be interesting or consistent so it doesn't distract you too much.

3. This one isn't really a con but it is divisive: This game gets pretty difficult at times. A few of the main dragon enemies including and especially the final boss can give you a serious run for your money in the annoy-o-meter in terms of the kind of absolute JRPG fuckery they can pull out of their magic bag of bullshit movesets and while I generally enjoy that kind of thing, I know it's not for everyone. Most regular combat shouldn't be too tricky once you have a team comp that works well together but you also need to pay attention since the same team that carries you to victory one time might be worth beans against another dragon.

Final thoughts: This is... a really good game. Interesting story, really interesting characters, pretty world and a battle system that really makes you sit down and think. There's also a demo for this available in the e-shop and while your data doesn't carry over - you do receive multiple perks for carrying over your demo data including some exclusive items that, while not game breaking, do help a ton in the early stages of the game.

This isn't a final list by any stretch of the word; I only have the energy to do these two right now, but the next games up for coverage are Ever Oasis and Stella Glow! If you're interested in my full plan of games I want to cover here then my current lineup includes: Theatrhythm: Curtain Call, Project Mirai: Deluxe, Culdecept Revolt, Alliance Alive, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Etrian Odyssey V, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse.

Finally, if anyone has played any of the games I mention, cover or plan to cover PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME, I AM SO LONELY IN MY FORTRESS OF SAND. On a serious note, I'd love to hear what other people who've played these games think!

Thanks for reading,

-Ginger

PS: @feralpeacock Because a million years ago, on my first underrated games post, you asked that I remember you. :D

#ginger rambles #ginger talks about video games #monster hunter stories #monster hunter #code dragon iii vfd #video games #3ds #underrated games #These take so much energy to make holy shit #There are so many more amazing 3ds games I could talk about #But I legit just don't have the braincells for #Also I know Apocalypse probably has the biggest audience that played it out of all the games listed #But it's criminally underrated because it was different #So it's probably going to get it's own little review thing #Yeehaw

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crowsent · 4 years

Text

a fuckton of things i want in da4

a few words censored bc tumblr will swallow this in the void if i dont. long ass fuck list ahead

a romanceable dwarf

more romanceable elves/qunari

more elf/qunari/dwarf companions

consistent writing for once

more nb representation

good hair. please just give me good hair options. give me long hair. give me luxurious flowing locks. give me braids. give me good fucking hair options

let me shittalk the chantry

dalish elf npcs that impact the plot in unique ways

dalish elf companions that are proud of being dalish

if it is set in tevinter maybe uh. maybe address the issue of systemic oppression (and slavery) of elves???????

a return of the friendship/rivalry system in da2 but improved. maybe instead of a friendship rivalry sliding scale its friendship/rivalry/animosity sliding scale. bc rivalry is more like. two people pushing each other to be better than they were before. friendly competition. hes an idiot but hes my idiot kind of deal. animosity would be just regular disapproval. i liked the crisis cutscenes in dai so high animosity would be the same as low approval and might make the companion leave still, but theres more variety with high approval. high approval “friendship” would be the “were best friends and we share many opinions and agree on almost everything” while high approval “rivalry” being “we disagree on almost everything but goddamn it youre my friend and ill follow you into the fade if i have to” so you can have a high approval with someone instead of being a kissass

actions and choices having consequences again

multiple endings again (epilogue slideshows dont count)

dialogue wheels with descriptions that match what you actually say

characters from rivain, antiva, anderfels, etc

gifts. bring back the gifts. i want to give my companions gifts

maybe. maybe a focus of non-andrastian religion for once?

let me shittalk the chantry

i know its a stretch, but maybe. diverse skin colours. please?

nd characters that are written respectfully and treated w dignity

please bring back the talent wheel from dao and da2

more bi romance options

more wlw romance options

more mlm romance options

ace romance options

nb romance options

background romances

let me shittalk the chantry

far fetched but maybe a polycule?

i lowkey LOVED the fast-paced feel of da2s combat so maybe bring that back in some form? maybe improved to mesh with the tactics of dai to give players absolute freedom of playstyle whether they want to be like me and rush into every encounter or play more strategically

companions with unique companion abilities

would be nice to explore cities

would be nice if the open world were a little smaller so it doesnt feel empty all the gd time

more mage spells. mages felt like just another class of fighter to me in dai. they dont really have any awe-inducing wow factor like in dao or even da2. if the narrative wants me to believe that mages are powerful and dangerous and that it takes multiple templars to hunt down an apostate, maybe show that? give me strong mages

remove the jump ability. its pointless

a narrative that addresses the oppression that the chantry and templars perpetuated please

bring back the attributes

make the choices in dai matter. mages governing themselves? i wanna see that

let me shittalk the chantry

please bring back the healing magic for fucks sakes

multi-class system between rogues and warriors?

multiple specialisations that feel like specialisations and not just skill tree+

player-only skill trees

hardening

companion quests that affect their abilities and further dialogue

actual morally grey choices instead of this stupid mage freedom vs templar oppression narrative that is in no way morally grey but is presented as such and thus leaves the conflicts and narratives set up by dao and da2 to be fucking meaningless

bring back the tactics

would be nice to have an origins-esque prologue again. maybe one that would determine future events in game just to give your character better narrative cohesion with the plot

an approval/disapproval system but for companions with other companions. bringing certain companions together may bring them closer or make them pissed off with each other which affects banter maybe quests maybe combat

give me a fucking mabari bioware. give me back my fucking mabari

day/night cycle

a nightmare mode where you have to finish the main quest on a time limit. it is absurd that dai expects me to believe that i have all this time to do wartable missions that can take literal real life DAYS to finish and still thwart corypheus’ plans in time. bullshit

that said. no more wartable missions. waiting for a countdown to finish isnt very fun

let me shittalk the chantry

kal-sharok. ive been hearing about it since dao let me fucking see kal-sharok

dwarven politics

politics in general. my fav dao quest was the succession crisis plotline in orzammar/the landsmeet and wewh in dai

npcs i can talk to. even with generic dialogue like in dao. makes the world more alive

using the environment to your advantage. far fetched but i would love to be able to pull down boulders if were in the mountains or freeze water to get to places as a mage

home base customisation but the customisation choices you make actually. mean something. and do something. or at the very least give more companion dialogue/banter/approval change

laconic and ergonomic codexes. like. sorted by what kind of codex it is, etc etc but then you just get a brief summary of the codex and the option to read more about it so i dont spend eternity scrolling through cards looking for a specific codex entry. cool aesthetic dont get me wrong but real irritating to deal with. also. maybe. the pc making comments about the codex if you do read more about it? like a dalish elf saying “they got it all wrong” when reading a codex about dalish elves written by a human??? that would a) give character to the pc b) incentivise people to actually read the codex to see what was so wrong about it c) summarise the codex for people who want to learn the lore but dont want to spent the entire game reading text

maybe have the merchants in your home base close to crafting stations so you dont have to take a fucking hike if you miscounted the amount of elfroot you need?

let me shittalk the chantry

avvar companion maybe??? interesting lore right there

bring back stat requirements for weapons and remove the class restriction for most shit. obviously a dagger would be better for a rogue than a longsword and a mage would do better with a staff than a sword and shield but its not about efficiency. its about the roleplay. its about the options. give me the option to make a mage with wildly inappropriate stat distribution

bring back sustained mode abilities

traps. bring back traps. bring back the option to stealth into an area, trap the fuck out of it, and go from there

have the three available classes in kind of a rock paper scissors scenario. warriors do real well against rogues who do real well against mages who do real well against warriors. so you can plan your party depending on who/what youll face AND how much their approval will change during the quest you take them on

let me shittalk the chantry

actually resolve the plot points introduced in dai

a more threatening villain. the inquisitor thwarted every attempt made by corypheus in dai. he was not threatening at all

queer characters. background, companions, etc. queer characters

mounts were meh in dai. maybe. make them faster? or less cumbersome? or have your companions on mounts too so theres still banter?

i liked the armour tinting. let me have armour tinting from the beginning

i would really like mages to move and attack at the same time bc lowkey standing in one spot is uhhhhhhh kinda boring

let me check companions friendship/rivalry levels

would be nice if the narrative acknowledged that elves suffered greatly at the hands of the chantry and stopped victim-blaming them

more taverns. specifically like tapsters in dao where theres a dwarf just reciting something in a language i cant understand and if you look its a ballad/poet about dwarven culture and that was a real nice touch let me have that

dalish elf clan. dalish elf clan that does not get murdered please and thank you

meaningful quests. more cinematic dialogue

make found gear / quest reward gear more valuable than crafted gear

game modifiers like in dai were real nice. i want more

let me shittalk the chantry

quests that can be resolved in multiple ways. like connors fate in dao. and for those ways to impact further quests

companions with varying moral alignments

companions that are mutually exclusive (like alistair and loghain) but are both good companions so itd really make you think

a pc that IS NOT a “chosen one” vanilla da2 is my fav dragon age game for one reason and one reason only and that is because hawke is just some random refugee who escaped lothering. no chosen one magic at all. just an ordinary person who is a real good fighter. and that appealed to me more than this “you are the only one who can do it” narrative

let me meet more elvhen gods

if the setting is in tevinter, GIVE ME FUCKING ARCHITECTURE. give me the high spires, the archways, the buttresses, give me statues lining city gates and magic infused into the buildings. tevinter is a land ruled by MAGES give me magical architecture. give me floating buildings. give me fire floating as orbs above the streets like lamps. GIVE ME ARCHITECTURE

SHALE

let me shittalk the chantry

PIERCINGS GIVE ME FUCKING PIERCINGS BIOWARE

more main quests, longer main quests

if it is set in tevinter maybe. maybe address the fact that tevinter has been at war with the qunari for a while? on and off war is still war. and maybe give us the option to influence the outcome of that war?

more voice options. instead of just american voice or british voice, do the thing in dao again where there are multiple voices of different tones to further cement the pcs personality

more armour designs

biased but uh. can. can taliesen jaffe va a character?

i already said qunari companions but specifically saarebas companions

blood magic

FINISHING MOVE ANIMATIONS

please do not let it be as long as inquisition. inquisition was a SLOG in later playthroughs

body sliders. what if i want a tall but lanky qunari? what if i want a buff as shit elf? body sliders

more eye options

let me call out companions

btw bioware. if you really wanted cullen to be a good guy. maybe handle his fucking redemption arc a little better instead of retconning all the terrible and creepy shit hes done in the past k thx

can female walk/run animations not have. so much swaying hips? no one moves like that

personality dialogue that affects future dialogue like in da2 but meshed with the wider range of emotions introduced by dai

keep the race/s*x lock on romance candidates like in dai. keep the fact that some characters can only be romanced by certain races or s*xes

nb and genderqueer options for the pc

cutscenes of companions interacting

ngl i lowkey liked the random encounters of dao so maybe bring that back

my fav quest in dao is the landsmeet / orzammar succession crisis questline but you know whats my second favourite? the rescue mission if the warden gets captured and you have to play as your party members. give me that again

more creepy/dark shit. dai was too lighthearted for me esp after da2 and dao

let me shittalk the chantry

broodmothers. in hd.

red lyrium broodmothers. in hd

companions with different backgrounds. different faiths. different statuses. different families. etc

maybe make the pcs appearance make an impact on the story? like how bull says he likes redheads, but even if you are a redhead, he says nothing about it????? maybe keep track of which slider the player picks so that can affect the story?

i love my inquisitors but maybe. dont. bring the inquisitor in as anything more than an advisor/npc in this game? let me fall in love with a new pc???

if theres gonna be a homebase like skyhold where youre not in armor. maybe give us better clothing?

a kind of gear skin mechanic similar to ac:odyssey where you can change how the gear looks but keep the stats. so you can equip that higher level armour and keep the look and aesthetic of your old armour and you unlock the skins/looks of the armours you discover/make so you can be both powerful AND aesthetic

i enjoyed the nobility/underworld/arcane/etc knowledge in dai unlocking more dialogue options so maybe keep/expand on that but make it more accessible by side missions or companions or something that isnt the abysmal perk system in dai

let me shittalk the chantry

customisable walking animations. does the pc walk straightbacked? slouched? with a swagger? please

since there will undoubtedly be an obligatory fade sequence, maybe have an option for nightmare demons that ARENT spiders. thank you

slap on subtitles and conlang some languages. i want to hear elvish. i want to hear tevene. give me the languages

more dragons. esp if they look vastly different

more bard songs

i am completely biased here, but i would like to hear laura bailey as a va for a character. preferably a voice option for the pc

hey maybe have the true ending actually included in the base game and not in a dlc (tresppasser cough cough)

better val royeaux

please remove the had to do it to em idle animation tis distracting

on that note, more idle animations. maybe some unique to companions?

very trivial but. unique stair climbing/descending animation

bring back talking to companions on the road. maybe with some dialogue that can only be said on the road???

if banter is interrupted, make like rdr2 and pick up where the banter left off

more vallaslin designs please?

if theres another formal scene like dai maybe. give us. decent clothing. or better yet, decen clothing OPTIONS. i wanna decide how i look in a ball full of haughty orlesians

mage vs templar conflict resolved and addressed please. it is NOT resolved in dai. what we got was sequel bait and a slideshow. resolve it please

let me shittalk the chantry

a pro-mage anti-circle circle mage companion like anders

religious person who doesnt victim-blame elves in the codex or in game or anywhere please

characters more like leliana who question the chantry and acknowledge its corruption and greed

unapologetically sapphic companion

idc if its tevinter i dont want to fucking see queer people being disrespected

a true tal-vashoth companion, one who escaped from the qun

have quest decisions affect whether or not a companion will turn hostile to you or not

if IF solas will be redeemed, please do the redemption arc right

more horn options for qunari

an apostate mage who doesnt use me for their personal agenda whilst hiding something from me (morrigan, anders, solas) thanks

i really dig the whole “leader of an army” thing dai was trying to go for. but you didnt actually. lead. anything. would be nice to have that option. command soldiers. send them places that affect further quests. would even use the wartable for its intended purpose. planning wars. battles. like. you get sent word that there are bandits harassing villagers. you can set up an ambush with your soldiers or confront them headon, and theres a new mini-location on the map like the manor you meet vivienne in where you can go deal with the bandits and depending on your choices, there are actually soldiers with you in a field, or traps in a narrow pass, or even in a city. id rather the wartable shit dont return but if they have to, at least this way youre not just waiting real life time for a bunch of text to appear

i am real fucking excited for the possibility that da4 companions can just fucking die on you. good shit. give me that angst

missions that certain companions would refuse to go with you to. you know. so you actually have to use other members of your party instead of the same 3 (three) people all the goddamn time

disabled characters (i want a character who suffers from the same chronic bad leg disease as i do is that too much to ask)

kinda touched on by the da2 combat point but let me do close combat damage with the staff

no multiplayer. and if there is a multiplayer, dont tie it with achievements

let me fucking explore weisshaupt

(i dont think solas will be the endgame villain of da and i dont think da4 will be the last da game but still) again. for emphasis. resolve the plot points dai brought up

full-body scars and tattoo options

companions and npcs changing their opinions about things over time. eg: a pro-circle mage wanting instead for circles to be abolished after a specific side mission or a main quest decision etc

keep the multiple companion quests. and maybe change what kinds of companion quests are available further down depending on choices made in previous companion quests

please for fucks sake give us more characters of colour

let me shittalk the chantry

#dragon age #dragon age 4 #da4 #long post #its 3 am and i am once again putting on my clown wig bc bioware will fucking disappoint me again

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ardenttheories · 4 years

Note

Your takes on gender can be applied these ways also: 1. Their species could be transphobic solely because they might view gender as unnecessary (which isn’t true, due to so many trolls being trans with no problem, so that’s out the window,) or 2. The Condesce herself or her generation created gender roles on Alternia; it would also make sense with The Signless preaching beliefs of freedom and possibly even expression, if we were to go that route. While it doesn’t fix all, it’s better than nothin

Continuing on with Signless and the Condesce, it would have actually made more sense for Sign to be a Fuchsia if society is based on blood caste, for more than one reason (I mean the political implications of a thief of BLOOD being a tyrannical emperor and what you could do with that are pretty fucking apparent but hey who gives a shit amiright) and while life can be just as politically aligned as blood, the inherent structure of blood and the way it’s broken and set up makes Sign a better fit

The bulge-nook standard is all just a bunch of useless bullshit, but it wasn’t in the past apparently; I think it’s mentioned somewhere in the comic that they’re actually close to extinction because the mother grub method is unsustainable and was created BY the Condesce? And that they actually could procreate together but they’re slowly losing the ability? Therefore you could also say that those who are still able to reproduce via encounters could be labeled differently, but that’s still shit

Continuing once again off of the whole mother grub thing (Sorry I’m spamming your inbox I just really like your think thoughts,) the only reason I could see a troll harboring certain ‘gender’ traits (boobs for example) would be for advantages in different climates, besides possible ovaries which, if trolls are more bug than human-like, don’t even make sense anyway. It’s all just a bunch of crud BUT the argument for being trans lies solely in what could remain, OR societal reconstruction I guess

I suppose HIC could have been the generation to assign gender roles to her society, but my only issue would be this: why? I pointed this out in another anon, but there’s no actual divide into “trolls who are superior for being x gender” and “trolls who are inferior for being x gender”. She’s the empress, so you’d think she’d have a preference for women - but her closest and most valued are both men. And even then, she kills indisciminately between genders. Her only preference I’ve ever seen gender-wise is that she always views women as heiresses (or, people who are possible to take her throne), and even that doesn’t entirely make sense; it can easily be explained away as Hussie trying to build a matriarchy where one just didn’t need to exist, to parallel Alternia and Earth.

To HIC, hemospectrum trumps gender. A male and female rustblood could be standing side by side, both accused of a crime, and neither would be considered more or less guilty on a gendered basis: they’d both be culled for being rust. Likewise, two violetbloods could kill a purpleblood, and the male wouldn’t be more likely to get caught than the female, or viseversa. They’d both get away scot free because they’re highbloods, and higher than the purple they killed - or, they’d both be revenge-slaughtered by other purplebloods.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that, although our canonical legislacerator is female (Redglare), the actual judge (His Honorable Tyranny) is male. So, again, we have a male in power. Yet there’s no explicit bias towards or against men.

It’s this foundational issue for trying to put a gendered system - as we understand it - on a system that just doesn’t work for it. I do very firmly believe that the trolls would have a gender system, yes; but I think it would revolve around something entirely different. More like how bee genders work; if they’re all “female”, then how do you differentiate the “gender” of bees? By focusing on what actually differentiates them societally: their roles in the hive. Queen, worker, drone - these are the bee genders. How you could implement that to Alternians, I’m not totally sure; I’d have to think on that a little more.

The Signless works well as a mutantblood for the martyr status Hussie was going for; he’s a very clear allegory for Jesus as-is, and having him be a fuchsia wouldn’t have really worked in that sense (because he would have been born into an inherent place of power, without the requirement to go through the martyr journey - and he could have much more easily set about a better, more equal structure had he been an heir than he could have being a mutant).

It’s a good way to impose on readers just how violent troll society is against those who don’t fit into the spectrum, since the hemospectrum is a class structure that was instilled by both HIC and Doc Scratch (which doesn’t exist as strictly on Beforus, except that the upper classes look after the lower). It also just allows for the equal “one troll of each caste” motif Hussie wanted to go with. So, again, this is an unfortunate instance of Hussie choosing design over lore.

That said, being a fuchsiablood - or even a mutated fuchsia, if we still want to go down the mutant route - would have been endlessly interesting. It could have completely different to see a not-so-shoddily hidden allegory. How The Signless would have attempted to go against HIC, his abilities as a Blood Player, the potentialities of him still raising a rebellion and attempting to change the entire structure of Alternia to something more Beforean - it’s definitely juicy food for thought, if nothing else.

I couldn’t find anything on the Mother Grub method being instilled by HIC, or the fact that it was unsustainable - at least, not on Alternia. Everything I’ve seen relating to Alternia and Mother Grubs very much seems to state that these are the natural ways of the world, something that wasn’t meddled with (which goes along with a theory I had with a few anons some time ago, under the “#homestuck biology” tag, wherein the Mother Grub, trolls, and Drones are actually all founded from the same ancient species, but the trolls just so happened to be the ones to evolve into intelligent life).

(Edited note: I did find something mentioning that the threat of global extinction allowed for the implementation of the caste system to begin with - as in, the hemospectrum didn’t exist until that specific point in time. It doesn’t mention anything about the Mother Grubs before or after this event, or what caused the near-extinction of the troll race. I would assume Doc Scratch, in order to force the Hemospectrum to exist in the first place, since he takes full credit for its conception. In either case, it isn’t an inability to breed that almost killed off the entire Alternian race - otherwise, even post-Hemospectrum, they would have still died out.)

Anything regarding unsustainability might be instead referring to HIC’s attempts to reintroduce the troll population to the Alpha kids’ Earth; she tries to bring lusii into the world and tries to repopulate Earth using genetic material via the Mother Grub (including for humans), but ultimately fails to do so (partly because her attempts to do so were thwarted by a clone of her lusus, partly because, I assume, human DNA isn’t compatible with the Mother Grubs).

So, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like trolls ever had the ability to mate with each other and reproduce in a more mammalian way. Which I still despise as a concept, if I’m completely honest; the trolls are clearly meant to be based on insects, are surrounded by insect-like evolutionary divergences, and breed in a very insect-like way. The idea that they ever, at any point, had a more mammalian lineage just makes no sense. That’s like saying that we descended from ancient bees instead of ancient apes.

It’s, again, one of those instances were you can tell Hussie tried to make something unique and interesting, but then didn’t fully think it through and returned to what he knew most - which is a very much more human experience.

I think the best explanation for the “gender” differences - beyond “Hussie needed a way to show male and female characters because he didn’t think to include different genders in a society that clearly needed it - probably is the climate concept. It’d be more interesting, for one, and still allow for the potential that trolls don’t have - or show - inherent sexual dimorphism. Especially because, like you said, those are very mammalian traits? Insect-based species don’t have an evolutionary need for those things.

#ardenttheories #homestuck biology #long post//#Anonymous

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simul16 · 3 years

Text

Low Effort in Their Own Way

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

I've been watching a fair amount of D&D content on YouTube of late, for varying reasons, and if I may paraphrase Tolstoy's famous quote above, I've learned that all good D&D channels make high-effort content, while each bad D&D channel makes low-effort content in its own way.

Low-effort content tends to be:

Content that is or can be created quickly; it doesn't require a lot of prep time (and the presentation usually allows this limited prep time to show)

Content that copies current trends; while a certain amount of response to significant events in the gaming world is to be expected, low-effort channels regularly feature content that basically boils down to 'here's my reaction to whatever rumor or scandal is currently being talked about among the community'

Content that does not spark or contribute to a discussion; when such channels go beyond simply recapitulating a recent event, they frequently spend very little time explaining their own reaction and seldom spend any time at all explaining or exploring contrary opinions except to make jokes or elicit emotional reactions from an over-simplified or straw-man version of the contrary opinion

Now let's start off by saying that I'm not knocking low-effort content per se; anybody who knows anything about online marketing can tell you that low-effort content has a role to play in any marketing strategy. Ideally, though, your low-effort content, the stuff that you can get out the door quickly and easily and get in front of your potential customers, exists to guide those customers to your higher-quality content that convinces them to buy your product, order your service, or otherwise become someone who believes that you have something of value to say. Because it's cheap and easy to produce, low-effort content can be cast far and wide to serve as a net to capture many potential viewers and guide them to the gold mine of the really important stuff you have to say. Unfortunately, when your low-effort content is what you have to say, it very much begs the question of what exactly it is people should be coming to your channel for.

Here are a few but by no means an exhaustive list of the YouTube channels that to me seem to feature way too much low-effort content.

The Dungeon Dudes

The Dungeon Dudes are two guys (Kelly McLaughlin and Monty Martin) who mainly do scripted back-and-forth style discussions of D&D-related topics. I've talked about the Dungeon Dudes before, when taking apart one of their recent videos, but they also stream a D&D game they play in on Twitch (and frequently post recordings of those sessions on their channel), do product reviews, and generally do whatever they can to maintain a consistent pace of content output, generally a minimum of twice weekly. They've been around for nearly four years now, and have amassed about 273 thousand subscribers on their channel, with over 44 million views for their content, which seem like decent numbers for a niche content channel. (Contract with CinemaSins, which exists as a viral content manufacturer, and has amassed over 9 million subscribers and over 3.3 billion views. I'm not trying to say the Dungeon Dudes are the CinemaSins of D&D; if they were, their numbers would probably look a lot more like those of CinemaSins.)

The big problem with the Dudes as content creators is that, despite being a niche content channel, they are clearly in it to try to eke out some kind of income or living from the work they put into the channel: they've got a Patreon, they use affiliate links in the descriptions of their product review videos to gain some additional referrer income, and they do sponsored content when they can get a sponsor. They started back in the summer of 2017 with a very 2016-era plan on how to succeed at YouTube: put together a bunch of short (5-10 minutes, occasionally longer, but go over 15 minutes at your peril) videos and release them on an iron-clad schedule to get people used to coming back to your channel and looking over your new content, and to their credit, they've kept up their content production schedule very consistently over the past four years.

They've also learned a few things during that time and have adapted the channel in response: their videos explaining rules and reviewing new products tend to be more popular, so they work those topics in on a more regular basis. They've learned that the YouTube algorithm has subtly changed over the past few years to reward channels that can provide longer 'engagement' (which gives YouTube more opportunities to run ads), and have expanded their video length to an average of about a half-hour, with their re-broadcasts from Twitch being extra-long videos (between two and two-and-a-half hours) which, while drawing fewer total views, probably draw as much or more 'engagement' from the algorithm for the views they have.

But the need to spit out so much content on such a rigid, unforgiving schedule means that they have to aim for quick-creation and easy digestion: putting subclasses into a bog-standard tier ranking, making 'top five' and 'top ten' lists that seem like they're being cribbed from a more thoughtful resource, and generally getting stuff out the door (like their 'Powerful Spell Combos Using Teamwork' video) without spending too much time thinking about how valuable or even accurate their advice happens to be. More to the point, it seems to be taking its toll on the guys who serve as the hosts of the show: Kelly McLaughlin has a fairly dour expression in general, but lately he seems to have the countenance of a man who's about to post a 'very special episode' discussing the dangers of YouTuber burnout.

The Dungeon Dudes feature low-effort content because they have to in order to support the publishing frequency they've chosen; if they were to take the time to put together a truly high-effort piece regarding one of their traditional topics, their Patreon subscribers would likely be asking why their release schedule had slowed down before their work was even half-done.

Dungeon Craft

The Dungeon Craft channel is run by a fellow who refers to himself as 'Professor Dungeon Master'; I have not yet found any reference in his channel or elsewhere that identifies who he actually is, so I'll just refer to him as Prof. Prof has been on YouTube a bit longer than the Dungeon Dudes, having launched his channel in October of 2016, and has put out 185 'episodes' (as of the time of this writing), thus averaging between three and four episodes per month. Prof's own 'trailer' video explicitly states his channel's concept: "Some channels focus on running the game, others on building terrain, others on painting minis. I do it all!" You might think, then, that this would be a place to find quite high-quality content, especially related to terrain and miniatures painting tips, but it seems like the main effect of Prof making his channel be about multiple topics (and there are plenty of topics he discusses that don't fit into any of those three categories above) is that he can't successfully communicate what his channel is actually about, other than about his specific opinions. Maybe that's the reason he's sitting at about 65 thousand subscribers and just under 5 million views.

However, being at a slightly lower 'tier' of content production than the Dungeon Dudes is not itself any kind of crime or even indicative of poor quality -- after all, one of my favorite D&D lore channels on YouTube is RavenloftTravelAgent, and she's got just over a thousand subscribers and only about 50 thousand views on her videos. No, Prof could have a very high-quality, high-content channel with the subscriber numbers and views he has, but he doesn't.

Prof's issue is almost exactly the opposite of that of the Dungeon Dudes: instead of cranking out a rapid-fire, breakneck volume of content to keep up with an arbitrary content production schedule because that's how you make a living producing content for YouTube and you have to keep feeding the hungry algorithm, Prof cranks out content that's very easy for him to write because he's been involved in the game for a long time and already knows that the way he learned to play the game is the best way. Any topic that comes up related to D&D, he's got an opinion and can spit out a script explaining his opinion quickly because it's the same opinion he's held for decades. Classic D&D didn't have skills, so the next edition of D&D shouldn't have them either. Classic D&D had slow advancement, so slow advancement is better than fast advancement. This becomes even more obvious in the videos that have very little or nothing to do with running a D&D game, such as where Prof explains why he thought Avengers: Endgame sucked, or why he thought Season 8 of Game of Thrones was 'nearly perfect'.

Some of the oddest episodes of Dungeon Craft have to do when Prof makes admissions that make him out to be, well, the D&D channel for 'that kind' of old-school gamer: the ones who can make comments to each other that they can't make in front of their wives or significant others because the latter find the comments sexist, the kind of guys you can complain to about not being able to tell a Polack joke at work, the guys who treated D&D in the 1980s and 1990s the way that guys in the 1950s and 1960s treated golf where they could build a wall between the world as it existed and the world as they wanted to believe it was (and, if we're being honest, the way that they believed it should actually be). Nowhere is this more evident than in the video where Prof starts by discussing the hot, rich girlfriend he had once who tried but never got into D&D who he just had to break up with, and which by the 3 minute mark has him "calling bullshit" on the idea that relationships are built on compromise and negotiation. (I mean, you saw this coming, right? Right there at the end of the last paragraph about how the ending of Game of Thrones was so good? You knew that's where this was going, right?)

And, of course, he's not immune to just jumping on the latest bandwagon to contribute his drone to the chorus of voices talking about things just to be talking about things. It shouldn't be surprising that Prof jumped on the bandwagon of the lawsuit brought by Hickman and Weis against Wizards of the Coast over the upcoming Dragonlance trilogy, which turned out to be a nothing-burger. Even weirder is the tag in the description of that video which says "Analysis you can't get anywhere else", even though the video doesn't contain anything that hadn't already been discussed over the three weeks between the lawsuit and Prof's video other than Prof's own opinions about it. My favorite howler that Prof makes in this video is his assertion that, because Hickman and Weis got a lawyer to file a lawsuit, that means there's definitely fire under that smoke, because "big law firms do not accept cases they don't think they can win", which both ignores the existence of SLAPP suits as well as the existence of authors who seem to take perverse glee in suing rival authors just to drive them out of the industry. He's also responded with multiple videos in response to Cody at Taking20s controversial 'illusion of choice' essay, and his response to Ginny Di's essay on making online D&D suck less didn't include any of Ginny's solid advice on making online play more compatible with an in-person mentality (recognizing interruptive behavior, or using text chat to maintain side-conversations that would otherwise not be distracting in person), but instead gave these recommendations to players:

Keep your camera turned on

Mute yourself when not talking

Don't distract yourself with technology during the game

Nothing specific on recognizing how online play differs from tabletop play and suggesting ways to bring those two styles closer together, just commands because he's the DM and he says so. Or, in other words, low-effort, opinion-based content.

Nerd Immersion

Nerd Immersion, a channel by Ted that started in May of 2014 and has amassed over 70 thousand subscribers, starts his "channel trailer" video by leafing through a book, then looking up and saying, "Oh, hello" as if he'd just noticed that there was a camera on pointing at him while he's sitting in his orange-trimmed gaming chair. That, sadly, is roughly the level of thought that goes into the actual content contained on this long-tenured but seemingly still super-niche channel.

The weird thing is that at some point, it was obvious that Ted put some real effort into this channel. There are defined sections of the channel that focus on particular things, avoiding the Dungeon Craft problem of 'what topic is our channel about this week?' On Tuesdays, Ted posts a top-10 list. Ted comes up with an idea for a series, like 'Fixing 5E' or 'Reviewing Unearthed Arcana', posts regular articles until he's said what he means to say, then ends the series. (There hasn't been a new Fixing 5E video in roughly a year, meaning that Ted isn't wasting his own time and that of the viewer continually beating horses he's long since killed.) And he comes up with some great ideas for series, such as his series reviewing products on the DMs Guild; that particular series comes out somewhat irregluarly, but not so irregularly that you think he may have stopped doing the series without telling you.

Nerd Immersion's big problem can be summed up by simply looking at the list of videos on his channel and noticing that when he puts his own face on the thumbnail of the video, the startling frequency with which he's shrugging or has a puzzled face or just seems to be presenting himself as if he's not sure what's happening in his own video. I mean, I get it -- that's his image, the personality he wants to present to his audience. He doesn't have all the answers (a refreshing change from Dungeon Craft, honestly), but has some things to share if you're interested, so go ahead and take a peek. But then you take a look at those different sections we spoke about earlier and see that the 'Fixing' series all have the word Fixing at the top of the screen, the Nerd Immersion logo in the top left, two images underneath the text, one on the right side of the page and one on the left, separated right down the middle, and they all have Fix-It Felix on the far right. The Top 10 videos always have Top 10 at the top of the thumbnail. The Unearthed Arcana reviews all have 'Unearthed Arcana' at the top, then 'Review' in an odd off-set to the right beneath 'Unearthed Arcana'.

In other words, Ted has a formula, and he's damn well going to follow it.

Now it's not a bad thing to have a workflow -- if you're going to be cranking out videos at the volume that Ted does (not to mention the others on this list), you'd better have some kind of process for making the video, getting the thumbnail on it, etc.; otherwise each new video is a horrible nightmare of effort as you re-invent the wheel for every project. Nobody wants to do that, and the results would likely be unwatchable. Having a process is a good thing. But the Dungeon Dudes clearly also have a process -- they've put out at least two videos a week for three and a half years, so they damn well have a process or they wouldn't have been able to get out that much content. Looking at their channel, though, shows you that while they have a brand, and one that's evolving over time to boot, they're not just making the same video over and over again, or at least you wouldn't think that from looking at the thumbnails.

Ted's most interesting videos are where he's interviewing another person or even just having another person in the video, because having another person around clearly takes him at least a bit outside his rigid formulaic comfort zone. The problem is that those videos are few and far between -- the review of the infernal tiefling is about eight months separated from his interview with Celeste Conowitch about her Venture Maidens campaign guide. Also interesting are his unboxing videos, because Ted clearly likes minis and takes some degree of joy in cracking open and looking at new minis. His unboxing videos aren't as irregular as his interview videos, but they are fairly recent, with the first appearing just a few months ago, so it's still not clear if this is going to be a new regular part of the channel, or just another series that goes until he says what he wants to say about minis and then stops.

Most of the stuff on the site, though, is just, well, stuff, cranked out on a formula and thrown out into the digital void with the same soft-spoken volume regardless of whether it's major news or a press release. As an example, while pretty much everybody had an opinion on the Dragonlance lawsuit, Ted covered when the suit was announced, when it was dismissed by Weis and Hickman, when the actual trilogy that was the subject of the novels was announced, and the official release date of the first book in the new trilogy. When it came time to get ready to announce the newest campaign book, Ted was on the job, posting a video preparing for the announcement, another video later the same day when his original prediction of a Feywild adventure book seemed to be contradicted by other rumors that the book would be a Ravenloft book, then posted yet another video when the actual book was leaked on Amazon at 11:24pm later that same day confirming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, posted the video discussing the official announcement of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft the next day, and then the day after that followed up with more details on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft revealed in Dragon+. That's five videos in three days, for a grand total of just over 100 thousand views combined. The intention seems like Ted wants to be the CNN of the D&D news scene, but with those kind of distribution numbers, the result is more like your local home town's shopping circular that occasionally also features stories about the latest project to fix the potholes on Main Street. Just like nobody's doing 24/7 news coverage of your local town council, nobody is (or probably should strive to) doing 24/7 coverage of the gaming industry and Wizards of the Coast. At some point it just becomes running a script, pressing a button to upload the next video, because it's news, and while you don't have to think about news to quite the same degree you have to think about more opinion-based topics, once you stop thinking about the process and what it is you're making, all you have left is executing the formula, over and over again, and both the input and the output becomes repetitive.

Repetitive videos, in repetitive formats, with repetitive text, to keep the monster fed for another day. I can admire the effort that goes into it, but the overwhelming presence of the formula involved in cranking out this content keeps me from feeling that it's worth engaging with. It's low-effort, because the effort has been meticulously removed from the process.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here. There's not really any constructive criticism I could provide to these channels because, as I hope I've pointed out, it seems like low-effort content is pretty much the only thing these channels have to offer or in truth can offer, and anything that might cause their owners to re-consider their channels to improve their content would almost certainly lead to a very different if not wholly different channel. With things being as they are online, there's no guarantee that any new, higher-effort channel would be any more successful than the old low-effort one (remember the RavenloftTravelAgent channel with absolutely miniscule numbers; effort doesn't automatically equate with success). I can't even claim that being low-effort channels necessarily makes these channels bad (despite what I said in the intro); after all, they all have at least some good ideas, especially Nerd Immersion, and they each have subscribers and a following. I guess this is just my way of putting some small amount of effort into explaining why I don't feel like doing more to help these channels succeed, because I'd rather put my support toward channels making higher-quality, higher-effort content, especially because its not the content itself, but people engaging with that content that really drives a channel's success.

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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My Problems With X of Swords So Far....

SPOILERS!!!!!

As of this post, we are 16 of 22 chapters into this crossover event, the first of the Krakoa Era. I want to start off by saying that I have largely been enjoying this era of X-Men overall; I came for Jonathan Hickman taking over the franchise, but spent some of my quaruntine time catching up on the other titles and mostly enjoyed them. I am by no means an X-Men expert or superfan, but I know my lore pretty well and am a fan. That being said, let’s dive into this mess.

I want to give credit where credit is due, the first half of this event has been well crafted. The writers, as apparently led by Hickman and Tini Howard, have worked to create a consistent tone across all of the books and it shows. This is clearly an event crafted with care and skill. And aside from the error on Bogdanovic’s part, the art teams have been on point delivering great looking books. Considering this, the pedigree of the teams, and again, Jonathan Hickam, the guy who Marvel trusted to end Stan and Jack’s creation in Secret Wars, leading this event- this is should by all measures be much better than it is. Even if it didn’t live up to the aforementioned event, it should still be better than what we’ve got because of the ideas we’ve got on the page. I think these are all interrelated problems with the event, but I’m going to list them individually as I see them.

The Problems

1. Pacing- This largely effects the first half of the event, considering how the backhalf has changed, but we spent nearly 10 issues of the X-Men simply gathering their prophosized swords as ruled by the host of the tournament between the two sides, Saturynye. During this time, we did not get a lot of ideas of strategy or spycraft to learn more about a largely unknown enemy. We got a lot of decompressed character introspection, and even a set up to Al Ewing’s upcoming SWORD book (looking majorly forward to that book). This meant that we didn’t learn a lot about these characters that we did not already know to try to drive up the emotional tension that I don’t believe worked as the internal stakes did not match the scale of the external threats- the end of a utopia. This might have worked more if there were less of it and thus getting right to the heart of the matter. But the event spent so much space on spinning it’s wheels for.....what reason? Why was it necessary to give so much time this aspect compared to other possibilities? This brings me to my next problem.

2. The Promise of the New- One of the great things about this event is how it rewrites what we know about Apocalypse to make him more interesting while giving us a huge new set of characters and lore to get to know and love with the revelation of a whole secret history of mutants on Earth and then the history of the exiled mutants to what basically amounts to a Hell after fending it off from taking over Earth. It’s genuinely a great addition to Apocalypse and the franchise as a whole. I am supremely excited about the future of the Arrako people, but we spent 10 issues of the X-Men gathering swords while learning very little about this new land and new people. We learned about Solem a little bit and how he relates to the rest of Arrako, but that’s basically it. We are 16 issues in and we don’t know a whole lot about this lands or even more specifically the histories of Swordbreakers of Arrako. We know a little, but in all that time where the characters of X-Men and Arrako could have been interacting and building relationships to actually have drama beyond one side is coming to dominate the Earth for ancient reasons, we got next to nothing. And even as the tournament has started, the information and drama between the new side is minimal; enough to make the move the narrative forward but that’s it. I’m not saying I need a whole history course, but I definitely feel like we should know more than we do know about Arrako. I think we’ve in fact learned more about Otherworld than Arrako, which brings me to my next problem.

3. Otherworld....Why?- Seriously, why? It’s pretty clear both before and after Secret Wars that it isn’t necessary to travel through Otherworld to travel the multiverse. So...why? Because they want to build up Otherworld as a new playground for future stories and to connect othe ongoing drama of what had been happening in Excalibur, which...ok. Look I get that it helps to develop long unused properties to breath new life into them, but what does Otherworld have to do with Arrako other than apparently you have to travel through it to get to it? That seems forced to me and it does nothing to heighten the drama of the battle between Krakoa and Arrako. It forces a war to become a tournament, but other than that....again, it really doesn’t add anything. Otherworld’s role in this story is completely unnecessary. It’s easy to imagine this story without Otherworld. If Otherworld played a less forced role and a role that made more sense to the conflict, I wouldn’t have a problem with it’s inclusion or learning as much as we have about it. But, we’ve been given more information about various parts of Otherworld that have not been important and we could have spent that time learning more about or developing the relationships of Arrako/Krakoa.

4. A Tournament of the Absurd- I know I complained about it taking ten issues just to get our two sides into the same room for conflict, but then it took another three before we got to our first conflict. We were over half way through the crossover and no one had drawn their sword against their would-be enemy in favor of an overly theatrical and long dinner where we finally got some relationship building but were still not at the main draw of this attraction- the duels or whatever type of conflict it would really turn out to be. Literrally anything that involved the swords being used for combat got pushed back until like 60% through this story, which is squandering the promise of the premise. But finally, this week get got the to the action, and it was nothing like anticipated. Our first match lasts less 3 pages, which could be exciting if we understood what was going on with how the nature of the loss, but then it ‘s undercut by a plot point that makes very little sense and does not give the characters involved any real agency. An unexpected romance or marriage is always a nice surprise in a story like this, but this crossover doesn’t earn it. The characters are literally whisked away against their wills and told to marry each other without knowing a thing about each other, nor can they communicate with each other. If the marriage was a solution because of the two sides coming to an arrangement by the two sides talking it over or if it had been the two newlyweds plan based on their own insights and choices, then this idea would have been wonderful. But again, literally taken against their wills without warning and forced to marriage for the sake of two societies without it even being clear that this really advanced the cause of or guarnteed the safety of either side. Then we move forward to a fight that has promise only to be immediately stopped from fighting to participate in a childish contest between two obviously mismatched opponents that makes the contest one sided. Like, What The Actual Fuck? Why avoid the fight in favor of that contest? One clearly has more entertainment value than the other. Fuck it, fine, let’s see if Wolverine is given a fun fight. His first match (yeah, we’re getting too much Logan here) has potential, but the creative team decides to make the fight more psychedlic to the detriment of clarity of choreography and thus removes tension. It’s a style choice that pulls away from the fight and then the victory is undermined by a bullshit twist of the rules that compounds the lack of clarity into greater frustration. Then Wolverine is transported to a drinking contest against a teammate? Like, why? What does this do for the story? There’s a brief line used to justify it and the next thing it sets up, but it’s weak. It’s fucking frustrating, because developing the relationship of these two characters could have easily been handled differently rather than wasting one of the spots in the tournament for a point that is given instead of earned. I will give the third match a pass as that was actually what the story promised; intrigue and violence between the players.

At this point, unless something major changes, I’m calling it here: X of Swords is bad. It wastes is promised premise, it wastes it’s time, and it wastes it’s potential. The problem is that this is clearly crafted by people who generally know what the hell they’re doing, but for some ungodly reason their talents are not being put to their fullest. We’ve seen all of them write better stories; heck, the ongoing stories before the crossover started were better. Even if something major happens to really hook me back into this story that will only change my opinion from bad to mediocre because we’re already 75-ish% done with story, and that means all these problems will always be true. I really hope the characters of Arrako stick around after this story, because I think they have immense potential, but this is just a bad start. I know there are people out there that are happy with this story, and I’m happy for them. But, I hope I am not alone in seeing these problems. Let me know if I am not alone.

#x-men #marvel comics #x of swords #spoilers #wolverine #storm #apocalypse

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tanadrin · 5 years

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So all the terrible retcons and geographic inconsistency (Kul Tiras wtf) and the time travel and the bullshit with the night elves is bad (Illidan is the worst character ever, don't @ me), but the most frustrating part of WoW lore to me is its failure to explore certain complex emotional themes in a really satisfying way--like, the people who expound and expand on Warcraft lore are canny enough to notice that these emotional themes *exist*, but not clever enough to actually work with them or build them out, and so the whole thing collapses into rule-of-cool melodrama. There's nothing wrong with rule-of-cool melodrama; I love rule-of-cool melodrama. But Warcraft lore is *begging* to combine that rule of cool melodrama with some really rich and interesting emotions and character interpretations, it sets them up and is all ready to knock them down, and just... doesn't.

Take the conversation between Saurfang and Garrosh in the Borean Tundra, in WotLK, the one that ends with Saurfang saying "I don't eat pork." I think that's emblamatic of the big theme that unites the Horde, that makes it make sense as a faction. The Alliance, after all, started as a defensive association in the face of the Orc invasion; its renaissance after the creation of Durotar and the invasion of the Scourge is only natural. But what is the theme of the Horde? Is it honor? Strength? Sheer brutality? Well, none of those things. Orcs claim to value honor and strength; the Forsaken are certainly various shades of very dark gray at best, the Tauren and the Orcs *do* seem like natural allies of a sort, but all the races of the Horde have something even deeper in common: trauma. The Orcs are still (cf. Saurfang) dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been both forced and partially complicit in the atrocities of the First and Second War--after which their homeworld was destroyed, they were forced into concentration camps, and they had to rebuild their culture and their identity from the ground up. They have to find a new place in a new world, and there's this tension between the younger generation that doesn't have firsthand experience with any of this and just remembers that the Horde used to be a name that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies (Garrosh Hellscream, for instance) and the older generation that remembers how awful that time really was, and doesn't want to see the old ways revived because it might just destroy their people for good this time. Then there's the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, who were both driven out of their old homelands, and fell in with the Horde as natural allies with similar cultural points of reference; and the Blood Elves, whose suffering in the Third War was severe enough to radically alter their culture, coupled with being betrayed by their ruler who decided that joining the Burning Legion and abandoning them sounded like a better time than rebuilding Quel'Thalas.

And then there's the Forsaken. Oh, man, the Forsaken. The Forsaken and Sylvanas are some of my favorite characters in all of WoW, because sure, you could look at it and say, "okay, creepy undead who like green things that go plop and mad science = evil, bad guys." But you'd really be missing what makes the Forsaken interesting. They're not the Scourge--they explicitly broke away from the Scourge when Arthas left Lordaeron. They're not invaders, either. They're in fact mostly the human population of the destroyed kingdom of Lordaeron, the inheritors of that land, but who are treated by the Alliance as interlopers with no right to the very towns and villages they have *always* called home. They're treated as monsters by every living person who ever knew them, and they can't help but regard themselves that way, too. "What are we, if not slaves to this torment?" is one of the casual interaction lines you get when you click on Sylvanas: they do not *like* being dead. But Sylvanas is ruthless and cruel and after Arthas is killed, wins the Val'kyr over to her side so she can keep making more Forsaken. Why?

Simple. Let us imagine: you are an ordinary person, of no unusually great or poor moral virtue. You are hurt, badly. Grieviously. In a way you will never recover from. And everyone you love, all of your friends and your family, the whole society you come from, now sees you as an unredeemable monster that should, no, must be destroyed. How long must you be called a monster before you decide--fuck it, I *will* be the monster they call me. Because, at least that way, no one can ever hurt me again.

The overpowering motivation for the Forsaken is not power or bloodlust; it's not money, or forbidden knowledge. It's making sure no one in the whole world is ever able to make slaves of them again. To make sure they will not be hurt. And the biggest misstep the Alliance ever made was not reaching out to Sylvanas with overtures of friendship as soon as she established her kingdom--because like it or not, she has the support of the people of Lordaeron, and thus a damn good claim to her position. Maybe, if they had, they could have influenced the Forsaken, shown them that they had friends and didn't need to resort to amoral methods to defend themselves. But as it stands, they only have allies of convenience in the Horde (at least until Sylvanas becomes Warchief), and they know that no one in Azeroth is quite happy to see them continue to exist and be free. Everything else about the Forsaken--their use of dark magic, their development of a new, even more destructive plague, their recruiting former servants of the Lich King and raising new Forsaken from among the dead of the ongoing wars--makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a people that knows they are under threat from all sides, and will do anything to survive.

(The Draenei could have been something like this, too, FWIW. Like, a broken people, a people of exiles who are most comfortable in the shadows and with moral ambiguity. But then Metzen had to go make them Righteous Space Goats. I mean, come on. They're just boring now. They were never going to be Horde-aligned--there's too much history with the Orcs there!--but having a group like that on the side of the Alliance, to help drive home the point that there is not a clear good guys/bad guys distinction here, would have been really nice.)

That actually makes them a pretty damn good fit for the Horde. Moreover, it creates an interesting point of tension with the Alliance, which is clearly *not* always the good guys. I mean, there's the matter of orc concentration camps, but also consider the refusal of leaders like Daelin Proudmoore to contemplate peace (and the subsequent, somewhat... forced turn of Jaina Proudmoore from dove to hawk) and the steadfast refusal of many on that side to deal fairly with the races of the Horde just because they appear monstrous. And arrogance, hoo boy. Dalaran, Gilneas, the Night Elves--huge swathes of the Alliance are characterized by being arrogant and not a little cruel.

And what of Sylvanas becoming Warchief? I don't know where the BFA lore is going (I'm not playing retail anyway), but right now it looks like they're setting up another Garrosh type situation, and preparing for Thrall to retake the Warchief-ship, but if they do that it would be a real pity. First of all, because, well, we saw that already in Mists of Pandaria! What, are we going to besiege Orgrimmar again? Second of all--Sylvanas and Garrosh are *very* different people. Garrosh was, well, Proud; hence the Sha of Pride. He wanted glory and power, he wanted war for war's sake, so he could live up to his father's reputation as a warrior. He was willing to sacrifice everything else that made the Horde the Horde for that. Sylvanas, though, has one overriding motivation: Keep Her People Safe. Punish the people who hurt her is a strong secondary motivation--but it's part of that first one, because if she can make her enemies' victories painful enough, she might discourage them from trying to press their advantage. And her people *trust* her on this: "Dark Lady watch over you," they say when you take your leave. She is not an autocrat--she is their beloved protector. So, she makes the ruins of Lordaeron uninhabitable. She annihilates Teldrassil. Does she spend very many Orc and Troll and Tauren lives doing so? Very well. They aren't *her* people.

I don't think this has to be a tragic flaw leading to her downfall. It sure doesn't make her a good leader for the rest of the Horde, though (even though, on an emotional and aesthetic level, I am 3000% here for Warchief Sylvanas, even more than Warchief Vol'jin, who also had a lot of the creepy threatening vibe that made him a much more interesting choice than either Thrall or Garrosh). But you could make it one, and you could do it very well--they've already mentioned in the tie-ins that Calia Menethil, Arthas's sister, teeeechnically has a claim to the throne of Lordaeron. And, even more interesting, is no longer quite among the living, even if the mechanism of that unlife is happy fun magic instead of evil death magic. Moreover, she has some sympathy for the Forsaken. You could have a squaring-off between them, and you could have a Queen Calia--maybe. If you could bridge that gap and make her understand that the Forsaken feel fundamentally apart from the other human kingdoms now, if she could come to understand just how much evil the Alliance has done to them, if she could really grok what it's like to be them. Then you could have a leader who understands their trauma--but also wants to heal it, rather than lash out at anyone and everyone that might conceivably be a threat. That, too, would be very interesting.

(There’s a reason that, while I loved the Alliance as a kid, I only play Horde toons as an adult. It’s not just that the Horde feel more interesting and vivid to me. It’s that the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the Alliance stands out in much greater relief now. The Horde aren’t good guys--nobody’s the good guys, here--but they don’t lie about their motivations, and they don’t act with cruelty and then play the victim in response. Jaina was an important exception, but they badly mishandled her character in the runup to MoP, which I find very hard to forgive.)

But knowing Blizz, even if they go vaguely that route, they won't stick the emotional landing. There is a very good, if very OTT and melodramatic (in the best possible way), series of fantasy novels or games lurking *behind*, or perhaps parallel, to Warcraft's lore. It is a shame that Blizzard has done so much to obscure it with obnoxious cruft, retcons and timeline compression, repetitive use of the same handful of characters, stupid-ass time-travel plots that create ten thousand plot holes and inconsistencies, shitty tie-in novels (cf. everything by Richard Knaak), and a total failure to make half the world's characters (i.e., everyone in the Alliance) at all interesting. I have a daydream of doing my own version of WoW lore and posting it somewhere like on AO3, but one of the things that makes WoW lore simultaneously so interesting and disappointing to me is that it's embedded in the explorable, realized space of video game worlds. Hard to reproduce that in print, I think. Might be worth it to try.

#world of warcraft #lore #warcraft lore #the forsaken #sylvanas windrunner #the work of chris metzen and its discontents #but hey #at least i got full chain of the scarlet crusade on my warrior in classic

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iheardarumorxxx · 4 years

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Midnight Sun, Chapter Ten - Theory

Alright, time to jump back in. Took a couple of days off, refreshed my brain, now I think I can handle more of this asshole.

instead of answering my demand

See that? See how Eddie just goes ahead and tells us that he’s being a demanding little shithead? More shades of that controlling tendency that he has all throughout the series, outright stated. This is literally the first sentence of the chapter, and he’s not even pretending to be subtle about it.

describe it so that she would understand.

Yes, because ‘I can read minds, but only if they’re relatively nearby, and it gets easier to pick out voices as I become familiar with them’ isn’t clear in the slightest. See that, Eddie? I just explained for you with 23 words, instead of going off on some dumbass tangent metaphorthat takes up an entire paragraph like you do here because you think that the human mind is so small and weak that it can’t possibly comprehend cut and dry explanations.

The fact that Eddie thinks he needs to explain things in analogy for Bella because she won’t get it if he doesn’t really goes against this supposed idea he has about her being smarter and so above the other pitiful hooman folk. Either she’s too human to understand like everyone else, or she’s smarter and more rational and would get it without the metaphor. Pick one, Eddie.

I will say, one thing that I took from the Twilight series that still sticks with me is the phrase ‘Holy crow’. I do, in fact, use it unironically. It’s absolutely stupid, but I like the way it flows off the tongue.

Anyway, Bella just shouted it because Eddie is bending the car to his vampire physics again and going 100MPH, which, I would like to point out, she would have absolutely realized before now if she wasn’t so blatantly unobservent. She would have felt it, it wouldn’t have taken looking at the spedomoter to realize it.

“We’re not going to crash.”

Eddie is absolutely certain of this fact, and I am too only because SM would never let anything like that happen to her little woobie vampire and her SI Mary Sue. However, let’s apply real world logic to this for a sec. Just a sec because this story can’t handle real world logic for too long, but. They are presumably on a highway, going 100MPH at let’s say 930 to 10ish PM. I’ve never lived in Washington, but I’m going to make the presumption that there probably isn’t too much traffic this late, though, perhaps a bit more if it’s a Friday or Saturday night. Perhaps Eddie can keep perfect control of his own car, even going that fast, while most likely paying little to no attention to the road because he is constantly looking over at Bella in the passenger seat. He has his mind-reading power, which he probably uses to help him drive, and maybe there isn’t another car directly behind him based on how fast he’s going.

He’s still not taking the other drivers on the road into account. What if the car in front of you that you are rapidly coming up on because you’re going so fast sees a turtle or a deer or some other kind of animal in the road and swerves to avoid it. Since this is real world logic, even if you see it coming with your mind reading power, you can’t make your car stop on a dime going 100MPH. You’re going to crash, and since you are going so fast, it’s gonna be a pretty nasty one. Your vampire body can handle that, because you’re a marble adonis god, but Bella over there is squishy and human. You slam those breaks, seatbelt aside, she’s gonna end up through the windshield or strangled to death by that seatbelt.

He’s assuming that his vampire magic strength and perfectness is gonna be enough to protect him from literally everything. It will, because this book is not realistic in the slightest, but he’s still a dick for not taking into account the other drivers on the road. And not taking into account the fact that Bella is clearly upset and terrified that he’s going so fast.

Two and a half paragraph rant over one line. Check.

Bella spills about how Jacob told her the old story about the Cullens being sparkley, evil vampires who aren’t allowed at La Push because the wolves will eat them. And I have to say, because this story is the entire basis for Bella knowing that Eddie and his ilk are vamps, how the hell does it take her so long to figure out that Jacob is a werewolf in New Moon? Like, I know it’s because she’s stupid, but since she’s supposed to be wise beyond her years and smart and shit, why did it not click that both sides of the story must be true.

Rant for a different book, but.

I supposed this meant I was now free to slaughter a small, defenseless tribe on the coastline, were I so inclined. Ephraim and his pack of protectors were long dead.

This is it. This is the line I’ve been waiting for. I knew it was coming and it STILL pisses me off so damn much reading it. Do you see that? Do you see it? Eddie is talking about straight up genocide. He is literally talking about killing hundreds of people just because some teenage kid told an old folktale to a girl he thinks is cute to try and impress her. I would like to remind you of that line that Alice said earlier: “It helps if you think of them as people.” IT HELPS IF YOU THINK OF THEM AS PEOPLE, EDWARD!!! These people have done literally nothing to you! If you wanted to go, say, beat up Jacob Black for spilling your secret, that’s one thing (A terrible thing that is bullshit, even if Jacob gets a jerkass makeover in a few months) but you are literally la de fucking da over the idea of going down to the reservation and murdering every man, woman, and child there because of some bullshit technicality broken treaty. HOW THE FUCK DOES ANYONE THINK THIS GUY IS THE HERO? HOW DOES ANYTHING SEE HIM AS A GOOD LOVE INTEREST? HOW IS HE A PROTAGONIST? HE’S A FUCKING MURDERER, PLAIN AND SIMPLE SPELLED OUT RIGHT THE FUCK THERE! It was spelled out pretty damn well in that first classroom scene, but here we are reinforcing it, and this is the guy that SM said she was willing to leave her husband for. THIS GUY.

I hate it. I hate him. I’m not a happy camper.

And I’m gonna move on before I burst a blood vessel from how mad it makes me.

Bella goes on to tell Eddie that she flirted the story out of Jacob, and that she doesn’t care. He replies with “HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE! I’M A MONSTAH!” and she just shrugs and pops her gum. Eddie is just absolutely shocked by this because how could she not care? He even wonders if there’s something wrong with her. The answer is yes, she’s clearly a hybristophile, but that’s beside the point.

The ‘how old are you’ ‘17′ ‘how long have you been 17′ ‘a while’ exchange is actually kind of cute, on it’s own. Had it been in a better book, it might have made me smile a little. But in Twilight it just felt like forced comedy, and here with Eddie being all Emo about being a monstah and also being condescending and clearly angry about Bella knowing his secret, it comes off a lot darker in tone. It could have come off as a playful exchange between people getting to know one another, and instead, it’s a darker tone and it’s almost uncomfortable. The movie had this problem, too, where they made it all dark and angsty instead of just being a cute little exchange that it should have been.

“I can’t sleep.”

This is more of that thrown away world building that SM does. First it was the Vampires never Change thing and now the can’t sleep thing. It could have been so fascinating to explore what not being able to sleep does to the psyche of these Pires. How different vampires get used to that sensation over different periods of time. Did it unsettle Eddie at first when he was turned and just couldn’t sleep anymore? Was Jasper already a night owl who barely slept, so it wasn’t much of a change for him anyway? What do they do to fill their time? If their hobbies and interests never change, it seems like they wouldn’t be using all that newly acquired time to learn new skills and hobbies, even if that particular ‘never change’ plot point isn’t explored either and never actually seems relevant to them. Has a Pire ever tried to sleep anyway? Just lay down and closed their eyes and waited for eight hours to pass, hoping they would drift off? This is interesting lore. It’s something that could have given depth to the vampires instead of being a throwaway plot point so Eddie could watch Bella sleep at night. I’m disappointed. I want a good idea to actually be used well.

Edward calls Bella observant and to that I can only say ‘Ha.’

Eddie finally realizes that Bella has the hots for him too and it’s so UWU and trite, but he has to go and bring up that stupid Hades and Persephone metaphor again and piss me off in the process.

The get to Bella’s house and take forever with their goodbyes, and right at the end Eddie goes on about how he’s got this new hunger in him just looking at Bella and feeling how warm she is and shit and it’s just him being horny again, but nothing happens and Bella heads inside. But don’t worry, Eddie assures us that he’ll be in his usual perch in the rocking chair later that night to stalk her and watch her sleep, so everything is well.

She couldn’t love me the way I loved her

GET IT? BECAUSE VAMPIRES ARE BETTER THAN YOU(tm) AT EVERYTHING INCLUDING HOW HARD THEY LOVE? Seriously, so damn sick of this idea that the vampires in this universe just do everything and see everything and smell everything and feel everything just so much more intensely than the pitiful hoomans. I still have a rant about it. It’s still coming. Don’t worry.

A casual throwaway mention of the Voltouri here, AKA the vampire Mafia that make and enforce the rules. They don’t actually matter or have any real power in this series, and they suck, but nice little nod to the audience as a reminder that there is supposed to be a governing body in the vampire world.

Carlisie and Eddie boy are off to take care of the rapist who almost got Bella, and the entire fucking drive, Carlisle is just sitting there thinking about how wonderful Eddie is and how he deserves happiness and it’s such bullshit for him to be thinking that way when he KNOWS that Eddie can read his thoughts. He’s literally just showering him in compliments for the sake of it just so that Eddie can hear them and puff up his ego. I don’t buy that it’s just passive thoughts. He wants Eddie to hear them.

We all know who Carlisle and Esme’s favorite child is.

We end the chapter with Eddie going back to Bella’s house to watch her sleep, deciding to take it upon himself to wander around her house uninvited, and the rambling on about how Bella clearly doesn’t have a guardian angel because she crossed his path and no guardian angel would allow that. Then he makes some crack about being her guardian vampire, talks about how, oh, it’s actually a good thing that he took it upon himself to break into her house to watch her sleep because he got her another blanket because she seemed cold, and smiles to himself when she mumbles his name in her sleep.

That’s it, chapter done, I’m tired. I’m gonna try to crank out another one (maybe two) tonight, but no promises because this one really took a lot out of me. These characters just suck. Anyway, as always, feel free to message me or DM me to talk about the book, recommend future projects, etc. And you can always buy me a snack using the CashApp tag in my bio. Until next chapter, good damn bye.

#sierra recaps stuff #midnight sun #midnight sun spoilers #twilight #ms chapter 10

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dlamp-dictator · 4 years

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Allen Rambles about Code of Brawl

Man... remind me to never talk about having a future Rambling in the works, it’ll instantly fall into draft-hell. But anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk about Arknights in depth for a while now, but I’ve never had much drive to actually finish the damn draft of my initial thoughts a few months ago. I couldn’t tell you why, I just lost the drive to finish the thing. However, with Code of Brawl coming to a close and my thoughts on the event still lingering I think I can use it as jumping off point to actually talk about the game.

That said, here’s the synopsis.

Arknights is a Tower Defense game for the PC mobile devices placed in the world of Terra, where an infectious disease known as Oripathy ravages the land, slowly turning people to minerals in a slow and painful process. You play as the Doctor, an amnesiac military commander of the Rhodes Island pharmaceutical company who fights against the Infected radicals known as the Reunion.

That’s about as far as I can go in a single paragraph for main story, but Code of Brawl instead focuses on the eccentric adventures of Pengiun Logistics, side faction of the game that’s a seemingly innocent delivery company with quite the ragtag group in it, consisting of the happy-go-lucky gunner Exusiai, the cold and dismissive swordswoman Texas, the excitable and energetic Sora, and the business-savvy Croissant. All led by the charismatic and multi-talented Emperor. However, as their new intern Bison comes into the fold the group is caught in a series of gang wars and organized crime trying to snuff out the company.

And unlike Fire Emblem Three Houses, that really is the basic plot without me sarcastically building anything up. With that all said, I think I can move on and talk about...

The Story

The story of Code of Brawl honestly has the best and worst of Arknights writing. I think having a story that focused on a group outside of Rhodes Island was for the better. For all the lore blurbs and archive notes we get, I think Code of Brawl proves just how little Rhodes Island is involved with the world of Terra at large despite it’s apparent reputation as a weird and quirky company with some terrifyingly powerful Operators and lofty ambitions. And while I’m still only on Chapter 4 since I’m grinding out some E2 before moving on, Rhodes Island really does more reacting to random Reunion plans than anything proactive with their goals of curing Oripathy. They feel more like a counter military force to Reunion, and a barely effective on at that given the point of the story I’m at. Code of Brawl, being focused on another group with a more direct conflict and villains, feels a lot more cohesive and interesting, as Penguin Logistics’s goal is to just get Bison through his first day and take out whatever force is harassing them this week.

Penguin Logistics as a whole is a rather interesting bunch of ruffians and seeing them is gallivant around Lungmen trading blows and bullets with gangsters is a joy to read and see. Seeing some of the inner workings of Lungmen society, seeing a bit of the underbelly, as well as getting to see the cast just have more casual interactions with each other is great. We learn that Sora really is just gay for Texas, and the all of Penguin Logistics has only 3 function braincells with Texas having one and Mostima having the other two. We get to see that Sora has probably beaten someone to death with her microphone at some point given how willing she is to bar fight. A lot of fun stuff.

And then... there’s Mostima.

Look, I like this story, I really do, but Mostima really didn’t need to be here as far as the story is concerned. All she does plot-wise is rile up Exusiai, drop some cryptic advice for Bison, shows she knows more powerful than she leads on, and is a bit of a deus ex machina for the end of the plot, and not even by that much. You could had replaced her with Chen, Swire, Hoshigumi, ShiraYuki, or anyone else that would logically be in Lungmen at the time. Hell, ShiraYuki knowing everything a being cryptic about it would at least be in character for her.

And that’s not to knock Mostima. I actually pulled her in my last ten-pull (didn’t get Waii Fu though, and I’m still salty about that), she’s a pretty good and damn near god-tier once you get her to E2 if some of the guides on her are to be believed, though her kit is a little niche for an AoE caster of her cost. However, as far as the story is concerned she shows a serious issue with Arknights as a whole. That’s its constant need to have half of their characters be mysterious.

Mysterious Characters

So, just to give an example, here is a list of characters in Arknights with a Mysterious Past™. These are characters that either have their archive notes explicitly state their past is unknown, or characters who’s past is implied but but deliberately kept unconfirmed.

With that said...

Mostima

Myrtle

Cuora

Skadi

Specter

Shining

Siege

Projekt Red

Specter

Blue Poison

Lappland

Texas (?)

ShiraYuki

AMIYA

Okay, I’m cheating a little with Texas since she has enough of her past implied, but it’s still technically a mystery as far as the specifics go. But you see my point, right? A lot of characters have a Mysterious Past™, which is a nice shorthand to not go into depth about writing their background. Now, you don’t need to give twenty paragraphs on their backstory, but something would be nice. Keeping things a mystery might be nice for the theory-crafters, but for me it’s annoy as hell to see so many character, so many high-rated that really just have their skills and design to go off of, especially with most the cast overall having a pretty simple background to them that are interesting when you read through the lore blurbs and think about it. Breeze is a former noble that wanted to do more good in the world than throwing money at a problem. Liskarm is a protective friend that joined Rhodes Island to make sure the problematic Franka integrated without problems. Frostleaf is a child soldier that wants to do some good in the world after becoming Infected. Kroos, Beagle, and Fang joined Rhodes Island after getting kicked out of their old jobs. You don’t need to be flashy, but giving answers isn’t an admission of lacking creativity. The hints might be nice for the analysts, but the fans would likely want some answers.

Again, Mostima isn’t a problem, and a lot characters in that list do have some concrete hints about their past. Texas and Lappland are likely a former mafia heiresses and old rivals. Shining was likely a highly skilled mercenary before realizing she could do more good in the world with a healing staff instead of a sword. Siege is likely apart of Londinium royalty, but was either exiled or ran due to political turmoil. But that’s the issue, likely isn’t confirmed. Mostima being a powerful character with a mysterious past just feels like a cop out to me. It’s not bad, but she’s a symptom of what some of the issues of Arknights story is. I’m not asking for AFK Arena-levels of lore, just... an explanation here or there would be nice.

But anyway that’s my main issue, moving on.

General Gushing

Despite that large critique I have, there’s a lot I love about this story. For simplicity sake, because I’m tired of all the editing, I’ll put it into list form:

Penguin Logistics in general was just a joy to see. Watching them in action and just how laissez-faire they are is hilarious, especially when paired with the straightforward and reserved Bison freaking out over the wackiness.

Speaking of, Bison made for a very good straight man to balance out all the wild antics of PL. He really kept things from getting too crazy by at least questioning the zaniness, and the point when he finally stops caring and just charges in with a crazy plan of his own just gave me the giddiest of smiles.

Given how they discuss it, PL apparently trade blows with criminals and thugs on a daily basis, and since they’re just a delivery company this implies they likely deliver drugs or other hot cargo the mafia and gangs want... and given Emperor’s personality, that wouldn’t shock me.

Emperor in general is a delight of a character. He’s about as charismatic and wild as his aesthetic makes him look. I would legit whale for him if he ever become an operator.

Learning a little bit about Lungmen culture was fun as well, as little of it as we see. It’s my personal headcanon now that the mafia and general thugs of Lungmen don’t mess with civilians because they’re either a sleeper agent under the Rat King’s protection or they might be a kung fu master in plain clothes like Waai Fu.

Waai Fu and Texas fist fighting in the streets of Lungmen is just hilarious and awesome. I honestly don’t know what that says about either of them. Texas is holding her own against a martial artist with over 10 years of experience barehanded, meanwhile Waai Fu is holding her own against what lore blurbs have implied is the former heiress/hitman of a mafia. All the while drunkards and Texas’s coworkers are egging them on. This is the dumb content I live for.

Save for some of the absolute bullshit of the challenge maps, I found the actual game content to be pretty fair and interesting. The Bullies required good defender placement, a lot of the ranged units focused on targeting the helpful buildings that buffed your characters and increased the operator deployment count, and maps themselves had a few clever chokepoints to work with... At least until they started spamming Fanatics.

Bison actually has a pretty solid kit for a free Operator. He buffs a lot of adjacent units, has a no real weakness, his tools don’t feel niche like Grani or Celycon, overall a great unit. Once I finish E2-ing all my main Operators I might build him next.

While I have issues with her as a story element, Mostima is a 6-star that has instant utility once you promote her to E2, much like Chen and Siege. This is something I’m relieved to say as a lot of my 6-stars aren’t worth much until you E2 them and I’m still trying to E2 some of my easier units like Cuora and Gavial for Chapter 5 and CC.

That’s really all I have to say on that front. So to close things off...

For the Future

Like I always say in these Ramblings, I don’t like the idea of people prattling on about being able to “fix” or “rewrite” something has already been made. It always comes across as both arrogant and ignorant to me. However, I think it’s completely fair to make requests and suggestions for the future. ‘

That said, I'd like to continue seeing side stories without Rhodes Island’s involvement. Both to see other factions in their natural element and because, frankly, Rhodes Island always feels a little out of place when involved in other stories, or at least more of a distraction than a good element if chapter 2 and 3 are anything to go by. I think a Black Steel side story would be nice. Jessica, Franka, Liskarm, and Vanille getting into shenanigans in Columbia or something sounds like a fun time. Maybe have the leader/high commander of the organization as a new operator and they’re a really powerful Supporter than can buff the party, like a 6-star version of Sora or something that gives operators insane ASPD buffs... I don’t know, something like that anyway. Ideally something a little less wordy than Code of Brawl at least.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say. Next time... I’ll talk about something else. Maybe discuss a manga or something.

See you all later.

#arknights #your dictator is speaking

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years

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2x08: Crossroad Blues

Welcome to this season’s real hellatus! We’ve got a little theme for the episodes we’re recapping. Try and guess what it is :D Also, we have some good news and bad news. Good news: We’re going to do a whole week of recaps towards the end of the break! Yay! Bad news: They’re all episodes that we hate. We need to get them off our recap plate before the show ends. Enjoy the hellatus (*crying noise*).

Then:

Sam Winchester, professional puppy dog

Now:

Greenwood, Mississippi

August, 1938

Robert Johnson plays Crossroads Blues on a stage to a crowd at a bar. He briefly hears growls but continues to play. He stops again when he sees shadows race outside. The crowd looks confused. Robert runs outside after hearing barks. He races to a shed, but the unseen source of the barking follows him. He kneels to await his fate.

The door bursts open to find a woman and two men from the bar. The men run to find help and the woman pleads with Robert to stay with her as he mutters, “Dogs, black dogs.” He dies in her arms.

Sam and Dean are at a diner and Sam’s researching how much of an outlaw Dean is. Sam is upset because it’s going to make their job harder now that the feds have them on their radar. Well, they have Dean on their radar. Dean thinks Sam is jealous.

Sam’s got a case. An architect jumped off a building he designed, after calling animal control about seeing wild black dogs in his condo.

There’s a ton of lore on black dogs. Dean brings the real insight to the situation when he tells Sam, “Bet they could hump the crap out of your leg.” AND I MISS THIS DEAN SO MUCH SOME DAYS.

They interview Gunner Lawless his business partner under the guise of writing a tribute for Architectural Digest. His partner is resentful but admits that the man was a genius. He wasn’t always that way though. He wonders why people with true talent die young.

The brothers’ next stop is at an area animal shelter. Dean flirts his way into learning more about black dogs in the area. Dean Bean got Carly’s MySpace address too.

They next head to interview all the people that reported the black dogs. The first on their list is Dr. Sylvia Pearlman. She hasn’t been home in two days. Dean notes that she’s chief of surgery at her hospital, a position she’s had for ten years. She’s only about 42, so she’s very young for that position. They also find a connection to their vic and the doctor. They both visited a place called Lloyd’s Bar.

Meanwhile, the doctor is hiding out in an early season dingy motel room. She’s frazzled and petrified when someone knocks on the door. The motel staff is there demanding money for another night’s stay. She grabs her money and turns to the man in the door, only to see his face warp unnaturally.

The boys find Lloyd’s Tavern next. On the cross road outside the joint, Dean notices yarrow flowers growing alongside the road. These flowers are used for summoning rituals. They put things together and start digging a hole in the middle of the crossroads. They find a tin with various items in it.

People have been summoning and making deals with a demon. “Y’know cause that always ends good.” EAT YOUR WORDS DEAN. Sam says that these people aren’t seeing black dogs, they’re seeing hell hounds.

Meanwhile, the doctor meets her end with a visit from her own date with the hell hounds.

Rosedale, Mississippi

1930

We witness Robert Johnson make his crossroads deal with a demon.

Sam notes that whatever they’re dealing with is a lot like the Robert Johnson lore. Dean notes that Johnson’s music is full of references to hell hounds, demon deals, and the occult. Dean’s barely-tolerating-this-bullshit eyeroll is truly a wonder. (Objectification Sidenote: Damn, Dean’s pretty in this scene.)

Anyway, they have a picture of another person that made a deal, George Darrow. They head to where he lives. They notice pepper on the doorsill. George answers his door but doesn’t want anything to do with them. They reveal that they know about the supernatural and tell him they want to help. Sam asks about the pepper and George tells them that it’s actually goofer dust. It keeps out demons.

George talks about making his deal and reveals that the demon stayed around Lloyd’s for a week making deals with other people. George mentions the architect and doctor. There’s one other person that also made a deal ten years prior, a man named Evan Hudson. George is resigned to his fate and tells the brothers to leave.

Evan Hudson works in his home office late at night and flinches at hell hound barks. His wife peeks in before she heads off on a trip.

As she’s bidding him farewell, her face warps into a dead zombie howl. WHEE HALLUCINATIONS!

Sam and Dean arrive at Evan’s house. Dean opens with asking about Lloyd’s Bar, and Evan immediately slams the door in his face and retreats into his home. That went well! Dean kicks down the door and I’m FINE WITH THIS and not objectifying him at all.

The Winchesters corner Evan in his office. Yes, he knows hell hounds are coming for his soul. Dean’s bitterly dismissive of Evan’s distress, joking about potentially frivolous reasons for him to bargain his soul away. Evan reveals that his wife was dying of cancer, and he made a deal for her health. While Sam melts into a puppy-eyed puddle, Dean still reacts to this with anger. “You ever think about her in all this?” Dean asks. “I think you did this for yourself. So you wouldn’t have to live without her. Well guess what? She’s gonna have to live without you now.”

Dean’s anger is...counterproductive. So Sam pulls Dean away and they consult in the hall. Dean instructs Sam to spread George’s goofer dust around while he high tails it to the crossroads to summon himself a demon. He’ll exorcise it, and that will buy them a little time. Sam calls this out as a reckless plan and speculates that Dean’s only doing it because he thinks their dad made a deal. “What if he struck a deal?” Dean asks. “My life for his soul?” OH this SWEET EMOTIONAL TORTURE! He heads out to summon the demon.

Dean buries his offering in the crossroad and turns around to find a woman smirking at him. She’s a crossroads demon! They take turns objectifying each other and then Dean invites her to meet in his car for a little privacy. Classic serial killer pickup line.

Dean tells the demon his terms. He wants Evan released from his deal and he’ll barter himself for it. “You’d sacrifice yourself for someone else?” she says with a devilish smile. “Like father, like son.”

DRAMATIC MUSIC BREAK

The demon gleefully taunts Dean about John’s deal. When Dean tries to usher her into his car, she balks at the edges of the devil’s trap she sees peeking out from under Baby. Nice try, Dean Bean!

Meanwhile, Evan does his best dramatic chipmunk (prairie dog) impression.

The hell hounds are now growling from INSIDE THE HOUSE! Sam and Evan watch the doors warily.

While the hounds close in, Dean gets emotionally traumatized by the demon. (Side note, her breath is visible in this scene and she’s wearing a short sleeved, thin dress. I’m cold in sympathy.) She taunts him about his man-pain and terrible guilt about John’s death. She has the power to bring back John. Dean seems...interested.

The hell hound at Evan’s house stops rattling the door and the room goes silent for a moment until...the hound bursts through the ventilation grate! What a smart doggo!

Dean wants to learn more about the potential to bring back his dad and mopes under a wooden structure until the demon joins him there. She tells him she can give him a ten year deal: John’s life for Dean’s, and they get ten years together before Dean heads below. She plays Dean like a fiddle, and we get a callback to Dean’s feelings in Faith - that he’s not supposed to be alive. Dean experiences VERY LARGE EMOTIONS before wandering out of the structure. “You think you could throw in a set of steak knives?” He directs her attention upward, where he’s painted a devil’s trap on the underside of the structure. What a smart Dean Bean! Excellent misdirection.

Dean reels off HIS deal: Evan lives, and the demon goes free. If she doesn’t strike a deal, she gets exorcised. (Which is SO embarrassing amirite?)

Dean starts the exorcism and it starts a fierce wind to howling. The wind gusts into Evan’s house and blows away Sam’s goofer dust circle. Sam and Evan run for safety. The hell hound barks fiercely...until it doesn’t.

Cut to Dean angry-kissing the demon. A kiss seals the deal (apparently all demons like to slip a little tongue). (Insert crack headcanon that this is Crowley in an alternate vessel, when he first gets heart eyes for Dean.)

The demon tells Dean that her word is her bond, but if Dean breaks their deal then the first thing she’ll do when she escapes Hell is tear into Evan like he’s wet paper.

The demon can’t resist one parting shot. Dean should’ve taken the deal. John Winchester’s torture is unimaginably bad. Dean charges for her, the demon smokes out, and Dean’s left with a scared woman in the middle of the crossroads and way too many feelings.

Driving away, Sam and Dean listen to the blues and contemplate John’s deal. Sam tries to focus on the people John saved, but Dean’s stuck in a sadness pit of his own making. Sam asks him if he considered actually making the deal. Dean doesn’t answer, instead just turning the music up.

Oh, Dean.

The Quotes Bark at Midnight:

Dude, I'm like Dillinger or something

I bet they could hump the crap outta your leg

MySpace, what the hell is that?

Somebody goes over Niagara in a barrel, you gonna jump in and try to save 'em?

You're lucky I've got a soft spot for lost puppies and long faces

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn rewatch #spn 2x08 #crossroad blues #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural season 2

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